THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE
AND OTHER PLEAS AND DISCUSSIONS
BY
FRANCES POWER COBBE
AUTHOR OF “AN ESSAY ON INTUITIVE MORALS,” “RELIGIOUS DUTY,” “BROKEN
LIGHTS,” “THE HOPES OF THE HUMAN RACE,” “THE PEAK IN DARIEN,” “THE
DUTIES OF WOMEN,” “A FAITHLESS WORLD,” ETC.
BOSTON
GEO. H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET
1888
CONTENTS.
ESSAY PAGE
PREFACE v
I. THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE 1
II. THE EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS 35
III. PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM 69
IV. THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING 111
V. TO KNOW, OR NOT TO KNOW 147
VI. THE TOWN MOUSE AND THE COUNTRY MOUSE 173
PREFACE.
We are all possessed of friends who, when any serious belief or matter
of practical conduct is in question, take up at the outset a thesis of
their own which they press on our acceptance with the best arguments at
their disposal. It is a rarer privilege to enjoy the intercourse of one
who does not invariably start with a ready-made opinion of what may be
true, right, or expedient in the doubtful case on which we wish to
consult him, but who will patiently turn over the matter with us,
suggest and register the various “pros and cons,” refer to admitted
principles and facts, and thus aid us to form a comprehensive judgment
for ourselves rather than induce us to accept his own. The discourse of
the first order of friends is an Argument, a Plea, a Contention; that of
the second, a Discussion.
In the same way, of course, an Essay may be either a Plea or a
Discussion. The author may take the position of Counsel for one side or
other of the case before the reader, or else he may charge as Judge, and
sum up the substance of such arguments as might have been used by two
advocates on the opposite sides. Either style of writing is perfectly
legitimate; and each has its particular fitness and utility.
Misunderstanding and perplexity only occur when the hasty reader
(newspaper critics being signally guilty in this matter) chooses to
assume that an avowedly one-sided Plea is intended for a Judicial
Discussion,[1] or treats a Discussion as a Plea for the side which the
critic dislikes.
In the present little collection of Essays, written at various times and
for various objects, it will be found that the first three belong to the
class which I have described as Pleas, and the last three more or less
to that of Discussions.
I plead that the Scientific Spirit of the Age, while it has given us
many precious things, is, in its present exorbitant development,
depriving us of things more precious still.
I plead that the Education of the Emotions (to be carried on chiefly
through the contagion of good and noble sentiments) is an object of
paramount importance, albeit nearly totally ignored in ordinary systems
of education.
I plead that, in the present disintegration of all religious opinion,
Judaism may yet become a progressive, and cease to be merely a tribal,
faith; and that, if it absorb the moral and spiritual essence of
Christianity, it may solve the great problem of combining a theology
consonant to modern philosophy with a worship hallowed by the sacred
associations of the remotest past.
In the last three Essays, I discuss the relation of Knowledge to
Happiness; I discuss the real—as distinguished from the
conventional—character of our common processes of Thought; and, finally,
I discuss the respective claims of Town and Country Life to be esteemed
most healthy and felicitous for body and mind.
I shall much rejoice if I win my readers to adopt the opinions which I
have advocated in the first half of the book.
I shall remain altogether indifferent as to which of the alternative
views put forth in the concluding Essays may seem to them most
impressive, and only congratulate myself if I shall have succeeded in
setting forth in due light and order the multitudinous points which
together constitute the materials for forming a sound judgment upon
them.
FRANCES POWER COBBE.
HENGWRT, DOLGELLY,
1888.
ESSAY I.
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE.
That the present is pre-eminently the Age of Science is a fact equally
recognized by the majority who hail it with triumph and by the minority
who regard it with feelings wherein regret and apprehension have their
place. As in Literature an age of production is ever followed by an age
of criticism, so in the general history of human interests War,
Religion, Art, start in early days and run their swift course, while
Science creeps slowly after them, till at last she passes them on the
way and comes foremost in the race. We still in our time have War; but
it is no longer the conflict of valiant soldiers, but the game of
scientific strategists. We still have Religion; but she no longer claims
earth and heaven as her domain, but meekly goes to church by a path over
which Science has notified, “On Sufferance Only.” We still have Art; but
it is no longer the Art of Fancy, but the Art of the Intellect, wherein
the Beautiful is indefinitely postponed to the technically True, as
Truth is discerned by men who think _qu’il n’y a rien de vrai excepté le
laid_. All our multiform activities, from agriculture down to
dressmaking, are in these days nothing if not “scientific,” and to
thousands of worthy people it is enough to say that Science teaches this
or that, or that the interests of Science require such and such a
sacrifice, to cause them to bow their heads, as pious men of old did at
the message of a Prophet. “It is SCIENCE! Let it do what seemeth it
good.” The claims of the æsthetic faculty, and even of the moral sense,
to speak in arrest of judgment on matters entirely within their own
spheres, are ruled out of court.
By a paradoxical fatality, however, it would appear as if the obsession
of the Scientific Spirit is likely to be a little lightened for us by an
event which might have been expected to rivet the yoke on our necks. The
recently published Life of the most illustrious and most amiable man of
Science of this scientific age has suggested to many readers doubts of
the all-sufficiency of Science to build up not theories, but men. Mr.
Darwin’s admirably candid avowal of the gradual extinction in his mind
of the æsthetic[2] and religious elements has proved startling to a
generation which, even when it is ready to abandon Religion, would be
direfully distressed to lose the pleasures afforded by Art and Nature,
Poetry and Music. Instead of lifting the scientific vocation to the
skies (as was probably anticipated), this epoch-making Biography seems
to have gone far to throw a sort of dam across the stream, and to have
arrested not a few Science-worshippers with the query: “What shall it
profit a man if he discover the origin of species and know exactly how
earth-worms and sun-dews conduct themselves, if all the while he grow
blind to the loveliness of nature, deaf to music, insensible to poetry,
and as unable to lift his soul to the Divine and Eternal as was the
primeval Ape from whom he has descended? Is this all that Science can do
for her devotee? Must he be shorn of the glory of humanity when he is
ordained her Priest? Does he find his loftiest faculties atrophied when
he has become a machine for grinding general laws out of large
collections of facts”?[3]
While these reflections are passing through many minds, it may be
permitted to me to review some features of the Scientific Spirit of the
Age. Frankly, I shall do it from an adverse point of view. There were
many years of my life during which I regarded it with profound, though
always distant, admiration. Grown old, I have come to think that many
spirits in the hierarchy are loftier and purer; that the noblest study
of mankind is Man, rather than rock or insect; and that, even at its
best, Knowledge is immeasurably less precious than Goodness and Love.
Whether in these estimates I err or am justified, it would, in any case,
be superfluous for me to add my feeble voice to the glorification of the
Scientific Spirit. Diana of the Ephesians was never proclaimed so
vociferously “Great”; and perhaps, like the worshippers of the elder
goddess, it may be said of those of Science, “The most part know not
wherefore they have come together.” It will suffice if I succeed in
partially exhibiting how much we are in danger of losing by the
Scientific Spirit, while others show us, more or less truly, what we
gain thereby.
In speaking of “Science” in this paper, I must be understood to refer
only to the Physical Sciences, not to the mathematical or metaphysical.
The former (especially the Biological group) have of late years come so
much to the front that the old application of the word to the exact
sciences and to metaphysics and ethics has almost dropped out of popular
use. I also desire to explain at starting that I am not so blind as to
ignore the splendid achievements of modern physical science in its own
realm, nor the benefits which many applications of the Scientific Spirit
have brought in various other directions. It is the intrusiveness and
oppression of the Scientific Spirit in regions where it has no proper
work, and (still more often) its predominance in others where its place
should be wholly subordinate, against which a protest appears to be
needed. A score of causes have contributed in our generation to set
Science up and to pull other things down. The levels need to be
redressed. Time will not permit me to exhibit the results of the
excessive share taken of late years by the Scientific Spirit in many
practical matters wherein experience and common sense were safer guides,
_e.g._, in Agriculture. This side of the question I must leave
untouched, and limit myself to the discussion of the general influence
of the Scientific Spirit in Education, in Art, in Morals, and in
Religion.
Professor Tyndall, in the Preface to his great work on “Heat as a mode
of Motion,” calls Science “the noblest growth of modern times,” and adds
that “as a means of intellectual education its claims are still
disputed, though, once properly organized, greater and more beneficent
revolutions wait its employment here than those which have marked its
application in the material world” (2d ed., p. x). Since the publication
of this book, and indeed since the opening of the Age of Science, the
relative claims of Science and Literature to form the basis of
_intellectual_ instruction have been incessantly debated by men
qualified by experience in tuition (which I cannot claim to be) to form
a judgment on the subject. There has been, however, I think, too little
attention given on either side to the relative _moral_ influences of the
two studies.
In addressing the London Society for the Extension of University
Teaching on March 3 last, Sir James Paget expressed his dissent from
Professor Morley’s opinion (given on a similar occasion last year) that
“Literature was an excellent, if not a better study than Science.” Sir
James maintained, on the contrary, that “_nothing could better advance
human prosperity than Science_,” and he elaborately set forth the
specific benefits of a scientific education as he conceived them, as
follows:—
There was first the teaching of the power of observing, then the
teaching of accuracy, then of the difficulty of attaining to a real
knowledge of the truth, and, lastly, the teaching of the methods by
which they could pass from that which was proved to the thinking of
what was probable.[4]
It would, of course, be unjust to hold Science to these definitions, as
if they exhausted her claims as our instructress. It may, however,
fairly be assumed that, in the view of one of the leading men of science
of the day, they are _paramount_. If any much higher results than they
were to be expected from scientific teaching, Sir James would scarcely
have omitted to present them first or last. To what, then, do these four
great lessons of Science amount? They teach—and, I think, teach
only—Observation, Accuracy, Intellectual Caution, and the acquirement of
a Method of advancing to the _thinking of what was probable_,—possibly
the method commonly known as Induction.
I must confess that these “great truths” (as Sir James oddly calls them)
represent to my mind only the culmination of the lower range of human
faculties; or, more strictly speaking, the perfect application to human
concerns of those faculties which are common to man and the lower
animals. A fox may be an “_observer_,” and an exceedingly _accurate_
one—of hen-roosts. He may be deeply sensible of “_the difficulty of
attaining to a real knowledge_”—of traps. Further than this, he may even
“_pass from the proved_”—existence of a pack of hounds in his cover to
“_thinking that it was probable_”—he would shortly be chased. To train a
MAN, it is surely indispensable to develop in him a superior order of
powers from these. His mind must be enriched with the culture of his own
age and country, and of other lands and ages, and fortified by
familiarity with the thoughts of great souls on the topics of loftiest
interest. He must be accustomed to think on subjects above those to
which his observation, or accuracy of description, or caution in
accepting evidence can apply, and on which (it is to be hoped) he will
reach some anchorage of faith more firm than Sir James Paget’s climax of
scientific culture, “_the passing from that which was proved to the
thinking of what was probable_.” He ought to handle the method of
deductive reasoning at least as well as that of induction, and beyond
these (purely intellectual) attainments a human education making claim
to completeness should cultivate the imagination and poetic sentiment;
should “soften manners,” as the _literae humaniores_ proverbially did of
old; should widen the sympathies, dignify the character, inspire
enthusiasm for noble actions, and chivalrous tenderness towards women
and all who need defence; and thus send forth the accomplished student a
_gentleman_ in the true sense of the word. The benefits attributed by
Sir James Paget to Scientific education, and even those with which, in
candor, we may credit it beyond his four “great truths,” fall, I venture
to think, deplorably short of such a standard of culture as this.
The deficiencies of Scientific education do not exhaust the objections
against it. There seem to be positive evils almost inseparable from such
training when carried far with the young. One of the worst is the danger
of the adoption by the student of materialistic views on all subjects.
He need not become a theoretic or speculative Materialist: that is
another risk, which may or may not be successfully eliminated. But he
will almost inevitably fall into practical materialism. Of the two sides
of human life, his scientific training will compel him to think always
in the first place of the lower. The material (or, as our fathers would
have called it, the _carnal_) fact will be uppermost in his mind, and
the spiritual meaning thereof more or less out of sight. He will view
his mother’s tears not as expressions of her sorrow, but as solutions of
muriates and carbonates of soda, and of phosphates of lime; and he will
reflect that they were caused not by his heartlessness, but by cerebral
pressure on her lachrymal glands. When she dies, he will “peep and
botanize” on her grave,—not with the poet’s sense of the
sacrilegiousness of such ill-placed curiosity, but with the serene
conviction of the meritoriousness of accurate observation among the
scientifically interesting “Flora” of a cemetery.
To this class of mind, thoroughly imbued with the Scientific Spirit,
Disease is the most important of facts and the greatest of evils. Sin,
on the other hand, is a thing on which neither microscope nor telescope
nor spectroscope, nor even stethoscope, can afford instruction. Possibly
the student will think it only a spectral illusion; or he will foresee
that it may be explained by and by scientifically, as a form of disease.
There may be discovered _bacilli_ of Hatred, Covetousness, and Lust,
respectively responsible for Murder, Theft, and Adultery. Already
hypocrisy is a recognized form of Hysteria. The state of opinion in
“Erewhon” may be hopefully looked for in England, when the Scientific
Spirit altogether prevails.
Besides its materializing tendency, a Scientific Education involves
other evils, among which may be counted the fostering of a callous and
irreverent spirit. To this I shall return presently. Of course every
tendency of a pursuit, good or bad, affects the young who are engaged in
it much more than the old, whose characters may have been moulded under
quite opposite influences. We must wait for a generation to see the
Scientific Spirit in its full development.
As to the instruction of young men and women in Physiological Science in
particular, I am exonerated from treating the subject by being
privileged to cite the opinions of two of the most eminent and
experienced members of the scholastic profession. I do so with great
thankfulness, believing that it will be a revelation to many parents,
blindly caught by scientific claptrap, to learn that such are the views
of men among the best qualified in England to pronounce judgment on the
subject.
The late lamented Mr. Thring, of Uppingham, wrote to me, Sept. 6, 1886:—
My writings on Education sufficiently show how strongly I feel on
the subject of a literary education, or rather how confident I am in
the judgment that there can be no worthy education which is not
based on the study of the highest thoughts of the highest men in the
best shape. As for Science (most of it falsely so called), if a few
leading minds are excepted, it simply amounts, to the average dull
worker, to no more than a kind of upper shop work, weighing out and
labelling and learning alphabetical formulæ,—a superior grocer
assistant’s work, and has not a single element of higher mental
training in it. Not to mention that it leaves out all knowledge of
men and life, and therefore—is eminently fitted for life and its
struggle! Physiology in its worse sense adds to this a brutalizing
of the average practitioner, or rather a devilish combination of
intellect worship and cruelty at the expense of feeling and
character. For my part, if it were true that Vivisection had
wonderfully relieved bodily disease for men, if it was at the cost
of lost spirits, then let the body perish. And it is at the cost of
lost spirits. I do not say that under no circumstances should an
experiment take place, but I do say that under no circumstances
should an experiment take place for teaching purposes. You will see
how decided my judgments are on this matter.
The Rev. J. E. C. Welldon, Head Master of Harrow, has been good enough
to write to me as follows:—
I am most willing to let you quote my words, whether what I said
before or what I say now. You command my full sympathy in the
crusade which you have so nobly declared against cruelty. I say this
frankly, although I know that there is some difference between us in
regard to the practice of Vivisection. But even if it be necessary
that in some cases, and under strict conditions, vivisectional
experiments should be made upon animals, I cannot doubt that the use
of such experiments tends to exercise a demoralizing influence upon
any person who may be called to make them. I hold, therefore, that
the educational effect of Vivisection is always injurious. Knowledge
is dearly purchased at the cost of tenderness, and I cannot believe
that any morally-minded person could desire to familiarize the young
with the sight of animal suffering. For my part, I look upon the
hardness of heart with which some distinguished physiologists have
met the protest raised against Vivisection as one of many signs that
materialism means at the last an inversion of the ethical law;
_i.e._, a preference of knowledge to goodness, of mind to spirit,
or, in a word, of human things to divine. Surely it is a paradox
that they who minimize the specific distinction between man and the
animals should be the least tender in their views of animal
sufferings, and that Christians who accentuate that distinction
should be willing to spare animals pain at the cost of enhancing
their own. I conceive it then to be a primary duty of a modern
educator, at School or at College, to cultivate in his pupils, by
all the means in his power, the sympathetic sentiment towards the
animal world.
To turn to a less painful part of our subject.
Science and Art are constantly coupled together in common parlance and
in grants of public money; but, if ever incompatibility of temper formed
a just ground of divorce, it is surely in their case. When Science—like
Poverty—comes in at the door, Art—like Love—flies out at the window.
They move in different planes, and touch different parts of human
nature. Science appeals to the Intellect, Art to the Emotions; and we
are so constituted that our Intellects and Emotions are like buckets in
a well. When our Intellects are in the ascendant, our Emotions sink out
of sight; when our Emotions rise to the surface, our busy Intellects
subside into quiescence. It is only the idolatry of Science which could
make intelligent men overlook the fact that she and Art resemble two
leashed greyhounds pulling opposite ways, and never running together
unless there be some game (shall we surmise an endowment of public
money?) in view. The synthetic, reverential, sympathizing spirit of Art
is opposed, as the different poles of the magnet, to the analytic,
self-asserting, critical spirit of Science. The artist seeks Beauty;
finds likenesses; discerns the Ideal through the Real. The man of
Science seeks Facts; draws distinctions; strips the Real to the skin and
the bones.
A great light of the Scientific Age has been heard to say that when he
first visited the Vatican he “sat down before Raphael’s Transfiguration
and filled three pages of his note-book with its faults.” It was the
most natural thing in the world for him to do! How should a Physicist
approve of three figures suspended in the air in defiance of the laws of
gravitation? Or what could a Zoölogist say to an angel outrageously
combining in his person the wings exclusively belonging to the Order
_Aves_ with the arms and legs of _Bimana_? Worst of all, what must be
the feelings of a Physiologist confronted with a bas-relief of a Centaur
with two stomachs, or of a Cherub with none?
Poetry is the Art of Arts. If we desire to see what Science can do for
it, let us take a typical piece wherein Fancy revels and plays like an
Ariel with wreaths of lovely tropes,—say Shelley’s “Sensitive Plant,”
for example. We must begin by cutting out all the absurdly unscientific
statements; _e.g._, that the lily of the valley grows pale with passion,
that the hyacinth rings peals of music from its bells, and that the
narcissus gazes at itself in the stream. Then, in lieu of this folly, we
must describe how the garden has been thoroughly drained and
scientifically manured with guano and sewage. After this the flowers may
be mentioned under their proper classes, as monandria and polyandria,
cryptogams and phenogams. Such would be the result of bringing the
Scientific Spirit to bear on Poetry. Introduced into the border realm of
Fiction, it begins by marring with pedantic illustrations the otherwise
artistic work of George Eliot. Pushed further, it furnishes us with
medical novels, wherein the leading incident is a surgeon dissecting his
aunt. Still a step onward, we reach the brute realism of “A Mummer’s
Wife” and “La Joie de Vivre.” The distance between Walter Scott and Zola
measures that between Art and Science in Fiction.
To many readers it may appear that the antagonism of Science to Art may
be condoned in favor of her high claim to be the guide, not to Beauty,
but to Truth. But is it indeed _Truth_, in the sense which we have
hitherto given to that great and sacred word, at which Physical Science
is now aiming? Can we think of Truth merely as a vast heap of Facts,
piled up into an orderly pyramid of a Science, like one of Timur’s heaps
of skulls? To collect a million facts, test them, classify them, raise
by induction generalizations concerning them, and hand them down to the
next generation to add a few thousand more facts and (probably) to
reconstruct the pyramid on a different basis and another plan,—if this
be indeed to arrive at “Truth,” modern Science may boast she has touched
the goal. Yet in other days Truth was deemed something nobler than this.
It was the interests which lay behind and beyond the facts, their
possible bearing on man’s deepest yearnings and sublimest hopes, which
gave dignity and meaning to the humblest researches into rock and plant,
and which glorified such discoveries as Kepler’s till he cried in
rapture, “O God, I think thy thoughts after thee!” and Newton’s, till he
closed the “Principia” (as Parker said of him) by “bursting into the
Infinite and kneeling there.” In our time, however, Science has
repeatedly renounced all pretension to throw light in any direction
beyond the sequence of physical causes and effects; and by doing so she
has, I think, abandoned her claim to be man’s guide to Truth. The Alpine
traveller who engages his guides to scale the summit of the Jungfrau,
and finds them stop to booze in the _Wirthschaft_ at the bottom, would
have no better right to complain than those who fondly expected Science
to bring them to God, and are informed that she now never proceeds above
the Ascidian. So long as all the rivulets of laws traced by Science
flowed freshly onward towards the sea, our souls drank of them with
thankfulness. Now that they lose themselves in the sands, they have
become mere stagnant pools of knowledge.
We now turn to the influence of the Scientific Spirit on Morals.
Respecting the theory of ethics, the physico-Scientific Spirit has
almost necessarily been from the first Utilitarian, not Transcendental.
To Mr. Herbert Spencer the world first owed the suggestion that moral
intuitions are only results of hereditary experiences. “I believe,” he
wrote in 1868 to Mr. Mill, “that the experiences of utility, organized
and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have
been producing corresponding modifications which, by continued
transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of
moral intuition, certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct
which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility.”
Mr. Darwin took up the doctrine at this stage, and in his “Descent of
Man” linked on the human conscience to the instincts of the lower
animals, from whence he held it to be derived. Similar instincts, he
taught, would have grown up in any other animal as well endowed as we
are, but those other animals would not necessarily attach their ideas of
right and wrong to the same conduct. “If, for instance, men were reared
under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a
doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a
sacred duty to kill their brothers.” (_Descent of Man_, vol. i. p. 73.)
These two doctrines—that Conscience is only the “capitalized experience
of the human tribe” (as Dr. Martineau has summarized Mr. Spencer) and
that there is no such thing as absolute or immutable Morality, but only
a convenient Rule for each particular class of intelligent animals—have
between them revolutionized theoretic ethics, and deeply imperilled, so
far as they are accepted, the existence of human virtue. It is in vain
that the plea is often entered on the side of faith that, after all,
Darwin only showed _how_ Conscience has been evolved, perhaps by Divine
prearrangement, and that we may allow its old authority all the same. He
has done much more than this. He has destroyed the possibility of
retaining the same reverence for the dictates of conscience. As he
himself asks, “_Would any of us trust in the convictions of a monkey’s
mind?_... The doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind,
which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of _any
value_.” (_Life_, vol. i. p. 316.) Who, indeed, can attach the same
solemn authority to the monitions of the
“Stern daughter of the Voice of God”
and to the prejudices of ancestors just emerging from apehood? It was
hard enough heretofore for tempted men to be chaste, sober, honest,
unselfish, while passion was clamoring for indulgence or want pining for
relief. The basis on which their moral efforts rested needed to be in
their minds as firm as the law of the universe itself. What fulcrum will
they find henceforth in the sand-heap of hereditary experiences of
utility?
Thus the Scientific Spirit has sprung a mine under the deepest
foundations of Morality. It may, indeed, be hereafter countermined. I
believe that it will be so, and that it will be demonstrated that many
of our broadest and deepest moral intuitions can have had no such
origin. The universal human expectation of Justice, to which all
literature bears testimony, can never have arisen from such
infinitesimal experience of actual Justice, or rather such large
experience of prevailing injustice, as our ancestors in any period of
history can have known. Nor can “the set of our (modern) brains” against
the destruction of sickly and deformed infants have come to us from the
consolidated experience of past generations, since the “utility” is all
on the side of Spartan infanticide. But for the present, and while
Darwinism is in the ascendant, the influence of the doctrine of
Hereditary Conscience is simply deadly. It is no more possible for a man
who holds such a theory to cherish a great moral ambition than for a
stream to rise above its source. The lofty ideal of Goodness, the hunger
and thirst after righteousness, which have been the mainspring of heroic
and saintly lives, must be exchanged at best for a kindly good nature
and a mild desire to avoid offence. The man of science may be anxious to
abolish vice and crime. They offend his tastes, and distract him from
his pursuits; but he has no longing to enthrone in their place a
positive virtue, demanding his heart and life’s devotion. He is almost
as much disturbed by extreme goodness as by wickedness. Nay, it has been
remarked, by a keen and sensitive observer, that the companionship of a
really great and entirely blameless man of science invariably proved a
“torpedo touch to aspiration.”
An obvious practical result of the present influence of Science on
Morals has been the elevation of Bodily Health into the _summum bonum_,
and the consequent accommodation of the standard of right and wrong to
that new aim. An immense proportion of the arguments employed in
Parliament and elsewhere, when any question touching public health is
under discussion, rest on the unexpressed major premise “that any action
which in the opinion of experts conduces to the bodily health of the
individual or of the community is _ipso facto_ lawful and right.” I
cannot here indicate the conclusions to which this principle leads. Much
that the Christian conscience now holds to be Vice must be transferred
to the category of Virtue; while the medical profession will acquire a
Power of the Keys which it is perhaps even less qualified to use than
the Successors of St. Peter.
Another threatening evil from the side of Science is the growth of a
hard and pitiless temper. From whatsoever cause it arise, it seems
certain that, with some noteworthy exceptions, the Scientific Spirit is
callous. In the mass of its literature, the expressions of sympathy with
civilized or savage, healthy or diseased mankind, or with the races
below us, are few and far between. Men and beasts are, in scientific
language, alike “specimens” (wretched word!); and, if the men be ill or
dying, they become “clinical material.” The light of Science is a “dry”
one. She leaves no glamour, no tender mystery anywhere. Nor has she more
pity than Nature for the weak who fall in the struggle for existence.
There is, indeed, a scientific contempt quite _sui generis_ for the
“poor in spirit,” the simple, the devoutly believing,—in short, for all
the humble and the weak,—which constitutes of the Scientific Spirit of
the Age a kind of Neo-Paganism, the very antithesis of Christianity. I
may add that it is no less the antithesis of Theism, which, while
abandoning the Apocalyptic side of Christianity, holds (perhaps with
added consciousness of its supreme value) to the spiritual part of the
old faith, and would build the Religion of the future on Christ’s
lessons of love to God and Man, of self-sacrifice and self-consecration.
Prior to experience it might have been confidently expected that the
Darwinian doctrine of the descent of Man would have called forth a fresh
burst of sympathy towards all races of men and towards the lower
animals. Every biologist now knows tenfold better reasons than Saint
Francis for calling the birds and beasts “little brothers and sisters.”
But, instead of instilling the tenderness of the Saint of Assisi,
Science has taught her devotees to regard the world as a scene of
universal struggle, wherein the rule must be, “Every one for himself,
and no God for any one.”
Ten years ago an eminent American physician remarked to me: “In my
country the ardor of scientific research is rapidly overriding the
proper benevolent objects of my profession. The cure of disease is
becoming quite a secondary consideration to the achievement of a correct
diagnosis, to be verified by a successful _post mortem_.” How true this
now holds of the state of things in English hospitals, that remarkable
book, “St. Bernard’s,” and its still more important key, “Dying
Scientifically,” have just come in time to testify.[5] No one who has
read these books will deny that the purely Scientific Spirit is (at all
events sometimes) a merciless spirit; and that Dr. Draper’s famous
boast, so often repeated, that “Science has never subjected any one to
physical torture” (Preface to “Conflict,” p. xi), is untrue.
Irreverence appears to be another “note” of the Scientific Spirit.
Literature always holds a certain attitude of conservatism. Its kings
will never be dethroned. But Science is essentially Jacobin. The one
thing certain about a great man of science is that in a few years his
theories and books, like French Constitutions, will be laid on the
shelf. Like coral insects, the scientists of yesterday, who built the
foundations of the science of to-day, are all dead from the moment that
their successors have raised over them another inch of the interminable
reef. The student of Literature, dealing with human life, cannot forget
for a moment the existence of such things as goodness which he must
honor, and wickedness which he must abhor. But Physical Science, dealing
with unmoral Nature, brings no such lessons to her votaries. There is
nothing to revere even in a well-balanced solar system, and nothing to
despise in a microbe. Taking this into consideration, it might have been
foreseen that the Scientific Spirit of the Age would have been deficient
in reverence; and, as a matter of fact, I think it will be conceded that
so it is. It is a spirit to which the terms “imperious” and “arrogant”
may not unfitly be applied, and sometimes we may add “overbearing,” when
a man of science thinks fit to rebuke a theologian for trespassing on
_his_ ground after he has been trampling all over the ground of
theology. Perhaps the difference between the new “bumptious” Spirit of
Science and the old exquisitely modest and reverent tone of Newton and
Herschel, Faraday and Lyell, is only due to the causes which distinguish
everywhere a Church Triumphant from a Church Militant. But, whatever
they may be, it seems clear that it will scarcely be in an age of
Science that the prophecy will be fulfilled that “the meek shall inherit
the earth.”[6]
Among the delicate and beautiful things which Science brushes away from
life, I cannot omit to number a certain modesty which has hitherto
prevailed among educated people. The decline of decency in England,
apparent to every one old enough to recall earlier manners and topics of
conversation, is due in great measure, I think, to the scientific
(medical) spirit. Who would have thought thirty years ago of seeing
young men in public reading-rooms snatching at the _Lancet_ and the
_British Medical Journal_ from layers of what ought to be more
attractive literature, and poring over hideous diagrams and revolting
details of disease and monstrosity? It is perfectly right, no doubt, for
these professional journals to deal plainly with these horrors, and with
the thrice abominable records of “gynæcology.” But, being so, it follows
that it is _not_ proper that they should form the furniture of a
reading-table at which young men and young women sit for general—not
medical—instruction. Nor is it only in the medical journals that
disease-mongering now obtains. The political press has adopted the
practice of reporting the details of illness of every eminent man who
falls into the hands of the doctors, and affords those gentlemen an
opportunity of advertising themselves as his advisers. The last
recollection which the present generation will retain of many an
illustrious statesman, poet, and soldier, will not be that he died like
a hero or a saint, bravely or piously, but that he swallowed such and
such a medicine, and, perhaps, was sick in his stomach. Death-beds are
desecrated that doctors may be puffed and public inquisitiveness
assuaged.
So far does the materialist spirit penetrate into literature that in
criticising books and men the most exaggerated importance is attached by
numberless writers to the physical conditions and “environments” of the
personages with whom they are concerned, till we could almost suppose
that—given his ancestry and circumstances—we could scientifically
construct the Man, with all his gifts and passions. As if, forsooth, a
dozen brothers were alike in character, or even all the kittens in a
litter! It is refreshing to read the brisk _persiflage_ on this kind of
thing in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for March 1. The writer, reviewing
Mr. Lecky’s books, states that but little of that splendid historian’s
private life has been published, and adds:—
“Je ne me plains pas de cette sécheresse, je la bénis. C’est un
plaisir, devenu si rare aujourd’hui, de pouvoir lire un livre sans
en connaître l’auteur: de juger une œuvre directement et en
elle-même, sans avoir à étudier ce composé d’organes et de tissus,
de nerfs et de muscles, d’où elle est sortie: sans la commenter à
l’aide de la physiologie, de l’ethnographie, et de la climatologie:
sans mettre en jeu l’atavisme et les diathèses héréditaires!”[7]
Turn we lastly to the influences of the Scientific Spirit on Religion.
It is hardly too much to affirm that the advance of that Spirit has been
to individuals and classes the signal for a subsidence of religious
faith and religious emotion.[8] Judging from Darwin’s experience, as
that of a typical man of science, just as such a one becomes an
embodiment of the Scientific Spirit, this religious sentiment flickers
and expires, like a candle in an airless vault. Speaking of his old
feelings of “wonder, admiration, and devotion” experienced while
standing amid the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, he wrote in later
years, when Science had made him all her own: “_Now_ the grandest scenes
would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It
may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colorblind”
(_Life_, vol. i. p. 311). Nor did the deadening influences stop at his
own soul. As one able reviewer of his “Life” in the _Spectator_ wrote:
“No sane man can deny Darwin’s influence to have been at least
contemporaneous with a general decay of belief in the unseen. Darwin’s
Theism faded from his mind without disturbance, without perplexity,
without pain. These words describe his influence as well as his
experience.”
The causes of the anti-religious tendency of modern science may be
found, I believe: 1st, in the closing up of that “Gate called
Beautiful,” through which many souls have been wont to enter the Temple;
2d, in the diametric opposition of its method to the method of spiritual
inquiry; and, 3d, to the hardness of character frequently produced (as
we have already noted) by scientific pursuits. These three causes, I
think, sufficiently account for the antagonism between the modern
Scientific and the Religious Spirits, quite irrespectively of the
bearings of critical or philosophical researches on the doctrines of
either natural or traditional religion. Had Science inspired her
votaries with religious _sentiment_, they would have broken their way
through the tangle of theological difficulties, and have opened for us a
highway of Faith at once devout and rational. But of all improbable
things to anticipate now in the world is a Scientific Religious
Reformation. Lamennais said there was one thing worse than Atheism;
namely, indifference whether Atheism be true. The Scientific Spirit of
the Age has reached this point. It is contented to be Agnostic, not
Atheistic. It says aloud, “I don’t know.” It mutters to those who
listen, “I don’t care.”
The Scientific Spirit has undoubtedly performed prodigies in the realms
of physical discovery. Its inventions have brought enormous
contributions to the material well-being of man, and it has widened to a
magnificent horizon the intellectual circle of his ideas. Yet
notwithstanding all its splendid achievements, if it only foster our
lower mental faculties while it paralyzes and atrophies the higher; if
Reverence and Sympathy and Modesty dwindle in its shadow; if Art and
Poetry shrink at its touch; if Morality be undermined and perverted by
it; and if Religion perish at its approach as a flower vanishes before
the frost,—then, I think, we must deny the truth of Sir James Paget’s
assertion, that “_nothing can advance human prosperity so much as
science_.” She has given us many precious things; but she takes away
things more precious still.
ESSAY II.
THE EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS.
Human Emotions—the most largely effective springs of human conduct—arise
either at first hand on the pressure of their natural stimuli, or at
second hand by the contagion of sympathy with the emotions of other men.
This last source of emotion has not, I conceive, received sufficient
attention in practical systems of education, and to the consideration of
it the present paper will be chiefly devoted.
Every human emotion appears to be transmissible by contagion, and to be
also more often so developed than it is solitarily evolved. For once
that Courage or Terror, Admiration or Contempt, or even Good-will and
Ill-will, spring of themselves in the breast of man, woman, or child,
each is many times _caught_ from another mind possessed of the same
feeling. By a subtle sympathy, not unshared by the lower animals, a
sympathy which sometimes works slowly and imperceptibly and is sometimes
communicated with electric velocity, one man conveys to another, as if
it were a flame, the emotion which burns in his own soul. Thenceforth
the recipient becomes a fresh propagator of the emotion to those with
whom he in his turn comes into physical contact. A few instances may be
named to make clear my meaning.
The most familiar example of the contagiousness of the emotions, as the
reader will instantly recall, is that of Fear, which has often spread
through whole armies with such inexplicable celerity and fatal results
that the ancients were fain to attribute the frenzy to the malevolence
of a god, and called such terrors “Panic.” The disasters which have
occurred during the last few years in so many European and American
theatres and churches afford sad evidence that, though “great Pan is
dead,” our liability to succumb to such waves of fear has not been
diminished by modern civilization. The proof of the special power of the
contagion lies in this: that there is every reason to believe that the
majority of the persons constituting the terror-stricken crowd would,
_if alone_, have met the danger with reasonable composure. There is also
happily, we may remember, such a thing as the contagion of Courage as
well as that of Terror. And many a time and oft in our history the
captain of a sinking ship, the commander of a retreating regiment, has,
by his individual intrepidity, restored the _morale_ of his men. Again,
a remarkable instance of the contagiousness of emotion is afforded by
the Popularity of the men who become in any country the idols of the
hour. The fact is very well known to the organizers of _claques_ and
_réclames_ in theatres, and of ovations in political life, that it is
enough for a small band of friends in an assembly to cheer and clap
hands, to induce hundreds, who had previously little interest in the
work or person praised, to join the hosannas. When a statesman has
succeeded in arousing enthusiasm for himself (possibly by persuading
scores of people and associations that “all his sympathies are with
their”—totally opposite aims), he may then safely disappoint each in
turn and veer round to the opposite point of the political and
theological compass from which he sailed with flowing canvas. His
popularity will not be forfeited or even lessened; for it is a mere
contagion of sentiment, not a rational or critical judgment. Herein lies
the special peril of democracies, that this kind of contagion of
personal enthusiasm rapidly becomes the largest factor in their
politics. From the nature of things, the masses cannot form judgments on
questions of state, referring, perhaps, to countries of which the very
names are unknown to them; and, therefore, they must of necessity choose
Men, not Measures. When we further examine who are the Men so chosen and
why, we arrive at the startling discovery that it is exclusively _by
rhetoric_ that the contagious admiration and sympathy of the masses can
be roused. Not sound statesmanship, not wise patriotism, not
incorruptible fidelity, not dignified consistency, not, in short, any
one quality fitting a man to be a safe or able minister, attracts the
enthusiasm of the multitude, or is even estimated at all by them. The
only gift they can appreciate is that which they themselves would
designate “_the Gift of the Gab_.” The lesson is a grave one for all
free countries. By such popular idolatry of great talkers were all the
old republics of Greece and Magna Graecia brought to destruction; and
the men who by such means acquired a bastard royalty over them so
exercised it as to make the name of “Tyrant” for ever abominable.
As concerns emotions connected with Religion, the contagion of them has
been notorious in all ages, for good or evil, according to the character
of the religion in question. The intoxication of the dances of old
Mænads and the modern Dervishes, the shrieks and self-woundings of the
priests of Baal and Cybele, the frenzied scenes of sacrifice to Moloch
and the Aztec gods, and a hundred other examples will occur to every
reader. Probably those on the largest scale of all recorded in history
were the first Crusades, when “Europe precipitated itself on Asia” in a
delirium of religious enthusiasm caught from Peter the Hermit and
Bernard of Clairvaux. The outbursts of the Anabaptists, the Flagellants
and Prophets of the Cevennes, in Christendom, and of Moslem fanatics
under Prophets and Mahdis (of which we have probably by no means heard
the last), and finally the Revivals of various sects in England and
America, and the triumphs of the Salvation Army, are all instances of
the part played by the contagion of emotion in the religion of the
community at large. I shall speak hereafter of its share in personal
religious experience.