6 Joh. Bapt. a Vico, Neapol. Reg. eloq. Professor, de antiquissima
Itallorum sapientia ex lingua Latina originibus aruendâ: libri tres.
Neap., 1710.
7 The object I have proposed to myself, and wherein its distinction
exists, may be thus illustrated. A complex machine is presented to
the common view, the moving power of which is hidden. Of those who
are studying and examining it, one man fixes his attention on some
one application of that power, on certain effects produced by that
particular application, and on a certain part of the structure
evidently appropriated to the production of these effects, neither
the one or other of which he had discovered in a neighbouring
machine, which he at the same time asserts to be quite distinct from
the former, and to be moved by a power altogether different, though
many of the works and operations are, he admits, common to both
machines. In this supposed peculiarity he places the essential
character of the former machine, and defines it by the presence of
that which is, or which he supposes to be, absent in the latter.
Supposing that a stranger to both were about to visit the two
machines, this peculiarity would be so far useful as that it might
enable him to distinguish the one from the other, and thus to look
in the proper place for whatever else he had heard remarkable
concerning either; not that he or his informant would understand the
machine any better or otherwise, than the common character of a
whole class in the nomenclature of botany would enable a person to
understand all, or any one of the plants contained in that class.
But if, on the other hand, the machine in question were such as no
man was a stranger to, if even the supposed peculiarity, either by
its effects, or by the construction of that portion of the works
which produced them, were equally well known to all men, in this
case we can conceive no use at all of such a definition; for at the
best it could only be admitted as a definition for the purposes of
nomenclature, which never adds to knowledge, although it may often
facilitate its communication. But in this instance it would be
nomenclature misplaced, and without an object. Such appears to me to
be the case with all those definitions which place the essence of
Life in nutrition, contractility, &c. As the second instance, I will
take the inventor and maker of the machine himself, who knows its
moving power, or perhaps himself constitutes it, who is, as it were,
the soul of the work, and in whose mind all its parts, with all
their bearings and relations, had pre-existed long before the
machine itself had been put together. In him therefore there would
reside, what it would be presumption to attempt to acquire, or to
pretend to communicate, the most perfect insight not only of the
machine itself, and of all its various operations, but of its
ultimate principle and its essential causes. The mysterious ground,
the efficient causes of vitality, and whether different lives differ
absolutely or only in degree, He alone can know who not only said,
“Let the earth bring forth the living creature, the beast of the
earth after his kind, and it was so;” but who said, “Let us make man
in our image, who himself breathed into his nostrils the breath of
Life, and man became a living soul.”
The third case which I would apply to my own attempt would be that
of the inquirer, who, presuming to know nothing of the power that
moves the whole machine, takes those parts of it which are presented
to his view, seeks to reduce its various movements to as few and
simple laws of motion as possible, and out of their separate and
conjoint action proceeds to explain and appropriate the structure
and relative positions of the works. In obedience to the
canon,—“Principia non esse multiplicanda præter summam necessitatem
cui suffragamur non ideo quia causalem in mundo unitatem vel ratione
vel experientiâ perspiciamus, sed illam ipsam indagamus impulsu
intellectûs, qui tantundem sibi in explicatione phænomenorum
profecisse videtur quantum ab codem principio ad plurima rationata
descendere ipsi concessum est.”
8 The arborescent forms on a frosty morning, to be seen on the window
and pavement, must have _some_ relation to the more perfect forms
developed in the vegetable world.
9 Thus we may say that whatever is organized from without, is a
product of mechanism; whatever is mechanised from within, is a
production of organization.
10 “The matter that surrounds us is divided into two great classes,
living and dead; the latter is governed by physical laws, such as
attraction, gravitation, chemical affinity; and it exhibits physical
properties, such as cohesion, elasticity, divisibility, &c. Living
matter also exhibits these properties, and is subject, in great
measure, to physical laws. But living bodies are endowed moreover
with a set of properties altogether different from these, and
contrasting with them very remarkably.” (Vide Lawrence’s Lectures,
p. 121.)
11 Much against my will I repeat this scholastic term, _multeity_, but
I have sought in vain for an unequivocal word of a less repulsive
character, that would convey the notion in a positive and not
comparative sense in kind, as opposed to the _unum et simplex_, not
in degree, as contracted with the _few_. We can conceive no reason
that can be adduced in justification of the word _caloric_, as
invented to distinguish the external cause of the sensation heat,
which would not equally authorise the introduction of a technical
term in this instance.
12 For abstractions are the conditions and only subject of all abstract
sciences. Thus the theorist (vide Dalton’s Theory), who reduces the
chemical process to the positions of atoms, would doubtless thereby
render chemistry calculable, but that he commences by destroying the
chemical process itself, and substitutes for it a _mote dance_ of
abstractions; for even the powers which he appears to leave real,
those of attraction and repulsion, he immediately unrealizes by
representing them as diverse and separable properties. We can
abstract the quantities and the quantitative motion from masses,
passing over or leaving for other sciences the question of what
constitutes the masses, and thus apply not to the masses themselves,
but to the abstractions therefrom,—the laws of geometry and
universal arithmetic. And where the quantities are the infallible
signs of real powers, and our chief concern with the masses is as
SIGNS, sciences may be founded thereon of the highest use and
dignity. Such, for instance, is the sublime science of astronomy,
having for its objects the vast masses which “God placed in the
firmament of the heaven to be for _signs_ and for seasons, for days
and years.” For the whole doctrine of physics may be reduced to
three great divisions: First, _quantitative motion_, which is
proportioned to the quantity of matter exclusively. This is the
science of weight or statics. Secondly, _relative motion_, as
communicated to bodies externally by impact. This is the science of
mechanics. Thirdly, _qualitative motion_, or that which is accordant
to properties of matter. And this is chemistry. Now it is evident
that the first two sciences presuppose that which forms the
exclusive object of the third, namely, quality; for all quantity in
nature is either itself derived, or at least derives its powers from
some _quality_, as that of weight, specific cohesion, hardness, &c.;
and therefore the attempt to reduce to the distances or impacts of
atoms, under the assumptions of two powers, which are themselves
declared to be no more than mere general terms for those quantities
of motion and impact (the atom itself being a fiction formed by
abstraction, and in truth a third occult quality for the purpose of
explaining hardness and density), amounts to an attempt to destroy
chemistry itself, and at the same time to exclude the sole reality
and only positive contents of the very science into which that of
chemistry is to be degraded. Now what qualities are to chemistry,
_productiveness_ is to the science of Life; and this being excluded,
physiology or zoonomy would sink into chemistry, chemistry by the
same process into mechanics, while mechanics themselves would lose
the substantial principle, which, bending the lower extreme towards
its apex, produces the organic circle of the sciences, and elevates
them all into different arcs or stations of the one absolute science
of Life.
This explanation, which in appearance only is a digression, was
indispensably requisite to prevent the idea of polarity, which has
been given as the universal law of Life, from being misunderstood as
a mere refinement on those mechanical systems of physiology, which
it has been my main object to explode.
13 I apprehend that by men of a certain school it would be deemed no
demerit, even though they should never have condescended to look
into any system of Aristotelian logic. It is enough for these
gentlemen that they are experimentalists! Let it not, however, be
supposed that they make more experiments than their neighbours, who
consider induction as a means and not an end; or have stronger
motives for making them, unless it can be believed that Tycho Brähe
must have been urged to repeat his sweeps of the heavens with
greater accuracy and industry than Herschel, for no better reason
than that the former flourished before the theory of gravitation was
perfected. No, but they have the honour of being mere
experimentalists! If, however, we may not refer to logic, we may to
common sense and common experience. It is not improbable, however,
that they have both read and studied a book of hypothetical
psychology on the assumptions of the crudest materialism, stolen too
without acknowledgment from our David Hartley’s essay on Man, which
is well known under the whimsical name of Condillac’s Logic. But, as
Mr. Brand has lately observed, “the French are a queer people,” and
we should not be at all surprised to hear of a book of fresh
importation from Paris, on determinate proportions in chemistry,
announced by the author in his title-page as a new and improved
system either of arithmetic or geometry.
14 Such is the interpretation given by Lord Bacon. To which of the two
gigantic intellects, the poet’s or philosophic commentator’s, the
allegory belongs, I shall not presume to decide. Its extraordinary
beauty and appropriateness remains the same in either case.
15 The Anatomical Demonstrations of the Brain, by Dr. Spurzheim, which
I have seen, presented to me the most satisfactory proof of this.
16 The remark on the feeling of the antennæ, compared with the touch of
man, or even of the half-reasoning elephant, is yet more applicable
to the taste, which in these gelatinous animals might, perhaps not
inappropriately, be entitled the gastric sense.