HOW TO GET A COGITATIVE NOSE.
It is a great and prevalent mistake to imagine that a Cogitative mind
(and Nose) is to be acquired by reading alone. It is almost certain
that, as books multiply, Cogitative Minds decrease, for how is a man to
think, if all his thinking is done for him? The mind, when constantly
supplied with extraneous thoughts must, without great care, lose the
habit of generating internal ones. All the greatest thinkers have been
the first in their department of thought. Homer, Dante, Chaucer,
Shakspere, Bacon, &c. These men, as compared with even mediocre men in
our day, had very little learning,—but they had vast wisdom.
Read Bacon’s Novum Organum and Sylva for instance, and see how few facts
there are in them but such as are either now known to, or laughed at, by
every school-boy; yet direct your attention to the train of thought, to
the generalizations from these simple facts, to the originality of the
deductions, and behold how the dwarf in Knowledge becomes a giant in
Wisdom! It is even true that Bacon was behind his cotemporaries in many
matters of mere knowledge; yet the majesty of his wisdom was so vast
that it still rules, and ever must rule, the world of science.
So, as on the one hand, a man may have wisdom and yet want knowledge; on
the other, he may have all knowledge and be able to discourse of all
things, from the hyssop to the cedar, and yet want wisdom. It is of no
use to read and accumulate facts if we do not also _think_. Better
indeed to think and never read, than read and not think. If a man does
not think for himself, if he does not originate ideas, if books are not
to him _only_ the elements of thought, if he is not fully and immoveably
impressed with the conviction that two and two make five, or any greater
number which the Cogitative Mind can evolve, he has no chance of
becoming a wise man, whatever his learning, and however profound his
acquaintance with the thoughts of other men.
But you reply, two and two do not, and cannot make five, &c. We rejoin,
they as certainly and unquestionably do in metaphysics, as they
certainly and unquestionably do not in physics. True, in physics, two
and two things, two and two facts make four, and only four; but if the
mind, when in possession of those four, can generate nothing more from
them, it is a hopeless case with that mind. If, upon the recipience of
such four facts the mind remains contented with the arithmetical fact
that, from four units it has segregated four, it is, and for ever will,
remain stationary; it has gained nothing, and might as well have left
those four facts in their original units, for their addition has not
added to it one particle of wisdom.
Facts are, or ought to be, only the generators of ideas. Facts in
themselves are utterly worthless; it is in their associations, in their
consequences, their bearings on each other; it is as they support or
refute systems, theories and other mind-born facts, that they are of
value. Now, it is only by the action of mind upon them that they have
associations, consequences, &c. Without mind, facts must for ever remain
units; even though added together, _ad infinitum_, they have no natural
co-unity, no cohesion, no affinity for each other. A thousand facts
added together are still but a thousand units, unless mind has cohered
them into a system. This done, you clearly have the thousand facts
still, but you have _also_ something infinitely more valuable, you have
a mind-born fact, a deduction, a system, hypothesis, theory, axiom, or
whatever you please to call it.
Cordially as we hate coining new words, we still more cordially hate the
German fashion of hooking together two vernacular words and calling the
junction an addition to the language. But we are compelled, in order to
save circumlocution, to coin a word to express those facts which spring
from Mind, whether, as in moral philosophy, purely metaphysical, or as
in natural philosophy, generated by Mind from Matter, by Reason from
Experience. Such facts we would beg to call noögenisms (νοος, _mens_,
_cogitatio_, and γενος, _natus_, _progenies_); therein including all
mental offsprings or deductions, whether called hypotheses, theories,
systems, sciences, axioms, aphorisms, &c.
Noögenisms, therefore, are those facts which mind generates from other
facts without annihilating the latter; hence it is said that,
metaphysically, two and two make five. Thus, mind, contemplating the
physical facts of the super-position of strata, deduces from and adds to
them this metaphysical fact or noögenism;—Strata were deposited
successively.
Herein appears too an essential difference between Mind and Matter. If
diverse substances, having a natural affinity, be amalgamated, a new
substance is obtained, but the elements are lost. Of hydrogen and oxygen
water may be made, but the gases are forthwith lost in the fluid; the
procedure may be reversed and the water be converted into gases, but the
water has disappeared. This is not so with mind and noögenisms; for
however closely, by a mental synthesis, divers facts may be united into
a new fact or noögenism, the latter is obtained without losing the
former or elementary facts, which remain as Knowledge, elements of
Wisdom, to support the noögenism or create others.
We see then, that while Mind is crescive, Matter is not. Matter is
neither crescive nor decrescive. It may be changed into divers forms,
animal, vegetable, or mineral, but it never can be varied in _quantity_.
The six feet of animated clay dies, it rots in the silent tomb; years
pass by. The hand of affection which protected the loathsome, yet—for
the once animating spirit’s sake—beloved, remains is cold and rotted
too. The sepulchre, so long forgotten and deserted, again becomes of
interest to the brother of the hyæna and the resurrectionist—the
antiquarian. He, in his cool, business-like phraseology, opens a barrow
or exhumes a tomb, and finds—what? A pound of dust! The sole visible
remains of a gigantic hero or a stalwart king. Yet is not one particle
of that ancient demigod perished. Every atom is, in some shape or other,
in the universe. Some atoms may “have gone a passage through the guts of
a beggar,” and so have nurtured an other human form; some may have
stopped a beer-barrel and so
“Imperious Cæsar dead, and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”
The theory of the metempsychosis is true of matter; and as the ancient
sages believed the soul to be material, that theory, so far from being
violently absurd (as we in the pride of better knowledge are apt to term
it), was almost the only theory which the thinking and observant mind
could of itself elaborate. Hence the adoption of that system by
far-distant nations is no proof of inter-communication. What the Brahmin
in India found a natural result of the doctrine of the materiality of
the soul and its consequent analogy to everything else material, the
Druid in Britain would arrive at with equal ease.
But Mind is both crescive and decrescive; and it is another peculiar
property of Mind, that it is never stationary,—it is always changing,
increasing or decreasing. This is an important consideration; a fearful
responsibility cast upon it. If the one talent (and God has so benignly
ordered it, that no sane, and therefore responsible, mind is devoid of
at least one talent,) is hid in a napkin, the servant is condemned and
his talent taken from him. But if the talent is put out to use, it will
increase and grow, and make other talents, and the lord of that servant
will receive his own again with usury. For, having endowed man with this
crescive power, He justly demands that power to be exercised and the
mind to be enlarged and expanded “by every one according to his several
ability,” so that He may reap the harvest which his well-rewarded
servants have gathered in, “reaping where He hath not sown, and
gathering where He hath not strewed.”
The very cause of this crescive power of mind is, that the sum of the
units aggregated by mind is greater than the arithmetical sum of the
units; and the cause of this is, that facts, the elements of noögenisms,
are not, like chemical elements, lost in the fact compounded from them,
but retain likewise a separate, independent existence, capable of being
again compounded into other noögenisms, and still ever without losing
their original forms.
It will now be understood what is meant by two and two making five, &c.;
and until a man is incontrovertibly convinced of the possibility of this
he will in vain multiply facts. Facts must be added together, not for
their arithmetical product, which is Knowledge, but for their
metaphysical product, which is Wisdom. You will frequently hear asked by
utilitarians, what is the use (_cui bono?_) of such and such Knowledge?
Remember that the use of all Knowledge is to feed the mind and to
generate Wisdom, and you will always have this ready and sufficient
reply, “It is food for thought.”
And here it may not be out of place to endeavour to point out by an
example the difference between knowledge and wisdom, and at the same
time elucidate more clearly how the former is to be made subservient to
and the genetrix of the latter. We observe that a certain quartz-stone
is round. We have learnt two facts, the nature and form of the stone.
Now what is the value of those facts _per se_? The recipience of them
has increased our _knowledge_, but is the mind strengthened or rendered
one jot _wiser_? We trow not. But as a key or foundation to an aqueous
_theory_ of geology they are almost infinitely important. The Cogitative
Mind perceives that the round stone must have once been an angular
fragment broken off from some rock of quartz, and asks, “How came it
broken off? and how came it round?” The answers are a whole system of
geology; nay, perhaps an entire system of the universe a noögenism of
the sublimest kind.[25] Have not these facts generated? Is it not clear
that, if the physical units had remained metaphysical units they would
have been valueless? but being submitted to the powerful energy of
intense thought they become the parents of a noögenism, into which “the
angels desired to look,” and at the first dawn of which, from the
primæval chaos, “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of
God shouted for joy.”
Neither is this instance fanciful; for, while we write, it reminds us
that this identical simple fact,—a round pebble on a common,—appeared to
Paley to be one from which the mind could evolve nothing, and therefore
he contrasted it with a watch, whose mechanism led the mind to theorize
on its causes and origin; whereas, a recent commentator thereon justly
observes, that the stone was as fertile a source of cogitation and as
able a guide “from Nature up to Nature’s God,” as the watch was from
itself to _its_ maker.
From this example let us take warning, that facts be not to us nothing
more than round stones. Let us be careful never to let our minds rest
content with the mere accumulation of facts, but ever strive to build
them up into something more useful and ennobling. Let us use them as
bricks—mere logs of burnt clay in themselves, but fit to build glorious
monuments of the sublime power of human invention. Let us remember that
Ideas are the only things of real permanent value in this world; and
that, though we may store our brain with Facts till our heads burst,
unless those facts are to us only generators of Ideas, we have not, and
cannot acquire a Cogitative mind; we may have Knowledge, but we have not
Wisdom. A wise man hath wisely said, that “the wise man is”—not he who
knoweth _things_, but—“he who knoweth the _interpretation_ of a thing”
[_Eccles._ viii. 21]; and for this purpose only it is that, “Wise men
lay up knowledge” [_Prov._ x. 14], for “Wisdom finds out knowledge of
witty inventions” [_Prov._ viii. 12].
In order to effectually discipline the mind to attentive study, and to
save it from the strong temptation which is offered to desultory
reading, it is advisable for the adult and partially educated student to
form an hypothesis and read up to it. To reverse, in fact, the Baconian
principles of philosophy, and to study from hypothesis to facts, and not
from facts to hypothesis. This is, it is true, opposed to modern
philosophical principles, but properly modified and carefully guarded
against self-conceit and dogmatism, it is almost the only proper and
effective mode of study. It is the ancient or Aristotelian mode; and
though, when refuted by Bacon, as a mode of “discovering the sciences,”
it had become shamefully abused and degenerate, it has produced more
great original thinkers than the modern. Observe, that we recommend it
only as a mode of _study_, _i. e._, of disciplining and exercising the
mind, for beyond the purpose of _training_ it should not be pursued. It
is too dangerous to be prosecuted far, for the mind which has long
formed and nursed up a favourite hypothesis is unwilling to abandon it,
and is too apt to force all facts into accordance with it, instead of
modifying or abandoning it as new facts arise.[26]
But the great advantages of this plan, as a training process, would
appear to be—1st. That the mind being thus occupied with an hypothesis
has always that to direct its researches in a settled, uniform, and
definite course. 2nd. That every new fact accumulated is immediately
compared with the hypothesis, and is incorporated or written off as
_contra_, after this mental exercise, as occasion may require. Thus no
fact ever comes into the mind without being subjected to thought and
giving exercise to the important faculty of comparison. And this process
of comparing, to which every fact must be subjected, will not only
impress the fact and its comparatives on the memory, but will powerfully
tend to exercise and strengthen the Cogitative powers; for there is no
operation of mind which more actively calls into energy all the
faculties at once than comparing, because to compare two things fairly
we must (so to speak) know the length, breadth, depth, density and
powers of each. 3rd. A steady habit of reading is acquired; we read with
a definite aim—the establishment or refutation (we ought not to care
which) of our hypothesis, and, however wide and discursive our reading,
there is little danger of its becoming desultory—that curse and bane of
modern mind. The Baconian process of accumulating facts before
hypothesising, almost demands desultory reading, for the mind sees no
fixed end towards which it shall arrive; it is not permitted to guess
what may be the result of its studies, and hence too often loses all
interest in them, and remains content with the barren accumulation of
things.
What we would suggest may be thus illustrated: Let a man, intending to
study history, first adopt an hypothesis—of course he must have some
pre-knowledge. It matters not what the hypothesis, so that it is likely
to involve a very wide field of inquiry. If he contemplate primæval
history, let him adopt some such proposition as this, “Whether we can
infer from the institutions of mankind that they all spring from one
common ancestor?” Or this, “Whether any nation whose national records
have been preserved were the first owners of the soil?”
Is it not obvious, that with some such proposition before the mind it
will take much more interest in and more steadily direct its studies,
and that facts will be more easily remembered, from their bearing on the
hypothesis, than if merely received as naked, isolated units?
The only precautions to be taken are, not to be too strongly wedded to
either side of our hypothesis, nor to sit down too soon satisfied that
it is proved or disproved, nor to set up for teachers and discoverers,
while we are only learners and making discoveries.
It will be seen hereafter that, notwithstanding what has been said, we
differ not at all from Bacon himself; we differ only from his
pseudo-disciples, who have no more in common with his enlarged views of
the uses of science than the schools had with Aristotle, or the New
Academy with Plato. Nevertheless, we well know that we shall be well
abused by these disciples as an impugner of Bacon, and as a heretic to
his philosophy, just as your pious people condemn as an infidel or
atheist every one who denies any dogma which their wild enthusiasm has
grafted on the Bible. It is not in religion alone that bigotry is to be
found.
Bacon himself pursued the mode of study which we suggest. At fifteen he
formed an hypothesis, and devoted his whole life to its elucidation. The
hypothesis round which, as a centre, he gathered every fact within his
reach was this: Whether or not the Aristotelian was the best mode of
cultivating the mind, and of discovering the sciences?
He seems at first to have been disposed to think that it was neither;
but the conclusion to which he finally came, after many years of close
thought and arduous study, was, that it was the best mode of cultivating
the mind, but the worst mode of discovering the sciences. He did not
soon sit down satisfied that he was right, and set up for a dogmatic
teacher of his new philosophy. He waited patiently for any new light
which years and experience might throw upon it, either bringing out more
brightly its beauties or disclosing more satisfactorily its errors. Once
in each year he reviewed it and tested it by the new facts which he had
gleaned during the year’s studies. Once in each year, for twelve long
years, he wrote out with his own hand, altering, condensing and
verifying his _Novum Organum_ before he published it.
So much stress has, notwithstanding this illustrious example of the
master, been laid, ever since the publication of the Baconian or
inductive philosophy, upon the bare accumulation of facts, and so much
has been written against generalizing and hypothesizing, that it may be
as well, before quitting the subject, to point out wherein the disciples
of Bacon have neglected the precepts of their master; and to inquire
whether this neglect, and the only _partial_ adoption of his teachings,
have not contributed greatly to the advancement of mere Knowledge at the
expense of true Wisdom, and thus been very important causes of the
degeneracy of modern mind.
Bacon seems to have foreseen this effect of the exclusive adoption of
the experimental part of his philosophy—the only part which men have yet
had the courage to adopt—when he said, “Our way of _discovering the
sciences_ almost _levels the capacities_ of men, and leaves little room
for excellence, as it performs all things by sure rules and
demonstrations, and therefore these discoveries of ours are, as we have
often said, rather owing to felicity than to any great talent, and are
rather the production of time than of genius.”[27] It was for this
reason that he so earnestly, as we shall see hereafter, insisted against
its use by young and common minds, or as a means of mental cultivation.
And too truly has the prophetic caution been fulfilled! Nevertheless, as
it will be loudly denied that modern mind is degenerate, it may be as
well to ask how much we are in anything, except physical science (facts,
or what Bacon calls “Experience”), in advance of our two hundred years’
dead ancestors. Array the names in our list of Cogitatives,
chronologically and analytically, or do so by any list of great
thinkers, and you will scarcely find a proportion of one since 1700, to
three who lived between 1550 and that date.
Nevertheless, though there is this falling off in Wisdom, how vast has
been the accession of Knowledge. Bacon, in his day, complained that the
former, (Reason) had gone on without the latter (Experience); so that,
while mind had attained the highest flights of which it seemed capable,
the arcana of nature were yet unexplored, and little or nothing had been
done to advance man’s physical welfare. He said that, hitherto, reason
and experience were as new gifts of the gods:—the one laid on the back
of a light bird, the other on a dull ass, and that as yet they had not
been united. His object was to unite them; to this purpose he devoted
his gifted mind and strained his utmost energies. Yet if he were living
now he would be compelled to make the same complaint, with this
variation however, that men have abandoned the burden of the bird, and
have loaded themselves with that of the ass.
While then we admit the rapid advancement of Knowledge, let us pause a
moment and inquire if it is not a proof of the degeneracy of mind and
the decay of Wisdom, that, in that which is purely mental or dependent
on mind, we have no names of equal note with the names of those who
lived before the exclusive adoption of the experimental part of the
Baconian philosophy. Where is the name in poetry to set against
Shakspere and Milton; in metaphysics to match with Locke, Hobbes, &c.;
in deduction from facts and generalization with Bacon, Newton, Halley,
&c.; in theology, with the hundreds of names which yet eclipse all
modern commentators? It may perhaps be said in reply, if we have not
such great minds, we have a larger number of thinkers of lesser
magnitude. This is doubtful. Time has obliterated the swarms of lesser
fry who, like their congeners of the nineteenth century, lived their day
and gained a temporary fame in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
But further, it is easy to be a triton among minnows. It is as easy
now-a-days to set up for a literary character and “write a book” without
an idea, as it is for an insolvent man to pass for a rich one and live
sumptuously on borrowed capital and paper money. Our thousands of
authors are but the minnows which sport in the shallow brooks and live
their little day in glorious self-gratulation on the laudations of their
brother minnows; but if they happen to get out into the deep strong
waters, and a triton turns his stern eye upon them—pop—they turn their
tails round, dive to the bottom and are seen no more. Thus it was with
our novelists; they shone and blazed away—happy, glorious
book-wrights—till the triton Scott came athwart their path, and
straightway they were gone. And surely, surely, we now again want
another Scott to demolish the rapidly increasing tribe of cachinnators,
who appear to deem that the proper end of light literature is just to
raise a temporary laugh and be forgotten. Heaven send us salvation from
more Jerrolds, à Beckets and the whole tribe of ephemeral
laughing-stocks! It is the same in other and more important departments
of literature. Our historians are mere compilers of old letters; we fly
to Germany for historical criticism and acute generalizations from
facts, contenting ourselves with laboriously picking up a few obscure
facts for the use of our more deeply-thinking neighbours; who are
treading in the paths which our own sages trod two hundred and fifty
years ago, because they have not yet placed the exact sciences at the
head of intellectual pursuits, and abandoned thought for mechanisms,
generalizations from facts for the barren accumulation of facts.
The complaint of Lord Bacon is truer now than it was in his time: “If a
man turn his eyes to libraries, he may perhaps be surprised at the
immense variety of books he finds; but upon examining and diligently
weighing their matters and contents, he will be struck with amazement on
the other side; and after finding no end of repetitions, but that men
continually treat and speak the same things over and over again, fall
from admiration of the variety into a wonder at the want and scantiness
of those things which have hitherto detained and possessed the minds of
men.” Unhappily his system, by the universal and indiscriminate adoption
of only its lower and material offices to the exclusion of those higher
ends which he contemplated from it, and by its being used as a mode of
cultivating the mind, as well as a means of discovering the sciences,
has rather strengthened than weakened the justice of these censures. Our
Augustan age of thought is still that of Elizabeth and James I.; the
latter part of the sixteenth, and the early part of the seventeenth
centuries still outshine the nineteenth in loftiness of thought and
solidity of learning; yet we complacently boast of our progress, because
we rattle through the fields of learning at ten times the speed of our
ancestors, as we do over our railway-sected country, gleaning about as
little information of the one as of the other. We dash through the deep
cuttings and dark tunnels of literature at railway speed, taking
assertions for facts, and empty declamation and tawdry immorality for
sense and religion; and then, like the nervous lady who rides through a
railway tunnel without fainting, congratulate ourselves on having
accomplished some gigantic feat; though we have learnt just as much
about the subject of our studies as she has of the construction of the
tunnel; but having, like her, fretted and fumed for a few minutes at
some dark difficulty, we unite with her in thinking ourselves very
valiant and clever people.
We avail ourselves of the roads and paths which others have made, and
never stop to examine their solidity or foundations, or the principles
on which they are constructed. We lose the habits of deep investigation
and close thinking by a long and entire reliance on others, and our
minds become dissipated, and a prey to all the silly novelties which
spring like ephemera from the almost stagnant pools of modern brains.
This mental dissipation and its concomitant evil, reading for the
purpose of killing time,—with far more baneful effects than never
reading at all, but relying merely on our own serious excogitations,—are
curses from which we ought earnestly to endeavour to save ourselves.
This we can only do by sternly exercising the mind in settled definite
habits of thought, by placing before it a determinate aim and end to its
cogitations. It must know beforehand whither it is tending, so that, as
it proceeds, it may note its progress, and be able to judge whether it
is advancing or receding. It would be as absurd for a man to start on a
journey without knowing whither he was going, but to be continually
trying first one road and then another, in hopes it would bring him
somewhere, as it is for a student to sit down to study without any
definite purpose or view before him. True, the traveller might pick up
many facts and get some knowledge in his desultory course, and so might
the student; but neither would be advanced on his journey or have gained
any true wisdom. Yet this is the course of modern study. Loose,
desultory reading: a vague acquisition of unconnected facts is alone
aimed at. “Witness the transactions of our scientific bodies—a huge
undigestive mass of valuable facts; mere raw materials,
knowledge-bricks, which no one has dared yet to generalize or build up
into a harmonious and well-proportioned temple of wisdom.”
Run your memory over the records of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, and what do you find? Is it not exactly the same
as that which the witty author of “Hudibras” castigated two hundred
years ago, in his satire on the Royal Society,—a mere chronicle of the
feats of butterfly-hunters and fly-catchers? Is there to be found in the
eighteen years’ “Transactions” of the hundreds of scientific men, whose
combined knowledge is many hundred times more extensive than that of the
_savans_ of any past age, a single attempt at a generalization of their
immense field of facts? Is there any effort at what Solomon calls the
“interpretation of things?”—at gathering the “fruits” of the Baconian
system? Are they not only a barren addition to the mountain of facts
already accumulated? Alas! it is too true.
Modern _savans_ shrink from using the materials which, for several
centuries, thousands of laborious literary ants have been collecting.
Like the unhappy Psyche, doomed by the inexorable Venus to arrange and
sort into respective heaps a confused mass of wheat, barley, rye, millet
and other kinds of grain, they sit down in despair of accomplishing the
apparently hopeless task. Frightened at the gigantic labour, they not
only fly from it themselves but condemn every one who attempts to
arrange systematically the grains which, assorted, would afford valuable
seed for fresh crops of food, but which, while thus intermingled, are
utterly useless and unproductive. With an insane determination _not_ to
see the work which it is the duty imposed on the soul (Psyche) by the
prolific powers of nature (Venus) to accomplish, they go on adding to
the heterogeneous heap, and endeavour, by loud and clamorous applauses
of those who are mere collectors like themselves, to drown the voice of
those who would incite them to the enjoined and higher duty of assorting
and arranging.
Should any one, like the able but mistaken author of the “Vestiges of
the Natural History of Creation,” endeavour to bring Thought to bear
upon these dry bones and make them live, to generalize and build up a
system from them, great is the outcry and terrible are the
denunciations. The modern Prometheus who would animate with the
celestial fire of forethought the clay which lies a dead and useless
mass at his feet, is clamourously damned by his timid brethren the
Epimethei, the after or past-thinkers; and, unless he is endowed with
more than mortal power, he must submit to have his heart daily devoured
by the racking fiends—envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.
One of the laborious ants of whom we have been speaking asks, “For what
do we read?” and complacently answers, “To know _facts_.”[28] Indeed!
The highest office of mind is to make itself a barren storehouse! To us
it appears, on the contrary, that we should read and study generally,
not to _know_ facts, but to _be wise_ from facts, to make the head wiser
and the heart better. The mind is not to be considered as a mere granary
and barren receptacle of literary food, but rather as the stomach which
converts into a new substance—assimilating good healthy flesh and
blood—the heterogeneous materials which are put into it. Another ant, of
no mean pretensions among his brethren, enthusiastically endeavours, by
promises of “literary glory,” to incite some of them to pile up into one
heap the confused materials they have collected. “Let us see,” he says
with childish glee, “how much we’ve got! You John, and you Willy, and
you Bobby bring what you’ve collected! There pile it up! Make a snow
man; cut him eyes, and nose, and mouth.” There he is with a pipe in his
white lips. Doesn’t he look sage, and grave, and solemn? Dance round
him, ye children; clap your hands and be merry. Rejoice over your work
while it lasts. The first warm breath of spring will melt it away. It is
no man, it has no life, it is cold and dead. The snow, give it what
shape you will, is snow still. You have collected much, but you have got
nothing new out of your collection. But lest it should be supposed that
we belie this celebrated ant—this collector of grain—we will quote his
own words: “Within the last two hundred years (says Professor Playfair),
or since Galileo and Bacon taught us this great lesson, _we have been
employed in recording facts_ in ten thousand several volumes. But thus
scattered, they lose so much of their value and importance, that, in
another age, we may hope some aspirant after literary glory will perform
the Herculean labour of condensing the whole into (What?—a system of the
universe? a better knowledge of nature? No!) _a volume!_” A _volume!_
that is to say, gather the scattered masses into one heap as
heterogeneous as the scattered masses; pile up the snow, strewed over
pathway and field, hedge and ditch, into a snow man. That is the highest
aspiration of this Professor of divers learned societies. His grovelling
soul soars not to the hope that any new fact may be extracted by mind
from this vast heap of raw materials. He knows not that, metaphysically,
two and two make five, and that without any other material additions,
without any more ant-collections, the heap may be made to grow and
swell, that the spirit of life may be breathed into it, and that, wedded
to mind, it may even become the prolific parent of new facts of a far
higher and more enduring nature than any in his boasted volume. Facts,
which, having mind for one of their parents, will with filial love pay
back in tenfold blessings the life given them; facts which will lead
that parent to unravel the mysterious secrets of nature, and enable her
to behold the wonderful arcana of its Holy of Holies.
This is the purpose for which we should read, and this the glorious end
for which we should collect facts; instead of merely contenting
ourselves with being employed, as Playfair too truly says we have been
since the time of Bacon, “in recording facts in ten thousand several
volumes,” with no higher aspiration than that some laborious
stable-cleaner may sweep them up, hay and straw, corn and rubbish, into
one vast heap.
Since this was written, it pleases us to see that the able author of
“Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” has in his “Explanations”
spoken to the same effect and added another instance of the low estimate
formed by modern scientific minds of the uses of facts. “From year to
year and from age to age we see scientific men at work, adding, no
doubt, much to the known, and advancing many important interests, but at
the same time doing little for the establishment of comprehensive views
of nature. Experiments, in however narrow a walk, facts, of whatever
minuteness, make reputations in scientific societies. All beyond is
regarded with suspicion find distrust. The consequence is, that
_philosophy_, as it exists among us, _does nothing to raise its votaries
above the common ideas of their time_. Let me call upon the reader to
bring to his remembrance the impressions which have been usually made
upon him by the transactions of learned societies, and the pursuits of
individual men of science. Did he not always feel that while there was
laudable industry and zeal there was also an intellectual timidity,
rendering all the results philosophically barren?
“Perhaps a more lively illustration of their deficiency in the _life and
soul of nature-seeking_ could not be presented than in the view which
Sir John Herschel gives of the uses of science, in a Treatise reputed as
one of the most philosophical ever produced in our country. These uses,
according to the learned knight, are strictly material—it might be said
sordid—namely, ‘to show us how to avoid attempting impossibilities, to
secure us from important mistakes, in attempting what is in itself
possible by means either inadequate or actually opposed to the end in
view; to enable us to accomplish our ends in the easiest, shortest and
most economical and most effectual manner; to induce us to attempt and
enable us to accomplish, objects which, but for such knowledge, we
should never have thought of undertaking.’
“Such results, it will be felt, may occasionally be of importance in
saving a country gentleman from a hopeless mining speculation, or in
adding to the powers and profits of an iron-foundry or a cotton-mill,
but nothing more. When the awakened and craving mind asks what science
can do for us in explaining the great ends of the author of nature, and
our relations to Him, to good and evil, to life and to eternity, the man
of science turns to his collection of shells or butterflies, to his
electric machine or his retort, and is mute as a child who, sporting on
the beach, is asked what lands lie beyond the great ocean which
stretches before him.”[29]
This is unhappily too true a picture of modern science. Every effort is
made in scientific works to impress the material and sordid
money-getting uses of science as its only true end, and the highest
relation which it bears to humanity. Read any tract on the uses of
geology, and is there a word of high hope that the addition which recent
discoveries in this department have made to knowledge will assist in
raising and elevating the mind, or throw any new light upon the
mysteries of nature?
Not a word: but it is carefully detailed how an acquaintance with the
order of stratified rocks will facilitate the discovery of minerals, or
the boring of Artesian wells.
Are the uses of astronomy dwelt upon, we are taught that it enables the
seaman to navigate trackless seas for commerce or for war. Are the
purposes of chemistry detailed, we learn that it is fertile in assisting
the manufacturer to cheapen his goods, and undersell his less
experienced neighbour.
And are we to believe that for these base uses it will be given to man
to penetrate the wonders of the universe, and read the unexplained
mystery of its creation? Surely not. No, verily, we must raise our souls
far above these debasing cares, before the great and beneficent GOD will
permit us to understand His sublime works. We must come to the task with
clean hands, with pure, holy, unsullied minds, with humble, but high
aspirations, with the submission of little children, but with the
elevation of pure wisdom.
Is it possible that mind can progress at all, if it is for ever fixed on
the earth, grovelling after barren facts and never lifted up to heaven,
nor exercised in contemplation of the discoveries it has accumulated? Is
it possible that the mind can ever be wise which believes that it must
study for facts, and not to ‘weigh and consider?’ Must not the former
for ever remain the mere basket of the rag-and-bone collector? the
receptacle and dead vehicle of material things? Is it not better that
the mind should be exercised, like ‘a light bird,’ in the wildest and
most visionary dreams, than be reduced to such a ‘dull ass,’ or dead
entity? If the student would avoid the latter, he must abandon the mere
accumulation of facts for the comparing and weighing of evidence, the
calm looking for results, and the deliberate generalization from the
facts collected by the fact-collectors; the rag-and-bone-pickers, the
hewers of wood and drawers of water of the human race. Nevertheless
despise them not; they fill their allotted station in the world; they
are as necessary to the thinkers as the different ranks in society are
to each other. Bear in mind that Bacon never intended his system for
_students_, or to be used as a mental exercise. He only proposed it as a
means, (and confessedly the only true means) of ‘discovering the
sciences,’ and not as a mode of ‘cultivating’ the mind. It was to be the
exercise of the experienced and completely cultivated mind only, ‘of the
man of riper years, sound in his senses, and of a clear, unbiassed
mind.’[30] He foresaw and cautioned against its abuse by ‘vulgar minds.’
And in the sense used by him all young and learning minds are vulgar
(common) minds. The specialities which must distinguish them from the
common herd, are as yet unknown and hidden beneath the crust of
inexperienced ignorance.
He himself earnestly prays that his own and the Aristotelian system may
live together, and go hand in hand, the latter to cultivate the mind,
the former to discover facts. His words so long forgotten and unheeded
by his disciples are: “Let there be therefore, by joint consent, two
fountains, or dispensations of doctrine, and two tribes of Philosophers,
by no means enemies or strangers, but confederates and mutual
auxiliaries to each other; and let there _be one method of_ CULTIVATING,
and _another of_ DISCOVERING the sciences. Nor is ours very obvious,
_and to be taken at once_, nor tempting to the understanding, nor
_suited to vulgar capacities_, but solely rests upon its utility and
effects” (_i. e._ upon the way in which it is used and the results which
proceed from it). “But no one, sure, can suspect, that we desire to
destroy and demolish the philosophy, the arts, and the sciences at
present in use; for, _on the contrary, we embrace their use_, and
willingly pay them all due honour and observance. For we openly declare
that the things we offer, are not very conducive to these purposes
(mental exercises), as they cannot be brought down to vulgar capacities,
otherwise than by effects and works.”[31] Therefore in advocating the
retention of the Aristotelian mode of thinking for students, we do but
follow in the footsteps of his great opponent; who yet opposed only when
that ancient philosophy was carried beyond, and out of its proper
department—the cultivation of the powers of thought, into the discovery
of the sciences.
“The two faculties of reason and experience,” says Bacon, “should be
properly joined and coupled together.” Reason without experience (facts)
he compares to a light bird; Experience, without reason to a dull ass.
It is better to be the bird than the ass; it is best to be neither, and
yet both. It is only by joining experience with reason that the “sober
certainty” of the quadruped can be coupled with the “waking bliss,” the
ecstatic heavenward flight, of the light and joyous bird. If, like
Bacon, we were to endeavour to read the fable of the Sphinx, we would
say that it represents the wise mind, which has united reason and
experience into a beautiful form; comprehendible by man, but most hard
to be comprehended. Its human head portrays that to intellectual man
alone it is given to join together its other forms, the wings of a bird,
reason; and the body of a quadruped, experience. It is beautiful, for
such union is the perfection of wisdom, and ‘O how comely is wisdom!’ It
is cruel, for many lives must be sacrificed ’ere it can be discovered,
or the problem of its nature be solved.
Far different from the master himself, who saw in his philosophy the
attainment of high and holy purposes, his pseudo-disciples shrink not
from avowing that the material uses of philosophy are of higher import
than the metaphysical. And it is because writers of no mean powers have,
while setting themselves up as encomiasts and expounders of Baconism,
utterly lost sight of the higher and godlike purposes which Bacon hoped
to see his system promote, and have exalted only the simply mean and
sordid uses, which, as tending to man’s temporal comforts, Bacon’s large
heart also desired to increase, that we have so far enlarged our
observations hereon; and shall, ere we conclude, set a few extracts from
these modern views of Baconism in opposition to those of Bacon himself.
From these we shall see that, with regard to their views of the objects
of philosophy, no two systems can be more opposed than that of Bacon
himself, and that of the modern utilitarians, who dare to dub themselves
his disciples. The latter seek in science nothing higher than base
utilitarianism, thus elevating the body at the expense of the soul; the
former sought utilitarianism in company with the attainment of pure
truth and the investigation of the hidden secrets of nature, thus
elevating both soul and body.
It was the fault of the ancient philosophy that it endeavoured to
elevate the soul at the expense of the body, and to separate that which
God has joined together; it is equally the fault—but a far more baneful
one—of modern utilitarianism that it endeavours to elevate the body
above the soul, and treats the comfort of the former as of far higher
importance than the exaltation of the latter.
Bacon alone, truly wise, sought the well-being of both; and he alone
pointed out that the well-being of both lay in the same path, and might
be prosecuted simultaneously. While the ancient philosophy feared to
defile the soul by contact with what was falsely called the base in
nature, and the utilitarian dreads to have his sordid soul elevated
above the same operations,—which he equally terms base, yet loves to
degrade himself to—Bacon acknowledged nothing base in nature, and feared
not to study her simplest and meanest operations in the pursuit of
truth. He knew that whatever advances the soul makes in knowledge and
wisdom, must be made through and by means of the body; therefore, the
latter was not to be despised, but by all possible ways and means to be
made the efficient handmaid of the former. He knew that though the eye
sees not, and the ear hears not, yet that the soul, in this mortal
state, could neither see nor hear without them, and that by increasing
their fact-transmitting powers, he was developing the fact-generating
powers of the mind.
It was for this reason that he contemned not to give his mind to
experience, to making telescopes and ear-trumpets; but nevertheless he
did not regard them as the ultimate and sole end and aim of his
philosophy. His views of the ends of philosophy were, as we shall
presently see, to the full as high and lofty as those of Plato and the
Grecian philosophers; he only sought to arrive at those ends by means
different from those which they pursued. They both sought the same
objects—Truth, and the discovery of the secrets of nature; but while the
one foolishly did this by opposing nature, and acting in contradiction
to her mandates, the other did it by following her patiently through all
her devious windings.
The modern Baconian school of utilitarians errs in stopping half-way,
and in mistaking what Bacon merely deemed media, for the ultimate ends
of his philosophy. Whirled along by a steam-engine, informed by a
telegraph, freed from pain by chloroform, the utilitarian deems suchlike
products of the inductive philosophy, to be the _summum bonum_ of its
founder; forgetful that he considered such to be but the means to a
higher end, and has said that “the _summum bonum_ of human nature is the
possession of Truth, for this is a heaven upon earth.”
But the better to understand this, let us contrast modern Baconism with
Bacon,—“ab uno disce omnes.”
Mr. T. B. Macaulay, a masterly and deservedly popular writer, has
undertaken to give a more correct analysis of the objects of Baconism
than is usually entertained; but as it happens to be only an analysis of
modern utilitarianism, we will avail ourselves of it as a contrast with
Bacon’s own aspirations of the benefits to be derived from his
system.[32]
Hear the utilitarian’s version of Baconism in contrast with the ancient
philosophy.
“Plato, after speaking slightly of the convenience of arithmetic in the
ordinary transactions of life, as to make men shop-keepers or pedlars,
passes to what he considers as a far more important advantage. It
habituates the mind, he tells us, to the contemplation of _pure truth_,
and raises us above the material universe; and he advises his disciples
to this study, in order that they may learn to fix their minds on the
_immutable essences of things_. Bacon on the other hand, valued this
branch of knowledge _only_ on account of its uses with reference to the
visible and tangible world.
“Of mathematics, Plato says the real use is to lead men to the knowledge
of abstract _essential, eternal truth_. Bacon valued mathematics
chiefly, if not solely, on account of those uses which Plato deemed so
base—its application to mechanics, &c. If Bacon erred here, we must
acknowledge that we greatly prefer his error to the opposite error of
Plato.
“To sum up the whole,” says this eulogist of what he deems Baconism
against the ancient philosophy as explained by Plato, “we should say
that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god. The
aim of the Baconian philosophy, was to provide man with what he
requires, while he continues to be man, and to supply his vulgar wants.
The former aim was noble; but the latter was attainable. Plato drew a
good bow, but he aimed at the stars; therefore the shot was thrown away.
Bacon fixed his eye on a mark, which was placed on _the earth_, and
within bow-shot, and hit it in the white.”[33]
If this were a true picture of Bacon’s mind, how sad, and low, and
grovelling, must it have been. Accustomed to grieve that he suffered his
soul to be polluted by contact with the world, and bowed his heart
beneath the love of ill-gotten gold, we have yet found consolation in
the thought that the man and the philosopher were two; and that we might
dwell with rapture on the latter, take him to our heart, and make him
our mind’s companion without defiling ourselves with the former. But if
this were a true picture of the philosopher, we must turn from him with
disgust, as one whose soul was so imbued with the low and sordid, that
no intellectual powers, how sublime soever, could elevate it above what
was low and sordid, mean and base.
Sick at heart and disgusted with humanity, we must turn with joy to him
who sought “to exalt man into a god,” who urged us “to the contemplation
of pure truth,” “to fix our minds on the immutable essences of things,”
and “the knowledge of the abstract, essential, eternal truth.”
But thank God, it is not a true picture of Bacon’s mind and purpose in
revealing to the world a new philosophy.
At most it is but one half the picture, and that the lower half. It
exhibits the mouth only, the vehicle of the material things which
sustain the body. Yet nevertheless not to be despised; for without it
the body could not live, and without the body the mind could have no
communion with mortal minds, and as to them must be dead also. But it
entirely cuts off and conceals the upper half of the man; the skull, the
seat of mind, the residence of that God-inspired particle, which alone
ennobles and makes valuable the whole body.
It is true that Bacon hoped by his philosophy to supply man’s vulgar
wants, and to make his sojourn here as easy and comfortable as was
possible; but he sought this only as a necessary and blessed accident by
the way, and not as the end of his new learning.
While he laboured to benefit mankind as mortal man, he also strove to
elevate him as an immortal soul; mindful of the origin which, he dared,
like Plato, to hope to exalt man into a god, by leading the divine
spirit, breathed into him when he was made in the image of God, to a
contemplation and discovery of the secrets of the Great Artificer.
It was a favourite text of Bacon’s, “It is the glory of God to conceal a
matter; it is the glory of the King (a man) to find it out.” [_Prov._
xxv. 2.]
Was not this very much like placing man almost on a parity with God, and
exalting him into a god? And again, even misquoting to suit his lofty
notions of man’s capabilities: “The spirit of man is as the lamp of God,
wherewith He searches every secret.”[34] [_Prov._ xx. 27.] Surely, too,
the aim of him who describes the sole end of his philosophy in the
following words, is not different from that of him who urges his
disciples “to fix their minds on the contemplation of the immutable
essences of things.” “The end of our foundation is the knowledge of
causes, and secret motions of things, and the enlarging the bounds of
human empire to the effecting of all things possible.”[35]
Neither does he differ at all from the philosophy of the Academy in his
appreciation of pure truth. “Truth, which only doth judge itself,
teacheth that the inquiry of Truth, which is the love-making or wooing
of it; the knowledge of Truth, which is the presence of it; and the
belief of Truth, which is the enjoying of it—_is the sovereign good of
human nature_. The poet saith excellently well: ‘It is a pleasure to
stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure
to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the
adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing
upon the vantage-ground of Truth, and to see the errors and wanderings,
and mist and tempests in the sea below;’[36] so always that this
prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is
heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in
providence, and turn upon the poles of Truth.”[37] Is this the language
of one who had no higher aim than “to supply man’s vulgar wants, and
whose eye was ever on a mark which was placed on earth and within
bow-shot?” No! long since must Bacon have been forgotten, if his
philosophy had had no higher end than that which modern utilitarianism
deems its proudest boast.
One more extract will suffice to evince, that in promoting the proper
study of his favourite science, Natural Philosophy, he had far higher
views than mere utilitarianism; though this was to be regarded by the
way and as an accident of no mean importance. “All knowledge, and
especially that of natural philosophy, tendeth highly to the glory of
God in His power, providence and benefits appearing and engraven in His
works, which without this knowledge are beheld but as through a veil,
for if the heavens in the body of them do declare the glory of God to
the eye, much more do they in the rule and decrees of them declare it to
the understanding.”[38]
An apology is needed for this long episode on Bacon, and our apology
must be an anxious desire to direct the student back from the false
school of Baconism to the master himself. Leave the Macaulays, the
Herschels and the Playfairs to the work—and an important and useful work
it is—for which they are fitted; but do you endeavour so to mind earthly
things that you forget not heavenly things.[39] We say not, as did the
ancient philosophers, disregard earthly things; but, while attending to
them, forget not the heavenly, as the utilitarians do. Neither would it
have been necessary to have entered so fully into the matter had we not
been aware that of the thousands who pretend to tread in the steps of
Bacon, not above one or two have ever read his more important works, but
take their notions of his philosophy from such crude and partial views
as the merest utilitarians choose to enunciate as Baconian.
We require no other proof of the degeneracy of modern mind from the
close habits of intense thought which distinguished the predecessors and
cotemporaries of Bacon, than the melancholy fact, that while the _Novum
Organum_ and _De Augmentis_ were, in the author’s time, eagerly read by
every one pretending to a liberal education, and at once elevated him to
a high rank among literary men, they are scarcely ever opened in the
present day, “and though much talked of are but little read. They have
produced, indeed, a vast effect on the opinions of mankind, but they
have produced it through the operation of intermediate agents.”[40] Of
these intermediate agents we have given a few specimens; and as long as
the world submits to receive their version of Baconism, so long will
Baconism elevate Knowledge at the expense of True Wisdom. Let men return
to Bacon, and take _all_ that he teaches instead of part—the inferior
part—and there will be nothing for Wisdom or Knowledge to fear.