myself, think that the battle will forever remain a drawn one, and that for all practical

purposes this result is as good as anthropomorphism winning the day.*

6

Well, the Philosophers (as they term themselves) did gird themselves, and went forth to the battle, with the truly noble aim of reducing man to the dy namic dimensions of a clock. The attack was made in many different columns, and upon various points of the fortress; and the most flaming bulletins were from time to time issued, describing their successes. The confidence of the besiegers grew stronger, until from a drawn battle' they began to claim an absolute victory. I have heard skilful chess-players say that nothing is more dangerous than to attempt to win a drawn game, as it almost always results in utter ruin. It would appear to be the same in materialistic polemics. One of these columns, which may be distinguished as the Protoplasm' division, advanced to the attack with the loudest war-cries and much

martial music. But the leader was smitten in full career by a smooth stone from the brook,' disguised as a scientific fact, from the sling of an obscure warrior, which sank into his forehead-he murmuring only that his opponent was not only uneducated in the science of projectiles, but had not even reached that state of emergence from ignorance, in which the knowledge that such a discipline is necessary dawns upon the mind.' Since that time little has been heard of this detachment, and until very recently the other columns have exercised more discretion in their advances. Lately, however, the automatism of human nature, and the consequent irresponsibility of man, have been formulated in more distinct and positive terms; and we are told in language so plain as to prevent any possibility of misapprehension, that we have no such thing as volition. Professor Huxley states that 'there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the matter of the organism' and that the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that

The Scientific Aspects of Positivism,' Lay Sermons, &c., p. 164.

See a Lecture on the Study of Biology, by Prof. Huxley, in Nature, January 11, 1877. + Fortnightly Review, November 1874, p. 577.

state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act.' In like manner Pro

fessor Tyndall says: I have no power of imagining states of consciousness interposed between the molecules of the brain, and influencing the transference of motion among the molecules; ' these states of consciousness being further described as merely by-products which are not essential to the physical process going on in the brain.'*

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All which translated into the vernacular amounts to this. A speaker in an assembly, or a discord in a concert, disturbs me, and to escape the unpleasant sensation I leave the room, and I think I do so of my own free will.

'No,' says the modern philosopher, you are quite mistaken. You say you have a sensation, and I cannot absolutely deny it, but this sensation has nothing whatever to do with your action—neither has what you think to be your volition. The brain acts automatically in causing you to leave the room, and what you are pleased to consider your sensation and volition are only delusive by-products that have no influence on the action.'

I can but reply: Many thanks for the information, but I know by daily and hourly experience that of several courses open to me I can select one and reject the others, and I offer to submit this faculty to any test you can suggest. He discovers only, who PROVES; and unless you can prove the evidence of my senses and of my fundamental intuitions to be a perpetual lie, I must decline to accept the conclusion. Permit me to ask if common sense is finally and for ever excluded from the domain of philosophy?'

Nevertheless it must be conceded that this is not a complete answer to our philosopher. Doubtless theology has something to say on the question, ethics more, and common sense most of all; yet when all these have said their last word, science will claim, and most justly claim, to pronounce the final verdict on this as on every question relating to the nature and constitution of man. But if we are called upon to relinquish not only every form of religious belief, but all the principles upon which society and its laws have been founded, and the most deeply rooted and fundamental in

*Fragments of Science, p. 561.

tuitions of our consciousness, we on our part have the right to claim that the science in the name of which these requirements are made shall be sternly accurate in fact, rigid in method, cogent and conclusive in logic. To inquire if these conditions have been and are fulfilled, is my object in the remainder of this essay. And first as to Method.

It is not easy to construct a definition of scientific method in the abstract that shall be free from all objection; it is, however, perfectly easy to understand what this method ought to be practically, by considering a few concrete instances. While investigating the spectrum of a certain seleniferous deposit in 1861, Mr. Crookes noticed a single sharp and brilliant green line,' differing essentially from any line before observed. Had he been addicted to loose generalisation, instead of being a careful observer, he might have reasoned in this wise-This line has never been seen in the spectrum of any substance before examined, and I cannot reproduce it by the use of any one or any combination of these. But as I know that there are only (about) sixty elements, and that of these the whole world is composed, it must be due to some of them influenced by unknown and unknowable conditions.' This would naturally close the investigation. Instead of this, Mr. Crookes adopted the scientific method of recognising that new phenomena implied new elements of causation. He said: 'There is something else here, that I have not known before-what is it?' This resulted in the discovery of a new metal, thallium. The same method applied by Bunsen, Richter, and others, led to the discovery of several other new metals, Osmium, Casium, Indium, and Rubidium, thus greatly enlarging our knowledge of elementary bodies.

About thirty years ago Leverrier and Adams observed certain perturbations in the motions of the planet Uranus, which they could not trace to the influence of the other known planets. They did not sayOur system consists only of the sun and seven primary planets; therefore these perturbations are due to some of these under undefined conditions.' They said 'There is something else-what is it?' Following out this thought by per

haps the most beautiful train of investigations ever effected, they were enabled almost at the same time to direct a telescope to that point in the heavens where was found the disturbing element, the new planet Neptune.

To come nearer to the subject-the phenomena of light are known to be due to certain motions, tremors, undulations, or vibrations; and where motion is there must be something that moves. What is that something? Sound is also due to movements of a somewhat similar character; but in this case there is a material something, the air, or some other elastic substance, which vibrates. Undulations of air will not account for the phenomena of light, nor will any form of motion of any of the ponderable matters with which we are acquainted. Do we then say, in disregard of the evidence, that light is due to the vibrations of ponderable matter, because there is nothing else in the universe? No; to account for the phenomena we hypothecise a medium possessed of such attributes as will meet the requirements—we imagine an almost infinitely elastic substance filling stellar space, through which the pulses of light make their way. This ETHER not only fills space, but penetrates and surrounds the very atoms of solid and liquid substances; its motions are the light of the universe, yet it is itself invisible. It is imponderable and impalpable, it cannot be isolated, nor condensed, nor attenuated, nor exhausted, nor excluded from any space. It is of almost infinite tenuity, and yet in its properties it is more like a solid or a jelly than a gas.

Why do we believe in the existence of this ether, a substance with such contradictory and inconceivable if even not impossible properties? We cannot demonstrate its presence, we know nothing of its essential nature. But we do know that we meet with a whole world of phenomena that cannot be rationally attributed to any form, combination, or operation of ordinary matter; we know also that where there is a phenomenon there is a something underlying it, which possesses properties competent to produce it. If ordinary ponderable matter will not account for the phenomena, we infer that there is something else, and we ask, 'What is it?' Provisionally we an

WHEN the history of modern thought comes to be written in the future, nothing will appear more remarkable to the student of these times than the great divergence, or rather the irreconcilable antagonism, between the utterances of philosophy and the revelations of exact science. That philosophy should transcend science, that it should be something more than a summary of results, is too evident even to require admission; that it should be in absolute contradiction to these results, that it should set aside or distort the most familiar facts, the best established data of science, will scarcely be claimed by its most ardent votaries. Is this the case?

What is philosophy? It is the systematisation of the conceptions furnished by science. As science is the systematisa

Prof. Tyndall's Birmingham Address, to which this is a reply, appeared in the ECLECTIC for January, 1878.-ED.

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXVIII., No. I

Old Series Complete in 63 vols.

tion of the various generalities reached through particulars, so philosophy is the systematisation of the generalities of generalities. In other words, science furnishes the knowledge, and philosophy the doctrine.' What is truth? It is the correspondence between the order of ideas and the order of phenomena, so that the one becomes a reflection of the other-the movement of thought following the movement of things.' For practical purposes, nothing more clear or comprehensive can be required than these definitions, which are given by Mr. Lewes in the preface to his History of Philosophy.

The knowledge referred to is defined. as arising from the indisputable conclusions of experience; and the domain of philosophy is thus limited Whilst theology claims to furnish a system of religious conceptions, and science to furnish conceptions of the order of the

I

swer, it is the ether, with such and such properties. This appears to be a truly philosophic method.

But in advancing to the study of the energies of organised, living matter, we meet with certain phenomena differing most widely from, and in many cases directly opposed to, the forces or energies with which we are acquainted in the inorganic world—undulations, vibrations, motions, special selective powers, to say nothing of more obscure, complicated, or exalted manifestations. Observation and experiment alike declare that no arrangement or combination of any of those matters or forces which we call inorganic will produce these effects; and they have this further specific distinction, that they are never originated, by nature or art, except in the presence and with the concurrence of previously living matter. Yet our philosophers are content to assert that life is but the compounding in the organic world of forces belonging equally to the inorganic.' If we inquire what forces these are, and how they are compounded, where and by what agency, we ever and utterly fail to get any reply, unless it be in the form of a monotonous repetition of the same assertion, or a vague statement that the sun is the source of life.

When a mathematician or a physicist speaks of a resultant force, he is prepared to define the forces and their dimensions' by the composition of which this resultant force appears.

When a chemist

affirms a certain compound body, X, to be formed by the compounding of elements, A, B, and C, in definite proportions, he is expected to be able to justify his position both by analysis and synthesis, to show that these elements, and these only, exist in the compound, and that by bringing these together, under given conditions, he can produce the compound. Supposing it to be demonstrated to him that no possible combination of these elements has ever been known to produce any substance in the least degree resembling X, what would become of his scientific reputation if he still persisted in affirming, without offering any evidence whatever, that the composition was as first stated? And would it at all add to the dignity of his position to bring imputations of ignorance

and incapacity against his opponent ? * It is sufficiently evident that neither mathematics nor chemistry would be tolerated for a moment which did not fulfil rigorously these conditions. Yet in biological science it would appear competent to any one to say anything whatever, with a certainty of its being accepted as truth, only provided that it is sufficiently at variance with well-known facts and principles. Of this I can give no more striking illustration than the following wild passage from the most illustrious monist of the day :

Such events as the origin and formation of the organs of the senses present to the eye of the understanding, guided by the light of evolution, no more difficulties than the explanation of any ordinary physical processes, such as earthquakes, winds, or tides. By the same light we arrive at the very weighty conviction that all the natural bodies with which we are acquainted are equally living, and that the distinction which has been held as existing between the living and the dead does not really exist. When a stone which is thrown into the air falls again to the earth according to definite laws; when a crystal is formed from a saline fluid; when sulphur and mercury unite to form cinnabar; these facts are neither more nor less mechanical life phenomena than the growth and flowering of plants, than the propagation and sensory faculties of animals, or the perceptions and intelligence of man.t

This is a most attractive programme, and one full of interest and promise: unfortunately nothing is effected here or elsewhere towards completing the explanation.' It is asserted again and again that life is but mechanical force, and that soul and spirit and thought are but higher manifestations of the same; but no attempt, even the feeblest, is ever made to justify the wild assumption, or

to show how mechanical force can be

conceived as representing or producing either life or thought.

Advancing to the higher functions of life and mind, we find it all but universally recognised that the connection of these with physics and physical processes is unthinkable,' and that there is a vast chasm between the two classes of phe

It is scarcely necessary to remark that there is no reference here to Professor Tyndall, who is ever courteous to friend and foe in scientific controversy.

Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte. By Dr. Ernst Haeckel, 6th edition, p. 21.

Winds of Doctrine, p. 105.