Lecture at Sion College. 425 Every instant, with rapidity, we turn the eye from one point to another in the field of vision; and this rapidity, with perfection of the smaller field, and the rough sketching in of the larger, make the eye far superior to every other optical instrument. We turn our eye to one thing at a time: so soon as this has been taken in, we hasten to another, and the sense of vision accomplishes all that is necessary. Whatever we want to look at we see accurately, and so quick is the transition from one object to another, that practically we possess the same advantages as if we viewed the whole field of vision at once. Just as quickly as the eye turns up or down, and from side to side, the accommodation changes to bring the object looked at into focus; and thus both near and distant objects pass with rapid succession into accurate view. The eye shows them so rapidly that most people, who have not thought how they see, are not aware of any change at all. By the eye alone we discern the wealth of form and colour among flowers, the distant landscapes of our earth, all the varieties of sunlight that reveal them, and know the countless shining worlds that fill unmeasurable space. It is the unsurpassed model of opticians, philosophers extol it as an organism full of wonders, poets and orators justly celebrate its praise. The following words are printed in an address on scientific education "Some time ago I attended a large meeting of the clergy, for the purpose of delivering an address which I had been invited to give. I spoke of some of the most elementary facts in physical science, and of the manner in which they directly contradict certain of the ordinary teachings of the clergy. The result was, that, after I had finished, one section of the assembled ecclesiastics attacked me with all the intemperance of pious zeal, for stating facts and conclusions which no competent judge doubts: while, after the first speakers had subsided, amidst the cheers of the great majority of their colleagues, the more rational minority rose to tell me that I had been taking wholly superfluous pains, that they already knew all about what I had told them, and perfectly agreed with me. A hard-headed friend of mine, who was present, put the not unnatural question, 'Then why don't you say so in your pulpits,' to which inquiry I heard no reply. In fact the clergy are at present divisible into three sections: an immense body who are ignorant and speak out; a small proportion who know and are silent; and a minute minority who know and speak according to their knowledge." It is not a matter of wonderment, when a learned professor insults the common sense and attainments of educated men -men in the habit of encountering unbelief and misbelief— that they regard him as trifling with them; and say, with some little warmth, "no one doubts the elementary facts in physical science:" no wonder that the more courteous minority think and say, "we know all about what you have told us." The same professor attacks theology, in his Paper on The Origin of Species, Westminster Review, April 1860-"In this nineteenth century, as at the dawn of modern physical science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox. . . Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched if not slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget; and though, at present, bewildered and afraid to move it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of sound science; and to visit with such petty thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who refuse to degrade nature to the base of primitive Judaism." The Professor reminds us "The fire of rage was in him, and 'twere good You leaned unto his sentence with what patience Every one, even but a little acquainted with history, is well aware that science and true doctrine are never opposed. Religious intellectual and industrial progress culminates in the most splendid series of researches when God's glory and Science and True Doctrine Agree. 427 man's welfare are the motives which unitedly urge devout and thoughtful men to fearless investigation of truth. The fanatical and ignorant, in all ages, are afraid to unveil her statue; they say "we will none of this dogma, none of that science;" but the great and good have no fears that, perchance, they may encounter a ghastly death's head: they know that the beaming countenance of the image of Truth, raised by God Almighty, is the face of Jesus Christ, where Divine glory and human purity meet in rarest beauty. Feeling their way, as best they can, into that limited portion of facts lying within their reach, they interpret the Two Books of Revelation, the Works of God and the Word of God, as they are not as men might like them to be. The mediæval conception of the material and spirit world, as presented by Dante, was in harmony with the best science and the urgent wants of the time; but the Copernican revolution displaced all that, and scientific light thrown on the Bible enables us more largely to understand Providence, and to see that God's plan for every man is written in the physical laws of the universe and in the pure morality of Holy Scripture. It is time that all good and true men, whether professed students of Science or professors of Religion, put down every feeling of antagonism. The roll of names, illustrating the annals of science, does of itself ennoble that pursuit; the Newtons, the Wallises, the Wollastons, the Davys, the Rumfords, the Faradays, confer imperishable renown; will not praise be added to their successors if, enfranchised from narrowness, they recognize those other lights which shine here and there in the path of human life, that wayfarers may walk cheerily onward to their future home? For those who would falsify our high lineage, and require that we discard, as a romantic delusion, the ennobling conviction that we are little lower than the angels; we have an answer in the words of Goethe-" No strong-minded man suffers his belief in immortality to be torn from his breast." Indeed, we can show that their science is neither far-searching nor deep-piercing, and show it in their own way. Acting on their words "take nothing on trust, . . . . learn of nature, listen to the voice of truth "-we try their knowledge; we empty a lark's egg into a little vessel, a thrush's egg into another little vessel, a starling's egg into a third little vessel, and a blackbird's egg into a fourth little vessel, and, having destroyed the shells, ask these men to justify our confidence in their skill by severally naming the birds: they cannot ; no, not even by aid of a microscope. These are a small matter, try something great. Take a Camel, show the skeleton, and inquire our teachers never having seen a Camel before—“ Is it possible that skeleton can represent an animal with a huge hump on his back?" They will either say "We know not"; or prove from the bony structure that the hump is an absurdity almost approaching the impossible. Try a Lion, a Tiger, request an explanation of the osteological differences which constitute the one a Lion-frame, the other a Tiger-frame. They have no explanation. Respectfully ask why, during the whole controversy about man-like apes, we were not told that these apes have a huge air-sack packed away in front of the wind-pipe, and amongst the muscles of the neck,1 rendering the man-like apes very unman-like, and utterly unable to speak: so that we are not of them, nor they of us? If they knew of this, why were we not informed? If they did not know, it was ignorance that exalted the monkey and abased the man. Knowing, moreover, that the power of uttering articulate words is not found in races possessing structures nearest in likeness to man's; but in creatures, such as Parrots, with vocal organs so different to ours that it is not easy to trace the analogous parts; surely, our scientific teachers ought to remember what Pascal said—“It is dangerous to show man how much he resembles the beast, without, at the same time, indicating his own greatness." We accept evolution so far as verification warrants; but when those who profess to explain everything lower than man until there is " no essential difference between the drowning of a superfluous baby, and a superfluous kitten"for no faith means no morals ultimately, we disregard these 1 66 Cassell's Natural History," p. 67: Dr P. M. Duncan, F.R.S. Assertion as to Matter. 429 teachers of little science and of less faith. We are sure that there is "an end worth living for an end that is supremely good for us to gain, and supremely ill for us to lose—an end that we can only gain by virtue, and must lose by vice." The case, as to folly, may be viewed with somewhat more largeness. Physical Science, properly so called, concerns the relations between natural phenomena and their physical antecedents. The investigation is conducted by processes of mathematical reasoning as to whatever regards quantity and conditions of space. A lower department of natural science, phenomenology, examines and classifies phenomena; and infers, by induction, their laws. These laws cannot, however, be determined as the necessary results of physical energies until so interpreted by the higher science. The subordinate science has of late invaded the province of the higher; and, no longer servant, masterfully asserts, with high-sounding phrases, that though the world was not made, in any proper sense of making, all powers are mechanical, all mysteries can be explained by the laws of tangible matter and its energy.1 On examination, we find no clear evidence in favour of this wide assertion. Matter, simple as it may seem, "is the complex of so many relations, a conjuncture of so many events, a synthesis of so many sensations, that to know one Real thoroughly would only be possible through an intuition embracing the universe." We find even that scientific conviction of the objective reality of matter is discovered only by experiment under the guidance of mind; and that Heat, Light, Sound, Electric currents, are real and objective existences though, not matter, but forms of energy. A shadow, or reflection, is real-though not a solid; a motion is real, though not a substance; a feeling is real, though neither substance nor motion. As to scientific conception of matter, we find it convenient, in mathematical reasoning, to dispense with the ordinary meaning of the word; and, in place of the hard atom, to suppose a mere geometrical point "with repulsive and at1 Church Quarterly, April 1876. 2 "Problems of Life and Mind," vol. i. p. 343: Geo. Henry Lewes. |