Fragments of science Part 50

He is far too sagacious a man to commit himself, at the present time of day, to any such absurdity. But he insists that it ought not to be put on the same evidential level as the former. 'It ought,' as he poetically expresses it, I to be written in small letters under the text.' The audience ought to be warned that the speculative matter is only _possible_, not _actual_ truth--that it belongs to the region of 'belief,' and not to that of demonstration. As long as a problem continues in this speculative stage it would be mischievous, he considers, to teach it in our schools. 'We ought not,' he urges, 'to represent our conjecture as a certainty, nor our hypothesis as a doctrine: this is inadmissible.' With regard to the connection between physical processes and mental phenomena he says: 'I will, indeed, willingly grant that we can find certain gradations, certain definite points at which we trace a pa.s.sage from mental processes to processes purely physical, or of a physical character. Throughout this discourse I am not a.s.serting that it will never be possible to bring psychical processes into an immediate connection with those that are physical. All I say is that we have _at present_ no right to set up this _possible_ connection as _a doctrine_ of science.' In the next paragraph be reiterates his position with reference to the introduction of such topics into school teaching. 'We must draw,' he says, 'a strict distinction between what we wish to _teach_, and what we wish to _search for_. The objects of our research are expressed as problems (or hypotheses). _We need not keep them to ourselves; we are ready to communicate them to all the world_, and say "There is the problem; that is what we strive for." ... The investigation of such problems, in which the whole nation may be interested, cannot be restricted to any one. This is Freedom of Enquiry. But the problem (or hypothesis) is not, without further debate, to be made _a doctrine_.' He will not concede to Dr. Haeckel 'that it is a question for the schoolmasters to decide, whether the Darwinian theory of man's descent should be at once laid down as the basis of instruction, and the protoplastic soul be a.s.sumed as the foundation of all ideas concerning spiritual being.' The Professor concludes his lecture thus: 'With perfect truth did Bacon say of old "_Scientia est potentia_." But he also defined that knowledge; and the knowledge he meant was not speculative knowledge, not the knowledge of hypotheses, but it was objective and actual knowledge. Gentlemen, I think we should be abusing our power, we should be imperilling our power, unless in our teaching we restrict ourselves to this perfectly safe and una.s.sailable domain. From this domain _we may make incursions into the field of problems_, and I am sure that every venture of that kind will then find all needful security and support.' I have emphasised by italics two sentences in the foregoing series of quotations; the other italics are the author's own.

Virchow's position could not be made clearer by any comments of mine than he has here made it himself. That position is one of the highest practical importance. Throughout our whole German Fatherland,' he says, men are busied in renovating, extending, and developing the system of education, and in inventing fixed forms in which to mould it. On the threshold of coming events stands the Prussian law of education. In all the German States larger schools are being built, new educational establishments are set up, the universities are extended, "higher" and "middle" schools are founded. Finally comes the question, What is to be the chief substance of the teaching?' What Virchow thinks it ought and ought not to be, is disclosed by the foregoing quotations. There ought to be a clear distinction made between science in the state of hypothesis, and science in the state of fact. In school teaching the former ought to be excluded. And, as he a.s.sumes it to be still in its hypothetical stage, the ban of exclusion ought, he thinks, to fall upon the theory of evolution.

I now freely offer myself for judgment before the tribunal whose law is here laid down. First and foremost, then, I have never advocated the introduction of the theory of evolution into our schools. I should even be disposed to resist its introduction before its meaning had been better understood and its utility more fully recognised than it is now by the great body of the community. The theory ought, I think, to bide its time until the free conflict of discovery, argument, and opinion has won for it this recognition. A necessary condition here, however, is that free discussion should not be prevented, either by the ferocity of reviewers or the arm of the law; otherwise, as I said before, the work of social preparation cannot go on. On this count, then, I claim acquittal, being for the moment on the side of Virchow.

Besides the duties of the chair, which I have been privileged to occupy in London for more than a quarter of a century, and which never involved a word on my part, pro or con, in reference to the theory of evolution, I have had the honour of addressing audiences in Liverpool, Belfast, and Birmingham; and in these addresses the theory of evolution, and the connected doctrine of spontaneous generation, have been more or less touched upon. Let us now examine whether in my references I have departed from the views of Virchow or not.

In the Liverpool discourse, after speaking of the theory of evolution when applied to the primitive condition of matter, as belonging to 'the dim twilight of conjecture,' and affirming that 'the certainty of experimental enquiry is here shut out,' I sketch the nebular theory as enunciated by Kant and Laplace, and afterwards proceed thus: 'Accepting some such view of the construction of our system _as probable_, a desire immediately arises to connect the present life of our planet with the past. We wish to know something of our remotest ancestry. On its first detachment from the sun, life, as we understand it, could not have been present on the earth. How, then, did it come there? The thing to be encouraged here is a reverent freedom--a freedom preceded by the hard discipline which checks licentiousness in speculation--while the thing to be repressed, both in science and out of it, is dogmatism. And here I am in the hands of the meeting, willing to end but ready to go on. _I have no right to intrude upon you unasked the unformed notions which are floating like clouds, or gathering to more solid consistency in the modern speculative mind_.'

I then notice more especially the basis of the theory. Those who hold the doctrine of evolution _are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they only yield to it a provisional a.s.sent_. They regard the nebular hypothesis as probable; and, in the utter absence of any proof of the illegality of the act, they prolong the method of nature from the present into the past. Here the observed uniformity of nature is their only guide. Having determined the elements of their curve in a world of observation and experiment, they prolong that curve into an antecedent world, and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of development from the nebula to the present time.' Thus it appears that, long antecedent to the publication of his advice, I did exactly what Professor Virchow recommends, showing myself as careful as he could be not to claim for a scientific doctrine a certainty which did not belong to it.

I now pa.s.s on to the Belfast Address, and will cite at once from it the pa.s.sage which has given rise to the most violent animadversion.

'Believing as I do in the continuity of nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. At this point the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements that of the eye. By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that "matter" which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life.' Without halting for a moment I go on to do the precise thing which Professor Virchow declares to be necessary. 'If you ask me,' I say, 'whether there exists the least evidence to prove that any form of life can be developed out of matter independently of antecedent life, my reply is that evidence considered perfectly conclusive by many has been adduced, and that were we to follow a common example, and accept testimony because it falls in with our belief, we should eagerly close with the evidence referred to. But there is in the true man of science a desire stronger than the wish to have his beliefs upheld; namely, the desire to have them true. And those to whom I refer as having studied this question, believing the evidence offered in favour of "spontaneous generation" to be vitiated by error, cannot accept it. They know full well that the chemist now prepares from inorganic matter a vast array of substances, which were some time ago regarded as the products solely of vitality. They are intimately acquainted with the structural power of matter, as evidenced in the phenomena of crystallisation. They can justify scientifically their _belief_ in its potency, under the proper conditions, to produce organisms. But, in reply to your question, they will frankly admit their inability to point to any satisfactory experimental proof that life can be developed, save from demonstrable antecedent life.' [Footnote: Quoted by Clifford, 'Nineteenth Century,'

3, p. 726.]

Comparing the theory of evolution with other theories, I thus express myself: 'The basis of the doctrine of evolution consists, not in an experimental demonstration--for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof--but in its general harmony with scientific thought. From contrast, moreover, it derives enormous relative strength. On the one side we have a theory, which converts the Power whose garment is seen in the visible universe into an Artificer, fas.h.i.+oned after the human model, and acting by broken efforts, as man is seen to act. On the other side we have the conception that all we see around us and feel within us--the phenomena of physical nature as well as those of the human mind--have their unsearchable roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an infinitesimal span of which is offered to the investigation of man.' Among thinking people, in my opinion, this last conception has a higher ethical value than that of a personal artificer. Be that as it may, I make here no claim for the theory of evolution which can reasonably be refused.

'Ten years have elapsed' said Dr. Hooker at Norwich in 1868 [Footnote: President's Address to the British a.s.sociation.] 'since the publication of "The Origin of Species by Natural Selection," and it is therefore not too early now to ask what progress that bold theory has made in scientific estimation. Since the "Origin" appeared it has pa.s.sed through four English editions,' [Footnote: Published by Mr.

John Murray, the English publisher of Virchow's Lecture. Bane and antidote are thus impartially distributed by the same hand.] two American, two German, two French, several Russian, a Dutch, and an Italian edition. So far from Natural Selection being a thing of the past [the 'Athenaeum' had stated it to be so] it is an accepted doctrine with almost every philosophical naturalist, including, it will always be understood, a considerable proportion who are not prepared to admit that it accounts for all Mr. Darwin a.s.signs to it.'

In the following year, at Innsbruck, Helmholtz took up the same ground. [Footnote: 'Noch besteht lebhafter Streit um die Wahrheit oder Wahrscheinlichkeit von Darwin's Theorie; er dreht sich aber doch eigentlich nur um die Grenzen, welche wir fuer die Veraenderlichkeit der Arten annehmen duerfen. Da.s.s innerhalb derselben Species erbliche Racenverschiedenheiten auf die von Darwin beschriebene Weise zu kommen koennen, ja da.s.s viele der bisher als verschiedene Species derselben Gattung betrachteten Formen von derselben Urform abstammen, werden auch seine Gegner kaum leugnen.'--(Populaere Vortraege.)] Another decade has now pa.s.sed, and he is simply blind who cannot see the enormous progress made by the theory during that time. Some of the outward and visible signs of this advance are readily indicated. The hostility and fear which so long prevented the recognition of Mr.

Darwin by his own university have vanished, and this year Cambridge, amid universal acclamation, conferred on him her Doctor's degree. The Academy of Sciences in Paris, which had so long persistently closed its doors against Mr. Darwin, has also yielded at last; while sermons, lectures, and published articles plainly show that even the clergy have, to a great extent, become acclimatised to the Darwinian air. My brief reference to Mr. Darwin in the Birmingham Address was based upon the knowledge that such changes had been accomplished, and were still going on.

That the lecture of Professor Virchow can, to any practical extent disturb this progress of public faith in the theory of evolution, I do not believe. That the special lessons of caution which he inculcates were exemplified by me, years before his voice was heard upon this subject, has been proved in the foregoing pages. In point of fact, if he had preceded me instead of following me, and if my desire had been to incorporate his wishes in my words, I could not have accomplished this more completely. It is possible, moreover, to draw the coincident lines still further, for most of what he has said about spontaneous generation might have been uttered by me. I share his opinion that the theory of evolution in its complete form involves the pa.s.sage from matter which we now hold to be inorganic into organised matter; in other words, involves the a.s.sumption that at some period or other of the earth's history there occurred what would be now called 'spontaneous generation.' I agree with him that the proofs of it are still wanting.' 'Whoever,' he says, recalls to mind the lamentable failure of all the attempts made very recently to discover a decided support for the _generatio aequivoca_ in the lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic world will feel it doubly serious to demand that this theory, so utterly discredited, should be in any way accepted as the basis of all our views of life.' I hold with Virchow that the failures have been lamentable, that the doctrine is utterly discredited. But my position here is so well known that I need not dwell upon it further.

With one special utterance of Professor Virchow his translator connects me by name. 'I have no objection,' observes the Professor, 'to your saying that atoms of carbon also possess mind, or that in their connection with the Plastidule company they acquire mind; only I do not know how I am to perceive this.' This is substantially what I had said seventeen years previously in the 'Sat.u.r.day Review.' The Professor continues: 'If I explain attraction and repulsion as exhibitions of mind, as psychical phenomena, I simply throw the Psyche out of the window, and the Psyche ceases to be a Psyche.' I may say, in pa.s.sing, that the Psyche that could be cast out of the window is not worth houseroom. At this point the translator, who is evidently a man of culture, strikes in with a foot-note. 'As an ill.u.s.tration of Professor Virchow's meaning, we may quote the conclusion at which Doctor Tyndall arrives respecting the hypothesis of a human soul, offered as an explanation or a simplification of a series of obscure phenomena--psychical phenomena, as he calls them. "If you are content to make your soul a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which refuses the yoke of ordinary physical laws, I, for one, would not object to this exercise of ideality."' [Footnote: 'Presidential Address delivered before the Birmingham and Midland Inst.i.tute, October 1, 1877. Fortnightly Review,' Nov. 1, 1877, p. 60] Professor Virchow's meaning, I admit, required ill.u.s.tration; but I do not clearly see how the quotation from me subserves this purpose. I do not even know whether I am cited as meriting praise or deserving opprobrium. In a far coa.r.s.er fas.h.i.+on this utterance of mine has been dealt with in other places: it may therefore be worth while to spend a few words upon it.

The sting of a wasp at the finger-end announces itself to the brain as pain. The impression made by the sting travels, in the first place, with comparative slowness along the nerves affected; and only when it reaches the brain have we the fact of consciousness. Those who think most profoundly on this subject hold that a chemical change, which, strictly interpreted, is atomic motion, is, in such a case, propagated along the nerve, and communicated to the brain. Again, on feeling the sting I flap the insect violently away. What has caused this motion of my hand? The command from the brain to remove the insect travels along the motor nerves to the proper muscles, and, their force being unlocked, they perform the work demanded of them. But what moved the nerve molecules which unlocked the muscle? The sense of pain, it may be replied. But how can a sense of pain, or any other state of consciousness, make matter move? Not all the sense of pain or pleasure in the world could lift a stone or move a billiard-ball; why should it stir a molecule? Try to express the motion numerically in terms of the sensation, and the difficulty immediately appears. Hence the idea long ago entertained by philosophers, but lately brought into special prominence, that the physical processes are complete in themselves, and would go on just as they do if consciousness were not at all implicated. Consciousness, on this view, is a kind of by-product inexpressible in terms of force and motion, and unessential to the molecular changes going on in the brain.

Four years ago, I wrote thus: 'Do states of consciousness enter as links into the chain of antecedence and sequence, which gives rise to bodily actions? Speaking for myself, it is certain that I have no power of imagining such states interposed between the molecules of the brain, and influencing the transference of motion among the molecules.

The thing "eludes all mental presentation." Hence an iron strength seems to belong to the logic which claims for the brain an automatic action uninfluenced by consciousness. But it is, I believe, admitted by those who hold the automaton theory, that states of consciousness are produced by the motion of the molecules of the brain; and this production of consciousness by molecular motion is to me quite as unpresentable to the mental vision as the production of molecular motion by consciousness. If I reject one result I must reject both.

I, however, reject neither, and thus stand in the presence of two Incomprehensibles, instead of one Incomprehensible.' Here I secede from the automaton theory, though maintained by friends who have all my esteem, and fall back upon the avowal which occurs with such wearisome iteration throughout the foregoing pages; namely, my own utter incapacity to grasp the problem.

This avowal is repeated with emphasis in the pa.s.sage to which Professor Virchow's translator draws attention. What, I there ask, is the causal connection between the objective and the subjective--between molecular motions and states of consciousness?

My answer is: I do not see the connection, nor am I acquainted with anybody who does. It is no explanation to say that the objective and subjective are two sides of one and the same phenomenon.

Why should the phenomenon have two sides? This is the very core of the difficulty. There are plenty of molecular motions which do exhibit this two-sidedness. Does water think or feel when it runs into frost-ferns upon a window pane? If not, why should the molecular motion of the brain be yoked to this mysterious companion--consciousness? We can form a coherent picture of all the purely physical processes--the stirring of the brain, the thrilling of the nerves, the discharging of the muscles, and all the subsequent motions of the organism. We are here dealing with mechanical problems which are mentally presentable.

But we can form no picture of the process whereby consciousness emerges, either as a necessary link, or as an accidental by-product, of this series of actions. The reverse process of the production of motion by consciousness is equally unpresentable to the mind. We are here in fact on the boundary line of the intellect, where the ordinary canons of science fail to extricate us. If we are true to these canons, we must deny to subjective phenomena all influence on physical processes. The mechanical philosopher, as such, will never place a state of consciousness and a group of molecules in the relation of mover and moved. Observation proves them to interact; but, in pa.s.sing from the one to the other, we meet a blank which the logic of deduction is unable to fill. This, the reader will remember, is the conclusion at which I had arrived more than twenty years ago. I lay bare unsparingly the central difficulty of the materialist, and tell him that the facts of observation which he considers so simple are 'almost as difficult to be seized mentally as the idea of a soul.' I go further, and say, in effect, to those who wish to retain this idea, 'If you abandon the interpretations of grosser minds, who image the soul as a Psyche which could be thrown out of the window--an ent.i.ty which is usually occupied, we know not how, among the molecules of the brain, but which on due occasion, such as the intrusion of a bullet or the blow of a club, can fly away into other regions of s.p.a.ce--if, abandoning this heathen notion, you consent to approach the subject in the only way in which approach is possible--if you consent to make your soul a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which, as I have taken more pains than anybody else to show you, refuses the yoke of ordinary physical laws--then I, for one, would not object to this exercise of ideality.' I say it strongly, but with good temper, that the theologian, or the defender of theology, who hacks and scourges me for putting the question in this light is guilty of black ingrat.i.tude.

Notwithstanding the agreement thus far pointed out, there are certain points in Professor Virchow's lecture to which I should feel inclined to take exception. I think it was hardly necessary to a.s.sociate the theory of evolution with Socialism; it may be even questioned whether it was correct to do so. As Lange remarks, the aim of Socialism, or of its extreme leaders, is to overthrow the existing systems of government, and anything that helps them to this end is welcomed, whether it be atheism or papal infallibility. For long years the Socialists saw Church and State united against them, and both were therefore regarded with a common hatred. But no sooner does a serious difference arise between Church and State, than a portion of the Socialists begin immediately to dally with the former. [Footnote: 'Geschichte des Materialismus,' 2e Auflage, vol. ii. p. 538.] The experience of the last German elections ill.u.s.trates Lange's position.

Far n.o.bler and truer to my mind than this fear of promoting Socialism by a scientific theory which the best and soberest heads in the world have substantially accepted, is the position a.s.sumed by Helmholtz, who in his 'Popular Lectures' describes Darwin's theory as embracing 'an essentially new creative thought' (einen wesentlich neuen schoepferischen Gedanken), and who ill.u.s.trates the greatness of this thought by copious references to the solutions, previously undreamt of, which it offers of the enigmas of life and organisation. He points to the clouds of error and confusion which it has already dispersed, and shows how the progress of discovery since its first enunciation is simply a record of the approach of the theory towards complete demonstration. One point in this 'popular' exposition deserves especial mention here. Helmholtz refers to the dominant position acquired by Germany in physiology and medicine, while other nations have kept abreast of her in the investigation of inorganic nature. He claims for German men the credit of pursuing with unflagging and self-denying industry, with purely ideal aims, and without any immediate prospect of practical utility, the cultivation of pure science. But that which has determined German superiority in the fields referred to was, in his opinion, something different from this. Enquiries into the nature of life are intimately connected with psychological and ethical questions; and he claims for his countrymen a greater fearlessness of the consequences which a full knowledge of the truth may here carry along with it, than reigns among the enquirers of other nations. And why is this the case? 'England and France,' he says, 'possess distinguished investigators--men competent to follow up and ill.u.s.trate with vigorous energy the methods of natural science; but they have hitherto been compelled to bend before social and theological prejudices, and could only utter their convictions under the penalty of injuring their social influence and usefulness. Germany has gone forward more courageously. She has cherished the trust, which has never been deceived, that complete truth carries with it the antidote against the bane and danger which follow in the train of half knowledge. A cheerfully laborious and temperate people--a people morally strong--can well afford to look truth full in the face. Nor are they to be ruined by the enunciation of one-sided theories, even when these may appear to threaten the bases of society.' These words of Helmholtz are, in my opinion, wiser and more applicable to the condition of Germany at the present moment than those which express the fears of Professor Virchow. It will be remembered that at the time of his lecture his chief anxieties were directed towards France; but France has since that time given ample evidence of her ability to crush, not only Socialists, but anti-Socialists, who would impose on her a yoke which she refuses to bear.

In close connection with these utterances of Helmholtz, I place another utterance not less n.o.ble, which I trust was understood and appreciated by those to whom it was addressed. 'If,' said the President of the British a.s.sociation in his opening address in Dublin, we could lay down beforehand the precise limits of possible knowledge, the problem of physical science would be already half solved. But the question to which the scientific explorer has often to address himself is, not merely whether he is able to solve this or that problem; but whether he can so far unravel the tangled threads of the matter with which he has to deal, as to weave them into a definite problem at all ... If his eye seem dim, he must look steadfastly and with hope into the misty vision, until the very clouds wreathe themselves into definite forms. If his ear seem dull, he must listen patiently and with sympathetic trust to the intricate whisperings of Nature--the G.o.ddess, as she has been called, of a hundred voices--until here and there he can pick out a few simple notes to which his own powers can resound. If, then, at a moment when he finds himself placed on a pinnacle from which he is called upon to take a perspective survey of the range of science, and to tell us what he can see from his vantage ground; if at such a moment after straining his gaze to the very verge of the horizon, and after describing the most distant of well-defined objects, he should give utterance also to some of the subjective impressions which he is conscious of receiving from regions beyond; if he should depict possibilities which seem opening to his view; if he should explain why he thinks this a mere blind alley and that an open path; _then the fault and the loss would be alike ours if we refused to listen calmly, and temperately to form our own judgment on what we hear; then a.s.suredly it is we who would be committing the error of confounding matters of fact with matters of opinion, if we failed to discriminate between the various elements contained in such a discourse, and a.s.sumed that they had been all put on the same footing_.'

While largely agreeing with him, I cannot quite accept the setting in which Professor Virchow places the confessedly abortive attempts to secure an experimental basis for the doctrine of spontaneous generation. It is not a doctrine 'so discredited' that some of the scientific thinkers of England accept 'as the basis of all their views of life.' Their induction is by no means thus limited. They have on their side more than the 'reasonable probability' deemed sufficient by Bishop Butler for practical guidance in the gravest affairs, that the members of the solar system which are now discrete once formed a continuous ma.s.s; that in the course of untold ages, during which the work of condensation, through the waste of heat in s.p.a.ce, went on, the planets were detached; and that our present sun is the residual nucleus of the flocculent or gaseous ball from which the planets were successively separated. Life, as we define it, was not possible for aeons subsequent to this separation. When and how did it appear? I have already pressed this question, but have received no answer. [Footnote: In the 'Apology for the Belfast Address,' the question is reasoned out.] If, with Professor Knight, we regard the Bible account of the introduction of life upon the earth as a poem, not as a statement of fact, where are we to seek for guidance as to the fact? There does not exist a barrier possessing the strength of a cobweb to oppose to the hypothesis, which ascribes the appearance of life to that 'potency of matter' which finds expression in natural evolution. [Footnote: 'We feel it an undeniable necessity,' says Professor Virchow, not to sever the organic world from the whole, as if it were something disjoined from the whole.' This grave statement cannot be weakened by the subsequent pleasantry regarding 'Carbon & Co.']

This hypothesis is not without its difficulties, but they vanish when compared with those which enc.u.mber its rivals. There are various facts in science obviously connected, and whose connections we are unable to trace; but we do not think of filling the gap between them by the intrusion of a separable spiritual agent. In like manner though we are unable to trace the course of things from the nebula, when there was no life in our sense, to the present earth where life abounds, the spirit and practice of science p.r.o.nounce against the intrusion of an anthropomorphic creator. Theologians must liberate and refine their conceptions or be prepared for the rejection of them by thoughtful minds. It is they, not we, who lay claim to knowledge never given to man. Our refusal of the creative hypothesis is less an a.s.sertion of knowledge than a protest against the a.s.sumption of knowledge which must long, if not always, lie beyond us, and the claim to which is a source of perpetual confusion.' At the same time, when I look with strenuous gaze into the whole problem as far as my capacities allow, overwhelming wonder is the predominant feeling. This wonder has come to me from the ages just as much as my understanding, and it has an equal right to satisfaction. Hence I say, if, abandoning your illegitimate claim to knowledge, you place, with Job, your forehead in the dust and acknowledge the authors.h.i.+p of this universe to be past finding out--if, having made this confession, and relinquished the views of the mechanical theologian, you desire for the satisfaction of feelings which I admit to be, in great part, those of humanity at large, to give ideal form to the Power that moves all things--it is not by me that you will find objections raised to this exercise of ideality, if it be only consciously and worthily carried out.

Again, I think Professor Virchow's position, in regard to the question of _contagium animatum_, is not altogether that of true philosophy. He points to the antiquity of the doctrine. 'It is lost,' he says, 'in the darkness of the middle ages. We have received this name from our forefathers, and it already appears distinctly in the sixteenth century. We possess several works of that time which put forward _contagium animatum_ as a scientific doctrine, with the same confidence, with the same sort of proof, with which the "Plastidulic soul" is now set forth.'

These speculations of our 'forefathers' will appeal differently to different minds. By some they will be dismissed with a sneer; to others they will appeal as proofs of genius on the part of those who enunciated them. There are men, and by no means the minority, who, however wealthy in regard to facts, can never rise into the region of principles; and they are sometimes intolerant of those who can. They are formed to plod meritoriously on the lower levels of thought, unpossessed of the pinions necessary to reach the heights. They cannot realise the mental act--the act of inspiration it might well be called--by which a man of genius, after long pondering and proving, reaches a theoretic conception which unravels and illuminates the tangle of centuries of observation and experiment. There are minds, it may be said in pa.s.sing, who at the present moment stand in this relation to Mr. Darwin. For my part, I should be inclined to ascribe to penetration rather than to presumption the notion of a _contagium animatum_. He who invented the term ought, I think, to be held in esteem; for he had before him the quant.i.ty of fact, and the measure of a.n.a.logy, that would justify a man of genius in taking a step so bold.

'Nevertheless,' says Professor Virchow, 'no one was able throughout a long time to discover these living germs of disease. The sixteenth century did not find them, nor did the seventeenth, nor the eighteenth.' But it may be urged, in reply to this, that the theoretic conjecture often legitimately comes first. It is the forecast of genius which antic.i.p.ates the fact and const.i.tutes a spur towards its discovery. If, instead of being a spur, the theoretic guess rendered men content with imperfect knowledge, it would be a thing to be deprecated. But in modern investigation this is distinctly not the case; Darwin's theory, for example, like the undulatory theory, has been a motive power and not an anodyne. 'At last,' continues Professor Virchow, 'in the nineteenth century we have begun little by little really to find _contagia animata_.' So much the more honour, I infer, is due to those who, three centuries in advance, so put together the facts and a.n.a.logies of contagious disease as to divine its root and character. Professor Virchow seems to deprecate the 'obstinacy' with which this notion of a _contagium vivum_ emerged. Here I should not be inclined to follow him; because I do not know, nor does he tell me, how much the discovery of facts in the nineteenth century is indebted to the stimulus derived from the theoretic discussions of preceding centuries. The genesis of scientific ideas is a subject of profound interest and importance. He would be but a poor philosopher who would sever modern chemistry from the efforts of the alchemists, who would detach modern atomic doctrines from the speculations of Lucretius and his predecessors, or who would claim for our present knowledge of _contagia_ an origin altogether independent of the efforts of our 'forefathers' to penetrate this enigma.

Finally, I do not know that I should agree with Professor Virchow as to what a theory is or ought to be. I call a theory a principle or conception of the mind which accounts for observed facts, and which helps us to look for and predict facts not yet observed. Every new discovery which fits into a theory strengthens it. The theory is not a thing complete from the first, but a thing which grows, as it were asymptotically, towards certainty. Darwin's theory, as pointed out nine and ten years ago by Helmholtz and Hooker, was then exactly in this condition of growth; and had they to speak of the subject to-day they would be able to announce an enormous strengthening of the theoretic fibre. Fissures in continuity which then existed, and which left little hope of being ever spanned, have been since filled in, so that the further the theory is tested the more fully does it harmonise with progressive experience and discovery. We shall probably never fill all the gaps; but this will not prevent a profound belief in the truth of the theory from taking root in the general mind. Much less will it justify a total denial of the theory. The man of science who a.s.sumes in such a case the position of a denier is sure to be stranded and isolated. The proper att.i.tude, in my opinion, is to give to the theory during the phases of its growth as nearly as possible a proportionate a.s.sent; and, if it be a theory which influences practice, our wisdom is to follow its probable suggestions where more than probability is for the moment unattainable. I write thus with the theory of _contagium vivum_, more especially in my mind, and must regret the att.i.tude of denial a.s.sumed by Professor Virchow towards that theory. 'I must beg my friend Klebs to pardon me,' he says, 'if, notwithstanding the late advances made by the doctrine of infectious fungi, I still persist in my reserve so far as to admit only the fungus which is really proved while I deny all other fungi so long as they are not actually brought before me.' Professor Virchow, that is to say, will continue to deny the Germ Theory, however great the probabilities on its side, however numerous be the cases of which it renders a just account, until it has ceased to be a theory at all, and has become a congeries of sensible facts. Had he said, 'As long as a single fungus of disease remains to be discovered, it is your bounden duty to search for it,' I should cordially agree with him. But by his unreserved denial he quenches the light of probability which ought to guide the practice of the medical man. Both here and in relation to the theory of evolution excess upon one side has begotten excess upon the other.

NOTE.--As might have been expected, Professor Virchow, shows himself in practice far too sound a philosopher to be restricted by the canon laid down in his critique of Dr. Haeckel. In his recent discourse upon the plague, he asks and answers the question, 'What is the _contagium_?' in the following words: 'Et qu'est-ce que le _contagium_? A mon avis, l'a.n.a.logie de la peste aver le charbon contagieux me parait si grande qu'il me semble possible de trouver un organisme microscopique qui contient le germe de l'affection. Mais jusqu' a present on a peu cherche a trouver cet organisme.'--Revue Scientifique, March, 1879.

XVI. THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

[Footnote: A discourse delivered at the Royal Inst.i.tution of Great Britain on Friday, January 17, 1879, and introduced here as the latest Fragment.]

THE subject of this evening's discourse was proposed by our late honorary secretary. [Footnote: Mr. William Spottiswoode, now President of the Royal Society] That word 'late' has for me its own connotations. It implies, among other things, the loss of a comrade by whose side I have worked for thirteen years. On the other hand, regret is not without its opposite in the feeling with which I have seen him rise by sheer intrinsic merit, moral and intellectual, to the highest official position which it is in the power of English science to bestow. Well, he, whose constant desire and practice were to promote the interests and extend the usefulness of this inst.i.tution, thought that at a time when the electric light occupied so much of public attention, a few sound notions regarding it, on the more purely scientific side, might, to use his own pithy expression, be 'planted'

in the public mind. I am here to-night with the view of trying, to the best of my ability, to realise the idea of our friend.

In the year 1800, Volta announced his immortal discovery of the pile.

Whetted to eagerness by the previous conflict between him and Galvani, the scientific men of the age flung themselves with ardour upon the new discovery, repeating Volta's experiments, and extending them in many ways. The light and heat of the voltaic circuit attracted marked attention, and in the innumerable tests and trials to which this question was subjected, the utility of platinum and charcoal as means of exalting the light was on all hands recognised. Mr. Children, with a battery surpa.s.sing in strength all its predecessors, fused platinum wires eighteen inches long, while 'points of charcoal produced a light so vivid that the suns.h.i.+ne, compared with it, appeared feeble.'

[Footnote: Davy, 'Chemical Philosophy,' p. 110.] Such effects reached their culmination when, in 1808, through the liberality of a few members of the Royal Inst.i.tution, Davy was enabled to construct a battery of two thousand pairs of plates, with which he afterwards obtained calorific and luminous effects far transcending anything previously observed. The arc of flame between the carbon terminals was four inches long, and by its heat quartz, sapphire, magnesia, and lime, were melted like wax in a candle flame; while fragments of diamond and plumbago rapidly disappeared as if reduced to vapour.

[Footnote: In the concluding lecture at the Royal Inst.i.tution in June, 1810, Davy showed the action of this battery. He then fused iridium, the alloy of iridium and osmium, and other refractory substances.

'Philosophical Magazine,' vol. x.x.xv. p. 463. Quetelet a.s.signs the first production of the spark between coal-points to Curtet in 1802.

Davy certainly in that year showed the carbon light with a battery of 150 pairs of plates in the theatre of the Royal Inst.i.tution ('Jour.

Roy. Inst.' vol. i. p. 166).]

The first condition to be fulfilled in the development of heat and light by the electric current is that it shall encounter and overcome resistance. Flowing through a perfect conductor, no matter what the strength of the current might be, neither heat nor light could be developed. A rod of unresisting copper carries away uninjured and unwarmed an atmospheric discharge competent to s.h.i.+ver to splinters a resisting oak. I send the self-same current through a wire composed of alternate lengths of silver and platinum. The silver offers little resistance, the platinum offers much. The consequence is that the platinum is raised to a white heat, while the silver is not visibly warmed. The same holds good with regard to the carbon terminals employed for the production of the electric light. The interval between them offers a powerful resistance to the pa.s.sage of the current, and it is by the gathering up of the force necessary to burst across this interval that the voltaic current is able to throw the carbon into that state of violent intestine commotion which we call heat, and to which its effulgence is due. The smallest interval of air usually suffices to stop the current. But when the carbon points are first brought together and then separated, there occurs between them a discharge of incandescent matter which carries, or may carry, the current over a considerable s.p.a.ce. The light comes almost wholly from the incandescent carbons. The s.p.a.ce between them is filled with a blue flame which, being usually bent by the earth's magnetism, receives the name of the Voltaic Arc. [Footnote: The part played by resistance is strikingly ill.u.s.trated by the deportment of silver and thallium when mixed together and volatilised in the arc. The current first selects as its carrier the most volatile metal, which in this case is thallium. While it continues abundant, the pa.s.sage of the current is so free--the resistance to it is so small--that the heat generated is incompetent to volatilise the silver. As the thallium disappears the current is forced to concentrate its power; it presses the silver into its service, and finally fills the s.p.a.ce between the carbons with a vapour which, as long as the necessary resistance is absent, it is incompetent to produce. I have on a former occasion drawn attention to a danger which besets the spectroscopist when operating upon a mixture of const.i.tuents volatile in different degrees. When, in 1872, I first observed the effect here described, had I not known that silver was present, I should have inferred its absence.]

For seventy years, then, we have been in possession of this transcendent light without applying it to the illumination of our streets and houses. Such applications suggested themselves at the outset, but there were grave difficulties in their way. The first difficulty arose from the waste of the carbons, which are dissipated in part by ordinary combustion, and in part by the electric transfer of matter from the one carbon to the other. To keep the carbons at the proper distance asunder regulators were devised, the earliest, I believe, by Staite, and the most successful by Duboscq, Foucault, and Serrin, who have been succeeded by Holmes, Siemens, Browning, Carre, Gramme, Lontin, and others. By such arrangements the first difficulty was practically overcome; but the second, a graver one, is probably inseparable from the construction of the voltaic battery. It arises from the operation of that inexorable law which throughout the material universe demands an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, refusing to yield the faintest glow of heat or glimmer of light without the expenditure of an absolutely equal quant.i.ty of some other power. Hence, in practice, the desirability of any transformation must depend upon the value of the product in relation to that of the power expended. The metal zinc can be burnt like paper; it might be ignited in a flame, but it is possible to avoid the introduction of all foreign heat and to burn the zinc in air of the temperature of this room. This is done by placing zinc foil at the focus of a concave mirror, which concentrates to a point the divergent electric beam, but which does not warm the air. The zinc burns at the focus with a violet flame, and we could readily determine the amount of heat generated by its combustion. But zinc can be burnt not only in air but in liquids. It is thus burnt when acidulated water is poured over it; it is also thus burnt in the voltaic battery. Here, however, to obtain the oxygen necessary for its combustion, the zinc has to dislodge the hydrogen with which the oxygen is combined. The consequence is that the heat due to the combustion of the metal in the liquid falls short of that developed by its combustion in air, by the exact quant.i.ty necessary to separate the oxygen from the hydrogen.

Fully four-fifths of the total heat are used up in this molecular work, only one-fifth remaining to warm the battery. It is upon this residue that we must now fix our attention, for it is solely out of it that we manufacture our electric light.

Before you are two small voltaic batteries of ten cells each. The two ends of one of them are united by a thick copper wire, while into the circuit of the other a thin platinum wire is introduced. The platinum glows with a white heat, while the copper wire is not sensibly warmed.

Now an ounce of zinc, like an ounce of coal, produces by its complete combustion in air a constant quant.i.ty of heat. The total heat developed by an ounce of zinc through its union with oxygen in the battery is also absolutely invariable. Let our two batteries, then, continue in action until an ounce of zinc in each of them is consumed.

In the one case the heat generated is purely domestic, being liberated on the hearth where the fuel is burnt, that is to say in the cells of the battery itself. In the other case, the heat is in part domestic and in part foreign--in part within the battery and in part outside.

One of the fundamental truths to be borne in mind is that the sum of the foreign and domestic--of the external and internal--heats is fixed and invariable. Hence, to have heat outside, you must draw upon the heat within. These remarks apply to the electric light. By the inter-mediation of the electric current the moderate warmth of the battery is not only carried away, but concentrated, so as to produce, at any distance from its origin, a heat next in order to that of the sun. The current might therefore be defined as the swift carrier of heat. Loading itself here with invisible power, by a process of trans.m.u.tation which outstrips the dreams of the alchemist, it can discharge its load, in the fraction of a second, as light and heat, at the opposite side of the world.