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Science & Education

Thomas H. Huxley

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SCIENCE & EDUCATION

ESSAYS

THOMAS H. HUXLEY

PREFACE

The apology offered in the Preface to the first volume of this series

for the occurrence of repetitions, is even more needful here I am

afraid. But it could hardly be otherwise with speeches and essays, on

the same topic, addressed at intervals, during more than thirty years,

to widely distant and different hearers and readers. The oldest piece,

that "On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences,"

contains some crudities, which I repudiated when the lecture was first

reprinted, more than twenty years ago; but it will be seen that much of

what I have had to say, later on in life, is merely a development of

the propositions enunciated in this early and sadly-imperfect piece of

work.

In view of the recent attempt to disturb the compromise about the

teaching of dogmatic theology, solemnly agreed to by the first School

Board for London, the fifteenth Essay; and, more particularly, the note

n. 3, may be found interesting.

T. H. H.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, _September 4th, 1893_.

CONTENTS

I JOSEPH PRIESTLEY [1874]

(An Address delivered on the occasion of the presentation of a statue

of Priestley to the town of Birmingham)

II ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES [1854]

(An Address delivered in S. Martin's Hall)

III EMANCIPATION--BLACK AND WHITE [1865]

IV A LIBERAL EDUCATION; AND WHERE TO FIND IT [1868]

(An Address to the South London Working Men's College)

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V SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION: NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH [1869]

(Liverpool Philomathic Society)

VI SCIENCE AND CULTURE [1880]

(An Address delivered at the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's Science

College, Birmingham)

VII ON SCIENCE AND ART IN RELATION TO EDUCATION [1882]

(An Address to the members of the Liverpool Institution)

VIII UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL [1874]

(Rectorial Address, Aberdeen)

IX ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION [1876]

(Delivered at the opening of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore)

X ON THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY [1876]

(A Lecture in connection with the Loan Collection of Scientific

Apparatus, South Kensington Museum)

XI ON ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION IN PHYSIOLOGY [1877]

XII ON MEDICAL EDUCATION [1870]

(An Address to the students of the Faculty of Medicine in University

College, London)

XIII THE STATE AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION [1884]

XIV THE CONNECTION OF THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES WITH MEDICINE [1881]

(An Address to the International Medical Congress)

XV THE SCHOOL BOARDS: WHAT THEY CAN DO, AND WHAT THEY MAY DO [1870]

XVI TECHNICAL EDUCATION [1877]

XVII ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROMOTION OF

TECHNICAL EDUCATION [1887]

COLLECTED ESSAYS

VOLUME III

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY

[1874]

If the man to perpetuate whose memory we have this day raised a statue

had been asked on what part of his busy life's work he set the highest

value, he would undoubtedly have pointed to his voluminous

contributions to theology. In season and out of season, he was the

steadfast champion of that hypothesis respecting the Divine nature

which is termed Unitarianism by its friends and Socinianism by its

foes. Regardless of odds, he was ready to do battle with all comers in

that cause; and if no adversaries entered the lists, he would sally

forth to seek them.

To this, his highest ideal of duty, Joseph Priestley sacrificed the

vulgar prizes of life, which, assuredly, were within easy reach of a

man of his singular energy and varied abilities. For this object he put

aside, as of secondary importance, those scientific investigations

which he loved so well, and in which he showed himself so competent to

enlarge the boundaries of natural knowledge and to win fame. In this

cause he not only cheerfully suffered obloquy from the bigoted and the

unthinking, and came within sight of martyrdom; but bore with that

which is much harder to be borne than all these, the unfeigned

astonishment and hardly disguised contempt of a brilliant society,

composed of men whose sympathy and esteem must have been most dear to

him, and to whom it was simply incomprehensible that a philosopher

should seriously occupy himself with any form of Christianity.

It appears to me that the man who, setting before himself such an ideal

of life, acted up to it consistently, is worthy of the deepest respect,

whatever opinion may be entertained as to the real value of the tenets

which he so zealously propagated and defended.

But I am sure that I speak not only for myself, but for all this

assemblage, when I say that our purpose to-day is to do honour, not to

Priestley, the Unitarian divine, but to Priestley, the fearless

defender of rational freedom in thought and in action: to Priestley,

the philosophic thinker; to that Priestley who held a foremost place

among "the swift runners who hand over the lamp of life," [1] and

transmit from one generation to another the fire kindled,

in the childhood of the world, at the Promethean altar of Science.

The main incidents of Priestley's life are so well known that I need

dwell upon them at no great length.

Born in 1733, at Fieldhead, near Leeds, and brought up among Calvinists

of the straitest orthodoxy, the boy's striking natural ability led to

his being devoted to the profession of a minister of religion; and, in

1752, he was sent to the Dissenting Academy at Daventry--an institution

which authority left undisturbed, though its existence contravened the

law. The teachers under whose instruction and influence the young man

came at Daventry, carried out to the letter the injunction to "try all

things: hold fast that which is good," and encouraged the discussion of

every imaginable proposition with complete freedom, the leading

professors taking opposite sides; a discipline which, admirable as it

may be from a purely scientific point of view, would seem to be

calculated to make acute, rather than sound, divines. Priestley tells

us, in his "Autobiography," that he generally found himself on the

unorthodox side: and, as he grew older, and his faculties attained

their maturity, this native tendency towards heterodoxy grew with his

growth and strengthened with his strength. He passed from Calvinism to

Arianism; and finally, in middle life, landed in that very broad form

of Unitarianism by which his craving after a credible and consistent

theory of things was satisfied.

On leaving Daventry Priestley became minister of a congregation, first

at Needham Market, and secondly at Nantwich; but whether on account of

his heterodox opinions, or of the stuttering which impeded his

expression of them in the pulpit, little success attended his efforts

in this capacity. In 1761, a career much more suited to his abilities

became open to him. He was appointed "tutor in the languages" in the

Dissenting Academy at Warrington, in which capacity, besides giving

three courses of lectures, he taught Latin, Greek, French, and Italian,

and read lectures on the theory of language and universal grammar, on

oratory, philosophical criticism, and civil law. And it is interesting

to observe that, as a teacher, he encouraged and cherished in those

whom he instructed the freedom which he had enjoyed, in his own student

days, at Daventry. One of his pupils tells us that,

"At the conclusion of his lecture, he always encouraged his

students to express their sentiments relative to the subject of it,

and to urge any objections to what he had delivered, without

reserve. It pleased him when any one commenced such a conversation.

In order to excite the freest discussion, he occasionally invited

the students to drink tea with him, in order to canvass the

subjects of his lectures. I do not recollect that he ever showed

the least displeasure at the strongest objections that were made to

what he delivered, but I distinctly remember the smile of

approbation with which he usually received them: nor did he fail to

point out, in a very encouraging manner, the ingenuity or force of

any remarks that were made, when they merited these characters. His

object, as well as Dr. Aikin's, was to engage the students to

examine and decide for themselves, uninfluenced by the sentiments

of any other persons." [2]

It would be difficult to give a better description of a model teacher

than that conveyed in these words.

From his earliest days, Priestley had shown a strong bent towards the

study of nature; and his brother Timothy tells us that the boy put

spiders into bottles, to see how long they would live in the same

air--a curious anticipation of the investigations of his later years.

At Nantwich, where he set up a school, Priestley informs us that he

bought an air pump, an electrical machine, and other instruments, in

the use of which he instructed his scholars. But he does not seem to

have devoted himself seriously to physical science until 1766, when he

had the great good fortune to meet Benjamin Franklin, whose friendship

he ever afterwards enjoyed. Encouraged by Franklin, he wrote a "History

of Electricity," which was published in 1767, and appears to have met

with considerable success.

In the same year, Priestley left Warrington to become the minister of a

congregation at Leeds; and, here, happening to live next door to a

public brewery, as he says,

"I, at first, amused myself with making experiments on the fixed

air which I found ready-made in the process of fermentation. When I

removed from that house I was under the necessity of making fixed

air for myself; and one experiment leading to another, as I have

distinctly and faithfully noted in my various publications on the

subject, I by degrees contrived a convenient apparatus for the

purpose, but of the cheapest kind.

"When I began these experiments I knew very little of _chemistry_,

and had, in a manner, no idea on the subject before I attended a

course of chemical lectures, delivered in the Academy at

Warrington, by Dr. Turner of Liverpool. But I have often thought

that, upon the whole, this circumstance was no disadvantage to me;

as, in this situation, I was led to devise an apparatus and

processes of my own, adapted to my peculiar views; whereas, if I

had been previously accustomed to the usual chemical processes, I

should not have so easily thought of any other, and without new

modes of operation, I should hardly have discovered anything

materially new." [3]

The first outcome of Priestley's chemical work, published in 1772, was

of a very practical character. He discovered the way of impregnating

water with an excess of "fixed air," or carbonic acid, and thereby

producing what we now know as "soda water"--a service to naturally, and

still more to artificially, thirsty souls, which those whose parched

throats and hot heads are cooled by morning draughts of that beverage,

cannot too gratefully acknowledge. In the same year, Priestley

communicated the extensive series of observations which his industry

and ingenuity had accumulated, in the course of four years, to the

Royal Society, under the title of "Observations on Different Kinds of

Air"--a memoir which was justly regarded of so much merit and

importance, that the Society at once conferred upon the author the

highest distinction in their power, by awarding him the Copley Medal.

In 1771 a proposal was made to Priestley to accompany Captain Cook in

his second voyage to the South Seas. He accepted it, and his

congregation agreed to pay an assistant to supply his place during his

absence. But the appointment lay in the hands of the Board of

Longitude, of which certain clergymen were members; and whether these

worthy ecclesiastics feared that Priestley's presence among the ship's

company might expose His Majesty's sloop _Resolution_ to the fate

which aforetime befell a certain ship that went from Joppa to Tarshish;

or whether they were alarmed lest a Socinian should undermine that

piety which, in the days of Commodore Trunnion, so strikingly

characterised sailors, does not appear; but, at any rate, they objected

to Priestley "on account of his religious principles," and appointed

the two Forsters, whose "religious principles," if they had been known

to these well-meaning but not far-sighted persons, would probably have

surprised them.

In 1772 another proposal was made to Priestley. Lord Shelburne,

desiring a "literary companion," had been brought into communication

with Priestley by the good offices of a friend of both, Dr. Price; and

offered him the nominal post of librarian, with a good house and

appointments, and an annuity in case of the termination of the

engagement. Priestley accepted the offer, and remained with Lord

Shelburne for seven years, sometimes residing at Calne, sometimes

travelling abroad with the Earl.

Why the connection terminated has never been exactly known; but it is

certain that Lord Shelburne behaved with the utmost consideration and

kindness towards Priestley; that he fulfilled his engagements to the

letter; and that, at a later period, he expressed a desire that

Priestley should return to his old footing in his house. Probably

enough, the politician, aspiring to the highest offices in the State,

may have found the position of the protector of a man who was being

denounced all over the country as an infidel and an atheist somewhat

embarrassing. In fact, a passage in Priestley's "Autobiography" on the

occasion of the publication of his "Disquisitions relating to Matter

and Spirit," which took place in 1777, indicates pretty clearly the

state of the case:--

"(126) It being probable that this publication would be unpopular,

and might be the means of bringing odium on my patron, several

attempts were made by his friends, though none by himself, to

dissuade me from persisting in it. But being, as I thought, engaged

in the cause of important truth, I proceeded without regard to any

consequences, assuring them that this publication should not be

injurious to his lordship."

It is not unreasonable to suppose that his lordship, as a keen,

practical man of the world, did not derive much satisfaction from this

assurance. The "evident marks of dissatisfaction" which Priestley says

he first perceived in his patron in 1778, may well have arisen from the

peer's not unnatural uneasiness as to what his domesticated, but not

tamed, philosopher might write next, and what storm might thereby he

brought down on his own head; and it speaks very highly for Lord

Shelburne's delicacy that, in the midst of such perplexities, he made

not the least attempt to interfere with Priestley's freedom of action.

In 1780, however, he intimated to Dr. Price that he should be glad to

establish Priestley on his Irish estates: the suggestion was

interpreted, as Lord Shelburne probably intended it should be, and

Priestley left him, the annuity of L.150 a year, which had been promised

in view of such a contingency, being punctually paid.

After leaving Calne, Priestley spent some little time in London, and

then, having settled in Birmingham at the desire of his brother-in-law,

he was soon invited to become the minister of a large congregation.

This settlement Priestley considered, at the time, to be "the happiest

event of his life." And well he might think so; for it gave him

competence and leisure; placed him within reach of the best makers of

apparatus of the day; made him a member of that remarkable "Lunar

Society," at whose meetings he could exchange thoughts with such men as

Watt, Wedgwood, Darwin, and Boulton; and threw open to him the pleasant

house of the Galtons of Barr, where these men, and others of less note,

formed a society of exceptional charm and intelligence. [4]

But these halcyon days were ended by a bitter storm. The French

Revolution broke out. An electric shock ran through the nations;

whatever there was of corrupt and retrograde, and, at the same time, a

great deal of what there was of best and noblest, in European society

shuddered at the outburst of long-pent-up social fires. Men's feelings

were excited in a way that we, in this generation, can hardly

comprehend. Party wrath and virulence were expressed in a manner

unparalleled, and it is to be hoped impossible, in our times; and

Priestley and his friends were held up to public scorn, even in

Parliament, as fomenters of sedition. A "Church-and-King" cry was

raised against the Liberal Dissenters; and, in Birmingham, it was

intensified and specially directed towards Priestley by a local

controversy, in which he had engaged with his usual vigour. In 1791,

the celebration of the second anniversary of the taking of the Bastille

by a public dinner, with which Priestley had nothing whatever to do,

gave the signal to the loyal and pious mob, who, unchecked, and indeed

to some extent encouraged, by those who were responsible for order, had

the town at their mercy for three days. The chapels and houses of the

leading Dissenters were wrecked, and Priestley and his family had to

fly for their lives, leaving library, apparatus, papers, and all their

possessions, a prey to the flames.

Priestley never returned to Birmingham. He bore the outrages and losses

inflicted upon him with extreme patience and sweetness, [5] and betook

himself to London. But even his scientific colleagues gave him a cold

shoulder; and though he was elected minister of a congregation at

Hackney, he felt his position to be insecure, and finally determined on

emigrating to the United States. He landed in America in 1794; lived

quietly with his sons at Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, where his

posterity still flourish; and, clear-headed and busy to the last, died

on the 6th of February 1804.

Such were the conditions under which Joseph Priestley did the work

which lay before him, and then, as the Norse Sagas say, went out of the

story. The work itself was of the most varied kind. No human interest

was without its attraction for Priestley, and few men have ever had so

many irons in the fire at once; but, though he may have burned his

fingers a little, very few who have tried that operation have burned

their fingers so little. He made admirable discoveries in science; his

philosophical treatises are still well worth reading; his political

works are full of insight and replete with the spirit of freedom; and

while all these sparks flew off from his anvil, the controversial

hammer rained a hail of blows on orthodox priest and bishop. While thus

engaged, the kindly, cheerful doctor felt no more wrath or

uncharitableness towards his opponents than a smith does towards his

iron. But if the iron could only speak!--and the priests and bishops

took the point of view of the iron.

No doubt what Priestley's friends repeatedly urged upon him--that he

would have escaped the heavier trials of his life and done more for the

advancement of knowledge, if he had confined himself to his scientific

pursuits and let his fellow-men go their way--was true. But it seems to

have been Priestley's feeling that he was a man and a citizen before he

was a philosopher, and that the duties of the two former positions are

at least as imperative as those of the latter. Moreover, there are men

(and I think Priestley was one of them) to whom the satisfaction of

throwing down a triumphant fallacy is as great as that which attends

the discovery of a new truth; who feel better satisfied with the

government of the world, when they have been helping Providence by

knocking an imposture on the head; and who care even more for freedom

of thought than for mere advance of knowledge. These men are the

Carnots who organise victory for truth, and they are, at least, as

important as the generals who visibly fight her battles in the field.

Priestley's reputation as a man of science rests upon his numerous and

important contributions to the chemistry of gaseous bodies; and to form

a just estimate of the value of his work--of the extent to which it

advanced the knowledge of fact and the development of sound theoretical

views--we must reflect what chemistry was in the first half of the

eighteenth century.

The vast science which now passes under that name had no existence.

Air, water, and fire were still counted among the elemental bodies; and

though Van Helmont, a century before, had distinguished different

kinds of air as _gas ventosum_ and _gas sylvestre_, and Boyle and Hales

had experimentally defined the physical properties of air, and

discriminated some of the various kinds of aeriform bodies, no one

suspected the existence of the numerous totally distinct gaseous

elements which are now known, or dreamed that the air we breathe and

the water we drink are compounds of gaseous elements.

But, in 1754, a young Scotch physician, Dr. Black, made the first

clearing in this tangled backwood of knowledge. And it gives one a

wonderful impression of the juvenility of scientific chemistry to think

that Lord Brougham, whom so many of us recollect, attended Black's

lectures when he was a student in Edinburgh. Black's researches gave

the world the novel and startling conception of a gas that was a

permanently elastic fluid like air, but that differed from common air

in being much heavier, very poisonous, and in having the properties of

an acid, capable of neutralising the strongest alkalies; and it took

the world some time to become accustomed to the notion.

A dozen years later, one of the most sagacious and accurate

investigators who has adorned this, or any other, country, Henry

Cavendish, published a memoir in the "Philosophical Transactions," in

which he deals not only with the "fixed air" (now called carbonic acid

or carbonic anhydride) of Black, but with "inflammable air," or what we

now term hydrogen.

By the rigorous application of weight and measure to all his processes,

Cavendish implied the belief subsequently formulated by Lavoisier,

that, in chemical processes, matter is neither created nor destroyed,

and indicated the path along which all future explorers must travel.

Nor did he himself halt until this path led him, in 1784, to the

brilliant and fundamental discovery that water is composed of two gases

united in fixed and constant proportions.

It is a trying ordeal for any man to be compared with Black and

Cavendish, and Priestley cannot be said to stand on their level.

Nevertheless his achievements are not only great in themselves, but

truly wonderful, if we consider the disadvantages under which he

laboured. Without the careful scientific training of Black, without the

leisure and appliances secured by the wealth of Cavendish, he scaled

the walls of science as so many Englishmen have done before and since

his day; and trusting to mother wit to supply the place of training,

and to ingenuity to create apparatus out of washing tubs, he discovered

more new gases than all his predecessors put together had done. He laid

the foundations of gas analysis; he discovered the complementary

actions of animal and vegetable life upon the constituents of the

atmosphere; and, finally, he crowned his work, this day one hundred

years ago, by the discovery of that "pure dephlogisticated air" to

which the French chemists subsequently gave the name of oxygen. Its

importance, as the constituent of the atmosphere which disappears in

the processes of respiration and combustion, and is restored by green

plants growing in sunshine, was proved somewhat later. For these

brilliant discoveries, the Royal Society elected Priestley a fellow and

gave him their medal, while the Academies of Paris and St. Petersburg

conferred their membership upon him. Edinburgh had made him an honorary

doctor of laws at an early period of his career; but, I need hardly

add, that a man of Priestley's opinions received no recognition from

the universities of his own country.

That Priestley's contributions to the knowledge of chemical fact were

of the greatest importance, and that they richly deserve all the praise

that has been awarded to them, is unquestionable; but it must, at the

same time, be admitted that he had no comprehension of the deeper

significance of his work; and, so far from contributing anything to the

theory of the facts which he discovered, or assisting in their rational

explanation, his influence to the end of his life was warmly exerted in

favour of error. From first to last, he was a stiff adherent of the

phlogiston doctrine which was prevalent when his studies commenced;

and, by a curious irony of fate, the man who by the discovery of what

he called "dephlogisticated air" furnished the essential datum for the

true theory of combustion, of respiration, and of the composition of

water, to the end of his days fought against the inevitable corollaries

from his own labours. His last scientific work, published in 1800,

bears the title, "The Doctrine of Phlogiston established, and that of

the Composition of Water refuted."

When Priestley commenced his studies, the current belief was, that

atmospheric air, freed from accidental impurities, is a simple

elementary substance, indestructible and unalterable, as water was

supposed to be. When a combustible burned, or when an animal breathed

in air, it was supposed that a substance, "phlogiston," the matter of

heat and light, passed from the burning or breathing body into it, and

destroyed its powers of supporting life and combustion. Thus, air

contained in a vessel in which a lighted candle had gone out, or a

living animal had breathed until it could breathe no longer, was called

"phlogisticated." The same result was supposed to be brought about by

the addition of what Priestley called "nitrous gas" to common air.

In the course of his researches, Priestley found that the quantity of

common air which can thus become "phlogisticated," amounts to about

one-fifth the volume of the whole quantity submitted to experiment.

Hence it appeared that common air consists, to the extent of

four-fifths of its volume, of air which is already "phlogisticated";

while the other fifth is free from phlogiston, or "dephlogisticated."

On the other hand, Priestley found that air "phlogisticated" by

combustion or respiration could be "dephlogisticated," or have the

properties of pure common air restored to it, by the action of green

plants in sunshine. The question, therefore, would naturally arise--as

common air can be wholly phlogisticated by combustion, and converted

into a substance which will no longer support combustion, is it

possible to get air that shall be less phlogisticated than common air,

and consequently support combustion better than common air does?

Now, Priestley says that, in 1774, the possibility of obtaining air

less phlogisticated than common air had not occurred to him. [6] But in

pursuing his experiments on the evolution of air from various bodies by

means of heat, it happened that, on the 1st of August 1774, he threw

the heat of the sun, by means of a large burning glass which he had

recently obtained, upon a substance which was then called _mercurius

calcinatus per se_, and which is commonly known as red precipitate.

"I presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled

from it very readily. Having got about three or four times as much

as the bulk of my materials, I admitted water to it, and found that

it was not imbibed by it. But what surprised me more than I can

well express, was that a candle burned in this air with a

remarkably vigorous flame, very much like that enlarged flame with

which a candle burns in nitrous air, exposed to iron or lime of

sulphur; but as I had got nothing like this remarkable appearance

from any kind of air besides this particular modification of

nitrous air, and I knew no nitrous acid was used in the preparation

of _mercurius calcinatus_, I was utterly at a loss how to

account for it.

"In this case also, though I did not give sufficient attention to

the circumstance at that time, the flame of the candle, besides

being larger, burned with more splendour and heat than in that

species of nitrous air; and a piece of red-hot wood sparkled in it,

exactly like paper dipped in a solution of nitre, and it consumed

very fast--an experiment which I had never thought of trying with

nitrous air." [7]

Priestley obtained the same sort of air from red lead, but, as he says

himself, he remained in ignorance of the properties of this new kind of

air for seven months, or until March 1775, when he found that the new

air behaved with "nitrous gas" in the same way as the dephlogisticated

part of common air does; [8] but that, instead of being diminished to

four-fifths, it almost completely vanished, and, therefore, showed

itself to be "between five and six times as good as the best common air

I have ever met with." [9] As this new air thus appeared to be

completely free from phlogiston, Priestley called it "dephlogisticated

air."

What was the nature of this air? Priestley found that the same kind of

air was to be obtained by moistening with the spirit of nitre (which he

terms nitrous acid) any kind of earth that is free from phlogiston, and

applying heat; and consequently he says: "There remained no doubt on my

mind but that the atmospherical air, or the thing that we breathe,

consists of the nitrous acid and earth, with so much phlogiston as is

necessary to its elasticity, and likewise so much more as is required

to bring it from its state of perfect purity to the mean condition in

which we find it." [10]

Priestley's view, in fact, is that atmospheric air is a kind of

saltpetre, in which the potash is replaced by some unknown earth.

And in speculating on the manner in which saltpetre is formed,

he enunciates the hypothesis, "that nitre is, formed by a real

_decomposition of the air itself_, the _bases_ that are presented to

it having, in such circumstances, a nearer affinity with the spirit

of nitre than that kind of earth with which it is united in the

atmosphere." [11]

It would have been hard for the most ingenious person to have wandered

farther from the truth than Priestley does in this hypothesis; and,

though Lavoisier undoubtedly treated Priestley very ill, and pretended

to have discovered dephlogisticated air, or oxygen, as he called it,

independently, we can almost forgive him when we reflect how different

were the ideas which the great French chemist attached to the body

which Priestley discovered.

They are like two navigators of whom the first sees a new country, but

takes clouds for mountains and mirage for lowlands; while the second

determines its length and breadth, and lays down on a chart its exact

place, so that, thenceforth, it serves as a guide to his successors,

and becomes a secure outpost whence new explorations may be pushed.

Nevertheless, as Priestley himself somewhere remarks, the first object

of physical science is to ascertain facts, and the service which he

rendered to chemistry by the definite establishment of a large number

of new and fundamentally important facts, is such as to entitle him to

a very high place among the fathers of chemical science.

It is difficult to say whether Priestley's philosophical, political,

or theological views were most responsible for the bitter hatred which

was borne to him by a large body of his country-men, [12] and which

found its expression in the malignant insinuations in which Burke, to

his everlasting shame, indulged in the House of Commons.

Without containing much that will be new to the readers of Hobbs,

Spinoza, Collins, Hume, and Hartley, and, indeed, while making no

pretensions to originality, Priestley's "Disquisitions relating to

Matter and Spirit," and his "Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity

Illustrated," are among the most powerful, clear, and unflinching

expositions of materialism and necessarianism which exist in the

English language, and are still well worth reading.

Priestley denied the freedom of the will in the sense of its

self-determination; he denied the existence of a soul distinct from the

body; and as a natural consequence, he denied the natural immortality

of man.

In relation to these matters English opinion, a century ago, was very

much what it is now.

A man may be a necessarian without incurring graver reproach than that

implied in being called a gloomy fanatic, necessarianism, though very

shocking, having a note of Calvanistic orthodoxy; but, if a man is a

materialist; or, if good authorities say he is and must be so, in spite

of his assertion to the contrary; or, if he acknowledge himself unable

to see good reasons for believing in the natural immortality of man,

respectable folks look upon him as an unsafe neighbour of a cash-box,

as an actual or potential sensualist, the more virtuous in outward

seeming, the more certainly loaded with secret "grave personal sins."

Nevertheless, it is as certain as anything can be, that Joseph

Priestley was no gloomy fanatic, but as cheerful and kindly a soul as

ever breathed, the idol of children; a man who was hated only by those

who did not know him, and who charmed away the bitterest prejudices in

personal intercourse; a man who never lost a friend, and the best

testimony to whose worth is the generous and tender warmth with which

his many friends vied with one another in rendering him substantial

help, in all the crises of his career.

The unspotted purity of Priestley's life, the strictness of his

performance of every duty, his transparent sincerity, the

unostentatious and deep-seated piety which breathes through all his

correspondence, are in themselves a sufficient refutation of the

hypothesis, invented by bigots to cover uncharitableness, that such

opinions as his must arise from moral defects. And his statue will do

as good service as the brazen image that was set upon a pole before the

Israelites, if those who have been bitten by the fiery serpents of

sectarian hatred, which still haunt this wilderness of a world, are

made whole by looking upon the image of a heretic who was yet a saint.

Though Priestley did not believe in the natural immortality of man, he

held with an almost naive realism that man would be raised from the

dead by a direct exertion of the power of God, and thenceforward be

immortal. And it may be as well for those who may be shocked by this

doctrine to know that views, substantially identical with Priestley's,

have been advocated, since his time, by two prelates of the Anglican

Church: by Dr. Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, in his well-known

"Essays"; [13] and by Dr. Courtenay, Bishop of Kingston in Jamaica,

the first edition of whose remarkable book "On the Future States,"

dedicated to Archbishop Whately, was published in 1843 and the second

in 1857. According to Bishop Courtenay,

"The death of the body will cause a cessation of all the activity

of the mind by way of natural consequence; to continue for ever

UNLESS the Creator should interfere."

And again:--

"The natural end of human existence is the 'first death, the

dreamless slumber of the grave, wherein man lies spell-bound, soul

and body, under the dominion of sin and death--that whatever modes

of conscious existence, whatever future states of 'life' or of

'torment' beyond Hades are reserved for man, are results of our

blessed Lord's victory over sin and death; that the resurrection of

the dead must be preliminary to their entrance into either of the

future states, and that the nature and even existence of these

states, and even the mere fact that there is a futurity of

consciousness, can be known _only_ through God's revelation of

Himself in the Person and the Gospel of His Son."--P. 389.

And now hear Priestley:--

"Man, according to this system (of materialism), is no more than we

now see of him. His being commences at the time of his conception,

or perhaps at an earlier period. The corporeal and mental faculties,

in being in the same substance, grow, ripen, and decay together; and

whenever the system is dissolved it continues in a state of

dissolution till it shall please that Almighty Being who called it

into existence to restore it to life again."--"Matter and Spirit,"

p. 49.

And again:--

"The doctrine of the Scripture is, that God made man of the dust of

the ground, and by simply animating this organised matter, made man

that living percipient and intelligent being that he is. According

to Revelation, _death_ is a state of rest and insensibility,

and our only though sure hope of a future life is founded on the

doctrine of the resurrection of the whole man at some distant

period; this assurance being sufficiently confirmed to us both by

the evident tokens of a Divine commission attending the persons who

delivered the doctrine, and especially by the actual resurrection of

Jesus Christ, which is more authentically attested than any other

fact in history."--_Ibid_., p. 247.

We all know that "a saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn;" but it is

not yet admitted that the views which are consistent with such

saintliness in lawn, become diabolical when held by a mere dissenter.

[14]

I am not here either to defend or to attack Priestley's philosophical

views, and I cannot say that I am personally disposed to attach much

value to episcopal authority in philosophical questions; but it seems

right to call attention to the fact, that those of Priestley's opinions

which have brought most odium upon him have been openly promulgated,

without challenge, by persons occupying the highest positions in the

State Church.

I must confess that what interests me most about Priestley's

materialism, is the evidence that he saw dimly the seed of destruction

which such materialism carries within its own bosom. In the course of

his reading for his "History of Discoveries relating to Vision, Light,

and Colours," he had come upon the speculations of Boscovich and

Michell, and had been led to admit the sufficiently obvious truth that

our knowledge of matter is a knowledge of its properties; and that of

its substance--if it have a substance--we know nothing. And this led to

the further admission that, so far as we can know, there may be no

difference between the substance of matter and the substance of spirit

("Disquisitions," p. 16). A step farther would have shown Priestley

that his materialism was, essentially, very little different from the

Idealism of his contemporary, the Bishop of Cloyne.

As Priestley's philosophy is mainly a clear statement of the views of

the deeper thinkers of his day, so are his political conceptions based

upon those of Locke. Locke's aphorism that "the end of government is

the good of mankind," is thus expanded by Priestley:--

"It must necessarily be understood, therefore, whether it be

expressed or not, that all people live in society for their mutual

advantage; so that the good and happiness of the members, that is,

of the majority of the members, of any state, is the great standard

by which everything relating to that state must finally be

determined." [15]

The little sentence here interpolated, "that is, of the majority of the

members of any state," appears to be that passage which suggested to

Bentham, according to his own acknowledgment, the famous "greatest

happiness" formula, which by substituting "happiness" for "good," has

converted a noble into an ignoble principle. But I do not call to mind

that there is any utterance in Locke quite so outspoken as the

following passage in the "Essay on the First Principles of

Government." After laying down as "a fundamental maxim in all

Governments," the proposition that "kings, senators, and nobles" are

"the servants of the public," Priestley goes on to say:--

"But in the largest states, if the abuses of the government should

at any time be great and manifest; if the servants of the people,

forgetting their masters and their masters' interest, should pursue

a separate one of their own; if, instead of considering that they

are made for the people, they should consider the people as made

for them; if the oppressions and violation of right should be

great, flagrant, and universally resented; if the tyrannical

governors should have no friends but a few sycophants, who had long

preyed upon the vitals of their fellow-citizens, and who might be

expected to desert a government whenever their interests should be

detached from it: if, in consequence of these circumstances, it

should become manifest that the risk which would be run in

attempting a revolution would be trifling, and the evils which

might be apprehended from it were far less than those which

were actually suffered and which were daily increasing; in the name

of God, I ask, what principles are those which ought to restrain an

injured and insulted people from asserting their natural rights,

and from changing or even punishing their governors--that is, their

servants--who had abused their trust, or from altering the whole

form of their government, if it appeared to be of a structure so

liable to abuse?"

As a Dissenter, subject to the operation of the Corporation and Test

Acts, and as a Unitarian excluded from the benefit of the Toleration

Act, it is not surprising to find that Priestley had very definite

opinions about Ecclesiastical Establishments; the only wonder is that

these opinions were so moderate as the following passages show them to

have been:--

"Ecclesiastical authority may have been necessary in the infant

state of society, and, for the same reason, it may perhaps continue

to be, in some degree, necessary as long as society is imperfect;

and therefore may not be entirely abolished till civil governments

have arrived at a much greater degree of perfection. If, therefore,

I were asked whether I should approve of the immediate dissolution

of all the ecclesiastical establishments in Europe, I should

answer, No.... Let experiment be first made of _alterations_,

or, which is the same thing, of _better establishments_ than

the present. Let them be reformed in many essential articles, and

then not thrown aside entirely till it be found by experience that

no good can be made of them."

Priestley goes on to suggest four such reforms of a capital nature:--

"1. Let the Articles of Faith to be subscribed by candidates for

the ministry be greatly reduced. In the formulary of the Church of

England, might not thirty-eight out of the thirty-nine be very well

spared? It is a reproach to any Christian establishment if every

man cannot claim the benefit of it who can say that he believes

in the religion of Jesus Christ as it is set forth in the New

Testament. You say the terms are so general that even Deists would

quibble and insinuate themselves. I answer that all the articles

which are subscribed at present by no means exclude Deists who will

prevaricate; and upon this scheme you would at least exclude fewer

honest men." [16]

The second reform suggested is the equalisation, in proportion to work

done, of the stipends of the clergy; the third, the exclusion of the

Bishops from Parliament; and the fourth, complete toleration, so that

every man may enjoy the rights of a citizen, and be qualified to serve

his country, whether he belong to the Established Church or not.

Opinions such as those I have quoted, respecting the duties and the

responsibilities of governors, are the commonplaces of modern

Liberalism; and Priestley's views on Ecclesiastical Establishments

would, I fear, meet with but a cool reception, as altogether too

conservative, from a large proportion of the lineal descendants of the

people who taught their children to cry "Damn Priestley;" and with that

love for the practical application of science which is the source of

the greatness of Birmingham, tried to set fire to the doctor's house

with sparks from his own electrical machine; thereby giving the man

they called an incendiary and raiser of sedition against Church and

King, an appropriately experimental illustration of the nature of arson

and riot.

If I have succeeded in putting before you the main features of

Priestley's work, its value will become apparent when we compare the

condition of the English nation, as he knew it, with its present state.

The fact that France has been for eighty-five years trying, without

much success, to right herself after the great storm of the Revolution,

is not unfrequently cited among us as an indication of some inherent

incapacity for self-government among the French people. I think,

however, that Englishmen who argue thus, forget that, from the meeting

of the Long Parliament in 1640, to the last Stuart rebellion in 1745,

is a hundred and five years, and that, in the middle of the last

century, we had but just safely freed ourselves from our Bourbons and

all that they represented. The corruption of our state was as bad as

that of the Second Empire. Bribery was the instrument of government,

and peculation its reward. Four-fifths of the seats in the House of

Commons were more or less openly dealt with as property. A minister had

to consider the state of the vote market, and the sovereign secured a

sufficiency of "king's friends" by payments allotted with retail,

rather than royal, sagacity.

Barefaced and brutal immorality and intemperance pervaded the land,

from the highest to the lowest classes of society. The Established

Church was torpid, as far as it was not a scandal; but those who

dissented from it came within the meshes of the Act of Uniformity, the

Test Act, and the Corporation Act. By law, such a man as Priestley,

being a Unitarian, could neither teach nor preach, and was liable to

ruinous fines and long imprisonment. [17] In those days the guns that

were pointed by the Church against the Dissenters were shotted. The law

was a cesspool of iniquity and cruelty. Adam Smith was a new prophet

whom few regarded, and commerce was hampered by idiotic impediments,

and ruined by still more absurd help, on the part of government.

Birmingham, though already the centre of a considerable industry, was a

mere village as compared with its present extent. People who travelled

went about armed, by reason of the abundance of highwaymen and the

paucity and inefficiency of the police. Stage coaches had not reached

Birmingham, and it took three days to get to London. Even canals were a

recent and much opposed invention.

Newton had laid the foundation of a mechanical conception of the

physical universe: Hartley, putting a modern face upon ancient

materialism, had extended that mechanical conception to psychology;

Linnaeus and Haller were beginning to introduce method and order into

the chaotic accumulation of biological facts. But those parts of

physical science which deal with heat, electricity, and magnetism, and

above all, chemistry, in the modern sense, can hardly be said to have

had an existence. No one knew that two of the old elemental bodies, air

and water, are compounds, and that a third, fire, is not a substance

but a motion. The great industries that have grown out of the

applications of modern scientific discoveries had no existence, and the

man who should have foretold their coming into being in the days of his

son, would have been regarded as a mad enthusiast.

In common with many other excellent persons, Priestley believed that

man is capable of reaching, and will eventually attain, perfection. If

the temperature of space presented no obstacle, I should be glad to

entertain the same idea; but judging from the past progress of our

species, I am afraid that the globe will have cooled down so far,

before the advent of this natural millennium, that we shall be, at

best, perfected Esquimaux. For all practical purposes, however, it is

enough that man may visibly improve his condition in the course of a

century or so. And, if the picture of the state of things in

Priestley's time, which I have just drawn, have any pretence to

accuracy, I think it must be admitted that there has been a

considerable change for the better.

I need not advert to the well-worn topic of material advancement, in a

place in which the very stones testify to that progress--in the town of

Watt and of Boulton. I will only remark, in passing, that material

advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress. Becky

Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten

thousand a year, has its application to nations; and it is futile to

expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and

gross. But as regards other than material welfare, although perfection

is not yet in sight--even from the mast-head--it is surely true that

things are much better than they were.

Take the upper and middle classes as a whole, and it may be said that

open immorality and gross intemperance have vanished. Four and six

bottle men are as extinct as the dodo. Women of good repute do not

gamble, and talk modelled upon Dean Swift's "Art of Polite

Conversation" would be tolerated in no decent kitchen.

Members of the legislature are not to be bought; and constituents are

awakening to the fact that votes must not be sold--even for such

trifles as rabbits and tea and cake. Political power has passed into

the hands of the masses of the people. Those whom Priestley calls their

servants have recognised their position, and have requested the master

to be so good as to go to school and fit himself for the administration

of his property. In ordinary life, no civil disability attaches to any

one on theological grounds, and high offices of the state are open to

Papist, Jew, and Secularist.

Whatever men's opinions as to the policy of Establishment, no one can

hesitate to admit that the clergy of the Church are men of pure life

and conversation, zealous in the discharge of their duties; and at

present, apparently, more bent on prosecuting one another than on

meddling with Dissenters. Theology itself has broadened so much, that

Anglican divines put forward doctrines more liberal than those of

Priestley; and, in our state-supported churches, one listener may hear

a sermon to which Bossuet might have given his approbation, while

another may hear a discourse in which Socrates would find nothing new.

But great as these changes may be, they sink into insignificance beside

the progress of physical science, whether we consider the improvement

of methods of investigation, or the increase in bulk of solid

knowledge. Consider that the labours of Laplace, of Young, of Davy, and

of Faraday; of Cuvier, of Lamarck, and of Robert Brown; of Von Baer,

and of Schwann; of Smith and of Hutton, have all been carried on since

Priestley discovered oxygen; and consider that they are now things of

the past, concealed by the industry of those who have built upon them,

as the first founders of a coral reef are hidden beneath the life's

work of their successors; consider that the methods of physical science

are slowly spreading into all investigations, and that proofs as valid

as those required by her canons of investigation are being demanded of

all doctrines which ask for men's assent; and you will have a faint

image of the astounding difference in this respect between the

nineteenth century and the eighteenth.

If we ask what is the deeper meaning of all these vast changes, I think

there can be but one reply. They mean that reason has asserted and

exercised her primacy over all provinces of human activity: that

ecclesiastical authority has been relegated to its proper place; that

the good of the governed has been finally recognised as the end of

government, and the complete responsibility of governors to the people

as its means; and that the dependence of natural phenomena in general

on the laws of action of what we call matter has become an axiom.

But it was to bring these things about, and to enforce the recognition

of these truths, that Joseph Priestley laboured. If the nineteenth

century is other and better than the eighteenth, it is, in great

measure, to him, and to such men as he, that we owe the change. If the

twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be

because there are among us men who walk in Priestley's footsteps.

Such men are not those whom their own generation delights to honour;

such men, in fact, rarely trouble themselves about honour, but ask, in

another spirit than Falstaff's, "What is honour? Who hath it? He that

died o' Wednesday." But whether Priestley's lot be theirs, and a future

generation, in justice and in gratitude, set up their statues; or

whether their names and fame are blotted out from remembrance, their

work will live as long as time endures. To all eternity, the sum of

truth and right will have been increased by their means; to all

eternity, falsehood and injustice will be the weaker because they have

lived.

* * * * *

Footnotes:

[1] "Quasi cursores, vitai lampada tradunt."--LUCR. _De Rerum Nat_. ii.

78.

[2] _Life and Correspondence of Dr. Priestley_, by J. T. Rutt. Vol. I.

p. 50.

[3] _Autobiography_, s.s. 100, 101.

[4] See _The Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck_. Mrs.

Schimmelpenninck (_nee_ Galton) remembered Priestley very well,

and her description of him is worth quotation:--"A man of admirable

simplicity, gentleness and kindness of heart, united with great

acuteness of intellect. I can never forget the impression produced on

me by the serene expression of his countenance. He, indeed, seemed

present with God by recollection, and with man by cheerfulness. I

remember that, in the assembly of these distinguished men, amongst whom

Mr. Boulton, by his noble manner, his fine countenance (which much

resembled that of Louis XIV.), and princely munificence, stood

pre-eminently as the great Mecaenas; even as a child, I used to feel,

when Dr. Priestley entered after him, that the glory of the one was

terrestrial, that of the other celestial; and utterly far as I am

removed from a belief in the sufficiency of Dr. Priestley's theological

creed, I cannot but here record this evidence of the eternal power of

any portion of the truth held in its vitality."

[5] Even Mrs. Priestley, who might be forgiven for regarding the

destroyers of her household gods with some asperity, contents herself,

in writing to Mrs. Barbauld, with the sarcasm that the Birmingham

people "will scarcely find so many respectable characters, a second

time, to make a bonfire of."

[6] _Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air_, vol.

ii. p. 31.

[7] _Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air_, vol.

ii. pp. 34, 35.

[8] _Ibid_. vol. i. p. 40.

[9] _Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air_, vol. ii.

p. 48.

[10] _Ibid_. p. 55.

[11] _Ibid_. p. 60. The italics are Priestley's own.

[12] "In all the newspapers and most of the periodical publications I

was represented as an unbeliever in Revelation, and no better than an

atheist."--_Autobiography_, Rutt, vol i. p. 124. "On the walls of

houses, etc., and especially where I usually went, were to be seen, in

large characters, 'MADAN FOR EVER; DAMN PRIESTLEY; NO PRESBYTERIANISM;

DAMN THE PRESBYTERIANS,' etc., etc.; and, at one time, I was followed

by a number of boys, who left their play, repeating what they had seen

on the walls, and shouting out, '_Damn Priestley; damn him, damn

him, for ever, for ever,_' etc., etc. This was no doubt a lesson

which they had been taught by their parents, and what they, I fear, had

learned from their superiors."--_Appeal to the Public on the Subject

of the Riots at Birmingham_.

[13] First Series. _On Some of the Peculiarities of the Christian

Religion_. Essay I. "Revelation of a Future State."

[14] Not only is Priestley at one with Bishop Courtenay in this matter,

but with Hartley and Bonnet, both of them stout champions of

Christianity. Moreover, Archbishop Whately's essay is little better

than an expansion of the first paragraph of Hume's famous essay on the

Immortality of the Soul:--"By the mere light of reason it seems

difficult to prove the immortality of the soul; the arguments for it

are commonly derived either from metaphysical topics, or moral, or

physical. But it is in reality the Gospel, and the Gospel alone, that

has brought _life and immortality to light_." It is impossible to

imagine that a man of Whately's tastes and acquirements had not read

Hume or Hartley, though he refers to neither.

[15] _Essay on the First Principles of Government_, Second edition,

1771.

[16] "Utility of Establishments," in _Essay on First Principles of

Government_, 1771.

[17] In 1732 Doddridge was cited for teaching without the Bishop's

leave, at Northampton.

ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES

[1854]

The subject to which I have to beg your attention during the ensuing

hour is "The Relation of Physiological Science to other branches of

Knowledge."

Had circumstances permitted of the delivery, in their strict logical

order, of that series of discourses of which the present lecture is a

member, I should have preceded my friend and colleague Mr. Henfrey, who

addressed you on Monday last; but while, for the sake of that order, I

must beg you to suppose that this discussion of the Educational

bearings of Biology in general _does_ precede that of Special

Zoology and Botany, I am rejoiced to be able to take advantage

of the light thus already thrown upon the tendency and methods of

Physiological Science.

Regarding Physiological Science, then, in its widest sense--as the

equivalent of _Biology_--the Science of Individual Life--we have to

consider in succession:

1. Its position and scope as a branch of knowledge.

2. Its value as a means of mental discipline.

3. Its worth as practical information.

And lastly,

4. At what period it may best be made a branch of Education.

Our conclusions on the first of these heads must depend, of course,

upon the nature of the subject-matter of Biology; and I think a few

preliminary considerations will place before you in a clear light the

vast difference which exists between the living bodies with which

Physiological science is concerned, and the remainder of the

universe;--between the phaenomena of Number and Space, of Physical and

of Chemical force, on the one hand, and those of Life on the other.

The mathematician, the physicist, and the chemist contemplate things in

a condition of rest; they look upon a state of equilibrium as that to

which all bodies normally tend.

The mathematician does not suppose that a quantity will alter, or that

a given point in space will change its direction with regard to another

point, spontaneously. And it is the same with the physicist. When

Newton saw the apple fall, he concluded at once that the act of falling

was not the result of any power inherent in the apple, but that it was

the result of the action of something else on the apple. In a similar

manner, all physical force is regarded as the disturbance of an

equilibrium to which things tended before its exertion,--to which they

will tend again after its cessation.

The chemist equally regards chemical change in a body as the effect of

the action of something external to the body changed. A chemical

compound once formed would persist for ever, if no alteration took

place in surrounding conditions.

But to the student of Life the aspect of Nature is reversed. Here,

incessant, and, so far as we know, spontaneous change is the rule, rest

the exception--the anomaly to be accounted for. Living things have no

inertia, and tend to no equilibrium.

Permit me, however, to give more force and clearness to these somewhat

abstract considerations by an illustration or two.

Imagine a vessel full of water, at the ordinary temperature, in an

atmosphere saturated with vapour. The _quantity_ and the _figure_ of that

water will not change, so far as we know, for ever.

Suppose a lump of gold be thrown into the vessel--motion and

disturbance of figure exactly proportional to the momentum of the gold

will take place. But after a time the effects of this disturbance will

subside--equilibrium will be restored, and the water will return to its

passive state.

Expose the water to cold--it will solidify--and in so doing its

particles will arrange themselves in definite crystalline shapes. But

once formed, these crystals change no further.

Again, substitute for the lump of gold some substance capable of

entering into chemical relations with the water:--say, a mass of that

substance which is called "protein"--the substance of flesh:--a very

considerable disturbance of equilibrium will take place--all sorts of

chemical compositions and decompositions will occur; but in the end, as

before, the result will be the resumption of a condition of rest.

Instead of such a mass of _dead_ protein, however, take a particle of

_living_ protein--one of those minute microscopic living things which

throng our pools, and are known as Infusoria--such a creature, for

instance, as an Euglena, and place it in our vessel of water. It is

a round mass provided with a long filament, and except in this

peculiarity of shape, presents no appreciable physical or chemical

difference whereby it might be distinguished from the particle of dead

protein.

But the difference in the phaenomena to which it will give rise is

immense: in the first place it will develop a vast quantity of physical

force--cleaving the water in all directions with considerable rapidity

by means of the vibrations of the long filament or cilium.

Nor is the amount of chemical energy which the little creature

possesses less striking. It is a perfect laboratory in itself, and it

will act and react upon the water and the matters contained therein;

converting them into new compounds resembling its own substance, and at

the same time giving up portions of its own substance which have become

effete.

Furthermore, the Euglena will increase in size; but this increase is by

no means unlimited, as the increase of a crystal might be. After it has

grown to a certain extent it divides, and each portion assumes the form

of the original, and proceeds to repeat the process of growth and

division.

Nor is this all. For after a series of such divisions and subdivisions,

these minute points assume a totally new form, lose their long

tails--round themselves, and secrete a sort of envelope or box, in

which they remain shut up for a time, eventually to resume, directly or

indirectly, their primitive mode of existence.

Now, so far as we know, there is no natural limit to the existence of

the Euglena, or of any other living germ. A living species once

launched into existence tends to live for ever.

Consider how widely different this living particle is from the dead

atoms with which the physicist and chemist have to do!

The particle of gold falls to the bottom and rests--the particle of

dead protein decomposes and disappears--it also rests: but the

_living_ protein mass neither tends to exhaustion of its forces nor

to any permanency of form, but is essentially distinguished as a

disturber of equilibrium so far as force is concerned,--as undergoing

continual metamorphosis and change, in point of form.

Tendency to equilibrium of force and to permanency of form, then, are

the characters of that portion of the universe which does not live--the

domain of the chemist and physicist.

Tendency to disturb existing equilibrium--to take on forms which

succeed one another in definite cycles--is the character of the living

world.

What is the cause of this wonderful difference between the dead

particle and the living particle of matter appearing in other respects

identical? that difference to which we give the name of Life?

I, for one, cannot tell you. It may be that, by and by, philosophers

will discover some higher laws of which the facts of life are

particular cases--very possibly they will find out some bond between

physico-chemical phaenomena on the one hand, and vital phaenomena on

the other. At present, however, we assuredly know of none; and I think

we shall exercise a wise humility in confessing that, for us at least,

this successive assumption of different states--(external conditions

remaining the same)--this _spontaneity of action_--if I may use a term

which implies more than I would be answerable for--which constitutes

so vast and plain a practical distinction between living bodies and

those which do not live, is an ultimate fact; indicating as such, the

existence of a broad line of demarcation between the subject-matter

of Biological and that of all other sciences.

For I would have it understood that this simple Euglena is the type of

_all_ living things, so far as the distinction between these and

inert matter is concerned. That cycle of changes, which is constituted

by perhaps not more than two or three steps in the Euglena, is as

clearly manifested in the multitudinous stages through which the germ

of an oak or of a man passes. Whatever forms the Living Being may take

on, whether simple or complex, _production, growth, reproduction,_ are

the phaenomena which distinguish it from that which does not live.

If this be true, it is clear that the student, in passing from the

physico-chemical to the physiological sciences, enters upon a totally

new order of facts; and it will next be for us to consider how far

these new facts involve _new_ methods, or require a modification of

those with which he is already acquainted. Now a great deal is said

about the peculiarity of the scientific method in general, and of the

different methods which are pursued in the different sciences. The

Mathematics are said to have one special method; Physics another,

Biology a third, and so forth. For my own part, I must confess that I

do not understand this phraseology.

So far as I can arrive at any clear comprehension of the matter,

Science is not, as many would seem to suppose, a modification of the

black art, suited to the tastes of the nineteenth century, and

flourishing mainly in consequence of the decay of the Inquisition.

Science is, I believe, nothing but _trained and organised common

sense_, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from

a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only

so far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in

which a savage wields his club. The primary power is the same in each

case, and perhaps the untutored savage has the more brawny arm of

the two. The _real_ advantage lies in the point and polish of the

swordsman's weapon; in the trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of

the adversary; in the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant.

But, after all, the sword exercise is only the hewing and poking of the

clubman developed and perfected.

So, the vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical

faculties, by no mental processes, other than those which are practised

by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A

detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his

shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored

the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones. Nor

does that process of induction and deduction by which a lady, finding a

stain of a peculiar kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has

upset the inkstand thereon, differ in any way, in kind, from that by

which Adams and Leverrier discovered a new planet.

The man of science, in fact, simply uses with scrupulous exactness the

methods which we all, habitually and at every moment, use carelessly;

and the man of business must as much avail himself of the scientific

method--must be as truly a man of science--as the veriest bookworm of

us all; though I have no doubt that the man of business will find

himself out to be a philosopher with as much surprise as M. Jourdain

exhibited vhen he discovered that he had been all his life talking

prose. If, however, there be no real difference between the methods of

science and those of common life, it would seem, on the face of the

matter, highly improbable that there should be any difference between

the methods of the different sciences; nevertheless, it is constantly

taken for granted that there is a very wide difference between the

Physiological and other sciences in point of method.

In the first place it is said--and I take this point first, because the

imputation is too frequently admitted by Physiologists themselves--that

Biology differs from the Physico-chemical and Mathematical sciences in

being "inexact."

Now, this phrase "inexact" must refer either to the _methods_ or to

the _results_ of Physiological science.

It cannot be correct to apply it to the methods; for, as I hope to show

you by and by, these are identical in all sciences, and whatever is

true of Physiological method is true of Physical and Mathematical

method.

Is it then the _results_ of Biological science which are "inexact"?

I think not. If I say that respiration is performed by the

lungs; that digestion is effected in the stomach; that the eye is the

organ of sight; that the jaws of a vertebrated animal never open

sideways, but always up and down; while those of an annulose animal

always open sideways, and never up and down--I am enumerating

propositions which are as exact as anything in Euclid. How then has

this notion of the inexactness of Biological science come about? I

believe from two causes: first, because in consequence of the great

complexity of the science and the multitude of interfering conditions,

we are very often only enabled to predict approximately what will occur

under given circumstances; and secondly, because, on account of the

comparative youth of the Physiological sciences, a great many of their

laws are still imperfectly worked out. But, in an educational point of

view, it is most important to distinguish between the essence of a

science and the accidents which surround it; and essentially, the

methods and results of Physiology are as exact as those of Physics or

Mathematics.

It is said that the Physiological method is especially _comparative_;

[1] and this dictum also finds favour in the eyes of many.

I should be sorry to suggest that the speculators on scientific

classification have been misled by the accident of the name of one

leading branch of Biology--_Comparative Anatomy_; but I would ask

whether _comparison_, and that classification which is the result of

comparison, are not the essence of every science whatsoever? How is it

possible to discover a relation of cause and effect of _any_ kind

without comparing a series of cases together in which the supposed

cause and effect occur singly, or combined? So far from comparison

being in any way peculiar to Biological science, it is, I think, the

essence of every science.

A speculative philosopher again tells us that the Biological

sciences are distinguished by being sciences of observation and not

of experiment! [2] Of all the strange assertions into which speculation

without practical acquaintance with a subject may lead even an able

man, I think this is the very strangest. Physiology not an experimental

science? Why, there is not a function of a single organ in the body

which has not been determined wholly and solely by experiment? How did

Harvey determine the nature of the circulation, except by experiment?

How did Sir Charles Bell determine the functions of the roots of the

spinal nerves, save by experiment? How do we know the use of a nerve at

all, except by experiment? Nay, how do you know even that your eye is

your seeing apparatus, unless you make the experiment of shutting it;

or that your ear is your hearing apparatus, unless you close it up and

thereby discover that you become deaf?

It would really be much more true to say that Physiology is _the_

experimental science _par excellence_ of all sciences; that in which

there is least to be learnt by mere observation, and that which

affords the greatest field for the exercise of those faculties which

characterise the experimental philosopher. I confess, if any one were

to ask me for a model application of the logic of experiment, I should

know no better work to put into his hands than Bernard's late

Researches on the Functions of the Liver. [3]

Not to give this lecture a too controversial tone, however, I must

only advert to one more doctrine, held by a thinker of our own age

and country, whose opinions are worthy of all respect. It is, that

the Biological sciences differ from all others, inasmuch as in _them_

classification takes place by type and not by definition. [4]

It is said, in short, that a natural-history class is not capable of

being defined--that the class Rosaceae, for instance, or the class of

Fishes, is not accurately and absolutely definable, inasmuch as its

members will present exceptions to every possible definition; and that

the members of the class are united together only by the circumstance

that they are all more like some imaginary average rose or average

fish, than they resemble anything else.

But here, as before, I think the distinction has arisen entirely from

confusing a transitory imperfection with an essential character. So

long as our information concerning them is imperfect, we class all

objects together according to resemblances which we _feel_, but

cannot _define_; we group them round _types_, in short. Thus

if you ask an ordinary person what kinds of animals there are, he will

probably say, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, &c. Ask him to

define a beast from a reptile, and he cannot do it; but he says, things

like a cow or a horse are beasts, and things like a frog or a lizard

are reptiles. You see _he does_ class by type, and not by definition.

But how does this classification differ from that of the

scientific Zoologist? How does the meaning of the scientific class-name

of "Mammalia" differ from the unscientific of "Beasts"?

Why, exactly because the former depends on a definition, the latter on

a type. The class Mammalia is scientifically defined as "all animals

which have a vertebrated skeleton and suckle their young." Here is no

reference to type, but a definition rigorous enough for a geometrician.

And such is the character which every scientific naturalist recognises

as that to which his classes must aspire--knowing, as he does, that

classification by type is simply an acknowledgment of ignorance and a

temporary device.

So much in the way of negative argument as against the reputed

differences between Biological and other methods. No such differences,

I believe, really exist. The subject-matter of Biological science is

different from that of other sciences, but the methods of all are

identical; and these methods are--

1. _Observation_ of facts--including under this head that _artificial

observation_ which is called _experiment_.

2. That process of tying up similar facts into bundles, ticketed and

ready for use, which is called _Comparison_ and _Classification_,--the

results of the process, the ticketed bundles, being named _General

propositions_.

3. _Deduction_, which takes us from the general proposition to facts

again--teaches us, if I may so say, to anticipate from the ticket

what is inside the bundle. And finally--

4. _Verification_, which is the process of ascertaining whether, in

point of fact, our anticipation is a correct one.

Such are the methods of all science whatsoever; but perhaps you will

permit me to give you an illustration of their employment in the

science of Life; and I will take as a special case the establishment of

the doctrine of the _Circulation of the Blood_.

In this case, _simple observation_ yields us a knowledge of the

existence of the blood from some accidental haemorrhage, we will say;

we may even grant that it informs us of the localisation of this blood

in particular vessels, the heart, &c., from some accidental cut or the

like. It teaches also the existence of a pulse in various parts of the

body, and acquaints us with the structure of the heart and vessels.

Here, however, _simple observation_ stops, and we must have recourse

to _experiment_.

You tie a vein, and you find that the blood accumulates on the side of

the ligature opposite the heart. You tie an artery, and you find that

the blood accumulates on the side near the heart. Open the chest, and

you see the heart contracting with great force. Make openings into its

principal cavities, and you will find that all the blood flows out, and

no more pressure is exerted on either side of the arterial or venous

ligature.

Now all these facts, taken together, constitute the evidence that the

blood is propelled by the heart through the arteries, and returns by

the veins--that, in short, the blood circulates.

Suppose our experiments and observations have been made on horses, then

we group and ticket them into a general proposition, thus:--_all

horses have a circulation of their blood_.

Henceforward a horse is a sort of indication or label, telling us where

we shall find a peculiar series of phaenomena called the circulation of

the blood.

Here is our _general proposition_, then.

How, and when, are we justified in making our next step--a _deduction_

from it?

Suppose our physiologist, whose experience is limited to horses, meets

with a zebra for the first time,--will he suppose that this

generalisation holds good for zebras also?

That depends very much on his turn of mind. But we will suppose him to

be a bold man. He will say, "The zebra is certainly not a horse, but it

is very like one,--so like, that it must be the 'ticket' or mark of a

blood-circulation also; and, I conclude that the zebra has a

circulation."

That is a deduction, a very fair deduction, but by no means to be

considered scientifically secure. This last quality in fact can only be

given by _verification_--that is, by making a zebra the subject of

all the experiments performed on the horse. Of course, in the present

case, the _deduction_ would be _confirmed_ by this process of

verification, and the result would be, not merely a positive widening

of knowledge, but a fair increase of confidence in the truth of one's

generalisations in other cases.

Thus, having settled the point in the zebra and horse, our philosopher

would have great confidence in the existence of a circulation in the

ass. Nay, I fancy most persons would excuse him, if in this case he did

not take the trouble to go through the process of verification at all;

and it would not be without a parallel in the history of the human

mind, if our imaginary physiologist now maintained that he was

acquainted with asinine circulation _a priori_.

However, if I might impress any caution upon your minds, it is, the

utterly conditional nature of all our knowledge,--the danger of

neglecting the process of verification under any circumstances; and the

film upon which we rest, the moment our deductions carry us beyond the

reach of this great process of verification. There is no better

instance of this than is afforded by the history of our knowledge of

the circulation of the blood in the animal kingdom until the year 1824.

In every animal possessing a circulation at all, which had been

observed up to that time, the current of the blood was known to take

one definite and invariable direction. Now, there is a class of animals

called _Ascidians_, which possess a heart and a circulation, and

up to the period of which I speak, no one would have dreamt of

questioning the propriety of the deduction, that these creatures have a

circulation in one direction; nor would any one have thought it worth

while to verify the point. But, in that year, M. von Hasselt, happening

to examine a transparent animal of this class, found, to his infinite

surprise, that after the heart had beat a certain number of times, it

stopped, and then began beating the opposite way--so as to reverse the

course of the current, which returned by and by to its original

direction.

I have myself timed the heart of these little animals. I found it as

regular as possible in its periods of reversal: and I know no spectacle

in the animal kingdom more wonderful than that which it presents--all

the more wonderful that to this day it remains an unique fact, peculiar

to this class among the whole animated world. At the same time I know

of no more striking case of the necessity of the _verification_ of

even those deductions which seem founded on the widest and safest

inductions.

Such are the methods of Biology--methods which are obviously identical

with those of all other sciences, and therefore wholly incompetent to

form the ground of any distinction between it and them. [5]

But I shall be asked at once, Do you mean to say that there is no

difference between the habit of mind of a mathematician and that of a

naturalist? Do you imagine that Laplace might have been put into the

Jardin des Plantes, and Cuvier into the Observatory, with equal

advantage to the progress of the sciences they professed?

To which I would reply, that nothing could be further from my thoughts.

But different habits and various special tendencies of two sciences do

not imply different methods. The mountaineer and the man of the plains

have very different habits of progression, and each would be at a loss

in the other's place; but the method of progression, by putting one leg

before the other, is the same in each case. Every step of each is a

combination of a lift and a push; but the mountaineer lifts more and

the lowlander pushes more. And I think the case of two sciences

resembles this.

I do not question for a moment, that while the Mathematician is busy

with deductions _from_ general propositions, the Biologist is more

especially occupied with observation, comparison, and those processes

which lead _to_ general propositions. All I wish to insist upon

is, that this difference depends not on any fundamental distinction in

the sciences themselves, but on the accidents of their subject-matter,

of their relative complexity, and consequent relative perfection.

The Mathematician deals with two properties of objects only, number and

extension, and all the inductions he wants have been formed and

finished ages ago. He is occupied now with nothing but deduction and

verification.

The Biologist deals with a vast number of properties of objects, and

his inductions will not be completed, I fear, for ages to come; but

when they are, his science will be as deductive and as exact as the

Mathematics themselves.

Such is the relation of Biology to those sciences which deal with

objects having fewer properties than itself. But as the student, in

reaching Biology, looks back upon sciences of a less complex and

therefore more perfect nature; so, on the other hand, does he look

forward to other more complex and less perfect branches of knowledge.

Biology deals only with living beings as isolated things--treats only

of the life of the individual: but there is a higher division of

science still, which considers living beings as aggregates--which deals

with the relation of living beings one to another--the science which

_observes_ men--whose _experiments_ are made by nations one

upon another, in battlefields--whose _general propositions_ are

embodied in history, morality, and religion--whose _deductions_

lead to our happiness or our misery--and whose _verifications_ so

often come too late, and serve only

"To point a moral, or adorn a tale"--

I mean the science of Society or _Sociology_.

I think it is one of the grandest features of Biology, that it occupies

this central position in human knowledge. There is no side of the human

mind which physiological study leaves uncultivated. Connected by

innumerable ties with abstract science, Physiology is yet in the most

intimate relation with humanity; and by teaching us that law and order,

and a definite scheme of development, regulate even the strangest and

wildest manifestations of individual life, she prepares the student to

look for a goal even amidst the erratic wanderings of mankind, and to

believe that history offers something more than an entertaining

chaos--a journal of a toilsome, tragi-comic march no-whither.

The preceding considerations have, I hope, served to indicate the

replies which befit the first two of the questions which I set before

you at starting, viz. What is the range and position of Physiological

Science as a branch of knowledge, and what is its value as a means of

mental discipline?

Its _subject-matter_ is a large moiety of the universe--its

_position_ is midway between the physico-chemical and the social

sciences. Its _value_ as a branch of discipline is partly that

which it has in common with all sciences--the training and

strengthening of common sense; partly that which is more peculiar to

itself--the great exercise which it affords to the faculties of

observation and comparison; and, I may add, the _exactness_ of

knowledge which it requires on the part of those among its votaries who

desire to extend its boundaries.

If what has been said as to the position and scope of Biology be

correct, our third question--What is the practical value of

physiological instruction?--might, one would think, be left to answer

itself.

On other grounds even, were mankind deserving of the title "rational,"

which they arrogate to themselves, there can be no question that they

would consider, as the most necessary of all branches of instruction

for themselves and for their children, that which professes to acquaint

them with the conditions of the existence they prize so highly--which

teaches them how to avoid disease and to cherish health, in themselves

and those who are dear to them.

I am addressing, I imagine, an audience of educated persons; and yet I

dare venture to assert that, with the exception of those of my hearers

who may chance to have received a medical education, there is not one

who could tell me what is the meaning and use of an act which he

performs a score of times every minute, and whose suspension would

involve his immediate death;--I mean the act of breathing--or who could

state in precise terms why it is that a confined atmosphere is

injurious to health.

The _practical value_ of Physiological knowledge! Why is it that

educated men can be found to maintain that a slaughter-house in the

midst of a great city is rather a good thing than otherwise?--that

mothers persist in exposing the largest possible amount of surface of

their children to the cold, by the absurd style of dress they adopt,

and then marvel at the peculiar dispensation of Providence, which

removes their infants by bronchitis and gastric fever? Why is it that

quackery rides rampant over the land; and that not long ago, one of the

largest public rooms in this great city could be filled by an audience

gravely listening to the reverend expositor of the doctrine--that the

simple physiological phaenomena known as spirit-rapping, table-turning,

phreno-magnetism, and I know not what other absurd and inappropriate

names, are due to the direct and personal agency of Satan?

Why is all this, except from the utter ignorance as to the simplest

laws of their own animal life, which prevails among even the most

highly educated persons in this country?

But there are other branches of Biological Science, besides Physiology

proper, whose practical influence, though less obvious, is not, as I

believe, less certain. I have heard educated men speak with an

ill-disguised contempt of the studies of the naturalist, and ask, not

without a shrug, "What is the use of knowing all about these miserable

animals--what bearing has it on human life?"

I will endeavour to answer that question. I take it that all will admit

there is definite Government of this universe--that its pleasures and

pains are not scattered at random, but are distributed in accordance

with orderly and fixed laws, and that it is only in accordance with all

we know of the rest of the world, that there should be an agreement

between one portion of the sensitive creation and another in these

matters.

Surely then it interests us to know the lot of other animal

creatures--however far below us, they are still the sole created things

which share with us the capability of pleasure and the susceptibility

to pain.

I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and

evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms, will bear his

own share with more courage and submission; and will, at any rate, view

with suspicion those weakly amiable theories of the Divine government,

which would have us believe pain to be an oversight and a mistake,--to

be corrected by and by. On the other hand, the predominance of

happiness among living things--their lavish beauty--the secret and

wonderful harmony which pervades them all, from the highest to the

lowest, are equally striking refutations of that modern Manichean

doctrine, which exhibits the world as a slave-mill, worked with many

tears, for mere utilitarian ends.

There is yet another way in which natural history may, I am convinced,

take a profound hold upon practical life,--and that is, by its

influence over our finer feelings, as the greatest of all sources of

that pleasure which is derivable from beauty. I do not pretend that

natural-history knowledge, as such, can increase our sense of the

beautiful in natural objects. I do not suppose that the dead soul of

Peter Bell, of whom the great poet of nature says,--

A primrose by the river's brim,

A yellow primrose was to him,--

And it was nothing more,--

would have been a whit roused from its apathy by the information that

the primrose is a Dicotyledonous Exogen, with a monopetalous corolla

and central placentation. But I advocate natural-history knowledge from

this point of view, because it would lead us to _seek_ the

beauties of natural objects, instead of trusting to chance to force

them on our attention. To a person uninstructed in natural history, his

country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with

wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to

the wall. Teach him something of natural history, and you place in his

hands a catalogue of those which are worth turning round. Surely our

innocent pleasures are not so abundant in this life, that we can afford

to despise this or any other source of them. We should fear being

banished for our neglect to that limbo, where the great Florentine

tells us are those who, during this life, "wept when they might be

joyful."

But I shall be trespassing unwarrantably on your kindness, if I do not

proceed at once to my last point--the time at which Physiological

Science should first form a part of the Curriculum of Education.

The distinction between the teaching of the facts of a science as

instruction, and the teaching it systematically as knowledge, has

already been placed before you in a previous lecture: and it appears to

me that, as with other sciences, the _common facts_ of Biology--the

uses of parts of the body--the names and habits of the living

creatures which surround us--may be taught with advantage to the

youngest child. Indeed, the avidity of children for this kind of

knowledge, and the comparative ease with which they retain it, is

something quite marvellous. I doubt whether any toy would be so

acceptable to young children as a vivarium of the same kind as, but of

course on a smaller scale than, those admirable devices in the

Zoological Gardens.

On the other hand, systematic teaching in Biology cannot be attempted

with success until the student has attained to a certain knowledge of

physics and chemistry: for though the phaenomena of life are dependent

neither on physical nor on chemical, but on vital forces, yet they

result in all sorts of physical and chemical changes, which can only be

judged by their own laws.

And now to sum up in a few words the conclusions to which I hope you

see reason to follow me.

Biology needs no apologist when she demands a place--and a prominent

place--in any scheme of education worthy of the name. Leave out the

Physiological sciences from your curriculum, and you launch the student

into the world, undisciplined in that science whose subject-matter

would best develop his powers of observation; ignorant of facts of the

deepest importance for his own and others' welfare; blind to the

richest sources of beauty in God's creation; and unprovided with that

belief in a living law, and an order manifesting itself in and through

endless change and variety, which might serve to check and moderate

that phase of despair through which, if he take an earnest interest in

social problems, he will assuredly sooner or later pass.

Finally, one word for myself. I have not hesitated to speak strongly

where I have felt strongly; and I am but too conscious that the

indicative and imperative moods have too often taken the place of the

more becoming subjunctive and conditional. I feel, therefore, how

necessary it is to beg you to forget the personality of him who has

thus ventured to address you, and to consider only the truth or error

in what has been said.

* * * * *

Footnotes:

[1] "In the third place, we have to review the method of Comparison,

which is so specially adapted to the study of living bodies, and by

which, above all others, that study must be advanced. In Astronomy,

this method is necessarily inapplicable; and it is not till we arrive

at Chemistry that this third means of investigation can be used, and

then only in subordination to the two others. It is in the study, both

statical and dynamical, of living bodies that it first acquires its

full development; and its use elsewhere can be only through its

application here."--COMTE'S _Positive Philosophy_, translated by

Miss Martineau. Vol. i. p. 372.

By what method does M. Comte suppose that the equality or inequality

of forces and quantities and the dissimilarity or similarity of

forms--points of some slight importance not only in Astronomy and

Physics, but even in Mathematics--are ascertained, if not by

Comparison?

[2] "Proceeding to the second class of means,--Experiment cannot but be

less and less decisive, in proportion to the complexity of the

phaenomena to be explored; and therefore we saw this resource to be

less effectual in chemistry than in physics: and we now find that it is

eminently useful in chemistry in comparison with physiology. _In

fact, the nature of the phenomena seems to offer almost insurmountable

impediments to any extensive and prolific application of such a

procedure in biology._"--COMTE, vol. i. p. 367.

M. Comte, as his manner is, contradicts himself two pages further on,

but that will hardly relieve him from the responsibility of such a

paragraph as the above.

[3] _Nouvelle Fonction du Foie considere comme organe producteur de

matiere sucree chez l'Homme et les Animaux, par_ M. Claude Bernard.

[4] "_Natural Groups given by Type, not by Definition_.... The

class is steadily fixed, though not precisely limited; it is given,

though not circumscribed; it is determined, not by a boundary-line

without, but by a central point within; not by what it strictly

excludes, but what it eminently includes; by an example, not by a

precept; in short, instead of Definition we have a _Type_ for our

director. A type is an example of any class, for instance, a species of

a genus, which is considered as eminently possessing the characters of

the class. All the species which have a greater affinity with this

type-species than with any others, form the genus, and are ranged about

about it, deviating from it in various directions and different

degrees."--WHEWELL, _The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_,

vol. i. pp. 476, 477.

[5] Save for the pleasure of doing so, I need hardly point put my

obligations to Mr. J. S. Mill's _System of Logic_, in this view of

scientific method.

III

EMANCIPATION--BLACK AND WHITE

[1865.]

Quashie's plaintive inquiry, "Am I not a man and a brother?" seems at

last to have received its final reply--the recent decision of the

fierce trial by battle on the other side of the Atlantic fully

concurring with that long since delivered here in a more peaceful way.

The question is settled; but even those who are most thoroughly

convinced that the doom is just, must see good grounds for repudiating

half the arguments which have been employed by the winning side; and

for doubting whether its ultimate results will embody the hopes of the

victors, though they may more than realise the fears of the vanquished.

It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men;

but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average

negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man.

And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his

disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field

and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete

successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a

contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The

highest places in the hierarchy of civilisation will assuredly not be

within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means

necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest. But whatever

the position of stable equilibrium into which the laws of social

gravitation may bring the negro, all responsibility for the result will

henceforward lie between Nature and him. The white man may wash his

hands of it, and the Caucasian conscience be void of reproach for

evermore. And this, if we look to the bottom of the matter, is the real

justification for the abolition policy.

The doctrine of equal natural rights may be an illogical delusion;

emancipation may convert the slave from a well-fed animal into a

pauperised man; mankind may even have to do without cotton shirts; but

all these evils must be faced if the moral law, that no human being can

arbitrarily dominate over another without grievous damage to his own

nature, be, as many think, as readily demonstrable by experiment as any

physical truth. If this be true, no slavery can be abolished without a

double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than

the freed-man.

The like considerations apply to all the other questions of

emancipation which are at present stirring the world--the multifarious

demands that classes of mankind shall be relieved from restrictions

imposed by the artifice of man, and not by the necessities of Nature.

One of the most important, if not the most important, of all these, is

that which daily threatens to become the "irrepressible" woman

question. What social and political rights have women? What ought they

to be allowed, or not allowed, to do, be, and suffer? And, as involved

in, and underlying all these questions, how ought they to be educated?

There are philogynists as fanatical as any "misogynists" who, reversing

our antiquated notions, bid the man look upon the woman as the higher

type of humanity; who ask us to regard the female intellect as the

clearer and the quicker, if not the stronger; who desire us to look up

to the feminine moral sense as the purer and the nobler; and bid man

abdicate his usurped sovereignty over Nature in favour of the female

line. On the other hand, there are persons not to be outdone in all

loyalty and just respect for womankind, but by nature hard of head and

haters of delusion, however charming, who not only repudiate the new

woman-worship which so many sentimentalists and some philosophers are

desirous of setting up, but, carrying their audacity further, deny even

the natural equality of the sexes. They assert, on the contrary, that

in every excellent character, whether mental or physical, the average

woman is inferior to the average man, in the sense of having that

character less in quantity and lower in quality. Tell these persons of

the rapid perceptions and the instinctive intellectual insight of

women, and they reply that the feminine mental peculiarities, which

pass under these names, are merely the outcome of a greater

impressibility to the superficial aspects of things, and of the absence

of that restraint upon expression which, in men, is imposed by

reflection and a sense of responsibility. Talk of the passive endurance

of the weaker sex, and opponents of this kind remind you that Job was a

man, and that, until quite recent times, patience and long-suffering

were not counted among the specially feminine virtues. Claim passionate

tenderness as especially feminine, and the inquiry is made whether all

the best love-poetry in existence (except, perhaps, the "Sonnets from

the Portuguese ") has not been written by men; whether the song which

embodies the ideal of pure and tender passion--"Adelaida "--was

written by _Frau_ Beethoven; whether it was the Fornarina, or

Raphael, who painted the Sistine Madonna. Nay, we have known one such

heretic go so far as to lay his hands upon the ark itself, so to speak,

and to def

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