Fragments of science Part 37

Let us now turn our attention to the light which pa.s.ses unscattered among the particles. How must it be finally affected? By its successive collisions with the particles the white light is more and more robbed of its shorter waves; it therefore loses more and more of its due proportion of blue. The result may be antic.i.p.ated. The transmitted light, where short distances are involved, will appear yellowish. But as the sun sinks towards the horizon the atmospheric distances increase, and consequently the number of the scattering particles. They abstract in succession the violet, the indigo, the blue, and even disturb the proportions of green. The transmitted light under such circ.u.mstances must pa.s.s from yellow through orange to red. This also is exactly what we find in nature. Thus, while the reflected light gives us at noon the deep azure of the Alpine skies, the transmitted light gives us at sunset the warm crimson of the Alpine snows. The phenomena certainly occur as if our atmosphere were a medium rendered slightly turbid by the mechanical suspension of exceedingly small foreign particles.

Here, as before, we encounter our sceptical 'as if.' It is one of the parasites of science, ever at hand, and ready to plant itself and sprout, if it can, on the weak points of our philosophy. But a strong const.i.tution defies the parasite, and in our case, as we question the phenomena, probability grows like growing health, until in the end the malady of doubt is completely extirpated. The first question that naturally arises is this: Can small particles be really proved to act in the manner indicated? No doubt of it. Each one of you can submit the question to an experimental test. Water will not dissolve resin, but spirit will dissolve it; and when spirit holding resin in solution is dropped into water, the resin immediately separates in solid particles, which render the water milky. The coa.r.s.eness of this precipitate depends on the quant.i.ty of the dissolved resin. You can cause it to separate either in thick clots or in exceedingly fine particles. Professor Bruecke has given us the proportions which produce particles particularly suited to our present purpose. One gramme of clean mastic is dissolved in eighty-seven grammes of absolute alcohol, and the transparent solution is allowed to drop into a beaker containing clear water, kept briskly stirred. An exceedingly fine precipitate is thus formed, which declares its presence by its action upon light. Placing a dark surface behind the beaker, and permitting the light to fall into it from the top or front, the medium is seen to be distinctly blue. It is not perhaps so perfect a blue as may be seen on exceptional days among the Alps, but it is a very fair sky-blue. A trace of soap in water gives a tint of blue. London, and I fear Liverpool, milk makes an approximation to the same colour, through the operation of the same cause; and Helmholtz has irreverently disclosed the fact that the deepest blue eye is simply a turbid medium.

The action of turbid media upon light was ill.u.s.trated by Goethe, who, though unacquainted with the undulatory theory, was led by his experiments to regard the firmament as an illuminated turbid medium, with the darkness of s.p.a.ce behind it. He describes gla.s.ses showing a bright yellow by transmitted, and a beautiful blue by reflected, light. Professor Stokes, who was probably the first to discern the real nature of the action of small particles on the waves of aether, [Footnote: This is inferred from conversation. I am not aware that Professor Stokes has published anything upon the subject.] describes a gla.s.s of a similar kind. [Footnote: This gla.s.s, by reflected light, had a colour 'strongly resembling that of a decoction of horse-chestnut bark.' Curiously enough, Goethe refers to this very decoction: 'Man nehme einen Streifen frischer Rinds von der Rosskastanie, man stecke denselben in ein Glas Wa.s.ser, und in der kuerzesten Zeit werden wir das vollkommenste Himmelblau entstehen sehen.'--Goethe's Werke, B. xxix. p. 24.]

Capital specimens of such gla.s.s are to be found at Salviati's, in St.

James's Street. What artists call 'chill' is no doubt an effect of this description. Through the action of minute particles, the browns of a picture often present the appearance of the bloom of a plum. By rubbing the varnish with a silk handkerchief optical continuity is established and the chill disappears. Some years ago I witnessed Mr.

Hirst experimenting at Zermatt on the turbid water of the Visp. When kept still for a day or so, the grosser matter sank, but the finer particles remained suspended, and gave a distinctly blue tinge to the water. The blueness of certain Alpine lakes has been shown to be in part due to this cause. Professor Roscoe has noticed several striking cases of a similar kind. In a very remarkable paper the late Princ.i.p.al Forbes showed that steam issuing from the safety-valve of a locomotive, when favourably observed, exhibits at a certain stage of its condensation the colours of the sky. It is blue by reflected light, and orange or red by transmitted light. The same effect, as pointed out by Goethe, is to some extent exhibited by peat-smoke. More than ten years ago, I amused myself by observing, on a calm day at Killarney, the straight smoke-columns rising from the cabin-chimneys.

It was easy to project the lower portion of a column against a dark pine, and its upper portion against a bright cloud. The smoke in the former case was blue, being seen mainly by reflected light; in the latter case it was reddish, being seen mainly by transmitted light.

Such smoke was not in exactly the condition to give us the glow of the Alps, but it was a step in this direction. Bruecke's fine precipitate above referred to looks yellowish by transmitted light; but, by duly strengthening the precipitate, you may render the white light of noon as ruby-coloured as the sun, when seen through Liverpool smoke, or upon Alpine horizons. I do not, however, point to the gross smoke arising from coal as an ill.u.s.tration of the action of small particles, because such smoke soon absorbs and destroys the waves of blue, instead of sending them to the eyes of the observer.

These multifarious facts, and numberless others which cannot now be referred to, are explained by reference to the single principle, that, where the scattering particles are small in comparison to the aethereal waves, we have in the reflected light a greater proportion of the smaller waves, and in the transmitted light a greater proportion of the larger waves, than existed in the original white light. The consequence, as regards sensation, is that in the one ease blue is predominant, and in the other orange or red. Our best microscopes can readily reveal objects not more than 1/50000th of an inch in diameter. This is less than the length of a wave of red light. Indeed a first-rate microscope would enable us to discern objects not exceeding in diameter the length of the smallest waves of the visible spectrum. [Footnote: Dallinger and Drysdale have recently measured cilia 1/200000th of an inch in diameter. 1878.] By the microscope, therefore, we can test our particles. If they be as large as the light-waves they will infallibly be seen; and if they be not so seen, it is because they are smaller. Some months ago I placed in the hands of our President a liquid containing Bruecke's precipitate. The liquid was milky blue, and Mr. Huxley applied to it his highest microscopic power. He satisfied me that had particles of even 1/100000th of an inch in diameter existed in the liquid, they could not have escaped detection. But no particles were seen. Under the microscope the turbid liquid was not to be distinguished from distilled water. [Footnote: Like Dr. Burdon Sanderson's 'pyrogen,'

the particles of mastic pa.s.sed, without sensible hindrance, through filtering-paper. By such filtering no freedom from suspended particles is secured. The application of a condensed beam to the filtrate renders this at once evident.]

But we have it in our power to imitate, far more closely than we have hitherto done, the natural conditions of this problem. We can generate, in air, artificial skies, and prove their perfect ident.i.ty with the natural one, as regards the exhibition of a number of wholly unexpected phenomena. By a continuous process of growth, moreover, we are able to connect sky-matter, if I may use the term, with molecular matter on the one side, and with molar matter, or matter in sensible ma.s.ses, on the other. In ill.u.s.tration of this, I will take an experiment suggested by some of my own researches, and described by M.

Morren of Ma.r.s.eilles at the Exeter meeting of the British a.s.sociation.

Sulphur and oxygen combine to form sulphurous acid gas, two atoms of oxygen and one of sulphur const.i.tuting the molecule of sulphurous acid. It has been recently shown that waves of aether issuing from a strong source, such as the sun or the electric light, are competent to shake asunder the atoms of gaseous molecules. [Footnote: See 'New Chemical Reactions produced by Light,' vol. i.] A chemist would call this, 'decomposition' by light; but it behoves us, who are examining the power and function of the imagination, to keep constantly before us the physical images which underlie our terms.

Therefore I say, sharply and definitely, that the components of the molecules of sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by the aether-waves.

Enclosing sulphurous acid in a suitable vessel, placing it in a dark room, and sending through it a powerful beam of light, we at first see nothing: the vessel containing the gas seems as empty as a vacuum.

Soon, however, along the track of the beam a beautiful sky-blue colour is observed, which is due to light scattered by the liberated particles of sulphur. For a time the blue grows more intense; it then becomes whitish; and ends in a more or less perfect white. When the action is continued long enough, the tube is filled with a dense cloud of sulphur particles, which by the application of proper means may be rendered individually visible. [Footnote: M. Morren was mistaken in supposing that a modic.u.m of sulphurous acid, in the drying tubes, had any share in the production of the 'actinic clouds' described by me. A beautiful case of molecular instability in the presence of light is furnished by peroxide of chlorine as proved by Professor Dewar. 1878.]

Here, then, our aether-waves untie the bond of chemical affinity, and liberate a body--sulphur--which at ordinary temperatures is a solid, and which therefore soon becomes an object of the senses. We have first of all the free atoms of sulphur, which are incompetent to stir the retina sensibly with scattered light. But these atoms gradually coalesce and form _particles_, which grow larger by continual accretion, until after a minute or two they appear as sky-matter. In this condition they are individually invisible; but collectively they send an amount of wave-motion to the retina, sufficient to produce the firmamental blue. The particles continue, or may be caused to continue, in this condition for a considerable time, during which no microscope can cope with them. But they grow slowly larger, and pa.s.s by insensible gradations into the state of _cloud_, when they can no longer elude the armed eye. Thus, without solution of continuity, we start with matter in the atom, and end with matter in the ma.s.s; sky-matter being the middle term of the series of transformations.

Instead of sulphurous acid, we might choose a dozen other substances, and produce the same effect with all of them. In the case of some--probably in the case of all--it is possible to preserve matter in the firmamental condition for fifteen or twenty minutes under the continual operation of the light. During these fifteen or twenty minutes the particles constantly grow larger, without ever exceeding the size requisite to the production of the celestial blue.

Now when two vessels are placed before us, each containing sky-matter, it is possible to state with great distinctness which vessel contains the largest particles. The eye is very sensitive to differences of light, when, as in our experiments, it is placed in comparative darkness, and the wave-motion thrown against the retina is small. The larger particles declare themselves by the greater whiteness of their scattered light. Call now to mind the observation, or effort at observation, made by our President, when he failed to distinguish the particles of mastic in Bruecke's medium, and when you have done this, please follow me.

A beam of light is permitted to act upon a certain vapour. In two minutes the azure appears, but at the end of fifteen minutes it has not ceased to be azure. After fifteen minutes its colour, and some other phenomena, p.r.o.nounce it to be a blue of distinctly smaller particles than those sought for in vain by Mr. Huxley. These particles, as already stated, must have been less than 1/100000th of an inch in diameter.

And now I want you to consider the following question: Here are particles which have been growing continually for fifteen minutes, and at the end of that time are demonstrably smaller than those which defied the microscope of Mr. Huxley--_What must have been the size of these particles at the beginning of their growth?_ What notion can you form of the magnitude of such particles? The distances of stellar s.p.a.ce give us simply a bewildering sense of vastness, without leaving any distinct impression on the mind; and the magnitudes with which we have here to do, bewilder us equally in the opposite direction. We are dealing with infinitesimals, compared with which the test objects of the microscope are literally immense.

From their perviousness to stellar light, and other considerations, Sir John Herschel drew some startling conclusions regarding the density and weight of comets. You know that these extraordinary and mysterious bodies sometimes throw out tails 100,000,000 miles in length, and 50,000 miles in diameter. The diameter of our earth is 8,000 miles. Both it and the sky, and a good portion of s.p.a.ce beyond the sky, would certainly be included in a sphere 10,000 miles across.

Let us fill a hollow sphere of this diameter with cometary matter, and make it our unit of measure. To produce a comet's tail of the size just mentioned, about 300,000 such measures would have to be emptied into s.p.a.ce. Now suppose the whole of this stuff to be swept together, and suitably compressed, what do you suppose its volume would be? Sir John Herschel would probably tell you that the whole ma.s.s might be carted away, at a single effort, by one of your dray-horses. In fact, I do not know that he would require more than a small fraction of a horse-power to remove the cometary dust. After this, you will hardly regard as monstrous a notion I have sometimes entertained, concerning the quant.i.ty, of matter in our sky. Suppose a sh.e.l.l to surround the earth at a distance which would place it beyond the grosser matter that hangs in the lower regions of the air--say at the height of the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc. Outside this sh.e.l.l we should have the deep blue firmament. Let the atmospheric s.p.a.ce beyond the sh.e.l.l be swept clean, and the sky-matter properly gathered up. What would be its probable amount? I have sometimes thought that a lady's portmanteau would contain it all. I have thought that even a gentleman's portmanteau--possibly his snuff-box--might take it in. And, whether the actual sky be capable of this amount of condensation or not, I entertain no doubt that a sky quite as vast as ours, and as good in appearance, could be formed from a quant.i.ty of matter which might be held in the hollow of the hand.

Small in ma.s.s, the vastness in point of number of the particles of our sky may be inferred from the continuity of its light. It is not in broken patches, nor at scattered points, that the heavenly azure is revealed. To the observer on the summit of Mont Blanc, the blue is as uniform and coherent as if it formed the surface of the most close-grained solid. A marble dome would not exhibit a stricter continuity. And Mr. Glaisher will inform you, that if our hypothetical sh.e.l.l were lifted to twice the height of Mont Blanc above the earth's surface, we should still have the azure overhead.

Everywhere through the atmosphere those sky-particles are strewn. They fill the Alpine valleys, spreading like a delicate gauze in front of the slopes of pine. They sometimes so swathe the peaks with light as to abolish their definition. This year I have seen the Weisshorn thus dissolved in opalescent air. By proper instruments the glare thrown from the sky-particles against the retina may be quenched, and then the mountain which it obliterated starts into sudden definition.

[Footnote: See the 'Sky of the Alps,' Art. iv. sec. 3, vol. i.]

Its extinction in front of a dark mountain resembles exactly the withdrawal of a veil. It is then the light taking possession of the eye, not the particles acting as opaque bodies, that interferes with the definition. By day this light quenches the stars; even by moonlight it is able to exclude from vision all stars between the fifth and the eleventh magnitude. It may be likened to a noise, and the feebler stellar radiance to a whisper drowned by the noise.

What is the nature of the particles which shed this light? The celebrated De la Rive ascribes the haze of the Alps in fine weather to floating organic germs. Now the possible existence of germs in such profusion has been held up as an absurdity. It has been affirmed that they would darken the air, and on the a.s.sumed impossibility of their existence in the requisite numbers, without invasion of the solar light, an apparently powerful argument has been based by believers in spontaneous generation. Similar arguments have been used by the opponents of the germ theory of epidemic disease, who have triumphantly challenged an appeal to the microscope and the chemist's balance to decide the question. Such arguments, however, are founded on a defective acquaintance with the powers and properties of matter.

Without committing myself in the least to De la Rive's notion, to the doctrine of spontaneous generation, or to the germ theory of disease, I would simply draw attention to the demonstrable fact, that, in the atmosphere, we have particles which defy both the microscope and the balance, which do not darken the air, and which exist, nevertheless, in mult.i.tudes sufficient to reduce to insignificance the Israelitish hyperbole regarding the sands upon the sea-sh.o.r.e.

The varying judgments of men on these and other questions may perhaps be, to some extent, accounted for by that doctrine of Relativity which plays so important a part in philosophy. This doctrine affirms that the impressions made upon us by any circ.u.mstance, or combination of circ.u.mstances, depend upon our previous state. Two travellers upon the same height, the one having ascended to it from the plain, the other having descended to it from a higher elevation, will be differently affected by the scene around them. To the one nature is expanding, to the other it is contracting, and impressions which have two such different antecedent states are sure to differ. In our scientific judgments the law of relativity may also play an important part. To two men, one educated in the school of the senses, having mainly occupied himself with observation; the other educated in the school of imagination as well, and exercised in the conceptions of atoms and molecules to which we have so frequently referred, a bit of matter, say 1/50000th of an inch in diameter, will present itself differently. The one descends to it from his molar heights, the other climbs to it from his molecular lowlands. To the one it appears small, to the other large. So, also, as regards the appreciation of the most minute forms of life revealed by the microscope. To one of the men these naturally appear conterminous with the ultimate particles of matter; there is but a step from the atom to the organism. The other discerns numberless organic gradations between both. Compared with his atoms, the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the microscopic field are as behemoth and leviathan. The law of relativity may to some extent explain the different att.i.tudes of two such persons with regard to the question of spontaneous generation. An amount of evidence which satisfies the one entirely fails to satisfy the other; and while to the one the last bold defence and startling expansion of the doctrine by Dr. Bastian will appear perfectly conclusive, to the other it will present itself as merely imposing a labour of demolition on subsequent investigators. [Footnote: When these words were uttered I did not imagine that the chief labour of demolition would fall upon myself. 1878.]

Let me say here that many of our physiological observers appear to form a very inadequate estimate of the distance which separates the microscopic from the molecular limit, and that, as a consequence, they sometimes employ a phraseology calculated to mislead. When, for example, the contents of a cell are described as perfectly h.o.m.ogeneous or as absolutely structureless, because the microscope fails to discover any structure; or when two structures are p.r.o.nounced to be without difference, because the microscope can discover none, then, I think the microscope begins to play a mischievous part. A little consideration will make it plain that the microscope can have no voice in the question of germ structure. Distilled water is more perfectly h.o.m.ogeneous than any possible organic germ. What is it that causes the liquid to cease contracting at 39 degrees Fahr, and to expand until it freezes? We have here a structural process of which the microscope can take no note, nor is it likely to do so by any conceivable extension of its powers. Place distilled water in the field of an electro-magnet, and bring a microscope to bear upon it.

Will any change be observed when the magnet is excited? Absolutely none; and still profound and complex changes have occurred. First of all, the particles of water have been rendered diamagnetically polar; and secondly, in virtue of the structure impressed upon it by the magnetic whirl of its molecules, the liquid twists a ray of light in a fashion perfectly determinate both as to quant.i.ty and direction.

Have the diamond, the amethyst, and the countless other crystals formed in the laboratories of nature and of man no structure?

a.s.suredly they have; but what can the microscope make of it? Nothing.

It cannot be too distinctly borne in mind that between the microscopic limit, and the true molecular limit, there is room for infinite permutations and combinations. It is in this region that the poles of the atoms are arranged, that tendency is given to their powers; so that when these poles and powers have free action, proper stimulus, and a suitable environment, they determine, first the germ, and afterwards the complete organism. This first marshalling of the atoms, on which all subsequent action depends, baffles a keener power than that of the microscope. When duly pondered, the complexity of the problem raises the doubt, not of the power of our instrument, for that is nil, but whether we ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever enable us to grapple with the ultimate structural energies of nature. [Footnote: 'In using the expression "one sort of living substance" I must guard against being supposed to mean that any kind of living protoplasm is h.o.m.ogeneous. Hyaline though it may appear, we are not at present able to a.s.sign any limit to its complexity of structure.'--Burdon Sanderson, in the 'British Medical Journal,' January 16, 1875. We have here scientific insight, and its correlative caution. In fact Dr. Sanderson' s important researches are a continued ill.u.s.tration of the position laid down above.]

In more senses than one Mr. Darwin has drawn heavily upon the scientific tolerance of his age. He has drawn heavily upon time in his development of species, and he has drawn adventurously upon matter in his theory of pangenesis. According to this theory, a germ, already microscopic, is a world of minor germs. Not only is the organism as a whole wrapped up in the germ, but every organ of the organism has there its special seed. This, I say, is an adventurous draft on the power of matter to divide itself and distribute its forces. But, unless we are perfectly sure that he is overstepping the bounds of reason, that he is unwittingly sinning against observed fact or demonstrated law--for a mind like that of Darwin can never sin wittingly against either fact or law--we ought, I think, to be cautious in limiting his intellectual horizon. If there be the least doubt in the matter, it ought to be given in favour of the freedom of such a mind. To it a vast possibility is in itself a dynamic power, though the possibility may never be drawn upon. It gives me pleasure to think that the facts and reasonings of this discourse tend rather towards the justification of Mr. Darwin, than towards his condemnation; for they seem to show the perfect competence of matter and force, as regards divisibility and distribution, to bear the heaviest strain that he has. .h.i.therto imposed upon them.

In the case of Mr. Darwin, observation, imagination, and reason combined have run back with wonderful sagacity and success over a certain length of the line of biological succession. Guided by a.n.a.logy, in his 'Origin of Species' he placed at the root of life a primordial germ, from which he conceived the amazing variety of the organisms now upon earth's surface might be deduced. If this hypothesis were even true, it would not be final. The human mind would infallibly look behind the germ, and however hopeless the attempt, would enquire into the history of its genesis. In this dim twilight of conjecture the searcher welcomes every gleam, and seeks to augment his light by indirect incidences. He studies the methods of nature in the ages and the worlds within his reach, in order to shape the course of speculation in antecedent ages and worlds. And though the certainty possessed by experimental enquiry is here shut out, we are not left entirely without guidance. From the examination of the solar system, Kant and Laplace came to the conclusion that its various bodies once formed parts of the same undislocated ma.s.s; that matter in a nebulous form preceded matter in its present form; that as the ages rolled away, heat was wasted, condensation followed, planets were detached; and that finally the chief portion of the hot cloud reached, by self-compression, the magnitude and density of our sun. The earth itself offers evidence of a fiery origin; and in our day the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace receives the independent countenance of spectrum a.n.a.lysis, which proves the same substances to be common to the earth and sun.

Accepting some such view of the construction of our system as probable, a desire immediately arises to connect the present life of our planet with the past. We wish to know something of our remotest ancestry. On its first detachment from the central ma.s.s, life, as we understand it, could not have been present on the earth. How, then, did it come there? The thing to be encouraged here is a reverent freedom--a freedom preceded by the hard discipline which checks licentiousness in speculation--while the thing to be repressed, both in science and out of it, is dogmatism. And here I am in the hands of the meeting--willing to end, but ready to go on. I have no right to intrude upon you, unasked, the unformed notions which are floating like clouds, or gathering to more solid consistency, in the modern speculative scientific mind. But if you wish me to speak plainly, honestly, and undisputatiously, I am willing to do so. On the present occasion--

You are ordained to call, and I to come.

Well, your answer is given, and I obey your call.

Two or three years ago, in an ancient London College, I listened to a discussion at the end of a lecture by a very remarkable man. Three or four hundred clergymen were present at the lecture. The orator began with the civilisation of Egypt in the time of 'Joseph; pointing out the very perfect organisation of the kingdom, and the possession of chariots, in one of which Joseph rode, as proving a long antecedent period of civilisation. He then pa.s.sed on to the mud of the Nile, its rate of augmentation, its present thickness, and the remains of human handiwork found therein: thence to the rocks which bound the Nile valley, and which teem with organic remains. Thus in his own clear way he caused the idea of the world's age to expand itself indefinitely before the minds of his audience, and he contrasted this with the age usually a.s.signed to the world. During his discourse he seemed to be swimming against a stream, he manifestly thought that he was opposing a general conviction. He expected resistance in the subsequent discussion; so did I. But it was all a mistake; there was no adverse current, no opposing conviction, no resistance; merely here and there a half-humorous, but unsuccessful attempt to entangle him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed, known it all long ago, and they rallied the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, to be ranked amongst the finest samples of their cla.s.s, had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and transported the conception of life's origin to an indefinitely distant past.

This leads us to the gist of our present enquiry, which is this: Does life belong to what we call matter, or is it an independent principle inserted into matter at some suitable epoch--say when the physical conditions became such as to permit of the development of life? Let us put the question with the reverence due to a faith and culture in which we all were cradled, and which are the undeniable historic antecedents of our present enlightenment. I say, let us put the question reverently, but let us also put it clearly and definitely.

There are the strongest grounds for believing that during a certain period of its history the earth was not, nor was it fit to be, the theatre of life. Whether this was ever a nebulous period, or merely a molten period, does not signify much; and if we revert to the nebulous condition, it is because the probabilities are really on its side. Our question is this: Did creative energy pause until the nebulous matter had condensed, until the earth had been detached, until the solar fire had so far withdrawn from the earth's vicinity as to permit a crust to gather round the planet? Did it wait until the air was isolated; until the seas were formed; until evaporation, condensation, and the descent of rain had begun; until the eroding forces of the atmosphere had weathered and decomposed the molten rocks so as to form soils; until the sun's rays had become so tempered by distance, and by waste, as to be chemically fit for the decompositions necessary to vegetable life? Having waited through these aeons until the proper conditions had set in, did it send the flat forth, 'Let there be Life!'? These questions define a hypothesis not without its difficulties, but the dignity of which in relation to the world's knowledge was demonstrated by the n.o.bleness of the men whom it sustained.

Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide between this hypothesis and another; and public thought generally will afterwards be called upon to do the same. But, however the convictions of individuals here and there may be influenced, the process must be slow and secular which commends the hypothesis of Natural Evolution to the public mind. For what are the core and essence of this hypothesis?

Strip it naked, and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ign.o.ble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the n.o.bler forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the human mind itself--emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena--were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation. But the hypothesis would probably go even farther than this. Many who hold it would probably a.s.sent to the position that, at the present moment, all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, and all our art--Plato, Shakspeare, Newton, and Raphael--are potential in the fires of the sun. We long to learn something of our origin. If the Evolution hypothesis be correct, even this unsatisfied yearning must have come to us across the ages which separate the primeval mist from the consciousness of to-day. I do not think that any holder of the Evolution hypothesis would say that I overstate or overstrain it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, and bring before you, unclothed and unvarnished, the notions by which it must stand or fall.

Surely these notions represent an absurdity too monstrous to be entertained by any sane mind. But why are such notions absurd, and why should sanity reject them? The law of Relativity, of which we have previously spoken, may find its application here. These Evolution notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the intellectual gibbet, in relation to the ideas concerning matter which were drilled into us when young. Spirit and matter have ever been presented to us in the rudest contrast, the one as all-n.o.ble, the other as all-vile. But is this correct? Upon the answer to this question all depends. Supposing that, instead of having the foregoing ant.i.thesis of spirit and matter presented to our youthful minds, we had been taught to regard them as equally worthy, and equally wonderful; to consider them, in fact, as two opposite faces of the self-same mystery. Supposing that in youth we had been impregnated with the notion of the poet Goethe, instead of the notion of the poet Young, and taught to look upon matter, not as 'brute matter,' but as the 'living garment of G.o.d;' do you not think that under these altered circ.u.mstances the law of Relativity might have had an outcome different from its present one? Is it not probable that our repugnance to the idea of primeval union between spirit and matter might be considerably abated? Without this total revolution of the notions now prevalent, the Evolution hypothesis must stand condemned; but in many profoundly thoughtful minds such a revolution has already taken place. They degrade neither member of the mysterious duality referred to; but they exalt one of them from its abas.e.m.e.nt, and repeal the divorce hitherto existing between them. In substance, if not in words, their position as regards the relation of spirit and matter is: 'What G.o.d hath joined together, let not man put asunder.'

You have been thus led to the outer rim of speculative science, for beyond the nebulae scientific thought has never hitherto ventured. I have tried to state that which I considered ought, in fairness, to be outspoken. I neither think this Evolution hypothesis is to be flouted away contemptuously, nor that it ought to be denounced as wicked. It is to be brought before the bar of disciplined reason, and there justified or condemned. Let us hearken to those who wisely support it, and to those who wisely oppose it; and let us tolerate those, whose name is legion, who try foolishly to do either of these things.

The only thing out of place in the discussion is dogmatism on either side. Fear not the Evolution hypothesis. Steady yourselves, in its presence, upon that faith in the ultimate triumph of truth which was expressed by old Gamaliel when he said: 'If it be of G.o.d, ye cannot overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to nought.' Under the fierce light of scientific enquiry, it is sure to be dissipated if it possess not a core of truth. Trust me, its existence as a hypothesis is quite compatible with the simultaneous existence of all those virtues to which the term 'Christian' has been applied. It does not solve--it does not profess to solve--the ultimate mystery of this universe. It leaves, in fact, that mystery untouched. For, granting the nebula and its potential life, the question, whence they came, would still remain to baffle and bewilder us. At bottom, the hypothesis does nothing more than 'transport the conception of life's origin to an indefinitely distant past.'

Those who hold the doctrine of Evolution are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they only yield to it a provisional a.s.sent. They regard the nebular hypothesis as probable, and, in the utter absence of any evidence to prove the act illegal, they extend the method of nature from the present into the past. Here the observed uniformity of nature is their only guide. Within the long range of physical enquiry, they have never discerned in nature the insertion of caprice. Throughout this range, the laws of physical and intellectual continuity have run side by side. Having thus determined the elements of their curve in a world of observation and experiment, they prolong that curve into an antecedent world, and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of development from the nebula to the present time.

You never hear the really philosophical defenders of the doctrine of Uniformity speaking of impossibilities in nature. They never say, what they are constantly charged with saying, that it is impossible for the Builder of the universe to alter His work. Their business is not with the possible, but the actual--not with a world which might be, but with a world that is. This they explore with a courage not unmixed with reverence, and according to methods which, like the quality of a tree, are tested by their fruits. They have but one desire--to know the truth. They have but one fear--to believe a lie.

And if they know the strength of science, and rely upon it with unswerving trust, they also know the limits beyond which science ceases to be strong. They best know that questions offer themselves to thought, which science, as now prosecuted, has not even the tendency to solve. They have as little fellowship with the atheist who says there is no G.o.d, as with the theist who professes to know the mind of G.o.d. 'Two things,' said Immanuel Kant, 'fill me with awe: the starry heavens, and the sense of moral responsibility in man.' And in his hours of health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased, and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe. Breaking contact with the hampering details of earth, it a.s.sociates him with a Power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which he can neither a.n.a.lyse nor comprehend.

There is one G.o.d supreme over all G.o.ds, diviner than mortals, Whose form is not like unto man's, and as unlike his nature; But vain mortals imagine that G.o.ds like themselves are begotten, With human sensations and voice and corporeal members; So, if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man's fashion, And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of G.o.dhead, Then would horses depict G.o.ds like horses, and oxen like oxen, Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing.

XENOPHANES Of COLOPHON (six centuries B.C.), Supernatural Religion, vol. 1.

IX. THE BELFAST ADDRESS.