God and the World Part 4

Certainly, if we had to choose between the idea {67} of a careless or indifferent G.o.d, and the belief in a G.o.d who has given us ample proofs of a generally beneficent purpose, but who has, for reasons of the meaning of which we as yet can have only the vaguest conceptions, allowed Himself to be hindered and thwarted on the way to His goal, with results of suffering to Himself even greater than those endured by His creatures; if these were the alternatives before us, there can scarcely be one of us who would hesitate to say towards which of them his reason and conscience would confidently point him.

[1] _Origin of Species_, Chap. III.

[2] _Life and Letters_.

[3] _Thoughts on Religion_, pp. 92, f.

[4] p. 94.

[5] _Life and Letters_, I., p. 309.

[6] Address by Sir Frederick Treves at the Edinburgh Philosophical Inst.i.tution, October, 1905.

[7] p. 380.

[8] p. 377.

[9] p. 381.

[10] p. 375.

[11] p. 383.

[12] p. 377. Among the ill.u.s.trations that have been adduced of the insensibility of the lower organisms, none perhaps is more extraordinary than this: "A crab will continue to eat, and apparently relish, a smaller crab while being itself slowly devoured by a larger one!"--(Transactions of Victoria Inst.i.tute, Vol. XXV., p. 257).

[13] p. 384.

[14] William Allingham's _Diary_, p. 226.

[15] In 1896, by Messrs. Macmillan.

[16] In one instance, at least, Darwin had pictured in his imagination the steps by which a "strange and odious instinct" may have been developed from comparatively innocent beginnings. He was referring to the ejection by the young cuckoo of its companions from the nest. "I can see no special difficulty in its having gradually acquired, during successive generations, the blind desire, the strength and structure necessary for the work of ejection." "The first step towards the acquisition of the proper instinct might have been mere unintentional restlessness on the part of the young bird."--_Origin of Species_, p.

200.

[17] Pp. 135, f.

[18] P. 142.

[19] P. 143.

[20] P. 144.

[21] P. 232.

{68}

CHAPTER VII

LATER SCIENCE

The position, as we have described it, was that which may be said to have existed up to about twenty years ago. Since then much new light has come. Indeed, Lord Kelvin, speaking at Clerkenwell on February 26th, 1904, is reported in _The Times_ to have said, referring to the extraordinary progress of scientific research, that it "had, perhaps, been even more remarkable and striking at the beginning of the twentieth century than during the whole of the nineteenth."

Let us take first that which he had more particularly in mind, the advance in the knowledge of the const.i.tution of Matter.

In an address delivered before the British a.s.sociation at Bradford in 1873, Clerk Maxwell had stated the conclusions to which science had, up to that time, been led in its investigations of matter. Throughout the natural universe it had been shewn, by Spectrum a.n.a.lysis, that matter is built up of {69} molecules. These molecules, according to the most competent judgment, were incapable of sub-division without change of substance, and were absolutely fixed for each substance. "A molecule of hydrogen, for example, whether in Sirius, or in Arcturus, executes its vibrations in precisely the same time." The relations of the parts and movements of the planetary systems may and do change, but "the molecules--the foundation-stones of the natural universe--remain unbroken and unworn."

As a result of this, it was maintained that "the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel has well said, the essential character of being a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent." "Not that science is debarred from studying the internal mechanism of a molecule which she cannot take to pieces ... but, in tracing back the history of matter, science is arrested when she a.s.sures herself, on the one hand, that the molecule has been made, and on the other that it has not been made by any of the processes we call natural."

So the case had stood for some while until science, through its indefatigable inquirers, shewed that it was in very deed "not debarred from studying the internal mechanism of a molecule," nor, perhaps, from taking it to pieces. In 1895 came the {70} discovery of the X-rays by Rontgen in Germany, to be followed in a year by Becquerel's discovery of spontaneous radio-activity, and in a couple of years by the remarkable further discovery, made by Madame Curie, of what was termed "radium," a substance that went on producing heat _de novo_, keeping itself permanently at a higher temperature than its surroundings, and spontaneously producing electricity.

This in itself was a new fact of extraordinary interest. For long, discussion had been waged between two departments of scientific inquirers. The geologists and biologists had demanded hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of millions of years to allow for the developments with which they were concerned. The physicists, led by Lord Kelvin, refused to admit the demand, claiming that it could be proved mathematically that it was impossible that the sun could have been giving out heat at its present rate for more than a hundred million years, at the very outside. The appearance of radium robbed this argument of its cogency. It is true that an examination of the sun's spectrum has not, as yet, revealed any radium lines, but it is well known that helium, a transformation product of radium, is present in it.

And this modification of our views as to the {71} probable age of our solar system was far from being the only result of this latest discovery. Investigations which followed into radio-activity led the Cambridge professors, Larmor and Thomson, to conclude that electricity existed in small particles, which were called "electrons."[1] These seem to be the ingredients of which atoms are made. A molecule is composed of two or more atoms. That of hydrogen, for example, has two; that of water three; and so on up to a thousand or more.

Molecules are very small. If a drop of water were magnified to the size of the globe, the molecules would be seen to be less than the size of a cricket ball!

Atoms are much smaller. "The atoms in a drop of water outnumber the drops in an Atlantic Ocean." Electrons are much smaller still--about "a thousand-million-million times smaller than atoms."[2]

Within the atom thousands or tens of thousands of these electrons are moving in orderly arrangement, at terrific speed, round and about one another. The amount of energy required to build up a molecule of any degree of complexity is very great, and it is {72} by the breaking down of complex molecules into simple ones that all our mechanical work is done. And this is not all, for not only can the molecule be thus broken in pieces, but the atom itself is capable of disintegration.

"Although we do not know how to break atoms up, they are liable every now and then themselves to explode, and so resolve themselves into simpler forms." "Atoms of matter are not the indestructible and immutable things they were once thought."[3] The idea of the amount of energy thus revealed as available for all kinds of active work is so vast as to baffle calculation and even imagination. It has been said that there is energy enough in fifteen grains of radium, if it could all be set free at once, to blow the whole British Navy a mile high into the air. The thought that we are thus encompa.s.sed on every side by pent up potentialities of force, which if uncontrolled might at any moment work our destruction, may well deepen in us the sense of the need, not only for an originating, but for a continually directing mind to superintend the conduct of the universe.

We have referred to more than one change of view to which the new discoveries have led. We shall doubtless find that there are other scientific theories {73} which will have ere long to be modified.

Already it is recognised that the arguments of Lord Kelvin (he was then Sir William Thomson) and of Clerk Maxwell, which were based upon calculations as to the "dissipation of energy," can scarcely remain unaffected by what we now know, and suspect, of the crumbling and re-forming of atoms.

And there are hints abroad of even more revolutionary suggestions. If there has been one principle more imperatively and unanimously insisted upon than another, it has been the uniformity of Nature's laws. What then are we to make of a remark like the following, made by Professor J. J. Thomson, perhaps only half-seriously, to the British a.s.sociation at Cambridge, in 1904? "There was one law," he said, "which he felt convinced n.o.body who had worked on this question"--the radio-activity of matter--"would ever suggest, and that was the constancy of Nature."

Not less startling is it to be told that a question may yet be raised which will challenge "the conception of a luminiferous aether, which for half a century has dominated physical science. It is possible," so we are informed, "that the field of electro-magnetic energy surrounding an electric charge in motion moves with it, and that the vibrations of light travel through this moving {74} field, instead of through an ocean of stagnant aether."[4]

One further quotation of singular interest may be added. It is taken from an address to students by the President of the Inst.i.tution of Mining and Metallurgy.[5]

"Twenty years ago," he said, "the idea held that inorganic chemistry was almost a dead science--dead in the sense of being apparently completed in many of its aspects, and that its records could be safely confided to the encyclopaedia.... A modified conception of life is now becoming co-extensive with the whole range of our experience. Even a simple inorganic crystal does not spring ready formed from its solvent, but first pa.s.ses through phases of granulation and striation comparable with those which characterise the beginnings of vital growth. Metals exhibit in some respects phenomena similar to those possessed by organised beings. Thus, they show fatigue under long continued stress, and they recover their strength with rest. They are also susceptible to certain of the poisons which destroy organic life. Matter, broadly, is no longer merely dead masonry from which the edifice to shelter life {75} is constructed, but also appears to be the reservoir of that energy which is developed, altered and drawn into vitality itself....

The indestructibility of matter bids fair to become relegated to the museum of outworn theories; and with it will probably go our present conceptions as to the conservation of energy."

It is clear, then, that the tasks awaiting the students of physical science are likely to be as arduous, and we may hope as full of reward, as they have been at any time in the past. Meanwhile, it does look as if there were truth in Mr. Balfour's remark that "Matter is not merely explained, but is explained away."[6]

[1] The weighing and measuring of the electron were first announced by Professor Thomson to the British a.s.sociation meeting at Dover, in 1899.

[2] Sir Oliver Lodge.

[3] Sir Oliver Lodge. _Life and Matter_, p. 28.