burdened by no theoretical difficulties in the way of accepting it; but
there must be evidence. Scientific men get an awkward habit--no, I won't
call it that, for it is a valuable habit--of believing nothing unless
there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief which
is not based upon evidence, not only as illogical, but as immoral. We
will, if you please, test this view by the circumstantial evidence alone;
for, from what I have said, you will understand that I do not propose to
discuss the question of what testimonial evidence is to be adduced in
favor of it. If those whose business it is to judge are not at one as to
the authenticity of the only evidence of that kind which is offered, nor
as to the facts to which it bears witness, the discussion of such evidence
is superfluous. But I may be permitted to regret this necessity of
rejecting the testimonial evidence the less, because the examination of
the circumstantial evidence leads to the conclusion, not only that it is
incompetent to justify the hypothesis, but that, so far as it goes, it is
contrary to the hypothesis.

The considerations upon which I base this conclusion are of the simplest
possible character. The Miltonic hypothesis contains assertions of a very
definite character relating to the succession of living forms. It is
stated that plants, for example, made their appearance upon the third day,
and not before. And you will understand that what the poet means by plants
are such plants as now live, the ancestors, in the ordinary way of
propagation of like by like, of the trees and shrubs which flourish in the
present world. It must needs be so: for, if they were different, either
the existing plants have been the result of a separate origination since
that described by Milton, of which we have no record, or any ground for
supposition that such an occurrence has taken place; or else they have
arisen by a process of evolution from the original stocks.

In the second place, it is clear that there was no animal life before the
fifth day, and that, on the fifth day, aquatic animals and birds appeared.
And it is further clear that terrestrial living things, other than birds,
made their appearance upon the sixth day, and not before. Hence, it
follows that if, in the large mass of circumstantial evidence as to what
really has happened in the past history of the globe we find indications
of the existence of terrestrial animals, other than birds, at a certain
period, it is perfectly certain that all that has taken place since that
time must be referred to the sixth day.

In the great Carboniferous formation, whence America derives so vast a
proportion of her actual and potential wealth, in the beds of coal which
have been formed from the vegetation of that period, we find abundant
evidence of the existence of terrestrial animals. They have been
described, not only by European but by American naturalists. There are to
be found numerous insects allied to our cockroaches. There are to be found
spiders and scorpions of large size, the latter so similar to existing
scorpions that it requires the practised eye of the naturalist to
distinguish them. Inasmuch as these animals can be proved to have been
alive in the Carboniferous epoch, it is perfectly clear that, if the
Miltonic account is to be accepted, the huge mass of rocks extending from
the middle of the Palæozoic formations to the uppermost members of the
series must belong to the day which is termed by Milton the sixth.

But, further, it is expressly stated that aquatic animals took their
origin upon the fifth day, and not before; hence, all formations in which
remains of aquatic animals can be proved to exist, and which therefore
testify that such animals lived at the time when these formations were in
course of deposition, must have been deposited during or since the period
which Milton speaks of as the fifth day. But there is absolutely no
fossiliferous formation in which the remains of aquatic animals are
absent. The oldest fossils in the Silurian rocks are exuviæ of marine
animals; and if the view which is entertained by Principal Dawson and Dr.
Carpenter respecting the nature of the Eozoön be well founded, aquatic
animals existed at a period as far antecedent to the deposition of the
coal as the coal is from us; inasmuch as the Eozoön is met with in those
Laurentian strata which lie at the bottom of the series of stratified
rocks. Hence it follows, plainly enough, that the whole series of
stratified rocks, if they are to be brought into harmony with Milton, must
be referred to the fifth and sixth days, and that we cannot hope to find
the slightest trace of the products of the earlier days in the geological
record. When we consider these simple facts, we see how absolutely futile
are the attempts that have been made to draw a parallel between the story
told by so much of the crust of the earth as is known to us and the story
that Milton tells. The whole series of fossiliferous stratified rocks
must be referred to the last two days; and neither the Carboniferous nor
any other formation can afford evidence of the work of the third day.

Not only is there this objection to any attempt to establish a harmony
between the Miltonic account and the facts recorded in the fossiliferous
rocks, but there is a further difficulty. According to the Miltonic
account, the order in which animals should have made their appearance in
the stratified rocks would be this: fishes, including the great whales,
and birds; after them, all varieties of terrestrial animals except birds.
Nothing could be further from the facts as we find them; we know of not
the slightest evidence of the existence of birds before the Jurassic, or
perhaps the Triassic, formation; while terrestrial animals, as we have
just seen, occur in the Carboniferous rocks. If there were any harmony
between the Miltonic account and the circumstantial evidence, we ought to
have abundant evidence of the existence of birds in the Carboniferous, the
Devonian, and the Silurian rocks. I need hardly say that this is not the
case, and that not a trace of birds makes its appearance until the far
later period which I have mentioned.

And again, if it be true that all varieties of fishes and the great
whales, and the like, made their appearance on the fifth day, we ought to
find the remains of these animals in the older rocks--in those which were
deposited before the Carboniferous epoch. Fishes we do find, in
considerable number and variety; but the great whales are absent, and the
fishes are not such as now live. Not one solitary species of fish now in
existence is to be found in the Devonian or Silurian formations. Hence we
are introduced afresh to the dilemma which I have already placed before
you: either the animals which came into existence on the fifth day were
not such as those which are found at present, are not the direct and
immediate ancestors of those which now exist,--in which case either fresh
creations of which nothing is said, or a process of evolution, must have
occurred,--or else the whole story must be given up, as not only devoid of
any circumstantial evidence, but as contrary to such evidence as exists.

I placed before you in a few words, some little time ago, a statement of
the sum and substance of Milton's hypothesis. Let me now try to state, as
briefly, the effect of the circumstantial evidence bearing upon the past
history of the earth which is furnished, without the possibility of
mistake, with no chance of error as to its chief features, by the
stratified rocks. What we find is that the great series of formations
represents a period of time of which our human chronologies hardly afford
us a unit of measure. I will not pretend to say how we ought to estimate
this time, in millions or in billions of years. For my purpose, the
determination of its absolute duration is wholly unessential; but
unquestionably the time was enormous.

It results from the simplest methods of interpretation, that, leaving out
of view certain patches of metamorphosed rocks, and certain volcanic
products, all that is now dry land has once been at the bottom of the
waters. It is perfectly certain that, at a comparatively recent period of
the world's history,--the Cretaceous epoch,--none of the great physical
features, which at present mark the surface of the globe, existed. It is
certain that the Rocky Mountains were not. It is certain that the Himalaya
Mountains were not. It is certain that the Alps and the Pyrenees had no
existence. The evidence is of the plainest possible character, and is
simply this: we find raised up on the flanks of these mountains, elevated
by the forces of upheaval which have given rise to them, masses of
Cretaceous rock which formed the bottom of the sea before those mountains
existed. It is therefore clear that the elevatory forces which gave rise
to the mountains operated subsequently to the Cretaceous epoch; and that
the mountains themselves are largely made up of the materials deposited in
the sea which once occupied their place. As we go back in time, we meet
with constant alternations of sea and land, of estuary and open ocean;
and, in correspondence with these alternations, we observe the changes in
the fauna and flora to which I have referred.

But the inspection of these changes gives us no right to believe that
there has been any discontinuity in natural processes. There is no trace
of general cataclysms, of universal deluges, or of sudden destructions of
a whole fauna or flora. The appearances which were formerly interpreted in
that way have all been shown to be delusive, as our knowledge has
increased, and as the blanks which formerly appeared to exist between the
different formations have been filled up. That there is no absolute break
between formation and formation, that there has been no sudden
disappearance of all the forms of life and replacement of them by others,
but that changes have gone on slowly and gradually, that one type has died
out and another has taken its place, and that thus, by insensible degrees,
one fauna has been replaced by another, are conclusions strengthened by
constantly increasing evidence. So that within the whole of the immense
period indicated by the fossiliferous stratified rocks there is assuredly
not the slightest proof of any break in the uniformity of nature's
operations, no indication that events have followed other than a clear and
orderly sequence.

That, I say, is the natural and obvious teaching of the circumstantial
evidence contained in the stratified rocks. I leave you to consider how
far, by any ingenuity of interpretation, by any stretching of the meaning
of language, it can be brought into harmony with the Miltonic hypothesis.

ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE

In order to make the title of this discourse generally intelligible, I
have translated the term "protoplasm," which is the scientific name of the
substance of which I am about to speak, by the words "the physical basis
of life." I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is such a thing as
a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novel, so widely spread is the
conception of life as a something which works through matter, but is
independent of it; and even those who are aware that matter and life are
inseparably connected may not be prepared for the conclusion--plainly
suggested by the phrase, "_the_ physical basis or matter of life,"--that
there is some one kind of matter which is common to all living beings, and
that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical, as well
as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as
this appears almost shocking to common sense.

What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different from one another, in
faculty, in form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living
beings? What community of faculty can there be between the brightly
colored lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of
the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct
with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge?

Again, think of the microscopic fungus--a mere infinitesimal ovoid
particle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply into countless
millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage,
the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this bald sketch
of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the dimensions of
a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound
shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast
circumference. Or, turning to the other half of the world of life, picture
to yourselves the great Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live or have
lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle, and blubber,
with easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest ship that ever left
dockyard would founder hopelessly; and contrast him with the invisible
animalcules--mere gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could, in fact,
dance upon the point of a needle with the same ease as the angels of the
Schoolmen could, in imagination. With these images before your minds, you
may well ask, what community of form, or structure, is there between the
animalcule and the whale, or between the fungus and the fig tree? And, _a
fortiori_, between all four?

Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition, what hidden bond
can connect the flower that a girl wears in her hair and the blood that
courses through her youthful veins; or, what is there in common between
the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of the
tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seen
pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere
films in the hand which raises them out of their element?

Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of everyone who
ponders, for the first time, upon the conception of a single physical
basis of life underlying all the diversities of vital existence; but I
propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent
difficulties, a threefold unity--namely, a unity of power or faculty, a
unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition--does pervade the
whole living world.

No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the first place, to prove
that the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of living matter, diverse as
they may be in degree, are substantially similar in kind.

Goethe has condensed a survey of all the powers of mankind into the
well-known epigram:--

  Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich ernähren,
    Kinder zeugen, und die nähren so gut es vermag.

      Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell' er sich wie er auch will.

In physiological language this means that all the multifarious and
complicated activities of man are comprehensible under three categories.
Either they are immediately directed toward the maintenance and
development of the body, or they effect transitory changes in the relative
positions of parts of the body, or they tend toward the continuance of the
species. Even those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will,
which we rightly name the higher faculties, are not excluded from this
classification, inasmuch as, to everyone but the subject of them, they are
known only as transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the
body. Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action are, in the
long run, resolvable into muscular contraction, and muscular contraction
is but a transitory change in the relative positions of the parts of a
muscle. But the scheme which is large enough to embrace the activities of
the highest form of life covers all those of the lower creatures. The
lowest plant, or animalcule, feeds, grows, and reproduces its kind. In
addition, all animals manifest those transitory changes of form which we
class under irritability and contractility; and it is more than probable
that, when the vegetable world is thoroughly explored, we shall find all
plants in possession of the same powers, at one time or other of their
existence.

I am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare and conspicuous, as
those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plant, or the stamens of
the barberry, but to such more widely spread, and, at the same time, more
subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable contractility. You are
doubtless aware that the common nettle owes its stinging property to the
innumerable stiff and needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs that
cover its surface. Each stinging needle tapers from a broad base to a
slender summit, which, though rounded at the end, is of such microscopic
fineness that it readily penetrates, and breaks off in, the skin. The
whole hair consists of a very delicate outer case of wood, closely applied
to the inner surface of which is a layer of semifluid matter, full of
innumerable granules of extreme minuteness. This semifluid lining is
protoplasm, which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid,
and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of the hair which it
fills. When viewed with a sufficiently high magnifying power, the
protoplasmic layer of the nettle hair is seen to be in a condition of
unceasing activity. Local contractions of the whole thickness of its
substance pass slowly and gradually from point to point, and give rise to
the appearance of progressive waves, just as the bending of successive
stalks of corn by a breeze produces the apparent billows of a cornfield.

But, in addition to these movements, and independently of them, the
granules are driven, in relatively rapid streams, through channels in the
protoplasm which seem to have a considerable amount of persistence. Most
commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the protoplasm take similar
directions; and, thus, there is a general stream up one side of the hair
and down the other. But this does not prevent the existence of partial
currents which take different routes; and, sometimes, trains of granules
may be seen coursing swiftly in opposite directions, within a
twenty-thousandth of an inch of one another; while, occasionally, opposite
streams come into direct collision, and, after a longer or shorter
struggle, one predominates. The cause of these currents seems to lie in
contractions of the protoplasm which bounds the channels in which they
flow, but contractions so minute that the best microscopes show only their
effects, and not themselves.

The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned within the
compass of the microscopic hair of a plant, which we commonly regard as a
merely passive organism, is not easily forgotten by one who has watched
its display, continued hour after hour, without pause or sign of
weakening. The possible complexity of many other organic forms, seemingly
as simple as the protoplasm of the nettle, dawns upon one; and the
comparison of such a protoplasm to a body with an internal circulation,
which has been put forward by an eminent physiologist, loses much of its
startling character. Currents similar to those of the hairs of the nettle
have been observed in a great multitude of very different plants, and
weighty authorities have suggested that they probably occur, in more or
less perfection, in all young vegetable cells. If such be the case, the
wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to
the dullness of our hearing; and could our ears catch the murmur of these
tiny maelstroms, as they whirl in the innumerable myriads of living cells
which constitute each tree, we should be stunned, as with the roar of a
great city.

Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the exception that
contractility should be still more openly manifested at some periods of
their existence. The protoplasm of Algæ and Fungi becomes, under many
circumstances, partially, or completely, freed from its woody case, and
exhibits movements of its whole mass, or is propelled by the contractility
of one or more hair-like prolongations of its body, which are called
vibratile _cilia_. And, so far as the conditions of the manifestation of
the phenomena of contractility have yet been studied, they are the same
for the plant as for the animal. Heat and electric shocks influence both,
and in the same way, though it may be in different degrees. It is by no
means my intention to suggest that there is no difference in faculty
between the lowest plant and the highest, or between plants and animals.
But the difference between the powers of the lowest plant, or animal, and
those of the highest, is one of degree, not of kind, and depends, as
Milne-Edwards long ago so well pointed out, upon the extent to which the
principle of the division of labor is carried out in the living economy.
In the lowest organism all parts are competent to perform all functions,
and one and the same portion of protoplasm may successively take on the
function of feeding, moving, or reproducing apparatus. In the highest, on
the contrary, a great number of parts combine to perform each function,
each part doing its allotted share of the work with great accuracy and
efficiency, but being useless for any other purpose.

On the other hand, notwithstanding all the fundamental resemblances that
exist between the powers of the protoplasm in plants and in animals, they
present a striking difference (to which I shall advert more at length
presently), in the fact that plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out
of mineral compounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it
ready-made, and hence, in the long run, depend upon plants. Upon what
condition this difference in the powers of the two great divisions of the
world of life depends, nothing is at present known.

With such qualification as arises out of the last-mentioned fact, it may
be truly said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally one. Is
any such unity predictable of their forms? Let us seek in easily verified
facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be drawn by
pricking one's finger, and viewed with proper precautions and under a
sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be seen, among the
innumerable multitude of little circular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles,
which float in it and give it its color, a comparatively small number of
colorless corpuscles, of somewhat larger size and very irregular shape. If
the drop of blood be kept at the temperature of the body, these colorless
corpuscles will be seen to exhibit a marvelous activity, changing their
forms with great rapidity, drawing in and thrusting out prolongations of
their substance, and creeping about as if they were independent organisms.

The substance which is thus active is a mass of protoplasm, and its
activity differs in detail, rather than in principle, from that of the
protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry circumstances the corpuscle dies
and becomes distended into a round mass, in the midst of which is seen a
smaller spherical body, which existed, but was more or less hidden, in the
living corpuscle, and is called its _nucleus_. Corpuscles of essentially
similar structure are to be found in the skin, in the lining of the mouth,
and scattered through the whole framework of the body. Nay, more: in the
earliest condition of the human organism, in that state in which it has
but just become distinguishable from the egg in which it arises, it is
nothing but an aggregation of such corpuscles, and every organ of the body
was, once, no more than such an aggregation.

Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out to be what may be termed the
structural unit of the human body. As a matter of fact, the body, in its
earliest state, is a mere multiple of such units; and, in its perfect
condition, it is a multiple of such units variously modified.

But does the formula which expresses the essential structural character of
the highest animal cover all the rest, as the statement of its powers and
faculties covered that of all others? Very nearly. Beast and fowl, reptile
and fish, mollusk, worm, and polyp, are all composed of structural units
of the same character, namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There
are sundry very low animals, each of which, structurally, is a mere
colorless blood-corpuscle, leading an independent life. But, at the very
bottom of the animal scale, even this simplicity becomes simplified, and
all the phenomena of life are manifested by a particle of protoplasm
without a nucleus. Nor are such organisms insignificant by reason of their
want of complexity. It is a fair question whether the protoplasm of those
simplest forms of life which people an immense extent of the bottom of the
sea would not outweigh that of all the higher living beings which inhabit
the land put together. And in ancient times, no less than at the present
day, such living beings as these have been the greatest of rock-builders.

What has been said of the animal world is no less true of plants. Imbedded
in the protoplasm at the broad, or attached, end of the nettle hair, there
lies a spheroidal nucleus. Careful examination further proves that the
whole substance of the nettle is made up of a repetition of such masses of
nucleated protoplasm, each contained in a wooden case, which is modified
in form, sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes into a duct or spiral
vessel, sometimes into a pollen grain, or an ovule. Traced back to its
earliest state, the nettle arises, as the man does, in a particle of
nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest plants, as in the lowest animals,
a single mass of such protoplasm may constitute the whole plant, or the
protoplasm may exist without a nucleus.

Under these circumstances it may well be asked, how is one mass of
non-nucleated protoplasm to be distinguished from another? Why call one
"plant" and the other "animal"?

The only reply is that, so far as form is concerned, plants and animals
are not separable, and that, in many cases, it is a mere matter of
convention whether we call a given organism an animal or a plant. There is
a living body called _Æthalium septicum_, which appears upon decaying
vegetable substances, and, in one of its forms, is common upon the
surfaces of tan-pits. In this condition it is, to all intents and
purposes, a fungus, and formerly was always regarded as such; but the
remarkable investigations of De Bary have shown that, in another
condition, the _Æthalium_ is an actively locomotive creature, and takes in
solid matters, upon which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the most
characteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant, or is it an animal?
Is it both, or is it neither? Some decide in favor of the last
supposition, and establish an intermediate kingdom, a sort of biological
"No Man's Land," for all these questionable forms. But, as it is
admittedly impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between this no
man's land and the vegetable world, on the one hand, and the animal, on
the other, it appears to me that this proceeding merely doubles the
difficulty which, before, was single.

Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is
the clay of the potter, which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains
clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick
or sun-dried clod.

Thus it becomes clear that all living powers are cognate, and that all
living forms are fundamentally of one character. The researches of the
chemist have revealed a no less striking uniformity of material
composition in living matter.

In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investigation can tell us
little or nothing, directly, of the composition of living matter, inasmuch
as such matter must needs die in the act of analysis; and upon this very
obvious ground, objections, which I confess seem to me to be somewhat
frivolous, have been raised to the drawing of any conclusions whatever
respecting the composition of actually living matter, from that of the
dead matter of life, which alone is accessible to us. But objectors of
this class do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true
that we know nothing about the composition of any body whatever, as it is.
The statement that a crystal of calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime is
quite true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes, it may be
resolved into carbonic acid and quicklime. If you pass the same carbonic
acid over the very quicklime thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of
lime again; but it will not be calc-spar, or anything like it. Can it,
therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing about the
chemical composition of calc-spar? Such a statement would be absurd; but
it is hardly more so than the talk one occasionally hears about the
uselessness of applying the results of chemical analysis to the living
bodies that have yielded them.

One fact, at any rate, is out of reach of such refinements, and this is,
that all the forms of protoplasm which have yet been examined contain the
four elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex
union, and that they behave similarly toward several reagents. To this
complex combination, the nature of which has never been determined with
exactness, the name of protein has been applied. And if we use this term
with such caution as may properly arise out of our comparative ignorance
of the things for which it stands, it may be truly said that all
protoplasm is proteinaceous; or, as the white, or albumen, of an egg is
one of the commonest examples of a nearly pure protein matter, we may say
that all living matter is more or less albuminoid.

Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all forms of protoplasm are
affected by the direct action of electric shocks; and yet the number of
cases in which the contraction of protoplasm is shown to be effected by
this agency increases every day.

Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence that all forms of
protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar coagulation at a
temperature of from 40 to 50 degrees Centigrade, which has been called
"heat-stiffening"; though Kuhne's beautiful researches have proved this
occurrence to take place in so many and such diverse living beings, that
it is hardly rash to expect that the law holds good for all.

Enough has, perhaps, been said to prove the existence of a general
uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or physical basis of life,
in whatever group of living beings it may be studied. But it will be
understood that this general uniformity by no means excludes any amount of
special modifications of the fundamental substance. The mineral, carbonate
of lime, assumes an immense diversity of characters, though no one doubts
that, under all these protean changes, it is one and the same thing.

And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin, of the matter of
life?

Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused throughout the
universe in molecules, which are indestructible and unchangeable in
themselves, but, in endless transmigration, unite in innumerable
permutations, into the diversified forms of life we know? Or, is the
matter of life composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the
manner in which its atoms are aggregated? Is it built up of ordinary
matter, and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done?

Modern science does not hesitate a moment between these alternatives.
Physiology writes over the portals of life:--

  Debemur morti nos nostraque,--

with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to that melancholy
line. Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm
or man, the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved
into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always dying, and,
strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it died.

In the wonderful story of the "Peau de Chagrin," the hero becomes
possessed of a magical wild ass's skin, which yields him the means of
gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the
proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in
proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last
handbreadth of the _peau de chagrin_ disappear with the gratification of a
last wish.

Balzac's studies had led him over a wide range of thought and speculation,
and his shadowing forth of physiological truth in this strange story may
have been intentional. At any rate, the matter of life is a veritable
_peau de chagrin_, and for every trivial act it is somewhat the smaller.
All work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or
indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm.

Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical loss; and, in the
strictest sense, he burns that others may have light--so much eloquence,
so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is
clear that this process of expenditure cannot go on forever. But, happily,
the protoplasmic _peau de chagrin_ differs from Balzac's in its capacity
of being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after every
exertion.

For example, this present lecture, whatever its intellectual worth to you,
has a certain physical value to me, which is conceivably expressible by
the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in
maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. My _peau de chagrin_
will be distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the
beginning. By and by, I shall probably have recourse to the substance
commonly called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its
original size. Now, this mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or
less modified, of another animal--a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the
same matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure to sundry
artificial operations in the process of cooking.

But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not rendered it
incompetent to resume its old functions as matter of life. A singular
inward laboratory, which I possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the
modified protoplasm; the solution so formed will pass into my veins; and
the subtle influences to which it will then be subjected will convert the
dead protoplasm into living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into
man.

Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I might sup
on lobster, and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergo the
same wonderful metamorphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my
own place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacea might, and
probably would, return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature
by turning my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were
to be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I should find the
protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible into man, with no more
trouble than that of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of
the lobster.

Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what animal, or what
plant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm; and the fact speaks
volumes for the general identity of that substance in all living beings. I
share this catholicity of assimilation with other animals, all of which,
so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the protoplasm of any of
their fellows, or of any plant; but here the assimilative powers of the
animal world cease. A solution of smelling-salts in water, with an
infinitesimal proportion of some other saline matters, contains all the
elementary bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm; but, as
I need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep a hungry man
from starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from a like fate. An
animal cannot make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from some other
animal, or some plant--the animal's highest feat of constructive chemistry
being to convert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is
appropriate to itself.

Therefore, in seeking for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventually
turn to the vegetable world. The fluid containing carbonic acid, water,
and ammonia, which offers such a Barmecide feast to the animal, is a table
richly spread to multitudes of plants; and, with a due supply of only such
materials, many a plant will not only maintain itself in vigor, but grow
and multiply until it has increased a million-fold, or a
million-million-fold, the quantity of protoplasm which it originally
possessed; in this way building up the matter of life, to an indefinite
extent, from the common matter of the universe.

Thus, the animal can only raise the complex substance of dead protoplasm
to the higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm; while the plant
can raise the less complex substances--carbonic acid, water, and
ammonia--to the same stage of living protoplasm, if not to the same level.
But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example,
appear to need higher compounds to start with; and no known plant can live
upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. A plant supplied with pure
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur and the like,
would as infallibly die as the animal in his bath of smelling-salts,
though it would be surrounded by all the constituents of protoplasm. Nor,
indeed, need the process of simplification of vegetable food be carried so
far as this, in order to arrive at the limit of the plant's thaumaturgy.
Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful constituents be
supplied with ammonia, and an ordinary plant will still be unable to
manufacture protoplasm.

Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have no right to
speculate on any other), breaks up, in consequence of that continual death
which is the condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid,
water, and ammonia, which certainly possess no properties but those of
ordinary matter. And out of these same forms of ordinary matter, and from
none which are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm
that keeps the animal world a-going. Plants are the accumulators of the
power which animals distribute and disperse.

But it will be observed that the existence of the matter of life depends
on the preëxistence of certain compounds; namely, carbonic acid, water,
and ammonia. Withdraw any one of these three from the world, and all vital
phenomena come to an end. They are related to the protoplasm of the plant,
as the protoplasm of the plant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen,
oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon and oxygen
unite in certain proportions, and under certain conditions, to give rise
to carbonic acid; hydrogen and oxygen produce water; nitrogen and hydrogen
give rise to ammonia. These new compounds, like the elementary bodies of
which they are composed, are lifeless. But when they are brought together,
under certain conditions, they give rise to the still more complex body,
protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life.

I see no break in this series of steps in molecular complication, and I am
unable to understand why the language which is applicable to any one term
of the series may not be used with any of the others. We think fit to call
different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to
speak of the various powers and activities of these substances as the
properties of the matter of which they are composed.

When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion, and an
electric spark is passed through them, they disappear, and a quantity of
water, equal in weight to the sum of their weights, appears in their
place. There is not the slightest parity between the passive and active
powers of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen which have given
rise to it. At 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and far below that temperature,
oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to
rush away from one another with great force. Water, at the same
temperature, is a strong though brittle solid, whose particles tend to
cohere into definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty
imitations of the most complex forms of vegetable foliage.

Nevertheless we call these, and many other strange phenomena, the
properties of the water, and we do not hesitate to believe that, in some
way or another, they result from the properties of the component elements
of the water. We do not assume that a something called "aquosity" entered
into and took possession of the oxide of hydrogen as soon as it was
formed, and then guided the aqueous particles to their places in the
facets of the crystal, or among the leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the
contrary, we live in the hope and in the faith that, by the advance of
molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see our way as clearly
from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now
able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and
the manner in which they are put together.

Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water, and ammonia
disappear, and in their place, under the influence of preëxisting living
protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the matter of life makes its
appearance?

It is true that there is no sort of parity between the properties of the
components and the properties of the resultant; but neither was there in
the case of the water. It is also true that what I have spoken of as the
influence of preëxisting living matter is something quite unintelligible;
but does anybody quite comprehend the _modus operandi_ of an electric
spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen?

What justification is there, then, for the assumption of the existence in
the living matter of a something which has no representative, or
correlative, in the not-living matter which gave rise to it? What better
philosophical status has "vitality" than "aquosity"? And why should
"vitality" hope for a better fate than the other "itys" which have
disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus accounted for the operation of the
meat-jack by its inherent "meat-roasting quality," and scorned the
"materialism" of those who explained the turning of the spit by a certain
mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney?

If scientific language is to possess a definite and constant signification
whenever it is employed, it seems to me that we are logically bound to
apply to the protoplasm, or physical basis of life, the same conceptions
as those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the phenomena
exhibited by water are its properties, so are those presented by
protoplasm, living or dead, its properties.

If the properties of water may be properly said to result from the nature
and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no intelligible
ground for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm result from
the nature and disposition of its molecules.

But I bid you beware lest, in accepting these conclusions, you are placing
your feet on the first rung of a ladder which, in most people's
estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's, and leads to the antipodes of
heaven. It may seem a small thing to admit that the dull, vital actions of
a fungus are the properties of its protoplasm, and are the direct results
of the nature of the matter of which it is composed. But if, as I have
endeavored to prove to you, its protoplasm is essentially identical with,
and most readily converted into, that of any animal, I can discover no
logical halting-place between the admission that such is the case, and the
further concession that all vital action may, with equal propriety, be
said to be the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which
displays it. And if so, it must be true, in the same sense and to the same
extent, that the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your
thoughts regarding them, are the expression of molecular changes in that
matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena.

Past experience leads me to be tolerably certain that, when the
propositions I have just placed before you are accessible to public
comment and criticism, they will be condemned by many zealous persons, and
perhaps by some few of the wise and thoughtful. I should not wonder if
"gross and brutal materialism" were the mildest phrase applied to them in
certain quarters. And, most undoubtedly, the terms of the propositions are
distinctly materialistic. Nevertheless two things are certain: the one,
that I hold the statements to be substantially true; the other, that I,
individually, am no materialist, but, on the contrary, believe materialism
to involve grave philosophical error.

This union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation of
materialistic philosophy I share with some of the most thoughtful men with
whom I am acquainted. And, when I first undertook to deliver the present
discourse, it appeared to me to be fitting opportunity to explain how such
a union is not only consistent with, but necessitated by, sound logic. I
purposed to lead you through the territory of vital phenomena to the
materialistic slough in which you find yourselves now plunged, and then to
point out to you the sole path by which, in my judgment, extrication is
possible.

Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not relative, and,
therefore, that our conception of matter represents that which it really
is. Let us suppose, further, that we do know more of cause and effect than
a certain definite order of succession among facts, and that we have a
knowledge of the necessity of that succession,--and hence, of necessary
laws,--and I, for my part, do not see what escape there is from utter
materialism and necessarianism. For it is obvious that our knowledge of
what we call the material world is, to begin with, at least as certain and
definite as that of the spiritual world, and that our acquaintance with
law is of as old a date as our knowledge of spontaneity. Further, I take
it to be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible to prove that anything
whatever may not be the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that
human logic is equally incompetent to prove that any act is really
spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is one which, by the assumption, has
no cause; and the attempt to prove such a negative as this is, on the face
of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical impossibility
to demonstrate that any given phenomenon is not the effect of a material
cause, anyone who is acquainted with the history of science will admit,
that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now, more than ever, means,
the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and
the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of
what we call spirit and spontaneity.

I have endeavored, in the first part of this discourse, to give you a
conception of the direction in which modern physiology is tending; and I
ask you, what is the difference between the conception of life as the
product of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the old notion
of an Archæus governing and directing blind matter within each living
body, except this--that here, as elsewhere, matter and law have devoured
spirit and spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out of past
and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the
realm of matter and law until it is coextensive with knowledge, with
feeling, and with action.

The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a nightmare, I believe,
upon many of the best minds of these days. They watch what they conceive
to be the progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a
savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the
face of the sun. The advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their
souls; the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom; they are alarmed
lest man's moral nature be debased by the increase of his wisdom.

If the "New Philosophy" be worthy of the reprobation with which it is
visited, I confess their fears seem to me to be well founded. While, on
the contrary, could David Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at
their perplexities, and chide them for doing even as the heathen, and
falling down in terror before the hideous idols their own hands have
raised.

For, after all, what do we know of this terrible "matter," except as a
name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our own
consciousness? And what do we know of that "spirit" over whose threatened
extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising, like that which was
heard at the death of Pan, except that it is also a name for an unknown
and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of consciousness? In other
words, matter and spirit are but names for the imaginary substrata of
groups of natural phenomena.

And what are the dire necessity and "iron" law under which men groan?
Truly, most gratuitously invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an
"iron" law, it is that of gravitation; and if there be a physical
necessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the ground. But
what is all we really know, and can know, about the latter phenomenon?
Simply, that, in all human experience, stones have fallen to the ground
under these conditions; that we have not the smallest reason for believing
that any stone so circumstanced will not fall to the ground; and that we
have, on the contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall. It is
very convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been
fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that unsupported stones
will fall to the ground "a law of nature." But when, as commonly happens,
we change _will_ into _must_, we introduce an idea of necessity which most
assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no warranty that I
can discover elsewhere. For my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematize
the intruder. Fact I know, and Law I know, but what is this Necessity,
save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?

But, if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of
either matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity is something
illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate conception of law, the
materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but matter,
force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as the most
baseless of theological dogmas. The fundamental doctrines of materialism,
like those of spiritualism, and most other "isms," lie outside "the limits
of philosophical inquiry"; and David Hume's great service to humanity is
his irrefragable demonstration of what these limits are. Hume called
himself a skeptic, and therefore others cannot be blamed if they apply the
same title to him; but that does not alter the fact that the name, with
its existing implications, does him gross injustice.

If a man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants of the moon are, and
I reply that I do not know; that neither I, nor anyone else, has any means
of knowing; and that, under these circumstances, I decline to trouble
myself about the subject at all, I do not think he has any right to call
me a skeptic. On the contrary, in replying thus, I conceive that I am
simply honest and truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy of
time. So Hume's strong and subtle intellect takes up a great many problems
about which we are naturally curious, and shows us that they are
essentially questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable of
being answered, and therefore not worth the attention of men who have work
to do in the world. And he thus ends one of his essays:--

"If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school metaphysics, for
instance, let us ask, _Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning
quantity or number?_ No. _Does it contain any experimental reasoning
concerning matter of fact and existence?_ No. Commit it then to the
flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble ourselves about
matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and
can know nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and
ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the
little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less
ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually, it is
necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that the
order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is
practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for something
as a condition of the course of events.

Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as often as we like
to try. Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which
any belief can rest, and forms one of our highest truths. If we find that
the ascertainment of the order of nature is facilitated by using one
terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it is our clear
duty to use the former; and no harm can accrue, so long as we bear in
mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols.

In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phenomena of
matter in terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in terms of matter:
matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a
property of matter--each statement has a certain relative truth. But with
a view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology is in
every way to be preferred. For it connects thought with the other
phenomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those
physical conditions, or concomitants of thought, which are more or less
accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to
exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought that we
already possess in respect of the material world; whereas, the
alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads
to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas.

Thus there can be little doubt that the further science advances, the more
extensively and consistently will all the phenomena of nature be
represented by materialistic formulæ and symbols.

But the man of science who, forgetting the limits of philosophical
inquiry, slides from these formulæ and symbols into what is commonly
understood by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with
the mathematician who should mistake the _x_'s and _y_'s with which he
works his problems for real entities--and with this further disadvantage,
as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of
no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may
paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty of a life.

JOHN TYNDALL

SCOPE AND LIMIT OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM

Partly through mathematical and partly through experimental research,
physical science has of late years assumed a momentous position in the
world. Both in a material and in an intellectual point of view it has
produced, and is designed to produce, immense changes--vast social
ameliorations, and vast alterations in the popular conception of the
origin, rule, and governance of natural things. By science, in the
physical world, miracles are wrought; while philosophy is forsaking its
ancient metaphysical channels and pursuing others which have been opened
or indicated by scientific research. This must become more and more the
case as philosophical writers become more deeply imbued with the methods
of science, better acquainted with the facts which scientific men have won
and with the great theories which they have elaborated.

If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour- and minute-hands,
and possibly also a second-hand, moving over the graduated dial. Why do
these hands move, and why are their relative motions such as they are
observed to be? These questions cannot be answered without opening the
watch, mastering its various parts, and ascertaining their relationship to
each other. When this is done, we find that the observed motion of the
hands follows of necessity from the inner mechanism of the watch, when
acted upon by the force invested in the spring.

The motion of the hands may be called a phenomenon of art, but the case is
similar with the phenomena of nature. These also have their inner
mechanism and their store of force to set that mechanism going. The
ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this mechanism, to
discern this store, and to show that, from the combined action of both,
the phenomena of which they constitute the basis must of necessity flow.

I thought that an attempt to give you even a brief and sketchy
illustration of the manner in which scientific thinkers regard this
problem would not be uninteresting to you on the present occasion; more
especially as it will give me occasion to say a word or two on the
tendencies and limits of modern science; to point out the region which men
of science claim as their own, and where it is mere waste of time to
oppose their advance; and also to define, if possible, the bourne between
this and that other region to which the questionings and yearnings of the
scientific intellect are directed in vain.

But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the American Emerson, I
think, who said that it is hardly possible to state any truth strongly
without apparent injustice to some other truth. Truth is often of a dual
character, taking the form of a magnet with two poles; and many of the
differences which agitate the thinking part of mankind are to be traced to
the exclusiveness with which partisan reasoners dwell upon one half of the
duality in forgetfulness of the other half. The proper course appears to
be to state both halves strongly, and allow each its fair share in the
formation of the resultant conviction. But this waiting for the statement
of the two sides of the question implies patience. It implies a resolution
to suppress indignation if the statement of the one half should clash with
our convictions, and to repress equally undue elation if the
half-statement should happen to chime in with our views. It implies a
determination to wait calmly for the statement of the whole, before we
pronounce judgment in the form of either acquiescence or dissent.

This premised and, I trust, accepted, let us enter upon our task. There
have been writers who affirmed that the pyramids of Egypt were the
productions of nature; and in his early youth Alexander von Humboldt wrote
a learned essay with the express object of refuting this notion. We now
regard the pyramids as the work of men's hands, aided probably by
machinery of which no record remains. We picture to ourselves the swarming
workers toiling at these vast erections, lifting the inert stones, and,
guided by the volition, the skill, and possibly at times by the whip, of
the architect, placing them in their proper positions. The blocks in this
case were moved and posited by a power external to themselves, and the
final form of the pyramid expresses the thought of its human builder.

Let us pass from this illustration of constructive power to another of a
different kind. When a solution of common salt is slowly evaporated, the
water which holds the salt in solution disappears, but the salt itself
remains behind. At a certain stage of concentration the salt can no longer
retain the liquid form: its particles, or molecules, as they are called,
begin to deposit themselves as minute solids, so minute, indeed, as to
defy all microscopic power. As evaporation continues, solidification goes
on, and we finally obtain, through the clustering together of innumerable
molecules, a finite crystalline mass of a definite form. What is this
form? It sometimes seems a mimicry of the architecture of Egypt. We have
little pyramids built by the salt, terrace above terrace from base to
apex, forming a series of steps resembling those up which the Egyptian
traveler is dragged by his guides. The human is as little disposed to look
unquestioning at these pyramidal salt-crystals as to look at the pyramids
of Egypt without inquiring whence they came. How, then, are those salt
pyramids built up?

Guided by analogy, you may, if you like, suppose that, swarming among the
constituent molecules of the salt, there is an invisible population,
controlled and coerced by some invisible master, and placing the atomic
blocks in their positions. This, however, is not the scientific idea, nor
do I think your good sense will accept it as a likely one. The scientific
idea is that the molecules act upon each other without the intervention of
slave labor; that they attract each other and repel each other at certain
definite points, or poles, and in certain definite directions; and that
the pyramidal form is the result of this play of attraction and repulsion.
While, then, the blocks of Egypt were laid down by a power external to
themselves, these molecular blocks of salt are self-posited, being fixed
in their places by the forces with which they act upon each other.

I take common salt as an illustration because it is so familiar to us all;
but any other crystalline substance would answer my purpose equally well.
Everywhere, in fact, throughout inorganic nature, we have this formative
power, as Fichte would call it--this structural energy ready to come into
play and build the ultimate particles of matter into definite shapes. The
ice of our winters and of our polar regions is its handiwork, and so
equally are the quartz, feldspar, and mica of our rocks. Our chalk-beds
are for the most part composed of minute shells, which are almost the
product of structural energy; but behind the shell, as a whole, lies a
more remote and subtle formative act. These shells are built up of little
crystals of calc-spar, and to form these crystals the structural force had
to deal with the intangible molecules of carbonate of lime. This tendency
on the part of matter to organize itself, to grow into shape, to assume
definite forms in obedience to the definite action of force, is, as I have
said, all-pervading. It is in the ground on which you tread, in the water
you drink, in the air you breathe. Incipient life, as it were, manifests
itself throughout the whole of what we call inorganic nature.

The forms of the minerals resulting from this play of polar forces are
various, and exhibit different degrees of complexity. Men of science avail
themselves of all possible means of exploring their molecular
architecture. For this purpose they employ in turn, as agents of
exploration, light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and sound. Polarized
light is especially useful and powerful here. A beam of such light, when
sent in among the molecules of a crystal, is acted on by them, and from
this action we infer with more or less of clearness the manner in which
the molecules are arranged. That differences, for example, exist between
the inner structure of rock salt and crystallized sugar or sugar-candy, is
thus strikingly revealed. These differences may be made to display
themselves in chromatic phenomena of great splendor, the play of molecular
force being so regulated as to remove some of the colored constituents of
white light, and to leave others with increased intensity behind.

And now let us pass from what we are accustomed to regard as a dead
mineral to a living grain of corn. When _it_ is examined by polarized
light, chromatic phenomena similar to those noticed in crystals are
observed. And why? Because the architecture of the grain resembles the
architecture of the crystal. In the grain also the molecules are set in
definite positions, and in accordance with their arrangement they act upon
the light. But what has built together the molecules of the corn? I have
already said regarding crystalline architecture that you may, if you
please, consider the atoms and molecules to be placed in position by a
power external to themselves. The same hypothesis is open to you now. But
if, in the case of crystals, you have rejected this notion of an external
architect, I think you are bound to reject it now, and to conclude that
the molecules of the corn are self-posited by the forces with which they
act upon each other. It would be poor philosophy to invoke an external
agent in the one case and reject it in the other.

Instead of cutting our grain of corn into slices and subjecting it to the
action of polarized light, let us place it in the earth and subject it to
a certain degree of warmth. In other words, let the molecules, both of the
corn and of the surrounding earth, be kept in that state of agitation
which we call warmth. Under these circumstances, the grain and the
substances which surround it interact, and a definite molecular
architecture is the result. A bud is formed; this bud reaches the surface,
where it is exposed to the sun's rays, which are also to be regarded as a
kind of vibratory motion. And as the motion of common heat, with which the
grain and the substances surrounding it were first endowed, enabled the
grain and these substances to exercise their attractions and repulsions,
and thus to coalesce in definite forms, so the specific motion of the
sun's rays now enables the green bud to feed upon the carbonic acid and
the aqueous vapor of the air. The bud appropriates those constituents of
both for which it has an elective attraction, and permits the other
constituent to resume its place in the air. Thus the architecture is
carried on. Forces are active at the root, forces are active in the blade,
the matter of the earth and the matter of the atmosphere are drawn toward
both, and the plant augments in size. We have in succession the bud, the
stalk, the ear, the full corn in the ear; the cycle of molecular action
being completed by the production of grains similar to that with which the
process began.

Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily eludes the
conceptive or imagining power of the purely human mind. An intellect the
same in kind as our own would, if only sufficiently expanded, be able to
follow the whole process from beginning to end. It would see every
molecule placed in its position by the specific attractions and repulsions
exerted between it and other molecules, the whole process and its
consummation being an instance of the play of molecular force. Given the
grain and its environment, the purely human intellect might, if
sufficiently expanded, trace out _a priori_ every step of the process of
growth, and by the application of purely mechanical principles demonstrate
that the cycle must end, as it is seen to end, in the reproduction of
forms like that with which it began. A similar necessity rules here to
that which rules the planets in their circuits round the sun.

You will notice that I am stating my truth strongly, as at the beginning
we agreed it should be stated. But I must go still further, and affirm
that in the eye of science _the animal body_ is just as much a product of
molecular force as the stalk and ear of corn, or as the crystal of salt or
sugar. Many of the parts of the body are obviously mechanical. Take the
human heart, for example, with its system of valves; or take the exquisite
mechanism of the eye or hand. Animal heat, moreover, is the same in kind
as the heat of a fire, being produced by the same chemical process. Animal
motion, too, is as directly derived from the food of the animal as the
motion of Trevethyck's walking engine from the fuel in its furnace. As
regards matter, the animal body creates nothing; as regards force, it
creates nothing. Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his
stature? All that has been said, then, regarding the plant may be restated
with regard to the animal. Every particle that enters into the composition
of a muscle, a nerve, or a bone has been placed in its position by
molecular force. And, unless the existence of law in these matters is
denied, and the element of caprice introduced, we must conclude that,
given the relation of any molecule of the body to its environment, its
position in the body might be determined mathematically. Our difficulty is
not with the _quality_ of the problem, but with its _complexity_; and this
difficulty might be met by the simple expansion of the faculties which we
now possess. Given this expansion, with the necessary data, and the chick
might be deduced as rigorously and as logically from the egg as the
existence of Neptune was deduced from the disturbances of Uranus, or as
conical refraction was deduced from the undulatory theory of light.

You see, I am not mincing matters, but avowing nakedly what many
scientific thinkers more or less distinctively believe. The formation of a
crystal, a plant, or an animal is, in their eyes, a purely mechanical
problem, which differs from the problems of ordinary mechanics in the
smallness of the masses and the complexity of the processes involved. Here
you have one half of our dual truth; let us now glance at the other half.
Associated with this wonderful mechanism of the animal body, we have
phenomena no less certain than those of physics, but between which and the
mechanism we discern no necessary connection. A man, for example, can say
_I feel_, _I think_, _I love_; but how does _consciousness_ infuse itself
into the problem? The human brain is said to be the organ of thought and
feeling; when we are hurt, the brain feels it; when we ponder, it is the
brain that thinks; when our passions or affections are excited, it is
through the instrumentality of the brain. Let us endeavor to be a little
more precise here. I hardly imagine that there exists a profound
scientific thinker, who has reflected upon the subject, unwilling to admit
the extreme probability of the hypothesis that, for every fact of
consciousness, whether in the domain of sense, of thought, or of emotion,
a certain definite molecular condition is set up in the brain; who does
not hold this relation of physics to consciousness to be invariable, so
that, given the state of the brain, the corresponding thought or feeling
might be inferred; or, given the thought or feeling, the corresponding
state of the brain might be inferred.

But how inferred? It is at bottom not a case of logical inference at all,
but of empirical association. You may reply that many of the inferences of
science are of this character; the inference, for example, that an
electric current of a given direction will deflect a magnetic needle in a
definite way; but the cases differ in this, that the passage from the
current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we
entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem. But
the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of
consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a
definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not
possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ,
which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one to
the other. They appear together, but we do not know why. Were our minds
and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to
see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following
all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if
such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding
states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the
solution of the problem, "How are these physical processes connected with
the facts of consciousness?" The chasm between the two classes of
phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the
consciousness of _love_, for example, be associated with a right-handed
spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of
_hate_ with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know, when we
love, that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate, that the
motion is in the other; but the _Why?_ would remain as unanswerable as
before.

In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, and that thought,
as exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of the brain, I
think the position of the "Materialist" is stated, as far as that position
is a tenable one. I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain
this position against all attacks; but I do not think, in the present
condition of the human mind, that he can pass beyond this position. I do
not think he is entitled to say that his molecular groupings and his
molecular motions _explain_ everything. In reality, they explain nothing.
The utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes of phenomena,
of whose real bond of union he is in absolute ignorance.

The problem of the connection of body and soul is as insoluble in its
modern form as it was in the pre-scientific ages. Phosphorus is known to
enter into the composition of the human brain, and a trenchant German
writer has exclaimed, "Ohne Phosphor, kein Gedanke."[4] That may or may
not be the case; but, even if we knew it to be the case, the knowledge
would not lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone here assigned to
the materialist he is equally helpless. If you ask him whence is this
"Matter" of which we have been discoursing, who or what divided it into
molecules, who or what impressed upon them this necessity of running into
organic forms, he has no answer. Science is mute in reply to these
questions.

But if the materialist is confounded and science rendered dumb, who else
is prepared with a solution? To whom has this arm of the Lord been
revealed? Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance, priest and
philosopher, one and all. Perhaps the mystery may resolve itself into
knowledge at some future day. The process of things upon this earth has
been one of amelioration. It is a long way from the iguanodon and his
contemporaries to the President and the Members of the British
Association. And whether we regard the improvement from the scientific or
from the theological point of view, as the result of progressive
development, or as the result of successive exhibitions of creative
energy, neither view entitles us to assume that man's present faculties
end the series--that the process of amelioration stops at him.

A time may therefore come when this ultra-scientific region by which we
are now enfolded may offer itself to terrestrial, if not to human,
investigation. Two thirds of the rays emitted by the sun fail to arouse in
the eye the sense of vision. The rays exist, but the visual organ
requisite for their translation into light does not exist. And so, from
this region of darkness and mystery which surrounds us, rays may now be
darting which require but the development of the proper intellectual
organs to translate them into knowledge as far surpassing ours as ours
surpasses that of the wallowing reptiles which once held possession of
this planet. Meanwhile the mystery is not without its uses. It certainly
may be made a power in the human soul; but it is a power which has
feeling, not knowledge, for its base. It may be, and will be, and we hope
is, turned to account, both in steadying and strengthening the intellect,
and in rescuing man from that littleness to which in the struggle for
existence or for precedence in the world he is continually prone.

JOHN HENRY, CARDINAL NEWMAN

CHRISTIANITY AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE[5]

So far, then, as these remarks have gone, Theology and Physics cannot
touch each other, have no intercommunion, have no ground of difference or
agreement, of jealousy or of sympathy. As well may musical truths be said
to interfere with the doctrines of architectural science; as well may
there be a collision between the mechanist and the geologist, the engineer
and the grammarian; as well might the British Parliament or the French
nation be jealous of some possible belligerent power upon the surface of
the moon, as Physics pick a quarrel with Theology. And it may be
well--before I proceed to fill up in detail this outline, and to explain
what has to be explained in this statement--to corroborate it, as it
stands, by the remarkable words upon the subject of a writer of the
day:[6]--

"We often hear it said," he observes, writing as a Protestant (and here
let me assure you, gentlemen, that though his words have a controversial
tone with them, I do not quote them in that aspect, or as wishing here to
urge anything against Protestants, but merely in pursuance of my own
point, that Revelation and Physical Science cannot really come into
collision), "we often hear it said that the world is constantly becoming
more and more enlightened, and that this enlightenment must be favorable
to Protestantism, and unfavorable to Catholicism. We wish that we could
think so. But we see great reason to doubt whether this is a well-founded
expectation. We see that during the last two hundred and fifty years the
human mind has been in the highest degree active; that it has made great
advances in every branch of natural philosophy; that it has produced
innumerable inventions tending to promote the convenience of life; that
medicine, surgery, chemistry, engineering, have been very greatly
improved, that government, police, and law have been improved, though not
to so great an extent as the physical sciences. Yet we see that, during
these two hundred and fifty years, Protestantism has made no conquests
worth speaking of. Nay, we believe that, as far as there has been change,
that change has, on the whole, been in favor of the Church of Rome. We
cannot, therefore, feel confident that the progress of knowledge will
necessarily be fatal to a system which has, to say the least, stood its
ground in spite of the immense progress made by the human race in
knowledge since the days of Queen Elizabeth.

"Indeed, the argument which we are considering seems to us to be founded
on an entire mistake. There are branches of knowledge with respect to
which the law of the human mind is progress. In mathematics, when once a
proposition has been demonstrated, it is never afterwards contested. Every
fresh story is as solid a basis for a new superstructure as the original
foundation was. Here, therefore, there is a constant addition to the stock
of truth. In the inductive sciences, again, the law is progress....

"But with theology the case is very different. As respects natural
religion (Revelation being for the present altogether left out of the
question), it is not easy to see that a philosopher of the present day is
more favorably situated than Thales or Simonides. He has before him just
the same evidences of design in the structure of the universe which the
early Greeks had.... As to the other great question, what becomes of man
after death, we do not see that a highly educated European, left to his
unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot
Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences, in which we surpass the
Blackfoot Indians, throws the smallest light on the state of the soul
after the animal life is extinct....

"Natural Theology, then, is not a progressive science. That knowledge of
our origin and of our destiny which we derive from Revelation is indeed of
very different clearness, and of very different importance. But neither is
Revealed Religion of the nature of a progressive science.... In divinity
there cannot be a progress analogous to that which is constantly taking
place in pharmacy, geology, and navigation. A Christian of the fifth
century with a Bible is neither better nor worse situated than a Christian
of the nineteenth century with a Bible, candor and natural acuteness
being, of course, supposed equal. It matters not at all that the compass,
printing, gunpowder, steam, gas, vaccination, and a thousand other
discoveries and inventions, which were unknown in the fifth century, are
familiar to the nineteenth. None of these discoveries and inventions has
the smallest bearing on the question whether man is justified by faith
alone, or whether the invocation of saints is an orthodox practice.... We
are confident that the world will never go back to the solar system of
Ptolemy; nor is our confidence in the least shaken by the circumstance
that so great a man as Bacon rejected the theory of Galileo with scorn;
for Bacon had not all the means of arriving at a sound conclusion. But
when we reflect that Sir Thomas More was ready to die for the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, we cannot but feel some doubt whether the doctrine of
Transubstantiation may not triumph over all opposition. More was a man of
eminent talents. He had all the information on the subject that we have,
or _that, while the world lasts, any human being will have.... No
progress that science has made, or will make_, can add to what seems to us
the overwhelming force of the argument against the Real Presence. We are
therefore unable to understand why what Sir Thomas More believed
respecting Transubstantiation may not be believed, to the end of time, by
men equal in abilities and honesty to Sir Thomas More. But Sir Thomas More
is one of the choice specimens of human wisdom and virtue; and the
doctrine of Transubstantiation is a kind of proof charge. The faith which
stands that test will stand any test....

"The history of Catholicism strikingly illustrates these observations.
During the last seven centuries the public mind of Europe has made
constant progress in every department of secular knowledge; but in
religion we can trace no constant progress.... Four times since the
authority of the Church of Rome was established in Western Christendom,
has the human intellect risen up against her yoke. Twice that Church
remained completely victorious. Twice she came forth from the conflict
bearing the marks of cruel wounds, but with the principle of life still
strong within her. When we reflect on the tremendous assaults she has
survived, we find it difficult to conceive in what way she is to perish."

You see, gentlemen, if you trust the judgment of a sagacious mind, deeply
read in history, Catholic Theology has nothing to fear from the progress
of Physical Science, even independently of the divinity of its doctrines.
It speaks of things supernatural; and these, by the very force of the
words, research into nature cannot touch.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

PULVIS ET UMBRA[7]

We look for some reward of our endeavors, and are disappointed; not
success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our
ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues
barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun. The
canting moralist tells us of right and wrong; and we look abroad, even on
the face of our small earth, and find them change with every climate, and
no country where some action is not honored for a virtue and none where it
is not branded for a vice; and we look in our experience, and find no
vital congruity in the wisest rules, but at the best a municipal fitness.
It is not strange if we are tempted to despair of good. We ask too much.
Our religions and moralities have been trimmed to flatter us, till they
are all emasculate and sentimentalized, and only please and weaken. Truth
is of a rougher strain. In the harsh face of life, faith can read a
bracing gospel. The human race is a thing more ancient than the ten
commandments; and the bones and revolutions of the Kosmos, in whose joints
we are but moss and fungus, more ancient still.

Of the Kosmos in the last resort, science reports many doubtful things,
and all of them appalling. There seems no substance to this solid globe on
which we stamp: nothing but symbols and ratios. Symbols and ratios carry
us and bring us forth and beat us down; gravity, which swings the
incommensurable suns and worlds through space, is but a figment varying
inversely as the squares of distances; and the suns and worlds
themselves, imponderable figures of abstraction, NH{3} and H{2}O.
Consideration dares not dwell upon this view; that way madness lies;
science carries us into zones of speculation, where there is no habitable
city for the mind of man.

But take the Kosmos with a grosser faith, as our senses give it us. We
behold space sown with rotatory islands, suns and worlds and the shards
and wrecks of systems: some, like the sun, still blazing; some rotting,
like the earth; others, like the moon, stable in desolation. All of these
we take to be made of something we call matter: a thing which no analysis
can help us to conceive; to whose incredible properties no familiarity can
reconcile our minds. This stuff, when not purified by the lustration of
fire, rots uncleanly into something we call life; seized through all its
atoms with a pediculous malady; swelling in tumors that become
independent, sometimes even (by an abhorrent prodigy) locomotory; one
splitting into millions, millions cohering into one, as the malady
proceeds through varying stages. This vital putrescence of the dust, used
as we are to it, yet strikes us with occasional disgust; and the profusion
of worms in a piece of ancient turf, or the air of a marsh darkened with
insects, will sometimes check our breathing so that we aspire for cleaner
places. But none is clean: the moving sand is infected with lice; the pure
spring, where it bursts out of the mountain, is a mere issue of worms;
even in the hard rock the crystal is forming.

In two main shapes this eruption covers the countenance of the earth: the
animal and the vegetable; one in some degree the inversion of the other;
the second rooted to the spot; the first coming detached out of its natal
mud, and scurrying abroad with the myriad feet of insects, or towering
into the heavens on the wings of birds; a thing so inconceivable that, if
it be well considered, the heart stops. To what passes with the anchored
vermin, we have little clue; doubtless they have their joys and sorrows,
their delights and killing agonies; it appears not how. But of the
locomotory, to which we ourselves belong, we can tell more. These share
with us a thousand miracles: the miracles of sight, of hearing, of the
projection of sound; things that bridge space; the miracles of memory and
reason, by which the present is conceived, and, when it is gone, its image
kept living in the brains of man and brute; the miracle of reproduction,
with its imperious desires and staggering consequences. And to put the
last touch upon this mountain mass of the revolting and the inconceivable,
all these prey upon each other, lives tearing other lives in pieces,
cramming them inside themselves, and by that summary process, growing fat:
the vegetarian, the whale, perhaps the tree, not less than the lion of the
desert; for the vegetarian is only the eater of the dumb.

Meanwhile our rotatory island, loaded with predatory life, and more
drenched with blood, both animal and vegetable, than ever mutinied ship,
scuds through space with unimaginable speed, and turns alternate cheeks to
the reverberation of a blazing world, ninety million miles away.

What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease of the agglutinated
dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing,
feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with
hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a
thing to set children screaming; and yet, looked at nearlier, known as his
fellows know him, how surprising are his attributes! Poor soul, here for
so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with desires so
incommensurate and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, savagely
descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow lives: who
should have blamed him, had he been of a piece with his destiny, and a
being merely barbarous? And we look and behold him instead filled with
imperfect virtues: infinitely childish, often admirably valiant, often
touchingly kind; sitting down, amidst his momentary life, to debate of
right and wrong and the attributes of the deity; rising up to do battle
for an egg or die for an idea; singling out his friends and his mate with
cordial affection; bringing forth in pain; rearing, with long-suffering
solicitude, his young.

To touch the heart of his mystery, we find in him one thought, strange to
the point of lunacy: the thought of duty; the thought of something owing
to himself, to his neighbor, to his God; an ideal of decency, to which he
would rise if it were possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be
possible, he will not stoop. The design in most men is one of conformity;
here and there, in picked natures, it transcends itself and soars on the
other side, arming martyrs with independence; but in all, in their
degrees, it is a bosom thought. Not in man alone, for we trace it in dogs
and cats whom we know fairly well; and doubtless some similar point of
honor sways the elephant, the oyster, and the louse, of whom we know so
little. But in man, at least, it sways with so complete an empire that
merely selfish things come second, even with the selfish; that appetites
are starved, fears are conquered, pains supported; that almost the dullest
shrinks from the reproof of a glance, although it were a child's; and all
but the most cowardly stand amid the risks of war; and the more noble,
having strongly conceived an act as due to their ideal, affront and
embrace death. Strange enough, if, with their singular origin and
perverted practice, they think they are to be rewarded in some future
life; stranger still, if they are persuaded of the contrary, and think
this blow, which they solicit, will strike them senseless for eternity.

I shall be reminded what a tragedy of misconception and misconduct man at
large presents: of organized injustice, cowardly violence, and treacherous
crime; and of the damning imperfections of the best. They cannot be too
darkly drawn. Man is indeed marked for failure in his efforts to do right.
But where the best consistently miscarry, how tenfold more remarkable that
all should continue to strive; and surely we should find it both touching
and inspiriting that, in a field from which success is banished, our race
should not cease to labor.

If the first view of this creature, stalking in his rotatory isle, be a
thing to shake the courage of the stoutest, on this nearer sight he
startles us with an admiring wonder. It matters not where we look, under
what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what depth of
ignorance, burthened with what erroneous morality: by camp-fires in
Assiniboia, the snow powdering his shoulders, the wind plucking his
blanket, as he sits, passing the ceremonial calumet and uttering his grave
opinions like a Roman senator: in ships at sea, a man inured to hardship
and vile pleasures, his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern and a
bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him, and he, for all that,
simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave
to drown for others; in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent
millions to mechanical employments, without hope of change in the future,
with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to his virtues, honest
up to his lights, kind to his neighbors, tempted perhaps in vain by the
bright gin-palace, perhaps long-suffering with the drunken wife that ruins
him; in India (a woman this time) kneeling with broken cries and streaming
tears, as she drowns her child in the sacred river; in the brothel, the
discard of society, living mainly on strong drink, fed with affronts, a
fool, a thief, the comrade of thieves, and even here keeping the point of
honor and the touch of pity, often repaying the world's scorn with
service, often standing firm upon a scruple, and at a certain cost,
rejecting riches--everywhere some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere
some decency of thought and carriage, everywhere the ensign of man's
ineffectual goodness. Ah! if I could show you this! if I could show you
these men and women, all the world over, in every stage of history, under
every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope,
without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of
virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of
honor, the poor jewel of their souls! They may seek to escape, and yet
they cannot; it is not alone their privilege and glory, but their doom;
they are condemned to some nobility; all their lives long, the desire of
good is at their heels, the implacable hunter.

Of all earth's meteors, here at least is the most strange and consoling:
that this ennobled lemur, this hair-crowned bubble of the dust, this
inheritor of a few years and sorrows, should yet deny himself his rare
delights, and add to his frequent pains, and live for an ideal, however
misconceived. Nor can we stop with man. A new doctrine, received with
screams a little while ago by canting moralists, and still not properly
worked into the body of our thoughts, lights us a step further into the
heart of this rough but noble universe. For nowadays the pride of man
denies in vain his kinship with the original dust. He stands no longer
like a thing apart. Close at his heels we see the dog, prince of another
genus: and in him too we see dumbly testified the same cultus of an
unattainable ideal, the same constancy in failure. Does it stop with the
dog? We look at our feet, where the ground is blackened with the swarming
ant: a creature so small, so far from us in the hierarchy of brutes, that
we can scarce trace and scarce comprehend his doings; and here also, in
his ordered polities and rigorous justice, we see confessed the law of
duty and the fact of individual sin. Does it stop, then, with the ant?
Rather, this desire of well-doing and this doom of frailty run through all
the grades of life; rather is this earth, from the frosty top of Everest
to the next margin of the internal fire, one stage of ineffectual virtues
and one temple of pious tears and perseverance.

The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together. It is the common and
the god-like law of life. The browsers, the biters, the barkers, the hairy
coats of field and forest, the squirrel in the oak, the thousand-footed
creeper in the dust, as they share with us the gift of life, share with us
the love of an ideal: strive like us,--like us are tempted to grow weary
of the struggle,--to do well; like us receive at times unmerited
refreshment, visitings of support, returns of courage; and are condemned
like us to be crucified between that double law of the members and the
will. Are they like us, I wonder, in the timid hope of some reward, some
sugar with the drug? Do they, too, stand aghast at unrewarded virtues, at
the sufferings of those whom, in our partiality, we take to be just, and
the prosperity of such as, in our blindness, we call wicked? It may be;
and yet God knows what they should look for. Even while they look, even
while they repent, the foot of man treads them by thousands in the dust,
the yelping hounds burst upon their trail, the bullet speeds, the knives
are heating in the den of the vivisectionist; or the dew falls, and the
generation of a day is blotted out. For these are creatures compared with
whom our weakness is strength, our ignorance wisdom, our brief span
eternity.

And as we dwell, we living things, in our isle of terror and under the
imminent hand of death, God forbid it should be man the erected, the
reasoner, the wise in his own eyes--God forbid it should be man that
wearies in well-doing, that despairs of unrewarded effort, or utters the
language of complaint. Let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation
groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy--surely not
all in vain.

JOHN RUSKIN

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS[8]

When I accepted the privilege of addressing you to-day, I was not aware of
a restriction with respect to the topics of discussion which may be
brought before this Society[9]--a restriction which, though entirely wise
and right under the circumstances contemplated in its introduction, would
necessarily have disabled me, thinking as I think, from preparing any
lecture for you on the subject of art in a form which might be permanently
useful. Pardon me, therefore, in so far as I must transgress such
limitation; for indeed my infringement will be of the letter--not of the
spirit--of your commands. In whatever I may say touching the religion
which has been the foundation of art, or the policy which has contributed
to its power, if I offend one, I shall offend all; for I shall take no
note of any separations in creeds, or antagonisms in parties: neither do I
fear that ultimately I shall offend any, by proving--or at least stating
as capable of positive proof--the connection of all that is best in the
crafts and arts of man, with the simplicity of his faith, and the
sincerity of his patriotism.

But I speak to you under another disadvantage, by which I am checked in
frankness of utterance, not here only, but everywhere: namely, that I am
never fully aware how far my audiences are disposed to give me credit for
real knowledge of my subject, or how far they grant me attention only
because I have been sometimes thought an ingenious or pleasant essayist
upon it. For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the
misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not without a
foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing so: until I was
heavily punished for this pride, by finding that many people thought of
the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning. Happily, therefore,
the power of using such pleasant language--if, indeed, it ever were
mine--is passing away from me; and whatever I am now able to say at all, I
find myself forced to say with great plainness. For my thoughts have
changed also, as my words have; and whereas in earlier life, what little
influence I obtained was due perhaps chiefly to the enthusiasm with which
I was able to dwell on the beauty of the physical clouds, and of their
colors in the sky; so all the influence I now desire to retain must be due
to the earnestness with which I am endeavoring to trace the form and
beauty of another kind of cloud than those: the bright cloud of which it
is written, "What is your life? It is even as a vapor that appeareth for a
little time, and then vanisheth away."

I suppose few people reach the middle or latter period of their age,
without having, at some moment of change or disappointment, felt the truth
of those bitter words; and been startled by the fading of the sunshine
from the cloud of their life into the sudden agony of the knowledge that
the fabric of it was as fragile as a dream, and the endurance of it as
transient as the dew. But it is not always that, even at such times of
melancholy surprise, we can enter into any true perception that this human
life shares in the nature of it, not only the evanescence, but the mystery
of the cloud; that its avenues are wreathed in darkness, and its forms and
courses no less fantastic, than spectral and obscure; so that not only in
the vanity which we cannot grasp, but in the shadow which we cannot
pierce, it is true of this cloudy life of ours, that "man walketh in a
vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain."

And least of all, whatever may have been the eagerness of our passions, or
the height of our pride, are we able to understand in its depths the third
and most solemn character in which our life is like those clouds of
heaven; that to it belongs, not only their transience, not only their
mystery, but also their power; that in the cloud of the human soul there
is a fire stronger than the lightning, and a grace more precious than the
rain; and that, though of the good and evil it shall one day be said
alike, that the place that knew them knows them no more, there is an
infinite separation between those whose brief presence had there been a
blessing, like the mist of Eden that went up from the earth to water the
garden, and those whose place knew them only as a drifting and changeful
shade, of whom the Heavenly sentence is, that they are "wells without
water; clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of
darkness is reserved forever."

To those among us, however, who have lived long enough to form some just
estimate of the rate of the changes which are, hour by hour in
accelerating catastrophe, manifesting themselves in the laws, the arts,
and the creeds of men, it seems to me that, now at least, if never at any
former time, the thoughts of the true nature of our life, and of its
powers and responsibilities, should present themselves with absolute
sadness and sternness. And although I know that this feeling is much
deepened in my own mind by disappointment, which, by chance, has attended
the greater number of my cherished purposes, I do not for that reason
distrust the feeling itself, though I am on my guard against an
exaggerated degree of it; nay, I rather believe that in periods of new
effort and violent change, disappointment is a wholesome medicine; and
that in the secret of it, as in the twilight so beloved by Titian, we may
see the colors of things with deeper truth than in the most dazzling
sunshine....

You know, there is a tendency in the minds of many men, when they are
heavily disappointed in the main purposes of their life, to feel, and
perhaps in warning, perhaps in mockery, to declare, that life itself is a
vanity. Because it has disappointed them, they think its nature is of
disappointment always, or at best, of pleasure that can be grasped by
imagination only; that the cloud of it has no strength nor fire within;
but is a painted cloud only, to be delighted in, yet despised. You know
how beautifully Pope has expressed this particular phase of thought:--

  Meanwhile opinion gilds, with varying rays,
  These painted clouds that beautify our days;
  Each want of happiness by hope supplied,
  And each vacuity of sense, by pride.
  Hope builds as fast as Knowledge can destroy;
  In Folly's cup, still laughs the bubble joy.
  One pleasure past, another still we gain,
  And not a vanity is given in vain.

But the effect of failure upon my own mind has been just the reverse of
this. The more that my life disappointed me, the more solemn and wonderful
it became to me. It seemed, contrarily to Pope's saying, that the vanity
of it _was_ indeed given in vain; but that there was something behind the
veil of it, which was not vanity. It became to me, not a painted cloud,
but a terrible and impenetrable one: not a mirage, which vanished as I
drew near, but a pillar of darkness, to which I was forbidden to draw
near. For I saw that both my own failure, and such success in petty things
as in its poor triumph seemed to me worse than failure, came from the want
of sufficiently earnest effort to understand the whole law and meaning of
existence, and to bring it to noble and due end; as, on the other hand, I
saw more and more clearly that all enduring success in the arts, or in any
other occupation, had come from the ruling of the lower purposes, not by a
conviction of their nothingness, but by a solemn faith in the advancing
power of human nature, or in the promise, however dimly apprehended, that
the mortal part of it would one day be swallowed up in immortality; and
that, indeed, the arts themselves never had reached any vital strength of
honor, but in the effort to proclaim this immortality, and in the service
either of great and just religion, or of some unselfish patriotism, and
law of such national life as must be the foundation of religion.

Nothing that I have ever said is more true or necessary--nothing has been
more misunderstood or misapplied--than my strong assertion that the arts
can never be right themselves unless their motive is right. It is
misunderstood this way: weak painters, who have never learned their
business, and cannot lay a true line, continually come to me, crying out,
"Look at this picture of mine; it _must_ be good, I had such a lovely
motive. I have put my whole heart into it, and taken years to think over
its treatment." Well, the only answer for these people is,--if one had the
cruelty to make it,--"Sir, you cannot think over _any_thing in any number
of years,--you haven't the head to do it; and though you had fine motives,
strong enough to make you burn yourself in a slow fire, if only first you
could paint a picture, you can't paint one, nor half an inch of one; you
haven't the hand to do it."

But, far more decisively we have to say to the men who _do_ know their
business, or may know it if they choose, "Sir, you have this gift, and a
mighty one; see that you serve your nation faithfully with it. It is a
greater trust than ships and armies: you might cast _them_ away, if you
were their captain, with less treason to your people than in casting your
own glorious power away, and serving the devil with it instead of men.
Ships and armies you may replace if they are lost, but a great intellect,
once abused, is a curse to the earth forever."

This, then, I meant by saying that the arts must have noble motive. This
also I said respecting them, that they never had prospered, nor could
prosper, but when they had such true purpose, and were devoted to the
proclamation of divine truth or law. And yet I saw also that they had
always failed in this proclamation--that poetry, and sculpture, and
painting, though great when they strove to teach us something about the
gods, never had taught us anything trustworthy about the gods, but had
always betrayed their trust in the crisis of it, and, with their powers at
the full reach, became ministers to pride and to lust. And I felt also,
with increasing amazement, the unconquerable apathy in ourselves the
hearers, no less than in these the teachers; and that, while the wisdom
and rightness of every act and art of life could only be consistent with a
right understanding of the ends of life, we were all plunged as in a
languid dream--our hearts fat, and our eyes heavy, and our ears closed,
lest the inspiration of hand or voice should reach us--lest we should see
with our eyes, and understand with our hearts, and be healed.

This intense apathy in all of us is the first great mystery of life; it
stands in the way of every perception, every virtue. There is no making
ourselves feel enough astonishment at it. That the occupations or pastimes
of life should have no motive, is understandable; but--that life itself
should have no motive,--that we neither care to find out what it may lead
to, nor to guard against its being forever taken away from us,--here is a
mystery indeed. For just suppose I were able to call at this moment to
anyone in this audience by name, and to tell him positively that I knew a
large estate had been lately left to him on some curious conditions; but
that though I knew it was large, I did not know how large, nor even where
it was--whether in the East Indies or the West, or in England, or at the
Antipodes. I only knew it was a vast estate, and that there was a chance
of his losing it altogether if he did not soon find out on what terms it
had been left to him. Suppose I were able to say this positively to any
single man in this audience, and he knew that I did not speak without
warrant, do you think that he would rest content with that vague
knowledge, if it were anywise possible to obtain more? Would he not give
every energy to find some trace of the facts, and never rest till he had
ascertained where this place was, and what it was like? And suppose he
were a young man, and all he could discover by his best endeavor was that
the estate was never to be his at all, unless he persevered, during
certain years of probation, in an orderly and industrious life; but that,
according to the rightness of his conduct, the portion of the estate
assigned to him would be greater or less, so that it literally depended on
his behavior from day to day whether he got ten thousand a year, or thirty
thousand a year, or nothing whatever--would you not think it strange if
the youth never troubled himself to satisfy the conditions in any way, nor
even to know what was required of him, but lived exactly as he chose, and
never inquired whether his chances of the estate were increasing or
passing away?

Well, you know that this is actually and literally so with the greater
number of the educated persons now living in Christian countries. Nearly
every man and woman in any company such as this outwardly professes to
believe--and a large number unquestionably think they believe--much more
than this; not only that a quite unlimited estate is in prospect for them
if they please the Holder of it, but that the infinite contrary of such a
possession--an estate of perpetual misery--is in store for them if they
displease this great Land-Holder, this great Heaven-Holder. And yet there
is not one in a thousand of these human souls that cares to think, for ten
minutes of the day, where this estate is or how beautiful it is, or what
kind of life they are to lead in it, or what kind of life they must lead
to obtain it.

You fancy that you care to know this; so little do you care that,
probably, at this moment many of you are displeased with me for talking of
the matter! You came to hear about the Art of this world, not about the
Life of the next, and you are provoked with me for talking of what you can
hear any Sunday in church. But do not be afraid. I will tell you something
before you go about pictures, and carvings, and pottery, and what else you
would like better to hear of than the other world. Nay, perhaps you say,
"We want you to talk of pictures and pottery, because we are sure that you
know something of them, and you know nothing of the other world." Well--I
don't. That is quite true. But the very strangeness and mystery of which I
urge you to take notice, is in this--that I do not--nor you either. Can
you answer a single bold question unflinchingly about that other
world?--Are you sure there is a heaven? Sure there is a hell? Sure that
men are dropping before your faces through the pavements of these streets
into eternal fire, or sure that they are not? Sure that, at your own
death, you are going to be delivered from all sorrow, to be endowed with
all virtue, to be gifted with all felicity, and raised into perpetual
companionship with a King, compared to whom the kings of the earth are as
grasshoppers, and the nations as the dust of his feet? Are you sure of
this? or, if not sure, do any of us so much as care to make it sure? and,
if not, how can anything that we do be right--how can anything we think be
wise? what honor can there be in the arts that amuse us, or what profit in
the possessions that please?

Is not this a mystery of life?

But further, you may, perhaps, think it a beneficent ordinance for the
generality of men that they do not, with earnestness or anxiety, dwell on
such questions of the future, because the business of the day could not be
done if this kind of thought were taken by all of us for the morrow. Be it
so; but at least we might anticipate that the greatest and wisest of us,
who were evidently the appointed teachers of the rest, would set
themselves apart to seek out whatever could be surely known of the future
destinies of their race; and to teach this in no rhetorical or ambiguous
manner, but in the plainest and most severely earnest words.

Now, the highest representatives of men who have thus endeavored, during
the Christian era, to search out these deep things, and relate them, are
Dante and Milton. There are none who for earnestness of thought, for
mastery of word, can be classed with these. I am not at present, mind you,
speaking of persons set apart in any priestly or pastoral office, to
deliver creeds to us, or doctrines; but of men who try to discover and set
forth, as far as by human intellect is possible, the facts of the other
world. Divines may perhaps teach us how to arrive there, but only these
two poets have in any powerful manner striven to discover, or in any
definite words professed to tell, what we shall see and become there; or
how those upper and nether worlds are, and have been, inhabited.

And what have they told us? Milton's account of the most important event
in his whole system of the universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently
unbelievable to himself; and the more so, that it is wholly founded on,
and in a great part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod's account of the
decisive war of the younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his poem is
a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention is visibly and
consciously employed; not a single fact being, for an instant, conceived
as tenable by any living faith.

Dante's conception is far more intense, and, by himself, for the time, not
to be escaped from; it is indeed a vision, but a vision only, and that one
of the wildest that ever entranced a soul--a dream in which every
grotesque type or fantasy of heathen tradition is renewed, and adorned;
and the destinies of the Christian Church, under their most sacred
symbols, become literally subordinate to the praise, and are only to be
understood by the aid, of one dear Florentine maiden.

I tell you truly that, as I strive more with this strange lethargy and
trance in myself, and awake to the meaning and power of life, it seems
daily more amazing to me that men such as these should dare to play with
the most precious truths (or the most deadly untruths) by which the whole
human race listening to them could be informed, or deceived--all the world
their audiences forever, with pleased ear, and passionate heart; and yet,
to this submissive infinitude of souls, and evermore succeeding and
succeeding multitude, hungry for bread of life, they do but play upon
sweetly modulated pipes; with pompous nomenclature adorn the councils of
hell; touch a troubadour's guitar to the courses of the suns; and fill the
openings of eternity, before which prophets have veiled their faces, and
which angels desire to look into, with idle puppets of their scholastic
imagination, and melancholy lights of frantic faith in their lost mortal
love.

Is not this a mystery of life?

But more. We have to remember that these two great teachers were both of
them warped in their temper, and thwarted in their search for truth. They
were men of intellectual war, unable, through darkness of controversy, or
stress of personal grief, to discern where their own ambition modified
their utterances of the moral law; or their own agony mingled with their
anger at its violation. But greater men than these have
been--innocent-hearted--too great for contest. Men, like Homer and
Shakespeare, of so unrecognized personality, that it disappears in future
ages, and becomes ghostly, like the tradition of a lost heathen god. Men,
therefore, to whose unoffended, uncondemning sight, the whole of human
nature reveals itself in a pathetic weakness, with which they will not
strive; or in mournful and transitory strength, which they dare not
praise. And all Pagan and Christian civilization thus becomes subject to
them. It does not matter how little, or how much, any of us have read,
either of Homer or Shakespeare; everything round us, in substance or in
thought, has been moulded by them. All Greek gentlemen were educated under
Homer. All Roman gentlemen, by Greek literature. All Italian, and French,
and English gentlemen, by Roman literature, and by its principles. Of the
scope of Shakespeare, I will say only that the intellectual measure of
every man since born, in the domains of creative thought, may be assigned
to him according to the degree in which he has been taught by Shakespeare.
Well, what do these two men, centres of mortal intelligence, deliver to us
of conviction respecting what it most behooves that intelligence to grasp?
What is their hope--their crown of rejoicing? what manner of exhortation
have they for us, or of rebuke? what lies next their own hearts, and
dictates their undying words? Have they any peace to promise to our
unrest, any redemption to our misery?

Take Homer first, and think if there is any sadder image of human fate
than the great Homeric story. The main features in the character of
Achilles are its intense desire of justice and its tenderness of
affection. And in that bitter song of the Iliad, this man, though aided
continually by the wisest of the gods, and burning with the desire of
justice in his heart, becomes yet, through ill-governed passion, the most
unjust of men; and, full of the deepest tenderness in his heart, becomes
yet, through ill-governed passion, the most cruel of men. Intense alike in
love and in friendship, he loses, first his mistress, and then his friend;
for the sake of the one, he surrenders to death the armies of his own
land; for the sake of the other, he surrenders all. Will a man lay down
his life for his friend? Yea, even for his _dead_ friend, this Achilles,
though goddess-born and goddess-taught, gives up his kingdom, his country,
and his life--casts alike the innocent and guilty, with himself, into one
gulf of slaughter, and dies at last by the hand of the basest of his
adversaries.

Is not this a mystery of life?

But what, then, is the message to us of our own poet, and searcher of
hearts, after fifteen hundred years of Christian faith have been numbered
over the graves of men? Are his words more cheerful than the Heathen's--is
his hope more near--his trust more sure--his reading of fate more happy?
Ah, no! He differs from the Heathen poet chiefly in this--that he
recognizes, for deliverance, no gods nigh at hand; and that, by petty
chance--by momentary folly--by broken message--by fool's tyranny--or
traitor's snare, the strongest and most righteous are brought to their
ruin, and perish without word of hope. He indeed, as part of his
rendering of character, ascribes the power and modesty of habitual
devotion to the gentle and the just. The death-bed of Katharine is bright
with visions of angels; and the great soldier-king, standing by his few
dead, acknowledges the presence of the Hand that can save alike by many or
by few. But observe that from those who with deepest spirit meditate, and
with deepest passion mourn, there are no such words as these; nor in their
hearts are any such consolations. Instead of the perpetual sense of the
helpful presence of the Deity, which through all heathen tradition is the
source of heroic strength, in battle, in exile, and in the valley of the
shadow of death, we find only, in the great Christian poet, the
consciousness of a moral law, through which "the gods are just, and of our
pleasant vices make instruments to scourge us"; and of the resolved
arbitration of the destinies, that conclude into precision of doom what we
feebly and blindly began; and force us, when our indiscretion serves us,
and our deepest plots do pall, to the confession that "there's a divinity
that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will."

Is not this a mystery of life?

Be it so, then. About this human life that is to be, or that is, the wise
religious men tell us nothing that we can trust; and the wise
contemplative men, nothing that can give us peace. But there is yet a
third class to whom we may turn--the wise practical men. We have sat at
the feet of the poets who sang of heaven, and they have told us their
dreams. We have listened to the poets who sang of earth, and they have
chanted to us dirges and words of despair. But there is one class of men
more--men, not capable of vision, nor sensitive to sorrow, but firm of
purpose; practised in business; learned in all that can be (by handling)
known. Men whose hearts and hopes are wholly in this present world; from
whom, therefore, we may surely learn, at least, how, at present,
conveniently to live in it. What will _they_ say to us, or show us by
example? These kings--these councilors--these statesmen and builders of
kingdoms--these capitalists and men of business, who weigh the earth, and
the dust of it, in a balance. They know the world, surely; and what is the
mystery of life to us is none to them. They can surely show us how to
live, while we live, and to gather out of the present world what is best.

I think I can best tell you their answer by telling you a dream I had
once. For though I am no poet, I have dreams sometimes. I dreamed I was at
a child's May-day party, in which every means of entertainment had been
provided for them by a wise and kind host. It was in a stately house, with
beautiful gardens attached to it; and the children had been set free in
the rooms and gardens, with no care whatever but how to pass their
afternoon rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, know much about what was to
happen next day; and some of them, I thought, were a little frightened,
because there was a chance of their being sent to a new school, where
there were examinations; but they kept the thoughts of that out of their
heads as well as they could, and resolved to enjoy themselves. The house,
I said, was in a beautiful garden, and in the garden were all kinds of
flowers; sweet, grassy banks for rest; and smooth lawns for play; and
pleasant streams and woods; and rocky places for climbing. And the
children were happy for a little while; but presently they separated
themselves into parties; and then each party declared it would have a
piece of the garden for its own, and that none of the others should have
anything to do with that piece. Next, they quarrelled violently which
pieces they would have; and at last the boys took up the thing, as boys
should do, "practically," and fought in the flower-beds till there was
hardly a flower left standing; then they trampled down each other's bits
of the garden out of spite; and the girls cried till they could cry no
more; and so they all lay down at last, breathless, in the ruin, and
waited for the time when they were to be taken home in the evening.[10]

Meanwhile, the children in the house had been making themselves happy also
in their manner. For them there had been provided every kind of indoor
pleasure: there was music for them to dance to; and the library was open,
with all manner of amusing books; and there was a museum full of the most
curious shells, and animals, and birds; and there was a workshop, with
lathes and carpenter's tools, for the ingenious boys; and there were
pretty fantastic dresses, for the girls to dress in; and there were
microscopes, and kaleidoscopes, and whatever toys a child could fancy; and
a table, in the dining-room, loaded with everything nice to eat.

But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three of the more
"practical" children, that they would like some of the brass-headed nails
that studded the chairs; and so they set to work to pull them out.
Presently, the others, who were reading, or looking at shells, took a
fancy to do the like; and, in a little while, all the children, nearly,
were spraining their fingers, in pulling out brass-headed nails. With all
that they could pull out, they were not satisfied; and then, everybody
wanted some of somebody else's. And at last, the really practical and
sensible ones declared, that nothing was of any real consequence, that
afternoon, except to get plenty of brass-headed nails; and that the books,
and the cakes, and the microscopes were of no use at all in themselves,
but only, if they could be exchanged for nail-heads. And at last they
began to fight for nail-heads, as the others fought for the bits of
garden. Only here and there, a despised one shrank away into a corner, and
tried to get a little quiet with a book, in the midst of the noise; but
all the practical ones thought of nothing else but counting nail-heads all
the afternoon, even though they knew they would not be allowed to carry so
much as one brass knob away with them. But no--it was, "Who has most
nails? I have a hundred, and you have fifty"; or, "I have a thousand, and
you have two. I must have as many as you before I leave the house, or I
cannot possibly go home in peace." At last, they made so much noise that I
awoke, and thought to myself, "What a false dream that is, of _children_!"
The child is the father of the man; and wiser. Children never do such
foolish things. Only men do.

But there is yet one last class of persons to be interrogated. The wise
religious men we have asked in vain; the wise contemplative men, in vain;
the wise worldly men, in vain. But there is another group yet. In the
midst of this vanity of empty religion, of tragic contemplation, of
wrathful and wretched ambition, and dispute for dust, there is yet one
great group of persons, by whom all these disputers live--the persons who
have determined, or have had it by a beneficent Providence determined for
them, that they will do something useful; that whatever may be prepared
for them hereafter, or happen to them here, they will, at least, deserve
the food that God gives them by winning it honorably: and that, however
fallen from the purity, or far from the peace, of Eden, they will carry
out the duty of human dominion, though they have lost its felicity; and
dress and keep the wilderness, though they no more can dress or keep the
garden.

These--hewers of wood and drawers of water; these--bent under burdens, or
torn of scourges; these--that dig and weave that plant and build; workers
in wood, and in marble, and in iron--by whom all food, clothing,
habitation, furniture, and means of delight are produced, for themselves,
and for all men beside; men, whose deeds are good, though their words may
be few; men, whose lives are serviceable, be they never so short, and
worthy of honor, be they never so humble--from these surely, at least, we
may receive some clear message of teaching; and pierce, for an instant,
into the mystery of life, and of its arts.

Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. But I grieve to say,--or
rather, for that is the deeper truth of the matter, I rejoice to
say,--this message of theirs can only be received by joining them, not by
thinking about them.

You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have obeyed you in coming.
But the main thing I have to tell you is, that art must not be talked
about. The fact that there is talk about it at all, signifies that it is
ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter ever speaks, or ever has
spoken, much of his art. The greatest speak nothing. Even Reynolds is no
exception, for he wrote of all that he could not himself do, and was
utterly silent respecting all that he himself did.

The moment a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about it.
All words become idle to him--all theories. Does a bird need to theorize
about building its nest, or boast of it when built? All good work is
essentially done that way--without hesitation, without difficulty, without
boasting; and in the doers of the best, there is an inner and involuntary
power which approximates literally to the instinct of an animal--nay, I
am certain that in the most perfect human artists, reason does _not_
supersede instinct, but is added to an instinct as much more divine than
that of the lower animals; as the human body is more beautiful than
theirs; that a great singer sings not with less instinct than the
nightingale, but with more--only more various, applicable, and governable;