CHAPTER XIX. DEPARTMENTS OF EXPRESSION-SCIENCE. Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organized common sense.— HUXLEY. Science corrects the old creeds, sweeps away with every new perception, our infantile catechisms, and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses.--EMERSON. IF F history be defined, 'in the narrower sense, as the narration of a consecutive series of phenomena in time, or the description of a coexistent series of phenomena in space, the information thus received, that certain phenomena are or have been, may be called historical or empirical the latter because given by experience or observation, and not obtained as the result of inference or reasoning. But the knowledge of a phenomenon as a mere fact, as a mere isolated event, does not content us. The constitution of our mind compels us to suppose a cause to connect the objects of our experience with others which afford the reasons of their existence, and (because we are lost in the multitude of details) to assort them in classes, to reduce the many to the one, the infinity of nature to the finitude of mind, to tend ever upward from particular facts to general laws, from general laws to universal principles. This knowledge of the why or how, this generalized knowledge, is called scientific, philosophical, or rational. As generalities, current maxims have something of the reality of science, though too little tested and too loosely worded to deserve its name. They are reached by the same process, but less rigorously; and receive the same expository handling as the most precise doctrines of physics or metaphysics. Says Professor Huxley: The vast results obtained by science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes, other than those which are practiced by every one of us in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones. Nor does that process of induction and deduction by which a lady, finding a stain of a particular kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has upset the inkstand thereon, differ in any way from that by which Adams and Leverrier discovered a new planet. The man of science, in fact, simply uses with scrupulous exactness the methods which we all habitually and at every moment use carelessly. Scientific discourse being addressed principally to the understanding, its formal requirements are clearness, completeness, certainty, and method. Obviously, the power shrewdly and competently to take to pieces or to observe parts, and the power to group together and see how all the parts are related to one great whole, are possessed by comparatively few, and cannot be expected from the first efforts of intelligence, either of individuals or of nations. As late as the fifteenth century, an Oxford Catechism asked, 'What is the substance of which Adam, the first man, was made?' and the answer was: I tell thee of eight pounds by weight. Tell me what they are called. I tell thee the first was a pound of earth, of which his flesh was made; the second was a pound of fire, whence his blood came, red and hot; the third was a pound of wind, and thence his breathing was given to him; the fourth was a pound of welkin, thence was his unsteadiness of mood given him; the fifth was a pound of grace, whence was given him his growth; the sixth was a pound of blossoms, whence was given him the variety of his eyes; and seventh was a pound of dew, whence he got his sweat; the eighth was a pound of salt, and thence were his tears salt. It was not until the seventeenth century that a new epoch was determined, for us, by the genius of Bacon, who proclaimed that, for the attainment of scientific knowledge, it is necessary to observe with care- that is, to analyze; to reject every element as hypothetical which this analysis does not spontaneously afford; to call in experiment in the aid of observation; and to attempt no synthesis or generalization until the relative analysis has been completely accomplished. At present, perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of the age is, that it draws, far more largely than heretofore, upon experiment as a means of arriving at truth, while the knowledge thus acquired is applied to art and investigation with a freedom and boldness hitherto unknown. The innovations thus made upon other modes of thought are without parallel. New direction has been given to inquiry and aspiration. Gifted intellects have been diverted from poetry—from the search for the ideal, to the search for the real. We have seen how profoundly historical method has been influenced by the conception of order. Metaphysicians study the nervous system, and speak of the 'dynamics' of mind. All departments have the scientific coloring, the widened survey of man and of nature. Though we have used the word philosophical in its widest acceptation, as synonymous with scientific, the knowledge of mind in whatever aspect, is denominated philosophy by preeminence. The one is essentially external, the other essentially interior. But, as before remarked, the scientific method-the method first and specially applicable to the study of matter-powerfully affects every department of thought. Theories of mental processes which despise or ignore the disclosures of physiology and natural history, cannot hope to receive favor. The mistake-if regret may be expressed-is in making physiological investigation the sole or chief guide. All its achievements have only illuminated the old statement that soul and body are here intimately related. The problem of the connection of soul and body,' says Tyndall, 'is as insolvable in its modern form as it was in the pre-scientific ages.' No light has been shed upon the arcana of intellect and volition; nor exclusive approaches from the outside. ical wisdom can bring word of solace or the troubled and weary who ask: No can there be, by No sage of physvision of peace to 'Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Cleanse the stuffed bosom of the perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?' To produce scientific works that shall be classed among literary productions, there must be added to a mastery of the subject a mastery of language that is equally rare. Few writers succeed in so far liberating science from the burden of technicality, and, by the various arts that cạn impress ideas, imparting to their material that quality which we call 'readableness,' as to merit and ensure, for the presentation, a high place in literature. In general, writings of this species are more valued for their content than for their literary character. The following passage from Darwin will serve as an illustration of the attempt (which, from the nature of the matter, can never be more than partially successful) to combine poetic interest with instruction in the expositions of science: It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, bring growth with reproduction; inheritance, which is almost implied by reproduction; variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a ratio of increase so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of character and the extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving — namely, the production of the higher animals- directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved. |