MAN AND SCIENCE: A REPLY, 



59 



the other — the movement of thought following 

 the movement of things." For practical pur- 

 poses, nothing more clear or comprehensive can 

 be required than these definitions, which are giv- 

 en by Mr. Lewes in the preface ' to his " History 

 of Philosophy." 



The knoidedge referred to is defined as aris- 

 ing from the " indisputable conclusions of expe- 

 rience ; " and the domain of philosophy is thus 

 limited : " While theology claims to furnish a sys- 

 tem of religious conceptions, and science to fur- 

 nish conceptions of the order of the world, phi- 

 losophy, detaching their widest conceptions from 

 both, furnishes a doctrine which contains an ex- 

 planation of the world and of human destiny." 



In furnishing this explanation, has our mod- 

 ern philosophy been subject to these limitations ? 

 Has she been content to generalize the " indis- 

 putable conclusions of experience?" Or has 

 she wildly plunged into the ocean of reckless 

 conjecture, and with worse than Procrustean in- 

 tolerance lopped, stretched, and mutilated, the 

 well-known facts of science, in the vain attempt 

 to adapt them to the exigencies of a foregone 

 conclusion '? A glance at the diverging views 

 taken by philosophy and science in the domain 

 of biology will answer these questions. 



What does science teach us as to the origin of 

 life and living organisms ? Prof. Tyndall, in The 

 Popular Science Monthly for February and 

 March, demonstrates in the most forcible, clear, 

 and logical manner, that " life does not appear 

 without the operation of antecedent life." Phi- 

 losophy, on the same authority, tells us that there 

 is no difference in kind between organic and in- 

 organic Nature, that the sun is the source of life, 

 and that " if solar light and heat can be produced 

 by the impact of dead matter, and if from the 

 light and heat thus produced we_ can derive the 

 energies which we have been accustomed to call 

 vital, it indubitably follows that vital energy may 

 have an approximately mechanical origin." 2 

 And we are assured that Nature is constant and 

 uniform in her operations, and that " life in all 

 its forms has arisen by an unbroken evolution 

 and through the instrumentality of what are 

 called natural causes." 3 



With respect to the infinitely varied forms of 

 animals and vegetables, science tells us that nei- 

 ther by observation nor by experiment has the 

 phenomenon of transition from one species to an- 

 other been witnessed, and that therefore the " in- 



1 Pp. xviii., xx., and xxxi. 



2 " Fragments of Science, 1 ' p. 4C0. 



3 Ibid., p. 507. 



disputable conclusion of experience " is that the 

 physiological characters of species are absolutely 

 constant. Philosophy " generalizes " this state- 

 ment by setting it aside altogether, teaching us 

 that these characters are plastic, that species are 

 not fixed, but always becoming something else, 

 and that all living beings have been derived from 

 one or a few original forms of the simplest kind. 



As to the highest study of the philosopher, 

 the nature and origin of man, science teaches us 

 that, while he approaches the higher animals in 

 many details of his organization, his essential na- 

 ture is entirely apart from theirs ; that he pos- 

 sesses faculties and endowments of which no 

 germ or trace is found even in the highest brutes, 

 which differ not in degree only but in kind from 

 theirs — that between them and him there is a 

 "vast chasm," a "practically infinite diverg- 

 ence," 1 a gulf bridged over by no known living 

 or extinct forms, the boundaries of which cannot 

 be approximated even in thought. Philosophy 

 tells us that man is but the latest term in an un- 

 broken evolution (!) from the nebular haze until 

 now — an evolution effected without " the inter- 

 vention of any but what are termed secondary 

 causes " 2 — the direct descendant of a catarrhine 

 ape. 



Why do so many among us believe in these 

 things, that have neither truth nor verisimilitude 

 to recommend them, that are supported by no 

 phenomena in Nature, and are opposed to all the 

 known facts of science ? Why do we give our- 

 selves over, bound mind, soul, and conscience, to 

 accept anything that is told us with sufficient 

 confidence and iteration ? Why cannot we look 

 sometimes with our own eyes, and not always ac- 

 cept the testimony of others ? When we are 

 told, ex cathedra, that the "mystery and miracle 

 of vitality" consists in the "compounding in the 

 organic world of forces belonging equally to the 

 inorganic," it is surely competent to us to inquire 

 further about this compounding, viz., what forces 

 are compounded, what amounts of each, and 

 what resemblance to vital force we can produce 

 by any such artificial compounding. If, in reply 

 to this, we can get nothing but vague generalities 

 as to what might possibly occur under unknown 

 conditions, it might be wise at least to suspend 

 our judgment, in this as in the other innumerable 

 instances where our philosophy (so called) is at 

 issue with science. 



But in truth we are victims to the art of 

 phrasing. "Men believe," says Bacon, "that 



1 Prof. Huxley's " Man's Place in Nature," p. 103. 



2 Ibid., p. 108. 



