6o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pearance throughout. Enough has been said to indicate the di- 

 versity of various minds in these respects, and the importance of 

 recognizing and studying these distinctions, alike for their educa- 

 tional utilization and as a contribution to a scientific psychology. 



ANTAGONISM.* 



By Sib WILLIAM E. GROVE, F. E. S. 



SOME months ago, shortly after I had resigned my office of 

 Judge of the High Court, I was expressing to a friend my 

 fear of the effect of having no compulsory occupation, when he 

 said, by way of consolation, " Never mind, * for Satan finds some 

 mischief still for idle hands to do.' " You may possibly in the 

 course of this evening think he was right. I have chosen a title 

 for my lecture which may not fully convey to your minds the 

 scope of the views which I am going to submit to you. I propose 

 to adduce some arguments to show that "antagonism," a word 

 generally used to signify something disagreeable, pervades all 

 things ; that it is not the baneful thing which many consider it ; 

 that it produces at least quite as much good as evil ; but that, 

 whatever be its effect, my theory — call it, if you will, speculation 

 — is that it is a necessity of existence, and of the organism of the 

 universe so far as we understand it ; that motion and life can not 

 go on without it ; that it is not a mere casual adjunct of Nature, 

 but that without it there would be no Nature, at all events as we 

 conceive it ; that it is inevitably associated with unorganized mat- 

 ter, with organized matter, and with sentient beings. 



I am not aware that this view, in the breadth in which I sug- 

 gest it, has been advanced before. Probably no idea is new in all 

 respects in the present period of the world's history. It has been 

 said by a desponding pessimist that " there is nothing new, and 

 nothing true, and nothing signifies," but I do not entirely agree 

 with him ; I believe that in what I am about to submit there is 

 something new and true in the point of view from which I regard 

 the matter ; whether it signifies or not is for you to judge. The 

 universality of antagonism has not received the attention it seems 

 to me to deserve from the fact of the element of force, or rather of 

 the conquering force, being mainly attended to, and too little note 

 taken of the element of resistance unless the latter vanquishes the 

 force, and then it becomes, popularly speaking, the force, and the 

 former force the resistance. 



There are propositions applying more or less to Avhat I am go- 

 ing to say of some antiquity. Heraclitus, quoted by Prof. Huxley, 



* Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, on April 20, 1888. 



