622 



NATURE 



[October 28, 1897 



Petrarch, Tasso, and Ariosto. The most ardent admirers of 

 the Victorian poets would scarcely contend that any of them 

 stand on a higher pedestal than Shakespeare and Milton ; nor 

 would any German critic claim equality for any recent poet of 

 the Fatherland with Goethe and Schiller. In the delightful art 

 of music, the masterpieces of Haydn, Handel, and Mozart, 

 , judging by their popularity at the present day, are not surpassed 

 by the works of any of the later musical composers. 



I need not pursue the subject in greater detail. Wherever 

 we look —in all ages, among all peoples — we encounter the same 

 story with regard to that large and varied and most precious 

 outcome of the human mind which may be grouped under the 

 categories of the fine arts and literature. There is a history of 

 improvement and growth up to a certain culmination, or phase 

 of maturity. Beyond that point no further growth seems 

 possible — but rather, instead, a tendency to decline and 

 decadence.^ 



The evolution of .science differs fundamentally from that of 

 literature and the fine arts. Science advances by a succession 

 of discoveries. Each discovery constitutes a permanent addi- 

 tion to natural knowledge — and furnishes a post of vantage for, 

 and a suggestion to, further discoveries. This mode of advance 

 has no assignable limits ; for the phenomena of nature — the 

 material upon" which science works— are practically infinite in 

 extent and complexity. Moreover, science creates while it 

 investigates ; it creates new chemical compounds, new com- 

 binations of forces, new conditions of substances, and strange 

 new environments — such as do not exist at all on the earth's 

 surface in primitive nature. These " new natures," as Bacon 

 would have called them, open out endless vistas of lines of 

 future research. The prospects of the scientific inquirer are 

 therefore bounded by no horizon — and no man can tell, nor 

 even in the least conjecture, what ultimate issues he may 

 reach. 



The difference here indicated between the growth of art 

 and literature and the growth of science is, of course, 

 inherent in the subjects ; and is not difficult to explain. The 

 creation of an artist, whether in art or literature, is the expres- 

 sion and embodiment of the artist's own mind — and remains 

 always, in some mystic fashion, part and parcel of his person- 

 ality. But a scientific discovery stands detached ; and has only 

 an historical relation to the investigator. The work of an artist 

 is mainly subjective — the work of a scientific inquirer is 

 mainly objective. When and after a branch of art has 

 reached its period of maturity, the pupil of a master in that art 

 cannot start where his master ended, and make advances upon 

 his work ; he is fortunate if at the end of his career he can reach 

 his level. But the pupil of a scientific discoverer starts where 

 his master left off"; and, even though of inferior capacity, can 

 build upon his foundations and pass beyond him. It would 

 seem as if no real advance in art and literature were possible 

 except on the assumption that there shall occur an enlargement 

 of the artistic and literary faculty of the human mind. No such 

 assumption is required to explain and render possible the con- 

 tinuous advance of science. The discoverer of to-day need not 

 be more highly endowed than the discoverer of a hundred years 

 ago ; but he is able to reach further and higher because he 

 stands on a more advanced and elevated platform built up by 

 his predecessors. 



The fatal weakness of previous civilisations lay in the absence 

 of any element which had inherent in it the potentiality of con- 

 tinuous growth and unlimited expansion — and this is precisely 

 what exact science supplies to modern civilisation. A sharp 

 distinction must be drawn between the so-called science of 

 antiquity and the science of to-day. The ancients had a large 

 acquaintance with the- phenomena of nature, and were the 

 masters of many inventions. They knew how to extract the 

 common metals from their ores ; they made glass ; they were 

 skilled agriculturists ; they could bake, brew, and make wine, 

 manufacture butter and cheese, spin, weave, and dye cloth ; 

 they had marked the motions of the heavenly bodies, and kept 

 accurate record of time and seasons ; they used the wheel, 

 pulley and lever ; and knew a good deal of the natural history 

 of plants and animals, and of anatomy and practical medicine. 

 This store of information had been slowly acquired in the course 



1 If we take a wider view of the constituent elements of organised society 

 — a.nd embrace in our consideration the religious systems, the political and 

 civil institutions, the military organisations, the commerce and the miscel- 

 laneous disconnected mass of natural knowledge existing in the older civilisa- 

 tions — we look in vain for any constituent which had more than a limited 

 scope of expansion, and was not subject to decay. 



NO. 1461, VOL. 56] 



I of ages — mostly through haphazard discovery and chance ob- 

 servation — and formed a body of knowledge of inestimable value 

 for the necessities, conveniences, and embellishments of life. 

 But it was not science in the modern sense of the word.^ None 

 of this knowledge was systematised and interpreted by coordi- 

 nating principles ; nor illuminated by generalisations which 

 might serve as incentives and guides to further acquisitions. 

 Such knowledge had no innate spring of growth ; it could only 

 increase, if at all, by casual additions — as a loose heap of stones 

 might increase — and much of it was hable at any time to be 

 swept away into oblivion by the flood of barbaric conquest. 



It is quite obvious, from the subsequent course of events, that 

 there came into the world of natural knowledge about three 

 centuries ago, in the time of Galileo and Harvey, a something — 

 A movement, an impulse, a spirit— which was distinctly new — 

 which Bacon, with prophetic insight, termed a " new birth of 

 time." 



This remarkable movement did not originate with any start- 

 ling revelation ; it consisted rather in an altered mental atti- 

 tude, and a method. There arose a distrust in the dicta of 

 authority, and an increasing reliance on ascertained facts. 

 These latter came to be regarded as the true and only data upon 

 which natural knowledge could be securely founded and built 

 up. Doubt and question took the place of false certainty. 

 The hidden meaning of phenomena was sought out by observing 

 them under artificially varied conditions — or, to use the words 

 of Harvey, ' ' the secrets of nature were searched out and 

 studied by way of experiment." A p-iori reasoning from mere 

 assumptions, or from a few loosely observed facts, fell into dis- 

 credit. Observations were repeated and made more numerous 

 and more exact. These were linked together with more rigid 

 reasoning to stringent indue! ions. Hypotheses (or generalisa- 

 tions) were subjected to verification by experiment ; and their 

 validity was further tested by their efficacy in interpreting 

 cognate problems, and by their power to serve as guides to the 

 acquisition of fresh knowledge. Instruments of precision were 

 devised for more accurate observation of facts and phenomena 

 —for weighing and measuring, for estimating degrees of tem- 

 perature, the pressure of gases, the weight of the atmosphere, 

 and for recording time. The sense of sight was aided by means 

 of the telescope and microscope. The invention of instruments 

 and appliances for assisting research was an essential and in- 

 valuable feature of the "new philosophy." It is singular that 

 so little progress in this direction was made by the quick- 

 witted Greeks of the classical period ; and their neglect or 

 incapacity in this respect largely accounts for their conspicuous 

 failure in science as contrasted with their brilliant success in art 

 and literature.'-^ 



The new method soon began to yield fruit— at first slowly, 

 then more and more rapidly as the workers increased in number, 

 and the method was more fully understood. Discoveries were 

 no longer solely stumbled on accidentally, but were gathered in 

 as the fruit of systematic observation and purposive research. It 

 is not necessary for me, even if I had the time and ability, to 

 trace the history of scientific discovery from the time of Harvey 

 onward. I will only mention a few particulars by way of illus- 

 tration. You all know how, as lime passed on and knowledge 



1 " It is not a collection of miscellaneous, unconnected, unarranged 

 knowledge that can be considered as constituting .■science." — IVheivell. 



2 Whewell observes (" Histcry of the Jndu tive Sciences," vol. i. book i, 

 chap, lii.): "The Aristotelian physics cannot be considered as otherwise 

 than a complete failure. It collected no general laws from facts; and 

 consequently, when it tried to explain facts, it had no principles which were 

 of any avail." Whewell argues that this failure was not due to the neglect 

 of facts. He goes on to say : " It may excite surprise to find that Aristotle, 

 and other ancient philosophers, not only asserted in the most pointed manner 

 that all our knowledge mu>t begin from experience, but also stated in 

 langu.nge much resembling the habitual phraseology of the most modern 

 schools of philosophising, that particular facts must be collected; that from 

 these general principles must be obtaint d by induction; and that these 

 principles, when of the most general kind, are axioms." Then he quotes 

 passages in proof from Aristotle's writings. It is, however, pretty evident 

 that Aristotle's reverence for facts was no more than apious opinion, which 

 he habitually ignored in the actual handlirg of questions of natural know- 

 ledge. His treatise " On the Parts of Animals" bristles with errors of ob- 

 servation which a very moderate amount of painstaking would have recti- 

 fied. Had the ancient Greeks, and their successors in the middle ages, 

 been more accurate observers of facts, and had they sought for and invented 

 instruments for the more exact observation of facts, they would not have so 

 conspicuously failed to establish at least the foundations of exact science. 

 The historian of the inductive sciences, however, will have it otherwise. He 

 sums up his argument thus: "The defect was that, although they had in 

 their possession Facts and Ideas, the Ideas were not distinct and appro- 

 priate to the Facts." Is it not rather the case that the " Ideas were not 

 distinct and appropriate to the Facts," precisely because the " Facts" were 

 indistinctly seen and imperfectly apprehended ? 



