120 



DISCOVERY 



good enough. By science he means something which 

 is " entirely distinct from, and oppxjsite to, poetry, 

 letters, oratory, history, and philosophy ; something 

 that has no relation to, or connection with, the emo- 

 tions, or with the character of man ; something wholly 

 unconnected with conduct ; something with which 

 the principles of right and wTong have no concern." 

 By scientists he singles out men like Darwin, Newtoni 

 Lord Merchiston (the inventor of logarithms). Lord 

 Lister, and Dr. Fle.xner. These people and others, 

 and their views, are discussed at length. 



It is well that Mr. Coleridge is an open and coura- 

 geous enemy of science. He does not tolerate it, 

 wishing in his heart that it had never existed. He 

 does not content himself by damning the thing with 

 faint or with patronising praise. He hates it. He 

 sees in it the remorseless enemy of mankind, a some- 

 thing which destroys simplicity, beauty, and gentle- 

 ness, something which restores barbarism under the 

 mask of civilisation. He wishes it had never come 

 into being. His attitude at times is rather hke that 

 of Arnold of Rugby. " Rather than have physical 

 science the principal thing in my son's mind," wrote 

 he to a friend, " I would gladly have him think that 

 the sun went round the eaith, and that the stars 

 were so many spangles set in the bright blue firma- 

 ment." And Hegel too adopted this position. 

 In attacking Newton's theory of the movement 

 of planets according to universal gravitation, that 

 philosopher said that the planets were not pulled 

 this way or that way like so many stones, but that they 

 move of themselves in their orbits like the blessed gods ! 

 But Mr. Coleridge goes further than Arnold and Hegel, 

 further, too, than the poets of two hundred years ago, 

 who poked fun at science as it then existed. He has 

 no use for science at all. He longs for the good old 

 days before Messrs. Watt and Stephenson (as he calls 

 them) got busy on the steam-engine, before factories 

 polluted our air, before telephones took away the 

 last vestige of our privacy, and before those infernal 

 doctors began inoculating their patients, and experi- 

 menting with animals. 



Says Mr. Coleridge : 



" How am I advantaged as a man, and as one who 

 loves his country, by getting to Edinburgh from 

 London in eight hours, having seen nothing ; instead 

 of getting there in three or four days, and seeing all 

 the loveliness of the countryside, the peiisants happily 

 working in the fields, the sweet, unconscious beauty 

 of the villages, the parks and comely mansions with 

 their stately gates on the old high-road, the vener- 

 able churches with their iv>'-covered rectories hard 

 by, the quaint red brick almshouses, founded ages ago 

 by pious benefactors, with their placid old inmates 

 sitting out in the sun, all eloquent of the blessed re- 

 pose of the quiet life ? " 



Hear, hear ! we say to this. It is all very delight- 

 ful, and so far we agree with every word he says. It 

 calls to mind Mr. Chesterton's mediaeval peasant, or 

 Tom Pinch's ride to London in Martin Chuzzleuit, or 

 Goldsmith's " Sweet Auburn, loveliest viUage of the 

 plain." Yet the remedy for avoiding the rush to 

 Edinburgh is so simple that it must have occurred to 

 Mr. Coleridge. Go by motor-car. .\nd here, I con- 

 fess, I am wrong. Mr. Coleridge is not against every- 

 thing scientific. He excepts the bicycle and the 

 motor-car. They are all right, but who on earth 

 wants to know about conies and chemistry, or about 

 wireless and medicine ? The folk in the good old days 

 got on without them : why cannot we ? Is it any use 

 telling immortal souls that centrobaric dispositions 

 are kinetically symmetrical ? Are we really any the 

 better for rushing about in tubes, or being shot up in 

 elevators, or making cotton pants by machinery ? 

 The author thinks not, and he is entitled to his opinions. 

 Of course, there is no harm in knowing something 

 about astronomy or how to build bridges and bore 

 tunnels, and how the common-suction pump works, 

 and how many blue beans make five. This, howeverj 

 is not wisdom. Why put on airs because we know 

 these things ? Anyone who is awake and not 

 mentally deficient can acquire these facts in a few 

 hours. But wisdom — ah ! wisdom is a plant of 

 slower grov.'th. 



Mr. Coleridge is most interesting and most amusing 

 when he is attacking. Now, we all love an attack. 

 It doesn't matter specially what it is that is being 

 attacked, so long as it is an attack, and icx are the spec- 

 tators. How annoying it is to find that the street 

 fight has concluded just a few moments before our 

 arrival ! Mr. Coleridge's special " stunt " is to poke 

 fun at the apparent weaknesses of men of science. 

 The editor of a scientific journal prints two absolutely 

 contradictory statements on opposite pages of his 

 magazine, and Mr. Coleridge does not let us forget it ; 

 a meteorologist says, in an unguarded moment, that 

 " the sun itself does not give out heat," and we are 

 treated to a humorous commentary thereon ; a chemist 

 describes the preparation of ortho-cyano-benzj'l-hexa- 

 methylene-tetraminium chloride, and Mr. Coleridge ad- 

 ministers to him a dialectic upper-cut for not speUing 

 it more shortly. 



He thinks, too, that scientists are arrogant. Boyle, 

 Cavendish, Russel Wallace, Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, 

 Silvanus Thompson arrogant ! Yes. 



" They are all illustrious and world famous, they 

 pelt each other with degrees and diplomas, the whole 

 country rings with their mutual hosannas, and the 

 fountains of honour play upon them hke a fire-engine 

 on a conflagration." 



