713 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Union 

 Unity 



Comte's later speculations is this inordinate 

 demand for " unity " and " systematization." 

 This is the reason why it does not suffice to 

 him that all should be ready, in case of 

 need, to postpone their personal interests 

 and inclinations to the requirements of the 

 general good; he demands that each should 

 regard as vicious any care at all for his 

 personal interests, except as a means to the 

 good of others should be ashamed of it, 

 should strive to cure himself of it, because 

 his existence is not " systematized," is not 

 in " complete unity," as long as he cares 

 for more than one thing. The strangest part 

 of the matter is that this doctrine seems 

 to M. Comte to be axiomatic. That all per- 

 fection consists in unity, he apparently con- 

 siders to be a maxim which no sane man 

 thinks of questioning. It never seems to en- 

 ter into his conceptions that any one could 

 object ab initio, and ask why this universal 

 systematizing, systematizing, systematizing ? 

 Why is it necessary that all human life 

 should point but to one object, and be culti- 

 vated into a system of means to a single 

 end? May it not be the fact that mankind, 

 who, after all, are made up of single hu- 

 man beings, obtain a greater sum of happi- 

 ness when each pursues his own, under the 

 rules and conditions required by the good 

 of the rest, than when each makes the good 

 of the rest his only object, and allows him- 

 self no personal pleasures not indispensable 

 to the preservation of his faculties? The 

 regimen of a blockaded town should be cheer- 

 fully submitted to when high purposes re- 

 quire it, but is it the ideal perfection of 

 human existence? MILL Positive Philos- 

 ophy of Auguste Comte, p. 127. (H. H. & 

 Co., 1887.) 



353O. UNITY, LOWER VS. HIGHER 



Position of Agnosticism. [The] funda- 

 mental inconsistency in the agnostic philos- 

 ophy becomes all the more remarkable when 

 we find that the very men who tell us that 

 we are not one with anything above us are 

 the same who insist that we are one with 

 everything beneath us. Whatever there is in 

 us or about us which is purely animal we 

 may see everywhere; but whatever there is 

 in us purely intellectual and moral we del- 

 ude ourselves if we think we see it anywhere. 

 There are abundant homologies between our 

 bodies and the bodies of the beasts, but there 

 are no homologies between our minds and 

 any mind which lives and manifests itself 

 in Nature. Our livers and our lungs, our 

 vertebrae and our nervous systems, are iden- 

 tical in origin and in function with those 

 of the living creatures round us ; but there 

 is nothing in Nature or above it which 

 corresponds to our forethought, or design, 

 or purpose to our love of the good or our 

 admiration of the beautiful to our indig 

 nation with the wicked, or to our pity for 

 the suffering and the fallen. I venture to 

 think that no system of philosophy that has 

 ever been taught on earth lies under such a 



weight of antecedent improbability; and this 

 improbability increases in direct proportion 

 to the success of science in tracing the unity 

 of Nature, and in showing step by step how 

 its laws and their results can be brought 

 more and more into direct relation with the 

 mind and intellect of man. ARGYLL Unity 

 of Nature, ch. 8, p. 166. _(Burt.) 



3531. UNITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE 



The truth is that there is no branch of 

 human inquiry, however purely physical, 

 which is more than the word "branch" 

 implies; none which is not connected through 

 endless ramifications with every other, and 

 especially that which is the root and center 

 of them all. If He who formed the mind 

 be one with Him who is the Orderer of all 

 things concerning which that mind is occu- 

 pied, there can be no end to the points of 

 contact between our different conceptions 

 of them, of Him, and of ourselves. ARGYLL 

 Reign of Law, ch. 2, p. 35. (Burt.) 



3532. UNITY OF LANGUAGE 

 WRONGLY INFERRED History Told in 

 Borrowed Words Intercourse of Nations. 

 Before now a writer has proved to his own 

 satisfaction that Turkish, Arabic, and Per- 

 sian are all branches of one primitive lan- 

 guage, his argument being that the Turks 

 call a man adam, as the Arabs call the first 

 man, and a father pader, which is like the 

 Persian word. The fact is true enough, but 

 what the argument omits to notice is that 

 the Turks have been for ages enriching their 

 own barbaric language by taking words 

 from the cultured Arabic and Persian, and 

 adam and pader are such lately borrowed 

 words, not philologically Turkish at all. 

 Borrowed words like these are indeed valu- 

 able evidence, but what they prove is not the 

 common origin of languages it is inter- 

 course between the nations speaking them. 

 They often give the clew to the country 

 from which some new produce was obtained, 

 or some new instrument, or idea, or insti- 

 tution was learned. Thus in English it is 

 seen by the very words how Italy furnished 

 us with opera, sonata, chiaroscuro, while 

 Spain gave gallina and mulatto; how from 

 the Hebrews we have sabbath and jubilee, 

 from the Arabs zero and magazine, while 

 Mexico has supplied chocolate and tomato, 

 Haiti hammock and hurricane, Peru guano 

 and quinin, and even the languages of the 

 South Sea Islands are represented by ta- 

 boo and tatoo. But in all this there is not 

 one particle of evidence that any one of 

 these languages is sprung from the same 

 family with any other. TYLOR Anthropol- 

 ogy, ch. 6, p. 154. (A., 1899.) 



3533. UNITY OF MAN WITH LOW- 

 ER NATURE A Beneficent, Provision. 

 It is because of the composition of our 

 body that the animals and plants around 

 us are capable of ministering to our support 

 that the common air is to us the very 



