THE BELFAST ADDRESS 



39 



perfectly conclusive by many has been 

 adduced ; and that were some of us who 

 have pondered this question to follow a 

 very common example and accept testi- 

 mony because it falls in with our belief, 

 we also should eagerly close with the 

 evidence referred to. But there is in the 

 true man of science a desire stronger 

 than the wish to have his beliefs upheld 

 namely, the desire to have them true. 

 And this stronger wish causes him to 

 reject the most plausible support, if he 

 has reason to suspect that it is vitiated 

 by error. Those to whom I refer as 

 having studied this question, believing 

 the evidence offered in favour of " spon- 

 taneous generation " to be thus vitiated, 

 cannot accept it. They know full well 

 that the chemist now prepares from in- 

 organic matter a vast array of substances, 

 which were some time ago regarded as 

 the sole products of vitality. They are 

 intimately acquainted with the structural 

 power of matter, as evidenced in the 

 phenomena of crystallisation. They can 

 justify scientifically their belief in its 

 potency, under the proper conditions, to 

 produce organisms. But, in reply to 

 your question, they will frankly admit 

 their inability to point to any satisfactory 

 experimental proof that life can be 

 developed, save from demonstrable an- 

 tecedent life. As already indicated, they 

 draw the line from the highest organisms 

 through lower ones down to the lowest ; 

 and it is the prolongation of this line by 

 the intellect, beyond the range of the 

 senses, that leads them to the conclusion 

 which Bruno so boldly enunciated. 1 



The " materialism " here professed 

 may be vastly different from what you 

 suppose, and I therefore crave your 

 gracious patience to the end. "The 

 question of an external world," says 

 J. S. Mill, " is the great battle-ground of 

 metaphysics." 2 Mr. Mill himself reduces 

 external phenomena to " possibilities of 

 sensation." Kant, as we have seen, 



1 Bruno was a " Pantheist," not an " Atheist" 

 or a " Materialist." 



a Examination of Hamilton, p. 154. 



made time and space " forms " of our 

 own intuitions. Fichte, having first by 

 the inexorable logic of his understanding 

 proved himself to be a mere link in that 

 chain of eternal causation which holds 

 so rigidly in nature, violently broke the 

 chain by making nature, and all that it 

 inherits, an apparition of the mind. 1 

 And it is by no means easy to combat 

 such notions. For when I say " I see 

 you," and that there is not the least doubt 

 about it, the obvious reply is, that what 

 I am really conscious of is an affection 

 of my own retina. And if I urge that 

 my sight can be checked by touching 

 you, the retort would be that I am equally 

 transgressing the limits of fact ; for what I 

 am really conscious of is, not that you are 

 there, but that the nerves of my hand 

 have undergone a change. All we hear, 

 and see, and touch, and taste, and smell 

 are, it would be urged, mere variations 

 of our own condition, be'yond which, 

 even to the extent of a hair's breadth, 

 we cannot go. That anything answering 

 to our impressions exists outside of our- 

 selves is not a fact, but an inference, to 

 which all validity would be denied by 

 an idealist like Berkeley, or by a sceptic 

 like Hume. Mr. Spencer takes another 

 line. With him, as with the uneducated 

 man, there is no doubt or question as to 

 the existence of an external world. But 

 he differs from the uneducated, who 

 think that the world really is what con- 

 sciousness represents it to be. Our 

 states of consciousness are mere symbols 

 of an outside entity which produces 

 them and determines the order of their 

 succession, but the real nature of which 

 we can never know. 2 In fact, the whole 

 process of evolution is the manifestation 

 of a power absolutely inscrutable to the 



1 Bestimmung des Menschen. 



2 In a paper, at once popular and profound, 

 entitled " Recent Progress in the Theory of 

 Vision," contained in the volume of lectures by 

 Helmholtz, published by Longmans, this sym- 

 bolism of our states of consciousness is also 

 dwelt upon. The impressions of sense are the 

 mere signs of external things. In this paper 

 Helmholtz contends strongly against the vievr 

 that the consciousness of space is inborn ; and 



