Au^. 20, 1874] 



NATURE 



309 



Inaugitral Address of Prof. John Tyndall, D.C.L., 

 LL.D., F.R.S., President, 



An impulse inherent in primeval man turned his thou hts and 

 questionings betimes towards the sources of natural phenomena. 

 The same impulse, inherited and intensified, is the spur of 

 scientific action to-day. Determined by it, by a process of ab- 

 straction from experience we form physical theories whicli lie 

 beyond the pale of experience, but which satisfy the desire of 

 the mind to see every natural occurrence resting upon a cause. 

 In forming their notions of the origin of things, our earliest his- 

 toric (and doubtless, we might add, our prehistoric) ancestors 

 pursued, as far as their intelligence permitted, the same course. 

 They also fell back upon experience, but with this difference — 

 that the particular experiences which furnished the weft and woof 

 of Iheir theories were drawn, not from the study of nature, but 

 from what lay much closer to them, tire observation of men. 

 Their theories accordingly took an anthropomorphic form. To 

 supersensual beings, which, "however potent and invisible, were 

 nothing but a species of human creatures, perhaps raised from 

 amongmankind, and retaining all human passionsand appetites, "* 

 were handed over the rule and governance of natural pheno- 

 mena. 



Tested by observation and reflection, these early notions failed 

 in the long run to satisfy the more penetrating intellects of our 

 iMce. Far in the depths of history we find men of exceptional 

 power differentiating themselves from the crowd, rejecting these 

 anthropomorphic notions, and seeking to connect natural pheno- 

 mena with their physical principles. But long prior to these 

 purer efforts of the understanding the merchant had been abroad, 

 and rendered the philosopher pof.siljle ; commerce had been de- 

 veloped, wealth amassed, leisure for travel and for speculation 

 secured, while races educated under different conditions, and 

 therefore differently informed and endowed, had been stimulated 

 and sharpened by mutual contact. In those regions where the 

 commercial aristocracy of ancient Greece mingled with its eastern 

 neighbours, the sciences were born, being nurtured and developed 

 by free-thinking and courageous men. The state of things to be 

 displaced may be gathered from a passage of Euripides quoted 

 by Hume. " There is nothing in the world ; no glory, no pros- 

 perity. The gods toss all into confusion ; mix everything with 

 ■'ts reverse, that all of us, from our ignorance and uncertainty, 

 may pay them the more worship and reverence." Now, as 

 science demands the radical extirpation of caprice and the absolute 

 reliance upon law in nature, there grew with the growth of 

 scientific notions a desire and determination to sweep from the 

 field of theory this mob of gods and demons, and to place natural 

 phenomena on a basis more congruent ^^•ith themselves. 



The problem which had been previously approached from 

 above was now attacked from belo^v ; theoretic effort passed 

 from the super to the tub-sensible. It was felt that to construct 

 the universe in idea it was necessary to have some notion of its 

 constituent parts — of what Lucretius subsequently called the 

 "First Beginnings." Abstracting again from experience, the 

 leaders of scientific speculation reached at length the pregnant 

 doctrine of atoms and molecules, the latest developments of 

 which were set forth with such power and clearness at the last 

 meeting of the British Association. Thought no doubt had long 

 hovered about this doctrine before it attained the piecision and 

 completeness which it assumed in the mind of Democritus,t a 

 philosopher who may well for a moment arrest our attention. 

 "Few great men," says Lange, in his excellent " History of 

 Materialism," a work to the spirit and the letter of which I am 

 equally in>lebted, " have lieen so despitefully used by history .as 

 I^emocrii us. In the distorted images .sent down to us through 

 unscien'ilic traditions there remait.s of hira almost nothing but 

 the n.ame of ihe 'laughing philosopher,' while figures of im- 

 measurably smaller significance spread themselves at full length 

 before us." Lange speaks of Bacon's high appreciation of l)e- 

 mocritus — for ample illustrations of which I am indebted to my 

 excellent friend I\Ir. Spedding, the learned editor and biographer 

 of Bacon. It is evident, indeed, that Bacon considered Demo- 

 critus to be a man of weightier metal than either Plato or Aris- 

 totle, though their philosophy "was noised and celebrated in the 

 schools, amid the din and pomp of professors. " It was not they, 

 but Genseric and Attila and the barbarians, who destroyed the 

 atomic philosophy. "For at a lime when all lunnan learning 

 had suffered shipwreck, these planks of Aristotelian and Platonic 

 philosophy, as being of a lighter and more inflated substance, 



* Hume, ** Natural Hlstory^of Religion." 

 t Bom 460 B.C.) 



were preserved and come down to us, while things more solid 

 sank and almost passed into obli\ion." 



The principles enunciated by Democritus reveal his uncom- 

 promising antagonism to those who deduced the phenomena of 

 nature from the caprices of the gods. They are briefly these : — 

 I . From nothing comes nothing. Nothing that exists can be 

 destroyed. All changes are due to the combination and separa- 

 tion of molecules. 2. Nothing happens by chance. Every oc- 

 currence has its cause from which it follows by necessity. 3. The 

 only existing things are the atoms and empty space ; all else is 

 mere opinion. 4. The atoms are infinite in number, and infinitely 

 various in form ; they strike together, and the lateral motions 

 and whirlings which thus arise are the beginnings of worlds. 

 5. The varieties of all things depend upon the varieties of their 

 atoms, in number, size, and aggregation. 6. Tlie soul consists 

 of free, smooth, round atoms, like those of fire. These are the 

 most mobile of all. They interpenetrate the whole body, and 

 in their motions the phenomena of life arise. Thus the atoms of 

 Democritus are individually without sensation ; they combine in 

 obedience to mechanical laws ; and not only organic forms, but 

 the phenomena of sensation and thought are also the result of 

 their combination. 



That great enigma, "the exquisite adaptation of one part of 

 an organism to another part, and to the conditions of life," more 

 especially the construction of the human body, Democritus made 

 no attempt to solve. Empedocles, a man of more fiery and 

 poetic nature, introduced the notion of love and hate among the 

 atoms to account for their combination and separation. Noti- 

 cing this gap in the doctrine of Democritus, he struck in with the 

 penetrating thought, linked, however, mth some wild specula- 

 tion, that it lay in the very nature of those combinations which 

 were suited to their ends (in other words, in harmony with their 

 envu-onment) to maintain themselves, while unfit combinations, 

 having no proper habitat, must rapidly disappear. Thus more 

 than 2 000 years ago the doctrine of the " survival of the fittest," 

 which in our day, not on the basis of vague conjecture, but of 

 positive knowledge, has been raised to such extraordinary signi- 

 ficance, had received at all events partial enunciation.* 



Epicurus,t said to be the son of a poor schoolmaster at Samos, 

 is the next dominant figure in the history of the atomic philo- 

 sophy. He mastered the writings of Democritus, heard lectures 

 in Athens, returned to Samos, and subsequently wandered 

 through various countries. He finally returned to Athens, 

 where he bought a garden, and surrounded himself by pupils, 

 iir the midst of whom he lived a pure and serene life, and died a 

 peaceful death. His philosophy was .almost identical with that 

 of Democritus ; but he never quoted either friend or foe. One 

 main object of Epicurus was to free the world from superstition 

 and the fear of death. Death he treated with indifference. It 

 merely robs us of sensation. As long as we are, death is not ; 

 and when death is, we are not. Life has no more evil for him 

 who has made up his mind that it is no evil not to live. He 

 adored the gods, but not in the ordinary fashion. The idea of 

 divine power, properly purified, he thought an elevating one. 

 Still he taught, " Not he is godless who rejects the gods of the 

 crowd, but rather he who accepts them." The gods were to 

 him eternal and immortal beings, whose blessedness excluded 

 every thought of care or occupation of any kind. Nature pursues 

 her course in accordance with everlasting laws, the gods never 

 interfering. They haunt 



" The lucid interspace of world and world 

 Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind. 

 Nor ever falls the least white star of snow. 

 Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, 

 Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar 

 Their sacred everlasting calm."t 



L^nge considers the relation of Epicurus to the gods subjec- 

 tive ; the indication probably of an ethical requirement of his 

 own nature. We caimot read history with open eyes, or study 

 human nature to its depths, and fail to discern such a require- 

 ment. Man never has been and he never will be satisfied with 

 the operations and products of the uirderstanding alone ; hence 

 physical science cannot cover all the demands of his nature. 

 But the history of the efforts made to satisfy these demands 

 might be broadly described as a history of errors — the error 

 consisting in ascribing fixity to that which is fluent, which varies 

 as we vary, being gross when we are gross, and becoming, as our 

 capacities widen, more abstiact and sublime. On one great 

 point the mind of Epicurus was at peace. He neither sought 



* Lange, 2nd edit., p. 23. t Bom 342 B.C. 



X Tennyson's " Lucretius." 



