A7i^sr. 20, 1874] 



NATURE 



311 



had he devoted himself wholly to that side of science, he might 

 have reached in it an eminence comparable with that which he 

 attained as a poet. In sharpness of oljservation, in the detec- 

 tion of analojjies, however apparently remote, in the classifica- 

 tion and organisation of facts according to the analogies discerned, 

 fJoethe possessed extraordinary powers. These elements of 

 ■cientific inquiry fall in with the discipline of the poet. But, on 

 the other hand, a mind thus richly endowed in the direction of 

 natural history, may be almost shorn of endowment as regards 

 the more strictly called physical and mechanical sciences. 

 Goethe was in this condition. He could not formulate distinct 

 mechanical conceptions ; he could not see the force of mechani- 

 cal reasoning ; and in regions where such reasoning reigns 

 supreme he became a mere ignis fatiius to those who followed 

 him. 



I have sometimes permitted myself to compare Aristotle with 

 Goethe, to credit the Stagirite with an almost superhuman 

 power of amassing and systematising facts, but to consider him 

 fatally defective on that side of the mind in respect to which 

 incompleteness has been justly ascribed to Goethe. Whewell 

 refers the errors of Aristotle, not to a neglect of facts, but to " a 

 neglect of the idea appropriate to the facts ; the idea of mechnni- 

 cal cause, which is force, and the substitution of vague or inap- 

 plicable notions, involving only relations of space or emotions of 

 wonder." This is doubtless true; but the woid "neglect" 

 implies mere intellectual misdirection, whereas in Aristotle, as in 

 Goethe, it was not, I believe, misdirection, but sheer natural 

 incapacity which lay at the root of liis mistakes. As a physicist, 

 Aristotle displayed what we should consider some of the worst 

 attributes of a modern physical investigator — indistinctness of 

 ideas, confusion of mind, and a confident use of language, which 

 led to the delusive notion that he had really mastered his sub- 

 ject, while he as yet had failed to grasp even the elements of 

 it. He put words in the place of things, subject in the place of 

 object. He preached induction without practising it, inverting 

 the true order of inquiry by passing from the general to the par- 

 ticular, instead of from the particular to the general, fie made 

 of the universe a closed sphere, in the centre of which he fixed 

 the earth, proving from general principles, to his own satisfac- 

 tion and that of the world for near 2,000 years, that no other 

 universe was possible. His notions of motion were entirely 

 unphysical. It was natural or unnatural, better or worse, calm 

 or violent — no real mechanical conception regarding it lying at 

 the bottom of his mind. He affirmed that a vacuum could not 

 exist, and proved that if it did exist motion in it would be im- 

 possible. He determined a priori how many species of animals 

 must exist, and showed on general principles why animals must 

 have such and sucli parts. When an eminent contemporary 

 philosopher, who is far removed from errors of this kind, 

 remembers these abuses of the d priori method, he will be able 

 to make allowance for the jealousy of physicists as to tlie accept- 

 ance of so-called it priori truths. Aristotle's errors of detail 

 were grave and numerous. He affirmed that only in man we 

 had the beating of the heart, that the left side of the body was 

 colder than the right, that men have more teeth than women, 

 and that there is an empty space, not at the front, but at the 

 back of every man's head. 



There is one essential quality in physical conceptions which 

 was entirely wanting in those of Aristotle and his followers. I 

 wish it could be expressed by a word untainted by its associa- 

 tions ; it signifies a capability of being placed as a coherent 

 picture before the mind. The Germans express the act of pic- 

 turing by the word vorstdlcn, and the picture they call a 7vrstLl- 

 lung. We have no word in English which comes nearer to our 

 requirements than iinaginalion, and, taken with its proper limi- 

 tations, the word answers very well ; but, as just intimated, it is 

 tainted by its associations, and therefore objectionable to some 

 minds. Compare, with reference to this capacity of mental pre- 

 sentation, the case of the Aristotelian, who refers the ascent of 

 water in a pump to Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, with that of 

 Pascal when he proposed to solve the question of atmospheric 

 pressure by the ascent of the Puy de Dome. In the one case 

 llie terms of the explanation refuse to fall into place as a physical 

 image ; in the other the image is distinct, the fall and rise of the 

 barometer being clearly figured as the balancing of two varying 

 and opposing pressures. 



During the drought of the Middle Ages in Christendom, the 

 Arabian intellect, as forcibly shown by Draper, was active. 

 With the intrusion of the Moors into Spain, cleanliness, order, 

 learning, and refinement took the place of their opposites. 



When smitten with the disease, the Christian peasant resorted 

 to a shrine ; the Moorish one to an instmcted physician. The 

 Arabs encouraged translations from the Greek philosophers, but 

 not from the Greek poets. They turned in disgust "from the 

 lewdness of our classical mythology, and denounced as an un- 

 pardonable blasphemy all connection Ijetween the impure 

 Olympian Jove and the Most High God." Draper traces still 

 furtlier than Whewell the Arab elements in our scientific terms, 

 and points out that the under garment of ladies retains to this 

 hour its Arab name. He gives examples of what Arabian men 

 of science accomplished, dwelling particularly on Alhazen, who 

 was the first to correct the Platonic notion that rays of light are 

 emitted by the eye. He discovered atmospheric refraction, and 

 points out that we see the sun and moon after they have set. 

 He explains the enlargement of the sun and moon, and the 

 shortening of the vertical diameters of both these bodies, when 

 near the horizon. He is awaie that the atmosphere decreases in 

 density with increase of height, and actually fixes its height at 

 SSi miles. In the Book of the Balance Wisdom, he sets forth 

 the connection between the weight of the atmosphere and its 

 increasing density. He shows that a body will weigh differently 

 in a rare and a dense atmosphere : he considers the force with 

 which plunged bodies rise through heavier media. He under- 

 stands the doctrine of the centre of gravity, and applies 

 it to the investigation of balances and steelyards. He re- 

 cognises gravity as a force, though he falls into the error of 

 making it diminish at the distance, and of making it purely 

 terrestrial. He knows the relation between the velocities, 

 spaces, and times of falling bodies, and has distinct ideas of 

 capillary attraction. He improves the hydrometer. The deter- 

 mination of the densities of the bodies as given by Alhazen 

 approach very closely to our own. " I join," says Draper, in the 

 pious prayer of Alhazen, "that in the day of judgment the 

 All-Merciful will take pity on the soul of Abur-Raih.in, because 

 he was the first of the race of men to construct a table of specific 

 gravities." If all this be historic truth (and I have entire con- 

 fidence in Dr. Draper), well may he " deplore the systematic 

 manner in which the literature of Europe has contrived to put 

 out of sight our scientific obligations to the Mahommedans." * 



Towards the close of the stationary period a word-weariness, 

 it I may so express it, took more and more possession of men's 

 minds. Christendom had become sick of the school philosophy 

 and its verbal wastes, which led to no issue, but left the intellect 

 in everlasting haze. Here and there was heard the voice of one 

 impatiently crying in the wilderness, "Not unto Aristotle, not 

 unto subtle hypotheses, not unto Church, Bible, or blind tradi- 

 tion, must we turn for a knowledge of the universe, but to the 

 direct investigation of nature by observation and experiment." 

 In 1543 the epoch-making work of Copernicus on the paths of 

 tlie heavenly bodies appeared. The total crash of Aristotle's 

 closed universe with the earth at its centre followed as a 

 consequence; a. id "the earth moves" became a kind of 

 watchword among intellectual freemen. Copernicus was the 

 Canon of the Church of Frauenburg, in the diocese of 

 Ermeland. For three-and-thirty years he had withdrawn 

 himself from the world and devoted shimself to the consoli- 

 dation of his great scheme of the solar system. He made its 

 blocks eternal ; and even to those who feared it and desired its 

 overthrow it was so obviously strong that they refrained from 

 meddling with it. In the last year of the life of Copernicus his 

 book appeared : it is said that the old man received a copy of it 

 a few days before his death, and then departed in peace. 



The Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was one of the 

 earliest converts to the new astronomy. Taking Lucretius as 

 his exemplar, he revived the notion of the infinity of worlds ; 

 and combining with it the doctrine of Copernicus, reached the 

 sublime generalisation that the fixed stars are suns, scattered 

 numberless through space and accompanied by satellites, which 

 bear the same relation to them as the earth does to our sun, or 

 our moon to our earth. This was an expansion of transcendent 

 import ; but Bruno came closer than this to our present line of 

 thought. Struck with tlie problem of the generation and main- 

 tenance of organisms, and duly pondering it, he came to the con- 

 clusion that nature in her productions does not imitate the technic 

 of man. Her process is one of unravelling and unfolding. The 

 infinity of forms under which matter appears were not imposed 

 upon it by an external artificer ; by its own intrinsic force and 

 virtue it brings these forms forth. Matter is not the mere naked, 

 empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but 

 * "Intellectual Development of Europe," p. 359. 



