312 



NA TURE 



[Aiig. 20, 1874 



the universal mother, who brings forth all things as the fruit of 

 her own womli. 



This outspoken man was originally a Dominican monk. He 

 was accused of heresy and had to fly, seeking refuj^e in Genevn. 

 Paris, England, and Germany. In 1592 he fell into the hands 

 of the Inquisition at Venice. He was imprisoned for many 

 years, tried, degraded, excommunicated, and handed over to the 

 civil power, with the request that he should be treated gently 

 and '■ without the shedding of blood." This meant that he was 

 to be burnt ; and burnt accordingly he was, on Feb. 16, 1600. 

 To escape a similar fate, Galileo, thirty-three years afterwards, 

 abjured, upon his knees and with his hand on the holy gospels, 

 the heliocentric doctrine. After Galileo came Kepler, who 

 from his German home defied the power beyond the Alps. He 

 traced out from pre-existing observations the laws of planetary 

 motion. The problem was thus prepared for Newton, who bound 

 those empirical laws together by the principle of gravitation. 



During the Middle Ages the doctrine of atoms had to all 

 appearance vanished from discussion. In all probability it held 

 its ground among sober minded and thoughtful men, though 

 neither the Church nor the world \vas prepared to hear of it 

 with tolerance. Once, in the year 1348, it received distinct 

 expression. iJut retractation by compulsion immediately followed, 

 and thus discouraged, it slumbered till the 17th century, when it 

 was revived by a contemporary of Hobbes and Descartes, the 

 Pere Gassendi. 



The analytic and S3'nthetic tendencies of the human mind ex- 

 hibit themselves throughout history, great writers ranging them- 

 selves sometimes on the one side, sometimes on the other. Men 

 of lofty feelings, and minds open to the elevating impressions 

 produced by nature as a whole, whose satisfaction, therefore, is 

 rather ethical than logical, have leaned to the synthetic side ; 

 while the analytic harmonises best with the more precise and 

 more mechanical bias which seeks the .satisfaction of the under- 

 standing. .Some form of pantheism was usually adopted by the 

 one, while a detached Creator, working more or less after the 

 manner of men, was often assumed by the other.* Gassendi is 

 hardly to be ranked with either. Having formerly acknowledged 

 God as the first great cause, he immediately drops the idea, 

 applies the known laws of mechanics to the atoms, and thence 

 deduces all vital phenomena. God who created eaith and water, 

 plants and animals, produced in the first place a definite number 

 of atoms, which constituted the seed of all things. Then began 

 that series of combinations and decompositions which goes on at 

 the present day, and which will continue in the future. The 

 principle of every change resides in matter. In artificial produc- 

 tions the moving principle is different from the material worked 

 upon ; but in nature the agent works within, being the most 

 active and mobile part of the material itself. Thus this bold 

 ecclesiastic, without incurring the censure of the Church or the 

 world, contrives to outstrip Mr. Darwin. The same cast of 

 mind which caused him to detach the Creator from his universe 

 led him also to detach the soul from the body, though to the 

 body he ascribes an influence so large as to render the soul 

 almost unnecessary. The aberrations of reason were in his view 

 an afl'air of the material brain. Mental disease is brain-disease ; 

 but then the immortal reason sits apart, and cannot be touched 

 by the disease. The errors of madness are errors of the instru- 

 ment, not of the performer. 



It may be more than a mere result of education, connecting 

 itself probably with the deeper mental structure of the two men, 

 that the idea of Gassendi, above enunciated, is substantially the 

 same as that expressed by Prof. Clerk Maxwell at the close of 

 the very noble lecture delivered by him at Bradford last year. 

 According to both phdosophers, the atoms, if I understand 

 aright, are the /;i/<m-(/ wr7/<77i7/.v, the "manufactured articles," 

 which, formed by the skill of the Highest, produce by their sub- 

 sequent interaction all the phenomena of the material world. 

 There seems to be this difference, however, between Gassendi 

 and Maxwell. The one postulates, the other i}ifcrs his first 

 cause. In his manufactured articles, Prof. Maxwell finds the 

 basis of an induction which enables him to scale philosophic 

 heights considered inaccessible by Kant, and to take tlie logical 

 step from the atoms to their Maker. 



The atomic doctrine, in whole or in part, was entertained by 

 Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Boyle, and their 



* Boyle's model of the universe was the Strasburg clock with an outside 

 artificer. f;octlie. on the otlier hand, sang 



" Ihm ziemt's die Welt im Innem ta bewegen, 

 Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen." 

 Tlie same repugnance to the clockmaker conception is manifest in Carlyle. 



successors, until the chemical law of multiple proportions enabled 

 Dalton to confer upon it an entirely new significance. In our 

 day there are secessions from the theory, but it still stands firm. 

 Only a year or two ago Sir William Thomson, with charac- 

 teristic penetration, sought to determine the sizes of the atoms, 

 or rather to fix the limits between which their sizes lie ; while 

 only last year the discourses of Williamson and Maxw-ell illus- 

 trate the i^resent hold of the doctrine upon the foremost scientific 

 minds. What these atoms, self-moved and self-posited, can and 

 cannot accomplish in relation to life, is at the present moment the 

 subject of profound scientific thought. I doubt the legitimacy of 

 Maxwell's logic ; but it is impossible not to feel the ethic glow 

 with which his lecture concludes. There is, moreover, a Lucre- 

 tian grandeur in his description of the stedfastness of the atoms: — 

 "Natur.il causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to 

 modify, if they do not at length destroy, all the airangements 

 and dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. But 

 though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may 

 yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dis- 

 solved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules 

 out of wdiich these systems are built, the foundation stones of the 

 material universe, remain unbroken and unworn." 



Ninety years subsequent to Gassendi the doctrine of bodily in- 

 struments, as it may be called, assumed immense importance in 

 the hands of Bishop Cutler, who, in his famous "Analogy of 

 Religion," developed, from his own point of view, and with con- 

 summate sagacity, a similar idea. The bishop still influences 

 superior minds ; and it will repay us to dwell for a moment on 

 his views. He draws the sharpest distinction between our real 

 selves and our bodily instruments. He does not, as far as I remem- 

 ber, use the word soul, possibly because the term was so hack- 

 neyed in his day, as it had been for many generations previously. 

 But he speaks of " living powers," " perceiving " or " percipient 

 powers," "moving agents," " ourselves," in the same sense as 

 we should employ the term soul. He dwells upon the fact that 

 limbs may be removed and mortal diseases assail the body, while 

 the mind, almost up to the moment of death, remains clear. He 

 refers to sleep and to swoon, where the "living powers" are 

 suspended but not destroyed. He considers it quite as easy to 

 conceive of an existence out of our bodies as in them ; that wc 

 may animate a succession of bodies, the dissolution of all of them 

 having no more tendency to dissolve our real selves, or " deprive 

 us of living faculties — the faculties of perception and action — 

 than the dissolution of any foreign matter which we are capable 

 of receiving impressions from, or making use of, for the common 

 occasions of life." This is the key of the bishop's position: 

 "Our organised bodies are no more a part of ourselves than any 

 other matter around us." In proof of this he calls attention to 

 the use of gl.asses, which " prepare objects " for the " percipient 

 power" exactly as the eye does. The eye itself is no more per- 

 cipient than the glass, and is quite as much the instrument of the 

 true self, and also as foreign to the true self, as the glass is. 

 " And if we see with our eyes only in the same manner as we do 

 with glasses, the like may justly be concluded from analogy of all 

 our senses. " 



Lucretius, as you are aware, reached a precisely opposite 

 conclusion ; and it certainly would be interesting, if not profit- 

 able, to us all, to hear what he would or could urge in oppo- 

 sition to the reasoning of the bishop. As a brief discussion of 

 the point will enable us to see the bearings of an important 

 question, I will here )iermit a disciple of Lucretius to try the 

 strength of the bishop's position, and then allow the bishop to 

 retaliate, with the view of rolling back, if he can, the difiiculty 

 upon Lucretius. Each shall state his case fully and frankly ; 

 and you shall be umpire between them. The argument might 

 proceed in this fashion : — 



"Subjected to the test of mental presentation (fi^nt/t'/Zw//;) 

 your views, most honoured prelate, would present to many 

 minds a great, if not an insuperable difiiculty. Vou speak of 

 'living powers,' 'percipient or perceiving powers,' and 'our- 

 selves ;' but can you form a mental picture of any one of these 

 apart from the organism through which it is supposed to act ? 

 Test yourself honestly, and see whether you possess any faculty 

 that would enable you to form such a conception. The true 

 self has a local habitation in each of us ; thus localised, must it 

 not possess a form ? If so, what form? Have you ever for a 

 moment realised it ? When a leg is amputated the body is 

 divided into two parts ; is the true self in both of them or in 

 one ? Thomas Aquinas might say in both ; but not you, for 

 you appeal to the consciousness associated with one of the two 

 parts to prove that the other is foreign matter. Is conscious- 



