EDITOR'S TABLE. 



619 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE UPON PHI- , 

 LOSOPHY. 



IN" his thoughtful little work on " Re- 

 cent British Philosophy," Prof. 

 Masson, of the University of Edin- 

 burgh, has the following suggestive 

 passages upon the subject indicated in 

 the present title : 



" However earnestly we may contend for 

 such a notion of Philosophy as shall keep up 

 the tradition of it as something more than 

 Science, yet the perpetual liability of Phi- 

 losophy to modifications, at the hands of 

 Science, is a fact obvious to all. Not a new 

 scientific discovery can be made, not a new 

 scientific conception can get abroad, but it 

 exercises a disturbing influence on the pre- 

 vious system of thought, antiquating some- 

 thing, disintegrating something, compelling 

 some readjustment of the parts to each other, 

 some trepidation of the axis of the whole. 

 Sometimes the action is almost revolution- 

 ary. What a derangement in men's ideas 

 about every thing whatsoever, what a com- 

 pulsion to new modes of thinking, and to 

 new habits of speech, must have been caused 

 by the propagation of the Copernican As- 

 tronomy ! What a wrench to all one's 

 habits of thought, to be taught that the lit- 

 tle ball which carries us rotates on itself, and 

 is one of a small company of celestial bodies 

 that perform their periodical wanderings 

 round the sun, in lieu of the older astro- 

 nomical faith, according to which the earth 

 was fixed in the centre, and the limitless 

 azure with its fires was one vast spectacular 

 sphere, composed of ten successive and in- 

 dependent spherical transparencies, made to 

 wheel round the earth diurnally for her soli- 

 tary pleasure ! Man's thoughts, even about 

 himself and his destinies, could not but be 

 changed in some respects by this compul- 

 sion of his imagination to a totally new way 

 of fancying physical immensity and our 

 earth's share in its proceedings. . . . 



" It is not every day, indeed nor every 

 century, that there occurs such a vast com- 

 pulsory shifting of the very axis of men's 

 conceptions of the physical universe as that 

 which our ancestors had so reluctantly to 

 submit to only a century or two ago. But 



every generation, every year brings with it 

 a quantum of new scientific conceptions, new 

 scientific truths. They creep in upon us on 

 all sides. Is Philosophy to stand in the 

 midst of them haughtily and superciliously, 

 taking no notice? She cannot do so and 

 live. Whether she knows it or not, these 

 are her appointed food. She must eat them 

 up or perish. They do not constitute her 

 vitality, any more than the food that men 

 eat constitutes the life that is in them ; but, 

 just as men, in order merely to continue 

 alive, must refresh themselves continually 

 with food, so Philosophy, that she may not 

 fall down emaciated and dead by the way- 

 side, must not only not hold aloof from Sci- 

 ence, but must regard what Science brings as 

 her daily and delicious nutriment. Whatever 

 definition of Philosophy we adopt — whether 

 we call it simply and beautifully, with Plato 

 in one passage, ' a meditation of death,' or 

 adopt some of the more labored definitions 

 that have been given expressly to indicate its 

 relations to Science — it is equally certain 

 that a philosophy that should be out of ac- 

 cord with any ascertained scientific truth or 

 tendency to truth, or that should not in some 

 efficient manner harmonize for the reason 

 all the conceptions and informations of con- 

 temporary science, would be of no use for 

 educated intelligences, and would exist as a 

 refuge for others only by sufferance. Shall 

 Philosophy pretend to regulate the human 

 spirit, and not know what is passing within 

 it — to supervise and direct man's thinkings, 

 and not know what they are ? 



"In no age so conspicuously as in our 

 own has there been a crowding in of new 

 scientific conceptions of all kinds to exercise 

 a perturbing influence on Speculative Phi- 

 losophy. They have come in almost too fast 

 for Philosophy's powers of reception. She 

 has visibly reeled amid their shocks, and has 

 not yet recovered her equilibrium. Within 

 those years alone which we are engaged in 

 surveying there have been developments of 

 native British science, not to speak of in- 

 fluxes of scientific ideas, hints, and proba- 

 bilities from without, in the midst of which 

 British Philosophy has looked about her 

 scared and bewildered, and has felt that 

 some of her oldest statements about herself, 

 and some of the most important terms in 

 her vocabulary, require reexplication." 



