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SCIENCE. 



THE UNITY OF NATURE. 



By the Duke of Argyll. 

 VI. 



ON THE MORAL CHARACTER OF MAN, CONSIDERED IN 

 THE LIGHT OF THE UNITY OF NATURE. 



The consciousness of unworthiness in respect to moral 

 character is a fact as fundamental, and as universal in 

 the human mind as the consciousness of limitation in re- 

 spect to intellectual power. Both of them may exist in a 

 form so rudimentary as to be hardly recognizable. The 

 limits of our intelligence may be felt only in a dim sense 

 of unsatisfied curiosity. The faultiness of our character 

 may be recognized only in the vaguest emotions of occa- 

 sional self-reproach. But as the knowledge of mankind 

 extends, and as the cultivation of their moral faculties 

 improves, both these great elements of consciousness be- 

 come more and more prominent, and occupy a larger 

 and larger place in the horizon of their thoughts. It is 

 always the men who know most who feel most how 

 limited their knowledge is. And so likewise it is always 

 the loftiest spirits who are most conscious of the infirm- 

 ities which beset them. 



But although these two great facts in human conscious- 

 ness are parallel facts, there is a profound difference 

 between them ; and to the nature and bearing of this 

 difference very careful attention must be paid. 



We have seen in regard to all living thirgs what the 

 relation is between the physical powers which they pos- 

 sess and the ability which they have to use them. It is 

 a relation of close and perfect correspondence. Every- 

 thing requisite to be done for the unfolding and uphold- 

 ing of their life they have impulses universally disposing 

 them to do, and faculties fully enabling them to accom- 

 plish. We have seen that in the case of some animals 

 this correspondence is already perfect from the infancy 

 of the creature, and that even in the case of those which 

 are born comparatively helpless, there is always given to 

 them just so much of impulse and of power as is requisite 

 for the attainment of their own maturity. It may be 

 nothing more than the mere impulse and power of open- 

 ing the mouth for food, as in the case of the chicks of 

 many birds ; or it may be the much more active impulse 

 and the much more complicated power by which the 

 young mammalia seek and secure their nourishment ; or 

 it may be such wonderful special instincts as that by 

 which the newly hatched Cuckoo, although blind and 

 otherwise helpless, is yet enabled to expel its rivals from 

 the nest, and thus secure that undivided supply of food 

 without which it could not survive. But whatever the 

 impulse or the power may be, it is always just enough 

 for the work which is to be done. We have seen, too, 

 that the amount of prevision which is involved in those 

 instinctive dispositions and actions of animals is often 

 greatest in those which are low in the scale of life, so 

 that the results for which they work, and which they do 

 actually attain, must be completely out of sight to them. 

 In the wonderful metamorphoses of insect life, the im- 

 perfect creature is guided with certainty to the choice 

 and enjoyment of the conditions which are necessary to 

 its own development ; and when the time comes it selects 

 the position, and constructs the cell, in which its mysteri- 

 ous transformations are accomplished. 



All this is in conformity with an absolute and uni- 

 versal law in virtue of which there is established a per- 

 fect unity between these three things : — first, the physical 

 powers and structure of all living creatures; secondly, 

 those dispositions and instinctive appetites which are 

 seated in that structure to impel and guide its powers ; 

 and thirdly, the external conditions in which the crea- 

 ture's life is passed, and in which its faculties find an 

 appropriate field of exercise. 



If Man has any place in the unity of Nature, this law 

 must prevail with him. There must be the same corres- 



pondence between his powers and the instincts which in- 

 cite and direct him in their use. Accordingly, it is in this 

 law that we find the explanation and the meaning of his 

 sense of ignorance. For without a sense of ignorance 

 there could be no desire of knowledge, and without his 

 desire of knowledge Man would not be Man. His whole 

 place in Nature depends upon it. His curiosity, and his 

 wonder, and his admiration, and his awe — these are all 

 but the adjuncts and subsidiary- allies of that supreme 

 affection which incites him to inquire and know. Nor is 

 this desire capable of being resolved into his tendency to 

 seek for an increased command over the comforts and 

 conveniences of life. It is wholly independent of that 

 kind of value which consists in the physical utility of 

 things. The application of knowledge comes after the 

 acquisition of it, and is not the only, or even the most 

 powerful, inducement to its pursuit. The real incitement 

 is an innate appetite of the mind — conscious in various 

 degrees of the mystery, and of the beauty, and of the 

 majesty of the system in which it lives and moves ; con- 

 scious, too, that its own relations to that system are bu' 

 dimly seen and very imperfectly understood. In a former 

 chapter we have seen that this appetite of knowledge is 

 never satisfied, even by the highest and most successful 

 exertion of those faculties which are, nevertheless, our 

 only instruments of research. We have seen, too, what 

 is tte meaning and significance of that great Reserve of 

 Power which must exist within us, seeing that it remains 

 unexhausted and inexhaustible by the proudest successes 

 of discover)'. In this sense it is literally true that the eye 

 is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hear- 

 ing. Every new advance has its new horizon. Every 

 answered question brings into view another question un- 

 answered, and perhaps unanswerable, lying close behind 

 it. And so we come to see that this sense of ignorance 

 is not only part of our nature, but one of its highest parts 

 — necessary to its development, and indicative of those 

 unknown and indefinite prospects of attainment which 

 are at once the glory and the burden of humanity. 



It is impossible to mistake, then, the place which is 

 occupied among the unities of Nature by that sense of 

 ignorance which is universal among men. It belongs to 

 the number of those primary mental conditions which 

 impel all living things to do that which it is their special 

 work to do and in the doing of which the highest law of 

 their being is fulfilled. In the case of the lower animals, 

 this law, as to the part they have to play and the ends 

 they have to serve in the economy of the world, is sim- 

 ple, definite, and always perfectly attained. No advance 

 is with them possible, no capacity of improvement, no 

 dormant or undeveloped powers leading up to wider and 

 wider spheres of action. With Man, on the contrary, the 

 law of his being is a law which demands progress, which 

 endows him with faculties enabling him to make it, and 

 fills him with aspiraticns which cause him to desire it. 

 Among the lowest savages there is some curiosity and 

 some sense of wonder, else even the rude inventions they 

 have achieved would never have been made, and their 

 degraded superstitions would not have kept their hold. 

 Man's sense of ignorance is the greatest of his gifts, for 

 it is the secret of his wish to know. The whole structure 

 and the whole furniture of his mind is adapted to this 

 condition. The highest law of his being is to advance in 

 wisdom and knowledge: and his sense of the presence 

 and of the power of things which he can only partially 

 understand is an abiding witness of this law, and an abid- 

 ing incentive to its fulfillment. 



In all these aspects there is an absolute contrast be- 

 tsveen our sense of limitation in respect to intellectual 

 power (or knowledge) and our sense of unworthiness in 

 respect to moral character. It is not of ignorance, but of 

 knowledge, that we are conscious here, — even the knowl- 

 edge of the distinction between good and evil, and of that 

 special sense which in our nature is associated with it, 

 namely, the sense of moral obligation. Now it is a uni- 



