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Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews

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Title: Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews

Author: Thomas Henry Huxley


        
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LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS

by

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, LL.D., F.R.S.

London:
MacMillan and Co.
London
R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor, Printers,
Bread Street Hill.

1870







A PREFATORY LETTER.


MY DEAR TYNDALL,

I should have liked to provide this collection of "Lay Sermons,
Addresses, and Reviews," with a Dedication and a Preface. In the former,
I should have asked you to allow me to associate your name with the
book, chiefly on the ground that the oldest of the papers in it is a
good deal younger than our friendship. In the latter, I intended to
comment upon certain criticisms with which some of these Essays have
been met.

But, on turning the matter over in my mind, I began to fear that a
formal dedication at the beginning of such a volume would look like a
grand lodge in front of a set of cottages; while a complete defence of
any of my old papers would simply amount to writing a new one--a labour
for which I am, at present, by no means fit.

The book must go forth, therefore, without any better substitute for
either Dedication, or Preface, than this letter; before concluding which
it is necessary for me to notify you, and any other reader, of two or
three matters.

The first is, that the oldest Essay of the whole, that "On the
Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences," contains a view of
the nature of the differences between living and not-living bodies out
of which I have long since grown.

Secondly, in the same paper, there is a statement concerning the method
of the mathematical sciences, which, repeated and expanded elsewhere,
brought upon me, during the meeting of the British Association at
Exeter, the artillery of our eminent friend Professor Sylvester.

No one knows better than you do, how readily I should defer to the
opinion of so great a mathematician if the question at issue were
really, as he seems to think it is, a mathematical one. But I submit,
that the dictum of a mathematical athlete upon a difficult problem which
mathematics offers to philosophy, has no more special weight, than the
verdict of that great pedestrian Captain Barclay would have had, in
settling a disputed point in the physiology of locomotion.

The genius which sighs for new worlds to conquer beyond that surprising
region in which "geometry, algebra, and the theory of numbers melt into
one another like sunset tints, or the colours of a dying dolphin," may
be of comparatively little service in the cold domain (mostly lighted by
the moon, some say) of philosophy. And the more I think of it, the more
does our friend seem to me to fall into the position of one of those
"verständige Leute," about whom he makes so apt a quotation from Goethe.
Surely he has not duly considered two points. The first, that I am in no
way answerable for the origination of the doctrine he criticises: and
the second, that if we are to employ the terms observation, induction,
and experiment, in the sense in which he uses them, logic is as much an
observational, inductive, and experimental science as mathematics; and
that, I confess, appears to me to be a _reductio ad absurdum_ of his
argument.

Thirdly, the essay "On the Physical Basis of Life" was intended to
contain a plain and untechnical statement of one of the great tendencies
of modern biological thought, accompanied by a protest, from the
philosophical side, against what is commonly called Materialism. The
result of my well-meant efforts I find to be, that I am generally
credited with having invented "protoplasm" in the interests of
"materialism." My unlucky "Lay Sermon" has been attacked by
microscopists, ignorant alike of Biology and Philosophy; by
philosophers, not very learned in either Biology or Microscopy; by
clergymen of several denominations; and by some few writers who have
taken the trouble to understand the subject. I trust that these last
will believe that I leave the essay unaltered from no want of respectful
attention to all they have said.

Fourthly, I wish to refer all who are interested in the topics discussed
in my address on "Geological Reform," to the reply with which Sir
William Thomson has honoured me.

And, lastly, let me say that I reprint the review of "The Origin of
Species" simply because it has been cited as mine by a late President of
the Geological Society. If you find its phraseology, in some places, to
be more vigorous than seems needful, recollect that it was written in
the heat of our first battles over the Novum Organon of biology; that we
were all ten years younger in those days; and last, but not least, that
it was not published until it had been submitted to the revision of a
friend for whose judgment I had then, as I have now, the greatest
respect.

Ever, my dear TYNDALL,

Yours very faithfully,

T.H. HUXLEY

LONDON, _June 1870_.




CONTENTS.


I.
                                                               PAGE
ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE.
  (A Lay Sermon delivered in St. Martin's Hall, on the evening
  of Sunday, the 7th of January, 1866, and subsequently published
  in the _Fortnightly Review_)                                    3

II.

EMANCIPATION--BLACK AND WHITE.
  (The _Reader_, May 20th, 1865)                                 23

III.

A LIBERAL EDUCATION: AND WHERE TO FIND IT. (An Address
  to the South London Working Men's College, delivered on the
  4th of January, 1868, and subsequently published in _Macmillan's
  Magazine_)                                                     31

IV.

SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION: NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH. (Delivered
  before the Liverpool Philomathic Society in April 1869,
  and subsequently published in _Macmillan's Magazine_)          60

V.

ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES.
  (An Address delivered at St. Martin's Hall, on the 22d July,
  1854, and published as a pamphlet in that year)                80

VI.


ON THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY. (A Lecture delivered at the South
  Kensington Museum, in 1861, and subsequently published by the
  Department of Science and Art)                                104

VII.

ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE. (A Lay Sermon delivered in
  Edinburgh, on Sunday, the 8th of November, 1868, at the request
  of the late Rev. James Cranbrook; subsequently published in the
  _Fortnightly Review_)                                         132

VIII.

THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS OF POSITIVISM. (A Reply to Mr. Congreve's
  Attack upon the preceding Paper. Published in the _Fortnightly
  Review._ 1869)                                                162

IX.

ON A PIECE OF CHALK. (A Lecture delivered to the Working Men of
  Norwich, during the Meeting of the British Association, in 1868.
  Subsequently published in _Macmillan's Magazine_)             192

X.

GEOLOGICAL CONTEMPORANEITY AND PERSISTENT TYPES OF LIFE. (The
  Anniversary Address to the Geological Society for 1862)       223

XI.

GEOLOGICAL REFORM. (The Anniversary Address to the Geological
  Society for 1869)                                             251

XII.

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. (The _Westminster Review_, April 1860)   280

XIII.

CRITICISMS ON "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES." (The _Natural History
  Review_, 1864)                                                328

XIV.

ON DESCARTES' "DISCOURSE TOUCHING THE METHOD OF USING ONE'S
REASON RIGHTLY AND OF SEEKING SCIENTIFIC TRUTH." (An Address to
  the Cambridge Young Men's Christian Society, delivered on the
  24th of March, 1870, and subsequently published in
  _Macmillan's Magazine_)                                       351




LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS.




I.

ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE.


This time two hundred years ago--in the beginning of January,
1666--those of our forefathers who inhabited this great and ancient
city, took breath between the shocks of two fearful calamities, one not
quite past, although its fury had abated; the other to come.

Within a few yards of the very spot on which we are assembled, so the
tradition runs, that painful and deadly malady, the plague, appeared in
the latter months of 1664; and, though no new visitor, smote the people
of England, and especially of her capital, with a violence unknown
before, in the course of the following year. The hand of a master has
pictured what happened in those dismal months; and in that truest of
fictions, "The History of the Plague Year," Defoe shows death, with
every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking through the narrow
streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a silence broken
only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the woful
denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the madder yells of
despairing profligates.

But, about this time in 1666, the death-rate had sunk to nearly its
ordinary amount; a case of plague occurred only here and there, and the
richer citizens who had flown from the pest had returned to their
dwellings. The remnant of the people began to toil at the accustomed
round of duty, or of pleasure; and the stream of city life bid fair to
flow back along its old bed, with renewed and uninterrupted vigour.

The newly kindled hope was deceitful. The great plague, indeed, returned
no more; but what it had done for the Londoners, the great fire, which
broke out in the autumn of 1666, did for London; and, in September of
that year, a heap of ashes and the indestructible energy of the people
were all that remained of the glory of five-sixths of the city within
the walls.


Our forefathers had their own ways of accounting for each of these
calamities. They submitted to the plague in humility and in penitence,
for they believed it to be the judgment of God. But, towards the fire
they were furiously indignant, interpreting it as the effect of the
malice of man,--as the work of the Republicans, or of the Papists,
according as their prepossessions ran in favour of loyalty or of
Puritanism.

It would, I fancy, have fared but ill with one who, standing where I now
stand, in what was then a thickly peopled and fashionable part of
London, should have broached to our ancestors the doctrine which I now
propound to you--that all their hypotheses were alike wrong; that the
plague was no more, in their sense, Divine judgment, than the fire was
the work of any political, or of any religious, sect; but that they were
themselves the authors of both plague and fire, and that they must look
to themselves to prevent the recurrence of calamities, to all appearance
so peculiarly beyond the reach of human control--so evidently the result
of the wrath of God, or of the craft and subtlety of an enemy.

And one may picture to oneself how harmoniously the holy cursing of the
Puritan of that day would have chimed in with the unholy cursing and the
crackling wit of the Rochesters and Sedleys, and with the revilings of
the political fanatics, if my imaginary plain dealer had gone on to say
that, if the return of such misfortunes were ever rendered impossible,
it would not be in virtue of the victory of the faith of Laud, or of
that of Milton; and, as little, by the triumph of republicanism, as by
that of monarchy. But that the one thing needful for compassing this end
was, that the people of England should second the efforts of an
insignificant corporation, the establishment of which, a few years
before the epoch of the great plague and the great fire, had been as
little noticed, as they were conspicuous.


Some twenty years before the outbreak of the plague a few calm and
thoughtful students banded themselves together for the purpose, as they
phrased it, of "improving natural knowledge." The ends they proposed to
attain cannot be stated more clearly than in the words of one of the
founders of the organization:--

"Our business was (precluding matters of theology and state affairs) to
discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries, and such as related
thereunto:--as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation,
Staticks, Magneticks, Chymicks, Mechanicks, and Natural Experiments;
with the state of these studies and their cultivation at home and
abroad. We then discoursed of the circulation of the blood, the valves
in the veins, the venæ lacteæ, the lymphatic vessels, the Copernican
hypothesis, the nature of comets and new stars, the satellites of
Jupiter, the oval shape (as it then appeared) of Saturn, the spots on
the sun and its turning on its own axis, the inequalities and
selenography of the moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury, the
improvement of telescopes and grinding of glasses for that purpose, the
weight of air, the possibility or impossibility of vacuities and
nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment in quicksilver,
the descent of heavy bodies and the degree of acceleration therein, with
divers other things of like nature, some of which were then but new
discoveries, and others not so generally known and embraced as now they
are; with other things appertaining to what hath been called the New
Philosophy, which, from the times of Galileo at Florence, and Sir
Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) in England, hath been much cultivated in
Italy, France, Germany, and other parts abroad, as well as with us in
England."

The learned Dr. Wallis, writing in 1696, narrates, in these words, what
happened half a century before, or about 1645. The associates met at
Oxford, in the rooms of Dr. Wilkins, who was destined to become a
bishop; and subsequently coming together in London, they attracted the
notice of the king. And it is a strange evidence of the taste for
knowledge which the most obviously worthless of the Stuarts shared with
his father and grandfather, that Charles the Second was not content
with saying witty things about his philosophers, but did wise things
with regard to them. For he not only bestowed upon them such attention
as he could spare from his poodles and his mistresses, but, being in his
usual state of impecuniosity, begged for them of the Duke of Ormond;
and, that step being without effect, gave them Chelsea College, a
charter, and a mace: crowning his favours in the best way they could be
crowned, by burdening them no further with royal patronage or state
interference.

Thus it was that the half-dozen young men, studious of the "New
Philosophy," who met in one another's lodgings in Oxford or in London,
in the middle of the seventeenth century, grew in numerical and in real
strength, until, in its latter part, the "Royal Society for the
Improvement of Natural Knowledge" had already become famous, and had
acquired a claim upon the veneration of Englishmen, which it has ever
since retained, as the principal focus of scientific activity in our
islands, and the chief champion of the cause it was formed to support.

It was by the aid of the Royal Society that Newton published his
"Principia." If all the books in the world, except the Philosophical
Transactions, were destroyed, it is safe to say that the foundations of
physical science would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual
progress of the last two centuries would be largely, though
incompletely, recorded. Nor have any signs of halting or of decrepitude
manifested themselves in our own times. As in Dr. Wallis's days, so in
these, "our business is, precluding theology and state affairs, to
discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries." But our
"Mathematick" is one which Newton would have to go to school to learn;
our "Staticks, Mechanicks, Magneticks, Chymicks, and Natural
Experiments" constitute a mass of physical and chemical knowledge, a
glimpse at which would compensate Galileo for the doings of a score of
inquisitorial cardinals; our "Physick" and "Anatomy" have embraced such
infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and
space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems,
that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of
the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed.


The fact is perhaps rather too much, than too little, forced upon one's
notice, nowadays, that all this marvellous intellectual growth has a no
less wonderful expression in practical life; and that, in this respect,
if in no other, the movement symbolized by the progress of the Royal
Society stands without a parallel in the history of mankind.

A series of volumes as bulky as the Transactions of the Royal Society
might possibly be filled with the subtle speculations of the schoolmen;
not improbably, the obtaining a mastery over the products of mediæval
thought might necessitate an even greater expenditure of time and of
energy than the acquirement of the "New Philosophy;" but though such
work engrossed the best intellects of Europe for a longer time than has
elapsed since the great fire, its effects were "writ in water," so far
as our social state is concerned.

On the other hand, if the noble first President of the Royal Society
could revisit the upper air and once more gladden his eyes with a sight
of the familiar mace, he would find himself in the midst of a material
civilization more different from that of his day, than that of the
seventeenth, was from that of the first, century. And if Lord
Brouncker's native sagacity had not deserted his ghost, he would need no
long reflection to discover that all these great ships, these railways,
these telegraphs, these factories, these printing presses, without which
the whole fabric of modern English society would collapse into a mass of
stagnant and starving pauperism,--that all these pillars of our State
are but the ripples and the bubbles upon the surface of that great
spiritual stream, the springs of which, only, he and his fellows were
privileged to see; and seeing, to recognise as that which it behoved
them above all things to keep pure and undefiled.

It may not be too great a flight of imagination to conceive our noble
_revenant_ not forgetful of the great troubles of his own day, and
anxious to know how often London had been burned down since his time,
and how often the plague had carried off its thousands. He would have to
learn that, although London contains tenfold the inflammable matter that
it did in 1666; though, not content with filling our rooms with woodwork
and light draperies, we must needs lead inflammable and explosive gases
into every corner of our streets and houses, we never allow even a
street to burn down. And if he asked how this had come about, we should
have to explain that the improvement of natural knowledge has furnished
us with dozens of machines for throwing water upon fires, anyone of
which would have furnished the ingenious Mr. Hooke, the first "curator
and experimenter" of the Royal Society, with ample materials for
discourse before half a dozen meetings of that body; and that, to say
truth, except for the progress of natural knowledge, we should not have
been able to make even the tools by which these machines are
constructed. And, further, it would be necessary to add, that although
severe fires sometimes occur and inflict great damage, the loss is very
generally compensated by societies, the operations of which have been
rendered possible only by the progress of natural knowledge in the
direction of mathematics, and the accumulation of wealth in virtue of
other natural knowledge.

But the plague? My Lord Brouncker's observation would not, I fear, lead
him to think that Englishmen of the nineteenth century are purer in
life, or more fervent in religious faith, than the generation which
could produce a Boyle, an Evelyn, and a Milton. He might find the mud of
society at the bottom, instead of at the top, but I fear that the sum
total would be as deserving of swift judgment as at the time of the
Restoration. And it would be our duty to explain once more, and this
time not without shame, that we have no reason to believe that it is the
improvement of our faith, nor that of our morals, which keeps the plague
from our city; but, again, that it is the improvement of our natural
knowledge.

We have learned that pestilences will only take up their abode among
those who have prepared unswept and ungarnished residences for them.
Their cities must have narrow, unwatered streets, foul with accumulated
garbage. Their houses must be ill-drained, ill-lighted, ill-ventilated.
Their subjects must be ill-washed, ill-fed, ill-clothed. The London of
1665 was such a city. The cities of the East, where plague has an
enduring dwelling, are such cities. We, in later times, have learned
somewhat of Nature, and partly obey her. Because of this partial
improvement of our natural knowledge and of that fractional obedience,
we have no plague; because that knowledge is still very imperfect and
that obedience yet incomplete, typhus is our companion and cholera our
visitor. But it is not presumptuous to express the belief that, when our
knowledge is more complete and our obedience the expression of our
knowledge, London will count her centuries of freedom from typhus and
cholera, as she now gratefully reckons her two hundred years of
ignorance of that plague which swooped upon her thrice in the first half
of the seventeenth century.

Surely, there is nothing in these explanations which is not fully borne
out by the facts? Surely, the principles involved in them are now
admitted among the fixed beliefs of all thinking men? Surely, it is true
that our countrymen are less subject to fire, famine, pestilence, and
all the evils which result from a want of command over and due
anticipation of the course of Nature, than were the countrymen of
Milton; and health, wealth, and well-being are more abundant with us
than with them? But no less certainly is the difference due to the
improvement of our knowledge of Nature, and the extent to which that
improved knowledge has been incorporated with the household words of
men, and has supplied the springs of their daily actions.

Granting for a moment, then, the truth of that which the depreciators of
natural knowledge are so fond of urging, that its improvement can only
add to the resources of our material civilization; admitting it to be
possible that the founders of the Royal Society themselves looked for no
other reward than this, I cannot confess that I was guilty of
exaggeration when I hinted, that to him who had the gift of
distinguishing between prominent events and important events, the origin
of a combined effort on the part of mankind to improve natural knowledge
might have loomed larger than the Plague and have outshone the glare of
the Fire; as a something fraught with a wealth of beneficence to
mankind, in comparison with which the damage done by those ghastly evils
would shrink into insignificance.

It is very certain that for every victim slain by the plague, hundreds
of mankind exist and find a fair share of happiness in the world, by the
aid of the spinning jenny. And the great fire, at its worst, could not
have burned the supply of coal, the daily working of which, in the
bowels of the earth, made possible by the steam pump, gives rise to an
amount of wealth to which the millions lost in old London are but as an
old song.


But spinning jenny and steam pump are, after all, but toys, possessing
an accidental value; and natural knowledge creates multitudes of more
subtle contrivances, the praises of which do not happen to be sung
because they are not directly convertible into instruments for creating
wealth. When I contemplate natural knowledge squandering such gifts
among men, the only appropriate comparison I can find for her is, to
liken her to such a peasant woman as one sees in the Alps, striding ever
upward, heavily burdened, and with mind bent only on her home; but yet,
without effort and without thought, knitting for her children. Now
stockings are good and comfortable things, and the children will
undoubtedly be much the better for them; but surely it would be
short-sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate this toiling mother
as a mere stocking-machine--a mere provider of physical comforts?

However, there are blind leaders of the blind, and not a few of them,
who take this view of natural knowledge, and can see nothing in the
bountiful mother of humanity but a sort of comfort-grinding machine.
According to them, the improvement of natural knowledge always has been,
and always must be, synonymous with no more than the improvement of the
material resources and the increase of the gratifications of men.

Natural knowledge is, in their eyes, no real mother of mankind, bringing
them up with kindness, and, if need be, with sternness, in the way they
should go, and instructing them in all things needful for their welfare;
but a sort of fairy godmother, ready to furnish her pets with shoes of
swiftness, swords of sharpness, and omnipotent Aladdin's lamps, so that
they may have telegraphs to Saturn, and see the other side of the moon,
and thank God they are better than their benighted ancestors.

If this talk were true, I, for one, should not greatly care to toil in
the service of natural knowledge. I think I would just as soon be
quietly chipping my own flint axe, after the manner of my forefathers a
few thousand years back, as be troubled with the endless malady of
thought which now infests us all, for such reward. But I venture to say
that such views are contrary alike to reason and to fact. Those who
discourse in such fashion seem to me to be so intent upon trying to see
what is above Nature, or what is behind her, that they are blind to what
stares them in the face, in her.

I should not venture to speak thus strongly if my justification were not
to be found in the simplest and most obvious facts,--if it needed more
than an appeal to the most notorious truths to justify my assertion,
that the improvement of natural knowledge, whatever direction it has
taken, and however low the aims of those who may have commenced it--has
not only conferred practical benefits on men, but, in so doing, has
effected a revolution in their conceptions of the universe and of
themselves, and has profoundly altered their modes of thinking and their
views of right and wrong. I say that natural knowledge, seeking to
satisfy natural wants, has found the ideas which can alone still
spiritual cravings. I say that natural knowledge, in desiring to
ascertain the laws of comfort, has been driven to discover those of
conduct; and to lay the foundations of a new morality.


Let us take these points separately; and, first, what great ideas has
natural knowledge introduced into men's minds?

I cannot but think that the foundations of all natural knowledge were
laid when the reason of man first came face to face with the facts of
Nature: when the savage first learned that the fingers of one hand are
fewer than those of both; that it is shorter to cross a stream than to
head it; that a stone stops where it is unless it be moved, and that it
drops from the hand which lets it go; that light and heat come and go
with the sun; that sticks burn away in a fire; that plants and animals
grow and die; that if he struck his fellow-savage a blow he would make
him angry, and perhaps get a blow in return, while if he offered him a
fruit he would please him, and perhaps receive a fish in exchange. When
men had acquired this much knowledge, the outlines, rude though they
were, of mathematics, of physics, of chemistry, of biology, of moral,
economical, and political science, were sketched. Nor did the germ of
religion fail when science began to bud. Listen to words which, though
new, are yet three thousand years old:--

     "...When in heaven the stars about the moon
     Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
     And every height comes out, and jutting peak
     And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
     Break open to their highest, and all the stars
     Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart."[1]

If the half-savage Greek could share our feelings thus far, it is
irrational to doubt that he went further, to find, as we do, that upon
that brief gladness there follows a certain sorrow,--the little light of
awakened human intelligence shines so mere a spark amidst the abyss of
the unknown and unknowable; seems so insufficient to do more than
illuminate the imperfections that cannot be remedied, the aspirations
that cannot be realized, of man's own nature. But in this sadness, this
consciousness of the limitation of man, this sense of an open secret
which he cannot penetrate, lies the essence of all religion; and the
attempt to embody it in the forms furnished by the intellect is the
origin of the higher theologies.

Thus it seems impossible to imagine but that the foundations of all
knowledge--secular or sacred--were laid when intelligence dawned, though
the superstructure remained for long ages so slight and feeble as to be
compatible with the existence of almost any general view respecting the
mode of governance of the universe. No doubt, from the first, there were
certain phenomena which, to the rudest mind, presented a constancy of
occurrence, and suggested that a fixed order ruled, at any rate, among
them. I doubt if the grossest of Fetish worshippers ever imagined that a
stone must have a god within it to make it fall, or that a fruit had a
god within it to make it taste sweet. With regard to such matters as
these, it is hardly questionable that mankind from the first took
strictly positive and scientific views.

But, with respect to all the less familiar occurrences which present
themselves, uncultured man, no doubt, has always taken himself as the
standard of comparison, as the centre and measure of the world; nor
could he well avoid doing so. And finding that his apparently uncaused
will has a powerful effect in giving rise to many occurrences, he
naturally enough ascribed other and greater events to other and greater
volitions, and came to look upon the world and all that therein is, as
the product of the volitions of persons like himself, but stronger, and
capable of being appeased or angered, as he himself might be soothed or
irritated. Through such conceptions of the plan and working of the
universe all mankind have passed, or are passing. And we may now
consider, what has been the effect of the improvement of natural
knowledge on the views of men who have reached this stage, and who have
begun to cultivate natural knowledge with no desire but that of
"increasing God's honour and bettering man's estate."

For example: what could seem wiser, from a mere material point of view,
more innocent, from a theological one, to an ancient people, than that
they should learn the exact succession of the seasons, as warnings for
their husbandmen; or the position of the stars, as guides to their rude
navigators? But what has grown out of this search for natural knowledge
of so merely useful a character? You all know the reply.
Astronomy,--which of all sciences has filled men's minds with general
ideas of a character most foreign to their daily experience, and has,
more than any other, rendered it impossible for them to accept the
beliefs of their fathers. Astronomy,--which tells them that this so vast
and seemingly solid earth is but an atom among atoms, whirling, no man
knows whither, through illimitable space; which demonstrates that what
we call the peaceful heaven above us, is but that space, filled by an
infinitely subtle matter whose particles are seething and surging, like
the waves of an angry sea; which opens up to us infinite regions where
nothing is known, or ever seems to have been known, but matter and
force, operating according to rigid rules; which leads us to contemplate
phenomena the very nature of which demonstrates that they must have had
a beginning, and that they must have an end, but the very nature of
which also proves that the beginning was, to our conceptions of time,
infinitely remote, and that the end is as immeasurably distant.

But it is not alone those who pursue astronomy who ask for bread and
receive ideas. What more harmless than the attempt to lift and
distribute water by pumping it; what more absolutely and grossly
utilitarian? But out of pumps grew the discussions about Nature's
abhorrence of a vacuum; and then it was discovered that Nature does not
abhor a vacuum, but that air has weight; and that notion paved the way
for the doctrine that all matter has weight, and that the force which
produces weight is co-extensive with the universe,--in short, to the
theory of universal gravitation and endless force. While learning how to
handle gases led to the discovery of oxygen, and to modern chemistry,
and to the notion of the indestructibility of matter.

Again, what simpler, or more absolutely practical, than the attempt to
keep the axle of a wheel from heating when the wheel turns round very
fast? How useful for carters and gig drivers to know something about
this; and how good were it, if any ingenious person would find out the
cause of such phenomena, and thence educe a general remedy for them.
Such an ingenious person was Count Rumford; and he and his successors
have landed us in the theory of the persistence, or indestructibility,
of force. And in the infinitely minute, as in the infinitely great, the
seekers after natural knowledge, of the kinds called physical and
chemical, have everywhere found a definite order and succession of
events which seem never to be infringed.

And how has it fared with "Physick" and Anatomy? Have the anatomist, the
physiologist, or the physician, whose business it has been to devote
themselves assiduously to that eminently practical and direct end, the
alleviation of the sufferings of mankind,--have they been able to
confine their vision more absolutely to the strictly useful? I fear they
are worst offenders of all. For if the astronomer has set before us the
infinite magnitude of space, and the practical eternity of the duration
of the universe; if the physical and chemical philosophers have
demonstrated the infinite minuteness of its constituent parts, and the
practical eternity of matter and of force; and if both have alike
proclaimed the universality of a definite and predicable order and
succession of events, the workers in biology have not only accepted all
these, but have added more startling theses of their own. For, as the
astronomers discover in the earth no centre of the universe, but an
eccentric speck, so the naturalists find man to be no centre of the
living world, but one amidst endless modifications of life; and as the
astronomer observes the mark of practically endless time set upon the
arrangements of the solar system, so the student of life finds the
records of ancient forms of existence peopling the world for ages,
which, in relation to human experience, are infinite.

Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be as dependent for its
manifestation on particular molecular arrangements as any physical or
chemical phenomenon; and, wherever he extends his researches, fixed
order and unchanging causation reveal themselves, as plainly as in the
rest of Nature.

Nor can I find that any other fate has awaited the germ of Religion.
Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, out of the action and
interaction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has
taken the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism
or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their
relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is
needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the present
differs from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present
has become more scientific than that of the past; because it has not
only renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the
necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of books and
traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs: and of cherishing the
noblest and most human of man's emotions, by worship "for the most part
of the silent sort" at the altar of the Unknown and Unknowable.

Such are a few of the new conceptions implanted in our minds by the
improvement of natural knowledge. Men have acquired the ideas of the
practically infinite extent of the universe and of its practical
eternity; they are familiar with the conception that our earth is but an
infinitesimal fragment of that part of the universe which can be seen;
and that, nevertheless, its duration is, as compared with our standards
of time, infinite. They have further acquired the idea that man is but
one of innumerable forms of life now existing in the globe, and that the
present existences are but the last of an immeasurable series of
predecessors. Moreover, every step they have made in natural knowledge
has tended to extend and rivet in their minds the conception of a
definite order of the universe--which is embodied in what are called, by
an unhappy metaphor, the laws of Nature--and to narrow the range and
loosen the force of men's belief in spontaneity, or in changes other
than such as arise out of that definite order itself.

Whether these ideas are well or ill founded is not the question. No one
can deny that they exist, and have been the inevitable outgrowth of the
improvement of natural knowledge. And if so, it cannot be doubted that
they are changing the form of men's most cherished and most important
convictions.


And as regards the second point--the extent to which the improvement of
natural knowledge has remodelled and altered what may be termed the
intellectual ethics of men,--what are among the moral convictions most
fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people?

They are the convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief;
that merit attaches to a readiness to believe; that the doubting
disposition is a bad one, and scepticism a sin; that when good authority
has pronounced what is to be believed, and faith has accepted it, reason
has no further duty. There are many excellent persons who yet hold by
these principles, and it is not my present business, or intention, to
discuss their views. All I wish to bring clearly before your minds is
the unquestionable fact, that the improvement of natural knowledge is
effected by methods which directly give the lie to all these
convictions, and assume the exact reverse of each to be true.

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge
authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind
faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every
great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection
of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation
of the spirit of blind faith: and the most ardent votary of science
holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates
hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and
wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses
to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source,
Nature--whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment
and to observation--Nature will confirm them. The man of science has
learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.


Thus, without for a moment pretending to despise the practical results
of the improvement of natural knowledge, and its beneficial influence on
material civilization, it must, I think, be admitted that the great
ideas, some of which I have indicated, and the ethical spirit which I
have endeavoured to sketch, in the few moments which remained at my
disposal, constitute the real and permanent significance of natural
knowledge.

If these ideas be destined, as I believe they are, to be more and more
firmly established as the world grows older; if that spirit be fated, as
I believe it is, to extend itself into all departments of human thought,
and to become co-extensive with the range of knowledge; if, as our race
approaches its maturity, it discovers, as I believe it will, that there
is but one kind of knowledge and but one method of acquiring it; then
we, who are still children, may justly feel it our highest duty to
recognise the advisableness of improving natural knowledge, and so to
aid ourselves and our successors in their course towards the noble goal
which lies before mankind.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Need it be said that this is Tennyson's English for Homer's Greek?




II.

EMANCIPATION--BLACK AND WHITE.


Quashie's plaintive inquiry, "Am I not a man and a brother?" seems at
last to have received its final reply--the recent decision of the fierce
trial by battle on the other side of the Atlantic fully concurring with
that long since delivered here in a more peaceful way.

The question is settled; but even those who are most thoroughly
convinced that the doom is just, must see good grounds for repudiating
half the arguments which have been employed by the winning side; and for
doubting whether its ultimate results will embody the hopes of the
victors, though they may more than realize the fears of the vanquished.
It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men;
but no rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average
negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man.
And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his
disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field
and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete
successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a
contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The
highest places in the hierarchy of civilization will assuredly not be
within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means
necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest. But whatever the
position of stable equilibrium into which the laws of social gravitation
may bring the negro, all responsibility for the result will henceforward
lie between Nature and him. The white man may wash his hands of it, and
the Caucasian conscience be void of reproach for evermore. And this, if
we look to the bottom of the matter, is the real justification for the
abolition policy.

The doctrine of equal natural rights may be an illogical delusion;
emancipation may convert the slave from a well fed animal into a
pauperised man; mankind may even have to do without cotton shirts; but
all these evils must be faced, if the moral law, that no human being can
arbitrarily dominate over another without grievous damage to his own
nature, be, as many think, as readily demonstrable by experiment as any
physical truth. If this be true, no slavery can be abolished without a
double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than
the freed-man.

The like considerations apply to all the other questions of emancipation
which are at present stirring the world--the multifarious demands that
classes of mankind shall be relieved from restrictions imposed by the
artifice of man, and not by the necessities of Nature. One of the most
important, if not the most important, of all these, is that which daily
threatens to become the "irrepressible" woman question. What social and
political rights have women? What ought they to be allowed, or not
allowed, to do, be, and suffer? And, as involved in, and underlying all
these questions, how ought they to be educated?

There are philogynists as fanatical as any "misogynists" who, reversing
our antiquated notions, bid the man look upon the woman as the higher
type of humanity; who ask us to regard the female intellect as the
clearer and the quicker, if not the stronger; who desire us to look up
to the feminine moral sense as the purer and the nobler; and bid man
abdicate his usurped sovereignty over Nature in favour of the female
line. On the other hand, there are persons not to be outdone in all
loyalty and just respect for woman-kind, but by nature hard of head and
haters of delusion, however charming, who not only repudiate the new
woman-worship which so many sentimentalists and some philosophers are
desirous of setting up, but, carrying their audacity further, deny even
the natural equality of the sexes. They assert, on the contrary, that in
every excellent character, whether mental or physical, the average woman
is inferior to the average man, in the sense of having that character
less in quantity, and lower in quality. Tell these persons of the rapid
perceptions and the instinctive intellectual insight of women, and they
reply that the feminine mental peculiarities, which pass under these
names, are merely the outcome of a greater impressibility to the
superficial aspects of things, and of the absence of that restraint upon
expression, which, in men, is imposed by reflection and a sense of
responsibility. Talk of the passive endurance of the weaker sex, and
opponents of this kind remind you that Job was a man, and that, until
quite recent times, patience and long-suffering were not counted among
the specially feminine virtues. Claim passionate tenderness as
especially feminine, and the inquiry is made whether all the best
love-poetry in existence (except, perhaps, the "Sonnets from the
Portuguese") has not been written by men; whether the song which
embodies the ideal of pure and tender passion--Adelaida--was written by
_Frau_ Beethoven; whether it was the Fornarina, or Raphael, who painted
the Sistine Madonna. Nay, we have known one such heretic go so far as to
lay his hands upon the ark itself, so to speak, and to defend the
startling paradox that, even in physical beauty, man is the superior. He
admitted, indeed, that there was a brief period of early youth when it
might be hard to say whether the prize should be awarded to the graceful
undulations of the female figure, or the perfect balance and supple
vigour of the male frame. But while our new Paris might hesitate between
the youthful Bacchus and the Venus emerging from the foam, he averred
that, when Venus and Bacchus had reached thirty, the point no longer
admitted of a doubt; the male form having then attained its greatest
nobility, while the female is far gone in decadence; and that, at this
epoch, womanly beauty, so far as it is independent of grace or
expression, is a question of drapery and accessories.

Supposing, however, that all these arguments have a certain foundation;
admitting for a moment, that they are comparable to those by which the
inferiority of the negro to the white man may be demonstrated, are they
of any value as against woman-emancipation? Do they afford us the
smallest ground for refusing to educate women as well as men--to give
women the same civil and political rights as men? No mistake is so
commonly made by clever people as that of assuming a cause to be bad
because the arguments of its supporters are, to a great extent,
nonsensical. And we conceive that those who may laugh at the arguments
of the extreme philogynists, may yet feel bound to work heart and soul
towards the attainment of their practical ends.

As regards education, for example. Granting the alleged defects of
women, is it not somewhat absurd to sanction and maintain a system of
education which would seem to have been specially contrived to
exaggerate all these defects?

Naturally not so firmly strung, nor so well balanced, as boys, girls are
in great measure debarred from the sports and physical exercises which
are justly thought absolutely necessary for the full development of the
vigour of the more favoured sex. Women are, by nature, more excitable
than men--prone to be swept by tides of emotion, proceeding from hidden
and inward, as well as from obvious and external causes; and female
education does its best to weaken every physical counterpoise to this
nervous mobility--tends in all ways to stimulate the emotional part of
the mind and stunt the rest. We find girls naturally timid, inclined to
dependence, born conservatives; and we teach them that independence is
unladylike; that blind faith is the right frame of mind; and that
whatever we may be permitted, and indeed encouraged, to do to our
brother, our sister is to be left to the tyranny of authority and
tradition. With few insignificant exceptions, girls have been educated
either to be drudges, or toys, beneath man; or a sort of angels above
him; the highest ideal aimed at oscillating between Clärchen and
Beatrice. The possibility that the ideal of womanhood lies neither in
the fair saint, nor in the fair sinner; that the female type of
character is neither better nor worse than the male, but only weaker;
that women are meant neither to be men's guides nor their playthings,
but their comrades, their fellows and their equals, so far as Nature
puts no bar to that equality, does not seem to have entered into the
minds of those who have had the conduct of the education of girls.

If the present system of female education stands self-condemned, as
inherently absurd; and if that which we have just indicated is the true
position of woman, what is the first step towards a better state of
things? We reply, emancipate girls. Recognise the fact that they share
the senses, perceptions, feelings, reasoning powers, emotions, of boys,
and that the mind of the average girl is less different from that of the
average boy, than the mind of one boy is from that of another; so that
whatever argument justifies a given education for all boys, justifies
its application to girls as well. So far from imposing artificial
restrictions upon the acquirement of knowledge by women, throw every
facility in their way. Let our Faustinas, if they will, toil through the
whole round of

     "Juristerei und Medizin,
     Und leider! auch Philosophie."

Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the
less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less
gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within. Nay,
if obvious practical difficulties can be overcome, let those women who
feel inclined to do so descend into the gladiatorial arena of life, not
merely in the guise of _retiariæ_, as heretofore, but as bold
_sicariæ_, breasting the open fray. Let them, if they so please, become
merchants, barristers, politicians. Let them have a fair field, but let
them understand, as the necessary correlative, that they are to have no
favour. Let Nature alone sit above the lists, "rain influence and judge
the prize."

And the result? For our parts, though loth to prophesy, we believe it
will be that of other emancipations. Women will find their place, and it
will neither be that in which they have been held, nor that to which
some of them aspire. Nature's old salique law will not be repealed, and
no change of dynasty will be effected. The big chests, the massive
brains, the vigorous muscles and stout frames, of the best men will
carry the day, whenever it is worth their while to contest the prizes of
life with the best women. And the hardship of it is, that the very
improvement of the women will lessen their chances. Better mothers will
bring forth better sons, and the impetus gained by the one sex will be
transmitted, in the next generation, to the other. The most Darwinian of
theorists will not venture to propound the doctrine, that the physical
disabilities under which women have hitherto laboured, in the struggle
for existence with men, are likely to be removed by even the most
skilfully conducted process of educational selection.

We are, indeed, fully prepared to believe that the bearing of children
may, and ought, to become as free from danger and long disability, to
the civilized woman, as it is to the savage; nor is it improbable that,
as society advances towards its right organization, motherhood will
occupy a less space of woman's life than it has hitherto done. But
still, unless the human species is to come to an end altogether--a
consummation which can hardly be desired by even the most ardent
advocate of "women's rights"--somebody must be good enough to take the
trouble and responsibility of annually adding to the world exactly as
many people as die out of it. In consequence of some domestic
difficulties, Sydney Smith is said to have suggested that it would have
been good for the human race had the model offered by the hive been
followed, and had all the working part of the female community been
neuters. Failing any thorough-going reform of this kind, we see nothing
for it but the old division of humanity into men potentially, or
actually, fathers, and women potentially, if not actually, mothers. And
we fear that so long as this potential motherhood is her lot, woman will
be found to be fearfully weighted in the race of life.

The duty of man is to see that not a grain is piled upon that load
beyond what Nature imposes; that injustice is not added to inequality.




III.

A LIBERAL EDUCATION: AND WHERE TO FIND IT.


The business which the South London Working Men's College has undertaken
is a great work; indeed, I might say, that Education, with which that
college proposes to grapple, is the greatest work of all those which lie
ready to a man's hand just at present.

And, at length, this fact is becoming generally recognised. You cannot
go anywhere without hearing a buzz of more or less confused and
contradictory talk on this subject--nor can you fail to notice that, in
one point at any rate, there is a very decided advance upon like
discussions in former days. Nobody outside the agricultural interest now
dares to say that education is a bad thing. If any representative of the
once large and powerful party, which, in former days, proclaimed this
opinion, still exists in a semi-fossil state, he keeps his thoughts to
himself. In fact, there is a chorus of voices, almost distressing in
their harmony, raised in favour of the doctrine that education is the
great panacea for human troubles, and that, if the country is not
shortly to go to the dogs, everybody must be educated.

The politicians tell us, "you must educate the masses because they are
going to be masters." The clergy join in the cry for education, for they
affirm that the people are drifting away from church and chapel into the
broadest infidelity. The manufacturers and the capitalists swell the
chorus lustily. They declare that ignorance makes bad workmen; that
England will soon be unable to turn out cotton goods, or steam engines,
cheaper than other people; and then, Ichabod! Ichabod! the glory will be
departed from us. And a few voices are lifted up in favour of the
doctrine that the masses should be educated because they are men and
women with unlimited capacities of being, doing, and suffering, and that
it is as true now, as ever it was, that the people perish for lack of
knowledge.

These members of the minority, with whom I confess I have a good deal of
sympathy, are doubtful whether any of the other reasons urged in favour
of the education of the people are of much value--whether, indeed, some
of them are based upon either wise or noble grounds of action. They
question if it be wise to tell people that you will do for them, out of
fear of their power, what you have left undone, so long as your only
motive was compassion for their weakness and their sorrows. And, if
ignorance of everything which it is needful a ruler should know is
likely to do so much harm in the governing classes of the future, why is
it, they ask reasonably enough, that such ignorance in the governing
classes of the past has not been viewed with equal horror?

Compare the average artisan and the average country squire, and it may
be doubted if you will find a pin to choose between the two in point of
ignorance, class feeling, or prejudice. It is true that the ignorance
is of a different sort--that the class feeling is in favour of a
different class, and that the prejudice has a distinct flavour of
wrong-headedness in each case--but it is questionable if the one is
either a bit better, or a bit worse than the other. The old
protectionist theory is the doctrine of trades unions as applied by the
squires, and the modern trades unionism is the doctrine of the squires
applied by the artisans. Why should we be worse off under one _régime_
than under the other?

Again, this sceptical minority asks the clergy to think whether it is
really want of education which keeps the masses away from their
ministrations--whether the most completely educated men are not as open
to reproach on this score as the workmen; and whether, perchance, this
may not indicate that it is not education which lies at the bottom of
the matter?

Once more, these people, whom there is no pleasing, venture to doubt
whether the glory, which rests upon being able to undersell all the rest
of the world, is a very safe kind of glory--whether we may not purchase
it too dear; especially if we allow education, which ought to be
directed to the making of men, to be diverted into a process of
manufacturing human tools, wonderfully adroit in the exercise of some
technical industry, but good for nothing else.

And, finally, these people inquire whether it is the masses alone who
need a reformed and improved education. They ask whether the richest of
our public schools might not well be made to supply knowledge, as well
as gentlemanly habits, a strong class feeling, and eminent proficiency
in cricket. They seem to think that the noble foundations of our old
universities are hardly fulfilling their functions in their present
posture of half-clerical seminaries, half racecourses, where men are
trained to win a senior wranglership, or a double-first, as horses are
trained to win a cup, with as little reference to the needs of
after-life in the case of the man as in that of the racer. And, while as
zealous for education as the rest, they affirm that, if the education of
the richer classes were such as to fit them to be the leaders and the
governors of the poorer; and, if the education of the poorer classes
were such as to enable them to appreciate really wise guidance and good
governance; the politicians need not fear mob-law, nor the clergy lament
their want of flocks, nor the capitalists prognosticate the annihilation
of the prosperity of the country.

Such is the diversity of opinion upon the why and the wherefore of
education. And my hearers will be prepared to expect that the practical
recommendations which are put forward are not less discordant. There is
a loud cry for compulsory education. We English, in spite of constant
experience to the contrary, preserve a touching faith in the efficacy of
acts of parliament; and I believe we should have compulsory education in
the course of next session, if there were the least probability that
half a dozen leading statesmen of different parties would agree what
that education should be.

Some hold that education without theology is worse than none. Others
maintain, quite as strongly, that education with theology is in the same
predicament. But this is certain, that those who hold the first opinion
can by no means agree what theology should be taught; and that those who
maintain the second are in a small minority.

At any rate "make people learn to read, write, and cipher," say a great
many; and the advice is undoubtedly sensible as far as it goes. But, as
has happened to me in former days, those who, in despair of getting
anything better, advocate this measure, are met with the objection that
it is very like making a child practise the use of a knife, fork, and
spoon, without giving it a particle of meat. I really don't know what
reply is to be made to such an objection.

But it would be unprofitable to spend more time in disentangling, or
rather in showing up the knots in, the ravelled skeins of our
neighbours. Much more to the purpose is it to ask if we possess any clue
of our own which may guide us among these entanglements. And by way of a
beginning, let us ask ourselves--What is education? Above all things,
what is our ideal of a thoroughly liberal education?--of that education
which, if we could begin life again, we would give ourselves--of that
education which, if we could mould the fates to our own will, we would
give our children. Well, I know not what may be your conceptions upon
this matter, but I will tell you mine, and I hope I shall find that our
views are not very discrepant.


Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one
of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game
at chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary
duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a
notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and
getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with a
disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his son,
or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a
pawn from a knight?

Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune,
and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who
are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules
of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a
game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us
being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The
chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe,
the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on
the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair,
just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never
overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To
the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of
overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength.
And one who plays ill is checkmated--without haste, but without remorse.

My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which
Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul.
Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture, a calm, strong angel
who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win--and
I should accept it as an image of human life.

Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty
game. In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect in
the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and
their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the
affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in
harmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor less
than this. Anything which professes to call itself education must be
tried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not
call it education, whatever may be the force of authority, or of
numbers, upon the other side.

It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such thing
as an uneducated man. Take an extreme case. Suppose that an adult man,
in the full vigour of his faculties, could be suddenly placed in the
world, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he best
might. How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes. Nature
would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, the
properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow telling
him to do this and avoid that; and by slow degrees the man would receive
an education, which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and adequate to
his circumstances, though there would be no extras and very few
accomplishments.

And if to this solitary man entered a second Adam, or, better still, an
Eve, a new and greater world, that of social and moral phenomena, would
be revealed. Joys and woes, compared with which all others might seem
but faint shadows, would spring from the new relations. Happiness and
sorrow would take the place of the coarser monitors, pleasure and pain;
but conduct would still be shaped by the observation of the natural
consequences of actions; or, in other words, by the laws of the nature
of man.

To every one of us the world was once as fresh and new as to Adam. And
then, long before we were susceptible of any other mode of instruction,
Nature took us in hand, and every minute of waking life brought its
educational influence, shaping our actions into rough accordance with
Nature's laws, so that we might not be ended untimely by too gross
disobedience. Nor should I speak of this process of education as past,
for any one, be he as old as he may. For every man, the world is as
fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for
him who has the eyes to see them. And Nature is still continuing her
patient education of us in that great university, the universe, of which
we are all members--Nature having no Test-Acts.

Those who take honours in Nature's university, who learn the laws which
govern men and things and obey them, are the really great and successful
men in this world. The great mass of mankind are the "Poll," who pick up
just enough to get through without much discredit. Those who won't learn
at all are plucked; and then you can't come up again. Nature's pluck
means extermination.

Thus the question of compulsory education is settled so far as Nature is
concerned. Her bill on that question was framed and passed long ago.
But, like all compulsory legislation, that of Nature is harsh and
wasteful in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful
disobedience--incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime.
Nature's discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first;
but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why your
ears are boxed.

The object of what we commonly call education--that education in which
man intervenes and which I shall distinguish as artificial education--is
to make good these defects in Nature's methods; to prepare the child to
receive Nature's education, neither incapably nor ignorantly, nor with
wilful disobedience; and to understand the preliminary symptoms of her
displeasure, without waiting for the box on the ear. In short, all
artificial education ought to be an anticipation of natural education.
And a liberal education is an artificial education, which has not only
prepared a man to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural
laws, but has trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards,
which Nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties.

That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained
in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with
ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of;
whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of
equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine,
to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as
forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of
the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her
operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but
whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the
servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty,
whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others
as himself.

Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; for
he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with Nature. He will
make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely;
she as his ever beneficent mother; he as her mouth-piece, her conscious
self, her minister and interpreter.


Where is such an education as this to be had? Where is there any
approximation to it? Has any one tried to found such an education?
Looking over the length and breadth of these islands, I am afraid that
all these questions must receive a negative answer. Consider our primary
schools, and what is taught in them. A child learns:--

1. To read, write, and cipher, more or less well; but in a very large
proportion of cases not so well as to take pleasure in reading, or to be
able to write the commonest letter properly.

2. A quantity of dogmatic theology, of which the child, nine times out
of ten, understands next to nothing.

3. Mixed up with this, so as to seem to stand or fall with it, a few of
the broadest and simplest principles of morality. This, to my mind, is
much as if a man of science should make the story of the fall of the
apple in Newton's garden, an integral part of the doctrine of
gravitation, and teach it as of equal authority with the law of the
inverse squares.

4. A good deal of Jewish history and Syrian geography, and, perhaps, a
little something about English history and the geography of the child's
own country. But I doubt if there is a primary school in England in
which hangs a map of the hundred in which the village lies, so that the
children may be practically taught by it what a map means.

5. A certain amount of regularity, attentive obedience, respect for
others: obtained by fear, if the master be incompetent or foolish; by
love and reverence, if he be wise.

So far as this school course embraces a training in the theory and
practice of obedience to the moral laws of Nature, I gladly admit, not
only that it contains a valuable educational element, but that, so far,
it deals with the most valuable and important part of all education.
Yet, contrast what is done in this direction with what might be done;
with the time given to matters of comparatively no importance; with the
absence of any attention to things of the highest moment; and one is
tempted to think of Falstaff's bill and "the halfpenny worth of bread to
all that quantity of sack."

Let us consider what a child thus "educated" knows, and what it does not
know. Begin with the most important topic of all--morality, as the guide
of conduct. The child knows well enough that some acts meet with
approbation and some with disapprobation. But it has never heard that
there lies in the nature of things a reason for every moral law, as
cogent and as well defined as that which underlies every physical law;
that stealing and lying are just as certain to be followed by evil
consequences, as putting your hand in the fire, or jumping out of a
garret window. Again, though the scholar may have been made acquainted,
in dogmatic fashion, with the broad laws of morality, he has had no
training in the application of those laws to the difficult problems
which result from the complex conditions of modern civilization. Would
it not be very hard to expect anyone to solve a problem in conic
sections who had merely been taught the axioms and definitions of
mathematical science?

A workman has to bear hard labour, and perhaps privation, while he sees
others rolling in wealth, and feeding their dogs with what would keep
his children from starvation. Would it not be well to have helped that
man to calm the natural promptings of discontent by showing him, in his
youth, the necessary connexion of the moral law which prohibits stealing
with the stability of society--by proving to him, once for all, that it
is better for his own people, better for himself, better for future
generations, that he should starve than steal? If you have no foundation
of knowledge, or habit of thought, to work upon, what chance have you of
persuading a hungry man that a capitalist is not a thief "with a
circumbendibus?" And if he honestly believes that, of what avail is it
to quote the commandment against stealing, when he proposes to make the
capitalist disgorge?

Again, the child learns absolutely nothing of the history or the
political organization of his own country. His general impression is,
that everything of much importance happened a very long while ago; and
that the Queen and the gentlefolks govern the country much after the
fashion of King David and the elders and nobles of Israel--his sole
models. Will you give a man with this much information a vote? In easy
times he sells it for a pot of beer. Why should he not? It is of about
as much use to him as a chignon, and he knows as much what to do with
it, for any other purpose. In bad times, on the contrary, he applies his
simple theory of government, and believes that his rulers are the cause
of his sufferings--a belief which sometimes bears remarkable practical
fruits.

Least of all, does the child gather from this primary "education" of
ours a conception of the laws of the physical world, or of the relations
of cause and effect therein. And this is the more to be lamented, as the
poor are especially exposed to physical evils, and are more interested
in removing them than any other class of the community. If any one is
concerned in knowing the ordinary laws of mechanics one would think it
is the hand-labourer, whose daily toil lies among levers and pulleys; or
among the other implements of artisan work. And if any one is interested
in the laws of health, it is the poor workman, whose strength is wasted
by ill-prepared food, whose health is sapped by bad ventilation and bad
drainage, and half whose children are massacred by disorders which might
be prevented. Not only does our present primary education carefully
abstain from hinting to the workman that some of his greatest evils are
traceable to mere physical agencies, which could be removed by energy,
patience, and frugality; but it does worse--it renders him, so far as it
can, deaf to those who could help him, and tries to substitute an
Oriental submission to what is falsely declared to be the will of God,
for his natural tendency to strive after a better condition.

What wonder then, if very recently, an appeal has been made to
statistics for the profoundly foolish purpose of showing that education
is of no good--that it diminishes neither misery, nor crime, among the
masses of mankind? I reply, why should the thing which has been called
education do either the one or the other? If I am a knave or a fool,
teaching me to read and write won't make me less of either one or the
other--unless somebody shows me how to put my reading and writing to
wise and good purposes.

Suppose any one were to argue that medicine is of no use, because it
could be proved statistically, that the percentage of deaths was just
the same, among people who had been taught how to open a medicine chest,
and among those who did not so much as know the key by sight. The
argument is absurd; but it is not more preposterous than that against
which I am contending. The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all
the other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and
you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is
quite another matter whether he ever opens the box or not. And he is as
likely to poison as to cure himself, if, without guidance, he swallows
the first drug that comes to hand. In these times a man may as well be
purblind, as unable to read--lame, as unable to write. But I protest
that, if I thought the alternative were a necessary one, I would rather
that the children of the poor should grow up ignorant of both these
mighty arts, than that they should remain ignorant of that knowledge to
which these arts are means.


It may be said that all these animadversions may apply to primary
schools, but that the higher schools, at any rate, must be allowed to
give a liberal education. In fact, they professedly sacrifice everything
else to this object.

Let us inquire into this matter. What do the higher schools, those to
which the great middle class of the country sends it children, teach,
over and above the instruction given in the primary schools? There is a
little more reading and writing of English. But, for all that, every
one knows that it is a rare thing to find a boy of the middle or upper
classes who can read aloud decently, or who can put his thoughts on
paper in clear and grammatical (to say nothing of good or elegant)
language. The "ciphering" of the lower schools expands into elementary
mathematics in the higher; into arithmetic, with a little algebra, a
little Euclid. But I doubt if one boy in five hundred has ever heard the
explanation of a rule of arithmetic, or knows his Euclid otherwise than
by rote.

Of theology, the middle class schoolboy gets rather less than poorer
children, less absolutely and less relatively, because there are so many
other claims upon his attention. I venture to say that, in the great
majority of cases, his ideas on this subject when he leaves school are
of the most shadowy and vague description, and associated with painful
impressions of the weary hours spent in learning collects and catechism
by heart.

Modern geography, modern history, modern literature; the English
language as a language; the whole circle of the sciences, physical,
moral, and social, are even more completely ignored in the higher than
in the lower schools. Up till within a few years back, a boy might have
passed through any one of the great public schools with the greatest
distinction and credit, and might never so much as have heard of one of
the subjects I have just mentioned. He might never have heard that the
earth goes round the sun; that England underwent a great revolution in
1688, and France another in 1789; that there once lived certain notable
men called Chaucer, Shakspeare, Milton, Voltaire, Goethe, Schiller. The
first might be a German and the last an Englishman for anything he
could tell you to the contrary. And as for science, the only idea the
word would suggest to his mind would be dexterity in boxing.

I have said that this was the state of things a few years back, for the
sake of the few righteous who are to be found among the educational
cities of the plain. But I would not have you too sanguine about the
result, if you sound the minds of the existing generation of public
school-boys, on such topics as those I have mentioned.

Now let us pause to consider this wonderful state of affairs; for the
time will come when Englishmen will quote it as the stock example of the
stolid stupidity of their ancestors in the nineteenth century. The most
thoroughly commercial people, the greatest voluntary wanderers and
colonists the world has ever seen, are precisely the middle classes of
this country. If there be a people which has been busy making history on
the great scale for the last three hundred years--and the most
profoundly interesting history--history which, if it happened to be that
of Greece or Rome, we should study with avidity--it is the English. If
there be a people which, during the same period, has developed a
remarkable literature, it is our own. If there be a nation whose
prosperity depends absolutely and wholly upon their mastery over the
forces of Nature, upon their intelligent apprehension of, and obedience
to, the laws of the creation and distribution of wealth, and of the
stable equilibrium of the forces of society, it is precisely this
nation. And yet this is what these wonderful people tell their
sons:--"At the cost of from one to two thousand pounds of our hard
earned money, we devote twelve of the most precious years of your lives
to school. There you shall toil, or be supposed to toil; but there you
shall not learn one single thing of all those you will most want to
know, directly you leave school and enter upon the practical business of
life. You will in all probability go into business, but you shall not
know where, or how, any article of commerce is produced, or the
difference between an export or an import, or the meaning of the word
'capital.' You will very likely settle in a colony, but you shall not
know whether Tasmania is part of New South Wales, or _vice versâ_.

"Very probably you may become a manufacturer, but you shall not be
provided with the means of understanding the working of one of your own
steam-engines, or the nature of the raw products you employ; and, when
you are asked to buy a patent, you shall not have the slightest means of
judging whether the inventor is an impostor who is contravening the
elementary principles of science, or a man who will make you as rich as
Croesus.

"You will very likely get into the House of Commons. You will have to
take your share in making laws which may prove a blessing or a curse to
millions of men. But you shall not hear one word respecting the
political organization of your country; the meaning of the controversy
between freetraders and protectionists shall never have been mentioned
to you: you shall not so much as know that there are such things as
economical laws.

"The mental power which will be of most importance in your daily life
will be the power of seeing things as they are without regard to
authority; and of drawing accurate general conclusions from particular
facts. But at school and at college you shall know of no source of truth
but authority; nor exercise your reasoning faculty upon anything but
deduction from that which is laid down by authority.

"You will have to weary your soul with work, and many a time eat your
bread in sorrow and in bitterness, and you shall not have learned to
take refuge in the great source of pleasure without alloy, the serene
resting-place for worn human nature,--the world of art."

Said I not rightly that we are a wonderful people? I am quite prepared
to allow, that education entirely devoted to these omitted subjects
might not be a completely liberal education. But is an education which
ignores them all, a liberal education? Nay, is it too much to say that
the education which should embrace these subjects and no others, would
be a real education, though an incomplete one; while an education which
omits them is really not an education at all, but a more or less useful
course of intellectual gymnastics?


For what does the middle-class school put in the place of all these
things which are left out? It substitutes what is usually comprised
under the compendious title of the "classics"--that is to say, the
languages, the literature, and the history of the ancient Greeks and
Romans, and the geography of so much of the world as was known to these
two great nations of antiquity. Now, do not expect me to depreciate the
earnest and enlightened pursuit of classical learning. I have not the
least desire to speak ill of such occupations, nor any sympathy with
those who run them down. On the contrary, if my opportunities had lain
in that direction, there is no investigation into which I could have
thrown myself with greater delight than that of antiquity.

What science can present greater attractions than philology? How can a
lover of literary excellence fail to rejoice in the ancient
masterpieces? And with what consistency could I, whose business lies so
much in the attempt to decipher the past, and to build up intelligible
forms out of the scattered fragments of long-extinct beings, fail to
take a sympathetic, though an unlearned, interest in the labours of a
Niebuhr, a Gibbon, or a Grote? Classical history is a great section of
the palæontology of man; and I have the same double respect for it as
for other kinds of palæontology--that is to say, a respect for the facts
which it establishes as for all facts, and a still greater respect for
it as a preparation for the discovery of a law of progress.

But if the classics were taught as they might be taught--if boys and
girls were instructed in Greek and Latin, not merely as languages, but
as illustrations of philological science; if a vivid picture of life on
the shores of the Mediterranean, two thousand years ago, were imprinted
on the minds of scholars; if ancient history were taught, not as a weary
series of feuds and fights, but traced to its causes in such men placed
under such conditions; if, lastly, the study of the classical books were
followed in such a manner as to impress boys with their beauties, and
with the grand simplicity of their statement of the everlasting problems
of human life, instead of with their verbal and grammatical
peculiarities; I still think it as little proper that they should form
the basis of a liberal education for our contemporaries, as I should
think it fitting to make that sort of palæontology with which I am
familiar, the back-bone of modern education.

It is wonderful how close a parallel to classical training could be made
out of that palæontology to which I refer. In the first place I could
get up an osteological primer so arid, so pedantic in its terminology,
so altogether distasteful to the youthful mind, as to beat the recent
famous production of the head-masters out of the field in all these
excellences. Next, I could exercise my boys upon easy fossils, and bring
out all their powers of memory and all their ingenuity in the
application of my osteo-grammatical rules to the interpretation, or
construing, of those fragments. To those who had reached the higher
classes, I might supply odd bones to be built up into animals, giving
great honour and reward to him who succeeded in fabricating monsters
most entirely in accordance with the rules. That would answer to
verse-making and essay-writing in the dead languages.

To be sure, if a great comparative anatomist were to look at these
fabrications he might shake his head, or laugh. But what then? Would
such a catastrophe destroy the parallel? What think you would Cicero, or
Horace, say to the production of the best sixth form going? And would
not Terence stop his ears and run out if he could be present at an
English performance of his own plays? Would Hamlet, in the mouths of a
set of French actors, who should insist on pronouncing English after the
fashion of their own tongue, be more hideously ridiculous?

But it will be said that I am forgetting the beauty, and the human
interest, which appertain to classical studies. To this I reply that it
is only a very strong man who can appreciate the charms of a landscape,
as he is toiling up a steep hill, along a bad road. What with
short-windedness, stones, ruts, and a pervading sense of the wisdom of
rest and be thankful, most of us have little enough sense of the
beautiful under these circumstances. The ordinary school-boy is
precisely in this case. He finds Parnassus uncommonly steep, and there
is no chance of his having much time or inclination to look about him
till he gets to the top. And nine times out of ten he does not get to
the top.

But if this be a fair picture of the results of classical teaching at
its best--and I gather from those who have authority to speak on such
matters that it is so--what is to be said of classical teaching at its
worst, or in other words, of the classics of our ordinary middle-class
schools[2]? I will tell you. It means getting up endless forms and rules
by heart. It means turning Latin and Greek into English, for the mere
sake of being able to do it, and without the smallest regard to the
worth, or worthlessness, of the author read. It means the learning of
innumerable, not always decent, fables in such a shape that the meaning
they once had is dried up into utter trash; and the only impression left
upon a boy's mind is, that the people who believed such things must have
been the greatest idiots the world ever saw. And it means, finally, that
after a dozen years spent at this kind of work, the sufferer shall be
incompetent to interpret a passage in an author he has not already got
up; that he shall loathe the sight of a Greek or Latin book; and that he
shall never open, or think of, a classical writer again, until,
wonderful to relate, he insists upon submitting his sons to the same
process.

These be your gods, O Israel! For the sake of this net result (and
respectability) the British father denies his children all the knowledge
they might turn to account in life, not merely for the achievement of
vulgar success, but for guidance in the great crises of human existence.
This is the stone he offers to those whom he is bound by the strongest
and tenderest ties to feed with bread.


If primary and secondary education are in this unsatisfactory state,
what is to be said to the universities? This is an awful subject, and
one I almost fear to touch with my unhallowed hands; but I can tell you
what those say who have authority to speak.

The Rector of Lincoln College, in his lately published, valuable
"Suggestions for Academical Organization with especial reference to
Oxford," tells us (p. 127):--

"The colleges were, in their origin, endowments, not for the elements of
a general liberal education, but for the prolonged study of special and
professional faculties by men of riper age. The universities embraced
both these objects. The colleges, while they incidentally aided in
elementary education, were specially devoted to the highest learning....

"This was the theory of the middle-age university and the design of
collegiate foundations in their origin. Time and circumstances have
brought about a total change. The colleges no longer promote the
researches of science, or direct professional study. Here and there
college walls may shelter an occasional student, but not in larger
proportions than may be found in private life. Elementary teaching of
youths under twenty is now the only function performed by the
university, and almost the only object of college endowments. Colleges
were homes for the life-study of the highest and most abstruse parts of
knowledge. They have become boarding schools in which the elements of
the learned languages are taught to youths."

If Mr. Pattison's high position, and his obvious love and respect for
his university, be insufficient to convince the outside world that
language so severe is yet no more than just, the authority of the
Commissioners who reported on the University of Oxford in 1850 is open
to no challenge. Yet they write:--

"It is generally acknowledged that both Oxford and the country at large
suffer greatly from the absence of a body of learned men devoting their
lives to the cultivation of science, and to the direction of academical
education.

"The fact that so few books of profound research emanate from the
University of Oxford, materially impairs its character as a seat of
learning, and consequently its hold on the respect of the nation."

Cambridge can claim no exemption from the reproaches addressed to
Oxford. And thus there seems no escape from the admission that what we
fondly call our great seats of learning are simply "boarding schools"
for bigger boys; that learned men are not more numerous in them than out
of them; that the advancement of knowledge is not the object of fellows
of colleges; that, in the philosophic calm and meditative stillness of
their greenswarded courts, philosophy does not thrive, and meditation
bears few fruits.

It is my great good fortune to reckon amongst my friends resident
members of both universities, who are men of learning and research,
zealous cultivators of science, keeping before their minds a noble ideal
of a university, and doing their best to make that ideal a reality; and,
to me, they would necessarily typify the universities, did not the
authoritative statements I have quoted compel me to believe that they
are exceptional, and not representative men. Indeed, upon calm
consideration, several circumstances lead me to think that the Rector of
Lincoln College and the Commissioners cannot be far wrong.

I believe there can be no doubt that the foreigner who should wish to
become acquainted with the scientific, or the literary, activity of
modern England, would simply lose his time and his pains if he visited
our universities with that object.

And, as for works of profound research on any subject, and, above all,
in that classical lore for which the universities profess to sacrifice
almost everything else, why, a third-rate, poverty-stricken German
university turns out more produce of that kind in one year, than our
vast and wealthy foundations elaborate in ten.

Ask the man who is investigating any question, profoundly and
thoroughly--be it historical, philosophical, philological, physical,
literary, or theological; who is trying to make himself master of any
abstract subject (except, perhaps, political economy and geology, both
of which are intensely Anglican sciences) whether he is not compelled
to read half a dozen times as many German, as English, books? And
whether, of these English books, more than one in ten is the work of a
fellow of a college, or a professor of an English university?

Is this from any lack of power in the English as compared with the
German mind? The countrymen of Grote and of Mill, of Faraday, of Robert
Brown, of Lyell, and of Darwin, to go no further back than the
contemporaries of men of middle age, can afford to smile at such a
suggestion. England can show now, as she has been able to show in every
generation since civilization spread over the West, individual men who
hold their own against the world, and keep alive the old tradition of
her intellectual eminence.

But, in the majority of cases, these men are what they are in virtue of
their native intellectual force, and of a strength of character which
will not recognise impediments. They are not trained in the courts of
the Temple of Science, but storm the walls of that edifice in all sorts
of irregular ways, and with much loss of time and power, in order to
obtain their legitimate positions.

Our universities not only do not encourage such men; do not offer them
positions, in which it should be their highest duty to do, thoroughly,
that which they are most capable of doing; but, as far as possible,
university training shuts out of the minds of those among them, who are
subjected to it, the prospect that there is anything in the world for
which they are specially fitted. Imagine the success of the attempt to
still the intellectual hunger any of the men I have mentioned, by
putting before him, as the object of existence, the successful mimicry
of the measure of a Greek song, or the roll of Ciceronian prose! Imagine
how much success would be likely to attend the attempt to persuade such
men, that the education which leads to perfection in such elegancies is
alone to be called culture; while the facts of history, the process of
thought, the conditions of moral and social existence, and the laws of
physical nature, are left to be dealt with as they may, by outside
barbarians!

It is not thus that the German universities, from being beneath notice a
century ago, have become what they are now--the most intensely
cultivated and the most productive intellectual corporations the world
has ever seen.

The student who repairs to them sees in the list of classes and of
professors a fair picture of the world of knowledge. Whatever he needs
to know there is some one ready to teach him, some one competent to
discipline him in the way of learning; whatever his special bent, let
him but be able and diligent, and in due time he shall find distinction
and a career. Among his professors, he sees men whose names are known
and revered throughout the civilized world; and their living example
infects him with a noble ambition, and a love for the spirit of work.

The Germans dominate the intellectual world by virtue of the same simple
secret as that which made Napoleon the master of old Europe. They have
declared _la carrière ouverte aux talents_, and every Bursch marches
with a professor's gown in his knapsack. Let him become a great scholar,
or man of science, and ministers will compete for his services. In
Germany, they do not leave the chance of his holding the office he
would render illustrious to the tender mercies of a hot canvass, and the
final wisdom of a mob of country parsons.

In short, in Germany, the universities are exactly what the Rector of
Lincoln and the Commissioners tell us the English universities are not;
that is to say, corporations "of learned men devoting their lives to the
cultivation of science, and the direction of academical education." They
are not "boarding schools for youths," nor clerical seminaries; but
institutions for the higher culture of men, in which the theological
faculty is of no more importance, or prominence, than the rest; and
which are truly "universities," since they strive to represent and
embody the totality of human knowledge, and to find room for all forms
of intellectual activity.

May zealous and clear-headed reformers like Mr. Pattison succeed in
their noble endeavours to shape our universities towards some such ideal
as this, without losing what is valuable and distinctive in their social
tone! But until they have succeeded, a liberal education will be no more
obtainable in our Oxford and Cambridge Universities than in our public
schools.


If I am justified in my conception of the ideal of a liberal education;
and if what I have said about the existing educational institutions of
the country is also true, it is clear that the two have no sort of
relation to one another; that the best of our schools and the most
complete of our university trainings give but a narrow, one-sided, and
essentially illiberal education--while the worst give what is really
next to no education at all. The South London Working-Men's College
could not copy any of these institutions if it would. I am bold enough
to express the conviction that it ought not if it could.

For what is wanted is the reality and not the mere name of a liberal
education; and this College must steadily set before itself the ambition
to be able to give that education sooner or later. At present we are but
beginning, sharpening our educational tools, as it were, and, except a
modicum of physical science, we are not able to offer much more than is
to be found in an ordinary school.

Moral and social science--one of the greatest and most fruitful of our
future classes, I hope--at present lacks only one thing in our
programme, and that is a teacher. A considerable want, no doubt; but it
must be recollected that it is much better to want a teacher than to
want the desire to learn.

Further, we need what, for want of a better name, I must call Physical
Geography. What I mean is that which the Germans call "_Erdkunde_." It
is a description of the earth, of its place and relation to other
bodies; of its general structure, and of its great features--winds,
tides, mountains, plains; of the chief forms of the vegetable and animal
worlds, of the varieties of man. It is the peg upon which the greatest
quantity of useful and entertaining scientific information can be
suspended.

Literature is not upon the College programme; but I hope some day to see
it there. For literature is the greatest of all sources of refined
pleasure, and one of the great uses of a liberal education is to enable
us to enjoy that pleasure. There is scope enough for the purposes of
liberal education in the study of the rich treasures of our own language
alone. All that is needed is direction, and the cultivation of a refined
taste by attention to sound criticism. But there is no reason why French
and German should not be mastered sufficiently to read what is worth
reading in those languages, with pleasure and with profit.

And finally, by-and-by, we must have History; treated not as a
succession of battles and dynasties; not as a series of biographies; not
as evidence that Providence has always been on the side of either Whigs
or Tories; but as the development of man in times past, and in other
conditions than our own.

But, as it is one of the principles of our College to be
self-supporting, the public must lead, and we must follow, in these
matters. If my hearers take to heart what I have said about liberal
education, they will desire these things, and I doubt not we shall be
able to supply them. But we must wait till the demand is made.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] For a justification of what is here said about these schools, see
that valuable book, "Essays on a Liberal Education," _passim_.




IV.

SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION: NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH.

     [MR. THACKERAY, talking of after-dinner speeches, has
     lamented that "one never can recollect the fine things one thought
     of in the cab," in going to the place of entertainment. I am not
     aware that there are any "fine things" in the following pages, but
     such as there are stand to a speech which really did get itself
     spoken, at the hospitable table of the Liverpool Philomathic
     Society, more or less in the position of what "one thought of in
     the cab."]


The introduction of scientific training into the general education of
the country is a topic upon which I could not have spoken, without some
more or less apologetic introduction, a few years ago. But upon this, as
upon other matters, public opinion has of late undergone a rapid
modification. Committees of both Houses of the Legislature have agreed
that something must be done in this direction, and have even thrown out
timid and faltering suggestions as to what should be done; while at the
opposite pole of society, committees of working-men have expressed their
conviction that scientific training is the one thing needful for their
advancement, whether as men, or as workmen. Only the other day, it was
my duty to take part in the reception of a deputation of London working
men, who desired to learn from Sir Roderick Murchison, the Director of
the Royal School of Mines, whether the organization of the Institution
in Jermyn Street could be made available for the supply of that
scientific instruction, the need of which could not have been
apprehended, or stated, more clearly than it was by them.

The heads of colleges in our great Universities (who have not the
reputation of being the most mobile of persons) have, in several cases,
thought it well that, out of the great number of honours and rewards at
their disposal, a few should hereafter be given to the cultivators of
the physical sciences. Nay, I hear that some colleges have even gone so
far as to appoint one, or, may be, two special tutors for the purpose of
putting the facts and principles of physical science before the
undergraduate mind. And I say it with gratitude and great respect for
those eminent persons, that the head masters of our public schools,
Eton, Harrow, Winchester, have addressed themselves to the problem of
introducing instruction in physical science among the studies of those
great educational bodies, with much honesty of purpose and enlightenment
of understanding; and I live in hope that, before long, important
changes in this direction will be carried into effect in those
strongholds of ancient prescription. In fact, such changes have already
been made, and physical science, even now, constitutes a recognised
element of the school curriculum in Harrow and Rugby, whilst I
understand that ample preparations for such studies are being made at
Eton and elsewhere.

Looking at these facts, I might perhaps spare myself the trouble of
giving any reasons for the introduction of physical science into
elementary education; yet I cannot but think that it may be well, if I
place before you some considerations which, perhaps, have hardly
received full attention.

At other times, and in other places, I have endeavoured to state the
higher and more abstract arguments, by which the study of physical
science may be shown to be indispensable to the complete training of the
human mind; but I do not wish it to be supposed that, because I happen
to be devoted to more or less abstract and "unpractical" pursuits, I am
insensible to the weight which ought to be attached to that which has
been said to be the English conception of Paradise--"namely, getting
on." I look upon it, that "getting on" is a very important matter
indeed. I do not mean merely for the sake of the coarse and tangible
results of success, but because humanity is so constituted that a vast
number of us would never be impelled to those stretches of exertion
which make us wiser and more capable men, if it were not for the
absolute necessity of putting on our faculties all the strain they will
bear, for the purpose of "getting on" in the most practical sense.

Now the value of a knowledge of physical science as a means of getting
on, is indubitable. There are hardly any of our trades, except the
merely huckstering ones, in which some knowledge of science may not be
directly profitable to the pursuer of that occupation. As industry
attains higher stages of its development, as its processes become more
complicated and refined, and competition more keen, the sciences are
dragged in, one by one, to take their share in the fray; and he who can
best avail himself of their help is the man who will come out uppermost
in that struggle for existence which goes on as fiercely beneath the
smooth surface of modern society, as among the wild inhabitants of the
woods.

But, in addition to the bearing of science on ordinary practical life,
let me direct your attention to its immense influence on several of the
professions. I ask any one who has adopted the calling of an engineer,
how much time he lost when he left school, because he had to devote
himself to pursuits which were absolutely novel and strange, and of
which he had not obtained the remotest conception from his instructors?
He had to familiarize himself with ideas of the course and powers of
Nature, to which his attention had never been directed during his
school-life, and to learn, for the first time, that a world of facts
lies outside and beyond the world of words. I appeal to those who know
what Engineering is, to say how far I am right in respect to that
profession; but with regard to another, of no less importance, I shall
venture to speak of my own knowledge. There is no one of who may not at
any moment be thrown, bound hand and foot by physical incapacity, into the
hands of a medical practitioner. The chances of life and death for all
and each of us may, at any moment, depend on the skill with which that
practitioner is able to make out what is wrong in our bodily frames,
and on his ability to apply the proper remedy to the defect.

The necessities of modern life are such, and the class from which the
medical profession is chiefly recruited is so situated, that few medical
men can hope to spend more than three or four, or it may be five, years
in the pursuit of those studies which are immediately germane to physic.
How is that all too brief period spent at present? I speak as an old
examiner, having served some eleven or twelve years in that capacity in
the University of London, and therefore having a practical acquaintance
with the subject; but I might fortify myself by the authority of the
President of the College of Surgeons, Mr. Quain, whom I heard the other
day in an admirable address (the Hunterian Oration) deal fully and
wisely with this very topic[3].

A young man commencing the study of medicine is at once required to
endeavour to make an acquaintance with a number of sciences, such as
Physics, as Chemistry, as Botany, as Physiology, which are absolutely
and entirely strange to him, however excellent his so-called education
at school may have been. Not only is he devoid of all apprehension of
scientific conceptions, not only does he fail to attach any meaning to
the words "matter," "force," or "law" in their scientific senses, but,
worse still, he has no notion of what it is to come into contact with
nature, or to lay his mind alongside of a physical fact, and try to
conquer it, in the way our great naval hero told his captains to master
their enemies. His whole mind has been given to books, and I am hardly
exaggerating if I say that they are more real to him than Nature. He
imagines that all knowledge can be got out of books, and rests upon the
authority of some master or other; nor does he entertain any misgiving
that the method of learning which led to proficiency in the rules of
grammar, will suffice to lead him to a mastery of the laws of Nature.
The youngster, thus unprepared for serious study, is turned loose among
his medical studies, with the result, in nine cases out of ten, that the
first year of his curriculum is spent in learning how to learn. Indeed,
he is lucky, if at the end of the first year, by the exertions of his
teachers and his own industry, he has acquired even that art of arts.
After which there remain not more than three, or perhaps four, years for
the profitable study of such vast sciences as Anatomy, Physiology,
Therapeutics, Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, and the like, upon his
knowledge or ignorance of which it depends whether the practitioner
shall diminish, or increase, the bills of mortality. Now what is it but
the preposterous condition of ordinary school education which prevents a
young man of seventeen, destined for the practice of medicine, from
being fully prepared for the study of nature; and from coming to the
medical school, equipped with that preliminary knowledge of the
principles of Physics, of Chemistry, and of Biology, upon which he has
now to waste one of the precious years, every moment of which ought to
be given to those studies which bear directly upon the knowledge of his
profession?

There is another profession, to the members of which, I think, a certain
preliminary knowledge of physical science might be quite as valuable as
to the medical man. The practitioner of medicine sets before himself the
noble object of taking care of man's bodily welfare; but the members of
this other profession undertake to "minister to minds diseased," and, so
far as may be, to diminish sin and soften sorrow. Like the medical
profession, the clerical, of which I now speak, rests its power to heal
upon its knowledge of the order of the universe--upon certain theories
of man's relation to that which lies outside him. It is not my business
to express any opinion about these theories. I merely wish to point out
that, like all other theories, they are professedly based upon matter of
fact. Thus the clerical profession has to deal with the facts of Nature
from a certain point of view; and hence it comes into contact with that
of the man of science, who has to treat the same facts from another
point of view. You know how often that contact is to be described as
collision, or violent friction; and how great the heat, how little the
light, which commonly results from it.

In the interests of fair play, to say nothing of those of mankind, I
ask, Why do not the clergy as a body acquire, as a part of their
preliminary education, some such tincture of physical science as will
put them in a position to understand the difficulties in the way of
accepting their theories, which are forced upon the mind of every
thoughtful and intelligent man, who has taken the trouble to instruct
himself in the elements of natural knowledge?

Some time ago I attended a large meeting of the clergy, for the purpose
of delivering an address which I had been invited to give. I spoke of
some of the most elementary facts in physical science, and of the manner
in which they directly contradict certain of the ordinary teachings of
the clergy. The result was, that, after I had finished, one section of
the assembled ecclesiastics attacked me with all the intemperance of
pious zeal, for stating facts and conclusions which no competent judge
doubts; while, after the first speakers had subsided, amidst the cheers
of the great majority of their colleagues, the more rational minority
rose to tell me that I had taken wholly superfluous pains, that they
already knew all about what I had told them, and perfectly agreed with
me. A hard-headed friend of mine, who was present, put the not unnatural
question, "Then why don't you say so in your pulpits?" to which inquiry
I heard no reply.

In fact the clergy are at present divisible into three sections: an
immense body who are ignorant and speak out; a small proportion who know
and are silent; and a minute minority who know and speak according to
their knowledge. By the clergy, I mean especially the Protestant clergy.
Our great antagonist--I speak as a man of science--the Roman Catholic
Church, the one great spiritual organization which is able to resist,
and must, as a matter of life and death, resist, the progress of science
and modern civilization, manages her affairs much better.

It was my fortune some time ago to pay a visit to one of the most
important of the institutions in which the clergy of the Roman Catholic
Church in these islands are trained; and it seemed to me that the
difference between these men and the comfortable champions of
Anglicanism and of Dissent, was comparable to the difference between our
gallant Volunteers and the trained veterans of Napoleon's Old Guard.

The Catholic priest is trained to know his business, and do it
effectually. The professors of the college in question, learned,
zealous, and determined men, permitted me to speak frankly with them.
We talked like outposts of opposed armies during a truce--as friendly
enemies; and when I ventured to point out the difficulties their
students would have to encounter from scientific thought, they replied:
"Our Church has lasted many ages, and has passed safely through many
storms. The present is but a new gust of the old tempest, and we do not
turn out our young men less fitted to weather it, than they have been,
in former times, to cope with the difficulties of those times. The
heresies of the day are explained to them by their professors of
philosophy and science, and they are taught how those heresies are to be
met."

I heartily respect an organization which faces its enemies in this way;
and I wish that all ecclesiastical organizations were in as effective a
condition. I think it would be better, not only for them, but for us.
The army of liberal thought is, at present, in very loose order; and
many a spirited free-thinker makes use of his freedom mainly to vent
nonsense. We should be the better for a vigorous and watchful enemy to
hammer us into cohesion and discipline; and I, for one, lament that the
bench of Bishops cannot show a man of the calibre of Butler of the
"Analogy," who, if he were alive, would make short work of much of the
current _à priori_ "infidelity."


I hope you will consider that the arguments I have now stated, even if
there were no better ones, constitute a sufficient apology for urging
the introduction of science into schools. The next question to which I
have to address myself is, What sciences ought to be thus taught? And
this is one of the most important of questions, because my side (I am
afraid I am a terribly candid friend) sometimes spoils its cause by
going in for too much. There are other forms of culture beside physical
science; and I should be profoundly sorry to see the fact forgotten, or
even to observe a tendency to starve, or cripple, literary, or æsthetic,
culture for the sake of science. Such a narrow view of the nature of
education has nothing to do with my firm conviction that a complete and
thorough scientific culture ought to be introduced into all schools. By
this, however, I do not mean that every schoolboy should be taught
everything in science. That would be a very absurd thing to conceive,
and a very mischievous thing to attempt. What I mean is, that no boy nor
girl should leave school without possessing a grasp of the general
character of science, and without having been disciplined, more or less,
in the methods of all sciences; so that, when turned into the world to
make their own way, they shall be prepared to face scientific problems,
not by knowing at once the conditions of every problem, or by being able
at once to solve it; but by being familiar with the general current of
scientific thought, and by being able to apply the methods of science in
the proper way, when they have acquainted themselves with the conditions
of the special problem.

That is what I understand by scientific education. To furnish a boy with
such an education, it is by no means necessary that he should devote his
whole school existence to physical science: in fact, no one would lament
so one-sided a proceeding more than I. Nay more, it is not necessary for
him to give up more than a moderate share of his time to such studies,
if they be properly selected and arranged, and if he be trained in them
in a fitting manner.

I conceive the proper course to be somewhat as follows. To begin with,
let every child be instructed in those general views of the phenomena of
Nature for which we have no exact English name. The nearest
approximation to a name for what I mean, which we possess, is "physical
geography." The Germans have a better, "Erdkunde," ("earth knowledge" or
"geology" in its etymological sense,) that is to say, a general
knowledge of the earth, and what is on it, in it, and about it. If any
one who has had experience of the ways of young children will call to
mind their questions, he will find that so far as they can be put into
any scientific category, they come under this head of "Erdkunde." The
child asks, "What is the moon, and why does it shine?" "What is this
water, and where does it run?" "What is the wind?" "What makes the waves
in the sea?" "Where does this animal live, and what is the use of that
plant?" And if not snubbed and stunted by being told not to ask foolish
questions, there is no limit to the intellectual craving of a young
child; nor any bounds to the slow, but solid, accretion of knowledge and
development of the thinking faculty in this way. To all such questions,
answers which are necessarily incomplete, though true as far as they go,
may be given by any teacher whose ideas represent real knowledge and not
mere book learning; and a panoramic view of Nature, accompanied by a
strong infusion of the scientific habit of mind, may thus be placed
within the reach of every child of nine or ten.

After this preliminary opening of the eyes to the great spectacle of the
daily progress of Nature, as the reasoning faculties of the child grow,
and he becomes familiar with the use of the tools of knowledge--reading,
writing, and elementary mathematics--he should pass on to what is, in
the more strict sense, physical science. Now there are two kinds of
physical science: the one regards form and the relation of forms to one
another; the other deals with causes and effects. In many of what we
term our sciences, these two kinds are mixed up together; but systematic
botany is a pure example of the former kind, and physics of the latter
kind, of science. Every educational advantage which training in
physical science can give is obtainable from the proper study of these
two; and I should be contented, for the present, if they, added to our
"Erdkunde," furnished the whole of the scientific curriculum of schools.
Indeed I conceive it would be one of the greatest boons which could be
conferred upon England, if henceforward every child in the country were
instructed in the general knowledge of the things about it, in the
elements of physics, and of botany. But I should be still better pleased
if there could be added somewhat of chemistry, and an elementary
acquaintance with human physiology.

So far as school education is concerned, I want to go no further just
now; and I believe that such instruction would make an excellent
introduction to that preparatory scientific training which, as I have
indicated, is so essential for the successful pursuit of our most
important professions. But this modicum of instruction must be so given
as to ensure real knowledge and practical discipline. If scientific
education is to be dealt with as mere bookwork, it will be better not to
attempt it, but to stick to the Latin Grammar, which makes no pretence
to be anything but bookwork.

If the great benefits of scientific training are sought, it is essential
that such training should be real: that is to say, that the mind of the
scholar should be brought into direct relation with fact, that he should
not merely be told a thing, but made to see by the use of his own
intellect and ability that the thing is _so_ and no otherwise. The great
peculiarity of scientific training, that in virtue of which it cannot be
replaced by any other discipline whatsoever, is this bringing of the
mind directly into contact with fact, and practising the intellect in
the completest form of induction; that is to say, in drawing conclusions
from particular facts made known by immediate observation of Nature.

The other studies which enter into ordinary education do not discipline
the mind in this way. Mathematical training is almost purely deductive.
The mathematician starts with a few simple propositions, the proof of
which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of
his work consists of subtle deductions from them. The teaching of
languages, at any rate as ordinarily practised, is of the same general
nature,--authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental
operations of the scholar are deductive.

Again: if history be the subject of study, the facts are still taken
upon the evidence of tradition and authority. You cannot make a boy see
the battle of Thermopylæ for himself, or know, of his own knowledge,
that Cromwell once ruled England. There is no getting into direct
contact with natural fact by this road; there is no dispensing with
authority, but rather a resting upon it.

In all these respects, science differs from other educational
discipline, and prepares the scholar for common life. What have we to do
in every-day life? Most of the business which demands our attention is
matter of fact, which needs, in the first place, to be accurately
observed or apprehended; in the second, to be interpreted by inductive
and deductive reasonings, which are altogether similar in their nature
to those employed in science. In the one case, as in the other, whatever
is taken for granted is so taken at one's own peril; fact and reason
are the ultimate arbiters, and patience and honesty are the great
helpers out of difficulty.

But if scientific training is to yield its most eminent results, it
must, I repeat, be made practical. That is to say, in explaining to a
child the general phenomena of Nature, you must, as far as possible,
give reality to your teaching by object-lessons; in teaching him botany,
he must handle the plants and dissect the flowers for himself; in
teaching him physics and chemistry, you must not be solicitous to fill
him with information, but you must be careful that what he learns he
knows of his own knowledge. Don't be satisfied with telling him that a
magnet attracts iron. Let him see that it does; let him feel the pull of
the one upon the other for himself. And, especially, tell him that it is
his duty to doubt until he is compelled, by the absolute authority of
Nature, to believe that which is written in books. Pursue this
discipline carefully and conscientiously, and you may make sure that,
however scanty may be the measure of information which you have poured
into the boy's mind, you have created an intellectual habit of priceless
value in practical life.

One is constantly asked, When should this scientific education be
commenced? I should say with the dawn of intelligence. As I have already
said, a child seeks for information about matters of physical science as
soon as it begins to talk. The first teaching it wants is an
object-lesson of one sort or another; and as soon as it is fit for
systematic instruction of any kind, it is fit for a modicum of science.

People talk of the difficulty of teaching young children such matters,
and in the same breath insist upon their learning their Catechism,
which contains propositions far harder to comprehend than anything in
the educational course I have proposed. Again, I am incessantly told
that we, who advocate the introduction of science into schools, make no
allowance for the stupidity of the average boy or girl; but, in my
belief, that stupidity, in nine cases out of ten, "_fit, non nascitur_,"
and is developed by a long process of parental and pedagogic repression
of the natural intellectual appetites, accompanied by a persistent
attempt to create artificial ones for food which is not only tasteless,
but essentially indigestible.

Those who urge the difficulty of instructing young people in science are
apt to forget another very important condition of success--important in
all kinds of teaching, but most essential, I am disposed to think, when
the scholars are very young. This condition is, that the teacher should
himself really and practically know his subject. If he does, he will be
able to speak of it in the easy language, and with the completeness of
conviction, with which he talks of any ordinary every-day matter. If he
does not, he will be afraid to wander beyond the limits of the technical
phraseology which he has got up; and a dead dogmatism, which oppresses,
or raises opposition, will take the place of the lively confidence, born
of personal conviction, which cheers and encourages the eminently
sympathetic mind of childhood.

I have already hinted that such scientific training as we seek for may
be given without making any extravagant claim upon the time now devoted
to education. We ask only for "a most favoured nation" clause in our
treaty with the schoolmaster; we demand no more than that science shall
have as much time given to it as any other single subject--say four
hours a week in each class of an ordinary school.

For the present, I think men of science would be well content with such
an arrangement as this; but, speaking for myself, I do not pretend to
believe that such an arrangement can be, or will be, permanent. In these
times the educational tree seems to me to have its roots in the air, its
leaves and flowers in the ground; and, I confess, I should very much
like to turn it upside down, so that its roots might be solidly embedded
among the facts of Nature, and draw thence a sound nutriment for the
foliage and fruit of literature and of art. No educational system can
have a claim to permanence, unless it recognises the truth that
education has two great ends to which everything else must be
subordinated. The one of these is to increase knowledge; the other is to
develop the love of right and the hatred of wrong.

With wisdom and uprightness a nation can make its way worthily, and
beauty will follow in the footsteps of the two, even if she be not
specially invited; while there is perhaps no sight in the whole world
more saddening and revolting than is offered by men sunk in ignorance of
everything but what other men have written; seemingly devoid of moral
belief or guidance; but with the sense of beauty so keen, and the power
of expression so cultivated, that their sensual caterwauling may be
almost mistaken for the music of the spheres.

At present, education is almost entirely devoted to the cultivation of
the power of expression, and of the sense of literary beauty. The matter
of having anything to say, beyond a hash of other people's opinions, or
of possessing any criterion of beauty, so that we may distinguish
between the Godlike and the devilish, is left aside as of no moment. I
think I do not err in saying that if science were made the foundation of
education, instead of being, at most, stuck on as cornice to the
edifice, this state of things could not exist.

In advocating the introduction of physical science as a leading element
in education, I by no means refer only to the higher schools. On the
contrary, I believe that such a change is even more imperatively called
for in those primary schools, in which the children of the poor are
expected to turn to the best account the little time they can devote to
the acquisition of knowledge. A great step in this direction has already
been made by the establishment of science-classes under the Department
of Science and Art,--a measure which came into existence unnoticed, but
which will, I believe, turn out to be of more importance to the welfare
of the people, than many political changes, over which the noise of
battle has rent the air.

Under the regulations to which I refer, a schoolmaster can set up a
class in one or more branches of science; his pupils will be examined,
and the State will pay him, at a certain rate, for all who succeed in
passing. I have acted as an examiner under this system from the
beginning of its establishment, and this year I expect to have not fewer
than a couple of thousand sets of answers to questions in Physiology,
mainly from young people of the artisan class, who have been taught in
the schools which are now scattered all over Great Britain and Ireland.
Some of my colleagues, who have to deal with subjects such as Geometry,
for which the present teaching power is better organized, I understand
are likely to have three or four times as many papers. So far as my own
subjects are concerned, I can undertake to say that a great deal of the
teaching, the results of which are before me in these examinations, is
very sound and good; and I think it is in the power of the examiners,
not only to keep up the present standard, but to cause an almost
unlimited improvement. Now what does this mean? It means that by holding
out a very moderate inducement, the masters of primary schools in many
parts of the country have been led to convert them into little foci of
scientific instruction; and that they and their pupils have contrived to
find, or to make, time enough to carry out this object with a very
considerable degree of efficiency. That efficiency will, I doubt not, be
very much increased as the system becomes known and perfected, even with
the very limited leisure left to masters and teachers on week-days. And
this leads me to ask, Why should scientific teaching be limited to
week-days?

Ecclesiastically-minded persons are in the habit of calling things they
do not like by very hard names, and I should not wonder if they brand
the proposition I am about to make as blasphemous, and worse. But, not
minding this, I venture to ask, Would there really be anything wrong in
using part of Sunday for the purpose of instructing those who have no
other leisure, in a knowledge of the phenomena of Nature, and of man's
relation to nature?

I should like to see a scientific Sunday-school in every parish, not for
the purpose of superseding any existing means of teaching the people
the things that are for their good, but side by side with them. I cannot
but think that there is room for all of us to work in helping to bridge
over the great abyss of ignorance which lies at our feet.

And if any of the ecclesiastical persons to whom I have referred, object
that they find it derogatory to the honour of the God whom they worship,
to awaken the minds of the young to the infinite wonder and majesty of
the works which they proclaim His, and to teach them those laws which
must needs be His laws, and therefore of all things needful for man to
know--I can only recommend them to be let blood and put on low diet.
There must be something very wrong going on in the instrument of logic,
if it turns out such conclusions from such premisses.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] Mr. Quain's words (_Medical Times and Gazette_, February 20)
are:--"A few words as to our special Medical course of instruction and
the influence upon it of such changes in the elementary schools as I
have mentioned. The student now enters at once upon several
sciences--physics, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, botany, pharmacy,
therapeutics--all these, the facts and the language and the laws of
each, to be mastered in eighteen months. Up to the beginning of the
Medical course many have learned little. We cannot claim anything better
than the Examiner of the University of London and the Cambridge Lecturer
have reported for their Universities. Supposing that at school young
people had acquired some exact elementary knowledge in physics,
chemistry, and a branch of natural history--say botany--with the
physiology connected with it, they would then have gained necessary
knowledge, with some practice in inductive reasoning. The whole studies
are processes of observation and induction--the best discipline of the
mind for the purposes of life--for our purposes not less than any. 'By
such study (says Dr. Whewell) of one or more departments of inductive
science the mind may escape from the thraldom of mere words.' By that
plan the burden of the early Medical course would be much lightened, and
more time devoted to practical studies, including Sir Thomas Watson's
'final and supreme stage' of the knowledge of Medicine."




V.

ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES.


The subject to which I have to beg your attention during the ensuing
hour is "The Relation of Physiological Science to other branches of
Knowledge."

Had circumstances permitted of the delivery, in their strict logical
order, of that series of discourses of which the present lecture is a
member, I should have preceded my friend and colleague Mr. Henfrey, who
addressed you on Monday last; but while, for the sake of that order, I
must beg you to suppose that this discussion of the Educational bearings
of Biology in general _does_ precede that of Special Zoology and Botany,
I am rejoiced to be able to take advantage of the light thus already
thrown upon the tendency and methods of Physiological Science.

Regarding Physiological Science, then, in its widest sense--as the
equivalent of _Biology_--the Science of Individual Life--we have to
consider in succession:

1. Its position and scope as a branch of knowledge.

2. Its value as a means of mental discipline.

3. Its worth as practical information.

And lastly,

4. At what period it may best be made a branch of Education.

Our conclusions on the first of these heads must depend, of course, upon
the nature of the subject-matter of Biology; and I think a few
preliminary considerations will place before you in a clear light the
vast difference which exists between the living bodies with which
Physiological science is concerned, and the remainder of the
universe;--between the phænomena of Number and Space, of Physical and of
Chemical force, on the one hand, and those of Life on the other.

The mathematician, the physicist, and the chemist contemplate things in
a condition of rest; they look upon a state of equilibrium as that to
which all bodies normally tend.

The mathematician does not suppose that a quantity will alter, or that a
given point in space will change its direction with regard to another
point, spontaneously. And it is the same with the physicist. When Newton
saw the apple fall, he concluded at once that the act of falling was not
the result of any power inherent in the apple, but that it was the
result of the action of something else on the apple. In a similar
manner, all physical force is regarded as the disturbance of an
equilibrium to which things tended before its exertion,--to which they
will tend again after its cessation.

The chemist equally regards chemical change in a as the effect of the
action of something external to the body changed. A chemical compound
once formed would persist for ever, if no alteration took place in
surrounding conditions.

But to the student of Life the aspect of nature is reversed. Here,
incessant, and, so far as we know, spontaneous change is the rule, rest
the exception--the anomaly to be accounted for. Living things have no
inertia, and tend to no equilibrium.

Permit me, however, to give more force and clearness to these somewhat
abstract considerations, by an illustration or two.

Imagine a vessel full of water, at the ordinary temperature, in an
atmosphere saturated with vapour. The _quantity_ and the _figure_ of
that water will not change, so far as we know, for ever.

Suppose a lump of gold be thrown into the vessel--motion and disturbance
of figure exactly proportional to the momentum of the gold will take
place. But after a time the effects of this disturbance will
subside--equilibrium will be restored, and the water will return to its
passive state.

Expose the water to cold--it will solidify--and in so doing its
particles will arrange themselves in definite crystalline shapes. But
once formed, these crystals change no further.

Again, substitute for the lump of gold some substance capable of
entering into chemical relations with the water:--say, a mass of that
substance which is called "protein"--the substance of flesh:--a very
considerable disturbance of equilibrium will take place--all sorts of
chemical compositions and decompositions will occur; but in the end, as
before, the result will be the resumption of a condition of rest.

Instead of such a mass of _dead_ protein, however, take a particle of
_living_ protein--one of those minute microscopic living things which
throng our pools, and are known as Infusoria--such a creature, for
instance, as an Euglena, and place it in our vessel of water. It is a
round mass provided with a long filament, and except in this peculiarity
of shape, presents no appreciable physical or chemical difference
whereby it might be distinguished from the particle of dead protein.

But the difference in the phænomena to which it will give rise is
immense: in the first place it will develop a vast quantity of physical
force--cleaving the water in all directions with considerable rapidity
by means of the vibrations of the long filament or cilium.

Nor is the amount of chemical energy which the little creature possesses
less striking. It is a perfect laboratory in itself, and it will act and
react upon the water and the matters contained therein; converting them
into new compounds resembling its own substance, and, at the same time,
giving up portions of its own substance which have become effete.

Furthermore, the Euglena will increase in size; but this increase is by
no means unlimited, as the increase of a crystal might be. After it has
grown to a certain extent it divides, and each portion assumes the form
of the original, and proceeds to repeat the process of growth and
division.

Nor is this all. For after a series of such divisions and subdivisions,
these minute points assume a totally new form, lose their long
tails--round themselves, and secrete a sort of envelope or box, in which
they remain shut up for a time, eventually to resume, directly or
indirectly, their primitive mode of existence.

Now, so far as we know, there is no natural limit to the existence of
the Euglena, or of any other living germ. A living species once launched
into existence tends to live for ever.

Consider how widely different this living particle is from the dead
atoms with which the physicist and chemist have to do!

The particle of gold falls to the bottom and rests--the particle of dead
protein decomposes and disappears--it also rests: but the _living_
protein mass neither tends to exhaustion of its forces nor to any
permanency of form, but is essentially distinguished as a disturber of
equilibrium so far as force is concerned,--as undergoing continual
metamorphosis and change, in point of form.

Tendency to equilibrium of force and to permanency of form then, are the
characters of that portion of the universe which does not live--the
domain of the chemist and physicist.

Tendency to disturb existing equilibrium,--to take on forms which
succeed one another in definite cycles, is the character of the living
world.

What is the cause of this wonderful difference between the dead particle
and the living particle of matter appearing in other respects identical?
that difference to which we give the name of Life?

I, for one, cannot tell you. It may be that, by and by, philosophers
will discover some higher laws of which the facts of life are particular
cases--very possibly they will find out some bond between
physico-chemical phænomena on the one hand, and vital phænomena on the
other. At present, however, we assuredly know of none; and I think we
shall exercise a wise humility in confessing that, for us at least, this
successive assumption of different states--(external conditions
remaining the same)--this _spontaneity of action_--if I may use a term
which implies more than I would be answerable for--which constitutes so
vast and plain a practical distinction between living bodies and those
which do not live, is an ultimate fact; indicating as such, the
existence of a broad line of demarcation between the subject-matter of
Biological and that of all other sciences.

For I would have it understood that this simple Euglena is the type of
_all_ living things, so far as the distinction between these and inert
matter is concerned. That cycle of changes, which is constituted by
perhaps not more than two or three steps in the Euglena, is as clearly
manifested in the multitudinous stages through which the germ of an oak
or of a man passes. Whatever forms the Living Being may take on, whether
simple or complex, _production_, _growth_, _reproduction_, are the
phænomena which distinguish it from that which does not live.

If this be true, it is clear that the student, in passing from the
physico-chemical to the physiological sciences, enters upon a totally
new order of facts; and it will next be for us to consider how far these
new facts involve _new_ methods, or require a modification of those with
which he is already acquainted. Now a great deal is said about the
peculiarity of the scientific method in general, and of the different
methods which are pursued in the different sciences. The Mathematics
are said to have one special method; Physics another, Biology a third,
and so forth. For my own part, I must confess that I do not understand
this phraseology.

So far as I can arrive at any clear comprehension of the matter, Science
is not, as many would seem to suppose, a modification of the black art,
suited to the tastes of the nineteenth century, and flourishing mainly
in consequence of the decay of the Inquisition.

Science is, I believe, nothing but _trained and organized common sense_,
differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw
recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far
as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a
savage wields his club. The primary power is the same in each case, and
perhaps the untutored savage has the more brawny arm of the two. The
_real_ advantage lies in the point and polish of the swordsman's weapon;
in the trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of the adversary; in
the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant. But after all, the
sword exercise is only the hewing and poking of the clubman developed
and perfected.

So, the vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical
faculties, by no mental processes, other than those which are practised
by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A
detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe,
by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the
extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones. Nor does
that process of induction and deduction by which a lady, finding a stain
of a peculiar kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has upset
the inkstand thereon, differ in any way, in kind, from that by which
Adams and Leverrier discovered a new planet.

The man of science, in fact, simply uses with scrupulous exactness, the
methods which we all, habitually and at every moment, use carelessly;
and the man of business must as much avail himself of the scientific
method--must be as truly a man of science--as the veriest bookworm of us
all; though I have no doubt that the man of business will find himself
out to be a philosopher with as much surprise as M. Jourdain exhibited,
when he discovered that he had been all his life talking prose. If,
however, there be no real difference between the methods of science and
those of common life, it would seem, on the face of the matter, highly
improbable that there should be any difference between the methods of
the different sciences; nevertheless, it is constantly taken for
granted, that there is a very wide difference between the Physiological
and other sciences in point of method.

In the first place it is said--and I take this point first, because the
imputation is too frequently admitted by Physiologists themselves--that
Biology differs from the Physico-chemical and Mathematical sciences in
being "inexact."

Now, this phrase "inexact" must refer either to the _methods_ or to the
_results_ of Physiological science.

It cannot be correct to apply it to the methods; for, as I hope to show
you by and by, these are identical in all sciences, and whatever is true
of Physiological method is true of Physical and Mathematical method.

Is it then the _results_ of Biological science which are "inexact"? I
think not. If I say that respiration is performed by the lungs; that
digestion is effected in the stomach; that the eye is the organ of
sight; that the jaws of a vertebrated animal never open sideways, but
always up and down; while those of an annulose animal always open
sideways, and never up and down--I am enumerating propositions which are
as exact as anything in Euclid. How then has this notion of the
inexactness of Biological science come about? I believe from two causes:
first, because, in consequence of the great complexity of the science
and the multitude of interfering conditions, we are very often only
enabled to predict approximatively what will occur under given
circumstances; and secondly, because, on account of the comparative
youth of the Physiological sciences, a great many of their laws are
still imperfectly worked out. But, in an educational point of view, it
is most important to distinguish between the essence of a science and
the accidents which surround it; and essentially, the methods and
results of Physiology are as exact as those of Physics or Mathematics.

It is said that the Physiological method is especially _comparative_[4];
and this dictum also finds favour in the eyes of many. I should be
sorry to suggest that the speculators on scientific classification have
been misled by the accident of the name of one leading branch of
Biology--_Comparative Anatomy_; but I would ask whether _comparison_,
and that classification which is the result of comparison, are not the
essence of every science whatsoever? How is it possible to discover a
relation of cause and effect of _any_ kind without comparing a series of
cases together in which the supposed cause and effect occur singly, or
combined? So far from comparison being in any way peculiar to Biological
science, it is, I think, the essence of every science.

A speculative philosopher again tells us that the Biological sciences
are distinguished by being sciences of observation and not of
experiment![5]

Of all the strange assertions into which speculation without practical
acquaintance with a subject may lead even an able man, I think this is
the very strangest. Physiology not an experimental science! Why, there
is not a function of a single organ in the body which has not been
determined wholly and solely by experiment. How did Harvey determine the
nature of the circulation, except by experiment? How did Sir Charles
Bell determine the functions of the roots of the spinal nerves, save by
experiment? How do we know the use of a nerve at all, except by
experiment? Nay, how do you know even that your eye is your seeing
apparatus, unless you make the experiment of shutting it; or that your
ear is your hearing apparatus, unless you close it up and thereby
discover that you become deaf?

It would really be much more true to say that Physiology is _the_
experimental science _par excellence_ of all sciences; that in which
there is least to be learnt by mere observation, and that which affords
the greatest field for the exercise of those faculties which
characterise the experimental philosopher. I confess, if any one were to
ask me for a model application of the logic of experiment, I should know
no better work to put into his hands than Bernard's late Researches on
the Functions of the Liver.[6]

Not to give this lecture a too controversial tone, however, I must only
advert to one more doctrine, held by a thinker of our own age and
country, whose opinions are worthy of all respect. It is, that the
Biological sciences differ from all others, inasmuch as in _them_
classification takes place by type and not by definition.[7]

It is said, in short, that a natural-history class is not capable of
being defined--that the class Rosaceæ, for instance, or the class of
Fishes, is not accurately and absolutely definable, inasmuch as its
members will present exceptions to every possible definition; and that
the members of the class are united together only by the circumstance
that they are all more like some imaginary average rose or average fish,
than they resemble anything else.

But here, as before, I think the distinction has arisen entirely from
confusing a transitory imperfection with an essential character. So long
as our information concerning them is imperfect, we class all objects
together according to resemblances which we _feel_, but cannot _define_:
we group them round _types_, in short. Thus, if you ask an ordinary
person what kinds of animals there are, he will probably say, beasts,
birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, &c. Ask him to define a beast from a
reptile, and he cannot do it; but he says, things like a cow or a horse
are beasts, and things like a frog or a lizard are reptiles. You see _he
does_ class by type, and not by definition. But how does this
classification differ from that of the scientific Zoologist? How does
the meaning of the scientific class-name of "Mammalia" differ from the
unscientific of "Beasts"?

Why, exactly because the former depends on a definition, the latter on a
type. The class Mammalia is scientifically defined as "all animals which
have a vertebrated skeleton and suckle their young." Here is no
reference to type, but a definition rigorous enough for a geometrician.
And such is the character which every scientific naturalist recognises
as that to which his classes must aspire--knowing, as he does, that
classification by type is simply an acknowledgment of ignorance and a
temporary device.

So much in the way of negative argument as against the reputed
differences, between Biological and other methods. No such differences,
I believe, really exist. The subject-matter of Biological science is
different from that of other sciences, but the methods of all are
identical; and these methods are--

1. _Observation_ of facts--including under this head that _artificial
observation_ which is called _experiment_.

2. That process of tying up similar facts into bundles, ticketed and
ready for use, which is called _Comparison_ and _Classification_,--the
results of the process, the ticketed bundles, being named _General
propositions_.

3. _Deduction_, which takes us from the general proposition to facts
again--teaches us, if I may so say, to anticipate from the ticket what
is inside the bundle. And finally--

4. _Verification_, which is the process of ascertaining whether, in
point of fact, our anticipation is a correct one.

Such are the methods of all science whatsoever; but perhaps you will
permit me to give you an illustration of their employment in the science
of Life; and I will take as a special case, the establishment of the
doctrine of the _Circulation of the Blood_.

In this case, _simple observation_ yields us a knowledge of the
existence of the blood from some accidental hæmorrhage, we will say: we
may even grant that it informs us of the localization of this blood in
particular vessels, the heart, &c., from some accidental cut or the
like. It teaches also the existence of a pulse in various parts of the
body, and acquaints us with the structure of the heart and vessels.

Here, however, _simple observation_ stops, and we must have recourse to
_experiment_.

You tie a vein, and you find that the blood accumulates on the side of
the ligature opposite the heart. You tie an artery, and you find that
the blood accumulates on the side near the heart. Open the chest, and
you see the heart contracting with great force. Make openings into its
principal cavities, and you will find that all the blood flows out, and
no more pressure is exerted on either side of the arterial or venous
ligature.

Now all these facts, taken together, constitute the evidence that the
blood is propelled by the heart through the arteries, and returns by the
veins--that, in short, the blood circulates.

Suppose our experiments and observations have been made on horses, then
we group and ticket them into a general proposition, thus:--_all horses
have a circulation of their blood_.

Henceforward a horse is a sort of indication or label, telling us where
we shall find a peculiar series of phænomena called the circulation of
the blood.

Here is our _general proposition_ then.

How and when are we justified in making our next step--a _deduction_
from it?

Suppose our physiologist, whose experience is limited to horses, meets
with a zebra for the first time,--will he suppose that this
generalization holds good for zebras also?

That depends very much on his turn of mind. But we will suppose him to
be a bold man. He will say, "The zebra is certainly not a horse, but it
is very like one,--so like, that it must be the 'ticket' or mark of a
blood-circulation also; and, I conclude that the zebra has a
circulation."

That is a deduction, a very fair deduction, but by no means to be
considered scientifically secure. This last quality in fact can only be
given by _verification_--that is, by making a zebra the subject of all
the experiments performed on the horse. Of course, in the present case,
the _deduction_ would be _confirmed_ by this process of verification,
and the result would be, not merely a positive widening of knowledge,
but a fair increase of confidence in the truth of one's generalizations
in other cases.

Thus, having settled the point in the zebra and horse, our philosopher
would have great confidence in the existence of a circulation in the
ass. Nay, I fancy most persons would excuse him, if in this case he did
not take the trouble to go through the process of verification at all;
and it would not be without a parallel in the history of the human mind,
if our imaginary physiologist now maintained that he was acquainted with
asinine circulation _à priori_.

However, if I might impress any caution upon your minds, it is, the
utterly conditional nature of all our knowledge,--the danger of
neglecting the process of verification under any circumstances; and the
film upon which we rest, the moment our deductions carry us beyond the
reach of this great process of verification. There is no better instance
of this than is afforded by the history of our knowledge of the
circulation of the blood in the animal kingdom until the year 1824. In
every animal possessing a circulation at all, which had been observed up
to that time, the current of the blood was known to take one definite
and invariable direction. Now, there is a class of animals called
_Ascidians_, which possess a heart and a circulation, and up to the
period of which I speak, no one would have dreamt of questioning the
propriety of the deduction, that these creatures have a circulation in
one direction; nor would any one have thought it worth while to verify
the point. But, in that year, M. von Hasselt happening to examine a
transparent animal of this class, found to his infinite surprise, that
after the heart had beat a certain number of times, it stopped, and then
began beating the opposite way--so as to reverse the course of the
current, which returned by and by to its original direction.

I have myself timed the heart of these little animals. I found it as
regular as possible in its periods of reversal: and I know no spectacle
in the animal kingdom more wonderful than that which it presents--all
the more wonderful that to this day it remains an unique fact, peculiar
to this class among the whole animated world. At the same time I know of
no more striking case of the necessity of the _verification_ of even
those deductions which seem founded on the widest and safest inductions.

Such are the methods of Biology--methods which are obviously identical
with those of all other sciences, and therefore wholly incompetent to
form the ground of any distinction between it and them.[8]

But I shall be asked at once, Do you mean to say that there is no
difference between the habit of mind of a mathematician and that of a
naturalist? Do you imagine that Laplace might have been put into the
Jardin des Plantes, and Cuvier into the Observatory, with equal
advantage to the progress of the sciences they professed?

To which I would reply, that nothing could be further from my thoughts.
But different habits and various special tendencies of two sciences do
not imply different methods. The mountaineer and the man of the plains
have very different habits of progression, and each would be at a loss
in the other's place; but the method of progression, by putting one leg
before the other, is the same in each case. Every step of each is a
combination of a lift and a push; but the mountaineer lifts more and the
lowlander pushes more. And I think the case of two sciences resembles
this.

I do not question for a moment, that while the Mathematician is busied
with deductions _from_ general propositions, the Biologist is more
especially occupied with observation, comparison, and those processes
which lead _to_ general propositions. All I wish to insist upon is, that
this difference depends not on any fundamental distinction in the
sciences themselves, but on the accidents of their subject-matter, of
their relative complexity, and consequent relative perfection.

The Mathematician deals with two properties of objects only, number and
extension, and all the inductions he wants have been formed and finished
ages ago. He is occupied now with nothing but deduction and
verification.

The Biologist deals with a vast number of properties of objects, and
his inductions will not be completed, I fear, for ages to come; but when
they are, his science will be as deductive and as exact as the
Mathematics themselves.

Such is the relation of Biology to those sciences which deal with
objects having fewer properties than itself. But as the student, in
reaching Biology, looks back upon sciences of a less complex and
therefore more perfect nature; so, on the other hand, does he look
forward to other more complex and less perfect branches of knowledge.
Biology deals only with living beings as isolated things--treats only of
the life of the individual: but there is a higher division of science
still, which considers living beings as aggregates--which deals with the
relation of living beings one to another--the science which _observes_
men--whose _experiments_ are made by nations one upon another, in
battle-fields--whose _general propositions_ are embodied in history,
morality, and religion--whose _deductions_ lead to our happiness or our
misery,--and whose _verifications_ so often come too late, and serve
only

     "To point a moral or adorn a tale"--

I mean the science of Society or _Sociology_.

I think it is one of the grandest features of Biology, that it occupies
this central position in human knowledge. There is no side of the human
mind which physiological study leaves uncultivated. Connected by
innumerable ties with abstract science, Physiology is yet in the most
intimate relation with humanity; and by teaching us that law and order,
and a definite scheme of development, regulate even the strangest and
wildest manifestations of individual life, she prepares the student to
look for a goal even amidst the erratic wanderings of mankind, and to
believe that history offers something more than an entertaining chaos--a
journal of a toilsome, tragi-comic march nowhither.

The preceding considerations have, I hope, served to indicate the
replies which befit the two first of the questions which I set before
you at starting, viz. what is the range and position of Physiological
Science as a branch of knowledge, and what is its value as a means of
mental discipline.

Its _subject-matter_ is a large moiety of the universe--its _position_
is midway between the physico-chemical and the social sciences. Its
_value_ as a branch of discipline is partly that which it has in common
with all sciences--the training and strengthening of common sense;
partly that which is more peculiar to itself--the great exercise which
it affords to the faculties of observation and comparison; and I may
add, the _exactness_ of knowledge which it requires on the part of those
among its votaries who desire to extend its boundaries.

If what has been said as to the position and scope of Biology be
correct, our third question--What is the practical value of
physiological instruction?--might, one would think, be left to answer
itself.

On other grounds even, were mankind deserving of the title "rational,"
which they arrogate to themselves, there can be no question that they
would consider, as the most necessary of all branches of instruction for
themselves and for their children, that which professes to acquaint them
with the conditions of the existence they prize so highly--which teaches
them how to avoid disease and to cherish health, in themselves and
those who are dear to them.

I am addressing, I imagine, an audience of educated persons; and yet I
dare venture to assert that, with the exception of those of my hearers
who may chance to have received a medical education, there is not one
who could tell me what is the meaning and use of an act which he
performs a score of times every minute, and whose suspension would
involve his immediate death;--I mean the act of breathing--or who could
state in precise terms why it is that a confined atmosphere is injurious
to health.

The _practical value_ of Physiological knowledge! Why is it that
educated men can be found to maintain that a slaughter-house in the
midst of a great city is rather a good thing than otherwise?--that
mothers persist in exposing the largest possible amount of surface of
their children to the cold, by the absurd style of dress they adopt, and
then marvel at the peculiar dispensation of Providence, which removes
their infants by bronchitis and gastric fever? Why is it that quackery
rides rampant over the land; and that not long ago, one of the largest
public rooms in this great city could be filled by an audience gravely
listening to the reverend expositor of the doctrine--that the simple
physiological phenomena known as spirit-rapping, table-turning,
phreno-magnetism, and by I know not what other absurd and inappropriate
names, are due to the direct and personal agency of Satan?

Why is all this, except from the utter ignorance as to the simplest laws
of their own animal life, which prevails among even the most highly
educated persons in this country?

But there are other branches of Biological Science, besides Physiology
proper, whose practical influence, though less obvious, is not, as I
believe, less certain. I have heard educated men speak with an
ill-disguised contempt of the studies of the naturalist, and ask, not
without a shrug, "What is the use of knowing all about these miserable
animals--what bearing has it on human life?"

I will endeavour to answer that question. I take it that all will admit
there is definite Government of this universe--that its pleasures and
pains are not scattered at random, but are distributed in accordance
with orderly and fixed laws, and that it is only in accordance with all
we know of the rest of the world, that there should be an agreement
between one portion of the sensitive creation and another in these
matters.

Surely then it interests us to know the lot of other animal
creatures--however far below us, they are still the sole created things
which share with us the capability of pleasure and the susceptibility to
pain.

I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and
evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms, will bear his
own share with more courage and submission; and will, at any rate, view
with suspicion those weakly amiable theories of the Divine government,
which would have us believe pain to be an oversight and a mistake,--to
be corrected by and by. On the other hand, the predominance of happiness
among living things--their lavish beauty--the secret and wonderful
harmony which pervades them all, from the highest to the lowest, are
equally striking refutations of that modern Manichean doctrine, which
exhibits the world as a slave-mill, worked with many tears, for mere
utilitarian ends.

There is yet another way in which natural history may, I am convinced,
take a profound hold upon practical life,--and that is, by its influence
over our finer feelings, as the greatest of all sources of that pleasure
which is derivable from beauty. I do not pretend that natural-history
knowledge, as such, can increase our sense of the beautiful in natural
objects. I do not suppose that the dead soul of Peter Bell, of whom the
great poet of nature says,--

     A primrose by the river's brim,
     A yellow primrose was to him,--
     And it was nothing more,--

would have been a whit roused from its apathy, by the information that
the primrose is a Dicotyledonous Exogen, with a monopetalous corolla and
central placentation. But I advocate natural-history knowledge from this
point of view, because it would lead us to _seek_ the beauties of
natural objects, instead of trusting to chance to force them on our
attention. To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country, or
sea-side, stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works
of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall. Teach
him something of natural history, and you place in his hands a catalogue
of those which are worth turning round. Surely our innocent pleasures
are not so abundant in this life, that we can afford to despise this or
any other source of them. We should fear being banished for our neglect
to that limbo, where the great Florentine tells us are those who, during
this life, "wept when they might be joyful."

But I shall be trespassing unwarrantably on your kindness, if I do not
proceed at once to my last point--the time at which Physiological
Science should first form a part of the Curriculum of Education.

The distinction between the teaching of the facts of a science as
instruction, and the teaching it systematically as knowledge, has
already been placed before you in a previous lecture: and it appears to
me, that, as with other sciences, the _common facts_ of Biology--the
uses of parts of the body--the names and habits of the living creatures
which surround us--may be taught with advantage to the youngest child.
Indeed, the avidity of children for this kind of knowledge, and the
comparative ease with which they retain it, is something quite
marvellous. I doubt whether any toy would be so acceptable to young
children as a vivarium, of the same kind as, but of course on a smaller
scale than, those admirable devices in the Zoological Gardens.

On the other hand, systematic teaching in Biology cannot be attempted
with success until the student has attained to a certain knowledge of
physics and chemistry: for though the phænomena of life are dependent
neither on physical nor on chemical, but on vital forces, yet they
result in all sorts of physical and chemical changes, which can only be
judged by their own laws.

And now to sum up in a few words the conclusions to which I hope you see
reason to follow me.

Biology needs no apologist when she demands a place--and a prominent
place--in any scheme of education worthy of the name. Leave out the
Physiological sciences from your curriculum, and you launch the student
into the world, undisciplined in that science whose subject-matter
would best develop his powers of observation; ignorant of facts of the
deepest importance for his own and others' welfare; blind to the richest
sources of beauty in God's creation; and unprovided with that belief in
a living law, and an order manifesting itself in and through endless
change and variety, which might serve to check and moderate that phase
of despair through which, if he take an earnest interest in social
problems, he will assuredly sooner or later pass.

Finally, one word for myself. I have not hesitated to speak strongly
where I have felt strongly; and I am but too conscious that the
indicative and imperative moods have too often taken the place of the
more becoming subjunctive and conditional. I feel, therefore, how
necessary it is to beg you to forget the personality of him who has thus
ventured to address you, and to consider only the truth or error in what
has been said.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] "In the third place, we have to review the method of Comparison,
which is so specially adapted to the study of living bodies, and by
which, above all others, that study must be advanced. In Astronomy, this
method is necessarily inapplicable; and it is not till we arrive at
Chemistry that this third means of investigation can be used, and then
only in subordination to the two others. It is in the study, both
statical and dynamical, of living bodies that it first acquires its full
development; and its use elsewhere can be only through its application
here."--COMTE'S _Positive Philosophy_, translated by Miss Martineau.
Vol. i. p. 372.

By what method does M. Comte suppose that the equality or inequality of
forces and quantities and the dissimilarity or similarity of
forms--points of some slight importance not only in Astronomy and
Physics, but even in Mathematics--are ascertained, if not by Comparison?

[5] "Proceeding to the second class of means,--Experiment cannot but be
less and less decisive, in proportion to the complexity of the phænomena
to be explored; and therefore we saw this resource to be less effectual
in chemistry than in physics: and we now find that it is eminently
useful in chemistry in comparison with physiology. _In fact, the nature
of the phænomena seems to offer almost insurmountable impediments to any
extensive and prolific application of such a procedure in
biology._"--Comte, vol i. p. 367.

M. Comte, as his manner is, contradicts himself two pages further on,
but that will hardly relieve him from the responsibility of such a
paragraph as the above.

[6] "Nouvelle Fonction du Foie considéré comme organe producteur de
matière sucrée chez l'Homme et les Animaux," par M. Claude Bernard.

[7] "_Natural Groups given by Type, not by Definition...._ The class is
steadily fixed, though not precisely limited; it is given, though not
circumscribed; it is determined, not by a boundary-line without, but by
a central point within; not by what it strictly excludes, but what it
eminently includes; by an example, not by a precept; in short, instead
of Definition we have a _Type_ for our director. A type is an example of
any class, for instance, a species of a genus, which is considered as
eminently possessing the characters of the class. All the species which
have a greater affinity with this type-species than with any others,
form the genus, and are ranged about it, deviating from it in various
directions and different degrees."--WHEWELL, _The Philosophy of the
Inductive Sciences_, vol. i. pp. 476, 477.

[8] Save for the pleasure of doing so, I need hardly point out my
obligations to Mr. J.S. Mill's "System of Logic," in this view of
scientific method.




VI.

ON THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY.


Natural history is the name familiarly applied to the study of the
properties of such natural bodies as minerals, plants, and animals; the
sciences which embody the knowledge man has acquired upon these subjects
are commonly termed Natural Sciences, in contradistinction to other,
so-called "physical," sciences; and those who devote themselves
especially to the pursuit of such sciences have been, and are, commonly
termed "Naturalists."

Linnæus was a naturalist in this wide sense, and his "Systema Naturæ"
was a work upon natural history, in the broadest acceptation of the
term; in it, that great methodizing spirit embodied all that was known
in his time of the distinctive characters of minerals, animals, and
plants. But the enormous stimulus which Linnæus gave to the
investigation of nature soon rendered it impossible that any one man
should write another "Systema Naturæ," and extremely difficult for any
one to become a naturalist such as Linnæus was.

Great as have been the advances made by all the three branches of
science, of old included under the title of natural history, there can
be no doubt that zoology and botany have grown in an enormously greater
ratio than mineralogy; and hence, as I suppose, the name of "natural
history" has gradually become more and more definitely attached to these
prominent divisions of the subject, and by "naturalist" people have
meant more and more distinctly to imply a student of the structure and
functions of living beings.

However this may be, it is certain that the advance of knowledge has
gradually widened the distance between mineralogy and its old
associates, while it has drawn zoology and botany closer together; so
that of late years it has been found convenient (and indeed necessary)
to associate the sciences which deal with vitality and all its phenomena
under the common head of "biology;" and the biologists have come to
repudiate any blood-relationship with their foster-brothers, the
mineralogists.

Certain broad laws have a general application throughout both the animal
and the vegetable worlds, but the ground common to these kingdoms of
nature is not of very wide extent, and the multiplicity of details is so
great, that the student of living beings finds himself obliged to devote
his attention exclusively either to the one or the other. If he elects
to study plants, under any aspect, we know at once what to call him; he
is a botanist, and his science is botany. But if the investigation of
animal life be his choice, the name generally applied to him will vary,
according to the kind of animals he studies, or the particular phenomena
of animal life to which he confines his attention. If the study of man
is his object, he is called an anatomist, or a physiologist, or an
ethnologist; but if he dissects animals, or examines into the mode in
which their functions are performed, he is a comparative anatomist or
comparative physiologist. If he turns his attention to fossil animals,
he is a palæontologist. If his mind is more particularly directed to the
description, specific discrimination, classification, and distribution
of animals, he is termed a zoologist.

For the purposes of the present discourse, however, I shall recognise
none of these titles save the last, which I shall employ as the
equivalent of botanist, and I shall use the term zoology as denoting the
whole doctrine of animal life, in contradistinction to botany, which
signifies the whole doctrine of vegetable life.

Employed in this sense, zoology, like botany, is divisible into three
great but subordinate sciences, morphology, physiology, and
distribution, each of which may, to a very great extent, be studied
independently of the other.

Zoological morphology is the doctrine of animal form or structure.
Anatomy is one of its branches, development is another; while
classification is the expression of the relations which different
animals bear to one another, in respect of their anatomy and their
development.

Zoological distribution is the study of animals in relation to the
terrestrial conditions which obtain now, or have obtained at any
previous epoch of the earth's history.

Zoological physiology, lastly, is the doctrine of the functions or
actions of animals. It regards animal bodies as machines impelled by
certain forces, and performing an amount of work, which can be
expressed in terms of the ordinary forces of nature. The final object of
physiology is to deduce the facts of morphology, on the one hand, and
those of distribution on the other, from the laws of the molecular
forces of matter.

Such is the scope of zoology. But if I were to content myself with the
enunciation of these dry definitions, I should ill exemplify that method
of teaching this branch of physical science, which it is my chief
business to-night to recommend. Let us turn away then from abstract
definitions. Let us take some concrete living thing, some animal, the
commoner the better, and let us see how the application of common sense
and common logic to the obvious facts it presents, inevitably leads us
into all these branches of zoological science.

I have before me a lobster. When I examine it, what appears to be the
most striking character it presents? Why, I observe that this part which
we call the tail of the lobster, is made up of six distinct hard rings
and a seventh terminal piece. If I separate one of the middle rings, say
the third, I find it carries upon its under surface a pair of limbs or
appendages, each of which consists of a stalk and two terminal pieces.
So that I can represent a transverse section of the ring and its
appendages upon the diagram board in this way.

If I now take the fourth ring I find it has the same structure, and so
have the fifth and the second; so that, in each of these divisions of
the tail, I find parts which correspond with one another, a ring and two
appendages; and in each appendage a stalk and two end pieces. These
corresponding parts are called, in the technical language of anatomy,
"homologous parts." The ring of the third division is the "homologue"
of the ring of the fifth, the appendage of the former is the homologue
of the appendage of the latter. And, as each division exhibits
corresponding parts in corresponding places, we say that all the
divisions are constructed upon the same plan. But now let us consider
the sixth division. It is similar to, and yet different from, the
others. The ring is essentially the same as in the other divisions; but
the appendages look at first as if they were very different; and yet
when we regard them closely, what do we find? A stalk and two terminal
divisions, exactly as in the others, but the stalk is very short and
very thick, the terminal divisions are very broad and flat, and one of
them is divided into two pieces.

I may say, therefore, that the sixth segment is like the others in plan,
but that it is modified in its details.

The first segment is like the others, so far as its ring is concerned,
and though its appendages differ from any of those yet examined in the
simplicity of their structure, parts corresponding with the stem and one
of the divisions of the appendages of the other segments can be readily
discerned in them.

Thus it appears that the lobster's tail is composed of a series of
segments which are fundamentally similar, though each presents peculiar
modifications of the plan common to all. But when I turn to the fore
part of the body I see, at first, nothing but a great shield-like shell,
called technically the "carapace," ending in front in a sharp spine, on
either side of which are the curious compound eyes, set upon the ends of
stout moveable stalks. Behind these, on the under side of the body, are
two pairs of long feelers, or antennæ, followed by six pairs of jaws,
folded against one another over the mouth, and five pairs of legs, the
foremost of these being the great pinchers, or claws, of the lobster.

It looks, at first, a little hopeless to attempt to find in this complex
mass a series of rings, each with its pair of appendages, such as I have
shown you in the abdomen, and yet it is not difficult to demonstrate
their existence. Strip off the legs, and you will find that each pair is
attached to a very definite segment of the under wall of the body; but
these segments, instead of being the lower parts of free rings, as in
the tail, are such parts of rings which are all solidly united and bound
together; and the like is true of the jaws, the feelers, and the
eye-stalks, every pair of which is borne upon its own special segment.
Thus the conclusion is gradually forced upon us, that the body of the
lobster is composed of as many rings as there are pairs of appendages,
namely, twenty in all, but that the six hindmost rings remain free and
moveable, while the fourteen front rings become firmly soldered
together, their backs forming one continuous shield--the carapace.

Unity of plan, diversity in execution, is the lesson taught by the study
of the rings of the body, and the same instruction is given still more
emphatically by the appendages. If I examine the outermost jaw I find it
consists of three distinct portions, an inner, a middle, and an outer,
mounted upon a common stem; and if I compare this jaw with the legs
behind it, or the jaws in front of it, I find it quite easy to see,
that, in the legs, it is the part of the appendage which corresponds
with the inner division, which becomes modified into what we know
familiarly as the "leg," while the middle division, disappears, and the
outer division is hidden under the carapace. Nor is it more difficult to
discern that, in the appendages of the tail, the middle division appears
again and the outer vanishes; while, on the other hand, in the foremost
jaw, the so-called mandible, the inner division only is left; and, in
the same way, the parts of the feelers and of the eye-stalks can be
identified with those of the legs and jaws.

But whither does all this tend? To the very remarkable conclusion that a
unity of plan, of the same kind as that discoverable in the tail or
abdomen of the lobster, pervades the whole organization of its skeleton,
so that I can return to the diagram representing any one of the rings of
the tail, which I drew upon the board, and by adding a third division to
each appendage, I can use it as a sort of scheme or plan of any ring of
the body. I can give names to all the parts of that figure, and then if
I take any segment of the body of the lobster, I can point out to you
exactly, what modification the general plan has undergone in that
particular segment; what part has remained moveable, and what has become
fixed to another; what has been excessively developed and metamorphosed,
and what has been suppressed.

But I imagine I hear the question, How is all this to be tested? No
doubt it is a pretty and ingenious way of looking at the structure of
any animal, but is it anything more? Does Nature acknowledge, in any
deeper way, this unity of plan we seem to trace?

The objection suggested by these questions is a very valid and important
one, and morphology was in an unsound state, so long as it rested upon
the mere perception of the analogies which obtain between fully formed
parts. The unchecked ingenuity of speculative anatomists proved itself
fully competent to spin any number of contradictory hypotheses out of
the same facts, and endless morphological dreams threatened to supplant
scientific theory.

Happily, however, there is a criterion of morphological truth, and a
sure test of all homologies. Our lobster has not always been what we see
it; it was once an egg, a semifluid mass of yolk, not so big as a pin's
head, contained in a transparent membrane, and exhibiting not the least
trace of any one of those organs, whose multiplicity and complexity, in
the adult, are so surprising. After a time a delicate patch of cellular
membrane appeared upon one face of this yolk, and that patch was the
foundation of the whole creature, the clay out of which it would be
moulded. Gradually investing the yolk, it became subdivided by
transverse constrictions into segments, the forerunners of the rings of
the body. Upon the ventral surface of each of the rings thus sketched
out, a pair of bud-like prominences made their appearance--the rudiments
of the appendages of the ring. At first, all the appendages were alike,
but, as they grew, most of them became distinguished into a stem and two
terminal divisions, to which, in the middle part of the body, was added
a third outer division; and it was only at a later period, that by the
modification, or absorption, of certain of these primitive constituents,
the limbs acquired their perfect form.

Thus the study of development proves that the doctrine of unity of plan
is not merely a fancy, that it is not merely one way of looking at the
matter, but that it is the expression of deep-seated natural facts. The
legs and jaws of the lobster may not merely be regarded as modifications
of a common type,--in fact and in nature they are so,--the leg and the
jaw of the young animal being, at first, indistinguishable.

These are wonderful truths, the more so because the zoologist finds them
to be of universal application. The investigation of a polype, of a
snail, of a fish, of a horse, or of a man, would have led us, though by
a less easy path, perhaps, to exactly the same point. Unity of plan
everywhere lies hidden under the mask of diversity of structure--the
complex is everywhere evolved out of the simple. Every animal has at
first the form of an egg, and every animal and every organic part, in
reaching its adult state, passes through conditions common to other
animals and other adult parts; and this leads me to another point. I
have hitherto spoken as if the lobster were alone in the world, but, as
I need hardly remind you, there are myriads of other animal organisms.
Of these, some, such as men, horses, birds, fishes, snails, slugs,
oysters, corals, and sponges, are not in the least like the lobster. But
other animals, though they may differ a good deal from the lobster, are
yet either very like it, or are like something that is like it. The cray
fish, the rock lobster, and the prawn, and the shrimp, for example,
however different, are yet so like lobsters, that a child would group
them as of the lobster kind, in contradistinction to snails and slugs;
and these last again would form a kind by themselves, in
contradistinction to cows, horses, and sheep, the cattle kind.

But this spontaneous grouping into "kinds" is the first essay of the
human mind at classification, or the calling by a common name of those
things that are alike, and the arranging them in such a manner as best
to suggest the sum of their likenesses and unlikenesses to other things.

Those kinds which include no other subdivisions than the sexes, or
various breeds, are called, in technical language, species. The English
lobster is a species, our cray fish is another, our prawn is another. In
other countries, however, there are lobsters, cray fish, and prawns,
very like ours, and yet presenting sufficient differences to deserve
distinction. Naturalists, therefore, express this resemblance and this
diversity by grouping them as distinct species of the same "genus." But
the lobster and the cray fish, though belonging to distinct genera, have
many features in common, and hence are grouped together in an assemblage
which is called a family. More distant resemblances connect the lobster
with the prawn and the crab, which are expressed by putting all these
into the same order. Again, more remote, but still very definite,
resemblances unite the lobster with the woodlouse, the king crab, the
water-flea, and the barnacle, and separate them from all other animals;
whence they collectively constitute the larger group, or class,
_Crustacea_. But the _Crustacea_ exhibit many peculiar features in
common with insects, spiders, and centipedes, so that these are grouped
into the still larger assemblage or "province" _Articulata_; and,
finally, the relations which these have to worms and other lower
animals, are expressed by combining the whole vast aggregate into the
sub-kingdom of _Annulosa_.

If I had worked my way from a sponge instead of a lobster, I should have
found it associated, by like ties, with a great number of other animals
into the sub-kingdom _Protozoa_; if I had selected a fresh-water polype
or a coral, the members of what naturalists term the sub-kingdom
_Cœlenterata_ would have grouped themselves around my type; had a snail
been chosen, the inhabitants of all univalve and bivalve, land and
water, shells, the lamp shells, the squids, and the sea-mat would have
gradually linked themselves on to it as members of the same sub-kingdom
of _Mollusca_; and finally, starting from man, I should have been
compelled to admit first, the ape, the rat, the horse, the dog, into the
same class; and then the bird, the crocodile, the turtle, the frog, and
the fish, into the same sub-kingdom of _Vertebrata_.

And if I had followed out all these various lines of classification
fully, I should discover in the end that there was no animal, either
recent or fossil, which did not at once fall into one or other of these
sub-kingdoms. In other words, every animal is organized upon one or
other of the five, or more, plans, whose existence renders our
classification possible. And so definitely and precisely marked is the
structure of each animal, that, in the present state of our knowledge,
there is not the least evidence to prove that a form, in the slightest
degree transitional between any of the two groups _Vertebrata, Annulosa,
Mollusca_, and _Cœlenterata_, either exists, or has existed, during that
period of the earth's history which is recorded by the geologist.
Nevertheless, you must not for a moment suppose, because no such
transitional forms are known, that the members of the sub-kingdoms are
disconnected from, or independent of, one another. On the contrary, in
their earliest condition they are all alike, and the primordial germs
of a man, a dog, a bird, a fish, a beetle, a snail, and a polype are, in
no essential structural respects, distinguishable.

In this broad sense, it may with truth be said, that all living animals,
and all those dead creations which geology reveals, are bound together
by an all-pervading unity of organization, of the same character, though
not equal in degree, to that which enables us to discern one and the
same plan amidst the twenty different segments of a lobster's body.
Truly it has been said, that to a clear eye the smallest fact is a
window through which the Infinite may be seen.

Turning from these purely morphological considerations, let us now
examine into the manner in which the attentive study of the lobster
impels us into other lines of research.

Lobsters are found in all the European seas; but on the opposite shores
of the Atlantic and in the seas of the southern hemisphere they do not
exist. They are, however, represented in these regions by very closely
allied, but distinct forms--the _Homarus Americanus_ and the _Homarus
Capensis_: so that we may say that the European has one species of
_Homarus_; the American, another; the African, another; and thus the
remarkable facts of geographical distribution begin to dawn upon us.

Again, if we examine the contents of the earth's crust, we shall find in
the latter of those deposits, which have served as the great burying
grounds of past ages, numberless lobster-like animals, but none so
similar to our living lobster as to make zoologists sure that they
belonged even to the same genus. If we go still further back in time,
we discover, in the oldest rocks of all, the remains of animals,
constructed on the same general plan as the lobster, and belonging to
the same great group of _Crustacea_; but for the most part totally
different from the lobster, and indeed from any other living form of
crustacean; and thus we gain a notion of that successive change of the
animal population of the globe, in past ages, which is the most striking
fact revealed by geology.

Consider, now, where our inquiries have led us. We studied our type
morphologically, when we determined its anatomy and its development, and
when comparing it, in these respects, with other animals, we made out
its place in a system of classification. If we were to examine every
animal in a similar manner, we should establish a complete body of
zoological morphology.

Again, we investigated the distribution of our type in space and in
time, and, if the like had been done with every animal, the sciences of
geographical and geological distribution would have attained their
limit.

But you will observe one remarkable circumstance, that, up to this
point, the question of the life of these organisms has not come under
consideration. Morphology and distribution might be studied almost as
well, if animals and plants were a peculiar kind of crystals, and
possessed none of those functions which distinguish living beings so
remarkably. But the facts of morphology and distribution have to be
accounted for, and the science, whose aim it is to account for them, is
Physiology.

Let us return to our lobster once more. If we watched the creature in
its native element, we should see it climbing actively the submerged
rocks, among which it delights to live, by means of its strong legs; or
swimming by powerful strokes of its great tail, the appendages of whose
sixth joint are spread out into a broad fan-like propeller: seize it,
and it will show you that its great claws are no mean weapons of
offence; suspend a piece of carrion among its haunts, and it will
greedily devour it, tearing and crushing the flesh by means of its
multitudinous jaws.

Suppose that we had known nothing of the lobster but as an inert mass,
an organic crystal, if I may use the phrase, and that we could suddenly
see it exerting all these powers, what wonderful new ideas and new
questions would arise in our minds! The great new question would be,
"How does all this take place?" the chief new idea would be, the idea of
adaptation to purpose,--the notion, that the constituents of animal
bodies are not mere unconnected parts, but organs working together to an
end. Let us consider the tail of the lobster again from this point of
view. Morphology has taught us that it is a series of segments composed
of homologous parts, which undergo various modifications--beneath and
through which a common plan of formation is discernible. But if I look
at the same part physiologically, I see that it is a most beautifully
constructed organ of locomotion, by means of which the animal can
swiftly propel itself either backwards or forwards.

But how is this remarkable propulsive machine made to perform its
functions? If I were suddenly to kill one of these animals and to take
out all the soft parts, I should find the shell to be perfectly inert,
to have no more power of moving itself than is possessed by the
machinery of a mill, when disconnected from its steam-engine or
water-wheel. But if I were to open it, and take out the viscera only,
leaving the white flesh, I should perceive that the lobster could bend
and extend its tail as well as before. If I were to cut off the tail, I
should cease to find any spontaneous motion in it; but on pinching any
portion of the flesh, I should observe that it underwent a very curious
change--each fibre becoming shorter and thicker. By this act of
contraction, as it is termed, the parts to which the ends of the fibre
are attached are, of course, approximated; and according to the
relations of their points of attachment to the centres of motion of the
different rings, the bending or the extension of the tail results. Close
observation of the newly opened lobster would soon show that all its
movements are due to the same cause--the shortening and thickening of
these fleshy fibres, which are technically called muscles.

Here, then, is a capital fact. The movements of the lobster are due to
muscular contractility. But why does a muscle contract at one time and
not at another? Why does one whole group of muscles contract when the
lobster wishes to extend his tail, and another group, when he desires to
bend it? What is it originates, directs, and controls the motive power?

Experiment, the great instrument for the ascertainment of truth in
physical science, answers this question for us. In the head of the
lobster there lies a small mass of that peculiar tissue which is known
as nervous substance. Cords of similar matter connect this brain of the
lobster, directly or indirectly, with the muscles. Now, if these
communicating cords are cut, the brain remaining entire, the power of
exerting what we call voluntary motion in the parts below the section is
destroyed; and on the other hand, if, the cords remaining entire, the
brain mass be destroyed, the same voluntary mobility is equally lost.
Whence the inevitable conclusion is, that the power of originating these
motions resides in the brain, and is propagated along the nervous cords.

In the higher animals the phænomena which attend this transmission have
been investigated, and the exertion of the peculiar energy which resides
in the nerves has been found to be accompanied by a disturbance of the
electrical state of their molecules.

If we could exactly estimate the signification of this disturbance; if
we could obtain the value of a given exertion of nerve force by
determining the quantity of electricity, or of heat, of which it is the
equivalent; if we could ascertain upon what arrangement, or other
condition of the molecules of matter, the manifestation of the nervous
and muscular energies depends, (and doubtless science will some day or
other ascertain these points,) physiologists would have attained their
ultimate goal in this direction; they would have determined the relation
of the motive force of animals to the other forms of force found in
nature; and if the same process had been successfully performed for all
the operations which are carried on in, and by, the animal frame,
physiology would be perfect, and the facts of morphology and
distribution would be deducible from the laws which physiologists had
established, combined with those determining the condition of the
surrounding universe.

There is not a fragment of the organism of this humble animal, whose
study would not lead us into regions of thought as large as those which
I have briefly opened up to you; but what I have been saying, I trust,
has not only enabled you to form a conception of the scope and purport
of zoology, but has given you an imperfect example of the manner in
which, in my opinion, that science, or indeed any physical science, may
be best taught. The great matter is, to make teaching real and
practical, by fixing the attention of the student on particular facts;
but at the same time it should be rendered broad and comprehensive, 

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