CHAPTER XXV. NATURE. A mechanical conception of nature, though useful as a working hypothesis, is in reality an irrational conception. Reason indicates that the world is made up of bodies, each of which is a compositum consisting of both matter and an active, immaterial principle; the two forming a substantial unity. What science is- What we are-The soul—The correlation of forcesThe mechanical philosophy-The undulatory theory of light-The nature of gases-The atomic theory-The nebular theory-Space -Time-Motion-Energy-Matter-Motion and thought-The inorganic world-The organic world-Animal automatismWhat an organism is-Psychology and physiology-Organic symmetry-Vitalism-Five orders of immaterial principlesGeneration-Intermediate temporary forms-Cosmical hypotheses -Existences, real and ideal-Reason in nature. OUR pursuit of truth has now carried us through a brief survey of the world about us, and we have noticed many of the leading phenomena which form the subject-matter of various sciences. We have next to advance from the sciences, to the science of sciences, or science par excellence. Our endeavour must now be to obtain what knowledge we may of the highest truth which appears to us attainable by man's natural faculties. And here it may be well to repeat what was said at the outset of this work,* namely, that the inquirer after truth must trust only to the dictates of his own reason, and be careful to accept nothing as certain, except what his intellect, after patient and persevering thought, shows him to be evidently true. That in such an * See above, p. 4. What science is. inquiry considerable patience and perseverance may sometimes be necessary for persons not well versed in observations and reflections of the kind, should occasion no surprise, considering what a call there is for the exercise of the same virtues in the acquisition of any merely physical science. The object of the present section is to obtain the most complete knowledge we can of the nature of the universe about us: what it seems to be composed of, and what are the interactions of its various parts? what was its origin, if origin it had? what purposes, if any, seem to be proclaimed by it? what may be the history of its life, if life it has; and what may be anticipated in the future respecting it? In other words, the inquiry pursued in this section may be shortly expressed by the questions, "What things really are? Why things are? and how things have become what they are? It is to the consideration of the first of these questions exclusively that the present chapter is devoted. "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas." No knowledge of mere phenomena, together with their successions and co-existences, suffice to constitute "science;" which must investigate the essential natures and causal actions of the objects of its study, even if it has to end by declaring that its investigations have led to no certain or positive result. The essence of "science" is a knowledge of 'causes," and only when these have been investigated to the fullest extent which our powers and opportunities permit, will our knowledge merit such a name. Science has to do with self-evident, necessary truths-first principles which underlie and maintain every department of "physical science." The latter, therefore, great and noble as it is, is necessarily a subordinate science which must submit to be ruled and judged by that upon which its very existence depends; namely, the science of sciences or "philosophy." Two opposite temptations beset the inquirer at his outset in pursuit of such supreme science. During the last two centuries physical knowledge has been so wonderfully augmented as to lead some persons to suppose that the further advance of our knowledge is absolutely unlimiteda supposition tending to much rashness of speculation and much hasty and unjustifiable dogmatism. Other persons. are much more impressed with the limitations to our knowledge, and the amount of previous error which the same progress has also seemed to reveal-an impression tending to intellectual paralysis and much hasty and unjustifiable scepticism. In our inquiry we must do our very best to avoid both these temptations. We must never shrink from declaring that to be true, the certainty of which is evident to our minds, however wonderful it may be. We must also be most careful not to declare anything to be certain which is not, after mature meditation, seen to be clearly evident and indubitably true. It may be well for any reader who feels tempted to doubt about his power of knowing, with absolute certainty, anything beyond phenomena and physical science, to reflect a moment on the fact that he himself knows that he knows, with absolute certainty, the very truth about what Omnipotence could or could not do; and this concerning matters which not only do not exist, but may be regarded as only hypothetically possible. Thus, let him suppose that Omnipotence might have made our world such as it is, save that all its birds were water-birds-like ducks, geese, etc. Then let him suppose that Omnipotence might have made our world such as it is, save that none of its birds were water-birds. will then see that it is, and must eternally be and have been, absolutely impossible even for Omnipotence to have made both these possible states of our world simultaneously actual. Having reflected on this simple but evident truth, the reader, disposed to doubt his powers of perception, may proceed with more confidence to consider truths of a lower and more ordinary kind. He In setting out, then, to investigate as best we may the nature of the universe-" what it is "-let us first examine the tools with which we have to work, and the nature of the objects they have to work upon. In so doing we shall find that we have already been forced, in preceding sections, somewhat to anticipate certain questions of the highest science. Our "tools" are those active powers of mind which we know we possess. The "objects they have to work upon" include everything thinkable, even What we are. * the very thought itself which thinks. We have already seen in what certainty consists; that we have supreme certainty of our own existence,t and also that there are absolute, primary, fundamental truths which are selfevident and need no proof. We have made sure that there are valid processes of inference, and that what is thus inferred from true premisses, must itself be absolutely true. We have recognized the distinction | between what is objective and what is subjective, and we have seen that objective conditions (objective concepts) must correspond with our subjective perceptions of certainty, ¶ or else we are plunged in hopeless scepticism, the utter folly of which has been fully recognized by us. Manifestly, if we can know nothing, all inquiry must be useless. We have also recognized the fact that we have two sets of faculties; †† one pertaining to the senses and bound down within the scope of the imagination, the other pertaining to the intellect and capable of conceiving truths to which the imagination could never attain. Of these two, we have further seen ‡‡ that intellect, and intellect alone, must be our supreme and ultimate criterion. In the second section of this work we endeavoured to make it clear that we have certain evidence of the existence of a world, external to and independent of us. Trusting to the validity of the considerations therein put forward, it will here be assumed that we have a real and true knowledge of the existence of an external world—that we truly perceive about us a variety of real existences of various kinds, and a multitude of extended bodies. Amongst these extended objects is to be included that material frame which each of us knows as his own body. What each man knows as his really existing and persisting mind, he also knows in conjunction with that same body, the two somehow constituting a certain unity which he perceives and calls "himself." Thus, in setting out to consider the world about us, as to what it really is, we may best begin with that which is obviously the best and most intimately known to us of † See above, pp. 15-28. See above, p. 35. *See above, pp. 11, 13. †† See above, pp. 180, 203. See above, p. 12. |