The History Of Things

( Originally Published 1909 )

The Antiquity of Things.—One of the most obvious results of the study of nature is simply the conviction that everything has a long history behind it. "Everything," as Bagehot said, "has become an antiquity." The human race seems to be several hundreds of thousands of years old, and yet man is a creature of yesterday compared with many of his present companions upon the earth. How long it is since the earth became fit to be the cradle and home of life we do not know, but it must be reckoned in millions of years. One enthusiastic calculator has stated, with al-most painful precision, that the earth is 861,000,000 years old.

Things Change with the Times. But it is not merely the length of years that impresses us; it is that everything or rather the aspect of everything has changed with the times. The present is in a sense a child of the past, but it is different from its parent. The earth has passed from phase to phase; one climate has succeeded another; there has been a procession of faunas and floras over the stage; we look back upon a great drama.

"There rolls the deep where grew the tree;
O Earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There, where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.

"The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands
Like clouds they shape themselves and go." —"In Memoriam," CXXII.

Making of the Earth.—The story of the earth is a long story, retold every year in our schools and colleges, always becoming clearer and more picturesque as investigation continues. All that we require to do for our present purpose is to open the book here and there to revive our impressions of the sweep of events.

In the book of the genesis of things there are no pages grander than those that deal still somewhat vaguely with the making of our solar system. The Nebular Hypothesis, which we owe to the genius of Kant and Laplace, is one of the boldest and most inspiring of all the scientific guesses at truth, and with sundry emendations and saving clauses this Nebular Hypothesis is adhered to by most modern investigators.

"This world was once a fluid haze of light,
Till toward the centre set the starry tides
And eddied into suns, that wheeling, cast
The planets." —Tennyson's "Princess."

"The history of a star," Professor R. K. Dun-can writes, "begins with a nebula. A nebula is a vast swarm of meteorites colliding together. The meteorites are cold lumps of matter containing the chemical elements as we know them on earth. These meteorites in accordance with their gravitational attraction seek the centre of the swarm, collisions result, heat is evolved, and the temperature gradually rises."

Owing to the meteoric bombardment, the condensing and colliding mass becomes converted into incandescent gas, probably much simpler chemically than the original swarm. As the bombardment of meteorites ceases, the gaseous star begins to cool. Chemically, it retraces its steps, becoming more complex and heterogeneous again. It passes through the condition now illustrated by our sun or by Arcturus, and may eventually become in itself extinct, like "yon dead world, the moon."

One of the most attractive forms of the Nebular Hypothesis is that suggested by Professor Chamberlin. Laplace started with a gaseous nebula, Lockyer and G. H. Darwin start with a swarm of meteorites, Chamberlin starts with innumerable small bodies (planetesimals) revolving about a central gaseous mass. The central mass became the sun; knots or partial concentrations in the nebula became the nuclei of the planets; the residue of diffuse nebulous matter is added to the sun or to the planets. The prominent features of this theory are (1) that it starts from a parent nebula of a spiral type, like most of those now existing; (2) that it supposes this nebula to consist of small bodies, like infinitesimally small planets; and (3) that it does not suppose any fundamental change in the dynamics of the system after the nebula was once formed.

Even to-day the work of creation continues, for stars are being born out of the fire-mist; even to-night it may be that a new star will be seen taking her place as a débutante in the splendid cosmic assembly. Some stars are growing cooler and more complex, recapitulating the history of our own earth; others seem to be growing hotter and less complex, perhaps suggesting what may hap-pen here also in days to come.

Stages in the History.—The earth, then, probably had its beginning as one of the rings swirled off from a great nebular mass, the centre of which gradually condensed into our sun. It was once a rapidly rotating molten planet one of many, for it may be noted that over five hundred planets large and small are now known, though Hegel tried to prove that there could not be more than seven. It probably had a deep atmosphere, part of which afterward condensed into the waters that cover the earth. Its molten ocean was profoundly disturbed by solar tides, and it was perhaps a particularly high tide which made the earth give birth to the moon. This marked the first critical period in the history of our planet. "At the eventful time of parturition the earth was rotating, with a period of from two to four hours, about an axis inclined at some 110 or 12° to the ecliptic. The time which has elapsed since the moon occupied a position nine terrestrial radii distant from the earth is at least fifty-six to fifty-seven millions of years, but may have been much more."

The moon thus arose as a sort of moult of the outer envelope of the hot earth. It was charged with steam and other gases under a pressure of 5,000 pounds to the square inch, but as it receded from the earth and the pressure continuously diminished it became "as explosive as a charged bomb, and steam burst forth from numberless volcanoes." The moon, in short, was only born to die. " While the face of the moon might thus have acquired its existing features, the ejected material might possibly have been shot so far away from its origin as to have acquired an independent orbit" and some of the meteorites which now descend upon the earth may be returned portions of the early envelope, the bulk of which gave rise to the moon.

Soon after the birth of the moon the earth be-came consolidated (with a surface temperature of about 1170° C.) and the moon may have been influential in determining high-pressure areas and low-pressure areas over the surface of the crust, which may have had something to do with primitive depressions and elevations. This, as Professor Sollas says, was the second critical period in the history of the earth, the stage of the "consistentior status." It may have been forty millions of years ago, or much more.

When, with continued cooling, the temperature of the surface fell to 370° C., the steam in the atmosphere would begin to liquefy, and this was the first step in the origin of the oceans. The hot waters began to be localized in primitive faint depressions, and, acting energetically on the silicates of the primitive crust, began to be salt. In a manner difficult to understand a distinction was established between ocean basins and continental areas.

Through stages more or less like those hinted at above the earth has reached its present state. The vast nucleus or "centrosphere" seems to be practically solid, the melting point of the metals and metalloids being raised by the immense pressure. Outside the central mass there is "a shell of materials bordering upon fusion," which Sir John Murray calls the "tektosphere." On this plastic shell there rests the heterogeneous and wrinkled crust or lithosphere, always slightly pulsating.

Then followed what may be called the wrinkling and folding of the earth's crust. If the solid core slowly contracted, the primitive crust in accommodating itself through changes in the plastic shell or tektosphere to the shrinkage within, would be buckled, warped, and thrown into ridges. "The contraction of the interior of the earth, consequent on its loss of heat, causes the crust to fall upon it in folds, which rise over the continents and sink under the oceans, and the flexure of the area of sedimentation is partly a consequence of this folding, partly of overloading."' The continents may be due to contractions of the whole crust, while mountains may be due to foldings of the outer layers through tangential stress brought about by contractions of the deepest layers.2 Here we have to do with local collapses or dislocations of the crust and there with great lateral thrusts. As in pack ice, there may have been unyielding masses, which had to be piled one upon the other, while other masses may have been simply overlapped.

Not less momentous were the great transgressions and regressions of the seas.

Sculpturing of scenery.—Finally, we pass to a chapter in the earth's history which we can read with less uncertainty the more detailed sculpturing and the making of scenery. There have been violent blows, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions; there have been drastic changes of climate, such as the Great Ice Age; but most of the factors which have wrought out the details of earth-sculpture seem to have been very gentle chisellings. The solid earth is weathered away by air and rain, by frost and snow; the waters wear the stones; the mountain is transplanted piece-meal to the sea; there is a ceaseless wear and tear of continents; there is a slow deposition of the soluble and insoluble results of denudation. As James Hutton said in his "Theory of the Earth" (1788), "little causes, long continuing," have wrought great changes.

The Hand of Life upon the Earth.—Nor can we overlook the influence of the hand of life upon the earth. The sea-weeds cling around the shore and lessen the shock of the breakers. The lichens eat slowly into the stones, sending their fine threads beneath the surface as thickly sometimes "as grass-roots in a meadow-land," so that the skin of the rock is gradually weathered away. On the moor the mosses form huge sponges, which mitigate floods, and keep the springs welling and the streams flowing in days of drought. Many little plants smooth away the wrinkles on the earth's their mother's face, and adorn her with jewels. Others have caught and stored the sun-shine, hidden its power in strange guise in the earth, and our hearths with their smouldering peat or glowing coal are warmed by the sunlight of the summers of thousands or millions of years ago. The grass, which began to grow in comparatively modern (i. e., Tertiary) times, has made the earth a fit home for flocks and herds, and protects it like a garment; the forests affect the rain-fall and temper the climate, besides sheltering multitudes of living things, to many of whom every blow of the axe is a death-knell. In fact, no plant, from bacterium to oak-tree, either lives or dies to itself, or is without its influence, direct or indirect, upon the earth. In arguing from the present rates of earth-weathering to those in past ages, geologists have not perhaps taken sufficient account of the degree in which the hand of life, especially in more modern times, has modified the extra-animate cosmic operations.

Similarly, as regards animals, the influence of the hand upon life upon the earth is manifold. On the one hand we see destructive agencies the boring sponges and worms reduce the shells to sand, the Pholads and other larger borers help to break down the most solid seashore rocks, the crayfish and their enemies, the water-voles, unite to make the river-banks collapse, the beavers have changed the aspect of large tracts of country, and so on through a long list.

On the other hand we see conservative agencies the accumulation of enormous quantities of calcareous and siliceous ooze in the great abysses of the oceans, the formation of great shell-beds, the building of coral-reefs. We have al-ready spoken of the work of earthworms, and when we add to that all that is done by hundreds of other subterranean creatures from burial beetles to moles and all that is effected by the microbes of the soil, we see a new meaning in the phrase "the living earth."

To sum up,

"They say the solid earth whereon we tread
In tracks of fluent heat began,
And grew to seeming random forms,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
Till at the last arose the man."

This in more precise language the astronomers and geologists tell us, that the earth took form from a whirling crowd of meteorites; that after a stage of intense heat it began to cool and consolidate; that it got its centrosphere, its tektosphere, its lithosphere, its hydrosphere, its atmosphere; that as it aged its skin became wrinkled each wrinkle marking an event in its life as those on our faces often do; that it was exquisitely sculptured by fire and frost, by wind and rain, by river and sea; that it became fit to be a cradle and home of living creatures; that the hand of life has been working upon it for untold ages, forming chalk cliffs and coral reefs and coal beds; and that, finally, man has changed the face of continents often reckless of results and ruthless of beauty.

There are obvious disadvantages in trying to outline in a few minutes the history of a hundred million years or more. The outline can have none of the picturesqueness of detail which gives charm and vividness to a well-told story. A brief outline is apt to suggest that everything has been cleared up, which is very far from being the case. Some chapters are extremely obscure and there are great difficulties in every chapter. Every year, however, the geologists are learning to read the history book better, and we have given the sketch as an essential part of our argument. It is an instance of the slow working of the cosmic mechanism towards a result which is wonderful. We can discuss it without any complications in regard to vitalism or psychism. The keynote of geological history-reading may be found in Hutton's famous sentence: "No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which the principle was known, and no extraordinary events to be alleged to ex-plain a common appearance."

Age of the Earth.—Before we consider the precise nature of the scientific interpretation of the past, let us pause for a moment to look back on the history objectively. We are impressed by the antiquity of it all. It is well known that at the end of the eighteenth century, or later, there was, even among geologists, a widespread belief that the habitable earth was some 6,000 years old a belief arrived at by a peculiar wresting of the Scriptures. But when James Hutton began to see "the ruins of an older world in the present structure of the globe," when William Smith began to disclose the succession of strata and to tell the tale of age before age stretching back into a distant past, when Cuvier and others began to outline a succession of faunas and floras leading us back and back to the mist of life's beginnings, there was a reaction to an opposite extreme, and many began to think of the earth as a sort of in-animate Methuselah, "without beginning of days or end of years."

Slowly, attempts at measurement began. The geologists tried to measure the thickness of stratified rocks, sometimes estimated at 100,000, sometimes at 265,000 feet; they divided this by the observed rate of denudation and deposition (a foot in a century or a foot in ten centuries), and the answer varied from twenty-six millions to six hundred and eighty millions of years. They tried other methods, such as computing the time required by the sea to become as salt as it is, and they reached other results. The biologists also had their finger in the pie, and made a modest demand for a slice of time sufficient to account for the evolution of living creatures, which some supposed would require a hundred million years, and others more, and others less. In short, both geologists and biologists drew without stint upon the bank of time, until the physicists reminded them that their credit was not quite unlimited. Arguing from the rate of cooling of the earth and sun and other insecure data, the physicists, notably Professor Tait and Lord Kelvin, refused to allow more than ten to twenty millions of years. Under pressure, the grant was afterwards increased to forty or even a hundred millions, which showed how flexible the calculations were. Within the last few years, however, since the discovery of radio-activity, since it became known that the earth is not self-cooling, but self-heating, the physicists have become willing to grant the geologists and biologists as much time as they want, say a thousand million years? All this uncertainty has been mainly due to the insecure data, which no amount of sound mathematics and accurate arithmetic can make up for. The fact is that the age of the earth is an unsolved problem, but it must amount to many millions of years. We have dwelt upon this because in our conception of nature must be included the datum that the time required to bring about a result may be practically unimaginable in its amount. The span of the longest human life is but a tick of the geological clock. If genius be an infinite patience, we see it in the making of the earth. Nature is never in a hurry. She works "ohne Hast, ohne Rast."

"One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee--
One lesson which in every wind is blown,
Of toil unsevered from tranquillity."

Inorganic Evolution.—But what of the material of the earth throughout its history ? There are perhaps a quarter of a million of quite distinct kinds of compounds on the earth; these are all due to diverse combinations of some eighty elements; and there is no reason to doubt that they have been gradually made in the course of the earth's cooling. But have the elements also a history ? It is too soon to say much about in-organic evolution, but we may recall the known fact that radium gives rise to helium, and the probability that uranium gives rise to radium. There is here a hint of the transmutation or transformation of elements. Sir William Crookes, for instance, has offered suggestions as to the possible origin of the chemical elements from a formless primordial stuff or "protyle," wherein all matter was in the pre-atomic state potential rather than actual. He has gone the length of suggesting that the chemical elements owe their stability to their being the outcome of a struggle for existence in which the most stable survived.

Let us take a paragraph from Prof. R. K. Duncan's marvellously clear exposition of "The New Knowledge."1 "It may be true that all bodily existence is but a manifestation of units of negative electricity lying embosomed in an omnipresent ether of which these units are, probably, a conditioned part. Mass comes into existence only as the negative electron, assuming motion, carries with it a bound portion of the ether in which it is bathed; and furthermore this mass depends solely upon the velocity with which the negative unit moves. Our negative unit on receiving mass be-comes a "corpuscle" endowed with the primary qualities of matter superimposed upon those of electricity. Corpuscles congregating into groups or various configurations constitute essentially the atoms of the chemical elements, locking up in these configurations super-terrific energies and leaving but "a slight residual effect" as chemical affinity or gravitation with which we attempt to carry on the work of the world. These atoms, congregating in their turn as nebulae and under the slight residual force of gravitation, condense into blazing suns. The suns decay in their temperature and become ever more and more complex in their constitution as the atoms lock themselves, developing up into the molecules of matter to form a world. We see the molecules growing ever more and more complex as the world grows colder until we attain to organic compounds. We see these organic compounds united to form living beings and we see these living beings developing into countless forms, and, after aeons of time, evolving into a dominant race, which is us."

This rather takes one's breath away, and of course the clear-headed author's use of the words "we see" is highly metaphorical. In this case seeing means believing. An outsider can hardly refrain from suspecting that the evolutionary physicists tend to be a little impetuous, perhaps even metaphysical. Is there not a tendency to make a demiurge of the ether, which, after all, is but a necessary hypothesis ? It seems a little uncertain whether it is "some mysterious form of non-matter," as is generally believed, or whether it may not be the lightest and simplest of the elements, as Mendeleeff suggested. Just as Berkeley resolved "matter" into affections of "Spirit," so the modern physicists resolve matter into "a mode of motion," and we cannot think of the origin of motion any more than we can think of the origin of spirit. Matter is resolved into molecules, which are resolved into atoms, which are resolved into corpuscles surrounded by positive electricity, and a corpuscle is a moving unit of negative electricity together with a ` bound" portion of the surrounding ether which is its mass. It is impossible for ordinary mortals to think of motion apart from "something" moving, and the only "somethings" left to us seem to be electricity and ether. It seems all to end in motion and mystery, which is perhaps a wholesome result. The common denominator of physical science allows abundant scope for transcendental interpretation.

"Ins Innre der Natur dringt kein erschaffner Geist."

Interpretation of the Past.—We have given an out-line of the process of becoming which seems to have led to the present phase of inanimate Nature. Let us now consider what we have got.

Starting from processes which go on today whether these be weathering or star-making science seeks to reconstruct the stages in the genesis of the earth. It tries to make a rationally connected history by showing that particular sets of conditions lead on to particular sets of results,' and in so doing it must always argue from what goes on now to what may have happened long ago.

Just as Darwin argued from the experience of breeders in the nineteenth century to what might have occurred in natural breeding millions of years ago, so Lyell, before him, argued from processes of earth sculpture going on under his eyes to what might have occurred in ancient days when there was no eye to see. This is the only path of interpretation available, but it is obviously one on which we must walk warily. In appreciating the value of certain factors we must work from the present backward, but it is possible that the present state of affairs may give us, so to speak, a false start.

Development and Evolution.—It seems a confusion of thought to speak of the evolution of the earth, as if it were like the evolution of organisms. We should rather compare the story of the earth to the story of an individual development. It is the same earth all through, just as it is the same organism all through. In organic evolution, how-ever, we have to do with races, with a succession of new forms, arising out of old forms, which either disappear or continue to exist alongside of their descendants. We may perhaps speak of the evolution of the chemical elements, of which we know very little, but we cannot accurately speak of the evolution of the earth. It is not the survivor among many earths which arose from the womb of a Protogaea. It has had a long development, that is all. This may seem verbal pedantry, and yet fallacy is apt to arise from confusing continuous individual development with racial evolution.

In the development of an individual organism we always start with a more or less rich inheritance which is the product of a long evolution in previous ages. We regard the development as a gradual realization of the "given" potentiality, as a gradual expression of what is already there. We believe that in an appropriate environment stage succeeds stage in an absolutely predetermined fashion. There is an identity of essential substance through-out, and the stage of to-day contains that of to-morrow, and must, in normal conditions, give rise to it. New properties, new modes of behaviour, emerge day after day, and although we do not know how the potential becomes actual, we can watch the process. In an absolutely transparent egg, like that of the moth Botys hyalinalis, we can follow the whole visible process with unbroken continuity the minting and coining of the cater-pillar out of the egg, the emergence of obvious complexity out of apparent simplicity. We can-not, of course, see the development of the cater-pillar's instincts any more than we can see the growth of the chick's mind by any amount of embryology, but we see what takes place, and it looks like an automatic autonomous unfolding. The only way in which we can meet the difficulty of the emergence of the apparently new is by sup-posing that the apparently new was potentially there in the beginning.' In short, we read back the consequents into the antecedents. So, in the development of the earth, we have to do with what we believe to be a perfectly continuous series of distributions and re-distributions of matter and energy in the ambient ether. The meteorites become a nebula, and the nebula becomes a star. lt differentiates and integrates as it cools, and we try to chronicle stage after stage. We do not suppose that the sum-total of matter and energy in the whole system of things suffers any loss or makes any gain. If apparently new properties arise, we believe that they are old properties in new guise. We can make apparently very new things ourselves, such as dynamite, but we know that the properties of dynamite can be resolved into the properties of simpler things. Even when we discover a new thing like Radium, with altogether unexpected properties, we soon follow it up by discovering radio-activity in many other cases. It may be, for all we know, an intrinsic property of matter to emit rays. In any case, we revise our conception of what is "given," and say that there is nothing new under the sun. In short, in the history of the earth, we believe we have to do with a continuous natural development, in which antecedents pass over into their consequents, and we feel no need for any cause in the strict sense except the first cause which is taken for granted throughout.

Later on, we shall try to show that this way of looking at things must be somewhat enlarged when we come to the emergence of living organisms .upon the earth, when we have to do with autonomous agents, when we study intelligent behaviour, when we face the biggest fact in all science man, with his ideas and ideals a thinking reed, who, if the universe should crush him, would still be nobler than the universe in knowing that he was crushed.

Mechanical Categories Suffice.—If we leave out of account, in the meantime, life and all results that can be referred to the hand of life, and consider the history of the inanimate world, either as regards its great events or in such details as the making of a volcanic mountain, the carving of a valley, or the formation of a river-system, we find that it is possible to give a more or less probable mechanical account of the various sequences which may have led up to the results we know and admire. Thus the history of the Niagara Gorge and its relation to the Great Lakes, past and present, has been worked out up to a certain degree of security in a most beautiful and convincing manner. From what we know of present physical and chemical processes we can interpret the past with considerable precision with increasing precision every year. And the general result which we must bear in mind is that mechanical categories suffice. In inanimate nature, science sees a system whose relations of sequence admit of being restated by means of equations of motion. Whether we try to interpret the history of the solar system or the genesis of minerals, the origin of a mountain chain or of the granite that helps to compose it, the work of a glacier or the formation of a stalactite, we work with reliable formulae of gravitation, attraction and repulsion, hydrostatics and thermodynamics, and so on—i. e., with purely mechanical formulae, and we do not find that they are insufficient. If we take the known properties resident in matter and the laws of energy as data, we can plausibly reconstruct any particular part of the inanimate world. " Gebt mir Materie," Kant said, "und ich will daraus eine Welt schaffen."

Do Things Make Themselves?—When we consider these two general results, first, that the be-coming of the earth reads like a story of continuous individual development, as of an egg into a chick; and, second, that in our redescription of both the present and the past of any particular part of inanimate nature the categories of mechanics are sufficient, we get a strong impression that there is much truth in what Kingsley made Nature say in his immortal "Water-Babies," "I make things make themselves."

We look back on the history of inanimate nature and we see obvious complexity arising out of apparent simplicity a nebula becomes an intricate earth; we see a higher order emerging out of a lower a system of sun and planets is established; we see a multitude of parts working together with the smoothness of a well-made machine; we see what we call beauty and what, if we had been the makers of the history, we should certainly have called progress. It is very wonderful. And yet, in a certain sense, are we not warranted in saying that Nature has made herself what she is, i. e., that any particular result is the natural predetermined predictable outcome of the antecedent conditions ? Few feel any particular necessity for invoking the aid of a deus ex machina to account for the frost-flowers seen on the window-pane on a winter morning which, in fairy-like beauty, re-main for a brief space as external reminiscences of the evening talk but each spray of that frosty pane is molecularly as complex as the Milky Way seems to our eyes. It has been said that the undevout astronomer is mad, but Laplace was as astronomer quite right in saying in answer to Napoleon's famous question regarding God, that he had no need of that hypothesis. He was right, in the first place, because science is a perfectly definite business of formulating sequences in terms of sense-experience, and is false to its task when it obscures its deficiencies by interpolating formulae of an entirely different order. And he was right, in the second place, because in the scientific interpretation of any particular occurrence in inanimate nature, we have no reason to believe that mechanical categories are not quite sufficient. To conclude, however, that this scientific interpretation is in terms of concepts which are self-explanatory, or that it is the only interpretation, or that it is in itself a satisfying human interpretation, is quite another matter.

Recoil from the Scientific Position.—The scientific conception of the physical universe as a sort of world-egg developing of itself, capable in virtue of the properties resident in it of passing from phase to phase in the course of tons, like a machine wound up not only to go but to improve itself by going, is repugnant to many minds, and various attempts have been made to wriggle away from it. Fundamentally, perhaps, this recoil is due to a misunderstanding of the aim of science, a failure to see that a descriptive account of occurrences is not an explanation of them, and cannot be put in opposition to other quite incommensurable ways of summing up the history. But let us consider for a moment how some have tried to put a brake on the impetuously driven chariot of science.

(1) It is useful to point out that many of the riddles of inanimate nature are still unsolved, for nothing is more prejudicial to progress than giving a false simplicity to facts, or "giving to the ignorant, as a gospel, in the name of Science, the rough guesses of yesterday that to-morrow should for-get.'" He would be a bold man who should say that he thoroughly understood the tides, not to speak of the weather, and no astronomer pretends that he really knows how the worlds were formed. He thinks that he is on the sure track of knowing, that is all. How little we know of the possible origin of the eighty or so different kinds of elements ? But this sort of argumentum ad ignorantiam, while healthy enough within limits, can give no permanent satisfaction. It crumbles when we read the history of scientific progress in a single century. The lap of the future is full of scientific puzzles, but who will pick out those that are insoluble, and pin his faith on a gratuitous and really presumptuous ignorabimus?

(2) Another form of the same kind of argument is also useful within limits. It consists in pointing out that many of the terms currently used in chemico-physical interpretations of inanimate nature are not really simple, but are big with mystery. What is gravitation, for instance, or what is electricity, or what is matter itself ? If this argument means that science starts by postulating something "given," it is sound; but if it says that gravitation or electricity is irreducible, it is illegitimate. It is faint-hearted and premature to assume that what is at present irreducible will remain irreducible, unless some good reason can be given for so judging. It yields no permanent satisfaction when we reflect on the past, when we consider the success which has attended scientific efforts to reduce the number of supposed separate entities or powers. The use of "William of Occam's razor" Entia non sunt multiplicanda prceter necessitatem has already had its reward. It has given us a deeper conviction of the "oneness" of Nature. We need simply recall how " Caloric" was eliminated, yielding to the modern interpretation of heat "as a mode of motion"; how emanations of "Light" had to follow, when the undulatory or the electromagnetic theory of their nature was established; how "Force" itself has become a mere measure of motion; and how even "Matter" tends to be resolved into units of negative electricity, carrying with them a bound portion of the ether in which they are bathed. By all means, let us have a criticism of the categories of science which is indeed part of the business of a useful philosophy but let us avoid the dogmatism of asserting that the scientific unification of nature has reached its limits. " God said, 'Let Newton be,' and there was light," and another Newton may be born tomorrow.

(3) Another line of argument is less easily dealt with. The scientific position is that natural happenings are due to properties resident in the given material, whether it be a nebula or a dew-drop. But do we know all the resident properties ? May there not be resident properties as yet undiscovered ? May there not be resident properties which are by their very nature beyond scientific-discovery? The answer to this argument is Experiment. We can work only with the resident properties that we know, and if by experiment we get a result which cannot be accounted for in terms of the known resident properties, then we must admit that some resident properties have escaped detection, and are there though we cannot define them. As a matter of fact, this commonplace of scientific procedure has often led to the discovery of previously unknown resident properties. But if we can give an adequate account of an occurrence in the laboratory in terms of known resident properties, we are justified in trying to do the same for the grandest cosmic phenomena. If we could convince ourselves, as some have convinced them-selves, that a sum of money can disappear from a safe without any opening, we should have to ad-mit that there are properties resident in matter that the physicist is unaware of. But who can say that he knows of any occurrence in inanimate nature which the known resident properties are obviously incapable of accounting for ? If the letters of a jumbled fount of type or the fragments of a smashed machine were to rise up and arrange themselves in working order, we should have to revise our mechanical categories; but we do not know of any such phenomena in the ordinary course of inanimate nature.

It is open to any one to say that there is a spirit in the nebula and a Psyche in the dew-drop--just as Haeckel says that there is a permanent soul in every atom; but if these are supposed to be operative, the scientific analyst must say that he finds no need for the hypothesis, since the laws of motion suffice for him, while, if they are supposed to be inoperative, the scientific analyst usually applies William of Occam's razor without remorse.

The form in which this line of thought seems most attractive is briefly this. When we consider any particular corner in the inanimate world, say, the making of the Niagara Falls or the making of the frost-flowers on the window, we do not require in our redescription more than mechanical formule. But when we consider Nature not in isolated pieces but as a harmonious whole, when we recognize the progressive order, the orderly progress, and the beauty of it all, when we go on to recognize the probability that the earth has been the parent of its tenants, then we mast read back into the world-egg with which we start a potentiality of giving rise to all that follows, and thus the Lowest Common Denominator of Science becomes the counterpart of the Greatest Common Measure of Philosophy.

Nature of Scientific Interpretation.—But the more immediate answer to the recoil from the scientific position is to be found by considering what most modern workers mean by scientific interpretation.

The scientific interpretation of inanimate nature is always after this pattern: Given a certain collocation of material particles in certain conditions, the result after a certain time will be so and so. The problem is to redescribe natural happenings in the simplest available terms, namely, in terms of mechanics in the wide sense. Some of the terms used are simpler or more irreducible than others; thus that form of mutual attraction which we call gravitation is probably more irreducible than what we call chemical affinity. Some which seemed irreducible in the past have undergone simplification; thus Heat is no longer an "element" or an "entity" or a "force" but "a mode of motion." Some which are not reducible at present will probably undergo simplifying analysis in the future, for the physicist may some day discover the true inwardness of gravitation, and be able to tell us what really happens in the invisible world when the apple falls in the orchard. Progress is continuous toward the ideal of redescribing all the occurrences in inanimate nature in terms of the laws of motion; one fastness after another has given up its keys; one riddle after another has been read; all of which means a scientific demonstration of the unity of nature.

It is true that the redescriptions which are given of intricate occurrences do not sound simple; the more thorough they are, the more do they pass beyond the comprehension of the unlearned and become preserves for the mathematically minded; even more than in ancient days is it true that the portal of the scientific academy bears the legend, "Let no one ignorant of mathematics enter here." But the point is that the assumptions of the mechanical interpretation of inanimate nature are simple, in the sense that the laws of motion are simple. It comes to this, then, that the birth and death of worlds, the harmony of the spheres, the sweep of our whole solar system in space in short, the greatest of cosmic phenomena submit to being studied by the same exact methods, and to being redescribed in the same simple terms as the thunderstorm and the dew-drop, the sublime architecture of the mountains and the evanescent beauty of the frost-flowers on the window pane. It surely shows us that we live in a universe not a multiverse, if such things be so; the very fact that the world is scientifically intelligible shows that there is a rational unity behind it; it surely shows us that Man is no freak of nature who can hold the earth in a balance and measure the heavens in his scale. Strictly speaking, science redescribes and reconstructs by means of symbols conceptual formulae such as matter, electricity, ether, gravitation, chemical affinity. There must be the counterfoils of reality in these, else science would not work out practically as it does; we could not trust it and predict by means of it as we do. But a law of nature is no longer regarded by any scientific man as a necessity which things have to obey; it is rather a summary expression of certain constancies of scientific experience.

Strictly speaking, as regards inanimate nature, science finds no true causes. It is a mechanical axiom that what is in the results was also in the conditions, and what science is continually doing is to show that one particular collocation of matter and energy passes into another. Sometimes the resultant is obviously just the components over again and no further explanation is needed or possible; in many cases, however, science has simply to record that the sequence occurs. How it exactly occurs is not known. Strictly speaking, science must always start with a good deal "given," which it takes for granted. In the particular case we have been discussing the something "given" is the nebula. The scientific conception of this is that it was like the nebulae we see in the heavens today, a whirling system of meteorites or planet-esimals. At the same time, if it be true that not only the inanimate but the animate as well has grown out of the nebula, then we must read back into it all the grandeur of all its consequents. Finally, it must be clearly understood that science never even asks the irrepressible question, why has all this become as it has become ?

Thus science recognizes the fundamental mysteriousness of things, (1) as regards its Common Denominator; (2) as regards the chains of sequence it chronicles, but does not explain; (3) as regards the beginning.

As one of our philosophers. has said : "Some people write and talk as if the discovery of the natural cause of an event meant the withdrawal of the event from the sphere of divine agency. Ac-cording to this way of thinking, the gradual success of science in reducing all phenomena to natural law is tantamount to the banishment of God from the universe. He becomes a hypothesis that is not required, or if any room be left for his action, it must be at some point in the "dark background and abysm of time" when the orderly system of the universe is supposed to have been set agoing.

Now, what is the misunderstanding in the minds of those who think that there is some opposition or antithesis between saying that the Earth grew out of a nebula and saying that God created the world by the word of His power? The basal misunderstanding is a failure to see that the word ultimate does not occur in the scientific dictionary. For particular purposes of formulating and thereby perhaps working with natural processes science pursues certain methods and reaches certain results. Its outlook is in no way inconsistent with the emotional outlook, but it seems fairly obvious that one must not try to make one sentence of the two statements, "O wunderschön ist Gottes Erde, und schön auf ihr ein Mensch zu sein," and "Bodies attract one another with a force proportional directly to the product of their masses and inversely as the square of their mutual distance." There is no reason to surrender the philosophical outlook, with its conviction that "In our life alone does Nature live"; but we must not mix this up in any way with an inquiry into radio-activity.

Again, the aim of science is not to explain but to redescribe in simpler terms, to find a common denominator, but its interpretations are always in terms of conceptual formulae such as matter, energy, ether, gravitation, chemical affinity, and so on which are not themselves self-explanatory; which are in fact only intellectual counters, symbols of the mysterious reality.

Again, science continually tries to refund one natural phenomenon into another, seeking to show that given certain conditions A, B, C, certain results D, E, F will always follow. When D, E, F are simply A, B, C in a new guise, as when we get a single resultant force out of several components, the scientific interpretation is complete. When D, E, F are quite different from A, B, C, as when we get water by combining hydrogen and oxygen, we know that the conditions have somehow passed over into the resultants, but we cannot tell how the result is as it is. This is true of most scientific interpretations. They do not deal with causes in the sense in which we speak of a personal agency as a cause.

Again, science in its historical treatment of things always starts from something "given," which it does not explain, which in the last re-source it cannot explain. From this something "given" there seems to be a continuous development, and it is therefore believed that this antecedent had in it the potentiality of all that comes out of it. Thus, if order, progress, harmony, beauty, intelligence, come out of it, they must somehow have been potentially in it. We may try to substantiate the original antecedent in abstraction from its consequents, we must do so in pursuing the scientific method. We may try to think of the nebula as a whirling mass of meteorites, and nothing more; but if the whole solar system came out of that, we must as philosophers, if not as scientists, say that "There is nothing in the End which was not also in the Beginning," and if there is Logos at the end, we may be sure that it was also at the beginning.

With this explanation, is it not possible to return without repugnance to the scientific position with its central idea of a continuous natural development ?

But some one may say, I am not clear in regard to what you have said regarding science not pre-tending to give explanations, but this much I gather, that the picture you leave with us is that of a world developing of itself. That is so, if you do not forget to supplement this with the quotation from Kant with which we closed the previous lecture: "The universe must sink into the abyss of nothingness, unless we admit that, besides this infinite chain of contingencies, there exists some-thing that is primal and self-subsistent, something which as the cause of this phenomenal world se-cures its continuance and preservation."

What we have been trying to show is, that the conception of this earth of ours with which Science works, and works to such purpose both theoretical and practical is the conception of a continuous natural development in which any particular series of sequences is describable in terms of mat-ter and motion. But why should the scientific mind be so afraid of the insinuation of a metaphysical principle ? Simply because it is a confusion of thought that paralyzes intelligence.

What we are driving at has been clearly stated by Prof. A. Seth Pringle-Pattison:1 "Natural explanations—i. e., regulated sequences and coexistences of phenomena are what every science has to seek in its own sphere; and, accordingly, science justly regards as suspect the explanation of any phenomena by the immediate causality of a metaphysical agent. The interjection of such a causality into the empirical connections which she seeks to unravel, she treats as a form of ignava ratio." "It makes the investigation of causes a very easy task," says Kant, "if we refer such and such phenomena immediately to the unsearchable will and counsel of the Supreme Wisdom, whereas we ought to investigate their cause in the general mechanism of nature. This is to consider the labor of reason as ended, when we have merely dispensed with its employment."

Do we mean, then, that from such a beginning as a swarm of meteorites, the whole earth with all its beauty and order has grown ? That is what science seems to suggest. What a poor and inadequate beginning, you may say, for such a wonderful result. But has any one a right to say this ? Whence came the swarm of meteorites and all that they contained, what is electricity, what is the ether ? What is the reality behind all the counters whose moves it is permitted to science to formulate and eventually to predict ?

Do we mean that from such a beginning the whole earth with all its beauty and order has grown without direction from without ? That is what science seems to say, that the direction is from within, that the Kosmos was already in the Nebula, that there never was any chaos at all, that there is nothing in the end which was not also in the beginning. And if you like to add, "In the beginning was the Logos," science has no word to say against it.

Lafcadio Hearn tells us that in the house of any old Japanese family the guest is likely to be shown some of the heirlooms. . . . "A pretty little box, perhaps, will be set before you. Opening it you will see only a beautiful silk bag, closed with a silk running-cord decked with tiny tassels... .

You open the bag and see within it another bag, of a different quality of silk, but very fine. Open that, and lo! a third, which contains a fourth, which contains a fifth, which contains a sixth, which contains a seventh bag, which contains the strongest, roughest, hardest vessel of Chinese clay that you ever beheld. Yet it is not only curious but precious; it may be more than a thousand years old."

Historical natural science has to do with a similar process of unwrapping it removes one silken envelope after another, trying to unravel the pattern and count the threads and what is finally revealed, though it seem to the careless but as hard clay, is something if we may say something so very old, so very wonderful, that science can give no name to it.