3. The Sciences

We are not, we frankly confess, learned in the sciences. They have changed so rapidly and so essentially since our younger days, when we did take some pains to master them, that we do not know what they are today any more than we do what they will be tomorrow. We have not, in our slowness, been able to keep pace with them, and we only know enough of them now to know that they are continually changing under the very eye of the spectator. But if we do not know all the achievements of the sciences, we claim to know something of the science of sciences, the science which gives the law to them, and to which they must conform or cease to pretend to have any scientific character. If we know not what they have done, we know something which they have not done. (Vol. 9, 269, 270.)

No philosopher, no theologian ever did or ever does object to scientific investigation in the proper field of observation and induction, nor to any science which really is science. Thus Cardinal Bellarmine, who may be regarded as speaking with authority for both philosophers and theologians, said to Galileo’s friend: "Tell your friend to pursue his mathematical studies without meddling with the interpretation of Scripture, and when he has proved his theory, it will then be time enough to consider what changes, if any, in the interpretation of the sacred text will be necessary." The trouble the Florentine experienced grew out of the fact that he insisted, while his heliocentric theory was still only a theory, an unproved hypothesis, on publishing it and having it received as science. In all the cases in which the scientists complain of having been or of being persecuted by philosophers and theologians, or in which they do really encounter opposition from them or the church, it is never for their science or their scientific discoveries; but for publishing as science theories and hypotheses opposed to the belief of mankind, and in demanding, while they are as yet unproved or unverified and are only conjectures more or less plausible, that they shall be received as certain, and philosophy, theology, religion, politics, social order, all that has hitherto been held as settled, as true and sacred, shall be altered or modified so as to conform to them. Let their authors pursue their investigations in quiet, and not disturb the public with their hypotheses till they have proved them, converted them into exact and certain science, and nobody will oppose them; and both the church and society, theologians and philosophers, will accept with gratitude and generously reward their patient labors and unwearied investigations. But this is precisely what the Huxleys, the Buchners, the Taines, the Darwins, the Spencers, the Tyndalls refuse to do; and hence they are opposed by all sensible men, not, as they would have the world believe, for their science, but for their lack of science and their attempt to impose on society as science what is not science, what has no scientific validity, and springs only from their own delusions or distempered brains. (Vol. 9, pp. 512, 513.)

Between the sceicntists and philosophers, or those who cultivate not the special sciences, and determine the principles to which the several special sciences must be referred in order to have any scientific character or value, there is a long-standing quarrel, which grows fiercer and more embittered every day. We are far from pretending that the positivists or Comtists have mastered all the so-called special sciences; but they represent truly the aims and tendencies of the scientists, and of what by a strange misnomer is called philosophy; so called, it would seem, because philosophy it is not. Philosophy is the science of principles, as say the Greeks, or of first principles, as say the Latins, and after them the modern Latinized nations. But Herbert Spencer, Stuart Mill, and the late Sir William Hamilton, the ablest representatives of philosophy as generally received by the English-speaking world, agree with the Comtists or positivists in rejecting first principles from the domain of science and in relegating theology and metaphysics to the region of the unknown and the unknowable. Their labors consequently result, as Sir William Hamilton himself somewhere admits, in universal nescience, or, as we may say, absolute nihilism or nullism.

This result is not accidental, but follows necessarily from what is called the Baconian method, which the scientists follow, and which is, in scholastic language, concluding the universal from the particular. Now, in the logic we learned as a school-boy and adhere to in our old age, this is simply impossible. To every valid argument it is necessary that one of the premises, called the major premise, be a universal principle. Yet the scientists discard the universal from their premises and from two or more particulars, or particular facts, profess to draw a valid universal conclusion, as if any conclusion broader than the premises could be valid! The physico-theologians are so infatuated with eh Baconian method that they attempt, from certain facts which they discover in the physical world, to conclude, by way of induction, the being and attributes of God, as if anything concluded from particular facts could be anything but a particular fact. Hence the aforementioned authors, with Professror Huxley at their tail, as well as Kant in his "Critik der reinen Vernunft," have proved, that a causative force, or causality, cannot be concluded either by way of induction or of deduction from any empirical facts, or facts of which observation can take note. Yet the validity of every induction rests on the reality of the relation of cause and effect and the fact that the cause actually produces the effect.

Yet our scientists pretend that they can, from the observation and analysis of facts, induce a law, and a law that will hold good beyond the particulars observed and analyzed. But they do not obtain any law at all; and the laws of nature, about which they talk so learnedly, are not laws, but simply facts. Bring a piece of wax to the fire and it melts; hence it is said to be a law that wax so brought in proximate relation with fire will melt; but this law is only the particular fact observed, and the facts to which you apply it are the identical facts from which you have obtained it. The investigation in all cases where the scientists profess to seek the law is simply an investigation to find out and establish the identity of the facts, and what they call the law is only the assertion of that identity, and never extends to facts not identical, or to dissimilar facts.

Take mathematics: as far as the scientist can admit mathematics, they are simply identical propositions piled on identical propositions, and the only difference between Newton and a plough-boy is that Newton detects identity where the plough-boy does not. Take what is called the law of gravitation: it is nothing but the statement of a fact or a class of facts observed, and the most that it tells us is that if the facts are identical they are identical – that is, they bear such and such relations to one another. But let your positivist attempt to explain transcendental mathematics, and he is all at sea if he does not borrow from the ideal science or philosophy which he professes to discard. How will the geometrician explain his infinitely extended lines, or lines that may be infinitely extended? A line is made up of a succession of points, and therefore of parts, and nothing which is made up of parts is infinite. The line may be increased or diminished by the addition or subtraction of points, but the infinite cannot be either increased or diminished. Whence does the mind get this idea of infinity? The geometrician tells us the line may be infinitely extended – that is, it is infinitely possible; but it cannot be so unless there is an infinite ground on which it can be projected. An infinitely possible line can be asserted only by asserting the infinitely real, and therefore the mind, unless it had the intuition of the infinitely real, could not conceive of a line as capable of infinite extension. Hence the ancients never assert either the infinitely possible or the infinitely real. There is in all gentile science, or gentile philosophy, no conception of the infinite; there is only the conception of the indefinite.

This same reasoning disposed of the infinite divisibility of matter still taught in our text-books. The infinite divisibility of matter is an infinite absurdity; for it implies an infinity of parts or numbers, which is really a contradiction in terms. We know nothing that better illustrates the unsoundness of the method of the scientists. Here is a piece of matter. Can you not divide it into two equal parts? Certainly. Can you do the same by either of the halves? Yes. And by the quarters? Yes. And thus on ad infinitum. Where, then, is the absurdity? None as long as you will deal with only finite quantities. The absurdity is in the fact that the infinite divisibility of matter implies an infinity of parts; and an infinity of parts an infinity of numbers; and numbers and every series of numbers may be increased by addition and diminished by subtraction. An infinite series is impossible.

The moment the scientists leave the domain of particulars or positive facts and attempt to induce from them a law, their induction is of no value. Take geology: the geologist finds in that small portion of the globe which he has examined certain facts, from which he concludes that the globe is millions and millions of ages old. Is his conclusion scientific? Not at all. If the globe was in the beginning in a certain state, and if the structural and other changes which are now going on have been going on at the same rate from the beginning – neither of which suppositions is provable – then the conclusion is valid; not otherwise. Sir Cahrles Lyell, if we recollect aright, calculated that at the present rate it must have taken at least a hundred and fifty thousand years to form the delta of the Mississippi. Officers of the United States army have calculated that a little over four thousand years would suffice.

So of the antiquity of man on the globe. The scientist finds what he takes to be human bones in an eave along with the bones of certain long since extinct species of animals, and concludes that man was contemporary with the said extinct species of animals; therefore man existed on the globe many – nobody can say how many – thousand years ago. But two things render the conclusion uncertain. It is not certain from the fact that their bones are found together that man and these animals were contemporary; and the date when these animals became extinct, if extinct they are, is not ascertained nor ascertainable. They have discovered traces in Switzerland of lacustrian habitations; but these prove nothing, because history itself mentions "the dwellers on the lakes," and the oldest history accepted by the scientists is not many thousand years old. Sir Charles Lyell finds, or supposes he finds, stone knives and axes, or what he takes to be stone knives and axes, deeply embedded in the earth in the valley of a river, though at some distance from its present bed, and thence concludes the presence of man on the earth for a period wholly irreconcilable with the received biblical chronology. But supposing the facts to be as alleged, they do not prove anything, because we cannot say what changes by floods or other causes have taken place in the soil of the locality, even during the period of authentic history. Others conclude from the same facts that men were primitive savages, or ignorant of the use of iron. But the most they prove is that at some unknown period certain parts of Europe were inhabited by a people who used stone knives and axes; but whether because ignorant of iron or because unable from their poverty or their distance from places where they were manufactured to procure similar iron utensils, they give us no information. Instances enough are recorded in history of the use of stone knives by a people who possessed knives made of iron. Because in our day some Indian tribes use bows and arrows, are we to conclude that firearms are unknown in our age of the world?

What the scientists offer as proof is seldom any proof at all. If an hypothesis they invent explains the known facts of a case, they assert it as proved and therefore true. What fun would they not make of theologians and philosophers if they reasoned as loosely as they do themselves! Before we can conclude a hypothesis is true because it explains the known facts in the case, we must prove, 1^st, that there are and can be no facts in the case not known; and, 2^nd, that there is no other possible hypothesis on which they can be explained. We do not say the theories of the scientists with regard to the antiquity of the globe and of man on its surface, nor that any of the geological and astronomical hypotheses they set forth are absolutely false; we only say that their alleged facts and reasonings do not prove them. The few facts known might be placed in a very different light by the possibly unknown facts; and there are conceivable any other number of other hypotheses which would equally well explain the facts that are known. (Vol. 9, pp. 401-405.)

But suppose you have proved the antiquity of the earth and of man on it to be as you pretend: what then? In the first place, you have not proved that the earth and man on it were not created, that God did not in the beginning create the heavens and the earth and all things therein. You leave, then, intact both the formula and the dogma which presupposes and reasserts it as a truth of revelation as well as of science. But we have disproved the chronology of the Bible. Is it the chronology of the Bible or chronology as arranged by learned men that you have disproved? Say the chronology as it actually is in the Bible, though all learned men know that that chronology is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to make out, and we for ourselves have never been able to settle it at all to our entire satisfaction, is it certain that the scriptures themselves even pretend that the date assigned to the creation of the world is given by divine revelation and is to be received as an article of faith? There is an important difference between the chronology given in the Hebrew Bible and that given in the Septuagint used by the apostles and Greek fathers, and still used by the united as well as by the non-united Greeks, and we are not aware that there has ever been an authoritative decision as to which or that either of the two chronologies must be followed. The commonly received chronology certainly ought not to be departed from without strong and urgent reasons; but if such reasons are adduced, we do not understand that it cannot be departed from without impairing the authority of either the Scriptures or the church. We know no Christian doctrine or dogma that could be affected by carrying the date of the creation of the world a few or even many centuries farther back, if we recognize the fact of creation itself. Our faith does not depend on a question of arithmetic, as seems to have been assumed by the Anglican bishop Colenso. Numbers are easily changed in transcription, and no commentator has yet been able to reconcile all the numbers as we now have them in our Hebrew Bibles, or even in the Greek translation of the Seventy.

Supposing, then, that geologists and historians of civilization have found facts, not to be denied, which seem to require for the existence of the globe and man on its face a longer period than is allowed by the commonly received chronology, we do not see that this warrants any induction against any point of Christian faith or doctrine. We could, we confess, more easily explain some of the facts which we meet in the study of history, the political and social changes which have evidently taken place, if more time were allowed us between Noah and Moses than is admitted by Usher’s chronology; it would enable us to account for many things which now embarrass our historical science; yet whether we are allowed more time or not, or whether we can account for the historical facts or not, our faith remains the same; for we have long since learned that in the subjects with which science proposes to deal, as well as in revelation itself, there are many things which will be inexplicable even to the greatest, wisest, and holiest of men, and that the greatest folly which any man can entertain is that of expecting to explain everything, unless concluding a thing must needs be false because we know not its explanation is a still greater folly. True science as well as true virtue is modest, humble indeed, and always more depressed by what it sees that it cannot do than elated by what it may have done. (Vol. 9, pp. 277-279.)

The naturalists have undoubtedly proved the existence of races or varieties of men, like the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Malayan, the American, and the African, more or less distinctly marked, and separated from one another by greater or less distances; but have they proved that these several races or varieties are distinct peoples, or that they could not all have sprung from the same original pair? Physiologists, we are told, detect some structural differences between the negro and the white man. The black differs from the white in the greater length of the spine, in the shape of the head, leg, and foot and heel, in the facial angles, the size and convolutions of the brain. Be it so; but do these differences prove the diversity of the species, or, at most, only a distinct variety in the same species? May they not all be owing to accidental causes? The type of the physical structure of the African is undeniably the same with that of the Caucasian, and all that can be said is that in the negro it is less perfectly realized, constituting a difference in degree, indeed, but not in kind.

But before settling the question whether the several races of men belong to one and the same species or not and have or have not had the same origin, it is necessary to determine the characteristic or differentia of man. Naturalists treat man as simply an animal standing at the head of the class or order of mammalia, and are therefore obliged to seek his differentia or characteristic in his physical structure; but if it be true, as some naturalists tell us, that the same type runs through the physical structure of all animals, unless insects, reptiles, and crustacean form an exception, it is difficult to find in man’s physical structure his differentia. The schoolmen generally define man, a rational animal, animal rationale, and make the genus animal and the differentia reason. The characteristic of the species, that which constitutes it, is reason or the rational mind, and certainly science can prove nothing to the contrary. Some animals may have a degree of intelligence, but none of them have reason, free will, moral perceptions, or are capable of acting from considerations of right and wrong. We assume, then, that the differentia of the species homo, or man, is reason, or the rational soul. If our naturalists had understood this, they might have spared the pains they have taken to assimilate man to the brute and to prove that he is a monkey developed.

This point settled, the question of unity of the species is settled. There may be differences among individuals and races as to the degree of reason, but all have reason in some degree. Reason may be weaker in the African than in the European, whether owing to the lack of education or to other accidental causes, but it is essentially the same in the one as in the other, and there is no difference except in degree; and even as to degree, it is not rare to find negroes that are, in point of reason, far superior to many white men. Negroes, supposed to stand lowest in the scale, have the same moral perception and the same capacity of distinguishing between right and wrong and of acting from free will that white men have; and if there is any difference, it is simply a difference of degree, not a difference of kind of species.

But conceding the unity of the species, science has, at least, proved that the several races or varieties in the same species could not have all sprung from one and the same original pair. Where has science done this? It can do it only by way of induction from facts scientifically observed and analyzed. What facts has it observed and analyzed that warrant this conclusion against the Adamic origin of all men? There are, as we have just said, no anatomical, physiological, intellectual, or moral facts that warrant such conclusion, and no other facts are possible. Wherever men are found, they all have the essential characteristic of men as distinguished from the mere animal; they all have substantially the same physical structure; all have thought, speech, and reason, and though some may be inferior to others, nothing proves that all may not have sprung from the same Adam and Eve. Do you say ethnology cannot trace all the kindreds and nations of men back to a common origin? That is nothing to the purpose; can it say they cannot have had a common origin? But men are found everywhere, and could they have reached from the plains of Shinar continents separated from Asia by a wide expanse of water, and been distributed over America, New Holland, and the remotest islands of the ocean, when they had no ships or were ignorant of navigation? Do you know that they had, in what are to us ante-historical times, no ships and no knowledge of navigation, as we know they have had them both ever since the first dawn of history? No? Then you allege not your science against the Christian dogma, but your ignorance, which we submit is not sufficient to override faith. You must prove that men could not have been distributed from a common centre as we now find them before you can assert that they could not have had a common origin. Besides, are you able to say what changes of land and water have taken place since men first appeared on the face of the earth? Many changes, geologists assure us, have taken place, and more than they know may have occurred and have left men where they may have gone without crossing large bodies of water. So long as any other hypothesis is possible you cannot assert your own as certain. …

We do not pretend to be able to account for the differences of the several races, any more than we pretend to be able to account for the well-known fact that children born of the same parents have different facial angles, different-sized brains, different-shaped mouths and noses, different temperaments, different intellectual powers, and different moral tendencies. We may have conjectures on the subject, but conjectures are not science. If necessary to the argument, we might, perhaps, suggest a not improbable hypothesis for explaining the difference of complexion between the white and the colored races. The colored races- the yellow, the olive, the red, the copper-colored, and the black- are inferior to the Caucasian, have departed farther from the norma of the species and approached nearer to the animal, and therefore, like animals, have become more or less subject to the action of the elements. External nature, acting for ages on a race enfeebled by over-civilization and refinement, and therefore having in a great measure lost the moral and intellectual power of resisting the elemental action of nature, may, perhaps, sufficiently explain the differences we note in the complexion of the several races. If the Europeans and their American descendants were to lose all tradition of the Christian religion, as they are rapidly doing, and to take up with spiritism or some other degrading superstition, as them seem disposed to do, and to devote themselves solely to the luxuries and refinements of the material civilization of which they are now so proud and boast so much, it is by no means improbable that in time they would become as dark, as deformed, as imbecile as the despised African or the native New Hollander. We might give very plausible reasons for regarding the negro as the degraded remnant of a once overcivilized and corrupted race; and perhaps, if recovered, Christianized, civilized, and restored to communication with the great central current of human life, he may in time lose his negro hue and features and become once more a white man, a Caucasian. But be this as it may, we rest, as is our right, on the fact that the unity of the human species and its Adamic origin are in possession, and it is for those who deny either point to make good their denial. (Vol. 9, pp. 279-282.)

But the Scriptures say mankind were originally of one speech, and we find that every species of animals has its peculiar song or cry, which is the same in every individual of the same species; yet this is not the case with the different kindred and nations of men; they speak different tongues, which the philologist is utterly unable to refer to a common original. Therefore there cannot be in men unity of species, and the assertion of Scriptures of all being of one speech is untrue. If the song of the same species of birds or the cry of the same species of animals is the same in all the individuals of that species, it still requires no very nice ear to distinguish the song or the cry of one individual from that of another; and therefore the analogy relied on, even if admissible, which it is not, would not sustain the conclusion. Conceding, if you insist on it, that unity of species demands unity of speech, the facts adduced warrant no conclusion against the scriptural assertion; for the language of all men is even now one and the same, and all really have one and the same speech. Take the elements of language as the sensible sign by which men communicate with one another, and there is even now, at least as far as known or conceivable, only one language. The essential elements of all dialects are the same. You have in all the subject, the predicate, and the copula or the noun, adjective, and verb, to which all the other parts of speech are reducible. Hence the philologist speaks of universal grammar and constructs a grammar applicable alike to all dialects. Some philologists also contend that the signs adopted by all dialects are radically the same, and that the differences encountered are only accidental. This has actually been proved in the case of what are called the Aryan or Indo-European dialects. That the Sanskrit, the Pehlvi or old Persic, the Keltic, the Teutonic, the Slavonic, the Greek, and the Latin, from which are derived the modern dialects of Europe, as Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Dutch, German, Scanian, Turk, Polish, Russian, Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish, all except the Basque and Lettish or Finnish, have had a common origin, no philologist doubts. That the group of dialects called Semitic, including the Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopic, have an origin identical with that of the Aryan group is, we believe, now hardly denied. All that can be said is that philologists have not proved it, nor the same fact with regard to the so-called Turanian group, as the Chinese, the Turkish, the Basque, the Lettish or Finnish, the Tartaric or Mongolian, etc., the dialects of the aboriginal tribes or nations of America and of Africa. But what conclusion is to be drawn from the fact that philology, a science confessedly in its infancy and hardly a science at all, has not as yet established an identity of origin with these for the most part barbarous dialects? From the fact that philology has not ascertained it, we cannot conclude that the identity does not exist, or even that philology may not one day discover and establish it.

Philology may have also proceeded on false assumptions which have retarded its progress and led it to false conclusions. It has proceeded on the assumption that the savage is the primitive man, and that his agglutinated dialect represents a primitive state of language instead of a degenerate state. A broader view of history and a more just induction from its facts would, perhaps, upset this assumption. The savage is the degenerate, not the primeval man; man in his second childhood, not in his first; and hence the reason why he has no growth, no inherent progressive power, and why, as Niebuhr asserts, there is no instance on record of a savage people having its own indigenous efforts passed from the savage to the civilized nation. The thing is as impossible as for the old man, decrepit by age, to renew the vigor and elasticity of his youth or early manhood. Instead of studying the dialects of savage tribes to obtain specimens of the primitive forms of speech, philologists should study them only to obtain specimens of worn-out or used-up forms or of language in its dotage. In all the savage dialects that we have any knowledge of, we detect or seem to detect traces of a culture, a civilization, of which they who now speak them have lost all memory and are no longer capable. This seems to us to bear witness to a fall, a loss. Perhaps when the American and African dialects are better known and are studied with reference to this view of the savage state, and we have better ascertained the influence of climate and habits of life on the organs of speech and therefore on pronunciation, especially of the consonants, we shall be able to discover indications of an identity of origin where now we can detect only traces of diversity. As long as philology has only partially explored the field of observation, it is idle to pretend that science has established anything against the scriptural doctrine of the unity of speech. The fact that philologists have not traced all the various dialects now spoken or extinct to a common original amounts to nothing against faith, unless it can be proved that no such original ever existed. It may have been lost and only the distinctions retained.

Naturalists point to the various species of plants and animals distributed over the whole surface of the globe, and ask us if we mean to say that each of these has also sprung from one original pair, or male and female, and if we maintain that the primogenitors of each species of animal were in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve or in the ark with Noah. If so, how have they become distributed over the several continents of the earth and the islands of the ocean? Argumentum a specie ad speciem non valet, as say the books of logic. And even if it were proved that in case of plants and animals God duplicates, triplicates, or quadruplicates the parents by direct creation, or that he creates anew the pair in each remote locality where the same species is found, as prominent naturalists maintain or are inclined to maintain, it would prove nothing in the case of man. For we cannot reason from animals to man or from flora to fauna. Nearly all the arguments adduced from so-called science against the faith are drawn from supposed analogies of men and animals, and rest for their validity on the assumption that man is not only generically, but specifically, an animal, which is simply a begging the question. (Vol. 9, pp. 282-285.)

The continual changes that take place from time to time in physiology show – we say it with all deference to physiologists- that it has not risen as yet to the dignity of a science. It is of no use to speak of progress, for changes which transform the whole body of a pretended science are not progress. We may not have mastered all the facts of a science; we may be discovering new facts every day; but if we have, for instance, the true physiological science, the discovery of new facts may throw new light on the science – may enable us to see clearer its reach and understand better its application, but cannot change or modify its principles. As long as your pretended science is liable to be changed in its principles, it is a theory, an hypothesis, not a science. Physiologists have accumulated a large stock of physiological facts, to which they are daily adding new facts. We willingly admit these facts are not useless, and the time spent in collecting them is not wasted; on the contrary, we hold them to be valuable, and appreciate very highly the labor, the patient research, and the nice observation that has collected, classified, and described them; but we dare assert, notwithstanding, that the science of physiology is yet to be created; and created it will not be till physiologists have learned and are able to set forth the dialectic relations of spirit and matter, soul and body, God and nature, free will and necessity. Till then there may be known facts, but there will be no physiological science. As far as what is called the science of human life, or human physiology, goes, Professor Draper’s work is an able and commendable work; but he must permit us to say that the real science of physiology he has not touched, has not dreamed of; nor have any of his brethren who see in the human soul only a useless appendage to the body. The soul is the forma corporis, its informing, its vital principle, and pervades, so to speak, and determines, or modifies, the whole life and action of the human body, form the first instant of conception to the very moment of death. The human body does not exist, even in its embryonic state, first as a vegetable, then as an animal, and afterwards as united to an immaterial soul. It is body united to soul from the first instant of conception, and man lives, in any stage of his existence, but one and the same human life. There is no moment after conception when the willful destruction of the foetus is not the murder of a human life.

Man, though the ancients called him a microcosm, the universe in little, and he contains in himself all the elements of nature, is neither a mineral nor a vegetable, nor simply an animal, and the analogies which the physiologist detects between him and the kingdoms below him form no scientific basis of human physiology, for like is not same. There may be no difference that the microscope or the crucible can detect between the blood of an ox and the blood of a man; for the microscope and chemical tests are in both cases applied to the dead subject, not the living, and the human blood tested is withdrawn from the living action of the soul, an action that escapes the most powerful microscope and the most subtle chemical agent. Comparative physiology may gratify the curiosity, and when not pressed beyond its legitimate bounds it may even be useful and help us to a better understanding of our own bodies; but it can never be the basis of a scientific induction, because between man and all animals there is the difference of species. Comparative physiology is, therefore, unlike comparative philology; for however diverse may be the dialects compared, there is no difference of species among them, and nothing hinders philological inductions from possessing, in the secondary order, a true scientific character. Physiological inductions resting on the comparative study of different individuals or different races or families of men may also be truly scientific; for all these individuals and all these races or families belong to one and the same species. But the comparative physiology that compares man and animal gives only analogies, not science. (Vol. 9, pp. 293-295.)

Let us come to the doctrine for which the professor[Draper] writes his book, namely, individuals, communities, nations, universal humanity, are under the control of physical conditions, therefore of physical law, or law in the sense of physiologists or the physicists. If this means anything, it means that the religion, the morality, the intellectual development, the growth and decay, the littleness and the grandeur of men and nations depend solely on physical causes, not at all on moral causes – a doctrine not true throughout even in human physiology, and supported by no facts, except in a very restricted degree, when applied to nations and communities. In the corporeal phenomena of the individual the soul counts for much, and in morbid physiology the moral often counts for more than the physical; perhaps it always does, for we know from revelation that the morbidity of nature is the penalty or effect of man’s transgression. It is proved to be false as applied to nations and communities by the fact that the Christian religion, which is substantially that of the ancient patriarchs, is, at least as far as science can go, older than any of the false religions, has maintained itself the same in all essential respects, unvaried and invariable, in every variety of physical change and in every diversity of physical condition, and absolutely unaffected by any natural causes whatever.

The chief physical conditions on which the professor relies are climate and geological position. Yet what we hold to be the true religion, the primitive religion of mankind, has prevailed in all climates and been found the same in all geographical positions. Nay, even the false pagan religions have varied only in their accidents with climatic and geographical positions. We find them in substance the same in India, Central Asia, on the banks of the Danube, in the heart of Europe, in the ancient Scania, the Northern Isles, in Mexico and Peru. The substance of Greek and Roman or Etrurian mythology is the same with that of India and Egypt. M. Renan tells us that the monotheism so firmly held by the Arabic branch of the Semitic family is due to the vast deserts over which the Arab tribes wander, which suggest the idea of unity and universality; and yet for centuries before Mohammed, these same Arabs, wandering over the same deserts, were polytheists and idolaters; and not from contemplating those deserts, but by recalling the primitive tradition of mankind, preserved by Jews and Christians, did the founder of Islam attain to the monotheism of the Koran. The professor is misled by taking, in the heathen mythology he has studied, the poetic imagery and embellishments, which indeed vary according to the natural aspects, objects, and productions of the locality, for their substance, thought, or doctrine. The poetic illustrations, imagery, and embellishments of Judaism are all oriental; but the Jew in all climates and in all geographical positions holds one and the same religious faith even to this day; and his only real difference from us is that he is still looking for a Christ to come, while we believe the Christ he is looking for has come, and is the same Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified at Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate. (Vol. 9, pp. 307-309.)

The theory that the rise, growth, decay, and death of nations depend on physical conditions alone, chiefly on climate and geographical position, seems to us attended with some grave difficulties. Have the climate and geographical positions of India, Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome essentially changed from what they were at the epoch of their greatness? Did not all the great and renowned nations of antiquity rise, grow, prosper, decline, and die in substantially the same physical conditions, under the same climate, and in the same geographical position? Like causes produce like effects. How could the same physical causes cause alike the rise and growth and the decay and death of one and the same people in one and the same climate and in one and the same geographical position? Do you say climate and even physical geography change with the lapse of time? Be it so. Be it as the author maintains, that formerly there was no variation of climate on this continent, from the equator to either pole; but was there for Rome any appreciable change in the climate and geography from the time of the third Punic war to that of Honorius, or even of Augustulus, the last of the emperors? Or what change in the physical conditions of the nation was there when it was falling from what there was when it was rising?

Nations, like individuals, have, according to the professor, their infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and death. But why do nations grow old and die? The individual grows old and dies because his interior physical machinery wears out, and because he must die in order to attain to the end for which he lives. But why should this be the case with nations? They have no future life to which death is the passage. The nation does not rise or fall with the individuals that found it. One generation of individuals passes away and another comes, but the nation survives; and why, if not destroyed by external violence, should it not continue to survive and thrive to the end of time? There are no physical causes, no known physiological laws, that prevent it. Why was not Rome as able to withstand the barbarians or to drive them back from her frontiers in the fourth century as she was in the first? Why was England so much weaker under the Stuarts than she had been under the Tudors or was again under the Protector? Or why have we seen her so grand under Pitt and Wellington and so little and feeble under Palmerston and Russell? Can you explain this by a change of climate and geographical position or any change in the physical conditions of the nation, that is, any physical changes not due to moral causes?

We see in several states of the Union a decrease, a relative, if not a positive decrease, of the native population, and the physical man actually degenerating, and to an extent that should alarm the statesman and the patriot. Do you explain this fact by the change in the climate and the geographical position? The geographical position remains unchanged, and if the climate has changed at all, it has been by way of amelioration. Do you attribute to it a change in the physical condition of the country? Not at all. There is no mystery as to the matter, and though the effects may be physical or physiological, the causes are well known to be moral, and chief among them is the immoral influence of the doctrine the professor and his brother physiologists are doing their best to diffuse among the people. The cause is in the loss of religious faith, in the lack of moral and religious instruction, in the spread of naturalism, and the rejection of supernatural grace- without which the natural cannot be sustained in its integrity- in the growth of luxury, and the assertion of material goods or sensible pleasure as the end and aim of life. There is always something morally wrong where prizes need to be offered to induce the young to marry and to induce the married to suffer their children to be born and reared. (Vol. 9, pp. 312, 313.)

The common sense of mankind, in all ages of the world, has uniformly attributed the downfall of nations, states, and empires to moral causes, not to physiological laws, climatic influences, or geographical position. The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. Righteousness exalteth a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people. This is alike the voice of inspiration and of universal experience. The traveler who visits the sites of nations renowned in story, now buried in ruins, of cities once thronged with a teeming population, the marts of the world, in which were heard from morning till night- till far into the night- the din of industry, and marks the solitude that now reigns there, the barren waste that has succeeded to once fruitful fields and vineyards, and observes the poor shepherd that feeds a petty flock on the scanty pasturage, or the armed robber that watches for a victim to plunder, receives a far less vivid impression of the dependence of nations on physical causes and conditions than of the influence of the moral world on the natural, and reads in legible characters the meaning of that fearful penalty which God pronounced when he said to the man: "And the earth for thy sake shall be cursed." The physical changes that have come over Assyria, Syria, Lybia, Egypt, and Palestine are the effects of the moral deterioration of man, not the cause of that deterioration. (Vol. 9, pp. 314, 315.)

The professor[Huxley] speaks of the difficulty of determining the line of demarcation between the animal and the plant; but it is difficult to draw the line between the mineral and the plant or between the plant and the inorganic matter from which it assimilates its food or nourishment?... We should like to have the professor explain how ordinary matter, even if quick, becomes protoplasm, and how the protoplasm becomes the origin and basis of the life of the plant. Every plant is an organism with its central life within. Virchow and Cl. Bernard by their late discoveries have proved that every organism proceeds from an organite, ovule, or central cell, which produces, directs, and controls or governs the whole organism, even in its abnormal developments. They have also proved that this ovule or central cell exists only as generated by a pre-existing organism, or parent, of the same kind. The later physiologists are agreed that there is no well-authenticated instance of spontaneous generation. Now, this organite must exist, live, before it can avail itself of the protoplasm formed of ordinary matter, which is exterior to it, not within it, and cannot be its life, for that moves from within outward, from the center to the circumference. Concede, then, all the facts the professor alleges, they only go to prove that the organism already living sustains its life by assimilating fitting elements form ordinary matter. But they do not show at all that it derives its life from them; or that the so-called protoplasm is the origin, source, basis, or matter of organic life; or that it generates, produces, or gives rise to the organite or central cell; not that it has anything to do with vitalizing it. Hence the professor fails to throw any light on the origin, matter, or basis of life itself. (Vol. 9, pp. 366, 367.)

It may or may not be difficult in the lower organisms to draw the line between the plant and the animal, and we shall urge no objections to what the professor[Huxley] says on that point; we will only say here that the animal organism, like the vegetable, is produced, directed, and controlled by the central cell, and that this cell or ovule is generated by animal parents. There is no spontaneous generation and no well-authenticated instance of metagenesis. Like generates like, and even Darwin’s doctrine of natural selection confirms rather than denies it. It is certain that the vegetable organism has never, as far as science goes, generated an animal organism. Arguments based on our ignorance prove nothing. The protoplasm can no more produce or vitalize the central animal than it can the central vegetable cell, and, indeed, still less; for the animal cannot, as the professor himself asserts, sustain its life by the protoplasmic elements till they have been prepared by the vegetable organism. Whence, then, the animal germ, organite, or ovule? What vitalizes it and gives it the power of assimilating the protoplasm as its food, without which the organism dies and disappears?

Giving the professor the fullest credit for exact science in all his statements, he does not, as far as we can see, prove his protoplasm is the physical basis of life or that there is for life any physical basis at all. He only proves that matter is so far plastic as to afford sustenance to a generated organic life, which every farmer who has ever manured a field of corn or grass or reared a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle knows and always has known, as well as the illustrious professor.

We can find a clear statement of several of the conditions of life, both vegetable and animal, but no demonstration of the principle of life, in the professor’s very elaborate discourse. Indeed, if we examine it closely we shall find that he does not even pretend to demonstrate anything of the sort. He denies all means of science except sensible experience, and maintains with Hume that we have no sensible experience of causes or principles. All science, he asserts, is restricted to empirical facts with their law, which in his system is itself only a fact or a classification of facts. The conditions of life, as we observe them, are for him the essential principle of life in the only sense in which the word principle has or can have for him an intelligible meaning. He proves, then, the physical basis of life by denying that it has any intelligible basis at all. He proves, indeed, that the protoplasm, which he shows, or endeavors to show, is universal- one and the same, always and everywhere- is present in the already existing life of both the plant and the animal; but that whatever it be in the plant or animal which gives it the power to take up the protoplasm and assimilate it to its own organism, which is properly the life or vital power, he does not explain, account for, or even recognize. With him, power is an empty word. He nowhere proves that life is produced, furnished, or generated by the protoplasm or has a material origin. Hence the protoplasm, by his own showing, is simply no protoplasm at all. He proves, if anything, that in inorganic matter there are elements which the living plant or animal assimilates, and into which, when dead, it is resolved. This is all he does and, in fact, all he professes to do.

The professor makes light of the very grave objection that chemical analysis can throw no light on the principle or basis of life, because it is or can be made only on the dead subject. He of course concedes that chemical analysis is not made on the living subject; but this, he contends, amounts to nothing. We think it amounts to a great deal. The very thing sought, to wit, life, is wanting in the dead subject, and of course cannot by any possible analysis be detected in it. If all that constituted the living body is present in the dead body, why is the dead body dead, or why has it ceased to perform its vital functions? The protoplasm, or what you so call, is as present in the corpse as in the living organism. If it is the basis of life, why is the organism no longer living? The fact is that life, while it continues, resists chemical action and death by a higher and subtler chemistry of its own, and it is only the dead body that falls under the action of the ordinary chemical laws. There is, then, no concluding the principle or basis of life from any possible dissection of the dead body. (Vol. 9, pp. 367-369.)

We know that some physiologists regard the waste of the body, which in life is constantly going on and which is repaired by the food we take, as incipient death; but this in only because they confound the particles or molecules of matter of which the body is externally built up, and which change many times during an ordinary life, with the body itself, and suppose the life of the body is simply the resultant of the aggregation of these innumerable molecules or particles. But the life of the organism, we have seen, is within it, and its action from the centre, and it is only its life, not its death, that throws off or exudes as well as assimilates the material particles. The exudation as well as the assimilation is interrupted by death. Why the protoplasm could not live unless it died is what we do not understand.

…The waste of the living organism is not death nor dying, though death may result from it. And the supply of protoplasm in the shape of food does not originate new life nor replenish a life that is gone, but supplies what is needed to sustain and invigorate a life that is already life. In the second place, the vital force is not built up by protoplastic accretions, but operates from within the organism, from the organite or central cell, without which there could be no accretions or secretions. The food does not give life; it only ministers sustenance to an organism already living. No chemical analysis of the food can disclose or throw any light on the origin, nature, or constitution of the organic life itself.

It is this fact that prevents us from having much confidence in chemical physiology, which is still insisted on by our most eminent physiologists. In every organism there is something that transcends the reach of chemical analysis, and which no chemical synthesis can reproduce. Take the professor’s protoplasm itself. He resolves it into the minerals, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen: but no chemist can by any possible recombination of them reproduce protoplasm. How, then, can one say that these minerals are its sole constituents, or that there are not other elements entering it which escape all chemical tests and, indeed, are not subject to chemical laws? Chemistry is limited and cannot penetrate the essence of the material substance any more than the eye can. It never does and never can go beyond the sensible properties of matter. Life has its own laws, and every physiologist knows that he meets in the living organism phenomena or facts which it is impossible to reduce to any of the laws which are obtainable from the analysis of inorganic or lifeless matter. It is necessary, then, to conclude that there is in the living organism present and active some element which, though using lifeless matter, cannot be derived from it or explained by physical laws, be they mechanical, chemical, or electrical. The law of life is a law sui generis and not resolvable into any other. We must even go beyond the physical laws themselves if we would find their principle.

As far as human science goes, there is, where the nucleus of life is wanting, no conversion of lifeless matter into living matter. The attempt to prove that living organisms, plants, animals, or man, are developed from inorganic and lifeless matter, though made as long ago as Leucippus and Democritus, systematized by Epicurus, sung in rich Latin verse by Lucretius, and defended by the ablest of modern British physico-philosophers, Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Biology," has by the sane part of the human race in all times and everywhere been held to be foolish and absurd. It has no scientific basis, is supported by no known facts, and is simply an unfounded, at least an unsupported, hypothesis.

Life to the scientist is an insolvable mystery. We know no explanation of this mystery or of anything else in the universe, unless we accept the creative act of God; for the origin and cause of nature are not in nature herself. We have no other explanation of the origin of living organisms or of the matter of life. God created plants, animals, and man, created them living organisms, male and female created he them, and thus gave them the power to propagate and multiply each its own kind by natural generation. The scientist will of course smile superciliously at this old solution, insisted on by priests and accepted by the vulgar; but though not a scientist, we know enough of science to say from even a scientific point of view that there is no alternative: either this or no solution at all. The ablest men of ancient or modern times, when they reject it, only fall into endless sophisms and self-contradictions. (Vol. 9, pp. 374-376.)

Even if it be true that the majority of eminent men spring from families more or less distinguished, it does not necessarily follow that they derive their eminent abilities by inheritance; for in those same families, born of the same parents, we find other members whose abilities are in no way remarkable and in no sense above the common level. In a family of half a dozen or a dozen members one will be distinguished and rise to eminence, while the others will remain very ordinary people. …Why these marked differences in the children of the same blood, the same breed, the same parents and ancestors? If Mr. Galton explains the inferiority of the five or the eleven by considerations external or independent of race or breed, why may not the superiority of the one be explained by causes alike independent of breed? Why are the natural abilities of one brother inferior to another’s, since they are both born of the same parents? If a man’s natural abilities are derived by inheritance from organization, why is one superior to the other? Every day we meet occasion to ask similar questions. This fact proves that there are causes at work on which man’s eminence or want of eminence depends of which Mr. Galton’s theory takes no note, which escape the greatest scientists, and at best can be only conjectured. But conjecture is not science. (Vol. 9, p. 407.)

This is not all. As far as known, very eminent men have sprung from parents of very ordinary natural abilities, as of social position. The founders of dynasties and noble families have seldom had distinguished progenitors, and are usually not only the first but the greatest of their line. …

Then, again, who can say how much of a great man’s greatness is due to his natural abilities with which he was born, and how much is due to the force of example, to family tradition, to education, to his own application, and the concurrence of circumstances? It is in no man’s power to tell nor in any scientist’s power to ascertain. It is a common remark that great men in general owe their greatness chiefly to their mothers, and that in the great majority of cases known eminent men have gifted mothers. This, if a fact, is against Mr. Galton’s theory; for the father, not the mother, transmits the hereditary character of the offspring, the hereditary qualities of the line, if the physiologists are to be believed. Hence nobility in all civilized nations follows the father, not the mother. The fact of great men owing their greatness more to the mother is explained by her great influence in forming the mind, in molding the character, in stimulating and directing the exercise of her son’s faculties, than that of the father. It is as educator in the largest sense that the mother forms her son’s character and influences his destiny. It is her womanly instincts, affection, and care and vigilance, her ready sympathy, her tenderness, and power to inspire a noble ambition, kindle high and generous aspirations in the breast of her son, that do the work. (Vol. 9, p. 408.)