Part 9

Do we not want to feel _more_, not less, in the presence of phenomena--to enter into a living relation with the blue sky, and the incense-laden air, and the plants and the animals--nay, even with poisonous and hurtful things to have a keener _sense_ of their hurtfulness? Is it not a strange kind of science, that which wakes the mind to pursue the shadows of things, but dulls the senses to the reality of them--which causes a man to try to bottle the pure atmosphere of heaven and then to shut himself in a gas-reeking, ill-ventilated laboratory while he analyses it; or allows him to vivisect a dog, unconscious that he is blaspheming the pure and holy relation between man and the animals in doing so? Surely the man of Science (in its higher sense, that is) should be lynx-eyed as an Indian, keen-scented as a hound--with all senses and feelings trained by constant use and a pure and healthy life in close contact with Nature, and with a heart beating in sympathy with every creature. Such a man would have at command, so to speak, the keyboard of the universe; but the mechanical, unhealthy, indoor-living student--is he not really _ignorant of the facts_?--Certainly, since he has not felt them, he is.

The process of the true Science consists first in the naming and defining of phenomena (_i.e._, the facts of human consciousness), and secondly, in the discovery of the true relation of these phenomena to each other; and since the definitions of phenomena and their relations keep varying with the standpoint of the observer, the process evidently involves all experience, and ultimately the discovery of that last fact of experience to which and through which all the other facts are related. It is therefore an age-long process, and has to do with the emotional and moral part of man as well as with the logical and intellectual. It is, in fact, the discovery of the nature of Man himself, and of the true order of his being.

Modern Science--though seeking for a unity in Nature--fails to find it, because, from the nature of the case, any large body of knowledge in which all people will agree is limited to certain small regions of human experience--regions in which very likely no unity is discoverable. It takes the emerald, and breaks it up; treats of its colour and light-refracting qualities on the one hand; of its crystalline structure and hardness on the other; of its weight and density; and of its chemical properties; all separately, and producing long strings of generalisation from each aspect of the subject. But how all these qualities are conjoined together, what their relation is which _constitutes_ the emerald--yea, even the smallest bit of emerald dust--it (wisely) does not attempt to say. It takes the man and dissects him; treats of his blood, his nerves, his bones, his brain; of his senses of sight, of touch, of hearing; but of that which binds these together into a unity, of their true relation to each other in the man, it is silent.

Yet the man knows of himself that he _is_ a unity; he knows that all parts of his body have relation to _him_, and to each other; he knows that his senses of sight and hearing and touch and taste and smell are conjoined in the focus of his individual life, in his "I am;" he knows that all his faculties and powers, however much they may belong to different planes, spiritual or material, or may come under the inquisition of different Sciences, have an order of their own among each other--that there _is_ an ultimate Science of them--even though he be not yet wholly versed in it. And he knows, moreover, that in a grain of dust, or in an emerald, or in an orange, or in any object of Nature, the different attributes of the object--which the Sciences thus treat of separately--are only the reflexion of his different senses; so that the problem of the conjunction of different attributes in a body comes back to the same problem of the union of various senses and powers in himself--each individual object being only a case, externalised as it were, and made a matter of consciousness, of the general relation to each other of his own sensations and feelings. Knowing all his--I say--he sees that the understanding of Nature in general and of the laws or relations which he thinks he perceives among external things must always depend on the relations and laws which he tacitly assumes, or which he is directly conscious of, as existing between the various parts of his own being; and that the ultimate truth which Science--the divine Science--is really in search of is a moral or psychologic Truth--an understanding of what man is, and the discovery of the true relation to each other of all his faculties--involving all experience, and an exercise of every faculty physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual, instead of one set of faculties only.

Not till we know the law of ourselves, in fact, shall we know the law of the emerald and the orange, or of Nature generally; and the law of ourselves is not learnt, except subordinately, by intellectual investigation; it is mainly learnt by life. The relation of gravity to vitality is learnt not so much by outer experiment in a laboratory as by long experience within ourselves from the day when as infants we cannot lift ourselves above the floor, through the years of the proud strength of manhood scaling the loftiest mountains, to the hour when our disengaged spirits finally overcome and pass beyond the attraction of the earth; and just as the sense of weight--which first appears as a quite external sensation--is thus at last found to stand in most pregnant relation with our deepest selves, so of the other senses which feed the individual life--the senses of light, of warmth, of taste, of sound, of smell. Taste, which begins as it were on the tip of the tongue, becomes ultimately, if normally developed, a sense which identifies itself with the health and well-being of the whole body; the pleasure of taste becomes vastly more than a mere surface pleasure, and its discrimination of food more than a mere regard for the nutrition of the ordinary corporeal functions. The sense of Light, which begins in the material eye, grows and deepens inwardly till the consciousness of it pervades the whole body and mind with a kind of inward illumination or divine Reason, showing the places of all things and enfolding the sense of beauty in itself. The sense of Warmth in the same manner is related to and leads up to Love; and Sound, in the voices of our friends or the divine chords of music, has passed away from being an external phenomenon and has established itself as the language of our most tender and intimate emotions.

All the senses thus, as they develop and deepen, are found to unite in the very focus of individual life. Slowly, and through long experience, their relation to each other, _their very meaning_ unfolds, or will unfold; and as this process takes place the man knows himself _one_, a unity, of which the various faculties are the different manifestations. Then further through his less localised feelings or more glorified senses the individual finds his relation to other individuals. Through his loves and hatreds, through his senses of attraction, repulsion, cohesion, solidarity, order, justice, charity, right, wrong and the rest--these feelings, each like the others deepening back more and more as time goes on--he gradually discovers his true and abiding relationship to other individuals, and to the divine society of which they all form a part--and so at last, if we may venture to say so, his relationship to the absolute and universal. At present, since our most important relation to each other is conceived of as one of rivalry and Competition, we of course think of the objects of Nature as being chiefly engaged in a Struggle for Existence with each other; but when we become aware of all our senses and feelings, and of ourselves as individuals, as having relation to the Absolute and universal, proceeding from it, as the branches and twigs of a tree from the trunk--then we shall become aware of a Divine or absolute science in Nature; we shall at last understand that all objects have a permanent and indissoluble relation to each other, and shall see their true meaning--though not till then.

Is it possible then that Science, having hitherto--and we shall see in time that this process has been really most valuable and important--gone outwards from the centre towards the very fringe of Humanity--emptying facts as far as possible as it went of all feeling, and reducing itself at last to the most shadowy generalisations on the very verge of sense and nonsense--is it possible, I say, that it will now return, and _first_ filling up facts with feeling as far as practicable (that is, by direct and the most living contact with Nature in every form, learning to enter into direct personal sense-relationship with every phenomenon and phase), will so gradually ascend to the great central fact and feeling, and then at last and for the first time become fully conscious of a vast organisation--absolutely perfect and intimately knit from its centre to its utmost circumference--(the true cosmos of Man--the conceptions of man and god combined)--existing inchoate or embryonic in every individual man, animal, plant, or other creature--the object of all life, experience, suffering, and toil--the ground of all sensation, and the hidden, yet proper, theme of all thought and study?

For this is it possible that Science will, speaking broadly, have to leave the laboratory and become one with Life; or that the great currents of human life will have to be turned on into these often Augean stables of intellectual pruriency?--the investigation of Nature no longer a matter of the intellect alone, but of patient listening and the quiet eye, and of love and faith, and of all deep human experience, bearing not superciliously its weight towards the interpretation of the least phenomenon--every "fact" thus deepened to its utmost--all experience (rather than experiment) courted, and filial walking with Nature, rather than tearing of veils aside--the life of the open air, and on the land and the waters, the companionship of the animals and the trees and the stars, the knowledge of their habits at first hand and through individual relationship to them, the recognition of their voices and languages, and listening well what they themselves have to say; the keenest education of the senses towards the physical powers and elements, and the acceptance of _all_ human experience, without exception--till Science become a reality.

Is it possible that in some sense, instead of reducing each branch of Science to its lowest terms, we shall have to read it in the light of its _highest_ factors, and "take it up" into the Science above--that we shall have to take up the mechanical sciences into the physical, the physical into the vital, the vital into the social and ethical, and so forth, before we can understand them? Is it possible that the phenomena of Chemistry only find their due place and importance in their relation to living beings and processes; that the phenomena of vitality and the laws of Biology and Zoology--Evolution included--can only be "explained" by their dependence on self-hood--both in plants and animals; that Political Economy and the Social Sciences (which deal with men as individual selves) must, to be understood aright, be studied in the light of those great ethical principles and enthusiasms, which to a certain extent override the individual self; and that, finally, Ethics or the study of moral problems is only comprehensible when the student has become aware of a region beyond Ethics, into which questions of morality and immorality, of right and wrong, do not and cannot enter?

Of this reversal of the ordinary scientific method Ruskin has given a great and signal instance in his treatment of Political Economy; it remains, perhaps, for others to follow his example in the other branches of Science.[31]

With regard to the absolute datum question we have seen that Science has two alternatives before it--either to be merely intellectual and to seek for its start-point in some quite external (and imaginary) thing like the Atom, or to be divine and to seek for its absolute in the innermost recesses of humanity. We have two similar alternatives in the doctrine of Evolution, which looks either to one end of the scale or the other for its interpretation--either to the amoeba or to the man--to something it knows next to nothing of, or to that which it knows most of. Goethe, when gazing at a fan-palm at Padua, conceived the idea of leaf-metamorphosis, which he afterwards enunciated in the now accepted doctrine that all parts of a plant--seed-vessel, pistil, stamens, petals, sepals, stalk, etc.--may be regarded as modifications of a leaf or leaves. In this view the distinctions between the parts are effaced, and we have only one part instead of many--but the question is "what is that part?" It is of course arbitrary to call it a leaf, for since it is continually varying it is at one time a leaf, and at another a stalk, and then a petal or a sepal, and so forth. What then is it? For the moment we are baffled.

So with the doctrine of Evolution as applied to the whole organic kingdom up to man. Like the doctrine of leaf-metamorphosis it obliterates distinctions. Geoffroy St. Hilaire proposed to show the French Academy that a Cephalopod could be assimilated to a Vertebrate by supposing the latter bent backwards and walking on its hands and feet. There is a continuous variation from the mollusc to the man--all the lines of distinction run and waver--classes and species cease to exist--and Science, instead of many, sees only _one_ thing. What then is that one thing? Is it a mollusc, or is it a man, or what is it? Are we to say that man may be looked upon as a variation of a mollusc or an amoeba, or that the amoeba may be looked on as a variation of man? Here are two directions of thought; which shall we choose? But the plain truth is, the Intellect can give no satisfactory answer. Whichever, or whatever, it chooses, the choice is quite arbitrary--just as much so as the choice of the "leaf" in the other case. There is no answer to be given. And thus it is that _the appearance of the doctrine of Evolution is the signal of the destruction of Science_ (in the ordinary acceptation of the word). For Evolution is the successive obliteration of the arbitrary distinctions and landmarks which by their existence _constitute_ Science, and as soon as Evolution covers the whole ground of Nature inorganic and organic (as before long it will do)--the whole of Nature runs and wavers before the eye of Science, the latter recognises that its distinctions _are_ arbitrary, and turns upon and destroys itself. This has happened before, I believe--ages back in the history of the human race--and probably will happen again.

The only conceivable answer to the question, "What is that which is now a mollusc and now a man and now an inorganic atom?"[32] is given by man himself--and his answer is, I fear, not "scientific." It is "I Am." "I am that which varies." And the force of his answer depends on what he means by the word "I." And so also the only conceivable answer to the absolute datum question is to be found in the meaning of the word "I"--in the deepening back of consciousness itself. Man is the measure of all things. If we are to use Science as a minister to the most external part of man--to provide him with cheap boots and shoes, etc.--then we do right to seek our absolute datum in his external part, and to take his _foot_ as our first measure. We found a science on feet and pounds, and it serves its purpose well enough. But if we want to find a garment for his inner being--or, rather, one that shall fit the _whole_ man--to wear which will be a delight to him and, as it were, a very interpretation of himself--it seems obvious that we must not take our measure from outside, but from his very most central principle. The whole question is, whether there _is_ any absolute datum in this direction or not. There have been men through all ages of history (and from before) who have declared that there is. They have perhaps been conscious of it in themselves. On the other hand there have been men who, starting from their feet, declared that consciousness itself was a mere incident of the human machine--as the whistle of the engine--and thus the matter stands. On the whole, at the present day, the _feet_ have it, and (notwithstanding their variety in size and boot-induced conformation) are generally accepted as the best absolute datum available.

Under the foot _régime_ the universe is generally conceived of as a medley of objects and forces, more or less orderly and distinct from man, in the midst of which man is placed--the purpose and tendency of his life being "adaptation to his environment." To understand this we may imagine Mrs. Brown in the middle of Oxford Street. 'Buses and cabs are running in different directions, carts and drays are rattling on all sides of her. This is her environment, and she has to adapt herself to it. She has to learn the laws of the vehicles and their movements, to stand on this side or on that, to run here and stop there, conceivably to jump into one at a favourable moment, to make use of the law of its movement, and so get carried to her destination as comfortably as may be. A long course of this sort of thing "adapts" Mrs. Brown considerably, and she becomes more active, both in mind and body, than before. That is all very well. But Mrs. Brown has a _destination_. (Indeed how would she ever have got into the middle of Oxford Street at all, if she had not had one? and if she did get there with no destination at all, but merely to skip about, would there be any Mrs. Brown left in a short time?) The question is, "What is the destination of Man?"

About this last question unfortunately we hear little. The theory is (I hope I am not doing it injustice) that by studying your environment sufficiently you will find out--that is, that by investigating Astronomy, Biology, Physics, Ethics, etc., you will discover the destiny of man. But this seems to me the same as saying that by studying the laws of cabs and 'buses sufficiently you will find out where you are going to. These are ways and means. Study them by all means, that is right enough; but do not think _they_ will tell you where to go. You have to use them, not they you.

In order therefore for the environment to act, there must be a destination. This I suppose is expressed in the biological dictum, "organism is made by function as well as environment." What then is the function of Man? And here we come back again to the meaning of the word "I."

Nothwithstanding then the prevalence of the foot régime, and that the heathen so furiously rage together in their belief in it, let us suggest that there is in man a divine consciousness as well as a foot-consciousness. For, as we saw that the sense of taste may pass from being a mere local thing on the tip of the tongue to pervading and becoming synonymous with the health of the whole body; or as the blue of the sky may be to one person a mere superficial impression of colour, and to another the inspiration of a poem or picture, and to a third--as to the "god-intoxicated" Arab of the desert--a living presence like the ancient Dyaus or Zeus; so may not the whole of human consciousness gradually lift itself from a mere local and temporary consciousness to a divine and universal? There is in every man a local consciousness connected with his quite external body; that we know. Are there not also in every man the makings of a universal consciousness? That there are in us phases of consciousness which transcend the limit of the bodily senses, is a matter of daily experience; that we perceive and know things which are not conveyed to us by our bodily eyes or heard by our bodily ears, is certain; that there rise in us waves of consciousness from those around us, from the people, the race, to which we belong, is also certain; may there not then be in us the makings of a perception and knowledge which shall not be relative to this body which is here and now, but which shall be good for all time and everywhere? Does there not exist, in truth, as we have already hinted--an inner Illumination--of which what we call light in the outer world is the partial expression and manifestation--by which we can ultimately see things, _as they are_, beholding all creation, the animals, the angels, the plants, the figures of our friends and all the ranks and races of human kind, in their true being and order--not by any local act of perception but by a cosmical intuition and presence, identifying ourselves with what we see? Does there not exist a perfected sense of Hearing--as of the morning-stars singing together--an understanding of the words that are spoken all through the universe, the hidden meaning of all things, the word which is creation itself--a profound and far pervading sense, of which our ordinary sense of sound is only the first novitiate and initiation? Do we not become aware of an inner sense of Health and of Holiness--the translation and final outcome of the external sense of taste--which has power to determine for us absolutely and without any ado, without argument and without denial, what is good and appropriate to be done or suffered in every case that can arise?

And so on; it is not necessary to say more. If there are such powers in man, then there is indeed an exact science possible. Short of it there is only a temporary and phantom science. "Whatever is known to us by (direct) consciousness," says Stuart Mill in his System of Logic, "is known to us beyond possibility of question;" what is known by our local and temporary consciousness is known _for the moment_ beyond possibility of question; what is known by our permanent and universal consciousness is permanently known beyond possibility of question.[33]

FOOTNOTES:

[31] Thus the study of Geometry would be primarily an education of the eye, and the mind's eye, to the perception of geometrical forms and facts, the judgment of angles, etc.--and secondarily only a process of deductive reasoning--a body of empirical knowledge strengthened and tied together by bands of logic; the study of Natural History would be primarily an affectionate intimacy with the habits of animals and plants, and classification would be treated as a secondary matter and as a help to the former; Physiology would be studied in the first place by the method of Health--the pure body--becoming gradually transparent with all its organs to the eye of the mind--and dissection would be used to corroborate and correct the results thus attained; and so on.

[32] Compare the Sphinx-riddle: What is that which goes on four legs, etc.

[33] See for continuation of this subject the chapter on "A Rational and Humane Science," p. 219 _infra_.

DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS:

A CRITICISM OF MORALITY

The State is the actually existing realised moral life. For it is the unity of the universal essential Will with that of the individual, and this is "Morality."--HEGEL.