Chapter 70

With one special utterance of Professor Virchow his translator connects me by name. 'I have no objection,' observes the Professor, 'to your saying that atoms of carbon also possess mind, or that in their connection with the Plastidule company they acquire mind; only I do not know how I am to perceive this.' This is substantially what I had said seventeen years previously in the 'Saturday Review.' The Professor continues: 'If I explain attraction and repulsion as exhibitions of mind, as psychical phenomena, I simply throw the Psyche out of the window, and the Psyche ceases to be a Psyche.' I may say, in passing, that the Psyche that could be cast out of the window is not worth houseroom. At this point the translator, who is evidently a man of culture, strikes in with a foot-note. 'As an illustration of Professor Virchow's meaning, we may quote the conclusion at which Doctor Tyndall arrives respecting the hypothesis of a human soul, offered as an explanation or a simplification of a series of obscure phenomena--psychical phenomena, as he calls them. "If you are content to make your soul a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which refuses the yoke of ordinary physical laws, I, for one, would not object to this exercise of ideality."' [Footnote: 'Presidential Address delivered before the Birmingham and Midland Institute, October 1, 1877. Fortnightly Review,' Nov. 1, 1877, p. 60] Professor Virchow's meaning, I admit, required illustration; but I do not clearly see how the quotation from me subserves this purpose. I do not even know whether I am cited as meriting praise or deserving opprobrium. In a far coarser fashion this utterance of mine has been dealt with in other places: it may therefore be worth while to spend a few words upon it.

The sting of a wasp at the finger-end announces itself to the brain as pain. The impression made by the sting travels, in the first place, with comparative slowness along the nerves affected; and only when it reaches the brain have we the fact of consciousness. Those who think most profoundly on this subject hold that a chemical change, which, strictly interpreted, is atomic motion, is, in such a case, propagated along the nerve, and communicated to the brain. Again, on feeling the sting I flap the insect violently away. What has caused this motion of my hand? The command from the brain to remove the insect travels along the motor nerves to the proper muscles, and, their force being unlocked, they perform the work demanded of them. But what moved the nerve molecules which unlocked the muscle? The sense of pain, it may be replied. But how can a sense of pain, or any other state of consciousness, make matter move? Not all the sense of pain or pleasure in the world could lift a stone or move a billiard-ball; why should it stir a molecule? Try to express the motion numerically in terms of the sensation, and the difficulty immediately appears. Hence the idea long ago entertained by philosophers, but lately brought into special prominence, that the physical processes are complete in themselves, and would go on just as they do if consciousness were not at all implicated. Consciousness, on this view, is a kind of by-product inexpressible in terms of force and motion, and unessential to the molecular changes going on in the brain.

Four years ago, I wrote thus: 'Do states of consciousness enter as links into the chain of antecedence and sequence, which gives rise to bodily actions? Speaking for myself, it is certain that I have no power of imagining such states interposed between the molecules of the brain, and influencing the transference of motion among the molecules. The thing "eludes all mental presentation." Hence an iron strength seems to belong to the logic which claims for the brain an automatic action uninfluenced by consciousness. But it is, I believe, admitted by those who hold the automaton theory, that states of consciousness are produced by the motion of the molecules of the brain; and this production of consciousness by molecular motion is to me quite as unpresentable to the mental vision as the production of molecular motion by consciousness. If I reject one result I must reject both. I, however, reject neither, and thus stand in the presence of two Incomprehensibles, instead of one Incomprehensible.' Here I secede from the automaton theory, though maintained by friends who have all my esteem, and fall back upon the avowal which occurs with such wearisome iteration throughout the foregoing pages; namely, my own utter incapacity to grasp the problem.

This avowal is repeated with emphasis in the passage to which Professor Virchow's translator draws attention. What, I there ask, is the causal connection between the objective and the subjective--between molecular motions and states of consciousness? My answer is: I do not see the connection, nor am I acquainted with anybody who does. It is no explanation to say that the objective and subjective are two sides of one and the same phenomenon. Why should the phenomenon have two sides? This is the very core of the difficulty. There are plenty of molecular motions which do exhibit this two-sidedness. Does water think or feel when it runs into frost-ferns upon a window pane? If not, why should the molecular motion of the brain be yoked to this mysterious companion--consciousness? We can form a coherent picture of all the purely physical processes--the stirring of the brain, the thrilling of the nerves, the discharging of the muscles, and all the subsequent motions of the organism. We are here dealing with mechanical problems which are mentally presentable.

But we can form no picture of the process whereby consciousness emerges, either as a necessary link, or as an accidental by-product, of this series of actions. The reverse process of the production of motion by consciousness is equally unpresentable to the mind. We are here in fact on the boundary line of the intellect, where the ordinary canons of science fail to extricate us. If we are true to these canons, we must deny to subjective phenomena all influence on physical processes. The mechanical philosopher, as such, will never place a state of consciousness and a group of molecules in the relation of mover and moved. Observation proves them to interact; but, in passing from the one to the other, we meet a blank which the logic of deduction is unable to fill. This, the reader will remember, is the conclusion at which I had arrived more than twenty years ago. I lay bare unsparingly the central difficulty of the materialist, and tell him that the facts of observation which he considers so simple are 'almost as difficult to be seized mentally as the idea of a soul.' I go further, and say, in effect, to those who wish to retain this idea, 'If you abandon the interpretations of grosser minds, who image the soul as a Psyche which could be thrown out of the window--an entity which is usually occupied, we know not how, among the molecules of the brain, but which on due occasion, such as the intrusion of a bullet or the blow of a club, can fly away into other regions of space--if, abandoning this heathen notion, you consent to approach the subject in the only way in which approach is possible--if you consent to make your soul a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which, as I have taken more pains than anybody else to show you, refuses the yoke of ordinary physical laws--then I, for one, would not object to this exercise of ideality.' I say it strongly, but with good temper, that the theologian, or the defender of theology, who hacks and scourges me for putting the question in this light is guilty of black ingratitude.

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Notwithstanding the agreement thus far pointed out, there are certain points in Professor Virchow's lecture to which I should feel inclined to take exception. I think it was hardly necessary to associate the theory of evolution with Socialism; it may be even questioned whether it was correct to do so. As Lange remarks, the aim of Socialism, or of its extreme leaders, is to overthrow the existing systems of government, and anything that helps them to this end is welcomed, whether it be atheism or papal infallibility. For long years the Socialists saw Church and State united against them, and both were therefore regarded with a common hatred. But no sooner does a serious difference arise between Church and State, than a portion of the Socialists begin immediately to dally with the former. [Footnote: 'Geschichte des Materialismus,' 2e Auflage, vol. ii. p. 538.] The experience of the last German elections illustrates Lange's position. Far nobler and truer to my mind than this fear of promoting Socialism by a scientific theory which the best and soberest heads in the world have substantially accepted, is the position assumed by Helmholtz, who in his 'Popular Lectures' describes Darwin's theory as embracing 'an essentially new creative thought' (einen wesentlich neuen schoepferischen Gedanken), and who illustrates the greatness of this thought by copious references to the solutions, previously undreamt of, which it offers of the enigmas of life and organisation. He points to the clouds of error and confusion which it has already dispersed, and shows how the progress of discovery since its first enunciation is simply a record of the approach of the theory towards complete demonstration. One point in this 'popular' exposition deserves especial mention here. Helmholtz refers to the dominant position acquired by Germany in physiology and medicine, while other nations have kept abreast of her in the investigation of inorganic nature. He claims for German men the credit of pursuing with unflagging and self-denying industry, with purely ideal aims, and without any immediate prospect of practical utility, the cultivation of pure science. But that which has determined German superiority in the fields referred to was, in his opinion, something different from this. Enquiries into the nature of life are intimately connected with psychological and ethical questions; and he claims for his countrymen a greater fearlessness of the consequences which a full knowledge of the truth may here carry along with it, than reigns among the enquirers of other nations. And why is this the case? 'England and France,' he says, 'possess distinguished investigators--men competent to follow up and illustrate with vigorous energy the methods of natural science; but they have hitherto been compelled to bend before social and theological prejudices, and could only utter their convictions under the penalty of injuring their social influence and usefulness. Germany has gone forward more courageously. She has cherished the trust, which has never been deceived, that complete truth carries with it the antidote against the bane and danger which follow in the train of half knowledge. A cheerfully laborious and temperate people--a people morally strong--can well afford to look truth full in the face. Nor are they to be ruined by the enunciation of one-sided theories, even when these may appear to threaten the bases of society.' These words of Helmholtz are, in my opinion, wiser and more applicable to the condition of Germany at the present moment than those which express the fears of Professor Virchow. It will be remembered that at the time of his lecture his chief anxieties were directed towards France; but France has since that time given ample evidence of her ability to crush, not only Socialists, but anti-Socialists, who would impose on her a yoke which she refuses to bear.

In close connection with these utterances of Helmholtz, I place another utterance not less noble, which I trust was understood and appreciated by those to whom it was addressed. 'If,' said the President of the British Association in his opening address in Dublin, we could lay down beforehand the precise limits of possible knowledge, the problem of physical science would be already half solved. But the question to which the scientific explorer has often to address himself is, not merely whether he is able to solve this or that problem; but whether he can so far unravel the tangled threads of the matter with which he has to deal, as to weave them into a definite problem at all ... If his eye seem dim, he must look steadfastly and with hope into the misty vision, until the very clouds wreathe themselves into definite forms. If his ear seem dull, he must listen patiently and with sympathetic trust to the intricate whisperings of Nature--the goddess, as she has been called, of a hundred voices--until here and there he can pick out a few simple notes to which his own powers can resound. If, then, at a moment when he finds himself placed on a pinnacle from which he is called upon to take a perspective survey of the range of science, and to tell us what he can see from his vantage ground; if at such a moment after straining his gaze to the very verge of the horizon, and after describing the most distant of well-defined objects, he should give utterance also to some of the subjective impressions which he is conscious of receiving from regions beyond; if he should depict possibilities which seem opening to his view; if he should explain why he thinks this a mere blind alley and that an open path; _then the fault and the loss would be alike ours if we refused to listen calmly, and temperately to form our own judgment on what we hear; then assuredly it is we who would be committing the error of confounding matters of fact with matters of opinion, if we failed to discriminate between the various elements contained in such a discourse, and assumed that they had been all put on the same footing_.'

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While largely agreeing with him, I cannot quite accept the setting in which Professor Virchow places the confessedly abortive attempts to secure an experimental basis for the doctrine of spontaneous generation. It is not a doctrine 'so discredited' that some of the scientific thinkers of England accept 'as the basis of all their views of life.' Their induction is by no means thus limited. They have on their side more than the 'reasonable probability' deemed sufficient by Bishop Butler for practical guidance in the gravest affairs, that the members of the solar system which are now discrete once formed a continuous mass; that in the course of untold ages, during which the work of condensation, through the waste of heat in space, went on, the planets were detached; and that our present sun is the residual nucleus of the flocculent or gaseous ball from which the planets were successively separated. Life, as we define it, was not possible for aeons subsequent to this separation. When and how did it appear? I have already pressed this question, but have received no answer. [Footnote: In the 'Apology for the Belfast Address,' the question is reasoned out.] If, with Professor Knight, we regard the Bible account of the introduction of life upon the earth as a poem, not as a statement of fact, where are we to seek for guidance as to the fact? There does not exist a barrier possessing the strength of a cobweb to oppose to the hypothesis, which ascribes the appearance of life to that 'potency of matter' which finds expression in natural evolution. [Footnote: 'We feel it an undeniable necessity,' says Professor Virchow, not to sever the organic world from the whole, as if it were something disjoined from the whole.' This grave statement cannot be weakened by the subsequent pleasantry regarding 'Carbon & Co.']

This hypothesis is not without its difficulties, but they vanish when compared with those which encumber its rivals. There are various facts in science obviously connected, and whose connections we are unable to trace; but we do not think of filling the gap between them by the intrusion of a separable spiritual agent. In like manner though we are unable to trace the course of things from the nebula, when there was no life in our sense, to the present earth where life abounds, the spirit and practice of science pronounce against the intrusion of an anthropomorphic creator. Theologians must liberate and refine their conceptions or be prepared for the rejection of them by thoughtful minds. It is they, not we, who lay claim to knowledge never given to man. Our refusal of the creative hypothesis is less an assertion of knowledge than a protest against the assumption of knowledge which must long, if not always, lie beyond us, and the claim to which is a source of perpetual confusion.' At the same time, when I look with strenuous gaze into the whole problem as far as my capacities allow, overwhelming wonder is the predominant feeling. This wonder has come to me from the ages just as much as my understanding, and it has an equal right to satisfaction. Hence I say, if, abandoning your illegitimate claim to knowledge, you place, with Job, your forehead in the dust and acknowledge the authorship of this universe to be past finding out--if, having made this confession, and relinquished the views of the mechanical theologian, you desire for the satisfaction of feelings which I admit to be, in great part, those of humanity at large, to give ideal form to the Power that moves all things--it is not by me that you will find objections raised to this exercise of ideality, if it be only consciously and worthily carried out.

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Again, I think Professor Virchow's position, in regard to the question of _contagium animatum_, is not altogether that of true philosophy. He points to the antiquity of the doctrine. 'It is lost,' he says, 'in the darkness of the middle ages. We have received this name from our forefathers, and it already appears distinctly in the sixteenth century. We possess several works of that time which put forward _contagium animatum_ as a scientific doctrine, with the same confidence, with the same sort of proof, with which the "Plastidulic soul" is now set forth.'

These speculations of our 'forefathers' will appeal differently to different minds. By some they will be dismissed with a sneer; to others they will appeal as proofs of genius on the part of those who enunciated them. There are men, and by no means the minority, who, however wealthy in regard to facts, can never rise into the region of principles; and they are sometimes intolerant of those who can. They are formed to plod meritoriously on the lower levels of thought, unpossessed of the pinions necessary to reach the heights. They cannot realise the mental act--the act of inspiration it might well be called--by which a man of genius, after long pondering and proving, reaches a theoretic conception which unravels and illuminates the tangle of centuries of observation and experiment. There are minds, it may be said in passing, who at the present moment stand in this relation to Mr. Darwin. For my part, I should be inclined to ascribe to penetration rather than to presumption the notion of a _contagium animatum_. He who invented the term ought, I think, to be held in esteem; for he had before him the quantity of fact, and the measure of analogy, that would justify a man of genius in taking a step so bold. 'Nevertheless,' says Professor Virchow, 'no one was able throughout a long time to discover these living germs of disease. The sixteenth century did not find them, nor did the seventeenth, nor the eighteenth.' But it may be urged, in reply to this, that the theoretic conjecture often legitimately comes first. It is the forecast of genius which anticipates the fact and constitutes a spur towards its discovery. If, instead of being a spur, the theoretic guess rendered men content with imperfect knowledge, it would be a thing to be deprecated. But in modern investigation this is distinctly not the case; Darwin's theory, for example, like the undulatory theory, has been a motive power and not an anodyne. 'At last,' continues Professor Virchow, 'in the nineteenth century we have begun little by little really to find _contagia animata_.' So much the more honour, I infer, is due to those who, three centuries in advance, so put together the facts and analogies of contagious disease as to divine its root and character. Professor Virchow seems to deprecate the 'obstinacy' with which this notion of a _contagium vivum_ emerged. Here I should not be inclined to follow him; because I do not know, nor does he tell me, how much the discovery of facts in the nineteenth century is indebted to the stimulus derived from the theoretic discussions of preceding centuries. The genesis of scientific ideas is a subject of profound interest and importance. He would be but a poor philosopher who would sever modern chemistry from the efforts of the alchemists, who would detach modern atomic doctrines from the speculations of Lucretius and his predecessors, or who would claim for our present knowledge of _contagia_ an origin altogether independent of the efforts of our 'forefathers' to penetrate this enigma.

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Finally, I do not know that I should agree with Professor Virchow as to what a theory is or ought to be. I call a theory a principle or conception of the mind which accounts for observed facts, and which helps us to look for and predict facts not yet observed. Every new discovery which fits into a theory strengthens it. The theory is not a thing complete from the first, but a thing which grows, as it were asymptotically, towards certainty. Darwin's theory, as pointed out nine and ten years ago by Helmholtz and Hooker, was then exactly in this condition of growth; and had they to speak of the subject to-day they would be able to announce an enormous strengthening of the theoretic fibre. Fissures in continuity which then existed, and which left little hope of being ever spanned, have been since filled in, so that the further the theory is tested the more fully does it harmonise with progressive experience and discovery. We shall probably never fill all the gaps; but this will not prevent a profound belief in the truth of the theory from taking root in the general mind. Much less will it justify a total denial of the theory. The man of science who assumes in such a case the position of a denier is sure to be stranded and isolated. The proper attitude, in my opinion, is to give to the theory during the phases of its growth as nearly as possible a proportionate assent; and, if it be a theory which influences practice, our wisdom is to follow its probable suggestions where more than probability is for the moment unattainable. I write thus with the theory of _contagium vivum_, more especially in my mind, and must regret the attitude of denial assumed by Professor Virchow towards that theory. 'I must beg my friend Klebs to pardon me,' he says, 'if, notwithstanding the late advances made by the doctrine of infectious fungi, I still persist in my reserve so far as to admit only the fungus which is really proved while I deny all other fungi so long as they are not actually brought before me.' Professor Virchow, that is to say, will continue to deny the Germ Theory, however great the probabilities on its side, however numerous be the cases of which it renders a just account, until it has ceased to be a theory at all, and has become a congeries of sensible facts. Had he said, 'As long as a single fungus of disease remains to be discovered, it is your bounden duty to search for it,' I should cordially agree with him. But by his unreserved denial he quenches the light of probability which ought to guide the practice of the medical man. Both here and in relation to the theory of evolution excess upon one side has begotten excess upon the other.

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