Part 1

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE AND OTHER PLEAS AND DISCUSSIONS

BY

FRANCES POWER COBBE

AUTHOR OF “AN ESSAY ON INTUITIVE MORALS,” “RELIGIOUS DUTY,” “BROKEN LIGHTS,” “THE HOPES OF THE HUMAN RACE,” “THE PEAK IN DARIEN,” “THE DUTIES OF WOMEN,” “A FAITHLESS WORLD,” ETC.

BOSTON GEO. H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET 1888

CONTENTS.

ESSAY PAGE PREFACE v

I. THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE 1

II. THE EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS 35

III. PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM 69

IV. THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING 111

V. TO KNOW, OR NOT TO KNOW 147

VI. THE TOWN MOUSE AND THE COUNTRY MOUSE 173

PREFACE.

We are all possessed of friends who, when any serious belief or matter of practical conduct is in question, take up at the outset a thesis of their own which they press on our acceptance with the best arguments at their disposal. It is a rarer privilege to enjoy the intercourse of one who does not invariably start with a ready-made opinion of what may be true, right, or expedient in the doubtful case on which we wish to consult him, but who will patiently turn over the matter with us, suggest and register the various “pros and cons,” refer to admitted principles and facts, and thus aid us to form a comprehensive judgment for ourselves rather than induce us to accept his own. The discourse of the first order of friends is an Argument, a Plea, a Contention; that of the second, a Discussion.

In the same way, of course, an Essay may be either a Plea or a Discussion. The author may take the position of Counsel for one side or other of the case before the reader, or else he may charge as Judge, and sum up the substance of such arguments as might have been used by two advocates on the opposite sides. Either style of writing is perfectly legitimate; and each has its particular fitness and utility. Misunderstanding and perplexity only occur when the hasty reader (newspaper critics being signally guilty in this matter) chooses to assume that an avowedly one-sided Plea is intended for a Judicial Discussion,[1] or treats a Discussion as a Plea for the side which the critic dislikes.

In the present little collection of Essays, written at various times and for various objects, it will be found that the first three belong to the class which I have described as Pleas, and the last three more or less to that of Discussions.

I plead that the Scientific Spirit of the Age, while it has given us many precious things, is, in its present exorbitant development, depriving us of things more precious still.

I plead that the Education of the Emotions (to be carried on chiefly through the contagion of good and noble sentiments) is an object of paramount importance, albeit nearly totally ignored in ordinary systems of education.

I plead that, in the present disintegration of all religious opinion, Judaism may yet become a progressive, and cease to be merely a tribal, faith; and that, if it absorb the moral and spiritual essence of Christianity, it may solve the great problem of combining a theology consonant to modern philosophy with a worship hallowed by the sacred associations of the remotest past.

In the last three Essays, I discuss the relation of Knowledge to Happiness; I discuss the real—as distinguished from the conventional—character of our common processes of Thought; and, finally, I discuss the respective claims of Town and Country Life to be esteemed most healthy and felicitous for body and mind.

I shall much rejoice if I win my readers to adopt the opinions which I have advocated in the first half of the book.

I shall remain altogether indifferent as to which of the alternative views put forth in the concluding Essays may seem to them most impressive, and only congratulate myself if I shall have succeeded in setting forth in due light and order the multitudinous points which together constitute the materials for forming a sound judgment upon them.

FRANCES POWER COBBE.

HENGWRT, DOLGELLY, 1888.

ESSAY I. THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE.

That the present is pre-eminently the Age of Science is a fact equally recognized by the majority who hail it with triumph and by the minority who regard it with feelings wherein regret and apprehension have their place. As in Literature an age of production is ever followed by an age of criticism, so in the general history of human interests War, Religion, Art, start in early days and run their swift course, while Science creeps slowly after them, till at last she passes them on the way and comes foremost in the race. We still in our time have War; but it is no longer the conflict of valiant soldiers, but the game of scientific strategists. We still have Religion; but she no longer claims earth and heaven as her domain, but meekly goes to church by a path over which Science has notified, “On Sufferance Only.” We still have Art; but it is no longer the Art of Fancy, but the Art of the Intellect, wherein the Beautiful is indefinitely postponed to the technically True, as Truth is discerned by men who think _qu’il n’y a rien de vrai excepté le laid_. All our multiform activities, from agriculture down to dressmaking, are in these days nothing if not “scientific,” and to thousands of worthy people it is enough to say that Science teaches this or that, or that the interests of Science require such and such a sacrifice, to cause them to bow their heads, as pious men of old did at the message of a Prophet. “It is SCIENCE! Let it do what seemeth it good.” The claims of the æsthetic faculty, and even of the moral sense, to speak in arrest of judgment on matters entirely within their own spheres, are ruled out of court.

By a paradoxical fatality, however, it would appear as if the obsession of the Scientific Spirit is likely to be a little lightened for us by an event which might have been expected to rivet the yoke on our necks. The recently published Life of the most illustrious and most amiable man of Science of this scientific age has suggested to many readers doubts of the all-sufficiency of Science to build up not theories, but men. Mr. Darwin’s admirably candid avowal of the gradual extinction in his mind of the æsthetic[2] and religious elements has proved startling to a generation which, even when it is ready to abandon Religion, would be direfully distressed to lose the pleasures afforded by Art and Nature, Poetry and Music. Instead of lifting the scientific vocation to the skies (as was probably anticipated), this epoch-making Biography seems to have gone far to throw a sort of dam across the stream, and to have arrested not a few Science-worshippers with the query: “What shall it profit a man if he discover the origin of species and know exactly how earth-worms and sun-dews conduct themselves, if all the while he grow blind to the loveliness of nature, deaf to music, insensible to poetry, and as unable to lift his soul to the Divine and Eternal as was the primeval Ape from whom he has descended? Is this all that Science can do for her devotee? Must he be shorn of the glory of humanity when he is ordained her Priest? Does he find his loftiest faculties atrophied when he has become a machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts”?[3]

While these reflections are passing through many minds, it may be permitted to me to review some features of the Scientific Spirit of the Age. Frankly, I shall do it from an adverse point of view. There were many years of my life during which I regarded it with profound, though always distant, admiration. Grown old, I have come to think that many spirits in the hierarchy are loftier and purer; that the noblest study of mankind is Man, rather than rock or insect; and that, even at its best, Knowledge is immeasurably less precious than Goodness and Love. Whether in these estimates I err or am justified, it would, in any case, be superfluous for me to add my feeble voice to the glorification of the Scientific Spirit. Diana of the Ephesians was never proclaimed so vociferously “Great”; and perhaps, like the worshippers of the elder goddess, it may be said of those of Science, “The most part know not wherefore they have come together.” It will suffice if I succeed in partially exhibiting how much we are in danger of losing by the Scientific Spirit, while others show us, more or less truly, what we gain thereby.

In speaking of “Science” in this paper, I must be understood to refer only to the Physical Sciences, not to the mathematical or metaphysical. The former (especially the Biological group) have of late years come so much to the front that the old application of the word to the exact sciences and to metaphysics and ethics has almost dropped out of popular use. I also desire to explain at starting that I am not so blind as to ignore the splendid achievements of modern physical science in its own realm, nor the benefits which many applications of the Scientific Spirit have brought in various other directions. It is the intrusiveness and oppression of the Scientific Spirit in regions where it has no proper work, and (still more often) its predominance in others where its place should be wholly subordinate, against which a protest appears to be needed. A score of causes have contributed in our generation to set Science up and to pull other things down. The levels need to be redressed. Time will not permit me to exhibit the results of the excessive share taken of late years by the Scientific Spirit in many practical matters wherein experience and common sense were safer guides, _e.g._, in Agriculture. This side of the question I must leave untouched, and limit myself to the discussion of the general influence of the Scientific Spirit in Education, in Art, in Morals, and in Religion.

Professor Tyndall, in the Preface to his great work on “Heat as a mode of Motion,” calls Science “the noblest growth of modern times,” and adds that “as a means of intellectual education its claims are still disputed, though, once properly organized, greater and more beneficent revolutions wait its employment here than those which have marked its application in the material world” (2d ed., p. x). Since the publication of this book, and indeed since the opening of the Age of Science, the relative claims of Science and Literature to form the basis of _intellectual_ instruction have been incessantly debated by men qualified by experience in tuition (which I cannot claim to be) to form a judgment on the subject. There has been, however, I think, too little attention given on either side to the relative _moral_ influences of the two studies.

In addressing the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching on March 3 last, Sir James Paget expressed his dissent from Professor Morley’s opinion (given on a similar occasion last year) that “Literature was an excellent, if not a better study than Science.” Sir James maintained, on the contrary, that “_nothing could better advance human prosperity than Science_,” and he elaborately set forth the specific benefits of a scientific education as he conceived them, as follows:—

There was first the teaching of the power of observing, then the teaching of accuracy, then of the difficulty of attaining to a real knowledge of the truth, and, lastly, the teaching of the methods by which they could pass from that which was proved to the thinking of what was probable.[4]

It would, of course, be unjust to hold Science to these definitions, as if they exhausted her claims as our instructress. It may, however, fairly be assumed that, in the view of one of the leading men of science of the day, they are _paramount_. If any much higher results than they were to be expected from scientific teaching, Sir James would scarcely have omitted to present them first or last. To what, then, do these four great lessons of Science amount? They teach—and, I think, teach only—Observation, Accuracy, Intellectual Caution, and the acquirement of a Method of advancing to the _thinking of what was probable_,—possibly the method commonly known as Induction.

I must confess that these “great truths” (as Sir James oddly calls them) represent to my mind only the culmination of the lower range of human faculties; or, more strictly speaking, the perfect application to human concerns of those faculties which are common to man and the lower animals. A fox may be an “_observer_,” and an exceedingly _accurate_ one—of hen-roosts. He may be deeply sensible of “_the difficulty of attaining to a real knowledge_”—of traps. Further than this, he may even “_pass from the proved_”—existence of a pack of hounds in his cover to “_thinking that it was probable_”—he would shortly be chased. To train a MAN, it is surely indispensable to develop in him a superior order of powers from these. His mind must be enriched with the culture of his own age and country, and of other lands and ages, and fortified by familiarity with the thoughts of great souls on the topics of loftiest interest. He must be accustomed to think on subjects above those to which his observation, or accuracy of description, or caution in accepting evidence can apply, and on which (it is to be hoped) he will reach some anchorage of faith more firm than Sir James Paget’s climax of scientific culture, “_the passing from that which was proved to the thinking of what was probable_.” He ought to handle the method of deductive reasoning at least as well as that of induction, and beyond these (purely intellectual) attainments a human education making claim to completeness should cultivate the imagination and poetic sentiment; should “soften manners,” as the _literae humaniores_ proverbially did of old; should widen the sympathies, dignify the character, inspire enthusiasm for noble actions, and chivalrous tenderness towards women and all who need defence; and thus send forth the accomplished student a _gentleman_ in the true sense of the word. The benefits attributed by Sir James Paget to Scientific education, and even those with which, in candor, we may credit it beyond his four “great truths,” fall, I venture to think, deplorably short of such a standard of culture as this.

The deficiencies of Scientific education do not exhaust the objections against it. There seem to be positive evils almost inseparable from such training when carried far with the young. One of the worst is the danger of the adoption by the student of materialistic views on all subjects. He need not become a theoretic or speculative Materialist: that is another risk, which may or may not be successfully eliminated. But he will almost inevitably fall into practical materialism. Of the two sides of human life, his scientific training will compel him to think always in the first place of the lower. The material (or, as our fathers would have called it, the _carnal_) fact will be uppermost in his mind, and the spiritual meaning thereof more or less out of sight. He will view his mother’s tears not as expressions of her sorrow, but as solutions of muriates and carbonates of soda, and of phosphates of lime; and he will reflect that they were caused not by his heartlessness, but by cerebral pressure on her lachrymal glands. When she dies, he will “peep and botanize” on her grave,—not with the poet’s sense of the sacrilegiousness of such ill-placed curiosity, but with the serene conviction of the meritoriousness of accurate observation among the scientifically interesting “Flora” of a cemetery.

To this class of mind, thoroughly imbued with the Scientific Spirit, Disease is the most important of facts and the greatest of evils. Sin, on the other hand, is a thing on which neither microscope nor telescope nor spectroscope, nor even stethoscope, can afford instruction. Possibly the student will think it only a spectral illusion; or he will foresee that it may be explained by and by scientifically, as a form of disease. There may be discovered _bacilli_ of Hatred, Covetousness, and Lust, respectively responsible for Murder, Theft, and Adultery. Already hypocrisy is a recognized form of Hysteria. The state of opinion in “Erewhon” may be hopefully looked for in England, when the Scientific Spirit altogether prevails.

Besides its materializing tendency, a Scientific Education involves other evils, among which may be counted the fostering of a callous and irreverent spirit. To this I shall return presently. Of course every tendency of a pursuit, good or bad, affects the young who are engaged in it much more than the old, whose characters may have been moulded under quite opposite influences. We must wait for a generation to see the Scientific Spirit in its full development.

As to the instruction of young men and women in Physiological Science in particular, I am exonerated from treating the subject by being privileged to cite the opinions of two of the most eminent and experienced members of the scholastic profession. I do so with great thankfulness, believing that it will be a revelation to many parents, blindly caught by scientific claptrap, to learn that such are the views of men among the best qualified in England to pronounce judgment on the subject.

The late lamented Mr. Thring, of Uppingham, wrote to me, Sept. 6, 1886:—

My writings on Education sufficiently show how strongly I feel on the subject of a literary education, or rather how confident I am in the judgment that there can be no worthy education which is not based on the study of the highest thoughts of the highest men in the best shape. As for Science (most of it falsely so called), if a few leading minds are excepted, it simply amounts, to the average dull worker, to no more than a kind of upper shop work, weighing out and labelling and learning alphabetical formulæ,—a superior grocer assistant’s work, and has not a single element of higher mental training in it. Not to mention that it leaves out all knowledge of men and life, and therefore—is eminently fitted for life and its struggle! Physiology in its worse sense adds to this a brutalizing of the average practitioner, or rather a devilish combination of intellect worship and cruelty at the expense of feeling and character. For my part, if it were true that Vivisection had wonderfully relieved bodily disease for men, if it was at the cost of lost spirits, then let the body perish. And it is at the cost of lost spirits. I do not say that under no circumstances should an experiment take place, but I do say that under no circumstances should an experiment take place for teaching purposes. You will see how decided my judgments are on this matter.

The Rev. J. E. C. Welldon, Head Master of Harrow, has been good enough to write to me as follows:—

I am most willing to let you quote my words, whether what I said before or what I say now. You command my full sympathy in the crusade which you have so nobly declared against cruelty. I say this frankly, although I know that there is some difference between us in regard to the practice of Vivisection. But even if it be necessary that in some cases, and under strict conditions, vivisectional experiments should be made upon animals, I cannot doubt that the use of such experiments tends to exercise a demoralizing influence upon any person who may be called to make them. I hold, therefore, that the educational effect of Vivisection is always injurious. Knowledge is dearly purchased at the cost of tenderness, and I cannot believe that any morally-minded person could desire to familiarize the young with the sight of animal suffering. For my part, I look upon the hardness of heart with which some distinguished physiologists have met the protest raised against Vivisection as one of many signs that materialism means at the last an inversion of the ethical law; _i.e._, a preference of knowledge to goodness, of mind to spirit, or, in a word, of human things to divine. Surely it is a paradox that they who minimize the specific distinction between man and the animals should be the least tender in their views of animal sufferings, and that Christians who accentuate that distinction should be willing to spare animals pain at the cost of enhancing their own. I conceive it then to be a primary duty of a modern educator, at School or at College, to cultivate in his pupils, by all the means in his power, the sympathetic sentiment towards the animal world.

To turn to a less painful part of our subject.

Science and Art are constantly coupled together in common parlance and in grants of public money; but, if ever incompatibility of temper formed a just ground of divorce, it is surely in their case. When Science—like Poverty—comes in at the door, Art—like Love—flies out at the window. They move in different planes, and touch different parts of human nature. Science appeals to the Intellect, Art to the Emotions; and we are so constituted that our Intellects and Emotions are like buckets in a well. When our Intellects are in the ascendant, our Emotions sink out of sight; when our Emotions rise to the surface, our busy Intellects subside into quiescence. It is only the idolatry of Science which could make intelligent men overlook the fact that she and Art resemble two leashed greyhounds pulling opposite ways, and never running together unless there be some game (shall we surmise an endowment of public money?) in view. The synthetic, reverential, sympathizing spirit of Art is opposed, as the different poles of the magnet, to the analytic, self-asserting, critical spirit of Science. The artist seeks Beauty; finds likenesses; discerns the Ideal through the Real. The man of Science seeks Facts; draws distinctions; strips the Real to the skin and the bones.

A great light of the Scientific Age has been heard to say that when he first visited the Vatican he “sat down before Raphael’s Transfiguration and filled three pages of his note-book with its faults.” It was the most natural thing in the world for him to do! How should a Physicist approve of three figures suspended in the air in defiance of the laws of gravitation? Or what could a Zoölogist say to an angel outrageously combining in his person the wings exclusively belonging to the Order _Aves_ with the arms and legs of _Bimana_? Worst of all, what must be the feelings of a Physiologist confronted with a bas-relief of a Centaur with two stomachs, or of a Cherub with none?

Poetry is the Art of Arts. If we desire to see what Science can do for it, let us take a typical piece wherein Fancy revels and plays like an Ariel with wreaths of lovely tropes,—say Shelley’s “Sensitive Plant,” for example. We must begin by cutting out all the absurdly unscientific statements; _e.g._, that the lily of the valley grows pale with passion, that the hyacinth rings peals of music from its bells, and that the narcissus gazes at itself in the stream. Then, in lieu of this folly, we must describe how the garden has been thoroughly drained and scientifically manured with guano and sewage. After this the flowers may be mentioned under their proper classes, as monandria and polyandria, cryptogams and phenogams. Such would be the result of bringing the Scientific Spirit to bear on Poetry. Introduced into the border realm of Fiction, it begins by marring with pedantic illustrations the otherwise artistic work of George Eliot. Pushed further, it furnishes us with medical novels, wherein the leading incident is a surgeon dissecting his aunt. Still a step onward, we reach the brute realism of “A Mummer’s Wife” and “La Joie de Vivre.” The distance between Walter Scott and Zola measures that between Art and Science in Fiction.