Part 24

More than ten years ago I amused myself at Killarney, by observing on a calm day, the straight smoke columns rising from the chimneys of the cabins. It was easy to project the lower portion of a column against a bright cloud. The smoke in the former case was blue, being seen mainly by reflected light; in the latter case it was reddish, being seen mainly by transmitted light. Such smoke was not in exactly the condition to give us the glow of the Alps, but it was a step in this direction. Brücke’s fine precipitate above referred to looks yellowish by transmitted light, but by duly strengthening the precipitate you may render the white light of noon as ruby colored as the sun when seen through Liverpool smoke or upon Alpine horizons.

I do not, however, point to the gross smoke arising from coal as an illustration of the action of small particles, because such smoke soon absorbs and destroys the waves of blue instead of sending them to the eyes of the observer.

These multifarious facts, and numberless others which cannot now be referred to, are explained by reference to the single principle that where the scattering particles are small in comparison to the size of the waves, we have in the reflected light a greater proportion of the smaller waves, and in the transmitted light a greater proportion of the larger waves, than existed in the original white light. The physiological consequence is that in the one light blue is predominant, and in the other light orange or red. And now let us push our inquiries forward. Our best microscopes can readily reveal objects not more than 1/50000 of an inch in diameter. This is less than the length of a wave of red light. Indeed, a first-rate microscope would enable us to discern objects not exceeding in diameter the length of the smallest waves of the visible spectrum. By the microscope, therefore, we can submit our particles to an experimental test. If they are as large as the light-waves they will infallibly be seen; and if they are not seen it is because they are smaller.

I placed in the hands of our president a bottle containing Brücke’s particles in greater number and coarseness than those examined by Brücke himself. The liquid was a milky blue, and Mr. Huxley applied to it his highest microscopic power. He satisfied me at the time that had particles of even 1/100000 of an inch in diameter existed in the liquid they could not have escaped detection. But no particles were seen. Under the microscope the turbid liquid was not to be distinguished from distilled water. Brücke, I may say, also found the particles to be of ultra microscopic magnitude.

But we have it in our power to imitate far more closely than we have hitherto done the natural conditions of this problem. We can generate in air, as many of you know, artificial skies, and prove their perfect identity with the natural one as regards the exhibition of a number of wholly unexpected phenomena. By a continuous process of growth, moreover, we are able to connect sky matter, if I may use the term, with molecular matter on the one side, and with molar matter, or matter in sensible masses, on the other.

In illustration of this, I will take an experiment described by M. Morren, of Marseilles, at the last meeting of the British Association. Sulphur and oxygen combine to form sulphurous acid gas. It is this choking gas that is smelt when a sulphur match is burnt in air. Two atoms of oxygen and one of sulphur constitute the molecule of sulphurous acid. Now it has been recently shown in a great number of instances that waves of ether issuing from a strong source, such as the sun or the electric light, are competent to shake asunder the atoms of gaseous molecules. A chemist would call this “decomposition” by light; but it behooves us, who are examining the power and function of the imagination, to keep constantly before us the physical images which we hold to underlie our terms. Therefore I say, sharply and definitely, that the components of the molecules of sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by the ether waves. Enclosing the substance in a suitable vessel, placing it in a dark room, and sending through it a powerful beam of light, we at first see nothing; the vessel containing the gas is as empty as a vacuum. Soon, however, along the track of the beam a beautiful sky-blue color is observed, which is due to the liberated particles of sulphur. For a time the blue grows more intense; it then becomes whitish; and from a whitish blue it passes to a more or less perfect white. If the action be continued long enough, we end by filling the tube with a dense cloud of sulphur particles, which by the application of proper means may be rendered visible.

Here, then, our ether waves untie the bond of chemical affinity, and liberate a body—sulphur—which at ordinary temperatures is a solid, and which therefore soon becomes an object of the senses. We have first of all the free atoms of sulphur, which are both invisible and incompetent to stir the retina sensibly with scattered light. But these atoms gradually coalesce and form particles, which grow larger by continual accretion until after a minute or two they appear as sky matter. In this condition they are invisible themselves, but competent to send an amount of wave motion to the retina sufficient to produce the firmamental blue. The particles continue, or may be caused to continue, in this condition for a considerable time, during which no microscope can cope with them. But they continually grow larger, and pass by insensible gradations into the state of cloud, when they can no longer elude the armed eye. Thus, without solution of continuity, we start with matter in the molecule, and end with matter in the mass, sky matter being the middle term of the series of transformations.

Instead of sulphurous acid we might choose from a dozen other substances, and produce the same effect with any of them. In the case of some—probably in the case of all—it is possible to preserve matter in the skyey condition for fifteen or twenty minutes under the continual operation of the light. During these fifteen or twenty minutes the particles are constantly growing larger, without ever exceeding the size requisite to the production of the celestial blue. Now when two vessels are placed before you, each containing sky matter, it is possible to state with great distinctness which vessel contains the largest particles.

The eye is very sensitive to differences of light, when, as here, the eye is in comparative darkness, and when the quantities of wave motion thrown against the retina are small. The larger particles declare themselves by the greater whiteness of their scattered light. Call now to mind the observation, or effort at observation, made by our president when he failed to distinguish the particles of resin in Brücke’s medium, and when you have done so follow me. I permitted a beam of light to act upon a certain vapor. In two minutes the azure appeared, but at the end of fifteen minutes it had not ceased to be azure. After fifteen minutes, for example, its color and some other phenomena pronounced it to be a blue of distinctly smaller particles than those sought for in vain by Mr. Huxley. These particles, as already stated, must have been less than 1/100000 of an inch in diameter.

And now I want you to submit to your imagination the following question: Here are particles which have been growing continually for fifteen minutes, and at the end of that time are demonstrably smaller than those which defied the microscope of Mr. Huxley. What must have been the size of these particles at the beginning of their growth? What notion can you form of the magnitude of such particles? As the distances of stellar space give us simply a bewildering sense of vastness without leaving any distinct impression on the mind, so the magnitudes with which we have here to do impress us with a bewildering sense of smallness. We are dealing with infinitesimals compared with which the test objects of the microscope are literally immense.

From their perviousness to stellar light, and other considerations, Sir John Herschel drew some startling conclusions regarding the density and weight of comets. You know that these extraordinary and mysterious bodies sometimes throw out tails 100,000,000 of miles in length, and 50,000 miles in diameter. The diameter of our earth is 8,000 miles. Both it and the sky, and a good portion of space beyond the sky, would certainly be included in a sphere 10,000 miles across. Let us fill this sphere with cometary matter, and make it our unit of measure. An easy calculation informs us that to produce a comet’s tail of the size just mentioned, about 300,000 such measures would have to be emptied into space. Now suppose the whole of this stuff to be swept together, and suitably compressed, what do you suppose its volume would be? Sir John Herschel would probably tell you that the whole mass might be carted away at a single effort by one of your dray-horses. In fact, I do not know that he would require more than a small fraction of a horse-power to remove the cometary dust. After this you will hardly regard as monstrous a notion I have sometimes entertained concerning the quantity of matter in our sky. Suppose a shell, then, to surround the earth at a hight above the surface which would place it beyond the grosser matter that hangs in the lower regions of the air—say at the hight of the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc. Outside this shell we have the deep blue firmament. Let the atmospheric space beyond the shell be swept clean, and let the sky matter be properly gathered up. What is its probable amount? I have sometimes thought that a lady’s portmanteau would contain it all. I have thought that even a gentleman’s portmanteau—possibly his snuff-box—might take it in. And whether the actual sky be capable of this amount of condensation or not, I entertain no doubt that a sky quite as vast as ours, and as good in appearance, could be formed from a quantity of matter which might be held in the hollow of the hand.

Small in mass, the vastness in point of number of the particles of our sky may be inferred from the continuity of its light. It is not in broken patches nor at scattered points that the heavenly azure is revealed. To the observer on the summit of Mont Blanc the blue is as uniform and coherent as if it formed the surface of the most close-grained solid. A marble dome would not exhibit a stricter continuity. And Mr. Glaisher will inform you that if our hypothetical shell were lifted to twice the hight of Mont Blanc above the earth’s surface, we should still have the azure overhead. Everywhere through the atmosphere those sky particles are strewn. They fill the Alpine valleys, spreading like a delicate gauze in front of the slopes of pine. They sometimes so swathe the peaks with light as to abolish their definition. This year I have seen the Weisshorn thus dissolved in opalescent air.

By proper instruments the glare thrown from the sky particles against the retina may be quenched, and then the mountain which it obliterated starts into sudden definition. Its extinction in front of a dark mountain resembles exactly the withdrawal of a veil. It is the light then taking possession of the eye, and not the particles acting as opaque bodies, that interfere with the definition.

By day this light quenches the stars; even by moonlight it is able to exclude from vision all stars between the fifth and the eleventh magnitude. It may be likened to a noise, and the stellar radiance to a whisper drowned by the noise. What is the nature of the particles which shed this light? On points of controversy I will not here enter, but I may say that De la Rive ascribes the haze of the Alps in fine weather to floating organic germs. Now the possible existence of germs in such profusion has been held up as an absurdity. It has been affirmed that they would darken the air, and on the assumed impossibility of their existence in the requisite numbers, without invasion of the solar light, a powerful argument has been based by believers in spontaneous generation.

Similar arguments have been used by the opponents of the germ theory of epidemic disease, and both parties have triumphantly challenged an appeal to the microscope and the chemist’s balance to decide the question. Without committing myself in the least to De la Rive’s notion, without offering any objection here to the doctrine of spontaneous generation, without expressing any adherence to the germ theory of disease, I would simply draw attention to the fact that in the atmosphere we have particles which defy both the microscope and the balance, which do not darken the air, and which exist, nevertheless, in multitudes sufficient to reduce to insignificance the Israelitish hyperbole regarding the sands upon the seashore.

The varying judgments of men on these and other questions may perhaps be, to some extent, accounted for by that doctrine of relativity which plays so important a part in philosophy. This doctrine affirms that the impressions made upon us by any circumstance, or combination of circumstances, depends upon our previous state. Two travelers upon the same peak, the one having ascended to it from the plain, the other having descended to it from a higher elevation, will be differently affected by the scene around them. To the one nature is expanding, to the other it is contracting, and feelings are sure to differ which have two such different antecedent states.

In our scientific judgments the law of relativity may also play an important part. To two men, one educated in the school of the senses, who has mainly occupied himself with observation, and the other educated in the school of imagination as well, and exercised in the conception of atoms and molecules to which we have so frequently referred, a bit of matter, say 1/50000 of an inch in diameter, will present itself differently. The one descends to it from his molar hights, the other climbs to it from his molecular lowlands. To the one it appears small, to the other large. So also as regards the appreciation of the most minute forms of life revealed by the microscope. To one of these men they naturally appear conterminous with the ultimate particles of matter, and he readily figures the molecules from which they directly spring; with him there is but a step from the atom to the organism. The other discerns numberless organic gradations between both. Compared with his atoms, the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the microscopic field are as behemoth and leviathan.

The law of relativity may to some extent explain the different attitudes of these two men with regard to the question of spontaneous generation. An amount of evidence which satisfies the one entirely fails to satisfy the other; and while to the one the last bold defense and startling expansion of the doctrine will appear perfectly conclusive, to the other it will present itself as imposing a profitless labor of demolition on subsequent investigators. The proper and possible attitude of these two men is that each of them should work as if it were his aim and object to establish the view entertained by the other.

I trust, Mr. President, that you—whom untoward circumstances have made a biologist, but who still keep alive your sympathy with that class of inquiries which nature intended you to pursue and adorn—will excuse me to your brethren if I say that some of them seem to form an inadequate estimate of the distance which separates the microscopic from the molecular limit, and that, as a consequence, they sometimes employ a phraseology which is calculated to mislead.

When, for example, the contents of a cell are described as perfectly homogeneous, as absolutely structureless, because the microscope fails to distinguish any structure, then I think the microscope begins to play a mischievous part. A little consideration will make it plain to all of you that the microscope can have no voice in the real question of germ structure. Distilled water is more perfectly homogeneous than the contents of any possible organic germ. What causes the liquid to cease contracting at 39° F., and to grow bigger until it freezes? It is a structural process of which the microscope can take no note, nor is it likely to do so by any conceivable extension of its powers. Place this distilled water in the field of an electro-magnet, and bring a microscope to bear upon it. Will any change be observed when the magnet is excited? Absolutely none; and still profound and complex changes have occurred.

First of all, the particles of water are rendered diamagnetically polar; and secondly, in virtue of the structure impressed upon it by the magnetic strain of its molecules, the liquid twists a ray of light in a fashion perfectly determinate both as to quantity and direction. It would be immensely interesting to both you and me if one here present, who has brought his brilliant imagination to bear upon this subject, could make us see as he sees the entangled molecular processes involved in the rotation of the plane of polarization by magnetic force. While dealing with this question he lived in a world of matter and of motion to which the microscope has no passport, and in which it can offer no aid. The cases in which similar conditions hold are simply numberless. Have the diamond, the amethyst, and the countless other crystals formed in the laboratories of nature and of man, no structure? Assuredly they have, but what can the microscope make of it? Nothing. It cannot be too distinctly borne in mind that between the microscopic limit and the true molecular limit there is room for infinite permutations and combinations. It is in this region that the poles of the atoms are arranged, that tendency is given to their powers, so that when these poles and powers have free action and proper stimulus in a suitable environment, they determine first the germ and afterwards the complete organism. This first marshaling of the atoms on which all subsequent action depends baffles a keener power than that of the microscope. Through pure excess of complexity, and long before observation can have any voice in the matter, the most highly trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem. We are struck dumb by an astonishment which no microscope can relieve, doubting not only the power of our instrument, but even whether we ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever enable us to grapple with the ultimate structural energies of nature.

But the speculative faculty, of which imagination forms so large a part, will nevertheless wander into regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be entirely shut out. We think that though the detailed analysis may be, and may ever remain, beyond us, general notions may be attainable. At all events, it is plain that beyond the present outposts of microscopic inquiry lies an immense field for the exercise of the imagination. It is only, however, the privileged spirits who know how to use their liberty without abusing it, who are able to surround imagination by the firm frontiers of reason, that are likely to work with any profit here. But freedom to them is of such paramount importance that, for the sake of securing it, a good deal of wildness on the part of weaker brethren may be overlooked. In more senses than one Mr. Darwin has drawn heavily upon the scientific tolerance of his age. He has drawn heavily upon time in his development of species, and he has drawn adventurously upon matter in his theory of pan-genesis. According to this theory, a germ already microscopic is a world of minor germs. Not only is the organism as a whole wrapped up in the germ, but every organ of the organism has there its special seed.

This, I say, is an adventurous draft on the power of matter to divide itself and distribute its forces. But, unless we are perfectly sure that he is overstepping the bounds of reason, that he is unwittingly sinning against observed fact or demonstrated law—for a mind like that of Darwin can never sin wittingly against either fact or law—we ought, I think, to be cautious in limiting his intellectual horizon. If there be the least doubt in the matter, it ought to be given in favor of the freedom of such a mind. To it a vast possibility is in itself a dynamic power, though the possibility may never be drawn upon.

It gives me pleasure to think that the facts and reasonings of this discourse tend rather towards the justification of Mr. Darwin than towards his condemnation, that they tend rather to augment than to diminish the cubic space demanded by this soaring speculator; for they seem to show the perfect competence of matter and force, as regards divisibility and distribution, to bear the heaviest strain that he has hitherto imposed upon them.

In the case of Mr. Darwin, observation, imagination, and reason combined have run back with wonderful sagacity and success over a certain length of the line of biological succession. Guided by analogy, in his “Origin of Species” he placed as the root of life a primordial germ, from which he conceived the amazing richness and variety of the life that now is upon the earth’s surface, might be deduced. If this were true it would not be final. The human imagination would infallibly look behind the germ, and inquire into the history of its genesis.

Certainty is here hopeless, but the materials for an opinion may be attainable. In this dim twilight of speculation the inquirer welcomes every gleam, and seeks to augment his light by indirect incidences. He studies the methods of nature in the ages and the worlds within his reach, in order to shape the course of imagination in the antecedent ages and worlds. And though the certainty possessed by experimental inquiry is here shut out, the imagination is not left entirely without guidance. From the examination of the solar system, Kant and Laplace came to the conclusion that its various bodies once formed parts of the same undislocated mass; that matter in a nebulous form preceded matter in a dense form; that as the ages rolled away heat was wasted, condensation followed, planets were detached, and that finally the chief portion of the fiery cloud reached, by self-compression, the magnitude and density of our sun. The earth itself offers evidence of a fiery origin; and in our day the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace receives the independent countenance of spectrum analysis, which proves the same substances to be common to the earth and sun. Accepting some such view of the construction of our system as probable, a desire immediately arises to connect the present life of our planet with the past. We wish to know something of our remotest ancestry.

On its first detachment from the central mass, life, as we understand it, could hardly have been present on the earth. How then did it come there? The thing to be encouraged here is a reverent freedom—a freedom preceded by the hard discipline which checks licentiousness in speculation—while the thing to be repressed, both in science and out of it, is dogmatism. And here I am in the hands of the meeting—willing to end, but ready to go on. I have no right to intrude upon you, unasked, the unformed notions which are floating like clouds or gathering to more solid consistency in the modern speculative scientific mind. But if you wish me to speak plainly, honestly, and undisputatiously, I am willing to do so. On the present occasion

You are ordained to call, and I to come.