Part 23

Of scarcely less importance, it seems, was that movement which was prepared for by the illustrious biologists of the hundred years just past, and formally begun by the late Mr. Darwin. Galileo quickened the sense for the simpler phenomena of inorganic nature. And with the same simplicity and frankness that marked the efforts of Galileo, and without the aid of technical or scientific instruments, without physical or chemical experiment, but solely by the power of thought and observation, Darwin grasps a new property of organic nature--which we may briefly call its plasticity. With the same directness of purpose, Darwin, too, pursues his way. With the same candor and love of truth, he points out the strength and the weakness of his demonstrations. With masterly equanimity he holds aloof from the discussion of irrelevant subjects and wins alike the admiration of his adherents and of his adversaries.

Scarcely thirty years have elapsed since Darwin first propounded the principles of his theory of evolution. Yet, already we see his ideas firmly rooted in every branch of human thought, however remote. Everywhere, in history, in philosophy, even in the physical sciences, we hear the watchwords: heredity, adaptation, selection. We speak of the struggle for existence among the heavenly bodies and of the struggle for existence in the world of molecules.

The impetus given by Galileo to scientific thought was marked in every direction; thus, his pupil, Borelli, founded the school of exact medicine, from whence proceeded even distinguished mathematicians. And now Darwinian ideas, in the same way, are animating all provinces of research. It is true, nature is not made up of two distinct parts, the inorganic and the organic; nor must these two divisions be treated perforce by totally distinct methods. Many sides, however, nature has. Nature is like a thread in an intricate tangle, which must be followed and traced, now from this point, now from that. But we must never imagine,--and this physicists have learned from Faraday and J. R. Mayer,--that progress along paths once entered upon is the only means of reaching the truth.

It will devolve upon the specialists of the future to determine the relative tenability and fruitfulness of the Darwinian ideas in the different provinces. Here I wish simply to consider the growth of natural knowledge in the light of the theory of evolution. For knowledge, too, is a product of organic nature. And although ideas, as such, do not comport themselves in all respects like independent organic individuals, and although violent comparisons should be avoided, still, if Darwin reasoned rightly, the general imprint of evolution and transformation must be noticeable in ideas also.

I shall waive here the consideration of the fruitful topic of the transmission of ideas or rather of the transmission of the aptitude for certain ideas. Nor would it come within my province to discuss psychical evolution in any form, as Spencer and many other modern psychologists have done, with varying success. Neither shall I enter upon a discussion of the struggle for existence and of natural selection among scientific theories. We shall consider here only such processes of transformation as every student can easily observe in his own mind.

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The child of the forest picks out and pursues with marvellous acuteness the trails of animals. He outwits and overreaches his foes with surpassing cunning. He is perfectly at home in the sphere of his peculiar experience. But confront him with an unwonted phenomenon; place him face to face with a technical product of modern civilisation, and he will lapse into impotency and helplessness. Here are facts which he does not comprehend. If he endeavors to grasp their meaning, he misinterprets them. He fancies the moon, when eclipsed, to be tormented by an evil spirit. To his mind a puffing locomotive is a living monster. The letter accompanying a commission with which he is entrusted, having once revealed his thievishness, is in his imagination a conscious being, which he must hide beneath a stone, before venturing to commit a fresh trespass. Arithmetic to him is like the art of the geomancers in the Arabian Nights,--an art which is able to accomplish every imaginable impossibility. And, like Voltaire's ingénu, when placed in our social world, he plays, as we think, the maddest pranks.

With the man who has made the achievements of modern science and civilisation his own, the case is quite different. He sees the moon pass temporarily into the shadow of the earth. He feels in his thoughts the water growing hot in the boiler of the locomotive; he feels also the increase of the tension which pushes the piston forward. Where he is not able to trace the direct relation of things he has recourse to his yard-stick and table of logarithms, which aid and facilitate his thought without predominating over it. Such opinions as he cannot concur in, are at least known to him, and he knows how to meet them in argument.

Now, wherein does the difference between these two men consist? The train of thought habitually employed by the first one does not correspond to the facts that he sees. He is surprised and nonplussed at every step. But the thoughts of the second man follow and anticipate events, his thoughts have become adapted or accommodated to the larger field of observation and activity in which he is located; he conceives things as they are. The Indian's sphere of experience, however, is quite different; his bodily organs of sense are in constant activity; he is ever intensely alert and on the watch for his foes; or, his entire attention and energy are engaged in procuring sustenance. Now, how can such a creature project his mind into futurity, foresee or prophesy? This is not possible until our fellow-beings have, in a measure, relieved us of our concern for existence. It is then that we acquire freedom for observation, and not infrequently too that narrowness of thought which society helps and teaches us to disregard.

If we move for a time within a fixed circle of phenomena which recur with unvarying uniformity, our thoughts gradually adapt themselves to our environment; our ideas reflect unconsciously our surroundings. The stone we hold in our hand, when dropped, not only falls to the ground in reality; it also falls in our thoughts. Iron-filings dart towards a magnet in imagination as well as in fact, and, when thrown into a fire, they grew hot in conception as well.

The impulse to complete mentally a phenomenon that has been only partially observed, has not its origin in the phenomenon itself; of this fact, we are fully sensible. And we well know that it does not lie within the sphere of our volition. It seems to confront us rather as a power and a law imposed from without and controlling both thought and facts.

The fact that we are able by the help of this law to prophesy and forecast, merely proves a sameness or uniformity of environment sufficient to effect a mental adaptation of this kind. A necessity of fulfilment, however, is not contained in this compulsory principle which controls our thoughts; nor is it in any way determined by the possibility of prediction. We are always obliged, in fact, to await the completion of what has been predicted. Errors and departures are constantly discernible, and are slight only in provinces of great rigid constancy, as in astronomy.

In cases where our thoughts follow the connexion of events with ease, and in instances where we positively forefeel the course of a phenomenon, it is natural to fancy that the latter is determined by and must conform to our thoughts. But the belief in that mysterious agency called causality, which holds thought and event in unison, is violently shaken when a person first enters a province of inquiry in which he has previously had no experience. Take for instance the strange interaction of electric currents and magnets, or the reciprocal action of currents, which seem to defy all the resources of mechanical science. Let him be confronted with such phenomena and he will immediately feel himself forsaken by his power of prediction; he will bring nothing with him into this strange field of events but the hope of soon being able to adapt his ideas to the new conditions there presented.

A person constructs from a bone the remaining anatomy of an animal; or from the visible part of a half-concealed wing of a butterfly he infers and reconstructs the part concealed. He does so with a feeling of highest confidence in the accuracy of his results; and in these processes we find nothing preternatural or transcendent. But when physicists adapt their thoughts to conform to the dynamical course of events in time, we invariably surround their investigations with a metaphysical halo; yet these latter adaptations bear quite the same character as the former, and our only reason for investing them with a metaphysical garb, perhaps, is their high practical value.

Let us consider for a moment what takes place when the field of observation to which our ideas have been adapted and now conform, becomes enlarged. We had, let us say, always seen heavy bodies sink when their support was taken away; we had also seen, perhaps, that the sinking of heavier bodies forced lighter bodies upwards. But now we see a lever in action, and we are suddenly struck with the fact that a lighter body is lifting another of much greater weight. Our customary train of thought demands its rights; the new and unwonted event likewise demands its rights. From this conflict between thought and fact the problem arises; out of this partial contrariety springs the question, "Why?" With the new adaptation to the enlarged field of observation, the problem disappears, or, in other words, is solved. In the instance cited, we must adopt the habit of always considering the mechanical work performed.

The child just awakening into consciousness of the world, knows no problem. The bright flower, the ringing bell, are all new to it; yet it is surprised at nothing. The out and out Philistine, whose only thoughts lie in the beaten path of his every-day pursuits, likewise has no problems. Everything goes its wonted course, and if perchance a thing go wrong at times, it is at most a mere object of curiosity and not worth serious consideration. In fact, the question "Why?" loses all warrant in relations where we are familiar with every aspect of events. But the capable and talented young man has his head full of problems; he has acquired, to a greater or less degree, certain habitudes of thought, and at the same time he is constantly observing what is new and unwonted, and in his case there is no end to the questions, "Why?"

Thus, the factor which most promotes scientific thought is the gradual widening of the field of experience. We scarcely notice events we are accustomed to; the latter do not really develop their intellectual significance until placed in contrast with something to which we are unaccustomed. Things that at home are passed by unnoticed, delight us when abroad, though they may appear in only slightly different forms. The sun shines with heightened radiance, the flowers bloom in brighter colors, our fellow-men accost us with lighter and happier looks. And, returning home, we find even the old familiar scenes more inspiring and suggestive than before.

Every motive that prompts and stimulates us to modify and transform our thoughts, proceeds from what is new, uncommon, and not understood. Novelty excites wonder in persons whose fixed habits of thought are shaken and disarranged by what they see. But the element of wonder never lies in the phenomenon or event observed; its place is in the person observing. People of more vigorous mental type aim at once at an adaptation of thought that will conform to what they have observed. Thus does science eventually become the natural foe of the wonderful. The sources of the marvellous are unveiled, and surprise gives way to calm interpretation.

Let us consider such a mental transformative process in detail. The circumstance that heavy bodies fall to the earth appears perfectly natural and regular. But when a person observes that wood floats upon water, and that flames and smoke rise in the air, then the contrary of the first phenomenon is presented. An olden theory endeavors to explain these facts by imputing to substances the power of volition, as that attribute which is most familiar to man. It asserted that every substance seeks its proper place, heavy bodies tending downwards and light ones upwards. It soon turned out, however, that even smoke had weight, that it, too, sought its place below, and that it was forced upwards only because of the downward tendency of the air, as wood is forced to the surface of water because the water exerts the greater downward pressure.

Again, we see a body thrown into the air. It ascends. How is it that it does not seek its proper place? Why does the velocity of its "violent" motion decrease as it rises, while that of its "natural" fall increases as it descends. If we mark closely the relation between these two facts, the problem will solve itself. We shall see, as Galileo did, that the decrease of velocity in rising and the increase of velocity in falling are one and the same phenomenon, viz., an increase of velocity towards the earth. Accordingly, it is not a place that is assigned to the body, but an increase of velocity towards the earth.

By this idea the movements of heavy bodies are rendered perfectly familiar. Newton, now, firmly grasping this new way of thinking, sees the moon and the planets moving in their paths upon principles similar to those which determine the motion of a projectile thrown into the air. Yet the movements of the planets were marked by peculiarities which compelled him once more to modify slightly his customary mode of thought. The heavenly bodies, or rather the parts composing them, do not move with constant accelerations towards each other, but "attract each other," directly as the mass and inversely as the square of the distance.

This latter notion, which includes the one applying to terrestrial bodies as a special case, is, as we see, quite different from the conception from which we started. How limited in scope was the original idea and to what a multitude of phenomena is not the present one applicable! Yet there is a trace, after all, of the "search for place" in the expression "attraction." And it would be folly, indeed, for us to avoid, with punctilious dread, this conception of "attraction" as bearing marks of its pedigree. It is the historical base of the Newtonian conception and it still continues to direct our thoughts in the paths so long familiar to us. Thus, the happiest ideas do not fall from heaven, but spring from notions already existing.

Similarly, a ray of light was first regarded as a continuous and homogeneous straight line. It then became the path of projection for minute missiles; then an aggregate of the paths of countless different kinds of missiles. It became periodic; it acquired various sides; and ultimately it even lost its motion in a straight line.

The electric current was conceived originally as the flow of a hypothetical fluid. To this conception was soon added the notion of a chemical current, the notion of an electric, magnetic, and anisotropic optical field, intimately connected with the path of the current. And the richer a conception becomes in following and keeping pace with facts, the better adapted it is to anticipate them.

Adaptive processes of this kind have no assignable beginning, inasmuch as every problem that incites to new adaptation, presupposes a fixed habitude of thought. Moreover, they have no visible end; in so far as experience never ceases. Science, accordingly, stands midway in the evolutionary process; and science may advantageously direct and promote this process, but it can never take its place. That science is inconceivable the principles of which would enable a person with no experience to construct the world of experience, without a knowledge of it. One might just as well expect to become a great musician, solely by the aid of theory, and without musical experience; or to become a painter by following the directions of a text-book.

In glancing over the history of an idea with which we have become perfectly familiar, we are no longer able to appreciate the full significance of its growth. The deep and vital changes that have been effected in the course of its evolution, are recognisable only from the astounding narrowness of view with which great contemporary scientists have occasionally opposed each other. Huygens's wave-theory of light was incomprehensible to Newton, and Newton's idea of universal gravity was unintelligible to Huygens. But a century afterwards both notions were reconcilable, even in ordinary minds.

On the other hand, the original creations of pioneer intellects, unconsciously formed, do not assume a foreign garb; their form is their own. In them, childlike simplicity is joined to the maturity of manhood, and they are not to be compared with processes of thought in the average mind. The latter are carried on as are the acts of persons in the state of mesmerism, where actions involuntarily follow the images which the words of other persons suggest to their minds.

The ideas that have become most familiar through long experience, are the very ones that intrude themselves into the conception of every new fact observed. In every instance, thus, they become involved in a struggle for self-preservation, and it is just they that are seized by the inevitable process of transformation.