The Scientific Spirit of the Age, and Other Pleas and Discussions

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 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”?

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.

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.

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