Chapter I: Introductory (2)

The advantages which ensue from this mode of "ranging round each topic" are well described by the late Sir B. Brodie (Psychological Inquiries, 1st series, p. 18). "Our minds are so constructed that we can keep the attention fixed on a particular object until we have, as it were, looked all around it; and the mind that possesses this faculty in the greatest degree of perfection will take cognisance of relations of which another mind has no perception. It is this, much more than any difference in the abstract power of reasoning, which constitutes the vast difference which exists between the minds of different individuals; which distinguishes the far-sighted statesman from the shallow politician; the sagacious and accomplished general from the mere disciplinarian. Such also is the history, not only of the poetic genius, but also of the genius of discovery in science. 'I keep the subject,' said Sir Isaac Newton, 'constantly before me, and wait until the first dawnings open by little and little into a full light.' It was thus that, after long meditation, he was led to the invention of fluxions, and to the anticipation of the modern discovery of the combustibility of the diamond. It was thus that Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood; and that those views were suggested to Davy, which are propounded in the Bakerian lecture of 1806, and which laid the foundation of that grand series of experimental researches which terminated in the decomposition of the earths and alkalies."

Dr. Tyndall also considers the case of Newton ("Fragments of Science," p. 60). "Newton pondered all these things. He had a great power of pondering. He could look into the darkest subject until it became entirely luminous. How this light arises we cannot explain; but, as a matter of fact, it does arise." Dr. Tyndall had before remarked on the question thus suggested, that "There is much in this process of pondering and its results which it is impossible to analyse. It is by a kind of inspiration that we rise from the wise and sedulous contemplation of facts to the principles on which they depend. The mind is, as it were, a photographic plate, which is gradually cleansed by the effort to think rightly, and which when so cleansed, and not before, receives impressions from the light of truth. This passage from facts to principles is called induction, which in its highest form is inspiration; but, to make it sure, the inward sight must be shown to be in accordance with outward fact. To prove or disprove the induction, we must resort to deduction and experiment."--Ibid, p. 57-8.

This last remark concerns the process of verification which the accomplished writer discusses through several subsequent pages.

Notwithstanding a passing observation of Dr. Tyndall's that "this power of pondering facts is one with which the ancients could be but imperfectly acquainted," some readers will be struck by the thought that it forms the nearest approach which can be made by any inductive discoverer to the old philosophical method of Dialectic. Janet says, in a volume to which those who have not encountered it will thank me for introducing them, "La dialectique logique dans Platon est parfaitement conforme aux lois de la raison. Elle ne sert qu'à réfuter les idées fausses, ou à éclaircir les idées données antérieurement par une sorte de synthèse, qui, suivant les uns, n'est que le progrès de la généralisation, et, selon nous, est le progrès de l'intuition." (Études sur la Dialectique dans Platon et dans Hegel, p. 393.) For a more complete appreciation of what is here stated in few words, the student should peruse pp. 244, seq. The account given by Janet appears in some measure to coincide with Dr. Tyndall's idea, though perhaps the word "Intuition" might be more entirely approved by Schelling or Coleridge than by any Physicist.

Be this as it may, Dr. Tyndall's outline of the Inductive process in its highest form is evidently one which describes the prerogative of Genius--the exercise of Imagination as distinguished from Fancy--the child, that is, of Reason, rather than a stray bantling of sportive wit.

To bring his general conception within the grasp of every-day workers, and describe a procedure which may be adopted as a kind of practical rule or maxim, let us look at this subject in the following manner.

Suppose we take the example of a great idea; that, for instance, of the constitution of Great Britain, or any other nation which subsists in tolerable freedom from revolutionary change. There are clearly two elements involved--one, Permanence; the other, Progress. These, in the actual working constitution, form its factors, or moments (as they may be better termed); and in the idea or mental representation of the same, we may liken them to complementary colours in the spectrum, which appear separately contrasted in tint, but blend together in a wave of white light. Now, our analysing faculty of mind is, in point of fact, our intellectual prism. It separates each bright and strong idea into elements so antagonistic as to be apparently incompatible. Like clear yellow and shadowy violet, one component seems excellent in beauty, another its foil or opposite. To one class of minds truth consists in Permanence, and Progress is a note of evil omen. Of another class the contradictory is true. The real statesman alone knows that their blending is a question of measure and degree, of human affairs,--time, circumstance, and opportunity.

We may ask with reason what gain accrues to the statesman by looking at his country's constitution from this point of sight? Evidently a good deal. He will soon discern that practically it cannot exist in vigour if either factor be eliminated. Each is given in the analysis of his prolific idea, and, however great may seem the apparent incompatibility, both must be capable of co-existence and correlation. Now, there could be no synthesis if, on the one hand, Progress did not imply a something which remains identical and in unity with itself, while it flourishes and grows;--or, on the other hand, if Permanence were not safest, when its strength is manifested by its vital increase. Consequently, to grow is to continue essentially the same;--to be permanent is to live and bear fresh fruit every passing year.

A precisely similar advantage accrues to the Ethical Philosopher from a process of the like description. He considers (it may be) the concrete idea of moral activity. Obviously, there must be found in it an unfettered power of choice, and a conformity to the rule of moral law. Submitted to the analytic prism, the two elements come out at opposite poles in very decided contrast. At the pole of necessary conformity we find what looks like Determinism;--at the pole of choice appears its irreconcilable antagonist, a sense of Responsibility, logically unexplained, but inalienable from our moral nature. And our Ethical inquirer finds the only possible synthesis of his two contrasted moments of morality in the deep truth that each righteous man is a Law unto himself. And hence it is, that the righteous shines out over the lower world of mechanical arrangement--a faint, it may be, but still a visible image of the God who made him what he is.[11]

By the same process of analysis and reconstruction the Natural Theologian arrives (as may be shown) at a synthesis of Faith and Reason. Yet these two are antagonistic in the eyes both of the sceptic and the superstitious. _Les extrêmes se touchent_, and by both extremes faith is relegated to the region of sentimental æsthetics.

Reason, say both, is Faith's natural enemy; and must fail to yield any expectation of future happiness in the presence of a righteous God, together with its long train of present hopes and fears. Our plain answer is that the true synthesis of Natural Theism lies in the chief primary fact of our human nature--the undeniable existence of its Reasonable Beliefs. They originate deep down, and we may affirm respecting the birth of each and all, as Dr. Tyndall affirms of the inward vision which dawns upon the philosophic mind when photographically cleansed by its own efforts to think rightly,--"how this light arises we cannot explain, but as a matter of fact it does arise." In its degree it may be (to use Dr. Tyndall's word) "a kind of inspiration." And what endowment has a higher claim to such a representative kinship?--what nobler gift can be conceived from God to man than a Belief of Reason? Dr. Tyndall's further requirement that "the inward sight must be shown to be in accordance with the outward fact," a Natural Theologian may hope to meet by a sufficient verification. He may meet it in the case of this particular Belief by showing, as we shall try to show, our actual human experience of its working and its worth.

We might pursue similar examples through the regions of Discovery and Production, but the three instances already adduced may fairly suffice. It is, perhaps, more interesting to observe the real gains which accrue from pondering over an idea in the manner exemplified. How much political _charlatanerie_ is at once disposed of when men distinctly acknowledge that two reputed incompatibilities, however useful as war-cries, are essentially conjoint elements in all truly statesmanlike action: what countless angry controversies die in the moral principle that each righteous man is a Law unto himself! And not only to Natural Theology, but to other parts of knowledge, it is of the greatest utility to perceive with equal distinctness that Reason has its beliefs as well as Unreason; and that when we accept reasonable beliefs as the basis of scientific investigation, we affirm their value for the conduct and government of life. The true amount of that value as a mainspring of our hopeful activities is estimated on another page. Meantime, we may remark from the three examples above discussed, how regularly an idea of Reason, analysed into its complementary factors, resumes a concrete form when we employ it as a maxim of practical life. The politician who separates progress from stability is really preparing his country for revolution. The man on whose heart the law is not written (like the necessity laid upon St. Paul[12]) is as yet imperfectly righteous. And so too, if in our Beliefs we lose sight of the gift that makes us human, we are likely to ring the changes between superstition, atheism, and effeminate sentimentality.

When, from results, we pass to the easiest method for attaining them, there seems but little to add to the extracts with which this note commenced. And if the object be clearly defined, the labour of the mental workshop need not be a severe discouragement. It is true that no man can take his Thought--the offspring of his inward Light--pull it to pieces, and reconstruct it, as he would deal with a thing of brass or iron. But every earnest ponderer may keep his prolific idea steadily in view, and hold conversations with himself respecting it. This is the well-known method by which Aristotle virtually obtains his conclusions before he finally proceeds to deduce them. From the same conception of Method, real thinking appears to Plato as a Dialogue without speech. And, doubtless, actual discussion between two or more living men would be the surest way of arriving at the goal of insight, provided those most uncommon of all endowments, common sense and common honesty, could be assured to the dialecticians.[13]

Thus much, then, may serve as an illustration of the task we are attempting, and of the means by which we hope to accomplish it. If achieved, it will form a contribution to the great work thus characterised by the Rector of Lincoln College from the University pulpit, as reported in the _Oxford Undergraduates' Journal_ for October 26, 1871: "The Natural Theology of the last century is no longer found to be satisfactory in presence of the geological and biological sciences as they now stand. The answer that the sciences are wrong and the theologians are right does not admit of being discussed or refuted, for it is the answer of ignorance. The answer of the Catholic Church, which is to take refuge in its own authority, can only be practically tendered where there is an infallible living authority, as in the chair of S. Peter. It seems to be the business of the English Church especially--a Church which has never yet broken with reason or proscribed education--to fairly face these questions, to resume the Natural Theology of the past age, and to re-establish the synthesis of Science and Faith."

E.--ON THE EFFECT OF CONSILIENT PROOFS.

The expressive word "_Consilience_" has been adopted on the authority of Dr. Whewell and Professor Pritchard, both of whom employ it in preference to the commoner expression _convergence_. Upon the force of consilient proofs, Dr. Whewell writes thus:--

"The cases in which inductions from classes of facts altogether different have _jumped together_, belong only to the best established theories which the history of science contains. And as I shall have occasion to refer to this peculiar feature in their evidence, I will take the liberty of describing it by a particular phrase, and will term it the _Consilience of Inductions_.

"It is exemplified principally in some of the greatest discoveries. Thus it was found by Newton that the doctrine of the attraction of the sun varying according to the inverse square of the distance, which explained Kepler's _Third Law_ of the proportionality of the cubes of the distances to the squares of the periodic times of the planets, explained also his _First_ and _Second Laws_ of the elliptical motion of each planet; although no connexion of these laws had been visible before. Again, it appeared that the force of universal gravitation, which had been inferred from the _perturbations_ of the moon and planets by the sun and by each other, also accounted for the fact, apparently altogether dissimilar and remote, of the _precession of the equinoxes_. Here was a most striking and surprising coincidence, which gave to the theory a stamp of truth beyond the power of ingenuity to counterfeit....

... The theory of universal gravitation, and of the undulatory theory of light, are indeed full of examples of this consilience of inductions. With regard to the latter, it has been justly asserted by Herschel, that the history of the undulatory theory was a succession of _felicities_. And it is precisely the unexpected coincidences of results drawn from distant parts of the subject which are properly thus described." ("Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," B. XI., chap. v., s. 3.)

And again, "It is true, the explanation of one set of facts may be of the same nature as the explanation of the other class; but then, that the cause explains _both_ classes, gives it a very different claim upon our attention and assent from that which it would have if it explained one class only. The very circumstance that the two explanations coincide, is a most weighty presumption in their favour. It is the testimony of two witnesses in behalf of the hypothesis; and in proportion as these two witnesses are separate and independent, the conviction produced by their agreement is more and more complete. When the explanation of two kinds of phenomena, distinct, and not apparently connected, leads us to the same cause, such a coincidence does give a reality to the cause, which it has not while it merely accounts for those appearances which suggested the supposition. This coincidence of propositions inferred from separate classes of facts, is exactly what we noticed in the last book, as one of the most decisive characteristics of a true theory, under the name of _Consilience of Inductions_.

"That Newton's first rule of philosophizing, so understood, authorizes the inferences which he himself made, is really the ground on which they are so firmly believed by philosophers. Thus, when the doctrine of a gravity varying inversely as the square of the distance from the body, accounted at the same time for the relations of times and distances in the planetary orbits and for the amount of the moon's deflection from the tangent of her orbit, such a doctrine became most convincing: or, again, when the doctrine of the universal gravitation of all parts of matter, which explained so admirably the inequalities of the moon's motions, also gave a satisfactory account of a phenomenon utterly different--the precession of the equinoxes. And of the same kind is the evidence in favour of the undulatory theory of light, when the assumption of the length of an undulation, to which we are led by the colours of thin plates, is found to be identical with that length which explains the phenomena of diffraction; or when the hypothesis of transverse vibrations, suggested by the facts of polarization, explains also the laws of double refraction. When such a convergence of two trains of induction points to the same spot, we can no longer suspect that we are wrong. Such an accumulation of proof really persuades us that we have to do with a _vera causa_. And if this kind of proof be multiplied,--if we again find other facts of a sort uncontemplated in framing our hypothesis, but yet clearly accounted for when we have adopted the supposition,--we are still further confirmed in our belief, and by such accumulation of proof we may be so far satisfied as to believe without conceiving it possible to doubt. In this case, when the validity of the opinion adopted by us has been repeatedly confirmed by its sufficiency in unforeseen cases, so that all doubt is removed and forgotten, the theoretical cause takes its place among the realities of the world, and becomes _a true cause_." (Ibid. B. XII., chap. xiii., art. 10.)

The reader of this Essay will be pleased to remark as he proceeds that its argument is made up of a diversity of proofs (very many among them being inductive), and that they all lend each other mutual support and become consilient at last.

FOOTNOTES:

[a] The language of this paragraph is the language of ordinary life. In Coleridge's "Table Talk," for example, the subject of Man's distinguishing prerogative of Immortality is discussed by the great speaker, and his nephew's note of the discussion is headed "Materialism." There appears, indeed, considerable difficulty in finding a precise expression for the form of belief, or unbelief, commonly called Materialism. Most people speak of it as of some clear and well-defined theory until they begin seriously to investigate its _rationale_. Investigators are then apt to become loud in their complaints of its inexactness. Take by way of instance the following example. Speaking of "the doctrines of Materialism," Lord Brougham remarks: "The vague and indistinct form of the propositions in which they are conveyed affords one strong argument against their truth. It is not easy to annex a definite meaning to the proposition that mind is inseparably connected with a particular arrangement of the particles of matter; it is more difficult to say what they mean who call it a modification of matter; but to consider it as consisting in a combination of matter, as coming into existence the instant that the particles of matter assume a given arrangement, appears to be a wholly unintelligible collocation of words."--(_Discourse of Natural Theology_, p. 102).

Under such circumstances it may seem difficult for many a Materialist to describe himself as the adherent of a distinct or closely reasoned system. The main point we would submit for his earnest consideration is the question whether his hypothesis lands him in certain subtle refinements concerning the nature and connection of Force, Mind, and those generalized facts which have been called the primary properties of Matter,--or whether it leads him onward to the opinions described in the text. Looking at the subject in this light, we might feel inclined to draw a broad distinction between mere scientific Materialism and the Materialistic doctrines of sceptical philosophy.

[b] "I doubt," said Mr. Gladstone at Liverpool on December 21, 1872,--"I doubt whether any such noxious crop has been gathered in such rank abundance from the press of England in any former year of our literary history as in this present year of our redemption, eighteen hundred and seventy-two." The Premier had before remarked: "I believe that neither Science nor Thought is responsible, any more than Liberty is responsible, for the misdeeds committed in their names."

The passage from which these brief extracts are made is given at greater length in the additional note to this Section (A).

[c] Since writing the above, my attention has been called to Paley's censure of the "disingenuous _form_" under which Scepticism was placed before the public in his day. He says (_Moral Philosophy_, B. v. Sect. 9): "Infidelity is served up in every shape that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination; in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem; in interspersed and broken hints, remote and oblique surmises; in books of travels, of philosophy, of natural history; in a word, in any form rather than the right one,--that of a professed and regular disquisition. And because the coarse buffoonery and broad laugh of the old and rude adversaries of the Christian faith would offend the taste, perhaps, rather than the virtue of this cultivated age, a graver irony, a more skilful and delicate banter, is substituted in their place."

[d] "Atheists," says the _Pall Mall Gazette_ of January 18, 1873, "write Atheism because they are Atheists, but Alexandre Dumas writes Atheism, though a good Catholic, who goes to church every Sunday."

[e] Pre-eminent amongst these remonstrants is Mr. Gladstone. In the speech before cited, he says, p. 25: "It is to be hoped that they will cause a shock and a reaction, and will compel many, who may have too lightly valued the inheritance so dearly bought for them, and may have entered upon dangerous paths, to consider, while there is yet time, whither those paths will lead them. In no part of his writings, perhaps, has Strauss been so effective, as where he assails the inconsistency of those who adopt his premises, but decline to follow him to their conclusions. Suffice it to say, these opinions are by no means a merely German brood; there are many writers of kindred sympathies in England, and some of as outspoken courage." (Compare the extracts from this class of writers given along with the Premier's remarks in Note A.)

[f] Die Zustände eines Volkes hängen hauptsächlich von seiner Denkweise ab: diese ist der wichtigste und einflussreichste Zustand. Alle andern können nur nach und in ihr begriffen werden. Sie ist es, die den Menschen zu einem solchen macht; und in ihrer Ausbildung entwickelt sich erst die Menschlichkeit.--(Wilhelm H. J. Bleek, "Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache," p. 12).

[3] Cowper, "The Task," B. III.--It must be confessed that the honest-minded humanitarian may often find in the reception he encounters ample reason and motive enough for taking up Teufelsdroeckh's parable:--"'In vain thou deniest it,' says the Professor; 'thou _art_ my Brother. Thy very hatred, thy very envy, those foolish lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humour: what is all this but an inverted sympathy? Were I a steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? Not thou! I should grind all unheeded, whether badly or well,'"--(_Sartor Resartus_, B. III. c. 7). And when the bigotry of Unbelief is not content with persecuting the honest-minded humanitarian--when he hears some shallow, half-animalized specimen of humanity shouting for a red-handed communism and the blood of the innocent--_then_ he may not irrationally exclaim with the same philosopher:--"Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, suddenly covered up within the largest imaginable glass-bell,--what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the world!"

[g] I am indebted to Mr. Gladstone's appendix (p. 40) for the following apposite quotations from Sir George Cornewall Lewis's very scarce work, "On the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion." Speaking of "Authority, and its place not as an antagonist of Reason, but as an instrument of Reason for the attainment of Truth," Sir George remarks, in page 35 of his book: "'It is commonly said that the belief is independent of the will,' and that no man can change it 'by merely wishing it to be otherwise.' But 'the operation of a personal interest may cause a man insensibly to adopt prejudices or partial and unexamined opinions.' In page 38 he adds: 'Napoleon affords a striking instance of the corruption of the judgment in consequence of the misdirection of the moral sentiments.'"

All friends, and many casual readers, of S. T. Coleridge will remember that he asserted the same, or perhaps a stronger, conclusion upon metaphysical grounds, and with a force of language not easily surpassed. This--one of Coleridge's bursts of gorgeous eloquence and imagery--will be found in "The Friend," a book which, according to C. Lamb, contains "his best talk." The subject commences on page 260 of Vol. III., Ed. 2, and page 211, seq., Vol. III., Ed. 4. In the latter place it is amplified by a summary of his arguments, pages 213, 214. The position propounded, that true insight cannot exist apart from moral rectitude, receives considerable light from the doctrine of philosophical postulates maintained in the "Biographia Literaria," Vol. I. c. 12, and chiefly borrowed from Schelling, to whom there is an honest reference in the first Edition, I. 250. I mention this circumstance because Coleridge has been held guilty of unjustifiable pillage by writers who have noted his borrowing, but omitted to observe such acknowledgments as he makes, together with the additions and alterations which he introduces.

The corruption of a naturally acute understanding has seldom been more graphically painted than by Judge Talfourd. (See Additional Note, B.)

[4] Compare Lord Macaulay on "Special Pleading in History," Additional Note, C.

[h] These divisions have been sometimes called Physico-Theology and Ethico-Theology; but the latter designation is far too restricted for the line of thought pursued in the latter portion of this Essay.

[i] See Additional Note, D.

[5] Pope, "Essay on Man," Ep. II. Compare Mr. Pattison's notes, pp. 87, 88, and 90. We may remark that the Aphorism "Know thyself" has been often employed to convey a lesson the most distant possible from Pope's,--_e.g._, "Know thyself; and so shalt thou know God, as far as is permitted to a creature, and in God all things."

[j] See Additional Note, E.

[6] The work referred to, "Der alte und der neue Glaube," appeared in the latter half of 1872.

[7] Compare an illustrative passage, B. III. p. 34. "We have been seeking to determine, whether our point of view, from which the law-governed All, full of life and intelligence, is the summit of thought (die höchste Idee), can still be called a religious point of view, and we have animadverted upon Schopenhauer, who loses no opportunity of flying in the face of this which is our Idea. As I have said, such outbreaks impress our understanding as absurdities; to our feelings, they are blasphemies. It appears to us rash and reckless, on the part of a mere human individual, so boldly to set himself up against the All, out of which he grows, and from which he has the morsel of intelligence that he misuses. We see in this an abnegation of that feeling of dependence, which we admit to belong to all men. We demand the same piety towards our Universum, as the devout man of the old fashion did for his God."

[8] This declaration we quote in its native German. Its first sentence, together with the sentences immediately preceding, are those passages selected for translation by Mr. Gladstone.

"Historisch genommen, d. h. die ungeheuren Wirkungen dieses Glaubens mit seiner völligen Grundlosigkeit zusammengehalten, lässt sich die Geschichte von der Auferstehung Jesu nur als ein weit historischer Humbug bezeichnen. Es mag demüthigend sein für den menschlichen Stolz, aber es ist so; Jesus könnte all das Wahre und Gute, auch all das Einseitige und Schroffe das ja doch auf die Massen immer den stärksten Eindruck macht, gelehrt und im Leben bethätigt haben; gleichwohl würden seine Lehren wie einzelne Blätter im Winde verweht und zerstreut worden sein, wären diese Blätter nicht von dem Wahnglauben an seine Auferstehung als von einem derben handfesten Einbände zusammengefasst und dadurch erhalten worden." (p. 72.)

[9] As a consequence of the difference in standpoint, the use made by the two men of their several conclusions is marked by very considerable contrast. Comte's Humanity was to be served by a ritual as well as a social set of ordinances. Strauss looks quite another way. Considering the outrage which would be committed upon philosophy and feeling should his Universum find irreverent treatment in the words and writings of men; our emotion, he says, on such occasions becomes thoroughly religious. If then it be asked in express terms whether he and his fellow-thinkers really have a Religion or no, they cannot answer roundly as they will when questioned on Christianity; they must rather say yes or no according to the meaning of the word Religion in the mind of their questioner. (See Strauss, p. 143.)

[10] In the Livraison of the Deux Mondes for November, 1856, M. Cucheval-Clarigny wrote thus: "Personne plus que David Hume n'a éprouvé l'inconstance des jugemens humains. Après avoir été mis au rang des esprits qui ont fait le plus d'honneur à l'humanité, on le compte volontiers aujourd'hui parmi les corrupteurs de la raison et les apôtres du mal." That another kind of interest has been more recently felt in Hume is evidenced by the republication of his works in America and England. While writing this note I learn that a new edition of the seldom-read Treatise on Human Nature will shortly appear, with notes by two well-known members of Balliol College.

[11] Compare with this the subjoined orison for a special gift of moral rectitude penned by Professor Huxley (Lay Sermons, p. 373). "I protest that if some great power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer. The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to any one who will take it of me." It seems wonderful that the talented writer fails to perceive that should his terms be granted the bargain would be dear indeed--it must take place at the expense of his Personality. He would have no choice left, consequently no rightness of choice. With the loss of his volition his manhood would be forfeited; and the Huxley of our praise and blame must needs sink at once and for ever from a Person to a Thing--

"Rolled round in Earth's diurnal course
With rocks, and stones, and trees."

After all, we may trust that this outpouring of soul after mechanical goodness, is neither more nor less than a fresh rehearsal of the popular fallacy or fable of a learned and intelligent, but somewhat over-hasty, death-watch. The difference between the two myths is not great, and both owe their existence to the prolific fancy of Professor Huxley. About three years ago the teleological beetle speculated in a manner which would have grieved the soul of Aldrich or Whately respecting the purpose of a kitchen clock. The death-watch concluded, like a death-watch, and not like a logician, that the clock's final end was to tick. Man, as Bacon tells us, is the servant and interpreter of nature. Does any one feel sure that a death-watch is the servant and interpreter of kitchen timepieces? Yet his inconsequent thinking served as an implement of Fate to "quail, crush, conclude, and quell" Teleology in general, and the Design argument for Natural Theism in particular. _Now_, a human Huxley clock always going morally right _because it must_, is equally conclusive against all freedom and all Conscience. Equally conclusive, we know, because equally true to Nature and to Fact. As conclusive as arguments against received biological tenets drawn from those great natural curiosities the Gorgon, the dragon of St. George, and the fire-breathing Chimæra, who united in her own fair person a lion, a dragon, and a goat. This latter well-known phenomenon may seem nearly as striking as any right-minded clock imaginable, and not much more incongruous.

Many readers may be reminded of Amurath's Ring. But few probably will know, and fewer still recollect, Miss Edgeworth's clever comment upon it in "Rosamond." The book is unfortunately scarce, not having been reprinted along with "Early Lessons," therefore we add the extract ("Rosamond," vol. i., p. 148):--

"Do you remember, brother," said Laura, "your wish when you were reading that story in the 'Adventurer,' last week?"

"Not I. What wish?" said Godfrey. "What story?"

"Don't you remember," said Laura, "when you were reading the story of Amurath and his ring, which always pressed his finger when he was going to do anything wrong?"

"Yes; I wished to have such a ring," said Godfrey.

"Well, a friend is as good as such a ring," said Rosamond; "for a friend is, as somebody observed, a _second conscience_; I may call Laura my _second conscience_."

"Mighty fine! but I don't like secondary conscience; a first conscience is, in my opinion, a better thing," said Godfrey.

"You may have that too," said Rosamond.

"Too! but I'd rather have it alone," said Godfrey. "There is something so cowardly in not daring to stand alone."

The lesson seems to be that second-hand goodness falls short of true goodness, and that the impulse to moral action must arise from within--so unmanly is every endeavour at shaking off, either by cowardice or by unreflectiveness, the human burden and birthright of Responsibility.

Amurath's ring was a mechanical conscience. Professor Huxley's clock is a mechanism in the outward form of a man. These two imaginations convey the useful lessons that neither Conscience nor Mankind are mere machines. A clock goes because it must go its hourly round; a man chooses which way, when, and whither he will go.

[12] 1 Corinthians ix. 16.

[13] For a useful account of Plato's Dialogue in connection with Plato's philosophy, see "Introduction to the Republic," by Davies and Vaughan, pp. xxi.-xxiv. Cambridge, 1852.