On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge
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Thomas H. Huxley >> On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge
Again, what simpler, or more absolutely practical, than the attempt to
keep the axle of a wheel from heating when the wheel turns round very
fast? How useful for carters and gig drivers to know something about
this; and how good were it, if any ingenious person would find out the
cause of such phenomena, and thence educe a general remedy for them.
Such an ingenious person was Count Rumford; and he and his successors
have landed us in the theory of the persistence, or indestructibility,
of force. And in the infinitely minute, as in the infinitely great,
the seekers after natural knowledge, of the kinds called physical and
chemical, have everywhere found a definite order and succession of
events which seem never to be infringed.
And how has it fared with "Physick" and Anatomy? Have the anatomist,
the physiologist, or the physician, whose business it has been to
devote themselves assiduously to that eminently practical and direct
end, the alleviation of the sufferings of mankind,--have they been able
to confine their vision more absolutely to the strictly useful? I fear
they are worst offenders of all. For if the astronomer has set before
us the infinite magnitude of space, and the practical eternity of the
duration of the universe; if the physical and chemical philosophers
have demonstrated the infinite minuteness of its constituent parts, and
the practical eternity of matter and of force; and if both have alike
proclaimed the universality of a definite and predicable order and
succession of events, the workers in biology have not only accepted all
these, but have added more startling theses of their own. For, as the
astronomers discover in the earth no centre of the universe, but an
eccentric speck, so the naturalists find man to be no centre of the
living world, but one amidst endless modifications of life; and as the
astronomer observes the mark of practically endless time set upon the
arrangements of the solar system so the student of life finds the
records of ancient forms of existence peopling the world for ages,
which, in relation to human experience, are infinite.
Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be as dependent for its
manifestation on particular molecular arrangements as any physical or
chemical phenomenon; and, whenever he extends his researches, fixed
order and unchanging causation reveal themselves, as plainly as in the
rest of Nature.
Nor can I find that any other fate has awaited the germ of Religion.
Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, and out of the action and
interaction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has
taken the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism
or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their
relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is
needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the present
differs from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present
has become more scientific than that of the past; because it has not
only renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the
necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of books and
traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs: and of cherishing the
noblest and most human of man's emotions, by worship "for the most part
of the silent sort" at the altar of the Unknown and Unknowable.
Such are a few of the new conceptions implanted in our minds by the
improvement of natural knowledge. Men have acquired the ideas of the
practically infinite extent of the universe and of its practical
eternity; they are familiar with the conception that our earth is but
an infinitesimal fragment of that part of the universe which can be
seen; and that, nevertheless, its duration is, as compared with our
standards of time, infinite. They have further acquired the idea that
man is but one of innumerable forms of life now existing in the globe,
and that the present existences are but the last of an immeasurable
series of predecessors. Moreover, every step they have made in natural
knowledge has tended to extend and rivet in their minds the conception
of a definite order of the universe--which is embodied in what are
called, by an unhappy metaphor, the laws of Nature--and to narrow the
range and loosen the force of men's belief in spontaneity, or in
changes other than such as arise out of that definite order itself.
Whether these ideas are well or ill founded is not the question. No one
can deny that they exist, and have been the inevitable outgrowth of the
improvement of natural knowledge. And if so, it cannot be doubted that
they are changing the form of men's most cherished and most important
convictions.
And as regards the second point--the extent to which the improvement of
natural knowledge has remodelled and altered what may be termed the
intellectual ethics of men,--what are among the moral convictions most
fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people.
They are the convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief;
that merit attaches to a readiness to believe; that the doubting
disposition is a bad one, and scepticism a sin; that when good
authority has pronounced what is to be believed, and faith has accepted
it, reason has no further duty. There are many excellent persons who
yet hold by these principles, and it is not my present business, or
intention, to discuss their views. All I wish to bring clearly before
your minds is the unquestionable fact, that the improvement of natural
knowledge is effected by methods which directly give the lie to all
these convictions, and assume the exact reverse of each to be true.
The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge
authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties;
blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for
every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute
rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the
annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary
of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most
venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents
and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he
chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary
source, Nature--whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to
experiment and to observation--Nature will confirm them. The man of
science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by
verification.
Thus, without for a moment pretending to despise the practical results
of the improvement of natural knowledge, and its beneficial influence
on material civilization, it must, I think, be admitted that the great
ideas, some of which I have indicated, and the ethical spirit which I
have endeavoured to sketch, in the few moments which remained at my
disposal, constitute the real and permanent significance of natural
knowledge.
If these ideas be destined, as I believe they are, to be more and more
firmly established as the world grows older; if that spirit be fated,
as I believe it is, to extend itself into all departments of human
thought, and to become co-extensive with the range of knowledge; if, as
our race approaches its maturity, it discovers, as I believe it will,
that there is but one kind of knowledge and but one method of acquiring
it; then we, who are still children, may justly feel it our highest
duty to recognise the advisableness of improving natural knowledge, and
so to aid ourselves and our successors in their course towards the
noble goal which lies before mankind.