Should any one, like the able but mistaken author of the “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,” endeavour to bring Thought to bear upon these dry bones and make them live, to generalize and build up a system from them, great is the outcry and terrible are the denunciations. The modern Prometheus who would animate with the celestial fire of forethought the clay which lies a dead and useless mass at his feet, is clamourously damned by his timid brethren the Epimethei, the after or past-thinkers; and, unless he is endowed with more than mortal power, he must submit to have his heart daily devoured by the racking fiends—envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.
One of the laborious ants of whom we have been speaking asks, “For what do we read?” and complacently answers, “To know facts.”[[28]] Indeed! The highest office of mind is to make itself a barren storehouse! To us it appears, on the contrary, that we should read and study generally, not to know facts, but to be wise from facts, to make the head wiser and the heart better. The mind is not to be considered as a mere granary and barren receptacle of literary food, but rather as the stomach which converts into a new substance—assimilating good healthy flesh and blood—the heterogeneous materials which are put into it. Another ant, of no mean pretensions among his brethren, enthusiastically endeavours, by promises of “literary glory,” to incite some of them to pile up into one heap the confused materials they have collected. “Let us see,” he says with childish glee, “how much we’ve got! You John, and you Willy, and you Bobby bring what you’ve collected! There pile it up! Make a snow man; cut him eyes, and nose, and mouth.” There he is with a pipe in his white lips. Doesn’t he look sage, and grave, and solemn? Dance round him, ye children; clap your hands and be merry. Rejoice over your work while it lasts. The first warm breath of spring will melt it away. It is no man, it has no life, it is cold and dead. The snow, give it what shape you will, is snow still. You have collected much, but you have got nothing new out of your collection. But lest it should be supposed that we belie this celebrated ant—this collector of grain—we will quote his own words: “Within the last two hundred years (says Professor Playfair), or since Galileo and Bacon taught us this great lesson, we have been employed in recording facts in ten thousand several volumes. But thus scattered, they lose so much of their value and importance, that, in another age, we may hope some aspirant after literary glory will perform the Herculean labour of condensing the whole into (What?—a system of the universe? a better knowledge of nature? No!) a volume!” A volume! that is to say, gather the scattered masses into one heap as heterogeneous as the scattered masses; pile up the snow, strewed over pathway and field, hedge and ditch, into a snow man. That is the highest aspiration of this Professor of divers learned societies. His grovelling soul soars not to the hope that any new fact may be extracted by mind from this vast heap of raw materials. He knows not that, metaphysically, two and two make five, and that without any other material additions, without any more ant-collections, the heap may be made to grow and swell, that the spirit of life may be breathed into it, and that, wedded to mind, it may even become the prolific parent of new facts of a far higher and more enduring nature than any in his boasted volume. Facts, which, having mind for one of their parents, will with filial love pay back in tenfold blessings the life given them; facts which will lead that parent to unravel the mysterious secrets of nature, and enable her to behold the wonderful arcana of its Holy of Holies.
This is the purpose for which we should read, and this the glorious end for which we should collect facts; instead of merely contenting ourselves with being employed, as Playfair too truly says we have been since the time of Bacon, “in recording facts in ten thousand several volumes,” with no higher aspiration than that some laborious stable-cleaner may sweep them up, hay and straw, corn and rubbish, into one vast heap.
Since this was written, it pleases us to see that the able author of “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” has in his “Explanations” spoken to the same effect and added another instance of the low estimate formed by modern scientific minds of the uses of facts. “From year to year and from age to age we see scientific men at work, adding, no doubt, much to the known, and advancing many important interests, but at the same time doing little for the establishment of comprehensive views of nature. Experiments, in however narrow a walk, facts, of whatever minuteness, make reputations in scientific societies. All beyond is regarded with suspicion find distrust. The consequence is, that philosophy, as it exists among us, does nothing to raise its votaries above the common ideas of their time. Let me call upon the reader to bring to his remembrance the impressions which have been usually made upon him by the transactions of learned societies, and the pursuits of individual men of science. Did he not always feel that while there was laudable industry and zeal there was also an intellectual timidity, rendering all the results philosophically barren?
“Perhaps a more lively illustration of their deficiency in the life and soul of nature-seeking could not be presented than in the view which Sir John Herschel gives of the uses of science, in a Treatise reputed as one of the most philosophical ever produced in our country. These uses, according to the learned knight, are strictly material—it might be said sordid—namely, ‘to show us how to avoid attempting impossibilities, to secure us from important mistakes, in attempting what is in itself possible by means either inadequate or actually opposed to the end in view; to enable us to accomplish our ends in the easiest, shortest and most economical and most effectual manner; to induce us to attempt and enable us to accomplish, objects which, but for such knowledge, we should never have thought of undertaking.’
“Such results, it will be felt, may occasionally be of importance in saving a country gentleman from a hopeless mining speculation, or in adding to the powers and profits of an iron-foundry or a cotton-mill, but nothing more. When the awakened and craving mind asks what science can do for us in explaining the great ends of the author of nature, and our relations to Him, to good and evil, to life and to eternity, the man of science turns to his collection of shells or butterflies, to his electric machine or his retort, and is mute as a child who, sporting on the beach, is asked what lands lie beyond the great ocean which stretches before him.”[[29]]
This is unhappily too true a picture of modern science. Every effort is made in scientific works to impress the material and sordid money-getting uses of science as its only true end, and the highest relation which it bears to humanity. Read any tract on the uses of geology, and is there a word of high hope that the addition which recent discoveries in this department have made to knowledge will assist in raising and elevating the mind, or throw any new light upon the mysteries of nature?
Not a word: but it is carefully detailed how an acquaintance with the order of stratified rocks will facilitate the discovery of minerals, or the boring of Artesian wells.
Are the uses of astronomy dwelt upon, we are taught that it enables the seaman to navigate trackless seas for commerce or for war. Are the purposes of chemistry detailed, we learn that it is fertile in assisting the manufacturer to cheapen his goods, and undersell his less experienced neighbour.
And are we to believe that for these base uses it will be given to man to penetrate the wonders of the universe, and read the unexplained mystery of its creation? Surely not. No, verily, we must raise our souls far above these debasing cares, before the great and beneficent God will permit us to understand His sublime works. We must come to the task with clean hands, with pure, holy, unsullied minds, with humble, but high aspirations, with the submission of little children, but with the elevation of pure wisdom.