Professor Dewar’s brilliant success in producing liquid oxygen will be remembered by all who had the privilege of witnessing it last year, on the occasion of the celebration of Faraday’s Centenary. Its production is attended with the greatest difficulties; so great that Professor Dewar even felt doubts as to his being successful in his attempt at that time, which made his complete success all the more gratifying to him. When produced, it is difficult to hold and difficult to manipulate; but nothing daunted by these difficulties, Professor Dewar continued his researches, subjecting it to tests which no mind less penetrating than his own would ever have thought of, with the result that, most unexpectedly to himself, he has “hit upon a magnificent reality.” The ordeal to which, with consummate skill, he subjected this unstable fluid, disclosed its marvellous affinity for the magnet; and iron is now no longer able to claim the distinction which it has hitherto enjoyed, of monopolizing the affections of the magnet. Sir Robert Ball, LL.D., F.R.S., in commenting upon this important and most interesting addition to our knowledge of the properties of oxygen, says:—“Seeing that water, which is so largely composed of oxygen, is not attracted by a magnet, it might certainly have seemed unlikely that a liquid which was nothing but pure oxygen should be affected to any noteworthy degree. I suspect, however, that Professor Dewar must have had some sagacious reason for anticipating that the magnet would treat liquid oxygen with much more attention than it bestowed on water. At all events, whether he expected it or not, the result as described was of the most extraordinary character. The liquid oxygen was vehemently attracted by the great magnet; it seems to have leaped from the vessel, to have clung round the poles, and continued to adhere to them until it had all evaporated and resumed the form of gas. The appreciation of this discovery will be shared not alone by chemists, but by all who are interested in the great truths of nature.”
When Mr. Keely fell upon his discovery of an unknown force, he had not the faintest conception of the infinite extent, nor of the nature, of the territory he had invaded. Step by step he has been led on through years of patient and persistent research, yet even now feeling that he has but lifted one corner of the veil of the goddess of nature, and that a lifetime is too short to do more than this. The physicists whom Keely, in the earlier years of his discovery, invited to confer with him as to the origin of the force which was generated by the disintegration of water, preferred rather to pronounce him an impostor, after witnessing his demonstrations, than to admit that such results should have escaped the penetration of their all-powerful methods. “It indicates,” says Dr. Watson, “a mistaken apprehension of the basis of our own so highly valued system of inquiry, that we should arrogate to it absolute exclusiveness, and deride, as though they were searchers after proved impossibilities, all those who choose to make the trial whether truth may be sought by any method besides our own.”
History repeats itself, but on new planes. It is not those who are mighty in their own eyes whom Providence chooses as instruments to reveal new truths to the world when the needs of humanity require “a new order of things.” The evolution of the human race is slow but sure. If in one century some backward steps are taken, in the next with giant strides all is regained that seemed to have been lost. Each age answers the need of its own time. “The condition of mankind, during the last quarter of the fifteenth century, bore some curious analogies to its state at present,” writes Julian Hawthorne, under the heading, “The New Columbus.” “A certain stage or epoch of human life seemed to have run its course and come to a stop. The impulses which had started it were exhausted. Once more, it seems, we have reached the limits of a dispensation, and are halted by a blank wall. There is no visible way over it, nor around it. We cannot stand still; still less can we turn back. What is to happen? What happens when an irresistible force encounters an impenetrable barrier? That was the question asked in Columbus’ day, and he found an answer to it. Are we to expect the appearance of a new Columbus to answer it again? What Columbus can help us out of our dangers now? The time has come when the spirit of Columbus shall avouch itself, vindicating the patient purpose of Him who brings the flower from the seed. Great discoveries come when they are needed; never too early nor too late. When nothing else will serve the turn, then, and not till then, the rock opens and the spring gushes forth. Who that has considered the philosophy of the infinitely great and of the infinitely minute can doubt the inexhaustibleness of nature? And what is nature but the characteristic echo of the spirit of man? A prophet has arisen, during these latter days, in Philadelphia, who is commonly regarded as a charlatan; but men, cognizant of the latest advances of science, admit themselves unable to explain upon any known principles the effects he produces.”
“What we are to expect is an awakening of the soul; the rediscovery and rehabilitation of the genuine and indestructible religious instinct. Such a religious revival will be something very different from what we have known under that name. It will be a spontaneous and joyful realization by the soul of its vital relations with its Creator. Nature will be recognized as a language whereby God converses with man. The interpretation of this language, based as it is upon an eternal and living symbolism, containing infinite depths beyond depths of meaning, will be a sufficient study and employment for mankind for ever. Science will become, in truth, the handmaid of religion, in that it will be devoted to reporting the physical analogies of spiritual truths, and following them out in their subtler details. Hitherto the progress of science has been slow, and subject to constant error and revision. But as soon as physical research begins to go hand in hand with moral or psychical research it will advance with a rapidity hitherto unimagined, each assisting and classifying the other.
“The attitude of men towards one another will undergo a corresponding change. It is already become evident that selfishness is a colossal failure …. Recent social theorists propose a universal co-operation, to save the waste of personal competition. But competition is a wholesome and vital law; it is only the direction of it that requires alteration. When the cessation of working for one’s livelihood takes place, human energy and love of production will not cease with it, but will persist and must find their channels. But competition to outdo each in the service of all is free from collisions, and its range is limitless. Not to support life, but to make life more lovely, will be the effort; and not to make it more lovely for one’s self alone but for one’s neighbour. Nor is this all.
“The love of the neighbour will be a true act of divine worship, since it will then be acknowledged that mankind, though multiplied to human sense, is in essence one; and that in this universal one, which can have no self-consciousness, God is incarnate.
“The divine humanity is the only real and possible object of mortal adoration, and no genuine sentiment of human brotherhood is conceivable apart from its recognition. But, with it, the stature of our common manhood will grow toward the celestial. Obviously, with thoughts and pursuits of this calibre to engage our attention, we shall be very far from regretting those which harass and enslave us to-day. Leaving out of account the extension of psychical faculties, which will enable the antipodes to commune together at will, and even give us the means of communicating with the inhabitants of other planets, and which will so simplify and deepen language that audible speech, other than the musical sounds indicative of emotion, will be regarded as a comic and clumsy archaism,—apart from all this, the fathomless riches of wisdom to be gathered from the commonest daily objects and outwardly most trivial occurrences, will put an end to all craving for merely physical change of place and excitement. Gradually the human race will become stationary, each family occupying its own place, and living in patriarchal simplicity, though endowed with power and wisdom that we should now consider god-like …. We have only attempted to indicate what regions await the genius of the new Columbus; nor does the conjecture seem too bold that perhaps they are not so distant from us in time as they appear to be in quality.”
If we turn, from this seemingly Utopian forecast, to the matter-of-fact utterances of Ernest Renan, we will find that he anticipates nothing less as the destiny of humanity, than the perfecting of it as a unity. Asserting that the nineteenth century is preparing the way for the enfranchisement of the mind, he proceeds logically to show how this evolution is to be brought about, strong in the faith that Providence will not fail in its design to secure the ultimate happiness of the human race. To quote, at length, from Renan:—“It is the law of science, as of every human undertaking, to draw its plans on a large scale, and with a great deal that is superfluous around them. Mankind finally assimilates only a small number of the elements of food. But the portions that have been eliminated played their part in the act of nutrition. So the countless generations that have appeared and disappeared like a dream, have served to build the great Babel of humanity which uprises toward the sky, each layer of which means a people. In God’s vast bosom all that lived will live again, and then it will be true to the very letter that not a glass of water, not a word that has furthered the divine work of progress will be lost. That is the law of humanity; an enormous and lavish expenditure of the individual; for God only sets Himself the large, general plan; and each created being finds subsequently in himself the instincts which make his lot as mild as possible. All help to accelerate the day when the knowledge of the world shall equal the world, when the subject and the object having become identified, God will be complete. Philosophy up till now has scarcely been anything but fancy, a priori, and science has only been an insignificant display of learning. As for us, we have shifted the field of the science of man. We want to know what his life is, and life means both the body and the soul; not placed facing one another like clocks that tick in time, not soldered together like two different metals, but united into one two-fronted phenomenon which cannot be divided, without destroying it. It is time to proclaim the fact that one sole Cause has wrought everything in the domain of intellect, operating according to identical laws, but among different surroundings.
“The lofty serenity of science becomes possible only when it handles its imperturbable instrument with the inflexibility of the geometrician, without anger and without pity. True science, the complete and felt science, will be for the future, if civilization is not once again arrested in its march by blind superstition and the invasion of barbarism, in one form or another. But it is contended that the inferiority of the philosophy of science consists in its being accessible to the small minority. This is, on the contrary, its chief title to glory, showing us that we should labour to hasten the advent of the blessed day in which all men will have their place in the sunshine of intelligence, and will live in the true light of the children of God. It is the property of hope to hope against hope, and there is nothing which the past does not justify us in hoping from the future of humanity. Perfect happiness, as I understand it, is that all men should be perfect. I cannot understand how the opulent man can fully enjoy his happiness while he is obliged to veil his face in presence of the misery of a portion of his fellow-creatures. There can only be perfect happiness when all are equal, but there will only be equality when all are perfect. Thus we see that it is not a question of being happy; it is a question of being perfect; a question of true religion, the only thing which is serious and sacred. Inequality is legitimate whenever inequality is necessary for the good of humanity. Rights create themselves like other things. The French Revolution is not legitimate because it has taken place, but it took place because it was legitimate; the freeing of the negroes was neither achieved nor deserved by the negroes, but by the progress in civilization of their masters. Right is the progress of humanity; there is no right in opposition to this progress, and, vice versâ, progress legitimizes everything. Never, since the origin of things, has human intelligence set itself so terrible a problem as the one which now menaces our age. Upon the one hand, it is necessary to preserve the conquests already secured for civilization; while upon the other, all must have their share in the blessings of this civilization. It took centuries to conceive the possibility of a society without slavery. The traveller who looks only at the horizon of the plain, risks not seeing the precipice or the quagmire at his feet. In the same way, humanity when looking only to the distant object is tempted to make a jump for it, without regard to the intermediate objects against which it may not improbably dash itself to pieces. Socialism is, therefore, right to the extent of discerning the problem, but solves it badly; or rather socialism is not yet possible of solution. Reforms never triumph directly; they triumph by compelling their adversaries to partially adopt them in order to overcome them. It might be said of reforms as of the crusades: ‘Not one succeeded: all succeeded.’ As one sees the tide bringing the ever-collapsing waves upon the shore, the feeling aroused is one of powerlessness. The wave arrived so proudly, and yet it is dashed to pieces against the sand, and it expires in a feeble career against the shore which it seemed about to devour. But, upon reflection, one finds that this process is not as idle as it seems; for each wave, as it dies away, has its effect; and all the waves combined make the rising tide against which heaven and hell would be powerless. Humanity, when it is fatigued, is willing to pause; but to pause is not to rest. The calm is but an armistice and a breathing space. It is impossible for society to find calm in a state when it is suffering from an open wound such as that of to-day. The age is oppressed by this inevitable and seemingly insoluble problem. We barricade ourselves in one party, in order not to see the reasons of the other side. The conservatives are wrong, for the state of things which they uphold, and which they do right to uphold, is intolerable. The revolutionists are wrong; for it is absurd to destroy when you have nothing to put in place of what you destroy. At these epochs, doubt and indecision are the truth; the man who is not in doubt is either a simpleton or a charlatan. Revolutions must be made for well-ascertained principles, and not for tendencies which have not yet been formulated in a practical manner. They are the upheavals of the everlasting Enceladus turning over when Etna weighs too heavily upon him. It is horrible that one man should be sacrificed to the enjoyment of another. If it were merely a question of self-indulgence, it would be better that all should have Spartan fare, than that some should have luxuries and others go hungry; but, as long as material ease is to a certain extent the indispensable condition of intellectual perfection, the sacrifice is not effected for the enjoyment of another individual, of the luxuries of life, but it is made upon behalf of society as a whole. A society is entitled to what is necessary for its existence, however great may be the apparent injustice resulting for the individual. It is the idea of the ancient sacrifice—the man for the nation. If the object of life were but self-indulgence, it would not be unreasonable that each one should claim his share, and from this point of view any enjoyment which one might procure at the expense of others would be in reality an injustice and a robbery: but the object of life, the aim of society, should be the greatest possible perfecting of all. The State is neither an institution of police, as Smith would have it, nor a charity bureau and a hospital as the Socialists would have it. It is a machine for making progress. In the state of things which I should like to see, manual labour would be the recreation of mental labour. The immense majority of humanity is still at school: to let them out too soon would be to encourage them in idleness. Necessity, says Herder, is the weight of the clock which causes all the wheels to turn. Without the idea of progress, all the ideas of humanity are incomprehensible. We must keep our machines in order, if we would bring down paradise upon earth; and paradise will be here below when all have their share in light, perfection, beauty, and therefore in happiness.