The English Novel and the Principle of its Development

by Sidney Lanier

Of course these, as the opinions of professed idealists, would not be representative of the Greek attitude towards physical science.

Yet when we turn to those who are pre-eminently physical philosophers, we find that the mental disposition, though the reverse of hostile, is nearly always such as to render the work of these philosophers unfruitful. When we find, for example, that Thales in the very beginning of Greek philosophy holds the principle, or beginning, ἡ ἀρχἡ of all things to be moisture, or water; that Anaximenes a little while after holds the beginning of things to be air; that Heraclitus holds the arche to be fire: this sounds physical, and we look for a great extension of men's knowledge in regard to water, air and fire, upon the idea that if these are really the organic principles of things, thousands of keen inquiring eyes would be at once leveled upon them, thousands of experiments would be at once set on foot, all going to reveal properties of water, air and fire.

But perhaps no more expressive summary of the real relation between man and nature, not only during the Greek period but for many centuries after it, could be given than the fact that these three so-called elements which begin the Greek physical philosophy remained themselves unknown for more than two thousand years after Thales and Anaximenes and Heraclitus, until the very last century when, with the discovery of oxygen, men are able to prove that they are not elements at all; but that what we call fire is merely an effect of the rapid union of oxygen with bodies, while water and air are compounds of it with other gases. It is perfectly true that in the years between Thales and the death of Aristotle, a considerable body of physical facts had been accumulated; that Pythagoras had observed a number of acoustic phenomena and mathematically formulated their relations; it is true that—without detaining you to specify intermediate inquirers—we have that wonderful summary of Aristotle—wonderful for one man—which is contained in his Physics, from which the name "meta-physics" originated, though the circumstance that he placed the other books after those on physics, calling them Τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσιχὰ βιβλἱα, the meta-physical, or over and above physical, books.

When we read the titles of these productions—here are "Eight Books of Physical Lectures," "Four Books of the Heavens," "Two Books of Production and Destruction," Treatises "On Animals," "On Plants," "On Colors," "On Sound"—we feel that we must be in a veritable realm of physical science. But if we examine these lectures and treatises, which probably contain the entire body of Greek physical learning, we find them hampered by a certain disability which seems to me characteristic not only of Greek thought, but of all man's early speculation, and which excludes the possibility of a fruitful and progressive physical science. I do not know how to characterize this disability otherwise than by calling it a lack of that sense of personal relation to fact which makes the thinker passionately and supremely solicitous about the truth, that is, the existence of his facts and the soundness of his logic; solicitous of these, not so much with reference to the value of his conclusions as because of an inward tender inexorable yearning for the truth and nothing but the truth.

In short, I find that early thought everywhere, whether dealing with physical facts or meta-physical problems, is lacking in what I may call the intellectual conscience—the conscience, for example, which makes Mr. Darwin spend long and patient years in investigating small facts before daring to reason upon them; and which makes him state the facts adverse to his theory with as much care as the facts which make for it.

Part of the philosophy of this personal relation between a man and a fact is very simple. For instance what do you know at present of the inner life of the Patagonians? Probably no more than your Mitchell's or Cornell's Geography told you at school. But if a government expedition is soon to carry you to the interior of that country, a personal relation arises which will probably set you to searching all the libraries at your command for such travels or treatises as may enlarge your knowledge of Patagonia.

It is easy to give a thousand illustrations of this lack of intellectual conscience in Greek thought, which continued indeed up to the time of the Renaissance. For example: it would seem that nothing less than a sort of amateur mental attitude towards nature, an attitude which does not bind the thinker to his facts with such iron conscientiousness that if one fact were out of due order, it would rack him, could account for Aristotle's grave exposition of the four elements. "We seek," he says "the principles of sensible things, that is of tangible bodies. We must take therefore not all the contrarieties of quality but those only which have reference to the touch.... Now the contrarieties of quality which refer to the touch are these: hot, cold; dry, wet; heavy, light; hard, soft; unctuous, meagre; rough, smooth; dense, rare." Aristotle then rejects the last three couplets on several grounds and proceeds: "Now in four things there are six combinations of two; but the combinations of two opposites, as hot and cold, must be rejected; we have therefore four elementary combinations which agree with the four apparently elementary bodies. Fire is hot and dry; air is hot and wet; water is cold and wet: earth is cold and dry." And thus we comfortably fare forward with fire, air, earth and water for the four elements of all things.

But Aristotle argues that there must be a fifth element: and our modern word quintessence is, by the way, a relic of this argument, this fifth element having been called by later writers quinta essentia or quintessence. The argument is as follows: "the simple elements must have simple motions, and thus fire and air have their natural motions upwards and water and earth have their natural motions downwards; but besides these motions there is motion in a circle which is unnatural to these elements, but which is a more perfect motion than the other, because a circle is a perfect line and a straight line is not; and there must be something to which this motion is natural. From this it is evident that there is some essence or body different from those of the four elements, ... and superior to them. If things which move in a circle move contrary to nature it is marvelous, or rather absurd that this, the unnatural motion should alone be continuous and eternal; for unnatural motions decay speedily. And so from all this we must collect that besides the four elements which we have here and about us, there is another removed far off and the more excellent in proportion as it is more distant from us."

Or take Aristotle's dealing with the heaviness and lightness of bodies.

After censuring former writers for considering these as merely relative, he declares that lightness is a positive or absolute property of bodies just as weight is; that earth is absolutely heavy, and therefore tends to take its place below the other three elements; that fire has the positive property of lightness, and hence tends to take its place above the other three elements; (the modern word empyrean is a relic of this idea from the pyr or fire, thus collected in the upper regions), and so on; and concludes that bodies which have the heavy property tend to the centre, while those with the light property tend to the exterior, of the earth, because "Exterior is opposite to Centre, as heavy is to light."