We for our part have always noticed that when a man talks much about “Baconian philosophy,” he is going to stuff into our ears some incredible nonsense. He who has good evidence to bring forward—trusts at once to his evidence. Phrenologists, mesmerists, spiritualists, all who have a very weak case, are great discoursers on the rules of induction. They eke out their defective reasoning by proving to us, whether we are aware of it or not, that they are very good reasoners. Most readers, fortunately for themselves, are satisfied with a few brilliant passages of the ‘Novum Organum.’ If they proceeded farther, they might find that not only did it not assist them in their researches after physical truth, but that it embarrassed them considerably as to the real nature of physical science, and the kind of truth to be sought for.
Bacon was a great writer, a great thinker, but he was not “the father of modern philosophy.” If we are to have fathers in science, the title must be given to such men as Galileo, Kepler, Newton. He who discovers one great scientific truth does more even for the logic of science than any writer upon that logic can perform.
Science does not stand in contradiction to the metaphysical or ethical discussions of ancient or of modern times. There is no contrast such as is popularly described between the old philosophy and the new. But a vast addition has been made to one kind of our knowledge. And with regard to that great argument of utility which Lord Macaulay has so eloquently developed, it must be borne in mind that the utility of the physical sciences made itself known by certain individual discoveries and inventions, not by mere abstract contemplation of what the study of nature might produce. In fact, the utility of the pursuit was the very argument which Socrates made use of to draw men from the study of objective nature to the study of themselves. As matters then stood, more seemed likely to be effected by regulating the mind of man than by observing the winds or the clouds, or any of the phenomena of nature.
Let us carry ourselves back in imagination to the state of philosophy which existed at Athens in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, and which Mr Merivale has so pleasantly described in his last volume of ‘The History of the Romans under the Empire.’ Philosophy seems to have come to a dead-lock. “On every side it was tacitly acknowledged that the limits of each specific dogma had been reached; that all were true enough to be taught, and none so true as to be exclusively believed. Their several professors lived together in conventional antagonism, and in real good-fellowship. Academics and Peripatetics, Stoics and Epicureans, Pyrrhonists and Cynics, disputed together or thundered one against the other through the morning, and bathed, dined, and joked together, with easy indifference, through the evening.” Well, let us suppose that amongst this conclave a Baconian philosopher had presented himself, with his new organon and his speculations on the new power men would derive, if, with this organon in their hands, they would proceed to the study of nature. After some struggle to get a footing in what Mr Merivale has described as a most conservative university, he would perhaps have been allowed to open his school in Athens, and he would have added one more figure to that group of philosophers who disputed in the morning, and dined amicably together in the evening. Another admirable talker would have appeared amongst them. This would have been the whole result. But now let us imagine that to this Athens a Galileo had come with his telescope and revealed the satellites of Jupiter; let us imagine that a Cavendish had come with his electric battery and decomposed water into two gases, one of which burst readily into flame; what a stir would there then have been amongst all the schools and classes of Athens! Still larger telescopes would have been made, and the electric battery applied to all sorts of substances. An era of experimental philosophy would at once have been inaugurated.
All honour to the great and eloquent writer; but such palms and such wreaths as Science has to bestow are due to those who have discovered scientific truths. These are they who have really stirred the minds of men as well as placed power in their hands; and, without gainsaying a word of what Lord Macaulay has so brilliantly stated of the utilities of science, it is worthy of notice that in no department of philosophy have truth and knowledge been sought for with so much avidity purely for their own sakes. And it should be added that only by the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake can its utilities be developed. For it is one thing to prosecute science with a general conviction that its truths will turn to inventions for the good of man, and quite another thing to set before ourselves some desirable end or object of a practical kind as the goal to which we are striving. This is what the alchemists did when they set before themselves the transmutation of metals as the achievement to be accomplished. To study nature under such guidance as this would be a great mistake. We may be wasting our time on an impossibility; we should certainly be narrowing the sphere of our observation. But when we strive in every direction to proceed from the known to the unknown, by seizing upon every new relation which offers itself to the understanding, then we can hardly fail to stumble upon some discovery of a practical utility. The passion for knowledge sweeps all things into our net, and we may find marvellous treasures there we never dreamt of. The higher sentiment of the love of knowledge is that which can alone conduct us to the utilities of knowledge. We cannot predict what science will enable us to do, and then proceed with our studies in order that we may accomplish this end. It is science which teaches us what new ends can be accomplished. It is an ever-broadening knowledge, procured immediately for its own sake, that opens up to us the new possibilities, the new powers, that man may aspire to and possess.
THE YEANG-TAI MOUNTAINS, AND SPIRIT-WRITING IN CHINA.
That portion of China which lies more immediately to the west of the estuary of the Canton river, comprising the Sun-on, Toong-koon, Kinei-shin, and Tai-phoong districts, is exceedingly mountainous, and inhabited by a turbulent people, constantly fighting among themselves, and but little subject to mandarin rule. Even still foreigners scarcely ever visit it; and when, during the war, I first commenced to wander there, the field was entirely my own; and many were the prophecies that, if I returned at all, it would be in at least a headless, if not in a completely disjointed, condition. The torture and murder, a few years before, of six young Englishmen at Hwang-chu-ku, near Canton, when they were only taking an afternoon stroll, had rendered our countrymen particularly chary of trusting their persons in the hands of the Chinese; and at the time my excursions commenced, there was additional danger, arising from the fact that, though Canton was in the hands of the Allied troops, the gentry of the provinces still kept up a species of warfare, and offered rewards for our heads: so, while a few well-armed sportsmen from Hong-Kong might occasionally pass over to the mainland immediately opposite, it was deemed madness to think of spending a night there, or to go any distance into the country beyond. But though the island of “Fragrant Streams,” as the words Hong-Kong signify, has some curious caves and wild lonely spots, its limits are so circumscribed that a residence in it became extremely irksome. To be sure, the quiet old Portuguese city of Macao, with its grotto of Camoens, could be reached in four or five hours by steamer, with the refreshing possibility, as one or two cases proved, of being pirated and murdered on the way by the Chinese passengers; a gunboat, too, would take us up to Canton in about a day: but these places, however interesting, soon became insufficient; they began to present themselves in the disagreeable light of being only suburbs of Hong-Kong, and I resolved to seek entertainment elsewhere.
Being unaware that some German missionaries had, before the war broke out, laboured in the neighbouring districts, I had to feel my way without any previous information as to the character of the different villages and towns, and so incurred some dangers which otherwise might have been avoided. The first time of sleeping on the mainland was in an ancestral hall, along with a friend, whose Chinese teacher even refused to escort us on account of the supposed danger. The next time, accompanied only by some native coolies, to carry bedding and provisions, I wandered for nearly a week among the mountains, and slept at whatever village I happened to be at by sun-down, without meeting any apparent danger, or even unpleasantness. After that—sometimes alone, sometimes with others; sometimes in perfect safety, and at others with extreme risk—I made excursions innumerable. The manner in which I thus explored for myself the country lying to the east of the firth of the Canton river may have given it peculiar charms; but the contrast of its valleys and mountains to those of Hong-Kong, and to those immediately opposite that barren island, would have been sufficient to endear it to all who feel with Goethe, that “the works of nature are ever a freshly-uttered word of God.” The wooded hills and beautiful green valleys were pleasant haunts after the chunam and rotten granite of the mercantile city of Victoria. Those were happy days spent among the mountains of Kwang-tung—crossing rugged passes, ascending lofty peaks, bathing in deep, black mountain-pools, loitering at wayside tea-houses, or under the shade of wide-spreading trees. Those were pleasant evenings—though not always undisturbed by danger, and on the limited-intercourse principle—passed beside some long-robed teacher in the village schoolhouse, some shaven monk in a Buddhist monastery, or even in some opium-perfumed junk, with half-piratical mariners who would gamble the whole night through. Perhaps, gentle reader, you will not be averse to accompany me on one of those otherwise solitary excursions, and so to gain, without the trouble or danger, some little knowledge of the country and the peasant people. Our company will certainly not be of the silver chopstick kind; but I trust it will not be altogether disagreeable or without profit.
The trip I select was made in the first warm days of the spring of 1860, after affairs had been settled in the south of China, and no rewards were out for the heads of foreigners; but I took notes of it at the time, which have kept it fresh in recollection. At first I used to carry my own provisions, cooking utensils, &c.; but after a little further knowledge of the people and their ways, all these were dispensed with; for, besides the expense, it was often difficult to find accommodation for a retinue of coolies, and their tendency to jabber at unseasonable moments was a source of constant annoyance. A pair of chopsticks, a strip of waterproof lined with cork, and a couple of blankets for bedding, together with a change of clothes, and a flask or two containing stronger waters than those which abound in China, were soon found to be all that was necessary, and would easily be carried by a single coolie when slung to the ends of a bamboo pole carried on his shoulders—for men accustomed to bear weights in this way walk as easily with a moderate burden as they do without any. Aheung is my companion on the present occasion. He is old, but sturdy; he works more willingly than younger men, and has an inestimable peculiarity about the formation of his mouth which renders it next to impossible to understand anything he says. Even his own countrymen have difficulty in making out his meaning, and I never attempt it; so he cannot remonstrate with me, and is placed in the position of being a recipient of orders, or, as Carlyle would phrase it, of being passively pumped into as into an empty bucket. Naturally, Aheung is of rather a garrulous disposition, and every now and then he pours out a sudden flood of complicated sounds, resembling a mixture of Gaelic and Chinese; but, on finding that nobody understands him, he as suddenly subsides into abashed silence. Though perfectly honest, he is shrewd at a bargain, and fond of receiving a kumshan, or present, which he pronounces kwumchwha. This old gentleman is also extremely timid, and apt to disappear at critical moments. He goes with me on excursions because he has a wife who knows that it is for his interest to do so, and makes him; but he is seldom at his ease, and mutters an inarticulate protest at every new movement, or holds up his hands and shrugs his shoulders, assuming an aspect of despair. It must be added that he is extremely attentive, of a very kind disposition, with much natural politeness, and of great devoutness or religiosity. I never met such a man for worship. It was all one to Aheung whether he was in an ancestral hall, a Buddhist monastery, a Tauist temple, or a Christian chapel; he never let a chance pass of going down upon his knees and doing “joss-pidgin.” As some men have an omnivorous appetite, so my old Chinaman had a most catholic appetite for worship, and a taste for what Dr Brown calls “fine confused feedin’!” On one occasion he gave great satisfaction to a missionary with whom we were travelling, by his punctuality in attending morning prayers: and the missionary said to me, “That seems a very good old man of yours; I should not wonder if he became a convert.” To my friend’s annoyance, however, Aheung was to be seen at the first temple we came to waving a burning joss-stick, and prostrating before an image of the solemn-faced Buddha, and was much astonished when rebuked for this by the missionary. With such an outfit and a companion one is in light marching order for an active rather than a luxurious excursion; and as the weather has begun to get warm, I dispense with the inconvenience of European shirt, waistcoat, coat, and neck-tie, contenting myself with a loose white China coat, having no collar and no pressure at the armpits, and covered by another silk one of similar make and dimensions. It would be difficult to overrate the comfort and advantage of such a costume to those who have to take exercise in hot weather. As to money, it is impossible to burden my coolie with any considerable sum in Chinese “cash,” as there are a thousand of that coin to the dollar; but ten or twelve dollars will cover all the expenses of the excursion, and that we take in sycee silver, or dollars broken up into small pieces, which are preferred by the Chinese to the entire coin, and in which small payments can be made without the trouble of changing.
A “pull-away boat,” manned chiefly by women, soon carried us across the spacious harbour of Hong-Kong, into a large bay, and on to a fine sandy beach on the opposite mainland. Here the magnificent range of mountains which lines the coast presents a low pass, up which runs a steep cork-screw path, by which we got to the other side of them, and, winding along for an hour, to a narrow wooded gorge at the head of the Leuk-ün valley, which, in the yellow evening light, lay peacefully below, fringed by thick dark woods, above which rose imposing mountains of picturesque form. It is well to take it easy for the first two days, so our resting-place that night was a very short way down the valley, at an ancestral hall in the village of Kan-how. This hamlet comprised not more than a dozen houses, but their hall was large, clean, well built, and served as a schoolhouse, as well as for some other purposes. On entering I found the old men seated in arm-chairs, just finishing a consultation on some important subject or other, and the children soon crowded in, in expectation of the cash which it is both wise policy and Chinese custom for strangers to distribute amongst them. The custodian of this pleasant place was a one-eyed ancient of most forbidding appearance. His one eye not only did the business of two, but gave the impression that it had gone out of his head, and was prowling about generally for something or other. His exterior semblance, however, did belie his soul’s timidity; and his chief failing was a peculiar passion for corks, which he sought after and treasured up with the avidity of a miser. I used to keep a store of beer in this ancestral hall, and on my visits he always seemed to be troubled at night by a suspicion that some cork had escaped his search, or might be abstracted from a bottle, and he would rise to look for it. On one occasion a friend just out from England spent a night with me in this place, and being by no means assured of the safety of sleeping among Chinese, the personal appearance of the Uniocular caused him a great deal of unnecessary anxiety. He could not sleep because of a vision he had of the One-eyed progging at him with a spear, and the One-eyed could not sleep because of an imaginary cork! The game which these two carried on during the night was extremely comical. Their small sleeping-rooms were at opposite corners of the joss-house, and not in sight of each other, so they never actually came in contact. First, the old man would rise, light a reed, and, bending almost double, with his one eye glittering down upon the black stone floor, search for the object of his desire. Roused by the noise made, or the glimmer of the light, my friend would then rise also, and, being unaccustomed to such work, steal out in his stocking-soles, peering into the darkness with a lighted taper in one hand and a revolver in the other. On hearing the creaking of the boards when his enemy arose, the cork-gatherer always extinguished his light, and, on catching a glimpse of the dreadful apparition with the revolver, stole off terrified to his own den, not to re-emerge until all was quiet, and some time had elapsed. Unfortunately, it usually happened, whenever I persuaded a friend to go with me upon the mainland, that some danger, or appearance of danger, occurred, and prevented him from repeating the visit.