THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XI., No. 66.—SEPTEMBER, 1870.
HEREDITARY GENIUS.[285]
Mr. Galton is what in these days is called a scientist, or cultivator of the physical sciences, whose pretension is to confine themselves strictly to the field of the sciences as distinguished from science; to assert nothing but positive facts and the laws of their production and operation, ascertained by careful observation and experiment, and induction therefrom. Their aim would seem to be to explain all the facts or phenomena of the universe by means of second causes, and to prove that man is properly classed with animals, or is only an animal developed or completed, not an animal transformed and specificated by a rational soul, which is defined by the church to be forma corporis.
Between the scientists and philosophers, or those who cultivate not the special sciences, but the science of the sciences, and determine the principles to which the several special sciences must be referred in order to have any scientific character or value, there is a long-standing quarrel, which grows fiercer and more embittered every day. We are far from pretending that the positivists or Comtists have mastered all the so-called special sciences; but they represent truly the aims and tendencies of the scientists, and of what by a strange misnomer is called philosophy; so-called, it would seem, because philosophy it is not. Philosophy is the science of principles, as say the Greeks, or of first principles, as say the Latins, and after them the modern Latinized nations. But Herbert Spencer, Stuart Mill, and the late Sir William Hamilton, the ablest representatives of philosophy as generally received by the English-speaking world, agree with the Comtists or positivists in rejecting first principles from the domain of science, and in relegating theology and metaphysics to the region of the unknown and the unknowable. Their labors consequently result, as Sir William Hamilton himself somewhere admits, in universal nescience, or, as we say, absolute nihilism or nullism.
This result is not accidental, but follows necessarily from what is called the Baconian method, which the scientists follow, and which is, in scholastic language, concluding the universal from the particular. Now, in the logic we learned as a school-boy, and adhere to in our old age, this is simply impossible. To every valid argument it is necessary that one of the premises, called the major premise, be a universal principle. Yet the scientists discard the universal from their premises, and from two or more particulars, or particular facts, profess to draw a valid universal conclusion, as if any conclusion broader than the premises could be valid! The physico-theologians are so infatuated with the Baconian method that they attempt, from certain facts which they discover in the physical world, to conclude, by way of induction, the being and attributes of God, as if any thing concluded from particular facts could be any thing but a particular fact. Hence, the aforenamed authors, with Professor Huxley at their tail, as well as Kant in his Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, have proved as clearly and as conclusively as any thing can be proved that a causative force, or causality, cannot be concluded by way either of induction or of deduction from any empirical facts, or facts of which observation can take note. Yet the validity of every induction rests on the reality of the relation of cause and effect, and the fact that the cause actually produces the effect.
Yet our scientists pretend that they can, from the observation and analysis of facts, induce a law, and a law that will hold good beyond the particulars observed and analyzed. But they do not obtain any law at all; and the laws of nature, about which they talk so learnedly, are not laws, but simply facts. Bring a piece of wax to the fire and it melts, hence it is said to be a law that wax so brought in proximate relation with fire will melt; but this law is only the particular fact observed, and the facts to which you apply it are the identical facts from which you have obtained it. The investigation, in all cases where the scientists profess to seek the law, is simply an investigation to find out and establish the identity of the facts, and what they call the law is only the assertion of that identity, and never extends to facts not identical, or to dissimilar facts.
Take mathematics; as far as the scientist can admit mathematics, they are simply identical propositions piled on identical propositions, and the only difference between Newton and a plough-boy is, that Newton detects identity where the plough-boy does not. Take what is called the law of gravitation; it is nothing but the statement of a fact, or a class of facts observed, and the most that it tells us is, that if the facts are identical, they are identical—that is, they bear such and such relations to one another. But let your positivist attempt to explain transcendental mathematics, and he is all at sea, if he does not borrow from the ideal science or philosophy which he professes to discard. How will the geometrician explain his infinitely extended lines, or lines that may be infinitely extended? A line is made up of a succession of points, and therefore of parts, and nothing which is made up of parts is infinite. The line may be increased or diminished by the addition or subtraction of points, but the infinite cannot be either increased or diminished. Whence does the mind get this idea of infinity? The geometrician tells us the line may be infinitely extended—that is, it is infinitely possible; but it cannot be so unless there is an infinite ground on which it can be projected. An infinitely possible line can be asserted only by asserting the infinitely real, and therefore the mind, unless it had the intuition of the infinitely real, could not conceive of a line as capable of infinite extension. Hence the ancients never assert either the infinitely possible or the infinite real. There is in all Gentile science, or Gentile philosophy, no conception of the infinite; there is only the conception of the indefinite.
This same reasoning disposes of the infinite divisibility of matter still taught in our text-books. The infinite divisibility of matter is an infinite absurdity; for it implies an infinity of parts or numbers, which is really a contradiction in terms. We know nothing that better illustrates the unsoundness of the method of the scientists. Here is a piece of matter. Can you not divide it into two equal parts? Certainly. Can you do the same by either of the halves? Yes. And by the quarters. Yes. And thus on ad infinitum? Where, then, is the absurdity? None as long as you deal with only finite quantities. The absurdity is in the fact that the infinite divisibility of matter implies an infinity of parts; and an infinity of parts, an infinity of numbers; and numbers and every series of numbers may be increased by addition, and diminished by subtraction. An infinite series is impossible.