One last instance, the most remarkable of all, and we may leave this book. It need hardly be said that a father of the kind depicted in this book would have a holy horror of the Catholic Church, and he had. He "welcomed any social disorder in any part of Italy, as likely to be annoying to the Papacy." He "celebrated the announcement in the newspapers of a considerable emigration from the Papal dominions, by rejoicing at this outcrowding of many, throughout the harlot"s domain, from her sin and her plagues," and he even carried his hatred so far as to denounce the keeping of Christmas, which to him was nothing less than an act of idolatry.
On a certain Christmas Day, the servants, greatly daring, disobeyed the order of their master and actually had the audacity to make a small plum-pudding for themselves. Actuated by pity, no doubt, and by a feeling of kindness towards a small boy deprived of all the joys of the season, they pressed a slice of this pudding upon the son, who succ.u.mbed--very naturally--to the temptation. Shortly after, however, being afflicted by a stomach-ache, remorse came upon him and he rushed to his father, exclaiming: "Oh! papa, papa, I have eaten of flesh offered to idols!" When the father learned what had happened, he sternly said, "Where is the accursed thing?" Having heard that it was on the kitchen table, "he took me by the hand, and ran with me into the midst of the startled servants, seized what remained of the pudding, and with the plate in one hand and me still tight in the other, ran till we reached the dust-heap, where he flung the idolatrous confectionery on to the middle of the ashes, and then raked it deep down into the ma.s.s. The suddenness, the velocity of this extraordinary act, made an impression on my memory which nothing will ever efface." Such is a plain unvarnished account of the kind of way in which numbers of people were brought up in the "fifties and "sixties of the last century. Can it be wondered that those who had such a childhood should grow up with an absolute horror of the Person in Whose name such things--absurdities when not positive crimes--were perpetrated? I firmly believe that these wholly false ideas of G.o.d and of sin have had more to do with the spread of materialism than many will perhaps be disposed to admit. Educated people, especially those trained in scientific methods, demand a certain common sense and sobriety in their beliefs. If they are brought up to believe that a grievous sin is committed when they invent an innocent story; when they go to a theatre or to a dance, or play a game of cards; if they have never known the demands of real Christianity as put forward by the Catholic Church, is it likely that they will cleave to a faith which apparently engenders such absurdities as the Christmas pudding episode? It is, indeed, as Father Wasmann says, a thousand pities that the reasonableness, the logic, the dignity of the Catholic religion should remain for ever hidden from the eyes and minds of many who so often are as they are, because they were brought up as they were.
In all these things we find the key to another problem. In another essay in this volume I have called attention to the glad intelligence, as it seems to a certain school of writers, that we are freed from the "bugbear of sin," as one of them puts it; able to enjoy ourselves without any thoughts of that kind.
Now I cannot but believe that such writers are thinking of the bugbear of artificial sins invented by the professors of a gloomy creed of religion. It is not to be supposed that any serious writer--and those to whom I allude are eminently such--would speak or write with pleasure and satisfaction of escaping from the bugbear of sins against morality or against one"s neighbour; from the bugbear of dishonesty or theft; of taking away a person"s character; of running away with his wife. I am convinced that it is the invented crimes of card-playing, theatre-going, and the like to which they are alluding: it could not surely be otherwise; and that makes it all the more unfortunate that before misusing a technical term like the word "sin," and thus perhaps misleading some young and ardent mind, such writers could not follow Father Wasmann"s advice and study some simple manual of Catholic ethics, from which they would learn the real doctrine of Christianity and would discover how very different a thing it is and how very much more reasonable than the distorted caricature which we have been studying.
-- 2. THEOPHOBIA: ITS NEMESIS
Whether my view as to the cause, or one of the causes, is right or not, the fact remains that by the mid-Victorian period England had fallen to a very large extent a prey to materialism. Many people attribute the sudden onslaught of this to the publication of _The Origin of Species_ and the controversies of the foolish which followed thereon. Samuel Butler, that brilliant writer who has not even yet come into his own, sums up in his novel _The Way of All Flesh_ (and it may incidentally be remarked, in himself) most of the characteristics of the day. Many a parsonage home like that of the Rev. Theobald Pontifex existed in those days, and more than one Ernest Pontifex emerged from them. Now in this book Butler states that "the year 1858 was the last of a term during which the peace of the Church of England was singularly unbroken," and there no doubt he is right; "The Evangelical Movement ... had become almost a matter of ancient history. Tractarianism had subsided into a tenth-day"s wonder; it was at work, but it was not noisy." Then he says the calm was broken by the publication of three books: _Essays and Reviews_, _The Origin of Species_, _Criticisms on the Pentateuch_ by Colenso. Few persons probably now remember the first and the last of these books; the fame of the second is likely to last long.
Whether again Butler is right in his idea as to the causes or not, as to the fact there can be no doubt. We have arrived at a period when the prevalent opinion amongst the intellectual cla.s.ses was that religion--belief in anything which could not be fully understood--was impossible once one began to think seriously about it. Those who did not really look into such questions might go on considering themselves to believe in revelation, but the moment that a man seriously tackled the subject, his religion was bound to go, just as that of Ernest Pontifex did at the end of five minutes" conversation with an atheistic shoemaker.[21] Agnosticism and materialism were in the air, and remained the dominant features for quite a number of years. There were those who deplored the loss of their faith such as it had been. Huxley obviously did; and Romanes, who afterwards returned to the Church of England, confessedly did. Such persons, and there were many of them, honestly were unable to believe, and said so. A great deal of this was due to the att.i.tude of popular science at that time. It was in a hot fit, and was going to explain everything, if not to-day, at least to-morrow. Now, as Sir Oliver Lodge told us before the war, in his book _Continuity_, we are in a cold fit and we seem only to know that nothing can be known.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, best known as the creator of _Sherlock Holmes_, tells us in a recent book from which I shall have further to quote (_The New Revelation_, Hodder and Stoughton, 1918): "When I had finished my medical education in 1882, I found myself, like many young medical men, a convinced materialist as regards our personal destiny." With the facts contained in this statement I fully agree. The date in question is almost exactly that at which I also became a qualified medical man, and I, and I fancy most of my generation, believed ourselves to be agnostics if not atheists. It was the atmosphere of the time, and so strong as with difficulty to be resisted by those who resorted to the Universities. The point which I want to make is that during the latter part of the Victorian period we had come to a generation of intellectuals practically devoid of religion and followed in that respect by that always larger portion of any generation which, not having brains to think for itself, yet desiring to follow the intellectual _motif_ of the day, adopts whatever is the fashionable att.i.tude for the moment towards unseen things. Yesterday it was blank negation; to-day it tends, as we shall see, to be spiritualism; to-morrow it might be earnest faith: let us hope so. And as to Calvinism, all this was _post hoc_ of course; _propter hoc_ also as I think.
What followed? That is what we now have to consider. The first thing which happened was the very natural discovery that science cannot explain everything; has in fact a strictly limited range of country to deal with. This discovery began to sap the foundations of materialism.
Then there came the further discovery that all was not well, as so many supposed that it would be, under a scheme of life divorced from all connection with religion. Mr. Lucas, who has given the world many pleasant books, none of them with any obvious bias in favour of religion, in _Over Bemertons_ (one of the most pleasant) makes one of his characters, _Mr. Dabney_, deplore the loss of the seriousness of the Victorian era: "We believe only in pleasure and success; our one ideal is getting wealth." Parenthetically, is not that just what might be expected? If there is really nothing but this world, what better can we seek than as much pleasure as we can get out of it? _Over Bemertons_ was first published in 1908, and the remedy which _Mr. Dabney_ then suggested, with a really curious prophetical insight, has just been vigorously applied. That remedy was "War, nothing more or less. A b.l.o.o.d.y war--not a punitive expedition or "a sort of a war"" (he quoted these words with white fury) ""that might get us right again." "At great cost," I said. "A surgical operation," he replied, "if the only means of saving life, cannot be called expensive.""
Finally the discovery was made that mankind will not for long be content to do altogether without religion; a need for something more than bread alone being ingrained in his nature. Thus even the professedly materialistic societies try to afford something in the way of religious exercises. I have recently seen a notice of one of the so-called Ethical Societies in which the members (at their meetings, I take it) are "requested to silently meditate for five minutes on the good life."[22]
It would seem to be quite as beneficial and more practical to meditate on split infinitives. A subst.i.tute for religion has to be found; what is it to be? In the years before the war Mr. Masefield published a very interesting book called _Mult.i.tude and Solitude_, which narrates the trials and troubles of two young Englishmen who make a perilous journey to Africa in search of the secret of the sleeping-sickness. In all their trials they never seem to have thought of prayer, in which it may be a.s.sumed they did not believe, but when they returned to England it occurred to one of them that there was something wanting in their life, and he propounded to his friend the view that "the world is just coming to see that science is not a subst.i.tute for religion," which is one of the things urged in this paper. He then proceeded to the rather startling conclusion that science _is_ "religion of a very deep and austere kind." One is reminded of a well-known pa.s.sage in the Bible: "_Inveni et aram in qua scriptum erat_ IGNOTO DEO." To set up science as an "unknown G.o.d" seems a curious choice, even more curious than the choice of humanity, which--pitiable object as it is--was at least made in the image of G.o.d. Not to pile up instance upon instance, let us content ourselves with remembering that Mr. Wells, who in his earlier novels had certainly not displayed any marked affection for religion, in the last published before the war (_Marriage_) brings his hero face to face with the great realities, and makes him exclaim to his wife that he may "die a Christian yet," and urge upon her the need for prayer, if only out into the darkness. Of course, as all the reading world knows, since the war commenced, Mr. Wells has set up his own altar "IGNOTO DEO," not with much more satisfactory results than those attained by Mr.
Masefield. It is an historical fact that times of war have also been times of religious awakening, and it is natural that they should be so, for even the most careless must be brought to contemplate something more than the day"s enjoyment. It is not then wonderful that the terrible war which has raged with Europe as the c.o.c.kpit, and practically all the nations of the world as partic.i.p.ants, should turn the minds of those who are in the righting line towards thoughts which in times of peace may never have found entrance there. From all sides one hears that this is so, yet here again it is too often the case that an "unknown G.o.d" is sought, and from want of proper direction not always found. In a recently published memoir of one of the many splendid young fellows by whose death the world has been made poorer during this calamitous war, there is this moving pa.s.sage: "I know that many hearts are turning towards _something_, but cannot find satisfaction in what the Christian sects offer. And many, failing to find what they need, fall back sadly into vague uncertainties and disbelief, as I often do myself." We badly need a St. Paul who will say to these and other anxious hearts, "_Quod ergo ignorantes colitis, hoc ego annuntio vobis_."
However, it is much more with those who only "stand and wait" than with those who were actually in the trenches that we are concerned; what about the lamentable army of wives and mothers, widows and orphans, people bereft of those they loved or rising every morning in dread of the news which the day might bring forth; what about these and their att.i.tude towards the things unseen? That many such have turned to some genuine form of religion is happily beyond dispute, but it is also unquestionably true that thousands have turned aside to the attractions of spiritualism. A recent article in the Literary Supplement of the _Times_ commenced with the statement that "Among the strange, dismaying things cast up by the tide of war are those traces of primitive fatalism, primitive magic, and equivocal divination which are within general knowledge." The writer of the article in question thinks that as we have taken a huge and lamentable step backwards in civilisation, we need not be surprised that we should also have receded in the direction of those primitive instincts to which he calls attention. This process had, however, begun long before the war.
The late Dr. Ryder, Provost of the Birmingham Oratory, was a very shrewd observer of public affairs and a very close and dear friend of the present writer. It must be more than twenty years ago since he remarked to me that he thought that materialism had shot its bolt and that the coming danger to religion was spiritualism, a subject on which, if I remember right, he had written more than one paper. I asked him what led him to that conclusion, and his reply was to ask me whether I had not noticed the great increase in number of the items in second-hand book catalogues--a form of literature to which we were both much addicted--under the heading "OCCULT." Since the war, however, there can be no doubt about the fact that spiritualism has made great strides. A thousand pieces of evidence prove it. Look, for example, at the enormous vogue of _Raymond_, a book of which I say nothing, out of personal regard for its author and genuine respect for his honesty and fearlessness. But I return to Sir Arthur Doyle"s book, and we find him a.s.suring us that he is personally "in touch with thirteen mothers who are in correspondence with their dead sons," and adds that in only one of these cases was the individual concerned with psychic matters before the war. Further, he explains that it was the war which induced him to take an active interest in a subject which had been before no more than one of pa.s.sing curiosity. "In the presence of an agonised world," he writes, "hearing every day of the deaths of the flower of our race in the first promise of their unfulfilled youth, seeing around one the wives and mothers who had no clear conception whither their loved one had gone to, I seemed suddenly to see that this subject with which I had so long dallied was not merely a study of a force outside the rules of science, but that it really was something tremendous, a breaking down of the walls between the two worlds, a direct undeniable message from beyond, a call of hope and of guidance to the human race at the time of its deepest affliction." Perhaps it is not wonderful that spiritualism should have won the success which it has, for it offers a good deal to those who can believe in it. It offers definite intercourse with the departed; positive knowledge as to the existence of a future state, and even as to its nature--the last-named intelligence not always very attractive. Further, it requires no particular creed and, it would appear, no special code of morals; for one of its teachings, I gather, is that it does not greatly matter what a man thinks or even does, so far as his future welfare is concerned.
Sir A. Doyle"s book is the least convincing exposition of spiritualism I have yet read--and I have studied many of them--but it may be taken to include the latest views on the subject. Amongst the revelations which he gives, there is one purporting to come from a spirit who "had been a Catholic and was still a Catholic, but had not fared better than the Protestants; there were Buddhists and Mahommedans in her sphere, but all fared alike." Another spirit informed Sir A. Doyle that he had been a freethinker, but "had not suffered in the next life for that reason."
This is not the occasion, and in no way am I the man, to tackle the subject of spiritualism, but this at least I think may be said, that the person who argues that the whole thing is a fraud and deception does not know what he is talking about. Look at the history of the world--_Quod semper_, _quod ubique_, almost _quod ab omnibus_. The records of early missionaries--Jesuits especially--teem with accounts of the same kind of phenomena as we read of in connection with seances to-day, occurring in all sorts of places and amongst widely separated races of mankind. We have it in the _Odyssey_; we have it in Cicero and in Pliny; we have it in the Bible. All this is not a mere matter of imposition.
In a very curious book recently published (_Some Revelations as to "Raymond_," by a Plain Citizen; London, Kegan Paul), to which some attention may now be devoted, the writer, himself a firm believer in spiritualism and one obviously in a position to write about it, points out that the old term "magic" has been relegated to the performances of conjurers, and the terminology so altered as to make spiritualism appear to be a new gospel, whereas the contrary is the case. "The impression prevailed that civilised people were in presence of a new order of phenomena, and were acquiring a new outlook into the regions of the Unknown; whereas the truth was that they were merely repeating, under new social conditions and in a new environment, the same experiences that had happened to their ancestors during some thousands of years."
Here I may interject the remark that as far as my reading and knowledge go, no spirit has ever had a good word to say for the Catholic religion.
What that Church thinks about spiritualism has been made quite clear, and that is enough for Catholics. Before leaving the Plain Citizen, we must not omit to notice one strange hypothesis of his, all the stranger as coming from a professed spiritualist. He maintains--perhaps it would be fairer to say that he lays down as a working hypothesis--the following thesis: Spiritualism involves the existence of mediums, and mediums for the most part have to make their living by their operations.
They will not be averse to making their incomes as large as possible.
For the purpose of acquiring information as to the affairs of possible clients, they have, so he a.s.serts, an almost Freemasonic a.s.sociation by which all sorts of pieces of intelligence concerning persons of importance are collected and disseminated amongst the brotherhood. It did not require much imagination to suppose that the war would add to the number of their clients, whether their claims had real foundation or not; what they wanted above all things was some one of undoubted position who would "boom the movement," in the slang of the day. They laid all their plans to get their man in the author of _Raymond_, and they got him. Such is his thesis for what it is worth.
However, it is time to conclude. What I wanted to show was that Theophobia was the Nemesis of a dreadful type of Protestantism, and that spiritualism was the Nemesis of the materialism a.s.sociated with that Theophobia. There is no need to point out to Catholic readers where the remedy lies, and where the real Communion of the saints is to be found.
They are not likely to be drawn aside by the "Lo here!" of the "false Christs" whom we were promised and whom we are getting. It is for those who have themselves experienced the consolations of the Catholic religion to do their best, each in his own way, to make known to others outside our body what things may be found within.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 21: An excellent example may be found in Butler"s own career. Destined for the ministry of the Church of England (with his own full consent), he was set to teach a cla.s.s in a Sunday school. Finding that some of his pupils were unbaptized, yet no worse-behaved than the others, and obviously quite ignorant of what baptism meant, he abandoned all belief. His biographer, equally ignorant, in narrating, with approval, this change of opinion, says, "Paley had produced evidence of Christianity, but none so unmistakable as this to the contrary."]
[Footnote 22: Dr. Johnson once remarked that "to find a subst.i.tution for violated morality was the leading feature in all perversions of religion."]
III. WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE SYSTEM
Exclusive and long-continued devotion to any special line of study is liable to lead to forgetfulness of other, even kindred, lines--almost, in extreme cases, to a kind of atrophy of other parts of the mind. There is the example of Darwin and his self-confessed loss of the aesthetic tastes he once possessed. Nor are scientific studies the only ones to produce such an effect. The amusing satire in _The New Republic_ has, perhaps, lost some of its tang now that the prototype of its Professor of History is almost forgotten, but it has not lost its point. Lady Ambrose tells the tale: "He said to me in a very solemn voice, "What a terrible defeat that was which we had at Bouvines!" I answered timidly--not thinking we were at war with anyone--that I had seen nothing about it in the papers. "H"m!" he said, giving a sort of grunt that made me feel dreadfully ignorant, "why, I had an excursus on it myself in the _Archaeological Gazette_ only last week." And, do you know, it turned out that the Battle of Bouvines was fought in the Thirteenth Century, and had, as far as I could make out, something to do with Magna Charta."
It is, however, among writers on biological subjects that we find the most salient instances of this contraction. With extraordinary self-abnegation they seem, in the contemplation of the problem with which they are concerned, to forget that they themselves are living things, and, more than that, the living things of whom they ought to know and could know most, however little that most may be. When the biologist begins to philosophise as, after the manner of his kind, he often does, he should leave his microscope and look around him; whereas he often forgets even to change the high for the low power. Thus he limits his field of vision and forgets, when attempting his explanation, that it is only _within a system_ that he is working. Professor Ward, in _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, says:
"From the strict premisses of Positivism we can never prove the existence of other minds or find a place for such conceptions as cause and substance; for into these premisses the existence of our own mind and its self-activity have not entered. And accordingly we have seen Naturalism led on in perfect consistency to resolve man into an automaton that goes of itself as part of a still vaster automaton, Nature as mechanically conceived, which goes of itself. True, this mechanism goes of itself because it _is_ going, and being altogether inert, cannot stop or change. How it ever started is indeed a question which science cannot answer, but which, on the other hand, it has no occasion to ask: time, its one independent variable, extends indefinitely without hint of either beginning or end. Such a system of knowledge, _once we are inside it_, so to say, is entirely self-contained and complete."
"_Once we are inside it!_" what so many writers forget or ignore is that they _are_ inside it, and that their explanations do not explain the system or how it came to be there or to be in operation. Everybody is familiar with Paley"s example of the watch found on the heath. Let us carry it a little further. Suppose some student, after devoting years of patient examination to the watch, were to come forward and say: "I have discovered the secret of this watch. There is a spring in it which possesses resiliency, and it is that which drives the wheels. I think I have heard people say that there must have been a watchmaker to design and construct this piece of machinery, but, in face of my discoveries, any such explanation is wholly unnecessary and may be altogether abandoned."
Perhaps this a.n.a.logy may be regarded as exaggerated; but, before thus condemning it, let the following pa.s.sage be studied. It is from a very important book recently published, which claims (and has had its claim supported by many periodicals) to have done away with any need for an explanation of life beyond that which can be given by chemistry and physics, Jacques Loeb"s _Organism as a Whole, from a Physico-Chemical Viewpoint_.
It would be hard to find a worse example of confused thinking than that of the following pa.s.sage:
"The idea that the organism as a whole cannot be explained from a physico-chemical viewpoint rests most strongly on the existence of animal instincts and will. Many of the instinctive actions are "purposeful," _i.e._ a.s.sisting to preserve the individual and the race. This again suggests "design" and a designing "force," which we do not find in the realm of physics. We must remember, however, that there was a time when the same "purposefulness" was believed to exist in the cosmos where everything seemed to turn literally and metaphorically around the earth, the abode of man. In the latter case, the anthropo- or geo-centric view came to an end when it was shown that the motions of the planets were regulated by Newton"s law, _and that there was no room left for the activities of a guiding power_.
Likewise, in the realm of instincts, when it can be shown that these instincts may be reduced to elementary physico-chemical laws, the a.s.sumption of design becomes superfluous." (_Italics mine._)
In the first place the "purposefulness" of the movements of the planets is not affected in the very least by the question of heliocentricism.
What the author is probably thinking of is an exaggerated and obsolete teleology, but that is not what seems to be the purport of the pa.s.sage.
Let that pa.s.s. The main confusion lies in the application of the term "Law." The Ten Commandments, and our familiar friend D.O.R.A., are laws we must obey or take the consequences of our disobedience. The "laws"
which the writer is dealing with are not anything of this kind. Newton"s Law is not a thing made by Newton, but an orderly system of events which was in existence long before Newton"s time, but was first demonstrated by him. It tells us how a certain part of the system works--when we are "_inside it_." It does not in the least explain the system any more than the discovery of the resiliency of the spring of the watch explains the watch itself. So far from dispensing with "the activities of a guiding power," Newton"s law is positively clamant for a final explanation, since it does not tell us, nor does it pretend to tell us, how the "law"
came into existence, still less how the planets came to be there, or how they happen to be in a state of motion at all. Writers of this kind never seem to have grasped the significance of such simple matters as the different kinds of causes, or to be aware that a formal cause is not an efficient cause, and that neither of them is a final cause. Coming to the latter part of the paragraph, it is in no way proved that instincts can be reduced to physico-chemical laws, and, suppose it were proved, the a.s.sumption of design would be exactly where it is at this moment. It is the old story of St. Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna and their discussion on abiogenesis, and surely biologists might be expected to have heard of that. The same confusion of thought is to be met with elsewhere in this book, and in other similar books, and a few instances may now be examined.
Samuel Butler, in _Life and Habit_, warns his readers against the dicta of scientific men, and more particularly against his own dicta, though he made no claim to be a scientist. If his reader _must_ believe in something, "let him believe in the music of Handel, the painting of Giovanni Bellini, and in the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul"s first Epistle to the Corinthians." And he exclaims: "Let us have no more "Lo, here!" with the professor; he very rarely knows what he says he knows; no sooner has he misled the world for a sufficient time with a great flourish of trumpets than he is toppled over by one more plausible than himself." That is a somewhat unkind way of putting it; but undoubtedly theory after theory is put forward, and often claimed to be final, only to disappear when another explanation takes its place. Thus at the moment we are in the full flood of the chemical theory which is employed to explain inheritance. That heredity exists we all know, but so far we know nothing about its mechanism. Darwin, with "Pangenesis," and others, using other t.i.tles, argued in favour of a "particulate" explanation, but the number of particles which would be necessary to account for the phenomena involved, this and other difficulties, have practically put this explanation out of court. Then we had the Mnemic theory of Hering, Butler, and others, by which the unconscious memory of the embryo--even the germ--is the explanation. Quite lately the mnemic theory has been claimed by Rignano in his _Scientific Synthesis_ as a complete explanation, in forgetfulness of the fact that even the all-powerful protozoon can only remember what has pa.s.sed and could certainly not _remember_ that it was some day going to breed a man. At the moment, things are explained on a chemical basis, though that basis is far from firm; is of a shifting nature, and a little hazy in details. Some time ago, colloids were the cry. A President of the British a.s.sociation almost led one to imagine that "the homunculus in the retort" might be expected in a few weeks. But the chemists would have none of this, and denied that the colloids, about which they ought to know more than do the biologists, had that promise in them which had been claimed. We had Leduc and his "fairy flowers," as now we have Loeb and others with their metabolites and hormones. As to these last, there seems to be no kind of doubt that the internal secretions of many organs and structures have effects which were, even a few years ago, quite unsuspected. Those of the thyroid and adrenals are excellent examples.
It seems to be the fate, however, of all supporters of new theories to run into extravagances. Darwin had to remind his enthusiastic disciples that Natural Selection could not create variations, and we may feel some confidence that Hering, were he alive, would urge his followers to bear in mind that memory cannot create a state of affairs which never existed. So far we may certainly say that these internal secretions do produce certain physical effects, some of them effects not to be suspected by the uninformed reader. There seems to be very good evidence that the growth of antlers in deer depends upon an internal secretion from the s.e.x-gland and from the interst.i.tial tissue of that gland; for it is apparently upon the secretions of this portion of the gland that the secondary s.e.xual characters depend, and not merely these, but also the normal s.e.xual instincts. And this takes us a stage further. The extreme claim is that all instincts, in fact all thoughts and operations, are in the last a.n.a.lysis chemical or chemico-physical. Let us examine this claim for a moment. The adrenals are two inconspicuous ductless bodies situated immediately above the kidneys. Not many years ago, when the present writer was a medical student, all that was known about these organs was that when stricken with a certain disease, known as Addison"s disease from the name of its first describer, the unfortunate possessor of the diseased glands became of a more or less rich chocolate colour. To-day we know that the internal secretion of these organs is a very powerful styptic, and there is good reason to believe that a copious discharge accompanies an unusual exhibition of rage. When we are told things of this kind we must first of all remember that the adrenalin does not cause the rage, though it may produce its concomitant phenomena. If a man flies into a violent pa.s.sion because someone has trodden upon his corns, and there is a copious flow of adrenalin from the glands, it is not that flow which has caused his rage. It may be the flow from the interst.i.tial tissue of the s.e.x-glands which engenders s.e.xual feelings, but then those are almost wholly physical, and only in a very minor sense--if even if any true sense--psychical. Persons who take the extreme view have never yet suggested that there is a characteristic hormone connected with those psychical attributes alluded to in the chapter of the Corinthians recommended to our notice by Butler. In fact they seem to ignore all but the lower or vegetable characters when dealing with psychology from the chemico-physical point of view.
Finally, we come again to the fatal and fundamental defect of this as of other "explanations"; it is an explanation "_within the system_," and therefore unphilosophical in so far as it fails to explain the facts through their ultimate or deepest reasons.
A large part of Loeb"s book is devoted to a description of the author"s remarkable experiments in artificial parthenogenesis, and an attempt to show that they offer a complete explanation. Sir William Tilden, one of the greatest living authorities on organic chemistry, tells us that "too much has been made of the curious observations of J. Loeb and others"; and he definitely states that when we consider "the propagation of the animal races by the s.e.xual process ... there can be no fear of contradiction in the statement that in the whole range of physical and chemical phenomena there is no ground for even a suggestion of an explanation." Behind this p.r.o.nouncement of an expert, one might well shelter oneself; but the question under consideration merits a little further treatment. The reproduction of kind, though usually a bi-s.e.xual process, may, however, normally in rare cases be uni-s.e.xual, and this process is known as Parthenogenesis. Even in human beings certain tumours of the s.e.x-glands, known as teratomata, very rare in women and even rarer, if ever existent, in men, have been claimed as examples of attempts at parthenogenesis, and so far no better explanation is available.
Now Loeb and others have succeeded in certain forms--even in a vertebrate like the frog--in inducing development in unimpregnated ova.
The evidence for all these things is still slender; but we will content ourselves with noting that point and pa.s.sing on to the consideration of the phenomena and the claims put forward in connection with them. We find the task of unravelling the writer"s meaning rendered more difficult by a certain confusion in his use of terms, since fertilisation, _i.e._ syngamy--the union of the different s.e.x products--seems to be confused with segmentation, _i.e._ germination; and this confusion is accentuated by the claim that "the main effect of the spermatozoon in inducing the development of the egg consists in an alteration in the surface of the latter which is apparently of the nature of a cytolysis of the cortical layer. Anything that causes this alteration without endangering the rest of the egg may induce its development." When the spermatozoon enters the ovum it causes some alteration in the surface membrane of the latter which, amongst other things, prevents the entrance of further spermatozoa. Loeb thinks that in causing this alteration it sets up the segmentation of the ovum. That there is a close connection between the two events seems undoubted; that they are in relation of cause and effect seems likely. It is quite evident that an artificial stimulus can in certain cases set up segmentation, but never can it cause the fertilisation of the ovum. It may very likely produce the same change in the membrane that is caused by the entrance of the spermatozoon under normal circ.u.mstances--membrane formation may be necessarily coincident with the liberation in the egg of some zymose which arises from a pre-existent zymogen. But we are still some way off any a.s.surance that the _main_ object of the spermatozoon in inducing the development of the egg is this surface alteration. It may be the initial effect; very probably it is; but since the main function of the spermatozoon must be the introduction of germplasm from the male parent, it is too much for anyone to ask us to believe that its _main_ function is concerned with surface alteration.
Loeb argues that the change in the surface membrane is of a chemical character, and that no doubt may be correct; but even if we allow him every scientific fact, or surmise, he is still, as in the other cases with which we have dealt, miles away from any real explanation. He is still inside his chemico-physical explanation to begin with; and, even within that, he still leaves us anxious for the explanation of a number of points--for example, as to the nature of the chemical process which accompanies, or is the cause of, segmentation. We in no way press these questions; for similar demands could be made in so many cases; we only indicate that they are there. What we do press is this--that when an authority comes forward to a.s.sure us that all the processes of life, including man"s highest as well as his lowest attributes, can be explained on chemico-physical lines, we are ent.i.tled to ask for a more cogent proof of it than the demonstration, however complete, of the germination of an egg, caused by artificial stimulus and not by the ordinary method of syngamy, even though that germination may lead to the production of a perfect adult form. We are ent.i.tled to ask him to make clear to us not only what is happening _within his system_, but--which is far more important--what that system is, and how it came into existence. We are ent.i.tled to ask why the artificial stimulus, or the entry of the spermatozoon, produces the effects which it is claimed to produce instead of any one of some score of other effects which it might conceivably have produced. Above all we are ent.i.tled to ask why there are any effects, or even why there is any ovum or any spermatozoon or curious physiological investigator, to give the artificial stimulus.
Until some light is thrown upon these things we are still within the system, or merely hovering round its confines, and are far away from any final or philosophical explanation such as would satisfy the mind of the man who wants to get a real and not a partial knowledge of the things around him.
We may now turn to the question of Vitalism. It was long the regnant theory; then temporarily the Cinderella of biology; it is now returning to its early position, though still denied by those of the older school of thought who cannot imagine the kitchen wench of yesterday the ruler of to-day. One of the objections to Vitalism is that this explanation of living things is thought by ignorant writers to be so inextricably mixed up with theological considerations as to furnish a case of _stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae_. That is, of course, absurd; but it creates an undoubted bias against the theory. Hence it is the fashion amongst its opponents to write of it as "mystical" or, as Loeb does, as "supernatural," probably the most illogical term that could possibly be used. What is Vitalism? It is the theory that there is some other element--call it entelechy with Driesch, or call it what you like--in living things than those elements known to chemistry and physics. If it is _not_ there, _cadit quaestio_; if it _is_ there it is not "supernatural." It might with reason be called "super-mechanical," or "super-chemical," or "super-physical"; but if it is in Nature, as it is held to be, it is not "supernatural" in any true sense of that word--no dictionary confines the term "Nature" to the operations of chemistry and physics.
A good deal of the misconception existing on this point comes from pure ignorance of philosophy, a subject with which writers of this school seldom have even a nodding acquaintance. "The idea of a quasi-superhuman intelligence presiding over the forces of the living is met with in the field of regeneration." Echoes of the Cartesian idea of the soul seem to ring in this statement; but it could not have been written by anyone who had mastered the Aristotelian or the Scholastic explanation of matter and form. But let us take this question of Regeneration; the power which all living things have, in some measure, though in very different measure, of reconstructing themselves when injured. It has been dealt with in a masterly manner by Driesch; and we may at once say that we do not think that Loeb has in any way contraverted his argument, nor even entered the first line of defence of that which is built up around what he calls by the somewhat forbidding name of "Harmonious-Equipotential System."
Let us take one particular example, a very remarkable one, which has been cited by both writers--Wolff"s experiment on the lens of the eye.
The lens is just behind the pupil or central aperture in the iris or coloured ring at the front of the eye, and behind the cornea which is to the eye what a watch-gla.s.s is to a watch. If the lens of the eye be removed from a newt, as it is from human beings in the operation for cataract, the animal will grow another one. How does it do it? In certain cases a tiny fragment of the lens has been left behind after the operation, and the new one grows from that. This is sufficiently wonderful, but by no means so wonderful as what happens in other cases in which the entire lens has been removed and the new lens grows from the outer pigmented layer of the margin of the iris. To the unbiological reader one source of origin will not seem more wonderful than the other, but there is really a vast distinction between them. At an early stage in the development of the embryo, the cells composing it become divisible into three layers. It is even possible, as Loeb maintains, that this differentiation is present in the unsegmented ovum, in which case the facts to be detailed become still more remarkable and significant. These layers are known as epi-, meso-, and hypo-blast; and from each one of them arise certain portions of the body, and certain portions only. It would be as remarkable to a biologist to find these layers not breeding true as it would to a fowl-fancier to discover that the eggs of his Buff Orpingtons were producing young turkeys or ducks.
Now the lens is an epiblastic structure, and the iris is mesoblastic.
Hence the wonder with which we are filled when we find the iris growing a lens. Loeb attempts to explain this in the first instance by telling us that the cells of the iris cannot grow and develop as long as they are pigmented; that the operation wounds the iris, allows pigment to escape, and thus permits of proliferation. We may accept this, and yet ask why it takes on a form of growth familiar to us only in connection with epiblast? The reply is: "Young cells when put into the optic cup always become transparent, no matter what their origin; it looks as if this were due to a chemical influence, exercised by the optic cup or by the liquid it contains.
"Lewis has shown that when the optic cup is transplanted into any other place under the epithelium of a larva of a frog the epithelium will always grow into the cup where the latter comes in contact with the epithelium; and that the ingrowing part will always become transparent."
A most remarkable and interesting experiment; it has this very important limitation--that it is always _epithelium_ with which it has to do, whereas in Wolff"s experiment the regeneration takes place from mesoblastic tissue. The cause of the transparency may be a chemical reaction--it depends a good deal upon our definition of that phrase. Is protoplasm a chemical compound? Some have considered it so, and spoken of its marvellously complicated molecule. Of course it is made up of carbon, hydrogen, and other substances within the domain of chemistry.
But is it, therefore, merely a chemical compound? The reply involves the whole riddle of Vitalism. The author would say that it, as well as all the living things to which it belongs, is purely and solely a chemical compound; and he must take the consequences of his belief. One of these consequences, from which doubtless he would not shrink, would be that a super-chemist (so to speak) could write him and his experiments and his book down in a series of chemical formulae--a consequence which takes a good deal of believing. But it also involves him in a belief in the rigidity of chemical reactions; and we are ent.i.tled to ask for an explanation of the identical behaviour of the chemical reaction in connection with epiblastic and mesoblastic cells--both pure chemical compounds _ex hypothesi_ and, as far as we can tell from their normal behaviour, widely differing from one another. The optic cup, or its contained fluid, is one chemical compound; epithelium is another; mesoblast is a third. We want an explanation of the identical behaviour of the first with _either_ of the two latter; and this should be borne in mind--that the reaction is not a mere matter of "clearing" of a tissue as the histologist would clear his section by oil-of-cloves or other reagent, but of the construction of a different type of cell--epithelial, not connective tissue.
It certainly follows that there must be some superior, at least widely different, agency at work than one of a purely chemical character--something which transcends chemical operations. This is precisely what the Vitalist claims. No one will fail to award praise to any attempts to explain the phenomena of Nature, whether within or without any system. Loeb"s book sets out to do a great deal more--to explain what it does not explain--the Organism as a Whole, and thus to give a philosophical explanation of man. It even claims to afford hints for a rule for his life, at least so we gather from the Preface, where, alluding to "that group of freethinkers, including d"Alembert, Diderot, Holbach and Voltaire," the author tells us that they "first dared to follow the consequences of a mechanistic science--incomplete as it then was--to the rules of human conduct, and thereby laid the foundation of that spirit of tolerance, justice, and gentleness which was the hope of our civilisation until it was buried under the wave of homicidal emotion which has swept through the world." On which it is surely reasonable to ask how a chemical reaction can learn so to alter itself as to exhibit "tolerance, justice, and gentleness," attributes which it had not previously possessed? Such claims of this and other writers, who would find in the laws of Nature as formulated to-day (forgetful that their formulae may to-morrow be cast into the furnace) a rule of life as well as a full explanation of the cosmos, resemble in their lack of base an inverted pyramid.