sometimes told that the advance of scientific knowledge has done much to curb "the overweening dogmatism of theologians." However that may be, it has certainly given rise to a new dogmatism not less overweening. If theologians have offended by seeking to draw within their jurisdiction matters of merely physical, historical, or philological science, assuredly physicists are in a like condemnation. Nor, human nature being what it is, need this excite our wonder. It has been well observed that "what makes physical researches so intoxicating is the feeling they inspire of perfect acquaintance with the constitution of 'nature." The special note of the nineteenth century is the stupendous results achieved by those researches. Our planet has-so to speak-been swept into new environments. Old questions are transfigured in the light of new knowledge. The world of thought has been revolutionised. One effect of this absorbing devotion to physical science, so abundantly recompensed, has been the growth of that new dogmatism whereof I have spoken: a dogmatism which requires us to believe, under pain of intellectual reprobation, that purely physical methods are the sole roads to truth that everything may be brought within the province of matter and force. Thus there is an influential school-Schleicher, I suppose, must be reckoned its most eminent representativewhich insists on ranking the science of language

among

the purely physical sciences: which will have it that the signification of words is nothing more than a mere result of determinable nervous action. Consider for a moment what this means. That the science of language must start from phonology may be admitted. That it is nothing but phonology can be allowed only if speech is merely mechanical, physical, external. But is there any article of any creed which so largely taxes our credulity as does this proposition? For a sound is not a word. It does not become a word until

it is invested with a meaning. And meaning implies thought. There can be no word without a concept. Mr. Sayce has admirably observed, "Phonology, the science of sound, is not synonymous with the science of language; it is but a department, a subdivision of the master science and deals only with the external, the mechanical, the physical side of speech. . not with its inward essence. The relation of grammar and the inner signification of words and sentences, are what constitute the real essence of language, and in so far as these belong to thought and not to the mere vocal organs of the body, the science of language, like the other sciences which have to do with the mind, must be described as a historical and not a physical science.'

But we are told that history is a physical science. M. Littré has succinctly formulated this dogma :

*Introduction to the Science of Language, vol. i. p. 59, 60.

1.]

LAW AND NECESSITY.

15

"History is a natural science when the antecedent produces the consequent."* According to that view, which is much in favour at the present day, the annals of mankind are "eine reine Naturgeschichte"

-a mere record of mechanism and fatality, of necessitated transformation and movement: the world's saints and sages are mere puppets, impotent pieces in the game played-shall we say?-by natural selection: and the Progress of races, or of humanity at large, is due to the crganic interaction of blind forces. Such is the conception of history as a merely physical science: the materialistic conception, we may call it, without inaccuracy, and, I trust, without offence: and its effect is to derationalise history: to reduce it to "a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing." I need hardly say how utterly different is the view of those who follow the transcendental philosophy. Most assuredly we hold that the historical course of events is subordinate to universal laws. To me it appears that the one great incontestable conquest of the modern mind is the expulsion from philosophy of the notion of uncertain-that is of irrationalchance, and the establishment of the universal reign of law. But when we speak of law, we mean something very different from the 'aváуêη of the ancient Stoics or the necessity of modern phenomenists. To my mind the word "law" carries with it the conception that the world has been designed upon

* Etudes sur les Barbares et le Moyen Age, p. 296.

a rational plan; that its course is governed by constant method, and not by caprice, unreason, or the throwing of Lucretian dice, as hazard may direct them; that if we could view the entire prospect from end to end, we should perceive every where the same infinite power, controlling, overruling, and bringing the action of secondary causes to an harmonious and reasonable issue.

Yes, "reasonable." And here I am led to remark upon the abundant evidence supplied by the physical sciences themselves against the exclusive claims made, under the name of Progress, for their special methods. Existence presents two problems: the how and the why. To explain the how of things, we must discover that uniformity of sequence or co-ordination which we call the laws of phenomena; we must analyze their elements. But there is that within us, and nothing can altogether root it out, which will not let us rest in phenomena; which seeks to know what it is that underlies, informs, and upholds the appearances apprehensible by sense which demands how to pass from the natura naturata to the natura naturans. To these "obstinate questionings" physical science can give no answer. It can reduce the complex to the simple, the phenomenon to the law, the special law to the general law. But all this, as Schopenhauer has justly said, is "like a sum which never works out. Causal series without beginning or end, fundamental forces which are inscrutable,

1.]

"SIFTING THEIR HUSKS.”

17

endless space, beginningless time, infinite divisibility of matter, and all further conditioned by a knowing brain, in which it exists just like a dream, and without which it vanishes, such is the labyrinth in which physical science leads us ceaselessly round." * To explain the why of things we must discover their reason and their ends. And this is the office of metaphysics. But the dominant school of contemporary thought puts aside that higher knowledge, and, more or less contemptuously, denies its reality. "We see at the present day," remarks the acute and bitter thinker whom I just now quoted, "the husk of nature investigated with the utmost nicety. The investigators have the minutest acquaintance with the intestines of intestinal worms, with the parasites of parasites. But if some one comes-as, for example, myself— and speaks of the kernel of nature, they will not listen; they even think it has nothing to do with the matter, and go on sifting their husks." † Metaphysics," a celebrated naturalist, whom I must not name, once said-"what is one to make of metaphysics? Is it science? If not, it is a dream." "No," was the reply, "it is not physical science, which is what you mean by

* Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Book I., chap. xvii. I avail myself of Messrs. Haldane and Kemp's translation.

Ibid. He observes elsewhere in the same chapter: "We may set up this as the necessary credo of all just and good men, I believe in metaphysics.'

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