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 with its inward essence. The relation of 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.”*

. . not

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 organic 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 'aváykη 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.]

66

SIFTING THEIR HUSKS."

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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 a dream." "No," was the reply, "it is not physical science, which is what you mean by

Is it science? If not, it

* 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.'

C

science,' but it is not a dream. It is that superior science which alone enables us to view the exact sciences in their true proportions, and which puts all dreams to flight." He smiled incredulously, and departed, I suppose, in Schopenhauer's phrase, "to go on sifting his husks."

Now, this tendency of contemporary thought need not surprise us. Men whose whole energies are concentrated upon lower realities become slow of heart to understand higher. A great devotion to the natural sciences is ever inimical to philosophy. It is a proverbial saying, "Show me ten doctors and I will show you nine atheists." The proportion may be too large; I cannot judge. But, subject to such arithmetical correction as may be required, this witness is true. Yet-to come to my present point—it surely manifests what Butler calls "shortness of thought," that physicists should so positively insist upon experience and analysis as the only methods of arriving at reality. Goethe has observed, "There are not a few problems in the natural sciences of which a man cannot speak justly without calling metaphysics to his aid; not technical words about knowing and being, such as make a show in the schools, but that wisdom of thought which was before all physics, which lives with it, and will endure after it." Most certain it is that the very mental processes, without which physicists could not advance one step, start from the direct and intuitive perception of necessary