PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S ADDRESS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1933, 15 March 1875, Page 4

PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S ADDRESS.

Address delivered before the British Associci' Hon, assembled at Belfast, with additions, by John Tgndall, F.JR.S., President. London: loxgmans, Gkeen. and Co., 1874. [COKTIKTJED.]

Epicurus (1), said to be the son of a poor schoolmaster at l?amos_, is the next dominant figure in the history of the atomic philosophy. He mastered ihe ■writings of Democritus, heard lectures in Athens, went, back to Samos, and subsequently wandered through various countri3S. He finally returned to Athens where he bought a garden, and surrounded him self by pupils, in the midst of whom he liyed a pure and serene life, and died a peaceful death. Democritus looked to the soul as the ennobling part of man ; even beauty without understanding partook of animalism. Epicurus also rated the spirit above the body ; the pleasure of the body was that of the moment, while the spirit could draw upon the future and the past. His philosophy was almost identical with that of Democritus ; but he never quoted either friend or foe. One main object of Epicurus was to free the world from superstitionxaitid the fear of death. Death he treated witlr iadifference. It merely robs us of sensation. As long as we are, death is not; and when death is, we are not. Life has no more evil for him who has made up his mind that it is no evil not to lire. He adored the gods, but not in the ordinary fashion.. The idea of divine power," p^operly^ purified, ■' he thought an elevating bne. Still he taught, 'Not he is godless who rejects the gods of the crowd, but rather he who accepts them.' The gods were' to him eternal and immortal beings, whose blessedness excluded every thought of care or occupation of any kind. Nature pursues her course in accordance with everlasting laws, the gods never interfering. They haunt . - ' The lucid interspace of world and world Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind, Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, j Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar Their sacred everlasting calm.'(2) Lange considers the relation of Epicurus to the gods subjective; the indication probably of an ethical requirement of his own nature. We cannot read his history with open eyes, or study human nature to its depths, and fail to discern such a requirement. Man never has been, and he never will be, satisfied with the operations and products of the Understanding alone; hence physical science cannot coverall the demands of his nature. But the history of the efforts made to satisfy these demands might be broadly described as a history of errors —the error, in great part, consisting in ascribing fixity to that which is fluent, which varies as we vary, being gross when we are gross, and becoming, as our capacities widen, more abstract and sublime. On one great point the mind of Epicurus was at peace. , He neither sought nor expected liere, or hereafter, any personal profit from his relation to the gods. And it is assuredly a fact that loftiness and serenity of thought may be promoted by conceptions which/involve no idea of profit of this kind. 'Did I not believe,' said a great man to me once, ' that an intelligence is at the heart of things, my life on earth would be intolerable.' The utterer of these words is not, in my opinion, rendered less noble but more noble by the fact that it was the need of ethical harmony here,.and not the thought of personal profit hereafter, that prompted his observation; There are persons, not belonging to the highest intellectual zone, nor yet to the lowest, to whom perfect clearness of exposition suggests want of depth. They find comfort and edification in an abstract and learned phraseology. To some such people Epicurus, who spared no pains to rid his style of every trace of haze and turbidity, appeared, on this very account, superficial. He had, however, a disciple who thought it no unworthy occupation to spencl his days and Dights in the effort to reach, the clearness of his master, and to whom the Greek philosopher is mainly indebted for the extension and perpetuation bf his fame. A century and a half after the death of-FpieurusyLucretius (3) wrote Hs great poem, ' On the Nature of Things,' in which he, a Eoman, developed with extraordinary ardour the philosophy of his Greek predecessor. He wishes to win over his friend Memniusto the school of Epicurus; and although he has no rewards in a future life to offer, although his object appears to be a purely negative one, he addressess his friend with the heat of an apostle. His object, like that of his great forerunner, iii the destruction of superstition; and considering that men trembled before every natural event as a direct monition from the gods, and that everlasting torture was also in prospect, the freedom aimed at by Lucretius might rerhaps be deemed a positive good. 'This terror,' he sayc, * and darkness of mind must be dispelled, not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect and the law of nature/ He refutes, the notion that anything can come out of nothing, or that that which is once begotten can be recalled to nothing. The first beginnings, the atoms, are indestructible,. and into them all things can be resolved at last. Bodies are partly atoms, and partly combinations of atoms ; but the atoms nothing can quench^ They are strong in solid singleness, and by their denser combination all things can be closely packed and exhibit enduring. strength. He denies that matter is infinitely divisible. We come at length to the atoms/ without which, as an imperishable substratum, all order in the generation and development of things would be destroyed. i The mechanical shock of the atoms

(1) Born 342 B.C. . (2) Tennyson's "Lucretius.' (3) Born 99 B.C.

being in his view the all-sufficient cause of things, he combats the notion that the constitution of nature has been in any way determined by intelligent design. The inter-action of the atoms throughout infinite time rendered all manner of combinations possible. Of these the fit ones persisted, while the unfit ones disappeared. Not after sago deliberation did the atoms station themselves in their right places, nor did they bargain what ! motions they should assume. From all eternity they have, been diiven together, and after trying motions and unions of every kind, they fell at length into the arrangements out of which this system of things has been formed. 'If you will apprehend and keep in mind these things, nature, free at once, and rid of her haughty lords, is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself, without the meddling of the gods.' (1) To meet the objection that his atoms cannot be seen, Lucretius describes a violent storm, and shows that the invisible particles of air act in the same way as ihe visible particles of water. We perceive* moreover, the different smells of things, yet never see them coming to our nostrils. Again, clothes hung up on a shore which waves break upon become moist, and then get dry if spread out in the sun, though" no eye can see either the approach or the escape of the water particles. A ring, worn long on the finger, becomes thinner; a water-drop hollows out a stone; the ploughshare is rubbed away in the field ; the street pavement is worn by the feet ; but the particles that disappear at any moment we cannot see. Nature acts through invisible particles. That Lucretius had a strong scientific imagination the foregoing references prove. A fine, illustration of his power in this respect is his explanation of the apparent rest of bodies whose atoms are in motion. He employs the image of a flock of sheep with skipping lambs, which, seen from a distance, presents simply a white patch upon the green hill, the jumping of the individual lambs being quite invisible. His vaguely-grand conception of the atoms falling eternally through space suggested the nebular hypothesis to Kant, its first propoundcr. Far beyond the limits of our visible world are to be found atoms innumerable, which have never been united to form bodies, or which, if once united, have been again dispersed, falling silently through immeasurable intervals of time and space. As everywhere throughout the All the same conditions are repeated, so must the j phenomena be repeated also. Above us, below us, beside us, therefore, are worlds without end ; and this, when considered must dissipate every thought of a deflection of the universe by the gods. The worlds come and go, attracting new atoms out of limitless space, or dispersing their own particles. The reputed death of Lucretius, which forms the basis of Mr Tennyson's noble poem, is in strict accordance wi,th his philosophy, which was severe and pure. j

During the centuries lying beisveen the first of these three philosophers and the last, the human intellect was active in other fields than theirs. The sophists had run through their career. At A thens had appeared Socrates. Plato, and Aristot c, who ruined the sophists, and whose yoke remains. to some extent unbroken to the present hour. Within this period also the School of Alexandria was founded, Euclid wrote his ' Elements,' and made some advance in optics. Archimedes had propounded the theory of the lever and the principles of hydrostatics. Pythagoras had made his experiments on the harmonic intervals, while astronomy was immensely enriched by the discoveries of Hipparchus, who was followed by the historically more celebrated Ptolemy. Anatomy had been made the basis of Scientific medicine; and it is said by Draper (2) that vivisection then began. In fact, the science of ancient Greece had already cleared the world of the fantastic images of divinities operating capriciously through natural phenomena. It had shaken itself free from that fruitless scrutiny 'by the internal light of the mind alone,' which had vainly sought to transcend experience and reacli a knowledge of ultimate causes. Instead of accidental observation it had introduced observation with a purpose; instruments were employed to aid the senses ; and scientific method was rendered in a great measure complete by the union of Induction and Experiment. What, then, stopped its victorious advance? Why was the scientific intellect compelled, like an exhausted soil, to lie fallow for nearly two millenniums before it could regather the elements necessary to iits fertility and strength? Bacon has already let us know one cause ; Whewell ascribes this stationary period to four causes—obscurity of thought, servility, intolerance of disposition, enthusiasm of temper—-and he gives striking examples of each. (8) But these characteristics must have had their antecedents in the circumstances of the time. Rome and the other cities of the Empire had fallen into moral putrefaction. Christianity had appeared, offering the gospel'to the poor, and, by moderation if not asceticism of life, practically protesting against the profligacy of the age. The sufferings of the early Christians, and the extraordinary exaltation of mind which enabled them to triumph dyer the diabolical tortures to which they were subjected, (4) must ( have left traces not easily effaced. They scorned the earth, in view of that '■ Building of Gfod, that house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.' The Scriptures which ministered to their

(1) Monro's translation. In his criticism^ of this work, Contemporary Review, 1807, Dr. Hayman does not appear to be aware of the really sound and subtile observations on which the reasoning of Lucretius, though erroneous, sometimes rests. (2). History of the Intellectual Developement of Europe, p. 295. (3) History of the Inductive Sciencesj vol. i. (4) Depicted with terrible vividness in Kenan's | Antichrist

spiritual needs were also the measure of I their Science. When, for example, the celebrated question of antipodes came to be discussed, the Bible was with many the ultimate court of appeal. Augustin, j who flourished a.d. 400, would not ftenyj the rotundity of the earth; but he would deny the possible existence of inhabitants ! at the other side, ' because no such race is recorded in Scripture among the descendants of Adam.' Archbishop Boniface was shocked at the assumption of a * world of human beings out ef the reach of the means of salvation.' Thus reined in, Science was not likely to make much progress. Later on the political and theological strife between the Church and civil governments, so powerfully depicted by Draper, must have done much to stifle investigation. Whewell makes many wise and brave remarks regarding the spirit of the Middle Ages. It was a menial spirit. The seekers after natural knowledge had forsaken that fountain of living waters, the direct appeal to nature by observation and experiment, and had given themselves up to the remanipulation of the notions of their predecessors. It was a time when thought had become abject, and when the acceptance of mere authority led, as it always does in science, to intellectual death. Natural events, instead of being traced to physical, were referred to moral causes ; while an jexercise of the phantasy, almost as degrading as the spiritualism of the present day, took the place of scientific speculation. Then came the mysticism of the \ Middle Ages, Magic, Alchemy, the Neoplatonic philosophy, with its visionary though sublime abstractions which caused men to look with shame upon their own bodies as hindrances to the absorption of the creature in the blessedness of the Creator. Finally came the Scholastic philosophy, a fusion, according to Lange, of the least-mature notions of Aristotle with the Christianity of the West. Intellectual immobility was the result. As a traveller without a compass in a fog may wander long, imagining he is making way, and find himself after hours of toil at his startingpoint, so the schoolmen, having * tied and untied the same knots and formed and dissipated the? same clouds,' found them* selves at the end of centuries in their old position. [To he continued.']