SIR JAMES PAGET ON SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY,

THE Address delivered by Sir James Paget to the students preparing for ordination at the clergy school of Leeds, which has just been published by Messrs. Rivington, might very well supply the basis of a very original and very striking book on the divergences and the points of approach between Theology and Science. It is marked not only by the rare moral thoughtfulness and candour of the most accomplished of the greet surgeons of hie day, but by that keen insight iuto the limitations of science which only the habitual study of science and the mastery of its principles can give. Sir James Paget points out, in a passage of much beauty, that though, as amongst the various branches of Science, the specialisation which has become so extreme of late years has tended to estrange the - master of one from the master of the. other, and to render

the very language of the students of the different departments unknown tongues to each other, yet that nevertheless, this extreme division of labour ends in bringing all the different departments Of science to converge, in ways hitherto quite unsuspected, in the great central truth of that unity of method which implies unity of authorship and unity of purpose :—

" It may even seem likely that, in the future, as knowledge widens

and divides its fields, and men's studies become more specialised and distinct, the opposition will become more intense, the deviations wider, the difficulty of reconciliation greater ; for each group will become less and less able to appreciate the works of the others. A learned professor of Ttibingen speaking, not long ego, of the progress of knowledge, said that he feared that the temple of science would fail of being fiffished for the same reason as did the Tower of Babel, because the workmen did not know each other's language. And there is, indeed, groat truth in the symbol. There are very few men living who can, I will not say study, but even understand the language of the whole of any recent volume of the ' Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.' But on this point the history of science is opposed to what we might expect. As the field of science has been more divided, and studies have been more special, and men have worked on narrower fields, so has the unity of nature become more evident ; they have dug deeper and come nearer to a centre. Here

is a point which seems to me most worthy of your regard. Let me

illustrate it by some instances. In my early studies it was hold by many that life, or the vital principle, that which was deemed the active power in all living things, was not only different from the principles at work in dead matter, but absolutely and essentially

opposed to them all. It was thought in some measure profane and irreligious to hold that life, regarded not as a condition but as a thing, could be in any kind of relation or alliance with anything acting in dead matter, as with chemical affinity, caloric, magnotiam, 01' anything of the kind. But, while men have been more and more separating themselves into groups of physiologists, and physicists, and chemists, and each of these again into lesser groups, the intimate relation of all the forces of matter, whether living or dead, their correlations and mutual convertibility, have become more and more evident. Similarly, it was believed, hardly more than half a century ago, that the chemical compositions of organic, and of inorganic matter Were essentially unlike, and that the organic could not be attained except through operations of a vital power. Now, chemistry makes hundreds of compounds not distinguishable from those formed in living bodies ; and the late researches of M. Friedel, showing that carbon, the most characteristic element of organic compounds, can be replaced in some of them by silicon, one of the most charac- teristic elements of the inorganic, seem to show that all attempts to indicate a clear line of distinction between the chemistry of the living and that of the dead will fail. Again, the likeness of things that were deemed diverse is illustrated by Darwin's observations on the carnivorous plants. One used to think that if there were a sure mark of distinction between plants and animals, it was that these had, and those had not, stomachs with which they could digest, change, and appropriate alien nutritive substances. He has shown as true digne- tion in plants—especially by the loaves of the Drosera, the little Sun-dew which you may gather on the moors—as can take place in any of our own stomachs; a digestion tree, complete, and similar to our own. Yet further, Darwin's last book, on the 'Movements of Plants,' makes it more than ever clear that we Must think very cautiously in assigning the existence of a nervous system as a really characteristic distinction between plants and animals. So, in respect of diseases, I have lately tried to show that between ours and theirs there is no difference of kind, however much theirs may be, in com- parison, free from the complications of nervous system, moving blood and mind in which we have to study our own. Nay, even beyond plants' I have ventured to suggest that a truly elemental pathology must be studied in crystals, after mechanical injuries or other dis- turbing forces. I might cite many instances more, but those may suffice for illustration of the general fact, that in the progress of knowledge, while scientific men have seemed to be working mortUitid more widely apart, they have found more and more near relations among all the objects of their study. As the rays of knowledge have extended and diverged, so has their relation to one common centre become mere evident, and the unity of nature has become more sig- nificant of the unity of Clod."

And what Sir James Paget insists upon as the result of pur- suing the teaching of facts in different departments of science, however widely they appear to diverge from each other, he be- lieves to be equally applicable to the opposite divergences be- tween the drift of theology and the drift of science as a whole. In point of fact, of course, theology first taught as that unity of cause and drift whieli science is slowly verifying, though it insisted boldly on a mental origin for that unity which the modern scientific school strives in vain to dispense with. And not only did theology anticipate science in teaching us the unity of creation, before that unity had been verified by study, but as Sir James Paget hints, it also anticipated science in warning us that we must not trust our reasoning powers too confidently, when they appear to us to deduce positively from one truth what Beam inconsistent with another truth. Theology teaches us, for instance, the foreknowledge of God, and as posi- tively the responsibility and free-will of man ; and yet to very many men's minds, these truths .appear wholly incompatible just as the evidence of our senses appeared to teach us that the sun moves round the earth, while the evidence of a much more

important body of fact taught, on the contrary, that the earth moved round the sun. Alike by revelation and by science we have been warned not to believe too easily in the incompati- bility of truths independently established on firm grounds, simply because we fancy that we can demonstrate to ourselves their inconsistency :—

"And yet more, lot me venture to say, each side should avoid the habit of thinking that they can safely impute inferences as necessary consequences of the beliefs held by the other; that they can easily show what meat come of carrying-out a belief to what they call its logical consequences. It is from this that much of the bitterest part of controversy is derived. It is declared that if this or that probably harmless opinion be allowed, some grievous error or some utter folly

must come next. It stands to reason,' they say. Stands to reason.' One is tempted to ask, first, whose reason ? Is it the reason of a really reasonable man ? and of one well instructed in the subject of inquiry ? But in any case, it should be remembered how many things that did stand to reason have fallen at the test of fact. I am sure it is true in science, I suspect it is true in theology, that all the the beliefs which we now know to have been erroneous, and all the denials of what we now know to have been true, did ones 'stand to reason.' rhey did so stand, with all seeming strength and security, in the minds of those who maintained them and were ready to defend them as certain truths. It stood to reason that the sun moved round the earth, and that people could be bewitched, and that the moon had much to do with lunatics ; it stood to reason, oven with the rare power of reasoning of Bishop Berkeley, that tar-water would ouro and prevent many serious diseases. And I suppose that in every heresy the error has stood to reason in the minds of many who held to it. There are few expressions which, in serious matters, we should more carefully avoid than this, or any which imply that we can of our own mental power infer certainties, or settle the boundaries of probabilities, or the consequences of beliefs, in subjects which we have nob thoroughly studied."

And most aptly does Sir James Paget quote from the late Canon Mosley the weighty sentence,--" it were to be wished that the active penetration and close and acute attention which mankind have applied to so many subjects of knowledge, and so successfully, had been applied in a somewhat greater propor- tion than it has been to the due apprehension of that very important article of knowledge,—their own ignorance."

On the theological side, however, Sir James Paget's flue address certainly needs some expansion and illustration. Much that he says goes to prove not only that the sup- posed divergency of drift between the different sciences is more or less imaginary, but that "our future knowledge will not be merely heaped on the surface of that we now possess," but that "it will penetrate the mass aucl fill its gaps and inter- spaces, and make many things one, which as yet seem multiple and alien." What he does not do quite so successfully, and what is yet quite within the scope of his address, is to show that this filling-in of the blank " interstitial spaces" between science and science, will be accompanied by a similar filling-in of the blank interstitial spaces between science and revelation. If it be so, there should already be instances in which science has

verified, from a totally new side, truths anticipated by revela- tion, though not anticipated in the manner or form in which science brings its truths to light. We have already referred to one case of this kind suggested in Sir James Paget's address, namely, to the anticipation by revelation of the unity of Nature.

But there is, of course, a possible interpretation of this anticipa- tion which would deny that it was, properly speaking, an antici- pation of an important truth at all. We turn, therefore, to what we hold to be the most striking of all the anticipations by re- velation of a doctrine only now being slowly verified by science, and one filling up "the interspace " between two very different regions of haman investigation. Sir Janice Paget refers to Mr, Darwin's teaching as to "the survival of the fittest" thus :— "Man has reached his present state in civilised races through an incessant struggle not only for food and life, but for intel- lectual mastery ; for virtue, as against those vices that are only brutality surviving ; for truth, as against -error. The influences of Christianity and of civilisation have made the struggle more gentle ; the better sort of men do not destroy one another ; but the law of conflict is not abrogated. The struggle which, from ago to age, has ensured the survival of the fittest, has been under a law which includes intellectual conflicts, and. has con- stantly helped. to the attainment of the truth." Sir James Paget here uses the phrase "survival of the fittest" in a sense different from Mr. Darwin's, but one of which it is most im- portant to notice the true applicability to moral types. Mr.

Darwin's " survival " depends on the organic transmission to descendants of all the habits and variations of physical organi- sation favourable to the preservation or multiplication of a race, and on the tendency which those habits and physical variations have to shelter the individuals possessing them from destruction, and to give them special advantages in the conflict with other races for food and mastery. But Sir James Paget uses the phrase in a very different sense. The only sense in which controversy and collision amongst human minds tend to the "survival of the fittest creed," is by sifting belief, and bringing to the side of the more reasonable or more potent and inspiring thought, those who were previously on the side of the less reasonable or less potent and inspiring thon,ght,—in other words, by persuading men who were not adherents of a particular conviction to adopt and a.ct upon that conviction. It is the ultimate power of gaining adherents which in this sense secures the survival of beliefs ; and if those be the "fittest" beliefs which seem most to strengthen and vivify the minds of the most dominant races of men, as those are the fittest races for the earth which gain the securest and most dominant position in it, then, no doubt, revelation has antici- pated in a most astounding way the survival, and therefore, the fitness of certain beliefs which had nothing in the world to suggest them as fit beliefs for men at all, unless we can ascribe that suggestion to the inspiration of a superhuman mind. For revelation anticipated that that belief should most" survive which should range on its side the most prefound indifference to its own adherents' survival ; that the survival of the belief should be secured by the suffering and death of the believer; that it should triumph through his defeat ; become strong by virtue of his weakness, and conquer in his humiliation. In the Jewish revelation, the promise is to the righteous servant who shall go like a lamb to the slaughter, and who, as the sheep before the shearers is dumb, openeth not his mouth, and who is even to be "numbered with the trans- gressors." But in the Christian revelation the principle of a survival ensured by death is carried to its utmost extent. It is made in some sense a condition of the triumph of Christianity that with no weapons of the flesh shell it resist evil,—that it is to yield before injustice and indignities, as the air yields before a blow ;—that unless it can face death as the ear of wheat does when it is sown, it shall not "bring forth much fruit ;" that without shame it cannot be glorified ; that without taking the lowest place, it can never reach the highest. No*, we venture to say that the power which could steadily predict, as the most fitting of human beliefs to survive all other beliefs, and to inspire those in whom it does survive to great achievements, such readiness, not to say ardour, to lose, to suffer, to die, in its name, was a power which Science itself ought to admit, — now that history has verified

the prediction, — to the rank of superhuman. What could seem less likely to improve the position of life on this earth, than the teaching that earthly life itself was utterly insignificant, compared with a particular state of heart towards a world which nobody could see? What could promise less of dominance, less of achievement, less of dis- tinction, than this constant exhortation to covet lowliness, to be patient of injustice, to welcome dishonour ? Imagine the world from the Agnostic point of view, and you can hardly conceive a doctrine more likely to secure its own speedy extinc- tion, than the doctrine that the world is to be won only by despis- ing the world, and true life gained only by encountering death. Yet this is precisely the paradox which Judaism first taught, and Christ accepted as the very key-note of his revelation, but of which it has taken centuries to verify the power. Ought not Science to admit that not even the first predicted and verified eclipse of the sun, tested the principles of science more effect- ually than this century-old anticipation of a typo of belief as the fittest to survive all other human beliefs and to clomivate the mind of man, which no one without superhuman help could have conceived appropriate to earthly life at nil?