THE LATEST THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE.*

The motto prefixed to these volumes, taken from the writings of D'Alembert, expresses the very grandest idea that uninspired reason ever framed to itself:—"The universe, to him who could embrace it from a single point of view, would be—if it is allowable to say it—but one unique fact and one great truth." It is the object of the author of the volumes before us to make good this sublime conception, from data supplied by the science of the times. Efforts of a like kind have be made by a long line of illustrious thinkers extending from Thales the Milesian, down to Humboldt. There is for all minds of exalted cast an unspeakable fascination the idea of the Cosmos,—that boundless universe around them in which at first sight everything appears multitudinous, complex and confused ; but which, upon patient and prolonged investigation, yields up its inmost secrets, and discloses the presence every where of simplicity of means, uniformity action, regularity of law, and the dominance of a marvellous central unity for ever developing itself under infinite varieties manifestation. The Cosmos is the antithesis of the Chaos. A void and formless universe the illimitable theatre of the fortuitous play of countless diverse, opposite, and conflicting forces, is a conception which the mind instinctively rejects. It is, in a word, unthinkable. But the ordered universe, which all is harmony and beauty, and all works towards the ultimate perfection of every part—this is a thought, to illumine the mind of man or angel for his entire existence. And then, the supreme delights of knowledge ! To be able to read creation's open book, and to draw thence the lofty lessons it conveys—lessons that fairly raise the mind which grasps them whole stages nearer to the supreme intelligence that works in all and through all ; to be able to realise in thought the half divine conception with which the great poet of our time closes the series of melodious monodies on his dead friend—

 "One God, one law, one element.

 And one far-off divine event,

To which the whole creation moves ;"  

to know the construction of the universe the mechanical forces that speed the planets in their courses, and that make our earth spin round upon its orbit under the fertilising beams of the glorious sun ; the varied meteorological conditions and conditions of existence in those remote worlds which sparkle in infinite space ; the circulation of life in the words of vegetable, animal, and human life ; the workings of intelligence amid the "shadowy tribes of mind ;" the mysterious connexion between thought and brain ; the aggregate of creation seen as one superb panorama—these are studies worthy of the intellectual aristocracy of the race and the priceless heritage of "those who know."
It is a certain fact that science during the past 50 years has made more rapid progress than it had made during the previous two centuries. Its march might be fitly described us the rush of a railway train. All other departments of human affairs have been by comparison stagnant. The consequence of this is that science, exulting in its strength is taking the lead of all other departments and in a generation or two the whole order of ideas in the minds of men, and thence a human institutions, will be subjected to process of revolutionary change. Even as the case stands, all the governing thought of the world is scientific. Literature, law philosophy, history, criticism, and even poetry, are each pervaded with the spirit of the new science. Take a few representative writers in each of these departments :—In literature, Carlyle and his disciples ; in law John Austin and Sir Henry Maine ; in philosophy, Mill and his school ; in history Buckle, Froude, and Lecky; in criticism Taine, Leslie Stephen, and Matthew Arnold ; in poetry, Tennyson and Browning. Every one of these leaders of thought in their separate spheres is a zealous apostle of the latest scientific thought. It therefore becomes an imperative duty for any man who would not willingly drop out of the ranks in the onward march of intellect to keep up some acquaintance with the progress and achievements of modern science. To gain this end the thing most needful is a clear and comprehensive survey of all that science has discovered, demonstrated, and is aiming to accomplish. Such a summary we have in the present work on Cosmic Philosophy. It is the production of a master-mind in the intellectual domain, symmetrically arranged, logically reasoned, and written in a style of transparent clearness. . . . He begins by what he terms a prolegomena, in which he lays down the abstract bases on which all scientific investigation and reasoning, which are not simply spurious, must of necessity be founded.

1. The foundations of a cosmic philosophy must be laid in metaphysics. Before the astronomer begins to take his observations of the movements of celestial bodies in the far-off depths of space, he must first carefully test his instruments. Before we commence to speculate on the nature and origin of the universe surrounding us, we must examine the mental instruments, and test the processes, by which the speculation is to be carried on. We must ask and answer the questions—How do we know ? and how far does our knowledge extend ? The answers to these questions are humbling to human pride. We are only given imperfect powers, and our range of both perception and reason is imperiously limited. Each mind, imprisoned in a narrow fleshly cell, looks out upon creation, so to speak, through five dim loopholes. For myriads of mankind even these small avenues of intelligence are hardly open at all. An impenetrable haze—the haze of ignorance —shrouds almost the entire system of things without them from intelligent apprehension. But even for the most enlightened disciples of knowledge the field of vision is strangely limited. All our knowledge is purely relative ; nothing is absolute. Of things as they exist in themselves, and independently of our perception of them, we know nothing, and cannot so much as conceive anything. We cannot tell whether the visible universe has a real existence, or is only a shadow of reality. The ultimate term of the Berkeleyan philosophy — namely, that the external universe depends for its existence on our perception of it—has never been and never can be, disproved. What is the ultimate constitution of matter? What, in its final term, is motion? How did this universe originate? Vainly, for the ten-thousandth time, are those and the like questions asked. Answer from the mind within us, or from the immense system of things without us, there cometh none. In whatever direction we pursue our speculations on these primal enigmas of life we speedily find ourselves plunged into fathomless regions of incomprehensibility. "By no power of conception or subtilty of reasoning can we break down or undermine the eternal wall which divides us from the knowledge of things in themselves." The inquiry into final causes in Nature is therefore strictly discredited by science. As Bacon finely says, "Final causes are like the Vestal Virgins, dedicated to God, and barren."

2. Our knowledge, then, is in fact but endless classifying. The Absolute being to us unknowable and inconceivable, we are compelled to realise to our own minds each different object, thought, action, or phenomenon, by the mental process of discriminating it from all other similar objects, thoughts, actions, or phenomena, as the case may be.

3. But our perceptions of even these secondary qualities are radically imperfect. We are never sure that what we do know of any object corresponds exactly with the reality of that object. We know, for example redness in colour and resistance to bodily motion. But we are unable to assert that the redness and the resistance as we perceive them are in any way like the qualities themselves. Does this appear too bold an assertion? The ready answer is that to many persons afflicted with what is called colour-blindness, redness is a quality of colour that does not exist at all. To some acute ears, again, aerial vibrations recurring at the rate of 16 per second are distinctly heard as separate notes, whilst to other ears they form one unbroken low note. Some ears again, can take in sounds which vibrate 30,000 in a second whilst to others such sounds are wholly inaudible. A whiff of ammonia, again, reports itself to the eye as a smarting pain, to the nose as an unpleasant odour, to the tongue as an acrid taste, and dissolved in water gives a burning sensation to the touch. A ray of sunlight is light to the eye without heat, but falling on the hand it is heat without light. Vibrations occurring as seldom as 16 to the second and as often as 30,000 to the second, are audible, but vibrations are not audible below the first pitch or above the second. When vibrations occur 458 billions of times in a second they strike the eye as red light at 577 billions in a second they become green light ; and at 727 billions in a second they become violet light. Beyond the latter limit they cease to affect us consciously. Here, then, we have the same external cause—vibration in particles of matter—producing in us sensations so different as those of sound heat and light. Clearly, therefore, we know nothing of external objects or agencies excepting as they affect us through our senses.

4. But, nevertheless, when pursued to its final term, both in the region of the ideal and the material, the inquiry forces us upon the conclusion that there does exist externally to us an unknowable Reality, of which all phenomena whatsoever are knowable manifestations. Beyond this conclusion scientific speculation never can advance. All that relates to the being, attributes, and moral government of this unknowable reality belongs exclusively to the domain of religion natural or revealed.

5. The instruments and limits of science having thus been defined, the next point is to determine the method of its investigations. There are two possible and precisely opposite methods open to us. We may either begin by reasoning from the existence and faculties of our own minds to the external objects around us ; or we may begin with these external objects, note, compare and classify them, and from such classification deduce general principles, and thence universal laws. Of these two methods the first is termed subjective or metaphysical, and the second objective or scientific. Modern science completely discredits and discards the first method as being empirical, fallacious and without result, whilst the second is based on observation, is strictly reasoned, and fruitful in the most splendid results. Plato was the prince of subjective philosophers, but the entire mass of his half inspired speculations is worthless when set beside Newton's single generalisation of the law of gravitation. All the transcendental philosophy of all the ancient and modern worlds would not have availed to bring to light the single fact discovered by James Watt in a Sunday solitary ramble, and to which the nineteenth century owes its railways namely—that steam is an elastic vapour. Nevertheless for those who choose to follow it, metaphysics is a quite allowable line of speculation ; only those who do so must not intrude their theories or their speculative conclusions into the domain of science.

6. Every object and every movement that we perceive in the universe around us is the effect of some foregone cause or combination of causes. To trace out the chain of causes link by link till the final term of investigation is reached is the proper business of science. Of absolute causation it knows nothing, and cannot even conceive anything. In this department, also, as in the outer department of facts and phenomena, all our knowledge is relative. "Start from what point we may we must sooner or later reach the circumference of the circle that includes all that is knowable. Every attempt to overstep this circumference and gain a sure foothold in the dark region beyond must result in utter discomfiture. The inquiry into the origin and contents of our belief in causation reveals more clearly than ever our impotence to deal with objective powers and existences. The attempt to detect the hidden energy in the act of causation is but the fruitless attempt to bind in the chains of some thinkable formula that universal Protean power, of whose multitudinous effects we are cognisant in the sequence of phenomena, but which in its secret nature must ever mockingly elude our grasp." And at this point the remark may be interposed that the confession which science here modestly makes of its own incompetence to deal with absolute truths is merely a variation of a similar and much misunderstood statement made by the Apostle Paul in his eloquent plea for the necessity of a divine revelation—" The world by its wisdom (i.e., its science and its philosophy) knew not God." In other words science is scientific, not theological, nor metaphysical, nor transcendental.

7. "O physics! Beware of Metaphysics !" are words contained in one of the chapters of Newtons great work. To construct a cosmic theory of the universe it is necessary that there should be a total severance made between the two methods of procedure already described. The fixed idea of untutored human nature, that every separate object and movement in the universe is a distinct expression of the volition of an unseen and unknowable power, must be carefully set aside. This is necessary, not because the phrase the "will of God" may not be perfectly accurate and expressive of a real truth, but because it is incompetent to explain anything scientifically. It is the unreasoning answer of the benighted savage, who starts in alarm when the thunder rolls through the sky above his head ; or of the fatalistic Turk, who knows nothing at all of what true knowledge is. In a word, the phrase is just the parrot-cry of ignorance, whenever it is used to decry or to discredit scientific inquiry. Herein lies the precise point at which unscientific minds begin to take alarm whenever the word "science" is mentioned in their presence. Because the scientific inquirer does not at once refer everything to "the will of God," as the preacher in the pulpit is accustomed to do, therefore it is assumed that he denies the Divine power and working in creation. But this is by no means a fair inference. Newton was not the less a devout believer in revelation because he referred the laws of motion in the heavenly bodies, not to the "will of God" directly but to the principle of universal gravitation. And the case holds throughout. "The existence of God—denied by Atheism and ignored by Positivism— is the fundamental postulate upon which Cosmism bases its synthesis of scientific truths. In the progress from Anthropomorphism to Cosmism the religious attitude remains unchanged from the beginning to the end. And thus the apparent antagonism between science and religion, which is the abiding terror of timid or superficial minds, and which the positive philosophy did so little comparatively to remove, is in the Cosmic philosophy utterly and for ever swept away."
Here is a conclusion that will doubtless be hailed with intense satisfaction by thinkers of all classes.

*"Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Based on the Doctrine of Evolution, with Criticisms on the Positive Philosophy." By John Fiske, M.A., LL B., Assistant Librarian at Harvard University. 2 vols. London : Macmillan and Co. 1874.



Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Saturday 6 March 1875, page 4