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 ON THE 
 
 REALISATION OF THE POSSIBLE. 

 
 Eleusis servat quod ostendat reviscntibus. Initiatos nos 
 crcdimus : in vcstibulo karemus. 
 
 Seneca.
 
 ON THE 
 
 REALISATION OF THE POSSIBLE, 
 
 SPIRIT OF ARISTOTLE. 
 
 F. W. BAIN, M.A., 
 
 Quondam Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford. 
 
 rh Se Svvdfj.fi tls tVTfAe'xeiai/ jSaSi'fe*. 
 
 JAMES PARKER AND CO. 
 
 6 SOUTHAMPTON-STREET, STRAND, LONDON 
 
 AND 27 BROAD-STREET, OXFORD. 
 1899.
 
 Printed by James Parker and Co., 
 Crown Yard, Oxford.
 
 S3 
 
 3ifc 
 
 TO 
 
 THE WARDEN AND FELLOWS 
 
 OF 
 
 ALL SOULS' COLLEGE, OXFORD, 
 
 THIS SOLUTION OF AN OLD PROBLEM 
 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
 WITH RESPECT AND ESTEEM.
 
 " MHTIN ("fiSe, Bed' <ro<f)iav rts lipio-r ereXeao-ev ; " — 
 
 tJx® r ' avT '- K eiruiv r/o-der uTroTrrape'voiv, 
 anf/a r dpeifiopevrf TraXivopo~os ave'inev ernKXr/v 
 
 e< Aioj lepevrjv, oipai, eivatvvpiav. 
 rjpas yap xaAe7rco? xP^ V0S epire'ipovs e8l8a£ev, 
 
 pe'ia 8" API2T0TEAH2 auros anavr epadev. 
 7fpa>ros eTTiarrpi-qs I8eav enoirjae reXeiav 
 
 vXr/s 8vrnT€idovs Tpa^v deXrjpa 8dpa>v, 
 8t]poTiKT]v t dvopoov ardcriv dp6u>o~as 8iaXeKT(ov, 
 . dpxrjv T auroKpdrcop evdpovlo~as re vopov 
 Xpvaovv Trdai vopua-jxa, Xdyovs KareKO\f/ev aKpiftels' 
 
 (vuv 8e o-o(f)i£6pevoi, xp^P e ^ opeovvpiais.) 
 Tlpcorayopas re KaXfos dvdpa>Trca trdvra perpelo~dai 
 
 aero' rouro yap rju avro to uerpov avt]p, 
 irao~av 6pi(,6pevos yeveo-iv NOOS, auros opiaros 
 
 H nPfiTH AYNATI2N ENTEAEXEIA AOrON. 
 S> 2(/uy£ dv8poXereip', a'lviyp.d erov \o~6i reXeurr/v 
 
 'Lo~xoV l8ov Tov ayav euaroxov OiSiVoSa / 
 dp\r)6ev 8 rjv dur\ Aoyov TSlvdos ftao-iXevayv' 
 
 vvv re Aoyos (ppov8os, Aoypa t dveipoyeves 
 nvevpariKois (jivaa Xriprpxao-LV, epya r dpa^vris 
 
 vrjTTVTias pvias SatSaXecus dnara. 
 ■%a>pio~pov y^i>xrjs ana rrooparos rjXldtov yap, 
 
 dKp6o~o(f)ov 8' aropov 8eo-p6v eyu>ye kuXcc' 
 aepvd T 'AXr/Beias ye U\droov ene8ei^e 7rpoVa>7ra 
 
 avro 6' Apio~TOTeXr]s ijyayev ' Ov ro8e rt. 
 pe\p^ 8e roii8e irdXat. fxerea>pLadel.aa Nolens 
 
 Kai.ope.vrj nrepvyas 6do~o~ov eirvnre Karoo. 
 u> rots rjuadoeaaav 68onrXaveovo~iv ept]pi)v 
 
 \ijrh\r) klcov rgXetyavovs o-o(filas !
 
 Vlll 
 
 & kot' dneipoPdOovs aKaTatrraTov oibpa BaXdrrqs 
 
 (paidipov ovpavias oppa KaracrTdcreios ! 
 XafjiTrpuv o(tov <rTi\fieis Kara irdvTa KciTavyd^ets re — 
 
 dpxcis, Kocrpov, opovs, yfjv, pereapa, (pva-iv, 
 (wa, 7ro\(is, tyvxrjv, 7ToirjTas, prjTOpas, rjdrj — 
 
 rj (po(3os ei, Seivfj Trapcpavocov 8vvdpei 
 ws ov&' eaTrepos ovt tip ea>os a , e/c?7/3oAos, aidav, 
 
 Saipoviov Kadapds (pdcrpa 8i<aiocrvvt]s ! 
 Biiipcov bfj tis lip' rj(j6a ; (pvaiv yap cnap(poTepl£et.s 
 
 rdv pdpov, dvdpanra' rov voov, ddavdra. 
 
 » Elk. Nic. v. I. 
 b De Part. Anim. iv. 5, and Plato, Sy?np. 202 E.
 
 PRE FACE. 
 
 AS nothing in this world can be understood except when 
 considered in relation to the whole of which it forms 
 a part, and as, owing to the over-specialisation and ex- 
 cessive differentiation of modern intellectual labour, there 
 is a complete divorce between science, history, and Aris- 
 totle, the man of science totally ignoring Aristotle a , the 
 historian too busy to attend to either, and the Aristotelean 
 degenerating into a commentator, the result is, that the real 
 significance of that revolutionary ferment in the mind of 
 Europe, occasioned principally by the Origin of Species, 
 is not perceived. The deification of Darwin was, in fact, 
 though the world did not know it, its apology to Aristotle, 
 its 7ra\iva>5la, the recantation of its abuse and rejection of 
 its old Master, dating from the Reformation. 
 
 It is true that modern Science supplements, corrects, 
 and enriches the philosophy of Aristotle, in detail : but 
 conversely, that philosophy can do for modern Science 
 something of which it stands in sore need ; something 
 which modern philosophers have attempted to do for it 
 in vain. As a man might have in his possession the 
 various parts of a steam-engine, or the bones of a mam- 
 moth, and yet be unaware of his wealth, from not knowing 
 how to put the pieces together; so the Sciences do not 
 recognise the meaning of their own discoveries, because 
 
 * Always excepting the universal Humboldt, who said of Aris- 
 totle, that he must remain, for thousands of years to come, the 
 Master of the Wise. (Kosmos, ii. 525, Bohn.) The spirit of Aris- 
 totle was half reborn in Humboldt. 
 
 b
 
 PRE FA CE. 
 
 they ignore that organic whole, that method, scheme, or 
 plan, of which they are all but so many particular illus- 
 trations. The faggot is not bound. Now, the Old Or- 
 ganon is just the string that runs through and makes a 
 necklace of the several beads : it is the lost unity of their 
 disjecta membra, that which the world loved long since and 
 has lost awhile. Men of Science will one day awake to 
 honour duly their greatest man : they will awake, to dis- 
 cover, not without a blush, that those old 'essences' and 
 1 entehchies ' at which they have been scoffing for cen- 
 turies — 
 
 And they hae sworn a solemn oath 
 John Barleycorn was dead — 
 
 that old obsolete philosophy which, under the strong 
 delusion of their own ignorance, they mistook, like Thor, 
 for a miserable grey-haired old woman, and strove in 
 vain to overturn, was only the Universe in disguise.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction ..... i 
 
 I. Historical : on Modern Idealism, or the En- 
 deavour to account for the Continuous Real 
 by the Discrete Ideal; to reduce and refer 
 the Infinite Possibility of the Universe to a 
 single case of Abstracted Actuality: the 
 origin, development, self-contradiction, and 
 intrinsic futility of that Endeavour . 13 
 
 II. Analytical: on the Origin (dp\n)> Unity 
 (rfkos), and Evolution (ytveais), of the Physical 
 Sciences. 
 
 a. Origin : the Nature (ova-la) of Sight . . 69 
 
 § 1. The Critical Blunder of the Idealist . 71 
 
 § 2. The Raison d'etre, or Duty, of Sight . 100 
 
 § 3. The Analytical Definition of Sight . 120 
 
 £. Unity : the Logic of Nature (ova-la, cpvaa, rtkos) 163 
 
 § 1. Molecule, or the Nature of Physics . 165 
 
 § 2. Syllogism, „ „ Logic . 172 
 
 §3. System „ ,, Astronomy . 178 
 
 § 4. Rock „ „ Geology . 185 
 
 §5. Cell „ \ _. , /potentiality 191 
 
 „ > Biology Y 
 
 § 6. Soul „ \ bJ { actuality 201 
 
 § 7. Wealth „ „ Economics . 206 
 
 § 8. Institution „ „ Politics . 210 
 
 § 9. Authority „ „ Law . .221
 
 xii CONTENTS. 
 
 § 10. Character, or the Nature of Ethics . 227 
 
 § n. Insight „ „ Intellect . 232 
 
 § 12. Reality „ „ Metaphysics . 236 
 
 y. Teleology : the Law of Evolution . . 245 
 
 Appendices — 
 
 a. On the relation of Aristotle to Plato . 
 
 b. The Impossibility of ' Natural Selection 
 
 c. On the Hindoo ' Syllogism ' . 
 
 d. Aristotle as a Geologist 
 
 e. Force .... 
 
 257 
 262 
 264 
 267 
 
 274 
 
 Note. — With regard to the title of this essay, it goes without saying 
 that possible (— the Scholastic fosse) is not adequate as a rendering 
 of Aristotle's Greek. Potential and dynamical, terms employed 
 nowadays in special scientific senses, are unsatisfactory. In the 
 absence, therefore, of any exact equivalent, I have preferred possible 
 as a general expression, replacing it in particular cases by other 
 words. 
 
 ERRATUM. 
 P. 40, note t, last linz, for electrophorus read electroscope.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ALL down history, but especially in the last two 
 centuries, the intellectual and consequently the 
 practical efforts of the world have been rendered 
 vain and nugatory by a fatal weakness of which it 
 is unconscious, which makes the philosopJiical basis 
 of its thinking radically erroneous a priori. 
 
 This weakness is, the innate and incorrigible pro- 
 pensity in the human mind to abstraction. In every 
 sphere of thought, in history and politics, in philo- 
 sophy and religion, in science and economics, men 
 poison and vitiate all their thought beforehand, 
 without suspicion, by abstracting things from those 
 correlative, often latent and imperceptible con- 
 ditions, which alone make them possible, and there- 
 fore real. For every real thing is a realised possi- 
 bility ; possibility is the root and source, and the 
 core of reality, but this they ignore, and so their 
 thought never reaches realities, for which they sub- 
 stitute invariably entities, unrealities, mere rational 
 impossible figments of the self-deluding mind. In 
 this substitution of entities for realities, by a failure 
 to recognise their possibility, lies the very soul and 
 creative cause of error ; it is this which has ruined 
 
 B
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the thought of Modern Europe and brought about 
 most of its practical evils. 
 
 The heart of the delusion is this, that the world 
 cannot draw the line between its imagination and 
 its judgment. It is deluded and fooled by its own 
 faculty of idealising and abstracting : taking things 
 out of and away from their context, mistaking a 
 part for the whole, neglecting essential determinant 
 factors, conceiving a state of things other, and 
 better, not only than what is actual, but even possi- 
 ble. Hence the Utopiology which futilises its en- 
 deavours. It cannot understand that the limits of 
 the possible are fixed and determined with adaman- 
 tine necessity by the inalterable nature of tilings, that 
 nature which, notwithstanding all its physical science, 
 it ignores, and which it is precisely the essence of 
 Modern Philosophy to deny. Therefore it is, that it 
 gives its vote by preference to the man who advo- 
 cates magnificent, high-sounding, ultra - philan- 
 thropical impossibilities, only because he does not 
 possess insight into the nature of things as they 
 are. It is his very want of wisdom that wins him 
 weight in the world, which considers him noble, 
 sublime, and so on. And though the world's own 
 nature gives him the lie, yet it does not see this, 
 for it does not know itself, and utterly refuses to 
 recognise its own face in the glass. It worships
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 accordingly the wrong men, paying no attention 
 to its real ' prime ministers,' and deifying, as pro- 
 found moral and economical philosophers, literary 
 dreamers, foolish Utopians, or preaching charlatans, 
 whose thought moves in worlds other than this our 
 real one, and who eternally deceive themselves and 
 the world, and lead it, while it gapes at the stars, into 
 sloughs and ditches : since the effort to realise more 
 than is possible invariably ends in actually realising 
 less a . 
 
 To speculate is human : to define, divine. Any 
 human being can speculate : but not one man in 
 a million knows what thinking means. For ' specu- 
 lative thought/ as it is called, with which we are 
 deluged nowadays, is to real thinking what wishing 
 is to willing. The one is vulgar, easy, attractive, 
 feeble, feminine b , and fatal : the other rare, un- 
 popular, male, difficult, and beyond all price. They 
 differ, notwithstanding their superficial resemblance, 
 infinitely and immeasurably ; as weakness and 
 strength, dreaming and doing, Plato and Aristotle, 
 
 * This is why some periods in history are unjustly blackened 
 on the authority of poets, dreamers, religious and political enthu- 
 siasts, who criticise reality from the point of view of unrealisable 
 ideals. 
 
 b The mark 01 degeneracy in literature and philosophy is the 
 appearance of women in it. Women are incapable of thought ; it 
 requires the semen virile. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Hindoo and Englishman, Ahriman and Ormusd. 
 Utopiology, sublime speculative roaming in the 
 realms of the abstract, imaginary and infinite, 
 soaring on what Michelet calls Vaileinfini du desir et 
 du rive, has not only its charm but its positive 
 value in human life c : there is even a point of view 
 from which it might be regarded as the choicest 
 flower (but not the fruit) of existence : yet its 
 danger consists just in its beauty, and the difficulty 
 lies always, not in idealising the real, but in realis- 
 i?ig the ideal. This is what is so infinitely hard, for 
 it involves definition, determination, patience, con- 
 centration, labour, courage, self-control, grasp, 
 analysis — thereby to acquire real insight into the 
 limits of the possible and the nature of things as 
 they are. 
 
 Emancipation, political or intellectual, from old 
 chains of slavery, proclaimed so noisily by the 
 philosophers and politicians of the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries, is a great idea, certainly : 
 but then, the realisation ? For nihilism is liberty 
 in the intellectual no more than it is in the political 
 sphere ; though it is equally easy in either. To 
 be a ' radical,' a ' root and branch ' man, a sceptic, 
 
 c Could you e.g. convert the Hindoos to a kind of sober, rational 
 Deism, you would make them no wiser, no better, and very much 
 sadder men : they only live in their mythological dreams.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to deny everything wholesale, is easy enough. The 
 difficulty is to begin again, to believe on good grounds, 
 to understand the raison ditre, the necessity and 
 nature of things: to base life on logic. If the 
 boasted emancipation which is the note of modern 
 philosophical and political history meant only the 
 denial and ignorant rejection or abuse oj necessary 
 mental and political laws and conditions by conceited 
 superficiality that did not understand and would not 
 recognise anything but the obvious, it was only an- 
 other form of slavery, grosser than the old. And 
 this is in fact exactly what it did mean, as I shall 
 endeavour to show. The emancipators were them- 
 selves, little as they dreamed it, slaves, and conse- 
 quently the enslavers of the dupes who should follow 
 their blind leading, to a radical misconception of 
 the nature of things. They were absolutely ignorant 
 of the nature of those very two things which they 
 professed to understand and expound — the Mind 
 and the State. And what the world most needs 
 at this moment is the recognition and restoration 
 of the very thing they strove to pull down : the 
 philosophy of Aristotle. 
 
 When Renan described a certain peculiar con- 
 ception of Aristotle's philosophy as a ' newtonisme 
 metaphysigue 6 ,' he let fall an expression whose 
 
 d Aver rocs, p. 1 1 6.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 depth and admirable felicity he was infinitely far 
 from intending or even suspecting. Renan was an 
 advanced sentimental cosmopolitan Liberal, and 
 did not appreciate Aristotle, whose philosophy 
 possessed in his eyes only an historic interest ; but 
 it is curious to see how in this instance he speaks 
 truth point blank, though unawares. Metaphysical 
 Newtonism is the very word : that is Aristotle. For 
 just as Newton rectified and methodised the con- 
 ceptions of the world especially with regard to 
 celestial mechanics, by discovering and introducing 
 the correct central idea ; so, as I propose to show, 
 has the central conception of Aristotle's philosophy e 
 power to rectify our conceptions in many directions 
 where they require it, by methodising all. The 
 modern Physical Sciences are the verification of 
 Aristotle's philosophy, which gives them just that 
 which they have not got, the scheme and unity of 
 Science. They are all but particular illustrations 
 of his universal : the philosophy of Aristotle is the 
 One in their Many. 
 
 Aye ! and it is something more : it is the very 
 soul and spirit of life. And if the English people 
 only knew him better, they would make Aristotle 
 their patron-saint. Aristotle is the great constitu- 
 tional philosopher and natural historian who has 
 
 • Not that to which Renan refers, but another.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 as it were critically anticipated the English type : 
 the spirit of his philosophy is incarnate on their 
 practical activity. For what is the Englishman's 
 summunt bonum ? It is, I will venture to answer 
 for him, the exercise of power, i.e. the realisation 
 of the possible. This is the secret of English life, 
 of its ethics, its politics, its athletics. This is that 
 ^vyr\<i ivepyeia tear dperrjv which is only the ethical 
 aspect of the universal law of organic motion, to 
 examine which is the object of this essay. You 
 may epitomise the spirit of Aristotle and the soul 
 of the Englishman in one and the same word — 
 doing, action, energy. It is not either Bacon or 
 Hobbes, Locke or Hume, Berkeley or Mill f : still 
 less is it Kant and his school of dreaming ideologists : 
 it is Aristotle who has divined the soul, expressed 
 the ideal, and methodised the life of the English 
 nation. He is the true English philosopher: he is 
 more English than Greek : and yet they have 
 thrown away this royal eagle for wallowing hogs 
 or blinking night-owls. 
 
 But, no doubt, the idea that we ought to return to 
 Aristotle, and seek the reconstruction of shattered 
 principles in the Old Organon, might seem retro- 
 
 f The two philosophers who really did understand England were 
 Bolingbroke and Disraeli : but England does not return the com- 
 pliment : she knows nothing of her greatest men.
 
 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 grade, academic, the delusion of a dreaming school- 
 man, especially to the 'practical' man, the terrible 
 Liberal ignoramus whose criterion of truth is the 
 numerical majority of the ignorant, or, still worse, 
 half-educated, and whose disastrous efforts to realise 
 the impossible during this century g have brought 
 the world to a pass apparently without a passage. 
 Therefore, I wish to draw the particular attention 
 of the reader to the striking resemblance between 
 our present position and that of the Greek world 
 in the time of Aristotle : i.e. between our problems 
 and those which he had to solve. 
 
 Now, as then, there is a school (speculative, not 
 experimental, Physical Science, corresponding to 
 Democritus and others of old) whose aim is the 
 purely mechanical h explanation of the world by 
 means of Atoms, EtJiers, Vortices, &c. Now, as 
 then, this school is opposed by another (German 
 
 * This is the explanation of the chaotic state of France. She laid 
 down impossible principles at the Revolution : but she refuses to 
 recognise this : hence every successive government in France is 
 obliged to pretend and proclaim principles which it knows to be 
 absurd : and each in turn is convicted of hypocrisy and failure. And 
 so it will be, till they abandon the principles. 
 
 h Mr. Stallo's masterly criticism of this mechanical philosophy 
 (Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics) is, as he knows, largely 
 a modern restatement of arguments brought by Aristotle himself 
 against the mechanical theorists of his own day (see especially De 
 Ctclo and De Gen. et Corrupt passim).
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Transcendental Philosophy and its offshoots, cor- 
 responding to Plato and others in ancient times) 
 in which rationalistic figments, the idea, the concrete 
 notion, universal reason, objective thought, conscious- 
 ness, the ego, &c, play the same explanatory part 
 as the atoms and ethers of the mechanical philoso- 
 phers. Now, as then, there is a school (that of the 
 Liberals and Political Economists, corresponding 
 to Socrates and one side of the Sophists) whose 
 banner is cosmopolitanism, philanthropy, individual 
 freedom, universal brotherhood, &c, but whose 
 necessary outcome, based as it is on pure ignorance 
 of the nature of things, is diabolical competition, 
 envy, hatred, and malice, Socialism, Nihilism, 
 Anarchy, and other desperate remedies involving 
 national death. Now, as then, there is an ' educated ' 
 public opinion lost in a chaos of conflicting theories, 
 wavering helplessly like a flock of sheep between 
 old and new, at the mercy of every charlatan, and 
 a practical conclusion of the Sophistical type, that 
 anything is good which will sell. Now, as then, 
 the cause of the chaos is the same, the break up of 
 old dogmas ' and the absence of any recognised 
 
 1 And every one must be struck with the curious resemblance 
 between Medieval Christendom and the Pope, and the Greekdom 
 and Oracle of Herodotus : between the international rivalries and 
 diplomacy of Modern Europe, and the squabbles of the Greek States
 
 io INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and authoritative intellectual standard or canon of 
 Reason, any such logical training school and Court 
 of Appeal as the Scholastic Philosophy in the 
 Middle Ages. Then, the cause of this absence was 
 that there was no such thing, Aristotle not having 
 yet appeared : now, it is that his logical canon has 
 been ousted and supplanted by systematised ab- 
 surdity. 
 
 And is, forsooth ! Europe to find salvation in the 
 Reason of Aristotle ? Not at all. That is precisely 
 the theme of this essay. Aristotle can no more save 
 Modern Europe than he could save Ancient Greece. 
 Reason never yet saved any nation. And why ? 
 Simply because it is only reason, and as such impo- 
 tent, it does not contain power. There is a strange 
 distrust of human reason in every human institu- 
 tion, says Bolingbroke : and the ethical impotence 
 of reason is just the answer of Aristotle himself to 
 Plato's rationalism. It is not by reason, but by 
 institutions, and the habits and authority embodied 
 in them, that nations are saved, if at all. But now, 
 the denial or ignorance of this truth, the emphasis oj 
 1 pure 1 reason to the neglect of the organic, potential 
 factor, is exactly the tiling which constitutes the essence 
 
 in Thucydides. The part of Philip profiting by dissension has yet 
 to be played.
 
 INTRODUCTION. n 
 
 of modern philosophy. This is just that rationalism 
 which is the core alike of Descartes and Kant, 
 Adam Smith or J. S. Mill, &c, in which lies the 
 root of the evils now impending over the world. 
 For though nations can only be saved by institu- 
 tions, they can be ruined by ideas. 
 
 And it may be that the evil has now gone too far, 
 and arrived at that stage when it can no longer 
 be cured or eradicated. It may be that Europe can 
 wash out her philosophic errors, or expiate them, 
 only by means of a bath of ' blood and iron,' which 
 will either regenerate or annihilate, mend or end 
 her. For if you lay down principles, you must take 
 the consequences : and the possible will march on 
 to its realisation, whether we know it, and whether 
 we like it, or not.
 
 I. HISTORICAL. 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 \pevSrj AajUj8droi/<ri koI a.av\\6yi(TToi flffiv' &K\' eybs At6ttov 
 SoQfvros t5/VA« ijv/xfiaivfi.
 
 AXIOMS. 
 
 aOvvarov ^| aTu/AWf flval rt avvexfS. 
 
 t))v ariyn-qv 8rt oi>x oT6v re /3apos (x e,v > (pavtpbv. 
 
 eK twv vo'qraiv ovStv yiverai fj.4ytdos.
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR 
 
 T3EFORE Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton had 
 -*-^ made their immortal astronomical discovery, 
 systems of the heavens were but so many ingenious 
 yet mistaken attempts to account for the celestial 
 motions on a false initial hypothesis. It is the same 
 with modern philosophical systems or theories ot 
 Knowing and Being. The parallel is exact. For 
 every philosophy that begins by dogmatically mis- 
 interpreting the deliverance of the senses, denying, 
 e.g., that Sight shows us things as they really are 
 in themselves, i.e. apart from the mind which 
 perceives them, is necessarily, nolens volens, obliged 
 as a consequence to frame some fictitious hypothesis 
 in order to account for the knowledge and existence 
 of things in some round-about way. This is the 
 psychological root and original cause of Idealism : 
 a disease of reason springing from an erroneous 
 interpretation of the deliverance of the senses. 
 But fully to account for the philosophy of Idealism, 
 psychological analysis alone will not suffice : it 
 
 ■ Although this historical section comes naturally first, yet the 
 reader will appreciate it much better if he reads it after Parts 
 II. and III.
 
 16 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 must be combined with historical investigation. 
 For the diseases of the mind, like those of the 
 body, are catching, and contact, contagion, or 
 continuity will often explain their presence in 
 places where they would never have originated 
 spontaneously. Many an Idealist has never be- 
 stowed a thought upon the senses : in his case 
 Idealism is not original, but second-hand, derived, 
 inherited : he caught it from some book, person, 
 or school of thought. 
 
 For if men hand on to one another, like runners, 
 the burning torch of science, they hand on also, 
 with far more persevering tenacity, the false lights 
 of bad theories and erroneous principles. We love 
 to exalt and extol reason, the peculiar glory and 
 prerogative of man, while we are apt to forget the 
 defects of its qualities. Pure reason, like pure 
 water, is delicious : but then reason, like water, 
 is never found pure in nature b . And incalculable 
 as are the benefits arising from reason, which alone 
 renders possible the continuity of human achieve- 
 ment, it is the same reason which also makes 
 possible the continuity of error, the terrible per- 
 petuation of sophistry, from which the animal, 
 
 b This is not a merely fanciful analogy : the nature of reason, and 
 that of water, is identical : see Part II. /3, §§ i and 2.
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. ly 
 
 not being rational, is free. Continuity is a two- 
 edged weapon, a double-dealer: it blows, like 
 the Satyr in the fable, both hot and cold from 
 the same mouth : its blessing has a curse attached 
 to it. And so it is, that men follow one another 
 in false systems, spell -bound and hypnotised 
 by terminology, each with his whole attention 
 magnetically concentrated on his predecessor, his 
 faculties subordinated to a sort of artificial tethered 
 reason, whose bounds are fixed by the elasticity 
 of the founder's dogmas. He leads the way : ol 
 Se Kara ttjv <J)Q)vt]v eirovrai KeKrjXrjfiivoi, like a row 
 of geese on a common : and humanity advances 
 like a living man tied to a corpse. 
 
 And thus, though the capacity of reason, the 
 special difference of man, lifts him immeasurably 
 above all other animals in one way, it subjects 
 him in another to certain very great disadvantages, 
 which they, precisely by reason of their inferiority, 
 escape. On the other hand, the senses, which he 
 shares with the animals, who in this respect often 
 infinitely surpass him, are far more essential than 
 reason to life as such. The animal can get along 
 very well without reason, but not at all without 
 senses. Now, man is himself an animal, and it is 
 not as men, but as animals, that we have senses. 
 However superior in dignity and rank, reason is 
 
 C
 
 i8 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 nevertheless posterior in order, and, as it were, 
 only the upper story of the edifice : a faculty super- 
 added to, and possibly absent from, animal life : 
 a capacity, however essential to man, not essen- 
 tial to the animal, as such. 
 
 It is, therefore, the bounden duty of every 
 philosopher who erects theoretical structures of 
 reason, to begin by thoroughly scrutinising and 
 determining first the nature of the senses. But 
 when we turn to the systems of modern phi- 
 losophers, we are astounded to find, that, with the 
 rarest exceptions, they do nothing of the sort. 
 Nor can anything be more miserably poor and 
 inadequate than the conception of the senses enter- 
 tained by the leading Cartesians : anything more 
 meagre and summary, more discreditable, more 
 ridiculous, than the criticism (bestowed upon them 
 by the most eminent critical philosophers. The 
 idea of accurately defining the nature of the senses 
 never so much as occurs to any one of them. 
 Yet without definition, where is scientific solidity, 
 and what is criticism ? Really, when we examine 
 the writings of philosophers, we might be tempted 
 to define a critic as one who delights in drawing 
 very obvious conclusions from principles which he 
 has accepted without examination from one who 
 himself took them on trust from a third person,
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 19 
 
 and so on ad infinitum. Any kind of sand or 
 rubbish is apparently good enough to form the 
 foundation of an elaborate and imposing edifice 
 of Pure Reason. In fact, as will be seen further 
 on, the preliminary criticism of the critical philo- 
 sophers is not merely weak and inadequate : it is 
 scandalous ; it is incredible ; it is heartrending. 
 
 Observe, that notwithstanding all the doubt which 
 scepticism may throw over the testimony of the 
 senses, the man of science must of necessity, and 
 always does in fact assume, that his senses intro- 
 duce him, somehow or other, to things as they are 
 in themselves, ex analogia universi .• for, if they do 
 not, all explanation is impossible, and the whole 
 edifice of science is a mere mass of conjectural 
 hypothesis, with no more intrinsic probability than 
 the raving of a maniac or a drunkard's dream. 
 Speculation on the nature of things in a sphere 
 placed ex hypotJiesi beyond all capacity of arriving 
 at^, it is, obviously, utterly vain and futile. All 
 scientific explanation, therefore, postulates, as its 
 necessary condition, that the senses do not trans- 
 figure, but mirror, realities : since it is all merely 
 the reduction of the unknown to terms of the 
 known : and accordingly all finally comes back 
 upon the senses. And therefore, scientific men who 
 are not metaphysicians shrink with instinctive 
 
 C 2
 
 20 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 repulsion from all sceptical considerations. They 
 assume without ceremony that the senses introduce 
 us to things in themselves, and are for the most 
 part content to leave the matter there ; pointing, 
 not without reason, when asked for the proof of 
 their assumption, to the ' pudding,' the practical pro- 
 ducts of scientific activity. And this is quite as it 
 should be. But now, the scientific assumption is the 
 philosopher's problem. It is for the latter to analyse 
 and critically justify this necessary working hypo- 
 thesis of science : otherwise, the scientific tree will 
 have a flaw at its root. And yet not only have 
 the philosophers never succeeded in performing this 
 task, but they have on the contrary definitely and 
 we might almost say unanimously pronounced it 
 impossible. Entangled in a web of sceptical so- 
 phistry, spun by themselves out of bad abstractions, 
 they have fallen a prey to their own neglect of 
 initial critical analysis, and abandoned reason to 
 the claws of the sceptic, whose charges of im- 
 potence against the senses, whose denial of the 
 possibility of attaining to any knowledge of things 
 as they really are per se, are declared to be well 
 founded and irrefutable, and made the point of 
 departure of all philosophy. And thus philosophy 
 is founded c on the theoretical impotence of science ; 
 
 c e.g. ' Scepticism proves, on the hypothesis of the distinction
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 21 
 
 a thing equally fatal to science and philosophy, 
 directly productive of intellectual chaos and anarchy. 
 Moreover, what is worse than all, many of the 
 leading men of science, failing to realise the sui- 
 cidal absurdity of their action, have been beguiled 
 by philosophy into stultifying all their activity by 
 accepting the initial scepticism ; wherein, as will be 
 shown further on, they have been very ill advised, 
 and have only succeeded in demonstrating that 
 a very good man of science may be a very bad 
 dialectician. And thus the indispensable conditional 
 assumption of science, its cardinal postulate, is 
 degraded to the level of a mere vulgar belief 
 or instinct unsusceptible of critical establishment : 
 reason is convicted of impotence, and the magni- 
 ficent ensemble of modern Physical Science all hangs 
 dubiously from the hair of an initial ' perhaps ' ; to 
 which, for practical reasons, we give the benefit of 
 the doubt, without being able to clear it of sus- 
 picion ; much as your Scottish jury would dismiss 
 
 ' between subject and object, that knowledge is impossible' 
 
 'it is because the finite contradicts itself that we are thrown back 
 'upon the infinite' (Caird's Hegel, pp. 51, 57.) A sceptic's prooj 
 is a curious thing : something must be wrong either with his scepti- 
 cism or his proof: and as we shall see, it is not the finite* but the 
 philosophers, who contradict themselves, and saddle the nature of 
 things with their own impotence.
 
 22 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 a culprit under a verdict of Not Proven, and an 
 everlasting stain on his character. 
 
 Modern Philosophy is, in fact, determined through- 
 out by its original want of critical analysis in respect 
 of the senses. It is, to describe it generally, a high 
 platform of error, an elaborately developed attempt, 
 or series of successive attempts, to account for know- 
 ledge and existence per impossible, on sceptical 
 principles that cannot do it : hence its abstruse, 
 far-fetched, round-about and sometimes well-nigh 
 unintelligible complexity. The generic term for 
 this philosophy, reposing on the theoretical im- 
 potence of the senses, is Idealism ; but under that 
 name are comprised many very different schemes, 
 many of which would be far more appropriately 
 designated Phenomenalism. The essence and core 
 of them all is the initial dogma, hypothesis, as- 
 sumption, or article of faith, that the senses trans- 
 figure : that all that we can ever reach by their 
 means is the transfigured effect of an unknown 
 cause : that consequently, with iron necessity, know- 
 ledge is only phenomenal of an unknown reality, 
 and the whole Universe phenomenal, i.e. dependent 
 on mind, or unknown : its presence and existence 
 conditioned, somehow or other, by the prior and 
 indispensable presence and existence of 'conscious- 
 ness.' Every form of Idealism, and nearly every
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 23 
 
 system of Modern Philosophy, is a variation on 
 this theme. It lay potentially in the scepticism of 
 Descartes ; broke the shell and emerged from the 
 egg with Malebranche and Berkeley ; and has since 
 been very variously developed by Hume, Kant, 
 Comte, and their numerous disciples and commen- 
 tators: it can, therefore, be only as variously defined, 
 according to the special features and clothing which 
 it assumes in each case ; as, for example : the 
 phenomenalisation, or rationalisation, of realities, 
 the conversion of entia realia into entia rationis ; 
 the abstraction of ' the ego ' from its constituent 
 relations, its illegitimate erection into an uncon- 
 ditioned and self-subsisting essence d , prior to or 
 independent of those relations : the explanation of 
 the Universe by the figmentary assumption of some 
 queer permanent or universal ' consciousness ' or 
 'ego': the reduction of the Universe to a mani- 
 festation of ' mind ' : the thesis, that the under- 
 standing makes Nature : the endeavour to construct 
 the physical Universe in the alembic of ' mind ' 
 out of a c chaotic manifold ' of sense ; the attempt 
 to deduce the world from ' sensations,' and the denial 
 of all not so deducible : and so on. This Idealism, 
 
 d Observe that when the word essence is used in this way, it 
 has no meaning. There is no abstract being.
 
 24 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 or Phenomenalism, or Sensationalism, or Ration- 
 alism, call it by whatever name you will, essentially 
 identical under all its forms, is nothing whatever 
 but the misbegotten attempt of abstract logical 
 reasoning to turn evolution upside down, and make 
 the original low conditional on the posterior high : 
 it is a colossal, strictly preposterous blunder, reposing 
 on ignorance of the law of continuity ; the endeavour 
 to refer the whole Universe of potentiality to one 
 little abstracted case of actuality : it is an inversion 
 of the ova (a and the e'f ov, the omega and alpha of 
 evolution, seeking to place the differentiated result 
 at the bottom of the scale of creation, the final 
 development at the unevolved beginning of things. 
 The essence of Idealism is, in fact, the astounding 
 varepov irporepov of endeavouring to account for the 
 posse of things by their esse, instead of vice versa, 
 divorcing actuality from potentiality, the act from 
 the capacity, hypostatising it, and seeking to make 
 this discrete abstraction account for the continuity 
 and possibility of the Universe : an error springing 
 from ignorance of natural economy, or evolution, or 
 the spirit of the Aristotelian philosophy — for all these 
 are but different names for the same thing — inaugu- 
 rated by the conceited and ignorant self-sufficiency 
 of the founders of Modern Philosophy in the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries.
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 25 
 
 Little did those unfortunate men, who have so 
 long been falsely extolled as profound thinkers, 
 dream of what they were doing, when, condemning 
 with summary and indiscriminate iconoclasm the 
 whole of Scholasticism 6 in the lump, they turned 
 their backs upon its biological kernel, the evolu- 
 tionary analysis and scientific method of Aristotle. 
 They were foredooming philosophy to centuries of 
 sophistry and ultimate failure. Like men, who from 
 ignorance of mathematics should ' begin again ' by 
 rejecting Newton's Principle/,, so they, wholly igno- 
 rant of biology and natural economy, ' began again ' 
 by rejecting Aristotle's Principia — that is, his cen- 
 tral conception of evolutionary continuity, his realisa- 
 tion of the possible ; for in depth of insight into 
 organic nature no man ever equalled Aristotle. 
 Descartes, the notorious doubter, whose preliminary 
 doubt was merely the dust thrown in the eyes of 
 the world to blind it to the most astonishing system 
 of hypothetical figmentary dogmatism ever hatched 
 in the brain of man : Descartes, who so ridiculously 
 called in the veracity of the Deity to help his halt- 
 
 e The credit of re-awakening the human mind from its barbaric 
 mediaeval slumber belongs to the Schoolmen, that is, indirectly, to 
 Aristotle himself : it is falsely ascribed to the Jacobs who stepped 
 in when the work was done, supplanted and abused its real authors : 
 whose shoes they were not worthy even so much as to polish.
 
 26 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 ing philosophy over a preliminary stile f {dignus 
 vindice nodus), apparently forgot that however little 
 the Deity might be inclined to deceive a man, he 
 might deceive himself : and certainly, no man ever 
 did so more effectually than Descartes. The mind, 
 idiotically throwing away all its knowledge, and 
 centred by Descartes in its pan-ignoring self, is 
 lost in the bottomless void of ' consciousness,' and 
 cut off from all hold of reality : the logical corollary 
 is the state of internal self-concentrated abstraction, 
 the divine beatitude of the Hindoo yogi or monk 
 of Mount Athos. But in the western world of 
 energy and action, this would not do : notwithstand- 
 ing Schopenhauer. Somehow or other, reality had 
 to be squared with the principle. Accordingly, from 
 this point begins the evolution of the Absurd, which 
 rises by a climax till it culminates in Hegel s . The 
 long series of Cartesian philosophers is simply the 
 continuous evolution of diseased thought : a study 
 in intellectual pathology. And one feature of this 
 disease, parenthetically, is too remarkable to be 
 
 ' The true proof of the veracity of my senses is not the veracity 
 of the Deity but my own existence. See below, Part II. o, § 2. 
 
 s The kernel of value in Hcgelianism is simply Aristotle, stood 
 on his head, and disguised in the abuse of language and the Abstracti- 
 fication of the Concrete, pushed to absurdity, and dialectically evolved 
 according to Spinoza's omnis ddcrminalio est negalio, which is a 
 mere truism.
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 27 
 
 passed over. Just as Descartes found himself com- 
 pelled to supplement the impotence of his original 
 starting-point by calling the Deity to his aid, so 
 we find that all his continuators waver between the 
 horns of a dilemma : the positive denial of a Deity 
 altogether, or the refuge in the Deity, as a sort of 
 dialectical necessary hypothesis h to account for that 
 permanence and continuity of the world which their 
 principle annihilates. Idealism swings backwards 
 and forwards, oscillates like a pendulum between 
 the extremes of Nihilism and Pantheism. It was 
 fatal : it was so determined from the origin : there 
 is no escape. One or the other : Hume, Schopen- 
 hauer, or Hegel : choose. 
 
 The philosophical world which congratulated itself 
 on substituting Descartes for Aristotle, a fine new 
 lamp for an old one, never suspected that it was 
 rejecting the graded and evolutionary conception 
 of Nature as a continuous ladder of being, the 
 logic of analytical definition, the law of organic 
 differentiation, in a word, biological insight, to en- 
 throne in its place abstract, rationalistic, quasi- 
 
 h German transcendental philosophy is only the hypostasis of the 
 Cartesian personal sum into an impersonal Est, with a big E. This 
 kind of ' Universal Consciousness ' is to the metaphysicians exactly 
 what the Ether is to the mechanical mathematical physicists : an 
 explanatory sine qud nmi : a figment minus which they cannot 
 get on.
 
 28 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 mathematical speculation on a basis of blank ignor- 
 ance ; for in the age of Descartes, and for long 
 afterwards, the intellect of Europe was a tabula rasa 
 as far as the organic world is concerned \ And so 
 it embraced a method, whose essence lay just in 
 the elimination of the element of reality, the poten- 
 tiality and continuity of Nature, and which aimed, 
 more mathematico, at reducing the Universe to a 
 mechanical play of abstract entities, a mere juggle 
 with ' extension ' and motion. It was not Aristotle, 
 it was his enemies, who would turn Nature into a 
 play of logic. 
 
 The source and root of the error was the natural 
 bent of Descartes' mind, which was through and 
 through mathematical : hence his fatal tendency to 
 abstract and entify realities 1 ". What the mathema- 
 tician leaves out is, everything, except the quantita- 
 tive shell of things : he leaves out continuity, the 
 woof and web of reality, which no numeration of 
 infinitesimals will ever subsequently reach. You 
 
 1 Leibnitz alone dimly discerned the value of what was being thrown 
 away, and he has gained immense credit for his inkling of that 
 which, a thousand years before him, Aristotle exhaustively under- 
 stood. 
 
 k to yap <pvaiKa x ui P l ^ ov(riv > VTtov ovra x^P'CTa tuiv ixadrnxartKciv 
 (Phys. ii. 2), a criticism which hits Descartes and Ricardo as well 
 as Plato.
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 29 
 
 cannot abstract reality; its essence is exactly what 
 cannot be grasped by abstraction : but abstraction 
 is the essence and method of mathematics, and it 
 was also the beginning and end of the method of 
 Descartes, whose great idea was, to reduce the world 
 to a mathematical problem l ; and who would admit 
 nothing which he could not clearly and distinctly 
 conceive. This criterion of truth is perhaps the most 
 striking illustration in history of the incapacity in- 
 herent in the mathematical mind to comprehend 
 what thinking means. Could he, forsooth ! dis- 
 tinctly conceive the origin of the fowl from the egg, 
 or the butterfly from the caterpillar ? What he 
 loses is only the universal potentiality of Nature, 
 its dynamical energy : for you cannot conceive, you 
 can only perceive, a real thing. 
 
 And so, he determined philosophy a priori to 
 impotence. With this abstract regard, the philo- 
 sophical current flowing from Descartes turned away, 
 and lost the soul of action, losing thereby the very 
 
 1 See Kuno Fischer's Descartes and his School, especially pp. 93 
 and 322 {Eng. Trans.). ' mathematics becomes the criterion by which 
 ' he tests every cognition .... so ripens already the problem to which 
 ' he gave his entire life, the fundamental reform of the sciences by 
 ' means of a new method based on the analogy of mathematics .... 
 ' the problem is, to apply the methods of mathematics to the know- 
 ' ledge of the universe ; to treat mathematics, not as the theory 
 ' of quantities, but as the theory of science as universal mathematics, '
 
 30 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 possibility and principle of explanation and defi- 
 nition of organic realities. For everything organic 
 is defined by its work, its action, its duty, and its 
 capacity to perform that work and duty, in its due 
 place in the scale and nexus of creation. Such a 
 thing has its raison d'etre only in mediis rebus, out 
 of which it has no meaning ; nor can it be under- 
 stood and defined and accounted for, save by con- 
 templating it there. This is why mathematics 
 cannot express even the simplest organism. For 
 the essence of mathematics is abstraction : but you 
 lose, by abstraction, just what constitutes the es- 
 sence and explanation of every natural object, since 
 that lies, not in the thing itself, but in other things 
 which surround it and make it, by their demands 
 upon it, what it is : that is to say, in continuity 
 and correlation. Every natural object is for the 
 sake of another : is what it is and becomes what 
 it is by the necessity of conforming to this other ; 
 and so, this 'other', this 'for the sake of [rivos 
 eveica ;) is just the principle of explanation, the 
 thing needed to account for all organic realities. 
 Take any such thing out of the chain of being, 
 consider it in abstracto, and you render it unintel- 
 ligible : you cut yourself off ipso facto from all possi- 
 bility of understanding it. Just as the cliff is defined 
 and accounted for by wind and water, waves and
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 31 
 
 weather, so is it universally" 1 . Definition is the 
 repetition in tJiougJit of the historical causes which 
 made the thing in fact. In the abstract, for ex- 
 ample, all plains are alike. In reality, they all differ, 
 in their soils, in their climates, in their geographical 
 position, in their elevation above sea-level, in their 
 geological process of formation. It is not abstrac- 
 tion, but geology, that accounts for the plains. Still 
 more with organic life. The salmon's tail, the owl's 
 eye, the eagle's wing, can only be defined and ac- 
 counted for by referring them to the water, the 
 night, and the air. Abstracted, every natural object 
 is an x\ and so, the Cartesian philosophy makes the 
 whole Universe an x. The conception of continuity, 
 correlation, concrete and exact particular position 
 in time, place, and relation is the indispensable con- 
 dition of scientific explanation n . You must not 
 abstract and calculate : you must look and see and 
 think. Your sight is more important even than 
 your reason, because it shows you everything, there 
 and then, in mediis rebus. 
 
 But all this is totally ignored by Descartes and 
 his school, whose thought is dominated by mathe- 
 matics as the type of scientific explanation and 
 
 ■ This is the analytical definition of Aristotle. 
 
 a Hence Aristotle's everlasting qualifications — his wov, -(ire, ncHs, 
 irpbs ti, and so on.
 
 
 32 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 definition, and the consequent fatal and futile effort 
 to explain continuous realities by discrete abstrac- 
 tions °. They lose the point : for mathematics does 
 not contain it. Its circles and squares are never 
 hungry or thirsty ; they never want to eat or drink, 
 or escape from enemies or propagate their species : 
 they have no WANTS and require accordingly no 
 ORGANS, whose raison d'etre is to serve their needs p , 
 and preserve their lives, and whose explanation 
 accordingly lies of necessity in their final cause, their 
 purpose, their end, their duty, their work. 
 
 For 7] <j)V(rts TeXo<? icrriv and ovBev fidrijv 17 tyvais 
 TToiei. Nature's creatures are not mere aimless, 
 shapeless lumps : no creature of Nature, nor any 
 essential part of such a creature but has its end, 
 its use, its raison d'etre. This is that universal law 
 of Nature, that utilitarian, economic, or teleological 
 principle, which, under the name of final causes, 
 modern philosophy at its origin ignorantly laughed 
 to scorn and threw aside. But va? ridentibus ! Like 
 men in a dream, they were but inflicting fatal wounds 
 
 Exhibited in the superlative degree by Spinoza, who endeavoured, 
 more Cartesiano, to deal with virtue after a method suitable only 
 to triangles and parallelograms. His method is exactly that part 
 of him which is utterly worthless. 
 
 It is need which differentiates living from dead matter, and 
 it appears at the very bottom of the scale : protoplasm exhibits 
 ' greed for oxygen.' (Campbell's Elementary Biology, p. 4.)
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 33 
 
 on themselves, while they fancied they were slaying 
 others. The scoffers at Aristotle's teleology and 
 ' entelechies ' were, little as they knew it, scoffing 
 at Nature herself, and she had her revenge. Their 
 own philosophy paid the penalty. By this super- 
 cilious rejection of the organic law of Nature which 
 had been discovered, systematically analysed, and 
 definitely won for the world, out of the void and 
 formless infinite, by the genius of Aristotle, all pro- 
 found and solid philosophy was rendered impossible : 
 any such philosophy as might in fact arise was 
 doomed in the germ. Having cast aside that wis- 
 dom which it did not understand, philosophy was 
 left to its own devices in the darkness, and lost 
 its way, every now and then pursuing with eager- 
 ness some momentary ignis f atoms into a bog. 
 
 And this is why, in their various treatises on 
 Human Nature, or special parts of it, philosophers 
 of the Cartesian school always stultify altogether 
 that nature of which they profess to treat, being 
 as they are completely ignorant of Nature, organic 
 Nature, in general, the whole, of which our human 
 nature is but a special case. Above all do they 
 stultify that part with which our particular concern 
 is in these pages, as being, for the purpose of 
 science, the most important of all — the nature of 
 Sight ; by neglecting its conditions, ignoring its 
 
 D
 
 34 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 duty, eviscerating it of its meaning, denying its 
 power, and reducing it to a futile interior absur- 
 dity, all but identical with its contrary impo- 
 tence, blindness. 
 
 Sight is an organic function, and the picture 
 presented to us by our eyes is not there for 
 nothing : it has a vitally important use. But in 
 the philosophy of Cartesians, this is completely 
 ignored. With Berkeley, Hume, Kant and their 
 successors, all the pictures of Sight are futile, 
 fxaraia : all these ideas, impressions, plienomena 
 sensations, &c, are idle, useless, purposeless «J, purely 
 aesthetic : they merely appear, these phantasms, 
 as it were for the sole sake of appearing, at the 
 stroke of some enchanter's wand, his mysterious^/ : 
 they hang suspended, so to say, in the air without 
 rhyme or reason, arise causelessly out of the dark : 
 presto, there on a sudden they are before us, we 
 know not why : they have no raison d'etre, serve 
 no end : they are phenomena and nothing more, 
 shadows on the screen of non-entity and the un- 
 known. And then come the obvious corollaries. 
 Out of such phenomenal plienomena, turn and twist 
 them how you may, you can never get anything 
 
 <» Because they are abstracted from the sphere of their operation 
 see below, Part II., a, § 2.
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 35 
 
 but themselves : perfectly true : ergo, denial or 
 transmogrification of all that cannot be deduced 
 from them : — the philosophy of Hume r , the most 
 logical of the Cartesians. But this is a reductio ad 
 absurdum, and makes the world feel uneasy : con- 
 sequently, the phenomenal premisses being unques- 
 tioned, next in order come the various wire-drawn 
 round-about, and unintelligible endeavours to get 
 back, by some internal juggling with abstractions, 
 what the premisses make impossible and utterly 
 destroy : to show how this real continuous world 
 which we perceive and know is there, only ' for 
 consciousness,' only through the agency of some 
 hypothetical, permanent 'ego,' 'subject,' some strange 
 universal figment which is ' eternal, self-determined, 
 and thinks s ': — the philosophy of post-Kantians in 
 England and Germany, of transcendentalisms and 
 'absolutes.' And as the natural consequence of such 
 stuff as this, comes last of all the present stage, in 
 
 r Hume's philosophy is nothing but the consistent denial of con- 
 tinuity. Kant endeavours to answer him, by accentuating the per- 
 manent ego: but his world of phenomena remains as unreal as Hume's, 
 and his permanent ego is a bit of illogically introduced realism, as 
 will be shown below. Permanence and continuity depend on some- 
 thing Kant's philosophy does not contain — potentiality. Cartesian 
 philosophy which starts from the actual ego, a thing discontinuous 
 and interrupted, cannot reach potentiality of which it knows nothing. 
 See Part II., a, % 3. * Green. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 which all philosophy whatever is banned by the 
 world as all nonsense, gibberish, moonshine, cob- 
 webs, ' metaphysics.' Poor metaphysics ! how many 
 crimes are committed in thy name ! The whole 
 process is logical and necessary, and the conclusion 
 is, that reason leads infallibly to absurdity ; the 
 practical result is intellectual ruin and chaos, and 
 among other things, the degeneration of all litera- 
 ture, which has no backbone of thought, and is 
 rapidly going down hill. 
 
 Never did any man hit the point more admirably 
 than old Hobbes of Malmesbury, when he compared 
 strayed reasoners to ' birds, that entering by the 
 'chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a 
 'chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, 
 ' for want of wit to consider which way they came in.' 
 Modern philosophers are exactly such foolish fools. 
 Entering by the chimney, the abstract starting-point 
 of Descartes, they all find themselves in a close 
 prison of their own making, and so flutter con- 
 tinually at the false windows, the various systems 
 by which they vainly strive to escape from the 
 necessary logical consequences of their original 
 error. Do what they may, they are logically lost 
 beyond redemption. Each may echo the lament of 
 Samson, / am become the dungeon of myself. The 
 sceptic holds them in a grip from which they can
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 37 
 
 escape only by abandoning reason for mysticism 
 and imaginary figments. Hence all these desperate 
 efforts, since Hume, to galvanise a corpse, quicken 
 a caput mortmim, get from dead premisses a living 
 conclusion, emerge from the gaol in which Descartes 
 has confined them. In vain : the sceptic triumphs : 
 ' your phenomena, discrete and individual, do not 
 ' contain realities : you have not got reality, causa- 
 ' tion, the continuous and necessary nexus, in your 
 ' premisses, and I tell you, you can never get it out 
 ' of them.' Nor can they. Their only resource is 
 to resort to the explanation of the known by the 
 unknown, imaginary, fictitious ; of the actual and 
 perceptible by the hypothetical and gratuitous: their 
 philosophy becomes accordingly a \6yos dXoyos, a 
 thing upside down : the endeavour to account for 
 realities by non-entities, a process whose intrinsic 
 absurdity has to be disguised by dark and obscure 
 terminology, metaphor, coupled with a kind of 
 impatience of logic, and the exaltation of sentiment, 
 feeling, faith, mysticism, as the highest qualities of 
 mind — the self-conviction of intellectual impotence. 
 Hence the utter ruin of philosophical style, the 
 virtue of which is logical exactitude and crystal 
 clearness, but which has now become a kind of 
 horrible philosophical Chinese, which violates the 
 first canon of speech, — that, of two men communi-
 
 38 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 eating, both shall understand the meaning of the 
 words. 
 
 All this has come about, with iron inevitable 
 necessity, owing to the original neglect of ana- 
 lysing the exact nature of the senses, and the 
 misinterpretation of those doors of knowledge, 
 which was involved in the radical error of Des- 
 cartes, the start with abstractions. 
 
 Of all our senses, Sight is the most valuable, 
 being the chief source of all original and immediate 
 knowledge. Out of it as out of a root grows almost 
 all philosophy and almost all art : all contemplation, 
 action, and production issue from and depend upon 
 it : scientific explanation all runs back to it, as the 
 objective sense and ultimate ground beyond which 
 we cannot go : the final reference is always to 
 Sight. Moreover, it is in itself the choicest gift of 
 God : a permanent and inexhaustible well of the 
 purest of all human pleasures, from which at all 
 moments we may draw deep draughts of inward 
 peace and ever various beauty ; for we never tire 
 of it, and it never runs dry, but, like the purse of 
 Fortunatus, has always some new gold piece at 
 the bottom of it. And did not custom stale us to 
 its perpetual miracle, Sight would seem to us what 
 indeed it is, the first wonder of the world : but like
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 39 
 
 the music of the spheres, it moves us not, because 
 it is always with us, and those only realise its 
 value who have lost it. Then, when it is gone, 
 they understand that life deprived of Sight is like 
 the earth without the sun. Milton knew 
 
 ' But chief of all, 
 O loss of Sight, of thee I most complain.' 
 
 And we may say without much exaggeration 
 of Sight, what Aristotle says of motion, that to be 
 ignorant of its nature is to ignore the nature of 
 the Universe. 
 
 For consider. How were the old four satellites 
 of Jupiter originally discovered ? By deduction, like 
 the planet Neptune ? No. By induction, like the Law 
 of Gravitation ? No. How then ? By simple inspec- 
 tion, intuition. Sight. The telescope was pointed 
 at Jupiter, and they were seen. They existed for 
 ages, unknown to the world, owing to the immense 
 distance that divides us from Jupiter: but the inven- 
 tion of the telescope ' ccelorum pcrrupit claustra ' — 
 that is, annihilated the distance — and there they 
 were. 
 
 And as with the telescope, so, in the opposite 
 direction, with the microscope. Ordinary human 
 vision lies in the middle between the two. The 
 telescope and microscope, with all their admirable 
 adaptations to special ends, have raised our faculty
 
 4 o THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 of Sight to a power previously inconceivable, and 
 revealed to us two new worlds — that is, two enlarge- 
 ments of the old world — the world of the infinitely- 
 great, and the world of the infinitely small. But 
 they have done something more. They show us, 
 if we think about it, how our power of vision is 
 the condition, the root, the source, the possibility, 
 and in a sense, the limit of science 1 . Deduct the 
 telescope and microscope, and two worlds vanish 
 from our ken : the two opposite ends : deduct 
 Sight, the intermediate, and all goes. If in a world 
 of men who see, the blind can artificially make 
 shift, by education, assistance, and communication, 
 without their eyes to live and partly know, we 
 must not allow this to deceive us as to the truth. 
 Such blind men are possible, only because others 
 see. There are, it is true, other doors of knowledge 
 than the eyes, and there may be, and is, in fact' 
 animal life without sight. But speaking from the 
 human point of view, both life and science are 
 conditional on sight u , and impossible without it. 
 Take it away, and both must disappear. 
 
 1 Scientific instruments are but means of translating imperceptible 
 powers of nature into terms especially of sight: e.g. the barometer 
 makes visible the weight of the atmosphere, the thermometer, the 
 degree of heat, the electrophorus, the presence of electricity, &c. 
 
 u So, Night is the condition of our knowledge of the Universe. 
 Were day perpetual, we should know nothing of the stars.
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 41 
 
 And yet, though everybody knows perfectly well, 
 in a way, i.e. in its exercise, what it is, to see ; 
 nobody can tell. There is not a single philosopher, 
 ancient or modern, who has ever understood, critic- 
 ally, what Sight is, the nature of Sight ; exactly 
 what it is, to see. They all mutilate, misinterpret, 
 and misrepresent the fact. There is in the problem 
 of Sight a very peculiar, subtle, and insidious snare, 
 a trap into which all unwarily fall. Now an error 
 about Sight is fatal, as modern philosophy shows. 
 For this is the beginning of philosophy, its neces- 
 sary point of departure dXiA punctum saliens : in this 
 imperceptible point lies the whole development of 
 thought : for a principle, as Aristotle says, is a 
 dwarf in size with the power of a giant. The true 
 nature of Sight, what Sight IS, has escaped every- 
 one : for it reposes essentially upon that intimate 
 communion between soul and body, which all doc- 
 tors understand, but which almost all philosophers 
 disastrously ignore. 
 
 I say, that on the critical determination of this 
 problem, all hangs. Determine rightly the nature 
 of Sight, and out of it, as out of a rich and fertile 
 soil, philosophy will rise like a luxurious and spread- 
 ing vegetation : but the original error of the Car- 
 tesian school is like a stony and unprofitable sand, 
 a very waste and desert, the arid home of stunted
 
 42 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 bush and scanty cactus, salt lakes and delusive 
 mirage. 
 
 In vain do all these philosophers dogmatically 
 lay down, accept, or assume, each in a dialect of his 
 own {ideas, impressions, sensations, phenomena, &c), 
 that we do not see external objects : that the reality 
 remains ever hidden behind the mind's own states, 
 feelings, sensations, and what not ; that only what 
 things seem to be, and not what they really are 
 in themselves, is attainable. Here, for example, are 
 the Sun, Moon, and Stars. All down the ages, from 
 time immemorial, men have worshipped and adored 
 and counted their time by these heavenly bodies, 
 the nearest of which is more than two hundred 
 thousand miles off. Now, we cannot either touch, 
 hear, taste, or smell these bodies. Then, if we do 
 not see them, how did we ever become aware of 
 them, how get at them, how know that they are 
 there ? ' Oh ! ' says a philosopher, ' gently, my dear 
 ' Sir : distinguo : we infer them from sensations V 
 ' Infer them from sensations, do we ? and pray, how 
 ' do you know that ? ' ' Why, physiology tells us, 
 
 ' that the brain, eye, nerves ' ' Brain ? eye ? 
 
 ' nerves ? and how do you know that you have such 
 
 x We do nothing of the kind : Sight is not inference, nor, as I 
 shall show further on, has reason anything whatever to do with it : 
 but of this on a future page.
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 43 
 
 ' things ? ' ' Why, of course, all men have them.' 
 ' But how do you know ? ' ' Well, we see them, when 
 
 'we dissect ' 'Ah! ah. \ {see them — the devil 
 
 ' you do ! So you can see brains and nerves, and 
 ' therefore, you cannot see the moon. But permit 
 ' me to inform you, that you cannot employ the 
 ' capacity of Sight in its own disproof. If I can- 
 ' not see the moon, your physiology is all moonshine! 
 
 All idealism, since Berkeley, is founded on a 
 denial of the power of Sight, based on a misinter- 
 pretation of its nature, and a vicious argument in 
 a circle. The detailed examination of this will 
 occupy our attention further on, but here we may 
 anticipate so far as to notice the method of pro- 
 cedure, which is this. First, the philosophers see, 
 as we all do, long before we become philosophers, 
 and continually afterwards, external objects, and 
 so get knowledge of them. Then, when they come 
 to philosophise, they reflect, that the things are 
 distant, and so cannot be, and are, in fact, not seen. 
 
 To account for this difficulty, they resort y to what, 
 as I shall show further on, is only a misinterpreta- 
 tion of the fact ; what we see is within, and the 
 external object is only inferred and not seen. The 
 next step is obvious : cut bono this external object ? 
 
 y Thus Idealism appears historically after Materialism, of which it is 
 only the other side: Berkeley follows Ilobbes.and Protagoras Democritus.
 
 44 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 It is accordingly discarded, as at once superfluous, 
 problematical, and unknown : and thus they con- 
 clude, in the most satisfactory manner, that the 
 objects seen are within, ergo, there is, or may be, 
 nothing without the mind : and you have scepticism 
 and idealism at once. Though all this while it is 
 precisely their actual knowledge of these objects 
 without or external to the mind which started all 
 the chain of reasoning ending in their denial. Thus 
 they all end by denying, each in his own way, the 
 very thing which they started to explain, and on 
 this foundation arise all the various systems of 
 philosophy. But we may fling back upon them all 
 the charge which they would fasten upon us — 
 
 ' Thou hast no speculation in those eyes 
 Which thou dost glare with. ' 
 
 Postponing, now, to a future page the critical 
 examination of the Idealists' premiss, let us con- 
 sider some aspects of their systematic thought. 
 
 Nothing in all history is more astonishing than 
 the incoherence and internal self-contradiction of 
 those critical systems which have been universally 
 extolled as triumphs of dialectical ingenuity, unless 
 it be the passive and acquiescent approval with 
 which these systems, compounded of mutually ex- 
 clusive positions, have been stamped by the world.
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 45 
 
 Hume and Kant are adored as dialectical giants, 
 the very Otus and Ephialtes of metaphysical saga- 
 city, holding Reason, as it were, bound in iron 
 chains, with their feet on his throat. 
 
 I say, that the reputations of those philosophers 
 for critical power crumble to pieces at the very first 
 touch of analysis. 
 
 I. Two things are inseparably associated with the 
 name of Hume, Scepticism and Empiricism. Hume 
 the sceptic is equally Hume the empiricist : he is 
 as it were the very incarnation of both spirits ; and 
 the combination of the two in one man is challenged 
 by nobody. Yet the two things are absolutely in- 
 compatible and mutually destructive ; and their 
 union in Hume proves to demonstration that neither 
 he himself, nor his disciples, understand what sys- 
 tematic thinking means. 
 
 ' It is beyond a doubt,' says Kant, in the very 
 first line of his Critique, ' that all our knowledge be- 
 ' gins with experience ' ; and in this respect the world 
 is entirely at one with him. ' The general pro- 
 ' position that all our knowledge of the objective 
 ' world is derived from experience appears to be 
 ' undeniable, and is doubtless assented to explicitly, 
 ' or in some mode of implication, by every sane 
 ' person at the present day z .' 
 
 z Stallo's Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics.
 
 46 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 Very good : now, suppose that I deny that pro- 
 position. Why, then, says Mr. Stallo, you must 
 be insane. Let us see. 
 
 I find my head more or less full of knowledge, 
 and I ask myself, where does it all come from. 
 Experience ? Not in the least. Nine-tenths of my 
 own or anybody else's knowledge comes not via 
 experience, but by the medium of books, communi- 
 cation, language Pooh ! that is still experience : 
 
 if not your own, then somebody else's 
 
 Ah ! ah ! somebody else's. Now we are getting 
 to the point. So, then, it is not true, but false, 
 to say that all knowledge comes from experience, 
 UNLESS you take in other people as well as yourself: 
 unless, that is to say, you are speaking, not of the 
 individual, but of man, the race, the species, men 
 collectively. The statement, universally recognised 
 as true, is so only of continuous man, not of the 
 abstract individual. In other words, the sceptic who 
 asserts the doctrine is committing logical suicide : 
 he is cutting his own throat : in the mouth of Hume 
 the sceptic, the statement is absurd, seeing that his 
 own, your own, my own, knowledge does not come, 
 and cannot be accounted for, from his own, your 
 own, my own experience*. Shut up, ex hypothesi, 
 
 * i.e. All our knowledge comes from experience : yes : all my 
 knowledge — no.
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 47 
 
 in himself, limited to his own ideas and impressions , 
 his knowledge is inexplicable : the greater part of 
 it must remain for ever simply x, an irreducible surd, 
 of which no account can possibly be given : its 
 presence in the mind an insoluble mystery. For 
 the moment he resorts, in order to explain it, to 
 language, communication, he is abandoning his posi- 
 tion, going outside himself; but this is just what 
 logically he can never do. Language is a sealed 
 book to scepticism, and one of the rocks on which 
 it splits : for it is the essential condition of any 
 degree of knowledge, and its explanation : a thing 
 wholly irreconcilable with any subjective philo- 
 sophy : for what is speech but the externality of 
 reason, its vehicle, the continuity of man with man 
 in space and time, the intellectual money of society ; 
 (speech being to thought exactly what money is 
 to demand : its material body ;) a capacity that has 
 absolutely no meaning at all for the isolated Car- 
 tesian ego, or Hume's ' bundle of impressions.' And 
 in fact, we might go much further : for even the 
 inner man and his nature are determined by speech ; 
 as e.g. the faculty of the orator or poet. So little 
 is humanity explicable on sceptical principles : so 
 much does the interior moral man depend on that 
 continuity, of .which Hume's scepticism is the 
 denial.
 
 48 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 I say, then, that without language, i.e. continuity, 
 that is, for the abstract individual, it is altogether 
 false, and even ridiculous, to derive knowledge from 
 experience. The position is utterly incompatible 
 with scepticism, and destroys it. That Hume should 
 be admired and accepted as the representative 
 champion of both is merely one of the innumerable 
 proofs of the deplorable imbecility of the world. 
 It need not surprise us to find language and its 
 corollaries totally ignored in Cartesian philosophy, 
 such as that of Hume. He could not have denied 
 it, without stultifying himself—for what is his 
 book ? — nor again could he possibly have deduced 
 it from impressions and ideas ; so that had it oc- 
 curred to him, he must simply have acknowledged 
 that his philosophical principles were unable to cope 
 with it, and torn up his Treatise on Human Nature. 
 That would have been a pity — Othello's occupation 
 gone ! Yet we are bidden to bow down to the philo- 
 sophical profundity of the man, the two principal 
 aspects of whose philosophy are logically incom- 
 patible, and who had never so much as considered 
 language in relation to his principles : language, 
 which is but the outside of reason, the body of which 
 reason is the soul. No body, no soul : no language, 
 no thought. The simple truth is that Hume had, 
 and could have, no insight whatever into the nature
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 49 
 
 of reason b , because it is an organic thing, a social 
 capacity ; and requires for its comprehension and 
 explanation biology, and that continuity of Nature 
 of which Hume's philosophy is the rationalistic, 
 superficial denial. The individual, the ego, or iso- 
 lated abstract bundle of discrete impressions, could 
 have no reason, for he, or rather it, would have no 
 need of communication, which is reason's original 
 root c . 
 
 II. And this brings us to another less obvious 
 but no less profound, error in the analysis of Hume. 
 The peculiar and superlative merit of his philosophy, 
 as, since Kant, we have been told usque ad nauseam, 
 the thing that constitutes his greatest achievement 
 and evinces the subtle penetration of his metaphysical 
 glance, is his criticism of causality. I assert, on the 
 contrary, that it proves exactly the opposite : his 
 lamentable want of equipment, positive or critical, 
 for the adequate performance of the task which 
 he set himself to do. 
 
 The colossal blunder which he made here arose 
 naturally and almost necessarily out of his philo- 
 sophic method. Hume was not a genuine philo- 
 
 b See Part II., ft § 2. 
 
 c It could not even have a memory, for memory depends, not on 
 the discrete, actual ego, but on the continuous, potential ego ignored 
 by Hume. See Part II., a, § 3. 
 
 E
 
 50 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 sopher, by which I mean, one who being puzzled 
 by realities seeks to account for them d , and so arrives 
 at principles by the regressive analysis of realities : 
 he was a book "philosopher, i.e., he took his philo- 
 sophical premisses from another (Berkeley) and de- 
 duced corollaries from them, leaving out, ignoring, 
 or denying everything which they did not contain. 
 The consequence is, that he has left out, without 
 the least suspicion, exactly half of the whole in the 
 case before us — causality. He did not fix his eye 
 on the facts of Nature, analyse and classify their 
 causes (as Aristotle did), but he arrived at his 
 conception of causality deductively from his phi- 
 losophical premisses. The mind has impressions : 
 now, between any two of these there is no neces- 
 sary connection discoverable : there is Hume's 
 philosophy, and his idea of causality, in a nut- 
 shell e . Nor can anything be simpler or more easy 
 to see than his point. Mere sequence, not necessity : 
 the imperceptibility of the power that effects the 
 result. Let that be as it may : we will not quarrel 
 
 d All children, e.g., possess genuine philosophic curiosity. 
 
 e It is nowadays insinuated that Hume was not serious but ironical. 
 Nothing could be further from the truth : he was entirely in earnest ; 
 and the way in which he labours, through two huge volumes, to 
 orce the whole world into the strait-waistcoat of a bedlam theory 
 that does not contain it will always make his book one of the wonders 
 of the world.
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 51 
 
 with it at present : where he makes his egregious 
 blunder is in supposing that this is all: that this 
 efficient causality exhausts the species of cause and 
 necessity. 
 
 I almost despair of bringing home to the reader 
 the full atrocity of this extraordinary oversight. 
 All. Why, Hume recognises and considers only 
 one side of causality, of the other he has never 
 so much as dreamed. It never enters his head that 
 there are two totally different kinds of real (not 
 merely formal and subjective) necessity and causa- 
 lity. He understands one only : the other he ab- 
 solutely ignores. And yet this other side is just 
 the key to the whole world ot organic Nature : it is 
 that great universal necessity which Aristotle calls 
 the avdy/cr) tov Sia ri, the necessity which everything 
 is under of conforming to circumstances, the final, 
 formal, and adaptive, as opposed to the efficient 
 causality alone recognised by Hume. 
 
 Here, for example, is a gold watch. Now, it is 
 not the gold which determines the nature of the 
 watch, but the necessity of keeping time. This is 
 that organic final necessity which makes the watch 
 what it is. Break the watch up, reduce it to gold 
 only, and this necessity is gone : only the material 
 necessity of the elements, as such, remains f . 
 
 f This is treated in detail in Part II., 0. 
 E 2
 
 52 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 This is only a type of the universal law of Nature. 
 This organic necessity is the key to the economy 
 of Nature ; it is the web and woof in which every 
 organic being is set, and by which it is moulded 
 and defined. This is the cause which is needed to 
 determine and account for every organic being in 
 the world : yet it is ignored, absolutely and utterly, 
 by Hume's criticism of causality : because biology is 
 a sealed book to him : he knows nothing whatever 
 of organic nature g . Yet he never suspects this de- 
 ficiency, which is essential in any one who endeavours 
 to account for human nature. He resembles a man 
 handling astronomy without any knowledge of mathe- 
 matics. We cannot see that fire must burn : very 
 well : now, how is it with the other necessity which 
 he ignores ? Is it not iron, and is it not obvious ? 
 Can the whale live in the Sahara, or the camel in 
 the Polar Sea ? Can the butterfly swim, or the eel 
 fly ? Can a steam engine run with square wheels ? 
 Is not the form of a boot or a glove, a saw or 
 a saddle determined necessarily by their work ? 
 Must not the crow and the gull see and fly, if 
 they are to live ? Can sheep live under water ? 
 But why multiply instances ? This fatal organic 
 necessity, arising not from the properties of matter 
 as such, but from conditions and exigencies that 
 
 • it obtains in other spheres also, but is less easy to see in them.
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 53 
 
 make demands upon the form ; this necessity, which 
 must be obeyed on pain of death and disappearance, 
 is invisible to Hume and his commentators : and 
 yet it contains the secret of the Universe. In other 
 words, Hume's treatment — it is in no sense an 
 analysis — of causality is only a fragment of the 
 whole, a segment of the entire circle. He treats 01 
 Human Nature in perfect ignorance of that species 
 of causation of which it is a special case. Human 
 Nature is not material, it is organic. An owl or a 
 man obey a very different necessity from that which 
 rules over a mere lump of matter. Kill the animal : 
 deprive it of its life and reduce it to its elements, 
 and the necessity which tyrannised over it while 
 it was alive is gone : it must no longer fly or run, 
 eat, drink, or see, &c, that end has gone : and with 
 it goes organic necessity. Hume's boasted analysis 
 of causality is the reasoning of a blind man about 
 colours : it is a futile attempt to account for bio- 
 logical problems without any insight into the sphere 
 of the problem : the vain endeavour of a part to pass 
 for a whole of which it is utterly unconscious : it 
 resembles, to revert to a former illustration, the 
 effort to account for the watch by reference only to 
 its gold — a theory whose absurdity it would be im- 
 possible to surpass. Had Aristotle been presented 
 in the shades with a copy of Hume's Treatise on
 
 54 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 Human Nature, he would have thrown it aside, 
 with the criticism, that the author was an acute 
 reasoner who knew absolutely nothing of Nature, 
 and was wholly unconscious of the extent of his 
 own deficiencies. 
 
 III. Kant ranks in public estimation as fully the 
 equal, if not even the superior, of Hume : the critic 
 tar excellence. 
 
 Very good. Now, does it ever occur to Kant, 
 all the way through the Critique of Pure Reason, 
 or elsewhere ; does it ever occur to the author of 
 that truly remarkable dictum — ' the matter of phe- 
 nomena is given us a posteriori: the form must 
 1 lie ready for them a priori in the mind ' — does it, 
 I say, ever occur to him that man does not only 
 contemplate phenomena, but creates them ? What is 
 a temple, a statue, a steam engine ? Now, the artist 
 certainly does not create the matter : we have even, 
 were it necessary, Kant's own authority for it. What 
 then remains for him to create ? The form ? Oh no ! 
 according to Kant that cannot be ; for the form 
 of phenomena is given to them by our mind in 
 the act of contemplation : it lies ready for them 
 in the mind. Then what remains for the artist 
 to create ? Nothing : for form and matter exhaust 
 the phenomenon. 
 
 And this is the critical quality of the Critical
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 55 
 
 Philosophy ! that epoch-making system which was 
 avowedly founded by its illustrious author on the 
 assumption that 'objects must conform to our faculty 
 ' of representation.' Imagine a rhinoceros conforming 
 to our faculty of representation ! Objects do conform 
 to something : but it is not our faculty of repre- 
 sentation : it is the organic necessity of circum- 
 stances. But of this Kant knew nothing : though 
 it was ' writ large ' in the writings of Aristotle. 
 
 IV. Yet once more. If there is any one thing 
 plainer than another, it is, the moral consequence 
 of the Cartesian principle. If the individual self, 
 my ' egOy is the sole reality, and all else mere 
 phantom of me, then virtue is absurdity and obli- 
 gation disappears: for continuity is gone, and the 
 Self, having no fellows, becomes, as it were, itself 
 the Deity, outside all control, alone in a world 
 which is only a reflection, or expression, or mani- 
 festation of itself. Pan-egoism. Le Monde, cest 
 Moi h . It follows, with inevitable necessity, that 
 selfishness, pure, ferocious, bestial selfishness, reigns 
 supreme. In the frightful solitude created by the 
 Cartesian principle, I am the sole and only reality, 
 and to myself the only law. With what would you 
 seek to bind Me ? what meaning has the word Duty 
 
 '' This is Fichte, a maniac who is perfectly logical, and corresponds 
 to the Hindoo philosophy of the Upanishads and the Vedanla system.
 
 56 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 to Me ? I laugh the very notion to utter scorn. But 
 now, even supposing the necessity clear to him, 
 which is hardly ever the case, no Cartesian would 
 for all that dare to lay such a moral consequence 
 down, for if he did, he would be instantly doomed 
 by the revolted moral judgment of the world. And 
 accordingly, we see all the Cartesians labouring in 
 the most grotesque manner to link an Ethic on to 
 their principle : to get, by hook or crook, out of 
 their principle a morality which it not only does not 
 contain, but annihilates. Nothing in the history of 
 the ludicrous can parallel the spectacle presented 
 to us by the desperate efforts of Spinoza, Hume, 
 Kant, Schopenhauer', and others of the school to 
 put forth some moral system that will square with 
 their premisses. Spinoza's attempt to dovetail an 
 ethic mathematically on to a system which sinks the 
 individual in the universal sea of Being — called God 
 for euphemism — was absurd enough. But the palm 
 was reserved, here also, for Kant, in whose famous 
 Categorical imperative the Sublime and the Ridi- 
 culous meet. It is a realised asymptote, the last 
 desperate stronghold (or weakhold) of a false philo- 
 sophy driven into a hole, not daring or willing to 
 
 Schopenhauer is the most consistent : his moral system being, in 
 fact, the thesis that there is none : ' what we arc, we are ; virtue, 
 ' a fig ! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.'
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 57 
 
 admit the obvious moral consequences of its own 
 fundamental principles: the grotesquely ridiculous 
 figment of a man whose heart was better than his 
 head, and who shrank, either from timidity or 
 politics, from boldly carrying his principles out to 
 their bitter end. But give me the man who has 
 the courage of his principles : he is worth his weight 
 in gold. No logical coward ever made a great phi- 
 losopher : though it is true that many have been 
 regarded by the world as great philosophers who 
 were in truth very far from being anything of the 
 kind. , 
 
 And exactly in harmony with this, though arrived 
 at by a somewhat different road, is the specious 
 accent laid nowadays on the principle of ' con- 
 science,' in semi-philosophical religious thought : 
 conscience, which in Dryden's fine language is ' the 
 ' royalty and prerogative of every " private " man : 
 1 he is absolute within his own breast, and account- 
 able to no earthly power for that which passes only 
 ' between God and him ' : — as opposed to the old 
 system of external social control, exemplified in 
 almost all ages and countries : e.g. in the Hindoo 
 system of Caste, the old self-governing communities 
 of Europe, groups and guilds, and so on. This 
 internal principle of conscience sounds indeed mag- 
 nificent : on no text is it possible to preach finer
 
 58 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 sermons. But show me a society morally directed 
 and controlled only by this grand interior principle 
 of conscience, and I will show you a gang of knaves 
 and hypocrites. Conscience, which has so fine a 
 ring in the ear of pious bookworms who do not 
 understand human nature as it is, but are always 
 contemplating ideal human nature and pure reason — 
 this conscience, regarded as a working moral prin- 
 ciple, is utterly futile and impotent : it is the sancti- 
 monious mask of any rogue, the specious cowl of 
 any villainy that shuns the light because its deeds 
 are evil ; and the virtue contained in conscience is 
 really derived from outside ; for virtue, like lan- 
 guage, is an organic, not an individual attribute. 
 Embrace Cartesian principles, let go continuity and 
 the organic nexus as the basis of human nature, and 
 your ' individual ' may have indeed a conscience, 
 but only after the fashion of Tartuffe or Titus Oates. 
 Conscience, in the good sense of the word, the con- 
 science of the really good man, the mens conscia 
 recti, is a result, not a principle : it is the inward 
 spiritual sign and indication of an outward social 
 virtue that is there ; but it is not itself the principle 
 of virtue. Any Macchiavellian soul who has not 
 got it will laugh to scorn the vain efforts of Car- 
 tesian philosophers to establish morality for him on 
 such a delusion. Conscience may be the finest
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 59 
 
 flower of virtue, but it is not its root. That root 
 is, continuity, organic obligation, i.e., Duty, which 
 is merely the moral aspect of that final cause totally 
 neglected by Cartesian philosophers. The Duty of 
 any organic being is determined by its relations 
 to others : it is a special case of the ov eveica. When 
 a man dies for another : when he sacrifices his own 
 Wic for the sake of some one else, he is, little as he 
 may dream of it, illustrating and verifying the 
 analysis of Aristotle : he is practically refuting the 
 philosophy of Descartes. 
 
 The truth is, that the only logical attitude for one 
 who begins, like Descartes, by making the abstract 
 discrete hypostatised self the sole or primary reality 
 is the ironical one. A didactic sceptic is an ab- 
 surdity. Hence all these inevitable self-contradic- 
 tions in the works of philosophers who endeavour 
 to dogmatise on sceptical principles. A genuine, 
 thorough-going sceptic, who laughs at all science, 
 (he would have plenty to laugh at now,) never argues, 
 but expresses himself in jest and mockery, scoffs 
 and gibes, is at least not inconsistent ; you cannot 
 touch him : he has a literary position, and even 
 commands our sympathy to a certain extent : it 
 is a point of view. But a didactic sceptic, a sceptic 
 who seriously reasons and writes books to prove this
 
 60 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 or that ! — it is a monstrosity, a self-contradiction 
 incarnate. Unfortunately, to get the reputation of 
 a ' great sceptic ' you must write books, otherwise no 
 one will ever hear of you : consequently, a great 
 sceptic is apparently of necessity an illogical thinker. 
 The only really great sceptics are those of whom, by 
 reason of their logical attitude ot complete silence, 
 the world has never even heard. It knows, then, 
 nothing of its greatest men ! 
 
 What these Cartesian philosophers all do is, in 
 reality, very simple. They have embraced a prin- 
 ciple, an original philosophical starting-point, which 
 logically reduces the world to zero or ego (with a 
 large or small E), and which would reduce them, 
 were they critically consistent, to silence ; for there 
 is no room for language in their philosophy. But 
 this would not do : the world's philosophers cannot 
 be silent men : moreover, they do not see it, for 
 there is not a single Cartesian who understands the 
 logical consequences of his own principle. There- 
 fore, though they parade their principle in the fore- 
 ground of their dialectical endeavours, they really 
 convey, by an illicit subterfuge, all that matter into 
 their philosophical systems which has really no right 
 to be there : i.e. they proclaim the Idealistic prin- 
 ciple, while secretly profiting by all that vast field 
 of continuity and potentiality which it eliminates
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 61 
 
 and cannot account for. There is accordingly very 
 often much by the way in their systems of frag- 
 mentary insight, though it is quite irreconcilable 
 with their original principle. Their pretext and 
 banner is Idealism : but their thought forsakes their 
 principle, when it comes to action, for the real 
 nature of things is stronger than the sophistry of 
 self-deluding rationalism k . Where they all fail is 
 in critical consistency ; systematic organisation and 
 coherence of thought : agreement of part with part. 
 They have neither the grasp nor the courage to 
 carry their principle out to its logical conclusion. 
 They ought, in strictness, to do one of two things : 
 either absolutely deny all that their principle will 
 not admit, as Hume partly did, — all, virtue, neces- 
 sity, language, society — everything whatever that 
 depends on continuity and potentiality : or con- 
 versely, deny the principle itself. They do neither. 
 They assert the principle, and combine it forcibly 
 with consequences that do not follow from it, and 
 are incompatible with it. They assert the principle, 
 because they have never yet been able to see how or 
 
 k It is commonly asserted nowadays that Idealism is as valid an 
 hypothesis as any other, because it can explain in its own way all 
 that any other theory can. But unfortunately, the one thing no 
 Idealism can explain is just the essence of the Universe— potential 'ity. 
 Idealism = esse minus *oss(.
 
 62 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 where it is erroneous : they combine it with incon- 
 sistent inconsequent consequences, because it is just 
 these which are the matters of concern and import- 
 ance to the world : all the vital interests of humanity 
 being precisely the things which their principle logic- 
 ally sweeps away. Hence the grotesque want of 
 critical consistency in their systems : hence the ab- 
 surd and fantastic, wearisome and idiotic attempts 
 to explain the continuous real by the discrete ideal, 
 the universal background of things by one of its own 
 particular manifestations : the substance by its re- 
 flection : the organic woof and web of existence by 
 mathematical atomistic points, or worse still, by 
 hypothetical figments and imaginary nonentities 
 hence in short, the whole generation of the Idealistic 
 school from Descartes down. Idealism was doomed 
 from its birth to this self-contradiction, the arbitrary 
 and forcible conjunction of mutually exclusive op- 
 posites. It professes to derive all from the self, 
 while it is really obliged to derive it from other 
 things : it professes an hypothetical theory which 
 in practice it entirely disregards : its pages are full 
 of discussions ot things of which, ex hypothesi, it 
 could never know anything at all, which could not 
 even exist at all, on its principles : and the very 
 language it makes use of is its running refutation. 
 There is, indeed, a sense in which Idealism, not
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 63 
 
 being founded on reason, cannot be overthrown by 
 it : seeing that ' what came not in by reason cannot 
 'by reason be expelled.' To many people, Idealism 
 means, not what it is, not that essentially nihilistic 
 or egoistic phenomenalism which logical Cartesian- 
 ism must be, but a vague sentimental magnificent 
 something compounded of aspirations and imagina- 
 tions, mysteriously related to e.g. Wordsworth's Ode 
 to Immortality, Tennyson's In Memoriam, Plato's 
 Phcedo, and so on. Idealism is conceived to be a 
 kind of sublime, ethereal, profound and lofty mode 
 of thought ; its exponent, a soaring genius, a finer 
 soul, raised far above your gross and grovelling, 
 commonplace and superficial realist l . It requires 
 courage as well as criticism to be a realist, since 
 you run the risk of being branded with superficiality 
 just for that reason. The truth is, in reality, the 
 other way : Idealism being a superficial absurdity 
 which ignores the potentiality of the Universe, and 
 tries to make our shallow little human scoop the 
 measure of that Infinite* Ocean of Possible Being into 
 which, here and there, it dips. But the world is 
 governed by the sound of words, and better loves to 
 
 Realism is the true mean between the two equally false poles 
 of Materialism and Idealism. It combines the virtues of both with 
 the fallacies of neither.
 
 64 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 go up in balloons than to go down in diving-bells ; 
 and so it comes about that, deluded by their own 
 faculty of language, people cling desperately to a 
 philosophy that logically annihilates everything 
 which they hold sacred. Sancta simplicitas ! they 
 resemble nothing so much as drowning men hugging 
 to their bosoms — the anchor ! And then, just as 
 natural objects look more beautiful when reflected 
 in water than they do in themselves, so an imagina- 
 tive charm, a literary spell, hangs about the notion 
 of Idealism — there is a kind of magical aroma in the 
 very word — which exercises on minds of a certain 
 calibre a far more potent attraction than logic ot 
 the sharpest ever can. Xvirei to aKpifies : there 
 seems to be something a little mean and illiberal in 
 applying nicety of criticism to gorgeous or graceful 
 speculations : the noli turbare circulos meos is not 
 without its influence ; and there will always be 
 people who prefer to err with Plato, Berkeley, Schop- 
 enhauer, and other masters of literary grace and 
 beauty ; for however much men may talk about 
 reason and truth, they prefer the Sophist, the man 
 who discourses beautifully about the truth, to the man 
 who nakedly and unmeretriciously exhibits it. There 
 can be no finer instance of this than Plato himself, 
 whose everlasting polemic against the Sophists com- 
 pletely blinds people to the fact that he was himself —
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 65 
 
 this is the real Socratic irony — a thousand times 
 more of a Sophist than any of those whom he carica- 
 tures and confutes in his pretty dialogues by the 
 most childish pretences at reasoning. With the 
 appeal to reason always on his lips, he settles every 
 question by his own dogmatic requirements, and his 
 philosophy owes its own attractions entirely to those 
 very allurements of sense which it is always con- 
 demning ; its logical content taken apart from its 
 setting would seem as miserable as a Persian cat 
 shorn of its hair. This is why of all philosophies 
 that of Plato m can least be abstracted from his 
 works. You must go to Plato himself for it, since 
 every account of it leaves out the one thing valuable 
 about it : its vehicle, the style, the atmosphere, the 
 by-play. 
 
 However apparently different, Platonism and Car- 
 tesianism are really and at bottom the same thing : 
 the core of both is total ignorance, neglect, or denial 
 of potentiality and the endeavour to subordinate the 
 concrete to the abstract, realities to their reflection 
 in the mirror of consciousness. It is not without 
 reason that Plato's admirers regard him as the 
 founder and anticipator of all modern philosophy. 
 He is so, in fact. Cartesianism is simply the return, 
 
 m AfSpi rvcpKtjS Ktxl yor)Ti ra iv ovpav$ hiyyovulvcp, 3s ovSe ra iv 
 tji yfj KaBopifv itivvaro. 
 
 F
 
 66 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 
 
 based on biological ignorance, to that abstract 
 philosophy of Plato, which Aristotle annihilated 
 by his discovery of the evolutionary process of 
 Nature, the continuous march from possible to 
 actual : a discovery rediscovered, verified and solidi- 
 fied by modern science, and one which is as valid 
 and complete a refutation of the modern Cartesian, 
 as it was of the ancient Platonic, Idealism. 
 
 But when any philosophy has once acquired 
 status, prescription, authority : when sophistry has 
 become a classic : when it is taught in colleges 
 and bound in vellum : when its commentators have 
 become a fraternity, its elucidation, a trade : when 
 critical reputations have been staked on its truth, 
 and professorial expositions of its principles stand 
 or fall with it : it dies hard. To convict it of error 
 is, as it were, to take down great ' critical ' philo- 
 sophers from their pinnacles, or make them, in 
 Bolingbroke's malicious phrase, ' like little statues 
 • on great pedestals, only seem the smaller by their 
 ' very elevation.' The world dislikes nothing so much 
 as to see its idols broken, and have to confess that 
 its gods were after all not porcelain, but common 
 clay. Rather than admit this, it will obstinately 
 refuse to see. And therefore, though it should 
 ultimately, as it certainly will, awake, and cease 
 to decorate with musk roses the fair large cars of
 
 THE GENEALOGY OF ERROR. 67 
 
 its Cartesian Bottom, meanwhile the thin ghost of 
 Idealism will continue to haunt the dens of philo- 
 sophers and lurk in the shadow of libraries, long 
 after it is logically defunct. 
 
 The future of philosophy, like the past, belongs 
 to Aristotle ; the unique, the immortal Master of 
 the Wise. He, he alone lives and endures for ever : 
 all the rest are fleeting shades. I wandered in his 
 deserted school, and raked in the ashes of his extinct 
 altar, till a spark of his divine genius suddenly glim- 
 mered and glowed in the darkness : I fostered and 
 fed it with fuel till it flamed into fire and showed 
 me the way : lit me like a torch to the discovery 
 of a definition, which, though not Aristotle's, is 
 Aristotelian : which I venture to say that Aristotle 
 himself would now have given, could Aristotle rise 
 from the dead. I have but raised his spirit, and 
 written down the oracle on scattered leaves. 
 
 F 2
 
 II. ANALYTICAL. 
 
 a. ORIGIN : THE NATURE OF 
 SIGHT. 
 
 ipifffihs, yvwptff/jLbt ovaias.
 
 AXIOMS, 
 
 Trjs yap apxys &\\ri yvuxris k<x\ ovk diroBd^it- 
 7j yap atidrjcts iiri(TTr)^.7}S t)(*i dvvaij.iv.
 
 a. ORIGIN: THE NATURE OF 
 SIGHT. 
 
 § I. The Critical Blunder oj the Idealist. 
 QTRANGE, and even incredible as it may seem 
 to the reader, it is nevertheless true, and I shall 
 now proceed to convince him by ocular demon- 
 stration, that Idealism is critically impossible, being 
 confronted at its outset by a dilemma, either horn 
 of which destroys it. The whole edifice of modern 
 philosophical Idealism is founded on a critical 
 blunder. 
 
 And this is the puncium saliens of all the sub- 
 sequent paradox and difficulty : therefore I exhort 
 the reader to give it his most serious and profound 
 attention. The source of all those sceptical per- 
 plexities which have ruined philosophy and brought 
 discredit upon human reason lies in this initial atom, 
 so small as to be almost imperceptible, yet so tre- 
 mendous in its potential results that the conse- 
 quences of failing to detect it are fatal. Minute 
 as it is, the mighty genius of evil lurks within it, 
 and if we carelessly overlook it and let it pass, 
 we are, like the princess in the fairy tale, lost irre- 
 trievably.
 
 72 ORIGIN: 
 
 Philosophers of every school, realist, idealist, 
 dogmatic or sceptical, however much they may 
 differ in all other respects, do nevertheless agree 
 in one point. They all unanimously admit that 
 the testimony of consciousness, naive, unanalysed, 
 uncriticised, is in favour of vulgar realism. That 
 we seem to see the very external objects themselves, 
 immediately, as they are, at a distance, is the opinion 
 alike of the vulgar and of every philosopher, call 
 him Hume or Hamilton, Kant or Huxley, Berkeley 
 or Reid. 
 
 All philosophy, therefore, begins with, and is 
 founded upon, the critical analysis of this vulgar 
 opinion ; which every philosophy must accept, un- 
 less and until it can be shown to be erroneous. 
 
 Idealism is founded on the rejection of this vulgar 
 opinion. 
 
 Now, whether this vulgar opinion be right or 
 wrong — a point to which I shall return on a future 
 page — it has escaped the notice of all the philo- 
 sophers that in either case Idealism is out of the 
 question. For it is impossible to refute this vulgar 
 opinion, except on realistic assumptions. You cannot 
 refute vulgar realism by any process of reasoning 
 consistent with Idealism. And therefore it is, that 
 Idealism, as a critical philosophy, is impossible : for 
 no Idealist can ever refute the vulgar view without
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 73 
 
 at the same time destroying the foundation of his 
 own philosophy. In every attempt which has ever 
 been made to refute it, the Idealist assumes the very 
 thing- which he is disproving, the denial of which 
 constitutes the essence of his own theory. Every 
 Idealist commits, and must of necessity commit, 
 logical suicide on the threshold of his speculations. 
 Though it is assumed by all that the initial position 
 of their school has been long ago established, the 
 truth is, on the contrary, that it never has been, nor 
 ever can be, established at all. You can enter the 
 philosophy of Idealism only by committing an out- 
 rageous critical fallacy at the door. A chasm yawns 
 between the Idealist and his own philosophy, which 
 is not surmountable save by an illegitimate and 
 illogical jump. The Idealist plumes himself on 
 the impregnable nature of his position : but what 
 he does not perceive is that he never can get into 
 it himself. It can be garrisoned only by ghosts, 
 disembodied spirits, i.e. logically dead men. 
 
 I shall now call up in order the representative 
 champions and master spirits of Idealism, and make 
 them convict themselves out of their own mouths. 
 
 Take, then, to begin with, the strong man of 
 scepticism, the renowned and redoubtable Hume, 
 who, grant him but his premisses, will inevitably 
 reduce you the whole world to a mere fiction of
 
 74 ORIGIN: 
 
 the imagination, filling up the gaps in its impressions 
 by a continuous hypothetical nescio quid. 
 
 'Men,' says this eminent philosopher, 'always 
 'suppose the very images themselves presented 
 ' to the senses to be the external object?, and 
 ' never entertain any suspicion that the one are 
 nothing but representations of the other.' [There 
 are, then, others P] 'This very table which we see 
 ' white and which we feel hard is believed to exist 
 'independent of our perception, and to be some- 
 ' thing external to the mind which perceives it. 
 
 ' But this universal and primary opinion of all 
 ' men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, 
 ' which teaches ' [now mark} ' that nothing can ever 
 • be present to the mind but an image or perception, 
 ' and the senses are only the inlets through which 
 'these are conveyed a , without being able to produce 
 'any immediate intercourse between the mind and 
 'the object.' [There is, tJien, an object, other than 
 and external to the mind?} 'The table which we 
 'see seems to diminish as we recede further from 
 ' it, but the real table wliicli exists independent of 
 
 a Note the words here. Hume pictures to himself the images 
 travelling along from objects through the senses, conceived as tunnels 
 or channels, to the mind situated somewhere over against the objects 
 — realism I And what does he mean by ' can be present,^ and ''with- 
 out being able? ' What meaning has possibility for his philosophy, 
 which postulates only discrete impressions ?
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 75 
 
 us suffers no alteration : it was, therefore, but its b 
 1 image which was present to the mind. These/ 
 concludes the sceptical philosopher, with obvious 
 satisfaction, ' are the obvious dictates of reason.' 
 
 And is it really possible for such criticism as this 
 to pass muster, and command general approval, 
 from Hume's own day down to our own ? Obvious 
 dictates of reason ! by all means, if you like ; but 
 they are instantly fatal to Hume the sceptical Idealist. 
 What ! then after all, there is a real table existing 
 independent of us, at a distance ? And pray, how 
 in the world do you come to know that ? You tell me 
 that the apparent table diminishes, but the real table 
 does not, therefore, &c, this is actually the reasoning 
 on which you found your Idealism, your denial of 
 the possibility of knowing any such independently 
 existing real objects. That is, you employ actual 
 knowledge of such objects to prove that none can 
 be known : you base your proof that such knowledge 
 is impossible, upon that very knowledge. Then, 
 whence came that knowledge of yours ? How can 
 you refute the possibility of knowledge by means 
 of just such actual knowledge ? how refute the 
 vulgar realism by employing a knowledge which 
 you declare to be impossible? Will you be good 
 
 b Its image, forsooth ! What is it, and what is an image? How 
 can there be an image of an unknown net/ting ?
 
 7 6 ORIGIN: 
 
 enough to explain how you can contrast the ap- 
 parent with the real object and prove them distinct 
 and different, if there are no real objects and 
 if, as your philosophy maintains, they cannot be 
 known c ? 
 
 This is the criticism of a great sceptic ! On this 
 dialectical pleasantry, this grotesque and almost 
 incredible blunder, is founded the .whole critical 
 philosophy of Hume : founded, that is to say, on 
 a dilemma, either horn of which annihilates it. 
 Either the vulgar opinion, this universal and primary 
 opinion of all men, recognised by Hume, is right 
 or wrong. If it is right, his whole philosophy is 
 elaborate nonsense. If wrong, then he must prove 
 that it is so, without assuming what he is disproving 
 in his proof. It may be wrong : we are perfectly 
 ready and willing to admit it, but let him produce 
 the evidence. Refute, by all means, the vulgar 
 view, and then proceed with the alternative which 
 you establish on its rejection. But it is really rather 
 too much to refute realism by its own aid, and then 
 coolly go on to substitute in its place an Idealism 
 which you have yourself annihilated by the very 
 reasoning you employ to demolish the vulgar 
 opinion. 
 
 This is the foundation of those remarkable 
 
 c Cf. Treatise on Human Nature, i. iv. §§ 2, 5.
 
 THE NA TURE OF SIGHT. 77 
 
 sceptical conclusions and speculations which are 
 presently to awaken Kant from the dogmatic 
 slumber in which, till old age, he lies, contentedly 
 lapped in all the puerilities of spiritualistic pneu- 
 matological metaphysics. But before dealing with 
 Kant, let us consider Hume's ' forerunner,' the 
 source of his sceptical inspiration, Berkeley. Berke- 
 ley deserves attentive consideration, because his 
 speculative paradoxes about the senses make him, 
 after Descartes, the second founder of modern 
 Idealism d . 
 
 Berkeley is a very curious ' phenomenon : ' 
 a most noteworthy instance of the disastrous ab- 
 surdity that arises from speculative ingenuity not 
 weighted by the ballast of exact definition. His 
 attractive personality, his graceful literary quality, 
 and the ' pulpit strain ' in his eloquence, cover, 
 as with a thick cloak, the multitude of his logical 
 sins. But we must not allow these argumenta ad 
 hominem to throw us off the scent : logic is logic, 
 and sophistry, sophistry, be the reasoner saint or 
 devil. Berkeley's logic is of the feminine type : 
 charming in its absurdity. An eternal self-con- 
 tradiction in his argument, of which more anon : 
 
 d Observe, that with his Theory of Vision, right or wrong, we 
 have in this section no quarrel or concern : it is only his Idealism, 
 based on that theory, yet wholly incompatible with it, that is now 
 in point.
 
 78 ORIGIN: 
 
 a grotesque hallucination about distance as ' a line 
 1 projected endwise to the fund of the eye : ' (as 
 if we had only one eye ! as if it were not clear as 
 noonday that this conception of distance itself im- 
 plies just that very externality or 'outness' which he 
 labours to explain away !) inextricable confusion 
 arising from the perversion of common words to 
 new-fangled private meanings of his own ; (the 
 assassination of thought, for public or common 
 significance is the essence of speech ;) an irritating 
 and incomprehensible incapacity or refusal to under- 
 stand what is a general idea e : (arising principally 
 from his own perverse signification of the term idea : 
 no human being ever having supposed the existence 
 of a general idea, in his sense of the word ;) and 
 a theological arriere-pensee by which, in spite of 
 the constant appeals to reason, the course of the 
 argument is always secretly determined : — there 
 is Berkeley. Yet of all his characteristics the most 
 significant is this, that though he insists continually 
 that it is not he, but the other philosophers, that 
 are the paradoxical rascals, he keeps on repeating 
 the same arguments, over and over again, with 
 a kind of unwearied, unsatisfied enthusiasm ; i.e. 
 
 * Yet Hume takes this miserable vial entendu for a great new 
 discovery. The confusion between intellectual conception (v6r)na) 
 and imaginative pictOl cntation (<f>aVraoyta) poisons modern 
 
 philosophy.
 
 THE NA TURE OF SIGHT. 79 
 
 he felt the absurdity of his own paradoxes, and 
 was in fact labouring to persuade himself as much 
 as other people. ' What means this iteration, 
 ' woman ? ' This, that he is arguing against the 
 grain : inspired, not by the interests of truth, but 
 the supposed interests of his creed. What is want- 
 ing in Berkeley, as it is wanting in his school 
 generally, is the organic element, apprehension 
 of the continuity of Nature : he abstracts soul 
 from body, the actual from its vehicle, labouring 
 to show that esse — percipi. And how then as to 
 ■bosse ? He ignores it : it is for him as a book with 
 seven seals. 
 
 Nothing in history surpasses the strange ab- 
 surdity of this perfectly serious endeavour to de- 
 monstrate that the essence of the world consists 
 in its aspect, its mirrored reflection in conscious- 
 ness. And any one who examines Berkeley's life 
 and writings together can see at a glance that 
 the good bishop was a visionary, a kind of theo- 
 logico-mathematical enthusiast: full of quaint fancies 
 and delicate suggestions, but wholly destitute of 
 the two things above all necessary to make a great 
 thinker, the sense of reality and the capacity of 
 systematic organisation of thought. His thought 
 takes its tone not from biology, (the sphere of 
 the senses,) but from mathematics, recently en-
 
 8o ORIGIN: 
 
 nobled by Newton's achievements : nor can any- 
 thing more conclusively demonstrate his extra- 
 ordinary lack of consecutive and co-ordinating grasp 
 than his astonishing blindness to the logical con- 
 sequences of his own principles. What could be 
 more ironical than the fervour of his crusade 
 against his bugbears, the Atheists and Free- 
 thinkers, the partisans of Matter? Did it never 
 occur to him that he was rooting up along with 
 the tares of his enemies' opinions the wheat of 
 his own ? that all mysteries reached not by sense 
 but abstraction stand on the same footing? and 
 that in hewing away at general ideas, he was 
 cutting down a branch on which he was seated 
 himself? Could anything be plainer? What kind 
 of dialectical depth can we allow in the man who 
 could not see so obvious a consequence ? Need 
 it astonish us, then, to find that the philosophy 
 of his old age {Siris) actually preaches exactly 
 that primordial universal matter which it was the 
 whole aim and object of the philosophy of his 
 youth to destroy ? Is the old man or the young 
 one to be our guide ? for they will meet no better 
 than the blessing of Judah and Issachar. 
 
 The simple truth is, that Berkeley did not know 
 what it was to think a philosophy out. His merit 
 lies in isolated fragments of insight, scattered here
 
 THE NA TURE OF SIGHT. 
 
 and there in his writings like occasional gems in 
 a heap of paradoxical rubbish, and couched generally 
 in the form of queries: discrete, not continuous. 
 Nor, as his life shows, did he really know anything, 
 when he started his philosophy, but a little mathe- 
 matics f . Experience taught him wisdom : he 
 dropped quietly out of his paradoxes, and more 
 into harmony with the common sense of the world, 
 as age came on : the force of reality with all its 
 myriad potentialities gradually weaned him, as 
 it did Plato g , from the dialectical hallucinations 
 that had beguiled his youth. And yet in that youth, 
 actuated by the zealous enthusiasm that inspired 
 many other actions of his life, he did not shrink 
 from setting up his puny little unfledged philosophy, 
 crude, raw, impotent, empty-headed little weakling 
 as it was, against the profound, all-embracing, 
 organically founded and systematically thought-out 
 and world-tested evolutionary analysis of Aristotle 
 and his giant logical followers, the Schoolmen. 
 It was the well-meant rivalry of a farthing candle 
 with the great Sun at noon. There is indeed 
 something painfully ludicrous in the spectacle of 
 
 f It is the same with Hume, whose philosophy, the product of a 
 young man, exhibits, naturally enough, acute deduction of accepted 
 premisses to logical conclusions, not analytical regress from realities 
 to principles that will explain them. 
 
 * See Appendix. 
 
 G
 
 82 ORIGIN: 
 
 a man posing as a philosopher, and writing volume 
 after volume, full of language and reasoning, whose 
 particular bugbear is general ideas. He should, 
 to be consistent, have expounded his philosophy 
 by a series of pictures and diagrams. 
 
 Berkeley's Idealistic dialectic, his argument for 
 Idealism h throughout, is nothing whatever but the 
 kaleidoscopic repetition of one and the same weari- 
 some fallacy, which runs through every page of his 
 writings : the assumption of the very thing which 
 he is labouring to disprove, Idealism established 
 on realistic assumptions, the disproof of any know- 
 ledge of an esse which is not pcrcipi, by its actual 
 employment. For example : — 
 
 ' Phil. Have you not acknowledged that no real 
 'property of any object can be changed without 
 'some change in the thing itself? 
 
 ' Hyl. I have. 
 
 ' Phil. But as we approach to or recede from 
 ' an object, the visible extension varies, being at one 
 ' distance ten or a hundred times greater than at 
 'another. Doth it not therefore follow from hence 
 ' likewise that it is not really inherent in the 
 ' object ? 
 
 h ' According to my system,' he says, ' all things are entia rationis, 
 and he culls the distinction between entia rationis and entia realia 
 'a foolish distinction of the Schoolmen.' He takes his own ration- 
 alistic folly for wisdom, in entire good faith.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 83 
 
 ' Hyl. I own I am at a loss what to think. 
 
 1 Phil. Your judgment will soon be determined, 
 'if you will venture to think as freely concerning 
 'this quality as you have concerning the rest. Was 
 'it not admitted as a good argument 1 that neither 
 ' heat nor cold was in the water, because it seemed 
 ' warm to one hand and cold to another. 
 
 ' Hyl. It was.' 
 
 Or again : 
 
 ' Phil. It seems then that light doth no more than 
 ' shake the optic nerve ? 
 
 ' Hyl. Nothing else. 
 
 ' Phil. And that consequent to each particular 
 ' motion of the nerves, the mind is affected with 
 ' a sensation, which is some particular colour ? 
 
 ' Hyl. Right. 
 
 1 Phil. And those sensations have no existence 
 ' without the mind ? 
 
 1 Hyl. They have not.' 
 
 Such is the uniform and unvarying quality of 
 Berkeley's thought : always and everywhere we 
 find the very thing which he is disproving as- 
 sumed as a fact and made the basis of the ar- 
 gument : via., Knowledge of an object, an esse, 
 
 1 It was indeed. Here we see the necessity of Aristotle, to dis- 
 tinguish between the actual and potential heat. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 ORIGIN: 
 
 beneath and without the percipi (water, light, optic 
 nerve, motion, &c). The very reasoning employed 
 to establish his thesis utterly destroys it : he cuts 
 his own throat in every line. The premisses as- 
 sume what the conclusion denies k : certainly a mode 
 of reasoning unknown to Aristotle and the poor old 
 Schoolmen, whose distinctions Berkeley so much 
 despises. But the obliging lay-figures in his dia- 
 logues, ever ready with their easy admissions, 
 never detect the fallacy: how should they, poor 
 creatures ? they are only the interlocutor himself, 
 under another name. By means of such dummy 
 dialectic as that of Plato or Berkeley, there is 
 no difficulty in proving or disproving anything. 
 The thing is a sham, a parade : show minus sub- 
 stance ; esse minus posse : imposing upon those 
 only who take — God bless them ! — dialogue for 
 dialectic, verses for poetry, a grinning row of 
 false teeth for Nature's genuine grinders l . Plato 
 forgot, when he invented this method, thinking to 
 fix Socrates on paper, that it lost ipso facto the 
 
 k A particularly striking instance of this common Idealistic method 
 is this : how can an Idealist talk, as they all do, of an inverted image 
 on the retina? How can the image be inverted, situated in an 
 opposite way, to the real object, if there be no such object? 
 
 1 As the doctor in Waverley ' was a believer in all poetry which 
 * was composed by his friends and written out in fair straight lines 
 ' with a capital at the beginning of each.'
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 85 
 
 virtue and soul of the living question and answer, 
 retaining only its dry bones, the galvanic activity 
 of waxworks. 
 
 This glaring self-contradiction forms the substance 
 and core of all Berkeley's reasoning. Yet it did 
 not prevent J. S. Mill from pronouncing Berkeley 
 the greatest of all the metaphysicians, for all his 
 Logic did not enable Mill to see a fallacy that 
 stared him in the face. Mill will go bail for 
 Berkeley, but quis custodiat ipsicm ? Let Mill 
 answer for himself. 
 
 Consciousness tells us, says Mill, that we see 
 the real object : whereas we know that we see 
 only a variously coloured surface m . Indeed ! and 
 how come we to know that f Let Mill answer that 
 question, if he can, without committing logical 
 suicide. He will refer you to the time-honoured 
 old Chesselden case. But, on Mill's principles, 
 what has that case to do with me ? I am not 
 the patient in that case. I am myself. You tell 
 me that I see what I do not see : I ask for proof : 
 and you refer me to something outside, something 
 not myself, as a type of me : something diseased 
 into the bargain. And you call this proof. Proof ! 
 Why, is it not just J. S. Mill who denies type, 
 essence, and believes only in particulars' ? Who 
 
 ■ See § 3 on this point.
 
 86 ORIGIN: 
 
 declares that syllogistic argument from type to 
 particulars n is a fallacy ? Yet here is this very 
 Mill appealing from somebody else's experience 
 to my own : arguing that I really see what I do 
 not see, because somebody else, who was diseased, 
 saw what I do not see. And pray, what is the 
 evidence on which he knows of the existence of 
 that somebody else? Surely not that he sees other 
 people? What then ? 
 
 And this is to replace the old Organon of Aris- 
 totle ! This marvellous logical genius, who has anni- 
 hilated the syllogism, and analyses thought, if he 
 is not mistaken, ' under better auspices ' than 
 Aristotle : this nineteenth century prodigy, who 
 tells us that the real fact of the matter, in Vision, 
 is something not only not corroborated by con- 
 sciousness, but even contradicted by it, is, if you 
 please, the very same man whose cardinal philo- 
 sophical principle is this : — that we can never know 
 anything primarily about anything, except what 
 experience and consciousness tell us ! 
 
 To ' logic ' of this kind the world erects statues : 
 monuments of something other than it intends. 
 
 Where shall we turn for 'criticism?' where, but 
 to the Critical Philosophy? 
 
 The epoch making genius of Konigsberg, when 
 B See, on this point, Fait II. B, § 2.
 
 THE NA TURE OF SIGHT. 87 
 
 at length awakened from his dogmatic slumber, 
 took a line of his own. Far from rejecting vulgar 
 realism, he admits it, under the new name of 
 Empirical Realism, as the primary fact : but he 
 immediately proceeds to qualify and retract the 
 admission by denying exactly that which forms 
 the essence of the vulgar belief — that it has any 
 validity apart from intuition. Space, Time, and 
 Causality have, on the contrary, nothing to do with 
 things in themselves, i.e. apart from the perceiving 
 mind. These are absolutely incognisable. Then 
 the question instantly presents itself: And how in 
 the world comes Kant to know anything about them ? 
 How is it that this critical philosopher commences 
 by dogmatising about the incognisable ? and con- 
 tradicts himself flatly at the beginning ? You tell 
 me that Space, Time, and Causality do not belong 
 to things in themselves : and yet you assert that 
 these things cause our sensations, and you speak 
 of them in the plural. What ! there are, then, many 
 of these things in themselves ? But how is this ? 
 for number, you say, applies only to phenomena. 
 And then, Space, the possibility of figure and form, 
 a purely mental contribution ? What ! the form of 
 a saddle, a saw, a boot, the crab's claw, the bat's 
 wing, the horse's hoof, the salmon's tail, of our own 
 ear, eye, brain or lungs, which it is impossible to
 
 88 ORIGIN: 
 
 perceive, all given by our mind in the act of per- 
 ception ! Why, we must invent a Deity, a permanent 
 act of intuition, to explain the continuous existence 
 of the world when it is not being contemplated by 
 any human or animal eye : Its sole function shall 
 be to keep on contemplating : if It were to stop for 
 a moment, everything would go out ' bang, like 
 a candle', like Alice, if the Red King stopped 
 dreaming . 
 
 Well does Aristotle say, that the mind when 
 moving in absurdities becomes itself absurd. Kant's 
 Critical Philosophy has reached the apex. Its 
 grotesque absurdity escapes detection, owing to 
 the fact that he never clearly understood his own 
 meaning, and juggles everlastingly with the word 
 p/ienomena, which he employs to denote both ex- 
 ternal realities and subjective perceptions: (the two 
 being in his philosophy falsely identified :) e.g. he 
 says, on the opening page of his Critique : ' it is the 
 ' matter of all phenomena which is given us a pos- 
 * teriori ; the form must lie ready for them a priori 
 'in the mind 1 '.' Now, as long as we remain in ab- 
 
 " If God did not exist, said Voltaire, it would be necessary to 
 create Him. Words prophetic of German philosophy, in which the 
 Deity becomes a sort of explanatory dialectical necessity dragged 
 in ex machitid to prop Idealism. 
 
 * Of notional classification or recognition alone is this true : e.c.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 89 
 
 stracto, thinking vaguely of phenomena as purely 
 mental affections, the full significance of this as- 
 tounding dictum does not come out : but take a 
 concrete example, a particular phenomenon, and then 
 see. Is the matter of a statue by Pheidias given 
 us a posteriori, and its form by our mind ? Is the 
 matter of a corkscrew, a hippopotamus, or a bishop, 
 given us a posteriori, and its form by our mind ? 
 You cannot save Kant by denying that these things 
 are the phenomena, because it is just the essence of 
 his philosophy that they are : vulgar realism being 
 empirically valid. Did Kant really suppose that 
 the mind in actu percipiendi^ there and then con- 
 verted an amorphous ' chunk ' of the Ding-an-Sich 
 'given' to it who knows how, into shape? turn one 
 chunk into a cartridge, another into a rifle, and a 
 third into a Brahmin sepoy ? and are there three 
 chunks for the three phenome?ta, one apiece ? or 
 does the mind divide for itself the continuous Ding, 
 chopping off such pieces as may serve its turn ? 
 Really, one might sometimes laugh, when one con- 
 
 this thint; which I see is a candle : but this was always known to 
 everybody. 
 
 *> Cp. J. H. Stirling, Text Book tc Kant: ' that house, this tree, 
 1 this table, this pen, external as they are, are not wholly so, but 
 ' have forms projected into them from within my own self even 
 ' in the very act of my perceiving them.'
 
 9 o ORIGIN: 
 
 siders the imbecility of the world, for a quarter of 
 an hour. Why, did it never occur to this wonderful 
 critical philosopher, as we enquired in the Intro- 
 duction, to reflect that phenomena are not only 
 perceived but created by man ? What is a hatchet 
 or a shoe? what are machinery, sculpture, archi- 
 tecture ? Forms created by man. And is the whole 
 differentiation of Nature created by our mind in 
 the instant of perception ? Do not attempt to crawl 
 off at a tangent by importing into the question 
 hypothetical figments, universal ego, or any other 
 such devices to bolster up one error by making 
 another: I hamstring such quibbles with Occam's 
 Razor : entia non sunt multiplicanda prceter necessi- 
 tatem. 
 
 The very absurdity of this protects it, because 
 people are unwilling to suppose that any theory 
 of which they have made an idol could possibly 
 be such nonsense. But there is no escape : the 
 absurdity is a rigorous, logical, inevitable corollary 
 of Kant's fundamental dogmas. If, as he maintains, 
 phenomena* are empirically just what they seem to 
 
 r • In the Transcendental /Esthetic, we proved that everything in- 
 ' tuited in space and time, all objects of a possible experience are 
 ' nothing but phenomena, that is, representations : and that these, 
 1 as presented to us, as extended bodies, have no self-subsistent ex- 
 istence apart from human thought.' (Critique, ed. Meiklejohn,
 
 THE NA TURE OF SIGHT. 91 
 
 be, then and there : if yet space be a purely mental 
 contribution of no validity minus the mind, and con- 
 sequently its form accrues to the chaotic matter 
 only in the moment of perception : then it follows 
 with iron necessity that the whole differentiation 
 of objects in respect of their form is bestowed upon 
 them by the mind : and you can escape only by 
 a concatenation of figments, the hypothetical sup- 
 position of some permanent act of perception, call 
 it by any name you please. 
 
 The simple fact is, as any one who closely examines 
 the Critique of Pure Reason can see, that, busily 
 occupied in elaborating his internal rational super- 
 structure, Kant never clearly understood his own 
 meaning as to the most important point of all, the 
 phenomenoft, its significance, and its relation to the 
 'thing in itself.' His thought in this respect is 
 simply a muddle, as he shows whenever he attempts 
 to explain himself. He wavers indefinitely between 
 vulgar realism and sceptical idealism, the inevitable 
 consequence of making space at once empirically 
 valid and a subjective phantasm: his outside is inside, 
 and he moves in a haze of confusion, because, having 
 once identified the phenomenon with the real ex- 
 
 p. 307.) Kant's notion of proof "is truly remarkable : there is nothing 
 in the Transcendental Esthetic bearing the remotest resemblance to 
 an argument.
 
 92 ORIGIN: 
 
 ternal object, he is obliged to keep on contradicting 
 himself, by using the term object now for the phe- 
 nomenon, now for the thing in itself. These things 
 in themselves are really nothing but external objects, 
 which Kant's theory makes incognisable, but which 
 are, in fact, known not only to the world in general, 
 but to himself. Hence his actual knowledge of 
 them is constantly contradicting his theory that 
 they are incognisable ; and accordingly every page 
 of his book is a tissue of this self-contradiction : 
 the actual display of knowledge respecting a sphere, 
 knowledge of which he declares to be impossible. 
 
 His theory is simply a combination of two errors : 
 its psychological genesis is this. First, he accepts 
 vulgar realism: then he gratuitously denies it. Hence 
 he first identifies the phenomenon with the external 
 object : and then dogmatically severs them, thus 
 reducing the external object to & je ne sais qnoi by 
 deriving all its qualities from the perceiving mind. 
 It thus becomes a nonentity — in theory: in fact, 
 it continues to exist, in spite of Kant, just as if the 
 Transcendental ^Esthetic* had never been written. 
 
 If,' says Kant, ' things could be contemplated otherwise than 
 ' as they are, and as the pure Understanding would cognise them, 
 ' then they would all seem quite different : ergo, Space and Time 
 'are mere forms of intuition.' This is what he calls proof! And 
 what is this miserable figment, a pure Understanding? If three 
 times six were thirteen, then, &c, &c.
 
 THE NA TURE OF SIGHT. 93 
 
 And yet it is just this foolish Transcendental 
 Esthetic which Schopenhauer, a most fervent disciple, 
 singles out as the only part of Kant's whole philo- 
 sophy which is sound : but then its extraordinary 
 merit and profundity console Schopenhauer for all 
 Kant's other shortcomings. The disciple, adopting 
 the doctrine of his master as to Space and Time, 
 has argued elaborately for it in a special treatise. 
 Here is a specimen of his reasoning : 
 
 ' Sensation is and remains a process within the 
 'organism, and is limited as such to the region 
 'within the skin: it cannot, therefore, contain any 
 ' thing that lies beyond that region, or in other 
 'words, anything outside us.' (Four-fold Root, &c.) 
 
 Here, forsooth ! is criticism ! What ! there is, then, 
 after all, an outside, a beyond, which sensation cannot 
 contain ? And pray, how do you know that ? Do you 
 not see that you are assuming the independent 
 existence of Space in order to refute it ? We cannot 
 perceive what is outside, because it is outside : there- 
 fore, we perceive what is inside: therefore, there is 
 no outside. Q.E.D. 
 
 Elsewhere, Schopenhauer breaks forth poetically, 
 a propos of vision — he was a great writer — as 
 follows : ' Sight needs no contact, nor even prox- 
 'imity: its field is unbounded and extends to 
 ' the stars.' Perfectly true. But reconcile this
 
 94 ORIGIN: 
 
 opinion, if you can, to the Transcendental Aesthetic. 
 Why this laudation of Sight? If Space be a purely 
 mental subjective contribution, why admire Sight 
 more than Touch? or why feel more admiration 
 for the Sight of the fixed stars than the Sight of 
 your own nose? What is the ground of distinction 
 between Sight and Touch? This, that Touch informs 
 us about bodies hi contact with our organism, and 
 Sight, about bodies at a distance. Let any one 
 square Schopenhauer's rhetoric with his criticism, 
 who can. 
 
 Enough of the critical philosophers : take, now, 
 some typical specimens of the scientific physiological 
 sensationalism of our own day : and to begin with, 
 listen to the late Professor Huxley, who has stamped 
 the doctrines of Descartes, Berkeley, and Hume, 
 with his eminent physiological approval. 
 
 ' What the senses testify is neither more nor less 
 1 than the fact of their own affection l . As to the 
 ' cause of that affection, they really say nothing : ' 
 or again: 'the impact of the ethereal vibrations 
 ' upon the sensory expansion, or essential part of 
 1 the visual apparatus, is sufficient to give rise to 
 1 all those feelings which we term sensations of light 
 
 1 It is not the senses, but the organs of sense, that are affected : 
 see below, § 3, for the criticism of this lamentable confusion between 
 senses and their organs.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 95 
 
 ' and colour, and to that feeling of outness which 
 'accompanies all our visual sensations 11 . 
 
 Now, how is it that Professor Huxley comes to 
 be exhibiting here knowledge of those very causes 
 of sensations which he declares to be unknown? Who 
 does not see that his denial reposes upon the very 
 possibility which he denies? These ethereal vibrations, 
 this sensory expansion, this visual apparatus, not only 
 are these causes well known to him, but he actually 
 knows that they are sufficient to give rise to that 
 feeling of outness, &c. x Why, his knowledge is 
 perfectly amazing. And where, then, did it come 
 from ? Surely, Professor Huxley could not descend 
 to the humble, self-contradictory admission that it 
 came by observation and experiment, i.e. Sight ? 
 for he tells us that it could not so come, since the 
 senses tell us nothing of the causes of their affections. 
 Did he get it, then, by Divine Revelation, or did 
 he dream it ? To say that he got it in the laboratory 
 or the dissecting-room is to cut his own throat. 
 He uses the knowledge that came in through his 
 eyes to disprove its own possibility, which shows us 
 that more things than physiology are required to 
 make a philosopher. Huxley's actual science is 
 
 u Elementary Physiology 1 , pp. 240, 223. Similarly in his Essays 
 on Descartes, Berkeley, and Hume. 
 
 x Feeling of outness ! ' Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all ? '
 
 96 ORIGIN : 
 
 the disproof of his own philosophy : and yet the 
 world took the philosophy on the authority of 
 the science ! Truly, there is here food for joyous 
 laughter. 
 
 Take a still more modern instance : — Professor 
 Theodor Ziehen, who says, in his Introduction 
 to Physiological Psychology, 'our science stands 
 ' in the closest relation with the founder of the 
 ' Critical Philosophy, Kant. Locke, Berkeley, 
 1 Hume, had prepared the way for the great truth y 
 ' which Kant finally expressed, that primarily we 
 ' have only the psychical series, the series of ap- 
 ' pearances or phenomena, as he called them. 
 ' The hypothetical " cause " of the phenomena or 
 ' the psychical series is I. merely inferred, 2. a factor 
 ' of which we know absolutely nothing.' 
 
 Very good : merely inferred and absolutely u-n 
 known. We turn, then, to any other page of his 
 book, and we read, e.g. on p. ior, as follows: 
 ' the adequate physical stimulus of the eye is 
 ' furnished by the vibrations of the ether ' . . . . 
 ' not all velocities of ethereal vibration impart 
 ' a sensation of light to the eye '....' the 
 ' number of vibrations per second may be too 
 ' large or too small to produce such a sensation ' 
 . . . . ' in general, only more than 400 billions and 
 
 l This great truth is either a truism, or a fallacy.
 
 THE NA TURE OF SIGHT 97 
 
 ' less than 900 billions per second are capable of 
 1 exciting visual sensations.' 
 
 So Professor Ziehen was quite right, when he 
 said that his ' science ' was closely related to 
 Kant's philosophy. It is indeed of the same criti- 
 cal quality. From this, or almost any page of 
 his book, it turns out, that so far from the causes 
 of sensation being absolutely unknown to Professor 
 Ziehen, he possesses, on the contrary, a knowledge 
 of them which is absolutely appalling: he can 
 count with accuracy in billions in this absolutely 
 unknown sphere. What an astounding achieve- 
 ment ! But I want to know, how comes he to know 
 about the unknown ? Doubtless Professor Ziehen 
 would be justly annoyed if any one were to tell 
 him that his knowledge was all moonshine — a de- 
 lusion and a dream. But if it is really knowledge, 
 how can it be knowledge of the unknown ? Of two 
 things, one. Either he does not know what he 
 says he knows, and it is all nonsense about the bil- 
 lions, or the causes of phenomena are not un- 
 known. Which is it that is wrong—optics and 
 the undulatory theory of light, or Kant ? It may 
 be both : it must be one or the other. The only 
 question is, which ? 
 
 These citations, which might be increased in- 
 H
 
 98 ORIGIN: 
 
 definitely, will suffice to show the reader clearly 
 the nature of the point here enforced : he can add 
 to them himself to any extent that he pleases by 
 rummaging the literature of philosophy. 
 
 The truth is simply this, that Idealism is neces- 
 sarily founded on a self-contradiction. It is obliged 
 to assume, in its own establishment, the very thing, 
 of whose possibility it is the denial : knowledge 
 of that which lies behind the phenomenon, of the 
 reality independent of its sensations, ideas, im- 
 pressions, &c. You cannot possibly refute vulgar 
 realism, except by realistic arguments. The pre- 
 liminary refutation of vulgar realism is a task 
 beyond the power of Idealism. I challenge any 
 reader to discover, in all the literature of philo- 
 sophy, or, if he can, to manufacture for himself, 
 a disproof of vulgar realism which does not as- 
 sume either that, or realism of a modified kind. 
 How can anything be more obvious ? How can you 
 first derive externality from Sight, and then employ 
 it to prove that Sight contains none ? How base the 
 disproof of the possibility of a certain kind of know- 
 ledge upon the actually possessed knowledge it- 
 self? The thing is manifestly ridiculous. And yet, 
 from Berkeley down, every Idealist without ex- 
 ception commits without suspicion this astonishing 
 fallacy, and bases his philosophy upon the very
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 99 
 
 thing which it maintains to be impossible. But 
 I ask, again and again : If Sight contains no exter- 
 nality, whence then comes all that external knowledge 
 by means of which they prove to us that i J is im- 
 possible ? 
 
 They all admit implicitly what they explicitly 
 deny, viz. : that somehow or other, as all their 
 proofs and arguments imply, we do get at the 
 causes of phenomena, ' behind ' them. The ques- 
 tion therefore for us is, How? 
 
 To that question we accordingly turn. Note, 
 meanwhile, the conclusion as to Idealism. There 
 is only one kind of Idealism possible : Idealism 
 by faith, the credo quia absurdum : the Idealism 
 which adopts its first principle without critical ex- 
 amination. Critical Idealism is impossible. No 
 Idealist can open his mouth to refute the vulgar 
 realism which is primarily in possession of the 
 field, and valid till it is refuted, without annihil- 
 ating himself. Refute it, by all means, if you 
 can. But if you cannot, you must accept it : and 
 if you can, you must cut your coat accordingly : 
 your disproof disproves also Idealism. 
 
 This much therefore is certain : that the much 
 despised vulgar person, however it may subse- 
 quently turn out with him, may at least laugh to 
 all eternity at the futile efforts of the Idealist to 
 
 H 2
 
 ioo ORIGIN: 
 
 capture his position. He may indeed capture the 
 position, but only to arrive in it dead himself, like 
 the old Rajpoot chieftain before Chittore. Alive, 
 he carnot take it. Idealism, like those unfortunate 
 souls of "horn Plato tells us somewhere, is destined 
 to yearn for ever for critical existence, yet fated 
 not to be. Idealism is a philosophy only de facto, 
 and not de jure . : t is the illogical realisation of the 
 impossible z . 
 
 § 2. The Raison d'etre, or D7ity, of Sight. 
 
 The founders of modern Idealism, whose evil that 
 they did lives after them, were the victims of their 
 own point of departure, abstraction. The senses 
 are unintelligible, they have absolutely no meaning, 
 except when considered in a light never dreamed 
 
 1 There are four possible theories, and only four, as to visual 
 phenomena. They may be — 
 
 1 . The very external realities themselves. 
 
 2. Copies, images, more or less closely resembling those realities. 
 
 3. Signs, or symptoms, indicative of realities, but totally unlike 
 them : phenomena of an unknown x. 
 
 4. Signs, symptoms, ideas, impressions, sensations, or what you 
 will, indicative of nothing but themselves. 
 
 Of these four, the two last are the view of Idealism : the first 
 of the vulgar : the second contains the truth, but it requires ex- 
 planation. Properly understood, it coincides with the vulgar view. 
 See below, § 3. Note, also, that on either of the last two theories, 
 science is impossible. 
 
 v
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT 101 
 
 of by Descartes or Berkeley, Hume or Kant, Reid 
 or Hamilton. All these philosophers, when dealing 
 with the senses, fumble in the dark void of ab- 
 straction with a mere spoonful of isolated water, 
 knowing absolutely nothing of the vast ocean of 
 organic existence and natural economy, the whole, 
 of which our senses are but special cases. The 
 immeasurable superiority of Aristotle to every other 
 philosopher, ancient or modern, a superiority which 
 he retains even in these days of evolution, arises 
 principally from the fact that he always has his 
 eye upon organic existence as a whole, and his 
 thought moves accordingly in the true sphere of 
 the problem. He never converts realities into non- 
 entities by abstracting them from that nexus of 
 relations in which alone they can be what they are. 
 
 The philosopher, who, meditating upon the nature 
 of Sight, comes to the conclusion that the vulgar 
 are mistaken, and adopts views analogous to those 
 which we analysed in the last section, is settling 
 in a very summary manner a question that does 
 not affect men only, but involves the whole world 
 of living creatures, which stands or falls theoretically 
 by his answer. Is there now a single Cartesian 
 philosopher who recognises Sight to be that which 
 it is, a capacity not human, but animal ? Do you 
 find a glimpse of this conception in Berkeley, Hume,
 
 102 ORIGIN: 
 
 Kant, or their commentators ? But, says the reader, 
 how should we expect to find it ? it is only since 
 Darwin that we have learned to view these things 
 in their true light ; but they lived before evolution. 
 And how, then, about Aristotle, whom they despised 
 and rejected ? This point of view is the very soul 
 of him : it runs through every line of his works ; 
 it is printed large on every page of him : and yet, 
 for the Cartesians, he wrote in vain. None, says 
 the proverb, are so blind as those who will not see. 
 Aristotle was to be condemned, because he was 
 Aristotle, and so the modern philosophers went 
 on their way rejoicing in the new light of their 
 dense ignorance of Nature and her methods. Ob- 
 serve, for example, how, two thousand years after 
 Aristotle, the fact of a chicken seeing as soon as 
 it is out of its shell disconcerts J. S. Mill a , and 
 how lamely he endeavours to reckon with it. Why 
 this awkward uneasiness ? Why, because it had 
 never occurred to Mill before to consider his philo- 
 sophical premisses in their true light, the universal, 
 organic, animal point of view. This chicken, seeing 
 accurately and well, in so unexpected and annoying 
 a manner, is quite a novel idea to Mill, who though 
 he knows nothing about chickens or any other 
 animal, looks down from the height of his wisdom 
 
 * See his Dissertations.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT 103 
 
 upon poor old Aristotle. Mill has read his Berkeley 
 and his Hume, but he has never observed the facts 
 of Life : he is a mere book philosopher, a continua- 
 tor, a commentator : the source of his principles 
 is not Nature and original analytical thought, but 
 his library, and his awful father. Life as it is in 
 living beings, animals : Nature, her methods and 
 means of attaining her ends, are foreign, strange, 
 and surprising to him. Who could have supposed 
 that this wretched chicken would see in this dis- 
 gusting manner ? Well indeed might it set him 
 thinking. This miserable little fluffy atom, this 
 absurd little egg-shaped insignificance, annihilates 
 the philosophy of J. S. Mill, and upsets Berkeley's 
 Theory of Vision ; proving, beyond all possibility of 
 denial, that Sight does not always require experience 
 and the association of visual and tactual sensations. 
 Then, if not always, does it ever ? Do we ourselves 
 see like the chicken ? What is Sight ? 
 
 Discussions of Sight by Cartesian philosophers 
 resemble a treatise on comparative anatomy written 
 by a man who had never seen any skeleton but his 
 own. As if it were possible adequately to handle 
 any general characteristic of animal life, sex, gen- 
 eration, development, sense, by confining yourself 
 to a single specimen ! When Darwin discusses 
 sexual selection, does he confine himself to man?
 
 104 ORIGIN: 
 
 Aristotle could have taught these philosophers 
 better than Darwin, had they not been so wise in 
 their own conceit, that it is as animals, and not as 
 men, that we have Sight b . The sense of Sight 
 is, in animals that have it, one of the sine quibus 
 non : it is a means to an end, an instrument of life, 
 like the capacity of flying, running, swimming, 
 burrowing, &c, to each capacity being assigned 
 its appropriate and necessary organ, as fins, wings, 
 legs, eyes, &c. Consequently, before proceeding 
 to lay down the nature of Sight, the first question 
 of any one must be, what part does Sight play in 
 the animal economy : thence, a fortiori, in our own ? 
 The general precedes the special: the animal foun- 
 dation comes before the human edifice reared upon 
 it. If you want to understand Sight, you must 
 go to the sphere of its operation, the scene of its 
 action, and watch it at work. Then, and not till 
 then, after having accumulated your observations, 
 you can speculate on its nature z . You can no more 
 
 b ovk \i &v6pa>iroL tcr/xtv, 1\V fj foia, inrdp-)((i. 
 
 c It is really extraordinary to see how completely the Cartesians 
 reverse the truth as to themselves and Aristotle. Hume or Mill, 
 e.g. , preach experience, and condemn a priori metaphysical methods. 
 Yet it was they themselves, not Aristotle, who were erecting schemes 
 of human nature on a basis of ignorance as to Nature in general. 
 Aristotle's method is the analysis of accumulated facts: theirs is 
 abstract deduction from a rationalistic dogma.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 105 
 
 understand the nature of Sight apart from the sphere 
 of its operation, than you can understand the tail 
 of the salmon or the mouth of the whale, away from 
 the water of the river or the sea. For it is the work, 
 the ditty, of all these organs and capacities that 
 made, explains, and accounts for them : and that 
 work can be performed only in mediis rebus. How 
 can the philosopher who ignores this utilitarian, or 
 evolutionary, or altruistic principle of explanation, 
 who does not know that everything organic is for 
 the sake of some other thing, make head or tail of 
 the senses ? For Sight is as strictly an instrument 
 as any other organic capacity. Can you explain 
 the differences of sight, the vision of the eagle, the 
 swan, the owl, without reference to their peculiar 
 habits ? and if not the differences of the capacity, 
 how then the capacity itself? For the general 
 capacity is only contained in the sum total of the 
 particular species of visual power. Contemplate the 
 economy of Nature : consider her hosts of animals, 
 creeping, flying, burrowing, diving, dashing about 
 in all directions in escape or pursuit, by means of 
 their organs and capacities, depending at every 
 moment amid a legion of enemies and hostile in- 
 fluences on their powers and faculties and senses 
 for their lives : and then turn to the dogmas of 
 Cartesian philosophers about the senses : you will
 
 106 ORIGIN: 
 
 see that they all ignore the essence of the matter. 
 They are attempting to deal with organic means 
 without reference to their ends : they do not even 
 know that they are means : they turn the utility 
 of the senses to the futility of the senses, by isolat- 
 ing them and abstracting them from their work. Ig- 
 noring this work, which alone gives them significance, 
 they rob the senses of their point and stultify them 
 altogether. 
 
 For they invariably argue as if the mind's interest 
 in its ideas, sensations, impressions, phenomena, &c, 
 were a purely aesthetic interest, OewpCas eve/ca : they 
 represent 'the ego ' as the disinterested and in- 
 different spectator of these idle phenomena: as it 
 the torpid and curious contemplation of phenomena 
 were the primary and original function of the mind. 
 Whereas, on the contrary, the truth is that such 
 contemplation, scientific, aesthetic, or metaphysical, 
 is a luxury, an amusement, a pastime ; possible 
 among the countless hosts of creatures only to man, 
 and even of men, only to those in comparatively 
 easy circumstances : to a mere handful, as it were, 
 of beings. It is universally ignored by Cartesian 
 philosophers that the senses of the animal are the 
 means and possibility of its life and its action 
 a hostile world : or in other words that its ideas, 
 impressions, phenomena, &c, are its WEAPONS in
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 107 
 
 the incessant struggle for existence : their permanent, 
 primary and underlying function, the preservation 
 of that self to which they belong". reXos yap ov yvutcns 
 a\\a Trpdgcs : the phenomena that appear in Sight 
 are not, as they become in Art or Philosophy, an 
 end in themselves, but only a means to that end, 
 which is life itself. The mind is no mere magic- 
 lantern to amuse or delude us with shadows 
 [phenomena): it is rather a lamp, the light of Nature, 
 to discover objects in the surrounding darkness and 
 enable us to cope with them. And yet this is just 
 what Cartesians deny. They eviscerate the senses 
 of their externality, and deny that they either can 
 or do give us any information of the real nature of 
 the external object e . But the proof that they do 
 is the fact of existence. Imitating a formula of Kant, 
 we may say, ' they do, for they must, otherwise life 
 ' were impossible,' and Idealism is the theoretic im- 
 possibility and stultification of organic Nature. 
 
 d This is the principle on which Aristotle accounts for the parts 
 or organs of animals : the end of all is the preservation of the animal 
 (ffw^nu tV cpiiaiv) in various ways, by fighting or fleeing, &c. 
 
 • ' No sensation can give me any information but how I am 
 'affected, I myself: of any information as regards the object I am 
 'entirely void.' Stirling's Text Book to Kant. As to which, see 
 below, § 3 : and observe how Stirling, just like Kant, as we saw, 
 is obliged to speak of the ' thing in itself as the object, i.e. to imply 
 knowledge of the theoretically unknown x.
 
 108 ORIGIN: 
 
 Oh ! but Hume admitted it, the acute reader will 
 exclaim : he admitted that action refutes scepticism, 
 though reason cannot : as an agent he was perfectly- 
 satisfied. But this objection mistakes the point : 
 which Hume never saw. His point is quite different. 
 What he says is this : that the necessities of action 
 compel us to disregard the sceptical conclusions of 
 reason, which are still irrefutable. What I say, 
 on the contrary, is that the fact of organic exist- 
 ence f proves its possibility, and this possibility 
 demonstrates that the senses give us the real nature 
 of things, show us really what they are : — that is, 
 disprove his premisses, for he denied the fact. 
 He is candid enough to allow that life and action 
 will not square with his philosophical conclusions: 
 but he never either saw or suspected that, properly 
 considered and analysed, they annihilate his pre- 
 misses. That his premisses were erroneous it never 
 entered his head to imagine : his faith in them is 
 perfect and implicit : he never entertains a mo- 
 mentary scruple concerning thems, notwithstanding 
 
 If it be objected, that the sceptic can, from his standpoint, know 
 nothing of organic existence, I retort by challenging him to disprove 
 vulgar realism from his standpoint : which, as I have shown in the 
 last section, he can never do. Dogmatic and didactic scepticism, 
 as I have shown throughout this essay, is a tissue of self-contradiction. 
 * e.g. he says of Berkeley that his writings are the best sceptical 
 education possible, because his arguments produce no conviction,
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 109 
 
 the fact that, as we have already seen, they are 
 based on self-contradiction. 
 
 To return. 
 
 Every organic body, said Aristotle, ages ago, 
 lives by its wits, and must therefore, if it is to 
 preserve its life, perceive things not only when it 
 is in contact with them, but also from a distance 11 . 
 
 What is it, now, that enables vultures to flock 
 to a dead camel, owls to catch mice in the dark, 
 and in general, each animal to pursue and capture 
 its prey or elude and escape from its enemies ? 
 Wings, legs, beak, claws, &c. ? Certainly, but these 
 are all only secondary : there is a prior weapon 
 which makes all these possible by conveying intelli- 
 gence : in a word, Sight, which initiates all, by 
 instantaneously discovering the wliere and the what 
 of the object to avoid or pursue betimes: i.e. at a 
 distance'. 
 
 But in opposition to this, what says Idealism ? 
 This, that Sight is, in fact, not what it seems to 
 be : that ' the ego ' perceives, not others, but only 
 
 yet admit of no answer. Not only do they admit of an answer 
 (see § 3), but their argument in a vicious circle (§ i) is so palpable 
 that it does Hume small credit to have failed to see it. 
 
 h ct -yhp jucAAct aw^eadai oil p6vov 8e? a.irrofj.ei'of alodavtoQai dAAd 
 Kal &iro6tv. 
 
 Hearing and scent do the same of course, in special cases very 
 powerfully : but we confine ourselves here to Sight.
 
 no ORIGIN: 
 
 itself: that the distant object itself cannot be, and 
 is, in fact, not seen : that ' of any information with 
 'regard to the object I am entirely void : ' that the 
 real nature of external objects is not given by Sight : 
 that ' the ego ' is shut up in itself, knows and can 
 know nothing but purely subjective phenomena, 
 &c, &c. 
 
 Why, life is possible, only if all this is absurd : 
 only if the very external objects are and can be 
 perceived, as they actually are, at a distance : aye, 
 and a very great distance too. 
 
 I repeat : Life, the whole organic creation, is 
 POSSIBLE, only if the creatures, ourselves included, 
 do actually perceive external objects as they really 
 are in themselves at a distance : otherwise, IMPOS- 
 SIBLE. The premisses of Idealism contradict the 
 possibility of organic existence : ergo, conversely, 
 the fact of organic existence annihilates the pre- 
 misses of Idealism : for ab actu ad posse valet con- 
 seeutio. The real nature of external objects must 
 be perceived at a distance : for if not, no creature 
 could live for a day k . 
 
 When Berkeley laboured, in the supposed interests 
 of theology (he was really injuring his cause) sophis- 
 tically to dissociate what God and evolution have 
 joined, Sight and Touch, and dogmatically denied 
 
 k iraat p.iv ro?s l'x ovai ourripias tvtKa iindpx (i V fyu-
 
 THE NA TURE OF SIGHT. 1 1 1 
 
 that the object we see is the very same object we 
 touch (see his Theory of Vision, §§ 49, 136, &c), 
 he was only proving, little as he suspected it, his 
 own blank ignorance of that natural economy, dis- 
 covered by Aristotle, of which the first law is, that 
 every creature, and every organ of such a creature, 
 exists for the sake of its peculiar work. Now, what 
 is the work or duty of Sight? It is simply, the 
 revelation of distant objects betimes to the organism 
 possessing it, to enable it, among other things, to 
 avoid THAT, which it would injure it to touch. 
 Were there, as Berkeley labours to show, no identity : 
 were the object we see in fact other than the object 
 we touch, then life would be impossible. But it is 
 not only not impossible: it is actual: ergo, Berkeley's 
 thesis is absurd : an ingenious but unsound paradox, 
 reposing, as we shall see in the next section, on 
 a want of sufficiently close analysis and an abuse 
 of language. His own existence, could he have 
 but seen it, disproved his theory. For how had he 
 preserved it himself, how had his countless gener- 
 ations of ancestors handed it on to him, like runners, 
 from individual to individual, but by learning at 
 every moment from Sight at a distance how to avoid 
 that very self-same object which it would have in- 
 jured them to touch. Berkeley does not understand 
 what Sight is: he confounds a bit of Sight, an
 
 U2 ORIGIN: 
 
 element, with the whole, its potentiality with its 
 actuality 1 . 
 
 Idealism reposes on the dogmatic stultification 
 of the senses. Perception, on the Idealistic hypo- 
 thesis, has absolutely no meaning at all : it is non- 
 sense. Perception in its very notion implies that its 
 possessor lives not by and in himself but in others: 
 lives by continually adjusting himself to those others. 
 He has perception precisely in order to do this, by 
 perceiving, not himself, but those others, as they really 
 are : for if he perceived them otherwise than as they 
 are, he might just as well not perceive them at all, 
 and would in fact speedily cease to do so. Idealism 
 stultifies perception : explains it by futilising it : 
 by laying down that perception of others is really 
 only perception of self, and that what those others 
 really are in themselves is beyond knowledge. Much 
 use this sort of perception would be to the hawk 
 or the eagle, the tiger or the shark ! Is it not plain 
 that all these philosophers ignore the dependence 
 of life on the senses, the USE of all these phenomena, 
 impressions, ideas, sensations ? Are these mere otiose 
 
 1 Astronomy, in particular, would be impossible, it Berkeley were 
 right : see Airy's Popular Astronomy, p. 65, for a type of almost 
 all experimental reasoning in that science. Do two men on opposite 
 sides of the earth observing a star, see one and the same, or two 
 different stars?
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 113 
 
 meaningless phantasms, indicative of nothing but 
 themselves ? Or are they not rather information by 
 telegram to the creature to warn it to action ? What 
 is a beast of prey? are not all animals, ourselves 
 included, beasts of prey? and how then do they 
 prey ? Certainly not by perceiving only themselves. 
 When we consider the wild beasts and their ways, 
 the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, the myriads 
 of insects, all living from hand to mouth by perceiv- 
 ing things (each the other) as they really are at 
 a distance, there is something unspeakably grotesque 
 about this philosophical paradox : this solemn trifling 
 of rationalistic speculation which has neglected the 
 analysis and exact determination of the nature of 
 sense. Objects are distant, and therefore cannot 
 be themselves seen: therefore, what is seen is inside; 
 the mind is limited to itself. Eh! wiseacres! and 
 how then does the salmon rise to a fly, how do the 
 eagles gather together where the carcase is ? Are 
 you so sure that objects cannot be themselves seen 
 at a distance ? Have you disproved that yet ? Will 
 you decide a priori upon what is or is not possible, 
 without looking to see ? But you say, vulgar realism 
 is absurd. Is it? How do you know? Because the 
 things are at a distance, and therefore cannot be seen 
 there — riest ce pas ? And pray, how do you know 
 that they are at a distance, if you cannot see them 
 
 I
 
 1 14 ORIGIN: 
 
 there ? Can you, or can you not, see the Moon ? 
 That is the question. 
 
 The curious delusion that causes all this paradox 
 and absurdity has not only tangled the Idealists in 
 its nooses : but it has snared even their antagonists, 
 who always concede to theui their point, even in the 
 very act of endeavouring to refute them. This is 
 just why they have none of them ever succeeded. 
 Take, for example, some statements on this point 
 made by the author of Physical Realism, the latest 
 attack on the position of Idealism m . 
 
 1 Berkeley certainly proved that we do not see 
 <an object at a distance,' 'we do not see external 
 ' objects at a distance from the eye. The propa- 
 1 gation of undulations to the retina and the con- 
 1 sequent nervous motion prove that we do not see 
 ' external objects at all' (p. 239); 'we see no solidity' 
 (p. 228) ; 'there is no vision of the third dimension' 
 (p. 229) ; ' we see an extended coloured plain ' 
 (p. 232). ' Berkeley proved that we do not see the 
 
 m My obligations of all kinds to Professor Case are such that 
 I differ with him only with reluctance and against the grain. But 
 it was from himself I learned the Saiov irportn^v tV aX-tidfiav. 
 Physical Realism consists of i. an argument from what is known 
 to how we know it, its data: we do know, ergo, we can, somehow, 
 reach a physical universe : and 2. an attempt to supply a solution 
 of this somehow. It is this second point which seems to me to be 
 unsuccessful : with the first I entirely coincide.
 
 THE NA TV RE OF SIGHT. 1 1 5 
 
 1 real situation of objects, and in especial that we 
 ■ do not see which is up and which is down, but 
 'an inverted image' (p. 234); 'we see no remote 
 ' distance, no real magnitude, and no real situation 
 ' of external objects; no solidity, no resistance, no 
 ' protrusion, no outness of the world in external 
 ' space ; this is what Berkeley proved ' (p. 240) ; 
 'no external object is sensible' (p. 24); 'we speak 
 ' of perceiving the fire though we only infer it ' 
 (p. 25) ; 'the external thing is inferred by reason' 
 (p. 82) ; ' we have no empirical intuition except of 
 'ourselves' (p. 54); 'sense never apprehends a non- 
 ' ego distinct from the ego, that is, the man himself 
 (P- 82). 
 
 To all this 1 reply by a question : does Professor 
 Case really hold that all Nature is invisible ? What 
 is the distinction between visible and invisible Nature? 
 Is it not that we see one and infer the other ? We 
 see one side of the moon, and infer the other : but 
 according to Professor Case, both are inferred. Do 
 we, or do we not, see ships, butterflies, snipe, news- 
 papers, legs of mutton, cricket balls ? 
 
 I give a direct negative to every statement about 
 Sight quoted above. I assert that we see everything 
 which Professor Case says that we do not see. Or in 
 other words, the error of Professor Case, if I may 
 venture to say so of one whose learning and abilities 
 
 I 2
 
 n6 ORIGIN: 
 
 I know to be far above my own, is precisely the same 
 error as that of all the Idealists : he does not under- 
 stand what Sight IS : he confounds its elementary 
 constituents with its whole, wrongly identifies the ego 
 with its organism, and is therefore necessarily obliged 
 to assert that we see what we do not see, and that 
 we do not see what we do see. Sight is not in- 
 ference ; nor has reason anything whatever to do 
 with it ; we do not see a coloured plain, nor an 
 inverted image ; nor did Berkeley prove any of 
 those things specified by Professor Case. All those 
 statements repose on and spring from that error 
 which is exactly the cause that generates and per- 
 petuates Idealism ; the confusion between the nature, 
 the complete whole, of Sight, and its constituent 
 elements and conditions. Why does the world think 
 and say that it sees e.g. trees and flowers, if it does 
 not ? What is the essence and meaning of seeing ? 
 That is the question to which we now turn. 
 
 Meanwhile, we may sum up the argument in this 
 section as follows. 
 
 The aphorism in which Descartes wrapped up 
 Idealism for his successors to unfold and develope 
 was : Cogito ergo sum : je pense ; done, je suis ? 
 
 [Note, that this cogito ergo sum is valid, only 
 if we strictly define and limit the sum, thus : Cogito 
 ergo sum, qud cogitans. But how then as to me, not
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 117 
 
 qua cogitating, but qud everything else, qud living, 
 dying, loving, hating, eating, drinking, begetting, 
 talking? Descartes' position is in fact utterly futile. 
 You can argue existence from cogitation, only in 
 that sense of the word existence which is limited 
 to cogitation, the merest superficies of existence. 
 Descartes' aphorism places the essence of existence 
 in thought, which is pure nonsense : he ignores and 
 leaves out the whole of man's other potentialities, 
 all his organic nature en bloc, with the solitary excep- 
 tion of actual thought. This is simply ridiculous : 
 it cuts off the esse from the posse, and makes it 
 absolutely unintelligible. The rational faculty of 
 man is that which is peculiar to him: but his organic 
 animal nature is far more universal and profound : 
 'one touch of nature makes the whole world kin ;' 
 and his senses are even more essential than his 
 reason to his life. Descartes destroys the kinship, 
 the continuity. To place the core of human nature 
 in its rational activity is to miss life altogether, as 
 the development of Cartesianism proves. And in 
 fact, Descartes shows plainly, by the use he made 
 of his aphorism — he uses it to infer his existence 
 as a man, whereas it only justifies him in inferring 
 his rational existence — how sorely he stood in need 
 of a dose of those categories of that old Aristotle 
 whom he despised. What do you mean, my dear
 
 n8 ORIGIN: 
 
 Descartes, by sum ? for iroKkayjas Xeyerat to 6v. 
 The truth is that he and his followers supplement 
 the narrow content of a bad principle by illicit 
 conveyance : they make up for the deficiencies of 
 their original starting-point by illegitimately intro- 
 ducing those organic elements which it does not 
 contain. They smuggle in the potentiality and 
 continuity of the real world and real men and 
 women up the back stairs. This is why, in Car- 
 tesian treatises on human nature, the human nature 
 is conspicuous chiefly by its absence : such elements 
 as are in fact actually present being dragged in 
 forcibly over the wall, not by the door of their 
 principle. They are treatises, not upon human 
 nature, but upon abstract individual rationality — an 
 ens rationis with no blood in its pallid spectral 
 body.] 
 
 The aphorism, then, which we may oppose to 
 that of Descartes, as containing the fruitful germ 
 of all continuous and organic Nature is : Sum ergo 
 percipio : i.e. existence of Self implies perception 
 of others and is impossible without it : the senses are 
 prior to thought, and more universal, more common, 
 more vital. 
 
 So again, the question which Kant, whose philo- 
 sophy is a mere restatement of Descartes, a fuller 
 explication of his implications, propounded to meta-
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 119 
 
 physicians, was this : How are synthetic judg- 
 ments a priori possible? 
 
 [A question, observe, to which his own answer 
 is no answer at all. Even if we grant that Time 
 and Space are mere forms of intuition, still that 
 does not give the possibility of any judgments at 
 all, as Kant thought. So far, you have nothing but 
 blank forms ; no spatial or temporal determinations ; 
 no subjects or predicates ; nothing to judge about; 
 no elements of a judgment. These can come to 
 us only a posteriori, and then it is that we obtain 
 our generalities by abstraction from concrete par- 
 ticular material cases : thus, one (egg), two (dogs)» 
 three (men), straight (stick), curved (bow), round 
 (moon), and so on ; i.e. mathematics : which do 
 not, as is constantly asserted, deal with pure space 
 and time, but with determinations of space and 
 time, wholly abstracted from concrete particulars and 
 all necessarily a posteriori*. That such extremely 
 poor stuff as Kant's ' analysis ' of this matter could 
 ever pass muster is simply unintelligible to me. 
 There are no synthetic judgments a priori, for the 
 very simple reason that there are no judgments, 
 
 n I refer the reader, for some admirable discussions on this subject, 
 to Professor Case's Physical Realism, Stallo's Concepts and Theories 
 of Modem Physics, and Harper's Metaphysics of the School. But 
 it is all in Aristotle.
 
 120 ORIGIN: 
 
 nor any possibility of any judgments a priori at all. 
 Like all the other Cartesians, Kant pretends to derive 
 from the subject what he really obtained long ago, 
 before he became a philosopher, from the object: 
 he bestows on his hypothetical subject, or ' ego' the 
 benefit of all that experience which the real one, 
 i.e. he himself, has acquired : producing, like a 
 juggler eggs, synthetic a priori judgments from 
 a bag that does not contain any.] 
 
 The question which in Kant's fashion we may 
 propound to Idealists is this: How is life possible? 
 i.e. how is it possible for any animal to live, unless 
 it can adjust itself to external objects by perceiving 
 their real nature, and at a distance ? 
 
 § 3. The Analytical Definition of Sight. 
 
 to fitv bvvdfia, to Se evreXf^eia ov. 
 
 The error committed by all the philosophers 
 without exception with regard to Sight is this, 
 that they do not distinguish between the poten- 
 tiality and actuality of Sight, but sometimes ab- 
 stract the latter from the former, sometimes con- 
 found them together and identify the esse of Sight 
 with what is only a part of its posse. To explain 
 this clearly and fully is the object of this section,
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 121 
 
 which brief as it is has cost me many years of 
 intense meditation : and I hope that the reader will 
 chew and digest it line by line : it will be worth 
 his while. The extreme subtlety and delicacy of 
 this beautiful problem are not more remarkable 
 than its simplicity, when once it is mastered. But 
 mangle it with the coarse and indiscriminate sledge- 
 hammer of carelessness, and you destroy philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 Whoever begins with abstractions must end with 
 them. You cannot get, logically, more out of the 
 sack than you originally put into it : and if the 
 external world or the real nature of things is not 
 in your premisses, you will never get it out of them. 
 It has accordingly always been easy for Idealists to 
 show, and so far with justice, that logic is on their 
 side — assuming the premisses with which everybody 
 starts. If what ' the ego ' perceives is always only 
 itself, by whatever term you call it, then the ne- 
 cessary logical corollary is and can be nothing but 
 Idealism. 
 
 But now, we have seen that Idealism involves 
 self-contradiction and absurdity. Where then lies 
 the solution ? I answer, in the exact analytical de- 
 finition of the nature of Sight : which owing to the 
 want of this exact analysis has always been muti-
 
 122 ORIGIN: 
 
 lated, dogmatically eviscerated of half its contents. 
 For the picture presented to us by Sight is no 
 abstraction. It is, on the contrary, the point of 
 continuity at which mind and matter, logic and 
 physics, touch : it combines and partakes of both : 
 its nature is double, it is a whole, compounded of 
 two halves, which has been confounded with, and 
 degraded to, now one, now the other of its halves. 
 This is one of those cases wherein the half is not 
 more than the whole but infinitely less. 
 
 Owing to their failure to detect the double nature 
 of Sight the philosophers have fallen into confusion. 
 This confusion consists in a latent a priori fallacy, 
 to which, in order to mark it distinctly, I give the 
 somewhat alarming title of the Obj edification of the 
 Subject: the confusion in various ways of the ego 
 with its own organism. It is this which drives the 
 philosophers inevitably, and as it were against 
 their will, into the hopeless quagmire of Idealism, 
 Scepticism, eternal perplexity and self-contradiction: 
 yet they can never free the question from its 
 paradox, because the misconception is latent, lying 
 unobserved beneath and anterior to all thought upon 
 the problem, involving them a priori in misunder- 
 standing and foredooming them to failure. It is not 
 a Critique of Pure Reason, it is a Critique of Impure 
 Reason that is wanted, showing how false notions or
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 123 
 
 prejudices, latent and unobserved, form a priori 
 categories in which all new ideas are received. It 
 did not seem, for example, to Kant, that he himself 
 was, in fact, under the influence of just such a dis- 
 torting a priori prejudice which poisoned and futil- 
 ised his whole philosophy a priori. 
 
 I, the conscious personality, the l ego,' the subject 
 which perceives and knows, is neither something 
 existing within the organism, in any pineal gland, to 
 which the senses are inlets, nor is it something over 
 and above, additional to, and numerically other than, 
 the organism — the old barbarian conception of the 
 soul as a sort of tenant or lodger in the body : the 
 notion of Animism, of ' Pneumatology,' of the savage, 
 and of Plato : — nor, yet again, is it the organism, 
 identical with it, one and the same thing. It is 
 the actuality of the organic powers — €We\e\;eia rod 
 Bvvdfiei ovros. To illustrate by a metaphor, which 
 is, however, only partially adequate , the ego stands 
 to its organism as its focus stands to a concave 
 mirror : it is its outcome, essentially bound up with 
 and dependent on it, exists through its agency and 
 apparatus : yet it is not another extra thing located 
 within it, nor is it the same thing. What the or- 
 
 Because in the case of soul and body the relation is reciprocal : 
 whereas with the focus and the mirror the first is wholly determined 
 by the second.
 
 124 ORIGIN: 
 
 ganic powers can, that the ego is and does : it is 
 actually what they are potentially : it is the inward 
 illumination and realisation of organic possibilities. 
 
 But now, in considering the senses, the philo- 
 sophers all without exception unconsciously ab- 
 stract, hypostatise, as it were materialise the ego. 
 They all argue and think and talk of the perceiving 
 ego, the percipient subject, as if it were, not the 
 actuality and expression of the organic powers, but 
 a sort of separate and distinct materialistico-spiritual 
 substantial thing, co-existing with and in the or- 
 ganism, with a shape and a place, an extent and 
 content, an outside and inside of its own : they 
 objectify the subject, bestow upon the nature of an 
 object, either by completely separating it from, or 
 by identifying it with, its organism. All their lan- 
 guage and thought is pervaded by, inwoven with, 
 and poisoned by the misconception. The ' ego ' has 
 'impressions' — a metaphor from wax and a seal: 
 ideas, phenomena, &c, are ' in ' and ' o n ' it : it 
 lives 'in' the body, and the senses are 'inlets' or 
 'avenues ' or 'channels' to it : it is 'within ' and ob- 
 jects are 'without:' the forms of objects, as in Kant's 
 philosophy, 'lie ready for tJiem in the mind' — it is 
 then a kind of box, surface, or receptacle ? Take 
 any exponent of Idealism, from Berkeley down ; 
 examine carefully his argument : you will see, better
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 125 
 
 than any explanation or quotation can show you, 
 how this a priori delusion determines the thought : 
 and the first cause of the insoluble perplexity will 
 discover itself: the scales fall from your eyes, and 
 the question rights itself like a ship, when the cable 
 that chains and submerges it parts with a snap. 
 
 For it at once becomes plain how this initial 
 underlying conception of the ego as a sort of re- 
 ceptacle or surface in or on which impressions or 
 representations from objects impinge naturally forces 
 them to the conclusion that the ego is conscious 
 only of its own modifications p, its own self or sub- 
 stance — hence the perplexity. The philosophical 
 dead-lock is generated by the initial a priori mis- 
 conception of the ego as a sort of extended thing 
 or substantial entity : the confusion of the ego with 
 its organism, of the senses with the material organs 
 of sense. These philosophers all make an antithesis 
 between the distant object and the ego: but there 
 is no such thing : the antithesis is between the object 
 and the organism. The ego is not a thing like an 
 object : it is an act : it has no parts and no mag- 
 nitude : its essence and being are its action, i.e. 
 knowing or perceiving. Images and impressions do 
 not ' strike the senses,' as, from Hume down, philo- 
 
 f Modern physiological sensationalism puts it in another way : 
 for which see below.
 
 126 ORIGIN: 
 
 sophers all with irritating and obstinate absurdity, 
 repeat : there is no impinging or striking upon the 
 senses or the ego at all, but upon the organs of 
 sense : the sense is the conscious result, the actu- 
 ality and realisation of the possible operation of an 
 organ so affected. In all the reasoning of the philo- 
 sophers on this head, physiological and critical con- 
 fusion reign. It is never the ego and the senses, 
 but always the organism and the organs of sense, 
 which are affected by external objects. The philo- 
 sophers all transfer to the ego the nature and 
 qualities of its organism : hence all the trouble. 
 What right, for example, has Hume, or any similar 
 philosopher, to talk of objects or images from 
 objects ' striking upon the senses ? ' That is realism 
 and physiology and confusion : it implies just that 
 external knowledge of the causes of ' impressions ' ab 
 extra which he denies. From the pufely sceptical 
 point of view no such conception or phraseology 
 is either possible or permissible. 
 
 So far from perceiving always and only itself, 
 what 'the ego' perceives is, on the contrary, always 
 and necessarily something not itself. For the ego is 
 always perceivcr, never perceived, because not even 
 perceptible : it is the seer, not the seen : it knows 
 itself not perceptibly, but only by reflection, 
 thought turned back and bent inwards ; nay, it
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 127 
 
 exists only in the first person, as the term ' ego ' 
 implies : from the outside there is only an or- 
 ganism, the material possibility and vehicle of 
 'the ego ' : you cannot perceive it, either your own 
 or any one else's ; it is never a perceptible object, 
 and has no qualities of perceptible objects ; each 
 of us is confined to his own, which he knows only 
 indirectly in its exercise. • And in swoons, ' we' dis- 
 appear, like ghosts : the act ceases : nay even in 
 sleep, which returns at regular intervals, the ego 
 ceases, not absolutely, but temporarily. ' We ' are 
 then, not actually, but only potentially : the dream 
 being the dim mysterious suggestion of the poten- 
 tiality of an ego which for the moment is not ac- 
 tual, not in full being, but which emerges, when the 
 spell that bound it in sleep (we know not how) is 
 broken, and arises, like the electric spark, once 
 more out of its gloom, and again becomes a reality. 
 
 And so, even if Sight were, what it is not, but 
 what many suppose it to be : even if, that is to say, 
 what we saw were, not the real object, but only our 
 organism, it would still be altogether false to say 
 that the ego perceives only itself : its own organism 
 being just as much external to the ego as is the 
 furthest of the fixed stars. 
 
 But what then do we actually see ? What is the 
 nature and essence of Si^ht ?
 
 128 ORIGIN: 
 
 We find that, apparently, we see the external 
 object at a distance : whereas physiology seems to 
 contradict this, placing ' what we see ' in our head. 
 For example, if, when we were contemplating any 
 object, say, a ship at sea, sudden pressure were ex- 
 erted on our brain, the whole picture would in- 
 stantly disappear : we should lose consciousness. 
 How, then, account for the apparently flagrant 
 contradiction between the verdict of the vulgar and 
 the verdict of science, the organic means in our 
 brain and eye, and the seen object apparently away 
 at a distance ? 
 
 The paradox and perplexity here arise from not 
 understanding what Sight is: from our latent and 
 inveterate confusion in thought of the organism and 
 the ego : of the potentiality of Sight with its ac- 
 tuality : the false identification of the final and 
 complete conscious result with its sub-conscious 
 organic condition. 
 
 The Intuitive Realism of Reid and his followers 
 was a mere uncritical, unanalytical deus ex machind, 
 the refuge of anti-scepticism to dogmatic absurdity : 
 and yet in a way its advocates were wiser in their 
 foolishness than the ' critical ' philosophers were in 
 their wisdom. For the explanations and accounts 
 of Sight given by philosophers from Berkeley down 
 are all mere caricatures : attempts based upon in-
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 129 
 
 sufficient insight to degrade, by bad analysis, the 
 complete function to its undeveloped raw conditions : 
 to confound and mix up the nature and essence of 
 Sight with its elements : to identify evolved power 
 with unevolvcd impotence : to argue us out of our 
 acquired capacities and deny them, for want of 
 ability to understand. When Berkeley, Hume, 
 Huxley, and the rest identify Sight with ' sensa- 
 tions or ideas of light and colour,' they show only 
 that they completely fail to grasp the nature of 
 Sight. Sensations of light and colour are no more 
 Sight than a lump of gold is a watch. 
 
 Sight is an evolutionary acquired organic power 
 or capacity (efts). The eye rises by gradations, from 
 incapacity to capacity, from the dubious pigment 
 spot of the ' Naked-eyed ' Medusa, to the telescopic 
 organ of the eagle or the vulture. Now, these organs 
 of vision, the eyes of animals, however much they 
 may differ in their several ranges, powers, and special 
 adaptations, agree nevertheless in this essential par- 
 ticular: they are all of them mirrors, reflectors q . 
 
 The eye, the organ of vision, is acted upon and 
 affected by rays of light, apprehended from 'within,' 
 i.e. consciously, as colour. But though the conscious 
 apprehension of colour, as such, is a mere sensation, 
 
 q There are in the eyes ot some animals remarkable and anomalous 
 structures whose use is not known.
 
 i 3 o ORIGIN: 
 
 i.e. the transfigured effect of a wholly different cause: 
 nevertheless the sensitive apprehension of colour is 
 not Sight at all r . 
 
 The preliminary condition of Sight is the imaging, 
 mirroring, organic photography of objects by the 
 agency of light on the receiving surface of the eye, 
 the retina. What appears there is not colour, but 
 colours in forms, or coloured forms. A single such 
 coloured form never appears alone : it appears as 
 one among many others, often almost infinitely 
 numerous, of different sizes, colours, forms, imping- 
 ing from different angles and distances : all being 
 taken in which are for the time being commanded 
 by the field of the eye. Thus the retinal photograph 
 is still insufficient : it is only a chaos : something 
 further is necessary before there is Sight : its con- 
 structive architectural arrangement. 
 
 Now, this capacity, this power of constructing an 
 ordered whole out of colour sensations, is Sight. 
 It is a power acquired, ingrained, and perfected 
 by the practice and inherited accumulations of the 
 whole sum of geological periods ab initio rernm, rising 
 by gradations from original impotence (aTeprjais) till 
 it culminates in eagle vision. The primitive organism 
 with a pigment spot or rudimentary incipient ' eye,' 
 
 r See, for example, the misleading argument in Huxley's Hume, 
 about the Hash of light on a low protoplasmic organism. 

 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 131 
 
 or organ of vision, dimly and subjectively conscious 
 of light and colour sensations, as such, could not 
 see : could, that is to say, be said to ' see ' only 
 in the sense in which a fowl obscurely conscious 
 of the number of its eggs may be called a mathe- 
 matician, a Newton or La Place : yet of such an 
 oyster-like organism alone would the assertion of 
 those philosophers hold, who degrade the powerful 
 capacity of Sight to sensations of light and colour. 
 Sight is infinitely more. 
 
 I define Sight as : the realisation or actual exercise 
 (eVTe\e^€/a) of an organic power : the power oj auto- 
 viatic instantaneous and involuntary (reflex) con- 
 struction of the spatial determinations s (figure, size, 
 position, motion, rest, number) of any dista?it object 
 out of its images projected upon the retinal surfaces: 
 or briefly and elliptically, the instantaneous spatial 
 obj edification of colours. 
 
 It is the external object, and not the sub-conscious 
 organic image, which is seen. I exhort the reader 
 to follow this carefully : simple as the point is, 
 nevertheless the philosophers all go down like nine- 
 
 s Observe that Sight operates only within definite limits ; what 
 is too near or too far t too large or too small, is either not at 
 all or only imperfectly seen : e.g. we only see the stars imperfectly, 
 as points of light at an inestimable distance. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 ORIGIN: 
 
 pins before the deceptive snare in this problem : and 
 once down, never rise again. 
 
 Sight is not the sensational apprehension of the 
 colours, but the creative construction of spatial 
 determinations out of them. Colour sensations are 
 no more Sight than wood is a table l . 
 
 In spite of the universal assertion of philosophers 
 that what we see is colours — a deceptive statement 
 which seems so obvious that we all originally accept 
 it — I assert, on the contrary, that we do not see 
 colours, that colours are not what we see : and a 
 little reflection will convince the reader that, not- 
 withstanding the consensus of authorities on this 
 head, they are wrong. Of course colour is the 
 vehicle, the sine qua 11011, of Sight, but for all that 
 what we actually see is not colours. When, for 
 example, we are contemplating any scene, so far 
 from seeing the colours, it is only by the very 
 strongest possible effort of concentrated will and 
 attention that we can conquer our true Sight, and 
 bring ourselves artificially to the point of seeing 
 only the various colours, if indeed it is possible to 
 do it at all. What we really do see is, not the 
 colours, but forms, figures, spatial determinations 
 and relations ; it is these that we see, and colour 
 
 1 ' Light or colour is all that Sight can see.' Stirling, Text Book 
 l« h'ant, p. 38.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 133 
 
 is only the means through which we do it : a means 
 to which, unless we specially for other reasons direct 
 our attention to it, we pay, for the utilitarian purpose 
 of Sight, no attention at all. Sight is not the ap- 
 prehension of the colours, but the intuitive architec- 
 tural construction of an ordered spatial edifice out 
 of them. And this is so true, that if you tell the 
 ' vulgar person ' that what he sees is only colours, 
 he will either deny it and laugh at you, or accept 
 it with doubt, hesitation, testing experiment and 
 uncertainty as an altogether novel idea : and he is 
 quite right, he does not see colours : what he sees 
 is objects ; for to see is, to pass instantaneously and 
 involuntarily through the colours to their spatial 
 signification. Further, every artist knows well, and 
 every one learning to paint will find, that until he 
 really studies the subject he is totally unaware of 
 how his Sight is arrived at : he gets at it instantly, 
 and yet is quite unconscious of the colours and 
 shades that gave him his Sight, his constructive 
 intuitive knowledge. Look at a statue : you see it 
 instantly : now, try to reproduce on a flat surface or 
 diagram the colours that enabled you to see it : you 
 cannot : because you have not a notion what were 
 the elements, the colours, that gave you your Sight : 
 your instantaneous cognition of its figure and form. 
 Everybody can see : not one in a million knows
 
 134 ORIGIN: 
 
 anything about the elementary conditions of his 
 Sight, i.e. the colours that make it possible. More- 
 over, a colour-blind person, except in respect of 
 identifying colours, as such, will and does see just 
 as well as anybody else, and indeed, such a person 
 may pass the greater part of his life, and yet this 
 incapacity of his may never have been discovered, 
 just becaue it is not colours apprehended as such 
 that constitute the essence of Sight. For we see, 
 not colours, but through colours : what we see is 
 that which the colours accidentally bring with them, 
 i.e. space relations. As artists, we may specially at- 
 tend to colours, but yet colour sensations are not the 
 essence of the matter in Sight. Colours are internal 
 subjective sensations, but Sight is not: not internal 
 subjectivity, but external, i.e. spatial, objectivity. 
 
 To one born blind, who had just recovered, not, 
 observe, his Sight, but a certain possibility of Sight 
 by a surgical operation, the field of vision, the 
 expanse of the retina, would appear like a chaotic 
 palette of colours. Objects there mirrored would 
 seem, if we may trust the time honoured Chesselden 
 case, ' as if they all touched the eye like a shutter,' 
 a variously coloured fiat surface. From this such 
 'critics' as J. S. Mill conclude, that what we our- 
 selves see is just such a surface. And now, what 
 does the case prove ? Exactly the opposite — that we do
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 135 
 
 not see such a surface. That patient 'saw' and similar 
 patients 'see' such a surface, precisely because they 
 cannot see. Is that plain or not? They do not re- 
 semble, they differ from us. They have not Sight 
 but only a part of it, its elements : their Sight is 
 not whole: their capacity is maimed, diseased, im- 
 perfect: it is not so much a capacity as an in- 
 capacity : the power of instant automatic spatial 
 construction is not theirs. 
 
 The truth of any definition shows itself especially 
 in its power of conciliating opposing views. The 
 apparently paradoxical datum of consciousness, when 
 carefully considered in the light of the definition 
 of Sight, is explained and understood : it turns 
 out to stand in no real contradiction with the 
 demands of physiology. The seeming contradiction 
 and the puzzle arise from confusion of thought, 
 and vanish as soon as we clearly and exactly 
 comprehend what Sight actually is, what it is 
 that we do when we see. Consciousness tells us 
 that we see the very external objects, while Ideal- 
 ism denies this, having learned from physiology 
 that the affections of the organs of sense and the 
 nervous system, i.e. something Jiere and not there — 
 are the internal (organic) conditions of Sight. But 
 now, the mere organic affections, the nervous 
 mechanism, the physiological machinery, all this
 
 136 ORIGIN: 
 
 is not Sight, but only the possibility of Sight : the 
 organism is not the ego, nor are the organic con- 
 ditions of Sight themselves Sight. Sight is the 
 conscious spatial cognition actually realised from 
 those sub-conscious conditions. When I say, ' Yon- 
 ' der I see a horse,' this does not mean ' here my 
 organism is thus or thus affected,' but ' there in 
 ' space is a horse which I know from here : ' i.e. 
 the assertion means only that I locate and spatially 
 define a horse at a distance : and this is just what 
 we found it was, to see (to tl -qv elvai tw opav). 
 We do not only seem to see the object itself at 
 a distance, but we actually do so, for though our 
 organism {the posse of vision) is here, the organism 
 is not the ego ; the ego, like the focus of the mirror, 
 is where it acts. That conscious picture of the 
 horse which we unconsciously build out of organic 
 hints is not in our organism, though it is of it, 
 it is constructively referred to a distance or ' thrown 
 outside,' and this is just the peculiar power and 
 capacity of Sight, which is so hard to understand 
 just because there is nothing like it in the Universe. 
 All things sui generis are difficult to comprehend. 
 The organic hints are inside — this is physiology, 
 the posse : the conscious picture is not — this is 
 Sight, the esse". Consider, now, the antagonism 
 
 " The reader who will carefully examine the curious phenomena
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 137 
 
 between the view of the vulgar and the physiolo- 
 gical claim : the actuality and potentiality of Sight. 
 The vulgar view says : there is only one thing, 
 the 'object which I see:' physiology says, 'No, 
 there are two : the external object and its image 
 in your head.' Now, both these views are correct. 
 The conscious perceptum is the result of a relation 
 between two terms, but then physiology deals with 
 the relation beneath consciousness. The antithesis is 
 beneath and prior to consciousness, between the 
 organs of sense and the object {not between ego 
 and object), and when these two opposites are 
 suitably disposed — organs here — object there — then 
 comes the result, the conscious act arising out of 
 the relation or antithesis ' I see the object,' i.e. in 
 consciousness there is only one thing, whereas beneath 
 it there are two. Sight, as we said at the outset 
 of this section, is the point of continuity, at which 
 mind and matter touch : it welds together two 
 sides and makes one of them. The vulgar person 
 is perfectly right in saying ' I see the object,' and 
 the physiologist equally right in saying, that there 
 are two poles of the operation : the paradox comes 
 
 presented by convex and concave mirrors and magnifying glasses, 
 which throw their images into the most extraordinary places, will 
 be enable*! to see the point of the mystery. The eye is not a flat 
 surface.
 
 138 ORIGIN: 
 
 in, when we forget that the physiology is beneath 
 consciousness, and confound the organism and the 
 ego, potentiality with actuality of vision ; and sever, 
 as Berkeley and his friends do, the esse of vision from 
 its posse ; making the conscious result hang, as it 
 were, alone in the air, abstracting it from the sub- 
 conscious relation that produced it. Berkeley's 
 Idealism (on which all subsequent variations are 
 founded) is the divorce of the ego from its organism, 
 a stick with but one end. The vulgar in result 
 agree with Berkeley, but then they do not pretend 
 to account for their belief, whereas he does : and 
 so turns a truth, which is true only as a result, 
 into a fatal and mischievous sophism and error 
 by divorcing the soul from its body. I see the 
 object, says the vulgar person : yes, says Berkeley, 
 so you do; only it is merely an idea. This is 
 the conversion of truth into error. Criticism does 
 what Berkeley could not do : it explains and justi- 
 fies the vulgar view while harmonising it with 
 physiology by distinguishing ego from organism, 
 actuality from possibility of Sight. The vulgar 
 view (of which Reid was the uncritical champion) 
 is merely the statement of the conscious result : 
 Berkeley's paradox is the dogmatic conversion of 
 the vulgar view into an absurdity by abstraction : 
 physiology is the material analysis of the organic
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 139 
 
 means : the true definition of Sight conciliates 
 physiology with the naive superficiality of the 
 vulgar, and annihilates the one-sided paradox of 
 a self-contradictory Idealism. 
 
 I repeat ; the confusion results from failing to 
 distinguish the actuality of Sight, the conscious 
 ' idea,' from its physiological conditions, which are 
 latent and only subsequently discoverable, only 
 known by scientific analogical inferences from 
 others to self. It is perfectly true that interior, 
 i.e. organic, affections are the sub-condition of 
 Sight : it is no less true that I see the external 
 object itself, for this 'I see ' is not the mere state- 
 ment of the sub-conscious organic affection, but 
 the expression of the resulting conscious cognition 
 of the spatial determinations of the object itself. 
 To deny that we see the object itself is simply 
 to misunderstand the meaning of the word see, 
 which consists in the instant cognition of the 
 figure and whereabouts of a distant object or objects 
 from the unconscious, unknown, and invisible images 
 projected upon the retina of the eyes. 
 
 I say, invisible images. It is most curious to 
 observe how invincible even to philosophers is the 
 delusion that exists on this head. I see, for ex- 
 ample, a ship. Now, it is true that the ship itself 
 is not in my head. What is there is, two miniature
 
 140 ORIGIN: 
 
 images of the ship, one on each retina. Yet it is 
 quite a mistake to suppose that I see these images. 
 That assumes other two eyes behind each eye, 
 looking at it. I do not see my own eye or retina : 
 no man ever did or could : I see with my eyes : 
 i.e. spatially construct the ship ; define, locate it, 
 in relative size, shape, situation, &c, by the stereo- 
 scopic combination of the two images into one 
 solid whole, the final result alone being conscious. 
 Just as the reflections are in the mirror, yet the 
 mirror does not reflect its own reflections, but 
 distant objects : so the images are in my head, 
 yet what I see is the distant object : for this ' I 
 see ' is not the statement of the means, but the 
 expression of the conscious result. 
 
 When, for example, Berkeley or one of his friends 
 tells me that I do not see the distant object, I 
 ask, what does he mean? Of what object is he 
 speaking x ? Not his ' visible idea,' for that is just 
 what he says I do see, but the object — which I 
 do not see — the moon, for example ? Eh ! Why, 
 is it not as clear as noonday that Berkeley is only 
 
 x Dirk Ilatteraick denies all recollection of the murder, and they 
 measure his boots. The devil ! he exclaims, how could there be 
 a footmark on the ground, when there was a frost as hard as the 
 heart of a Memel log? Ah ! says the lawyer drily, that was the day 
 you do not recollect. Just so, Bcaumarchais caught Mme. de 
 (loezman over the immortal ' quinze /out's.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 141 
 
 saying that to see is not to see, that we do not 
 see exactly what we do sec. Do I not see the 
 Moon ? then how in the world do I get at it ? 
 how know that it is there ? and is the moon at 
 a distance, or is it not ? The truth is, Berkeley's 
 position reposes on a mere misunderstanding. Truly 
 a little physiological learning is a dangerous thing. 
 With absolutely no physiology or physics, no know- 
 ledge of eye, brain, nerves, retinal image, undula- 
 tions, &c, it would never seem to any one to assert 
 that what we see is internal, within, we should all 
 be vulgar realists. But when we learn about optic 
 nerve, retina, &c, then the mischief begins. Then 
 we are in a position to confound the ego and Sight 
 with the organs that make them possible, and assert 
 that the ego is conscious only of its own self, that 
 what we see is within, and so forth y . All this is 
 only an example of that half-knowledge which is 
 worse than the most vulgar ignorance : knowledge 
 just enough to go wrong, not sufficient insight or 
 criticism to go right. Men reduce, accordingly 
 the power of Sight to impotence, and perception 
 
 y As Kant, for example, does. It is not the ego but its organism 
 which conditions the spatial perception of objects, the form of the 
 eye. Kant bestows upon the ego, which is an act, the spatial quali- 
 fications that belong to its organism : he gives it the possibility, 
 permanence, and form which arise from its organism. His Idealism 
 is only a bungling caricature of the realism which he denies.
 
 142 ORIGIN: 
 
 of others to perception of self, owing to a want of 
 ability to analyse and distinguish things that are 
 distinct : to yap Siopl^etv ovk icrrl rwv iroWwv, says 
 the Master: and in their handling of the problem 
 of the senses modern philosophers belong entirely 
 to the mob. 
 
 But your ' visible idea ' alters and changes per- 
 petually, rejoins the Berkleian : how then can you 
 be said to see the object itself? (Because, forsooth ! 
 that does not change ? and how do you know that, 
 my dear Sir?) This apparently formidable objection 
 reposes on the same misunderstanding of what it 
 is to see. He would, it is to be presumed, hardly 
 say that the mirror does not reflect objects because 
 their reflections alter continually in it as it moves. 
 Yet his assertion is no less absurd. It is precisely 
 because the mirror does reflect objects that its re- 
 flections alter and must alter continually : just so, 
 it is precisely because we do see the objects that 
 the ' visible idea ' alters perpetually : and this, now, 
 is a beautiful illustration of the truth of our defini- 
 tion of Sight. If we contemplate, e.g., a stool from 
 different points of view, it is true that its perspective, 
 its images projected on the retina, change continu- 
 ally : and yet it is always the stool itself that we 
 see, just because Sight does not mean the dull 
 wooden reception or apprehension of a plane image,
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 143 
 
 but spatial reconstruction or localisation out of the 
 two images. Berkeley is here only displaying his 
 exasperating faculty of abusing language. He never 
 took the trouble to criticise his instrument, speech 
 — before starting to philosophise in matters that 
 require above all extreme nicety and exact accuracy 
 of meaning. He never understood what it was to 
 see because he never understood what it was to de- 
 fine. According to him you could truly be said 
 to see an object only if, at whatever distance or 
 point of view you stood, it remained always identical 
 and invariable in your view. Now, the only thing 
 that really does this is a hallucination, a thing really 
 internal, i.e. the proof that we see the external 
 object is among other things exactly those changes 
 which Berkeley imagines to disprove it. He is 
 only playing on the word see. What he demands 
 is that Sight shall be Identity : i.e. he will not allow 
 that the mirror reflects the objects unless the objects 
 themselves are actually in the mirror, which would 
 make all reflection impossible. Exactly so with 
 Sight. It is the object we see, but he confounds 
 and mixes up the organic posse of Sight with its 
 conscious esse, and denies accordingly what is the 
 truth. The stereoscope will enable any one to under- 
 stand : Sight being, not the reception of either or both 
 retinal images, but the total solid picture resulting.
 
 144 ORIGIN: 
 
 But, the reader may object, all this may be 
 expressed in other terms ; the physiology of our 
 own day has corroborated Berkeley, by stating his 
 thesis anew — cerebral motion, nervous energy, stimu- 
 lation, and so forth. On the contrary, what has 
 happened is, that some physiologists of our day, 
 more skilled in physiology than in criticism, have 
 been beguiled by the baneful influence of Idealistic 
 philosophy into the endeavour to establish a sort 
 of physiologico-sensational Idealism that contains 
 self-contradiction in its heart, and crumbles to 
 pieces at the very first touch of analysis. 
 
 The fatal error of much of the higher scientific 
 speculation of our day is due to a want of training 
 in scientific method, and it lies in ignoring the fact 
 that though you may reduce by analysis a thing to its 
 elements, the elements are not, as such, the thing z . 
 Two entirely different things may consist of pre- 
 cisely the same elements. A butterfly pounded in 
 a mortar and reduced to its elements is no longer 
 a butterfly. Now, this is exactly the mistake that 
 is made in the false identification of all the senses 
 as sensations. 
 
 Heat, for example, the feeling, the conscious 
 apprehension of motion, is a sensation, the trans- 
 figured effect of a wholly different cause : just so 
 1 See Part II. (1, passim.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 145 
 
 in a different way are sound and colour. Hence 
 it is, that the sense of Sight is classed with the 
 feeling of heat, as being both sensations of the 
 same kind, because Sight is falsely regarded as 
 sensations of light and colour. But as we have 
 already seen, it is nothing of the sort. Though 
 colour is a sensation, colour sensations are not 
 Sight at all : and the nature of the sense of 
 Sight is altogether different from the nature of 
 the sensation of heat or colour. Colour sensations, 
 as such, are to Sight exactly what ink is to the 
 words composed of it. Just as ink conveys the 
 words, so does colour bring with it the spatial 
 forms of objects : and just as it is not the vehicle, 
 ink, as such, which makes the word what it is, so 
 it is not colour at all, but the space element that 
 comes with it, that make Sight possible. Thus, 
 though the sensation of colour is the conscious 
 feeling of a cause of a wholly different kind, 
 Sight, which is made possible by the space brought 
 with the colour, accidentally associated with the 
 colour, is, on the contrary, the cognition of an 
 element whose cause and effect are the same in 
 kind. 
 
 No amount of colour sensation, as such, will ever 
 produce even the very lowest form of Sight. Sight 
 begins not with colour sensations, but with space 
 
 L
 
 146 ORIGIN: 
 
 apprehension, the noticing, that is to say, and taking 
 stock of, those spatial elements and forms which 
 accompany colours, for colours must bring forms 
 to the retina. The reduction of Sight to colour 
 sensations is based on a wholesale misunderstand- 
 ing : it is exactly analogous to the mistake of re- 
 ducing a printed page to the ink-blot made by 
 over-turning the bottle. From ink alone you will 
 never get words : and from colour alone, Sight will 
 never come. The original starting-point of the 
 evolution of Sight, its e'£ ov, is not colour, but 
 form, space : and just so, Sight itself, when we 
 have got it, is, not the apprehension of colour, 
 but the instantaneous cognition of space. 
 
 This false identification of Sight with colour 
 sensations, and consequently a confusion of ob- 
 jective knowledge with subjective feeling, is the 
 fatal error of physiological sensationalists who lump 
 together all the senses indiscriminately as sensations : 
 meaning by that term transfigured effects of un- 
 known causes. But when we come to examine 
 their books these unknown causes turn out to be 
 perfectly well-known motion : for their analysis, as 
 we said, is palpably self-contradictory. If the senses 
 transfigure : if all the senses are sensations, and all 
 sensation transfigures, how is it possible to discover 
 that heat, colour, sound, ab intra are motion, ab
 
 THE NA TURE OF SIGHT. 147 
 
 extra ? The actual science of these philosophers 
 disproves their analysis of its origin. We are as- 
 tounded by their profound knowledge of those 
 causes which they declare ex cathedra to be un- 
 knowable. The truth is, that they derive objective 
 knowledge from Sight, and employ that very 
 knowledge to disprove its own possibility. They 
 do get at objective knowledge, but they do not 
 know how they do it. The solution lies in the 
 accurate analysis of the nature of Sight. 
 
 And by the way it is important to notice another 
 point closely connected with this, in which physi- 
 ology has gone beyond her last. Sight is often 
 stated to take place ' in ' the brain, because, when 
 the optic nerve is severed, there is no longer any 
 Sight. But now, this does not prove that we see 
 in the brain. It proves only, that an eye minus 
 a brain is as powerless as a brain minus an eye a : 
 that the whole apparatus must work together in 
 order to see. The eye will mirror, will perform 
 its part, even though the optic nerve should be 
 cut, ,but in that case ' I ' shall not see, because 
 you have deprived ' me ' of my eye : the telegraphy 
 does not work, the wire is broken. To say that 
 it is the brain which sees, that Sight takes place 
 
 n The reader will not fall into the error of supposing that a human 
 brain and the whole of it are required : see below. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 ORIGIN: 
 
 • in ' the brain, is a misconception : it makes the 
 eye otiose and stultifies its structure. Brain and eye 
 see, all together : that is the truth : but to emphasise 
 the brain at the expense of the eye is worse than 
 to ignore it. We hear with our ears, touch with 
 our fingers, smell with our nose, and see with our 
 eyes : Sight is not thought, but sense b : and Aris- 
 totle says well that Sight is the soul of the eye : 
 the eye, which by reflecting the forms of the objects 
 surrounding it makes possible their spatial cognition 
 at a distance. 
 
 Sight is, not the transfigured effect of a cause 
 incognisable to us, but the organic, inwardly con- 
 scious and illuminated photography of Nature. 
 Observe, that if physiology denies this, we may 
 deny physiology, for it is only committing suicide. 
 Physiology can claim no authority, if sense cannot 
 reach the real nature of things, for it is all built 
 upon that assumption. Whence comes the know- 
 ledge of the physiologist as to his own brain ? 
 If all sensation transfigures, all Science is non- 
 sense, including physiology. But science is not 
 nonsense : it is only the dialectic of some of its 
 ambitious professors who would be philosophers 
 that is bad. All the science in the world will not 
 make up for the absence of dialectic. 
 '' See below.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT 149 
 
 And the absurdity of the original dogma becomes 
 glaring in the fashionable constructive physiologico- 
 sensational psychology, which, like all other feeble 
 ill-defined speculation nowadays, is baptized with the 
 name of a 'science.' (Can you make bread, if you do 
 not know what bread is? Can you make a science, 
 if you do not know what is science ?) The attempts 
 of its exponents, however, as e.g. those of the cele- 
 brated Wundt, to construct our actual experiences 
 from sensational atomistic points c : to derive, for 
 example, all our cognition of space from move- 
 ments — ' space-construction by ocular movements ' — 
 break down altogether the moment we touch 
 them ; as indeed even Wundt is obliged to admit : 
 a momentary electric flash, during which there is 
 no time for any movement at all, will reveal 
 a perfect picture : and the experiment on a large 
 scale is familiar to every one who has been out 
 in a thunderstorm at night : a sudden flash of 
 lightning will reveal the whole country and every 
 feature in it with glaring distinctness for miles 
 around. This demonstrates irrefutably that ocular 
 
 c It is here that the ridiculous modern speculations about space 
 ot more than three dimensions come in : they are all based upon the 
 farcical notion that our space has a form, is an actuality, instead 
 of being what it is, the infinite possibility of form. This sort of 
 mathematical foolishness is regarded as the most profound wisdom : 
 it is simply the result of a want of training.
 
 150 ORIGIN: 
 
 movements' 1 are totally unnecessary for the ordinary 
 perception of objects : although they very well may 
 be for the exact and delicate estimate of comparative 
 and approximately identical lengths or sizes. This 
 however is a different thing, and one practically 
 altogether useless : what does the exact apprecia- 
 tion of almost indifferent differences matter to the 
 animal for its life ? It sees all essentials instan- 
 taneously, and ocular movements are altogether 
 unnecessary for the purposes of Sight. Wundt, 
 however, consoles himself by saying that anyhow 
 they were, once e . But though this should be the 
 case, what has that got to do with it, now ? What 
 we are and can, that we are and can : never mind 
 what we were and could not. In spite of 'science' 
 of this kind, the eye of the eagle will continue 
 to differ in power from the pigment spot of a miser- 
 able Medusa. Nothing, however, seems to satisfy 
 your sensational philosopher but the reduction and 
 degradation of power to impotence : then he thinks 
 he has explained everything. To explain away 
 and end by denying the very thing you started 
 to explain, or at least mutilate and mangle it, is 
 
 d ' The duration of the retinal stimulus must be exceedingly short, 
 'as the electric flash lasts only o - oooooo68 second.' Landois and 
 Slirling, Hitman Physiology, p. 773. 
 
 c Human and Animal Psychology, p. 165, &c.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 151 
 
 the golden rule of modern philosophical ' specu- 
 lation V 
 
 All these efforts to reduce what is to what was, 
 to degrade the whole organic capacity to the in- 
 capacity of its elements, and prove that the space 
 and its contents which we see at a glance are all 
 made up out of movements and inference, are pal- 
 pably ridiculous. In their endeavour to drag our 
 senses into the Procrustes bed of their sensationalist 
 dogma, these philosophers most unaccountably over- 
 look the most obvious facts. Can anything be 
 plainer or more undeniable than this, that the 
 capacity of vision depends, to begin with, on the 
 structure of the visual organ, the eye ? For if not, 
 why should it have a form at all ? Qui bono the 
 elaborate and highly specialised structures of the 
 organs of sense, of the eyes of animals, so admira- 
 bly adapted for seeing by night or day, in air or 
 water, at long or short ranges ? The retina is a 
 camera: why? In attempting to construct the con- 
 tinuous perception out of a sensational series of 
 hypothetical points, these philosophers argue as if 
 our two eyes were in reality nothing but the punc- 
 tual extremity of a nerves. As if the finished and 
 
 f I wonder whether the physiological sensationalists have ever 
 watched a hawk striking. There you see what Sight can do. 
 
 s Kant's ' chaotic manifold ' of sense : a piece of absurdity. The
 
 152 ORIGIN: 
 
 complicated machinery of the eye, its elaborate 
 speculum, were all to no purpose ! as if Nature had 
 made it in vain ! as if the eye contributed nothing 
 to the power of Sight ! Of course it does : the eye 
 receives its whole field at one and the same moment, 
 no part being prior or posterior to the other. And 
 though we cannot attend to so vast an extent, but 
 only to one thing at a time, it is nevertheless there. 
 
 What can be more ridiculous, more forced and 
 preposterous, than all these attempts to identify 
 the vision of to-day with the ante-diluvian, pre- 
 geological, problematical 'vision' of conjectural 
 animals with incipient tentative guesswork eyes. 
 Sight is a power acquired not by the practice of 
 one individual life, but that of whole geological 
 epochs : and the eye of to-day need be at no such 
 shifts to reach its object as the eye at the origin 
 of things, which was not an eye at all, or the specu- 
 lative theoretical 'eye' of the sensationalists, which 
 is apparently not an eye but a point. If Sight were 
 only what these pettifogging theorists seek to make 
 it out, laborious effort, piecemeal construction, dis- 
 jointed mosaic, rational inferential patchwork out 
 of successive sensational ' manies,' then evolution 
 and development would have been in vain. All 
 
 senses do not give us chaos but order. Kant understood nothing of 
 the senses, and the want was fatal to his whole philosophy.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 153 
 
 this sort of philosophy is the mistaken endeavour, 
 based on a want of training in the philosophy ot 
 definition, to degrade by analysis the highly de- 
 veloped powerful capacity as it is to the highly 
 problematical incapacity that it was or may have 
 been, for we know what we actually now see much 
 better than any one knows what, ages ago, we may 
 possibly have seen : it is, in the matchless phrase- 
 ology of Aristotle, to confound and identify the 
 ovala, the evTeXe^eta, with the original e£ ov or 
 aTep7)ai<; ; it is to ignore evolution and degrade the 
 highest rung of the ladder of being to the lowest. 
 
 And now, we come to a point which has been 
 running alongside the argument all the time, and 
 which no doubt has repeatedly occurred to the 
 reader. I cannot understand how any one can go 
 so far astray as to maintain that Sight is Inference 
 and performed by Reason ; an opinion which, not- 
 withstanding its manifest and open absurdity, is 
 nowadays commonly received. Sight, Inference! 
 It is infinitely far from being so : it is a wholly 
 distinct and different capacity. It is true that we 
 may, for explanatory purposes, compare Sight to 
 a conclusion from premisses which are latent and 
 only physiologically discoverable : but this is only 
 an analogy, against which we should be always on 
 our guard : the resemblance is merely superficial
 
 154 ORIGIN: 
 
 and the difference profound and essential. It is 
 also true that we find, in man, seeing and reasoning 
 united : this is what supports the error. But that 
 they are distinct and different is irrefutably demon- 
 strated by a single glance at the animal world. 
 
 The automatic intuitive flash or ' leap in the dark ' 
 of Sight to its constructive ' conclusion,' its finished 
 spatial stereoscopy h , is to Inference, what Nature 
 is to Reason, what the whole geological series of 
 animal life in space and time is to a single indi- 
 vidual human life. Sight is profound, organic, in- 
 tuitive, involuntary, universal, unerring, the vitally 
 necessary means of existence throughout the animal 
 world : Inference is shallow, rational, discursive, 
 conscious, fallacious, exclusively human (for animals 
 possess only faint germs of it), and exhibited in 
 but few specimens even of men in any degree of 
 excellence. Inference is aristocratic : but Sight 
 is common, vulgar, democratic, nay, bestial. In- 
 ference is reasoning, and performed by reason : 
 Sight, not : Inference is logical, essentially bound 
 up with speech and society : Sight, not : it arises 
 from the inner depths of the individual animal 
 nature : only social animals can have reason, but 
 the lonely solitary animal has, and must have, Sight. 
 Reason we have, as men : Sight, as animals : the 
 '' For Sight is pictorial : Inference noetic.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 155 
 
 one is a superficies, the other, an abyss. The 
 man least capable of Inference, the woman, child, 
 barbarian, or animal barely or not at all capable 
 of reasoning, may see far better than a Hum- 
 boldt 1 or an Aristotle. It would indeed be a 
 bad business for the world if Sight were Inference, 
 if its Sight depended on its Reason. But this 
 is so far from being the case that Reason may 
 not only be absent, in animals that have not got 
 it, but even utterly destroyed in those that have 
 it, and yet Sight may remain : a maniac or idiot 
 will see as well as a sane man, and many animals 
 infinitely better. How can Sight be Inference, 
 or in any way whatever connected with Reason, 
 when it exists in the highest perfection, keen and 
 powerful and telescopic, where Reason is dull, weak, 
 or even absent altogether ? 
 
 The truth is that to call Sight Inference is to 
 abuse language, and argues a complete failure to 
 understand its nature, originating in the biological 
 deficiencies of the founders of modern philosophy. 
 Sight is a wholly distinct and different power, be- 
 longing to the animal as such, with which Reason 
 has nothing to do. It is beneath and independent 
 of Reason : we see as we digest : it is an animal 
 and non-rational function : a faculty and weapon 
 ' See his Kosmos, vol. iii. p. 70.
 
 156 ORIGIN: 
 
 analogous to claws, teeth, wings, beaks, talons, and 
 similar indispensable instruments of self-preservation. 
 We do not infer the objects we see : we see them : 
 it is not discursive inference, but constructive pic- 
 torial presentation : we open our eyes and there 
 they are : the thing is instantaneous, involuntary, 
 automatic, and inevitable: it is a pictorial 'con- 
 clusion ' without premisses, which are unknown, and 
 only discoverable by subsequent anatomy, and ana- 
 logical inference from others to self. So far from 
 deriving Sight inferentially from physiological ' pre- 
 misses,' the truth is the opposite : we know that 
 there are such ' premisses ' only by a roundabout 
 process of reasoning. That physiological knowledge 
 which is employed to prove that Sight is ' inference 
 from sensations' is itself derived from Sight assumed 
 to be, what in fact it is, valid and objective : it is 
 secondary to the original authority of Sight. But 
 as we have seen, these ' premisses,' these physio- 
 logical conditions, arc only the sub-conscious po- 
 tentiality of Sight. We do not see our own internal 
 organs, we see with them ; what we see is, as has 
 been shown, the external object ; to see being to 
 reconstruct spatially the external object from hints 
 furnished by the two eyes. But the process is un- 
 conscious ; when we open our eyes external objects, 
 as it were, crowd in upon us ; and the proof that
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 157 
 
 they are there is the fact that we are here, for other- 
 wise we should not be here to see. Sight is a faculty 
 whose exercise is the proof of its own veracity ; for 
 to see wrong is for the animal certain and almost 
 instant death. It is not the veracity of the Deity 
 which is the proof of the veracity of the senses : 
 it is, the very existence of the percipient animal. 
 For existence is impossible, except on the hypothesis 
 that the senses exhibit the nature of things. 
 
 And therefore it is, that the vulgar argument, the 
 appeal to the eye, is not absurd, not philosophically 
 ridiculous : it is perfectly sound and unanswerable : 
 although it is only a concrete argument and does 
 not explain itself. The absurdity lies on the con- 
 trary with the paradoxical philosophers, whose scep- 
 tical arguments, and subsequent dialectical edifices 
 to reconvert scepticism into reality, are all really 
 based on the very authority which they deny, the 
 authority of the eye. The vulgar are perfectly 
 right : objective knowledge, knowledge of the true 
 independent nature and constitution of things, of 
 an esse which is not percipi, is given, though they 
 know not how, directly by the eye, the mirror of 
 Nature which reflects its object tanquam in speculum; 
 and the truth is, curiously enough, the exact reverse 
 of the way in which the Kantian philosophy puts it. 
 It is precisely the form of the object which is ob-
 
 158 ORIGIN: 
 
 jective, valid independently of perception, and only- 
 trie sensational element, the colour as such, which 
 is the contribution of the conscious self. Kant's ab- 
 surd Aesthetic is the truth turned upside down. And 
 yet the world has been vainly endeavouring for a 
 century to think itself by brute force into this non- 
 sensical dogmatism, trying as hard as it can to stand 
 intellectually on its head, and then wondering with 
 ludicrous amazement at the impotence of reason. 
 But grant one absurdity and the rest follow. Divorce, 
 as Plato and modern philosophers do, soul from 
 body, esse from posse, and you doom yourself to 
 absurdity as the sparks fly upwards. 
 
 The founders of Idealism in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries had a wholly erroneous con- 
 ception of the value of the vulgar opinion. They 
 viewed the vulgar superciliously from the heights 
 of their own rationalism uninspired by any insight 
 into natural economy and organic possibilities. But 
 there is nothing more foolish than abstract ration- 
 alism. As Aristotle, the wise, the profound, the pro- 
 phetic Aristotle, knew ands aid, the vulgar opinion, 
 when it really is vulgar, i.e. common to all, and not 
 factitious, is more than all the wisdom of the learned ; 
 for it is <f>vaifcbv : it has in it what the individual 
 opinion, however well grounded, never has : it has 
 in it the depths and vital necessities of organic
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT. 159 
 
 Nature, the profundities of the needs and creative 
 demands of life. Sight, touch, hearing, language, 
 aTopyr), the sentiment of kinship — the wisdom 
 and authority of these is not rational, but real, 
 organic. Oculus populi, ocuhis Dei. Dr. John- 
 son's repartee, when he rapped his stick upon the 
 ground, has afforded food for many an Idealistic 
 gibe : and doubtless, considered as dialectic, it was 
 poor : but was it poorer than the dialectic of the 
 Idealists themselves, whose soul is self-contradiction? 
 It contains the answer it does not unfold — viz., 
 that the sophistry of rationalism carries less weight 
 than the instinctive evidence of sense. And we have 
 seen that the critical analysis of the senses is the 
 answer to an Idealism that begins by denying them, 
 on evidence derived from themselves. 
 
 And so, the authority of the eye, though disease 
 may now and again pervert and falsify it, and pre- 
 judice warp it, is yet the first and highest of all 
 authorities, and the solid foundation of all scientific 
 knowledge of the Universe. The very illusions, 
 hallucinations, to which we are subject in states of 
 disease or semi-disease, the curious spectral phe- 
 nomena (these are really pkenometia) which mock 
 and mimic the genuine objective deliverances of 
 Sight, and furnish superficial dialecticians with 
 sceptical arguments against the testimony of the
 
 160 ORIGIN: 
 
 senses, are, in reality, only an inverse proof of the 
 truth of healthy Sight k . For they mean, when pro- 
 foundly considered, that the organic mechanism of 
 vision has during aeons of practice and experience 
 become so accurately trained to its work, so deli- 
 cately responsive to the touch on the trigger, the 
 stimulus from outside, that now and then in a 
 moment of aberration due to disease or fatigue, 
 when the machine is out of order, it anticipates 
 orders and works without its appropriate cause. 
 But now, observe, that this is no refutation, but on 
 the contrary, a confirmation of its normal deliver- 
 ance. For it could not do this, exceptionally, were 
 ?iot its normal action so exact. The nature of its 
 occasional error, ox faux pas, exhibits the truth and 
 unerring accuracy and entirely trustworthy fidelity 
 of its general testimony : and, as Aristotle often 
 insists, we must base our conclusions about human 
 nature not on diseased, aberrant specimens, but 
 those which are healthy and sound. The diseased 
 eye is not an eye, nor, in spite of reasoners like 
 J. S. Mill, is a patient in an ophthalmic hospital 
 the type of healthy men. 
 
 The strong, simple, and profound proof of the 
 
 k Moreover, the sceptic cuts his own throat by admitting that they 
 are illusions : for to know that you must be able to compare the 
 appearance with the reality ; but this is just what he denies to 
 be possible.
 
 THE NATURE OF SIGHT 161 
 
 independent reality and existence of the external 
 world is, notwithstanding all the pseudo-dialectic 
 of critical incapables, just this, that we see it. The 
 instinct of the vulgar coincides with and is con- 
 firmed by the most severe and exhaustive meta- 
 physical analysis : the necessary postulate of science, 
 that the senses introduce us to the nature of things 
 as they are in themselves, turns out to be solid 
 and philosophically correct : and the only result 
 definitely achieved by the philosophers who have 
 laboured with such inadequate equipment to throw 
 doubt on the senses of the world, is, that they have 
 discredited its reason. They have brought philo- 
 sophy herself into disrepute and bad odour by the 
 absurd conclusions which they declare to be the 
 necessary result of self-examination, and opened 
 the door to every description of feeble mysticism, 
 which presents itself bravely, as being not more 
 absurd than reason herself 1 . But the incapacity 
 which they would fasten upon reason belongs in 
 reality only to that portion of it which has fallen 
 to their share : they would saddle humanity in 
 general with their own particular imperfections. 
 Humanity, however, is not so foolish in its instincts 
 
 1 ' Un manoeuvre qui a toujours seduit les esprits plus ardents que 
 'sages, de fonder la religion sur le scepticisme.' Kenan, Averroes, 
 P- 97- 
 
 M 
 
 i
 
 162 ORIGIN, &c. 
 
 as it is in its reason and its prejudices, and wisdom 
 will often be found to lie with the vulgar rather 
 than a corrupt school of hereditary error, floating 
 about balloonwise in the rarified atmosphere of 
 abstraction, the chain that bound it to terra firma 
 long since broken and cast away. 
 
 To emerge from the labyrinth of Idealistic para- 
 logism into which Descartes and his followers have 
 beguiled her : to shake off the long debauch of 
 sophistry, the deep draughts of stupefying jargon 
 and outrageous abuse of language, continued till 
 the very nerve of male and vigorous thought is 
 paralysed and drugged into impotence, modern 
 philosophy will have to drink the waters of Lethe 
 and again become a child : burn all her books, 
 and emerge like a phcenix from the ashes of her 
 philosophical library : go back and sit at the feet 
 of Aristotle, and learn from him that subtlety is 
 worse than useless, if it is not based upon insight 
 into the sphere of the problem and exact analytical 
 definition.
 
 /3. UNITY: THE LOGIC OF 
 NATURE. 
 
 ris oiv 6 (pvcrticbs ; irdrepov b irepl 7T)V v\i]i>, vbv be \6yov 
 ayvowv ; 7) 6 irepl rbv \6yov (x6vov ; ^ fiaXKov 6 e'£ a/uupo'iv ; 
 
 M 2
 
 AXIOMS. 
 
 to yap atrtop rov fjpai irciffiv 7; ovala ku\ 6 \6~yos ttjs oixrtas. 
 ■i] <p{>ais atria iraai ra^eus.
 
 j3. UNITY: THE LOGIC OF 
 NATURE. 
 
 § I. MOLECULE, or Physics. 
 
 r PHE ultimate unit and radical of modern Physics 
 is the molecule. The physical world, to its eye, 
 is an immense accumulation of molecules. 
 
 The material objects that surround us, and in 
 their totality constitute the physical world, solids, 
 liquids, gases, animals, vegetables, minerals, rocks, 
 trees, rivers, beasts, birds, fishes, &c, are all com- 
 posed of stuff, material, itself compound. Analysis 
 decomposes these compounds into elements. And 
 the sum of its investigations is this : that the various 
 substances of which all things are composed are 
 nothing but masses or aggregates of minute homo- 
 geneous particles or molecules: each of a definite 
 and peculiar constitution. These molecules consist 
 of and can be resolved into definite proportional 
 quantities of ultimate {i.e. not hitherto further 
 decomposable) elements. Water, for example, de- 
 composes into oxygen and hydrogen. The (phy- 
 sical) molecule consists of (chemical) elements*, 
 oxygen and hydrogen. 
 
 * I say elements, not atoms, because the molecule is quite indc-
 
 1 66 UNITY: 
 
 All composite substances, then, consisting of 
 molecules, or combinations of ultimate elements, in 
 different proportions, ratios, and arrangements (?), 
 any such substance can be expressed in terms of 
 its molecule : defined by its molecule. The mole- 
 cule is the root, the radical, the epitomised ex- 
 pression of the nature of the substance. Water, 
 e.g., is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, in the 
 proportion, by volume, of one to two, by weight, 
 of eight to one. Every molecule of water, then, 
 will exhibit this proportionate amalgamation : in 
 other words, water is H 2 0. And this is typical: 
 what holds of water holding, mutatis mutandis, of 
 all other substances: e.g. alcohol is C 2 H c O ; sul- 
 phuric acid, H 2 S0 4 ; common salt Na CI; and 
 so on. Thus though every special substance is 
 sui generis, has, that is to say, its own peculiar 
 definition, its own molecule : yet the molecule in 
 general, the essential nature of any substance may 
 be defined as 
 
 ' the smallest mass into which a substance is 
 ' capable of being divided without changing its 
 ' chemical nature : ' or ' the smallest particle of 
 
 pendent of any theory as to the nature of the elements. What 
 is certain about the elements is the ratio or proportion required in 
 a compound. The atomic theory, in my opinion, makes the mistake 
 of trying to actualise the potential, as also does the kinetic theory 
 of gases.
 
 THE L OGIC OF NA TURE. 167 
 
 'a substance in which its qualities inhere ''.' (Note, 
 parenthetically, that this is exactly the Aristotelean 
 form of expression, rj e'Aa^to-T?; <rdp%, </>\6£, or what- 
 ever it may be.) 
 
 There is, however, something more. Observe, 
 that the elements, as such, though present in the 
 correct proportion, do not constitute the mole- 
 cule composed of them. The molecule of any 
 particular substance is its elements only in that 
 peculiar combination ; i.e. it is not the elements 
 that constitute the molecule, but the special syn- 
 thesis of the elements. It is the peculiar disposition 
 of each special synthesis that makes each molecule 
 what it is, and gives to each substance its peculiar 
 qualities and attributes. The same elements may 
 make different molecules or substances : e.g. 
 
 1 the pleasant odour of apples, and the disgusting 
 'smell of rancid butter come from substances con- 
 ' sisting of the same elements united in the same 
 
 ' proportion what, then, can be the cause of 
 
 1 this difference ? .... for the past ten years a great 
 ' part of the intellectual power of the chemists of 
 
 b Cooke, to Chemistry, pp. 84, 86 : cf. Wurtz, Atomic Theory, 
 p. 326. ' Why is mercury indivisible? I do not understand: I do 
 ' not pretend to do so : only I admit that physical and chemical 
 ' forces cannot divide it any further, because otherwise it would 
 ' cease to be mercury. '
 
 1 68 UNITY: 
 
 ' the world has been applied to this problem . . . 
 1 and the answer they have obtained is, that the 
 ' difference of qualities depends on molecular struc- 
 ' ture, and the same atoms arranged in different order 
 1 may form molecules of different substances having 
 ' wholly different qualities c .' 
 
 Thus does the stone which the builders rejected 
 become the head stone in the scientific corner. 
 Here we find modern Science going unawares back 
 to Aristotle: unconsciously repeating his very words; 
 unintentionally verifying his logic of science, his 
 analysis of the essential nature of things. For what 
 is this molecule but the physical aspect of Aristotle's 
 essence ? to yap clitlov tov elvai iracnv ?) ovala, kclI 
 6 Xoyo<? t?7<? ovo-la?. The essence of Aristotle looks 
 at us from every piece of salt or sugar, coal or 
 diamond, every drop of oil or water, every under- 
 trodden clod or stone, lump of clay or chalk ; and 
 the chemists of modern times are metaphysicians 
 sans le savoir, Peripatetics against their will. This 
 1 lowest possible realisation ' is nothing whatever 
 but the unconscious translation of Aristotle's Greek. 
 This is that very eWeAi^eta r) irpoaTri tov hvva[xet 
 ovtos which the world has been rejecting for cen- 
 turies. This synthesis of matter and form, with 
 c New Chc?nistry, p. 294.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 169 
 
 the stress laid upon the form, is taking the very 
 words from Aristotle's mouth. It is the essence 
 of anything that makes it what it is, and definition 
 is the declaration of that essence. In vain, then, 
 did modern philosophy reject Aristotle : it was 
 doomed to come back to him, whether it liked it 
 or not ; he lay inevitably across the onward path 
 of modern Science, and while men thought they 
 were receding further and further away from him, 
 they were in reality drawing nearer and nearer to 
 him. Is there not something ironical in the spec- 
 tacle of modern Science running into the very jaws 
 of the philosophy which it is always abusing, and 
 pronouncing to be obsolete and ' metaphysical ? ' 
 ' Physics, beware of Metaphysics ! ' Water, beware 
 of H 2 0. What if Metaphysics should turn out to 
 be the very core and heart of physics ? The essence 
 of physics is in fact, metaphysics, and every physical 
 molecule is metaphysic in concreto. 
 
 Now this molecule, this ovcria, this essence, this 
 nature, this synthesis of elements into a compound, 
 a crvvdkov or whole, which thereby becomes ipso facto 
 something new and entirely different from those 
 elements, just as zuater differs wholly from its con- 
 stituent gases, is, as we shall now see, the root and 
 core of science, the secret of reality in every grade 
 of the ladder of being d . 
 d Further considerations with respect to this particular § will be
 
 \yo UNITY: 
 
 Note: As regards the ultimate constitution of 
 matter, Aristotle is in advance of modern chemists, 
 notwithstanding the fact that they have gone beyond 
 him in detail. 
 
 Everything, he says, is either an element, or com- 
 posed of elements : irav iariv 77 oToiyelov rj etc cttol- 
 ^eiW. And he defines an element, with precision 
 and accuracy, as, that into which other bodies are 
 resolved, existing in them eitJier potentially or actually 
 {for which, is not clear) bat which itself is not re- 
 solvable into anything further, different in kind". 
 Now, according to Aristotle, the mistake made by 
 those modern chemists and physicists who, specu- 
 lating on the ultimate constitution of matter, offer 
 us atoms or vortex-rings, is that of attempting to 
 reduce the actual, not to the potential, but to the 
 actual : a mistake analogous, as he says himself, 
 to that of attempting to break up a sword into little 
 swords, or a saw into little saws. 'The attempt to 
 ' bestow an intrinsic figure on the elements is absurd,' 
 he says : ' an element cannot have one f .' Elemen- 
 tary matter must be formless and amorphous : ready 
 to take any form according to circumstances, but 
 itself possessing none : e.g. water will accommodate 
 
 found in Harper's Metaphysics of the School, vol. ii. ; the coincidence 
 of which with this § is all the more remarkable because it is inde- 
 pendent : my own § having been written before I had seen it. 
 ■ Dc Ccclo, III. 3. f lb., III. 8.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 171 
 
 itself to a vessel of any shape, and fill it ; it is itself 
 amorphous. And though Aristotle was wrong as 
 to what the elements were, in particular ; for we 
 know now that air and water, earth and fire are 
 not elementary, but compound : yet what he says 
 holds, apart from the particular error : he knows 
 what an element, as such, must be. The difference 
 between physical mixture and chemical combination^, 
 is exactly this : that in the former the elements 
 exist actually, whereas in the latter, they do not : 
 they are lost : oxygen and hydrogen exist in water, 
 not actually, but potentially : they can be educed 
 and become actual only by the destruction of the 
 water : i.e., of that special form, which in water they 
 possessed. Therefore Aristotle says, that the ele- 
 ments come out of one another — \elirerat e'£ uX\rj\wv 
 •yiyveadat : by which he means, that what is actually 
 one substance may be potentially another. And in 
 fact, I venture to say that no one but Aristotle 
 
 « Admirably defined by Aristotle in the tenth chapter of his De 
 Generatione et Corruption*. When barley and wheat are mixed 
 together, you have only mixture, juxtaposition (auvdeais), but when 
 gas becomes water, you have mingling, chemical combination (fi(^is), 
 the point of which is that the elements disappear, as such, but 
 remain potentially — cai^eTat yap ri Svi/a/xis axniiv. And this com- 
 bination Aristotle defines admirably as rS>v uliitwv aWowQivrwv eWins 
 — ' the unification of mingled elements that have changed their 
 1 nature, as elements ! '
 
 172 UNITY: 
 
 ever thoroughly understood the philosophy of chem- 
 istry : because this too also depends on the great 
 distinction between potential and actual, which 
 modern Science, with all its wonderful discoveries, 
 ignores, though it is staring at her out of them all. 
 
 § 2. Syllogism, or Logic. 
 
 Modern Philosophy began by rejecting, amongst 
 other things, Aristotle's analysis of thought, Syllo- 
 gism. And though the rejection of this part of 
 his philosophy has never been so universally accepted 
 as that of other departments, yet gathering force 
 and consistency, like a snowball, as it has run down 
 the hill of Cartesian development along certain lines, 
 it has reached its fullest and most comprehensive, 
 most mature and elaborate statement in the Logic 
 of John Stuart Mill. The denial of Syllogism is, in 
 fact, at once the necessary corollary of sensational 
 principles and their apagogical refutation : for, as 
 we shall presently see, you can deny Syllogism no 
 more than you can deny modern Physics. The man 
 who, like Mill, denies Syllogism shows thereby 
 only this, that he has not a glimpse of insight into 
 the nature of things. 
 
 A word, to begin with, on Bacon's rejection of
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 173 
 
 Syllogism, so well known, and so completely mis- 
 understood. Here is his own charge : — 
 
 " Syllogismus ex propositionibus constat, proposi- 
 ' tiones ex verbis, verba autem notionum tesserae et 
 1 signa sunt. Itaque si notiones ipsae mentis (quae 
 ' verborum quasi anima sunt, et totius hujusmodi 
 ' structurae et fabricae basis) male ac temere a rebus 
 ' abstractae, et vagae, nee satis definite ac circum- 
 ' scriptae, denique multis modis vitiosae fuerint, omnia 
 ' ruunt. Rejicimus igitur Syllogismum.' 
 
 Now, it is obvious, that this is not an argument 
 against Syllogism, as such, at all. It is only an 
 argument against bad Syllogism. On such grounds 
 as these we might with equal justice reject Bacon's 
 own method, or indeed any other method whatever, 
 as the Syllogism. Bad reasoning, says Bacon, is 
 bad reasoning : certainly : so is bad observation, bad 
 observation, and bad experiment, bad experiment. 
 And will you reject observation and experiment, 
 because they may be, and very often are, bad ? 
 
 But further, it is palpable that this rejection of 
 Syllogism is really a rejection of language alto- 
 gether. Nil probat qui nimium probat. Bacon's 
 quarrel is not with the Syllogism, but its ele- 
 ments, the words. And thus it stands in close 
 relation with Berkeley's quarrel with general ideas, 
 Descartes' isolation of the self, and other such
 
 174 UNITY: 
 
 manifestations of individualism ; all but various 
 denials of the continuity of Nature. Yet in Bacon 
 such an attitude is altogether inconsistent and ab- 
 surd. How could, of all men in the world, Bacon, 
 whose great idea was co-operation and continuity in 
 Science, fail to perceive that in this rejection of 
 language he is rejecting the very possibility of 
 both ? Whatever defects there may be in language, 
 words, the constituent elements of Syllogism, we 
 cannot for all that get along without them. 
 
 We see, then, that Bacon's apparent rejection 
 of Syllogism is, properly understood, only a demand 
 for exact definition of words and terms and notions : 
 than which nothing could be more desirable. It is 
 not Syllogism, as such, but its abuse, that Bacon 
 denies. 
 
 But what he did not do, was done by others, 
 and the rejection of Syllogism, as such, mature 
 and considered, is seen fully developed in J. S. Mill, 
 whose Logic is the developed statement of what is 
 indicated more or less clearly in earlier philoso- 
 phers from whom he drew inspiration : the Lockes, 
 Berkcleys, Humes. It is in reality an inverse dis- 
 proof of his philosophical principles, and reposes 
 on his ignorance of essence, a problem which, as 
 Ueberweg says h , he entirely failed to solve. 
 u Logic, p. 152.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 175 
 
 The Syllogism was pronounced by Mill to be 
 a pctitio principii (though his own writings are, as 
 the writings of all reasoners must be, composed 
 throughout of Syllogisms ; for a man may deny 
 the Syllogism in theory : in practice he must obey 
 it, whether he will or no) because he wrongly re- 
 garded the major premiss as merely the numerical 
 sum-total of the particular individual cases ; where- 
 as, on the contrary, the major is not numerical but 
 typical. It is not 'all men are mortal' but, 'every 
 man is mortal,' every man, qua man ; it contains 
 the type, the essence. Deny this, as Mill does', 
 and of course there is no Syllogism : but then 
 Aristotle knew this as well as Mill, and said so, 
 ages ago. ' No universals, no syllogisms.' This is 
 true, but it is not new : it belongs not to Mill 
 but to Aristotle himself: whereas what is new 
 and what does belong to Mill is what is at once 
 erroneous and absurd. 
 
 1. In asserting that the conclusion gives, not some- 
 thing different from, but something already con- 
 tained in the major, Mill, to begin with, overlooks 
 the fact, obvious and elementary as it might seem, 
 that the conclusion results from, and is possible only 
 
 Yet though he denies this, in theory, he appeals to it, in fact : 
 as, for instance, I have shown on p. 85 of this book. No man 
 ever contradicted himself more flatly throughout than J. S. Mill.
 
 176 UNITY: 
 
 through, the combination of the two premisses. The 
 question-begging example in the first figure, by 
 which he endeavours to support his position, might 
 deceive, and has doubtless often deceived, a tyro : 
 but how it could possibly deceive a professional 
 logician, writing a huge treatise to advocate a revo- 
 lutionary subversion of the consent of ages, is beyond 
 my understanding. A single example in the second 
 or third figure would have made the truth plain 
 even to J. S. Mill : e.g. some Mussulmans are good 
 men : no Musulmans are Hindoos : ergo, some good 
 men are not Hindoos, i.e. there may be virtue 
 outside the pale of Hinduism. It would have puzzled 
 Mill to say, which premiss contained the conclusion 
 here. And is it credible that an elaborate condem- 
 nation of Syllogism should be gravely put forward 
 by a man to whom, after presumably years of 
 meditation, it should still be unknown that the 
 conclusion depends not on one premiss only but 
 on the combination of the two ? 
 
 2. But this is not all. Little did the unfortunate 
 ' logician ' suspect that in thus pronouncing on the 
 Syllogism he was running his head against a wall 
 buttressed by the Universe: that he was deliberately 
 writing himself clown ignorant of the very thing which 
 he professed to understand and expound, the inner 
 nature of all Science. The irony of this is almost
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 177 
 
 overpowering. In denying the Syllogism, what Mill 
 is really denying, though he does not know it, is 
 the molecule, the plan of Creation, the law which 
 runs through every form and grade of being, and 
 binds all the Sciences together as a string binds 
 beads. 
 
 For what was, as we saw, the molecule, the physical 
 essence ? It was, something new , something different 
 from the elements, necessarily resulting from their 
 being what and as they were. Well now, that is 
 exactly Aristotle's definition of Syllogism — avWoyia- 
 /xos earn Xoyos, ev a> redevTcov tivwv erepov tl twv 
 Keifxevcov e£ dvdyfcrjs (TVfj,/3alvet tm ravra elvac. 
 
 Syllogism is to thought exactly what its molecule 
 is to a physical substance: Syllogism is the molecule 
 of thought. Thought consists of Syllogisms just 
 as a substance consists of molecules. . The premisses 
 are the chemical elements ; the conclusion is the 
 necessarily resulting new and entirely different sub- 
 stance : the mind is the alembic or crucible in which 
 the chemico-intellectual process takes place. The 
 conclusion differs from the premisses, and yet de- 
 pends on them, exactly as water differs from and 
 depends on oxygen and hydrogen, being contained 
 in neither. 
 
 We see, therefore, that Aristotle's wonderful ana- 
 lysis harmonises with and is confirmed by the axioms 
 
 N
 
 178 UNITY: 
 
 of modern Chemistry, as well as by those of the 
 other Sciences, as we shall find. For the Syllogism 
 to be erroneous would contradict Nature : it is im- 
 possible that it should be so : it is only the logical 
 aspect of essence. In the sphere of material bodies, 
 the essence appears as the molecule : in the sphere 
 of thought, it appears as the Syllogism. The two 
 things are at bottom identical ; one and the same 
 thing in different clothes. But a Mill looks at the 
 Syllogism, Aristotle's wonderful and profound dis- 
 covery, with the sightless glare of complacent fatuity, 
 and wisely pronounces it an error ! 
 
 Note. ' By chemical action we signify that which 
 occurs when two or more substances so act upon one 
 another as to produce a third substance differing alto- 
 gether from the original ones in properties.' Roscoe's 
 Elem. Chew. This, as the reader will observe, is almost 
 identical with Aristotle's definition of Syllogism. 
 
 § 3. System, or Astronomy. 
 
 The uranological scheme of Aristotle was wholly 
 erroneous. But what is especially worthy of notice 
 is that he went further astray in this field than others 
 of the Greeks, precisely because he was a better reasoner 
 than them all. All his errors flow logically from
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 179 
 
 a fundamental position in harmony with observation k 
 and experience, which was for all that an error. Yet 
 no man would have hailed the Copernican-Newtonian 
 astronomy with more delight than himself, because 
 in fact the Newtonian astronomy fits into his philo- 
 sophy, his continuous ladder of Science, much better 
 than his own did, which, as many little touches in 
 the De Ccelo show, was unsatisfactory in his own 
 eyes. 
 
 In the view of Aristotle, which remained the view 
 of all the world till Newton, celestial motion was 
 different in kind from motion on the earth. To show 
 that, on the contrary, the two were the same was 
 precisely the point in which Newton revolutionised 
 astronomical conceptions. By thus identifying all 
 motion, he brought the heavens down to earth, or 
 raised earth to the heavens 1 . He thus for the first 
 time classed astronomy among the physical Sciences. 
 With Aristotle, astronomy was, as it were, hyper- 
 physical. Its peculiarity broke the continuity of his 
 
 k rbv 5' ovpavbv bpu/pev kvkXui irepi(pfp6fx€i/ov (De Ccelo, I. 5). From 
 this principle it follows necessarily, as he shows, that the heaven 
 cannot be infinite, that it must be composed of different stuff from 
 our matter, &c, &c. 
 
 1 Note, that Aristotle condemns the Pythagoreans for their opinion, 
 that the earth was itself a celestial body (wherein they were more 
 right than he was), because their opinion, he says, does not correspond 
 with phenomena. (De Ccelo, II. 13.) 
 
 N 2
 
 180 UNITY: 
 
 series of particular sciences ; it contained celestial 
 elements foreign to all earthly things — circular mo- 
 tion, eternal sameness, &c. — and it thus appears 
 among the other Sciences like a mysterious Deity 
 among common mortals. This is why nothing can 
 be a greater mistake than to estimate the scientific 
 value of Aristotle by his astronomical speculations, 
 as is commonly done by those who do not know 
 him. As Leibniz 1 " says somewhere, excellently well, 
 Aristotle ought to be forgiven for making the earth 
 the centre of the Universe : the mistake lay not 
 so much in him as in his age. Appearances in 
 astronomy are the direct reverse of the fact, and 
 in an age when as yet nothing worth mentioning 
 had been done in mathematics, mechanics n or geo- 
 graphical exploration, what but appearances were 
 available ? The more scientific caution a philosopher 
 might have, the more likely he was in that age to 
 go astray in astronomy. It had no ground to stand 
 
 m The germ of the Calculus, the idea of continuous infini- 
 tesimals, is clearly expressed by Aristotle (esp. in Physics, iii. 6), 
 where he shows, that just as a given quantity may be potentially 
 divided ad infinitum, so, conversely, every definite quantity contains 
 within it a potentially infinite number of quantities whose sum never 
 reaches it. Query, was Leibniz indebted to Aristotle? 
 
 " The discovery which made the fortune of Archimedes almost 
 belongs to Aristotle — ' in air, a piece of wood weighing a talent is 
 ' heavier than a piece of lead weighing a hundred drachms : but 
 in water it is lighter.'' {De Caio, IV. 4.)
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 181 
 
 on, and no instruments to work with : hence those 
 notions of circular motion and mystical divinity 
 which form the basis of Aristotle's theory of the 
 heavens. 
 
 And yet it is astonishing to see, how with all his 
 limitations, Aristotle's appalling sagacity places him, 
 even here, in the same class of ideas as the truth. 
 His endeavour, though it does not succeed, is to 
 get an explanation of celestial phenomena on the 
 principles of gravity and levity, i.e., motion to or 
 from the centre. Newton himself had not a clearer 
 perception of the astronomical importance of weight 
 than Aristotle : and Newton's first and third laws 
 of motion are stated °, in the very words of Newton, 
 in Aristotle's Physics (iii. 5 and iv. 8), ' no one can 
 ' say why, in vacuo, anything moved should ever stop 
 ' anywhere ; for why here rather than there ? — so 
 ' that it will either remain at rest, or move on, for 
 ' ever, unless some superior force should interfere.' 
 But he does not see how this applies. This was 
 
 'The great misapprehension which possessed the minds of nearly 
 ' all men till the time of Galileo was that the continuous action of 
 ' some force was necessary to keep a moving body in motion .... 
 ' it is hard to say who was the first clearly to see and announce 
 ' that this notion was entirely incorrect, and that a body once set 
 'in motion and acted on by no force would move forwards for ever. . . 
 'we can hardly be far wrong in saying that Newton was the first 
 'who clearly laid down this law in connection with the correlated 
 ' laws that cluster round it.' Newcomb's Popular Astronomy, p. 75.
 
 1 82 UNITY: 
 
 reserved for Newton, who founded the true as- 
 tronomy upon it p. 
 
 The Newtonian astronomy has destroyed and 
 replaced the astronomy of Aristotle ; but it has 
 not destroyed his philosophy : on the contrary, it 
 strengthens and exemplifies it. It strengthens 
 it : for it makes astronomy a physical Science like 
 all the other Sciences, and so avoids that breach 
 of continuity which was caused by the anomalous 
 mystical character of old astronomical speculations ; 
 it exemplifies it, for it furnishes another and most 
 beautiful illustration of the essence of Aristotle, in 
 the clothing of the night and stars. 
 
 For what is it that holds in astronomy the place 
 that we have seen the molecule and the Syllogism 
 to hold in Physics and Logic ? What is the astro- 
 nomical essence, the molecule, so to say, of the 
 Universe and the celestial spaces ? It is, System : 
 as, e.g., the Solar System, the System of Jupiter, 
 of Saturn, &c. For the Universe does not consist 
 in its matter ; nor do the countless bodies scattered 
 in space constitute, as such, the sphere and Science 
 
 >' The predecessor of Newton is not Aristotle, hut Empedocles, 
 whom Aristotle quotes to disagree with him {Dc Calo, IT. i), ' wc 
 ' must not suppose that the heavenly hodies remain as they are 
 ' because the speed of their revolution is so great as to conquer their 
 'natural tendency to fall, as Empedocles says.' This is exactly 
 Newton's idea. Query, did Newton get a hint from Empedocles ?
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 183 
 
 of Astronomy. The stars, suns, planets, comets, are 
 not the Universe : the Universe is, the regular and 
 harmonious system and co-adjustment of those stars 
 and suns q and planets: their balanced and delicate 
 correlation, so admirably expressed by the old Greek 
 word /coo-yuo?, which denotes not only the order but 
 its beauty. It is not the elements, the masses, that 
 constitute the Universe : it is that something different 
 from the elements, which results necessarily from 
 their being what they are. This is the soul of 
 Astronomy : of which mathematics is only the in- 
 strument. And Astronomy is scientific, only in so 
 far as it can detect and establish System. It has 
 done this admirably, and we might almost say, 
 completely, for our Solar System. But the enor- 
 mous distance of the suns which we call stars 
 relatively to our faculties places them beyond our 
 scientific grasp ; and there is, properly speaking, 
 little Scientific Knowledge, but only observation 
 and cataloguing of the stars : in spite of the spec- 
 troscope, the most audacious instrument ever devised 
 by the aspiring spirit of man. The goal of Astro- 
 nomy is perhaps unattainable: it aims at discovering 
 
 i ' The result of the observations hitherto made proves that the 
 ' firmament is studded not only with red and yellow suns (as was 
 ' known long ago to the ancients), but also with blue and green suns. ' 
 (Arago, in Humboldt's Kosmos, iii. 283.) Can any idea be more 
 magnificent than this?
 
 1 84 UNITY: 
 
 the system of the Universe ; but how shall we tackle 
 this portentous problem, when we can hardly succeed 
 in estimating doubtfully the distance of a few of the 
 nearest stars ? 
 
 Now when we reflect how the life of all organised 
 beings, including our own, with all its infinitely 
 various moral and political development, is deter- 
 mined by and dependent on heat and cold, a very 
 slight variation in which one way or the other would 
 annihilate all : how these again depend on the regu- 
 larity of the seasons, the mingled influences of Sun 
 and Moon, and are possible only through the ex- 
 tremely delicate balance and order of our System, 
 we shall recognise what this astronomical essence, 
 this celestial realisation of the possible, means. Chaos 
 might come again ; every individual element, every 
 particular sun or planet might be still materially 
 there : but the essence of the Universe, the world 
 and all its beauty, all the myriad corollaries of order, 
 the very possibility of art or science would be gone. 
 So true is it that harmony is the soul and condition 
 of all : and this is not poetry, but science ; or rather, 
 one of the points at which they touch each other. 
 But the astronomical essence is harder to perceive 
 than that of Physics, because it is so large and 
 universal, escaping observation much in the same 
 way as the names in a map which are spread out
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 185 
 
 over large spaces are harder to find than the names 
 of little towns. Just so, even the savage knows that 
 his life depends on food and water, but he never 
 suspects that it is also dependent on gravity, on the 
 continuous spinning of our globe round the Sun and 
 upon its own axis, and so forth. And not only the 
 Savage, but the highly civilised man, is equally blind 
 to the truth. Has he not been laughing for cen- 
 turies at the absurdity of Aristotle's dictum to yap 
 aiTiov rov elvat iracnv rj ovaia koX 6 X.670? tj}<? ovcrlas. 
 Perhaps instead of laughing, he would have done 
 better to try and understand it. 
 
 § 4. ' Rock,' or Geology. 
 
 The lovers of Geology may be excused for pre- 
 ferring their fascinating Science to all others. For 
 though every Science has its own peculiar and 
 absorbing interest, and none can claim to be before 
 or after another in dignity and honour, nevertheless 
 Geology has in it this remarkable peculiarity : it 
 is what Bacon would have called a ' bordering ' 
 instance. Border countries are particularly rich 
 in instruction ; now, Geology stands on the border 
 between the inorganic and organic worlds, the 
 Sciences that deal with dead and those that deal
 
 1 86 UNITY: 
 
 with living matter, and it partakes of both. Geology- 
 contains in it the obscure germs of higher things : 
 in rivers and mountains, plains and valleys, seas 
 and shores, lakes and deserts, we dimly recognise 
 the first faint indications of a personality and char- 
 acter which are coming ; i.e. which rise into definite 
 and clearer grades in plants and animals, and attain 
 their highest expression in the souls of men. 
 
 The singularity of Geology lies in this, that its 
 essence is, as it were, temporary and unstable, fleet- 
 ing : it is a sort of historical accident. 
 
 What is the central conception of Geology ? It 
 investigates the Crust of the Earth, and its com- 
 ponent elements and substances : its granites and 
 basalts, marbles and quartzes, its coal, clay, sand, 
 chalk, and what not : in a word, all materials that 
 go to make up the Crust of the Earth. But ob- 
 serve, now, that Geology does not investigate these 
 materials as such. That is the business of Chem- 
 istry or Mineralogy. The object of Geology is to 
 investigate and account for all these materials, not 
 as such, but as existing in peculiar local and tem- 
 poral positions, situations, forms. Primarily their 
 form, and only subsidiarily their matter is the object 
 of Geology. In the language of Aristotle's Cate- 
 gories we might say that the function of Geology 
 is to account for the Kecadcu of materials. Geology,
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 187 
 
 in other words, is the Science which aims at ac- 
 counting for the formation of rocks ; a ' rock ' being 
 geologically, any natural aggregate (layer, stratum, 
 deposit, upheaval, &c), of any material which con- 
 tributes to form the Crust of the Earth ; including 
 therefore, not only solids, but liquids, and even 
 gases. The word ' bank ' would convey to an un- 
 initiated ear what is meant geologically by a ' rock,' 
 which contains no reference to the quality of 
 material, but only to its form, having long ago lost 
 its popular connotation of hardness ; since it was 
 soon discovered that it is impossible to draw any 
 line, owing to the gradual continuity and ' shading 
 off' of substances that are hard into those that 
 are not so. 
 
 If, then, Geology should ever succeed in fully 
 accounting for every ' rock,' in explaining how every 
 particular constituent portion of the Earth's Crust 
 has come to be what and as it is, it will have done 
 its work, and arrived at its goal. And so, Geology 
 is essentially a historical Science ; it deals with 
 continuous change. This, and the fact that it in- 
 cludes palaeontology, the archaeology of the Earth's 
 life, gives it a peculiar analogy to economics and 
 politics ; and the most fruitful conception of history 
 proper is that which sees its type in Geology, with 
 its successive epochs, layers, and strata, its up-
 
 1 88 UNITY: 
 
 heavals and catastrophes r (occasional corollaries 
 of slow continuous changes), political and social 
 institutions being to the historian just what ' rocks ' 
 are to the geologist. 
 
 And so, here too we see that the law obtains. 
 Geology, too, has its essence, though it is, as we 
 saw, one of a peculiar kind. As, to the logician, 
 all thought is an aggregate of Syllogisms, to the 
 physicist, all substances are aggregates of molecules, 
 to the astronomer, the Universe is an aggregate 
 of systems, so to the geologist, the Crust of the 
 Earth is an aggregate of ' rocks.' Here, as always, 
 it is not the material elements as such, but that 
 something different, their peculiar disposition or com- 
 position, which is the essence of the matter. The 
 geologist is not a chemist nor a mineralogist, though 
 both these come to his assistance ; he is something 
 
 r Compare the Reformation or French Revolution with such facts 
 as these, 'in 1783, at Skaptar Jokul, in Iceland, a great fissure 
 ' opened ; two streams of lava issuing from this rent were in bulk 
 'equal to the mass of Mont Blanc! A century later, in 1883, the 
 ' most violent explosive eruption on record occurred at Krakatoa, 
 ' in the Sunda Straits. There was no outflow of lava, but pumice 
 ' and dust were thrown to the heiglfl of sixteen miles into the air, 
 'the pulsations of the atmosphere travelled two and a half times 
 ' round the globe, violent waves were produced in the ocean, which 
 ' were registered on the tide gauges all over the world, and ejected 
 ' materials were scattered over a circle with a radius of 1,000 miles !' 
 {Student's Lyell, p. 467. Judd.)
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 189 
 
 more : one who can account for the shape of hills, 
 the dip of strata, the position and age of fossils, 
 the trend of valleys, the structure of volcanoes, the 
 height of lands and depths of seas, &c. : in a word, 
 he is the biographer of the ' rocks,' and can tell 
 how each came to be what it is. To a Humboldt 
 or a Lyell, the whole Earth is full of friends : each 
 peak or canon, each dune or desert, appeals with 
 an interest almost personal : he follows the fortunes 
 of a ' rock ' with the sympathy of a reader reading 
 a novel ; nay, he can tell you, like Hamlet's grave- 
 digger, how long each skull has lain in the ground, 
 as if it were that of Yorick himself. For the whole 
 earth is after all but a cemetery, a burial-ground : 
 iraaa <yrj Ta^o?. It is marvellous to think how many 
 centuries have passed, while all the time men took 
 the earth for granted, and saw not what was 
 staring them in the face, as we can see, now that 
 Geology has lifted the curtain from our eyes, and 
 invested with scientific interest the very mud and 
 stones on which we tread. What poetry that was 
 ever written appeals to us weighted with such 
 sublimity as the bare unvarnished tale of Geology, 
 the record of the rocks ? We seem to listen, as 
 we read it, to the slow and measured beat of the 
 pendulum of Time: the infinite patience of Creation 
 is almost appalling : age after age, series after scries,
 
 190 UNITY: 
 
 generation after generation, comes into being and 
 passes away ; mighty rivers flow on for aeons un- 
 perceived by human eyes, and disappear : great seas 
 beat on shores that now exist no longer, and moun- 
 tains crumble and waste away, grain by grain, into 
 flat and level plains : huge forests grow silently, 
 flourish, fade, decay, and die, leaving their trans- 
 muted substance to drive the engines of a future 
 age ; and the weird creatures of early periods slowly 
 and mysteriously change into descendants that do 
 not resemble their parents. Would any man ap- 
 preciate the continuity of Nature, let him meditate 
 on Geology : there, if anywhere, he shall find a 
 sermon in the stones to set him thinking. Let him 
 lie on a cliff that hangs sheer over the sea, some 
 hundreds of feet below, and listen to the break- 
 ing of the waves, the sough of the wind, the scream 
 of the gulls : even at that very moment creation 
 is going on before his eyes : Nature is showing him 
 her hand, so naively and openly that for thousands 
 of years he could not see it : the organic method 
 of creation, the continuous change, the universal 
 Kivrjai^, the ordered march from possible to actual, 
 destroying with one hand and creating with the 
 other, is visibly proceeding from day to day and 
 hour to hour : and a text-book of Geology is an 
 abstract of its course.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 191 
 
 Aristotle knew nothing about Geology s . And yet 
 of all the Sciences Geology is the one which most 
 admirably confirms and exhibits his metaphysical 
 law. The geological process is an everlasting series 
 of variations on one theme, which is Aristotle's 
 definition of Motion or Change. 1) rou Swcitov § 
 SvvaTov ivTeke^eta is the motto of Geology. The 
 brain of man could rise no higher : that definition 
 marks the summit of human intellectual power : 
 for it not only seizes and expresses the evolutionary 
 process of the Universe, but carries with it the stamp 
 of the eagle genius which was capable of so seizing 
 and expressing it. 
 
 § 5. Cell, or Biology (potentiality.) 
 
 Of all the discoveries of modern Science, there 
 is none more wonderful than that of the Cell. The 
 revelations of embryology, or the study of develop- 
 ment, pregnant in themselves with profound sig- 
 nificance, are from. our present point of view doubly 
 interesting and important, for they vindicate the 
 insight of Aristotle in the most curiously exact 
 manner, and prove conclusively that the abuse of 
 Aristotle by the philosophers of modern times was 
 the abuse of knowledge by ignorance. 
 
 * But see Appendix.
 
 192 UNITY: 
 
 The cell stands to the organic world in the same 
 relation as the molecule to the physical world : the 
 cell is the organic molecule, the organic unit and 
 radical, the stuff out of which all is constructed. 
 Embryology tells us that every living organism 
 comes from a cell, a fertilised ovum ; was, that is 
 to say, originally a cell, which by a mysterious 
 power, implanted and initiated by fertilisation, grad- 
 ually evolves under appropriate conditions into a 
 fully developed animal or plant. 
 
 Though every branch of modern Science illustrates 
 Aristotle's philosophy, even where it destroys his 
 particular views, nowhere do we find such a re- 
 markable corroboration of his analysis, as here. In 
 this he is right aven in the detail, as those who 
 misunderstand and abuse him in other respects, are 
 obliged to admit. The theory of Epigenesis, with 
 which the name of Harvey is inseparably associated, 
 was first propounded by Aristotle in his Dc Genera- 
 tione Animalium: biological differentiation, an idea 
 which made the fortune of Von Baer, belongs to 
 Aristotle ; the constant segmentation of the originally 
 undifferentiated cell, in which the process of de- 
 velopment consists, is described by himself — wov 
 yap to fj,ev irpwTov dSiopiarov, elra 8ia/cpiv6fjL6vov 
 ylvercu 7roWa. 
 
 There is a very great difference between a modern
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 193 
 
 text-book of embryology and Aristotle's imperfect 
 efforts, in point of fulness of detail and elaboration. 
 None the less, such a text-book runs on the lines 
 laid down by Aristotle, and does but fill up the 
 sketch, outlined by the hand of the old master. 
 The man who studies such a modern text-book is 
 also studying unintentionally a particular branch 
 of the philosophy of Aristotle. 
 
 Now, there is one very important error frequently 
 committed by modern scientific exponents of this 
 process of development that was never committed 
 by Aristotle. It is constantly asserted, and the 
 most far - reaching philosophical conclusions are 
 founded on the assertion, that all protoplasm is 
 identical. Protoplasm is spoken of generally, as if 
 it were everywhere the same, the common life- 
 material of all organic beings. The protoplasm 
 of plant and animal, of different plants and different 
 animals, is, we are told, microscopically indistin- 
 guishable. It may be so : the resemblance may 
 even go further : the chemical constituents may be 
 the same. Yet not only does that not warrant us 
 in pronouncing on the identity of all protoplasm, 
 but on the contrary, it is demonstrably certain that 
 the reverse is the truth. Two portions of proto- 
 plasm may look the same, may even consist of the 
 same chemical constituents, but they are for all 
 
 o
 
 194 UNITY: 
 
 that potentially different, and development proves it. 
 No cell ever becomes anything other than one de- 
 finite thing. Consider, e.g. among vegetables, the 
 bamboo, the bulrush, the carrot, the onion, the 
 orange, the cucumber : among animals, the camel, 
 the elephant, the eagle, the porcupine, the mole, 
 the owl, the swan : suppose, to make the case as 
 strong as possible, that the chemical elements of 
 the several cells of these essentially different beings 
 were the same or nearly so in all : yet is it not plain 
 that every cell must be intensely sui generis, and 
 that the more the elements are the same, the more 
 is it necessary that the cause of the difference must 
 lie in the composition, the synthesis ; that something 
 different from the elements which as we have seen 
 is everywhere the essence of all being ? With this 
 agrees the extraordinarily complex nature of the 
 organic cell as compared with the physical mole- 
 cule, a complexity which defies the efforts of ana- 
 lysis, for it is unstable, and therefore examination 
 disturbs it ; alters, even in the endeavour to de- 
 tect it. 
 
 Here, as everywhere, the truth clearly exhibits 
 itself. Just as water is a thing totally different 
 from its elements, so is each cell a thing wholly 
 other than its component materials. Between cells, 
 as between molecules, there obtains the most in-
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 195 
 
 tense difference ; a difference that lies, not in the 
 elements, but the structure. To every cell its own 
 potentiality that determines the result : to yap atriou 
 Toy elvau ttcmtiv rj ova-la Kol 6 \6yos rfj9 ovalas. 
 The essence of every living creature lies potentially 
 in its cell, and appears fully developed in the grown 
 animal : growth being the process of the change, 
 the realisation of the possible as such. 
 
 Note. It is precisely in connection with the cell 
 as the potentiality of the fully developed animal 
 that the. impotence and superficiality of Darwin's 
 theory of Natural Selection becomes so glaring. 
 I have proved in my Body and Soul that that 
 theory is not only erroneous, but impossible : that it 
 is at once a truism and an absurdity, the absurdity 
 being quietly swallowed for the sake of the truism. 
 But in connection with our present subject I invite 
 the reader to consider the following argument. 
 
 The problem of evolution is not only physical 
 but metaphysical : that is to say, the solution must 
 take account not only of the historical genesis and 
 chronological origin of organic forms, but also of 
 their definite nature and constitution, when they 
 have originated : not only the passage, change, and 
 transmutation of one form into another, but also 
 
 O 2
 
 196 UNITY: 
 
 the fixity of the form so obtained. Now the theory 
 of Natural Selection utterly ignores this fixity and 
 what it implies. It solves the origin of any form 
 by happy accident, casual variation. Very good. 
 But the continued production of similar forms is 
 not an accident. Why does a rhinoceros go on 
 producing a rhinoceros ? Obviously, because the 
 cell, the fertilised ovum, is obliged by the necessity 
 of its nature to become a rhinoceros and nothing 
 else. Now, no accident will account for this neces- 
 sity, this formal cause. Any one who will reflect 
 upon this will inevitably come to the conclusion 
 that the transmutation of any form into another 
 is somehow or other determined by and bound up 
 with changes in the generative system and process : 
 that is, in the formal cause, the cell, the potentiality 
 of the complete and perfect animal. It is not a 
 trifling miserable accidental variation in the fully 
 developed animal, of no account whatever in the 
 nature of the animal, but some radical and profound 
 chemico-organic change in the cell which alone can 
 explain final and definite alteration of the animal's 
 form ; an alteration which is therefore constant, and 
 goes on without change, with the regularity of clock- 
 work : for fixity is no more to be disregarded than 
 change of form. According to Darwin's way of 
 looking at the matter, this fixity would be a mere
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 197 
 
 accident 4 , like the shape of water in a cup, ready- 
 to change without demur or hesitation at the call 
 of circumstances. But what he ignores is the. formal 
 cause, the potentiality of form. To explain the origin 
 of species you must explain that : it is certainly 
 not explained by accidental variation. No amount 
 of accidental variation will add up into necessary 
 potentiality of a definite form : will in other words, 
 make up, explain, or account for, a cell. That, once 
 having arisen, a superior form will defeat an inferior 
 one, is a thing that stands to reason : it is a mere 
 truism: but the difficulty is, to understand, how u 
 that superior form came about. Darwin's theory 
 never touches the point : he assumes, just what con- 
 stitutes the difficulty ; the arising of favourable 
 variations. But how do these arise ? The Origin 
 of Species is an ignoratio elenchi. 
 
 Imperfect as it is, the geological record proves 
 conclusively v that the historical series of life on 
 the globe exhibits a constant progress upwards in 
 organisation from lower to higher : otherwise ex- 
 pressed, cells have constantly been becoming richer 
 
 1 Just as rocks are geological accidents, so according to Darwin's 
 views are organic forms. It is a view derived from geology. 
 
 " This is where his fallacy lies. If the variations were very slight, 
 they would not be favourable : to be so, they would have to be 
 very large and sudden. See Appendix. 
 
 T Lyell's Geology (Judd), p. 446.
 
 ipS UNITY: 
 
 in potentiality, growing in power and variety. Now 
 to imagine that this continuous acquisition of ad- 
 ditional potentiality, of further formative power, can 
 be accounted for by the impossible selection, or 
 survival, or preservation of a minute, haphazard, 
 almost imperceptible variation in the fully developed 
 animal, argues a want of understanding of the point 
 where the difficulty is. The difficulty does not lie in 
 seeing, that the advantageous form will defeat its com- 
 petitors, — but in seeing how that advantage comes 
 about. Darwin's theory only explains what is ob- 
 vious : what is difficult it does not explain ; it as- 
 sumes it. It postulates the advantage : this is simply 
 to beg the question. The insignificant variation 
 in the full grown animal, the accidents of matter, 
 could never exercise the slightest influence. On 
 the other hand, it is certain that the very strangest 
 and abrupt departures from type, new organic points 
 of structure, are sometimes produced suddenly, by 
 the mysterious agency of generation. Two parrots 
 have been known, for example, abruptly to pro- 
 duce a third adorned with a brilliant scarlet hood 
 possessed by neither of its parents. This, and 
 similar instances, show that the solution of the 
 problem lies, not in the casual variation of the full 
 grown animal, but in the changes produced by some 
 mysterious agency in the form of the cell, the poten-
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 199 
 
 tiality of the animal x . The developed animal lies 
 a priori, potentially, in its cell, which must therefore 
 be rigorously determined by organic necessity : it 
 is this that contains the mystery. In other words, 
 the change of fully developed forms lies in some 
 difference of composition in the cells, exactly as, 
 analogously, the difference of molecules lies in some 
 chemical difference of the composition of their 
 elements. 
 
 That cells do become transmuted is certain : but 
 equally certain is it that Darwin's theory is not the 
 explanation of how it is done. That theory is alto- 
 gether superficial ; it does not touch the point. It 
 is a mistaken endeavour to account for inner organic 
 potential necessity by trifling exterior accident. 
 
 The cause of the transmutation of cells certainly 
 lies in generation, of which we know absolutely no- 
 thing : the mixture and as it were chemical compo- 
 sition of the cell. Aristotle has some profound 
 apcrcus on this point. ' We ought to observe,' he 
 
 1 ' When we remember such cases as the formation of the more 
 ' complex cells, and certain monstrosities, which cannot be accounted 
 'for by reversion, cohesion, &c, and sudden strongly-marked de- 
 ' viations of structure, such as the appearance of a moss-rose on 
 ' a common rose, we ?nust admit that the organisation of the indi- 
 1 vicinal is capable through its own laws of growth, under certain 
 ' conditions, of undergoing great modifications, independently of the 
 '■gradual accumulation of slight inherited modifications.' Origin oj 
 Species, p. 151 (5th Ed.). This destroys his theory.
 
 200 UNITY: 
 
 says y, 'that a change in a very small principle will 
 'bring" about concomitantly change in many things 
 ' that depend on that principle. This is plainly to 
 ' be noted in the case of eunuchs. For though only 
 1 the organs of generation have been destroyed, yet 
 ' the whole form changes to such an extent as to 
 'seem almost womanish: plainly indicating that 
 ' that part or power which determines the sex of 
 ' the animal is of the very first importance in its 
 'economy 2 .' This is a very pregnant consideration 
 in connection with the origin and transmutation of 
 forms, and it is here that the core of the problem 
 lies. 
 
 Darwin was a very great naturalist, and his 
 powers of observation were of the first order, but 
 he was a very poor thinker, and the only part of the 
 Origin of Species which is original is altogether 
 futile. The transmutation of species is a necessary 
 deduction from geology : it was ' in the air ' when 
 he wrote, and we should have had the idea now, 
 even had he never existed. But the endeavour to 
 account for that transmutation by ' Natural Selec- 
 tion ' is only one of the innumerable instances of 
 the sort of palpable absurdity that can pass for 
 philosophy, when the appeal is to the vulgar. A 
 
 y De Generatione Animalium, i. 2. 
 * Cp. also lb. iv. I, and v. 7.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 201 
 
 man nowadays may be totally destitute of training 
 in analytical thinking, definition, and method : he 
 may not even know what ' science ' is : yet if he 
 collects beetles or cuts up frogs he is a ' man of 
 science,' and qualified accordingly to pronounce on 
 the profoundest questions, betraying at every step 
 that the sutor is ultra crepidam. For no amount 
 of knowledge of particular scientific detail will 
 make a man a master of science. It is not the 
 accumulation of facts, it is the interpretation of 
 facts, in which lies science ; nor as a rule are ' men 
 of science ' even aware that thought has laws. And 
 this deplorable state of things must continue, until 
 Physics learns, not to beware of Metaphysics, but 
 to understand, and revere her. 
 
 § 6. SOUL, or Biology (actuality.) 
 
 The cell is the potentiality of the living being : 
 its actuality is the soul, on which so many strange 
 delusions have existed since the beginning, founded 
 on the error of divorcing and abstracting the esse 
 from the posse. Here also Aristotle alone was equal 
 to the problem. 
 
 Observe a dead crab, impaled on a pin or other- 
 wise preserved in a collection : there you have the 
 body. Watch the same crab, scuttling about side-
 
 202 UNITY: 
 
 ways over rocks and sea-weed, half in and half out 
 of water, when the tide is coming hurtling and 
 heaving in : there you have the soul, the essence 
 of life. It is not the body of the crab, but the soul 
 of him, the energetic activity of his peculiar frame, 
 in its due situation and circumstances, that con- 
 stitutes his being and fills us with such inexhaustible 
 delight to see. This is that ^v^fjs ivepyeia kut' 
 apeTTjv wherein consists the happiness, the end and 
 goal of all organic existence. The infinite varieties 
 of plants and animals are all only incarnations of 
 soul of various kinds, and therefore Aristotle says 
 well, that the business of the natural philosopher 
 is with the soul rather than the body : tov cpvaiKov 
 irepl ^rv^ip av elrj \ijeiv ical elBivai, not the dead 
 quiescent structure, but its living energy. 
 
 Anatomy and physiology deal only with the body, 
 the means to the end : they tell us nothing about 
 the nature of that whose parts and structure they 
 investigate. ' Man is only entitled to that rank in 
 ' a morphological system which, in future ages, when 
 ' nothing is left of our race but a sufficient number 
 ' of fossil bones, a thinking being would assign to 
 ' him in a scientific arrangement of the animal 
 'kingdom. According to the principles of com- 
 ' parative anatomy and by scientific requirements 
 ' he would then be separated from the apes of
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 203 
 
 ■ the present geological era only as an order or 
 1 sub-order a .' 
 
 Now, though this may be true, it proves only 
 this, how little anatomy penetrates into the nature 
 of man. The skeleton does not contain the soul. 
 Contemplate the skeletons of man and the gorilla ; 
 who could dream, from such inspection, of the 
 infinite difference between the natures of the two ? 
 Who could tell by examining the skeleton of the 
 elephant, that this enormous unwieldy bony structure 
 can walk through dense jungle so silently as to 
 come upon deer by surprise ? Who could imagine 
 by examining the skeletons of the cuckoo or cow- 
 bunting that these birds have the habit of laying 
 their eggs in the nests of other birds? Who could 
 foresee, from an examination of the anatomical 
 structure of the sand-wasp, its habit of laying its 
 egg in a tunnel of mud filled with dead spiders 
 for the future nutriment of its grub ? And so 
 universally. No amount of anatomy will give you 
 a particle of insight into the nature of bird or 
 beast or fish b . To understand this you must go 
 to their haunts and watch them. Only there will 
 you get that Realisation of the Possible, that actual 
 
 * Oscar Peschel's Races of Man, p. 6. 
 
 b Except of a purely general description, as carnivora from their 
 teeth, &c. : yet this is not always certain, for there are animals whose 
 habits contradict their structure.
 
 204 UNITY: 
 
 energy which is the soul of each, and which it is 
 the object of natural history and biography to seize 
 and depict. And with man it is clearly the same 
 The dissecting table is democratic and levelling. 
 Lay open on it Loyola, Napoleon, Shakspeare, 
 Aristotle, or a peasant from the plough, it will 
 not show you the difference. You must view them 
 at work, alive, to understand the peculiar nature 
 of each. Do the stupid crowds who flock to 
 Zoological Gardens in great cities understand the 
 strange and melancholy beasts at which they stare 
 with lack lustre eyes, offering them all indiffer- 
 ently buns? How should they? The carcases of 
 the wild animals are there to see, but not their 
 souls, their selves: they left those in the jungles 
 and the forests and the deserts which were their 
 homes, and lost them in captivity. This is why 
 in all such places there is something gloomy and 
 oppressive : a Thiergarten or a ' Zoo ' is, in fact, 
 a morgue, a place of death and corpses, a dungeon 
 of the dead-alive. Lifted out of the economy of 
 Nature, in which they filled a place and had their 
 being, these singular structures lose their raisou 
 d'etre, lose their grace and appositeness, and be- 
 come absurd : mere misshapen lumps of matter 
 without any visible appropriate end, like a lid 
 without its box, a corkscrew where no bottles are,
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 205 
 
 or a Hindoo Pundit at Timbuctoo. For the soul 
 of everything lies not in itself, but in other things 
 and its relation to them : each thing is for the 
 sake of those others. Sever the continuity, and 
 you slay the soul, leaving only something that 
 seems to live but does not. It wants only that 
 infinitesimal thing, that something different which 
 constitutes the essence of reality in every grade 
 of the ladder of being; that imperceptible touch 
 of Nature which alone of all philosophers Aristotle 
 could seize and understand, because he only was 
 not the victim of abstraction. 
 
 The soul of every living creature lies indeed in 
 others ; experience will furnish every man a bitter 
 proof of the truth as he grows old. For then the 
 old circle of friends with which he started and in 
 which he had his place gradually disappears, and 
 with it disappears also the best part of himself: 
 for the element in which he was at home is gone, 
 and he may now say sadly with Ovid : Barbarus 
 hie ego sum quia non intelligor ulli. 
 
 Thus old men are already dead, when Death 
 finally arrives to take them away : and they get 
 up from the table and follow him gladly out of 
 the room, for their life has long been a void, 
 a mere mockery, containing nothing of that which 
 made it what it was.
 
 206 UNITY: 
 
 § 7. Wealth, or Economics. 
 
 The unit, or molecule, of Economics is a single 
 one of those instruments of life which collectively 
 we call Wealth. 
 
 Now, it is to be carefully observed that there are 
 two distinct and different points of view from which 
 we may approach the subject of Wealth : and it 
 makes not a little but all the difference in the world 
 which we adopt. The remarkable fact is that almost 
 all economists confound the two and waver between 
 them : they avowedly adopt the one, and yet give 
 a definition which is harmonious only with the other. 
 The only really logical economist, who has clearly 
 and wholly adhered to one point of view, is Mr. H. D. 
 Macleod, and what he gains by this on one side 
 he loses on the other : for his point of view is the 
 wrong one : he is not a political but a mathematical 
 economist. 
 
 Wealth may be considered either as created or as 
 exchanged: either as a product to be used, or as a com- 
 modity to be sold: and Economics become accord- 
 ingly the scientific analysis either of the process of 
 creation, or the mechanism of exchange. To confine 
 your attention to this second view is to mistake the 
 means for the end : for the true end of all wealth as, 
 e.g., a shoe, is not to be sold, but to be used. For the
 
 THE LOGIC OF NA TURE. 207 
 
 commercial man, the means is the end ; but for the 
 statesman, not so. 
 
 I. If, therefore, we adopt the first, which is the 
 true and philosophical point of view, admirably in- 
 dicated by the title of Adam Smith's work, — An 
 Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of 
 Nations* — we obtain the true definition of Wealth, 
 which I have elsewhere called the Quadruple Princi- 
 ple of Wealth-Creation. The Wealth of any nation 
 is a vast accumulation of units, each one of which 
 is to the whole aggregate exactly what a molecule 
 of water is to a mass of it : each, that is to say, is 
 a synthesis or compound of essentially four consti- 
 tuent causes, viz. : Material, Labour, Form, and De- 
 mand d : the four Aristotelean causes. (Aristotle 
 never applied them to Economics, but he may be 
 regarded as the potential author of the true defini- 
 tion, here as in the case of Sight.) According to 
 this definition, two things are especially to be ob- 
 served. First, that the highest form of Wealth would 
 be a great work of art : a statue, a picture, a drama, 
 
 c There is not a line, from end to end of Smith's book, on the 
 nature of wealth : its causes were, as he partly sees himself, wholly 
 other than the theory which he advocates ; and that theory, it 
 realised, would destroy all the nations in the world : it is anti- 
 nalional. 
 
 We might express it thus: as water is- II.jO, so Wealth is 
 MLFD.
 
 2o8 UNITY: 
 
 a temple, an oratorio ; and the highest activity of 
 the nation, the full development and expression of 
 the creative faculty. Secondly, that the power is 
 more than the act, the posse of Wealth than its esse, 
 and that we ought to think rather of the permanence 
 of the causes of Wealth, than the actual Wealth 
 itself. And this was not done by the economists. 
 
 II. But the enormous development of commerce, 
 coupled with want of insight into the nature of 
 Wealth, has led to the general adoption by eco- 
 nomists of the commercial or business point of view, 
 resulting in this definition of Wealth, that it is any- 
 thing whatever that will exchange. The essence of 
 Wealth is thus placed, not in its true end, but in 
 its exchange value. And according to this defini- 
 tion, the highest form of Wealth would be Money, 
 and the goal and aim of human endeavour, national 
 or individual, to make it. 
 
 This is the chrematistic view, which has a partial 
 truth, but becomes an error in so far as this part 
 claims to be all, which makes money the riXos, the 
 essence and final cause of all productive effort ; 
 which turns all the sciences and arts into means 
 to that end, and makes venality the test of worth. 
 Nemesis will overtake the nation which adopts this 
 view. For just as the true end of man is the ^vxns 
 ipipyeia kclt apeTrjv, so is the true end of creation
 
 THE LOGIC OF NA TURE. 209 
 
 or production the object created : for Wealth must 
 subserve the end. And indeed, the world, though 
 in its business relations it would agree with the 
 shortsighted shopkeeper definition, yet in its heart 
 of hearts agrees with the other. For it looks upon 
 its great works of art, rightly, as its best and truest 
 Wealth, and recognises, obscurely, that business is not 
 the end, but only a means to the end. Nor does 
 it class the business man, the man who makes most 
 money, on a level with the artist or philosopher or 
 statesman: it may envy, but it does not admire him: 
 no one erects statues to business men or money- 
 makers. And this shows, though it is not under- 
 stood, that the essence of Wealth is not exchange- 
 value. That is the highest form of Wealth which 
 embodies the soul of all Wealth and combines each 
 necessary element at its highest power: which gives 
 us the choicest material, the hardest labour, the best 
 intellect, and satisfies, expresses, or answers to the 
 highest need of man. 
 
 Which is the real Wealth: the Parthenon, or its 
 weight in gold ? there is the choice of Hercules. On 
 the answer to that question depends, theoretically, 
 the economic system : practically, the national char- 
 acter and achievement, and its reputation in his- 
 tory. As a rule the solution will be that of the 
 poet, 
 
 P
 
 210 UNITY: 
 
 ' video meliora, proboque, 
 Deteriora sequor,' 
 
 a quotation which is painfully, humiliatingly true : 
 for it has caught the spirit of humanity ; whose 
 better part aims at higher things, but which is too 
 weak to attain them. 
 
 § 8. Institution, or Politics. 
 
 Every State is a system of institutions : insti- 
 tution is the essence of the State. What its mole- 
 cule is to a physical substance, its cell to an 
 organism, that its institutions are to a State. 
 And the same relation obtains here, as there : 
 it is not the elements but the composition that 
 determines the result. The men make the State, 
 but still more does the State make the men ; it 
 ' turns out ' its men. Hence the indescribable 
 difference between good and bad institutions. 
 
 It is the essence of Liberalism to ignore this truth : 
 hence the political convulsions of this century, hence 
 the everlasting endeavours to realise the impossible 
 by legislative juggling ; to identify the essential 
 differences existing between the members of the 
 State. 
 
 The mathematical tone of Science inspires, and 
 lies at the root of, this error. When the State is
 
 THE L OGIC OF NA TURE. 2 1 1 
 
 conceived, correctly, as a community, this concep- 
 tion is not a mathematic but an organic conception. 
 Community does not mean, as political theorists 
 assume, union of equals and similars, but of un- 
 equals atid dissimilars, oh <yctp ^iverai ttoXis it; 6/aoiW. 
 A State is an organic unity, composed of lesser 
 organic groups which are different in kind. The 
 conception which lies at the root of Liberalism is 
 what we may call the Atomic Theory of society : 
 a State of homogeneous units ; a mere numerus 
 of identical atoms: a community of individuals. 
 No such ' State ' ever did, ever will, or ever could 
 exist, except for a moment. The French at the 
 close of last century made, under the influence of 
 this theory e , a clean sweep of their institutions, and 
 set up a mathematical ' State ' of units, which 
 immediately became the only thing it could be- 
 come — a barrack ; and vanished, as things settled 
 down again, leaving France a prey to convulsion, 
 owing to the destruction of her institutions. 
 
 The accepted statement, that the progress of 
 society is from status to contract, harmonises with 
 this Atomic Theory. But this statement is only 
 true legally : if understood socially it is false and 
 absurd. It is altogether a delusion to suppose that 
 
 ■ Admirably shown in the best of all histories of the Revolution, 
 that of Taiae. 
 
 P 2
 
 212 UNITY: 
 
 you can get rid of status in any State. You may 
 abolish it, in a particular technical sense ; you may 
 change its form ; but it will always be there. And 
 the reason is that you cannot have any State 
 without institutions, and institutions involve status 
 of a kind. 
 
 The men of a State are not individuals but 
 persons : the two radical elementary conceptions 
 of the State are, in the language of Roman Law, 
 persona and res, persons and things, i.e. property, 
 for res does not mean a thing in the metaphysical 
 sense, it means a thing in relation to persons. Law 
 has nothing to do with a thing in the abstract. 
 
 Take, e.g., England. Among English institutions, 
 we observe a Monarch, a Peerage, a House of Com- 
 mons, a Church, a Bar, Universities, Public Schools, 
 an Army, consisting of different Regiments, a Navy, 
 &c. Now, the Queen, a Duke, a Member of Parlia- 
 ment, a Bishop, a Q.C., the Head of a College, an 
 Oxford or Eton man, a Colonel R.A., a Captain 
 R.N., &c, are none of them individuals. They 
 are persons. They are made what they are by 
 their positions. Their lives and actions are deter- 
 mined at all moments by the myriad influences of 
 the corps to which they belong. For example, the 
 spirit of Public Schools and the University has the 
 most profound influence on the Government of
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 213 
 
 India: abolish them, and India would be governed 
 far otherwise than it is. Or again, the past of any 
 Regiment hovers over its living members and in- 
 spires them when in action. And so it is universally. 
 That is to say, that the nature and activity of 
 Englishmen is determined, made what it is, by 
 their institutions. This is the true self-government, 
 of which the Liberal or Atomistic theory, which 
 thinks of nothing but the numerical representation 
 of individuals, is the bastard caricature. 
 
 I say, then, that here, as in all the other spheres 
 of Science, it is not the elements, but that something 
 different from the elements, which arises from their 
 being what and as they are ; that is, the institutions, 
 which are the essence of the matter in the political 
 area. It is not the men that make the State, but 
 the State that makes the men. 
 
 Obviously, volumes might be written on this 
 theme. But as the present object is only to connect 
 politics with the Aristotelean conception of nature 
 in general, I shall content myself with two illus- 
 trations of the way in which a misconception of 
 the truth may bring about fatal results, with the 
 best intentions in the world. 
 
 The false effort after unification, equalisation, 
 identification of opposites and dissimilars, which 
 arises from and reposes on the Atomic or mathe-
 
 214 UNITY: 
 
 matical conception of the State, appears especially 
 nowadays in two directions : the attempt to realise 
 equality of properties and the attempt to realise 
 equality of persons. 
 
 I. Viewing with moral disapproval the actual 
 system, according to which property is very un- 
 equally divided, and owned to a large extent by 
 ' idle rich ' men, the economists and political philo- 
 sophers of this century have industriously laboured 
 to show, and the Socialists and other Utopians now 
 repeat after them, that the foundation and principle 
 of property is industry : that this alone is its legiti- 
 misation : that only that is properly your own which 
 you have made yourself: that the true law of the 
 State is that he who does not work shall not eat, 
 and that he only should have and enjoy who has 
 made. 
 
 I assert, on the contrary, that such a principle 
 is inconsistent with the existence of the State, and 
 that its realisation would be the death of every 
 State and the annihilation of every existing system 
 of property. I say that the principle of property 
 is, and must necessarily be, that he who does not 
 work shall have and enjoy. 
 
 To exist, the State must have a continuous exist- 
 ence, from parents to children onwards. Now, the 
 principle of political continuity is inheritance. With-
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 215 
 
 out inheritance, no State is possible. But with 
 inheritance, it is impossible that property should 
 be founded on industry. For you cannot prevent 
 property from passing into the hands of those who 
 had nothing to do with the making of it. And 
 now, in addition to the main stream of inherit- 
 ance, consider also the minor but still immense 
 affluents of marriage, gift, bequest, gambling, swind- 
 ling, theft. Are you going to stop them ? Can 
 you prevent property from passing by their means ? 
 You might as well attempt to dam Niagara. These 
 things are the foundation and explanation of every 
 system of property in the world. It makes not 
 the slightest difference how property was originally 
 acquired, whether by force, fraud, or industry. Be 
 that how you please, a few generations later it will 
 be in the hands of an heir of some kind ; i.e. of 
 some one who had no hand in the making of it. 
 
 Without the State, no property, for no security. 
 Without inheritance, again, no State. With in- 
 heritance, property is and must be, sooner or later, 
 owned by those who did not make it. This is the 
 law of property which no human force can alter. 
 
 And this is one of the many tests by which we 
 may judge of the degree of insight possessed by 
 any economist into the nature of the State. J. S. 
 Mill, for example, asserts that bequest is involved
 
 216 UNITY: 
 
 in the nature of property, and inheritance not ; that 
 you can have property without inheritance. I say 
 that it is just the other way : that you can have 
 property without bequest, but that you cannot have 
 it without inheritance. And history would confirm 
 this : but why appeal to history when reason is so 
 clear ? How is it possible for property to exist 
 without some principle of inheritance ? Who is to 
 possess that which was owned by one who dies 
 without a will? Are we to scramble for it? Mill's 
 conception of property, like his conception of almost 
 every other thing, is not the mirror of property 
 as it is, but the visionary notion of property as 
 it is not and cannot be : here as everywhere, his 
 thought is not analytic of the real, but abstract and 
 fictitious. He does not penetrate into the necessity 
 of the actual system of property and understand 
 its raison d'etre, why it is as it is, but he frames 
 an idea of what he supposes property ought to be, 
 and condemns existing systems because they do not 
 agree with it. The attempt to bring property into 
 harmony with the conception of society as a com- 
 munity of equal workers is simply futile. To be 
 unequal, and to be in possession of those who do 
 not work, is the necessity involved in the principle 
 of property, and however you may start, time will 
 realise this possibility, whether you will or no.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 217 
 
 II. Turn, now, to the second idea, the effort after 
 equality of persons, which arises from the radically- 
 false conception of the State as a community of 
 homogeneous units agreeing in their ' common 
 human nature.' The method of realising this state 
 of things lies in advocating the abolition of all 
 such institutions as recognise, embody, and per- 
 petuate differences of degree or kind in the mem- 
 bers of a society. This is described as Liberty, 
 and its partisan is a Liberal, i.e. one whose aims 
 are ' noble,' and whose insight into possibility is nil. 
 Liberty is the one thing Liberals might have been 
 supposed to understand. It was, as it were, their 
 political stock-in-trade — their private farm. There 
 is no one thing which they understand less. This 
 is why every society that falls into the hands of 
 Liberals is doomed : it ruins itself in pursuit of 
 a false ideal. True Liberty ; the fact, not the 
 phrase ; the actual, not the ideal ; the reality, not 
 the dream ; is not a natural and inalienable right, 
 it is a constitutional privilege ; not a universal, 
 but a peculiar thing ; positive, not negative ; not 
 inherent in, but added to, humanity; not opposed 
 to authority, but presupposing it ; not contrary 
 to institutions, but dependent on them : not natural 
 but acquired ; not common but enclosed ground ; 
 a Upov i7To\Udpov, the result of the holy communion
 
 2i8 UNITY: 
 
 of the State f . No philanthropy can ever bestow 
 liberty on the human race, or turn what is essen- 
 tially a privilege into a cosmopolitan attribute. 
 The attempt to do so, the realisation of ' human 
 liberty,' however beautiful its emblematic head may 
 appear on the coins of a momentary Republic, can 
 only result in its opposite, the slavery of man. For 
 if you give to the weak that freedom, that emancipa- 
 tion which can belong only to the strong", you 
 cast them unprotected on the world, and they will 
 sink, by the law of moral gravitation, to their 
 natural place. 
 
 Is it not plain ? can anything be plainer ? Take 
 illustrations. What two things have been more 
 zealously denounced by middle-class Liberalism 
 than the two old institutions of Slavery and Con- 
 cubinage? The Slave and the Concubine are re- 
 garded with pious horror as hideous features of a 
 barbaric and immoral age. Well, we have got rid 
 
 f 'You may inflict on me death, banishment, or dishonour,' says 
 Socrates to his judges, 'and some might think these things evils, 
 • but I do not.' That is, he despises the institutions of the city to 
 which he owed everything. Rightly did they put him to death. 
 
 s Liberals call out that Greece is being deprived (1897) of the 
 control of her own affairs, ' inalienable rights of every independent 
 nation.' But the fact is that Greece is utterly unfit to be inde- 
 pendent, and would not remain so for six months, if left to herself. 
 The independence of Greece is the diplomatic fad of Western 
 Europe : it must pay for its toy accordingly.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 219 
 
 of the words ; how is it with the things ? We have 
 substituted liberty for institutions; and we have got, 
 accordingly, instead of the Slave, the Proletariate, 
 and instead of the Concubine, the Prostitute. The 
 very institution of Slavery secured to the weak, the 
 slave, more true liberty than the 'free' man enjoys 
 under the regime of competition, i.e. Liberty ; for 
 his very freedom is his slavery : it throws him de- 
 fenceless into the hands of fortune, accident, and the 
 myriad fluctuations of circumstances. Under the 
 old system, both Slave and Concubine had a recog- 
 nised and not dishonourable position in society : 
 now, under other names, they are outside society, 
 while forming part of it, and constitute two of its 
 most formidable dangers and crying reproaches. 
 Institutions that recognise human nature, or ' Li- 
 berty ' and ' Morality ' that do not : choose, Star- 
 vation and Prostitution, or Slavery and Concubinage. 
 The emancipation of women is a very pretty idea ; 
 very pleasant for the aristocratic few : it means 
 things horrible even to think of for the democratic 
 many. Women are altogether unfit to be emanci- 
 pated : the necessity for their subordinate (not, ob- 
 serve, inferior) position is physiological, organic. 
 The theory, and a little coquetting with the practice, 
 look beautiful in time of peace and quiet : see how 
 it will work when times are troubled, and the fight-
 
 220 UNITY: 
 
 ing begins. Place women on a footing of perfect 
 equality with men : let them hold property, and 
 establish complete freedom of divorce h ; you will 
 injure them far more than you benefit them, as time 
 will show: for among other things, marriage becomes 
 an absurdity. It binds, ties ; it is slavery : your free 
 man and woman will have none of it. What is the 
 corollary ? 
 
 Liberals think, by reason of their profound ignor- 
 ance of the nature of things, to make homogeneous 
 the essentially unhomogeneous members of the State, 
 to identify parts that are complementary, polar op- 
 posites, and confound distinctions rooted in the 
 nature of things. They might just as well try to 
 make a horse walk with his mouth and eat with 
 his hoof. But they persevere ; they are actuated 
 by the best intentions, the noblest aims : they will 
 divide all, wealth, enjoyment, work, duties, functions, 
 equally and indiscriminately among all, men, women, 
 nay, even children (who work now as they never 
 worked before, and the joy has gone out of their life) ; 
 property, education, liberty, shall be the same for 
 all; the Universities shall be the hothouses, in which 
 
 h ' A specious theory is confuted by this free and perfect experi- 
 ' ment, which demonstrates that the liberty of divorce does not 
 'contribute to happiness and virtue.' Gibbon's Decline and Fall, 
 e. 44.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 221 
 
 young men and maidens shall be educated together, 
 and why not the Public Schools ? II faut avant tout 
 que les fannies soient homines; apres, qui vivra verra. 
 The time cannot be far distant when we shall love 
 like cattle, and think like chimpanzees : when all 
 our men are knaves or slaves, and all our women 
 prostitutes. For all these things are only various 
 forms of Chaos : whose essence, so to say, lies in the 
 confusion of distinctions and the absence of defini- 
 tion. 
 
 § 9. Authoritv, or Law. 
 
 As a layman in Law, I will venture to doubt 
 whether any one thing has been productive of more 
 mischief in this century than the inability to dis- 
 tinguish between Morality and Law ; to discern, 
 in what lies the essence of Law. 
 
 The essence of Law is authority. A law may be 
 moral as it may be immoral, conformable to notions 
 of equity or opposed to them ; but it is neither the 
 morality nor the immorality of the law which makes 
 it a law. What makes every law, Law, is that some- 
 thing different from its content which must always 
 accompany it, if it is to be a law ; i.e. the authority 
 which it carries with it.
 
 222 UNITY: 
 
 Now, this authority may have more sources than 
 one. It may be derived from superior force, the 
 direct and positive command of a superior who has 
 the power to reward or punish the obedience or 
 disobedience of the law. Or it may be derived 
 from belief, custom, religion, superstition. The 
 narrow rationalism ' of Austin, following Hobbes, 
 could see no source of authority but the State : 
 but this view would exclude half the Law in 
 history from the category of Law. 
 
 Any law may be defined as, a general rule of 
 conduct, to do or forbear, imposed by a real or 
 imaginary superior power, which will, or which it 
 is believed will, inflict a punishment on the breaker 
 of the rule. Observe, that if you leave out the 
 imaginary element in this definition, you will arrive 
 at the absurd result that the laws even of a State 
 are sometimes not laws : because it may very well 
 happen, and often has happened, that the supreme 
 authority in a State has in fact not the power to 
 enforce its laws or punish their breach : yet the 
 belief that it has such power might continue to 
 preserve the State and the laws long before its 
 real impotence was discovered. And this is so 
 true that in fact even in ' positive ' laws the imagi- 
 
 1 Austin does not understand that the potentiality of Law is deeper 
 than its actuality.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 223 
 
 nary power is far more important than the real, 
 and a brand new set of such laws would not be 
 so efficacious as when time had accustomed people 
 to them, i.e. begotten the authority of custom for 
 them ; so much does authority, and therefore law, 
 rest upon custom as its basis. What people believe 
 to be is in one way more important and stronger 
 than what actually is. And even the dissolution 
 of the State would produce less chaos than the 
 cessation of old beliefs, for the loss of authority 
 in the first case would be less than its loss in the 
 second : as is amply demonstrated by such periods 
 in history as the English Rebellion or the French 
 Revolution. 
 
 A mere precept of morality, as such, is not a law 
 and has no authority. It becomes a law, when, 
 and exactly in so far as, it acquires authority: 
 either by being laid down by a superior power, 
 actual and able to punish its breach, or by be- 
 coming recognised in the common practice and 
 belief of men as binding, from reason of custom, 
 superstition, or religion. To commit murder is 
 everywhere to violate morality, in nearly every 
 country to break law, but it was not so among 
 the Thugs in India ; it was just the other way ; 
 to commit murder was the law among the Thugs : 
 a law supported by an authority greater than all
 
 224 UNITY: 
 
 the authority behind the laws of England : the 
 authority of absolute and implicit belief in the com- 
 mand of an imaginary superior k , obeyed with an 
 obedience punctual and unquestioning. Here you 
 certainly had law ; equally certainly you had not 
 morality. And the truth is that there are as many 
 species of the genus Law as there are different 
 sources of authority. The Laws of the Church were 
 equal Laws with the Laws of the State ; canon and 
 civil Law was equally Law, before the Reforma- 
 tion. Hobbes' view of Law, like his abuse of 
 Aristotle, was dictated largely by bias and sinister 
 intention : he hated the Church. 
 
 And the truth that the essence of Law is 
 authority, is admirably brought out and exem- 
 plified in what is known as International Law. 
 In abstracto, International Law is not Law at all, 
 for it lacks that which is just the essence of Law — 
 authority. But it becomes truly Law exactly in so 
 far as it becomes associated with and is supported 
 by authority. The various States of ancient Greece 
 in the times of which Herodotus writes, had an 
 International Law in their common religious beliefs 
 and tics of kinship 1 . In the time of Thucydides 
 
 k See the extraordinary record in Sleeman's Ramaseeana, a book 
 that is unique in human history. 
 
 See especially Herodotus, Book viii. c. 144. The same sort
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 225 
 
 we see this disappearing, not because the morality- 
 was any the less theoretically binding than before, 
 but because the authority enforcing it — the belief 
 — was decaying. Under the Roman Empire the 
 various independent States of the ancient world 
 were all subjected to the Imperial system, and 
 International Law merged or disappeared, as it 
 were, into the Law of one colossal State : just as, 
 economically, the world had then a free trade m . 
 In later times the double system of Emperor and 
 Pope, the conception of a two-headed Christendom, 
 preserved a sort of International Law, which the 
 Church, rather than the State, represented and em- 
 bodied. But the Reformation destroyed it. Instead 
 of a common Christendom arose the modern system 
 of independent rival States. 
 
 And one of the first things revealed after the 
 Reformation had been in progress for some time 
 was the crying need of some International Law. 
 In truth it was the logical corollary of the Re- 
 formation. There are very few books in history 
 which have laid their finger on the point, recognised 
 
 of thing probably existed among the Hindoo Rajas of the Gangetic 
 Age. 
 
 m It is greatly to be regretted that Gibbon's immortal classic, 
 owing to his inexplicable over-valuation of Tacitus, represents the 
 Empire in colours often darker than the truth. The Empire was 
 «tp m^.ny ways, not the slavery, but the freedom of the world. 
 
 Q
 
 226 UNITY: 
 
 the inner need and necessity of their age, so ac- 
 curately as the great work of Grotius. He pointed 
 emphatically to a great want — an International 
 Authority. And since his time there has gradually 
 grown up a body of rules regulating national 
 conduct, recognised by the various nations as 
 forming a system of Law, and operating by di- 
 plomacy and treaties. To say that this is occa- 
 sionally set at nought by this or that Power in 
 periods of chaos is only to say, what is obvious, 
 that the system is delicate and comparatively un- 
 stable, yet it is Law for all that, in so far as it 
 is recognised as authoritative, and renders admirable 
 services to Europe. It is beautiful to see how the 
 maniacs who made the French Revolution, in their 
 crusade to establish International Morality, only 
 succeeded in destroying pro tempore International 
 Law. The same thing in principle is done by those 
 Liberals at present who ridicule and make light of 
 the European Concert. That Concert is a histori- 
 cally developed organisation which has become 
 a kind of institution : and though, as an eminent 
 statesman recently and humorously observed, 
 among its many virtues speed is not one, it is 
 nevertheless the nearest approach to the substi- 
 tution of diplomacy and arbitration for war that 
 Europe has yet seen. 

 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 227 
 
 As the Infinite is the potentiality of the finite* 
 so is International Morality the possibility of Inter- 
 national Law: being realised and becoming actual 
 in such measure as it can be embodied, however 
 imperfectly, in institutions that command obedience 
 and authority ; authority, the soul and essence of 
 Law, which disappears, when authority is withdrawn, 
 ipso facto, as night comes of itself when daylight 
 dies. 
 
 § 10. Character, or Ethics. 
 
 THERE exists, in the whole compass of literature, 
 one scientific treatise, and one only, on this subject; 
 and it is the Ethics of Aristotle. The greatness of 
 that book can be properly appreciated only by one 
 who has ransacked history to find anything simile 
 aut secundum — in vain. Of preachers, of moralists, 
 the name is legion. But one man only could analyse 
 and define virtue, mistaking no halves for the whole, 
 and laying his finger, with unerring accuracy, on the 
 point where virtue touches happiness, ' turning to 
 scorn, with lips divine, the falsehood of extremes,' 
 and steering clear alike of the mystical abuses of 
 God or beast by seizing the moral nature of man. 
 Ethical Science begins and ends with Aristotle. 
 
 Virtue is grounded on the nature of man, and its 
 
 Q2
 
 228 UNITY: 
 
 fundamental postulate is that life is good : for life 
 is itself the end. Deny this, with the pessimist, the 
 ascetic, or the hyperphysical idealist who frames his 
 ethic not in accordance with the nature of man, and 
 all is lost : virtue as well as life becomes absurd, and 
 the logical corollary is Nirvana, suicide, the denial 
 of life, mystical extravagance and abomination of 
 all kinds : for where the heights are, there also is 
 the abyss. Life is itself a good : rather, the good, 
 the end. Thus also, the acts, the means that con- 
 duce to the end. Observe, now, that the nature of 
 man, on which virtue is grounded, is not that ab- 
 stract humanity of which so much is heard nowa- 
 days (which leads into isolation, quietism, mona- 
 chism, self-absorption, withdrawal from the world, 
 laziness, and the death of the nation), but real 
 humanity, real men ; not men in the abstract but 
 men in the concrete, living and working in the 
 social nexus. Of these men, each one is a unit, 
 a manifestation of character, of virtuous or vicious 
 disposition or habit (££*?). The commentary on Aris- 
 totle's Ethics is universal history ; every biography 
 is an instance in point. 
 
 Those actions arc good which tend to the welfare 
 of the whole of which the individual character or 
 single man forms a part. This whole is not human- 
 ity, but his community, state, or nation, out of which
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 229 
 
 no welfare is attainable. But now, good conduct 
 alone does not constitute virtue, nor indicate char- 
 acter. A bad man may act virtuously ; bad men 
 do indeed continuously and throughout life act more 
 or less in accordance with virtue for ends of their 
 own. This is the hypocrisy of society. The miser 
 gives alms : the avaricious man subscribes: the cruel 
 man shows mercy ; the coward performs a cour- 
 ageous action; the lascivious man abstains parcalcul, 
 &c. All this does not constitute virtue. For that 
 depends not on the outside but the inside ; not the 
 act, but the spirit or intention of the doer. This is 
 the essence of virtue, the essence of character. It 
 is conduct indeed, but not conduct, as such; it is 
 conduct plus that something different which accom- 
 panies it, which here, as always, is the soul of the 
 matter and makes virtue what it is. Not only what 
 is done, but how it is done. 
 
 No greater blow was ever inflicted upon Ethics 
 than by the Provincial Letters of Pascal. Sir Henry 
 Maine has said n , that since the publication of those 
 'celebrated papers,' ethical speculation has ceased 
 to be conducted on the lines of the casuists. He 
 does not say, for he did not see, that this meant the 
 ruin of all sound ethics, which in losing Aristotle lost 
 its tradition, its truth and its method. Pascal's 
 
 n Ancient Law.
 
 230 UNITY: 
 
 Provincial Letters are the greatest libel that has ever 
 been written : a literary masterpiece of the first order, 
 written by a man of genius to serve, not the truth, 
 but a party. As D'Alembert says, nobody can 
 have known better than Pascal, when, to serve the 
 Jansenists, he composed those wonderful specimens 
 of dramatic irony, that what he attributed to the 
 Jesuits alone was common to the casuists of all the 
 orders ; and that he was misrepresenting theoretic 
 and speculative subtlety common to all, and holding 
 it up as if it were systematically contrived by the 
 Order of Jesus to corrupt the world in the interests 
 of their society. He imputed to a theoretic prac- 
 tice a sinister intention, and charged it on one out 
 of a number. Was this commendable procedure 
 on his part? Is it for the uneducated vulgar to judge 
 about such questions as these ? Pascal proved too 
 much : if he was right, the Jesuits were not men but 
 devils. No order of men could ever have formed 
 such a design as he imputed to them. 
 
 Notwithstanding the disastrous result of con- 
 founding the use with the abuse, out of which 
 Pascal made his point, the truth which he cari- 
 catured is the truth par excellence in Ethics. It is 
 not the act, but the spirit of the act, which makes 
 it good. And no man can perform the act in the 
 proper spirit, unless he be the right sort of man ;
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 231 
 
 unless, that is, his character be definitely of the 
 right kind. Now, character does not depend upon 
 knowledge : it is formed by education. Hence the 
 close connection of virtue with education : the true 
 end of all education being, not to impart know- 
 ledge, but to form character. Hence the invalu- 
 able worth of good educational institutions. The 
 link between ethics and politics is supplied by the 
 analytical philosophy of Aristotle, who in this as 
 in other cases combines profundity with common 
 sense and the practice of the world, sublimity with 
 sanity, health, invigoration : the mens sana in cor- 
 pore sano. There is a place in his Ethics not only 
 for the hero, the magnanimous man, but also for 
 the honest, straightforward, open English schoolboy. 
 The tone of Aristotle's Ethics is the same as that 
 of the plays of Shakspeare or the novels of Scott, 
 the two greatest dramatic authors, not only because 
 of their power, but because of their tone. Litera- 
 ture, now, is not a tonic but a poison : for it has 
 lost Aristotle and its thought is diseased : it is 
 based not on virtue but on vice, and its charac- 
 teristic is aKpaaia, a/coXaala, the absence of self- 
 control, moral impotence, and eroticism.
 
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 § ii. Insight , or Intellect. 
 
 INSIGHT is of all things the rarest and most 
 valuable. It is totally different from either learning 
 or reason ; the most learned man or the most power- 
 ful reasoner may possess no insight at all; and yet 
 without insight both learning and reason are often 
 worse than useless. 
 
 And what then, exactly, is insight ? This can 
 best be understood by taking an instance, wherein 
 we may see insight typified, from the royal game, 
 the king of games, the game of Chess. 
 
 The elements of Chess are the chequered board 
 and various pieces, of different powers and capaci- 
 ties, each with its peculiar move. But what, now, 
 is Chess ? Rousseau, if I remember rightly, says 
 somewhere, that he studied Chess in books upon 
 the game for months, and was then beaten easily 
 by a tyro the first time he endeavoured really to 
 play. ' The books ' tell you, for example, that in 
 such and such an opening, such and such a move 
 is good. But the truth is that no move is, by itself, 
 good. It is of no use to know theoretically the 
 opening ' good ' moves, if you cannot proceed. The 
 analytical treatise carries any particular opening out 
 
 Aristotle has two terms with this meaning, <pp6vricns and vovs ; 
 the former relating to the practical, the latter to the theoretical 
 sphere.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 233 
 
 for some fifteen or twenty moves, and then dis- 
 misses the game with the statement, ' Black wins.' 
 But let White be Morphy, and Black, Rousseau, 
 and Black will not win. 
 
 Quorsum hczc tarn putida ? This, that the art 
 of Chess is not to be learned from books, and does 
 not lie in theoretically good moves or learning. 
 It lies in combination ; i.e. he can best play Chess 
 who understands the powers of the pieces in com- 
 bination p, and given any particular situation, can 
 discern the point of it in regard to strength or 
 weakness, and consequently, the next thing to be 
 done. The same situation — all the pieces and the 
 whole board — lie open before the bad as before 
 the good player ; but one can see and the other 
 not. The advance of some unregarded Pawn, the 
 sacrifice of some important Piece, something not 
 apparent, something altogether futile, or even fatal, 
 except to the player who has real understanding 
 of the whole nexus and correlation of the situation : 
 this is Chess, this is Skill. 
 
 Now, this imaginative power of penetrating a 
 
 p So the technical expression, ' winning the exchange involves 
 a fallacy. The Rook is not necessarily more valuable than Knight 
 or Bishop : nay even a Pawn may be more valuable than a Queen : 
 everything depends upon the circumstances. Every chess player 
 will remember the celebrated game in which Zukertort beat Black - 
 burne by offering his Queen for nothing.
 
 254 UNITY: 
 
 whole and discerning the point, is insight, a word 
 which paints admirably exactly what is involved 
 in the thing. Transfer all this from Chess to Life, 
 to Politics, to War, to Philosophy, and you have the 
 explanation of a thing which in this age beyond 
 all others the world wholly misunderstands, videlicet, 
 that to know is not to understand. A man may be 
 an exhaustive specialist in his own department, and 
 yet misunderstand it altogether ; he may spend his 
 whole life in research, and have before his eyes the 
 complete details of the situation — historic, economic, 
 scientific, military, political ; and yet may altogether 
 mistake and mismanage his material, because he 
 has not insight. It is not the accumulation of facts, 
 it is their interpretation, on which all depends ; and 
 this world is so curiously arranged that it is pre- 
 cisely the man who has to decide who is least likely 
 to possess insight. Why is modern history, with 
 all its superabundance of detail, in so many ways 
 the exact reverse of the truth ? because not one 
 in a hundred historians has any insight. Why is 
 ' Political Economy ' a mass of rubbish ? because its 
 founders had no insight. Why is modern philosophy 
 throughout sophistical ? because its exponents have 
 no insight. When Napoleon came to Toulon, the 
 siege was over ; why ? insight. When Clive marched 
 to Arcot, Trichinopoli fell : insight. When Julius
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 235 
 
 Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he had managed to put 
 the Senate diplomatically in the wrong : insight. 
 Why was there a Mutiny in India in 1857 ? absence 
 of insight. 
 
 Ita vita est hominnm quasi si ludas tesseris. That, 
 which is manifested in the ' mimic battle ' in the 
 games of a Morphy or a Labourdonnais ; which 
 breathes in every page of Aristotle or Bolingbroke, 
 De Retz or Disraeli, and is never found in a Mill 
 or Macaulay, a Ricardo or Descartes ; which guides 
 and inspires a Themistocles, or Bismarck, Jane 
 Austen or Dostoyeffsky, is insight : the power of 
 grasping the whole as a whole, and consequently 
 discerning the related influence of every part ; the 
 power of intuitively apprehending and appreciating 
 the importance of what is apparently trivial, the 
 real triviality of what is apparently of colossal 
 dimensions ; the power of seeing through the mask 
 and the pretext, influencing the event by little 
 strokes and insignificant master- touches : — this 
 power is nothing whatever but the essence of 
 Aristotle in a subtle and intangible form, re- 
 flected in the mirror of mind. The chess-board 
 is before us all ; but it is not a knowledge of the 
 elements that makes the player : it is the intellectual 
 apprehension of that something different from the 
 elements which is in them, but invisible to all eyes
 
 236 UNITY: 
 
 save those that can see : something that cannot 
 be proved % and cannot be communicated, for 
 reason cannot reach it ; that is there, for one or 
 two, and entirely absent, for all the others ; who con- 
 sequently deny it, and prove, satisfactorily to them- 
 selves and others, that it does not exist and is not 
 there. 
 
 § 12. Reality, or Metaphysics. 
 
 icTTiv eiriGTrifxri rt9, says Aristotle, ?} Oecopel to 
 ov fj ov : there is a science which investigates not, 
 as physics does, the genesis of things, how they 
 come to be, but their essence, what are they, when 
 they are : i.e., which asks, what is the meaning of 
 the verb, to be, and in what consists the fact of 
 being. Things r that are, differ infinitely, but they 
 all agree in this respect, that they are. What is this 
 common property ? What is the being of a thing ? 
 What is it, to be real ? What constitutes reality ? 
 
 Metaphysics may well complain, like Liberty, 
 that many crimes are committed in her name. 
 
 q vovs av tit] tuiv apx^>" .... &M77 yvu<ris ko) ovk diro^u^is. 
 
 1 Except Matter, Space, and Time, which are not things, but 
 the universal possibilities of things, never actually anything. Space 
 is the possibility of figure and co-existence ; Time, the possibility 
 of change and succession ; Matter, the possibility of force. The 
 definition of force, which puzzles modern scientific men who will 
 not consult Aristotle is, the actuality of material power.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 237 
 
 Under the influence of the Cartesian philosophy, 
 of which we may truly say, nihil quod tetigit non 
 fccdavit, it has come to this, that Metaphysics, whose 
 object is as real and whose necessity is as indis- 
 pensable as Physics to the world, Metaphysics, 
 which deals with the most real of realities, is 
 identified with and degraded to thin, visionary, 
 abstract speculation about supra-sensuous hyper- 
 physical realms, attenuated problematical theorising 
 about the incognisable, essentially associated with 
 a disbelief in the testimony of the senses. And 
 as a consequence, Science, which needs a sound 
 Metaphysic as a fish needs water, and cannot exist 
 without it, has turned its back on ' Metaphysics ' 
 and employs the epithet metaphysical as an awful 
 brand wherewith to damn anything not agreeable 
 to it, while all the time it is wallowing in a ' meta- 
 physic ' of its own that sets all logic at defiance, 
 and would have made the old Schoolmen blush. 
 In modern scientific speculation, Mathematics has 
 replaced Metaphysics, calculation has usurped the 
 place of thought ; the inevitable consequence being 
 the confusion of abstractions with realities, the en- 
 deavour to explain concrete realities by hypothetic 
 mathematic figments, e.g. ' mass,' ' atoms] 'forces] 
 regarded as mere points or ' centres ' of agency 
 without material vehicle, and so on : in a word,
 
 238 UNITY: 
 
 the explanation of the continuous by the discrete, 
 which is absurd, and the same error precisely 
 as the ' metaphysics ' which Science so much de- 
 spises. Modern speculative Science and modern 
 speculative Philosophy are different variations on 
 the same theme — the endeavour to account for the 
 concrete reality by the abstract ens rationis. The 
 spirit of Descartes informs them both. 
 
 Metaphysics is not the degraded futile thing to 
 which modern Philosophy has reduced it, and which 
 it appears in the eyes of modern Science. Its 
 sphere and province is to point out that One in 
 the Many, which we have seen to be the core of 
 every special Science ; to track the identity through 
 all its special transformations and metamorphoses ; 
 and thus to show Science, as it were, her own face 
 in the glass, and reveal to her what she is, which 
 is just what at present she does not know. We 
 might call Metaphysics with perfect truth, the self- 
 knowledge of Science, the recognition by Science 
 of her own inner nature, that is, the intellectual 
 recognition of Nature of which Science is herself 
 the mirror. The specialist in any particular Science, 
 who does not know the metaphysical unity of all 
 Science, does not even properly understand his own : 
 for juncta juvant s . 
 
 • Cp. Jevons, Principles of Science, p. 599.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 239 
 
 By the constant (chemical) analysis of things into 
 their constituent elements, or by the constant (logical) 
 reference of any particular thing to a higher genus 
 of which it is a special case, most philosophies, such 
 as, e.g., those of Plato, Spinoza, Descartes, the 
 Eleatics, Schopenhauer, the Atomists, modern Phy- 
 sical Science, the old Hindoos, &c, come to place 
 reality either in ultimate elements, or ultimate 
 abstract genera, both of which are however not 
 more but less real than the things which they 
 seek to explain. Hence we find these schools 
 offering us as the true reality, Atoms, universal 
 imponderable Ethers, Ideas, Matters, Wills, Selves, 
 Brahms, Ones, and so on. All such philosophies 
 are philosophies of Identity : they place reality, 
 that is to say, in underlying fundamental Unity, 
 to which we penetrate by neglecting what is 
 different. 
 
 But now, it is obvious that this method, however 
 valuable as contributing to complete knowledge, 
 leads us nevertheless not towards, but further and 
 further away from reality, seeing that even assuming 
 this or that fundamental identity, the difficulty and 
 the problem does not lie in the identity, but in the 
 differences of things. How did the identity ever 
 become difference ? We must travel back again from 
 identity to difference. In other words, all these
 
 240 UNITY: 
 
 philosophies miss the point, viz., that a thing IS, 
 not only its elements, but something more, that is, 
 its peculiar composition ; not only its generic notion, 
 but something more, that is, its peculiar differences 
 (springing from time, place, and relation, the con- 
 ditions of reality which all these philosophies leave 
 out by abstraction). The essence of reality does not 
 lie in the underlying unconditioned identity of things, 
 whatever that may be, but in something in each 
 particular thing peculiar to itself; the essence of 
 anything is no secret, hidden, mysterious, incognis- 
 able x, lying ' behind ' its phenomenal manifestation 
 (a materialistic or idealistic notion, the diametrical 
 antipodes of the truth) ; but on the contrary it is 
 naively and openly written in large characters on 
 everything. So far from being unknown and un- 
 knowable, it is on the contrary precisely the essence' 
 of anything which we can perfectly and exhaustively 
 know. It is not atoms, ethers, &c, that give its 
 reality to my watch, my horse, my dog, my wife, or 
 my child, my coat or hat. What, when you come to 
 talk of reality, is a res u ? 
 
 1 Nine out of ten modern philosophers confound the essence of 
 a thing with its material substratum, owing to the unfortunate word 
 substance. Matter, as Aristotle said, ages ago, is dyvuinbs ica6' 
 
 ai)TT)t>. 
 
 u Aristotle's philosophy is the only one in the world which is 
 not contradicted by language : the reason is that languages, in the
 
 THE LOGIC OF NA TURE. 241 
 
 Aristotle solves the problem. He does not, like 
 modern Science and some philosophical schools, 
 overlook and neglect the synthesis by attending 
 exclusively to its material constituent elements; nor 
 again does he, like Plato and others, overlook and 
 make light of differences by attending exclusively 
 to ideal, i.e. generic agreement : but on the contrary 
 he holds realities to be, and reality to consist in 
 the actual, differentiated, conglomerated, definitely 
 thus or thus constituted structures. The essence of 
 reality, for him, is not identity but difference : his 
 real is the roSe ti, the ' this ' thing : not the ultimate 
 elements yielded by chemical analysis — els 6 ava- 
 Xverat, eax aT0V » nor > a g am ; the ultimate residuum of 
 ascending logical abstraction, under which the thing 
 is classed, but the incarnate ovata, the molecule, so 
 to say, in flesh and blood, which contains within it 
 both the elements and the logical kind or class or 
 notion, but which is also more than either, because 
 inclusive of both, and just in this tinion lies the reality : 
 i.e., it differs from both precisely in the fact that 
 it is real and they are not, being each of them only 
 factors in the real. And the much misunderstood 
 business of definition is to reproduce and state both 
 
 process of formation, recognise, what he does, that the essence of 
 reality is not identity, but difference. 
 
 R
 
 242 UNITY: 
 
 sides of the compound ; neither by itself being 
 adequate to the reality. 
 
 The Platonic Realities, the Realities of modern 
 Science, the Spinozan, the Schopenhauerian Reality, 
 the Buddhist, Comtian, or Kantian Reality, the 
 Hindoo Brahma and all similar ultimates, are all 
 of them not the real realities, but elements and ab- 
 stractions from the true realities, arrived at by hy- 
 postatising, dissolving, dissecting, refining, discarding 
 and neglecting differences from those realities, ab- 
 stracting from the conditions of reality, time, place, 
 and relation. What all these philosophies overlook 
 is that their various reals, their unities, exist only 
 in the particular realities * : that those alone exist 
 per se, all the other things in them. The real reality, 
 the ens realissimum, is the particular differentiated 
 thing, the cvvoKov e£ vXrjs ical elBovs in its peculiar 
 and necessary time, place, and relations. 
 
 Is not this just our real world, the world not of 
 philosophical abstraction, but of perception, of seas 
 and sunsets, trees and flowers, men and women, 
 riches and poverty, cities and villages, kings and 
 popes and members of parliament ; the real world 
 
 x There cannot be a more admirable illustration of this than 
 Sanskrit roots: which have only an ideal existence, i.e. exist only 
 n the words ' derived ' from them. The philological consideration ot 
 the Sanskrit language is one of the most beautiful verifications of 
 Aristotle's philosophy.
 
 THE LOGIC OF NATURE. 243 
 
 of history and natural history, politics, literature, and 
 life ? Here, then, we emerge, like Dante from the 
 Inferno, to find the profoundest of all metaphysical 
 analyses, the analysis of Aristotle, in exact harmony 
 with the popular instinct, the uncritical judgment 
 of the vulgar. But this is very old ? aye, so it is, 
 as old as the hills ; yet old as it is, the world cannot 
 learn it, will not have it, obstinately and incorrigibly 
 persists in substituting for the realities its own ab- 
 stract fancies, theories, and notions ; nay, nowadays 
 its practical error is canonised and elevated into a 
 philosophic dogma. We are gravely told by ' philo- 
 sophers ' to-day, that all is thought, that the real is 
 the rational, that the notion constitutes reality ; 
 logical thought usurps the place of perceptible 
 reality, and the world congratulates itself on its 
 insight when by means of verbal juggling and criti- 
 cal imbecility it rivets its congenial error — the con- 
 fusion of abstractions with realities — to itself with 
 clamps of iron, seeing profound wisdom in the stupid 
 confusion of being with thought, ignoring the dy- 
 namical potentialities of Nature, taking shadow for 
 substance, mistaking for the real its subsequent 
 logical reflection in consciousness, and endeavouring 
 to generate the Universe out of empty discrete ab- 
 stractions by dialectical quibbling and metaphorical 
 abuse of language, ex 8e rdv votjtwv ouSev jiperat 
 
 R 2
 
 244 UNITY, &c. 
 
 fMeyedos. Thought does not contain the living 
 potentiality and continuity of Nature ?. 
 
 Idealisms pass : but the philosophy of Aristotle, 
 the philosophy of analysis and definition, of evolu- 
 tionary continuity and biological realism, endures : 
 it is confirmed and verified by all modern experi- 
 mental Science, that is, by Nature herself, whose 
 creatures conform to her laws because the penalty 
 of disobedience is death and annihilation, and are 
 thus all but so many living arguments, incarnations 
 of metaphysic, metaphysic embodied in matter, real- 
 ity in concreto. Nature rediscovers in the reason 
 of Aristotle, her chef cTxuvre, that creative method 
 of which all her creatures are but specimens and 
 exemplifications, and logic turns out to be but the 
 mirror of fact. The works of Nature and the 
 thoughts of Aristotle are akin : the characteristic 
 of both is a certain unanalysable, indefinable, un- 
 attainable union of the simple and the profound. 
 
 r Aristotle says profoundly that the mathematical point has no 
 weight: this is an aphorism which contains in germ the whole of 
 philosophy.
 
 y. TELEOLOGY : THE LAW OF 
 EVOLUTION. 
 
 i) (pvais i) Keyoptvr) ais yevtcris 656s ecrrtv us <pvaiv.
 
 AXIOMS. 
 
 7) (pvcris reKos iffrlv' oTov yap eaaffTOV ecrri ttjs ytveotws 
 T(\e(r9(iar]s ravr-qv (pa/xtv ri)v (pvai.v ziuai etcaarov. 
 
 ■S) rod Swd/xei ovtos iyreXexeia, 77 toiovtov, KiVTjfris icrri .... 
 XaKiTTT] fihy ISelv, iv^i\ofJ.ivr) 5e ilvai.
 
 y, TELEOLOGY: THE LAW OF 
 EVOLUTION. 
 
 INVOLUTION, in the proper sense of the word, 
 is the discovery and the soul of Aristotle. 
 At the same time, he is no Darwinian. The pre- 
 cursors of Darwin are, not Aristotle, but Anaxi- 
 mandros, and still more Empedocles. 
 
 The meaning of Evolution is a point on which 
 much confusion and misconception prevails. It is 
 of the very first importance to understand clearly 
 the distinctions appropriate to the subject. 
 
 The term ' evolution,' employed nowadays by 
 anybody with indiscriminate and unintelligent reck- 
 lessness, has several altogether distinct and different 
 meanings. 
 
 I. It is employed to designate the theory, common 
 to Lamarck, Darwin, and all modern evolutionists, 
 of the transmutation of species, the passage and 
 gradual change in time of one specific form into 
 another. This view is derived from and essentially 
 dependent on modern Geology : the changes of 
 1 rocks,' and the discovery of unknown and ancient 
 organic remains, having inevitably suggested the 
 continuous modification of species. In this sense
 
 248 TELEOLOGY . 
 
 of the word, evolution is entirely unknown to 
 Aristotle. Observe, however, that this evolution 
 stands in a very sympathetic relation to his own 
 philosophy. It supplements and enlarges his own 
 biological scheme. 
 
 II. Evolution again is employed, most improperly, 
 to designate the theory, peculiarly Darwinian, of 
 Natural Selection, which is a special theory as to 
 how the evolution in the first sense came about. 
 According to this theory, species have arisen by 
 the survival of the fittest in the struggle for 
 existence, the selection of favourable variations 
 arising fortuitously'" 1 , and their addition, seriatim, 
 till they constitute a new positive form. 
 
 Acquaintance with this theory presupposes ac- 
 quaintance with the first, for the one is an endeavour 
 to explain the how of the other. As Aristotle knew 
 nothing of the first, so neither was he acquainted 
 with this one. But a sort of faint germ or fore- 
 shadow of this view is to be seen in a theory of Em - 
 pedocles quoted and rejected by Aristotle. Darwin's 
 attention was drawn to it by a friend, and he notices 
 it in the Preface to the Origin of Species, but the 
 translation which was supplied to him is not good ; 
 he seems to suppose that Aristotle favoured the 
 
 * I have proved in another work that this theory is not only not 
 true but intrinsically absurd and impossible. See Appendix.
 
 THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 249 
 
 idea, but the reverse is the case. Aristotle 
 says h : 
 
 ' There is this difficulty : why explain the for- 
 ' mation of organised beings on a teleological prin- 
 ciple ? why not otherwise? e.g. as rain falls, not 
 1 to ripen the corn, but by necessity, and when this 
 ' happens, the corn also happens to ripen, and 
 1 similarly, as, when rain rots the corn in the floor, 
 ' it did not fall with that object, but the thing 
 1 was an accident ; so, why should not the parts 
 'of an organic being be explained in the same 
 ' way ? why should not the teeth grow (as the rain 
 ' fell) of necessity, the front teeth sharp, suited for 
 ' biting, and the back teeth flat, suited for grinding, 
 ' the food : not intended for those functions, but 
 ' happening to suit them ? and so with all other 
 ' parts that seem designed for an end — all those 
 'parts which chanced to come about exactly as 
 ' they would have done if they had been designed 
 • for an end being preserved, having spontaneously 
 
 b Physics, ii. 8. 
 
 c Note, that the almost universal misconception prevailing as to 
 Aristotle's teleology arises from the fact that we mean by ' Nature ' 
 the universe — rb nav — whereas his ' nature ' means the constitutive 
 law of any organic being. When he says Nature acts teleologically, 
 he does not mean what we should mean, if we said the same thing 
 he is only stating a fact, viz., that in the formation of organic beings, 
 the end determines the whole process. Explain it how you please, 
 the fact is there.
 
 2^o TELEOLOGY : 
 
 1 happened to fit their circumstances ; all those, on 
 ' the contrary, that did not so come about, perishing 
 ' and still continuing to perish, like the early monsters 
 ( of Empedocles.' 
 
 He states this theory, and proceeds to reject it, 
 because, he says, were it so ; were the parts of 
 animals and plants formed merely by chance, we 
 should see them arising now in one way, now in 
 another : whereas, as it is, they always come about 
 in the same way : i.e. not chance, but a definite 
 and determined law presides over their formation. 
 And this is undeniable. Observe, that he is thinking 
 only of each individual form, and not of any geo- 
 logical succession of forms. The rabbit does not 
 get his ears, nor the swan his web foot, by chance, 
 but by the inner necessity of his own nature (<}>vais) 
 which determines his whole form a priori in the 
 cerm. This is what Aristotle means here, and he 
 
 o 
 
 is quite right. The genesis of the animal is no 
 accident. The further question raised by modern 
 geology, as to the transmutation of species by con. 
 tinuous change, is not in his mind : it is quite an- 
 other point of view which never occurred to him, 
 as far as we can judge by his works. 
 
 III. Finally, evolution is used to denote the 
 theory, associated in modern times principally with 
 Von Baer and Herbert Spencer, of biological differ-
 
 THE LA IV OF E VOL UTLON. 25 1 
 
 cntiation, of development, of organic change, the 
 gradual growth and unfolding of the simple and 
 potential into the complex and actual. This is the 
 true and proper meaning of the term evolution, and 
 this is the sense in which Aristotle is not only the 
 discoverer of evolution but its greatest master : the 
 first and the greatest of all evolutionists, the most 
 universal and the most profound. And to explain 
 exactly what he meant by his teleology and his 
 yeveais, I shall take an example — language. 
 
 The essence of language is the expression, i.e. the 
 communication of thought. Now, if we imagine 
 a people in its infancy just beginning (we know not 
 how d ) to use language, to lisp and stammer as it 
 were, it is easy to see that the lowest possible form, 
 the germ of language (6 eXd^iaros \6yo?, ivTeXe^eia 
 7) wpcoTT]), would be the expression of a single thought, 
 the rudimentary sentence or proposition. Words 
 are only the elements of speech, and speech lies not 
 in the elements, as such, but in the significant syn- 
 thesis of the elements. Therefore it is impossible 
 that language should have commenced with isolated 
 words : the beginning of speech must necessarily be 
 the sentence e . (Not of course a sentence, definite, 
 
 d In Aristotelean language — it is the efficient cause of the origin 
 of language that we do not know. 
 
 c It is much to be regretted that Professor Sayce, who claims
 
 2^2 TELEOLOGY: 
 
 logical and clear, such as we find in the works of 
 an Aristotle, but one confused, hazy, muddy, indis- 
 tinct, yet still a sentence.) From this rudimentary 
 sentence, up to the complete formation of a rich, 
 subtle, and flexible language, the adequate organ 
 of the perfect expression of thought, the language 
 of an Aristotle or a Panini, there is of course an 
 immense distance. Now, this process of formation 
 is the yivecris of language, or, in modern terminology, 
 its evolution. 
 
 And it is obvious that there are two limits to this 
 evolutionary process or yeveaLs : one accidental, the 
 peculiar mental endowment of the people in question 
 — for this or that savage nation will never originate 
 such a language as e.g. Greek or Sanskrit or Russian 
 — the other (even given the highest possible mental 
 qualities), necessary and essential, beyond which 
 further progress is impossible ; that is, the relations, 
 actual or possible, of reality. For thought is the 
 mirror of fact, and therefore language cannot pro- 
 gress beyond the point at which it is able fully and 
 adequately to express everything expressible. It 
 is clear that no language has ever attained this ideal, 
 that most languages fall infinitely short of it, and 
 
 this discovery as his own, can never mention Aristotle without a 
 sneer : seeing that the discovery is not his, but Aristotle's. (The 
 writer of the dialogue Sophistes in Plato was indebted to Aristotle.)
 
 THE LAW OF E VOL UT10N. 2 5 3 
 
 that different languages exhibit different powers, 
 stages, degrees, grades of this capacity of expression. 
 But suppose that any language should have suc- 
 ceeded in reaching this perfect power : then this 
 would be its term, its goal, its end (opus, reXos, 
 ayadov), the final terminus of the evolution of lan- 
 guage. The yeveais is the progress to the T€\os f . 
 And the progress, the motion, itself, as such, is a 
 special case of the realisation of the possible. 
 
 The only difference between Aristotle and modern 
 evolution, in the third and proper sense of the word, 
 is that he accentuates its logical, rather than its 
 historical aspect. His is the logical and metaphy- 
 sical discovery of the law : modern science enriches 
 and illustrates it in all directions by giving it his- 
 torical meanings of which he never knew. We may 
 call Aristotle the spirit of evolution, its potentiality : 
 modern scientific discovery is the actual realisation 
 and effecting of that spirit. 
 
 And it is obvious that what holds of the evolution 
 of language holds equally, mutatis mutandis, of 
 everything else, laws, religions, states, systems, in- 
 struments, machines, organic structures of any kind. 
 Their development is, as it were, preordained : lies 
 
 ' The point of departure, considered with reference to the coming 
 re'Aos not yet existing, is what Aristotle calls cnip-qais, i.e. negation 
 privation, absence of the end.
 
 254 TELEOLOGY, &c. 
 
 fatally within the principle or starting-point {dpxh) 
 originally laid down. And in this consists the secret 
 of prediction. He only can predict who understands 
 principles, for then he can see in the germ the com- 
 ing end. This power belongs only to one man in 
 a million, and therefore any such man is destined 
 to be a voice crying in the wilderness in his own 
 day ; his wisdom not being appreciated till time 
 has rendered obvious to all, by its explicit realisation, 
 that possibility which he understood beforehand. 
 Of this two of the finest examples in history are 
 Lord Bolingbroke and Lord Beaconsfield : both of 
 whom are exactly described by Aristotle, when he 
 says to iv dp%V 'yivopevov tcatcov ov rod tv^ovtos 
 <yvcovai dWa ttoXltikov dvSpbs. But neither of those 
 consummate politicians has ever yet been pro- 
 perly appreciated.
 
 APPENDICES.
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 a. ON THE RELATION OF ARISTOTLE 
 TO PLATO. 
 
 IS Aristotle Plato's complement, or his antipodes ? A 
 word on this vexata qucestio is necessary to justify and 
 explain some expressions in the text. 
 
 When we look closely into Plato, we perceive that 
 there are in fact two Platos. There is the true Plato, 
 the Plato always indicated by the world when it refers 
 to Platonism, the Plato of the Protagoras and the Gorgias, 
 the Phczdo and the Eulhydemus, the Phccdrus and the 
 Symposium, the Republic and the Timceus : the Plato of 
 dream, myth, mysticism, idealism, dramatic irony and 
 comedy, literary grace and classic beauty : the Plato of 
 paederasty and poetic insight, childish puerility and logical 
 imbecility a : and there is another Plato, the anti-Plato 
 of the Sophist and Thecetetus, the Phikbus and Parmenides, 
 &c, who has lost all these graces and qualities, dropped 
 down to earth, ceased to soar, and become sober, 
 methodical, realistic and critical. The first Plato opposes 
 Aristotle : the second closely resembles him. The dif- 
 ference between these two Platos is indeed so striking 
 that some critics are led to deny the authenticity of some 
 
 * The apology for this is always that Plato lived in an age before 
 logic (Jowett). But Aristotle did not invent logic, he only analysed 
 and methodised it. Vixere fortes ante Agatnemnona : there were 
 good reasoners before Aristotle. 
 
 S
 
 258 ON THE RELATION OF 
 
 of these dialogues in the later manner. But the diffi- 
 culty of this solution is to draw the line between what 
 is genuine and what not. 
 
 My own solution of this mystery I give here for what 
 it is worth : it seems to me to carry its truth on its face. 
 
 Aristotle was twenty years with Plato, and the cham- 
 pions of Plato never tire of laying emphasis on his debt 
 to his master. And certainly he owed him much, but 
 less than is commonly supposed. For did Plato owe 
 nothing to Aristotle ? Are not action and reaction equal 
 and opposite ? Can we imagine any one associating for 
 twenty years with such a mind as Aristotle and gaining 
 nothing by it ? Look at the reciprocal influence of the 
 post-Kantian transcendental philosophers in Germany. 
 These dialogues, full of the spirit of Aristotle, were doubt- 
 less written by Plato after Aristotle's criticism had taught 
 him to modify his own views. They are not prior, but 
 posterior to Aristotle himself, even though they may be 
 prior to Aristotle's works. 
 
 What makes this hypothesis almost more than an hypo- 
 thesis is the very singular fact, that we find in these 
 dialogues Aristotelean turns of expression, little fragments 
 of insight, terminology, and thought, detached, yet syste- 
 matic ; at home in Aristotle's system, but appearing in Plato 
 exactly like organic fossils in a rationalistic inorganic 
 deposit incapable of producing them itself. In Aristotle 
 they are parts of an organic whole ; we see how he got 
 at them : in Plato, on the contrary, they are like fish 
 out of water or flies in amber : we cannot understand how 
 they got there ; they are inserted, in some unintelligible 
 manner, from outside. They presuppose and argue a
 
 ARISTOTLE TO PLATO. 259 
 
 biological and evolutionary scheme, to which Plato had 
 not the key. (Consider, for example, the Xo'yos and 8ia<f>6pa 
 in Thecztetus b (at the end), the fj irparrj o-vanXoKr) in Sophist 
 (262. C), the yeveais and ova-la in Phikbus (53. E. 54), 
 the criticisms of the ideal theory in Parmenides, all 
 brought in so strangely in the lump as if taken from some 
 extraneous source.) 
 
 The only possible explanation of these curiosities is the 
 influence of Aristotle, whether Plato wrote these dialogues 
 or not. Observe, too, that this theory is the only one 
 which accounts for the remarkable silence of Aristotle as 
 to these dialogues. The silence of Aristotle does not 
 indeed prove that Plato did not write them. But it is 
 impossible to understand why in certain cases Aristotle 
 should not have referred to them, except on this hypothesis ; 
 and on this hypothesis it is easy to see why. He would 
 and commonly does refer to Plato for Plato's own views. 
 But he would naturally not refer to Plato for views which 
 were not Plato's, but only reflections of his own. If, for 
 example, the criticisms on the ideal theory were Plato's 
 own, we cannot understand how it is that Aristotle never 
 makes the faintest allusion to them in the corresponding 
 passage in his Metaphysics, where he presents arguments 
 almost identical beyond all doubt as if they were his own. 
 And so in fact they are : they spring from the core of his 
 philosophy and are instinct with his own spirit. No one 
 capable of understanding that will ever doubt who origin- 
 
 b In a note on Thealelns, 156 A, Zeller says 'the preterite {fa} 
 ' is used here as in the Aristotelean expression ri ?)v eirai.' And 
 in point of fact the Sophist and Theatetus are full of Aristotelean 
 reminiscences, as it were, which cannot be explained by anticipation. 
 
 S 2
 
 2 6o ON THE RELA TION OF 
 
 ated them. We never get a hint of them in any Platonic 
 dialogue, till they leap, fully armed, into existence in the 
 Parmenides. Had Plato been capable of originating them, 
 some germs, at least, of them would have crossed his mind 
 before. But in fact, the point of view implied in the 
 criticisms is diametrically opposed to that of Plato : it is 
 a change of the philosophical centre of gravity, and the 
 outcome of a mind totally different from his own. 
 
 For the truth is that the real Plato, the original Plato- 
 nising Plato, is the opposite pole, the antipodes of Aris- 
 totle : their spirits are different in kind. Aristotle is biology, 
 evolution, analysis, experience, dissection of the concrete ; 
 he is, in his own language, a (pvaixbs: whereas Plato is 
 a AoyiKor, rationalistic ; his philosophy is the hypostasis 
 of abstractions ; and his method of arriving at truth is the 
 futile endeavour to strike it, by dialectical quibbling with 
 vague and empty abstractions, from the collision of heads 
 that do not contain it. Two negatives, except in mathe- 
 matics, will never make an affirmative : empty disputation 
 can never end in any positive acquisition, nor will you ever 
 succeed in deriving the real from the rational, the concrete 
 from the abstract, the incarnate individual thing from its 
 logical husk. 
 
 But the difference and the contrast between the two 
 philosophers has a deeper root still. Aristotle really was 
 a philosopher. But Plato was a philosopher malgre lui : 
 at heart he was a politician. This is why he never can 
 leave the politicians alone. They turn up constantly under 
 his pen, in or out of season ; he cannot keep away from 
 them ; the public life, the society of the city, is ever 
 before his eyes : a perpetual unrest, a hankering after the
 
 ARISTOTLE TO PLATO. 261 
 
 sphere of politics, whose actors he is always denouncing, 
 haunts the pages of Plato : his very denunciations are only 
 a twisted proof of the fact that he was realiy born 
 for politics and had missed his vocation, and felt it. 
 His sensitive pride shrank from the dirty work involved 
 in all politics (especially then), yet he could not bring 
 himself to shake off the spell, and while he turned away 
 from public life, his soul remained in spite of him hovering 
 round it, half regretfully, like the moth round the candle. 
 Political yearning, dissatisfaction with pure contemplation, 
 a longing to interfere practically, tinged with melancholy, 
 runs through every page of Plato. This is that which 
 gives them that faint aroma, that subtle flavour of 
 sourness and misanthropy. 
 
 But in Aristotle there is none of this. His attitude is 
 always dtvpias Zvaca ; calm, pure, critical, dispassionate ; 
 his style is that of a man thinking to himself, solely for 
 the eliciting of the truth, without a vestige of literary 
 appeal : he has no preference for any one part of the 
 stupendous whole more than another; all comes alike 
 to him. He examines, with equal absorbed scientific 
 curiosity, the parts of the lobster or the revolutions of 
 states, the saltness of the sea or the nature of the 
 syllogism, the sponges at the bottom or the magnani- 
 mous man at the top There is no disturbing, disquieting 
 passion here ; it is the cold, pure, dry light that makes 
 the wisest soul.
 
 b. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF 'NATURAL 
 SELECTION.' 
 
 THE theory of Natural Selection made Darwin's for- 
 tune ; it gained him the reputation of a great original 
 thinker, and he was credited, on the strength of it, 
 with having ' placed evolution on a scientific basis.' 
 Really, it is a little ridiculous. How could Darwin, how 
 could all those enemies who were so anxious to disprove 
 his theory, fail to perceive, what stares us in the face, 
 that that theory is impossible ? For consider. Is it possible 
 for Nature to select those variations which are selected 
 by man ? Certainly not. And why ? Because they are 
 so slight as to be all but imperceptible, and consequently 
 of no value whatever to the organism. Still less possible 
 is their accumulation in any one direction, seeing that 
 intercrossing would instantly destroy them. 
 
 Over and over again, in volume after volume, Darwin 
 never wearies of insisting i. That the variations actually 
 selected by man are so slight as to be almost impercep- 
 tible even to a trained eye\ 2. That Nature can select 
 only beneficial variations. 3. That free intercrossing will 
 instantly obliterate all. And yet, with a blindness al- 
 together extraordinary, and a little irritating, he never 
 sees, — it never crosses his mind, — that exactly for these 
 reasons his Natural Selection is impossible. But how can 
 anything be plainer ? And how can we attribute great 
 
 * When we consider the innumerable myriads of individuals that 
 constitute many a species, as e.g. the common cod, herring, migratory 
 locust, or the 'white ant,' the utter impotence and futility of a single 
 almost imperceptible variation in one individual will appear in all 
 its absurdity.
 
 THE IMPOSSIBILITY, &c. 263 
 
 powers of thought to the man who could spend his whole 
 life in meditating on the point without detecting so obvious 
 a fallacy ? 
 
 But Darwin possessed an unrivalled knowledge of the 
 facts of Nature ? Precisely : and the wonderful thing is, 
 that his facts annihilate Ids theory, though he never sees it. 
 Innumerable facts adduced by himself, and others, show 
 that, somehow or other, by some organic chemistry mys- 
 terious to us, organic beings possess the power of origin- 
 ating abrupt and considerable modifications in their own 
 structure. And geology harmonises with this b . Now this 
 formative organic power is exactly what Aristotle means 
 by (frvcris . And though by reason of his limited experience 
 Aristotle believed this power to be more fixed and in- 
 variable than perhaps it is, he is none the less perfectly 
 right in the main. Darwin's theory is an attempt to over- 
 look and ignore this power, though no man's writings prove 
 it more irrefutably than his own. And his works will owe 
 their permanent value not to the theory which they contain, 
 but to the rich mine of facts, which he accumulated to 
 support it, though they do, in reality, destroy it altogether. 
 His thesaurus of facts testifies to the organic power of 
 Nature; his theory strives impotently to reduce her to 
 mechanics, a kind of blasphemy congenial to the present 
 age, which does not understand the old wisdom of Aris- 
 totle — ovk eaTtv e£ aWov yevovs fxtTaftavTa Set£czi. 
 
 b Geology shows us no such infinitesimally graduated continuity 
 as Darwin's theory requires : it gives us no dissolving views : it shows 
 us indeed continuity of a kind, but it is the discontinuous continuity 
 of a ladder, not that of a slope. Natura facit salius ; she goes by 
 degrees, but still she leaps.
 
 c. ON THE HINDOO 'SYLLOGISM.' 
 
 IT is often asserted, and commonly believed, that the 
 Hindoos discovered the syllogism independently of Aris- 
 totle : and it has even been recently insinuated by some 
 that he derived it from them. 
 
 Now, Aristotle certainly never derived his syllogism 
 from Hindoo philosophy, for the simplest of all reasons, — 
 it is not there. The error on this head is due to three 
 causes : first, the desire in some quarters to over-value 
 Hindoo philosophy : secondly, the necessities of trans- 
 lation, scholars being in a manner compelled to employ 
 such terms as syllogism, middle term, &c, as equivalents for 
 Sanskrit words a : thirdly and principally, to ignorance of 
 what syllogism really means. 
 
 It is true that the European, educated in Aristotelean 
 logic, on contemplating the Hindoo five-membered form 
 of inference, seems to recognise, in the last three members, 
 the syllogism. But observe, that he sees only what he 
 brings. He sees the syllogism: the Hindoos did not. To 
 the notion of syllogism, — the combination of two premisses 
 containing three terms, so as to generate something entirely 
 different, the conclusion — they never attained. And why ? 
 Precisely because they lacked the previous conception that 
 
 * See e.g. Gough's Vaiseshika Aphorisms of Kanada, or Monier 
 Williams' Dictionary, s.w., T^TTJ 77 TrfTT &c. A middle term 
 obviously implies other two, ami the conception of syllogism, as such. 
 The Hindoo conception is quite different, not syllogism, but a 
 sort of train, such as that indicated by Locke.
 
 ON THE HINDOO 'SYLLOGISM: 265 
 
 made the discovery possible. Aristotle discovered syllogism, 
 the logical aspect of essence, because he was familiar with 
 essence in general and elsewhere. But such a notion is 
 wholly foreign to Hindoo philosophy. Hindoo philosophy 
 knows nothing of essence in this analytical and Aristo- 
 telian sense b . What the Hindoos mean by essence is a 
 mysterious, mystical, transcendental identity : a hidden, 
 underlying, abstract, incognisable, pantheistic or material- 
 istic Unity, the exact antipodes of Aristotle's otaia. 
 
 To confound Aristotle's syllogism with the Hindoo 
 process is an error reposing on a misunderstanding both 
 of Aristotle's syllogism and the whole spirit of Hindoo 
 philosophy c . Their inference from a mark indicative of 
 universal pervasion, though acute and partially adequate, 
 will not bear a moment's comparison with Aristotle's per- 
 fect analysis. No glimpse of syllogism, of that logical 
 chemistry whereby a conclusion emerges of necessity from 
 the combination of elements wholly different from it, ever 
 came to them. Nor can anything show us what we owe 
 to Aristotle better than a consideration of how little the 
 
 b Modem thought has paid a heavy penalty for rejecting the term 
 quiddity •, which has a strange unfamiliar sound. And yet qua7itity 
 and quality are excellent and indispensable terms. When we speak 
 of humanity, mortality, fluidity, &c, we do but give special instances 
 of that, whose general expression is quiddity. The Schoolmen were 
 wiser than their enemies : they did not make philosophy contradict 
 grammar by eliminating the nouns. 
 
 c No two things could be more opposed to each other than Aris- 
 totelean and Hindoo philosophy. The Hindoos are the victims of 
 abstraction : it is the root alike of their religion, their ethics, their 
 theory and practice : abstraction from the world, abstraction from 
 others, abstraction from self: it is their ideal, their core, and their 
 curse.
 
 266 ON THE HINDOO 'SYLLOGISM: 
 
 Hindoos, with all their metaphysical subtlety d , could 
 achieve without him. Had Aristotle never existed, it is 
 doubtful whether thought would ever have been adequately 
 analysed at all. Certainly no modern philosopher could 
 have done it. It takes an Aristotle to discover syllogism, 
 just as it takes a Mill to discover that it is wrong. 
 
 d The really interesting thing that the old Hindoos have given us 
 is not what their language contains, but that language itself: and 
 I take this opportunity of entering a protest against the barbarous, 
 ridiculous, and utterly abominable custom of printing it, in Europe, 
 in Roman characters, by which its beauty is wholly destroyed. What 
 should we think of Homer or Plato so printed? It is like putting 
 a tall hat on Pericles, or dressing Julius Caesar in a suit of ' dittoes.'
 
 d. ARISTOTLE AS A GEOLOGIST. 
 
 FEW people would credit Aristotle with any geological 
 insight, still less associate him with that doctrine of 
 continuous geological change which Lyell and others have 
 made so familiar to us. Therefore I feel sure that the 
 reader will be obliged to me for recalling his attention 
 to the following remarkable passage in his Metcorologica 
 (cap. 14) :— 
 
 ' The same places in the earth are not always water, or 
 ' dry land, but they change, according as rivers come into 
 ' being, or run dry and disappear. Therefore continent 
 1 and sea change places, nor does the former remain ever 
 • land, nor sea sea, but sea arises where there was land, 
 ' and where now there is sea will again be land. This 
 ' however we must suppose to take place with a certain 
 ' periodical regularity. Its original cause and starting- 
 ' point lies in this, that the interior of the earth, like that 
 ' of plants and animals, has its season of maturity and 
 ' old age. Only that in the case of the animals and plants, 
 ' the whole necessarily flourishes and decays together ; 
 ' whereas with the earth it comes about in bits at a time, 
 ' through the action of cold and heat. These increase 
 ' and diminish under the influence of the sun and the 
 ' cosmical revolution a . Hence parts of the earth acquire 
 ' different potentialities, and the capacity of remaining 
 ' watery for a certain time, after which they dry up and 
 ' grow old again : while other places revive and become 
 
 * This reminds us curiously of some modern theories as to the 
 cause of an Ice A?e.
 
 268 ARISTOTLE AS A GEOLOGIST. 
 
 ' watery, by turns. Necessarily, then, as the places dry, 
 1 springs must disappear; and when this happens the rivers 
 ' must first diminish in size, and finally dry up altogether. 
 ' But the rivers changing their places, disappearing in one 
 ' place and appearing in another, the sea must change 
 ' also, making dry land in one place, where it recedes 
 ' being forced back by the rivers, and forming lagoons in 
 ' another, where river deposits had previously filled it up 
 ' and made dry land. But because all the physical change 
 * of the earth takes place by continuous increment and in 
 1 periods of immense length as compared with our own If', 
 ' it escapes our notice. Just so in former ages have whole 
 ' races of men died out and disappeared without any 
 ' recollection of the whole change from start to finish. 
 ' Such destructions are occasioned on the largest scale 
 ' and most speedily by war : others are due to plagues, 
 ' or droughts, either very large and sudden, or little by 
 ' little. In this manner even the migrations of such races 
 ' escape notice, owing to the fact that some keep leaving 
 1 the old locality, while others remain, till at last the place 
 ' can no longer afford a subsistence for any considerable 
 1 number. From the date of the first emigration, then, 
 ' down to the last, long periods would elapse, so that 
 ' nobody would remember it : but length of time would 
 ' obliterate all memory of it, even while there was still 
 1 some remnant in the original home. Just in this manner 
 ' must we suppose it comes about that no one can re- 
 ' member when the various races first immigrated into 
 ' localities that were formerly swamps and lagoons, but 
 ' subsequently changed and became dry. For seeing 
 ' that this change took place by gradual addition in a
 
 ARISTOTLE AS A GEOLOGIST. 269 
 
 ' very long period of time, no one would be able to re- 
 ' member, who came first, or when, or what the places 
 ' were like when they arrived. As, for example, has 
 1 occurred in Egypt : a place which is obviously getting 
 ' drier and drier, the whole district being plainly the 
 1 accumulated deposit of the Nile. But owing to the fact 
 ' that as the swampy parts gradually dried those who lived 
 * nearest them would keep coming in to inhabit them, 
 ' length of time has destroyed all recollection of the 
 1 beginning. However, the mouths are all, with the ex- 
 ' ception of the Canopic, obviously the work not of the 
 ' river but of man. Moreover Egypt was formerly called 
 ' Thebes. And Homer, so recent, as it were, in com- 
 ' parison with such changes, bears witness to the point : 
 ' for he alludes to that country as though Memphis were 
 ' not in his day, or at any rate not so large as it is now. 
 'Just as was to be expected. For the lower parts were 
 ' colonised later than those higher up the river : since 
 ' the districts nearest the point of deposit would neces- 
 ' sarily remain swampy longest, owing to the lagoons being 
 ' formed always at the lowest points \ As time goes on 
 1 this changes, and the place becomes habitable : since 
 ' such districts improve by drying. Those, on the other 
 ' hand, that were formerly good grow too dry and so de- 
 ' teriorate. This has befallen Greece, particularly the 
 ' territory of Argos and Mycenae. In the time of the 
 ' Trojan war, the territory of Argos could support but 
 ' few inhabitants, owing to its swampy nature j while that 
 
 b ' Near the sea, the Nile forms many great lagoons, enclosed by 
 1 tongues of earth or sand, and communicating with the .Mediterranean 
 'by breaches in the banks.' — Lenormant's Ancient History of the 
 East, p. 194.
 
 270 ARISTOTLE AS A GEOLOGIST. 
 
 1 of Mycenae was good, and held, therefore, in more 
 ' honour. Now, the parts are reversed, for the reason 
 'above stated: Mycenae having become absolutely dry 
 ' and arid, and Argos, its dry places having become moist, 
 ' being now good land. 
 
 ' Exactly, then, as has happened in this small instance, 
 1 so must we suppose things to come about on a large 
 ' scale in the case of large areas of land. There are, how- 
 ' ever, some persons of limited views who would find the 
 1 cause of such phenomena as these in some universal 
 ' catastrophe, some cosmical recreation of things. Hence, 
 ' too, they assert that the sea is drying up and growing 
 ' smaller, because there are obviously more places dry 
 ' now than there used to be. And this is true : yet their 
 ' inference is false. There are, in fact, many places now 
 ' dry that were wet : but then, the converse holds also : 
 ' for if they look they will find many places where the 
 ' sea has gained upon the land. The cause of this, how- 
 ' ever, we must not seek for in any universal catastrophe : 
 ' it would, indeed, be absurd to turn the universe upside 
 ' down in order to account for such trifling and insigni- 
 ' ficant changes. For the earth is with all its bulk a mere 
 ' nothing in comparison with the whole heaven. We 
 ' should rather look for the cause of all these changes in 
 ' some periodically returning and appointed flood of waters, 
 ' analogous to what we see in a monsoon c , only on a 
 ' colossal scale : such, too, as comes not always in the 
 ' same places, but varies in locality, like the so-called 
 ' Deucalionic deluge (which had to do especially with the 
 
 c This exactly conveys Aristotle's meaning, although he was not 
 familiar with monsoons.
 
 ARISTOTLE AS A GEOLOGIST. 271 
 
 ' region of Greece, and, in particular, its older part, that 
 ' is, the district about Dodona and the Achelous ; a river 
 ' which has changed its bed in many places. There in 
 1 former times dwelt the Selli, and those of old called 
 'Greeks, but now Hellens.) Whensoever, then, such a 
 ' flood takes place we must suppose that its effects endure 
 ' for a long period, and that the case is similar to that 
 1 of rivers in the normal state of things. (Some persons 
 ' think that the reason why some rivers are perennial, 
 ' and others not, is the size of their subterranean re- 
 ' servoirs : we hold, on the contrary, that it is the great 
 ' size, density, and coldness of the high lands that supply 
 ' them : since these can best receive, retain, and produce 
 ' water : whereas those rivers fail in water soonest, which 
 1 run under systems of hills small in bulk or porous, stoney, 
 1 or argillaceous in substance.) Just so, in the case of 
 ' the supposed flood, those places would best retain their 
 ' moisture Avhich resemble the high lands supplying ever- 
 ' flowing rivers. In time, these evidently become drier, 
 1 and at the same time the watery parts would grow smaller, 
 ' till a new periodical inundation should return. 
 
 ' Since, now, it is necessary that if the whole is to abide 
 ' it must suffer change of a kind, but not wholesale de- 
 ' struction and recreation, then, as we say, it is impossible 
 ' for the same parts to remain always land or water 
 ' whether marine or fluviatile. This is proved by the 
 ' facts : for example, the land of the Egyptians, whom 
 ' we call the most ancient of men, has obviously all come 
 ' into being, and is the work of the river, as any one can 
 ' see for himself by examining the place. The part ad- 
 jacent to the Red Sea is a sufficient proof. One of their
 
 272 ARISTOTLE AS A GEOLOGIST. 
 
 ' Kings attempted to dig a canal here, as it would be 
 ' of no small advantage to them if the place could be 
 1 made navigable from sea to sea : and Sesostris is said 
 ' to have been the first of the old kings to make the 
 ' attempt : he found, however, that the land was below the 
 1 sea-level. Therefore both he, and Dareius after him, 
 ' abandoned canal-cutting, lest the current of the river 
 ' should be destroyed by mixing with the sea. It is, 
 ' therefore, clear that there was formerly here one con- 
 ' tinuous sea. And this is why the country about Am- 
 ' monian Libya seems disproportionately lowlying and 
 ' hollow compared with the country seawards from it. 
 ' Plainly there has been depositing here, and there must 
 ' have been lagoons and spits of land. But as time went 
 ' on the water, left behind in lagoons, dried up, and has 
 ' long disappeared. Again, the rivers have added so 
 ' much by accumulation to Lake Maeotis, that only ships 
 ' drawing much less water than those of sixty years ago 
 ' can now get in. From this it is easy to see that the 
 1 bottom of this lake, like that of other lakes, is the work of 
 ' the rivers, and must finally dry up altogether. Again, 
 ' the Bosphorus is in continual flow, owing to the accu- 
 ' mulation always going on, and any one may see with his 
 ' own eyes how the thing takes place even now. As 
 ' often as the stream made a beach on the Asian side, 
 ' a lagoon would form behind it, originally of small size : 
 ' this would subsequently dry up ; and afterwards, another 
 ' beach, starting from the first, would form, and another 
 ' lagoon ; and so on continuously. And this going on, 
 ' as time proceeded a kind of river must have come about : 
 'finally this too would dry up.
 
 ARISTOTLE AS A GEOLOGIST. 273 
 
 ' // is plain , then, since time never fails, and the whole 
 ' Is eternal, that neither the Don nor the Nile flows for ever, 
 ' but that there must have been a time when the land from 
 ' which they flow was dry ; since their work has its term, but 
 1 time has none. And the like holds of all other rivers. 
 1 Well then, if rivers arise and pass away, and the same 
 1 parts of the earth are not always watery, the sea loo must 
 ' change. But the sea receding here and gaining there, then 
 ' obviously no parts of the whole earth remain always either 
 ' sea or land, but all change, in time, from sea to land, and 
 ' land to sea? 
 
 Who could believe that this curious passage, which reads 
 like a chapter of de la Be'che's Geological Observer, was 
 written two thousand years ago? Observe that Aristotle 
 is alive to a possibility too much ignored by modern 
 extreme Uniformitarians 3 the possibility of agencies on 
 a colossal scale still working regularly yet escaping our 
 notice owing to the shortness of our life ; just as the 
 periodical strike of a clock would seem an irregular 
 catastrophe to beings that lived and died every second.
 
 e. FORCE. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 WHAT is Force? Modern Science can show us, in a 
 thousand ways, modo hcereat in ipso experimento, but 
 whenever she tries to tell us what it is, she is quite unable 
 to do it. Now, this is just where Aristotle can help her. 
 
 What is Aristotle's definition of Motion ? The realisation 
 of the possible, as such. And what does he mean by that? 
 Let us see a . 
 
 Suspend a ball of lead by a string. This lead has in 
 it a power of falling to the ground. Cut the string : it 
 falls : there is the realisation of the possibility, one species 
 of motion, falling. Any material body has the power of 
 being elsewhere than it is ; place it elsewhere : there you 
 have the realisation of the possibility, local motion. Water 
 has the power of becoming, under different conditions of 
 heat, solid, liquid, or gaseous; submit it to those conditions, 
 and you have, accordingly, ice, water, or steam; the pos- 
 sibility is realised by freezing, melting, or vaporisation. 
 Drop a piece of potassium into water; you will get another 
 realisation of a possibility, chemical combination, combustion, 
 or burning. Throw a beam of light through Iceland Spar, 
 you get the realisation of another power, polarisation. 
 Bring one magnet near another : you get another instance, 
 in attraction or repulsion. Is this rock sandstone or lime- 
 stone ? if the latter, a solution of acid will cause it to 
 effervesce ; apply it ; the power is realised, effervescence. 
 
 1 Illustrations only are possible here : but the reader who, with 
 Aristotle's definition in his eye, would run over, e.g. , Faraday's Lec- 
 tures on the Various Forces of Nature, would still better appreciate 
 the scientific beauty and value of Aristotle's wonderful definition.
 
 FORCE. 275 
 
 Chloride of sodium has the power of crystallising in cubes: 
 prepare it, and you have crystallisation. Any fertilised 
 germ-cell has the power of becoming this or that plant 
 or animal : here you have another species of the realisation 
 of the possible — growth. And so on. 
 
 Now, what is it that is common to all these various 
 manifestations of force? Aristotle alone can tell, he can 
 define force : it is, the realisation of the possible. This is 
 that which is common to mechanical motion, to chemical 
 combination, to organic growth. The fundamental error 
 of modern speculative physical science is the attempt to 
 reduce the general to one of its species : to reduce all 
 forms of motion to mechanical motion, which is impossible. 
 They differ in kind. 
 
 Aristotle's definition exhibits the true relation of force 
 to matter, about which so much nonsense is talked now- 
 adays b . It is the posse which is continuous and eternal, 
 not the esse : matter, not force. Force arises only when 
 the conditions are suitable, as any man can see who has 
 ever struck a match. The power lies quiet till the con- 
 ditions are appropriate : then you get the force : the 
 realised possibility. 
 
 ' Show me a man who can define, and I will follow him 
 1 to the end of the world.' 
 
 h Of all the pseudo-scientific theories of to-day, none is so absurd 
 as the talk about '■immaterial centres of force,' as if, forsooth ! force 
 could exist by itself. Force is an act. Similarly, the man of science 
 who sneers at Aristotle tells you on the same page that matter is 
 indestructible, although it is only in the Aristotelean sense of the word 
 matter that this is true. Every particular form of matter is, as such, 
 destructible : it is only matter, as such, the abstract and incognisable 
 residual something, which cannot be destroyed.
 
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