i. Touching their barbarous terminology, -- how much of truth is there in the complaint? Can anything be said in their justification; or by way of an extenuation of their offence, if offence they have really committed?
Now, at the outset, I think it will be conceded by every man of sense, that all Sciences and Disciplines have, must have, a terminology proper to themselves. It is necessary; because each Science has its own peculiar concepts derived from its own special subject-matter, and those concepts must be expressed in appropriate Terms. Thus, for example, when in comparatively recent times a remarkable impulse was given to the study of Geology, we began to hear of the Neptunian and Plutonic theories, -- of metamorphic rocks, of fossiliferous strata, -- of flora and fauna, -- of faults, strikes, dips, -- of coprolites, encrinites, trilobites, ammonites, -- Eocene, Miocene, Pleistocene, periods, -- and so on. Again, a terminology is necessary at times, in order to avoid perpetual circumlocutions that would end in reducing the reader's mind to a state of hopeless confusion. I lately came across a striking illustration of this necessity in a Paper written by a distinguished physiologist on a special point of Comparative Anatomy, and read some few months ago before the Royal Society. I quote from this Paper the more readily, because it not only serves to illustrate the necessity of which I am now speaking, but will go to establish a fact, (not sufficiently realized, perhaps, by those modern writers who have called the Scholastics to task for their barbarous terminology), that physicists of our time are not a whit behind the medieval Doctors in the invention of a technical vocabulary, whenever the occasion offers. The following is the passage to which I am referring : -- 'Of these I shall term a longitudinal line traversing the centre of the sacral vertebrae, the sacral axis; a second, drawn along the ilium, dorso-ventrally, through the middle of the sacral articulation and the centre of the acetabulum, will be termed the iliac axis; a third, passing through the junctions of the pubis and ischium above and below the obturator foramen, will be the obturator axis; while a fourth, traversing the union of the ilium, in front with the pubis, and behind with the ischium, will be the iliopectineal axis. . . . The ventral rami of the pubes are short and, like those of the ischium, they are united throughout their whole length in a long symphysis, the ischial division of which is as long as, if not longer than, the pubic division. The cotyloid ramus of each ischium gives off a stout elongated metischial process backwards. . . . I am disposed to think that, in this animal,' (the Ornithorhynchus), 'the rectus, at least in its posterior moiety, is represented by the homologue of this muscle, which has extended laterally over the dorsal face of the enormously enlarged homologues of the rami of the ypsiloid cartilage.'{1} Now, as a layman in this branch of knowledge, I should be the last to venture the assertion, that such an elaborate terminology is either unnecessary or useless. But, if we bear in mind that it centres round one bone in the structure of vertebrates; I think it should make the men of this generation more modest in their diatribes, against the Scholastic Doctors, touching this matter. It may, perhaps, be objected that I have purposely selected an exceptional case, -- that the author, from whom the quotation has been taken, exhibits a special proclivity for the invention of new terms, -- that Comparative Anatomy, by reason of its recent development, (one might almost say, by reason of its recent genesis as a physical Discipline), claims to itself a new nomenclature, that the instance given, therefore, cannot be considered as typical, -- consequently, that it is doing a grave injustice to the physical Sciences, so called, in general, and savours largely of a sophistical unfairness, to saddle these latter with the responsibility of an abnormal usage. What can he said in answer to such an objection, if not to adduce other instances from other Works on Physics, which will serve to show that the example already given is not so exceptional as may have been supposed Accordingly, I proceed to set before the reader another illustration, taken from a paper on the green Rhabdocele Planarian, (Convoluta Schultzii), published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, March 27, 1879. These are the words of the writer: -- 'I will first notice an interesting point in the histology of the ciliated ectoderm. In teased preparations, kept cold, the ciliated cells often become amoeboid, some of the cilia changing into slender finger-like or stout fusiform pseudopodia. These often retain their curvature parallel to the unaltered cilia, and I have even seen the finer pseudopodia contracting gently in time with the cilia of the same cell, thus establishing a complete gradation between the rythmically contractile cilium and the amoeboid pseudopodium, through what is really a rythmically contractile pseudopodium.' Again, in a well-known Work on Chemistry inorganic and organic, I find the following words: -- 'By treating phenylamine (aniline), NH2 (C6H5), with dichloride of ethylene (Dutch liquid), the diphenyl- diethylene-diamine, N2 (C6H5)(C2H4)''2, is obtained, which represents a double molecule of ammonia (N2H6), in which H2 are replaced by two of ethylene, and H4 by two of ethylene. By the action of chloroform upon aniline, formyl- diphenyl-diamine, N2 (CH)'''(C6 H5)2H, has been obtained, in which H3 are replaced by the triatomic formyle (CH), and H2 by phenyle. It has been seen that phenylamine is produced by the deoxidising action of ferrous acetate upon nitrobenzole (C6H5NO2),'{2} etc., etc. In another well-known Book on Chemistry, we frequently encounter passages like the following : -- 'TRIETHYLIA,' (I omit the chemical symbols), 'is formed from diethylia by the further action of ethylic bromide. Triethylia combines in its turn with ethylic bromide, or still better with ethylic iodide. The salt thus formed contains TETRETHYLAMMONIUM.' And again: 'The salt might have to be called metethyprobutammonic iodide.'{3}
I have been told by those who are experts in those branches of knowledge, that the terms, therein coined in such abundance, are of great service to the student; and, indeed, it would be rash to suppose that men of eminence would establish a difficult and elaborate vocabulary for the mere purpose of parading their particular Discipline on stilts. Nevertheless, it is at least hazardous to declaim against the barbarism of the Scholastic terminology, in face of such modern specimens as those which I have signalized. It should be added, moreover, that the Scholastic terminology has been, in great measure, borrowed from Aristotle, and is established by the sanction of about eight hundred years; while these vocabularies are, all of them, comparatively modern, and are daily receiving fresh additions to the number of their words. Nor do I think that the most determined adversary of the former could discover in the voluminous writings of either St. Thomas or Suarez any single phrase which could hope to rival such phrases as, 'The cotyloid ramus of each ischium gives off a stout elongated metischial process backwards,' or, 'Phenylamine is produced by the deoxodising action of ferrous acetate upon nitrobeuzole,' or, 'Homologues of the rami of the ypsiloid cartilage.'
But I have not yet concluded my defence of the Scholastic terminology. Hobbes has taken the heading of a Chapter which he discovered in one of the Opuscula of Suarez. It is not the first Chapter; and, as I have before remarked, the little Treatise in which it appears, discusses a question already mooted in one of his great Works, and presupposes, on the part of the reader, a knowledge of the controversy. Now, I intend to test the worth of the declamatory criticism of Hobbes, by introducing a parallel instance from modern physical science. And I purpose making my selection from no small or parenthetical brochure, but from an elaborate Work in two volumes. The Book which I have chosen is The Evolution of Man, by Ernst Haeckel. The author informs us, in his first Chapter, that he has striven 'to present this branch of the science in as popular a form as possible.' I think, then, that I have been exceptionally fair towards Hobbes; though I shall beg leave to imitate him so far as to take my example from the heading of the sixteenth chapter, which is as follows: -- Relation of the General Inductive Law of the Theory of Descent to the Special Deductive Laws of the Hypotheses of Descent. --Incompleteness of the Three Great Records of Creation: Palaeontology, Ontogeny, and Comparative Anatomy. -- Unequal Certainty of the Various Special Hypotheses of Descent. -- The Ancestral Line of Men in Twenty-two Stages: Eight Invertebrate and Fourteen Vertebrate Ancestors. -- Distribution of these Twenty-two Parentforms in the Five Main Divisions of the Organic History of the Earth. -- First Ancestral Stage: Monera. -- The Structureless and Homogeneous Plasson of the Monera. -- Differentiation of the Plasson into Nucleus, and the Protoplasm of the Cells. -- Cytods and Cells as Two Different Plastoid-forms. -- Vital Phenomenon of Monera. -- Organisms without Organs. -- Second Ancestral Stage: Amoebae. -- One-celled Primitive Animals of the Simplest and most Undifferentiated Nature. -- The Ameboid Egg-cells . -- The Egg is older than the Hen. -- Third Ancestral Stage: Syn-Amoeba, Ontogenetically reproduced in the Morula. -- A Community of Homogeneous Amoeboid Cells. -- Fourth Ancestral Stage: Planaea, Ontogenetically reproduced in the Blastula or Planula. -- Fifth Ancestral Stage: Gastraea, Ontogenetically reproduced in the Gastrula and the Two-layered Germ-disc. -- Origin of the Gastraea by Inversion (invaginatio) of the Planaea. -- Haliphysema and Gastrophysema. -- Extant Gastraeads.'
It is to be presumed that Hobbes knew nothing whatsoever of the great controversy, between the Dominican and Jesuit Schools, touching the way of reconciling the concurrence and help of God in human action with the liberty of the human will; otherwise, he could not possibly have made the unmeasured animadversions that have been quoted at the beginning of this preface. Accordingly, I am in my strict right, if I summon a man of ordinary culture, who has never made acquaintance with modern labours in comparative anatomy, to read through the above summary and tell me how much he understands of its contents. As he passes along the array of unusual and, to him, unintelligible names with which the heading is studded; what would most probably be the impression produced upon his mind? what the judgment he would pronounce? If he were a self-sufficient man or occupied by an antecedent prejudice against this particular study, I am afraid that he would follow in the wake of the author of the Leviathan. If, on the contrary, he were a modest, reverential, man, conscious of his own ignorance, he would reserve his judgment. He would say to himself, that every science or discipline has its terminology, -- that possibly all these big words are a necessary peristyle, albeit of unpolished granite, -- that new facts, like new ideas, give birth to new expressions, -- that a man of wisdom will not care to quarrel with terms, however absonous and false to their derivation, which have been consecrated, by common consent, as symbols of those facts or natural phenomena, -- that, in any case, he will be better able to judge, when he has to a certain extent mastered the subject-matter. I am not quite so sure that, after having done his best in this direction, his verdict would be as favourable to the Evolution of Man as to the Opusculum of Suarez. Anyhow, the reader must not Imagine that I have picked out my example of set purpose, because it stands out in contrast with the summaries, or headings, of other Chapters in the same Book. If he should take the trouble to examine, he will find, that there are summaries of Chapters, which might have been cited with equal effect. In particular, as regards the nomenclature, the following is a collection from the headings of the first six Chapters: 'Ontogeny, -- Phylogeny, -- Biogeny, -- Heredity, -- Adaptation, -- Purposive Causes, -- Monistic or Unitary Cosmology, -- Dualistic or Binary Cosmology, -- Embryology, -- Morphogeny, -- Morphology; (Summary of Chapter I). -- Incubated chick, -- Animalculists, -- Ovulists, -- Epigenesis; (Summary of Chapter II.) -- Purposelessness, or (Summary of Chapter V). -- Yelk, -- Chorion; (Summary of Chapter VI). I think I may safely say that there are more technical words in this one Work, than could be collected from the twenty-five Volumes of St. Thomas or the twenty-five Volumes of Suarez. The reader will be able to determine the point, in great measure, for himself, by examining the Glossary in the Appendix to the present Volume. If he makes abstraction of words which have become common property among all philosophical writers and students of whatsoever School, and adds to these such words as, though in common use, have received a determined meaning from Scholastic usage; he will find that 'the barbarous terminology,' will be reduced to surprisingly small dimensions.
But I must put him on his guard against supposing that, on this account, the study of the Scholastic Philosophy will prove easy from the very commencement.
There are three principal reasons for concluding the reverse. Two of these reasons are common to all time; the third applies more pointedly to the present age. The first is traceable to the abstract nature of the subject-matter. Those whose minds have been hitherto accustomed to deal exclusively with the concrete, -- with that which is purely phenomenal and pervious to the senses, will, for the most part, experience a great difficulty at first in habituating their minds to the conceiving of ideas, so remotely and feebly assisted by phantasmata, or sense-paintings. Yet, without the aid of these latter, thought, (at least, in the actual order), is impossible. This is one principal reason why physicists so often make but lame metaphysicians.
The second reason is traceable in the common use of the terms, with which the metaphysical science primarily deals. All men conceive such ideas, and make use of such terms, as, Being, Nature, Thing, The Individual, One, True, Good, Possible, Existence, and the like. But, in the minds of the unphilosophical and unscientific, the concepts formed of such realities are vague, indistinct, superficial. The vulgar use the words, because they must; because the objects, of which those words are the instituted symbol, come across them everywhere and at every moment. But they begin by using them as children; and they end by using them like children. Consequently, they always attach these concepts to the concrete and individual, -- to this thing, this Being, this One, this Good, this Possible, this Existent, and so on; and the instinctive propensity for individuating, together with the indefiniteness of the idea, causes that their primitive notions touching these realities are mixed up with imaginations, and clouded by connection with sensile perceptions, (the lowest and least significant of the actions of the human soul), to such an extent, that they are prone, first of all, to misconceive the vast realm of highest truths which are set before them in the metaphysical science, and afterwards, to despise, as unpractical and sophistic, that which carries them so far aloft above the conceptionless chaos of mere matter and its belongings. They cannot follow; so they curse or mock, (according to their natural bent), the aeronaut who would allure them to attempt the lofty heights. Moreover, many among them there are, who have no stomach for a journey towards the heavens; while they can succeed in digging yellow nuggets from the bowels of the earth. But I am digressing. I say, then, that it is a misfortune for the vulgar, (and by the word, vulgar, I understand all such as have not enrolled themselves as students under the supreme natural science, whether they be simpler folk, or physicists, or politicians, or otherwise men of culture), that the objects, which they are, summoned by Metaphysics to contemplate, are already familiar to them, however imperfectly and even erroneously, in thought and speech; so that, like a pupa, they must isolate themselves from this outer world, contract within themselves, and shake off that outer integument of sense, before they can hope for wings.
The third and last reason is, as I have already said, more germane to the mental condition of the present time. It is to be found in the intellectual make, produced, in part by the system of education now in vogue, in part by the action of our ephemeral literature. I will refer, first of all, to the former. To my mind, (but I wish to speak with all deference for the judgment of those who have made a special study of the subject), the great error in the modern system of mental education consists in confusing the education of the intellectual faculties with the acquisition of knowledge. Yet, the two are essentially distinct; and the former is an absolutely necessary preparation for the latter. You cannot expect men to acquire accurate knowledge, till their minds have formed a habit of accuracy. But, if, at the outset of their education, you stimulate those who are comparatively children, and whose intellectual habits are as yet unformed, to become encyclopedian, -- if you set before them Latin, Greek, modern Languages, Geography, English Literature, Arithmetic, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, and force upon them the study of each and all, irrespective of their natural tastes and propensions, you render the acquisition of solid accuracy, perspicacity, depth, impossible. Add, yet further, the stimulus of competition. What is the inevitable result? The young intellect is subjected to an unwholesome system of cram, as it has been called. The mental stomach is overloaded, in anticipation of the competitive examination. At that time, the sufferer discharges his load at the feet of the examiners; and labours henceforth, unto his life's end, from an intellectual indigestion. His faculties have been warped, not developed, by the process; and he is rendered permanently incapable of acquiring true science. Not only is his mind warped, but it has become positively hostile to deep, patient, laborious, thought; and it requires no ordinary power of will to purge oneself of the prejudice, and to bring back the distorted bow to its natural curve. As things go, supposing the Darwinian theory to be true, I anticipate, at least in this country, the evolution of a new tribe of men who will he mainly hydrocephalous.
Our ephemeral literature has likewise had its influence in nurturing a habit of mind peculiarly inimical to metaphysical study. Not that I mean to bring any indictment against our periodicals and lighter works, which, as I think, for the most part contrast very favourably with those of other countries. Indeed, the fault lies in the excess of devotion to such productions, rather than in the character of the productions themselves. It would be nearer the mark, therefore, were I to say, that the important position which this species of literature holds amongst us, is a symbol, or even result, of the defect to which I am referring, rather than its cause; though in this, as in other like cases, there is always more or less of a causal reciprocity, on the well-known principle of demand and supply.
The intellectual defect to which I am alluding may be most clearly described as an habitual passivity of thought. Under its influence the mind is prone to submit, without effort of its own, to the impressions and ideas set before it. It loves to be fed, as children are fed, without enduring the trouble of purveying for itself. It takes in ready-made views and plausible conceits, as a man buys gold chains and rings, for ornamental wear; but will not rouse itself to examine, discriminate, compare, pursue, judge. Wisdom is, in its eyes, an article huckstered in book-marts; not the prize of the patient labours of a lifetime. Such enervation of the intellectual powers is fatal to metaphysical study; where, if anywhere, the mind must be on the alert, first of all in order to understand the deep truths that are there discussed, and then to be able to preserve itself from the hydra-headed impostures of false philosophies. If a man thinks that he can get up Metaphysics, (to use a popular expression), as he can get up views about the prehistoric man or the evolution of living bodies; he had better spare himself the loss of time, and adopt the advice of the Member for the University of London.
{1} A Paper by Professor Huxley, included in the Proceedings of the Royal Society for March 6, 1879. I could not help fancying that this eminent writer must have had such passages as the above in his mind, when he penned the following words, (Hume, Chap. i, p. 59): 'Since physical science, in the course of the last fifty years, has brought to the front an inexhaustible supply of heavy artillery, of a new pattern, warranted to drive solid bolts of facts through the thickest skulls, things are looking better; though hardly more than the first faint flutterings of the dawn of the happy day, when superstition and false metaphysics shall be no more . . . are as yet discernible,' etc.
{2} Bloxam's Chemistry, p. 539.
{3} Williamson's Chemistry, § 269.