Legend
< The British Association (continued from page 10-22) >
this very charm there is undoubtedly a danger, and we must be all the more careful lest it should exert an influence in arresting the progress of truth, just as at an earlier period traditional beliefs exerted an authority from which the mind but slowly and with difficulty succeeded in emancipating itself.
“But have we, it may be asked, made in all this one step forward towards an explanation of the phenomena of consciousness or the discovery of its source? Assuredly not. The power of conceiving of a substance different from that of matter is still beyond the limits of human intelligence, and the physical or objective conditions which are the concomitants of thought are the only ones of which it is possible to know anything, and the only ones whose study is of value.
“We are not, however, on that account forced to the conclusion that there is nothing in the universe but matter and force. The simplest physical law is absolutely inconceivable by the highest of the brutes, and no one would be justified in assuming that man had already attained the limit of his powers. Whatever may be that mysterious bond which connects organisation with psychical endowments, the one grand fact—a fact of inestimable importance—stands out clear and freed from all obscurity and doubt, that from the first dawn of intelligence there is with every advance in organisation a corresponding advance in mind. Mind as well as body is thus travelling onwards through higher and still higher phases; the great law of Evolution is shaping the destiny of our race; and though now we may at most but indicate some weak point in the generalisation which would refer consciousness as well as life to a common material source, who can say that in the far off future there may not yet be evolved other and higher faculties from which light may stream in upon the darkness, and reveal to man the great mystery of Thought?”
Without doubt the chief feature of the 1879 meeting of the British Association was the evening lecture delivered by Mr. W. Crookes on “Radiant Matter.” The Albert Hall was crowded. The experiments were of an entirely novel description, and of such a nature as could not have been anticipated two or three years ago. The following were the closing remarks of Mr. Crookes, and as he uttered them a smile broke over the features of several persons in the audience, who saw more meaning in them than the generality of the listeners could realise:—
“In studying this fourth state of Matter we seem at length to have within our grasp and obedient to our control the little indivisible particles which with good warrant are supposed to constitute the physical basis of the universe. We have seen that in some of its properties Radiant Matter is as material as this table, whilst in other properties it almost assumes the character of Radiant Energy. We have actually touched the border land where Matter and Force seem to merge into one another, the shadowy realm between Known and Unknown which for me has always had peculiar temptations. I venture to think that the greatest scientific problems of the future will find their solution in this border land, and even beyond; here, it seems to me, lie ultimate realities, subtle, far-reaching, wonderful.
“Yet all these were, when no Man did them know, |
Mr. Crookes’s lecture was published in full in The Engineer newspaper last week, accompanied by a large number of beautifully executed diagrams of the experiments.
Professor E. Ray Lankester’s lecture on “Degeneration” was the most thinly attended of all the evening meetings. It was heavy and wearisome, though probably sound from a zoologist’s point of view. It exhibited no symptoms of genius or of poetry, and the Sheffield Daily Telegraph of August 25th contains the following paragraph about it:—
People have different views about the British Association and its lectures. A local gentleman, who wears the order of the Local Committee on his noble breast, went to hear Professor E. Ray Lankester on “Degeneration.” “How did you like it?” he was asked. “Like it!” he repeated; “it was so awfully dry, and I felt myself so degenerated that I went to a friend’s, and drank off three glasses of beer before I felt restored to my normal condition of wetness.”
One of the secretaries, in seconding a vote of thanks to Professor Lankester, explained that originally somebody else bad been invited to deliver the lecture for that evening, but when he announced his inability to do so, Professor Lankester was asked, and was kind enough to quickly come forward.
During my stay here I have made some inquiries about the actions in this neighbourhood of Mr. John Ruskin, who has established a Museum at Upper Walkley, near Sheffield. The Museum stands upon the brow of a hill, on which clusters of small cottages are scattered about; the entrance to the establishment is through a doorway in a stone wall, and a pathway beneath some apple trees in a carefully- tended garden leads to a small cottage, which is used for the purposes of the Museum. From the entrance doorway is a magnificent view of the valley below, and the hills in the distance; there is a quietude and repose about the spot which, in our opinion, is, therefore, much better fitted for quiet study than the centre of a noisy town. People who have no desire to learn, and who visit the place from curiosity, think that it is an exceedingly unpractical step to place the Museum so far from the centre of Sheffield. The establishment of the Museum is but a portion of a wider scheme called “The St. George’s Guild,” formed to put in practice Mr. Ruskin’s principles of political economy. Mr. Ruskin has peculiar ideas of his own, as strange as those of the Chinese philosopher, Pooh Pooh, who was charitably thought to be mad by his neighbours because he promulgated the doctrine that his daughter ought to see her future husband before she was married to him, and furthermore that she should have some voice in the selection of her future partner; the heretical old man also believed that she ought to have some sort of affection for him. The good Cantonese were as much horror-stricken by these doctrines as an English matchmaking mother would be, and Pooh Pooh would undoubtedly have been <... continues on page 10-24 >