(Docketed ‘Cosmic’. Ten sheets appear to be wanting. The paper was read before the Sunday Lecture Society at St George’s Hall, Langham Place, London, on 4 May 1873, and this draft was probably made not long before that date.)
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Transcript
On the relations between Science and some Modern Poetry.
A long time ago, when wandering about in a library, I chanced upon an old and very singular book. It was called the commentary of Hierocles upon the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans. {1} I had never heard of Hierocles, nor of the Golden Verses, {2} but I was curious about the Pyth.; {3} so I made out as much of the book as I could; and I have not been able to find out much more since about Hier. & the Golden Verses. It seems that Hierocles was a Neo-Platonist, who lived in the middle of the fifth century; and that this book was meant to give a connected account, so far as was then possible, of the teaching of the Pythagoreans. It seems to me that that fifth century of our era is an exceedingly interesting and instructive period, of which we should endeavour to get pictures from as many points of view as possible. Canon Kingsley has given us one picture, in a book which I hope many of us know—Hypatia: {4} which at least gives us a tolerably clear idea of the sort of time that the philosophers had of it. And there is M. Ozanam’s very interesting book—Civilization in the fifth century {5}—which puts the matter from another point of view. Our philosopher Hierocles, like the rest of his school, had ideas which may be regarded as a modification of the old Greek beliefs in two directions. They were largely rationalized and explained away by the introduction of scientific ideas; while they were supplemented and propped up on the other side by magic and mysticism not of Greek origin. In the commentary of which I speak these two modifications have become so important that they entirely override the original basis of Greek belief; the olympian mythology receives a merely nominal homage, and has no longer any practical influence. Sometimes science is everything, and its methods all-sufficient; sometimes everything depends upon a mystical communion with spirits. On one page you think you are talking to Prof Huxley; on the next, to Mr Home. {6} The book which forms This {7} curious mixture is a commentary on what seems to have been a traditional document among the disciples of Pythagoras; of what date I know not, except that it does not pretend to be the work of the unknown sage himself. The Golden Verses are a collection of precepts for the guidance of life; they are for the most part very simple and admirable, and just such as we should write down today for a person whom we did not expect to understand anything very difficult. Some relate to the duties of a citizen as such, some to those of an individual as such; these latter being remarkable for the very great stress which they lay upon the laws of health. The only attempt to reduce them to a general principle is the maxim that the Reason is to guide all other activities. So far, then, if the Golden Verses were now published for the first time, there would be nothing very remarkable about the things they tell you to do; not only the actions advised, but the degree of importance attached to different portions of the code, are as nearly as possible what we in this hall at least should be ready at once to approve. And even when we reconsider that the document is probably two thousand years old, we have no reason to be astonished that the ideal of human action among the most cultivated Teutonic races should very nearly approximate to that of the ancient Greeks. But in this same document, mixed up with the common-place precepts, there is found a general conception of the universe, with which the precepts are in harmony. After a strong declaration of belief that by far the greater part of the evils that men suffer are preventible evils, that the people perisheth for lack of knowledge; {8} there comes this extraordinary passage:
“Know, so far as it is permitted you, that Nature is everywhere uniform; in order that you may neither hope things that ought not to be hoped for, nor be ignorant of what can be attained.”
And then further:—
“But be of good cheer; for those mortals have the blood of the gods in them (or partake of divine descent) to whom holy Nature unfolds all things as she leads them on.”
I am told that the expression here used belongs especially to the hierophant in the mysteries—the guiding priest by whom the faithful were initiated into the divine secrets one by one. Now I may be reading into these passages by an after-light something that is not there; but it does seem to me that coming as they do in justification of rules for practice, they are equivalent to the application of past experience to present circumstances, in accordance with an observed order of events, for the purpose of making progress—that is to say, they lay down as the rule of life exactly what we call science.
“Know, so far …
Observe especially the limitation here, ᾗ θεμις εστι—the uniformity of nature is not stated absolutely or universally, but only so far as fate permits—so far as human knowledge goes: that is, so far as it is applicable to human practice. Again, the image of the hierophant gradually leading forward the neophytes from one arcanum to another, used as a symbol of the education by Nature of the human race, does seem to me to shew very distinctly that the idea of progress was present to the minds at least of those who took these verses for their rule. It has been asserted that the ancient world was entirely devoid of the conception of progress. This may to a certain extent be true of political progress; but we cannot admit it of scientific progress, when we find Hipparchus[,] who had made the great step of determining the nature of the solar and lunar motions and had failed to extend the same methods to the planets, storing up observations in the sure and certain hope that a more fortunate successor would accomplish that work; which indeed was done by Ptolemy. And it is very important to notice that the exact sciences were regarded as the standard to which the others should endeavour to attain—as appears by a subsequent passage in these very verses. For the unknown author directs you to “exercise yourself in the purifications and in the upward-leading liberation of the soul”. Upon this Hierocles makes a very remarkable comment. He says “the purification of the rational soul are the mathematical sciences; and the upward-leading liberation (αναγωγος λυσις—the freedom that is progress) is the scientific view of things (διαλεκτικη των οντων εποπτεια)”. And I will go even further than this, and say that the ancients possessed not only the conception of progress but the method of it, namely experiment. Hierocles lived some three centuries after Ptolemy had experimented and made tables of refraction. In the Astronomical sciences, and in the Medical sciences, they had made real experiments; and I am not aware that in the Sociological sciences a systematic series of experiments has been made even yet. Here, as so often, the question comes up “why was this promise not fulfilled?”. And I think anybody who will read all the Golden Verses and then some of the commentary of Hierocles, will see at least what was the process of decay.
Just as the traveller who has been worn to the bone by years of weary striving among men of another skin suddenly gazes with doubting eyes upon the white face of a brother; so if we travel backwards in thought over the darker ages of the history of Europe, we at length reach back with such bounding of heart to men who had like hopes with ourselves; and shake hands across that vast with the singers of the Golden Verses, our own true spiritual ancestors.
I am she that (SS. 75)
Now I dare say you will think I have no business, after promising to talk about the relations of science with some modern poetry, to begin by speaking of this very ancient poetry that was written probably more than two thousand years ago. But in the first place I wanted very much to speak of these verses, because they produced a great impression upon me at the time when I first read them, and I have been very fond of them ever since; and one likes as you know to talk to other people about things which have given pleasure to oneself. And in the second place, they will serve to indicate very well what is the kind of poetry that we have to consider today. It is not all modern poetry, but only some modern poetry; namely that which deals with what my friend Mr Henry Sidgwick calls Cosmic emotion. When we attempt to think about the sum of things, about the Universe or Macrocosm, to put together the most general conceptions that we can form about the great aggregate of events that are always taking place, to strike a sort of balance among the feelings which these events produce in us, and to add to these the feeling of vastness associated with an attempt to represent the whole of existence; then we experience a cosmic emotion, and emotion in regard to the universe or cosmos. And it is impossible to cast a superficial glance over what we are taught about the history of mankind without perceiving how immense and powerful a part appears to have been played in that great drama by the nature of the cosmic emotions which have been felt by different races. But this is not the only kind of cosmic emotion. Instead of paying attention to the Macrocosm or universe outside of us, we may if we please pay attention to the microcosm, the universe of ourselves. We may consider the totality of our own actions and of the feelings which they produce; we may form the highest possible generalization to express the character of those which we call good, and consider that this is desirable as a guiding principle in our life. We thus obtain an exceedingly general distinction between good and evil; and when we contemplate this, we experience an emotion which is different from that which we feel in particular cases, by having added to it the element of vastness because it regards everything that we do. This also is to be called a cosmic emotion, because it is an emotion felt towards the universe of human action. Now a particular form of each of these two kinds of cosmic emotion has been expressed in a beautiful couplet by Immanuel Kant, which has been perfectly translated by Lord Houghton:
Two things there are that fill the mind with awe;
The starry heavens, and man’s sense of law.
The starry heavens on a clear night being the most direct presentation of the sum of things, and from the nature of the circumstances fitted to produce a cosmic emotion of the first kind; while the moral faculty of man was thought of by Kant as possessing universality in a peculiar sense, for the form of all maxims, according to him, is that they are fit for universal law—a mode of viewing the faculty which is specially adapted to produce cosmic emotion of the second kind.
Now you will see at once that the Golden Verses present you with a picture of Nature and of Life which is quite fitted to produce Cosmic Emotion; namely they regard the Universe as continually educating us and teaching us to act rightly; this is done by setting Reason free from the chains that bind her, and enthroning her as the guiding principle. But the important thing to notice is that here the cosmic emotion is not two but one; the universe is regarded only as related to human action, and human action only as cooperation with Nature. I shall endeavour to shew you that this unity is essential to the scientific view of things. But assuming this for the present, there are two questions that lie before us today:
First, the scientific question; have we, with our additional knowledge, any modification to propose in this view of the cosmos, any development to evolve, any clearer definition to formulate? How do we conceive the world?
I shall endeavour to shew in answer to this question that we have a more definite conception, both of the external and of the internal cosmos.
Secondly, the poetic question; does a poetical literature exist which expresses the cosmic emotion proper to this advanced conception?
I shall answer to this question in the affirmative.
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But before going on to consider these questions, it is necessary to take note of some very important limitations, in order that we may not hope things that ought not to be hoped for, nor on the other hand be ignorant of what can be attained. First of all, then, the cosmos that we have to do with is no longer a definite whole including absolutely all existence. The old cosmos had a boundary in space, a beginning and an end in time. Beyond that boundary was nothing; before the beginning and after the end, no history. But now the real universe extends at least far beyond the cosmos, the order that we actually know of. The sum total of our experience and of the inferences that can fairly
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All practical questions, therefore, are within the domain of science; and it is easy to see conversely that unpractical questions are out of it. By an unpractical question I mean one from the answer to which no inference can be drawn by which our actions would be affected. For example, it is a very practical question, where or no there is hydrogen in the Sun. For if there is not, then some other substance can give out light exactly like that given out by hydrogen; and the attempt to analyse a substance by the spectroscope is a wrong action. It is this very limitation, then, that necessitates the union of the two kinds of cosmic emotion; for the external cosmos is limited to that which we can know so as to affect the internal cosmos.
This consideration seems to me so very important that I shall put it in another way. It has been expressly denied by Kant, who with many other merits has certainly this one; that he has proposed distinctly, and given answers to, a great number of important questions; which everybody since his time has been obliged to give some answer to, whether agreeing with him or not. His doctrine in regard to this question is that the practical reason is obliged to assume certain principles which are not given by the speculative reason; that it directs us to act as if these things were true, although they are not known as true statements but only as regulative principles. Now it seems to me one of the great services rendered to this subject by Mr Bain {9} that he pointed out how every belief is in reality a regulative principle. When you believe that A is B, you mean to act as if A was B; and that is the essence of the belief. Every assertion that you make is an aggregate of resolves. We may even give a physiological explanation of this.
What then is that curious state of mind in which you believe that you believe a certain statement? This is still a resolve to act. It means not that you are going to act as if the statement were true, but that you are going to assert it and to try and make other people assert it.
Now, in regard to these two doctrines—one, that the practical reason requires principles which the speculative reason does not supply; the other, that the two are identical—it is very important to observe that the difference between them is a difference of individual choice, and that neither of them can be proved. For I can choose, if I like, to believe something that is not justified by my speculative reason; that is to say, which cannot be inferred from experience on the assumption that Nature is uniform.+ {10} If every real belief is a resolve to act, and so belongs to the practical reason, this comes to saying that my practical reason refuses to assume the uniformity of Nature and to be confined to conclusions which may be got from experience by its help. Now this is not a case for argument, for it decides what I am going to take as proof. The only thing to be said is this; that Nature being actually uniform is selecting those races and those individuals who do act upon the assumption of uniformity—that the other kind of action does not pay.
Now I make this choice; I resolve to believe those statements which can be inferred from experience on the assumption that Nature is uniform, and those statements only. My belief is then wholly determined by science. And while the cosmos presented to me by science is limited to that part of things which is of practical importance to me, so that I apparently lose by the limitation; at the same time I learn that it necessarily contains all that is of practical importance to me; which is distinctly a gain.
So if we consider the other limitation imposed by the changing character of human nature, we shall find that it is precisely this which enables us to find a general principle of action. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the flood of light which the doctrine of evolution has thrown upon this subject. Suppose the rest of the world suddenly petrified at any given instant, and that you were able to walk about and look at the people. The great majority of them would be standing on one leg, many with their mouths open, and the rest would be in still more absurd positions—I mean, of course, absurd for a continuance. Their attitudes and gestures, considered as belonging to people in repose, would be utterly inexplicable. But now remember that this world is not meant to be still, but in motion; then instantaneously every part of the scene acquires its true meaning. So if we regard organic nature as a fixed thing, not only do the likenesses and differences of animals and plants become inexplicable, but the only distinction between good acts and evil ones which can be got from experience becomes distinction founded on the pleasure and pain of the individual. You know how this is modified in the theory of Utilitarianism so as to mean the aggregate pleasure and pain of the race; but on the hypothesis that human nature is fixed, this is merely an arbitrary assumption. But from the moment that we admit the continual change of the organic world, everything is clear. We get a distinction between good and bad which is obvious on the face of it and is of universal application.
How so? If I have evolved myself out of an amphioxus it is clear that I have become better by the change; I have risen in the organic scale; I have become more organic. Of all the changes that I have undergone the greater part must have been changes in this direction; some in the opposite direction; some perhaps neutral. But if I could only find out which, I should
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the word. “Freedom is such a property of the will” says Kant “as enables living agents to originate events, independently of foreign determining causes.”
The character of an organic action, then, is Freedom. Now the highest of all organisms is the social organism. This has precisely the same property as the lowest; viz:, it is able to aggregate together motions which are relatively molecular into molar motions. the {12} individual men of a social organism are the molecules of which it is composed; and by means of it actions which, as individual, are insignificant, are massed together into the important movements of a society. Freedom, or action from within, is the necessary form of good actions in a social organism. The possibility of this is not got rid of until the society is absolutely enslaved and separated into its elements.
Courage yet, my brother or my sister (L.G. 363)
Freedom, as the ultimate principle of right action, has thus two forms, as existing in the individual and in the community. The action by which the community is free is Comradeship
“Oneself I sing, a simple, separate person (L.G. 1.)
Yet after the word Democratic, the word En-masse.
“Come, I will make the continent” {11} (L.G. 127)
For the individual we come back to the Pythagorean maxim of free choice with reason at the helm.
Then he stood up (S.S. 2.)
Hence Freedom is to be taken as identical with the soul of man, engaged in ceaseless conflict with the environment.
His eyes take part in the morning (S.S. 118)
Conflict still going on
Listen, I will be honest (L.G. 184)
Pilgrim (S.S. 125)
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Note that diacritic marks are generally wanting from the Greek quotations. The abbreviations ‘L.G.’ and ‘S.S.’ refer to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Swinburne’s Songs before Sunrise. The brackets round these references have been supplied.
{1} There are a number of editions of Hierocles’ commentary, in various languages. The text followed by Clifford in the published version of this essay (‘Cosmic Emotion’) was that of Mullach, in Fragmenta Philosophorum Græcorum (Paris: Ambroise Firmin Didot, 1860). See Nineteenth Century, ii. 414, note 2.
{2} Comma supplied.
{3} ‘but … Pyth.’ interlined; preceding comma supplied.
{4} Kingsley’s novel Hypatia, or New Foes with an Old Face, set in fifth-century Alexandria, was serialised in 1852 and published in two volumes the following year. The ODNB explains that the ‘new foes’ of the subtitle were 'J. H. Newman, now a Roman Catholic, and the other leaders of the Oxford Movement, such as E. B. Pusey; the old face imputed to them was that of the fanatical (and of course celibate) monks of fifth-century Alexandria who murdered the Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia, and who Kingsley viewed as extreme and discreditable examples of the asceticism of the early church from which contemporary Catholic spirituality had drawn inspiration. By way of contrast Kingsley introduces the ostrich-hunting married bishop Synesius and, a little improbably, a crew of cheerfully brutal proto-British Goths who embody Kingsleyan virtues of rough, unconventional decency, courage, physical sturdiness, and a saving respect for women.'
{5} History of Civilization in the Fifth Century (2 vols., 1868), an English translation by Ashley C. Glyn of Antoine Frédéric Ozanam’s Études germaniques pour servir à l‘histoire des Francs (2 vols., 1847-9). Ozanam was a passionate Catholic apologist, and therefore, as Clifford indicates, his point of view naturally differed from Kingsley’s.
{6} Daniel Dunglas Home, the celebrated medium, mocked by Browning in his poem ‘Mr Sludge the Medium’.
{7} Sic. The preceding words of the sentence were interlined.
{8} This is Clifford’s version of the more usual expression, ‘The people perish for lack of knowledge’, an adaptation of part of Hosea iv. 6.
{6} Alexander Bain (1818–1903), psychologist.
{10} Footnote: '+ eg. C[…] race actually alive in bowels of earth'. The first word is instinct.
{11} Closing inverted commas supplied.
{12} Sic. A preceding word was deleted.
† Sic.