Saying no more about patriotism and its perverting effects on sociological judgments, which are, indeed, so conspicuous all through history as scarcely to need pointing out, let me devote the remaining space to the perverting effects of the opposite feeling — anti-patriotism. Though the distortions of opinion hence resulting are less serious, still they have to be guarded against.
In England the bias of anti-patriotism does not diminish in a marked way the admiration we have for our political insti tutions; biit only here and there prompts the wish for a strong government, to secure the envied benefits ascribed to strong governments abroad. Nor does it appreciably modify the gen eral attachment to our religious institutions; but only in a few who dislike independence, shows itself in advocacy of an authoritative ecclesiastical system, fitted to remedy what they lament as a chaos of religious beliefs. In other directions, however, it is displayed so frequently and conspicuously as to affect public opinion in an injurious way. In respect to the higher orders of intellectual achievement, under-valuation of ourselves has become a fashion; and the errors it fosters react detrimentally on the estimates we make of our social regime, and on our sociological beliefs in general.
What is the origin of this undue self -depreciation? In some cases no doubt it results from disgust at the jaunty selfsatisfaction caused by the bias of patriotism when excessive. In other cases it grows out of affectation: to speak slightingly of what is English seems to imply a wide knowledge of what is foreign, and brings a reputation for culture. In the remain ing cases it is due to ignorance. Passing over such of these self -depreciatory estimates of our powers and achievements as have partial justifications, I will limit myself to one which has no justification. Among the classes here indicated, it is the custom to speak disrespectfully of the part we play in dis covery and invention. There is an assertion occasionally to be met with in public journals, that the French invent and we improve. Not long since it was confessed by the Attorney -General that the English are not a scientific nation. Recently the Times, commenting 011 a speech in which Mr. Gladstone had been disparaging our nation and its men, said: — " There is truth, however, in the assertion that we are backward in ap preciating and pursuing abstract knowledge."10 Such state ments exhibit the bias of anti-patriotism creating a belief that is wholly indefensible. As we shall presently see, they are flatly contradicted by facts; and they can be accounted for only by supposing that those who make them have had a culture ex clusively literary, A convenient way of dealing with this bias of anti-patri otism will be to take an individual example of it. More than any other, Mr. Matthew Arnold has of late made himself an exponent of the feeling. His motive cannot be too highly respected; and for much that he has said in rebuke of the vainglorious, entire approval may rightly be felt. Many grave defects in our social state, many absurdities in our modes of action, many errors in our estimates of ourselves, are to be pointed out and dwelt upon; and great good is done by a writer who efficiently executes the task of making us feel our shortcomings. In his condemnation of the ascetic view of life which still prevails here, one may entirely agree. That undue valuation of material prosperity common with us, is a fault justly insisted on by him. And the overweening confi dence so often shown in a divine favour gained by our greater national piety, is also an attitude of mind to be reprobated. But by reaction Mr. Arnold is, I think, carried too far in the direction of anti-patriotism; and weakens the effect of his criticism by generating a re-action. Let us glance at some of his views.
The mode of procedure generally followed by Mr. Arnold, is not that of judicially balancing the evidence, but that of meeting the expression of self-satisfied patriotism by some few facts calculated to cause dissatisfaction: not considering what is their quantitative value. To reprove a piece of national self-laudation uttered by Mr. Roebuck, he comments on the murder of an illegitimate child by its mother, reported in the same paper. Now this would be effective if infanticide were peculiar to England, or if he could show a larger proportion of infanticide here than elsewhere; but his criticism is at once cancelled on calling to mind the developed system of babyfarming round Paris, and the extensive getting-rid of infants to which it is instrumental. By following Mr. Arnold's method, it would be easy to dispose of his conclusions. Suppose, for instance, that I were to set down the many murders com mitted in England by foreigners within our own memories, including those by Courvoisier, by Mrs. Manning, by Barthelemi near Fitzroy Square, by a Frenchman in Foley Place (about 1854-7), that by Muller, that by Kohl in the Essex marshes, that by Lani in a brothel near the Haymarket, that by Marguerite Diblanc, the tragedy of the two young Ger mans (Mai' and Nagel) at Chelsea, ending with the recent one in Great Coram Street — suppose I were to compare the ratio between this number of murderers and the number of for eigners in England, with the answering ratio among our own people; and suppose I were to take this as a test of the Conti nental culture Mr. Arnold so much admires. Probably he would not think the test quite relevant; and yet it would be quite as relevant as that he uses — perhaps somewhat more relevant. Suppose, again, that by way of criticism on German administration, I were to dwell on the catastrophe at Berlin, where, during the celebration of victory, fourteen sightseers were killed and some hundreds injured; or suppose I were to judge it by the disclosures of the leading Berlin phy sician, Virchow, who shows that one out of every thi'ee chil dren born in Berlin dies the first year, and whose statistics prove the general mortality to be increasing so rapidly that while " in 1854 the death-rate was 1000, in 1851-63 it rose to 1164, and in 1864-8 to 1817 " "—suppose, I say, that I took these facts as proof of failure in the social system Mr. Arnold would have us copy. Possibly he would not be much shaken; though it seems to me that this evidence would be more to the point than a case of infanticide among ourselves. Fur ther, suppose I were to test French administration by the sta tistics of mortality in the Crimea, as given at the late meeting of the French Association for the Advancement of Science, by M. Le Fort, who pointed out that — " Dans ces six mois d'hiver 1855-1856, alors qu'il n'y a plus guere d'hostilites, alors que les Anglais ont seulement en six mois 165 blesses, et les Francais 323, 1'armee anglaise, grace aux precautions prises, n'a que peu de malades et ne perd que 606 homines; 1'armee francaise voit eclater au milieu d'elle le typhus, qu'on eut pu eviter, et perd par les maladies seules 21,190 hommes; " and who further, respecting the relative mortalities from operations, said that — " En Crimee, les armees anglaise et francaise se trouvent exposees aux memes besoins, aux memes vicissitudes atmospheriques, et cependant quelle difference dans la mortalite des operes. Les Anglais perdent 24 pour 100 de leurs amputes du bras, nous en perdons plus du double, 55 sur 100; il en est de meme pour I'amputation de la jambe: — suppose. I say, that I were thus to deal with the notion that "they manage these things better in France." Mr. Arnold would, very likely, not abandon his belief. And yet this con trast would certainly be as damaging as the fact about the girl Wragg, to which he more than once refers so emphati cally. Surely it is manifest enough that by selecting the evi dence, any society may be relatively blackened and any other society relatively whitened.
From Mr. Arnold's method let us turn to some of his spe cific statements; taking first the statement that the English are deficient in ideas. He says: — " There is the world of ideas, and there is the world of practice; the French are often for suppressing the one, and the English the other." ia Admitting the success of the English in action, Mr. Arnold thinks that it goes along with want of faith in speculative conclusions. But by putting ideas and practice in this antithesis, he im plies his acceptance of the notion that effectual practice does not depend on superiority of ideas. This is an erroneous no tion. Methods that answer are preceded by thoughts that are true. A successful enterprise presupposes an imagination of all the factors, and conditions, and results— an imagination which differs from one leading to an unsuccessful enterprise in this, that what will happen is clearly and completely fore seen, instead of being foreseen vaguely and incompletely: there is greater ideality. Every scheme is an idea: every scheme more or less new, implies an idea more or less orig inal: every scheme proceeded with, implies an idea vivid enough to prompt action; and every scheme which succeeds, implies an idea so accurate and exhaustive that the results correspond with it. When an English company accommo dates Amsterdam with water (an element the Dutch are very familiar with, and in the management of which they, cen turies ago, gave us lessons) must we not say that by leaving us to supply their chief city they show a want of confidence in results ideally seen? Is it replied that the Dutch are not an imaginative people? Then take the Italians. How hap pens it that such a pressing need as the draining of Naples, has never suggested to Italian rulers or Italian people the tak ing of measures to achieve it; and how happens it that the idea of draining Naples, instead of emanating from French or Germans, supposed by Mr. Arnold to have more faith in ideas, emanates from a company of Englishmen, who are now pro posing to do the "work without cost to the municipality.11 Or what shall we infer as to relative faith in ideas, on learning that even within their respective territories the French and Germans wait for us to undertake new things for them?
When we find that Toulouse and Bordeaux were lighted with gas by an English company, must we not infer lack of ideas in the people of those places? When we find that a body of Englishmen, the Rhone Hydraulic Company, seeing that at THE BIAS OF PATRIOTISM. •_-..]
Bellegarde there are rapids having a fall of forty feet, made a tunnel carrying a fourth of the river, and so got 10,000 horse power, which they are selling to manufacturers; and when we ask why this source of wealth was not utilized by the French themselves; must we not say that it was because the idea did not occur to them, or because it was not vivid and definite enough to prompt the enterprise? And when, on going north, we discover that not only in Belgium and Hol land are the chief towns, Brussels, Antwerp, Lille, Ghent, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Haarlem, &c., lighted by our Con tinental Gas Association, but that this combination of Eng lishmen lights many towns in Germany also — Hanover. Aixla-Chapelle, Stolberg. Cologne. Frankfort Vienna, nay. that even the head-quarters of geist, Berlin itself, had to wait for light until this CoTupauy supplied it. must we not say that more faith in ideas was shown by English than by Germans? Germans have plenty of energy, are not without desire to make money, and knew that gas was used in England; and if neither they nor their Governments undertook the work, we must infer that the benefits and means were inadequately conceived. English enterprises have often been led by ideas that looked wholly unpractical: as when the first English steamer astonished the people of Coblentz. in 1S17. by making its appearance there, so initiating the Rhine steam-navigation; or as when the first English steamer started across the Atlan tic. Instead of our practice being unideal. the ideas which guide it sometimes verge on the romantic. Fishing up a cable from the bottom of an ocean three miles deep, was an idea seemingly more fitted for The Arabian Xights than for actual life: and yet success proved how truly those who conducted the operation had put together their ideas in correspondence with the facts — the true test of vivid imagination.
To show the groundlessness of the notion that new ideas are not evolved and appreciated as much in England as else where, I am tempted here to enumerate our modern inven tions of all orders: from those directly aiming at material results, such as Trevethick's first locomotive, up to the calculat ing-machines of Babbage and the logic-machine of Jevons, quite remote from practice in their objects. But merely assert ing that those who go through the list will find that neither in number nor in importance do they yield to those of any nation during- the same period, I refrain from details. Partly I do this because the space required for specifying them would be too great; and partly because inventions, mostly having immediate bearings on practice, would perhaps not be thought by Mr. Arnold to prove fertility of idea: though, considering that each machine is a theory before it becomes a working reality, this would be a position difficult to defend. To avoid all possible objection, I will limit myself to scientific dis covery, from which the element of practice is excluded; and to meet the impression that scientific discovery in recent days has not maintained its former pace, I will name only our achievements since 1800.
Taking first the Abstract Sciences, let us ask what has been done in Logic. We have the brief but pregnant statement of inductive methods by Sir John Herschel, leading to the defi nite systematization of them by Mr. Mill; and we have, in the work of Professor Bain, elaborately-illustrated applica tions of logical methods to science and to the business of life.
Deductive Logic, too, has been developed by a further concep tion. The doctrine of the quantification of the predicate, set forth in 1827 by Mr. George Bentham, and again set forth under a numerical form by Professor De Morgan, is a doctrine supplementary to that of Aristotle; and the recognition of it has made it easier than before to see that Deductive Logic is a science of the relations implied by the inclusions, exclusions, and overlappings of classes.14 Even were this all, the instal ment of progress would be large for a single generation. But it is by no means all. In the work by Professor Boole, Inves tigation of the Laivs of Thought, the application to Logic of methods like those of Mathematics, constitutes another step far greater in originality and in importance than any taken since Aristotle. So that, strangely enough, the assertion quoted above, that " we are backward in appreciating and pur suing abstract knowledge," and this complaint of Mr. Arnold that our life is wanting in ideas, come at a time when we have lately done more to advance the most abstract and purelyideal science, than has been done anywhere else, or during any past period!
In the other division of Abstract Science — Mathematics, a recent revival of activity has brought results sufficiently striking. Though, during a long period, the bias of patriot ism and undue reverence for that form of the higher calculus which Newton initiated, greatly retarded us; yet since the re commencement of progress, some five-and-twenty years ago, Englishmen have again come to the front. Sir W. R. Hamil ton's method of Quaternions is a new instrument of research; and whether or not as valuable as some think, undoubtedly adds a large region to the world of known mathematical truth. And then, more important still, there are the achieve ments of Cayley and Sylvester in the creation and develop ment of the higher algebra. From competent and unbiassed judges I learn that the Theory of Invariants, and the methods of investigation which have grown out of it, constitute a step in mathematical progress larger than any made since the Dif ferential Calculus. Thus, without enumerating the minor achievements of others, there is ample proof that abstract science, of this order also, is nourishing among us in great vigour.
Nor, on passing to the Abstract-Concrete Sciences, do we find better ground for this belief entertained by Mr. Arnold and others. Though Huyghens conceived of light as constituted of undulations, yet he was wrong in conceiving the undula tions as allied in form to those of sound; and it remained for Dr. Young to establish the true theory. Respecting the prin ciple of interference of the rays of light propounded by Young, Sir John Herschel says, — " regarded as a physical law [it] has hardly its equal for beauty, simplicity, and extent of application, in the whole circle of science; " and of Young's all-important discovery that the luminiferous undulations are transverse not longitudinal, he says that it showed " a sagac ity which would have done honour to Newton himself." Just naming the discovery of the law of expansion of gases by Dalton, the laws of radiation by Leslie, the theory of dew by Wells, the discrimination by Wollaston of quantity and inten sity in electricity, and the disclosure of electrolysis by Nicholson and Carlisle (all of them cardinal discoveries) and passing over minor contributions to physical science, we come to the great contributions of Faraday — magneto-electricity, the quan titative law of electrolysis, the magnetization of light, and diamagnetism: not mentioning others of much significance.
Next there is the great truth which men still living have finally established — the correlation and equivalence of the physical forces. In the establishment of this truth English men have had a large share — some think the larger share. Remembering that in England the conception of heat as a mode of motion dates from Bacon, by whom it was expressed with an insight that is marvellous considering the knowledge of his time — remembering, too, that " Locke stated a similar view with singular felicity; " we come, among Englishmen of the present century, first to Davy, whose experiments and arguments so conclusively supported those of Eumford; then to the view of Roget and the postulate on which Faraday habitually reasoned, that all force arises only as other force is expended; then to the essay of Grove, in which the origin of the various forms of force out of one another was abundantly exemplified; and finally to the investigations by which Joule established the quantitative relations between heat and mo tion. Without dwelling on the important deductions from this great truth made by Sir W. Thomson, Rankine, Tyndall, and others, I will merely draw attention to its highly-abstract nature as again showing the baselessness of the above-quoted notion.
Equally conclusive is the evidence wrhen we pass to Chem istry. The cardinal value of the step made by Dalton in 1808, when the apergu of Higgins was reduced by him to a scien tific form, will be seen on glancing into Wurtz' Introduction to Chemical Philosophy, and observing how the atomic theory underlies all subsequent chemical discovery. Nor, in more recent days, has the development of this theory fallen unduly into foreign hands. Prof. Williamson, by reconciling the theory of radicals with the theory of types, and by intro ducing the hypothesis of condensed molecular types, has taken a leading part in founding the modern views of chemical com binations. We come next to the cardinal conception of atom icity. In 1851, Prof. Frankland initiated the classification of the elements by their atomicities: his important interpretation being now avowedly accepted in Germany by those who orig inally disputed it; as by Kolbe in his Moden der Modernen Chemie. On turning from the more general chemical truths to the more special chemical truths, a like history meets us. Davy's discovery of the metallic bases of the alkalies and earths, revolutionized chemists' ideas. Passing over many other achievements in special chemistry, I may single out for their significance, the discoveries of Andrews, Tait, and espe cially of Brodie, respecting the constitution of ozone as an allotropic form of oxygen; and may join with these Brodie's discoveries respecting the allotropic forms of carbon, as throw ing so much light on allotropy at large. And then we come to the all-important discoveries, general and special, of the late Prof. Graham. The truths he established respecting the hydration of compounds, the transpiration and the diffusion of liquids, the transpiration and the diffusion of gases, the dial ysis of liquids and the dialysis of gases, and the occlusion of gases by metals, are all of them cardinal truths. And even of still greater value is his luminous generalization respecting the crystalloid and colloid states of matter — a generalization which, besides throwing light on many other phenomena, has given us an insight into organic processes previously incom prehensible. These results, reached by his beautifully-coher ent series of researches extending over forty years, constitute a new revelation of the properties of matter.
Neither is it true that in advancing the Concrete Sciences we have failed to do our share. Take the first in order — As tronomy. Though, for the long period during which our mathematicians were behind, Planetary Astronomy progressed but little in England, and the development of the Newtonian theory was left chiefly to other nations, yet of late there has been no want of activity. When I have named the inverse prob lem of perturbations and the discovery of Neptune, the honour of which we share with the French, I have called to mind an achievement sufficiently remarkable. To Sidereal Astronomy we have made great contributions. Though the conception of Wright, of Durham, respecting stellar distribution was here so little attended to that when afterwards enunciated by Kant (who knew Wright's views) arid by Sir W. Herschel, it was credited to them; yet since Sir W. Herschel's time the re searches in Sidereal Astronomy by Sir John Herschel and others, have done much to further this division of the science. Quite recently the discoveries made by Mr. Huggins respect- 20G THE STUDY OP SOCIOLOGY.
ing the velocities with which certain stars are approaching us and others receding, have opened a new field of inquiry; and the inferences reached by Mr. Proctor respecting groupings of stars and the " drifting " of star-groups, now found to harmo nize with the results otherwise reached by Mr. Huggins, go far to help us in conceiving the constitution of our galaxy. Nor must we forget how much has been done towards explain ing the physical constitutions of the heavenly bodies, as well as their motions: the natures of nebula;, and the processes going on in Sun and stars, have been greatly elucidated by Huggins, Lockyer, and others.
In Geology, the progress made here, and especially the progress in geological theory, is certainly not less — good judges say much greater — than has been made elsewhere. Just noting that English Geology goes back to Ray, whose notions were far more philosophical than those set forth long after wards by Werner, we come to Hutton, with whom in fact ra tional Geology commences. For the untenable Neptunist hy pothesis, asserting a once-universal aqueous action unlike the present, Hutton substituted an aqueous action, marine and fluviatile, continuously operating as we now see it, antago nized by a periodic igneous action. He recognized denudation as producing mountains and valleys; he denied so-called primitive rocks; he asserted metamorphism; he taught the meaning of unconformity. Since his day rapid advances in the same direction had been made. William Smith, by estab lishing the order of superposition of strata throughout Eng land, prepared the way for positive generalization; and by showing that contained fossils are safer tests of correspondence among strata than mineral characters, laid the basis for subse quent classifications. The better data thus obtained, theory quickly turned to account. In his Principles of Geology, Lyell elaborately worked out the uiiiformitarian doctrine — the doctrine that the Earth's crust has been brought to its present complex structure by the continuous operation of forces like those we see still at work. More recently, Prof. Ramsay's theory of lake-formation by glaciers has helped in the inter pretation; and by him, as well as by Prof. Huxley, much has been done towards elucidating past distributions of continents and oceans. Let me name, too, Mallet's Theory of Earthquakes— the only scientific explanation of them yet given.
And there must be added another fact of moment. Criticism has done far more here than abroad, towards overthrowing the crude hypothesis of universal " systems " of strata, which suc ceeded the still cruder hypothesis of universal strata, enun ciated by Werner.
That our contributions to Biological science have in these later times not been unimportant, may, I think, be also main tained. Just noting that the " natural system " of Plantclassification, though French by development is English by origin, since Kay made its first great division and sketched out some of its sub-divisions; we come, among English botan ists, to Brown. He made a series of investigations in the mor phology, classification, arid distribution of plants, which in number and importance have never been equalled: the Prodromus Florae Novce-Hollandice is the greatest achievement in classification since Jussieu's Natural Orders. Brown, too, it was who solved the mystery of plant-fertilization. Again, there is the conception that existing plant-distribution has been determined by past geological and physical changes — a conception we owe to Dr. Hooker, who has given us sundry wide interpretations in pursuance of it. In Animal-physiology there is Sir Charles Bell's discovery respecting the sensory and motor functions of the nerve-roots in the spinal cord; and this underlies multitudinous interpretations of organic phe nomena. More recently we have had Mr. Darwin's great addi tion to biological science. Following in the steps of his grandfather, who had anticipated Lamarck in enunciating the general conception of the genesis of organic forms by adap tive modifications, but had not worked out the conception as Lamarck did, Mr. Darwin, perceiving that both of them were mistaken in attributing the modifications to causes which, though some of them true, were inadequate to account for all the effects, succeeded, by recognizing the further cause he called Natural Selection, in raising the hypothesis from a form but partially tenable to a quite tenable form. This view of his, so admirably worked out, has been adopted by the great ma jority of naturalists; and, by making the process of organic evolution more comprehensible, it is revolutionizing biological conceptions throughout the world. In the words of Professor Cohn, " no book of recent times lias influenced the concep tions of modern science like the first edition of Charles Dar win's Origin of Species."16 Nor should we overlook the vari ous kindred minor discoveries, partly dependent, partly in dependent: Mr. Darwin's own respecting the dimorphism of flowers; Mr. Bates's beautiful interpretation of mimicry in in sects, which led the way to many allied interpretations; Mr. Wallace's explanations of dimorphism and polymorphism in Lepidoptera. Finally, Professor Huxley, besides dissipat ing some serious biological errors of continental origin, has made important contributions to morphology and classifica tion.
Nor does the balance turn against us on passing to the nexthighest concrete science. After those earlier inquiries by which Englishmen so largely advanced the Science of Mind, and set up much of the speculation subsequently active in France and Germany, there came a lull in English thinking; and during this arose the absurd notion that the English are not a philosophical people. But the lull, ending some forty years ago, gave place to an activity which has quickly made up for lost time. On this point I need not rest in assertion, but will quote foreign testimony. The first chapter of Prof. Eibot's work, La Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine be gins thus: — " ' Le sceptre de la psychologic, dit M. Stuart Mill, est decidement revenu a PAngleterre.' On pourrait soutenir qu'il n'cn est janmis sorti. Sans doute, les etudes psychologiques y sont maintenant cultivees par des hommes de premier ordre qui, par la solidite de leur methode, et ce qui est plus rare, par la precision de leurs resultats, out fait entrer la science dans une periode nouvelle; mais c'est plutot un redoublement qu'un renouvellement d'eclat."
Similarly, on turning to Ethics considered under its psycho logical aspect, we find foreign testimony that English thinkers have done most towards the elaboration of a scientific system. In the preface to his late work, La Morale nella Filosofia Positiva (meaning by " Positiva" simply scientific), Prof. Barzellotti, of Florence, states that for this reason he limits himself to an account of English speculation in this depart ment."
And then, if, instead of Psychology and Ethics, Philosophy at large comes in question, there is independent testimony of kindred nature to be cited. Thus, in the first number of La Critique Philosophique (8 Fevrier, 1872), published under the direction of M. Renouvier, the acting editor, M. Pillon, writes: —