THE HUMILITY OF SCIENCE.

MR. AUBREY DE VERE had not, in all probability, read the discussion on "Astronomy and Theology" which appeared in these columns a few months ago, when he wrote the fine poem on Copernicus which appears in the September number of the Contemporary Review ; but if he had read it, he could hardly have put more impressively than he has, the true criticism on such a view as Mr. Frederic Harrison's, that the moment you establish the heliocentric view of the solar system, you dis- prove that conception of Revelation which makes the In- carnation its central fact. Mr. De Vere supposes Copernicus, —who wrote, by-the-way, nearly a century before Galileo's brush with the Papacy, and who is said to have got a Pope's personal authority for his publication of his treatise on the heliocentric view of the planetary system,—on the eve of his death to be musing on the effect of the new doctrine on the religious belief of the age ; to be anticipating that it may produce some consternation, and yet confident that it will in the end prove to be not only reconcilable with the theology of the Church, but even that it will give new significance to that theology,—or at least that it will give anew emphasis and a new illustration to the meaning of the word " humility" as it applies to the attitude of men of science towards that infinite world of knowledge on the margin of which, as Newton has since said, they are permitted, like children on the sea-shore, to pick up a few shells. What does humility in men of science really mean P Does it mean an inveterate belief that, to the mind of such a being as man, the unknown will always be immeasurably vaster than the known P Such an inveterate belief is consistent not only with intellectual pride, but with intellectual pride of the worst type,—the pride that consists half in rash but confident inferences derived from its own knowledge, and half in still rasher and more confident inferences derived from its own ignorance. The true humility proper to science means something very different. It means the docility of learners towards a teacher infinitely above them not only in the knowledge to be imparted, but in the wisdom which recognises the true relations between the different kinds of knowledge and the great danger of undermining the foundations of moral knowledge by showy physical knowledge. Humility really means keeping low, keep- ing on the ground, not walking on stilts, not delighting in a position of advantage over other men. And science is humble only when it uses its knowledge and its ignorance alike to help other men, and not to lord it over them. Mr. De Vere makes. Copernicus say that to his mind the heliocentric view which makes so little of the earth is a revelation made rather to the soul than to the intellect of man, one that gives us a vivid lesson as to what we mean when we call God Infinite. And yet, he adds, that lesson might have misled if it had come before we had gained a sufficiently deep conviction of the spiritual essence of God's nature, and while we were- still in danger of thinking only of the grandeur of his archi-

tecture :—

" The Stars do this for men,

They make Infinitude imaginable : God by our instincts felt as infinite, When known, becomes such to our total being, Mind, spirit, heart, and soul. The greater Theist Should make the greater Christian. Yet 'tis true Best gifts may come too soon. No marvel this : The earth was shaped for myriad forms of greatness, As Freedom, Genius, Beauty, Science, Art, Some extant, some to be : such forms of greatness Are through God's will greatness conditional : Where Christ is greatest these are great ; elsewhere Great only to betray. Sweetly and safely In order grave, the maker of the worlds Still modulates the rhythm of human progress; His angels, on whose song the seasons float, Keep measured cadence : all good things keep time Lest Good should strangle Better."

And the drift of his poem is that Good would have strangled Better, if our knowledge of the scientific scale and wonders of the universe had preceded instead of succeeded the reve- lation of God's purity and righteousness and love. But having once well learned that these characteristics of his,— purity, righteousness, and love,—are even more essentially divine than physical infinitude, the lesson as to what physical infinitude really includes, becomes one of incalculable value, since it gives definiteness to our mind when we repeat the words, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord ; for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." In that passage it is almost asserted in so many words that the astronomical scale of the heavens, as compared with that of the earth, is a mere hint to us of the infinitude of God's moral and spiritual world as compared with our moral and spiritual world, and that, if we are to feel humbled when we reflect on the inconceivable grandeur of the celestial architecture, we

are much more to feel humbled when we reflect on the incon- ceivable grandeur of God's purity, righteousness, and love. And this is how Mr. De Vere works out that thought as regards the objection that the earth, being so poor a fraction of the infinite universe, the Incarnation could not have taken place for the redemption of such a race as ours :—

" This Earth too small For Love Divine ! Is God not Infinite ? If so, His Love is infinite. Too small ! One famished babe meets pity oft from man More than an army slain ! Too small for Love ! Was Earth too small to be of God created ? Why then too small to be redeemed ?

The sense Sees greatness only in the sensuous greatness : Science in that sees little : Faith sees naught; The small, the vast, are tricks of earthly vision : To God, that Omnipresent All-in-Each, Nothing is small, is far. . . . . . . . . .

They that know not of a God How know they that the stars have habitants ? 'Tis Faith and Hope that spread delighted bands To such belief; no formal proof attests it. Concede them peopled ; can the sophist prove Their habitants are fallen ? That too admitted, Who told him that redeeming foot divine Ne'er trod those spheres P That fresh assumption granted What then ? Is not the Universe a whole?

Doth not the sunbeam herald from the sun Gladden the violet's bosom ? Moons uplift The tides : remotest stars lead home the lost: Judtea was one country, one alone : Not less who died there died for all. The Cross Brought help to vanished nations : Time opposed No bar to Love : why then should Space oppose one ? We know not what Time is, nor what is Space ;— Why dream that bonds like theirs can bind the Unbounded P If Earth be small, likelier it seems that Love Compassionate most and condescending most To Sorrow's nadir depths, should choose that Earth For Love's chief triumph, missioning thence her gift Even to the utmost zenith !"

That seems to express adequately the true humility of sCience,

which consists not merely in acknowledging the vastness of its ignorance,—for in that it often takes a genuine pride, as in the use of a weapon wherewith it can browbeat not only the un- wise but even the wise credulities of man,—but in recognising that while science, such science as the inductive astronomy at least, stands on the common ground of slowly accumulated experience, and even mathematical science stands only on the commanding heights of necessary truth dictating within what limits our experience must be confined, there is a sort of truth which is higher than either, because it comes with a force of moral authority that proclaims its origin in a higher nature, and that, without forcing us to obey it, compels us to own that disobedience is full of the anguish of self.

condemnation. The humility of science consists in this recognition of a higher kind of knowledge than any which pure science, whether inductive or deductive, can convey,— a kind of knowledge which is not knowledge of things at all, and not mere knowledge of men, but which announces

itself as knowledge strong enough to bind man to some Being who is to human nature a lawgiver and an inspiration.

Copernicus, in this fine poem, is made to recognise with awe,—nay, as matter of history, he did recognise,—the danger that the knowledge which he had painfully accu- mulated concerning the motions of the heavenly bodies, might be made the means of subverting the knowledge which he recognised as something far higher, because it regu- lated the living principles of heavenly minds, — minds to whose authority ours are in a voluntary though whole- some subjection, which we may, if we will, repudiate. He saw that the popular teaching in which the highest illumi- nation vouchsafed by God to man is necessarily contained, was not teaching concerning the motions of the heavenly bodies at all, and was teaching which did not imply any special study of the motions of those bodies ; so that what that teaching did bring home to us as to the power and pur- poses of God, might seem to be more or less invalidated by the special inferences which the work of astronomers had enabled him to gather concerning astronomical laws. And he felt that any such rash inference would involve the human race in far greater loss than his science could procure it gain. That was true scientific humility, the humility of a man who, though he had learned something new, and something new which was of magnificent proportions, yet recognised that it was nothing at all in comparison with the higher knowledge conveyed in terms suggesting false impressions as to the science of astronomy, though true impressions as well as impressions of the most infinite value as to the character of God. "He bath made the round world so fast that it cannot be moved," was not true if it meant that God did not move it, and was not constantly moving it through space at an almost inconceivable velocity ; but it was true in its real meaning,—namely, that God had put it beyond the reach of any power but his own to interfere with its destiny, and to prevent the ripening of his purposes for those who dwelt on it. And that meaning is a meaning of infinitely higher value to the children of men than any knowledge which astronomers could give us, even though it enables sailors to sail the sea with com- parative safety; for without moral law and reverence for the divine spirit in the heart, every ship might be a little hell of anarchy, and every crew beyond the power of astro- nomical knowledge to help or save. Without the benefit of the law which binds man to God, and therefore also to man, and sets his self-will bounds which it can only pass at the cost of becoming hateful to itself, students would not only be destitute of the tranquillity of mind requisite for the accumulation of scientific observation, but deficient in that con- fidence that they are under the sway of a great and righteous

character, seeking to reveal itself, which is at the root of all hope of progress. What we call " faith " is, indeed, moral knowledge, though knowledge of a very different kind from that which the perception of the senses, when preserved by memory, stores up for us. It is knowledge of the better and the worse, knowledge that obedience to the teaching of the light we have, is better even than the increase of that light without obedience to its teaching. Inductive science is humble (or humilis is the true sense), when it consciously works on the ground, of common experience, that is, on a level below that of mathe- matical science, for the latter compels us to recognise that it can lay down the law to experience; but even mathematical science, though it may claim to provide us with the very conditions of experience, is of the earth earthy compared with the moral reve- lation which preceded both the one and the other in the order of human development, and laid down the rule of man's duties almost before science, properly so called, had begun to train man's eyes and hands to discriminate duly between appearance and rea]ity. This is what Copernicus had more or less dimly recognised, and what Mr. Aubrey de Vere at least makes him effectually proclaim.