LORD PALMERSTON'S CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES.
THE Lord Rector of Glasgow University has permitted himself one great moral heresy in his inaugural address. The primary object of education being to depress the spirits, the tendency of his otherwise excellent discourse is, on the whole, to raise them. This is a heresy perhaps permissible to a prime minister,—even admirable in one of our great statesman's age ; and his large sagacity is shown in the fact that he permits himself no other. Whether the "fabulous Indian deity Sri," to whose festivals- " pagan we regret to say,"—he appealed as a precedent after he had begged the students a holiday, was a personage at whom, under any other circumstances, official Glasgow would have liked to smile, is perhaps doubtful. But with his usual adroitness he did not suggest her to Principal Barclay before the holiday was granted, but only made mention of her to his youthful hearers afterwards as a kind of jocular but learned excuse for the welcome intercession which might otherwise have seemed to identify their more dignified status with that of schoolboys. With the exception of a general air of good spirits Lord Pahnerston's discourse was everything that the most sensitive of the old-world didactic school could have wished, glancing easily over a great range of branches of study, with a word of nearly impartial recognition to each, and only the suspicion of favouritism towards two, — the classics and the "crust of the earth," — which alone he singled out for the emphatic compliment that they were essential to the "edu- cation of a gentleman." And even here there was an apology, perhaps we may say a moral justification, for the seemingly grotesque selection. Both have been a perennial store of wealth to Lord Palmerston, and there was almost a pathos, therefore, in the grateful candour with which he honoured and thus oddly associated them ; —for the classics have furnished his speeches with many a happy ornament and humorous allusion, and the crust of the earth (in the shape of Welsh slate quarries) has supplied his private resources with conditions of social success still more important. Hence, perhaps, he gave each of them a shade more honour than their equal share. The claasical writers are eulogized for writing so well as they did in an age when "men of literature and science had not many of the advantages which we possess for the diffusion" &c.—in other words, no printed books. It would scarcely have been prudent, perhaps, to hint that the printing press is, so far as it affects "mere elegance of style and condensation of thought," our main difficulty, for the nineteenth century does not like to think itself at a disadvantage in any respect with the early ages of the world. But if Cicero had, like Lord Brougham, belonged in his earlier years to a Useful Knowledge Society, and gone in generally for omniscience, would Cicero have left a name any bigger than Lord Brougham's ? You could not, perhaps, have educated Herodotus quite into the habitual inaccuracy of an Alison ; but you might have smothered his mind with "Educational Courses" till you had drawn a film of dim half-knowledge over those wide wondering eyes with which the in- quiring Greek looked out upon "the freshness of the early world." But the Lord Rector would have given pain to his audience if he had even suggested the disadvantages of education, while the view of the classics as a repertory of polished - phrases was eminently judicious. With regard to the crust of the earth, Lord Palmerston's possibly unexpected enthusiasm may have been less in the orthodox path of a University eloge on learning. How, indeed, "general information with respect to the manner in which layer upon layer, and rock upon rock, have, at different times, been placed upon each other "—though undoubtedly a branch of know- ledge most noble in itself —is to add any special polish to a gentle. man's intellect, must have a little puzzled his audience, who had probably been accustomed to regard familiarity with the crust of the earth less as an accomplishment than ELS a laborious form of in- dustry. Indeed, Lord Palmerston himself gratefully said that it was essential to "mineral operations ;" which, of course, has made the crust of the earth an exceedingly powerful instrument in sharpening the wits of men all over the world, from Australia to Peru ; and, perhaps, the Lord Rector wished to convey the impres- sion that the process of sharpening the wits is identical with that
of polishing the intellect ;—certainly a new idea to his audience, if he did.
However, the most striking and really cheering part of the Lord Rector's discourse was the unique classification of the sciences, which he struck off on the spur of the moment with his usual alacrity and intrepidity of intelligence. To the Glasgow professors—many of them, perhaps, deep students of that pyramidal classification of the sciences, from Mathematics at the base to Sociology at the top, which is regarded as the one great achievement, we believe, of the Positive philosophy,—it must have been truly refreshing to see a veteran statesman fresh from Parlia- ment go in quite courageously on that debated ground and extem- porize a perfectly novel classification of his own. Lord Palm erston took some pains to divide the sciences into those which embrace the knowledge of the works of Man, and those which embrace the know- ledge of the works of God ;—a difficult division in point of principle, since one asks, with some embarrassment, what the sciences arising strictly from a knowledge of the works of man are ; and not less diffi- cult in practice when we find enumerated among them language, literature, metaphysics, mathematics, and mechanics—while the divine sciences are enumerated as chemistry, geology, astronomy, and natural history. We cannot but inquire with amazement whether, even if Lord Palmerston regards language and literature as a direct human invention, the properties of numbers also belong to the works of man? or the laws of motion, or the laws of thought ? and, if so, why exactly the laws of chemical combination and the laws- which regulate the formation of the "crust of the earth" ("essen- tial accomplishment of every gentleman "), or the laws of the suns and planets, or of the microscope and the creatures it reveals, are reserved for sciences which treat only of the works of God? "We have gone through," said Lord Palmerston, after enumerating language, literature, history, mathematics, and metaphysics,—
" We have gone through some of the prominent works of man, but I should also point out to your attention that range of study which relates. more particularly to what are called mechanics, the laws of motion, the mechanical arts, the fundamental principles of which are useful to every man, whatever may be the line of life on which he is going to enter and you have ample opportunities here of making yourselves masters of the elementary principles at least of that branch of humal science. Gentlemen, we have talked here of the works of man' and they are well deserving of investigation. But you would fall short of that which I recommend to you if you did not devote also a part of study, and a por- tion of your labour, to the contemplation of the works of God. That- brcsnch of knowledge has in many respects made wonderful progress of late years, and you have the means, by the result of the studies of others, of acquiring information which it would have taken the labours of years.
for you yourselves to have acquired Do not neglect to avail. yourselves of these means. The first subject of study would naturally be that which is commonly compri=ed in the single term chemistry—the operations of nature in all those elements in which we live aud deal—a. knowledge of which is useful to every man in his individual condition, and on the study of which depend the industry, wealth, and prosperity of nations."
The Lord Rector's classification certainly strikes us as be- wildering. At first we imagined that the distinction intended. between human and divine sciences might be one between sciences of which man's mental operations are the subject-matter as well as the diceovering power, and sciences which deal with objects external to man, like the "crust of the earth." This woukl agree- with the classification of language, literature, history, mathematics, and metaphysics amongst the former, all of which concern human speech, thoughts, or modes of thought. But when the science of the "laws of motion" and mechanical powers are included in these "human sciences," we confess ourselves entirely at fault, since the "laws of motion" and the mechanical principles are- not, we should think, laws of human thought, or of man in any sense in which the chemical laws are not so also. They affect the human body ; but chemical and physiological laws, and even the laws regulating that gentlemanly subject, the "crust of the earth,' affect his body equally, or even more ;—the law, for example, that a body once in motion will go on for ever without change of velocity, unless impeded by some opposite force, having certainly a rather less obvious bearing on the human body than the laws of chemical combination or decomposition.
But though Lord Palmerston kept the key to his principle of classification a profound secret, he did not conceal his greater respect for the obviously useful sciences, next at least after the " ornamental " branch of knowledge which deals with the classical languages and literatures. He was a little depreciating to history, because no two events, as he justly says, are ever so like each other that the knowledge of one case will tell you how to act in the other case. He was curt with metaphysics, the effort to study which might, he thought, open the mind, even though the study itself may lea'v'e it sealed ; he was more enthusi- astie about mathematics in general and their logic, though he did not say that they were an "essential accomplishment for a gentleman,"—and he was even obsequious to logarithms, which, besides their practical value in calculations, were invented by a Scotchman. But the real stress of his admiration was reserved for "the operations of nature in all those elements in which we live and dell," a limitation on chemistry and geology which may have surprised some of the Glasgow Professoriate, who probably scarcely thought especially of "dealers" in describing the area of their science.
The inaugural address did not exactly bring Lord Palmer- ston out in the light of a University man. There was none of the precision of thought, or even familiarity with the ordinary defini- tions of his subject, which we usually look for from Lord Rectors, which Mr. Gladstone, for example, would have shown. Lord Palmerston talks of these subjects, for the most part, with the sort of admiring inquisitiveness of the last generation, looking on science from afar. His main idea was to recommend the young men of Glasgow to pick up general information as fast as they could ; he could assure them it would turn up useful somehow. What did it matter to him if one or two of the sciences, into which he recom- mended them to look, were bundled up under the wrong head? He came there as a statesman to acknowledge a compliment, to say a good-humoured word or two to the young people, to show that he had himself always listened with curiosity to miscellaneous information, and had turned it to the best possible account in his dexterous management of his own fortunes and the fortunes of his country,—in short, that miscellaneous know- ledge had often been useful to him in " dealing " with atoms rather more lively than chemical atoms,—with men. And that, no doubt, was what he had to do, and did most effectively. His address demonstrated that to the statesman all knowledge is a motive power ; that if he has the vaguest possible notions about the sciences, he can easily work up all he does know into his own peculiar art ;—that "the elements in which he lives and deals" are tact.% dexterities, and a skilful use of all waste material in extend- ing his power over the minds of men ; and that no man ever made a happier use of such waste material than the Prime Minister of Eng- land in talking to the Glasgow students about the sciences, human and divine.
Previous page
