The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 1904. SCIENCE AND THE UNIVERSE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 198, 19 August 1904, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 1904. SCIENCE AND THE UNIVERSE.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the wrong that needs For the future in the distance, And the yuod that we can do.

The Prime Minister of England ia a man of many accomplishments, and his eminence as a statesman ihas somewhat obscured, the successes he has won in the domains of literature and philosophy. The presidential address which Mr Balfour has just delivered to the British Association may remind us that if he had never entered politics he might have made name and fame for himself in a purely intellectual career. This address a.ppear3 to have dealt chiefly with a subject on which Mr Balfour has already expended much energy and ingenuity, the "interpretation of the universe;" and the tone of the cabled extracts shows that Mr Balfour still opposes as vigorously as ever the positive or materialistic explanation of the mysteries of life and nature. In his earlier wiitings on thia question, and* more especially in '•'The Foundations of Belief," Mr Balfour has striven to show that the dogmatic assertions of modern materialistic science are based on no coherent principles and on no sure or definite knowledge; and the conclusion he has now reached is that the results of con-

temporary scientific research tend directly towards an idealistic rather than a materialistic conception of the gature of tilings. The scientific theory to 'which Mr Balfour has more particularly referred i 3 certainly one of the most startling .md fascinating that Science has yet attempted to state. Modem doctrines of physical and natural science have mostly been built up on the hypothesis of the atomic theory, which regards the atom as the ultimate and indivisible form into which matter can be resolved. But since scientists have taken to investigating the phenomena of radio-activhy ;hey have been driven to the conclusion chat the atom is merely as it were a Hollow sphere containing many minute revolving molecules—"a whole stellar system of inlinitely smaller and absolutely identical units in orbital revolution." In the light of this theory chemistry, it has been said, has bw.-ome ''the astronomy of the infinitesimal." For want of a better word these "ions" or molecules are said to be electrical in their nature; and by this new conception the older scientific theory that purported to explain matter and electricity seems to have been shaken to its foundations. When the wonders of radium were first revealed to the world Lord Kelvin did not hesitate to assert that the principle of the Conservation of Energy seemed to be quite discredited by this extension of our knowledge Now Sir Oliver Dodge has suggested that matter is no longer "stable in its atoms" as was once supposed; that it may even be regarded as in a condition of "perpetual flux;" and that electricity and matter in their ultimate forms are one and the same thing. Such are ths main features of the "new physics," which, as Air Balfour claims, point the way towards a more or less idealistic interpretation of the fundamental problems of human and cosmic existence. Without entering upon the discussion of abstruse metaphysical and scientific theories we may agree unreservedly with Mr. Balfour that with the aid of recent scientific researches a strong case can be made out against those who hold that Life and Nature can be completely explained in terms of matter. It is certainly surprising that scientists, whose work might be expected to remind them constantly that our knowledge is finite and that our senses are fallible, should insist upon any given theory of the universe as conclusive or impregnable. Yet the materialism that Haeekel has preached in Germany, and that Professor Clifford stated in its most uncompromising form in England, will hear of no doubt or hesitation as to its absolute finality. It is the fashion with certain types of scientists to denounce the irrational bigotry of metaphysicians and theologians; but we fail to see how the dogmatism of theologians, for example, is worse than the scientific variety. Pure materialism cannot even claim to be logical and intelligible. To say, for example, that 'thought is a function of the brain," or that "the brain secretes thought," is merely to play with words. To pretend that at any given moment science can claim the right to formulate a creed or a theory of existence that shall be accepted as final and unalterable is to contradict the whole history of human progress. To deny the possibili- ! ty of immaterial existence—to assert in I the words of Professor Clifford, that "the universe is made up of atoms and ether, and there is no room for ghosts," is to rival fhe worst follies of pagan theology or the worst fantasies of mediaeval superstition. It was in the hope of combating the influence of those scientists who arrogantly assert that this thing is impossible or that thing is incredible, because opposed to their own scheme of natural law, that Mr. Balfour wrote the "Foundations of Belief;" and the revolution in the scientific conception of matter that the last five years have witnessed may well justify him in the hope that he has lived to see the turning of the intellectual tide in the direction of a broader and more rational interpretation of the great fact* of life.

But the question that Mr Balfoar raised in his address is not one of merely intellectual interest, and no English thinker has expressed more powerfully than the author of "XTie Foundations of ; Belief" the moral and spiritual bearing of that "idealistic interpretation" of life to which he believes the world is being slowly led. From the point of view of the purely materialistic thinker, says Mr Balfour, "man is no longer the final cause of the universe, the Heaven-des-cended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets. Of the combination of causee which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science, indeed, as yet, knows nothing. It is enough that from such beginning's, famine, disease, and mutual slaughter, fit nurses of the future lords of creation have gradually evolved, after infinite

travail, a race with conscience enough to feel that it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is insignificant. " How, then, does life appeal to the man who has once convinced himself that such is his origin and such his destiny? "We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth tideless and inert, no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude." And what of all the hopes and dreams and longings that-have borne up the race in its conflict with "iron circumstance"? There is but one answer. "Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe will be at rest. Imperishable monuments and immortal deeds, Death itself, and Love stronger than Death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that is be better or be worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion and suffering of man have striven through countless generations to efl'ect." It is indeed an impressive, and in some respects an appalling, delineation of human destiny as materialism would have us accept it. Thia is the theory of life that Mr Balfour has set himself the task of confuting, and he has devoted his great intellectual and logical powers to the construction of a philosophy which shall provide a better hope than this for the race and the individual. But we have said per-

haps enough to give some idea of the eloquence with which Mr Balfour has treated this fascinating theme, and the moral fervour which he has imported into the discussion of what to many minds appears to be only a scientific or metaphysical problem, with no direct bearing upon human nature or human life.