THE DUKE OF ARGYLL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2298, 17 March 1898, Page 46

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL.

j A SCIENTIFIC PEER. : A Protest Against "tub Confusion of I ARISTOCRACIES. I It is the fond belief of many people that j >• ur aristocracy is one of the chief glories of ! she British empire. la spite of the eadea- ! voura of democracy to demonstrate the I absurdity cf iecognising purely hereditary 3 ,;'.aims to reverence and admiration, a lord * continues to be a lord, and, by virtue of his ! Itidship, to move in the highest circles of , stciefcy and receive the highest esteem of a conventional people. While this hereditary .•.ikiccracy maintains its position and privi- -•;.,'«■>?, there is rapidly springing up a new ird as ore vigorous aristocracy — the aristocracy of wealth. A peerage is now regarded 'js a thing to be bought, indirectly, by '• » iiiianthropy in any of its thousand oatenta?tU3 foims. It is notorious that knighthoods and baronetcies are not always t tstowed for purely honorary considers?:or;s, and until there is witnessed the spec>t cle of a poor man being made a knight* cr a neer, the philosopher must be content to T'gard an aristocracy of Mammon as an in- < viable accompaniment of the supremacy o£ iSj^-Ggtrialism. _ . i la addition to these two accepted kinds , or arittccracy, the thinking members of the ; c'-iinnianity recognise an aristocracy of in- ■ teilect. The peers of the realm of thought !, &re no less real to them .than the titled . aobles of the Honse of Lords. Bat between j tbe two there is an essential difference. 1 The claims of the latter can be proved in a J* court of law; the only *a!id claim in the ' former case is ihe unanimous admiration oi the intellectual members of tociety. A similar difference exists between ihe aristo- \ cracy of wealth and this intellectual aristcj crscy. The recognition in the former cape is formal and forced ; in the latter case ifc is catural and spontaneous. -sThere are many cases in which the aristocracies of wealth and birth mingle and are indistinguishable, but; both are clearly distinguished from the unnumbered and untitled aristocracy of intellect. This being the case, it is evident that any attempt of the members of either of the two former aristocracies to seek entrance, by virtue of their high position, into the aristoi cracy of intellect must bG watched with I misgiving. Tbe attempt is frequently matle; j and although few men would openly acknowI ledge high birth or great wealth to be valid rights to an intellectual peerage, the possession of these secondary attributes freI quently paves the way to ths attainment of such an honour. The scientifie'verdicts of Lord Salisbury are listened to with an attention and regard which would hardly be accorded to an equally accomplished amateur in a humble rank of life. The metaphysical speculations of Mr Balfour — who, though not himself an aristocrat, is closely connected with the aristocracy, and moves in the loftiest social circles — receive a larger share of popular acclamation than their permanent value can, on independent grounds, be held to merit. Other instances of a similar nature might perhaps be quoted, fcttt it will be sufficient to study one o£ the

most glaring instances of all — that of his Grace thß Duke of Argyll.

It is perhaps too early yet to undertake to place his Grace in bis proper position among modern scientific men. Old as be is, his life's work is not yet done, and he may yet enrich the world with a new idea or a valuable discovery. So far as he has gone, he has made a modest contribution to our knowledge of the geology of Scotland, he has written several book 3 on scientific and other subjects, and he has entertained a section of tbe public by numerous articles of a popular scientific character in various journals. He has mingled with scientific men of eminence and repute, and has always held ficra and sincere convictions on most important scientific matters. He has devoted his life to the pursuit of knowledge.

On these grounds he may fitly claim a good position among the large number of ardent amateurs of science. But the Dake of Argyll has, by virtue of his failing for oracular statements and autocratic judgments, made a bid for a place higher than tbat of the humble amateur. His title gave him the immediate attention of a democratic public, which seldom questions the scientific eminence of a duke. With a free hand he has sowed the seeds of scientific ideas far and wide, and liberally distributed the fruits of his intellectual labours. It is characteristic of tbe man that we find him, old as he is and often as he has said his say, appearing before his subjects at Inveraray and delivering a speech of two hours' duration on the meaning and scope of sciencs.

During bis introductory remarks tha Bake. discoursed pleasantly on Iba various meanings of the word science, and the relations of Bcience to popular or oufyatematised knowledge. One may pass over the Duke's doubts about the correlation of forces and his sentimental exaltation 'of the study of " tbe relations of things to our own higher faculties " to the place of tho " highest science." The latter would be a comparatively innocent effort of human vanity did ie not Isad the Dake to infer that this view of the " highest science " absolutely " condemned and put out oi court all those who, pretending to be scientific men, said we must exclude the consideration of purpose and design as the highest explanation of the phenomena of the universe." The method of reasoning here seem.3 to be that as a man

is to us tbe highest known thing in the universe, therefore the phenomena of that universe are to be interpreted in terms of his highest attributes, his will and his capability of design. This argument is quite plausible to those who believe that man's methods of working are a true reflex of thosa of the efficient cause of all phenomena. Bat there are many scientific considerations, grounded on the dectrine of evolution, which go to demonstrate that the argument for this belief involves a non seqyAtur. The principal consideration is that; will-power and the capability of conscious design aie, kince man is a product of evolution, themselves the outcome of the action and interaction of tbe same inscrutable natural forces which man would describe in terms of human powers. In addition, we only, know of tbe powers of will and design in correlation with brain changes, and it would tax rhe Duke of Argyll to conceive anything of the nature of a brain actuating the infinite universe as a man's brain does his body. T>> put the matter in a nutshell, the Duke's fault, from the point of view of ecier.ee, has been the projection of the humaD into the divine, the attempt to explain the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute in terms of the finite, the temporal, and the relative.

This tendency to anthropomorphism detracts considerably from the scientific valne of the remainder of tbe Duke's address. It underlies and explains tbe energetic attack which Ye makes on Darwin's theory of natural selection, Tbe history of science, in its relation to theology, shows tbat this doctrine supplied the first stable argument pgainsfc the prevalent belief in design in tbe universe. Darwin showed, with a wealth of illustration and observation which constitutes his great strength, that the various animal and vegetable forms wer§ the result, not of conscious creative design, but of ?daptation. His Grace makes no attempt to rafnte sny of the arguments for this view, which aie found in " The Origin of Species," bat contents himself with an oracular verdict that the dectrine of natural selection is " obviously a metaphor^" v " a mixed metaphor, a self -contradictory metaphor," and no explanation of the facts of nature whatever. His solitary aigamentative endeavour is made when, he narrows the maiter.down to the doctrine that, if the theory of natural selection be true, all forms of life must have had a common parentage. Then, he concludes, " at a certain date life must have had a beginning in the world, and the first living creatures, or germs of creatures, could have had no parentage."

| His Grace mast have a very superficial • knowledge of recent studies ot the nature i of vital activity if he regards this as an inj superable objection to the doctrine of evolui tion. His theological ' prepossessions have j probably led him to regard tbe difference ! between life and not-life as a difference ia | kind which only a special creative work i could overcome. Bnt recent scientific inves- | tigation tends to tbe belief that the difference is not one of kind, but simply of degree, and tbat life is the manifestation of a form of molecular activity different only by its much greater complexity from the molecular activity shown in the formation cf a crystal. It is quite true that no man ; has yet really succeeded in producing living , protoplasm out ot its constituents, but that I* is no reason for denying the possibility, or j even probability, that at one pariod of the ! development of the earth the conditions | were such that carbon nitrogen, hydrogen, I and oxygan combined by a series of stages into higher and higher multiples until the living protoplasm was formed. That the I living protoplasm manifests properties which j its constituents do not manifest is no more ' mysterious than that water should exbibit J properties unpossessed by either hydrogen oe oxygen. The only point, indeed, upon which the special creation theorist can fix an argument is the fact that man has not as ! yet been able to make protoplasm. But the difficulties in the way of conclusive experiment to this end are enormous. It is plainly a matter of extreme difficulty to reproduce in the laboratory the conditions

which the evolutionist pictures as having existed on our earth duriDg the formation of protoplasm. Man's failure, in short, is no criterion of Nature's powers and possibilities.

In these and kindred matters his Grace betrays the survival of notions which were prevalent in the days before Darwin and Spencer. It; is, of course, a matter of opinion how far s, man holding these older notions can be regarded as a scientific oracle. But ifc can hardly bo doubted that; the tide of scientific progress has long ago swept past the position hald by the Duke of Argyll and bis intellectual companions. Their position is*, as regards fundamental questions, a practically stationary one, and is is noiftoo much to ask that it should kg justified by at least as many cogent scientific facts and deductions as may be advanced in support of the progressive thought of to-day. It does not appear that the Dake of Argyll has ever seriously attempted such a justification. The guiding principle of his scientific views is theology, a principle which for manyreasons is regarded by scientific men as by no means a thoroughly reliable one. But the Duke's attitude tcward? theology is very much that of most liberal theologians who dabble in science, and ifc 13 probably the source cf part of ni*. popularity. The rest must be attributed' simost entirely to the prevalent respect for titular dignity. In the scientific world any personal and accidental advantage is often a serious hindrance to tbe spread of truth. Truth is impersonal, and not all the dignity and eminence in the world can actually translate falsehood into fact. Bnt it may go a long way to reverse the two in the minds of the credulous and ignorant. This is a darger which every effort should be made to avoid. Personal ambition and a minor public sentiment would alone be sacrificed were dukes, marquises, and knights to forego their titles in the aristocrscies of wealth and birth when tbey seek entrance into the greater but more limited aristocracy of intellect. — A. G. W., in the Glasgow Citizen,