The Express.
London, England, 1866-08-24 00:00:00

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

(THIS DAY.)

Y L °PAM% ADDIERS.
It exhibits, says the Time with striking vigour
sad effect the victories at physic:a science upon the Sad
oL observation and experiment. Is the latter part of it,
Mr. Grove approaches a subject upon which science has
not been, and is not capable of being, so sucoessful.
Science discovers facts, and it discovers immediate causes
which ere simply facts, but when it comes to ultimate
muses and the origination of things, then science has to
take

. • more halting step. Mr. Grove, however, courage-
ously ventures into these unfathomable waters ; he makes
• transition from the experimental field of science to the
speculative, and enters upon the much-debated question of
the origin of species. Upon this question, the president
decides in favour of the hypothesis of • gradual growth of
every species by a natural law out of some pre-existent
organism, or in favour of the Darwinian theory. He
arrives at this =elusion upon the ground of facility of
conception and apparent probability, accompanied with
minor evidence from the rudimental features occasionally
shown in embryos and from the metamorphosis of plants
There can be no doubt, proceeds the Times, that Mr. Grove
is right upon the fact of the greater facility ; the question,
however, is rare to be raised on the other side whether fa-
cility of conception is a perfectly infallible test of truth.
It is so impossible to conceive the beginning of anything
that, unless we deny a beginning of things in bto, that im-
possibility cannot, argumentatively, count for much. The '
beginning of the smallest and moat rudimental organism
is as difficult to conceive as the beginning of an elephant.
Such an argument, therefore, to be logical, involves the
rejection of any beginning of things at all, and this rejec-
tion implicates us immediately in the most insoluble meta-
physical and religious difficulties.
The inaugural address of Mr. Grove, the Daily News
remarks, is an exercise on the old theme Natant non kohl
sadtunt. To show the correlation of forces reflected in the
sciences which expound them, to trace the conservation of
an identical energy, under manifestations the most dis-
similar, to display the gradual ascent of the sciences, the
more complex growing out of the more simple, and de-
pending on it, was • suitable introduction to the
sectional labours of an association which deals with every
department of nature, and was a task which Mr. Grove's I
genius and pursuits fitted him beyond most other men to
discharge. Whether that continuity which he exhibited
is destined to receive more complete illustration in the
final establishment of the speculations with which the
illustrious names of Darwin and Lyell are more especially
associated—an opinion to which Mr. Grove apparently in-
clines—or whether further knowledge will prove that
the continuity, while general, is not universal—is a
point on which the bigotry of science and the bigotry
of theology are equally inadmissible. Only one thing is
certain, that between • true science and a true theology
there can be no conflict. To seek the traces of the Divine
will in the Divine operations, and not in our own pre.
possessions, is to unite the true humility of science with
the true humility of religion. In the application of his
scientific doctrine to politics, the Daily News considers
the reproach which Mr. Grove addresses to " our philo-
sophical writers" somewhat hasty and ill-considered.
In the writings of Mr. Mill, for example, the theory
of human experience as the basis of leg;slation re-
ceives the most peifect shape it has yet assumed.
If we are "to follow the law of nature, and to avoid
cataclysms " in politics, we must guard rather against the
narrowness of vested interests and reactionary fears than
against the " revolutionary ideas " of which Mr. Grove
"freaky and which are foreign to the English character
and very rare in English speculation.
" Continuity " is the key note of Mr. Grove's inaugural
addressbefore the British Association at Nottingham. The
continuity signified is evidently that of a gradual and un-
ceasing progress, unbroken by miracles, convulsions, or
cataclysms. Mr. Grove's continuity is, in fact, much the
same as Mr. Darwin's " development." To these
philosophers the universe is not so much an elaborate
and perfected mechanism in ceaseless action, as • vast
and complex organism, perpetually advancing towards
some higher stage of existence. Step by step, and never
per sultan, all things advance, and man himself is no
exception to the law of continuity. Yet, observes the
Herald, there are some things in which continuity seems
to have failed, and it should rather like Mr. Grove to tell
why it has. He himself says that "in ethics, in politics,
in poetry, in sculpture, in painting, we have scarcely, if
at all, advanced beyond the highest intellects of ancient
Greece or Italy." If continuity be a law, how comes it
thus broken? Science is not everything, and philosophers
are fallible. The history of philosophy is a history of
repudiated errors as well ass record of accepted truths.
Into every department of human effort the spirit of un-
trammeled, fearless inquiry has forced its way ; and what
has been the result ?—asks the Telegraph. Mr. Greve
sums it up in one word, when he says that our elution'
see all tending to show that throughout the universe there
exists the element of " continuity "—that everywhere we
witness the presence of one pervading law. The investi-
gations into the correlation of forces or the conservation of
energy, all distinctly point to the existence of one central
agency; and so, without indulging in any chimerical specu-
lations, we may believe with Mr. Grove, that the day is
approaching when to the conception of matter we shall
have but to add that of motion, in order to explain all
physical phenomena.