John Le Conte

“ In assigning to man, and to the planet he inhabits, so small—so insignificant—a position in the material world, science seems only to have made progress to humiliate and to humble us!
Let us accept the lesson of humiliation, with a proper sense of reverence! But, while humbling ourselves in the presence of the overwhelming vastness of God's creation, let us not degrade ourselves: let us not imagine that so insignificant—so ephemeral a being—groping about on so minute a speck in the universe—is totally unworthy of a Creator's care ”

“ Yes, the lofty aspirations of humanity are not delusions; they are realities. They link us with a purer order of existence, which makes us heirs of immortality. We repose under a confident and unwavering assurance that, in God's own time, these earth-mists will be dispersed, and the dim twilight of conjecture will yield to the glorious, unclouded noonday of knowledge.—The California Teacher—Abstract of a Lecture. ”

“ She teaches us that grand humility which annihilates self, and places the soul as a child-like learner in the face of God's universe! Like the sacred Shepherd, with unsandalled feet, we advance with reverential awe upon the holy ground, and receive assurances that our minute sphere is benignly noticed by the eye of Omniscience; that, amid the surrounding grandeur, man is not overlooked! ”

“ By the side of such wonderful achievements of the mind, what signifies the weakness and fragility of our body; what signifies the dimensions of the planet—our residence—the grain of sand on which it has happened to us to appear for a few moments! ”

“ We do not consider the sun as less intended to warm and vivify the tribes of plants and animals, because we find evidences that the earth and other planets were developed in the vast periods of past ages, from a common nebulous mass! We are rather, by the discovery of so general a law, led into a scene of wider design—of deeper contrivance—of more comprehensive adjustments. "The object of such views is not to lead to physical truth, but to connect such truth—obtained by its proper processes and methods—with our views of God—the Master of the universe." ”

“ If there is one power of the human soul which, more nearly than any other, approaches the faculty of creation, it is that by which the almost inspired artist develops out of a rude block of stone, or out of such mean materials as canvas and metallic pastes of various colors, figures which surpass in beauty, and in power of exciting emotion, the objects they profess to represent. ”

“ In contemplating the vastness of the sidereal universe, every person, in every age and country, must recognize as irresistibly natural, the train of thought expressed by the Hebrew Psalmist, when he exclaims: "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? ”

“ The discussion would be profitless, for modern science in no way depends for its magnificent triumphs of fact and thought upon any utterances of the ancients. It is the creation of patient, intelligent labor of the last two centuries, and its results can be neither confuted nor confirmed by any thing that was said, thought, or done, at an earlier period. I have merely referred to these indications of doctrines of evolution to recall to your minds that the two great schools of thought, which now divide philosophers, have existed from very remote times. ”

“ Some express the relation very briefly, by saying that science and religion are opposed to each other; others, again, that they have nothing in common. These expressions are true of certain classes of minds; but the greater number of thinking and educated persons see that, though the ultimate truths taught by each are of quite distinct nature, and can by no means come in conflict, inasmuch as they have no point in common, yet so far as these truths are embodied in human language, and manipulated by human interest, they have a common dominion over the soul of man. ”

“ Moreover, there can be no question that for more than two centuries past astronomers have recognized the probability of the existence of satellites to this planet. In fact, analogy would lead us to expect that Mars would be furnished with one or more moons; for, being situated at a greater distance from the sun than the earth, it seems more especially to need such luminaries to cheer its dark nights. Under the influence of these anticipations, the astronomers, who have so carefully studied the physical features of Mars, have doubtless been looking for these satellites. ”

“ In fulfilling the final duty assigned to your Presidents by the laws of the Association, some have spoken to you in solemn and wise words concerning the duties and privileges of men of science, and the converse duties of the nation toward those earnest and disinterested promoters of knowledge. Others, again, have given you the history of the development of their respective branches of study, and their present condition, and have, in eloquent diction, commended to your gratitude those who have established on a firm foundation the basis of our modern systems of investigation. ”

“ A little instrument, which is scarcely any thing more than a small triangular piece of glass, solves questions which hundreds of thousands of dollars expended in telescopes, and years of observation, could not have settled! Penetrating into the illimitable depths of space, it reveals to us something of the physical and chemical constitution of stellar clusters and nebulæ, so remote, that the light which the spectroscope analyzes, must have left them thousands, perhaps millions, of years ago! ”

“ Yet upon the earth, without the volcano and the earthquake, and the elevating forces of which they are the feeble indications, there would be no permanent separation of land and water; consequently no progress in animal and vegetable life beyond what is possible in the ocean. To us, then, as sentient beings, the volcano and the earthquake, viewed from a biological stand-point, have a profound significance.
It is indeed difficult to see in what manner the student of purely physical science is brought to a knowledge of any evidences of intelligence in the arrangement of the universe. ”

“ This kind of truth can never be revealed to us by the study of inorganic aggregations of the universe. The molar, molecular, and polar forces, by which they are formed, may be expressed, so far as science has reduced them to order, by a small number of simply formulated laws, indicative neither of purpose nor intelligence, when confined within inorganic limits. In fact, taking also the organic world into consideration, we as yet see no reason why the number of chemical elements known to us should be as large as it is, and go on increasing almost yearly with more minute investigations. ”

“ We have seen that the period of revolution of the inner satellite is less, while that of the outer is greater, than a Martial day. It is evident, therefore, that, as seen from the surface of the planet, the apparent motion of the satellites will be in opposite directions, the inner rising in the west and setting in the east, the outer (like our moon) rising in the east and setting in the west. This anomalous condition of things must have greatly perplexed the primitive astronomers of Mars, and probably led them to the invention of cycles and epicycles to account for these appearances. ”

“ In answering the query above proposed, it will be necessary to separate the essential truths of religion from the accessories of tradition, usage, and, most of all, organizations and interpretations which have in the lapse of time gathered around the primitive or revealed truth.
With the latter, the scientific man must deal exactly like other men—he must take it or reject it, according to his spiritual gifts; but he must not, whatever be his personal views, discuss it or assail it as a man of science, for within his domain of investigation it does not belong. ”

“ The connection between our organs of sense and remote bodies necessarily implies the existence of some intervening medium; and, moreover, to convey physical impression to the organ of sense, this medium must be material. Whatever theory of light we adopt, we are equally driven to the conception of the existence of some form of matter in the celestial spaces. The fact that light and heat are propagated from one part of space to another in time demands that the medium of communication should possess inertia—an essential property of matter. ”

“ By the gradual subsidence and condensation of these discrete particles by the effect of gravity, a central aggregation or nucleus would be formed—the germ of our sun. Let us hasten to see what light this view throws upon the physical cause of the rotation of the primitive solar nebula. It is obvious that a crowd of aggregating bodies, animated by independent and partially-opposing impulses, must produce collision, destruction of velocity, and a subsidence toward the centre of attraction. ”

“ Suppose that man—I purposely use the singular noun to indicate that all human beings of similar intelligence and education working toward a definite end will work in a somewhat similar manner—suppose, then, I say, that man, endeavoring to carry out some object of importance, devises a method of so doing, and creates for that purpose a series of small objects, and we find that these small objects naturally divide and distribute themselves in age and locality, in a similar manner to that in which the species of a group of organisms are divided in space, and distributed in time ”

“ Thus will be hastened the time when the glorious, all-sufficient spiritual light, which, though given through another race, we have adopted as our own, shall shine with its pristine purity, freed from the incrustations with which it has been obscured by the vanity of partial knowledge, and the temporary contrivances of human polity. ”

“ THERE is no member of the solar system, with the exception of our moon, which can be studied under such favorable circumstances as the planet Mars; for, although Venus, when in inferior conjunction, is nearer to us than Mars in opposition, yet Venus, at this time, turns her darkened hemisphere toward the earth. ”

“ Since, then, there is no occasion for strict science and pure religion to be in conflict, how shall the peace be kept between them?
By toleration and patience—toleration toward those who believe less than we do, in the hope that they, by cultivation or inheritance of æsthetic perception, will be prepared to accept something more than matter and energy in the universe, and to believe that vitality is not altogether undirected colloid chemistry. ”

“ It is no argument for the nonexistence of such a body that we have not yet seen it; but it ought to serve as an argument to stimulate us to apply our most powerful instruments to the regions around this planet with more frequency and attention than we have hitherto done, and it is possible that our diligence may be rewarded with the discovery. The long duration of winter in the polar regions of Mars seems to require a moon to cheer them during the long absence of the sun ”

“ As physical science advances, final causes do not disappear. The principle of design changes its mode of application, but loses none of its force; it is merely transferred from the region of facts to that of laws. ”

“ Let us give no place to the crude speculations of would-be teleologists, who are, indeed, in great part, refuted already by the progress of science, which continually exhibits to us higher and more beautiful relations between the phenomena of Nature "than it hath entered into the mind of man to conceive." ”

“ These spectrum investigations afford tangible and unmistakable evidence that there are in space, masses of ignited gaseous or vaporous matter of prodigious extent, shining by their own light, and resembling the vast nebula which the Nebular Hypothesis declares to have been the original condition of our solar system. The nebulous matter, assumed as the basis of the hypothesis, is no figment of the theorist! ”

“ I fear that the unhappy spirit of contention still survives, and that there are yet a few who fight for victory rather than for truth. The deceptive spirit of Voltaire still buds forth occasionally; he who, as you remember, disputed the organic nature of fossil shells, because in those days of schoolmen their occurrence on mountains would be used by others as a proof of a universal Noachian deluge. The power of such spirits is fortunately gone for any potent influence for evil, gone with the equally obstructive influence of the scholastics with whom they formerly contended. ”

“ These human beings, therefore, with brains very similar to our own, and, as is held by some persons, potentially capable of similar cultivation with ourselves, were unable to recognize the outlines of even such familiar objects as the features of their own race. Was there any fault in the drawing of the artist? Probably not. Or in the eye of the savage? Certainly not, for that is an optical instrument of tolerably simple structure, which cannot fail to form on the retina an accurate image of the object to which it is directed. ”

“ Thus proceeding, from the highest forms in each type of animal life to the lower, and even down to the lowest, we may be prepared te advance the thesis that all animals are intelligent, in proportion to the ability of their organization to manifest intelligence to us or to each other; that wherever there is voluntary motion, there is intelligence: obscure it may be, not comprehended by us, but comprehended by the companions of the same low grade of structure. ”