Oliver Lodge

“ The total possibility of existence is so vast that no simple formula, nor indeed any form of words, however complex, is likely to be able to sum it up and express its essence to the exclusion of all other modes of expression. It is a pity, therefore, that Professor Haeckel should think it necessary to decry one set of ideas in order to support another set. There is room for all in this large universe—room for everything, except downright lies and falseness. ”

“ Moreover, the ultimate forms of existence which we distinguish in our little speck of the universe are, possibly, only two out of infinite varieties of existence, not only analogous to matter and analogous to mind, but of kinds which we are not competent so much as to conceive—in the midst of which, indeed, we might be set down, with no more notion of what was about us, than the worm in a flower-pot, on a London balcony, has of the life of the great city. ”

“ But is it to be asserted on the strength of that fact that the term "music" has no significance apart from its material manifestation? Have the ideas of Sir Edward Elgar no reality apart from their record on paper and reproduction by an orchestra? It is true that without suitable instruments and a suitable sense organ we should know nothing of music, but it cannot be supposed that its underlying essence would be therefore extinct or non-existent and meaningless. Can there not be in the universe a multitude of things which matter as we know it is incompetent to express? ”

“ The education of the human race is a long process, and we are not yet fit to be fully trusted with the steering gear; but the words of the old serpent were true enough: once open our eyes to the perception and discrimination of good and evil, once become conscious of freedom of choice, and sooner or later we must inevitably acquire some of the power and responsibility of gods. A fall it might seem, just as a vicious man sometimes seems degraded below the beasts, but in promise and potency a rise it really was. ”

“ The latest form of difficulty is peculiarly deep-seated, and is a natural outcome of an age of physical science. It consists in denying the possibility of any guidance or control,—not only on the part of a Deity, but on the part of every one of his creatures. It consists in pressing the laws of physics to what may seem their logical and ultimate conclusion, in applying the conservation of energy without ruth or hesitation, and so excluding, as some have fancied, the possibility of free-will action, of guidance, of the self-determined action of mind or living things upon matter, altogether. ”

“ Some of the personality of an Old Master is locked up in a painting: and whoever wilfully destroys a great picture is guilty of something akin to murder, namely, the premature and violent separation of soul and body. Some of the soul of a musician can be occluded in a piece of manuscript, to be deciphered thereafter by a perceptive mind.
Matter is the vehicle of mind, but it is dominated and transcended by it. A painting is held together by cohesive forces among the atoms of its pigments, and if those forces rebelled or turned repulsive the picture would be disintegrated and destroyed ”

“ The truth is that all philosophy aims at being monistic; it is bound to aim at unification, however difficult of attainment; and a philosopher who abandoned the quest, and contented himself with a permanent antinomy—a universe compounded of two or more irreconcilable and entirely disparate and disconnected agencies—would be held to be throwing up his brief as a philosopher and taking refuge in a kind of permanent Manichæism, which experience has shown to be an untenable and ultimately unthinkable position. ”

“ In his view, our present knowledge of the universe should suggest to the Church a new examination of the dogma of Creation;our knowledge of history should make her revise her ideas of revelation; and our progress in psychology and moral philosophy should suggest to her to re-state her theology of the Incarnation. Every one can see that there is a grain of truth in this kind of talk. But it is, on the whole, a pestilent and dangerous heresy. If the formulas of modern science contradict the science of Catholic dogma, it is the former that must be altered, not the latter. ”

“ The development of exact natural knowledge in all its vast range, from physics to history and criticism, is the consequence of the working out, in this province, of the resolution to 'take nothing for truth without clear knowledge that it is such'; to consider all beliefs open to criticism; to regard the value of authority as neither greater nor less, than as much as it can prove itself to be worth. The modern spirit is not the spirit 'which always denies,' delighting only in destruction ”

“ Man was beginning to cease to be merely a passenger on the planet, controlled by outside forces; it is as if the reins were then for the first time being placed in his hands, as if he was allowed to begin to steer, to govern his own fate and destiny, and to take over some considerable part of the management of the world. ”

“ And thus gradually arises a developed self-consciousness, a discrimination between the self and the external world, and a realisation of the power of choice and freedom,—a stage beyond which we have not travelled as yet, but a stage at which almost all things seem possible.
The first two properties, assimilation and reproduction, overshadowed by the possibility of death, are properties of life of every kind, plant life as of all other. The power of locomotion and special senses, overshadowed by the sense of pain, are the sign of a still further development into what we call "animal life." ”

“ Thus, if any man think he has reason to believe that the 'substance' of matter, to the existence of which no limit can be set either in time or space, is the infinite and eternal substratum of all actual and possible existences, which is the doctrine of philosophical materialism, as I understand it, I have no objection to his holding that doctrine ”

“ Here is a full-blown anticipation of an intelligible exposition of the Universe in terms of matter and force: the substantial basis of what smaller men call materialism and develop into what they consider to be a materialistic philosophy. But there is no necessity for anything of the kind; a systematic expression of facts in terms of one of their aspects does not exclude expression in terms of other and totally different aspects also. Denial of all sides but one, is a poor kind of unification. ”

“ Madness and delirium are natural phenomena amenable to law.
But in actual life we are living on one side of a boundary, and are aware of things on one side only; the things on this side appear to us to constitute the whole universe, since they are all of which we have any knowledge, either through our senses or in other ways. Hence we are subject to certain illusions, and feel certain difficulties,—the illusion of unstimulated and unmotived freedom of action, and the difficulty of reconciling this with the felt necessity for general determinism and causation. ”

“ Is it not more reasonable to say that just as we are conscious of the power of guidance in ourselves, so guidance and intelligent control may be an element running through the universe, and may be incorporated even in material things? ”

“ If it be thought that I mean by this something superstitious, and for ever inexplicable or unintelligible, I have no such meaning. I believe in the ultimate intelligibility of the universe, though our present brains may require considerable improvement before we can grasp the deepest things by their aid; but this matter of "vitality" is probably not hopelessly beyond us; and it does not follow, because we have no theory of life or death now, that we shall be equally ignorant a century hence. ”

“ In order to estimate the value of Professor Haeckel's scheme of the universe, it is not necessary to appeal to philosophers: it is sufficient to meet him on scientific ground, and to show that in his effort to simplify and unify he has under-estimated some classes of fact and has stretched scientific theory into regions of guess-work and hypothesis, where it loses touch with real science altogether. ”

“ If it exists, if it is not mere illusion, it appears to me to be something whose full significance lies in another scheme of things, but which touches and interacts with this material universe in a certain way, building its particles into notable configurations for a time—without confounding any physical laws,—and then evaporating whence it came. This language is vague and figurative undoubtedly, but, I contend, appropriately so, for we have not yet a theory of life—we have not even a theory of the essential nature of gravitation ”

“ The reconciliation between opposing views lies in realising that the Universe of which we have a kind of knowledge is but a portion or an aspect of the whole.
We are free, and we are controlled. We are free, in so far as our sensible surroundings and immediate environment are concerned; that is, we are free for all practical purposes, and can choose between alternatives as they present themselves. ”

“ True and enduring peace there cannot be until one of the combatants lies powerless on the ground. Either the Church wins, and then farewell to all 'free science and free teaching'—then are our universities no better than gaols, and our colleges become cloistral schools; or else the modern rational State proves victorious—then, in the twentieth century, human culture, freedom, and prosperity will continue their progressive development until they far surpass even the height of the nineteenth century. ”

“ Knowledge of the true, training for the good, pursuit of the beautiful: these are the three great departments of our monism; by the harmonious and consistent cultivation of these we effect at last the truly beatific union of religion and science, so painfully longed after by so many to-day. ”

“ Energy must be available for the performance of any physical operation, but the energy is independent of the determination or arrangement. Guidance and control are not forms of energy, nor need they be themselves phantom modes of force: their superposition upon the scheme of Physics need perturb physical and mechanical laws no whit, and yet it may profoundly affect the consequences resulting from those same laws. The whole effort of civilisation would be futile if we could not guide the powers of nature. ”

“ Even so a villager, picked out as a recruit and sent to the seat of war, may serve his country, may gain experience, acquire a soul and a width of horizon such as he had not dreamt of; and when he returns, after the war is over, may be merged as before in his native village. But the village is the richer for his presence, and his individuality or personality is not really lost ”

“ HYPOTHESIS AND ANALOGIES CONCERNING LIFE
The view concerning Life which I have endeavoured to express is that it is neither matter nor energy, nor even a function of matter or of energy, but is something belonging to a different category; that by some means at present unknown it is able to interact with the material world for a time, but that it can also exist in some sense independently ”

“ An attempt at Monism is therefore common to all philosophers, whether professional or amateur; and the only question at issue is what sort of Monism are you aiming at, what sort of solution of the universe have you to offer, what can you hold out to us as a simple satisfactory comprehensive scheme of existence? ”