Essays On Education And Kindred Subjects (Fiscle Part- 11) - Herbert Spencer (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt) 📗
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More Readily Altered; And That It Has, From Time To Time, Been Quietly
Ameliorated. Nevertheless, We Shall Find That The Analogy Holds
Substantially Good. For In This Case, As In The Others, The Essential
Revolution Is Not The Substituting Of Any One Set Of Restraints For Any
Other, But The Limiting Or Abolishing The Authority Which Prescribes
Restraints. Just As The Fundamental Change Inaugurated By The
Reformation Was Not A Superseding Of One Creed By Another, But An
Ignoring Of The Arbiter Who Before Dictated Creeds--Just As The
Fundamental Change Which Democracy Long Ago Commenced, Was Not From This
Particular Law To That, But From The Despotism Of One To The Freedom Of
All; So, The Parallel Change Yet To Be Wrought Out In This Supplementary
Government Of Which We Are Treating, Is Not The Replacing Of Absurd
Usages By Sensible Ones, But The Dethronement Of That Secret,
Irresponsible Power Which Now Imposes Our Usages, And The Assertion Of
The Right Of All Individuals To Choose Their Own Usages. In Rules Of
Living, A West-End Clique Is Our Pope; And We Are All Papists, With But
A Mere Sprinkling Of Heretics. On All Who Decisively Rebel, Comes Down
The Penalty Of Excommunication, With Its Long Catalogue Of Disagreeable
And, Indeed, Serious Consequences.
The Liberty Of The Subject Asserted In Our Constitution, And Ever On The
Increase, Has Yet To Be Wrested From This Subtler Tyranny. The Right Of
Private Judgment, Which Our Ancestors Wrung From The Church, Remains To
Be Claimed From This Dictator Of Our Habits. Or, As Before Said, To Free
Us From These Idolatries And Superstitious Conformities, There Has Still
To Come A Protestanism In Social Usages. Parallel, Therefore, As Is The
Change To Be Wrought Out, It Seems Not Improbable That It May Be Wrought
Out In An Analogous Way. That Influence Which Solitary Dissentients Fail
To Gain, And That Perseverance Which They Lack, May Come Into Existence
When They Unite. That Persecution Which The World Now Visits Upon Them
From Mistaking Their Nonconformity For Ignorance Or Disrespect, May
Diminish When It Is Seen To Result From Principle. The Penalty Which
Exclusion Now Entails May Disappear When They Become Numerous Enough To
Form Visiting Circles Of Their Own. And When A Successful Stand Has Been
Made, And The Brunt Of The Opposition Has Passed, That Large Amount Of
Secret Dislike To Our Observances Which Now Pervades Society, May
Manifest Itself With Sufficient Power To Effect The Desired
Emancipation.
Whether Such Will Be The Process, Time Alone Can Decide. That Community
Of Origin, Growth, Supremacy, And Decadence, Which We Have Found Among
All Kinds Of Government, Suggests A Community In Modes Of Change Also.
On The Other Hand, Nature Often Performs Substantially Similar
Operations, In Ways Apparently Different. Hence These Details Can Never
Be Foretold.
Meanwhile, Let Us Glance At The Conclusions That Have Been Reached. On
The One Side, Government, Originally One, And Afterwards Subdivided For
The Better Fulfilment Of Its Function, Must Be Considered As Having Ever
Been, In All Its Branches--Political, Religious, And
Ceremonial--Beneficial; And, Indeed, Absolutely Necessary. On The Other
Side, Government, Under All Its Forms, Must Be Regarded As Subserving A
Temporary Office, Made Needful By The Unfitness Of Aboriginal Humanity
For Social Life; And The Successive Diminutions Of Its Coerciveness In
State, In Church, And In Custom, Must Be Looked Upon As Steps Towards
Its Final Disappearance. To Complete The Conception, There Requires To
Be Borne In Mind The Third Fact, That The Genesis, The Maintenance, And
The Decline Of All Governments, However Named, Are Alike Brought About
Part 2 Chapter 2 (On Manners And Fashion) Pg 96
By The Humanity To Be Controlled: From Which May Be Drawn The Inference
That, On The Average, Restrictions Of Every Kind Cannot Last Much Longer
Than They Are Wanted, And Cannot Be Destroyed Much Faster Than They
Ought To Be.
Society, In All Its Developments, Undergoes The Process Of Exuviation.
These Old Forms Which It Successively Throws Off, Have All Been Once
Vitally United With It--Have Severally Served As The Protective
Envelopes Within Which A Higher Humanity Was Being Evolved. They Are
Cast Aside Only When They Become Hindrances--Only When Some Inner And
Better Envelope Has Been Formed; And They Bequeath To Us All That There
Was In Them Good. The Periodical Abolitions Of Tyrannical Laws Have Left
The Administration Of Justice Not Only Uninjured, But Purified. Dead And
Buried Creeds Have Not Carried With Them The Essential Morality They
Contained, Which Still Exists, Uncontaminated By The Sloughs Of
Superstition. And All That There Is Of Justice And Kindness And Beauty,
Embodied In Our Cumbrous Forms Of Etiquette, Will Live Perennially When
The Forms Themselves Have Been Forgotten.
[1] _Westminster Review_, April 1854.
[2] This Was Written Before Moustaches And Beards Had Become Common.
Part 2 Chapter 3 (On The Genesis Of Science) Pg 97
There Has Ever Prevailed Among Men A Vague Notion That Scientific
Knowledge Differs In Nature From Ordinary Knowledge. By The Greeks, With
Whom Mathematics--Literally _Things Learnt_--Was Alone Considered As
Knowledge Proper, The Distinction Must Have Been Strongly Felt; And It
Has Ever Since Maintained Itself In The General Mind. Though,
Considering The Contrast Between The Achievements Of Science And Those
Of Daily Unmethodic Thinking, It Is Not Surprising That Such A
Distinction Has Been Assumed; Yet It Needs But To Rise A Little Above
The Common Point Of View, To See That No Such Distinction Can Really
Exist: Or That At Best, It Is But A Superficial Distinction. The Same
Faculties Are Employed In Both Cases; And In Both Cases Their Mode Of
Operation Is Fundamentally The Same.
If We Say That Science Is Organised Knowledge, We Are Met By The Truth
That All Knowledge Is Organised In A Greater Or Less Degree--That The
Commonest Actions Of The Household And The Field Presuppose Facts
Colligated, Inferences Drawn, Results Expected; And That The General
Success Of These Actions Proves The Data By Which They Were Guided To
Have Been Correctly Put Together. If, Again, We Say That Science Is
Prevision--Is A Seeing Beforehand--Is A Knowing In What Times, Places,
Combinations, Or Sequences, Specified Phenomena Will Be Found; We Are
Yet Obliged To Confess That The Definition Includes Much That Is Utterly
Foreign To Science In Its Ordinary Acceptation. For Example, A Child's
Knowledge Of An Apple. This, As Far As It Goes, Consists In Previsions.
When A Child Sees A Certain Form And Colours, It Knows That If It Puts
Out Its Hand It Will Have Certain Impressions Of Resistance, And
Roundness, And Smoothness; And If It Bites, A Certain Taste. And
Manifestly Its General Acquaintance With Surrounding Objects Is Of Like
Nature--Is Made Up Of Facts Concerning Them, So Grouped As That Any Part
Of A Group Being Perceived, The Existence Of The Other Facts Included In
It Is Foreseen.
If, Once More, We Say That Science Is _Exact_ Prevision, We Still Fail
To Establish The Supposed Difference. Not Only Do We Find That Much Of
What We Call Science Is Not Exact, And That Some Of It, As Physiology,
Can Never Become Exact; But We Find Further, That Many Of The Previsions
Constituting The Common Stock Alike Of Wise And Ignorant, _Are_ Exact.
That An Unsupported Body Will Fall; That A Lighted Candle Will Go Out
When Immersed In Water; That Ice Will Melt When Thrown On The
Fire--These, And Many Like Predictions Relating To The Familiar
Properties Of Things Have As High A Degree Of Accuracy As Predictions
Are Capable Of. It Is True That The Results Predicated Are Of A Very
General Character; But It Is None The Less True That They Are Rigorously
Correct As Far As They Go: And This Is All That Is Requisite To Fulfil
The Definition. There Is Perfect Accordance Between The Anticipated
Phenomena And The Actual Ones; And No More Than This Can Be Said Of The
Highest Achievements Of The Sciences Specially Characterised As Exact.
Seeing Thus That The Assumed Distinction Between Scientific Knowledge
And Common Knowledge Is Not Logically Justifiable; And Yet Feeling, As
We Must, That However Impossible It May Be To Draw A Line Between Them,
The Two Are Not Practically Identical; There Arises The Question--What
Is The Relationship That Exists Between Them? A Partial Answer To This
Question May Be Drawn From The Illustrations Just Given. On
Reconsidering Them, It Will Be Observed That Those Portions Of Ordinary
Knowledge Which Are Identical In Character With Scientific Knowledge,
Comprehend Only Such Combinations Of Phenomena As Are Directly
Cognisable By The Senses, And Are Of Simple, Invariable Nature. That The
Smoke From A Fire Which She Is Lighting Will Ascend, And That The Fire
Will Presently Boil Water, Are Previsions Which The Servant-Girl Makes
Equally Well With The Most Learned Physicist; They Are Equally Certain,
Equally Exact With His; But They Are Previsions Concerning Phenomena In
Constant And Direct Relation--Phenomena That Follow Visibly And
Immediately After Their Antecedents--Phenomena Of Which The Causation Is
Neither Remote Nor Obscure--Phenomena Which May Be Predicted By The
Simplest Possible Act Of Reasoning.
If, Now, We Pass To The Previsions Constituting What Is Commonly Known
As Science--That An Eclipse Of The Moon Will Happen At A Specified Time;
And When A Barometer Is Taken To The Top Of A Mountain Of Known Height,
The Mercurial Column Will Descend A Stated Number Of Inches; That The
Poles Of A Galvanic Battery Immersed In Water Will Give Off, The One An
Inflammable And The Other An Inflaming Gas, In Definite Ratio--We
Perceive That The Relations Involved Are Not Of A Kind Habitually
Part 2 Chapter 3 (On The Genesis Of Science) Pg 98Presented To Our Senses; That They Depend, Some Of Them, Upon Special
Combinations Of Causes; And That In Some Of Them The Connection Between
Antecedents And Consequents Is Established Only By An Elaborate Series
Of Inferences. The Broad Distinction, Therefore, Between The Two Orders
Of Knowledge, Is Not In Their Nature, But In Their Remoteness From
Perception.
If We Regard The Cases In Their Most General Aspect, We See That The
Labourer, Who, On Hearing Certain Notes In The Adjacent Hedge, Can
Describe The Particular Form And Colours Of The Bird Making Them; And
The Astronomer, Who, Having Calculated A Transit Of Venus, Can Delineate
The Black Spot Entering On The Sun's Disc, As It Will Appear Through The
Telescope, At A Specified Hour; Do Essentially The Same Thing. Each
Knows That On Fulfilling The Requisite Conditions, He Shall Have A
Preconceived Impression--That After A Definite Series Of Actions Will
Come A Group Of Sensations Of A Foreknown Kind. The Difference, Then, Is
Not In The Fundamental Character Of The Mental
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