CHAPTER III.

The reader will have noticed the warmth of Chauncey’s regard for the Lesley family. He had found with them not only sympathy and affection, but a great intellectual stimulus. Mr. Lesley, now Professor of Geology and Mining in the University of Pennsylvania, and the official geologist of that State, had formerly been a minister in the Orthodox Congregational Church; nor has he, I believe, ever relinquished the distinctive part of his religious opinions. Chauncey could hardly have found a keener or more original thinker, — one more eager to welcome a new thought, more competent for the discussion of it, or less disposed to accept it unchallenged. Professor Lesley, in the midst of a hundred pressing occupations, has found time to send me some reminiscences of Chauncey. I insert them here, and do not omit the frank and characteristic expressions of his dissent from some of the opinions of his friend: —

“My first acquaintance with Chauncey Wright was made nearly thirty years ago, and continued under the inspiration of the most cordial friendship, without a break, to the time of his death. We loved each other dearly, and with good reason. His best friends were also mine. We passed days and weeks together under the same roof. It was his kind practice for more than a dozen years to spend his Christmas holidays with my wife and me at our house in Philadelphia, and we looked forward through each autumn to his visit as one of the great events of the year. One of my pleasant recollections of Chauncey is of his habit of carrying my

daughter Mary in his arms around the garden of Mrs. Lyman’s house in Cambridge. She was never so happy as when he held her. Their mutual attachment was beautiful to look upon: it long outlasted babyhood on her part, and on his part never failed. His heart was of pure gold. His generosity to the young, the weak, and the aged, bore the stamp of a refined nobility. He was in truth one of Nature’s noblemen: incapable of a meanness, unselfish, passionately fond of pure and true people, and holding himself aloof from those who fell beneath that standard. He vouchsafed his friendship to few, but from these he withheld nothing.

“Such was my friend for me from first to last, and as I believe still is and always will be. For death is only a longer voyage to Europe or to China. We cease for a while to see and hear the departed, but they are as real and living to us on board ship on a far-off sea, as on the wharf at home. If letters fail when sent by post, that is no sign of death; nor is the lack of communication with Chauncey Wright now a sound argument on his side of the discussion respecting a future life. I firmly believe and joyfully look forward to the renewal of his visits in some future Christmas holidays.

“What weeks were those! What eloquence flowed from his lips and eyes as he walked up and down the parlor floor, now and then turning and standing to enforce his views, or leaning half in revery against the mantel-piece, while some superfine illustration flowed softly and evenly from his imagination in language singularly choice and elegant. His writings are hard for the inexpert to read; but women and children could understand all that he said, even when he was in his highest moods. There was neither tedium nor uncertainty for his hearers while he spoke. Many of his positions I accounted philosophically untenable, because I did not accept all of his premises. But no exception could be taken against his logic; no misunderstanding of his train of thought

was possible; and never was English spoken more delightfully by a scholar and a gentleman.

“One thing always impressed me: he never lowered the tone of a conversation. I never heard him use a slang word, or any expression approaching the limits of vulgarity,—by which I merely mean the stupid and inelegant. It required genius of no common mould to maintain perpetually such elevation above the commonplace without becoming a bore to common people or wearisome to his companions in philosophy. He was indeed a genius of the higher world; and this it was that made him in other respects, —in all respects, — as I have already said, one of Nature’s noblemen.

“During most of the years of our intercourse, I was myself as fond of metaphysical discussions as he was; and you may better imagine than I describe the delights of our meetings, the regrets of our partings, the brilliancy of our evening parties, the earnestness of our walks together, the depth of our friendship. But of late years I became absorbed by affairs, and disuse of the tools and weapons begat in me indifference to the arts and exercises of metaphysics. For several years before Chauncey’s death, I saw less of him than before; and our correspondence also fell away; for business obliged me to neglect the art and exercise of letter-writing also. He only shared the fate of all my other friends. Then, when we met, we found ourselves intellectually travelling in opposite directions. His tendencies were all towards that New City which men are building on the fens of Mattershire, and I found him speculating in its water lots. For my part, I preferred to keep house in the Old Jerusalem, where it was dry, and where I could, at least now and then, sniff a breeze from the Everlasting Hills. He traversed my opinion that phyllotaxis is merely a well-bred habit of the soul of the plant; that however many creators the infinitely numerous organic formal inventions of the world may call for, and however subordinate (in

a hierarchy perhaps) these subordinate creators may be to a God of Gods and Lord of Lords, —to try to disinspirit matter is to make Berkeleyism a necessary refuge for the philosopher. He called for proof of the invisible, and would accept of no half proof.

“It is the old story. Friends love and leave each other; usually because one stays and the other goes. But being eternally friends, they meet again; usually by the return of the traveller. It is my belief, my dear friend, that the school of the Darwinists is in this fashion on its travels. It resembles, I think, Sir W. Thomson and his crew in the ‘Challenger,’ sounding the depths, and collecting the form-treasures of all seas, — only to come back and enrich books and museums, but by no means to change Metaphysical Science in any noteworthy degree.”

To Professor Lesley.

Cambridge, Jan. 19, 1865.

Thank you very much for your objection to one of my theological arguments, as well as for your expressions of approval. The theological arena is a new one for me, The reference is to an article on “Natural Theology as a Positive Science” in the “North American Review” for January, 1865; Philosophical Discussions, p. 35. ⁴⁰ and I am painfully conscious of being poorly armed for its contests. The study of exact sciences, where one cannot go astray without falling into absurdity and incomprehensibility, is not so good a discipline as is commonly supposed, for preparing the mind against inaccuracies of thought and expression in matters full of darkness and pitfalls. I have seen many illustrations of this in the arguments of mathematicians when out of their element.

The above confession must not be understood, however, in any other than that soothingly general sense in which confessions

are made in church, — “O Lord, we have grievously sinned, but not by this, that, or the other particular act, of which our uncharitable neighbor thinks us guilty.” My error is only that of being misunderstood, —a great and dangerous error, it is true, in a literary aspirant, — but then it comes also from a confusion which is in the readers as well as the writers of theological discourses.

In mathematics we attend principally to the reasons, and let the conclusions follow if they will; but in theology the conclusions are of the first importance, and the reasons are dragged after them. Now I erred in not pointing out with sufficient distinctness that my aim was to examine the arguments and not the conclusions of Natural Theology, — to examine the reasonings from physical facts to certain conclusions, and not the interpretation which might be legitimately put upon these facts, if the conclusions were granted or otherwise verified.

It is doubtless true, granting the conclusion, — the existence of a law-giver and designer, — that the laws and apparent designs which are discovered by science are the signs or symbols of final cause or purpose; but how, then, can we use them as proofs of what we have assumed in thus interpreting them? My argument against Paley is ad hominem. He says a law implies power, and so it does; but it does not determine the nature of that power, saving only that it is a power which acts according to law, or is manifested by an order.

Design, which is an antecedent in the order of human production, is illegitimately assumed to be a real and essential and not an incidental, phenomenal antecedent, unless intelligence is shown to be essential to all order. Put this is the point in question. The materialist assumes just as validly that design is an incident to the order of human contrivances, or is what the logicians call an “inseparable accident,” but not an essential antecedent to this order as such, and therefore

is not implied in order generally. When Paley and other theologians conclude that “the works of nature proceed from intelligence and design” on the ground of scientific evidence, they pervert language just as much as the materialist, when he argues that they proceed from law, — always supposing, of course, that we do not grant the conclusion of either side. To the theologian, who begs the question, law and design are the obverse and reverse of the same fact, — the objective and subjective aspects of the same nature,— intelligence. To the materialist, who also begs the question, design is the characteristic of the anticipating, reflective action of the human mind, rehearsing in its little world, the imagination, the acts by which it modifies the course of nature. The form of order which it thereby impresses on the powers of natural agents is not essentially different from the order which pervades the whole of nature, — the order of law,— the origin of which he does not profess to know or even conceive, but calls it substance, of which the type to his mind is the substance of the bodies which manifest this order or matter, and when he refers the order of nature to the “agency of law,” he means the agency of the power of which law is the manifestation, —just as the theologian, when referring any thing to design, means to refer it to a personal cause. The materialist refers the order of nature to an unknown and as he believes unknowable origin; and as far as physical evidence is concerned he is warranted in doing so, quite as much as the theologian is in drawing his conclusions from the same source, — unless, indeed, it be an axiom that “all order is designed order.”

But, if this is true, what need of argument? We do not prove axioms by argument.

But the conclusions of theology so fill the mind, answering to other than rational interests, that any one who would hold them in abeyance, and strictly follow the argument a posteriori,

seems to doubt or reject them, or to yield to motives other than rational ones for disbelief, while he is only examining their grounds as he would the reasons of a conclusion in physics or mathematics.

Starting from religious conclusions and interpreting nature in accordance with them, the theologian discovers “law” and “design” as symbols, and his proofs amount to pious circles, like those of the whirling dervish; and it seems to me he would perform a more substantial service to religion, if he would look straight at the origin of his faith, instead of such pious exercises, by which he gets so dizzy as to bring science and faith into conflict.

But I must stop lest you think me giddy, too, from so long a contemplation of such gyrations.

A glimpse of Chauncey among his associates at the office of the Nautical Almanac may be had from the following passages of a letter from Professor Simon Newcomb, late of the United States Naval Observatory at Washington: Since this was written, Professor Newcomb has been appointed Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac. ⁴¹ —

“My acquaintance with him,” he says, “began in 1857, when I became a computer for the Nautical Almanac, and hence a sort of scientific colleague. He had then an abominable habit of doing his whole year’s work in three or four months, during which period he would work during the greater part of the night as well as of the day, eat little, and keep up his strength by smoking. The rest of the year he was a typical philosopher of the ancient world, talking, but, so far as I know, at this period, seldom or never writing. His disciples were his fellow-computers on the almanac. He regarded philosophy as the proper complement of mathematics, — the field into which a thinking mathematician would naturally wander. Philosophic questions were our daily subjects of discussion. . . . My favorite subject was that to which the

enclosed correspondence relates, — the compatibility of freewill with absolute certainty regarding human acts, and the absence of any reason for supposing that human actions are any less determinate than the operations of nature. Wright was at first inclined to claim, in accordance with popular notions of free-will, that these propositions were not well founded, but at length was led to maintain that, considered simply as phenomena, they were correctly formulated; that is, that we have no reason to believe human acts, considered simply as phenomena, to be any less determinate than the operations of nature. This is the ground which you will see that we agree upon in the enclosed correspondence.

. . . “When Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ appeared, it was the subject of a special discussion, extending over a considerable time, before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It was in following this discussion that his views of the philosophy of natural selection first seemed to assume a definite form in his mind. The fallacy involved in the popular arguments respecting the cell of the honey-bee was long his favorite theme, and at length led to his communicating a short note on the subject to the American Academy.”

The correspondence referred to by Professor Newcomb consisted of a letter from him to Chauncey, asking that he would suggest proper Greek or Latin phrases for certain philosophical discriminations, and of the following letter in reply: —

To Mr. Simon Newcomb.

Cambridge, May 18, 1865.

. . . Much more thought and care than I have yet given to it would be necessary to a final and valuable decision on so important a matter as the invention of a nomenclature, — which is to ordinary metaphysics what the construction of a machine is to the working of it.

I have examined only one book at all likely to contain any terms suited to your purposes. A little work of Burgersdyck on Metaphysics contains innumerable scholastic subdivisions of the genus potentia, but none to the purpose; and I am inclined to believe that you are right in thinking that the ideas you propose for baptism have never before been analyzed, or at least signalized, with any distinctness. At any rate, such a conviction has been the more readily accepted by me, in that it saves me the trouble of continuing research in this direction.

I accordingly appealed to the classical knowledge of a friend for the proper Latin equivalents of the phrases “possibility for aught that we know” and “possibility for aught that we do not know,” or “for aught that exists;” and I had the good fortune to find that the Latin idiom is well adapted to these meanings, and renders them in phrases which have quite a scholastic ring. Quod, with the subjunctive, does the business.

Potentia quod sciamus and Potentia quod ne sciamus, or Potentia quod vere sit, express your P1 and P2 quite scholastically. For your P3 there is a choice of phrases, — Potentia quod velle possimus, or Potentia quod valeat voluntas, — which seem to me to hit the mark.

You do not, of course, wish that the nomenclature should decide whether P3 is included under either P1 or P2 as contradictory opposites, dividing, as they seem to do, the universe of potentiality between them; but you wish a term by which the problem can be stated and discussed without ambiguity or confusion; and these phrases seem to me to be sufficient for this purpose.

The sense of freedom or of liberty to choose, is the consciousness of a power to choose in a different way from that we actually follow, or of a possibility for aught that we can will, or for aught that the will avails. That is, the particular

act of the will does not represent all the determinants to action which we contemplate in deliberate choice.

Hence I propose for your

P1 . . . Potentia quod sciamus;

P2 . . . Potentia quod ne sciamus, vel quod vere sit;

P3 . . . Potentia quod velle possimus, vel quod valeat voluntas.

Potentiality is not contrasted in scholastic language with determination, but with actuality; existence in potentia with existence in actu or in esse. But it does not seem to me essential to adopt technical phrases for your C1, C2, C3, in so far as they are the negations of your P1, P2, P3, though it is obvious that a distinction should be made between actual causal determinations and the logical determinations of thought,—between what is determined without reference to our knowledge and what is determined in our knowledge.

Determination and indetermination seem to me to be the best terms, taken by themselves in their broadest sense, and excluding the use of the vague and ambiguous terms “possibility” and “potentiality.” And if we also exclude the words “liberty” and “necessity,” as Mr. Mill proposes, we shall simplify the problem of voluntary actions very materially.

The question will then be, whether there are any elements, known or unknown, which enter into volitional determinations not in accordance with the law of causation, or other than the regular consequents of conditions and determinations previously existing in our characters and circumstances.

I contend that no evidence of the existence of such elements can be distinguished from ignorance. All testimony in the matter must be negative. Dr. Johnson says: “We know our wills are free, and there’s an end on’t;” but I contend that we do not know that our wills are not free, and there isn’t even a beginning of a solution of the question from the testimony of consciousness. With reference to the possibility of any other evidence, the only practical problem is whether, in

considering human actions, we ought or ought not to presume that they fall under the law of causation, just as all other phenomena in nature are presumed to do. This problem is quite distinct from any anticipation we may have that we may become acquainted so intimately with the springs of human action as to be able to predict with certainty the course of an individual’s conduct. We do not hope to predict the weather with certainty, though this is probably a much simpler problem; but we nevertheless believe the complex phenomena of the weather to be made up of elementary regular sequences.

That our conscious volitions are not so compounded, we certainly can never know; and the only presumption in favor of this doctrine is its seeming dependence upon our sense of moral freedom and responsibility. But I contend that this seeming reason is only an illusion and a misunderstanding of the question. The world has been deceived for more than sixteen centuries by metaphors invented by some Alexandrian Platonists speculating on the nature of virtue. Sects, schisms, and strifes have been the consequents of these unfortunate metaphors drawn from Roman law. While everybody recognizes as real those feelings which we describe as a sense of moral freedom and the feeling of responsibility, few attend to the metaphorical character of the names which are given to them. “The virtuous man is free,” said the Platonic philosopher. “He is, like a Roman citizen, uncontrolled by a master.” “A vicious man is a slave.” Such is the metaphor: now what is the real character so described? This freedom is internal control in place of external control; centric or self control, which, so far from making a man free, in the scientific sense of the word, makes his life regular and his conduct calculable. He has a freedom like that of the solar system or like that of a normal growth. Again, moral responsibility was so named from legal responsibility in Roman law; and the sense of it is only the sense of dignity and trustworthiness

which is characteristic of moral feeling, a sense of being intrusted with interests not his own. This sense is also proportional to the virtue of a man, though it is not absent from any one capable of sympathetic and reflective action. Minus the metaphor, it has nothing to do with the question of philosophical liberty.

From all these considerations, I conclude that, if the terms in which the problem of philosophic liberty is discussed be freed from ambiguity and metaphor, there will be little or nothing left to discuss; only the idle question, in fact, whether in the world of the unknown, and the arcana of ignorance, there be not such things as undetermined beginnings, real, finite, first causes; — an idle question, because no affirmative testimony Can be adduced except our ignorance; and, as this is insufficient to disprove the law of causation in other cases, how can it be of weight in this?

To Professor Lesley.

Cambridge, May 31, 1865.

... If any thing could diminish the sympathy I feel with your disappointment in being obliged to give way to invalidism and to take a vacation, it is the pleasure I anticipate from your promised visits. They will be more grateful to me than seashore or mountain, and I look forward with impatience to the days when you will come with your budget of “things to discuss.”

We may find the mountains or the seashore good grounds for our rational picnic, though we only go to them for the pleasure of losing sight of them. No day of last summer comes more distinctly and pleasurably to my recollection than that on which we climbed Wachusett together, — and greater heights than that, in discourse.

To Mr. Abbot.

Cambridge, June 26, 1865.

I trust you will not consider the long time I have allowed to pass before responding to your friendly challenge to a philosophical tournament, as any indication of hesitation or unwillingness on my part to undertake the correspondence you propose. I had much rather you would regard it as time required to consider the difficult problems, — involving, as they do, so many knotty points and grounds of diverse opinions; but in fact the time has not been so employed. I have had few opportunities and fewer occasions of inspiration; and nothing but comparative leisure at present and a desire to express the pleasure and gratification I received from your letter and your request for further correspondence, excuses the present attempt to respond to them.

The clear summary which you give of your argument for the infinity of space, and the questions which you propose as containing the chief issues between us, help me to bring my thoughts at once to the discussion. You ask first, “What is the origin of the idea of space simply considered, as the absolute correlate and condition of matter irrespective of its infinity?” In answer, I propose to give, as briefly as I can, the empiricist’s interpretation of the admitted facts of space, and his explanation of what he conceives to be the origin of the idea. “The idea of space as the necessary and absolute condition of matter,” as “the receptacle of matter, without which as an extended object it could not exist,” includes, it seems to me, a confusion of two distinct propositions, on the discrimination of which the empiricist bases his criticism of the absolutist’s philosophy. He denies that any necessity is cognizable except the necessities of thought; and he would consequently say of the idea of space, that though it is necessary to the representation of matter as an object of

thought, yet it cannot be known as the necessary and absolute condition of matter per se or as underlying noumenal existence. Things and their relations known as phenomena, and their laws, include all that is known to us, except bare existence. Space and Time, distinctly known by abstraction and generalization, are none the less relations of things, merely because they are the absolute conditions [of thinking] of things; the conditio sine qua non of their existence [to us]. And there is not any true or unavoidable antithesis between “abstractions, generalizations, or relations,” and the “absolute correlates of things,” as thought. Relations may be necessary as well as contingent; and because things cannot be conceived out of certain relations, it does not follow that these relations have any other existence than in the things in which they are cognized. To postulate the order, which experience determines in our thinking, as also the order of ontological dependence, is to assume at once and without adequate discussion the position against which the empiricist protests.

The conception of Time and Space as primarily any other than those relations which are universal in our experience of things comes from confounding the truly abstract Time and Space with their abstract representations. I mean by abstract representation the imaging in the phantasy of as few of the propertied and relations of sensible objects as can be represented, excluding or leaving in the background all else. Such syntheses of all the relations necessary to the conception of things in general give the abstract ideas of space as the “receptacle of matter” and of time as the continuum of events. These are not primary intuitions, but constructive synthetic representations made up of the elementary abstract relations of things and events. What we really and immediately know are phenomena — objects and events—with their relations. Proceeding to know them better and better, we first class

them by the ultimate and truly unanalyzable principle of “likeness and unlikeness.” Resemblances and differences of all degrees are cognized, and those phenomena in which resemblance is as perfect as is consistent with their plurality are still found to differ in what we call Space and Time; and this is all we ultimately know of space and time. They are the abstract genera of differences which exist between all phenomena as plural, however great resemblances they may have. An identical object is known by phenomena differing in time only. The universality of the relations of space and time in our experience, and their consequent necessity in our thoughts, united with the notion of identity in an object, gives the notion of continuity of existence both in space and time. We are not immediately cognizant of this continuity as such. What we know are discrete phenomena and their relations of resemblance and difference.

I do not believe that Space and Time are pure hypotheses posited to account for the relations of phenomena. I think they are really cognized as ultimate differences in phenomena; but the continuities of Space and Time must either be of the nature of hypotheses, or else I think we must grant your position of a faculty above sense and understanding capable of cognizing them. As hypotheses and as the only hypotheses we can form to account for or rationalize our experiences, they may be regarded as truly necessary to thought and universal, like the relations on which they are founded.

That time continues between any two events, and that space extends between any two objects cognized by us is inferred as being simply necessary to thought, since we cannot imagine any quantitative difference which is not divisible nor any parts which are not different in space and time. The relations of space and time are intuitions of sense; but as receptacle and continuum, or as conditions of these relations, they are hypotheses. The conception of continuity involves that of quantity,

which I think is primarily cognized as a relation of the relations of time and space — and, I may add, of intension in sensation or power. Two events are conceived quantitatively as separated by other events or the possibility of other events which still differ in time. And similarly of objects in space and of sensations. Objects, events, and feelings are related in space, time, and power, and these are related in quantity. Out of the vague apprehension of quantitative relations in these, we form precise abstract conceptions of quantity, which we cannot however separate entirely from these relations. We have therefore three species of quantity, — quantity in space, time and degree.

But you may object that a rationalizing hypothesis, which, you will say, is not, and cannot be, given by sense or understanding, must come from a faculty above these, which is also the source of the validity of the hypothesis; but I contend that so far as such an hypothesis is apprehended at all, and so far as it has any validity, it is apprehended and vouched for by understanding and sense. The process is perfectly analogous to the formation of general ideas, which it is now admitted on all hands cannot be apprehended by sense or represented in imagination, yet is the proper function of understanding dealing with the data of experience. In the same way, the hypothesis of a receptacle or continuum, so far as it is apprehended at all, is apprehended in and through the relations of the phenomena which it reduces to rational order. As well contend that mathematical formulas and processes which convey no meaning in themselves, but develop implicit relations of quantity, are given and vouched for by a special faculty, as contend that space — the receptacle — is a distinct datum of intelligence.

The distinction between Space and Extension is thus to my mind only that which subsists between an abstract synthetic hypothesis and the elementary relations which it reduces to

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order and harmony in thought. The latter alone are properly apprehended by any faculty of knowledge. Space is really apprehended in the relations of extension in bodies. All bodies — the whole non-ego of sense, embraced in one intuition, with the exclusion of all which is non-essential to representation in general, gives us the space of imagination. Rational space is that which is essential to clear, distinct, and rational thought, or is necessary to understanding. It excludes color and tangible properties, and includes the hypothesis of continuity. Sense by itself does not give continuity, but at the same time does not exclude it. All the data of sense are in accordance with it; and hence they verify or give validity to it, so far as it has validity or is capable of verification. The impossibility of thinking contrary to it, is not regarded by the empiricist as a distinct kind of proof. This only expresses the degree of the proof which experience affords.

I come now to your question concerning the infinity of space. This predication, though it cannot be understood, cannot be denied, since it involves no contradiction. At the same time, it cannot be affirmed as an hypothesis necessary to account for any cognizable fact which is not accounted for by the idea “that space extends beyond our powers of knowing or conceiving it.” What infinite space includes, more than this, is unnecessary, and therefore unwarranted; and it is only by sublating the contradictory proposition, as you propose to do in your proof (p. 94, N. A. Review), that it can be posited.

But what is the contradictory of infinite space as distinguished from indefinite space? Not finite space simply, as you propose in your proof. The truly infinite is the unconditionally unlimited or indefinite, and its contradictory is the unconditionally limited, — not merely the finite, which may be conditionally limited. What you really sublate in your proof

is only the conditionally limited as predicated of abstract space. You say: “For suppose it [space] limited, it must be limited either by matter or by vacuity [that is in either case conditionally limited]; but Space is presupposed by matter, and is itself, in the absence of matter, vacuity, consequently, &c.”

But this dilemma does not include an alternative which is the real contradictory of infinite space. Unconditionally limited space is neither limited by other space nor by matter, but per se or by itself. This is inconceivable, of course, — obtrusively and staggeringly so; but it does not involve any logical contradiction, and is not therefore repugnant to reason any more than its equally inconceivable contradictory, infinite space.

Since therefore I must disallow your demonstration of infinity, I come to your third question, “What is the reason why the infinity of space is a less obtrusive and staggering inconceivability than its [absolute] finitude?”

The clause following the words you quote from my letter, though connected only by an “and,” contains the reason. I should have said that “we finally rest on unlimited space as the least obtrusive and staggering inconceivability, [since it is] the one for which we can most easily substitute a. pseud representation, namely, an indefinitely great extension.” The suffering senses are quieter, but the understanding is still frustrated. æsthetic considerations — or perhaps I should say anæsthetic considerations — decide, where reason is balanced. The decision is the other way — and for the same reason — in the case of the infinite and absolute of causation. An absolute beginning is preferable to an infinite non-beginning, because we can easily substitute for it a pseud representation; namely, a beginning in knowledge or in consciousness, such as, in the case of our own volitions, seem like new

creations, self-determined. This satisfies sense and imagination by deceiving them, but the understanding is still baffled.

Infinite space, as an hypothesis to account for any thing of which we are truly cognizant, not only transcends our powers of conception, but also the necessities of thought. A simpler hypothesis is competent to do all that it can do. We need only space which includes all that we can know, and extends beyond our powers of knowing or conceiving it.

The infinite and absolute are therefore both inconceivable and incognizable by us in the relations of space and time. How much more so out of relation to these! The Infinite and Absolute of pure Being, transcending time, space, and phenomena, are only names to us, but names which, nevertheless, as mutually contradictory, says Hamilton, stand, either the one or the other, for an inconceivable reality. This which is Hamilton’s peculiar doctrine is to my mind the weakest point in his argument. As an empiricist, he was not competent to draw such a conclusion. He was not, however, a thorough-going empiricist; and he can be convicted of inconsistency, if it be showing that he was not competent to affirm for the laws of thought an absolute validity independently of experience, while he denied any such thing as an absolute knowledge.

I imagine that this is the flaw which Mr. Mill has discovered; but as I have not yet read Mill, and do not know what his line of argument is, I set down this anticipation at a venture.

I hope that my argument will not prove unanswerable, and that I may hear from you at your earliest leisure.

During these years, Chauncey had grown intimate with the family of Mr. Norton. I am able to give some account of his acquaintance with them from the pen of Mr. Norton himself. He says: —

“I first heard of Chauncey Wright in 1857, soon after returning to Cambridge from a two years’ absence in Europe. The ‘Atlantic Monthly’ was just established; and Mr. Lowell, its first editor, printed in one of the early numbers Vol. I. p. 272, January, 1858. ⁴² a striking and interesting paper by Wright, called ‘The Winds and the Weather.’ I remember that Mr. Lowell spoke to me of it in high terms of praise, and told me of the modesty and shyness of the writer, and of his apparent promise as a scientific thinker. I heard of him occasionally from other friends; but some time passed before we met. In the winter of 1858 or 1859, a little club of men of various interests was started in Cambridge, and I think I first saw Wright at one of its meetings. He was generally very silent; but, when he spoke, his words were to the point and worth listening to. We did not meet often, but our acquaintance slowly ripened into friendship; and when, in the autumn of 1863, Mr. Lowell and I became editors of the ‘ North American Review,’ Wright was one of the men whom we both desired to engage as a contributor to its pages. In the winter of 1864, I saw much of him; and he began to be a frequent visitor at my house. At first, except when alone with me, his shyness made him silent, and gave him the appearance of reserve; but this gradually wore off, and he became before long an easy and familiar friend with all the members of the household. His mode of work by continuous stretches, with intervals between them of freedom from regular occupation, gave him leisure during those intervals for frequent walks with my wife, my sisters, or myself, and for loitering days, spent in winter in the parlor or my study, and in summer on the piazza or the grass. During these days, he shared in the common domestic interests, — in talk or reading, in the amusements of the children, in discussion of affairs, of characters, of education,

of the conduct of life, &c.; was full of ready sympathy in small concerns, of wise suggestion and service in important matters.”

To Mr. Charles Eliot Norton.

Cambridge, July 23, 1865.

The time you name for my visit will be a convenient one for me. I wish I could be as sure that Gurney will be able to come with me. I propose to go on Tuesday to Mount Desert Island with Thayer, to revel for a week near the seas and mountains.

I have read Mill’s Hamilton once, and I find it much more difficult to say what I think and feel about it than I anticipated. I feel at present more in the condition of a learner than a critic, but it wouldn’t do to tell the public so. I rebel, nevertheless, against much that Mill says, though I do not feel confident in my opinions. He appears to make sad havoc of Hamilton’s opinions and arguments, and on the latter topic he is certainly strong, and I willingly acknowledge him victor.

This is the way with metaphysics, which are for the most part false, — even clearly false arguments, for opinions vaguely expressive of some ill-apprehended truths. The chief merit of Mill’s book is in the clear exposure he makes of the fallacies, of the metaphysical school which Hamilton represents.

In my second reading, I am taking notes so as to get a summary view of the points which interest me; but these, I fear, will not interest the readers of the “Nation.”

In August, 1865, he writes to Mr. Norton that he has sent to the “Nation” “a very tough and profound criticism,” — an article entitled “Mill on Hamilton.” This was the first

of his contributions to the “Nation” the last appeared only three days before his death. A full list of these contributions is as follows: — Vol. I. No. 9, p. 278, “Mill on Hamilton.” 20, p. 627, “McCosh on Intuitions.” 22, 27, p. 20, “Mill on Comte.” 55, p. 724, “Spencer’s Biology.” 60, p. 804, “Martineau’s Essays.” 23, 72, p. 385, “Masson’s Recent British Philosophy.” 24, 80, p. 27, “Mansel’s Reply to Mill.” 90, p. 231, “Ennis on the Origin of the Stars.” 102, p. 470, “The Reign of Law.” 25, 116, p. 238, Note to “Mathematics in Court.” 26, 148, p. 355, Bledsoe’s “Philosophy of Mathematics.” XIII. 335, p. 355, Two Notes on Mr. C. S. Peirce’s Review of Berkeley. XVI. 412, p. 351, Notice of Mill, from the paragraph beginning, “The standing of Mr. Mill,” to the end. XVIII. 467, p. 381, Lewes’s “Problems of Life and Mind.” XX. 503, p. 113, Two Notes in answer to a request for information about books relating to the theory of Evolution. 505, p. 146, “Sir Charles Lyell.” 508, p. 208, Note on Bastian. 512, p. 277, “McCosh on Tyndall.” 518, p. 379, “Speculative Dynamics.” 520, p. 405, “Who are our Ancestors?” p. 409, Note on Professor Winlock. XXI. 522, p. 9, Two Notes on Sir Henry Maine and the “Greatest Happiness” principle. 524, p. 43, Blackwell’s “Sexes in Nature.” 532, p. 168, “German Darwinism.” ⁴³

In the fall of 1865, his brother George died. It is to this event that the following letter makes reference: —

To Mrs. George F. Wright.

Cambridge, Nov. 28, 1865.

A week of busy occupation has passed very rapidly, but makes my recent sad visit to you seem distant. Here in Cambridge, removed from the associations which must constantly at every turn force the grievous reality of our loss upon you, it comes to me as a dream which I can hardly realize; and when I realize it, I feel the additional affliction of the fact that I am not in a position to realize it fully, by being able to make it a part of my special care and daily life. For a sorrow such as ours is worthy not to be put aside by impertinent businesses, but to be ennobled by a life of duties which are consecrated by the sorrow. But this is your own true consolation, to know that you have many things to do which he would have wished you to do, and which you have to do because he can no longer do them, — duties now more sacred than ever to you. The nobility of such duties takes away the pain of loss, and makes life the more worthy, since in a sense he still lives in them.

How much better to feel the lost one’s presence in the work we have to do, than to think of him as removed even to a happy life remote from ours. The life that survives death, so far as the living can comprehend it, is in the feeling that we have gained new motives, new inspirations, new sanctions to carry on another’s life of duty in our own.

To the Same.

Cambridge, June 28, 1866.

... I did not tell you, I believe, that we were engaged on the business of removing the Nautical Almanac office from Cambridge to Washington. My share in the business was to get my present work forward as far as possible, so as to begin

on the first of July a new arrangement, by which I am to be allowed to reside in Cambridge, Northampton, or the North Pole, if I please, and to take work “by the piece,” instead of a salary. This will be much more profitable to me, as it gives me more to do.

To Mr. Norton.

Cambridge, July 24, 1866.

A few days after I received the manuscript following your last note, I entrapped Gurney into listening to the new philosopher. It was a hot day; and, after I had read a little more than half, I desisted, — Gurney looked so weary and bored. And so we returned to worldly affairs and common thoughts, letting the philosopher lie in my drawer for three weeks or more. To-day, Gurney submitted to hear the rest, that we might, if possible, qualify our very unfavorable opinion of the first half. Long before I had finished it, the old expression of weariness came upon our friend, and made me pause to ask if he found it dreary. “A howling wilderness,” he answered. As we were emulous of godlike qualities, we persevered to the end, but have our redress in the following report: —

Utterly without method, the article is very deficient in mere literary excellences; and, though freer than is usual with transcendentalists from astonishing expressions, it lacks at the same time the genuine transcendental merit of suggestiveness. It is the mere dry husk of Hegelianism, — dogmatic, without the only merit of dogmatism, distinctness of definition.

I am not so much a positivist as to deny that mystical and poetical philosophies are valuable products of human genius; but then they must be works of real genius, — of a Plato, a Hegel, or an Emerson. No being is prosier than the uninspired disciple of the mystic. All that is stimulating — all the glorious vision — has melted away. Instead of clouds, we have left mere idiocy; blank staring at emptiness.

To the Same.

Northampton, Aug. 9, 1866.

Arrived here on Tuesday evening. I have attended one of the conferences of this amiable body [the American Association for the Advancement of Science].

To a listener who permits the free play, and has room for the happiness, of the malevolent affections, it was tolerable. What greatness of mind and character such debates force upon the attention — by contrast! I shall drive up to Ashfield, bringing Lesley and his little girls, who will visit their friends in Cummington. Lesley has consented to be my companion in a visit to you for a day; and I have no doubt you will extend to him the hospitality which Gurney forfeits by his ill-arranged engagements and occupations.

To the Same.

Northampton, Aug. 10, 1866.

... I find the savants much more reasonable and sensible in private conversation than in debate. In private discourse, they are much more apt to give you the result of mature thought; but the interest of debate depends too much on the illusory charm of new and crude ideas. Among the superstitions of America, please mention the admiration and ambition of public speaking. I have assured several savant-struck ladies that enthusiasm in speech is very apt to be proportioned to crudeness in ideas. But this does not explain ----, who repeated yesterday what he has said at every scientific meeting at which I have heard him speak; and he said it with as much animation as if the world were not weary of it. I never heard him mention it in private; and so, notwithstanding its age, I class it with new and crude ideas, — with the difference that it is a chronic case of public speaking, — a brilliant idea which occurred to him once upon a time, and has been a standing marvel of inspiration ever since.

To the Same.

Cambridge, Aug. 31, 1866.

. . . This evening I start with Lesley and Thayer for a few days’ trip to Mount Desert. I expect to learn a good deal of geology, with so good a teacher and in a region so rich in geological interests.

In driving away from Ashfield, on our first turn to the left, about half way up the hill and on the right of the road, lay a great rock, much worn and with a quartz mass exposed on its surface shaped like a letter S. Lesley said that this was an excellent specimen of what Hitchcock calls compressed pebbles. In your next drive that way, you should look for it. I hear that the Buffalo meeting was a great success. I think the National Academy ought to satisfy ----’s ambition for control. Why is pettiness always ahead and so active; and why is magnanimity so stupid and slow? In short, what is the origin of evil? These problems, geological and spiritual, will last you a fortnight, when I hope to make you a visit and hear your answers.

It was during this promised visit to Ashfield, I think, that the excursion took place to which Mr. Norton refers in the following passage of a letter from which I have already quoted: —

“In 1865, I think, and again in 1866 and 1867, he spent some days with us in our summer home at Ashfield, where he learned to know, and became strongly attached to, our friend and summer neighbor, Mr. George William Curtis. I remember well an excursion in the autumn of 1866 or 1867, which we three made together from Ashfield to North Adams, where Mr. Curtis was to deliver a political address. The days were among the finest of the year, the country through which we drove was as beautiful as any part of Massachusetts, the

landscape was in its full autumnal glory, and the incidents of the little journey were various enough to give animation to the days. Wright was in excellent spirits: he was open to all the influences of the time, and, quickened by them to more than usual vivacity, he displayed, in a way not to be forgotten, the large resources of his thought, the wise conclusions of his mature judgment, in discussions of politics, of religion, of philosophy, and of practical life, and in his shrewd and kindly estimates of men. He often afterwards referred to these days, and especially to the scenery and the talk in harmony with it, on the morning of our return, as we crossed the Hoosac Mountain.

“The quality,” adds Mr. Norton, “of our relations with Wright, was unique. It was of complete, easy trust. There was no possibility of a misunderstanding, or of even the most transient irritation. His sweetness was absolute, his obligingness never at fault, he had no sharp points to be watched for and avoided. There were no intermittences of confidence. The only drawback on intimacy with him lay in one’s own liability to physical exhaustion. His powerful physical and intellectual frame prevented him from always recognizing the comparative feebleness of his companions. He could talk well, too long for average human nature, and sometimes when he was fresh for a new start at midnight others were weary; but he was not tyrannical, and, if not always perceptive of the moods and conditions of his friends, he was not vexed by being asked to conform to them. A man freer from pettiness of all sorts, freer from the sensitiveness of self-reference, I have never known.”

Among the friends whose acquaintance Chauncey especially valued were Miss Catherine Howard, of Springfield, Massachusetts, and her sisters. He first knew them at Cambridge. Miss Howard taught there at one time in Professor Agassiz’s

school, at which Chauncey was himself at the same time a teacher. From time to time afterwards, as he passed through Springfield on his way to and from Northampton or Ashfield, he was in the habit of passing some hours with this most agreeable household.

The following letters to Miss Howard are good specimens of the kindly humor with which he used to answer the questions which his friends often saved up to ask him: —

To Miss Catherine L. Howard.

Cambridge, Dec. 6, 1866.

. . . But I wander into moral philosophy: your question is one in natural philosophy: “Why does molasses-candy grow whiter from our working it?” This admits, it seems to me, both of a poetical and a scientific answer. After the manner of our countrymen, it might be answered by asking other questions. Why does the sea grow white when the winds work it into foam? Why are beaten eggs white? Why is snow white? or, to descend to bathos, Why is soapsuds white?

In the three cases where fluids are concerned, the sea, the eggs, and the soapsuds, the admixture of air with them is the property common to them all. Let us believe, then, that a pure aerial spirit enters into, and purges these gross fluids of their dark and evil properties. This might satisfy the poetical imagination, and every good Christian conscience.

But the sceptical, scientific understanding demands to know more about it. That which is common to all the five cases (the sugar and the snow, as well as the three fluids) is the fine mechanical subdivision of these substances, — which in the case of the fluids is effected by the admixture of air, but in the case of the solids is independent of this circumstance.

Solid ice is not white, but pulverized ice and snow are; and a large list of substances might be added which grow white, and many others which become lighter in color, on being pulverized.

But what has this all to do with molasses-candy? Just this: the process of working it is one by which it becomes finely subdivided by the admixture of air with it. Melt the worked candy, and it becomes a thick, creamy foam, from which the heat would soon expel the air, and it would then relapse into its pristine dark and evil state. Fine mechanical subdivision in the worked candy, or breaks in the continuity of its solidity by the interposition of minute particles of air, is, then, the condition in which molasses-candy agrees with all the cases analogous with it in respect to the property in question. (I am following the Baconian method, — perhaps I ought to tell you.)

But the sceptical spirit is not even satisfied with this. Why should minute mechanical subdivisions, interruptions of the continuity of a solid or fluid substance, produce whiteness? Here optics comes to our aid. In a finely divided substance there is a correspondingly greater number of reflecting surfaces. Every minute bubble of air makes such a surface. The amount of white light, or sunlight, which is reflected near the surface of such a substance, bears a much larger proportion to that which is reflected from greater depths, and after transmission through the substance, than when the substance is continuous in its texture. A continuous substance, like undisturbed water, reflects principally, almost exclusively, from one surface. But foam reflects daylight, or white light, from innumerable surfaces, and reflects light which has penetrated only a little way into it. The color of any substance is composed of light from two sources, — of the light which it reflects and the light which it transmits, either directly or by internal reflection. Directly transmitted light, as in the case

of colored glass, is that which the substance does not absorb. In all other cases, we have a union of the two kinds of color, — the color which is reflected unaltered from the outmost surface of the substance, and that which is reflected from the interior of the substance. The proportion of these two sources of color depends chiefly on the mechanical constitution of the substance. In homogeneous, continuous substances, internal reflection predominates. In heterogeneous, discontinuous substances, like the worked candy, external reflection predominates. Snow and refined sugar are white because their light is chiefly that which is reflected from innumerable crystalline surfaces. In unrefined or brown sugar, the crystals are covered by a film of treacle or molasses, which is washed off in the process of refining. The internally reflected light from the treacle gives the brown color, the other constituents of white light being absorbed by this substance.

Molasses-candy, therefore, grows whiter from our working it, because the working introduces air into it, and thereby increases the number of reflecting surfaces near its exterior, from which white light is reflected without the loss, by absorption, of any of its constituents.

In your note, you come very near to this explanation: you say, “I have bothered you so many times before this”(so far you are wrong, — but you add) “to get a few rays of light thrown into the depths of my ignorance, &c.” I am surprised that you did not see in this the answer to your question! It is because light is thrown into the sweet depths of the unworked candy, and is not reflected, that it looks so dark. It is only by reflected and superficial light that it grows in whiteness.

... I shall be pleased to answer, if I can, any other questions — not metaphysical—which you may still have in reserve.

To the same.

Cambridge, Dec. 11, 1866.

Is it not a pity that, after having written at such length, I should be obliged to rightly earn your thanks by a supplement!

In attending too exclusively to the general principles involved in the solution of your problem, I overlooked a circumstance of main importance to the special question about the candy.

I have nothing to retract as to the principle that a fine mechanical subdivision of the mass is the cause, on the optical principles which I explained, of the whiteness of the worked candy. But the admixture of air with it, though one of the means of effecting this subdivision, is by no means the most important. A breaking up of the mass, as it stiffens or becomes of a vitreous consistency, is effected by the working. This is analogous to the effect of pounding ice or cakes of maple-sugar, when the pounding does not pulverize, but simply cracks the mass into minute but coherent fragments. You know that in freezing ice-creams the constant stirring prevents solid congelation, and breaks the freezing mass into minute crystals of ice. Something similar to this takes place in working the candy. For though the candy does not crystallize, it is still vitrified, and the working prevents it from vitrifying into a continuous, translucent body.

This explanation can be tested in practice; for, according to it, the critical time for working the candy to its utmost whiteness is when the whole mass is nearly stiff, and when the parts which become quite stiff or vitreous break and mingle with the still pliant mass without being remelted by it.