| | | Science is a great grievance in the minds of certain classes. | It banishes all poetry; it ruins philosophy; it opposes | religion; it undermines morality; it withdraws the veil of | mystery from nature, and gives men’s minds helpless into | the hands of prosaic matter-of-fact and degrading

| “materialism.”

Above all, it is so

“cold,”

and |

“chills the mind.”

If all, or any of these charges | were true, science would have much to answer for, and | scientific men ought to be relegated to the

“dangerous | classes.”

In the presence of the fact, however, that | some considerable poets have taken great interest in | science, and that the greatest poet of modern times was | also a scientific discoverer, one may feel dubious | respecting the power of science to banish poetry. If it ruins | philosophy, it can only do so by substituting a truer | philosophy. If it opposes religion, we have to explain the | awkward fact of so many scientific men being very religious, | and of so many clergymen being eminent in science. If it | undermines morality, we ought to find the Royal Society a | Botany Bay, and

“ticket-of-leave men”

large | contributors to the Philosophical Transactions. | Finally, with respect to those warm and sensitive minds | which dread lest cold science should

“chill

them, | there is always the pleasing alternative of hot nescience, to | which we leave them. | Dr. Julius Frauenstadt takes the complaint more au | serieux than we do. He publishes this little treatise to | explain away the absurd alarm, which only absurd people | feel; and they will scarcely read his work. In | England, it will probably be thought that science was in no | need of so elaborate a defence, and that such a defender | is more embarrassing than an antagonist; for Dr. | Frauenstadt, who defends religion from even the suspicion | of being weakened by the progress of science, evidently | understands by

“religion”

something which, in this | country, bears an equivocal character, and is often saluted | with hard names, such as

“Pantheism.”

In this | respect, he is a German; and the Germans are much of the | same way of thinking as the Chinese, whose formula, he | tells us is ~~ | The first part of his argument is directed to show that | science destroys superstition, and in so far purifies religion. | But as the changes in the conceptions of men do not bring | about the destruction of those feelings from | which the conceptions sprang, and of which they were a | rude explanation, science cannot affect the | fountain-springs of awe and hope, although it must do | away with the streams of superstition. This point Dr. | Frauenstadt has well argued. In the first chapter, he | considers the superstitions of poetry which have been | banished by the progress of truer ideas, and which Schiller, | in his celebrated Gods of Greece, deplores as | the exodus of true poetry. But to the poet it is little matter | whether a Hamadryad lives in the tree, or a Dryad in the | fountain. his imagination still plays like sunshine among the | branches of the one, or murmurs musically in the waves of | the other; for poetry does not lie in the object, or | in the machinery employed, but in the soul of the poet, and | in what he feels concerning objects. Let us apply this to | religion, and to the superstitions with which ignorance | clothes it. Out of the perennial feelings of awe and hope, | untaught minds create certain forms ~~ say of demons and | witches ~~ which more extended knowledge proves to be | the offspring of ignorance; but the mind, when thus | convinced, is not deprived of those primal feelings which | first suggested the superstitions. The mystery of nature | remains as dark as before ~~ our only light is that which | enables us to see how false was the light by which we | once thought the mystery was explained. We know, for | instance, that when the Tyrians, besieged by Alexander, | put fetters on the statue of Hercules to prevent his going | over to the enemy, their superstition was idle, and that no | practical result could come of it. We know that Peruvian | bark is a better cure for fever than prostrations before the | goddess Febris ~~ we know that a lightening-conductor will | protect the steeple far better than prayers. We have learnt | to employ natural means, by studying nature more truly. | The emotions remain, as of old – the change is in our | intelligence. | Turning from religion to morals, we find Dr. Frauenstadt | arguing, sometimes wisely, but sometimes, as we in | England should say, not wisely. The real point, we | conceive, is this ~~ science endeavours to understand the | true relations of phenomena, and truth can never hurt | morality, but must benefit it. Nor is it difficult to show how | the progress of science really does benefit morality; but Dr. | Frauenstadt flies off at metaphysical tangents, and loses | himself in mysteries. Against the charges of

| “materialism”

and

“necessity,”

he is willing to | enter the lists with all comers. he admits that the tendency | of modern science is open to these charges, but only | because modern science is taking a false direction. The | tiefere philosophisch gebildete Naturwissenschaft | (i.e. Dr. Franenstadt’s system, which is adopted from | Schopenhauer) quashes all materialism, by showing that | exclaims Schopenhauer to the zoologists, | | Lest our readers should conclude Schopenhauer to be a | mad metaphysician, we will not pursue the exposition in his | own language; but, reducing it to more intelligible forms, | we may say that it is the celebrated system of Lamarck, | clothed in German phraseology. Lamarck taught that the | various besoins of animals created their organs. | The birds inhabiting marshy districts wanted their legs | lengthened, that they might not wet themselves; but as | these long legs would have made the capture of food | precarious, long necks and long bills grew out of the desire | to capture food. Or, as Schopenhauer says, the bull has | horns because he wills to butt ~~ he does not | butt because he has horns; and the hunter takes his rifle | because he wills to shoot the deer ~~ he does not shoot | the deer because he has a rife. With this metaphysical key | does Schopenhauer unlock many a casket. Love, for | instance, he assures us, is nothing more than the volition | of the yet unborn offspring desiring to enter upon life. We | give this in his own words for the benefit of our German | readers: ~~ For it is to be observed that | a new individual is born solely because that unborn | individual wills it. This is the famous principle of | “Will in Nature,” which has made Schopenhauer a Magus | in Germany. We trust our readers appreciate it. | By means of the

“will”

and its acts, materialism is | of course got rid of by Dr. Frauenstadt, and science freed | from that charge. In a style equally metaphysical, | he gets rid of

“necessity.”

He admits that all our | actions are necessary, but the active being is free. He says | the phrenologists are quite right in attributing crimes to | organization: but the individual is nevertheless free, | because the individual is prior to the | organization, and his freedom lies in this priority. All his | acts are determined by motives, and are therefore | necessary; but these acts are but phenomena | ~~ his noumenon is free. What advantage | morality is to draw from such freedom as this, we do not | clearly perceive; but we give our readers the benefit of the | argument, and send them, if they are curious, to the little | volume itself, which is in many respects worth reading, and | has the rare merit of being brief.