1. “Decision.” Written in February 1853.

After a humorous sketch of the distraction arising from the different associations of term and vacation time, the question is raised whether on the whole a learned education is unfavourable to decision of character and opinion. The answer pointed at, though not distinctly given, is that high education may often unsettle opinion, but ought to strengthen character. It must suffice here to quote a few of the most characteristic passages:—

“... In this charitable (holiday) frame of mind, we resolved to try the effect of our learning upon a mixed company.

“Not to dazzle them too much at first, we merely ventured to quote to an elderly lady a passage from Griffin on Presbyopic Vision. She intended to get a new pair of spectacles, and hoped that optical advice, fresh from College, might assist her in her choice. She was surprised to learn that she must ascertain the distance behind the retina at which the image of a distant object is formed, and that she might then determine from the proper formula the focal lengths of the lenses she required.

“Shocked at the unhesitating way in which we proposed the most barbarous if not impossible operations, she replied that she would rather try several pairs, and take those that suited her best.”

“... When this indecision” (of opinion) “cannot be traced to hypochondria, we generally find indications of a defective appreciation of quantity and a deceptive memory.

“Its victims measure reasons by their number and not by their weight. They do not say 'so much' but 'so many things to be said on both sides.’ To make the number equal on both sides they will split an argument or state it in several ways. These ingenious self-tormentors have invented a form of reasoning which ought to take its place beside the 'reasoning in a circle.’ We may call it reasoning in a corner, or tergiversation.... It derives its name from the motion of the imprisoned monarch in a drawn game at draughts, and is resorted to when pressed by a disjunctive argument.... In this way these clacking metronomes endeavour to transfer their inquietude to their neighbours.”

“... It is this consciousness of aim that gives to their experience the character of self-education. While other men are drifted hither and thither by conflicting influences, their sails seem to resolve every blast in a favourable direction. To them catastrophes are lessons and mysteries illustrations. Every thing and every person is estimated by its effect in accelerating personal advancement.

“The aims thus adopted may be different in kind and value. One may aim at effective deeds, another at completeness, a third at correctness, a fourth at dignity, while another class estimates its progress by the universality of its sentiments and the comprehensiveness of its sympathy with the varieties of the human mind. Some, in short, attend more to self-government, and some to mental expansion. When these tendencies can be combined and subordinated, there emerges the perfectly educated man, who, in the rigidity of his principles, acts with decision, and in the expansibility of his sympathy tolerates all opinions.”

2. “What is the Nature of Evidence of Design?” 1853.

“Design! The very word ... disturbs our quiet discussions about how things happen with restless questionings about the why of them all. We seem to have recklessly abandoned the railroad of phenomenology, and the black rocks of Ontology stiffen their serried brows and frown inevitable destruction.

“... The belief in design is a necessary consequence of the Laws of Thought acting on the phenomena of perception.

“... The essentials then for true evidence of design are—(1) A phenomenon having significance to us; (2) Two ascertained chains of physical causes contingently connected, and both having the same apparent terminations, viz., the phenomenon itself and some presupposed personality.... If the discovery of a watch awakens my torpid intelligence I perceive a significant end which the watch subserves It goes, and, considering its locality, it is going well.... My young and growing reason points out two sets of phenomena ... (a) the elasticity of springs, etc. etc., and (b) the astronomical facts which render the mean solar day the unit of civil time combined with those social habits which require a cognisance of the time of day.

“... It is the business of science to investigate these causal chains. If they are found not to be independent but to meet in some ascertained point, we must transfer the evidence of design from the ultimate fact to the existence of the chain. Thus, suppose we ascertained that watches are now made by machinery ... the machinery including the watch forms one more complicated and therefore more evident instance of design.”

“... The only subordinate centres of causation which I have seen formally investigated are men and animals; the latter even are often overlooked. But every well-ascertained law points to some central cause, and at once constitutes that centre a being in the general sense of the word. Whether that being be personal is a question which may be determined by induction. The less difficult question whether the being be intelligent is more practicable, and should be kept in view in the investigation of organised beings.

“The search for such invisible potencies or wisdoms may appear novel and unsanctioned.... For my part I do not think that any speculations about the personality or intelligence of subordinate agents in creation could ever be perverted into witchcraft or demonolatry.

“Why should not the Original Creator have shared the pleasure of His work with His creatures and made the morning stars sing together, etc.?

“I suspect that such a hope has prompted many speculations of natural historians, who would be ashamed to put it into words.[187]

“... Three fallacies—(1) Putting the final cause in the place of a physical connection, as when Bernoulli saw the propriety of making the curves of isochronous oscillations and of shortest time of descent both cycloids; (2) The erroneous assertion of a physical relation, as when Bacon supplemented the statement of Socrates about the eyebrows by saying that pilosity is incident to moist places; (3) (and worst) applying an argument from final causes to wrongly asserted phenomena:—‘Because water is incompressible, it cannot transmit sound, and therefore fishes have no ears.' Every fact here stated is erroneous”

In the course of this paper—in which are discernible the traces of early impressions derived through the poetry of Milton—there occurs also incidentally a statement of the Hamiltonian doctrine of Perception,[188] with the following significant corollary:—

“Perception is the ultimate consciousness of self and thing together.

“If we admit, as we must, that this ultimate phenomenon is incapable of further analysis, and that subject and object alone are immediately concerned in it, it follows that the fact is strictly private and incommunicable. One only can know it, therefore two cannot agree in a name for it. And since the fact is simple it cannot be thought of by itself nor compared alone with any other equally simple fact. We may therefore dismiss all questions about the absolute nature of perception, and all theories of their resemblances and differences. We may next refuse to turn our attention to perception in general, as all perceptions are particular.”

3. Idiotic Imps. Summer Term, 1853.

Starting from Isaac Taylor’s Physical Theory of another life, which Maxwell at this time seems to have regarded as in itself an innocent and rather attractive piece of fancy,—“the perusal of it has a tendency rather to excite speculation than to satisfy curiosity, and the author obtains the approbation of the reader, while he fails to convince him of the soundness of his views,”—he takes occasion from it to characterise the “Dark Sciences” to which Taylor’s book may unintentionally lend encouragement—a result to be deprecated.

“The first question I would ask concerning a spiritual theory would be, Is it favourable or adverse to the present developments of Dark Science? The Dark Sciences ... while they profess to treat of laws which have never been investigated, afford the most conspicuous examples of the operation of the well-known laws of association ... in imitating the phraseology of science, and in combining its facts with those which must naturally suggest themselves to a mind unnaturally disposed. In the misbegotten science thus produced we have speciously sounding laws of which our first impression is that they are truisms, and the second that they are absurd, and a bewildering mass of experimental proof, of which all the tendencies lie on the surface and all the data turn out when examined to be heaped together as confusedly as the stores of button-makers ... and those undigested narratives which are said to form the nutriment of the minute philosopher.... The most orthodox system of metaphysics may be transformed into a dark science by its phraseology being popularised, while its principles are lost sight of.”

Three phases of dark science are described:—

“(1.) At first they were or pretended to be physical sciences. Their language was imitated from popular physics, and their professed aim was to explain occult phenomena by means of new and still more occult material laws. Experiments in animal magnetism were always performed with the nose carefully turned towards the north. In electrobiology a scrupulous system of insulation was practised at first, and afterwards, when galvanism became more popular than statical electricity, circuits were formed of alternate elements, those of one sex being placed between those of the other.... The fluid which in former times circulated through the nerves under the form of animal spirits, is in our day expanded so as to fill the universe, and is the invisible medium through which the communion of the sensitive takes place.

“(2.) The next phase of the dark sciences is that in which ... the phraseology of physics is exchanged for that of psychology. In this stage we hear much of the power of the will. The verb to will acquires a new and popular sense, so that every one now is able to will a thing without bequeathing it. People can will not to be able to do a thing, then try and not succeed; while those of stronger minds can will their victims out of their wits and back again.

“(3.) The third or pneumatological phase begins by distrusting, as it well may, the explanations prevalent during the former stages of apparitions, distant intercourse, etc. It suggests that different minds may have some communion, though separated by space, through some spiritual medium. Such a suggestion if discreetly followed up might lead to important discoveries, and would certainly give rise to entertaining meditations. But the cultivators of the dark sciences have done as they have ever delighted to do. Their spirits are not content with making themselves present

but they become the familiar spirits of money-making media, and rap out lies for hours together for the amusement of a promiscuous ‘circle.’ ... While the believers sit round the table of the medium and form one loop of the figure 8, the spiritual circle enclosing the celestial mahogany forms the upper portion of the curve, the medium herself constituting the double point. But who shall say of the dark sciences that they have reached the maximum of darkness? Men have listened to the toes of a medium as to the voice of the departed. Let them now stand about her table as about the table of devils. If one spirit can wrap itself in petticoats, why may not another dance with three legs? A most searching question truly! And accordingly the powerful analysis of Godfrey has led him to the conclusion that a table of which the plane surface is touched by believing fingers may be transformed into a diaboloid of revolution.... Will there be an interminable series of such expressions of belief, each more unnatural than its predecessor, and gradually converging towards absolute absurdity?”

4. Has everything beautiful in Art its original in Nature Spring of 1854—shortly after the Tripos Examination.

“As the possibility of working out the question within the time forms no part of our specification, we may glance at heights which mock the attenuated triangle of the mathematician, and throw our pebble into depths which his cord and plummet can never sound.”

Maxwell here takes his revenge upon the Senate-house by becoming more discursive than ever.[189]

He begins by deprecating precise definitions and proposing an appeal to facts.

His conclusion is as follows:—“Nothing beautiful can be produced by Man except by the laws of mind acting in him as those of Nature do without him; and therefore the kind of beauty he can thus evolve must be limited by the very small number of correlative sciences which he has mastered; but as the Theoretic and imaginative faculty is far in advance of Reason, he can apprehend and artistically reproduce natural beauty of a higher order than his science can attain to; and as his Moral powers are capable of a still wider range, he may make his work the embodiment of a still higher beauty, which expresses the glory of nature as the instrument by which our spirits are exercised, delighted, and taught. If there is anything more I desire to say it is that while I confess the vastness of nature and the narrowness of our symbolical sciences, yet I fear not any effect which either Science or Knowledge may have on the beauty of that which is beautiful once and for ever.”

The following observations occur in the course of the essay:—

“All your analysis is cruelly anatomical, and your separated faculties have all the appearance of preparations. You may retain their names for distinctness, but forbear to tear them asunder for lecture-room demonstration.... They separate a faculty by saying it is not intellectual, and then, by reasoning blindfold, every philosopher goes up his own tree, finds a mare’s nest and laughs at the eggs, which turn out to be pure intellectual abstractions in spite of every definition.

“With respect to beauty of things audible and visible, we have a firm conviction that the pleasure it affords to any being would be of the same kind by whatever organisation he became conscious of it.... Our enjoyment of music is accompanied by an intuitive perception of the relations of sounds, and the agreement of the human race would go far to establish the universality of these conditions of pleasure, though Science had not discovered their physical and numerical significance.”

Beauty of Form.—“A mathematician might express his admiration of the Ellipse. Ruskin agrees with him.... It is a universal condition of the enjoyable that the mind must believe in the existence of a law, and yet have a mystery to move about in.... All things are full of ellipses—bicentral sources of lasting joy, as the wondrous Oken might have said.” Beauty of form, then, is—1. Geometrical; 2. Organic; 3. “Rivers and mountains have not even an organic symmetry; the pleasure we derive from their forms is not that of comprehension, but of apprehension of their fitness as the forms of flowing and withstanding matter. When such objects are represented by Art, they acquire an additional beauty as the language of Nature understood by Man, the interpreter, although by no means the emendator, of her expressions.

“... The power of Making is man’s highest power in connexion with Nature.”

Beauty of Colour.—“The Science of Colour does, indeed, point out certain arrangements and gradations which follow as necessarily from first principles, as the curves of the second order from their equations. These results of science are, many of them, realised in natural phenomena taking place according to those physical laws of which our mathematical formulæ are symbols; but it is possible that combinations of colours may be imagined or calculated, which no optical phenomenon we are acquainted with could reproduce. Such a result would no more prove the impropriety of the arrangement than ignorance of the planetary orbits kept the Greeks from admiring the Ellipse.”

5. Envelopment: Can Ideas be developed without Reference to Things as their developing Authorities? Summer Term, 1854.

Early in 1854 Maxwell had read J. H. Newman’s[190] Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. He appears to have felt an inconsistency between the tenor of that work and its title, which set him meditating on the difference between true Development—i.e. Education—and Envelopment or Self-Involution, as a tendency incident to certain habits of thought.

He traces the working of this tendency in various subjects ending with theology, and then proceeds as follows:—

“Envelopment is a process by which the human mind, possessed with a preternatural impatience of facts and fascinated by the apparent simplicity of some half-apprehended theory, seeks, by involving the chain of its speculations in hopeless confusion, to round it, as it were, to a separate whole.

“Thus Mr. Newman and his predecessors take up some single practice of Christians, and by means of analogies derived from the practices of Egyptian priests, Roman emperors, or Jewish rabbis, they determine, most precisely, the situation, extent, and exposure of the place of purging by fire, together with all the technicalities, observances, and etiquette of that mysterious region. The convolutions of the brain are very wonderful.”

As a further illustration he proceeds to trace the genesis of phreno-mesmerism.

Against the Theory of the Development of Doctrine he sets the fact of the Education of Mankind.

The Essay is highly ironical and full of caustic touches, but it is difficult to detach them for quotation.

“One great art in argument when you have the first move is to divide everything into that which is and that which is not in some assigned class. In this way you make it the business of the opponent to discover what other important things there may be which may be said of the subject in hand.

“... These subtle differences when further multiplied by the application of the seven tests of development, would require a seven years’ apprenticeship with Thomas Aquinas before anything could be said of them except assent or contempt.

“... In every human pursuit there are two courses—one, that which in its lowest form is called the useful, and has for its ultimate, object the extension of knowledge, the dominion over Nature, and the welfare of mankind. The objects of the second course are entirely self-contained. Theories are elaborated for theories’ sake, difficulties are sought out and treasured as such, and no argument is to be considered perfect unless it lands the reasoner at the point from which he started.

“... Some years ago I encountered a gentleman whose main object was to discover the musical relations of the number eleven. I hear on good authority that the question is not only more perplexed but more interesting than ever.

“... I have unaccountably passed over that Logic by means of which many a powerful mind has persuaded itself that it was usefully engaged while devoting a life to the defence or attack of the fourth figure of the syllogism, and that Metaphysics which even now seeks to find arguments about the operations of the senses, while it rejects the aid of physiology or any other appeal to facts.

“I now proceed to envelop an argument from one of those dark sciences which seem to have been sent up from Dom Daniel for the special purpose of displaying reasonings of this kind.

“It is well known that the brain is the organ of intellectual activity. It is held by all that the intellect is made up of many distinct faculties. Therefore the brain must be composed of corresponding organs.” ...

The Essay concludes quite seriously—“The education of man is so well provided for in the world around him, and so hopeless in any of the worlds which he makes for himself, that it becomes of the utmost importance to distinguish natural truth from artificial system, the development of a science from the envelopment of a craft.”

6. Morality. May 1855. (See above, p. 202), Is Ethical Truth obtainable from an Individual Point of View?

An inquiry concerning the first principles of Moral Philosophy.

Of three criteria, fitness, pleasure, and freedom, the last is preferred, but is pronounced incomplete. Adam Smith’s use of the principle of sympathy is then considered. “The repeated action of what Smith calls sympathy, calls forth various moral principles, which may be deduced, no doubt, from other theories, as necessary truths, but of which the actual presence is now first accounted for.... Instead of supposing the moral action of the mind to be a speculation on fitness, a calculation of happiness, or an effort towards freedom, he makes it depend on a recognition of our relation to others like ourselves.” This method (that of self-projection) is pronounced the only true one, but is to be extended so as to embrace other relations than that of mere similarity.

Such is the bare outline of an essay which would fill at least a dozen pages. It touches on various themes, from the origin of law to the religious sanction of morals, and contains no little evidence of the writer’s growing power of observing human life.

7. Language and Speculation. Autumn of 1855. (See above, p. 218.) Is the Modern Vocabulary of the English Language the Effect or the Cause of its Speculative State?

A series of observations on style, original but very discursive, chiefly aimed at certain literary affectations which were then beginning to creep in.

“... The new form of the old thought must be dressed out with words, and must attract attention by bringing forward what should be kept in the background. No wonder the poor fellow thinks his head is turned, when he is trying to see over the collar of his coat.

“... By all means let us have technical terms belonging to every science and mystery practised by men, but let us not have mere freemasonry or Ziph language by which men of the same cult can secretly combine.”

8. Analogies. February 1856. Are there Real Analogies in Nature?

This essay contains a serious exposition of Maxwell’s deliberate views on philosophical questions, and is therefore given here entire, not omitting the playful opening paragraph.

“In the ancient and religious foundation of Peterhouse there is observed this rule, that whoso makes a pun shall be counted the author of it, but that whoso pretends to find it out shall be counted the publisher of it, and that both shall be fined. Now, as in a pun two truths lie hid under one expression, so in an analogy one truth is discovered under two expressions. Every question concerning analogies is therefore the reciprocal of a question concerning puns, and the solutions can be transposed by reciprocation. But since we are still in doubt as to the legitimacy of reasoning by analogy, and as reasoning even by paradox has been pronounced less heinous than reasoning by puns, we must adopt the direct method with respect to analogy, and then, if necessary, deduce by reciprocation the theory of puns.

“That analogies appear to exist is plain in the face of things, for all parables, fables, similes, metaphors, tropes, and figures of speech are analogies, natural or revealed, artificial or concealed. The question is entirely of their reality. Now, no question exists as to the possibility of an analogy without a mind to recognise it—that is rank nonsense. You might as well talk of a demonstration or refutation existing unconditionally. Neither is there any question as to the occurrence of analogies to our minds. They are as plenty as reasons, not to say blackberries. For, not to mention all the things in external nature which men have seen as the projections of things in their own minds, the whole framework of science, up to the very pinnacle of philosophy, seems sometimes a dissected model of nature, and sometimes a natural growth on the inner surface of the mind. Now, if in examining the admitted truths in science and philosophy, we find certain general principles appearing throughout a vast range of subjects, and sometimes re-appearing in some quite distinct part of human knowledge; and if, on turning to the constitution of the intellect itself, we think we can discern there the reason of this uniformity, in the form of a fundamental law of the right action of the intellect, are we to conclude that these various departments of nature in which analogous laws exist, have a real inter-dependence; or that their relation is only apparent and owing to the necessary conditions of human thought?

“There is nothing more essential to the right understanding of things than a perception of the relations of number. Now the very first notion of number implies a previous act of intelligence. Before we can count any number of things, we must pick them out of the universe, and give each of them a fictitious unity by definition. Until we have done this, the universe of sense is neither one nor many, but indefinite. But yet, do what we will, Nature seems to have a certain horror of partition. Perhaps the most natural thing to count “one” for is a man or human being, but yet it is very difficult to do so. Some count by heads, others by souls, others by noses; still there is a tendency either to run together into masses or to split up into limbs. The dimmed outlines of phenomenal things all merge into another unless we put on the focussing glass of theory and screw it up sometimes to one pitch of definition, and sometimes to another, so as to see down into different depths through the great millstone of the world.

“As for space and time, any man will tell you that 'it is now known and ascertained that they are merely modifications of our own minds.' And yet if we conceive of the mind as absolutely indivisible and capable of only one state at a time, we must admit that these states may be arranged in chronological order, and that this is the only real order of these states. For we have no reason to believe, on the ground of a given succession of simple sensations, that differences in position, as well as in order of occurrence, exist among the causes of these sensations. But yet we are convinced of the co-existence of different objects at the same time, and of the identity of the same object at different times. Now if we admit that we can think of difference independent of sequence, and of sequence without difference, we have admitted enough on which to found the possibility of the ideas of space and time.

“But if we come to look more closely into these ideas, as developed in human beings, we find that their space has triple extension, but is the same in all directions, without behind or before, whereas time extends only back and forward, and always goes forward.

“To inquire why these peculiarities of these fundamental ideas are so would require a most painful if not impossible act of self-excenteration; but to determine whether there is anything in Nature corresponding to them, or whether they are mere projections of our mental machinery on the surface of external things, is absolutely necessary to appease the cravings of intelligence. Now it appears to me that when we say that space has three dimensions, we not only express the impossibility of conceiving a fourth dimension, co-ordinate with the three known ones, but assert the objective truth that points may differ in position by the independent variation of three variables. Here, therefore, we have a real analogy between the constitution of the intellect and that of the external world.

“With respect to time, it is sometimes assumed that the consecution of ideas is a fact precisely the same kind as the sequence of events in time. But it does not appear that there is any closer connection between these than between mental difference, and difference of position. No doubt it is possible to assign the accurate date of every act of thought, but I doubt whether a chronological table drawn up in this way would coincide with the sequence of ideas of which we are conscious. There is an analogy, but I think not an identity, between these two orders of thoughts and things. Again, if we know what is at any assigned point of space at any assigned instant of time, we may be said to know all the events in Nature. We cannot conceive any other thing which it would be necessary to know; and, in fact, if any other necessary element does exist, it never enters into any phenomenon so as to make it differ from what it would be on the supposition of space and time being the only necessary elements.

“We cannot, however, think any set of thoughts without conceiving of them as depending on reasons. These reasons, when spoken of with relation to objects, get the name of causes, which are reasons, analogically referred to objects instead of thoughts. When the objects are mechanical, or are considered in a mechanical point of view, the causes are still more strictly defined, and are called forces.

“Now if we are acquainted not only with the events, but also with the forces, in Nature, we acquire the power of predicting events not previously known.

“This conception of cause, we are informed, has been ascertained to be a notion of invariable sequence. No doubt invariable sequence, if observed, would suggest the notion of cause, just as the end of a poker painted red suggests the notion of heat, but although a cause without its invariable effect is absurd, a cause by its apparent frustration only suggests the notion of an equal and opposite cause.

“Now the analogy between reasons, causes, forces, principles, and moral rules, is glaring, but dazzling.

“A reason or argument is a conductor by which the mind is led from a proposition to a necessary consequence of that proposition. In pure logic reasons must all tend in the same direction. There can be no conflict of reasons. We may lose sight of them or abandon them, but cannot pit them against one another. If our faculties were indefinitely intensified, so that we could see all the consequences of any admission, then all reasons would resolve themselves into one reason, and all demonstrative truth would be one proposition. There would be no room for plurality of reasons, still less for conflict. But when we come to causes of phenomena and not reasons of truths, the conflict of causes, or rather the mutual annihilation of effects, is manifest. Not but what there is a tendency in the human mind to lump up all causes, and give them an aggregate name, or to trace chains of causes up to their knots and asymptotes. Still we see, or seem to see, a plurality of causes at work, and there are some who are content with plurality.

“Those who are thus content with plurality delight in the use of the word force as applied to cause. Cause is a metaphysical word implying something unchangeable and always producing its effect. Force on the other hand is a scientific word, signifying something which always meets with opposition, and often with successful opposition, but yet never fails to do what it can in its own favour. Such are the physical forces with which science deals, and their maxim is that might is right, and they call themselves laws of nature. But there are other laws of nature which determine the form and action of organic structure. These are founded on the forces of nature, but they seem to do no work except that of direction. Ought they to be called forces? A force does work in proportion to its strength. These direct forces to work after a model. They are moulds, not forces. Now since we have here a standard from which deviation may take place, we have, besides the notion of strength, which belongs to force, that of health, which belongs to organic law. Organic beings are not conscious of organic laws, and it is not the conscious being that takes part in them, but another set of laws now appear in very close connexion with the conscious being. I mean the laws of thought. These may be interfered with by organic laws, or by physical disturbances, and no doubt every such interference is regulated by the laws of the brain and of the connexion between that medulla and the process of thought. But the thing to be observed is, that the laws which regulate the right process of the intellect are identical with the most abstract of all laws, those which are found among the relations of necessary truths, and that though these are mixed up with, and modified by, the most complex systems of phenomena in physiology and physics, they must be recognised as supreme among the other laws of thought. And this supremacy does not consist in superior strength, as in physical laws, nor yet, I think, in reproducing a type as in organic laws, but in being right and true; even when other causes have been for a season masters of the brain.

“When we consider voluntary actions in general, we think we see causes acting like forces on the willing being. Some of our motions arise from physical necessity, some from irritability or organic excitement, some are performed by our machinery without our knowledge, and some evidently are due to us and our volitions. Of these, again, some are merely a repetition of a customary act, some are due to the attractions of pleasure or the pressure of constrained activity, and a few show some indications of being the results of distinct acts of the will. Here again we have a continuation of the analogy of Cause. Some had supposed that in will they had found the only true cause, and that all physical causes are only apparent. I need not say that this doctrine is exploded.

“What we have to observe is, that new elements enter into the nature of these higher causes, for mere abstract reasons are simply absolute; forces are related by their strength; organic laws act towards resemblances to types; animal emotions tend to that which promotes the enjoyment of life; and will is in great measure actually subject to all these, although certain other laws of right, which are abstract and demonstrable, like those of reason, are supreme among the laws of will.

“Now the question of the reality of analogies in nature derives most of its interest from its application to the opinion, that all the phenomena of nature, being varieties of motion, can only differ in complexity, and therefore the only way of studying nature, is to master the fundamental laws of motion first, and then examine what kinds of complication of these laws must be studied in order to obtain true views of the universe. If this theory be true, we must look for indications of these fundamental laws throughout the whole range of science, and not least among those remarkable products of organic life, the results of cerebration (commonly called ‘thinking’). In this case, of course, the resemblances between the laws of different classes of phenomena should hardly be called analogies, as they are only transformed identities.

“If, on the other hand, we start from the study of the laws of thought (the abstract, logical laws, not the physiological), then these apparent analogies become merely repetitions by reflexion of certain necessary modes of action to which our minds are subject. I do not see how, upon either hypothesis, we can account for the existence of one set of laws of which the supremacy is necessary, but to the operation contingent. But we find another set of laws of the same kind, and sometimes coinciding with physical laws, the operation of which is inflexible when once in action, but depends in its beginnings on some act of volition. The theory of the consequences of actions is greatly perplexed by the fact that each act sets in motion many trains of machinery, which react on other agents and come into regions of physical and metaphysical chaos from which it is difficult to disentangle them. But if we could place the telescope of theory in proper adjustment, to see not the physical events which form the subordinate foci of the disturbance propagated through the universe, but the moral foci where the true image of the original act is reproduced, then we shall recognise the fact, that when we clearly see any moral act, then there appears a moral necessity for the trains of consequences of that act, which are spreading through the world to be concentrated on some focus, so as to give a true and complete image of the act in its moral point of view. All that bystanders see, is the physical act, and some of its immediate physical consequences, but as a partial pencil of light, even when not adapted for distinct vision, may enable us to see an object, and not merely light, so the partial view we have of any act, though far from perfect, may enable us to see it morally as an act, and not merely physically as an event.

“If we think we see in the diverging trains of physical consequences not only a capability of forming a true image of the act, but also of reacting upon the agent, either directly or after a long circuit, then perhaps we have caught the idea of necessary retribution, as the legitimate consequence of all moral action.

“But as this idea of the necessary reaction of the consequences of action is derived only from a few instances, in which we have guessed at such a law among the necessary laws of the universe; and we have a much more distinct idea of justice, derived from those laws which we necessarily recognise as supreme, we connect the idea of retribution much more with that of justice than with that of cause and effect. We therefore regard retribution as the result of interference with the mechanical order of things, and intended to vindicate the supremacy of the right order of things, but still we suspect that the two orders of things will eventually dissolve into one.

“I have been somewhat diffuse and confused on the subject of moral law, in order to show to what length analogy will carry the speculations of men. Whenever they see a relation between two things they know well, and think they see there must be a similar relation between things less known, they reason from the one to the other. This supposes that although pairs of things may differ widely from each other, the relation in the one pair may be the same as that in the other. Now, as in a scientific point of view the relation is the most important thing to know, a knowledge of the one thing leads us a long way towards a knowledge of the other. If all that we know is relation, and if all the relations of one pair of things correspond to those of another pair, it will be difficult to distinguish the one pair from the other, although not presenting a single point of resemblance, unless we have some difference of relation to something else, whereby to distinguish them. Such mistakes can hardly occur except in mathematical and physical analogies, but if we are going to study the constitution of the individual mental man, and draw all our arguments from the laws of society on the one hand, or those of the nervous tissue on the other, we may chance to convert useful helps into Wills-of-the-wisp. Perhaps the ‘book,’ as it has been called, of nature is regularly paged; if so, no doubt the introductory parts will explain those that follow, and the methods taught in the first chapters will be taken for granted and used as illustrations in the more advanced parts of the course; but if it is not a ‘book’ at all, but a magazine, nothing is more foolish to suppose that one part can throw light on another.

“Perhaps the next most remarkable analogy is between the principle, law, or plan according to which all things are made suitably to what they have to do, and the intention which a man has of making machines which will work. The doctrine of final causes, although productive of barrenness in its exclusive form, has certainly been a great help to enquirers into nature; and if we only maintain the existence of the analogy, and allow observation to determine its form, we cannot be led far from the truth.

“There is another analogy which seems to be supplanting the other on its own ground, which lies between the principle, law, or plan according to which the forms of things are made to have a certain community of type, and that which induces human artists to make a set of different things according to varieties of the same model. Here apparently the final cause is analogy or homogeneity, to the exclusion of usefulness.

“And last of all we have the secondary forms of crystals bursting in upon us, and sparkling in the rigidity of mathematical necessity and telling us, neither of harmony of design, usefulness or moral significance,—nothing but spherical trigonometry and Napier’s analogies. It is because we have blindly excluded the lessons of these angular bodies from the domain of human knowledge that we are still in doubt about the great doctrine that the only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.”

9. Autobiography. (Dated) 8th March 1856. Is Autobiography possible?

Under the guise of an ironical paradox, that all biography is (1) impossible, (2) inevitable, Maxwell recommends the simple record of facts, and deprecates the method of introspection. Of many shrewd remarks occurring in the course of this essay, the following are the most noticeable:—

“... When a man once begins to make a theory of himself, he generally succeeds in making himself into a theory.

“... The truthfulness of the biography depends quite as much upon the relations which subsisted between the author and his subject, as upon his fidelity in collecting authentic accounts of his actions.

“... It will be found that the motives under which the celebrated characters of history have acted, are, whether good or bad, pretty much of the same order of refinement, as long as we gather them from the same historian. It is when we pass from one historian to another that we discover a new order of motives, both in the good and the bad characters.

“... People do not talk of you, or if they do, they make blunders. But they do reflect you, and that more faithfully than your looking-glass.

“... The stomach-pump of the confessional ought only to be used in cases of manifest poisoning. More gentle remedies are better for the constitution in ordinary cases.

“... Every man has a right and is bound to become acquainted with himself; but he will find himself out better by intercourse with well-chosen reagents, than by putting on his own thumbscrews, or by sending round to his friends for their opinions. In the choice of reagents, the first thing to be avoided is incapability and insincerity, which generally go together.

“... Suppose such a history or biography to exist, where actions are described without comment, but in a spirit faithful to the highest truth. It will be an indestructible picture of life, which cannot be distorted by future accidents, and which, by its clear arrangement and perfect simplicity, is sure to pass into our experience without that opposition which, by the constitution of man, accompanies the forcible administration of moral precept.”

10. Unnecessary Thought. October (?), 1856. “Is a horror of Unnecessary Thought natural or unnatural? Which does Nature abhor most, a superplenum or a vacuum of thought ”?

A great part of every life is necessarily unconscious or mechanical. “We have a natural and widespread aversion to the act of thinking, which exists more or less in all men.” But, on the other hand, abstract thought needs to be continually checked through contact with reality, and it is more important that our thoughts should have a living root in experience, than that they should be perfectly self-consistent at any particular stage of their growth.

“... They know the laws by heart, and do the calculations by fingers.... When will they begin to think? Then comes active life: What do they do that by? Precedent, wheel-tracks, and finger-posts.

“... There is one part of the process at least to which attention is unfavourable. I mean the very important and necessary operation of forgetting useless facts.

“... Growth goes on in the mind as in the body by a process of appropriation and rejection; and the mental growth is rendered steady and real by its close connection with material and external things.”