There is here, to use a mathematical metaphor, integration. Certitude comes from the integration of an indefinitely great number of differentials. It is in this way that we have certitude of a personality, of a voice, of a type. We see an elm tree half a mile away, and say, ‘That is an elm tree,’ although if we could set down exactly what it is we see, the indications would seem quite insufficient for so certain a conclusion. What we see is but a vague blotch, but we read into it, from an indefinitely large number of slight indications, what we have always known nearer by for an elm tree.
This kind of belief stands on the broadest base, even when it deals with things not appreciable to our senses (for instance, the ancient Western doctrine of immortality). But the affirmations of the sort called to-day ‘scientific,’ are balanced upon a point. The apparent proof of them lies along a narrow chain, every link of which, behind the first physical appreciation of the senses, depends upon a number of postulates, each capable of breaking down under some new consideration.
For instance, our senses tell us, and we know, that if you mix two known substances in a certain fashion, and in a certain proportion, say two portions by weight of the one and four portions by weight of the other, they will disappear, and a third totally different thing will appear in their stead. That is what happens when you try any one of a thousand chemical experiments. It is what happens when an electric spark is passed through a certain mixture of oxygen and hydrogen under certain conditions. We know that with the same conditions, and the same proportionate weights this astonishing thing takes place: the substitution of a third totally different thing for the two things which have disappeared: all that remains being the combined weight, which does not change. We also know that, under suitable conditions, the new third thing, totally different from the two original things it has supplanted, will disappear, and the two original things will reappear; and we know that the combined weights of the first two, and the weight of the third thing which takes their place, are the same. All that is real knowledge, definite, proved and certain science, in the old and exact sense of the word ‘science’—which signifies a sort of knowledge depending upon proof so conclusive that the human reason cannot admit the possibility of the opposite.
We further know that when we repeat these conditions a dozen, or a myriad times, the same results appear, as in the case of any other natural sequence in the physical world; as in the case of a stone falling from a height, or a sound following from a blow. On such knowledge we erect an hypothesis, we say that the mysterious substitution of a third totally different thing for the first two, but the maintenance of an equal weight throughout, can only _on the analogy of our other experience_ be explained by the constitution of matter in certain ultimate particles which we call ‘atoms’; for, as it seems to our very limited imaginations, if that be not the ultimate constitution of matter, the only other way in which the thing can take place, the only other way imaginable to us—that is, capable of being presented to our minds as a picture—is a transformation through the mere effect of number, a certain magic in number having some inherent power to affect the modes of what we call ‘matter.’
But as the former concept—that of the atom—is mechanical, and easy to picture, while the latter is highly mysterious, escapes measurement, and involves qualities which we do not to-day associate with any inherent power of number, we accept the first hypothesis. We assume—we do not prove—that matter consists thus of atoms.
Granted that hypothesis, we can give the measurement of the supposed atom, and investigate its qualities. But having begun with an hypothesis, each new stage of investigation depends on a further hypothesis: a second built on the first, a third on the second, and so on—till you get to the exceedingly hypothetical electron. Strictly speaking, pure science stops at the first phenomenon ascertainable by the senses—the change of two into a third and of the third back into the two. All the rest is but a scaffolding of _presumptions_ built upon the _supposed_ nature of that change. It has not attaching to it proof so conclusive that the possibility of an opposite cannot be imagined. It is not science.
It is, further, true that with each stage in hypothesis the element of probability, however high, is less than it was in the last stage; the tenth of ten successive guesses, each reposing on the last, is less secure than the ninth; the ninth than the eighth.
But the academies do not grasp this evident truth; they live by imaginaries, which they affirm to be things; and that is why one of the wisest of the moderns launched that decisive phrase, ‘the bankruptcy of science’: that is the bankruptcy of the promises advanced by false modern science.
The great Ferrero quarrels with that famous phrase. Yet he himself has written one more damning; for he writes: ‘The men of the nineteenth century thought they knew everything, and they knew nothing.’
The harbours of that coast between Torbay and Portland I do not sufficiently know. I have never entered Teignmouth, in spite of the lyrical invitation to its beauties which is set like a gem in the ‘Channel Pilot.’ I have never attempted the shallow bar of Exmouth.
Bridport Haven I only entered once, with several companions in a crowded boat. Never was I more fascinated by any little haven, for it has the delightful qualities of a model.
I had been running for Portland Bill in a fairly fresh wind, which rose more than I liked. It was blowing from a little west of south, so that she would just point at the smooth water which usually lies between the Race and the land. We were far outside, and had about ten miles to go, but the wind rose more and more, until it threatened us, and also backed a little southerly. We turned round and ran for Bridport, which was about seven miles away to the north of us and a little east. It was near high water, so we had no fears for getting in, and we ran through the long, narrow bottle-neck of an entrance, more like a canal than a harbour, to find ourselves in a basin about the size of a large drawing-room, but with everything complete—a Lloyd’s office, a harbour master, and a signal station, a hotel, and all on the scale of the place. It was above here, in Bridport town, that Monmouth, who had landed at Lyme (and I must say it did great credit to his shipmaster, for he came with three craft, if I remember right, and seems to have found room for all of them) met his first check. But the name Monmouth starts me off again—I cannot hold the mount when that hunt of history is up: and I don’t want to.
The more you read of those expeditions—as of William’s two years later—the more difficult you will find it to estimate what measure of support the invaders had. What may be called the legend—the sort of rodomontade you get in the clear, if obvious, rhetoric of Macaulay—may be left aside with contempt. It is not historical, and it is not intended to be historical; it is pamphleteering for a prepared audience; a flattery of ignorant complacency: written not to examine or to inform, but to sell. The picture of a whole England, ardently opposed to James, desiring nothing more than his dethronement, is as false as would be to-day a picture of an England ardently desiring prohibition. But there were elements present which made it worth while to risk the throw; and (as we know) with the aid of a group of very wealthy men, and of plenty of hypocrisy and foreign subvention, the second invasion, the Dutch invasion, succeeded.
I think the real reason we find it difficult to-day to estimate the forces of that society, is that we have a false way of thinking in terms of exact measurement; a habit we have borrowed from the more advanced physical science of our time, but one not applicable to political factors. We think in terms of majorities, and ask ourselves how many men were on one side and how many men on the other.
Now things did not stand like that at all in 1686, or in 1688, and they hardly ever so stand in any national crisis. The bulk of men will accept an event, unless it be quite outrageously opposed to their daily habits. Further, the bulk of men are moved by tradition and custom and nearly always incline, very vaguely, to a continuance of what they have known. And at the same time, paradoxically, all men have an appetite for _something_ new and are more or less adventurous for a change. In the main issue of the Revolution of 1688, we can be pretty clear on two large majorities, not dividing men into groups, but dividing the mind of each man within himself.
There was a very large majority in general sympathetic with the Protestant culture which had gradually triumphed since the pivot-date of the Gunpowder Plot. What proportion of this was ardent, and in what degree, no one can establish; but you may safely say that throughout England as a whole, there was, by the last quarter of the seventeenth century, not more than about one seventh definitely Catholic in confession and open adherence, and hardly as many again indifferent, or slightly sympathetic with that one seventh. But, on the other hand, the number of people who believed that James II was attempting the impossible task of upsetting what had become the national religion, cannot have been large. It is true that popular illusion is capable of anything—witness ‘the Russians in England’ during the war. But I see no sign of that absurd accusation against James having taken root in the masses. The number who objected to his policy of toleration and to his proposal that Catholics should have the same rights as their fellow subjects was large; but it certainly was not, and could not have been, an enthusiastic majority. On the other hand, the number who objected to the idea of their national king belonging to what was to them an alien religion was certainly very large indeed: nearly three quarters of England.