Source: Internet Archive/Google scan of the 1871 edition Source URL: https://archive.org/details/bodyandmindanin00maudgoog Public domain basis: Public-domain English text by Henry Maudsley.Google This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover. Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you. 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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at |http: //books .google .com/I LANE MfDK ' |-"-.A7Y OF STAr,fO;VI>ON ; PXmDXKT-BLXCT OF TBM MBDICO-PSTCHOLOOIOAI. AUOCIATIOir ; XOXOBABT MSmXB OF m MBDICO-PSTCHOLOOICAL SOCIXTr OF PAXIB, or nu ncFBBiAL socnrr of rHraiciAira ov yrxsuA, avd of nut loctBTr fox thb rxoMonoir of pstcbiatbt and FOBsnic rsTCHOLoar of tibkha. IOBMBBLT BXSIDBIfT rHTSICIAIT OF THB XABCHXarXB BOTAL LVXATIC HOtPRAL, BTO. NEW YORK : B. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 90, 93 & 94 OBAND STBEBT. 1871. 3 yi PREFACE. frighten bim from entering on liia path of inqniry, phantomB to lead him astray at every turn after he haa entered upon it, deceivers lurking to betray hint nnder the guise of aeeming friends tendering help. Let him take all the pains in the world, he cannot ex- press adequately and exactly what he would — ^neither more nor less — ^for he must use words which have al- ready meanings of a metaphysical kind attached to them, and which, when used, are therefore for Iiim more or less a misinterpretation. He ia thus forced into an apparent encroachment on questions which he does not in the least degree wish to meddle with, and provokes an antagonism without ever designing it; and so one cannot but think it would have been well if lie could have had his own words exactly fitting his facts, and free from the vagueness and ambiguity of a former metaphysical use. The article on the "Theory of Vitality," which ap- peared in 1833, is now reprinted, with a few, maiflly verbal, alterations. The aspect of some of the ques- tions discussed in it has been somewhat changed by the progress of inquiry and thought since that time, but it appears to the Author tliat, great as discussion has been, there are yet considerations respecting vitali- ty that have not been duly weighed. Whether living matter was formed originally, or is now being formed, from non-living matter, by the operation of physical causes and natural laws, are questions which, notwith- PREFACE. vii standing the lively and vigoi^oas handling which they have had, are far from being settled. Exact experi- ment can alone put an end to this dispute : the one conclusive experiment, indeed, in proof of the origin of living from dead matter, will be to make life. Meanwhile, as the subject is still in the region of dis- cussion^ it is permissible to set forth the reflections which the facts seem to warrant, and to endeavor to indicate the direction of scientific development which seems to be foretokened by, or to exist potentially in, the knowledge which we have thus far acquired. This much may be said : that those who oppose the doc- trine of so-called spontaneous generation, not on the groimd of the absence of conclusive evidence of its occurrence, which they might justly do, but on the ground of what they consider special characteristics of living matter, would do well to look with more in- sight into the phenomena of non-living Nature, and to consider more deeply what they see, in order to dis- cover whether the characteristic properties of life are quite so special and exclusive as they imagine them to be. Having done that, they might go on to consider whether, even if their premises were grant- ed, any conclusion regarding the mode of origin of life would legitimately follow; whether in fact it would not be entirely gratuitous and imwarrantable to con- clude thence the impossibility of the origin of living matter jfrom non-living matter. The etymological im- viii PREFACE. port of the words physics and physiology is notably the same ; and it may be that, as has been suggested, in the difference of their application lies a hidden irony at the assumption on which the division is grounded. 9, Hanover Square, W. November 6, 1870. CONTENTS. LECTURES. PAGE I. — On the Physical Condition of Mental Function in Health . . . . . .11 II. — On Certain Forms of Degeneracy of Mind, their Causation, and their Relations to other Dis- orders of the Neryous System . . . 41 III. — On the Relations of Morbid Bodily States to Dis- ordered Mental Functions . . . ,10 APPENDIX. I. — The Limits of Philosophical Inquiry ,. . 98 II. — The Theory of Vitality ..... 120 BODY AiNT> MIND: AN INQUIEY INTO THEIE CONNECTION AND MUTUAL INFLUENCE, BPECIALLY IN EEFEEENCE TO MENTAL DISORDERS. LECTURE I. Gentlemen : The relations of mind and bodj in health and in disease I have chosen as the subject of these lectures, not with the hope of doing full justice to so complex and difficult an inquiry, but because it has for some time been my special work, and there was no other subject on which I should have felt myself equally justified in addressing you. No one can be more deeply sensible than I am how little exact our knowledge is of the bodily conditions of mental functions, and how much of that which we think we know is vague, uncertain, and fluctuating. But the time has come when the immediate business which lies before any one who would advance our knowledge of mind unquestionably is a close and searching scrutiny of the bodily conditions of its manifestations in health and disease. It is most necessary now to make use of the results of the study of mind in health to light and guide our researches into its morbid phe- nomena, and in like manner to bring the instructive in- 1 stances presented by unsound mind to bear upon the inter- pretation of its healthy functions. The physiology and the pathology of mind are two branches of one science ; and he 12 BODY AND MISD. irho BtndicB the one must, if he would work wisely and well, stcidj the other also. Mj aim will be to promote the recon- ciliation between them, onA in doing so I shall embrace the occasion, wlienover it offers itself, to indicate the principles which shonid gnide oar efTorts for what mast always bo the i highest object of medical science and art — ^tlie production and preservation of a, somid mind in a aonnd body. Act- nally to accomplish much of tills purpose will not lie in my power, but I may bring together fragmentary observa- tions, point out the bearing of them on one another and on received opinions, thns unfold their moaning, and mark broadly the lines which future reaearch must take. Within the memory of men now living insanity waa such a speuial study, and its treatment such a special art, that it stood quite aloof from general medicioo in a mysterions and mischievoos isolation ; owing little or nothing to the results of progress in other branches of medicine, and contributing nothing to their progress. The reason of this it is not hard fto discover. The habit of viewing mind aa an intangible entity or incorporeal cpsonce, which science inherited from theology, prevented men from subjecting its phenomena to the same method of investigation as other natural phenom- ena; its disorders were thought to be an incomprehensible affliction and, in accordance with the theological notion, due to the presence of an evil spirit in the sufferer, or to the en- I slavcment of the sool by sin, or to any thing but their true Ij^anse — bodily disease. Conseq^nently, the treatment of the insane was not in the hands of intelligent physicians, who aimed to apply the resources of medicine to the alleviation I or cure of bodily illneaa, but was given up to coarse and ig- norant jailers, whose savage cruelties will for ail time to J come be a great and ugly blot upon the enlightenment of the ago which tolerated them. Matters ore happily changed now. On all hands it is ad- 1 mitted that tiie manifestations of mind take place through lervoua system ; and that its derangements are the result ORGAN AND FUNCTION. 13 of nervous disease, amenable to the same method of investi- gation as other nervous diseases. Insanity has accordingly become a strictly medical study, and its treatment a branch of medical practice. Still, it is all too true that, notwith- standing we know much, and are day by day learning more, of the physiology of the nervous system, we are only on the threshold of the study of it as an instrument subserving men- tal function. "We know little more positively than that it has such function ; we know nothing whatever of the physics and of the chemistry of thought. The conception of mind as a*^ mysterious entity, different essentially from, and vastly supe- rior to, the body which it inhabits and uses as its earthly tene- ment, but from which its noblest aspirations are thought to be to get free, still works openly or in a latent way to ob- struct the study of its functions by the methods of physical research. Without speculating at all concerning the nature of mind — which, let me distinctly declare at the outset, is a question which science cannot touch, and I do not dream of attempting to touch— I do not shrink from sayinj? that we shall make no progress toward a mental science if we begin by depreciating the body : not by disdaining it, as metaphy- sicians, religious ascetics, and maniacs have done, but by laboring in an earnest and inquiring spirit to understand it, shall we make any step forward; and when we have fully comprehended its functions, when we know how to estimate fitly this highest, most complex, and wonderful achievement of organized skill, it will be quite time, if there be then the inclination, to look down upon it with contempt. The truth is, that in inquiries concerning mind, as was once the case in speculations concerning other natural phe- nomena of forces, it has been the practice to begin where the inquiry should have ended. Just as the laws of physical ac- tions were evoked out of the depths of human consciousness, and the relations of bodies to one another attributed to sym- pathies and antipathies, attractions and abhorrences, instead 14 BODY ASD MIiVD. of being acquired by patient obaerTation nml Ciireful goneraliza- tion, so has a fabric of mental philosopliy beea reared on Lbo I donbtfal revelations of Bclf-conacloaencss, in entire disregard of the more tedions and less attractive duty of observation of facts, and induction, from thera. Surely it la time we put serioualy to ourselvea tbe question whether the inductive method, whicb Las proved ita worth by ita abundant fruit- folness wherever it hoB been faithfully applied, should not be as rigidly used in the inveatigatioa of mind as in the iayeatigation of other natnral phenomena. If so, we onght certainly to begin our inquiry with the observation of the simpleat instances — with its physiological manifcstationa in animals, in children, in idiots, in savagea, mounting by de- grees to tbe highest and most recondite facts of conaciouaneas, the interpretation or the misinterpretation of which consti- tutes what has hitherto claimed to bo mental pliiloiophy. The inductions which we get by observing the simple may be used with success to disentangle the phenomena of tlie complex; but the endeavor to apply the complex and obscure to the interpretation of the simple is sure to end in confusion and error. The higher mental faculties are formed by evolntion from the more simple and elementary, just as the more spe- cial and complci structure proceeds from tlie more simple and general ; and in the one case as in the other we must, if we would truly learn, foliow the order of development. Not that it is within my present purpose to trace the plan of development of our mental faculties, bat the facta and argu- menta which I shall bring forward will prove how vain and futile it is to strive to rear a sound fabric of mental sci- ence on any other foundation. To begin the study of mind, then, with the observation of ita humblest hodily manifeatationa ia a strictly scientific method. When we come to inquire what these are, it is far from easy to fiz the point at which mental fnuction begins. Without doubt most of the actions of man, and many of thoae of the higher animals, do evince the operation of mind, REFLEX ACTIOS. 15 Ijiit whereabouts in tho animal kingdom it first appears, and what part it has in the lower nervB-fnn.Gtions of man, are queationa not easily anawered. The more closely the matter is loolced into, the more clearly it appears that we habitaallj embrace in our conception of mind different nervons func- tions, some of whieh proceed from different nerve-centres, and the more necessary it beeomea to analyze these funotiona, to separate the more simple and clcmcatary, and to discover in the concrete as much as possible of the meaning of the abstraction. Is the brain the exclusive organ of mind! If it be 90, to what category of fanctions ehall we refer the re- i flex acts of the spinal cord, which take place independently I of the brain, and vrhich often achieve as definite an end, and seem to display aa intelligent an aim, 09 any conscions act of volition? It needs not to illustrate in detail the nature and extent of reflex action, which is familiar enoagb, but I may select a striking example in order to serve as a text for the reflections which I wish to bring forward. One simple fact, rightly nndei-atood and truly interpreted, will teach as much aa a thoosand foots of the some kind, but the thousand must have been previously observed in order to nnderatand truly the one ; for it is certainly true that, to apprehend the full meaning of common things, it is necessary to study a great many nncoramon things. This, however, has been done in this instance hy the distinguished physiologists whose labors have iised on a tolerably firm basis the doctrine of reflex action; we may, therefore, take, as oar starting-point, the accepted results of their labors. It is well known that, if the hind-foot of a frog that has had its head cot off be pinched, it is withdrawn from the ir- ritation. The stimuloa to the afferent nerve roaches the gray matter of the spinal cord, and sets free a force which excites to action the correspoudiog motor nerves of the some side. When the foot is pinched mqro strongly, the force liberated by the atimnlna passes across the oord to the motor nerves of the opposite side, and there is a simultaneous withdrawal 16 ' AND MIXD, of Loth limbs ; ani], if the escitation be stronger still, tiiere is a wider irradintion of tlio efl'ccts of the Btimulus in the gray matter, and a moveiaeat of nil four liaiba follows, tho frog Jumping away. These movements of the decapitated frog, Trhicli it is plain effect the definite purpose of getting it out of the way of harm, we believe to be analogous to the violent coughing hy which food that haa gone the wrong way ia espelled from the human larynx, or to the vomitiug hy which offending matter is ejected from tho stomach. Indo- . pendently of conscionaneas and of will, an organism plainly has tho power — call it intelligent or call it what we will — of ' feeling and eaciiewing what is hurtful to it, as well as of feel- ing and ensuing what ia beneficial to it. Bnt theesperiment on thefrogmajheraademore striking and instructive. Tonch with, acetic acid the thigh of a de- capitated frog over the internal condyle, and the animal riiba it off with tbe dorsal surface of tlie foot of tlio same side; cut off tho foot, snd apply the acid to the anme spot, and the animal tries to get at it again with its foot, but, of course, having lost it, cannot. After some fruitless efforts, therefore, it gives up trying in that way, seema restless, as thoagh, says Pflfiger, it was seeking some other way ; and at last it makes nse of the foot of the other leg, and succeeds in rubbing off tlie acid. Notably we have here not merely contractions of mnaclca, bnt combined and hQiTiionized contractions in due sequence for a special pnrpoae. There are actions that have all the appearance of being guided by intelligence and insti- gated by will in an animal the recognized organ of whose in- telligence and will has been removed. What are we to say in esplanation of movements that have such n look of adaptation? Are they mental, or are they 'only physical f If they are mental, it ia plain that we mnst much enlarge and modify out conception of mind, and of the seat of mind; if physical, it ia plain that we mnst subtract from mind functions that are essential to itafull function, and properties that are the very foundaliona of its development PURPOSIVE ACTS. 17 in the higher centres. Some eminent physiologists now maintain, on tbe strength of these experiments, that the ac- cepted doctrine of reflex action is quite untenable, and that the spinal cord is really endowed with sensation and volition ; and certainly these adapted actions seem to give us all the signs of being felt and willed, except telling us that they are so. Before accepting, however, this explanation of the ob- scure by something more obscure still, it were well to realize distinctly how dangerous a practice it usually is to apply de- ductively to the interpretation of simple phenomena ideas pertaining to the more complex, and how essential a princi- ple of the method of induction it is to follow the order of evolution, and to ascend from the interpretation of the sim- ple to that of the complex. The explanation savors of the old and evil tendency which has done so much harm in phi- losophy, the tendency to explain the facts of Nature by what we feel to go on in our minds ; because we know that most of our actions take place consciously and voluntarily, we can hard- ly help thinking that it must be the same in the frog. Might we not, however, as well suppose and hold that positive at- tracts negative and repels positive electricity consciously and voluntarily, or that in the double. decomposition of chemical salts one acid chooses voluntarily the other base ? It is most necessary to be on our guard against the danger of misapply- ing ideas derived from internal observation of the functions of mind-centres to the interpretation of the functions of lower nerve-centres, and so of misinterpreting them. As- suredly we have sad experience enough to warn us against involving the latter in the metaphysical haze which still hangs over the functions of the supreme centres. All the conclusion which the facts warrant is that actions for a definite end, having indeed the semblance of predesign- ing consciousness and will, may be quite unconscious and auto- matic ; that the movements of the decapitated frog, adapted as they are to secure its well-being, are no more evidence of intelligence and will than are the movements of coughing. 18 BODY AND HIXD. saeezing, and Bwallowing in man. In the constitution of the fLnimsl's spinal cord are implanted the faculties of sach movo- meats for Belf-preservation, which it has inherited aa a part of ita nature, and without which it could hardlj live a day; BCCordinglj it acta neceaaarilj and hlindtj ; though it has lost its foot, it endeaTora vamlf to act sa if its foot was still there, and only whbn the irritation continues unaffected hj its futile efforts makes, in answer to it, those farther rufloi movements which are the physiological seqaences of the nnsncceBsful movements : it snpplementB one aeries of reiler actions by another.* But, although these purposive inovouients are not evidence of intelligence and volition in the spinal cord, it is another question whether they do not evince tlio same phyai- ological properties and the operation of the same laws of evolution aa govern the development of intelligence anJwill in the higher centres. I have taken the experiment on the frog to exemplify the proposition that designed actions may be unconscious and automatic, becauae the phenomena are more simple in it than in man, and more easy therefore to be understood; but the proposition is equally true of his spinal cord. In ita case, however, we have to boar in mind that faculties are not in- nate to the same degree and extent as in the lower animals, but have to be acquired by education— to bo organized, in fiict, after birth. It must be taught, just na t)io lirain must, before it can perform its functions as an organ of anitual life ; and, being much more under the control of the more highly- developed brain, feeling and volition commonly mingle largely in ita functiong, and its independent action cannot he so plainly eshibited. But, when ita motor centres have been taught, when they have gained by education the power of eiecnting what are called secondary automatic acts, it is cer- • Wisely or nnwlMlr. as Ihe caseioiiy be; for leflei movementa wblch SECONDARY AUTOMATIC ACTS. 19 tain that it can and does habitnally execute them indepen- dently of consciousness and of will. They become as purely automatic as are the primitive reflex acts of the frog. To the statement, then, that actions bearing the semblance of design may be unconscious and automatic we have now to add a second and most weighty proposition — ^namely, that acts con-] sciously designed at first may, by repetition, become uncon-: scions and automatic, the faculties of them being organized- in the constitution of the nerve-centres, and they being then' performed as reflex effects of an external stimulus. This law, by which the education of the spinal cord takes place, is, as we shall hereafter see, a most important law in the- develop-/ ment of the higher nerve-centres. Let us now go a step further. The automatic acts, whether priralsiry or secondary, in the frog or in the man, which are excited by the suitable external stimulus, may also be excited by an act of will, by an impulse coming downward from the brain. When this happens, it should be clearly apprehended that the immediate agency of the moyements is the same ; it is in the motor centres of the spinal cord ; the will does not and cannot act upon the nerve-fibres of each muscle individu- ! ally, but simply gives the order which sets in motion the or- ; ganized machinery of the movements in the proper motor centres. This is a consideration of the utmost importance, for it exhibits how great a part of our voluntary acts is really the automatic action of the spinal cord. The same move- ments are effected by the same agency in answer to different stimuli — ^in the one case to an external stimulus, in the other case to an impulse of will ; and in both cases the mind is alike ignorant of the immediate agency by which they are done. But while the automatic acts take place independently of will, the will is absolutely dependent on the organized expe- rience in the cord for the accomplishment of its acts ; with- out this it would be impotent to do a voluntary act. When, therefore, we have taken out of a voluntary act the large part which is due to the automatic agency of the motor cen- 20 BOOT AMD MIND. tres, it clearly appears that we hava Bubtractad ivo small proportion from what we are ia the habit of comprising vaguely under miad. We perceive, indeed, how indiflpensa- hle an exact and fuithful observation of the functions of the I spinal cord ia to a true physiological inquiry into mind, and ) what on important means of analysis a knowledge of them yields us. Carrying the knowledge ao gained into our esami- natioa of the functions of the Idgher nerve-centres, we ob- serve how much of them it will serve to interpret. The re-, suit ia, that we find a great part of the habituul functions of , the higher centres to bo similarly autouiotio, and to admit of ' a similar physiological interpretation. There can be no doubt that the ganglionic nuclei of the aenaes — the sensorial nuclei — are connected with motor nu- clei ; and that we have in anch anatomical arrangement the agency of a number of reflei movements. Moat of the in- stinctive acts of animals are of this kind, the faculties being innate in them. In man, however, who is actually the most helpleaa, though potentially the most powerful, of all living creatures when he comes into the world, the sensory and associated motor nuclei must bo educated, just as the spinal centres must. To illustrate thia sensoii-motor or inatinctivo action, we may take the results of.Flourens'a well-known experiment of removing the cerebral hemisphorea of a pigeon. What happens? The pigeon seemingly loses at once all in- telligence and all power of spontaneous action. It appears as if it were naleop ; yet, if thrown into the air, it will fly. If laid on its back, it struggles on to its legs again ; the pupil of the eye eontracta to light, and, if the light be very bright, the eyes are shut. It will dress its feathers if they are ruffled, and will sometimes follow with a movement of its head the movement of a candle before it ; and, when apistol is fired off, it will open its eyes, ati'etch its neck, raise its head, and then fall back into its former attitude. It is quite evident from this experiment that general sensibility and special sensation^ are possible after the removal of tlie hemispheres; but they SENSORI-MOTOR ACTS. 21 J are not then transformed into ideas. The impressions of sense [ reach and affect the sensory centres, but they are not intel- i leotnahj perceived ; and the proper movements are excited / but these are reflex or automatic. There are no ideas, there is no true spontaneity ; and the animal would die of hunger before a plateful of food, though it will swallow it when pushed far enough into its mouth to come within the range of the reflex acts of deglutition. Here again, then, we have a surprising variety of adapted actions of which the body is capable without the intervention of intelligence, emotion, and will — ^without, in fact, mind in its exact sense having any part in them. The pigeon is brought to the level of the inverte- brata, which have no higher nerve-centres than sensory ganglia, no centres of intelligence and will, and which exe- cute all their varied and active movements, all their wonder- ful displays of instinct, through sensory and associated motor nuclei. They seek what is good for them, avoid what is hurtful to them, provide for the propagation of their kind — perform, indeed, all the functions of a very active life without knowing that they are doing so, not otherwise than as our pupils contract to light, or as our eyes accommodate them- selves to vision at different distances, without consciousness on our part. The highest specializations of this kind of nerve-function are displayed by the ant and the bee ; their wonderful instinctive arts show to what a degree of special perfection sensori-motor action may be brought.* * I do not say that the ant and the bee are entirely destitute of any power of adaptation to new experiences in tlieir lives— that they are, in foot, purely organized machines, acting always with unvarying regularity; it would appear, indeed, fh)m close observation, that these creatures do sometimes discover in their actions traces of a sensibility to strange experiences, and of corresponding adaptation of movements. We cannot, moreover, con- ceive how the remarkable instincts which they manifest can have been acquired originally, except by virtue of some such power. But the power in them now is evidently of a rudimentary kind, and must remain so while they have not those higher nerve-centres in which the sensations are com- bined into ideas, and perceptions of the relations of things are acquired. Granting, however, that the bee or ant has these traces of adaptive action, 22 BODY AXD MIND, Uniika the bee and the ant, man must slowly learn the use of his senses and their reBpoadent movementa. This he doea by virtue of the fundamental property of nerve-centres, whereby they react in a definite ■way to anitable impressionH, organically register their experience, and so acqaire by edii- :^ation, tlieir special faculties. Thna it is that many of the ' dally actions of onr life, whicli directly follow iniprcasiona OB the senses, take place in answer to sensations that are not ' porceired — become, ao to apeak, inttinetwa ; some of them being not a whit lesa antomatio than the inatinctire acts of JJie bee, or the acts of the pigeon deprived of ita hemispheres. "When we move abont in a room with the objccta in which we are quite familiar, we direct our stcpa so as to avoid Ihem, without being conscious what they are, or what we are do- ing; we see them, aa we easily discover if we try to move about in the same way with our eyes shut, hnt we do not pereeire them, the mind bemg fully occupied with some train of thought In hke manner, when we go through a series of faniibar acta as in dressing or nndressing ourselves, the opi rations are really automatic , once begun, we continue them in a mcrhanical order, 'nhile the mind is thinking of other tbinsa and if we afterward reflect upon what we have done, in order to call to mind whether we did or did not omit something, as for instance to wind up our watcli, we cannot aalisfy ourselves esoept by trial, even though we had actually done what we wore in donbt about. It is evident, indeed, that in a state of profound reverie or abstraction a person may, ns a somnambulist sometimes doca, see without know- It mnet be allowed Ihat the; bid tml; radlmcau of fDiictloiiB, nhicli Id Iho BnpreiDB iietYB.teDtrea we dff«lEi«ile as reB^on nmi voljtlon. Snchacon- [bEEloa might be a Iroable to a iueUipb;aIcBl pbieiolnglet, nha woald tbere- itpon Bod it BcecBBOty to place a metaplirfllcal eotity behind the BO-called iDBtlncls or the bee, bat con be no trouble to the iDdnctiyc physioloEiBl ; he simply recogniMB sn lUnttration of a phjsIolOBlcfil dlmnlon or propordoB, Bod of Iha physical oondilions of prlmitiTe voliiion, and traces in the e»o- iBtlon at mind and Its organii, at In tho svolntian ot other fnnetionB lud their organs, a pragrosslvo Bpcclalisntlon and inncsFlng complexity. SUPREME NERVE-CENTRES. 23 ing that he sees, hear without knowing that he hears, and go through a series of acts scarcely, if at all, conscious of them at the time, and not remembering them afterward. For the" \ most distinct display of sensori-motor action in man, it is ' necessary that his cerebral hemispheres, which are so largely developed, and intervene much in the functions of the subor- . dinate centres, should be deeply engaged in their own func- : tions, or that these should be suspended. This appears to be the case in those brief attacks of epileptic unconsciousness known as the petit mal^ in which a person will sometimes go on with the work he was engaged in at the time of the attack, utterly unaware of the momentary interruption of , his consciousness.* There are many instances of this sort on record, which I cannot stop to relate now ; they prove how lai*ge a part sensori-motor functions, which are the highest nerve-functions of so many animals, play in our daily actions. "We ought clearly to apprehend the fact that, as with the spinal cord, so here, the movements which take place in an- swer to the stimulus from without may be excited by the stimulus of the will descending from the hemispheres, and that, when they are so excited, the immediate agency of them is the same. The movements that are outwardly manifest are, as it were, contained inwardly in the appropriate motor nuclei ; these have been educated to perform them. Hence it is that, when the left corpus striatum is broken up by dis- ease, the right cannot do its special work; if it could, a man might write with his left hand when his right hand was dis- abled by paralysis. Thus much, then, concerning our sensori-motor acts. "When we have yielded up to the spinal cord all the part in our actions that properly belongs to it, and to the sensory gan- glia and their connected motor nuclei all the part that be- longs to them, we have subtracted no inconsiderable part from the phenomena which we are in the habit of designating * For examples, I may refer to my work on " The Physiology and Pa- thology of Mind," 2d edition. 24 BODY AND HIND. mentHl imd including under mind. But wo still leave un^ touched the highest functiooa of the nervous eystera — thoso to which the hemispherical ganglia minister. These ore the fanctions of intelligence, of emotion, and of will ; thej are the strictlj mental fimctioue. The question at once arises whether we have to do in these supreme centres with limda- mentall; different properties and different laws of evolution from those which belong to the lower nerve-centres. Wo have to do with different functions certainly ; but are the organic processes which take place in them cssentiatlj differ- ent from, or are they identical witii, those of the lower nerve-centres ? They appear to bo essentially the same ; there is a reception of iniprejisions, and there is a reaction to impressions, and there is anorganic repatration of the effects both of the impressions and of tho reactions to them. The ex- ternal stimuli do not, it is true, ascend directly to the supreme centres as they do to the spinal centres and the sensory cen- tres; thej are transmitted indirectly through the sensory gangha ; it is through the senses that we get our ideas. This is in accordance with the anatomical observation — which, however, is dispated — that no sensory fibres go direolly through to the hemispheres, and no motor fibres start directly from them; both sensory and motor fibres stopping at the corpora striata and thalami optici, and new fibres connect- ing these with the hemispheres. But this does not alter the flmdamental similarity of the organic processes in the higher centres. The impressions »hich are made there are the physi- ological oonditioDH of ideat; the feeling of the ideas ia emo- tion — for I hold emotion to mean the special aensibihty of the vesicular neurine to ideas^the registration of them ia memOTy ; and the reaction to them is nolitwrt. Attention is the maintenance of the tension of an idea or a group of ideas — the keeping it before the mind ; and reflection is tlie successive transference of energy from one to another of a series of ideas. We know not, and perhaps never shall know, what mind is; bnt we are nevertheless bound to inveatigate, MEMORY. 25 in a scientific spirit, the laws of its functions, and to trace the resemhlances which undoubtedly exist between them and thcff unctions of lower nerve-centres. Take, for example, the so-called faculty of memory, of which metaphysicians have made so much as affording us the knowledge of personal identity. From the way in which they usually treat of it, one would suppose that memory was peculiar to mind, and far beyond the reach of physical ex- planation. But a little reflection will prove that it is noth- ing of the kind. The acquired functions of the spinal cord, and of the sensory ganglia, obviously imply the existence of "^ memory, which is indispensable to their formation and exer- cise. How else could these centres be educated ? The im- pressions made upon them, and the answering movements, both leave their traces behind 'them, which are capable of being revived on the occasions of similar impressions. A ganglionic centre, whether of mind, sensation, or movement, which was without memory, would be an idiotic centre, in- capable of being taught its functions. In every nerve-cell there is memory, and not only so, but there is memory in every organic element of the body. The virus of small-pox or of syphilis makes its mark on the constitution for the rest of life. We may forget it, but it will not forget us, though, like the memory of an old man, it may fade and become faint with advancing age. The manner in which the scar of a cut in a child's finger is perpetuated, and grows as the body grows, evinces, as Mr. Paget has pointed out, that the organic ele- ment of the part remembers the change which it has suffered. Memory is the organic registration of the effects of impres- sions, the organization of experience, and to recollect is to revive this experience — ^to call the organized residua into functional activity. The fact that memory is accompanied by cousciousness in the supreme centres does not alter the fundamental nature of the organic processes that are the condition of it. The more : sure and perfect, indeed, memory becomes, the more uncon- 2 26 BODT ASD MB'R , scions it becumes; and, wlicn an idea or mental state has been completelv organized, it is retired witLoat conscious- ness, and takes it^ part aatoraaticaUj in onr mental oper&- tiona, jast as an Labitua] movement does in aur bodil;r aotJT- itj. T^'e perceive in operation here the eame law of organ!- zataon of conscioas ocqaiaitiona as unconscioos pover, wliicli we observed in the fonctions of the lower nerve-centres. A child, while learning to epeak or read, has to remember the meaning of each word, must tediouslj exercise its memory; hut wliich of us finds it necessary to remember the meaninga of the common words which we are dailj asing, as we most do those of a foreign language nith which we are not very £amiliar ? We do remember tbem, of course, but it is bj An nnconscions memorj. In like manner, a pupil, learning to play the piano-forte, ia obliged to call to mind each note: bat the skilfiil player goes through no such process of conaciona remembrance ; his ideas, like hia movements, are antoraatio, and both so rapid as to surpass the rapidity of snccession of conscions ideas and movements. To my mind, there are in- controvertible reasons to conclude that the organic conditions of memory are the same in the supreme centres of thought as they are in the lower centres of sensaUon and of reflex action. Accordingly, in a brain that ia-not disoi^anized by injary or disease, the organic registrations are never actually forgotten, but endure while life lasts; no wave of oblivion can efface their characters. Consciousness, it ia true, may be impotent to recall them ; but a fever, a blow on the head, a poison in the blood, a dream, the agony of drowning, the hoar of death, rending the veil between onr present con- ecioosnosB and these inscriptions, will sometimes call viv- idlj back, in a momentary flash, and call back too with all the feelings of the original eaperience, much that seemed to have vanished from the mind forever. In the deepest and most secret receaaea of mind, there is nothing hidden from the individual seli^ or from others, which may not be thus some time accidentally revenled ; so that it might well be VOLITION. 27 that, as De Quincey surmised, the opening of the book at the day of judgment shall be the unfolding of the everlasting scroll of memory.* As it is with memory so is it with volition, which is a physiological function of the supreme centres, and which, like memory, becomes more unconscious and automatic the more completely it is organized by repeated practice. It is not man's function in life to think and feel only; his inner life he must express or utter in action of some kind — in word or deed. Receiving the impressions from Nature, of which he is a part, he reacts upon Nature intelligently, modifying it in a variety of ways ; thus Nature passes through Jmman na- ture to a higher evolution. As the spinal cord reacts to its impressions in excito-motor action, and as the sensory centres react to their impressions in sensori-motor action, so, after the complex interworking and combination of ideas in the hemispherical ganglia, there is, in like manner, a reaction or desire of determination of energy outward, in accordance with the fundamental property of organic structure to seek what is beneficial and shun what is hurtful to it. It is this property of tissue that gives the impulse which, when guided by intelligence, we call volition, and it is the abstraction from the particular volitions which metaphysicians personify as the will, and regard as their detennining agent. Physio- logically, we cannot choose but reject the will ; volition we know, and will we know, but the will, apart from particular acts of volition or will, we cannot know. To interpose such a metaphysical entity between reflection and action there- upon would bring us logically to the necessity of interposing a similar entity between the stimulus to the spinal cord and its reaction. Thus, instead of unravelling the complex by help of the more simple, we should obscure the simple by ♦ An apt illustration, most trae to Nature, of the recurrence of early impressions in the delirium of dyiug, is afforded by Falstaff, who, as he expires In a London tayem after a life of debaudiery, babbles of green fields. 28 BODY AKD MIND. Bpeciilations concerning the complex. As pIiysiologiBts, wi bave to deal with volition as a. fuuction of the supreme een tres, following reflection, varying in quantity and quality oi its cause voribs, strengthened by education and exercise, en- feebled by diaose, decayiug with decay of structure, and al- ways needing for ita outward expression the edaeatod agency of the subordinate motor centres. .We have to deal with will, aot as a single undecomposable facolty nnaffected by bodily conditions, but aa a result of organic changes in the supreme centres, affected as certainly and seriously by dis- order of them aa our motor faculties are by disorder of their centres. Loss of power of will is one of the earliest and most characteristic symptoms of mental darangcment ; and what- ever may have been thought ia times past, we know well now that the loss is not the work of some andean spirit that has laid its hands upon the will, but the direct effect of physical disease. But I mast pass on now to other matters, without stop- ping to unfold at length the resemblances between the prop- erties of the supreme centres and those of the lower nerve- centres. We see that tlie supreme centres are educated, as the other centres are, and the better they are educated the better do they perform their innctionaof thinking and willing. The development of mind is a gradual process of organization in them. Ideas, as they are successively acquired through the gateways of the senses, are blended and combined and grouped in a oompleiity that defies analysis, the organic co binations being the physiological conditions of our highest mental operations — reflection, reasoning,and judgment. Two leading ideas we ought to grasp and hold fast: first, that the complex and more recondite pheuomena of mind are formed out of the more simple and elementary by progressive spe- cialization and integration ; and, secondly, that the laws by means of which this formation takes |dace are not laws of n merely, but laws of organic combination and evo- Thc growth of mental power means an aclunl addi- MOTOR INTUITIONS. 29 tion of structure to the intimate constitution of the centres of mind — a mental organization in them ; and mental derange- ment means disorder of them, primary or secondary, func- tional or organic. Although I have declared the hemispherical ganglia to be preeminently the mind-centres, and although it is in disorder of their functions — in disordered intelligence, in disordered emotion, and in disordered will — that insanity essentially con- sists, it is nevertheless impossible to limit the study of our mental operations to the study of them. They receive im- pressions from every part of the body, and, there is reason to believe, exert an influence on every element of it : there is not an organic motion, sensible or insensible, which does not, consciously or unconsciously, affect them, and which they in turn do not consciously or unconsciously affect. So intimate and essential is the sympathy between all the organic func- tions, of which mind is the crown and consummation, that we may justly say of it, that it sums up and comprehends the bodily life — that every thing which is displayed outwardly is contained secretly in the innermost. We cannot truly under- stand mind-functions without embracing in our inquiry all the bodily functions and, I might perhaps without exaggera- tion say, all the bodily features. I have already shown this in respect of motor functions, by exhibiting how entirely dependent for its expression will is upon the organized mechanism of the motor centres — ^how, in effecting voluntary movements, it presupposes the appro- priate education of the motor centres. Few persons, perhaps, consider what a wonderful art speech is, or even remember that it is an art vhich we acquire. But it actually costs us a great deal of pains to learn to speak ; all the language which an infant has is a cry ; and it is only because we begin to learn to talk when we are very young, and are constantly prac- tising, that wo forget how specially we have had to. educate our motor centres of speech. Here, however, we come to another pregnant consideration : the acquired faculty of the 30 BODY AND MIXD. educated motor centre is not only a. neotsssiiry Ggcncy in tlio pcrformanoe of a voluntary act, but I maintain that it posi- tively enters as a mental element into the corapowtion of the definite volition ; that, in fact, the specific motor faculty not only acts downward upon the motor nervea, thus executing the movement, bat also acta upward npon the mind-centres, thereby giving to consciousneHS tlio conception of tlie suitable movement — the appropriate motor intuition. It is certain that, in order to execute consciously a voluntary act, we must have in the mind a conception of the urn or purpose of ths act. The will cannot act upon the separate muscles, it can only determine tiie result desired ; and thereupon the com- bined contraction, in dae force and rapidity, of the separate muselea takes place in a way that wo have no consciousness of, and accomplishes the act. The infant directly it is bom can suck, certainly not consciously or voluntarily ; on the first occasion, at any rate, it can have no notion of the pnrpose of its movements ; but the effect of the action is to excite in tho mind the speeial motor intuition, and to lay the foundation of the special volition of it. We cannot do an act volnntarily unless we know what we are going to do, and wo cannot hnov) sxaelly what we are going to do until we have tanght ourselves to do it. This exact knowledge of the aim of the act, which we get by eiperieoco, tho motor intnition gives na. The essential intervention of the motor intnition, which ia, as it were, the abstract of the movement, in our mental life, ia beat illustrated by the movements of speech, but is by no means peeuhar to them. Each word represents a certain association and succession of muscular acts, and is itself noth- ing more than a oonventionnl sign or symbol to mark the par- ticular mnacnlar expression of a particular idea. The word has not independent vitality ; it difiers in different languages; and those who are deprived of the power of articulate speech must make use of other muscular acts to express their ideas, speaking, as it were, in a dumb discourse. There is no reason on earth, indeed, why a person might not learn to express GESTURE LANGUAGE. ;a every thought which he can utter in speech by movements of his fingers, limbs, and body — ^by the silent language of ges- ture. The movements of articulation have not, then, a special Jcind of connection with the mind, though their connection is a specially intimate one ; they are simply the most convenient for the expression of our mental states, because they are so numerous, various, delicate, and complex, and because, in con- junction with the muscles of the larynx and the respiratory muscles, they modify sound, and thus make audible language. Having, on this account, been always used as the special in- struments of utterance, their connection with thought is most intimate ; the Greeks, in fact, used the word \6yos to mean both reason and speech. But this does not make the rela- tions of the movements of speech to mind different ^mda- mentally from the relations of other voluntary movements to mind ; and we should be quite as much warranted in assign- ing to the mind a special faculty of writing, of walking, or of gesticulating, as in speaking of a special faculty of speech in it. What is true of the relations of articulate movements to mental states is true of the relations of other movements to mental states : they not only express the thought, but, when otherwise put in action, they can excite the appropriate thought. Speak the word, and the idea of which it is the ex- pression is aroused, though it was not in the mind previously; or put other muscles than those of speech into an attitude which is the normal expression of a certain mental state, and the latter is excited. Most if not all men, when thinking, repeat internally, whisper to themselves, as it were, what they are thinking about; and persons of dull and feeble intel- ligence cannot comprehend what they read, or what is some- times said to them, without calling the actual movement to their aid, and repeating the words in a whisper or aloud. As speech has become the almost exclusive mode of expressing our thoughts, there not being many gestures of the body which are the habitual expressions of simple ideas, we cannot present striking examples of the powers of other movements 32 BODY AND MISD. to call up tlie appropriato ideas; jet the delicatQ muBoular adaptfltloDS which effect tha accominoclatioii of tlie eje to vluon at different distances seem really to give to the mind its ideas of distance and magnitude. No one actanllj sees distance and magnitude ; he seex only certain signs from which he has learned to judge intuitive]/ of them — the mufl- cnlar adaptationa, tliough ho is uneonscioiis of them, impart- ing the saitahle intnitions. Tlie case is stronger, however, in regard to oor emotions. Tiatble mnscnlar espresaion is to pasaion what language or aadible muscular espresslon is to thonglit. Bacon rightlj, therefore, pointed out the advantage of o stndy of the forms of espression. "For," he saya, "the lineaments of the body do disclose the disposition and inclination of the mind in gen- eral ; but the motions of the cuontcnance and parts do not only HO, but do farther diseloso the present hninor and state of the mind or will." The mnsclea of the eonntenance are the chief exponents of human feeling, much of the rarietj of which is due to the action of the orbicular muscles with the system of elevating and depressing muscles. Animals cannot laugh, hecanse, besides being incapable of ludicrous ideas, they do not possess in sufBcient development the orhicnlar muscle of the lips and the straight muscles which act upon them. It is because of the superadded mnacles and of their combined actions — not combined contraction merely, but consentaneous action, the relaxation of some accompanying the contraction of others — that the human countenance is capable of cipressing a variety of more coraplei emotions than animala can. Those who would degrade the body, in order, as they imagine, to exalt the mind, should consider more deeply than they do the importance of our muscular expressions of feeUng. The manifold shades and kinds of oxjiression which the lips present— tlieir gibes, gambols, and flashes of merriment; the qoiek language of a quivering nostril; the varied waves and ripples of beaatifol emotion which play on the human countenance, with the spasms of MUSCULAR EXPRESSION. 33 passion that disfigure it-— all which we take such pains to emhody in art — are simply effects of muscular action, and might he produced hy electricity or any other stimulus, if we could only apply it in suitable force to the proper muscles. When the eye is turned upward in rapt devotion, in the ecstasy of supplication, it is for the same reason as it is rolled upward in fainting, in sleep, in the agony of death : it is an involuntary act of the oblique muscles, when the straight muscles cease to act upon it. We perceive, then, in the study of muscular action, the reason why man looks up to heaven in prayer, and why he has placed there the power " whence Cometh his help." A simple property of the body, as Sir C. Bell observes — the fact that the eye in supplication takes what is its natural position when not acted upon by the will — has influenced our conceptions of heaven, our religious ob- servances, and the habitual expression of our highest feelings. Whether each passion which is special in kind has its special bodily expression, and what is the expression of each, it would take me too long to examine now. Suffice it to say that the special muscular action is not merely the exponent of the passion, but truly an essential part of it. Fix the countenance in the pattern of a particular emotion — in a look of anger, of wonder, or of scorn — and the emotion whose appearance is thus imitated will not fail to be aroused. And if we try, while the features are fixed in the expression of one passion, to call up in the mind a quite different one, we shall find it impossible to do so. This agrees with the experiments of Mr. Braid on persons whom he had pift into a state of hypnotism; for, when the features or the limbs were made by him to assume the expression of a particular emotion, thereupon the emotion was actually felt by the pa- tient, who began to act as if he was under its influence. We perceive then that the muscles are not alone the machinery by which the mind acts upon the world, but that their ac- tions are essential elements in our mental operations. The superiority of the human over the animal mind seems to be 34 BODY AXD MIKD. esaentiallj connected with the greater variety of muscular action of wliich man 13 copahle : were ho deprived of the in- finitely-varied movementa of hands, tongue, Inrjni, lips, and face, in which lie is so far aliead of the animals, it is prob- able that he would be no better than an idiot, notwithstand- ing he might have a normal development of brain.* If these reflections are wcU grounded, it is obvious that disorder of the motor centres may hove, as I believe it has, no little effect upon the phenomena of mental derangement. In some coses of insanity there are genuine muscular hnilii- cinotions, jnst aa there ore in dreama Bomotimes, when the muscles are in a constrained attitude ; and, where the morbid effecta are not ao marked, there ia good reason to suppose that a Bonrching imjuiry along tliis almost untrodden path will diaclose the mode of generation of many delusions that seem now inesplicabie. But wo cannot limit a complete study of mind even by a Ibll Imowtedge of the functions of tlie nervous and mnsoular systems. The organic system has most certainly an essential port in the constitution and the Ijmctions of mind, In the great mental revolution caused by the development of the sexual system at puberty we hare the moat striking example of the intimate and essential aympothy between the brwn as a mental organ and other organs of the body. The change of character at this period is not by any meana limited to the appearance of the sesnal feelings and their sjmpathetio Ideas, but, when traced to its ultimate reach, will be found to extend to the highest feelings of mankind, social, moral, and even religious. In its lowest sphere, as a mere animal instinct, it is clear that the sexual appetite forces the most selfish person out of the little circle of self-feeling into a wider feeling of family sympathy and a rudimentary moral feeling. The consequence ia that, when an individual is sexu- Ure tmlh, ORGANIC FUNCTIONS. 35 ally mutilated at an early age, he is emascalated morally as well as physically. Eunuchs are said to he the most de- praved creatures morally : they are cowardly, envious liars, utterly deceitful, and destitute of real social feeling. And there is certainly a characteristic variety of insanity caused hy self-ahuse, which makes the patient very like a eunuch in character. It has been affirmed by some philosophers that there is no essential dijQference between the mind of a woman and that of a man ; and that if a girl were subjected to the same education as a boy, she would resemble him in tastes, feel- ings, pursuits, and powers. To my mind it would not be one whit more absurd to affirm that the antlers of the stag, the human beard, and the cock's comb, are effects of education ; or that, by putting a girl to the same education as a boy, the female generative organs might be transformed into male organs. The physical and mental differences between the sexes intimate themselves very early in life, and declare themselves most distinctly at puberty : they are connected with the influence of the organs of generation. The forms and habits of mutilated men approach those of women ; and women, whose ovaries and uterus remain from some cause in a state of complete inaction, approach the forms and habits of men. It is said, too, that in hermaphrodites the mental character, like the physical, participates equally in that of both sexes. "While woman preserves her sex, she will neces- sarily be feebler than man, and, having her special bodily and mental characters, will have to a certain extent her own sphere of activity ; where she has become thoroughly mas- culine in nature, or hermaphrodite in mind — when, in fact, she has pretty well divested herself of her sex — ^then she may take his ground, and do his work ; but she will have lost her feminine attractions, and probably also her chief feminine functions. Allowing that the generative organs have their specific effect upon the mind, the question occurs whether each of 30 "BODY AND MIXD. tbe mtemul orgauH has not aUo a special effect, giving rise to particular feelings witli tiieir sympatliotio ideaa. Thfv ara notably united in the closest sympathy, bo that, although in- sensible to touch, tbey Lave a sensibility of their own, by virtue of which they agree in a consent of functions, and re- spond mora or less to one another's BufFeriugB ; and there can be no question that the brain, aa the leading member of thia physiological union, is sensible of, and affected by, the oon- ditiona of its fellow-raembers. We have not the sanio oppor- tunity of observing the specific effects of other organs that we have in the coaa of tlie generative organs; for while those come into functional ootioa directly after birth, these come into action abruptly at a certain period, and thus ex- hibit their specific effects in a decided manner. It may well be, however, that the general uniformity among men in their passions and emotions is dae to the specific sympathies of organs, just as tho unifonnity of tlieir ideas of external Na- ture is due to the nniform operation of the organs of sense. It is probable that an exact observation of the mental ef- fects of morbid states of the different organs would help the inquiry into the feelings and desires of the mind which owe their origin to particular organs. What are the psychological features of disease of the heart, disease of the lungs, disease of the liver? They are unquestionably different in each case. The inquiry, which has never yet been seriously attempted, is, without doubt, a difficult one, but I believe that the phe- nomena of dreams might, if carefully observed, afford some help. The ground-tone of feeling in a dream, tbe background on which the phantoms move, is oftea determined by the state of an internal organ, the irritation of which awakens into some degree of activity that part of the brain with which the organ is in specific sycipathy ; accordingly sympa- thetic ideas spring out of the feeling and unite in a more or lesH coherent dream-dramo- How plainly this happens in the case of the generative organs it is unnooesaary to point out: exciting their specific dreams, they teach a lesson concerning SPECIFIC ORGANIC SYMPATHIES. 37 physiological sympatMes which, applied to the observation of the effects of other organs, may be largely nseftil in the interpretation, not of dreams only, but of the phenomena of insanity. Dreams fnmish a particularly fruitful field for the study of the specific effects of organs on mind, because these effects are more distinctly felt and more distinctly declared when the impressions from the external senses are shut out by sleep. As the stars are not visible, although they still shine, in the daytime, so the effects of an internal organ may not be perceptible during the waking state while conscious- ness is actively engaged. But judt as, when the sun goes down, the stars shine visibly, which before were invisible, veiled by his greater light, so when active consciousness is suspended, organic sympathies, which before were iusensible, declare themselves in the mind. Perhaps it is in the excita- tion of its sympathetic feeling and ideas by a disordered organ during sleep that we may discover the explanation of a fact which seems to be undoubted, and to be more than accident- al — namely, that a person has sometimes dreamed propheti- cally that he would have a particular internal disease, before he consciously felt a symptom of it, and has been afterward surprised to find his dream come true. It is natural to suppose that the passion which a particu- lar organ produces in the mind will be that which, when otherwise excited, discharges itself specially upon that organ. ISTotably this is the case with the sexual organs and the pas- sion to which they minister. When we consider the effects which a joyful anticipation, or the elation of a present ex- citement, has upon the lungs — the accelerated breathing and the general bodily exhilaration which it occasions — we can- not help thinking of the strange hopefulness and the sanguine expectations of the consumptive patient, who, on the edge of the grave, projects, without a shadow of distrust, what he will do long after he will have been " green in death and fes- tering in his shroud." Observe how fear strikes the heart, and what anxious fear and apprehension accompany some 38 BODY AND UISD. affections of tlie heart. Anger, disappointaient, and envj, notabl? touch the liver; which, in its torn, wliea deranged, engenders a gloomy tone of mind through which all thing* have a raalignnnt look, and from which, when philosophy avails not to free us, the roatorotion of its fanetions will yield instant reUef. The internal organa are plainly not the agents of their special functions only, hut, hy reason of the intimate consent ov sympathy of functions, they are essential conatitnenta of our mental life. The tiine yet at my disposal will not allow me to do mors than mention the effects of mental states on the intimate pro- cesses of nutrition and secretion. Emotion may undoubtedly favor, hinder, or pervert nutrition, and increase, lessen, or alter a secretion; in doing which there is reason to think that it acts, not only hy dilating or contracting tlie vessels through the vaso-motor system, as we witness in the blush of shame and the pallor of fear, hut also directly on the or- ganic elements of the part through the nerves, which, as the latest researches seem to show, end in them aometimes by continuity of substance. If they do so end. It is difficult to conceive how a strong emotion vibrating to the ultimata fibrils of a nerve can fail to affect for a moment or longer the functions of the orgauio elements. Bo this so or not, however, the familiar ohservationa — first, that a lively hope or joy eserta an enlivening effect upon the bodily life, quiet and equable when moderate, but, when stronger, evinced in the briUiancy of the eye, in the quickened pulse and respira- tion, in an inclination to laugh and sing ; and, secondly, that grief or other depressing passion has an opposite effect, re- laxing the arteries, enfeebling the heart, making the eye dull, impeding digestion, and producing an inclination to sigh and weep — these familiar observations of opposite effects indicate the large part which mental states may play, not in the causation of all sorts of disease alone, but in aiding recov- ery from them. A sudden and great mental shock may, like a great physical shock, and perhaps in the same way, par- INFLUENCE OF MIND ON BODY. 39 aljze for a time all the bodily and mental functions, or cause instant death. It may, again, produce epilepsy, apoplexy, or insanity ; while a prolonged state of depression and anxiety is sometimes an important agent in the causation of chronic disease, such as diabetes and heart-disease. Oan it be doubted, too, that the strong belief that a bodily disorder will bo cured by some appliance, itself innocent of good or harm, may so affect beneficially the nutrition of the part as actually to effect a cure ? To me it seems not unreasonable to suppose that the mind may stamp its tone, if not its very features, on the individual elements of the body, inspiring them with hope and energy, or infecting them with despair and feebleness. A separated portion of the body, so little that our naked eye can make nothing of it, the spermatozoon of the male and the ovum of the female, does at any rate contain, in a latent state, the essential characters of the mind and body of the individual from whom it has pro- ceeded ; and, as we are utterly ignorant how this myste- rious effect is accomplished, we are certainly not in a posi- tion to deny that what is true of the spermatozoon and ovum may be true of other organic elements. And, if this be so, then those who profess to discover the character of the in- dividual in the character of the nose, the hand the features, or other part of the body, may have a foundation of truth fbr speculations which are yet only vague, fanciful, and val- ueless. Perhaps we do not, as physicians, consider suflSciently the influence of mental states in the production of disease, and their importance as symptoms, or take all the advantage which we might take of them in our efforts to cure it. Quack- ery seems to have here got hold of a truth which legitimate medicine fails to appreciate and use adequately. Assuredly the most successful physician is he who, inspiring the great- est confidence in his remedies, strengthens and exalts the im- agination of his patient : if he orders a few drops of pepper- mint-water with the confident air of curing the disease, will 40 BODY AND MIND. he not really do more sometimes for the patient than one who treats him in the most approved scientific way, hut without inspiring a conviction of recovery ? Ceremonies, charms, ges- ticulations, amulets, and the like, have in all ages and among all nations heen greatly esteemed and largely used in the treatment of disease ; and it may he speciously presumed that they have derived their power, not from any contract with the supernatural, hut, as Bacon observes, by strengthening and exalting the imagination of him who used them. En- tirely ignorant as we are, and probably ever shall be, of the nature of mind, groping feebly for the laws of its operation, we certainly cannot venture to set bounds to its power over those intimate and insensible molecular movements which are the basis of all our visible bodily functions, any more than we can justly venture to set bounds to its action in the vast and ever-progressing evolution of Nature, of "which all our thoughts and works are but a part. This much we do know : that &s, on the one hand, in the macrocosm of Nature, it is certain that the true idea once evolved is imperisbable^that it passes from individual to individual, from nation to nation, from generation to generation, becoming the eternal and ex- alting possession of man — so, on the other hand, in the mi- crocosm of the body, which some ignorantly despise, there are many more things in the reciprocal action of mind and organic element than are yet dreamed of in our philosophy. LECTURE IL Gentlemen ; In my last lecture I gave a general survey of the physiology of our mental functions, showing how in- dissolubly they are bound up with the bodily functions, andi how barren must of necessity be a study of mind apart from|! body. I pointed out that the higher mental operations were^' functions of the supreme nerve-centres ; but that, though of a higher and more complex nature than the functions of the lower nerve-centres, they obeyed the same physiological laws of evolution, and could be best approached through a knowl- edge of them. I now propose to show that the phenomena of the derangement of mind bear out fully this view of its na- ture ; that we have not to deal with disease of a metaphys- ical entity, which the method of inductive inquiry cannot reach, nor the resources of the medical art touch, but with disease of the nervous system, disclosing itself by physical and mental symptoms. I say advisedly physical and mental, because in most, if not all, cases of insanity, at one period or other of their course, there are, in addition to the prominent mental features, symptoms of disordered nutrition and secre- tion, of disordered sensibility, or of disordered motility. ITei- ther in health nor in disease is the mind imprisoned in one corner of the body ; and, when a person is lunatic, he is, as Dr. Bucknill has remarked, lunatic to his fingers' ends. Mental disorders are neither more nor less than nervous dis- eases in which mental symptoms predominate, and their entire separation from other nervous diseases has been a sad hin- 42 BODY ASD MISD. dcranco to progress. When a blow on the bear! Iios paraljzed Henaibility and movement, in consequenco of the disease in tlio brain which it has initiated, the patient ia sent to tUe hospital ; bnt when a blow on tlie bead has cnnaed mental derangement, in conseqnenoe of the disease of brain wliioh it has initioted, tlie patient is sent to an naj lum. Id like man- ner, one man who has unluckily ewallowed the eggs of a ttonin, and has got a cysticercus in the brain, may go to tha hospital ; another who has Iwen similarly unlucky goes to an asylum. Syphilitic disease of the brain or its arteries landa one person in an asylam with mental symptoms predominant, anotlier in a hospital witli sensory and motor disorder pre- dommant. The same cause produces dificTent symptoms^ ac- cording to the part of the brain which it particniarly affects. !No doubt it is riglit that mental derangements should hare, as they often require, the special appliances of an asylnm, but it is oert^nlynot right that the separation which is neces- sary for treatment should reach to their pathology and to tJie method of its stndy. So long as this is the case, we shall labor in vain to get exact scientific ideas concerning their causation, their pathology, and their treatment. Clearing, then, the qnestion as completely as possible from the haze which metaphysics has cost around it, let na ask — How comes idiocy, or insanity f What is the scientific mean- ing of them! We may take it to bo beyond question that they are not accidents; that they come to pass, as every other event in Nature does, by natural law. They are mya- teriouB visitationa only because we nnderstand not the laws of their production, appear casualties only because we are ignorant of their causality. When a blow on the head or an infiamraation of the membranes of the brain has produced derangement of mind, we need not look farther for a cause : the actual harm done to stnicture is sufficient to account for disorder of function in the best-constitutfld and best-developed brain. But it is only in a small proportion of cases of insanity that we can discover such a direct physical occnsion of disease. IDIOCY. 43 In a great many cases — ^in more than half, certainly, and per- haps in ^YQ out of six — there is something in the nervous organization of the person, some native peculiarity, which, however we name it, predisposes him to an outbreak of in- sanity. When two persons undergo a similar moral shock, or a similar prolonged ansdety, and one of them goes mad in consequence, while the other goes to sleep and goes to work and recovers his equanimity, it is plain that all the cooper- ating conditions have not been the same, that the entire cause has been different. "What, then, has been the differ- ence ? In the former case there has been present a most im- portant element, which was happily wanting in the latter — there has been a certain hereditary neurosis, an unknown and variable quantity in the equation. Perhaps of all the erroneous notions concerning miud which metaphysics has engendered or abetted, there is none more false than that which tacitly assumes or explicitly de- clares that men are bom with equal original mental capacity, opportunities and education determining the differences of subsequent development. The opinion is as cruel as it is false. What man can by taking thought add one cubit either to his mental or to his bodily stature ? Multitudes of human beings come into the world weighted with a destiny against which they have neither the will nor the power to contend ; they are the step-children of ITature, and groan under the worst of all tyrannies — the tyranny of a bad organization. Men differ, in- deed, in the fundamental characters of their minds, as they do in the features of their countenances, or in the habits of their bodies; and between those who are bom with the poten- tiality of a full and complete mental development, under fa- vorable circumstances, and those who are bom with an innate incapacity of mental development, under any circum- stances, there exists every gradation. What teaching could ever raise the congenital idiot to the common level of hu- man intelligence? What teaching could ever keep the in- spired mind of the man of genius at that level? 44 BODY AND MISD. The congenital idiot ia deprived of his human hirthright ; for he ia born with ench a, defect of brain that he cannot display anj, or can onlj display verj feeble and imperfect mental functiona. From no fault of his own is he thus afflict- ed, seeing that he mnst be held innocent of ull offence bat the offence of his share of origiaal sin; bat it is nowise so clear tliat it is not from some fault of his parents. It is all too tme that, in manj ca-ies, there bos observablj been a neglect or disregard of the Jaws which govern the progress of human development through the ages. Idiocy is, indeed, a monofao- tured article; and, tUthough we are not always able to tdl how it is maunfactured, still its important causes are known and are within control. Many cases are distinctly traceable to parental intomperanaa and excess. Out of 300 idiots in Massachusetts, Dr. Howe found as many as 14S to be the off- spring of intemperate parents ; and tliere are numerous scat- tered observations which prove that chronic alcoholism in the parent may directly occasion idiocy in the child. I think, too, that there is no reasonable question of the ill effects of marriages of consanguinity : that their tendency is to pro- duce degeneracy of the race, and idiocy as the eitremest form of snch degeneracy. I do not say that all the children of snch marriages may not Bometimes be healthy, and lome of them quite healthy at other times; but the general and nltimate result of fireeding in and in is to produce barrenness and sterility, children of a low degree of viability and of imperfect mental and physical development, deaf-mutism, and BCtnal imbecility or idiocy. Again, insanity in the parent may issne in idiocy in the offspring, which is, ho to speak, the natural term of mental degeneracy when it goes on un- checked through generations. It may be affirmed with ao little confidence that^ if the experiment of intermarrying in- sane persons fur two or three generations were tried, the re- sult would be sterile idiocy and extinction of tlie family. Certain unfavorable conditions of life tend unquestionably to produce degeneracy of the individual; the morbid predispo- DEGENERATE VARIETIES. 45 sition so generated is then transmitted to the next generation, and, if the nnfavorable conditions continue, is aggravated in it ; and thns is formed a morbid variety of the human kind, which is incapable of being a link in the line of progress of humanity. Nature puts it under the ban of sterility, and thus prevents the pei*manent degradation of the race. Morel has traced through four generations the family history of a youth who was admitted into the asylum at Houen in a state of stupidity and semi-idiocy; the summary of which may fitly illustrate the natural course of degeneracy when it goes on through generations. First generation: Immorality, depravity, alcoholic ex- cess and moral degradation, in the great-grandfather, who was killed in a tavern-brawl. Second generation : Hereditary drunkenness, maniacal at- tacks, ending in general paralysis, in the grandfather. Third generation : Sobriety, but hypochondriacal tenden- cies, delusions of persecutions, and homicidal tendencies in the father. Fourth generation: Defective intelligence. First attack of mania at sixteen ; stupidity, and transition to complete idiocy. Furthermore, probable extinction of the family ; for the generative functions were as little developed as those of a child of twelve years of age. He had two sisters who were both defective physically and morally, and were classed as imbeciles. To complete the proof of heredity in this case. Morel adds that the mother had a child while the father was confined in the asylum, and that this adulterous child showed no signs of degeneracy. When epilepsy in young children leads to idiocy, as it often does, we must generally look foir the deep root of the mischief in the family neurosis. No one can well dispute that, in the case of such an extreme morbid variety as a congenital idiot is, we have to do with a defective nervous organization. We are still, however, without more than a very few exact descriptions 46 BOOT AKD UIKD. of tho brains of idiots. Mr. MarsLall has reccDtJj- czaiuiiied and described tho brains of two idiots of Eoropcuii descent. Ho found the convolutions to ho fewer in numljer, individn- allj less complex, broader and smoother, tbnn in the apes : " In this respect," he says, "the idiots' brains ore even more simple than thot of the gibbon, and approach that of the baboon." Tho condition wbb the rcsnlt neitlier of atrophy nor of more arrest of growtli, hut consisted essentially in an imperfect evolation of the cerebral hemlsphei'cs or their parts, dependent on an arrest of development. Tho propor- tion of the weight of brain to that of body was extraordinarily diminished. We leam, then, that when mnn is bom with a brain no higher — indeed, lower — than that of an ape, he moy have tite convoliitiuna fewer in number, and individually leas complei, than they are in the brain of a chimpanzee and an orang; tho human brain may revert to, or fall below, that type of development from which, if the theory of Darwin be true, it has gradually ascended by evolution tlirougb the With tho defect of organ there is a corresponding defect of fonction. Bat there is sometimes more than a simple defect. A cmious and interesting fact, which Las by no means yet received the consideration which it deserves, ia that, with the appearance of thia animal type of brain in idiocy, there do sometimes appear or reappear remarkable animal traits and instincts. There is a class of idiots which may justly be designated theroid, so like brutes are the mem- bers of it. The old stories of so-called wild men, such as Peter tlie wild boy, and the young savage of Aveyron, who ran wild in the woods and lived on aeoms and whatever else they conld pick np ther time. These degraded beings i exhibited a somewhat striking a wild animal life. Dr. Carpenter of an idiot ^rl, who was sednccd by some miscreant, and who, when she was delivered, gnawed through the umbilical certainly exaggerated at the videntiy idiots, who 3 and eapncity for a ■, however, quotes the oasa THEROm DEGENERACY. 47 cord as some of the lower animals do. And Dr. Oriohton Brown, of the "West Riding Asylum, records a somewhat similar case in a young woman, not an idiot naturally, but who had gone completely demented after insanity. She had been in the habit of escaping from home, and of living in solitude in the woods, feeding upon wild fruits or what she could occasionally beg at a cottage, and sleeping in the brush- wood. She had frequently lived in this manner for a fort- night at a time. During one of these absences she was delivered of twins; she had sought out a sheltered hollow, and there, reverting to a primitive instinct, gnawed through the umbilical cord. The twins were alive when found two days after birth, but the mother was. in a very exhausted state, having had no food or covering since her delivery. " We have at Salpfetri^re," says Esquirol, " an imbecile woman, who used to earn a few sous by doing rough household work. It has happened on several occasions that as soon as she got her sous she took them to a laborer, and gave herself up to his brutality ; but when she was pregnant she went no more to him." In the conformation and habits of other idiots the most careless observer could not help seeing the ape. A striking instance of this kind is described by Dr. Mitchell, Deputy Commissioner in Lunacy for Scotlaud. " I have never," he says, " seen a better illustration of the ape-faced idiot than in this case. It is not, however, the face alone that is ape- like. He grins, chatters, and screams like a monkey, never attempting a sound in any way resembling a word. He puts himself in the most ape-like attitude in his hunts after lice, and often brings his mouth to help his hands. He grasps what he brings to his mouth with an apish hold. His thumbs are but additional fingers. He has a leaping walk. He has heavy eyebrows, and short hair on his cheek or face. He is muscular, active, and not dwarfish. He sits on the floor in ape fashion, with his genitals always exposed. He has filthy habits of all kinds. He may be called an idiot of the lowest 48 BODY AND MIND. order ; yet there is a miscliievous brate-like iatelligence in cje. His head ia nut very Bnifill, ita greatcBt cirotiinfer«tioe being tvrenty inches and a half, bnt in sluipe it Btronglf eshibita the ope-form of ab normality." Pinel lias recorded tbe case of an idiot who wss eome- thing like ft aheep, botb in respect of her tmtes, her mode of life, and the form of lier head. She had an aversion to meat, and ate fruit and Tegetahlea greedily, and drank nothing bnt water. Her demonstrationB of sensibility, joy, or tronble, were conflDcd to the repetition of the ill-artieukted words, 6^, ma, 6aA. She alternately bent and raised her head, and robbed herself against the belly of the girl who nttended her. If she wanted to resist or express her discontent, she tried to butt with the crown of her head ; she wna very pas- sionate. Her back, her loins, and shoulders, were covered with flesible and blockish hairs one or two inches long. Sbe never could be made to sit on a ohair or bench, even wlien at meals; aa soon as she waa placed in a sitting posture, eha glided on the floor. She slept on the floor in the postore of animals. There ia now under care, in the West Riding Asylum, b. deformed idiot girl who, in general appearance and babita, baa, according to Dr. Brown, striking features of resemblance to a goose ; so much so, that the nurses who received her de- scribed her aa jnst like " a plucked goose." Her father died in the asylum, and her mother's aiatcr was also a patient in It atone tiioo. She is four feet twoinchesin height, has a email head, and thin and scanty hair, so that the crown of the head is partially bald. The oyea are large, round, prominent, and resiieBS, and are frequently covered by the eyelida, as if by a alow, forcible effort at winking. The lower jaw is large, projecting more than one inch beyond the contracted upper jaw, and possesses an extraordinary range of antero-poa- terior, as well as lateral, movement ; the whole eonfignration of the lower part of the face having a somewhat hill-like ap- pearance. The neck ia imiisnally long and flexible, and Is THEROID IDIOCY. 49 capable of being bent backward so as actually to touch the back between the scapulae. The cutis anserina is general over the body^ but is most marked on the back and dorsal aspects of the limbs, where it looks exactly as if it had been just deprived of feathers. The inferior angles of the scapulae stand prominently out, and moving freely with the movements of the arms have precisely the appearance of rudimentary wings. The girl utters no articulate sounds, but expresses pleasure by cackling like a goose, and displeasure by hissing or screeching like a-gpose, or perhaps like a macaw. When angry, she flaps her arms against her sides and beats her feet upon the floor. She knows her own name, and understands one or two short sentences, such as " Come here " and "Put out your hand." She recognizes the persons who attend upon her, and feed her, and is much agitated if touched by a stranger. She cannot feed herself, but swallows voraciously all that is put into her mouth, showing no preference for one article of diet over another. She is dirty in her habits, and no amount of attention has improved her in this respect. She is very fond of her bath, cackling when she is put into it. and screeching when she is taken out of it.'*' It is a natural question. Whence come these animal traits * The following account of an idiot in the Western Coaniies Idiot Asy- lorn has been commnnicated to me by Mr. Kenton, surgeon to the Asylum : She is between 15 and 16 years old, has a very small head, but is well formed otherwise, and well nourished. She has little or no intellect, not bdng able to speak, and barely understanding a few signs. By careftil treatment she has been taught to feed herself, bnt there her education has reached its limit. She has been left to herself, and watched with a view to observe her natural habits. When alone in the garden, she chooses a quiet spot among the shrubs, and, sitting down, will bend forward with her small head be- tween her thighs, and occupy herself in picking imaginary insects from the adjacent parts of her body, pretending to pick them and to throw them away. She will then wander about, and finding a suitable bough, will swing by her hands, and then double her legs over the branch and swing with her head downward. She will steal any thing she fiincics, and hide it away ; will suddenly spring upon any child near and bite and scratch it, and then in a moment look as demure as if she had done nothing. At cer- tain times she will go nndcr the shrubs, scratch a bole with her hands in 3 60 BODY AND UND. and instincts iu inimt Whence was derived tlio jastinct which tauglit the idiot woman to gnnw through the nmbilioal cord ( Was it real); the reappearance of a primitiro instinct of BDiniid uatore — a faint echo from a faT'diataot past, t«sti- fjing to a kinship which mim has almost ontgrown, or baa grown too prond to acknowledge? No doubt such ammo] traita nro marks of extreme human dogencracj, but it is ao explanation to coll tlieu so ; degenerations come by law, and are as natural as natural law can make them. Inetead of passing them hj as abnormal, or, worse still, stigmatizing them as unnataral, it behooves us to seek for the scientific interpretation whieh they must certainly have, "Wben we reflect that every human brain does, in the course of its do- velopuient, pass throui;]i the snme stages as tlie brwns of other vertebrate animals, and that its transitional states te- ssmhle the permanent forms of their brains; and when we reflect further, that the stages of its development in the womb inaj be considered the abstract and brief chronicle of a series of dcrelopmcnti that have gone on tbrongh coontless ages in Nature, it does not seem so wonderful, as at the first blush it might do, that it should, when in a condition of arrested development, sometimes display animal instincts. Summing up, as it were, in itself the leading forms of the vertebrate type, there is truly a brate brain within the man's; and when the latter stops short of ita obarocteristie develop- ment as human — when it remains arrested at or below the level of an orang's brain — it may be presumed that it will manifest its most primitive functions, and no higher functioDS. tbo grnand, ail dawa Dpon It ae a cat do«», tbmi tun round nod circfult; corer the spot by ecrajilnR ths cmlhovoT It irlth her hands, Sho Icare her dathai np Into Blrtpi. uid hides the plecea, Mr. Kenton mentions nnothpr Idiot midcc hie care, who pau ererj thing to hla nose behire potting tt lata Ilia moatb. This he doss, not hnstiJy, bnl delitienllclr. eiaminlng etch piece or food carefully by Ui penaa of amell. He greatiy dlBllIiea bntter. Bud will not cut pEe-cniat or any coolied fbod wfa[cb contains batter, aod be delecUlti presence nllhcertainty by the acnae of amcU. Ho wtll not Mas aBT one illl he bit BnW«d at the person fireL CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT. 51 I am not aware of any other considerations than those jnst adduced which offer even the glimpse of an explanation of the origin of these animal traits in man. We need not, how- ever, confine onr attention to idiots only. Whence come the savage snarl, the destructive disposition, the ohscene lan- guage, the wild howl, the offensive habits, displayed by some of the insane ? Why should a human being deprived of his reason ever become so brutal in character as some do, unless he has the brute nature within him ? In most large asylums there is one, or more than one, example of a demented per- son who truly ruminates : bolting his food rapidly, he retires afterward to a comer, where at his leisure he quietly brings it up again into the month and masticates it as the cow does. I should take up a long time if I were to enumerate the various brute-like characteristics that are at times witnessed among the insane ; enough to say that some very strong facts and arguments in support of Mr. Darwin's views might be drawn from the field of morbid psychology. We may, with- out much difficulty, trace savagery in civilization, as we can trace animalism in savagery ; and, in the degeneration of in- sanity, in the unMnding, so to say, of the human kind, there are exhibited marks denoting the elementary instincts of its composition. It behooves us, as scientific inquirers, to realize distinctly the physical meaning of the progress of human intelligence from generation to generation. What structural differences in the brain are implied by it ? That an increasing purpose runs through the ages and that ^Hhe thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns,'' no one will call in question ; and that this progress has been accompanied by a progressive development of the cerebral hemispheres, the convolutions of which have increased in size, number, and complexity, will hardly now be disputed. Whether the frag- ments of ancient human crania which have been discovered in Europe do or do not testify to the existence of a barbarous race that disappeared before historical time, they certainly 53 BODY AND MIND. mark a, race not liiglicr than the lowest surviving iiiituaii ro- riclj. Br. PritDhard'B compariBon of the skutiH of the same nation at different periods of its history led him to the oon.- clnsion that the present inhabitants of Britain, "«ither as the result of mnny ages of great intelleotnal cultivation or from some other cause, have innch more capaciona hrain-casea than their forefathers." Yet stronger evidence of a growth of brain with the growth of intelligence is furnished by an ezainination of the brains of esisting eavagcg. Gratiolet has ligiired and descrihod the brain of the Ilotteutot Venus, vho was nowise an idiot. He found a striking simplicity and a regular arrangement of the convolution of the fVontal lobes, which presented an almost perfect symmetry in the two hemisphorea, involuntarily recalling tlie regularity and sym- metry of the cerebral oonvolntions in the lower animals. The brain was palpably inferior to that of a normally-de- veloped white woman, and could only be compared with the brain of a white idiotic from arrest of cerebral development. Ifr, Marsliall has also recently examined the brain of a Bush- woman, nnd has diacovered like evidence of atmetoral inferi- ority: the primary convolntions, although all present, were smaller and much less complicated than in the European ; the c:itcma1 connecting eonvolntions were stiU more Temsrk- ably defective ; the secondary snici and convolnHons were everywhere decidedly less developed ; there was a defidenoy of transverse commiDSural fibres ; and in size, and every one of the signs of comparative inferiority, " it leaned, as it were, to the higher qaadrnmanonB forma." Tlie developmental dif- ferences between this brain and the brain of a European were in fhct of the same kind as, though leas in degree than, those between the brain of an ape and tliat of a man. Among Enropeans tlio average weight of the brain is greater in edncat«d than in oneducated persons; its size — other cir- cumstances being eqnal — bearing a general relation to the mental power of the individnol. Dr. Thurnam concludes, fhim a sories of carefully-compiled tables, that while BRAIN-WEIGHTS. 63 the average weight of the brain in ordinarjj Europeans is 49 oz., it was 54.7 oz. in ten distinguished men; and Prof. Wagner found a remarkably complex arrangement of the convolutions in the brains of five very eminent men which he examined.* Thus, then, while we take it to be well established that the convolutions of the human brain have undergone a considerable development through the ages, we may no less justly conclude that its larger, more numer- ous, and complex convolutions reproduce the higher and more varied mental activity to the progressive evolution of which their progressive increase has answered — ^that tbey manifest the kind of fanotion which has determined the structure. The vesicular neurine has increased in quantity and in qual- ity, and the function of the increased and more highly-en- dowed structure is to display that intelligence which it un- * The following table is compiled firom Dr. ThnmAm^B paper " On the Weight of the Homan Brain ^* {Journal of Mental Science, April, 1866) : BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF DISTINQUISHED MEN. AgM. 0». 1. Ca?ier, Naturalist 63 64.5 2. Abercromble, Physidan 64 68 8. Sparzheim, Phyeidan 66 65.06 4. Dirichlet, MatJumatieian ..... 64 66.6 6. Be Momy, Stateeman and Courtier .... 50 58.6 6. Daniel Webster, Statesman ..... 70 58.5 7. Campbell, Lord- Chancellor 80 68.6 8. Chalmers, celebrated Preacher ..... 67 68 9. Fachs, Patholoffiet 53 53.9 10. Gauss, Mathematician 78 53.6 Average of ten distingoiahed men .... 50-70 54.7 Brain-weights ofayerage European men . . \^^ Sj Ayeragebrain-weight of male negroes 44.8 " " 14 congenital idiots (males) . . 43 8 '» " (females). . 41.3 Estimated brain-weight of Microcephalic idiocy (males) . . 37.5 " »* " " (females) . 82.5 It may be proper to add that the ayerage weight of the adult male brain is 10 per cent, greater than that of the female— 100 : 90. The brains of the Hottentot, Buslunaxi, and Australian are, so for as observation goes, of less weight than those of negroes. 51 BODY AND HL\D. i^onsciouslj enibodieH. The native AustruUaii, who in one of the lowest existing savages, has no words in hid Uagaage to oxpresB such exaltetl ideas as justice, lore, virtue, iiieto?; lie has no snch ideas in his miod, and caoDot comprehend them. The vesicnlar nenriae whidi shoold embody them in its con- Htitiition and manifest them in its function has not been de- Teloped in his convolutions; ho is as incapalilo tlierefore of the higher mental displays of abstract reaaoniag and moral feeling bb an idiot ia, and for a like reason. Indeed, were we to imagine a person bom in this country, at this time, with a brtdn of no higher development than the brain of on Aiib~ tralian savage or a Bushman, it is perfectly certain that he would be more or less of an imbecile. And the only way, I suppose, in which beings of so ]ov an order of devolopmeat could be raised to a civilized level of feeling and thought would bo by cultivation continued through several genera- tions; they would have to undergo a gradual process of hu- manization before they could attain to the capacity of civili> zation. Some, who one moment own freely the broad truth that all mental manifestations take place thrnngh the brain, go on, nevertheless, to strnigjitway deny that the conscience ot moral aensibilitj can be a function of organisation. But, if all mental operations are not in this world equolly fiinctiiMid of organizotion, I know not what warrant wc have for dc- claritig any to be so. The solution of the muoh-yexed ques- tion concerning the origin of the moral »ense seems to lie in the considerations jn St adduced. Are not, indeed, oar moral intuitions rosnits of the operation of the fundamental law of nervons organization by which that which is consoionsly fw- qnired becomes on nnconscious endowment, and ia then tranamitttid as more or less of an instinct to the next genera- tion! Thoy are esamplea of knowledge which has been hardly gained throngh the suffering and experience of the race, being now inherited as a natural or instinctive sensi- bility of the woll-constitutcil brnin of the individual, Tn tlie THE MORAL SENSE. 55 matter of onr moral feelings we are most ti*nly the heirs of the ages. Take the moral sense, and examine the actions which it sanctions and those which it forbids, and thns ana- lyze, or, as it were, decompose, its nature, and it will be fonnd that the actions which it sanctions are those which may be proved by sober reason to be conducive to the well-being and the progress of the race, and that its prohibitions fall upon the actions which, if freely indulged in, would lead to the degeneration, if not extinction, of mankind. And if we could imc^ne the human race to live back again to its ear- liest infancy — ^to go backward through all the scenes and experiences through which it has gone forward to its present height — and to give back from its mind and character at each time and circumstance, as it passed it, exactly that which it gained wjien it was there before — should we not find the fragments and exuviae of the moral sense lying here imd there along the retrograde path, and a condition at the beginning which, whether simian or humni., ^7as bare of al^ true moral feeling ? * We are daily witnesses of, and our daily actions testify to, the operation of that plastic law of nervous organization by which separate and successive acquisitions are combined and so intimately blended as to constitute apparently a sin- gle and undeoomposable faculty : we observe it in the forma- tion of our volitions ; and we observe it, in a more simple and less disputable form, in the way in which combinations of movements that have been slowly formed by practice are executed finally as easily as if they were a single and sim- ple movement. If the moral sense — ^which is derived, then, insomuch as it has been acquired in the process of human development through the ages — were not more or less innate in the well-bom individual of this age, if he were obliged to go, as the generations of his forefathers have gone, through * Foster, in bis " Essay on Decision of Character,'' makes this concep- tion of the individnal character, ahnost in the words nsed ; hnt the applica- tion of it to the race, and the conclnslon drawn, are of conrse not his. 5G BODY AND MISD. tlio clemMrtary process of acquiring it, he would ba very niQch in the position of a person who, on each occasion of writing his name, had to go tbrongh the Elementary Bteps of learning to do eo. The progressive evolution of the human brain ia a proof that wo do iiibcrit as b natnral endowment the labored atiquiaitiona of our ancestors; the added stmot- ure represents, as it were, tlio embodied eiperienoe and memories of the race; and there is no greater difficulty in believing that the moral sense may hare heen so formed, than in believing, what has long been known and is admitted on all hands, that the yonag fos or yonng dog inherits as an in - stinet the special cunning which the foxes and the dogs that hare gone before it have had to win by hard experience. These remarks are not an nnnecessary digression. Nor will they have been made in vain if they serve to fix in onr minds the conviction that the law of progressive evolution and specialization of nerve-centres, which may be traced generally from the flret appearance of nerve-tisstie in the low- est animals to the complex stracture of the nervons system of man, and specially from the rudimentary appearance of cerebral convolntions in the lower vertebrata to the numer- ous and complex convolutiona of the human brain, does not abruptly cease its action at the vesicular nonrino of the hemi- spheres, but continues in force within tjie intimate recesses of the mental organization. Moreover, they are specially to the purpose, seeing that they enable us to understand in some sort how it is that a perversion or destruction of the moral sense is often one of the earliest symptoms of mental derange- ment : ga the latest and moat eiqnisite product of mental or- ganization, the highest bloom of culture, it is the first to testify to disorder of the mind-centres. Not that wo can de- tect ony structural change in such case; it is far too delicate for that. The wonder would, indeed, be if we could diaoover such more than minroacopical changes with the inatraments of research which we yet possess. We might almost aa well look to discover the anatomy of a gnat with a telescope. INSANE NEUROSIS. 57 I purposely selected for consideration the defective brain of the idiot, because it eidiibits an undeniable fault of struct- ure, which is often plainly traceable to evil ancestral in- fluences. When we duly consider this, and reflect that we might, if we chose, arrange a series of human brains which should present a regular gradation from the brain of an ape to that of a well-developed European, are we not folly justi- fied in supposing that like unfavorable ancestral influences may occasion defects in the constitution or composition of the mind-centres which we are yet quite unable to detect ? We know nothing of the occult molecular movements which are the physical conditions of our mental operations; we know little or nothing of the chemical changes which accom- pany them — cannot, in fact, detect the difference between the nerve-element of a brain exhausted by exercise and in- capable of further function, and that of a brain reinvigorated by sleep and ready for a day of energetic function ; and we know nothing of the intricate connection of nerve-cells in the hemispheres. It is plain, then, that there may be, unknown to us save as guessed from their effects, the most important modifications in the molecular activities of nerve-element, changes in its chemical composition, and actual defects in the physical constitutaon of the nerve-centres. Wherefore, when no appreciable defect is found in the brain of one who has had a strong predisposition to insanity, and has ultimately died insane, it behooves us to forbear a hasty conclusion that it is a perfectly well-constituted brain. Close to us, yet in- accessible to our senses, there lies a domain of Kature — ^that of the infinitely little — the operations in which are as much beyond our present ken as are those that take place in tho remotest regions of space, to whicli the eye, with all its aids, cannot yet reach, and of which the mind cannot conceive. It certainly cannot be disputed that, when nothing abnor- mal whatever may be discoverable in the brains of persons who have a strong hereditary tendency to insanity, they often exhibit characteristic peculixkrities in their manner of 5S BOUT ASD MISD. tboaght, feeling, nod coDduct, carrjing iu their phjsiogiLomr, bodilj habit, and mctttol dispositioQ, the Bure marks of their evil herilngc. Ttieso mtirka arc, I believe, the outward and visible signs of nn inward and invisible pecnlisrity of cerebral organization. Here, indeed, we broach a most important in- quiry, which has only lately attracted attention — the inqniry, namely, into the physical and mental signs of the degeneracy of the human kind. I do not mean to assert that all persona whose parents or blood relatives have suffered from nervous or mental disease exhibit mental and bodily peculiarities; some may be wall formed liodily and of snperior notarol in- telligence, tho hereditary disposition in them not having assumed the character of deterioration of race ; l>ut it admits of no dispute that there is what may be called an inmna ttmperamcnt or neurosis, and that it is marked by pecnliari- ties of mental and bodily conformation. Uorel, who was the first to indicate, and has done much to prowcute, this line of inquiry, looks apon an individual so constituted as containing in himself the germs of a morbid variety : summing np the pathological elements which have been manlfi'sted by his an- cestors, he represents the first tenn of a series which, if nothing happen to check the transmission of degenerate ele- ments from generation to generation, ends in tho extreme degeneracy of idiocy, and in extinction of the family. Wliat are the bodily and mental murks of the insane temperament! That there ore such is most certain; for although the varieties of this temperament cannot yet be described with any precision, no one who accustoms himself to observe closely will fail to bo able to say positively, in many instances, whether an insane person, ond even a sane person in some instances, comes of an insane family or not An irregular and unsymmctrioal conformation of the head, a want of regularity and harmony of the features, nnd, as Morel holds, malformations of the external ear, are sometimes ob- served. Convulsions are apt to occur in early life, and there e tics, grimaces, or other spaBinodic movements of muscles THE INSANE TEMPERAMENT. 59 of face, eyelids, or lips, afterward. BtammeriDg and defects of pronunciation are also sometimes signs of the neurosis. In other oases there are pecnliarities of the eyes, which, though they may be fall and prominent, have a yacillating movement, and a vacantly-abstracted, or half-fearftd, half- sttspicions, and distrnstfal look« There may, indeed, be something in the eye wonderfully suggestive of the look of an animal. The walk and manner are uncertain, and, though not easily described in words, may be distinctly peculiar. With these bodily traits are associated peculiarities of thought, feeling, and conduct. Without being insane, a person who has the insane neurosis strongly marked is thought to be strange, queer, and not like other persons. He is apt to see things under novel aspects, or to think about them under novel relations, which would not have occurred to an ordinary mortal. Panning on words is, I am inclined to think, some- times an indication of the temperament, and so also that liigher kind of wit which startles us with the use of an idea in a double sense ; of both which aptitudes no better example can be given than, that of Charles Lamb. His case, too, may show that the insane temperament is compatible with, and indeed it not seldom coexists with, considerable genius. Even those who have it in a more marked form often exhibit re- markable special talents and aptitudes, such as an extraor- dinary talent for music, or for calculation, or a prodigious memory for details, when they may be little better than im- becile in other things. There is, indeed, a marked instinctive character in all they think and do ; they seem not to need or to be able to reflect upon their own mental states. At one time unduly elated, at another time depressed without ap- parent cause, they are prone to do things differently from the rest of the world ; and now and then they do whimsical and seemingly quite purposeless acts, especially under con- ditions of excitement, when the impulses springing out of the unconscious morbid nature surprise and overpower them. Indeed, the mental balance may bo easily upset altogether by 60 BODT AKD hind. I any great moral eliock, or by the strain of continued anxiety. A great pbyaioal change io the syatem, too, such ae is caoBed by the development of puberty, by the puerperal state, and the climacteric change, is not without danger to tboir mental Btability. The cffocta of alcohol on such peraona are in soma respects special : it docs not makti them ao much drunk as mad for the time being ; and I think it will be found in most, if not all, cases of insanity caused by alcohol that there has been a prediaposition to it. 1 have sketched generally the featnrea of the insane temperament, but there are rennj several varieties of it which need to be observed and described. In praetico we meet with individuals representing every gradation from the mild- est form of the insane temperament down to actual idiocy. These cases ought to be arranged in groups according to their affinities, for nntil this bo done we shall not make much real progresa toward exact eciontific notions respecting the cauaa- tion and pathology of insanity. One group might consist of those egotistic beings, having the insane neurosis, who mani- fest B peculiar morbid suspicion of every thing and every- body; they detect an interested or maliciouB motive in the most innocent actions of others, always looking out for on evil interpretation ; and even events they regard as in a sort of conspiracy against them. Incapable of altruistic reflec- tion and true sympathies, they live a life of solitude and aelf- hrooding, intrenched within their morbid self-feeling, until the discord between them and the world is so great that there ia nothing for it but to count them mad. Another group might be made of those persons of unsound mental temperament ■who are liom with an entire absence of the moral sense, destitute of the possibility even of moral feeling; they are as truly inseusiblo to the moral relations of life, as defi- cient in this regard, as a person color-blind is to corttun colora, or as one who is without eor for music is to the finest harmonies of sound. Although there is uanaOy conjoined with this absence of moral sensibility more or less weakness MORAL DEFECTS. 61 of mind, it does happen in some instances that there is a re- markablj acnte intellect of the cunning type. The observations of intelligent prison-snrgeons are tend- ing more and more to prove that a considerable proportipn of criminals are weak-minded or epileptic, or come of families in which insanitj, epilepsy, or some other nenrosis, exists. Mr. Thompson, surgeon to the General Prison of Scotland, has gone so far recently as to express his conviction that the principal business of prison-surgeons must always be with mental defects or disease ; that the diseases and causes of death among prisoners are chiefly of the nervous system; and, in fine, that the treatment of crime is a branch of psy- chology. He holds that there is among criminals a distinct and incurable criminal class, marked by peculiar low physical and mental characteristics; that crime is hereditary in the families of criminals belonging to this class; and that this hereditary crime is a disorder of mind, having close relations of nature and descent to epilepsy, dipsomania, insanity, and other forms of degeneracy. Such criminals are really morbid varieties, and often exhibit marks of physical degeneration — spinal deformities, stammering, imperfect organs of speech, club-foot, cleft-palate, hare-lip, deafiiess, paralysis, epilepsy, and scrofula. Moreau relates a striking case, which is of in- terest as indicating the alliance between morbid or degenerate varieties, and which I may quote here. Mrs. D , aged thirty-two. Her grandfather kept an inn at the time of the great French Bevolution, and during the Beign of Terror he had profited by the critical situation in which many nobles of the department found ^thiBmselves to get them secretly into his house, where he was believed to have robbed and murdered them. His daughter, who was in his secrets, having quarrelled with him, denounced him to the authorities, but he escaped conviction from want of proofs. She subsequently committed suicide. One of her brothers had nearly murdered her with a knife on one occasion, and another brbther hanged himself. Her sister was epileptic, 62 BOOT AKD ULVD, imbecilf, and parosyemtiJly violent. Hor daughter, tbo pa- tient, after Bwlmining in the head, noises in the oars, flaabes before tlie eje?, became deranged, fancying that people wore jdatCing against her, purchasing anna and barricading herself in her room, and woa linally put in an anjlani. Thus there were, in different members of this fatnilj, crime, melancholia, epilepsy, snicide, and mania. Ki'cd we wonder at itl The moral element is an eesential port of a complete and sound character; he who is destitute of it, being unquestionably to that extent a defective being, is therefore on the road to, or marks, race degenoriusy ; ond it is not a matter of maoh won- der that his children should, when better influences do not intervene to check the morbid tendency, exhibit a further de- gree of degeneracy, and be actual morbid varieties. I think that no one who has stadied closely the causation of insanity will question this mode of production. I could not, if I would, in the present Btato of knowledge, describe accurately all the characteristics of the insane neu- rosis, and group according to their affinities the cases testify- ing to its influence. The chief concern now with its morbid pecntiarities is to point out, first, that tbey mark some inher- ited fault of broin-organizatioD ; and, secondly, that the canse of Buoh fault is not insanity alone in the parent, but may be other nervous disease, such as hysteria, epilepsy, alcoholism, paralysis, and neuralgia of all kinds. Except in the cose of snicidal insanity, it is not nsaal for the parent to transmit to the child the particular form of mental derangement from whioli he has suffered : insanity in the parent may bo epilepaj in the child, and epilepsy in the parent insanity in the cluld; and, in families where a etrong tendency to insanity exists, one member may be insane, another epileptic, a third may suffer from severe neuralgia, and a fourth may commit sai- eide. The morbid conditions which affect the motor nerve- centres in one generation eecin to concentrate themselves sometimes upon the sensory or the ideational ceutrca in an- other. In truth, nervous disooao is a veritahle Proteus, dis- TKANSITORY IFURY. 63 appearing in one form to reappear in another, and, it may be, dapricionslj skipping one generation to fasten npon the next. The different forms of insanity that occur in young chil- dren — as all forms of it except general paralysis may do— are almost always traceable to nervous disease in the preceding generation, a neuropathic condition being really the essential element in their causation. The cases of acute mania in chil- dren of a few weeks or a few years old, which have been de- scribed, might more properly be classed as examples of idiocy with excitement. There can be no true mania until there is some mind. But we do meet sometimes in older children Avith a genuine acute mania, occurring usually in connection with chorea or epilepsy, and presenting the symptoins, if I may so express it, of a mental chorea or an epilepsy of the mind, but without the spasmodic and convulsive movements of these diseases. More or less dulness of intelligence and apathy of movement, giving the seeming of a degree of imbe- cility, is common enough in chorea, and in some cases there is violent delirium ; but, besides these cases, there are others in which, without choreic disorder of movements, there is a choreic mania : it is an active delirium of ideas which is the counterpart of the usual delirium of movements, and its auto- matic character and its marked incoherence are striking enough to an ordinary observer. Hallucinations of the spe- cial senses, and loss or perversion of general sensibility, usu- ally accompany the delirium, the disorder affecting the cen- tres of special and general sensation, as well as the mind-cen- tres. Between this choreic mania and epileptic mania there are intermediate conditions partaking more or less of the charac- ter of one or the other — ^hybrid forms of a cataleptic nature. The child will lie for hours or days in a seeming ecstasy or trance, with its limbs rigid or fixed in a strange posture. There may be apparent insensibility to impressions, while at other times vague answers are given, or there is a sadden bursting out into wild shrieks or incoherent ravhig. If this fit BODY AXD MIN'D. be of a religious kind, the cliild is apt to be thouglit bj ig> norant persoiis to be isapired. The uttacka are of Yoriable duration, and are repeated at Tai'TJng inten'als. On the one hand, they pass into attacka of chorea; and, on the other hand, into true epileptic aeizursB, or alternate with then. In cbUdren, as in adults, a brief attack of violent mania, a genuine mania tranritoria, maj precede, or follow, or take the place of an epileptic fit ; in the latter case being a masked epilepsy. Children of three or four years of age are some- times seized with attacks of violent shrieking, desperate stubbornness, or furious rage, when they bite, tear, kick, and do all the destmction they ean ; these sci7ures, which are a sort of vieariona epilepay, come on periodically, and may either pass inthe coarse ofafew months into regular epilepsy, or may alternate with it. Older children have perpetrated crimes of a savage and determined nature — incendiarism and even murder — under the influence of ainiilar attacka of tran- sitory fury, followed or not by epileptic convulsions. It is of the utmost importance to realize the deep effect which the epileptic neurosis may have on the moral character, and to keep in mind the poasibility of its csistcnce when a savage, apparently motiveless, and nnnccountable crime has been committed, A single epileptic seizure has been known to change entirely the moral character, rendering a child rude, vidous, and perverse, who was hitherto gentle, amiable, and tractable. No one who has eeen it can fail to have been stmek with the great and abrupt change in moral character which takes place in the asylum epileptic immediately before the recurrence of his fits ; in the intervals between them he is often an amiable, obliging, and industrious being, but when they impend he becomes sullen, morose, and most dangerous to meddle with. Not an attendant but can then foretell that ho is going to have his fits, as confidently almost as he can foretell that the sun will rise next daj'. Morel haa made the interesting observation, which is certainly well founded, that t^ epUeptio neorosisimay exist for a con^deisble period in INSANE NEUROSIS. 65 an undeveloped or masked form, showing itself, not by con- vulsions, but by periodic attacks of mania, or by manifesta- tions of extreme moral perversion, which are apt to be thought wilful viciousness. But they are not : no moral in- fluence will touch them; they depend upon a morbid physical condition, which can only have a physical cure ; and they get their explanation, and indeed justification, afterward, when actual epilepsy occurs. ' The epileptic neurosis is certainly most closely allied to the insane neurosis; and when it exists in its masked form, af- fecting the mind for some time before convulsions occur, it is hardly possible to distinguish it from one form of the insane neurosis. The difficulty of doing so is made greater, inas- much as epilepsy in the parent may engender the insane neurosis in the child, and insanity in the parent the epileptic neurosis in the child. A character which the insane neurosis has in common with the epileptic neurosis is, that it is apt to burst out in a convulsive explosion of violence ; that when it develops into actual insanity it displays itself in deeds rather than in words — ^in an insanity of action rather than of thought. It is truly a neurosis spasmodiea. Take, for ex- ample, a case which is one of a class, that of the late Alton murderer, who, taking a walk one fine afternoon, met some little girls at play, enticed one of them into a neighboring hop-garden, there murdered her and cut her body into frag- ments, which he scattered about, returned quietly home, openly washing his hands in the river on the way, made an entry in his diary, " Killed a little girl ; it was fine and hot ;" and, when forthwith taken into custody, confessed what he had done, and could give no reason for doing it. At the trial it was proved that his father had had an attack of acute mania, and that another near relative was in confinement, suffering from homicidal mania. He himself had been noted as peculiar; he had been subject to fits of depression, been prone to weep without apparent reason, and had exhibited singula caprices of conduct ; and it had onoe been necessary ae BODY AND MIKD. tu walcb tiiiu from fenr that lie mi^lit commit suicide. IIo was not insane in the legal or the ordinary sense of tlie term, but he certainly liad tlie Inaase neuroais, and it may be presumed confldently that lie would, hnd lie lived, bave be- come insane. Those who have practiciJ experienoo of iuBanity know well that there is b most distressing form of the diseiue ; in which a despernte impulse to corarait suicide or homicid« overpowers acd talces prisoner the reason. Ttie terrible im- pulse is deplored sometimeB by bim who suffers from it as deeply aa by any one who witneasea it; it cnnses bim unspeak- able distroaa ; he is fidly conseious of its nature, and struggles in vain against it ; his reason is no further affected than in havrng lost power to eonlro!, or having become the slave of, the morbid and convulsive impulse. It may be that thia form of derangement does sometimea occur where there is no he- reditary predisposition to insanity, but there can be no doubt that in the great mtyority of cases of the kind there is auch & neuropathic state. The impulse is truly a convulsive idea, aprin^ng from a morbid condition of nerve-element, and it ia strictly comparable with an epileptic convulsion. How grossly unjust, then, the judicial criterion of responsibility which dooms an insane person of this class to death if he knew what he was doing when he committed a murder I It were as reasonable to hang a man for not stopping by on act of will a convulsion of which ho was conscioos. An interest- ing circnrastanco in connection with this morbid impulse is that its convulsive activity is sometimes preceded by a feeling very like the aura epileptiea — a atrange morbid sensation, beginning in some part of the body, and rising gradually to tlie brain. The patient may accordingly give warning of the impeudtng attack in some instances, and in one case waa calmed by having his thumbs loosely tied together with a ribbon when the forewarning occurred. Dr. Skae records an inatruetivo enample in one of Lis annual reports. The feeling began at the tocti, roac gradually to the chest, producing a AURA EFILEPTICA. 67 sense of &iatness and constriction, and then to the head, pro- ducing a monjentary loss of conscionsness. This anra was accompanied by an involnntary jerking — ^first of the legs, and then of the arms. It was when these attacks came on that the patient felt impelled to commit some act of violence against others or himself. On one occasion he attempted to commit suicide by throwing himself into the water; moro often the impulse was to attack others. He deplored his con- dition, of which he spoke with great intelligence, giving all the details of his past history and feelings. In other cases a feeling of vertigo, a trembling, and a vague dread of something fear- ful being about to happen, resembling the vertigo and mo- mentary vague despair of one variety of the epileptic aura, precede the attack. Indeed, whenever a murder has been committed suddenly, without premeditation, without malice, without motive, openly, and in a way quite different from the way in which murders are commonly done, we ought to look carefully for evidence of previous epilepsy, and, should there have been no epileptic fits, for evidence of an aura epi- lepUca and other symptoms allied to epilepsy. It is worth while observing that in other forms of insanity, when we look closely into the symptoms, there are not un- frequently complaints of strange, painful, and distressing sensations in some part of the body, which appear to have a relation to the mental derangement not unlike that which the epileptic aura has to the epileptic fit. Common enough is a distressing sensation about the epigastrium : it is not a definite pain, is not comparable strictly to a bumiug, or weight, or to any known sensation, but is an indescribable feeling of distress to which the mental troubles are referred. It sometimes rises to a pitch of anguish, when it abolishes the power to think, destroys the feeling of identity, and causes such unspeakable suffering and despair that suicide is at- tempted or accomplished. In other cases the distressing and indescribable sensation is in the crown of the head or down the spine, and sometimes it arises from the pelvic organs. In 68 BODY AXD MISD. all coses the patients connect their niontal trouble with it, regarding it as the cause of the painful confasion of thought, the utter inability of exertion, the diBtrcHsing ideas, and the paroxysm of despair. Perhaps they exaggerate its impor- tance; but there can be little doubt that writcTB on mental disorders, too exclnsively occnpied with the prominent men- tal features, liave not hitherto given sufficient attention to these anomolons sensations. We have been, opt to class them as hypoi;hondriacal, and to pass them over as of no special signifleanco; butloannothelp thinking that, properly studied, they may sometimes teach us mora of the real nature of the partioolar form of insanity — of its probable course, termina- tion, and its most suitable treatment — than many much more obtrnsive symptoms. In bringing this lecture to an end, I may fitly point out how entirely thus far the observation of the phenomena of de- fective and disordered mind proves their essential dependence on defective and disordered brain, and how closely they are related to some other disordered nervons functions. The insane neurosis which the child inherits in consequence of its par- ent's insanity is as sorely a defect of physical nature as is the epileptic neurosis to which it is so closely allied. It is an indisputable though extreme fact that certain human beings are bom witli anch a native deficiency of mind that all the training and education in the world will not raise them to the height of brutes; and I believe it to be not less true that, in consequence of evil ancestral influences, individuals arc bom with such a flaw or warp of Natnre that nil the care in the world will not prevent them from being vicious or crimi- nal, or becoming insane. Education, it is true, ruay do ranch, and the circumstances of life may do much ; but we cannot forget that the foundations on which the acquisitions of education mnst rest are not acquired, but inherited. No one can escape tho tyranny of his organijation ; no one can elude the destiny that is innate in him, and which uncon- soloualy and irresistibly shapes his ends, even when he be- TYRANNY OF ORGANIZATION. 69 lieves that he is determiiimg them with consummate fore- sight and skill. A well-grounded and comprehensive theory of mind must recognize and embrace these facts ; they meet us every moment of our lives, and cannot be ignored if we are in earnest in our attempts to construct a mental science ; and it is because metaphysical mental philosophy has taken no notice whatever of them, because it is bound by the prin- ciple of its existence as a philosophy to ignore them, that, notwithstanding the labor bestowed on it, it has borne no fruits — ^that, as Bacon said of it, " not only what was asserted once is asserted still, but what were questions once are ques- tions still, and, instead of being resolved by discussion, are only fixed and fed." 72 BOOT AND MIND. and disordered movemenlB there is alwajs somu degree of moral perversion. Tliu increases until it swallows up the other symptoms : the patient loses more and more of b^r energy and self-control, becoming capriciously fanciful abotit lier licaltli, imagining or feigning strange diseases, and keep- ing Dp the delasion or the iupostarc with a pertinacity thtit might seem incredible, getting more and more impatient uf the odrice and interference of others, and indifferent to the interests and duties of her position. Outbursts of t«mper become almost ontbreats of mania, particularly at the men- strual periods. An erotic tinge may be observable in her manner of behavior; and occssionallj there are qnasi- ecstatio or cataleptic states. It is an easily-curable form of derangement if the patient be removed in time from the ans- iouB hut hnrtM sympathies and attentions of her family, and placed under good moral control ; but, if it bo allowed to go on unchecked, it will end in dementia, and it is especially apt to do so when there is a marked hereditary predisposition. In some instances we observe a curious connection be- tween insanity and nearnlgia, not unlike that which, existing between opUepsy and a special form of neuralgia, induced Trousseau to describe the latter as epileptifonn. I have un- der observation now a lady who suffered for some time from an intense neuralgia of the left half of the face ; after tbe removal of b tooth saspected to be at tlie root of the mis- chief the pain ceased, but an attack of melancholia immedi- ately followed. Griesinger mentions a similar case of a gen- tieman under liis care, in whom a donble occipital neuralgia was followed by a melancholic state of mind. In his " Con». montariea on Insanity," Dr. Burrows tells of a very eloqnent divine who was always maniacal when free from pains in the spine, and sane when the pains returned to that site. And tbe late Sir B. Brodie mentions two coses of a similar kind : in one of them a neuralgia of the vertebral column alter- nated with true insanity. These cases appear to be instances of the transference of morbid action from one nerve-centre to TRANSFORMATION OF NEUROSES. 73 another, such as Dr. Darwin formerly noticed and commented on. "Mrs. ^," he says, "was seized every day, about the same hour, with violent pain in the right side of her bow- els, about the situation of the lower edge of the liver, with- out fever, which increased for an hour or twoj till it became quite intolerable. After violent screaming she fell into con- vulsions, which terminated sometimes in fainting, with or without stertor, as in common epilepsy; at other times a temporary insanity supervened, which continued about half an hour, and the fit ceased." It seems not unreasonable to suppose that the morbid action in the sensory centres, which the violent neuralgia implied, was at one time transferred to the motor centres, giving rise to convulsive movements, and at another time to the mind-centres, giving rise to convulsive ideas. There is a form of neuralgia which is the analogue of a convulsion, and there is a mania which is the counterpart, in the highest nerve-centres, of neuralgia and convulsions in their respective centres. Perhaps if we had the power in some cases of acute insanity to induce artificially a violent neuralgia, or general convulsions — to transfer the morbid ac- tion from the mind-centres — we might, for the time being at any rate, cure the insanity. I pass on now to exhibit the effects of organic sympathies in the causation of mental disorders, or rather the specific effects of particular organs upon the features of different forms of insanity. In my first lecture I pointed out that there is the closest physiological consent of functions be- tween the different organs ; that the brain, as the organ of mind, joins in this consent ; and that our ideas and feelings are obtmned by the concurrence of impressions from the internal organs of the body and the external organs of the senses. The consequence is, that derangement of an internal organ, acting upon the brain, may engender, by pathological sympathy, morbid feelings and their related ideas. The mental effects may be general or specific : a general emotional depression through which all ideas loom gloomy, of which 4 u BODY AND MIND, every one's experience teatifiea; and a special morbid feeling with its particular sympathetic ideas, of wliich the phent una cf dreaming nnd insauitj yield illnstrations. The Blight ehades of thie kiad of morbid inflacnce we, c not venture to trace ; bnt it is easy to recognize the m miiTked effects. Talie, for example, the irritation of oraries or uterns, which ia Bometimes tlie direct occasion of njftnpAo- mania — a disease hj which the most chaste nnd modest woman is transformed into a raging ftiry of lust. Some ob- servers have, without sufBoient reason 1 tliink, made of nj/mphotnania e, special variety, grouping under the t«r)n cases in which it was a prominent symptom. But it cert^nlj occurs in forms of mania that are quite distinct— in pnerperal mania, for example, in epileptic mania, and in the ma sometimes met with in old women ; and the cases in whiclt it does occur have not sach cliarftcteristic features as warrant the formation of a definite gronp. We have, indeed, to note and bear in mind how often sexual ideas and feelings ai nnd display themselves in all sorts of insanity; how they connect themselves with ideas which in & normal mental state have no known relation to tliem ; so tliat it seems inexplicable that a virtuona person should ever have learned, as it is distressing that she should manifest, so much obscenity of thought nnd feeling. Perhaps it is that sncii ideas are i cited sympathetically in a morbidly active brain by nnrelated ideas, just as, in other nervous disorders, sympathetic morbid sensations and moveraenta occur in parts distant fi'om the seat of the primary irritation. Considering, too, what t important agent in the evolution of mind the sexual feeling is, how much of thought, feeling, and energy it remotely in- spires, there is leaa cause for wonder at the naked interven- tion of ita simple impulses in the phenomena of mania, when ooSrdination of function is abolished in the supreme centres, and the mind resolved, as it were, into its primitive animal elements. This should teach us to take care not to attribute too hastily the sexual feelings to a morbid irritatioii of the INSANITY OF PUBESCENCE. 75 sexual organs. It is plain that thej may have a purely cen- tral origin, just as the excitation of them in health maj pro- ceed from the mind. Here, in fact, as in other cases, we must bear in mind the reciprocal influence of mind on organ, and of organ on mind. The great mental revolution which occurs at puberty may go beyond its physiological limits, in some instances, and become pathological. The vague feelings, blind longings, and obscure impulses, which then arise in the mind, attest the awakening of an impulse which knows not at first its aim or the means of its gratification ; a kind of vague and yearning melancholy is engendered, which leads to an abandonment to poetry of a gloomy Byronic kind, or to indulgence in inde- finite religious feelings and aspirations. There is a want of some object to fill the void in the feelings, to satisfy the undefined yearning — a need of something to adore; con- sequently, where there is no visible object of worship the invisible is adored. The time of this mental revolution is, at best, a trying period for youth ; and, where there is an in- herited infirmity of nervous organization, the natural dis- turbance of the mental balance may easily pass into actual destruction of it. The form of derangement connected with this period of life I believe to be either a fanciful and quasi-hysterical melancholia, which is not very serious when it is properly treated ; or an acute mania, which is apt to be recurrent, and is much more serious. The former occurs especially in girls, if it be not peculiar to them ; there are periods of depression and paroxysms of apparently causeless weeping, alternating with times of undue excitability, more especially at the menstrual periods; a disinclination is evinced to work, to rational afliusement, to exertion of any kind ; the behavior is capricious, and soon becomes perverse and wilful ; the natural afiections seem to be blunted or abolished, the patient taking pleasure in distressing those whose feelings she would most consider when in health; and, although there are no fixed 76 BODY AND MIND. delusions, lliero are unfounded Hugpiciona or feors and chan- ging morbid fancies. Tbo aniiuns sympathies of those most dear are apt to foster the morbid self-feeling which oruTea them, and thus to aggravate the disease: what such patienU need to learn is, not the indulgence but a forgetfulneaa of their feelings, not the ohservBtion but the renunciation self, not introspoetion but useful action. In some of theao oases, where the disease baa become chronic, delndons of aexuttl origin occur, and the patient whose virginitj is intact imagines that she is pregnant or has had a babj. The morbid solf-fedlng that bos its root in the sexual s;^- tem is not unapt to take on a religious guise. Wo observe esamples of tliis in certain members of those latter-day reli- gious sects wliich profess to commingle reli^on and love, and which especiullj abound in jimcrica. No physiologist < well doubt that the holy kiss of love in such coses owee all its warmth to the sexual feeling which consciously or unci scioosly inspires it, or that the mystical union of the se: lies very close to a union that is nowise mystical, when it does not lead to madness. A similar intimate connection between fanotical religious exaltation and sexual excitement is exe plified by the lives of sueh religious enthusiasts as St. Theresa and 8t. Catherine de Sienne, whoso nightly trances and visions, in which they believed themselves received as verita- ble Bponses into the bosom of Christ and transported into an nnspealiablo ecstasy by the touch of ITia sacred lips, attested, though they knew it not, the influenoe of excited sexual or- gans on the mind. More extreme examples of a like patho- logical action are afforded by those insane women who he- licTO thom^^elvea to be visited by lovers or ravished by perse- cutors during the night. Bexual liaUucinatiuns, betraying on ovarian or uterine excitement, might almost b« described as the characteristic feature of tlie insanity of old maids; tlio false visions of unreal indulgence being engendered probably in the same way as visions of banquets occur in the dreams of a starving person, or as visions of cooling streams lo ono PERIODIC INSANITY. 77 who is perishing of thirst. It soems to be the fact that, d- thougli women bear sexual excesses better than men, the7 suffer more than men do from the entire deprivation of sexual intercourse. The development of puberty may lead indirectly to insanity by becoming the occasion of a vicious habit of self-abuse in men ; and it is not always easy to say in such cases how much of the evil is due to pubescence and how much to self-abuse. But the form of mental derangement directly traceable to self-abuse has certainly characteristic features. There are no acute symptoms, the onset of the disease being most grad- ual. The patient becomes offensively egotistic and impracti- cable ; he is full of self-feeling and self-conceit ; insensible to the claims of others upon him, and of his duties to them ; interested only in hypochondriacally watching his morbid sensations, and attending to his morbid feelings. His mental energy is sapped; and though he has extravagant pretensions, arid often speaks of great projects engendered by his con- ceit, he never works systematically for any aim, but exhibits an incredible vacillation of conduct, and spends his days in indolent and suspicious self-brooding. His relatives he thinks hostile to him, because they do not take the interest in his sufferings which he craves, nor yield sufficiently to his pre- tensions, but perhaps urge him to some kind of work ; he is utterably incapable of conceiving that he has duties to them. As matters get worse, the general suspicion of the hostility of people takes more definite form, and delusions spring up that persons speak offensively of him, or watch him in the street, or comment on what passes in his mind, or play tricks upon him by electricity or mesmerism, or in some other mys- terious way. His delusions are the objective explanation, by wrong imagination, of the perverted feelings. Messages may be received from Heaven by peculiar telegraphic signals ; and there are occasionally quasi-cataleptic trances. It is strange what exalted feelings and high moral and religious aims these patients will often declare they have, who, incapa- 78 BODY AND MIND, bio of reforming tliemaelvea, are ready to refurm the world, A later and worse stage is one of moody or vacant self-ab- Borption, and of eitremo loss of mental power. They are Bjlont, or, if they conrerao, they diisoover delusions of a sns- pioious or ohseeae character, the perverted aexQiU passion still Riving the color to their thonght». They die miserable wrechs at the lart. ThU ia aform of inmnity which oertdnly had its apeciol exciting cause and its characteristic featnres ; nevertheleas, I think tliat Bolf-aboae seldom, if ever, produces it without the cooperation of the insane neurosis. The monthly activity of the ovaries which marlcB the ad- vent of puberty in women has a notable eficct upon the luiad and body; wherefore it may become an important caose of mental and physical derangement. Most women at that time are sosceptible, irritable, and capricions, any cause of Te.vation affecting them more seriously than usual ; and some who have the insane neurosis exhibit a disturbance of mind which amounts almost to disease. A sudden snppre's- aion of the menses has produced a direct explosion of insan- ity ; or, oconrring some time before an outbreak, it may be an important link in its causation. It is a matter also of com- mon experience in asylnms, that esacerbntions of insanity often take place at the menstrual periods ; but whether there is a particular variety of mental derangement connected with disordered menstmation, and, if bo, what are its special fea- tures, we are not yet in a position to say positivelr. There is certainly a recurrent mania, which seems sometimes to have, in regard to its origin and the times of its attacks, a relation to the menstraal function, suppression or irregularity of which often accompanies it ; and it is an obvious prcsnmp- tiun that the mania may be a sympathetic morbid effect of the ovarian and uterine excitement, and may represent an exaggeration of the mental irritability which is natural to women at that period. The patient becomes elated, hila- rious, talkative, passing soon from that condition into a state of acnte and noiay mania, which may last for two or three RECURRENT INSANITY. 79 weeks or longer, and then sinking into a brief stage of more or less depression or confasion of mind, from which she awakens to calmness and clearness of mind. In vain we flatter ourselves with the hope of a complete recovery ; after an interval of perfect lucidity, of varying duration in diflfer- ent cases, the attack recurs, goes through the same stages, and ends in the same way, only to be followed by other at- tacks, until at last, the mind being permanently weakened, there are no longer intervals of entire lucidity. Could we stop the attacks, the patient might still regain by degrees mental power ; but we cannot. All the resources of our art fail to touch them, and I know no other form of insanity which, having so much the air of being curable, thus far de- fies all eflforts to stay its course. We should be apt to con- clude that it was connected with the menstrual function, were it not that periodicity is more or less the law of all ner- vous diseases, that its attacks often recur at uncertain inter- vals, and, more decisive still, that it is not confined to women, but occurs perhaps as often in men. Whether connected or not, however, in any way with the generative functions, it certainly presents features of relationship to epilepsy, and occurs where the insane neurosis exists ; and, if I were to describe it in a few words, I should designate it an epilepsy of the mind. Its recurrence more or less regularly ; the uniformity of the prodromata and of the symptoms of the attack, each being almost an exact image of the other ; its comparatively brief duration ; the mental torpor or confu- sion which follows it, and the ignorance or denial sometimes, on the part of the patient, of his having had the attack ; the temporary recovery; and the undoubted fact that it often occurs where there is evidence of an insane neurosis pro- duced by epilepsy, or insanity, or both, in the family ; these are facts which support the opinion of its kinship to epilepsy. I have under my care an unmarried lady who for many years has been subject to these recurrent attacks of mania, and whose intelligence has now been destroyed by them ; ulti- 80 BODY AND MIXD. mately true epileptic fits aiiperTened, bat Ihoy only oocnr, at long intervals, nsnallj not oftener tbon twice a year, while tho maniacal attacks recur regularly every three or four weeks. It is of some interest, in regard to the question of its natiu-e, that the age of its most freqnent onthreak is, as it is with epilepsy, the years that cover the development of pnberty. Irregularity or suppression of menstruation may or may not be jirescnt, bo that we are not warranted in at- triboting the disease to amenorrlioja or dysmenorrhoja; we are the leas warranted in doing bo, as any form of insanity, how- ever caused, may occasion a suppression of the menses. The natural cessation of menstruation at the change of life is accompanied by a revolution in the economy wliich is often trying to the mental stability of those who have a pre~ disposition to insanity. The age of pleasing is post, but not always the desire, which, indeed, sometimes grows then more exacting; there are all sorts of anomalous sensations of bod- ily distress, attesting the disturbance of circulation and of nerve functions j and it is now that an insane jealousy and a propensity to stimulants are apt to appear, especiaUy where there have been no children. When positive insanity breaks out, it usually has the form of profound melancholia, with vague delusions of an extreme character, as that the world is iu flames, that it is turned upside down, that every thing ia changed, or that some very dreadful but imdefined calamity haa happened or is about to happen. The countenance hoa the expression of a vague terror and apprehension. In some oases short and transient paroxysms of excitement break the melancholy gloom. These usually occur at the menstrual periods, and may continue to do so for some time after the function lias ceased. It is not an unfavorable form of in- sanity as regards probability of recovery nndor suitable treat- Continuing the consideration of tho influence of the gen- erative organs in the production of insanity, I come now to puerperal insanity. Under this name are sometimes con- PUERPEBAL INSANITY. 81 founded three distinct varieties of disease — that which occurs during pregnancy, that which follows parturition and is properiy puerperal, and that which comes on months after- ward during lactation.* The insanity of pregnancy is; as a rule, of a marked melancholic type, with suicidal tendency ; a degree of mental weakness or apparent dementia being sometimes conjoined with it. Other cases, however, exhibit much moral perversion, perhaps an uncontrollable craving for stimulants, which we may regard as an exaggerated display of the fanciful cravings from which women suffer in the earlier months of pregnancy. We can hardly fail, indeed, to recognize a connection between the features of this form of insanity and the strange longings, the capriciousness, and the morbid fears, of the pregnant woman. The patient may be treated successfully by removal from home ; but, if the dis- ease be allowed to go on, there is no good ground to expect that parturition will have a beneficial effect upon it ; on the contrary, the probability is, that it will run into a severe puer- peral insanity, and from that into dementia. Puerperal insanity proper comes on within one month of parturition ; and, like the insanity of pregnancy, occurs most often in primiparce. The statistics of the Edinburgh Asylum show that ia all the cases occurring before the sixteenth day after labor, as most cases do, the symptoms were those of acute mania ; but in all the cases which occurred after the sixteenth day they were those of melancholia. In both forms, but especially in the latter, there is sometimes a mixture of childishness and apparent dementia. The mania is more likely than the melancholia to get well. It is of an acute and extremely incoherent character, a delirious rather than a sys- tematized mania, marked by noisy restlessness, sleeplessness, tearing of clothes, hallucinations, and in some cases by great salacity, which is probably the direct mental effect of the irri- tation of the generative organs. Suicide may be attempted ♦ " The Insanity of Pregnancy, Puerperal Insanity, and Insanity ol Lactation." By J. Batty Take, M. D. 82 BODY AND MISD. in an excited, parpoaeleas way. The bodily Bfmptoiiis, con- tradictiog the violence of the montEil cscit«ment, indicate feebleneag; the featorea aro pinched; the skin is pole, cold, and olammy; and the pulse is quick, small, and irrit&ble. We may flafely Bay that recovery takes place in three oat of four cases of puerperal mania, uaiioliy in a few weeks; the patient, after the acnte sjmptoma have subsided, sinking into a temporary stute of confliaion and feebleness of mind, and then waking np as from a drcasi. I may add the expreesion of a conviction that no good, but rather barm, is dooe by attempting to stifle this or any other form of acnte inaauity by the administration of large doses of opinm. The insanity of lactation does not come under the scheme of this lecture; for it is an asthenic inaonity, produced by bodily exhaustion and the depression of mental worries. The time of its occurrence seems to show that the longer the child is suckled the greater is the liability to it; and in the majority of cases it has the form of melancholia, oiten with determined suicidal tendency. Bo frequently is hereditary predisposition more or leas distinctly traceable in these three forms of insanity occurring in connection with child-bearing, that we are warranted in declariBg it quite exceptional for any one of them to be met with where it is entirely absent. I have now enumerated all the forms of insanity which, being specially connected with the generative organs, pre- sent chwaoteristie features. It is eortnin, however, that die- ease of them may act as a powerful cooperating cause in the production of insanity, without giving rise, so far as we know, to a special group of symptoms. Thus, for example, melancholia, distinguishable by no feature irom melancholia otherwise caused, may be the effect of disease of the ntems. Schroder van der Kolfc mentions the case of a woman pro- foundly melancholic who suffered from prolapsas uteri, and in whom the melancholia disappeared when the nt«ma was retnraed to its proper place. Flemming relates two aimilaF SYMPATHETIO INSASITT. 83 oases in which melancholia was cored b; the uae of & pessary, the depreflaioQ returning in one of them whenever the pessary was removed ; &ad I have met with one case in which pro- fonad melancholia of two years' standing disappeared after the removal of a prolapsna uteri. Other diseaaea and dis- placements of the Qterns may act in a similar way. Let me now say a few words concerning the abdominal organs. No one will coll in question that the states of their fanctiona do exert a positive influence on our states of mind ; but it is unfortunately too true that we cannot yet refer aoy special mental eymptoms to the influence of the abdominal organs. I have met with one case of severe melancholia, of long standing, which was distinctly cnred by the expulsion of a tape-worm ; and it appears to be tolerably certain that hypochondriacal insanity is in some instances connected with, if not caused by, a perverted sensation proceeding from an internal organ, most often abdominal. In health we are not conscious of the impressions which these organs make upon the brain, albeit they aaauradly send their unperceived contributions to the stream of energies of which conscioua- ness ia the sum and the outcome ; but, when a disordered or- gan sends a morbid impression to the brain, it no longer does ita work there in silence and selt'Snppression, but asserts itself in an unwonted afi'ection of oonsciousnesa. The hypo- chondriac cannot withdraw his attention from the morbid sensation to which it ia irresiatihly attracted, and which it aggravates; his interest in all things else is gradually quenched, and his ability to tliink and act freely in the rela- tions of life sapped. The step from this state to positive in- sanity is not a great one: the strange and distressing sensation, being so anomalous, so unlike any thing of which the patient has had experience, afiecting him so powerfully and so unac- mtably, geta at last an interpretation that seema suited to sxtraordinary character; and he then imagines that some 10,1 or man or devil has got Inside him and is tormenting He baa now a hallucination of the organic senae which 84 BODY AND MIND. dominatea his tiiouglits, and he is trulj iasane- Ncit long since I saw a patient who believed that he had a nian ia his betlj' ; when his bowels were constipated, the delusion became active, ho made deBjicrate eSbrts b; vomiting to get rid of his torment- or, and was then surlj, morose, and dangerous; but, when Itis bowels had been relieved, the delusion siihsidod into the bsckgroiind, and be was good-tempered and industrious. If a patient, instoad of attribating his sufferinga to an absurdly impossible canse, ascribes tlieni to a eerious Internal diaease which he cectainlf has not got, there will bo a difficulty in deciding whether he ia insane or not, shoiUd he do injury to himself or others, as hypochondriacal melanoholica sometimes do. It is a probable surmise that in those cases of insanity in which there are snch delusions as that food will not enter tbo stomach, that there is no digestion, that the intestines are souled up, there is a caaao in a morbid irritation ascend- ing from the viscera to the brain. I am forthermore dis- posed to think that a form of fearful melancholia in which the patient evinces an extreme morbid sensitiveness to liis every thought, feeling, and act, in which he is, as it were, Lypochondriacally distressed about whatever he thinks, feels, and does, imagining it, however trivial and innocent, to be a great sin, wliich has cost hira his happiness in time and eter- nity, has its fonndatiou in certain morbid states of abdominal sensation. lu cases of this sort, the delusion is not the eanaa of the feeling of despair, but is, as it were, a condensation from it, and an attempted interpretation of it. The same thing is observed in dreams : the images and events of a dis- tressing dream are not the causes of the feelrngs, bnt are caused by them; they undergo strange and sudden meta- morphoses irithont cansing mnch or any surprise, and they disappear together with the terror the moment we awake, which would not be the case if they really caused tlie terror, We perceive, indeed, in this generation of the imago ont of the feeling, the demonstration of the true nature of ghosts and apparitions ; the nervous system being in an excited PANPHOBIA. 85 state of expectant fear, and the images being the effects and exponents of the feeling: they give the vague terror form. Accordingly, as Coleridge has remarked, those who see a ghost nnder snch circumstances do not suffer much in conse- quence, though in telling the story they will perhaps say that their hair stood on end, and that they were in an agony of terror ; whereas those who have been really frightened by a figure dressed up as a ghost have often suffered seriously from the shock, having fainted, or had a fit, or gone mad. In like man- ner, if an insane person actually saw the dreadful things which he imagiues that he sees sometimes, and really thought the ter- rible thoughts which he imagines he thinks, he would suffer in health more than he does, if he did not actually die of them. I come now to the thoracic organs. The heart and the lungs are closely connected in their functions, so that they mutually affect one another. Some diseases of the lungs greatly oppress and trouble the heart; yet there is reason to believe that they have their special effects upon the mind. How, indeed, can we think otherwise when we contrast the sanguine confidence of the consumptive patient with the anxious fear and apprehension exhibited in some diseases of the heart ? It used to be said tha|i disease of the heart was more frequent among the insane than among the sane ; but the latest observations do not afford any support to the opinion, nor do they furnish valid grounds to connect a particular variety of insanity with heart-disease in those cases in which it does exist. All that we are thus far war- ranted in affirming is, that if there be a characteristic mental effect of such disease, it is a great fear, mounting up at times to despairing anguish ; and perhaps I may venture to add that, if there be a variety of mental disorder specifically con- nected with heart-disease, it is that form of melancholia in which the patient is overwhelmed with a vague and vast apprehension, where there is not so much a definite delusion as a dreadful fear of every thing actual and possible, and which is sometimes described as panphobia. 86 BODY AND MIND. Tliere hoa long been an opinion, which seems to be well founded, that tubocole of the lungs ia more common among the inanne than among tba aano. For although the propor- tion of deaths in oajlums attributed to phthiais is one-fourth, which ia the same proportion as tliat for tlie ease population above fourteen jeara of age, Br. Clonston baa shown, by careful Bcrotiny of tbe records of 2S2 poit-morttm examina- tions made in the Edinburgh Aajlnm, that phthisis was the asaigned cause of death in onlj a little more than hnlf of tbe cases ia whioli there was tubercle in the body. The symp- toms of phthisis are so much masked in the inaane, thera being naually no cough and no expectoration, tliat its diag- nosis is difflonlt, and it ia not alwaja detected daring life. The relation between it and insanity boa been noticed bj soreral writers : Schroder van der Kolfc was distinctly of opinion that an hereditary predisposition to phthisis might predispose to, or develop into, insanity, and, on the other band, that insanity predisposed to phthisis ; and Dr. Oloua- ton found that hereditary predipoaition to insanity existed in seven per cent, more of the insane who were tubercular than of the insane generally. When family degeneration is far gone, the two diseases appear to occur frequently, and tbe last member is likely to die inaane or phthisical, or both ; whether, therefore, they mutually predispose to one another or not, they are often concomitant effects in the coarse of degeneration. However, in weighing the specific value of these observations, we must not forget that, independently of any special relation, the enfeebled nutrition of tuberculosia will tend to stimulate into activity the latent predisposition to insanity ; and that, ia like manner, insanity, especially in its melaacholio forms, will favor the actual development of a predisposition to phthisis. In the cases in which tbe development of phtbisia and insanity has been nearly contemporaneous, which are about one-fourth of the coses in which they coesist, tlie mental symptoms aro of ao peculiar and uniform a character as to PHTHBrCAL MANIA. 87 ■ ■ hnve lod to the inclnaion of the cnaea in a nntural group nnder the designfttion of phthiiieal mania. Thej have no poaitively distinctive symptom, it is tme ; they cannot be separated from other caaes by a well-defined line of demar- cntion. Yet they do exhibit, Dr. Clonston believea, certain common and uniform charactera which juatify their descrip- tion aa a Beparate variety. They often begin in on insidiona way by irritability, waywardnesa, and caprioionsneaa of con- duct, and apparent weakening of intellect; yet the patient conreraea rationally when he chooses to talk, and showa that he atill baa hia intellect, albeit there ia a great diainclinatiou to eiert it. To sign a certificate of his insanity would be no easy matter. Or they begin with an acutely maniacal or melancholic stage, which is, however, of very short duration, soon passing into a hatf-maniacal, half-demented etate. If there bo n single characteriatio feature, it is a monomania of snspicion. As the disease advances, the symptoms of de- mentia predominate ; but there are occasional brief attacks of irritable excitement and .fitful flaahes of intelligence. And in these coses, more often than in other cases, there occurs a momentary revival of intelligence before death. We shall the more readily admit the special features of phthisical mania when wo call to mind that there ia in most phthisical patients a peculiar mental state ; and that brief attacks of temporary mania or delirium aometiraea occur ia the course of phthisis. The pbthiaioal patient is irritable, fnnoiftil, tin- stablo of purpose, brilliant, and imaginative, but wonting in calmness and repoae, quick of insight, but without depth and comprehension ; every thing is fltfu! — fitful energy, fltftil pro- jects, fitful flashoa of imaginatiou. The hectic ia in hia thoughts and in his actions. The whims and imaginings of hia mind become almost wanderings at times, hia fancies almost delusions. I have now said enough concerning the sympathetic mental effects of disordered organs, not certainly to set forth adequately their natare, bnt to show the essential importance B8 BODT AND TUSO. of n careJiil stud; of them. To completo the exposition of the action of patbological sjmpBthieH on mind, it would be noceasarj to trace out tlie close relations that there are between tbo organic feeliogB and the different kinds of special Benaibilitj — between Rjetemic and senae consciousness. The digestiTO organs have a close sjmpathj with the sense of taste, Bs we observe in the bod taste accomponjing indiges- tion, in the nausea and -vomiting which a nanseona taste ma^ cause, and in the aToidance of poisonous matter hy aniraiils. The respiratory organs and the sense of smell are, in like manner, simpatheticall; associated ; and there can bo no doubt that the sense of smell has special relations with the sexual feeling. The state of the digestive organs notablj affects the general sensibility of the skin. Disturbances of these physiological sympathies may become the occasions of insane delnsiona. Digestive derangement, perverting the taste, will engender a delusion that the food is poisoned. Disease of the respiratory organs appears sometimes to pro- duce disagreeable Gmells, which are then perhaps attributed to olijeetive canses, such as the presence of a corpse in tlie room, or to gases malictonsly disseminated in it bj fancied persecutors. In mania, smell and taate are often grossly per- verted, for the patient will devour, with seeming relish and avidity, dirt and garbage of the most offensive kind. Increase, diminution, or perversion of the sensibility of the akin, one or other of which is not uncommon among the insane, may undonbtedly be the cause of extravagant delusions. We hardly, indeed, realize how completely the mind is dependent npon the habit of its sensations. The man who has lost a limb can hardly be i>er9uaded that he has lost it, so sensible is he of the accustomed feelings in it ; years after he has lost it he dreams of vivid Bensations and of active movements in it— has, in fact, both sensory and motor hallucinations. It is easy, then, to understand how greatly abnormal sensations may perplex and deceive the unsound mind, A woman under EsquiroPs care had complete ancosthesia of the skin: she HALLUCINATIONS. 89 believed that the devil had carried off her body. A soldier who was wounded at the battle of Austerlitz lost the sensibil- ity of his skin, and from that time thought himself dead. When asked how he was, he replied, "Lambert no longer lives ; a cannon-ball carried him away at Austerlitz. What you see is not Lambert, but a badly-imitated machine," which he always spoke of as it. A patient under my care, who suf- fered from general paralysis, and had lost sensibility and voluntary power of one side, could never be persuaded that another patient, a very harmless fellow, had not got hold of him, and was keeping him down; and when convulsions occurred in the paralyzed side, as they did from time to time, he swore terribly at his fancied tormentor. Were a sane per- son to wake up some morning with the cutaneous sensibility gone, or with a large area of it sending up to the brain per- verted and quite unaccountable impressions, it might be a hard matter perhaps for him to help going mad. The mental effects of perverted sensation afford a promis- ing field for future research ; when better understood it can- not be doubted that they will explain many phenomena in the pathology of mind that now quite baffle explanation. It behooves us to clearly realize the broad fact, which has most wide-reaching consequences in mental physiology and pathol- ogy, that all parts of the body, the highest and the lowest, have a sympathy with one another more intelligent than conscious intelligence can yet, or perhaps ever will, conceive ; that there is not an organic motion, visible or invisible, sen- sible or insensible, ministrant to the noblest or to the most humble purposes, which does not work its appointed effect in the complex recesses of mind ; that the mind, as the crowning achievement of organization, and the consummation and out- come of all its energies, really comprehends the bodily life. I had originally set down within the purpose of these Lectures the consideration, which I must now forego, of the influence of the quantity and quality of the blood in the pro- duction of insanity. Poverty and vitiation of blood may 90 BODY ASD MD.D. certBinlj plaj a weighty part in producing mental, aa tliej do in producing other nervons disordora. Lower the supply of blood to tho brnin below a certain levo), and the power of thinking ia abolished ; the brain will then no more do mental work than ft wator-wheel will moTO the machinery of tba tniU when tlie water is lowered so as nut to touch it. When a strong emotion prodnces a temporary loss of oonaiaoDBnesa, it ie to bo presumed that a contraction of arteries takes plaoe within the brain similar to that which canaes the pallor of the face; and when the laboring heart pumps hard to over- come the obstrDction, and the walls of the resBels are weaJc, they may bnrsl, and the patient die of effusion of blood. Daring sleep the supply of blood to the brain is lessened natnraUy, and we perceive the effects of the lowering of the supply, as it takes place, in the sort of incoherence or mild deliriam of ideas just before falling off to sleep. To a like condition of things we ought most probably to attribute the attacks of transitory mania or delirium that occur now and then in consequence of great physical exhanation, as frora great and sadden loss of blood, or jnst as convalescence from fever or other acute disease is setting in, or in the prostratioa of phthisis, and which a glass of wine opportunely given will BometiuicB cure. The distress of the melancbolio patient is greatest when he wakes in the morning, which ia a time when a wstoh ought to be kept specially over the suicidal patient; the reason lying probably in the effects of the di- minished cerebral circnlation during sleep. If the state of the blood be vitiated by reason of some poison bred in the body, or introduced into it from without, the mental functions may be seriously deranged. We are able, indeed, by means of the drags at our command, to per- form all sorts of experiments on the mind: we can suspend its action for a time by chloral or chloroform, can exalt its functions by small doses of opium or moderate doses of sloo- hol, can pervert them, producing an artificial dehrium, by the administration of large enough doses of belladonna and Indian VITIATED BLOOD. 01 hemp. We can positively do more experimentally with the functions of the mind-centres than we can do with those of any other organ of the body. When these are exalted in con- sequence of a foreign substance introduced into the blood, it cannot be doubted that some physical effect is produced on the nerve-element, which is the condition of the increased activity, not otherwise probably than as happens when a fever makes, as it certainly will sometimes do, a demented person, whose mind seemed gone past all hope of even mo- mentary recovery, quite sensible for the time being. Perhaps this should teach us that, just as there are vibrations of light which we cannot see, and vibrations of sound which we can- not hear, so there are molecular movements in the brain which are incapable of producing thought ordinarily, not sufficing to affect consciousness, but which may do so when the sensi- bility of the molecules is exalted by physical or chemical modification of them. Alcohol yields us, in its direct effects, the abstract and brief chronicle of the course of mania. At first there is an agreeable excitement, a lively flow of ideas, a revival of old ideas and feelings which seemed to have passed from the miud, a general increase of mental activity — a. condition very like that which often precedes an attack of acute mania, when the patient is witty, lively, satirical, makes jokes or rhymes, and certainly exhibits a brilliancy of fancy which he is capable of at no other time. Then there follows, in the next stage of its increasing action, as there does in mania, the automatic excitation of ideas which start up and follow one another without order, so that thought and speech are more or less incoherent, while passion is easily excited. After this st&ge has lasted for a time, in some longer, in others shorter, it passes into one of depression and maudlin melancholy, just as mania sometimes passes into melaucholia, or convulsion into paralysis. And the last stage of all is one of stupor and de- mentia. If the abuse of alcohol be continued for years, it may cause different forms of mental derangement, in each of 92 BODY AND MIND. wliich tbo muBculnr aro curiously like the mental syrnptoniB : delirtnm trotnens in ono, an ocnte soie; and destructive mania in another, chronic alcoholism in a third, ani a condition of mental weakness witli loss of memoiy and loss of energy in a fourth. Writers on gont agree that u suppressed gout may entail mental derangement in some persona ; and, on the other hand, that insanity has sometimes disappeared with the appearance of the nsaal gouty paroiyam. Sydenham noticed and described a species of mania supervening od an epidemic of intermittent fever, wliich, he remarks, contrary to all other kinds of mad- ness, would not yield to plentiful venesection and purging. Griesingcr, again, has directed attention to cases in which, instead of the nsaal symptoms of ngno, the patient hns liad an intermittent insanity in regnlar tertian or qaortan attacks, and has been cured by quinine. Wo must hear in mind, however, that intermittence may he a feature of insanity as of other nervous diseases, without agne having any thing whatever to do with it, and withoot quinine doing any good whatever. Quinine will not cure the intennitCenco of nervous diseases, though it may cure ague in which the symptoms are inter- mittent. Griesinger has also pointed out that mental disorder has sometimes occurred in the course of acute rheumatism, the swelling of the joints meanwhile subsiding. These facta, with others which I cannot dwell upon now, prove how im- portant an agency in the production of insanity a perverted state of the blood may be. But it is o mode of causation of which wo know so little that I may justly dedare we know- nest to nothing. The observation and classification of mental disorders have been so exclusively psychological that we have not ainoerely realized the fact that they illnstrate the same pathological principles as other diseases, are produced in the same way, and must be investigated in the same spirit of posi- tive research. Until this be done I see no hope of improve- ment in our knowledge of Ihem, and no use in multiplying books about them. IDIOPATHIC INSANITY. 93 It is quite true that when we have referred all the cases of insanity which we can to bodily causes, and grouped them according to their characteristic bodily and mental features, there will remain cases which we cannot refer to any recog- nizable bodily cause or connect with any definite bodily dis- ease, and which we must be content to describe as idiopathic. The explanation of these cases we shall probably discover ultimately in the influence of the hereditary neurosis and in the peculiarities of individual temperament. It is evident that there are fundamental differences of temperament, and it is furthermore plain that different natures will bo differently favored in the struggle of existence ; one person will have an advantage over another, and by the operation of the law of Natural Selection there will be a success of the fittest to suc- ceed. It is with the development of mind in the couduct of life as it is with every form of life in its relation to its environ- ment. Life is surrounded by forces that are always tending to destroy it, and with which it may be represented as in a continued warfare : so long as it contends successfully with them, winning from them and constraining them to further its development, it flourishes ; but when it can no longer strive, when they succeed in winning from it and increasiug at its expense, it begins to decay and die. So it is with mind in the circumstances of its existence : the individual who cannot use circumstances, or accommodate himself successfully to them, and in the one way or the other make them further his development, is controlled and used by them ; being weak, he must be miserable, must be a victim ; and one way in which his suffering and failure will be manifest will be in insanity. Thus it is that mental trials which serve in the end to strength- en a strong uature break down a weak one which cannot fitly react, and that the efficiency of a moral cause of insanity betrays a conspiracy from within with the unfavorable out- ward circumstances. It behooves us to bear distinctly in mind, when we take the moral causes of insanity into consideration, that the men- 94 BODY AHD MIND. tal Buffering or psycliical poin of a end emotion testifies to actual wear and tear of nerve-eloment, to dieiotegralioii of Bome kind ; it is the exponent of a physieat ohaoge. Wliat tlie cliange is we know not; bnt we mny take it to be bejond question that, wlien a Bhock imparted to tho mind tLroagii the senses cansea a violent emotion, it prodnces a real commotion in the molecules of tlie brain. It is not that an intangible something flashes inward and mysteriooBl; af- fects on inlanftible lootapliysioal entity ; but that an impres- sion made on the sense is conveyed along nervous paths of commnnication, and produces a definite physical effect in physicaily-constitnted mind-centres ; and that the mental effect, which la the exponent of the physical change, may be then tranaferred by molecular motion to the muscles, thus getting muscular eipression, or to the processes of nntrition and secretion, getting expression in modificationa of them. When there is a native infirmity or instability of nerve- element, in consequence of bad ancestral infiucnces, the in- dividual will be more liable to, and will suffer more from, Buch violent mental commotions; the disintegrating change in the nerve-element will be more likely to pass into a disor- ganization which rest and nutrition caimot repair, not other- wise than as happens with the elements of any other organ under like conditioQui of excessive stimnlation. Aa physi- cians, we cannot afford to lose sight of the physical aspects of mental states, if we wonid truly comprehend the natoro of mental disease, and learn to treat it with success, The metaphysician may, for the purposes of speonlation, separate mind from body, and evoke tho laws of its operation ont of the depths of self-consciousness; but the physician— who has to deal practically with the thoughts, feelings, and eon- duct of men ; who lias to do with mind, not as an abstract entity concerning which he may be content to speculate, but ES a force in Nature, the operations of which ho mnet pa- tiently observe and aniiously labor to influence — must recog- nize how entirely tho integrity of the mental functions de- UNITY OP BODY AND MIND. 95 pends on the integrity of the bodily organization — must ac- knowledge the essential unity of body and mind. To set forth this unity has been a chief aim in these Lec- tures, because I entertain a most sincere conviction that a just conception of it must lie at the foundation of a real ad- vance in our knowledge both of the physiology and pathol- ogy of mind. I have no wish whatever to exalt unduly the body ; I have, if possible, still less desire to degrade the mind ; but I do protest, with all the energy I dare use, against the unjust and most unscientific practice of declaring the body vile and despicable, of looking down upon the highest and most wonderful contrivance of creative skill as something of which man dare venture to feel ashamed. I cannot now summarize the facts and arguments which I have brought forward ; I must trust to the indulgence of your memory of them when I declare that to my mind it appears a clear sci- entific duty to repudiate the quotation from an old writer, which the late Sir William Hamilton used to hang on the wall of his lecture-room : ^' On earth there is nothing great but man, In man there is nothing great but mind." The aphorism, which, like most aphorisms, contains an equal measure of truth and untruth, is suitable enough to the pure metaphysician, but it is most unsuitable to the scientific in- quirer, who is bound to reject it, not because of that which is not true in it only, but much more because of the baneful spirit with which it is inspired. On earth there are assured- ly other things great besides man^ though none greater ; and in man there are other things great besides mind, though none greater. And whosoever, inspired by the spirit of the aph- orism, thinks to know any thing truly of man without study- ing most earnestly the things on earth that lead up to man, or to know any thing truly of mind without studying most earnestly the things in the body that lead up to and issue in mind, will enter on a barren labor, which, if not a sorrow to 06 BODY AND MIND. himself, wiil assuredly bo sorrow and vesatioQ of spirit to DtlierB. To recboQ tbe highest operations of mind to be fuactiona of a mental organizatioD is to exalt, not to degrade, our conception of creative power and skill. For, if it bo lawfnl and right to burst into admiration of tbo wonderfnl contrivance in Nature by which noblq and beautiftd prodncts are formed out of base materials, it is surely mncli stronger evidence of contrivance to have developed the higher mental functions by evolution from the lower, and to iiave need forms of matter as the orgauic inHtrumcnts of all. I know not why tbe Power which created matter and its properties should be thought not to have endowed it with the functioos of reason, feeling, and will, seeing that, whether we discover it to bo 80 endowed or not, the mystery is equally incompre- hensible to ns, equally siraplo and easy to the Power which. created matter and its properties. To a right-thiniing and right'feeling mind, the beauty, tbe grandeur, the mystery of ' Nature are augmented, not le,?sened, by each new glimpse into the secret recesses of her operations. The sun going forth from its chamber in the east to run its conrso is not less glo- rions in miijesty because we have discovered the law of gravi- tation, and ore able by spectral analysis to detect the metals wbich enter into its composition — because it is no longer Helios driving his golden chariot though the pathless spaces of the heavens. TIio monntains are not loss imposing in their grandeur because the Oreads liave deserted them, nor the groves less attractive, nor the streams more desolate, be- cause science has banished the Dryads and the Nniada. Ho, science haa not destroyed poetry, nor expelled tbe divine from Nature, bnt has furnished the materials, and given the presages, of a higher poetry and a mightier philosophy than the world has jet seen. The grave of each superstition which it slays is the womb of a better birth. And if it eome to paas in its onward march — as it may well be it will oome to pass— that other saperatitions shall be dethroned aa SCIENCE AND POETKY. 97 tho sun-god has been dethroned, we may rest assured that this also will be a step in human progress, and in the benefi- cent evolution of the Power which ruleth alike the courses of the stars and the ways of men. APPENDIX. I.— TEE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHICAL INQTIIBT» It la not a little hard upon those who notr devote them- selves to the patient interrogation of Nature, bj means of observation and experiment, that the; should be counted, whether they will or not, ministers of the so-called Positive Philosophy, and disciploB of him who ia popularly considered the founder of that philosophy. No matter that positive in- vestigation within the limits which Comto prcBcribes was pursued earnestly and Hystematically before his advent, and with an esactness of method of which he had no conception; that many of those diatingnished sinoo his time for their Bcientific researches and generalizations have been anac- qaainted with hia writings ; that othera who have studied them withhold their adherence from hia doctrines, or ener- getically disclaim them. These things are not considered; BO soon as a scientific inquirer pushes hia rosearehea into the phenomena of life and mind, he is held to be a Comtist. Thus it happens that there is a growing tendency in the pnblic raind to identify modem science with the Positive Philosophy. Considering how ranch mischief has often been done by iden- * Journal itflfrTital Selena, No. 10, The LlmLta of PhiloBophlcal Inqnirj. Addreii dullTered to the Memben of tbe BdlDbargli PbllOBOpblcaL Inatitn- ilon, November B,1S68, By Wltliam, Lord-Arehhlfhop of Tort (Edmon- -iTOnndDongl.-.) THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY. 99 tifying the character of an epoch of thought with the doc- trines of some eminent man who has lived and labored and taken the lead in it, and thus making his defects and errors, hardened into formulas, chains to fetter the free course of thought, it is no wonder that scientific men should be anxious to disclaim Oomte as their lawgiver, and to protest against such a king being set up to reign over them. Not conscious of any personal obligation to his writings, conscious how much, in some respects, he has misrepresented the spirit and pretensions of science, they repudiate the allegiance which his enthusiastic disciples would force upon them, and which popular opinion is fast coming to think a natural one. They do well in thus making a timely assertion of independence ; for, if it be not done soon, it will soon be too late to be done well. When we look back at the history of systems of re- ligion and philosophy, it is almost appalling to reflect how entirely one man has appropriated the intellectual develop- ment of his age, and how despotically he has constrained the faith of generations after him ; the mind of mankind is abso- lutely oppressed by the weight of his authority, and his errors and limitations are deemed not less sacred than the true ideas of which he has been the organ : for a time he is made an idol,k at the sound of whose name the human intellect is ex- pected to fall down and worship, as the people, nations, and languages were expected, at what time they heard the sound of the flute, harp, sackbnt, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, to fall down and worship the golden image which Nebuchad- nezzar the king had set up. Happily it is not so easy to take captive the understanding now, when thought is busy on so many subjects in such various domains of Nature, and when an army of investigators often marches where formerly a solitary pioneer painfully sought his way, as it was when the fields of intellectual activity were few and limited, and the laborers in them few also. A lecture delivered by the Archbishop of York before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, which has been pub- TIIE LIMITS OF 100 lishcd as n paiujihlet, contains u plain, earni'st, and oil the wLole temperate, but not rcrj cloeely'roasoned, criticism, from hia point of view, of the tendency of modern scientific research, or ratlter of PoeitiviEm, and a somewhat vagae dec- laration of the limits of philosophical inquiry. Be peroeiveB with sorrow, but not with groat apprehension, that the pros- pects of phUosophj are clouded over in England, France, and German]:, and that a great part of the thinking world is oo- capied with physical researches. Bnt he does not therefore despair ; believing that Positivism indicates only a temporary mood, produced by prostration and lassitude after a period of nnusoal controversy, and that it will after a time pass away, and ha followed by a now era of speculative activity. It may he presumed that men, vreary of their fruitless efforts to Bcole the lofty and seemingly barren heights of trne philoa- ophy, have token the easy path of Positivism, which does not lead upward at all, but leads, if it be followed far enough, to quflpnires of nnbelief. The facts on which the archbishop bases his opinion, and the steps of reasoning h; which he is able thus to couple a period of speculative activity with a period of religions belief, and to declare a system of powtive scientific research to be linked inseparably with a system of unbelief, do not appear ; Ihej are snfficiont to inspire strong conviction in him, bnt they apparently lie too far down in the depths of his moral conscionsness to be capable of being nnfoldcd, in lucid seqnence, to the apprehension of others. To the critical reader of the lecture it mast at once occur that a want of discrimination between things that are wide- ly different is the cause of no little looseness, if not reok- lessnesa, of assertion. In the first place, the archbishop identifies off-hand the course and aim of modern scientific progress with the Positivism of Oomte and Lis followers. This is very much as if any one should insist on attributing the same character and the some aim to persons who were travelling for a considerable distance along the same road. As it was Comto's great aim to organize a harmonious co- PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY. 101 ordination and sabordination of the sciences, he assimilated and used for his purpose the scientific knowledge which was available to him, and systematized the observed method of scientific progress from the more simple and general to the more special and complex studies ; but it assuredly is most unwarrantable to declare those who are engaged in physical research to be committed tp his conclusions and pretensions, and there can be no question that a philosophy of science, when it is written, will differ widely from the so-called Posi- tive Philosophy. In the second place, the archbishop unwittingly perpe- trates a second and similarly reckless injustice in assuming, as he does, that modem science must needs accept what he describes as the sensational philosophy. ^^ Thus the business of science," he says, "is to gather up the facts as they ap- pear, without addition or perversion of the senses. As the senses are our only means of knowledge, and we can only know things as they present themselves to t'lo eye and ear, it follows that our knowledge is not absolute knowledge of the things, but a knowledge of their relations to us, that is, of our sensations." Passing by the question, which might well be raised, whether any one, even the founder of the sensational philosophy, ever thus crudely asserted the senses to be our only means of knowledge, and our knowledge to be only a knowledge of our sensations ; passing by, too, any discussion concerning what tbe archbishop means, if he means any thing, by an absolute knowledge of things as dis- tinct from a knowledge of things in their relations to us, and all speculations concerning the faculties which finite and rel- ative beings who are not archbishops have of apprehending and comprehending Hhe absolute ; it is necessary to protest against the assumption that science is committed to such a representation of the sensational philosophy, or to the sensa- tional philosophy at all. Those modem inquirers who have pushed farthest their physical researches into mental func- tions and bodily organs have notoriously been at great pains 102 THE LIMITS OF to discriminato between the nervous centres which minister to sensation and those which minister to reflection, and have done mnch to elacidate the physical and functional connec- tions between them. They have never been gwltj of calling all knowledge a knowledge only of sensations, for they rec- ognize how vague, barren, and unmeaning, are the terms of the old language of philosophical strife, when an attempt is made to apply them with precision to the phenomena re- vealed by exact scientific observation. The sensorial centres with which the senses are in direct connection are quite dis- tinct from, and subordinate to, the nervous centres of idea- tion or reflection — the supreme hemispherical ganglia. It is in these, which are far more developed in man than in any other animal, and more developed in the higher than in the lower races of men, that sensation is transformed into knowl- edge, and that reflective consciousness has its seat. The knowledge so acquired is not drained from the outer world through the senses, nor is it a physical mixture or a chemical compound of so much received from without and so much added by the mind or brain ; it is an organized result of a most complex and delicate process of development in the highest kind of organic element in Nature — a mental organi- zation accomplished, like any other organization, in accord- ance with definite laws. We have to do with lo/ws of life, and the language used in the interpretation of phenomena must accord with ideas derived from the study of organiza- tion ; for assuredly it cannot fail to produce confusion if it bfe the expression only of ideas derived from the laws of phys- ical phenomena, so far as these are at present known to us. Now, the organization of a definite sensation is a very differ- ent matter from, has no resemblance in Nature to, the phys- ical impression made upon the organ of sense, and the or- ganization of an idea is a higher and more complex vital process than the organization of a sensation ; to call knowl- edge, therefore, a knowledge only of sensation is either a meaningless proposition, or, in so far as it has meaning, it is PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY. 103 falser than it would be to afSrm the properties of a chemical compouiid to be those of its constituents. Were they who pursue the scientific study of mind not more thoughtful than the Archbishop of York gives them credit for being, they would have no reason to give why animals with as many senses as man has, and with some of them more acute than his, have not long since attained, like him, to an understand- ing of the benefits of establishing archbishoprics. It must be understood that by the assertion of the organic basis of mental function is not meant that the mind imposes the laws of its own organization; on the contrary, it obeys them, knowing not whence they come nor whither they tend. Innate ideas, fundamental ideas, categories of the un- derstanding, and like metaphysical expressions, are obscure intimations of the laws of action of the internal organizing power under the conditions of its existence and exercise ; and it is easy to perceive that a new and higher sense con- ferred on man, altering entirely these conditions, would at once render necessary a new order of fundamental ideas or categories of the understanding. That all our knowledge is relative cannot be denied, unless it be maintained that in that wonderful organizing power which cometh from afar there lies hidden that which may be intuitively revealed to con- sciousness as absolute knowledge — that the nature of the mysterious power which inspires and impels evolution may, by a flash of intuitive consciousness, be made manifest to the mind in the process of its own development. If Kature be attaining to a complete self-consciousness in man, far away from such an end as it seems to be, it is conceivable that this might happen ; and if such a miraculous inspiration were thus to reveal the unknown, it would be a revelation of the one primeval Power. Clearly, however, as positive sci- entific research is powerless before a vast mystery — the whence, what, and whither, of the mighty power which gives the impulse to evolution — it is not justified in making any proposition regarding it. This, however, it may rightly 104 THE LIMITS OF do ; wliile keeping its inqairies within the limits of the knowable, it may exanune criticallj, and use all aviulsble mottns of t«Btiiig, the claims and credentials of anj professed revelation of the nyBtcr;. And it is in the pnrsnit of saoh inquiries that it wonld have been satisfactory to have had from the archbishop, as a high-prieat of the mystery, aomo gleam of information as to the proper limita which he be- lieves ouglit to be oljBerved, At what point ia the hitherto and no farther to which inquiry may advance in that direc- tion 1 Whore do we reach the holy ground when it becomes necessary to put the scientific shoes from off our feet? There must assuredly be some right and duty of examination into the evidence of revelations claiming to be Divine; for, if it were not so, how could tbo intelligent Mussulman ever be, if he ever is, persnaded to abandon the one God of his faith, and to accept what must sccra to him the polytheism of the Christian Trinity ! Another error, or rather set of errors, into which the archbishop plunges, is that he assumes positive science to he materialistic, and materialism to involve the negation of God, of immortality, and of free will. This imputation of mate- rialism, which ought never to have been so ligiitly made, it is quite certain that the mtoority of scientific men would ear- nestly disclaim. Moreover, the materialist, as such, is not nnder any luteal constraint whotever to deny either the ei- iatonce of a God, or the immortality of the soni, or free will. Ono is almost tempted to say that in two things the arch- bishop distances competition; first, in the facility with which he loses or dispenses with the lints of his own chain of rea- soning; and, secondly, in his evident inability to perceive, when looking sincerely with all his might, real and essential distinctions which are at all subtile, which arc not broadly, and almost coarsely, marked. If the edge of a distinction be fine, if it be not as blunt as a weaver's beam, it fails seem- ingly to attract his attention. Whosoever believes sincerely a the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, as tflnght by PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY. 105 tlio Apostle Paul, which all Christians profess to do, must surely have some difficulty in conceiving the immortality of the soul apart from that of the hody ; for, if the apostle's preaching and the Christian's faith he not vain, and the hody do rise again, then it may he presumed that the soul and it will share a common immortality, as they have shared a com- mon mortality. So far, then, from materialism heing the ne- gation of immortality, the greatest of the apostles, the great Apostle of the Gentiles, earnestly preached materialism as es- sential to the life which is to come. There is as little or less justification for saying that materialism involves of necessity the denial of free will. The facts on which the doctrine of free will is hased are the same facts of ohscrvation, whether spiritualism or materialism he the accepted faith, and the question of their interpretation is not essentially connected with the one or the other faith ; the spiritualist may consist- ently deny, and the materialist consistently advocate, free will. In like manner, the helief in the existence of God is nowise inconsistent with the most extreme materialism, for the helief is quite independent of the facts and reasons on which that faith is founded. The spiritualist may deny God the power to make matter think, hut the materialist need not deny the existence of God hecause he holds that matter may he capahle of thought. Multitudes may logically helieve that mind is inseparahle from hody in life or death — that it is horn with it, grows, ripens, decays, and dies with it, without dishelieving in a great and intelligent Power who has called man into heing, and ordained the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. What an unnecessary horror hangs over the word materi- alism I It has an ugly sound and an indefinite meaning, and is well suited, therefore, to be set up as a sort of moral scarecrow ; hut, if it be closely examined, it will be found to have the semblance of something terrible, and to be empty of any real harm. In the assertion that mind is altogether a function of matter, there is no more actual irreverence than in 106 THE LIMITS OF EisBerting tbnt matter U the realization c the other proposition lie Ing equally mea postulate a knowledge of any thing mi Whether exlonsion be visible thought, oi r mind; the one and lingless so farasthej re than phenomena. thought invisible ex- tenaon, ia a qneation of a choice of words, and not of n clioioe of conceptions. To those who cannot conceive that any oi^ gani/ation of matter, however complex, shoold he capable of BBch exalted functions oa those which are called mental, is it really more conceivable that any organization of matter can be the mecbanical instrnroent of the complex maiiifestatiosB of an immaterial mind? Is it not as easy for on omnipotent power to endow matter with mental functions as it is to create nn immaterial entity capable of accomplishing them through matter ? Ia tlie Creator's arm shortened, so that He cannot endow matter with sensation and ideation f It is strangely overlooked by many who write on thia matter, that the brain is not a dead instrument, but a living organ, with fimctions of a higher kind than those of any other bodily organ, insomuch as its organic nature and stmcture for sur- pass thoBe of any other organ. What, then, are those func- tions if they are not mental ? No one thinks it necessary to assume an immaterial liver behind the hepatic structure, in or- ' der to account for it« functions. But so far as the natnre of nerve and the comples structnre of the cerebral convolutions exceed in dignity tlio hepatic elements and structure, so far must the material functions of the brain exceed those of the liver. Men are not sufficiently careful to ponder tlie wonder- ibl operations of which matter is capable, or to reflect on the miracles effected by it which are continually before their eyes. Are the properties of n chemical componnd loss mysterious essentially because of the familiarity with which we handle them ? Consider the seed dropped into the gronnd : it swells with germinating energy, bursts its integuments, sends up- ward a delicate shoot, which grows into a stem, putting forth in due season its leaves and flowers, until finally a beantifal structure is formed, such aa Solomon in alt his glory could not PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY. 107 eqaal, and all the art of mankind cannot imitate. And jet all these processes are operations of matter; for it is not thought necessary to assume an immaterial or spiritnal plant which effects its purposes through the agency of the material structure which we observe. Surely there are here exhibited properties of matter wonderful enough to satisfy any one of the powers that may be inherent in it. Are we, then, to be- lieve that the highest and most complex development of or- ganic structure is not capable of even more wonderful opera- tions? Would yon have the human body, which is a micro- cosm containing all the forms and powers of matter organized in the most delicate and complex manner, to possess lower powers than those forms of > matter exhibit separately in Na- ture ? Trace the gradual development of the nervous system through the animal series, from its first germ to its most com- plex evolution, and let it be declared at what point it sudden- ly loses all its inherent properties as living structure, and be- comes the mere mechanical instrument of a spiritual entity. In what animal, or in what class of animals, does the imma- terial principle abruptly intervene and supersede the agency of matter, becoming the entirely distinct cause of a similar, though more exalted, order of mental phenomena? To ap- peal to the consciousness of every man for the proof of a power within him, totally distinct from any function of the body, is not admissible as an argument, while it is admitted that consciousness can make no observation of the bodily or- gan and its functions, and until therefore it be proved that matter, even when in the form of the most complex organi- zation, is incapable of certain mental functions. Why may it not, indeed, be capable of consciousness, seeing that, whether it be or not, the mystery is equally incomprehensible to us, and must be reckoned equally simple and easy to the Power which created matter and its properties? When, again, we are told that every part of the body is in a constant state of change, that within a certain period every particle of it is re- newed, and yet that amid these changes a man feels that he .J 105 THE LIMITS OF mtinlly the same, we perceive notliing ij ent in the idea, of the action of a inatorial organ ; for it is not absnrd to suppose that in the brain the new series of particles take the pattern of those which tliej* replace, as they do in other organs and tiBsnes which are continnatlj changing their Hnljstanco yet preserve their identity. Even the scar of b wound on the finger is not ollen efiaced, bnt grows h the body grows: why, then, assame the necessity of an imma- terial principle to prevent the impression of an idea from be- ing lost ? The truth is, that men have dispnted vagaely and violently aboDt matter and motion, and ahout the imposaibility of mat- ter affecting an immaterial mind, never having been at the pains to reflect carefully npon the different liinds of matter and the corresponding differences of kind in ita motions. All Borts of matter, diverse as they are, were vaguely matter — there was no discrimination made; and all tlie manifold and special properties of matter were comprised nnder the gen- eral term motion. This was not, nor oould it lead to, good ; for matter really rises in dignity from physical matter in wliich physical properties eiiat to chemical matter and chem- ical forces, and from chemical matter to living matter and ita modes of force ; and then in the scale of life a continoing aa- cent leads itom the lowest kind of living matter with its force or energy, through different kinds of physiological elements with their special energies or functions, to the highest kind of living matter with ita force — viz., nerve-matter and nerve- force; and, lastly, through the different kinds of nerve-cells and their energies to the most exalted agents of mental func- tion. Obviously, then, simple ideos derived from observation of mechanical phenomena cannot fitly he applied to the ex- planation of the functions of that most complex combination of elements and energies, physical and chemical, in a small space, which we have in living structure ; to speak of me- chanical vibration in nerves and nerve-centres is to convej felsc ideas of their ertremdy delicate and coraples energies, PHILOSOPHIOJLL INQUIRY. 109 and thus seriously to hinder the formation of more just coa- ceptions. ^ In like manner, much barren discussion has been owing to the undiscriminating inclusion of all kinds of mental mani- festations under the vague and gelieral term mind; for there are most important differences in the nature and dignity of so-called mental phenomena, when they are properly observed and analyzed. Those who have not been at the pains to follow the order of development of mental phenomena and to make themselves acquainted with the different kinds of functions that concur to form what we call mental action, and who have not studied the differences of matter, are doing no better than beating the air when they disclaim against materialism. By rightly submitting the understanding to facts, it is made evident that, on the one hand, matter rises in dignity and function until its energies merge insensibly into functions which are described as mental, and, on the other hand, that there are gradations of mental function, the lowest of which confessedly do not transcend ther functions of matter. The burden of proving that the Deua ex machind of a spiritual entity intervenes somewhere, and where it intervenes, clearly lies upon those who make the assertion or who need the hypothesis. They are not justified in arbitra- rily fabricating an hypothesis entirely inconsistent with ex- perience of the orderly development of N'ature, which even postulates a domain of Nature that human senses cannot take any cognizance o^ and in then calling upon those who reject their assumption to disprove it. These have done enough if they show that there are no grounds for and no need of the hypothesis. Here we might properly take leave of the archbishop's address, were it not that the looseness of his statements and the way in which his understanding is governed by the old phrases of philosophical disputes tempt further criticism, and make it a duty to expose aspects of the subject of which he does not evince the least apprehension. He would, we ima- 110 THE LIMTT8 OF gino, be hard put to it to support the heavy indictment con- tfuned in the foHowing sentence which he flinga off sa be goes heedlessly forward: " A BfBtem which protends to djs- peasB with the ideas of God, of iminortoiitj-, of free agency, of causation, and of design, would seem to offer feiv attrac- tions." The question of the value of any system of philosophy 13 not, it may he observed incidentally, whether it is nnattrao- tive because it dispenses with reottived notions, still le«s because its adversaries imagine that it must dbpense with them; bat it is whether it possesses that degree of funda- mental trnth which will av^ to enlarge the knowledge oad to attract ultimately the belief of mankind. History dots not record that the doctrines of Christianity wore found attraotivo by the philosophers of Greece or Rome when they were first preached there; does, indeed, record that Panl preaching on Kara' Hill at Athena, the city of intellectnol enlightenment, and declaring to the inhabitants the unknown God whom they ignorantly worshipped, made no impression, bnt fosnd it prudent to depart thence to Corinth, nowise renowned at that lime as a virtnoiis city, renowned, indeed, in far other wise. We have not, however, quoted the foregoing sentenoo in order to repudiate popular attractiveness as a criterion of truth, but to taiie occasion to declare the wide difference be- tween the modest spirit of scientific inqniry and the confident dogmatism of the flo-c.illad Positive Philosophy. Science, rcoogniKing the measure of what it oan impart to he bounded by the existing limits of scientific inquiry, makes no proposi- tion whatever concerning that which lies beyond these lim- its; equally careful, on the one hand, to avoid a barren enunciation in words of what it cannot apprehend in thought, and, on the other hand, to refrain from a blind denial of possibilities transcending its mcona of research. A calm noquiescenco in ignorance tmtil light comes is its atti- tude. It must he borne clearly in mind, however, that this BompuloDS care to abst^ irom presumptuous assertions does not warrant the impfflitiob of any arbitrary barrier to the PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY, H 1 reacli of its powers, but is quite consistent witli the convic- tion of the possibility of an invasion and subjugation of the unknown to a practically unlimited eltent, and with the most strenuous efforts to lessen its domain. ^ The wonder is — and the more it is considered the greater it seems — that human inteUigenoe should ever have grown to the height either of affirming or of denying the existence of a God. Oertainly the denial implies, even if the affirmation does not also, the assumption of the attributes of a God by him who makes it. Let imagination travel unrestrained through the immeasurable heavens, past the myriads of orbs which, revolving in their appointed paths, constitute our solar system, through distances which words cannot express nor mind conceive definitely, to other suns and other planet- ary systems ; beyond these glimmer in the vast distance the lights of more solar systems, whose rays, extinguished in the void, never reach our planet : still they are not the end, for as thought in its fight leaves them behind, and they vanish in remote space, other suns appear, until, as the imagination strives to realize their immensity, the heavens seem almost an infinite void, so small a space do the scattered clusters of planets fill. Then let sober reflection take up the tale, and, remembering how small a part of the heavenly hosts our solar system is, and how small a part of our solar system the earth is, consider how entirely dependent man, and beast, and plant, and every living thing are upon the heat which this our planet receives from the sun; how vege- tation flourishes through its inspiring influence, and the vegetation of the past in long-buried forests gives up again the heat which ages ago it received from the son ; how animal life is sustained by the life of the vegetable kingdom, and by the heat which is received directly from the sun; and how man, as the crown of living things, and his highest mental energy, as the crown of his development, depend on all that has gone before him in the evolution of Nature— considering all these things, does not living Nature f^pear but a small 11! THE tIMITS OF and incidental by-play of the sun's energies i Seems it not aa nDBpeakable presumption to affirm that man is the main end and purpose of creation 1 Is it not appalling to think that he should dare to speak of what so far fiiirposses the reach of Ma feehle senses, and of the power which ordains and governs the order of events — impionely to deny the' existence of a God, or not less impiously to ereate one in his image! TLo portion of the universe with which man is brought into relation hy his eiisting sentiency is but a frag- ment, and to measure the possibilitiea of tlie infinite unknown by the standard of what he knows is t-ery much as if the (jyster ahoold judge nil Nature by the esperience gained with- in its shell— ^should deny the eilstence on earth of ft hnman being, beeauae its intelligence cannot conceive his nature or recognize hia works. Encompassing us ond transcending onr ken ia a universe of energies ; how can man, then, the " feeble atom of an hour," presume to affirm whose glory the heavens declare, whose handiwork the firmnment showeth? Certain- ly true science does not so dogmatize. Bacon, in a well-known and often-quoted passage, has re- marked, that "a little philosophy tnclineth men's minds to Atheism, bnt depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go DO further ; but when it beholdeth tlie chain of them, confeder- ate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity." It is not easy to perceive, indeed, how modem sci- ence, which makes its inductious concerning natural forces from observation of their manifestations, and arrives at generalizations of difi'erent forces, can, after observation of Nature, avoid the generalization of an intelligent mental force, linked in harmonious association and essential relationa with other forces, but leading and constraining them to higher aims of evolution. To speak of such evolution as the coarse of Nature ia to endow an undefined agency with tiie proper- ties which are commonly assigned to a god, whether it bO PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY. 113 called God or not. The nature, aim, and power of this su- premo intelligent force, working so far as we know from everlasting to everlasting, it is plainly impossible that man, a finite and transient part of JTatnre, should comprehend. To suppose him capable of doing so, would be to suppose him endowed with the very attributes which, having only in part himself, he ascribes in the whole to Deity. Whether the low savage has or has not the idea of a God is a question which seems hardly to deserve the amount of attention which it has received. It is certain that he feels himself surronnded and overruled by forces the natures and laws of which he is quite ignorant of, and that he is apt to interpret them, more or less clearly, as the work of some being of like passions with himself, but vastly more powerfal, whom it is his interest to propitiate. Indeed, it would ap- pear, so far as the information of travellers enables us to judge, that the idea entertained of God by the savage who has any such idea is nearly allied to that which civilized peo- ple have or have had of a devil ; for it is the vague dread of a being whose delight is in bringing evil upon him rather than that of a being who watches over and protects him. Being ignorant altogether of the order of Nature, and of the fixed laws under which calamities and blessings alike come, he frames a dim, vague, and terrible embodiment of the causes of those effects which touch him most painftilly. Will it be believed, then, that the Archbishop of York actually appeals to the instinct of the savage to rebuke the alleged atheism of science ? Let it be granted, however, that the alleged in- stinct of the savage points to a God and not to a devil ruling the world, it must in all fairness be confessed that it is a dim, undefined, fearful idea — ^if that can be called an idea which form has none — ^having no relationship to the conception of a God which is cherished among civilized people. In like manner as the idea of a devil has undergone a remarkable development with the growth of intelligence from age to age, until in some quarters there is evinced a disposition to im- lit TEIE LIMITS OF prove liiin out of being, ao the conception of a God lia.s under- gone an important development tJirougii tlie agea, in coira- spondence witli tlio development of tlie hnniau mind. The conceptions of God affirmed by different revelntionti notalily reflect, and are an indoi of, the intellectual and moral chtir- Bcter of the people to whom each reTcktion lias been made, and the God of the same religion does nnqnestionably advance Tvitii the mental evolntioo of the people professing it, being differently conoeired of at different stages of cnltnre, irt, in its early infancy, when it is, so to epeok, learning its steps, endeavors to copy Nature, and, copying it badly, exaggerates and caricatures it, whence the savage's crude notion of a God; bnt the aim and work of the highest art is to prodnce by idealization the illnaion of & higher reality, whence a more exalted and spiritual conception of Deity. Notwithstanding the archbishop's chargii of atheism against science, there is hardly one, if indeed there be even one, eminent scientific inquirer who baa denied the existence of God, while there is notably more than one who has evinced a childlike simplicity of faith. The utmost clium of scientific skepticism is the right to examine the evidence of u revelation professing to be Divine, in the same searching way aa it would examine any other evidence— to endeavor to trace the origin and development, and to weigh the value, of re- ligioDS conceptions as of other conaeptioni. It tiolutes the fimdomental liabit of the Bcientific icmd, the very principle of its nature, to demand of it the unqnestionmg acceptance of any form of faith which tradition may hand down aa divinely revealed. When the foUon ers of a religion appeal, as the followers of every religion do, in proof of it, to the testimony of miracnloaa events contrary to the eipericnco of the present order of Nnture. there is a scientiflc fact not contrary to experience of the order of Nature which they overlook, but which it is incumbent to hear in mind, viz.; That eager and enthusiastic disciples sometimes have viwons and dream dreams, and that they are apt inucccnlly to ima- PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY. 116 gine or purposely to inyent extraordinary or supernatural events worthy the imagined importafice of the subject, and answering the burning zeal of their fwth. The calm observer and sincere interpreter of Nature cannot set capricious or arbitrary bounds to his inquiries at any point where another may assert that he ought to do so ; he cannot choose but claim and maintain the right to search and try what any man, Jew or Gentile, Mussulman or Bramin, has declared sacred, and to see if it be true. And, if it be not true to him, what matters it how true it be? The theologian tells him that the limits of philosophical inquiry are where faith be- gins, but he is concerned to find out where faith does begin, aiid to examine what sort of evidence the evidence of things unseen is. And if this right of free inquiry be denied him, then is denied him the right to doubt what any visionary, or fanatic, or madman, or impostor, may choose to proclaim as a revelation from the spiritual world. Toward the close of his lecture the archbishop, breaking out into peroration, becomes violently contemptuous of the philosopher who, *^ with his sensations sorted and tied up and labelled to the utmost, might," he thinks, " chance to find himself the most odious and ridiculous being in all the multiform creation. A creature so glib, so wise, so full of discourse, sitting in the midst of creation with all its mystery and wonder, and persuading you that he is the master of its secrets, and that there is nothing but what he knows I " It is not very difficult to raise a laugh by drawing a caricature ; but it was hardly, perhaps, worthy the lecturer, the subject, and the audience, to exhibit on such an occasion an archi- episcopal talent for drawing caricatures. As we have al- ready intimated, this philosopher, " so glib, so wise, so full of discourse,'' does not profess to know nearly so much of the mystery and wonder of creation as the archbishop does. There is more flourishing language of the same sort before the discourse ends, but it would be unprofitable to transcribe or criticise it; and it is only right to the lecturer to say that no THE LIMITS OF he is near hid onclosioii when ke works bimself tip Into this vitaperative and somewhat hjsterioal ecstasy. The follow- ing passage may ho quoted, however, tui instmotive in more respects than one : '■ Tbo world offers jaat now tlie spectacle, Immiliatiag to na in many ways, of millioaa of people clinging to Ibair old idolatrous roli- giooB, uid refiulng Co cliungo them even for a higher form ; while in diriistiaa Enrogo thonaanda of llie moat cultivated class arc bEguming to consider atheism a permissible or even a dcairable thing. The very inatinota of the savaga raboltB ns. But just wben wo acem in danger of losing all may come the moment of awakening to the dangers of our LosB. A world where thought is a secretion of the hraia-gltmd — where t>ee will is the dream of a madntoD tliat tbinlis he is an am- peror, though naked and in cbiutia— where Qod is not or at least not knowahle, suoh is not the world as we have learned it, on which great Uvea have hesD lived out, groat aelf-saerifioeB dared, great piety and devotion bale been beat on softenuig the sin, the ignoranoe, and the misery. It is a world from wbiob the sun is witiidrawa, andwith it all light and Ufa. But tills is not nurvorld as it was, not the woild of our (kthers. To Uvo is to tbink and to will To tbinlc is to see the chun of fkets in creation, and passing along its golden links to Dnd the band of God at ita beginning, as wo saw His handiwoit in its course. And to will is to be able to know good and evil ; and to irill aright ia to submit the will entirely to a will bigbpr than ours. 80 that with Qod alone can we find true knowledge and true rest, tha vaunted fruits of pbilosopby." Was ever heforo snch n terrihle indictment against Chris- tianity drown by a Christian prelate 1 Ita doettinea have now been preached for nearly two thonsand years; they have had the aids of vast armies, of incalculable wealth, of the greatest genius and eloquence ; they are embodied in the results of conqueata, in the snbUmeat works of art, in some of the noblest speoimons of oratory, in the very organization of modern society ; thousanda npon tlionsaads have died martyra to their faith in them, and thousands more have been made martyrs for want of faith in them ; thoy have been carried to the darkest places of the earth by the vehicles of oe, have been proclaimed by the messengers and PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY. 117 backed by the moral power of a higher civilization; they are almost identified with the spirit and results of modem scientific progress: all these advantages they have had, and yet the archbishop can do no more than point to the spectacle of millions of people clinging to their old idola- trous reliigions, and to thousands of the most cultivated class in Christian Europe who are beginning to consider atheism a permissible or even a desirable thing I Whether it be really true that so many of the cultivated class in Europe are gravitating toward atheism we cannot say ; but, if the allega- tion be true, it may well be doubted whether an appeal to the instincts of the savage who persists in clinging to his idolatry will avail to convince them of their error. It is not very consistent on the archbishop's part to make such an ap- peal, who in another paragraph of his lecture emphatically enjoins on philosophy not to banish Qod, freedom, duty, and immortality from the field of its inquiries, acyuring it solemnly never to consent to abandon these highest subjects of study. Another comment on the passage above quoted which sug- gests itself is that men have undergone great self-sacrifices, sufferings, and death, for a bad cause with as firm and cheer- ful a resolution as good men have for the best cause ; to die for a faith is no proof whatever of the truth of it, nor by any means always the best service which a man may render it. Atheism counts its martyrs as well as Christianity. Jordano Bruno, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, was condemned for atheism, sentenced to death, and, refusing to recant, burned at the stake. Yanini, who suffered death as an atheist, might have been pardoned the zuoment before his execution if he would have retracted his doctrines ; but he chose to be burned to ashes rather than retract. To these might be added others who have gone through much persecution and grievous suffering for a cause which the Archbishop of York would count the worst for which a man could suffer. How many Christians of one sect have undergone lingering tor- tures and cruel deaths at the hands of Christians of another lie THE LIMITS OF sect for the cake of small and Don-esBDOtiol pgiBts of doc- trine in wliicii ouly tiioy differed — for points at issuo bo mi- nate ns to "be scarcely riaible to the nicest theological ejel " ChriBtianity has Bomotimefi been a terrible war-cry, and it most be confessed tliot Christiana have been good perseca- tors. When tbo passions of men have worked a faith into enthusiosn], they will suffer end die, and inflict goffering and death, for any oanso, good or bad, Tiio appeal to martjr- dom of professors is therefore of small worth na an aiga- ment fbr the truth of their doctrine. Pity 'tis that it is so, for, if it wore otherwise, if eelf-aacrifice in a cause would sof- lice to establish it, what a noble and powerful argument in support of the OhriEtian veritiee might orchbishopa and bish- ops offer, in these sad times of luxury and unbelief when so many are lapsing into atheism I But wo must bring to an end these reflections, which ere some of those that have been soggcstcd by the pornsal of tite orchiepiai^opol address on the "Limits of Philosophical In- quiry." Though heavy charges are laid against modem sci- ence, they are made in a thooghttess rather than a bitter spirit, while the absence of bigotry and the general candor displayed moy justify a hope that the author will, on reflec- tion, perceive his "opinions to require farther consideration, and his statements to be too indiscriminate and sweeping. On the whole there is, we think, less reason to apprehend harm to scientific inquiry from this discharge of the arch- bishop's feelings, than to apprehend harm to those who are obstinately defending the religions position against the attack which is thought imminent For he has used his friends liadly; he has exposed their entire flank to the enemy; while he would distinctly have philosophy concern itself with the highest subjects — God, freedom, and immortality — despising a philosophy which forbears to do so, and pointing oot how miserably it falls short of its highest mission, he warns philosophy in the same breath that there ia a point at which its teaching ends. PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY. 119 " Philosophy, while she is teaching morals and religion, will soon come to a point where her teaching tends. . . She will send her scholars to seek in revelation and practical obedience the higher cnltare that she can onlj commence/' The pity of the matter is, that we are not famished with a word of guidance as to where the hitherto and no farther point is. With brave and flonrishing words he launches the inquirer on a wide waste of waters, but without a rudder to guide him, or a compass to steer by. Is he to go on so long as what he discovers is in conformity with the Gospel accord- ing to the Thirty-nine Articles, but furl-to his sails, cease his exertions, and go down on his knees, the moment his discov- eries clash with the faith according to the Thirty-nine Arti- cles ? What guarantee have we that he will be content to do so ? In withholding the Scriptures from the people, and shutting off philosophy entirely from the things that belong to faith, the Church of Rome occupies a strong and almost impregnable position ; for, if there be no reading there will be no inquiry, and if there be no inquiry there will be no doubt, and if there be no doubt there will be no disbelief. But the union of philosophical inquiry and religious faith is not a natural union of kinds ; and it is difficult to see how the product of it can be much different from the hybrid products of other unnatural unions of different kinds — can be other than sterile, when it is not monstrous. IL— THE THEORY OF VITAUmr.* It has been the caBtom of certain dieciptes of the h>- OBlled Positive Fhilosophj to repndiate as extravagant tha well-lcnowii opinion of Protagoras, that man was the meas- ure of the universe. If the proposition he understood of man as he ia known to himself by the revelations of Belt- consciousness, there is uoquestionablf great reason for its Flection ; bnt, if it he applied to him as an objective stndy, it is manifest that modern science is tending to prove it by no means so absurd as it has been sometimes deemed. Day by day, indeed, is it becoming more and more clear that, as Sir T. Browne has it, man "parallels Natnre in the cosmog- raphy of himself; " that, in truth, " we are that bold and adventurous piece of Katnre whioh he that studies wisely learns in a compendium what others labor at in a divided piece and endless volnme." t The " hearen -descended 71*81 a-iawJi" " acquires new valuo as a maxim inculcating on man the objective stndy of himself. The earliest cultivators of Grecian philosophy — Thales, Anaximenes, and Diogenes of ApoUonia — did seek objec- tively for the apx'h or first principle of things common to man and the rest of Nature. This primitive kind of indno- tion was soon, however, abandoned for the easier and speed- ier deduction from the subjective facts of consciousness ; so that, as the Gorman philosopher is said to have done with THE THEORY OF VITALITY. 121 the elephant, man constructed the laws of an external world out of the depths of his own consciousness. Because an in- dividual was conscious of certain passions which influenced his conduct, he fancied that natural bodies were alfected in their relations to one another by like passions. Hence the phenomena of Nature were explained by sympathies, antip- athies, loves, discords : oil had an antipathy to water ; Nature abhorred a vacuum ; Love was the creative force which produced development and harmony ; Hate, the de- structive force which produced disorder and discord. The method was only a phase of the anthropomorphism by which the Dryad was placed in the tree, the Naiad in the fountain, and the gods of mankind were created by man. The result of such a method was Inevitable. When in a language there is but one word for two or three different meanings, as happens in all languages before the cultivation of science — when, for example, the loadstone is said to attract iron, the earth to attract heavy bodies, the plant to attract moisture, and one mind to attract another, without further differentiation — ^there necessarily is an ambiguity about words; disputes thereupon arise, and the unavoidable issue is sophistry and sophists. That was a result which the in- genious and active mind of Greece soon reached. In scien- tific nomenclature it is constantly becoming necessary to dis- card words which are in common use, because of their vague- ness and want of precision; for as it is with life objectively, and as it is with cognition or life subjectively, so must it be with the language in which the phenomena are expressed. A scientific nomenclature must rightly present a progress from the general to the special, must reflect in its increasing specialization the increased specialization of human adapta- tion to external Nature. As might be expected, Plato and Aristotle both recognized the evil in Greecej^ and both tried to check it. The metaphysics, analytics, etc., of the latter have been described as a dictionary of general tem^s, " the process throughout being first to discover and establish defi* 6 122 TOE TOEORY nittj meaiiingB, und llion to appropriato to each a aevoral word."* But it is in vain to attempt to e3tabli3li words ex- cept aa living outgrowths of attuul facts m Nature. The method WM a mistaken one ; there woa not ftn intending of the miod to the realities of external Nature, and knowled^ WB8 harren, wantiog those "fruits and invented works" which Bacon pronounces to be, aa it were, " sponsors and sureties for the truth of philosophy." Mnch the same thing happened in the earlier part of the Jdiddle Ages. The mysticism and sophistry which then pre- vailed, the endless and unproHtahle hut learned and ingenious diapntea oonoerning empty propositions and words which had no definite meanings, might be said to represent the wasted efforts and unaraiUog strength of a blind giant. But as the infant, moved by an internal impnlse, at £rat strives nncoD- eciously for its mother's hreast and draws its nourishment therefrom, gradually awakening thereby to a conscioouneas of the mother who supplies it, so the human mind for a time gathered unconsciously ttio material of its knowledge from Natore, nntil it was gradually awakened to a full conscioaa- nesa of the fruitful hosom which was supplying it. The al- chemist, moved by his avarice and the instinct of a unity in Nature, and the astrologer, moved by the feeling of a destiny governing human actions, both lighted on treasm-es which, though not then nppreclateil, were yet not lost; for of astrol- ogy came aatronouiy, and from alchemy, in the fulness of time, was born chemistry. In Roger Bacon, who successfully interrogated Nature In the spirit of the inductive method, we • Coleridgfl- Ltterarj Bponden t. Ill for thi «tomi)l, pnitB- worthy surolj a thai Bar nIstmdnljKV re upon Arlftolle Thn*: '■ And herein lea nnotal ttemanalaUbephllMO- pherArlBtoUelhat didp mooed Id anch spirit rdlfftre ee and conlndk. Hon toward al ontLgnity, nnde rlaklne otonlj to torn newiTordeof Bci- enMalploasnr Ingulah ntwladom." {Do Angmcotia Scl And again : e.Bsthonelibehsdbeen oflbeMceorUjeOttoinat 9,thOD gliliieconldnot eigne. epL Ihe flnt tbine bodidhofcUlea all hlf br thren ' Obld OF VITALITY. 123 see the human mind mstinctiyely and, as it were, uncon- sciously striving after the true source of knowledge ; while in the Ohaucellor Bacon, who established the principles and systematized the rules of the inductive philosophy, we see it awakened to a clear apprehension of the necessity of doing with design and method that which in an imperfect manner it had for some time been blindly aiming at. But as it is with the infant, so it is with humanity : action preceded con- sciousness, and Bacon was the efflux of a spirit which pre- vailed, and not the creator of it. The method of investigation has accordingly been com- pletely reversed. Instead of beginning with himself and passing thence to external Nature, man begins with Nature and ends with himself; he is the complex to which his in- vestigations ascend step by step through progressively in- creasing complications of the simple. Not only so, but the necessity of studying himself objectively is fully recognized ; it is not the subjective feeling of heat or cold in a feverish patient, but the figure at which the thermometer stands, that is now appealed to as the trustworthy index of the real tem- perature. The development of the senses, or, in other words, the increased specialty of human adaptation to external Na- ture, has been, as the progress of science proves, the founda- tion of intellectual advance ; the understanding has been de- veloped through the senses, and has in turn constructed in- struments for extending the action of the senses.* The tele- scope has merely been a means for enabling the eye to pene- trate into distant space, and to observe the motions of worlds which the unaided vision would never have revealed ; by the microscope the minute structure of tissues and the history of * A great desideratam is a history of sach development of the eenges : " Wir besitzen gar treffllche Werke liber die Geschichte von Schlachten nnd Staatsform^i, genaae Tagebtlcher von KOnigen und flc!sslge Yerzeich- nisse von den SchOpfangen der Dichter. Aber den wichtigsten Bcitrag za elner Bildnngsgeschichte des Menschen in der elngreifendsten Bedeatnng des Wortes hat noch Niemand geliefert. Uns fehlt eine Entwickelungs- geschi'jhte der Sinne."— Molbschott, Kreldai^des Lebens. 124 TUE THEORY the llttld world of tlio orgflnic cell have been cindo known ; the balance has demonstrated tho indestractiiiilitj of m&tter, and lioH EUpphed to ecienco the exactness of tlic nnnierica] method; and, in the electric stream, there has heen fonud a means of invest! (gating norve-oction, like that n-hich there is in polarized light for sscertainiag the internal condition of crystallized bodies. Who would Lave ventured to predict some time since that it woufd ever bo possible to measure the speed at which an impulse of the will travels along the nerves! • And who will \'entiiro to sa,v that it will not at a future timti be possible to iiioasnro tho velocity with which one idea ealta np another in tlie brain] Biology lunst plainly of neccssitj be the last and most difficult study, for it pre- supposes tho other sciences as vital force supposes iof^or forces; hot it ia tlie evident tendency of advancing knowl- edge to bring life more and more within the compass of sri- entiflc investigatioit. And if it he sometimes made a reproach to science, as it was by Comte, that it has not discovered tho laws of life, it may well reat calm under the censure, point- • Bath an eminent phjeioln^el I19 Mfiller conld TciilDre to predict Iha impoaslbilttr thereaf. Iii hia Phystola^; he eaje : " WIr wtnluD luch wubl nle die Mltlcl etwluncn die Geecbwlndlgkclt dor Nnvenwlrlinng zD cnnlt- Celadiinnsdlayvrglelchiingehcarcr Entfcnimie telbt sns dardle SchnFl- U^kelt elner den Kerren In dicect Blnelubt nns]ii;;Dn Wlrkong del LIclit benicbnet icirden kBon," WILh wblch coDipara Selmboltz; " Cebec dta UethDden kleiiiflto Zelttbeilcben za meseeo," etc. leSD. A» long BB pbyalologlBta coD*Idered 11 ncccBsary to refer the operatlani ortba nense bi Ibe i^itcaBlou of an Impondcniblc oi pejchicnl principle, it mlgbt well appear Incredlblo tbat Ibe ntpldlt; or Ibo alream Btwiild ba meaBUOible witbln Ibe limits of the anlmnl body. At preeent wo know, from tbe iDvestigatlons of Da Boie-HeymoDd on tbe clectro-mDlor propcr- tlcB or nerves, tbat the acllvlty bf whlcb the prnpagntlna or a Btlmotiu la BccompllBbed 1b closely connected with an altered arTangemoiit of tbeli ma- terial mulocales—perhslMi even eegcntlally datennined by them. Accord- ingly, the process of caadnclloH Id neirea may belong to the series of con- llnnonB molecnlat nperatlosB or ponderable bodies, In which, for enraple, tbe condactlon of sonod iu tbe sir. or Ibe combaBllon in a tube filled with an explosive mlrtnre, 1b to be reckoned- It la not anrprlalng tberelbn,^^ headdB, "tbat tbe apeod of coDdaellon ihotiid bo very niDdersle," (Deber die Mcthoden, elc.) ■ OF VITALITY. 125 ing to the history of the earth to show that Nature, having done all else, required a long period before it accomplished the evolution of life. In spite, then, of a desire on the part of some persons to separate biology from the other sciences, and, notwithstand- ing the alarm occasion^y displayed with regard to the dig- nity of vitality, it is the certain tendency of advancing knowledge to bring a science of life into close and indissolu- ble relations with other sciences, and thus to establish in cognition, or to reflect in consciousness, the unity which exists in Nature. 'When, in ancient times, life was assigned to the stars, the air, the water, a sort of unity was recog- nized, but recognized only by explaining Nature from a very imperfect knowledge of man ; now the task is to explain man on the basis of an increasing knowledge of Nature, and in that way to demonstrate the unity of the whole. "What must be the result? Nothing less, indeed, than the reconciliation of the ideal and the real, the identification of subjective and objective. As life is a condition in which an intimate corre- lation exists between the individual and Nature, it is evident that, while Plato dealt only with ideas of the mind, his sys- tem must remain comparatively unprofitable ; but it is evi- dent also that, since we have learned to discover tbe laws or ideas in Nature of which ideas in the mind are correlates, it becomes possible to find in Nature an interpretation of Plato's true ideas.* Once for all, it may perhaps be taken for granted that the ideas of genius never can be meaningless ; for its mental life is a reflection in consciousness of the un- conscious life of Nature. How excellently has this been ex- emplified in him who embodied in poetical form the scientific spirit of this age 1 It was the great characteristic of Goethe, * ^^ But It is manifest that Plato, in his opinion of ideas as one that had R wit of elevation situate as upon a cliff, did descry * that forms were the true object of knowledge/ but lost the real fruit of his opinion by consider- ing of forms as absolutely abstracted ftrom matter, and not confined and de- termined by matter ; and so turning his opinion on theology, wherewith all his natural philosophy is infected."— De Aug. Sclent. 130 THE THEORT Hs Laratcr justly said of liim, to give a poetical form to tbc real; Le proved, in fact, tliat science, in place of rendering poetrj impossible, opened a field for llie liighest poetrj. His romance of the Elective Affinities (WahherwandtchqfCcn) starts from tlie chemical affinities of elomenta, and applies such affinities to hmnon beings, tlicrein exactly reversing the old molliod, which, starting from the phenomena of self-con- sciousness, applied the passions of the homan mind to the phenomena of eiternnl Nature. Of Goctho it may be jostly said, tliat in liim the ideal and the reSlwcre happily blended; thiit lie embodied the scientific spirit of the age, and yet was in some respects an advance upon it ; that he was a prophecy of that which must be a coarse of devolupmcnt of the human mind if it ho destined to develop. The foregoing general sketch of the coarse aed tendencT' of knowledge ia fully jostified by the present aspect of sci- ence. When Nature was first examined objectively the dif- ferences in matter appeared luanifold, and its modes of energy or activity — that is, its forces — appeared many also. On a more careftil use of the senses, liowover— in fact, by the ap- plication of the delicate balance to the products of combus- tion — it became evident that one form of matter only disap- peared to rcapjiear in another form ; that it never perished, but only changed. Elementary matter tbna passes upward into chemical and organic compounds, and then downward from organic to chemical, and froto chemical compounds to its elementary condition. Out of dnst man is formed by an upward transformation of matter, and to dust he returns by a retrograde metamorphosis thereof. Corresponding with tlie changes in the form of matter are changes in its modes of energy or its forces ; to different combinations and ar- rangements of molecules correspond different modes of en- ergy. Force therefore is eternal, like matter, and passes through a corresponding cycle of transfonuations. The cor- relation and conservation of forces, which have always been more or less clearly roongniied as necessities of human OF VITALITY. 127 thought, are now accepted as scientific axioms, and are daily receiving experimental demonstration.* Though it may seem diflScult to avoid the conclusion that there is fundamentally but one natural force which manifests itself under different modes, yet such a supposition at present transcends the domain of science. As & matter of fact we are compelled, in order to form a satisfactory conception of mat- ter and its forces, to regard it under a twofold aspect. In all our conceptions we imply a sort of dualism of power in every body, though we are very apt to forget it in our gen- eralizations. The hinges of gravitation, for example, keep worlds in their orbits by opposing a centrifugal force which would otherwise drive them afloat into space. The smaller hinges of molecular cohesion hold together the infinitely smaller bodies which we call molecules of matter, in opposi- tion to a repulsive force, which, on the application of a little heat, may drive them off into space, and in volatile sub- stances does so drive them off without heat. It is the same with liquids ; their diffusion power is similar in character to the volatility of solids ; while " colloids " are volatile, " crys- talloids " are comparatively " fixed." There is a relation of molecules to one another which we are compelled to repre- sent in conception as the result of a force of repulsion or tension. And as some sensible image is necessary for the mind in order to the clearness of a conception of the invisi- ble, physics assumes between the ponderable molecules of a body certain ethereal pai'ticles wliich are in a state of sta- ^Eplcarns, Democritns, Aristotle, all upheld the eternity of matter; the quotations from Lucretias and Persius on that subjept are well known, but the following passage from the De AugmenUs is not so common : " All things change, but nothing is lost. This is an axiom in physics, and holds in natural theology; for as the sum of matter neither diminishes nor in- creases, eo it is equally the work of Omnipotence to create or to annihilate." Other passages of like import occur in Bacon^s writings. And the Bra- minical doctrine is as follows : '^The ignorant assert that the universe in the beginning did not exist in its author, and that it was created out of nothing. O ye, whose hearts are pure, how could something come out of nothing?" 128 TIIE THEOHT tionai'y oscillation, tbo degree of teniperatare of tlio body boing supposed to depend apon the intensity of tlie octjve force of tliBfio imponderable intermolecolar pftrticles. If the body be suddenly and greatly compressed, thoae motions are comraanicated to the impondoruble ether outside the body, and tension force thna hecomea free force in manifest radia- tion of hcBt, " What is heat in ns," very juttly said Loolce, " is in the heated body nothing bat motion," When heat ia withdrawn from matter — that is, when the tension force be- comes free, its molecules get nearer to one another — their cohesion ia greater; thus Vftpora become liquids and liquids become solids. It seems probable that the necessity of regarding matter under this twofold aspect of attraction and repulsion is owing to man's inability, na being himself a part of Nature, to form a conception of Nature as a whole. lie must neoessarily re- gord things in relation to himself; for as he exists only in relation to Nature, and as every phase of consciousness ia an expression of this relation, it is plain that one of the elements of the relation cannot free itself, and jrom an indejiendent point of view watch nnconcemedly things as tliey really are. Thns, though we speak of passivity and activity, they are really not different kinds of action, hnt different relations of the same kind of action. Whatever be the cause, aud how- ever donbtfel the philoaopbioaJ validity of the distinction, we arc compelled to regard matter in this twofold relation. One aspect of the relation wo describe as passive, statical, cohesion, or, to nao the generic term, nttraction; the other is active, dynamical, tension, or, to use tiio generic terra, re- pulsion. Attraction plus repulsion of molecolea constitutes our conce])tion of matter ; and, in observation of its modes of energy, attraction is recognized in gravitation, cohesion, magnetism, affinity, love, while repulsion is found in the oen- trifogal force, in heat, in electricity, in antipathy, and hate. It is in rismg to the department of chemical componnda that attraction is fonnd tmder a new and special phase as OF VITALITY. 129 cbemioal aflBnity. But, when the chemical union of two mol- ecules into a single one takes place, a diminution of the ten- sion force surrounding each molecule must occur, and, accord- ing to the law of the conservation of force, an equivalent of another force must he set free. This happens in the produc- tion of heat and electricity; for, as Faraday has shown, chemical action cannot take place without the development of electricity. The amount of force liberated in a simple chemical combination will be the equivalent of the tension force lost. "When one atom of carbon combines with one atom of oxygen, a definite quantity of tension force surrounding each molecule disappears, and a definite quantity of heat is accord- ingly produced. When two molecules separate in chemical de- composition, they necessarily make passive or latent so much active fofce ; so much heat becomes so much tension force. But furthennore, in a chemical decomposition we have the resolution of that very intense and special force, chemical afl5nity itself; so that the force set free will, one would sup- pose, far exceed that which becomes latent as tension force around the molecules. We know not why two molecules should chemically combine ; we accept as a fundamental law of their nature this high, special, and powerful fonri of at- traction ; but we do know that, when chemical decomposition takes place, a little chemical force must be resolved into a large display of inferior force. It is a fact authenticated by Faraday, that one drop of water contains, and may be made to evolve, as much electricity as under diflferent modes of display would suffice to produce a lightning-flash.' The decomposition of matter is the resolution of force, and in such resolution one equivalent of chemical force will corre- spond to several equivalents of inferior force. Thus chemical force, though correlated with the physical forces, may be said to be of a much higher order than they are. In the still higher stage of matter in a state of vitality, we meet with chemical combination of a much more complex character than occurs in inorganic matter ; attraction appears .] 130 THE TBEOItY under ita most specia] and complex form. Hatter, which in ita elomentarj condition might occupy some space, is so blendod or combined as to occupy a minimum ot epoce ; and force, which, under e. lower mode, might suffice perhaps to illuminate tlio heavens, is here confined within tho email compass of an organic cell or of a speck of protoplasm. We have to do, however, with organic matter under two torms — as dead and aa living matter, as displajing energy of its own, or as displaying no energy. Dead organic matter has ceased to act, and it is now acted upon; it is at the mercy of the forces which auiTound it, and immediately begin to effect ils dissolution. Ileal hastens decomposition, hecaiiBO in tlie Heporation of the constituents of organic matter Into the ultimate inorganic products — carbonic acid, nmnionia, and water^a cerlain amount of active force mast become latent BH the tension force of tliese molecnlcs; and this force the heat snpphes. There is also the force of the chemical affinity of the oxygen of the air for the oAidlzable elements of the Bubstauce; and the combination is necessarily attended with the prodncCion of heat. The heating value of organic matter will accordingly increase with the quautity of oxidizable ele- ments; hut the matter is by no means so simple as it might at first sight appear to be. Siipjicse the atom of carbon witli which an atom of osjgen combines was previonaly in com- bination witli, for example, an atom of hydrogen ; and the question is, wliethcr the amount of heat produced will be the aame as though the atom of carbon had been freoJ In reality it will' not ; it must he less, because in the separation of the carbon atom and the hydrogen atom so muoli active force must become tension force — that is, so much heat mnst dis- appear or become latent ; and that loss of heat will neces- sarily ooQuterbalauce a part of the heat produced, or the decrease of tension force which occurs, through the combi- nation of the atom of carbon with the atom of oxygen. It ia this consideration which appears to invalidate some experi- ments made and conclosions come to with regard to animal OF VITALITY. 131 But thore is another consideration. In this mere burning or decomposition of organic matter, or that which represents the passive, statical, or attractive phase of vitality, the active force which results is due partly to force jfrom without, and not solely to the liberation of force latent in the matter. Ex- ternal forces have, as it were, been pulling it to pieces. What, then, on the principle of the conservation of force, becomes of th^t intense chemical force which is implied in the organic nature of the material, that power which holds it together as a specific material differing in properties from all kinds of inorganic matter? Though dead, the chemical composition of organic substance is the same as when alive ; and its future destiny is entirely dependent on the circum- stances in which it may be placed. In the air, it is true, it will undergo decomposition into inorganic products ; but, if it be surrounded with the conditions of life, if it be exposed to the influence of higher forces, by being given as food to some animal, it does not go downward, but upward, and somehow takes on life again. It is plain what becomes of the statical force under the latter circumstances. But, in the decomposition of organic matter in the air and the correlative resolution of force, it is not so evident what becomes of all the force which must be liberated. That it returns to general ITature can admit of no doubt; but does it all appear as heat? A part of it must necessarily do so, becoming latent as the tension force of the molecules of the ultimate products of its decomposition, and the rest is liberated under some form or other, if not entirely as heat. There is some reason to believe, . however, that dead organic substance does not always un- dergo the extreme retrograde metamorphosis of material and of force before being used up again in vital compounds, even by the vegetable kingdom. It has been shown that not only do pale plants, such as ftmgi, feed on organic matter, but that soluble humus is regularly taken up by the roots of al- most all plants. Prof. Le Oonte has shown it to be probable that the decomposition of the organic matter -supplies the 132 THE TIIEOnT force nonesaary for raising other matter from a lower to n higher Btflge.* The foroe necessary for organization is thns furnished by the force which rcsnlts from d isorgani ration ; death and destruction are the oonditions of life nnd devel- Dpment. When orgnnio matter displays energy— tliat is, when it has life^its relations with its surronndioga aro different. As chemical affinity Beems to hold the plaeo of attraction in it, and to correspond to gravitation among celestial Iwdies, cohesive force among molecules, and magnetio force among polar molocules, so its dynamical or vital action socuib to cor- respond to the force of repulsion, to the centriftiga! force of heavenly hodieB, the tenaion force of molecules, and electrical repiUsion. The display of energy coincides with a niolecnlar change in the statical element. 'With the function of a gan- glionicnorve-oel!, for ©sample, a correlative molecular change, or "waste," as it is called, necessarily takes place either in the nerve-clonient itself or in what is supplied to it from the hlood. Tlie anhstances which are met with in the so-called estractives of nerve-tissue afford abundant evidence of o ma- terial waste ; for as products of the retrograde metamorphosis are found lactic acid in oonsiderahle quantities, krcatin, nric acid, probably also hyposanthin, and, rcprcBcnting the fatty acida, formic and acetic acid.t And what Dn Bois-Reymond proved to happen in muscle, Fanke has observed to happen also with nerve : wliile the contents of nervo-tnbes are neutral during rest in the living state, they become acid after death, and also after great activity during life. After escessive mental exercise, it is well known that phosphates appear in • Tlio Correlatlnn of rhyalcal, Cbemical, and Vital Forco, ona Uio Con- ecmitlon of Force In Vllol Pbenomcna. Bj J. Lo Conle. Profeeaor ot Oe- oloKj and Ckfinlstry In Sonlh Carolina Collogo. (.\merlcan IJonrnal of 8c[i!nce and Arte. No. IS. ISSD.) i It Is ImerestlBg lo remsrk bow tlie prodncts of idicmlcal tianarornutlan reeultirg from nerre-acllon agroe with Iho prodncts of ilccotoposKioa aKcr muauDlar octWU;. and how tlie roanllB colacide witb what, a priori, might bare heon eipoeled from tho creal vlul actlTtly of nerve-atciictare. OF VITALITY. 133 the urine in considerable quantities ; and it is only hy sup- posing an idea to be accompanied by a correlative change in the nerve-cells that we can explain the bodily exhaustion which is produced by mental labor, and the breakiug down of the brain under prolonged intellectual efforts. There is even at times a sensation of something going on in the brain ; and, in insanity, such anomalous feelings are sometimes per- sistently complained of. But the change or waste which accompanies energy is restored by nutrition during rest, and the conditions of future energy are thus established ; nutritive attraction steadily repairing the waste of centrifugal function. The cell thus, for a time at least, preserves its individuality ; and definiteness of energy, with the maintenance of individ- uality, is what is connoted by vitality. Is the energy displayed by living matter something quite special ? In attempting to answer that question, two consid- erations should be kept in view. In the first place, an effect need not at all resemble in properties its cause ; the qualities of a chemical compound are quite different from those of its constituents. Such a complex compound as organic matter really is may be expected, therefore, to exhibit peculiar prop- erties in no way resembling those of its constituent elements or those of simple compounds. In the second place, the ar- rangement or grouping of the molecules in a substance, inde- pendently of its chemical composition, may greatly alter its properties : there is a molecular as well as a chemical consti- tution of matter. In that condition of bodies which is de- scribed as Isomerism, there are atoms alike in number, nature, aud relative proportion, so grouped as somehow to produce compounds having very different chemical properties. Again, it has been found that the same matter may exist under two very different conditions, and with very different properties — as colloidal and as crystalloidal, in a gelatinous or in a crys- talline state. And what is the chief difference ? It is that the colloidal is a dynamical state of matter, the crystalloidal a statical state. The colloid exhibits energy ; its existence is 134 THE TIIEORT a onntinued metastasis ; and it mnj be luoked upon, eays Graham, " as tlie probable primary source of llie force ap- pearing in tbe pbenomenn of vitality," Tie distinction be- tween the two kinds of matter is, in fact, ''. tLat subststiiig between the tiiatorial of a miaeral and the materia) of an organized lanss." And yet minerals may esiat in tbe colloidal Btate ; tlie bydrated peroxides of Ibe alnminous class, for ei- ample, are colloids. Furtbermore, tlio mineral forms of sOicio noid deposited from water, such as flint, ore fonnd to have passed during the geological ages from tbe colluidul into the crystalline condition ; and, on tbe otlier hand, in the so-called blood-crystals of Fuako, a soft and gelatinous albuminoid is seen to assnme a crystalline contour. " Con any facts," asks Graham, " more strikingly illustrate tbe maxim, that in Ifa- ture there are no abrupt transitions, and that distinctions of class are never ahsolate ) " * The foregoing considerations render it evident that the manifestation of organic energy by matter is not a contrast to the kind of energy which is displayed by inorganic matter, and so far jastify tbe supposition that it may be a question of chemiaal composition and intimate molecular constitution. Vitality woold not then bo a special principle, bat a resnlt, and would be expldned ultimately by the operation of the so-called molecular forces. Coleridge's assertion, that the division of substances into living and dead, though ptycKologieally ne- cessary, was of doubtful philosophical validity, would receive a support which its author couid scarce have expected for it. Before granting any conclusion, it is desirable to eiamine into that which is generally deemed to constitnte the spe- •A lUrtlier c^mctcriEtic of colloids J linRDlac i ia in all nButinginU'ltrot hprcntoffonlirely tbelrowniD their ponctrablllty; they itre permeable >rl la. by the more highly diOUslye cls^s of sabsluDcea, bal otlier colloldul &DbBtaac«B Ihat may be In solution. I cODCeptlon of solid mitter maat aoon andergo copsldcrabla modlflcatlOD. (Od Llqnld Qlmislon applied 10 AdaIjbIb. By T. Graham. F.B.B. Phlto- Bophlcal TiannactlaiiB, 136S.) OF VITALITY. 135 cialty of life. Now, it is certain, when we consider the vast range of vitality from the simple life of a molecule or cell to the complex life of man, that valid ohjections may be made to any definition of life. If it be wide enough to comprise all forms, it will be too vague to have any value ; if narrow enough to be exact, it will exclude the most lowly forms. The problem is to investigate the conditions of the manifesta- tion of life. A great fault in mauy attempted definitions has been the description of life as a resistance or complete con- trast To the rest of Nature, which was supposed to be con- tinually striving to destroy it. But the elements of organic matter are not different from those of inorganic, whence they are derived, and to which they return ; and the chemical and mechanical forces of these elements cannot be suspended or removed within the organism. What is special is the manner of composition of the elements : there is a concurrence of manifold substances, and they are combined or grouped to- gether in a very complex way. Such union or grouping is, however, only a further advance upon, and by no means a contrast to, the kind of combination which is met with in in- organic bodies. Life is not a contrast to non-living Nature, but a further development of it. The more knowledge ad- vances, the more plainly is it shown that there are physical and chemical processes upon which life depends. Heat is produced by combustion in the organism as it is in the fire ; starch is converted into sugar there, as it is in the chemical laboratory ; urea, which is so constant a product of the body 's chemistry, can be formed artificially by the chemist; and the process of excitation in a nerve, on the closure of a con- stant stream, appears to be analogous to the process of elec- trolysis in which hydrogen is given off at the negative pole.* The peculiarity of life is the complexity of combination in so small a space, the intimate operation of many simultaneously- acting forces in the microcosm of the organic cell. Knowl- * A. yon Bezold : 'IJntersnchiiDpren fiber die electrische Erregang der Nerven and Maskeln. Leipzig, 1861. 1S6 THE THEORY cJgo cannot pnss tho life-boumlury, Lctunse thvra arc not at prcseot any means of following the intimate diasges wlurb take place beyond it ; there is a world tliere into which the BEnsca of man cannot jet enter. But, aa each grent advance of science has followed some invention by which the opera- tion of the sonaea has been eitenJed, there can be little doubt that the important step toward a true Ecience of life will be made with the discovery of a means of tracing the delicate procesaes of protoplasmic activity. Microscopic phys- ics and microscopic chemistry, nay, physics and chemistry of a delicacy beyond the roach of tho powers of the highest microscope, are needed. So that it may well be that this gen- eration and generations to ooine will have passed to their everlasting rest before a discovei'y of the secret of vital 0.C- tivity is made. Before dealing with that which is considered to mark tt second and great peculiarity of life, namely, its aim or plan, it will be well to illaatrato the foregoing remarks from the phenomena of eonscions vitality. It is, in tmth, with the low- est form of vitality as it la with the lowest form of eonscions vitality — with tho human mind in the earliest stages of its evo- lution. A self-conservative impulse moves the moat barbarous people to regard tho operation of the external forces of Nature, and to adopt mde meona to preserve life and to obtain comfort ; tho savage avoids the current which would drive his tr^ ca- noe on the hungry breakers, and shelters his hut from the over- whelming fury of the stonn ; he may be said to war with Kn- ture for the maintenance of individual power, na the vital force of a cell may be said to war with the nature that imme- diately surrounds it. But it is obvious that man only struggles successfully with the physical forces by recognizing the laws of their action, and by accommodating his individnal forces to physical lawa ; it is victory by obedience. By eonacions obedi- ence to the physiciJ law, he appropriates, as it were, the force tiieroof, in the increase of his own power ; the idea is devel- oped in hia mind as the correlate of the law or idea in Na- OF VITALITY. 137 ture ; in his mental progress Nature is undergoing develop- ment through him. By keeping in mind this analogy of the mental force the difficulty will he ohviated, which there might seem to be in conceiving the organic cell as a result of physi- cal and chemical forces, and yet as resisting the action of these forces. Every act of so-called resistance on the part of the cell to the natural forces is really a phenomenon indi- cating the development of them ; its life is not a contrast to non-living Nature, but a further complication of it. The fun- damental law of life is the same for its conscious and uncon- scious manifestations ; it is individuation by appropriation. And, however necessary it may seem to the individual, as a part of a whole looking at the rest, to represent the vital as in constant antagonism to the physical, such a conception does not faithfully express the condition of the whole regard- ed as a whole. A just conception of Nature as one harmoni- ous whole is plainly not antagonistic to the spirit of any in- vestigations which may tend to prove the dependence of life on physical and chemical processes. That which is commonly said to constitute the specialty of life is the maintenance of a certain definite plan ; and accord- ingly Coleridge, following Schelling, defined life as "the principle of individuation." Given the different kinds of force and of matter, and how, it is asked, is the pattern de- termined and worked out? As every individual is in life weaving out some pattern " on the roaring loom of time," though " what he weaves no weaver knows," so the lowest form of vitality manifests a definite energy, and is said to accomplish a definite plan. A crystal would go on increasing if suitable materials and the conditions of its growth were present, " but it has been provided that trees do not grow up into heaven." Life works according to an aim, said Aristotle. Admitting all this, we are not therefore called upon to admit a special contrast to the rest of Nature. Liebig compares the living body to a building which is constructed after a definite, preordained plan ; but it is obvious that exactly in the same 13: TDE THEORY. sense might the ])ositivo biologist say of llio ohemiciJ atom, that it is aonstracted and displuya encrgT' accordiog to a pre- ordained plan; or even of the crjBtal, tliat it works out a certain pnttern, seeing that it cannot overstep the laws of its form. The plan la the law of the matter, and the law ia not aometliing outside the matter, bnt it ia inherent in it. OrgBnio matter, like the chemical element, has an. activity givon to it- ui'If which it mast display ; the law of ciCasalitj is true of it as of inorganio matter; and the orgonio effect, the so-oalled accomplUliment of the plan, is the necessary rcault of a cer- tain molectilar constitution and certain intimate combinations nliich exist in the organic moiecule or cell ur monad, or whatever else we choose to name the ultimate unit of life. The direct denial of a epecial vital force has been the nntnral reaction against that dogmatism which assumed a vital principle tliat wna self-generating, did any thing it liked, and was not amenable to investigation. That any force shonid be self-generating in inesbnustible quantity is really an in- conceivable sapposition. If the axiom, that force, like matter, is not capable of annihilation, be accepted, and wo find, as we do, that organic bodies incorporate, or someliow cause to disappear, inorganicmatter and force, and thereby themselves increase, it is an unavoidable conclusion that the organic matter and force must represent the converted inorganic matter and force. To suppose that the vital force was self- produced wonld bo to suppose a disturbance of the equilib- rium of Natnre, and it raigiit not then be unreasonable to fear lest the earth, by the increase of its repulsion force, should break through the hinges of gravitation and float off into space, or barst into fragments, as a planet between Mars and Jupiter is snpposed at one time to have done.* > Sdi^nce, In (1b TieworiiTo.seeiDBtoliefollowlQiTtlieconcBC of derclop- mentinHDmboldt'gralna. InMs earlier wrilfngB be defined vital Funeu Ibe DDknown cmte viltb prevents Ihe elomenta bom following thuiroil^- nal BttracliTB forces. (Aptioitgm.eidoel.Phy5.Chcin,Plsnt.) " Reflection anil pTDlODgiid study," he eaya, in bis "^epecls of Natarf," " in din dopart- msnM of phj-Bioldgj and cbom1i!trT, haredepply alialcen oij- earlier beJlef in OF VITALITY. 139 « When, however, it is said that a minute portion of living matter converts inorganic matter into its own nature, and thus develops new organic matter which has the power of doing likewise, it is evident that a great and peculiar poten- tiality is assumed in the living molecule. What power is it which transforms the matter and force ? Some who have ad- vocated the correlation of the vital force with the physical forces seem not to have given due attention to this question ; they have laid such great stress on the external force as to have fallen into an error almost as great as, though the oppo- site of, that of the advocates of a self-generating vital force. External circumstances are the necessary conditions of in- ward activity, fcut the inward fact is the important condition — it is the determining condition, and, so far as we know yet, it can only he derived from a like living mother struct- ure. Nevertheless, even in that inherited potentiality there is not a contrast to that which happens in the rest of Nature. When heat is converted into electricity, or any force into another, the change is not self-determined ; the determining force lies in the molecules of the matter,' in the so-called statical force, that which Aristotle in his division of causes names the material cause. And if it he ohjected that a little life is ahle to do such a great deal, the answer is that a like thing happens in fermentation. When a certain organic sub- stance makes the inorganic matter in contact with it become organic, it may be that it does so by a kind of infection or fermentation by which the molecular relations of its smallest particles are transferred to the particles of the inorganic just as in the inorganic world forces pass from matter to matter. But there are further considerations. Admitting that the vital transforming matter is at first derived from vital struct- peculiar Bo-called vital force/^ And again : " The diflBLcuIly of eatisfactorily referring the yital phenomena of organism to physical and chemical laws depends chiefly (and almost in the same manner as the prediction of mete- orological processes in the atmosphere) on the complication of the phenom- ena, and on the great number of the simnltaneonslyacting forces, as well as the conditions of their activity." 140 THE THEORY ure. it is evident tLat the external force uiiil matter trans- formed docs in turn become traiiBforniing force — tiiat is, vital. And if tliat tnkes place after tlie vital process fla« onee com- meneed, ia it, it may be ashed, extravagant to suppose tliot a similar transformation might at some peiiod have oommeneed tlie process, andmaj even now be doing sol The fact that in growth and development life is continunlij increasing, from s ti'ansformation of physical and chemical forces, is aiter all in favor of the presnmption that it ma; at first have so origi- nated. And the advocate of this view may turn upon lija opponent, and demand of him how he, with a duo regard to the axiom that force is not self-generating, and to the fact that Uving matter does increase from llie size of a little cell to the magnitude of a human hodj', accounts for the oonfemal prodnction of transforming power! A definite qnoutitj only could have been derived from the mother structure, and that must have been exlianeted at an early period of growth. The ohvions refuge of the vitaliat is to the facts that it is impossi- ble now to evolve life artificially out of any combination of physical and chemical forces, aud that such a transformation is never witnessed save under the conditions of vitaUty. Thus the argument stands. Meanwhile, those who do believe in the oripnntion of life from non-living matter hope to Huceeed in artificially producing the npward transforma- tion, and may say reasonably enongh that it is not to be ex- pected that sueh transformation should now take place as a regular process in Natnro, except nnder conditions of vitality. Sacb a snppoBition is as unnecessary as it would be to assume that the savage must continue to rob togotiier his sticks, after he has obtained the spark, in order to make the fire barn. What only is necessary is that the spark of fire, or the spark of life, once evolved, should be placed under suitable condi- tions, and it will then go on increasing. The minutest portion of living matter roallynow contains implicitly, as it were in a microcosm, the complexity of chemical and physical combina- tions and the conditions which were necessary for the li rat OF VITALITY. 141 production of life in the macrocosm, and it supplies these as the conditions of further vital transformations. In fact, Na- ture, having accomplished a result, does not need on each fu- ture occasion to go through the preliminary steps by which the result was first arrived at. And in this relation it is very interesting to observe how much use is made of the force supplied by the destruction of certain organic matter in rais- ing other matter to a higher stage. It is supposed, for ex- ample, that urea is partly produced by the oxidation of an excess of so-called albuminous matters in the blood, without these having entered into the formation of tissue ; and the force thus supplied in the retrograde metamorphosis will be available, and probably is used, for the exaltation of other elements. It needs but little consideration to see that the living cell cannot supply all the force which is used in increasing and advancing life — ^in the multiplication and transformation of cells; heat and other external conditions are necessary, as being, so to speak, material for transformation. It is a mis- take, however, to say, as some have i^^d, that heat and ex- ternal conditions determine the rate of growth. The rate of germination, for example, certainly varies according to exter- nal conditions, but the limits of variation are fixed by the inherent properties of the structure. The seeds of a begonia taken from the same pod will, as Mr. Paget has pointed out, germinate, some in a day, some at the end of a year, and some at various intermediate times, even when they are all placed under the same external conditions. And the same author has pointed out other indications of self-dependent time-rates in the lower organisms. There are, in fact, inter- nal as well as external conditions of growth, and the former are the more important, for they are really the determining conditions. It is with the organic cell and its conditions as it is with the individual and his circumstances ; the latter may greatly modify character, and are necessary for development, but the essential fact, which determines the limit of the modi- 142 THE THEORY fyiDg power of circuniatancea, is the iintiire implanted in the individual. It IB ess; to perceive liow iiDpoeeiMe it is, in tlie present Btato ot ecience, to como to any positive coDdusion with re- gard to the Datiiro of the vital force. All tliat can be said is, that advancing knowledge more and more clearly proves tha dependence of life on pbysica! and chcmicid proccsseB, find. tends to show that vital action does not contrast witli the kind of action esliibited by inorganic Nature. Living matter displays, in fact, the energy of colloidal and tlie plan of cry»- talloidal matter. When vital force undergoes resolution into inferior force, simuttaneously with the decomposition of snb- stance, it 13 into heat, chemical force, and electricity, thot «a find it, as it were, unfolded; it ia n natural conjecture, there- fore, that the conditions of the artificial production of vitality mnat he a high and complex chemistry to represent the stat- ical correlative, and some mode of repulsion force, as heat or electricity, or biitb, to represent the dynamical correla- tive. It is certainly extremely nn philosophical in the present condition of knowledge to refuse to accept vitality na a special mode of manifestation of force ; the special character of its phenomena demand that, whatever its real natare may he, vitfJ forc« ahonld for tho present he received as a distinct force on the same terms as chemical force or electrical force. The facts of observation, as well as a priori considerations, unqnestionnbly demand also that it should be regarded as subject to the laws of the correlation and conservation of force. Aa, then, vital force is plainly lij far the highest force in dignity, a small quantity of it will correspond in value to a much greater quantity of an inferior force; one equivalent of vital force, in fact, will correspond to many equivalents of the lower forces. An immense amount of force is re- quired to raise matter from its elementary state to that con- dition in which it is described as organic ; and the upward transformation evidently only tabes place through the inter- OF VITALITY. 143 mediate action of chemical force. Bat vital force surpasses chemical force apparently in as great a degree as chemical force surpasses physical force. How great, thenj must be its mechanical equivalent I Who can measure the power of a great idea? Armies fight in vain against it, and nations yield to its sway. What wonder that life was the last and highest development of ]N"ature, and that it was produced only after the inferior forces had been long in existence ! What ground, furthermore, it might be asked, have we for supposing that it is destined to be the last development of force ? Is it not possible that a still higher manifestation of force than that which we call vital may ultimately result from the complexity of forces and conditions which are now present on earth ? The hypothesis of Laplace was, that in primeval times a large quantity of nebulous matter was spread through space. This nebulous matter was through gravitation aggregated into solid masses. Immense heat must have been thus produced, and this heat might then produce light, and develop electricity as it does now when acting on the thermo-electric plates. Electricity might appear again as heat or as light, or as qhemical force, as it does in the de- composing cell of a voltaic battery. The correlation of these forces we are able to trace now, and it is not difficult to con- ceive how they mutually excited and affected one another in the primeval times when the earth was, as we are told, without form and void. But there was a time when no life existed on the earth. So that as we. can now obtain one force from another up to the point where life begins, when we are at fault, similarly considerable time elapsed in Nature before vital force followed on the physical and chemical, forces. Science may, then, claim that in its difficulty and delay it only reflects a corresponding difficulty in Nature. But there are other important considerations with regard to vitality. It does not follow, because we recognize a special vital manifestation, that there is but one kind thereof; it is in reality necessary to admit different degrees, if not different 144 THE THEORY I kiuds, of vitolit;. Aa with organic matter so witL orgonia force, we trace as advance from the most simplQ oad general to the moat complex aud Bpeoial. Tlio tissue of Uie simple jirotozoon is uniform and esliibits no trace of structure; its active relations arc eqmilly aimple. In tlie ascending scolo of life continuous differentiation of tissue oorresponds witli increasing speoialt/ and complexity of relation witii the ex- ternal, until in man we observe the higliest example of a nnity of organism procoeding from manifold varieties of ele- ments, and of unity of action from tlio coordination of many forces. And as it is witli the animal kingdom, so it is with tim elementary stmcturea wLicli form it ; tbere is a scale of dignity, a liierarcliy of tissues ; tlie lowest appear firsts and are neces- sary steps for the evolation of the highest. All the foroe of Nature could not develop a nervo-cell directly out of inor- ganic matter; atid the cell of the Fratocoeevs ninaliii, or the molecules of tlio Amoibo, conld not, under any possible cir- cumstances, energize as ncrve-foroe. Between the vitality of thought and the vitality of the fungus there is scarcely a comparison possible ; the former is dependent npon the widest and most complex, and at the samejiime the most intense and special relations with external Nature, while the latter eshibitd only a few general and comparatively simple relations there- with. Between the relations of a nerve-cell and an epidermic cell with their surroundings, there is as much difference aa there is between the relations of a Rhizopod and those of a Cephalopod with extemnl Nature. And the relations of a nerve-cell with its surroundings are, it must be remembered, dependent on the maintenance of the relations of all the in- ferior elements of the body which intervene in the descending scale between it and the inorganio. Whatever, then, may be the fact in animal development, it is certain that transformation of species takes place in tlie structural elements. When a tissue takes material from the blood, it does not merely aggregate, bnt it assimilates it — that is, it malies it of the same Hnd with itself. In develop- OF VITALITY. 145 ment, a higher tissue constantly proceeds from a lower one, and demands the lower one as a necessary antecedent to its production; it has thus, as external conditions, not only those which are general, bnt the intimate and special influ- ences of the tissue which is before it in the order of existence. In the latter are supplied the special and essential conditions for the exaltation and transpeciation of force and material. But all exaltation of force is, as it were, a concentration of it ; one equivalent of the higher force corresponds to many equivalents of the inferior force which has been transformed. Hence it is that the power of reproducing tissues or parts in animals is diminished much more by development than by growth ; and the law which describes the reparative power in each species of animal as being in an inverse ratio to ita position in the scale of life, though not strictly proved, is yet true as a general proposition. If, now, the degree of dignity of an element represents a corresponding degree of vitality, it is obviously right to speak of the life of the blood, without any design of placing its life on the same level with that of nerve. In the decomposition of material and the correlative resolution of force which take place when the blood-cell returns to the inorganic state, there will be much less force liberated than when a nerve-cell un- dergoes the retrograde metamorphosis. As a great expendi- ture of force is needed to raise matter from the inorganic to the organic state, so a further greater expenditure is required to raise matter from a low organic to its highest organic con- dition. The nerve-cell is, so to say, the highest parasite which thus sucks up the life of the blood ; and, if the process of its decomposition were accurately observed, it would be found that all the force which had been consumed by it in its upward transformation was ^ven back to ITature in its down- ward metamorphosis. The retrograde metamorphosis of organic elements is con- stantly taking place as a part of the history of life. In the function of nerve-cell, a nerve-force is liberated which excites I U6 THE THEOHT muscular furoo, and ia iiltiiiiat«lj giv^a baok to eitcmai Na- ture as motion ; the coiaoideut *' waste " of subetanoc la re- ceived ioto the blood, and ultimately also pfiases back to Nature. It is probable, however, that this " waste " doea not pass alnoya directly oat of the body, hat that it may be first naed oa the nuCrimeot of Bome lower element. Thas, «s there seemed reaaon to bclievu that, in the economy of Nn- tare, animal matter did not undergo the extreme retrograde metamorphosis into inorgamo matter before being used as food by regetables, ao inthe animal body the highereleniontsdo not appear at once to undergo the extreme retrograde metamor- phosis, but are firet used as the nntriment of lower organic element. How admirably does Nature thus economize in the body! Juat aa on a larger scale the carbonic acid exhaled by animals is taken up by vegetables, and a poison thna re- moved from the atmosphere in which the animal lives, so by one organic element of the body the blood ia purified from the waste matter of a higher element which would be poison- ous to it. The parta impaired by activity, aa ali parts must be, are repaired during rest in a condition of health. And it is very interesting to obaerve, as Mr, Paget has pointed out, that the organic processes of repnir in each tissue are ad- justed to a certain time-rate, which is variable according to, but is not determined by, external conditjona. The time-rate is determined by the implanted properties, and "for each unit of nutrition might be reckoned a unit of time." Tlia periodicities of organic life appear to be prominent instances of the law; and the rhytlimio motiona of the heart, or the motions of cilia, are, Mr, Paget supposes, due "to a method of nutrition in which the acting parts are, at certain peri- ods, raised with time-regulated progress to a state of inatsbil- ity of composition from which they then decline, and in their decline may change their ehape and move with a deSnite velo- city, or(&s nervoua centres) may discharge nerve-force." * In . (CrootiUn tee- 01^ VrTALITY. 147 this recognition of the chronometry of organic processes, there is unquestionably great promise for the fixture ; for it is plain that the observance of time in the motions of organic molecules is as certain and universal, if not as exact, as that in the motions of heavenly bodies. Each organic process has its definite time-rate; and each cell has its appointed pe- riod of life different for different kinds of cells. The exer- cise of its ^lergy is the accomplishment of the life-task of the gland-cell of the stomach, and its existence ends therewith — it discharges its duty with its life ; but it is not so with other cells. It is not known, for example, how soon the blood-cell and other cells die. The blood-cell may be ephemeral, and after the manufacture of its material straightway perish, supplying in the products of its decomposition material for the coloring matters of the bile ; or it may isuKsomplish its function more than once, and live therefore for some time. Certain facts do, indeed, point to a short duration, as, for example, the de- struction of the nucleus in the blood-cell, the analogy of the cells of the stomach and milk-glands, and of the sebaceous and spermatic cells, and the great production of blood^oells ; but nothing positive is known, and the subject is one which awaits, and ought to receive, careful attention. Such, then, is the general process of life physiologically regarded. But there is nothing special in disease. Although the destructive cancerous mass seems at first sight to admit of no sort of comparison with the beneficial formation of a developing organ, yet the production is governed by laws of organic growth and activity. No new forces nor new laws appear in the organism under the circumstances which are de- scribed as disease. ^^ 'Tis as natural to die as to be bom,^* says Sir T. Browne ; and, if we choose to accept the doctrine of final cause, we must acknowledge that the disease which leads to death is as natural, as much in the purpose of Nature, as the physiological processes which constitute health. An indi- vidual exists in certain relations with the external, and the harmony which results from the maintenance of these rela- 146 THE THEORY tions id Ijeaitli, n'Lilu a disturbaiice of tEjein, nlietlier from a cnuBe in the orgniiiem or in the extcroal circumstancea, or parti; in one and pertly in the other, ia discord or digease. The phenomena of morbid action may therefore, when prop- erly regarded, he aerviceahlo as experiments ilhistrating the charaotcr and relationa of vital action. Aa ench cell has its appointed period of life, and each Bpocies of ocU its natural degree of life, and as there ore many cells and many kinds of cells in the human body, it is evident that disease will bo more easily initiated in it than in aa organism with less differentiation of tissue, and leas com- plexity of structure. For the life of the organism is the man of the life of its individual parts, and superiority of vitality Bignifies more numerous, special, and complex relatioDB with the external. In the lowest organisms, where there is a aimilarity of structure, one part is independent of another, aEd dependent only on the maintenance o! certain general and simple relations with the external; there is, therefore, comparatively little liability to disturbance.* When the parts are, however, nnlike, and there is a definite subordination of them, so that the well-being of the highest structure is de- pendent on the weli-heing of all the structures which inter- vene in the descending scale between it and inorganic Nature, there ia plainly abundant room for disturbance. Aa in the state, BO in the organism, the vitality of the gorernincnt flows from, and rests upon, the well-being of individuals. When, from some of the many disturbing causes which initiate disease, a particular elementary constituent of the body ia prevented from rising to the dignity of its specific constitution and energy, there will, if the disturbing eanse • Gootbe, »Itet es jlEg tliit every HiIdb ItTlog Is B collemon of Brine, eclMependent belnge, Bdde: "Js nnTolkommiier due 0«c1iflpf iat. deeto nictar Bind dieee Tlieile elnuider glclch Oder Uinllcli. nod dcBto meli t eleldun ele dmn Oanzen. 3b volkomimiKr d&s GescHOpr wird, deelo iiiiataDlicher wcrdcD die Thelle etnundeT. Jn nhnllchBT die Tbdle elnanderBtod. de«to irenl^r elnd nlseliinQder BUbordlnlrl. Dla SnboidliiBtlon dcrThrlte dratM »af elD volkommnerai Of achOpf." OF VITALITY. - 149 has not been so serious as to destroy the life of the part, be a production of an elemenl of a lower kind with a lower en- ergy ; and that is a diseased product. It is as if the substanoe of a polype were produced among the higher physiological elements of the human body, and went on increasing there without regard to relations with surrounding elements of tissue. There may be a production of foreign substance in larger quantity than that which should rightly be formed of the natural tissue, and a greater display of force, but both structure and energy are of a lower order. What is gained in quantity is lost in quality, and the vitality is intrinsically less. Inflammation in a part is really the result of a degenera- tion of its vitality. When a wound heals by the " first inten- tion,^^ there is direct adhesion of its surfaces, and no inflam- mation, for the natural vitality of the part is maintained, and eflfects the repair. When slight inflammation occurs, the vi- tality of the part has undergone a certain dj'^eneration, and material of an inferior order to the proper element of the part is produced ; this substance binds the surfaces together, and it may in process of time, on the complete subsidence of in- flammation, and under the favorable conditions of surround- ing healthy tissue life, even rise to the condition of the proper structure. But the lymph does not appear to be thrown out with any special beneficial design ; it is the simple result of a deterioration of energy, is only a less degree of a positive evil. When greater inflammation takes place, or wlien the natural vitality of the part is feeble, there is a gredter degen- eration, and material of a still lower kind, wbich is not even organizable under any circumstances, is produced. Pus is poured out, and ceases to appear with the restoration of the proper vitality of the tissue. If the inflammation is still greater, the degeneration passes into actual destruction of life, and mortification ensues. When John Hunter, therefore, speaks, aa he does, of Nature calling up the vital powers to produce suppuration, his words convey a false notion of what \^ 150 THE TBEOKY really happens. Tho injury Las ao daiusged tlio parts that tlie Tital action cannot riBO to its Bpecific elevation ; im in- ferior kind of action ia alone possible, which is really disease, and only bo far beneficial as it proveB that the life of the part LaB not been hilled outright. As inighC be espected, there- fore, it is in exhausting diaeoaes that inflammation most com- monly and easily occnra. IIow incorrect, then, ia it to Bpeak of inflammation as if it were a process specially provided for restoring the healthy life of parts I When adhesive inflamma- tion ia said to limit the aoppuration of an abscess, its ooenr- rcnce is a rcsalt of diminishing mischief, and testifies to a leas serioDB degeneration of vita! force. How hard it is not to bo blind when theories or wiahea lead ual When adheave in- flammation Axes a piece of Btrsngnlatcd gat to t!io side of the belly, 80 as hnppily to prevent the passage of fecal matter into the peritoneal cavity, it is sometimes said to be a wise and kindly provision of Nature. What, then, shall be swJ of iniiammation when it glnoa tho gut to a hernial cavity, or raanufacturea a fibrona band which strangles the gut ? Is this also a wise and beneficial design) That which ia true of the material products of inflamma- tion ia necessarily tmo of its force ; tho heat, and pain, and rigors, the forces as well as the material, testify to a degenera- tion of vital force. The sort of stormy rage and demonstra- tive activity which characterize inflammation, though nnqnes- tionalily aa exhibition of force, are not really an increased display of tho proper vital force. The latter has undergone a transformation from the quiet, self-contained activity of development into the unrestrained diBsipation of a lower ac- tivity; and, as regards the latter, it might be said that sev- eral monads of its matter, or volumea of its force, arc equiva- lent only to one monad of matter or one volume of force of the former. Eigors, as the involuntary action of voluntary muscle, are a degradation of action witnessing to a molecular deterioration of vital conditions. Heat is a physical force which must have resulted from the retrograde metamorphosis OF VITAIiiry. 151 of vital force. The existence of pain, where rightly there shonld be no sensation, testifies to a molecular deterioration of fstatical element and a correlative exhibition offeree. The increased action of inflammation in a part is, therefore, di- minished vital action. Perhaps it might once for all be stated, as a law of vital action, that the dignity of the force is in an inverse ratio to its volometrical display. It is indeed with organic action as it is with mental action. The emo- tional man displays considerable force, and often produces great effects in the way of destruction, but his power is vast- ly inferior to that of the man who has developed emotion a. force into the higher form of will-force, who has oodrdinated the passions into the calm, self-contained activity of definite productive aim. Surely creation always testifies to. a much higher oaergy than destruction. The foregoing considerations unavoidably flow from a conception of vitality as correlate with other natural forces, and as subject to the law of the conservation of force. They obtain additional weight, however, from being in some ac- cordance with the important generalizations which one of the most philosophical physiologists of the present time has made with regard to morbid products. Virchow has, as is well known, referred all morbid structures to physiological types, and maintains that there is no new structure produced in the organism by disease. The cancer-cell, the pus-cell, and all other disease-produced cells, have their patterns in the cells of healthy structure. The cells of tubercle corre- spond with the corpuscles of the lymphatic glands; pus and colorless blood-corpucksles cannot be distinguished except by looking at the place whence they come; the cells of cancer in bone " are the immediate descendants of the cells in bone ; ^' and certain colloid tumors have the structure of the umbilical cord. " Where a new formation takes place^ certain histolo- gical elements of the body must generally also cease to exist ; *' and every kind of new formation is really, therefore, destruc- tive, and destroys something of what previously existed. The I THE THEOSV 1 tissue, with its eqnivalenta, he describes us the common Htock of germs of the body ; from them morbid Btructures proceed by continnons development, '' Heterolo- gous tissues have physiological types ; and there is do other kind of heterology in morbid structures than the abnormal manner in which the; arise as to place (heterotopia), lime (hoterochronia), and quantity (hetarometria)." • The conclusions with regard to vital force, which a con- sistent conception of it as a natural force aeems to necessi- tate, will find extensive application in the various phenomena of disease. We have seen that if the resolution of tlio vital- ity of a single nerve-cell into a titidity of a lower kind be supposed — into that, for esampJe, of polype substance — it would necessarily suffice for the production of a whole polype, or perhaps of a multitude of polypes. In other words, one nervous unit, monad, or molecule, is the vital oquivaleut of many nnits, monads, or molecules of polype Bubstani'e. How idle it is, then, to dispute, as same have done, as to whether epilepsy is increased vital action or diminished vital action, when there esists no clear conception of what is meant by the words I No one con deny that there is great display of force in the convulsions of epilepsy, but is it increased vital force) Is a man in convulsions a strong man f for that is the real question. Does convulsion in a paralyzed limb indicate increased vital action of it ? When tetanns of a muscle is produced, as Weber showed it might be, by putting a loop of thread round its nerve and slowly and gradually tightening it, does the violent action of the muscle testify to increased vitality ? If it reoUy does, then the mechanical tetanomotor of Ileidenhain might, properly used, suffice for the care of every pnrulysis, and effect a com- plete renewol of life. In speaking of vital action, we may either consider the whole organism as individual, or we may consider the cell or organic monad as the individual. If we regard the organiam •Cclliihr Pathology. OP VITALITT. 153 as individual, then when general convulsions take place in it — that is, violent and aimless movements completely withdrawn from the control of the will, which should rightly codrdinate them into definite action — ^it is simply to use words without meaning to say that the vital action of tbe individual is in- creased. There is not, then, individual action ; and the defi- nition of vitality is not applicable to the organism as a whole. The highest manifestation of individuality is in the conscious- ness of man, the so-called unity of the ego ; but, when the coordination of forces for a definite end is replaced by the convulsions of epilepsy, there is neither subjective nor ob- jective unity of action. Instead of that quiet will-force which expresses conscious unity, or that unconscious unity of or- ganic action which is manifest in sleep, there is the violent and incoherent exhibition of inferior force. Increased action is the result of a degeneration of the proper vital action. " A man in convulsions is not strong, though six men cannot hold him." Like considerations apply when the single cell is regarded as individual. In virtue of a certain chemical constitution and a certain definite arrangement of molecules, a cell ex- hibits energy as nerve-force. That special mode of energy is the definite result of a certain coordination of chemical com- binations and molecular relations ; and these are connoted in the individuality of the cell. When, however, in place of the definite process of statical attraction (nutrition) and dy- namical repulsion (energy), there takes place a large demon- strative display of force — as general epileptic convulsions, being the sum of the action of the individual cells, prove there must — ^it is impossible to pronounce such force as of the same rank or kind as the proper energy of the cell. It is an inferior kind of power, and the certain indication of a de- generation of the statical correlative. It is the duty of a cell, 80 to speak, as of an individual, to live in certain relations with its surroundings — it is, indeed, its essence as an individ' ual cell of specific character ; and, when it is not so living, it IG4 THE TSEOBT I ia reoUj degeseratiDg. loHing its naturo or kind, passing more or less qaickiy toward death. Its action U certainly not in- cressed fnnotional action. In troth, it woald be as jnat to aall the extrayagnnt action of maducss in an indiTidnoI occa- pjing a certain position in a ajatetn of government increased functional action, and to bbj that the goTcminent was stronger for his degenerate nntion. A state, again, would not he pow- erful, would not even exist, if each individual did as hia pas- sions prompted, altogether regardlees of his relations to others; and it would certainly he a strange use of language to say then that the fiinctional action of that individual was increased. The phenomena of conscious vitality might he used to illustrate the some principles. A passionate man is not strong-mi uded, nor do the ravings of insanity reveal mental Tigor. A completely -fashioned will is the true mark of a strong mind. " A character," said Novalis, " is a completely- fashioned will." As in the order of natural development there has heen on ascent from the physical and chemical forces to the aim-working vital force, and thenee from the lowest vitality to the highest manifestation thereof, so in the cooi-se of mental development there is a progress tbropgh aensation, passion, emotion, reason, to the highest phase of mental force, a well-fashioned will. The rightJj-developed mind, like the healthy cell, recognizes its relations to others ; self-feeling gives place to or expands into moral feeling, and in the will all the phases of conscionsneaa are coordinated into calm, just, definite action. Noise and fiiry surely indi- cate weakness; they are the manifestation of inferior force —the tale of an idiot signifying nothing. The strongest force is qniet force, and the ravings of insanity, which might not nnjustly he compared to the convulsions of epilepsy, do not evince mental power. May wo not, then, already perceive, what advancing knowledge most ever render more clear, how the conscious mind of man hlenda in unity of development with the nn- OF VITALITY. 156 consdons life of Nature ? As the revelation of Nature pro- ceeds in the progress of science, the idealism of Plato and the realism of Bacon will be found to harmonize as expres- sions of the same truths ; the generalizations of Humboldt and the poetical intuitions of Goethe may be looked upon as but different descriptions of the same facts. Idealism and real- ism blend and are extinguished in the Intimate harmony be- tween the individual and Nature. How great, then, the igno- rance which fancies that poetry demands a rude age for its successful development I How little, again, the insight which would make of science an ugly anatomy only 1 After analysis comes synthesis ; and, beyond the practical realization of sci- ence in works which add to human comfort, there remains the oesthetical embodiment of science. Art has now opening before it a field so wide that imagination cannot dare to limit it, for science must plainly attain to its highest development in the work of the future poet, who shall give to its reality a beautiful form. Goethe indicated the path, but he who shall accomplish it will be a greater than Goethe.* * Perbaps the tniest estimate of science, and the most remarkable prophecy with regard to it, is to be foand in that wonderfhl tale by Ooethe, " Das MJElhrchen," a tale which has been described, by one who has done most toward maldng Gk>ethe known and understood in England, **as the deepest poem of its sort in existence— «s the only tme prophecy emitted for who knows how many centuries." THE END. THE PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY THE milVD. By HENRY MAXJDSLEY, M. D. Frlce, cloth, $3.00. Tbia is ons or those vorks wliicli mark the beginning of n uetr era !□ tbe Etud; of menial scioncp, and at the siLme time it ijj conceded on all aidea to ita pracUcai portions, a most reliable guide for the diagnosia, descrip- tion, and treatment of inaanity. each charsctetlzed by Ibe Bamo bold nod biilllaiirihoiiKbt. the sung diBnniuEBtvIe , i.i — — J.,. i(eTlirig*eTiM. IhQt we buTe found all IhroDgh. Welflj "To affect a reconclllBtion bstiveen the Pifcbology and lbs ratboloEy iif Ibe niqd, orrailiBr tocoinlmcta Imsiufgr both iii a coramDn sdencs. ia lUealmof Dr. Uauileley'e ho ,._ .^g ^^,g ,,^1^ g^j brillianrihof-' "■- ' ■- - down the Dookwitbadiniratton, and we coDiinend It ., . ai a work of eitraordlDary merit and origin a hty— one or those prodoctlona that an very decided advancee la ImowledgB and eclence."— JVtio York MtdktU Jounial, Janvani, ISSe. "TbiBworkofDr. Naadfili^y'e 1b nnqueftionahly onf nf the ahleat and most im- portaol, on the enbjocta of which k treaca, that iiaa eyer appeared, arid docB inflalte credii to bla nhlloaophlcal ocumea and accnrfllo oltfeivatkm. No one baa more anc- ceasfnlly exbtbiled the discordant roanlls ot mctapbyplcol, nhrciolorical, and palho- . logical atndlea of the mind, or dcmonatretcd more fallefaclorliy tbe naaleBBneta of an esclnslve method, or the prsp?ini need of combined adloo, and of a more pliilo- BDpbical mode of proceeding."— Jfflfjcal Stcont, Xmemitr IS, IBaT. '■ In the recital of the cauiea of iosanlly, as found In pecnllarltiee of clylllzallon, of religion, aei, condition, and partlcnlarly In the eneroBBing pnraall of wealth, tbla calm Bcientlflc work baa the aoleninllT ot a hnndred sermona : and, afler going doym Into this eiploralloo of the mynierfea of onr being, we shall come np into aeflve Ilfb liillyandwoadaVlhny wearemade!'— J™iFnpl?OHK<. " " °"' '"^ ^^ " It la long Bince we read a BcieutlEc work of anj wafi BO thoroDj^bly good and important, or whicb acf fulBlmentnf a moatardnooa and laborious taslc"— J " Dr. Mandaley'a work, wblcli baa already becoi --- ... . .iiecararalstndf of all those whoarc I pathology of the brain."— AiiMrTi;WlQ(MDvin as the man, perhaps of all men now liviog, best fftled for the great work he haa undertaken and accomplished." — Alfred Bessell Wallace. In Germany these TJews are rapidly Eitpnding. Prof. GiekiE, a distin. guished British geologist, attended the recent Congress of German Natural- ists and Fhysiciana, at Innapruclt, in which some eight hundred lavanti were prcaent, and thus writes; "What specially struck me was the universal sway which the writinga of Darwin now exercise over the German mind. You see it on every side, m private oonvorsation, in printed papers, in all the many seclions into which such a meeting as that at Innspruck divides. Darwin's name is oflca men- tioned, and alwBjs with the prafoundcst veneration. But even where no al- lusion is specially made to him, nay, even more markedly, where such allusloa is absent, we see how thoroughly his doctrines bave permeated the scientific mind, even in those departments of knowledge which might seem at fiiut sight to be farthest from natural history. 'You are still discussing in Eng- land,' said a German friend to me, ' whether or not tbe theory of Darvin can i>e true. Wo have got a long way beyond that here. His theory is now our common slarting-point.' And, so far as my experience went, I found It to r>. APPLHTON' & CO.. PubliaherB. r LAY SEEKOJs^y, ADDEESSES, AND REVIEWS, By TnOSLiS DESRT HUXLEY. Clotb, 12ma, 390 pages. Frine, tl.TS Tais is tlie latest and moat popular of the works of this in- trepid and accomplished English thinker. The American edition of the work is the latest, and contains, in ndditioti to the English edition, Professor Huxley's recent masterly address on " Sp( taneous Generation," delivered hefore the British Asaociation for the Advancement of Science, of which he wns president. The foCowing; is from an ahle article in the Independent : The " Lay Sermona, Addreaaea, ind ItcTicws " is a book to he read by eteiy one who wonld keep up with the advance of troth — aa wall by those who are hostile as those who are frieadly to his conclusions. In it, scientific and philosophical topics are handled with conEummate abil- ity. It is remarkable for purify of style and power of eipreasion. No- where, iu any modem work, is the adFanccmcnt of the parsuit of that natural knowledge, which is of vital importance to bodily and menUd well-being, ao abl; bandied. Professor Huxley is undoubtedly the repreaentatlre scientific Tnali of the ape. Hia reverence for tbe right and devotion lo tralh have estab- liahedhia leadership of modem acientiGc thought. He leads the beUefb and aapirations of the increasLoglj powerful body of the younger men pf science. His ability for research is marvellous. There is poasible no mora equipoise of judgment than that to which ho brings the phenomena of Kature. Besides, he is not a mere sclcntiat. Eia is a popularized phi- losophv ; social queationa have been treated by hie pen in a mannermost masterly. In faia popular addreasea, embracing the widest range of top- ics, ho treada on ground with which be eeeros thoroughly famiUiar. There are those who hold the name of Professor Huiley as synony- mous with irreverence and atheism. Plato'a was so btld, and Galileo's, and Deacartos's, and Xewton's, and Faraday's, There can be no greater mistake. No man haa greater reverence for the Bible than Huiley. Ko one more acquamtauce with the text of Scripture. He believes there is definite government of the universe ; that pleasures and pams are distrib- uted in accordance with law ; and that the certain proportion of evil woven up in the life even of worms will help the man who thinks to bear his own share with courage. In the estimate of Professor Huilej's future influence upon science, his youth and health form a large element. He has jast passed bis forty- fifth year. If God spare his life, truth can hardly fail to bo the gainer from a mind that is stored with knowlcdce of the laws of the Creatoc's operations, and that has learned to love all beanty and hate all vilencas of ■ SPEN'GEKS SYSTEM OF PHILOBOPHT. .THE PHILOSOPHY OF EYOirTION. By HERBERT SPENCER. Tbls greut Byslem at scicntlSc thDn;;tit, ths mo?t oiij^nul and impDrUiit men- ial nndertakiag of Ibe agB, lo which Mr. Spffncer haa dcvoled his lllo, la now well sdraiiced, Lho published volnmts bolne: Firct Principles. T!n Prindplet r-f Ei- •iogy, two volamea, and The Prlad^ts of Psychologt/i ■'iL '-> which will ho (horlly printed. Thia philoaoplilcal system differs from all Ua predeceaaora In being Bolldlj bleed on tiie aclencea of ohaerriitloD and Induction ; In representing the order and couiae ot Nature; in bringing Nature and mim, lire, mind, and Boelet;, nndar one great lavr of action ; and in doTeiopIn^ a method of thought which may aervB for pncticai gnidance in dealing wltb tbe affairs of life. Tbnt Ur. Spencer t> the man for tbie ^reat wock will be srideHt from tho fOUowInE etatemeDta : " Tho onlj complete and BjBtemstic BtalemeDt of the doctrine of CTolntlon with wblcli I Bra acquainted is that contained In Mr. Herbert Spencer's ' System DfPhiloaopbyi'a worlt whii^h ahonld ho carefdl; Btndled by all who deBire to know whltber stleatlBc lliougbt la tending."— T. H. Huilbt. "Ofallonr thinkers, hols the ono who baa fcrmed to himecir the largest new Khome ofa systematic phi ioaophy,"— Prof. MUSON. "Ifany IndlilduRllnllnciicelsTislbiyoDcroachingonMlllaln thIeconntIT, It le bin."— Jbid. "Mr. Spcocer Is one of the most Tisorons as well ia boldeEl Ihinkera that SngUeh specntaiion boa yet produced."— JoHK Btuabt Mill, " One of tho neatest nietaphjsiciana of modem timea."- TMd. "Oneof our deepest thinkers. "—Dr. Jaskm D. Hooheb. It is qneftianable if any thinker of finer calibre lias appeared In our coun- try."— Qbobbb Henet Lewkb. "He alone, of all British ihlokera, hae organized a phlloBopby."— 7Mi2. "Ho is as keen an anaiyataa is known In the history of philosophy ; I do uot eicept either Aristotle or Earn."— Qeobub Eiflet. thorobas not In England heen a pbUosopbcr of more remarkable speculallve and iyslemollKing talent than (In spile of some crrora and aomo narrowneES) Mr. Her- bert S ponce r."—i!mdDn Satiailaii iterfcio. " We cannot regain from offering onr Irihnlo of reapect lo one who, whether for the eitent of his positive knoivledge, or for the profundity of his speculstlTa Insist, has already acbiiiied a name second to none In the whole range of Eng- llah philosophy, and whose worbn will worthily snttala the credit of English •tiousbl In the present Bonerallon."— ir«(niftj»Cn' EevUai. Worli ^ Uirbert Spmar p^MU^td Jy B. AppltUa it Cb. The FhUoBophy of Serbert Spencer. FIRST PRINCIPLES; nr Tiro fasts: L TOE UITENOWAELE. H LAWS OF THE ENOWABLB. En oaa Volume, BIS pa,Bea. BirtbliabUltr, esniestDC ^rtnom u Id IhlB. The ■lantlon Id UiIb Iwok, dju^^E aod dotcrmUicd n Out QriglimUtr and foirlf ^ AQ tmlDent and conimuidliig position u ■ inetipli jaldu, a, and proruDdit^, an ta doda of bis former Tolumen lo mn- s IB not A emdfl thou^t, i fllppaot flings or nn tmroreDt la- otvIthataDdlDg that It hna Bomethlng of the chsracter of ■ d upon tbao]dphnoaophleB.''-"^if£offffa(7burnri2. ■ of FInt Prlnj» bcther that Bf atem la better than all other arBtema, la bold Bad TlgoTOOB thought wdl add aomethlng TalnahU iedgo tB imdcDhible.''— ITMca Herald. g llTlng thlnkera. If le rod lie tl WarluftiilMtdbiiD. JffUton dt Ca. THE CORREUTION AED CONSERVmOK or FORCES. SERIES OF EXPOSITIONS BY GROVE, MAYER, HELMHOLTS^ FARADAY, LIEBIG, AND CARPENTER. WITH AN INTRODUCTION. BY E. Lu YOUMAiro The work embraces : T.-THE CORRELATION^ OF PHYSIO.^ FORCES. Bf W. R. Gbote. (The complete work.) II.— CELESTIAL DYNAMICS. Bt Db. J. R. 'ULayrs. m.— THE INTERACTION OF FORCES. Bt Pbop. nBLM- nOLTZ. rV. — THE CONNECTION AND EQUIVALENCE 01 FORCES. By Peop. Liebio. v.— ON THE CONSERVATION OF FORCE. Br Dk Fabaday. VI.— ON THE CORRELATION OF PHYSICAL AND VI TAL JTOBCES. By Db. CUbpknteb. r Being a Oavaso of Twelve Lectures delivered before tbe Royal luBtitution of Great Britain. WarkipitUithed by V. Apji/iion it Co, HEAT, CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF MOTION, BT JOHN TTNDALL, F. E. S. " oLAomis or nm aips," ett. Willi Ono nundrcd Illufllrtitions, 8ro, 4S0 pages. Price, ^2. from tbo Amerlo&n Jonznal of Salanca.— With all [ta« etill whicli bu nude Fikmdiir tha mmtoi at erporlmcDlol Bclsuca in Gnat Britain, PrDresBor TjmdiU ■njoj-B Uie DdTiDUgeoraaapcrliu'Eeiicnil col Curs, owl lathna enabM lo get forth hi! pUlosapb; wilb nil tbc gncea ot eloquence ana Uie anlab ar aopcrlai dlctloo. Willi • ilmpllciiy, and absepce of tcchnitallUoa, wblcl reaia bla csplanatioas IbcW lo an- aolentllla minds, and at Uio aame time s thorongbnPSS and drlglnalily brwbllli tieln- itmoUtba moat leoniod. bo unfolds all tbemodcmphiloadptafor heat Bla vark lidua nnh Bl ODce ai a cliaalo Dpon ths aabjcct. New Tork Times.— PnfeuorTjmdall'a coursoct lectures oDbestlsauof the moEt beautiful Ulusmilona of i mods of handling tcIentlBo snlijscta, which la com- fenerally; va mean Itfi trutmeot of anbJactBlnaatjIa at oncaprD^oufl^j tui papu' lar. The title of ProDisior TynduU'i nark Isdlcatts the theot7 of heat held I7 him. and indeed the onl^ one now held b; ecieDtiflc men— it ti a mode qfrnoUoa. Seaton Jonm&L — Ha axblblts Iho curEonB and boantirn] nnrklnge of nntoro la a moat delightful manner. Before the rendET partidos of natcr leek tbcmaelvea or by flowers with Qne acrrated potala, er Into rosettaa of frozEU gauze; the; bound upwjvtl In boiling fountnlno, or creep alonij onward In sLupeDdoua glaclerL Flamea bnrat Into mualo and eln^, or ceoso to ain^ as the experimenter pleaEes, and metals pilnt them- tclTosniion ascrooo In tiazzllo^ hues oji the painter toncheahlacanvaa. Kew Tork Tribime.— The moat orlelnalud important contiibntioii thathM jet been made to the thonrr and Ulcratnro of thecmstlo. ScIenU&D American.— Th work is ndttcn in a cbsrmlng style, and la Iha ftara. It ia the ineet popukr exposition of the dynamical theory of beat that hiB yet ■pptared. The old material theory of heat may be cald to be defunct. Ixmlavilto Bemocrat.- This la one of the most dellghttU adontiao worki «( Ihe lecturer before us, and aoehlabrllllAnt experiments In every stn^e of tbelrprogreaL The Iheoiy Is w carefully and thoroughly eiphdned Uut nu one can foil IL Bncb books US these cieate a loTB for ulenco. Independent.- Pror«Eor Tyndall's eipoaltlons and oxperliaenta a. niougblfal, inEenlooB, clear, and conTloolBK; porltona of the book ha' Inlnnul n! a roroonec, in aiartllne am the fleocrlBlions and elncldatlonii. " One of the most accomplished Writers of the Age." HISTORY OF Tns msE Ain) I]^^LUEI^^CE OF THE BPISIT OF RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. By ^V. K. EC. LKCKY, BI. A. 2 Vols, small 8vo. Cloth, $4. [From the Edinburgh Becieu."] *^ We opened these volames, never having heard the name of their aathor, and entirely ignorant of his pretensions to a place in English literature. Wo closed them with the conviction that Mr. Lecky Is one of the most accomplished writers and one of the most ingenioos thinkers of the time, and that his book deserves the highest commendation we can bestow upon it. Indeed, it has seldom been our good fortune to take up an essay by an unknown, and we presume, a young author, so remarkable for the purity and el^;ance of its style, so replete with varied erudition, appropriately introduced to enliven argument, or so distinguished for broad and dispassionate views. ****** This book well deserves to be imiversally read and careftilly studied, for If the eye is dazzled at first by the Inril- Ilancy of the fervor, the mind is Interested and occupied by the subtlety and per- spicuity of a thousand observations which escape notice on a first perusal. In a word, we hope to see this work take its place among the best literary productions of the age, and we doubt not that it will poworAiUy conduce to the ultimate tri- umph of that cause to which it is devoted.^ D. APPLETON A CO., Publishers, 00, 02 k 94 Gbakd Strebt, Nbw Yosc. A JPPZSTOIT A OO.'S PTTBUaATlQim THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN; By ATTSTIN ITX-INT, Jr., ]M. D. AUmsntatioD ; Digestion; Absorption; Lymph and Ohyla 1 Toliune, Bvo. Clatb. Frice, C4.50. BECESTrr PUBLISHED. THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE SERIES Introdnotion ; The Blood ; The Oirculation ; Eespiiation, 1 votmna, Sto, Cloth, Fcice, tl.50. "ProfessDr Flint is engaged in the preparation of an extended iTorU on humui phjGioloi;]'i in viAch he professes toconsider sjl tbe Bubjccta uFuallir regarded as belonging to that departmenl of phys- ical acl^^iice. The work nltl be diviikd into sepurate and distinct parts, but the seFeral Tolume; in vhich it is to be published will form a cooneeted Beries." — Providence Joumnl. It ii Tree from technicalitiea and purely profesaionil termB, uicl Inatcad of only being adapted to the use of the medical boalty, will be found of interest to the gBnenil reader who desires clear ■ad condsc informalloQ on the subject of man phyeicul." — Evaiing " Digestion is too little understood, indigestion too eilenpively snffered, to render this a work of supererogation. Stomachs will b»yo tlidr revenge, sooner or later, if Nature's laws ace infrioged upon through ignurante or stubbomoess, and it is well that all should mt derslflnd how the penalty for 'high living' is assessed." — Chitag« ianiinff Journal. "A. year has elapsed since Dr. Fliat publiahcci the first part of . his groat work upon human physiology. Jtwas an admirable treatiee distinct in itself— cihausting the special aubjecls upon whieh il Krentad."~Phi!adelphia Ingiiii-er. "A BOOK WBI€B IB AS SSADABLE A3 A NOVSl." I I HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,, From Augustus to Charlemague. Bj W. E. H. LECKV, M. A. 2 T0I3., 8to. 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Fivm at Mia Tort Tlma. knowledge Ihcy most require, Mlecled and irninged by lliose who i™ coiDp* mdffVTor to Aupplj. U li mlontQ od points of genera] liitereat md conaanHk iBudvMioo ^''onT'ollicrtoolt or Afcranm In tUa world. Tte best laletit in Uu frmntrj hu been engaged In Its production-*^ FAICB OF THS WOBK : In Eitm Cloth, per voL, *5 TO In LIbnuy Loatber, per vol-, , ..-.-.,.--...-.,s. D. APPLETOn & CO., Publishers, OO, 92 A 91 QBiKD i5iiii:ET, NuwYoE I (I LANE MEDICAL LIBRARY To avoid fine, this book should be returned on or before tbe date last stamped below. JUN 3 19)4 bQ s! .•a B W •§& IS W .-1 ta^to ■ S 1 m 1? / / / / / / / 4 1 1