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EVOLUTION, EXPRESSION,
AND SENSATION.

PUBLISHED BY _
JAMES MACLEHOSE, GLASGOW.

wy
'

MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON.

London, . Hamilton, Adams and Co.
. Macmillan and Co.

- Douglas and Foulis.

. .

Cambridge, .
Edinburgh, .

-MDCCCLXXXI.

EVOLUTION, EXPRESSION,
AND SENSATION,

CALE: LIFE AND PATH OLOG *.

BY

JOHN CLELAND, M.D., F.R.S.,

PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW.

. GLASGOW:
JAMES MACLEHOSE, ST. VINCENT STREET,
Publisher to the Gniversitp.
1881.

All rights reserved.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from

Microsoft Corporation

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION, A 4 P z : ‘ . ‘ Vil
E

THE EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION, F @ ‘ 3
AE:

THE ELEMENT OF SYMBOLIC CORRELATION IN EX-

PRESSION, ; ; ; é ‘ ; ‘ EP >.
III.

VISION, . ; ; ; : F ; ; ; Ma fe
IV.

THE PHYSICAL RELATIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND
THE SEAT OF SENSATION, A THEORY PROPOSED, gi

V.

SOM Ce). Se ee ce Re a eee es

Vi.

TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND THE PUBLIC, a ‘ « ~ 139

INTRODUCTION.

THIS volume is not intended exclusively for either
medical men or biologists, but for all who take an
interest in the i ak speculations inseparably
bound up with the present position of biological
science.

The first five of the six articles now published
together, although they have been written at differ-
ent periods and with different objects in view, are
devoted to subjects more or less cognate. So that
one will be found to illustrate allusions made in
others.

The conception which it is sought to defend in
the address “On the Evolutions of Organization ” is
that these evolutions are definite, and that the high-
est evolution of animal life is completed in man.
Development both in the individual and in the
totality of life is not only a development from a
simple beginning, but a development towards a
completed whole. There is morphological design,
and when in any line of development the design is

Vili INTRODUCTION.

completed, the evolution ceases, although, by the
operation of environment or external circumstances,
variations may continue to occur and degenerations
of diverse kinds may take place.

Such views demand for the universe a_back-
ground or underlying element of spirit. Among
the evidences of the place occupied by spirit in
nature, I count that which is afforded by what I
term symbolic correlation as highly important, and
the demonstration of the existence of symbolic cor-
relation I have sought to establish by an analysis of
human expression. At the conclusion of the article
on that subject the existence of such a principle of
expression as conducing to the characters of biolo-
gical evolution is simply hinted, while it is referred
to more fully, but still with great brevity, in the
first article of the series.

Under the head of *‘ Vision” it is shewn that the
evolution of sense-organs is a very different thing
from the evolution of sensation; and while it is
pointed out that natural selection furnishes no
adequate explanation of the rise of the organ of
vision as a structure, attention is called to the cir-
cumstance that the very existence of vision and the
other senses points to there being an unknowable
territory whence, and not from the material world,
they take their origin.

In discussing the subject of vision, the whole sub-
ject of sensation has naturally come up, and refer-

INTRODUCTION. ix

ence is made to the doctrine of sensation put
forward in the memoir “ On the Physical Relations
of Consciousness and the Seat of Sensation.” That
doctrine may not have received much attention ;
but it is in the position of remaining unassailed,
while the old doctrine is unsatisfactory to some of the
most competent judges, and remains undefended
from the objections here brought against it.

With regard to the fifth article of the series, it
need only be said that the connection of the theory
of cell-life with that of life in every other aspect is
too close to require more than mention here ; while
to one who believes in life within life and in the
unity of cause in the order of events in each, cell-life
is especially interesting as the simplest of a series of
which the most complex known is the life-evolution
on the face of the earth.

Every one is familiar by this time with the re-
luctance of certain physicists and naturalists to take
into consideration even the possibility of such an
element as spirit being necessary for the construc-
tion of a rational philosophy of nature. The
wonderful advances in physics, affording sure foot-
ing for further progress within that domain, and
giving play for speculations formerly inconceivable,
may lead some physicists to overleap those strict
fences the observance. of which has secured the ad-
vance of their favourite studies, and they may
dream that the physical is the only world. So also

x INTRODUCTION.

there are biologists so startled by the progress
made through physical methods in explaining
phenomena once deemed inexplicable, save by re-
ference to an agency interfering with physical laws,
that they think they have a glorious revelation
before them when they account life to be nothing
more than a chance result of the operation of those
laws to which the manifestations of physical energy
are no doubt as subject within the body as in the
inorganic world. Such an attitude is natural in
the enthusiasm of discovering that so much is ex-
plained which was formerly set aside as inexplicable
because vital. The argument runs much in this
fashion : Vitality not only gave no explanation of
any of the operations within the body, but its
alleged virtues prevented the search for explanation;
but physical research has explained much, and we
may expect it to explain much more. So far well.
But they add that it must explain everything ; and
in this they go too far. I trust to show that this
notion, often put forward with much dogmatism and
with unnecessary rancour, must be set aside because
there are phenomena, such as morphological plan,
which cannot possibly be referred at any future time
to physical laws, but indicate spirit.

To those working habitually with physical
methods, no doubt spirit seems a vague and intan-
gible entity because unsubject to those methods.
The very word spirit brings down to us from olden

INTRODUCTION. xi

times the record of the difficulty which is still experi-
enced in grasping the non-material, since its original
meaning, breath, is nothing more than movement of
the least tangible form of matter. But this diffi-
culty of looking out on spirit as an object, without
imagination stepping in to invest it dimly with
material form, has its counterpart in the impossi-
bility of looking at material phenomena as if from
within, without attributing to them a consciousness
like our own: and this also has had no trifling
effect on the thought of primitive nations. The
disadvantage of our position in relation to matter is
similar to that which we suffer in respect of spirit ;
matter we know only from without, spirit only from
within.

But, further, our consciousness is plainly a mere
surface-wave on an inscrutable deep ; and brought
to that surface there is perpetual evidence of ef-
fort, and thus the known properties of spirit are
‘consciousness and force. On the other hand, the
phenomena of matter are confined to movement in
space, one particular form of force ; it presents but
a finite exhibition of one of the known properties of
spirit, while it shows no sign of the other, namely,
of consciousness. Therefore, matter gives us no
explanation of spirit; but in the hidden ocean of
infinite spirit is locked the secret of matter.

While, however, matter in its relations to matter
presents merely one order of the properties of spirit,

xii INTRODUCTION.

posited in points or centres, and each centre acting
on the others, when we review the nervous system
in its relations with consciousness we pass from the
mere mutual relations of such centres, and find both
mind acting on matter, and matter acting on mind.
Those who deny the evidence of spirit existing inde-
pendentof matter point to the permanence of energy
in the material world. They argue that the mind
is affected by physical stimuli, and that no mental
operation takes place without corresponding physi-
cal action. They assume that, were consciousness
beyond the circle of physical changes, it would re-
main unaffected by them, instead of mind acting on
body, and body on mind, as is the case; but if it be
within the circle of physical change then, they argue,
it is itself physical, or at least we have no right to
suppose that it can exist independent of matter.
From the dogma that mind cannot exist independ-
ent of matter, one can easily see how simple is the
passage to some such formula as that mind is an
evolution of matter. But to extract a clear mean-
ing from such a formula is not so easy: it is the
endowing of matter with properties demonstrated in
no physical nor chemical laboratory. Thus when
in the passage quoted at p. 23, Hackel speaks of
spirit as a function of force he uses a form of words
which conveys no meaning. Had he said that force

isa function of spirit he might have reached a truly
“ monistic” philosophy and thrown the mind back on

INTRODUCTION. Xili

infinite spirit as the source of all finitudes, instead
of compelling it to rest on an unfounded imagina-
tion that the particles of matter had other than
their known properties and that these were sufficient
for the evolution of consciousness.

As to the exact position of the mind in relation
to the chain of physical changes in the body, we
may in the future learn more about it than we
know at present, but, meanwhile, it is quite certain
that mental action is not in quantitative relation
to the preceding external influences applied to the
organs of sense. If a servant whispers in your
ear that there are robbers in the house, there will
be caused much less vibration of the drum of your
ear and consequent action of the auditory nerve
than by the loud ringing of a dinner bell ; but there
will possibly result very much greater mental dis-
turbance. The stimuli in both cases would be
applied to the same nerves ; and no physical theory
can represent it as possible that the channels
taken in the brain by the irritation conveyed along
the nerves would vary according to the meaning of
the sounds. It is plain therefore that the physical
stimulant in sensation does not lie in the same re-
lation to the mental changes immediately following,
as does the charge exploded in a gun to the flight
of the bullet. The vibration in the ear produces
change in the nerves proportionate to its amount;
and science does not know how the last of these

XiVv INTRODUCTION.

changes is related to consciousness so as to affect
it. The next change, so variable in amount, due
neither to vibrations nor to sense of sound but to
the idea which the sound symbolizes, begins in the
mind ; and science does not know how it happens
| that it is accompanied with change in the brain, of
strictly proportionate amount.

These are undeniable facts, though not what-a

onfiding public has been always taught in science
ectures. It may be added that there is no ex-
perimental evidence to show whether the amount
of nervous change resulting from a given amount
of physical stimulus is ever the same after passing
through a nervous centre in which it affects con-
sciousness as it would be after passing a centre in
which it does not. But we have every reason to
believe that the reflex actions in which no con-
sciousness is involved are strictly proportional to
the amount of stimulus ; while we know that when
consciousness is affected it will often happen that
no obvious action will follow a stimulus which
would otherwise be sufficient to produce move-
ments.

In defending the position that the evolutions
observable in organization are definite, I have
used in the address which follows, few and simple
illustrations, but I trust they are sufficient to give
stability to the argument. Manifestly the more
complex problems of morphology could not have

\

INTRODUCTION. - XV

been made use of, as they would have necessitated
too many technicalities, and disputes on innum-
erable points of detail. Take for example, the
structure of the vertebrate skull. Nothing, to my
thinking, could illustrate morphological design more

_ beautifully. But painstaking workers have found —

the subject exceedingly difficult, and the majority
of anatomists have at different times been contented
to accept the dicta of some authority on it, instead
of studying nature for themselves. The opinions
disseminated in that,fashion among English stu-
dents during the last sixteen years, originating
in rather perfunctory observations, involve in my
opinion the grossest misinterpretations ; and unless.
these are cleared away the morphological beauty of
the skull cannot be seen. I content, myself, there-
fore, with taking this opportunity of referring
students who may wish to know my views on
this subject to a memoir “On the relations of
the Vomer, Ethmoid and Inter-maxillary bones,”
published in the Philosophical Transactions, 1862 ;
and to an address in the British Association
Reports, 1875.; and await a more favourable occa-
sion to discuss its intricate details.

The graduation address, which is the last of the
articles brought together in this volume, claims no
close relationship with the others ; yet the remarks |
on truth which it contains may possibly be of ser-

vice to those engaged in the abstract questions to

XVi INTRODUCTION.

which these articles are devoted, as well as to the
young practitioners for whom they were written.
I do not suppose for a moment that they are
less required by the upholders of one view than
by adherents of any other. In republishing that
address I desire especially to direct attention to
the unsatisfactory state of the law with regard to ©
everything affecting our knowledge of the causes
of death.

_ THE EVOLUTIONS OF

ORGANIZATION.

THE EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

(An Address delivered at the Opening of the Medical Classes
in the University of Glasgow, 26th October, 1880. )

THE study of medicine presents to him who would
view it properly two great aspects :—primarily, it
exhibits an art for the relief of the sufferings of
others ; but it also displays a wide field of inves-
tigation for the satisfaction and development of
‘the inquirer’s own mind. So evidently is this the
case, and so naturally does the study of the body
tend to a wider survey of the realms of nature,
that in ancient, as well as more modern times,
research of the most extensive character, and far-
reaching speculations, have occupied the attention
of physicians. As soon as the student begins his
curriculum, by seeking a knowledge of the human
body he comes into the presence of the great
system of organization on the face of the earth, of
which the structure of man forms the crowning
object, not to be justly appreciated save in con-
junction with the rest. As he becomes acquainted

4 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

with the phenomena of life, and learns the me-
chanical and chemical processes involved in them,
he naturally asks how far the laws of life are to
be explained by the laws of matter, and what is
the motive power of the order of phenomena both
in the individual and in the series. There come up
for his consideration the links uniting to the body
that spiritual element which, in the actions of the
individual, is never seen by us in operation, save
in the closest association with physical structure.
And the yet larger speculation, Is spirit or matter
the prior, the underlying, unchangeable, and eternal
element, constantly obtrudes itself on the horizon
of more limited inquiries. |

These are all questions which have been much
discussed in recent times; and the order of the
appearance of structures having been studied both
in the form of palzontology and development, it is
not wonderful that speculations have been rife as
regards not only the nature, but likewise the origin
of life, of species, of matter, and intelligence.

That there is a certain unity binding together
the most diverse forms of organization is a doctrine
which, at this date, I fancy no one will deny. The
similarity of the units of life in plant and animal
texture, and the general, if not altogether universal,
pervasion of sexual distinction, are illustrations of

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 5

that; and if I confine my view to the animal
kingdom, I think the days are past when any one
will consider it chimerical to compare vertebrates
with invertebrates, or the most dissimilar inverte-
brates one with another. At once it will be granted
that ova, however various, are comparable, and
that it is matter for observation to compare the
stages of their growth as they give rise to forms
that are far asunder. Nor will any serious doubt
be entertained on survey of that highest and most
important assemblage of animals the vertebrata, that
they have appeared on earth in the order of their
complexity ; however great may be the mystery in
which the rise of invertebrata may be wrapped.
All this involves the conception of a complex unity
acquiring its complexity stage by stage, even as
the individual develops from the ovum to the adult
condition; and such a conception may be justly
termed Evolution.

But such an evolution may be conceived of
variously, both in respect of character and cause.
In its character it may be conceived of as a growth
without aim, forming altogether an indefinite ag-
gregation like the sum of the branches of a tree ;
or the view may be held that it is an orderly
arrangement, like some vast temple in which every
minaret and most fantastic ornament has got its

6 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

own appointed place and harmonies, while the
central tower ascends to its pre-ordained comple-
tion,—an evolution like that of-a plant from whose
root-leaves the shoot ascends with leaves that
change their character according to law, till the
summit is reached, where definite groups converge,
assorted to complete the flower.

And just as there are diverse notions as to the
character of the evolutions of life on the globe, so
there is difference of opinion as to the source from
which it springs. There are some who still deny
the genetic connection of different forms of life, .
and others who either consider genetic connection
proved, or look on it as a hypothesis with more or
less probability in its favour; and among these
latter there are some who see no morphological
facts which cannot be explained by reference to
genetic relationship and its involved lines of
heredity; while there are others like myself who,
in heredity, can only recognize a phenomenon the
origin of which demands an explanation.

It is a very remarkable circumstance that while
all these views are held and have been known to
the scientific world for a great length of time, the
name of Avolutionists has, with curious oblivious-
ness, been assumed as a distinctive title by those
who believe that the evolution is merely indefinite

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 7

and entirely to be explained by heredity. It is for
them to say if this exactness in the choice of a
name is an index of the accuracy of the reasoning
on which their views are founded. Had they called
themselves Demolitionists, on account of their dis-
belief in morphological design, the name might
possibly have been more expressive.

Looking, however, at evolution in the natural
sense of the word, we may find it useful to give a
glance to some of the more notable opinions that
have been held on the subject.

In such a survey, however brief, the school of
Schelling, as represented by Oken and Carus, must
not be overlooked. Professor Hackel of Jena claims
for Oken a foremost place in the pedigree of that
system which he has himself put forward; and,
undoubtedly, though there is little other affinity
between Hiackelism and the doctrine which Oken
published at the same University of Jena in his
“ Naturphilosophie” in 1810, than that both draw
largely on the imagination, Oken’s is a theory of
evolution embracing all Nature. It is built upon
an @ priori conception. It constantly declares that
things must be after a certain fashion, simply be-
cause the conception demands it ; and it is scarcely
surprising that, proceeding by this method, not
distinguishing between speculation and demonstra-

8 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

tion, its details are often far astray. His own words
are :—“ I am very well aware that there is many an
object which does not stand in its right place, but
where again is there a single system in which this
is not more strikingly the case? We have here
dealt only with the restoration of the edifice, where-
in, after years of long and oft-repeated attempts,
the furniture may for the first time be properly dis-
tributed, without detriment to its general bearings
or ground plan.”?

That which made Oken’s writings a living power
was, that to him nature was in all its parts replete
with meaning, inspired with an inherent fitness, and
not the mere chance result of a concourse of atoms
unaccounted for. Laying the foundation of his
system in a mathematical conception, he seeks to
ally himself not to Epicurus but to Pythagoras.
“Every real,” he says, “is absolutely nothing else
than a number. This must be the sense entertained
of numbers in the Pythagorean doctrine, namely,
that everything or the whole universe had arisen
from numbers. . . . The essence in numbers is
-naught else than the Eternal. The Eternal only
is or exists, and nothing else is when a number
exists.”” He lays claim to having advanced, so

1Elements of Physiophilosophy, translated for the Ray Society by
Alfred Tulk, p, xiv. 2 Op. cit. p. 13.

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 9

early as 1805, the doctrine that all organic beings
originate in and consist of cells, which constitute the
protoplasm from which all larger organisms are
evolved;* and he is more generally recognized as
having been the first to perceive that the skull con-
sists of segments in serial continuity with those of
the vertebral column. But principally it concerns
us to notice that while Oken appreciated the cor-
respondence between the ovum, the beginning of
life in the complex, animal, and the “oozoa” or
simplest forms of animals, he saw in the animal
world an unity completed in man; or, to use
his own words, the animal kingdom is only a
dismemberment of the highest animal, 2.2, of
man.”

The plan sketched by Oken was, so far as the
animal kingdom was concerned, modified and
elaborated by C. G. Carus. Guided, like Oken, by
the aphorism that the whole is repeated in every
part, Carus published with his beautiful work on
Comparative Anatomy a volume of “Researches
on Philosophic or Transcendental Anatomy,” as
perplexing a puzzle as could well be conceived for
a plain observer of Nature. But it is to be noted
among the much that is good which we owe to him,
that he recognized as a eardinal fact the central

1 Op. cit. p. xi- 2 Op. cit. p. 494.

10 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

position of the digestive system throughout the
animal kingdom, the truth at the bottom of Hackel’s
gastrea theory; and that he so far appreciated the
relation of the segmented invertebrata to the verte-
brata as to perceive that, while in certain lower
forms the nervous system completed a circle round
the mouth, in the invertebrate segmentata the nerv-
ous centres were concentrated on the under, and in
the vertebrata on the upper side; seeing in this
what Oken had already observed through the
organic world, and what so skilled and accurate an
observer as Dana! has more recently recognized in
this very matter, a system of expression in nature,
according to which things of highest dignity are
placed uppermost.

In France, Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire, claiming
to be free from all a priori fancies, but acknowledg-
ing the influence which the definition of Leibnitz
had on him, that “the order of the universe is variety
in unity,” was led to the conception of the “unity
of organization” by the results of researches into
points of detail; and collecting those detailed
researches in one work, his “ Philosophie Anatom-
ique,’ he commences by asking, “Can the organi-
zation of vertebrate animals be reduced to one

1J..D. Dana ‘‘On Cephalization,” &c. Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist.,
Sept., 1863.

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. II

type?”! and subsequently arrives at the doctrine that
“all animals are made on one and the same type.”
Founding on observation, this great anatomist ap-
preciated not only the correspondence of part with
part in different animals, but the existence of inher-
ent laws of symmetry and order governing the
formation of structures similar in different animals
and hereditarily transmitted. To express it in the
distinct nomenclature of Owen, he recognized the
existence of general as well as special homologies.
The compeer of Lamarck, he saw reason, even
before that writer, to judge that the dogma of
immutability of species, in all time and circum-
stances, lacked proof; and, at a period later than
Lamarck’s work, he cast it aside, thus affording
evidence to those who may require it that the ap-
preciation of the orderly internal laws of organi-
zation is not inconsistent with a full appreciation
of the possibility of a genetic connection of diverse
forms — seeing that, in this instance, one inde-
pendent thinker originated for himself both ideas'
and clearly perceived that the second could in no
degree allow. the first to be dispensed with. His
notion was, that the “ambient world having under-
gone changes from one geological epoch to another,
even the atmosphere having varied in chemical

1 Philosophie Anatomique, II., p. 445,

12 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

composition, and the conditions of respiration
having been thus modified, actual forms had to
differ in organization from their ancestors of ancient
times, and that according to the degree of the
modifying force.” *

Lamarck, who next claims attention, has given
the summary of his doctrine in language so brief and
clear,that I may quote his own words. He lays down
four principles :—“1. Life, by its own forces, tends
continually to increase the volume of the whole body
which possesses it, and to extend the dimensions
of its parts up to a limit which it determines. 2.
The production of a new organ in an animal body
results from a new want supervening, which con-
tinues to make itself felt, and from a new move-
ment which this want gives birth to, and continues.
3. The development of the organs and their force
of action are constantly in ratio of the employment
of these organs. 4. All that has been acquired,
laid down or changed, in the organization of the
individuals during the course of their life, is con-
served by their generation and transmitted to the
new individuals proceeding from those which have
undergone those changes.”

1 Mémoires de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, XII., 63. Isidore
Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Histoire Naturelle Générale, II., p. 416.

2Lamarck, Hist. Nat. des Animaux sans Vertébres, 3rd Edition,
P. 57+

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 13

The proofs of the effect of new wants or appe-
tency, in producing new organs, he derives from
the acknowledged effect of habitual action in in-
creasing the development of organs. But while it is
difficult to limit the results of use, disuse, or peculiar
action in developing, dwindling, or modifying struc-
tures already in some form existing, it is not easy
to understand how such a principle could operate
to produce an organ the basis of which was not
previously laid down. |

That which gives thé air of absurdity to Lamarck’s
illustrations is that, altogether unlike St. Hilaire, he
appears to have ignored the necessity for a prin-
ciple independent of external circumstances to regu-
late form, in, for example,such matters as symmetry.
The following may be given as an instance :— “I
conceive that a gasteropod mollusc, which, as it
crawls along, finds the need of touching the bodies
in front of it, makes efforts to touch those bodies
with some of the foremost parts of its head, and
sends to these every time quantities of nervous
fluids, as well as other liquids. I conceive, I say,
that it must result from this reiterated afflux towards
the points in question that the nerves which abut
at these points will, by slow degrees, be extended.
Now, as in the same circumstances other fluids of
the animal flow also to the same places, and espe-

14 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

cially nourishing fluids, it must follow that two or
more tentacles will appear and develop insensibly
in those circumstances on the points referred to.
This is, without doubt, what has happened in all the
races of gasteropods whose wants have given rise
to the habit of touching bodies with the parts of
their head.”: Thus he allowed himself to passin the
most guileless way, like many a subsequent writer,
from “ze concois” to “sans doute.”

Lamarck espoused the doctrine of spontaneous
generation, as he was bound logically from his
point of view to do. His contention was that it
was improbable that under the government of the
material universe by secondary causes there should
be a deviation from that system either in the first
appearance or subsequent evolution of life ; and he
failed, erroneously, as I believe, to see that in the
phenomena of life any element was present differ-
ent in kind from the phenomena of dead matter.
“‘ Certes,” he says, “the power which has made the
animals has made them all that they are, and en-
dowed them with the faculties observed in each, by
giving an organization fitted to produce them.
Observation authorizes us to recognize that this
power is ature, and that she is the product of the
will of the Supreme Being, who has made her what

1 Op. cit. p. 59.

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 15

she is.”* Observe how unjustifiable are the charges
which have been brought against him from a theo-
logical point of view. “Chose étrange!” he ex-
claims afterwards, “l’on a confondu la montre avec
Vhorloger, ’ouvrage avec son auteur.”?

In 1844 there was published in Edinburgh the
book entitled “Vestiges of the Natural History of
Creation,’ a work which appears to have been
treated with scant justice by any party. Dar-
winians have thought it necessary to disparage
both this work and “Lamarck; while to those de-
fenders of Christianity who have so little faith in
its own strength that they think it cannot stand
without their coopering, and smell danger perpetu-
ally from afar, it mattered nothing that the author
of the “Vestiges,” as well as Lamarck, emphatically
declared the necessity, according to his view, for a
Creator. He described himself modestly as “a
private person with limited opportunities of study”;
and in the wide area over which he ranges he some-
times seeks support from things which an expert in
this or that department would touch with a wary
hand ; but, independence and originality, temper-
ance-and frankness are qualities which he displays
in an unusual degree. |

The reasons which led him to think that spon-

‘1Op. cit. p. 66. 2 Op. cit. p. 95.

16 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

taneous generation had, at least at a former period
of the earth’s history, existed, were the same as
influenced Lamarck; but his hypothesis of the
mode in which variety and complexity have been
reached is different, namely, “that the several
series of animated beings, from the simplest and
oldest, up to the highest and most recent, are,
under the providence of God, the results, first, of
an impulse which has been imparted to the forms
of life, advancing them in definite times, by gener-
ation through grades of organization terminating
in the highest dicotyledons and vertebrata, these
grades being few in number, and generally marked
by intervals of organic character, which we find to
be a practical difficulty in ascertaining affinities ;
second, of another impulse connected with the vital
forces, tending in the course of generations to
modify organic structures in accordance with ex-
ternal circumstances, as food, the nature of the
habitat and the meteoric agencies, these being the
‘adaptations’ of the natural theologian.”* Thus,
while he saw the possibility of a modifying power
being exerted by external circumstances, he appre-
ciated clearly the necessity of recognizing an
element on which it was exerted; and the necessity
for that “impulse,” as he calls it, ought to have

1Vestiges of the Nat. Hist. of Creation, roth edition, p. 155.

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 17

warned him from adhesion to spontaneous gener-
ation. But I hold him to be right in considering
the progress from simpler to more complex life in
the history of the earth as being analogous to the
development of an individual from the embryonic
to the adult condition, a definite, and not an inde-
finite evolution.

Such were the various views involving an evol-
ution in one sense or another with which biology
was familiar before the year 1859, when Darwin’s
Origin of Species made its appearance. In that
work there is full agreement with Lamarck in res-
pect that the origin of life from a creator is frankly
and continually referred to, and that the question
brought up is essentially the old one of the degree
in which forms through long epochs of time are
capable of changing; but spontaneous generation
is let alone, and the author is content to express
his belief that “animals have descended from at.
most only four or five progenitors, and plants from
an equal or lesser number.”* The new element
imported into the discussion is, as you are aware,
what he terms “natural selection,” a result of the
struggle for existence. This struggle for existence
had already been pointed out by Owen’ as a potent

1 Origin of Species, 3rd edition, p. 518.
* Zoological Transactions, voliv, p. 15. See, also, Comparative Anat-
omy of Vertebrates, vol. iii, p. 799.

18 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

factor in extinction of species, but it was left for
.Darwin to originate the idea that it could do what
Owen recognized as due to innate causes, viz., that
it could produce variety and advance by the con-
tinual survival in the contest of the “fittest,” 2. e.
of those which by accidental variations of structure
had in the struggle an advantage over their neigh-
bours. The struggle exists, beyond all question ;
and few can read Darwin’s works without being
impressed with the likelihood of its resulting during
long periods in an indefinite amount of variety.
Yet, even as to this, it may be remarked that there
is a tacit assumption in the theory, that individuals
surviving by slight variations of different kinds
would be separated one from the other, so as not
to mix the different peculiarities to which they
severally owed their survival; and it may be ob-
jected that such separation would be unlikely so
long as the variations were yet exceedingly slight ;
while it may be judged probable from. Mr. Darwin’s
own researches that individuals with slight consan-
guinity and differing minutely one from the other,
but not too greatly, would be exactly those which
would be most prolific and so give rise to a mixing
of incipiently diverging characters.

The more important criticism can in no way be
eluded that the doctrine of natural selection has

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 19

precisely the same defect as the Lamarckian doc-
trine of appetency, only to a greater degree; it
does not account for the formation of any new
organ, nor for new organs appearing symmetrically.
No doubt, on the “je concois” principle it may be
made to lengthen and strengthen to any extent
any number of structures already existing, and,
potent for degeneration also, may be supposed’ to
dwarf others, when they become incumbrances.
Thus it is noticeable that in the series of forms
preceding the limbs“of the horse, a story on which
so much is sometimes founded, no new structure
makes its appearance; simply the third digits have
enlarged in size, while those on each side have
become smaller; and in the horse of the present
day both the enlargement and the dwindling have
reached a degree beyond which it is difficult to
conceive them passing. I notice these circum-
stances though I am not prepared to dogmatize to
the effect that it actually was by the sole agency
of natural selection that the series of limb-forms
alluded to found an appropriate completion in the
horse. But that natural selection should give rise
to totally new and symmetrical organs is hard to
imagine and impossible to prove. Mr. Darwin, to
a certain extent, acknowledged the difficulty, and
boldly he launched an attempt to account for the

20 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

organ of vision, on the principle that if so complex
a structure could be disposed of, no difficulty need
be made about any other. Starting from a nerve-
extremity coated with pigment as the simplest in
“the great kingdom of the Articulata” he sees no
difficulty “in believing that natural selection has
converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve .
merely coated with pigment and invested by trans-
parent membrane into an optical instrument, as
perfect as is possessed by any member of the great
Articulate class.”* Then, without attempting to
. explain the vertebrate eye, which, in the individual,
is developed like many other structures, through a
series of forms utterly incapable of function, he tells
the reader that, if he finds the other facts in the
book bear out the theory, he is bound to admit that
the eye of an eagle might be formed by natural
selection. No doubt, the evolution of the vertebrate
from the invertebrate eye is made easier by Kowa-
levsky’s discoveries in the larval ascidians; but
what is called an eye in amphioxus is only a spot
without mechanism for vision, so that it is really
true that the invertebrate eye is blotted out be-
fore the true vertebrate eye, which, in the in-
dividual, passes through so many visually useless
stages of development, suddenly appears before

1 Op. cit. pp. 206 and 207.

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 21

us, explain it as you will, in full functional opera-
tion. But even supposing, as seems possible
enough, that vertebrates possessing vision were
once linked to forms like larval ascidians by ani-
mals of soft structure with gradually increasing
perfection of sight, and that amphioxus is after
all degenerated from some member of such a lost
chain of transitional forms, the visually useless
stages of development of the vertebrate eye
cannot be the mére accumulated record of a:
series of gradually improving optical instru-
ments.

No more than Lamarck has Darwin considered
that it is not a sensitive nerve alone which is
required to begin vision or any other special sense,
but a capability of the consciousness to be modified
in a way altogether incomparable with the equally
incomprehensible affection which constitutes gen-
eral sensation.

While the Darwinian system adds the idea of
natural selection to the stock of hypotheses for
explanation of evolution by. external influences, it
denies the existence of any definite evolution of
organization dependent on a definite cause. While
it has the greatest faith in the power of the ovum
to carry down the most minutely determined
details of future development, it denies that there

22 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

is anything apart from the accidents of external
circumstances to direct the paths of the whole
world-history of life, and thus shuts out of con-
sideration the whole class of phenomena. which
were not only built on by Oken, but were patent
to St. Hilaire, and Owen, and Goodsir; and it
not only leaves both sex and symmetry unaccounted
for, but renders them inexplicable, although they
are matters obvious to every one, and pervading ec
whole organic world.

It is worthy of notice that the position taken,
with admirable moderation, by Darwin himself,
that living forms have originated from a very few
progenitors, is no aid to the conception of con-
tinuity, unless there be added the doctrine of
spontaneous generation,—the absence of evidence
for which has been the subject of an honest and
pathetic wail from an eminent Darwinian. Either
the assumed primordial forms sent onward, in the
stream of heredity to future ova, a something not
derived from external circumstances, or they owed
all their properties to the operation of the laws of
dead matter. If they were the accidental evolu-
tions of dead matter,—that is spontaneous genera-
tion. If they owed their properties to another
source, then every ovum that exists has similar
properties distinct from those of dead matter, as

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 237

believers in definite evolution or morphological
design contend.

Professor Hiackel, of Jena, founding on the
Darwinian hypothesis, not only pushes it to the
furthest limit, but accounts for every thing by what
he calls the “monistic philosophy.” _

According to the materialists, says he, the matter
has originated the force; and, according to the
Spiritualists, the force has originated the matter ;
but both are dualistic and wrong: according to
the monistic philosophy you can neither think of
force without matter, nor of matter without force.
“Spirit and soul are only higher and combined
or differentiated powers of the same function,
which we indicate by the most general expression
as force; and force is an universal function of all
matter.”* He has interested himself and_ his
readers inventing most detailed pedigrees of dif-
ferent forms, more or less valuable according to
the degree in which they express established
morphological affinities, and recommends, to the
consternation of so able a scientific and political
authority as Virchow, that this sort of thing should
be taught in the public schools of Germany. He
talks with admiration of Oken and St. Hilaire as
his predecessors in evolution, and fails to see that

1 Anthropogenie, pp. 707-8.

24 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

they were on another line of rails, and moving in
an opposite direction. Affinity means morpho-
logical relationship, and is a matter of observation ;
but the pedigree of species cannot, in the nature
of things, be the subject of either observation or
induction. Every affinity pointed out is a scientific
gain; but it is no advantage to science-to put
affinities forward in the form of an allegation that
the allied forms are descended from a common
ancestor of imaginary structure. If evolutions are
definite, or, in other words, if morphological design
exist, the necessity for explaining a// affinity by
genetic relationship disappears.

The quotation from MHackel just made will
probably lead you to reflect that it is of the utmost
importance, in considering the relations of both
life and intelligence to matter, to have a clear
understanding what the properties of matter are.
Now, if we consider the phenomena of matter in
its inorganic forms, we cannot fail to see that they
are all of one order,—viz., related to movement
in space. The energy spoken of in connection
with matter is nothing but movement and tendency
to movement,—a thing whose dealings are alto-
gether with locality. But it is the immediate
experience of every one that consciousness is not
movement in space. No doubt it is found in-

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 25

directly by science that consciousness does not
exist in organisms without a proportionate amount
of molecular action; but that is no reason for
confounding the one thing with the other, and
saying that consciousness zs molecular action,—a
statement which conveys no meaning.

And just as consciousness is not to be confused
with the molecular actions associated with it in
organisms, so life is something else than the sum of
the chemical and mechanical operations engaged in
its manifestation. Its phenomena are no doubt
mere movement in space, and therefore allied to
those of matter rather than to those of conscious-
ness, but they exhibit two closely connected char-
~ acters—development and heredity, to which we
find nothing analogous in the inorganic world.
Crystallization is not analogous to development,
for crystallization is uniform in its intimate parts ;
whereas the essence of development is the sequence
of a definite series of forms entirely differing one
from another, and heredity is the transmission of
this remarkable property. While, then, the experi-
ments of Pasteur and Lister conclusively prove
that there is no such thing as spontaneous genera-
tion in the present; the difference in character
between development and the laws of matter makes
spontaneous generation an inadequate hypothesis

a

26 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

to account for the first appearance of life in the
past.

Much less shall we feel inclined to such a notion,
if we discern in the whole train of life on the face
of the earth a series of developments in different
directions, as determined as the development of the
ovum into an adult individual.

But, it will be said, what of the law of continuity?
It is for the sake of continuity that spontaneous
generation has been sought after. If, it is argued,
the evolutions of the movements, forms, and condi-
tions of the heavenly bodies have happened by the
mere laws of matter, is it likely that there has been
the intervention of miracle in peopling this world of
life? - Well, as I read the series of evolutions, we
must begin where Plato began, with the Eternal
and Unlimited. Matter, the lowest grade of the
evolving cosmos in which we are placed, is an exhi-
bition of that divine energy acting from points in
only one manner, namely, movement in space; and
those centres of movement only exist as such one
for another. In that case, matter is not eternal,
but is itself an intrusion into the field which it
occupies, followed in the history of this globe by
other intrusions in which all the continuity existing
is that they occur gradually. We do not know how
gradually matter came to its present condition ; but

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. — 27

if the whole area of space within our cognizance
gives no hint of a development from which sprang
the separate chemical elements so-called, what like-
lihood is there that the span of their changes in
time could come within our recognition? The
phenomena peculiar to life, and summed up in
development, we know have appeared by slow
degrees ; and intelligence, an addition totally dif-
ferent in kind, both from matter and from life,
makes its appearange likewise by insensible gra-
dation.

If the development of each individual be related
to a larger development as the lives of the tissue-
elements are related to the life of an organism, and
if that larger development proceeds in definite direc-
tions to termini or adult conditions, I own that I
can see nothing out of harmony. It has seemed to
some of the ablest biologists that have ever lived that
there is a vast amount of evidence that such ter-
mini exist. But the prejudiced superstition that
starts with the dogma that there can be no design
nor aught that is complete in nature, because the
laws of matter must be capable of accounting for
everything, never deigns to consider the evidence of
ordered evolution or completeness, but sets it aside
with a sneer as “scholastic nonsense” and “ arche-
typal follies,’ and calls that attitude the “method

28 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

of modern science.” Rather, I apprehend, the
method of true science, modern or not, would be to
study each evolution separately, attending to all the
phenomena, and investigating its limits, and the
action of every possible factor in its production.
Thus, truly, it is of importance to study the opera-
tion of circumstances of environment at the present
day, that we may understand the effects of environ-
ment in the past; and science is enormously indebted
to Darwin for the stimulus which he has given to
that inquiry. But just as in the evolution of lan-
guage, although environment plays an all-important
part, the fundamental factors are the existence of
ideas to communicate and a parallelism of things
of different order, rendering it possible for ideas to
be represented by signs, so also in the evolutions of
organization there is a non-material element in the
definitely directed impulse, and there is a physiog-
nomic propriety in organic forms, a class of facts
appreciated by both Oken and Dana, telling of
spirit which pervades the whole.

It is certain that the evolutions of form after
passing through periods of activity do cease; for
while all the most curious forms of invertebrate
life,—polyzoa, echinodermata, lamellibranchs, brach-
iopoda and cephalopoda, are formed already in
palzozoic times, the vertebrates have in the same

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 29

circumstances of geological change been most active
since then, and passed from piscine forms on to
man. And neither the structure nor the intellect
of man surpasses now the perfection that it had
reached in ancient Egypt and in Greece; though
the lapse of time has proved sufficient for varia-
tions and degenerations. The definite lines of
development on which the head had gradually
risen to the perfection exhibited by the classic
sculptors are incapable of being carried further:
the face is curved #h under the skull so far that
it could not be carried back to a greater extent,
and leave room for teeth, tongue, and throat.

Nor can attention be too frequently directed to the
ordered and completed evolution seen in the history
of the heart, a remarkable series from the simple to
the complex, but showing in the amphibian and
reptilian stage a more complex mechanism, yet less
perfect machine than in the fishes, so that, as I have
elsewhere said, “it might have been difficult to
explain if it could have been noted by an observer
before birds and mammals appeared on the earth.’”*
But the mechanism gradually developed is com-
pleted, with variety, in the bird and mammal,
and shows no sign of undergoing further com
plication.

1 Animal Physiology, p. 116.

30 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

One often hears final causes spoken of with a
contempt which is indeed only a revulsion from a
style of writing which will not now find many
admirers, in which adaptations were found by point-
ing out what extraordinary consequences would
follow some impossible alteration in nature, and
final were made to do the duty of efficient causes ;
but in the history of the vertebrate heart may be
seen a remarkable instance of the definite evolution
of a complex mechanism to perform a particular
kind of work. There is no reason to doubt that
here we have morphological evolution, and final
cause combined; just as it is possible to imagine,
though we may have little experience of it, a build-
ing morphologically belonging to the Gothic order,
yet teleologically fitted for the wants of modern
science.

It is a legitimate position to take up, that all the
evolutions of nature are definite, but that the series
of such evolutions is indefinite in number and
kind ; that individual evolutions, like other indi-
viduals, are finite, but form members of a larger
total. So, in the evolutions of organization we see
vortic units, the textural elements, receiving and
rejecting currents of material, while they maintain
during a finite life-time their individuality, and
these united into larger individuals subject to the

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 31

same law. In the evolution of vegetation, which
everywhere exhibits definite individuals, or organs,
structurally united in indefinite series, the highest
groups are composed of compound individuals in
whose structure the most. complex, and in every
way highest evolution occurs in connection with
the highest vegetable function, the perpetuity of
the series of finite individuals; and, the flower
once perfected, evolution has ceased, though varia-
tion continues. In the animal kingdom, as has
been long appreciatéd, even from the ovum the
part devoted to vegetal function has its surface
turned inwards, and the complexity of the animal
sphere, which is wrapped around the vegetal, takes
place in connection with the conscious faculties.
By the ministry of sensation and voluntary move-
ment the food is introduced into the specially
vegetal parts, while in connection with the per-
fecting of those animal functions a process takes
place such as in the vegetable kingdom is seen
only in the flower, namely, that the portions,
whether segments or organs, become more definite
in number, more fused and compact. Thus, the
largest feature in the evolution of both plants and
animals consists in that which is simple passing
into the manifold, and the manifold being com-
pacted together in a higher unity. These evolu-

32 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION.

tions are subjected in the vegetable kingdom to
the service of nutrition and reproduction; while
in the animal kingdom nutrition and reproduc-
tion give way in importance to the develop-
ment of intelligence. And, however imperfectly
zoologists may yet agree as to the evolutions in
detail in different parts of the animal kingdom, it
is plain that in the human form an organism has
at last appeared constituting an abode of intelli-
gence such as exists in no other, and that in man
alone intelligence reaches the capability of ascend-
ing beyond the wants of the physical organism in
the contemplation of abstract truth.

This organism, I repeat, has not improved with
the progress of discovery in modern science, but
was at least as complete in the heroes of antiquity
as in those of recent times. It is surely, then, an
assumption to suppose that evolution as distin-
guished from variation in animal forms must go on
unchecked till astronomic change shall have ended
the capability of this world to support life. It is
far more probable that the evolutions of the future
are to be sought in realms with which the zoologist
acknowledges that he has nothing to do, and take
origin out of the special psychical characters of
man.

For my own part I maintain that the universe,

EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. — 33

the “zpos Tov Ocor,” presents an endless unrolling
of definite evolutions, and that the evolutions of
organization are completed, though its variations
continue, while other evolutions are at work, and
more will appear.

iy

a
re

Y §

ON, Fg ELEMENT OF SYMBOLIC

.

all
= te am ri, de
Bra yi one

BY

ON THE ELEMENT OF SYMBOLIC
CORRELATION IN EXPRESSION.’
¢

THE very use of the word expression implies a
relationship between mind and body; for that
which is expressed is a condition of mind, and that
by which it is expressed is a condition of body ;
while the problem remains for both the naturalist —
and the metaphysician—By what means do move-
ments of the body, or more widely, conditions of
matter afford an index to conditions of the mind ?

Expression may be said to be conveyed through
the medium of the senses of sight and hearing.
The other senses may be left out of consideration ;
for flavours and odours, however far-reaching their
effects on’ the percipient, have no utility whatever
in directly determining conditions of other minds,
and the sense of touch refers to forms and movements

1 Originally published in the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology,
July, 1879. _

an EXPRESSION.

better determined usually by sight. By the blind,
forms and movements are appreciated through touch,
which by others are more quickly perceived through
the medium of vision ; and in the case of the deaf,
visible signs may be made to serve a purpose better
fulfilled by words when words can be heard ; but it
remains true that expression is a mechanism of
forms, appreciable movements, and sounds, and
that these are most generally conveyed through
the portals of eye and ear.

Thus the problem of expression as I have defined
it involves the whole study of the origin of lan-
guage, and the same gulf has to be bridged over in
determining how meanings have become attached
to words as in determining how they are attached
to arrangements of feature and gesture. But the
origin of the primitive symbols in speech is so
obscure; and the interaction of circumstances $o
complex in the elevation of them into languages,
and in determining the differences and changes of
these, that one can hardly expect as yet any further
light to be thrown by philology on expression by
feature and gesture than that which is afforded by
the mere recognition of the fact that language is a
symbolic mechanism, to be grouped along with
everything else to which the term expression can
be applied.

EXPRESSION. 39

Such a recognition, however, does afford the
reflection that since such a complex system of
symbols has certainly arisen within the limits
of man’s existence, and has not been inherited
from any ancestry among the lower animals, it
is unnecessary to suppose that the far simpler
language of feature and gesture has been. so in-
herited, even in those instances in which similar
movements occur in man and other animals.

It is also instructwe that the action of individuals
in initiating language is infinitesimal, that the art
of speech is acquired by observation and imitation
in which the learner is largely unconscious of the
details of the process which he imitates, and that
he learns the meaning of words simply by observing
their constant association with ideas otherwise ex-
pressed, but not from any appreciation of inherent
connection between the words and the ideas; any
such connection having been in most instances
completely disguised long ages ago in the changes
through which the words have passed. This being
palpably the case, it is not surprising that into the
simpler language of feature and gesture an imit-
ative element largely enters, nor wonderful that
it presents much whose origin is difficult to account
for.

40 EXPRESSION.

Permanent Expression.

The most recent, and probably the most profound
and elaborate attempt to unravel the mysteries of
expression is Mr. Darwin’s, and I think it is to be
regretted that so acute and original an observer
has confined himself so strictly to the expression of
the emotions, and neither allowed his mind to
diverge to the expression of thought by language,
nor to that permanent expression due to form of
skeleton and chiselling of soft parts. Of course it
is open to any one to take up the position that

there is no relationship between the characteristics
of the mind and the permanent forms of the body,
and such a position is often maintained. But even
if it be granted, as it well: may be, that conclusions
derived from bodily conformation are often liable
to be delusive, and even if the extreme view be
held that the forms of the features and other
parts of the body never afford any key whatever
to mental qualities, it yet remains incontrovert-
ible that the mind of the observer is so affected
by different bodily forms as to associate them
with different mental qualities, and to feel a
sense of the unexpected when convinced in any
instance that the association is violated by nature.
Thus it is one of the acknowledged aims of the

EXPRESSION. 4l

artist to convey by forms permanent characters
of mind. |

It may, indeed, be fairly held that a graceful
form, by awakening the idea of the graceful in the
onlooker, will lead him to associate that idea with
the possessor of the form, and will tinge his judg-
ment of the mind behind it; especially when the
graceful forms are found in the head, the seat of the
organ of mental action, and the face the special
index of its changesy So also the idea of strength
given by a well-knit body may be erroneously
allowed to impress the judgment favourably as to
the presence of strength of mind ; and, indeed, it
may also be held that the habits engendered by a
sturdy or weakly bodily development have much
influence in modifying mental tone. But no such con-
siderations will account for those various symbolisms _
of form by means of which every competent painter
is able to portray minds of various mould, apart
from the temporary expression. I do not attempt
at the present moment to explain why ; but assur-
edly very different mental characteristics will be
indicated by varying the proportion of breadth to
length in drawing a face, or by varying the propor-
tion of one-third of the face to the rest. A massive
chin is so distinctly a physiognomic representation
of firmness, that an artist would in vain attempt to

42 EXPRESSION.

exhibit the resolution of a Cromwell in a face with
a small and narrow jaw, or with one of those pretty
chins like a bagatelle ball, not uncommon in certain
localities. And the chin is the more remarkable as
a feature of expression since its projection forwards
is distinctive of the higher races of humanity, and
has nothing to do with the muscles of mastication in
connection with which the lower jaws of savages
_are often heavy and strong. It has no physical
function whatever, so faras I am aware. None of
the lower animals have a vestige of it, and the
lower races of humanity approximate to them
in this respect, without loss of power either in the
lips or jaw. Curiously it happens that the /evatores
mentt, muscles correctly named by the old anato-
mists musculi superbi, adapted by pushing the
lower lip upwards to aid that closure of the mouth
by which is expressed a resolve to resist, accom-
panied with an assertion of superiority,—it happens
that those muscles render the integuments of the
chin more prominent ; and if they were sufficiently
strong, and if the integuments to which their fibres
descend were adherent to the bone, their habitual
action would increase the forward prominence ; but
both they and the other muscles of the face
attached to the chin are far too small for the
wildest fancy to suppose that they .can possess

EXPRESSION. 43

such an influence; therefore their action, instead
of affording an explanation of the chin, rather
exhibits a parallel problem in expression.

Another very striking illustration of the sugges-
tion of mental character by permanent bodily form
is to be obtained thus :—Taking a profile sketch,
leave the features unaltered, but make additions or
subtractions from the occipital region and back of
the neck by changing the line descending from the
position where the o¢cipital and parietals meet, or
from a lower point. Grave subtractions from the
part so bounded become incompatible with the
expression of mental stability long before they are
carried to such an extent as to be anatomically
improbable; but it must not be forgotten that the
change so simply sketched implies the gravest
alteration in the form of the brain and skull in
their whole extent. Here, then, we have an in-
stance of change of expression produced by the
altered form of parts whose primary function is
certainly not one of expression, and thus contrast-
ing in a marked way with the changes producible
by form of chin.

In the present day, however, the theory of Gall
and Spurzheim is justly exploded; and I make
bold to repeat what I have already stated else-
where, that the vague and helpless notions of

A4 EXPRESSION.

localization of mental functions in different parts
of the cerebral hemispheres, so fashionable with
so-called “medical psychologists,’ have no sup-
port from the facts of comparative anatomy,
pathology, and experiment, all of which show that
the hemispheres have a function common to the
mass of their grey matter, so far as thought is con-
cerned. Therefore, it would appear that differences
of shape of head, not involving differences of cranial
capacity, when they indicate differences of mental
character, have a purely physiognomic value per-
fectly similar to that of differences of features of
the face. We may even go further, and admit
that it is probable that many of the statements
of the’ followers of Gall have a large amount of
physiognomic truth although their theory is utterly
wrong. »

‘These remarks are, I think, sufficient to illustrate
that in the expressiveness of permanent forms of
the body a class of phenomena exists, not to be
explained by reference to the “three principles”
which appear to Mr. Darwin “to account for most
of the expressions and gestures involuntarily used
by man and the lower animals under the influence
of various emotions and sensations,” viz.: “ Ser-
viceable associated habits,” “the principle of anti-
thesis,” and “the principle of actions due to the

EXPRESSION. 45

constitution of the nervous system, independently
of the will.”

I might have alluded more particularly to those
forms which depend not on the skeleton but on the
soft parts, giving the presence or absence of chisel-
ling to the features ; the term chiselling indicating
curves such as suggest a firm material moulded
into shape, as contrasted with those into which soft
pulp might gravitate. But it may well be answered
that such modelling being pleasant to the eye is
inherited by artificial selection, and that, though on
this account more common in the educated classes,
it may be largely present in the absence of grace
or culture of mind or heart, while in other instances
these latter may be present, and modelling of the
features absent. A fair argument might be sus-
tained that the circumstances favourable to moral
and mental selection are often coincident with
those favourable to physical selection ; and that,
apart from this, it is natural to associate the plea-
sant in mind with the pleasant in body, forms
noble on account of mere physical harmonies with
nobility of moral description, even though the two
things may not be associated in the external world.
Yet there are probably few who will doubt that if
two children of the same parents, closely resembling

1 Darwin, Expression of the Emotions, p. 28,

46 EXPRESSION.

one another, be taken, the one left in neglect, the
other subjected to educating influences, the differ-
ence of treatment will be likely to tell on the
moulding of the features. 7

’

Expression of the Emotions.

The element in expression of emotion, whether
by gesture or feature, which appears to me to be
the most important, has often been entirely over-
looked ; and although it seems to have been largely
present to the mind of Piderit and of Gratiolet,’
yet the rationale has not been effectively ex-
pounded, and we see one of the most elaborate and
ingenious writers on the subject, Mr. Darwin,
throwing it altogether aside. |

I shall now try to put it in definite form. To
this end, I observe first, that words indicating posi-
tion and quantity represent ideas relating to both
the physical and mental world. Secondly, emotions
expressible by such words are indicated by the
attitudes, gestures, and movements of body ex-
pressed by the same words. Thirdly, the same
principle is applicable to movement of feature.

I. For the sake of clearness, it may be well to
discuss the first of these propositions separately.
The words useful for our purpose by referring to

1 Darwin, loc, cit., p. 6.

EXPRESSION. 47

both physical and mental conditions are such as the
following :—Those expressing height, as—upward
and downward, ascent and descent, elevation and
depression, superiority and inferiority, rise and
decline or fall, over and under; those expressing
other directions, as—forward and backward, ad-
vance and retrogression, before and behind or to
one side, direct and roundabout, straight and
oblique ; those expressing distance, as—far and
near, approach and separation, attraction and re-
pulsion; words expréssing magnitude, as—large
and small, wide and narrow, expanded and con-
tracted ; words expressing resistance, as—strong
and weak, hard and soft, firm and yielding ; words
connected with motion or rest, as—quick and slow,
tension and relaxation.

The connection between the physical and other
meanings of these words is in most instances
not far to seek. No doubt at first sight it may
seem puzzling to find anything in common be-
tween moral elevation and physical elevation
-or mere distance from the earth’s surface, and one
may look on it as remarkable that in the ideas
of all men the two things are associated, and
are so by a link independent of the peculiarities of
individual languages, so that one is led to suspect
that the bond is not only universal but necessary ;

48 EXPRESSION.

and a similar difficulty may be felt at the applica-
tion of such words as “ advance,” not to movement
in space but to conditions of other than physical
description.

But very little consideration will make such
difficulties disappear. They do not exist in re-
lation to many of the words enumerated above ;
for magnitude, resistance, and motion, three of
the heads used in the enumeration, are obviously
ideas not confined to objects in space, though
primarily the words refer to physical objects, ac-
dording to the general rule of words with a physical
and metaphysical application. As regards words
expressing distance, it will be noted that “ near” or
“far” remains the same idea, whether the degree of
deviation from identity contemplated refers to time,
space, or constitution ; while attraction or repulsion
is the mere tendency to passage from one degree
of nearness to another, whether in space or in
constitution. |
~ In such expressions as “advance” and “ retro-
gression” we have still to deal with distance; only
in this instance it is distance from a goal more or
less distinctly imagined as an object of desire,
whether it be a spot on earth to which we bend
our steps, or some intellectual, moral or artistic
perfection, or whatever else; while the character

EXPRESSION. 49

of the means adopted to reach the goal is expressed
by such words as “ direct” or “ roundabout.”

There remains only the metaphoric use of words
referring to height to be explained of all the list
with which we began. Here another principle
comes into play : we have not to do with a common
idea of various application, but with two distinct
ideas associated by circumstance. Because the sky
and the natural sources of light are above, because
vegetable life attracts attention most by growth
above the surface ofthe ground, because the visible
products of putrefaction sink down and become
buried over, because dead bodies fall, because in
activity we stand up, and in rest lie down, and
because a lofty position commands attention and
gives physical advantages, therefore a host of
associations grow up in the human mind, by which
“upward” represents the good, the great, and the
living, “ downward ” the evil and the dead. In the
same manner, indeed more directly, we associate
impressions through the organs of sense with im-
pressions from the moral world similarly pleasant
or otherwise, as in the case of sweetness, bitterness,
brightness and gloom.

2. Emotions to which such words as we have
been considering have application are indicated

by the attitudes, gestures, and movements of body
D

50 . EXPRESSION.

expressed by the same words. More shortly, the
workings of the mind are expressed by attitudes,
gestures, and movements of body of a nature cor-
relative with them.

That which we like we desire to be near to, what
we dislike we seek to avoid ; but it is not merely
on these accounts that we bend the body forwards
and approach that which pleases us, while we
retreat or draw our head and body back from what
is offensive. In numerous instances such move-
ments and gestures are made not from any notion
of achieving a purpose, and still less from an
inherited habit founded in their utility to real or
supposed ancestors, but simply from the close con-
nection subsisting between movement towards an
object and mental attraction to it, or between
movement away from an object and a feeling of
repulsion.

A similar remark holds good with regard to
movement of the arms, which perform gestures of
receiving and rejecting. It may be mentioned in
passing that so far as these are performed from
the shoulder, they are accomplished respectively by
the gectoralis major muscle, which might be termed
the. muscle of embrace, and the Jatissimus dorst
muscle, which might be called the muscle of rejec-
tion. Lift the arm into the position which places the

EXPRESSION. SI

latissimus dorsi on the greatest stretch, and sweep
it downwards and backwards, with the palm turned
away from the body, and no gesture of the limb
can more thoroughly express the putting away of
something vile. Nay, more, if the same movement
be carried out also by the forearm and hand, the
gesture begins with the palm in front of the face as
if to conceal from the eyes what is loathsome, and
passes from this to the removal of it altogether.
Yet it is a gesture applied to the intangible and
invisible ; by it the Cleric puts away false doctrine,
and the fastidious sublimely brands a notion as
vulgar.

In like manner, slight movements of the arms
express the hugging of an idea to the bosom
when nothing but what is thoroughly impersonal is
thought of, and the fingers bend as if to keep a
something in the hand when nothing but delightful
sentiment is concerned. Thus, one may frequently
see among children at play, when an amusement is
proposed, the right or more active arm thrown up-
wards and inwards towards the opposite shoulder,
and the hand gently closed, while the word “ come”
is on the lips, and that when no removal to another
place is intended. It is partly the expression of a
wish for all to join in concert, partly it expresses
the pleasure with which the object to be joined in is

52 EXPRESSION.

anticipated. Similarly, ifan artist wished to express
sympathy he would bend the figure forwards toward
the object of the emotion, with the fingers stretched in
the same direction, as if ready to help, and the palm
probably inclined downwards, as if in token of pro-
tection, but not because there is anything actually
to be covered by them.

In exercising authority the body is raised to its
full height, because the moral attitude is one of
superiority, and the hand may be brought down to
indicate that opposition will be dealt with in the
way which in the symbolism of language is ex-
pressed as “put down.” Again, a speaker in ex-
plaining his views may bring the fingers of one
hand down on the other, as if he were producing a
visible object and placing it on his hand before you,
or were pointing to a visible statement on paper, the
downward movement not now giving the idea of de-
struction, but of that which is symbolically called
“laying down” his propositions. Here the move-
ment of the hand keeps pace with the success of the
speaker’s effort to put his ideas in words; the
movement is arrested and the muscles tense, as in a
state of mental tension he struggles with a difficulty;
then as he overcomes the difficulty down goes the
hand, as everybody knows, with energy parallel to
that which he wishes to give to his statement.

EXPRESSION. 53

It may be doubted if there are any gestures to
which the principle of symbolism, which I have at-
tempted to illustrate, does not apply. True, move-
ment upwards, downwards, forwards, and backwards,
with quickness or slowness, tension or relaxation,
form but a small number of elements of gesture
compared with the varieties of mental condition
expressed, yet there are combinations, adjustments,
_ and accessories which give them a wide range of ex-
pression. Take the, condition of relaxation, for
example ; it may bé seen in enjoyed repose, or in
sorrow, weariness, or despair. But, keeping feature
entirely out of the question, in enjoyment of repose
the attitude exhibits careful selection with a view to
_comfort, which in the excess of sorrow or despair is
entirely absent. In despair the body is thrown
back, and causes its relaxation to indicate the use-
lessness of having anything further to do with that
which is before the mind’s eye; in weariness it
turns to one side as if change could alone give
relief from utter lifelessness ; while in sorrow the
body is folded on itself as if the heart would nurse
its own bitterness, and yield to prostration, with the
world shut out.

But especially is the direction of the eye the
appropriate supplement of gesture, and its con-
nection with this may fairly be taken into

54 EXPRESSION.

account before considering expression by the —

features.

An erect carriage may be given to the body by
haughtiness, conceit, the exercise of authority, or
the presence of ennobling thoughts ; but very differ-
ent is the direction of the eye in these different
circumstances. In haughtiness the upward head
contrasts with the somewhat downward glance, in-
dicating that it is the height pertaining to self which
occupies the mind and which looks down on others;
in conceit the straying of the eyes over the person,
and the glancing about to take note of the effect
on others, show how approbation is sought for; in
command the glance is direct, as of one who would
bring his personality right into contact with those
whom he would wield ; but in ennobling thought
the eye, as well as the body, is turned upwards as if
both were governed by a power above them.

In kneeling in worship the idea is that of humilia-
tion before a superior Being, and if the eyes are
directed upwards, it is because the mind naturally
associates the rule of such a Being over us with a
dwelling above us; while if the hands are clasped
or crossed on the breast, it is the natural conclusion
of a motion of the arms towards one another as if
in desire to receive. I venture to think that this is
a more natural explanation of clasped hands than

ee ea

EXPRESSION. 55

the idea of placing them in the hands of another in
token of submission. But what I wish to attract
attention to now is, that in humble attitudes
the direction of the eyes is in harmony with
the direction of the face; if the face be turned
upwards the eyes look upwards; if downwards,
the eyes look downwards; and the expression
is very different both from the contemptuous
effect, of an upward face and downward eyes,
and from the downward face and upward eyes with
their many variations, seeming, with one exception,
always to convey an expression into which a con-
cealed advance enters as a necessary element. The
culprit sheltering himself by a lie, who has not
mastered the base art of concealing the concealment
which he practises, hangs his head over his secret,
while he steals upward glances to see the effect
which he distrusts; and if suspicion enters more
largely into his feeling, he does not face you, but
stands sideways, and, looking obliquely, betrays by
the want of harmony between eye and attitude the
duplicity which is within. On the other hand there
are expressions delightfully gay in which a slight
bend of the neck is combined with an upward
glance; yet they have the element of slyness enter-
ing into their humour, or that equally innocent and
slight suggestion of a secret taking the form of a

56 EXPRESSION.

confidence which seems to say, “You and I
understand.”
There appears to me to be one exception to the
rule that a downward face and upward eye give the
idea of concealment ; and it is in mental absorption
when the head happens to be bent forwards and
the eyes staring into space. Yet it is an exception
more apparent than real, the glance having less

the appearance of proceeding from the face than of

having quitted it altogether. What catches the
eye most in such circumstances is the relaxation,
the absence of expression, from the mind being too
much occupied with its musing to devote attention
to attitude or feature. The head only bends when
the relaxation of the previous attitude allows it to
fall forwards; and it falls as readily backwards
when the attitude has been favourable to that
movement. The eyes also are probably nearly in
the position of muscular inaction. In the dead the
position of the eyes is more turned upwards than
they would be in looking directly forwards during
life, and their strange stare seems to depend less on
the perfect movelessness than ona slight divergence
of their axes. Further, it is known that the condi-
ion of rest of the adjustments within the eyeball is
when the focus is set for the infinitely distant,
which requires the axes of the eyes to be parallel ;

a
oan Se

Ge

—_—_

EXPRESSION. 57

and one may see in the stare of absorption that the
eyes are parallel or slightly divergent, therefore
probably with the muscles of the eyeballs relaxed.

But enough, probably, has been said to illustrate
the principle sought to be established, that atti-
tudes and gestures, including movement of the
eyes, have direction corresponding essentially with
the emotions which they express.

3. The same principle is applicable to the ex-
pressions of the features. It is palpable that in
feelings of elation the angles of the mouth are
raised, the upper eyelid also is drawn well up, the
eyebrows are lifted, though not sufficiently to pro-
duce the slightest wrinkle of the brow, and even
the lower eyelid is raised, partly by contraction of
fibres of the orbicularis, partly pushed by the rising
cheek. Nor is elevation the only movement, but
nature expresses the expansive feeling, the ten-
dency of gladness to widen its scope, by an outward
movement. The angles of the mouth spread more
outwards than upwards, and as elation is carried
further the mouth begins to open. The apertures
of the eyes.are not as capable as the mouth of out-
ward enlargement ; but to them also the appear-
ance of greater breadth is given by the formation
of lines, spreading outwards and upwards from the
outer angles. Nor is the nose, though less move-

58 EXPRESSION.

able, quite quiescent: it is perceptibly broadened
and shortened by the outward and upward move-
ment of the ale. Thus this characteristically
human expression is not confined to a single
feature, much less the effect of a single muscle,
after the fashion in which Duchenne’ endeavours
to demonstrate that various expressions are pro-
duced each by a particular band of fibres. The
means are various by which the results so harmoni-
ous in character, so similar in their symbolism, are
achieved: here it is by the direct pulling of
muscles, there by the accident of one part pushing
another upwards, and by the wrinkling caused by
an action having another primary object.

Under the influence of the depressing emotions
the same parts are depressed which were raised
in smiling; and the apertures of the face, the
openings of communication with the world, are
diminished as the soul retires from its disagree-
able surroundings, The brows, the eyelids, the
alz of the nose, but most of all the angles of the
mouth, are lowered in all expressions of sadness.

But, in speaking of smiling and sorrow, I keep
out of consideration altogether laughter, sobbing
and crying. They do not fall within the limits of
actions principally explained by the natural corre-

1 Méchanisme de la Physiognomie Humaine.

EXPRESSION. 59

lation of physical movements and mental actions ;
they depend, probably, altogether on the mechanism
of the nervous system. The nervous centres acted
on by an excess of emotion are deranged ; and it
would require a far more intimate knowledge of
cerebral function than has yet been arrived at to
enable us to follow the details of the causation of
the convulsions produced. Laughter, sobbing, and
crying have the feature in common of convulsive
breathing. In laughter, perhaps in symbolical con-
nection with desire for the outflow of emotion, the
expirations are accentuated and prolonged, and are
therefore most obviously broken with convulsive
quiverings ; in sobbing, on the contrary, the inspira-
tions are elongated and broken into a number of
convulsive acts ; while in the crying of children the
true sobbing is mixed with a desire to announce
their sufferings loudly abroad, and, therefore, the
convulsive inspirations are followed by an unneces-.
sarily long expiration, utilised, if I may use the
expression, for the purpose of howling. But it is
interesting to note that the extreme distortion of
the face in the most violent crying is not dissimilar
from that inthe most violent fit of laughter ; and an
amusing illustration of this can be obtained by turn-
ing up Plate I. fig. 2 of Mr. Darwin’s work on
Expression, which represents a little child with eyes

60 EXPRESSION.

shut and mouth open, evidently roaring. Cover
with a card all but the face, and draw on the card
the body of a fat old man lying back in his chair,
and the child’s face, without a stroke of change, will
be converted into the bald head of the old man con-
vulsed with laughter. How so? Simply because
old men are more given to roar with laughter than
to bellow like children.

There is another of Mr. Darwin’s illustrations with
which a similar experiment may be made, namely,
Plate V. fig. 1, a female head expressing disdain.
Hide the neck, and make that head bend over a
figure so drawn that the head shall have a droop in
keeping with the direction of the eyes, and the ex-
pression of contempt completely disappears, giving
place to one which is serious and quiet. The ex-
periment, however, could not have been successful
if the expression had been carried further by the
curling of the upper lip. When contempt is ex-
pressed merely by attitude, it is done, as I have
said, by upward and backward motion of the head,
and a glance in precisely the opposite direction.
When the features aid the expression, they act on
the same principle. While the angles of the mouth

are free from all elevation, or are even depressed, in .

token of the depressing effect of the unpleasant, re-
treat upwards and backwards from that which excites

ee VE ——————F rT =

EXPRESSION. 61

disdain is indicated by the raising of a portion of
the upper lip; and the expression once originated
can be exaggerated by the drawing up of the lower
lip and the chin by the /evator menti, while the
angles of the mouth are actually pulled down, so as
to give it the appearance of being held down at the
ends while an effort is made to pull it up from
the surroundings which hold it.

In the allied expression of disgust, the /evator
menti takes no part, while the depressors of the
lower lip are moré strongly contracted, because
the idea is no longer to keep away from the
objectionable notion, but to get rid of the foul
thing which has already entered. The same
muscles come into play in getting rid of a bad
taste; and language, travelling in a similar line
to expression by feature, signifies the alliance
by the word disgust. Darwin also, quoting Piderit,
draws attention to the action of the nose, which
gives the idea of getting rid of an offensive odour ;
but I think these writers are mistaken in imputing
to the upper lip an action “so as to close the
nostrils as by a valve.” The upper lip is incapable
of shutting the nostrils, and is not used in any
animal for that purpose ; and what we really do, in
an unrestrained expression of disgust, is to raise and
distend the nostrils, as if to give egress to an objec-

62 EXPRESSION.

tionable vapour which has already intruded; and
forthwith we expire through both nostril and
mouth.

Resolution is expressed mainly by the mouth ;
compressed lips indicating opposition to assault or
entreaty from without, or the closing up of any ten-
dency to yield from within. In the pout of discon-
tent the angles of the mouth are drawn in as in all
expressions of dissent, while the projection of the
lips is in readiness for an expressive expiration ren-
dered audible, it may be, by a labial; just as, when
the teeth and jaws take up the symbolic action
instead of the lips, naturally syllables with dentals
lie to hand. By what slight circumstances expres-
sion of features may be modified is seen by the very
different impression produced by a protruded and
contracted mouth ready for an inspiration.

Hitherto I have made little mention of the mus-
cles of the forehead. What Mr. Darwin has written
on the “grief muscles”* is exceedingly suggestive ;
yet I own that, to my mind, it falls short of explain-
ing the phenomena which he so graphically depicts.
The frown expresses displeasure by the descent
and gathering together of the two eyebrows, and
so far is in perfect keeping with the principle of
symbolic: correlation which I have tried to give

1Op. cit. p. 181,

———e—————

EXPRESSION. 63

prominence to. It occurs also in attempts to see
distinctly external objects, helping to shade from
dazzling surroundings, and concentrates the at-
tention on a limited field ; and, in exercising the
internal perceptions when a difficulty is encoun-
tered, the forehead falls into the same condition
as when a difficulty in distinguishing an object
with the eye is met with. These explanations
appear to me more satisfactory than to sup-
pose that the frown is the relic of childhood’s
screaming,! the mofe so as in the worst cases of
screaming in childhood the eyes are not protected
by a frown at all, but by the violent closure of the
lids by means of the orvdicularis, so that the infantile
frown is rather derived from the same source as the
frown of the adult than the parent of it.

The formation of “rectangular furrows” on the
forehead, with elevation of the inner part of the
eyebrow, is more complex, and demands reference
to the anatomy of the muscles. Undoubtedly we
owe to Duchenne the knowledge, which anatomists
ought to have perceived before, but did not, that the
pyramidalis nasi is antagonistic to the central fibres
of the frontalis. It is attached to bone below, while
the more fixed attachment of the frozzalzs muscle is
above. For a much longer time we have known the

1Darwin, op. cit. p, 225.

64 EXPRESSION.

corrugator supercilit as an opponent of the frontals,
but the description of it is unsatisfactory. In the
eighth edition of Quain’s Anatomy it is described,
according to the received mode, as proceeding
“outwards and a little upwards.” Luschka des-
cribes it as a part of the orbicularis, and denies its
power to corrugate the eyebrow.’ Henle, highly
elaborate, describes it as part of the ordicularis,
and consisting “of two or three slips covering one
another in such a way that the higher they arise
they are the deeper, and pass more from a gentle
upward slope to a transverse direction.”” But he
also describes as part of the occzpzto-frontalis® slips
passing upwards from an attachment to the frontal
process of the superior maxillary bone. So far as
I can see by dissecting the frontalis, pyra-midalis,
and corrugator muscles from the deep aspect, a
much simpler description would be more accurate,
as well as more in accord with what may be made
out by examining carefully the movements of the
integument during life. I am disposed to describe
together the muscular fibres passing upwards from
the superior maxillary bone and inner end of the
superciliary ridge as a sheet which widens as it passes
upwards inseparably connected with the froztaltzs, its

1Luschka, Anatomie des Menschen, iii. p. 365.
2Henle, Anatomie des Menschen, Muskellehre, p. 143.
$Ibid. p. 136.

EXPRESSION. 65

upper and inner fibres directed toward the frontal
eminence, while its outer fibres form the part of the
muscle usually bearing the name. In antique
statuary the line of action of the moveable attach-
ment of this muscle is sometimes indicated by a
depression rising upwards and outwards high on the
forehead, while the gathered integument is com-
paratively smooth. This is the actual line to which
the action of the muscle can be traced on the
living body in males with fleshy foreheads; and
I have no doubt that this, unmixed with “ rectan-
cular furrows,” was the outline of the horse-shoe
of Sir Walter Scott in Redgauntlet,to which Mr.
Darwin refers. When this line is drawn down-
wards and inwards, the result will be to approach
the upper attachments of the outer fibres of the
Frontalis so much to their inferior attachments
that they will be deprived of the power of
raising the eyebrow or wrinkling the forehead ;
and this I believe to be the anatomical reason
why the outer parts of the eyebrows are depressed
while their inner ends are elevated in the joint
contraction of /frontalis and corrugator muscles.
On the other hand, the outer angles distinctly par-
ticipate in the action when the brows are raised
in expression of cheerful eagerness; and when I

assume that expression I can feel that the occz-
E

met. EXPRESSION.

pitalis and attrahens auriculam are brought into
action. |

The raising of the inner ends of the eyebrows,
while they are depressed in the rest of their extent,
is not a downright and intense expression of one
mastering emotion, but comes from a struggle of
conflicting feelings. It is a combination similar
to the raising of the upper lip while the angles of
the mouth are drawn down; and it often accom-
panies that action in expressing the acuteness of
the petty vexation which is akin to disgust and
sometimes so named. Then the expression travels
up from the mouth to the forehead. |

This brings to our notice that some expressions
‘are more liable to be shown by the mouth, others
by the eye and forehead, and only when they be-
come intense do they invade the whole face. I
believe that I shall be correct in saying that ex-
pression for the information of others is most
liable to be made with the mouth, the organ of
communication with the world ; while expressions
that betray thoughts unintentionally with the outer
world are most liable to begin in the eye and fore-
head. |

I take it that the transverse wrinkling of the
brow is simply the expression of mental irritation by
muscular contraction, such as occurs in the rest of

EXPRESSION. 67

the face, but confined to the forehead when the
mind is thrown in on itself and not intensely ex-
cited. Thus it is proverbially the expression of
care, and still more of despair. Round both
the mouth and the eyes, the muscles expressive of
control are those which draw the parts together.
When control is lost altogether, the radiating
muscles have it all their own way ; and therefore it
is that the brow is transversely furrowed, the eyes
staring, and the mouth wide open in terror. When
control is sought toe exercised, and emotion pulls
the antagonist muscles, the result is quivering, a
quivering sometimes seen in the rectangular furrows
on the forehead. Those furrows are most variable
in meaning. In bright sunlight the frontal is em-
ployed by the will against the instinctive protec-
tive action of the corrugators. At other times the
frontal takes the lead, and the corrugators try to
counteract it in an attempt to look grave, or an
absurd trifle disturbs serenity, and twitchings take
place out of harmony. :

But I have sufficiently spoken of the subject
which I have mainly sought to illustrate, namely,
that the principal key to a great part of expression
is the correlation of movements and positions with
ideas. I shall only add that the correlation which
I have sought to make plain is found elsewhere in

68 EXPRESSION.

nature besides the face of man. In the vegetable
kingdom the flower is put in the place of honour ;
in the vertebrate animals, the nervous system,
which, with the exception of the supracesophageal
ganglion, had been inferior in the articulata, be-
comes superior; while in man the brain is superior
in every sense.

Bie VERE N,

III.

VISION?

FEW truths can be“more surprising when first we
become aware of them than the indirectness of the
communication of the mind with the external world
through the senses. Our sensations, like our move-
ments, are the results of action of most complex
machinery working without our having knowledge
of its structure, or even, it may be, of its existence.
We have no consciousness of the myriad changes
taking place within it before a momentary sensa-
tion of sight, or sound, or touch can occur.

Not only so, but it is impossible to give any
reason why the peculiar actions of the various sen-
sory mechanisms are followed by the particular
sensation which they each induce. Thus, although
science discovers to us the existence of vibrations of
light and sound, we cannot say why the irritation of

1 Tn greater part re-arranged from portions of two popular lectures,

Tt ee NE ty NN A st eh a a

ne eee. Le Oe

72 VISION.

appropriate organs by those vibrations, should pro-
duce, one the sensation called sound, and the other
a sensation altogether incomparable with it, namely
vision. Neither can we say how it is that the vibra-
tions of heat produce a sensation different from
either. In short, beyond the sequence made known
by experience, we know of no relationship between
sonorous, luminous, and thermic vibrations on the
one hand, and the sensations of sound, sight, and
heat on the other. The sensations may be purely
arbitrary consequences of the irritations produced
by the various stimuli, for all that science can tell
us to the contrary. We perceive in this an instance
of the impossibility, in our circumstances, of bridging
the gulf between matter and consciousness,

While, however, the sensations received through
the eye, the ear, and the surface of the body, so
differ in kind as to be incomparable, they yet
combine, by means of the addition of time and
space, to give common information. It is ad-
mitted that time is an idea independent of the
external senses; and, notwithstanding opinions
to the contrary, the position is possible that
the same is true of space, and that the mind
‘must from the first recognise itself as sur-
rounded by oz ego as well as existent. How-

ever that may be, a sense of the position of the |

VISION. 73.

parts of the surface of the body is counted as a
part of common sensation, though a very different
thing from touch ; and it is from this that the first
conceptions of magnitudes, including distance, are
derived ; while we afterwards learn by experience
to translate certain phenomena of sight and sound
as effects of distance. As to tastes and smells, they
differ from objects of sight and hearing in being
referred to the situation of their respective organs ;
yet they may, when accompanied with movement,
and the comparison of differing degrees of the
sensation taking place one after the other, become
associated with the appreciation of locality, as
occurs remarkably in dogs following the scent.
And not only is the exercise of the senses thus
mixed with the idea of space, but every sensation
involves consciousness of its duration and repeti-
tion or non-repetition. Thus the ideas of time and
space become the means of unifying the results
of sensations incomparable in their own nature ;
so that the hand, the eye, and the ear, combine to
increase the common stock of information.

It follows that extension, configuration and move-
ment are properties of external objects which fall
under a different head from colour and sound as we
see and hear them. A sense of redness has no objec-
tive reality, but the vibration which causes it, the re-

74 VISION.

peated movement at a definite rate, is in a very
different position, and has exactly the same objec-
tive reality as space and time, whatever that
may be.

In examining the characters of the channels of
communication between the mind and the world
afforded by the senses it will be convenient to con-
sider for a moment the mechanism of touch before
passing on to vision.

Suppose that you put your finger in contact with
the point of a pin, and let us try to make out as
far as we can the mechanism by which you become
aware of that very simple matter. In your finger
there are numbers of threads, each branching at the
end into a brush of filaments so densely distributed
that you cannot place the pin point on any part of
the skin where it will not be microscopically close to
some of them. These threads, called nerves, run up
to the spinal marrow ; and when your finger touches
the pin it is most certain that a change takes place
in the end of a nerve and quickly travels along it, at
a rate of more than one hundred feet per second, till
it reaches the spinal marrow. And even then you do
not feel the pin- point; for if your spinal marrow were
divided at the top of the neck, as has happened to
some unhappy persons, we might pinch and burn
your hand, and, though it would wince and jerk so

Oe ee

VISION. 75

as to give the appearance of feeling, you would be
quite insensible to every injury of it. The change
which began in the nerve must run up the spinal
marrow and into the brain before you can feel the
pin-point. And although science can tell you that
when an animal’s brain is removed it loses con-
sciousness, and can tell you that intelligence is in
proportion to complexity of brain structure, science
cannot tell you why it should be so, nor why any
commotion of particles of matter, the only change of
which brain is capable, should be associated with
operations of the mind, and even with the knowledge
that the pin-point touches your finger. Thus we
see that there is not only a long and difficult journey
between the touch with the pin and: our knowledge
of it, but that there is a gap between our conceptions
of mind and matter, utterly bridgeless in our present
state of being; although all our ideas are shaped
from that world of matter, our connection with which
is so incomprehensible. Let us even believe, as I
do, that the mind reaches more or less thoroughly
at different times to the finger ends, and is
actually present there so long as the connection
with the brain is undivided, we do not by that
supposition bring the mind into immediate con-
tact with the external world; for you will admit
that not one of you is conscious of the brain and

76 VISION.

nerves in which your consciousness resides, or would
even know that you had such things unless those to
whom the interior of the body is known by dissec-
tion had told you.

It is very startling, and to the unscientific very
confusing. I do not care at the present moment to
press the inquiry further. All the length which I
wish to lead you just yet is to appreciate that even
in touch, which is the simplest of our senses, there
is no immediate contact of the mind with external
objects. At most, you are only aware of the posi-
tions in which your various sensations are felt : you
are not conscious of the things which cause those
sensations.

Let us turn now from common sensation to Vision.
_ Vision is the most subtile and most complex of all
the senses. It is produced by the vibrations of
light, vibrations vastly more minute than those of
sound ; and even sonorous vibrations are for the
most part incapable of affecting the sense of touch ;
although, no doubt, if one stands near a piano with a
tense parchment in his hand, he will feel the notes
producing vibrations in his fingers. Further, we
not only appreciate light and darkness by vision,
but the exact relative position of very numerous
spots of light, with their various degrees of intensity
and their differences of colour, all at the one time.

re
se ee ee ee ee ne.

VISTON. 77

Every picture consists of points of light of different
degrees of intensity and varieties of colours, and the
appearance of form is nothing but the grouping of
points of light and shade and colour. That the
mind, then, which is only affected by the external
world through the medium of nerve-terminations,
may appreciate the landscape, it is necessary that
it shall receive a separate sensation from the light
emanating from each of a large number of points,
and that the relative positions of these sensations
shall be such that“they may be recognized in
positions corresponding with the points in the
landscape to be represented.

In the eye these requirements are furnished.
In it a camera or dark chamber of notable size
‘exists similar to that which a photographer uses,
having a lens in the fore part, and a sensitive
curtain at the back. All the difference between
this camera and a photographer’s is, that this
is globular and the optical arrangements are more
perfect. When the photographer looks in at the
back of his camera, he sees on the ground glass
plate the image depicted which he wishes to photo-
graph, placed upside down, but faithfully delineated
in all its colours; and such an inverted landscape
is formed in like manner in the back part of each of
our eyeballs. And as the photographer adjusts the

78 VISION.

focus of his instrument by altering the position of
the lens, screwing it nearer or further from the
screen, so we adjust the focus of our eyes instinc-
tively according to the distance of the object
looked at, not indeed by changing the position of
the lens but by altering its form so as to make it
stronger or weaker as required.

The sensitive curtain is called the retina; and
in the early embryo, when the brain is as yet
a hollow structure with delicate walls, the retina
was continuous with the brain, forming in fact
a portion of it, and lined on its deep surface
with a layer of cells continuous with the epithelial
cells lining the hollow of the brain. These cells
at the back of the retina become developed into
elongated structures called rods and cones, or
included under the common name of bacillary
elements ; and the exceedingly minute bacillary
elements are the organs on which the light of the
inverted picture acts. They have a highly complex
structure which need not engage our attention at
present ; and the main part of the retina presents
a remarkable modification of brain-structure, re-
ceiving the fibres of the optic nerve and placed in
structural continuity by means of other nerve-fibres
with the bacillary elements. The rays of light
pass through the retina proper without producing

VISION. 79

any irritation, and reaching the bacillary elements
stimulate the nerve-terminations in connection
with them; and when the impressed conditions
thus started are continued through the retina and
optic nerve to the brain the sensations of vision
take place. ‘Thus the mechanism of vision, though
more complex than that of common sensation, is of
a very similar description.

There is, however, one striking distinction. In
the case of touch the sensation is referred to the
spot where the stimvlus is applied: in the case of
vision it is referred, not to the spot where the ray of
light falls on the inverted picture in the back of the
eye, but to a point outside the body and placed in
the direction from which the ray has come. That
is certainly the case, however inexplicable; al-
though it is true that the recognition of distance is
learned slowly by experience. Were the landscape
at birth perceived as a pair of minute inverted pic-
tures lying inside the head, it would be impossible
for a new born animal to learn that they were
indices of a world outside: and it is curious that
physiological writers have not always noticed this,
but have tried to explain how two inverted pictures,
spoken of as if they were outside the body, are
rectified and made one.

The perfection of vision necessary for the ap-

80 . VISION.

preciation of a picture does not appear at once in
the simpler forms of eyes met with in animals low
in the scale ; and perhaps the most interesting way
of looking at the structure of the human eye is to
compare it with others of a less complex sort. |
The simplest form of indubitable eye is a nerve-
termination with pigment on it, and more simple
still there are spots of pigment in various animals
in which nerves are not to be found; and those
spots are possibly or in some instances even pro-
bably eyes; that is to say sensitive to the rays
which the pigment reflects.

The star fishes furnish examples of a simple form
of indubitable eyes. They have not all got eyes;
but those which possess them have them at the tips
of their arms in groups which form a scarlet spot.
We know that these organs are eyes because they
have not only bright colour round them, but have a
transparent structure at the extremity, which admits
light to the nerve-extremities behind it. There can
be no doubt, therefore, that light is the irritant
which acts on these organs; but it is equally certain
that they are utterly incapable of displaying the
forms of surrounding objects, for every ray which
enters must fall on the red cup which surrounds the
nerve terminations, and in consequence of this its
red elements will be reflected from place to place in

VISION. SI

the hollow cup, and strike the nerve extremities in
different places, while the other colours are absorbed.
Therefore only red rays can be appreciated, and
even these cannot be discerned as distinctively red,
since there are no other colours perceived with
which they might compare. Such eyes may guide
the animal to localities where there are conditions of
light favourable to its wants, just as a dog is guided
by smell ; but it is difficult to imagine that they can
give information more precise. Nor is it easy to see
that much advance cah be gained in function even
where a lenticular transparent body lies in front of
a number of distinct nerve-terminations, if as in the
case of the emerald eyes that adorn the pecten, a bril-
liant pigment surrounds the whole. But when a tran-
sparent structure with nerve-termination behind is
surrounded by dark pigment, which absorbs the
oblique rays and allows only the direct rays to
penetrate to the nerve, the effect is very different,
and complication suitable for the production of
vision may occur either by the crowding together of
a number of such organs, or by the multiplication of
nerve-terminations of a bacillary character behind
one common lens in a dark chamber.

Of the first sort are the compound eyes met with
in crustaceans and insécts. If you look, for example,

at the large domes which form the greater part of
F

82 VISION.

the head of a dragon-fly you will see that even to
the naked eye they exhibit a grated appearance, such
as might be presented by a very fine sieve ; and un-
der a magnifier they show a surface like that of a
honey comb, consisting of numbers of hexagonal
compartments. Every compartment is the end of a
tube, containing a transparent substance like glass,
its walls lined with black, and its deep extremity
occupied with a sensory structure continuous with
the nerve of sight. The effect of this arrangement
is obvious ; only one ray of light can pass down each
tube ; all lateral rays being absorbed by the black
walls. The sensitive structure at the bottom of each
tube is thus exposed to only one spot in the land-
scape, the spot directly opposite it; and there is
painted in the bottom of the eye a miniature repeti-
tion of the landscape which might be compared with
a pattern in Berlin wool,each tube containing a single
stitch. Here then you have undoubtedly an instance
of true vision—a number of separate spots of light
appreciated at the same moment, and every spot re-
ferred, not to its position in the eye, but to the direc-
tion from which the ray of light has come. This
sort of eye is an optical instrument which requires no
focusing. ‘There are just as many points in the
Jandscape exhibited to the animal as there are tubes
in the eyes, and if the landscape is distant those

VISION. 83

points are scattered, while if it is near they are
crowded together; and probably in this way a
sense of distance is obtained. We may judge also
that this form of eye is suitable principally for seeing
very near objects.

In all the higher kinds of animals—namely, in all
the vertebrates, from fishes up to man, and likewise
in the highest group of invertebrates, including the
nautilus and cuttle fishes, the arrangement exists of
a camera, a lens, a bacillary layer and a retina or
membranous expansién of brain-matter. So far,
the eye of the cuttle fish, together with the other
less developed camerate eyes found in the inverte-
brata is similar to the eye of vertebrate animals ;
but while the optical contrivances in the two sets of
structures are similar, the sources of their origin are
totally different; so that it is impossible to con-
ceive that by any process of modification in succes-
sive ages the one kind of eye could have grown out
of the other. This is particularly the case as
regards the retina or sensitive curtain on which the
light is thrown. In both vertebrate and cuttle fish
eye, it consists of a sheet of nervous substance con-
nected with a covering of microscopically minute
rods which receive the rays of light and are affected
by them. In both instances it is an inverted pic-
ture which is cast on the retina, not an erect picture

84 VISION.

as in insects; and in both instances each rod re-
ceives its own ray of light which produces a separate
sensation, such as I have presumed to be produced
at the bottom of each tube of the insect’s eye, and
in both the number of those separate sensitive points
is enormously greater than. in the insect’s eye.
To illustrate the difference in sensitiveness of the
higher forms of eyes and the insect’s eye, I may
mention that in a fly’s eye there are about 8,000
tubes, whereas in the most sensitive spot of the
human eye there are probably about 700,000 sensi-
tive points crowded into about the two hundreth
of a square inch. But the resemblance between
the retina of the cuttle fish and that of verte-
brates is carried no farther than I have men-
tioned. The rods of such a retina as ours are
structures which originated, as already mentioned,
in the earliest development, from the lining of
the interior of the brain; while those of the in-
vertebrata are derived from the skin ; and in conse-
quence of that, there is this great difference, that in
the invertebrata the rods are on the surface of the
retina looking towards the light, while in our eye
they are turned away from it.

There is a way in which those two forms of eyes
may be more closely compared morphologically ;
and it is one which gives promise of more beautiful

VISION. 85

harmonies to be yet discovered, exhibiting an
orderly evolution of structure in the animal king-
dom; but it is difficult to see what help it can give
to those who must needs have the evolutions of
organization accounted for by natural selection. In
the very early vertebrate embryo the hollow of the
interior of the brain was an open groove, and thus
the epithelium lining it, including the bacillary
layer of the retina, is originally continuous with
the cells of the cuticle all over the body. The lens
in both vertebrates and invertebrates is cuticular
growth ; and thus in a sense the whole eye is a
superficial development in both.

But the distinction remains that the vertebrate
eye is derived from two separate hollows placed
apex to apex, and one folded round the other,
while the invertebrate eye represents only one
of them. Having regard to certain transparent
tunicates and to Kowalevsky’s observations on the
development of the ascidians, in which the eye takes
origin from the walls of an originally open neural
sac, it seems even possible that the cerebral part of
the vertebrate eye is the part homologous with the
invertebrate eye, while it is the vertebrate lens which
is the superadded structure. But such a suggestion is
little more than a speculation. What is important is
this, that the lowest vertebrate has no eyes properly

86 VISION.

so called at all; that the animals supposed to be
its nearest invertebrate allies have only eyes of an
imperfect description incapable of true vision, while
other vertebrates have eyes which repeat the land-
scape, and are only comparable with invertebrate
eyes in the manner mentioned.

But however interesting the evolutions of the
organ of vision may be, it may be questioned if
there is not even more food for reflection in the
very existence of such a sense as vision or such
a sense as sound. One has no difficulty in agree-
ing with Gegenbaur that certain eyes may have
been evolved out of tactile organs, but it is much
harder to understand how it comes to pass that
touch is the sense which it is, or that there can
possibly be any transition from touch to hearing,
or from touch to vision. As sensations they are,
as already said, incomparable, and intermediates
between them are therefore inconceivable to us.
No doubt the sensations of sound and vision are
themselves inconceivable to those who are born
deaf and blind, but that very consideration points
to this: that in these senses there are two things for
consideration, the material apparatus and the pro-
perties of that consciousness which is capable of
being modified by stimuli received through the
medium of the apparatus. To me it appears plain

VISION. 87

that the idea of vision must have previously existed
before it could form part of the consciousness of
any animal; and in the evolutions of organs of
sight I am compelled to recognize in the simpler
forms the early stages of a morphological design,
moving forward in definite directions to accomplish
a mode of contact between the external world and
the consciousness of animals, the idea of which
already existed.

Is it in accordance with anything that we know
of the laws of nature‘that such contact should be of
an arbitrary and purely artificial kind? Consider
that while we are without experience of spirit-life,
except in connection with body, it would be credu-
lity to suppose that no spirits exist save those
enchained by matter. Suppose them to exist, and
suppose them to appreciate the material universe
in that intrinsic character which reason and not
sense informs us of, namely, as so many centres of
force inhabiting space, it is plain that they cannot
have vision in the sense in which we have it—a
sensation artificially produced through affected
nerves. They cannot have any of our senses. But
must they necessarily be devoid of the ideas which
they represent? Is it necessary to suppose that
things which we possess in common with the
majority of animals exist nowhere else in the whole

88 VISION.

universe? Is it philosophical to suppose that there
is no other universe than that which is indicated to
us by whirling spheres that roll through space,
and that these must be shorn even of those pro-
perties by which they directly affect our senses,
the properties by which alone we have acquired
knowledge of their existence? It is easy to see
what strange possibilities may be opened up by
such a question, but that is no reason why the
question should not be asked. Either we must
suppose that the sensations of sight and sound.
have links in some way corresponding to them in
a world of which we know nothing, or that they
are arbitrary illusions, graduated doubtless in keep-
ing with movements not directly appreciable by us,
but arbitrary nevertheless.

a LY,

THE. PHYSICAL RELATIONS OF
CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE SEAT OF
SENSATION, A THEORY PROPOSED.

IV.

THE PHYSICAL RELATIONS OF CON-
SCIOUSNESS AND THE. SEAT: (OF
SENSATION, A THEORY PROPOSED."

IN venturing to disttrb the theory of Sensation as
it has long been taught, I am very sensible that it
may be difficult to obtain a patient hearing, seeing
that it is a theory universally received ; yet there
are important points which that theory leaves
unexplained, points familiar to all, and which only
require to be mentioned for every one to admit
that, as the theory at present stands, they are totally
inexplicable. That theory may be shortly stated
thus :—that an irritation applied in the neighbour-
hood of a nerve-extremity produces an impression
which is conducted along the nerve till it reaches
the seat of consciousness in the brain; and that the
mind, affected by the impression, becomes thereby
cognisant of a sensation, which it refers to the

1 Originally published in the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology.
November 1870.

Q2 CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION.

extremity of the nerve along which the impression
has been conducted. Further, let it be recollected
that nervous impression is nothing but a physical
condition, some of the peculiarities of which have
been laid bare by experimenters, and which is
capable of affecting any of the nervous elements,
_ viz., nerves, both motor and sensory, and nerve
corpuscles,

In speaking of nervous impression thus defined,
we deal with a matter of fact, although we are not
thoroughly acquainted with its details; but in
stating the doctrine of the modus operandi of
sensation, we have merely to do with a theory.

This theory is, however, a physiological as well
as psychological theory, and involves the considera-
tion of the functions of nervous structures, as well
as the laws to which consciousness is subject ; and
it is the more important to point this out, because
the physiologist is liable to think that where con-
sciousness is involved physiology cannot be con-
cerned, whereas the doctrine of sensation, although
it relates to a matter on the psychological frontier,
is arrived at from physiological data; and it is
because it is, as will be shewn, at variance with
other anatomical and physiological data that it
requires alteration.

It may be taken as certain that when a nervous

CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION. 93

impression is conducted to the seat of consciousness
in the cerebral hemispheres, corpuscles there enter
into a corresponding condition to that of the con-
ducting nerve, precisely as a corpuscle which is the
turning-point in a reflex action is no doubt affected
by the condition which it receives from the sensory
and passes on to the motor nerve. But if we
imagine that in an act of consciousness the cor-
puscles of the hemispheres undergo any change
other than that of passing into the impressed con-
dition studied in nefves, we become cuilty of an
assumption which has the plain objection of being
unfounded. That assumption is unfortunately
often made, apparently from confusion of ideas ;
for authors, particularly medical authors, speak as
if mental impressions lodged in the brain ; whereas
nervous impression, the only active condition into
which. there is evidence of the brain passing, is
a physical state of a uniform nature, while, on the
other hand, a mental impression is the presence of
a notion in the mind, and the variety of such
notions is infinite. I shall return to the considera-
tion of the bearing of this remark on views as to
the details of the functions of the hemispheres, but
wish first to direct attention to the difficulties of
the received doctrine of sensation.

I own that, even supposing all difficulties as to

94 CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION.

the route pursued by impressions from the peri-
phery to the brain to be removed, to me it is
utterly inconceivable that the sites of irritations
over the whole surface of the body should be
minutely indicated, and a more vague appreciation
of the positions of internal irritations be obtained,
by differences in the cerebral termini of the impres-
sions conveyed from different parts. The supposi-
tion involves the difficulty that there is no mode
by which the mind of the child could ever learn to
associate the changes taking place at the cerebral
termini with changes at different parts of the
surface. If the consciousness were ignorant of
the surface of the body at the commencement
of life, it must continue always to be so, for want
of means from which to derive the information ;
no amount of custom could avail it, for the mind
gets all its experience from the senses, and until it
could refer sensations to the parts of the body
from which they were derived, it could gain no ex-
perience of the external world whatever. Therefore
the doctrine of sensation necessitates the assump-
tion that the functional union of the parts of the
periphery with different termini in the brain is
primordial, and that the surface of the body is
minutely represented or repeated by a number
of points in the brain, which, however confusedly

CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION. 95

massed together, derive their properties from their
connections. 2%

This assumption has possibly never been stated
in this form before, but it is one from which the
received doctrine of sensation allows no escape,
and surely it is an assumption sufficient to arouse
some suspicion of the doctrine which demands it.
If it be true, it seems strange that some of those
termini are not often the seat of disease while
others escape, that we do not meet with paralysis
of the sensation of limited patches of the body
occurring from limited cerebral lesions, and that
nothing of the sort has been laid bare by the
experiments of vivisectors.

‘If we now contemplate the routes by which
impressions from the periphery reach the brain,
we meet with other difficulties., It is plain that if
the mind is affected by the condition of cerebral
elements as if they were situated at the parts from
which they receive impressions, then the accuracy
of the mind’s knowledge of the periphery is de-
pendent on the number of such elements which
receive impressions from distinct parts, and that
each distinctly recognizable spot of the body must
be joined by a separate tract with its own cerebral
terminus. That tract may be interrupted by cor-
puscles with branches in other directions, and must

96 CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION.

be so to account for reflex actions, but it cannot
in any part of its course, pass. through a fibre com-
mon to it and another spot of the periphery,
without the consciousness being bereft of all means
of distinguishing the one spot from the other.
But all that we know of the structure of the cord
notoriously contradicts the notion of such an ar-
rangement—an arrangement which would involve
the continual accumulation of additional sensory
tracts in the cord from its lower to its upper
extremity. Moreover, it appears certain from the
experiments of Dr. Brown-Séquard that the greater
‘part of the conducting material of the cord, its
white matter, may be divided, and, provided the
grey matter is-left intact, sensation in the parts
beyond the lesion remains unimpaired. Thus, the
routes of communication between the brain and
nearly the whole surface of the body are known to
pass through the extremely limited area exhibited
by a transverse section of the grey matter of the
cord, and probably more than half that area is
occupied with binding tissue which has nothing to
do with nervous conduction, while of the nerve-fibres
which traverse it, a number are motor, and accord-
ing to the theory some must be devoted entirely to
impressions from internal parts of the body, even
though such impressions are principally patho-

CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION. 97

logical. Can it be believed that the remaining
fibres traversing such a section approach in number
what would be necessary in allowing one nerve-
fibre for the area of distribution of each nerve-
fibre on the surface of the body ?

If it be attempted to escape from this difficulty
by attributing with Dr. Beale a function of import-
ance to those numerous striz or fibrillz which that
writer, and after him, Max Schultze, have described
in nerve-corpuscles and axis-cylinders, the import-
ance of a single nerve-fibre as a conductor may be
indefinitely multiplied, but the assumption is made
that those fibrille are really present during life,
and that each one is capable of maintaining the
active or the passive condition quite independent
of the others with which it is in close alliance; an
assumption which must appear sufficiently great
to those who remember how little individuality
belongs to the much more easily demonstrated
fibrille of muscular fibre. Even then, the diffi-
culty remains as much as ever ; for, if we suppose
that these fibrillz are continued down all the poles,
and that the peripheral nerves possess them, as
well as others, we have indefinitely multiplied the
tracts in the periphery as well as in the cord, and
left the disproportion in numbers the same as ever;

while, if we deny fibrillze to the peripheral nerves,
G

98 CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION.

and suppose them to exist in the fibres of the cord
alone, we assume that the work which requires a
whole fibre in a peripheral nerve, can be done by
one of a multitude of striz in a fibre of the cord,
which seems improbable.

If the difficulties which have been enumerated
appear greaty when the received theory is applied
to the explanation of common sensation, they are
still more striking when it is applied to vision.
The theory demands that for every ray of light
appreciated by the mind there must be a com-
pletely distinct communication from one of the rods
or cones which constitute the individual sensory
organs of the retina to a terminus in the brain,
and that the impressed condition of every such
terminus must be capable of creating in the mind
a knowledge of the position of the point on which
the ray falls as related to all the other impressed
points of the retina. That supposition involves
all the difficulty which has been pointed out in the
case of common sensation ; while the anatomy of
the retina, even more distinctly than that of the
spinal cord, contradicts the possibility of distinct
communication between each of the immense num-
ber of peripheral nerve-terminations and the seat of
consciousness. Within the retina, the threads
leading from the terminal rods and cones already

CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION. 99°

enter into a complicated ganglion most developed
in the part where vision is clearest, and it would
be very hard to imagine that the fibres of the
optic nerve emerging from the ganglionic corpus-
cles correspond individually with distinct rods or
cones.

These being the objections to the received
theory of sensation, they appear to me to warrant
search for an escape from them, and I have been
led, by the consideration of the properties of the
living corpuscles of thé body, and of what appear
to me the established facts with regard to the
actions of the cerebral hemispheres, to a hypothesis
which I venture to put forward, believing it to
furnish that escape, and to be in harmony with
all that is known of the nervous system. |

But before doing so, I find it necessary to ex-
plain and defend the view which I hold with
regard to the connection between mind and brain,
and which I have already in a few words suggested
in a paper on the structure of the cerebral convo-
lutions in the Quarterly Fournal of Microscopical
Sczence (April, 1870.) We must inquire into the
relations of consciousness with the hemispheres
before we ask how it is brought into communi-
cation with the finger-ends.

The cerebral hemispheres, which are well ascer-

100 CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION.

tained to be the organs without which none of at
least the higher acts of consciousness can be per-
formed, are a pair of highly corrugated vesicles,
closely connected one with the other, and continu-
ous with the rest of the brain by the lower margins
of the inlets into the cavities of the vesicles, where
are situated the corpora striata. The structure
throughout the different lobes and convolutions of
the hemispheres, notwithstanding minor differences,
is fundamentally the same. Their grey matter con-
sists of strata of nerve-corpuscles and nucleated pro-
toplasm, and the vast majority of the corpuscles are
connected with fibres ascending from the corpora
striata and with others which lie horizontally, that
is, parallel to the surface, while they send another
stronger process perpendicularly outwards. The
horizontal fibres exist throughout the thickness of
the grey matter, but are massed particularly in
a varying number of strata, while others of them
coat the surface in various places. We have thus
an arrangement fitted to allow consentaneous
action of the whole grey matter of the hemisphere,
but nothing pointing to different functions of the
different regions. The convolutions are accounted
for when it is considered that they bring the
vascular supply within easy reach of every part
of the grey matter, and the minor differences of

CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION. 101

structure may reasonably be supposed to arise
from the different relations in which the different
parts of the hemisphere lie to the corpora striata
and from unequal development of the nerve-cor-
puscles ; a supposition in favour of which is the
circumstance that in the posterior lobes, the parts
furthest from the corpora striata, the nerve-cor-
puscles are least developed, and the horizontal
fibres are most abundant.

But not only does the study of structure thus
point to the probability of the whole hemispheres
having one combined function, but development,
comparative anatomy, and experiment point to the
propriety of considering the corpora striata as
forming with the hemispheres one organ. The
corpora striata are enlargements of the basal por-
tions of the hemisphere-vesicles ; so says develop-
ment: they are inseparable from the islands of
Reil; so says adult structure. They may be
irritated or damaged by vivisection in mammals,
without damage to sensation or motion, and slic-
ing them away in birds produces effects corres-
ponding with those produced by slicing away the
hemispheres in mammals; that is the evidence
of experiment : while comparative anatomy shows
the hemisphere-vesicles forming each a unity in
fishes, a small distinct corpus striatum within

102 CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION.

each in the turtle, and in the bird the whole
hemisphere-vesicle converted into corpus striatum
(or, more correctly, corpus striatum and island
of Reil), with the exception of little more than a
membrane at the upper part. The hemisphere-
vesicle, therefore, appears to be a single organ
primarily divisible, as Reichert has _ beautifully
shown, into a root-part which includes corpus
striatum and island of Reil, and the “mantle”
which includes the remainder; and I apprehend
that the mantle zs only a multiplier of the function
of the root-part.

If we now revert to one of the propositions
made at starting, and bear in recollection that
while there is every reason to believe that the
corpuscles of the hemispheres pass into the im-
pressed condition studied in nerves, there is no
vestige of evidence that they have any additional
active condition, it will become apparent that the
law of operation of the functions of the hemi-
spheres is that they are so connected with the
mind that the total amount of mental action at
one time is dependent on the total amount in the
hemispheres of that physical state which we call
the impressed condition.

Consciousness and the fieaisemeeih scanicion
of brain-substance go always together, but that

CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION. 103

impressed condition of the brain-substance is of
one ‘invariable nature, while the objects which
may ‘occupy the consciousness, its’ acts of me-
mory, of observation, of reason, of volition, and
its conditions of emotion or desire are of end-
less variety. The hemispheres, including the
corpus striatum, may therefore not inappropriately
be termed the organ of attention, the mode of
whose action may be described thus :—the total
amount of attention at any oné moment is in
proportion to the total amount of the impressed
condition of the whole corpuscles of the hemi-
spheres: but that. attention may be occupied with
numerous different mental actions going on at
the same time; and with the specific nature of
its occupation, whether memory, reason, emotion,
appetite or volition, the brain can have nothing
to do. . an

This view stands in direct opposition to’ the
views which find favour at present with at least
many physicians of mental disease. Starting
with the proposition that the diseases of the mind
are the diseases of the brain, which has a certain
amount of truth in it, they have unconsciously
slid from that starting-point into phrenological
assumptions and into a belief that brain-corpuscles
are pigeon-holes of ideas ; and thus they predicate

104 CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION.

of matter properties incomprehensible and of which
there is no evidence. But it is remarkable that
neither medicine nor surgery, nor experiments on
animals, have shown any difference of function
in the different parts of the hemispheres. Wounds
of the brain and limited spots of disease do not
vary in their symptoms according to the part of
the roof of the hemisphere attacked. I am not
forgetful of the remarkable phenomena of aphasia
nor the discoveries of Broca, but I have pointed
out elsewhere’ that the connection between aphasia
and lesion of the brain external to the island of
Reil is best explained, not by reversion to the
doctrine of the divisibility of the hemispheres into
different organs, but by taking into account the
variety of processes required to go on consentane-
ously to produce speech, and considering the.
interruption to the consentaneous action of the
hemispheres by interference with the fibres of
communication at the most central part of the
organ.

It is not only in the case of speech but in all
the more complicated operations of thought that
the mind has to attend to different matters at
the same time, and it can well be imagined that
simultaneous and harmonious action of the brain-

1 Medical Press and Circular, 11th March, 1870,

CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION. 105

elements is very necessary to secure that end.
Thus it will be seen that the doctrine of brain-
action which is here proposed by no means
separates altogether the character of the mind
from dependence on that of the brain. There are
three elements on which the character of the brain
as affecting the mind may be safely presumed to
depend, viz., the intensity and ease of action pos-
sible to individual brain-elements, the total amount
of those elements, and, lastly, but possibly, most
important of all, the’ freedom and perfection of
communication of those elements one with an-
other. It may well be supposed that this last
requisite is more liable to be deficient in large
brains, as the distances are greater and the ele-
ments to be joined together more numerous in
them.

In the structure of the brain there is the closest
affinity to the structure of the rest of the nervous
system, and its corpuscles are elements plainly
comparable with the living parts or protoplasm-
derivatives of other textures, and there is ground
to. presume that in like manner the impressed
condition of nerve-corpuscles, whether in the brain
or elsewhere, and of nerve-fibres is analogous to
the contraction of muscular fibres and of amzboid
corpuscles: the peculiarity of those of the hemis-

106 CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION.

pheres being simply that action of the mind excites
their action, and that their action excites that of
the mind." That presumption prepares the way
for the hypothesis of sensation which I venture to
suggest, which is this: that the consciousness extends
Srom its special seat so far as there is continuity
of the impressed condition ; that when an irritation
is applied to a nerve-extremity in a finger or else-.
where, the impression (or rather impressed con-
dition) travels as is generally understood, but
exists for at least a moment along the whole’
length of the nerve, and that as soon as there is
continuity of the impressed condition from finger
to brain the consciousness is in connection with
the nerve and is directly aware of the irritation
at the nerve-extremity. Or the position may be
shortly stated thus: functional continuity between
nerve-extremity and brain is proved to be neces-
sary for sensation, while on the other hand existence
of distinct routes of communication between them.
is highly improbable; and seeing that functional
continuity is sufficient of itself to explain the
phenomena, we are not entitled to assume the

1 A wider generalization may probably be made, namely, that every
living element of texture exists in two conditions, the self-nutrient and
the irritated ; and only in proportion as self-nutrition is in abeyance is
the irritated condition possible.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION. 107

existence of distinct routes, as has hitherto been’
done.

Let it be distinctly understood that I do not say
that consciousness resides in the nerve-extremities,
but only that when the nerves are in the active or
impressed condition in their whole extent up to
the brain, the consciousness is affected directly
by the irritations applied to their extremities,
The relation then of consciousness to the brain
remains totally different from its relation to the
nerve. The impressed’ condition of the cerebral
corpuscles produces only excitement of the mind ;
the impressed condition of a peripheral nerve or
its extremity continued up to the brain brings
the consciousness into communication with the
irritation applied.

- At the extremities of the different nerves are
placed various arrangements which are least com-
plicated in the nerves of general sense, and which.
modify their capability of being irritated by differ-
ent stimuli. Thus the expansion of the optic
nerve is incapable of being affected by the irritation
of light, but the rods and cones of the retina are
irritated by them with ease. The complicated
nerve-extremities of the ear are acted on by sounds,
and the comparatively simple extremities of the
nerves of general sense are acted on by mechanical

108 CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION.

irritations and changes of temperature. It appears
then that if we suppose that the consciousness is
directly affected by the application of the irritation
to the nerve-extremity, we have the simplest pos-
sible explanation of differences of colour and of
notes, and of the different kinds of sensation, con-
veyed by the nerves of general sense. We are in
a position to say that as the irritation varies so
varies the sensation, without being obliged to
assume different kinds or conditions of nerves
without evidence.

The objections may be urged against my theory
that irritation of the ulnar nerve produces sensation
in the finger ends, that persons after amputation of
an arm feel pain in the fingers, and that irritation
of one nerve often causes pain in another, as when
disease of the hip gives pain in the knee, or tooth-
ache pain in the temple; but it appears to me that
all these things are better explained by this theory
than by the received one. When one strikes the
ulnar nerve at the elbow accidentally with force
everybody knows that the acute pain is not felt
in the fingers, but at the part struck, and that this
is immediately succeeded by pain and a peculiar
sense of vibration which travel downwards from
the struck part till they reach the fingers. A
patient who has had a limb removed, in like

CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION. 109

manner, is perfectly aware of the site of irritation
when a nerve-trunk in the stump is touched, and it
seems reasonable to suppose therefore that the
sense of the presence of the removed part is some-
how to be explained by habit, the reversion of
consciousness to previous conditions, and is com-
parable with other waking illusions of the phantom
sort. The production of pain in the temple from
toothache may be explained on the supposition
that intensity of the impressed condition sufficient
to produce pain is conducted to a nerve-centre and
spread centrifugally, just as I have suggested that
the alteration in an ulnar nerve struck at the elbow
spreads down to the fingers.

If I have put forward these views of sensation
simply as a suggestion I should be still more
unwilling to be dogmatic in applying them to the
motor nerves. Yet it may be mentioned that one
of the most inscrutable of all phenomena, looked at
from the received point of view, is the circumstance
that the will is able to regulate delicately the
movements of the limbs by adjusting the contrac-
tions of complicated muscles of which the mind is
wholly unconscious; and the difficulty in this
matter will be greatly simplified if we can see
our way to believe that, when a motor nerve is set
in action from the brain, the mind is brought into

110 CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION.

connection with its distribution. Further, the hypo-
thesis facilitates the explanation of muscular sense,
and accounts for what has been observed by Dr.
Brown-Séquard, that the tracts for muscular sense
do not decussate in the spinal cord. The pheno-
mena sought to be explained by the hypothesis of
muscular sense are the consciousness of the posi-
tion of a part, the capability of regulating its
movements even when ordinary sensation is para-
lyzed, and the consciousness of the maintenance
of muscular effort in such parts.. The hypothesis
which I offer in explanation of these phénomena is
that by continuity of the impressed condition from
the brain to the distribution of the motor nerves
we are conscious of the parts to which the distribu-
tion extends, and of the exercise of the will within
them. But, it will be alleged in reply, when we
move our fingers we feel the movement not in
the muscles of the forearm, but in the fingers. I
think, however, that this difficulty will not appear
so great when we analyse our sensations in endea-
vouring to make some unaccustomed movement.
Thus, although in moving our limbs we are not
conscious of any sense of effort which we could
localize in the region of the muscles brought into
action, unless perhaps when unaccustomed resist-
ance is met with, it is different when one. attempts

CONSCIOUSNESS. AND SENSATION. 111

to move the pinna of the ear.or bring the palmaris
brevis into action. If I attempt either of these
actions I am conscious of exercising an effort to
produce contraction in the neighbourhood of the
part, on that side of it towards which I wish to
move it. It seems to me therefore that muscular
sense, as I have sought to explain it, is sufficient, in
conjunction with experience, to account even for
the movement of the fingers.

The bearing of the hypothesis now put forward
on the functions of the’nerves may be expressed in
a few propositions.

1. The irritation of a nerve of common sensation
throws the nerve into the impressed condition ;
and as soon as that condition is continued to the
brain, the mind recognizes the irritation at the site
where it is applied, in the form of sense of touch,
temperature, or pain, according to its character.
Over-intensity of the impressed condition may also
itself be recognized in the form of pain.

2. Nerves of special sense differ from those of
common sensation both in the circumstance that
the apparatus at their extremities is affected by
irritations of a different kind from those which
affect other nerves, and in their irritation being
recognized in the form of the special sense to which
they are devoted.

112 CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION.

3. By the impressed condition continued from
the brain to the distribution of a motor nerve not
only is a stimulus communicated to the muscles
and applied by the nerve, but muscular sense is
given ; and the consciousness being brought into
direct communication with the part by establish-
ment of continuity of the impressed condition, the
will is enabled to regulate the position of the part
and the degree of muscular energy with which it is
maintained. But a motor nerve differs from sen-
sory nerves of all sorts in the fact that irritation
of it does not produce any sensation either of the
character of common sensation or special sense ;
and in this respect it is probably like the proper
fibres of the spinal cord and brain.

It may be allowable to say in conclusion that in
publishing these views I put most importance on
the objections which I have urged against the
received doctrine of sensation ; and in venturing to
suggest another in its place I am perfectly aware
that there is much which is imperfect in the hypo-
thesis which I have put forward, and I can only
hope that it may prove of some use in building up
a more perfect view. ;

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CELL

V.

CELL THEORIES.’

Stricker’s article on ‘‘The General Characters of Cells,” in his
‘‘Human and Comparative Hfstology.” Published 1868; translated
by Power, 1870,

Beale, in Todd, Bowman and Beale’s “‘ Physiological Anatomy and
Physiology of Man,” 1866 and 1871,

IN placing the titles of these books at the head
of this article, I purpose less to review them
than to refer to the opinions of their authors in >
illustration of a general survey of the conceptions
at present prevalent, with regard to the vital units
of living bodies.

Observation is more a means than anend. The
end is to arrive at an accurate conception of the
processes of nature ; and very different conclusions
are arrived at by different men, founding their

1 Reprinted from the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, July»
1873. The article, as it originally appeared, contained a criticism
of the views held by the late Professor Hughes Bennett, but it has been
deemed unnecessary to reprint that part at the present date, A few
added sentences are placed within brackets.

116 CELL THEORIES.

judgment on similar phenomena. Possibly, the
just zeal at the present day for accurate infor-
mation tends to lead to an undervaluing of the
faculty by which observations are translated.
Every man is obliged to translate what he sees.
No doubt he ought to distinguish carefully in his
own mind the appearances seen from his trans-
lation of them ; but no man ever did or ever will
give a description of a complex microscopic ap-
pearance so as exactly to reflect the appearances
seen, uncoloured by the element of judgment ;
and much less is it possible to found a statement »
on a variety of observations which is not largely
dependent on the attitude of the observer's mind.
One observation has its effect in modifying the
translation of another; and it is greatly due to this
that many microscopic objects of a corpuscular
nature, or what are still called cells, are capable
of being interpreted very differently now as com-
pared with the way in which they were looked
at twenty years ago. Formerly, corpuscles round
which no cell-wall was demonstrated were too
easily supposed to have one although it was
invisible, or were regarded as exceptions to a
general rule ; now they are viewed with different
eyes, and taken as proofs that the cell-wall is
unimportant.

CELL THEORIES. 117

The history of conceptions regarding cells is
in its general outlines exceedingly instructive.
The notion of a cell was first derived from vege-
table tissues with their easily exhibited cellulose
cell-walls. The vesicular form thus caught the eye
from the first. Then, in many instances in animal
tissues also a real or apparent vesicular structure
was easily observed ; as in adipose, epithelial, and
nerve-corpuscles. The contents in vesicular struc-
tures were seen to be various, but the frequent
existence of a nucleus of firmer consistence im-
- bedded in them could be demonstrated, and within
this were often seen one or more nucleoli of some
sort or other. Thus it naturally happened that
the cell-wall was considered a characteristic struc-
ture, and was supposed to be functionally import-
ant; and next to it, the nucleus was regarded
as the seat of vital properties, because it was
seen to divide preparatory to the multiplication
of cells, and to be distinct in young cells, however
it might dwindle out of sight in the old. The
circumstance, manifest from the outset, that cell
contents were various, taken in conjunction with
their being the part which least caught the eye,
led to their vital importance being long overlooked,
But as improved microscopic methods came into
use, including reagents, such as carmine, which

118 CELL THEORIES.

bring masses of albuminoid matter into view not
only by outline but throughout their extent, the
general existence of such masses in bodies of the
sort which had been known as cells came to be
recognized, and, as a natural consequence, it gradu-
ally dawned on the minds of independent observers
that the outlines of such masses were the things
which, in many instances, had been translated
as cell-walls.

Two other advances aided in completing a
revolution of opinion with regard to cell-walls,
namely, the discovery of corpuscles undergoing .
_ amoeboid changes of form and migrations, and the
tracing of nerves in many instances into continuity
with nucleated corpuscles. Thus a change has
crept into the whole conception of the nature of
those vital units whose importance functionally
had been first recognized in the case of some which
had apparently a cellular form; and thus it hap-
pens that the term cell is still employed in many
instances in which it would be better to use the
word corpuscle. A nucleated corpuscle is as con-
venient an expression as a nucleated cell; a
connective-tissue-corpuscle is an expression which
involves no theory or description either of structure
or function ; and it would be an enormous advant-
age to the spread of accurate ideas if the word cell

CELL THEORIES. 119

were never used except when it was meant to
predicate the existence of a cell-wall.

For some years past I have, in teaching, been
particular in this matter of nomenclature, believing
that misleading names do generate confused ideas,
and that no conventional compact can make it
judicious to designate a solid mass by a word
which indicates a hollow vesicle, or advisable to
use a common word in a sense at variance with its
usual meaning. It ig as if we were to invest the
tongs with the scientific name of poker. ‘There
is nothing, I can assure you, gentlemen,” said
Goodsir, “which has more retarded science and
philosophy, and the kindred subjects on which
human reason has been employed, than the intro-
duction of terms with conventional meanings.”
But I admit that it is difficult to escape from an
accustomed’ groove, and that for a time one must
be content, under protest, to speak occasionally of
secreting cells, nerve-cells, hepatic cells, and so
forth ; were it for no other reason than to be in
harmony with the language of text-books, in speak-
ing to students.

The changes in the anatomical conception of the
living corpuscle have not been without their influ-
ence on the physiological conception. In the days
when the cell-wall was paramount, it seemed an

120 CELL THEORIES.

important point to determine how far the passage
of substances through that membrane was the
result of mere osmosis, and how far it depended on
the action of some attractive power within. To the
school whose tendency was to refer everything to
the laws of dead matter, the cell-wall was a most
important agent ; to those on the other hand who
considered that to account for the formative changes
in living bodies the presence of another force must
be assumed, the nucleus as situated in the interior
seemed the source of vital actions.

Moreover, in the absence of a defined know-
ledge of the protoplasmic element, the conception
of the nucleus was obscured by extending the
designation to bodies which ought not to be so
named. An instance of this may be found in
the case of connective-tissue-corpuscles. Many
years before Virchow’s researches threw a light
on these structures, a corpuscular element was
recognized as present in connective tissue. It
was even taught by some to be the same ele-
ment as could easily be demonstrated as consti-
tuting, in a cellular form, a large part of the bulk
of foetal connective tissue, and to be of the utmost
importance in its vital properties. But that element,
in the adult, was known only as it may be found
figured by Dr. Sharpey in 1848 (Quain’s ‘Anatomy,

CELL THEORIES. I2I

5th edition, pp. cxv. and cxvi.). No doubt Dr.
Sharpey distinguished clearly the nuclei “attached
to the surface of the filamentous bundles or in their
interior” from the rounded and oval corpuscles and
irregular particles met with in the interstices of the
tissue,” which he said were “probably to be con-
sidered as belonging to the interstitial fluid ;” but
those who imputed importance to that latter variety
of corpuscles had little help for it, at that time, but
to associate them with nuclei.

In the present day the protoplasmic element
has assumed an enormous importance, casting the
nucleus into the shade, while the reign of cell-walls
has come to an end altogether. But to speak of
life, as is sometimes done, as if it were an inherent
property of a particular chemical substance, is
surely going too far, and is a view which has
nothing true in it which is not more than thirty
years old; for it has long been familiar to every
one that life never exists without the presence of
nitrogenous substance of an albuminoid character ;
and, though it has since been discovered that life
in various instances exists in non-nucleated struc-
tureless masses of protoplasm, that is a very different
thing from life being a property of protoplasm.
Further, it may very fairly be questioned if some
of the simple organisms are not rather to be com-

122 CELL THEORIES.

pared with the nuclei in textures than with proto-
plasm around nuclei. If certain of them are non-
nucleated protoplasmic masses, may not vibriones
be regarded as mere nuclei and nothing else?
Besides, in the textures, there are many nuclei
which have no apparent protoplasm about them ;
and there are also nuclei with processes, which may
be regarded as bodies intermediate in character
between the typical nucleus and the protoplasmic
mass. The corpuscles of the deep layers of the
cutis are mere nuclei, with long processes in various
directions; while in the tapetum of the eye of the
ox long threads extend from nuclei, like the threads
at the extremities of fusiform cells in foetal connec-
tive tissue. Also,aspermatozoon may be regarded
as a simple nucleus. No doubt, as mentioned by
Stricker, both Schweiger Seidel, and la Valette St.
George declare that not only a nucleus, but proto-
plasm, enters into the construction of the sperma-
tozoon; but if we examine the forms represented
by la Valette, both in “ Stricker’s Manual” and
in his original paper in “Schultze’s Archiv,” we
shall see that what is meant is that the proto-
plasm is at first adherent to the spermatozoon or
nucleus, and afterwards absorbed into it or other-
wise lost, but that there i$ no permanence in
the spermatozoon of a substance preserving the

CELL THEORIES. 123

chareacters of protoplasm and distinct from the
nucleus.

One of the short-comings of Professor Stricker’s
article on the general character of cells is that he
exaggerates the virtue of the protoplasm. Heuses
the expression, “ Protoplasm is termed a living
substance,” or, as the German (man _bezeichnet)
may be more strictly translated, “it is recognized
as a living substance ;” and he speaks in such a
way as to leave the impression that it is a definite
chemical compound. Now, the fact is that proto-
plasm when examined under the microscope, is
usually as thoroughly dead as anything could be
well imagined to be. Living masses of protoplasm,
no doubt, can be studied microscopically, and a
great stride has been made in science by the ex-
amination of such masses in texture; but the com-
position of the protoplasm is not definitely known.
It is quite unobjectionable to call the albuminoid
mass of a nucleated corpuscle protoplasm, even
after it has been acted on by means of chromic
acid, carmine, or other reagents. In fact, proto-
plasm is simply a convenient name to use in speak-
ing of the pulpy nitrogenous substance of vital
corpuscles; but it is not to be forgotten that the
substance referred to-is variable in appearance and
behaviour, as is well illustrated by Heidenhain’s

124 CELL THEORIES.

observations on the differences in both salivary and
gastric secreting corpuscles in states of activity and
rest. How, then, shall we say that in its different
conditions the material which constitutes the mass
of such corpuscles is one and the same chemical
substance? We shall, indeed, take a very imperfect
view of the living units to which an unhappy
chance has given the unfortunate name of cells,
if we say that because neither cell-wall nor
nucleus is an essential element, therefore life is a
property of protoplasm. It was recognized by
observers long ago that the bond of connection
between the bodies which they described lay not
in a detail of structure, but in the possession
of one or more of the vital. properties, irritability,
growth, or reproduction; and the observations of
later years do not overthrow that conception, but
afford it additional support. Indeed, there are
passages in Professor Stricker’s article which show
an appreciation of this.

That article is one which affords much food for
reflection, and is a repertory of important infor-
mation. But as a history it is defective, even
greatly so. The author neither does justice to the
work of Virchow nor of Beale ; and Goodsir is a
name of which he makes no mention, Yet Vir-
chow inaugurated an era in the history of cell-

CELL THEORIES. 125

conceptions ; and Virchow dedicates his “ Cellular
Pathology ” to Goodsir, as “ one of the earliest and
most acute observers of cell life.” And if I may
again quote one neglected anatomist in support
of the claims of another, it may be mentioned that
in 1845, Goodsir, in his paper on “Centres of
Nutrition,” which never admits the possibility of
cells originating otherwise than from pre-existing
cells, declares that “ for the first consistent account
of the development of cells from a parent centre
we are indebted to the researches of Martin
Barry.’ However, we are informed by the Ger-
man Professor, that Remak, in his “ Entwicklungs-
geschichte,” 1852-1855, “has the merit of chiefly
contributing to the abandonment of the doctrine
of cell formation from free blastema,” and that
the same observer established the law that cells
are developed by division alone in pathological
processes also. Then follows the remark, naive
enough, considering these statements about Re-
mak, that Virchow’s “well-grounded statement
made in 1855, ‘Omnis cellula e cellula,’ really
constitutes the basis of our present cell theory.”
Virchow’s real claim to consideration in the history
of cell theories is neither grasped nor mentioned,
namely, that by displaying in their full importance
the connective-tissue-corpuscles, he afforded the

126 CELL THEORIES.

means of accounting for the development of the
more complex elements of tissue, as well as for
pathological growths.

These omissions, however, are accounted for by
a note inserted by Professor Stricker in the trans-
lation (p. 38). Misled. by Cohnheim, he had be-
lieved the results of Goodsir, Redfern, and Virchow
to be founded on incorrect investigation ; but later
observation of his own has convinced him that
he was mistaken. These are not his words, but
perhaps they are as clear.

No doubt the neglected discovery of Waller,
again made and successfully propounded by Cohn-
heim, that white corpuscles pass through the walls
of uninjured capillary vessels into the tissues, was
one which upset previous notions, and might well
create in some minds a doubt concerning the
doctrine of Virchow’s “Cellular Pathology.” But
looking at the subject with the advantage of the
five years which have elapsed since Professor
Stricker wrote his article, one cannot doubt that
the real state of matters is simply this :—that
amoeboid connective-tissue-corpuscles and white
blood-corpuscles are all one set of bodies, though
the first are in the tissues, and the others floating
free in the blood ; and they might well be termed
common or undifferentiated corpuscles. While

CELL THEORIES. 127

there need be little doubt that pus-corpuscles are
derived from white blood-corpuscles, there also
need be no more doubt that they likewise origin-
ate both fissiparously and endogenously in the
tissues.

I have used the expression “common or undiffer-
entiated corpuscles;” and on this subject it may
be necessary to make some remark. The vital
powers may be enumerated as irritability or sensi-
bility, contractility, nutrition or elaboration of sub-
stance, and reproduction. All these properties are
possessed by an amceba and by ameeboid cor-
puscles. But every separate living organism does
not possess them all; there are individuals with-
out reproductive power. In like manner, all the
vital units do not possess throughout life all vital
properties; but zz the process of differentiation
one property becomes exalted, while another ts lost.
Muscular fibres, nerve-corpuscles, the corpuscular
elements of peripheral nerve-terminations, and
secreting corpuscles illustrate this. All of them
have lost the reproductive power; muscular fibres
have exalted contractility, nerve-terminations ex-
alted sensibility, and secreting corpuscles a highly
developed elaborating power. [In brain-corpuscles
the proliferating power may reappear in patho-
logical circumstances, but it does so at the expense

128 CELL THEORIES.

of the specially developed properties. In muscular
fibre it appears to be lost altogether. ]

Probably the greatest difficulty in conceiving
of the origin of differentiated textural elements
from common corpuscles is to settle the relation of
epithelial to other corpuscles, and on that subject
it is not easy to give an opinion. In particular,
the phenomena of skin-grafting, including the
stimulus given to the growth of skin over a whole
ulcer by the presence of grafts of minute size,
might even suggest the possibility of a sexual
distinction between the corpuscles of the graft and
those among which it is planted. At all events,
the microscopy of skin-grafting is worthy of study,
and the utility of the practice affords evidence that
all the less differentiated corpuscles are not capable
of producing, at least without assistance, all other
kinds of corpuscles. [Evidence of this is especially
to be seen in the circumstance that the most
effective grafts are those which completely dis-
appear before being succeeded by a transparent
pellicle which spreads ; and also in the well-ob-
served fact that improvement in an ulcer to which
srafts have been successfully applied is not con-
fined to the spots where they have been placed.]

It must be kept in mind that the corpuscular
mass of the embryo becomes early divided into

CELL THEORIES. >

layers, of which the outer and the inner ‘may be
said to be opposed to the middle one, in respect
that those become epithelial, while this becomes
the source of other tissues. Further, the important
observation by His, of the abundant cell prolifer-
ation at the circumference of the area vasculosa,
and of the intrusion of the elements so formed into
the interior of the embryo, must be kept in mind
as giving rise in early embryology to a primary
division of the corpuscular masses into centrifugal
and centripetal. That His is right in his view that
the whole skeleton and connective tissues, as well
as the blood and blood-vessels, are derived from
the centripetal group I cannot believe, because
it appears to me that Remak’s view of the origin
of the skeleton corresponds much better than that
of His with what may be seen in _ transverse
sections of embryos; but it does seem very pos-
sible that the centripetal development, being the
source of the blood and blood-vessels, furnishes
not only nourishment to them but corpuscles which
conjugate with all those of the centrifugal mass.
I throw this out as a suggestion, and it will not,
perhaps, be considered a very wild one, when this
remark of Stricker’s is remembered :—“ Were any
one to maintain that the migrating cells are ‘con-

jugation organisms, no stronger objection could
I

130 CELL THEORIES.

be raised against him than against another who
should maintain that the migrating cells are epi-
thelia. Recklinghausen has advanced a theory
respecting the conjugation of cells, which, however,
on account of its brevity, scarcely allows us to
judge of its value.” The theory of Recklinghausen
refers to conjugation between different elements of
blood.

The part taken by Dr. Beale in the advance.

of the cell conception has been one of great im-
portance, and is worthy of full consideration. The
great merit of Dr. Beale appears to me to lie in
pointing out that the cell-wall is in all instances an
after-growth, and that the vital processes of the
corpuscle are independent of it. In saying this,
I am not forgetful of the work of Max Schultze
in 1863, quoted by Stricker; but Dr. Beale has the
priority, and lays down the doctrine of the non-
vital character of the cell-wall in a very clear and
emphatic manner, classifying, as was not done
. before, cell-walls with the inter-corpuscular sub-
stance. He simplified thereby the conception of
cell multiplication; for if the cell-wall be, even
when present, no part of the vital corpuscle, there
is no radical distinction between fissiparous and
endégenous reproduction. His distinct recognition
also that the origin of inter-communicating pro-

tt ace eal Macatee

CELL THEORIES. 131

cesses of cells is not by outgrowth of processes,
but by the separation of corpuscles which gradu-
ally part, is most important; though there is grave
reason to pause before denying with him that con-
tinuity of structure is ever the result of separate
elements sending out processes which unite.

But, however much it may be desired to give Dr.
Beale full credit for the advances which he has
made, it is easy enough to understand why that
credit should be sometimes withheld, when one
considers how these*Advances have been mixed up
with a theory of “germinal and formed matter”
which has made but little way. It is quite im-
possible to support the doctrine that all “ formed
matter” was once “germinal,” particularly if such
things as the matrix of cartilage and the fibres
of tendon are to be included under the term, as
they are by Dr. Beale. Certain cell-walls, as those
of at least some of the fat-cells, are really altered
protoplasm ; but there is not the slightest reason
to believe that the matrix of cartilage or the fibres
of tendon are transformed portions of the vital
corpuscles, or that they are undeserving of the
name of “intercellular” substance. Rather would
it have been well if Dr. Beale had looked on the
cell-wall itself as intercellular.

_ His. difficulty appears to be that “no well-

132 | CELL THEORIES.

ascertained facts have yet been adduced in favour
of the view that any living structure whatever can
influence matter at a distance from it, so as to alter
its properties or composition, or in support of the
notion that cell-wall, cell-contents, or intercellular
substance possess any metabolic power whatever.”
And the way he gets over this difficulty in the case
of hepatic cells is most ingenious, namely, by re-
presenting that the outer part of each corpuscle is
no longer vital, but converted into formed material
of a soft description, becoming changed into bili-
ary constituents, albuminoid and amyloid matters.
Other researches, however, come to our rescue here.
There is nothing more certain than the power
which Chrzonszczewsky showed: hepatic corpuscles
to possess of taking up sulpho-indigotate of soda
from the blood and passing it on into the gall-ducts.
Here, then, is an indubitable instance of a living
structure influencing matter external to it. And
where, after all, is the unaccustomed marvel in this,
when it is recollected that all the attractions of dead
matter are exercised by molecules or masses, as the
case may be, on others external to themselves, and
that in the case of gravitation there is no limit to
the distance’ which may be between the masses
provided that they are sufficiently large ?

Looking at things from my point of view, I am

CELL THEORIES. 133

also obliged to think it a pity that Dr. Beale has
not recognized the true place of muscle in his
theory. He calls the contractile substance of.
muscle “formed matter,’ which indeed it is
in the sense of being raised to a higher state of
organization than the corpuscles out of which it is
formed ; but the formed matter of Dr. Beale is,-ac-
cording to his definition, no longer vital; and that
is not the case with muscular fibre, which not only
has the vital power of contractility, but the power of
consuming other than its own substance in produc-
tion of contraction. The real definition of a striped
muscular fibre is, that it is a compound living cor-
puscle which has no reproductive power, but has a
far more highly developed contractility than the
amoeboid corpuscles.

It may be stated that at the present day there
is no difficulty in believing in the uninterrupted
sequence of corpuscles by reproduction through all
generations. The melting of the spermatozoa and:
germinal vesicle within the ovum may be regarded
as a variety of conjugation, resulting in the forma-
tion of acorpuscle, which by its fissiparous division
constitutes the wholly corpuscular germinal mem-
brane, from which are furnished the parents of
every living corpuscle in the adult body, including
the ova or the spermatozoa, according to the sex.

134 CELL THEORIES.

But the mere tissue-life in individual corpuscles
will not account for the phenomena of development
without the addition of a larger life or a formative
principle common to the whole individual, and it
would be of incalculable advantage in the just con-
ception of pathological phenomena, if the central
and tissue lives were more generally distinguished
than they are. [No one has yet reduced, in a satis-
factory way, any of the properties above mentioned
as belonging to corpuscles, namely, irritability, con-
tractility, nutrition and reproduction, to the laws of
unorganized matter; and having regard to that
circumstance, and to the complicated phenomena of
development of higher organisms, exhibiting series
of changes unlike anything in the organic world; it
is legitimate to conclude that in living beings there
is a superadded element acting on the textural
units individually, and that such an element con-
trols likewise the development of the organism.
The neoplasms of the pathologist afford abundant
example of corpuscular life breaking loose from
the central control by means of which it is utilized
in health for the construction and continuance of
definite organs. |

Still proceeding on the principle of life within
life, we may go further and assert that a larger life,
or series of developmental changes from a simple

CELL THEORIES. 135

origin to a definite goal, may be observed in the
evolution of all animal forms in the history of the
globe. Such a doctrine alone is capable of explain-
ing all the facts of morphology, and giving to the
speculations of Darwin the backbone which they
require. [The reasons for it are stated in the fore-
going essay on the Evolutions of Organization.
It may be added here that such a doctrine is fav-
ourable rather than adverse to the supposition of a
genetic relationship of, widely separate species. For
if not a textural unit has arisen save by genesis
from pre-existing units, and not an organism save
from pre-existing organisms, analogy, which is
however an uncertain guide, suggests that not a
species has arisen save from pre-existing species.
If the pedigree of man from inorganic matter has
during long ages passed through an ascending
series of forms, so also has individual manhood
passed through stages of development ‘equally in-
ferior to the adult condition. But we enter on
another inquiry when we ask by what means the
highest development .of organization has been
evolved both in the individual and in the world-
history of life, even supposing that genetic relation-
ship of all the parts be admitted as probable. ]

Sere

_ TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND
Ser THE PUBLIC. ©

Lea on

VI.

TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND THE PUBLIC.

Address delivered at the Ceremony of Graduation in the
University off Glasgow, Fuly 1880.

Gentlemen, the duty devolves upon me to address
to you a few words of congratulation on the present
auspicious epoch of your lives. Auspicious may it
prove to all of you. To all it must be a satisfaction
that you no longer have examinations to look
forward to, and no longer feel obliged to read
wearily for such ordeals, instead of studying for
the sake of information. It is to be hoped, there-
fore, that your days of study are not now over, but
only about to begin, and that the education which
you have received at College will prove principally
useful by teaching you the methods to be pursued
in acquiring knowledge during the rest of your
lives.

_ All education proceeds on one of two plans—the
pin-cushion plan, which regards the mind as‘a dead

140 TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC.

receptacle, to be packed with facts and fictions,
useful and otherwise; or the horticultural plan,
which looks on it as a living plant, to be nursed to
a healthy and more mature condition, ere the time
for transplanting arrives, when it is to become
useful or ornamental by the exercise of the healthy
powers which have been educed. It is palpable
that in all professional education there is a large
mass of fact to be learned, but obvious also that
the facts will be of little use without the art of
handling them and turning them to account. More
especially is this the case in medicine. The facts
which are brought under the notice of medical
students are, as you have experienced, these: the
modes of preservation of health and treatment of
disease; the laws of health and disease and the
actions of remedies, which form the immediate
basis of treatment; the structure of the body,
without a knowledge of which its operations,
healthy and otherwise, cannot be known, and
without which you dare not use the knife; the
chemical laws which govern both thé body in its
operations and the remedies which you propose
to use; and lastly, the characters of animals and
vegetables, that domain of life to which our life
belongs. I have placed foremost that which is
most prominent in the minds of most of you—the

TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 141

treatment of disease ; and I do not doubt that you
have all learned a great number of details of treat-
ment which you will use to the advantage of
patients yet unborn, as well as others, it is to be
hoped. But remember that the changes which
take place in treatment are perpetual, and that
there is nothing reliable in any treatment which
is not based on science.

The jeers of Le Sage and Moliére, and many a
sneer of later date, have been only too well founded ;
and if there be truth, as truth there is, in the
vaunted progress of medicine and surgery in recent
years, that progress is entirely owing to two closely
connected causes, namely—first, the enormous ad-
vances that have been made in chemistry, natural
history, anatomy, and physiology; and, secondly,
that the practitioner, prepared by the study of
these sciences; has applied their methods in his
own special studies, has founded a science of path-
ology, and learned what accuracy of observation
means in clinical research. It is then the methods
learned in your scientific studies which those of you
who aim at reaching the first rank in our profession
will find the most useful part of your education, as
you woo Nature for her hidden treasures all your
lives. This lotion and that operation, O young
surgeons; this plaister and that panacea, most

142 TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC.

promising physicians, will be superseded, it. may
be, in a very few years; but if you have learned
the scientific method, you will help, by patient
and accurate observation and thought, progress
which shall endure when much crude innovation
known by the name shall have been abandoned
and forgotten.

How hard it is to be accurate! Nay, rather how
impossible! Accuracy is approached as if by a
process of dividing the distance. Constant effort
produces constant progress; but a fraction of the
distance continually remains. At least, so it is in
matters of observation and construction. We begin
them with a preconceived notion as to the degree
of exactness required ; as we proceed we find we
have to amend our notions; and when we have
done this several times we find it exceedingly
difficult or even impossible to recall the state of mind
from which we started. Turn back your minds
to the first few days of your studentship, and try to
realise your first impressions of, for example, a verte-
bral column. Probably you thought that nothing
could be easier to understand, but wondered at the
tiresomeness of detail in the descriptions given by
authorities. You will probably also recollect that
your teachers took a great deal of trouble to con-
vince you of the importance of much which you

TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 143

had difficulty in appreciating when pointed out to
you, simply because at that stage of your develop-
ment you thought it far too minute and trifling for
a rational being to attend to. |

Without going beyond the study of anatomy I
might point out many more striking illustrations of
the difficulty of arriving at accuracy, by asking you
to look back, not on your own history, but on
history which can be studied from records, the
progress of the science. One example will suffice.
Consult the plate showing the vascular system
originally published by Vesalius in 1542, and you
cannot fail to be astonished at its extraordinary
character. The inextricable confusion which it
exhibits in matters long regarded as fundamental
almost surpasses comprehension ; and yet Vesalius
was far ahead of his contemporaries. He was
conscientiously, and lovingly describing what he
believed that he had seen; and the name that he
has left behind him, as well as the remarkable story
of his life, is guarantee for the ability which he
brought to his work. In 1699, appeared Bidloo’s
work with its celebrated engravings; and in the
plate of the arteries there given, not only is the
influence of the plate by Vesalius abundantly
evident, but in some respects the inaccuracies are
distinctly greater, though as a work of art it is

144 TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC.

beautiful. It is more difficult to conceive the point
of view of these old anatomists than to remember
the changes which have gradually taken place in
our own conceptions of accuracy; and yet in this
instance we have but an example of what may be
_often seen both in natural history and in human
affairs, that the development of the individual
repeats after a fashion the development of the race.
The art of accuracy had to be learned in anatomy
and other sciences precisely as each of us has had
to learn it, and as we shall continue to learn it as
long as we admit the paramount excellence of
truth.

Nor is that which obtains with regard to accuracy

in scientific matters less applicable or important in.

reference to the statements which we allow ourselves
to make in the ordinary conversation and business of
life. All truthfulness is an art, and a difficult art to
learn. In scientific matters the only difficulty in
learning this art in most cases is to discipline the
observation and teach it to act with rigour and free
from prejudice and imagination. But in the affairs
of life, and especially in our profession, there are
more serious difficulties in the practice of truthful-
ness than these. Emotion comes in—emotion,
which into scientific investigation ought not to enter
though it too often does; and I do not know a

ee

TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 145

single emotion that has not got a warping power.’ In
your practice you will make blunders, everybody
does ; and you will try to conceal them, everybody
does ; it will often be well for your patient that you
should. You will learn much which your patients
will think that they have a right to know, but which
it would be wrong to tell them; and patients’
friends will ask distressing questions which it may
be your duty not to answer. They will ask you
questions, also, especially in the early days of your
practice, which you may find eminently inconvenient
to yourselves to answer, even when you know full
well that you are thoroughly able to do your duty.
In all these cases, and in many more which might
be mentioned, you will readily see how emotion of
one sort or other may interfere with accuracy of
statement ; and with regard to them all, I may
further say, happy is the man who can bring tact to
his rescue or even finesse in aid of truth.

1 Tt is indeed true that all emotion has a warping power; yet I can-
not republish this sentence without noting that I have fallen into a
specious error in saying that emotion ought not to enter into scientific
work, The emotions should all be strictly disciplined, especially those
founded on personal pique, which was the emotion most present to my
mind, Even pique has warmed men up to work, though not of the
best sort. As for the man who brings little enthusiasm into his work,
he will take little credit out of it, either in the way of discovery or of
influencing other minds. Yet enthusiasm continually warps the judg-
ment, and we must curb our enthusiasm for our own views of truth
by loyal adhesion to the spirit of candour and caution by which we
can alone hope to throw aside the prejudices to which we are liable,

ete K

146 TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC.

No doubt these qualities are too often thought to
mark their possessor as false, and it is beyond ques- |
tion that they may be used in support of falsehood
as well as in aid of truth. Yet there is a form of
blarney to be found in all grades of society perfectly
legitimate when it is the offspring of geniality. It
is an art not unknown to the fashionable practi-
tioner ; perhaps you may find occasion to practise
it. Be tender at least with feelings that are tender
and sore, and ever when inclined to prattle remem-
ber and beware. It is the man who is looking out
with clear and honest eyes, not thinking of himself,
that has most time to study his neighbours and
become a true tactician ; while they who rush in-
considerately into every false position have most
difficulty in emerging with clean hands; and the
tongues which go spinning for ever like tops are
they the burden of whose discourse is most fre-
quentlyan hum. It is the pace that kills. Of such
an one, had not Johnson objected to playing upon
words, it might be said in a sense far different from
what he intended, “Nullum quod tetigit non
ornavit,” for he adds legs and arms to every story
he takes up.

Am I wrong then in considering honesty an art,
and a very difficult one too? “An honest man’s
the noblest work of God,” says Pope in his “ Essay

TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 147

on Man,” much to the disgust, as you recollect, of
Mr. Burchell, who thought the reputation of men
was “to be prized, not from their exemption from
fault, but the size of those virtues they were pos-
sessed of,” a sentiment in which there is much truth ;
but the more you think over it the more you will
find that perfect honesty is a virtue of such size, a
gem so rare, that it is not to be found anywhere, but
is to be perpetually and earnestly sought after.
Professor Wendell Holmes, American anatomist,
and most pleasant “of writers, tells us how comes
“ Timidity, and after her Good-Nature, and last of
all Polite Behaviour, all insisting that truth must
voll, or nobody can do anything with it ; and sothe
first with her coarse rasp, and the second with her
broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do
so round off and,smooth and polish the snow-white
cubes of truth, that when they have become a little
dingy by use, it becomes hard to tell them from the
rolling spheres of falsehood.”

If we consider the three learned professions we
shall find that in all of them there are incentives to
truthfulness, and peculiar provocations to the re-
verse. The lawyer has often to practise special
pleading, which may possibly, in some instances,
weaken the moral antipathy to wrong ; but he has
to study from the commencement the abstract prin-

148 ‘TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC.

ciples of law, and the phases of its development,
and learns as a judge to balance evidence indepen-
dent of emotion. Clergymen, in the individual
exercise of their profession, have before them the
highest ideal ; but bearing on them is the unhappy .
fact that in ecclesiastical organizations, as such,
abstract truth or error has no locus standi, but every
consideration yields to the question of accordance
with the laws of the church. As to medicine, I
have already touched on the difficulty of being
truthful in the practice of the profession; but, on
the other hand, in the search after general laws,
authority is now-a-days armed with less persecuting
power than formerly, and freedom is enjoyed in
scientific inquiry.

Returning then to the subject of scientific ac-
curacy: the physician is set face to face with
nature ; and all correct treatment of disease must
be founded on an accurate knowledge of patholo-
gical changes. If your practice be not so founded,
it will be quackery ; and the public and the state
are to blame that the opportunities of arriving at a
correct pathology are not what they ought to be.

There are two senses in which pathological
anatomy is the foundation of correct practice. In
the first place, the profession, as a profession, could
have no knowledge at all of any pathological change

TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 149

without studying morbid conditions after death.
That is to you self-evident ; but the general public
have never caught hold of the idea properly, or
they would take more care that the greatest possi-
ble facilities should be given for the prosecution of
inquiries on which their own health ultimately de-
pends. But let the public listen to this further
statement, which you will all recognize as true,
though some of you will forget it as time rolls on—
that the practice of each individual practitioner is
trustworthy only when he makes use of frequent op-
portunities of examining after death to verify and
supplement his judgments where they have been
right, to test his guesses and his suppositions that
he may see how far they have accorded with fact,
and most of all to correct the numerous errors into
which the wisest and the most experienced continu-
ally fall. |

We talk of the progress of medicine; but what
an enormous amount of distress might be alleviated
if that which is known could be brought to bear in
every instance in which it is applicable, or even in
the majority of instances. To this end continued
pathological observation must be conducted by
every practitioner; and it is because the blame of
the neglect of this lies much more with the public
than with the profession that I venture to point out

} 1530 ZRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC.

what happens when verification of diagnosis is
neglected. Let us try to trace the history of a
medical career in which this fault is committed. A
graduate has been accustomed in his studies to
have series of cases brought before his notice, of
which the most prominently impressed on him have
got well, and have seemed thereby to show that the
evil had been accurately recognized and successfully
combated. Others, likewise distinctly remembered,
have got worse and worse, till they have ended
fatally ; and in those cases a proper investigation
afterwards has taught numerous lessons which
could not fail to impress the thoughtful observer.
And if, besides all those, there have been, as there
must be, numerous other cases which have not been
rounded off to a dramatic conclusion of success or
tragic close, but have lingered on in an unsatisfac-
tory way, or disappeared from observation none the
better ; the exigencies of teaching, apart from the
operation of any subtle and unconscious instinct of
human nature in the mind of the teacher, tend
often to throw such cases into the background, while
their absence of sensational interest leads the
student to leave them there to be forgotten. The
graduate passes, as many of you are about to do,
into general practice on his own account. Then
how great is the change! The acute cases which

TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 151

were so instructive in hospital no longer form the
staple of his experience, and the chronic cases no
more like meteors disappear from view. He has
these disadvantages to cope with—namely, that in
his successful cases, as will always happen, he is in
a certain number of instances deceived by the cir-
cumstance that the fortunate issue has not in reality
been aided by his treatment, or that the treatment
has accidentally suited a condition other than the
presumed lesion against which it was directed ; in
fatal cases he seldom*has the opportunity afforded
him of proving the opinions on which he has acted,
and when the opportunity occurs he learns to con-
sider it a trouble to utilize it; while, as for the vast
number of cases that seem to get neither greatly
better nor worse, they become inevitably, as time
goes on, a lighter burden on his conscience, are set
down as among the things that “no fellow can find
out,” and kept as quiet as may be with a variety of
palliatives. What wonder that such a man falls
into a humdrum routine !

Suppose, in obscure cases, you exercise your
reasoning powers to the best of your ability ; you
form the theory which seems most probable ; but
you have no means of testing it ; other cases occur
similar in much to those which have been already
seen, and you apply the unproven theory with all

152 YRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC.

the strength of conviction, and so keep adding to
what you call your experience—never verifying, and
perhaps altogether wrong in your ideas as to what
had really happened in the interesting cases on
which you have built. Will it be remarkable if
your notions become crude, if your own belief in
pathology and in precise diagnosis become dulled,
and your practice degenerate to a stupid supersti-
tion? This picture is by no means an altogether
imaginary one. It is the record of what I have
seen. The cure is to be found in the increase of
facilities for comparing the theories formed in at-
tendance on the living with the revelations that are
offered by the dead ; and that is a matter which
rests with the general public.

The general public is a vague and not altogether
satisfactory body to deal with. It is possible to
have the greatest respect for your fellow-men indi-
vidually, and have little for the general public: and
justly so ; because the opinions, passions, and pre-
judices that pass most current in the throng are by
no means the secretly cherished and better judg-
ments of the individuals who compose it. We do
not air most blatantly on all occasions the wisdom
which we privately think the best ; I fear we should
be prigs if we did; but so it happens that it is some-
thing a good deal worse than our best by which in

TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 153

our social relations we influence others and are in-
fluenced. We must also take into consideration
that when we analyse the characters of individual
men, we find that no man is wise in everything, and
that most are wise in reference to things within a
very limited compass. Yet, as it is the property of
truth to keep ever sapping the domain of error,
there is an always increasing number of truths and
half-truths which gain the assent of the majority of
men. From such considerations as these, it arises
that public opinion is“often the foolish offspring of
passion and prejudice, especially with regard to
mere passing events ; and yet, with regard to per-
manent matters, it keeps slowly and lumberingly,
but very surely, moving on at a respectful distance
behind the heels of wisdom. We are bound, there-
fore, in those professional matters with regard to
which it would be better for the public to be
liberated from prejudice, and be more fully in-
formed, we are bound to keep hopefully pointing
out the things which our training brings specially
under our notice, and so endeavour by the one thing
in which we are wise to make up for the many in
which we are foolish.
As to the propriety of the public affording facili-
ties to medical men to do their duty in the matter
of making certain the cause of death in every case,

154. ZYRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC.

it is to be frankly admitted with satisfaction that,
in this, Scotland is far ahead of some other parts
of the British Isles. I doubt, however, if there is
anything like a proper conception of the fearful
way in which the public suffers when the duty in
question is neglected by medical men.

The public has to learn that an unskilful practi-
tioner is simply a waster of human life, and that
the public itself is but a bad judge of the waste of
its own life which may take place. The popular
prejudice against a custom thousands of years old
in royal families is the cause of an enormous annual
slaughter among all ranks, not the less real because
it is impossible to compute.

It may be further mentioned, that it is at least
supposed that the government statistics, made at
considerable expense, of the causes of mortality,
are of some use; yet it is an obvious fact, of which
I have had abundant experience, that the returns
which medical men have, under compulsion, filled
up, stating causes of death, are in large part utterly
worthless, not from any wilful dereliction of duty
on the part of members of the profession, but
because information is asked which they are not
in a position to give. The schedules sent out by
the registrar for certification of cause of death
ought to demand whether or not a post-mortem

TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 155

examination has been made, and the sanitary
department ought to keep the results obtained in
cases where such examination has taken place,
completely separate from the comparatively worth-
_ less returns of cases in which there has been none.

Moreover, when it is considered what pains are
taken to secure accurate returns of causes of death
in the army, and when it is remembered what a
very large number of the practitioners engaged in
civil practice hold appointments in a great variety
of public institutions, one would think that it only
required a proper knowledge of the issues at stake
to rouse the public to the consideration of its own
safety, and to extend in some measure military
methods to civil practice, so as to develop a more
thorough knowledge of their profession among all
ranks of medical men, and save the lives of rich
and poor.

I desire to use this opportunity to say one word
about pathological museums. They are the means
of furnishing permanent and accessible records of
remarkable phenomena, and are even more useful
in affording comparison of different stages and
varieties of disease one with another. There are
no doubt certain matters connected with the general
appearance of morbid textures which are better
observed in the recent condition ; but there is much

156 ZRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC.

more which cannot be seen to advantage, nor
indeed studied at all, except in carefully designed
preparations permanently preserved.

Now, the great promoters of the art of displaying
structure without desiccation were William and
John Hunter, two Lanarkshire brothers. The
museum of John Hunter, the property of the Col-
lege of Surgeons, London, is continually and abun-
dantly added to in a manner which would be
highly satisfactory to its founder. The museum of
William Hunter, a wonderful collection, embracing
books, engravings, paintings, coins, and objects of
natural history, was bequeathed to this University,
and finds in Professor Young an enthusiastic cura-
tor; but its circumstances are most unfortunate as
regards its anatomical and pathological department,
the department which is most closely connected
with the reputation of its founder. This interesting
collection, made by the elder of the two brothers,
who had the merit of teaching to his younger
brother the art, is not, like the collection of John
_ Hunter, a living centre which gathers to itself the
best of present work; and this University is at the
present moment almost powerless to make it so.
But there can be no doubt that Glasgow ought
to be the seat of one of the finest, most actively
increasing, and most useful pathological collections

TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 157

in the world; and when I think of the public spirit
of this great city, and the enlightened character of
those who have it in their power to bring this
about, I cannot doubt that the time will rapidly
come when a great and successful effort will be
made by the supply of funds, and by proper com-
bination, to give to a science so important for the
direct interests of the public as pathology is, the
support in Glasgow which it ought to enjoy. We
require much extension of accommodation in our
medical school, so rapidly do the wants of medical
teaching develop; and a special representation of
pathology on our staff is greatly to be desired, as
well as an united medical museum, to which not
only students may have liberal admission for pur-
poses of study, but medical men may resort from
all parts, both for their own immediate benefit and
also to help them in work by which they may
enlighten others.

In the path of a progress of which we can have
no fear as to whither it will lead we must not halt ;
and it is with pleasure, therefore, that I take this
opportunity of attracting attention to an important
advantage added this spring to our medical school
by the appointment of the able medical superin-
tendent of the Royal Asylum of Gartnavel as
University Lecturer on Insanity. I trust that when

158 TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC.

another year comes round our senior students will
mark their appreciation of the important privilege
thus offered them.

Graduates, on you we depend for further advance.
It is for you, by earnestness and honourable work,
to reflect new credit on your Alma Mater. I ask
of you, wherever you go, to preserve for her a
kindly regard. To you who go to foreign coun-
tries I would say, do not forget her museums ; and
all of you be assured that among your old teachers
you will ever find a sincere desire to help you in
the pursuit of knowledge.

GLASGOW :
Printed at the Gnibersity Press
BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE, 153 WEST NILE STREET.

a a let

Se) a ee Oe a ee

WORKS PUBLISHED BY
MR. MACLEHOSE,

— Publisher to the Aniversity of Glasgow.

SAINT VINCENT STREET, GLASGOW.

‘

Pan Pome a oman Sh

Lee gem mete Bas 40

xp ool
bredet. 41" hol & lam
. . W. A. Smith & Son. ‘

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THADAIV: TRIAS

PUBLISHER TO THE
UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW.

MR. MACLEHOSE'S
Catalogue of Books.

ARGYLL, Duke of—WHAT THE TURKS ARE; AND HOW WE
HAVE BEEN HELPING THEM. Speech delivered in the City
Hall, Glasgow, September 19, 1876. By His Grace the
DUKE OF ARGYLL, K.T. With a Preface. Second Edition.
8vo. Is. ¢ 2

ARGYLL, Duke of—SPEECH ON THE CONDUCT OF THE
FOREIGN OFFICE DURING THE INSURRECTION IN CRETE
IN 1867. 8vo. 6d.

ANDERSON—CLINICAL LECTURES ON THE CURABILITY
OF ATTACKS OF TUBERCULAR PERITONITIS AND ACUTE
PHTHISIS (GALLOPING CONSUMPTION). By T. M‘CALL
ANDERSON, M.D., Professor of Clinical Medicine in the
University of Glasgow. Crown 8vo, Illustrated with Wood
Engravings. 2s. 6d.

AN DREWS—THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SCEPTICISM AND PHENO-
MENALISM. By JAMES ANDREWS. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.

BANNATYNE—GUIDE TO THE REGIMENTAL EXAMINATION
FOR PROMOTION OF OFFICERS IN THE INFANTRY. Part I.
—Containing what is required by Her Majesty’s Regula-
tions to qualify for promotion to the Rank of LIEU-
TENANT. By LIEUTENANT COLONEL BANNATYNE.
Sixteenth Edition, carefully revised. 1880. Small 8vo. 7s.

4 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

BAN NATYNE—GUIDE TO THE REGIMENTAL EXAMINATION
FOR PROMOTION OF OFFICERS IN THE INFANTRY.
Part II. Containing what is required by Her Majesty’s
Regulations, in addition to the subjects comprised in
Part I., to qualify for Promotion to the Rank of CAPTAIN.
Thirteenth Edition, carefully revised. 1880. Small 8vo. 7s.

[Lx preparation.

BANNATYNE— INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE PAYMENT OF
TROOPS AND COMPANIES IN THE CAVALRY AND INFAN-
TRY, founded on the Queen’s and War Office Regulations.
Small 8vo. New and greatly enlarged Edition. 6s.

BANNATYNE—BRIGADE DRILL, in the form of Question and
Answer, founded on the Field Exercise and Evolutions of
Infantry. Small 8vo. Is.

BATHGATE—COLONIAL EXPERIENCES; OR SKETCHES OF
PEOPLE AND PLACES IN THE PROVINCE OF OTAGO, NEW
ZEALAND. By A. BATHGATE, Dunedin. Crown$8vo._ 7s. 6d.

‘*¢ Anybody who may be desirous of getting an idea of the real state of
matters in New Zealand, cannot do better than read Mr. Bathgate’s
pleasant, chatty, unpretending colonial experiences.”—Leeds Mercury.

BLACKBURN—THE Pipirs. By the Author of “Caw,
Caw,” with Sixteen page Illustrations by J. B. (MRs.
HUGH BLACKBURN). 4to. 3s.

‘‘This is a charming fable in verse, illustrated by the well-known J. B.,
whose power in delineating animals, especially birds, is scarcely inferior to
Landseer or Rosa Bonheur.” —Courant.

BORLAND HALL, by the Author of “ OLRIG GRANGE.” See
SMITH.

ee

MR. MACLEHOSE, GLASGOW. 5

BROWN—THE LIFE OF A SCOTTISH PROBATIONER. Being
the Memoir of THOMAS DAVIDSON, with his PoEMS and
LETTERS. By the REV. JAMES Brown, D.D., Minister of
St. James’ Church, Paisley. Second Edition. With Por-
trait. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

‘‘ A charming little biography. His was one of those rare natures which
fascinates all who come in contact with it.” —Spectator.

“It is an unspeakable pleasure to a reviewer weary of wading through
piles of commonplace to come unexpectedly on a prize such as this,"*"— Vor-
conformist,

*« A very fresh and interesting little book.” —Saturday Review,

BUCHANAN—CaAmpP LIFE IN THE CRIMEA AS SEEN BY A
CIVILIAN. A Personal Narrative by GEORGE BUCHANAN,
M.A., M.D., Professor of Clinical Surgery in the University
of Glasgow. Crown 8vp. 7s. 6d.

BUCHANAN—INAUGURAL ADDRESS. Delivered in the Uni-
versity of Glasgow. By PROFESSOR BUCHANAN. 8vo. 16.

CAIRD, Principal—AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY
OF RELIGION. By the VERY REVEREND JOHN CAIRD, D.D.,
Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow,
and one of Her Majesty’s Chaplains for Scotland. Demy 8vo.
Ios. 6d.

** It is the business of the reviewer to give some notion of the book which
he reviews, either by a condensation of its contents or by collecting the
cream in the shape of short selected passages ; but this cannot be done with
a book like the one before us, of which the argument does not admit of
condensation, and which is all cream......... The most valuable book of its
kind that has appeared.” —Mr. T. H. Green in The Academy.

‘Tt is remarkable also for its marvellous power of exposition and grace-
ful subtlety of thought. Hegel’s solution of the problem of religion is at
length adequately represented in English literature. Hegelianism has never
appeared so attractive as it appears in the clear and fluent pages of Princi-
pal Caird.”--Spectator,

**This is in many respects a remarkable book, and perhaps the most
important contribution to the subject with which it deals that has been
made in recent years.” —J/ind, October 1880. ,

‘‘To many a student the reading of this book will mark an intellectual
and spiritual epoch.”— 7he Nation (New York).

6 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

CAIRD, Principal—UNIVERSITY SERMONS AND LECTURES.

8vo. Is. each.

I. WHAT IS RELIGION? A Sermon preached before the Uni-
versity, at the Opening of the University Chapel. 1871.

2. CHRISTIAN MANLINESS. A Sermon preached before the

~ University, at the Opening of the Winter Session, 1871.

3. IN MEMORIAM. A Sermon preached before the University
on occasion of the Death of the Very RrEv. THOMAS
BARCLAY, D.D., Principal of the University.

4. THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. A Lecture delivered in West-
minster Abbey, on the day of Intercession for Missions.

5. THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. A Lecture delivered at the
Opening of the Winter Session. 1874.

6. THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF THE SCIENCES. A Lecture
delivered at the Opening of the Winter Session. 1875.

CAIRD, Professor E.—A CRITICAL ACCOUNT OF THE PHIL-
OSOPHY OF KANT: with an Historical Introduction. By
EDWARD CAIRD, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Moral Phil-
osophy in the University of Glasgow, and late Fellow and
Tutor of Merton College, Oxford. 8vo. 18s.

‘*This book contains the most exhaustive and most valuable exposition
of Kant’s metaphysical system which has appeared in this country. The
critical analysis is incisive and searching, and the exposition plain and un-
ambiguous, “The running commentary is the work of a man who both
knows what he has to say, and knows how to say it forcibly and well. The
style is attractive as well as clear. Without being ornate or rhetorical, it
has about it a kind of quiet eloquence which comes of conscious strength
and of genuine conviction.”—-7he Times.

‘Mr. Caird’s statement of the Kantian doctrine is singularly felicitous.
The simplification is at once full, accurate, and unbiased.’ "—Mr. T. H.
GREEN in the Academy.

**No account of Kant’'s Philosophy has ever appeared in England so
full, so intelligible, and so interesting to read as this work by Professor
Caird. It is Zhe English Book on Kant.'""—Contemporary Review,

CAMERON—LIGHT, SHADE, AND TOIL: POEMS. By WILLIAM
C. CAMERON, Shoemaker. With Introductory Note by the
REV. WALTER C. SMITH, D.D. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s.

MR. MACLEHOSE, GLASGOW. a

CLELAN D—EVOLUTION, EXPRESSION, AND SENSATION, by
JOHN CLELAND, M.D., F.R.S., Professor of Anatomy in
the University of Glasgow. Crown 8vo. [Jn the Press.

DAVIDSON—LIFE oF—See BROWN’S LIFE OF DAVIDSON.

DEAS—HIsToRY OF THE CLYDE TO THE PRESENT TIME.
With Maps and Diagrams. New Edition Enlarged. By
JaMES DEAS, M. Inst. C.E., Engineer of the Clyde Naviga-
tion. 8vo. Ios. 6d.

‘Mr. Deas tells his story in a very clear and concise way.”—Saturday
Review,

DERBY, Earl of—INAUGHRAL ADDRESS, delivered to the
University of Glasgow, on his Installation as Lord Rector
of the University. By the Right Honourable The EARL
OF DERBY. 8vo. Is.

DICKSON—PLEADING IN THE COURTS OF LAW OF SCOT-
LAND. An Address delivered before the Glasgow Juridical
Society. By W. GILLESPIE DicKsoN, LL.D., Advocate,
late Sheriff of Lanarkshire. 8vo. Is.

DICKSON—INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. ~ Delivered at the
Opening of the Divinity Hall, in the University of Glasgow,
Session 1873-74. By WILLIAM PURDIE DIcKSON, D.D.,
Professor of Divinity. $8vo. Is.

DODS—ON PREACHING, an Address delivered to the Students
of the Free Church College, Glasgow, by Marcus Dods,
D.D. Second Edition, 8vo. 6d.

DOTTY AND OTHER PoEMs by J. L. Extra Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d.

8 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

EGGS 4p. A DOZEN, AND CHICKENS 4p. A POUND
ALL THE YEAR ROUND. Containing full and com-
plete information for successful and profitable keeping of
Poultry. Small 8vo. Cheap Edition in Paper Covers.
Seventeenth Thousand. Is. :

‘No book has appeared for many years that discusses the subject so
explicitly and exhaustively." —Daily Review.

EWING—MEMOIR OF JAMES EWING, EsQ., of Strathleven,
Formerly Lord Provost of Glasgow, and M.P. for that City.
By the late REV. MACINTOSH Mackay, LL.D. Fcap. 4to,
With Portrait. 2Is.

GAIRDNER—FLUCTUATIONS IN TRADE. A Lecture delivered
to the Institute of Accountants. By CHARLES GAIRDNER,
Manager of the Union Bank of Scotland. Third Edition.
Demy 8vo. Is.

GAIRDNER, Professor—Two LECTURES ON BOOKS AND
PRACTICAL TEACHING, AND ON CLINICAL INSTRUCTION.
Being Introductory Addresses delivered in the University
of Glasgow, and in the Western Infirmary. By W. T.
GAIRDNER, M.D., Professor of Practice of Medicine in the
University of Glasgow, Physician in Ordinary to Her
Majesty the Queen in Scotland. $8vo. Is,

GEMMEL—THE TIBERIAD; or, The Art of Hebrew Accen-
tuation. A Didactive Poem, in Three Books. By JOHN
GEMMEL, M.A., Senior Minister of Free Church at Fairlie.
Extra fcap. 8vo. 3s. .

GLASGOW—THE OLD COUNTRY HOUSES OF THE OLD
GLASGOW GENTRY. Illustrated by permanent Photographs.
Royal 4to. Half Red Morocco.. Gilt Top. Second Edition.
Very scarce. £10, 10s.

This is a history of one hundred of the old houses in and around
Glasgow, and of the families who owned and lived in them. To the
local antiquary it is especially interesting as a memorial of the old burgher
aristocracy, of their character and habits, and of the city in which they
lived ; while to the descendants of the ‘‘old gentry”’ it is interesting as
containing the history of their forefathers and the rise of their families,

ee a

MR. MACLEHOSE, GLASUOIV. 9

GLASGOW—MEMORABILIA OF THE CITY OF GLASGOW
Selected from the Minute Books of the Burgh, 1568 to
1750. Fcap. 4to. Half Morocco, Gilt Top. Very scarce.
63s.

GLASGOW UNIVERSITY ALBUM FOR THE NEW
COLLEGE. With a Photograph of. the New College.
Edited by Students of the University. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

GLASGOW UNIVERSITY LOCAL EXAMINATIONS.
Scheme of Examinations for 1881, and Report for 1880.
Crown 8vo._ 6d. «

GLASGOW UNIVERSITY CALENDAR FOR THE YEAR
1880-81. Published annually. Contains official information
as to the University, the Classes, Graduation in all the
Faculties, Examinatién Papers, University Fees, Bursaries,
Scholarships and Fellowships, and the list of Members of
the General Council of the University. Crown 8vo. 2s.

GOVETT—CurRIst’s RESURRECTION AND OURS; OR I.
CORINTHIANS XV. EXPOUNDED. By the REV. R. GOVETT,
Norwich. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.

GRANT—CHRISTIAN BAPTISM EXPLAINED. By the late REV.
WILLIAM GRANT, Ayr. 16mo. | Is. 6d.

GRANT—THE LOoORD’s SUPPER EXPLAINED. By the late
REV. WILLIAM GRANT, Ayr. Seventh Edition. 16mo, 4d,

GRAY, David—THE POETICAL WORKS OF DAVID GRAY.
Edited by HENRY GLASSFORD BELL, late Sheriff of Lanark-
shire. New and enlarged Edition, extra fcap. 8vo. 6s.

‘«Gems of poetry, exquisitely set." —Glasgow News.

JACK—INAUGURAL ADDRESS. Delivered in the University of
Glasgow, November 1879. By WILLIAM JACK, M.A.,
LL.D., Professor of Mathematics in the University of
Glasgow. $8vo. IS.

ze) BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

JEBB—THE ANABASIS OF XENOPHON.—Book III., with the
Modern Greek Version of Constantine Bardalachos (for the
use of the Greek Classes in the University of Glasgow), and
with an Introduction by R. C. JEBB, M.A., Professor of
Greek in the University of Glasgow. Crown 8vo. 2s.

LEITCH—PRACTICAL EDUCATIONISTS AND THEIR SYSTEMS
OF TEACHING. By JAMES LEITCH, late Principal of the
Church of Scotland Normal School, Glasgow. Crown 8vo. 6s.

**This capital book presents us, in a compact and well-digested

form, with all that is of most value in the really practical methods of
the greatest educationalists.” —School Board Chronicle.

LEISHMAN—A SYSTEM OF MIDWIFERY, INCLUDING THE
DISEASES OF PREGNANCY AND THE PUERPERAL STATE.
By WILLIAM, LEISHMAN, M.D., Regius Professor of Mid-
wifery in the University of Glasgow. In one Thick Volume.
Demy 8vo. Nearly 900 pp., with 210 Wood Engravings.
Third Edition, revised. 2is.

** Unquestionably the best modern book on the subject in our lan-
guage.” —British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review. @

**It is the best English work on the subject.”—ZLamncet.

** We should counsel the student by all means to procure Dr. Leish-
man’s work.” —London Medical Record.

‘** In many respects not only the best treatise on the subject that we
have seen, but one of the best treatises on any medical subject that has
been published of late years.” —Practitioner.

MACELLAR—MEMORIALS OF A MINISTRY ON THE CLYDE.
Being Sermons preached in Gourock Free Church. By the
late REV. ROBERT MACELLAR. With a _ Biographical
Notice by the REy. A. B. BRUCE, D.D., Professor of Theo-
logy, Free Church, Glasgow. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. 7s.

MACEWEN—SERMons. By the late ALEXANDER MACEWEN,
M.A.,D.D., Minister of Claremont Church, Glasgow. Edited
by his Son. With a Memoir. Crown 8vo. 6s.

So er

MR. MACLEHOSE, GLASGOW. II

MACGEORGE—PAPERS ON THE PRINCIPLES AND REAL
POSITION OF THE FREE CHURCH. By ANDREW Mac-
GEORGE. 8vo. 6s.

MACLEOD, NORMAN, D.D.—Sermons on the occasion of
his Death, preached in the Barony Parish Church, and the
Barony Chapel, bythe REv. DR. WATSON, Dundee; REv. Dr.
TAYLOR, Crathie; REV. MR. GRANT, St. Mary’s, Partick;
and Rev. Mr. MORRISON, Dunblane. $8vo. Is.

M‘KINLAY, J. Murray—Poems. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d.

M‘KENDRICK—OUTLINES OF PHYSIOLOGY, IN ITS RELa-
TIONS TO MAN. By J. GRAY M‘KENDRICK, M.D.,F.R.S.E.,.
Professor of Physiology in the University of Glasgow.
Crown 8vo. 750 pages, and 250 Engravings. 12s. 6d.

‘“We have much pleasure in confidently recommending this work to-
students Of medicine and others, as being the one of all others of recent
date, best suited for their requirements.” —British Medical Journal,

** An admirable book on physiology, well adapted to the wants of the
student, and of practitioners in medicine. Such books as this ought to be
read, not alone by medical and biological students, but by all men of any

pretensions to general culture.’ —Brztish Quarterly Review.
‘The style is clear, and the illustrations numerous." —Practitioner.

M‘KENDRICK—LECTURES ON THE GRAPHIC METHOD OF

PHYSIOLOGICAL RESEARCH. Illustrated with numerous.
Engravings. Crown 8vo. [lx preparation,

MACMILLAN—OurR LOoRD’s THREE RAISINGS FROM THE
DEAD. By the Rev. HUGH MACMILLAN, LL.D., F.R.S.E.,
Author of “ Bible Teachings in Nature.” Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘“‘ He has written a book on one of the most trying themes, which is at
once edifying and instructive, full of devotional fervour as of fine thought.”
Nonconformist. Ae

‘¢ A spirit of earnest piety pervades the book ; its language is simple and
unaffected, and it abounds in apt and felicitous illustrations.” — Scotsman,

MARTYNE—Poems. By HERBERT MARTYNE. Extra fcap-
age 3v0.- 6s.

12 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

MAXWELL—ADDREsSS TO THE SENATUS AND GENERAL
COUNCIL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. Delivered
at his Installation as Chancellor of the University, on the
27th April, 1876. By the late SIR WILLIAM STIRLING
MAXWELL, K.T., Bart., M.P.. 8vo. Is.

MORTON—-THE TREATMENT OF SPINA BIFIDA BY A NEW
METHOD. By JAMES MORTON, M.D., Professor of Materia
Medica, Anderson’s College, and Surgeon and Clinical
Lecturer of Surgery in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
Crown 8vo. With Six Illustrations. 5s.

MUIR—THE ExXPRESSION OF A QUADRATIC SURD AS A CON-
TINUED FRACTION. By THOMAS Muir, M.A., F.R.S.E.,
Examiner in Mathematics in the University of Glasgow.
8vo. Is. 6d.

MURRAY—OLD CARDROsS, a Lecture. By DAVID MURRAY,
M.A., F.S.A. Scot. Crown 8vo, 1s. 6d. Large paper copies,
on Dutch Paper, Parchment Wrapper, 6s.

NEWTON—Sir Isaac NEWTON’S PRINCIPIA. Edited by
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON, D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., Professor
of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, Fellow
of St. Peter’s College, Cambridge; and HUGH BLACKBURN,
M.A., late Fellow of Trinity ‘College, Cambridge. Crown
4to. 31s. 6d.

‘*So far as we have compared it with other copies, this edition seems to
be better than any of its predecessors. The printing and paper are
excellent, and the cuts especially are greatly improved.” —Wature.
NICHOL—TABLES OF EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND HISTORY,

FROM A.D. 200 TO 1876. By JOHN NICHOL, M.A., Balliol,
Oxon., LL.D., Regius Professor of English Language and
Literature, in the University of Glasgow. 4to, Cloth.
6s. 6d.

‘The tables are clear, and form an admirable companion to the student
of history, or indeed to any one who desires to revise his recollection of
facts.” — Times.

i hs ep deal

MR. MACLEHOSE, GLASGOW. 13

NICHOL—TABLES OF ANCIENT LITERATURE AND HISTORY,
FROM B.C. 1500 TO A.D. 200. By PROFESSOR NICHOL.
4to, Cloth. 4s. 6d.

‘«They constitute a most successful attempt to give interest to the
chronology of literature, by setting before the eye the relation between the
literature and the practical life of mankind."—Odserver.

NICHOL—A NEW VOLUME OF POEMS, [Ln preparation.
OLRIG GRANGE, See SMITH.

PORTER—CHRISTIAN PROPHECY: OR POPULAR EXPOSI-
TORY LECTURES ON THE REVELATION TO THE APOSTLE
JOHN. By S. T. PORTER. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d.

PORTER—THE LAsT SERMONS in a 41 Years’ Ministry, and
in the 24th Year of Pastorate in the Independent Church,
in West Bath Street, Glasgow. - By S. T. PoRTER. Crown
8vo. Is. 6d.

PULSFORD—SERMONS PREACHED IN TRINITY CHURCH,
GLASGOW. By WILLIAM PULSFORD, D.D. Crown 8vo.
Cloth, Red Edges. Cheap Edition. 4s. 6d.

‘* The sermons have much of the brilliancy of thought and style by which

Robertson fascinated his Brighton hearers.""—Dazly Review.

«The preacher we are made to feel, speaks to us out of the fulness of his
own spiritual and intellectual life. He is a preacher, because he has been
first a thinker.” —Sfec/ator.

RANKINE—Soncs AND FABLES. By WILLIAM J. MAc-
QUORN RANKINE, late Professor of Engineering in the
University of Glasgow. With Portrait, and with Ten Illus-
trations by J. B. (Mrs. HUGH BLACKBURN). Second
Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s.

“These songs are exceedingly bright, strong, and clever : quite the best
we have seen for long. They are, in our judgment, far superior to those of

Mr. Outram and Lord Neaves, and these are no contemptible singers. An
admirable photograph is prefixed to the volume.” —Aderdeen Fournal.

14 _ BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

SMITH, Walter C.—RABAN ; OR, LIFE SPLINTERS : a Poem.
By the Author of “ Olrig Grange.” Extra Fecap. 8vo.
7s. 6d. [This day.

SMITH, Walter C.—OLRIG GRANGE: a Poem in Six Books.
Edited by HERMANN KUNST, Philol. Professor. Third
Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 6d.

** This remarkable poem will at once give its anonymous author a high
place among contemporary English poets.—xaminer.

‘«The most sickening phase of our civilization has scarcely been exposed
with a surer and quieter point, even by Thackeray himself, than in this
advice of a fashionable and religious mother to her daughter.”—PadlZ MJad/
Gazette.

‘*The pious self-pity of the worldly mother, and the despair of the
worldly daughter are really brilliantly put. The story is worked out with
quite uncommon power.’’—Academy.

SMITH, Walter C.—BORLAND HALL: a Poem in Six Books.
By the Author of “Olrig Grange.” Second Edition.
Extra feap. 8vo. 7s.

‘* Songs of exquisite beauty stud the poem like gems in some massy work
of beaten gold. Original and vigorous thought, rare dramatic instinct, and
profound knowledge of human nature are embodied in poetry of a very
high class. The poem is not only notable in itself, but full of splendid
promise.” —Scotsman.

‘* Lyell’s mother, stern and unrepentant, even in death, is a terrible por-
trait, in which we recognize the genius of the author of ‘Olrig Grange.’
; Astyle singularly brilliant and passionately fervent, a verse melodi-
ous and various in measure, a command of language, unusually extensive
and apt, and an exquisite sensibility to all natural loveliness,” —Euglish
Independent,

SMITH, Walter C.—HILDA ; AMONG THE BROKEN GODS:
a Poem. By the Author of “Olrig Grange.” Second
- Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 7s. 6d.

‘That it is characterized by vigorous thinking, delicate fancy, and happy
terms of expression, is admitted on all hands.’'— Z?mes.

‘*A poem of remarkable power. It contains much fine thought, and
shows throughout the deepest penetration into present-day tendencies in
belief or no-belief."—British Quarterly Review.

SMITH, Walter C.—BisHoP’s WALK; and Other Poems.
Extra feap 8vo. 2s. 6d.

—s

‘lian ia pee 8 eed

._. —— To 67%

tA, ce

MR. MACLEHOSE, GLASGOW. 15
STANLEY, Dean—THE BURNING BusH. A Sermon preached
before the Glasgow Society of the Sons of Ministers of the
Church of Scotland. By the Very Reverend ARTHUR
PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D., Dean of Westminster. 8vo. Is.

STEWART—THE PLAN OF ST. LUKE’s GOSPEL; A Critical
Examination. By the REV. WILLIAM STEWART, M.A.,

D.D., Regius Professor of Biblical Criticism in Glasgow
University. 8vo. 3s. 6d.

STORY—CREED AND CONDUCT: Sermons preached in Ros-
neath Church. By the REV. ROBERT HERBERT STORY,
D.D., Minister of the Parish. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

‘* Characterized throughout by profound earnestness and spirituality, and
written in a style at once graceful, clear, and nervous. Dr. Story has made
a well-timed attempt to widen the theology, and at the same time to deepen
and intensify the religious iran of his countrymen.”-—Scotsman.

STORY—ON FAst DAys; With reference to more Frequent
Communion, and to Good Friday. By the REv. ROBERT
HERBERT STORY, D.D., Minister of Rosneath. 8vo. Is.

‘**A thoughtful and earnest discussion of a most important question.” —
Edinburgh Courant, ‘‘ A very able pamphlet.’—Glasgow Herald.

VEITCH—THE HISTORY AND POETRY OF THE SCOTTISH
BORDER, THEIR MAIN FEATURES AND RELATIONS. By
JOHN VEITCH, LL.D., Professor of Logic and Rhetoric in
the University of Glasgow. Crown 8vo. Ios. 6d.

‘«This is a genuine book. We can heartily recommend it to three classes
of readers—to all who have felt the power of Scott’s ‘Border Minsirelsy’
(and who with a heart has not ?), to all who care to visit and really to know
that delightsome land, for no other book except the ‘ Border Minstrelsy’
itself will so open their eyes to see it; to all dwellers in the Borderland who
wish to know, as they ought to know, what constitutes the grace and glory
of their Borderland." —Contemporary Review,

‘‘ We feel as if we were hearing the stories, or listening to the snatches of
song among the breezes of the mountains or the moorland, under the
sun-broken mists of the wild glens, or the wooded banks of the Yarrow or
the Tweed.” — 7imes.

**The fullest, most thorough, and most deeply critical work on Border
history and poetry that we have." —British Quarterly Review,

16 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY MR. MACLEHOSE.

VEITCH—LUCRETIUS AND THE ATOMIC THEORY: By PRO-
FESSOR VEITCH. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.

- «© We have read this little volume with no ordinary delight. We warmly
recommend it,’’--Noxconformist,

VEITCH—HILLSIDE RHYMES:

“ Among the rocks he went,
And still looked up to sun and cloud
And listened to the wind.”

Extra fcap. 8vo. 5s.

‘* Let any one who cares for fine reflective poetry read for himself and
judge. Next to an autumn day among the hills themselves, commend us
to poems like these, in which so much of the finer breath and spirit of those
pathetic hills is distilled into melody.” —Scotsman.

VEITCH—THE TWEED, AND OTHER POEMS. Extra fcap. $vo.
6s. 6d.
‘‘ Every page bears witness to a highly cultivated mind: every page is

also marked by originality and a deep love for nature.” — Westminster
Review,

VILLAGE LIFE

“* He seems to be a stranger ; but his present is
A withered branch, that’s only green at top.”

_ Extra feap 8yo. 6s. 6d.

‘‘ These are simply the ripest notes that have appeared in Scotland for
a time too long to calculate.""—Zxaminer.

‘‘A remarkable volume of poetry, which will be read by all who have
any keen interest in the progress of English literature.”"—Standard.

WADDELL— OSSIAN AND THE CLYDE, FINGAL IN IRELAND,
OSCAR IN ICELAND; or, Ossian Historical and Authentic.
By P. HATELY WADDELL, LL.D... 4to. 12s. 6d.

WATSON—KANT AND HIS ENGLISH CRITICS, a comparison
of Critical and Empirical Philosophy. By JoHN WaTSoN,
M.A., LL.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in Queen’s
University, Kingston, Canada. 8vo. [Ja the Press.

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