THE GIFT OF

MAY TREAT MORRISON

IN MEMORY OF

ALEXANDER F MORRISON

NATURE AND MAN

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc.. Historically
and Scientifically Considered. i2mo, cloth,
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Principles of Mental Physiology. With
their Application to the Training and Dis-
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D. Appleton and Co., Publishers, New York.

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NATURE AND MAN

ESSAYS
SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL

BY

WILLIAM B. CARPENTER

C. B., M. D., LL. D., F. R. S.

WITH AN INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR BY
J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, M. A.

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NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1889

Authorized Edition.

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CONTENTS.

MEMORIAL SKETCH.

PAGE

I. Early Life ... ... ... ... ... .•• 4

IL A Student's Preparation ... ... ... ^3

in. Physiology and Religious Philosophy ... ... 3^

IV. The Correlation of the Vital and Physical Forces 40

V. Determinism and Self-Direction ... ... ... 54

VL Home Life at Fifty Years ... ... ... 69

VIL Deep-Sea Researches ... ... ... ... ••• 88

Vin. Darwinism in England ... ... ... ... 105

IX. Characteristics ... ... ... .•• ••• i'3

ESSAYS.

L The Method and Aim of the Study of Physiology

(1838) ... ... ... ... ... ••• 155

IL The Brain and its Physiology (1846) ... ... 159

III. The Automatic Execution of Voluntary Movements

(1850) ... ... ••• ... ••• ••• ^64

IV. The Influence of Suggestion in modifying and

directing Muscular Movement, independently of
Volition {1852) ... ... ... ... ... 169

V. The Phasis of Force (1S57) ... ... ... ... I73

VI. Man the Interpreter of Nature. Presidential Ad-
dress at the British Association, Brighton, 1S72 185

VII. The Psychology of Belief (1873) ... ... 2U

438093

vl CONTENTS.

PAGE

VIII. The Fallacies of Testimony in Relation to the

Supernatural (1876) ... ... ... ... 239

IX. The Doctrine of Human Automatism (1875) ... 261

X. The Limits of Human Automatism {1876) ... ... 284

XL The Deep Sea and its Contents (1880) ... ... 3^^

XII. The Force behind Nature (18S0) ... ... ... 35°

XIII. Nature and Law (iSSo) ... ... ... ... 3^5

XIV. The Doctrine of Evolution in its Relations to Theism

(1882) ... ... ... ... — ... 384

XV. The Argument from Design in the Organic World

(1S84) ... ... ... ... ••• ••. 4^9

APPENDIX.
List of Dr. Carpenter's Writings ... ..• ««« ... 467

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J 1 0 J

WILLIAM BENJAMIN CARPENTER.

A MEMORIAL SKETCH.

I ' t t t I e .

WILLIAM BENJAMIN CARPENTER.

The Essays contained in this volume represent chiefly the
later phases of their writer's thoughts on the problems
concerned with the interpretation of nature and man.
Some of the conclusions which they embody he believed
to be of high importance in the guidance of life ; they were
the result of long observation and reflection, and in some
cases differed widely from the ideas which his early educa-
tion and his first studies had led him to adopt. It is the
aim of this sketch to indicate some of the processes which
contributed to this change, and to present, as briefly as
possible, the connection between Dr. Carpenter's widely
varied work and the personality from which his many-
sided energy flowed out. The long list of writings which
bear his name exhibits an extraordinary range of labour ;
and the historians of different branches of science will
come upon the traces of his activity in fields that are rarely
cultivated by the same hand. It is not now desired to
estimate the precise value of his numerous contributions to
knowledge, but rather to show what were the hidden pur-
poses and guiding aims of his life, what were the gifts of
mind and heart which he brought to their fulfilment, and
how these took outward shape and form.

MEMORIAL SKETCH.

I.

William Benjamin Carpenter was born at Exeter, on
October 29, 18 13. His father, Dr. Lant Carpenter, was
then one of the pastors of George's Meeting ; but the
removal of the family from Exeter to Bristol, in 18 17, when
William was only in his fourth year, made the latter city
the true home of his early life. It was there that the Rev.
Dr. Carpenter's labours, which were to leave so deep an
impress on all his children, bore their ripest fruit. Schools
were created in connection with the congregation of
Lewin's Mead ; he took a prominent share in the founda-
tion of the Literary and Philosophical Institution ; he was
an ardent promoter of Catholic Emancipation and Reform.
This was, indeed, only the outer fringe of his home activities.
To the work of his ministry he added the long and patient
toil of the student, and the ceaseless diligence of the teacher.
And the qualities which shone conspicuously through all
these phases of his energy, his strong affections, his deep
religious earnestness, his commanding sense of duty, his
eager zeal for the public good, and especially for education,
appeared in one after another of his family. William was
his fourth child, and eldest son. Hardly less did the boy
owe to his mother, a woman of unusual endowments of
mind and heart, who fully shared the austere and high view
of life characteristic of her Puritan ancestry. With few
advantages of education, her native abilities had been,
nevertheless, carefully cultivated ; she had a vigorous and
independent mind, which often made it a pleasure for the
trained scientific investigator to ask her opinion of his most
advanced speculations ; and in the wisdom of her judgment,
springing from the clear insight of a pure and tender heart,
her children found again and again in their perplexities a
secure repose.

EARLY YEARS. 5

To the education which he received under his father's
superintendence, Dr. W. B. Carpenter always looked back
with gratitude. Those who recall the tall spare figure and
the iron-grey hair of his later years, will find it difficult to
think of him as a child of rounded limbs and golden locks,
who grew into a stout and chubby boy. In the home dis-
cipline no time was lost. He used to say that he " knew his
" Latin grammar at five," though the extent of this know-
ledge was never defined ; and he had already before that
gained a firm mastery of certain external realities, to which
he attached the highest value. In a discourse delivered in
connection with University College, Bristol, in 1880, he
recalled one of these items of early acquisition.

Our whole fabric of geometrical knowledge is based upon
ideal representation. My own feeling is very strong diat all
geometrical teaching ought to be from time to time shown to
consist with actual objective facts. Going back to my own
experience, I can remember the fact of our having in our
nursery a box of cubes, which my father had happened to pur-
chase from a lecturer who was disposing of some articles of
the kind. The box of cubes was ten inches each way, and
each cube an inch, and therefore the box contained a thousand
cubes ; and this plaything of our nursery has been of the
greatest value to me through life, in giving me a conception of
the relation of solids to each other, for I have found continually
that young people who have learnt and can repeat glibly
arithmetic tables, have not the least idea what these tables
mean. Hence the importance of bringing the reasoning
powers of the mind to bear upon the facts which observation
reveals to us.

This was one of the aims which Dr. Lant Carpenter
invariably held up before the boys under his care. His
school was remarkable for the prominence assigned to the
enforcement and illustration of scientific principles. This
side of knowledge was more congenial to his son William

6 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

than literary or historical culture. He acquired, indeed, a
fair mastery of the classical languages, and retained to the
last a warm affection for his Greek Testament. But his
intellectual sympathies were enlisted rather by the air-
pump and the geological cabinet than by Homer or Horace.
He received a good grounding in mathematics, and formed
a strong desire to become a civil engineer ; he delighted
(like his father) in construction of all sorts. A tradition still
remains of a model of a ship made in the boys' workshop
at the bottom of the garden ; while a maturer effort, in
which he was aided by Mr. W. J. Odgers, then a resident
master in the school, produced " a most beautiful trans-
" parent instrument for showing the climates, which, being
" rectified for any latitude, shows the length of the day and
" night at the solstices and equinoxes, the altitude of the
" sun at noon, and illustrates very well the reason Avhy the
''days are longer as we approach the higher latitudes."
This love of workmanship remained with him in after-
days. He fitted up his study with all sorts of small devices;
and he had a penetrating insight into the most intricate
machinery. But he was never able to give effect to his
early preference for the profession of engineering.

The railway system had not then been developed, and no
suitable opening presented itself for the indispensable and
costly training. So he finally agreed to submit to the
wishes of his family, and under the kind proposals of Mr.
Estlin, a leading general practitioner in Bristol, and a
member of his father's congregation,* resolved to devote
himself to the study of medicine. His cherished hopes were

* Mr. Estlin was the son of the Rev. Dr. Estlin, the predecessor of Dr.
Carpenter at Lewin's Mead. He was a man of wide scientific culture, and
frequently lectured at the Bristol Institution and the Mechanics' Institution.
He was specially eminent as an oculist ; and weekly, for forty years, attended
the Eye-dispensary which he founded. In later life he took a lead in philan-
thropic and religious movements.

EARLY YEARS. 7

relinquished for what seemed to him an obvious duty,
though to the end of her life his mother regretted the
sacrifice, and doubted whether it had been right to demand
it. He set himself to work with a grim determination to
make the best of it, and on July 2, 1827, he wrote to his
sister Mary, whom he addressed as " Dear Sister soft Sea-
urchin : " —

I have been over to Mr, Estlin for an hour this morning, to
learn about the weights and measures used in surgery, and he
recommends me to come over every morning, when I can spare
time for an hour, to vaccinate children, and to pull out their
teeth, and to make up pills and medicines. I think I shall like
it pretty well.

On his fifteenth birthday, in 1828, he was formally
apprenticed. He sent a mock account of the proceedings
to his sister, adding —

I am telling you all these things in a humorous way, but I
assure you I felt it very much ; and at the end of the day, when
I had time for quiet reflection, I formed many resolutions, which
I hope I shall have strength and faith to carry into execution.

The beginning of a professional career did not, how-
ever, wholly remove him from the school. But he remains
rather to teach than to learn. He discourses to the boys on
chemistry, and hears his younger brother, Philip, his Latin.
His mind is cultivated through the various lectures at the
neighbouring Institution, and the books and reviews which
pass in turn through the Reading Society. One of these
awakens his early interest with a first attempt at demon-
strating the correlation of the physical forces.

There is a book come into the society (he announces to
his "dear old Poll"), Mr. Exley's " New Theory of Matter,"
by which he explains all the attractions of gravitation, cohe-
sion, electricity — chemical, magnetic, etc., — upon the same
principles. Mr. Exley read a paper at the Institution, in which

8 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

he gave an outline of his theory, which greatly excited my
curiosity to see the book.

The consciousness of power is increasing within him,
and the longing to exercise it. He is in his sixteenth
year, and so in May, 1829, he communicates his plan to
the same " dear old Poll," -with a droll touch of boyish
self- justification for so forward a step.

I am thinking about delivering some lectures on optics at
the Mechanics' Institution next winter. I shall be glad if you
will give me your opinion about it when you write next. I
have paid a good deal of attention to optics lately, and feel
myself pretty well qualified to do it, so far as information is
concerned. I am grown a good deal during the past year, and
look more of a man than I did.

The manly look, indeed, came early enough ; his
speedy absorption in severe intellectual labour gave to his
dem.eanour a gravity which caused him to be habitually
regarded as older than he really was. Moreover, a serious
illness completely altered his appearance, and the plump-
ness which he lost he never regained.

It was greatly to William Carpenter's advantage that
while he Avas prosecuting his medical studies under Mr.
Estlin, and subsequently at the Bristol Medical School and
the Infirmary, he remained in close connection with the
home circle in Great George Street. There he learned,
under his father's guidance, to take an active interest in
public affairs ; and the incidents connected with the Bristol
riots in October, 1 83 1, left an ineffac'eable impression in
his mind. The boys' school had by that time been given
up, and his mother and sisters had opened a girls' school
instead. They felt in no danger, but it fell to him to escort
a number of neighbours to a place of safety in Clifton,
and as he looked back over the city, lighted with the
blazing glare of gaol and custom-house, Mansion-house and

THE WEST INDIES. 9

Bishop's Palace, he received a lesson which he never forgot.
In the slavery question he was also trained to take a lively-
interest ; but his views on the subject of emancipation
were somewhat modified by a few months' stay in the
West Indies, during the year 1833, as the companion of
Mr, Estlin, whose health required a sojourn in a warm
climate.

It was his first long separation from his family, and the
closely written sheets which he sent back to England, bore
witness to the strength of the feeling to which he had felt
unable at parting to give expression. On his first Sunday
on board ship, his thoughts go out with longing to the dear
circle singing their evening hymn in the library, perhaps
(in remembrance of him) to one of his favourite tunes ; his
minute observations on sky and sea, and on the beautiful
landscapes of St. Vincent, are all illustrated by familiar
comparisons with objects nearer home. The estate on
which he resided was remarkably well managed, and he
was greatly struck with the physical comfort of the slaves,
contrasted with their total want of mental and moral
culture. This degradation of character filled him with far
greater horror than the loss of personal liberty.

What I have hitherto seen does not in the least diminish,
hut rather increases, my aversion to slavery ; but the causes of
it are certainly altered, and I am led to make more allowance
for the planters, when I sec more plainly the difficulties by which
they are surrounded.

To this experience he frequently recurred in after-life
when he was tempted himself, or saw others tempted, to a
sternness of judgment which wider knowledge might have
modified : " We should learn," he said, " to be tolerant of
"others' intolerance." On his return in the summer, the
record of his observations was communicated by his father
to one of his Parliamentary friends, who was so much struck

lo MEMORIAL SKETCH.

by them that he sent them on to Mr. Stanley (afterwards
Lord Derby), then in charge of the Government Emanci-
pation Bill, just passing through the House of Commons.
But the clause which they chiefly affected had been already
adopted.

The medical studies interrupted by the voyage to the
West Indies were resumed for another session in Bristol ;
but in the autumn of 1834, William Carpenter proceeded
to London. There he attended lectures at University
College — sometimes as many as thirty-five in a week — and
medical and surgical practice at the Middlesex Hospital,
where he acted for a time as clinical clerk to Dr. Watson.
Widening the ordinary range of professional study, he
entered for the course delivered by Dr. Grant on Compara-
tive Anatomy ; and to this he afterwards looked back with
peculiar interest, not only for the information which he
gained through it, but for the mental quickening and special
love of the subject which it roused within him. In the
meanwhile the severity of his studies was relieved by the
one pursuit which in later years afforded him unfailing
recreation, his music.

You ask me (he wrote to his brother Russell) how I get on
with my music. I consider pretty well, seeing that I am entirely
a self-taught genius. My instrument is a seraphine, which is
made with keys like a piano or organ, and sounds by small
reeds like those of the mouth-asolians, which you may remember,
only better tuned, and worked by bellows. I chose it in
preference to a piano, because it has exactly the touch of the
organ, which it is my great ambition some time or other to
pUvy.

Then came the inevitable examinations, with the
natural comments of a successful candidate, not perhaps
forgotten when in later days he himself sat in the ex-
aminer's chair.

MEDICAL STUDIES. n

To R. L. Carpenter.

London, October 24, 1835.
I am now a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and
a Licentiate of the Apothecaries' Company. I passed through
the latter examination a month ago, and the other last night.
In both cases I had the felicity of kicking my heels in the
waiting-room for more than five hours, and you may suppose
the state of agitation I was in when summoned into the awful
room. . . . The College was much the most awful of the
two, as only one candidate was examined at a time, whilst ten
of the first surgeons in London were weighing every word I
said, sitting at a long cross-table, so that all looked me in the
face. However, I did not see any of them through fright,
except Sir Benjamin Brodie, who examined me. ... It was
rather curious that I spent the last week before going up to the
Hall in getting up a quantity of technical knowledge of which I
was asked nothing, Avhilst the subject I was most questioned on
at the College I had looked over just before leaving Regent
Street, and therefore had it all pat. Indeed, Sir Benjamin
Brodie complimented me upon the attention I had paid to the
subject, which I really knew little of compared with other
points, and I was continually afraid lest he should get out of
my depth. So much does chance govern affairs of this kind.

He was on the eve of starting for Edinburgh, where
new companionships were to be formed, which would pro-
foundly affect his subsequent course. But he had already
his own plans, for he confided to his brother his intention of
publishing the next year a little work on the philosophical
study of Natural History. And he had just received what
was to be one of the most powerful and enduring of the
intellectual impulses of his whole life. It was a somewhat
curious coincidence that it should come indirectly through
the American philanthropist whose recent visit to Bristol
had so deeply stirred his sister Mary.*

* See the "Life and Work of Mary Carpenter," chap. ii.

12 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

I had a pleasing little pigmis from Dr. Tuckerman lately
(he wrote to his brother Russell, in the letter just quoted), as
he desired my father to lay out a sovereign owed by him to
Dr. Tuckerman in a book for me. I chose Lyell's " Geology."
I have been much interested in reading his third book " On the
Distribution of the Animal Kingdom."

To this treatise he ever afterwards felt himself most
deeply indebted. In returning thanks for the Lyell medal,
which was awarded to him in 1 88 3, in recognition of the
value of his investigations into the minute structure of
various fossil Invertebrates, and his deep-sea researches, he
thus referred to this early influence : —

This distinction is yet more gratifying to me from its having
been founded by one whom I have held in the highest honour
from my boyhood, when (as I well remember) I heard Charles
Lyell spoken of as a young man who was advancing in the
Geological Society doctrines of a most heretical kind, but was
defending them so ably as to hold his own against the most
weighty opponents. The study of his " Principles " was not
only the delight of my youth, but a most valuable part of my
scientific training ; and the privilege of subsequent intercourse
with him through nearly forty years was one which I ever
highly esteemed ; for whilst it brought me under the immediate
influence of his philosophic spirit, it also afforded me the
continual stimulus of his kindly encouragement. I would
recall a litde incident which is doubly illustrative. When, in
1855, I made my monograph of the genus Orbitolites the basis
of a disquisition on the general subject of the variability of
species (a doctrine impressed on me by Dr. Prichard), I sent
him a copy of the memoir (published in the " Philosophical
Transactions "), with a sort of apology for having tried to make
so much out of what might be thought so small and trivial a
subject ; he replied with a most kindly approval of the object
and manner of my work, adding " any single point is really the
universe," — a remark whose pregnancy left an impression on my
mind that time has only deepened.

Beside the influence of Lyell's " Principles " must be set

RESIDENCE AT EDINBURGH. 13

that of another writer no less eminent, Sir John Herschel,
whose "PreHminary Discourse on the Study of Natural
Philosophy" contributed another potent element to the
formation of William Carpenter's intellectual character.
Just before his departure from London to Edinburgh, at
the end of October, 1835, he wrote to his parents —

I quite agree with you in all your feelings respecting the
valuable influence of my stay here upon me. I feel, however,
that the high standard I have set myself of intellectual ex-
cellence is no small assistance to religious principle; and I
should say that I have derived more benefit in a moral point of
view from Sir John Herschel's book than from any other than
my Bible.

II.

To his residence at Edinburgh, William Carpenter
always looked back afterwards with deep and abiding
pleasure. He formed there some of the most valued of his
friendships ; he laid the foundations of some of his most
fruitful work ; he felt a more vivid mental stimulus
from the society around him than he had found in London ;
and he gained a heightened confidence in his powers. He
carried with him letters to some of the most eminent
teachers of the University, and the leaders of the literary
and scientific coteries of the Northern Athens. One of his
first visits was paid to Professor Wilson, who had been a
class-mate of Dr. Lant Carpenter's, at Glasgow. The
following account of it ' in due time found its way to
Bristol : —

Edinburgh, November 15, 1835.
I was not a little astonished to be introduced to a very wild-
looking man, with a velveteen shooting-coat, and his hair stray-
ing down his shoulders in all directions, looking as little as
possible like a professor of moral philosophy. ... On a little

14 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

conversation, he discovered me to be the son of his old fellow-
student, and we began to talk about Dr. Blair, with whom he
keeps up a correspondence. He subsequently asked me to
dinner, where I met Taylor (author of "Philip van Something"),
who was the lion of the last London season. Professors Pillans
and Muir, and some more intelligent men. Wilson and Taylor
had some interesting conversation on Wordsworth, which would
have delighted Mary. Both seemed to think him too minute
in describing nature, and that he has been very much soured
by his early want of success. They also began to discuss the
various translations of " Faust^," and, the conversation turning on
Goethe in general, I was able to edge in a word as to his having
been the first propounder of the doctrine of morphology in
plants. Professor Muir and I fell out about the date of this
production. I set it as far back as 1795, but allowed that it
was not noticed until at least fifteen years later. Professor Muir
was positive that it was not more than twenty years ago. I, of
course, yielded, but had the satisfaction when I returned home,
on referring to Lindley, to see that it was 1790.

Many friendly houses were soon open to the young
Bristol student, who found more sympathy with his heresy
than he expected ; for he wrote shortly after : " As far as I
" have seen, the moderate party of the Scotch Church are
" extremely liberal, and I believe that many of them are
"Unitarians at the bottom." But he was astonished at the
superior freedom from conventional restraints which marked
the education of women ; and though he had been accus-
tomed to see his own sisters trained in the principles of
science, and familiar with the fossils or the shells in their
own cabinet, yet an extension of the same method of
education caused him an amusing shock.

The tone of society (he wrote to his father) is certainly much
more well-informed here than in London. At least, there is less
reserve among the ladies with regard to scientific pursuits, which
many pursue here to an extent which even I think hardly femi-
nine ; such as practical (hammer-in-hand) geology, practical

RESIDENCE AT EDINBURGH. 15

chemistry in classes— a row of young ladies performing experi-
ments all at the same time, like a company of soldiers going
through the exercise.

The subject remained in his mind, for he recurred to it
a few weeks later : —

I should be very sorry to see women restraining their
natural feelings by reason and philosophy as much as men ought
to do. I have often been afraid myself lest too close attention
to scientific subjects should blunt my natural feelings ; and I
should think that the new-fashioned system of female education
might be in danger of making the pupils too much matter-of-
fact.

Shortly after his arrival in Edinburgh, William Carpenter
joined the Medical Society, formed in connection with the
University, and at once began to take an active part in its
debates. " I find it exceedingly useful," he said, in writing
home ; " and in nothing more so than in showing me my
" deficiencies, for I find many here who in purely professional
" knowledge are far before me." His mind at this time pre-
ferred to dwell on large and general conceptions, to discover
analogies, to follow out principles, rather than to come into
close contact with actual facts. He was capable, as many
of his subsequent writings showed, of minute and laborious
investigations ; and he could marshal details with singular
skill as soon as he could reduce them into classes. But
though his memory was well-trained and retentive, it did
not easily assimilate much of the material presented to
him in the lecture-room, or prescribed for an examination.
When the news reaches him of the college successes of his
younger brothers, Russell and Philip, "Alas, poor me!" he
exclaims (July 4, 1836), " I seem doomed to get no prizes."
But he adds : " However, it does not make me despair of
" myself, for I feel a good deal more confidence in my powers,
" if I have strength to exert them, than I have ever done ;

i6 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

" and, I believe I may say, a well-grounded confidence."
Three weeks later he, too, can announce an addition to the
family honours : " I had the pleasure this morning of re-
" ceiving a gold medal as a prize for an essay on a depart-
" ment of Physiological Botany."

By this time he had fairly entered on the labours of
authorship. These were not indeed lightly undertaken.
His home-training had impressed him with a serious and
steadfast purpose ; and while circumstances had led him to
the profession of medicine, in which he had no expectation
of special success, he had embraced the study of science
with a vivid moral ardour which gave it, for him, the force
of a vocation. This vocation he sedulously nourished ; he
threw into it the whole power of his being. The life of
Kepler awakened in him an eager and enthusiastic devo-
tion ; and he recurred to it again and again long afterwards
as a support in protracted and perplexing inquiries. A
collection of passages from the works of Herschel, Whewell,
Mrs. Somerville, Channing, and other writers, entered in
his commonplace-book, reveals some of the guiding motives
of his thought ; one of these, to which he often referred
through half a century of teaching and research, is here
subjoined. It was derived from a Lecture on Universal
History by Schiller, with whose life and spirit he was ac-
quainted through the pages of Carlyle.

Just as sedulously as the trader in knowledge severs his own
peculiar science from all others, does the lover of wisdom strive
to extend its dominion and restore its connection with them. I
say to restore, for the boundaries which divide the sciences
are but the work of abstraction. What the empiric separates,
the philosopher unites. He has early come into the conviction
that in the dominion of the intellect, as in the world of matter,
everything is linked and commingled, and his eager longing for
universal harmony and agreement cannot be satisfied by frag-
ments. All his efforts are directed to the perfecting of his

A BOOK PROJECTED. 17

knowledge ; his noble impatience cannot be restrained till all
his conceptions have arranged themselves into one harmonious
whole, till he stands at the central point of arts and sciences,
and thence overlooks the whole extent of their dominion with
a satisfied glance. New discoveries in the field of his activhy,
which depress the trader in science, enrapture the philosopher.
Perhaps they fill a chasm which the growth of his ideas had
rendered more wide and unseemly, or they place the last stone,
the only one wanting to the completion of the structure of his
ideas. But even should they shiver it into ruins — should a new
series of ideas, a new aspect of nature, a newly discovered law in
the physical world, overthrow the whole fabric of his knowledge,
he has akvays loved truth better than his system, and gladly will he
exchange her old and defective form for a new and fairer one.
Under such intellectual impulses as these, he had con-
ceived the idea, while still only in his twenty-second year,
of a work which should serve as an introduction to the
philosophical study of Natural History. The treatises of
the day appeared to him deficient in grasp of the underlying
principles of physiological science ; they were filled with
facts and observations which were sometimes ill understood,
because their true relations were only imperfectly appre-
hended. He boldly grappled with the difhculty, and re-
solved to aim at nothing less than a general view of the
entire realm of organic nature, so as to set forth the funda-
mental laws which might be discerned in the life alike of
plants and animals. His thoughts had been playing round
special questions in this wide domain as far back as his
voyage to the West Indies. The subject haunted him
during the session which he spent at University College,
and rose into a positive though immature design. His first
printed paper, published before he left London, in the West
of England Journal, October, 1835, dealt with "The Structure
and Functions of the Organs of Respiration in the Animal
and Vegetable Kingdoms."* Starting from the recognized
* It was continued in January, 1836.

1 8 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

facts of chemistry, comparative anatomy, and physiology,
he dwelt at length on the analogy between the forms of
the respiratory apparatus in the two great classes ; he
showed that it held good with regard to their functions
also, and he even extended it to digestion. Nor did he fail
to point out the simplicity and uniformity of the processes
into which these apparently complicated phenomena might
be resolved, and the similarity of the means by which they
were carried into effect.

The theme thus started continued to occupy his mind
while he was pursuing his professional studies at Edinburgh,
in the University and the Infirmary, under Professors Alison
and Christison. Immediately after his arrival, he had re-
ported to his sisters, in November, 1835, the actual com-
mencement of his cherished project.

I have begun to work at my book, and have nearly finished
the organs of support, in which I shall bring forward a number
of most beautiful analogies which Roget has omitted from
his evident ignorance of Vegetable Physiology. I shall read it
soon as a paper at the Royal Medical Society, of which I am
a member. I think these debates will be of great service to me,
as they evidently are of a very high character.

This central idea, accordingly, runs through the essays
of the next few years, which contain the germs of various
biological principles destined to receive clearer enuncia-
tion afterwards from himself and others. In the summer
of 1836, he is already in communication with Dr. (sub-
sequently Sir John) Forbes, who had enrolled him among
the contributors to the recently established British and
Foreign Medical Reviezv. Dr. Forbes had entrusted to him
a number of new books on vegetable physiology ; but the
reviewer told his father (July 4, 1836) that his essay would
be "principally devoted to pointing out the analogies
"between animals and vegetables, and the advantages of

THE STUDY OF PHYSIOLOGY. 19

"studying general physiology or the most universal laws of
"life, before applying to any particular branch." This pur-
pose was thus vindicated in the article, which did not
appear until July, 1837.

We should be glad to see the science of physiology based
upon a more extensive generalization of the phenomena of
vitality than has usually been thought necessary : the study of
comparative anatomy is now recognized as the surest means
of arriving at accurate results on many disputed questions,
since the different forms of animals may be regarded, to use
the language of Cuvier, as " so many kinds of experiments
"ready prepared by Nature." Vegetables present us with a
greater simplification of the vital functions than is afforded by
the lowest animal, since all the changes necessary to the sup
port of the individual and the continuance of the species are
performed without the influence or interference of those powers
which are possessed in a greater or less degree by the whole
animal kingdom. Hence the physiologist may advantageously
resort to the study of vegetable life for the explanation of many
of the proximate causes of those phenomena which are com-
plicated in the higher forms of organized beings by so great
a variety of secondary influences.

The purpose here implied received further illustration
in two essays, produced in March and April, 1837, on
" The Voluntary and Instinctive Actions of Living Beings,"
and on " The Unity of Function in Organized Beings." In
the first of these, William Carpenter (who had now become
President of both the Royal Medical and the Royal Physi-
cal Societies) sought a common ground of action in the
irritability or contractility which he recognized as a vital
property of vegetable tissues equally with those of
animals. But the paper was further remarkable for its
analysis of the functions of the nervous system in the higher
vertebrates, in which the writer opened a path for his future
researches in " mental physiology." The second paper was
designed to apply \.o fitnction one of the laws propounded

20 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

by Von Baer with regard to structure, — " a special function
" arises only out of one more general, and this by a gradual
" change ; " to which the Edinburgh student added another,
— " in all cases where the different functions are highly
"specialized, the general structure retains, more or less, the
"primitive community of function which originally charac-
"terized it." In working out these principles, the writer
sketched " an outline of the doctrine of unity of function
" with regard to the changes essential to the maintenance of
"individual organisms, both of plants and animals ;" and
finally expressed his belief that "even in tracing the gradual
" development of the functions peculiar to animals, namely,
"sensation and voluntary motion, we may find that the
" special type is evolved from one more general."

After reading these papers before the Royal Medical
Society, William Carpenter returned to Bristol. He had
already lectured in Edinburgh, on Natural History, making
his appearance, on one occasion, to his extreme disgust, at
Wombwell's menagerie, where he was expected, in ac-
cordance with a precedent set by a former lecturer — " like
" myself, very respectable " — to meet his class before the
cages of the wild-beast show. He had now to deliver his
first course as lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence at the
Bristol Medical School, and he began at the same time the
actual practice of his profession. His leisure hours, how-
ever, were devoted to his scientific pursuits, and he became
a competitor for the Students' Prize, raised by the students,
and adjudged by certain of the Professors at Edinburgh.
The subject (proposed by Professor Alison) was highly
congenial to him, " On the Difference of the Laws regulating
Vital and Physical Phenomena." * In language v/hose
clearness showed how clearly he had already trained him-

* His essay proved successful; he devoted the prize (;,^3o) to the purchase
of a microscope, and from that time microscopic research continued to absorb
more and more of his attention.

VITAL AND PHYSICAL PHENOMENA. 21

self to think, he laid down the meaning of the word law^
and its place in science.

The term laiv expresses the conditions of action of the pro-
perties of matter. In our study of the phenomena of nature,
it is our object to ascertain their laws by the inquiry into the
conditions under which the occurrences present themselves ;
and a law deduced from this source is nothing more than
a general expression of the conditions common to a certain
class of phenomena, leading us to the belief that under the
same conditions the same phenomena will constantly occur.
When this is found to be the case by the experimental applica-
tion of the law to unknown cases, the law is said to be verified,
and it may then fairly rank as a general fact to be included with
others of like standing in a still higher expression of the condi-
tions common to all these, and therefore to all the particular
instances included in them. By successive generalizations of
this nature, we aim to ascend from the most complicated and
restricted to the most simple and universal statement of the
phenomena of the universe ; and in so far as this is attained
in every science, giving us the means not only of explaining
new phenomena as they arise, but of predicting otherwise
unexpected occurrences, that science may be regarded as
perfect.

Starting from this view of Law, the essayist affirmed
(in words afterwards quoted by Dr. Roget, in his article,
" Physiology," in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica ") that
" there is nothing essentially different in the character oi the
" laws regulating vital and physical phenomena, either as to
" their comprehensiveness, their uniformity of action, or the
" mode in which they are to be established by the general-
"ization of particular facts." He recognized a practical dis-
tinction between the properties of inorganic matter and
those of living organized matter ; but he declared that
" the properties of any aggregation of matter depend upon
"the method in which its ultimate molecules are combined
"and arranged;" that "the vital properties of organized

22 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

" tissues are not less the result of their material constitu-
" tion ; " and that " vital properties are not added to matter
" in the process of organization ; but those previously existing
" and hitherto inactive are called out and developed." He
ventured, therefore, on the speculation that "the vital and
" physical properties of matter may ultimately be shown to
" result from some higher, more general quality ; an advance
" in the path of philosophy, should it ever be proved, far
" beyond any which has been already attained, or which we
*' have in immediate prospect."

The same thought is developed in an article published
in the British and Foreign Medical Review, in April, 1838,
entitled " Physiology an Inductive Science," criticizing the
portion of Dr. Whewell's'-'History of the Inductive Sciences,"
which relates to that subject. A few passages from this
essay, which was much admired at the time, will be found
on a later page of this volume.* They strike the keynote
of much of his subsequent " Philosophy of Nature."

Side by side with this article, in the same number of the
Revieiv, stood another from the same busy pen, more than
fifty pages in length, on " The Physiology of the Spinal
Marrow." It contained a full treatment of the doctrine of
reflex action, then recently propounded as new by Dr.
Marshall Plall; and it was generally accepted by competent
judges as a fair statement of the aspect which the question
presented at that date, though it did not give satisfaction
to Dr. Hall. The author was recognized as having placed
the discussion upon a broader basis, as regards both the
general doctrines of the Physiology of the nervous system
and their history, than that to which Dr. Hall had been
himself disposed to restrict it.

Such were the preliminary labours by which the young
man of twenty-four prepared for the accomplishment of

* See p. 155.

THE FIRST BOOK. 33

his long- cherished design. He was now anxious to get a
lectureship, which might enable him to devote himself
unreservedly to the pursuit of Physiology. The Bristol
meeting of the recently established British Association for
the Advancement of Science, in 1836, had brought him into
connection with the leading men of various departments.
Dr. Forbes proved a most kind and faithful promoter of
his advance. In the spring of 1838 he tells his brother
Russell that he has been to London to ascertain the proba-
bility of his getting an appointment as teacher of his
favourite science, and that Sir James Clarke, Principal
Physician to the Queen, is interesting himself much in his
prospects. And he adds, " By the advice of my friends, I
" am now working vigorously at my book on ' General and
"Comparative Physiology,' for publication in the autumn."
To this task he now girded himself up in earnest. It
was a bold attempt for so young a man, for it aimed at
surveying the entire field of what is now termed Biology.
He described it himself as an introduction to the study of
human physiology, and a guide to the philosophical pursuit
of natural history. Its enormous range — for it began with
a description of the whole animated world — made it im-
possible for him to have himself verified the statements
which he was obliged to take on trust. Its originality lay
rather in the effort which it made to view the science of
life as a unity, and lay down some simple and universal
laws. Looking back upon it from the more advanced
position of a quarter of a century later, the author said of
it, that the novelty of its plan and the general merits of its
execution obtained for it a more favourable reception than
might have been justified by a severe scrutiny ; his know-
ledge had been drawn rather from books than from nature ;
he had systematized the facts collected by others, rather
than added to the store by independent research. Yet ever

2d MEMORIAL SKETCH.

in its first crudity he believed that the work was of service
in giving a scientific direction to the studies of others, just
as the preparation of it had consoHdated his own. In sub-
sequent editions it was entirely re-written, enlarged, and
modified. Two thoughts may here, however, be named,
for the sake of their bearing on his future views. Doctrines
of " progressive development " and evolution were already
vaguely in the air ; and he applied them to the evolution
of structure in the following passage : —

In the early stages of formation in every animal or vegetable,
we may observe as great a dissimilarity to its ultimate condition
as exists between the lower and higher members of each kingdom.
And if we watch the progress of evolution, we may trace a cor-
respondence between that of the germ in its advance towards
maturity, and that exhibited by the permanent conditions of the
races occupying different parts of the ascending scale of creation.
This correspondence results from the operation of the same law
in both cases. If we compare the forms which the same organ
presents in different parts of the series, we shall always observe
that it exists in its most general or diffused form in the lowest
classes, and in its most special and restricted in the highest, and
that the transition from one form to the other is a gradual one.

Secondly, he criticized the principle which Cuvier and
other writers had endeavoured to erect into a law, under
the name of the " harmony of forms." It implied that there
was a specific plan, not only for the formation, but for the
combination of organs ; that there was a constant harmony
between organs apparently the most remote, and that the
altered form of one was invariably attended with a corres-
ponding alteration in the others. But, argued William
Carpenter —

A little consideration will show that the existence of this
adaptation of parts is nothing more than a result of other laws
of development. It is evident that if it were deficient, the race
must speedily become extinct, the conditions of its existence

EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 25

being no longer fulfilled ; these conditions being, for the whole
organism, what the vital stimuli already described are for its in-
dividual properties. . . . The statement above given cannot,
therefore, be regarded as a latu^ since it is nothing more than
the expression, in an altered form, of the fact that as the life of
an organized being consists in the performance of a series of
actions, which are dependent on one another, and all directed
to the same end, whatever seriously interferes with any of those
actions must be incompatible with the maintenance of existence.

Thus was a young naturalist already feeling after the
doctrine afterwards to be formulated as the " survival of
"the fittest." The principle implied in his view led im-
mediately to a striking modification in the doctrine of
design, as it had been taught since the days of Paley.

Those who have dwelt most upon this adaptation of the
structure of living beings to the external conditions in which
they exist, appear to have forgotten that these very conditions
might be regarded with just as much propriety as specially
adapted to the support of living beings. We have as much
ground to believe that this earth, with all its varieties of season,
temperature, light, moisture, etc., was adjusted for the mainte-
nance of plants and animals upon its surface, as that these
plants and animals were created in accordance with its pre-
existing circumstances. The Natural Philosopher does not
regard it as a sufficient explanation of the astronomical or
meteorological changes which he witnesses, that they are for the
benefit of the living inhabitants of the globe, and yet, as it has
been already shown, they furnish conditions of vital action as
important as those afforded by organized structure. The Philo-
sophical Anatomist, therefore, does not regard the object or
function of a particular structure as a sufficient account of its
existence ; but in attaining the laws of its formation in-
dependently of any assumption of an end, he really exhibits
the primary design in a much higher character, than in de-
ducing it from any limited results of its operation.

Shortly after the publication of this treatise, William
Carpenter proceeded to Edinburgh, where an alteration in

26 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

the University regulations enabled him to graduate by three
months' additional residence. Once more on the students'
bench, in the winter of 1839, he had the pleasure of hearing
his book quoted in class with high approval by the Professor.
There, moreover, he renewed old friendships, and took his
place again at the meetings of the Royal Medical Society,
to which he read the dissertation afterwards sent in for his
degree of Doctor of Medicine. He chose for his subject
" The Physiological Inferences to be deduced from the
Structure of the Nervous System of Invertebrated Ani-
mals." Like his earlier productions, this was based less upon
results of original anatomical or experimental inquiry, than
upon facts already determined. But he gave a fresh inter-
pretation of these facts : he .showed that the doctrines
hitherto taught by Dr. Grant and Mr. Newport, for example,
were inconsistent with them ; and he proceeded to apply to
the nervous systems of articulated and molluscous animals
the principles of reflex action, of which he had already else-
where discussed the higher forms. His views were at once
adopted by Professor Owen and other eminent physiolo-
gists. Mr. Newport, indeed, at first contested them, but
subsequent inquiry convinced him of the correctness of
his critic's position, which he frankly adopted in a Memoir
published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1843.

From Edinburgh, Dr. W. B. Carpenter returned to
Bristol, to resume his lectures at the Medical School, and
to make another effort to acquire a practice. He found
himself among a circle of friends whose varied tastes and
powers in some degree compensated him for the loss of the
intellectual stimulus of the northern University. To Dr.
Prichard, the author of the well-known " Physical History
of Mankind," who resided in the old Elizabethan mansion
known as the Red Lodge,* he looked up with almost filial

* Afterwards converted by Mary Carpenter into a Reformatory for Girls.

SETTLEMENT IN BRISTOL. 27

reverence and gratitude. In his old master, Mr. Estlin, he
had the kindest and most judicious of counsellors. From
Mr. Stutchbury, the curator of the Museum in the Philoso-
phical Institution, he derived many a valuable fact in natural
history. The refined and cultivated companionship of Dr.
Symonds, afterwards the leading physician of the West of
England, and the beautiful musical skill of the Rev. S. C.
Fripp,* who played the organ at the Levvin's Mead Chapel,
ministered to a different side of his nature. And another
intimacy belonging to this period was a source of great
pleasure to him in after-years, when circumstances again
brought the two men together, — his acquaintance with Mr.
Francis William Newman, under whom his brother Philip
had studied at the Bristol College. When proposals were
started for removing Manchester New College from York
to Manchester, and it was known that this step would
involve the loss of the services of Mr. Kenrick, its eminent
teacher in the languages and literature of antiquity, Dr.
W. B. Carpenter wrote to his brother Russell in the follow-
ing terms: —

November, 1839.
I wish, when you see Mr. Martineau, you would mention
Mr. Newman to him as classical tutor. He would also under-
take mathematics. I do not know whether it is considered
essential to have all Unitarians, but Mr. Newman is, I believe,
nearer one than anything else, and I cannot imagine any greater
advantage to the College than to have such a mind as his in
connection with it. Freedom of inquiry is his leading principle.
You know how logical he is, and what a beautiful spirituality
there is in his character.t

The practice which Dr. W. B. Carpenter had now
resolved to seek, was not, however, easy to find. His

* Mr. Fripp, father of the well-known artists, George and Alfred Fripp,
had left the Church of England on theological grounds.

t The arrangement here suggested was, some time after, carried into
effect.

28 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

reputation as a writer proved rather injurious than bene-
ficial to him. Moreover, he longed more and more to
devote himself to the pursuit and exposition of scientific
truth, and he found the distractions of professional work in
the highest degree irksome. Besides the difficulties risins;
from such interruptions, he was peculiarly susceptible to
the feeling of responsibility in connection with his cases.
They haunted him painfully, and he could not put them
aside. He was often ready enough in other relations to
incur responsibility without flinching ; but in the treatment
of disease his sensitiveness caused a continuous distress
which time and use failed to overcome. The summer
and autumn of 1839 were partly spent in harassing
attempts to obtain a more remunerative lectureship than
that which he held at the Medical School ; though he was
able, in addition, to gather general audiences at the Philoso-
phical Institution for popular courses on Natural History.
A step in this direction was made in 1840, when he
exchanged the subject of Medical Jurisprudence for that of
Physiology in the Medical School. He made up his mind
finally to seek his livelihood as a teacher and writer, and
abandon all further idea of medical practice. A second
edition of his treatise on " General and Comparative
Physiology " was required in 1841; and in 1842 he brought
out a new work entitled, " Principles of Human Physiology."
These years were marked for him by important family
incidents. He had lived so much away from home, and
his intellectual interests had been so keen, that he felt
afterwards that he had been too much absorbed by his own
aims. In the home labours, where his mother and sisters
were carrying on the school which provided the means for
his education, he had had no share — he had only accepted
their results. The strain of study, of thought, of production
had often been protracted and severe ; and he had not the

LIFE IN BRISTOL. 29

elasticity of nature which enabled him easily to throw off
its effects. He was conscious that he had often failed, as
he said, to make his outward conduct conform to his real
sentiments in family intercourse ; he knew that his manners
had " a rough and sometimes prickly exterior." The death
of Dr. Lant Carpenter, who was drowned in the Mediter-
ranean in the spring of 1840, while on a voyage for his
health, brought these sentiments of self-reproach into
strong prominence in his mind. He occupied himself
during the summer with the preparation of a volume of his
father's sermons ; and recorded in a letter to his old and
much-valued friend, Mrs. Wright, of Dalston, the thoughts
which they awakened in his mind.

Kingsdown, Bristol, September 6, 1840,
There has been to me a melancholy pleasure in thus renew-
ing, as it were, my intercourse with my father's mind by retracing
his writings with more care than as an ordinary reader I should
have bestowed upon them. . . . How much I wish that in my
moral character I had more of his spirit. I often think of him
as one who has shown us how nearly it is possible for frail
human nature to approach the great Pattern by steadfastly
keeping before his eyes the object of his imitation, and it is
encouraging at times when a deeply humbling sense of one's
own shortcomings might otherwise lead to despondency and
doubt of the possibility of acting up sufficiently near to the
Gospel standard.

I can dwell now without pain on the events of the past few
months, for my mind, though generally violently affected by
the first shock, more easily reconciles itself than that of many
persons to what is certain ; and the nature of my pursuits, too,
causes the thought that all is the ordination of a wise and
loving Parent, to become interwoven with it — so far, at least, as
to check the murmur, if it cannot repress the sigh. I trust that
this source of consolation may not fail me in any trials to which
it may be the will of Providence that I should hereafter be
subjected.

30 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

This sorrow passed away in the establishment of a home
of his own. On October 24, 1840, Dr. Carpenter was
married at Exeter, to Louisa Powell. Her father, who had
died during her girlhood, had been a well-known merchant
in the city ; her mother was a daughter of Henry Cort,
whose invention of iron-puddling, though it brought ruin
to himself, proved the source of enormous wealth to the
English nation. In the little house on Kingsdown, at the top
of a steep flight of steps leading up from the square below,
and commanding a splendid view of the valley in which
lay the busy city with its towers and spires, its factory
chimneys, and the masts of its shipping, there was planted
the beginning of a happiness which grew with deepening
experience through five and forty years. A certain quaint-
ness marked the arrangements of the little morning room,
where the young wife saw behind her husband's chair, at
the other end of the table, a human skeleton set up erect.
There was never any other. From first to last they lived
in undivided trust.

Round the home gathered many intellectual and social
interests. Music brightened it continually. . This had
been always a favourite taste, almost a passion. When the
Medical Society at Edinburgh had celebrated its centenary
in 1837, William Carpenter, then its senior president, on
whom devolved the duty of delivering the oration of the
day, had lamented that it debarred him from sharing in
the vocal entertainment which followed the feast : " a
"number of the members, with Dr. Christison at their head,
" got up some capital glees. I could not join in this, as I
" had not time for previous practising." There was more
time now, in the intervals between lecturing and literary
work. With the fruits of one of his prize-essays he had
purchased an organ, in Edinburgh ; it was regarded by his
family as a kind of idol, and bore the familiar name ot

LIFE IN BRISTOL. 31

Dagon, the piano coming in only second, as Dagonella.
The microscope also was busily employed in the evenings
in the drawing-room, and Dr. Carpenter began a series of
investigations into the microscopical structure of shells,
which first made known his capacities for independent
research. The chapel and its organ were not forgotten.
And the whole was crowned in 1841 by the birth of a son.
Here is a glimpse of his life, as it was shaping itself in the
spring of 1842, when he was just finishing his winter courses
of lectures : —

I have been working a good deal with the microscope, and
have made some discoveries which I think quite worthy of
being communicated to the Royal Society. I am also busy in
preparing our collection of psalm-tunes, which we are about to
publish. There have been several good reviews of my " Physi-
ology." Little Billy is thriving very well, and is really a very
intelligent, good-tempered child. I am glad he does not take
after his papa in the latter particular.

III.

Dr. Carpenter had now acquired a reputation as a
scientific writer, which justified him in becoming a can-
didate, in the summ.er of 1842, for the Professorship of the
Institutes of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh.
Many of the eminent teachers of the faculty would have
welcomed such a colleague ; but the chair was not in their
gift. The election lay with the Lord Provost and the
Town Council, who regarded his Unitarianism as a fatal
disqualification for the teaching of physiology, and declined
even to consider his claims. It was a bitter disappoint-
ment to him ; and the repetition of it some years later,
when he again came forward as candidate for the post
vacated by the lamented death of his friend, Professor

32 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

Edward Forbes, reopened an old wound. But he had the
happiness of feeling, long before he himself passed away,
that, through the spread of larger views of Christianity,
this ground of objection was for ever removed.

In the mean time he was obliged to labour incessantly
with his pen. In 1841 he had undertaken, single-handed,
the issue of a " Cyclopaedia of Natural Science." Treatise
after treatise, on Animal Physiology, Mechanical Philo-
sophy, Horology, Astronomy, Vegetable Physiology,
Botany, and Zoology, poured out in a stream of yellow-
backed numbers with punctual regularity for three years.
Such a production gave him a wide range of knowledge,
and enabled him often to enrich his lectures and essays
with varied illustrations. But the struggle to maintain
his position was severe ; and the acquaintance which he
formed in the autumn of 1843 with Lady Byron and her
daughter, Lady Lovelace, led to his removal to Ripley,
in Surrey, to undertake the superintendence of certain
branches of the education of Lord Lovelace's two chil-
dren at his country-seat at Ockham. The only available
house was small and inconvenient ; the precious organ
had to be left behind. Withdrawn from the circle of his
friends in Bristol, he was more closely occupied than
ever with his scientific studies, of which he felt his grasp
becoming stronger and deeper. When the second edition
of his *' Human Physiology " was called for in the summer
of 1844, he wrote to his brother Russell : —

It is very interesting to me to see how much progress my
own knowledge of the subject has made during the last two
years and a half, which many people think have been unprofit-
ably occupied in writing the Cyclopaedias ; and to find how
many views which I advanced hesitatingly have since been so
far sanctioned by additional facts that I can now state them
with almost certainty.

AT RIPLEY. 33

At Ockham, and at the hospitable house of Lady
Byron, at Esher, Dr. Carpenter had occasional opportu-
nities of making acquaintances outside the range of his
own pursuits. The Dissenters' Chapels Act, passed in
the summer of 1844, had relieved the Unitarians from
the danger of being dispossessed of the chapels which
they had inherited from their Presbyterian ancestors.
Among the promoters of this measure was Mr. Samuel
Smith, with whom Dr. Carpenter was thus brought into
contact.

He had taken an active part in the Committee for the
Chapels Bill, and I was glad to learn that a subscription is
being entered into for making a present to Mr. Field, who
most liberally declines receiving any remuneration for his
services, though (as I have heard from several sources) all his
time this Session, and much of his time for the two preceding,
has been taken up about this business. Mr, Smith fully con-
firmed my previous impressions : that without his exertions,
and the influence he has gained by his thorough probity and
professional skill with the Government Law Officers, the Bill
would never have passed. I know it to be a fact that nearly
every Government speech was got up from materials supplied
by him, and taken with the utmost confidence. Gladstone's
speech was prepared within thirty-six hours of the Debate.

These passing glimpses into the outside world could
not, however, compensate for the absence of the religious
sympathy to which he had been accustomed.

I feel the loss of public worship (so he wrote to his brother
Russell, in December, 1S44) more than any other kind of in-
convenience of my situation here. I have a most particular
attachment to Lewin's Mead Chapel, and to the worship as
there conducted ; and you can scarcely think how strong is my
yearning to be at my old post, and to feci that I am endeavour-
ing, however feebly, to lead the devotional feelings of the con-
gregation by that form of expression which is, in my own mind,

34 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

so closely related to what there is of heaven in mortal feelings.
I shall be better pleased when I have Dagon again, for at pre-
sent I do not feel the music of our little service as connecting
me with public worship — a piano and organ are so different —
but perhaps you may not understand this, and may think that
I set too much value on trifles. But you know that different
minds are differently constituted, and that the feelings, espe-
cially, are affected in different ways. It takes a greal deal to
move me on some subjects, but I am susceptible enough
(with all my philosophy) on others. . . .

Never since I have begun to look at the subject at all, have
I felt so much hope of human progress as I do now. The
advance, almost silently for a long time, but now manifesting
itself in a variety of ways, towards what I deem right views on
a great variety of subjects, is to me most wonderful and cheer-
ing, and I hope I shall never feel discouraged at want of
success in any of my own individual efforts to forward it.

The year 1844 was distinguished by the publication of
the remarkable book entitled " The Vestiges of Creation,"
which first suggested the theory afterwards known as
" genetic development," or the lineal descent of the higher
forms of plants and animals from the lower. The parallel
between many of its conceptions and those expounded in
Dr. Carpenter's writings, led some readers to ascribe it to
him. Early in 1845 he met, at Lady Byron's, the Hon.
Miss Murray, one of the Queen's maids of honour.

She was very amusing (he reported), especially as she was
full of royal and noble opinions upon phrenology and mes-
merism, and especially upon the "Vestiges," which is being very
extensively read in the highest circles, and generally attributed
to me. Prince Albert is reading it aloud to the Queen in an
afternoon. This is his customary employment,- and they read
through many valuable works in that manner.

In an article in the British mid Foreign Medical
Review, published in January, 1845, Dr. Carpenter ex-
pressed his sympathy with many of the author's positions,

''THE VESTIGES OF CREATION:' 35

though he critic'zed various errors of detail. But he was
not prepared to accept the main doctrine, for which he
regarded the evidence as altogether inadequate. And on
more abstract grounds, he somewhat hesitatingly sug-
gested that if it were admitted as possible that any com-
bination of inorganic matter could under any circumstances
produce a living being, there was no reason why such a
combination should not be the real origin of every race,
including man himself Every species would thus have
been called into being in accordance with the original plan
and the pervading energy of the Creator, just when that
coincidence of circumstances occurred which was favour-
able to its development and continuance. It was cha-
racteristic of his state of imperfect emancipation from the
traditional view of Biblical revelation in which he had
been trained, that he added —

That the Creator formed man out of the dust of the earth,
we have Scriptural authority for believing ; and we must con-
fess our own predilection for the idea that, at a certain period,
however remotely antecedent, the Creator endowed certain
forms of inorganic matter with the properties requisite to
enable them to combine at the fitting season into the human
organism, — over that which would lead us to regard the great-
grandfather of our common progenitor as a chimpanzee.

A little later, however, he seemed to be somewhat
more favourably inclined to the general proposition, as a
matter of a priori probability, though the evidence of
science then appeared to him clearly to indicate "the non-
^' convertibility of species really distinct;" and in one of
a scries of papers published in the Inquirer, in 1845, on
"The Harmony of Science and Religion," he thus pointed
out the important analogies on which he afterwards dwelt
so much, between the presence of design in the evolution
of the solar system, in the evolution of any given human

36 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

form from its first germ, and in the evolution of the entire
organic world.

In this hypothesis I cannot see anything that is either
abstractedly improbable, or that in the least tends to separate
the idea of Creative Design from the Organized Creation.
There is surely nothing more Atheistical in the idea that the
Creator, instead of originating each race by a distinct and
separate act (the notion commonly entertained), gave to the
first created Monad those properties, by the continued action
of which, through countless ages, a Man would be evolved, —
than there is in the idea, to which we are irresistibly led by
Physiological study, that the Creator has given such properties
to the first germ-cell of the human ovum, as enable it to
become developed into the human form in the course of
only a few months ; — or in the idea, to which Astronomical
research seems to lead, that the Deity, instead of establish-
ing the present system of the Universe by creating each star
and planet in its present form, setting it in a particular place,
and giving it a certain motion, produced this result by the
creation of Nebular Matter, and by the endowment of it with
certain properties, whose continued operation fiecessarily
wrought it out. If we believe that to the mind of the Deity,
the past and the future are alike present, and that His pre-
science is so perfect as to comprehend all the results of the
plan on which He conducts the operations of the Universe,
we see His hand in the mode of creation supposed by this
hypothesis of development, fully as much as in the one com-
monly attributed to Him. And if we believe that what we
call laivs and properties of matter are nothing else than human
expressions of the constancy of the mode in which the
Creator operates, we see that the hypothesis coincides with
all which Science and Religion alike teach, respecting the
invariability of His mode of working. To imagine that the
Creator was obliged to interpose, or to exert some special
agency, for the production of new races of plants and animals,
every time that the conditions of the earth's surface became
incompatible with the continued existence of those previously
existing, and at the same time became prepared for others, —

RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 37

appears to me the same thing as to suppose that He was
obhged, through want of previous acquaintance with the
changes on the earth's surface, to meet the emergencies as
they might arise, and to compensate for the unforeseen ex-
tinction of one race of beings, by the special creation of
another.

The course of Dr. Carpenter's thought had at this time
only appeared to confirm the view of the world and of life
in which he had been brought up. He had accepted the
Biblical record as a supernatural revelation accredited by
miracles. He said, indeed, that —

We must allow a great deal in regard to the form of what we
call revelation, and that physical science, in the form in which
it is now developing itself, is another revelation which is adapted
to convince the intellect of those who could not receive the
same doctrines as mere matters of faith.

And' he added —

As the mind of man advances, I believe that the Biblical
revelation will come to be regarded in the light in which 1 now
view it, i.e. as specially designed for those periods when the
human mind would more passively receive the truths it teaches,
and would give more ready credence to the proofs by which it
was then supported ; that, as less confidence comes to be placed
in the external evidences, the strength of the internal will be
found to increase ; and that, in fine, the fundamental truths of
religion will rest on the generalizations of science, blended with
the express declarations of God, the latter being received chiefly
as such, because in full accordance with the former.

The " internal evidences," however, on which Dr. Car-
penter was then disposed to rely, were not those of the
moral and religious affections ; they were almost wholly of
an intellectual kind ; they were such as were suggested by
the contemplation of the " plan of creation," and the indica-
tions of the presence and energy of mind in the world
around. In such a mood of thought, miracles still had

438093

38 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

their place and value. His attention had not yet been
called, either by literary criticism or by the study of the
conditions under which beliefs are formed, to the origin
and composition of the Gospel narratives.

To impugn the miracles as facts (he wrote to his brother
Russell, in the letter just quoted. February 2, 1845), seems to
me to indicate a very incorrect view of the nature of evidence ;
and the desire to do so which prompts the attempt shows, I
think, a very perverted view of the real character of revelation
as well as of the import of " natural laws."

Miracles were, in fact, the manifestation of some higher law.
The conception of the uniformity of the Divine action
in the universe had at this time so complete a sway over
Dr. Carpenter's mind that he surrendered to it even the
entire range of human thought and volition. In later
days he became known as the ardent opponent of that
interpretation of our consciousness now designated as " de-
" terminism." But his earlier studies had only strengthened
him in the strict necessarian ideas of his original education.
He had been trained by his father in the principles of
Hartley; his psychological text-book had been James Mill's
"Analysis of the Human Mind;" and his acquaintance
with John Stuart Mill, and the perusal of his treatise on
Logic, had not tended to weaken the general notions thus
impressed upon him. These notions appeared confirmed
by his scientific inquiries, which had hitherto dealt entirely
with the world of matter, and had not yet extended to the
processes of the mind. He was saved from the conse-
quences of the elder Mill's dissection of the idea of God by
his acceptance of a doctrine of revelation ; and, under the
strong belief in the presence of design in nature, his empi-
rical philosophy and his religion found a comfortable shelter
together. Accordingly, in another of the Inquirer papers
already quoted, he affirms (§ 97) "that all human actions

RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 39

" (being the results of the operation of circumstances upon the
" mental constitution of each individual according to fixed
" laws) are to be regarded, like the phenomena of the Physical
" Universe, as the expressions of the will of the Creator," and
(§ I08) "that all the actions of the human mind are as
"much the expressions of the Divine will as are the opera-
"tions of man's bodily frame, or the movements of the
"heavenly bodies." Where all mental operations are but
the working out of the Divine plan, the belief in our own
freedom is, of course, a part of that plan. " Hence we are
"to ourselves perfectly free. We do as we wish, notwith-
" standing that our volitions are all the necessary results of
" our constitution and circumstances, and are prearranged
" by Deity."

We must in consequence (argued Dr. Carpenter) recognize
in the phenomena of mind the same determinateness as in
those of physics and vitality. The difficulty which affects us
in regard to the prediction of them is precisely that which
affects the meteorologist, viz. a very imperfect acquaintance
with the conditions under which the phenomena occur. If
these conditions are fully known, the result may be accurately
predicted.

This absolute abandonment of all individual causation,
which was thus merged in the only true self in the whole
universe — namely, God — required an immediate revision of
the meaning of the common terms of the moral conscious-
ness. The current ideas of responsibility, merit, guilt, all
disappeared. With them passed away, likewise, the ordi-
nary view of rewards and punishments, and all justification
for the doctrine of eternal torments.

It cannot be regarded as consistent with either the justice
or the benevolence of the Deity (concluded Dr. Carpenter) that
he sliould, by the infliction of additional suffering, as a retribti-
tio7i for acts which are really his own, increase the burden

40 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

of evil under which the human race already lies as a necessary
consequence of its imperfection. All ideas of punishment, as
necessary to satisfy Divine wrath, or to expiate human offences,
are excluded on the present scheme. But it does not exclude
the idea of suffering, as on the one hand a necessary conse-
quence of human error, and on the other as requisite for the
eradication of that error, and for the purification and elevation
of the human soul.

It was characteristic of his fidelity to the steadfast
rectitude of his moral training, however imperfectly it
might harmonize with his theoretical interpretations, that
he still sought to maintain our accountability to the Deity
even for the " acts which are really his own."

We are as much aceoiintahle to our Creator for the use we
make of our powers as if he had committed them to our
charge in ignorance of the result ; and our virtues and faults are
to us as much under the control of the self-regulating power
with which he has endowed us as they could be if we had no
relation to him whatever as a Creator, but were self-existent
beings.

Nature had been driven out with a pitchfork, but it
persisted in coming back. What use Dr. Carpenter was
afterwards to make of the meaning of the " self-regulating
power " which he thus recognized, the essays on " Human
Automatism," written after thirty years more of experience
and reflection, will abundantly show.

IV.

In the spring of 1845, the arrangement with Lord
Lovelace was brought to a close, and Dr. Carpenter moved
to London, He had been appointed in the preceding year
to the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology in the Royal
Institution, and he had been elected a Fellow of the Royal
Society, He now undertook the course of General Anatomy

SETTLEMENT IN LONDON. 41

and Physiology at the London Hospital, where he continued
to lecture for the next twelve years. He settled in a small
house in Stoke Newington, which he exchanged shortly
after for a more convenient residence near the Regent's
Park. The usual home life went on without interruption,
broken only by occasional excursions to various parts of
the country for courses of popular lectures on Natural
History. The constant toil of production must be kept up,
and in 1846 appeared a " Manual of Physiology," in which
the doctrines of the larger treatises were condensed. He
continued to contribute to the British and Foreign Medical
Review, of which he became editor in 1847, on the retire-
ment of Dr. Forbes, who warmly expressed his great
indebtedness to him for his ever-ready aid. For the next
five years he bestowed upon it a large amount of time and
energy ; besides his general supervision, he wrote numerous
articles for it, on a still wider range of subjects than he had
hitherto discussed. Another post was conferred on him in
1847 by his election to the Examinership in Physiology
and Comparative Anatomy in the University of London ;
and when the Fullerian Professorship at the Royal Listitu-
tion expired in the same year, the trustees of the British
Museum designated him for the Swiney Lectureship on
Geology. This list may be completed by the record of his
succession, in 1849, to the chair of Medical Jurisprudence
in University College; and, in 1852, to the Principalship
of University Hall.

These different appointments brought Dr. Carpenter
into connection with a larger circle of friends engaged in
kindred pursuits, and enabled him to form ties which were
severed only by death. With Dr. Sharpey, Professor of
Physiology in University College, with Mr. (now Sir James)
Paget, Dr. (now Sir Joseph) Hooker, and Mr. George Busk,
he remained always in relations of cherished intimacy. Mr.

42 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

Robert Chambers sought him out in an early visit, and the
suspicion which he had already formed through correspon-
dence with him as to the authorship of the " Vestiges," was
strongly confirmed by their subsequent intercourse, which
ripened into warm friendship. His researches into the micro-
scopic structure of shells brought him the acquaintance of
Mr. Darwin, who requested him to examine for him some
specimens of the great Pampas formation, for the " Geo-
logical History of South America," on which he was then
engaged. These shell-inquiries, which he had begun at
Bristol, and continued at Ripley, were conducted with the
aid of grants from the British Association, and the results
were published in its Reports for 1844 and 1847, with forty
plates lithographed from original drawings. They estab-
lished his reputation as an original investigator, and
prepared the way for his future labours on the great class
of Foraminifera, on which his first paper was published
in 1850. His discoveries among the Brachiopoda, in par-
ticular, were extended and summarized in an Introductory
Memoir on the microscopic structure of the shells of that
group, contributed to Mr. Davidson's elaborate work on
British Fossil Brachiopoda in 1853.

Other friendships also entered his life from another side.
He became acquainted with Mr. A. J. Scott,* and at his
house he witnessed one evening an encounter between Mr.
Carlyle and Professor F. W. Newman, who had left Man-
chester to become Professor of Latin in University College,

I have only left myself space (he related to his sister Mary,
in the spring of 1847) to tell you briefly that I met Carlyle in
society last night, and listened to a long debate between him
and Newman, in Avhich Carlyle vehemently denounced tolera-
tion as the destruction of all individuality. His language was

* Then Professor of English in University College, London, and afterwards
Principal of Owen's College, Manchester.

RESIDENCE IN LONDON. 43

very forcible, and many of his views had much truth ; but he
evidently pushed them to an extreme, either intentionally or
through habit.

In fact, on this occasion, Carlyle went so far as to defend
Calvin for burning Servetus ; and Dr. Carpenter used often
to relate how, when he had departed, Mr. Newman held up
his hands in amazement, and asked, " Does Mr. Carlyle
always talk like that.?" In his house at Regent's Park
Terrace, Dr. Carpenter's nearest neighbours were Mr. Scott
and Mr. Wills, the fellow-worker with Dickens in the
manasrement of Household Words. Mrs. Wills was a sister
of Mr. Robert Chambers, and in her society the hard-
working man of science often found relief for his wearied
brain among the drolleries of Scotch humour and the pathos
of Scotch ballads, which he specially loved.

Dr. Carpenter's residence in London also secured for
him a renewal of the religious fellowship which he had so
sorely missed in Ripley. He saw, indeed, some tendencies
among those to whom he was otherwise drawn by theo-
logical affinity, of which he seriously disapproved ; and
with a touch of sarcasm very rare in his conversation or
letters, he pointed out the danger to his brother Russell.

I think that Unitarians are pretty nearly as likely to be
Pharisaical as Trinitarians, if placed in the same circumstances.
" God, I thank Thee that I am not as these poor blinded
"idolaters that pray to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," is, if I
mistake not, a form of thanksgiving often felt among us, if not
uttered.

This dissatisfaction found expression in the year 1848,
when he made an earnest and public protest against
the refusal on the part of some who were regarded as
leaders of the Unitarian body, to extend the Christian
name to those who rejected the historical character of the
Gospel miracles. The influence of German criticism was
3

44 MEMORIAL SKETCH,

beginning to be powerfully felt in this country. The
translation of Strauss's " Life of Jesus " had just appeared ;
and the writings of Theodore Parker were exciting a
vigorous interest, partly friendly, partly hostile, among
English as among American Unitarians. Dr. Carpenter
had not then entered on the psychological studies which
were afterwards to modify his view of the conditions of
belief under which the miraculous narratives grew up ; nor
had he investigated the composition of the Gospels. " To
" me," said he, " the evidence for the Christian miracles, taken
"as a whole, is quite as much as is requisite to obtain my
" intellectual assent." But that assent was practically ten-
dered upon other grounds than historical testimony. It
was on the character and teachings of Jesus that he really
took his stand. " For myself, I should say with Locke,
" ' The doctrine proves the miracles, rather than the miracles
" ' the doctrine.' " With some of the most respected members
of the Unitarian Association, therefore, he felt himself in
imperfect sympathy ; and partly from this cause, and
partly from the continued pressure of his lecture engage-
ments, and subsequently, owing to his official connection
with the University of London, he took no active share in
it for many years. But in worship he found the satisfac-
tion of his religious needs. His removal to Regent's Park
Terrace enabled him to join the congregation at Rosslyn
Hill, Hampstead, with whose pastor, Dr. Sadler, he formed
at once a warm and intimate friendship. The musical por-
tion of the service appeared to him, however, cold and bare,
with its antiquated accompaniment of fiddles. With cha-
racteristic energy he propounded a plan for the purchase
of an organ and the formation of a choir. In this little
sanctuary, enlarged and enlarged again as the congregation
increased, was he to be found at the organ, Sunday by
Sunday, for the next seventeen years \ and when this duty

RESIDENCE IN LONDON. 45

was relinquished, he remained till the last a regular wor-
shipper. How completely his religious interests crowned
his life, and supplied him with a point of view from which
to look on social affairs, may be seen from a passage in
a letter to his mother, at the close of 1848.

To Mrs. Carpenter, Bristol.

London, December 31, 1848.
We can never forget this year. How vast and wonderful
have been its convulsions, and yet how insignificant at present
seem its results. Yet I cannot but believe that it is only the
commencement of a more enlightened and progressive state,
and that the demonstrations of popular force which it has ex-
hibited will prevent for the future anything like a return to the
arbitrary systems of the past. And one most hopeful sign has
been that there has been nowhere any reaction against religion,
as in the first French Revolution. I cannot but think that the
increased freedom of action in Germany will contribute to much
more practical freedom of religious inquiry. It is wonderful
how difficult that people have found it to carry their speculative
freedom into action, owing as it would seem to a certain torpor
of that part of their psychical nature which brings abstract prin-
ciples into actualities. I have been very much struck with this in
reading an article on Gfrorer's " Origin of Christianity " in the
last Prospective Review. The article interested me very much,
and gave me clearer views as to the philosophy of the Alexan-
drian school than I had before. I have been much dwelling on
the idea I mentioned to you that the Gospel of John was com-
posed by John of Ephesus (the probable writer of the Epistles),
from material supplied by the Apostle John ; and the more I
trace in it the pervading influence of the Neo-Platonic philo-
sophy, the more unlikely does it seem to me that the simple-
minded aposde, whose Jewish and material mind is so strongly
displayed in the Apocalypse, should himself have penned such
a finished and metaphysical composition.

For some time past the Temperance movement had
been exciting more and more of Dr. Carpenter's interest.

46 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

It had been earnestly espoused by the rest of his family ;
and he was led to deal with it from the scientific side.
Accordingly, in an article in the Medical Review, published
in 1847, Dr. Carpenter discussed the effects of alcoholic
drinks on the human system in health and disease. Two
years later he obtained a prize of one hundred guineas
for the best essay on the use and abuse of alcoholic liquors,
which was published in 1850. He himself practised total
abstinence, and trained his children to it, until repeated
illnesses in later years (especially one of many months'
duration in 1864-5) led him to take a moderate amount
of stimulant. But he always remained a hearty friend to
the Temperance cause. In an address on the "Physiology
of Alcoholics," delivered in 1882, in the Tremont Temple,
Boston, Massachusetts, at the request of Governor Long
and other leading men, he reaffirmed many of the
positions of his earlier essay.

The five years during which Dr. Carpenter occupied the
editorial chair of the Medico-Chiriirgical Review, were per-
haps the busiest of all his busy life. His professional
appointments kept him constantly at work as a lecturer.
He poured out article after article in the Review. He was
carrying his physiological treatises through new editions,
into which so much fresh matter was absorbed that there
sometimes seemed but little of the original structure left.
And his natural history researches engaged his constant
attention. Brief holidays only could he allow himself
His day began at six, and often ended only at midnight,
an hour or two over the microscope in the evening forming
his only recreation, while his wife played or sang, or
beguiled him to join her in a duet. In this continued .strain
he had little time for family intercourse, and his corre-
spondence was reduced to the smallest dim.ensions. Every
now and then, however, the occurrence of some anniversary

RESIDENCE IN LONDON. 47

led him to open his heart, or some fresh fact or idea kindled
his enthusiasm, and impelled him to look for sympathy in
the old Bristol home. The press of affairs often drove the
returning birthday from his mind till he wrote the date,
and the recollection of brother or sister surged up in his
consciousness, and prompted his pen. The following
passage from a letter to his sister Mary, shows the attitude
of his thought to the memory of the great bereavement
which had never long been absent from her imagination.
It was written on her birthday, but it would arrive on the
anniversary of her father's death, a day

that must be felt by all of us to be one of deep interest,
though lime modifies the painful part of the associations con-
nected with it, and makes us dwell (or, rather, should do so) on
the mutual happiness we enjoy as a family, notwithstanding our
diversity of tastes and pursuits. . . . The memory of our dear
father should not be to any of us, I think, associated with pain-
ful feelings, even when thus specially recalled ; for we can all
feel that we are occupied as he would approve, and carrying out
in our various modes the objects in which he was most deeply
interested. And while we may all of us at times regret the loss
of his counsel and guidance, yet we may also feel that if it had
been longer continued to us, we might either by resting too
much upon it have too little cultivated our own self-reliance, or,
on the other hand, carried as we have been into circumstances
in which he could not follow us, we might have been often led
to give him pain, by preferring our own judgment to his. Affec-
tion never dies, though it may sleep ; and whether he be or be
not at present regarding us with love, I no more think of his
love as lost to us, than I do of that of my wife or children as
extinguished when they are asleep.

A year or two later he steals a few minutes from the
rush of business to announce to the same sister a discovery
among the Foraminifcra at which he has been so long
working.

48 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

To Miss Mary Carpenter.

London, November 3, 1850.
I have had a regular torrent of interruptions, so that if it
continues I shall really be driven for a month or so to a country
lodging where I may experience the blessed consciousness that
no one can come in upon me. I try to exercise Christian
charity towards the many people who bother me ; but it is really
very difficult to do so when one feels driven to desperation by
the want of power to fulfil one's engagements, to say nothing of
the misery of having one's trains of thought interrupted, and
the provoking consciousness that no sacrifice of one's self will
remedy the evil, since my brain (and it is well for me that it is
so) breaks down at once under overwork, and refuses to labour
for more than twelve hours a day, by the very simple process
of going to sleep over my pages. So when it will spin nothing
more, I betake myself upstairs to tea, and finish in the evening
with music and microscopizing ; the latter being a special delight
to me at the present time, as I have found the most interesting
things possible among my Australian dredgings, namely, the
recent types of all my most interesting forms of fossil Forami-
nifera (I only last night discovered the one wanting to com-
plete the list), confirming all that I had advanced respecting
them, with other forms entirely new. I do not know when I
have been more fascinated by anything.

By the side of these minute investigations he was at the
same time pursuing two important lines of thought, not
wholly unrelated to each other, both of which had for a
long time engaged his attention. The connection sub-
sisting between the different forces of Nature had excited
his boyish interest when Mr. Exley had expounded to a
Bristol audience that " new theory of matter " by which all
the attractions of gravitation, cohesion, electricity, and the
rest, might be explained upon the same principles. In
dealing with the " laws regulating vital and physical pheno-
mena," he had looked forward to a time when it might be

THE VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES. 49

shown that the vital properties of matter resulted from
some higher and more general qualities from which the
physical might also be derived. He was now about to
place this speculation on a more assured basis of fact and
reasoning. And the study of the nervous system which
he had begun in Edinburgh, was to be pursued more and
more eagerly till it was to result in a complete reversal,
largely on physiological grounds, of that interpretation of
the moral consciousness which he had recently put forward
with such security of faith.

The publication of Mr. Grove's views on the " Corre-
lation of the Physical Forces," in 1846, gave a vivid stimulus
to Dr. Carpenter's reflections on this subject. He saw at
once that they could be applied and extended within the
domain of physiology. He had himself for some time
urged that what were commonly called the vital properties of
organic matter were simply the result of the capacities for
action, with which its constituent molecules were endowed,
when called into play under conditions suitable for their
combination into living forms. He was now prepared to give
more coherent shape to this conception. When the British
Association met at Oxford, in 1847, he twice presented it
for discussion. " In the Medical Section, where I spent
" most of this morning," he wrote to his wife, on June 25, " I
"gave some views which I had formed on the correlation of
"the Vital and Physical Forces suggested by Mr. Grove's
"pamphlet. I shall bring these forward also in the Physical
" Section, where I think they will be better appreciated."
Discussions such as these helped him to consolidate his
thoughts ; they were further developed in scattered hints
in the pages of the Medico- Chirurgical Review ; and in due
time he felt that they were ripe enough for communication to
the Royal Society. The following letters, to his mother, and
to an old fellow-student, show the general drift of his ideas : —

50 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

To Mrs. Carpenter, of Bristol

London, 1849.

I am longing for a little leisure to write out my paper for the
Royal Society, on the " Vital and Physical Forces ; " and will
rivOw try and give you some idea of it, as well as of some specu-
lations which have arisen in my mind in connection with it, and
on which I should like to have your opinion.

The whole is built upon the views that Physical Philosophers
have been lately coming to — that Light, Heat, Electricity, Mag-
netism, Chemical Affinity, and Mechanical Motion, are all to be
regarded as forms or modes oi force, and that they are mutually
convertible, each being capable of producing the rest, either
directly or through the medium of electricity, which is a sort of
connecting link among them all. Thus the friction of two
similar bodies produces heat ; of two dissimilar, electricity ; the
heat and the electricity being more abundant as the motion is
retarded, i.e. as the friction is greater. Conversely heat and
electricity may be made to produce mechanical motion, as in
the steam-engine and in the various electric rotatory machines.
So electricity will produce heat, and heat will generate electricity.
Electricity and magnetism are not identical, as was once sup-
posed ; but each will produce the other, or may be converted
into it. And, as in all these cases, the agent and the product
are in a constant proportion to each other, it seems as if
the same force were everywhere in action, though varied in its
manifestations according to the circumstances under which it is
operating.

Now, I was first led to apply these views to the Vital forces
by the very close relation that exists between nervous agency
and electricity. All the most recent and trustworthy experi-
ments lead to the conclusion that the two are not identical, as
some have supposed, but that they are very closely related;
Electricity being able to generate Nerve-force (manifested both
in musculoj motion and in sensation), and Nerve-force being
able to generate electricity, as in the electric fishes. Carrying
out these views, I have brought together phenomena which in-
dicate that the Nerve-force may be excited by Heat, Light

THE VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES. 51

Chemical Affinity, and Mechanical Motion ; and that it may in
turn excite all these forces. Thus it appears that we have a
right to say that Nerve-force is as completely correlated to
Electricity and the other physical forces as they are to each
other \ its peculiarity being that it is only manifested through a
certain peculiar material structure. But this is not sufficient to
separate it, though it keeps it distinct. Until lately we thought
that Magnetism could only be manifested by iron ; and it is
only through a peculiar combination of metals that Heat can
be made to generate Electricity. So it is only through nervous
structure that Electricity, etc., can generate Nerve-force.

From Nerve-force I was led to consider other Vital forces, as
those of growth and development, muscular force, the chemical
transformations peculiar to living bodies and others ; and was
able to reduce them all to one general expression, that of cell-
force ; all of these forces being, in my apprehension, but varied
expressions of that which is manifested in its simplest form in
the development of a cell, the elementary form of all organized
structure ; as is indicated by the circumstance that when a cell
has taken on one mode or action, it seems incapable of
performing any other, each peculiar vital endowment being
manifested by a set of cells appropriated to it.

The question next arises whether these vital forces have any
relation to the physical ; and guided by the connection between
one of them (Nerve-force) and Electricity, I was led to look at
well-known facts in a new point of view, and to conclude that
the Vital forces manifested by plants are really the Heat and
Light which they receive, transformed, by acting through organic
germs, into cell-forces ; so that the Vital forces of plants are
correlated to Heat and Light, as is further shown by the fact that
certain plants can generate these by their own vital powers.
The proof is of the same kind in regard to animals ; but their
dependence on external Heat is not so obvious, in consequence
of a provision for the internal production of heat existing among
many of them. But it is as true of them as of plants, that the
activity of their vital operations is in direct proportion to the
measure of heat which their bodies receive in one mode or
the other. Thus a frog will live slow or fast, just according as
the temperature of the air or water is near 32° or 80°.

53 MEMORIAL SKETCH

All this I have developed in my " Comparative Physiology "
— not as fully, however, as I could wish. But I have there
avoided touching on the relation of Mental force to those
commonly called Material. I have been turning the matter
over in my mind, however, and have come to the conclusion that
we cannot logically separate them. It is all very well to say
that Mind and Matter are distinct entities ; but we are talking of
forces, not of material substances, and I cannot see any reason
for shrinking from the conclusions to which the facts appear to
point. These conclusions you will find in the enclosed note to
a friend, whose opinion I much desired. In addition to what I
have said there of the action of the mind upon the body, I
might advert to the influence of emotional states in modifying
the nutrition and secretion, and conversely to the marvellous
influence of a slight contamination of the blood on the emotional
states.

To Dr. Paget.

I have been thinking much more about Mental phenomena,
and have been questioning within myself whether Mental force
should not be brought into the general category of the Vital
forces, on the grounds that Nervous force excites Mental force
(as in sensation giving origin to Mental operations), and con-
versely Mental force excites Nervous force (as in emotional or
volitional actions). It seems to me impossible to deny that
this correlation is as complete as those existing among the
physical forces ; whatever we may think of the degree in which
the higher phenomena of mind are dependent upon material
conditions. Further, Nervous force is, in the animal body, that
kind of connecting link between Mental force and the Physical
forces which Electricity (as Grove has shown) often is among
the Physical forces themselves, one being often convertible into
another through the medium of electricity, which is not thus
convertible directly. But if such a correlation really exists
between Mental and Vital and Physical forces, that the one
may even indirectly produce the other, may we not regard all
the physical forces of the universe as the direct manifestation of
the Mental force of the Deity ? I believe that I could find
very orthodox testimony in support of some such view. Locke

THE VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES. 53

argues that all notion of power is derived from our conscious-
ness of effort (a doctrine advanced as novel by later philosophers),
and that the existence of the powers of nature thus necessarily
leads us back to a mental source for them. It is to me very
interesting to find the two lines of argument— the one starting
from the correlation of the Physical, Vital, and Mental forces,
as indicated by objective facts ; the other from the analysis of
our own subjective consciousness — which, so far from being in
any way irreverent, only gives a new argument for the existence
of an Intelligent First Cause.

From this point of view I should look upon the whole
Kosmos as the corporeity of the Deity, a doctrine which some
may think pantheistic, but which seems to me necessarily to
follow from that of his universal and immediate agency, which
I cannot but regard as the highest method of viewing his modus
operandi. Thus I should regard the mutual correlation of
mental forces as enabling one mind to act on another directly
or indirectly, according to the means of communication, that of
the Deity upon man directly, that of man upon man indirectly.
The correlation of the Mental and Vital forces is manifested on
the large scale in the phenomena of life, and the direct result of
the Divine agency ; on a smaller and more limited scale in the
mutual relations of mental and corporeal activity in man. The .-
correlation of the Mental and Physical is manifested in the way
in which man acts on external nature, and is acted upon by it,
through the medium of Nervous force, but more directly in the
phenomena of the material universe considered as the immediate
expression of the Divine will.

In working out such speculations it will, of course, be very
difficult to avoid shocking the prejudices of some good and wise
people ; but I do not mind this if the philosophy of them will
bear a rigid examination, as I am certain that in the end they
will tend to render our ideas of the Divine agency more definite,
and at the same time to elevate our conceptions of it, by showing
that in every way in which we feel ourselves limited, the Deity
is unlimited, his mind exerting itself directly and universally in
every class of phenomena.

The views indicated in the first of these letters were

54 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

embodied In a memoir " On the Mutual Relations of the
Vital and Physical Forces," chiefly written in 1849, and
communicated in 1850 to the Royal Society. To this paper
Dr. Carpenter looked back in after-years as one of his most
original productions. He did not seek in it, he said, "to
" increase the knowledge of existing facts, so much as to
"develop new relations between those already known." Its
main thesis was that what is called " vital force " really
has its origin in solar light and heat, not (as generally
taught up to that date) in a power inherent in the germ ;
that which the germ supplies, according to his views, being
the directive agency by which forces derived ab externo are
used in the building-up and maintenance of the organism.
The paper was at first regarded as too abstract and hypo-
thetical, and some doubt was expressed as to its admission
into the " Philosophical Transactions." It ultimately ap-
peared there in 185 1 ; but it made little impression at the
time. Its line of argument, however, secured more and
m.ore attention, and its conclusions were finally accepted as
a part of the general doctrine of the " Conservation of
Energy," which had been previously promulgated by Mayer
and Helmholtz, but was not at that time known beyond
Germany.*

V.

While these speculations were occupying Dr. Carpenter's
thought, he was at the same time slowly elaborating a view

* See the passages from the article entitled, " The Phasis of Force," below,
p. 173. In a lecture on " Present Aspects of Physiology " (Edinburgh, 1874),
Professor Rutherford said, " Much of the present aspect of physiology is owing
" to Ludwig, who introduced into biological study the graphic method of record-
" ing movement invented by Thomas Young; to Carpenter, who applied to
" pliysiological phenomena Grove's principle of the correlation ol force, and so,
" much about the same time as Mayer and independently of him, paved the way
" to the application to physiology of Joule and Helmholtz's great principle of
" the conservation of energy ; much of it is owing to Du Bois Reymond, on
" account of his researches on animal electricity,"

DETERMINISM AND SELF-DIRECTION 55

of the nervous system and the functions of the brain which
was destined to overthrow the entire fabric of his early-
determinism. His interest in these problems dated from
his student-days at Edinburgh ; and they had been dis-
cussed, though somewhat briefly, and on the lines then
usually accepted, in the first editions of his treatise on
" Human Physiology." But a marked advance was made in
the year 1846, by the publication of an article in the
British and Foreign Medical Reviczv, on Mr. Noble's work
on " The Brain and its Physiology." In this essay, Dr.
Carpenter discussed the true methods of investigation into
the physiology of the brain, with especial reference to
phrenology, whose supposed scientific foundations were
completely demolished. Pie then proceeded to extend the
idea of reflex action to the centres of sensation and idea-
tion, and, as a writer in the Times observed after his death,
"enunciated, with a completeness which has stood the test
" of time, the fundamental notions of ' consensual ' and ' ideo-
" motor ' action." * Mr. Noble was converted, and became
one of his critic's warmest friends. And Mr. J. S. Mill
wrote from the India House to express his admiration and
assent : —

I should have been truly vexed not to have heard imme-
diately of such a valuable contribution to science as your paper,
I have read it once with great care, but I must read it a second
time before I can have completely incorporated it with my
system of thought. I have long thought that you were the
person who would set to rights the pretensions of present and
the possibilities of future phrenology ; but I did not venture to
hope that I should see, so soon, anything approaching in com-
pleteness and conclusiveness to this.

The doctrine of the will remained in the background in

this essay; but it quickly forced its way into Dr. Carpenter's

* Dr. Carpenter's own summary of his conclusions at this period will be
found below, p. 159.

56 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

psychology, through the study of abnormal mental con-
ditions, and the attention which he bestowed on mesmerism,
electro-biology, and other fashionable aberrations. In
January, 1847, he contributed to his Review an article on
Dr. Moreau's " Psychological Studies on Hachisch and on
Mental Derangement." The book made a deep impression
upon him, for it enabled him to grasp as he had never done
before the significance of the control exerted by the will in
a mind of healthy activity over its own trains of thought.

One of the first appreciable effects of the hachisch (he wrote)
is the gradual weakening of that power of voluntarily controlling
and directing the thoughts, which is so characteristic of the
vigorous mind. The individual feels himself incapable of fixing
his attention upon any subject ; his thoughts being continually
drawn off by a succession of ideas which force themselves (as
it were) into his mind, without his being able in the least to
trace their origin. These speedily occupy his attention, and
present themselves in strange combinations, so as to produce
the most fantastic and impossible creations. By a strong effort
of the will, however, the original thread of the ideas may still
be recovered, and the interlopers may be driven away, their
remembrance, however, being preserved, like that of a dream
recalling events long since past. These lucid intervals, how-
ever, become of shorter duration, and can be less frequently
procured by a voluntary effort ; for the internal tempest becomes
more violent, the torrents of disconnected ideas are so powerful
as completely to arrest the attention, and the mind is gradually
withdrawn altogether from the contemplation of external realities,
being conscious only of its own internal workings.

The phenomena of hypnotism also excited Dr. Car-
penter's interest, for they threw further light on the con-
ditions of the mind's activity when its volitional control
was suspended, and led him to reflect on the influence of
mental states on muscular feeling and exertion in the
presence of certain powerful ideas which the sensations

DETERMINISM AND SELF-DIRECTION. 57

failed to correct. The study of a number of criminal trials
brought clearly before his view the forces of different
passions and propensities, and the relative feebleness of the
checks imposed upon them by the will. In the discussion
of insanity and of responsibility for acts of violence, he
found himself compelled to analyze the whole processes of
the moral life, and his results were surprisingly different in
1847 from those which he had previously announced in
1845.* Starting from the frequent experience of moral
conflict between (for example) the duty of a professional
visit to a patient needing aid, and the desire to escape a
wet ride or to avoid bringing home infection, he inquired in
what lay the deciding power. Rejecting the current ex-
planations of the autocratic nature of conscience or the
moral sense, which pronounced directly on the right or
wrong of any action, he expressed his sympathy with a
view of its real function propounded shortly before by an
"anonymous critic," in the Prospective Review, who affirmed
that moral good was not a quality resident in actions, but
that ethical judgments were always relative, and involved a
preference for one spring of action over another.!

We cannot, therefore (said Dr. Carpenter), attach a moral
character to the actions of animals that are performed under
the direction of a blind undesigning instinct, which operates in
them as the spring which moves an automaton, leaving them
no choice between one course and another ; nor can we say
that a human action is in itself morally wrong as regards the
individual, when it directly results from a violent iminilse which
he has no power to restrain. . . . According to this view, then,
what is termed conscience is nothing else than the idea of right

* The following quotations are from an article in the British and Foreign
Medico- Chiriirgical kevie-.u, July, 1847, entitled, "Dr. M.i)oonthe Relations
of Crime, Insanity, and Punishment."

t The " anonymous critic " was Mr. (now Dr.) Martineau, who thus sketched
in his article on Whewell's "Elements of Morality " the outlines of the ethical
system now expounded in the second volume of his "Types of Ethical Theory."

58 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

or wrong character which becomes attached to an action,
when we place in comparison the motives which prompted it ;
and this idea is entirely dependent on the relative worth or
value in the moral scale which we have been accustomed to
assign to the different classes of motives. The moral rule of
action hence consists in the preference of a higher to a lower
motive or combination of motives. But it will of course be
asked how are the relative values of these motives to be deter-
mined ; and the answer is, simply, by the universal conscious-
ness of mankind, which is found to be more and more accordant
in this respect, the more faithfully it is interpreted, and the more
fully the general mind is expanded and enlightened. It is this
tendency towards universal agreement upon this fundamental
point which leads us to feel satisfied that there will in the end
be as good a foundation for a science of morals in the
psychical constitution of man, as there is for that of music in
the pleasure which he derives from certain combinations of
sounds.

Among these various springs of action, what is the
function of the will }

[It is] not only concerned in carrying into effect the sug-
gestions of the desires. In the well-regulated mind it ought to
have a controlling influence over the desires themselves, so as
to prevent them from exercising themselves with undue force.
This is, in fact, the power known as self-control — a power which
cannot be too early cultivated or too habitually exercised. Now,
we believe that much may be learned by observation of infantile
life of the nature of this power. When a young child gives way
to a fit of passion, the nurse attempts to restore its equanimity
by presenting some new object to its attention, so that the more
recent and vivid pleasurable impression may efface the sense of
past uneasiness. As the child grows older, the judicious mother
teaches it self-control, by calling up in its mind such motives as
it is capable of appreciating ; the act of self-control being the
result of the overpowering influence of the higher motives sug-
gested to it over the lower or selhsh emotions which we desire
to bring into subjection.

DETERMINISM AND SELF-DIRECTION. 59

The development of this power was the object of all true
education ; and special stress was laid on the appeal to the
highest motives within the child's comprehension.

In laying down these principles, Dr. Carpenter had, in
fact, been taking lessons in his own nursery. They were
the principles he was himself learning to apply. The reader
will perhaps forgive the triviality of an anecdote which
throws light on these notions of moral discipline. Re-
quiring one day a supply of hydrogen for purposes of lecture
illustration, he called his three boys into his study to see
him granulate the zinc to be employed in its preparation.
The melted metal was in an iron ladle on the fire, and he
began slowly to pour it into a basin of cold water, with a
natural accompaniment of sputtering. The youngest of the
trio, famous in the family for a peculiar roar known as the
"square mouth," was frightened, and began to cry. His
father bade him control himself and be quiet, but the
admonition was without effect. A threat to send him out
of the room proved equally vain. " But it shows you don't
trust me," remonstrated his father. The boy checked his
cries at once and was still.

The problem here was reduced to very simple elements.
But in more complex cases, the process was, in Dr. Car-
penter's view, essentially the same.

The will (he said), by a peculiar effort, represses the
vehemence of one class of motives by forcibly withdrawing the
attention from them and directing it to another of a higher
character. . . . The mind, thus swayed hither and thither by
various motives contending for the mastery, is at last decided
by those which present themselves most forcibly before it ; and
it is in keeping some in the background, and bringing others
into clearer view, that the power of the will seems to be exerted
in modifying the decision.

Here is the germ of much of his later doctrine as to the

6o MEMORIAL SKETCH.

true character of volitional as distinguished from automatic
action. It involved a free surrender of the earlier deter-
minism. From this time he ceased to teach that all human
actions were " the results of the operation of circumstances
" upon the mental constitution of each individual according
" to fixed laws." He recognized the share which each man
may take in the formation of his own character. This
thought grew in importance as his observation and ex-
perience extended. He studied the type of spontaneous
activity presented by the musical genius of Mozart, in
whom the creative energy was at its height while the will
was weak and impulse strong ; and he took the keenest
interest in the mental action of Coleridge, whose life he
regarded " as a sort of waking dream, in regard to the
" deficiency of that self-determining power which is the pre-
" eminent characteristic of every great mind." Convinced
that the true nature of volitional action would be best
understood by the examination of those states in which the
will is completely in abeyance, he set himself to investigate
the condition in which the courses of thought were entirely
determined by the influence of suggestions upon the mind,
and to compare this with the habitual control and direction
exerted in the formation of a decision between various
plans of action. This line of inquiry was in part physio-
logical and in part psychological : its base lay in the
nervous system, from which it was carried up into the
operations of the consciousness. A few passages from an
article on " The Physiology and Diseases of the Nervous
System," published in his Review for January, 1850,* will
show the progress which he was making in the interpreta-
tion of the mechanism of action and its relation to feelings
and ideas ; his doctrine, that the will determines the result,
while the automatic apparatus of the body supplies the

* See below, p. 164.

DETERMINISM AND SELF-DIRECTION. 6i

means for voluntary action, having especial importance.
Mr. J. S. Mill was so much impressed with the value of
the principles thus indicated that he wrote to congratulate
the author on an —

additional step in advance in the most important inquiry in
all physiology, viz, that most directly connected with psychology.
I have long looked to you (he added) as the great living guide
in this advancing speculation, both by your own speculative
powers, and by the clearness and philosophical discrimination
with which you conceive and judge the results arrived at by
others.

The general view of the distinction between automatic
and volitional action at which Dr. Carpenter had now
arrived, was completed by the proof of the reflex activity
of the brain, which had been first suggested by Dr. Laycock.
The peculiar phenomena known under the name of Electro-
Biology, which then attracted so much public attention,
afforded Dr. Carpenter many opportunities of testing his
conclusions ; and in a lecture delivered at the Royal
Institution, in March, 1852, " On the Influence of Suggestion
in modifying and directing Muscular Movement, inde-
pendently of Volition," he expounded the connection which
he believed to subsist between the different modes of action
of the nervous system.* The power of ideas to produce
respondent movements through the instrumentality of the
cerebrum was illustrated by the states of electro-biology
and somnambulism, when the controlling power of the
will was suspended. The ideo-motor principle of action
being thus established at the head of the physiological
scale, it was easily applied to many of the phenomena ot
mesmerism and spiritualism, which depended on the state
of expectant attention. In this condition the abstraction of
the mind laid the will to rest, and the anticipation of a
* See the extracts from the Report below, p. 169.

62 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

given result served as the stimulus which involuntarily
prompted the muscles to produce it. An article in the
Quarterly Review for October, 1853, enabled him to answer
the question, " What are we to believe ? " as to mesmerism,
electro-biology, odylism, table-turning, spirit-rapping, and
table-talking, on physiological principles, and led him to
offer an earnest plea for the proper discipline of the auto-
matic apparatus of man's nature by his will.

The study of human nature (he urged), physical, in-
tellectual, moral, and spiritual, is far too much neglected in our
educational arrangements. That the preservation of corporeal
health is in great degree dependent upon the observance of
the rules dictated by physiological science, and that a general
knowledge of the structure and functions of man's l>ody is really
worth his possession for its own sake, is gradually coming to be
generally acknowledged. We would urge, however, that an
acquaintance with his ?nind is not one whit the less desirable
for the right development of its powers and for tlie preservation
of its health. We have seen in the various phenomena we have
been discussing how largely the will is concerned in all those
higher exercises of the reasoning powers, even upon the most
commonplace subjects, by which our conduct ought to be
governed ; and how important it is that the automatic ten-
dencies, of whatever nature, should be entirely subjugated by it.
We are satisfied, from extensive observation, that in a large pro-
portion of cases of insanity, the disorder is mainly attributable
to the want of acquirement, in early life, of proper volitional
control over the current of thought ; so that the mind cannot
free itself from the tyranny of any propensity or idea which
once acquires an undue predominance. The deficiency of
power to repel the fascinations of some attractive delusion that
appeals to the vanity, to the love of the marvellous, or to some
other respective predisposition, by employing the reason to strip
off its specious disguise and expose its latent absurdities, really
proceeds from a want of the same kind, the supply of which
ought to be one of the prominent objects of educational culture
in every grade.

DETERMINISM AND SELF-DIRECTION. 63

Dr. Carpenter had, indeed, endeavoured himself to pro-
vide an instrument for such culture. The fourth edition of
his " Human Physiology," which was completed in 1852 and
issued in 1853, contained a full outline of his vijws on the
nervous system.* It was his habit in preparing successive
editions of his large treatises to expand them by the in-
corporation of the latest researches ; but this did not
generally involve any fundamental reconstruction, though
sometimes three-fourths or four-fifths of the actual matter
might be fresh. In this case, however, the whole division
of the work was wrought anew from the beginning. He
rejected at the outset the doctrine that man's character was
formed for him and not (in part, at least) by him ; appealed
to his consciousness of possessing a self-determining power ;
and then proceeded to expand and enforce the conceptions
to which in his previous writings he had given partial ex-
pression. Without hesitation he boldly carried the idea of
automatic action into the intellectual products of the brain
itself under the name of " unconscious cerebration," while he
carefully discriminated from all forms of reflex operation
the voluntary control which should reign supreme over all.
This intelligent volition he recognized as the source of the
power we determinately exert through our bodily organism
upon the world around. Here he found the origin of that
conception of force which he discerned behind every
phenomenon of the external universe, and this supplied
him with a new basis for his interpretation of the visible
scene as the constant realization of Divine Thought and
Will. To the development of these views he returned
twenty years later ; and the last decade of his life, as the
essays in this volume will show, was largely occupied

• In ncl<no\vledL;ing the receipt of a copy of this edition, his former teacher,
Professor \V. I*. AHson, of Edinburgh, wrote : " I liavc lound in your (Hscussion
" of the nervous system and its physiology much that was new to me, much that
" is original, and nothuig but what is valuable."

64 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

with the endeavour to expound them with reiterated
emphasis.

Side by side with the treatise on " Human Physiology "
stood the " Principles of General and Comparative Physi-
ology," of which the third edition appeared in 1851,* and
the fourth in 1854. Of the place which these books filled
in the medical and scientific education of the time, and the
author's share in the direction of modern thought through
them, a brief estimate is offered in the words of those most
qualified to speak. Dr. Carpenter used himself in earlier
days to say that the greatest honour he had ever received
was to be told by Von Baer that he had read one of his
Physiologies on the shores of the Caspian.

I believe (writes Sir James Paget), that among all the events
which have had great influence on the teaching of physiology
in our medical schools, none has been more important than
the institution of separate courses of physiological lectures.
The whole subject, so far as it was taught at all, used to be
included in the course on anatomy, and was regarded as far
less important than the applications of anatomy in the practice
of surgery. The change began between forty and fifty years
ago, and among many things proving its necessity, none, I think,
had more influence than the publication of Dr. Carpenter's two
principal works in 1839 and 1842. Their influence coincided
with those exercised by Dr. Sharpey's teaching and the transla-
tion of Midler's " Physiologie des Menschen," and with the con-
stantly increasing interest in physiology which was sdrred by
the teachings of Owen, Liebig, and Goodsir, by Dr. Marshall
Hall's works on the reflex functions of the spinal cord, and by
Kiernan's essay on the minute structure of the liver, and
Bowman's on that of the kidney.

It is impossible to measure the influence of each of these ;
but their number and importance are enough to prove that the

* The labour involved in the production of such books may be in part
estimated from the fact that out of the loSo pages of which the new volume
consisted, only 15 1 belonged to the previous edition. The general plan, how-
ever, remained the same.

INFLUENCE AS A PHYSIOLOGIST. 65

period in which Dr. Carpenter's chief works were first pubHshed
was one of active research and real progress. The range of
physiology was rapidly enlarging, and the need of having it much
more thoroughly taught in the medical schools was constantly
becoming more evident. Nothing could better both prove and
supply this need than did Dr. Carpenter's books, collecting and
teaching as they did all that the best and latest researches of
the time was making sure or probable. They proved that
physiology could not reasonably be regarded as of second-rate
importance in medical education, and to many they supplied the
means of teaching it. Gradually the schools adopted the plan
of having the lectures on physiology and histology completely
separate from those on anatomy, and coextensive with them ;
many of the teachers became physiologists, and did good original
work, and encouraged their pupils to imitate them ; and the
whole subject was taught in its relations with medicine as well
as surgery.

I think that no change more important than this has been
made in our medical schools during the last half-century; and
that no one contributed to it more than Dr. Carpenter. For
many years his books were almost without a rival in the London
schools; Mayo's " Physiology " soon ceased to be read; the trans-
lations of Tiedemann and Blumenbach were disused ; the trans-
lation of Miiller's " Physiology " was too large, and in some parts
too difficuh, for any but the best students. And this continued
till physiology became a subject of examination for diploma,
and smaller books were required with more simple recitals of
admitted facts, and with less argument and reasoning.

I cannot speak from sufficient personal knowledge of Dr.
Carpenter's influence as an oral teacher; but I believe it was
similar, though not equal, to that which he exercised as a writer,
and, especially, was marked, as were his books, by his power of
clearly expounding, even while condensing, all that he could
learn in even the widest study of each subject that he taught.
He was always earnest and enthusiastic ; he could say exactly
what he knew and believed ; and he used to speak as if he
wished his hearers to have the same pleasure as he himself had
enjoyed in learning what he had to tell.

But Dr. Carpenter's influence on the progress and teaching

66 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

of physiology was not nearly limited to that of his chief books
or to the time at which it began to be felt and was most potent.
All through his life he was among the most active in the promo-
tion of research, in discussions whether in public or in private,
in reviewing, in exciting others to work. He constantly main-
tained or enlarged the wide range of physiology in which he had
begun ; and however definitely he might state facts already
known on any subject, he never seemed to imply that they
were complete or final, or that the general principles of which
they were evidences did not admit of wider application. An
admirable example of this was in his extension of the principle
of reflex action in the nervous centres. The doctrine of the
reflex action of the spinal cord, as expounded by Dr. Marshall
Hall, was at the time so complete and compact that it seemed
to produce in some minds a feeling of final satisfaction and
repose. It did not so with him, and, as the result of his careful
thinking, he showed that power like that of the spinal cord exists
and does far higher work in portions of the brain.

This may, I believe, be regarded as his best contribution
to physiology. It is, indeed, a rare example of accurate think-
ing, and the best instance of his exercise of a power by which
he may always have renown among lecturers and writers on
science. Its principles expanded and became clearer as they
passed through his mind beLween the leai-ning and the teaching
of them.

My contemporaries in the medical profession (says Mr.
Huxley), the old men who were young men commencing their
studies forty or five and forty years ago, will, I am sure, recog-
nize as gratefully as I do our indebtedness to Dr. Carpenter's
" Human Physiology," It was the standard work on the sub-
ject in this country at that time, and it retained its high and
well-deserved reputation for some thirty years.

The " forties " constituted a period of transition between
the old physiology and the new, between the science of Haller
and Bichat and the science of Ludwig and Claude Bernard.
The microscope was opening a new world to the anatomist and
the embryolcgist \ while properly conceived and executed ex-
perimental investigations of the properties of living matter were

INFLUENCE AS A PHYSIOLOGIST. 67

leading by the only possible road to the explication of the
complex operations known as functions.

Dr, Carpenter undertook the important office of inter-
mediary between the rapidly accumulating masses of new
knowledge and the student of physiology. Sifting, condens-
ing, and methodically arranging the materials and embodying
the results in an admirably lucid style, he produced a com-
pendium of great excellence. And, although the greater part
of the work was not enriched by any observations personal to
the author, there was much that was original in the mode of
treatment of the various topics. This is particularly true of
the chapters on the nervous system. I conceive that in these
chapters, and in subsequent independent writings. Dr. Carpenter
contributed in no small degree to the foundation of a rational,
that is to say, a physiological psychology.

While the " Principles of Human Physiology " not only
played a leading part in the scientific education of successive
generations of medical practitioners, but was widely read by the
public at large, the " Principles of Comparative Physiology,"
of which the first edition was published in 1838, did still more
important service.*

The book has the title, and in some respects resembles a
well-known treatise by the eminent French savant Duges. But
it is a very much better piece of work, and, to my mind, con-
tains by far the best general survey of the whole field of life and
of the broad principles of Biology which had been produced up
to the time of its publication. Indeed, although the fourth edition
is now in many respects out of date, I do not know its equal for
breadth of view, sobriety of speculation, and accuracy of detail.

I should say that Dr. Carpenter most conspicuously in-
fluenced the course of education in medicine and the progress
of biological science by these two works, which have been read
by thousands who knew nothing of his many valuable direct
contributions to histology and zoology. In addition, his excel-
lent and very popular work on " The Microscope," opened
wide the gates of science to many people who might otherwise
never have been tempted to enter therein.

* The editions to which Mr. Huxley's remarks especially refer are the
third, published in 185 1, and the fourth, 1S54.

4

68 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

My copy of the "Comparative Physiology" (writes Mr.
Thiselton-Dyer, F.R.S.) bears the date 1854. A good deal has
been added to biological knowledge since then ; but in my
opinion there is no modern book which, taken as a whole, sur-
passes it in firm grasp of general principles and in clear and
ordered exposition of details to anything like the degree that it
itself did the literature contemporary with it. I suppose few
of the younger men read it now. Yet I am convinced it would
well repay them for the trouble. Only recently, in a paper sub-
mitted for my opinion, I found the principle of the antithesis
between vegetative and reproductive activity in the organism
set forth by the writer as something novel, in utter unconscious-
ness apparently of the fact that it is stated and enforced with
extreme precision by Dr. Carpenter.

The book itself may not be read, but, as is always the case
with good work, its influence, far from being spent, was never
more a living force amongst English teachers of science than at
the present moment. The doctrine so emphatically taught by
Professor Huxley that Botany and Zoology are but branches
of a common discipline — Biology, was Dr. Carpenter's cardinal
idea. In so far, then, as English biological science has to-day a
broad and far-seeing scope, and, above all, looks for ideas of the
widest generality in the accumulation of facts and observations,
to Dr. Carpenter's influence must in my judgment be undoubt-
edly attributed no small share in the success it has achieved.

One feature of Dr. Carpenter's writings astonishes me now,
perhaps, even more than it did thirty years ago. One is ac-
customed nowadays to huge books which are vast receptacles
of knowledge, and tell the student more than he wants to know
about everything. The aggregation of such pieces of literature
is, after all, little more than mechanical. The actual facts cited
often seem in collision, and left to fight it out among them-
selves ; they are rarely examined critically ; still more rarely are
they summed up from a single point of view. This was not Dr.
Carpenter's method : in marshalling the contents of an infinite
number of detached memoirs, he seems to me unsurpassed ; he
had the double gift of both selecting what was significant and of
emphasizing its significance in connection with general prin-
ciples. Whatever he took into his mind was digested and

INFLUENCE AS A PHYSIOLOGIST. 69

assimilated there into perfect clearness ; and I suppose few
scientific writers have ever so distinctly known what they meant,
or expounded it with such precision, or with such a wealth of
apt illustration.

One other book may be named in this connection, the
treatise on "The Microscope," first produced in 1856. By
this, said Professor E. Ray Lankester,* "the army of
" amateur observers, who delight in the revelations of the
" microscope, were trained to accurate work, and led on to
"become useful auxiliaries of the professional explorers of
" the organic world." This treatise Dr. Carpenter retained
in his own hands, issuing the sixth edition, immensely in-
creased in size, in 1881. Both in England and in the
United States it has filled a most important place.

No one who has had any experience of the innumerable
amateur scientific societies scattered throughout the country
(observed a writer in the Medical Press and Circular)\ can
have any difficulty in determining to what extent this single
book has influenced the love for practical microscopy among
the masses. Formerly this was much more evident than now,
when the pioneer of popular guides is only one out of many
similar volumes, and when we are liable to forget the indebted-
ness of the present to the labourers in the past.

VI.

The principal physiological labours of Dr. Carpenter
were now complete. He was not disposed to overrate
their absolute value. A quick sense of justice sometimes
made him seem tenacious of recognition of his share in
the development of English biological science, as it also
prompted him to accord hearty welcome to the discoveries
of others. But when he compared his own work with what

• Academy, November 21, 1885. t November 18, 1S85.

70 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

might appear much humbler toil and less conspicuous
achievement in other fields, he did not exaggerate its
importance.

For myself (he wrote to his mother in September, 1855),
I feel that Providence points out to each of us what we are fit
for, and that it is our duty to follow its pointings. I try to do my
work in the world in the way and directions in which I feel
best fitted to promote human progress. I often feel how very
little mere intellectual enlightenment does, and wish that I had
more opportunity of labouring for the moral improvement of
individuals. So far from looking doivn upon such work as
Philip is carrying on, I look /// to it* He that saves a sinner
from the error of his ways, does a far higher work than he who
writes any amount of scientific books, or makes any amount of
scientiiic discoveries.

The energy of Dr. Carpenter's nature, however, was not
without its own missionary outlets. With his earnest view
of life, even his social pleasures must be touched with
something of his favourite science. He had made the
acquaintance of Lord Ashburton, and both the opening
and the close of 1855 were spent under his roof at The
Grange. The guests on the second occasion included Mr.
and Mrs. Brookfield, with whom he afterwards became
intimate (Mr. Brookfield, of all his friends, being most
able to rouse what humour he possessed), and Mr. and
Mrs. Carlyle. Among these he pursued a sort of apos-
tolate of the microscope ; with what success, the following
passage from a letter to his v/ife will show : —

To-day I came upon hun (Mr. Carlyle) alone in a walk, and
had the boldness to tackle him, and really got on very well,
by setting him to talk about Coleridge, Lamb, etc. He fired
out tremendously against Coleridge's self-degradation, but

* Philip p. Carpenter was then minister of the Cairo Street Chapel, War-
rington. His philanthropic labours, as well as his services to conchological
science, are described in " Memoirs of the Life and Work of Philip Pearsall
Carpenter, B.A., Ph.D., ediied by Russell Lant Carpenter, B.A."

GENERAL INTERESTS. 71

thought Lamb's talk a sort of dikited insanity. ... I have
opened their eyes a good deal, and interested them much, by
the microscope, and I am very glad that I offered to bring it.
I shall put it away now that the literary lions are coming down,*
and shall keep myself in the background as an observer. I
should have told you that Carlyle was very anxious to see one
of his own hairs ; and as it happened to be a very strong and
rough one, we had some amusing jokes as to the typical cha-
racter which it represented. Mrs. Carlyle then wanted one of
hers to be exhibited, which was rather slenderer, but still con-
siderably knobby.

These brief days of rest were hardly sufficient, however,
for an overtasked frame, and an illness in the winter of
1856 drove him to St. Leonard's for restoration. There
he seized the opportunity for reading various works for
which the home-toils provided no leisure. The latest
published volumes of Macaulay's History gratified his taste
for political narrative, and he wrote to his mother with
enthusiasm of the interest with which he traced through his
pages the evolution " under the wise, firm, and imperturbable
"guidance of the king, of those principles of constitutional
"government on which our national prosperity has so
"securely rested." Theology, as usual, claimed some of his
attention ; —

I have not head enough for sermon reading, but have
devoted myself on Sundays to " Port Royal," f which I find far
more interesting than I expected, and which comes much more
home to my feelings than abstract disquisitions on religious
subjects. It is remarkable, and I know not how to account for
it, that with so much tendency to abstraction and generalization
in my own mind, I cannot take in the abstractions and general-
izations of others without thinking them out for myself

The same holiday enabled him to study with eagerness

* Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Tom Taylor, and others, were expectetl.

t An abridgment of Mrs. Sclunimelpenninck's History, by P. P. Carpenter.

72 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

Professor Jowett's recent treatise on the Epistles of Paul,
and the results of his reading soon appeared in the Greek
Testament class which he used to conduct on Sunday
mornings in University Hall.

To the student-life around him there he devoted a con-
siderable amount of thought. During the morning hours
before his lectures began, he was always at hand for those
who sought his guidance and advice. At dinner, and in
his drawing-room in the evenings, he took a friendly lead
in conversation, and won the confidence of young men by
his sympathy with them in their interests and difficulties.
Partly to provide them with larger social opportunities, he
organized, with his wife's help, in the spacious Council
Room and Library, a series of soirees, which became quite a
feature of his tenure of office, for there the newest scientific
illustrations were often to be seen, and men and women of
distinction mingled in the throng. The grave and earnest
habits of his own life often produced on others deep and
abiding impressions. As in every other relation in which
he was placed, faithfulness to duty was its most striking
characteristic, so that if anything went seriously wrong
among those under his care, he suffered the keenest dis-
tress. Engagements, in the same way, must be fulfilled
at whatever personal cost. The wants of his pupils were
his first consideration as teacher ; and it was observed, as
in complete accordance with the whole tone of his mind,
that he lectured to one of his University College classes
within an hour of hearing of his mother's death (after a
long illness in 1856) with even more than his usual clear
ness and accuracy.

In May, 1856, Dr. Carpenter was elected to the Regis-
trarship of the University of London. This appointment
enabled him to cease lecturing and examining in Physiology,
though he continued to serve as Professor in University

THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON. 73

College, and to reside as Principal in University Hall.
Two years later, however, the new Charter of 1858 intro-
duced changes in the constitution of the University which
involved a considerable increase in the duties of the
Registrar, and he then relinquished his other functions, and
devoted himself with undivided zeal to his administrative
labours. His tenure of office for three and twenty years
coincided with a vast expansion of the operations and
influence of the University, in the direction of which he
took a leading share. His large knowledge of the needs
and conditions of higher education, especially medical and
scientific, bore rapid fruit. The arrangements for degrees
in science owed their first forms chiefly to him, and in
working them out practically his organizing skill and his
mastery of detail were repeatedly tested and not found
wanting. His business qualities enabled him to perform
mere routine work with great despatch, while the history
of each step of departmental development seemed to fix
itself without effort in his accurate and retentive memory.
Thus as years went on, he became a sort of storehouse of
precedents which he could recall and apply with unusual
facility ; and it often happened that when administrative
changes were proposed by younger men he could retrace
the occasion of similar suggestions long before, and the
reasons which had been urged against them, and had pre-
vailed. The whole aim of his work was to bring the
University as closely as possible into contact with the
higher educational life of the country. His extensive
experience and his willingness to impart information or
advice made him in time a centre to which the promoters
of all kinds of educational enterprises might resort ; and in
the rise of many of the local colleges in the great provincial
towns, he took the keenest interest. His position, more-
over, placed him in connection with many distinguished

74 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

men associated in the work of the University, among
whom his own scientific distinction gave him a just influ-
ence. The Chancellor, the successive Vice-Chancellors,
were his steadfast friends ; and to the last day of his life he
cherished, as one of its most precious privileges, the re-
membrance of the intimate relations into which he was
admitted with the stately and reserved historian, Mr. Grote.
On his retirement from University Hall, in 1859, Dr.
Carpenter settled in a house at the foot of Primrose Hill,
which became the family home for more than a quarter of
a century. In the possession of a settled income, and free
from the care and strain which had beset his earlier years,
he was able to give fuller play to his tastes, and pursue with
less difficulty his favourite scientific inquiries. In his new
study was built an organ, which he designed himself, with
some unusual features, to secure as much variety and rich-
ness as possible without overwhelming power. Here he
found at last a place of ease though not of indolence, of
satisfied desire, such as he had never before enjoyed.

The organ looks extremely handsome (he wrote one
winter's day to his brother Russell), and is as charming
in its voice as in its exterior. I can sometimes scarcely
realize how completely all the hopes of my life have now
been accomplished. A few days ago I was very poorly
with a bad cold, and I remained in bed part of the morning,
reading Dickens's " Tale of Two Cities," which had so fully
taken up my attention that I thought of nothing else even
while I was dressing. When I went into my study, feeling
rather miserable in myself, and found a bright fire, bright
sunlight, and everything looking so much the opposite of what
I had been reading, and of my own physical condition, I was,
as people say, " struck all of a heap."

To this home Dr. Carpenter delighted to welcome his
friends, and year by year, as the circle widened, his facilities
also increased. What impression he produced upon the

HOME LIFE. 75

guests who came to him acquainted only with his writings,
may be gathered from the following letter of the late Mr.
George Ripley, for so many years the well-known literary
critic of the New York Tribune.

I trust I do not abuse his kind hospitalities by saying that
my visits at his house are among the brightest recollections of
my London experience. With his eminent position in the
scientific world, he has the modest simplicity of a child. His
love of truth and reality, which impresses one as the staple of
his character, is not incompatible with an affectionate gentle-
ness of manner which lends a peculiar charm to his instructive
conversation. Dr. Carpenter is chiefly known as a physiologist,
though eminently distinguished in other branches of natural
science. But I found him equally interested in the great
problems of philosophic speculation, " fate, foreknowledge, and
free will," which have been the delight and torment of high
thinkers in every age. He has none of the flippant scorn of
certain modern pretenders to science who ignore everything
beyond this " visible diurnal sphere," and who would limit the
study of the human soul to the manipulations of the dissecting-
knife and microscope. Among other topics which he elucidated
in his familiar talk was the unconscious activity of the brain in
connection with the phenomena of the will. Starting with the
recognition of the fact that matter is merely the vehicle of force,
he sets aside the old dispute between the spiritualists and
materialists as barren of fruit, and seeks to establish a sound
and comprehensive psychology on the basis of the whole
constitution of man, and his relations to the external world.
From this point of view he regards the great centres of nervous
force as the source of two classes of automatic actions, primary
and secondary, of which the latter, though originally prompted
by the will, and still remaining under its control, are habitually
performed without any volitional agency. The power of
invention, whether in the sphere of poetry, art, or mechanical
combination, may be referred to this source. The same
principle explains the higher operations of the mind, the
creations of genius, and the intuitions of the moral sense. It
is the ever-flowing current of mental activity which may be

76 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

0

regarded as the spontaneous unconscious action of the brain,
that produces the miracles of intellect which we regard as
natural inspiration. Although this power is a gift, the possession
of which is not at our command, partaking of the nature of an
instinct, which no culture can produce any more than it can
raise a crop of corn where the seed has not been sown, it may
be developed and strengthened by appropriate discipline. In
proportion to our love of the true, the beautiful, and the
good, it gains in efiicient and harmonious activity. The more
intimately we commune with the highest ideals of artistic and
moral excellence, the more thorough will be our appreciation of
whatever is noble and elevating. The more faithfully we devote
ourselves to the pursuit of truth, free from all selfish aims and
conscious prejudices, the more consummate will be our mental
force, and the richer in fruitful results. A foundation is thus
laid in the original constitution of man for the advancement
not only of the individual but of the race, until, in a higher
phase of existence, the laborious and uncertain deductions of
the intellect may be superseded by the clear vision of intuitive
insight.

London, however, was not the only place where Dr.
Carpenter was able to receive congenial visitors. In 1855,
he had spent a brief September holiday in the Isle of
Arran, in the Clyde, with results that had a determining
influence upon his scientific inquiries. While dredging in
Lamlash Bay, he came across numerous specimens of the
beautiful rosy Feather-Star {Comatula rosacea), and its
larval stages, which resemble the stalked form of Penta-
crinus. When the British Association met that year in
Glasgow, this " rediscovery " (as he called it) of the Penta-
crinoid larva excited great interest among his Natural
History friends. "Professor Kolliker," * he wrote, "is
" quite delighted, and seems much inclined to accompany
" me to Lamlash for the purpose of working out the
"matter fully." The result was that Dr. Carpenter took

* The distinguished anatomist of Wiirzburg.

HOME LIFE. 77

a house on Holy Island, off the shores of which the
Comatula had its home. Lying across Lamlash Bay, it
formed a splendid natural breakwater, and gave security
to the hundreds of vessels which sometimes sought shelter
in the bay from the storms outside. The island itself
was a great rocky mass, rising a thousand feet out of the
sea. The solitary house stood at the northern end, two
miles from the village of Lamlash, across the bay. Dr.
Carpenter was a fearless boatman ; he was fond of an oar,
and had a passion for sailing, which he had first practised
in the West Indies ; and his boat was often seen scudding
across for letters and provisions while the visitors on the
other side were glad to be on shore. He was commonly
known in the village as " the eccentric Englishman ; " and
an old woman in the valley behind, who had never been
beyond the confines of the bay in all her life, could not
repress her amazement that any one should " come down
" fra' London and live on an island, wi' the water a'
" round it."

To this summer home came many friends, drawn by
interest in common pursuits and the opportunities of
dredging, which were by no means so frequent then as
now. Dr. Balfour, Professor of Botany in the University of
Edinburgh, who often resided at Lamlash, was a frequent
visitor ; so, too, was Professor (now Sir William) Thomson,
from his Brodick home. The guests, to be sure, ran risks
of possible detention, if a gale cut off the communications ;
and it was with mingled amusement and despair that the
mistress of the establishment, in the early hours of the third
day of a violent storm which had actually sunk the boat at
her moorings, received a plaintive request from Professor
Helmholtz for a bread poultice, when there was but half
a loaf left, and the household would have to breakfast on
porridge, tinned meat, oatcake, and potatoes. Such inci-

78 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

dents as these, however, only heightened the contrast be-
tween the island-freedom and the conventions of town life.
Through the quaint English of the following words of the
late Professor Edouard Claparede, of Geneva, who left be-
hind him (in 1859) '^^^ impression of a singularly gentle and
lovable nature, breathes a truthful utterance of gratitude: —

I wish to tell you and your wife my thanks for the kind re-
ception I enjoyed in Holy Island. This fortnight on the banks
of Lamlash Bay is one of the happiest I ever delighted upon.
I often heard of the friendly hospitality of Englishmen, which
comes not only from the lips as the French, but from the heart,
and shows itself by facts more than by words. I am glad that
your kindness gave me occasion of experiencing myself the
truth of this reputation.

From this vacation Dr. Carpenter went home to study
the book which was to give so profound an impulse to
scientific thought in all directions, "The Origin of Species,"
by Mr. Darwin. He was well fitted to appreciate its
general argument, for the subject of modification by de-
scent, and the wide limits of species had been long in his
mind. He had, indeed, rejected the theory of the author
of the "Vestiges," but it had been on the grounds of de-
ficient evidence and physiological error, not from theo-
logical prepossession. In an article on Dr. Prichard's two
treatises, " The Physical History of Mankind," and "The
Natural History of Man," published in 1847, he had
reiterated the general doctrine —

That amongst the different species of plants and animals
there is a very wide diversity in regard to their respective
capacities for variatioti. In the species which have least capacity
for variation we find (as a necessary consequence) the least
adaptiveness to external conditions ; ... on the other hand, in
those which have most capacity for variation, that capacity
manifests itself in the peculiar adaptation which their physical
constitution undergoes to circumstances as they change ; and

" THE ORIGIN OF SPECIESP 79

also in the spontaneous origination of peculiarities that cannot
be traced to the influence of those circumstances.

He had discussed numerous cases of variation among
domesticated animals, and advocated especially the descent
of the dog from the wolf ; replying to the objection that
the wolf does not exhibit a disposition to attach itself to
man, in these terms : —

It has been proved that the wolf is much more capable of
domestication than is commonly supposed ; if taken young from
its wild state, and brought under the influence of man; and that
it then displays as much attaclnnent to its master, and remem-
brance of kindness shown it, as any dog could do. So that
there is no difficulty in understanding how, by a continuance of
this influence through successive generations, the character of
the race may become so permanently changed that the traces
of former domestication may not be altogether lost, even in
breeds which have returned to their wild state for centuries.
There is no reason why \\\t psychical character of a peculiar
aptitude for domestication should not manifest itself as the
special feature of a variety, like any physical character, such as
the remarkable conformation of the otter breed of sheep ; or
why, to put the matter in a still more definite form, the first
manifestation of the variability of the species of wolf should not
be the production of a race disposed to attach itself to man,
from which race, under the continued influence of domestica-
tion, an almost infinite variety of new breeds has arisen, differing
in the number of the vertebrae in their tails, in that of their
toes, and even in that of their molar teeth. These last de-
partures from the ordinary type exist, not merely in particular
races most remote from it, but also within the limits of single
varieties or breeds, just like the occasional appearance of six-
fingered races among various nations of men. They cannot,
therefore, be admitted as specific difterences ; and they serve to
show how very wide are the limits of variation in tbis species.

The researches into the Foraminifcra, in which Dr.
Carpenter had been subsequently engaged, had led him

8o MEMORIAL SKETCH.

still further in the direction here indicated ; he had had
occasion again and again to point out how arbitrary were
the bounds set by previous investigators, and how un-
satisfactory was the old doctrine of the immutability of
fixed types.*

He was ready, therefore, to give sympathetic and in-
telligent consideration to Mr. Darwin's main thesis, and in
the correspondence which ensued, Mr. Darwin warmly ex-
pressed his pleasure at the support which was likely to be
afforded to it.

I must thank you (he wrote on November i8, 1859) for
your letter on my own account, and, if I know myself, still
more warmly for the subject's sake. As you seem to have
understood my last chapter without reading the previous chapters,
you must have maturely and most profoundly self thought out
the subject, for I have found the most extraordinary difficulty
in making even able men understand at what I was driving.

The next day came a second note —

I beg pardon for troubling you again. If, after reading my
book, you are able to come to a conclusion in any degree
definite, will you think me very unreasonable in asking you to
let me hear from you ? I do not ask for a long discussion, but
merely for a brief idea of your general impression. From your
widely-extended knowledge, habit of investigating truth, and
abilities, I should value your opinion in the very highest rank.

After another fortnight, Mr. Darwin replied to the com-
munication which he had thus invited : " I am perfectly
"delighted at your letter. It is a great thing to have got a
"great physiologist on our side." Two articles, one in the
National Review for January, i860, and the other in the
British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review for April,
enabled Dr. Carpenter to give an outline of Mr. Darwin's

* At the meeting of the British Association in Glasgow, in 1855, Dr. Car-
penter dehvered one of the evening lectures, and took as his subject the
" Range of Variation of Species."

" THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES." 8i

views, and illustrate them with a variety of independently
selected facts. Of this second, Mr. Darwin wrote as
follows : —

You must let me express my admiration at this most able
essay, and I hope to God it will be largely read, for it must
produce a great effect. ... I have not a criticism to make,
for I object to not a word ; and I admire all, so that I cannot
pick out one part as better than the rest. It is all so well
balanced. But it is impossible not to be struck with your
extent of knowledge in Geology, Botany, and Zoology.

Other thoughts were at the same time occupying his
mind. He had lectured that winter at the Royal Institu-
tion, on " The Relation of the Vital to the Physical Forces,"
with especial reference to the life of plants, and had con-
tested the doctrine of germ-force, maintaining that

What the germ really supplies is not the force, but the direc-
tive agency, thus rather resembling the control exercised by the
superintendent builder, who is charged with working out the
design of the architect, than the bodily force of the workmen,
who labour under his guidance in the construction of the fabric.
The agency of the germ may be regarded like Magnetism, as a
static force; and just as Magnetism requires to be combined
with motion, to enable it to develop Electricity, so does the
directive agency of the germ need the co-operation of a dyniainic
force for the manifestation of its organizing power. That
dynamic force, as we learn from an extensive survey of the
phenomena of life, is Heat.

The report of this lecture drew from the veteran
Mrs. Sonierville the following letter : —

'fc>

Florence, June 12, i860.

The proof of the sequence of forces by which you have

connected mind with mind, and transmitted your ideas to the

minds of your audience, has required a higher power of intellect

than that of making electricity the bearer of thought from con-

83 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

tinent to continent, sublime as it is, inasmuch as many intellects
were combined to effect the latter, while the general tendency
of science seems to have been your sole guide in demonstrating
that matter is merely the medium through which mind-force,
like all other force, acts, and that thus mind may, and in fact
does, exist independently of matter. The series which you
have completed is very beautiful. First, Mr. Grove's masterly
demonstration of the correlation of the physical forces, then
your proof of their correlation with the vital force so happily
illustrated by the zoospores, and, lastly, the remarkable correla-
tion between the vital and mental forces. No doubt this series
will mark the middle of the nineteenth century as a great
scientific epoch, the discoveries arising from which who can
predict, when the motion of a microscopic atom affords irre-
sistible proof of an important fact ? The paper you have kindly
sent is so full of interesting matter, and contains so much new
to me, that it is in vain to write all I should have wished to
talk to you about. I can only heartily thank you for it.

The researches on the Foraminifera, on which Dr.
Carpenter had been long engaged, were now drawing to a
close. Four successive memoirs upon them had been pre-
sented to the Royal Society, and published in the " Philo-
sophical Transactions," and on these, together with his
investigations into the microscopic structure of shells, his
observations on the embryonic development of Piirpiira,
and his various other writings in Physiology and Com-
parative Anatomy, was based the award of one of the
Royal medals, which he received from the President and
Council of the Royal Society in i86i. He was still hard
at work completing the long-delayed treatise on the entire
group, designed for the Ray Society, in which he was
assisted by Mr. W. K. Parker and Mr. T. Rupert Jones.
With how much eagerness he toiled, even through the hot
summer days in which he was detained by University
examinations, may be inferred from the following letter
to his wife at Holy Island : —

RESEARCHES ON FORAMINIFERA. 83

London, August 20, 1861.
When working on Friday evening, after my return home, upon
Dactylopora7 I got an entirely new hght, which revolutionized
my ideas of it so completely (as regards its more complex forms,
at least) that I could not rest until I had gone over it with Mr.
Parker. I worked at it all Saturday morning, and, finding
everything confirmatory of my new ideas, I went over to him
in the evening, and fortunately found him at home and dis-
engaged. It was quite charming to see his delight at the new
and more satisfactory information I was able to give him, and
he seemed just as glad to be shown that he was in error as if
he had made it all out originally himself. He gave me per-
mission to do anything I wished in dismounting, breaking, and
laying open his specimens, and I have found it desirable to
take almost every one (several score in all) off its slide, and
to examine it separately, making sections and fractures, but
especially finding that removing portions by acid supplied under
the microscope with a camel's-hair brush did most what I
wanted. In this way I have thoroughly succeeded, have
cleared up every difficulty, and have got the whole truth before
me in a way quite demonstrative. I never followed up a
scientific examination with such zest before, or had the same
opening out of such novelty in so short a time.

The incident made a strong impression upon his mind.
He recurred to it a month later in writing from Holy
Island to his brother Russell.

I never saw a more beautiful instance of thorough candour.
As step by step I led him from the simpler to the more complex
arrangements, and showed him how the latter evolved them-
selves out of the former, he seemed just as much pleased in
coming to the knowledge of a new and beautiful set of facts as
if he had been himself the one to find them out ; and was just
as ready to accept them as if he had not previously, not only
formed, but published a description altogether at variance with
what he now saw to be the truth.

In the following year, these labours were completed by
the publication, under the auspices of the Ray Society, of

84 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

the large and important work entitled, " An Introduction
to the Study of the Foraminifera."

Among Dr. Carpenter's favourite recreations was an
occasional visit to Paris. He had many friends and cor-
respondents among the savans of the French capital. With
Professor Milne Edwards he was united by many ties of
common work ; and he was always sure of finding there a
fresh sympathy in his researches and speculations. There,
during the Easter vacation of 1863, he heard of the dis-
covery of the flint implements and the human jaw at
Abbeville. A day's inquiry on the spot on his way home
greatly excited his interest, and led him to return in the
following month, with Mr. George Busk, Dr. Falconer, and
Mr. Prestwich, to take part in the investigation which
ensued. The question to be decided was the antiquity of
the bone. Professor Milne Edwards presided over the
inquiry. '' He has the great advantage," reported Dr.
Carpenter, "of being able to interpret each side to the
"other when there is any difficulty. The discussion has
" been most friendly, and I think that each side has found
" that the other had more to say than was expected."

So the fiftieth year of his life ran on ; and when the
family greetings poured in upon him on his birthday, he
uttered his feelings with unusual copiousness and freedom
in a sort of general epistle.

London, October 30, 1863.
There is great beauty in the expression Avhich almost all of
you have quoled about " the sunny side of fifty." I had quite
forgotten it, if I ever heard it; but I can fancy good Dr.
Tuckeiman's genial utterance of it, and can heartily respond
to it.

After dwelling on his home-happiness, he continued —

My social position, too, is such as when I entered upon life,
sacrificing whatever prospects I might have had for the more

FIFTY YEARS. 85

congenial pursuits which promised no more substantial return
than a bare maintenance, was altogether beyond ray hopes. It
is now thoroughly equal to my ambition. Anything higher
would only bring with it increased cares, and involve greater
temptations to worldly distraction. ... I honestly believe that
I am succeeding in carrying the University through a very
important phase of its development as few other people could
do, the range of knowledge required to make the various exami-
nations go smoothly, to say nothing of habits of business, being
very considerable. So that although I am not badly paid for it,
I consider that, in giving up myself heartily to University work, 1
am really labouring efficiently for the public weal.

I have now thoroughly determined to devote what remains
to me of working power to original scientific research. My two
large Physiologies have been for some time out of print, and
Churchill has been at me for new editions. For some time I
rather clung to the idea of reproducing them with assistance ;
but I have now quite come to the conclusion that I must give
them entirely up, and a new edition of my " Human Physi-
ology " is now being prepared by a gentleman whom I have
recommended to Churchill. It is, of course, a considerable
regret to me to give up what I have worked so hard upon, and
to feel that I have no right hencetbrth to call myself a phy-
siologist. But, as I had to choose between imperfectly keeping
up with this subject and entirely giving up original research,
I could not hesitate in preferring the latter. . , .

Of my more particularly personal state I shall say less, for I
have less to say. I feel deeply thankful for the many mercies
I have experienced, not less for the discipline I have undergone.
As I heard old Mr. Robberds say, on an anniversary of his
commencement at Cross Street, " God and man have been very
kind to me." And I trust that others can perceive that the
discipline of life has not been without its salutary effect. I am
sometimes disquieted by intellectual doubts and difficulties, and
I often mourn that I cannot /rt'/ what others seem to experience
of their personal relation to the Deity. But I believe that these
difficulties are a necessary result of the habits of thought which
have been growing up with me ; and as they never obscure my
view of duty, I find it better not to trouble myself too much

86 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

about them, but to apply myself to the business of the time, and
find their practical solution in the doing it. Still, it is when
prevented by bodily indisposition from so escaping them that
these sources of uneasiness make themselves felt ; and, as it
would be too much to expect all sunshine, I must regard these
as the clouds. I am now and then comforted by the know-
ledge of the large toleration which men of great religious
experience have for difficulties like mine. Both Mr. Martineau
and Dr. Sadler (to whom I have most freely opened myself)
have assured me that I ought not to make myself unhappy
about them, and that they would rather be in my position than
in that of many who believe themselves much safer.

Through the difficulties here indicated, Dr. Carpenter,
after no long interval, worked his way. The strong religious
needs of his nature found their satisfaction in the view of
the world depicted in the later essays in this volume. His
intellectual fidelity was far too steadfast for him to be con-
tented with anything short of real intelligible conviction.
And partly under the stimulus of the preaching and the
writings of his friend, the Rev. James Martineau, and partly
through the natural development of his own philosophical
principles, he laid firmly in his thought the bases of the
Theistic interpretation of the world. Moreover, he was
peculiarly susceptible to sympathy, though the subjects on
which he was exercised did not admit of frequent speech ;
and the presence by his side of a most tender and discern-
ing companion who (as one who knew her well, said) " leaned
" on him, but in whose very leaning there was persuasion,"
brought to him a helpful influence more easily understood
than described. He did not dwell on special theological
points ; but his doubts and difficulties were of the kind to
be met by evidence of the reality of religion in man's nature
and experience. Had he been shut up to the alternative
of the Calvinistic scheme of redemption or agnosticism,
he would doubtless have joined the ranks of those who

SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 87

declared a theology impossible. But he returned to the
manifestation of religion which he saw in the character
and teachings of Jesus, from whose figure he now began'
to detach the supernatural vestments in which it had
been robed. There he found nothing inconsistent with the
strictest demands of his science, while a moral image of
supreme beauty was presented to his affections ; and he
accepted Christianity in the sense in which he believed it
to have existed in " the mind of Christ." This attitude of
thought is portrayed in the conclusion of one of the first
Sunday lectures for the people on scientific subjects which
were ever delivered in London, in the winter of 1866.* The
topic of the evening had been the "Antiquity of Man."
After stating some of the scientific and moral difficulties
besetting the ordinary Evangelical view of the Bible, Dr-
Carpenter (who had warmly befriended Dr. Colenso three
years before) continued in these terms : —

But to the honest inquirer, who brings to the religious his-
tory of the world the same modes of investigation that he applies
to the secular — who takes nothing for granted, but endeavours
fairly to estimate every fact at its true value — who appreciates
at their full worth those noblest instincts of man with which all
true progress has been in relation, by action and reaction, both as
cause and as effect — and who looks to the religion of the future
as destined to exalt and refine these, and to bring them to bear
with augmented strength on the great problems of human wel-
fare, what but good can come from the freest search into
scientific truth? What part does science play that is not in
fullest harmony with the highest truths of religion ? Do the
Divine words of our dying Master, " Father forgive them for
"they know not what they do," appeal less strongly to our deepest
sympathies, because asuonomy teaches that the earth moves

• These lectures at St. Martin's Ilall were under the auspices of the
National Sunday League. Dr. Carpenter took great interest in these and
similar efTor'.s to extend the range of Sunday teaching. lie was President of
the Sunday Lecture Society from its first formation, in 1S69, until his death.

88 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

round the sun ? Or does his prayer for his disciples, " that they
" may be one even as we are one," less earnestly move us to seek
to realize that unity which he came to promote, because geology
shows that the present surface of the globe is the resultant of a
vast series of changes, of which we have no trace in the Biblical
record, but which are yet more surely revealed to the eye of
science than they could have been by the most veracious contem-
porary narrator ? So far from being in opposition, I affirm that
science is in the fullest harmony with all that is essential and
true in Christianity ; for whilst it is every day contributing to
the material welfare of man, it is even more certainly benefiting
him by the enlargement of his intellect, the elevation of his
morale, and the strengthening of his power of spiritual discern-
ment— all which contribute their respective shares to the de-
velopment of his religious nature ; and, last, but by no means
least, it is undermining, one by one, those props on which have
rested those unsightly and repulsive additions built up by the
perverted ingenuity of theologians around the original edifice :
so that, when the time is at last come, the blast of common
sense, the flood of public opinion, shall overthrow all that has
its foundation in the sand, and leave in its majestic simplicity
and beauty that temple, founded upon a rock, in which all
mankind shall one day gather themselves for the worship of
their common Father and the recognition of their mutual
brotherhood as His children.

VII.

In the vacation of 1863, Dr. Carpenter visited his friend,
Professor (afterwards Sir Wyville) Thomson, at Belfast.
He, too, was engaged in the study of the Crinoid group,
and in the waters of the Belfast Lough he had successfully
employed the dredge. The visit was repeated in the follow-
ing year, but it was interrupted by the beginning of a very
serious illness, through which Dr. Carpenter was nursed
with the greatest care by his kind host and Mrs. Thomson.
But when he was at length able to return to London, he

" EOZO'ON." 89

was quite unfit to resume his University duties. The long
strain which he had put upon his energies seemed to have
exhausted his natural powers of recovery. The eminent
medical men who met in consultation at his house, and
detected the presence of permanent disease, said to them-
selves beneath their breath outside the door of the patient's
room, " He has one foot in the grave already." Music
ceased to charm ; his scientific investigations were laid
aside ; his Foraminifera and his ComatuLne remained undis-
turbed. It seemed as though he had become prematurely
old ; torpor crept over him and numbed his activities ; the
weeks passed by listlessly and mounted into months, and
he gained no strength. The fears of his friends appeared
on their way to verification, when one day Sir William
Logan, the head of the Geological Survey of Canada, called
upon him, bringing with him some specimens from the great
beds of the Canadian limestones, on which he asked his
opinion. Dr. Carpenter's quick eye at once detected in
them a remarkable affinity to the foraminiferal structure
with which he was so familiar. His interest was again
powerfully awakened ; the "will to live" revived ; he began
to make microscopic preparations, and entered with much
of his former zest on a new path of inquiry, with the result
that he regained some of his old vigour, and became the
ardent champion of the truly organic character of the rock
in question. Here, as he believed, was the earliest known
form of animal existence ; it was the Eozo'dn, " the dawn
of life."

The spring of 1865 found Dr. Carpenter again at his
post. But his strength was not yet adequate to the full
labours which the summer series of examinations entailed.
Threatened with another collapse, he was suddenly ordered
off to the Engadine, He passed slowly up the Rhine with
his wife, being directed to proceed as little as possible by

90 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

rail, and the travellers rested for a while at Heidelberg.
There his scientific imagination was kindled by the wonders
of the spectroscope in the laboratory of Professors Kirchhofif
and Bunsen ; and a supper-party in the Castle grounds,
given by them in his honour, stamped itself in his memory
as one of the happiest evenings of his life. At St. Moritz he
found the stimulus which his constitution so much needed.
His vitality reasserted itself; the specific malady was sub-
dued and kept at bay, though it tended occasionally to
break out again in after-years ; and when, to avoid the ad-
vancing cold of the latter part of August, he moved down
to Bellaggio, he drank in deep draughts of beauty from the
mountains and the lake which completed the refreshment
of mind and heart.

In June of this year Dr. Carpenter had presented to
the Royal Society the first portion of a memoir on the
Rosy Feather-star, which embodied the results of his
vacation studies at Arran for many years previously.
These had been carried on in conjunction with Professor
Wyville Thomson, who had already published an account
of his observations on the earliest larval stages of the
Feather-star. Dr. Carpenter's memoir took up the subject
at the point to which it had been carried by Professor
Thomson, and made known two important discoveries, one
of which found immediate acceptance. But the other, re-
specting the nervous system of the Crinoid type, remained
without notice for many years ; and when, in 1875, he
stated his views more fully, they were strongly opposed
by the principal continental students of Crinoidea. They
gradually found acceptance, however, and were publicly
adopted by his chief opponent, but a few weeks after his
death, in 1885.

But the joint work of the two friends on the Rosy
Feather-star was destined to bear yet more important

DEEP-SEA RESEARCHES. 91

fruit. For it led them to take a very special interest in
the discovery, by Professor Sars, the Superintendent of the
Fisheries to the Swedish Government, of a stalked Crinoid
living at a depth of three hundred fathoms, near the
Lofoden Islands. This little form, which had received
the name Rhizocrimis, was recognized as the living repre-
sentative of a family of stalked Crinoids, which was abun-
dantly represented in the Oolitic rocks, and less so in the
chalk, but had apparently become extinct in later geological
times. The discovery of a member of this group, living in
European seas, was therefore of the highest significance
to the two English students of the Crinoidea ; and it sug-
gested to Professor Thomson, in 1868, the idea that the
British Government might be induced to promote the
scientific exploration of the deep sea between the Shetlands
and the Faroe Islands. This proposition was promptly laid
by Dr. Carpenter before the Council of the Royal Society,
who in their turn made application to the Government.
The season was already advanced, but a vessel was allotted
for the purpose ; Dr. Carpenter was entrusted by the
Admiralty with the scientific direction of the expedition,
and he was accompanied by Professor Thomson and one of
his own sons.

This was the beginning of the series of deep-sea re-
searches, in which for four years Dr. Carpenter bore so
conspicuous a part, until they culminated in the despatch
of the Challenger on its voyage round the world. These
expeditions involved no small amount of work. Special
apparatus was necessary for dredging and for temperature-
soundings, which was only perfected after various prelimi-
nary trials. The plan of operations had to be carefully
designed in consultation with the authorities of the Ad-
miralty ; and their results in due course begot reports,
which grew both in bulk and in importance with succes-
5

92 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

sive years. Nor were the cruises themselves an unalloyed
pleasure, though they brought with them hours of rapturous
scientific bliss. Again and again, when Dr. Carpenter
joined his vessel, he was worn and jaded with protracted
work through the hottest days of the year, when, unfortu-
nately, the severest pressure of University duty coincided
with his least physical capacity to bear it. He knew that
he would pass days together, perhaps a week, in his berth
at the outset, and again with every gale ; and that the
liability to sickness and discomfort would haunt him
through the entire voyage. But for the brilliant success
of the first expedition, he would hardly, perhaps, have had
courage to attempt another.

The ship first assigned to the investigators was the
Lightning ; it had passed the days of its youth, for it had
been built in 1824; nor was it constructed in accordance
with modern ideas of speed, as it was the earliest steam-
vessel in her Majesty's service. " Our old tub," wrote Dr.
Carpenter, somewhat disconsolately, " cannot, at the best,
" make mere than seven miles an hour ! " The weather was
abominable ; even the officers and men were sick ; and it
was often too rough to attempt to dredge. The kindness
of the Danish Governor and his lady, while the ship was at
Thorshavn, the chief harbour of the Faroe Islands, and
agreeable intercourse with the Dean of the Islands, and
the Rector of the High School, relieved the tedium of
confinement to the little cabin. Once more at sea, they
encountered fresh resistance from wind and wave, as though
the waters resented their inquisitorial activity, and were
determined to baffle all efforts to probe the secrets of their
depths. But at length the day of compensation dawned.

DEEP-SEA RESEARCHES. 93

To Mrs. Carpenter.

On board the Lightning, September 6, 1S68.
This morning, after two days' interdiction, we had our most
interesting result. At 530 fathoms the temperature was 47°
(probably on account of the Gulf Stream), and we have brought
up in a muddy ooze a most remarkable set of new and large
forms of siliceous sponges, with which Thomson is especially
delighted, together with others previously discovered and re-
cently described by Loven, as well as small specimens of the
Hyalonema (Japanese flint-rope) and its encrusting Polype ; the
whole giving materials for completely settling the questions lately
discussed between Gray and Bowerbank, in which Thomson has
intervened, and (as at present appears) entirely in favour of
Thomson's views. He is, of course, greatly delighted, and now
says that it was quite worth a week's misery to get these.

September 7.
After I wrote yesterday afternoon, we had the intense satis-
faction of meeting with two specimens of jRhizocriims, not very
good ones, but serving to prove the existence of this type in the
open ocean, and therefore (presumably) in considerable quanti-
ties, if we can only hit upon the spots where it abounds, as we
have fortimately done with the sponges. This completes the
success of our expedition in everything that we hoped to do,
except that the zoology of the Faroe fjords proved much less
interesting than we had anticipated. We have proved that dredg-
ing at 500 or 550 fathoms involves no more difficulty, where
there is adequate power, than dredging at 100 fathoms. We
have found out the best form of dredge and the best material
for the bag. We have got all the Norwegian forms to which we
alluded in our letters as carrying us back to older types. We
have added a great deal to our knowledge of geographical dis-
tribution, and have shown how much more it depends on the
temperature than on the pressure of the deep sea ; and we
have a set of observations on this subject which are of first-
rale importance. As complete novelties from 500 fathoms and
more, we have not only the series of siliceous sponges, but also

94 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

some very curious Rhizopods, with sandy envelopes. And what
was of special interest as marking the tropical source of the
warm band, was the presence of two large forms of shelly Fo-
raminifera, of types precisely corresponding to those of warm
waters, and living. If they had been dead, they might have
been regarded as mere drifts.

A week later the ship found shelter again in Storno-
vvay. From this haven of rest, in the light of their recent
successes, the memory of their first troubles faded away.

Nothing but the strong motive which induced me to make
the original application (wrote Dr. Carpenter) would have kept
me up through its early miseries and discouragements. If we
had had to come home with our tails between our legs, instead
of with the flying colours with which our ship was literally decked
when we came into port, my present feelings would have been
very different.

The results of these investigations were summed up in
two important generalizations. In the first place, the phe-
nomena of temperature led Dr. Carpenter to conjecture
that besides what is properly called the Gulf Stream, i.e.
" the current of heated water which issues from the Gulf
" of Mexico," there was a " continual interchange between
" the oceanic waters of equatorial and polar regions." The
water cooled in the polar seas, he argued, must sink, and
displace the water that is warmer than itself, pushing it
away towards the equator. In the deepest parts of the
ocean, therefore, there would be a progressive movement
in the equatorial direction ; whilst, conversely, the warm
water of the tropical seas, being the lighter, would spread
itself north and south over the surface of the ocean, and
would thus move towards the polar regions, losing its heat
as it approached them, till, under the influence of polar cold,
it again sank to the bottom, and the same round was re-
traced anew. This view of ocean-circulation had been, in

DEEP-SEA RESEARCHES. 95

fact, already offered by the French physicist, Pouillet, and
also by the Russian physicist, Lenz, with whose expositions
of it Dr. Carpenter afterwards became acquainted, though
they had not given any precise indication of the forces
which would keep up the movement. It had failed to win
acceptance, and the current doctrine on the subject was
that of Sir John Herschel.

With indefatigable industry, Dr. Carpenter set himself
to establish his own conception, as he hoped, beyond refu-
tation. In papers before scientific societies, in private
discussions, in popular lectures, in magazine articles, he
reasoned and expounded ; he urged fresh illustrations ; he
met and overcame unexpected difficulties. The facts ac-
cumulated in subsequent expeditions, and the masterly
combinations in which he arranged them, at length began
to produce the desired effect. In a letter, written only a
month before his death, in 1871, Sir John Herschel ac-
cepted the new teaching, which also won the sanction of
such distinguished authorities as Sir William Thomson and
the Astronomer Royal,

The second suggestion was due to Professor Wyville
Thomson. The animals brought up alive from the chalk-
like deposit then in progress over what the temperature-
soundings proved to be a relatively warm area, distinguished
from a cold area at no great distance, presented many
points of most interesting relationship to the Fauna of the
Cretaceous period. Was it not possible, then, surmised
Professor Thomson, that the deposit of Globigerina-mud
had been going on, over some part or other of the North-
Atlantic sea-bed, from the Cretaceous epoch to the present
time } Might we not, indeed, be said to be, in one sense,
still living in the Cretaceous epoch ?

To the solution of these and other problems generated
by the first cruise, successive expeditions were devoted.

96 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

Her Majesty's surveying-vessel Porcupine, under the com-
mand of Captain Calver, was assigned for the service, and
proceeded, in 1869, to work over the ground traversed by
the Lightning, as well as to investigate new fields ; while
in 1870 it was sent to the Mediterranean. The following
passages from Dr. Carpenter's letters home will show his
interest in the scientific work and in the new scenes to
which he was introduced.

Thorshavn, August 22, 1869.
I have now to tell you of a most remarkable and unexpected
revelation. Our dredgings last year brought in so little from
the bottom of the cold area except stones and sand, that we
concluded that animal life is very scanty under that low tem-
perature. Captain Calver, however, having bethought him of
attaching swabs to the dredge, so as to sweep the bottom as
well as to scrape it, these swabs have come up teeming with
life, when there was next to nothing in the dredge but sand and
stones. And though a great deal of this consists of common
things, yet we have obtained in this way some specimens of ex-
traordinary interest. Thus in one place we brought up several
specimens of the large Comafula Eschrichtii, a well-known
Greenland and Icelandic type, obtained there in shallow waters.
But our great catch has been an extraordinary sponge, with a
thick and dense branching axis like that of a Gorgonia, en-
tirely disconnected from the flesh which clothes it, and of a
bright-green colour. This came up in abundance on Friday
morning, the dredge having been down for several hours of the
night, and pulled in at four in the morning. W. T. and I were
on deck by five, though the morning was decidedly uncom-
fortable, cold, with a drizzling rain ; and we forgot all about
the weather in our interest in this and the abundance of other
things brought up by the swabs. They were perfectly gay with
bright-coloured Echinoderms, purple, red, and orange ; and
■when I detached several of these and put them in a basin
with some of the green stems of the sponges, and bright-
yellow Comatulae, I thought I had never seen a more beautiful
display of animal colour. Yet this came from a bottom of sand

DEEP-SEA RESEARCHES. 97

and stones, at a depth of about 600 fathoms, presumably in
utter darkness, at a temperature of 30°, and with 40 per cent,
of carbonic acid in the atmosphere of dissolved gases. I can
scarcely conceive a more complete boulevcrsement of our ordinary
biological notions than is given by this remarkable disclosure of
the condition of this bottom.

Stornoway, September 9, 1869.
On Tuesday we brought up a great prize, an Echinoderm,
which (Thomson is sure) is " brand-new, but intensely old," i.e.
a form which belongs to the Chalk, but was supposed to be quite
extinct. It is something like an Echinus which has been sat
upon, so as to be flattened out into a round cake ; its peculiarity
being that whilst it has the same general plan of structure, the
plates are disconnected from each other, and some of the
meridional bands are wanting, so that there is a general loose-
ness about the frame, which gives it a most curious feel when laid
living on the hand. The discovery of this living type at once
gives the clue to the interpretation of the fossil Echinothiiria,
which had previously been accounted very problematical, and
supplies an instance equally interesting with Hhizocrmus, of the
persistence of Cretaceous types, thus adding strong support to
Thomson's hypothesis. In the evening the dredge was put over,
and allowed to trail all night with the swabs attached. Hearing
the heaving-in a little before five a.m., I got up and went on
deck, where Thomson aheady was, and there we saw a sight
we shall not easily forget : the swabs loaded with Holteiiias, of
which there were at least two buckets full, besides multitudes of
other things, nearly all of them specially interesting, as a new
species of Cidaris, nearer to the Chalk forms than the common
one, numerous specimens of star-fish, of which we had previously
only two or three, and of which there are probably no specimens
in any other than Scandinavian museums, two very fine specimens
of Hyalonema, many small siliceous sponges, and last (but by
no means least) a second specimen of the EchiiwtJiuria. This
I was greatly rejoiced at for Thomson's sake, as he can now
work out the anatomy of the animal without mutilating his first
and best specimen. This brought our work to a most trium-
phant conclusion, this haul being as much beyond any previous
one in interest as was our corresponding haul last year.

98 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

In the next summer, when the Poraipine was anchored
off Goletta, the little harbour of Tunis, science gave way to
sight-seeing. The Mediterranean had, in fact, yielded less
zoological results than were expected ; but even this nega-
tive issue was not without its consolations. " After all," re-
flected Dr. Carpenter, " it was something to have found out
*' that there was nothing to find."

Malta, September 13, 1870.

On Monday morning we got up very early, breakfasting at
five o'clock, to go up to Tunis, for which the little steamer that
runs up and down the lake ordinarily leaves at six. But when
we got on shore we learned that there was not enough water in
the lake, and had to take a carriage to drive round it. This
was tiresome, as the drive was very uninteresting, the country
being quite level for miles round, and very arid, the only green
at this season being that of the olive tree. The only feature of
interest was a fine group of mountains at some distance, about
the scale of Goatfell and Ben Huish,* and not unlike them in
outline. The appearance of Tunis itself did not improve as we
approached it. Excepting a few villas, which are chiefly occupied
as consular residences, it is entirely included within a wall ; and
when we passed the gates we found ourselves in very narrow
roads, with continuous dead walls on either side, ocoasionally
pierced by doorways, which led to the interior of the houses.

We at last came into the principal open space of the town,
where what were formerly the palaces of the Bey and his principal
ministers are now the consular and other public offices, the
palaces being outside the walls. Having learned that the Bey
sits on Monday mornings at his palace to hear causes, we at
once went on to it, and found it a by no means imposing-looking
building, with numerous courtyards, at some distance outside
the town. We were shown into a room, from which we had a
view of one of these courtyards, in which the guard was relieved,
with the usual European ceremonial and the performance of the
military band. There was something in the whole affair which

* Mountains in Arran, which constantly served as a family standard for
comparison.

DEEP-SEA RESEARCHES. 99

impressed all of us with the feeling of its being very like a scene
in a theatre, the marching and costumes of the men being very-
like that of the supers on the stage. The music was simply
hideous, the different instruments playing in unison or octave
without the slightest idea of harmony, and leaving off on the most
unexpected notes. Two or three times we were told that the Bey
was coming ; but, after waiting an hour, we found that he had
gone over to another place. We followed thither, and learned
to our mortification that he had just finished his sitting. We
were shown the hall in which it had taken place, which was
more like a long corridor ; and we were told that the suitor has
to stand at one end of this, and to ' make his statement ' * to
an officer near him, who repeats it to another a litde way off,
and at last it reaches the Bey, with such modifications and vari-
ations as it may have sustained in its transit. Of course, any
questions from the Bey's end have to go through the reverse
process ; while the replies will again find their way to him as at
first. Fancy the proceedings of an English court of justice being
carried on on such a system !

The new palace has, built into it, several relics from the
remains of Carthage ; entirely, as I should judge, of the Chris-
tian times, when Carthage was an important Roman city and a
bishop's see \ among these was a pair of columns, ten or twelve
feet high, of brass.

We then returned to town and went to the bazaar, which is
the place of all buying and selling, except what is carried on in
some little shops of the meanest kind elsewhere. This is a most
curious place. It is a series of narrow and tortuous arcades,
completely arched over, except in one central spot, where they
all meet Tliis, at the frequented time (eleven a.m.) at which
we chanced to be there, was full of people, some buyers, but
many sellers : people who have got no shops, but carry their
goods on their heads, screaming and shouting what they have
to announce. In these arcades the only light is from a hole
left here and there in the arched roof; yet this is sufficient in
the middle of the day to give as much as is needful. The shops

* Another home phrase, derived from the habit of certain members of the
family, whose conversation on subjects in which they were interested, was apt
to become monologue.

loo MEMORIAL SKETCH.

are the queerest little dens imaginable, just about the same size
and arrangement as those of the beasts at the Zoo. You stand
in front of them, and the dealer sits cross-legged on the raised
floor, rising to get any of the goods on shelves disposed round his
den. All those of one trade congregate in the same arcade, and
the stocks of the several dealers are very small. Of the larger
articles, it often happens that each man has only one of a kind,
and if you do not like it, you either go on to another dealer, or
the shop-keeper will collect other specimens from his neighbours.
There does not seem to be any rivalry among them, but each
deals for his neighbours as well as for himself. In many of these
dens the manufacture is going on. This is especially the case
with the red Fez, which is now gradually taking the place of the
turbans, etc., among the various races along the Mediterranean,
and of which all the best that are sold come from Tunis. . . .

The next morning we again got up early to pay a visit to the
Consul, who had arrived from England the day before, and to
see the remains of Carthage, which lie near the entrance of the
bay of Tunis. There is now nothing of a port, and it is difficult
to see how there ever can have been a harbour of any importance ;
but there is a massive ruined wall extending far into the interior,
notwithstanding that a great deal of the stone has been taken
to build houses in the neighbourhood. But that which was
especially worth seeing was a great series of very large under-
ground cisterns, like dry docks, lined with brick, and arched
over, for the storing of water brought by an aqueduct from
mountains at many miles distance. There were two rows of
these, of which seventeen have been uncovered in each, and
there may be many more still buried and filled up. I never saw
so gigantic a public work.

I find Malta a very interesting place, and the harbour and
fortifications are wonderful. We went a long drive yesterday to
see some places of interest in the interior of the island, and
more especially St. Paul's Bay. This was very much what I
expected from Mr. James Smith's plan of it,* and I seemed able

* Mr. James Smith, of Jordan Hill, near Glasgow, an old fellow-student of
Dr. Lant Carpenter, had devoted special attention to the record of St. Paul's
voyage, which he had investigated in his own yacht. His results were published
in a book entitled " The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul."

DEEP-SEA RESEARCHES. loi

to fix almost precisely on the spot where the ship grounded :
the point on which he is said to have landed has a small chapel
to commemorate the event. The interest of the association is
somewhat marred by the erection of a new set of villas near the
shore, as the locality is thouglit to be suitable for a bathing-
place !

Nothing can exceed the aridity of the country, the surface
of which is, at this season, almost entirely bare of vegetation,
except the cotton-plant, which is extensively cultivated, and is
now just ripening. The land is everywhere divided up by stone
walls into enclosures of varying size, but scarcely any trees are
to be seen anywhere. These will all be sown at the beginning
of the rainy season, and in a few weeks everything will be ver-
dant. The population of the island is enormous, more than
120,000, in an area much smaller than that of the Isle of Wight.
How they all live is a mystery I have not yet been able to solve,
as all the food grown in the island will not keep them three
months in the year, and I cannot learn how they find means to
purchase the deficit. The lower class are chiefly sailors, and
go about all parts of the Mediterranean. The patois they speak
is based on Arabic, with a mixture of Italian words, and they
can make themselves understood all along the African coast,
from Egypt to Tangier, though the people of Egypt, Tripoli,
Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco, speak very differently among them-
selves. They seldom, however, go beyond the Mediterranean,
and come back to Malta as their home whenever anything goes
wrong with them elsewhere.

Gibraltar, September 29, 1870.

We learn here of the fall of Strasburg, the surrender of Metz,
and the investment of Paris. I have had a long talk with Sir
F. Williams this morning, and find him strongly anti-Gallican.
He has been a good deal in France during the last two years,
and has seen how the people and the Emperor have been egging
each other on, in their desire to pick a quarrel with Prussia, with
a view to obtain further territorial extension. He says, very
truly, Europe stood by without interfering when France acquired
Savoy and Nice ; why should France interfere with the consoli-
dation of Germany ? Paris complains now of being besieged by

102 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

Prussia, when at the beginning of the war the universal ciy of the
French army was "k Bedin." This was even chalked on the
baggage and ammunition waggons. . . . It is Sir F. Williams's
opinion that of all men now living, Thiers is the man who most
contributed to the present state of things, both by helping to
make the exaltation of France the one idea of the French
. people, and also by inducing Louis Philippe to fortify Paris,
which now makes it the special point of attack by the
Prussians.

The attention excited by the deep-sea researches, and
the value of the discoveries already made, led Dr. Carpen-
ter to project a plan for investigations on a still wider
scale. Mr. Lowe, then member for the University of
London, and Chancellor of the Exchequer in Mr. Glad-
stone's first administration, took a v/arm interest in the
work. " Though time is a scarce commodity just now," he
had written from Downing Street in March, 1870, "I have
" not been able to deny myself the pleasure of reading your
" lecture. It fills me with interest and admiration. You may
" rely on my support for further experiments of a like
"nature." This support was cordially given to the larger
proposals which Dr. Carpenter now ventured to lay before
Mr. Goschen, who at that time presided over the Admiralty,
for the scientific circumnavigation of the globe. In the
summer of 1871 these proposals received the practical
sanction of the Cabinet, and Dr. Carpenter felt that a
heavy responsibility rested upon himself to do all in his
power to render such an expedition successful. Many
considerations seemed to point to his own assumption of
its scientific direction. He possessed an unusual range of
knowledge, a very varied experience of affairs, an eminent
position, and he had given special proof of his ability to
conduct investigations alike in the physics, the zoology,
and the geology of the deep sea. There were, of course,

DEEP-SEA RESEARCHES. 103

considerations of another kind arising out of the peculiar
risks to his own health, his home, his University duties ;
but he felt himself ready to make any sacrifice for his love
of knovvledge for its own sake. These thoughts, blended
with what may be called his family-consciousness, were in
the background of his mind when he wrote from the Shear-
water* to his sister, Mary Carpenter, who, earlier in the
year, had been contemplating a fourth visit to India.

To Mary Carpenter.

Gibraltar, August 25, 187 1.
Your going out to India seems now little more than my
going out for a vacation cruise ; and it seems as clearly your
mission to carry on the work of female education in India,
as it is mine to prosecute the science of the deep sea. You
have found your work, as Carlyle says, and I have found mine.
I have been reading again, on this voyage, Carlyle's " Life of
John vSterling." Poor Sterling, from a combination of circum-
stances, never found his work, though having all the will to do
it. On the other hand, Coleridge had with his vast powers
and influence on the thought of the time, no end of work to
do, but had no will to do it. When Sterling had made up his
mind to leave the Church, Carlyle says, " What is to be done ?
Something must be done and soon, under penalties. Whoever
has received, on him there is an inexorable behest to give !
Fais ton fait. Do thy little stroke of work ! This is Nature's
voice, and the sum of all the commandments to each man."
The more I see of human life and experience, the more I see
how true this is ; and how all individual considerations should be
kept in subservience to great ends, when we have a right to
feel assured that they are truly great and good. You, my
dear sister, have the happiness of feeling that your ends are
in the most eminent degree both great and good, as bearing

* The Shearwater, under command of Captain (now Sir George) Nares,
was on its way to the Red Sea for surveying work. It had been arranged
that Dr. Carpenter should carry out some investigations in the Mediterranean
oil the way.

104 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

immediately on the moral as well as on the intellectual ele-
vation of great masses of our fellow-men and women. My
work (I mean my scientific work) is of a very different cha-
racter, and has not, apparently, a direct moral bearing, how-
ever high its intellectual value. But I feel sure that the
single-minded pursuit of truth for its own sake, without a
thought of selfish aims, has its effect not only in raising the
character of the individual, but in elevating the moral standard
of the educated community ; and I am sure that I can trace
this in the greater earnestness, sincerity, and thoroughness of
the leading scientific men of my own standing, as compared
with many of those of the generation now passing away. I
do not think the same of mere intellectual acquirement ; though
even here the thoroughness on which our dear father used to
lay so much stress, is a valuable moral discipline. So, my
dear sister, let us, the eldest daughter and the eldest son,
bearing the name which we so much venerate, go on our
several ways ; carrying out each in her and his own way the
objects in which our dear parents would have felt so much
interest.

It was highly characteristic of Dr. Carpenter at this
crisis that he placed the decision as to his scientific duty in
other hands. He felt that the fascination of the prospect
of devoting the rest of his life to original investigations for
which he believed himself specially qualified, might be-
come one of those " dominant ideas," the presence of which
he could so often detect in the conduct and dispositions of
others. He consulted those in whose wise judgment he
felt the fullest confidence, and he returned from the Medi-
terranean that autumn perfectly content to tread the
accustomed round. He never looked back. In all the
preparations for the Challenger Expedition he took an
active share, and he saw it depart without a pang. There
were still fresh interests to occupy his mind, and more
work for him to do at home.

DARWINISM IN ENGLAND. 105

VIII.

The conclusion of this chapter of Dr. Carpenter's active
labour may fitly be followed by a semi-autobiographical
summary of his views on " Darwinism in England," drawn
up during his second Mediterranean cruise, and published
in a little Valetta journal named // Barth* in December,
18S1.

I have been so frequently asked by Continental savans
what English naturalists think of Mr. Darwin's views, that it
may not be an unprofitable use of a short interval of leisure
which my detention in Malta forces upon me, if I attempt
briefly to answer the question.

To do this, I must say something of the state of opinion
among British naturalists previous to the appearance of Mr.
Darwin's " Origin of Species." I can myself remember the
time when the " fixity of species " was the generally accepted
doctrine among zoologists and botanists ; when much greater
stress was laid upon points of difference than upon points of
agreement ; and when far more credit was attached to the
multiplication of species by attention to minute differences than
to the reduction of their number by such a careful comparison
of numerous individuals as proved these differences to be in-
constant and gradational. So, again, it was the general creed
of the older palaeontologists that each geological period had a
fauna and a flora of its own, every, member of which must be
specifically distinct from that which preceded and followed it;
a complete extinction of all the types of life then existing having
taken place at the end of every such period, and an entirely neiv
creation having ushered in the next. This school has been
represented among Continental naturalists to a recent period
by men of such eminence as M. D'Orbigny and Professor
Agassiz ; but it has long since died out in Britain. All our
most esteemed zoologists and botanists have latterly studied

* A larcije part of this was afterwards embodied in a paper entitled,
"Charles Darwin: his Life and Work," Modern Review^ July, 1SS2. A
few verbal changes made in this paper are here introduced.

io6 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

the range of variation of each reputed species, as one of the
most essential features of its character; whilst our ablest
Palaeontologists have laboured with success in tracing the
identity of numerous species whose remains occur in forma-
tions stratigraphically distinct. It was, indeed, a favourite
doctrine of the late Professor Edward Forbes, that there was a
constant relation between the range of any species in space and
its range in titne ; i.e. that in proportion as the constitution of
any species adapted it to diversities in climate, food, etc., so as
to permit its extension over a wide geographical area, in that
proportion would it have been able to accommodate itself to
changes in the same condition, so as to hold its ground through
successive geological periods. Further, it had come to be per-
ceived that where the stratigraphical continuity is the closest,
there is the greatest resemblance between the successive faunae,
as in the case of the different members of the Cretaceous
series ; and further, that where there is an interruption to such
continuity in one locality, the gap is often bridged over else-
where. And even as regards those great separations which
were reputed to mark the terminations of the Palaeozoic and of
the Mesozoic series respectively, it was generally believed by
geologists of the newer school that the interruption was more
apparent than real; depending merely on the want of inter-
mediate beds in that small portion of the globe which has been
hitherto explored. A geologist who has formed his notions of
stratigraphical succession from a country where Tertiary strata
immediately overlie Silurian, would find that tremendous hiatus
in great degree filled up by the intermediate series presented in
England alone ; and, in like manner, if the British geologist
could carry his researches into areas which were submerged
when Palaeozoic and Cretaceous Europe were above the sea, he
could doubtless find abundant evidence of gradational passage
to the Mesozoic and Eocene. Such gradations, it is now well
known, are not wanting within the limits of Europe, and are
very obvious elsewhere.

Even in the pre-Darvvinian epoch, then, many of our most
thouglitful naturalists were disposed to admit (i) that no definite
limits can be assigned to the variation of any species without

DARWINISM IN ENGLAND. 107

the careful collection and comparison of examples of the type
throughout the entire extent of its geographical and geological
range, and (2) that a very considerable amount of geiieric con-
tinuity existed between the fauna and flora of successive strata,
extending in all probability to what are known as representative
species ; as well as to types between which the gradational
passage could be shown to be complete. These doctrines I
myself strongly advocated in the first of the memoirs on Fora-
minifera (entirely devoted to the genus Orbitolites), which I
have presented at various times to the Royal Society ; and
I therein cited, in support of them, the experience of several of
my most esteemed brother-naturalists, whose views on this
question were altogether in accordance with my own. And if
these doctrines be admitted, it becomes obvious that the range
of any true species in geological time would be determined only
by the degree of its capacity to accommodate itself to changes
in the conditions of its existence; and that there is no a priori
reason why marine types having a large capacity of this kind
should not maintain their existence through a long succession
of epochs. That existing species of mollusca are met with even
in the earliest Tertiary strata, and in increasing proportion in
the later, had been demonstrated by M. Deshayes, and made by
Sir C. Lyell the foundation of his classification of the Tertiary
series. That numerous types of Foraminifera and Diatomacese
characteristic of the Cretaceous period are existing at the present
time, had been shown by Professor Ehrenberg. And Messrs.
Parker and Rupert Jones had shown the identity of even Triassic
Foraminifera with types still inhabiting the Mediterranean.

However limited in scope were these pre-Darwinian views,
as compared with those developed in the " Origin of Species,"
they had taken the same direction, and in some degree pre-
pared the way for their reception ; as had also an application of
Von Baer's great doctrine of Development from the General to the
Special^ which was first (I believe) put forward by Professor
Broun, and which I myself worked out (in ignorance of his
having already done so) in the third edition of my " General
and Comparative Physiology." For I there dwelt upon several
cases in which the earlier forms of certain great types presented

io8 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

genei'alizeil combinations of characters, which subsequently be-
came more and more distinctly specialized in the progress of
geological time. But I put forth this merely as an expression
of the plan according to which the succession of animal and
vegetable forms had been created, not as indicating any genetic
continuity between the earlier and the later. Some years before,
indeed, while criticizing the "Vestiges of the Natural History
of Creation," and exposing the unsoundness of the author's
data and the fallacy of his reasonings, I had taken occasion to
say that I had not the least objection, either philosophical or
theological, to the doctrine of Progressive Development, if only
it could be shown to have a really scientific basis : since the
development of the very highest type of animal life from the
very lowest, during the long succession of geological ages, did
not seem to me more strange than the actual development of
that same type during a nine months' gestation. And I had
further argued that it really involves a far higher idea of Creative
Design to believe that a small number of types of organic life
originally introduced were continuously evolved in the course
of geological ages, according to a definite and unchanging plan,
into a countless variety of forms suitable to the "conditions of
existence " at each period, and finally into the flora and fauna
of the present epoch, — than to suppose that the changes which
successively took place in those conditions necessitated inter-
ferences from time to time on the part of the Creator, in com-
pensating, by the creation of new species, for the extinction of
the old. For, to compare great things with small, we regard
the production of a chronometer whose pendulum or balance-
spring is furnished with a self-acting compensation for changes
of temperature, as a higher effort of constructive skill than the
production of an ordinary clock or watch, in which the needful
compensations have to be made, as occasion requires by the
interposition of an external power.

By those who had been following the line of thought I have
just indicated, the publication of Mr. Darwin's " Origin of
Species " was felt, as by myself, to be the inauguration of a
new era in a biological science. It gave a distinct shape to
ideas on which many of us had been pondering as vague specu-

DARWINISM IN ENGLAND. 109

lative possibilities. It showed that the doctrine of Progressive
Development might be put into the form of a definite scientific
hypothesis; in favour of which a vast mass of evidence could
be adduced, whilst the objections to its acceptance were shown
to arise chiefly out of that " imperfection of the geological
record" which we were all prepared to admit. It showed that
on general grounds the probability of a genetic continuity of
organic life throughout the geological series— the fauna and
flora of any epoch being the product of "descent with modifica-
tion" from that which preceded it, — is far greater than that of
successive n^\s creations. And to such as admitted this, it was
plain that the conclusion can scarcely be evaded, that as the
tendency throughout has been clearly one of progressive dif-
ferentiation or specialization, the number of original types might
have been very small — perhaps even a single primordial "jelly-
speck " being the common ancestor of all.

But we could not attach the importance which Mr. Darwin
seemed to do, to the doctrine of Natural Selection, or the
" survival of the fittest," as in itself an adequate explanation of
the progressive modifications that have produced the long and
diversified succession of animal and vegetable forms which have
peopled our globe from the first appearance of life on its surface
to the present time. The instances adduced by Mr. Darwin as
results of artificial selection were cases of varietal modification
only ; and he was unable to prove that the character which
most strongly marks what the naturalist had been accustomed
to accept as a true species — viz. its incapacity for producing with
any congener an intermediate self-sustaining race — is otherwise
than fixed and permanent. All that he could show is that
va?'ieties placed under artificial conditions may come to be so
far differentiated constitutionally as to breed together with
difiiculty. But of the actual origination of what a philosophical
botanist or zoologist would accept as a true species, incapable
of breeding except with its own type, I do not recollect that he
was able to produce any instance whatever. If, then, Natural
Selection could not be shown to have produced a new species,
still less could it be looked to as a vera causa, for the establish-
ment of still greater differences.

no MEMORIAL SKETCH.

But it is further obvious that Natural Selection can only
operate where a capacity for variation is inherent in the type.
There are some types of which the range of variation is so
restricted that they can only exist at all under certain combina-
tions of conditions ; their distribution, therefore, being limited
alike in space and in time. There are others which have a
much wider range, being able to adapt themselves to great
diversities in external conditions ; but it cannot be justly said
that the variations which these present are " spontaneous."
Every effect requires a cause. Natural Selection is assuredly
not that cause, since its effect is only to perpetuate, among
varietal forms, that one which best suits the conditions of exist-
ence. Consequently we must look io forces acting either within
or without the organism, as the real agents in producing what-
ever developmental variations it may take on. Of the action of
such forces, we at present know scarcely anything; and Mr.
Darwin has not given us much help towards the solution of the
problem.* But this much seems to me clear : that just as there
is at the present time a determinate capacity for a certain fixed
kind of development in each germ, in virtue of which one
evolves itself into a zoophyte, and another (though not originally
distinguishable from it) into a man, so must the primordial
germs have been endowed each with its determinate capacity
for a particular course of development ; in virtue of which it
has evolved the whole succession of forms that has ultimately
proceeded from it. That the " accidents " of Natural Selection
should hsiwe produced that orderly succession, is to my own mind
inconceivable ; I cannot but believe that its evolution was part
of the original Creative Design ; and that the operation of
Natural Selection has been simply to limit the survivorship,
among the entire range of forms that have thus successively
come into existence, to those which were suited to maintain that
existence at each period.

* In 1882 this last clause ran thus : — "But Mr. Darwin has himself most
" fully recognized the need of them. His latest utterance on the subject is that
" 'at the present time there is hardly any question in biology of more import-
" 'ance than that of the nature and causes of variability.' I cannot, then, be
"accused of undervaluing 1 )arvvin's work, in pointing out that what I originally
"felt to be its weakest part, still remains incomplete."

DARWINISM IN ENGLAND. iii

That something of this kind is felt by most of those British
naturaHsts who, hke myself, accept the doctrine of continuity
by " descent with modification," is more than I can possibly
affirm ; but I believe that such as have thought most deeply on
the subject are quite satisfied that the doctrine of Natural
Selection docs not of I'tse// afford an adequate explanation of the
phenomena that have to be accounted for. Of that genetic
continuity, however, every extension of palteontological know-
ledge affords additional evidence. A most striking example is
afforded by the gradual divarication of the Ruminant and
Pachyderm orders, and of the family subdivisions of the latter,
which can be now traced through the Tertiary and Quaternary
series. Every naturalist knows that the Anoplotherium and
other mammals whose fossil remains occur in the Eocene
Tertiaries of Paris, presented most remarkable combinations of
pachyderm and ruminant characters, which are completely
separated and specialized in Pliocene and post-Pliocene genera.
A few years ago a remarkable collection of mammalian fossils
was discovered at Pikermi in Greece ; and the study of these,
most carefully prosecuted by M. Gaudry, of the Jardin des
Plantes, has shown that they supplied such a number of
" missing links," that the genetic derivation of the latter more
specialized types from the earlier more generalized could scarcely
remain a matter of doubt to any naturalist not previously
wedded to the doctrine of special creations. On the basis of a
very careful examination of the whole series as completed by
recent American discoveries, Professor Huxley has been able
to construct a " Pedigree of the Horse," so complete that nothing
is now wanting to its entire continuity from the Eocene period
to the present.

Again, the Deep-Sea researches in which it has been my
privilege to bear a part, have shown that a large number of
Cretaceous Echinoderms, Corals, Sponges, and Foraminifera,
as well as of Tertiary Mollusca, supposed to be extinct, survive
in the depth of the ocean at the present time ; these types being
in some cases specifically identical, whilst in others the modifica-
tion they have undergone is so limited as to justify their being
accounted representative species. This has been the result^ not

113 MEMORIAL SKETCH. .

merely of the dredging expeditions conducted by my colleagues
(Professor Wyville Thomson and Mr. J. Gvvyn Jeffreys) and
myself, but also of the like exploration carried on by the
United States Coast Survey in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere.
[One of the most characteristic examples of it is presented by
the little Rhizocritius Lofotensis ; the discovery of which by
G. Sars, off the coast of Norway, in 1866, gave the start to our
own work. For this is clearly a dwarfed and deformed repre-
sentative of the highly-developed Apiocrimis (Pear encrinite)
of the Bradford clay (Wiltshire Oolite) ; which, as my friend
Wyville Thomson said, " seems to have been going to the bad
" for millions of years,'' under the influence of a reduced
temperature.]

To most English naturalists it seems premature at present
to attempt to construct a pedigree of the animal kingdom
generally, as has been done by Professor Haeckel and other
naturalists in Germany. It appears that the palseontological as
well as the developmental history of each group must be much
more completely ascertained before any but tentative arrange-
ments of this kind can be formed. Thus, while some of us
have found no difficulty in believing that all existing birds have
arisen from one common stock, the derivation of that stock from
a common stirps with the reptilian at first appeared almost
inconceivable ; birds and reptiles being physiologically almost
the antithesis of each other. But the discovery of the Archse-
opteryx has shown that a true bird may have a prolonged and
distinctly jointed tail. The careful comparison made by Mr.
Seeley of the skull of the Pterodactyl with that of the Fowl, led
him to conclude that the former must have had a development
of brain scarcely inferior to the latter, and was likely, therefore,
to have had a circulation as vigorous and complete as that of
birds. [And the researches of Professor Marsh in the Cretaceous
strata of North America, have brought together a vast numljer
of "missing links" in the form of Pterodactyls which resemble
birds in the want of teeth, and cf birds which correspond with
reptiles in the possession of them.] Further, the development
of the Struthious birds, which were formerly supposed to have
the closest mammalian affinities, is now found to be much mure

DARWINISM IN ENGLAND. 113

reptilian than mammalian ; while certain Dinosaurian reptiles
present distinct indications of progress towards birds. And
thus it does not seem at all unlikely that evidence may here-
after be obtained, which may adequately support the idea of
the descent even of birds and reptiles from a common
ancestor.*

In the mean time I think I may say with confidence that all
British naturalists who are not dominated by the prejudices of
a bygone age, accept the general doctrine of Continuity as —
to say the least — a good working hypothesis, under the guidance
of which their inquiries may be advantageously prosecuted;
and that they feel the great desideratum to be the acquirement
of such a knowledge of extinct types, as may give to the entire
pedigree of the animal and vegetable kingdoms a completeness
approaching that of the pedigrees already constructed for par-
ticular families ; and such an elucidation of the causes of varia-
tion as may show under what circumstances those marked
divergences of type took place, whereby distinct classes, orders,
families, and genera successively came into existence.

IX.

The cessation of the summer cruises in which Dr.
Carpenter took so active a share, and the completion of
the new building of the University of London, which had
involved him in much additional and anxious labour be-
yond his ordinary duties, set him free for other tasks. He
had become the secretary to the Gilchrist Educational Trust
on its first establishment in 1865, and was thus brought into
connection with a large number of educational movements
all over the country. This was especially the case with
the courses of popular scientific lectures for the working
classes in various large towns, the organization of which
fell chiefly upon him. He resumed his place himself upon

* In 1S82 : "And thus the evidence now in course of accumulation
"already afifoids adequate support to the idea, etc."

114 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

the platform, with the prestige of diversified experience
and eminent scientific authority. Winter after winter he
made a rapid tour, lecturing four or five nights a week, to
vast assemblies rising from twelve to eighteen hundred
people. His subjects often lay far apart ; sometimes they
were suggested by the physical or biological conditions of
the deep sea ; sometimes they dealt with popular applica-
tions of important physiological and psychological prin-
ciples, as when he discoursed of human automatism or
epidemic delusions ; or, again, they were fetched from his
experiences of travel, it might be in the Nile valley, or
(subsequently) at Niagara, when any chance listener who
had trodden the same ground would often find that he had
nearly as much to learn as those who had stayed at home.
In such discourses (and this was also characteristic of some
of his writing in later years), Dr. Carpenter often fell in-
stinctively into a sort of autobiographical vein. He had
been mixed up with so many important movements, and
had seen so much of their working, that it seemed the
most natural thing to him to illustrate almost every fresh
topic by his own personal experiences, or his own contribu-
tion of action, knowledge, or thought, to the matter under
discussion. Such references were not inconsistent with a
real modesty, though they did not always convey that
impression. They poured out from his lips, or his pen,
simply because they appeared to him the most suitable
to his purpose ; and they often stood side by side with
an original teaching of far higher value. In a lecture
oil Niagara, he once related what Oersted had said to
him about it in a way which excited some amusement
for its evidently unconscious egotism ; " but Oersted's re-
marks," it was observed, " which were the substance of
" the story, were commonplace compared to Dr. Car-
"penter's own comments, which were thrown in incident-

POPULAR LECTURES. 115

"ally and apparently with no sense of their greatly
"superior importance." To great popular audiences this
practice only seemed like taking them into a familiar
intimacy, and it made them feel immediately at ease. In
each new town which he visited, he was always interested
in the leading industries and manufactures ; and some
apt illustration, borrowed perhaps from a local process
which he had that morning witnessed, caught the atten-
tion of his hearers, which never flagged to the close.
Nothing, indeed, was more striking than the breathless
suspense with which a complicated argument would be
followed, the gathering excitement as the conclusion to
which it pointed first came distantly into view, and the
burst of applause attending its final demonstration. But
Dr. Carpenter was never dependent on the stimulus
afforded by these popular manifestations. He was very
generous of his time and thought even for small causes.
He would take as much pains to speak to a little band
assembled in the school-room at Hampstead,* or to the
poor and uncultivated at an East-end Mission, as to his
equals and critics at the Royal Institution, or the huge
and eager gatherings of a northern town.

Such lecture-tours, however, were the recreation of Dr.
Carpenter's spare time, rather than the occupation of the
working hours saved from his University duty. These
were devoted with unflagging vigour to the various
branches of research in which he was continuously en-
gaged. One little stream of notes and papers communi-
cated to the scientific periodicals dealt with his former
clients, Comatula and Eozoon. Another was concerned
with the theory of oceanic circulation, currents, tempera-

* Only last summer a gardener at Hampstead referred to a lecture on
mildew, delivered many years before, as having been of great practical use
to him.

ii6 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

ture, and the physical geography both of the deep and
inland seas. And a third, growing in bulk and importance,
related to the old questions of psychology and religious
philosophy, on which he had been silently pondering since
1854. He entered the field once more with papers on the
" Physiology of the Will " (1871), and "Common Sense"
(February, 1872). In the summer of 1872 he presided
over the meeting of the British Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science at Brighton, and took as the theme
of his address the interpretation of nature by man.* A
succession of articles on kindred topics followed in the
next three years, while he devoted himself to the project
which he had long entertained, of enlarging the outline of
.his chapters on the nervous system in the fourth edition
of his " Human Physiology." This was completed in
1874, under the title of "Principles of Mental Physiology,
with their Applications to the Training and Discipline of
the Mind, and the Study of its Morbid Conditions." Into
this book he poured much of his most earnest thought, his
observations on human character, his meditations on the
conduct of life. Starting from the functions of the dif-
ferent portions of the nervous system,")* he sketched the
natural history of thought and feeling, and discriminated
with the added precision of twenty years' consideration,
between the two spheres of automatic action and volitional
control. Reflection had only confirmed him in the views
which his physiological inquiries had originally generated ;
and he had accumulated a large store of illustrations, which
threw new and suggestive lights on the meaning of many
of the commonest experiences. The attention which he
had bestowed on many abnormal mental phenomena, and

* See below, p. 185.

t Subsequent investigations have thrown doubt on some of his positions,
but it is not perhaps too much to say that in the present state of knowledge
the view which he offers still remains more coherent than any other.

''MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY."^ 117

the openness of mind with which he surveyed them, gave
especial value to his treatment of difficult questions on
the border-land of the marvellous. Students of philo-
sophy who found that he approached their problems from
the scientific rather than the metaphysical side, sometimes
discovered gaps in his reasoning, even while they shared
his conclusions. This was especially the case in his dis-
cussions of speculative themes such as the nature of the
external world, or the presence of Mind and Will in the
Universe, to which the argument of the whole book was
one long prelude. He had not had a metaphysician's train-
ing ; and could not think in his language, or dwell at ease
with his abstractions. When he read the treatises of
Principal Caird or Professor Edward Caird, and attempted
to master the principles of Kant or Hegel, he felt himself
in a strange land, among men of other tongues which he
could not learn. But he believed that what was on one
side a limitation, might be on another a source of strength.
He managed to combine with the idealism of Berkeley
and Mill a robust realism which was intelligible to the
ordinary reader ; and he hoped that he might act as the
interpreter of important scientific truths to a growing
number of religious minds whose faith could not live in
the attenuated air of the new agnosticism.

One great desire I have (he wrote to his brother Russell
in the birthday letter, this time on the right date, of December,
1874), to be of some use as a mediator in the conflict which has
now distinctly begun between science and theology. I see
quite clearly that it is of no use to try to grapple with the sub-
ject unless one thoroughly masters the question on both sides.
On the scientific side I find it taking a development such as
I never dreamed of, as in Professor Clifford's Sunday 1-ecture
published in the last Fortnightly^ in which it is asserted that
there is no room for a God within the solar system ; while his
and H.'s doctrine of human automatism pure and simple, seems

ii8 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

to me to strike at the root of all moral responsibility. I am
going to reply to this in the Contemporary Review for Feb-
ruary. I know that there are a number of thoughtful people,
especially among the clergy, who look to me for guidance on
these matters, and I am anxious not to fail in giving it. I have
the greatest confidence in the ultimate prevalence of truth ; and
the surging up of the depths only makes me feel that the
bottom is reached more nearly than on previous occasions.

The interest excited by these varied labours was in-
dicated in the letters which Dr. Carpenter often received
from those who were eminent in philosophy, in public
affairs, and literature, of which the following criticisms and
acknowledgments may serve as specimens : —

From the Rev. Dr. Martineau.

Dolgelly, September 8, 1872.
I was presuming enough to hope for an authorized copy of
your Address,* and so refrained from looking at the imperfect
newspaper reports which fell in my way. Your kind remem-
brance of me in your presentations has enabled me to read it
with the careful attention it requires and repays. It is full of
interest from beginning to end ; and I need not say that its
main drift and purpose appear to me at once philosophical and
seasonable. The distinction on which you insist between the
" law " and the " cause " of phenomena is assuredly real and
of the utmost moment : and no survey of the ultimate logic of
science can be long regarded as adequate which does not pro-
vide for it. If I had taken in hand to enforce it, I should have
expressed myself (doubtless to the great disgust of my hearers)
in terms more metaphysical than you have deemed it needful to
employ, being convinced— possibly through over-estimate of my
habitual pursuits— that there is no firm basis for the distinction,
unless we resort to the d priori postulates of thought. For
science, in its researches into Nature, I do not see how we can

* The Address delivered at the Brighton meeting of the British Association
in the previous August. See p. 185.

PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY. 119

claim more than access to the laws of phenomena, in their
grouping and succession ; nor can I hesitate to accept the posi-
tivist dictum ^yx'AS. causes lie entirely beyond scientific cognizance.
Our own causality, as you justly say, we do directly know ; but
causality other than oiir own we do not know by either observa-
tion or consciousness ; we observe only movements ; we feel only
certain sensations of our own ; both of which are phenomena
and not their causes ; and our reference of such things to an
objective causality which is not in our experience is, I take it, an
intuitive intellectual act, planting outside of us the counterpart
and antithesis of the power which we put forth from within.
If the authority of this intellectual act as a prior condition of our
thinking of phenomena at all is denied, no ground whatever
appears to me to remain for " dynamical laws ; " and either Mill
or Biichner would easily throw back your second class into the
first They would ask what more you find in the " conditions
of the action of a force " than the concurrence or sequence of
phenomena ; and would protest that the " direct consciousness "
to which you appeal is still nothing but an order of feelings, i.e.
of internal " phenomena ; " and on the ground of scientific ex-
perience and method, I really do not see how an answer could
be given to this. Besides Mill's reduction of all mathematical
and physical axioms to inductions on observed uniformities, we
have now Continental physicicns calling in question Newton's
first law of motion ; so that, among those who decline all
obligations to metaphysical assumptions, the distinction which
you would draw between Kepler's laws and Newton's is being
broken down. As to Biichner, since he contends, as you do,
for our scientific knowledge of " force " (as well as " matter"),
and therefore does not stop short with your first class of " laws,"
but proceeds to the second, I do not see why he may not,
with you, speak of such laws as " governing " or " explaining "
phenomena.

So much for my old client, Metaphysics versus Physics. He
is always bothering you, if you try to dispense with him. The
only other point that I should like to remark upon is a use
(which seems to me the source of misapprehension) of the word
intuition. It is certainly common to speak of any apprehension at

I20 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

a glance, though it may be a shorthand compend of many steps,
as " intuitive ; " and in this sense. Bidder's calculations, the
visual interpretation of distance, etc., may be called "intuitive;"
and you may speak of " the tendency to form intuitions," etc.
But in accurate metaphysical speech " intuition " denotes — like
the phrase " a priori cognition " — a primary condition of thought
at all, a belief or cognition presupposed in experience, and con-
stitutive of it. Such cognitions {e.g. space, time, cause) must
seem to us immediate and irresolvable (being really so) ; but it
is not this seeming (which may be simulated by acquired states)
which earns the name : if they can be resolved, they do not
deserve it, and it must be handed back to their primary ele-
ments till you get to that which you must bring into experience
if you are to think it at all. Hence the explanation of intuitions
by ancestral inheritance is necessarily without result. The pri-
mary conditions of thought cannot be the effect of converging or
accumulating lines of thought. All that habit, personal or
transmitted, can do, is to facilitate and condense mental actions
once difficult and consciously successive ; so as to conceal the
steps and prevent detection of the elementary intuitions. But
those elementary intuitions must be there, though we may have
got hold of the wrong things for them. Thus by denying that my
(seeming) intuitions were intuitions to my hundredth grandfather,
you only evade the question by pushing it back. Of course, in
one sense, no one denies the genesis of intuitions, more than of
any other function of a human being who, from end to end, has
to be born. The question is not of the ph3'siological building up
of the conditions of life, but of i7itellcctual derivation ; and the
intuition doctrine simply maintains that intellectual action
cannot take place at all, without certain cognitive elements
being supplied from vi^ithin.

I was interested in your new case of recovered vision. It
adds a valuable fact. I fancy, however, that the theory to which
we have been accustomed requires a good deal of qualification.
Even in this case, why should the patient accuse herself of
" stupidity " in not recognizing the scissors, if the means of
recoo'nition were not there? The co-ordination of the visual
and tactual experiences is already within reach by the muscular

PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY. 121

traversing of the eye ; and the lesson is easier in proportion to
the command over the needful movements.

I shall look with much interest to your further treatment of
such topics in the Contemporary, and especially for your
elucidation of the " sense of effort," an obscure point on wliich
light would be most welcome. As at present informed, I think
too much is attributed to the "muscular sense," notwithstand-
ing its value as a measure of force.

From the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P.

10, Downing Street, January 13, 1873.

I have read, though only quite recently, the paper you were
so good as to send on the '* Physical Condition of Inland Seas ; "
and I am very glad it has been in the power of the Government
to meet your wishes in this important and most attractive branch
of inquiry.

I have also read your paper on " Hereditary Transmission "
in the Contemporary Review * and I venture to offer two remarks.

First, with regard to handwriting. I could name two most
conspicuous instances of eldest sons who presented in the main
a strong contrast to their fathers in character, but who in hand-
writing strongly, and in their autographs most closely, resembled
them.

Secondly, with regard to colour. I should say that my
observations on hereditary transmission have been human only,
and in their very limited ranges have turned on the comparison
of ancient and modern men ; as to whom generally it has
appeared to me that there had been probably in simultaneous
operation opposite processes, on the one side of growth and
development, on the other of dilapidation. What I would now
mention relates to the former of the two. Examination of the
text of Homer, with respect to colours, convinced me that the
ready perception of them, which our children generally display,
was an acquired aptitude, standing in marked contrast with the
perceptions of three thousand years ago, as they are represented

* " On the Hereditary Transmission of Acquired Psychical Habits," in
the Cotilemporary Review for January, 1873 ; the subject was continued in the
April and May numbers.

122 MEMORIAL SKETCH. '

by the poet, whose views of specific colour appear to show much
defect and confusion, while his sense of light was most vivid,
and his sense of form alike strong and refined.

From Dr. OLIVER Wendell Holmes.*

Boston, Mass., U.S., May 9, 1874.
I have been for such a long series of years your debtor,
having been familiar with your writings since the first essay
which brought you into notice, having always almost within
arm's length your Physiologies, Human and Comparative, and
your book on the Microscope, that you are a kind of classic
to me ; and to see my name in a treatise of yours is like re-
ceiving an unexpected honorary degree from some institution
of note and name. I have always been greatly interested in
the subject of unconscious cerebration, to use the expression
which you, I think, first employed long ago in your Physiology.
Every man is more or less a metaphysician, and I think we often
feel, in reading the acutest or even the profoundest analysis of
mental actions, that we too are experts, and hold in transparent
solution the same ideas to which another has given the crystal-
line solidity and definiteness of language. In this way I have
often felt when reading your own subtle and searching observa-
tions, and very likely with this feeling have borrowed more from
your suggestions than I was aware of If I have done so in the
little book from which you quote, or helped myself from others
without giving them credit, you will, I know, set it all down to
unconscious cerebration and automatic manipulation. But as
we all handle the same tools in the same cerebral workshop, it
is no more wonderful that we should often work after the same
pattern, than that two gloves made in two different countries,
should each have four fingers and a thumb.

'o^

Fro7n the Rev. Dr. Martineau.

London, March 9, 1874.
I am much gratified by your kind remembrance of me in
drawing up your list of presentations for your " Mental Physi-

* On receiving a copy of the " Principles of Mental Physiology," in which
Dr. Carpenter had quoted Dr. Holmes's " Mechanism in Thought and Morals."

''MENTAL physiology:' 123

ology." I need not say that the original groundwork of the
volume has long been familiar to me. Indeed, I owe to it a
large part of my small store of knowledge with regard to the
nervous system and its fimctions in man. The new elements
in the volume are most inviting ; it is impossible to cut open
the sheets without alighting, by merely indulging a cursory
glance, on a rich vein of instruction or suggestion. To me,
also, it is always a comfort when I take up your books to know
that in surveying the belt of borderland between the domains
of physiology and of psychology, you will treat the rights of
both with due respect, and will not turn a professed scientific
exploration into an expedition of aggression and conquest. If
anything is absolutely and ultimately certain, it is that neither
of these provinces can ever merge by annexation into the other ;
and that therefore the true method of prosecuting both requires
the creation and observance of a separate nomenclature and
descriptive vocabulary for each. Yet among our English
writers on these subjects, nine out of tea conceal their real
distinctness, and thrust them into artificial approximation by
carrying over the language of the one into their reports of the
phenomena of the other.

Within two years of its publication, the " Mental
Physiology" ran through four editions, and in 1876 Dr.
Carpenter drew up a final statement of his views on the
limits of human automatism in the shape of a preface to
the fourth edition, which dealt with recent utterances of
some of his scientific friends, notably Professor Huxley
and Professor Clififord.* The days were still full of eager
labour, but the longing for rest rose more and more fre-
quently in his mind. In the spring of 1875 he was greatly
interested in the project of University Extension, and joined
a deputation to the Lord Mayor on behalf of a scheme
" originated by Cambridge, but here taken up at my in-
" stance in a more comprehensive spirit. Our object is to
"induce the City Companies to co-operate in a People's

• See below, p. 2S4

124 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

" College for thorough high-class teaching." The Council
which was formed to carry on the work, represented the
three Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, and London, and
he remained a member of it till the last. But the active
conduct of such new enterprises he felt that he must leave
to younger men.

I assure you (he wrote to his brother Russell, as the year
1875 ran out) that even when most rejoicing in the continuance
of my own energy, I often long for the time when I may cease
to feel it a duty to be always doitig something, and may be able
to rest on my oars with an easy conscience, and let the world
go on without my participation.

Partly under the influence of this feeling, and partly for
the completion of some investigations into the anatomy
and development of the Feather-Star {Comatula), he
obtained leave of absence from the University for three
months in the beginning of 1876. When all the arrange-
ments for the winter courses of Gilchrist lectures were
completed, he hurried off to Naples to carry on his studies
in the great aquarium maintained there by international
scientific co-operation. Through a long spell of cold and
cheerless weather, the southern city failed to reveal her
charms ; and its sanitary and social conditions somewhat
disgusted him.* His interest rose high, however, over
Pompeii, which he did not visit till his wife could join
him in the spring ; and when they passed to Rome, to
Florence, to Bologna, on their way home, he found so keen
a pleasure in great historic memories, and so unexpected a
susceptibility to the glories of classic and mediaeval art, that

* He used to tell afterwards, with much amusement, how when he was one
day walking alone at no great distance from the town, a stalwart beggar sud-
denly came up behind him, flung his arms over his shoulders, and snatched
away the contents of his breast-pocket. The prize proved to be no poclcet-
booic with its roll of notes inside, only a little paper-covered guide, which had
cost a lira. Dr. Carpenter walked on with an amused pity for his assailant's
disappointment.

VISIT TO ITALY. 125

he regretted that he had not snatched a few more days
from the laboratory to bestow on the opportunity he might
never have again. To see Italy once more became one of
his cherished dreams. Meanv/hile the usual labours were
begun again ; the University claimed him as the spring
advanced ; a new phase of the Eozoon controversy turned
up, in which he gave a temporary triumph to "the Anti-
Eozoonists ;" the fresh materials collected at Naples called
loudly for arrangement ; and the fourth edition of the
'* Mental Physiology " only awaited the new preface.

My time (he wrote in the middle of May) has been much
taken up by foreigners, who have come over to the Exhibition
of Scientific Apparatus, which seems to have excited much more
attention abroad than here. The Queen came to pay it a visit
on Saturday morning, and the Empress of Germany. I followed
in the train, and had a general look at what the collection con-
tains, which is very wonderful and interesting, but what time I
shall get to examine even a small part of it, I cannot divine.
Just now I have to digest a new alternative scheme for the
B.Sc. examination, and to ascertain the opinion of from twelve
to twenty people upon it, and to go into questions between the
University and the Medical Corporations, which, after every-
thing had been settled, the latter have reopened. And as to
home work, I am only gradually preparing (by getting my things
into some kind of order) for what I shall take up when my time
comes. I have not yet been able to concentrate my thoughts
sufficiendy to write the preface to my " Mental Physiology."

At length the time arrived. After twenty-three years
of service, coinciding with the period of the most rapid
development of the University, Dr. Carpenter resigned the
office of Registrar, his retirement taking effect in the spring
of 1879. Honours at home and abroad had flowed in upon
him abundantly. In 187 1, his own University of Edinburgh
had conferred on him the degree of LL.D. He had more
than once served as Vice-President of the Royal Society.

126 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

In 1872, he had filled the Presidential chair of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science. The next
year he was made a Corresponding Member of the Institute
of France, the name which was submitted as an alternative
to the choice of the electors being that of Charles Darwin.
And Mr. Disraeli, soon after coming into power in 1874,
conceiving that his services to education and science de-
served recognition, recommended him to the Queen, without
political or official prompting, for the order of Companion
of the Bath. To these distinctions the Senate of the Uni-
versity had it not in their power to add ; but they recorded
their sense, not only of the ability, judgment, and fidelity
with which he had uniformly discharged the duties of his
post, but also of the zeal and efficiency with which he had
on all occasions exerted himself, both within and beyond
the limits of his official obligation, for the promotion of the
best interests of the University ; and they expressed their
conviction of the advantage conferred upon it by the
services of a Registrar who, besides being an excellent
administrator of its affairs, had attained, by his scientific
labours, a position which gave him a just weight and in-
fluence over those with whom he was officially brought
into contact. When the next vacancy occurred, his name
was placed upon the list of the Senate, and he continued
to take an active share in its deliberations.*

The sense of occasional strain now passed out of Dr.
Carpenter's life ; but his days were no less fully occupied
than before. He had more leisure to write, though writing
became more irksome, and from the vantage ground of
experience, and detachment from professional interests, he
addressed himself with fresh energy to questions new and
old. He had published two years before a little volume on

* His portrait was painted by subscription among the graduates, and now
hangs in the Senate-room.

CHARACTERISTICS, 127

" Mesmerism and Spiritualism," and had devoted a large
amount of time and thought to the investigation of " spiri-
tualistic" phenomena, both at his own house and at the
houses of other friends, such as Mr. Robert Chambers and
Mr. A. R. Wallace. Then came vaccination, vivisection,
the germ theory of disease, on all of which he entered with
a certain eagerness which showed an unabated activity for
thought, an unwearied zeal for what he believed to be the
public good. It was his earnestness for this cause which
sometimes lent a touch of asperity or intellectual scorn
towards forms of error (as he regarded them) which had
no legitimate ground, and might, in his judgment, be
noxious to physical or mental health. If ever he yielded
to the temptation to speak ex cathedra in the name of
science — a habit which he deplored when he observed it
in others — It was in dealing with doctrines and practices
which appeared to him rooted in incurable prepossession,
and maintained against overwhelming evidence. Here his
intellectual tolerance found its limits. He was ardent, and
hence sometimes unguarded in controversy ; but none
could enter into dispute with him, and not feel that he
sought no personal triumph, but only desired the establish-
ment of the truth. This quality of his mind revealed itself
especially In the essays on religious philosophy, which he
contributed to the Modern Review in the years 1880 and
onwards. They bear the impress of a calm and weighty
judgment, which has faced all issues without fear ; they
are the deliberate outcome of long and patient thought,
lifted above passion or prejudice, and anxious only to know
things as they are, to " see life steadily, and see it whole."

In August, 1882, Dr. Carpenter was able to realize a
long-cherished wish to visit Canada and the United States.
Accompanied by his wife, he passed from Quebec through
Montreal, the home of the last years of his brother, Dr. P.

128 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

P. Carpenter, to Niagara, stopping on his way at the great
beds in which Eozoon had been discovered. The week's rest
which the travellers sought at the Falls was diversified by-
attendance at the meeting of the American Pharmaceutical
Conference, where he was called on for an address. It was
a foretaste of what befell him afterwards. Congresses and
conferences seemed to occur in town after town as he
arrived. On one occasion, the discovery of his name in
the hotel book suggested to some leading pastor an urgent
request that he would give a discourse from the pulpit
of his church. The most important of these speeches,
some of which were quite improDiptu, was delivered before
the National Congress of Unitarian and other Christian
Churches, at Saratoga, on " The Influence of Science on
the Progress of Religious Thought." The autumn weeks
were chiefly spent in Boston, where Dr. Carpenter poured
out the results of many years of labour and thought in two
courses of lectures, under the auspices of the Lowell Insti-
tute, on the " Physical Conditions of the Deep Sea," and
on " Human Automatism." The boundless hospitality of
his Boston friends, and the contact with so many men
eminent in science and literature, with whom he had been
acquainted only through books and correspondence, ren-
dered this visit a time of keen intellectual excitement, and
filled him with affectionate memories.* From his earliest
years he had been trained to interest in New England
Unitarianism, and he was familiar with the writings of its
leading representatives. When the centenary of Dr. Chan-

* The impression which he left behind him was of the same warm-hearted
kind. He was ready to be pleased and to give pleasure everywhere. "There,
"at my house," afterwards wrote his old English friend, the Rev. Brooke
Herford, " the big-wigs having met him elsewhere, I gathered a crowd of
"young students and our poorer ministers, to have a chance to see him, and
" they have spoken to me many a time since of his beautiful cordiality, kind-
" ness, and simplicity, as he talked with them at first individually, ard then
"all sitting round and holding a general cross-fire of questioning."

VISIT TO AMERICA. 129

ning's birth had been celebrated in London, in 1880, he
had attended, at some personai risk, for he was suffering
from a return of the malady of 1864, to show his " thorough
"accordance as a man of science with his general views of
"human nature and its responsibilities." The great Civil
War had kindled in him an absorbing interest ; he had
followed its progress with almost personal anxiety ; his
recollection of its incidents was vivid, and in a long letter
written in 1878, to Dr. O. W. Holmes, who had sent him a
copy of his life of the historian and diplomatist Motley, he
had retraced, in full detail, the causes which had for a while
somewhat alienated his own sympathies, and those of
many of his London friends, from the side of the North,
partly through what he felt to be the unwise advocacy of
Mr. Motley, with whom he was at one time in intimate
intercourse. For the character of Lincoln he had conceived
warm admiration ; he had studied the details of his career ;
in the President's devotion to duty, his single-mindedness,
his strength, he found the elements of nobility which he
regarded as of highest worth, and his sense of humour was
especially gratified by the manifold stories which he
gathered of the insight and pungency of Lincoln's retorts.
Under these influences his judgment of the issue became
far tenderer to the North ; and when, after his return home
in December, he recalled some of his impressions, strongest
and deepest was his admiration for the readiness with which
it had met the call to sacrifice.

To the Rev. R, L. Carpenter.

London, December 31, 18S2.

A very fine memorial of the graduates who lost their lives

in the war has been erected by subscription at enormous cost

[at Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass.]; including a hall for

dining, a good deal in the style of one of the Oxford or Cam-

I30 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

bridge College Halls, but much larger, and a theatre for public
celebrations (in which the Greek play was performed not long
ago), with a sort of transept between the two, giving entrance
to each, the walls of which are covered with memorial tablets
containing the lists of the graduates of the several faculties,
with a number of appropriate mottoes. It was the going over
these lists and recognizing so many names of the old New
England families, that impressed me more than anything else
with a feeling how completely the war had penetrated every
circle of Northern society. O. W. Holmes's son, who has been
Professor of Law at Harvard, and has been just made a judge
(at the age of forty), went to the war before he graduated, and
was wounded three times. Theodore Lyman, brother-in-law of
Alexander Agassiz, whom I only knew as a naturalist (he has
just brought out an admirable monograph in the Challenger
Series), served on the staff of one of the Generals, and now
holds the rank of Colonel. He has just been elected to Con-
gress. In every cemetery the graves of those who fell are
specially distinguished by small flags ; and there are generally
little societies for keeping them decorated with flowers. I
asked Dr. Morison what he considered to have been the
principal motive that impelled the Northern volunteers ; and
he said without hesitation that it was " country." The anti-
slavery feeling doubtless helped, but it was not the moving
power. The more I come to know of what they went through,
the less I have been surprised at their complaint of want of
sympathy on our parts, and their interpretation of our coldness
as resulting from a desire for a split that should destroy the
union which they felt bound by all the ties of patriotism to
uphold. . . .

A great sensation was produced while we were in Boston
by a paper read at the Unitarian Club by Dr. George Ellis,
as to the proper mode of now dealing with orthodoxy. He ex-
pressed the conviction that in the old controversies in which
the discussion was upon the meaning of texts, both sides accept-
ing the Scriptural authority, the orthodox had the best of it ;
and that the way now to deal with the questions at issue is
to throw over this authority altogether. I think he is quite

SEVENTY YEARS OF AGE. 131

right in his conclusion, though I do not accord with his pre-
mises, as I do not think that the Trinity or the Deity of Christ
find any support in the Bible. But I think that much of the
Calvmistic system and the doctrine of eternal punishment are
clearly formularized, and can only be set aside by an appeal
to general principles involving an abandonment of doctrinal
inspiration.

On his return to London, Dr. Carpenter resumed his
usual occupations. But it was not without an effort. The
excitement of his American tour had involved a great drain
on his strength, though it had given him acceptable change
of thought, and a really invaluable mental refreshment.
Composition became more and more difficult ; he shrank
from taking pen in hand ; the labour of revising the short-
hand-writers' reports of his lectures on " Human Auto-
matism " loomed portentously before him so that he could
hardly face it, and in fact it was never completed. He
felt age creeping upon him, though he struggled against it.
When the seventieth birthday came round in the autumn
of 1883, he wrote to his brother Russell : —

It was very pleasant to me to receive on Monday morning
such a chorus of affectionate greetings on the attainment of my
three score and ten years. Your remark about David's lamen-
tation having special reference to the want of spectacles and
dentistry was very apposite, these being now great aids in
making life worth living. But I suppose that there were no
small-print books or newspapers in those days that now
specially need the artificial help. I wonder whether David was
subject to rheumatism ; he ought not to have been, in the dry,
warm climate of Palestine ; but it is this that just now makes
me most uneasy respecting my future, as the damp weather
we are at present experiencing has made me more painluUy
conscious of creaking joints.

Yet no one who witnessed his burst of energy the next
spring would have thought his strength declining. On the

132 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

4th of April, 1884, he records that he has been "on circuit"
the previous week, lecturing for the Gilchrist Trust at
Gloucester, Stafiford, Northampton, Peterborough, and
York ! In the next week he is to discourse to the Micro-
scopical Society, and at the approaching Easter to attend
the Ter-centenary festival of the University of Edinburgh,
as representative of the University of London. Degrees
were to be conferred in the metropolis of Knox's Calvinism
on Dr. Martineau and M. Renan. "Verily," said Dr.
Carpenter, recalling his earlier experiences, " tempora
nmtantnry Nor did this complete the list of his engage-
ments. " On the following week I am to go down to
" Plymouth to help to launch a local Fisheries Exhibition
** they are getting up there. Our zoological station is as
" yet in niibibiis." Ever since his visit to Naples, Dr.
Carpenter had been impressed with the desirability of pro-
moting marine zoological research at home, and he had
made proposals for the thorough exploration and study of
Milford Haven. This plan was not adopted. But a
Marine Biological Association was formed, of which he
became vice-president, and this has since carried out, by
means of its laboratory on Plymouth Sound, a design
traceable to his own suggestion. It was the last public
movement which he helped to initiate and guide.

In the same spring he presented to the Royal Society
a short paper on the Nervous System of the Crinoidea.
Here he summarized the evidence in favour of his views,
which had been made known since his second statement of
them in 1876, partly by the researches of one of his sons,
and partly by those of other naturalists in England, France,
and Germany. This was his last communication on a
scientific subject to a learned' society. Eighteen months
later, but a few weeks after his death, a text-book of
zoology was published by his former chief opponent in

LAST YEARS 133

Germany, in which his views were unreservedly adopted ;
and they are now taught in every zoological laboratory,
though their importance as regards the general evolution
of the Echinoderm type is not yet fully recognized.

Thus, his interests were still keen and clear ; and
though the times were long past when he could punctually
turn out the same amount of " copy " day after day with
the utmost precision, and he would sit for a whole morning
pen in hand gazing at the paper, unable to put down a
word, every now and then some public or private event
roused the old force. In the summer of 1884 he had
given an address to a meeting of Unitarian ministers on
the " Relation of the Argument from Design in the Organic
World to the Doctrine of Evolution," and this was (with
some difficulty) enlarged from the reporter's notes, and
published in the October number of the Modern Review*
It was the final utterance of his reasoned faith. A few
weeks later he shared the universal regret at the death of
Mr. Fawcett, as well as the universal curiosity and ex-
pectation as to the probable attitude of the Opposition and
the House of Lords on the Franchise and Redistribution
Bills. References to politics were very rare in his corre-
spondence, though his conversation often dealt largely
with them. The following letter contains a characteristic
illustration from Bristol memories : —

To the Rev. R. L. Carpenter.

London, November 9, 1S84.
Although I did not often come across him (Mr. Fawcett),
we were very good friends when we met ; and I greatly ad-
mired the pluck with which he had made so good a position
in the House, notwithstanding his bUndness. My own impres-
sion, indeed, is that his accident was really the making of him,

* See below, p. 409.

134 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

by giving him a power of concentrating his energies so as to
overcome the obstacles his bUndness created. I shall always
have a pleasant recollection of him for the kindly way in which
he moved a vote of thanks to me as President of the British
Association at the closing meeting at Brighton, for which he
was then M.P. He said that he was quite unable to judge for
himself what I had done for science, but that all he had heard
of me led him to recognize the love of truth as the guiding
motive of my scientific career.*

The next week will, I suppose, show whether the Opposi-
tion are going to be wise in time, or to evoke the hostility of
the mass of the people, of which they have had the fullest
warning. If they adopt the suggestions of Gladstone and Lord
Hartington, and put forth their own programme of a redistribu-
tion scheme, which the Government will most gladly take into
consideration, so as to make (as Gladstone said) the Bill the
work of the House, they will have a much better case on which
to go before the country at the next election, than if they per-
sist in opposing the passage of the Franchise Bill. And I
cannot but hope that the attitude of Mr. Gorst may have a
sufficient number of imitators among the Peers to make Lord
Salisbury doubtful of his majority. If they force the country to
question the right of fifty country gentlemen — responsible to
nobody — to resist its will, I think there is no doubt what the
ultimate result will be. It is rather curious that Lord Salis-
bury, who is so anxious to preserve the minority vote for the
CoJiifuons, should oppose any change in the mode of electing
the Scotch and Irish Peeis, which makes the majority the sole
electors, and gives no representation whatever to the minority,
which (as in the election of aldermen by the fi}-st Bristol Town
Council) may be numerically less by only a single vote. I have
the fullest confidence that a great result will be gained in the
end, in whatsoever way it is worked out But it will be a great

* Mr. Fawcett said that lonq; before he had the honour of Dr. Carpenter's
personal acquaintance, he had always heard him spoken of by scientific men,
whose authority he valued and whose opinion he could trust, as one of the
most conscientious, laborious, and single-minded workers in the great world of
science. No one, he had always been told, had ever worked with a purer
desire to promote scientific truth, with less idea of personal distinction, than
Dr. Carpenter. — Brighton Daily News, August 22, 1872.

CHARACTERISTICS. 135

pity for the agitation to be prolonged, to the suspension of
other legislation.

Dr. Carpenter's recollection of Mr. Fawcett's words
touched indeed the central energy of his whole thought
and life. To realize Schiller's description of the philo-
sopher, to love truth better than his system, had been his
constant endeavour.

In the pursuit of truth (he wrote in a fragment found
among his private memoranda), the more faithfully, strictly,
and perseveringly we fix our attention on the goal, not allowing
ourselves to be distracted by the temptations of self-interest, or
by the timid apprehensions of those who fear the risks more
than they value the reward, the more shall we find ourselves
progressively emancipated from those unconscious prejudices
which cling around us as results of early misdirection and
erroneous habits of thought, and which are more dangerous to
our consistency than those against which we knowingly put
ourselves on our guard. And so in the path of life, if we
begin by turning to the right, and determinately keep straight
on, we find the way become more and more clear before us ;
the suggestions of a temporary expediency lose their force
when we have formed the fixed habit of trying everything by
the test of fundamental principles ; the temptations which
arise out of the lower parts of our nature lose their hold upon
us in proportion as we keep our attention fixed upon the
highest class of motives ; and the determination to act upon
those motives becomes more and more easy to carry out with
every victory it has already gained.

Here was his whole philosophy of conduct ; it guided
him alike in scientific and social effort, and was the spring
of his untiring toil. What influences he had felt most
stimulating and helpful from the personalities whom he
had known, may be inferred from the concluding words of
a lecture on the " Principles of the System of Reformatory
and Preventive Discipline as worked out in Theory and
Practice by Mary Carpenter," delivered before the Sunday

136 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

Lecture Society, of which he was President, on November
4, 1877, in the autumn following his sister's death.

The world has been most benefited by the labours of those
who have had the greatest desire to employ their powers for the
good of others, the greatest knowledge of the best mode of
doing so, and the greatest faith in the ultimate success of their
work. And I wish no better for myself than that 1 should here-
after be remembered as one who has endeavoured, in however
humble a degree, to transmit to those who may come after me
the earnest love of scientific truth which was the pre-eminent
characteristic of John Frederick Herschel, the unswerving
love of what was just and right and kind which animated the
course of George Grote, and the large-hearted and self-sacri-
ficing love of her fellow-creatures which gave to Mary Car-
penter a foremost place among the philanthropists of this or
any other time.
To his friends, also, as to the public men who only saw
him at a distance, singleness of aim seemed the most
striking quality of Dr. Carpenter's life. This had, indeed,
its severe and unsympathetic side to some who approached
him only for the first time, especially in any post of official
duty. He was charged to carry out certain rules, and they
must be fulfilled, whatever might be the cost to personal
convenience or pride. His life-long habit of acting on
fixed principles made him impatient of anything that
seemed to contravene them ; the strenuous effort of his
earlier years had partly deprived him of the elasticity of
nature which renders it easy for others to enter into fresh
relations ; and he had a difficulty in spontaneously adapt-
ing himself to varieties of character not formed after his
own model. As his circle of friendships widened, how-
ever, and a larger and more diverse experience gave him a
fuller insight into the perplexities of life, his judgments
towards his closing years became far gentler. He was not,
indeed, without his share of the combative impulse ; but

CHARACTERISTICS. 137

even when he headed an assault upon what seemed to him
injurious error, or absolute folly, or defended on his own
side some cherished position, he sought to distinguish
between the opinions which he condemned and the per-
sons who held them, for whom he even sometimes came
to feel an unexpected tenderness. In his pursuit of truth
there were no reserves ; honesty of purpose was stamped
upon all he wrote. Thoroughness marked all his perform-
ance, whether in scientific investigation, in the discharge
of official duty, or the administration of private or public
trusts ; he could be content with nothing but his best,
and he could endure no slovenliness in others born of
weakness or indolence. This very thoroughness made
him often slow in forming opinions, till all available evi-
dence should be before him ; and though his convictions
when once formed were exceedingly tenacious, he strove
earnestly to guard himself against allowing them to be-
come mere prejudices, and he was not betrayed into
quitting the attitude of the teacher, with its open outlook
towards all possibilities, for that of the partisan. Hence in
his treatment of religious questions he could reason with-
out dogmatism. There was in his mind what one of his
friends described as an " abiding and apparently inde-
" structible instinct of reverence ;" but it was united with
perfect intellectual freedom. This quality commanded the
sympathy of many who had become more or less detached
from the traditional forms of belief ; they read what he
wrote on the deeper issues of faith " without the kind of
"mental protest which is elicited both by orthodox denun-
"ciations of scientific agnosticism, and not less so by the
"pert and aggressive attitude of many modern agnostics."
At the same time there was nothing visionary about
Dr. Carpenter's modes of thought. Of the two great seers
with whom he was acquainted, he probably derived from

138 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

Carlyle the more vivid intellectual stimulus ; but Emerson
had for him by far the stronger moral charm, and awakened
in him the more enthusiastic admiration. When he
visited Concord, he eagerly gathered up the memories
of the beauty and nobility of Emerson's life, though he
had often failed to follow him with assent or even with
comprehension along the dizzy heights of his discourse.
Emerson's flashing glances into the manifold relations of
things were, indeed, as different as possible from the slow
and cautious steps with which Dr. Carpenter felt his way
through facts to principles. He would go no further than
the most careful reasoning allowed him ; but he admitted
into the elements on which his reasoning was to be based
certain primary powers, affections, and sentiments, which
he found in his own heart, and saw in various forms in the
consciousness of the race. Nor was he disturbed in his
estimate of their value, because it might be possible to
show their origin and trace the history of their growth.
The obligations of conscience were not, in his view,
stripped of their Divine authority, even though the con-
tents of its specific decisions depended on the long evolu-
tion of experience. So he seemed to many to balance and
harmonize different aspects of scientific, moral, and religious
truth with a well-tempered wisdom ; giving to reason its
fullest play over the widest range of outward and inward
facts, he rose to be a kind of sage in the intellectual and
theological world around him. Teachers and students,
men of thought and feeling, and men of the world and
affairs, discerned in him an unusual breadth of sympathy,
and a rare combination of gifts, each of which was culti-
vated to its fullest capacity. The simplicity of his aims
flowed forth from a rich and sound humanity.

" He was one of my oldest friends," said Sir James
Paget," after his death, " a friend of more than forty years ;

CHARACTERISTICS. 139

" and in all that time I could think of him as a model of
" srentleness and fairness, and of unbounded desire for the
"attainment and diffusion of knowledge." This sense of
justice was stamped on all his intellectual work. He
sought anxiously to manifest it towards others ; he desired
it to be displayed towards himself. It made him eager
to recognize to the full the value of the investigations of
fellow-labourers, and he expected a similar recognition of
his own.

I gratefully remember (wrote one of his old friends to him
in 1883) that you were among the earliest to welcome me
among the workers in biology, and to encourage me by com-
mendation both privately and publicly expressed.

Of his generous kindness to young men, and his faithfulness
as a friend (Mr. Huxley says), I can speak from knowledge. I
was a very young man, almost friendless in the scientific world,
when I returned to England in the end of 1850. I made Dr.
Carpenter's acquaintance early in 1851, and it so happened
that I was able to give him some odds and ends of information,
which he found useful in bringing out the third edition of the
" Principles of Comparative Physiology." In the preface, Dr.
Carpenter has referred to my small services in a manner which
I thought then, and think now, disproportionate to my deserts ;
and, from that time until his lamented death, he remained a
friend who did me many a good turn, and upon whose stead-
fastness I could always rely. More than once I had the mis
fortune to come into scientific conflict with him ; and on one
occasion, certainly, I was in the right. Yet not even that
provocation disturbed his unvarying goodness.

Some other aspects of Dr. Carpenter's work are de-
scribed in the following communication from Mr. Thiselton-
Dyer, F.R.S.*

In later years, when it was my privilege to be counted by
Dr. Carpenter among his personal friends, I saw, with delight,

* See a quotation previously given, p. 68.
7

140 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

another side of his scientific character. Up to the very end, his
intense interest in new knowledge might put to the blush many
a younger man. It seemed extraordinary that it should never
flag. I well remember his ardent excitement on the return of the
Challenge?; laden with the spoils of four years' deep-sea explora-
tion. It was just the same at the British Association at South-
port, when he sat for hours at a time in the Biological section,
eager to hear the papers read by the younger men, and
delighted, when called upon, to speak words of approval and
encouragement.

And not merely had he this vast appetite for knowledge,
but it was an appetite governed by perfect mastery. He
remembered all about everything which he had ever learnt. It
was a hazardous matter, therefore, to differ with him on a point
of historical detail, and on the one occasion when I ever found
myself in that predicament, I executed a very speedy strategic
retreat. I append a copy of a letter which he wrote me on that
occasion. It is in its way an interesting chapter of scientific
history, and illustrates in a manner which is still marvellous to
me in re-reading it, the perfect discipline in which he preserved
the detailed knowledge stored up in his mind. The letter is the
more important as it states, and I think with perfect accuracy,
what he claimed to have effected in some points of botanical
theory.*

* To W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, Esq.

56, Regent's Park Road, July 7, 1875.

Dear Mr. Thiselton-Dyer. — Glancing over your article in the new number
of the Microscopical Journal I see with some surprise that you credit De
Bary with being the first to point out that conjugation is the primitive phase
of sexual reproduction. For this was distinctly indicated by Thwaites in his
paper in the A7inals for March, 1848 ; and I myself more fully developed this
view in the British and Foreif^n Medico- Chiriwgical Review for October, 1848,
pp. 370, 371, and October, 1849, pp. 341-347, also p. 437, where I bring into
contrast ihe subdivision of cells as the type oi growth, and ^'' the mixture or
" reunion of the contents of two cells,'''' as the type o{ gcjieration.

This, again, was explicitly set forth in my "General and Comparative
Physiology," 3rd edition, 1851, p. 881.

The whole subject was at that date in a state of complete muddle ; and I
think I could easily show that I was one of the first to indicate the mode in
which the clearing-up would take place. In fact, I do not see that any essential
correction has been made in the views I expressed in pp. 346, 347 of the
RevircV oi Oclohtx, 1849, which no other vegetable physiologist, so far as I
know, had then reached, Thwaites having most nearly approached them.

CHARACTERISTICS. 141

I feel that there is perfect justice in the complaint he makes
in the conclusion of the letter. The position is pathetic, but
inevitable, and can only be redressed, if at all, by the testimony
of men like myself, who do actually, in some degree, apprehend
what the position of a man like Dr. Carpenter really has been
in scientific history, and have the opportunity of stating it.

Dr. Carpenter, in (act, was a member of a group of men who
lived through a half-century of biological discovery, the like of
which, from the nature of things, can never be repeated. The
rapid development of the use of the microscope revealed a pro-
fusion of cardinal facts in biology in a comparatively short time.
The actual quantity of biological investigation will, year by year,
no doubt, progressively increase. But the veil of ignorance can
never again be lifted in the same interval from such an aggre-
gation of fundamental additions to knowledge, for the simple
reason that science can never again be occupied, as it was then,
at one and the same moment with the fundamental facts of every
branch of biological investigation. It was in this exciting
atmospliere that Dr. Carpenter passed the early part of his life.
The facts of the life-history of a fern are taught in every class
of elementary biology in the three kingdoms. Yet I remember
Dr. Carpenter telling me how he one day met a friend in the
street who asked him to go to the lodgings (somewhere in

Owen's book on " Parthenogenesis " shows what a confusion he was in ; as
Steenstrup's "Alternation of Generations," and Edward Forbes's "Naked-
Eyed Medusa " had shown in regard to the reproduction of animals. In the
first volume of the Review (then edited by me) I had shown that the so-called
" alternation " is really the btiddtJts;- oi generative zooids from the nutritive
zooid ; and this, though contested at the time by Edward Forbes and Owen, is
now universally recognized. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association,
in 1847, at which I advanced this heresy, I was pooh-poohed ; and at the
Council of the Ray Society, at which I advocated the reproduction of Suminski's
book on the "Ferns," I was assured that the close resemblance of the
Antherozoids to Spermatozoa was quite sufficient proof that they could have
nothing to do with vegetable reproduction.

I do not think that the men of the present generation, who have been
brought up in the light, quite apprehend (in this as in other matters) the utter
darkness in which we were then groping, or fully recognize the deserts of those
who helped them to what they now enjoy.

I am not given to reclamations, and should not have troubled you with this
on my own account ; but Thvvaites having lieen a special "child " of mine (as
he always avowed), I do not like that //c" should not get full credit for his work,

Yours faithfully,

WiLUAM B. Carpenter.

142 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

Bloomsbury) of a Pole who had come to London, and who had
made a remarkable discovery about the reproduction of ferns.
This was Suminski, whose research holds an ever-memorable
place in the history of botanical discovery. The elementary
facts of biology seem a somewhat hackneyed drama to us now.
But Dr. Carpenter had, as it were, seen the whole mise en schie.
The entire story was fresher to him than it could be to us,
paradox as this may seem. But the new knowledge of his later
days was equally absorbing to him. It often seemed to me
amazing to reflect that here was a man who had practically seen
the whole thing grow up, and yet was as enthusiastic about the
future development of biological science as its youngest votary.
Certainly, as I have said, the progress of discovery which
Dr. Carpenter saw, was an exciting one, and it was a fortunate
thing that the task fell to him to be in some sort its historian,
or, at any rate, expositor. For, as he in effect tells us, he at least
never lost his head about it. The great work of his life was,
after all, that he gathered up the new knowledge, digested it and
put it before the world in a coherent and logical form. Stated
in this way, the task accomplished may not seem much. In
effect it was of the deepest importance. In my judgment he laid
the foundations of that breadth and comprehensiveness of the
English biological school, which will, I hope, be its lasting heri-
tage. In some ways his method of orderly exposition reminds
me of the logical lucidity of the best French work of the same
kind. But in grip, depth, and even a sort of fervour, I venture
to think that its good qualities were peculiarly English.

In full accord with the single-mindedness of Dr.
Carpenter's scientific character was the simplicity of his
personal and home life. A certain frugality of habit,
the fruit of Puritan ancestry and early struggle, marked
him almost to the last ; but it imposed no restraints on
his domestic intercourse. There all the wealth of his
afTection manifested itself in his never-ceasing solicitude
for the welfare of his sons, and the strength of his prin-
ciples in the patience with which he took up the family
burdens that sometimes fell upon him. In his later years

CHARACTERISTICS. 143

he delighted to gather his grandchildren about him ; the
playfulness which had been repressed under the strain
of early days, found vent ; and the ways and wants of an
infant went straight to his heart. On one of his Scotch
rambles, in the autumn of 1878, he wrote to his wife
(of whose travelling companionship he was that season
deprived) from the Bridge of Allan : —

Yesterday, after a morning shower, the day was very bright
and beautiful, and I greatly enjoyed the journey, not the less
for there being in the carriage a fifteen-months- old baby, the
brightest, most good-tempered, and one of the prettiest I ever
saw. Though the journey was more than six hours, she did
nothing but laugh, sing, and play the whole time, except when
she was sucking her bottle, and made great friends with me. I
also amused myself with watching my aneroid, which went down
an inch and a quarter in going over the highest watershed, that
above Killiecrankie, and then rose visibly as we descended the
steep incline.

The sympathy which he felt for children readily ex-
tended itself also to animals. The proximity of his house
to the Zoological Gardens made him a frequent visitor on
Sunday afternoons. There he was often to be found in the
monkey-house, especially in the private room of the first
chimpanzee, in whom he took a lively interest. He was
always pleased to relate its educational progress, and would
constantly take friends to see a display of its accomplish-
ments. This grew almost into the pride of ownership ; and
when the poor animal succumbed under its second teething,
he genuinely regretted its decease.

No less marked was the force of his feeling at the other
end of the scale. In all that related to the conduct and
character of those with whom he was most nearly connected,
or even of those with whom he was brought only into
official relations, his sensitiveness was extreme. Anything
that seemed like moral wrong caused him the most stinging

144 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

pain ; and to the imputations which he had occasionally
to meet in controversy he was acutely susceptible. Again
and again he would occupy the hours of a sleepless night
by writing letters, which the calmer judgment of the morn-
ing (sometimes under the influence of his wife) withheld ;
the energy of protest had expended itself, and reason sug-
gested the modifying considerations which agitated sensi-
bility had ignored. The same warmth manifested itself in
his friendships, and prompted continual acts of kindness,
which sometimes surprised the receiver, until he learned
that he might rely on his faithfulness with implicit trust
The inevitable severance of old family ties, especially the
death of his brother Philip and his sister Mary within a few
weeks of each other, in the summer of 1 877, deeply affected
him ; and in the loss of friends whom he revered or loved,
like Mr. Grote and Sir William Siemens, he felt that some-
thing passed out of his life beyond recall. It was with no
less vigour of heart that he joined in public worship. He
well understood the strain involved in the preacher's office :
" My work," he said once, " is for the most part merely in-
"tellectual ; but when I do anything that deeply interests
*' my feelings, I find how much it takes out of me." The
more the preacher was himself touched by what he was
saying, the more sure was he of Dr. Carpenter's sympathy,
and sometimes he would utter that sympathy with earnest
emphasis. In music, above all other forms of art, he found
for such modes of emotion the fullest expression ; yet his
favourite passages in the masses of Haydn and Mozart,
the oratorios of Handel, Mendelssohn, and Spohr, or the
symphonies of Beethoven, were hardly dearer to him than
some of the simplest strains of congregational psalmody,
associated as they were with the memories of a life.*

* He had himself compiled a book of tunes, for the use of the Rosslyn
Hill congregation ; it contained several compositions of his own.

CHARACTERISTICS. 145

This readiness of sympathy, combined with his vast
range of knowledge, gave a special geniality and charm to
his companionship, and enabled him as a teacher the better
to enter into the difficulties of his pupils. Looking back
on the precious half-hour before breakfast, which he always
devoted, even in his busiest days, to his sons' lessons, they
could recall the evident interest which he took in their
Latin and Greek, their Algebra and Geometry, for the sake
of the studies and the problems themselves. He seemed as
much at home in them as the masters who gave their lives
to them ; and the lad to whom it appeared only natural
that a grown-up person should deal easily with a school-
boy's work, found reason afterwards to marvel that the
mind, absorbed in other pursuits, could so readily unlock
the secrets of a different lore. He had the same intel-
lectual curiosity in manufactures, inventions, machinery,
processes of every sort. The newest scientific toy, the
zoetrope, the chameleon top, the radiometer, was sure to
appear upon his table. And his studies of things were
always supplemented by the studies of men. He read the
political memoirs of his own time with avidity, and could
turn on rills and streams of discourse on the. most un-
expected subject. ,The conversation once alighted, in some
party chiefly composed of young men, on the consti-
tutional history of Switzerland in the last century ; he
was immediately ready with a large store of facts, and
kept up the talk for three quarters of an hour. His
lectures in the same way seemed to proceed from an in-
exhaustible source. " When I look at that man's head,"
said a Bristol organ-builder, " I cannot help wondering at
" the amount of knowledge it contains." He possessed a
power of mental classification, so he once told a friend, by
which, whenever he became acquainted with a new fact, it
arranged itself under its proper head, and was there ready

146 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

for reproduction and application. He was thus able to do
mentally what most others can only accomplish by an
elaborate machinery of labelled papers. Nor did he con-
cern himself only with facts. Like other eminent men of
science, he was a great novel-reader. In hours of weari-
ness he always turned to his favourite, Scott. Though he
could not originate humour, he enjoyed it greatly in others.
To Lamb he was drawn with a positive affection ; he was
familiar with Hood and Dickens ; the sayings of Mrs.
Poyser were sometimes on his lips, though he found Daniel
Deronda " rather tough ; " and he had a warm appreciation
of Thackeray, with whom, through his kinship to Mrs.
Carpenter, he was brought into occasional contact, the
character he loved best in all fiction being Colonel
Newcome.

These resources made Dr. Carpenter a welcom.e guest
among a large circle of friends ; but it was in his own home
that his personality was most amply revealed. There it
became clear how large was the circle of his interests. The
study was equally open to the tried scientific investigator,
or the young man in the first flush of enthusiasm over
some new work ; there the stores of his collections, accu-
mulated for future memoirs, some of which were never
written, were displayed ; there the bearings of one element
or another of doubtful interpretation were discussed ; there
his delight in beauty, whether in a new form of animal life
or in the order and coherence of a chain of reasoning,
kindled the zeal of fellow-workers and friends. For those
to whom the microscope had less charm, there were remem-
brances of travel, photographs and stereographs gathered
from other lands ; politics, literature, antiquities, music, all
supplied in turn themes for his eager and discursive talk
And he would always take the same pains (or even greater)
for the undistinguished, as for the brilliant and famous

CHARACTERISTICS. I47

He felt for young men, especially, an almost fatherly in-
terest ; the friends of his sons could always rely on him
for counsel and help ; for those who were passing through
struedes such as he had himself endured, he had an un-
tiring sympathy ; whenever it was possible he exerted
himself to promote their welfare or professional advance-
ment ; and even if that lay beyond the reach of any effort
of his, the influence of his example and encouragement
proved a strength and support. Writing of " that beautiful
" presence, full of benevolence and kindly dignity, of intel-
" lectual vivacity and moral earnestness, of wisdom and
" love which pervaded the whole atmosphere of the house,
"and lent a charm to the most trivial interests and a
" brightness to the most serious employments," an American
visitor recalled her memories of a brief stay in the summer
of 1884:—

I think of him in every phase of that short intercourse,
of his friendly morning greeting, of his table-talk, so easy,
so entertaining, of the long walks in the gardens, through
the park, down in the city, of the expedition to Kew, of all
those excursions lighted up, illustrated, by a constant flow
of anecdote or personal reminiscences, poured out without
stint, without reserve, as freely as if he were talking to his
equals, instead of to insignificant persons who could give him
nothing in return. Especially I think of the Sunday morning
when he and I alone went to the Temple Church, and, finding
it closed, wandered about the gardens, sat down in the Fountain
Court, and then penetrated through Lincoln's Inn Fields, into
the crowded ways by Drury Lane, and out again into the
decorous Strand. I wish I could have made notes of all his
talk that day, especially as we sat half an hour by the fountain
in the stillness of the Sunday morning and of the ancient build-
ings round. And most of all I think of him as he sat on
Sunday evenings playing the sweet old music that he loved, his
face full of light, and his voice of sweetness.
A similar impression was recorded after his death by

hs memorial sketch.

another pen, that of a cultivated Norwegian scholar, the
friend of one of his sons.

Well do I remember the kindness he showed me, the
obscure stranger, when I was privileged to be together with
him, his noble face, his eager instructive talk, more interesting
than any I ever listened to, the genial sympathy and light in
which he moved as in his atmosphere. You felt him imme-
diately to be not only a great but a good man. I like to think
of him as I remember him one night at Christmas in his house,
with his sons assembled round him in the library, your mother
at his side, giving out a hymn at the organ, his fine face
upturne d in beaming gratitude towards his Eternal Maker.

Genuineness, reality, in thought, feeling, and conduct,
these were the things which he asked from those around
him ; these were the standards of worth for which he
cared.

When I preached a sermon in reference to Mr. Darwin
(reported his friend, Dr. Sadler, shortly after his death). Dr.
Carpenter came to me afterwards Avith tears in his eyes, and
told me of what had been said to him by a leading scientific
friend, to the effect that great as Mr. Darwin was as a scientific
discoverer, he was still greater as a man. And he spoke as if
he felt this testimony to character to be not only true, but also
more to be desired than any testimony to intellectual ability
could be. I think what was said is no less true of himself than
it was of Mr. Darwin. The work of his life was great for its
quality and for its extent ; but pervading it all one sees the
man of highest moral principle, and of a deeply religious
nature.

In the spring of 1885, Dr. Carpenter's strength, which
had for some time been impaired, especially by repeated
attacks of rheumatism, seemed suddenly to give way. For
many weeks he remained in a condition of physical and
mental torpor which made his family apprehend the possi-
bility of some obscure brain-disease. Change of air and

CLOSING DAYS. 149

scene failed at first to restore him ; but the vigour of his
constitution slowly reasserted itself ; and the customary
visit to Scotland, with the gentle stimulus of varied society
and the pleasure of meeting old friends, partly revived
his energy. He even insisted on attending the meeting
of the British Association at Aberdeen, and took some
share in its labours.

He looked somewhat ill (wrote Professor W. C. Mcintosh,
of St. Andrews, a few weeks later), but his great kindness and
interest in the proceedings triumphed over physical weakness,
so that he was one of the pillars and heads of the meeting. I
shall never forget his generous action and kindly words in pro-
posing thanks for my address in Section D.

He had especial satisfaction in breaking his journey
home so as to avail himself of the hospitality of the
Bishop of Ripon. His visit to the Palace happened to
coincide with an ordination ; he studied the details of the
examination (in one department of which his own " Mental
Physiology" was prescribed), and showed the same bright
and sympathetic interest in intercourse with some of the
clergy and candidates which had struck his Boston friends.
He had always noted with care the signs of the growth of
Liberal opinions both within and without the Established
Church. He had gladly embraced occasional opportunities
of addressing the London clergy at Sion College on sub-
jects such as prayer, or evolution, connected with the
theory and practice of religion. He was accordingly quite
willing to accept an invitation from Canon Fremantlc to
read a paper before the Christian Conference at its
November meeting, on the subject of Miracles. The sug-
gestion harmonized with the direction which his own
thoughts had been recently taking. Biblical study had
never lost its charm for him. But a short time before
he had read through Dr. A, B. Davidson's Commentary

I50 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

on Job ; and during his Scotch sojourn he had devoted
much attention to Dr. Temple's Bampton Lecture. So,
when once more at home, he took up some of his former
occupations. He attended a few meetings, and when
questions of difficulty arose, his judgment showed its wonted
clearness, and was felt to have lost none of its grave
wisdom. On the 7th of November, he met a number of
old friends at the house of Mr. George Busk, where the
animated talk of a group including his host, Mr. Huxley,
Dr. AUman, and himself, made the party peculiarly memo-
rable. The next day he dined after morning chapel with
one of his sons, and spoke much of the Resurrection, in
connection with his forthcoming paper, dwelling with
especial force on the testimony of Paul, and expressing
a characteristic suspense of judgment among the various
theories offered in explanation. The whole topic occupied
his mind so fully that it naturally came uppermost when,
on the following afternoon, he met Dr. Martineau at the
Athenseum. The subjoined record of their talk was after-
wards communicated by Dr. Martineau to the Christian
Reformer of January, 1886.

About 4.30 p.m. on Monday, November 9, I met my late
friend, Dr. Carpenter, at the Athenaeum, for the first time since
his illness in the early summer. Though he bore some slight
traces of rheumatism still, he was full of hfe and energy in his
conversation ; which, passing quickly from subject to subject,
soon settled upon the paper on miracles, which he was about
to prepare for the Christian Conference on the following

Monday.

He did not propose, he said, to undertake a substantive
treatment of the topic as a whole, but to content himself with
a criticism of Bishop Temple's argument in his recent volume
of Bampton Lectures. In that work, the credibility of miracles
was vindicated in the method suggested to Babbage by his
calculating-machine, and expounded in the so-called " Ninth

CLOSING DAYS. 151

Bridgewater Treatise ; " consisting chiefly in resolving a phe-
nomenon, which was exceptional within the little span of
human experience, into an incident of some more slowly cir-
culating series. Dr. Carpenter remarked that this explanation,
by merely throwing the event out of the category of miracle
into that of law, stripped off all its supposed religious signifi-
cance, as a special act of Divine witness and authentication.
Instead of an isolated " interposition," it Avas the recurring
term of a periodicity, admitting of prediction. There was
neither more nor less sacredness in a change due to a law
of giant strides taking a millennium at a step, than in one
which recurred at a moment's beat, like the steps of a little
child. If the common conception is true, and all the order of
Nature is delivered over to Second Causes, immediate volition of
the First Cause is removed alike from the frequent and the
rare. If, on the other hand, the enumerated energies of nature
are but constant varieties of form in the Divine activity, the
contents of every cycle, swift or slow, are alike immediate. The
supposed argument from miracles rests upon an assumed
antithesis between Nature and God, which the Babbage solution
destroys.

Dr. Carpenter added that, to him, the whole class of argu-
ments to which that of Bishop Temple belongs, on the abstract
possibility, probability, credibility, of miracles, appeared a
futile waste of ingenuity. The problem was not philosophical,
but historical ; and must be determined by critical methods
applied to the records of concrete cases ; fair account being
taken, on the one hand, of the value and extent of assured
first-hand evidence; and, on the other, of the sources of sub-
jective illusion and the fluid state of all popular tradition.

Under these conditions, the reported miracles were, to him,
evidence chiefly of the intense and profound impression left by
the personality of Jesus. In that, and in the spiritual relations
which it implied, lay the real secret, and the permanent power,
of Christianity. These the records suffice to preserve; and
with these it is wiser for the present age to be content.

More than this passed between us ; and 1 believe that I was
tempted to say more in my recital to the Christian Conference.
But further I cannot securely go, without making my lamented

152 MEMORIAL SKETCH.

friend responsible rather for my part of the conversation than
for his own. The foregoing sentences contain, at least, the
outUne of the scheme of thought which he sketched.

To this meeting Dr. Carpenter recurred several times
in the home-talk that evening, over the tea-table, the
microscope, and the familiar game of backgammon. On
retiring to rest he took a hot-air bath to ease the stiffness
and rheumatic pains which the damp weather rendered
unusually severe, when the accidental overturning of the
lamp inflicted such injuries that after a few hours — which
closed in tranquil sleep — he passed quietly away.

Four days later, on Friday, November 13, his remains
were laid near those of a venerated relative to whom he
had been deeply attached, in the Highgate Cemetery.
Ere the last office was complete, Dr. Sadler spoke of him
as teacher and investigator, as companion and helper, and
added the following words on that aspect of his life which
it is especially the object of this volume to illustrate : —

At a time when religion and science have appeared too
often unhappily divided, it is hardly possible to overestimate
the significance of their union in him, of his steadfast avowal
of his own faith, and his personal sympathy with and participa-
tion in Christian worship. It is hardly possible to overrate the
value of the contributions from his pen on religious subjects.
To none, indeed, of those who have given up all religious pro-
fession, was a narrow and unspiritual theology, such as has been
too often preached, more repellent than to him. But in the
home of his childhood he breathed an atmosphere both of
religious freedom and of religious feeling, and was led by pre-
cept and example to think freely and earnestly on religious
subjects, and the result was that his large intellectual culture
did not repress in him a most devotional spirit, but gave it a
wider range, and enabled it to soar up higher, foreshadowing,
I trust, the way in which

"That in us which thinl<s and that which feels
Shall everlastingly be reconciled,
And that which questioneth with that which kneels,"

ESSAYS.

I.

THE METHOD AND AIM OF THE STUDY OF

PHYSIOLOGY.

[From the conclusion of an article entitled, " Physiology an Inductive
Science," in the British and Foreign Medical Review, April, 1838.]

It is quite evident that no one can advantageously commence the
study of physiology without a tolerably complete knowledge of
human anatomy, both general and special. Those details, however,
which are peculiarly connected with physiological inference may,
perhaps, be not improperly deferred until the time when their appli-
cation tends to implant them on the memory. Either conjointly
with, or subsequently to, the study of the human organism, we
recommend that a general knowledge of comparative anatomy be
acquired ; and though the magnitude of the task may alarm the
student, he will find that if he avoids devoting much attention to
details of external form, and endeavours to make himself acquainted
with the general development of each system, the pursuit will be
easy as well as delightful. It will not be amiss to acquire at the
same time a knowledge of the structure of vegetables, not only
because we find there expressed in another and frequently a simpler
form, the anatomical facts which it is difficult to trace in animals,
but because the attainment of the laws of morphology in flowering
plants, and their progressive extension in the cryptogamia, may
advantageously serve as our guide in the more intricate pursuit of
similar generalizations in the animal kingdom. We have already
stated our belief that a knowledge of the principles of general
physics is essential to the successful cultivation of physiological

IS6 NATURE AND MAN.

science ; and when all these preparatory steps have been taken,
the student will enter upon its study with no small advantages.

Whatever may be thought of the expediency of commencing
the study of anatomy by investigating the structure of the simplest
organisms, a plan which has many advocates, we are decidedly of
opinion that this course is essential in physiology ; and that the
student who adopts it will be saved the necessity of unlearning
many erroneous notions which he would unavoidably imbibe from
the premature study of the human functions. In the pursuit of
general physiology he will learn what are the essential conditions
of life ; he will see the changes indispensable to its support mani-
fested in their simplest circumstances ; and he will be able to
ascertain what structures are necessary to their performance, and
what additions and modifications these may undergo to suit the
various purposes of their existence. He will acquire, also, the
great advantage of making observation a substitute for experiment ;
the former means, wherever it can be employed in physiology
being decidedly preferable (as we hope we have successfully de-
monstrated), both in the certainty and satisfactory nature of the
conclusions which may be drawn from it ; and in its freedom
from those objections which every humane mind must feel to the
infliction of unnecessary tortures upon beings endowed with
sensations as acute as our own.

We have alluded, in the early part of this article, to the diffi-
culty of distinguishing the operation of vital and physical laws •
and this we cannot but regard as a question to be completely
determined before the laws of purely vital phenomena can be
satisfactorily established. To analyze the phenomena in which
physical laws are acting under conditions supplied by vital pro-
cesses, and to trace the diversities from their usual mode of action
occasioned by the existence of these conditions, appears to us,
therefore, to be at present the most obvious method of advancing
the science. We cannot but believe that the inquiry would
ultimately terminate in referring all vital actions to properties
as essentially connected with that form of matter which we call
organized, as are the ordinary physical properties with inorganic
matter.

One more question would then remain : is it possible that these

THE STUDY OF PHYSIOLOGY. if,/

physical and vital properties of matter, which are at present our
ultimate facts or axioms, may be hereafter included within a more
general expression common to both ? On this subject we can
only speculate ; but the probability appears decidedly in the
affirmative. We have already remarked upon the rapid progress
of generalization in the physical sciences, rendering it probable
that before long one simple formula shall comprehend all the
phenomena of the inorganic world ; and it is not, perhaps, too
much to hope for a corresponding simplification in the laws of the
organized creation, although this is necessarily retarded by the
many obstacles which the nature of the subject presents to
the philosophical inquirer. In proportion to our attainment of
such generalizations, we rise from the domain of our ignorance to
that of our knowledge ; for, at every successive step, we are able
to comprehend new relations between facts that previously seemed
confused and insulated ; new objects for what formerly appeared
destitute of utility.

Every step, then, which we take in the path of generalization
must increase our admiration of the beauty of the adaptation, and
the harmony of the action of the laws we discover ; a beauty and
harmony in which the contemplative mind delights to recognize
the wisdom and beneficence of the Divine Author of the universe,
If we can conceive that the Almighty _;?«/ which created matter out
of nothing, impressed upon it one simple law, which should regu-
late the association of its masses into systems of almost illimitable
extent, controlling their movements, fixing the times of the com-
mencement and the cessation of each world, and balancing against
each other the perturbing influences to which its own actions give
rise, — should be the cause, not only of the general uniformity, but
of the particular variety of their conditions, governing the changes
in the form and structure of each individual globe protracted
through an existence of countless centuries, and adjusting the
alternation of " seasons and times and months and years," — should
people all these worlds with living beings of endless diversity of
nature, providing for their support, their happiness, their mutual
reliance, ordaining their constant decay of succession, not merely
as individuals, but as races, and adapting them in every minute
particular to the conditions of their dwelling, — and should har-

158 NATURE AND MAN.

monize and blend together all the innumerable multitude of these
actions, making their very perturbations sources of new powers ; —
when our knowledge is sufficiently advanced to comprehend these
things, then shall we be led to a far higher and nobler concep-
tion of the Divine mind than we have at present the means of
forming.

II.

THE BRAIN AND ITS PHYSIOLOGY.

[From an article in the British and Foreipi Medical Rcvieiv, October, 1846.]

It may be desirable to recapitulate briefly the positions on which
we have now dwelt.

1. That the sensory ganglia supply all the conditions requisite
for the reception of sensations in the higher animals as in the
lower ; and that there is a class of actions excitable through them
by the direct influence of sensations ; to these we give the name
of consensual.

2. That the sensations which excite these actions, also excite
the feelings of pleasure and pain, which have their seat in the
same ganglia. These feelings may receive different designations,
according to the nature of the objects towards which they are dis-
played. Thus, attachment and dislike, affection and rage, joy and
sorrow, and many other simple and elementary feelings, are but
modifications or phases of pleasure and pain, which receive their
different designations according to the character of the objects
which excite them, the ideas which they arouse, and the mode in
which they are manifested.

3. That sensations, the simple feelings connected with them,
and the consensual movements to which they prompt, make up
the sum-total of those operations to which the term instinctive is
properly applicable ; that these take place through the instru-
mentality of the sensory ganglia^ and that none of those higher
operations which involve the formation of ideas, reasoning pro-
cesses, and volitional determinations, can take place without a
cerebrum.

i6o NATURE AND MAN.

4. That the cerebrum is the seat of the formation of ideas, or
elementary notions originating from sensations, and of all those
higher intellectual operations^ of which those ideas form (as it were)
the pabulum.

5. That the occurrence of ideas in the cerebrum may produce
feelings of pleasure or pain in the sensory ganglia, analogous to
those which are produced by sensations.

6. That the tendency to the recurrence of a certain class of
ideas, constantly connected with feelings of pleasure or pain, con-
stitutes what is known as an emotion, desire, or propensity ; and
that this is composite in its nature, involving the cerebrum for the
formation of ideas, and the sensory ganglia for the feelings with
which they are associated.

7. That certain ideas, which thus strongly excite the feelings,
may also produce m.otions through the instrumentality of the
sensory ganglia and their nerves ; that these movements are in-
voluntary in their character, and are excited by emotional states
in the same manner as they are by direct sensations ; and that
they consequently belong to the consensual group.

8. That intellectual operations may take place, in which the
feelings do not participate (as, for example, in mathematical or
scientific ratiocination) ; but that the motives which regulate our
personal conduct are, in great part, derived from the feelings
attached to particular ideas or classes of ideas. When the
emotional states thus act, in affecting the further course of the
mental operations, they have no immediate agency upon the body,
their influence being exerted through the will.

9. That the exertion of the reasoning powers, and the final
determination which, in its action on the body or the mind, we
call volition or will, operates solely through the instrumentality of
the cerebrum.

10. That the cerebrum has probably no direct connection,
however, either with the sensory organs or with the muscular
system; but that it depends upon the sensorial ganglia for the
reception of sensations, and for the execution of voluntary move-
ments ; this execution being still guided by the sensations received
through these ganglia, and the act of muscular contraction being
dependent upon their continuance.

THE BRAIN AND ITS PHYSIOLOGY. i6i

We conclude, as we commenced, by disclaiming any hostility
whatever to the phrenological system in the abstract, and by
freely admitting the general coincidence between the indications
of human character, which are afforded by cranioscopical examina-
tion, and those derived from a direct acquaintance. But we con-
sider that, in building up their system, the followers of Gall have
been too disregardful of evidence supplied from other sources than
observation of man ; and that they have been misled, as to the
fundamental connection of the cerebrum with the purely instinctive
actions, by their inattention to comparative anatomy, which proves
that the cerebrum cannot be the instrument of those actions ; and
have glossed over the important objection which the non-develop-
ment of the posterior lobes in the lower mammalia and in all the
oviparous vertebrata interposes to the location of the animal pro-
pensities in them. So far, however, from availing ourselves of
these errors, as conclusive arguments against the whole system, we
have endeavoured, by a new analysis of the propensities and
emotions, to show that the facts supplied by comparative anatomy
may be brought into conformity with the physiology of Gall ; and
that the phrenological system may be planted upon a much more
secure and extended basis than it has yet possessed ; a new and
more exact series of observations, however, being required to
build it up Avith anything like firmness and consistency. We
cannot regard the question of the functions of the cerebellum as
at all fundamental in its character ; and can easily understand how
a candid phrenologist like Dr. Gowan, may, on this point, embrace
the views held (we believe) by all the leading physiologists of
the day.

Finally, we commend our review of the subject to the candid
consideration of those who thmk with us that the determination
of the general functions of the encephalon is the first question for
the physiologist ; that the determination of the share of these per-
formed by the cercbrn7n, to be effected by attention to comparative
anatomy and by experiment, is \}c\q. secotid ; and that the determina-
tion of the special functions oi different parts of the cerebrum, to be
effected (for the reasons we have stated) by the comparison of the
varieties of cerebral (not cranial) conformation in man, with some
assistance from that of the lower animals, is the third. Upon

i63 NATURE AND MAN.

those who blindly uphold the method of Gall, in disregard of all
the improvements which have taken place in our knowledge of
neurology since his time, and who regard the present phrenological
system as so perfect as to be incapable of improvement, we certainly
despair of making any impression. We would not be supposed to
assert our conviction that our own views, as now expressed, are so
complete as to be incapable of further improvement. Considering,
as we do, that the whole science of encephalic phrenology is in
its infancy — that a large amount of information as to the funda-
mental data on which it must be built up is yet wanting — that
the progress of comparative anatomy, of embryology, and of
microscopy may make many additions to our knowledge of the
connections of different parts of the nervous centres, which may
tend to modify previously received doctrines — and that, on the
other hand, an entirely new system of psychological observation
must be carried out, in order to bring psychology and physiology
into their proper relation ; it would be absurd in us to attempt to
lay down dogmatic conclusions, by which to stand or fall. We
would be understood as attempting nothing in this article, but to
test the relative validity of two rival methods of philosophizing on
this subject. Our conviction of the uniformity of Nature is such,
that we are thoroughly persuaded that there can be no real con-
tradiction between her various indications, when these are properly
brought together and compared ; and our attempt has been to
point out the application of the method, which has elsewhere been
pursued with complete success, to neurological investigation. We
deem it particularly incumbent upon us to point out that even if
our views should be proved to be erroneous as to a few minor
points — such, for example, as the offices of the thalami and corpora
striata — our main argument is not affected. The points for which
we contend are simply these : the independent character of the
sensory ganglia as the instruments of sensation and of consensual
actions ; the superadded character of the cerebrum, as the organ
by whose instrumentality ideas are formed, and reasoning processes
are carried on ; and the mixed character of the emotions and pro-
pensities, as compounded of ideas and sbnple feelings of pleasure
and pain. On this last point we venture to think that we have
made a real advance in psychology, which will prove to be im-

THE BRAIN AND ITS PHYSIOLOGY. 163

portant ; and we happen to know that several intelligent psycho-
logists are well prepared to receive it, as fixing and defining views
which had been previously floating in their own minds. It seems,
indeed, to have been glimpsed at by the late Mr. James Mill, in
his valuable " Analysis of the Human Mind ; " his deficiency
consisting in connecting the feeling too much with the sensation,
rather than with the intellectual idea. We should be doing in-
justice to that very painstaking anatomist, Mr. Swan, were we not
to state that, on referring to his general summary of his views of
the oftices of the nervous centres, we find a very near coincidence
with the leading features of our own doctrines regarding the re-
lative ofiices of the sensory ganglia and the cerebrum — doctrines,
indeed, to which it would be easy to point out approaches in the
writings of many previous physiologists, to whose authority we
might refer in support of our own.

i64 NATURE AND MAN.

III.

THE AUTOMATIC EXECUTION OF VOLUNTARY

MOVEMENTS.

[From an article on Todd's " Physiology of the Nervous System," in the
British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, January, 1850.]

Every one who has attentively considered the nature of what we
are accustomed to call vohmtary action has been struck with the
fact that the will simply determines the result, not the special
movements by which it is brought about. If it were otherwise, we
should be dependent upon our anatomical knowledge for our
power of performing the simplest movements of the body.
Again, there are very few cases in which we can single out any
individual muscle, and put it into action independently of others ;
the cases in which we can do so are those in which a single
muscle is concerned in producing the result, as in the elevation
of the eyelids, and we then really single out the muscle and cause
it to contract, by " willing " the result. Thus, then, however
startling the position may at first appear, we have a right to affirm
that the will cannot exert any direct or immediate power over the
muscles; but that its determinations are carried into effect
through the intermediation of some mechanism, which, without
any further effort on our own parts, selects and combines the
particular muscles whose contractions are requisite to produce
the desired movement. This conclusion, at which we arrive by
an analysis of our own consciousness is in perfect harmony with
the influences which we should draw from the anatomical rela-
tions of the cerebrum ; for we have found strong reason to believe

AUTOMATIC MOVEMENTS. 165

that the cerebrum does not directly transmit any fibres to the
muscular system ; but that its operations are exerted through those
fibres which pass between the surface of the hemispheres and the
chain of ganglionic centres at the base of the cranium that con-
stitutes the summit of the automatic apparatus. And thus, as the
sensorium plays (so to speak) upon the cerebrum, sending to it
sensations in order to call forth its activity as the instrument of
the purely mental operations, so does the cerebrum, in its turn,
play downwards upon the motor portion of the automatic ap-
paratus, sending it volitional impulses, which excite its motorial
activity. Thus, even what we are accustomed to consider our
volufitary movements, are in their immediate and essential nature
automatic ; their peculiar character being, that whereas the ordi-
nary automatic movements are excited by external stimuli, im-
pressional or sensational, conveyed by the afferent nerves, the
volitional movements are excited by a stimulus proceeding from
the cerebrum, and conveyed along what Reil, with great sagacity,
termed the nerves of the internal senses.

The views which we have advanced as to the really automatic
character of voluntary movements, and the inclusion of the
sensorial centres in the automatic, rather than in the cerebral,
division of the apparatus, appear to us to be in most singular
harmony with the phenomena of those movements which were
not unaptly designated by Hartley as " secondarily automatic,"
having been voluntary in the first instance, but having been
brought by habit into more or less complete independence of
the will. Such actions, in fact, take the place in man of those
which are primarily and purely automatic in many of the lower
animals. Take, for example, the movements of progression. In
the first instance they are performed in sole respondence to the
will. Whilst the child is learning to walk, every single effort has
a voluntary source ; but still its immediate dependence on the
automatic mechanism is evident in the necessity for attention to
the guiding sensations as the regulators of the voluntary effort
As the habit of movement becomes more and more established,
however, we are able to withdraw both the attention and the
voluntary effort, to such a degree that at last it is only necessary
for the will to start or commence the actions, and to permit their

1 66 NATURE AND MAN.

continuance. We think that no one can doubt this, who can
analyze his own consciousness as to those states of " reverie " in
which the mind is completely withdrawn from the contemplation
of external objects, and is concentrated, as it were, upon itself.
A person who is subject to such fits of "absence of mind," may
fall into one of them whilst walking the streets; his whole atten-
tion shall be absorbed in his train of thought, so that he is
conscious of no more interruption in its continuity than if his
body were perfectly at rest, and his reverie was taking place in
the quietude of his own study ; and yet, during the whole of
that time, his hmbs shall have been in motion, carrying him along
the accustomed path ; and his vision shall have given the direc-
tion to these movements which is requisite to guide him along a
particular line, or to move him out of it for the avoidance of
obstacles. In such a case it would seem as if the contact of
the foot with the ground, in making each step, was the stimulus
to the next movement ; and as if the visual organs exerted just
the same automatic guidance over the direction of the progres-
sion as they appear to do in animals which do not possess a
distinct organ of intelligence and will. The complete occupation
of the mind in other ways, as in close conversation or argument,
is equally favourable to this independent action of the automatic
apparatus in progression ; and many other cases might be cited,
in which an habitual train of actions, such as reading aloud, or
playing on a musical instrument, is not interrupted by the complete
withdrawal of the attention, and consequent suspension of volun-
tary effort.

It would be difficult to explain such phenomena on the
hypothesis of the " distinct system ; " because we cannot con-
ceive how a set of movements originally performed by the
sensori- volitional or cerebral fibres can ever be transferred to
the excito-motor or spinal ; and every one allows that in man
these movements are in the first instance prompted by the will and
performed under the guidance of sensations. On our hypothesis,
on the other hand, the solution is easy and natural. Even when
voluntary, as they are in the first instance, these movements are
performed by the instrumentality of the automatic apparatus ; and
the influence of habit gradually links on the actions to the

AUTOMATIC MOVEMENTS. 167

sensations which at first guided them, in such a manner that the
latter at last come to be in themselves adequate excitors of
the movement, when the series has once been commenced by
an exertion of the will. It has been thought by some a sufficient
proof of the voluntary nature of these movements, that we can
check them at any time by an effort of the will ; but this we do
only when the attention has been recalled to them, so that the
cerebrum, liberated, as it were, from its previous self-occupation,
resumes its usual play upon the automatic centres. It has been
asked, moreover, why, if these sensations are adequate to call
forth automatic movements when the perceptive and voluntary
operation of the cerebrum is suspended, they do not exert the
same influence when it is in its ordinary condition of functional
activity. This inquiry, however, is equally applicable to the
most undoubted cases of automatic movement ; thus we do not
find that tickling the soles of the feet in man ordinarily produces
the same semi-convulsive agitation of the lower extremities, that
such irritation will call forth when the spinal cord has been
divided or seriously injured in the dorsal region. And when
the cerebral influence is withdrawn by the absorption of the
mind in reverie, slight stimuli will often call forth unaccustomed
and sometimes powerful automatic movements. So, again, during
sleep, when both the cerebrum and the sensory ganglia are in a
state of torpor, reflex actions may be excited through the spinal
cord, such as could not be called forth by the same stimuli in the
waking state. The fact appears to be that, when the cerebrum
is in its usual state of activity, any irritation which would dispose
to reflex action, if its effect were limited to the automatic centres,
is expended (as it were) by being propagated onwards to the
cerebrum ; and the mind thus rendered conscious of it, controls,
if necessary, any tendency to automatic action which it may have
excited. But when this onward propagation of the polar state is
checked, either by interruption of the structural continuity, or by
the want of a recipient condition of the cerebrum, it must then
react in the automatic apparatus itself. The case, in fact, appears
to us to be analogous to that of the emotional impulses, which
are not so prone to act upon the mi/id when they can discharge
themselves through the /^odj by muscular movement. The im-

i68 NATURE AND MAN.

mediate seat of these impulses, Dr. Todd agrees with us in
locating in the sensory ganglia; but he does not seem to us
sufficiently to recognize the participation of the cerebrum in
emotional states. A simple feeling of pleasure or pain excited
by a sensation, and tending to react directly upon the muscular
system, cannot be correctly termed an emotion ; for this last
involves an idea, which, though originally springing from a
sensation, at last comes to be quite independent of external
stimuli. But the idea is not emotional so long as it is a state
of simple consciousness : it must be associated with a pleasur-
able or painful feeling, in order that it may become so ; and then,
if strongly excited, it may act at once through the automatic
centres, without any effort of the will. In an emotional action,
then, we believe the impulse to be formed in the sensorial centres,
so that it so far resembles an instinctive movement ; but this im-
pulse derives its force rather from a cerebral idea than from an
external sensation ; and its influence, if not exerted downwards
through the motor apparatus, is transmitted back again to the
cerebrum, so as to modify the course of the intellectual opera-
tions, and to supply motives to the will.

IV.

ON THE INFLUENCE OF SUGGESTION IN MODIFY-
ING AND DIRECTING MUSCULAR MOVEMENT,
INDEPENDENTLY OF VOLITION.

[From a report of a Lecture at the Royal Institution, March 12, 1852.]

It now remains to inquire whether any such physiological ac-
count can be given of the "biological" state, as shall enable us
to refer it to any of the admitted laws of action of the nervous
system. This, the lecturer stated, was the point which he was
the most desirous of elucidating ; and in order to prepare his
auditors for the reception of his views, he gave a brief explanation
of those phenomena of "reflex" action (now universally recog-
nized by physiologists), in which impressions made upon the
nervous system are followed by respondent automatic movements.
Such movements have hitherto been distinguished into the excito-
motor, which are performed, without the exciting impression being
necessarily felt, through the instrumentality of the spinal cord and
the nerves connected with it ; and the scnsori-motor, in which sensa-
tion necessarily participates, the respondent motions not being
executed unless the impressions are felt, and their instrument
being the chain of sensory ganglia (collectively constituting the
" sensorium ") which lies between the spinal cord and the cere-
brum, and is intimately connected with both. The automatic
movements of breathing and swallowing, which continue during
a state of profound insensibility, are examples of the former
group ; whilst the start upon a loud sound, the closure of the
lids to a flash of light, or the sneezing induced by the dazzling
of the eyes, as well as by the irritation of the nasal passages, are
instances of the latter. The whole class of purely emoiional
movements may be likened to these ; for in so far as they are

I/O

NATURE AND MAN.

involuntary, and depend upon the excitation of certain states of
mind by external impressions, they must be considered as
" reflex " in the general sense of that term.

Now the usual modus operandi of sensations is to call forth
ideas to the mind ; and these ideas, associated or not with emo-
tional states, become the subjects of intellectual processes, which
result at last in a determination of the will. The movements we
term, voluntary or volitional differ from the emotional and auto-
matic, in being guided by a distinct conception of the object to
be attained, and by a rational choice of the means employed.
And so long as the voluntary power asserts its due predominance,
so long can it keep in check all tendency to any other kind of
action, save such as ministers directly to the bodily wants, as the
automatic movements of breathing and swallowing.

The cerebrum is universally admitted to be the portion of the
nervous system which is instrumentally concerned in the forma-
tion of ideas, the excitement of the emotions, and the operations
of the intellect ; and there seems no reason why it should be
exempted from the law of " reflex action," which applies to
every other part of the nervous system.* And as we have seen
that the emotions may act directly upon the muscular system
through the motor nerves, there is no a priori dithculty in believ-
ing that ideas may become the sources of muscular movement,
independently either of volitions or of emotions. — The relations
of these different modes of action of the nervous system, and the
place which this ideo-motor form of " reflex " operation will
hold in regard to the rest, will be made more apparent by the

following tabular arrangement : —

THE WILL

Volitional Movement

Cerebrum —> Motor Impulse N g

Intellectual Processes'' ■)

t t I

i Emotions

L-t

Ideas

t

Sensations -^ Sensory Ganglia — > Motor Impulse

t

Impressions — ^ Spinal Cord — ^ Motor Impulse

rt O

<

* To Dr. Laycock is due the credit of first extending the doctrine of reflex
action to the brain.

SUGGESTION AND MOVEMENT. 171

Now if that ordinary 71 p7v a rd comsQ of external impressions —
whereby they successively produce sensations, ideas, emotions,
and intellectual processes, the will giving the final decision upon
the action to which they prompt — be anywhere interrupted, the
impression will then exert its power in a transverse direction, and
a "reflex" action will be the result. This is well seen in cases
of injury to the spinal cord, which disconnects its lower portion
from the sensorium without destroying its own power : for im-
pressions made upon the lower extremities then excite violent
reflex actions, to which there would have been no tendency if the
current of nervous force could have passed upwards to the cere-
brum. So, if sensations be prevented by the state of the cerebrum
from calling forth ideas through its instrumentality, they may
react upon the motor apparatus in a manner in which they would
never do in its state of complete functional activity. This the
Lecturer maintained to be the true account of the mode in
which the locomotive movements are maintained and guided in
states of profound abstraction, when the whole attention of the
individual is so completely concentrated upon his own train
of thought that he does not perceive the objects around him,
although his movements are obviously guided by the impressions
whicli they make upon his sensorium. And he adverted to a
very remarkable case, in which the functional activity of the
cerebrum seemed to have been almost entirely suspended for
nearly a twelvemonth, and all the actions of the individual
presented the automatic characters of consensual and reflex
movements.

On the same grounds, it seems reasonable to suppose that
when ideas do not go on to be developed into emotions, or to
excite intellectual operations, they, too, may act (so to speak) in
the transverse direction, and may produce respondent movements
through the instrumentality of the cerebrum ; and this will of
course be most likely to happen when the power of the will is in
abeyance, as has been shown to be the case in regard to the
direction of the thoughts, in the states of electro-biology, somnam-
bulism, and all forms of dreaming and reverie. Here the move-
ments express the ideas that may possess the mind at the time ;
with these ideas, emotional states may be mixed up, and even

172 NATURE AND MAN.

intellectual operations may be (as it were) automatically per-
formed under their suggestive influence. But so long as these
processes are carried on without the control and direction of the
will, and the course of thought is entirely determined by sug-
gestions from without (the effects of which, however, are diversi-
fied by the mental constitution and habits of thought of the
individual), such movements are as truly automatic as are those
more directly prompted by sensations and impressions, although
originating in a more truly psychical source. But the automatic
nature of the purely emotional actions can scarcely be denied;
and as it is in those individuals in whom the intellectual powers
are the least exercised, and the controlling power of the will is the
weakest, that the emotions exert the strongest influence on the
bodily frame, so may we expect ideas to act most powerfully
when the dominance of the will is for the time completely
suspended.

Thus the ideo-motor principle of action finds its appropriate
place in the physiological scale, which would, indeed, be incom-
plete without it. And, when it is once recognized, it may be
applied to the explanation of numerous phenomena which have
been a source of perplexity to many who have been convinced of
their genuineness, and who could not see any mode of reconciling
them with the known laws of nervous action. The phenomena
in question are those which have been recently set down to the
action of an " Od-force," such, for example, as the movements of
the " divining-rod," and the vibration of bodies suspended from
the finger ; both which have been clearly proved to depend on
the state of expectant attentio?i on the part of the performer, his
will being temporarily withdrawn from control over his muscles
by the state of abstraction to which his mind is given up, and the
anticipation of a given result being the stimulus which directly
and involuntarily prompts the muscular movements that produce it.

V.

THE PHASTS OF FORCE.*

[In the earlier part of the article, Dr. Carpenter referred to "a few of the
"more striking and typical examples o{ \\\q phasis of matter, for the purpose of
"introducing a kindred topic, the phasis of force.''' After ilkistnting the
mutual correlation of mechanical force, heat, chemical affinity, and electricity,
he dealt with light, passing from its relation to the preceding modes of force,
to describe its effects in influencing vital processes, and thus advancing to the
phenomena of life.]

In by far the larger number of cases in which Light is evolved,
its manifestation can be directly traced to chemical combination ;
whilst, conversely, light is often a most powerful agent in bringing
about chemical change. In fact, it may be doubted whether light
does not alter the structure or composition of all matter through
which it passes, or on which it falls. Upon such an alteration
depend, not only all the phenomena of photography, and numerous
chemical changes of a most important character, but also the
sustentation of all organic life, and our own sensibility to visual
phenomena. For it is by the extraordinary influence of light upon
the surface of the growing plant, that it is able to separate the
inorganic elements of water, carbonic acid, and ammonia, and to
unite them into those new and peculiar compounds — starch, oil,
albumen, and their derivatives — which serve, not only for the
extension of the vegetable fabric, but also for the nutrition of the
animal body ; so that without light, as Lavoisier truly said, nature
were without life and without soul. So, again, there can be no
doubt that it is by directly producing some change in the nervous
tissue of the retina, of which change the result is transmitted to

* National Review, April, 1S57.

174 NATURE AND MAN.

the sensorium, that luminous impressions are communicated to
our consciousness ; and this change is essential to the continued
nutrition of the tissue ; for it is well known to the physiologist,
that if an opacity on the front of the eye completely prevent the
access of light to the interior, the retina and the optic nerve
gradually waste away, just as muscles do when long disused.
What the precise nature of this change may be, is yet beyond our
ken ; but of the immediate and direct relation of light to the
peculiar properties of animal bodies, a very remarkable proof has
been recently given by the researches of one of the best experi-
mental physiologists of our time, M. Brown-Sequard ; for he has
found that the contraction of the fibres of the iris, which diminishes
the diameter of the pupil, is capable of being called forth, not only
by the stimulus of light upon the retina, which affects the iris
through the nervous circle of reflex action, but also by the impact
of Light upon the iris itself, which directly excites the contraction
of its muscular fibres, in the same way as electrical or mechanical
stimulation excites muscular contraction elsewhere.

By these most important links of connection, we are conducted
to another division of the inquiry — that which relates to the powers
of Life. There have not been wanting, at any period in the history
of physiology, men who have attempted to identify all the forces
actii.g in the living body with those operating in the inorganic
universe. Because muscular force, when brought to bear on the
bones, puts them in motion according to the laws of mechanics —
and because the propulsive power of the heart drives the blood
through the vessels on strictly hydraulic rules, it has been imagined
that the movements of living bodies may be fully explained on
physical principles ; no account being taken of the most im-
portant consideration of all, namely, the source of that power
which the living muscle possesses, but which the dead muscle is
utterly incapable of exerting. So, again, because the digestive
process, whereby food is reduced to a fit state for absorption, and
the formation of various products of the decomposition that is
continually taking place in the living body, may be imitated in the
laboratory, it has been supposed that the appropriation of the
nutriment to the production of living tissue, and the various meta-
morphoses which this undergoes, are to be regarded as chemical

THE P HAS IS OF FORCE. 175

phenomena ; here, again, those most essential peculiarities of the
living body, which involve the temporary subjection of ordinary
chemical affinities to some other agency, being entirely passed by.
A scarcely less unphilosophical method, however, has been pursued
by another class of reasoners, who have cut the Gordian knot by
attributing all the actions of living bodies which physics and
chemistry cannot account for, to a hypothetical " vital principle ; "
an agency which they suppose to exert an autocratic rule in each
organism, and whose laws they think it vain to seek.

By various intelligent physiologists of modern times, however,
the dynamical ideas introduced from physics and chemistry have
been carried into the domain of life ; and it has been felt that the
only mode of placing physiology on a truly scientific basis is, to
regard those phenomena which, being altogether peculiar to living
bodies, are designated "vital," as the manifestations of a special
force or power, and to seek to determine the laws of its operation
by the study of its actions. Of all these actions, there is none so
universal, and therefore so characteristic, as that by which the
organism is built up, or rather builds itself up, from the germ, by
the appropriation of materials derived from external sources, and
subsequently maintains itself in its characteristic form during its
term of life ; hence the hypothetical power which is the supposed
source of it, has been designated as the nisus fonnaiivns, the
bildimgsirieb, or the oi'ga/Jizing force. This power is usually con-
sidered as inherent in the organic structure, and as quite indepen-
dent of heat or other agencies external to this, although they are
admitted to exert an exciting or modifying influence on its 0];)era-
tion ; and it is supposed to be imparted to each individual, like
the substance of the germ from which it sprang, by the parental
organisms which preceded it. In this point of view, therefore, the
germ being potentially the entire organism, all the organizing force
required to build up an oak or a palm, an elephant or a whale,
must be concentrated in a minute particle only discernible by
microscopic aid. But the hypothesis may be disproved by even
a more complete rednctio ad absurdum than this ; for if we suppose
the whole organizing force to be inherent in the organism itself,
and to have been at first derived from its parents, the aggregate of
the forces possessed by the several individuals, how numerous so-

176 NATURE AND MAN.

ever, of any one species, must have been concentrated in their
first progenitors — a doctrine scarcely less monstrous than that of
the emboitement of the germs themselves, which were once supposed
to lie packed one within the other, like nests of pill-boxes.

Now, as the process of physiological inquiry has been recently
bringing more and more clearly into view the dependence of all
Vital activity upon certain antecedent conditions, it has especially
established such a definite relation between the degree of this
activity and the amount of Heat supplied to the organism, either
from external or internal sources, as to make it clear that this
agent is much more than a mere stimulus or provocative to the
exercise of the vital force, and really furnishes the power that does
the work. It has been, in fact, from the narrow limitation of the
area over which physiological research has been commonly pro-
secuted, that this great truth has not sooner become apparent.
Whilst the vital phenomena of warm-blooded animals, which
possess within themselves the means of maintaining a constant
temperature, were made the sole, or at any rate the chief objects
of study, it was not likely that the inquirer would recognize the
influence of external heat in accelerating, or of cold in retarding
their functional activity. It is only when the survey is extended
to cold-blooded animals and to plants, that the immediate and
direct relation between heat and vital energy — as manifested in
the rate of growth and development, or of other changes peculiar
to the living body — is unmistakably evinced.

All the facts and generalizations of Botanical Geography point
to the uninterrupted supply of a large measure of light and heat as
the source of the rich luxuriance and perennial activity of tropical
vegetation ; whilst the periodical declension of vegetative activity
which we observe in the trees and plants of the temperate zone, is
no less obviously due to the seasonal diminution in the supply of
these agents. So, again, the entire cessation of all manifestations
of vegetative life during the protracted intensity of an arctic winter,
is in striking contrast with the almost incredible rapidity of develop-
ment, which is observable under the unintermitted beams of the
summer sun. Now, there are certain annual plants, such as the
corn-grains, which will flourish under a considerable variety of
climatic conditions, and whose term of life is definitely marked

THE PHASIS OF FORCE. 177

out; and of such it has been ascertained by Boussingault, that the
same aggregate amount of light and heat is required by each kind
for the sustentation of its whole term of activity from germination
to the maturation of its seed, under whatever latitude it be grown ;
that term being so uniformly abbreviated by an exaltation, and
protracted by a depression, in the intensity of these forces, as to
show that its rate of life must stand in a direct ratio to them.

We have already seen that the influence of light is exerted in
providing the material for vegetable growth by a quasi-chemical
action ; and it is capable of proof by direct experiment, that,
ceteris paribus, the quantity of carbonic acid decomposed by a
plant in a given time is proportional to the amount of light that
has fallen upon it. There is no reason to suppose that light acts
upon more than the surface, or that it has any direct concern with
the internal operations of growth and development. On the
contrary, we find that at one most important epoch, that of ger-
mination, these processes are most actively carried on in the
dark ; it being only when all the store of nutriment laid up in the
seed has been exhausted, and when the young plant is beginning
to be dependent upon that which it obtains for itself, that the
influence of light becomes requisite. On the other hand, the rate
of germination is so closely dependent, as every maltster knows,
upon the degree of heat to which the seed is exposed, that it is
capable of being exactly regulated by an increase or a diminution
of the temperature ; and thus we are led to regard heat as the
force by which the vegetable germ is enabled to appropriate the
nutriment prepared for it, and to organize this into living tissue.
Such a view, however, is by no means equivalent to the assertion
that heat is itself the " vital principle," or the organizing force.
We do not say that heat is electricity, because the heating of a
certain combination of metals produces an electric current through
them ; nor do we say that heat is mechanical force, because by
boiling water we generate an elastic vapour. In each of these
instances the character of the force is changed ; and so it is here.
The living organism is the medium of transmutation, like the bis-
muth and antimony in the first case, or like the water in the
second; and its special peculiarity is, that it converts the heat,
not only into vital force generally, but into that peculiar form of

178 NATURE AND MAN.

it which exerts itself in building up and maintaining a certain
structural type. Thus each species puts to a use of its own the
heat that is supplied to it; just as, if we may use so rough a
simile, each of the machines in a large manufactory may turn out
a particular kind of work, although the same motor force is sup-
plied to all ; and each generation transmits to its successor, not
the force, but the capacity, for making a particular use of the
force; just as a machine would do, that could apply its motor
power to the construction of another machine similar to itself.

The study of the life-history of cold-blooded animals — those,
namely, whose temperature closely follows that of the medium
they inhabit — leads to precisely the same conclusions ; as is
especially apparent in those cases in which the ratio of life can be
most accurately estimated. The earliest developmental changes
in the fertilized egg of the frog, for example, consist in the cleavage,
or segmentation of the yolk-mass, first into two parts, tlien into
four, then into eight, and so on ; and it was found by Mr. Newport
that the periods at which the successive cleavages took place were
so precisely determined by the temperature to which the eggs were
exposed, that he could predicate the former from the latter with
great precision. So it has long been known that the production of
larvcE from the eggs of insects could be accelerated or retarded,
like the germination of plants, by increase or diminution of tem-
perature ; and that the same holds good also regarding the pro-
duction of the perfect chrysalis in the last metamorphosis. In the
adult animal, the rate of life may be in some degree estimated by
the amount of carbonic acid thrown off in respiration ; and it has
been shown by the experiments of Dr. W, F. Edwards, that this
increases in a direct ratio to the temperature to which the body is
exposed ; whilst the duration of life, when respiration is prevented,
is much greater at low temperatures than at high, showing that the
animals then live much more slowly.

The case is different, however, with warm-blooded animals ; for
they are rendered in a great degree independent of external varia-
tions, by the power which they possess of generating such an
amount of heat within themselves, as shall keep the temperature
of their bodies up to a certain fixed standard. Hence it is that
their rate of life varies very little, and that their developmental

THE P HAS IS OF FORCE. 179

functions are performed with a remarkable conformity to fixed
periods of time. Thus, in the incubated egg of the bird, which is
not left to casual supplies of warmth, but is constantly subjected
to the high temperature of the maternal body, the chick is matured
after a definite term of days ; and if the requisite heat were not
thus constantly supplied, not merely would the developmental
process be suspended, but the reduction of temperature would
annihilate the organizing power. For it is the peculiarity of warm-
blooded animals, that whilst this power is more energetic in its
action than in that of the lower tribes, it requires for its mainte-
nance a higher measure of heat; so that a reduction of the
temperature of the body to such a degree as would favour the
energetic activity of the lish or reptile, would be fatal to the bird
or mammal.

Although there is still some obscurity respecting certain phe-
nomena of " animal heat," yet there is no question amongst
either chemists or physiologists in regard to the general fact, that
the main source of this heat is the oxygenation (by a kind of
combustive process) of the hydrocarbons contained in the food.
Now, we have seen that all these hydrocarbons, such as starch,
sugar, oil, etc., are either directly or indirectly derived from the
vegetable kingdom ; and not only a direct amount of oxygen,
hydrogen, and carbon have been consumed in their production,
but also a certain amount of solar light and heat, which they may
thus be said to embody. The combustive process is not so
carried on in the living body as to give forth light, save in a few
exceptional cases, but it reproduces in the form of heat all that
was embodied in the respiratory food, and thus the warm-blooded
animal may be said to be continually restoring to the universe
that force which the growing plant had appropriated to itself.
And, carrying the same principle a little further, we may say, that
in utilizing the stores of coal which have been prepared by the
luxuriant vegetation of past ages, man is not only restoring to the
atmosphere the carbonic acid and water of the carboniferous
epoch, but is actually reproducing and applying to his own use
the light and heat which its vegetation drew from the solar beams,
as if for the very purpose of fixing them until he should find the
means of turning them to account. Looking at this matter from

i8o NATURE AND MAN.

the standpoint afforded by the " correlation " doctrine, we are
led to question whether the project of the Laputan sage to ex-
tract sunbeams from cucumbers was so very chimerical after all ,
while we cannot but feel an increased admiration of the intuitive
sagacity of that remarkable man George Stephenson, who Avas
often laughed at for propounding in a somewhat crude form the
very idea which we have just been endeavouring to present under
a more philosophical aspect.

There are other modes, however, in which the living animal
restores to the universe the forces which the plant took from it.
Its most distinguishing attribute is motion ; and this motion being
another expression of force, the question arises, What is the source
of that force ? There, again, we fall back on the plant, both for
the force, and for the material of the structure which exerts it.
All the higher forms of animal motion are the result of Muscular
contraction ; and physiologists are now generally agreed in the
truth of the statement first formally enunciated by Liebig, that
every act of muscular contraction involves the death and oxida-
tion of an amount of muscular substance proportional to the force
exerted. Hence we are justified in regarding the motion produced
by this contraction as an expression of the vital force which is
superseded by chemical action, and as holding the same relation
to that chemical action which the voltaic current bears to the
oxidation of the zinc in the battery. Going further back, we
find that the peculiar nitrogenous material of which muscle is
composed, though organized by the animal under the agency
already explained, is really generated by the plant ; and that its
production in large amount may be regarded as the highest effort
of plant-life, taking place as it does only under the most favourable
concurrence of conditions, among which a copious supply of light
and heat are especially required. And thus we may say that the
nitrogenous constituents of plants embody a high degree of force,
which is destined ultimately to manifest itself in the sensible
motions of animals. And it is a curious confirmation of this
view, that if these substances pass into decomposition without
being organized into muscle, they set free a large amount of
chemical force; all those "ferments" which have so remarkable
a power of exciting chemical changes in other organic compounds,
being members of this group.

THE P HAS IS OF FORCE. i8i

The highest manifestation of animal life, however, is unques-
tionably that Nerve-force, by the instrumentality of which our
consciousness receives its impressions of phenomena external to
it, and our will exerts its power in producing motion through the
instrumentality of the muscular apparatus. Regarding the nature
of this force there is still some obscurity, but its very close rela-
tion to electricity cannot be doubted. Though many most eminent
physicists hold that they are identical, we regard the "correlation"
doctrine as equally accounting for all those facts which support
such a view, whilst it also accords with others which seem opposed
to it ; and we, therefore, prefer to consider nervous force as be-
longing to a distinct category. As its source lies, like that of
muscular power, in the chemical changes involved in the death
and decomposition of the peculiar tissue which manifests it, we trace
it back ultimately to the plant which generated the material of the
tissue, and thence to the light and heat which that plant received
from the sun. Although the most obvious exertion of this force
in the living body is that by which it calls forth muscular con-
traction, yet it can also influence in a very marked manner the
processes of nutrition and secretion ; so that its correlation with
the general organizing force is exhibited (as in the case of elec-
tricity and chemical action) on both sides, the nervous substance
giving up its characteristic organization whilst developing nerve-
force, and that nerve-force being transmitted to a distant part, to
be applied there in producing or modifying organization. It is
now well known that in the common experiment of exciting
muscular contraction by galvanizing a motor nerve, the galvanism
does not act directly through the nerve upon the muscle, but
excites the nerve-force in that part of the trunk which intervenes
between the point irritated and the muscle to which the nerve is
distributed ; and in like manner, when sensation is called forth by
the application of the electric stimulus to the sensory nerve, the
effect is produced, not by the transmission of the electric current
to the sensorium, but by the excitement of the nerve-force of the
part of the trunk which proceeds towards it from the point irri-
tated. And as the converse action to this excitement of nerve-force
by electricity, we have the excitement by electricity of nerve-force
in the electric fishes and a few other animals. Certain phenomena

1 82 NATURE AND MAN.

of animal heat seem to indicate that nerve-force may directly
produce elevation of temperature, and there are forms of animal
luminosity which do not appear to depend upon an ordinary
combustive process, but which rather resemble electric scintil-
lations and seem immediately dependent on an exertion of nerve-
force. Further, the pecuhar influence of states of the nervous
system upon the composition of various secretions can only be
explained by supposing that nerve-force has a direct power of
modifying chemical action. So that of this, the highest form of
vital force, all the material manifestations are of a kind that bring
us back again into the region of physics and chemistry.

But there is another aspect under which we have to view
nerve-force — that of its relation to mental phenomena. That the
excitement of this force in a certain part of our nervous apparatus
is capable of producing a change in our state of consciousness, is
the only explanation that can be offered of our recipience of
Sensations from impressions made upon our organs of sense. So,
again, that the state of mental activity which we term the Will,
can so excite the nerve-force of the central organs as to occasion
its transmission to the muscular apparatus, is the only explanation
that can be offered of our power of voluntary motion. These two
simple facts seem quite adequate to establish a " correlation "
between nerve-force and mental agency, which is not less com-
plete than that which has been shown to exist between nerve-
force and electricity ; and we are led to the same conclusion by a
careful appreciation of the fact, which all physiological knowledge
of the conditions of mental activity tends to establish, that this
activity, like exertion of muscular force, can only be sustained,
as man is at present constituted, at the expense of the death and
disintegration of the nervous substance. This idea of " correla-
tion " once started, is found to give a scientific expression to a
vast mass of facts demonstrative of the intimate connection
between body and mind, which, though accepted as conformable
to the universal experience of mankind, have not yet found their
place in systematic treatises ; since they occupy that " debatable
"ground" between metaphysics and physiology which the votaries
of each of these sciences, far from wishing to claim it for them-
selves, are desirous to cede to the dwellers on the other side

THE P HAS IS OF FORCE. 183

of the border. Take, for example, the production of temporary
insanity by intoxicatmg agents, on the one hand ; the influence
of the emotions, not merely on the quantity, but also on the
quality, of the secretions, on the other. These are unmistakable
phenomena, that have just as great a claim to be examined and
accounted for as those of ordinary mental or corporeal activity;
and which have yet been passed by, simply because no one
has yet been able to suggest any other than a " material "
explanation of them.

We shall have greatly failed in our purpose, however, if we
have not by this time led our readers to perceive how com-
plete is the distinction between matter and force, and how close
is the relation between force and mind. Matter is in no case
more than the embodiment or instrument of force ; all its (so-
called) active states being merely the manifestations of an energy,
which, under different forms, is unceasingly operative. Nor can
it be fairly said, that in substituting the doctrine of force for
that of the " imponderables," we are only setting up one hypo-
thetical entity in place of another. Force is truly more of a
reality to us than matter itself 5 for we cannot become cognisant
even of the most fundamental property of matter — its occupation
of space — without the consciousness of resistance. We cannot, it
is true, isolate force from matter ; but we have two modes of
judging of it — one objective, the other subjective ; one based
upon observation of external phenomena, the other on the direct
revelation of our own consciousness. And we hold it to be by
the combination of both sets of considerations that cur truest and
most definite ideas of dynamical agency are to be attained. We
are conscious of the exertion of a power, when we either pro-
duce or resist motion ; whenever, therefore, we see bodies in
motion, we infer that only by a like exertion of power could
that motion have originated ; so when the retardation of motion
gives rise to heat, or heat (in ceasing to manifest itself as such)
gives rise to expansive force, we perceive that it is only the
manifestation that is changed, the fundamental power remain-
ing the same. And as we are thus led by the " correlation "
doctrine to consider the various agencies of nature as the ex-
pression of a conscious will, we find the highest science com-

i84 NATURE AND MAN.

pletely according with the highest religion, in directing us to
recognize the omnipresent and constantly sustaining energy of
a personal Deity in every phenomenon of the universe around
us — the pantheistic and anthropomorphic conceptions of His
character being thus brought into harmony, when we view
"Nature" as the embodiment of the Divine volition, the "forces
of Nature " as so many diversified modes of its manifestation,
and the " laws of Nature " as nothing but man's expressions
of the uniformities which his limited observation can discern in
its phenomena.

VI.

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE.

[Presidential Address at the meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, Brighton, 1872.]

My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen, — Thirty-six years have now
elapsed since at the first and (I regret to say) the only meeting of
this Association held in Bristol — which Ancient city followed im-
mediately upon our national Universities in giving it a welcome —
I enjoyed the privilege which I hold it one of the most valuable
functions of these annual assemblages to bestow : that of coming
into personal relation with those distinguished men whose names
are to every cultivator of science as " household words," and the
light of whose brilliant example, and the warmth of whose cordial
encouragement are the most precious influences by which his own
aspirations can be fostered and directed. Under the presidency
of the Marquis of Lansdowne, with Conybeare and Prichard as
vice-presidents, with Vernon Harcourt as general secretary, and
John Phillips as assistant-secretary, were gathered together Whe-
well and Peacock, James Forbes and Sir W. Rowan Hamilton,
Murchison and Sedgwick, Buckland and De la Beche, Henslow
and Daubeny, Roget, Richardson, and Edward Forbes, with many
others, perhaps not le^s distinguished, of whom my own recollection
is less vivid.

In his honoured old age, Sedgwick still retains, in the academic
home of his life, all his pristine interest in whatever bears on the
advance of the science he has adorned as well as enriched ; and
Phillips still cultivates with all his old enthusiasm the congenial

1 86 NATURE AND MAN.

soil to which he has been transplanted. But the rest — our fathers
and elder brothers — " Where are they ? " It is for us of the
present generation to show that they live in our lives ; to carry
forward the work which they commenced ; and to transmit the
influence of their example to our own successors.

There is one of these great men, whose departure from among
us since last we met claims a special notice, and whose life — full
as it was of years and honours — we should have all desired to see
prolonged for a few months, could its feebleness have been un-
attended with suffering. For we should all then have sympathized
with Murchison, in the delight with which he would have received
the intelligence of the safety of the friend in whose scientific
labours and personal welfare he felt to the last the keenest interest.
That this intelligence, which our own expedition for the relief of
Livingstone would have obtained (we will hope) a few months
later, should have been brought to us through the generosity of
one, and the enterprising ability — may I not use our peculiarly
English word, the " pluck " — of another of our American brethren,
cannot but be a matter of national regret to us. But let us bury
that regret in the common joy which both nations feel in the
result ; and while we give a cordial welcome to Mr. Stanley, let
us glory in the prospect now opening, that England and America
will co-operate in that noble object which — far more than the
discovery of the sources of the Nile — our great traveller has set
before himself as his true mission, the extinction of the slave
trade.

At the last meeting of this association, I had the pleasure of
being able to announce, that I had received from the First Lord
of the Admiralty a favourable reply to a representation I had
ventured to make to him, as to the importance of prosecuting on
a more extended scale the course of inquiry into the physical and
biological conditions of the deep sea, on which, with my colleagues
Professor Wyviile Thomson and Mr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys, I had been
engaged for the three preceding years. That for which I had
asked was a circumnavigating expedition of at least three years'
duration, provided with an adequate scientific staff, and with the
most complete equipment that our experience could devise. The
Council of the Royal Society having been led by the encouraging

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 187

tenor of the answer I had received, to make a formal appHcation
to this effect, the Hberal arrangements of the Government have
been carried out under the advice of a scientific Committee, which
included representatives of this Association. Her Majesty's ship
Challenger, a vessel in every way suitable for the purpose, is now
being fitted out at Sheerness ; the command of the expedition is
intrusted to Captain Nares, an officer of whose high qualifications
I have myself the fullest assurance ; while the scientific charge of
it will be taken by my excellent friend Professor Wyville Thomson,
at whose suggestion it was that these investigations were originally
commenced, and whose zeal for the efficient prosecution of them
is shown by his relinquishment for a time of the important academic
position he at present fills. It is anticipated that the expedition
will sail in November next ; and I feel sure that the good wishes
of all of you will go along with it.

The confident anticipation expressed by my predecessor, that
for the utilization of the total eclipse of the sun then impending,
our Government would " exercise the same wise liberality as
" heretofore in the interests of science," has been amply fulfilled.
An eclipse-expedition to India was organized at the charge of the
Home Government, and placed under the direction of Mr. Lockyer;
the Indian Government contributed its quota to the work ; and a
most valuable body of results was obtained, of which, with those
of the previous year, a report is now being prepared under the
direction of the Council of the Astronomical Society.

It has been customary with successive occupants of this chair,
distinguished as leaders in their several divisions of the noble
army of science, to open the proceedings of the meetings over
which they respectively presided, with a discourse on some aspect
of Nature in her relation to man. But I am not aware that any
one of them has taken up the other side of the inquiry — that
which concerns man as the " Interpreter of Nature ; " and I have
therefore thought it not inappropriate to lead you to the con-
sideration of the mental processes, by which are formed those
fundamental conceptions of matter and force, of cause and effect,
of law and order, which furnish the basis of all scientific reasoning,
and constitute the Philosophia prima of Bacon. There is a great

i88 NATURE AND MAN

deal of what I cannot but regard as fallacious and misleading
philosophy — " oppositions of science falsely so called " — abroad
in the world at the present time. And I hope to satisfy you, that
those who set up their own conceptions of the orderly sequence
which they discern in the phenomena of Nature, as fixed and
determinate Laws, by which those phenomena not only ai-e within
all human experience, but always have been, and always must be,
invariably governed, are really guilty of the intellectual arrogance
they condemn in the systems of the ancients, and place themselves
in diametrical antagonism to those real philosophers, by whose
comprehensive grasp and penetrating insight that order has been
so far disclosed. For what love of the truth as it is in Nature was
ever more conspicuous, than that which Kepler displayed, in his
abandonment of each of the ingenious conceptions of the planetary
system which his fertile imagination had successively devised, so
soon as it proved to be inconsistent with the facts disclosed by
observation ? In that almost admiring description of the way in
which his eriemy Mars, " whom he had left at home a despised
" captive," had " burst all the chains of the equations, and broke
"forth from the prisons of the tables," who does not recognize the
justice of Schiller's definition of the real philosopher, as one who
always loves truth better than his system ? And when at last he
had gained the full assurance of a success so complete that (as he
says) he thought he must be dreaming, or that he had been
reasoning in a circle, who does not feel the almost sublimity of
the self abnegation, with which, after attaming what was in his own
estimation such a glorious reward of his life of toil, disappoint-
ment, and self-sacrifice, he abstains from claiming the applause of
his contemporaries, but leaves his fame to after-ages in these
noble words : " The book is written ; to be read either now or by
" posterity, I care not which. It may well wait a century for a
" reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer."

And when a greater than Kepler was bringing to its final issue
that grandest of all scientific conceptions, long pondered over
by his almost superhuman intellect — which linked together the
heavens and the earth, the planets and the sun, the primaries and
their satellites, and included even the vagrant comets, in the nexus
of a universal attraction — establishing for all time the truth for

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 189

whose utterance Galileo had been condemned, and giving to
Kepler's laws a significance of which their author had never
dreamed, — what was the meaning of that agitation which pre-
vented the philosopher from completing his computation, and
compelled him to hand it over to his friend ? That it was not
the thought of his own greatness, but the glimpse of the grand
universal order thus revealed to his mental vision, which shook
the serene and massive soul of Newton to its foundations, we have
the proof in that beautiful comparison in which he likened himself
to a child picking up shells on the shore of the vast ocean of
truth — a comparison which will be evidence to all time at once of
his true philosophy and of his profound humility.

Though it is with the intellectual representation of Nature
which we call science that we are primarily concerned, it will not
be without its use to cast a glance in the first instance at the other
two principal characters under which man acts as her interpreter
— those, namely, of the artist and of the poet.

The Artist serves as the interpreter of Nature, not when he
works as the mere copyist, delineating that which he sees with his
bodily eyes, and which we could see as well for ourselves ; but
when he endeavours to awaken within us the perception of those
beauties and harmonies which his own trained sense has recognized,
and thus impart to us the pleasure he has himself derived from
their contemplation. As no two artists agree in the original con-
stitution and acquired habits of their minds, all look at Nature
with different (mental) eyes ; so that to each, Nature is what he
individually sees in her.

The Poet, again, serves as the interpreter of Nature, not so
much when by skilful word-painting (whether in prose or verse 1
he calls up before our mental vision the picture of some actual or
ideal scene, however beautiful ; as when, by rendering into appro-
l)riate forms those deeper impressions made by the nature around
him on the moral and emotional part of his own nature, he transfers
these impressions to the corresponding part of ours. For it xs the
attribute of the true poet to penetrate the secret of those mysterious
influences which we all unknowingly experience ; and having dis-
covered this to himself, to bring others, by the power he thus
wields, into the like sympathetic relation with Nature — evoking

igo NATURE AND MAN.

with skilful touch the varied response of the soul's finest chords,
heightening its joys, assuaging its griefs, and elevating its aspirations.
Whilst, then, the artist aims to picture what he sees in Nature, it
is the object of the poet to represent what '^.t feels in Nature ; and
to each true poet, Nature is ivhat he individually finds in her.

The Philosopher's interpretation of Nature seems less individual
than that of the artist or the poet, because it is based on facts
which any one may verify, and is elaborated by reasoning pro-
cesses of which all admit the validity. He looks at the universe
as a vast book lying open before him, of which he has in the first
place to learn the characters, then to master the language, and
finally to apprehend the ideas which that language conveys. In
that book there are many chapters, treating of different subjects; and
as life is too short for any one man to grasp the whole, the scientific
interpretation of this book comes to be the work of many intel-
lects, differing, not merely in the range, but also in the character of
their powers. But whilst there are " diversities of gifts," there is
"the same spirit." While each takes his special direction, the
general method of study is the same for all. And it is a testimony
alike to the truth of that method and to the unity of Nature, that
there is an ever-increasing tendency towards agreement among
those who use it aright — temporary differences of interpretation
being removed, sometimes by a more complete mastery of her
language, sometimes by a better apprehension of her ideas — and
lines of pursuit which had seemed entirely distinct or even widely
divergent, being found to lead at last to one common goal. And
it is this agreement which gives rise to the general belief — in many,
to the confident assurance — that the scientific interpretation of
Nature represents her, not merely as she seems, but as she really is.

But when we carefully examine the foundation of that assurance,
we find reason to distrust its security ; for it can be shown to be
no less true of the scientific conception of Nature, than it is of the
artistic or the poetic, that it is a representation framed by the mind
itself ovil of the materials supplied by the impressions which ex-
ternal objects make upon the senses ; so that to each man of
science. Nature is zvhat he individually believes her to be. And that
belief will rest on very diff'erent bases, and will have very unequal
values, in different departments of science. Thus in what are

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 191

commonly known as the " exact " sciences, of which astronomy
may be taken as the type, the data afiforded by precise methods
of observation can be made the basis of reasoning, in every step
of which the mathematician feels the fullest assurance of certainty ;
and the final deduction is justified either by its conformity to
known or ascertainable facts — as when Kepler determined the
elliptic orbit of Mars ; or by the fulfilment of the predictions it has
sanctioned — as in the occurrence of an eclipse or an occultation
at the precise moment specified many years previously; or, still
more emphatically, by the actual discovery of phenomena till then
unrecognized — as when the perturbations of the planets, shown by
Newton to be the necessary results of their mutual attraction, were
proved by observation to have a real existence ; or as when the
unknown disturber of Uranus was found in the place assigned to
him by the computations of Adams and Le Verrier.

We are accustomed, and I think most rightly, to speak of these
achievements as triumphs of the human intellect. But the very
phrase implies that the work is done by mental agency. And even
in the very first stage of the process — the interpretation of observations
— there is often a liability to serious error. Of this we have a most
noteworthy exam.ple in tlie fact that the estimated distance of the
earth from the sun, deduced from observations of the last transit
of Venus, is now pretty certainly known to be about three millions
of miles too great ; the strong indications of such an excess afforded
by the nearly coincident results of other modes of inquiry having
led to a re-examination of the record, which was found, when fairly
interpreted, fully to justify — if not even to require — the reduc-
tion. Even the verification of the prediction is far from proving
the intellectual process by which it was made to have been correct.
For we learn from the honest confessions of Kepler, that he was
led to the discovery of the elliptic orbit of Mars by a series of
happy accidents, which turned his erroneous guesses into the right
direction ; and to that of the passage of the radius vector over
equal areas in equal times, by the notion of a whirling force ema-
nating from the sun, which we now regard as an entirely wrong
conception of the cause of orbital revolution.* It should always

♦ See Drinkwater's " Life of Kepler," in the Library of Useful Knowledge,
pp. 26-35.

193 NATURE AND MAN.

be remembered, moreover, that the Ptolemaic system of astronomy,
with all its cumbrous ideal mechanism of " centric and excentric,
" cycle and epicycle, orb in orb," did intellectually represent all
that the astronomer, prior to the invention of the telescope, could
see from his actual standpoint, the earth, with an accuracy which
was proved by the fulfilment of his predictions. And in that last
and most memorable anticipation which has given an imperishable
fame to our two illustrious contemporaries, the inadequacy of the
basis afforded by actual observation of the perturbations of Uranus,
required that it should be supplemented by an assumption of the
probable distance of the disturbing planet beyond, which has been
shown by subsequent observation to have been only an approxi-
mation to the truth.

Even in this most exact of sciences, therefore, we cannot pro-
ceed a step, without translating the actual phenomena of Nature
into intellectual representations of those phenomena ; and it is
because the Newtonian conception is not only the most simple,
but is also, up to the extent of our present knowledge, universal
m its conformity to the facts of observation, that we accept it as
the only scheme of the universe yet promulgated, which satisfies
our intellectual requirements.

When, under the reign of the Ptolemaic system, any new in-
equality was discovered in the motion of a planet, a new wheel
had to be added to the ideal mechanism, as Ptolemy said, " to
" save appearances." If it should prove, a century hence, that the
motion of Neptune himself is disturbed by some other attraction
than that exerted by the interior planets, we should confidently
expect that not an ideal but a real cause for that disturbance will
be found in the existence of another planet beyond. But I trust
that I have now made it evident to you, that this confident ex-
pectation is not justified by any absolute necessity of Nature, but
arises entirely out of our belief in her uniformity ; and into the
grounds of this and other primary beliefs, which serve as the
foundation of all scientific reasoning, we shall presently inquire.

There is another class of cases, in which an equal certainty is
generally claimed for conclusions that seem to flow immediately
from observed facts, though really evolved by intellectual pro-
cesses ; the apparent simplicity and directness of those processes

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 193

either causing them to be entirely overlooked, or veiling the as-
sunnptions on which they are based. Thus Mr. Lockyer speaks as
confidently of the sun's chromosphere of incandescent hydrogen,
and of the local outbursts which cause it to send forth projections
tens of thousands of miles high, as if he had been able to capture
a flask of this gas, and had generated water by causing it to unite
with oxygen. Yet this confidence is entirely based on the as-
sumption, that a certain line which is seen in the spectrum of a
hydrogen flame, means hydrogen also when seen in the spectrum
of the sun's chromosphere ; and high as is the probability of that
assumption, it cannot be regarded as a demonstrated certainty,
since it is by no means inconceivable that the same line fiiight be
produced by some other substance at present unknown. And so
when Dr. Huggins deduces from the different relative positions
of certain lines in the spectra of different stars, that these stars
are moving from or towards us in space, his admirable train of
reasoning is based on the assumption that these lines have the same
meaning — that is, that they represent the same elements — in every
luminary. That assumption, like the preceding, may be regarded
as possessing a sufficiently high probability to justify the reasoning
based upon it ; more especially since, by the other researches of
that excellent observer, the same chemical elements have been
detected as vapours in those filmy cloudlets which seem to be
stars in an early stage of consolidation. But when Frankland and
Lockyer, seeing in the spectrum of the yellow solar prominences
a certain bright line not identifiable with that of any known ter-
restrial flame, attribute this to a hypothetical new substance which
they propose to call Helium, it is obvious that their assump-
tion rests on a far less secure foundation ; until it shall have
received that verification, which, in the case of Mr. Crookes's
researches on Thallium, was afforded by the actual discovery
of the new metal, whose presence had been indicated to him by
a line in the spectrum not attributable to any substance then
known.

In a large number of other cases, moreover, our scientific inter-
pretations are clearly matters of yW-,'-;//^///; and this is eminently
d. personal act, the value of its results depending in each case upon
the qualifications of the individual for arriving at a correct decision.

194 NATURE AND MAN.

The surest of such judgments are those dictated by what we term
" common sense," as to matters on which there seems no room for
difference of opinion, because every sane person comes to the
same conclusion, although he may be able to give no other reason
for it than that it appears to him " self-evident." Thus while philo-
sophers have raised a thick cloud of dust in the discussion ot the
basis of our belief in the existence of a world external to ourselves
— of the Non-Ego, as distinct from the Ego — and while every
logician claims to have found some liaw in the proof advanced by
every other — the common sense of mankind has arrived at a
decision that is practically worth all the arguments of all the
philosophers who have fought again and again over this battle-
ground. And I think it can be shown that the trustworthiness
of this common sense decision arises from its dependence, not on
any one set of experience, but upon our unconscious co-ordination
of the whole aggregate of our experiences — not on the conclusiveness
of any one train of reasoning, but on the convergence of all our
lines of thought towards this one centre.

Now this " common sense," disciplined and enlarged by appro-
priate culture, becomes one of our most valuable instruments of
scientific inquiry ; affording in many instances the best, and some-
times the only, basis for a rational conclusion. Let us take as a
typical case, in which no special knowledge is required, what we
are accustomed to call the " flint implements " of the Abbeville
and Amiens gravel-beds. No logical proof can be adduced that
the peculiar shapes of these flints were given to them by human
hands; but does any unprejudiced person now doubt it? The
evidence of design^ to which, after an examination of one or two
such specimens, we should only be justified in attaching aprobable
value, derives an irresistible cogency from accumulation. On the
other hand, the ////probability that these flints acquired their
peculiar shape by accidetit, becomes to our minds greater and
greater as more and more such specimens are found ; until at last
this hypothesis, although it cannot be directly disproved, is felt to
be almost inconceivable, except by minds previously " possessed "
by the " dominant idea " of the modern origin of man. And thus
what was in the first instance a matter of discussion, has now
become one of those " self-evident " propositions, which claim the

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 195

unhesitating assent of all whose opinion on the subject is entitled
to the least weight.

We proceed upward, however, from such questions as the
common sense of mankind generally is competent to decide, to
those in which special knowledge is required to give value to the
judgment ; and thus the interpretation of Nature by the use of
that faculty comes to be more and more individual ; things
being perfectly " self-evident " to men of special culture, which
ordinary men, or men whose training has lain in a different
direction, do not apprehend as such. Of all departments of
science, geology seems to me to be the one that most depends on
this specially-trained " common sense ; " which brings as it were
into one focus the light afforded by a great variety of studies —
physical and chemical, geographical and biological ; and throws
it on the pages of that great stone book, on which the past history
of our globe is recorded. And whilst astronomy is of all sciences
that which may be considered as most nearly representing Nature
as she really is, geology is that which most completely represents
her as seen through the medium of the interpreting mind ; the
meaning of the phenomena that constitute its data being in almost
every instance open to question, and the judgments passed upon
the same facts being often different according to the qualifications
of the several judges. No one who has even a general acquaintance
with the history of this department of science can fail to see that
the geology of each epoch has been the reflection of the minds by
which its study was then directed ; and that its true progress dates
from the time when that " common sense " method of interpreta-
tion came to be generally adopted, which consists in seeking the
explanation of past changes in the forces at present in operation,
instead of invoking the aid of extraordinary and mysterious
agencies, as the older geologists were wont to do, whenever they
wanted— like the Ptolemaic astronomers — "to save appearances."
The whole tendency of the ever-widening range of modern geo-
logical inquiry has been to show how little reliance can be placed
upon the so-called " laws " of stratigraphical and palasontological
succession, and how much allowance has to be made for local
conditions. So that while the astronomer is constantly enabled
to point to the fulfilment of his predictions as an evidence of the

196 NATURE AND MAN.

correctness of his method, the geologist is almost entirely destitute
of any such means of verification. For the value of any prediction
that he may hazard — as in regard to the existence or non-existence
of coal in any given area — depends not only upon the truth of the
general doctrines of geology in regard to the succession of stratified
deposits, but still more upon the detailed knowledge which he may
have acquired of the distribution of those deposits in the particular
locality. Hence no reasonably-judging man would discredit either
the general doctrines or the methods of geology, because the pre-
diction proves untrue in such a case as that now about to be
brought in this neighbourhood to the trial of experience.

We have thus considered man's function as the scientific in-
terpreter of Nature in two departments of natural knowledge ;
one of which affords an example of the strictest, and the other
of the freest method, which man can employ in constructing his
intellectual representation of the universe. And as it would be
found that in the study of all other departments the same methods
are used, either separately or in combination, we may pass at once
to another part of our inquiry.

The whole fabric of geometry rests upon certain axioms which
every one accepts as true, but of which it is necessary that the
truth should be assumed, because they are incapable of demon-
stration. So, too, the deliverances of our "common sense" derive
their trustworthiness from what we consider the " self-evidence "
of the propositions affirmed. There are, then, certain primary
beliefs, which constitute the groundwork of all scientific reasoning ;
and we have next to inquire into their origin.

This inquiry brings us face to face with one of the great
philosophical problems of our day, which has been discussed by
logicians and metaphysicans of the very highest ability as leaders
of opposing schools, with the one result of showing how much can
be said on each side. By the intuitionalists, it is asserted that the
tendency to form these primary beliefs is inborn in man, an original
part of his mental organization ; so that they grow up spontaneously
in his mind as its faculties are gradually unfolded and developed,
requiring no other experience for their genesis, than that which
suffices to call these faculties into exercise. But by the advocates

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 197

of the doctrine which regards experience as the basis of all our
knowledge, it is maintained that the primary beliefs of each in-
dividual are nothing else than generalizations which he forms of
such experiences as he has either himself acquired or has consci-
ously learned from others ; and they deny that there is any original
or intuitive tendency to the formation of such beliefs, beyond
that which consists in the power of retaining and generalizing
experiences.

I have not introduced this subject with any idea of placing
before you even a summary of the ingenious arguments by which
these opposing doctrines have been respectively supported ; nor
should I have touched on the question at all, if I did not believe
that a means of reconcilement between them can be found in the
idea, that the intellectual intuitions of any oiie generation are the
embodied experiences of the previous race. For, as it appears to me,
there has been a progressive improvement in the thinking pozver
of man ; every product of the culture which has preceded serving
to prepare the soil for yet more abundant harvests in the future.

Now, as there can be no doubt of the hereditary transmission
in man of acquired constitutional peculiarities, which manifest
themselves alike in tendencies to bodily and to mental disease, so
it seems equally certain that acquired mental habitudes often im-
press themselves on his organization, with sufficient force and
permanence to occasion their transmission to the offspring as
tendencies to similar modes of thought. And thus, while all admit
that knowledge cannot thus descend from one generation to
another, an increased aptitude for the acquirement, either of know-
ledge generally, or of some particular kind of it, may be thus in-
herited. These tendencies and aptitudes will acquire additional
strength, expansion, and permanence, in each new generation,
from their habitual exercise upon the materials supplied by a con-
tinually enlarged experience; and thus the acquired habitudes
produced by the intellectual culture of ages, will become a
" second nature " to every one who inherits them.*

* This doctrine was first explicitly put forth by Mr. Herbert Spencer ; in
whose iihilosojihical treatises it will he found inost ably developed. I am glad
to be able to append the foUowint; extract from a letter which Mr. John Mill,
the great master of the experiential school, was good enough to write to me
a few months since, with reference to the attempt I had made to place

198 NATURE AND MAN.

We have an illustration of this progress in the fact of continual
occurrence, that conceptions which prove inadmissible to the
minds of one generation, in consequence either of their want of
intellectual power to apprehend them, or of their preoccupation by
older habits of thought, subsequently find a universal acceptance,
and even come to be approved as " self-evident." Thus the first
law of motion, divined by the genius of Newton, though opposed
by many philosophers of his time as contrary to all experience, is
now accepted by common consent, not merely as a legitimate in-
ference from experiment, but as the expression of a necessary and
universal truth ; and the same axiomatic value is extended to the
still more general doctrine, that energy of any kind, whether mani-
fested in the " molar " motion of masses, or consisting in the
"molecular" motions of atoms, must continue under some form
or other without abatement or decay ; what all admit in regard to
the indestructibility of matter, being accepted as no less true of
force, namely, that as ex nihilo nil jit, so nil fit ad 7iihilum*

But, it may be urged, the very conception of these and similar
great truths is in itself a typical example of intuition. The men
who divined and enunciated them stand out above their fellows,
as possessed of a genius which could not only combine but create,
of an insight which could clearly discern what reason could but
dimly shadow forth. Granting this freely, I think it may be shown
that the intuitions of individual genius are but specially exalted
forms of endowments which are the general property of the race

"common sense" upon this basis (Coufciaf'orary Revi-ew, February, 1S72) : —
" When st.ites of mind in no respect innate or instinctive have been frequently
" repeated, the mind acquires, as is proved by the power of habit, a greatly
• increased facility of passing into those states ; and this increased facility must
"be owing to some change of a physical character in the organic action of the
"brain. There is also considerable evidence that such acquired facilities of
"passing into certain modes of cerebral action can, in many cases, be trans-
"mitted, more or less completely, by inheritance. The limits of this power
"of transmission, and the conditions on which it depends, are a subject now
" fairly before the scientific world ; and we shall doubtless in time know much
"more about them than we do now. But so far as my imperfect knowledge
"of the subject qualifies me to have an opinion, I take much the same view of
"it that you do, at least in principle."

* This is the form in which the doctrine now known as that of the "Con-
servation of Energy " was enunciated by Dr. Mayer, in the very remarkable
essay published by him in 1S45, entitled, " Die organische Eewegung in ihrem
Zusainmenhange mit dem Stolfwechsel."

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 199

at the time, and which have come to be so in virtue of its whole
previous culture. Who, for example, could refuse to the marvel-
lous aptitude for perceiving the relations of numbers, which dis-
played itself ill the untutored boyhood of George Bidder and Zerah
Colburn, the title of an intuitive gift ? But who, on the other hand,
can believe that a Bidder or a Colburn could suddenly arise in a
race of savages who cannot count beyond five ? Or, again, iu the
history of the very earliest years of Mozart, who can fail to recognize
the dawn of that glorious genius, whose brilliant but brief career
left its imperishable impress on the art it enriched ? But who
would be bold enough to affirm that an infant Mozart could be
born amongst a tribe, whose only musical instrument is a tom-tom,
whose only song is a monotonous chant ?

Again, by tracing the gradual genesis of some of those ideas
which we now accept as " self-evident," — such, for example, as
that of the "uniformity of Nature" — we are able to recognize them
as the expressions of certain intellectual tendencies, which have
progressively augmented in force in successive generations, and
now manifest themselves as acquired mental instincts that pene-
trate and direct our ordinary course of thought. Such instincts
constitute a precious heritage, which has been transmitted to us
with ever-increasing value through the long succession of preceding
generations ; and which it is for us to transmit to those who shall
come after us, with all that further increase which our higher culture
and wider range of knowledge can impart.

And noAv, having studied the working action of the human
intellect in the scientific interpretation of Nature, we shall examine
the general character of its products ; and the first of these with
which we shall deal is our conception of tnatter and of its relation
to force.

The psychologist of the present day views matter entirely
through the light of his own consciousness : his idea of matter in
the abstract being that it is a "something" which has a permanent
power of exciting sensations ; his idea of any "property " of matter
being the mental representation of some kind of sensory impres-
sion he has received from it; and his idea of any particular kind
of matter being the representation of the whole aggregate of the

2O0 NATURE AND MAN.

sense-perceptions which its presence has called up in his mind.
Thus when I press my hand against this table, I recognize its un-
yieldingness through the conjoint medium of my sense of touch,
my muscular sense, and my mental sense of effort, to which it will
be convenient to give the general designation of the tactile sense ;
and I attribute to that table a hardness which resists the effort I
make to press my hand into its substance, whilst I also recognize
the fact that the force I have employed is not sufficient to move
its mass. But I press my hand against a lump of dough; and
finding that its substance yields under my pressure, I call it soft.
Or again, I press my hand against this desk ; and I find that
although I do not thereby change \isform, I change \\.s place ; and
so I get the tactile idea of motion. Again, by the impressions
received through the same sensorial apparatus, when I lift this
book in my hand, I am led to attach to it the notion oi 7v eight or
ponderosity ; and by lifting different solids of about the same size,
I am enabled, by the different degrees of exertion I find myself
obliged to make in order to sustain them, to distinguish some of
them as light, and others as heavy. Through the medium of
another set of sense-perceptions which some regard as belonging
to a different category, we distinguish between bodies that feel
" hot " and those that feel " cold ; " and in this manner we arrive
at the notion of differences of temperature. And it is through the
medium of our tactile sense, without any aid from vision, that we
first gain the idea of solid form, or the three dimensions of space.

Again, by the extension of our tactile experiences, we acquire
the notion oi liquids, as forms of matter yielding readily to pressure,
but possessing a sensible weight which may equal that of solids :
and of air, whose resisting power is much slighter, and whose
weight is so small that it can only be made sensible by artificial
means. Thus, then, we arrive at the notions of resistance and of
weight as properties common to all forms of matter ; and now that
we have got rid of that idea of light and heat, electricity and
magnetism, as " imponderable fluids," which used to vex our souls
in our scientific childhood, and of which the popular term " electric
fluid " is a " survival," we accept these properties as affording the
practical distinction between the " material" and the " immaterial."

Turning, now, to that other great portal of sensation, the

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 201

sight, through which we receive most of the messages sent to us
from the universe around, we recognize the same truth. Thus it
is agreed aUke by physicists and physiologists, that colour does
not exist as such in the object itself; which has merely the power
of reflecting or transmitting a certain number of millions of un-
dulations in a second ; and these only produce that affection of
our consciousness which we call colour, when they fall upon the
retina of the living percipient. And if there be that defect either
in the retina or in the apparatus behind it, which we call " colour-
blindness " or Daltonism, some particular hues cannot be dis-
tinguished, or there may even be no power of distinguishing any
colour whatever. If we were all like Dalton, we should see no
difference, except in form, between ripe cherries hanging on a
tree, and the green leaves around them : if we were all affected
with the severest form of colour-blindness, the fair face of Nature
would be seen by us as in the chiaroscuro of an engraving of one
of Turner's landscapes, not as in the glowing hues of the wondrous
picture itself And in regard to our visual conceptions it may be
stated with perfect certainty, as the result of very numerous
observations made upon persons who have acquired sight for the
first time, that these do fiot serve for the recognition even of those
objects with which the individual had become most familiar
through the touch, until the two sets of sense- perceptions have
been co-ordinated by experience.*

When once this co-ordination has been effected, however, the
composite perception of form which we derive from the visual
sense alone is so complete, that we seldom require to fall back
upon the touch for any further information respecting that quality
of the object. — So, again, while it is from the co-ordination of the
two dissimilar pictures formed by any solid or projecting object
upon our two retince, that (as Sir Charles VVheatstone's admirable
investigations have shown) we ordinarily derive through the sight

* Thus, in a recently recorded case in which sight was imparted by opera-
tion to a young woman who had been bhnd from birth, but who had never-
theless learned to work well with her needle, when the pair of scissors she
had been accustomed to use was placed before her, though she described
their shape, colour, and glistening metallic character, she was utterly unable
to recognize them as scissors until she put her finger on them, when she at
once named them, laughing at her own stupidity (as she called it) in not
having made them out before.

202 NATURE AND MAN.

alone a correct notion of its so/id form, there is adequate evidence
that this notion, also, is a menta.\ judgme/if based on the experience
we have acquired in early infancy by the consentaneous exercise
of the vis'aal and tactile senses.

Take, again, the case of those wonderful instruments by which
our visual range is extended almost into the infinity of space, or
into the infinity of minuteness. It is the mental not the bodily
eye, that takes cognizance of what the telescope and microscope
reveal to us. For we should have no well-grounded confidence
in their revelations as to the unknown, if we had not first acquired
experience in distinguishing the true from the false by applying
them to known objects ; and every interpretation of what we see
through their instrumentality is a mental Judgment as to the prob-
able form, size, and movement of bodies removed by either their
distance or their minuteness from being cognosced by our tactile
sense.

The case is still stronger in regard to that last addition to
our scientific annamentum, which promises to be not inferior in
value either tc^he telescope or the microscope; for it may be truly
said of the spectroscope, that it has not merely extended the range
of our vision, but has almost given us a new sense, by enabling
us to recognize disdnctive properties in the chemical elements
which were previously quite unknown. And who shall now say
that we know all that is to be known as to any form of matter ;
or that the science of the fourtk quarter of this century may not
furnish us with as great an enlargement of our knowledge of its
properties, and of our power of recognizing them, as that of its
third has tione ?

But, it may be said, is not this view of the material universe
open to the imputation that it is "evolved out of the depths of
our own consciousness " — a projection of our own intellect into
what surrounds us — an ideal rather than a real world ? If all
we know of matter be an " intellectual conception," how are
we to distinguish this from such as we form in our dreams ? —
for these, as our Laureate no less happily than philosophically
expresses it, are "true while they last." Here our "common
sense" comes to the rescue. We "awake, and behold it was
a dream." Every healthy mind is conscious of the difference

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 203

between its waking and its dreaming experiences ; or, if it is
now and then puzzled to answer the question, " Did this really
happen, or did I dream it?" the perplexity arises from the
consciousness that it might have happened. And every healthy
mind, finding its own experiences of its waking state not only
self-consistent, but consistent with the experiences of others,
accepts them as the basis of its beliefs, in preference to even
the most vivid recollections of its dreams.

The lunatic pauper who regards himself as a king, the asylum
in which he is confined as a palace of regal splendour, and
his keepers as obsequious attendants, is so " possessed " by the
conception framed by his disordered intellect, that he does pro-
ject it out of himself into his surroundings ; his refusal to admit
the corrective teaching of common sense being the very essence
of his malady. And there are not a few persons abroad in the
world, who equally resist the teachings of educated common
sense, whenever they run counter to their own preconceptions ;
and who may be regarded as — in so far — affected with what I once
heard Mr. Carlyle pithily characterize as a " diluted insanity."

It has been asserted, over and over again, of late years, by
a class of men who claim to be the only true interpreters of
Nature, that we know nothing but matter and the laws of matter,
and that force is a mere fiction of the imagination. May it not
be aflSrmed, on the other hand, that while our notion of matter
is a conception of the intellect, force is that of which we have
Xht most direct — perhaps even the only direct — cognizance? As
I have already shown you, the knowledge of resistance and of
weight which we gain through our tactile sense is derived from
our own perception of exertion ; and in vision, as in hearing,
it is the force with which the undulations strike the sensitive
surface that affects our consciousness with sights or sounds.
True it is that in our visual and auditory sensations, we do not,
as in our tactile, directly cognosce the force which produces
them ; but the physicist has no difficulty in making sensible
to us indirectly the undulations by which sound is propagated,
and in proving to our intellect that the force concerned in the
transmission of light is really enormous.*

• See Sir John Herschel's " Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects."

204 NATURE AND MAN.

It seems strange that those who make the loudest appeal to
experience as the basis of all knowledge, should thus disregard
the most constant, the most fundamental, the most direct of all
experiences ; as to which the common sense of mankind affords
a guiding light much clearer than any that can be seen through
the dust of philosophical discussion. For, as Sir John Herschel
most truly remarked, the universal consciousness of mankind is
as much in accord in regard to the existence of a real and intimate
connection between cause and effect, as it is in regard to the ex-
istence of the external world ; and that consciousness arises to
every one out of his own sense of personal exertion in the origina-
tion of changes by his individual agency.

Now while fully accepting the logical definition of cause as
the "antecedent or concurrence of antecedents on which the
" effect is invariably and unconditionally consequent," we can
always single out one dynamical antecedent — the power which
does the work — from the aggregate of material conditions under
which that power may be distributed and applied. No doubt the
term cause is very loosely employed in popular phraseology ; often
(as Mr. Mill has shown) to designate the occurrence that imme-
diately preceded the effect ; — as when it is said that the spark
which falls into a barrel of gunpowder is the cause of its explosion,
or that the slipping of a man's foot off the rung of a ladder is the
cause of his fall. But even a very slightly trained intelligence can
distinguish the power which acts in each case, from the conditions
under which it acts. The force which produces the explosion is
locked up (as it were) in the powder ; and ignition merely liberates
it, by bringing about new chemical combinations. The fall of the
man from the ladder is due to the gravity which was equally pull-
ing him down while he rested on it; and the loss of support?
either by the slipping of his foot, or by the breaking of the rung,
is merely that change in the material conditions which gives the
power a new action.

Many of you have doubtless viewed with admiring interest
that truly wonderful work of human design, the Walter printing-
machine. You first examine it at rest ; presently comes a. man,
who simply pulls a handle towards him : and the whole inert
mechanism becomes instinct with life, — the continuous sheet of

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 205

four miles of blank paper which rolls off the cylinder at one end,
being delivered at the other, without any intermediate human
agency, as separate Times newspapers, at the rate of 15,000 an
hour. Now what is the cai/se of this most marvellous effect?
Surely it lies essentially in the power or force which the pulling of
the handle brought to bear on the machine from some extraneous
source of power, — which we in this instance know to be a steam-
engine on the other side of the wall. This force it is, which, dis-
tributed through the various parts of the mechanism, really performs
the action of which each is the instrument; ihey only supply the
vehicle for its transmission and application. The man comes
again, pushes the handle in the opposite direction, detaches the
machine from the steam-engine, and the whole comes to a stand ;
and so it remains, like an inanimate corpse, until recalled to
activity by the renewal of its moving power.

But, say the reasoners who deny that force is anything else
than a fiction of the imagination, the revolving shaft of the steam-
engine is " matter in motion ; " and when the connection is
established between that shaft and the one that drives the
machine, the motion is communicated from the former to the
latter, and thence distributed to the several parts of the mechan-
ism. This account of the operation is just what an observer
might give, who had looked on with entire ignorance of every-
thmg but what his eyes could see ; the moment he puts his hand
upon any part of the machinery, and tries to stop its motion,
he takes as direct cognizance, through his feeling of the effort
required to resist it, of \hQ force which produces that motion, as he
does through his eye of the motion itself

Now since it is universally admitted that our notion of the
external world would be not only incomplete, but erroneous, if
our visual perceptions were not supplemented by our tactile, so,
as it seems to me, our interpretation of the phenomena of the
universe must be very inadequate, if we do not mentally co-
ordinate the idea of force with that of motion, and recognize it as
the " efficient cause " of those phenomena, — the " material con-
ditions" constituting (to use the old scholastic term) only ''their
•' formal cause." And I lay the greater stress on this point, because
the mechanical philosophy of the present day tends more and

2o6 NATURE AND MAN.

more to express itself in terms of motion rather than in terms of
force ; — to become kinetics instead oi dynamics.

Thus from whatever side we look at this question, — whether
the common sense of mankind, the logical analysis of the relation
between cause and effect, or the study of the working of our own
intellects in the interpretation of Nature, — we seem led to the
same conclusion; that the notion of y^;-^!? is one of those ele-
mentary forms of thought with which we can no more dispense,
than we can with the notion of space or of succession. And I
shall now, in the last place, endeavour to show you that it is the
substitution of the dynamical for the mere phenomenal idea, which
gives their highest value to our conceptions of that order of
Nature, which is worshipped as itself a god by the class of inter-
preters whose doctrine I call in question.

The most illustrative as well as the most illustrious example
of the difference between the mere generalization of phenomena
and the dynamical conception that applies to them, is furnished
by the contrast between the so-called laws of planetary motion
discovered by the persevering ingenuity of Kepler, and the inter-
pretation of that motion given us by the profound insight of
Newton. Kepler's three laws were nothing more than compre-
hensive statements of certain groups of phenomena determined
by observation. The first, that of the revolution of the planets
in elliptical orbits, was based on the study of the observed
places of Mars alone ; it might or might not be true of the other
planets ; for, so far as Kepler knew, there was no reason why
the orbits of some of them might not be the excentric circles
which he had first supposed that of Mars to be. So Kepler's
second law of the passage of the radius vector over equal areas in
equal times, so long as it was simply a generalization of facts in
the case of that one planet, carried with it no reason for its ap-
plicability to other cases, except that which it might derive from
his erroneous conception of a whirling force. And his third law
was in like manner simply an expression of a certain harmonic
relation which he had discovered between the times and the dis-
tances of the planets, having no more rational value than any
other of his numerous hypotheses.

Now the Newtonian "laws" are often spoken of as if they

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 207

were merely higher generalizafiofis in which Kepler's are in-
cluded ; to me they seem to possess an altogether different
character. For starting with the conception of two forces, one
of them tending to produce continuous uniform motion in a
straight line, the other tending to produce a uniformly accele-
rated motion towards a fixed point, Newton's wonderful mastery
of geometrical reasoning enabled him to show that, if these
^//rtw/Va/ assumptions be granted, Kepler's //2<?/itfw^««/ ." laws,"
being necessary consequences of them, must be universally true.
And while that demonstration would have been alone sufficient
to give him an imperishable renown, it was his still greater glory
to divine that the fall of the moon towards the earth — that is, the
deflection of her path from a tangential line to an ellipse — is a
phenomenon of the same order as the fall, of a stone to the ground ;
and thus to show the applicability to the entire universe, of those
simple dynamical conceptions which constitute the basis of the
geometry of the Principia.

Thus, then, whilst no "law" which is simply d, generalization
of phenotnena can be considered as having any coercive action, we
may assign that value to laws which express the universal con-
ditions of the action of a force whose existence we learn from the
testimony of our own consciousness. The assurance we feel that
the attraction of gravitation tnust act under all circumstances ac-
cording to those simple laws which arise immediately out of our
dynamical conception of it, is of a very different order from that
which we have in regard (for example) to the laws of chemical
attraction, which are as yet only generalizations of phenomena.
And yet even in that strong assurance, we are required by our
examination of the basis on which it rests, to admit a reserve of
the possibility of something different ; a reserve which we may
well believe that Newton himself must have entertained.

A most valuable lesson as to the allowance we ought always
to make for the unknown " possibilities of Nature," is taught us
by an exceptional phenomenon so familiar that it does not attract
the notice it has a right to claim. Next to the law of the uni-
versal attraction of masses of matter, there is none that seems to
have a wider range than that of the expansion of bodies by heat and
their contraction by cold. Excluding water and one or two other

2o8 NATURE AND MAN.

substances, the fact of such expansion might be said to be in-
variable; and, as regards bodies whose gaseous condition is
known, the law of expansion can be stated in a form no less
simple and definite than the law of gravitation. Supposing
those exceptions, then, to be unknown, the law would be
universal in its range. But it comes to be discovered that water,
whilst conforming to it in its expansion from 39^° upwards to
its boiling-point, as also, when it passes into steam, to the special
law of expansion of vapours, is exceptional in expatiding also
from 39^° donmivards to its freezing-point ; and of this failure
in the universality of the law, no rationale can be given. Still
more strange is it, that by dissolving a little salt in water, we
should remove this exceptional peculiarity ; for ^^a-water con-
tinues to contract from 39^' downwards to its freezing-point 12'^
or 14° lower, just as it does with reduction of temperature at
higher ranges.

Thus from our study of the mode in which we arrive at those
conceptions of the orderly sequence observable in the phenomena
of Nature which we call " laws," we are led to the conclusion
that they are human conceptions, subject to human fallibility; and
that they may or may not express the ideas of the great Author
of Nature. To set up these laws as self-acting, and as either ex-
cluding or rendering unnecessary the power which alone can give
them effect, appears to me as arrogant as it is unphilosophical.
To speak of any law as "regulating" or "governing" phe-
nomena, is only permissible on the assumption that the law is
the expression of the modus operandi of a governing power. —
I was once in a great city which for two days was in the hands
of a lawless mob. Magisterial authority was suspended by
timidity and doubt ; the force at its command was paralyzed
by want of resolute direction. The "laws" were on the statute
book, but there was no power to enforce them. And so the
powers of evil did their terrible work ; and fire and rapine con-
tinued to destroy life and property without check, until new power
came in, when the reign of law was restored.

And thus we are led to the culminating point of man's intel-
lectual interpretation of Nature — his recognition of the unity of
the power, of which her phenomena are the diversified manifesta-

MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 209

tions. Towards this point all scientific inquiry now tends. The
convertibility of the physical forces, the correlation of these with
the vital, and the intimacy of that nexus between mental and
bodily activity, which, explain it as we may, cannot be denied,
all lead upward towards one and the same conclusion ; and the
pyramid of which that philosophical conclusion is the apex, has its
foundation in the primitive instincts of humanity.

By our own remote progenitors, as by the untutored savage
of the present day, every change in which human agency is not
apparent was referred to a particular animating intelligence.
And thus they attributed not only the movements of the heavenly
bodies, but all phenomena of Nature, each to its own deity.
These deities were invested with more than human power ; but
they were also supposed capable of human passions, and subject
to human capriciousness. As the uniformities of Nature came to
be more distinctly recognized, some of these deities were invested
with a dominant control, while others were supposed to be their
subordinate ministers. A serene majesty was attributed to the
greater gods who sit above the clouds ; while their inferiors
migrht " come down to earth in the likeness of men." With the
growth of the scientific study of Nature, the conception of its
harmony and unity gained ever-increasing strength. And so
among the most enlightened of the Greek and Roman philo-
sophers, we find a distinct recognition of the idea of the unity of
the directing mind from which the order of Nature proceeds ; for
they obviously believed that, as our modern poet has expressed

it^

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
" Whose body Nature is, and God the soul."

The science of modern times, however, has taken a more
special direction. Fixing its attention exclusively on the order
of Nature, it has separated itself wholly from theology, whose
function it is to seek after its cause. In this, science is fully justi-
fied, alike by the entire independence of its objects, and by the
historical fact that it has been continually hampered and impeded
in its search for the truth as it is in Nature, by the restraints
which theologians have attempted to impose upon its inquiries.
But when science, passing beyond its own limits, assumes to take

2IO NATURE AND MAN.

the place of theology, and sets up its own conception of the order
of Nature as a sufficient account of its cause, it is invading a
province of thought to which it has no claim, and not unreason-
ably provokes the hostility of those who ought to be its best
friends.

For whilst the deep-seated instincts of humanity, and the pro-
foundest researches of philosophy, alike point to mind as the one
and only source of power, it is the high prerogative of science to
demonstrate the unity of the power which is operating through the
limitless extent and variety of the universe, and to trace its con-
tinuity through the vast series of ages tliat have been occupied
in its evolution.

VII.
ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF.

[The Roscoe lecture, delivered before the Literary and Philosophical
Society of Liverpool, November 24, 1873.]

The progress of thought has been likened, by an able writer of
our time, to a succession of waves which sweep over the minds of
men at distant intervals : —

" There are periods of comparative calm and stagnation, and
" then times of gradual swelling and upheaving of the deep, till
" some great billow slowly rears its crest above the surface, higher
"and still higher, to the last; when, with a mighty convulsion,
"amid foam and spray, and 'noise of many waters,' it topples
" over and bursts in thunder up the beach, bearing the flood line
" higher than before."

" In the eyes of those who have watched intelligently the signs
" of the times," continued Miss Cobbe, " it seems that some such
" wave as this is even now gathering beneath us, a deeper and
" broader wave than has ever yet arisen. No partial and tem-
" porary rippling of the surface is it now, but a whole mass of
" living thought seems steadily and slowly upheaved, and the
"ocean is moved to its depths." *

The experience of the last ten years has so fully justified this

grave warning, that it clearly becomes all who duly care for their

own and their children's welfare, to looic well to the foundations of

their beliefs, which are likely soon to be tested by such a wave as

* Preface to the collected works of Theodore Parker, 1863.

10

212 NATURE AND MAN.

has never before tried their solidity. New methods of research,
new bodies of facts, new modes of interpretation, new orders of
ideas, are concurring to drive onwards a flood which will bear
with unprecedented force against our whole fabric of doctrine ;
and no edifice is safe against its undermining power, that is not
firmly bedded on the solid rock of truth. How, then, are we to
prepare ourselves to meet it ? Shall we, like Canute and his
courtiers, rest secure in our own supremacy, and try to keep back
the waves by simply forbidding their advance? We need not go
as far as Rome for examples of this mode of dealing with the
difificulty ; for we have a good many minor popes at home, who
can scold quit? as well — and just as ineffectually. Shall we go
out, as Mrs. Partington did, with pattens and broom, to try and
sweep away the Atlantic ? Such seems to me the method of
those who aim to put down a great scientific hypothesis by
citing a text or two ; * setting themselves up on the pattens
of authority, and using arguments that are no more capable of
holding water than the incoherent twigs of a besom. Or shall
we imitate the able engineer, who, without experience of the
power of a Channel-sea driven onwards at highest spring-tide
by a south-west gale, thought to protect his railway-embankment
by a massive wall ? That wall was broken down, that embank-
ment washed away, by the very first storm that tested its security.
And so will it be with any barrier which the intellect of man may
try to erect against the progress of other intellects than his own ;
for it is only the Source of all Thought who can say " Hitherto
" shalt thou come, and no further, and here shall thy proud waves
" be stayed."

To what example, then, can we look ? What better can we
wish for than is supplied by that wonderful edifice, which, for
more than a century, braving the violence of the most destructive
storms, has calmly and unintermittingly displayed its guiding light
to the wave-tossed mariner, and which has furnished the pattern
of every similar beacon elsewhere erected for the direction and
warning of the navigator. I need not tell you to what I refer ;
for Smeaton and the Eddystone are household words to every
Briton. But I would show you something of the mind of the man
* See " Priests and Philosophers," by the Rev. W. Greswell.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 213

who executed what has been characterized * as " the most arduous
" undertaking that had fallen to any engineer, and than which none
'* was ever more successfully executed ; " and something of the way
in which he prepared himself for his great work.

The mind of Smeaton is made known to us in that admirable
series of reports on engineering subjects, which were described by
the same competent authority, "as a mine of wealth for the sound
" principles which they unfold, and the able practice they exemplify;
" both alike based on close observation of the operations of Nature,
" and affording many fine examples of cautious sagacity in applying
"the instructions she gives to the means within the reach of art."
It was to Nature, not to the time-honoured traditions of his pro-
fession, that this great practical philosopher went, when he had to
deal with the problem of the Eddystone. He saw in the bole of
the oak which had stood the blasts of centuries, the shape that
would not only give to his tower the greatest inherent strength,
but would project upwards, instead of directly resisting, the dash
of the impetuous waves. And he then brought all the resources
of constructive skill to carry out this sagacious design ; erecting
on a broad and solid foundation that beautifully formed super-
structure, which not only bears aloft the far-shining and welcome
light, but serves as the dwelling-place for those who are charged
with its maintenance.

And this, it seems to me, is the way in which we should en-
deavour to erect our own fabric of thought, if we wish it to be
enduring in itself — withstanding alike the rude assaults of external
force, and the gradual weakening of internal decay — and to afford
a guiding light to others. Our foundations must be laid broad
and deep in the intellectual, moral, and physical constitution of
man, and his relation to all that is outside him. Those fixed and
immutable principles of reason on which all knowledge is based,
must be solidly and patiently built up, course by course ; each
securely bolted-down to that which supports it. We must learn
early " to distinguish what is just in itself, from what is merely
"accredited by illustrious names." We must cultivate the insight
which shall enable us to detect a fallacy of observation, or a

* Introduction to the first volume of the " Transactions of the Institution
of Civil Engineers."

214 NATURE AND MAN.

weakness of deduction ; and determinately reject from our ground-
tiers every stone that is not fit to bear the weight of the super-
structure we intend to raise upon them. Recognizing it as a fact
in the history of human thought, that every great error contains
some admixture of truth, from which its power over men's minds
is essentially derived, we must so shape our fabric that it shall
direct, rather than oppose, the force of the aggressive wave. And
then, though our skill may not suffice to give permanence to our
weaker superstructure, though our lantern may be shattered and
our light may for a time be extinguished, we shall retain a secure
basis on which to rebuild our tower, crowning it with a new
and more enduring dome, and setting in it a lamp of yet brighter
lustre.

Such, I persuade myself, would have been the mode in which
we should have been counselled by the calm wisdom and richly
stored historic experience of that illustrious man, whose memory
you are now met to honour ; had he lived into these times, and
been brought face to face with the problems we have now to
meet. Accustomed as I have been from boyhood to hear his
name mentioned with affectionate respect, counting some of his
descendants among my most valued friends, and not unfamiliar
with the general bearing of his historic writings, I cannot be
ignorant of the life-long consistency with which he advocated the
cause of human freedom and human progress ; of the grave
severity with which he reflected on the intolerance of those re-
formers, who, while struggling against the absolutism of papal
Rome, endeavoured to make themselves scarcely less absolute ;
and of the true philosophy and lenient charity with which he
attributed that intolerance to the habit ingrained in their nature
by their early training, of which it was scarcely in their power to
divest themselves.

And in now inviting your attention to that most important
question of practical psychology, — the mode in which our beliefs
are formed, and the degree in which we are personally responsible
for them, — I am but following a path which he marked out,
towards a conclusion in which I persuade myself that he would
have concurred.

Our beliefs must be carefully distinguished from our know-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 215

ledge ; and they seem to me to bear much the sam.e relation to
it, that our furniture has to the building in which we put it. The
walls (are or ought to be)" solid and enduring; so is everything
that deserves to be called knowledge. Each stone supports, and
is supported by, the rest ; and nothing but a weakness of its
foundation or a decay of its material can make our fabric of
thought uninhabitable. But the beliefs with which we furnish it
have not the same durability. Adapted to meet our temporary
needs, they may be either poor in material, or but slightly put
together. A carpet wears out, and, when past shifting and patch-
ing, must be replaced by a new one ; a table or a chair breaks
down, and, after successive repairs, is discarded as no longer
serviceable. Or perhaps our requirements change ; and some
article which was at first made expressly in accordance with them,
proves no longer suitable to our needs ; so that, finding it in our
way, we wish to get rid of it. Some pieces of our furniture, again,
originally of more substantial make, have become faded and old-
fashioned ; but they may be family heirlooms, or we may have
ourselves become attached to them ; and so, not liking to discard
them altogether, we put them away in some dark corner, or perhaps
consign them to a seldom-visited lumber-room, where they rest
almost forgotten in their obscurity. But at last some ray of sun-
shine throws a brighter light than usual upon our dark corner ; or
the opening of the shutters of our lumber-room lets into it the
unwonted light of day ; and we then find our old sofas and four-
post beds so moth-eaten and decayed, that we turn them out of
our house instanter.

I shall not pursue this comparison at present, but propose to
resume and develop it hereafter.

Although belief, as Dr. Reid truly says, " admits of all degrees,
from the slightest suspicion to the fullest assurance," yet we
commonly use the term to designate that form of assent to any
particular proposition, which, Avhile falling short of positive cer-
tainty, is yet sufficiently complete not only to serve as the basis of
our further reasoning, but to direct our course of action. And it
is chiefly in this sense that I shall use the term on the present
occasion ; distinguishing belief, on the one hand, from that com-
plete assurance which constitutes positive knowledge, and^ on the

2i6 NATURE AND MAN.

other, from that merely speculative or provisional acceptance of
a proposition, which neither shapes our thought, nor governs our
action, and which really constitutes little more than an absence of
^//Vbelief in it.

You are all familiar with that current doctrine in regard to the
nature of behef, which assumes that we "try" every proposition in
our court of intellect, just as we try a prisoner in a court of law.
We are supposed to listen with equal attention to the evidence
adduced on each side, and to give our best consideration to the
arguments which the opposing advocates erect upon it. Holding
our intellectual balance with eyes blinded like those of Justice, we
poise against each other the two aggregates of, pro and con ; and
according as one or the other scale is made to go down by the
" preponderance of evidence," do we accept or reject the pro-
position. But how comes it, if this be the whole account of our
procedure, that the judgments of different men on the very same
evidence are so notoriously diverse ? The great Tichborne case,
for example, cannot be brought up in any society, without elicit-
ing opposite verdicts from self-constituted jurymen, who profess
to have followed the course of the whole trial with the greatest
care, and whose judgment cannot be supposed to have been
swayed by the least admixture of partiality or self-interest. The
clue to this diversity is found in the further fact, that even those
who agree in their conclusion, will often be found to have formed
it on dissimilar grounds ; the respective weights of the several
evidentiary facts being very differently estimated by different
individuals. And thus we are led to this result ; that the weights
or probative values of such evidentiary facts are not absolute quan-
tities, but 77iatters of personal estimate ; being — like our sensations
of heat or cold as compared with the indications of the ther-
mometer— the expressions of their effects upon our own con-
sciousness. For while there are some things as to which the
common consciousness of mankind is in perfect accord, there are
others which impress different individuals so diversely, that we
are forced to regard what may be termed the personal equation *

* This term is used by astronomers to mark the quickness of sight by
which each of several observers is characterized ; any visual phenomenon that
is being watched for by two observers at once (as, for example, the contact of

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 217

of each recipient, as a factor whose importance is at least equal
to that of the impressing force, in the determination of the
resultant belief

The nature of this "personal equation," and the degree in
which its determination lies within our own power, constitute,
therefore, an essential part of our inquiry.

No one can attend to his own habitual course of thought
without recognizing it as a fact, that the judgments which deter-
mine his beliefs in regard to a very large proportion of the
propositions that are constandy coming before him (as, for ex-
ample, in the reading of his daily newspaper), are so direct and
immediate, so httle governed by any processes of conscious
ratiocination, as to have much of the intuitive character. We
estimate the worth of each statement, partly by our appreciation
of the external evidence on which it rests, but still more (in
most cases at least) by what we call the internal evidence of its
intrinsic probability. But this intrinsic probability, like the re-
spective weights of the several facts which make up the aggregate
of the external evidence, may be estimated very differently by
different individuals ; the " personal equation " of each being often
its most important factor. For while there are some propositions
which are at once decided with absolute unanimity by an appeal
to the "common sense" of mankind, there are others on which
very different decisions are given, with no less directness and
assurance, by different individuals, according to the respective
mental state of each at the moment; the response of every indi-
vidual mind to any such question asked of it, being as much the
result of the antecedent condition of that mind, as our feeling of
heat or cold when we plunge our hands into a basin of lukewarm
water is dependent upon their previous thermal condition.*

Let us take as an example of an immediate judgment in
which there would be a general if not an universal accordance
that which any person of average intelligence would give upon
the case put by Paley in the opening sentence of his " Natural

a star with the wire of the transit instrument) being usually seen appreciably
sooner by one of them than by the other.

* Thus if we immerse the right hand for a short time in cold water, and the
left in hot, anil tiicn transfer them botii to water of medium temperature, this
will be felt as warm by the right, and as cold by the left.

2i8 NATURE AND MAN.

Theology": — "In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot
" against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there :
"I might possibly answer that, for anything I knew to the con-
" trar}'-, it had lain there for ever ; nor would it perhaps be very
" easy to show the absurdity of this answer." Now, what is it
that determines our immediate rejection of a proposition, which,
as Paley says truly, cannot be easily refuted by any strict logical
process ? Perhaps neither the child nor the savage would have
anything to say against it ; yet no member of an educated com-
munity could entertain it for a moment. For what we call our
ordinary common sense pronounces its adverse decision in the
most distinct and explicit form, immediately that the proposition
is brought before its tribunal; its judgment being an acquired
intuition, which may be regarded as the general resultant of a
great aggregate of famihar experiences, embodied in each indi-
vidual's reason.

But in a large proportion of cases, the matter is one which lies
outside the range of ordinary " common sense ; " some special
preparedness being required for the right appreciation of the in-
herent probability of the statement. One among my audience,
for example, who has no previous information on the subject,
happens to read the entertaining and (in certain aspects) very
suggestive "Autobiography of Robert Houdin the Conjuror," and
meets, near its conclusion, with the following passage : —

" The furnace (of an iron-foundry) was opened, and a jet of
" molten metal, about the thickness of my arm, burst forth.
" Sparks flew in every direction, as if it were a firework perform-
"ance. After the lapse of a few minutes, my companion walked
"up to the furnace, and calmly began washing his hands in the
" metal, as if it had been lukewarm water. I walked forward in
" my turn ; I imitated my companion's movements ; I literally
" dabbled in the burning liquid ; I took a handful of the metal
" and threw it in the air, and it fell back in a fire-shower on the
" ground. The impression I felt in touching this molten iron can
" only be compared to what I should have experienced in handling
"hquid velvet, if I may so express myself"

Any ordinary reader would be fully justified in treating this won-
derful narration as Houdin's account of some new kind of conjur-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 219

ing trick, like the "inexhaustible bottle," the "aerial suspension,"
or the " second sight," mentioned in his previous pages. For he
would scarcely be more able to conceive of a man literally and
actually immersing his hands in molten iron, without any special
preparation, and withdrawing them unharmed, than he could
suppose an unlimited quantity of several different liquids to be
poured out of a single bottle.

Another reader, however, finds no inherent improbability in
the narration ; for he knows that a special study had been made
by M. Boutigny of that "spheroidal state" of bodies, of which we
have a familiar example in the rolling and jumping of drops of
water upon a red-hot iron plate ; and that between this phe-
nomenon (which is in itself sufficiently wonderful, when we come
to think of it) and the harmless immersion of the hand in molten
iron, M. Boutigny had worked out a continuous series of experi-
mental marvels, all of them referable to the same simple and
intelligible principle, — viz. the interposition of a film of vapour
between the heated plate and the water thrown upon it, or between
the molten iron and the hand immersed in it,* which prevents
absolute contact between the two. Our second reader might
himself, perhaps, have been present at the meeting of the British
Association in 1845, at which M. Boutigny gave an account of
these investigations, and publicly exhibited the freezing of 7vater
in a red-hot platinum crucible (an experiment which Faraday
afterwards " capped " by freezing tnerairy in a like vessel) ; and
at which, also, one of the workmen at Messrs. Ransome and
May's foundry, in the presence of a large number of competent
witnesses, did exactly what Houdin describes. Or, if he was not
himself present, he knows that M. Boutigny's experiments were
fully accepted as genuine at the time by the whole scientific
world ; that they have never in any way been called in question ;
and that the doctrine founded upon them is now universally recog-
nized as an established principle in physics. Thus lie has been
prepared by his previous training for the ready acceptance of
Houdin's narration ; he feels assured that the occurrence might

* If the hand be naturally moist, there is no need of any preparation what-
ever ; if it be diy, the hand should be previously dipped in water and wiped
on a towel.

220 NATURE AND MAN.

have happened exactly as it is described, this very M. Boutigny
being named by Houdin as his companion and exemplar ; and
looking to the reason assigned by Houdin for inquiring into the
subject — viz. his desire to account for the wonders he had himself
witnessed in the performances of the Arab conjurors, whom he
was sent by the French Government to outdo (these men walking
with bare feet upon red-hot bars of iron, and licking red-hot
plates with their tongues) — he sees no reason for discrediting
Houdin's statement that it really did happen.

To the well-informed physicist, the internal evidence of con-
formity to a general principle is here so satisfactory, that he needs
but a very small weight of external testimony to justify his belief
in the particular fact narrated. But to any one who comes freshly
to the subject, the affirmation seems to rest on external testimony
alone ; while the negation afforded by the inherent improbability
of the statement is to the mind so decisive, that he deems himself
fully justified in repudiating it altogether. Supposing, however,
that a scientific friend points out to him that he has no title to set
up a judgment which has no other basis than his own ordinary
common sense, against that of men who have given special atten-
tion to this department of inquiry, and who agree in asserting,
not only that the fact is true, but that it admits of a satisfactory
explanation ; he then, if not over-confident in his own judgment,
withdraws the negation, and accepts the affirmative, in deference
to the authority by which it is supported ; still, however, without
feeling that assurance which constitutes "conviction." But,
further, if he can then be induced to go, step by step, through
the whole series of experimental researches which lead up to this
wonderful climax, he comes to feel the full force of that internal
evidence, which not only removes all difficulty in the acceptance
of the asserted fact, but shows that it has an inherent probability
of its own, as a particular case of a well-established general
principle. And yet I suspect that, however strong his mental
conviction as to the safety of the act, there is not one of us who
would venture to hold his hand in a stream of molten iron, until
he had previously seen another person do so with impunity.

Another illustration, in a very different line of inquiry, may
be drawn from the recent case of Louise Lateau, a Belgian

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 221

peasant girl, who has exhibited the curious phenomenon of
" stigmatization," — that is, a spontaneous periodical bleeding,
without any actual wounds, from the hands and feet, the forehead
and the side, which were pierced in the crucified Saviour. By
Catholics, this occurrence (like previous cases of the same kind)
has been trumpeted as miraculous ; while by Protestants, it has
been denounced as an imposture. Here we at once see how
completely the antecedent condition of each mind has determined
the response ; the external testimony as to the facts of the case
which satisfies the former, being altogether repudiated by the
latter, on account of what they regard as its inherent improb-
ability. But to the physiologist who has carefully studied the
local effects which concentrated attention can exert on bodily
organs, especially when coupled with a strong expectation of a
certain result (such expectation being peculiarly efficacious when
coupled with strong religious emotion), the case presents no
difficulty whatever. The testimony of the numerous and com-
petent medical witnesses, fully on their guard against sources of
fallacy, and determined to detect the cheat, if cheat there were,
affords as strong a body of external evidence as could be brought
to prove the reality of any occurrence whatever. And so far
from finding any inherent improbability in their narrative^ I can
only say for myself, that its internal evidence is to my mind quite
as strong as its external. The subject of it was obviously one of
that class of young women who are known to every medical
practitioner as peculiarly liable to " possession " by dominant
ideas ; and this possession manifested itself in a periodical
"ecstasy," a form of natural somnambulism, in which the mind,
entirely closed to the external world, is given up entirely to its
own contemplations. Her current of thought and feeling in this
state uniformly ran in the direction of the Saviour's Passion, the
whole scene of which seemed to pass before her mind, as might
be judged from her expressive actions ; and a strong evidence of
the reality of the condition was afforded by the fact that, accord-
ing to the testimony of the medical witnesses, each fit terminated
in a state of extreme physical prostration, which could not have
been simulated — the pulse being scarcely perceptible, the breath-
ing slow and feeble, and the whole surface bedewed with a cold

222 NATURE AND MAN.

perspiration. Now the transudation of blood from the skin
through the orifices of the perspiratory ducts, under strong
emotional excitement, being a well-authenticated physiological
fact, there seems to me nothing in the least degree improbable in
the narrative ; on the contrary, any one who accepts the " charm-
ing away" of warts, and the cure of more serious maladies, as
results of a strongly excited " expectant attention," will regard
the stigmatization of an Ecstatica as the natural result of the
intense concentration of her thoughts and feelings on a subject
that obviously had a peculiar attraction for them.

Thus the belief of the Catholic partizan in the " miraculous "
theory, that of his Protestant opponent in the "cheat" theory,
and that of the scientific physiologist in the " natural " tlieory, all
of which have the same external testimony as one of their factors,
are severally governed by the "personal equation" which consti-
tutes the other factor, — namely, that antecedent mental state which
really settles the value to be assigned to the external testimony,
by what it regards as the inherent probability or improbability of
the fact, and thus indirectly determines the " preponderance of
evidence." Either may, if he thinks proper, accuse each of the
two others of being " prejudiced " in favour of his own particular
belief; but the "prejudice" is simply, in each case, a resultant
of previous training. I, on the one hand, who accept the scien-
tific explanation, have no right to charge the devout Catholic with
absurd superstition, because, having been brought up in the belief
that miracles are worked at the present day for the authentication
of Divine truth, he accepts this particular case as belonging to
the " miraculous " category ; but he, on the other, is not entitled
to brand me as a sceptic or an infidel, because, having been
brought up in the belief that the age of miracles has ceased, my
scientific studies lead me to a rational explanation of the facts
which I agree with him in accepting. I may fairly, however,
deny the right of his Protestant opponent to question either the
honesty or the competence of witnesses, whose prepossessions
were obviously rather against than in favour of the genuineness
of the phenomena; merely because, while refusing to admit
their "miraculous" character, he has not given sufficient atten-
tion to the body of evidence relating to the influence of

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF 223

mental upon bodily states,* to be able to recognize their
"naturalness."

I would now ask you to accompany me in the examination of
a still more remarkable phenomenon, which attracted considerable
attention some years ago, but of which nothing (so far as I know)
has been lately heard ; that, namely, which the late Mr. Braid of
Manchester termed " human hybernation." It is known to most
persons who have resided long in India, that certain Hindoo
devotees are reputed to have the power of passing at will into a
condition of death-like torpor, and of remaining for days or even
weeks in that condition without the loss of their vitality, so that
they may be resuscitated by appropriate means, although they
have been all that time buried so securely in a vault, as to be
absolutely cut off from supplies of food, and almost entirely
secluded from air. But I suppose that there are few who have
regarded such statements as deserving of any serious attention ;
the wonderful jugglery by which the celebrated "tree trick" is
performed, being, it may be supposed, quite adequate to impress
witnesses of no extraordinary penetration with a belief in the
genuineness of phenomena that were merely contrived for the
purpose of deceit But the narratives which Mr. Braid obtained
from witnesses not only of unimpeachable veracity but of the
fullest competence, to whom every facility for the most careful
scrutiny was accorded, put the matter in an entirely different
light. In one of these cases, vouched for by Sir Claude Wade,
who was long our political agent at the Court of Runjeet Singh,
the fakeer was buried in an underground cell for six weeks ; and
having been twice dug out by Runjeet Singh during that period,
was found on each occasion in precisely the same condition of
apparent death as when first buried. In another case, mentioned
by Lieutenant Boileau, in his " Narrative of a Journey in Raj-
warra," in 1835, the man had been buried for ten days, in a grave
lined with masonry and covered with large slabs of stone, and
strictly guarded ; and he assured Lieutenant Boileau that he was
ready to submit to an interment of a twelvemonth's duration, if
desired. In a third case, cited by Mr. Braid, the trial was made
under the direct supervision of a British officer, a period of nine
* See Dr. Tuke's work on the " Influence of the Mind on the Body."

224 NATURE AND MAN.

days having been stipulated for on the part of the devotee ; but
the officer, fearing that he might incur blame if the result should
be fatal, had the fakeer dug out on the third day, without any
previous notice. In each case we have the testimony of British
medical officers as to the condition of the body when exhumed ;
and in this all the narratives agree. Its appearance was perfectly
corpse-like ; no pulsation could be detected either in the heart or
in the arteries (there was no stethoscopy in those days) ; and
there were no perceptible movements of breathing. The means
of restoration employed by the attendants of the saint were just
what we should ourselves employ in a case of " suspended anima-
tion ; " namely, friction of the surface, the application of warmth,
and the administration of stimulants as soon as the power of
swallowing returned.

Still it may be said that it is so intrinsically improbable, not
to say impossible, that a state of apparent death could be self-
induced in the first instance, and could then endure for weeks (to
say nothing of months) without the absolute loss of vitality, that
it is more likely that even these most competent and trustworthy
witnesses were deceived, than that the facts really happened as
narrated by them. And a determined sceptic might feel himself
justified in likening their narratives to the wonderful stories told
by Marco Polo, as to the chain thrown up into the air, the
climbing-up of this chain by a boy until he was out of sight, the
falling to the ground of his head, body, and limbs in separate
pieces, and their spontaneous reunion, so that the boy got up
and walked alive and whole in the presence of a circle of
spectators.

But the scientific physiologist, as in the preceding instance,
sees a clue to the rational explanation of the cases of the buried
fakeers ; which leads him to view the testimony given in regard
to them by the cautious, sceptical, and well-informed witnesses
who vouch for them, in a very different light from that of the
wonder-loving traveller of the middle ages.

In the first place, the state of " suspended animation " or
"apparent death" is one of which the existence cannot be
denied; since it is continually produced by drowning, and some-
times occurs spontaneously. And that such a state might be

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 225

maintained in India under the circumstances described, for a
much longer period than in this country, may be fairly attributed
to the warmth of the tropical soil ; which will prevent any con-
siderable reduction of the temperature of the body buried in it,
notwithstanding the almost entire suspension of its internal heat-
producing operations. Again, it has been experimentally ascer-
tained that even warm-blooded mammals, whose hybernation is
profound, can be kept under water for an hour or more without
injury ; although, in their ordinary condition of activity, they
would be killed by a submersion of three or four minutes. And
thus there is nothing, in the almost complete privation of air,
that militates against the probability that the buried fakeer might
remain enclosed in a narrow vault, without suffering from the
want of it ; for the nearly complete suspension of all the functions
of life will reduce the demand for air, as for food, almost to zero.

But, secondly, there is to the well-informed physiologist no
inherent improbability in the self-induction of this curious con-
dition. For, in the first place, he has the standard case of Colonel
Townsend, which no medical authority has ever ventured to call
in question, so high was the authority of Dr. Cheyne, the eminent
physician by whom it was recorded. And Mr. Braid, in the course
of his experiments on that form of artificial somnambulism which
he termed hypnotism, met with several cases (of which I myself
saw more than one) in which the self-induction of that state pro-
duced a marked lowering of the pulse and respiration ; the reduc-
tion being such in one instance as seriously to alarm Mr. Braid,
and to necessitate the immediate termination of the experiment.

The inherent improbability of the asserted phenomena, then,
being thus weakened or even removed by scientific inquiry, we
are free to attach whatever weight to the testimony in their favour
we may think it deserves on its own account. And I long since
expressed my own conviction, that though we may scarcely
accept that testimony as affording a satisfactory basis for positive
assurance, we have no right whatever to refuse to believe it. 1 he
case seemed to me to be one fairly calling for that " suspension
of the judgment," which our great Faraday used to advocate, as
preferable in many instances to that premature " making up of
our minds," which often involves either our /^«-making them

226 NATURE AND MAN.

again at some subsequent time when fresh evidence has been
adduced, or our persistence, from mere obstinacy, in a belief
which we should not have adopted in the first instance, if the
whole case had been then before us.

But having happened long since to speak on the subject to
Professor Max Miiller, I learned from him the additional very
important fact, that this condition of self-induced suspension of
vital activity forms, as it were, the climax of a whole series of
states, with two of which I was myself very familiar — "electro-
biology," or artificial reverie, and " hypnotism," or artificial som-
nambulism ; both of them admirably studied by Mr. Braid,
through whose kindness I had many opportunities of investigating
their phenomena. The self-induction of these states, practised by
the Hindoo devotees, is part of a system of religious philosophy
which is termed the Yoga ; and by the kindness of Professor Max
Miiller I possess a very curious account of this philosophy, printed
at Benares twenty-two years ago, by Sub-Assistant Surgeon Paul,
who had carefully studied it. It appears from this that the object
of the whole system is to induce a state of mystical self-contempla-
tion, tending to the absorption of the soul of the individual into
the Supreme Soul, the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of the
World ; and that the lower forms of it consist in the adoption of
certain fixed postures, which seem to act much in the same way
with the fixation of the vision in Mr. Braid's methods. The first
state, pi-dndydma, corresponds very closely with that of reverie or
abstraction ; the mind being turned in upon itself and entirely
given up to devout meditation, but the sensibility to external im-
pressions not being altogether suspended. The second state,
pratydhdra, is one which — the external senses being closed, while
the mind is still active — corresponds with some forms of somnam-
bulism. Those who have attained the power of inducing this
condition, then practise dhardna, a stage of complete quiescence of
body and mind, corresponding with what is known as catalepsy, —
the body remaining in any posture in which it may be placed.
From this they pass into the d/iydna, in which they believe them-
selves to be surrounded by flashes of external light or electricity,
and thus to be brought into communion with the Universal Soul,
which endows them with a clairvoyant power. And the final

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 227

State of samctdhi, which they themselves liken to the hybernation
of animals, and in which the respiratory movements are suspended,
is regarded as that of absolute mental tranquillity, which, according
to these mystics, is the highest state which man can attain ; the
individual being absolutely incapable of committing sin in thought,
act, or speech, and having his thoughts completely occupied with
the idea of Brahma, or the Supreme Soul, without any effort of
his own mind.

From this point of view, then, the history of the buried fakeers
presents a new significance ; for so far from being an exceptional
phenomenon, this self-induced state of suspended animation is
one towards which the whole of their system of religious
philosophy tends, and for which it provides, as it were, both the
physical and the mental education. And the evidence thus
derived from an entirely independent source, of the inherent
probability of occurrences whose narration first called forth
nothing but incredulity, seems now, in my judgment, sufficient
to give a very decided preponderance to the scale of positive
belief

Now it is obvious that the state of belief of each one of
yourselves, to whom the subjects of the three cases I have now
discussed may be entirely new, will be mainly determined by the
confidence you may be severally predisposed to place in my
scientific knowledge. You may reasonably conclude that,
although not a professed physicist, I should not declare to you
my conviction that a man may hold his hand unharmed in a
stream of molten iron, without having the strongest grounds for
that assurance which the confirmation of a priori scientific proba-
bility can furnish to the testimony of competent and unpre-
judiced witnesses. And those of you who may know me not
only as a physiologist, but as one who has for thirty years made
a special study of the border-ground between physiology and
psychology, will perhaps be disposed to think that I should not,
without adequate reason, speak to you of the stigmatization of
Louise Lateau, and of the buried life of the Hindoo Yogi, as not
to be lightly put aside as cheats, but to be entertained as matters
of serious investigation. In each of these cases, however, the
question is obviously one as to which the decision between

228 NATURE AND MAN.

testimony and the dictates of common sense depends upon
special knowledge ; the negative verdict which ahnost every
person of average intelhgence would almost unhesitatingly pro-
nounce, being liable to reversal by the lightening of the scale of
general experience, while fresh weights are put by special in-
vestigation into the scale of testimony. And the " personal
equation " which determines the belief of each individual who
does not work out the inquiry for himself, here consists mainly in
his confidence in the knowledge and judgment of another person.
The evidentiary facts on which his scientific guide relies, may be
utterly meaningless to himself; but he accepts them, as the
merchant would a bill of exchange, on that guide's assurance of
their worth; and the "preponderance of evidence," like the
balance of an account, is decided accordingly. If any one
who is either disqualified by ignorance from rightly appreciating
the value of the evidentiary facts, or is unwilling to take the
trouble of investigating the case, claims to dispose of it in an
off-hand way in accordance with his " common sense " notions, we,
who have studied the subject, take leave to tell him that it is a
case requiring the z/;zcommon sense that only special culture can
bestow, without the possession of which his judgment is altogether
worthless.

But I have now to direct our inquiry to that class of beliefs,
which relate to matters lying within the scope of ordinary
reason, upon which every thoughtful man feels himself not only
competent but called upon to decide for himself, and yet as to
which there is no less a diversity in the judgments formed upon
the same evidence, than there is in the cases we have already
considered.

While the world has been too ready to charge with moral
culpability those who depart from the beaten tracks of religious
or scientific orthodoxy, independent thinkers seem to me to have
often been unjust as well as unwise in flinging back the accusa-
tion, and in imputing to those whose mental development has
taken place under a particular system, and whose whole intel-
lectual and moral nature has shaped itself into conformity with
that system, either a wilful blindness to evidence which at once

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 229

carries conviction to their own minds, or an intellectual incapacity
to appreciate it. For, as I shall now endeavour to show you, the
ordinary beliefs of every individual are mainly determined by a
"personal equation" not less definite than that of the man who
has studied some particular subject, though it is the exponent
rather of his general than of his special culture. Here we shall
find it convenient to resume our former comparison, and liken the
mind of each individual to an edifice, — palace, dwelling-house, or
cottage, as the case may be, — which, though partially furnished,
still has some of its rooms entirely empty, while in others there
are recesses, nooks, and corners remaining to be filled, or perhaps
only a few pegs on which some lighter articles may be loosely
hung.

Now it seems to me that our immediate acceptance or rejec-
tion of the propositions daily coming before us, as to which our
judgment does not need to be specially informed, but which the
ordinary common sense, or acquired instinct, of an average man
is quite competent to decide, is determined on exactly the same
principle, as our acceptance or rejection of (let us say) a book-
case, which may be offered as likely to suit a certain recess
in our library. For just as our decision is guided in the latter
case by i\\Q fifting-in of the piece of furniture to the vacant nook,
so does our intellectual assent to a new proposition depend upon
its fitting-in to some appropriate place in our existing fabric of
thought. The fit of this new bookcase may be so perfect, that
we have no question whatever about retaining it ; and it gradually,
by use and habit, becomes to ourselves as much a part of the
library, as if it had grown into its walls. And so a new belief, for
which an appropriate place is ready in our fabric of thought, and
which precisely fits into that place, not only obtains immediate
acceptance, but ere long (if not called in question) is adopted
into the fabric itself

But, again, the fit of the bookcase may not be perfect in the
first instance, and yet we may think so well of its general
suitableness as not to like to let it go ; and we then consider
whether by some slight alteration either of the bookcase or of the
recess, we can bring about an adjustment. If this can be done,
we keep the bookcase ; if it cannot, we send it back. Even so,

230 NATURE AND MAN.

tlie new proposition may not in the first instance find any place
in our fabric of thought into which it can be received ; and yet
its want of accordance may be so slight, as to lead us to examine
whether we cannot make it fit by some process of accommoda-
tion ; — either our recess being widened by argument and dis-
cussion, or the proposition being narrowed by the Hmitation of its
terms. If we can thus bring about a satisfactory "fit," we accept
the proposition as part of our intellectual furniture; if not, we
dismiss it, — at any rate for a time.

Now in this intellectual judgment, it seems clear to me that
the will is no more involved at the moment of making it, than it
is in that which is determined by the "preponderance of evidence."
For if there be a complete suitableness, or a complete unsuitable-
ness, between the new proposition and the vacant recess in our
fabric of thought, we accept it without hesitation in the one case,
we feel compelled to reject it in the other. So far, then, it is
true that " we are no more responsible for our opinions than we
"are for the colour of our skin." But, whenever the proposition
comes to be the subject of discussion, — whether we are simply
canvassing the practicability of fitting it into our recess, or are
carrying it through the whole procedure of a trial on its merits,
the will comes to exert a powerful influence on the result ; as
is truly expressed by that proverbial embodiment of universal
experience, that "we easily believe what we wish." How, then,
upon the theory of the instinctive or automatic nature of assent
which I have been endeavouring to establish, is this influence
exerted ?

In those old political trials, which are now happily — so far as
our own country is concerned — only matters of history, it not
unfrequently happened that the prisoner's life or death, whilst
determined by the verdict of a jury honestly meaning to be im-
partial, really depended on the partizan conduct of the presiding
judge. For though the jury were all sworn, and really intended,
to give a " true verdict according to evidence," yet the judge had
it largely in his power to determine which way the balance should
incline. In the first place, he might refuse even to consider the
objections which the prisoner's counsel was fully justified in taking
to the indictment, and might accept the reply of the crown-lawyer

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 231

as all sufficient, when it did not really meet one of the points
raised for the defence. Again, while treating the witnesses for the
Crown with the utmost consideration, assuming the truth of every
statement they may make, and placing every obstacle in the way
of the sifting of their testimony by cross-examination, he treated
the witnesses for the defence as if they were utterly unworthy of
credit, and allowed the crown-counsel the utmost licence in his
endeavour to lower the value of their testimony by unjustifiable
insinuations or bullying assumptions. And in his " summing-up,"
he would so forcibly present to the jury both the law and the
evidence on one side, and so determinately keep down the force
of law and evidence on the other, that the jury might be honestly
compelled, even against their own prepossessions, to give a most
iniquitous verdict.

And so in the discussion of a question of intellectual truth, the
will has the power of keeping some considerations more or less
completely out of view, whilst it increases the force of others by
fixing the attention upon them. Another familiar proverb, that
" there are none so blind as those that won't see," precisely
expresses the way in which the will thus exerts its influence.
For as the opponents of the Copernican system refused to look
at the satellites of Jupiter through the telescope of Galileo, so there
are too many who wilfully turn away the eyes of their minds from
inconvenient truths ; or refuse to get a gleam of sunshine into
the dark chambers of their intellects, where they hide as sacred
treasures the antiquated beliefs of past ages, the worthlessness
of which would be at once apparent if the full light of day were
permitted to shine in upon them.

On the other hand, the will, when inspired by the habitual
desire to act on the highest principles of right, determinately
blinds us, not only to the direct promptings of self-interest, but
to those arguments which we instinctively feel to be soi)histical,
though we may not be able logically to expose their fallacy; just
as Nelson at Copenhagen turned his blind eye to the signal for
his recall, which he did not think it for the honour of his country
to obey.

But we must now carry this inquiry a step further back ; and
consider where the responsibility lies for the construction of that

232 NATURE AND MAN.

fabric of thought, the shape and dimensions of whose recesses
determine the admissibiUty of the beliefs that constitute its
furniture.

The general plan of that fabric may be said to be determined
by our congenital constitution. Every being is, in the first in-
stance, what Nature made him ; and however much his capacities
and tendencies may be developed and modified by subsequent
influences, these cannot build up any superstructure that was not,
as it were, sketched out in the original design. The foundations
are laid, and the basement-storey reared, by the education and
training we receive ; and while we are in no degree responsible
for this in the first instance, we gradually come to be so more and
more, as we acquire that power of volitional selection, by which
we can regulate the action of our intellectual faculties, and de-
termine the choice of its objects — so far, at least, as this may be
left to ourselves. But it is during this period of our lives that we
are most powerfully, though unconsciously, influenced by that
aggregate of external influeuces which the ancient Greeks desig-
nated as the No'/xos — a term we sometimes translate as " custom "
and sometimes "law," and which may be considered as expressing
that custom which has the force of law, and which has become so
completely a " second nature " as to be less easily changed than
any written law. Of this No^aos the "caste" of India is doubtless
the most conspicuous example j but no observant mind can fail
to recognize the applicability to our own social condition of the
admirable account given by Mr. Grote of the Greek conception of
that " King of all" (to borrow the phrase cited by Herodotus from
Pindar), which "exercises plenary power, spiritual as well as
" temporal, over individual minds ; moulding the emotions as well
"as the intellect, according to the local type — determining the
"sentiments, the belief and the predisposition in regard to new
"matters tendered for belief, of every one — fashioning thought,
"speech, points of view, no less than action — and reigning
"under the appearance of habitual, self-suggested tendencies."
— {^Plato and the other Companio?is of Sokratcs, vol. i. p. 249.)

The physiologist who believes that during the whole period of
growth, the brain is shaping itself according to the mode in which

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 233

it is habitually exercised, and that the nerve-tracks then laid down
are maintained through life, even though disused, far more per-
sistently than any that result from subsequent mental modifica-
tions, will most fully realize to himself the extreme importance of
this No/.tos — the influence unconsciously exerted by the family life,
the public opinion of the school and college, and the usages and
habits of thought and feeling of the particular social class as a
member of which the youth makes his first entrance into the
world — not only in moulding the moral character, but in building
up the fabric of thought. And it operates in this special way —
that it shapes our mental recesses to the forms and dimensions of
certain ancestral pieces of furniture that are waiting to be put into
them ; so that as the fabric is growing up, and one room is ready
after another, these respectable beliefs find their appropriate
places ; the recipient never dreams of questioning their inherent
use and value, because they " fit " in so perfectly ; and so long as
nothing occurs to make him doubt the security of his walls, and
he does not experience any special inconvenience from the antique
awkwardness of his furniture, he continues to give it a place, to
the exclusion of articles of newer fashion and more attractive
exterior.

In so far, then, as the fabric of thought of each individual
has been built up by influences external to himself, he cannot be
regarded as in any sense responsible for his acceptance of beliefs
which that fabric has been shaped to receive ; but he does
become responsible, when the time comes for him to think for
himself, to examine into the foundations of his knowledge, to test
the goodness of its materials, and to try the security of its con-
struction. Any one who is restrained from doing this, whether by
passive indolence or by timorous apprehension of the possible
results of inquiry, either to his own worldly interests or to those
of others, is liable some time or other to find his fabric of thought
overthrown, and himself buried in its ruins ; and even though no
wave should dash, no lightning-flash should shatter, it may ulti-
timately fall to pieces from sheer decay. Every one, on the other
hand, who recognizes his obligation to make the best use in his
power of the faculties with which he finds himself gifted, and who
looks at the search for truth as his noblest object, the attainment

234 NATURE AND MAN.

of it as his most glorious prize, will be constantly on the watch for
opportunities of improving his fabric of knowledge, and of per-
fecting its furniture of beliefs. Now in doing this, he will find
that as his fabric is altered (or rather, alters itself), his furniture
must be changed in accordance with it ; for the enlargement of
one of his apartments may enable him to give place to some
article which he was formerly obliged to reject, whilst the reduc-
tion of another may crowd out the fittings which were once
most perfectly suited to it. Every one who has gone through a
sufficiently long course of intellectual experiences, and has been
accustomed to reflect upon them, must be conscious that this has
often occurred to himself. He is surprised, on turning over the
records of his earlier beHefs, to find how many of them he would
now absolutely reject ; not because they have been disproved by
additional evidence, but because he has himself grown out of them.
And it is, further, by the use of the power which every man
possesses of enlarging^ as well as improving, his fabric of thought,
by applying himself to the acquirement of new knowledge, that
he gains a vastly increased capacity for the reception of a nobler
and grander order of beliefs, such as he would have previously
thought it impossible t*liat he could ever come to possess. Sup-
pose an American professor to have come over, a dozen years
ago, to announce to the scientific public of Europe, that he had
devised and perfected a method by which he was enabled to
recognize in the incandescent atmosphere of the sun at least
seventeen of the component elements of our own globe ; that he
had discovered the most notable of these to be hydrogen, which,
heated to redness, forms a glowing envelope ordinarily at least
five thousand miles thick, whence fiery tongues are shot forth
from time to time, sometimes to the height of fifty thousand miles
in a few minutes, their disappearance being often as rapid as their
projection ; and that he had ascertained the sun-spots to be the
centres of circular storms, sometimes revolving at the rate of one
hundred and twenty miles per second, which are set in motion by
a downward rush of metallic vapours, dependent on a local cooling
that can only be measured by thousands of degrees ; what would
have been our mental attitude? These propositions would, to
most of us, whether scientific or unscientific, have seemed so com-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 235

pletetely inadmissible into our fabric of thought, that we should
have suspected our American friend of amusing himself by trying
upon us one of those ingenious hoaxes for which his countrymen
have shown a special aptitude.

Let us suppose our professor to have further assured us that
he was able by the same method to determine the existence of
many of the terrestrial elements even in the fixed stars ; that he
had found hydrogen not only to be universally present, but to
perform the leading part in those changes which give rise in
certain cases to the known variations in their brightness (a star
previously invisible to the naked eye suddenly blazing out with a
lustre surpassing that of Jupiter, and declining almost as rapidly) ;
and that he was further able to prove that many of these luminaries
have a motion of approach to or recession from us, such as no
measurement of their angular positions could detect, no telescopic
scrutiny would lead us even to surmise, though its rate may be
fifty miles per second ; we should scarcely have been unreasonable
in regarding his statements as ingenious inventions devised to try
how far our credulity might extend.

And if, not satisfied with this, he ventured a still higher flight,
and had assured us that he had obtained by the same simple
method the solution of that grand astronomical problem — the
constitution of the nebulae — which the ablest observers, armed
with the largest and most perfect instruments, had declared to
be beyond their ken ; and that he could classify the irresolvable
nebulae with certainty into those which are mere whiffs of vapour,
and those which are aggregations of stars too remote to be sepa-
rately discerned ; — we should, I think, have begun to respect his
imaginative power for the sublimity of its conceptions, while the
extravagance of this last assertion would have seemed fully to
justify our repudiation of the whole series as utterly destitute of
any claim on our belief

But suppose that our Transatlantic visitor, instead of laying
his claims before an incredulous public, had privately brought
together some half-dozen of the most eminent physicists of
Europe, who were acquainted with all that had been previously
learned as to the constitution of the solar spectrum, and the modi-
fications produced in flame by the presence of certain chemical
II

236 NATURE AND MAN.

elements ; —he would have been able in a brief space, not only to
satisfy them of the soundness of his basis, but to erect upon that
basis a new and substantial addition to their fabric of knowledge,
culminating in a lofty "heaven-kissing" tower, of which every
stone should be so firmly and variously knitted to every other, as
to leave no room for any suspicion of insecurity. And having, by
the strictest methods of observation and experiment, verified his
statements — step by step — as to all those facts which are capable
of direct demonstration, and having become fully assured, in the
course of their inquiries, of their visitor's personal good faith, they
would have found no difficulty in crediting his accounts of those
celestial marvels of rare occurrence, which it would be altogether
beyond his power to reproduce.

I do not know anymore remarkable fact in the Psychology of
Belief, than the universality with which even the most wonderful —
I might say the most romantic — results of Spectrum Analysis have
been accepted as sober truth, not merely by the whole scientific
world, but by the general public. And this universality is, I think,
to be attributed to these two conditions : — first, that the absolute
concurrence of scientific men on this subject gives to their state-
ments the value (if I may so express myself) of bank-notes, which
any one may convert into the standard gold of personal knowledge,
merely by inquiring into the matter for himself ; — and secondly,
that these results are additions to our previous knowledge, and do
not run counter to any established beliefs. But suppose they had
done so, would they have been the less true in themselves, or
have possessed any the less claim on universal acceptance ? The
old beliefs would clearly have had to give place in this instance, as
they have had to do in many previous cases, to the new knowledge.
With one more practical application of this method of study-
ing the psychology of belief, I must bring this discourse to a
conclusion.

I alluded at its commencement to a great scientific hypothesis,
which is now on its trial at the bar of public opinion, and which,
if adopted as a principle of construction, will give a new shape to
a large part of our fabric of thought ; and I would say a few
words of what seems to me the spirit in which that trial should
be conducted. There are many of our securest beliefs, which

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 237

de])end on the convergence of a number of separate probabilities
towards a common centre, while none of them are complete as
proofs ; the whole of what is commonly termed "circumstantial"
evidence being, in fact, of this character. And just as the value
of the " circumstances " depends on the testimony of experts, —
a case of poisoning, for example, requiring the analysis of the
chemist, and the examination of the morbid appearances by a
pathologist, — so must the hypothesis of evolution be ultimately
either established or disprovetl by its accordance or disaccordance
with a vast aggregate of facts of Nature, which belong to different
departments of scientific inquiry. The geologist traces the suc-
cession of plants and animals in palseontological order, and finds,
as he advances in his studies, less and less evidence of interrup-
tion, and more and more of continuity, biological as well as
physical. The zoologist and botanist, who have been accustomed
to classify their multitudinous and diversified forms of plants and
animals according to their " natural affinities," find a real meaning
in their classification, a new significance in their terms of relation-
ship, when these are used to represent what might be regarded
with probability as actual community of descent. The morpho-
logist who has been accustomed to trace a " unity of type " in
each great group, and especially to recognize this in the presence
of rudimentary parts which must be entirely useless to the animals
that possess them, delights in the new idea which gives a perfect
rationale of what had previously seemed an inexplicable super-
fluity. And the embryologist, who carries back his studies to the
earliest phases of development, and follows out the grand law of
Von Baer, " from the general to the special," in the evolution of
every separate type, finds the extension of that law from the indi-
vidual to the whole succession of organic life, impart to his soul
a feeling of grandeur, like that which the physical philosopher
of two hundred years ago must hive experienced, when Newton
first promulgated the doctrine of universal gravitation. And
lastly, when the doctrine of evolution is looked at in its moral
aspect, as one which leads man ever onwards and upwards, and
which encourages his brightest anticipations of the ultimate
triumph of truth over error, of knowledge over ignorance, of
right over wrong, of good over evil, who shall presume to say

238 NATURE AND MAN.

that the convergence of all these great lines of thought, each
of them the resultant of the patient toil of a whole army of
scientific workers, is a fact of no account? Absolute truth, no
man of science can ever hope to grasp ; for he knows that all
human search for it must be limited by human capacity. But
he denies the right of any one else to impose upon him, as
" absolute truth," his own fallible exposition of the revelation con-
veyed in the teachings of religiously-inspired men ; for he claims
an equal right to be accounted a true expositor of the revelation
conveyed in the Divine Order of the Universe. And the real
philosopher, who fixes his hope on a perpetual approximation to
that absolute truth which he may never actually grasp— who, for-
getting those things which are behind, is always reaching forth
to those which are before — who tends towards perfection, without
ever //rtending to it — and who is constantly striving upwards, so
as either himself to reach, or to help his successors to reach, a yet
loftier elevation — believes that he is thus best fulfilling his duty to
the Great Giver of his own powers of thought, and to the Divine
Author of that Nature in which he deems it his highest privilege
to be able to read some of the thoughts of God.

VIIL

ON THE FALLACIES OF TESTIMONY IN RELATION
TO THE SUPERNATURAL.

^Contemporary Review^ January, 1876.]

No one who has studied the history of science can fail to recog-
nize the fact, that the rate of its progress has been in great degree
commensurate with the degree oi freedom from any kind of pre-
possession with which scientific inquiry has been conducted. And
the chapters of Lord Bacon's *' Novum Organon," in which he
analyzes and classifies the prejudices that are apt to divert the
scientific inquirer from his single-minded pursuit of truth, have
rightly been accounted among the most valuable portions of that
immortal work. To use the felicitous language of Dr. Thomas
Brown, " the temple which Lord Bacon purified was not that of
" nature herself, but the temple of the mind ; in its innermost
"sanctuaries were the idols which he overthrew; and it was not
*' till these were removed, that truth would deign to unveil herself
"to adoration."

Every one, again, who watches the course of educated thought
at the present time, must see that it is tending towards the exer-
cise of that trained and organized common sense which we call
" scientific method," on subjects to which it is legitimately applic-
able within the sphere of religious inquiry. Science has been
progressively, and in various ways, undermining the old " bases
of belief;" and men in almost every religious denomination, ani-
mated by no spirit but that of reverent loyalty to truth, are now
seriously asking themselves, whether the whole fabric of what is

240 NATURE AND MAN.

commonly regarded as authoritative revelation must not be care-
fully re-examined under the searching light of modern criticism,
in order that what is sound may be preserved and strengthened,
and that the insecurity of some parts may not destroy the stability
of the whole.

I notice, further, among even " orthodox " theologians of the
present time, indications of a disposition to regard the New
Testament miracles rather as encumbrances, than as props, to
what is essential in Christianity ; of a feeling that they are rather
to be explained away,* than adduced as authoritative attestations
of the teachings of Jesus ; — and of a perception that to attempt to
enforce a belief in them on the part of the rising generation, will
be either to alienate from the acceptance of those teachings many
of the most cultured and most earnest young people of our time,
or to reduce their minds to that state of unreasoning subservience
to authority, which finds its only logical basis in the Roman
Catholic Church. And, moreover, I observe it to be among
those, in various religious denominations, who are converging to
tbe conclusion that the "authority" of Christianity most surely
consists in the direct appeal it makes to the hearts and con-
sciences of mankind, — who most fully recognize in the life,
teaching, and death of Christ, that manifestation of the Divine
(d7raT;yao-yu.a t^s co^t^s koX ^apaKTr]p t^s iiTroorTacrews avrov) which
constitutes him their Master and Lord,^and who most earnestly
and constantly aim to fashion their own lives on the model of his,
— that there is the greatest readiness to admit that the records
of that life are tinged by the prepossessions, and subject to the
inaccuracies, to which all human testimony is liable.

It was nobly said thirty years ago f (I believe by Francis
Newman) that " every fresh advance of certain knowledge appa-
" rently sweeps off a portion of (so-called) religious belief, duf only
" to leave the true religious element more and more pure ; and in

* Thus theoloj^ians of the "philosophic" school argue that miracles are
not to be regarded as departures from the Divine order, but are parts of the
order originally settled in the Divine mind — as typified by the well-known
illustration supplied by Mr. Babbage from his calculating-machine. But this
obviously puts altogether on one side the notion of miracles as extraordinary
interpositions, involving a more direct personal agency than the ordinary
uniformity.

\ Frospective Review^ vol, i. p. 53.

FALLACIES OF TESTIMONY. 241

'■'■proportion to its purify will be its ifijliience for good, and for good
" 07ily; " and that " little as many are aware of it, faithlessness is
" often betrayed in the struggle to retain in the region of faith that
"which is already passing into the region of science, for it implies
" doubt of the value of truth." Thoroughly sympathizing with this
view, — in no spirit of hostility to what is commonly regarded as
revealed truth, — but with a desire to promote the discriminating
search for what really constitutes revealed truth, — I offer the
following suggestions, arising out of the special studies which
have occupied a large part of my life, to the consideration of such
as may deem them worthy of attention.

That the whole tendency of recent scientific inquiry has been
to strengthen the notion of " continuity " as opposed to " cata-
clysms " and " interruptions," and to substitute the idea of pro-
gressive " evolution" for that of "special creations," cannot but
be obvious to every one who is familiar with the progress of in-
quiry in astronomy, physical geology, palaeontology, and biology.
But the scientific theist who regards the so-called " laws of
nature " as nothing else than man's expressions of so much of the
Divine order as it lies within his power to discern, and who looks
at the uninterruptedness of this order as the highest evidence of
its original perfection, need lind (as it seems to me) no abstract
difficulty in the conception that the Author of Nature can, if He
will, occasionally depart from it. And hence, as I deem it pre-
sumptuous to deny that there might be occasions which in His
wisdom may require such departure, I am not conscious of any
such scientific " prepossession " against miracles, as would pre-
vent me from accepting them as facts, if trustworthy evidence of
their reality could be adduced. The question with me, theretore,
is simply : — " Have we any adequate historical ground for the
" belief that such departure has ever taken place?"

Now it can scarcely be questioned that whilst the scientific
probability of uniform sequence has become stronger, the value
of testimony in regard to departures from it has been in various
ways discredited by modern criticism. It is clear that tlie old
arguments of Lardner, and the modern reproduction of them by
Professor Andrews Norton (Boston, N.E.), which in my early
days were held as demonstrating the "genuineness of the Gos-

242 NATURE AND MAN.

pels," no longer possess their former cogency. . For the question
has now passed into a phase altogether different from that which
it presented a century or two ago. It was then, " Are the nar-
"ratives genuine or fictitious? Did the narrators intend to speak
" the truth, or were they constructing a tissue of falsehoods ? Did
" they really witness what they narrate, or were they the dupes of
" ingenious story-tellers ? " It is now, " Granting that the narrators
"wrote what they firmly believed to be true, as having themselves
" seen (or thought they had seen) the events they recorded, or as
" having heard of them from witnesses whom they had a right to
"regard as equally trustworthy with themselves; is their belief a
" sufficient justification for ours ? What is the extent of allowance
"which we are to make for 'prepossession' — (i) as modifying
"their conception of each occurrence at the time, and (2) as
"modifying their subsequent remembrance of it.-* And (3), in
"cases in which we have not access to the original records, what
" is the amount of allowance which we ought to make for the
"accretion of other still less trustworthy narratives around the
" original nucleus ? "

Circumstances have led me from a very early period to take
a great interest in the question of the value of testimony, and to
occupy myself a good deal in the inquiry as to what is scien-
tifically termed its "subjective" element. It was my duty for
many years to study and to expound systematically to medical
students the probative value of different kinds of evidence ; and
my psychological interest in the curious phenomena which,
under the names of mesmerism, odylism, electro-biology, psychic
force, and spiritual agency, have been supposed to indicate the
existence of some new and mysterious force in nature, led me,
through a long series of years, to avail myself of every oppor-
tunity of studying them that fell within my reach. The general
result of these inquiries has been to force upon me the convic-
tion, that as to all which concerns the " supernatural " (using
that term in its generally understood sense, without attempting a
logical definition of it), the allowance that has to be made for
" prepossession " is so large, as practically to destroy the validity
of any testimony which is not submitted to the severest scrutiny
according to the strictest scientific methods. Of the manner in

FALLACIES OF TESTLMONY. 243

which, within my own experience, what seemed the most trust-
worthy testimony has been completely discredited by the appU-
cation of such methods, I shall give some examples hereafter.

I would by no means claim for myself or any other scientific
man an immunity from idolatrous prepossessions ; for we must
all be guided in our researches by some notion of what we expect
to find ; and this notion may be very misleading. Thus, when
no metal was known that is not several times heavier than water,
it was not surprising that Dr. Pearson, as he poised upon his
finger the first globule of potassium produced by the battery of
Davy, should have exclaimed, " Bless me, how heavy it is ! "
though, when thrown into water, the metal floated upon it.
But while the true disciple of Bacon is on his guard against
" idolatry," and is constantly finding himself rudely handled (as
Dr. Pearson was) by " the irresistible logic of facts " if he falls
into it, the pledged upholder of any relij;ious system can be
scarcely other than, in some degree, an " idolater." The real
philosopher, says Schiller, is distinguished from the " trader in
knowledge " by his " always loving truth better than his system."

Bacon's classification of " idols " is based on the sources of
our prepossessions; and although his four types graduate in-
sensibly into each other, yet the study of them is very profitable.
Sir John Herschel is, I think, less successful when he classifies
them as (i) prejudices of opinion and (2) prejudices of sense;
because an analysis of any of his " prejudices of sense " shows
that it is really a "prejudice of opinion." My first object is to
show that we are liable to be affected by our prepossessions at
every stage of our mental activity, from our primary reception
of impressions from without, to the highest exercise of our reason-
ing powers ; and that the value of the testimony of any individual,
therefore, as to any fact whatever, essentially depends upon his
freedom from any prepossessions that can affect it.

That our own states of consciousness constitute what are, to
each individual, the most certain of all truths — in a philosophical
sense (as J. S. Mill says) the only certain truths — will, I suppose,
be generally admitted ; but there is a wide hiatus between this,
and the position that every state of consciousness which repre-

244 NATURE AND MAN

sents an external object has a real object answering to it. In fact,
although we are accustomed to speak of ** the evidence of our
senses" as worthy of the highest credit, nothing is easier than to
show that the evidence of any one sense, without the check
afforded by comparison with that of another, is utterly untrust-
worthy.

I might pile up instances of visual illusion, for example, in
which the subject would be ready to affirm without the slightest
hesitation that he sees something which greatly differs from the
object that actually forms the picture on his retina ; his erroneous
interpretation of that picture being the result of a prepossession
derived from antecedent experience. I could show, too, that the
same picture may be interpreted in two different modes : a
skeleton-diagram, for example, suggesting two dissimilar solid
forms, according as the eyes are fixed on one or another of its
angles ; and a photograph of a coin or fossil being seen as a
cameo or as an intaglio, according as the position of the light
affects the interpretation of its lights and shadows. Again, I
have before me two pieces of card, A and B, of similar form :
when A is placed above B, the latter is unhesitatmgly pronounced
the larger ; if their relative positions be reversed, A is pronounced
with equal conviction, to be the larger ; 3'et, when one is laid
upon the other, they are found to be precisely equal in size.

So, again, in those more complex combinations of natural
objects which the pictorial artist aims to represent, the different
modes in which the very same scene shall be treated by two
individuals working at the same time and from the same point of
view, show how differently they interpret the same visual picture,
according to their original constitution and subsequent training.
As Carlyle says, " The eye sees what it brings the power to see."

But mental prepossessions do much more than this ; they
produce sensations having no objective reality. I do not here
allude to those " subjective sensations " of physiologists, which
depend upon physical affections of nerves in their course, the
circulation of poisoned blood in the brain (as in the delirium of
fever), and the like ; but I refer to the sensations produced by
mental expectancy, a most fertile source of self-deception. The
medical practitioner is familiar with these in the case of

FALLACIES OF TESTIMONY, 245

" hysterical " subjects ; whose pains are as real experiences to
them, as if they originated in the parts to which they are
referred. And I have no reason to doubt that the "sensitives"
of Reichenbach really saw the llanies they described as issuing
from magnets in the dark, — as a very honest and highly educated
gentleman assured me that he did, not only when the magnet was
there, but when he believed it to be still there (in the dark), after
it had been actually withdrawn. So there are " sensitives " in
whom the drawing of a magnet along the arm will produce a
sensible aura or a pricking pain ; and this will be equally
excited by the belief that the magnet is being so used, when
nothing whatever is done.

Now, the phenomena of which these are simple examples,
appear to me to have this physiological signification, — that
changes in the cerebrum which answer to the higher mental
states, act downwards upon the sensorium at its base, in the
same manner as changes in the organs of sense act upwards
upon it ; the very same state of the sensorium being producible
through the nerves of the internal and of the external senses, and
the very same affection of the sensational consciousness being
thus called forth by impressions ab extra and ab intra. Thus
individuals having a strong pictorial memory can reproduce
scenes from nature, faces, or pictures, with such vividness that
they may be said to see with their " mind's eye " just as distincdy
as with their bodily eye ; and there is an instance on record
(which Mr. Ruskin fully accredits, as well from having seen the
two pictures as from his own similar experiences) in which a
painter at Cologne accurately reproduced from memory a large
altar-piece by Rubens, which had been carried away by the
French. Those, again, who possess a strong pictorial imagination,
can thus create distinct visual images of what they have never
seen through their bodily eyes. And although this power of
voluntary representation is comparatively rare, yet we are all
conscious of the phenomenon as occuring involuntarily in our
dreams.

Now, there is a very numerous class of persons who are
subject to what may be termed " waking dreams," which they can
induce by placing themselves in conditions favourable to reverie ;

246 NATURE AND MAN.

and the course of these dreams is essentially determined by the
individual's prepossessions, brought into play by suggestions con-
veyed from without. In many who do not spontaneously fall
into this state, fixity of the gaze for some minutes is quite sufficient
to induce it; and the "mesmeric mania" of Edinburgh in 185 1,
showed the proportion of such susceptible individuals to be much
larger than was previously supposed. Those who have had
adequate opportunities of studying these phenomena, find no
difficulty in referring to the same category many of the " spiritual-
istic " performances of the present time, in which we seem to have
reproductions of states that were regarded in ancient times, under
the influence of religious prepossession, as results of divine
inspiration. I have strong reason to believe (from my conviction
of the honesty of the individuals who have themselves narrated to
me their experiences) that they have really seen, heard, and felt
what they describe, where intentional deception was out of the
question ; that is, that they had the same distinct consciousness,
in states of expectant reverie, of seeing, touching, and conversing
with the spirits of departed friends, that most of us occasionally
have in our dreams. And the difference consists in this — that
whilst one, in the exercise of his common sense, dismisses these
experiences as the creation of his own brain, having no objective
reality, the other, under the influence of his prepossession, accepts
them as the results of impressions ab extra made upon him by
" spiritual " agencies.

The faith anciently placed, by the Heathen as well as the
Jewish world, in dreams, visions, trances, etc., has thus its precise
parallel in the present day ; and it is not a little instructive to
find a very intelligent religious body, the Swedenborgians, im-
plicitly accepting as authoritative revelation the visions of a man
of great intellectual ability and strong religious spirit, but highly
imaginative disposition, the peculiar feature of whose mind it was
to dwell upon his own imaginings. These he seems to have so
completely separated from his worldly life, that the Swedenborg
who believed himself to hold intercourse with the spiritual world,
and Swedenborg the mechanician and metallurgist, may almost be
regarded as two distinct personalities.

If, then, the high scientitic attainments of some of the

FALLACIES OF TESTIMONY. 247

prominent advocates of "spiritualism," and our confidence in
their honesty, be held to require our assent to what they narrate
as their experiences, in regard to a class of phenomena which they
declare that they have witnessed, but which they cannot reproduce
for the satisfaction of other men of science who desire to submit
them to the rigorous tests which they regard as necessary to sub-
stantiate their validity, then we must, in like manner, accept the
records of Swedenborg's revelations as binding on our belief
That they w^ere true to him I cannot doubt ; and in the same
manner, I do not question that Mr. Crookes is thoroughly honest,
when he says that he has repeatedly witnessed the " levitation of
the human body." But I can regard his statements in no other
light, than as evidence of the degree in which certain minds are
led by the influence of strong " prepossession," to believe in the
creations of their own visual imagination.

All history shows that nothing is so potent as religious enthu-
siasm, in fostering this tendency ; the very state of enthusiasm, in
fact, being the " possession " of the mind by fixed ideas, which
overbear the teachings of objective experience. These, when
directed to great and noble ends, may overcome the obstacles
which deter cooler judgments from attempting them ; but, on the
other hand, may also move not only individuals but great masses
of people to extravagances at which sober common sense revolts ;
as the history of the Flagellants, the dancing mania, and other
religious epidemics of the Middle Ages forcibly illustrate. And
nothing is more remarkable in the history of these epidemics, than
the vividness with which people who were not asleep, saw visions
that were obviously inspired by the prevalent religious notions of
their times. Thus, some of the dancers saw heaven opened, and
the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary ; whilst others saw
hell yawning before their feet, or felt as if bathed in blood ; their
frantic leaps being prompted by their eagerness to reach towards
the one or to escape from the other.

In the next place, I would briefly direct attention to the influ-
ence of prepossessions on those interpretations of our sensational
experiences, which we are prone to substitute for the statement of
the experiences themselves. Of such misinterpretations, the
records of science are full 3 the tendency is one which besets

248 MATURE AND MAN.

every observer, and to which the most conscientious have
frequently yielded ; but I do not know any more striking illustra-
tions of it than I could narrate from my own inquiries into mes-
merism, spiritualism, etc. The most diverse accounts of the
facts of a seance will be given by a believer and a sceptic. One
will declare that a table rose in the air, while another (who had
been watching its feet) is confident that it never left the ground ;
a whole party of believers will affirm that they saw Mr. Home float
out of one window and in at another, whilst a single honest
sceptic declares that Mr. Home was sitting in his chair all the
time. And in this last case we have an example of a fact, of
which there is ample illustration, that during the prevalence of an
epidemic delusion the honest testimony of any number of indi-
viduals on one side, if given under a "prepossession," is of no more
weight than that of a single adverse witness — if so much. Thus
I think it cannot be doubted by any one who candidly studies the
witchcraft trials of two centuries back, that, as a rule, the wit-
nesses really believed what they deposed to as facts ; and it
further seems pretty clear that in many instances the persons
incriminated were themselves " possessed " with the notion of the
reality of the occult powers attributed to them. No more in-
structive lesson can be found, as to the importance of the
"subjective" element in human testimony, than is presented in
the records of these trials. Thus, Jane Brooks was hung at
Chard assizes in 1658, for having bewitched Richard Jones, a
sprightly lad of twelve years old ; he was seen to rise in the air
and pass over a garden wall some thirty yards ; and nine people
deposed to finding him in open daylight, with his hands flat
against a beam at the top of the room, and his body two or three
feet from the ground ! If this " levitation of the human body,"
confirmed as it is in modern times by the testimony of Mr.
Crookes, Lord Lindsay, and Lord Adair, to say nothing of the
dozen witnesses to Mrs. Guppy's descent through the ceiling of
a closed and darkened room, has a valid claim on our belief,
how are we to stop short of accepting, on the like testimony, all
the marvels and extravagances of witchcraft ? If, on the other
hand, we put these witnesses out of court, as rendered un-
trustworthy by their "prepossession," what credit can we attach

FALLACIES OF TESTIMONY. 249

to the testimony of any individuals or bodies dominated by a
strong religious " prepossession ; " tiiat testimony having neither
been recorded at the time, nor subjected to the test of judicial
examination ?

Though I have hitherto spoken of " prepossessions " as ide-
ational states, there are very few in which the emotions do not
take a share ; and how strongly the influence of these may
pervert the representations of actual facts, we best see in that
early stage of many forms of monomania, in which there are as
yet no fixed delusions, but the occurrences of daily life are
wrongly interpreted by the emotional colouring they receive. But
we may recognize the same influence in matters which are con-
stantly passing under our observation ; and a better illustration of
it could scarcely be found than in the following circumstance,
mentioned to me as having recently occurred in the practice of a
distinguished physician : — The head of a family having been
struck down by serious illness, this physician was called in to con-
sult with the ordinary medical attendant ; and after examining
the patient and conferring with his colleague, he went into the
sitting-room where the family were waiting in anxious expectation
for his judgment on the case. This he delivered in the cautious
form which wise experience dictated : — " The patient's condition
is very critical ; but I see no reason why he should not recover."

One of the daughters screamed, " Dr. says Papa will die ! "

another cried out, in a jubilant tone, " Dr. says Papa

will get well." If no explanation had been given, the two
ladies would have reported the physician's verdict in precisely
opposite terms, one being under the influence oi fear, the other
of hope.

I shall now give a few illustrative examples, from recent ex-
periences, of the contrast between the two views taken of the
same phenomena, (i) by such as are led by their "prepossessions"
at once to attribute to "occult" influences what they cannot
otherwise explain, and (2) by those who, under the guidance of
trained and organized common sense, apply themselves in the
first instance, to determine whether there be anything in these
phenomena which "natural" agencies are not competent to
account for.

250 NATURE AND MAN.

1. When, in 1853, the "table-turning" epidemic had taken so
strong a hold of the public mind, that Professor Faraday found
himself called upon to explain its supposed mystery, he devised
a very simple piece of apparatus for testing the fundamental
question, whether there is any evidence that the movements of
the table are due to anytlmig else than the muscular action of
the performers who place their hands upon it. And having
demonstrated by its means (i) that the table never went round
unless the "indicator" showed that lateral pressure had been
exerted in the direction of the movement, whilst (2) it always
did go round when the 'indicator' showed that such lateral
pressure was adequately exerted, he at once saw that the phe-
nomenon was only another manifestation of the involuntary
" ideo-motor " action which had been previously formulated, on
other grounds, as a definite physiological principle ; and that
there was, therefore, not the least evidence of any other agency.
Yet it is still asserted that the validity of Faraday's test is com-
pletely disproved by the conviction of the performers that they
do not exert any such agency ; all that this proves being that
they are not conscious of such exertion — which, to the physio-
logist, affords no proof whatever that they are not making it.

2. So again Professors Chevreul and Biot, masters of ex-
perimental science worthy to be placed in the same rank with
Faraday, had been previously applying the same principles and
methods to the systematic investigation of the phenomena of
the Divining rod and the oscillations of suspended buttons ;
the former of which were supposed to depend upon some
"occult" power on the part of the performer, whilst the latter were
attributed to an hypothetical "odylic" force. And they con-
clusively proved that in both cases the results are brought about
(as in table-turning) by the involuntary action of mental ex-
pectancy on the muscles of the performer ; the phenomena
either not occurring at all, or having no constancy whatever,
when he neither knows nor guesses what to expect. — The follow-
ing instance of the application to the phenomena of the divining
rod, of the very simple test of closing the eyes, has lately been
sent me by an American friend, who was apparently unaware of
its former application by Chevreul and Biot. " An aged clergy-

FALLACIES OF TESTIMONY. 251

"man of thorough integrity, has for many years enjoyed the
" reputation of being specially skilled in the finding of places to
" dig wells by means of the * divining rod.' His fame has spread
*' far ; and the accounts that are given by him, and of him, must
" be to those who place an implicit reliance on human testimony
"overwhelmingly convincing. He consented to allow me to
" experiment with him, and I found that only a few moments
"were required to prove that his fancied gift was a delusion. In
" his own yard there was known to be a stream of water running
"a few feet below the surface, through a small pipe. As he
" marched over and near this, the rod continually pointed
" strongly downwards, and several times turned clear over.
"These places I marked, and then blindfolded him, and
"marched him about until he knew not where he was, taking
"him over the same ground over and over again ; and although
" the rod went down a number of times, // did not once point to
" or near the places indicated."

3. About twenty-five years ago, when the old phenomena of
the oscillations of suspended buttons, developed by Dr. H. Mayo
into a pseudo-scientific theory of od-force, were strongly exciting
public attention, a medical friend of great intelligence, then
residing in the south of France, wrote me long letters giving the
results of his surprising experiences, and asking what I regarded
as their rationale. My reply was simply, — " Shut your eyes, and
let some one else observe the oscillations." In a short time I
heard from him again, to the effect that his re-investigation of
the matter under this condition had satisfied him that there was
no other agency concerned than his own involuntary muscular
movement, directed by his mental expectancy of the results which
would ensue.

In the foregoing cases, the honest beliefs of the agents them-
selves brought about the results ; in the following, these beliefs
were taken up by the witnesses to the performances of others, in
spite of all common-sense probability to the contrary, under the
influence of their own strong "prepossessions."

4. At a spiritualistic seance at which I was present, at an early
stage of the present epidemic, the " medium " pressed down one

25:

NATURE AND MAN.

side of a large loo table supported on a pedestal springing from
three spreading feet, and left it resting on only two of its feet,
with its surface at an angle of about 45°. Having been admitted
to this seafice under a promise of non-interference, I waited until
its conclusion ; and then, going over to the table, set it up and
left it in the same position. For I had observed, when this was
done by the "medium," that the edge of the broad claw of each
foot, and the edge of its castor, bore on the ground together, so
as to afford a base which, though narrow, was sufficient for the
table to rest on, its weight happening to be balanced when thus
tilted half over. Several persons of great general intelligence
who were present at this seance (Mr. Robert Chambers among
the rest), assured me that if it had not been for my exposure of
this trick, they should have gone away in the belief that the
table was sustained by " spiritual " influence, as in no other way
could they suppose it to have kept its position against the force
of gravity.

5. So strong was the impression made by the rope-tying and
other performances of the Davenport Brothers, about twenty
years ago, upon those who were already prepossessed in favour
of their "spiritualistic" claims, that I was pressed by men of
distinguished position to become a member of a committee for
their " scientific " investigation. Having a strong prepossession,
however, in favour of the common-sense view that these per-
formances were but the tricks of not very clever jugglers, and
learning that this inquiry was to take place in a darkened room,
and that the members of the committee must form a circle with
joined hands, I at once declined to have anything to do with it;
on the ground that, to exclude the use of the eyes and hands,
which the scientific investigator uses as his chief instruments of
research, was to render the inquiry utterly nugatory. Now that
the tricks of the Davenport Brothers have been not merely
imitated but surpassed by Messrs. Cooke and Maskelyne, I
suppose that no truly " rational " person would appeal to them as
evidence of " spiritual " agency.

6. During the meeting of the British Association at Belfast
in 1874, a lady medium of great repute held spiritualistic 5'^a«<:^i',
at which she distributed flowers, affirmed to have been brought

FALLACIES OF TESTIMONY. 253

to her then and there by the spirits, fresh from the garden, with
the dew of heaven upon them. As there was nothing more in
this performance tlian is done every day by an ordinary conjuror,
only the confidence entertained in the good faith of the medium
could justify a belief in the " spiritual " transport of the flowers ;
but this belief, aided by the general " prepossession," had been
implicitly accepted by many of the witnesses on such occasions.
An inquisitive young gentleman, however, who was staying in
the same house, and did not share in this confidence, found a
basin-full of these flowers (hollyhocks) in a garret, with a decanter
of water beside it ; and strongly suspecting that they had been
stored there with a view to distribution at the seance, and that
the dew would be supplied, when wanted, from the decanter, he
conveyed into the water a chemical substance (ferrocyanide of
potassium), in quantity so small as not to tinge it, and yet to be
distinctly recognizable by the proper test. On the subsequent
application of this test (a per-salt of iron) to the flowers dis-
tributed by the " medium," they were found to give Prussian blue.
— This is no piece of hearsay, but a statement which I have in the
hand of the gentleman himself, with permission to make it public.

But every form of " prepossession " has an involuntary and
unsuspected action in modifying the memorial traces of past
events, even when they were originally rightly apprehended. A
gradual change in our own mode of viewing them will bring us to
the conviction that we always so viewed them ; as we recently saw
in the erroneous account which Earl Russell gave of his action as
Foreign Secretary in the negotiations which preceded the Crimean
war. His subsequently acquired perception of what he should
have done at a particular juncture, wrought him up to the honest
belief that he really did it. To few persons of experience in life
has it not happened to find their distinct impressions of past
events in striking disaccordance with some contemporary nar-
rative, as perhaps given in a letter of their own. An able lawyer
told me not long since that he had had occasion to look into a deed
which he had not opened for twenty years, but which he could
have sworn to contain certain clauses ; and to his utter astonish-
ment, tlic clauses were not to be found in it. His habitual con-

254 NATURE AND MAN.

ception of the purpose of the deed had constructed what answered
to the actual memorial trace.

Now this constructive process becomes pecuHarly obvious, in
a comparison of narratives given by the behevers in mesmerism,
spirituahsjn, and similar " occult " agencies, when there has been
time for the building-up of the edifice, — with contemporary records
of the events, made perhaps by the very narrators themselves.
Everything which tends to prove the reality of the occult influence,
is exaggerated or distorted ; everything which would help to ex-
plain it away, is quietly (no doubt quite unintentionally) dropped
out. And convictions thus come to be honestly entertained, which
are in complete disaccordance with the original facts. This source
of fallacy was specially noticed by Bacon : —

" When the mind is once pleased with certain things, it draws
"all others to consent, and go along with them ; and though the
" power and number of instances that make for the contrary, are
" greater, yet it either attends not to them, or despises them, or
" else removes them by a distinction, with a strong and pernicious
" prejudice to maintain the authority of the first choice unviolated.
" And hence in most cases of superstition, as of astrology, dreams,
"omens, judgments, etc., those who find pleasure in such kind
" of vanities always observe where the event answers, but slif^ht and
'■'■pass by the instances ivhere it fails., which are much the more
" raunerousy — Novum Organon.

Of the manner in which this constructive process will build up
a completely ideal representation of a personality (with or without
a nucleus of reality), which shall gain implicit acceptance among a
whole people, and be currently accepted by the world at large, we
have a " pregnant instance " in the William Tell tradition. For
the progressive narrowing-down of his claims, which has resulted
from the complete discordance between the actions traditionally
attributed to him and trustworthy contemporary history, leaves
even his personality questionable ; while the turning-up of the
apple-story in Icelandic sagas and Hindoo myths seems to put it
beyond doubt that this, at any rate, is drawn from far older
sources. The reality of this process of gradual accretion and
modirication, in accordance with current ideas in regard to the
character of an individual or the bearing of an event, cannot now

FALLACIES OF TESTLMONY. 255

be doubted by any philosophic student of history. And the
degree in which such constiuctions involve ascriptions of super-
natural power, can be shown in many instances to depend upon
the prevalent notions entertained as to what the individual might
be expected to do.

No figure is more prominent in the early ecclesiastical history
of Scodand, than that of St. Columba, "the Apostle of the Scoto-
Irish," in the sixth century. Having left Ireland, his native
country, through having by his fearless independence been brought
into collision with its civil powers, and been excommunicated by
its church-synods, he migrated to Scotland in the year 563, and
acquired by royal donation the island of lona, which was a
peculiarly favourable centre for his evangelizing labours, carried
on for more than thirty years among the Picts and Scots, and also
among the northern Irish, No fewer than thirty-two separate
religious foundations among the Scots, twenty-one among the
Picts, and thirty-seven among the Irish, many of which occupied
conspicuous places in the monastic history of the earlier Middle
Ages, seem to have been planted by himself or his immediate
disciples ; the most celel)rated of all these being the college of the
Culdees at lona, which kept alive the flame of learning during a
prolonged period of general ignorance and superstition, and be-
came a centre of religious influence, which extended far beyond
the range of its founder's personal labours, and caused his memory
to be held in the deepest veneration for centuries afterwards.
The point on which I here desire to lay stress, is the cofitinuity of
kistory, as trustworthy as any such history can be ; the incidents
of St. Columba's life having been originally recorded in the con-
temporary fasti of his religious foundation, and transmitted in
unbroken succession to Abbot Adamnan, who first compiled a
complete Vita of his great predecessor, of which there still exists
a manuscript copy, whose authenticity there is no reason to doubt,
which dates back to the early part of the eighth century, not much
more than one hundred years after St. Columba's death. Now,
Adamnan's Vita credits its subject with the possession of every
kind of miraculous power. The saint prophesied events of all
kinds, trivial as well as grave, from battles and violent deaths,
down to the spilling of an inkhorn, the falling of a book, the

256 NATURE AND MAN.

omission of a single letter from a writing, and the arrival of guests
at the monastery. He cured nurhbers of people afflicted with
inveterate diseases, accorded safety to storm-tossed vessels, himself
walked across the sea to his island home, drove demons out of
milk-pails, outwitted sorcerers, and gave supernatural powers to
domestic implements. Like other saints, he had his visions of
angels and apparitions of heavenly light, which comforted and
encouraged him at many a trying juncture, — lasting, on one
occasion, for three days and nights.

Now it seems to me beyond all reasonable doubt, that St.
Columba was one of those men of extraordinary energy of cha-
racter and earnest religious nature, who have the power of strongly
impressing most of those with whom they come into contact,
moulding their wills and awakening their religious sympathies, so
as to acquire a wonderful influence over them \ this being aided
by the commanding personal " presence " he is recorded to have
possessed. And it is not surprising that when themselves the
subjects of what they regarded as "supernatural" power, they should
attribute to him the exercise of the same power in other ways.
In fact, to their unscientific minds it seemed quite "natural" that he
should so exert it ; its possession being, in their belief, a normal
attribute of his saintship. That he himself believed in his gifts,
and that many wonders were actually worked by the concurrent
action of his own faith in himself and his followers' faith in him,
will not seem unlikely to any one who has carefully studied the
action of mental states upon the bodily organism. And that round
a nucleus of truth there should have gathered a large accretion of
error, under the influence of the mental preconception whose
modus operandi I have endeavoured to elucidate, is accordant with
the teachings of our own recent experience, in such cases as that
of Dr. Newton and the Zouave Jacob. In these and similar
phenomena, a strong conviction of the possession of the power on
the part ot the healer seems to be necessary for the excitement of
the faith ot those operated on ; and the healer recognizes, by a
kind of intuition, the existence of that faith on the part of the
patient. Do not several phrases in the gospel narratives point to
the same relations as existing between Jesus and the sufferers who
sought his aid ? The cure is constantly attributed to the " faith "

FALLACIES OF TESTIMONY. 257

of the patient ; whilst, on the other hand, we are told that Jesus
did not do many mighty works in his own country " because of
their unbehef," — the very condition which, if these mighty works
had been performed by his own will alone, would have been
supposed to call forth its exertion, but which is perfectly con-
formable to our own experience of the wonders of mesmerism,
spirituaUsm, etc. So Paul is spoken of as " steadfastly behold-
ing " the cripple at Lystra, " and seeing that he had faith to be
healed."

The potency of influences of the opposite kind upon minds
predisposed to them, and through their minds upon their bodies,
is shown in the "Obeah practices" still lingering among the negroes
of the West Indian colonies, in spite of most stringent legislation.
A slow pining away, ending in death, has been the not unfrequent
result of the fixed belief, on the part of the victim, that "Obi" has
been put upon him by some old man or old woman reputed to
possess the injurious power; and I see no reason to doubt that
the Obri men or women were firm believers in the occult power
attributed to them.

Every medical man of large experience is well aware how
strongly the patient's undoubting faith in the efficacy of a par-
ticular remedy or mode of treatment assists its action ; and where
the doctor is himself animated by such a faith, he has the more
power of exciting it in others. A simple prediction, without any
remedial measure, will sometimes work its own fulfilment. Thus,
Sir James Paget tells of a case in which he strongly impressed a
woman having a sluggish, non-malignant tumour in the breast,
that this tumour would disperse within a month or six weeks ; and
so it did. He perceived the patient's nature to be one on which
the assurance would act favourably, and no one could more
earnestly and effectively enforce it. — On the other hand, a fixed
belief on the part of the patient that a mortal disease has seized
upon the frame, or that a particular operation or system of treat-
ment will prove unsuccessful, seems in numerous instances to have
been the real occasion of the fatal result.

Many of the so-called " miracles " of the Romish Church, such
as that of the " Holy Thorn " (narrated in the History of the Port
Royalists) which stood the test of the most rigid contemporary

258 NATURE AND MAN.

inquiry, carried on at the prompting of a hostile ecclesiastical
party, seem to me fully explicable on the like principle of the
action of strongly excited "faith "in producing bodily change,
whether beneficial or injurious \ and nothing but the fact that this
strong excitement was called forth by religious influences, which
in all ages have been more potent in arousing it than influences
of any oiher kind, gives the least colour to the assumption of their
supernatural character.

I might draw many other illustrations from the lives of the
Saints of various periods of the Roman C:.tholic Church, as chro-
nicled by their contemporaries, many of whom speak of themselves
as eye-witnesses of the marvels they relate ; thus, the " levitation
of the human body " — i.e., the rising from the ground, and the
remaining unsupported in the air for a considerable length of time
■ — is one of the miracles attributed to St. Francis d'Assisi. But it
will be enough for me to refer to the fact that some of the ablest
ecclesiastical historians in the English Church have confessed their
inability to see on what grounds — so far as external evidence is
concerned — we are to reject these, if the testimony of th-e Biblical
narratives is to be accepted as valid evidence of the supernatural
occurrences they relate.

But the most remarkable example I have met with in recent
times of the " survival " in a whole community of ancient modes
of thought on these subjects (the etymological meaning of the
term "superstition"), has been very recently made public by a
German writer, who has given an account of the population of a
corner of Eastern Austria, termed the Bukowina, a large propor-
tion of which are Jews, mostly belonging to the sect of the
Chassidim, who are ruled by "Saints " or "Just Ones." "These
" saints," says their delineator, " are sly impostors, who take ad-
" vantage of the fanaticism, superstition, and blind ignorance of
" the Cliassidim in the most barefaced manner. They heal the
" sick by pronouncing magic words, drive out devils, gain lawsuits,
" and their curse is supposed to kill whole families, or at least to
" reduce them to beggary. Between the ' saint ' and ' God ' there
" is no mediator, for he holds personal intercourse with the Father
" of all, and his words are oracles. Woe to those who should
" venture to dispute these miracles in the presence of these un-

FALLACIES OF TEST/MONY. 259

" reasonable fanatics ! They are ready to die for their superstitions
"and to kill those who dispute them." *

Now I fail to see what stronger external evidence there is of
any of the supernatural occurrences chronicled in the Old Testa-
ment, than that which is afforded by the assured conviction of this
Jewish community as to what is taking place at the present time
under their own eyes. And assuming, as I suppose most of us
should be ready to do, that the testimony to these contemporary
wonders would break down under the rigorous test of a searching
examination, I ask whether we are not equally justified in the
assumption that a similar scrutiny, if we had the power to apply
it, would in like manner dispose of many of the narratives of
old time, either as distortions of real occurrences, or as altogether
legendary.

In regard to the New Testament miracles generally, whilst
failing to see in what respect the external testimony in their
behalf is stronger than it is for the reality of the miracles attri-
buted to St. Columba, I limit myself at present to the following
questions : —

First. Whether the " miracles of healing " may not have had
a foundation of reality in " natural " agencies perfectly well-known
to such as have scientifically studied the action of the mind upon
the body. In regard to one form of these supposed miracles — the
casting out of devils — I suppose that I need not in these days
adduce any argument to disprove the old notion of " demoniacal
possession," in the face of the fact that the belief in such "posses-
sion " in the case of lunatics, epileptics, etc., and the belief in the
powers of " exorcists " to get rid of it, is still as prevalent among
Eastern nations as it was in the time of Christ. And I suppose,
too, that since travellers have found that the Pool of Bethesda is
fed by an intermittent spring, few now seriously believe in the
occasional appearance of an " angel " who moved its water ; or in
the cure of the first among the expectant sick who got himself
placed in it, by any other agency than his " faith " in the efficacy
of the means. I simply claim the right to a more extended
application of the same critical method.

Secondly. Whether we have not a similar right to bring to

* E. Kilian, in Fraser's Magazitie for December, 1875.
12

26o NATURE AND MAN.

bear on the study of the Gospel narratives, the same principles of

criticism as guided the early Fathers in their construction of the

Canon, with all the enlightenment which we derive from the

subsequent history of Christianity, aided by that of other forms of

religious belief. The early Christian Fathers were troubled with

no doubts as to the reality of miracles in themselves ; and they

testified to the healing of the sick, the casting out of devils, and

even the raising of the dead, as well-known facts of their own

time. But they rejected some current narratives of the miraculous

which they did not regard as adequately authenticated, and others

as considering them puerile. Looking at it not only as our right,

but as our duty, to bring the higher critical enlightenment of the

present day to bear upon the study of the Gospel records, I ask

whether both past and contemporary history do not afford such a

body of evidence of a prevalent tendency to exaggeration and

distortion, in the representation of actual occurrences in which

" supernatural" agencies are supposed to have been concerned, as

entitles us, without attempting any detailed analysis, to believe

that if we could know what really did happen, it would often prove

to be something very different from what is narrated.

By such a general admission, we may remove the serious diffi-
culties to which I alluded at the outset — difficulties which must, I
think, have been present to the mind of Locke, when he recorded,
in the Common-place Book published by Lord King, the remark-
able aphorism that " the doctrine proves the miracles, rather than
" the miracles the doctrine."

IX.

ON THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM.

[Contemporary Review, February, 1875.]

What is the range and limit of the Automatic action of the
body of Man, and what clue we gain from modern physiological
research as to the manner in which it is controlled and directed
by his mind, are the questions I propose to discuss in this
paper ; and it will, I think, be advantageous to enter upon the
discussion historically, by tracing the principal stages in the
development of the system of doctrine now generally accepted by
physiologists.

Somewhat more than fifty years ago (1821), the publication of
the discoveries of Charles Bell gave a new impetus to a study which
had previously made but little progress for more than a century.
It was by him that the principle was first placed on a valid ex-
perimental basis, that every one of the ^multitudinous fibres of
which any single nerve-trunk is composed, runs a distinct course
between its central and its peripheral terminations ; and that its
function consists in establishing a connection, in the one case,
between an organ of sense and the central sensorium ; or, in the
other, between a motor centre and the muscle which it calls into
contraction. The fibres of the former class he termed " sensory,"
and those of the latter " motor ; " and he showed that while the
ordinary spinal nerves contain fibres of both functions (separated,
however, into distinct groups at their roots), there are nerves in
the head which are sensory only, and others which are solely
motor. It has since been proved, however, that between these
two classes of nerve-fibres there is not really any essential

262 NATURE AND MAN.

difference, each serving, like a telegraph-wire, to convey "mole-
cular motion " (the now fashionable mode of expressing a change
of whose nature we really know nothing whatever) in either
direction, and its function depending entirely upon its connec-
tions. The subsequent progress of inquiry, moreover, has made
it clear that such " molecular motion," transmitted from a recipient
organ to a nerve-centre, may there excite a motor response with-
out any affection of the consciousness ; and hence the " sensory "
nerves of Bell are now more generally termed " afferent," or
"centripetal."

The " nervous circle," as it was termed by Bell, composed of
a sensory nerve, the nerve-centre to which it proceeds, and the
motor nerve passing forth from that centre to the muscles, was
distinctly recognized by him as furnishing the mechanism of
those involuntary movements which are called forth by sensory
impressions ; as when the passage of a crumb of bread, a drop
of water, or a whiff of acrid vapour into the larynx, excites the
act of coughing; — the impression transmitted upwards by the
sensory nerves, to a certain part of the brain (including in this term,
for the present, the whole aggregate of nerve-centres contained
in the cranial cavity), making itself felt there, and calling forth,
through the motor nerves that proceed to the muscles of expira-
tion, a combined movement adapted to get rid of the source of
irritation. This is a typical example of what is now termed reflex
action which may be regarded as the elementary form of nervous
activity.

In such a low and almost homogeneous organism as that of
the hydra (or fresh-water polype), however, every part seems
equally capable of receiving impressions and of responding to
them by contraction. As there are neither special sense-organs
nor special muscles, there are no special nerves ; and the move-
ments by which it grasps the prey that may come within its reach,
and draws it into its digestive cavity, are no more indicative of
consciousness or will, than are those of the muscles of the gullet
that carry down into the stomach the food which is brought within
their grasp in the act of swallowing, or than the churning action
of the stomach itself during the process of digestion. The con-
tinuance of these movements in the alimentary canal of higher

THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 263

animals, after it has been taken out of the body, is a clear proof of
their purely automatic nature; and there is no reason to regard the
prehensile actions of the Iiydra, or other animals of similar grade
of organization, in any other light.

But with the development of a special muscular apparatus,
and the limitation (with accompanying exaltation) of the sensory
endowments of particular parts of the organism, we find a nervous
mechanism interposed, the primary office of which is obviously
" internuncial " merely. Thus, in the humble ascidian, rooted
to one spot during all but its free embryonic stage of existence,
and obtaining both its food and the oxygen required for the
aeration of its blood by currents sustained by the vibration of
the cilia that line its alimentary canal and respiratory sac, an
action that resembles coughing is the only sign it gives of any
but a purely vegetative existence. The orifice of the dilated
pharynx which forms the respiratory sac is fringed with short
tentacles, from which nerve-fibres proceed to a ganglionic centre
in their neighbourhood ; and from this centre we find motor fibres
ramifying over the muscular mantle in which the body is inclosed.
And thus if the ciliary current should draw inwards a particle of
unsuitable size or character, the contact of this with the guardian-
tentacles excites a rellex contraction of the muscular sac, whereby
a jet of water is squirted out that carries the offending particle
to a distance. It is obvious that this act no more represents
conscious intention on the part of the ascidian, than the cough
of the infant represents a desire to get rid of an uneasy sensa-
tion in its throat ; in the one case as in the other, the adaptive-
ness of the action to the purpose it answers is simply that of
a piece of mechanism ; and we characterize it, therefore, as
automatic.

It has been shown by Professor Huxley that Descartes, who
distinctly recognized the purely mechanical nature of such actions,
had made as near an approach as he could do to what we now
regard as their true rationale, in attributing them to a reflexion of
the " animal spirits " in the nerve-centres from the sensory to the
motor nerves ; and he seems further to have been in advance of
his successors in maintaining that the impressions which call forth
reflex movements may do so without being consciously felt. It

264 NATURE AND MAN.

is difficult, however, to ascertain precisely the real meaning of
Descartes, as of many writers who succeeded him ; for the Latin
sentire and its derivations obviously cover a very wide range of
mental affections, from simple consciousness up to the highest
forms of thought and feeling ; and it is clear from the illustrations
given by Descartes, that he sometimes meant rather sdf-zow-
scioasness — that is, the consciousness of one's consciousness —
than those simple states of feeling, which, though they can be
shown to have originally guided our movements, in consequence
of their habitual recurrence cease to excite our notice and are not
remembered. To this distinction I shall presently have occasion
to return.

The next important stage in the progress of neurological
inquiry, consisted in the determination and general recognition of
the independent endowments of the spinal cord. To those who
have been brought up in modern neurological doctrine, it seems
scarcely credible that the grossest ignorance should have pre-
vailed up to the end of the first third of the present century, in
regard to the centric character of this organ ; even Bell regarding
it as a bundle of nerves — a conductor that brings the nerve-trunks
issuing from it into continuity with the brain, which was assumed
to be (with the exception of the sympathetic ganglia) the sole
centre of the nervous system of Vertebrate animals generally,
and of man in particular. And in like manner the knotted ventral
nerve-cord of articulated animals was represented by Bell's
disciple, George Ne\vport (and also by Professor Grant), as a
mere conductor between the cephalic ganglia and the nerve-trunks.
Yet Prochaska and Legallois had long before experimentally
proved, not only that the spinal cord as a whole is a centre of
reflex action quite independent of the brain, but that separated
segments of the spinal cord may so act independently of each
other. So, in the case of articulated animals, any one who had
cut a worm or a centipede into pieces, and had witnessed the
continued movements of each segment, might have drawn the
inference that these movements were sustained by the inde-
pendent endowments of the ganglionic centres which the seg-
ments severally contained. It had been further proved by Legal-
lois that the respiratory movements continue after the removal of

THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 265

the whole brain proper ; the nerve-centre on whose action their
continuance depends, being that upward extention of the spinal
cord into the cavity of the skull which is known as the medulla
oblongata. Yet these facts were so generally ignored in physio-
logical teaching, that, as I can myself remember, they were only
vaguely referred to in proof of the persistence of a low degree of
consciousness after the loss of the brain.

No one whose recollection goes back as distinctly as mine
does, to the publication (in the Philosophical Transactions for
1833) of Dr. Marshall Hall's "Researches on the reflex function
•' of the Medulla Oblongata and Medulla Spinalis," can have a
doubt that this memoir has been the basis of all our present more
exact knowledge of " reflex action " generally. It is true that its
author developed no principle which could not have been found
in the writings of Prochaska, more obscurely in those of his
predecessor, Unzer, and yet less distinctly and more remotely in
those of Descartes. But the ideas of these philosophers, having
been in advance of their time, had never been received into the
general body of physiological doctrine ; and there can be little
doubt of the originality of Dr. Marshall Hall's researches, although,
by his indignant denial of having been anticipated by Prochaska,
he provoked the imputation that he had stolen his ideas from that
author. At any rate, it was by his persistence in calling attention
to the demonstrative independence of the spinal cord and medulla
oblongata as a centre (or rather series of centres) of nervous
power, that the fact came to be universally accepted as a cardinal
principle of physiology, and that the occurrence of " reflex action "
without any necessary excitement of cotiscioiisness gradually obtained
general recognition. Only those, however, who themselves took
part in the controversy, will be likely to remember the strong
opposition which the latter part of this doctrine encountered.
Tho. putposive character of the movements executed by a headless
frog, as when, its legs make efforts to push away the probe with
which its cloaca is being irritated, or when one leg wipes away
the acid applied to the surface of the other, was constantly
adduced as a proof that the headless trunk feels the impression,
and makes a conscious effort to get rid of it. And it is not even
now possible to meet such an assertion with any direct disproof;

266 NATURE AND MAN.

the arguments on the other side being rather of the nature of
cumulative probabihties. Thus — (i) as the separated head of the
frog will itself show reflex action (the eyelid closing when its edge
is irritated), the division of the head from the body would establish
two distinct centres of consciousness, or two egos, if the per-
formance of reflex action be accepted per se as an indication of
the persistence of sensibility ; while (2) the number of these
centres may be further multiplied by dividing the spinal cord in
the middle of the back, so that the reflex actions of the fore limbs
are performed through the instrumentality of the anterior segment,
and those of the hind limbs through the instrumentality of the
posterior segment ; and (3) cases are of no infrequent occurrence
in the human subject, in which, the lower segment of the spinal
cord having been entirely cut off by disease or accident from
communication with the brain, reflex actions in the legs may be
excited by tickling the soles of the feet, or the application to
them of a heated plate, without the least consciousness on the
part of the patient, either of the application of the excitant, or of
the respondent motions it calls forth. And though it was at first
urged that this last fact gives no assurance that the endowments
of the spinal cord are the same in the frog as they are in man, yet
there has been a growing disposition to recognize the uniformity
of Nature in this and other particulars, and to accept the facts of
human consciousness (or unconsciousness) as affording the best
data for the interpretation of such actions of the lower animals as
are performed through a demonstrably similar instrumentality.

When once this principle is admitted, it becomes obvious that,
however " purposive " may be the character of such actions, their
performance from the first, without training or experience, may be
regarded as valid evidence that they are determined by nothing
else than a physical mechanism. No one doubts this in regard to
that rhythmical succession of contractions and dilatations of the
auricles and ventricles of the heart, by which the circulation of
the blood is kept up ; nor in regard to that regular sequence of
respiratory movements which serves to maintain the aeration of the
blood, alike in the waking state while the attention is completely
engrossed elsewhere, and in the states of profound sleep and
insensibility. And there are no co-ordinated muscular move

THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 267

ments of which the "purposive" character is more obvious, than
it is in the acts of coughing and sucking • the former of which we
knowexperientially to be executed without any conscious intention,
and to be capable of being excited in states of the profoundest coma
that is compatible with the continuance of ordinary breathing;
while the latter, although requiring a still more complex combina-
tion of the movements of respiration with those of swallowing, can
be shown to be a purely " reflex " act, being at once excited by
the impression made on the lips of a new-born mammal, even
when, in the case of a puppy or guinea-pig, the whole of the brain-
proper has been experimentally removed, or when the human
infant has come into the world with its spinal cord and medulla
oblongata intact, but without any higher nervous centre.

It was while the doctrine of reflex action without the necessary
participation of sensation was thus fighting its way to a place in
the general scheme of neuro-physiology, that another very important
advance was made by investigations of an entirely different nature,
which gave it a cogency and completeness to which it could not
otherwise have laid claim ; — I refer to the establishment of the
essential distinction, alike in structure and in function, between the
two forms of nerve-substance that are known in human anatomy as
the " grey " and the " white " matter. The determination of this
distinction, which is one of even more fundamental importance
than that established by Bell between the motor and sensory nerves,
was not the work of any one physiologist. It had long been
known that the white portion of the brain, the white strands of the
spinal cord, and the entire substance of the nerve-trunks, have
a fibrous structure ; and the advance of histological research
(which sprang from the application of the principle of achromatism
to the uiicroscope) demonstrated that these fibres were ultimately
resolvable into tubules of extreme minuteness. On the other hand,
the " grey " matter which forms the convoluted layer of the surface
of the cerebrum, but which occupies the interior of the spinal cord
and the ganglia of the sympathetic system, as it does of the gang-
lionic nerve-centres of Invertebrata, was found to be made up of
cells or vesicles, certain extensions of which communicate with each
other, whilst others become continuous with the fibres of tlic nerve-
trunks. The difference in the relative supply of blood which these

268 NATURE AND MAN.

two forms of nerve-tissue respectively receive, is not less significant
than that of their histological characters ; this being especially
manifest in the "grey "and the "white " portions of the brain.
For, whilst the nerve-cells lie in the midst of a plexus of capillaries
so close that no other tissue receives anything approaching to the
same quantity of blood in a given space, the vascularity of the
tubular component of the brain, spinal cord, and nerve trunks is
by no means remarkable. And it is easily proved experimentally
that, while an interruption to the circulation of the blood through
the brain immediately suspends its functional activity, the con-
ductivity of the nerve-trunks lasts for a considerable time after the
general stoppage of the flow of blood through their vessels.

I can myself distinctly recollect the gradual spread of the belief
in the physiological distinctness of these two forms of nerve-
substance (of which the late Mr. S. Solly was one of the earliest
upholders in this country) from a very limited circle to universal
acceptance ; the tubular being regarded, like the wires of the
electric telegraph, as the conductor of nerve-force ; whilst the
vesicular or ganglionic was considered, like the battery which
sends the charge, as the origifiator of nerve-force. We now know
that this account of the matter is not strictly true ; since the
vesicular substance may serve also for the transmission, while the
fibrous substance may, under certain circumstances, serve also for
the origination, of that special form of " molecular motion " which
constitutes the characteristic action of the nervous system. But
in a broad, general way, the analogy is sufficiently correct ; and the
recognition of it soon led to important consequences. For Mr.
R. D. Grainger showed, by a careful examination of the roots of
the spinal nerves, that while some of them are continuous with the
fibrous strands of the cord, which thus bring them into continuous
connection with the cephalic centres, others lose themselves in its
grey or vesicular nucleus, which, serving as their ganglionic centre,
is the source of the independent power of the spinal cord ; and
he further pointed out that the relative proportions of this vesicular
matter in the several parts of tlie spinal cord of different vertebrate
animals is closely proportioned to the size of the trunks which
proceed from them, and more particularly to the relative importance
of the anterior and posterior members as instruments of locomo-

THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 269

tion. Taking up a suggestion thrown out by Mr. Grainger, I was
myself led to re-examine, under this new light, the facts previously
ascertained in resrard to the structure and actions of the nervous
system of invertebrate animals ; with the result that these facts
seemed to me not only to justify, but to require, the acceptance
of the doctrine that every separate ganglion of the ventral cord of
insects, centipedes, etc., is an independent centre of reflexion, the
function of the cephalic ganglia (which are chiefly, if not entirely,
the centres of the nerves of special sense,) being to harmonize and
direct their activity. This, again, now seems to be so self-evident
a proposition as to need no demonstration ; yet it had, like the
doctrines already summarized, to fight its way to general recog-
nition ; and though accepted by most British physiologists, it
seems not to have been known on the Continent until the publica-
tion, four years subsequently, of the classical memoir " On the
"Nervous and Circulatory Systems of the Myriapoda"(/%/A?^^////<ra/
Transactions, 1843), ^^ which Mr. Newport gave in his adhesion
to it.

The application of the doctrine of reflex action to insects gave
a definite physiological basis for the doctrine of instinct. All who
had carefully studied the remarkable habits of this class of animals,
especially those of the social Hymenoptera, had been led to recog-
nize their essentially automatic character; as specially indicated (i)
by the almost invaria])le uniformity with which they are performed
by all the individuals of the same type ; (2) by the perfection with
which they are performed from the very commencement of the life
of the imago ; and (3) by the impossibility, in many cases, of any
training or guidance having been derived from parental experience,
in the construction of habitations, the collection and storing up of
food for the larvae, and the like. Such actions can only be attri-
buted to an innate or congenital tendency to particular " modes
of motion" of the nervous system, dependent upon its mechanical
arrangements ; and to whatever extent insects learn from their
own experience, or have the power of intentionally adapting .their
ordinary constructive operations to new conditions * — a question

• The account given by Mr. Bolt in his Naturalist in Nicarai^ua of the
adaptations made by ants, under contingencies brought about by human
agency, and but little likely to have arisen under natural conditions, seems

270 NATURE AND MAN.

still under discussion — no one, I believe, who has really studied
the subject, would hesitate in endorsing the sagacious remark ot
Macleay, that just as intelligence (or the intefitional adaption
of means to ends) is the essential characteristic of vertebrate
animals, culminating (of course) in man, so instinct (or the
working-out of results by an automatic mechanism) is the essential
characteristic of the articulate series, culminating in insects.
And it is a curious confirmation of this view, that of all vertebrate
animals, those which most strongly display instinctive pro-
pensities— modified, however, by intelligence — are birds, which
have been appropriately termed " the insects of the vertebrated
series."

The nature of Automatism, and the share it takes in the ordi-
nary life of insects, etc., may be recognized in the following
examples : —

If the head of a Centipede be cut off whilst it is in motion,
the body will continue to move onwards by the action of its legs;
and if the body be divided into several pieces, the same will take
place in the separate parts. After these movements have come
to an end, they may be excited again by irritating any part of
the nerve-centres or the cut extremity of the nervous cord. If
the body be opposed in its progress by an obstacle over which
the propulsive action of its legs can carry it, it mounts over it
and moves directly onwards ; but if the obstacle be too high to
be thus surmounted, the cut extremity remains forced up against
it, the legs still continuing to move. The only difference, there-
fore, between the crawling of the headless and that of the
complete Centipede, consists in the direction given to the move-
ments of the latter by the visual sense ; the sight of an obstacle
causing it to turn out of the way before reaching it.

There is an insect termed the Mantis, allied to the crickets
and grasshoppers, whose conformation fits it to lie in wait for its
prey, rather than to go in search of it. Resting on its two
hinder pairs of legs, it lifts up the front of its body, which is
furnished with a pair of large and strong legs ending in sharp
claws, in readiness to capture any unlucky insect that may come

more indicative of their possession of intelligential power, than anything that
had been ascertained by the elaborate observations of Huber.

THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 271

within their reach ; and it is from the resemblance of this attitude
to that of prayer, that the Alantis has acquired from naturalists
the specific name of religiosa, and from the peasantry of the
South of France, where it abounds, the designation oi prie-Dieu.
Now, if the head be cut off, the body still retains its position,
and resists attempts to overthrow it, while the arms close around
anything that is introduced between them, and impress their
claws upon it. This they will continue to do when the front
portion of the body to which they are attached is separated from
the rest ; while the hinder part will still remain balanced on the
four legs that support it, not only resisting any attempt to over-
throw it, but recovering its position when disturbed. Here,
again, it is obvious that the nerve-centres in the head have only
a directive action, derived from the guidance afforded by the
senses, especially the visual.

While the stimulus to the reflex movements of the legs in the
foregoing cases appears to be given by the contact of the ex-
tremities with the solid surface whereon they rest, the appropriate
impression, in the case of aquatic insects, can only be made by
the contact of liquid. Thus the cephalic ganglia of the vfell-
known water-beetle, Dytiscus rnargi/ialis, having been removed,
the insect remained motionless so long as it rested on a dry sur-
face; but when cast into water it executed the usual swimming
movements with the greatest energy and rapidity, striking all its
comrades to one side by its violence, and persisting in these for
more than half an hour.

The directing action of the cephalic ganglia would seem, for
the reasons already stated, to be not less automatic than the
reflex action of the ganglia of the trunk ; but whilst we have every
reason to regard the latter as not involving consciousness, all
analogy would indicate that the former cannot exert itself without
the excitement of sensation. When we see an insect moving
directly towards an object from a distance (as when bees fly
straight to honey-yielding or pollen-yielding flowers, or make for
the entrance of their hi\ e at the approach of a summer shower),
avoiding obstacles placed in its way, escaping from the hand
that is coming down to crush, or the net that threatens to

272 NATURE AND MAN.

capture it ; when, also, we see that it possesses organs, which,
though framed on a different plan from our eyes, have a sufficient
structural parallelism to justify the inference that they too have
a visual function, it seems to me that the ojius prohandi lies on
those who maintain that the motions of insects can be thus guided
without sight of the objects which attract or repel them.

In this, as in other parts of the inquiry, the answer that is
probably nearest the truth is that which we receive from our own
consciousness when rightly interrogated. It was the sagacity of
Hartley that first distinctly worked out the parallel (previously in-
dicated by Descartes) between the secondary automatism which
man acquires by habit, and the original ox primary automatism of
the lower animals. The act of walking, for example, though
originally learned by experience under the guidance of sense-im-
pressions, comes to be so completely automatic as to be kept up
when once initiated by voluntary direction, not only without any
conscious effort, but even without any consciousness of the move-
ments we are performing, until our attention is called to them ; so
that, as it is credibly asserted, soldiers fatigued by a long march
will continue to plod onwards (as Indian punkah-pullers will go
on alternately twitching and letting go their cord) in a profound
sleep. But whilst the locomotive actions performed in this last
condition resemble those of the decapitated centipede, in simply
carrying the body forwards without avoidance of obstacles, those
of a man who is awake, but whose attention is engrossed by some
internal object of contemplation, are obviously guided by im-
pressions received through his visual organs. Thus I have seen
John S. Mill making his way along Cheapside at its fullest afternoon
tide, threading his way among the foot-passengers with which its
narrow pavement was crowded, and neither jostling his fellows
nor coming into collision with lamp-posts ; and have been assured
by him that his mind was then continuously engaged upon his
System of Logic (most of which was thought-out in his daily walks
between the India office and his residence at Kensington), and
that he had so little consciousness of what was taking place around
him, as not to recognize his nearest friends among the people he
met, until his attention had been recalled to their presence. Most
of us, I suppose, have had experiences of the same kind. It has

THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 273

often happened to myself, that, having previously intended to take
some special direction, I have found myself in the track which I
have been for years accustomed to follow for six days in the week,
through having committed myself to the guidance of my bete as
Xavier de Maistre calls it, whilst my ame was otherwise engaged.
Now in these and similar cases, do we see, or do we not see the
objects whose impressions upon our retinae excite those molecular
changes in our nerve-centres which direct our muscular action ? I
find it difficult to conceive that they act except through my con-
sciousness, however faintly and transiently excited ; but I would
by no means assert it to be impossible. It is very important,
however, to bear in mind the distinction between seeing and
noticing, as also between hearing and apprehending. That Ave
see and hear a great many things of which we take no distinct
cognizance at the time for want of attention to them, is indicated
by the fact that the remembrance of them surges up at some sub-
sequent date, not unfrequently in dreams. And it seems to me
more philosophical to regard the guiding action of visual impressions
as exerted through the consciousness, however faindy it may be
awakened, than to assert without a tittle of evidence that a bee
does not see the flower or the entrance to its hive towards which
it flies in a direct line, or that the chicken does not see the grain
or insect at which it pecks. That the sensation may be " sur-
plusage " where it prompts no higher psychical action, and that
the physical change would equally take place without it, is doubt-
less an arguable proposition as regards the actions of animals
whose life is purely automatic ; but where the like actions (as in
the case of man) have had to be learned by experience, it seems
to me inconceivable that such experience can be gained except
consciously. The child learning to walk, who (as Paley says) is
" the greatest posture-master in the world," is vividly conscious of
the sense of loss of balance to which he is unaccustomed ; and it
is under the guidance of that sense that his movements are directed
to the recovery of his equilibrium. But by the habitual recurrence
of similar experiences, a "mode of motion" comes to be established
in his nervous mechanism, which shapes that mechanism (according
to the physiological law of nutrition) in accordance with it ; and
thus the adult, who has acquired the art of shifting his weight

274 NATURE AND MAN.

from one foot to another, without anything more than a slight
and transient disturbance of his equiUbrium, ceases to perceive
what has become monotonous by the frequency of its repetition ;
and it is only when his equilibrium happens to be more seriously
disturbed by a slip of his foot or a stumble over an unnoticed
obstacle, that he becomes aware of the constant control exercised
over his automatic movements by this delicate regulating balance.
All these facts distinctly point to a reflex action of the gang-
lionic centres of the organs of special sense, as the mechanism
by wliich impressions on those organs call forth and direct the
instinctive actions of the lower animals ; and, as we shall presently
see, they harmonize completely with the results of experiments
made upon the higher. Whether it be alone the " motion of
molecules" (or physical change of any kind) that excites the
respondent movement, or whether the sight, sound, smell, or other
affection of the consciousness by the object which attracts or
repels the insect, be a necessary link in the chain of sequences, is
a question which seems to me to have no essential bearing upon
the automatism of man ; since the appeal to our own experience
evokes the unhesitating response, that in him, at any rate (as pre-
sumably in the animals that most nearly approach him in structure),
the higher forms of activity can only be excited in the first instance
through the consciousness, though they too may become automatic
bv frequent repetition. The essential difference between what we
are accustomed to term the instinctive actions of insects, and the
smiply reflex movements which we have seen to be executed by
their headless trunks, or even by segments of those trunks, consists
in their greater complexity and variety, and in the special con-
trolling and directing power of the cephalic ganglia \ and this may
be equally exerted, whether the excitement of sensation (i) be a
necessary link in the chain of sequences ; or (2) be simply a con-
comitant, which must occur when the mechanism is in complete
working order ; or (3), as some maintain, is not really produced
by impressions transmitted by the afi"erent nerves to the cephalic
ganglia, any more than it is by the impressions which excite the
separated ganglia of the ventral cord to reflex action. The first
having been my former opinion, I was led to distinguish the actions
automatically excited through the cephalic ganglia as sensori-molor ;

THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 275

but I now quite admit that there is much to be said in favour of
the second. For the denial of consciousness to insects, however,
I cannot see any other argument than that if " molecular motion "
be competent to do the work, sensation would be a useless sur-
plusage,— an application of the doctrine of final causes which can
scarcely be admitted as having any scientific validity.

The study of the conditions of instinctive action having thus
landed us in the conclusion of its dependence upon a mechanism
of nerves and muscles excited to activity by external impressions,
we apply the same method of inquiry to the conditions of that
rational action with which we credit the higher vertebrates, and of
which we trace the dawnings among the lower.

It is now universally acknowledged that the meaning of that
complex aggregate of ganglionic centres which makes up the
brain of man, can only be rightly understood by a careful study
(i) of the comparative structure of the brains of the lower verte-
brata, and (2) of the history of embryonic development. And it
is the distinct teacliing of both alike, that so far from the Cerebrum
being the fundamental portion of the brain (as its enormous relative
size in man would seem to indicate) it is originally a sort of offset,
from that axial cord which constitutes the primary and essential
part of the nervous apparatus of vertebrates ; the lower part of
this axis being formed by the spinal cord, and the upper by the
series of ganglionic centres which lie along the floor of the skull,
and which represent (in their relation to the sensory and motor
nerves of the head) the cephalic ganglia of insects. For in the
lowest fishes there is scarcely even a rudiment of the cerebrum,
the forward extension of the spinal axis constituting the whole
brain. And alike, as it would seem, in all vertebrates, the founda-
tion of the cerebral hemispheres is laid, not in these first-formed
"cerebral [or rather cephalic] vesicles," which really represent the
higher segments of the axial cord, but in a pair of minute
" vesicles of the cerebral hemispheres," which are budded off
from the most anterior of these. The proportion which the
development of the cerebrum, in the ascending series of verte-
brata, bears to that of the axial cord, corresponds so closely with
that which reason (so far as we can interpret its manifestations)
bears to instinct, as to warrant the conclusion that, since we are

276 NATURE AND MAN.

justified in assuming that the axial cord (of which the cerebellum
seems to be an appendage) furnishes the mechanism of automatic
action, the cerebrum is the instrument of the intelligence. And
experiment not only bears out this conclusion, but also demon-
strates that a great number of actions which man requires long
training to be able to perform — which training involves the
conscious purposive effort of the Ego — ^are provided for in the
lower animals by the automatic mechanism which they con-
genitally possess.

Among the lower vertebrates, the frog is the animal whose
actions have been most thoroughly studied, and their mechanism
most carefully investigated. These actions are for the most part
very simple ; the habits of the creature leading its natural life
being for the most part such as mechanism will readily provide
for. That to a very large extent they are purely automatic, can
be demonstrated by experiments of the kind already cited. Thus,
at the season of sexual excitement, the fore-legs of the male tend
to close firmly upon anything that is placed bet(veen them (just as
mechanically as the fly-trap of the Dioncea closes upon the unlucky
insect that alights upon it), and will retain that clasp for weeks ;
and this although the spinal cord has been divided both above
and below the segment from which the nerves of the fore-legs are
given off. The clasping action may be excited by simply touching
the thumb of either fore-foot, which at that season is considerably
enlarged and furnished with a peculiar papillary structure ; and
thus it becomes obvious that this action no more indicates inten-
tion, than does the corresponding movement of the fore-legs of
the Mantis. There are many other actions performed by the
agency of the spinal cord alone, which seem so purposive as
to make it difficult for those to regard them in any other light,
who have not been led by the considerations previously urged, to
recognize the large share which pure automatism has in the life
of this animal. If, again, its cerebellum be left in connection
with its spinal cord, the cerebrum and optic ganglia having been
removed, it will execute all its locomotive movements as well as
the complete frog would do, yet only in respondence to some
stimulus. Thus if, as it sits upright in the usual attitude of a
frog, the skin of its foot be pinched, it will jump; whilst, if thrown

THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 277

into water, it will swim, just like the brainleso water-beetle already
mentioned

But if, instead of removing the whole of the brain, we take
away (as in Goltz's experiments) only the cerebral hemispheres,
leaving the whole axial cord uninjured, the condition of the frog
is precisely assimilated to that of the pigeons from which the
cerebral hemispheres were removed by Flourens, Magendie, and
I.ongetjWith results remarkably similar. Goltz's frog, like Flourens's
pigeon, sits unmoved as if profoundly asleep, apparently seeing
nothing and hearing nothing ; but it will jump when irritated, and
shows that its movements are guided (whether consciously or not)
by the incidence of light on its eyes ; for if a book be placed at
some little distance in front, between the frog and the light, it will
avoid the book, when excited to jump, by passing to the right t
hand or the left. And so Flourens's pigeon, when excited to walk
by being pushed forwards, would avoid objects that lay in its
way ; and, according to the observation of Longet, if a lighted
candle was made to describe a circle before its eyes, the head
of the bird would move in a corresponding manner. Goltz's frog
and Flourens's pigeon, moreover, while taking no notice of food,
and making no effort to feed themselves, swallow food that is put
into their mouths, and may be thus kept alive and vigorous for
weeks or months, Goltz's frog croaking whenever a particular
part of its back is stroked. The pigeon, moreover, gets upon its
legs again when overthrown, and moves its wings in flight if
thrown into the air, thus showing that the mechanism of its
ordinary actions remains uninjured, though it does not spontane-
ously exert it. This is proved, in regard to the frog, by the
curious observations of Goltz, which Professor Huxley has himself
verified : —

" If put on the hand the frog sits there, crouched, perfectly
''quiet, and would remain so unless stimulated to action; but if
"the hand be inclined very gently and slowly, so that the frog
"would naturally slip off, the creature's fore-paws are shifted on to
" the edge of the hand, until he can just prevent himself from
" falling. If the turning of the hand be slowly continued, he
"mounts up with great care and deliberation, putting first one leg
" forward and then the other, until he balances himself with per-

278 NATURE AND MAN.

" feet precision upon the edge, and if the turning of the hand is
" continued, over he goes, through the opposite set of operations,
" until he comes to be seated in security upon the back of the
" hand."

Even this we are fully justified in attributing to the action of
a mechanism : for we are continually ourselves making yet more
elaborate adjustments of our muscular movements, to perform
some action which — originally voluntary — has come to be " me-
chanical ; " and this under circumstances which forbid the idea
that the conscious will in any way directs those adjustments. I
have already pointed out this in the case of ordinary walking ;
and the balancing power of a practised rope-dancer would seem,
from the feats which he performs, to be exerted scarcely less auto-
■^ matically. So in that most entertaining and suggestive book,
"The Autobiography of Robert Houdin, Conjuror," the author tells
us that he early in life trained himself to the performance of a
number of his feats of dexterity, whilst reading a book with
continuous attention ; and that he thus gradually acquired the
power of keeping /^'wr balls in the air, without a moment's distrac-
tion of his thoughts. And he further tells us that having a mind,
while writing this passage of his memoir, to try to what extent
he retained this power, after a disuse of it for thirty years, he
found that he could still keep up three balls without any interrup-
tion of his reading. The purely automatic nature of an action
performed under such circumstances, fully justifies our attributing
it to a nervo-muscular mechanism ; but there are these essential
differences between the automatism of Goltz's frog or of Flourens's
pigeon, and that of Houdin — that while the one was original, the
other was acquired ; and that while the one was set going by an
external stimulus, the other was put in action by a conscious
intention, of which we have every reason to regard the cerebrum
as the instrument.

Of these differences it appears to me that Professor Huxley
has lost sight, in his application to man of the conclusions he
draws from the automatism of animals. In refusing to credit the
spinal cord of the frog with the power of conscious self-direction,
which a few physiologists still attribute to it, he takes his stand
(quite rightly, as I think) upon the facts of human experience;

THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 279

which show that when any part of the spinal cord has been cut off
from the brain by disease or injury, the portion of the body below
the point of section loses its sensibility, and that whatever action
its muscles may be excited to perform, such action is not only
independent of the will, but incapable of being controlled by it.
But when he argues from the fact that because certain actions of
a frog which appear to be purposive are really automatic, similar
actions of man which express the determinations of the conscious
Ego really result from the working of an unconscious mechanism,
he not only ignores, but distinctly repudiates, the very experience
on which he previously built. For even if it could be shown that
the spinal cord of man can do all that the same organ does in the
frog — if, for example, on the application of an irritant to one of
the legs of a paraplegic patient, the other leg were to be raised and
crossed, so as to rub it off, — such a fact would give us no right to
say that when either this or any other movement is executed in
response to a conscious determination of the Ego, such conscious
determination has nothing at all to do with it. All that could be
legitimately inferred from it would be, that the automatic apparatus
is competent to perform this feat, and that when the conscious
Ego executes it by what we call the mandate of his will, he uses
the automatic apparatus as its instrument.

The doctrine that the Ego puts the body in movement, not
(as formerly taught) by its immediate voluntary control over the
muscles, but by its power of making the automatic apparatus
perform anything that lies within its capacity — whether original
or acquired — accords with all the phenomena, physical, as well
as psychical ; whilst the doctrine of pure automatism, based
entirely on the physical, is in direct opposition to the psychicah
Let us take the act of coughing as an example ; this being, per-
haps, the most purpose-like of all the originally automatic actions
performed by adult man. We admire the combination of the
closure of the glottis with explosive expiration, as perfectly
adapted to get rid of any offending matter which has found its
way into the air-passages ; and at the same time we recogni::e the
fact that this combination is madeyv^r us and not by us, and that,
when the stimulus is present in sufficient force, we must execute
it, however strong may be our desire to restrain it. But our

28o NATURE AND MAN.

experience also tells us that we can execute the same act by
simi^ly luilling to do so ; as, for instance, when we wish to give
a signal, to clear our throat, or to cough-down a troublesome
speaker. And if I assert, on the basis of every-day experience,
that my conscious Ego can direct my automaton to execute this
movement, it is surely no answer to say that because my auto-
maton was competent to do it for itself, therefore my conscious
Ego really had nothing to do with it For supposing my air-
passages to be free from any irritation, I do not cough unless I
will to cough ; and my will simply takes the place of the stimulus
which the passage of a crumb of bread into my larynx would
give. So Goltz's frog and Flourens's pigeon, though capable of
performing the ordinary movements of locomotion when excited
to do so, remain quiescent in the absence of such excitement,
for want of a cerebrum to supply the place of the external
stimulus by one proceeding from the conscious Ego. And
although my bete may have come to be quite as capable as
Goltz's frog or Flourens's pigeon, of continuing to walk by itself
when my dine is asleep or engaged elsewhere, it is none the less
under subjection to my ame when the latter asserts its preroga-
tive ; the automatic movements of my bete being then governed
by the consciously formed determinations of my Ego.

The higher we ascend in the vertebrate series towards man,
the more evident does it become that the ordinary course of
action is determined rather by the intentional direction given
through the cerebrum to the working of the automatic mechanism,
than by its own unconscious operation ; in other words, by reason
rather than by instinct. And in man we find that everything is
left to be learned by experience, save what is imperatively required
for the maintenance of life — such as the rhythmical contractions
of the heart, the peristaltic movements of the alimentary canal,
the acts of swallowing and respiration, their combination in the
act of sucking, and the like. Even the tendency to that sudden
closure of the lids when danger is threatened to the eyes, which is
among the most purely automatic of our protective actions, seems
to be an acquired rather than a congenital instinct.

It is the very condition of such acquirement, however, that
the human Ego is thus enabled to exercise a rational control over

THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 28 r

its automatism (as in ordinary walking), which those animals do
not possess whose locomotion is purely mechanical; initiating,
directing, regulating, and checking its actions, with such direct-
ness that many have maintained that because they were voluntary
in the first instance, they must always remain so — a position
which seems to me as unscientific as the doctrine I have already
combated, that because actions adapted to a purpose are per-
formed automatically by a frog, the actions which man executes
with a determinate intention are really automatic. The human
Ego can even turn to his own account certain parts of his origin-
ally automatic mechanism. Thus, although his will does not
extend so far into the penetralia of his organism, as to enable him
to influence the motions of his heart or alimentary canal, and
although, if he try ever so hard, he cannot suspend the act of
breathing to the extent of asphyxiating himself, he can so regulate
his expirations as to make them subservient to those vocal utter-
ances which express, by a mechanism that has to be trained to its
work, the thoughts and feelings of his mind.

But when we have been thus led to recognize in the cerebrum,
not the original centre of the whole nervous activity of the body,
but a superadded organ, in which our sensorial experiences are
registered, through the instrumentality of which they give rise to
the states of consciousness designated as emotions and ideas, and
by whose downward action expression is given to the determina-
tions of the Ego, it may still be plausibly maintained that the
whole series of " molecular motions " of which it is the seat, must
take place in accordance with certain fixed and definite physical
laws ; and that it is utterly unscientific to suppose that mind can
intervene to modify them.

That there is a mechanism of thought and feeling, the action
of which forms part of tlie Hfe of the body, which gives rise to
that succession of thoughts and feelings wherein* the life of the
mind may be said to consist, and which goes on, when left to
itself, according to its original constitution, modified by the
influences subsequently brought to bear upon it, can be doubted
by no psychologist who is also a physiologist. The cerebrum, as
was first pointed out by Dr. Laycock, has a reflex action of its
own, analogous to that of the lower centres, but determined as to

282 NATURE AND MAN.

its nature by the moJifications superinduced upon its original
mechanism by acquired habit ; and this doctrine is but the physio-
logical expression of the Herbartian psychology of residua. The
response given by this mechanism, whether manifesting itself in
bodily or in mental action, is as automatic as the act of walking,
or any other sequence of movements which we execute with the
like absence of conscious or designed exertion. We cannot help,
for example, the recurrence of ideas called up by local or personal
associations ; nor can we help the feelings of pain or pleasure, of
aversion or desire, which are inseparably connected in our minds
with these ideas. It would be as unreasonable to say that we can
help them, as it would be to say that we can prevent ourselves
from feeling pain when a pin is run into our flesh, or pleasure in
eating a good dinner when we are hungry.

But is this all ? Have we no power to control and direct this
automatic cerebral action, as the cerebral action itself directs and
controls the action of the lower centres ? Does the body of man
constitute his 7vhoIe self, or is there an Ego to which that body is
in any degree subservient ?

To these questions it does not seem to me to be within the
capacity of physiology — limiting that term to man's corporeity —
to give an answer. If we look at the whole of our mental no less
than our bodily activity as dependent upon the reflex action of
our cerebrum, we are undoubtedly landed in an automatism, far
more varied indeed, but not less bound by the laws of physical
causation, than the automatism of the ascidian to which it is now
fashionable to trace back our pedigree. But to say that this is
the only way in which science permits us to regard it, is (as it
seems to me) to disregard that on which all science is based—-
experience. Surely our own immediate mental experiences are as
worthy of confidence, as are deductions drawn from phenomena
outside ourselves, which we can only rightly interpret on the basis
afforded by those very experiences ; the test of the validity of such
interpretation being furnished by their conformity to our other
immediate experiences. And if we are led by physiological evi-
dence to recognize in the cerebrum a power of directing and con-
trolling the automatism of the axial cord, I do not see on what
ground we are to reject the testimony of direct consciousness,

THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 283

that the automatism of the cerebrum is itself directed and con-
trolled by some higher power.

That we can form no conception of the nature of the causal
relation between mental and bodily phenomena, is nothing to the
purpose — as Professor Huxley himself distinctly admits in regard
to the production of sensations and other mental changes by
"modes of motion" of the nervous system. But if (to use his
own appropriate terms) neuroses can give rise to psychoses, it is
surely quite accordant with the great fundamental principle of
interaction to affirm that conversely psychoses can give rise to
neuroses ; just as the electricity generated in a voltaic battery by
chemical change, can itself produce chemical change. Professor
Clifford, indeed, refuses to admit a causal relation either way,
giving no other reason for his refusal than his inability to conceive
how a "motion of molecules" can be produced in any other
mode than by a motion of neighbouring molecules. But I am
yet to learn that either in this or any other case, our deductions
from experience are to be limited by our ability to supply their
rationale.

13

284 NATURE AND MAN.

X.

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM.

[Preface to the fourth edition of the " Principles of Mental Physiology,"
1S76.]

Since the first issue of the following treatise, the question of
" Human Automatism " has largely engaged the attention of that
increasing portion of the public mind which interests itself in
scientific inquiry. The address of the eminent physicist who
occupied the presidential chair at the Belfast meeting of the British
Association, embodied a philosophical creed of which it seems a
necessary corollary, that all mental as well as bodily activity, being
the outcome of the "potentialities" of matter, is subject to physical
conditions alone. — The distinguished biologist who brilliantly ex-
pounded at the same meeting the Cartesian doctrine that " Animals
are Automata," explicitly maintained (in direct opposition to
Descartes himself) that Man is only a more complicated and
variously endowed automaton : his bodily actions being determined
solely by physical causes ; the succession of his mental states
depending entirely upon the molecular activities of his cerebrum ;
and the movements he is accustomed to regard as expressing his
feelings, or as executing his intentions, having their real origin in
brain-changes, of which those feelings and intentions are the mere
concomitant " symbols in consciousness." * — Professor Huxley's
pronunciamento was soon followed by that of an able mathematician,
who brought to that profoundly difiicult problem of " body and
mind " which has exercised the greatest intellects from Aristotle
to J. S. Mill, the training of a skilled athlete, who knocks down
* Fortnightly Revierv, November, 1874, p. 577.

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 285

with one vigorous blow any opponent unprepared for his pecuHar
mode of attack. Relying exclusively upon physical experiences,
Professor Clifford affirmed without the smallest hesitation,* that as
the only thing which can possibly be conceived to influence matter
is either the position or the motion of surrounding matter, the
statement "that the will influences matter" is simply " nonsense ;"
an affirmation which assumes that Professor Clifford knows all
about matter and its dynamical relations, and therefore has an
unquestionable right to say that mankind at large are wrong in the
conviction that the movements of their bodies are in any way
directed by their minds.

From the confidence with which what are asserted to be the
inevitable conclusions of physiological science are now advanced
in proof of the doctrine of human automatism, it might be supposed
that some new facts of pecuhar importance had been discovered,
or some more cogent deductions drawn from the facts previously
known. But after an attentive re-examination of the whole ques-
tion, I find nothing in the results of more recent researches to
shake the conviction at which I arrived nearly forty 5^ears ago,t of
the existence of a fundamental distinction, not only between the
rational actions of sentient beings guided by experience, and the
automatic movements of creatures whose whole life is obviously
but the working of a mechanism, — but also between those actions
(common to man and intelligent brutes) which are determined by
a preponderating attraction towards an object present to the con-
sciousness, and those (peculiar, as I believe, to man) in which
there is, at one stage or another, that distinct purposive interven-
tion of the self-conscious Ego which we designate will, whereby the
direction of the activity is modified.

What modern research seems to me to have done, is to eluci-
date the mechanism of automatic action ; to define with greater
precision the share it takes in the diversified phenomena of animal
life, psychical as well as physical ; and to introduce a more scientific
mode of thought into the physiological part of the inquiry. But
in so far as those who profess to be its expositors ignore the funda-

* Fortnightly Revinv, December, 1874, p. 728.

t '* On the Voluntary and Instinctive Actions of Living Beings," in the
Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, No. 132 (1837).

286 NATURE AND MAN.

mental facts of consciousness on which Descartes himself built up
his philosophical fabric, dwelling exclusively on physical action as
the only thing with which science has to do, and repudiating the
doctrine (based on the universal experience of mankind) that the
mental states which we call volitions and emotions have a causative
relation to bodily changes, they appear to me to grasp only one
half of the problem, to see only one side of the shield. That the
principle of the conservation of energy holds good not less in the
living body than in the inorganic world, I was myself among the
earliest to maintain.* That in the most powerful muscular effort
which can be called forth by the human will, there is no more a
creation of energy than in an automatic convulsion, I believe as
firmly as Professor Clifford. And that the general tendency of
modern scientific research is to extend the domain of law to every
form of mundane change, — the belief in the uniformity of causation
being now assumed as axiomatic in all scientific procedure, — I
recognize as fully as Mr. Herbert Spencer. This tendency could
not be expressed more forcibly than in the following citation from
Mr. H. Sidgwick's recent treatise : —

"The belief that events are determinately related to the state
" of things immediately preceding them, is now held by all com-
" petent thinkers in respect of all kinds of occurrences except human
" volitions. It has steadily grown both intensively and extensively,
" both in clearness and certainty of conviction, and in universality
" of application, as the human mind has developed and human
" experience has been systematized and enlarged. Step by step, in
"successive departments of fact, conflicting modes of thought
" have receded and faded, until at length they have vanished every-
" where, except from this mysterious citadel of will." f

Before inquiring, however, whether there is adequate ground
for regarding the human will in this exceptional light, it may be
well to consider what basis there is for the assumption that the
range of physical causation extends itself from the sphere of matter
to that of mind, — in other words, that moral causation and physical
causation are convertible terms.

* " On the Mutual Relations of the Vital and Physical Forces," Philosophical
Transactions, 1850.

t " The Methods of Ethics," p. 47.

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 287

It may be fairly urged, on one side, that the tendency of
modern scientific investigation has been to show that a very large
proportion (if not the whole) of those changes whose succession
constitutes our mental life, are determinately related, on the one
hand, to the mental states which immediately preceded them, and,
on the other, to the material conditions of the bodily organism.
The pure metaphysician, who studies the " laws of thought " in the
abstract, as if man consisted of mind without body, no more doubts
the former, than the physiologist, who works upwards from body
to mind, and studies the successions of consciousness as functions
of the nervous system, can question the latter. And the psycho-
logist, whose object (to use the words of Mr. Herbert Spencer) is
to elucidate "not the connection between internal phenomena, nor
*' the connection between external phenomena, but the connection
" between these two connections," and who studies the relation
between psychical phenomena and physical conditions through the
whole range of the animal kingdom, interpreting these phenomena
by a scientific scrutiny of his own experiences, and applying the
knowledge thus gained to the explanation of the actions of organisms
whose constitution resembles his own (this inquiry being the special
object of the present treatise), finds himself irresistibly brought to
the conclusion that automatism * has a very large share in the life
of every human being; and is thus naturally led to question
whether there is atiy part of man's action which is exempted from
the law of physical causation.

The corrective to this view, however, appears to me to be
furnished by the intelligent study of that large class of the phe-
nomena of human nature which lies patent to every trained
observer in the ordinary course of events. For the more carefully
he studies these phenomena, the more clearly is he led to see that,
as has been pithily said by Emerson, " Thoughts rule the World ;"
and that, though the spheres of moral and physical causation
impinge (as it were) upon one another, they are in themselves
essentially distinct The influence of a great idea conceived by a

* In the term " Automatism," as used here and elsewhere, I include not
merely those bodily but those mental activities, which ai'e detcrniwatdy related
to (or, in other words, are caused bv) previous bodily or mental activities, to the
exclusion of all choice or self-direction on the part of the Ego.

288 NATURE AND MAN.

thinker in his closet, in dominating the action of an entire nation,
is utterly disproportioned to any conceivable play of molecular
forces that can be excited by the physical agency of the thinker in
putting his idea into speech or writing. The moral power of the
" thoughts that breathe, and words that burn " in the utterances
of the poet, cannot be correlated, like the mechanical energy
exerted by his muscles in the writing of his verse, with the quantity
of food he may have consumed in their production. And the new
direction that may be given to the whole course of two lives, by
the faintest expression of emotion in a tone, a look, or a touch,
cannot be brought to any common measure, either with those
muscular contractions, or with those molecular changes in nervous
matter, which are the physical causes of its manifestation.

But to this it may be replied that, even when we look at human
action from its mental side, without any regard to physical ante-
cedents, we cannot help recognizing in it the principle of causation
by character and circumstances ; and that without the power of
prediction which we derive from organized experience, as is well
stated by Mr. Sidgwick {op. at. p. 48), social life would be im-
possible. But while everyone admits the existence of uniformities
in human action which constitute the basis of our social fabric,
every one also admits that the closest observation of these uni-
formities, and the most sagacious analysis of their conditions, does
not justify anything more than a " forecast " of the course of action,
either of individuals or of communities, in any given contingency.
"Who would have thought that he would have done such a
" thing ? " is our frequent exclamation in regard to some one of
whom we considered that we had a most intimate knowledge : that
"the unexpected [in politics] is what always happens," has passed
into a proverb. It is, of course, open for the automatist to assert
that the element of uncertainty here arises, as in the case of
weather-forecasts, from the complexity of the conditions, and
from our imperfect acquaintance with them ; and he might fairly
urge, on general grounds, that if we could grasp the whole of the
antecedents, and measure the potency of each, no " unconditioned"
or self-originating element would be found to have interfered with
the regular sequence of cause and effect. But he has no right
whatever to assume this. The whole history of science shows that

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 289

the investigation of " residual phenomena" has been a most fertile
means of discovery in regard to agencies not previously suspected.
And until it shall have been proved that there are no human
actions which cannot be accounted for by " unconditional
" sequence," such an assumption cannot be admitted as an ade-
quate disproof of the testimony borne by human consciousness
to the opposite effect. " It is impossible for me to think," says
Mr. Sidgwick {iip. cit. p. 51), "in the moment of deliberate
"volition, that my volition is completely determined by my formed
" character and the motives acting upon it. The opposite con-
"viction is so strong as to be absolutely unshaken by the evidence
"brought against it. I cannot believe it to be illusory. . . . No
"amount of experience of the sway of motives even tends to make
" me distrust my intuitive consciousness, that in resolving after
" deliberation I exercise free choice as to which of the motives
" acting on me shall prevail. Nothing short of absolute proof that
" this consciousness is erroneous, could overcome the force with
" which it announces itself as certain ; and I cannot perceive tliat
'•'such proof has been given."

It is alleged, indeed, that the belief entertained by all men —
except philosophers — in their own freedom of choice (within
certain limits) between different modes of action, is an illusion of
ignorant "common sense," which, like the vulgar belief that the
sun moves round the earth, is utterly dispelled by the light of
science. But the two beliefs rest upon an entirely different basis.
The latter, like other erroneous beliefs which arise in the exercise
of our senses, is an inference from the facts of consciousness, which
a more enlarged experience (such as that afforded by almost every
railway-journey) shows to be untenable : the former is the imme-
diate affirmation of consciousness itself, the assurance of which, its
constant recurrence under a great variety of conditions only serves
to confirm.

The direct testimony of consciousness as to any one of its
primal cognitions, must be held, as it seems to me, of higher
account than the deductions of reason from data afforded by other
cognitions ; constituting, in fact, a " base of verification " to which
all our logical triangulation must be worked back, if we desire to
test its validity. And no fact of consciousness as to which man-

290 NATURE AND MAN.

kind in general is in accord, can be disproved, save by the con-
tradiction afforded by some other primary cognition of superior
validity. For, as has been truly said by John S. Mill, "feeling
" and thought are much more real than anything else ; they are
" the only things which we directly know to be real." * We know
nothing about matter, as Berkeley demonstrated, except by inference
from the manner in which its states affect our consciousness ;
" itself we do not perceive ; we are not conscious of it." And
hence those so-called "experiences," on the basis afforded by
which the whole fabric of physical science is built up, being really
nothing else than " assumptions to account for our sensations "
(Mill), can only be accepted as valid, in so far as they accord with
those primal cognitions which we cannot dissociate from our own
consciousness of personal agency. Thus, for example, when
Professor Clifford affirms (loc. cit.) that no interaction can possibly
take place between bodily and mental states, the physical facts
going along by themselves, and the mental facts going along by
themselves, on two utterly different platforms, — he calls upon us
to receive as the indubitable teaching of science, the result of a
process of reasoning based upon one set of experiences alone ;
notwithstanding that this is completely contradicted by another
set, which, as appealing much more directly to our own conscious-
ness, has a stronger claim upon our acceptance. For all mankind
— except philosophers of Professor Clifford's school — accept it as
a fact, " based on the normal experience of healthy men," that,
running a pin into one's flesh is the cause of that mental state
which we call pain (Huxley, op. cit. p. 574) ; a certain neurosis, or
molecular change in the nervous system, producing a corresponding
psychosis, or affection of the consciousness. And, conversely, since
all mankind — except the followers of Professors Huxley and
Clifford — accept it as a fact, " based on the normal experience of
healthy men," that the state of mind which we term volition is
the cause of the muscular movement that gives expression to it —
a psychosis producing the neurosis which calls forth muscular con-
traction— I cannot see that this conviction can be nullified by any
inference drawn from an order of facts that is capable of an entirely
different interpretation. The doctrine propounded by Professor
* *' Posthumous Essays," p. 202.

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 291

Huxley in his Belfast lecture, that the feeling we call volition is
not the cause of the voluntary act, but the " symbol in conscious-
ness " of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of
that act (like the blowing of the steam-whistle, which signals, but
does not cause, the starting of the locomotive), and that the
strongest volition has therefore no power in itself to call forth a
movement, seems to me to find its best answer in the explicit state-
ment which he himself put forth not many years previously, that
" the belief that our volition counts for something as a condition
" in the course of events," is one which " can be verified experi-
" mentally as often as we like to try," and therefore "stands upon
"the strongest foundation upon which any belief can rest, and
" forms one of our highest truths." *

When we come to examine the reasons latterly assigned by
Professor Huxley for giving up this assured belief, we find them
mainly based on the fact that certain actions which would be
ordinarily accounted volitional (as being initiated by an intentional
effort) in man, can be performed under circumstances which
strongly indicate a purely automatic causation.

Thus it has been shown by Goltz, that a frog from which the
cerebrum has been removed, and which (according to ordinary
physiological doctrine) has consequently lost the power of
voluntary movement, will jump when irritated, the direction of
this movement being affected by the incidence of light upon its
eyes \ though making no effort to feed itself, it will swallow food
put into its mouth, and may thus be kept alive for weeks or
months ; and will utter its croak when a particular part of its
back is stroked. But further, although, when put on the hand,
the frog sits there crouched, perfectly quiet, and would remain
so unless stimulated to action, yet (says Professor Huxley) " if
"the hand be inclined very gently and slowly, so that the frog
"would naturally slip off, the creature's forepaws are shifted on to
" the edge of the hand until he can just prevent himself from
" falling. If the turning of the hand be continued, he mounts
" up with great care and deliberation, putting first one leg forward,
"and then the other, until he balances himself with perfect pre-
" cision upon the edge, and in the turning of the hand over he

* " Lay Sermons," p. 160.

»92

NATURE AND MAN.

"goes through the opposite set of operations, until he comes to
"iDe seated in security upon the back of the hand." — {Fortnightly
Review, Nov. 1874, p. 567).

Now, that Man is himself continually making yet more elabo-
rate adjustments of his muscular movements, under circumstances
which forbid the idea that they are in any way directed by his
conscious will, is expressly shown in various parts of the present
work. Some of these actions, as coughing and sucking, are
originally or pi'imarily automatic ; and can be experimentally
shown not to depend upon cerebral instrumentality, except
when performed in obedience to a volitional mandate. Others,
as walking erect, are originally performed under the conscious
purposive direction of the mind; but, when they have once
become habitual, they may be repeated involuntarily, and even
unconsciously, by a secondary or acquired automatism, the
mechanism of which has constructed itself in virtue of the
tendency of the nervous system to grow to the mode in which it is
habitually exercised. And this is equally true of those more
special activities which have been acquired by " training," —
such as rope-dancing, music-playing, juggling with balls, etc. ;
for these may be performed (as we are accustomed truly
enough to say) "mechanically" by any individual by whom
they have been so habitually repeated as to have become a
" second nature."

Of this general principle, of which numerous examples will
hereafter come before the reader, the following singularly curious
illustration, which I have lately received from a trustworthy source
(a clergyman in the north of England), may be here presented : —
" While I was a student in Dublin University, I was at an
"evening party at which a lady was asked to play for dancing.
" Unfortunately she had taken far too much at supper ; and was,
" in fact, after she had begun to play, so drunk as to be totally
" unable to rise off the stool. I was standing near the piano,
" and saw her eyes close, her head fall forward, and give every
"manifestation of sleep except snore aloud. But her playing
"went on in perfect time; and, in fact, the difficulty was, when
" she had ended a waltz or quadrille, to make her stop ; for when
"she was shaken out of sleep, it was evidently her intention to

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 293

"go on the whole night. To set her going again, it was only
" necessary to place her hands on the keys, and she would begin
" a new quadrille, soon again relapsing into sleep, and yet con-
" tinning to play well. I was studying a deep course of nieta-
" physics at the time, for my degree in those subjects in Trinity
" College ; and the case made a great impression on my mind.
" I could not account for it on any of my then principles \ but I
"see it perfectly now."

I have recently learned, too, that it is no uncommon ex-
perience in telegraph offices, for transmitters of messages, when
they have been for some time in the service, to work the instru-
ments without conscious thought of what they are doing.
"They read the words," says my informant, " pass them through
"their minds, and transfer them to the sending part of the
"apparatus, just as unconsciously and automatically as Wheat-
" stone's transmitter does. I have often found myself," he con-
tinues, " indulging in trains of thought, or even listening to a
" conversation that might be going on near me, and yet continued
"to 'receive' and 'send' just as if I was giving my whole
"attention to the work; and when I came to see the messages
"afterwards, I knew that they had passed through my hands
" only by the handwriting. Once, indeed, when on night duty,
" I became completely unconscious whilst sending a long anvl
" monotonous ' group ' message, consisting entirely of figures,
"and woke up bewildered, and had to ask the receiving station
" ' after what ? ' before I could proceed. Some clerks believe
" that the work is done more accurately when done auto-
"matically; but I scarcely think this justified by experience."

However strange these statements may seem, they find their
parallel in our own familiar experience. For almost every one
who has been much in the habit of reading aloud, is well aware
that he may continue to do this with perfect articulation, punctua-
tion, emphasis, and intonation, while his mind is so completely
engrossed by some entirely different subject, that, until his atten-
tion is recalled to it. he is no more aware that he is reading, or
conscious of the guidance he has been receiving from his visual
sense, than is the philosopher of the pursuance of his walk whilst
his whole mind is given to the solution of some knotty problem.

294 NATURE AND MAN.

The only difference between the case of the reader-aloud
and that of the telegraph-clerk, is that the words whose visual
pictures have fallen on the retina, are expressed in the one case
by acts of vocalization, in the other by a special kind of finger-
language. So, the case of the musical performer who continued
to play quadrilles in her sleep, is analogous to that of the ambula-
tory thinker ; a previously acquired succession of movements,
once initiated, going on without conscious direction ; each move-
ment being suggested by that which preceded it, and itself
suggesting the next.

The same explanation seems to me to be legitimately ap-
plicable to the case of the French sergeant, on which great stress
is laid by Professor Huxley {loc. cit. p. 568) as indicating that
what we are accustomed to call voluntary action in ourselves is
really automatic. For, as a consequence of a wound in the head
received at Gravelotte, this man frequently passed spontaneously
into a state closely resembling that of the artificially-induced
hypnotism, whose phenomena are described in the latter part
of this treatise. The essential peculiarity of this state is the
suspension of the directing and controlling power of the Will ;
so that the whole course of action is determined automatically
by suggestion. And its phenomena, so far from affording
any evidence that the same is the case in our normal state,
and that what we call Will is only the " symbol in conscious-
ness "of a material change which would equally take place without
it, seem to me to testify exactly the contrary. For we cannot help
recognizing a marked difference between the normal and the
abnormal states of such subjects ; and, as I think I have demon-
strated in my discussion of these and of allied states, that
difference essentially consists in the suspension in the latter
state of that volitional power, which in the former directs and
controls the successions of thought and action. And on the
recognition of this difference will depend our appreciation of the
relative moral " responsibility " of the subjects of these states, for
the same actions performed in the normal and in the abnormal con-
ditions respectively. Thus we should hold the French sergeant
fully "responsible" for any theft he might commit when in full
possession of his wits; and yet for the very same action per-

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 295

formed in his automatic state, we should be ready to admit the
excuse that he had no power of self-control (p. 302).

Thus, as it seems to me, the cases cited by Professor Huxley
are readily explicable by the principle of secotidary or acquired
automatism first explicitly laid down by Hartley ; this taking the
place in man (save as regards such actions as breathing and suck-
ing, which are essential to the life of the infant) of those which
are primary or original among the lower animals. And I hold
it to be the legitimate inference from the fact that certain actions
of the frog, resembling those which man might execute volitionally
under like circumstances, are performed automatically, that a
provision exists in the inherited structure of the frog, for doing
that which man only learns to do by intentional " training," — an
inference which all physiological study tends to confirm. For the
fullest recognition of automatism in the performances of Goltz's
frog does not in the least invalidate the testimony of my own
consciousness, that when, being called on to balance my body
under some unaccustomed circumstances (as in crossing a stream
on a narrow plank, or over a series of stepping-stones), I give my
whole attention to the act, the movements of my body are executed
under my intentional direction. Again, the fact that various
actions have become so familiar to me by habit as to be performed
automatically, affords no real contradiction to the testimony of
my own conciousness, that when I was first trained (or was
training myself) to execute them, my will issued the mandates
which were carried into effect by my muscles. I cannot believe
that a piece of delicate handiwork, such as a minute dissection,
or the painting of a miniature — requiring constant visual guidance,
and trained exactness of muscular response — can be executed
without a distinct volitional direction of each movement. And I
find myself quite unable to conceive that when I am consciously
attempting, whether by speech or by writing, to excite in the minds
of my readers the ideas which are present to my own conscious-
ness at the moment, it is not my mind which is putting my lips or
my hand in motion, but that (as Professor Huxley maintains) it is
my body which is moving of itself, and simply keeping my mind
informed of its movements.

If this doctrine were true, not only of particular cases, but of

296 NATURE AND MAN.

human life generally, it is obvious that its stream would flow on
exactly as it does, if we had no consciousness at all of what we
are about; that the actions and reactions of the " ideagenous
molecules " would do the work of the philosopher, even if they
never generated ideas in his mind ; that he would give forth its
results in books or lectures, not from any intention or desire that
his books should be read and his lectures heard, so as to bring
the thoughts of other minds into relation with his own, but simply
because .certain molecular motions in his brain call forth the
movements of speech or writing ; and that, in like manner, the
noblest works of genius — the master-pieces of the poet, the artist,
and the musician — would none the less be produced, if the
"symbols in consciousness" were never evoked in their pro-
ducers' nature, and would prove none the less attractive to other
automata, if the molecular movements of their brains should be
equally incapable of exciting either intellectual or emotional
activity ; such activity being, to use a legal phrase, mere " sur-
plusage." To myself this seems like a rcductio ad absui-dum.
For although I maintain in the present treatise that an automatic
action may take place in the cerebrum, which, without any inter-
vention of consciousness, may evolve products usually accounted
mental, yet in all such cases the action takes place on the lines
previously laid dois^n by volitional direction ; being exactly parallel,
in the case of cerebral action, to that secondary or acquired
automatism, by which particular kinds of movement, originally
acquired by "training," come to be performed " mechanically."

1 fail to find, then, in any of the modern developments either
of physical or physiological science, any adequate grounds for
abandoning the position maintained in the following treatise, as
to the direction and control to which the automatic activity
of man is subject in proportion to the development of his
volitional power, — that is, the power exerted by the Ego not
only with a distinct purpose, but with a consciousness of effort, the
strength of which is the mark and measure of its exercise.

The direct testimony of consciousness, in regard not only to
the existence of this volitional power, but also to the self-
determination of the Ego in the exercise of it, is borne out by

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 297

numerous other considerations of various degrees of cogency,
more or less intimately related to each other ; the aggregate of
which, like that of the mutually-supporting outworks round a
citadel, adds enormously to the strength of the position, though
each independently might be inefficient for its defence.

I. It is supported by the very existence of the idea symbolized
in the word choice ; an idea which we could not entertain, if we
did not find something answerable to it in our own subjective
experience. For in external nature there is nothing that can be
truly termed "choice." If a piece of iron be brought within the
sphere of attraction of two magnets placed on opposite sides of it,
one near but feeble, the other strong but remote, we feel assured
that it will be drawn towards the one which makes the stronger
pull upon it; and we take its motion in one or the other direction,
as the indication of the superior tractive force of the magnet
towards which it tends. To use the word " choice " in such a
case — to say that the iron chooses towards which of the magnets
it shall move, — would be felt by every one a misapplication of the
term. The same would be the case as regards any other action
determined by physical causation. And yet on the determinist
doctrine, if I am attracted by the temptation of an immediate
but immoral pleasure, and am deterred from it either by a sense
of duty or by the fear of the remote consequences of the sin, I
have no more " choice " as to the course I shall take, than has
the piece of iron that is attracted in opposite directions by two
magnets. Now my contention is, not merely that I have a choice,
but that the very existence of an idea which can be derived from
no other source than human experience, confirms the testimony of
my own consciousness to that effect.* And the like confirmation
is afforded by the familiar reply, " I have no choice,'' in cases in
which we feel it to be a necessity (whether physical or moral) that
we should take a particular line of action.

That in making our choice, and in acting upon it, we are
determined by the "preponderance of motives," I do not call in
question ; the self-determining power of the will seeming to me

* The case Feems to me exnctly parallel to that of the notion of force,
which is based on our own consciousness of ejfort in originating or in resisting
motion.

298 NATURE AND MAN.

to be exerted in modifying the preponderance which the motives
per se would determine. The affirmation that our actions are
determined by the strongest motives, appears to me, indeed, a
mere truism ; being only another mode of saying that the motive
which prevails is the strongest. For we have no other test of the
relative strength of motives, than that which is afforded by our
experience of their action in each individual case. If we put into
a balance two bodies of known densities, we can predict, by the
comparison of their dimensions, which will preponderate. But, if
the density of one or both is unknown, we can only determine
which is the heavier by seeing which scale goes down. And so
we can have no other measure of the relative strength of motives
of different orders, than that which is afforded by their respective
effects in the determination of the conduct. Now, all experience
shows that motives which may exert a preponderating influence at
one moment, are comparatively powerless at another; on the
other hand, motives whose influence at one moment is scarcely
felt, may come to acquire a force that makes them far outweigh
those which at first overbalanced them. This is especially
apparent when we exert our volitional power of " self-control "
to check the immediate action which is prompted by some auto-
matic impulse ; time being thus gained for the excited feeling to
subside, and for the " second thoughts" of the higher reason to
make themselves heard.* And a further reflection on our own
mental experiences will satisfy us, that these variations in the
relative strength of motives mainly arise from the degree of atten-
tion that we give to each respectively. An excited feeling which
would soon die out if left to itself, will retain its potency, or even
gain augmented force, if we allow ourselves to brood over it;
whilst, on the other hand, the power of those remoter considera-
tions which deliberation suggests, increases in proportion as they
are dwelt on. And just as in the case of the two magnets, we
may reverse their relative attractions by changing their respective
distances from the iron between them, so can each Ego who has
acquired the power of directing his own course of thought and

* It is not always, however, that "second thoughts are best." For the
immediate impulse may be a bmevoUnt one, and the "second thoughts"
deliberately selfish.

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 299

feeling, alter the relative potency of different motives or sets of
motives, by detcrminately directing his attention to those wliich
would draw him in one direction, and by partially or completely
excluding those of an opposite tendency from his mental view.

If it be urged by the Automatist that this fixation of the Ego's
attention on one set of motives to the exclusion of the other, is
really due to the superior strength of the motive (supplied by his
previously formed character) which leads him to desire so to fix it,
I reply that no experience of which I am conscious is more real
to me, than that if I did not make an effort to keep my attention
fixed, the desire alone would fail to do it. I am further conscious
that a great deal more is " taken out of me " (to use an expressive
colloquialism) by the prolongation of such a struggle, than by a
far larger measure of undistracted mental action. And I ask,
"Why, on the automatist theory, should this be?" — To myself
it seems clear that it is in the control he thus acquires over the
automatism of his nature, that Man's //r^^i?/;/ of choice essentially
consists ; whilst, on the other hand, it is in virtue of his want of
power to gain a complete control, that \\\s freedom is limited.

This view seems to me to find its strongest support in the
experience of those who have been most largely and most success-
fully engaged in the education of the young. For, as I have had
abundant opportunities of learning, they watch for the dawn of
this power of retiection and deliberation in the child, endeavour
to strengthen his feeble resolution by judicious encouragement,
lead him to reflect upon the consequences of his misdoing to
himself or to others, and give additional force to his sense of
duty by earnest appeals to it, so as to sustain him in a conflict to
which he is as yet unequal if left to himself; but at the same time
they make him feel that he must not always expect such help, and
that it rests with himself, by habitually fixing his attention upon
what his reason and his moral sense tell him he ought to do, to
be able to will to do it against his inclination.

No experience is so remarkable in its bearing on this question,
as that of the philanthropic men and women who have taken the
largest and most efiicient share in the work of juvenile reforma-
tion. For they have to deal with a class of boys and girls, who
have grown up to a most unmanageable age, in habits of entire

300 NATURE AND MAN.

unrestrainedness of thought and feeling, and in no more re-
strainedness of action than has been imposed on them by external
coercion or by fear of punishment. These young " reprobates "
have not the least idea of self-control, or of doing anything else
than that which their inclinations prompt ; their notions of " right "
are all based upon limited self-interest ; and they hold everything
to be " wrong " which interferes with what they conceive to be
their own "rights." Now the first lesson that has to be taught
them is that of obedience to discipline, for which punishment has
often to be used as a motive. But in proportion as the habit of
self-cox\\xo\ is acquired, appeals to the better nature come to have
a force superior to that of mere coercion : and the greatest success
is attained when that controlling power is spontaneously exerted
under the direction of the ought or ought not. So, in the cultiva-
tion of the dormant moral sense, the first teaching goes to show
that what the pupil considers his [or her] " rights " are some one
else's " wrongs ; " and the golden rule is enforced by the practical
applications which are found most suitable to impress it on each
individual nature. Thus a foundation is laid for the development
of that higher moral sense, on which the principle of religious
obligation is most securely based. But the result of the most
successful eff"ort in this direction is only considered to have been
attained, when the subject of it has been awakened to a full con-
sciousness of possessing a power within himself to resist temptation
and to act as duty directs ; which power it rests with himself to
exert, and for the non-exercise of which he is responsible.*

Of course it will be replied by the automatist, that all such
"training" is part of the external influences which go to the
formation of the character; and that its efficacy depends upon
the degree in which the sense of duty can be thus developed by
judicious culture into efficient predominance. But I affirm it to
be a matter of notorious experience, that it is the reiteration of
the assurance that the child or juvenile ofi"ender can govern his
temper, if he will try hard enough ; that he can overcome a
difficulty, if he will summon courage to make a vigorous eff'ort ;
that he can choose and act upon the right, in spite of strong

* My information on this subject is mainly derived from my sister, Mary
Carpenter ; than whom no one can speak with a greater weight of authority.

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 301

temptation to do wrong, by deiermiiiately keeping before his mind
the motives and sanctions of duty, — which constitutes the most
effectual means of calling fordi that power of "self-control,"
which the most enlightened writers of antiquity, and the most
successful of modern educators, concur in regarding as the most
valuable result alike of moral and of intellectual discipline. —
To the consistent Automatist, who denies the existence in the
Ego of any self-determining power, and who puts his whole trust
in the motives brought to bear from without, it seems to me
that the word try can really have no more meaning than the
word choice.

2. That the self-consciousness of freedom involved in the
very idea of choice is not illusory, is further indicated by the uni-
versal existence of a moral consciousness absolutely inconsistent
with the notion of automatism. The conception of freedom, as
Mr. Sidgwick remarks {op. cit. p. 50), "is, so to say, the pivot
"upon which our moral sentiments naturally play." Our feelings
of approval and disapproval in regard to human conduct, are of
an order quite different from those we entertain in regard to any
kind of mechanical action. I have no moral approbation for a
chronometer whose perfect time-keeping gives the true place of
a ship at sea, or the true longitude of a transit-station ; such as I
have for the maker of that chronometer, whom I know to have
put forth his utmost skill in its construction, careless of advantage
to himself, but thinking only of the human lives he helps to save,
or the accuracy of the scientific researches in which he thus bears
an honourable part. Nor have I any moral disapproval for a
watch whose stopping or bad-going causes me to incur serious
detriment by missing a railway-train ; such as I have for the work-
man whose carelessness in putting that watch together proves to
be the occasion of my misfortune. Yet, upon the automatist
theory, neither of these human agents could help doing exactly
what he did ; and I am therefore alike unreasonable in blaming
the man who has caused me injury, and in commending the man
who has done good service. So, again, our feelings, in regard
to the actions of brutes, or of human beings whose brute con-
dition seems to justify us in considering them as Automata, are

302 NATURE AND MAN.

very different from those with which we view the like actions of
men whom we regard as possessing a self-regulating power.* We
should never think of blaming a wasp for stinging us, or a poisonous
snake for biting us ; neither do we esteem a bee deserving of credit
for its industry in laying up honey for our use, or deem the silk-
worai an object of gratitude for the toilsome ingenuity with which
it spins the cocoon whose thread furnishes the material of our
most beautiful fabrics ; — each of these creatures doing that which
it is its "nature" to do, and having no power to do otherwise.
We make the like allowance for young children, or even for
" children of a larger growth," in whom the moral sense and
the power of self-control have not yet been developed ; as we do
also for the insane, who are either deficient in the power of
self-direction, or whose will is overborne by some uncontroll-
able impulse. We hold them " not responsible " for any injury
they may do us ; and justify the discipline to which we subject
them, as alike needful for the welfare of society at large, and likely
to be beneficial to themselves. But we view in a very different
light the acts of simple recklessness, still more those of deliberate
selfishness, and yet more again those of treacherous and unmanly
brutality, that are committed by men who knowing better have
preferred the worse ; acting on the suggestions of slothful folly, or
the cool calculations of self-interest, or the fierce impulses of
malignant passion, without regard to the sufferings which their
misdeeds may bring upon others.

When, for example, a man throws down stones from a house-
top without looking to see who is below, or fires a pistol in a
crowded thoroughfare without care as to who may be in the line
of the bullet, not only does the law regard him as fully " respon-
sible " for any injury that may be caused by his act (holding him
guilty of murder if death ensues), but public feeling sanctions

* See the " Psychologic Naturelle " of M. Prosper Despine ; in which the
mental mechanism of crime is studied from nature, under the guidance of views
as to the relation betv/cen the automatism of Man's nature and the controlling
power of the will, which essentially correspond with those set forth in the
present work. A large proportion of criminal offenders, according to M.
Despine, are so devoid of moral sense, that they must be accounted "moral
jdiots ; " and in many more, that sense is temporarily overborne by a passion
which the subject of it has never been trained to control.

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 303

the infliction of severe punishment, although he had not intended
to do harm to any one ; and this because he could have helped
doing what he did, and must have wilfully shut his eyes to its
possible or probable consequences. — So, when a man deliberately
plans to blow up a house or a ship, at the sacrifice of scores or
(it may be) of hundreds of human lives, for the sake of gaining
a few scores or hundreds of pounds by a fraudulent policy of
insurance, the primary instincts of humanity would protest
against his being punished with a view merely to the prevention
of similar crimes and to his own reformation, and every one
feels that he "richly deserves" the heaviest penalty of the law.*
And we have no terms of reprobation strong enough for the
cowardly ferocity of a Nana Sahib ; who gratified his hatred of
the British to whom he had previously professed to be a friend,
by the brutal murder of the defenceless women and children
who had trusted themselves to his protection; and who, if he
had been taken "red-hand," would assuredly have been deemed
by the world in general a fitting object of "retributive justice."

But, as has been pithily remarked, if vice and virtue are pro-
ducts like sugar and vitriol, the laws of whose production science
may be expected to discover, "it will be as irrational to feel indigna-
" tion at base and cowardly actions, as it would be to feel angry
"about the chemical affinities." And the like may be said of the
irrationality, on the automatist hypothesis, of the moral approval
we feel for acts of noble self-sacrifice ; — such as that of the steers-
man of the burning ship, who held his place at the wheel, so as to
run the ship towards shore, though the fire beneath was roasting
the soles of his feet ; — or that of the handful of brave men who
blew open the gate of Delhi, the stronghold of the Indian mutineers,
in the face of what seemed certain annihilation ; — or that of the six
hundred soldiers who kept their stations on the deck of the sinking
Birkenhead, while the women and children were being lowered
into the boats. Could we entertain that feeling, if we really
believed the men whose deeds and sufferings we hold among our
most precious memories, to be nothing more than well-regulated

* I here allude not merely to the recent Bremerhaven explosion, but to a
case in which the blowing up of a pile of building that contained two hundred
people, was attempted in Glasgow, fortunately without success, when I was
studying in Edinburgh about forty years since.

304 NATURE AND MAN.

machines ? One of the most admirable sayings of Fred. W.
Robertson has always seemed to me to be his reply to the
remonstrance addressed to him by one of his churchwardens, as
to the displeasing effect of the outspokenness of his preaching
upon some of the principal supporters of his church. " I don't
" care," he said ; meaning, of course, " I must preach as my own
"sense of duty prompts me." — "You know what 'don't care'
" came to? " said the remonstrator. — " Yes, sir," replied Robertson,
" it came to Calvary." That the sympathetic thrill which every
true Christian disciple must feel when he realizes the full force of
these pregnant words, is the illusion of an unenlightened nature,
which the revelations of science will dispel by proving their utterer
to have been an automaton whose choice between duty and self-
interest was determined solely by " circumstances," may be the
conclusion of the unimpassioned closet-philosopher; but the ex-
perience of all who, like Robertson, make the sublimest of all acts
of self-sacrifice the rule and guide of their own lives, recognizes in
such sacrifice a moral power far transcending in probative value
any logical deduction of the intellect.

3. I find the embodiment of that moral consciousness in all
language and literature ; for whatever may be the judgment of
ethical philosophers as to the nature and source of the fundamental
distinction between right and wrong, and whatever may be the
direction given to that notion by the No/aos by which the judgment
of each individual is shaped as to what is right and what is wrong,
the sense in which these terms are universally accepted is
based on the idea of a ^-^//-determining capability to do the right
and to ai'oid the wrong.* This seems to me perfectly clear, when

* It is not a little instructive to find the moral intuitions of men like
Professor Clifford rising up to assert themselves against their philosophy. In
his lecture on "Right and Wrong" (^Fortnightly Review, December, 1875),
it is distinctly affirmed not only that there is a moral sense or conscience,
which is "the whole aggregate of our feelings about right or wrong, regarded
" as tending to make us do the right actions and avoid the wrong ones," but,
that there are feelings of moral approval and disapproval which imply " choice ; "
that " a particular motive is made to prevail by the fixing the attention upon
" that class of remembered things which calls up the motive," and that in so
far as this act of directing the attention is voluntary, "I am responsible because
"I made the choice ;" and that "within certain limits I am responsible for
" what I am now, because within certain limits I have made myself." In all

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 305

we compare this acceptation with the sense we attach to the very
same words when appUed (figuratively) to a piece of pure mechan-
ism. If I say that my watch goes " right," I do not assign to il
any moral credit, but merely mean that it keeps time well. And
if I say that it goes " wrong," I do not speak of it as an object of
blame, but merely mean that it wants regulating.

If the " wrong " movement of the self-acting points of a railway
gives such a direction to the train which passes over them as
causes a terrible sacrifice of life, we do not imply by our use of
the word the moral criminality with which we charge a pointsman
whose drunken carelessness has brought about a similar calamity.
The machine could not help acting as it did; we assume that the
pointsman could. If the machine proves to have been ill-con-
structed, or to have got out of order by neglect, we blame the man
whom we believe to have been in fault ; but if its working was
deranged by a snow-storm of unprecedented violence, we cannot
say that any one is chargeable with moral " wrong." So, if the
pointsman can excuse himself by showing that he had been on duty
for eight-and-forty hours continuously, and did not know what he
was about, we shift the blame on the directors who wrongly over-
taxed his brain ; whilst, if it turns out that his inattention was due,
neither to drunkenness nor to over-fatigue, but to sudden illness,
we cannot say that any one was in fault. But, on the automatist
theory, the pointsman could no more help getting drunk, than,
when drunk, he could help neglecting his work ; and the railway-
directors could no more help keeping the pointsman on duty for
forty-eight hours, than he could help the bewilderment which was
caused by this overstrain of his power. And, neither the drunken
pointsman nor the reckless directors were any more morally
responsible for the loss of life, in the one case, than were the self-
acting points in the other: each being a machine whose movements
were determined by the law of its construction and the conditions
in which it was placed ; and the term "wrong," as applied to the
action of the man, having no other meaning than it has when

this he seems to me implicitly to recognize that direction of bodily action by the
mind of the Ego, which in his previous lecture he distinctly denied {.ante, p. 290) ;
and, whilst still upholding the principle of uniformity of sequence, to surrender
all that essentially constitutes automatism.

3o6 NATURE AND MAN.

applied to the working of the self-acting points. — The moral con-
sciousness of mankind protests against such an identification.

So, again, I am unable to attach any definite import to such

words as eyKpareta, crwippocrvvr], continentia, ox te/npet'anda, — to see

any meaning in the ancient proverb that " he that is slow to anger

" is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he

"that taketh a city," — or to feel any admiration for the hero who

" has gained that greatest of all victories, the victory over himself,"

if the course of action results from no other agency than either

physical or mental automatism, and no independent power be put

forth by the Ego in determining it. And if I felt obliged to accept

that doctrine as scientific truth, I should look to its honest and

consistent application to the training of the young as the greatest

of social calamities. For I can imagine nothing more paralyzing

to every virtuous effort, more withering to every noble aspiration,

than that our children should be brought up in the behef that their

characters are entirely formed for them by " heredity " and

" environments ; " that they tnust do whatever their respective

characters impel them to do ; that they have no other power of

resisting temptations to evil, than such as may spontaneously arise

from the knowledge they have acquired of what they ought or

ought not to do ; that if this motive proves too weak, they can do

nothing of themselves to intensify and strengthen it ; that the notion

of "summoning their resolution," or "bracing themselves for the

conflict," is altogether a delusion ; that, in fine, they are in the

•position of a man who is floating down-stream in a boat without

oars, towards a dangerous cataract, and can only be rescued by

the interposition of some Deus ex mac/iind. — How the perception

of this, as the logical outcome of the doctrine of automatism,

weighed " like an incubus " upon the spirit of John Stuart Mill,

when he first fully awoke to it, he has himself told us in his

Autobiography (p. 169). " I felt," he says, " as if I was scientifically

" proved to be the helpless slave of antecedent circumstances ; as

"if my character and that of all others had been formed for us by

" agencies beyond our control, and was wholly out of our own

" power." And it is not a little curious that, while continumg to

advocate as scientific truth the determination of human conduct

by the formed character of each individual, and while excluding

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 307

any interference, at the tinal stage, with the strict sequence of
cause and effect, he impUcitly admitted the independence or
unconditioned agency of the Ego in the formation of his character.
" I saw," he says, " that though our character is formed bycircum-
" stances, our own desire can do much to shape those circum-
" stances ; and that what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the
" doctrine of free-will, is the conviction that ive have real ponier over
" the formation of our own character ; that our will, by influencing
" some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits and
"capacities of willing." I can attach no other meaning to this
remarkable passage (the teaching of which is more fully developed
in chap. i. of Book VI. of the "System of Logic"), than that it
recognizes a factor in the formation of our characters, which is
something else than *' heredity //z/x environments." For I can
scarcely suppose J. S. Mill not to have seen that if a man's desires
are themselves the results of antecedent " circumstances," the
incubus of hopeless slavery to those circumstances can no more
be removed by any desires for self-improvement which ex hypothesi
arise out of them, than a weight which bears down on a man's
shoulders can be lifted off by its own pressure. And any one who
reads in De Quincey's "Confessions" the graphic narrative of his
miserable experiences from the abuse of opium, will see how
ineffectual are the strongest desires, without the will to carry them
into effect.

4. It may be confidently stated as a result of universal ex-
perience, that our "capacity of willing," that is, of giving a
preponderance to the motive on which we elect to act, depends,
first, upon our conviction that we really have such a self-deter-
mining power, and, secondly, upon our habitual exercise of it.
The case, which is unfortunately but too common, of a man who
habitually gives way to the desire for alcoholic excitement, and
is ruining himself and his family by his self-abandonment, will
bring into distinct view the practical bearing of the antagonistic
doctrines.

The automatism of his nature (purely physical so far as the
bodily craving for alcohol is concerned, but including, in most
cases, some play of social instincts) furnishes an aggregate of
14

3o8 NATURE AND MAN.

powerful attractions to the present gratification. On the other
side is an aggregate of moral deterrents, which, when the atten-
tion is fixed upon them in the absence of the attractive object,
have a decided preponderance, so far as the desires are concerned.
The slave of intemperance is often ready to cry out, " O wretched
"man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this
" death ? " — and he proves his sincerity by his readiness to take
every indirect precaution that does not interfere with his personal
liberty. But when the temptation recurs, the force of the attrac-
tion is intensified by its actual presence ; the direct sensory
presentation makes a more vivid impression than the ideal repre-
sentation of the deterrent motives ; and the balance, which
previously turned against the indulgence, now preponderates in
favour of it. What, then, is it within the power of the Ego to
do? On the automatist theory, nothitig. For not only is he
unable to call to his aid any motive which does not spontaneously
arise, but he cannot make any alteration in the relative strength
of the motives which are actually present to his consciousness.
He says, to himself and to others, " I could not help yielding ; "
and automatism sanctions the plea. Society may be justified in
imposing on him either restraint or punishment, alike for its own
security and for his welfare ; but no consistent automatist can
regard him as an object of the ?noral reprobation which we in-
stinctively feel for the self-degraded sot ; and experience shows
that the system of external repression almost invariably loses its
potency as a deterrent, as soon as the restraining influence is
withdrawn.

Now, although I hold it beyond question that a state may be
induced by habitual alcoholic indulgence, in which the unhappy
subject of it loses all power of resistance, I affirm it to be
" the normal experience of healthy men," that the ordinary
toper has such a power in the earlier stages of his decadence,
and that he is justly held culpable for not exerting it. This power
is exercised in the determinate fixation of the Ego's attention on
the deterrent motives which he knows oitght to prevail, and in the
determinate withdrawal of his mental vision from the attraction
which he knows ought not to prevail ; so that the intensification
of the former, and the weakening of the latter give to the claims

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 309

of duty a preponderating force in the regulation of the conduct.
The deliverance of the universal experience of mankind upon
this point, seems to me to take a rank equal to that of our
common-sense decision in regard to the reality of an external
world. And it is confirmed by the superior efficacy of our
appeal to the better nature of the individual we are endeavouring
to rescue, when this is backed by the assurance that he has the
power of escape from the enslavement which he feels to be
gradually closing in upon him, if he will but resolutely exert it.
We say to him : — " You can conquer, if you will. And it rests
" with yourself to will. You have every possible motive of the
" highest kind on the one side, and nothing but the attraction of
" a selfish indulgence on the other. Be a man, and not a beast.
" Exert the power which you know and feel yourself to possess ;
" keep your thoughts and affections steadily fixed upon the right ;
" avoid the first step in the downward path ; and when the
"moment of unexpected temptation comes, make a vigorous
" effort, determine to succeed, and you will come off victorious.
" And when you have once done so, you will feel a more assured
" conviction that you can do so again ; each victory will make the
"next easier to you; and, by steady perseverance, you will re-
" acquire that power of self direction which will enable you to
"keep straight without an effort." — I appeal to the experience of
such as have had to deal with these sad cases, whether this is not
the more effective method.

Whatever allowances Society may be ready to make for indi-
vidual cases — such, for instance, as that of Hartley Coleridge,
who was the victim of a strong hereditary predisposition, accom-
panied by a constitutional weakness of will, — it recognizes as a
fixed conviction, and consistently acts upon that conviction, that
the incipient drunkard has a power over himself; that he can not
only abstain if he chooses, but that he ca?i choose to abstain because
he knows that he oir^ht to do so ; and that when, by voluntarily
giving way to his propensity, he brings himself into a condition
in which he is no more responsible for his actions than a lunatic,
he is not thereby exempted from the penalty that may attach to
them, but must be held responsible for having knowingly and
deliberately brought himself into the condition of irresponsibility.

3IO NATURE AND MAN.

On the automatist theory, a drunkard who deserts a comfortable
home for the tap-room (I make large allowance for those who
have //^comfortable homes), who neglects an attached wife and
loving children for the society of profligates, and who, with ample
means of higher enjoyment, surrenders himself without a struggle
to the allurement of sensual pleasure, and at last renders himself
amenable to the law by fatal outrage on the patient wife who has
long borne with his brutality, is no more a subject of moral repro-
bation than poor Hartley Coleridge ; who, when he strayed from
the loving care of his friends, would be found in the parlour of
some rural public-house, delighting the rustics with his wonderfid
stories, and indulging to his heart's content in the unlimited beer
which the publican was only too glad to allow him. When, on
the other hand, the subject of a strong hereditary alcoholic craving
maintains a daily conflict with his tempter, uses every means he
can think of to avoid or weaken its seductions, puts forth all his
energy in resisting them, and, through occasional failures, comes
off on the whole victorious, the consistent automatist can have
no other approbation to bestow upon him, than that which he
would accord to a self-governing steam-engine or a compensation-
balance watch.

5. Further, the existence of the ideas cuiTently attached to
the words duty and responsibility, is an evidence of the acceptance
by Mankind at large, of the belief that every normally-constituted
individual has a power of choice and se/f-reguIation,~^^ oughi"
necessarily implying "can." And this evidence is not invalidated
by the discrepancy which must always exist between legal and
moral responsibility. For the law, looking mainly to the pro-
tection of society, necessarily deals rather with acts than with
motives ; and punishments must often be inflicted with a de-
terrent view, which we may not regard the criminal as having
morally deserved.

Thus, in the rescue of the Fenian conspirators at Manchester,
the men who made the attack on the prison-van which involved
the death of police-sergeant Brett, were doubtless animated by
what they deemed noble and patriotic motives. They had no
ill-will towards Brett individually; but, as the Judge laid it down

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 311

in his charge to the Grand Jury, they were all guilty of murder,
as being concerned in the common design of using dangerous
violence towards any police who might resist their efforts in
procuring the rescue of the prisoners. The man Allen, who
fired the fatal shot, seems to have done so in the full knowledge
that the sacrifice of his own life would be the consequence : —
'• I will free you, Colonel," he is reported to have said, " if I swing
" for it." If the same thing had been done to rescue an escaped
slave, or to retake a ship captured by pirates or mutineers, or
by an enemy in war, it would have been accounted a glorious
act of heroism. But it can scarcely be doubted that the in-
fliction of capital punishment on the ringleaders in this outrage
was necessary to maintain tlie supremacy of law and order. —
The same may be said of the execution of Orsini for his attempt
on the life of the Emperor Louis Napoleon. Orsini, it is now
well known, was simply the instrument of the Carbonari Society
to which the Emperor had belonged in the earlier part of his
life, for inflicting the condign punishment decreed by its laws,
as the penalty incurred by any of its members who failed to
do everything in his power for the liberation of Italy. The
Emperor, having been formally tried and condemned for his
inaction, was decreed worthy of death, according to the oath
which he had himself taken ; and lots were cast to select the
individual who should be charged with the execution of the
sentence. The lot fell upon Orsini, who was summoned from
Birmingham for the purpose; and the summons was one (as
he hinted to his friends there) which he felt that he must obey,
though at the risk of iiis own life. It is clear that the Emperor
felt no personal ill-will against him, and regarded his execution
as a political necessity; the publication in the Moniteur of the
will in which Orsini bequeathed to the Emperor the liberation of
Italy and the charge of his children, being understood at the time
by well-informed politicians as an acceptance, on the Emperor's
part, of both legacies, of which acceptance the liberation of Italy
has been the direct or indirect consequence. It is difficult to
see in what respect Orsini's act of self-sacrifice, under what we
may deem a mistaken sense of duty, was less noble than that
of other patriots whom the world holds in honour

312 NATURE AND MAN.

Omniscience alone can rightly assign the moral responsibility
of each individual for his several acts ; the degree of that respon-
sibility being determined (as in the cases cited under the last
head) by the proportion which his will or self-regulating power
bears to the strength of the dominant motives by which he is
urged in each case. This ratio, as already shown, will be a
" general resultant " of the whole previous course of life ; every
exercise of the will increasing its vigour and controlling efficiency,
while every weak concession to a dominant passion tends to make
the individual its slave. And thus a man (or woman) may come
at last so far to have lost the power of self-conlrol, as to be unable
to resist a temptation to what is known to be wrong, and to be
therefore morally irresponsible for the particular act ; but such an
individual, like the drunkard in the commission of violence, is
responsible for his irresponsibility, because he has wilfully abnegated
his power of self-control, by habitually yielding to temptations
which he knows that he ought to have resisted.

The moral judgments which tve form of the actions of other
men, are necessarily as imperfect as our predictions of their con-
duct ; since no one can fully estimate the relative potency of
heredity and environments, on the one side, and of the sense of
duty and capacity of willing, on the other : and the consciousness
of our own weakness in resisting the temptations which we feel
most attractive to ourselves, should lead us to make large allow-
ance for the frailties and shortcomings of others. There are too
many, who, as old Butler pithily said —

*' Compound for sins they are inclined to,
" By damning those they have no mind to."

Kindly allowance for the offender (" considering thyself, lest thou
" also be tempted ") is perfectly consistent with reprobation of
the offence. And thus the "charity" which " beareth all things,
" believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things,"
is in strict accordance with the results of psychological inquiry
into the influences which form the character and determine the
relative potency of motives.

It seems to me (as to Mr. Sidgwick, op. cit., p. 50) quite
clear that on the automatist or determinist theory, such words as
"ought," "duty," "responsibility," have to be used, if used at

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 313

all, in new significations. The welfare of that aggregate of auto-
mata which we call society, may require that every individual
automaton shall be prevented from doing what is injurious to it ;
and punishment for offences actually committed may be reason-
ably inflicted as a deterrent from the repetition of such offences
by the individual or by others. But if the individual has ifi
Imnsdf no power eidier to do the right or to avoid the wrong,
and if the potency of that aggregate of feelings about actions as
being "right or wrong" which is termed conscience, entirely
depends upon " circumstances " over which he neither has, nor
ever has had any control, I fail to see in what other sense he
should be held "responsible" for doing what he knows that
he " ought not" to have done, or for doing what he knows that he
"ought" to have done, than a steam-engine, which breaks away
from its "governor" in consequence of a sudden increase of
steam-pressure, or which comes to a stop through the bursting
of its steam-pipe, can be accounted responsible for the damage
thence arising.

The idea of " responsibility," on the other hand, which is
entertained by mankind at large, rests upon the assumption, not
only that each Ego has a conscience which recognizes a distinc-
tion between right and wrong, and which (according to the train-
ing it has received) decides zvhat is right and what is wrong in
each individual case, but also that he has a volitional power
which enables him to intensify his sense of " duty " by fixing his
attention upon it, and thus gives it a potency in determining his
conduct which it might not have otherwise possessed. That this
power is a part of the Ego's " formed character," and that it can
only be exerted within certain limits, is fully admitted on the
doctrine I advocate ; but the responsibility of the Ego is shifted
backwards to the share he has had in the formation of his cha-
racter and in the determination of those limits. And here, again,
the results of scientific investigation are in complete harmony
with the precepts of the greatest of all religious teachers. For
no one can study these with care, without perceiving that Jesus
and Paul addressed themselves rather to the formation of the
character than to the laying down rules for conduct ; that they
endeavoured rather to cultivate the dispositions which should

314 NATURE AND MAN.

lead to right action, than to fix rigid lines of duty, the enforce-
ment of which under other circumstances might be not only
unsuitable but actually mischievous ; and that they not only most
fully recognized the power of each individual to direct the habitual
course of his thoughts, to cherish his nobler affections, and to
repress his sensual inclinations, but made the possession of that
power the basis of the entire system of Christian morality.

That system has been found to harmonize with the experience
of the best and wisest of our race ; which has proved its capa-
bility of strengthening every virtuous effort, of giving force to
every noble aspiration, of aiding the resistance to the allurements
of self-interest, and of keeping at bay the stronger temptations of
vicious indulgence. The tendency of the automatist philosophy,
on the other hand, which represents man as nothing but "a part
" of the great series of causes and effects, which, in unbroken
"continuity, composes that which is, and has been, and shall be
" — the sum of existence," * seems to me to be no less certainly
towards the discouragement of all determinate effort, either for
individual self-improvement, or for the general welfare of the race.
For though it fully recognizes, as factors in human action, the
most elevated as well as the most degraded classes of motives,
and gives all the encouragement to the culture of the one and to
the repression of the other that faith in the uniformity of causa-
tion can afford, yet by refusing to the Ego any capability of /itm-
self modifying the potency of those factors, it dries up the source
of that sense of independence which springs from the conviction
that man's "volition counts for something as a condition in the
"course of events," and leaves him a mere instrument in the
hands of an inexorable fate.

To myself it seems as if nothing was wanting either in my
own self-consciousness, or in what I know of the conscious
experiences of other men, to establish the existence of the " self-
" determining power " for which I contend. I cannot conceive
of any kind of evidence of its existence more cogent than that
which I already possess. And feeling assured that the sources of
my belief in it lie deep down in the nature of every normally-
constituted human being, I cannot anticipate the time when that

* Prof. Huxley in Fortnightly Revi'.w, Nov., 1S74, p. 577.

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 315

belief will be eliminated from the thought of mankind ; when the
words " ought," " duty," " responsibility," " choice," " self-
control," and the like, will cease to have the meaning we at
present attach to them; — and when we shall really treat each
other as automata who cannot help doing whatever our "here-
dity " and " environments " necessitate.

3i6 NATURE AND MAN.

XI.

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS.

^Nineteenth Century, April, i8So.]

When, in June 1871, I placed before Mr. Goschen, then First
Lord of the Admiralty, the scheme I had formed for a Scientific
Circumnavigation Expedition, I stated as its general object " the
" extension to the three great oceanic areas — the Atlantic, the
" Indian and Southern, and the Pacific— of the physical and
'' biological exploration of the Deep Sea, which has been ten-
"tatively prosecuted by my colleagues and myself, during a few
" months of each of the last three years, on the eastern margin of
" the North Atlantic, and in the neighbouring portion of the
" Mediterranean." Those researches had been regarded by the
scientific public — not of this country only, but of the whole
civilized world — as of extraordinary interest ; not only for the new
facts that they had brought into view and the old fallacies which
they had exploded, but for the new ideas they had introduced
into various departments of scientific thought. And I felt myself
justified in expressing the confident belief '* that the wider exten-
' sion and systematic prosecution of them will be fruitful in such
'a rich harvest of discovery as has been rarely reaped in any
' scientific inquiry."

The " Challenger Expedition," thus originated, was fitted out
in the most complete manner, everything being done which skill
and experience could suggest to make it a complete success. A
ship was selected whose size and construction rendered her

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 317

peculiarly suitable for the work ; she was placed under the com-
mand of Captain (now Sir George) Nares, than whom no more
highly qualified head could have been chosen. In the work of
the ship he had the zealous co-operation of a selected staff of
naval officers, whilst for the direction of the scientific work the
expedition had the advantage of the services of Professor (now
Sir) Wyville Thomson, with five assistants, each of whom had
already shown special proficiency in the particular department
committed to his charge.

The expedition left Sheerness on the 7th of December, 1872,
and returned to Spithead on the 24th of May, 1876 ; having
altogether traversed a distance of nearly seventy thousand nautical
miles or (nearly four times the earth's equatorial circumference),
and having, at intervals as nearly uniform as possible, established
362 observing stations along the course traversed. This course
was, for various reasons, anything but a direct one. ' In the first
year the Atlantic was crossed and recrossed three times each
way; and a diversion was made from Bermuda to Halifax, and
back again, for the special purpose of examining the phenomena
of the Gulf Stream. This first part of the voyage terminated at
the Cape of Good Hope, from which a fresh start was made for
Kerguelen's Land, on which Captain Nares was directed to report
in regard to the sites most suitable for the observation of the
approaching transit of Venus. Thence the Challenger proceeded
due south towards the antarctic ice-barrier : and, after making the
desired observations along its margin, she proceeded to Mel-
bourne, Sydney, and New Zealand. The next portion of her
voyage was devoted to an examination of the western part of the
great Pacific area, with a diversion into the adjacent part of the
Malay Archipelago ; and it was when proceeding almost due
north from New Guinea to Japan that her deepest sounding (the
deepest trusitvorthy sounding yet made) of 4,475 fathoms —
26,850 feet, or more than_/?7'(? miles — was obtained. From Japan
her course was shaped almost due east, kcejMng near the parallel
of 38° north as far as the meridian of the Sandwich Islands, so
as to traverse about two-thirds of the North Pacific ; and then,
taking a southern direction, she proceeded first to that group,
and thence across the equator to Tahiti, thus making a north

3i8 NATURE AND MAN.

and south course through the tropical Pacific. From Tahiti she
proceeded south-east towards Cape Horn, with a detour to Val-
paraiso ; and after passing through the Straits of Magellan, touch-
ing at the Falkland Islands, and putting in at Monte Video, she
proceeded eastward halfway across the South Atlantic, to com-
plete the east and west section partly taken in the first year of
the voyage on the parallel of the Cape. Changing her course to
the north, she ran a north and south line as far as the equator,
in the meridian of Madeira ; and then, turning north-west, and
keeping at some distance from the African coast, got into the
middle line of the North Atlantic, which she followed past the
Azores ; after which she bore up for home.

At each of the observing stations a sounding was taken for
the determination of the exact depth ; the bottom-temperature was
accurately ascertained ; a sample of bottom-water was obtained
for chemicai and physical examination ; and a sample of the
bottom itself was brought up, averaging from one ounce to one
pound in weight. At most of the stations, serial temperatures
also were taken ; i.e. the temperature of the waters at several
different depths between the surface and the bottom was deter-
mined, so as to enable " sections " to be constructed, giving what
may be called the thermal stratification of the entire mass of
ocean-water along the different lines traversed during the voyage,
and samples of sea-water were also obtained from different depths.
At most of the stations a fair sample of the bottom-fauna was
procured by means of the dredge or trawl : while the swimming
animals of the surface and of intermediate depths were captured
by the use of a "tow-net," adjusted to sweep through the waters
in any desired plane. And while the direction and rate of any
surface-current were everywhere determined by methods which
the skilful navigator can now use wath great precision, attempts
were made to determine the direction and rate of movement of the
water at different depths, wherever there was any special reason
for doing so. In addition to all this, which constituted the
proper work of the expedition, meteorological and magnetic
observations were also regularly taken and recorded.

The vast mass of accurate information, and of materials from
which accurate information may be obtained, which has thus been

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 319

collected in regard to the Physics of the Ocean, affords a body
of data for scientific discussion of which, when it shall have been
fully published, advantage will doubtless be eagerly taken by the
various inquirers into the different branches of this subject who
are at present anxiously waiting for it. And, in like manner, the
enormous collection of marine animals that has been most carefully
made along the whole of the Challenger's course, and at various
depths from the surface down to more than four miles — the
locality and depth from which every specimen was obtained
having been accurately recorded — attests the entire success of the
Biological portion of the Challenger's work. But here, again,
however great the amount of work done, much more remains to
do, in the " working up " of this most valuable material. It has
been distributed among Naturalists of the highest competence in
their respective departments, each of whom will report separately
upon his own subject. And only when all these separate reports
shall have been published, which cannot be for some years, will it
be possible to give a general resume of the zoological results of the
expedition. But in the study of the bottom-deposits more progress
has been made ; and Mr. Murray — one of the Challenger scientific
staff, who was specially charged with this department during the
voyage — has already arrived at some results of such remarkable
interest as fully to justify the belief I had expressed to Mr.
Goschen, " that the key to the interpretation of much of the past
" history of our globe is at present lying at the bottom of the sea,
"waiting only to be brought up."

I have been so often asked, " What has the Challenger expedi-
" tion done for science ? " that, notwithstanding what I have shown
to be the impossibility of at present giving more than a very
inadequate idea of the results of its work, I shall now endeavour
briefly to show what light these results have thrown on a few
general questions oi %xtdX interest; some of which were first opened
up in our previous deep-sea explorations, while on others not
apparently related to it the Challenger researches have been found
to cast an unexpected light.

The question which naturally takes the first place in order is
that of the depth and configuration of the Ocean basins, as to which
little had been previously learned with certainty, except in the

320 NATURE AND MAN.

case of the North Atlantic, Avhich had been carefully sounded
along certain lines with a view to the laying of telegraph cables.
The first systematic survey of this kind brought out a set of facts
which were then supposed to be exceptional, but which the sound-
ings of the Challenger, taken in connection with those of the
United States ship Tuscarora and the German Gazelle, have shown
to be general ; viz. (i) that the bottom smks very gradually from
the coast of Ireland, westward, for a hundred miles or more ; (2)
that then, not far beyond the hundred-fathom line, it falls so
rapidly that depths of from 1200 to 1500 fathoms are met
with at only a short distance further west; (3) that after a
further descent to a depth of more than 2000 fathoms, the
bottom becomes a slightly undulating plain, whose gradients
are so low as to show scarcely any perceptible alteration of
depth in a section in which the same scales are used for vertical
heights and horizontal distances ; * and (4) that on the American
side as on the British this plain is bordered by a very steep slope,
leading up quickly to a bottom not much exceeding 100
fathoms in depth, which shallows gradually to the coast-line of
America. Nothing seems to have struck the Challenger surveyors
more than the extraordinary yfrt-Zz/i^ji- (except in the neighbourhood
of land) of that depressed portion of the earth's crust which forms
the floor of the great oceanic area ; the result of one day's
sounding enabling a tolerably safe guess to be formed as to the
depth to be encountered on the following day ; and thus, if the
bottom of the mid-ocean were laid dry, an observer standing on
any spot of it would find himself surrounded by a plain only com-
parable to that of the North American prairies or the South
American pampas.

Thus our notions of the so-called " ocean basins " are found
to require considerable modification ; and it becomes obvious
that, putting aside the oceanic islands which rise from the bottom
of the sea, as mountain-peaks and ridges rise ficm the general
surface of the land, the proper oceanic area is a portion of the
crust of the earth which is depressed with tolerable uniformity
some thousands of feet below the land area, whilst the bands of

* Sections drawn (as usual) with a vertical scale enormously in excess of the
horizontal altogether misrepresent the real character of the oceanic sea-bed.

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 321

shallow bottom which usually border the existing coast-lines are
to be regarded as submerged portions of the adjacent land-
platforms. The form of the depressed area which lodges the
water of the deep ocean is rather, indeed, to be likened to that of
a flat waiter or tea-tray, surrounded by an elevated and steeply
sloping rim, than to that of the basin with which it is commonly
compared. And it further becomes obvious that the real border
of any oceanic area may be very different from the ostensible border
formed by the existing coast-line.

Of this difference between the shallow waters covering sub-
merged land, and the sea that fills the real ocean basins, we have
nowhere a more remarkable example than that which is presented
to us in the seas which girdle the British Islands. These are all
so shallow that their bed is undoubtedly to be regarded as a
continuation of the European continental platform, an eleva-
tion of the north-western corner of which, to the amount of
only 100 fathoms, would reunite Great Britain to Denmark,
Holland, Belgium, and France, and would bring it into con-
tinuity with Ireland, the Hebrides, and the Shetland and Orkney
Islands. Not only would the whole of the British Channel be
laid dry by such an elevation, but the whole of the North Sea
also, with the exception of a narrow deeper channel that lies
outside the fiords of Norway. Again, the coast-line of Ireland
would be extended seawards to about 100 miles west of Galway,
and that of the Western Hebrides to beyond St. Kilda ; but
a little further west, the sea-bed shows the abrupt depression
already spoken of as marking the commencement of the real
Atlantic area. A like rapid descent has been traced ontside the
hundred-fathom line in the Bay of Biscay (a considerable part of
which would be converted into dry land by an elevation of that
amount), and along the western coast of Spain and Portugal,
where, however, it takes place much nearer the existing land-
border. The soundings of the United States ship Tuscarora in
the North Pacific have shown that a like condition exists along
the western coast of North America ; a submerged portion of its
continental platform, covered by comparatively shallow water,
forming a belt of variable breadth outside the existing coast-line,
and the sea-bed then descending so rapidly as distinctly to mark

322 NATURE AND MAN.

the real border of the vast Pacific depression. And as similar
features present themseves elsewhere, it may be stated as a general
fact that the great continental platfo7'ms usually rise very abruptly
from the margins of the real oceanic depressed areas.

On the other hand, a depression of the existing land of northern
Europe to the same or even half that amount would cause very
extensive areas of what is now dry land to be overflowed by sea ;
the higher tracts and mountainous regions alone remaining as
representatives of the continental platform to which the sub-
merged portions equally belong. This, as every geologist knows,
has been, not once only, but many times, the former condition of
Europe ; and finds a singular parallelism in the present condition
of that great continental platform of which the peninsula and
islands of Malaya are the most elevated portions. For the Yellow
Sea, which forms the existing boundary of south-eastern Asia, is
everywhere so shallow that an elevation of loo fathoms would
convert it into land, while half that elevation would lay dry
many of the channels between the Malay Islands, so as to bring
them into continuity not only with each other but with the continent
of Asia. And Mr. Wallace's admirable researches on the zoology
of this region have shown that such continuity undoubtedly existed
at no remote period, its mammalian fauna being essentially Asiatic
On the other hand, a like elevation would bring Papua into land-
continuity with Australia ; with which, in like manner, the intimacy
of its zoological relations shows it to have been in former connec-
tion. The Indo-Malay province is separated from the Papuo-
Australian province by a strait which, though narrow, is so much
deeper than the channels which intervene between the separate
members of either group that it would still remain as a fissure of
considerable depth, even if the elevation of the two parts of the
great area it divides were sufficient to raise most of each into dry
land. And thus we may view the whole area extending from
south-eastern Asia to South Australia as a vast land-platform (partly
submerged), of which the great fissure that divides it into two dis-
tinct zoological provinces may be considered as corresponding with
the great break made by the Mediterranean in the continuity
between Europe and Africa, and that made by the Gulf of Mexico
and the Caribbean Sea in the continuity between North and

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 3^3

South America. There is generally a very marked contrast in
elevation between the slightly submerged portions of this land-
platform and the deep sea-floors in its neighbourhood, the descent
from the former to the latter being very abrupt.

Now these parts remarkably confirm the doctrine long since
propounded by the distinguished American geologist Professor
Dana, when reasoning out the probable succession of events
during the original consolidation of the earth's crust, and its sub-
sequent shrinkage upon the gradually contracting mass within —
that these elevated areas now forming the Continental platforms,
and the depressed areas that constitute the existing Ocean-floors
wej-e formed as such in the first instance, and have remained
unchanged in their general relations from that time to the
present, notwithstanding the vast disturbances that have been
produced in each by the progressive contraction of the earth's
crust. For this general contraction, coupled with the unequal
bearing of the different parts of the crust upon one another, has
been the chief agency in determining the evolution of the earth's
surface-features ; producing local upheavals and subsidences aUke
in the elevated and depressed areas ; so that lofty mountains and
deep troughs have been formed, with plications and contortions
of their component strata; metamorphism of various kinds has
been produced, and volcanic action, with earthquake phenomena
involving extensive dislocations of the crust, has been repeated
through successive geological periods, mostly along particular
lines or in special areas, without making any considerable altera-
tion in the position of the great Continent, or in the real borders
of the Oceanic areas, though the amount of the continental areas
that might be above water, and the position of their coast-lines,
might vary greatly from time to time.

This idea of the general permanence of what we used to call
the great " ocean basins " had, in fact, struck me forcibly, as
soon as the soundings of the Challenger and Tuscarora, in the
Pacific, enabled me to work out the enormous disproportion
between the mass of land above the sea-level and the volume of the
waters beneath it. At the end of our first {Lightning) cruise in
1868, my colleague, Professor Wyville Thomson, had pointed out
to me that there is no adequate reason for supposing that the

324 NATURE AND MAN.

present bed of the North Atlantic has ever been raised into dry
land since the termination of the Cretaceous epoch, which was
marked by the elevation of the chalk formations of Europe and
Asia on the one side, and of North America on the other, into
dry land ; and that the persistence of a considerable number of
cretaceous types in its marine fauna justifies the conclusion that
the deep sea-bed of this ocean has not undergone any essential
change of condition through the whole of the Tertiary period.
This conclusion I unhesitatingly indorsed; and though the an-
nouncement of it rather startled some of our geological Nestors,
it has come to be generally accepted by the younger generation
as by no means improbable. Subsequent reflection upon the
disproportion to which I have just referred, though from imperfect
data I at first z^^/^ffr-estimated it, disposed me to extend the ?ame
view to the ocean basins generally ; and happening at the same
time to become acquainted with the doctrines which had been
advanced by Professor Dana (then little known in this country),
I was strongly impressed by their accordance — this being the
more remarkable on account of the entire difference of the data
and lines of reasoning which led Professor Dana and myself to
the same conclusion.*

We are now able to form an estimate of the relative masses of
Land and Sea which is probably not far from the truth. The
area of the existing land is to that of the sea as about i to 2f , or
as 4 : ii; so that if the entire surface of the globe were divided
into fifteen equal parts, the land would occupy only four of these,
or rather more than a quarter, whilst the sea would cover eleven,
or rather less than three-quarters. But the average height of
the whole land of the globe above the sea-level certainly does
not exceed looo feet, that of Asia and Africa being some-
what above that amount, while that of America (North and
South), Europe, and Australia is considerably below it. On the
other hand, the average depth of the ocean-floors is now known to
be at least 2\ miles, and may be taken (for the convenience of
round number) at 13,000 feet. Thus the average depth of
the ocean being 13 times as much as the average height of the

* See my article "Atlantic," in the ninth edition of the Encyclopadia

Bntannica.

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 325

land, and the area of the sea 2f times that of the land, tJie total
volume of the ocean-water is {2% x it,) Jt^st 36 thnes that of the land
above the sea-level.

Now this disproportion appears to me to render it extremely
improbable tliat any such geological "see-saw" as may have pro-
duced successive alternations of land and water between the several
parts of the same continental platform can have ever produced
an exchange between any continental platform and an ocean-floor
such as was assumed by Sir Charles Lyell to have taken place
over and over again in geological time.* For even supposing all
the existing land of the globe to sink down to the sea-level, this
subsidence would be balanced by the elevation of only one thirty-
sixth part of the existing ocean-floor from its present average
depth to the same level. Or, again, let the great island-continent
of Australia (whose area is about one-seventeenth of the total
land-area of the globe) be supposed to subside to the depth of the
average sea-bed, so as to be altogether lost sight of not only by
the surface navigator but by the deep-sea surveyor, and a com-
pensatory elevation to take place in the existing land area, this,
if limited to an area of the size of Australia (which is about equal
to that of the whole of Europe), would raise it all to nearly the
height of Mont Blanc ; whilst, if spread over the entire land area
of the globe, // zvould ncai'ly double its present average elevation.

Now we have no reason whatever to believe that vertical
upheavals or subsidences have ever taken place over extensive
areas to anything like such amounts, which have their parallels
only in the elevation of lofty mountain chains, or in the comple-
mentary formation of deep troughs now filled by sedimentary
deposit originating in the degradation of the neighbouring land ;
which local disturbances (as Professor Dana has shown) have
been effected by the lateral or horizontal ihxnst engendered during
the shrinkage of the globe in cooling. Moreover, the contours of
the oceanic area, so far as they have been yet determined by the
Challenger and other soundings, give no sanction whatever to
the notion of the existence of any submerged continental platform.
On the contrary, the Challenger observations enable it to be
affirmed with high probability that the islands which are met
* See chap. xii. of his Prittciples of Geology.

3^6 NATURE AND MAN.

with in the real oceanic area (as distinguished from those which,
like the British Isles, are really outlying parts of the slightly
sunken corner of the platform which rises into continental land in
their vicinity; or which, like the great islands of the Malayan
Archipelago, are the " survivals " of a continental platform more
deeply submerged) are all of Volcanic origin, having been pro-
jected upwards from beneath, instead of having gone down from
above. This may be stated with confidence in regard to all those
which consist of inorganic rocks ; and since it is equally true of
those coral islands whose rock basis shows itself above the surface,
the same maybe fairly presumed in regard to the submerged peaks
on which those "atolls" rest, above whose level platforms no
rocky base now rises. These volcanic vents are generally found
on upward bulgings of median portions of the depressed ocean-
floors ; whilst, on the other hand, the volcanoes which rise from
the elevated land-platforms are for the most part thrown up near
their oceanic margins; and Professor Dana gives mechanical
reasons for both these classes of facts, deduced from consideration
of the mode in which the horizontal thrust will be exerted in the
two areas respectively. The " crumpling " of the elevated portions
of the crust which throws up mountain ridges, produces at the
same time equivalent depressions, and these will be filled by sea-
water if it has access to them, as is the case with the enormously
deep pit-holes found in various parts of the Malayan area; or
with fresh waters where, being cut off from the sea, they are sur-
rounded by a mountainous region affording a large supply of it, as
in deep lake-basins of Switzerland ; or they may remain almost
empty for want of water, like the deeply depressed valley of the
Jordan ; or may be partly filled, like the Caspian. And thus the
distribution of land and water over different parts of the Con-
tinental platforms may have been greatly changed from time to
time, and groups or chains of islands may have been raised and
again submerged in the Oceanic area, without making any such
essential changes in the Map of the World as Sir Charles Lyell
supposed to have taken place over and over again.

Now this view of the permanence of the great original division
of the crust of the earth into elevated and depressed areas, and of
the non-conversion of any considerable part of a continental plat-

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 327

form into a deep sea-bed, or of a deep sea-bed into a continental
platform, has received a most unexpected and explicit confirma-
tion from the study of the deposits at present being formed on the
Oceanic sea-bed, of which a sample was brought up in every
sounding taken by the Challenger, whilst larger collections of
them were made by the trawl and the dredge. For such deposits
as are obviously formed by the disintegration of ordinary land-
masses were, as a rule, only found in the comparatively shallow
waters in the near neighbourhood of those masses, the almost
universal absence of the ordinary siliceous sand of our shores being
a most noteworthy fact. Indeed, the exception served to prove
the rule ; for it was only when the Challenger's course lay parallel
to the coast of Africa, some two or three hundred miles to the
westward of it, that the soundings gave evidence of its presence ;
and that this sand had been blozun over the sea-surface from the
Sahara was indicated by its deposit as a fine dust on the ship's
deck. : but deposits of volcanic origin were met with in unexpected
abundance, the most common being a red day, first found on the
deepest areas of the Atlantic, the source of which was for some
time a question of great perplexity to the scientific staff of the
Challenger, from its presenting itself at such a distance from any
land that it could not be supposed to have been brought down
(as the clay deposits of shore-waters are) by continentol rivers.
'I'he clue to the solution of the difficulty was furnished by the
unexpected capture, in the " tow-net," of a considerable number
of floating masses of pumice-stone, whilst the trawl frequently
brought up bushels of such, varying in size from that of a pea to
that of a football. Now pumice is formed of ordinary lava which
has been raised (like dough) into a spongy condition by the
liberation of gases in its substances, and it contains a considerable
proportion of feldspar, which affords the material of clay ; and as
the clay deposits were found to contain fragments of pumice in
various stages of disintegration, the probability of their volcanic
origin seeins so strong as to justify its full acceptance. Mr.
Murray thinks it likely that not only all the pieces of pumice
which float on the surface, but those spread over the sea-bottorri,
have been ejected from /^z/^-volcanoes ; some of them, perhaps,
having fallen into the sea in the first instance, but the greater

328 NATURE AND MAN.

number having been washed down by rain and rivers. After
floating for a longer or shorter time, so as to be carried about by
winds and currents, perhaps to very considerable distances, they
would become water-logged and sink to the bottom, and there
undergo gradual disintegration. They were always found in
greatest abundance in the neighbourhood of volcanic centres,
such as the Azores and the Philippines; and within their areas,
again, were found tufaceous deposits — dust and ashes which had
been carried by the winds blowing over the craters. But there were
also occasionally found, at several hundred miles' distance from
any land, small pieces of obsidian and basaltic lavas, whose presence
there could only be accounted for by subtnarine volcanic action.

In association with the clays there were found remarkable
deposits of manganese, sometimes incrusting corals, etc., with a
coating of greater or less thickness, but more generally forming
nodular concretions, varying in size from little pellets to several
pounds in weight, which were usually found to include organic
bodies, such as sharks' teeth or whales' ear-bones. The following
summary of this curious class of facts is given in Lord George
Campbell's " Log-letters " : —

"In some regions everything at the bottom, even the bottom

" itself, would appear to be overlaid by and impregnated with this

"substance. Sharks' teeth of all sizes (many gigantic, one was

"four inches across the base) are frequent, and are sometimes sur-

" rounded by concentric layers of manganese of nearly an inch in

" thickness. A siliceous sponge, bits of pumice, radiolaria and

" globigerinae, and lumps of clay, have all been found forming the

" nuclei of these nodules. We have caught in one haul, where

" there has been no reason to suppose that the trawl has sunk

"more than two inches in the clay, over 600 sharks' teeth, 100

"ear-bones of whales, and fifty fragments of other bones, some

" embedded in manganese an inch thick, some with only just a

" trace of manganese on them, and some with no trace at all.

" These sharks' teeth are all fossil teeth, the same as are found

"in great quantities in Tertiary formations, particularly in Swiss

"Miocene deposits.*

* The writer does not seem aware of the extraordinary abundance of
similar sharks' teeth and whales' ear-bones in the so-called " coprolite pits "
of our Suffolk crag.

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 329

" As we have every reason to believe that this aggregation of
" the manganese is a very slow process, the occurrence of these
" teeth and bones, some embedded deeply, and some not at all, in
" the same surface-layers, argues strongly in favour of an extremely
"slow rate of deposition. On the other hand, the occurrence of
"sharks' teeth in shore deposits is extremely rare, and in the
"organic oozes slightly less so" — p. 495.

This deposit of manganese seems, like that of the red clay,
traceable to a volcanic source : — ■

" Wherever we have pumice containing much magnetite,
" olivine, augite, or hornblende, and these apparently undergoing
" decomposition and alteration, or where we have great showers
" of volcanic ash, there also is manganese in the greatest abund-
"ance. The correspondence between the distribution of these
"two may therefore be regarded as very significant of the origin
"of the latter. Manganese is as frequent as iron in lavas ; and in
" magnetite and in some varieties of hornblende and augite it par-
" tially replaces peroxide of iron. It is therefore probable that the
" manganese, as we find it, is one of the secondary products arising
" from the decomposition of volcanic minerals, that decomposition
" being caused by the carbonic acid and oxygen of ocean-waters."
— Log- letters, p. 495.

These deep-sea deposits of manganese differ in mineral structure
and composition from any of the known ores of that metal ; and
the conditions under which they are being formed constitute a
problem of very great interest, to which, as to other points of this
inquiry, a most distinguished Continental petrologist, the Abb^
Renard, is now giving the most careful attention, with the full ex-
pectation of being able to throw great light upon the mode of
production of many minerals whose origin has been hitherto
unaccounted for.

But there is yet another form of inorganic deposit whose
character is even more remarkable : —

" In the midst of the clay from the bottom," says Professor
Geikie, " Mr. Murray found numerous minute spherical granules
"of native iron, which, as he suggests, are almost certainly of
meteoric origin — fragments of those falling stars which, coming to
us from planetary space, burst into fragments when they rush

a

330 ^ NATURE AND MAN.

" into the denser layers of our atmosphere. In tracts where the
"growth of silt upon the sea-floor is excessively tardy, the fine
"particles scattered by the dissipation of these meteorites may
"remain in appreciable quantity. It is not needful to suppose
"that meteorites have disappeared over these ocean-depths more
"numerously than over other parts of the earth's surface. The
"iron granules have no doubt been as plentifully showered down
"elsewhere, though they cannot be so readily detected in accumu-
" lating sediment. I know no recent discovery in physical geo-
"graphy more calculated to impress deeply the imagination than
"the testimony of this meteoric iron from the most distant abysses
" of the ocean. To be told that mud gathers on the floor of those
"abysses at an extremely slow rate conveys but a vague notion of
"the tardiness of the process. But to learn that it gathers so
** slowly that the very star-dust which falls from outer space forms
"an appreciable part of it, brings home to us, as hardly anything
" else could do, the idea of undisturbed and excessively slow
"accumulation." — Lecture on Geographical Evolution^ p. 7.

Next to the volcanic clays, the globigerina-ooze (which had
been brought up by the hundredweight in the Lightning and
Porcupine dredgings) proved to be the most abundant oceanic
deposit. Not only from the completeness of their minute shells
in the surface-layer, but also from the fact that a large proportion
of these shells were occupied by their sarcodic bodies in an ap-
parently fresh condition, we had concluded that the Globigerinae
live on the bottoms on which their remains accumulate. But
since, in nearly all but the coldest parts of the oceanic area
traversed by the Challenger, they were collected in abundance
by the " tow-net " drawn through the waters at or beneath the
surface. Sir Wyville Thompson and some of his associates have
come to the conclusion that they pass their whole lives in the
surface stratum, their subsidence to the bottom only taking place
after their death, I have myself, however, remained of the
ojjinion that they subside during life, when the addition of new
chambers has come to an end, and the further exudation of car-
bonate of lime has been applied to the thickening of the walls of
the old ; and that they continue to live on the bottom, continually
adding to the thickness of their shells. And in this I have the

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. .331

satisfaction of finding myself supported by Mr. H. B. Brady, into
whose most competent charge the Foraminifera of the Challenger
have been given for " working up." For the result of a series of
most careful comparisons between the Globigerinas brought up
from any bottom and those captured floating in the upper waters
of the same region, shows that the shells of the former so greatly
exceed those of the latter in size and massiveness as to make it
certain that they continued to live and grow after their subsidence.

The careful examination in which Mr. Murray has been en-
gaged of the calcareous deposits (resembling chalk in process of
formation), chiefly consisting of globigerina-ooze, but also con-
taining the disintegrated remains of free-swimming Pteropod mol-
luscs, as well as of shells and corals that have lived on the bottom,
has led him to the remarkable conclusion that in their descent
from the upper waters towards the deeper sea-bottoms the thin
shells of the Globigerinas and the yet more delicate pteropod
shells are again dissolved, by the agency of the carbonic acid
that is held in larger proportion in those abyssal waters. And
thus it was that on the deepest parts of the Oceanic area, though
Globigerince were captured by the tow-net in the same abundance
as elsewhere, their remains were entirely wanting on the bottom
beneath. At intermediate depths the ooze and the red clay
would often be found mixed, in proportions that seemed related
to the depth. But in the shallower waters not sufficiently charged
with carbonic acid to exert any solvent powers, the organic de-
posit prevailed almost to the exclusion of the inorganic. This,
then, seems to have been the condition of the marine area in
which the old Chalk was deposited ; a variety of considerations
pointing to the conclusion that the sea-bottom whereon accumu-
lated the foraminiferal ooze of which it is almost entirely composed,
was of no considerable depth.

But the surface-waters are also inhabited by microscopic
organisms whose skeletons are composed, not of carbonate of
lime, but of silex ; and of these, some — the Diatoms — are vege-
table, whilst others — the Radiolarians — are animals of about the
same simplicity as the Foraminifera. The Diatoms abound in
those colder seas which are not prolific in Foraminifera; often
accumulating in such numbers as to form green bands that attract
15

332 NATURE AND MAN.

the notice of both Arctic and Antarctic voyagers. And their ex-
quisitely sculptured cases, accumulating on the bottom, form a
siliceous " Diatom-ooze," which takes the place in higher latitudes
of the white calcareous mud, resulting from the disintegration of
foraminiferal shells. The foraminiferal ooze, moreover, generally
contains, in larger or smaller proportion, the beautiful siliceous
skeletons of Radiolaria ; and sometimes these were found to pre-
dominate to such a degree that the ooze mainly consisted of them,
in which case it was designated as radiolarian. As siliceous
skeletons are not — like calcareous — dissolved by deep-sea water,
those which fall down from the surface even upon the deepest
bottoms rest there unchanged ; and thus it happens that they are
found diffused through the red-clay deposits, and, at the greatest
depths, sometimes almost entirely replace them. Some of these
minute organisms were almost everywhere captured alive in the
tow-net; but, like the Diatoms, they commonly aggregate in
patches or bands, and this to such a degree as to colour the sea-
surface, the hue of their animal substance being usually red or
reddish-brown. Such patches are often seen in the neighbourhood
of the Shetlands, where they are designated by the fishermen as
" herring food."

Thus, then, if we compare (i) the deposits now going on upon
the deep Oceanic sea-bed, (2) the sediments at present in course
of deposition in the shallower bottoms nearer land, and (3) the
materials of the sedimentary rocks of all geological periods, we
see that whilst there is a close correspondence between the second
and the third, the first difTers so completely — in most particulars
— from both the others as to be utterly beyond the range of
comparison with them ; the chief exception being presented by
those calcareous sediments which correspond with the various
Limestone formations intercalated among the sandstones and
clays that have had their origin in the degradation of the pre-
existing land. We now know for certain that the sands and clays
washed off the land — whether by the action of ice or river-waters
on its surface, or by the wearing away of its margin by the waves
of the sea — sink to the sea-bottom long before they reach the
deeper abysses ; not the least trace of such sed'unents having been
ajiywhere found at a distance from the coniitiental J>latforms. And

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 333

thus the study of the deposits on the Oceanic sea-bed has fully
confirmed the conclusion drawn from the present configuration
of the earth's surface, as to the general persistence of those
original inequalities which have served as the bases of the exist-
ing continents, and the floors of the great ocean basins.

In the masterly lecture on " Geographical Evolution " recently
given by Professor Geikie before the Royal Geographical Society,
the importance of these results, as affording the key to the inter-
pretation of much of the past history of the earth, is most fully
brought out. " For," he unhesitatingly asserts, with all the au-
thority of a vast geological experience, "from the earliest geo-
" logical times the great area of deposit has been, as it still is, ^/le
" marginal belt of sea-floor skirting the land. It is there that nature
"has always strewn 'the dust of continents to be.' The decay- of
" old rocks has been unceasingly in progress on the land, and the
"building up of new rocks has been as unceasingly going on
"underneath the adjoining sea. The two phenomena are the
" complementary sides of one process, which belongs to the terres-
" trial and shalloiv oceanic parts of the earth's surface, and not to the
" 7vide and deep ocean basins." " No part of the results obtained
" by the Challenger expedition," he goes on to say, " has a pro-
" founder interest for geologists and geographers than the proof
" they furnish that the floor of the ocean-basins has no real analogy
" among the sedimentary formations which form most of the frame-
" work of the land." And after dwelling on the chief facts I have
already brought together, he thus sums up : —

" From all this evidence we may legitimately conclude that
*' the present land of the globe, though composed in great measure
"of marine formations, has never lain under the deep sea, but
" that its site must always have been near land. Even its thick
" marine limestones are the deposits of comparatively shallow
"water. Whether or not any trace of aboriginal land may now
" be discoverable, the characters of the most unequivocally marine
" formations bear emphatic testimony to the proximity of a terres-
" trial surface. The present continental ridges have probably
"always existed in some form; and as a corollary we may infer
"that the present deep oceati-basins likewise date from the remotest
^'■geological antiquity.^*

334 NATURE AND MAN.

No part of the Challenger's work has been more thoroughly
and successfully carried out than the determination of the thermal
stratification, or vertical distribution of temperature in the different
parts of the Oceanic area; an inquiry first prosecuted with trust-
worthy thermometers ("protected" to resist pressure) in the
Porcupine expeditions of 1869 and 1870. This determination
was effected by "serial" temperature-soundings; thermometers
attached to a sounding-line being let down to depths progres-
sively increasing by 10 fathoms down to 200, and below this to
depths progressively increasing by 100 fathoms to the bottom.
It is in the upper stratum of 200 fathoms that the most rapid
reduction of temperature usually shows itself; the further re-
duction beneath this stratum taking place at a progressively
diminishing rate, until from 1500 fathoms downwards to the
bottom at any depth there is usually very little change.

The Temperature-soundings of the Challenger, supplemented
by other more limited explorations of the same kind, have clearly
brought out this most unexpected result, that the low bottom-
temperatures previously observed represent, — not, as has been
supposed, the overflowing of the sea-bed by " Polar currents "
of limited breadth and inconsiderable thickness, overlaid by a
vast mass of comparatively warm water, — but the reduction of
nearly the whole body of oceanic water, in every basin except
that of the North Atlantic (to whose exceptional character I shall
presently advert), to a temperature which averages but a very few
degrees above 32° Fahr., that of its deepest stratum being some-
times even a degree or two below the freezing-point of fresh water;
while the heating influence of the solar rays is limited to a very
small depth beneath the surface.

Thus in the South Atlantic, in which a sounding taken near
37° S. lat. gave a depth of 2900 fathoms and a bottom-tempera-
ture beneath 32° Fahr., the lowest stratum, consisting oi absolutely
glacial water, was found to have the enormous thickness of 1000
fathoms : this was overlaid by another stratum of 1000 fathoms,
in which the temperature rose slowly from 32° at its lower to
36^° at its upper surface ; and this, again, by another of about
500 fathoms, which showed a further rise at its upper surface to
40°, the rate of elevation from below upwards being no more
than about 0.7° for every 100 fathoms. Thus it is only in the

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 335

uppermost layer of about four hundred fathoms (less than one-
seventh of the whole) that the temperature exceeds 40° ; and the
regularity of the rise of the thermometer, from 40° at its base to
the summer surface-temperature of 70°, at the rate of about "^^^
for every 100 fathoms, justifies our regarding the plane of 40° as
the limit of the depth at which the solar rays here exert any direct
heating influence.

On her passage southwards towards the Antarctic ice-barrier,
the Challenger found the progressive reduction of surface-tempera-
ture to correspond with the progressive thinning of the warm
superficial layer in a manner which clearly showed that the
thermal condition of the southern ocean is entirely dominated
by the flow into it of the great mass of glacial water which has
been cooled down in the Antarctic area, and that it is, so to speak,
a vast reservoir of cold, the outflow from which keeps down the
temperature of every part of the oceanic area in free communi-
cation with it. This we see best in the Pacific, whose vast basin
is almost entirely filled by water of glacial or sub-glacial coldness,
on the surface of which in the intertropical region there floats a
layer whose temperature rises rapidly from its lower limit of 40°
to 80° at the surface, and whose thickness is nowhere more than
one fifth of the whole depth. This exceptional stratum, which
clearly derives its heat from the direct action of the solar rays
upon its surface, progressively thins away in either hemisphere
as it is traced from the tropic to the parallel of 55°, where it
disappears altogether, except in the course of the Kuro Siwo, or
gulf-stream of the Pacific, which slants northwards from Japan
towards Behring's Strait. That the cold of the great mass of
glacial and sub-glacial water which everywhere underlies it, and
which rises to the surface beyond its northern and southern
borders, is due to an underflow from the Antarctic area, is dis-
tinctly indicated by the absolute continuity of the same glacial
temperature throughout the deepest stratum — all the way from
the southern ocean to the Aleutian Islands, the bottom-tempera-
tures at depths of 2000 fathoms or more not differing as much
as \° Fahr., whilst the thermal stratification of the whole super-
incumbent mass up to within 500 fathoms of the surface shows
a similar uniformity.

336 NATURE AND MAN.

The thermal condition of the North Atlantic, however, is very
different. Putting aside the extraordinarily low temperature of
29!° revealed by the Porcupine temperature-soundings in the
stratum occupying the deeper part of the channel of 500 fathoms
between the Faroe and the Shetland Islands, which has been
since proved to be a southward extension of the true Arctic
basin, no lower bottom-temperature than 35° had been anywhere
met with in our earlier work, while we had found the thickness
of the warm stratum ranging from 40° upwards to range from
800 to 900 fathoms. This want of a truly glacial understratum
I attributed to the limitation of the communication between the
deeper parts of the Arctic and North Atlantic basins, preventing
the coldest water of the former from flowing out into the latter.
And this explanation has been borne out by the subsequent
temperature-soundings of the Valorous, which have shown the
existence of a ridge between Greenland and Iceland, lying at a
depth which allov/s water of 35° to pass over it, while keeping
back the deeper stratum of Arctic water. I had further predicted
than an Antarctic underflow would probably be found to range
to the north of the Equator, where it would be recognized by
the reduction of the bottom -temperature below 35° : and this
prediction was verified in the first temperature-section carried by
the Challenger obliquely across the Atlantic to St. Thomas's, the
bottom-temperature there falling a degree, and showing a still
further reduction as it was subsequently traced southwards to the
Equator, where it fell nearly to 32°.

But, further, I had ventured the prediction that the meeting
of the Arctic and Antarctic underflows under the Equator would
cause an uprising of cold water from the bottom towards the
surface, so that the plane of 40° would be found nearer the sur-
face in the neighbourhood of the line than either to the north
or to the south of it ; and it was a great surprise to many on
board the Challenger to find, as they first approached the Equator
from the Tropic of Cancer, the plane of 40° rapidly rising from
a depth of 700 fathoms towards the surface, though the tempera,
ture of that surface-stratum was itself becoming higher and higher
until water of 40° was found at a depth of less than 300 fathoms,
descending again to about 400 as the Challenger' s course was laid

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 337

towards the Tropic of Capricorn. This anomaly had been re-
marked by Lenz fifty years previously : but the valuable series
of temperature-observations which he took in Kotzebue's second
voyage was strangely overlooked by those who ranked as the
highest authorities on the physics of the earth, until recently
disinterred by Professor Prestwich.

Not only is the stratum of above 40° Fahr. exceptionally deep
in the North Atlantic, but it is exceptionally warm, especially on
its western side, where a stratum of water having a temperature
above 60° Fahr, was found by the Challenger to range to a depth
of nearly 400 fathoms. Taking all circumstances into account,
I entertain no doubt that Sir Wyville Thomson is right in regard-
ing this stratum as the reflux of the northern division of the great
Equatorial Current, from the coast of the West India Islands and
of the peninsula of Florida, added to that of the Gulf Stream
proper. In consequence of the evaporation produced by its
prolonged exposure to the tropical sun, this water contains such
an excess of salt as, in spite of its high temperature, to be specifi-
cally heavier than the colder water which would otherwise occupy
its place in the basin, and consequently substitutes itself for the
latter by gravitation, to a depth of several hundred fathoms.
Thus it conveys the solar heat downwards in such a manner as
to make the North Atlantic between the parallels of 20° and 40°
a great reservoir of warmth, the importance of which will presently
become apparent.

The Challenger investigations have now, I think, afforded
the requisite data for the final solution of a question which has
been long under discussion — what, namely, the Gulf Stream (or
Florida Current) does, and what it does tiot, for the amelioration of
the climate of North-western Europe. All the best hydrographers,
both of this country and of the United States, agree in the con-
clusion that the Florida current dies out in the mid-Atlantic, losing
all the attributes by which it had been previously distinguished —
its movement, its excess of warmth, and its peculiarly deep colour;
and that it then degenerates into a mere surface-drift, the rate
and direction of which depend entirely upon the prevalent winds.
But, on the other hand, most conclusive prooi has been obtained
by the systematic comparisons of sea and air temperatures along

338 NATURE AND MAN.

the western coasts of North-western Europe that the amelioration
of its winter climate is due to the afflux of water of a temperature
considerably higher than that of the air. It has been urged with
conclusive force by Admiral Irminger (of the Danish Navy) that
nothing else can account for the openness of the fiords and harbours
of the indented coast of Norway, even beyond the North Cape,
through the whole winter ; whilst the opposite coast of East
Greenland, ranging, like it, between the parallels of 60° (that of
the Pentland Firth) and 72° N., is so blocked with ice throughout
the year as only to be approachable in exceptional summers.
And this view has derived full confirmation from the observations
systematically carried on under the direction of Professor Mohn
of Christiania (the able director of the Meteorological Department
of Norway), which have shown how completely dependent the
temperature of the coast-line is upon that of the sea which laves
it. For while the temperature of the air is generally much below
the freezing-point during the winter months, that of the water
is always considerably above it; the average excess at Fruholm,
near the North Cape, being as much as 14^° Fahr, And it has
been further shown by Professor Mohn that not only the coast-
temperature of Norway during the winter, but its inland climate,
is affected in a very marked manner by this afflux of warm water ;
for the " isocheimals," or lines of mean winter-temperature, instead
of corresponding with the parallels of latitude, lie parallel to the
coast-line.

How, then, are these phenomena to be explained ? If the vis
a iergo of the Gulf Stream has spent itself in the mid-Atlantic, what
force brings this afflux of warm water to our shores, and carries it
on to the north-east, along the coast of Norway, and even past the
North Cape to Spitzbergen and NovaZembla? And how does
it happen that the water that laves our north-western shores in
winter is not only so much warmer than the air which rests upon
it, but continues to preserve a notable portion of that warmth, at
least as far as the North Cape, notwithstanding that as it flows
northwards its temperature is more and more in excess of that of
the atmosphere above it ?

It is obvious that the continual outflow of the deeper stratum
of Polar water, of which we have evidence in the constant main-

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 339

tenance of the glacial temperature, not only of the sea-bottom,
but of the great mass of the water contained in the vast oceanic
basin, cannot be maintained without a continual indraught of the
upper stratum towards the Poles ; this, as its temperature is pro-
gressively lowered, decreases in volume and increases in specific
gravity ; and as the lower stratum flows away under the excess of
pressure, the upper stratum, now cooled down nearly to the
freezing-point of salt water, will sink into its place, making way
for a new indraught above. The two Polar underflows, on the
other hand, meeting at or near the Equator, will there tend to rise
towards the surface, replacing the water which has been draughted
away towards either Pole; and thus a constant "vertical circulation "
must be kept up by opposition of temperature alone, analogous to
that which takes place in the pipes of the hot-water apparatus by
which large buildings are now commonly warmed. The only
essential difference between the two cases is, that whilst the
primum inobite in the latter is the heat applied to the bottom of
the boiler, making the warmed water ascend by the reduction of its
specific gravity due to its expansion, the moving power in the
former is the cold applied to the surface of the Polar water, making
it descend by the increase of specific gravity due to the diminution
in its bulk as its temperature is lowered.

This doctrine was first distinctly promulgated nearly forty years
ago by the eminent physicist Lenz, on the basis of the temperature-
observations he had made in Kotzebue's second voyage more than
ten years previously ; these having satisfied him of two facts — first,
the general diffusion of a glacial temperature over the ocean-bottom,
which he rightly interpreted as dependent on an underflow of
Polar water ; and, second, the near approach of cold water to the
surface under the Equator than either on the north or on the
south of it, which he considered to indicate an uprising of that
Polar water from below, where the two underflows meet. But,
though accepted by Pouillet and other distinguished physicists,
this doctrine, with the observations by which it was supported
was entirely lost sight of until independently advanced by myself
as the only feasible explanation of the Poleward movement of
the whole upper stratum of North Atlantic water, and of the
southward outflow of glacial water from the Arctic basin, of which

340 NATURE AND MAN.

the Porcupine temperature-soundings seemed to afford conclusive
evidence.

My explanation, though contested by Mr. Croll, and not
accepted by Sir Wyville Thomson, has been explicitly adopted by
a large number of eminent physicists, both British and Continental,
among whom I may specially mention Professor Mohn of Chris-
tiania, who had previously maintained the dependence of the re-
markable climatic condition of Norway on the north-east extension
of the true Gulf Stream. Immediately on receiving the report in
which I had demonstrated the inadequacy of the Florida current
to propel as far as the coast of Norway the vast body of warm
water required to keep its harbours open, and had shown the depen-
dence of the north-east movement of the warm upper stratum to
the depth of 500 fathoms (which I had myself first recognized in
the Porcupine), on the Poleward indraught that forms the
necessary complement of the outward glacial underflow, Professor
Mohn not only expressed to me his entire concurrence in both
views, but communicated to me a remarkable example he had
himself met with of a similiar vertical circulation on a smaller
scale. It is to the remarkable thickness of this Poleward flow
that its surface-layer owes its power of so long resisting the cooling
effect of the atmosphere which overlies it; so that, as it flows
along the coast of Norway towards the North Cape, its temperature
even in winter sustains so much smaller a reduction than that of
the atmosphere as to give it an excess which constantly increases
with its northing. But though its surface-temperature is so little
reduced, the thickness of this warm stratum is undergoing pro-
gressive diminution as its deeper layers successively go up to
replace those which have been chilled and have gone down ; so
that beyond the North Cape the surface-temperature rapidly falls
with the eastward movement of this flow along the northern shores
of Europe and Asia; and all trace of heat imported from the
southwest at last dies out.

As the superheating of the upper stratum of the mid-x\tlantic is
dependent on the influx of Gulf Stream and other water ex-
ceptionally warmed in the Equatorial Current, the thermal effect of
its north-east flow is mainly dependent upon the Gulf Stream and
its adjuncts, while its niovement is kept up by the Polar indraught.

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 341

Thus neither the general Oceanic Circulation nor the Gulf Stream
could alone produce the result which is due to their conjoint action.
The Gulf Stream water, without the Polar indraught, would remain
in the mid-Atlantic ; and the Polar indraught, without Gulf Stream
water to feed it, would be almost as destitute of thermal power as
it is in the South Atlantic.

The transient visit of the ChaUctiger to the Antarctic ice-barrier
gave her scientific staff the opportunity of examining the structure
of the southern icebergs, which altogether differs from that of the
icebergs with wliich our northern navigators are familiar ; these
last being now universally regarded as glaciers, which have
descended the seaward valleys of Greenland and Labrador, and
have floated away when no longer supported by solid base ; and
the information they have gathered is of considerable interest, as
helping us to form a more definite conception of the condition of
our own part of the globe during the glacial epoch. A number of
independent considerations now lead almost irresistibly to the
conclusion that the icebergs of the Antarctic are for the most part
detached portions of a vast ice-sheet, covering a land surface — either
continuous, or broken up into an archipelago of islands — which
occupies the principal part of the vast circumpolar area, estimated
at about four and a half millions of square miles, or nearly double
the area of Australia. Of this ice-sheet, the edge forms the great
southern " ice-barrier," which presents itself, wherever it has been
approached sufficiently near to be distinctly visible, as a continuous
ice-cliff, rising from aoo to 250 feet above the sea-level.

The icebergs of the Antarctic Sea are, as a rule, distinguished
by their tabular form, and by the great uniformity of their height •
this, in bergs which show least signs of change since their first
detachment from the parent mass, seldom varies much from 200
feet above the sea-line. The tabular surface of the typical berg is
nearly flat, and parallel with the sea-line ; its shape usually
approaches the rectangular, and it is bounded all round by nearly
perpendicular cliffs. From a comparison of the specific gravity of
berg-ice with that of sea-water, it appears that the quantity of ice
beneath the surface required to float that which is elevated above
it must be about nine times as great ; in other words, supposing

342 NATURE AND MAN.

that a berg had the regular shape of a box, its entire depth from
its upper surface to its base must be ten times its height above the
sea-level. Consequently, if the latter be 200 feet, the entire height
of the mass would be 2000 feet, which might thus be assumed to
be the thickness of the ice-sheet from whose margin it was detached.
This estimate must not be accepted, however, as other than ap-
proximative. The dimensions of these bergs vary greatly. Those
seen from the Chalie?iger were generally from one to three miles
long ; but single bergs are reported of seven or even ten miles in
length ; and an enormous mass of floating ice, probably composed
of a chain of bergs locked together, forming a hook 60 miles long
by 40 broad, and inclosing a bay 40 miles in breadth, was passed in
1854 by twenty-one merchant ships, in a latitude corresponding
to that of the northern coast of Portugal.

The upper part of the ice-cliff that forms the exposed face of
the bergs is of a pale blue, which gradually deepens in colour
towards the base. When looked at closely, it is seen to be
traversed by a delicate horizontal ruling of faint blue lines
separated by dead-white interspaces. These lines preserve a
very marked parallelism, but become gradually closer and closer
from above downwards, their distance being a foot or even more
at the top of the berg, but not more than two or three inches near
the surface cf the water, where the interspaces lose their dead
whiteness, and become hyaline or bluish. There can be no doubt
that this stratification is due to successive accumulations of snow
upon a nearly level surface, the spaces between the principal blue
lines probably representing approximately the snow-accumulations
of successive seasons. The direct radiant heat of the sun is very
considerable even in these latitudes, so that the immediate surface
of the snow is melted in the middle of every ctSar day; and the
water, percolating into the subjacent layers, freezes again at night.
The frequent repetition of this process will convert a very con-
siderable thickness of snow into ice ; the blue transparent lamellae
being the most compact, whilst the intervening white veins are
rendered semi-opaque by the presence of air-cells. And it is
obviously the compression which these undergo that causes the
approximation of the blue lines, and the change to a greater com-
pactness and transparence in the intervening layers, towards

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 343

the bottom of the cHff. Sh'ght irregularities in the general
parallelism of the stratification, and the occasional thinning-out of
particular lamella;, were easily accounted for by the drifting of the
snow-layers of the surface, before they had become consolidated.
And although there are various cases in which the strata had
been changed from their original horizontality to various degrees
of inclination, sometimes also being traversed by " faults," and
occasionally even twisted and contorted, these might all be
accounted for by forces acting subsequently to the detachment
of the bergs. For their plane of flotation is liable to altera-
tion by changes of form due to unequal melting, and the sepa-
ration of large masses either above or below the surface ; and
" dislocations " of various kinds will be produced by collisions
and lateral thrusts, when bergs are impelled against each other
by the wind. Sir Wyville Thomas and Mr. Moseley entirely
agree in the statement that they could nowhere trace any such
" structure " as is produced in a land-glacier during its move-
ment down a valley, by the curvature and contraction of its
rocky borders, and the inequalities of the bottom over which it
moves. And the presumption is altogether very strong that these
vast masses have originally formed part of a great ice-sheet, formed
by the cumulative pressure of successive snow-falls over a land
area of no great elevation ; which flows downwards from its highest
level in the direction of least resistance, that is to say from the
Polar centre towards the continually disintegrating margin, pro-
gressively diminishing in thickness as it extends itself peripherally.
Thus gradually moving seawards, the ice-sheet will at last pass
the margin of the land, but will continue to rest upon the gradually
descending sea-bed, flowing down its gentle slope until lifted by
its own buoyancy (like a vessel or launch), when vast masses will
break off and float away.

Although the observers of the Challenger did not see either
masses of rock, stones, or even gravel upon any of the icebergs
they approached, VVilkes and Ross saw many such : and the
"soundings" of the Challenger were found to consist of such
comminuted clays and sands as would be the result of the abrasion
of rocky surfaces over which the ice-sheet had moved ; while
the dredge brought up a considerable quantity of land debris —

344 NATURE AND MAN.

chiefly basaltic pebbles about the meridian of 80° E., and further
to the eastward pebbles and larger fragments of metamorphic
rocks. It was probably from the valleys of the great volcanic
range that the rock-masses came which were observed on bergs
by Wilkes and Ross ; one of which, clearly of volcanic origin,
weighed many tons. That the southern circumpolar area is
chiefly land, and not water, seems to be further indicated by the
absence of any such low temperature of the deeper water as Sir
George Nares ascertained to° exist beneath the " palseocrystic " ice
of high northern latitudes. For the thermometers lowered
through borings in that ice gave 28° Fahr, at all depths, this being
the lowest temperature at which sea-water can remain unfrozen
under ordinary circumstances. On the other hand, the bottom
temperatures taken in the Challenger in closest proximity to
the Antarctic ice-barrier nowhere proved to be lower than the
temperature of surface-stratum which was cooled by the melting
of the berg-ice, thus indicating the absence of any supply of yet
colder water from a source nearer the Pole.

Thus the antarctic " ice-barrier " is to be regarded as the margin
of a Polar " ice-cap," whose thickness at its edge is probably
about 2000 feet, nine tenths of it lying beneath the water-line.
This margin is not permanent, but is continually wasting away
like the terminal portion of a land-glacier — not, however, by
liquefaction, but by disruption — and is as continually renewed by
the spreading out of the piled-up ice of the area within. What
may be the thickness of the " ice-cap " nearer its Polar centre we
have at present no means of knowing ; but it must doubtless be
kept down by the facility of downward flow in almost every
direction towards its periphery of 10,000 miles.

In regard to the animal life of the deep sea, the Challenger
researches do not seem likely to yield any new general result of
striking interest. Our previous work had shown that a depth of
three miles, a pressure of three tons on the square inch, an entire
absence of sunlight, and a temperature below 32°, might be sustained
by a considerable number and variety of animal types : and this
conclusion has been fully confirmed and widely extended. Many
specimens have been brought up alive from depths exceeding four
miles, at which the pressure was four tons on the square inch,

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 345

considerably exceeding that exerted by the hydraulic presses used
for packing Manchester goods. Even the "protected" ther-
mometers specially constructed for deep-sea sounding were
frequently crushed ; and a sealed glass tube containing air, having
been lowered (within a copper case) to a depth of 2,000 fathoms,
was reduced to a fine powder almost Hke snow by what Sir Wyville
Thomson ingeniously characterized as an mplosion, the pressure
having apparently been resisted until it could no longer be
borne, and the whole having been then disintegrated at the same
moment. The rationale of the resistance afforded by soft-bodied
animals to a pressure which thus affects hard glass is simply
that they contain no air, but consist of solids and liquids
only ; and that since their constituent parts are not subject to
more than a very trifling change of bulk, while the equality of the
pressure in every direction will prevent any change in their form,
there is really nothing to interfere with the ordinary performance
of their vital functions.

The entire absence of solar light, which constitutes another
most important peculiarity in the conditions of deep-sea life, would
seem at first sight to be an absolute bar to its maintenance. Ex-
perimental evidence has not yet, I believe, been obtained of the
direct penetration of the solar rays to more than 100 fathoms ; but
as I dredged slow-growing red calcareous Algse (true corallines)
in the Mediterranean at a depth of 150 fathoms (at, or below,
which Edward Forbes also would seem to have met with them),
the actinic, if not the luminous, rays must probably penetrate to
that range. Below what Edward Forbes termed the coralline
zone, it would seem impossible that any other type of vegetable
life can be sustained, than such as has the capacity of the fungi
for growing in the dark, living, like them, upon material supplied
by the decomposition of organic compounds. Such lowly phmts
have been found by Professor P. M. Duncan in corals dredged
h^om more than 1000 fathoms' depth.

Upon what, then, do deei)-sca animals feed ? In tlie early
stage of this inquiry it was ascertained by Dr. Frankland that the
samples of water procured by the Porcupine not only at con-
siderable distances from land, but also from bottoms exceeding
500 fathoms' depth, contained so much organic matter not in a

346 NATURE AND MAN.

decomposing state that animals having a large absorbent surface,
and requiring but a small proportion of solids in their food, might
be sustained by simple imbibition. And an adequate provision for
the continual restoration of such material to the ocean-waters
seemed to be made by the surface-vegetation which fringes almost
every sea-margin, and which occasionally extends itself over large
tracts in the open ocean, as, notably, in the Sargasso Sea. But
the Challenger researches have thrown a new light on this
question, by showing that the animals of the deep sea are largely
dependent for their food upon the minute organisms and the
debris of larger ones which are continually falling to the bottom
from the upper waters.

" This debris (says Mr. Moseley) is no doubt mainly derived
" from the surface Pelagic flora and fauna, but is also to a large
" extent composed of refuse of various kinds washed down by
" rivers, or floated out to sea from shores, and sunken to the
" bottom when water-logged. The dead Pelagic animals must fall
" as a constant rain of food upon the habitation of their deep-sea
" dependants. Maury, speaking of the surface Foraminifera,
" wrote, ' The sea, like the snow-cloud, with its flakes in a calm,
" ' is always letting fall upon its bed showers of microscopic shells.'
" It might be supposed that these shells and other surface-
" animals would consume so long a time in dropping to the
" bottom in great depths, that their soft tissues would be decom-
" posed, and that they would have ceased to be serviceable as
" food by the time they reached the ocean bed. Such, however,
" is not the case, partly because the salt water of the sea exercises
" a strongly preservative effect on animal tissues, partly because
" the time required for sinking is in reality not very great." —
Notes by a Naturalist, p. 582.

Of this Mr. Moseley assured himself by an experimental test,
which indicated that the dead body of a floating salpa might sink
to a depth of 2000 fathoms in little more than four days, whilst
its body might remain for a month so far undecomposed as to be
serviceable as food to deep-sea animals. As land was neared,
moreover, many interesting proofs were obtained of the feeding
of deep sea animals on debris derived from the neighbouring
shores.

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 347

" Thus, off the coast of New South Wales we dredged from 400
" fathoms a large sea-urchin which had its stomach full of pieces
" of a sea-grass (Zostera) derived from the coast above. Again,
"we dredged from between the New Hebrides and AustraUa,
"from 1400 fathoms, a piece of wood and half a dozen examples
" of a large palm-fruit as large as an orange. In one of these fruits,
" which had hard woody external coats, the albumen of the fruit
" was still preserved, perfectly fresh in appearance, and white,
" like that of a ripe cocoa-nut. The hollows of the fruits were
" occupied by two molluscs ; the husks and albumen were bored by
" a teredo-like mollusc ; and the fibres of the husks had among
"them small nematoid worms. — p. 583.

Branches of trees, also, and leaves of shrubs, in a water-logged
condition, were occasionally brought up in the dredge from great
depths ; and their occurrence, as Mr. Moseley remarks, is of im-
portance, not only to the naturalist, as showing that deep-sea
animals may draw large supplies of food from such sources, but
also to the geologist, as indicating the manner in which specimens
of land vegetation may have been imbedded in deposits formed
at great depths.

The entire absence of sunlight on the deep-sea bottom seems
to have the same effect as the darkness of caves, in reducing to a
rudimentary condition the eyes of such of their inhabitants as fish
and Crustacea, which ordinarily enjoy visual power ; and many of
these are provided with enormously long and delicate feelers or
hairs, in order that they may feel their way about with these, just
as a blind man does with his stick. But other deep-sea animals
have enormously large eyes, enabling them to make the best of
the little light there is in the depths, which is probably derived (as
suggested in the report of the Poraipine dredgings) from the
phosphorescence emitted by many deep-sea animals, especially a
certain kind of zoophytes. " It seems certain," says Mr. Moseley,
" that the deep sea must be lighted here and there by greater or
" smaller patches of luminous alcyonarians, with wide intervals,
" probably, of total darkness intervening ; and very possibly the
" animals with eyes congregate round these sources of light." It
is remarkable that with such poverty of light there should be such
richness of colour among deep-sea animals. Although most deep-

348 NATURE AND MAN.

sea fish are of a dull black colour, and some white as if bleached,
deep-sea crustaceans, echinoderms, and zoophytes usually exhibit
more colour than the corresponding forms that inhabit shallow
water. Thus tne deep-sea shrimps, which were obtained in very
great abundance, were commonly of an intensely bright scarlet ;
deep-sea holothurians are often of a deep purple ; and many deep-
sea corals have their soft structures tinged with a madder colouring-
matter resembling that which occurs in surface-swimming jelly-fish.

As was to be expected from the results of the Lightning and
Porcupine dredging s, the more extended explorations of the
Challenger have shown that there still live on the sea-depths a
number of animal forms which were supposed, until thus found,
to be extinct, existing only as fossils. And large numbers of
interesting new genera and species of known families of animals
were obtained ; whilst many forms which had been previously
accounted of extreme rarity have proved to be really common,
having a wide geographical range, and occurring in large numbers
in particular spots. This is tlie case, for example, with the
beautiful Pentacrinus, a survivor from the old Liassic times, of
which the living specimens preserved in all the museums of the
world could a i&n years ago have been counted on the fingers, all
of them having been brought up on fishing-lines from the neigh-
bourhood of the West India Islands. As many as twenty speci-
mens of a new species of this most interesting type, however, had
been brought up from a depth of 800 fathoms in one of the Por-
cupine dredgings off the coast of Portugal. The Challenger made
a large collection, including several new species, from various
localities. And yet more recently the dredgings of Professor
Alexander Agassiz in the Gulf of Mexico have shown how thickly
many parts of the sea-bed are covered with these " lily stars "
mounted upon their long wavy stalks.

Those, however, who had expected results of greater zoo-
logical and palaeontological importance from these explorations
must confess to some disappointment : —

" Most enthusiastic representations (says Mr. Moseley) were
" held by many naturalists, and such were especially put forward
" by the late Professor Agassiz, who had hopes of finding almost
*'all important fossil forms existing in life and vigour at great

THE DEEP SEA AND ITS CONTENTS. 349

"depths. Such hopes were doomed to disappointment; but
" even to the last, every cuttle-fish which came up in our deep-
" sea net was squeezed to see if it had a Belemnite's bone in its
" back, and Trilobites were eagerly looked out for. . . . We
" picked up no missing links to fill up the gaps of the great zoo-
" logical family tree. The results of the Challenget^s voyage have
" gone to prove that the missing links are to be sought out rather
" by more careful investigation of the structure of animals already
" partially known, than by hunting for entirely new ones in the
"deep sea." — Notes by a Naturalist, p. 587.

The work which has been already done by Mr. Moseley him-
self in this direction, contained in the memoirs he has presented
to the Royal and the Linneean Society, is of first-rate value. And
if the whole, or even any considerable part, of the vast Challenger
collection shall be worked out by the various specialists among
whom it has been distributed, with anything like the same com-
pleteness and ability, it cannot be questioned that the series of
volumes in which the scientific results of this voyage will be em-
embodied will far surpass in interest and importance those reports
of previous Circumnavigation Expeditious which are accounted
models of their class.

350 l^ATbRE AND MAN.

xri.

THE FORCE BEHIND NATURE.

\The Modern Review, January, 1880.]

Some thirty years ago, I enjoyed opportunities of discussing with
John Stuart Mill (whose younger brother had been for twelve
months an inmate of my house) many questions of philosophy in
which we both felt the deepest interest. Among these was the
Doctrine of Causation set forth in his recently published " System
of Logic : " — " We may define the cause of a phenomenon to be
" the antecedent, or the concurrence of antecedents, on which it
•'is invariably and unconditionally consequent." I pointed out
to my friend that when this assemblage of antecedents is analyzed,
it is uniformly found resolvable into two categories, which may
be distinguished as the dytiamical and the material ; the former
supplying the force or power to which the change must be attri-
buted, whilst the latter affords the conditions under which that
power is exerted. Thus, I urged, when a man falls from a ladder
because (as is commonly said) of the breaking of the rung on
which his foot was resting, the real or dynamical cause of his fall
is the force of gravity, or attraction of the earth, which pulls him
to the ground when his foot is no longer supported ; the loss of
support being only the material condition or collocation, which
allowed the force previously acting as pressure on the rung, to
produce the downward motion of the man who stood upon it.

To this Mr. Mill's reply was, that the distinction is one of
metaphysics, not of logic. I ventured, however, to press on him
that to whichever department of philosophy this point is to be
referred, is is one of fundamental importance ; that, assuming

THE FORCE BEHIND NATURE. 351

experience as the basis of our knowledge, we recognize the down-
ward tendency of every body heavier than air, by our sense of
muscular tension in hfting it from the ground, or in resisting its
descent towards the earth ; and that our cognition of force
through this form of sensation, being thus quite as immediate and
direct as our cognition of motion through the visual sense, ought
to be equally taken account of.

The promulgation, about the same time, of the doctrine of
the " Correlation of the Physical Forces " by Professor (now Sir
William) Grove, and the researches of Mr. Joule on the "Me-
chanical Equivalent of Heat," seemed to me to bring this view of
dynamical causation into yet greater importance; by showing
that what is true of that form of force which produces or resists
mechanical (or what is now distinguished as jftolar) motion, may
be legitimately extended to those other forms which are mani-
fested in the molecular changes that express themselves in
chemical action, or impress us with the sensations of heat, light,
etc. Partaking of the general ignorance at that time prevalent in
this country of the doctrine of " Conservation of Energy," already
promulgated in Germany by Mayer and Helmholtz, I myself
endeavoured to carry Professor Grove's principle into the domain
of biology ; by showing that what physiologists had been accus-
tomed to call vital force, may be regarded as having the same
"correlation" with the various forms of physical force as they
have with each other.* And in the introduction to the fourth
edition of my "Human Physiology" (published in 1853), I thus
explicitly defined my position : —

When this assemblage of antecedents is analyzed, it is uni-
formly found that they may be resolved into two categories,
which may be distinguished as the dynamical and the material,
the former supplying the force or power to which the change
must be attributed, whilst the latter afford the conditions under
which that power is exerted. Thus in a steam-engine we see
the dynamical agency of heat made to produce mechanical
power by the mode in which it is applied : first, to impart a
mutual repulsion to the particles of water ; and then, by means

* " On the Mutual Relations of the Vital and Physical Forces," in Philos.
Transact., 1850.

352 NATURE AND MAN

of that mutual repulsion, to give motion to the various solid
parts of which the machine is composed. And thus, if asked
what is the cause of the movement of the steam-engine, we dis-
tinguish in our reply between the dynamical condition supplied
by the heat, and the material condition (or assemblage of con-
ditions) afforded by the " collocation " of the boiler, cylinder,
piston, valves, etc. ... In like manner, if we inquire into the
cause of the germination of a seed — which has been brought to
the surface of the earth, after remaining dormant through having
been buried deep beneath the soil for (it may be) thousands
of years — we are told that the phenomenon depends upon
warmth, moisture, and oxygen ; but out of these we single
warmth as the dynamical condition, whilst the oxygen and the
water, with the organized structure of the seed itself, and the
organic compounds which are stored up in its substance, con-
stitute the material.
The subsequent general recognition by the scientific world of
the "correlation" between the forces of nature (under whatever
form expressed) has thus given a breadth of foundation to the
dynamical doctrine of causation which it previously lacked ; and
the doctrine having been afterwards formally developed by Pro-
fessor Bain, was summarized by J. S. Mill in the later editions of
his " Logic," almost in the very terms in which I had originally
propounded it to him in conversation, and had publicly expressed
it in the extract just cited : — " The chief practical conclusion
" drawn by Professor Bain, bearing on causation, is that we must
" distinguish in the assemblage of conditions which constitutes
" the cause of a phenomenon, two elements : one, the presence
" of a force ; the other, the collocation or position of objects
" which is required in order that the force may undergo the par-
" ticular transmutation which constitutes the phenomenon." *
Mr. Mill himself still preferred, however, to express the principle
in terms of motion, rather than in terms of force: — "If the
" effect, or any part of the effect, to be accounted for consists in
" putting matter in motion, then any of the objects present which
" has lost motion has contributed to the effect ; and this is the
" true meaning of the proposition that the cause is that one of

* "System of Logic" (eighth edition), vol. i. p. 406.

THE FORCE BEHIND NATURE. 353

" the antecedents which exerts active force." As this mode of
expressing the facts is sanctioned by high authorities at the
present time, it may be well for me to explain more fully the
basis of my original contention, that our cognition oi force is quite
as immediate and direct as our cognition of motion ; in fact (as
I think I shall be able to prove), even more fundamental, inas-
much as our cognition of matter itself is in great degree dependent
upon it.

It has been recently well said that " all true science involves
" both the knowledge of Nature and the knowledge of Man ; it
"includes the study of mind, as well as of matter. A philo-
" sopher may pursue either, but he can have no complete know-
" ledge of what he investigates, without borrowing from the other
"department of investigation."* Many of the nature-philo-
sophers who affirm that we have no knowledge of anything but
the matter and motion which lie within the range of " experience,"
show themselves very imperfectly acquainted with what "ex-
perience " really means ; unhesitatingly ranking as actual objec-
tive facts their own mental interpretations of the sensory
impressions they receive from external objects. Many meta-
physicians, on the other hand, have reasoned as if our concern
were with mental operations alone, and as if the abstractions in
which they deal had an existence per se, without any relation to
the phenomena of nature. But among the ablest thinkers of the
present time, there seems to be now a pretty general recognition
of the necessity for the replacement of the abstract definitions of
metaphysics — so far, at least, as they relate to the external world
— by psychological expressions of the modes in which the human
ego is affected by its changes. Thus the ordinary metaphysical
definition of " matter " is that which possesses " extension." But
for this definition to convey any definite idea to our minds, we
must know what " extension " means ; and this, we are told, is
the " occupation of space." Now, the conception of " space," in
the opinion of most psychologists, is ordinarily derived from our
interpretation of visual sensations ; and yet these may be alto-
gether deceptive. When we look at a window from a short

* "Natural Theo'iogy of the Doctrine of the Forces." By Professor Ben-
jamin Martin, of the University of the City of New York.

354 NATURE AND MAN.

distance, we cannot tell by the use of our eyes alone whether the
space included by its frame is void, or is occupied by a perfectly
transparent and colourless glass. A glass globe is held up in
front of it, and we cannot tell by looking at it whether it is empty,
or is filled with pure water or some other transparent colourless
liquid. And we can take no cognizance by our vision of the
atmosphere which surrounds us, unless its transparence is inter-
fered with by mist or fog. — Clearly, then, our visual sense cannot
per se furnish us with a satisfactory definition of matter.*

Now that we have got rid of the fiction of " imponderables,"
we might fall back on a definition of matter — in use before that
fiction was invented — as that which possesses "ponderosity" or
weight. But what is weight ? The downward tendency, it may
be replied, in virtue of which all unsupported bodies fall to the
earth. But what is this " tendency ? " We might see any number
of bodies falling to the ground, and might frame a correct law of
their motion, without having the remotest conception of their
possessing that downward pressure, which we at once recognize
when we take a lump of lead or iron into our hands ; and it is
obviously on our cognition of this pressure, that our idea of
weight or ponderosity is based. Now the instrumentality through
which we take cognizance of it seems to me to be threefold. In
i\-\Q first place, we have the sense of simple pressure on the tactile
surface ; as when, the hand passively resting on a table, a weight
is laid upon it. Secondly, we recognize it by the sense of tension
which we experience when a weight is attached to a pendent limb,
and which we refer to the muscles and ligaments which are thus
put on the stretch ; or when, the hand resting on the top of a
cylinder of glass placed over an air-pump, the air is exhausted
from beneath, so as to make us feel the downward " pressure of

* According to Professor Bain, the conception of space is essentially based
on the sense of muscular tension which, according to him, we experience in
the ordinary movements of our eyes. But I am satisfied that this is physio-
logically erroneous. These movements are ordinarily guided, as Professor
Alison long ago contended, and as Professor Ilelmholtz and I myself have
since experimentally proved, by the visual, not by the muscular sense ; and it
is only when we put the muscles to an unusual strain — as when our visual axes
converge on an object brought nearer and nearer to the eyes, or when we
entirely exclude light from the retina, that we experience any sense of tension
in their muscles.

THE FORCE BEHIND NATURE. 355

the atmosphere." In these two cases, the mind is the passive
recipient of the sensory impressions. But, thii-dly^ when we
determinately hft a weight or hold it suspended by our hands, we
experience, in addition to the sense of pressure and the sense ot
tension, a sense of effort^ which we recognize as an immediate
revelation of consciousness, not referrible to any physical im-
pression, but of the same kind as that which we experience in
a purely mental act, such as the fixation of the attention. And a
little consideration will, I think, make it clear that it is on this
"sense of effort" in resisting downward pressure, that our cognition
of weight is essentially based.

For, in \}s\q^ first place, the continuance of a moderate pressure on
the cutaneous surface, like other sensory impressions that become
habitual, soon ceases to affect us sensorially for we cognosce
rather the changes in the states of our sense organs, than the states
themselves. Or, again, we may suffer under a temporary or per-
manent paralysis of the cutaneous sense, that may prevent our
feeling the contact of the body we are lifting or supporting; and
yet, recognizing its downward pressure in other ways, we can put
our muscles into action to antagonize it. But, secondly, this
paralysis may extend to the muscular sense, so that the feeling of
muscular tension is wanting, as well as that of contact-pressure ;
and yet none the less can a weight be lifted or sustained by a
conscious effort, provided that the deficiency of the guiding
sensations ordinarily derived from the muscle itself is supplied by
the sight. A woman whose arm is sensorially but not motorially
paralyzed, can hold up her child as long as she looks at it ; and a
man affected with the like paralysis of his legs, can stand and
walk while looking at his feet. But, thirdly, since the mental
sense of effort is experienced in every determinate exercise of our
muscular power, and is, as all experience teaches, a necessary
condition of that exercise ; since, again, it is proportioned to the
exertion we put forth, and continues as long as that exertion is
sustained — it is in this, and not in the cutaneous or muscular
impressions, which are (so to speak) accidental, that as (it seems to
me) we find the real basis of our cognition of the " ponderosity "
of matter.

But " ponderosity " cannot be considered an essential property
16

356 NATURE AND MAN,

of matter, being merely the "accident" of the earth's attraction
for bodies lying within its range. This attraction varies with the
distance of a body from the centre of the earth ; and a body
occupying the common centre of gravity of the earth and sun
would be equally drawn towards both, and would consequently
have no " weight." We must, therefore, seek a satisfactory
definition of matter elsewhere ; and we find the clue to it in the
consideration that the sense of effort we experience in antagonizing
the downward pressure of a body, is but a particular case of our
more general cognition of resistance. When we project our hand
against a hard and fixed solid body, our consciousness of its
resistance to our pressure is exactly that which we experience
when we try to raise a weight that we have not strength to lift ;
whilst if that solid be either yielding in its parts or movable as a
whole, we measure its resistance, as in lifting a weight, by our
sense of the effort necessary to overcome it. When we move our
hand through a liquid, we are conscious of a resistance to its
motion, which is greater or less according to the " viscosity " of
the liquid. And when we move our open hand through air at
rest, we are still conscious of a resistance, our sense of it being
augmented by an extension of the surface moved, as in the act of
fanning ; whilst if the air is in motion, we feel its pressure on the
sail of a boat by the " pull" of the sheet we hold in our hand, or
on the sails of a windmill by the rotation it imparts, the force of
which we can estimate by the effort we must put forth to resist it.
Attenuate any kind of air or gas as we may, its resistance can still
be made apparent by the like communication of its own motion to
solid bodies. Thus, in Mr. Crookes's wonderful radiometer, a
set of vanes poised on a pivot within a globe of glass exhausted
to a millionth of its ordinary gaseous contents, is whirled round
by the movement excited in the molecules of that residual
mUionth, either by the heat of the radiant beam falling on the
surface of the globe, or by the passage of an electric current
across its interior ; and the mechanical force required to impart
that motion can be measured with precision, by bringing it into
comparison with some other force (as that of gravity) of which we
can take immediate cognizance. And thus, as Herbert Spencer
remarks, by the decomposition of our knowledge of any form of

THE FORCE BEHIND NATURE, 357

matter into simpler and simpler components, we must come at
last to the simplest, to the ultimate material, to the substratum ;
and this we find in the impression of resistance we receive through
what we may call our "force-sense." *

Such being the teachings alike of general and of scientific
experience, I cannot but feel surprised that any persons claiming
the title of philosophers should affirm that we know nothing except
matter and motion, and that force is a creation of our own
imagination. One might suppose such persons to be either
destitute of the "force-sense," or to have based their philo-
sophical system upon the movements of the heavenly bodies
which they can only see, instead of upon "those mundane phe-
nomena in the cognition of which they can bring their hands
to the assistance of their eyes. How essential this assistance
is to the formation of correct conceptions of the solid forms and
relative positions of the objects around us, is known to every one
who has studied the physiology of the senses. Should we not
think it absurd on the part of any one who possesses in the use of
his hands the means of detecting the error of his visual percep-
tions, if he were to base a superstructure of reasoning — still more
to found a whole system of philosophy — upon the latter alone .?
Yet such appears to me to be the position of those who deny our
direct cognition of force.

Let us suppose (if possible) a man who had enjoyed the full
use of his eyes, but whose limbs had been completely paralyzed
from infancy, looking on at a game of billiards. He would see a
succession of motions connected by regular sequence — the motion
of the arm of the player, the stroke of the cue, the roll of the ball,
its contact with another ball, the movement of the second ball, the
change of direction or the entire stop of the first, the rebound of
balls from the cushion in altered directions, and so on. And he
might frame a statement in " terms of motion " of all that passes
before his eyes, thinking this all he can know. — But suppose the
limbs of such a man to be suddenly endowed with the ordinary

* Herbert Spencer considers the cognition of resistance to be essentially
derived from the sense of muscuLar tension. I have already expressed my
reason for now dissenting from this view, which I myself formerly held.

358 NATURE AND MAN.

powers of sensation and movement ; let him take the cue into his
hands and himself strike the ball ; let him hold his hand on the
table so that the rolling ball shall strike it and make him feel its im-
pact ; let him hold the second ball and feel the shock imparted to
it by the stroke of the first. Can any one deny that he would thus
acquire a dynamical conception linking together the whole succes-
sion of phenomena, which he was previously quite incapable of form-
ing ; that this dynamical conception is quite as directly based upon
the experience derived through his " force-sense," as his kinetic
expression was upon that derived through his visual sense ; and that
this cognition of the force producing the motions is, therefore,
fully as much entitled to be introduced into a logical doctrine
of causation, as the visual cognition of the motions themselves ?
If it be replied that we have no proof that the movement of the
ball we strike is produced by the force which we consciously exert
in striking it, I simply reply that we have as much proof of it as
we have of anything which rests upon universal experience, and
which we can verify experimentally as often as we choose to try —
quite as much as we have of the existence of anything whatever
that is external to ourselves.

Let us take, again, the simple case of magnetic attraction. A
man who knows nothing of magnetism sees a piece of iron
brought within a certain distance of what looks like a horse-shoe
bar of the same metal, suddenly jump towards its approximated
ends; and might, as before, correctly express the fact in "terms
of motion." But let him take the piece of iron in his hands, so
as to feel the "pull" upon it when brought sufficiently near the
magnet, and he then becomes conscious, through his force-sense,
of a power of which he was before utterly ignorant.

Thus, as it seems to me, an analysis of those psychical experi-
ences, on which all our cognitions of the physical universe around
us are really based, irresistibly lands us in the conclusion that, as
Herbert Spencer expresses it, " All the sensations through which
" the external world is known to us, are explicable by us only as
"resulting from certain forms of force;" the direct derivation of
our conception of force from cur own experience of muscular
tension (or as I should myself say, from our own sense of effort)
being "a fact which no metaphysical quibbling can set aside."

THE FORCE BEHIND NATURE-. 359

In the words of the able American writer I have already quoted,
"The conception of force is one of those universal ideas which
" belong of necessity to the intellectual furniture of every human
" mind." By no one has the principle for which I am contending,
been more clearly and more authoritatively expressed than by Sir
John Herschel, a philosopher who united to his wonderful grasp
of Nature-phenomena a profound insight into the action of the
mind of man in the interpretation of them : —

" Whatever attempts have been made by metaphysical writers
" to reason away the connection of cause and effect, and fritter
"it down into the unsatisfactory relation of habitual [uncon-
" ditional] sequence, it is certain that the conception of some
" more real and intimate connection is quite as strongly impressed
"upon the human mind as that of the existence of an external
"world, the vindication of whose reality has, strange to say, been
" regarded as an achievement of no common merit in the annals
"of this branch of philosophy. It is our own immediate con-
" sciousness of ejfort, when we exert force to put matter in
" motion or to oppose and neutralize force, which gives us this
"internal conviction oi power and causation, so far as it relates
" to the material world." — Treatise on " Astronomy " in Lardner's
Cydopcedia, p. 232.

Man's position as the " Interpreter of Nature " may be not
inaptly likened (as it seems to me) to that of an intelligent
observer of the working of a cotton-factory, with whose mechan-
ical arrangements he is entirely unacquainted, and of whose
moving power he knows nothing whatever. He is taken into
a vast apartment,* in which he is at first utterly bewildered by
the number and variety of the movements going on around him ;
but, by directing his attention to the several machines, seriatim,
he is able to arrive at a classification of them, according to the
kind of ivork which each does. Thus he finds one set carding
the cotton-wool supplied to it, so that its confused tangle gives
place to a parallel laying of the fibres. He would see another
taking up the bundles of carded wool, and drawing them out

* In one of the flax-spinning mills belonging to the Marshalls of Leeds,
the whole of the work is done on one floor, covering (I believe) two acres of
ground, instead of in the usual building of several stories.

36o NATURE AND MAN.

(after repeated doublings to secure uniformity) into a long soft
cord. This cord he would then trace into the roving machine,
which, by a continuation of the drawing process, further reduces
its thickness, at the same time giving it a slight twist to increase
its tenacity, so that it admits of being then wound upon bobbins.
Thence he would trace the cord into the spintmig machine, which
at the same time stretches and twists the cord, producing from
it a yarn whose fineness might vary considerably in different
machines. Finally, he would see the spun yarn carried, some
as weft and some as woof, into the power-loom, from which it
emerges as woven cloth — the final resultant of the whole series
of operations.

Concentrating now his attention upon any one of these
machines, he studies its wheels, levers, and other moving parts,
and tries to comprehend their several actions and the bearing
of these upon each other. By long and scrutinizing observation
he masters the whole series of sequences, and traces the distri-
bution of motion from a single large axis, through the hundreds
(it may be) of separate pieces of the machine directly or indirectly
connected with it; and he might thus frame a description of the
working of the machine, which might be perfectly correct so far
as it goes, and which yet would be defective in one most essential
particular — the statement of the force or power by which it is
moved. For, so far as mere visual observation could teach him,
the machine might be self-moving ; and he might thus attribute
to each kind an inherent power of carding, roving, drawing,
spinning, or weaving, as the case might be.

Carrying his observations further, and noticing that one or
another of these machines comes to a standstill, but resumes its
motion after an interval, he may include this occasional suspension
also in his general expression ; but, perplexed by the want of any
regularity in its intervals, he will seek some further explanation.
Continuing his patient watch, he will see that the stoppage of the
machine follows the pulling of a handle by the man in attendance
upon it, and that when the handle is pulled the other way, the
machine goes on again ; and thus he will be led to introduce a
certain position of this handle as one of the antecedent conditions
of the machine's action. Still pursuing his inquiries, he finds out

THE FORCE BEHIND NATURE. 361

that the axes of the several machines are all in mechanical rela-
tion with one great longitudinal shaft, being connected with it
either by continuous bands passing round pulleys, or by trains
of wheelwork : and at last he discovers the important fact, that
the movement of the handle which stops the machine breaks the
continuity of that relation, shifting a strap from a "fast" to a
"loose" pulley, or throwing the wheelwork "out of gear;" while
the converse movement, which restores that continuity, is followed
by the renewed action of the machine, which goes on until the
continuity is again broken. Thus he will be led to regard its
maintenance as essential to the working of the machine ; but
nothing that he has yet learned explains to him why it is essential.
He has only got at the material collocaiioti which his educated
vision enables him to recognize ; and for anything he knows to
the contrary, the change in that collocation may be in itself
adequate to determine the result.

But let him lay hold of the band which stretches between the
main shaft and the axis of one machine, or attempt to stay with
his hand the rotation of the train of wheels which connects it with
another, — he then at once becomes conscious, through his "force-
sense," of the power which the band or the wheelwork is the
instrument of conveying; and as he finds that the "pull" upon
his hand is just the same whether the machine is in motion or
not, provided that the band or wheel remains in mechanical
connection with the main shaft, he comes to the conviction that
the source of the power is in the shaft, and that, so far from any
one of the machines having an inherent power of movement, its
motion entirely depends upon the force supplied to it from the
shaft. And when, under the guidance of this conception, he
again examines the working of the several kinds of machine, he
finds that while the p07ver is the same for all, the diversity in
their respective products is traceable to the diversity in their
^;onstruction— that is, to the material collocaiions through which
the one moving force exerts itself in action.

But having thus acquired the notion of moving po7ver, and
having satisfied himself of the derivation of the force that gives
motion to each of the entire aggregate of machines, from one
main shaft, our inquirer finds himself again posed. Has this

362 NATURE AND MAN,

shaft itself an inherent power of motion ; or does it derive that
power from any ulterior source? He sees the shaft apparently
terminate in the two end-walls of the building ; and, finding no
evidence of its connection with anything else, he may feel himself
drawn towards the conclusion that it moves of itself— \.ha.i is, by
the "potency" of its own material constitution. But before
adopting this rationale, he sees all the machines stop at once,
and finds that the shaft also has ceased to revolve. Here is a
new and starding phenomenon. After pondering on it for an
hour, and carefully looking out for an explanation, he sees the
shaft and its connected machines resume their motion, and yet
is certain that no agency visible to him has had any concern in
that renewal. By continued watching, he finds this suspension
and renewal to be periodical, so that he can frame a law that
shall express them in terms of time. Thus he might give a
complete phenomenal account of the action of the shaft, which
should be perfectly consistent with the assumption of its " inherent
potency," and which might be sufficiently satisfactory to his mind
to justify him in believing that there is no more to be learned
about it. But not wishing to leave anything uninvestigated, he
goes round to the other side of the wall. There he finds that one
end of the shaft comes through it, and is in mechanical connection
with either a steam-engine or a water-wheel ; and by watching
what occurs when its motion is checked and renewed, he sees
that the Engineer shuts off, or turns on, either the steam generated
in the boiler of the steam-engine, or the descending water whose
motion drives the wheel.

I shall not weary the patience of such readers as may have
followed me thus far, by tracing out in like detail the further steps
of the inquiry ; but shall land them in the final conclusion now
accepted by every man of science — that the power exerted in both
these cases is drawn from solar radiation : the fall of the water
which gives motion to the water-wheel, being merely the return
of that which has been pumped up as vapour by the sun's heat;
whilst the combustion of coal from which steam-power is derived,
reproduces, as active force or " energy," the sunshine that exerted
itself during the carboniferous period in dissociating carbonic acid
and water into the hydrocarbons of coal and the oxygen of the

THE FORCE BEHIND NATURE. 363

atmosphere, whose recombination gives forth heat and light And
if we look still further back for the source of the sun's radiant
energy, we should find it, perhaps, in the progressive consolidation
of the primeval " fire-mist " — nebular matter.

But whence nebular matter? And whence the force which
draws its particles together, and which manifests itself as light
and heat during their consolidation ? Here we come to a wall,
to the other side of which we seem at present to have no access.

But is there no other side ? Does not the whole course of the
preceding inquiry show the unsatisfaction (if I may revive an
obsolete word) of resting in any inherent "potency" of matter
as the ultima ratio of the existing kosmos ? If we think the man
foolish who supposes the main shaft of a cotton mill to turn oj
itself, merely because he sees it apparently end in a wall which
conceals from him the source of its motive power, are we not
really chargeable with the like folly if we attribute sell-motion to
the ultimate molecules of matter, merely because the power that
moves them is hid from our sight? The mere physicist may see
no possible way further. But there is a philosophy which has
fully as true and as broad a basis in man's psychical experience,
as can be claimed for the fabric of physical science ; and in the
admirable words of the great master I have already quoted (Sir
John Herschell, in his Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects,
p. 460), I shall sum up an argument which this paper is intended
rather to illustrate and enforce by an appeal to the familiar facts
of consciousness, than to present in strict logical form : —

*' In the mental sense of effort, clear to the apprehension of
'* every one who has ever performed a voluntary act, which is pre-
"sent at the instant when the determination to do a thing is
"carried out into the act of doing it, we have a consciousness of
" immediate and personal causation which cannot be disputed or
"ignored. And when we see the same kind of act performed by
" another, we never hesitate in assuming for him that conscious-
"ness which we recognize in ourselves ; and in this case we can
"verify our conclusion by oral communication." "In the only
"case in which we are admitted into any personal knowledge of
" the origin of force, we find it connected (possibly by intermediate
"Unks untraceable by our faculties, yet indisputably cotmected)

364 NATURE AND MAN.

"with volition, and by inevitable consequence, with motive, with
'■'■intellect, and with all those attributes of mind in which personality
" consists."

As a physiologist, I most fully recognize the fact that the
physical force exerted by the body of man is not generated de novo
by his will, but is derived from the oxidation of the constituents
of his food. But holding it as equally certain, because the fact is
capable of verification by every one as often as he chooses to make
tlie experiment, that, in the performance of every volitional move-
ment, that physical force is put in action, directed, and controlled,
by the individual personality or Ego, I deem it just as absurd and
illogical to affirm that there is no place for a God in Nature,
originating, directing, and controlling its forces by his will, as it
would be to assert that there is no place in Man's body for his
conscious Mind.

XIII.
NATURE AND LAW.

\The Modem Review, October, 1880.]

"The laws of light and gravitation," wrote Mr. Atkinson to
Harriet Martineau thirty years ago, " extend over the universe,
*' and explain whole classes of phenomena ; " and this " explana-
tion," according to the same writer, is all-sufficient, " philosophy
*' finding no God in Nature, nor seeing the want of any." The
"advanced" philosophy of the present time goes still further;
asserting that as the progress of science now places it beyond
doubt that all the phenomena of Nature — physical, biological, and
mental — are but manifestations of certain fundamental " properties
" of matter," acting in accordance with fixed laws, " there is no
"room for a God in Nature." And scientific thinkers who do
not accept this as the conclusion obviously deducible from their
recognition of the universality of the "reign of law," are branded
as either illogical thinkers, or as cowardly adherents of a bygone
superstition — men who are either deficient in the power to reason
out the conclusions to which their own premises necessarily lead
or have not the courage to face them.

There can be no question of the influence that is being exerted
by the reiteration of these assertions on the intelligent thought of
the younger generation. Over and over again has it been pointed
out with truth, that whenever science and theology have come into
conflict, theology has had in the end to go to the wall. The
Copernican system of astronomy has established itself in spite of
the thunders of the Vatican. The geological interpretation of the

366 NATURE AND MAN.

history of the earth has taken the place of the Mosaic Cosmogony
in the current behef of educated men, notwithstanding all the
denunciations of theological orthodoxy. Any one who should
now maintain the universality of the Noachian Deluge, to doubt
which was once to peril one's salvation, would be laughed at as an
ignoramus. The antiquity of man, which no more than twenty
years ago was repudiated as a dangerous heresy, has already
passed beyond the region of discussion. And so, it is affirm&J,
as the doctrine of evolution has now established itself in the minds
of all competent judges as an indisputable verity, science — which
formerly attacked and mastered only the outworks of theology —
will be assuredly no less successful in its assault on the citadel
itself The " creation " of the Old Revelation will fall before the
" evolution " of the New ; the notion of power will be superseded
by that of law; the evidences of "design" will be disposed of by
the fact of " natural selection ; " and the "potencies" of matter
will henceforth be the only subjects about which sensible men
will concern themselves.

Now I fully accept it as the highest work of the man of
science, whatever his department of study, to seek out those
"laws" which express the order of Nature. But I affirm that
even supposing him to have so completely succeeded in his
search, as to be able to formulate a general statement in which
they could be all embodied, and from which all the phenomena
of the universe could be traced out deductively, the question
of the cause of those phenomena would be left just where it
was ; the " law " simply expressing the order and physical con-
ditions of their concurrence, and giving no real "explanation" of
them.

Much of what seems to me a prevalent confusion of thought
on this subject — nothing being more common than to speak of
laws as " governing " or " regulating " phenomena, and to affirm
that phenomena are sufficiently "accounted for" when they can
be shown to be "consequences" of a law — seems to me to be
traceable to the double sense in which the word " law " is habitu-
ally used. And the purpose of my present paper will be to help
my readers to " think themselves clear " upon this matter ; by
showing the fundamental difference between the kgal and the

NATURE AND LAW. 3^7

strictly scientific conception of law, and by examining into the
theological bearing of each. And if, in so doing, I go over
ground which has been trodden until it seems perfectly familiar,
and use illustrations that may be thought to have been worn to
triteness, it is because I believe that the best lessons are often to
be drawn from the most familiar things, // they be looked at from
the rigJit point of view.

I. When we speak of the " laws " of a State, we mean the
rules laid down by the Governing Power of that State for the
conduct of its members; which rules, its Executive is charged
with enforcing by the power it wields. But there may be laws
which a Government regards as obsolete, and thinks it inexpedient
to enforce (as is the case with many of those still inscribed on our
Statute-book) ; or others of recent enactment, which a Govern-
ment may be deterred from carrying into execution by the antago-
nistic force of public opinion (as happened many times in regard
to the " fugitive slave law " of the United States). Or, again, the
Executive may itself be paralyzed by a panic, which allows mob-
force for the time to reign supreme (as in the riots of London in
1780, and the riots of Bristol in 1831); or may be overthrown
by a Revolution which subverts its authority, leaving anarchy to
prevail until a new Government shall have been constituted.
Thus it is clear that state-made laws have no coercive action in
themselves ; that action being entirely dependent upon the enforce-
ment of them by the governing power, of whose will they are to
be regarded as the expressions. The very term " government,"
indeed, carries with it the idea of a governing power on the one
hand, and of a people controlled by it on the other. And when
we speak of a State as " governed by law," we mean no more than
that its controlling Power " governs according to law ; " or, in
other words, that it acts — not on the arbitrary dictation of its own
will — but in accordance with certain fixed and determinate rules,
in which that will is expressed, and within which it limits its
exercise.

It is thus that when we pass from the sphere of human
government to that of the Divine, and speak of the universe
as " governed " by the " laws " of a supreme Ruler, we mean that
his power is exerted, not like that of an arbitrary potentate who

368 NATURE AND MAN.

changes his course of action as his own caprice or passion may
direct, but like that of a benevolent sovereign whose rule is in
uniform and orderly conformity with certain fixed principles,
originally determined as conducive to the welfare and happiness
of his people.

Such, in the earlier stages of scientific inquiry, when the uni-
formities of Nature first attracted the attention of thoughtful men,
seems to have been the aspect under which the "laws" that
express them were generally regarded. While the Hebrew mind,
nursed in the idea of an anthropomorphic theocracy, regarded all
the phenomena of the universe as the immediate expressions of the
personal will of its national deity, and, so far from feeling any
incredulity as to "supernatural" or apparently disorderly occur-
rences, expected them as .the appropriate attestations of his
authority, the philosophers of Greece and Rome, who gave them-
selves rather to the study of the order of Nature, and were strongly
impressed by its uniformities, for the most part saw in them (as
expressed by the application of the word kosmos, originally
meaning "orderly arrangement," to designate the universe) the
manifestations of supreme designing and controlling minds.*
And among those who, nearer our own time, most advanced our
knowledge of that order, the same conception of the nature of the
"laws" expressive of it continued to prevail. Thus it is recorded
of Kepler, that when, after a life devoted to the search, he had
discovered the three laws of planetary motion which have made
his name immortal, he spoke with devout gratitude of the ample
reward he had received for his labours, in having been thus per-
mitted " to think the thoughts of God." And no one who has
followed the course of Newton's discoveries and his own mode of
viewing them, can doubt that this idea was alike dominant in his
mind. For when charged by some of the theologians of his time
with (as they affirmed) superseding the Divine agency in the pro-
duction of the movements of the planetary system, by attributing
them to hypothetical forces of his own creation, he defended
himself by showing that his "Principia" simply aimed to express
the mode in which that agency exerts itself.

* Every reader of Cicero's treatise "De Natura Deorum" will recollect
this to be its " argument."

NATURE AND LAW, 369

II. But as the scientific conception of "law," based on the
discoveries of Kepler and Newton, extended itself into every
department of nature, and one class of her phenomena after
another was brought within its range, the idea of Divine govern-
ment, originally embodied in the phrase "laws of nature,"
dropped away; the study of "final causes" was found to hamper,
instead of guiding, scientific research; and the more thoroughly
the pursuit of the truth as it is in nature has been freed from
theological trammels, the more successful that pursuit has been.
While, however, the idea of " government " by a God is now
excluded, by general consent, from the domain of science, the
notion of " government " by law has taken its place, not only in
popular thought, but in the minds of many who claim the right
to lead it ; and it is the vaUdity of this notion which I have now
to call in question.

We may, I think, best begin our inquiry into what a " law of
nature " really means, by tracing historically the p)rogress of our
knowledge of that one, whose simplicity of form allows it to be
stated with the greatest clearness and precision, and whose uni-
versality seems to have been demonstrated beyond all question.
I mean, of course, the law of gravitation, as enunciated by Newton ;
which affirms that " all masses of matter attract one another with
" forces directly proportional to their masses, and inversely pro-
" portional to the squares of their distances." As I pointed out in
my former paper, what is meant by " force," in this and similar
expressions, is the " pull " of which we ourselves become sensible
in any attempt we make to resist its action — as when we try to
hold back a piece of iron that is being drawn towards a powerful
magnet.

That all solid or liquid bodies fall to the ground if unsupported,
must have been among the very earliest of the generalized
experiences of the human race ; and the downward " pull " felt by
every one who held such bodies in his hand, justified his attribut-
ing their fall, when let go, to the " attraction " exerted upon them
by the earth. The difference upon the " pulls " exerted by stones
of different sizes, would give the notion of differences of iveight ;
and certain standards being adopted, the balance applied the

370 NATURE AND MAN.

means of more exactly determining the downward " pull " of a mass,
than any personal estimate of it could afford. Differences of
weight being thus determined between masses of the same size,
but of different kinds of matter— as, for instance, between a cube
of lead and a cube of stone, or between a cubic vessel of water
and a block of wood of the same dimensions — gave the notion of
differences of relative weight (or " specific gravity ") and the weight
of water being taken as the standard of comparison, a distinction
was drawn between " heavy " and " light " bodies. The floating
of a piece of wood on the surface of water, and its rising up from
the bottom when no longer held down, were rightly interpreted as
a consequence of their respective downward tendencies or relative
weights ; for since it could be shown by experiment that if equal
measures of wood and of water were put in the two scales of a
balance, the water would go down, it w^as seen that the earth must
have a greater attraction for it, and that the ascent of the wood is
brought about by the descent of the water to take its place.

Now here we have a very simple case of what is commonly
called the " explanation " of a natural phenomenon. To those
who first reflected on the matter, the ascent of the solid wood
through the liquid water might seem an exception to the general
uniformity, for v/hich the philosopher of the time would be desired
to account. And he would do so by showing that it is really in
accordance with such uniformity. Further than this he could not
go ; and further than this no scientific explanation can go. As
J. S. Mill has truly said, " In science, those who speak of explaining
"any phenomenon mean (or should mean) pointing out not some
"more familiar, but merely some more general, phenomenon, of
"which it is a partial exemplification." — But our ancient philosopher
could ?iot have so explained the ascent of the smoke ; for he knew
not that both the atmosphere and the smoke have weight ; but
that the smoke, being the lighter of the two, ascends like a piece of
wood through a column of water ; and he could only account for
it by attributing to the smoke an exceptional "levity," which
made it ascend, whilst all other bodies descended. But he could
not really get any nearer to the "cause" of the general, than to
that of this exceptiotial phenomenon. As it is a " property," he
would say, of the earth to attract, and of bodies in general to be

NATURE AND LAW. 371

attracted by it, dotvnwards^ so it is a "property" of smoke to
mount upwards. But this is nothing more than another form of
stating the facts famihar to everybody. Such philosophers as talk
of laws " explaining " phenomena, or of the " potencies " of matter
as giving a sufficient account of its activities, seem to me not to
have got beyond that " wisdom of the Ancients," which, in such
a case as that just cited, they would themselves repudiate as mere
" folly."

The notion of the attractive force of the earth, unchecked by
any right conception of the action of force in producing motion,
led the Ancients into a very strange error. As the " weight " of a
body is the expression of the downward " pull " which the earth
exerts upon it, it seemed natural to suppose that the rate of the
fall of any heavy body to the ground would increase in proportion to
that weight, so that a body weighing ten pounds would fall ten times
as fast as a body weighing one pound. And this was formulated
as a "law" by Aristotle, and accepted by "educated" mankind
as such for nearly two thousand years : for although it might
have been at once disproved by the very simple experiment of
letting fall the two weights at the same moment from the top of a
high tower, and observing when they respectively struck the ground
at the bottom, the authority of Aristotle on the one hand (to doubt
which was rank heresy),^ and what seemed the " common sense
of the matter " on the other, prevented it from being called in
question.

Here again (as it seems to me) we may find a lesson of great
value. Aristotle was undoubtedly — as regards science — the
" master mind " of the ancient philosophy ; but in this matter
he proceeded upon his own conceptions, instead of upon ascer-
tained facts ; and he consequently presumed to make laws for
Nature, instead of setting himself to determine what are the laws
of Nature — framing general expressions of what he thought must
be her orderly uniformities, instead of inquiring what these
uniformities really are, and basing his generalizations upon them.

It was by Galileo that this matter was first experimentally
investigated. While yet a student in medicine at the University
of Pisa (his native town), his attention was attracted by the swing-
Lag of one of the chandeliers from the lofty roof of the Cathedral,

372 NATURE AND MAN.

which suggested to him a series of experiments upon the vibrations
of pendulums of different lengths— without, however, causing him
to pursue the subject further than the devising an instrument for
measuring the rate of the pulse. But the interest he took in the
study of mathematics and mechanics proved so strong as to lead
him to devote himself entirely to them, with a success that caused
him to be appointed lecturer on those subjects at the University.
Although no religious reformation could then make head in Italy,
a revolt against the domination of Aristotle was beginning to
break out among its scientific men ; and undeterred by the fate
of Giordano Bruno (who was burnt by the Inquisition at Rome in
1600), Galileo early joined the movement party. One of the first
of the Aristotelian doctrines which he called in question, was that
which I have just cited. He saw that it must be erroneous, as
taking no account of the very obvious consideration that while
the "pull" of the earth on the weight of 10 lbs. is ten times as great
as it is upon the weight of i lb., it has to give motion to ten times
the mass ; so that the rates of fall of the two bodies would be the
same. His teaching on this subject being opposed by his col-
leagues, Galileo, in the presence of the whole University, ascended
the " leaning tower," and dropping from its summit bodies of
different weights, he showed that (with an inconsiderable differ-
ence, due to the resistance of the air) they reached the bottom in
the same times.

As the monument of an experiment which gave the death-blow
to the tmscietitific legislation of Aristotle, and prepared the way for
the scientific legislation of Newton, the " leaning tower " of Pisa
beautiful in itself as an architectural work, has a far grander in-
terest for all who can appreciate this great step in the emancipation
of thought, which should cause it to be preserved with the most
jealous care so long as its stones will hold together.

But this demolition of an old error was only the first result of
Galileo's experimental researches. For he found, by letting fall
similar weights from different heights, that the rate of motion of
the falling body continually increases as it descends ; a body that
falls 16 feet in one second, falling 64 feet in two seconds, 144 feet
in three seconds, and 256 feet vafour seconds, this last being prob-
ably the greatest height at which he could experiment These

NATURE AND LAW. 373

results were found capable of being expressed by a very simple
formula — that the total fall in any number of seconds is the pro-
duct of the square of that number multiplied into the fall in the
first second. But there was no adequate ground for asserting, or
even for expecting, that this formula would hold good in regard to
a body let fall from a height of ten or a himdred times 256 feet.
The "law" was, in that stage, the simple generalized expression
of facts within the range of actuq.1 knowledge. No one had a
right to say how far above the general surface of the earth its
attractive force extends ; nor could it be affirmed with any cer-
tainty, that the fall of bodies from great mountain heights would
follow the same "law" as their fall from the top of a tower.

But a great advance was made, when Galileo applied to this
case the general doctrine of the action of " accelerating forces,"
to which his study of mechanics had led him. For he saw that
when the falling body is let go, it starts from a state of rest, its
velocity being o ; and that since it is receiving afresh, at every
instant of its fall, the same " pull " from the earth as that which
first puts it in motion, its rate of movement must undergo a con-
tinual regular acceleration. On the basis of this conception, a
very simple computation showed that during the first second it
will have thus acquired a velocity, which, if there were no fresh
"pull," would carry it through 32 feet in the next second, but
which, ^inth the fresh " pull," would cause it to descend 48 feet,
making 64 feet in the two seconds — and so on. The simply
empirical law, then, which at first had no higher value than it
derived from its accordance with a very limited experience, and
which might, or might not, be found to hold good beyond the
range of that experience, acquired a rational value, as the ex-
pression of what may be fairly anticipated to be the continually
accelerating rate of motion of falling bodies, due to the con-
stantly acting attraction of the earth upon all bodies within its
range. And thus it was reasonable to expect, that within the
range of the earth's attraction — whatever that range might be —
the rate of descent of bodies falling towards its surface would still
be found to conform to it. But no one could then form any
definite idea as to the extent of that range. It was, as we shall
presently see, the bold " scientific imagination " of Newton, which

374 NATURE AND MAN.

first framed the conception — and his vast mathematical ability,
which enabled him to give it definite shape — that the moon is
constantly " falling " towards the earth at a rate exactly conform-
able to that " law " of terrestrial gravitation, with which the name
and fame of Galileo will ever be associated.

My own first ideas of the Newtonian Philosophy, if I rightly
remember, were drawn from the answer given in that best child's
book of my generation — "Evenings at Home" — to the question
"Why does an apple fall?" Whether the apple of Newton is to
be relegated, like that of Tell, to the limbo of " myths," is a question
I shall not stop to discuss. It is enough that the story .serves to
illustrate the "idea." Probably if the question were put to a
hundred "educated" people, ninty-nine of them would give one of
these two answers, "Because of the earth's attraction," or, " Because
of the law of gravitation." But, as I have shown, to speak of the
attraction of the earth, is merely to express, in different words, the
fact that it " draws " the apple downwards ; and if we go further
and say that the earth draws downwards not only apples, but
stones, water, and air — in fact, all material bodies whatever — we
only express a general uniformity, of which we know nothing more
than that it is. Clearly it is no real "explanation" of the fall of
any one apple, to say that all apples or all material bodies fall
when unsupported. So the " law " of gravitation is merely an
expression of that general uniformity, framed with a scientific
exactness which enables us to say " with certainty " (in common
parlance) what will be the time occupied in the fall of a heavy body
through any given number of feet. But that "certainty" depends
not upon any " governing " action of the " law " itself, — for into the
purely scientific conception of law the idea of a governing power
does not enter ; — but solely upon our rational expectation that
what has been found conformable to a vast experience in the past,
under every variety of conditions, will in like manner prove con-
formable to it in the future.

Before, however, we follow the development of Galileo's
doctrine of terrestrial gravitation into the Newtonian doctrine of
universal gravitation, we must deal with another of the "laws"
imposed on Nature by the ancient philosophy. It was held that
as a circle is the most "perfect " figure, and as the motions of the

NATURE AND LAW. 375

celestial bodies imcst be " perfect," they must revolve in circles ; —
whether round the sun, as Pythagoras maintained, or round the
earth, as Aristotle and the later Schoolmen taught. Every tyro
knows how the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, based on the latter
conception, developed itself into a mechanism of most ingeniously
devised complexity, by the necessity of continually adding new
cycles and epicycles to "account for" the new discordances which
improved methods of observation were continually bringing to light
between the actual and the predicted places of the heavenly bodies.
This method of " accounting for '' them was a pure assumption ;
and yet it answered its purpose so well, as to form the basis of the
methods of astronomical computation in use at the present time.*
But when Copernicus revived the scheme of Pythagoras, and the
comparative simplicity of his system (doing away with a large part
of the cumbrous machinery of the Ptolemaic) recommended it to
the acceptance of minds not trammelled by their own scholastic
prejudices, or dominated by ecclesiastical tyranny, the whole
question had to be studied afresh ; and it was by the marvellous
perseverance and ingenuity of Kepler, the contemporary and friend
of Galileo, that the solution of it was found. Starting with the
conviction that there must be an " order " (if he could only find it
out), he passed his life in a series of guesses as to what that order
might be ; and his ingenuity in guessing was only surpassed by his
eagerness in subjecting every guess to the test of its strict con-
formity with observed facts, and by his candid readiness to abandon
it so soon as its discordance became clear to him. Limiting his
studies to the orbit of Mars, he brought to the explanation of the
observed places of that planet all the resources of eccentric but
uniform circular motion, which he could devise both for Mars and

* It is not a little singular that, notwithstanding the great advance which
mathemalical science has made since Newton's time, no formula has yet Ijeen
devised for (//rtr/Zi' computing the place of a planet or comet in an elliptic orliit ;
all such computations being still made on the assumption of uniform circnlar
motion, with cycles and epicycles " interpolated " (after the method of Ptolemy)
so as to attain any required appn^ximation to absolute correctness. And thus,
both as generalizing the facts of observation, and as furnishing the only basis
for accurate prediction, this complex conception (as now perfected) would have
liad even a higher claim to be received as true to Nature than Kepler's " laws "
o{ elliptic motion, until these were shown to be deducible from Newton's grand
and simple assumptions.

376 NATURE AND MAN.

the earth ; but found, time after time, that Mars " burst all the
"chains of the equations, and broke forth from the prisons of the
"tables." At last it occurred to him to try an ellipse; and on
projecting this as the path of the planet, he found, to his great joy,
that the observed places of Mars in the heavens corresponded so
exactly with what they should be on that assumption, as to afford
the strongest assurance of its truth. But this hypothesis of the
elliptical orbit of Mars did not " explain " anything ; it did no
more than state in general terms the course of that one planet's
motion. Why Mars should take that course, was a question on
which he threw no light. And, however probable he might think
it that the other planets also move in elliptic orbits, he neither
proved it as a fact by the like experiential investigation, nor could
adduce any other ground for such probability than that general idea
of uniformity and harmony which was the basis of his whole work.
It is clear, then, that Kepler's /r^/ " law of planetary motion " has
in itself no "governing" power whatever.

While working out his conception of elliptical motion, Kepler
was baffled for a time by the discordance between the observed
places of Mars, and the places which would be predicted for him
on the assumption of "uniform " motion in an elliptic — instead of
in a circular — orbit. Finding that motion to be much more rapid
in the part of the orbit nearer the sun, than in the part more
remote from it, he again applied himself to his old work oi guessing ;
and it is singular that he was led to hit upon what is known as his
second law — the passage of the "radius vector" over equal areas
in equal times — by an erroneous physical conception of a driving
force emanating from the sun, and acting more powerfully on near
bodies than those at a distance. Now this second " law," like the
first, was simply nothing else than a theoretical generalization of a
class of facts ; its value lay entirely in the correctness with which
it expressed them ; and so far was Kepler from having attained to
any higher conception of its import, that what he regarded as a
triumphant confirmation of his doctrine came out of a merely
accidental relation between the ellipse and the circle.*

* I do not know any more instructive or interesting scientific biography
than the " Life of Kepler," by Drinkwater, published by the long-since-defunct
"Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," which did much good work
of this kind half a century ago.

NATURE AND LAW. 377

It was not until twelve years after the publication of his first
two " laws," that Kepler was able to announce the discovery of the
third ; which expresses the numerical relation between the re-
spective distances of the planets from the sun, and the times oi their
revolution around him. This, again, was the outcome of a long
series of guesses. And what was remarkable as to the error of the
idea which suggested the second law to his mind, was still more
remarkable as to the third ; for not only, in his search for the
"harmony " of which he felt assured, did he proceed on the
erroneous notion of a whirling force emanating from the sun,
which decreases with increase of distance, but he took as his guide
another assumption no less erroneous, viz., that the masses of the
planets increase with their distances from the sun. In order to
make this last fit with the facts, he was driven to assume a relation
of their respective densities, which we now know to be utterly
untrue ; for, as he himself says, " unless we assume this proportion
"of the densities, the law of the periodic times will not answer."
Thus, says his biographer, " three out of the four suppositions
"made by Kepler to explain the beautiful law he had detected, are
" now indisputably known to be false ; " what he considered to be
the /r^^ of it, being only a mode of false reasoning by which "any
"required result might be deduced from any given principles."
And yet I cannot doubt that if Kepler had found his " law " to be
inconsistent with \}c\.Q.Jacts of which it was the generalized expression,
he would have at once surrendered this pet child of his old age,
with the same honest zeal for truth that led him to abandon the
earlier offspring of his creative brain.

Neither of the " laws " formulated by Kepler, then, can be
regarded as having any higher than an absolutely einpirical value ;
being good as expressions of certain classes of uniformities ob-
servable in nature ; but, as he left them, quite untrustworthy —
except as a guide to further inquiry — beyond the limits of the
experience on which they were based. They had (as it seems to
me) just the value of what is commonly known as "Bode's formula"
(called by Professor Newcome the " law of Titius "), in regard to
the distances of the planets from the sun : for this gave a numerical
expression of the several distances of Mercury, Venus, the Earth,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, which not only agreed sufficiently

378 NATURE AND MAN.

well with the observed facts to suggest the existence of a real
"law;" but actually led to the prediction of a "lost planet"
between Mars and Jupiter, which has been verified by the
discovery of somewhere near two hundred "asteroids," to say
nothing of streams of meteorites. The discovery of Neptune, how-
ever, effectually demolished the credit of this "law;" the distance
of that planet from the sun proving to be nearly one- fourth less than
the formula would make it.*

The first of the great achievements of Newton in relation to
our present subject, was a piece of purely geometrical reasoning.
Assuming two forces to act on a body, of which one should be
capable of imparting to it uniform motion in a straight line, whilst
the other should attract it towards a fixed point in accordance with
Galilto's law of terrestrial gravity, he demonstrated that the path
of the body would be deflected into a curve, which must be one of
the conic sections; and that, if the two forces are in near equivalence
the one to the other, the curve will be an ellipse. (Galileo had
already shown that the path of the projectile in which gravity
preponderates over the onward force, is a parabola). He proved,
moreover, that the motion of any body thus traversing an elliptical
orbit round a centre of attraction, must conform in its varying
rates to Kepler's second law. And further, he showed that if a
number of bodies be moving round the same centre of attraction
at different distances, the rates of their revolution mv.st conform
to Kepler's third law. By assuming the existence of these two
balanced forces, therefore, he not only showed that all the observed
uniformities could be deduced from that one simple conception,
but furnished a rational basis for the assured expectation that the
like uniformities would prevail in every other case. And the
verification of this expectation by the discovery that even comets

* It may not be iminstructive to note that in their mathematical search for
this stranger, which manifested its presence by disturbing the rrotions of Uranus,
both Adams and Leverrier took Bode's formula as the basis of their computa-
tions, assuming its distance from the sun to be somewhat more than twice that
of Uranus. And it was by nothing more or less than a fortunate coincidence,
that the new planet was found in the place which they agreed in assigning to
it ; for if the search had been made a year earlier or a year later, its actual
place would have been so far from its computed place, that it would probably
not have been found until new computations had been made on the basis of
some more lucky guess.

NATURE AND LAW. 379

move in elliptical orbits, and that, if these orbits can be exactly
determined by observation, and the influence of perturbing forces
rightly estimated, their return can be predicted, may be considered
as fully justifying such an expectation, so far at least as the solar
system is concerned.

But the "law" at which we thus arrive, is only a higher and
more comprehensive generalization of the facts of celestial observa-
tion, and rests on assumptions which are not only improved but
unprovable. For the idea of continuous onward motion in a
straight line, as the result of an original impulsive force not
antagonized or affected by any other — formularized by Newton
as his first " law of motion " — is not borne out by any acquired
experience, and does not seem likely to be ever thus verified.
For in no experiment we have it in our power to make, can we
entirely eliminate the antagonizing effect of friction and atmo-
spheric resistance ; and thus all movement that is subject to this
retardation, and is not sustained by any fresh action of the im-
pelling force, must come to an end. Hence the conviction com-
monly entertained that Newton's first " law " of motion must be
true, cannot be philosophically admitted to be anything more
than a high probability, based on the fact that the more completely
we can eliminate all antagonizing influences, the nearer we get to
the perpetuity of movement once initiated. To say that this " law "
is so self-evident that we cannot help accepting it as an " axiom " or
necessary form of thought, is to run counter to the historical fact,
that the great thinkers of antiquity— whom none have ever sur-
passed in pure thinking power — accepted as the dictate of universal
experience, that all terrestrial motions come to an end ; and were
thus led to range the celestial motions in a different category, as
going on for ever.

So, again, we have no proof, and in the nature of things can
never get one, of the assumption of the attractive force exerted
either by the earth, or by any of the bodies of the solar system,
upon other bodies at a distance.* All that we can be said to

* Newton himself strongly felt that the impossibility of rationally accounting
for action at a distance through an intervening vacuum, was the weak point of
his system. The science of the present day .is seeking for the solution of this
difficulty, in the hypothesis of the universal pervasion of space by moving mole-
cules of some form of highly attenuated matter.

I"7

38o NATURE AND MAN.

ktiow (as I have already pointed out) is that which we learn from
our own experience as to the attraction of the earth for bodies
near its surface. And although Newton is commonly credited
with having " demonstrated " the identity between terrestrial
gravity and the force which deflects the moon out of its straight
course, and with thus having "proved" the universality of the
mutual attraction of masses of matter, I speak with the authority
to which I consider myself entitled, not by my own study of this
subject, but by the answers of the greatest masters of it to questions
I have put to them, — that what Newton really did was to show
that such an exact numerical confoi'mity exists between the rate of
fall of the moon towards the earth (that is to say, her deflection
from her onward rectilineal path) in any given time, and the rate
of a body actually falling to the earth's surface (according to
Galileo's law), as justifies the assumption of the identity of the
force which causes the former, with that of which we have
experience in the production of the latter.

Now, in regard to the sun's attraction for the earth and planets,
we have no certain experience at all. Unless we could be trans-
ported to his surface, we should have no means of experimentally
comparing solar gravity with terrestrial gravity ; and if we could
ascertain this, we should be no nearer the determination of his
attraction for bodies at a distance. The doctrine of universal
gravitation, then, is a pure assumption ; and, as a highly com-
petent writer,* who obviously takes my own view of the matter,
has lately said with reference to Descartes' theory of "vortices"
(which, essentially the same with Kepler's, for some time disputed
the field with Newton's theory) : — " Had Descartes been able to
" show that the parts of his vortex must move in ellipses having
" the sun in one focus, that they must describe equal areas in equal
" times, and that their velocity must diminish as we recede from
"the sun, according to Kepler's third law, his theory would have
"so far been satisfactory." But while "all three of Kepler's laws
" were expressed in the single law of gravitation towards the sun,
" with a force acting inversely as the square of the distance,"
Descartes' theory entirely failed to grasp them, and therefore fell

♦ Professor Simon Newcomb, of the United States Naval Observatory, in
his admirable " Popular Astronomy."

NATURE AND LA IV. 381

before the comprehensive power of the Newtonian doctrine ; which
soon afterwards obtained its verification in the discovery that the
regular movements of the planets in their orbital revolution round
the sun, show "perturbations" whose actual amounts are found to
be exactly conformable to the results of computations based on the
assumption that they, too, attract one another in proportion to
their respective masses. A like verification was found in the
application of the doctrine of gravitation to the familiar phenomena
of the tides ; the rationale of which had remained a mystery until
Newton traced not only their diurnal rise and fall, but their
monthly and annual variations, to the attractive force exerted
by the moon (and in a less degree by the sun) upon the waters of
the ocean.

It will not, I believe, be questioned by any one who has
carefully studied Newton's writings, that he himself regarded the
doctrine of universal gravitation as an hypothesis^ the value of
which entirely depends upon the conformity of every deduction
that can be drawn from it by the most rigorous mathematical
reasoning, with the facts determined or determinable by observa-
tion.* But as all experience since his time has but afforded fresh
illustrations of that conformity, — as no perturbation, great or
small, has been observed in any of the bodies of the solar system,
which has not been " accounted for " (to use the familiar phrase)
by its conformity with the general doctrine, — and as the orbital
movements of double stars round their common centre of gravity
are now found to be in equally exact conformity with it, we feel
an assurance of its truth, which nothing, save a complete revolu-
tion either in the world of matter or in the world of mind, can
ever shake.

But this brings us no nearer to the idea of "government" by
that law. That Newton's law is higher and more general than
Kepler's — being, to use the language of J. S. Mill, one of those
fewest and simplest assumptions from which, being granted, the whole
order of Nature would result — does not give it any " power " to
produce or maintain that order. It is simply (again to quote
J. S. Mill) one of Xkxo^o. feivest general propositions from which all
the uniforniitics which exist in the universe might be deductively

* See note, p. 379.

382 NATURE AND MAN.

inferred * Newton, then, was the unquestionably greatest revealer
the world has yet seen of the order of the universe. As was grandly
said by a contemporary poet —

•' Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, ' Let Newton be,' and all was light."

But so far was he from claiming to have revealed anything of
the cause of that order, that he most distinctly repudiated the
notion. I altogether deny, then, the ri5,^ht of the so-called philo-
sophers of our time to attribute to Newton's or any other hypothesis
the solution of the problem of the Kosmos. No law of pure
science can be anything but an expression of the 7^^/ of its orderly
uniformity. And that fact gives us in itself no clue to its cause.
But it clearly does not exclude the notion of an Intelligent First
Cause, or Causa causarum. And to that notion we seem to be
led (as I pointed out in my former paper) by our own experience
of volitional or purposive agency. To me the uniformities of
Nature, so far from suggesting blind force, have ever seemed to
present, in their wonderful combination of unity and variety, of
harmony and diversity, of grandeur and minuteness, the evidences
of such a Designing Mind as we recognize in any great human
organization which approaches our notion of ideal perfection,
such as a well-conducted orchestra, a thoroughly disciplined army,
or an admirably arranged manufactory. To see a great result
brought about by the consentaneous but diversified action of a
multitude of individuals, each of whom does his own particular
work in a manner that combines harmoniously with the different
work of every other, suggests to me nothing but admiration for
the Master-mind by which that order was devised, and by the
influence of which it is constantly sustained. And so, as I wrote
more than forty years ago, " every step we take in the progress of
"generalization, increases our admiration of the beauty of the adap-
" tation, and the harmony of the action, of the laws we discover ;
"and it is in this beauty and harmony that the contemplative mind
"delights to recognize the wisdom and beneficence of the Divine
" Author of the universe." And I persuade myself that to those
who have followed me through this discussion, it may not be

'• System of Logic " (eighth edition), vol. i. p. 366.

* (i

NATURE AND LAW. 383

uninteresting to see in the closing paragraph of my first attempt
to work out the " Principles of General and Comparative Physi-
ology " (1839), the conception I had then formed, and to which
I still adhere, of the highest aim of scientific research : —

" If, then, we can conceive that the same Almighty fiat which
" created matter out of nothmg — impressed upon it one simple
" law which should regulate the association of its masses into
" systems of almost illimitable extent, controlling its movements,
" fixina; the times of the commencement and cessation of each
" world, and balancing against each other the perturbing influences
" to which its own actions give rise — should be the cause, not only
" of the general uniformity, but of the particular variety of their
" conditions, governing the changes in the form and structure of
" each individual globe protracted through an existence of count-
" less centuries, and adjusting the alternation of ' seasons and times
'* ' and months and years ; ' should people all these worlds with
" living beings of endless diversity of nature, providing for their
"support, their happiness, their mutual reliance, ordaining their
" constant decay and succession, not merely as individuals, but as
" races, and adapting them in every minute particular to the con-
" ditions of their dwellings; and should harmonize and blend
" together all the innumerable multitude of these actions, making
" their very perturbations sources of new power : when our know-
" ledge is sufficiently advanced to comprehend these things, then
" shall we be led to a far higher and nobler conception of the
" Divine mind than we have at present the means of forming.
" But, even then, how infinitely short of the reality will be any
" view that our limited comprehension can attain, seeing, as we
" ever must in this life, ' as through a glass, darkly ! ' How much
" will remain to be revealed to us in that glorious future, when the
" light of truth shall burst upon us in unclouded lustre, but when
" our mortal vision shall be purified and strengthened so as to
" sustain its dazzling brilliancy ! "

I purpose, at some future time, to apply the above method of
inquiry to the Law of " Evolution," which is very commonly sup-
posed to "account for" the existing fabric of the universe —
animate, as well as inanimate ; and to show that it really does
nothing more than express an orderly sequence of phenomena,
leaving the cause of that order entirely unexplained.

384 NATURE AND MAN.

XIV.

THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION IN ITS RELA-
TIONS TO THEISM.*

[The following Address had been in preparation, by request, as a reply to
one previously delivered by the then President of Sion College, before Mr.
Darwin's death. I purposely dwelt chiefly on the Cosmical Evolution, as a
matter on which scientific men are now generally agreed ; and did not attempt
to do more, in regard to Biological Evolution, than show that the same general
doctrine applied also to it.]

The subject on which I am to address you can only be profitably
discussed, when the ground has been previously cleared of all
misconception as to the relative claims and limitations of science
and theology, and the boundaries of the two have been distinctly
marked out. Dr. Martineau has told us that the object of science
is to determine the order of Nature, whilst it is the function of
theology to determine its cause ; but this definition would not
be accepted by those who find in the interaction of ihe J>hysical
forces a sufficient account of the phenomena of Nature; and I
should rather define the province of scieitce as the interpretation
of the phenomena of Nature from the stand-point of physical
causation, whilst theology interprets them from the stand-point
of moral causation. Now, although the two conceptions we thus
frame differ essentially in their aspect and character, yet, as I
shall endeavour to show, they are perfectly consistent with each
other.

The scientific conception of causation has recently undergone
a remarkable change, which has scarcely yet received its formal
recognition. Most of you, I presume, are familiar with the dis-
cussions by which the minds of the logicians of the last century
* An Address delivered at Sion College, May 15th, 1882.

EVOLUTION AND THEISM. 385

and the first half of the present were exercised, as to its real
nature. While Hume and his followers admitted nothing but
invariable and unconditional antecedence, as the "cause" of a
phenomenon, excluding altogether that notion oi force or power
which was expressed by the term "efficient cause," there has
always been a school of scientific men, who have maintained that
this notion is not only accordant with the fundamental instincts
of the human mind and the uniform teachings of human experi-
ence, but is justified by the highest scientific reasoning. And I
hold it to be not the least of the vast services rendered to science
by Sir John Herschel, that by constantly keeping this great
principle in clear view, he prepared the way for that general
recognition of it, which has latterly come about almost insensibly,
as a result of those researches into the mutual relations of the
physical forces, which have culminated in the general doctrine of
the Conservation of Energy. For even John Stuart Mill, who was
the most powerful upholder of the Hume doctrine, had come, in
his later years, to perceive (what I had frequently urged upon him
at an earlier period) that when the assemblage of antecedents is
analyzed, they are always found resolvable into two categories —
the force or power which produces the change, and the material
collocations which constitute the conditions of its exercise. Thus
— to use one of Mill's own illustrations — although we speak of
a man's fail from a ladder as " caused " by the slipping of his ibot
or the breaking of a rung (as the case may be), the efficient cause
is the attractive force of the earth, which the loss of support to
the man's foot brings into operation. And now that heat, light,
electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, and vital agency, are
universally admitted to be only varied expressions of different
kinds of movement among the particles of matter, sustained by
the same agency as that which, when it acts on masses of matter,
produces or resists mechanical motion, the " efficient cause " of
every phenomenon in nature is sought in the action of one or
other of these forces, and the determination of the conditions of
that action becomes the primal object of scientific inquiry.

The first result of thisstudy is the recognition of uniformity
in the action of these forces ; like results happening under like
conditions ; and diversities in the conditions being attended with

386 NATURE AND MAN.

corresponding differences in the results. And it is from obser-
vation and comparison of the conditions of the phenomena of
nature, that the materials are obtained for those general expres-
sions of them which are termed laws. Thus, by letting fall
weights from different stories of the leaning tower of Pisa, and
accurately noting the times of their respective descents, Galileo
was able to frame that very simple expression of the uniform
relation between the space fallen through, and the square of the
time occupied in the fall, which constitutes the law of Terrestrial
Gravitation. This enables us to predict, with what we call scien-
tific certainty, how many feet a heavy body will tall through in
a given period of time ; but this certainty has no other basis than
our own confident expectation, that what has always (so far as
our knowledge extends) proved true in the past, will prove equally
true in the future. For the " law " has no power iti itself; only
by a false analogy with the law of a State, can it be said to
"govern" or "regulate" the phenomena which it enables us to
predict. In short, though perhaps ninety-nine persons out of a
hundred would reply to the question why a stone falls to the
ground, " because of the law of gravitation," this answer would
be only tantamount to saying, " Because all other stones, if un-
" supported, similarly fall to the ground," which is obviously no
explanation at all. But when we express this general fact "in
terms of force," taking as a fundamental fact of human experi-
ence the downward pull which we feel the earth to exert upon
every body which we raise above it by our own effort, we bring
it home to our own consciousness of personal agency, which, as
I shall presently show, constitutes the connecting link between
the scientific and the theological conceptions of Nature.

The attributing to "properties of matter" the phenomena
which we witness in the universe around us, is only another mode
of expressing the fact of those uniformities, which science finds it
convenient to employ, and does not give any other " explanation "
of any one of them, than that which consists in showing it to be
a particular case of a general flict. Thus, when the genius of
Newton recognized in the deflection of the moon's motion from
the straight path into an elliptic orbit round the earth, a pheno-
menon of the same order as that which brings to the ground in

EVOLUTION AND THEISM. 387

a parabolic curve a cannon-shot fired obliquely into the air, and
extended the same conception to the orbital revolution of the
earth and other planets round the sun, he perceived that even
these were only cases of the still more general fact, that all
material bodies attract one another with forces proportional to
their respective masses, and inversely as the squares of their
distances, which expression is known as the law of Universal
Gravitation. Now the attributing this general fact to a universal
property of mutual attraction inherent in every particle of matter,
is really but another mode of expressing the same thing, a mere
figure of speech, which no more accounts for the phenomenon,
than does its similarity to any number of other phenomena.

Let me illustrate this by reference to a "property" which is
not universal. I might place before you two bars of iron, exactly
resembling one another in every particular of which our senses
can directly inform us, such as size, weight, external aspect, and
internal texture, as shown by fracture ; and yet one of them,
under certain conditions, exerts powers of which the other shows
itself to be altogether destitute. When brought near to a piece
of iron, it draws it to itself with a force of which we become
conscious in endeavouring to resist it ; and even from a consider-
able distance it deflects a compass-needle from its true position,
in a manner altogether dissimilar to that which happens when
the other bar is brought near it. From observation of these facts,
I can predict that if both these bars be buoyed up so as to float
on water, one of them will soon settle itself in a north and south
direction, and will return to that direction whenever deflected
from it ; while the other will remain in any position in which it
may be placed. And I distinguish the former as having " mag-
netic properties" of which the latter is destitute. Further, my
knowledge of the laws of magnetic science enables me to predict
that by moving the magnetic bar in a particular manner over the
non-magnetic bar, I can render the latter also magnetic, or, as
may be said, can impart magnetic properties to it ; but as this
cannot be done to a bar of gold or silver, copper or lead, we say
that iron is distinguished from metals generally by its capacity
for being magnetized. Now, this is clearly no explanatio7i of the
phenomena which we trace to the action of magnetic force; it

388 NATURE AND MAN.

is simply a general expression of one of the conditions under
which that force is exerted ; and the embodiment of our know-
ledge of those conditions into such general expressions, enables
me to predict other phenomena at first sight having no relation
to them. Thus we have the scientific certainty that the magnetic
bar, when moved within a coil of copper wire, will generate in
that wire an electric current, which, when conducted to any
distance, and made to pass in a coil of wire around a soft iron
bar, shall render it capable of attracting iron, deflecting the
compass-needle, and so on. Thus, to say that a piece of iron
has magnetic properties, is only another way of saying that it is
a magnet ; but whilst the ancients only knew of a magnet as
having the power of attracting iron, we know that it is capable
of doing many other things ; and of this capacity, the phrase
" magnetic properties " is nothing more than a convenient expres-
sion, embodying the general fact that the piece of iron which is
shown to be possessed of any one of them, possesses all the rest.

I might follow the same train of reasoning into every depart-
ment of scientific inquiry, and show that what has been called the
" promise and potency " of matter is nothing else than a phrase
embodying a general conception of the various uniformities
observable in its actions, and not helping us in the least degree
to an explanation of those uniformities. But as the real signifi-
cance— or, rather, z^^significance — of the term "property" be-
comes most apparent when it is used to designate the respective
potentialities of difi"erent species of organic germs, I shall defer
until the latter part of my address what I would further say upon
this point.

One of the most remarkable among the many doctrines which
have been recently propounded to account for particular groups
of physical phenomena, is that known as the kinetic theory of
gases ; to which the eminent ability of the late Professor Clark
Maxwell gave such a remarkable development, that, according to
the statement of one of its ablest expositors (Professor Tait), it
is "capable of explaining almost everything that we know with
"reference to the behaviour of gases, and, perhaps, even of
"vapours." The application of high mathematical reasoning to
the facts of observation seems not only to justify, but to necessi-

EVOLUTION AND THEISM. 389

tate, the conclusion, that the ultimate particles of all kinds of
gaseous matter are constantly darting about in all directions, with
enormous rapidity, and impinging not only against each other,
but against the walls of any space in which any portion of gas
may be enclosed j the rates of movement of the particles of
different gases, and the number of their impacts against each
other, being very diverse, though constant for the particles of
each gas so long as its conditions remain the same. Thus the
particles of hydrogen are moving at the rate of something like
seventy miles in a minute, and every particle has an average
number of 17,700 millions of collisions with other particles, by
each of which its course is changed; whilst in atmospheric air
(in which the mixture of oxygen and nitrogen has become so
complete that it behaves itself in this respect like a single gas),
the particles have an average velocity of only one-fourth of that
of hydrogen, and the number of collisions for each particle is only
half as great. But though the hypothetical assumption of these
molecular movements in the gaseous particles, is said to " explain "
all their sensible actions — such as their escape from the vessels
in which they are imprisoned, and the uniform diffusion of one
gas through another — it really does nothing more than carry us
a step higher in generalization. For supposing we accept this
hypothesis as a fundamental fact in physics, the question remains
as to the source of the movements, and the nature of the fo7xe
by which they are sustained. And it does not help us in the
least to attribute them to an inherent activity of matter ; seeing
that our only conception of that activity is b/ised on observation
either of the movements or of the phenomena from which those
movements are inferred ; just as the old notion that " nature
abhors a vacuum," merely expresses the general fact that air or
water will rush in to fill a void space, without giving us any
understanding of why it does so.

It is not a little instructive to find that two such masters in
the philosophy of science as Clerk Maxwell and Sir John Herschel,
ac^reed in the view they took as to the ultima ratio of any attempt
to explain the constitution of the universe by the " properties " of
its component atoms. For any such attempt — as Sir John Her-
schel long since pointed out — lands us in the conception of a very

390 NATURE AND MAN.

limited number of groups or classes of atoms, distinguished by
their several attributes ; each group, however, consisting of an
almost infinite number of individuals precisely resembling one
another in their properties. " Now, when we see a great number
" of things precisely alike, we do not believe this similarity to
" have originated except from a common principle independent
" of them ; and this conclusion, which would be strong even were
"there only two individuals precisely alike in all respects and/^?;*
'■'■ ever^ acquires irresistible force when their number is multiplied
" beyond the power of imagination to conceive. If we mistake
"not, the discoveries alluded to effectually destroy the idea of an
" eternal self-existent matter, by giving to each of its atoms the
" essential characters at once of a manufactured article and a
'■^subordinate agent." *

Thus, then, whenever we witness any change in the material
world for which we desire to account, we are led by scientific
reasoning to seek for the force which produced it ; and only when
we have succeeded in finding this, do we consider that we have
rationally explained the phenomenon. But whence the force ?
Science now teaches us to look for the source of it in the trans-
formation of some other kind of energy ; as when the production
of heat by the burning of coal is turned, in the steam engine, to
the maintenance of mechanical motion, which, communicated to
a dynamo-machine, generates an electric current, which, in its
turn, may be made to produce heat, light, mechanical motion, or
chemical action. But, as Sir John Herschel pointed out, " In our
" own performance of a voluntary movement, we have a conscious-
" ness of immediate and persofial causation which cannot be dis-
" puted or ignored ; and when we see the same kind of act
" performed by another, we never hesitate in assuming for him
" that consciousness which we recognize in ourselves."

The Physiologist, above all others, is forced, as it seems to
me, by the experience of every day, of every hour, and even of
every minute, to recognize the mutual convertibility of physical
and moral agency ; — the pricking of our skin with a pin producing
a change in our state of feeling ; and a mental determination
calling a muscle (or set of muscles) into a contraction which
* Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy," p. 38.

EVOLUTION AND THEISM. 391

generates mechanical power. And thus a bridge of connection is
estabhshed between physical and moral causation, which enables
us to pass without any sense of interruption or inconsistency from
the scientific to the theological interpretation of Nature, as here
formulated :

PHENOMENA OF NATURE.
Scientific Interpretation. Theological Interpretation.

Physical Causation. Moral Causation.

Forces of Nature. — Designations Powers of Nature. — The de^gna-

of varied modes of operation o( one tions of varied modes of manifesta-

fo/ct' acting under diversified physi- lion of one and tlie same Personal

cal conditions. Agency throughout the material

Universe.

Laws of Nature. — Generalized ex- Order of Nature. — The expres-

pressions of past uniformities ob- sion of the continuous and uniform

served in the action of the forces action of a Supreme Intelligence,

of Nature, leading to the expecta- as apprehended by the intelligence

tion of similar uniformities in the of Man.
future.

With these views of the relations between science and theology,
I have never myself been able to see why anything else than a
complete harmony should exist between them. True it is that
there have been, from time to time, men of science, who, from
what I believe to be an equally limited and illogical conception of
the subject, have drawn the conclusion that there is " no room"
for a God in Nature ; the " properties of matter " being, in their
view, all-sufficient to account for the phenomena of the universe
and for the powers and actions of the human mind. But this
seems to me only a natural reaction against what all history
teaches, as to the constancy with which, ever since science
emancipated itself from theology and set up for itself, it has been
hampered and impeded in its search for the truth as it is in Nature,
by the restraints which theologians have attempted to impose upon
its inquiries. The Romish Church, adopting the philosophy of
Aristotle into its own theological system, opposed as heretical
every attempt to call in question the authority of Aristotle, even
as to matters of fact ; and while it could not repudiate the proof
afforded by the experiments of Galileo, that a weight of lolb. does
nol {as affirmed by Aristotle) fall ten times faster than a weight of
I lb., it judicially condemned him as an impious heretic, for

392 NATURE AND MAN.

daring to teach that the earth moves round the sun. And Pro-
testant divines in this country, equally taking their stand upon
infallible authority, but shifting its basis from the Church to the
Bible, have no less vehemently opposed any scientific inquiry
which might throw a doubt upon the literal accuracy of the Book
of Genesis. Thus it is within the remembrance of many of us,
how the conclusions of Geologists as to the long succession of
changes which had taken place in the crust of the earth, and in
the races of plants and animals which had peopled its surface,
before the advent of Man, were denounced as destructive of all
religious faith ; how, when obliged by the logic of facts to admit
that the beginning of the world must be antedated indefinitely,
theologians took a fresh stand upon the modern origin of Man,
and did their utmost to discredit the evidence crowding in from
all quarters as to his remote antiquity and the low condition of
our primeval ancestors ; and how, when this evidence could no
longer be gainsaid, they tried to uphold the universality of the
Noachian Deluge, — with the miserable result of an ignominious
surrender.

But I rejoice in the conviction that the true genius of Protes-
tantism is now coming to be generally recognized as consisting,
not in its opposition to the claims of the Church of Rome to
infallible authority, but in its protest against any infallible authority
whatever ; in its readiness to submit the basis of its religious
system to the most searching criticism ; in its cordial welcome to
every truth of science or criticism which has been accepted by
the general voice of those most competent to decide upon its
claims ; and in the freedom with which it surrenders such parts
of its dogmatic systems, as prove to be inconsistent with tliose
great fundamental verities of moral and physical science, whose
domination over the educated thought of mankind constitutes the
basis on which alone the religion of the future can securely rest.
It is not, in my view, by their reassertion, with any amount of
positiveness, of doctrines from which the educated thought of the
age is drifting away, that the teachers of religion will best combat
what they designate as the " prevalent unbelief j " but by showing
themselves ready to profit by the lessons of the past, in regard to
the futility of all attempts either to check the progress of inquiry

EVOLUTION AND THEISM. 393

or to stifle its results, and by placing themselves in hearty sym-
pathy with the spirit of the present. Of that spirit, the noblest
manifestation is to be found in the life of that great man whose
departure from among us has drawn forth an expression of
reverential sorrow, the universality of which speaks more elo-
quently than any words of the world-wide influence exerted by
his thought. For in Darwin — as has been well said by one who
knew him best — the love of truth was more than his animating
motive, it was the passion of his intellectual nature. And its
ultimate prevalence — whether including the acceptance or in-
volving the rejection of his own system — was the firmest and most
deeply rooted of his convictions.

It is in this spirit that I ask you to follow me through
the inquiry which constitutes the purpose of our present
meeting.

I need scarcely tell those whom I am addressing that the
general idea of Evolution is by no means new. A notion that
the universe has not endured for ever in the form and aspect it
now presents, has been entertained in all ages, and by all peoples
of whose thoughts on the subject we have any record. In the
Chaos of the old Greeks we have the type of confusion and dis-
order ; in the void and formless waste of the Hebrews, the
attempt to represent a primeval condition which could only be
characterized by negations,

— a dark
Illimitable ocean, without bound,

Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height,
And time and place, are lost.

Out of this Chaos, divine power evoked order and harmony ; the
void and formless waste was made first to take definite shape in
the separation of the firmament from the earth ; the great lights
were set in the one ; the other was first clothed with vegetation,
and then peopled with animated forms, beasts of the field, fowls
of the air, fish of the sea; and last of all Man was called into
existence, and dominion given him over all other creatures. And
even those who at the present time regard the Mosaic cosmogony
as having an authoritative claiin on their acceptance, are bound
by it to regard Creation, not as an ivuneUiate but as a progressive

394 NATURE AND MAN.

act, — a gradual development, not the sudden springing of a com-
plete universe out of nothingness. And this is equally the case
whether the " six days," each with its evening and its morning, are
received in their literal sense, or are lengthened into indefinite
periods of time.

Lucretius and other " atomic " philosophers attempted to give
a definite shape to this conception ; but it first found really
scientific expression in the "Nebular Hypothesis" of modern
astronomy, the combined doctrine of Laplace and the elder
Herschel. According to this, the original condition of the
universe was a difi"used " fire-mist " of unequal tenuity ; the
mutual attractions of whose particles would cause its denser
portions to gather round them the rarer matters of the intervening
spaces, would draw together the smaller collections thus formed
into larger clusters, and would thus "evolve" out of the uni-
versally but unequally diffused nebular matter a limited number
of separate substantial masses. At the same time, the inequality
in the movements of the different parts of the condensing fire-mist
would impart rotary motions to the clustering masses, just as
whirlpools are formed in water, or whirlwinds in air, by the action
of opposing currents ; and such rotation would lead to the
detachment of the outer parts of the clusters, which would then
draw together into planetary masses. These would retain their
rotary motion round their original centres, whilst acquiring, in the
act of concentration, a rotary motion around centres of their
own, and in their turn giving off" their outer portions to form
satellites.

As regards the stellar universe, this hypothesis mainly rests on
the observations of the elder Herschel, which led him to the
conviction that beside the nebulae which the power of his tele-
scope enabled him to resolve into clusters of stars, there are some
which are still in the condition of patches of diffused faintly
luminous matter, in which the process of condensation has scarcely
begun ; others smaller but brighter, whose central parts look as if
they would soon form into stars ; others, again, in which stars had
actually begun to form ; and finally star-clusters, in which the
condensation is complete. Among the nearer stars, again, which
he considered to form part of our own particular cluster, he dis*

EVOLUTION AND THEISM. 39S

tinguished many which are not clear points of brilliant light, but
are surrounded by a more or less extended bright haze, such as
would be given out by an atmosphere of nebular matter in a state
of progressive condensation. And he pointed to what are known
as " variable " stars, as affording evidence that the heavenly bodies
are not permanently what they seem to us at any one moment,
or within the limited period of our observation of them, but
are undergoing progressive changes, the several stages of which
are presented to us in the various bodies now visible in the firma-
ment,— just as the several stages of any one human life from
infancy to old age are presented by the members of a single
community.

Now Laplace did not begin, like Herschel, with the stellar
universe ; but aimed to give a scientific account of the evolution
of the planetary system from the atmosphere of nebular matter,
which he, in accordance with Herschel's ideas, supposed to have
originally surrounded the sun ; and the train of reasoning by
which he Avorked this out on the lines I have already indicated,
was one of mechanical deduction from the Newtonian laws of
mutual attraction and motion. That these deductions were not
only in accordance with the ordinary conditions of the planetary
system, but were also applicable to the exceptional cases of the
ring of Saturn, and to the intervention of a multitude of asteroids,
in the place of a single planet, between Mars and Jupiter, seemed
to afford the same kind of confirmation to Laplace's theory, that
Herschel's had derived from the different degrees of condensation
observable among the celestial bodies. And the wide basis of
observation on which the nebular hypothesis of Herschel was
erected, commended it to the minds of many who viewed with
distrust the reasoning process by which Laplace deduced the
solar system from the supposed nebular atmosphere of the
sun.

I have never been able to understand why this doctrine should
have been the subject of so much theological opposition. It was
said to have been framed by Laplace with the express purpose of
" doing away with the necessity for a Creator ; " but though others
may have used it (as many are now using the Darwinian doctrine)
as an instrument of attack on Theistic belief, there is no trace, ia

396 r^ATURE AND MAN.

his own exposition of it, of any but that purely scientific concep-
tion of orderly sequence, under the constant and uniform action
of physical forces, in which there is assuredly nothing anti-theistic.
Let it not be forgotten that Newton, the devoutest man of science
that ever lived, was reproached by the theologians of his time for
setting up forces of his own invention as a substitute for the power
of God ; a charge of which every one now sees the absurdity.
And yet Laplace merely extended the Newtonian doctrines of
force and motion into the past, by showing how, under their con-
tinuous operation, a diffused nebulosity would evolve itself into
a solar system. Whence came the mutual attraction of its par-
ticles, which aggregated them into masses, and gave these masses
their movements of rotation, it was not for him — any more than
for Newton — to explain. To Laplace it must have been apparent
as it is to us, that the whole of this process of evolution implies
a commencement, — that however far back we go in time, we come'
to a point at which the mutual attractions must have begun to
exert themselves, — and that as a universal hxat perfectly homogeneous
" fire-mist " (the only condition under which it could have existed
from eternity) could not of itself have broken up into separate
parts, some account has to be given of its heterogeneousness, the
existence of which has to be assumed as the starting-point of the
process. Hence it is obvious that, however remote that point to
which we trace in thought the history of our universe, we are still
confronted with the impossibility of accounting by physical causa-
tion for its commencement ; and further, that if we find our only
explanation of this commencement in moral causality, we do not
exclude the subsequent perpetual agency of Creative Will, because
in scientific reasoning we speak of it in the language of physical
force. To the clear-seeing theologian, the evolution of an orderly
Kosmos, not by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, but by the
continuous operation of mutual attractions according to a law
of sublime simplicity, should furnish (as it seems to rne) the
sublimest exemplification of an Infinite Intelligence, working
out its vast designs " without variableness or the shadow of
turning."

But, it may be objected, the nebular hypothesis of Herschel
and Laplace has been disproved by subsequent research. One

EVOLUTION AND THEISM. 397

after another of the nebulce, which Herschel regarded as con-
sisting of unconsolidated " fire-mist," has been resolved by the
superior power of modern telescopes into clusters of stars ; and
the mathematical reasoning of Laplace has been found not to
stand the test of a rigorous scrutiny. This may be freely granted ;
and yet the general doctrine that the material universe has come
into its present condition by a process of immense duration, and
not by a single creative act, has received such a vast amount of
support from new and unexpected sources, that I have no hesita-
tion in affirming it to be accepted by all who are most qualified
to judge, as having been now placed beyond the reach of dis-
cussion. Instead of starting from a hypothetical postulate, modern
science reasons backwards, — in astronomy as in geology, — from
phenomena presenting themselves to our own observation ; and I
shall briefly notice the orders of fads ^ilrich. seem to me of the
greatest evidentiary value.

First in importance among these, is the certain distinction
which the Spectroscope now enables the astronomer to draw,
between the nebulae which are clusters of stars, and those which
consist of glowing gas. To the latter class belongs that great
nebula of Orion, which was long considered a sort of " crucial
instance " whereon the fate of the nebular hypothesis was to
turn. The prolonged and minute study which the late Lord
Rosse had made of this nebula, with the unequalled power (for
that particular object) of his six-foot reflector, had previously led
him to this conclusion ; but spectrum-analysis has placed it
beyond doubt ; and the fact acquires a new importance when the
doctrine of the Conservation of Energy is brought to bear upon it.
For " a nebulous body, in order to shine by its own light, must be
"hot, and must be losing heat through the very radiation by
" which we see it. As it cools, it must contract ; and this con-
" traction cannot cease, until it becomes either a solid body, or a
"system of such bodies, revolving round each other " (Newcomb).

Another fact of supreme importance, resting not only on the
indications given by the spectroscope, but on chemical analysis
of the Meteorites, which have now been ascertained to be plane-
tary bodies revolving in regular orbits round the Sun, but to be
deflected from these by the Earth's attraction when we cross their

398 NATURE AND MAN.

path, — is the identity in elementary composition, not only among
the bodies included in our solar system, but throughout the
innumerable solid and vaporous masses of which the stellar
universe is composed. And it is not a little curious that a link
between these two orders should be supplied by those wandering
bodies — the Comets — of which many seem to belong to both ;
not properly belonging to our system, but presenting themselves
within it as occasional visitors from the celestial spaces. Not
only does this identity add immensely to the strength of the
presumption as to the identity in physical origin of the entire
universe, but it also gives an entirely new meaning to the facts
previously determined by astronomy in regard to the relative
specific gravities of the Sun and Planets. For whilst the Earth
weighs niore than five and a half times as much as a globe of
water of the same bulk, Mercury rather more in proportion, and
Venus and Mars nearly as much, the specific gravity of the Sun
is only one-fourth that of the Earth, that of Jupiter a little less,
that of Uranus and Neptune only a little above that of water, and
that of Saturn so much beloiu it, that if his globe were thrown into
water it would float like a cork. Now, so long as nothing what-
ever was known about the chemical composition of the heavenly
bodies, it might be not -unreasonably surmised that the several
planets might be composed of different materials. But now that
we have evidence of their identical composition, their differences
in density suggest differences in degree of condensation. And
this suggestion derives a most remarkable confirmation from the
fact, that the greatest density shows itself in those smaller plane-
tary bodies which would have cooled the most quickly, and
which have therefore more or less nearly reached their final
stage ; whilst the least presents itself in the larger masses, whose
slower loss of heat would retard their condensation. The smallest
planetary body of whose constitution we have any knowledge,
— the Moon — is the one whose consolidation is most complete ;
even the gases and vapours which form atmospheres round the
Earth, Mars, and Venus, being fixed in its solid substance. And
of the relative rapidity of its cooling, we have further evidence
of the most convincing nature, in the intensity of the former
volcanic activity, which shows itself in the multitude of gigantic

EVOLUTION AND THEISM. 399

extinct craters by which its surface is now made rugged, — that
activity having been due (there can be no reasonable doubt) to
the rapid contraction of a solidified crust upon a still molten
interior. In the ring of Saturn, on the other hand, we have a no
less striking exemplification, not only of the mode in which the
detachment of the peripheral parts of the planetary masses may
be presumed to have given origin to their attendant satellites,
but of that earlier stage of condensation which consists in the
a-Tsregation of nebular matter into such assemblages of small
solid separate masses as form the Meteor-streams with which we
are now familiar, and also (there is reason to believe) the trains
of Comets. For mathematical investigation has demonstrated
that the ring of Saturn, or rather the system of concentric rings,
cannot possibly be W/^,— that it is in the highest degree improb-
able that it can he fluid, — whilst all the conditions of its con-
tinuous equilibrium are satisfied by the hypothesis of its consisting
of streams of separate small solid masses, revolving as satellites
round their primary, which may itself be presumed, from the
specific lightness of its mass, to be still in. a somewhat similar
stage of incipient condensation.

Again, an entirely new series of mathematical investigations is
now being followed out, as to the effects at present produced by
iidal action in retarding the Earth's rotation, and the conclusions
that may be justifiably drawn from the backward projection (so
to speak) of that retardation, so as to apply it to an earlier stage
of the history of our globe and its satellite. And one of its results
affords so striking a confirmation of the doctrine that the existing
state of things is the resultant of a long sequence of previous
continuous change, that I shall ask your special attention to it.
Assuming that the Moon was once in a fluid state, the Earth's
attraction must have exerted a most powerful tidal influence upon
it ; and the retarding effect of these lunar tides would gradually
diminish the rate of that rotation of the Moon upon her own
axis, which theory would lead us to suppose that she must have
originally performed. At present, as every one knows, she always
turns the same face towards the Earth, in virtue of a rotation on
her axis which occupies exactly the same time as her orbital
revolution. Now, this phenomenon has been a standing puzzle

400 NATURE AND MAN.

to astronomers. Of course, it may be said that the Creator, when
he set the Moon in the firmamant, ordained that she should for
ever turn the same face to the Earth. But no man of scientific
habits of thought could rest satisfied with such a notion. The
probabilities were many millions to one in favour of some physical
cause for so singular an eff'ect; and such a cause has recently
been discovered by Helmholtz, who has shown that the continuous
retardation produced by ancient tides would at last bring the
moon into the only attitude it could permanently retain without
being subjected to further incessant disturbance.

One more important evidentiary fact I have still to adduce,
which forms the connecting hnk between astronomical and geo-
logical evolution, and brings what may be now designated as the
scientific certainties of the past history of our own globe, to bear
on the history of every other body in the universe. I refer to the
determination of the high ititernal temperature of the Earth, v.'hich
now rests upon so wide a basis of concurrent observations, that
no one capable of scientifically appreciating their value any longer
entertains the smallest doubt as to the fact. And this fact can
only be rationally accounted for, as the result of gradual cooling
of the entire mass from a temperature higher than that now pos-
sessed by its hottest interior, by the radiation of heat from its
surface. For, as Sir William Thomson has tersely remarked, " If
" we were to find a hot stone in a field, we could say with entire
" certainty that this stone had been in the fire, or some other hot
"place, within a limited period of time."

Astronomical Evolution, then, lands us in the idea of a globe
of molten matter, over whose surface a crust is beginning to form ;
and it is at this point that geology takes up the inquiry, and aims
to give a consistent history of the long succession of changes
which that crust has since undergone — in other words, to trace
the "Evolution" of its existing from its primitive condition.
Here, again, two distinct lines of inquiry may be pursued. One
of these, leading us onward in time from the assumed beginning,
furnishes us with those great dynamical conceptions, that help us
to account alike for the vast movements whose evidence we trace
in the elevation of continents and of mountain-chains, and for the
local developments of heat which have shown themselves in

EVOLUTION AND THEISM. 401

volcanic action and in the metamorphism of sedimentary rocks ;
showing these to be the mechanical results of such inequalities of
the rate of cooling of different parts of the surface, as may well be
conceived to arise from the conditions of the previous conden-
sation. The other, leading us backward from the present to the
past, brings the various agencies which we know to be at present
modifying the earth's surface to bear upon its previous history ;
enabling us " in the fall of rain and the flow of rivers, in the
" bubble of springs and the silence of frost, in the quiet creep of
" glaciers and the tumultuous rush of ocean-waves, in the tremor of
" the earthquake and the outburst of the volcano, to recognize the
"same play of terrestrial forces by which the framework of our
"continents has been step by step evolved." (Geikie.)

I cannot suppose any one I am now addressing, to be ignorant
of the doctrine as to which modern geologists are now, I believe,
in universal accord — that of continuity of change (not necessarily
of uniformity in its rate) throughout the entire period of the
earth's history. The old notion of universal interruptions has
given place to that of local changes analogous to those of which
we have present experience ; that of vast sudden convulsions, to
slow progressive elevations or subsidences. The regular succes-
sion of stratified deposits, while interrupted in one portion of the
earth's surface, is found to be completed in another. And the
same proves to be the case in regard to the succession of those
organic forms, whose remains are preserved to us in those deposits.
For palaeontologists have long since been forced, by the " logic of
facts," to abandon the idea that in each of the successive
" periods " marked out by the earlier stratigraphical geologists,
the earth was peopled by a set of plants and animals peculiar to
that period — many of these forms being traceable with certainty,
in the same spot, from one " formation " to another ; whilst, when
they disappear in one locality, they may often be found to have
migrated to another. And thus, before the introduction of the
Darwinian doctrine, the old notion of a succession of entirely new
creations of Plants and Animals, to replace the Floras and Faunas
which had, one after another, been swept away from the entire
surface of the globe, was giving place to the notion of continuous
succession — certain species dying out from time to time, as they

402 NATURE AND MAN.

have done even within our own limited experience, and these
being replaced by others, of whose origin, however, science could
give no account.

Now, putting aside for the moment the question of the origin
of new forms of organic life, I would ask you to consider what is
the real theological bearing of this general doctrine of continuous
evolution, whether astronomical or geological. As I have endea-
voured to make clear to you, the very fact of its beginning implies
a moral cause for that beginning ; and the experience we derive
from our own sense of effort in producing physical change,
justifies us in regarding the action of what we scientifically desig-
nate the " physical forces," as the expressions of a continuously
acting will. Now, I fearlessly ask, which is the higher theological
conception, — that of the progressive unfolding of a plan conceived
in the first instance by the Infinite Wisdom whose counsels have
not changed because the end has been seen even from the begin-
ning, and of the continuous exertion, with persistent uniformity,
of an Almighty Power, which "fainteth not neither is weary,"
during these countless ages through which we are carried back by
our cultured scientific imagination ; or the anthropomorphic fig-
ment, conceived in the lowest stage of religious development, of
an artificer beginning the work of creation (according to Arch-
bishop Usher's chronology) on the 23rd of October, 4004 B.C.,
proceeding with its successive stages for six days, and then,
fatigued with his labours, taking a Sabbath day's rest, during
which the newly-created world had to go on as it best could ?

Passing, now, from the evolution of the inorganic universe to that
of the Organic forms with which our globe is at present peopled,
I must content myself with the general statement, that no one who
possesses a competent knowledge of the facts brought to light by the
ever-widening extension of palseontological research, can do other-
wise than admit that they tend strongly and unmistakably in the
direction of the doctrine of ^^;;///;«///7— maintained by "descent
with modification "—in opposition to the doctrine of successive
creations de novo. And this doctrine is found to be in such
singular accordance with the converging indications furnished
by ^every department of biological research, that, to almost every

EVOLUTION AND THEISM. .403

unprejudiced mind, its truth seems almost irresistible. Thus
the Zoolo2;ist and the Botanist, who have been accustomed to
classify their multitudinous and diversified types of vegetable and
animal life according to their " natural affinities," find a real
meaning in their classification, a new significance in their terms
of relationship, when these are used to represent what may be
regarded with probability as actual community of descent. The
Morphologist, who has been accustomed to trace a "unity of type"
in each great group, and especially to recognize this in the presence
of rudimentary parts which must be entirely useless to the animals
that possess them, delights in the new idea that gives a perfect
ratiofiale of what had previously seemed an inexplicable superfluity.
And the Embryologist, who carries back his studies to the earliest
phases of development, and follows out the grand law of Von
Baer, "from the general to the special," in the evolution of every
separate type^ finds the extension of that law from the individual
to the whole succession of organic life, impart to his soul a feeling
of grandeur, like that which the physical philosopher of two hun-
dred years ago must have experienced when he came to recognize
the full significance of Newton's law of universal gravitation.

I find myself quite unable to understand why the doctrine of
organic evolution should have been stigmatized as atheistic. We
have before us the every-dayy^7(r/ of the " evolution " of plants and
animals of every type from germ-particles of a common simplicity;
and, scientifically speaking, we must assign to each of these germs
a determinate capacity for a particular mode of development, in
virtue of which one evolves itself under certain conditions into a
zoophyte, and another (not originally distinguishable from it) into
a man. But 'f we do not, in so describing the process, set aside
the Creator — any more than in scientifically describing the self-
formation of a crystal — why should we be charged with doing so,
if we attribute to t\\t primordial gtrvn. that capacity for a particular
course of development^ in virtue of which it has evolved the whole
succession of forms that has ultimately proceeded from it, — these
forms constantly becoming more complex in organization and
more elevated in the scale of being ? Attach what weight we
may to the physical causes which have brought about this evolution,
I cannot see how it is possible to conceive of any but a moral
iS

404 NATURE AND MAN.

cause for the endowments that made the primordial germ suscep-
tible of their action. And of a beginning, we have even clearer
evidence in the organic than in the inorganic world ; since it may
be accounted as certain that there could have been no life upon
our globe, until its surface had so far cooled down that water
could remain as a liquid in its depressions. And in the so-called
laws of organic evolution, I see nothing but the orderly and con-
tinuous working-out of the original intelligent design.

There are some, however, who feel no difficulty in accepting
the doctrine of evolution as regards the animal and vegetable
creation generally, but nevertheless cannot bring themselves to
believe that it is equally applicable to Man ; whose place in
Nature, it is contended, is psychically so far above that of the
creatures which most nearly approach him physically, as to justify
his being placed on a different platform. Now, I recognize to its
fullest extent the weight of this objection ; for whilst freely ad-
mitting (as the result of my own life-long study of comparative
psychology) the possession, by many among the higher animals, of
reasoning powers and moral attributes which are of the same kind
as those of Man, however much below his in degree, I hold firmly
to the conviction that Man, in his condition of fullest development,
is essentially distinguished from them iaW, first, by his possession
of a self-directing power, and second, by his capacity for unlimited
progress. " The soul," says Francis Newman, " is that part of
"our nature which is in relation with the Infinite;" and I do
not know what better definition could be given of it And I
should regard the possession of this "soul" as fully justifying
the exemption claimed for Man, if it could be shown to be
something distinctly added on, at any given moment of his
existence, to his previous capacities. The very contrary, however
is the fact, as I hope now to satisfy you.

Every human infant born into the world, began its existence
nine months previously in the condition of a " jelly-speck," not to
be distinguished by any recognizable characters from what we may
suppose to have been the primordial germ of the animal world in
general. This first evolves itself into an aggregate of cells, corre-
sponding with that which represents a higher stage of Protozoic
life ; and long before it shows any trace of the Vertebrate type of

EVOLUTION AND THEISM. 405

organization, this aggregate shapes itself into a gastriila or primi-
tive stomach— the common possession, at this stage, of all animals
that rise above the protozoic condition, which is permanently
represented in the Zoophyte. It is iu a certain spot of the wall
of this gastrula, that the foundation is laid, in all vertebrate em-
bryos, of that which is to become the brain and spinal cord, with
its bony investment ; and this " primitive trace " of what is to
constitute the essential part of the human organism, does not
differ in any essential particular from that of a fish, a frog, a bird,
or any ordinary Mammal. So, the early development of the circu-
lating and respiratory apparatuses proceeds upon a plan common
to all Vertebrates ; even the early Human embryo possessing the
gill-arches which are to sprout into gills in fishes and amphibia,
though they afterwards disappear in Man (as in reptiles, birds, and
mammals) with the development of the lungs and the diversion of
the blood-circulation into them. When, in the progress of de-
velopment, the distinctively Mammalian type comes to present itself,
there is still nothing distinctive of Man ; in fact, the general con-
figuration of the body is shaped out, and most of the principal
organs have shown their characteristic structure, before the embryo
presents any feature by which it could be certainly distinguished as
human. And I may specially notice the fact that the cerebru7n,
whose great size and complexity of structure constitute man's most
important differential character, is evolved as a sort of offset from
the chain of sense-ganglia, which is the real basis of the brain in
all vertebrates, and continues to represent it in insects ; that it at
first presents the small relative size and simple organization which
we find permanently retained in the kangaroo or rabbit ; that, as
embryonic life advances, it comes more to resemble the brain of a
dog or cat, and then that of a monkey — the distinctly Human type
manifesting itself last. This is marked, not only in the backward
as well as forward extension of the cerebral hemispheres, but in the
number and depth of the convolutions which extend the surface of
their outer ganglionic layer, and bring it into closer relation with
the capillary blood-vessels, on whose supply of oxygenated blood
its whole subsequent activity is dependent.

Now, I cannot suppose any one of you to be ignorant of the
fact, that the Human infant at its entrance into the world is de facto

4o6 NATURE AND MAN.

a mere automaton — its life-movements for some time being of a
purely " reflex " character, such as may be carried on without
even any exercise of consciousness. And for long after the
child has begun to receive and register sensory impressions,
has learned to understand articulate speech, and is acquiring
knowledge of ideas as well as of objects of sense, any parent who
attentively compares its psychical manifestations with those of an
intelligent dog will recognize the close correspondence between
them. The uncontrolled dominance of impulses to action shows
itself in both alike ; and in the training of one, as of the other, we
have to make our appeal to the strongest motive. But the time
comes when we can fix the attention of the Human child on the
motive which he knows ought to prevail ; and in proportion as he
acquires, by habitual effort, the power of regulating the exercise of
his intellectual powers, and of controlling the action of his moral
and emotional forces, in that proportion does he become respon-
sible for his conduct, and capable of further self-elevation.

Thus, then, it is a simple ?naiter of fact, revealed by continuous
observation of the history of the Human individual, that the very
highest grade of humanity is only attained by a process of con-
timious ez'olution from the very lowest and simplest. For while his
bodily evolution takes place in accordance with the plan common to
the whole animal creation, the same is equally true of his psychical.
The infantile condition is the same in all races of mankind, and
child-nature presents itself everywhere under an aspect essentially
the same ; but whilst in some races an arrest of development
causes that nature to be retained through the whole of life, others
present an ascending series of stages, that culminate in what we
regard as the highest products of mental and moral culture. But
even among the races which as a whole are most advanced, we find
not individuals only, but grievously large numbers, in whom a bad
heredity and depraved surroundings have tended to foster the
lower animal nature at the expense of that which is distinctively
human ; and thus to rear a set of creatures which are morally far
nearer akin to the brute, than they are to more elevated types of
humanity. In these degraded outcasts we have the true types of
fallen man ; but it is now coming to be generally recognized
by scientific men, that the early history of the race generally, as

EVOLUTION AND THEISM. 407

now revealed by the study of its primeval conditions, has been
one of upward progress ; and that the time required to bring it
up to the capacity for recording its doings, even by picture-writing,
must be measured by thousands — not of years — but of centuries.

If, then, we have to trace back our ozvn ancestry to a primeval
type now represented by races whose limited capacity makes them
incapable of receiving any culture much higher than their own
(save through an education prolonged through many generations),
why should we shrink from attributing to these last the ancestry
to which /'//d'/> bodily and mental organization distinctly points?
And why should we assume, in the case of Man, a special creative
exertion of Divine power, when everything points to a continuity of
the same original plati of action, that has previously manifested
itself in the progressive evolution of the highest mammal from the
primordial jelly-speck?

To myself the conception of a continuity of action which
required no departure to meet special contingencies, because the
plan was all-perfect in the beginning, is a far higher and nobler
one than that of a succession of interruptions, such as would be
involved in the creation de novo of the vast series of new types
which Pateontological study is daily bringing to our knowledge.
And in describing the process of evolution in the ordinary
language of science, as due to " secondary causes," we no more
dispense with a P'irst Cause, than we do when we speak of those
physical forces, which, from the Theistic point of view, are so
many diverse modes of manifestation of one and the same power.
Nor do we in the least set aside the idea of an original design,
when we regard these adaptations which are commonly attributed
to special exertions of contriving power and wisdom, as the out-
come of an all-comprehensive Intelligence which foresaw that the
product would be " good," before calling into existence the germ
from which it would be evolved. We simply, to use the language
of Whewell, " transfer the notion of design and end from the
region of facts to that of laws," that is, from the particular cases
to the general plan : and find ourselves aided in our conception
of the infinity of Creative Wisdom and Power, when we regard it
as exerted in a manner which shows that not only the peopling of
the globe with the plants and animals suited to every phase of

4o8 NATURE AND MAN.

its physical conditions, but the final production of Man himself —
the heir of all preceding ages, with capacities that enable him to
become but " a little lower than the angels " — was comprehended
in the original scheme.

And, lastly, I would point out that the doctrine of evolution
presents its greatest attractiveness, when viewed, not merely in its
scientific aspect, as the highest form of the intellectual interpreta-
tion of nature, but in its moral bearings — as one which leads Man
ever onwards and upwards, and encourages his brightest anticipa-
tions of the ultimate triumph of truth over error, of knowledge
over ignorance, of right over wrong, of good over evil, — thus
claiming the earnest advocacy of every one who accepts it as
scientifically true. And it is under this conviction that I have
now brouglit the subject before you ; in the hope of, at any rate,
weakening what I cannot but regard as the prejudices of some,
and strengthening in others that disposition to regard it favourably,
which its cordial acceptance by many of the ablest leaders of
religious thought may have already engendered.

XV.

THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC

WORLD,

Reconsidered in its Relation to the Doctrines of
Evolution and Natural Selection.*

\The Modern Review, October, 1884.]

The request which has been courteously presented to me on your
behalf, that I should address you on a subject on which scientific
thought is at present much exercised, and which has a direct and
important bearing on theological inquiry, gives me an opportunity
of which I am very glad to avail myself, of setting forth the
results of the careful and, I hope, candid reconsideration of the
old Theistic " Argument from Design in the Organic World," which
has been continually before my mind from the time when the
publication of Mr. Darwin's " Origin of Species by Natural
Selection " brought its validity seriously into question.

You are all familiar with the frequently repeated remark, that
whenever science and theology have come into conflict, theology
has had to " go to the wall." And there are probably several
among you whose faith in the old " argument from design " has
been more or less seriously shaken by the confident assertions of
men of high scientific distinction, that the last victory which
science has gained over theology has been its greatest, — consist-
ing in nothing less than the complete subversion of the whole
doctrine of final causes. For, as they affirm, the adaptation of
means to end which is recognizable in the structure of plants and

* An address delivered to the London Ministers' Conference at Dr.
Williams's Library, June 6th, 1884.

4IO NATURE AND MAN.

animals, can now be so fully accounted for by natural agencies, as
to afford no evidence whatever of an originating intention, a
creative purpose.

Now if I regarded this claim as scientifically valid, I should
unhesitatingly counsel you to abandon your former position
without any attempt to defend it. For if we look back at the
results of former conflicts, we see that nothing has been more
injurious to theology than the persistence of theologians in
antiquated error. We of the present time can only wonder at the
obstinacy with which the self-styled " orthodox " have clung to
the idea that the world with its living inhabitants was created in
six successive days of the year 4004 B.C., the Creator resting from
his labours on the seventh ; that our own terrestrial globe is the
fixed centre of the universe — sun and moon, stars and planets,
revolving around it every twenty-four hours ; that not more than
6000 years have elapsed since man was first called into being ; and
that the Noachian Deluge extended over the whole globe and
destroyed all the animals then living on its surface, except the few
pairs that found a refuge in the ark. As each of these positions
has been successively impugned by scientific research, theologians
have raised the cry that the foundations of Christianity were being
undermined ; and yet they have now, tacitly if not openly, agreed
to abandon them all, as ancient traditions altogether destitute of
historical value. That theology has gained and not lost by this
abandonment, I do not suppose that any one now doubts ; the
lamp of truth must always shine brighter, when no longer
darkened by the mists of error. But theologians have not come
out unharmed from the conflict ; for they have given their
opponents a right to charge them with either a wilful blindness
to scientific truth, or an intellectual incapacity to recognize it ;
and this lesson should not be lost upon us of the present time.

I cannot doubt that all whom I am now addressing agree with
me in the conviction that Theology can only maintain its ground
in the future, by placing itself in accord with the highest scientific
thought of the time, — by readily accepting all that science reveals
to us in regard to the Order of Nature, — and by rigorously ab-
staining from all attempts to fetter or discourage its advance.
Such has ever been the teaching of one to whom we all look as

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 411

the best exponent of liberal theology, and the influence of whose
writings is more and more advancing its progress. Whilst
strenuously defending the Theistic position against its scientific as
well as its non-scientific assailants, Dr. Martineau has ever cor-
dially welcomed every real advance in science, not merely as
extending our knowledge of the material universe, but as leading
us to a more thorough recognition of its unity, its order, and its
harmony. And he has shown us how, by availing itself of the
highest and best results of scientific investigation, Theology is
expanding and elevating itself above the narrow limits of Mosaic
anthropomorphism, so as to reveal to us the Divine Thought as
pervading all space, and exerting itself in action through all time.
It was in this spirit that, two years ago, I reviewed, before a
different but kindred audience,* the bearing upon Theistic belief
of that doctrine of the progressive evolution of the inorganic
universe, which modern astronomical research, by the help of
methods of observation altogether new, has now established
beyond reasonable question. For, I maintained, if ever the
entire succession of changes by which the consolidation of the
original nebular matter into the multitude of suns and systems
that have sprung out of it, shall be scientifically shown to be the
work of physical forces acting in accordance with determinate
laws, we shall have only arrived at a knowledge of the Order of
Creation, and shall have advanced no nearer to that of its primal
Cause. The physicist who deduces from the activities of different
forms of matter certain " properties " which he attributes to
them, and then uses these very " properties " to account for those
activities, is obviously reasoning in a circle. What he calls " pro-
perties " and "laws" are really hw'i farms or categories under
which he finds it desirable to correlate those "uniformities of co-
existence and sequence" which his observation of nature brings
under his cognizance. " Why does an apple fall to the ground ? "
is a question which has as great a significance to us now, as it had
before Newton was led by pondering upon it to the discovery of
the law of gravitation. For that law only expresses the conditions
oj action of a universal force tending to draw together all masses of

♦ "The Doctrine of Evolution in its Relations to Theism," — an address
delivered at Sion College, see p. 384-

412 NATURE AND MAN.

matter ; while of the force itself it gives no account whatever. We
recognize it by our own consciousness of effort in lifting a weight
from the ground ; and this recognition carries us from the sphere
of physical into that of moral causation. For, as Sir John
Herschel long ago pointed out, our consciousness of direct
personal causation in the performance of a voluntary act, leads us
to regard what we call the '* Forces of Nature " as the emanations
of an all-pervading will, and those uniformities in their action
which we term her " laws " as the manifestations of its un-
changing continuity. As Dr. Martineau has admirably expressed
it, " In whatever sense, and on whatever grounds, we affirm the
" tenancy of our own frame by the soul that governs it, must we
" fill the universe with the ever-living Spirit of whose thought it is
" the development." The very conception of evolution involves
a beginning ; and for that beginning, which de facto excludes all
antecedent physical agency (otherwise it would not be a real
beginning), none but a moral cause can be assigned. And thus
the continuous uniformity in the evolutionary process, which some
have regarded as explained by the laws that merely express it,
really testifies to the perfection of the original design, the pro-
gressive unfolding of which has never needed a departure from it.
I have never met with a valid reason for regarding the relation
of the evolution-doctrine to the organic world, as in any respect
different from that in which it stands to the physical universe.
All the elders among us were brought up in that anthropomorphic
conception of " special creations," which seemed natural to the
childhood of our race, just as it does to the child-mind of the
present day. And to the older geologists, who regarded the
successive geological " periods " as marked off, one from another,
by cataclysmic interruptions that involved the destruction of all
the existing races of plants and animals, a similar introduction of
fresh forms, to re-people the newly modelled globe after each
cataclysm, seemed quite as conceivable as the original creation.
But all geological and palseontological inquiry has of late so
decidedly tended towards the substitution of the idea of slow
continuous change for that of violent convulsionary disturbances,
that when Mr. Darwin showed that a doctrine of continuous
" descent with modification " might be built upon a really scien-

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 413

tific basis, it gained a much more ready reception among un-
prejudiced thinkers than he had himself ventured to expect.
Many of us had been aheady prepared to entertain it favourably
by the plausible and in some respects forcible manner in
which a similar doctrine had been previously presented in the
" Vestiges of Creation ; " in reviewing which book, nearly forty
years ago, I expressed myself as fully concurring with its author in
regarding the idea of a continuous ascending succession, along which
the various races of plants and animals of the past and present
epochs, each of them adapted to its external conditions of
existence, have come into existence according to " laws " of
genetic descent, as a far higher expression of Creative Wisdom and
Power than that of special creations devised to meet each exigency
as it arose.

Considered from this point of view, the Darwinian doctrine
of "evolution," even when based on "natural selection," seems
to me to have no other bearing. For it is simply a concise
expression of what is maintained to have been an orderly and
continuous succession of phenomena, referable to natural causes ;
and no more excludes the idea of moral agency, than does the
substitution of the idea of the continuous evolution of the inor-
ganic universe for that of the creation of that universe in its
present form. In the pursuit of biological as of physical science,
I most fully recognize the essential importance of keeping clear
of what are termed "final causes," or assumptions of purpose,
and of rigorously limiting our study to "physical causation." But
the question now before us, — whether the evidences of intelligent
design, which theology has hitherto recognized in the structure
of organized beings, are or are not any longer tenable, when
viewed under the new light thrown upon them by the Darwinian
lamp, is one which — though science has much to say upon it —
it is beyond the province of science to decide. Newton and
Laplace were both accused of atheism by their contemporaries
for setting up their own conceptions in the place of the action
of the Creator ; and you well know that the same charge has been
brought against Darwin. I shall endeavour to show you that in
his case, as in that of his great predecessors, the real result of his
scientific work has been to effect for biology what they are well

414 NATURE AND MAN.

said by Dr. Whewell to have effected for astronomy — the " transfer
" of the notion of design and end from the region of facts to that
" of laws."

For the thorough consideration of this question, I think it
very important that we should start with a clear conception of
what the " Argument from Design " really means, and with a right
appreciation of the probative value of the evidence on which it
rests ; and these will therefore be the subjects to which I shall
first direct your attention.

It is a mere truism to assert that design implies a designer ;
because the definition of design is "the intentional adaptation
"of means to a preconceived end." We do not perform any
voluntary motion without a preconception of the action we "will"
to perform. It is this preconception of result that constitutes the
foundation of the effort made to carry it out. I may determine
the action itself; as when I 'will' to bend my fore-arm on my
arm. Or I may ' will ' to do something — as to lift a book from
the table, or to carry a spoon to my mouth — which requires this
flexion to carry my purpose into effect. But no action, in which
there is not such a preconception, is "intentional" or "volun-
tary." We are constantly using the word "design" in this sense.
An architect "designs" a building; a ship-builder "designs" a
ship; an artist "designs" a picture, and so on. In all such
works, we unhesitatingly recognize an intentional adaptation of
means to a preconceived end (though the designer and his pur-
pose may be alike unknown to us), from our personal experience
of other cases more or less familiar.

But we have now to deal with cases in which we have had no
such experience ; and to consider the grounds on which, in any
individual instance, we should feel justified in concluding that
an obvious adaptiveness has been " intentional," or, in other
words, that the object has been "designed" for the use which
we find it to answer. I do not affirm that we can in any case
obtain logical or demonstrative proof of such " designed " adapta-
tion ; but I think I can make it clear that this is one of the
numerous instances in which a convergence of separate probabilities
acquires the probative value of a moral certainty.

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 415

What we call " demonstration " rests entirely upon our mental
inability to accept as true anything that contravenes the thing
affirmed ; and if, in a chain of demonstrative reasoning, every
link has the strength of a necessary truth, we accept its conclusion
as having the same validity as the datum from which it started.
Now, I hold that exactly the same state of " conviction " may be
produced by a concurrence of probabilities, if these point sepa-
rately and independently to the same conclusion,— like radial
lines that converge from different parts of the circumference of
a circle, though none actually reach its centre. For the result
of that concurrence may be as irresistibly probative as any de-
monstration ; the conclusion to which they all point being one
which we are compelled to accept by our inability to conceive
of any other explanation of the whole aggregate of evidentiary
facts, though any one of them may be otherwise accounted for.
I am not aware that this principle has been discussed in any
treatise on logic ; but it is familiar to every lawyer who practises
in courts of justice; and its validity cannot, I think, be questioned
by any one who has studied the theory of what is commonly
called "circumstantial" evidence. Indeed, it would be difficult
to adduce a more remarkable example of the stability of an argu-
ment erected on a broad basis of independent probabilities, than
is presented in the wonderful fabric built up by the genius of
Darwin ; the general acceptance of the evolution-doctrine resting
on exactly the same kind of evidence as that on which I base
the argument from design. The most pronounced evolutionist
may be challenged to pro.iuce anything like a "demonstration"
of any one of his propositions. But (as I showed in my Sion
College address) the concurrence of probabilities suppHed by
morphology and embryology, by physiology and palaeontology,
is so complete as, in the minds of those most competent to
appreciate their probative value, to exclude any other hypothesis.
Those, therefore, who find in this concurrence a sufficient reason
for their assent to the doctrine of evolution, should be the last to
impugn the validity of the same mode of reasoning, when brought
to bear on the evidences of design which are afforded by the very
orderliness of that evolution.

In applying this principle to the question we are now con-

4i6 NATURE AND MAN,

sidering, I am quite willing to admit, in limine, that the mere
adaptiveness of a thing to a particular purpose, is often a very
unsafe ground for concluding that it was devised for that purpose.
For cases are constantly occurring, in which we find ourselves
able to turn some instrument to a use altogether different from
that for which it was intended by its maker ; and every one who
lias had much experience of changes of residence (as happened
to myself in early life), has found pieces of his furniture fitting
into appropriate recesses just as exactly "as if they had been
made for them." But I rest my argument on cases in which
the idea of such casual adaptiveness is altogether excluded by the
accumulation of separate and independent evidentiary facts, all
indicative of the same purpose ; and I shall further show you that
it is not invalidated (as Professor Huxley has maintained it to be)
by a possible misapprehension of that purpose ; the evidence of
a "design" being the same, even though we may be mistaken as
to what that design was.

Necessarily limiting myself to two typical illustrations, I shall
select one of a very simple nature, in which conviction is produced
by the accumulation of similar evidentiary probabilities, each of
which — taken individually — is of the slightest character and the
lowest value, their probative force depending entirely on their
collocation ; whilst in the other I shall show that our conviction
rests on the elaborate character of the constructive arrangements
by which a small number of separate but dissimilar adaptations
are so combined as to work out a single product.

About thirty years ago we began to hear a good deal about
"flint implements." They had not been altogether unknown
previously, as specimens of them were to be found in museums
of antiquities ; but they had never been brought to light in such
numbers, and under such very peculiar circumstances, as in the
working of the gravel beds of the valley of the Somme, near
Abbeville and Amiens. The matter was brought into notice by
M. Boucher de Perthes, a distinguished antiquarian and collector
at Abbeville. English men of science went over to study the
conditions under which these flint implements were found ; and
very soon satisfied themselves of the genuineness and importance
of this discovery. There were many who at first denied that they

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 4^7

afforded any evidence of the existence of man at the time when
these gravel-beds were deposited ; maintaining that their peculiar
shapes had been given by accidental collisions. I do not know
that any sane man now questions their human production ; and
I ask you to follow me in the examination of the evidence which
has wrought that universal conviction. We are all familiar with
the opening passage of Paley's " Natural Theology : "— " In crossing
" a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a s/one, and were
" asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer
" that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for
*' ever : nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity
"of this answer. But suppose 1 had found a waU/i upon the
" ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to
" be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I
"had before given — that, for anything I knew, the watch might
" have always been there " Now, if you were to " pitch your
foot" against one of these Jlin^ implements, you would find it
very difficult to account for its condition by any hypothesis of
accidental configuration. Flints are found, in considerable
numbers, wherever there has been a great denudation of the
chalk ; those originally embedded in it having been left on the
surface of the ground. You will generally find them whole, but
not unfrequently they have undergone fracture. If, in walking
through a chalk country, you look at a heap of flints collected
by the roadside for mending the road, you will find the greater
part of them entire, having shapes that suggest to the naturalist
the forms of the sponges, by the silicification of which they were
originally produced. You will doubtless find some broken ; but
you will never meet with one that even remotely resembles the
characteristic "flint implement" of the Amiens and Abbeville
gravels. They may have one or two, or perhaps half a dozen,
fractured surfaces ; but these are quite irregular, having no rela-
tion one to another. Now, a "flint implement" exhibits, perhaps,
fifty fractures ; and they are all so related in size and position as
to bring out a very definite shape. Yet this consideration alone
did not by any means satisfy those who were unwilling to admit
the conclusion that this shape had been worked out by human
hands. I well remember that when these objects were first

41 8 NATURE AND MAN.

brought into public notice, there were many persons who said,
" The shaping of these flints is merely accidental ; the flint fell
''into a river in which there were many stones knocking about,
" and the fractures have been produced by the flint having got,
"so to speak, under a number of hammers ; so that, a bit having
" been broken away here and a bit there, it has come to be shaped
"as it is now found." I will "not say that this is an absolutely
impossible supposition with respect to any single example ; but
when we find numbers of these flints, all showing the same form,
in one gravel bed, — when we meet with forms exactly similar in
other gravel beds — and when we learn that exactly similar flints
are used at the present time by peoples (some of the hill tribes
of India, for instance) among whom iron implements have not
yet found their way, the implements being held in a cleft stick,
and bound round by a leather thong, — then, I think, we have an
accumulation of evidence which makes it inconceivable that these
gravel flints, of which I have spoken, owed their shape to any-
thing else than human handiwork. But besides these large and
powerful implements, there are also a number of other kinds.
Some of these, though smaller, are of the same general shape,
each showing a similar series of regularly disposed fractures.
But there are also found, in the same beds and in the same
numbers, smaller "flakes" of flint, whose shapes might more
easily be supposed to have been accidentally acquired, for many
of them exhibit only two fractured surfaces, indicative of two
knocks ; so that it would be by no means inconceivable that any
single flake had been casually struck off by a second blow from
a flint which had already sustained a fracture nearly in the same
direction. But when we look at a number of these found together,
and when we know that similar flakes are used as cutting instru-
ments at the present time by some of the survivors of the old
"flint folk" (being often retained for sacrificial purposes, long
after the use of metallic cutting instruments has become general),
then we come to feel sure that even these small flakes must have
been struck off with a purpose.

Such is the cumulative argument that I would draw from a
consideration of this case. Even if we admit it as conceivable
that any single flint implement, or a small number of implements,

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 419

might have derived their regular shape from a number of acci-
dental blows, and that the people who now use such instruments
might have adopted and turned to account such as thus came to
their hands ready made, I hold it impossible for any one who
brings an unprejudiced mind to the examination of a sufficiently
large collection of them, brought from localities widely remote
from each other, to come to any oth'er conclusion than that they
have been shaped by human handiwork.

I might carry this argument from the " palaeolithic " to the
"neolithic" forms; in the latter of which smooth surfaces and
sharp continuous edges have been given by friction on other
stones. It is true that every pebble of a shingle beach exhibits
the result of similar attrition against other pebbles, in the shaping
and smoothing of its surface ; but any one who should maintain
that a characteristic flint implement of the neolithic kind could
have got its shape and polish from any such casual milling, would
be accounted destitute of common sense.

Now, although we can assign a use for each kind of implement,
it does not at all follow that such was the use for which it was
designed by its maker ; but the argument that it had a maker, and
that he designed it for sovie purpose, is not in the least weakened
by this uncertainty. And I shall hereafter show that we are justi-
fied by exactly the same kind of evidence, in distinguishing the
variations in organized structures, which persistently take place
in definite directions, and culminate in the evolution of a more
elevated type, from those " aimless " variations which correspond
to the accidental fractures of flints.

From one of the earliest products of human ingenuity I now
pass to one of the latest — the Walter printing-press, which I first
saw in operation in the Great Exhibition of 1862, and which em-
bodies one of the most marvellous combinations of different actions,
all related to one and the same end, that I have ever seen in any
single machine. In fact, it more impressed me with its resem-
blance to an organized structure, than any other piece of mechanism
that I am acquainted with. If you were to join on to the Walter
printing-press the paper-making machine, which is worked sepa-
rately for convenience merely, you might put in paper-pulp in one
end, and this would come out at the other end as printed Times

420 NATURE AND MAN.

newspapers, at the rate of 15,000 per hour, without any liuman
intervention. For the paper-making machine is now so perfected,
that a continuous sheet can be produced of any length desired.
Rolls three miles long are brought to the Times printing-office, and
put into the machine : the paper, as it is unrolled, is damped
through by passing over a hollow roller pierced with multitudes
of small holes, through which water is ejected from the inside ;
and the superfluous moisture is then squeezed out by passing the
paper between another pair of rollers, so that it is prepared to re-
ceive the impression. Then there are a number of most elaborate
and beautiful contrivances, by which for the flat " form " of the
ordinary printing-press is substituted a stereotype plate, wrapping
completely round a cylinder, the continuous revolution of which at
a very rapid rate impresses the paper that is made to pass over it.
When the compositor has finished setting up his type, and the
proof has been taken, read, and corrected, so that the "form"
can be " made up," an impression of it is taken off on a sheet of
damp papier mache ; and this, having been bent round the interior
of a hollow cylinder and rapidly dried, serves as the mould from
which a cast is made in type-metal, exactly representing on a
cylindrical surface the flat type-surface of the " form." This
cast, after being examined for defects, which are rapidly repaired,
is fitted on the printing-cylinder ; which is thus made ready, in a
wonderfully short space of time, for impressing the paper which is
to pass over it, with the " matter " of which the original " form "
was composed. As the paper has to be printed on both sides,
two such cylinders are needed ; and the sheet, having been printed
on one side by passing over the first, is printed on the other by
being conducted over the second. Another set of beautiful and
yet simple contrivances is provided for distributing the ink with
the most perfect uniformity, and for preventing any accidental
deficiency, such as might be produced by an air-bubble, from
leaving a blank on the type. After having passed over both
cylinders, the continuous roll passes through a cutting-machine,
which cuts off the sheets one after another at the proper length ;
and these fall from above to one and the other alternately of two
boys who receive the sheets and lay them in two piles.

Now, could any one who should see such a machine in opera-

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 421

tion, doubt that every part of it had been constructed with a view
to a preconceived purpose, whatever he might suppose that pur-
pose to be ? An iUiterate savage who knows nothing about the
meaning of Times newspapers, would none the less (if he had a
capacity for reasoning upon the matter at all) recognize an intelli-
gent purpose in the construction of the machine. But it is by him
who knows something of the difficulties which baffled all previous
attempts at printing from a continuously revolving cylinder, and
can thus appreciate the beautiful simplicity of the method by
which these have been overcome, and by which the machine has
been brought to its present perfection, that the greatest admiration
will be felt for the ability with which so many separate and dis-
similar arrangements have been brought into consentaneous and
mutually related action, so as to concur towards a common result,
which the machine would altogether fail to work out, if any one
of its processes were to suffer derangement.

Now, in the first of these cases we have a very close parallel to
those forms of Vegetable and Animal life, which are characterized
by the Biologist as of "low organization ;" by which is meant that
there is comparatively little differentiation in the structure of their
several parts, which are often repeated almost without limit, per-
forming actions identically the same. And yet in these, as in the
collocation of the individual fractures which have shaped out a flint
implement, we see evidence of a plan, in the orderly arrangement
of these parts, and in the adaptiveness of their combined action to
the well-being of the organism as a whole. Look, for example, at
a sea-anemone in the act of feeding ; and see how its multiple ten-
tacles attach themselves to a piece of fish, or to the shell of a
mussel or periwinkle, and draw it by their united contraction
into the creature's stomach. The adaptation is not less perfect,
because the action is so simple ; nothing could be conceived
more suitable to the conditions under which the sea-anemone
lives ; and the multiplication of similar parts, so disposed as to
enable them to work together to a common end, seems to me as
clear an evidence of "designed" adaptation in the sea-anemone,
as it is admitted to l)e in the " flint implement." But, as we
ascend the scale of animal life, we find this repetition of similar
parts giving place to differentiation, alike in structure and in

422 NATURE AND MAN.

action ; and in proportion as each kind of functional activity
becomes limited to a particular organ, does the mutual depend-
ence of the several parts of the organism necessarily become more
intimate. With this functional limitation we commonly find an
increasing complexity of structure, which enables the function to
be more effectively performed; and thus the body of any "highly
organized " animal consists of a number of dissimilar organs, each
— like the several parts of the Walter press — doing its own proper
work, but thereby contributing, at the same time, to maintain the
activity of the rest.

It has been on this marked adaptiveness of particular organs
to the kinds of action they respectively perform, that the " argu-
ment from design " has been commonly based ; and no case of
this adaptation has been more frequently dwelt upon, as showing
in its perfection the most obvious and convincing evidence of
" design " than the human eye. The perfection of this adaptation,
however, has been partially denied by several modern writers, who
have based their denial on a statement contained in a most
interesting and instructive lecture on "Tiie Eye and Vision,"
given some years ago by my very distinguished friend. Professor
Helmholtz.* The first part of this lecture is devoted to an ex-
position of the structure and actions of the eye, considered merely
as an optical instrument, and of those more recent researches,
which have shown that, in addition to retinal defects previously
known, the eye is not perfectly corrected for either spherical or
chromatic aberration, that the crystalUne lens has by no means the
perfect clearness it has been supposed to possess, and that its
fibrous structure produces an irregular radiation in the image of
any single bright point. " Now, it is not too much to say," con-
tinues the lecturer, " that if an optician wanted to sell me an
"instrument which had all these defects, I should think myself
"quite justified in blaming his carelessness in the strongest terms,
"and giving him back his instrument." f

Every one who has any knowledge of theological controversy,
will recollect how frequendy the charge has been justly raised of

• " Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects." Translated by Dr. Atkinson,
London, 1873.
t Ibid., p. 219,

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 423

unfairness of quotation ; a single passage, detached from its con-
text, often conveying a meaning altogether different from that
which it bears when taken with its context, so that even "the
"devil can cite Scrii)ture for his purpose." Those who take the
anti-theological side are specially bound, as it seems to me, to
abstain from doing the very thing for which they would severely
blame their opponents ; and yet I have seldom met with a case
so unfair, as the citation of this statement without any of the
qualifications which it subsequently receives. Thus, after show-
ing that these defects scarcely reveal themselves in our ordinary
vision — some of them requiring most refined methods of observa-
tion for their detection — Professor Helmholtz continues : " If I
"am asked why I have spent so much time in explaining the imper-
" fection of the eye, I answer, as I said at first, that I have not done
"so in order to depreciate the performances of this wonderful
"organ, or to diminish our admiration of its construction. It was
" my object to make my readers understand, at the outset of our
" inquiry, that it is not any mechanical perfection of the organs
" of our senses which secures for us such wonderfully true and
" exact impressions of the outer world. The extraordinary value
" of the eye depends on tlie way in which we use it : its perfection
"is practical, not absolute, consisting not in the avoidance of every
"error, but in the f;ict that all its defects do not prevent its render-
" ing us the most important and varied services." This " practical
"perfection" he afterwards defines as "adaptation to the wants of
"the organism ;" the defects of the eye as an optical instrument
being " all so counteracted, that the inexactness of the image which
"results from their presence very little exceeds, under ordinary
"conditions of illumination, the limits which are set to the delicacy
♦'of sensation by the dimensions of the retinal cones." *

An optical defect which has long been known to ophthalmolo-
gists, — the inferiority in the sensitiveness of the retinal surface
generally, to that of the central spot known as the macula lutea, —
is shown by Professor Helmholtz to be fully compensated by the
facility and rapidity with which we move the eye, in such a manner
as to bring the image of the object, or of any part of the object,
which we wish to examine minutely, upon this sensitive spot ;

* " Popular Lectures," p. 226.

424 NATURE AND MAN.

whilst the field over which our vision ranges with sufficient distinct-
ness to see our special object in combination with its surroundings,
is far larger than is attainable in any optical instrument of human
contrivance.

I venture to think, moreover, that my special experience as a
microscopist has given me the means of adding something to
Professor Helmholtz's demonstration of the practical efficiency of
the eye.

Until recently, it has not been found possible by the most
skilful constructors of the microscope to produce object-glasses of
high power and wide angular aperture, which should be perfectly
free from both spherical and chromatic aberration. This, however,
has recently been accomplished by what is called the "oil-immersion"
system ; but the correction can only be perfectly made for a certain
relative position of the conjugate foci ; — that is, when the object is
at the precise distance in front of the lens, and its image is formed
at the precise distance behind it, for which it is adjusted by the
maker. Hence, the principal continental constructor of these
lenses, Zeiss, of Jena, makes two forms of each power : one for
the short 8-inch body of the microscopes generally used on the
Continent, and one for the long jo-inch English body. Neither
of such object-glasses will work perfectly with a microscope of the
other length. For, in order that its image may be projected at
ten inches' distance, the object must be brought nearer to the
objective than when its image is formed at eight inches' distance ;
and this diminution will sensibly disturb the performance, on the
English microscope, of the combination which was perfectly cor-
rected for the Continental microscope ; whilst a disturbance in the
opposite direction will be produced by the increase of distance
between the object and the objective, which becomes necessary
when an objective corrected for the long English body is used
with a short Continental microscope. These disturbances will
alike affect the chromatic and the spherical aberration ; and
there is no known method by which they can be prevented.
In fact, I believe I may say that it is demonstrable that no
combination could be constructed, which should give perfectly
aplanatic and achromatic images at different focal distances.

Mark, now, the superiority of the eye. In its normal condition,

DESIGxV IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 425

this wonderful organ possesses a power to which no optical instru-
ment of human construction can show the remotest parallelism, —
that of adjusting itself to differences of focal distance. Thus, if I
close one eye, and hold up my finger between my other eye and
the clock at the far end of the room, I cannot see both of them
distinctly at the same time, because, as they are at different dis-
tances from my eye, their pictures on my retina cannot both be
distinct. But, without moving either my head or my eye, I can
so " focus " my eye on either as to see it distinctly, the other
becoming hazy. This we all constantly do without the least
knowledge of the mechanism by which it is effected : and all that
the most careful and refined investigation has revealed to the
Physiologist, is that the focal adjustment is made by a change in
the curvature of the crystalline lens ; its curvature being increased
when the rays that fall upon it are more divergent, because pro-
ceeding from a nearer object; and being diminished when the
rays, proceeding from a more distant object, are less divergent ; —
so as in each case to bring them to a focus on the retina. This
change of curvature is produced, it is believed, by the action of
the ciliary muscle which surrounds the lens ; but hoiv that action
is called forth we do not know. Indeed, we are quite unconscious
that we are putting it into contraction, I simply determine, " I
" will look at the clock," or, " I will look at my finger," and my
eye adjusts itself accordingly. If, on the other hand, I were to
look with a telescope, first at a watch-face a few feet off, and then
at a church-clock at a distance, I should have to diminish the
distance between the object-glass and the eye-piece ; and I cannot
conceive of any optical mechanism by which the telescope could
be enabled to make this adjustment/^/- itself. That the eye should
be provided with such a mechanism, has always seemed to me a
most wonderful evidence of intelligent design ; and the importance
of this provision in our daily life is so great (as every one knows in
whom it is even partially deficient*), as to outweigh beyond all

* While a person with good ordinary vision has a range of focal adjust-
ment from six or eight inches (ten inches being the ordinary " reading distance ")
to as many miles, that of a "short-sighted " person is limited to near objects,
and that of an elderly " long-sighted " person to distant objects. A complete
want of power to adjust the focus of the eyes is seldom met with ; but some-
times occurs as one of the odd local paralyses often left for a time by an attack
of diphtheria.

426 NATURE AND MAN.

comparison the slight want of optical perfection wliich — as I have
already shown you — is inseparable from it.

Let us now turn our attention to the fact that it is only in the
sensitive spot of the retina, the macula lufea, that we have the
most perfect provision, in the elaborateness of its structure, for the
reception and transmission of the visual picture. The " rods,"
and " cones," as they are called, of that spot are much smaller
tlian they are in any other part of the retinal surface ; and our
vision of objects whose picture falls upon it is proportionately
distinct and minute. Now to me it seems that the inferior visual
perfection of the rest of the retina, far from being disadvantageous,
is a positive advantage. How completely the disadvantage is
compensated by the facility with which we move our eyes, I have
already shown in Professor Helmholtz's own words. The direction
of their axes which is required to bring upon the macula lutea the
image of any object at which we wish to look, is given without
any conscious exertion of our own ; we have only to " will " to
look at the object, and the muscles of our eyes automatically bring
their axes into convergence upon it. If you look at the eyes of a
person who is reading or writing, you will see them move from left
to right as he follows each line across the page, and then turn
suddenly to the left again as he begins the next line ; and yet he
is not conscious of giving them any such direction. So, again, if
we fix our gaze on any object, and move our head upwards or
downwards, or from side to side, another person looking at our
eyes will see them move in the opposite direction, so that their
axes continue to point to the object at which we are looking.*
Now while the disadvantage of the limitation of distinct vision to
the macula lutea is thus fully compensated, I hold that this limita-
tion is postively advantageous in this way, — that we see the object,
or the part of the object, at which we will to look, with much g?-eater
distinctness than we should do if the whole of the visual picture
which we receive at one time were as complete and vivid as that
portion of it which is formed on the central spot of the retina.
For our W6V//«/ receptivity of this picture depends upon tho. attention
we give it ; so that the more completely our attention is con-

* Any one may make this experiment for himself, by looking at his own
eyes in a looking-glass, and moving his head either horizontally or vertically.

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 427

centrated upon the thing at which we specially wish to look, the
more distinctly we see it. The Microscopist well knows the great
advantage of limiting his field of view when he is examining
objects of the greatest difficulty. And every one who has been
accustomed to visit picture-galleries is aware how much more fully
he is able to appreciate a picture, when he looks at it in such a
manner that its surroundings are kept out of his view.

To be able to bring our fullest measure of visual power to bear
upon any object we desire to examine, and at the same time to
see surrounding objects with sufficient distinctness for the recog-
nition of their local relation to it, is, thus, far more advantageous
to us, than would be the extension of that highest degree of visual
power over the whole range at once. Here again, therefore, the
asserted imperfection of the eye as an optical instrument proves
to be the very contrary, when its structure and action are regarded
in their relations to the use we make of the organ ; added force
being thus given to the final conclusion drawn by Professor Helm-
holtz, that " the adaptation of the eye to its function is most com-
" plete, and is seen in the very limits which are set in its defects "
(p. 228). — Those who quote his previous statement for the purpose
of depreciating the perfection of the organ, are bound in honesty
to cite this also.

In the human eye, then, as in the Walter printing-machine, we
find a combination of a number of separate contrivances, each
individually of the most elaborate kind, yet having most complete
consentaneousness of action, all tending towards one common end,
which is attained with a perfection not theoretically surpassable
by our highest science. And the cumulative probability that the
eye, like the machine, is the product of " intelligent design," though
not logically demonstrative, has a cogency not inferior to the
" moral certainties " on which we are accustomed to rely in the
ordinary conduct of our lives. — This argument seems to me not to
be in the least invalidated, but rather to be strengthened, by the
fact that in the ascending series of animals we meet with eyes
which, compared with ours, are very imperfect. Beginning at the
bottom, we find a little coloured spot, generally on some part of
the surface of the animal, with a nerve-fibre proceeding from the
central ganglion to that spot ; and we judge this to be a rudimental
19

428 NATURE AND MAN.

organ of vision, by what we encounter as we proceed upwards.
The next stage consists in the addition of something like a crystal-
line lens — a little, bright, pellucid particle on the end of the nerve-
fibre, that seems by the concentration of luminous rays to intensify
the sensation of light We have strong reason to believe that
animals very low in the scale are guided by this sensation ; not in
the manner of plants, whose growth towards light is accounted for
by its physiological action on the formation of their tissues ; but
in f7iovements directed by a conscious perception of light, resembling
that of a nearly blind person who can just distinguish light from
darkness. We find this direction towards light, and the avoidance
of intervening obstacles, more and more obviously manifested in
the movements of animals, as we pass upwards to higher forms of
the visual organ. In front of the crystalline lens, we meet with a
transparent film representing a cornea, separated from it by an
anterior chamber ; and behind it we come to distinguish a vitreous
humour, covering an expansion of the nerve-fibre which is backed
by a pigment layer. When we have arrived at this stage, seen in
the " simple eyes " of insects, it is most beautiful to trace how the
further ascent takes place along two distinct lines; one culminating
in the " compound eye " of the insect, and the other in the single
eye of the vertebrate animal, of which that of the predaceous birds
is, perhaps, the highest type.

The " compound eye " of the insect, as you all know, is, in
its typical form, an almost hemispherical mass projecting from
the side of the head, which is made up of a number of separate
" eyelets " of nearly cylindrical form, whose several axes are
directed radially towards the spheroidal surface. Each " eyelet "
consists of a number of different components which appear to
correspond with those of our single eye ; probably giving an
achromatic character to the minute picture formed by its refrac-
tive action. But each can receive only those rays of light,
whose direction corresponds with that of its own axis ; and as
the eye of the insect is immovable, no eyelet can be made to turn
towards any particular object. By the multiplication of these
eyelets, however, and the radial direction in which they are fixed,
the aggregate "compound eye" will have a range fully equal,
and probably superior, to that of any single eye constructed on

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 429

the vertebrate plan. In some Butterflies and Dragon flies, each
" compound eye " is made up of many thousands of these " eye-
lets," the individual " corneules " of which give the " facetted "
appearance presented by the exterior of the aggregate mass ; whilst
the inner extremities of the cylinders abut upon a bulbous expan-
sion of the optic nerve, from which a filament proceeds to each
of them. Now we seem fully justified by observation of the
movements of Insects, in concluding that these are guided by
visual perceptions of external objects not less distinct than our
own. And it seems probable, therefore, that the action of the
compound eye is to impress the sensorium of the Insect with a
single picture, corresponding to that which is formed upon our
own retina, though received through a very differently constructed
instrument. Modern investigations, moreover, have shown that
the difference is rather apparent than real. For it is now known
that the retinal layer of the human eye is not a mere spreading-
out of the fibres of the optic nerve ; but that in front of these
terminal fibres is a layer of " rods " and " cones " on which the
retinal picture is formed. Thus, the visual picture which our
mind receives from either retina, is made up (so to speak) of the
aggregate of the visual impressions made separately and individ-
ually upon each of its " rods" and "cones," and — through these —
upon the individual fibres of the optic nerve on which they severally
impinge. And thus what may be called the " mechanism " of
our own vision, is really analogous to that of the vision of the
Insect. In fact, it would now seem probable that the " rods "
and " cones " of our own retina are really homologous with
similar structures contained in the cylindrical "eyelets" of the
Insect; so that the difference between its "compound eye" and
our own "single eye" lies only in the arrangement of the parts
of the recipient nerve-structure. Whilst we have a single refrac-
tive apparatus for the whole retinal area, by which a continuous
picture is thrown upon its entire expanse, the Insect has a sepa-
rate refractive apparatus for each of its retinal elements ; but as
the retinal elements themselves are essentially the same in both
cases, we may fairly presume that the resulting visual sensation,
which the Insect receives by the combination of their separate
actions, corresponds closely with our own. That in the Insect

430 NATURE AND MAN.

the same effect is produced by multiplication of pa7-ts, as is pro-
duced in ourselves by their concentration in a single apparatus, is
altogether conformable to their general type of organization.
And it seems to me greatly to strengthen the argument of " inten-
tion," that a similar perfection of adaptiveness should be attained
by the working-up of the same elementary materials on two
different methods of construction, in accordance with the general
plan of Articulates and Vertebrates respectively. With regard to
those more simple forms of visual apparatus which we regard as
inferior or rudimentary, it is to be borne in mind that they prove
no less suitable than our own to the requirements of the animals
which possess them, and are therefore equally perfect in their kind.
All the wants of the Leech, for example, are provided for by its
very simply-constructed eyes ; and it would have no use whatever
for the elaborately-constructed eyes of the actively-flying Insect, —
the evolution of the visual organs in the animal series showing a
close relation to that of the locomotive apparatus.

Further evidence of " intelligent design " is supplied by the
history of the development of any one of the highest forms of the
eye, such as that of the Chick in ovo. For it has been ascertained
by the careful study of this process, that the complete organ is
the joint product of two distinct developmental actions, taking
place in opposite directions, — a growing-inwards from the skin —
and a growing-outwards from the brain : the former supplying the
optical instrument for the formation of the visual picture, and
the latter furnishing the nervous apparatus on which this is
received, and by which its impression is conveyed to the sen-
sorium. A hollow, pear-shaped projection is sent out from the
division of the brain called the mesencephalon; the narrowed
neck or stalk of which afterwards becomes the optic nerve, whilst
its expanded portion, pressed back into a concavity, becomes the
retina. At the same time, an inward growth takes place from the
skin, at first strongly resembling that which gives origin to a hair-
follicle ; a sinking-in of the surface of the dermis or true skin,
being accompanied by an increased development of its epidermic
cells. This depression deepens into a round pit, the lower part
of which expands whilst its orifice contracts, so as to form a
closed globular cavity, which is at last completely shut off from

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 431

the exterior. This cavity is lined by epidermic cells, out of which
the crystalline lens is ultimately formed ; the derm on which they
rest becomes its capsule ; and the loose tissue which underlies the
derm becomes the vitreous humour. The back of the globe thus
formed, meeting the pear-shaped projection of the brain, pushes
it, as it were, inwards ; and thus derives from it the retinal invest-
ment which is necessary to bring the optical apparatus into rela-
tion with the nervous centres. Neither of these developmental
processes would be of any use without the other. It is only by
the conjunction of the two, that this most perfect and elaborate
instrument is brought into existence.

I have now put before you the original Argument from Design,
as set forth by Paley, expanded by the more advanced knowledge
of the present time. That this argument, based on the combina-
tion of adaptations presented in the structure of each organic type
— considered as a " special creation " — to the external conditions
of its existence, needs now to be reconstructed under the new
light of the Evolution-doctrine, must be freely admitted by those
who (like myself) maintain it to be still tenable. And I have
now to inquire how it is affected, first by the acceptance of the
doctrine of Evolution taken per se; and secondly by the explana-
tion supposed to be given of that Evolution by attributing it to
" Natural Selection."

I can best bring you to my own mode of viewing this question,
by first leading you to consider how it has been affected by the
substitution of our present knowledge of the evolution of any one
of the higher types from its protoplasmic germ-particle, for the old
notion that this germ-particle is a miniature representation of the
mature embryo, into which it has only to expand by growth.
The primordial "jelly-speck" in the Fowl's egg during the pro-
gress of its development into the fully-formed chick, passes
through a succession of phases, of which the first represents that
lowest or most homogeneous type of organization which is
common to the simplest Plants and the simplest Animals, — the
second, one which is distinctively Animal, — the third, one which is
distinctively Vertebrate, — the fourth, one which is distinctively
Oviparous, — and the fifth, one which is distinctively Ornithic, —

432 NATURE AND MAN.

while the peculiarities of the special Bird family to which it
belongs are the last to make their appearance. Thus, in the lan-
guage of the great Embryologist, Von Baer, to whom we owe this
splendid generalization, its evolution consists in a gradual progress
from the general to the special^ or, as Herbert Spencer would say,
from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.

Now if, in examining the structure of a typical Bird, we find
evidences of " design " in the wonderful adaptation of its clothing
of feathers alike to keep in the warmth of the body, and to sustain
it in its flight through the air, — in that organization of its heart
and lungs which enables them to keep up the energetic circulation
and respiration required for the maintenance of a high standard
of muscular activity, — in those arrangements of the skeleton and
muscular apparatus which give support and motion to the ex-
panded wings, — in the adaptation of the eye to that acute and
far-ranging vision which is needed for the guidance of its actions,
— and in many other provisions I might enumerate, — I affirm,
without any doubt of your assent, that this evidence is not in the
least degree invalidated by the discovery that the germ-particle is
not a miniature bird, but a protoplasmic "jelly-speck." In its
capacity for " evolution " into the complete type, the germ-particle
is just as much " potentially " the Bn-d, as if it could become one
by merely swelling out.

So, if we go back in thought to the origin of the race, as we
can by actual observation to that of the individual, the old con-
ception of " design " which was based on the idea of an original
Bird-creation does not lose any of its applicability, if we find
reason to believe that the orighial progenitor was a protoplasmic
"jelly-speck," certain of whose descendants have passed through
a series of forms progressively improving in structure and capacity,
and culminating in the perfected Bird. We merely substitute for
the idea of continuous uniform descent, that of the " progressive
development" of the race, as representing the mode in which our
present Bird has come to be ; deeming the latter the more prob-
able, because we find it correspond with the embryonic history
of every Bird now existing. The original progenitor was just as
" potentially " the Race, whether called into existence as a proto-
plasmic "jelly-speck," or as a fully developed Bird. And the

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD, 433

evidences of "design," which on the doctrine of "special crea-
tions " we find in the construction of the original Bird, and in the
provision for the continuous propagation of its own type, we equally
find in the production of the original "jelly-speck," and in the
evolutionary process by which the very lowest type of organization
has been progressively elevated to one of the highest. The mar-
vellous succession of changes by which a chick is evolved from
the germ-spot of the fowl's egg in the short period of two-and-
twenty days, assuredly does not become less worthy of our admira-
tion, if looked at as the abbreviated repetition of one which has
extended continuously over millions of years.

Let us now consider this question, not in regard to any par-
ticular species of Bird, but in regard to the class as a whole, —
consisting, as it does at the present time, of many thousands of
reputed " species," each of them possessing some particular adap-
tation to its own conditions of existence, and hence regarded
(according to our former ideas) as a separate product of Creative
Design.

Every Zoologist is aware that the structure of all Birds conforms
so closely to a common type, as to make it difficult to divide the
class into subordinate groups characterized by well-m.irked dis-
tinctions. For these distinctions almost entirely rest on the
comparative development, or peculiar shaping, of organs which
all alike possess. I remember that on remarking to my friend,
Professor Milne Edwards (the successor of Cuvier as the official
head of French naturalists), soon after the publication of the
" Origin of Species," that I could very well believe that all Birds
had descended from a common ancestry, he replied, " I regard
" Birds zoologically as constituting but a single family ; " — meaning
that their diversities of structure are not greater than those which
we find among the members of many single families of Mammals
or Reptiles. Now, if we find adequate grounds for the belief that
all the Birds which now exist, or ever have existed, are the descend-
ants of a common progenitor, and that the special peculiarities of
each type have arisen in the course of their "descent with modi-
fication," the adaptiveness of each resultant organism is not less
an evidence of design, because the aggregate result has been
wrought out through a continuous passage from the general type

434 NATURE AND MAN.

to the special, instead of having been elaborated in all its com-
pleteness in the first instance. If the original Bird was so
constructed as to be capable not only of engendering its own type,
but of giving origin by genetic succession to all the diversified
forms under which the ornithic type has presented itself, we must
regard that progenitor as " potentially " the entire class, and as
endowed with a capacity for producing the whole aggregate of
"adaptations" presented by its individual members. At each
stage in the progress of differentiation, we have thus precisely the
same evidence of " design," as if the entire set of specific types
had been turned out complete (as it were) by their Maker's hand
in the first instance ; and the substitution of the idea of progressive
divarication from a common Bird-type, for that of the original
multiplicity and continuous transmission of separate types, thus
involves no other modification in the mode of presenting the
argument, than the replacement of paroxysmal exertion by
continuous orderly operation, — a change which brings it into
conformity with the accredited evolutionary history of the physical
universe.

It is freely admitted by Mr. Darwin that it is by analogy only
that we are led to regard the progenitors of the great divisions of
the Animal and Vegetable kingdoms as having themselves had a
common origin ; but if we go along with him as far as we have
now done, we can scarcely stop short of that conclusion. For as
we know that the primitive germ-particles from which Birds or
Mammals now spring are not distinguishable by any recognizable
differences from those in which Rhizopods or Zoophytes originate,
— the special " potentiality " of each only manifesting itself in the
progress of its development, — so it seems more in accordance with
Nature's order, that the distinctions between the fundamental
types of animal organization should have arisen, like those of
their subordinate divisions, by "descent with modification," than
by " special creations " of their several progenitors. Accepting
provisionally, then, the doctrine of evolution in this widest sense,
as implying the common origin of the whole organized creation —
past and present — from a single stock, we shall find that no further
modification will be required in the form in which I have put the
Argument from Design, than such as gives it yet further range and

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 435

greater comprehensiveness. For we must then regard our one
ancestral germ-particle as endowed with a " potentiality " of pro-
gressive development, that has been equal to the peopling of our
globe with all that vast variety of living creatures, by some or
other of which it has been inhabited through all save the remotest
periods of its ever-changing history to the present time. That
this progressive development has taken place according to an
orderly succession, the study of which will ultimately enable us to
frame "laws" that shall express the conditions of the "perturba-
tions " as well of the '* uniformities " of genetic descent, is the
belief of every philosophic Biologist. But when biological science
shall have reached this elevated point, it will have revealed to us
only the Order of the evolutionary process, leaving us still to seek
for its Cause. But how much grander a conception of that order
do we obtain, when we are thus led to regard it as embodied
in one original design continuously working itself out through
the ages, in constant harmony with the changes contemporane-
ously taking place in the condition of the terrestrial surface, than
when we suppose it to have needed successive interpositions for
re-adaptation to those changes as they successively occurred !

But, it is affirmed, there is nothing in this adaptation that
cannot be accounted for by " Natural Selection." As changes took
place in their " environment," variations occurred in the living
inhabitants ; some of these were favourable to their new conditions,
some were the reverse ; the fittest survived, the unfit became
extinct J and thus those "adaptations" came about in the natural
course of things, for which theologians have needlessly invoked
the " design " of a Dens ex machina. In one of those most able
expositions of the doctrine of the " Origin of Species by Natural
Selection," by which Professor Huxley very early impressed the
educated public with the scientific value of the new views which
Mr. Darwin had opened out, he remarked that nothing had more
strongly impressed him than the fact that they had completely
disposed of the old teleological argument; the adaptations in
organized structures which had been regarded as evidences of
"design" being sufiiciently accounted for as results of the " sur-
" vival of the fittest." And this view of the case has been so

436 NATURE AND MAN.

zealously adopted by some of the younger advocates of the
doctrine, that they have gone the length of representing the plants
and animals which exhibit them, as having made themselves for the
purposes which their organization is found to answer, — as if they
had the intelligent design which is denied to an universal Creator.
When challenged to justify that language, they represent it as merely
" figurative ; " their intention being only to show that, as Natural
Selection gives a sufficient account of the adaptiveness, there is no
need to seek for any other explanation of it.

But to me it seems that Professor Huxley and his followers
in this line of argument have entirely overlooked the considera-
tion, that before Natural Selection among varietal forms could
come into operation, there must have been varieties to select
from, — that for the "fittest" to have survived, they must have
come to possess the structure that made them the fittest. It was
very early pointed out that Natural Selection only expresses a
general fact, and can in no sense be accounted a vera causa ; and
this, in his later years, Mr. Darwin showed himself quite willing
to admit. In what I believe to be his last public utterance on
the subject, he spoke of the causes of variation as at present the
greatest problem of biological science ; and the greater our success
in the investigation of it, the more surely — I feel convinced —
shall we recognize the evidences of an originating Design. While
the argument is carried back — exactly as by the determination of
the " laws " of the celestial motions — a stage nearer to the primal
source, its basis is extended, and its upward reach elevated. In
the admirable language of Dr. Martineau, " The law of ' natural
" selection,' instead of dispensing with anterior causation, and
" enabling the animal races to be their own Providence and do all
" their own work, distinctly testifies to the constitution of a world
" pre-arranged for progress, externally spread with large choice of
" conditions, and with internal provisions for seizing and realizing
" the best."

The life of every organized structure, from the lowest to the
highest, consists in a series of physical interactions between itself
and its environment; these interactions being maintained by
certain physical forces, and requiring certain material supplies.
The simplest Algal protophytes, under the influence of light and a

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 437

moderate degree of heat, can manufacture their own food out of
the inorganic components of air and water \ and can thus flourish
at all ordinary temperatures, wherever they can get an adequate
supply of these elements. Most of the higher Plants, on the other
hand, whilst still capable of generating out of air and water the
organic materials which they require for their own sustenance,
need also to be supplied with certain special mineral substances ;
and will only flourish within certain limits of temperature. More-
over, as Mr. Darwin has shown us, many of them require the
agency of Insects for the fertilization of their ovules ; and cannot
reproduce themselves by seeds where that agency is not supplied.
But the aggregate of these physical conditions constitutes only a
part of the cause of the Plant's growth : there must be an aptitude
on the part of the organism itself to turn them to account ; and of
the source of that aptitude, we at present know nothing whatever.
Some Plants can adapt themselves in a much greater degree than
others, to differences in external conditions; that adaptation
involving some modification of their own structure. " What,"
said Professor Lindley, fifty years ago, " is a ' common ' plant, but
" one which can grow and propagate itself in almost any kind of
" soil, and under almost every range of temperature ; and what is
" a 'rare' plant, but one which cannot flourish and produce seed,
" except under certain special conditions ? " Every botanist
knows that among our own wild plants, Rosa, Riibus, and Salix
are alike the most "variable," and the most "common" types;
" common," because they have the capacity for adapting them-
selves to different conditions of growth ; " variable," because of
the influence of those varying conditions upon their organization.
Out of the forms of Rose, Bramble, and Willow, ranked as
" varietal " by Mr. Bentham, our ablest student of them, previous
systematists had created more than three hundred "species."

Take, again, the influence of cultivation. There is no more
remarkable example of the alteration produced by more abundant
supply of food and more regulated temperature, than that ex-
hibited in the development of the wild Brassica okracea, a rambling
sea-shore plant, into the various kinds of cabbage, broccoli, and
cauliflower. Why will not culture produce the like effect upon
other plants ? It is (juile illogical to say that this transformation

433 NATURE AND MAN.

has been the effect of " physical causes," when the most essential
factor in that entire "aggregate of antecedents," which (according
to J. S. Mill) constitutes the " cause," is the "unknown quantity"
which we designate as the " constitution " of the organism itself
As I have already pointed out, we do not get any nearer to the
explanation of this constitution by tracing it backwards ancestrally;
for supposing Rosa, Rubiis, Salix, and Brasska to have derived
their respective peculiarities by " natural selection " from among
previous varieties, the question recurs, — Whence those varietal
modifications? No physical agencies can be assigned, at any
stage whatever of the descent, as an adequate account of them ;
since, for those agencies to take effect, there must have been a
concurrent capacity for variation, either in the organism itself, or in
its germ, in virtue of which its varietal forms were engendered. The
necessity for this factor is evinced by the negative results of its
deficiency, shown in the " rareness " of many wild plants, and the
unconquerable resistance made by others to all improvement by
cultivation.

Precisely the same thing obtains in the Animal kingdom. The
lowest Protozoa, of which Atnxba is the type, find in every pond
the organic materials which they require for their sustenance ; and
live and multiply under all ordinary ranges of temperature. But
most Animals of high organization require particular kinds of
food : some being purely carnivorous, others purely herbivorous ;
whilst others, like Man, are omnivorous, and are thereby enabled
to sustain themselves on a greater variety of alimentary sub-
stances. So, again, all the higher types of Animals need an
elevated temperature for the maintenance of their activity ; but
while the " cold-blooded," as Insects and Reptiles, are entirely
dependent upon the temperature of the medium they inhabit, and
are therefore reduced to a state of torpidity by its depression,
" warm-blooded " Birds and Mammals carry their heating-furnaces
about with them, and are thus in a great degree independent of
depressions in external temperature. Yet even with this advan-
tage, we find the whole Quadrumanous order and the larger
Carnivora, as well as the (existing) Elephant, Rhinoceros, and
Hippopotamus, restricted to tropical or sub-tropical climates ; none
of them being able to resist the winter cold of the temperate zone.

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 439

In striking contrast with their Hmitation of range is that of our
" domesticated " animals, especially Dogs and Cats, Sheep and
Oxen, Asses and Horses ; all of which possess more or less adap-
tability to a wide range of climatic and other conditions, while
the original (or supposed original) type of each becomes the
subject of numerous varietal modifications. Some of these are
distinctly adaptive, rendering the animals that exhibit them more
fit to sustain themselves in the new conditions in which Man's
agency (directly or indirectly exerted) has placed them ; whilst
others are as distinctly ;w«-adaptive, rendering the animals less fit
to maintain their existence if left to take care of themselves,
although perpetuated by man's " artificial selection " as either
useful or pleasing to himself.

In these varying capabilities of particular races, then, we must
recognize — no less than in the ordinary characters proper to each
race — the constitutional factor which extends the range of some,
and limits that of others, so that the physical agencies to which the
former show themselves amenable, have no similar effect upon the
latter. If we say that the unknown cause of the variability of
the one, or of the invariability of the other, lies in the " properties "
of the germ of each, — whether that of its immediate progenitor,
or of the primordial ancestor of both, — we really get no nearer
to an explanation of it, than we do by calling the former x and
the latter J/. There is no family in the whole Mammalian series,
of which the members are more closely similar in the essential
parts of their conformation, than the Cat tribe ; the Lion, Tiger,
Panther, Leopard, Puma, and Jaguar, differing in little else than
stature and hairy covering, and the domestic Cat being but a
reduced copy of the general type. What it was in its original
wild state, is not certainly known ; many races of " wild cats "
being pretty certainly descendants of the domesticated stock. In
virtue, however, of its adaptabilility to a lower range of temperature
Felts catus has established itself where neither Felis leo nor any
other of the larger (existing) cats can keep itself alive ; but whence
did it get this adaptability ? Suppose it to be replied, that, being
a smaller species than the rest, it was very early brought under the
influence of Man ; and that as the people who domesticated it
extended themselves further and further north of their original
20

440 NATURE AND MAN.

home, successive generations came to adapt themselves to greater
and yet greater degrees of winter cold, — the question still recurs,
whence this ancestral adaptability ?

The influence of physical conditions in modifying the con-
stitution is well known to be most strongly exerted during the
earlier period of life ; for as long as the organism is in process of
development, it will grow to its environment, as it will not do at
a later epoch, when it will either resist or succumb. We are told
by Sir Charles Lyell that the Cornish miners who went out some
sixty years ago to work the Real del Monte mines in Mexico, took
out some greyhounds to hunt the hares which abound on the
elevated plateaux of that country ; but that, in consequence of
the rarefied condition of the air, the dogs could not continue the
chase, but lay down panting for breath. The offspring of those
dogs, however, brought up at this elevation, were able to run down
the hares as well as if both had been on a lower level. The con-
stitution of the young dogs adapted itself to the environment in
which they grew up ; but whence that adaptability ? We do not
find it in any but living organisjtis ; no physical property gives the
least account of it.

The most remarkable example with which I am acquainted, of
the effect of physical conditions in modifying the developmental
process, is that which is seen in the economy of the Hive-bee. It
is well known that whenever, from any cause, a community wants
a queen, a worker-grub at an early stage is selected : a " royal
cell " is constructed round it, several ordinary cells being de-
molished for the purpose, and their contained grubs killed ; the
selected grub is fed with " royal jelly " instead of with " bee-
bread;" and (it seems probable) a higher temperature is main-
tained by the incessant activity of the bees which cluster about
the royal nursery. In due time a perfect " queen " comes forth,
differing from the " worker " not merely in the completeness of its
reproductive apparatus, but in the conformation of its jaws and
antennae, the absence of " pollen-baskets " on the thighs, and yet
more remarkably in its instincts. Now it is obviously no ex-
planation of this extraordinary transformation to say that every
worker grub is a " potential " queen ; because the attributing this
" potentiality " to it is only another way of expressing the fact

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 441

that it can be so transformed. The existence of the "potentiality,"
and of the wonderful instinct that leads the worker bees to act
upon it, are not less evidences of "design," because physical
agencies are needed to call them into exercise.

A familiar instance of adaptiveness between the conformation
of animals and their environment, is the possession by Birds and
Mammals inhabiting the Polar regions, of a tegumentary covering
that serves to keep in the warmth of their bodies, the former
being provided with an underclothing of down, the latter with a
thick close fur ; whilst, on the contrary, many of the larger
quadrupeds inhabiting the torrid zone show a marked deficiency,
or even entire absence, of hairy covering. Now this is the more
remarkable, because the ordinary effect of external warmth is to
increase, and of external cold to diminish, the determination of
blood to the skin ; of which we see the effects alike in the increase
of perspiration, and in the more rapid growth of the hair and nails
during summer. Yet I have myself seen in Southdown sheep,
which had been transported only two years previously to the
West Indies, the thick covering of wool replaced by short crisp
hair, scarcely distinguishable from that of the goats which had
inhabited the island for several generations ; and the hottest parts
of the South American Pampas are inhabited by breeds of cattle
(the descendants of those introduced by the Spaniards), of which
some are nearly, and others quite, destitute of hair, and which
cannot live in the more temperate air of the slopes of the
Andes. It seems clear, then, that this adaptation results from
some direct physical action of temperature on the constitution
of the animals ; and yet (like the expansion of water in cooling
from 392° to 32°) it is in direct opposition to a very general
law.

The same may be said of the winter whitening of the fur and
plumage of Arctic Mammals and Birds. For although this (like
the preceding) has been adduced as an example of "natural
selection, " — the white varieties surviving because they escape
being seen upon ground whitened by snow, — yet there must have
been some cause for the production of the white varieties ; and
it has been the experience of some of our Arctic voyagers,
that the winter whitening could be retarded by keeping the

442 NATURE AND MAN.

animals in a warm cabin, but took place in a few hours when
they were put out into air whose temperature was considerably
below zero.

Supposing, then, that we could trace out all the physical con-
ditions under which these adaptations come to be, we have still to
account for the adaptiveness in the constitution of the anitnals
which exhibit them.

We find a singularly parallel case in that beautiful piece of
human workmanship, — a clock or chronometer so constructed, as,
by the accurate " compensation " of its pendulum or balance-
wheel, to keep accurate time under all ordinary variations of
climatic temperature. Surely we do not consider it a sufficient
account of its self-adjustment, to attribute it to the physical action
of heat or cold ; for this would disturb the performance of an
ordinary clock or watch. We seek the explanation of its special
"potentiality" in the compensating apparatus ; and we trace back
the origin of this apparatus to the mind of its contriver. So, as
it seems to me, however long may be the chain of " causation," or
the series of " unconditional sequences," that may be traceable
backwards in the ancestral history of any organized type, we come
to a beginning of it, as to the first term of an arithmetical or
geometrical progression ; and we have no less to account for the
common beginning of the whole Organized Creation, with its
unlimited possibilities of modification and adaptation, than if we
had to account for the separate production of each type of Plant
and Animal.

I shall introduce one more curious illustration of my argument,
from a department of inquiry well worthy of systematic study, —
the influence of psychical conditions on the colour of animals.
The advocates of " natural selection " as an all-sufficient explana-
tion of the correspondence between the gorgeous hues of tropical
Birds and Insects, and the brilliant foliage and blossoms of the
trees in the midst of which they live, altogether neglect to tell us
how those varieties came to be engendered, the conformity of
whose colours to those of their environment made them the
"fittest" to survive. The story of Jacob and Laban shows the
antiquity of the belief that some influence exerted by the colour
of the "environment" on the visual sense of the parents, affects

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 443

the colour of the progeny ; and this belief seems justified by
modern observation. Thus, the Dingo, or wild dog of Australia
(probably the descendant of some domesticated race originally
introduced thither by man), has a uniform dull brown hue; but
when the parents have been brought by domestication into a more
varied environment, the pups vary in colour, — as has been often
seen in the Zoological Gardens. The breeders of the polled
Angus — a particular race of black cattle in Scotland — who make
a great point of keeping up the perfect uniformity of their black-
ness, getting rid of every individual that has even a single white
foot — take care to have everything black about their farmsteads ;
all the buildings are black, the horses are black, the dogs are
black, the fowls are black. No breeder will have anything
coloured or white about his place. Though no account can be
given of the physiological action which makes these precautions
effective (as they are asserted to be) in securing the desired result,
yet I am strongly inclined to think that some influence of this
kind is concerned in producing many singular correspondences
between the surface aspect of Fishes and Crustacea inhabiting
shallow waters, and the characters of the bottoms on which they
live. Every angler for trout is familiar with variations of this
kind ; and I have been assured of cases in which these fish, when
transferred from one part of a stream to another, were found in
no long time to have undergone a change in surface-markings,
which gave them the same conformity to the new bottom as they
previously had to the old. I once found in a pool on the sea-
shore some small Fishes and shrimp-like Crustaceans, the hue of
whose surface so exactly resembled that of the yellow sand
speckled with black that formed the bottom and sides of the pool,
that the closest watching scarcely enabled me to distinguish them ;
and I found, on microscopic examination of their respective in-
teguments, that their coloration was due in both alike to the
presence of large yellow pigment-cells, with small black ones
interspersed. Hence, even if we attribute this singularly close
adaptation to "natural selection," we have just as much to account
for the development of the peculiar pigmentation in the variety —
alike of the Jish and of the Crustacean — that exhibited it, as if we
believed these animals to have been originally created with it,

444 NATURE AND MAN.

And if we prefer to believe, as I am myself disposed to do, that
in all these instances the colour of the environment is reproduced
by some sort of physiological reflexion in the integument of the
animal (the psychical impression, as in numerous other cases, re-
acting in a physical change), we have still to account for the
peculiarity of constitution which made those particular races
amenable to that influence.

I trust that I have now satisfied you of the validity of the
position I took up in the first instance, that " natural selection "
does not — as has been affirmed — effectually dispose of the telea-
logical argument, by reducing adaptiveness to an accidental
conformity between the capacities of the "fittest" and the ex-
ternal conditions of their existence. That conformity cannot
exist, unless the beings possessed of it have previously come into
existence. There is no such thing as "accidental" variation.
A departure from the rule that " like produces like," never takes
place without a cause. If it should happen that a variation is —
under the circumstances — injurious rather than beneficial, it would
not be right to call it " aimless ; " for it may be no less perfectly
adapted to conditions which exist elsewhere, than is that variation
which gives to the race that possesses it an advantage in the
struggle for existence. If a Highland cow were to produce a
hairless calf which could not stand the winter cold, or a Pampas
cow were to bear a calf with a thick shaggy covering of hair which
would unfit it for its tropical habitat, none the less should we
recognize the general adaptiveness between each race and its
climatic environment, and see the evidence of "design" in the
provision for thus peopHng almost every country in which Man
can maintain his existence, with races of Oxen serving for his
support.

I have now, in fine, to ask you to follow me through an
entirely different line of argument. All the variations among
which "natural selection" can be shown to have any effective
operation, have reference to comparatively insignificant modifi-
cations of structure. Let us grant, for the sake of argument, that
all past and present modifications of the original Bird type may
have thus arisen. But on the mode in which that singularly

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 445

specialized type came into existence, — in which that most won-
derful feature of its organization, the feather, arose out of the
scaly covering of its Reptilian ancestors, — in which its heart came
to be divided into four chambers instead of three, and the arrange-
ment of its blood-vessels altered accordingly, in the establishment
of the " complete double circulation," that insures the perfect
aeration of the blood needed for the maintenance of the extra-
ordinary muscular energy by which the feathered wings can
sustain the body in flight, — I cannot see that " natural selection "
throws the least light There is, as I have already pointed out,
an adaptation in the several parts of the structure of the Bird,
not only to one general result, but to a consentaneous action in
bringing about that result, which shows itself to be more complete,
the more closely it is scrutinized. And on the hypothesis of
"natural selection" among "aimless" variations, I think it could
be shown that the probability is infinitely small, that the pro-
gressive modifications required in the structure of each individual
organ to convert a Reptile into a Bird, could have taken place
without disturbing the required harmony in their combined
action ; nothing but intentional pre-arrangement being competent
to bring about such a result. And the point on wliich I now
wish to fix your attention, is the evidence of such pre-arrange-
ment that is furnished by \\\q orderly sequence of variations allowing
definite lines of advance,

I shall illustrate this, in the first place, by a general outline
of a Memoir which I last year presented to the Royal Society, in
which I embodied the final results (as relating to this subject) of
an inquiry on which I had been engaged for forty years into the
organization of the Foraminifera ; a group of marine animals of
the simplest protoplasmic nature, which yet form for themselves
shelly coverings of singular regularity and complexity of structure,
the aggregation of whose remains forms many important Lime-
stone strata (as the Nummulitic limestone of which the Pyramids
are built, and the Miliolite limestone which has furnished the
chief building material of Paris), whilst Chalk is a product of their
disintegration. My studies of this group began with a compara-
tively gigantic type called the Orbitolite ; which is a shelly disk,
sometimes attaining the diameter of an inch, living at the present

446

NATURE AND MAN.

time on the coast of Australia, the Fiji reefs, and other Pacific
shores, and found fossil in the early Tertiary limestones of the
north of France, one bed of which is in great degree formed of
an accumulation of disks very similar to those now piling them-
selves up near its Antipodes. 1 was supplied, moreover, with
a series of smaller disks (chiefly picked out of shore-sands), down
to an almost microscopic minuteness, but agreeing with the larger
in this fundamental feature of their structure, — the arrangement

Fig. I.

Shelly Disk of Orbltolifes complanata, showing concentric rings of
chamberlets, arranged round a central nucleus.

of their mutually connected " chamberlets " in successive circles
round a central "nucleus," their plan of growth being thus ry^r/zW.
This plan is most fully carried out in typical specimens of the
large Orbitolites complanata (Fig. I.) ; in which the " sarcodic
nucleus," consisting of a flask-shaped " primordial segment," a,
Fig. IL, and of a "circumambient segment," b, b\ c, is at once
surrounded by a complete ring of sub-segments, separately budded

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD.

447

Fig. II.

Central Portion of Animal
Body of Orbit oliles com-
planata.

off from it ; successive rings, with constantly increasing numbers
of sub-segments, being in like manner
budded off around the outer border of
their predecessors, sometimes to the
number of loo. The shell, moulded
upon this composite body, thus ac-
quires the very regular discoidal form
shown in Fig. I. ; and its vertical
thickness usually increases from its
centre towards its circumference. A
vertical section of the disk (Fig. III.,
2) shows that the chamberlets visible
on its two surfaces form two super-
ficial layers, which communicate with
continuous annular galleries that lie just beneath them (Fig. III.,
3, d' , d"), every chamberlet, a, opening at each end into one of
these galleries; whilst the intermediate part of the disk is occupied
by columnar chamberlets (b, b), which open at either end into the
annular galleries, and are connected with each other by several
ranges of oblique passages {e, e,f,f). The passages proceeding
outwards from the last-formed ring, open on the margin of the
disk as pores arranged in more or less regular vertical series (Fig.
III., i) ; and these pores constitute the only means of communi-
cation between the complicated cavitary system of the disks, and
the surrounding waters from which the animal that inhabits them
draws its nutriment. The substance of this animal is apparently
altogether protoplasmic. Notwithstanding this complexity in the
structure of the disk, there is not the least trace of differentiation
in the contents of the several series of chamberlets. On the
contrary, there is every reason to believe that a continuous inter-
change must be always going on between the protoplasmic sub-
stance of the central and that of the peripheral parts of the disk ;
so that the nutriment taken in by the " pseudopodial " extensions
which the latter puts forth through the marginal pores, may be
diffused through the whole multiple series of sub-segments, of
which the body of this organism consists. This I characterized
as the "complex" type of Orbitolite structure.

The minute disks picked out of shore-sands, however, were

448

NATURE AND MAN.

found to present a much simpler plan of structure ; the chamber-
lets being arranged in a single plane around the central nucleus,

/

cr.

^^^^^'^^^^'%''':S^'^^^^^

Fig. III.
Structure of Shelly Disk of Orbiioliies complanata.

1. Edge of Disk, showing multiple series of marginal pores.

2. Vertical Section, showing two superficial planes of chamberlets, separated
by intermediate columnar structure.

3. Internal Structure : — a, superficial chamberlets ; b, b, columnar chamber-
lets of intermediate layer ; c, floors of superficial chamberlets, showing the
opening at each end into the annular gallery beneath ; d, annular galleries cut
transversely ; d', d", annular galleries laid open longitudinally ; e e,ff, oblique
stolon passages of the intermediate layer.

those of each ring being connected by a single annular gallery.

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD.

449

and their openings at the margin forming but a single row of
pores (Fig. IV., i, 3, 4). The arrangement of the first-formed
chamberlets, moreover, presented a single departure from the
cyclical plan, showing a distinctly ^/"/V^/ disposition (Fig. IV., 2);
the mouth of the spire, however, rapidly opening out by successive

Fig. IV.
Disk of Simple Type of OrbitoUtc.

1. Surface of Disk, showing later growth of concentric rings of chamberlets
around a first-formed spire.

2. Central portion enlarged.

3. Edge of Disk, showing single row of marginal pores.

4. Vertical Section, showing succession of chamJjerlets communicating
with each other radially by passages in the annular partitions, and laterally by
the annular canals, whose sections are seen as dark spots.

additions, so as to enclose the " nucleus " ; after which all suc-
ceeding additions were complete rings, so that the cyclical plan

450 NATURE AND MAN.

came to be completely established. This I designated as the
" simple " type of OrbitoUte structure.

I was further able to show that these two typical forms were
connected by a gradational series of connecting links ; the forma-
tion of disks of the "complex" type often commencing on a
plan resembling that of the " simple ; " and the change from the
latter to the former taking place, not at any fixed epoch of growth,
but after a variable number of rings had been formed, sometimes
abruptly, sometimes more gradually, in the manner to be presently
detailed. And I also found that the inner rings of even the largest
"complex" disks, if their early growth had taken place on the
"simple" type, were not complete, but showed a tendency to
one-sided and therefore spiral growth, like that seen in Fig. VI., 3.

Reflecting on the relations of these highly specialized Forami-
niferal types to the simpler forms of the Milioline group, to which
(in virtue of the " porcellanous " character of their shells) I
referred them, I ventured to construct a hypothetical pedigree;
tracing their descent (Fig. V.) from the particle of protoplasm
that forms the spheroidal chamber in which every Forarainiferal
shell begins, first to an open undivided spiral (i) ; then to a type
in which the spire is constricted at intervals (2) ; then to a type in
which it is completely divided into chambers by transverse par-
titions (3) ; then to a type in which the spirally arranged chambers
are divided by longitudinal partitions into chamberlets (4) ; then to
the "simple " type oi orbitolites, in which the spiral plan of growth
gives place to the cyclical (5); then to an "intermediate" type,
in which the original spiral alm.ost disappears (6) ; and finally
to the "complex" type, in which the plan is cyclical from the
beginning (7).

This hypothetical pedigree has found its complete confirmation
in a deep-sea OrbitoUte of extraordinary delicacy and beauty, which
was brought up in the Porcupine Expedition of 1S69. For this
little disk, about the size of a fourpenny piece, while for the most
part truly cyclical, has a long succession of inner chamberlets
arranged upon the spiral plan, as in Oi-hiadina ; these, again,
arise from expanded but undivided chambers, like those of a
Peneroplis; and these chambers are the continuation of a spiral
tube, with occasional constrictions, resembling that of a Spirolo-

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD.

451

Fig. V.

Diagram illustrating the Pedigree of the Complex type of Orbitolite,

Simple undivided Spire of Coniuspii-a.
Partially interrupted Spire of Spiroloculina.
Spire of Peneroplis, divided by partitions into chambers.
Spire of Orbkiilina, its chambers divided into rows of chamberlets.
Disk of "simple" Orbitolite, showing first-formed spire, surrounded by
concentric rings.

6. Disk of "duplex" Orbitolite, showing earlier passage from spiral to
cyclical plan of growth.

7. Central portion of Disk of "complex" Orbitolite, in which the cham-
bered nucleus alone shows an abbreviated spire, the very first row of chamber-
lets forming a complete ring.

I.

2.

3-

4-
5-

452 J^'ATURE AND 31 AN.

aiHfia, coiling continuously round a primordial chamber, as in
Cornuspira. Thus, in this interesting organism we find permanently
represented the whole developmental history of the " simple " type
of Orbitolite from the primordial jelly-speck. The large Challenger
collection of Orbitolites, made on the Fiji reef, has furnished me
with the means of still more completely working out the transition
from the "simple" to the "complex" type; a distinctly inter-
mediate type there presenting itself in great abundance. This,
which I term the "duplex" type (Fig. VL, i), resembles the
"simple" in having its annular series of chamberlets disposed in
a single plane, and in the connection of the chamberlets of each
ring by a single annular canal ; but differs in having its successive
rings connected by a double series of radial passages, which issue
on the edge of the disk (Fig. VI., 2) as marginal pores. The
columnar sub-segments, a a', b b\ of each ring are strung, as it
were, on the annular cord, c c' ; and this sends off an upper and
a lower series of stolon-processes, d d, d'd', which pass into the
upper and lower halves of the sub-segments of the next ring. —
The plan of growth in the first-formed portion, shown in Fig. VL,
3, is singularly intermediate between that of the "simple" and that
of the " complex " type. The regular spire of the former is now
reduced to the single turn made by the " circumambient segment,"
b b, round the "primordial segment" a ; but a partial continuance
of the same plan is shown in the incompleteness of the first two or
three rings of sub-segments ; these being budded forth from only
half of the " circumambient segment," instead of from its whole
periphery, as in the typical "complex" Orbitolite (¥\g. II.). Yet
even in large disks, whose later growth is characteristically " com-
plex," the nucleus and earlier rings are often formed on the
" duplex " plan, which passes into the " complex " in the manner
to be now described.

Believing, with Sir James Paget, that " the highest laws of
"biological science are expressed in their simplest terms in the
" lives of the lowest orders of creation," I shall now ask you to
follow me through a detailed examination of the transition from
one type to the other ; as shown in Fig. VII., which represents
a vertical section, taken in a radial direction, of one of those large
"complex" disks whose life was commenced on the plan of the

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD.

453

" simple." The first-formed series of chamberlets (w, w^, m^, m^,
m*) exactly correspond with those of the "simple" type (Fig. IV.,

liPH^^Si

Fig. VI.

1. Disk of Duplex type of OrbitoUte.

2. Edge of Disk, showing double row of marginal pores.

3. Central portion of Sarcode body : — a, primordial segment ; b, circum-
ambient segment, budding off a half-ring of sub-segments, from uhich
complete rings are afterwards formed.

4. Portion of the Sarcodic body of one ring ; a a! and b //, the two halves
of the columnar suli-segments in connection with c c', the annular cord ; from
this are given off the pairs of stolon-processes d d' , d d' , which connect it with
the sub-segments of the next annulus.

454 NATURE AND MAN.

4), constituting but a single plane ; those of each series being
connected together by a single continuous annular gallery (shown
in cross-section at (ac, ac), while those of each series are connected
with those of the next by single radial passages (r, r, r), which, as
each annulus was formed, would open at its outer edge as a single
row of marginal pores. Bat these are surrounded by rings {d, d},
cP) in which, while the annular canal is still single, two radial
passages (r) go off from it obliquely, one into the upper and the
other into the lower portion of each chamberlet of the next
annular series, those of the last-formed annulus showing them-
selves at its edge as a double row of marginal pores. From this
"duplex" type, the first advance towards the "complex" is shown
at e, e^, in the splitting, so to speak, of each annular canal into
two {ac, ac'\ and the interposition of a columnar cavity {m, in)
between its two halves. Now, in the inner (or earlier-formed) of
the annuli which show this complication {e^ e^), the two series of
chamberlets {s s, s' s') which lie between the two annular canals
and the two surfaces of the disk, are continuous with the inter-
mediate columnar chamberlets, and bear the same relation to their
respective annular canals as in the " duplex " type, each being
connected with one canal only ; and this stage of differentiation
characterizes the Orbitolites of the French Tertiaries, which seem
to have attained their full growth without any advance upon it.
But in the large Orbitolite disks of Australia and Fiji, I find this
simpler arrangement giving place to a more complicated one
(/, /I, /^, /^) ; the chamberlets of the two superficial layers being
separated from those of the intermediate layer, and being so
shifted in position, that each annular series lies over the interval
between two annular canals, and communicates with both of them ;
while the sarcodic body which occupies this cavitary system thus
comes to have the more complicated arrangement shown in
Fig. VIII. With the increase in the thickness of the intermediate
layer, the double row of marginal pores of the " duplex " type
gives place to the multiple series (Fig. VII., ;;//) of the "complex."
Now it seems to me impossible not to recognize the fact, that
the evolution of this type has taken place along a definite course ;
every stage being one oi progress, and each being (so to speak) a
preparation for the next. This, perhaps, will be most clearly seen

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD.

455

Fig. VII.

Diagrammatic representation of the
transition from the " simple " to the
" complex " plan of growth, as shown
in vertical section, from the primordial
and circumambient chambers {c p c') of
the centre, to the margin, whose pores
are shown at mp. The chambers ;;/,
wS m'^, m^, m^, are all formed upon the
smple type (as in Fig. IV., 4), and
show at ac, ac, the cross sections of
the annular canals, which connect all
the chamberlets of one ring, and at
r, r, r, the radial passages connecting
the successive annuli. The chambers
d, d^, d^, are formed upon the duplex
type ; the annular canals, ac, ac, being
single, but the radial passages r being
double. The chambers e, e\ show two
annular canals ac, ac, between which
is interposed a columnar chamberlet,
continuous with the two superficial
chamberlets s s'. In the chambers /,
f^,p,p, to the margin, which are all
formed on the fully-developed complex
type, the upper and under superficial
chamberlets ss,s' s', are completely cut
off from the intermedi-ite columnar
portion, and, by a shifting of their
position, each is made to communicate
with two annular canals.

w^--

Hm

S|

V.

■-.I

^UL^l

/I

iry-y^^'-

m¥

m

J

I

456 NATURE AND MAN.

by looking at the progressive complication in the structure of the
sarcodic body on which the shell is modelled. First, we have a
simple pear-shaped particle, extending itself into a cord that lies
in a continuous spiral around it, with constrictions at intervals.
This spire flattens out ; and then, by the formation of transverse
partitions, traversed by pores, the successive additions become
segmentally separated from each other, though mutually connected
by sarcodic extensions. Next, these segments undergo a further
division into sub-segments : all those forming each row being
strung (as it were) on a continuous sarcodic cord, which connects
them laterally ; while the successive rows are connected, as before,
by radial " stolon processes," those of the last-formed row issuing
forth through the marginal pores, as the pseudopodia, through
which nutriment is absorbed for the entire body. Then, by the
opening out of the spire, the lateral connecting cords become
complete rings, from which the radial stolon-processes are given
off; and the future increase of the "simple" type consists in the
formation of new circular series of sub-segments, each strung, as
it were, on its own annular cord. Now, the advance towards the
" complex " type is prepared for, so to speak, by the sending forth
of two sets of radial stolon-processes instead of one ; — a change
which, taken by itself, is meaningless, since every one who is
familiar with the variability of the Rhizopodal type (especially as
exhibited in the transitional forms between Peneroplis and De?i-
dritina) knows that it cannot make any difference to the animal
whether its pseudopodia issue from the margin of the disk, through
a single or through a double row of pores ; but which is full of
meaning when regarded as a preparation for that splitting of each
annular cord into two, in which the transition from the " simple "
to the " complex " type essentially consists. Every annulus of
the body of the latter consists of a series of columnar segments
(Fig. VIII., e e, e' e'), passing at each end into an annular cord
{a a', b b'), and communicating with the series internal and
external to it, by oblique stolon-passages, the number of which is
related to the length of the columns ; this again, determining the
thickness of the calcareous disk which is modelled upon them.
The sub-segments of the two superficial layers {c c, d d) do not
communicate with each other ; but those of each circlet are con-

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD.

457

nected (as already described) with the two annular cords that lie
beneath. And by this elaborate
arrangement, every part of the
minutely subdivided protoplas-
mic body which occupies the
minutely sub-divided cavity of
these disks, is brought into con-
tinuous relation with every other
part, and with the peripheral an-
nulus whose marginal pores con-
stitute the only access through
which nutriment can reach it
from without.

I might further illustrate my
argument that we have here the
obvious indication of a pre-
arranged plan, by the remark-
able provision made, not merely
for the reparation of injuries,
but for the restoration of the
typical form when the disk has
been so much broken as to
destroy that form completely.
Even a broken-off marginal frag-
ment may give origin to a new

Fig. VIII.

Portion of Sarcodic body of Com-
plex Orbitolite : — a a', b b' , upper
and lower annular cords of two con-
centric zones ; c c, upper layer of
superficial sub-segments ; d d, the
lower layer ; e e and e' e\ interme-
diate columnar sub-segments of the
two zones, giving off oblique stolon-
processes.

disk ; its sarcodic body extend-
ing itself all round it, so as to form a continuous band ; and this
forming a complete annulus of chamberlets, round which new
annuli are successively added.

In the Life-history of the perfected type, then, we can clearly
trace a sequence which runs exactly parallel to what we have
reason to regard as its Evolutionary history, and, in addition, a
provision for the maintenance of the/^//(?(;"/(!'^mode! ; the reparative
process being carried on — alike in the " simple," the "duplex,"
and the " complex " types — upon the plan characteristic of
each.

But my special reason for dwelling upon this "instance" (as
Bacon would call it) is, that the influence of Natural Selection

458 NATURE AND MAN.

would here seem to be excluded by the fact that the whole series
of ancestral forms through which the most elaborately constructed
Orbitolite now existing may be assumed to have passed, continue
to live and flourish at the present time. The very same dredging
may bring up shells of Cormispira, constructed upon the undivided
spiral plan shown in Fig. V., i ; shells of Spiroloculina, in which
the spiral is partially interrupted by rudimentary partitions, as at
2 ; shells of Peneroplis, in which the partitions are complete, bu
traversed by pores, as at 3 ; shells of Orbiculina, in which the
peneropline chambers are divided into chamberlets, the plan
of growth still remaining spiral, as at 4 ; and shells of the three
types of cyclically growing Orbitolites 5, 6, 7. As already
stated, the condition of the sarcodic body undergoes no corre-
sponding advance \ that of the most " complex " Orbitolite being as
homogeneous or undifferentiated as that of the simple Cornuspira.
There is no evidence whatever of any " struggle for existence " or
" survival of the fittest " ; all showing themselves equally fit to
survive. All " variation " seems to have taken place in such a
definite direction, as to evolve calcareous fabrics of ever-increasing
complexity ; but this complexity can scarcely give any advantage
to the organisms which have attained it, these being fully as
incapable as the simpler forms of escaping from their enemies by
movement, and showing no such differences of aspect as would
enable them to elude observation. In fact, the Fishes and larger
Crustaceans which would probably be their chief destroyers, would
be likely to be most attracted by the larger disks of the " com-
plex" type; while the younger specimens of that type, being
indistinguishable except by the Microscopist from full-grown
specimens of the "simple" and " duplex" types, are not likely to
be passed over by any hungry destroyer that might find these latter
of more suitable dimensions.

The last remark I have to make in relation to this noteworthy
" instance," is that its value is not in the least degree lessened
by the fact that the evolutionary process seems to be dependent
upon physical agencies. The Orbitolite type (as at present known
to us) flourishes best in tropical or sub-tropical seas ; the largest
" complex " forms yet discovered being found on the Fiji reefs ;
while the smallest " simple " forms only extend as far north as

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 459

the Mediterranean, — with the singular exception of the deep-sea
type found to the west of Ireland, which is probably a survival
from the warmer climate of some former epoch. And among the
specimens collected by the C/ialienger on the Fiji reef, I have
found a marked difference ; all the most highly-developed forms
of the " complex " type having been found near the surface, where
the temperature is the highest, and the supply of food most
abundant. But it can no more be said that these physical
agencies produced the advance, than that heat can viake a chick
out of the yolk and white of an egg, without a germ to appro-
priate and build up these materials. These physical agencies
supply only the conditions required for the evolutionary process,
— the source or spring of which is in the germ itself

As Natural Selection gives no account of the changes in the
plan of groivth which constitute so marked a feature in the evo-
lutionary history of the Orbitolite, so, as it seems to me, it gives
no explanation of the appearance of nciv organs : the complete
possession of which fits their possessors for a higher condition of
existence, and accords with other modifications that enable them
to take advantage of it- but which, in their rudimentary state,
cannot be conceived to be of any service to animals altogether
framed upon a less advanced type, and continuing to live in
accordance with lower conditions. And I shall take, as a suitable
"instance," what is known as the "swimming bladder" of the
Fish, which is an earlier form of the organ that becomes a lung in
air-breathing Vertebrata.

In the Vertebrate series we pass by a succession of stages from
the Fish, with gills fitted only for aquatic respiration, to the Reptile
which is fitted only for aerial respiration : the intermediate being
the true Amphibia, which, as regards their respiratory apparatus,
are fish in their early stage, and reptiles in the complete stage ;
some of them retaining their gills even after the development of
their lungs, so as to be able to live either in air or in water.
Now, the first rudiment of a "swimming bladder" that we meet
with in Fishes, is a little diverticulum or pouch opening off from
the pharynx or gullet ; and this extends itself in many cases so
as to become a bag or sac, lying along the spine, but entirely cut
off, by the closure of its neck, from any communication with the

46o NATURE AND MAN.

gullet. Such fish cannot take into it any air from the outside ; so
that the air which is found in the sac in some instances, would
seem to have been secreted from the blood. It is commonly sup-
posed that the fish uses this bladder for so regulating its specific
gravity as to rise or sink in the water ; but there is no adequate
basis for this hypothesis. For there is no muscular structure in
the bag to cause it to increase or diminish in size ; and there is
no outside arrangement of muscles that can be conceived to
answer this purpose. Moreover, when deep-sea Fish, having a
closed swimming-bladder, are brought to the surface, their swim-
ming-bladders burst in consequence of the removal of external
pressure, and the fish are killed. The most singular thing is,
that there are genera of fish, the Scomber (or Mackerel tribe) for
instance, of which some species have a swimming-bladder, and
others none ; and it cannot be affirmed that the latter are less
able to swim at different depths than the former. This swimming-
bladder, in certain other forms of fish, retains its original com-
munication with the pharynx ; and air can then pass into it from
the outside. Carp in ponds are often seen to swallow air; and
you may occasionally see gold-fish, which are a kind of carp,
coming to the surface of the water of the globes in which they are
kept, discharging air-bubbles and taking in a fresh supply. It
seems pretty certain, then, that there are fish which use this rudi-
mentary lung really for the purpose of respiration ; certainly the
Ganoid fishes do, which are a most important group in the evolu-
tionary series, connecting Fishes with Reptiles.

Now, of the first appearance of this organ, and of its develop-
ment into a closed air-bladder, it seems to me that Natural Selec-
tion gives no account whatever. Let it be supposed that the
pharyngeal pouch "formed itself" in some ancestral fish as an
"aimless" variation; how can it be conceived to have been of
such service to the animals which possessed it, that they beat
others in the struggle for existence, — when we do not find this to
be the case even with the fully-developed swimming-bladder?
And how can we account for the progressive elongation of the
pouch into a closed swimming-bladder, if, in this condition, it is
of no use to its possessors ? To me it seems as if the whole
evolutionary history of this organ plainly poii ts to its ulterior

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 461

development into an organ for atmospheric respiration; and is
unmeaning if not so viewed.

So, again, we may trace a remarkable uniformity in the line
of progress from the lower to the higher forms of pulmonary
apparatus. The purpose which the lung has to serve being the
exposure of the blood to the air over an extended surface, that
extension must be proportionate to the demand for aeration set
up by the muscular activity and temperature-standard of the
animal. The swimming-bladder of the Fish, even when used for
atmospheric respiration, is a simple, undivided sac, or, as in the
Ganoids, a pair of such sacs. The lung of the Frog has its internal
surface increased by its extension into a number of little pockets
in the upper part of the principal cavity. The same is the case
in the Snake, and in many other Reptiles ; each lung having a
large undivided cavity, with diverticula in its walls, over the
extended surface of which the blood-vessels are minutely dis-
tributed. In some of the higher Reptiles, as the Crocodile, the
cavity of the lung exhibits an incipient subdivision. In the lung
of Man, as of Mammals generally, an extraordinary increase is
given to the extent of aerating surface, by the excessively minute
subdivision of the cavity into air-cells ; of which thousands are
clustered round the end of each terminal twig of the bronchial
tree. But this increase would be without effect, if there were not
at the same time a most elaborate provision in the skeleton of
the trunk, in the disposition of its muscles, and in the mode in
which these are acted on by the nervous apparatus, for alter-
nately filling and emptying the lungs, so as to take in fresh sup-
plies of oxygen for the aeration of the blood, and to get rid of the
carbonic acid which it gives off. The chief feature in this pro-
vision is the enclosure of the lungs in a distinct cavity (that of
the chest) cut off from the abdomen by a muscular partition — the
diaphragm ; the contraction of which, by increasing the capacity
of the chest, produces an in-rush of air down the air-passages,
which penetrates to the remotest parts of the minutely-subdivided
cavity of the lungs. By no other action could the air contained
in that cavity be so effectually renewed. Thus the pulmonary
apparatus of the Mammal is the most perfect form that could be
devised for obtaining the highest amount of respiratory power
within the smallest compass.

462 NATURE AND MAN.

But the Bird requires a yet more active respiration than the
Mammal : being far higher in point of animal activity. It must
put forth far more muscular power in proportion to its size, in
order to raise itself in the air; and it must be able to sustain
that power for a great length of time. Its animal energy can
only be kept up by the maintenance of a higher temperature.
All this involves a much larger consumption of oxygen, and a
greater production of carbonic acid. Hence you would suppose
that if " natural selection " had in any way worked out the respi-
ratory apparatus of a Bird, it would be a more highly organized
instrument than that of a Mammal. So far, however, is this from
being the case, that the lung of the Bird is really formed upon the
lower plan of the lung of the Reptile. Instead of having the
minutely subdivided air-cells of the Mammalian lung, the lung of
the Bird is an aggregation of little lunglets, each resembling the
entire lung of the Frog ; and instead of the provision made in
the general structure of the Mammal for the constant renewal of
the air in the cavity of the lungs, we find the diaphragm absent,
and the bony framework of the trunk so firmly knit together (thus
affording fixed attachments for the powerful muscles of flight) as
to be incapable of the movement which our ribs and sternum
perform in aid of the action of the diaphragm. How, then, is
the more active respiration required by the Bird provided for ?
Just as in the Insect, to which Birds have so many analogies, —
by the extension of the respiratory surface through the body
generally. The long bones, instead of being filled with marrow,
are hollow ; and their cavities are connected with each other and
with that of the lung on either side : there are also air-sacs dis-
posed in various parts, which probably take a share in the same
action. Further, by the elasticity of the framework of the trunk,
the lungs are kept full of air, the state of emptiness being forced ;
so that when they have been compressed by a muscular effort,
they fill themselves again spontaneously as soon as the pressure is
relaxed.

Thus, looking at the general plan of the respiratory apparatus,
we find it undergoing a uniformly progressive elevation of type, as
we pass from the Fish to the Reptile, from the Reptile to the Bird,
and from the Bird to the Mammal. But if there was no pre-

DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 463

ordained plan, if this advance resulted from mere " accidental "
variations, we should have expected that some Bird would have
been evolved by " natural selection " with the lung of the
Mammal ; and that this form, by the survival of the fittest, would
have established itself to the exclusion of the lower type. On the
contrary, without any advance on the lower plan of Ornithic struc-
ture, an extension has been given to its respiratory surface, which
supplies all the needs of the most actively flying Bird, and makes
that apparatus as perfect, in its relation to the general plan, as if
that apparatus had been exceptionally raised to a higher grade of
development.

Here then, as in the preceding instance, we seem justified in
the conclusion that, as the doctrine of Natural Selection out of
an endless diversity of " aimless " variations fails to account for
that general consistency of the advance along definite lines of progress
which is manifested in the history of evolution (the two cases I
have brought before you being merely samples of an immense
aggregate, whose cumulative force seems to me irresistible), it
leaves untouched the evidence of Design in the original scheme of
the Organized Creation ; while it transfers the idea of that Design
from the particular to the general, making all the special cases of
adaptation the foreknown results of the adoption of that general
Order which we call Law. — As Dr. Martineau has pertinently
asked, " If it takes mind to construe the world, how can it require
"the negation of mmd to constitute it.?" Science, being the
intellectual interpretation of Nature, cannot possibly disprove its
origin in Mind ; and, if rightly pursued, leads us only to a higher
comprehension of the " bright designs," a more assured recog-
nition of the working of the " sovereign will," of its Divine Author.

21

APPENDIX.

LIST OF DR. CARPENTER'S WRITINGS.*

1835-^ I, 2. On the Structure and Functions of the Organs of
1836. J Respiration in the Animal and Vegetable King-

doms {West of England Journal, October, 1835;
January, 1836).

1836. 3. A Sketch of the Present State of our Knowledge of

the Laws of Chemical Combination, with some of
their more Important Applications {Ibid., January).

1837. 4. Oration delivered before the Members of the Royal

Medical Society of Edinburgh, at the Celebration
of their Centenary, February 17, 1837.

5. On the Voluntary and Instinctive Actions of Living

Beings (communicated to the Royal Medical
Society, March 23 ; printed in the Edinburgh
Medical and Surgical Journal, No. 132).

6. On Unity of Function in Organized Beings (com-

municated to the Royal Medical Society, April 14;
printed in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal,

. July).

7. Lindley, Henslow, De Candolle, Treviranus, Raspail,

on Vegetable Physiology {British and Foreign
Medical Review, July).
1838-54. 8-1 1. Principles of General and Comparative Phy-

* This list does not include occasional letters to newspapers on controversial
matters ; and it is possible that sundry early articles in various reviews, cyclo-
piedias, etc., have not been traced.

463 APPENDIX.

siology. Second edition, 1842 ; third edition,
185 1 ; fourth edition, 1854.

1838. 12. Hall, Grainger, Mayo, on the Physiology of the

Spinal Marrow {British and Foreign Medical Re-
viezu, April).

13. Physiology an Inductive Science {Ibid., April).

14. On the Differences of the Laws regulating Vital and

Physical Phenomena (Prize Essay, Edinburgh New
Philosophical Journal, April ).

15. Macilwain's Medicine and Surgery {British and

Foreign Medical Review, July).

1839. 16. Inaugural Dissertation on the Physiological Infer-

ences to be deduced from the Structure of the
Nervous System in the Invertebrate Classes of
Animals (Prize Thesis).
17. Hunter, Macartney, Rasori, Carswell, on Inflamma-
tion {British afid Foreign Medical Review, April ;
the portion relating to Hunter is marked, " Not by
W. B. C").
1839-47. 18-20. Articles on '^Life," "Microscope," "Nutri-
tion" (Todd's CyclopcBdia of Anatomy and Phy-
siology).

1840. 21. The Claims of Bell, Majendie, Mayo, etc., to Dis-

coveries in the Nervous System {British and
Foreign Medical Review, January).

22. Dubois on Medical Study : Preliminary Education

{Ibid., April).

23. Dubois and Jones on Medical Study : Principles of

Medical Education {Ibid., July).

1841. 24. Alison, Bushnan, Swainson, on Intellect {Ibid..,

January).

25. Graham, Thomson, Daniell, Daubeny, on the

recent Progress of Chemical Philosophy {Ibid.,
January).

26. Valentin on the Functions of Nerves {Ibid., April).

27. Outline of a Philosophical History of the Repro-

ductive Function in Plants and Animals {Edinburgh
Monthly Journal of Medical Science^

APPENDIX. 469

1841-44. 28-31. Popular Cyclopaedia of Natural Science, 5 vols.
The Treatises composing this series were after-
wards reissued separately :

Mechanical Philosophy, Horology, and As-
tronomy, 1857.
Zoology, 2 vols, (edited by W. S. Dallas, F.L.S.),

1857.
Vegetable Physiology (edited by Edwin Lan-

kester, M.D., F.R.S.), 1858.
Animal Physiology, 1859.
1842-55. 32-36. Principles of Human Physiology. Second
edition, 1844; third edition, 1846; fourth edition,
1852 ; fifth edition, 1855. (The sixth edition
appeared in 1864, under the editorship of Mr.
Power; the ninth in 1881).

1842. 37. Liebig's Animal Chemistry {British and Foreign

Medical Reviezv, October).

1843. 38. On the Origin and Functions of Cells, being Part II.

of a Report on the Results obtained by the Use
of the Microscope in the Study of Anatomy and
Physiology {Ibid., January).

39. On the Minute Structure of the Skeletons or Hard

Parts of Invertebrata {Proceedings of the Royal
Society, January).

40. On the Microscopic Structure of Shells {British

Association Report, August).

41. General Results of Microscopic Inquiries into the

Minute Structure of the Skeletons of MoUusca,
Crustacea, and Echinodermata {Annals and Maga-
zine of Natural History, December).

1844. 42. Hall and Newport on the Reflex Function of Animals

{British and Foreign Medical Review, January).

43. Report on the Microscopic Structure of Shells

{British Association Report, September),

44. On the Structure of the Animal Basis of the Common

Egg-Shell, and of the Membrane surrounding the
Albumen {Transactions of the Microscopical Society,
October 19).

470

APPENDIX.

1845.

45

46-

1846-

-65.

1846.

68.

1847.

69.

70.

71.

72.

73-

74-

75>

77-

78.

1847-

49.

1848.

83-

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation {British
and Foreign Medical Review, January).
-63. On the Harmony of Science and ReHgion

(eighteen papers in the Inquirer newspaper, March

22 to August 16).
64-67. Manual of Physiology. Second edition,

1851 ; third edition, 1856 ; fourth edition, 1865.
Noble on the Brain and its Physiology {BritisJi and

Foreign Medical Revieiv, October).
Moreau's Psychological Studies on Hachish and

Mental Derangement {British and Foreign Medico-

Chirurgical Review, January).
Matteucci on the Physical Phenomena of Living

Beings {Ibid., April).
Professor Owen on the Comparative Anatomy and

Physiology of the Vertebrate Animals {Ibid.,

April).
Report on the Microscopic Structure of Shells

{British Association Report, June).
On Piiotography applied to Microscopic Objects

{Ibid., Part H., June).
Dr Mayo on the Relations of Insanity, Crime, and

Punishment {British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical

Review, July).
76. Dr. Prichard on the Physical and Natural His-
tory of Mankind {Ibid., July and October).
Flourens, Sharpey, Tomes, on the Formation of

Bone {Ibid., October).
An Inquiry into the Effects of Alcoholic Drinks on

the Human System in Health and Disease {Ibid..,

October).
79-82. Articles on "Secretion," "Shell," "Sleep,"

" Smell " (Todd's Cyclopczdia of Anatomy and

PJiysiology).
Dalyell, Sars, Dujardin, and Van Beneden, on the

Development and Metamorphosis of Zoophytes

{British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review,

January).

APPENDIX,

471

1848. 84. Dr. Pereira's Edition of Matteucci's Lectures {British

and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, January).

85. On the Christian Name {Inquirer, June 20).

86. Taylor and Copland on Poisons {British and Foreign

Alcdico-Chirurgical Review, July).
87.. Schleiden and Ralfs on Botany {Ibid., October).

88. The Position and Prospects of the Medical Pro-

fession {Ibid., October).

89. Ethnology, or the Science of Races {Edinburgh

Review, October).

90. The Objects of Medical Study and the Spirit in

which they should be pursued (Introductory
Lecture delivered at the Medical School attached
to the London Hospital, October 2).

1849. 91. On the Microscopic Structure of Nummulina,

Orbitolites, and Orbitoides {Joicrnal of the Geo-
logical Society, May 2).

92. The Physiology of Parturition {British and Foreign

Medico-Chirurgical Review, July),

93. Owen and Paget on Reproduction and Repair {Ibid.,

October).

94. Physiological Botany {Ibid., October).
1849-52. 95-97. Articles on "Taste," "Touch," "Varieties

of Mankind" (Todd's Cyclopcedia of Anatomy
and Pliysiology).

1850. 98. The Physiology and Diseases of the Nervous System

{British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review,

January).
99. On the Mutual Relations of the Vital and Physical

Forces {Philosophical Transactions, June 20).
100. Evidence and Proof: the Trial of Dr. Webster

{British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review,

July).
1850-51. loi, 102. The Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors

in Health and Disease (Prize Essay). Second

edition, 185 1.
1852. 103. On the Influence of Suggestion in Modifying and

Directing Muscular Movement, independently of

472 APPENDIX.

Volition {Proceedings of the Royal Institution,
March 12).

1853. 104, On the Intimate Structure of the Shells of Brachio-

poda (contributed to the General Introduction
to Mr. Thomas Davidson's British Fossil Bra-
chiopodd).

105. The Physiology of Temperance and Total Absti-

nence, being an Examination of the Effects of
the Excessive, Moderate, and Occasional Use
of Alcoholic Liquors, on the Healthy Human
System (London : Henry G. Bohn, pp. 184).

106. The Moderate Use of Intoxicating Drinks, physio-

logically considered (London : W. Tweedie,

pp. 15)-

107. The Predisposing Causes of Epidemics {British

and Foreign Medico-Chirtirgical Review, January).
loS. Electro-Biology and Mesmerism {Quarterly Review,
October).

1854. 109. On a Peculiar Arrangement of the Sanguiferous

System in Terebratula and certain other Brachio-

poda {Proceedings of the Royal Society, April 5).
no. On the Development of the Embryo of Purpura

lapillus {British Association Report, Part II.,

September).
III. On the Development of the Embryo of Purpura

lapillus ( Transactions of the Microscopical Society,

December 29).

1855. 112. The Physiological Errors of Moderation (Scottish

Temperance League, pp. 31).
1855-60. 113-116. Researches on the Foraminifera.

Part I. General Introduction, and Monograph
of the Genus Orbitolites {Philosophical Trans-
actions, 1856; six plates. Abstract in /V(?^^,?^-
ings of the Royal Society, June 20, 1855).

Part II. Genera Orbiculina, Alveolina, Cyclo-
clypeus, and Heterostegina (/c^/i/., 1856; four
plates. Abstract in Proceedings of the Royal
Society, June 19).

APPENDIX. 473

Part III. Genera Peneroplis, Operculina, and
Amphistegina {Philosophical Transactions,
1859; six plates. Abstract in Proceedings of
the Royal Society, ]\vn^ 17, 185 8).

Part IV. Genera Polystomella, Calcarina, Tino-
porus, and Carpenteria, with concluding sum-
mary {Ibid., i860; six plates. Abstract in
Proceedings of the Royal Society, June 14).

1856. 117. Address as President at the Annual Meeting of

the Microscopical Society {Transactions of the
Microscopical Society, February 27).
118. On the Minute Structure of certain Brachiopod
Shells ; and on Vegetable Shell - Formation
{Annals and Magazine of Natural History,
June).
1856-81. 119-124. The Microscope. Second edition, 1857;
third edition, 1862; fourth edition, 1868; fifth
edition, 1874; sixth edition, 1881.

[For some time, probably about this period,
Dr. Carpenter contributed to the Westminster
Review ; but no particulars can now be re-
covered.]

1857. 125. The Phasis of Force {National Review, April).

126. On the Structure of the Shell of Rhynconella Gei-

nitziana {Annals and Magazine of Natural History,
March).

127. Remarks on MM. Koren and Danielssen's Re-

searches on the Development of Purpura lapillus
{Ibid., July).

128. On the Development of Purpura {Ibid., August).

1858. 129. On the Lowest (Rhizopod) Type of Animal Life,

considered in its Relations to Physiology, Zoology,
and Geology {Proceedings of the Royal Institution,
March 12).

130. Binocular Vision {Edinburgh Review, October).

131. Handbook of Psalmody (for the use of the Congre-

gation worshipping in Rosslyn Hill Chapel,
Hampstead).

474 APPENDIX.

1858. 132. On Tomopteris onisciformis, Eschscholtz {Trans-
actions of the Linnean Society^ January 20).

L860. 133. Darwin on the Origin of Species {National Review^
January).

134. Further Researches on Tomopteris onisciformis,

Eschscholtz {Transactions of the Linnean Society,
January 19). This paper was written in con-
junction with the late Dr. E. Claparede, of
Geneva,

135. On the Relation of the Vital to the Physical Forces

{Proceedings of the Royal Institution, February 24).

136. The Theory of Development in Nature {British

and Foreign Medico- Chimrgical Review, April).

1861. 137. Alcohol: What becomes of it in the Living Body?

( Westminster Review, January).

138. General Results of the Study of the Typical Forms

of Foraminifera, in their Relation to the Syste-
matic Arrangement of that Group, and to the
Fundamental Principles of Natural History and
Classification {Natural History Review, April).

139. On the Systematic Arrangement of the Rhizopoda

{Ibid., October).

1862. 140. Binocular Vision and the Stereoscope (a lecture

at the London Institution, March 19; reprinted
from the British Journal of Photography).
141. Introduction to the Study of the Foraminifera (folio,
with twenty-two plates). (Published for the Ray
Society. In this work Dr. Carpenter was assisted
by Mr. W. R. Parker and Mr. T. Rupert Jones).

1863. 142. On the Fossil Human Jawbone recently discovered

in the Gravel near Abbeville (in conjunction with
Mr. George Busk, Dr. Falconer, and Mr. Prest-
wich) {Proceedings of the Royal Society, April 16,
and Natural History Review, July, 1863).

1864. 143, 144. On the Application of the Principle of " Con-

servation of Force" to Physiology {Quarterly
Journal of Science, January and April).
145. Additional Note on the Structure and Affinities of

APPENDIX.

475

1864. T46.

1865. 147.
14S,

150-

. 151-

152-

• 153-

154-

155-

156.

1868. 157.
158,

Eozoon Canadense {Quarterly Journal of the Geo-
logical Society, November 23 ; with two plates).

On the Structure and Affinities of Eozoon Cana-
dense {Proceedings of the Royal Society, December
15; compare Annals and Magazine of Natural
History, April, 1865),

On the Structure, Affinities, and Geological Position
of Eozoon Canadense {Intellectual Observer, May).

149. Researches on the Structure, Physiology, and
Development of Antedon (Comatula, Lamk.)
rosaceus (abstract in Proceedings of the Royal
Society, June 1 5 ; Philosophical Transactions,
1866, with twelve plates).

On the Microscopic Structure of the Shell of Rhyn-
conella Geinitziana {Annals and Magazine of
Natural History, November).

Supplemental Notes on the Structure and Affinities
of Eozoon Canadense {Quarterly Jownal of the
Geological Society, January 10).

On Rhynconella Geinitziana {Annals and Maga-
zine of Natural History, April).

On the Perforate Structure of the Shell of Spirifer
cuspidatus {Ibid., January).

Further Observations on the Structure and Affini-
ties of Eozoon Canadense {Proceedings of the
Royal Society, May 16).

On Nachet's Stereo-Pseudoscopic Binocular Micro-
scope, and on Nachet's Stereoscopic Magnifier;
with remarks on the Angle of Aperture best
adapted to Stereoscopic Vision {Transactions of
the Royal Microscopical Society, June 12).

On the Shell-Structure of Spirifer cuspidatus, and
of certain allied Spiriferidse {Antials and Maga-
zine of Natural History, July).

On the Unconscious Activity of the Brain {Pro-
ceedings of the Royal Institution, March i).

159. The Zoetrope and its Antecedents {The Student,
July and August).

476 APPENDIX,

1868. i6o. On Spirifer cuspidatus {Annals and Magazine of

Natural History, August).
i6i. The Anorthoscope {The Student, September).

162. On the Structure of the Shells of Brachiopoda

{Annals and Magazi?ie of Natural History, Oc-
tober).

163. Preliminary Report of Dredging Operations in Seas

to the North of the British Islands, carried on by
Dr. Carpenter and Dr. Wyville Thomson (^Pro-
ceedings of the Royal Society, October 22).

1869. 164. On the Temperature and Animal Life of the Deep

Sea {Proceedings of the Royal Institution, April 9).

165. On the Rhizopodal Fauna of the Deep Sea {Pro-

ceedings of the Royal Society, June 17).

166. Preliminary Report of the Scientific Exploration

of the Deep Sea in H.M. Surveying Vessel Por-
cupine, during the summer of 1869, conducted
by Dr. Carpenter, V.P.R.S., Mr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys,
F.R.S., and Professor Wyville Thomson, LL.D.,
F.R.S. {Ibid, November 18).

1870. 167. On the Temperature and Animal Life of the Deep

Sea {Proceedings of the Royal Institution, Feb-
ruary 11).

168. On the Shell Structure of Fusulina {Monthly Micro-

scopical Journal, April).

169. Description of some Peculiar Fish's Ova {Ibid.,

April).

170. On the Comparative Steadiness of the Ross and

the Jackson Microscope-Stands {Ibid., April).

171. The Contagious Diseases Act {Inquirer, April 2).

172. Descriptive Catalogue of Objects from Deep-Sea

Dredgings, exhibited at the Soiree of the Royal
Microscopical Society, King's College, April 20).

173. On the Reparation of the Spines of Echinida

{Monthly Microscopical Journal, May).

174. 175. The Deep Sea : Its Physical and Biological

Conditions {The Student, July and October).
176. The Gulf Stream {Nature, August 25).

APPENDIX. 477

1870. 177. The Geological Bearings of Recent Deep-Sea

Explorations (^Nature, October 27).
1 78. Report on Deep-Sea Researches carried on during
the Months of July, August, and September,
1870, in H.M. Surveying Ship Porcupine^ by
W. B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S., and J. Gwyn
Jeffreys, F.R.S. {Proceedings of the Royal Society,
December 8).

1871. 179, 180. On Eozoon Canadense {Nature, January 5

and March 16).

181. On the Gibraltar Current, the Gulf Stream, and

the General Oceanic Circulation {Proceedings of
the Geographical Society, January 9).

182, 183. The Microscope and its Revelations (Two

Lectures at the Pharmaceutical Society, February
1 and March i).

184. The Temperature and Life of the Deep Sea (Man-

chester, Science Lectures for the People, February 8).

185. Ocean Currents: Researches in the Porcupine

{Contemporary Review, March).

186. On the Latest Scientific Researches in the Mediter-

ranean {Proceedings of the Royal Institution,
March 10).

187. The Physiology of the Will {Contemporary Review,

May).

188. On the Thermo-Dynamics of the General Oceanic

Circulation {British Association Report, August).

189. Spiritualism and its Recent Converts {Quarterly

Retnew, October).

190. Darwinism in England (// Barth, Valetta, De-

cember).

191. The Unconscious Action of the Brain (Manchester,

Science Lectures, December i).

192. Epidemic Delusions {Ibid., December 8).

1872. 193. What is Common Sense? {Contemporary Review,

February).
194. Oceanic Circulation and the Gulf Stream {Edin-
burgh Review^ April).

473 APPENDIX.

1872. 195. On the Temperature and Movements of the Deep

Sea {Popular Science Review, April).

196. Report on Scientific Researches carried on during

the Months of August, September, and October,
187 1, in H.M. Surveying Ship Shearwater {Pro-
ceedings of the Royal Society, June 13).

197. Presidential Address at the Brighton Meeting of

the British Association for the Advancement of
Science {British Association Report, August).

198. On the General Oceanic Thermal Circulation

{Ibid.).

199. On the Temperature and other Physical Conditions

of Inland Seas, in their Relation to Geological
Inquiry {Ibid.).

200. On a Piece of Chalk {Good Words, October).

201. On Mind and Will in Nature {Contemporary Review ,

October).

1873. 202-204. On the Hereditary Transmission of Acquired

.Psychical Habits {Ibid., January, April, May).

205. Ancient and Modern Egypt ; or, the Pyramids and

the Suez Canal (Manchester, Science Lectures,
February 19).

206. The Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger {Journal of the

Royal United Service Institution, April 18).

207. 208. The Gulf Stream (Two Papers, Good H'^ords,

January and February).
209-213. Spectrum Analysis (Five Papers, Ibid., May to
August).

214. On the Physical Condition of Inland Seas {Con-

temporary Review, August).

215. On the Undercurrents of the Bosphorus and

Dardanelles {British Association Report, Sep-
tember).

216. On the Physical Geography of the Mediterranean,

considered in Relation to that of the Black Sea
and the Caspian {Ibid.).

217. On the Physical Geography of the Caspian Sea,

in its Relation to Geology {Ibid.).

APPENDIX. 479

1873. 218. Recent Investigations into the Functions of Dif-

ferent Parts of the Brain (being the Substance of
two Lectures delivered before the Sunday Lecture
Society, November 2 and 9).
219. The Psychology of Belief (The Roscoe Lecture,
delivered before the Literary and Philosophical
Society of Liverpool, November 24 ; see also
Cojtlemporary Review, December).

1874. 220, On the Temperature of the Atlantic (^Proceedings

0/ the Royal Institution, March 20).

221. Remarks on Professor H. J. Carter's Letter to

Professor King on the Structure of the so-called
Eozoon Canadense {Annals and Magazine oj
Natural History, April).

222. On the Physical Cause of Ocean Currents {Philo-

sophical Magazine, May).

223. New Observations on Eozoon Canadense {Annals

and Magazine of Natural History, June).

224. Further Inquiries on Oceanic Circulation {Proceed-

ings of the Geographical Society, June i).

225. The Depths of the Sea {British Quarterly Review,

July).

226. Final Note on Eozoon Canadense {Annals and

Magazine of Natural History, November).

227. The Conditions wliich Determine the Presence or

Absence of Animal Life on the Deep Sea Bottom
{Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, De-
cember 4).

228. Principles of Mental Physiology (Fourth edition,

with new Preface, 1S76).

1875. 229, 230. On the Doctrine of Human Automatism

{Contanporary Ranew, February and May).

231. Remarks on Professor Wyville Thomson's Pre-

liminary Notes on the Nature of the Sea-Bottom,
procured by the Soundings of H.M.S. Challenger
{Proceedings of the Royal Society, February 5).

232. Is Man an Automaton? (A Lecture at the City

Hall, Glasgow, February 23).

48o APPENDIX.

1875. 233. The Voyage of H.M.S. Challettger (continued)

{Journal of the Royal United Service Institution,
March 12).

234. L'Automatisme Humain {Revue Scientifique, May).

235. Les Fonctions du Systfeme Nerveux chez les Inver-

tebres {Revue Scientifique, June).

236. Summary of Recent Observations on Ocean Tem-

perature made in H.M.S. Challenger and U.S.S.
Tuscarora, with their Bearing on the Doctrine of
a General Oceanic Circulation sustained by
Difference of Temperature {Proceedings of the
Royal Geographical Society, June).

237. On the Anatomy of Comatula, an addendum to

Professor Semper's Paper {Annals and Magazine
of Natural History, September).

238. Ocean Circulation {Contemporary Ranew, Sep-

tember).

239. Remarks on Mr. Croll's "Crucial Test" Argu-

ment {Philosophical Magazine, November).
240-242. Articles on the "Atlantic," "Baltic," "Black
Sea" {E7icyclopCEdia Britantiica, vol. iii.).

1876. 243. The Fallacies of Testimony in Relation to the

Supernatural {Contemporary Review, January).
244, 245. On the Structure, Physiology, and Develop-
ment of Antedon (Comatula, Lamk. ) rosaceus
{Proceedings of the Royal Society, January 20).

246. On the Genus Astrorhiza of Sandahl {Quarterly

Journal of Microscopical Science, April).

247. Supplemental Note to a Paper on the Structure,

Physiology, and Development of Antedon rosa-
ceus {Proceedings of the Royal Society, April 6).

248. Remarks on Mr. Carter's Paper " On the Poly-

tremata," especially with reference to their Mythi-
cal Hybrid Nature {Aiinals and Magazine of
Natural History, May).

249. On Oceanic Circulation {Atheficeum, May 13).

250. New Laurentian Fossil {Nature, May 4, 25).

251. Notes on Otto Hahn's "Micro-Geological Investi-

APPENDIX.

481

1876. 252.
253.

1877. 254.
255-

256.
257-

1879.

258.

259-

1880.

260.

261.

1881.

262.

263.
264.

265.

266.

gation of Eozoon Canadense " {^Annals and Maga-
zine of Natural History, June).

Foraminifera from the Cruise of the Valorous
{Proceeditigs of the Royal Society, June 15).

Report on the Physical Investigations carried
on by P. Herbert Carpenter, B.A., in H.M.S.
Valorous, during her return Voyage from Disco
Island in August, 1875 {Ibid.).

The Radiometer and its Lessons {Nineteenth
Century, April).

On the Temperature of the Deep Sea Bottom and
the Conditions by which it is determined {Pro-
ceedings of the Geographical Society, April).

Sketch of the Life and Work of Mary Carpenter
(Expanded from an Obituary Notice in the Times,
June).

Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc., historically and
scientifically considered (Two Lectures delivered
at the London Institution, with Preface md
Appendix).

The Eozoon Canadense {Nature, July 31).

Article on "Foraminifera" {Encyclopcedia Britan-
nica, vol. ix.).

The Force behind Nature {Modern Revieiv,
January).

Land and Sea considered in Relation to Geo-
logical Time {Proceedings of the Royal Institution,
January 23).

The Deep Sea and its Contents {Nineteenth Century,
April).

Nature and Law {Modern Review, October).

Article on "Indian Ocean" {Encyclopcedia Briian-
nica, vol. xii.).

The Truth about Vaccination {Times, May 11;
reprinted with enlargements at the request of
the Guardians of the Bedford Union).

The Morality of the Medical Profession {Modern
Review, July).

482 APPENDIX.

1881. 267. Disease Germs {Nineteenth Century, October).

268, 269. The Relation of Food to Muscular Work
{^Knowledge, November 4 and 11).

1882. 270. Predisposition to Disease {Dictionary of Medicine^.

271. The Ethics of Vivisection {Fortnightly Review^

February).

272. On the Conservation of Solar Energy {Knowledge,

March 17),

273. Small-Pox and Vaccination in 1871-81 {Nine-

teenth Century, April).

274. Sir Charles Bell and Physiological Experimenta-

tion {^Fortnightly Review, April).

275. Charles Darwin : his Life and Work {Modern

Review, July).
" 276. Science and Religion : the Influence of Science on
the Progress of Religious Thought (An Address
delivered before the National Conference of Uni-
tarian and other Christian Churches at Saratoga,
U.S., September 19).

277. The Doctrine of P^volution in its Relations to
Theism {Modern Reviezv, October).

278-283. Six Lectures on Human Automatism (De-
livered at the Lowell Institute in October and
November, and intended to form a small volume ;
New York Medical Journal, xxxvii., and Christian
Reforjner, London, vols, i., ii., iii.).

284. The Physiology of Alcoholics (Address in the
Tremont Temple, Boston, December 3).

1883. 285. Article on "Microscope" {Encyclopcedia JSritan

nica, vol. xvi.).

286. Report on the Genus Orbitolites {Zoology: Chal-

lenger Expedition, vol. vii. part xxi., eight
plates).

287. Researches on the Foraminifera. Supplemental

Memoir. On an Abyssal Type of the Genus
Orbitolites ; a Study in the Theory of Descent
{Proceedings of the Royal Society, June 14; and
Philosophical Transactions, 1883, pt. ii.).

APPENDIX. 483

1883. 288. On the Germ-Theory of Disease, considered from

the Natural History Point of View {British
Association Report, September).

1884. 289. The Germ-Theory of Zymotic Diseases ; considered

from the Natural History Point of View {Nine-
teenth Century, February).

290. On the Nervous System of the Crinoidea {Proceed-

ings of the Royal Society, May 29).

291. The Argument from Design in the Organic World,

reconsidered in its Relation to the Doctrines of
Evolution and Natural Selection {Modern Rrview,
October).

292. On the Structure of Orbitolites (Inaugural Address

as President of the Quekett Microscopical Club,
October 24) {Journal of the Quekett Microscopical
Club, vol. ii. series ii.).

1885. 293, President's Address at the Annual General Meeting

of the Quekett Microscopical Club, July 24
{J did.).

BY DR. CARPENTER.

Principles of Mental Physiology.

WITH THEIR APPLICATION TO THE TRAINING AND DIS-
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CONDITIONS. By William B. Carpenter, M. D., LL. D., etc.

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By William B. Carpenter, M. D., LL. D., etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.

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ESSAYS, SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. By the late Will-
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Intuition." 12mo. Cloth, ••fl.uO.

WORKS OF PROFESSOR JOHN TYNDALL.

Contributions to Molecular Physics in the Domain of Kadiant
Heat. A Serii'S of .Memoirs published in (he "Philosophical Tran.sactions " and
" Philosophical Magazine." By .Iohn Tyndall, F. R. S., M. D. (Tiibingen), LL. 1).,
I). C. L. Oxou. et Cantab. Profe.-sor "f Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institu-
tion of Great Britain. With Additions. 12nio. $6.00.

Heat as a Mode of Motion. By Prof. John Ttndall. New edition. 12mo.
Cloth, $2.5(1.

Lessons in Electricity, at the Royal Institution, lS75-'76. By
I'rof. John Tyndall. i2mo. Cloth, $].0U.

Light and Electricity : Notes of Two Courses of Lectures before the Royal In-
stitution of Great Britain. By Prof. John Tyndall. 12iiio. Cloth, $1.25.

Six Lectures on Light. Delivered in America in 1872-"73. By Prof. John
Tv.vDALL. 12nio. Cloth, $1.50.

Sound. By Prof. John Tynpall. Revised and enlarged edition. Illustrated.
• 12uio. Cloth, $2.00.

The Forms of Water, in Clouds and Rivers, Ice and Glaciers.

By Plot. John Tyndall. With 35 Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

6 SCIENCE AND PIIILOSOPHF.

Hours of Exercise in the Alps, By Prof. John Tyndali. With Illnstra-
tions. ]_'mo. Clolh, :f2.00.

Faraday as a Discoverer. A Memoir. By Prof. John Tyndall. 12mo.

Cloth, $1.00.

Fragments of Science for Unscientifi.c People. A Series of Detached
Kssays, Lectures, and Reviews. IJy Prof, ^ohn Ttndall. Kevised and en-
larsed edition. 12mo. Clutli, $2.50."

Address delivered before the British Association, assembled at
Belfast. By Prof. John Ttndall. E<-viscd, with Additions, by the Author,
since the Delivery. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents.

Essays on the Floating; Matter of the Air, in Relation to Pu-
trefaction and Infection. By Prof. John Ttndall. With Iliubtrations.
12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Research «?s on DiamagTietism and Magn^-Crystallic Action. In-
cluding the Question of Diamagnetic Polarity. By Prof. Joh.n Ttndall. "With
10 Plates. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Xiouis Pasteur : His Life and Labors. By his Son-in-Law. Translated from
the French bv Ladt Claud Hamilton. With an Introduction by Prof. John
Ttndall. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.

WORKS OF PROFESSOR R. A. PROCTOR.

The Moon: Her Motions, Aspect. Scenery, and Physical Condition*, with Two
Lunar Photofrraphs, and many Illustrations. By E. A. Pkoctok. New edition.
12mo. Cloth, $3.50.

The Expanse of Heaven. A Series of E^sars on the Wonders of the Firma-
ment. By R. A. Pkoctoe. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.

Lii^ht Science for Leisure Hours. F.'imiliar Essays on Scientific Subjects,
Natural Phenomena, etc. By E. A. Proctok. 12rao. Cloth, $1.75.

Other "Worlds than Ours : The Plurality of Worlds, studied under the Lipht
of Recent Scientific Researches. By R. A" Peoctoe. With Illustrations, some
colored. 12mo. Cloth, |2.50.

Our Place amonpr Infinities. A Series of Essays contrastinfr our Little
Abode in Space and Time with the Infinities around us. To which are added
Essays on the Jewish Sabbath and Astrology. By R. A. Pkoctor. 12mo.
Cloth, $1.75.

ASTRONOMY.

Elements of Astronomy. By Robert Stowetl Ball. LL. D., F.R. S.,
Andrews Professor of Astronomy in the ITniversitv of Dublin, Royal Astronomer
of Ireland. With Illustrations. " lOmo. Cloth, $2.25.

Origin of the Stars, and the Causes of their Motion and their
Light. By Jacob Ennis. 12mo. Cloth. $2.00.

Elements of Astronomy ; accompanied with numerous IllnstraHnns. a Colored
Representation of the Solar, Stell.ir, and Nebular Spectra, and Arapo's Celestial
Cnarts of the Northern and the Southern Hemisuheres. By J. Nor.man Lock-
TER, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Editor of "Nature," etc. Ameri-
can edition, revised and specially adapted to the Schools of the United States.
12rao. Cloth, $1.50.

Astronomy with an Opera-Glass. A Popular Introduction to the Study
of the Starry Heavens with the Simplest of Optical Instruments. AVith Ma])S
and Directions to facilitate the Recognition of the Constellations and the Principal
Stars visible to the Naked Eye. By Gakrett P. Skrviss. Svo. Cloth, $1.50.

Outlines of Astronomy. By Sir J. J. W. Hekschel. With Plates and
Woodcuts. Eleventh edition. Svo. Cloth, $4.00.

SCIEy^CE AND PHILOSOPHY. Y

Studies in Spectrum Analysis. By J. Norman LorKVER, F. R. 8., Corre-
siiondent of tbt; Institute of Fraaoe, otc. With UU Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth,
$:.'.uU.

Astronomy by Observation. By Eliza A. Bowen-. 4to. Cloth, $1.20.

Astronomy and Qeolog-y Compared. By Lord Okmatuwaite. iSmo.

Tinted fxiper. Cloth, $1.0J.

Spectrum Analysis, in its ApT)lication to Terrestrial Substances,
and ttie Physical Constitution of the Heavenly Bodies.

Fatiiiliarly explaiiie 1 by Dr A. Schkli.en, Director der Realschiile I. O. Cologne.
Translated from the second enlartred and revised German edition by Jane and
Caroline LxssKH,. Edited, with Notes, by William Kuogins, LL. D. With
numerous Wooilcuts, Colored Plates, and Portraits; also. Angstrom's and
Kirohhoff's Maps. 8vo. Cloth, $6.00.

The Sun. By C. A. Yoitno, Ph. I)., LL. D., Professor of Astronomy in the Col-
lege of New Jersey. With numerous Illustrations. Third edition. With Sup-
plementaiy Note. " \imo. Cloth, $'.^.00.

CHEMISTRY

The New Chemistry. By Prof. J. P. Cooke. New, revised, and enlarged edi-
tion. r2mo. Clolh, $2.00.

Class-Book of Chemistry. By Prof. E. L. Yottmans. With Illustrations.
12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Introduction to the Study of Org'anic Chemistry. By Prof. H. E.
Akmstro.ng, Ph. D., F. C. S. r2m() Cloth, ,11.50.

Introduction to the Study of Inorgranic Chemistry. By W. Allen
Miller. W^ith "1 Figures on Wood. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Chemical Exercises in Qualitative Analysis, for Ordinary Schools.
By GEOXftK W. Rains, M. D., Professor of Chemistry and Pharmacy In the Med-
ical Department of the University of Georgia. Cloth, fle.vible, 50 cents.

Adolph Strecker's Short Text-Book of Oreranic Chemistry. By

Dr. ,1. WisLK'Extrs. Tran.<lated and edited, with K\tensive Additions, by W. H.
HoDGKiNsoN, Ph. D., and A. J. Greenaway, F. I. C. Svo. Clolh, $5.0o!

Treatise on Chemistry. By H. E. Eoscok, F. R. 8., and G. Sciiorlemmer,

F. K. 8., Professors of Chemistry in the Victoria University, Owens College,
Manchester.

Inorganic Chemistry. Vols. I and II.

Vol. I. Non-Metallic Elements. Svo. $5.00.
Vol. 11. Part I. Metals. Svo. $3.00.
Vol. II. Part II. Metals. Svo. $3.00.

Organic Chemistry. Vol. III. Part I. The Chemistry of the Hydro-
carbons and their Derivatives, or Organic Chemistry. 8vo. $5.00.

Vol. in. Part II. The same. Svo. $5.(10.
Vol. III. Part 11 r. The sime. Svo. $S.O(t.
Vol. III. Part IV. The same. Svo. $8.00.

The Chemistry of Cookery. By W. Mattieu Williams. 12mo. Cloth,

$1..")0.

Qualitative Chemical Analysis and Laboratory Practice. By
Prot. T. E. TiionpK, Ph. D.. and .M. .M. P. Ml-ik. 12iiio. Cloth, $1.50.

Introduction to the Study of Chemical Philosophy. By W. A. Til-

D]-,N. F. C. S. 121110. Cloth, $1. .")!).

Chemistry of Lig-ht and Photography. By Dr.'HEKMANN Vogel. With
100 Illustrations. Pinio. Cloth, $2.00.

8 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

The Chemistry of Common Life. By the late Prof. J^mes F. "W. John-
ston. A uew edition, r-ivised and enlarge<l. and brou-'ht down to the Present
Ti:iie, by Arthur IlfiRBERT Church, M. A., Oxon , author of '■ Food : its Sources,
Constituents, and Uses." Illustrated with Maps and numerous Engravings on
Wood, lu one volume. 12mo. Cloth, $2.03.

A Hand-Book of Cliemioal Technolosry. By Efdolph Wagner. Ph. D.,
Professor of ^Jhemical lechaolofry at the ITniversity of Wurtzburs. Translated
and edited, from the eig'hth German edition, with Extensive Additions, by VV.
Ceookes, p. E. S. With 336 Illustrations. 8vo. Cloth, $5.00.

GEOLOGY. (See also Le Conte's Works.)

Applied Geology. A Treatise on the Industrial Kelations of Geolofrical Struct-
ure; and on the Nature. Occurrence, and L'ses of Substaui'es derived from Geo-
logical Sources. By SA.MrEi, G. Williams, Professor of General and Economic
Geology in Cornell University. 12mo. Cloth, $1.40.

Principles of Geolo°ry ; or. The Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabit-
ants, considered as illustrative of Geology. By Sir I^harlf.s Ltkll, Bart. Illus-
trated with Maps, Plates, and Woodcuts. Eevised edition. 2 vols., royal 8vo.

Cloth, $8.00.

Town Geologry. Bv the Eev. Charles Kingslet, F. L. S., F. G. S., Canon of
Chester 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Coal ResioTJS of America ; their Topography, Geology, and Development.
By James Macfarlane, A M. With a Colored Geological .Map of Pennsylvania,
a Railroad .Map of all the Coal Eegions, '24 other Maps, showing the Counties in
the States containing Coal, ^b full-page and 20 smaller Illustrations. Svo. TOO
pages. Cliith, $5.00; sheep, $5.00.

An American Geological Railway Gu'de, giving the Geological Forma-
tion at Every Eailway ^tation, with Notes on Intere.sting Places on the Eoutes,
and a Description of each of the Formations. By James Macfarlane, A. M.
Svo. Flexible cloth, $1.50.

Natural "Resources of the TJnited States. By Jacob Haeets Patton,
M. A., Ph.D. Svo. Clnth, $3.00.

The Study of Rocks. An Elementary Text-Book in Petrology. With Ilhis-
trations. By Frank Eutlet, of the English Geological Survey. 16mo. Cloth,

$1.T5.

BOTANY, ETC. (See also Darwin's Works.)

Pung-i; their Natures and Uses. By M. C. Cooke. Edited by the Eev. M. J.
Bkukelev. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Naturalist's Ramljles about Eome. By Dr. Charles C. Abbott. New

edition, revised. 12rao. Cloth, ,$1.50.

Orig'in of Cultivated Plants. By Alphonse de Candolle. 12mo. Cloth,
$2 01).

The Origin of Floral Structures throug-h Insects and other
As'ancies. By the Eev. George Henslow, Professor of Botany, Queen's
College. International Scientific Series. With numerous Illustrations. 12mo.
Cloth, $1.75,

Tha Geolo^rical History of Plants. By Sir J, William Dawson, F, E. S.
Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.

Primary Class-Book of Botany, d^^sigrned for Common Schools
and Pamiliss ; containins the Elements of Vegetable Structure and Physi-
ology. By FE.iNCES H. Green. Illustrated. 4to. Boards, $1,10.

Flowers and their Pedig-rees. By Grant Allen, Illustrated, 12mo.
Cloth, $1.50.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 9

Analytical Class-Book of Botany, desierned for Academies and
Private Students. In Two Pares. Part I. Eloments of Vefreiabk- Structure
anil Physiolofry. By Feaniki H. Green. Illustrated. Part II. Syoteniatic
Botany : Iilustnited bv a Compendious Fl >ra of the Morthern Statea. By Joseph
W. Co.NGDON. 4to. Cloth, $1.70.

First Book of Botany. Designed to cultivate the Observing Power of Chil-
dren. By Eliza A. YotTMANS. With numerous Illustrations. 12iiio. Half
bound, 80 cents.

Second Book of Botany. By Euza A. Tocmans. 12mo. Cloth, $1.30.

Descriptive Botany. A Practical Guide to the Classification of Plants, with a
Popular Flora. By Kliza A. Y odmans. 12iiio. Cloth, $1,40.

Physiolog'ical Botany. By Robert Bentley. F. L. S., Profe.'spor of Botany in
Kinsr's Co!lt'(?e, Ivmdon. Prepared as a Sequel to " Desci-iptive Botany," by Eliza
A. YouMANs. 12ino. Cloth, ^1.40.

WORKS ON ELECTRICITY.

Electricity and Magnetism. By Fleeming Jenkin-. l2mo. Cloth, $l.ro.

Tlie Electric Li^ht : Its History, Production, and Applications. By Km Ai,-
GiiAVE and .r. BorLAKD. Tmnslated from the French bv T. G'Conok Sloane.
Edited, with Notes and Additions, by C. M. Lungken. With 250 Illustrations.
8vo. c;loth, *5.00.

A Practical Treatise on Electric Lighting:. Bv J. E. H. Gordon, Mem-
ber of the I'ans ( oni.'r.-ss of Electricians. With 23 Full-page Plates, and numer-
ous Illustrations in the Text. 8vo. Cloth, $4.50.

Physical Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Bv J. E. H. Gor-
don, B. A , Ganib . Member ot the Intrniationnl Congress of Electricians, Paris,
1S8I; Man^iger of the Electric Department of the Telegraph Construction and
Maintenanse Coinoany. Second edition, revised, rearranged, and enlarged. With
about 312 Full-page and other Illustrations. 2 vols., 8vo. Cloth, $10.00.

The Modern Applications of Electricity. Bv E. Hospitalier. New

edition, revised, with many Additions. Translated by Jui,iu8 Maier, Ph.D.

Vol. I. Et.eotrio Generators, Electric Light.

Vol. ir. TELRpnoNE: Various Applications, Electrical Transmission of Energy.
2 vols., 8vo. With numerous Illustrations. $8.00.

Telesrraphv. Bv W. II. Peeeob, C. E., and J. Siyewright, M. A. Illustrated.
12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Electricity and the Electric Teleg-raph. By George B. Prescott.
Si.'cth edition, revised and enlarged. With C70 Illustrations. 2 vols., Svo. Cloth,
$5.0(1. Each volume sold separately.

Bell's Electric Speaking TeleDhone: Its Invention. Construction, Applica-
tion. Modification, .and History. By Geohgb B. Pkescott. With 330 Illustra-
tions. Svo. Cloth, $4.00.

Dynamo Electricity: Its Generation, Application, Transmission, Storage, and
Mea-surement. By George B. Pkescott. With 545 Illustrations. 8vo. Cloth,
$5.00.

A Popular Exposition of Electric'ty, with Sketches of some of Its Dis-
coverers. By .Martin S. Buen.nan. lOmo. Cloth, 75 cents.

CLIMATE, ETC.

Climate and Time in their Geoloei?al Relations: A Theorv of Secular
Ch.anges of the Earth's Climate. Bv .Tames Croll, of II. M. Geological Survey
of Scotland. With Maps and Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth. $2.50.

10 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

discussions on Climate and CosmologTr. By James Ceoll, LL. D.,
F. K.S. With Chart. 12ino. Cloth, $'2.U0.

Great Ice Ag-e, and its Relation to the Antiquity of Man. By

James Geikib. With Maps and Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $2.50.

Weather. A Popular Exposition of the Nature of Weather-Changes from Bay to
Day. By the Hon. Kalph Abkkcrombt, Fellow of the lioyal Meteorological
Society, London. With numerous Diagrams. ]2mo. Cloth, ^1.75.

Earthquakes and other Earth Movements. By John Milne, Professor
in the Imperial College of Engiiieering, Tokio, Japan. With 38 Illustrations.
12mo. Cloth, $1.75.

"Volcanoes: What they Are and what they Teach. By J. W. Jtrrn, Professor of
Geology in the Koyal School of Mines ^London). With 96 Illustrations, limo.
Cloth, $2.U0.

Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms. Containing the True
Law of Lunar Influence, with Practical Instructions to the Navigator to enable
him approximately to calculate the ('oming Chantres of the Wind and Weather
for any Given Day, and for any Part of the Ocean. By S. Bassnett. 12mo.
Cloth, $2.00.

ANIMAL LIFE. (See also Works of Huxley, Lubbock, and Nicholson.)

The Mammalia in their Relation to Primeval Times. By O.^oak
Scu.MiDT, Professor in the University of Strasburg. International Scientitic
Series. With 51 Woodcuts. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Anthropoid Apes. By Robert Haet.mann, Professor in the University of
Berlin. International Scientitic Series. With 63 Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth,
$1.75.

The Comparative Anatomy of the Domesticated Animals. By A.

Ch.\uveau. Professor at the Lyons Veterinary School. New edition, revised and
enlarged, with the Co-operatioh of 3. Akloing, late Principal of Anatomy at the
Lyons Veterinary School. Translated and edited by Jajsies Fleming. With 460
Illustrations. Svo. Cloth, $6.00.

Elements of Zoolog-v. By C. F. Holder. Fellow of the New York Academy
of Science, Corresponding Member Linnsean Society, etc.. and J B. Holdef. M. D.,
Curator of Zoology of American Museum of Natural History, Central Park,
New York. 12mo, 395 pages. Cloth, $1.40.

Evening's at the Microscope ; or. Researches among the Minuter Organs and
Forms of Animal Life. By P. H. Gosse. Ihick 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Jelly-Fish, Star- Fish, and Sea-Urchins. Being a Research on Primitive
Nervous Systems. By G. J. Romanes. ]2mo. Cloth, $1.75.

Animal Intellig-enca. By G. J. Romanes. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.

Mental Evolution in Animals. By G. J. Romanes. With a Posthumous

Essay on Instinct, by Charles Dawwin. 12mo. Cloth, |2 CO.

The Geog-raphical and Geological DistribuTion of Animals. By

Angblo Hkilpein. Professor of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Academy of
Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, etc. 12mo. Cloth, $2.t,0.

Mind in the Lower Animals in Health and Disease. By W. Laudek
Lindsay, M. D., F. R. 8. E., etc. 2 vols., 8vo. Cloth, $4.00.

Animal Life, as affected by the Natural Conf^itions of Existence.

By Karl Semper, Professor of the University at Wdrzburg. With Maps and
100 Woodcuts. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.

Mind in Nature; or. The Origin of Life, and the Mode of Development of
Animals. By Henry .Tameb Clark, A. B., B. S.. Adjunct Professor of Zoology
in Harvard University, etc. With over 200 lUustnations. Svo. Cloth, $8.50.

SCIEyCE AND PniLOSOPllY. 11

Animal Parasites and Messmates. By P. J, Van Beneden. With 83

Illustrations. I'Jino. Clotli. $1.50.

Animal Mschanicm. A Treatise on Terrestrial and Aerial Locomotion. By E.
J. Mabey. With 117 Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, §1.75.

Animal Liocomotion ; or. Walkinjj, Swimming, and Flying, with a Dissertation
on Aeronautics. By .T. ISell PETTtoREw, M. D. Illustrated. I'inio. Clolh, .$1.75.

Short Hi3tory of W^atural Science and tlie Progress of Discovery,

from the Time of the <Jreeks to the Present Day. For Schools and Yourij; Pei-
sons. By Arabella B. Buckley. Witti Illustrations. l'2uio. Olotj, i^.dO.

Life and her Children. Glimpses of .\niinal Life, from the Amoeba to the
Insects. By Arabella B. Buckley. Illustrated. l'2mo. Cloth, 5;1..50.

The Fairy- "Land of Science. By Aeabella B. Buckley. With numerous

Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Winners in Life's Pace; or, the Great Backboned Family. By Arabella
B. Buckley. Witb Illustrations. r2mo. Cioth, gilt side and back, f l.uu.

MAN. (See also Works of Huxley, Lubbock, and Spencer.)

The Org-ans of Speech, and their ApT)lication in the Formation

of Articulate Sounds. By Geokg IIerman.v von jNIeyer. Professor in
Ordinary of Anatomy in the University of Zurich. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.

The Five Senses of Man. By Julius Bernstein, 0. 5. Professor of Physi-
ology in the University of llallc. With 91 Woodcuts. 12mo. Cloth. $1.75.

Man and His Dwelling'-Place. An Essay toward the Interpretation of Na-
ture. By James Hinton. 12mo. Cloth, $1.76.

How the World was Peo-oled. Ethnological Lectu-es. By Eev. Eowakd
Fontaine, Professor of Theology and Natural Science, etc. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.

Man hefore Metals. By N. Joly, Professor at the Science Faculty of Tou-
louse; Correspondent of the Institute. With IIS Illustrations. r2mo. Cloth,
$I.7.J.

Anthropolcy : An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization, By Ed-
WABD B. Tylok, V. R. S. With 78 Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.

Heredity: A Psycholosrxal Study of its Phenomena. Laws. Causes, and Conse-
quences. Froni the French of Tu. Kibot. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.

Suicide: An Essiv in Comparative Moral Statistics. By Henry Mousflli. Pro-
foss'ir of Psychological Medicine in the Eoyal University, Turiu. 12mo. Cloth,
$1.75.

The Races of Man, and their Geographical Distribution. From
the German of Oscab Peschel. 12mo. Cloth, $2.25.

The Human Stsecies. By A. De Quateefages, Professor of Anthropology in
the Museum of Natural History, Paris. 12mo. Cloth, .$2.00.

Natural Historv of Man: A Course of Ekmcntarj^ Lectures. With an Ap-
pi^ndix. P.v .\. Die QriATREF.\(iES. Professor of Anthropology in the Museum of
Natural History. Paris. 12ino. Cloth, $1.00.

Ancient Stone Tmplem?nts. Weapons, and Ornaments of Great
Britain. By Joun Evans, D. C. L., LL. D., etc. Illustrated. &vo. Cloth,

$.").0I».

Ancient Bronze Implements Weanons, and Ornaments of Great
Britain an i Ireland. With 540 Illustratiijns. By John Evans, D. C. L.,
LL. D.,etc. Svo. Cloth, $5.00.

Diseases o*" Memory: An Essay in the Positive Psycholo.sy. BvTh. Eibot.
From the French, by William Huntington Smith. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

12 SCIEXOE AND PHILOSOPHY.

Psycholog'y; or. The Sgjence of Mind. By Rev. Oi-tver S. MrNSELL, D. D., late
rifsident of Illinois \V esleyan University. r2mo. Cloth, $1.70.

Slyth and Science. By Tito Vignoli. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Physical Expression : Its Modes and Principles. By Francis Waenek, M. D.,
Assistant I'hyslcian, and Lecturer on Botany to the London Hospital, etc. Inter-
national Scientific Series. Witb 51 ILustrations. 12mo. Cloth, II.IS.

Physiological .ffisthetics. By Gkant Allen. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.

Physiolog-y of Common Lile. By Geoege Henky Lewes. 2 vols., 12mo.
Cloth, $;J.DO.

The Brain and its Functions. By J. Luys, Physician to the Hospice de la
Salpetriere. With Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.5U.

General Physiolog'y of Muscles and Nerves. By Pr. L Rosenthal,
Professor of Physiology in the Univeroity of Erlaugen. With 75 Woodcuts.
12mo. Cloth, .$i.50.

liife of the Greeks and Romans, described from Ancient Monuments. By
K. GuHL and W. Koner. Translated from the third tierman edition by F.
UuEFFEE. With 543 Illustrations. Large 8vo. Cloth, $2.50.

Antiquities of the Southern Indians, particularly of the Georgia Tribes.
By C. C. Jo^ES, Jr. S\o. Cloth, $G.UO.

The Dictionary of Roman and Greek y* ntiqv.ities. "With nearly
2,000 Engravings on Wivod. from Ancient Orisinals, illustrative of the Industrial
Arts and SoMal Life of the (Jreeks and Romans. By Anthony Rich, B. A.
Crown S\o. Reduced jirice. Cloth, $3.00.

Hereclitary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences. By Francis
Galton, F. R. S., etc. New and revised edition, with an American Frt-face.
12mo. Cloth, $2.00.

Animal Magnetism. From the French of Alfred Binet and Charles Fere.
12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

PHILOSOPHY, ETC. (See also Spencer's Worl<s.)

Course of Modem PhilosoT>hy. By Tictob Cotrsis. Translated by O. W.
Wight. 2 vols., Svo. Cloth, .$-1.00.

Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. By Victor
Cousin. Translated by O. W. Wight. Svo. Cloth, $2.00.

Moral Philosophy. By Ht-bbard Winslow, D. D. 12mo. Cloth, $1.30.

Philosophy. Bv Sir William Hamilton, Bart. Arranged and edited by O. W.
Wight. Svo. "Cloth, $2.00.

Recent British Philosophy. By David Masson. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.

Fundamental Concepts of Modem Philosophic Thousrht Critically
and Historically Considered. By R. Kf kkn. Ph. D , Professor in Jena.
With an Introduction by Koah Porter, President of Yale College. 12ino.
Cloth, $1.75.

Biographical History of Philopophy, from its Origin in Greece
down to the Present Day. By George Henky Lewes. Library Edition.
Much enlarced and thoroUL'hly revised. Two volumes in one. Svo. Cloth,
$8.50. Also in two vols., small Svo. Cloth, $4.00.

Metaphysics; or. the Philosophy of Consciousness. Phenomenal and Re.il. By
Henry Longtteville Mansel. B. D., Waynflete Professor of Moral iind Meta-
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SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPEY. 13

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structor in Nervous Disease,"!, Harvard Medicnl School ; Visiting Physician for Dis-
eases of the Nervous System at the Boston City Hospital, etc. Svo. Cloth, $3.00.

The Applied Anatomy of the Nervous System, being a Study of this
Portion of the Human Boly from a Standpoint of its General Interest and Prac-
tical Utility, desitrned for Use as a Text-Book and as a Work of Reference. By
Ambrose L. Uannky, A.M., M. U., Adjunct Professor of Anatomy and late Lect-
urer on ihe Diseases of the <ienito Crinary Orgins and on Minor Surgery in the
Mediaal Department of the University of the City of New York, etc.; author of
"A Practical Treatise on Surgical Diagnosis," "The Essentials of Anatomy," etc.
Illustrated. Svo. Cloth, $4,uU ; sheep, $5.00.

Functional Nervous Diseases: Their Causes and their Treat-
ment. Memoir lor the Concourse of ISSl-lSSS, Academic Koyale de Modecine
de Bel.'ique. With a Suppleitient, i n the Anomalies of Refractif.n and Accom-
modation iif the Eye, and of the Ocular Muscles. By George T. Stkvens, M. D.,
Ph. D., Member of the American Medical Association, of the American Ophthal-
iiiological Society, etc. : formerly Professor of Ophthalmology and Physiology in
the Albany Medical College. With 6 Photographic Plates and 12 Illustrations.
Small Svo, 217 pages. Cloth, $2.50.

A Treatise on the Diseases of the Nervous System. By William
A. IIa.m.mond, M.D., Surgeon-General U. S. Army (retired list); Professor of Dis-
eases of the Mind and Nervous System in the" University of the City of New
York, etc. Eighth edition, rewritten, enlarged, and improved. In one large Svo
volume, with Complete Index and 112 Illustrations. Cloth, $5.00; sheep or half
Russia, $6.00.

A Treatise on Insanity in its Med'cal Relations. By William A.

Ham.mond, M.D. Svo. Cloth, $5.U0; sheep, $6.00.

Clinical Lectures on Di=eases of the Nervous System. Delivered
at the Bellevue Hospital Medical College. By William A. Hammond. M D.
Edited, with Notes, by T. M. B. ("ross, M. D., Assistant to the Chairs of Diseases
of the Mind and Nervous System, etc. Cloth, $3.50.

An Atlas of Clinical Microscopy. By Alexander Peter, M. D. Trans-
lated and edited by Ai.FREn C. Giiiard, M. D.. Assistant Surgeon United States
Army. First American, from the manuscript of the second Cerman edition, with
additions. 90 Plates, with 105 Illustrations, Chromo-lithographs. Square Svo.
Cioth, $6.00.

The TJse of the Microsco"oe in Clinical and Pathological Exami-
nations. By Dr. Carl Friedlaender, Privat-Docent in Pathological Anat-
omy at Berlin. Translated from the enlarged and improved .second edition, by
Henry C. Cob, M. D., etc. With a Chromo-lithograph. 12mo, x-195 pages.
Cloth, $1.00.

IMPOETANT MEDICAL BOOKS. 21

A Treatise on the Diseases of Women. J^y Alexander J. C. Skf.ne,
M. D., Professor of (Jyiui-'cdlosv in the Lonj? Island College Hospital. Brooklyn,
N. Y. ; formerly Professor of Uynaicoloiry in the New Voik Post-(ita(1uate Medi-
cal School anil Hos|)it il, etc. One vol. Svo, 960 pafi^cs, \vith 2.">4 fine Wood Engrav-
ings and i) Cbroino-litho^raphs. Sold by subscription only. Jixtia clolh binding,
$(j.i)0: sheep, $7.0 J.

Brain Exhaustion, with some Prelimina.ry Considerations on
C3r3bi'al Dynamics. By J. Le^.N-vrh Counino, M 1)., ibrmcrly PlivMeiun
to the Iludson liiver State Hospital lor the Insane. Crown Svo. Cloth, $2.(0.

A Manual of Midwifery. Including the Pathology of Pregnancy and the
Puerperal State. By Dr. Cakt, SciiuoEhEB. Professor of Midwifery and Director
of the Lying-in Institulii)n in the University of Krlungen. Translated from the
third Germ in edition by Chabi-es H. Cakter, B. A,, M. D.. B. S.. London, Mem-
ber of the Koyal College of Physicians, London, and Physician Accoucheur to St.
George's. Hanover Square, Dispensary. "With 20 Engravings on Wood. Svo.
Cloih, $3.50; sheep, $4.50.

Obstetric Clinic. A Practical Contribution to the Study of Obstetrics, and the
Diseases of Women and Children. By thi- Lite Geoegk T. KLLroT. M. D.. late
Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of AVonien and Children in the Bcllcvue
Hospital Medical College. Svo. Cloth, $4.50.

Fractical Manual of Diseases of Women and Uterine Therapeu-
tics, for Students and Practitioners. By H. MACxAiiiiiT'N Jones.
M. I),, Examiner in Obstetiics, Royal University of Ireland; Fellow of the Acad-
emy of .Melicine in Ireland; and of the Obstetrical Society of London. With
13S Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $3.U0.

The Pu'^rpenl Diseases. Clinical Lectures delivered at Bcllevue TTospital.
Bv FosDYOO BvKKKK. Si. I) . Clinical Professor of Midwitery and tlie Diseases of
Women in the Bellevuo Ilosjiital Medical College; Obstetric Physician to Belle-
vue Hospital; lIon)rary Fellow cf the Obstetrical Societies of London and Kdin-
burgh. Fourth editi.jn. Svo. Cloth, $5.00; sheep, $0.00.

The Science and Art of Midwifery. By Wh.i.tam T. Lusk, M. D.. Pro-
fessor of Obst 'tries and Diseases of Women and Children in the Bellevue Hos-
pital Medical College, Obstetric Surgeon to the Maternity and Emergency Hospi-
tals, an 1 Gynajcologist to the Bellevue Ilo-pital. With 220 Illustrations. Kew
edition, revised and enlarged. Svo. Cloth, $5.00; sheep, $0.00.

A Pra^itica,! Treatise on Genito- Urinary Diseases, including-
Syphilis. By E. L. Keyes, M. I)., Piofessor of Genito Urinary Surgery,
Syphilciloiy, and Dermatolosy, in Bellevue Hospital Medical College. .\ revision
of a Treatise bea' ing the same title, by Van Buren and Keycs. Second edition,
rewritten and enlarged. With 114 Engravings. Svo, 7U4 pages. Cloth, $5.00;
sheep, $0.00.

Diseases of the Ovaries : Their Diagnosis and Treatment. By T. Spescee
Wells, Fellow and Member of Council of the Eoyal College of Surgeons of Eng-
land, etc. Illustrated. Cloth, $4.50.

Pyuria; or, Pus in the Urine, and its Treatment: Comprising the
Diagnosis and Treatment of Acute anil Chronic Uiethriti<, Prostatitis, ('\stitis,
anil Pyelitis, with espscial reference to their Local Treatment, By l.'r. RoBEHt
Ui.TXMVNv, Professor of Genito-Urinary Diseases in the Vienna Polikllnik.
Translated, by permission, by Dr. AV alter B. Platt, F. E. C. S. (Eug.), Balti-
more. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00.

Syvihilis and Marriag-e. Lectures delivered at the St Louis Hospit.il, Paris.
Bv Ai.ERKn l-'oue.MiER. Professeur a la Facultii de Medecine do Paris; Medecin de
I'Hopitil S.aint-Louis; Membre de rAcademie de Medecine. Translated by P.
Albert Morrow, M. D . Physician to the Skin and Venereal Deiiartmeiit, New
York I)isi)ensary; Member New York Dermatological Society; Member New
York Academy of Medicine. Svo. Cloth, $2. t>0; sheep, $3.00.

22 IMPORTANT MEDICAL BOOKS.

'^^%J^onic Treatment of Syphilis. By E. L. Ketes, A. M., M. D., Adinnct
Trofess! r ot Surgery and Protessor of Dermatology in the Bellevue Hosnilal
Medical College, etc. Svo. Cloth, $1.00.

The Pathology and Treatment of Syphilis and Allied Venereal

Ijiseases. By IIkrmann von Zkisst., M.l). Secoi d edition, revised by
Maximilian von Zeissl. M. I). Translated, with ISotes, bv II. IUphael. M D
8vo. Cloth, $4.00; sheep, vo.OO. > ■ •

A Practical Treatise on Tumors of the Mammary Gland: em-
bracing iheir Histology, Pathology. Diagnosis, and Treatment. By Samuel W.
Gross, A. M., M. 1)., Surgeon to, and Lecturer on Clinical Surgery in. the Jefferson
Medical College Hospital and the Philadelphia Hospital, etc. In one handsome
Svo volume. With '29 Illustrations. Cloth, .t2.50.

Analysis of the Urine. With Special Reference to the Diseases of the Genito-
Lrimiry Organs. By M. B. Hoffman, Professor in the University of Gratz and
K Ultzmann, Docent in the University of Vienna. Translated from the Ger'u.an
edition under the special supervision of Dr. Ultzmann. By T. Barton Beune
A.M., M.D, Resident Physician Maryland University Hospital, and H Hoi-
BitooK Curtis. Ph. B. With 8 Lithographic Colored Plates from Ultzmann and
Hoffman s Atlas, and from Photograjihs lurni.shed by Dr. Ultzmann, ^yh^ch do not
appear in tbe German edition or any other translation. Second edition, revised
and enlarged. Svo. Cloth, $2.00.

Manual of Chemical Examination of the Urine in Disease. AVith
Brii't Directions tor the Examination of the most Common Varieties <if Urinary
Calculi, and an Appendix containing a Diet-Table for Diabetics. By Austin
Flint, Jr., M. D. Sixth edition, revised and corrected. 12nio. Cloth, $1.00.

Lectures on the Principles of Siirs-ery. Delivered at Bellevue Hospital.
By the late W. II Van Buken, M.D. Edited by Lewis A. Stimson, M D. Svo
IV-5SS pages. Cloth, *4.00; sheep, $5.00.

Lectures upon Diseases of the Rectum and the Sure-ery of the
Lower Bowel. Delivered at the Bellevue Hospital Medical College By
\V. H. Van Buren, A. M., M. D., Professor of the Principles and Practice of Sur-
gery m the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, etc. Second edition, revised and
enlarged. Svo. With 27 Illustrations and complete Index. Cloth, $3.00; sheep,

*f 4.1)0,

°^ A*.^?. ^d-^,' Jaundice, and Bilious Diseases. By J. Wickham Legg,
Al.D., t. K. C.S, Assistant Physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital and Lect-
urer on Patho.ogical Anatomy in the Medical School. With Illustrations in
Chromo-hthogiaphy. Svo. Cloth, $6.00 ; sheep, $T.00.

Hand-Book of Skin Diseases. By Dr. Istdoe Neumann, Lecturer on Skin
Diseases in the Royal University of Vienna. Translated from the German, second
edition, with Notes, by Lucius D. Bulkley, A.M., M.D., Surgeon to the New
York Dispensary. Department of Venereal and Skin Diseases; Assistant to the
S. \t '^."* ^^^ College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York ; Member of
the New lork Dermatological Society, etc. 66 Woodcuts. Svo. Cloth, $4.00;
sheep, $0.00. '

A Practical Treatise on Diseases of the Skin. By John T. Shoe-
"/^f m' , ", I' !*•' i'''o'essor of Dermatology in the Medico-Chirurgical College
ot l"hila:lelphia. With G Chromo-lithographs and numerous Engravines. Svo
Cloth, $j.uO; sheep, $6.00. be'"

Manual of r ermatolog-y. By A. R. Robinson. M. R. L. R. C. P. and S. (Edin-
burgh). Revised and corrected. Svo, 647 pages. Cloth, $5.00.

^ -^P.^^^SH Treatise on the Diseases of Children. By Alfred Vogel,
M. D., Protessor ot Clinical Medicine in the Univer.-itv of Dorpat. Russia. Trai;s-
Kated and edited by H. Raphael, M. D., formerly House Surgeon to Bellevue
Ho? pit;il. Third American from the eighth German edition, revised and enlarged.
Illustrated by 6 Lithographic Plates. 1 vol., svo, xii-640 pages. Cloth, $4.50;

IMPORTANT MEDICAL BOOKS. 23

Compendium of Children's Diseases. A TIand-Book for Practitioners and
Students. By Dr. .Idii.vNN Stki.\i:i:. I'role.^sor of the Diseases of CliilUren in tlie
University of I'nigue, and Pliy.-ieian to tlie l-'raneis-Joseph Hospital for Siclc i hil-
dren. Translated from the second (lernian edition by Lawson Tait. F. K. C.8.,
Sur ■eon to the Birnun-ham IJospital for Women ; Cousulting Surgeon to the
West Bromwich Hospiial, etc. bvo. Cloth, $3.50; sheep, $4.6u.

General Surgical Patholog'y and Therapeutics, in Fifty one Lectures.
A Text-Hook for Students and f'liysicians. By Ur. Theohok Billroth, Professor
of Surgery in Vienna. Iranslatecl by Chaklks K. Hackley, A M., M. D., Physi-
cian to'^the New Yorli Hospital; Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.
8vo. Cloth, $5.00; sheep, $01)0.

A Manual of Operative Surgery. By Joskph D. Bryant. M. D., Professor
of Anatomy and Clinical Surgery, and Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery
in Bellevue" Hospital Medical Colleire ; Visiting Surgeon to Belli'\ue Ho.'pital, and
Consulting Surgeon to the New York Lunatic Asylum and the Out-Door Depart-
ment of Belleviie Hospital. New edition, revised and enlarged. With 793 Illus-
trations. 8vo, 530 pages. Cloth, |5.00 ; sheep, |G.OO.

A Text-Book on Surgery: General. Operative, and Mechanical. By John A.
Wyeth. .M.D.. Professor of Surgery in the :^ew York Polyclinic; Surgeon to
Moujit Sinai Hospital, etc. With 771 Illustiations, about r,0 of them colored. 8vo.
Sold by subscription only. Buckram, uncut edges, $7.UU; sheep, $8.00; half
morocco, $8.50.

The Rules of Aseptic and Antiseptic Surgery. A Practical Treatise
for the Use of Students and the Gener.al Practitioner. By Arpad G. GEESTEn,
M. D., Professor of Surgery at the New York Polyclinic; Visiting Surgeon to the
German Hospital and to Mount Sinai Hospital, New York. Illustrated with over
200 Fiue Engravings, Svo. Cloth, $5.00 ; sheep, $6.00.

Operative Sur.g'ery on the Cadaver. By Jasper Jewett Garmany, A. M.,
.M D., V . K. 0. S., Attending Surgeon to Out-Door Poor Dispensary of Bellevue
Hosi>ital; Visiting Surgeon to Ninety -ninth Street Reception Hospital; Member
of the British Medical Association, etc. With 2 Colored Biagrams showing the
Collateral Circulation after Ligatures of .\rteries of Arm, Abdomen, and Lower
Extremity. Small Svo, 150 pages. Cloth, .$2.00.

A Treatise on Oral Deformities, as a Branch of ^fechnnical Sursrerv. Bv
NoKMAN W. Kingslky. M. D. S , D. D. S., President of the Board of Censors of
the State of New York, late Dean of the New Y'ork College of Dentistry and
Professor of Dental Art and Mechanism. Member of the American .\cadeiny of
Dental Science, etc. With over 350 Illustrations. Svo. Cloth, $5.00; sheep,
$6.00.

Contributions to Reparative Surgery, showing its Application to the
Treatment of Deformities, produced by Destructive Disease or injury; Con-
genital Defects from Arrest or K.xcess of Development; and Cicatricial Contrac-
tions following Burns Illustrated by 30 Cases and fine Engravings. By Gukdon
Buck, M. D. bvo. Cloth, $3.0il.

Diagnosis and Treatment of diseases of the Ear. By O. D. Pomeroy,
M. D., Surgeon to the Manhattan Eye .and Ear Hospital, etc. With 100 Illustra-
tions. New edition, revised and enlarged. Svo. Cloth, $3.00.

A Hand-Book of the Diseases of the Eye and the^'r Treatment.
By IIenuy K. Swanzy, A. .M.. M. B , F. P. C S. I , Surgeon of the National Eye
and Ear Infirmary, formerly assistant to the late f'rofessor A. von Graefe, Berlin.
AVith Illustrations. 12mo, xv-437 pages. Cloth, $3.00.

A Text-Book of Ophthalmoscopy. By Epward G. Lorino. M D. Part
I — The Normal Eye, Determination of Itefraction and Diseases of t.'ie Media,
Physiological Oi)tics. and Theory of the Oplithalinosrope. Svo. 2(17 pages. With
131 Illustrations, and 4 Chromo-lithograph Plates, containing 14 Figures. Cloth,
$5.00.

24 IMPORTANT MEDICAL BOOKS.

Diseases of the Heart and Thoracic Aorta. By Bteon Bkamwell,
Al. !>., F. K. C. P. E., Lecturer on tbe i^rinciples and J'ractlce of Medicine, and on
Practical Medicine and Medical Uiaiinosis. in the E.xtra-Academical School of
Medicine, Edinburgh, etc., etc. With 2^(5 Wood Engravings and 6S Lithograph
Plates, showing yi Figures— in ail 317 lUuitrations. 8vo, 7s3 pages. Cloth, $8.00;
sheep, .$J.bO.

A Treatise on Diseases of the Bones By Thomas M. Markok, M. D.,
I'roiessor of ^u^gery in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, etc.
With numerous Illustrations, bvo. Cloth, -i-l.&U.

Medical and Surgical Aspects of In-Knee (GENtr-VALGTrii): Its Rela-
tion to Rickets; its Previntion ; and its Treatment, with or without Si;rgical
Operation. By ',V . J. Liitle, M. U., F. K. C. P., late Senior Physician to and Lect-
urer on Medicine at the London Hospital; "Visiting Physician to tbe Infant Or-
phan Asylum at Waustsad; the Earlswood Asylum for Idiots; Founder of the
Koyal Orthopaedic Hospital, etc. Assisted by E. Muirheap Little, T.L i\. C. S.
One Svo volume, containing 101 pages, with complete Index, and illustrated by
upward of oO Figures and Diagrams. $2.00.

Xiectures on Orthopedic Surg'ery and Diseases of the Joints. De-

li\ered at Bellevue Hospital Medical College during the AVinter Session of 1S74-
'7.^. By Lewis A. Satre, M. D., Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, Fractures and
Dislocations, and Clinical Surgerj', in Bellevue Hospital Medical College, etc.
With 3.'-l Engravings on W'ool. Second edition, revised and greatly enlarged.
Svo. Cloth, $5.U0; sht'ep, $(J.tU.

Osteotomy and Osteoclasia for Deformities of the Lower Ex-
tremities. 3y CiiARLFS T. PooRE. M. D , Surireon to St. Mary's Free Hospital
for Children, New York ; Member of the New Y'ork Surgical Society, etc. svo,
2d2 pages. With Illustrations. Cloth, .$2.50.

A Practical Manual on the Treatment of Club-Foot. By Lewis A.
Sayre, M. D. Fom-th edition, enlarged and corrected. Illustrated. ]2mo. Cloth,

$1.2.5.

The Comparative Anatomy of the Dcmpsticated Animals. By A.

Chafveatt. Professor at the Lvons Velerinary School. New edition, revised ana
enlarged \vith the Co-operation of S. Akloing, late Principal of Anatomy at the
Lvons Veterinary School. Translated and edited by James Feeminu. With 450
Illustrations. 8vo. Cljth, $0.00.

Em.Ta"=n'^ie3, and How to Treat them. The Etiology, Pathology, and
Treatment of Accidents. Diseases, and « ases of Poisoning, which demand Prompt
Action. Desitrned for Students and Practitioners of Medicii;e. By Joseph W.
HiwR. M. D. (linical Professor of Surgery in the Medical Department of the
University of New York, etc. Third edition. Svo. Cloth, $2.50.

Hand-'Pook of Historical and Geog-raphical Phthisioloffy, with
Special Reference to the Distribution of Consumption in the United States, ay
George A. Evans, M. D. r2mo. Cloth, $2.00.

On the Tre'itment of Pulmonary Con'STimntion, by Hygiene, Climate,
and .\iedicinc. in its Connection with Modern Doctrines. By James Henry Ben-
net, M. D. Svo. Cloth, $1.50.

Exnloration of the Chest in Health and Disease. By Stephen
Smith Bpht. M. D.. Professor of Clinical Medicine, etc., in the New lork Post-
Graduate Medical School and Hospital, etc. r2mo.

The Curibilitv and Treatment of Pulmonnry Phthisis. By S. Jac-
coup. Professor of Medical Pathology to the Facultv of Paris. Translated and
edited by Montagu LttBnooK. M. D. (London and Paris), M. R. C. P. (England),
etc. 8v6, 407 pages. Cloth, $4.00.

New York : D. APPLETON k CO., Publishers, 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.

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