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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Half Hours with Modern Scientists, by T. H.

-Huxley

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and

-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms

-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you

-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before

-using this eBook.

-

-Title: Half Hours with Modern Scientists

-

-Author: T. H. Huxley

-        G. F. Barker

-        James Hutchinson Sterling

-        E. D. Cope

-        John Tyndall

-

-Release Date: August 30, 2021 [eBook #66177]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: UTF-8

-

-Produced by: deaurider, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed

-             Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was

-             produced from images generously made available by The Internet

-             Archive)

-

-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALF HOURS WITH MODERN

-SCIENTISTS ***

-

-

-                               HALF HOURS

-

-                                  WITH

-

-                           MODERN SCIENTISTS.

-

-

-                          LECTURES AND ESSAYS

-

-

-                                   BY

-

-           PROFS. HUXLEY, BARKER, STIRLING, COPE AND TYNDALL.

-

-

-                                  WITH

-

-

-                         A GENERAL INTRODUCTION

-

-

-                                   BY

-

-                       NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D.,

-

-                       PRESIDENT OF YALE COLLEGE.

-

-

-

-                             FIRST SERIES.

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-                           NEW HAVEN, CONN.:

-                      CHARLES C. CHATFIELD & CO.,

-                                 1872.

-

-

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-

-

-                      ────────────────────────────

-       Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1872, by

-

-                      CHARLES C. CHATFIELD & CO.,

-

-    In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

-                      ────────────────────────────

-

-

-

-

-    ──────────────

-             NEW HAVEN, CONN.:

-    THE COLLEGE COURANT PRINT.

-    ──────────────

-

-

-

-

-                           ──────────────────

-            Electrotyped by E. B. Sheldon, New Haven, Conn.

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-                               CONTENTS.

-

-            GENERAL INTRODUCTION. BY PREST. PORTER,       v

-

-            ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE.                1

-              PROF. T. H. HUXLEY,

-

-            CORRELATION OF VITAL AND PHYSICAL            37

-              FORCES.

-              PROF. G. F. BARKER, M.D.,

-

-            AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM—REPLY TO HUXLEY.       73

-              JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING,

-

-            ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION.             145

-              PROF. E. D. COPE,

-

-            SCIENTIFIC ADDRESSES.

-

-            ON THE METHODS AND TENDENCIES OF            219

-              PHYSICAL INVESTIGATION,

-

-            ON HAZE AND DUST,                           234

-

-            ON THE SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE                247

-              IMAGINATION,

-

-            PROF. JOHN TYNDALL, LL.D., F.R.S.,          217

-

-

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-

-

-

-

- INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION OF HALF HOURS WITH MODERN SCIENTISTS.

-

-

-The title of this Series of Essays—_Half Hours with Modern

-Scientists_—suggests a variety of thoughts, some of which may not be

-inappropriate for a brief introduction to a new edition. _Scientist_ is

-a modern appellation which has been specially selected to designate a

-devotee to one or more branches of physical science. Strictly

-interpreted it might properly be applied to the student of any

-department of knowledge when prosecuted in a scientific method, but for

-convenience it is limited to the student of some branch of physics. It

-is not thereby conceded that nature, _i.e._, physical or material nature

-is any more legitimately or exclusively the field for scientific

-enquiries than spirit, or that whether the objects of science are

-material or spiritual, the assumptions and processes of science

-themselves should not be subjected to scientific analysis and

-justification. There are so-called philosophers who adopt both these

-conclusions. There are those who reason and dogmatize as though nature

-were synonymous with matter, or as though spirit, if there be such an

-essence, must be conceived and explained after the principles and

-analogies of matter;—others assume that a science of scientific method

-can be nothing better than the mist or moonshine which they vilify by

-the name of metaphysics. But unfortunately for such opinions the fact is

-constantly forced upon the attention of scientists of every description,

-that the agent by which they examine matter is more than matter, and

-that this agent, whatever be its substance, asserts its prerogatives to

-determine the conceptions which the scientist forms of matter as well as

-to the methods by which he investigates material properties. Even the

-positivist philosopher who not only denounces metaphysics as

-illegitimate, but also contends that the metaphysical era of human

-inquiry, has in the development of scientific progress been outgrown

-like the measles, which is experienced but once in a life-time; finds

-when his positivist theory is brought to the test that positivism itself

-in its very problem and its solutions, is but the last adopted

-metaphysical theory of science.

-

-We also notice that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the

-inquisitive scientist to limit himself strictly to the object-matter of

-his own chosen field, and not to enquire more or less earnestly—not

-infrequently to dogmatize more or less positively—respecting the results

-of other sciences and even respecting the foundations and processes of

-scientific inquiry itself. Thus Mr. Huxley in the first Essay of this

-Series on _The Physical Basis of Life_, leaves the discussion of his

-appropriate theme in order to deliver sundry very positive and

-pronounced assertions respecting the “limits of philosophical inquiry,”

-and quotes with manifest satisfaction a dictum of David Hume that is

-sufficiently dogmatic and positive, as to what these limits are. In more

-than one of his Lay sermons, he rushes headlong into the most pronounced

-assertions in respect to the nature of matter and of spirit. The

-eloquent Tyndall, in No. 5, expounds at length _The Methods and

-Tendencies of Physical Investigation_ and discourses eloquently, if

-occasionally somewhat poetically, of _The Scientific use of the

-Imagination_. But Messrs. Huxley and Tyndall are eminent examples of

-scientists who are severely and successfully devoted respectively to

-physiology and the higher physics. No one will contend that they have

-not faithfully cultivated their appropriate fields of inquiry. The fact

-that neither can be content to confine himself within his special field,

-forcibly illustrates the tendency of every modern science to concern

-itself with its relations to its neighbors, and the unresistible

-necessity which forces the most rigid physicist to become a

-metaphysician in spite of himself. So much for the appellation

-“_Scientists_.”

-

-“_Half Hours_” suggests the very natural inquiry—What can a scientist

-communicate in half an hour, especially to a reader who may be ignorant

-of the elements of the science which he would expound? Does not the

-phrase _Half Hours with Modern Scientists_ stultify itself and suggest

-the folly of any attempt to treat of science with effect in a series of

-essays? In reply we would ask the attention of the reader to the

-following considerations.

-

-The tendency is universal among the scientific men of all nations, to

-present the principles of science in such brief summaries or statements

-as may bring them within the reach of common readers. The tendency

-indicates that there is a large body of readers who are so far

-instructed in the elements of science as to be able to understand these

-summaries. In England, Germany, France and this country such brief

-essays are abundant, either in the form of contributions to popular and

-scientific journals, or in that of popular lectures, or in that of brief

-manuals, or of monographs on separate topics; especially such topics as

-are novel, or are interesting to the public for their theoretic

-brilliancy, or their applications to industry and art.

-

-These essays need not be and they are not always superficial, because

-they are brief. They often are the more profound on account of their

-conciseness, as when they contain a condensed summary of the main

-principles of the art or science in question, or a brief history of the

-successive experiments which have issued in some brilliant discovery.

-These essays are very generally read, even though they are both concise

-and profound. But they could not be read even though they were less

-profound than they are, were there not provided a numerous company of

-readers who are sufficiently instructed in science to appreciate them.

-That such a body of readers exists in the countries referred to, is

-easily explained by the existence of public schools and schools of

-science and technology, by the enormous extension of the knowledge of

-machinery, engineering, mining, dyeing, etc., etc., all of which imply a

-more or less distinct recognition of scientific principles and stimulate

-the curiosity in regard to scientific truth. Popular lectures also,

-illustrated by experiments, have been repeated before thousands of

-excited listeners, and the eager and inventive minds of multitudes of

-ingenious youths have been trained by this distribution of science, to

-the capacity to comprehend the compact and pointed scientific essay,

-even though it taxes the attention and suspends the breath for a

-half-hour by its closeness and severity.

-

-The fact is also worthy of notice, that many of the ablest scientists of

-our times have made a special study of the art of expounding and

-presenting scientific truth. Some of them have schooled themselves to

-that lucid and orderly method by which a science seems to spring into

-being a second time, under the creative hand of its skilful expositor.

-Others have made a special study of philosophic diction. Others have

-learned how to adorn scientific truth with the embellishments of an

-affluent imagination. Some of the ablest writers of our time are found

-among the devotees of physical science. That a few scientific writers

-and lecturers may have exemplified some of the most offensive features

-of the demagogue and the sophist cannot be denied, but we may not forget

-that many have attained to the consummate skill of the accomplished

-essayist and impressive and eloquent orator.

-

-One advantage cannot be denied of this now popular and established

-method of setting forth scientific truth, viz., that it prescribes a

-convenient method of bringing into contrast the arguments _for_ and

-_against_ any disputed position in science. If materialism can furnish

-its ready advocate with a convenient vehicle for its ready diffusion,

-the antagonist theory can avail itself of a similar vehicle for the

-communication of the decisive and pungent reply. The one is certain to

-call forth the other, and if the two are present side by side in the

-same series, so much the better is it for the truth and so much the

-worse for the error. The teacher before his class, the lecturer in the

-presence of his audience, has the argument usually to himself; he allows

-few questionings and admits no reply. An erroneous theory may entrench

-itself within a folio against arguments which would annihilate its

-positions if these were condensed in a tract.

-

-This consideration should dispel all the alarm that is felt by the

-defenders of religion in view of the general diffusion of popular

-scientific treatises. The brief statement of a false or groundless

-scientific theory, even by its defender, is often its most effectual

-refutation. A magnificently imposing argument often shrinks into

-insignificance when its advocate is forced to state its substance in a

-compact and close-jointed outline. The articulations are seen to be

-defective, the joints do not fit one another, the coherence is

-conspicuously wanting. Let then error do its utmost in the field of

-science. Its deficient data and its illogical processes are certain to

-be exposed, sometimes even by its own advocates. If this does not happen

-the defender of that scientific truth which seems to be essential to the

-teachings and faiths of religion, must scrutinize its reasonings by the

-rules and methods of scientific inquiry. If science seems to be hostile

-to religion, this very seeming should arouse the defender of Theism and

-Christianity to examine into the grounds both by the light and methods

-which are appropriate to science itself. The more brief and compact and

-popular is the argument which he is to refute, the more feasible is the

-task of exposure and reply. Only let this be a cardinal maxim with the

-defender of the truth, that whatever is scientifically defended and

-maintained must be scientifically refuted and overthrown. The great

-Master of our faith never uttered a more comprehensive or a grander

-maxim than the memorable words, “_To this end was I born and for this

-cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.

-Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice._” It would be easy to

-show that the belief in moral and religious truth and the freedom in

-searching for and defending it which was inspired by these words have

-been most efficient in training the human mind to that faith in the

-results of scientific investigation which characterize the modern

-scientist. That Christian believer must either have a very imperfect

-view of the spirit of his own faith, or a very narrow conception of the

-evidences and the effect of its teachings, who imagines that the freest

-spirit of scientific inquiry, or the most penetrating insight into the

-secrets of matter or of spirit can have any other consequence than to

-strengthen and brighten the evidence for Christian truth.

-

-                                                                   N. P.

-

-    YALE COLLEGE, _May_, 1872.

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-                  PUBLISHERS’ NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.

-

-

-The five lectures embodied in this First Series of Half Hours with

-Modern Scientists were first published as Nos. I.—V. of the University

-Scientific Series. In this series the publishers have aimed to give to

-the public in a cheap pamphlet form, the advance thought in the

-Scientific world. The intrinsic value of these lectures has created a

-very general desire to have them put in a permanent form. They therefore

-have brought them out in this style. Each five succeeding numbers of

-this celebrated series will be printed and bound in uniform style with

-this volume, and be designated as second series, third series, and so

-on. Henceforth it will be the design of the publishers to give

-preference to those lectures and essays of American scientists which

-contain original research and discovery, rather than to reprinting from

-European sources. The lectures in the second series will be (1) On

-Natural Selection as Applied to Man, by Alfred Russel Wallace; (2) three

-profoundly interesting lectures on Spectrum Analysis, by Profs. Roscoe,

-Huggins, and Lockyer; (3) the Sun and its Different Atmospheres, a

-lecture by Prof. C. A. Young, Ph.D., of Dartmouth College; (4) the Earth

-a great Magnet, by Prof. A. M. Mayer, Ph.D., of Stevens Institute; and

-(5) the Mysteries of the Voice and Ear, by Prof. Ogden N. Rood, of

-Columbia College. The last three lectures contain many original

-discoveries and brilliant experiments, and are finely illustrated.

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-                             ──────────────

-                    _ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE._

-                             ──────────────

-

-

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-                             INTRODUCTION.

-

-

-The following remarkable discourse was originally delivered in

-Edinburgh, November 18th, 1868, as the first of a series of Sunday

-evening addresses, upon non-religious topics, instituted by the Rev. J.

-Cranbrook. It was subsequently published in London as the leading

-article in the _Fortnightly Review_, for February, 1869, and attracted

-so much attention that five editions of that number of the magazine have

-already been issued. It is now re-printed in this country, in permanent

-form, for the first time, and will doubtless prove of great interest to

-American readers. The author is Thomas Henry Huxley, of London,

-Professor of Natural History in the Royal School of Mines, and of

-Comparative Anatomy and Physiology in the Royal College of Surgeons. He

-is also President of the Geological Society of London. Although

-comparatively a young man, his numerous and valuable contributions to

-Natural Science entitle him to be considered one of the first of living

-Naturalists, especially in the departments of Zoölogy and Paleontology,

-to which he has mainly devoted himself. He is undoubtedly the ablest

-English advocate of Darwin’s theory of the Origin of Species,

-particularly with reference to its application to the human race, which

-he believes to be nearly related to the higher apes. It is, indeed,

-through his discussion of this question that he is, perhaps, best known

-to the general public, as his late work entitled “Man’s Place in

-Nature,” and other writings on similar topics, have been very widely

-read in this country and in Europe. In the present lecture Professor

-Huxley discusses a kindred subject of no less interest and importance,

-and should have an equally candid hearing.

-

-YALE COLLEGE, _March_ 30_th_, 1869.

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-                     On the Physical Basis of Life.

-

-

-In order to make the title of this discourse generally intelligible, I

-have translated the term “Protoplasm,” which is the scientific name of

-the substance of which I am about to speak, by the words “the physical

-basis of life.” I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is such a

-thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novel—so widely

-spread is the conception of life as a something which works through

-matter, but is independent of it; and even those who are aware that

-matter and life are inseparably connected, may not be prepared for the

-conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase “the physical basis or matter

-of life,” that there is some one kind of matter which is common to all

-living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by

-a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first apprehended,

-such a doctrine as this appears almost shocking to common sense. What,

-truly, can seem to be more obviously different from one another in

-faculty, in form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living

-beings? What community of faculty can there be between the

-brightly-colored lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral

-incrustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to

-whom it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with

-knowledge?

-

-Again, think of the microscopic fungus—a mere infinitesimal ovoid

-particle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply into

-countless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth

-of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this

-bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the

-dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres

-with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and

-go around its vast circumference! Or, turning to the other half of the

-world of life, picture to yourselves the great finner whale, hugest of

-beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of

-bone, muscle and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the

-stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would founder hopelessly; and

-contrast him with the invisible animalcules—mere gelatinous specks,

-multitudes of which could, in fact, dance upon the point of a needle

-with the same ease as the angels of the schoolmen could, in imagination.

-With these images before your minds, you may well ask what community of

-form, or structure, is there between the animalcule and the whale, or

-between the fungus and fig-tree? And, _a fortiori_, between all four?

-

-Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition, what hidden

-bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her hair and the blood

-which courses through her youthful veins; or, what is there in common

-between the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of

-the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seen

-pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere

-films in the hand which raises them out of their element? Such

-objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every one who

-ponders, for the first time, upon the conception of a single physical

-basis of life underlying all the diversities of vital existence; but I

-propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent

-difficulties, a threefold unity—namely, a unity of power or faculty, a

-unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition—does pervade the

-whole living world. No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the

-first place, to prove that the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of

-living matter, diverse as they may be in degree, are substantially

-similar in kind. Goethe has condensed a survey of all the powers of

-mankind into the well-known epigram:

-

-    “Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich

-    ernähren Kinder zeugen, und sie nähren so gut es vermag.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-    Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich, wie er auch will.”

-

-In physiological language this means, that all the multifarious and

-complicated activities of man are comprehensible under three categories.

-Either they are immediately directed towards the maintenance and

-development of the body, or they effect transitory changes in the

-relative positions of parts of the body, or they tend towards the

-continuance of the species. Even those manifestations of intellect, of

-feeling, and of will, which we rightly name the higher faculties, are

-not excluded from this classification, inasmuch as to every one but the

-subject of them, they are known only as transitory changes in the

-relative positions of parts of the body. Speech, gesture, and every

-other form of human action are, in the long run, resolvable into

-muscular contraction, and muscular contraction is but a transitory

-change in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. But the

-scheme, which is large enough to embrace the activities of the highest

-form of life, covers all those of the lower creatures. The lowest plant,

-or animalcule, feeds, grows and reproduces its kind. In addition, all

-animals manifest those transitory changes of form which we class under

-irritability and contractility; and it is more than probable, that when

-the vegetable world is thoroughly explored, we shall find all plants in

-possession of the same powers, at one time or other of their existence.

-I am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare and conspicuous,

-as those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plant, or the

-stamens of the barberry, but to much more widely-spread, and, at the

-same time, more subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable

-contractility. You are doubtless aware that the common nettle owes its

-stinging property to the innumerable stiff and needle-like, though

-exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover its surface. Each

-stinging-needle tapers from a broad base to a slender summit, which,

-though rounded at the end, is of such microscopic fineness that it

-readily penetrates, and breaks off in, the skin. The whole hair consists

-of a very delicate outer case of wood, closely applied to the inner

-surface of which is a layer of semi-fluid matter, full of innumerable

-granules of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm,

-which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid, and

-roughly corresponding in form with the interior of the hair which it

-fills. When viewed with a sufficiently high magnifying power, the

-protoplasmic layer of the nettle hair is seen to be in a condition of

-unceasing activity. Local contractions of the whole thickness of its

-substance pass slowly and gradually from point to point, and give rise

-to the appearance of progressive waves, just as the bending of

-successive stalks of corn by a breeze produces the apparent billows of a

-corn-field. But, in addition to these movements, and independently of

-them, the granules are driven, in relatively rapid streams, through

-channels in the protoplasm which seem to have a considerable amount of

-persistence. Most commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the

-protoplasm take similar directions; and, thus, there is a general stream

-up one side of the hair and down the other. But this does not prevent

-the existence of partial currents which take different routes; and,

-sometimes, trains of granules may be seen coursing swiftly in opposite

-directions, within a twenty-thousandth of an inch of one another; while,

-occasionally, opposite streams come into direct collision, and, after a

-longer or shorter struggle, one predominates. The cause of these

-currents seem to lie in contractions of the protoplasm which bounds the

-channels in which they flow, but which are so minute that the best

-microscopes show only their effects, and not themselves.

-

-The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned within the

-compass of the microscopic hair of a plant, which we commonly regard as

-a merely passive organism, is not easily forgotten by one who has

-watched its display continued hour after hour, without pause or sign of

-weakening. The possible complexity of many other organic forms,

-seemingly as simple as the protoplasm of the nettle, dawns upon one; and

-the comparison of such a protoplasm to a body with an internal

-circulation, which has been put forward by an eminent physiologist,

-loses much of its startling character. Currents similar to those of the

-hairs of the nettle have been observed in a great multitude of very

-different plants, and weighty authorities have suggested that they

-probably occur, in more or less perfection, in all young vegetable

-cells. If such be the case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical

-forest is, after all, due only to the dullness of our hearing; and could

-our ears catch the murmur of these tiny maelstroms, as they whirl in the

-innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we

-should be stunned, as with the roar of a great city.

-

-Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the exception, that

-contractility should be still more openly manifested at some periods of

-their existence. The protoplasm of _Algæ_ and _Fungi_ becomes, under

-many circumstances, partially, or completely, freed from its woody case,

-and exhibits movements of its whole mass, or is propelled by the

-contractility of one or more hair-like prolongations of its body, which

-are called vibratile cilia. And, so far as the conditions of the

-manifestation of the phenomena of contractility have yet been studied,

-they are the same for the plant as for the animal. Heat and electric

-shocks influence both, and in the same way, though it may be in

-different degrees. It is by no means my intention to suggest that there

-is no difference in faculty between the lowest plant and the highest, or

-between plants and animals. But the difference between the powers of the

-lowest plant, or animal, and those of the highest is one of degree, not

-of kind, and depends, as Milne-Edwards long ago so well pointed out,

-upon the extent to which the principle of the division of labor is

-carried out in the living economy. In the lowest organism all parts are

-competent to perform all functions, and one and the same portion of

-protoplasm may successively take on the function of feeding, moving, or

-reproducing apparatus. In the highest, on the contrary, a great number

-of parts combine to perform each function, each part doing its allotted

-share of the work with great accuracy and efficiency, but being useless

-for any other purpose. On the other hand, notwithstanding all the

-fundamental resemblances which exist between the powers of the

-protoplasm in plants and in animals, they present a striking difference

-(to which I shall advert more at length presently,) in the fact that

-plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of mineral compounds,

-whereas animals are obliged to procure it ready-made, and hence, in the

-long run, depend upon plants. Upon what condition this difference in the

-powers of the two great divisions of the world of life depends, nothing

-is at present known.

-

-With such qualification as arises out of the last-mentioned fact, it may

-be truly said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally one.

-Is any such unity predicable of their forms? Let us seek in easily

-verified facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be drawn

-by pricking one’s finger, and viewed with proper precautions and under a

-sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be seen, among the

-innumerable multitude of little, circular, discoidal bodies, or

-corpuscles, which float in it and give it its color, a comparatively

-small number of colorless corpuscles, of somewhat larger size and very

-irregular shape. If the drop of blood be kept at the temperature of the

-body, these colorless corpuscles will be seen to exhibit a marvelous

-activity, changing their forms with great rapidity, drawing in and

-thrusting out prolongations of their substance, and creeping about as if

-they were independent organisms. The substance which is thus active is a

-mass of protoplasm, and its activity differs in detail, rather than in

-principle, from that of the protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry

-circumstances the corpuscle dies and becomes distended into a round

-mass, in the midst of which is seen a smaller spherical body, which

-existed, but was more or less hidden, in the living corpuscle, and is

-called its _nucleus_. Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are to

-be found in the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and scattered through

-the whole frame work of the body. Nay, more; in the earliest condition

-of the human organism, in that state in which it has just become

-distinguishable from the egg in which it arises, it is nothing but an

-aggregation of such corpuscles, and every organ of the body was, once,

-no more than such an aggregation. Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm

-turns out to be what may be termed the structural unit of the human

-body. As a matter of fact, the body, in its earliest state, is a mere

-multiple of such units; and, in its perfect condition, it is a multiple

-of such units, variously modified. But does the formula which expresses

-the essential structural character of the highest animal cover all the

-rest, as the statement of its powers and faculties covered that of all

-others? Very nearly. Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm,

-and polype, are all composed of structural units of the same character,

-namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There are sundry very low

-animals, each of which, structurally, is a mere colorless

-blood-corpuscle, leading an independent life. But, at the very bottom of

-the animal scale, even this simplicity becomes simplified, and all the

-phenomena of life are manifested by a particle of protoplasm without a

-nucleus. Nor are such organisms insignificant by reason of their want of

-complexity. It is a fair question whether the protoplasm of those

-simplest forms of life, which people an immense extent of the bottom of

-the sea, would not outweigh that of all the higher living beings which

-inhabit the land, put together. And in ancient times, no less than at

-the present day, such living beings as these have been the greatest of

-rock builders.

-

-What has been said of the animal world is no less true of plants.

-Imbedded in the protoplasm at the broad, or attached, end of the nettle

-hair, there lies a spheroidal nucleus. Careful examination further

-proves that the whole substance of the nettle is made up of a repetition

-of such masses of nucleated protoplasm, each contained in a wooden case,

-which is modified in form, sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes into

-a duct or spiral vessel, sometimes into a pollen grain, or an ovule.

-Traced back to its earliest state, the nettle arises as the man does, in

-a particle of nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest plants, as in the

-lowest animals, a single mass of such protoplasm may constitute the

-whole plant, or the protoplasm may exist without a nucleus. Under these

-circumstances it may well be asked, how is one mass of non-nucleated

-protoplasm to be distinguished from another? why call one “plant” and

-the other “animal?” The only reply is that, so far as form is concerned,

-plants and animals are not separable, and that, in many cases, it is a

-mere matter of convention whether we call a given organism an animal or

-a plant.

-

-There is a living body called _Æthalium septicum_, which appears upon

-decaying vegetable substances, and in one of its forms, is common upon

-the surface of tan pits. In this condition it is, to all intents and

-purposes, a fungus, and formerly was always regarded as such; but the

-remarkable investigations of De Bary have shown that, in another

-condition, the _Æthalium_ is an actively locomotive creature, and takes

-in solid matters, upon which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the

-most characteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant, or is it an

-animal? Is it both, or is it neither? Some decide in favor of the last

-supposition, and establish an intermediate kingdom, a sort of biological

-No Man’s Land for all these questionable forms. But, as it is admittedly

-impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between this no man’s land

-and the vegetable world on the one hand, or the animal, on the other, it

-appears to me that this proceeding merely doubles the difficulty which,

-before, was single. Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis

-of all life. It is the clay of the potter; which, bake it and paint it

-as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from

-the commonest brick or sun-dried clod. Thus it becomes clear that all

-living powers are cognate, and that all living forms are fundamentally

-of one character.

-

-The researches of the chemist have revealed a no less striking

-uniformity of material composition in living matter. In perfect

-strictness, it is true that chemical investigation can tell us little or

-nothing, directly, of the composition of living matter, inasmuch as such

-matter must needs die in the act of analysis, and upon this very obvious

-ground, objections, which I confess seem to me to be somewhat frivolous,

-have been raised to the drawing of any conclusions whatever respecting

-the composition of actually living matter from that of the dead matter

-of life, which alone is accessible to us. But objectors of this class do

-not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true that we know

-nothing about the composition of any body whatever, as it is. The

-statement that a crystal of calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime, is

-quite true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes, it may be

-resolved into carbonic acid and quicklime. If you pass the same carbonic

-acid over the very quicklime thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of

-lime again; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it. Can it,

-therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing about the

-chemical composition of calc-spar? Such a statement would be absurd; but

-it is hardly more so than the talk one occasionally hears about the

-uselessness of applying the results of chemical analysis to the living

-bodies which have yielded them. One fact, at any rate, is out of reach

-of such refinements, and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which

-have yet been examined contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen,

-oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union, and that they behave

-similarly towards several reagents. To this complex combination, the

-nature of which has never been determined with exactness, the name of

-Protein has been applied. And if we use this term with such caution as

-may properly arise out of our comparative ignorance of the things for

-which it stands, it may be truly said, that all protoplasm is

-proteinaceous; or, as the white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the

-commonest examples of a nearly pure protein matter, we may say that all

-living matter is more or less albuminoid. Perhaps it would not yet be

-safe to say that all forms of protoplasm are affected by the direct

-action of electric shocks; and yet the number of cases in which the

-contraction of protoplasm is shown to be affected by this agency

-increases, every day. Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence

-that all forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar

-coagulation at the temperature of 40 degrees—50 degrees centigrade,

-which has been called “heat-stiffening,” though Kühne’s beautiful

-researches have proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such

-diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the law

-holds good for all. Enough has, perhaps, been said to prove the

-existence of a general uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or

-physical basis of life, in whatever group of living beings it may be

-studied. But it will be understood that this general uniformity by no

-means excludes any amount of special modifications of the fundamental

-substance. The mineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity

-of characters, though no one doubts that under all these Protean changes

-it is one and the same thing.

-

-And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin of the matter of

-life? Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused

-throughout the universe in molecules, which are indestructible and

-unchangeable in themselves; but, in endless transmigration, unite in

-innumerable permutations, into the diversified forms of life we know?

-Or, is the matter of life composed of ordinary matter, differing from it

-only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated? Is it built up of

-ordinary matter, and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work

-is done? Modern science does not hesitate a moment between these

-alternatives. Physiology writes over the portals of life,

-

-                     “Debemur morti nos nostraque,”

-

-with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to that

-melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, whether fungus

-or oak, worm or man, the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and

-is resolved into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always

-dying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it

-died. In the wonderful story of the “Peau de Chagrin,” the hero becomes

-possessed of a magical wild ass’s skin, which yields him the means of

-gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of

-the proprietor’s life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks

-in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the

-last handbreadth of the “Peau de Chagrin,” disappear with the

-gratification of a last wish. Balzac’s studies had led him over a wide

-range of thought and speculation, and his shadowing forth of

-physiological truth in this strange story may have been intentional. At

-any rate, the matter of life is a veritable “Peau de Chagrin,” and for

-every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and

-the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of

-protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical

-loss; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have

-light—so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic

-acid, water and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure

-cannot go on forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic _peau de chagrin_

-differs from Balzac’s in its capacity of being repaired, and brought

-back to its full size, after every exertion. For example, this present

-lecture, whatever its intellectual worth to you, has a certain physical

-value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains

-of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital

-processes during its delivery. My _peau de chagrin_ will be distinctly

-smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the beginning.

-By-and-by, I shall probably have recourse to the substance commonly

-called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its original

-size. Now this mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or less

-modified, of another animal—a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the same

-matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure to sundry artificial

-operations in the process of cooking. But these changes, whatever be

-their extent, have not rendered it incompetent to resume its old

-functions as matter of life. A singular inward laboratory, which I

-possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the modified protoplasm, the

-solution so formed will pass into my veins; and the subtle influences to

-which it will then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into

-living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man. Nor is this all.

-If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I might sup upon lobster,

-and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergo the same

-wonderful metamorphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my own

-place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacea might, and probably

-would, return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature by

-turning my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were to

-be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I should find the

-protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible into man, with no more

-trouble than that of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of

-the lobster. Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what

-animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm, and the

-fact speaks volumes for the general identity of that substance in all

-living beings. I share this catholicity of assimilation with other

-animals, all of which, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on

-the protoplasm of any of their fellows, or of any plant; but here the

-assimilative powers of the animal world cease.

-

-A solution of smelling-salts in water with an infinitesimal proportion

-of some other saline matters, contains all the elementary bodies which

-enter into the composition of protoplasm; but, as I need hardly say, a

-hogshead of that fluid would not keep a hungry man from starving, nor

-would it save any animal whatever from a like fate. An animal cannot

-make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from some other animal, or

-some plant—the animal’s highest feat of constructive chemistry being to

-convert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is

-appropriate to itself. Therefore, in seeking for the origin of

-protoplasm, we must eventually turn to the vegetable world. The fluid

-containing carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, which offers such a

-barmecide feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes of

-plants; and with a due supply of only such materials, many a plant will

-not only maintain itself in vigor, but grow and multiply until it has

-increased a million-fold, or a million million-fold, the quantity of

-protoplasm which it originally possessed; in this way building up the

-matter of life, to an indefinite extent, from the common matter of the

-universe. Thus the animal can only raise the complex substance of dead

-protoplasm to the higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm;

-while the plant can raise the less complex substances—carbonic acid,

-water, and ammonia—to the same stage of living protoplasm, if not to the

-same level. But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi,

-for example, appear to need higher compounds to start with, and no known

-plant can live upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. A plant

-supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus,

-sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal in his bath

-of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded by all the constituents

-of protoplasm. Nor, indeed, need the process of simplification of

-vegetable food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at the

-limit of the plant’s thaumaturgy.

-

-Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful constituents, be

-supplied without ammonia, and an ordinary plant will still be unable to

-manufacture protoplasm. Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it

-(and we have no right to speculate on any other) breaks up in

-consequence of that continual death which is the condition of its

-manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, which

-certainly possess no properties but those of ordinary matter; and out of

-these same forms of ordinary matter and from none which are simpler, the

-vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which keeps the animal

-world agoing. Plants are the accumulators of the power which animals

-distribute and disperse.

-

-But it will be observed, that the existence of the matter of life

-depends on the preëxistence of certain compounds, namely, carbonic acid,

-water, and ammonia. Withdraw any one of these three from the world and

-all vital phenomena come to an end. They are related to the protoplasm

-of the plant, as the protoplasm of the plant is to that of the animal.

-Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of

-these, carbon and oxygen unite in certain proportion and under certain

-conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen and oxygen produce

-water; nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to ammonia. These new compounds,

-like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless. But

-when they are brought together, under certain conditions they give rise

-to the still more complex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits

-the phenomena of life. I see no break in this series of steps in

-molecular complication, and I am unable to understand why the language

-which is applicable to any one term of the series may not be used to any

-of the others. We think fit to call different kinds of matter carbon,

-oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers and

-activities of these substances as the properties of the matter of which

-they are composed. When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain

-proportion, and the electric spark is passed through them, they

-disappear and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the sum of their

-weights, appears in their place. There is not the slightest parity

-between the passive and active powers of the water and those of the

-oxygen and hydrogen which have given rise to it. At 32 degrees

-Fahrenheit, and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen are

-elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to rush away from one

-another with great force. Water, at the same temperature, is a strong

-though brittle solid, whose particles tend to cohere into definite

-geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty imitations of the most

-complex forms of vegetable foliage. Nevertheless we call these, and many

-other strange phenomena, the properties of the water, and we do not

-hesitate to believe that, in some way or another, they result from the

-properties of the component elements of the water. We do not assume that

-a something called “aquosity” entered into and took possession of the

-oxide of hydrogen as soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous

-particles to their places in the facets of the crystal, or amongst the

-leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the contrary, we live in the hope and in

-the faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by

-be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the

-properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a

-watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put

-together. Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water and

-ammonia disappear, and in their place, under the influence of

-preëxisting living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the matter of

-life makes its appearance? It is true that there is no sort of parity

-between the properties of the components and the properties of the

-resultant, but neither was there in the case of the water. It is also

-true that what I have spoken of as the influence of preëxisting living

-matter is something quite unintelligible; but does any body quite

-comprehend the _modus operandi_ of an electric spark, which traverses a

-mixture of oxygen and hydrogen? What justification is there, then, for

-the assumption of the existence in the living matter of a something

-which has no representative or correlative in the not living matter

-which gave rise to it? What better philosophical status has “vitality”

-than “aquosity?” And why should “vitality” hope for a better fate than

-the other “itys” which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus

-accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its inherent “meat

-roasting quality,” and scorned the “materialism” of those who explained

-the turning of the spit by a certain mechanism worked by the draught of

-the chimney? If scientific language is to possess a definite and

-constant signification whenever it is employed, it seems to me that we

-are logically bound to apply to the protoplasm, or physical basis of

-life, the same conceptions as those which are held to be legitimate

-elsewhere. If the phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so

-are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties. If

-the properties of water may be properly said to result from the nature

-and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no intelligible

-ground for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm result from

-the nature and disposition of its molecules. But I bid you beware that,

-in accepting these conclusions, you are placing your feet on the first

-rung of a ladder which, in most people’s estimation, is the reverse of

-Jacob’s, and leads to the antipodes of heaven. It may seem a small thing

-to admit that the dull vital actions of a fungus, or a foraminifer, are

-the properties of their protoplasm, and are the direct results of the

-nature of the matter of which they are composed.

-

-But if, as I have endeavored to prove to you, their protoplasm is

-essentially identical with, and most readily converted into, that of any

-animal, I can discover no logical halting place between the admission

-that such is the case, and the further concession that all vital action

-may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of the molecular

-forces of the protoplasm which displays it. And if so, it must be true,

-in the same sense and to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I

-am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are the

-expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the

-source of our other vital phenomena. Past experience leads me to be

-tolerably certain that, when the propositions I have just placed before

-you are accessible to public comment and criticism, they will be

-condemned by many zealous persons, and perhaps by some few of the wise

-and thoughtful. I should not wonder if “gross and brutal materialism”

-were the mildest phrase applied to them in certain quarters. And most

-undoubtedly the terms of the propositions are distinctly materialistic.

-Nevertheless, two things are certain: the one, that I hold the

-statements to be substantially true; the other, that I, individually, am

-no materialist, but, on the contrary, believe materialism to involve

-grave philosophical error.

-

-This union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation of

-materialistic philosophy I share with some of the most thoughtful men

-with whom I am acquainted. And, when I first undertook to deliver the

-present discourse, it appeared to me to be a fitting opportunity to

-explain how such an union is not only consistent with, but necessitated

-by sound logic. I purposed to lead you through the territory of vital

-phenomena to the materialistic slough in which you find yourselves now

-plunged, and then to point out to you the sole path by which, in my

-judgment, extrication is possible. An occurrence, of which I was unaware

-until my arrival here last night, renders this line of argument

-singularly opportune. I found in your papers the eloquent address “On

-the Limits of Philosophical Inquiry,” which a distinguished prelate of

-the English Church delivered before the members of the Philosophical

-Institution on the previous day. My argument, also, turns upon this very

-point of limits of philosophical inquiry; and I cannot bring out my own

-views better than by contrasting them with those so plainly, and, in the

-main, fairly stated by the Archbishop of York. But I may be permitted to

-make a preliminary comment upon an occurrence that greatly astonished

-me. Applying the name of “the New Philosophy” to that estimate of the

-limits of philosophical inquiry which I, in common with many other men

-of science, hold to be just, the Archbishop opens his address by

-identifying this “new philosophy” with the positive philosophy of M.

-Comte (of whom he speaks as its “founder”); and then proceeds to attack

-that philosopher and his doctrine vigorously. Now, so far as I am

-concerned, the most Reverend prelate might dialectically hew M. Comte in

-pieces, as a modern Agag, and I should not attempt to stay his hand. In

-so far as my study of what specially characterizes the Positive

-Philosophy has led me, I find therein little or nothing of any

-scientific value, and a great deal which is as thoroughly antagonistic

-to the very essence of science as anything in ultramontane Catholicism.

-In fact, M. Comte’s philosophy in practice might be compendiously

-described as Catholicism _minus_ Christianity. But what has Comptism to

-do with the “New Philosophy,” as the Archbishop defines it in the

-following passage?

-

-“Let me briefly remind you of the leading principles of this new

-philosophy.

-

-“All knowledge is experience of facts acquired by the senses. The

-traditions of older philosophies have obscured our experience by mixing

-with it much that the senses cannot observe, and until these additions

-are discarded our knowledge is impure. Thus, metaphysics tells us that

-one fact which we observe is a cause, and another is the effect of that

-cause; but upon a rigid analysis we find that our senses observe nothing

-of cause or effect; they observe, first, that one fact succeeds another,

-and, after some opportunity, that this fact has never failed to

-follow—that for cause and effect we should substitute invariable

-succession. An older philosophy teaches us to define an object by

-distinguishing its essential from its accidental qualities; but

-experience knows nothing of essential and accidental; she sees only that

-certain marks attach to an object, and, after many observations, that

-some of them attach invariably, whilst others may at times be absent. *

-* * * * As all knowledge is relative, the notion of anything being

-necessary must be banished with other traditions.”

-

-There is much here that expresses the spirit of the “New Philosophy,” if

-by that term be meant the spirit of modern science; but I cannot but

-marvel that the assembled wisdom and learning of Edinburgh should have

-uttered no sign of dissent, when Comte was declared to be the founder of

-these doctrines. No one will accuse Scotchmen of habitually forgetting

-their great countrymen; but it was enough to make David Hume turn in his

-grave, that here, almost within ear-shot of his house, an instructed

-audience should have listened, without a murmur, while his most

-characteristic doctrines were attributed to a French writer of fifty

-years later date, in whose dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the

-vigor of thought and the exquisite clearness of the style of the man

-whom I make bold to term the most acute thinker of the eighteenth

-century—even though that century produced Kant. But I did not come to

-Scotland to vindicate the honor of one of the greatest men she has ever

-produced. My business is to point out to you that the only way of escape

-out of the crass materialism in which we just now landed is the adoption

-and strict working out of the very principles which the Archbishop holds

-up to reprobation.

-

-Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not relative, and

-therefore, that our conception of matter represents that which it really

-is. Let us suppose, further, that we do know more of cause and effect

-than a certain definite order of succession among facts, and that we

-have a knowledge of the necessity of that succession—and hence, of

-necessary laws—and I, for my part, do not see what escape there is from

-utter materialism and necessitarianism. For it is obvious that our

-knowledge of what we call the material world is, to begin with, at least

-as certain and definite as that of the spiritual world, and that our

-acquaintance with the law is of as old a date as our knowledge of

-spontaneity.

-

-Further, I take it to be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible to

-prove that anything whatever may not be the effect of a material and

-necessary cause, and that human logic is equally incompetent to prove

-that any act is really spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is one

-which, by the assumption, has no cause; and the attempt to prove such a

-negative as this is, on the face of the matter, absurd. And while it is

-thus a philosophical impossibility to demonstrate that any given

-phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any one who is

-acquainted with the history of science will admit, that its progress

-has, in all ages, meant, and now more than ever means, the extension of

-the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant

-gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call

-spirit and spontaneity.

-

-I have endeavored, in the first part of this discourse, to give you a

-conception of the direction towards which modern physiology is tending;

-and I ask you, what is the difference between the conception of life as

-the product of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the old

-notion of an Archæus governing and directing blind matter within each

-living body, except this—that here, as elsewhere, matter and law have

-devoured spirit and spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out

-of past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually

-extend the realm of matter and law until it is coëxtensive with

-knowledge, with feeling, and with action. The consciousness of this

-great truth weighs like a nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best

-minds of these days. They watch what they conceive to be the progress of

-materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels, when,

-during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The

-advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls; the tightening

-grasp of law impedes their freedom; they are alarmed lest man’s moral

-nature be debased by the increase of his wisdom.

-

-If the “New Philosophy” be worthy of the reprobation with which it is

-visited, I confess their fears seem to me to be well founded. While, on

-the contrary, could David Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at

-their perplexities, and chide them for doing even as the heathen, and

-falling down in terror before the hideous idols their own hands have

-raised. For, after all, what do we know of this terrible “matter,”

-except as a name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our

-own consciousness? And what do we know of that “spirit” over whose

-threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising, like

-that which was heard at the death of Pan, except that it is also a name

-for an unknown and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of

-consciousness? In other words, matter and spirit are but names for the

-imaginary substrata of groups of natural phenomena. And what is the dire

-necessity and “iron” law under which men groan? Truly, most gratuitously

-invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an “iron” law, it is that of

-gravitation; and if there be a physical necessity, it is that a stone,

-unsupported, must fall to the ground. But what is all we really know and

-can know about the latter phenomenon? Simply, that, in all human

-experience, stones have fallen to the ground under these conditions;

-that we have not the smallest reason for believing that any stone so

-circumstanced will not fall to the ground, and that we have, on the

-contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very

-convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been

-fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that unsupported stones

-will fall to the ground, “a law of nature.” But when, as commonly

-happens, we change will into must, we introduce an idea of necessity

-which most assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no

-warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I utterly repudiate

-and anathematize the intruder. Fact, I know; and Law I know; but what is

-this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind’s throwing? But, if

-it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either

-matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity is something

-illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate conception of law,

-the materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but

-matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as

-the most baseless of theological dogmas.

-

-The fundamental doctrines of materialism, like those of spiritualism,

-and most other “isms,” lie outside “the limits of philosophical

-inquiry,” and David Hume’s great service to humanity is his irrefragable

-demonstration of what these limits are. Hume called himself a sceptic,

-and therefore others cannot be blamed if they apply the same title to

-him; but that does not alter the fact that the name, with its existing

-implications, does him gross injustice. If a man asks me what the

-politics of the inhabitants of the moon are, and I reply that I do not

-know; that neither I, nor any one else have any means of knowing; and

-that, under these circumstances I decline to trouble myself about the

-subject at all, I do not think he has any right to call me a sceptic. On

-the contrary, in replying thus, I conceive that I am simply honest and

-truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy of time. So Hume’s

-strong and subtle intellect takes up a great many problems about which

-we are naturally curious, and shows us that they are essentially

-questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable of being

-answered, and therefore not worth the attention of men who have work to

-do in the world. And thus ends one of his essays:

-

-    “If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school

-    metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, _Does it contain any

-    abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?_ No. _Does it

-    contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and

-    existence?_ No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain

-    nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

-

-Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble ourselves about

-matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and

-can know nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and

-ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make

-the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat

-less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually

-it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first,

-that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent

-which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for

-something as a condition of the course of events. Each of these beliefs

-can be verified experimentally, as often as we like to try. Each,

-therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which any belief

-can rest; and forms one of our highest truths.

-

-If we find that the ascertainment of the order of nature is facilitated

-by using one terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it

-is our clear duty to use the former, and no harm can accrue so long as

-we bear in mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols. In

-itself it is of little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter

-in terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in terms of matter;

-matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as

-a property of matter—each statement has a certain relative truth. But

-with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology is

-in every way to be preferred. For it connects thought with the other

-phenomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those

-physical conditions or concomitants of thought, which are more or less

-accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to

-exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought as we

-already possess in respect of the material world; whereas, the

-alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads

-to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas. Thus there can be

-little doubt that the further science advances, the more extensively and

-consistently will all the phenomena of nature be represented by

-materialistic formulæ and symbols. But the man of science, who,

-forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these

-formulæ and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism,

-seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathematician, who

-should mistake the _x’s_ and _y’s_, with which he works his problems,

-for real entities—and with this further disadvantage as compared with

-the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical

-consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyze the

-energies and destroy the beauty of a life.

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-            _THE CORRELATION OF VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES._

-

-

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-                            THE CORRELATION

-

-                                   OF

-

-                       VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES.

-

-

-In the Syracusan Poecile, says Alexander von Humboldt in his beautiful

-little allegory of the Rhodian Genius, hung a painting, which, for full

-a century, had continued to attract the attention of every visitor. In

-the foreground of this picture a numerous company of youths and maidens

-of earthly and sensuous appearance gazed fixedly upon a haloed Genius

-who hovered in their midst. A butterfly rested upon his shoulder, and he

-held in his hand a flaming torch. His every lineament bespoke a

-celestial origin. The attempts to solve the enigma of this

-painting—whose origin even was unknown—though numerous, were all in

-vain, when one day a ship arriving from Rhodes, laden with works of art,

-brought another picture, at once recognized as its companion. As before,

-the Genius stood in the center, but the butterfly had disappeared, and

-the torch was reversed and extinguished. The youths and maidens were no

-longer sad and submissive, their mutual embraces announcing their entire

-emancipation from restraint. Still unable to solve the riddle, Dionysius

-sent the pictures to the Pythagorean sage, Epicharmus. After gazing upon

-them long and earnestly, he said: Sixty years long have I pondered on

-the internal springs of nature, and on the differences inherent in

-matter; but it is only this day that the Rhodian Genius has taught me to

-see clearly that which before I had only conjectured. In inanimate

-nature, everything seeks its like. Everything, as soon as formed,

-hastens to enter into new combinations, and nought save the disjoining

-art of man can present in a separate state ingredients which ye would

-vainly seek in the interior of the earth or in the moving oceans of air

-and water. Different, however, is the blending of the same substances in

-animal and vegetable bodies. Here vital force imperatively asserts its

-rights, and heedless of the affinity and antagonism of the atoms, unites

-substances which in inanimate nature ever flee from each other, and

-separates that which is incessantly striving to unite. Recognize,

-therefore, in the Rhodian Genius, in the expression of his youthful

-vigor, in the butterfly on his shoulder, in the commanding glance of his

-eye, the symbol of vital force as it animates every germ of organic

-creation. The earthly elements at his feet are striving to gratify their

-own desires and to mingle with one another. Imperiously the Genius

-threatens them with upraised and high-flaming torch, and compels them

-regardless of their ancient rights, to obey his laws. Look now on the

-new work of art; turn from life to death. The butterfly has soared

-upward, the extinguished torch is reversed, and the head of the youth is

-drooping; the spirit has fled to other spheres, and the vital force is

-extinct. Now the youths and maidens join their hands in joyous accord.

-Earthly matter again resumes its rights. Released from all bonds, they

-impetuously follow their natural instincts, and the day of his death is

-to them a day of nuptials.[1]

-

-The view here put by Humboldt into the mouth of Epicharmus may be taken

-as a fair representation of the current opinion of all ages concerning

-vital force. To-day, as truly as seventy-five years ago when Humboldt

-wrote, the mysterious and awful phenomena of life are commonly

-attributed to some controlling agent residing in the organism—to some

-independent presiding deity, holding it in absolute subjection. Such a

-notion it was which prompted Heraclitus to talk of a universal fire, Van

-Helmont to propose his Archæus, Hofmann his vital fluid, Hunter his

-_materia vitæ diffusa_, and Humboldt his vital force.[2] All these names

-assume the existence of a material or immaterial something, more or less

-separable from the material body, and more or less identical with the

-mind or soul, which is the cause of the phenomena of living beings. But

-as science moved irresistibly onward, and it became evident that the

-forces of inorganic nature were neither deities nor imponderable fluids,

-separable from matter, but were simple affections of it, analogy

-demanded a like concession in behalf of vital force.[3] From the notion

-that the effects of heat were due to an imponderable fluid called

-caloric, discovery passed to the conviction that heat was but a motion

-of material particles, and hence inseparable from matter. To a like

-assumption concerning vitality it was now but a step. The more advanced

-thinkers in science of to-day, therefore, look upon the life of the

-living form as inseparable from its substance, and believe that the

-former is purely phenomenal, and only a manifestation of the latter.

-Denying the existence of a special vital force as such, they retain the

-term only to express the sum of the phenomena of living beings.

-

-In calling your attention this evening to the Correlation of the

-Physical and the Vital Forces, I have a twofold object in view. On the

-one hand, I would seek to interest you in a comparatively recent

-discovery of Science, and one which is destined to play a most important

-part in promoting man’s welfare; and on the other I would inquire what

-part our own country has had in these discoveries.

-

-In the first place, then, let us consider what the evidences are that

-vital and physical forces are correlated. Let us inquire how far

-inorganic and organic forces may be considered mutually convertible, and

-hence, in so far, mutually identical. This may best be done by

-considering, first, what is to be understood by correlation: and second,

-how far are the physical forces themselves correlated to each other.

-

-At the outset of our discussion, we are met by an unfortunate ambiguity

-of language. The word Force, as commonly used, has three distinct

-meanings; in the first place, it is used to express the cause of motion,

-as when we speak of the force of gunpowder; it is also used to indicate

-motion itself, as when we refer to the force of a moving cannon-ball;

-and lastly it is employed to express the effect of motion, as when we

-speak of the blow which the moving body gives.[4] Because of this

-confusion, it has been found convenient to adopt Rankine’s

-suggestion,[5] and to substitute the word ‘energy’ therefor. And

-precisely as all force upon the earth’s surface—using the term force in

-its widest sense—may be divided into attraction and motion, so all

-energy is divided into potential and actual energy, synonymous with

-those terms. It is the chemical attraction of the atoms, or their

-potential energy, which makes gunpowder so powerful; it is the

-attraction or potential energy of gravitation which gives the power to a

-raised weight. If now, the impediments be removed, the power just now

-latent becomes active, attraction is converted into motion, potential

-into actual energy, and the desired effect is accomplished. The energy

-of gunpowder or of a raised weight is potential, is capable of acting;

-that of exploding gunpowder or of a falling weight is actual energy or

-motion. By applying a match to the gunpowder, by cutting the string

-which sustains the weight, we convert potential into actual energy. By

-potential energy, therefore, is meant attraction; and by actual energy,

-motion. It is in the latter sense that we shall use the word force in

-this lecture; and we shall speak of the forces of heat, light,

-electricity and mechanical motion, and of the attractions of

-gravitation, cohesion, chemism.

-

-From what has now been said, it is obvious that when we speak of the

-forces of heat, light, electricity or motion, we mean simply the

-different modes of motion called by these names. And when we say that

-they are correlated to each other, we mean simply that the mode of

-motion called heat, light, electricity, is convertible into any of the

-others, at pleasure. Correlation therefore implies convertibility, and

-mutual dependence and relationship.

-

-Having now defined the use of the term force, and shown that forces are

-correlated which are convertible and mutually dependent, we go on to

-study the evidences of such correlation among the motions of inorganic

-nature usually called physical forces; and to ask what proof science can

-furnish us that mechanical motion, heat, light, and electricity are thus

-mutually convertible. As we have already hinted, the time was when these

-forces were believed to be various kinds of imponderable matter, and

-chemists and physicists talked of the union of iron with caloric as they

-talked of its union with sulphur, regarding the caloric as much a

-distinct and inconvertible entity as the iron and sulphur themselves.

-Gradually, however, the idea of the indestructibility of matter extended

-itself to force. And as it was believed that no material particle could

-ever be lost, so, it was argued, no portion of the force existing in

-nature can disappear. Hence arose the idea of the indestructibility of

-force. But, of course, it was quite impossible to stop here. If force

-cannot be lost, the question at once arises, what becomes of it when it

-passes beyond our recognition? This question led to experiment, and out

-of experiment came the great fact of force-correlation; a fact which

-distinguished authority has pronounced the most important discovery of

-the present century.[6] These experiments distinctly proved that when

-any one of these forces disappeared, another took its place; that when

-motion was arrested, for example, heat, light or electricity was

-developed. In short, that these forces were so intimately related or

-correlated—to use the word then proposed by Mr. Grove[7]—that when one

-of them vanished, it did so only to reappear in terms of another. But

-one step more was necessary to complete this magnificent theory. What

-can produce motion but motion itself? Into what can motion be converted,

-but motion? May not these forces, thus mutually convertible, be simply

-different modes of motion of the molecules of matter, precisely as

-mechanical motion is a motion of its mass? Thus was born the dynamic

-theory of force, first brought out in any completeness by Mr. Grove, in

-1842, in a lecture on the “Progress of Physical Science,” delivered at

-the London Institution. In that lecture he said: “Light, heat,

-electricity, magnetism, motion, are all convertible material affections.

-Assuming either as the cause, one of the others will be the effect. Thus

-heat may be said to produce electricity, electricity to produce heat;

-magnetism to produce electricity, electricity magnetism; and so of the

-rest.”[8]

-

-A few simple experiments will help us to fix in our minds the great fact

-of the convertibility of force. Starting with actual visible motion,

-correlation requires that when it disappears as motion, it should

-reappear as heat, light, or electricity. If the moving body be elastic

-like this rubber ball, then its motion is not destroyed when it strikes,

-but is only changed in direction. But if it be non-elastic, like this

-ball of lead, then it does not rebound; its motion is converted into

-heat. The motion of this sledge-hammer, for example, which if received

-upon this anvil would be simply changed in direction, if allowed to fall

-upon this bar of lead, is converted into heat; the evidence of which is

-that a piece of phosphorus placed upon the lead is at once inflamed. So

-too, if motion be arrested by the cushion of air in this cylinder, the

-heat evolved fires the tinder carried in the plunger. But it is not

-necessary that the arrest of motion should be sudden; it may be gradual,

-as in the case of friction. If this cylinder containing water or alcohol

-be caused to revolve rapidly between the two sides of this wooden

-rubber, the heat due to the arrested motion will raise the temperature

-of the liquid to the boiling point, and the cork will be expelled. But

-motion may also be converted into electricity. Indeed electricity is

-always the result of friction between heterogeneous particles.[9] When

-this piece of hard rubber, for example, is rubbed with the fur of a cat,

-it is at once electrified; and now if it be caused to communicate a

-portion of its charge to this glass plate, to which at the same time we

-add the mechanical motion of rotation, the strong sparks produced give

-evidence of the conversion.

-

-So, too, taking heat as the initial force, motion, light, electricity

-may be produced. In every steam-engine the steam which leaves the

-cylinder is cooler than that which entered it, and cooler by exactly the

-amount of work done. The motion of the piston’s mass is precisely that

-lost by the steam molecules which batter against it. The conversion of

-heat into electricity, too, is also easily effected. When the junction

-of two metals is heated, electricity is developed. If the two metals be

-bismuth and antimony, as represented in this diagram, the currents flow

-as indicated by the arrows; and by multiplying the number of pairs, the

-effect may be proportionately increased. Such an arrangement, called a

-thermo-electric battery, we have here; and by it the heat of a single

-gas-burner may be made to move, when converted, this little electric

-bell-engine. Moreover, heat and light have the very closest analogy;

-exalt the rapidity with which the molecules move and light appears, the

-difference being only one of intensity.

-

-Again, if electricity be our starting point, we may accomplish its

-conversion into the other forces. Heat results whenever its passage is

-interrupted or resisted; a wire of the poorly conducting metal platinum

-becoming even red-hot by the converted electricity. To produce light, of

-course, we need only to intensify this action; the brightest artificial

-light known, results from a direct conversion of electricity.

-

-Enough has now been said to establish our point. What is to be

-particularly observed of these pieces of apparatus is that they are

-machines especially designed for the conversion of some one force into

-another. And we expect of them only that conversion. We pass on to

-consider for a moment the quantitative relations of this mutual

-convertibility. We notice, in the first place, that in all cases save

-one, the conversion is not perfect, a part of the force used not being

-utilized, on the one hand, and on the other, other forces making their

-appearance simultaneously. While, for example, the conversion of motion

-into heat is quite complete, the inverse conversion is not at all so.

-And on the other hand, when motion is converted into electricity, a part

-of it appears as heat. This simultaneous production of many forces is

-well illustrated by our little bell-engine, which converts the

-electricity of the thermo-battery into magnetism, and this into motion,

-a part of which expends itself as sound. For these reasons the question

-“How much?” is one not easily answered in all cases. The best known of

-these relations is that between motion and heat, which was first

-established by Mr. Joule in 1849, after seven years of patient

-investigation.[10] The apparatus which he used is shown in the diagram.

-It consists of a cylindrical box of metal, through the cover of which

-passes a shaft, carrying upon its lower end a set of paddles, immersed

-in water within the box, and upon its upper portion a drum, on which are

-wound two cords, which, passing in opposite directions, run over

-pulleys, and are attached to known weights. The temperature of the water

-within the box being carefully noted, the weights are then allowed to

-fall a certain number of times, of course in their fall turning the

-paddles against the friction of the liquid. At the close of the

-experiment the water is found to be warmer than before. And by measuring

-the amount of this rise in temperature, knowing the distance through

-which the weights have fallen, it is easy to calculate the quantity of

-heat which corresponds to a given amount of motion. In this way, and as

-a mean of a large number of experiments, Mr. Joule found that the amount

-of mass motion in a body weighing one pound, which had fallen from a

-hight of 772 feet, was exactly equal to the molecular motion which must

-be added to a pound of water, in order to heat it one degree Fahrenheit.

-If we call the actual energy of a body weighing one pound which has

-fallen one foot, a foot-pound, then we may speak of the mechanical

-equivalent of heat as being 772 foot-pounds.

-

-The significance and value of this numerical constant will appear more

-clearly if we apply it to the solution of one or two simple problems.

-During the recent war two immense iron guns were cast in Pittsburgh,

-whose weight was nearly 112,000 pounds each, and which had a caliber of

-20 inches.[11] Upon this diagram is a calculation of the effective blow

-which the solid shot of such a gun, assuming its weight to be 1,000

-pounds and its velocity 1,100 feet per second, would give; it is 902,797

-tons![12] Now, if it were possible to convert the whole of this enormous

-mechanical power into heat, to how much would it correspond? This

-question may be answered by the aid of the mechanical equivalent of

-heat; here is the calculation, from which we see that when 17 gallons of

-ice-cold water are heated to the boiling point, as much energy is

-communicated as is contained in the death-dealing missile at its highest

-velocity.[13] Again, if we take the impact of a larger cannon-ball, our

-earth, which is whirling through space with a velocity of 19 miles a

-second, we find it to be 98,416,136,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

-tons![14] Were this energy all converted into heat, it would equal that

-produced by the combustion of 14 earths of solid coal.[15]

-

-The conversion of heat into motion, however, as already stated, is not

-as perfect. The best steam-engines economize only one-twentieth of the

-heat of the fuel.[16] Hence if a steamship require 600 tons of coal to

-carry her across the Atlantic, 570 tons will be expended in heating the

-waters of the ocean, the heat of the remaining 30 tons only being

-converted into work.

-

-One other quantitative determination of force has also been made. Prof.

-Julius Thomsen, of Copenhagen, has fixed experimentally the mechanical

-equivalent of light.[17] He finds that the energy of the light of a

-spermaceti candle burning 126½ grains per hour, is equal in mechanical

-value to 13·1 foot-pounds per minute. The same conclusion has been

-reached by Mr. Farmer, of Boston, from different data.[18]

-

-If we pass from the actual physical energies or motions to consider for

-a moment the potential energies or attractions, we find, also, an

-intimate correlation. Since all energy not active in motion is potential

-in attraction, it follows that in the attractions we have energy stored

-up for subsequent use. The sun is thus storing up energy: every minute

-it raises 2,000,000,000 tons of water to the mean hight of the clouds,

-3½ miles; and the actual energy set free when this water falls is equal

-to 2,757,000,000,000 horse-powers.[19] So when the oxygen and the zinc

-of the ore are separated in the furnace, the actual energy of heat

-becomes the potential energy of chemical attraction, which again becomes

-actual in the form of electricity when the zinc is dissolved in an acid.

-We see, then, that not only may any form of force or actual energy be

-stored up as any form of attraction or potential energy, but that the

-latter, from whatsoever source derived, may appear as heat, light,

-electricity, or mechanical motion.

-

-Having now established the fact of correlation for the physical forces,

-we have next to inquire what are the evidences of the correlation of the

-vital forces with them. But in the first place it must be remarked that

-life is not a simple term like heat or electricity; it is a complex

-term, and includes all those phenomena which a living body exhibits. In

-this discussion, therefore, we shall use the term vital force to express

-only the actual energy of the body, however manifested. As to the

-attractions or the potential energy of the organism, nothing is more

-fully settled in science than the fact that these are precisely the same

-within the body as without it. Every particle of matter within the body

-obeys implicitly the laws of the chemical and physical attractions. No

-overpowering or supernatural agency comes in to complicate their action,

-which is modified only by the action of the others. Vitality, therefore,

-is the sum of the energies of a living body, both potential and actual.

-

-Moreover, the important fact must be fully recognized that in living

-beings we have to do with no new elementary forms of matter. Precisely

-the same atoms which build up the inorganic fabric, compose the organic.

-In the early days of chemistry, indeed, it was supposed that the

-complicated molecules which life produced were beyond the reach of

-simple chemical law. But as more and more complex molecules have been,

-one after another, produced, chemistry has become re-assured, and now

-doubts not her ability to produce them all. A few years hence, and she

-will doubtless give us quinine and protagon, as she now gives us

-coumarin and neurine, substances the synthesis of which was but

-yesterday an impossibility.[20]

-

-In studying the phenomena of living beings, it is important also to bear

-in mind the different and at the same time the coördinate purposes

-subserved by the two great kingdoms of nature. The food of the plant is

-matter whose energy is all expended; it is a fallen weight. But the

-plant-organism receives it, exposes it to the sun’s ray, and, in a way

-yet mysterious to us, converts the actual energy of the sunlight into

-potential energy within it. The fallen weight is thus raised, and energy

-is stored up in substances which now are alone competent to become the

-food of the animal. This food is not such because any new atoms have

-been added to it; it is food because it contains within it potential

-energy, which at any time may become actual as force. This food the

-animal now appropriates; he brings it in contact with oxygen, and the

-potential energy becomes actual; he cuts the string, the weight falls,

-and what was just now only attraction, has become actual force; this

-force he uses for his own purposes, and hands back the oxidized matter,

-the fallen weight, to the plant to be again de-oxidized, to be again

-raised. The plant then is to be regarded as a machine for converting

-sunlight into potential energy; the animal, a machine for setting the

-potential energy free as actual, and economizing it. The force which the

-plant stores up is undeniably physical; must not the force which the

-animal sets free by its conversion, be intimately correlated to it?

-

-But approaching our question still more closely, let us, in illustration

-of the vital forces of the animal economy, choose three forms of its

-manifestation in which to seek for the evidences of correlation; these

-shall be heat, evolved within the body; muscular energy or motion; and

-lastly, nervous energy, or that form of force which, on the one hand,

-stimulates a muscle to contract, and on the other, appears in forms

-called mental.

-

-The heat which is produced by the living body is obviously of the same

-nature as heat from any other source; it is recognized by the same

-tests, and may be applied for the same purposes. As to its origin, it is

-evident that since potential energy exists in the food which enters the

-body, and is there converted into force, a portion of it may become the

-actual energy of heat. And since, too, the heat produced in the body is

-precisely such as would be set free by the combustion of this food

-outside of it, it is fair to assume that it thus originates. To this may

-be added the chemical argument that while food capable of yielding heat

-by combustion is taken into the body, its constituents are completely or

-almost completely, oxidized before leaving it; and since oxidation

-always evolves heat, the heat of the body must have its origin in the

-oxidation of the food. Moreover, careful measurements have demonstrated

-that the amount of heat given off by the body of a man weighing 180

-pounds is about 2,500,000 units. Accurate calculations have shown, on

-the other hand, that 288·4 grams of carbon and 12·56 grams of hydrogen

-are available in the daily food for the production of heat. If burned

-out of the body, these quantities of carbon and hydrogen would yield

-2,765,134 heat units. Burned within it, as we have just seen, 2,500,000

-units appear as heat; the rest in other forms of energy.[21] We

-conceive, however, that no long argument is necessary to prove that

-animal heat results from a conversion of energy within the body; or that

-the vital force heat, is as truly correlated to the other forces as when

-it has a purely physical origin.

-

-The belief that the muscular force exerted by an animal is created by

-him is by no means confined to the very earliest ages of history.

-Traces of it appear to the careful observer even now, although, as Dr.

-Frankland says, science has proved that “an animal can no more

-generate an amount of force capable of moving a grain of sand than a

-stone can fall upward or a locomotive drive a train without fuel.”[22]

-In studying the characters of muscular action we notice, first, that,

-as in the case of heat, the force which it develops is in no wise

-different from motion in inorganic nature. In the early part of the

-lecture, motion produced by the contraction of muscle, was used to

-show the conversion of mass-force into molecular force. No one in this

-room believes, I presume, that the result would have been at all

-different, had the motion been supplied by a steam-engine or a

-water-wheel. Again, food, as we have seen, is of value for the

-potential energy it contains, which may become actual in the body.

-Liebig, in 1842, asserted that for the production of muscular force,

-the food must first be converted into muscular tissue,[23] a view

-until recently accepted by physiologists.[24] It has been conclusively

-shown, however, within a few years, that muscular force cannot come

-from the oxidation of its own substance, since the products of this

-metamorphosis are not increased in amount by muscular exertion.[25]

-Indeed, reasoning from the whole amount of such products excreted, the

-oxidation of the amount of muscle which they represent would furnish

-scarcely one-fifth of the mechanical force of the body. But while the

-products of tissue-oxidation do not increase with the increase of

-muscular exertion, the amount of carbonic gas exhaled by the lungs is

-increased in the exact ratio of the work done.[26] No doubt can be

-entertained, therefore, that the actual energy of the muscle is simply

-the converted potential energy of the carbon of the food. A muscle,

-therefore, like a steam-engine, is a machine for converting the

-potential energy of carbon into motion. But unlike a steam-engine, the

-muscle accomplishes this conversion directly, the energy not passing

-through the intermediate stage of heat. For this reason, the muscle is

-the most economical producer of mechanical force known. While no

-machine whatever can transform all of the energy into motion—the most

-economical steam-engines utilizing only one-twentieth of the heat—the

-muscle is able to convert one-fifth of the energy of the food into

-work.[27] The other four-fifths must, therefore, appear as heat.

-Whenever a muscle contracts, then, four times as much energy appears

-as heat as is converted into motion. Direct experiments by Heidenhain

-have confirmed this, by showing that an important rise of temperature

-attends muscular contraction;[28] a fact, however, apparent to any one

-who has ever taken active exercise. The work done by the animal body

-is of two sorts, internal and external. The former includes the action

-of the heart, of the respiratory muscles, and of those assisting the

-digestive process. The latter refers to the useful work the body may

-perform. Careful estimates place the entire work of the body at about

-800 foot-tons daily; of which 450 foot-tons is internal, 350 foot-tons

-external work. And since the internal work ultimately appears as heat

-within the body, the actual loss of heat by the production of motion

-is the equivalent of the 350 foot-tons which represents external work.

-This by a simple calculation will be found to be 250,000 heat units,

-almost the precise amount by which the heat yielded by the food when

-burned without the body, exceeds that actually evolved by the

-organism. Moreover, while the total heat given off by the body is

-2,500,000 units, the amount of energy evolved as work is equal to

-about 600,000 heat units; hence the amount of work done by a muscle is

-as above stated, one-fifth of the actual energy derivable from the

-food. One point further. The law of correlation requires that the heat

-set free when a muscle in contracting does work, shall be less than

-when it effects nothing; this fact, too, has been experimentally

-established by Heidenhain.[29] So, again, when muscular contraction

-does not result in motion, as when one tries to raise a weight too

-heavy for him, the energy which would have appeared as work, takes the

-form of heat: a result deducible by the law of correlation from the

-steam-engine.

-

-The last of the so-called vital forces which we are to examine, is that

-produced by the nerves and nervous centers. In the nerve which

-stimulates a muscle to contract, this force is undeniably motion, since

-it is propagated along this nerve from one extremity to the other. In

-common language, too, this idea finds currency in the comparison of this

-force to electricity; the gray or cellular matter being the battery, the

-white or fibrous matter the conductors. That this force is not

-electricity, however, Du Bois-Reymond has demonstrated by showing that

-its velocity is only 97 feet in a second, a speed equaled by the

-greyhound and the race-horse.[30] In his opinion, the propagation of a

-nervous impulse is a sort of successive molecular polarization, like

-magnetism. But that this agent is a force, as analogous to electricity

-as is magnetism, is shown not only by the fact that the transmission of

-electricity along a nerve will cause the contraction of the muscle to

-which it leads, but also by the more important fact that the contraction

-of a muscle is excited by diminishing its normal electrical current;[31]

-a result which could take place only with a stimulus closely allied to

-electricity. Nerve-force, therefore, must be a transmuted potential

-energy.

-

-What, now, shall we say of that highest manifestation of animal life,

-thought-power? Has the upper region called intelligence and reason, any

-relations to physical force? This realm has not escaped the searching

-investigation of modern science; and although in it investigations are

-vastly more difficult than in any of the regions thus far considered,

-yet some results of great value have been obtained, which may help us to

-a solution of our problem. It is to be observed at the outset that every

-external manifestation of thought-force is a muscular one, as a word

-spoken or written, a gesture, or an expression of the face; and hence

-this force must be intimately correlated with nerve-force. These

-manifestations, reaching the mind through the avenues of sense, awaken

-accordant trains of thought only when this muscular evidence is

-understood. A blank sheet of paper excites no emotion; even covered with

-Assyrian cuneiform characters, its alternations of black and white

-awaken no response in the ordinary brain. It is only when, by a frequent

-repetition of these impressions, the brain-cell has been educated, that

-these before meaningless characters awaken thought. Is thought, then,

-simply a cell action which may or may not result in muscular

-expression—an action which originates new combinations of truth only,

-precisely as a calculating machine evolves new combinations of figures?

-Whatever we define thought to be, this fact appears certain, that it is

-capable of external manifestation by conversion into the actual energy

-of motion, and only by this conversion. But here the question arises,

-Can it be manifested inwardly without such a transformation of energy?

-Or is the evolution of thought entirely independent of the matter of the

-brain? Experiments, ingenious and reliable, have answered this question.

-The importance of the results will, I trust, warrant me in examining the

-methods employed in these experiments somewhat in detail. Inasmuch as

-our methods for measuring minute amounts of electricity are very

-perfect, and the methods for the conversion of heat into electricity are

-equally delicate, it has been found that smaller differences of

-temperature may be recognized by converting the heat into electricity,

-than can be detected thermometrically. The apparatus, first used by

-Melloni in 1832,[32] is very simple, consisting first, of a pair of

-metallic bars like those described in the early part of the lecture, for

-effecting the conversion of the heat; and second, of a delicate

-galvanometer, for measuring the electricity produced. In the experiments

-in question one of the bars used was made of bismuth, the other of an

-alloy of antimony and zinc.[33] Preliminary trials having shown that any

-change of temperature within the skull was soonest manifested externally

-in that depression which exists just above the occipital protuberance, a

-pair of these little bars was fastened to the head at this point; and to

-neutralize the results of a general rise of temperature over the whole

-body, a second pair, reversed in direction, was attached to the leg or

-arm, so that if a like increase of heat came to both, the electricity

-developed by one would be neutralized by the other, and no effect be

-produced upon the needle unless only one was affected. By long practice

-it was ascertained that a state of mental torpor could be induced,

-lasting for hours, in which the needle remained stationary. But let a

-person knock on the door outside the room, or speak a single word, even

-though the experimenter remained absolutely passive, and the reception

-of the intelligence caused the needle to swing through 20 degrees.[34]

-In explanation of this production of heat, the analogy of the muscle at

-once suggests itself. No conversion of energy is complete; and as the

-heat of muscular action represents force which has escaped conversion

-into motion, so the heat evolved during the reception of an idea, is

-energy which has escaped conversion into thought, from precisely the

-same cause. Moreover, these experiments have shown that ideas which

-affect the emotions, produce most heat in their reception; “a few

-minutes’ recitation to one’s self of emotional poetry, producing more

-effect than several hours of deep thought.” Hence it is evident that the

-mechanism for the production of deep thought, accomplishes this

-conversion of energy far more perfectly than that which produces simply

-emotion. But we may take a step further in this same direction. A

-muscle, precisely as the law of correlation requires, develops less heat

-when doing work than when it contracts without doing it. Suppose, now,

-that beside the simple reception of an idea by the brain, the thought is

-expressed outwardly by some muscular sign. The conversion now takes two

-directions, and in addition to the production of thought, a portion of

-the energy appears as nerve and muscle-power; less, therefore, should

-appear as heat, according to our law of correlation. Dr. Lombard’s

-experiments have shown that the amount of heat developed by the

-recitation to one’s self of emotional poetry, was in every case less

-when that recitation was oral; _i.e._, had a muscular expression. These

-results are in accordance with the well-known fact that emotion often

-finds relief in physical demonstrations; thus diminishing the emotional

-energy by converting it into muscular. Nor do these facts rest upon

-physical evidence alone. Chemistry teaches that thought-force, like

-muscle-force, comes from the food; and demonstrates that the force

-evolved by the brain, like that produced by the muscle, comes not from

-the disintegration of its own tissue, but is the converted energy of

-burning carbon.[35] Can we longer doubt, then, that the brain, too, is a

-machine for the conversion of energy? Can we longer refuse to believe

-that even thought is, in some mysterious way, correlated to the other

-natural forces? and this, even in face of the fact that it has never yet

-been measured?[36]

-

-I cannot close without saying a word concerning the part which our own

-country has had in the development of these great truths. Beginning with

-heat, we find that the material theory of caloric is indebted for its

-overthrow more to the distinguished Count Rumford than to any other one

-man. While superintending the boring of cannon at the Munich Arsenal

-towards the close of the last century, he was struck by the large amount

-of heat developed, and instituted a careful series of experiments to

-ascertain its origin. These experiments led him to the conclusion that

-“anything which any insulated body or system of bodies can continue to

-furnish without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance.”

-But this man, to whom must be ascribed the discovery of the first great

-law of the correlation of energy, was an American. Born in Woburn,

-Mass., in 1753, he, under the name of Benjamin Thompson, taught school

-afterward at Concord, N. H., then called Rumford. Unjustly suspected of

-toryism during our Revolutionary war, he went abroad and distinguished

-himself in the service of several of the Governments of Europe. He did

-not forget his native land, though she had treated him so unfairly; when

-the honor of knighthood was tendered him, he chose as his title the name

-of the Yankee village where he had taught school, and was thenceforward

-known as Count Rumford. And at his death, by founding a professorship in

-Harvard College, and donating a prize-fund to the American Academy of

-Arts and Sciences at Boston, he showed his interest in her prosperity

-and advancement.[37] Nor has the field of vital forces been without

-earnest workers belonging to our own country. Professors John W.

-Draper[38] and Joseph Henry[39] were among its earliest explorers. And

-in 1851, Dr. J. H. Watters, now of St. Louis, published a theory of the

-origin of vital force, almost identical with that for which Dr.

-Carpenter, of London, has of late received so much credit. Indeed, there

-is some reason to believe that Dr. Watters’s essay may have suggested to

-the distinguished English physiologist the germs of his own theory.[40]

-A paper on this subject by Prof. Joseph Leconte, of Columbia, S. C.,

-published in 1859, attracted much attention abroad.[41] The remarkable

-results already given on the relation of heat to mental work, which thus

-far are unique in science, we owe to Professor J. S. Lombard, of Harvard

-College;[42] the very combination of metals used in his apparatus being

-devised by our distinguished electrical engineer, Mr. Moses G. Farmer.

-Finally, researches conducted by Dr. T. R. Noyes in the Physiological

-Laboratory of Yale College, have confirmed the theory that muscular

-tissue does not wear during action, up to the point of fatigue;[43] and

-other researches by Dr. L. H. Wood have first established the same great

-truth for brain-tissue.[44] We need not be ashamed, then, of our part in

-this advance in science. Our workers are, indeed, but few; but both they

-and their results will live in the records of the world’s progress. More

-would there be now of them were such studies more fostered and

-encouraged. Self-denying, earnest men are ready to give themselves up to

-the solution of these problems, if only the means of a bare subsistence

-be allowed them. When wealth shall foster science, science will increase

-wealth—wealth pecuniary, it is true: but also wealth of knowledge, which

-is far better.

-

-In looking back over the whole of this discussion, I trust that it is

-possible to see that the objects which we had in view at its

-commencement have been more or less fully attained. I would fain believe

-that we now see more clearly the beautiful harmonies of bounteous

-nature; that on her many-stringed instrument force answers to force,

-like the notes of a great symphony; disappearing now in potential

-energy, and anon reappearing as actual energy, in a multitude of forms.

-I would hope that this wonderful unity and mutual interaction of force

-in the dead forms of inorganic nature, appears to you identical in the

-living forms of animal and vegetable life, which make of our earth an

-Eden. That even that mysterious, and in many aspects awful, power of

-thought, by which man influences the present and future ages, is a part

-of this great ocean of energy. But here the great question rolls upon

-us, Is it only this? Is there not behind this material substance, a

-higher than molecular power in the thoughts which are immortalized in

-the poetry of a Milton or a Shakespeare, the art creations of a Michael

-Angelo or a Titian, the harmonies of a Mozart or a Beethoven? Is there

-really no immortal portion separable from this brain-tissue, though yet

-mysteriously united to it? In a word, does this curiously-fashioned body

-inclose a soul, God-given and to God returning? Here Science veils her

-face and bows in reverence before the Almighty. We have passed the

-boundaries by which physical science is enclosed. No crucible, no subtle

-magnetic needle can answer now our questions. No word but His who formed

-us, can break the awful silence. In presence of such a revelation

-Science is dumb, and faith comes in joyfully to accept that higher truth

-which can never be the object of physical demonstration.

-

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-                         NOTES AND REFERENCES.

-

-

-Footnote 1:

-

-  HUMBOLDT, Views of Nature, Bohn’s ed., London, 1850, p. 380. This

-  allegory did not appear in the first edition of the Views of Nature.

-  In the preface to the second edition the author gives the following

-  account of its origin: “Schiller,” he says, “in remembrance of his

-  youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me, during my long

-  stay at Jena, on physiological subjects.” * * * “It was at this period

-  that I wrote the little allegory on Vital Force, called The Rhodian

-  Genius. The predilection which Schiller entertained for this piece,

-  which he admitted into his periodical, _Die Horen_, gave me courage to

-  introduce it here.” It was published in _Die Horen_ in 1795.

-

-Footnote 2:

-

-  HUMBOLDT, _op. cit._, p. 386. In his _Aphorismi ex doctrina

-  Physiologiæ chemicæ Plantarum_, appended to his _Flora Fribergensis

-  subterranea_, published in 1793, Humboldt had said “Vim internam, quæ

-  chymicæ affinitatis vincula resolvit, atque obstat, quominus elementa

-  corporum libere conjungantur, vitalem vocamus.” “That internal force,

-  which dissolves the bonds of chemical affinity, and prevents the

-  elements of bodies from freely uniting, we call vital.” But in a note

-  to the allegory above mentioned, added to the third edition of the

-  Views of Nature in 1849, he says: “Reflection and prolonged study in

-  the departments of physiology and chemistry have deeply shaken my

-  earlier belief in peculiar so-called vital forces. In the year 1797, *

-  * * I already declared that I by no means regarded the existence of

-  these peculiar vital forces as established.” And again: “The

-  difficulty of satisfactorily referring the vital phenomena of the

-  organism to physical and chemical laws depends chiefly (and almost in

-  the same manner as the prediction of meteorological processes in the

-  atmosphere) on the complication of the phenomena, and on the great

-  number of the simultaneously acting forces as well as the conditions

-  of their activity.”

-

-Footnote 3:

-

-  Compare HENRY BENCE JONES, Croonian Lectures on Matter and Force.

-  London, 1868, John Churchill & Sons.

-

-Footnote 4:

-

-  Ib., Preface, p. vi.

-

-Footnote 5:

-

-  RANKINE, W. J. M., Philosophical Magazine, Feb., 1853. Also Edinburgh

-  Philosophical Journal, July, 1855.

-

-Footnote 6:

-

-  ARMSTRONG, Sir WM. In his address as President of the British

-  Association for the Advancement of Science. Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1863,

-  li.

-

-Footnote 7:

-

-  GROVE, W. R., in 1842. Compare “Nature” i, 335, Jan. 27, 1870. Also

-  Appleton’s Journal, iii, 324, Mch. 19, 1870.

-

-Footnote 8:

-

-  Id., in Preface to The Correlation of Physical Forces, 4th ed.

-  Reprinted in The Correlation and Conservation of Forces, edited by E.

-  L. Youmans, p. 7. New York, 1865, D. Appleton & Co.

-

-Footnote 9:

-

-  Id., ib., Am. ed., p. 33 et seq.

-

-Footnote 10:

-

-  JOULE, J. P., Philosophical Transactions, 1850, p. 61.

-

-Footnote 11:

-

-  See American Journal of Science, II, xxxvii, 296, 1864.

-

-Footnote 12:

-

-  The work (W) done by a moving body is commonly expressed by the

-  formula W = MV^2, in which M, or the mass of the body, is equal to

-  w/2g; _i.e._, to the weight divided by twice the intensity of gravity.

-  The work done by our cannon-ball then, would be (1 × (1100)^2)/(2 ×

-  64⅓) = 9,404·14 foot-tons. If, further, we assume the resisting body

-  to be of such a character as to bring the ball to rest in moving ¼ of

-  an inch, then the final pressure would be 9,404·14 × 12 × 4 =

-  451,398·7 tons. But since, “in the case of a perfectly elastic body,

-  or of a resistance proportional to the advance of the center of

-  gravity of the impinging body from the point at which contact first

-  takes place, the final pressure (provided the body struck is perfectly

-  rigid) is double what would occur were the stoppage to occur at the

-  end of a corresponding advance against a uniform resistance,” this

-  result must be multiplied by two; and we get (451,398·7 × 2) 902,797

-  tons as the crushing pressure of the ball under these conditions.

-  Note: The author’s thanks are due to his friends Pres. F. A. P.

-  Barnard and Mr. J. J. Skinner for suggestions on the relation of

-  impact to statical pressure.

-

-Footnote 13:

-

-  The unit of impact being that given by a body weighing one pound and

-  moving one foot a second, the impact of such a body falling from a

-  hight of 772 feet—the velocity acquired being 222¼ feet per second

-  (=√(2sg))—would be 1 × (222¼)^2 = 49,408 units, the equivalent in

-  impact of one heat-unit. A cannon-ball weighing 1000 lbs. and moving

-  1100 feet a second would have an impact of (1100)^2 × 1000 =

-  1,210,000,000 units. Dividing this by 49,408, the quotient is 24489

-  heat units, the equivalent of the impact. The specific heat of iron

-  being ·1138, this amount of heat would raise the temperature of one

-  pound of iron 215.191° F. (24,489 × ·1138) or of 1000 pounds of iron

-  215° F. 24489 pounds of water heated one degree, is equal to 136½

-  pounds, or 17 gallons U. S., heated 180 degrees; _i.e._, from 32° to

-  212° F.

-

-Footnote 14:

-

-  Assuming the density of the earth to be 5·5, its weight would be

-  6,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, and its impact—by the formula

-  given above—would be 1,025,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

-  foot-tons. Making the same supposition as in the case of our

-  cannon-ball, the final pressure would be that here stated.

-

-Footnote 15:

-

-  TYNDALL, J., Heat considered as a mode of Motion; Am. ed., p. 57, New

-  York, 1863.

-

-Footnote 16:

-

-  RANKINE (The Steam-engine and other prime Movers, London, 1866,) gives

-  the efficiency of Steam-engines as from 1-15th to 1-20th of the heat

-  of the fuel.

-

-  ARMSTRONG, Sir WM., places this efficiency at 1-10th as the maximum.

-  In practice, the average result is only 1-30th. Rep. Brit. Assoc.,

-  1863, p. liv.

-

-  HELMHOLTZ, H. L. F., says: “The best expansive engines give back as

-  mechanical work only eighteen per cent. of the heat generated by the

-  fuel.” Interaction of Natural Forces, in Correlation and Conservation

-  of Forces, p. 227.

-

-Footnote 17:

-

-  THOMSEN, JULIUS, Poggendorff’s Annalen, cxxv, 348. Also in abstract in

-  Am. J. Sci., II, xli, 396, May, 1866.

-

-Footnote 18:

-

-  American Journal of Science, II, xli, 214, March, 1866.

-

-Footnote 19:

-

-  In this calculation the annual evaporation from the ocean is assumed

-  to be about 9 feet. (See Dr. BUIST, quoted in Maury’s Phys. Geography

-  of the Sea, New York, 1861, p. 11.) Calling the water-area of our

-  globe 150,000,000 square miles, the total evaporation in tons per

-  minute, would be that here given. Inasmuch as 30,000 pounds raised

-  one-foot high is a horse-power, the number of horse-powers necessary

-  to raise this quantity of water 3½ miles in one minute is

-  2,757,000,000,000. This amount of energy is precisely that set free

-  again when this water falls as rain.

-

-Footnote 20:

-

-  Compare ODLING, WM., Lectures on Animal Chemistry, London, 1866. “In

-  broad antagonism to the doctrines which only a few years back were

-  regarded as indisputable, we now find that the chemist, like the

-  plant, is capable of producing from carbonic acid and water a whole

-  host of organic bodies, and we see no reason to question his ultimate

-  ability to reproduce all animal and vegetable principles whatsoever.”

-  (p. 52.)

-

-  “Already hundreds of organic principles have been built up from their

-  constituent elements, and there is now no reason to doubt our

-  capability of producing all organic principles whatsoever in a similar

-  manner.” (p. 58.)

-

-  Dr. Odling is the successor of Faraday as Fullerian Professor of

-  Chemistry in the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

-

-Footnote 21:

-

-  MARSHALL, JOHN, Outlines of Physiology, American edition, 1868, p.

-  916.

-

-Footnote 22:

-

-  FRANKLAND, EDWARD, On the Source of Muscular Power, Proc. Roy. Inst.,

-  June 8, 1866; Am. J. Sci., II, xlii, 393, Nov. 1866.

-

-Footnote 23:

-

-  LIEBIG, JUSTUS VON, Die organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf

-  Physiologie und Pathologie, Braunschweig, 1842. Also in his Animal

-  Chemistry, edition of 1852 (Am. ed., p. 26), where he says “Every

-  motion increases the amount of organized tissue which undergoes

-  metamorphosis.”

-

-Footnote 24:

-

-  Compare DRAPER, JOHN WM. Human Physiology.

-

-  PLAYFAIR, LYON, On the Food of Man in relation to his useful work,

-  Edinburgh, 1865. Proc. Roy. Inst., Apr. 28, 1865.

-

-  RANKE, Tetanus eine Physiologische Studie, Leipzig, 1865.

-

-  ODLING, _op. cit._

-

-Footnote 25:

-

-  VOIT, E., Untersuchungen über den Einfluss des Kochsalzes, des

-  Kaffees, und der Muskelbewegungen auf den Stoffwechsel, Munich, 1860.

-

-  SMITH, E., Philosophical Transactions, 1861, 747.

-

-  FICK, A., and WISLICENUS, J., Phil. Mag., IV, xxxi, 485.

-

-  FRANKLAND, E., _loc. cit._

-

-  NOYES, T. R., American Journal Medical Sciences, Oct. 1867.

-

-  PARKES, E. A., Proceedings Royal Society, xv, 339; xvi, 44.

-

-Footnote 26:

-

-  SMITH, EDWARD, Philosophical Transactions, 1859, 709.

-

-Footnote 27:

-

-  Authorities differ as to the amount of energy converted by the

-  steam-engine. (See Note 16.) Compare MARSHALL, _op. cit._, p. 918.

-  “Whilst, therefore, in an engine one-twentieth part only of the fuel

-  consumed is utilized as mechanical power, one-fifth of the food

-  absorbed by man is so appropriated.”

-

-Footnote 28:

-

-  HEIDENHAIN, Mechanische Leistung Wärmeentwickelung und Stoffumsatz bei

-  der Muskelthätigkeit, Breslau, 1864.

-

-  See also HAUGHTON, SAMUEL, On the Relation of Food to work, published

-  in “Medicine in Modern Times,” London, 1869, Macmillan & Co.

-

-Footnote 29:

-

-  HEIDENHAIN, _op. cit._ Also by FICK, Untersuchungen über

-  Muskel-arbeit, Basel, 1867. Compare also “Nature,” i, 159, Dec. 9,

-  1869.

-

-Footnote 30:

-

-  DU BOIS-REYMOND, EMIL, On the time required for the transmission of

-  volition and sensation through the nerves, Proc. Roy. Inst. Also in

-  Appendix to Bence Jones’s Croonian lectures.

-

-Footnote 31:

-

-  MARSHALL, _op. cit._, p. 227.

-

-Footnote 32:

-

-  MELLONI, Ann. Ch. Phys., xlviii, 198.

-

-  See also NOBILI, Bibl. Univ., xliv, 225, 1830; lvii, 1, 1834.

-

-Footnote 33:

-

-  The apparatus employed is illustrated and fully described in

-  Brown-Sequard’s Archives de Physiologie, i, 498, June, 1868. By it the

-  1-4000th of a degree Centigrade may be indicated.

-

-Footnote 34:

-

-  LOMBARD, J. S., New York Medical Journal, v, 198, June, 1867. [A part

-  of these facts were communicated to me directly by their discoverer.]

-

-Footnote 35:

-

-  WOOD, L. H., On the influence of Mental activity on the Excretion of

-  Phosphoric acid by the Kidneys. Proceedings Connecticut Medical

-  Society for 1869, p. 197.

-

-Footnote 36:

-

-  On this question of vital force, see LIEBIG, Animal Chemistry. “The

-  increase of mass in a plant is determined by the occurrence of a

-  decomposition which takes place in certain parts of the plant under

-  the influence of light and heat.”

-

-  “The modern science of Physiology has left the track of Aristotle. To

-  the eternal advantage of science, and to the benefit of mankind it no

-  longer invents a _horror vacui_, a _quinta essentia_, in order to

-  furnish credulous hearers with solutions and explanations of

-  phenomena, whose true connection with others, whose ultimate cause is

-  still unknown.”

-

-  “All the parts of the animal body are produced from a peculiar fluid

-  circulating in its organism, by virtue of an influence residing in

-  every cell, in every organ, or part of an organ.”

-

-  “Physiology has sufficiently decisive grounds for the opinion that

-  every motion, every manifestation of force, is the result of a

-  transformation of the structure or of its substance; that every

-  conception, every mental affection, is followed by changes in the

-  chemical nature of the secreted fluids; that every thought, every

-  sensation is accompanied by a change in the composition of the

-  substance of the brain.”

-

-  “All vital activity arises from the mutual action of the oxygen of the

-  atmosphere and the elements of the food.”

-

-  “As, in the closed galvanic circuit, in consequence of certain changes

-  which an inorganic body, a metal, undergoes when placed in contact

-  with an acid, a certain something becomes cognizable by our senses,

-  which we call a current of electricity; so in the animal body, in

-  consequence of transformations and changes undergone by matter

-  previously constituting a part of the organism, certain phenomena of

-  motion and activity are perceived, and these we call life, or

-  vitality.”

-

-  “In the animal body we recognize as the ultimate cause of all force

-  only one cause, the chemical action which the elements of the food and

-  the oxygen of the air mutually exercise on each other. The only known

-  ultimate cause of vital force, either in animals or in plants, is a

-  chemical process.”

-

-  “If we consider the force which determines the vital phenomena as a

-  property of certain substances, this view leads of itself to a new and

-  more rigorous consideration of certain singular phenomena, which these

-  very substances exhibit, in circumstances in which they no longer make

-  a part of living organisms.”

-

-  Also OWEN, RICHARD, (Derivative Hypothesis of Life and Species,

-  forming the 40th chapter of his Anatomy of Vertebrates, republished in

-  Am. J. Sci., II, xlvii, 33, Jan. 1869.) “In the endeavor to clearly

-  comprehend and explain the functions of the combination of forces

-  called ‘brain,’ the physiologist is hindered and troubled by the views

-  of the nature of those cerebral forces which the needs of dogmatic

-  theology have imposed on mankind.” * *

-

-  “Religion pure and undefiled, can best answer how far it is righteous

-  or just to charge a neighbor with being unsound in his principles who

-  holds the term ‘life’ to be a sound expressing the sum of living

-  phenomena; and who maintains these phenomena to be modes of force into

-  which other forms of force have passed, from potential to active

-  states, and reciprocally, through the agency of these sums or

-  combinations of forces impressing the mind with the ideas signified by

-  the terms ‘monad,’ ‘moss,’ ‘plant,’ or ‘animal.’”

-

-  And HUXLEY, THOS. H., “On the Physical Basis of Life,” University

-  Series, No. 1. College Courant, 1870.

-

-  _Per contra_, see the Address of Dr. F. A. P. Barnard, as retiring

-  President, before the Am. Assoc. for the Advancement of Science,

-  Chicago meeting, August, 1868. “Thought cannot be a physical force,

-  because thought admits of no measure.”

-

-  GOULD, BENJ. APTHORP, Address as retiring President, before the

-  American Association at its Salem meeting, Aug., 1869.

-

-  BEALE, LIONEL S., “Protoplasm, or Life, Matter, and Mind.” London,

-  1870. John Churchill & Sons.

-

-Footnote 37:

-

-  For an excellent account of this distinguished man, see Youmans’s

-  Introduction to the Correlation and Conservation of Forces, p. xvii.

-

-Footnote 38:

-

-  DRAPER, J. W., _loc. cit._

-

-Footnote 39:

-

-  HENRY, JOSEPH, Agric. Rep. Patent Office, 1857, 440.

-

-Footnote 40:

-

-  WATTERS, J. H., An Essay on Organic, or Life-force. Written for the

-  degree of Doctor of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania,

-  Philadelphia, 1851. See also St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal,

-  II, v, Nos. 3 and 4, 1868; Dec. 1868, and Nov. 10, 1869.

-

-Footnote 41:

-

-  LECONTE, JOSEPH, The Correlation of Physical, Chemical and Vital

-  Force, and the Conservation of Force in Vital Phenomena. American

-  Journal of Science, II, xxviii, 305, Nov. 1859.

-

-Footnote 42:

-

-  LOMBARD, J. S., _loc. cit._

-

-Footnote 43:

-

-  NOYES, T. R., _loc. cit._

-

-Footnote 44:

-

-  WOOD, L. H., _loc. cit._

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-                     _AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC._

-

-

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-                            PREFATORY NOTE.

-

-

-The substance of the greater part of this paper, which has been in the

-present form for some time, was delivered, as a lecture, at a

-Conversazione of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, in the

-Hall of the College, on the evening of Friday, the 30th of April last.

-

-It will be found to support itself, so far as the facts are concerned,

-on the most recent German physiological literature, as represented by

-Rindfleisch, Kühne, and especially Stricker, with which last, for the

-production of his “Handbuch,” there is associated every great

-histological name in Germany.

-

-    EDINBURGH, _October, 1869_.

-

-

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-                      AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC.

-

-

-It is a pleasure to perceive Mr. Huxley open his clear little essay with

-what we may hold, perhaps, to be the manly and orthodox view of the

-character and products of the French writer, Auguste Comte. “In applying

-the name of ‘the new philosophy’ to that estimate of the limits of

-philosophical inquiry which he” (Professor Huxley), “in common with many

-other men of science, holds to be just,” the Archbishop of York

-confounds, it seems, this new philosophy with the Positive philosophy of

-M. Comte; and thereat Mr. Huxley expresses himself as greatly

-astonished. Some of us, for our parts, may be inclined at first to feel

-astonished at Mr. Huxley’s astonishment; for the school to which, at

-least on the philosophical side, Mr. Huxley seems to belong, is even

-notorious for its prostration before Auguste Comte, whom, especially, so

-far as method and systematization are concerned, it regards as the

-greatest intellect since Bacon. For such, as it was the opinion of Mr.

-Buckle, is understood to be the opinion also of Messrs. Grote, Bain, and

-Mill. In fact, we may say that such is commonly and currently considered

-the characteristic and distinctive opinion of that whole perverted or

-inverted reaction which has been called the _Revulsion_. That is to say,

-to give this word a moment’s explanation, that the Voltaires and Humes

-and Gibbons having long enjoyed an immunity of sneer at man’s blind

-pride and wretched superstition—at _his_ silly non-natural honor and

-_her_ silly non-natural virtue—a reaction had set in, exulting in

-poetry, in the splendor of nature, the nobleness of man, and the purity

-of woman, from which reaction again we have, almost within the last

-decennium, been revulsively, as it were, called back,—shall we say by

-some “bolder” spirits—the Buckles, the Mills, &c.?—to the old

-illumination or enlightenment of a hundred years ago, in regard to the

-weakness and stupidity of man’s pretensions over the animality and

-materiality that limit him. Of this revulsion, then, as said, a main

-feature, especially in England, has been prostration before the vast

-bulk of Comte; and so it was that Mr. Huxley’s protest in this

-reference, considering the philosophy he professed, had that in it to

-surprise at first. But if there was surprise, there was also pleasure;

-for Mr. Huxley’s estimate of Comte is undoubtedly the right one. “So far

-as I am concerned,” he says, “the most reverend prelate” (the Archbishop

-of York) “might dialectically hew M. Comte in pieces as a modern Agag,

-and I should not attempt to stay his hand; for, so far as my study of

-what specially characterizes the Positive philosophy has led me, I find

-therein little or nothing of any scientific value, and a great deal

-which is as thoroughly antagonistic to the very essence of science as

-anything in ultramontane Catholicism.” “It was enough,” he says again,

-“to make David Hume turn in his grave, that here, almost within earshot

-of his house, an instructed audience should have listened without a

-murmur while his most characteristic doctrines were attributed to a

-French writer of fifty years’ later date, in whose dreary and verbose

-pages we miss alike the vigor of thought and the exquisite clearness of

-style of the man whom I make bold to term the most acute thinker of the

-eighteenth century—even though that century produced Kant.”

-

-Of the doctrines themselves which are alluded to here, I shall say

-nothing now; but of much else that is said, there is only to be

-expressed a hearty and even gratified approval. I demur, to be sure, to

-the exaltation of Hume over Kant—high as I place the former. Hume, with

-infinite fertility, surprised us, it may be said, perhaps, into

-attention on a great variety of points which had hitherto passed

-unquestioned; but, even on these points, his success was of an

-interrupted, scattered and inconclusive nature. He set the world adrift,

-but he set man too, reeling and miserable, adrift with it. Kant, again,

-with gravity and reverence, desired to refix, but in purity and truth,

-all those relations and institutions which alone give value to

-existence—which alone _are_ humanity, in fact—but which Hume, with

-levity and mockery, had approached to shake. Kant built up again an

-entire new world for us of knowledge and duty, and, in a certain way,

-even belief; whereas Hume had sought to dispossess us of every support

-that man as man could hope to cling to. In a word, with _at least_ equal

-fertility, Kant was, as compared with Hume, a graver, deeper, and, so to

-speak, a more consecutive, more comprehensive spirit. Graces there were

-indeed, or even, it may be said, subtleties, in which Hume had the

-advantage perhaps. He is still in England an unsurpassed master of

-expression—this, certainly, in his History, if in his Essays he somewhat

-baffles his own self by a certain labored breadth of conscious fine

-writing, often singularly inexact and infelicitous. Still Kant, with

-reference to his products, must be allowed much the greater importance.

-In the history of philosophy he will probably always command as

-influential a place in the modern world as Socrates in the ancient;

-while, as probably, Hume will occupy at best some such position as that

-of Heraclitus or Protagoras. Hume, nevertheless, if equal to Kant, must,

-in view at once of his own subjective ability and his enormous

-influence, be pronounced one of the most important of writers. It would

-be difficult to rate too high the value of his French predecessors and

-contemporaries as regards purification of their oppressed and corrupt

-country; and Hume must be allowed, though with less call, to have

-subserved some such function in the land we live in. In preferring Kant,

-indeed, I must be acquitted of an undue partiality; for all that

-appertains to personal bias was naturally, and by reason of early and

-numerous associations, on the side of my countryman.

-

-Demurring, then, to Mr. Huxley’s opinion on this matter, and postponing

-remark on the doctrines to which he alludes, I must express a hearty

-concurrence with every word he utters on Comte. In him I too “find

-little or nothing of any scientific value.” I too have been lost in the

-mere mirage and sands of “those dreary and verbose pages;” and I

-acknowledge in Mr. Huxley’s every word the ring of a genuine experience.

-M. Comte was certainly a man of some mathematical and scientific

-proficiency, as well as of quick but biased intelligence. A member of

-the _Aufklärung_, he had seen the immense advance of physical science

-since Newton, under, as is usually said, the method of Bacon; and, like

-Hume, like Reid, like Kant, _who had all anticipated him in this_, he

-sought to transfer that method to the domain of mind. In this he failed;

-and though in a sociological aspect he is not without true glances into

-the present disintegration of society and the conditions of it, anything

-of importance cannot be claimed for him. There is not a sentence in his

-book that, in the hollow elaboration and windy pretentiousness of its

-build, is not an exact type of its own constructor. On the whole,

-indeed, when we consider the little to which he attained, the empty

-inflation of his claims, the monstrous and maniacal self-conceit into

-which he was _exalted_, it may appear, perhaps, that charity to M. Comte

-himself, to say nothing of the world, should induce us to wish that both

-his name and his works were buried in oblivion. Now, truly, that Mr.

-Huxley (the “call” being for the moment his) has so pronounced himself,

-especially as the facts of the case are exactly and absolutely what he

-indicates, perhaps we may expect this consummation not to be so very

-long delayed. More than those members of the revulsion already

-mentioned, one is apt to suspect, will be anxious now to beat a retreat.

-Not that this, however, is so certain to be allowed them; for their

-estimate of M. Comte is a valuable element in the estimate of

-themselves.

-

-Frankness on the part of Mr. Huxley is not limited to his opinion of M.

-Comte; it accompanies us throughout his whole essay. He seems even to

-take pride, indeed, in naming always and everywhere his object at the

-plainest. That object, in a general point of view, relates, he tells us,

-solely to materialism, but with a double issue. While it is his declared

-purpose, in the first place, namely, to lead us into materialism, it is

-equally his declared purpose, in the second place, to lead us out of

-materialism. On the first issue, for example, he directly warns his

-audience that to accept the conclusions which he conceives himself to

-have established on Protoplasm, is to accept these also: That “all vital

-action” is but “the result of the molecular forces” of the physical

-basis; and that, by consequence, to use his own words to his audience,

-“the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts

-regarding them, are but the expression of molecular changes in that

-matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena.” And,

-so far, I think, we shall not disagree with Mr. Huxley when he says that

-“most undoubtedly the terms of his propositions are distinctly

-materialistic.” Still, on the second issue, Mr. Huxley asserts that he

-is “individually no materialist.” “On the contrary, he believes

-materialism to involve grave philosophical error;” and the “union of

-materialistic terminology with the repudiation of materialistic

-philosophy” he conceives himself to share “with some of the most

-thoughtful men with whom he is acquainted.” In short, to unite both

-issues, we have it in Mr. Huxley’s own words, that it is the single

-object of his essay “to explain how such a union is not only consistent

-with, but necessitated by, sound logic;” and that, accordingly, he will,

-in the first place, “lead us through the territory of vital phenomena to

-the materialistic slough,” while pointing out, in the second, “the sole

-path by which, in his judgment, extrication is possible.” Mr. Huxley’s

-essay, then, falls evidently into two parts; and of these two parts we

-may say, further, that while the one—that in which he leads us into

-materialism—will be predominatingly physiological, the other—or that in

-which he leads us out of materialism—will be predominatingly

-philosophical. Two corresponding parts would thus seem to be prescribed

-to any full discussion of the essay; and of these, in the present needs

-of the world, it is evidently the latter that has the more promising

-theme. The truth is, however, that Mr. Huxley, after having exerted all

-his strength in his first part to throw us into “the materialistic

-slough,” by _clear necessity of knowledge_, only calls to us, in his

-second part, to come out of this slough again, on the somewhat _obscure

-necessity of ignorance_. This, then, is but a lop-sided balance, where a

-scale in the air only seems to struggle vainly to raise its

-well-weighted fellow on the ground. Mr. Huxley, in fact, possesses no

-remedy for materialism but what lies in the expression that, while he

-knows not what matter is in itself, he certainly knows that casualty is

-but contingent succession; and thus, like the so-called “philosophy” of

-the Revulsion, Mr. Huxley would only mock us into the intensest

-dogmatism on the one side by a fallacious reference to the intensest

-scepticism on the other.

-

-The present paper, then, will regard mainly Mr. Huxley’s argument _for_

-materialism, but say what is required, at the same time, on his alleged

-argument—which is merely the imaginary, or imaginative, impregnation of

-ignorance—_against_ it.

-

-Following Mr. Huxley’s own steps in his essay, the course of his

-positions will be found to run, in summary, thus:—

-

-What is meant by the physical basis of life is, that there is one kind

-of matter common to all living beings, and it is named protoplasm. No

-doubt it may appear at first sight that, in the various kinds of living

-beings, we have only _difference_ before us, as in the lichen on the

-rock and the painter that paints it,—the microscopic animalcule or

-fungus and the Finner whale or Indian fig,—the flower in the hair of a

-girl and the blood in her veins, etc. Nevertheless, throughout these and

-all other diversities, there really exists a threefold _unity_—a unity

-of faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substance.

-

-On the first head, for example, or as regards faculty, power, the

-action exhibited, there are but three categories of _human_

-activity—contractility, alimentation, and reproduction; and there are

-no fewer for the _lower_ forms of life, whether animal or vegetable.

-In the nettle, for instance, we find the woody case of its sting lined

-by a granulated, semi-fluid layer, that is possessed of contractility.

-But in this respect—that is, in the possession of contractile

-substance—other plants are as the nettle, and all animals are as

-plants. Protoplasm—for the nettle-layer alluded to is protoplasm—is

-common to the whole of them. The difference, in short between the

-powers of the lowest plant or animal and those of the highest is one

-only of degree and not of kind.

-

-But, on the second head, it is not otherwise in form, or manifested

-external appearance and structure. Not the sting only, but the whole

-nettle, is made up of protoplasm; and of all the other vegetables the

-nettle is but a type. Nor are animals different. The colorless

-blood-corpuscles in man and the rest are identical with the protoplasm

-of the nettle; and both he and they consisted at first only of an

-aggregation of such. Protoplasm is the common constituent—the common

-origin. At last, as at first, all that lives, and every part of all that

-lives, are but nucleated or unnucleated, modified or unmodified,

-protoplasm.

-

-But, on the third head, or with reference to unity of substance, to

-internal composition, chemistry establishes this also. All forms of

-protoplasm, that is, consist alike of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and

-nitrogen, and behave similarly under similar reagents.

-

-So, now, a uniform character having in this threefold manner been proved

-for protoplasm, what is its origin, and what its fate? Of these the

-latter is not far to seek. The fate of protoplasm is death—death into

-its chemical constituents; and this determines its origin also.

-Protoplasm can originate only in that into which it dies,—the

-elements—the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen—of which it was

-found to consist. Hydrogen, with oxygen, forms water; carbon, with

-oxygen, carbonic acid; and hydrogen, with nitrogen, ammonia. Similarly,

-water, carbonic acid and ammonia form, in union, protoplasm. The

-influence of pre-existing protoplasm only determines combination in

-_its_ case, as that of the electric spark determines combination in the

-case of water. Protoplasm, then, is but an aggregate of physical

-materials, exhibiting in combination—only as was to be expected—new

-properties. The properties of water are not more different from those of

-hydrogen and oxygen than the properties of protoplasm are different from

-those of water, carbonic acid, and ammonia. We have the same warrant to

-attribute the consequences to the premises in the one case as in the

-other. If, on the first stage of combination, represented by that of

-water, _simples_ could unite into something so different from

-themselves, why, on the second stage of combination, represented by that

-of protoplasm, should not _compounds_ similarly unite into something

-equally different from themselves? If the constituents are credited with

-the properties _there_, why refuse to credit the constituents with the

-properties _here_? To the constituents of protoplasm, in truth, any new

-element, named vitality, has no more been added, than to the

-constituents of water any new element, named aquosity. Nor is there any

-logical halting place between this conclusion and the further and final

-one: That all vital action whatever, intellectual included, is but the

-result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it.

-

-These sentences will be acknowledged, I think, fairly to represent Mr.

-Huxley’s relative deliverances, and, consequently, as I may be allowed

-to explain again, the only important—while much the larger—part of the

-whole essay. Mr. Huxley, that is, while devoting fifty paragraphs to our

-physiological immersion in the “materialistic slough,” grants but

-one-and-twenty towards our philosophical escape from it; the fifty

-besides being, so to speak, in reality the wind, and the one-and-twenty

-only the whistle for it. What these latter say, in effect, is no more

-than this, that,—matter being known not in itself but only in its

-qualities, and cause and effect not in their nexus but only in their

-sequence,—matter may be spirit or spirit matter, cause effect or effect

-cause—in short, for aught that Mr. Huxley more than phenomenally knows,

-this may be that or that this, first second, or second first, but the

-conclusion shall be this, that he will lay out all our knowledge

-materially, and we may lay out all our ignorance immaterially—if we

-will. Which reasoning and conclusion, I may merely remark, come

-precisely to this: That Mr. Huxley—who, hoping yet to see each object (a

-pin, say) not in its qualities but in _itself_, still, consistently

-antithetic, cannot believe in the extinction of fire by water or of life

-by the rope, for any _reason_ or for any _necessity_ that lies in the

-nature of the case, but simply for the habit of the thing—has not yet

-put himself at home with the metaphysical categories of _substance_ and

-_casualty_; thanks, perhaps, to those guides of his whom we, the amusing

-Britons that we are, bravely proclaim “the foremost thinkers of the

-day”!

-

-The matter and manner of the whole essay are now fairly before us, and I

-think that, with the approbation of the reader, its procedure,

-generally, may be described as an attempt to establish, not by any

-complete and systematic induction, but by a variety of partial and

-illustrative assertions, two propositions. Of these propositions the

-first is, That all animal and vegetable organisms are essentially alike

-in power, in form, and in substance; and the second, That all vital and

-intellectual functions are the properties of the molecular disposition

-and changes of the material basis (protoplasm) of which the various

-animals and vegetables consist. In both propositions, the agent of proof

-is this same alleged material basis of life, or protoplasm. For the

-first of them, all animal and vegetable organisms shall be identified in

-protoplasm; and for the second, a simple chemical analogy shall assign

-intellect and vitality to the molecular constituents of the protoplasm,

-in connection with which they are at least exhibited.

-

-In order, then, to obtain a footing on the ground offered us, the first

-question we naturally put is, What is Protoplasm? And an answer to this

-question can be obtained only by a reference to the historical progress

-of the physiological cell theory.

-

-That theory may be said to have wholly grown up since John Hunter wrote

-his celebrated work ‘On the Nature of the Blood,’ etc. New growths, to

-Hunter, depended on an exudation of the plasma of the blood, in which,

-by virtue of its own _plasticity_, vessels formed, and conditioned the

-further progress. The influence of these ideas seems to have still

-acted, even after a conception of the cell was arrived at. For starting

-element, Schleiden required an intracellular plasma, and Schwann a

-structureless exudation, in which minute granules, if not indeed already

-pre-existent, formed, and by aggregation grew into nuclei, round which

-singly the production of a membrane at length enclosed a cell. It was

-then that, in this connection, we heard of the terms blastema and

-cyto-blastema. The theory of the vegetable cell was completed earlier

-than that of the animal one. Completion of this latter, again, seems to

-have been first effected by Schwann, after Müller had insisted on the

-analogy between animal and vegetable tissue, and Valentin had

-demonstrated a nucleus in the animal cell, as previously Brown in the

-vegetable one. But assuming Schwann’s labor, and what surrounded it, to

-have been a first stage, the wonderful ability of Virchow may be said to

-have raised the theory of the cell fully to a second stage. Now, of this

-second stage, it is the dissolution or resolution that has led to the

-emergence of the word Protoplasm.

-

-The body, to Virchow, constituted a free state of individual subjects,

-with equal rights but unequal capacities. These were the cells, which

-consisted each of an enclosing membrane, and an enclosed nucleus with

-surrounding intracellular matrix or matter. These cells, further,

-propagated themselves, chiefly by partition or division; and the

-fundamental principle of the whole theory was expressed in the dictum,

-“_Omnis cellula e cellulâ_.” That is, the nucleus, becoming gradually

-elongated, at last parted in the midst; and each half, acting as center

-of attraction to the surrounding intracellular matrix or contained

-matter, stood forth as a new nucleus to a new cell, formed by division

-at length of the original cell.

-

-The first step taken in resolution of this theory was completed by Max

-Schultze, preceded by Leydig. This was the elimination of an investing

-membrane. Such membrane may, and does, ultimately form; but in the first

-instance, it appears, the cell is naked. The second step in the

-resolution belongs perhaps to Brücke, though preceded by Bergmann, and

-though Max Schultze, Kühne, Haeckel, and others ought to be mentioned in

-the same connection. This step was the elimination, or at least

-subordination, of the nucleus. The nucleus, we are to understand now, is

-necessary neither to the division nor to the existence of the cell.

-

-Thus, then, stripped of its membrane, relieved of its nucleus, what now

-remains for the cell? Why, nothing but what _was_ the contained matter,

-the intracellular matrix, and _is_—Protoplasm.

-

-In the application of this word itself, however, to the element in

-question, there are also a step or two to be noticed. The first step was

-Dujardin’s discovery of sarcode; and the second the introduction of the

-term protoplasm as the name for the layer of the _vegetable_ cell that

-lined the cellulose, and enclosed the nucleus. Sarcode, found in certain

-of the lower forms of life, was a simple substance that exhibited powers

-of spontaneous contraction and movement. Thus, processes of such simple,

-soft, contractile matter are protruded by the rhizopods, and locomotion

-by their means effected. Remak first extended the use of the term

-protoplasm from the layer which bore that name in the vegetable cell to

-the analogous element in the animal cell; but it was Max Schultze, in

-particular, who, by applying the name to the intracellular matrix, or

-contained matter, when divested of membrane, and by identifying this

-substance itself with sarcode, first fairly established protoplasm, name

-and thing, in its present prominence.

-

-In this account I have necessarily omitted many subordinate and

-intervening steps in the successive establishment of the

-_contractility_, superior _importance_, and complete _isolation_ of this

-thing to which, under the name of protoplasm, Mr. Huxley of late has

-called such vast attention. Besides the names mentioned, there are

-others of great eminence in this connection, such as Meyen, Siebold,

-Reichert, Ecker, Henle, and Kölliker among the Germans; and among

-ourselves, Beale and Huxley himself. John Goodsir will be mentioned

-again.

-

-We have now, perhaps, obtained a general idea of protoplasm. Brücke,

-when he talks of it as “living cell-body or elementary organism,” comes

-very near the leading idea of Mr. Huxley as expressed in his phrase,

-“the physiological basis, or matter, of life.” Living cell-body,

-elementary organism, primitive living matter—that, evidently, is the

-quest of Mr. Huxley. There is aqueous matter, he would say, perhaps,

-composed of hydrogen and oxygen, and it is the same thing whether in the

-rain-drop or the ocean; so, similarly, there is vital matter, which,

-composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, is the same thing

-whether in cryptogams or in elephants, in animalcules or in men. What,

-in fact, Mr. Huxley seeks, probably, is living protein—protein, so to

-speak, struck into life. Just such appears to him to be the nature of

-protoplasm, and in it he believes himself to possess at last _a living

-clay_ wherewith to build the whole organic world.

-

-The question, What is Protoplasm? is answered, then; but, for the

-understanding of what is to follow, there is still one general

-consideration to be premised.

-

-Mr. Huxley’s conception of protoplasm, as we have seen, is that of

-living matter, living protein; what we may call, perhaps, elementary

-life-stuff. Now, is it quite certain that Mr. Huxley is correct in this

-conception? Are we to understand, for example, that cells have now

-definitively vanished, and left in their place only a uniform and

-universal _matter_ of quite indefinite proportions? No; such an

-understanding would be quite wrong. Whatever may be the opinion of the

-adherents of the molecular theory of generation, it is certain that all

-the great German histologists still hold by the cell, and can hardly

-open their mouths without mention of it. I do not allude here to any

-special adherents of either nucleus or membrane, but to the most

-advanced innovators in both respects; to such men as Schultze and Brücke

-and Kühne. These, as we have seen, pretty well confine their attention,

-like Mr. Huxley, to the protoplasm. But they do not the less on that

-account talk of the cell. For them, it is only in cells that protoplasm

-exists. To their view, we cannot fancy protoplasm as so much matter in a

-pot, in an ointment-box, any portion of which scooped out in an

-ear-picker would be so much life-stuff, and, though a part, quite as

-good as the whole. This seems to be Mr. Huxley’s conception, but it is

-not theirs. A certain _measure_ goes with protoplasm to constitute it an

-organism to them, and worthy of their attention. They refuse to give

-consideration to any mere protoplasm-_shred_ that may not have yet

-ceased, perhaps, to exhibit all sign of contractility under the

-microscope, and demand a protoplasm-_cell_. In short, protoplasm is to

-them still distributed into cells, and only that measure of protoplasm

-is cell that is adequate to the whole group of vital manifestations.

-Brücke, for example, of all innovators probably the most innovating, and

-denying, or inclined to deny, both nucleus and membrane, does not

-hesitate, according to Stricker, to speak still of cells as

-self-complete organisms, that move and grow, that nourish and reproduce

-themselves, and that perform specific function. “Omnis cellula e

-cellulâ,” is the rubric they work under as much now as ever. The heart

-of a turtle, they say, is not a turtle; so neither is a protoplasm-shred

-a protoplasm-cell.

-

-This, then, is the general consideration which I think it necessary to

-premise; and it seems, almost of itself, to negate Mr. Huxley’s

-reasonings in advance, for it warrants us in denying that physiological

-clay of which all living things are but bricks baked, Mr. Huxley

-intimates, and in establishing in its place cells as before—living cells

-that differ infinitely the one from the other, and so differ from the

-very first moment of their existence. This consideration shall not be

-allowed to pre-termit, however, an examination of Mr. Huxley’s own

-proofs, which will only the more and more avail to indicate the

-difference suggested.

-

-These proofs, as has been said, would, by means of the single fulcrum of

-protoplasm, establish, first, the identity, and, second, the

-materiality, of all vegetable and animal life. These are, shortly, the

-two propositions which we have already seen, and to which, in their

-order, we now pass.

-

-All organisms, then, whether animal or vegetable, have been understood

-for some time back to originate in and consist of cells; but the

-progress of physiology has _seemed_ now to substitute for cells a single

-matter of life, protoplasm; and it is here that Mr. Huxley sees his cue.

-Mr. Huxley’s very first word is the “physical basis or matter of life;”

-and he supposes “that to many the idea that there is such a thing may be

-novel.” This, then, so far, is what is _new_ in Mr. Huxley’s

-contribution. He seems to have said to himself, if formerly the whole

-world was thought kin in an “ideal” or formal element, organization, I

-shall now finally complete this identification in a “physical” or

-material element, protoplasm. In short, what at this stage we are asked

-to witness in the essay is, the identification of all living beings

-whatever in the identity of protoplasm. As there is a single matter,

-clay, which is the matter of all bricks, so there is a single matter,

-protoplasm, which is the matter of all organisms. “Protoplasm is the

-clay of the potter, which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains

-clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick

-or sun-dried clod.” Now here I cannot help stopping a moment to remark

-that Mr. Huxley puts emphatically his whole soul into this sentence, and

-evidently believes it to be, if we may use the word, a _clincher_. But,

-after all, does it say much? or rather, does it say anything? To the

-question, “Of what are you made?” the answer, for a long time now, and

-by the great mass of human beings who are supposed civilized, has been

-“Dust.” Dust, and the same dust, has been allowed to constitute us all.

-But materialism has not on that account been the irresistible result.

-Attention hitherto—and surely excusably, or even laudably in such a

-case—has been given not so much to the dust as to the “potter,” and the

-“artifice” by which he could so transform, or, as Mr. Huxley will have

-it, _modify_ it. To ask us to say, instead of dust, clay, or even

-protoplasm, is not to ask us for much, then, seeing that even to Mr.

-Huxley there still remain both the “potter” and his “artifice.”

-

-But to return: To Mr. Huxley, when he says all bricks, being made of

-clay, are the same thing, we answer, Yes, undoubtedly, if they are made

-of the same clay. That is, the bricks are identical if the clay is

-identical; but, on the other hand, by as much as the clay differs will

-the bricks differ. And, similarly, all organisms can be identified only

-if their composing protoplasm can be identified. To this stake is the

-argument of Mr. Huxley bound.

-

-This argument itself takes, as we have seen, a threefold course: Mr.

-Huxley will prove his position in this place by reference, firstly, to

-unity of faculty; secondly, to unity of form; and thirdly, to unity of

-substance. It is this course of proof, then, which we have now to

-follow, but taking the question of substance, as simplest, first, and

-the others later.

-

-By substance, Mr. Huxley understands the internal or chemical

-composition; and, with a mere reference to the action of reagents, he

-asserts the protoplasm of all living beings to be an identical

-combination of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is for us to

-ask, then, Are all samples of protoplasm identical, first, in their

-chemical composition, and, second, under the action of the various

-reagents?

-

-On the first clause, we may say, in the first place, towards a proof of

-difference which will only cumulate, I hope, that, even should we grant

-in all protoplasm an identity of chemical ingredients, what is called

-_Allotropy_ may still have introduced no inconsiderable variety. Ozone

-is not antozone, nor is oxygen either, though in chemical constitution

-all are alike. In the second place, again, we may say that, with

-_varying proportions_, the same component parts produce very various

-results. By way of illustration, it will suffice to refer to such

-different things as the proteids, gluten, albumen, fibrin, gelatine,

-etc., compared with the urinary products, urea and uric acid; or with

-the biliary products, glycocol, glycocolic acid, bili-rubin,

-bili-verdin, etc.; and yet all these substances, varying so much the one

-from the other, are, as protoplasm is, compounds of carbon, hydrogen,

-oxygen, and nitrogen. But, in the third place, we are not limited to a

-_may say_; we can assert the fact that all protoplasm is not chemically

-identical. All the tissues of the organism are called protoplasm by Mr.

-Huxley; but can we predicate chemical identity of muscle and bone, for

-example? In such cases Mr. Huxley, it is true, may bring the word

-“modified” into use; but the objection of modification we shall examine

-later. In the mean time, we are justified, by Mr. Huxley’s very

-argument, in regarding all organized tissues whatever as protoplasm; for

-if these tissues are not to be identified in protoplasm, we must suppose

-denied what it was his one business to affirm. And it is against that

-affirmation that we point to the fact of much chemical difference

-obtaining among the tissues, not only in the _proportions_ of their

-fundamental elements, but also in the _addition_ (and proportions as

-well) of such others as chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, potash, soda,

-lime, magnesia, iron, etc. Vast differences vitally must be legitimately

-assumed for tissues that are so different chemically. But, in the fourth

-place, we have the authority of the Germans for asserting that the cells

-themselves—and they now, to the most advanced, are only protoplasm—do

-differ chemically, some being found to contain glycogen, some

-cholesterine, some protogon, and some myosin. Now such substances, let

-the chemical analogy be what it may, must still be allowed to introduce

-chemical difference. In the last place, Mr. Huxley’s analysis is an

-analysis of _dead_ protoplasm, and indecisive, consequently, for that

-which lives. Mr. Huxley betrays sensitiveness in advance to this

-objection; for he seeks to rise above the sensitiveness and the

-objection at once by styling the latter “frivolous.” Nevertheless the

-Germans say pointedly that it is unknown whether the same elements are

-to be referred to the cells after as before death. Kühne does not

-consider it proved that living muscle contains syntonin; yet Mr. Huxley

-tells us, in his Physiology, that “syntonin is the chief constituent of

-muscle and flesh.” In general, we may say, according to Stricker, that

-all weight is put now on the examination of living tissue, and that the

-difference is fully allowed between that and dead tissue.

-

-On the second clause now, or with regard to the action of reagents,

-these must be denied to produce the like result on the various forms of

-protoplasm. With reference to temperature, for example, Kühne reports

-the movements of the amoeba to be arrested in iced water; while, in the

-same medium, the ova of the trout furrow famously, but perish even in a

-warmed room. Others, again, we are told, may be actually dried, and yet

-live. Of ova in general, in this connection, it is said that they live

-or die according as the temperature to which they are exposed differs

-little or much from that which is natural to the organisms producing

-them. In some, according to Max Schultze, even distilled water is enough

-to arrest movement. Now, not to dwell longer here, both amoeba and ova

-are to Mr. Huxley pure protoplasm; and such difference of result,

-according to difference of temperature, etc., must assuredly be allowed

-to point to a difference of original nature. Any conclusion so far,

-then, in regard to unity of substance, whether the chemical composition

-or the action of reagents be considered, cannot be said to bear out the

-views of Mr. Huxley.

-

-What now of the unities of form and power in protoplasm? By form, Mr.

-Huxley will be found to mean the general appearance and structure; and

-by faculty or power, the action exhibited. Now it will be very easy to

-prove that, in neither respect, do all specimens of protoplasm agree.

-Mr. Huxley’s representative protoplasm, it appears, is that of the

-nettle-sting; and he describes it as a granulated, semi-fluid body,

-contractile in mass, and contractile also in detail to the development

-of a species of circulation. Stricker, again, speaks of it as a

-homogeneous substance, in which any granules that may appear must be

-considered of foreign importation, and in which there are no evidences

-of circulation. In this last respect, then, that Mr. Huxley should talk

-of “tiny Maelstroms,” such as even in the silence of a tropical noon

-might stun us, if heard, as “with the roar of a great city,” may be

-viewed, perhaps, as a rise into poetry beyond the occasion.

-

-Further, according to Stricker, protoplasm varies almost infinitely in

-consistence, in shape, in structure, and in function. In consistence, it

-is sometimes so fluid as to be capable of forming in drops; sometimes

-semi-fluid and gelatinous; sometimes of considerable resistance. In

-shape—for to Stricker the cells are now protoplasm—we have club-shaped

-protoplasm, globe-shaped protoplasm, cup-shaped protoplasm,

-bottle-shaped protoplasm, spindle-shaped protoplasm—branched, threaded,

-ciliated protoplasm,—circle-headed protoplasm—flat, conical,

-cylindrical, longitudinal, prismatic, polyhedral, and palisade-like

-protoplasm. In structure, again, it is sometimes uniform and sometimes

-reticulated into interspaces that contain fluid. In function, lastly—and

-here we have entered on the consideration of faculty or power—some

-protoplasm is vagrant (so to translate _wandernd_), and of unknown use,

-like the colorless blood-corpuscles.

-

-In reference to these, as strengthening the argument, and throwing much

-light generally, I break off a moment to say that, very interesting as

-they are in themselves, and as Recklinghausen, in especial, has made

-them, Mr. Huxley’s theory of them disagrees considerably with the

-prevalent German one. He speaks of them as the source of the body in

-general, yet, in his Physiology, he talks of the spleen, the lymphatics,

-and even the liver—_parts_ of the body—as _their_ source. They are so

-few in number that, while Mr. Huxley is thankful to be able to point to

-the inside of the lips as a seat for them, they bear to the red

-corpuscles only the proportion of 1 to 450. This disproportion, however,

-is no bar to Mr. Huxley’s derivation of the latter from the former. But

-the fact is questioned. The Germans, generally, for their, part,

-describe the colorless, or vagrant, blood-corpuscles as probably media

-of conjugation or reparation, but acknowledge their function to be as

-yet quite unknown; while Rindfleisch, characterizing the spleen as the

-grave of the red, and the womb of the white, corpuscles, evidently

-refers the latter to the former. This, indeed, is a matter of direct

-assertion with Preyer, who has “shown that pieces of red

-blood-corpuscles may be eaten by the amoeboid cells of the frog,” and

-holds that the latter (the white corpuscles) proceed directly from the

-former (the red corpuscles); so that it seems to be determined in the

-mean time that there is no proof of the reverse being the fact.

-

-In function, then, to resume, some protoplasm is vagrant, and of unknown

-use. Some again produces pepsine, and some fat. Some at least contains

-pigment. Then there is nerve-protoplasm, brain-protoplasm,

-bone-protoplasm, muscle-protoplasm, and protoplasm of all the other

-tissues, no one of which but produces only its own kind, and is

-uninterchangeable with the rest. Lastly, on this head, we have to point

-to the overwhelming fact that there is the infinitely different

-protoplasm of the various infinitely different plants and animals, in

-each of which its own protoplasm, as in the case of that of the various

-tissues, but produces its own kind, and is uninterchangeable with that

-of the rest.

-

-It may be objected, indeed, that these latter are examples of modified

-protoplasm. The objection of modification, as said, we have to see by

-itself later; but, in the mean time, it may be asked, Where are we to

-begin, _not_ to have modified protoplasm? We have the example of Mr.

-Huxley himself, who, in the nettle-sting, begins already with modified

-protoplasm; and we have the authority of Rindfleisch for asserting that

-“in every different tissue we must look for a different initial term of

-the productive series.” This, evidently, is a very strong light on the

-original multiplicity of protoplasm, which the consideration, as we have

-seen, of the various plants and animals, has made, further, infinite.

-This is enough; but there is no wish to evade beginning with the very

-beginning—with absolutely pure initial protoplasm, if it can but be

-given us in any reference. The simple egg—that, probably is the

-beginning—that, probably, is the original identity; yet even there we

-find already distribution of the identity into infinite difference.

-This, certainly, with reference to the various organisms, but with

-reference also to the various tissues. That we regard the egg as the

-beginning, and that we do not start, like the smaller exceptional

-physiological school, with molecules themselves, depends on this, that

-the great Germans so often alluded to, Kühne among them, still trust in

-the experiments of Pasteur; and while they do not deny the possibility,

-or even the fact, of molecular generation, still feel justified in

-denying the existence of any observation that yet unassailably attests a

-_generatio æquivoca_. By such authority as this the simple philosophical

-spectator has no choice but to take his stand; and therefore it is that

-I assume the egg as the established beginning, so far, of all vegetable

-and animal organisms. To the egg, too, as the beginning, Mr. Huxley,

-though the lining of the nettle-sting is his representative protoplasm,

-at least refers. “In the earliest condition of the human organism,” he

-says, in allusion to the white (vagrant) corpuscles of the blood, “in

-that state in which it has but just become distinguished from the egg in

-which it arises, it is nothing but an aggregation of such corpuscles,

-and every organ of the body was once no more than such an aggregation.”

-Now, in beginning with the egg—an absolute beginning being denied us in

-consequence of the pre-existent infinite difference of the egg or eggs

-themselves—we may gather from the German physiologists some such account

-of the actual facts as this.

-

-The first change signalized in the impregnated egg seems that of

-_Furchung_, or furrowing—what the Germans call the _Furchungskugeln_,

-the _Dotterkugeln_, form. Then these _Kugeln_—clumps, eminences,

-monticles, we may translate the word—break into cells; and these are the

-cells of the embryo. Mr. Huxley, as quoted, refers to the whole body,

-and every organ of the body, as at first but an aggregation of colorless

-blood-corpuscles; but in the very statement which would render the

-identity alone explicit, the difference is quite as plainly implicit. As

-much as this lies in the word “organs,” to say nothing of “human.” The

-cells of the “organs,” to which he refers, are even then

-uninterchangeable, and produce but themselves. The Germans tell us of

-the _Keimblatt_, the germ-leaf, in which all these organs originate.

-This _Blatt_, or leaf, is threefold, it seems; but even these folds are

-not indifferent. The various cells have their distinct places in them

-from the first. While what in this connection are called the epithelial

-and endorthelial tissues spring respectively from the _upper_ and

-_under_ leaf, connective tissues, with muscle and blood, spring from the

-_middle_ one. Surely in such facts we have a perfect warrant to assert

-the initial non-identity of protoplasm, and to insist on this, that,

-from the very earliest moment—even literally _ab ovo_—brain-cells only

-generate brain-cells, bone-cells bone-cells, and so on.

-

-These considerations on function all concern faculty or power; but we

-have to notice now that the characteristic and fundamental form of power

-is to Mr. Huxley _contractility_. He even quotes Goethe in proof of

-contractility being the main power or faculty of _Man_! Nevertheless it

-is to be said at once that, while there are differences in what

-protoplasm _is_ contractile, all protoplasm is not contractile, nor

-dependent on contractility for its functions. In the former respect, for

-example, muscle, while it is the contractile tissue special, is also to

-Mr. Huxley protoplasm; yet Stricker asserts the inner construction of

-the contractile substance, of which muscle-fibre virtually consists, to

-be essentially different from contractile protoplasm. Here, then, we

-have the contractile _substance_ proper “essentially different” from the

-contractile _source_ proper. In the latter respect, again, we shall not

-call in the _un_contractible substances which Mr. Huxley himself

-denominates protoplasm—bread, namely, roast mutton, and boiled lobster;

-but we may ask where—even in the case of a living body—is the

-contractility of white of egg? In this reference, too, we may remark

-that Kühne, who divides the protoplasm of the epidermis into three

-classes, has been unable to distinguish contractility in his own third

-class. Lastly, where, in relation to the protoplasm of the nervous

-system, is there evidence of its contractility? Has any one pretended

-that thought is but the contraction of the brain; or is it by

-contraction that the very nerves operate contraction—the nerves that

-supply muscles, namely? Mr. Huxley himself, in his Physiology, describes

-nervous action very differently. There _conduction_ is spoken of without

-a hint of contraction. Of the higher faculties of man I have to speak

-again; but let us just ask where, in the case of any pure

-sensation—smell, taste, touch, sound, color—is there proof of any

-contraction? Are we to suppose that between the physical cause of heat

-without and the mental sensation of heat within, contraction is anywhere

-interpolated? Generally, in conclusion here, while reminding of

-Virchow’s testimony to the inherent inequalities of cell-capacity, let

-us but, on the question of faculty, contrast the kidney and the brain,

-even as these organs are viewed by Mr. Huxley. To him the one is but a

-sieve for the extrusion of refuse: the other thinks Newton’s ‘Principia’

-and Iliads of Homer.

-

-Probably, then, in regard to any continuity in protoplasm of power, of

-form, or of substance, we have seen _lacunæ_ enow. Nay, Mr. Huxley

-himself can be adduced in evidence on the same side. Not rarely do we

-find in his essay admissions of _probability_ where it is _certainty_

-that is alone in place. He says, for example, “It is more than probable

-that _when_ the vegetable world _is_ thoroughly explored we _shall_ find

-all plants in possession of the same powers.” When a conclusion is

-decidedly announced, it is rather disappointing to be told, as here,

-that the premises are still to collect. “_So far_,” he says again, “as

-the conditions of the manifestations of the phenomena of contractility

-have _yet_ been studied.” Now, such a _so far_ need not be _very far_;

-and we may confess in passing, that from Mr. Huxley the phrase, “the

-conditions of the _manifestations_ of the _phenomena_” grates. We hear

-again that it is “the rule _rather_ than the exception,” or that

-“weighty authorities have _suggested_” that such and such things

-“probably occur,” or, while contemplating the nettle-sting, that such

-“_possible_ complexity” in other cases “_dawns_ upon one.” On other

-occasions he expresses himself to the effect that “perhaps it would not

-yet be safe to say that _all_ forms,” etc. Nay, not only does he

-directly _say_ that “it is by no means his intention to suggest that

-there is no difference between the lowest plant and the highest, or

-between plants and animals,” but he directly proves what he says, for he

-demonstrates in plants and animals an _essential difference of power_.

-Plants _can_ assimilate inorganic matters, animals can _not_, etc.

-Again, here is a passage in which he is seen to cut his own “_basis_”

-from beneath his own feet. After telling us that all forms of protoplasm

-consist of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen “in very complex

-union,” he continues, “To this complex combination, _the nature of which

-has never been determined with exactness_, the name of protein has been

-applied.” This, plainly, is an identification, on Mr. Huxley’s own part,

-of protoplasm and protein; and what is said of the one being necessarily

-true of the other, it follows that Mr. Huxley admits the nature of

-protoplasm never to have been determined with exactness, and that, even

-in his eyes, the _lis_ is still _sub judice_. This admission is

-strengthened by the words, too, “If we use this term” (protein) “with

-such _caution_ as may properly arise out of our _comparative ignorance_

-of the things for which it stands;” which entitle us to recommend, in

-consequence “of our _comparative ignorance_ of the things for which it

-stands,” “_caution_” in the use of the term protoplasm. In such a state

-of the case we cannot wonder that Mr. Huxley’s own conclusion here is:

-Therefore “all living matter is more or less albuminoid.” All living

-matter is more or less albuminoid! That, indeed, is the single

-conclusion of Mr. Huxley’s whole industry; but it is a conclusion that,

-far from requiring the intervention of protoplasm, had been reached long

-before the word itself had been, in this connection, used.

-

-It is in this way, then, that Mr. Huxley can be adduced in refutation of

-himself; and I think his resort to an epigram of Goethe’s for reduction

-of the powers of man to those of contraction, digestion, and

-reproduction, can be regarded as an admission to the same effect. The

-epigram runs thus:—

-

-   “Warum treibt sich das Volk so, und schreit? Es will sich ernähren,

-    Kinder zeugen, und die nähren so gut es vermag.

-    Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich wie er auch will.”

-

-That means, quite literally translated, “Why do the folks bustle and

-bawl? They want to feed themselves, get children, and then feed them as

-best they can; no man does more, let him do as he may.” This, really, is

-Mr. Huxley’s sole proof for his classification of the powers of man. Is

-it sufficient? Does it not apply rather to the birds of the air, the

-fish of the sea, and the beasts of the field, than to man? Did Newton

-only feed himself, beget children, and then feed them? Was it impossible

-for him to do any more, let him do as he might? And what we ask of

-Newton we may ask of all the rest. To elevate, therefore, the passing

-whim of mere literary _Laune_ into a cosmical axiom and a proof in

-place—this we cannot help adding to the other productions here in which

-Mr. Huxley appears against himself.

-

-But were it impossible either for him or us to point to these _lacunæ_,

-it would still be our right and our duty to refer to the present

-conditions of microscopic science in general as well as in particular,

-and to demur to the erection of its _dicta_, constituted as they yet

-are, into established columns and buttresses in support of any theory of

-life, material or other.

-

-The most delicate and dubious of all the sciences, it is also the

-youngest. In its manipulations the slightest change may operate as a

-destructive drought, or an equally destructive deluge. Its very tools

-may positively create the structure it actually examines. The present

-state of the science, and what warrant it gives Mr. Huxley to dogmatize

-on protoplasm, we may understand from this avowal of Kühne’s: “To-day we

-believe that we see” such or such fact, “but know not that further

-improvements in the means of observation will not reveal what is assumed

-for certainty to be only illusion.” With such authority to lean on—and

-it is the highest we can have—we may be allowed to entertain the

-conjecture, that it is just possible that some certainties, even of Mr.

-Huxley, may yet reveal themselves as illusions.

-

-But, in resistance to any sweeping conclusions built on it, we are not

-confined to a reference to the imperfections involved in the very nature

-and epoch of the science itself in general. With yet greater assurance

-of carrying conviction with us, we may point in particular to the actual

-opinions of its present professors. We have seen already, in the

-consideration premised, that Mr. Huxley’s hypothesis of a protoplasm

-_matter_ is unsupported, even by the most innovating Germans, who as yet

-will not advance, the most advanced of them, beyond a protoplasm-cell;

-and that his whole argument is thus sapped in advance. But what

-threatens more absolute extinction of this argument still, _all_ the

-German physiologists do _not_ accept even the protoplasm-cell.

-Rindfleisch, for example, in his recently-published ‘Lehrbuch der

-pathologischen Gewebelehre’ speaks of the cell very much as we

-understand Virchow to have spoken of it. To him there is in the cell not

-only protoplasm but nucleus, and perhaps membrane as well. To him, too,

-the cell propagates itself quite as we have been hitherto fancying it to

-do, by division of the nucleus, increase of the protoplasm, and ultimate

-partition of the cell itself. Yet he knows withal of the opinions of

-others, and accepts them in a manner. He mentions Kühne’s account of the

-membrane as at first but a mere physical limit of two fluids—a mere

-peripheral film or curdling; still he assumes a formal and decided

-membrane at last. Even Leydig and Schultze, who shall be the express

-eliminators of the membrane—the one by initiation and the other by

-consummation—confess that, as regards the cells of certain tissues, they

-have never been able to detect in them the absence of a membrane.

-

-As regards the nucleus again, the case is very much stronger. When we

-have admitted with Brücke that certain cryptogam cells, with Haeckel

-that certain protists, with Cienkowsky that two monads, and with

-Schultze that one amoeba, are without nucleus—when we have admitted that

-division of the cell _may_ take place without implicating that of the

-nucleus—that the movements of the nucleus _may_ be passive and due to

-those of the protoplasm—that Baer and Stricker demonstrate the

-disappearance of the original nucleus in the impregnated egg,—when we

-have admitted this, we have admitted also all that can be said in

-degradation of the nucleus. Even those who say all this still attribute

-to the nucleus an important and unknown _rôle_, and describe the

-formation in the impregnated egg of a new nucleus; while there are

-others again who resist every attempt to degrade it. Böttcher asserts

-movement for the nucleus, even when wholly removed from the cell;

-Neumann points to such movement in dead or dying cells; and there is

-other testimony to a like effect, as well as to peculiarities of the

-nucleus otherwise that indicate spontaneity. In this reference we may

-allude to the weighty opinion of the late Professor Goodsir, who

-anticipated in so remarkable a manner certain of the determinations of

-Virchow. Goodsir, in that anticipation, wonderfully rich and ingenious

-as he is everywhere, is perhaps nowhere more interesting and successful

-than in what concerns the nucleus. Of the whole cell, the nucleus is to

-him, as it was to Schleiden, Schwann, and others, the most important

-element. And this is the view to which I, who have little business to

-speak, wish success. This universe is not an accidental cavity, in which

-an accidental dust has been accidentally swept into heaps for the

-accidental evolution of the majestic spectacle of organic and inorganic

-life. That majestic spectacle is a spectacle as plainly for the eye of

-reason as any diagram of the mathematician. That majestic spectacle

-could have been constructed, was constructed, only in reason, for

-reason, and by reason. From beyond Orion and the Pleiades, across the

-green hem of earth, up to the imperial personality of man, all, the

-furthest, the deadest, the dustiest, is for fusion in the invisible

-point of the single Ego—_which alone glorifies it_. _For_ the subject,

-and on the model of the subject, all is made. Therefore it is

-that—though, precisely as there are acephalous monsters by way of

-exception and deformity, there may be also at the very extremity of

-animated existence cells without a nucleus—I cannot help believing that

-this nucleus itself, as analogue of the subject will yet be proved the

-most important and indispensable of all the normal cell-elements. Even

-the phenomena of the impregnated egg seem to me to support this view. In

-the egg, on impregnation, it seems to me natural (I say it with a smile)

-that the old sun that ruled it should go down, and that a new sun,

-stronger in the combination of the new and the old, should ascend into

-its place!

-

-Be these things as they may, we have now overwhelming evidence before us

-for concluding, with reference to Mr. Huxley’s first proposition,

-that—in view of the nature of microscopic science—in view of the state

-of belief that obtains at present as regards nucleus, membrane, and

-entire cell—even in view of the supporters of protoplasm itself—Mr.

-Huxley is not authorized to speak of a physical matter of life; which,

-for the rest, if granted, would, for innumerable and, as it appears to

-me, irrefragable reasons, be obliged to acknowledge for itself, not

-identity, but an infinite diversity in power, in form and in substance.

-

-So much for the first proposition in Mr. Huxley’s essay, or that which

-concerns protoplasm, as a supposed matter of life, identical itself, and

-involving the identity of all the various organs and organisms which it

-is assumed to compose. What now of the second proposition, or that which

-concerns the materiality at once of protoplasm, and of all that is

-conceived to derive from protoplasm? In other words, though, so to

-speak, for organic bricks anything like an organic clay still awaits the

-proof, I ask, if the bricks are not the same because the clay is not the

-same, what if the materiality of the former is equally unsupported by

-the materiality of the latter? Or what if the functions of protoplasm

-are not properties of its mere molecular constitution?

-

-For this is Mr. Huxley’s second proposition, namely, That all vital and

-intellectual functions are but the properties of the molecular

-disposition and changes of the material basis (protoplasm) of which the

-various animals and vegetables consist. With the conclusions now before

-us, it is evident that to enter at all on this part of Mr. Huxley’s

-argumentation is, so far as we are concerned, only a matter of grace. In

-order that it should have any weight, we must grant the fact, at once of

-the existence of a matter of life, and of all organs and organisms being

-but aggregates of it. This, obviously, we cannot now do. By way of

-hypothesis, however, we may assume it. Let it be granted, then, that

-_pro hac vice_ there _is_ a physical basis of life with all the

-consequences named; and now let us see how Mr. Huxley proceeds to

-establish its materiality.

-

-The whole former part of Mr. Huxley’s essay consists (as said) of fifty

-paragraphs, and the argument immediately concerned is confined to the

-latter ten of them. This argument is the simple chemical analogy that,

-under stimulus of an electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen uniting into an

-equivalent weight of water, and, under stimulus of preëxisting

-protoplasm, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen uniting into an

-equivalent weight of protoplasm, there is the same warrant for

-attributing the properties of the consequent to the properties of the

-antecedents in the latter case as in the former. The properties of

-protoplasm are, in origin and character, precisely on the same level as

-the properties of water. The cases are perfectly parallel. It is as

-absurd to attribute a new entity vitality to protoplasm, as a new entity

-aquosity to water. Or, if it is by its mere chemical and physical

-structure that water exhibits certain properties called aqueous, it is

-also by its mere chemical and physical structure that protoplasm

-exhibits certain properties called vital. All that is necessary in

-either case is, “under certain conditions,” to bring the chemical

-constituents together. If water is a molecular complication, protoplasm

-is equally a molecular complication, and for the description of the one

-or the other there is no change of language required. A new substance

-with new qualities results in precisely the same way here, as a new

-substance with new qualities there; and the derivative qualities are not

-more different from the primitive qualities in the one instance, than

-the derivative qualities are different from the primitive qualities in

-the other. Lastly, the _modus operandi_ of preëxistent protoplasm is not

-more unintelligible than that of the electric spark. The conclusion is

-irresistible, then, that all protoplasm being reciprocally convertible,

-and consequently identical, the properties it displays, vitality and

-intellect included, are as much the result of molecular constitution as

-those of water itself.

-

-It is evident, then, that the fulcrum on which Mr. Huxley’s second

-proposition rests, is a single inference from a chemical analogy.

-Analogy, however, being never identity, is apt to betray. The difference

-it hides may be essential, that is, while the likeness it shows may be

-inessential—so far as the conclusion is concerned. That this mischance

-has overtaken Mr. Huxley here, it will, I fancy, not be difficult to

-demonstrate.

-

-The analogy to which Mr. Huxley trusts has two references: one, to

-chemical composition, and one to a certain stimulus that determines it.

-As regards chemical composition, we are asked, by virtue of the analogy

-obtaining, to identify, as equally simple instances of it, protoplasm

-here and water there; and, as regards the stimulus in question, we are

-asked to admit the action of the electric spark in the one case to be

-quite analogous to the action of preëxisting protoplasm in the other. In

-both references I shall endeavor to point out that the analogy fails;

-or, as we may say it also, that, even to Mr. Huxley, it can only seem to

-succeed by discounting the elements of difference that still subsist.

-

-To begin with chemical combination, it is not unjust to demand that the

-analogy which must be admitted to exist in that, and a general physical

-respect, should not be strained beyond its legitimate limits. Protoplasm

-cannot be denied to be a chemical substance; protoplasm cannot be denied

-to be a physical substance. As a compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen

-and nitrogen, it comports itself chemically—at least in ultimate

-instance—in a manner not essentially different from that in which water,

-as a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, comports itself chemically. In

-mere physical aspect, again, it may count quality for quality with water

-in the same aspect. In short, so far as it is on chemical and physical

-structure that the possession of distinctive properties in any case

-depends, both bodies may be allowed to be pretty well on a par. The

-analogy must be allowed to hold so far: so far but no farther. One step

-farther and we see not only that protoplasm has, like water, a chemical

-and physical structure; but that, unlike water, it has also an organized

-or organic structure. Now this, on the part of protoplasm, is a

-possession in excess; and with relation to that excess there can be no

-grounds for analogy. This, perhaps, is what Mr. Huxley has omitted to

-consider. When insisting on attributing to protoplasm the qualities it

-possessed, because of its chemical and physical structure, if it was for

-chemical and physical structure that we attributed to water _its_

-qualities, he has simply forgotten the addition to protoplasm of a third

-structure that can only be named organic. “If the phenomena exhibited by

-water are its properties, so are those presented by protoplasm, living

-or dead, its properties.” When Mr. Huxley speaks thus, Exactly so, we

-may answer: “living or dead!” That alternative is simply slipped in and

-passed; but it is in that alternative that the whole matter lies.

-Chemically, dead protoplasm is to Mr. Huxley quite as good as living

-protoplasm. As a sample of the article, he is quite content with dead

-protoplasm, and even swallows it, he says, in the shape of bread,

-lobster, mutton, etc., with all the satisfactory results to be

-desired.—Still, as concerns the argument, it must be pointed out that it

-is only these that can be placed on the same level as water; and that

-living protoplasm is not only unlike water, but it is unlike dead

-protoplasm. Living protoplasm, namely, is identical with dead protoplasm

-only so far as its chemistry is concerned (if even so much as that); and

-it is quite evident, consequently, that difference between the two

-cannot depend on that in which they are identical—cannot depend on the

-chemistry. Life, then, is no affair of chemical and physical structure,

-and must find its explanation in something else. It is thus that, lifted

-high enough, the light of the analogy between water and protoplasm is

-seen to go out. Water, in fact, when formed from hydrogen and oxygen,

-is, in a certain way and in relation to them, no new product; it has

-still, like them, only chemical and physical qualities; it is still, as

-they are, inorganic. So far as _kind_ of power is concerned, they are

-still on the same level. But not so protoplasm, where, with preservation

-of the chemical and physical likeness there is the addition of the

-unlikeness of life, of organization, and of ideas. But the addition is a

-new world—a new and higher world, the world of a self-realizing thought,

-the world of an _entelechy_. The change of language objected to by Mr.

-Huxley is thus a matter of necessity, for it is _not_ mere molecular

-complication that we have any longer before us, and the qualities of the

-derivative are essentially and absolutely different from the qualities

-of the primitive. If we did invent the term aquosity, then, as an

-abstract sign for all the qualities of water, we should really do very

-little harm; but aquosity and vitality would still remain essentially

-unlike. While for the invention of aquosity there is little or no call,

-however, the fact in the other case is that we are not only compelled to

-invent, but to _perceive_ vitality. We are quite willing to do as Mr.

-Huxley would have us to do: look on, watch the phenomena, and name the

-results. But just in proportion to our faithfulness in these respects is

-the necessity for the recognition of a new world and a new nomenclature.

-There are certainly different states of water, as ice and steam; but the

-relation of the solid to the liquid, or of either to the vapor, surely

-offers no analogy to the relation of protoplasm dead to protoplasm

-alive. That relation is not an analogy but an antithesis, the antithesis

-of antitheses. In it, in fact, we are in presence of the one

-incommunicable gulf—the gulf of all gulfs—that gulf which Mr. Huxley’s

-protoplasm is as powerless to efface as any other material expedient

-that has ever been suggested since the eyes of men first looked into

-it—the mighty gulf between death and life.

-

-The differences alluded to (they are, in order, organization and life,

-the objective idea—design, and the subjective idea—thought), it may be

-remarked, are admitted by those very Germans to whom protoplasm, name

-and thing, is due. They, the most advanced and innovating of them,

-directly avow that there is present in the cell “an architectonic

-principle that has not yet been detected.” In pronouncing protoplasm

-capable of active or vital movements, they do by that refer, they admit

-also, to an immaterial force, and they ascribe the processes exhibited

-by protoplasm—in so many words—not to the molecules, but to organization

-and life. It is remarked by Kant that “the reason of the specific mode

-of existence of every part of a living body lies in the whole, whilst

-with dead masses each part bears this reason within itself;” and this

-indeed is how the two worlds are differentiated. A drop of water, once

-formed, is there passive for ever, susceptible to influence, but

-indifferent to influence, and what influence reaches it is wholly from

-without. It may be added to, it may be subtracted from; but infinitely

-apathetic quantitatively, it is qualitatively independent. It is

-indifferent to its own physical parts. It is without contractility,

-without alimentation, without reproduction, without specific function.

-Not so the cell, in which the parts are dependent on the whole, and the

-whole on the parts; which has its activity and _raison d’être_ within;

-which manifests all the powers which we have described water to want;

-and which requires for its continuance conditions of which water is

-independent. It is only so far as organization and life are concerned,

-however, that the cell is thus different from water. Chemically and

-physically, as said, it can show with it quality for quality. How

-strangely Mr. Huxley’s deliverances show beside these facts! He can “see

-no break in the series of steps in molecular complication;” but,

-glaringly obvious, there is a step added that is not molecular at all,

-and that has its supporting conditions completely elsewhere. The

-molecules are as fully accounted for in protoplasm as in water; but the

-sum of qualities, thus exhausted in the latter, is not so exhausted in

-the former, in which there are qualities due, plainly, not to the

-molecules as molecules, but to the form into which they are thrown, and

-the force that makes that form one. When the chemical elements are

-brought together, Mr. Huxley says, protoplasm is formed, “and this

-protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life;” but he ought to have added

-that these phenomena are themselves added to the phenomena for which all

-that relates to chemistry stands, and are there, consequently, only by

-reason of some other determinant. New consequents necessarily demand new

-antecedents. “We think fit to call different kinds of matter carbon,

-oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers and

-activities of these substances as the properties of the matter of which

-they are composed.” That, doubtless, is true, we say; but such

-statements do not exhaust the facts. We call water hydrogen and oxygen,

-and attribute _its_ properties to the properties of them. In a chemical

-point of view, we ought to do the same thing for ice and steam; yet, for

-all the chemical identity, water is not ice, nor is either steam. Do we,

-then, in these cases, make nothing of the _difference_, and in its

-despite enjoy the satisfaction of viewing the three as one? Not so; we

-ask a reason for the difference; we demand an antecedent that shall

-render the consequent intelligible. The chemistry of oxygen and hydrogen

-is not enough in explanation of the threefold form; and by the very

-necessity of the facts we are driven to the addition of heat. It is

-precisely so with protoplasm in its twofold form. The chemistry

-remaining the same in each (if it really does so), we are compelled to

-seek elsewhere a reason for the difference of living from dead

-protoplasm. As the differences of ice and steam from water lay not in

-the hydrogen and oxygen, but in the heat, so the difference of living

-from dead protoplasm lies not in the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen,

-and the nitrogen, but in the vital organization. In all cases, for the

-new quality, plainly, we must have a new explanation. The qualities of a

-steam-engine are not the results of its simple chemistry. We do apply to

-protoplasm the same conceptions, then, that are legitimate elsewhere,

-and in allocating properties and explaining phenomena we simply insist

-on Mr. Huxley’s own distinction of “living or dead.” That, in fact, is

-to us the distinction of distinctions, and we admit no vital action

-whatever, not even the dullest, to be the result of the _molecular_

-action of the protoplasm that displays it. The very protoplasm of the

-nettle-sting, with which Mr. Huxley begins, is already vitally

-organized, and in that organization as much superior to its own

-molecules as the steam-engine, in its mechanism, to its own wood and

-iron. It were indeed as rational to say that there is no principle

-concerned in a steam-engine or a watch but that of its molecular forces,

-as to make this assertion of organized matter. Still there are degrees

-in organization, and the highest forms of life are widely different from

-the lowest. Degrees similar we see even in the inorganic world. The

-persistent flow of a river is, to the mighty reason of the solar system,

-in some such proportion, perhaps, as the rhizopod to man. In protoplasm,

-even the lowest, then, but much more conspicuously in the highest, there

-is, in addition to the molecular force, another force unsignalized by

-Mr. Huxley—the force of vital organization.

-

-But this force is a rational unity, and that is an idea; and this I

-would point to as a second form of the addition to the chemistry and

-physics of protoplasm. We have just seen, it is true, that an idea may

-be found in inorganic matter, as in the solar and sidereal systems

-generally. But the idea in organized matter is not one operative, so to

-speak, from without: it is one operative from within, and in an

-infinitely more intimate and pervading manner. The units that form the

-complement of an inorganic system are but independently and externally

-in place, like units in a procession; but in what is organized there is

-no individual that is not sublated into the unity of the single life.

-This is so even in protoplasm. Mr. Huxley, it is true, desiderates, as

-result of mere ordinary chemical process, a life-stuff in mass, as it

-were in the web, to which he has only to resort for cuttings and

-cuttings in order to produce, by aggregation, what organized individual

-he pleases. But the facts are not so: we cannot have protoplasm in the

-web, but the piece. There is as yet no _matter_ of life; there are still

-_cells_ of life. It is no shred of protoplasm—no spoonful or

-toothpickful—that can be recognized as adequate to the function and the

-name. Such shred may wriggle a moment, but it produces nought, and it

-dies. In the smallest, lowest protoplasm-cell, then, we have this

-rational unity of a complement of individuals that only are for the

-whole and exist in the whole. This is an idea, therefore; this is

-design: the organized concert of many to a single common purpose. The

-rudest savage that should, as in Paley’s illustration, find a watch, and

-should observe the various contrivances all controlled by the single end

-in view, would be obliged to acknowledge—though in his own way—that what

-he had before him was no mere physical, no mere molecular product. So in

-protoplasm: even from the first, but, quite undeniably, in the completed

-organization at last, which alone it was there to produce; for a single

-idea has been its one manifestation throughout. And in what machinery

-does it not at length issue? Was it molecular powers that invented a

-respiration—that perforated the posterior ear to give a balance of

-air—that compensated the _fenestra ovalis_ by a _fenestra rotunda_—that

-placed in the auricular sacs those _otolithes_, those express stones for

-hearing? Such machinery! The _chordæ tendineæ_ are to the valves of the

-heart exactly adjusted check-strings; and the contractile _columnæ

-carneæ_ are set in, under contraction and expansion, to equalize their

-length to their office. Membranes, rods, and liquids—it required the

-express experiment of man to make good the fact that the inventor of the

-ear had availed himself of the most perfect apparatus possible for his

-purpose. And are we to conceive such machinery, such apparatus, such

-contrivances merely molecular? Are molecules adequate to such

-things—molecules in their blind passivity, and dead, dull insensibility?

-Is it to molecular agency Mr. Huxley himself owes that “singular inward

-laboratory” of which he speaks, and without which all the protoplasm in

-the world would be useless to him? Surely, in the presence of these

-manifest ideas, it is impossible to attribute the single peculiar

-feature of protoplasm—its vitality, namely—to mere molecular chemistry.

-Protoplasm, it is true, breaks up into carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and

-nitrogen, as water does into hydrogen and oxygen; but the watch breaks

-similarly up into mere brass, and steel, and glass. The loose materials

-of the watch—even its chemical material if you will—replace its weight,

-quite as accurately as the constituents carbon, etc., replace the weight

-of the protoplasm. But neither these nor those replace the vanished

-idea, which was alone the important element. Mr. Huxley saw no break in

-the series of steps in molecular complication; but, though not

-molecular, it is difficult to understand what more striding, what more

-absolute break could be desired than the break into an idea. It is of

-that break alone that we think in the watch; and it is of that break

-alone that we should think in the protoplasm which, far more cunningly,

-far more rationally, constructs a heart, an eye or an ear. That is the

-break of breaks, and explain it as we may, we shall never explain it by

-molecules.

-

-But, if inorganic elements as such are inadequate to account either for

-vital organization or the objective idea of design, much more are they

-inadequate, in the third place, to account for the subjective idea, for

-the phenomena of thought as thought. Yet Mr. Huxley tells us that

-thought is but the expression of the molecular changes of protoplasm.

-This he only tells us; this he does not prove. He merely says that, if

-we admit the functions of the lowest forms of life to be but “direct

-results of the nature of the matter of which they are composed,” we must

-admit as much for the functions of the highest. We have not admitted Mr.

-Huxley’s presupposition; but, even with its admission, we should not

-feel bound to admit his conclusion. In such a mighty system of

-differences, there are ample room and verge enough for the introduction

-of new motives. We can say here at once, in fact, that as thought, let

-its connection be what it may with, has never been proved to result

-from, organization, no improvement of the proof required will be found

-in protoplasm. No one power that Mr. Huxley signalizes in protoplasm can

-account for thought: not alimentation, and not reproduction, certainly;

-but not even contractility. We have seen already that there is no proof

-of contraction being necessary even for the simplest sensation; but much

-less is there any proof of a necessity of contraction for the inner and

-independent operations of the mind. Mr. Huxley himself admits this. He

-says: “Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action are, in the

-long-run, resolvable into muscular contraction;” and so, “even those

-manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will, which we rightly

-name the higher faculties, are not excluded from this classification,

-inasmuch as to every one _but the subject of them_, they are known only

-as transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body.”

-The concession is made here, we see that these manifestations are

-differently known to the subject of them. But we may first object that,

-if even that privileged “every one but the subject” were limited to a

-knowledge of contractions, he would not know much. It is only because he

-knows, first of all, a thinker and willer of contractions that these

-themselves cease to be but passing externalities, and transitory

-contingencies. Neither is it reasonable to assert an identity of nature

-for contractions, and for that which they only represent. It would

-hardly be fair to confound either the receiver or the sender of a

-telegraphic message, with the movements which alone bore it, and without

-which it would have been impossible. The sign is not the thing

-signified, it is but the servant of the signifier—his own arbitrary

-mark—and intelligible, in the first place, only to him. It is the

-meaning, in all cases, that is alone vital; the sign is but an accident.

-To convert the internality into the arbitrary externality that simply

-expresses it, is for Mr. Huxley only an oversight. Your ideas are made

-known to your neighbors by contractions, therefore your ideas are of the

-same nature as contractions! Or, even to take it from the other side,

-your neighbor perceives in you contractions only, and therefore your

-ideas are contractions! Are not the vital elements here present the two

-correspondent internalities, between which the contractions constitute

-but an arbitrary chain of external communication, that is so now, but

-may be otherwise again? The ringing of the bell at the window is not

-precisely the dwarf within. Nor are Engineer Chappe’s “wooden arms and

-elbow-joints jerking and fugling in the air,” to be identified with

-Engineer Chappe himself. For the higher faculties, even for speech,

-etc., assuredly Mr. Huxley might have well spared himself this

-superfluous and inapplicable reference to contraction.

-

-But, in the middle of it, as we have seen, Mr. Huxley concedes that

-these manifestations are differently known to the subject of them. If

-so, what becomes of his assertion of but a certain number of powers for

-protoplasm? The manifestations of the higher faculties are not known to

-the subject of them by contraction, etc. By what, then, are they known?

-According to Mr. Huxley, they can only be known by the powers of

-protoplasm; and therefore, by his own showing, protoplasm must possess

-powers other than those of his own assertion. Mr. Huxley’s one great

-power of contractility, Mr. Huxley himself confesses to be inapplicable

-here. Indeed, in his Physiology (p. 193), he makes such an avowal as

-this: “We class _sensations_, along with _emotions_, and _volitions_,

-and _thoughts_, under the common head of states of _consciousness_; but

-what consciousness is we know not, and how it is that anything so

-remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of

-irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of

-the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the story.” Consciousness

-plainly was not muscular contraction to Mr. Huxley when he wrote his

-Physiology; it is only since then that he has gone over to the assertion

-of no power in protoplasm but the triple power, contractility, etc. But

-the truth is only as his Physiology has it—the cleft is simply, as Mr.

-Huxley acknowledges it there, absolute. On one side, there is the world

-of externality, where all is body by body, and away from one another—the

-boundless reciprocal exclusion of the infinite object. On the other

-side, there is the world of internality, where all is soul to soul, and

-away into one another—the boundless reciprocal inclusion of the infinite

-subject. This—even while it is true that, for subject to be subject, and

-object, object, the boundless intussuscepted multiplicity of the single

-invisible point of the one is but the dimensionless casket into which

-the illimitable Genius of the other must retract and withdraw itself—is

-the difference of differences; and certainly it is not internality that

-can be abolished before externality. The proof for the absoluteness of

-thought, the subject, the mind, is, on its side, pretty well perfect. It

-is not necessary here, however, to enter into that proof at length.

-Before passing on, I may simply point to the fact that, if thought is to

-be called a function of matter, it must be acknowledged to be a function

-wholly peculiar and unlike any other. In all other functions, we are

-present to processes which are in the same sense physical as the organs

-themselves. So it is with lung, stomach, liver, kidney, where every step

-can be followed, so to speak, with eye and hand; but all is changed when

-we have to do with mind as the function of brain. Then, indeed, as Mr.

-Huxley thought in his Physiology, we are admitted, as if by touch of

-Aladdin’s lamp, to a world absolutely different and essentially new—to a

-world, on its side of the incommunicable cleft, as complete, entire,

-independent, self-contained, and absolutely _sui generis_, as the world

-of matter on the other side. It will be sufficient here to allude to as

-much as this, with special reference to the fact that, so far as this

-argument is concerned, protoplasm has not introduced any the very

-slightest difference. All the ancient reasons for the independence of

-thought as against organization, can be used with even more striking

-effect as against protoplasm; but it will be sufficient to indicate

-this, so much are the arguments in question a common property now.

-Thought, in fact, brings with it its own warrant; or it brings with it,

-to use the phrase of Burns, “its patent of nobility direct from Almighty

-God.” And that is the strongest argument on this whole side. Throughout

-the entire universe, organic and inorganic, thought is the controlling

-sovereign; nor does matter anywhere refuse its allegiance. So it is in

-thought, too, that man has _his_ patent of nobility, believes that he is

-created in the image of God, and knows himself a free-man of infinitude.

-

-But the analogy, in the hands of Mr. Huxley, has, we have seen, a second

-reference—that, namely, to the excitants, if we may call them so, which

-_determine_ combination. The _modus operandi_, Mr. Huxley tells us, of

-preëxisting protoplasm in determining the formation of new protoplasm,

-is not more unintelligible than the _modus operandi_ of the electric

-spark in determining the formation of water; and so both, we are left to

-infer, are perfectly analogous. The inferential turn here is rather a

-favorite with Mr. Huxley. “But objectors of this class,” he says on an

-earlier occasion, in allusion to those who hesitate to conclude from

-dead to living matter, “do not seem to reflect that it is also, in

-strictness, true that we know nothing about the composition of any body

-whatever as it is.” In the same neighborhood, too, he argues that,

-though impotent to restore to decomposed calc-spar its original form, we

-do not hesitate to accept the chemical analysis assigned to it, and

-should not, consequently, any more hesitate because of any mere

-difference of form to accept the analysis of dead for that of living

-protoplasm. It is certainly fair to point out that, if we bear ignorance

-and impotence with equanimity in one case, we may equally so bear them

-in another; but it is not fair to convert ignorance into knowledge, nor

-impotence into power. Yet it is usual to take such statements loosely,

-and let them pass. It is not considered that, if we know nothing about

-the composition of any body whatever as it is, then we do know nothing,

-and that it is strangely idle to offer absolute ignorance as a support

-for the most dogmatic knowledge. If such statements are, as is really

-expected for them, to be accepted, yet not accepted, they are the

-stultification of all logic. Is the chemistry of living to be seen to be

-the same as the chemistry of dead protoplasm, because we know nothing

-about the composition of any body whatever as it is? We know perfectly

-well that black is white, for we are absolutely ignorant of either as it

-is! The _form_ of the calc-spar, which (the spar) we _can_ analyze, we

-cannot restore; therefore the _form_ of the protoplasm, which we

-_cannot_ analyze, has nothing to do with the matter in hand; and the

-chemistry of what is dead may be accepted as the chemistry of what is

-living! In the case of reasoning so irrelevant it is hardly worth while

-referring to what concerns the forms themselves; that they are totally

-incommensurable, that in all forms of calc-spar there is no question but

-of what is physical, while in protoplasm the change of form is

-introduction into an entire new world. As in these illustrations, so in

-the case immediately before us. No appeal to ignorance in regard to

-something else, the electric spark, should be allowed to transform

-another ignorance, that of the action of preëxisting protoplasm, into

-knowledge, here into _the_ knowledge that the two unknown things,

-because of non-knowledge, are—perfectly analogous! That this analogy

-does not exist—that the electric spark and preëxisting protoplasm are,

-in their relative places, _not_ on the same chemical level—this is the

-main point for us to see; and Mr. Huxley’s allusion to our ignorance

-must not be allowed to blind us to it. Here we have in a glass vessel so

-much hydrogen and oxygen, into which we discharge an electric spark, and

-water is the result. Now what analogy is it possible to perceive between

-this production of water by external experiment and the production of

-protoplasm by protoplasm? The discrepancy is so palpable that it were

-impertinent to enlarge on it. The truth is just this, that the measured

-and mixed gases, the vessel, and the spark, in the one case, are as

-unlike the fortuitous food, the living organs, and the long process of

-assimilation in the other case, as the product water is unlike the

-product protoplasm. No; that the action of the electric spark should be

-unknown, is no reason why we should not insist on protoplasm for

-protoplasm, on life for life. Protoplasm can only be produced by

-protoplasm, and each of all the innumerable varieties of protoplasm,

-only by its own kind. For the protoplasm of the worm we must go to the

-worm, and for that of the toad-stool to the toad-stool. In fact, if all

-living beings come from protoplasm, it is quite as certain that, but for

-living beings, protoplasm would disappear. Without an egg you cannot

-have a hen—that is true; but it is equally true that, without a hen, you

-cannot have an egg. So in protoplasm; which, consequently, in the

-production of itself, offers no analogy to the production, or

-precipitation by the electric spark, not of itself, but of water.

-Besides, if for protoplasm, preëxisting protoplasm, is always necessary,

-how was there ever a first protoplasm?

-

-Generally, then, Mr. Huxley’s analogy does not hold, whether in the one

-reference or the other, and Mr. Huxley has no warrant for the reduction

-of protoplasm to the mere chemical level which he assigns it in either.

-That level is brought very prominently forward in such expressions as

-these: That it is only necessary to bring the chemical elements

-“together,” “under certain conditions,” to give rise to the more complex

-body, protoplasm, just as there is a similar expedient to give rise to

-water; and that, under the influence of preëxisting living protoplasm,

-carbonic acid, water, and ammonia disappear, and an equivalent weight of

-protoplasm makes its appearance, just as, under the influence of the

-electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen disappear, and an equivalent weight

-of water makes its appearance. All this, plainly, is to assume for

-protoplasm such mere chemical place and nature as consist not with the

-facts. The cases are, in truth, not parallel, and the “certain

-conditions” are wholly diverse. All that is said we can do at will for

-water, but nothing of what is said can we do at will for protoplasm. To

-say we can feed protoplasm, and so make protoplasm at will produce

-protoplasm, is very much, in the circumstances, only to say, and is not

-to say, that, in this way, we make a chemical experiment. To insist on a

-chemical analogy, in fact, between water and protoplasm, is to omit the

-differences not covered by the analogy at all—thought, design, life, and

-all the processes of organization; and it is but simple procedure to

-omit these differences only by an appeal to ignorance elsewhere.

-

-It is hardly worth while, perhaps, to refer now again to the

-difference—here, however, once more incidentally suggested—between

-protoplasm and protoplasm. Mr. Huxley, that is, almost in his very last

-word on this part of the argument, seems to become aware of the bearing

-of this on what relates to materiality, and he would again stamp

-protoplasm (and with it life and intellect), into an indifferent

-identity. In order that there should be no break between the lowest

-functions and the highest (the functions of the fungus and the functions

-of man), he has “endeavored to prove,” he says, that the protoplasm of

-the lowest organisms is “essentially identical with, and most readily

-converted into that of any animal.” On this alleged reciprocal

-_convertibility_ of protoplasm, then, Mr. Huxley would again found as

-well an inference of identity, as the further conclusion that the

-functions of the highest, not less than those of the lowest animals, are

-but the molecular manifestations of their common protoplasm.

-

-Plainly here it is only the consideration, not of function, but of the

-alleged reciprocal _convertibility_ that is left us now. Is this true,

-then? Is it true that every organism can digest every other organism,

-and that thus a relation of identity is established between that which

-digests and whatever is digested? These questions place Mr. Huxley’s

-general enterprise, perhaps, in the most glaring light yet; for it is

-very evident that there is an end of the argument if all foods and all

-feeders are essentially identical both with themselves and with each

-other. The facts of the case, however, I believe to be too well known to

-require a single word here on my part. It is not long since Mr. Huxley

-himself pointed out the great difference between the foods of plants and

-the foods of animals; and the reader may be safely left to think for

-himself of _ruminantia_ and _carnivora_, of soft bills and hard bills,

-of molluscs and men. Mr. Huxley talks feelingly of the possibility of

-himself feeding the lobster quite as much as of the lobster feeding him;

-but such pathos is not always applicable; it is not likely that a sponge

-would be to the stomach of Mr. Huxley any more than Mr. Huxley to the

-stomach of a sponge.

-

-But a more important point is this, that the functions themselves remain

-quite apart from the alleged convertibility. We can neither acquire the

-functions of what we eat, nor impart our functions to what eats us. We

-shall not come to fly by feeding on vultures, nor they to speak by

-feeding on us. No possible manure of human brains will enable a

-corn-field to reason. But if functions are inconvertible, the

-convertibility of the protoplasm is idle. In this inconvertibility,

-indeed, functions will be seen to be independent of mere chemical

-composition. And that is the truth: for functions there is more required

-than either chemistry or physics.

-

-It is to be acknowledged—to notice one other incidental suggestion, for

-the sake of completeness, and by way of transition to the final

-consideration of possible objections—that Mr. Huxley would be very much

-assisted in his identification of differences, were but the theories of

-the molecularists, on the one hand, and of Mr. Darwin, on the other,

-once for all established. The three modes of theorizing indicated,

-indeed, are not without a tendency to approach one another; and it is

-precisely their union that would secure a definitive triumph for the

-doctrine of materialism. Mr. Huxley, as we have seen—though what he

-desiderates is an auto-plastic living _matter_ that, produced by

-ordinary chemical processes, is yet capable of continuing and developing

-itself into new and higher forms—still begins with the egg. Now the

-theory of the molecularists would, for its part, remove all the

-difficulties that, for materialism, are involved in this beginning; it

-would place protoplasm undeniably at length on a merely chemical level;

-and would fairly enable Mr. Darwin, supplemented by such a life-stuff,

-to account by natural means for everything like an idea or thought that

-appears in creation. The misfortune is, however, that we must believe

-the theory of the molecularists still to await the proof; while the

-theory of Mr. Darwin has many difficulties peculiar to itself. This

-theory, philosophically, or in ultimate analysis, is an attempt to prove

-that design, or the objective idea, especially in the organic world, is

-developed _in time_ by natural means. The time which Mr. Darwin demands,

-it is true, is an infinite time; and he thus gains the advantage of his

-processes being allowed greater _clearness_ for the understanding, in

-consequence of the _obscurity_ of the infinite past in which they are

-placed, and of which it is difficult in the first instance to deny any

-possibility whatever. Still it remains to be asked, Are such processes

-credible in any time? What Mr. Darwin has done in aid of his view is,

-first, to lay before us a knowledge of facts in natural history of

-surprising richness; and, second, to support this knowledge by an

-inexhaustible ingenuity of hypothesis in arrangement of appearances.

-Now, in both respects, whether for information or even interest, the

-value of Mr. Darwin’s contribution will probably always remain

-independent of the argument or arguments that might destroy his leading

-proposition; and it is with this proposition that we have here alone to

-do. As said, we ask only, Is it true that the objective idea, the design

-which we see in the organized world, is the result in infinite time of

-the necessary adaption of living structures to the peculiarities of the

-conditions by which they are surrounded?

-

-Against this theory, then, its own absolute generalization may be viewed

-as our first objection. In ultimate abstraction, that is, the only

-agency postulated by Mr. Darwin is time—infinite time; and as regards

-actually existent beings and actually existent conditions, it is hardly

-possible to deny any possibility whatever to infinitude. If told, for

-example, that the elephant, if only obliged _infinitely_ to run, might

-be converted into the stag, how should we be able to deny? So also, if

-the lengthening of the giraffe’s neck were hypothetically attributed to

-a succession of dearths in infinite time that only left the leaves of

-trees for long-necked animals to live on, we should be similarly

-situated as regards denial. Still it can be pointed out that ingenuity

-of natural conjecture has, in such cases, no less wide a field for the

-negation than for the affirmation; and that, on the question of fact,

-nothing is capable of being determined. But we can also say more than

-that—we can say that any fruitful application even of _infinite time_ to

-the _general problem of difference_ in the world is inconceivable. To

-explain all from an absolute beginning requires us to commence with

-nothing; but to this nothing time itself is an addition. Time is an

-entity, a something, a difference added to the original identity: whence

-or how came time? Time cannot account for its own self; how is it that

-there is such a thing as time? Then no conceivable brooding even of

-infinite time could hatch the infinitude of space. How is it there is

-such a thing as space? No possible clasps of time and space, further,

-could ever conceivably thicken into matter. How is it there is such a

-thing as matter? Lastly, so far, no conceivable brooding, or even

-gyrating, of a single matter in time and space could account for the

-specification of matter—carbon, gold, iodine, etc.—as we see and know

-it. Time, space, matter, and the whole inorganic world, thus remain

-impassive to the action even of infinite time; all _these_ differences

-remain incapable of being accounted for so.

-

-But suppose no curiosity had ever been felt in this reference, which,

-though scientifically indefensible, is quite possible, how about the

-transition of the inorganic into the organic? Mr. Huxley tells us that,

-for food, the plant needs nothing but its bath of smelling-salts.

-Suppose this bath now—a pool of a solution of carbonate of ammonia; can

-any action of sun, or air, or electricity, be conceived to develop a

-cell—or even so much lump-protoplasm—in this solution? The production of

-an initial cell in any such manner will not allow itself to be realized

-to thought. Then we have just to think for a moment of the vast

-differences into which, for the production of the present organized

-world, this cell must be distributed, to shake our heads and say we

-cannot well refuse anything to an infinite time, but still we must

-pronounce a problem of this reach hopeless.

-

-It is precisely in conditions, however, that Mr. Darwin claims a

-solution of this problem. Conditions concern all that relates to air,

-heat, light, land, water, and whatever they imply. Our second objection,

-consequently, is, that conditions are quite inadequate to account for

-present organized differences, from a single cell. Geological time, for

-example, falls short, after all, of infinite time; or, in known

-geological eras, let us calculate them as liberally as we may, there is

-not time enough to account for the presently-existing varieties, from

-one, or even several, primordial forms. So to speak, it is not _in_

-geological time to account for the transformation of the elephant into

-the stag from acceleration, or for that of the stag into the elephant

-from retardation, of movement. And we may speak similarly of the growth

-of the neck of the giraffe, or even of the elevation of the monkey into

-man. Moreover, time apart, conditions have no such power in themselves.

-It is impossible to conceive of animal or vegetable effluvia ever

-creating the nerve by which they are felt, and so gradually the

-Schneiderian membrane, nose, and whole olfactory apparatus. Yet these

-effluvia are the conditions of smell, and, _ex hypothesi_, ought to have

-created it. Did light, or did the pulsations of the air, ever by any

-length of time, indent into the sensitive cell, eyes, and a pair of

-eyes—ears, and a pair of ears? Light conceivably might shine for ever

-without such a wonderfully complicated result as an eye. Similarly, for

-delicacy and marvellous ingenuity of structure, the ear is scarcely

-inferior to the eye; and surely it is possible to think of a whole

-infinitude of those fitful and fortuitous air-tremblings, which we call

-sound, without indentation into anything whatever of such an organ.

-

-A third objection to Mr. Darwin’s theory is, that the play of natural

-contingency in regard to the vicissitudes of conditions, has no title to

-be named _selection_. Naturalists have long known and spoken of the

-“influence of accidental causes;” but Mr. Darwin was the first to apply

-the term _selection_ to the action of these, and thus convert accident

-into design. The agency to which Mr. Darwin attributes all the changes

-which he would signalize in animals is really the fortuitous contingency

-of brute nature; and it is altogether fallacious to call such process,

-or such non-process, by a term involving foresight and a purpose. We

-have here, indeed, only a metaphor wholly misapplied. The German writer

-who, many years ago, said “even the _genera_ are wholly a prey to the

-changes of the external universal life,” saw precisely what Mr. Darwin

-sees, but it never struck him to style contingency selection. Yet, how

-dangerous, how infectious, has not this ungrounded metaphor proved! It

-has become a _principle_, a _law_, and been transferred by very genuine

-men into their own sciences of philology and what not. People will

-wonder at all this by-and-by. But to point out the inapplicability of

-such a word to the processes of nature referred to by Mr. Darwin, is to

-point out also the impossibility of any such contingencies proceeding,

-by graduated rise, from stage to stage, into the great symmetrical

-organic system—the vast plan—the grand harmonious whole—by which we are

-surrounded. This rise, this system, is really the objective idea; but it

-is utterly incapable of being accounted for by any such agency as

-natural contingency in geological, or infinite, or any time. But it is

-this which the word selection tends to conceal.

-

-We may say, lastly, in objection, here, that, in the fact of “reversion”

-or “atavism,” Mr. Darwin acknowledges his own failure. We thus see that

-the species as species is something independent, and holds its own

-_insita vis naturæ_ within itself.

-

-Probably it is not his theory, then, that gives value to Mr. Darwin’s

-book; nor even his ready ingenuity, whatever interest it may lend: it is

-the material information it contains. The ingenuity, namely, verges

-somewhat on that Humian expedient of natural conjecture so copiously

-exemplified, on occasion of a few trite texts, in Mr. Buckle. But that

-natural conjecture is always insecure, equivocal, and many-sided. It may

-be said that ancient warfare, for example, giving victory always to the

-personally ablest and bravest, must have resulted in the improvement of

-the race; or that, the weakest being always necessarily left at home,

-the improvement was balanced by deterioration; or that the ablest were

-necessarily the most exposed to danger, and so, etc., etc., according,

-to ingenuity _usque ad infinitum_. Trustworthy conclusion is not

-possible to this method, but only to the induction of facts, or to

-scientific demonstration.

-

-Neither molecularists nor Darwinians, then, are able to level out the

-difference between organic and inorganic, or between genera and genera

-or species and species. The differences persist despite of both; the

-distributed identity remains unaccounted for. Nor, consequently, is Mr.

-Darwin’s theory competent to explain the objective idea by any reference

-to time and conditions. Living beings do exist in a mighty chain from

-the moss to the man; but that chain, far from founding, is founded in

-the idea, and is not the result of any mere natural _growth_ of this

-into that. That chain is itself the most brilliant stamp, the

-sign-manual, of design. On every ledge of nature, from the lowest to the

-highest, there is a life that is _its_,—a creature to represent it,

-reflect it—so to speak, pasture on it. The last, highest, brightest link

-of this chain is man; the incarnation of thought itself, which is the

-summation of this universe; man, that includes in himself all other

-links and their single secret—the personified universe, the subject of

-the world. Mr. Huxley makes but small reference to thought; he only

-tucks it in, as it were, as a mere appendicle of course.

-

-It may be objected, indeed—to reach the last stage in this

-discussion—that, if Mr. Huxley has not disproved the conception of

-thought and life “as a something which works through matter, but is

-independent of it,” neither have we proved it. But it is easy for us to

-reply that, if “_independent of_” means here “_unconnected with_,” we

-have had no such object. We have had no object whatever, in fact, but to

-resist, now the extravagant assertion that all organized tissue, from

-the lichen to Leibnitz, is alike in faculty, and again the equally

-extravagant assertion that life and thought are but ordinary products of

-molecular chemistry. As regards the latter assertion, we have endeavored

-to show that the processes of vital organization (as self-production,

-etc.) belong to another sphere, higher than, and very different from,

-those of mechanical juxtaposition or chemical neutralization; that life,

-then, is no mere product of matter as matter; that if no life can be

-pointed to independent of matter, neither is there any life-stuff

-independent of life; and that life, consequently, adds a new and higher

-force to chemistry, as chemistry a new and higher force to mechanics,

-etc. As for thought, the endeavor was to show that it was as independent

-on the one side as matter on the other, that it controlled, used,

-summed, and was the reason of matter. Thought, then, is not to be

-reached by any bridge from matter, that is a hybrid of both, and

-explains the connection. The relation of matter to mind is not to be

-explained as a transition, but as a _contrecoup_. In this relation,

-however, it is not the material, but the mental side, which the whole

-universe declares to be the dominant one.

-

-As regards any objection to the arguments which we have brought against

-the identity of protoplasm, again, these will lie in the phrase,

-probably, “difference not of kind, but degree,” or in the word

-“modification.” The “phrase” may be now passed, for generic or specific

-difference must be allowed in protoplasm, if not for the overwhelming

-reason that an infinitude of various kinds exist in it, each of which is

-self-productive and uninterchangeable with the rest, then for Mr.

-Huxley’s own reason, that plants assimilate inorganic matter and animals

-only organic. As for the objection “modification,” again, the same

-consideration of generic difference must prove fatal to it. This were

-otherwise, indeed, could but the molecularists and Mr. Darwin succeed in

-destroying generic difference; but in this, as we have seen, they have

-failed. And this will be always so: who dogs identity, difference dogs

-him. It is quite a justifiable endeavor, for example, to point out the

-identity that obtains between veins and arteries on the one hand, as

-between these and capillaries on the other; but all the time the

-difference is behind us; and when we turn to look, we see, for

-circulation, the valves of the veins and the elastic coats of the

-arteries as opposed to one another, and, for irrigation, the permeable

-walls of the capillaries as opposed to both.

-

-Generic differences exist then, and we cannot allow the word

-“modification” to efface them in the interest of the identity claimed

-for protoplasm. Brain-protoplasm is not bone-protoplasm, nor the

-protoplasm of the fungus the protoplasm of man. Similarly, it is very

-questionable how far the word “modification” will warrant us in

-regarding with Mr. Huxley the “ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the

-nettle as identical with the protoplasm of its sting. Things that

-originate alike may surely eventuate in others which, chemically and

-vitally, far from being mere modifications, must be pronounced totally

-different. Such eventuation must be held competent to what can only be

-named generic or specific difference. The “child” is only “_father_ of

-the man”—it is not the man; who, moreover, in the course of an ordinary

-life, we are told, has totally changed himself, not once, but many

-times, retaining at the last not one single particle of matter with

-which he set out. Such eventuations, whether called modifications or

-not, certainly involve essential difference. And so situated are the

-“ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the nettle, which, whether

-compared with the protoplasm of the nettle-sting, or with that in which

-they originated, must be held to here assumed, by their own actions,

-indisputable differences, physical, chemical, and vital, or in form,

-substance, and faculty.

-

-Much, in fact, depends on definition here; and, in reference to

-modification, it may be regarded as arbitrary when identity shall be

-admitted to cease and difference to begin. There are the old Greek

-puzzles of the Bald Head and the Heap, for example. How many grains, or

-how many hairs, may we remove before a heap of wheat is no heap, or a

-head of hair bald? These concern quantity alone; but, in other cases,

-bone, muscle, brain, fungus, tree, man, there is not only a

-quantitative, but a qualitative difference; and in regard to such

-differences, the word modification can be regarded as but a cloak, under

-which identity is to be shuffled into difference, but remain identity

-all the same. The brick is but modified clay, Mr. Huxley intimates, bake

-it and paint it as you may; but is the difference introduced by the

-baking and painting to be ignored? Is what Mr. Huxley calls the

-“artifice” not to be taken into account, leave alone the “potter?” The

-strong firm rope is about as exact an example of modification

-proper—modification of the weak loose hemp—as can well be found; but are

-we to exclude from our consideration the whole element of difference due

-to the hand and brain of man? Not far from Burn’s Monument, on the

-Calton Hill of Edinburgh, there lies a mass of stones which is

-potentially a church, the former Trinity College Church. Were this

-church again realized, would it be fair to call it a mere modification

-of the previous stones? Look now to the egg and the full-feathered fowl.

-Chaucer describes to us the cock, “hight chaunteclere,” that was to his

-“faire Pertelotte” so dear:—

-

-            “His comb was redder than the fine corall,

-             Embattled, as it were a castle-wall;

-             His bill was black, and as the jet it shone;

-             Like azure were his legges and his tone (toes);

-             His nailes whiter than the lilie flour,

-             And like the burned gold was his color.”

-

-Would it be even as fair to call this fine fellow—comb, wattles, spurs,

-and all—a modified yolk, as to call the church but modified stones? If,

-in the latter case, an element of difference, altogether undeniable,

-seems to have intervened, is not such intervention at least quite as

-well marked in the former? It requires but a slight analysis to detect

-that all the stones in question are marked and numbered; but will any

-analysis point out within the shell the various parts that only need

-arrangement to become the fowl? Are the men that may take the stones,

-and, in a re-erected Trinity College Church, realize anew the idea of

-its architect, in any respect more wonderful than the unknown disposers

-of the materials of the fowl? That what realizes the idea should, in the

-one case, be from without, and, in the other, from within, is no reason

-for seeing more modification and less wonder in the latter than the

-former. There is certainly no more reason for seeing the fowl in the

-egg, and as identical with the egg, than for seeing a re-built Trinity

-College Church as identical with its unarranged materials. A part cannot

-be taken for the whole, whether in space _or in time_. Mr. Huxley misses

-this. He is so absorbed in the identity out of which, that he will not

-see the difference into which, progress is made. As the idea of the

-church has the stones, so the idea of the fowl has the egg, for its

-commencement. But to this idea, and in both cases, the terminal

-additions belong, quite as much as the initial materials. If the idea,

-then, add sulphur, phosphorus, iron, and what not, it must be credited

-with these not less than with the carbon, hydrogen, etc., with which it

-began. It is not fair to mutter modification, as if it were a charm to

-destroy all the industry of time. The protoplasm of the egg of the fowl

-is no more the fowl than the stones the church; and to identify, by

-juggle of a mere word, parts in time and wholes in time so different, is

-but self-deception. Nay, in protoplasm, as we have so often seen,

-difference is as much present at first as at last. Even in its germ,

-even in its initial identity, to call it so, protoplasm is already

-different, for it issues in differences infinite.

-

-Omission of the consideration of difference, it is to be acknowledged,

-is not now-a-days restricted to Mr. Huxley. In the wonder that is

-usually expressed, for example, at Oken’s _identification_ of the skull

-with so many vertebræ, it is forgot that there is still implicated the

-wonder which we ought to feel at the unknown power that could, in the

-end, so _differentiate_ them. If the cornea of the eye and the enamel of

-the teeth are alike but modified protoplasm, we must be pardoned for

-thinking more of the adjective than of the substantive. Our wonder is

-how, for one idea, protoplasm could become one thing here, and, for

-another idea, another so different thing there. We are more curious

-about the modification than the protoplasm. In the difference, rather

-than in the identity, it is, indeed, that the wonder lies. Here are

-several thousand pieces of protoplasm; analysis can detect no difference

-in them. They are to us, let us say, as they are to Mr. Huxley,

-identical in power, in form, and in substance; and yet on all these

-several thousand little bits of apparently indistinguishable matter an

-element of difference so pervading and so persistent has been impressed,

-that, of them all, not one is interchangeable with another! Each seed

-feeds its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more grow into

-the fly than it will grow into an elephant. Protoplasm is protoplasm:

-yes, but man’s protoplasm is man’s protoplasm, and the mushroom’s the

-mushroom’s. In short, it is quite evident that the word modification, if

-it would conceal, is powerless to withdraw, the difference; which

-difference, moreover, is one of kind and not of degree.

-

-This consideration of possible objections, then, is the last we have to

-attend to; and it only remains to draw the general conclusion. All

-animal and vegetable organisms are alike in power, in form, and in

-substance, only if the protoplasm of which they are composed is

-similarly alike; and the functions of all animal and vegetable organisms

-are but properties of the molecular affections of their chemical

-constituents, only if the functions of the protoplasm, of which they are

-composed, are but properties of the molecular affections of _its_

-chemical constituents. In disproof of the affirmative in both clauses,

-there has been no object but to demonstrate, on the one hand, the

-infinite non-identity of protoplasm, and, on the other, the dependence

-of its functions upon other factors than its molecular constituents.

-

-In short, the whole position of Mr. Huxley, that all organisms consist

-alike of the same life-matter, which life-matter is, for its part, due

-only to chemistry, must be pronounced untenable—nor less untenable the

-materialism he would found on it.

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-                   _ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION_:

-

-                       PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL.

-

-

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-                                 ON THE

-

-                        HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION:

-

-                      _PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL_.

-

-“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth

-    out of the mouth of God shall man live.” ch-hd-end There is

-    apparently considerable repugnance in the minds of many excellent

-    people to the acceptance, or even consideration, of the hypothesis

-    of development, or that of the gradual creation by descent, with

-    modification from the simplest beginnings, of the different forms of

-    the organic world. This objection probably results from two

-    considerations: first, that the human species is certainly involved,

-    and man’s descent from an ape asserted; and, secondly, that the

-    scheme in general seems to conflict with that presented by the

-    Mosaic account of the Creation, which is regarded as communicated to

-    its author by an infallible inspiration.

-

-    As the truth of the hypothesis is held to be infinitely probable by

-    a majority of the exponents of the natural sciences at the present

-    day, and is held as absolutely demonstrated by another portion, it

-    behooves those interested to restrain their condemnation, and on the

-    other hand to examine its evidences, and look any consequent

-    necessary modification of our metaphysical or theological views

-    squarely in the face.

-

-    The following pages state a few of the former; if they suggest some

-    of the latter, it is hoped that they may be such as any logical mind

-    would deduce from the premises. That they will coincide with the

-    spirit of the most advanced Christianity, I have no doubt; and that

-    they will add an appeal through the reason to that direct influence

-    of the Divine Spirit which should control the motives of human

-    action, seems an unavoidable conclusion.

-

-

-                         I. PHYSICAL EVOLUTION.

-

-    It is well known that a species is usually represented by a great

-    number of individuals, distinguished from all other similar

-    associations by more or less numerous points of structure, color,

-    size, etc., and by habits and instincts also, to a certain extent;

-    that the individuals of such associations reproduce their like, and

-    cannot be produced by individuals of associations or species which

-    present differences of structure, color, etc., as defined by

-    naturalists; that the individuals of any such series or species are

-    incapable of reproducing with those of any other species, with some

-    exceptions; and that in the latter cases the offspring are usually

-    entirely infertile.

-

-    The hypothesis of Cuvier assumes that each species was created by

-    Divine power as we now find it at some definite point of geologic

-    time. The paleontologist holding this view sees, in accordance

-    therewith, a succession of creations and destructions marking the

-    history of life on our planet from its commencement.

-

-    The development hypothesis states that all existing species have

-    been derived from species of preëxistent geological periods, as

-    offspring or by direct descent; that there have been no total

-    destructions of life in past time, but only a transfer of it from

-    place to place, owing to changes of circumstance; that the types of

-    structure become simpler and more similar to each other as we trace

-    them from later to earlier periods; and that finally we reach the

-    simplest forms consistent with one or several original parent types

-    of the great divisions into which living beings naturally fall.

-

-    It is evident, therefore, that the hypothesis does not include

-    change of species by hybridization, nor allow the descent of living

-    species from any other _living_ species: both these propositions are

-    errors of misapprehension or misrepresentation.

-

-    In order to understand the history of creation of a complex being,

-    it is necessary to analyze it and ascertain of what it consists. In

-    analyzing the construction of an animal or plant we readily arrange

-    its characters into those which it possesses in common with other

-    animals or plants, and those in which it resembles none other: the

-    latter are its _individual_ characters, constituting its

-    individuality. Next we find a large body of characters, generally of

-    a very obvious kind, which it possesses in common with a generally

-    large number of individuals, which, taken collectively, all men are

-    accustomed to call a species; these characters we consequently name

-    _specific_. Thirdly, we find characters, generally in parts of the

-    body which are of importance in the activities of the animal, or

-    which lie in near relation to its mechanical construction in

-    details, which are shared by a still larger number of individuals

-    than those which were similar in specific characters. In other

-    words, it is common to a large number of species. This kind of

-    character we call _generic_, and the grouping it indicates is a

-    genus.

-

-    Farther analysis brings to light characters of organism which are

-    common to a still greater number of individuals; this we call a

-    _family_ character. Those which are common to still more numerous

-    individuals are the _ordinal_: they are usually found in parts of

-    the structure which have the closest connection with the whole

-    life-history of the being. Finally, the individuals composing many

-    orders will be found identical in some important character of the

-    systems by which ordinary life is maintained, as in the nervous and

-    circulatory: the divisions thus outlined are called _classes_.

-

-    By this process of analysis we reach in our animal or plant those

-    peculiarities which are common to the whole animal or vegetable

-    kingdom, and then we have exhausted the structure so completely that

-    we have nothing remaining to take into account beyond the

-    cell-structure or homogeneous protoplasm by which we know that it is

-    organic, and not a mineral.

-

-    The history of the origin of a type, as species, genus, order, etc.,

-    is simply the history of the origin of the structure or structures

-    which define those groups respectively. It is nothing more nor less

-    than this, whether a man or an insect be the object of

-    investigation.

-

-

-                        EVIDENCES OF DERIVATION.

-

-                       α. Of Specific Characters.

-

-    The evidences of derivation of species from species, within the

-    limits of the genus, are abundant and conclusive. In the first

-    place, the rule which naturalists observe in defining species is a

-    clear consequence of such a state of things. It is not amount and

-    degree of difference that determine the definition of species from

-    species, but it is the _permanency_ of the characters in all cases

-    and under all circumstances. Many species of the systems include

-    varieties and extremes of form, etc., which, were they at all times

-    distinct, and not connected by intermediate forms, would be

-    estimated as species by the same and other writers, as can be easily

-    seen by reference to their works.

-

-    Thus, species are either “restricted” or “protean,” the latter

-    embracing many, the former few variations; and the varieties

-    included by the protean species are often as different from each

-    other in their typical forms as are the “restricted” species. As an

-    example, the species _Homo sapiens_ (man) will suffice. His primary

-    varieties are as distinct as the species of many well-known genera,

-    but cannot be defined, owing to the existence of innumerable

-    intermediate forms between them.

-

-    As to the common origin of such “varieties” of the protean species,

-    naturalists never had any doubt, yet when it comes to the restricted

-    “species,” the anti-developmentalist denies it _in toto_. Thus the

-    varieties of most of the domesticated animals are some of them

-    known—others held with great probability to have had a common

-    origin. Varieties of plumage in fowls and canaries are of every-day

-    occurrence, and are produced under our eyes. The cart-horse and

-    racer, the Shetland pony and the Norman, are without doubt derived

-    from the same parentage. The varieties of pigeons and ducks are of

-    the same kind, but not every one is aware of the extent and amount

-    of such variations. The varieties in many characters seen in hogs

-    and cattle, especially when examples from distant countries are

-    compared, are very striking, and are confessedly equal in degree to

-    those found to _define_ species in a state of nature: here, however,

-    they are not _definitive_.

-

-    It is easy to see that all that is necessary to produce in the mind

-    of the anti-developmentalist the illusion of distinct origin by

-    creation of many of these forms, would be to destroy a number of the

-    intermediate conditions of specific form and structure, and thus to

-    leave remaining definable groups of individuals, and therefore

-    “species.”

-

-    That such destructions and extinctions have been going on ever since

-    the existence of life on the globe is well known. That it should

-    affect intermediate forms, such as bind together the types of a

-    protean species as well as restricted species, is equally certain.

-    That its result has been to produce _definable_ species cannot be

-    denied, especially in consideration of the following facts: Protean

-    species nearly always have a wide geographical distribution. They

-    exist under more varied circumstances than do individuals of a more

-    restricted species. The subordinate variations of the protean

-    species are generally, like the restricted species, confined to

-    distinct subdivisions of the geographical area which the whole

-    occupies. As in geological time changes of level have separated

-    areas once continuous by bodies of water or high mountain ranges, so

-    have vast numbers of individuals occupying such areas been

-    destroyed. Important alterations of temperature, or great changes in

-    abundance or character of vegetable life over given areas, would

-    produce the same result.

-

-    This part of the subject might be prolonged, were it necessary, but

-    it has been ably discussed by Darwin. The _rationale_ of the “origin

-    of species” as stated by him may be examined a few pages farther on.

-

-                 β. Of the Characters of Higher Groups.

-

-    _a. Relations of Structures._ The evidences of derivative origin of

-    the structures defining the groups called genera, and all those of

-    higher grade, are of a very different character from those discussed

-    in relation to specific characters; they are more difficult of

-    observation and explanation.

-

-    Firstly: It would appear to be supposed by many that the creation of

-    organic types was an irregular and capricious process, variously

-    pursued by its Author as regards time and place, and without

-    definite final aim; and this notwithstanding the wonderful evidences

-    we possess, in the facts of astronomy, chemistry, sound, etc., of

-    His adhesion to harmonious and symmetrical sequences in His modes

-    and plans.

-

-    Such regularity of plan is found to exist in the relations of the

-    great divisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms as at present

-    existing on the earth. Thus, with animals we have a great class of

-    species which consists of nothing more than masses or cells of

-    protoplasmic matter, without distinct organs; or the Protozoa. We

-    have then the Cœlenterata (example, corals,) where the organism is

-    composed of many cells arranged in distinct parts, but where a

-    single very simple system of organs, forming the only internal

-    cavity of the body, does the work of the many systems of the more

-    complex animals. Next, the Echinodermata (such as star-fish) present

-    us with a body containing distinct systems of organs enclosed in a

-    visceral cavity, including a rudimental nervous system in the form

-    of a ring. In the Molluscs to this condition is added additional

-    complication, including extensions of the nervous system from the

-    ring as a starting-point, and a special organ for a heart. In the

-    Articulates (crabs, insects,) we have like complications, and a long

-    distinct nervous axis on the lower surface of the body. The last

-    branch or division of animals is considered to be higher, because

-    all the systems of life organs are most complex or specialized. The

-    nervous ring is almost obliterated by a great enlargement of its

-    usual ganglia, thus become a brain, which is succeeded by a long

-    axis on the upper side of the body. This and other points define the

-    Vertebrata.

-

-    Plans of structure, independent of the simplicity or perfection of

-    the special arrangement or structure of organs, also define these

-    great groups. Thus the Protozoa present a spiral, the Cœlenterata a

-    radiate, the Echinodermata a bilateral radiate plan. The Articulates

-    are a series of external rings, each in one or more respects

-    repeating the others. The Molluscs are a sac, while a ring above a

-    ring, joined together by a solid center-piece, represents the plan

-    of each of the many segments of the Vertebrates which give the

-    members of that branch their form.

-

-    These bulwarks of distinction of animal types are entered into here

-    simply because they are the most inviolable and radical of those

-    with which we have to deal, and to give the anti-developmentalist

-    the best foothold for his position. I will only allude to the

-    relations of their points of approach, as these are affected by

-    considerations afterward introduced.

-

-    The Vertebrates approach the Molluscs at the lowest extreme of the

-    former and higher of the latter. The lamprey eels of the one possess

-    several characters in common with the cuttle-fish or squids of the

-    latter. The amphioxus is called the lowest Vertebrate, and though it

-    is nothing else, the definition of the division must be altered to

-    receive it; it has no brain!

-

-    The lowest forms of the Molluscs and Articulates are scarcely

-    distinguishable from each other, so far as adhesion to the “plan” is

-    concerned, and some of the latter division are very near certain

-    Echinodermata. As we approach the boundary-lines of the two lowest

-    divisions, the approaches become equally close, and the boundaries

-    very obscure.

-

-    More instructive is the evidence of the relation of the subordinate

-    classes of any one of these divisions. The conditions of those

-    organs or parts which define classes exhibit a regular relation,

-    commencing with simplicity and ending with complication; first

-    associated with weak exhibitions of the highest functions of the

-    nervous system—at the last displaying the most exalted traits found

-    in the series.

-

-    For example: In the classes of Vertebrates we find the lowest

-    nervous system presents great simplicity—the brain cannot be

-    recognized; next (in lampreys), the end of the nervous axis is

-    subdivided, but scarcely according to the complex type that follows.

-    In fishes the cerebellum and cerebral hemispheres are minute, and

-    the intermediate or optic lobes very large: in the reptiles the

-    cerebral hemispheres exceed the optic lobes, while the cerebellum is

-    smaller. In birds the cerebellum becomes complex and the cerebrum

-    greatly increases. In mammals the cerebellum increases in complexity

-    or number of parts, the optic lobes diminish, while the cerebral

-    hemispheres become wonderfully complex and enlarged, bringing us to

-    the highest development, in man.

-

-    The history of the circulatory system in the Vertebrates is the

-    same.[45] First, a heart with one chamber, then one with two

-    divisions: three divisions belong to a large series, and the highest

-    possess four. The origins of the great artery of the body, the

-    aorta, are first five on each side: they lose one in the succeeding

-    class in the ascending scale, and one in each succeeding class or

-    order, till the Mammalia, including man, present us with but one on

-    one side.

-

-Footnote 45:

-

-      See a homological system of the circulatory system in the author’s

-      Origin of Genera, p. 22.

-

-    From an infinitude of such considerations as the above, we derive

-    the certainty that the general arrangement of the various groups of

-    the organic world is in scales, the subordinate within the more

-    comprehensive divisions. The identification of all the parts in such

-    a complexity of organism as the highest animals present, is a matter

-    requiring much care and attention, and constitutes the study of

-    homologies. Its pursuit has resulted in the demonstration that every

-    individual of every species of a given branch of the animal kingdom

-    is composed of elements common to all, and that the differences

-    which are so radical in the higher groups are but the modifications

-    of the same elemental parts, representing completeness or

-    incompleteness, obliteration or subdivision. Of the former character

-    are rudimental organs, of which almost every species possesses an

-    example in some part of its structure.

-

-    But we have other and still more satisfactory evidence of the

-    meaning of these relations. By the study of embryology we can prove

-    most indubitably that the simple and less complex are inferior to

-    the more complex. Selecting the Vertebrates again as an example, the

-    highest form of mammal—_e.g._, man—presents in his earliest stages

-    of embryonic growth a skeleton of cartilage, like that of the

-    lamprey: he also possesses five origins of the aorta and five slits

-    on the neck, both which characters belong to the lamprey and the

-    shark. If the whole number of these parts does not coexist in the

-    embryonic man, we find in embryos of lower forms more nearly related

-    to the lamprey that they do. Later in the life of the mammal but

-    four aortic origins are found, which arrangement, with the heart now

-    divided into two chambers, from a beginning as a simple tube, is

-    characteristic of the class of Vertebrates next in order—the bony

-    fishes. The optic lobes of the human brain have also at this time a

-    great predominance in size—a character above stated to be that of

-    the same class. With advancing development the infant mammal follows

-    the scale already pointed out. Three chambers of the heart and three

-    aortic origins follow, presenting the condition permanent in the

-    batrachia; and two origins, with enlarged cerebral hemispheres of

-    the brain, resemble the reptilian condition. Four heart-chambers,

-    and one aortic root on each side, with slight development of the

-    cerebellum, follow all characters defining the crocodiles, and

-    immediately precede the special conditions defining the mammals.

-    These are, the single aorta root from one side, and the full

-    development of the cerebellum: later comes that of the cerebrum also

-    in its higher mammalian and human traits.

-

-    Thus we see the order already pointed out to be true, and to be an

-    ascending one. This is the more evident as each type or class passes

-    through the conditions of those below it, as did the mammal; each

-    scale being shorter as its highest terminus is lower. Thus the

-    crocodile passes through the stage of the lamprey, the fish, the

-    batrachian and the reptile proper.

-

-    _b. In Time._ We have thus a scale of relations of existing forms of

-    animals and plants of a remarkable kind, and such as to stimulate

-    greatly our inquiries as to its significance. When we turn to the

-    remains of the past creation preserved to us in the deposits

-    continued throughout geologic time, we are not disappointed, for

-    great light is at once thrown upon the subject.

-

-    We find, in brief, that the lowest division of the animal kingdom

-    appeared first, and long before any type of a higher character was

-    created. The Protozoön, Eozoön, is the earliest of animals in

-    geologic time, and represents the lowest type of animal life now

-    existing. We learn also that the highest branch appeared last. No

-    remains of Vertebrates have been found below the lower Devonian

-    period, or not until the Echinoderms and Molluscs had reached a

-    great preëminence. It is difficult to be sure whether the Protozoa

-    had a greater numerical extent in the earliest periods than now, but

-    there can be no doubt that the Cœlenterata (corals) and Echinoderms

-    (crinoids) greatly exceeded their present bounds, in Paleozoic time,

-    so that those at present existing are but a feeble remnant. If we

-    examine the subdivisions known as classes, evidence of the nature of

-    the succession of creation is still more conclusive. The most

-    polyp-like of the Molluscs (brachiopoda) constituted the great mass

-    of its representatives during Paleozoic time. Among Vertebrates the

-    fishes appear first, and had their greatest development in size and

-    numbers during the earliest periods of the existence of the

-    division. Batrachia were much the largest and most important of land

-    animals during the Carboniferous period, while the higher

-    Vertebrates were unknown. The later Mesozoic periods saw the reign

-    of reptiles, whose position in structural development has been

-    already stated. Finally, the most perfect, the mammal, came upon the

-    scene, and in his humblest representatives. In Tertiary times

-    mammalia supplanted the reptiles entirely, and the unspiritual

-    mammals now yield to man, the only one of his class in whom the

-    Divine image appears.

-

-    Thus the structural relations, the embryonic characters, and the

-    successive appearance in time of animals coincide. The same is very

-    probably true of plants.

-

-    That the existing state of the geological record of organic types

-    should be regarded as anything but a fragment is, from our

-    stand-point, quite preposterous. And more, it may be assumed with

-    safety that when completed it will furnish us with a series of

-    regular successions, with but slight and regular interruptions, if

-    any, from the species which represented the simplest beginnings of

-    life at the dawn of creation, to those which have displayed

-    complication and power in later or in the present period.

-

-    For the labors of the paleontologist are daily bringing to light

-    structures intermediate between those never before so connected, and

-    thus creating lines of succession where before were only

-    interruptions. Many such instances might be adduced: two may be

-    selected as examples from American paleontology;[46] _i.e._, the

-    near approach to birds made by the reptiles Lælaps and Megadactylus;

-    and the combination of characters of the sub-orders of Cryptodire

-    and Pleurodire Tortoises in the Adocus of New Jersey.

-

-Footnote 46:

-

-      Professor Huxley, in the last anniversary lecture before the

-      Geological Society of London, recalls his opinion, enunciated in

-      1862, that “the positively-ascertained truths of Paleontology”

-      negative “the doctrines of progressive modification, which suppose

-      that modification to have taken place by a necessary progress from

-      more to less embryonic forms, from more to less generalized types,

-      within the limits of the period represented by the fossiliferous

-      rocks; that it shows no evidence of such modification; and as to

-      the nature of that modification, it yields no evidence whatsoever

-      that the earlier members of any long-continued group were more

-      generalized in structure than the later ones.”

-

-      Respecting this position, he says: “Thus far I have endeavored to

-      expand and enforce by fresh arguments, but not to modify in any

-      important respect, the ideas submitted to you on a former

-      occasion. But when I come to the propositions respecting

-      progressive modification, it appears to me, with the help of the

-      new light which has broken from various quarters, that there is

-      much ground for softening the somewhat Brutus-like severity with

-      which I have dealt with a doctrine for the truth of which I should

-      have been glad enough to be able to find a good foundation in

-      1862. So far indeed as the Invertebrata and the lower Vertebrata

-      are concerned, the facts, and the conclusions which are to be

-      drawn from them, appear to me to remain what they were. For

-      anything that as yet appears to the contrary, the earliest known

-      marsupials may have been as highly organized as their living

-      congeners; the Permian lizards show no signs of inferiority to

-      those of the present day; the labyrinthodonts cannot be placed

-      below the living salamander and triton; the Devonian ganoids are

-      closely related to polypterus and lepidosiren.”

-

-      To this it may be replied: 1. The scale of progression of the

-      Vertebrata is measured by the conditions of the circulatory

-      system, and in some measure by the nervous, and not by the

-      osseous: tested by this scale, there has been successional

-      complication of structure among Vertebrata in time. 2. The

-      question with the evolutionist is, not what types have persisted

-      to the present day, but the order in which types appeared in time.

-      3. The Marsupials, Permian saurians, labyrinthodonts and Devonian

-      ganoids are remarkably generalized groups, and predecessors of

-      types widely separated in the present period. 4. Professor Huxley

-      adduces many such examples among the mammalian subdivisions in the

-      remaining portion of his lecture. 5. Two alternatives are yet open

-      in the explanation of the process of evolution: since generalized

-      types, which combine the characters of higher and lower groups of

-      later periods, must thus be superior to the lower, the lower must

-      (first) be descended from such a generalized form by degradation;

-      or (second) not descended from it at all, but from some lower

-      contemporaneous type by advance; the higher only of the two being

-      derived from the first-mentioned. The last I suspect to be a true

-      explanation, as it is in accordance with the homologous groups.

-      This law will shorten the demands of paleontologists for time,

-      since, instead of deriving all reptilia, batrachia, etc., from

-      common origins, it points to the derivation of higher reptilia of

-      a higher order from higher reptilia of a lower order, lower

-      reptilia of the first from lower reptilia of the second; finally,

-      the several groups of the lowest or most generalized order of

-      reptilia from a parallel series of the class below, or batrachia.

-

-    We had no more reason to look for intermediate or connecting forms

-    between such types as these, than between any others of similar

-    degree of remove from each other with which we are acquainted. And

-    inasmuch as almost all groups, as genera, orders, etc., which are

-    held to be distinct, but adjacent, present certain points of

-    approximation to each other, the almost daily discovery of

-    intermediate forms gives us confidence to believe that the pointings

-    in other cases will also be realized.

-

-                           γ. Of Transitions.

-

-    The preceding statements were necessary to the comprehension of the

-    supposed mode of metamorphosis or development of the various types

-    of living beings, or, in other words, of the single structural

-    features which define them.... As it is evident that the more

-    comprehensive groups, or those of highest rank, have had their

-    origin in remote ages, cases of transition from one to the other by

-    change of character cannot be witnessed at the present day. We

-    therefore look to the most nearly related divisions, or those of the

-    lowest rank, for evidence of such change.

-

-    It is necessary to premise that embryology teaches that all the

-    species of a given branch of the animal kingdom (_e.g._, Vertebrate,

-    Mollusc, etc.) are quite identical in structural character at their

-    first appearance on the germinal layer of the yolk of the parent

-    egg. It shows that the character of the respective groups of high

-    rank appear first, then those of less grade, and last of all those

-    structures which distinguish them as genera. But among the earliest

-    characters which appear are those of the species, and some of those

-    of the individual.

-

-    We find the characters of different _genera_ to bear the same

-    relation to each other that we have already seen in the case of

-    those definitive of orders, etc. In a natural assemblage of related

-    genera we discover that some are defined by characters found only in

-    the embryonic stages of others; while a second will present a

-    permanent condition of its definitive part, which marks a more

-    advanced stage of that highest. In this manner many stages of the

-    highest genus appear to be represented by permanent genera in all

-    natural groups. Generally, however, this resemblance does not

-    involve, an entire identity, there being some other immaturities

-    found in the highest genus at the time it presents the character

-    preserved in permanency by the lower, which the lower loses. Thus

-    (to use a very coarse example) a frog at one stage of growth has

-    four legs and a tail: the salamander always preserves four legs and

-    a tail, thus resembling the young frog. The latter is, however, not

-    a salamander at that time, because, among other things, the skeleton

-    is represented by cartilage only, and the salamander’s is ossified.

-    This relation is therefore an imitation only, and is called _inexact

-    parallelism_.

-

-    As we compare nearer and nearer relations—_i.e._, the genera which

-    present fewest points of difference—we find the differences between

-    undeveloped stages of the higher and permanent conditions of the

-    lower to grow fewer and fewer, until we find numerous instances

-    where the lower genus is exactly the same as the undeveloped stage

-    of the higher. This relation is called that of _exact parallelism_.

-

-    It must now be remembered that the permanence of a character is what

-    gives it its value in defining genus, order, etc., in the eyes of

-    the systematist. So long as the condition is permanent no transition

-    can be seen: there is therefore no development. If the condition is

-    transitional, it defines nothing, and nothing is developed; at

-    least, so says the anti-developmentalist. It is the old story of the

-    settler and the Indian: “Will you take owl and I take turkey, or I

-    take turkey and you owl?”

-

-    If we find a relation of _exact parallelism_ to exist between two

-    sets of species in the condition of a certain organ, and the

-    difference so expressed the only one which distinguishes them as

-    sets from each other—if that condition is always the same in each

-    set—we call them two genera: if in any species the condition is

-    variable at maturity, or sometimes the undeveloped condition of the

-    part is persistent and sometimes transitory, the sets characterized

-    by this difference must be united by the systematist, and the whole

-    is called a single genus.

-

-    We know numerous cases where different individuals of the same

-    species present this relation of _exact parallelism_ to each other;

-    and as we ascribe common origin to the individuals of a species, we

-    are assured that the condition of the inferior individual is, in

-    this case, simply one of repressed growth, or a failure to fulfill

-    the course accomplished by the highest. Thus, certain species of the

-    salamandrine genus amblystoma undergo a metamorphosis involving

-    several parts of the osseous and circulatory systems, etc., while

-    half grown; others delay it till fully grown; one or two species

-    remain indifferently unchanged or changed, and breed in either

-    condition, while another species breeds unchanged, and has never

-    been known to complete a metamorphosis.

-

-    The nature of the relation of _exact parallelism_ is thus explained

-    to be that of checked or advanced growth of individuals having a

-    common origin. The relation of _inexact parallelism_ is readily

-    explained as follows: With a case of _exact parallelism_ in the

-    mind, let the repression producing the character of the lower,

-    parallelize the latter with a stage of the former in which a second

-    part is not quite mature: we will have a slight want of

-    correspondence between the two. The lower will be immature in but

-    one point, the incompleteness of the higher being seen in two

-    points. If we suppose the immaturity to consist in a repression at a

-    still earlier point in the history of the higher, the latter will be

-    undeveloped in other points also: thus, the spike-horned deer of

-    South America have the horn of the second year of the North American

-    genus. They would be generically identical with that stage of the

-    latter, were it not that these still possess their milk dentition at

-    two years of age. In the same way the nature of the parallelisms

-    seen in higher groups, as orders, etc., may be accounted for.

-

-    The theory of homologous groups furnishes important evidence in

-    favor of derivation. Many orders of animals (probably all, when we

-    come to know them) are divisible into two or more sections, which I

-    have called _homologous_. These are series of genera or families,

-    which differ from each other by some marked character, but whose

-    contained genera or families differ from each other in the same

-    points of detail, and in fact correspond exactly. So striking is

-    this correspondence that were it not for the general and common

-    character separating the homologous series, they would be regarded

-    as the same, each to each. Now it is remarkable that where studied

-    the difference common to all the terms of two homologous groups is

-    found to be one of _inexact parallelism_, which has been shown above

-    to be evidence of descent. Homologous groups always occupy different

-    geographical areas on the earth’s surface, and their relation is

-    precisely that which holds between successive groups of life in the

-    periods of geologic time.

-

-    In a word, we learn from this source that distinct geologic epochs

-    coexist at the same time on the earth. I have been forced to this

-    conclusion[47] by a study of the structure of terrestrial life, and

-    it has been remarkably confirmed by the results of recent deep-sea

-    dredgings made by the United States Coast Survey in the Gulf Stream,

-    and by the British naturalists in the North Atlantic. These have

-    brought to light types of Tertiary life, and of even the still more

-    ancient Cretaceous periods, living at the present day. That this

-    discovery invalidates in any wise the conclusions of geology

-    respecting lapse of time is an unwarranted assumption that some are

-    forward to make. If it changes the views of some respecting the

-    parallelism or coëxistence of faunæ in different regions of the

-    earth, it is only the anti-developmentalists whose position must be

-    changed.

-

-Footnote 47:

-

-      _Origin of Genera_, pages 70, 77, 79.

-

-    For, if we find distinct geologic faunæ, or epochs defined by faunæ,

-    coëxisting during the present period, and fading or emerging into

-    one another as they do at their geographical boundaries, it is proof

-    positive that the geologic epochs and periods of past ages had in

-    like manner no trenchant boundaries, but also passed the one into

-    the other. The assumption that the apparent interruptions are the

-    result of transfer of life rather than destruction, or of want of

-    opportunities of preservation, is no doubt the true one.

-

-                      δ. Rationale of Development.

-

-    _a. In Characters of Higher Groups._ It is evident in the case of

-    the species in which there is an irregularity in the time of

-    completion of metamorphosis that some individuals traverse a longer

-    developmental line than those who remain more or less incomplete. As

-    both accomplish growth in the same length of time, it is obvious

-    that it proceeds with greater rapidity in one sense in that which

-    accomplishes most: its growth is said to be accelerated. This

-    phenomenon is especially common among insects, where the females of

-    perfect males are sometimes larvæ or nearly so, or pupæ, or lack

-    wings or some character of final development. Quite as frequently,

-    some males assume characters in advance of others, sometimes in

-    connection with a peculiar geographical range.

-

-    In cases of _exact parallelism_ we reasonably suppose the cause to

-    be the same, since the conditions are identical, as has been shown;

-    that is, the higher conditions have been produced by a crowding back

-    of the earlier characters and an acceleration of growth, so that a

-    given succession in order of advance has extended over a longer

-    range of growth than its predecessor in the same allotted time. That

-    allotted time is the period before maturity and reproduction, and it

-    is evident that as fast as modifications or characters should be

-    assumed sufficiently in advance of that period, so certainly would

-    they be conferred upon the offspring by reproduction. The

-    _acceleration_ in the assumption of a character, progressing more

-    rapidly than the same in another character, must soon produce, in a

-    type whose stages were once the exact parallel of a permanent lower

-    form, the condition of _inexact parallelism_. As all the more

-    comprehensive groups present this relation to each other, we are

-    compelled to believe that _acceleration_ has been the principle of

-    their successive evolution during the long ages of geologic time.

-

-    Each type has, however, its day of supremacy and perfection of

-    organism, and a retrogression in these respects has succeeded. This

-    has no doubt followed a law the reverse of acceleration, which has

-    been called _retardation_. By the increasing slowness of the growth

-    of the individuals of a genus, and later and later assumption of the

-    characters of the latter, they would be successively lost.

-

-    To what power shall we ascribe this acceleration, by which the first

-    beginnings of structure have accumulated to themselves through the

-    long geologic ages complication and power, till from the germ that

-    was scarcely born into a sand-lance, a human being climbed the

-    complete scale, and stood easily the chief of the whole?

-

-    In the cases of species, where some individuals develop farther than

-    others, we say the former possess more growth-force, or “vigor,”

-    than the latter. We may therefore say that higher types of structure

-    possess more “vigor” than the lower. This, however, we do not know

-    to be true, nor can we readily find means to demonstrate it.

-

-    The food which is taken by an adult animal is either assimilated, to

-    be consumed in immediate activity of some kind, or stored for future

-    use, and the excess is rejected from the body. We have no reason to

-    suppose that the same kind of material could be made to subserve the

-    production of life-force by any other means than that furnished by a

-    living animal organism. The material from which this organism is

-    constructed is derived first from the parent, and afterward from the

-    food, etc., assimilated by the individual itself so long as growth

-    continues. As it is the activity of assimilation directed to a

-    special end during this latter period which we suppose to be

-    increased in accelerated development, the acceleration is evidently

-    not brought about by increased facilities for obtaining the means of

-    life which the same individual possesses as an adult. That it is not

-    in consequence of such increased facilities possessed by its parents

-    over those of the type preceding it, seems equally improbable when

-    we consider that the characters in which the parent’s advance has

-    appeared are rarely of a nature to increase those facilities.

-

-    The nearest approach to an explanation that can be offered appears

-    to be somewhat in the following direction:

-

-    There is every reason to believe that the character of the

-    atmosphere has gradually changed during geologic time, and that

-    various constituents of the mixture have been successively removed

-    from it, and been stored in the solid material of the earth’s crust

-    in a state of combination. Geological chemistry has shown that the

-    cooling of the earth has been accompanied by the precipitation of

-    many substances only gaseous at high temperatures. Hydrochloric and

-    sulphuric acids have been transferred to mineral deposits or aqueous

-    solutions. The removal of carbonic acid gas and the vapor of water

-    has been a process of much slower progress, and after the expiration

-    of all the ages a proportion of both yet remains. Evidence of the

-    abundance of the former in the earliest periods is seen in the vast

-    deposits of limestone rock; later, in the prodigious quantities of

-    shells which have been elaborated from the same in solution. Proof

-    of its abundance in the atmosphere in later periods is seen in the

-    extensive deposits of coal of the Carboniferous, Triassic and

-    Jurassic periods. If the most luxuriant vegetation of the present

-    day takes but fifty tons of carbon from the atmosphere in a century,

-    per acre, thus producing a layer over that extent of less than a

-    third of an inch in thickness, what amount of carbon must be

-    abstracted in order to produce strata of thirty-five feet in depth?

-    No doubt it occupied a long period, but the atmosphere, thus

-    deprived of a large proportion of carbonic acid, would in subsequent

-    periods undoubtedly possess an improved capacity for the support of

-    animal life.

-

-    The successively higher degree of oxidization of the blood in the

-    organs designed for that function, whether performing it in water or

-    air, would certainly accelerate the performances of all the vital

-    functions, and among others that of growth. Thus it may be that

-    _acceleration_ can be accounted for, and the process of the

-    development of the orders and sundry lesser groups of the Vertebrate

-    kingdom indicated; for, as already pointed out, the definitions of

-    such are radically placed in the different structures of the organs

-    which aerate the blood and distribute it to its various

-    destinations.

-

-    But the great question, What determined the direction of this

-    acceleration? remains unanswered. One cannot understand why more

-    highly-oxidized blood should hasten the growth of partition of the

-    ventricle of the heart in the serpent, the more perfectly to

-    separate the aerated from the impure fluid; nor can we see why a

-    more perfectly-constructed circulatory system, sending purer blood

-    to the brain, should direct accelerated growth to the cerebellum or

-    cerebral hemispheres in the crocodile.

-

-    _b. In Characters of the Specific Kind._ Some of the characters

-    usually placed in the specific category have been shown to be the

-    same in kind as those of higher categories. The majority are,

-    however, of a different kind, and have been discussed several pages

-    back.

-

-    The cause of the origin of these characters is shrouded in as much

-    mystery as that of those which have occupied the pages immediately

-    preceding. As in that case, we have to assume, as Darwin has done, a

-    tendency in Nature to their production. This is what he terms “the

-    principle of variation.” Against an unlimited variation the great

-    law of heredity or atavism has ever been opposed, as a conservator

-    and multiplier of type. This principle is exemplified in the fact

-    that like produces like—that children are like their parents,

-    frequently even in minutiæ. It may be compared to habit in

-    metaphysical matters, or to that singular love of time or rhythm

-    seen in man and lower animals, in both of which the tendency is to

-    repeat in continual cycles a motion or state of the mind or sense.

-

-    Further, but a proportion of the lines of variation is supposed to

-    have been perpetuated, and the extinction of intermediate forms, as

-    already stated, has left isolated groups or species.

-

-    The effective cause of these extinctions is stated by Darwin to have

-    been a “natural selection”—a proposition which distinguishes his

-    theory from other development hypotheses, and which is stated in

-    brief by the expression, “the preservation of the fittest.” Its

-    meaning is this: that those characters appearing as results of this

-    spontaneous variation which are little adapted to the conflict for

-    subsistence, with the nature of the supply, or with rivals in its

-    pursuit, dwindle and are sooner or later extirpated; while those

-    which are adapted to their surroundings, and favored in the struggle

-    for means of life and increase, predominate, and ultimately become

-    the centers of new variation. “I am convinced,” says Darwin, “that

-    natural selection has been the main, but not exclusive, means of

-    modification.”

-

-    That it has been to a large extent the means of preservation of

-    those structures known as specific, must, I think, be admitted. They

-    are related to their peculiar surroundings very closely, and are

-    therefore more likely to exist under their influence. Thus, if a

-    given genus extends its range over a continent, it is usually found

-    to be represented by peculiar species—one in a maritime division,

-    another in the desert, others in the forest, in the swamp or the

-    elevated areas of the region. The wonderful interdependence shown by

-    Darwin to exist between insects and plants in the fertilization of

-    the latter, or between animals and their food-plants, would almost

-    induce one to believe that it were the true expression of the whole

-    law of development.

-

-    But the following are serious objections to its universal

-    application:

-

-    First: The characters of the higher groups, from genera up, are

-    rarely of a character to fit their possessors especially for

-    surrounding circumstances; that is, the differences which separate

-    genus from genus, order from order, etc., in the ascending scale of

-    each, do not seem to present a superior adaptation to surrounding

-    circumstances in the higher genus to that seen in the lower genus,

-    etc. Hence, superior adaptation could scarcely have caused their

-    selection above other forms not existing. Or, in other words, the

-    different structures which indicate successional relation, or which

-    measure the steps of progress, seem to be equally well fitted for

-    the same surroundings.

-

-    Second: The higher groups, as orders, classes, etc., have been in

-    each geologic period alike distributed over the whole earth, under

-    all the varied circumstances offered by climate and food. Their

-    characters do not seem to have been modified in reference to these.

-    Species, and often genera, are, on the other hand, eminently

-    restricted according to climate, and consequently vegetable and

-    animal food.

-

-    The law of development which we seek is indeed not that which

-    preserves the higher forms and rejects the lower after their

-    creation, but that which explains why higher forms were created at

-    all. Why in the results of a creation we see any relation of higher

-    and lower, and not rather a world of distinct types, each perfectly

-    adapted to its situation, but none properly higher than another in

-    an ascending scale, is the primary question. Given the principle of

-    advance, then natural selection has no doubt modified the details;

-    but in the successive advances we can scarcely believe such a

-    principle to be influential. _We look rather upon a progress as the

-    result of the expenditure of some force fore-arranged for that end._

-

-    It may become, then, a question whether in characters of high grade

-    the habit or use is not rather the result of the acquisition of the

-    structure than the structure the result of the encouragement offered

-    to its assumed beginnings by use, or by liberal nutrition derived

-    from the increasingly superior advantages it offers.

-

-                     ε. The Physical Origin of Man.

-

-    If the hypothesis here maintained be true, man is the descendant of

-    some preëxistent generic type, the which, if it were now living, we

-    would probably call an ape.

-

-    Man and the chimpanzee were in Linnæus’ system only two species of

-    the same genus, but a truer anatomy places them in separate genera

-    and distinct families. There is no doubt, however, that Cuvier went

-    much too far when he proposed to consider Homo as the representative

-    of an order distinct from the quadrumana, under the name of bimana.

-    The structural differences will not bear any such interpretation,

-    and have not the same value as those distinguishing the orders of

-    mammalia; as, for instance, between carnivora and bats, or the

-    cloven-footed animals and the rodents, or rodents and edentates. The

-    differences between man and the chimpanzee are, as Huxley well puts

-    it, much less than those between the chimpanzee and lower

-    quadrumana, as lemurs, etc. In fact, man is the type of a family,

-    Hominidæ, of the order Quadrumana, as indicated by the characters of

-    the dentition, extremities, brain, etc. The reader who may have any

-    doubts on this score may read the dissections of Geoffroy St.

-    Hilaire, made in 1856, before the issue of Darwin’s _Origin of

-    Species_. He informs us that the brain of man is nearer in structure

-    to that of the orang than the orang’s is to that of the South

-    American howler, and that the orang and howler are more nearly

-    related in this regard than are the howler and the marmoset.

-

-    The modifications presented by man have, then, resulted from an

-    acceleration in development in some respects, and retardation

-    perhaps in others. But until the _combination_ now characteristic of

-    the genus Homo was attained the being could not properly be called

-    man.

-

-    And here it must be observed that as an organic type is

-    characterized by the coëxistence of a number of peculiarities which

-    have been developed independently of each other, its distinctive

-    features and striking functions are not exhibited until that

-    coëxistence is attained which is necessary for these ends.

-

-    Hence, the characters of the human genus were probably developed

-    successively; but few of the indications of human superiority

-    appeared until the combination was accomplished. Let the opposable

-    thumb be first perfected, but of what use would it be in human

-    affairs without a mind to direct? And of what use a mind without

-    speech to unlock it? And speech could not be possible though all the

-    muscles of the larynx but one were developed, or but a slight

-    abnormal convexity in one pair of cartilages remained.

-

-    It would be an objection of little weight could it be truly urged

-    that there have as yet no remains of apelike men been discovered,

-    for we have frequently been called upon in the course of

-    paleontological discovery to bridge greater gaps than this, and

-    greater remain, which we expect to fill. But we _have_ apelike

-    characters exhibited by more than one race of men yet existing.

-

-    But the remains of that being which is supposed to have been the

-    progenitor of man may have been discovered a short time since in the

-    cave of Naulette, Belgium, with the bones of the extinct rhinoceros

-    and elephant.

-

-    We all admit the existence of higher and lower races, the latter

-    being those which we now find to present greater or less

-    approximations to the apes. The peculiar structural characters that

-    belong to the negro in his most typical form are of that kind,

-    however great may be the distance of his remove therefrom. The

-    flattening of the nose and prolongation of the jaws constitute such

-    a resemblance; so are the deficiency of the calf of the leg, and the

-    obliquity of the pelvis, which approaches more the horizontal

-    position than it does in the Caucasian. The investigations made at

-    Washington during the war with reference to the physical

-    characteristics of the soldiers show that the arms of the negro are

-    from one to two inches longer than those of the whites: another

-    approximation to the ape. In fact, this race is a species of the

-    genus Homo, as distinct in character from the Caucasian as those we

-    are accustomed to recognize in other departments of the animal

-    kingdom; but he is not distinct by isolation, since intermediate

-    form’s between him and the other species can be abundantly found.

-

-    And here let it be particularly observed that two of the most

-    prominent characters of the negro are those of immature stages of

-    the Indo-European race in its characteristic types. The deficient

-    calf is the character of infants at a very early stage; but, what is

-    more important, the flattened bridge of the nose and shortened nasal

-    cartilages are universally immature conditions of the same parts in

-    the Indo-European. Any one may convince himself of that by examining

-    the physiognomies of infants. In some races—_e.g._, the Slavic—this

-    undeveloped character persists later than in some others. The Greek

-    nose, with its elevated bridge, coincides not only with æsthetic

-    beauty, but with developmental perfection.

-

-    This is, however, only “_inexact_ parallelism,” as the characters of

-    the hair, etc., cannot be explained on this principle _among

-    existing races_. The embryonic characters mentioned are probably a

-    remnant of those characteristic of the primordial race or species.

-

-    But the man of Naulette, if he be not a monstrosity, in a still more

-    distinct and apelike species. The chin, that marked character of

-    other species of men, is totally wanting, and the dentition is quite

-    approximate to the man-like apes, and different from that of modern

-    men. The form is very massive, as in apes. That he was not abnormal

-    is rendered probable by approximate characters seen in a jaw from

-    the cave of Puy-sur-Aube, and less marked in the lowest races of

-    Australia and New Caledonia.

-

-    As to the single or multiple origin of man, science as yet furnishes

-    no answer. It is very probable that, in many cases, the species of

-    one genus have descended from corresponding species of another by

-    change of generic characters only. It is a remarkable fact that the

-    orang possesses the peculiarly developed malar bones and the copper

-    color characteristic of the Mongolian inhabitants of the regions in

-    which this animal is found, while the gorilla exhibits the

-    prognathic jaws and black hue of the African races near whom he

-    dwells. This kind of geographical imitation is very common in the

-    animal kingdom.

-

-                         ζ. The Mosaic Account.

-

-    As some persons imagine that this hypothesis conflicts with the

-    account of the creation of man given in Genesis, a comparison of

-    some of the points involved is made below.

-

-    First: In Genesis i. 26, 27, we read, “And God said, Let us make man

-    in our image, after our likeness,” etc. “So God created man in his

-    own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female

-    created he them.” Those who believe that this “image” is a physical,

-    material form, are not disposed to admit the entrance of anything

-    apelike into its constitution, for the ascription of any such

-    appearance to the Creator would be impious and revolting. But we are

-    told that “God is a Spirit,” and Christ said to his disciples after

-    his resurrection, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me

-    have.” Luke xxiv. 39. It will require little further argument to

-    show that a mental and spiritual image is what is meant, as it is

-    what truly exists. Man’s conscience, intelligence and creative

-    ingenuity show that he possesses an “image of God” within him, the

-    possession of which is really necessary to his limited comprehension

-    of God and of God’s ways to man.

-

-    Second: In Genesis ii. 7, the text reads, “And the Lord God formed

-    man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the

-    breath of life; and man became a living soul.” The fact that man is

-    the result of the modification of an apelike predecessor nowise

-    conflicts with the above statement as to the materials of which his

-    body is composed. Independently of origin, if the body of man be

-    composed of dust, so must that of the ape be, since the composition

-    of the two is identical. But the statement simply asserts that man

-    was created of the same materials which compose the earth: their

-    condition as “dust” depending merely on temperature and subdivision.

-    The declaration, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,”

-    must be taken in a similar sense, for we know that the decaying body

-    is resolved not only into its earthly constituents, but also into

-    carbonic acid gas and water.

-

-    When God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, we are

-    informed that he became, not a living body, but “a living soul.” His

-    descent from a preëxistent being involved the possession of a living

-    body; but when the Creator breathed into him we may suppose for the

-    present that He infused into this body the immortal part, and at

-    that moment man became a conscientious and responsible being.

-

-

-                      II. METAPHYSICAL EVOLUTION.

-

-    It is infinitely improbable that a being endowed with such

-    capacities for gradual progress as man has exhibited, should have

-    been full fledged in accomplishments at the moment when he could

-    first claim his high title, and abandon that of his simious

-    ancestors. We are therefore required to admit the growth of human

-    intelligence from a primitive state of inactivity and absolute

-    ignorance; including the development of one important mode of its

-    expression—speech; as well as that of the moral qualities, and of

-    man’s social system—the form in which his ideas of morality were

-    first displayed.

-

-    The expression “evolution of morality” need not offend, for the

-    question in regard to the _laws_ of this evolution is the really

-    important part of the discussion, and it is to the opposing views on

-    this point that the most serious interest attaches.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-    The two views of evolution already treated of, held separately, are

-    quite opposed to each other. The first (and generally received) lays

-    stress on the influence of external surroundings, as the stimulus to

-    and guidance of development: it is the counterpart of Darwin’s

-    principle called Natural Selection in material progress. This might

-    be called the _Conflict theory_. The second view recognizes the

-    workings of a force whose nature we do not know, whose exhibitions

-    accord perfectly with their external surroundings (or other

-    exhibitions of itself), without being under their influence or more

-    related to them, as effect to cause, than the notes of the musical

-    octave or the colors of the spectrum are to each other. This is the

-    _Harmonic theory_. In other words, the first principle deduces

-    perfection from struggle and discord; the second, from the

-    coincident progress of many parts, forming together a divine harmony

-    comparable to music. That these principles are both true is rendered

-    extremely probable by the actual phenomena of development, material

-    and immaterial. In other words, struggle and discord ever await that

-    which is not in the advance, and which fails to keep pace with the

-    harmonious development of the whole.

-

-    All who have studied the phenomena of the creation believe that

-    there exists in it a grand and noble harmony, such as was described

-    to Job when he was told that “the morning stars sang together, and

-    all the sons of God shouted for joy.”

-

-                    α. Development of Intelligence.

-

-    If the brain is the organ of mind, we may be surprised to find that

-    the brain of the intelligent man scarcely differs in structure from

-    that of the ape. Whence, then, the difference of power? Though no

-    one will now deny that many of the Mammalia are capable of reasoning

-    upon observed facts, yet how greatly the results of this capacity

-    differ in number and importance from those achieved by human

-    intelligence! Like water at the temperatures of 50° and 53°, where

-    we perceive no difference in essential character, so between the

-    brains of the lower and higher monkeys no difference of function or

-    of intelligence is perceptible. But what a difference do the two

-    degrees of temperature from 33° to 31° produce in water! In like

-    manner the difference between the brain of the higher ape and that

-    of man is accompanied by a difference in function and power, on

-    which, man’s earthly destiny depends. In development, as with the

-    water so with the higher ape: some Rubicon has been crossed, some

-    floodgate has been opened, which marks one of Nature’s great

-    transitions, such as have been called “Expression points” of

-    progress.

-

-    What point of progress in such a history would account for this

-    accession of the powers of the human intelligence? It has been

-    answered, with considerable confidence, The power of speech. Let us

-    picture man without speech. Each generation would learn nothing from

-    its predecessors. Whatever originality or observation might yield to

-    a man would die with him. Each intellectual life would begin where

-    every other life began, and would end at a point only differing with

-    its original capacity. Concert of action, by which man’s power over

-    the material world is maintained, would not exceed, if it equaled,

-    that which is seen among the bees; and the material results of his

-    labors would not extend beyond securing the means of life and the

-    employment of the simplest modes of defence and attack.

-

-    The first men, therefore, are looked upon by the developmentalists

-    as extremely embryonic in all that characterizes humanity, and they

-    appeal to the facts of history in support of this view. If they do

-    not derive much assistance from written history, evidence is found

-    in the more enduring relics of human handiwork.

-

-    The opposing view is, that the races which present or have presented

-    this condition of inferiority or savagery have reached it by a

-    process of degradation from a higher state—as some believe, through

-    moral delinquency. This position may be true in certain cases, which

-    represent perhaps a condition of senility, but in general we believe

-    that savagery was the condition of the first man, which has in some

-    races continued to the present day.

-

-                     _β. Evidence from Archæology._

-

-    As the object of the present essay is not to examine fully into the

-    evidences for the theories of evolution here stated, but rather to

-    give a sketch of such theories and their connection, a few facts

-    only will be noticed.

-

-    _Improvement in the use of Materials._ As is well known, the remains

-    of human handiwork of the earliest periods consist of nothing but

-    rude implements of stone and bone, useful only in procuring food and

-    preparing it for use. Even when enterprise extended beyond the

-    ordinary routine, it was restrained by the want of proper

-    instruments. Knives and other cutting implements of flint still

-    attest the skill of the early races of men from Java to the Cape of

-    Good Hope, from Egypt to Ireland, and through North and South

-    America. Hatchets, spear-heads and ornaments of serpentine, granite,

-    silex, clay slates, and all other suitable rock materials, are found

-    to have been used by the first men, to the exclusion of metals, in

-    most of the regions of the earth.

-

-    Later, the probably accidental discovery of the superiority of some

-    of the metals resulted in the substitution of them for stone as a

-    material for cutting implements. Copper—the only metal which, while

-    malleable, is hard enough to bear an imperfect edge—was used by

-    succeeding races in the Old World and the New. Implements of this

-    material are found scattered over extensive regions. So desirable,

-    however, did the hardening of the material appear for the

-    improvement of the cutting edge that combinations with other metals

-    were sought for and discovered. The alloy with tin, forming bronze

-    and brass, was discovered and used in Europe, while that with silver

-    appears to have been most readily produced in America, and was

-    consequently used by the Peruvians and other nations.

-

-    The discovery of the modes of reducing iron ores placed in the hands

-    of man the best material for bringing to a shape, convenient for his

-    needs the raw material of the world. All improvements in this

-    direction made since that time have been in the quality of iron

-    itself, and not through the introduction of any new metal.

-

-    The prevalent phenomena of any given period are those which give it

-    its character, and by which we distinguish it. But this fact does

-    not exclude the coëxistence of other phenomena belonging to prior or

-    subsequent stages. Thus, during the many stages of human progress

-    there have been men more or less in advance of the general body, and

-    their characteristics have given a peculiar stamp to the later and

-    higher condition of the whole. It furnishes no objection to this

-    view that we find, as might have been anticipated, the stone, bronze

-    and iron periods overlaping one another, or men of an inferior

-    culture supplanting in some cases a superior people. A case of this

-    kind is seen in North America, where the existing “Indians,”

-    stone-men, have succeeded the mound-builders, copper-men. The

-    successional relation of discoveries is all that it is necessary to

-    prove, and this seems to be established.

-

-    The period at which the use of metallic implements was introduced is

-    unknown, but Whitney says that the language of the Aryans, the

-    ancestors of all the modern Indo-Europeans, indicates an

-    acquaintance with such implements, though it is not certain whether

-    those of iron are to be included. The dispersion of the daughter

-    races, the Hindoos, the Pelasgi, Teutons, Celts, etc., could not, it

-    is thought, have taken place later than 3000 B. C.—a date seven

-    hundred years prior, to that assigned by the old chronology to the

-    Deluge. Those races coëxisted with the Egyptian and Chinese nations,

-    already civilized, and as distinct from each other in feature as

-    they are now.

-

-    _Improvement in Architecture._ The earliest periods, then, were

-    characterized by the utmost simplicity of invention and

-    construction. Later, the efforts for defence from enemies and for

-    architectural display, which have always employed so much time and

-    power, began to be made. The megalithic period has left traces over

-    much of the earth. The great masses of stone piled on each other in

-    the simplest form in Southern India, and the circles of stones

-    planted on end in England at Stonehenge and Abury, and in Peru at

-    Sillustani, are relics of that period. More complex are the great

-    Himyaritic walls of Arabia, the works of the ancestors of the

-    Phœnicians in Asia Minor, and the titanic workmanship of the Pelasgi

-    in Greece and Italy. In the iron age we find granitic hills shaped

-    or excavated into temples; as, for example, everywhere in Southern

-    India. Near Madura the circumference of an acropolis-like hill is

-    cut into a series of statues in high relief, of sixty feet in

-    elevation. Easter Island, composed of two volcanic cones, one

-    thousand miles from the west coast of South America, in the bosom of

-    the Pacific, possesses several colossi cut from the intrusive

-    basalt, some in high relief on the face of the rock, others in

-    detached blocks removed by human art from their original positions

-    and brought nearer the sea-shore.

-

-    Finally, at a more advanced stage, the more ornate and complex

-    structures of Central America, of Cambodia, Nineveh and Egypt,

-    represent the period of greatest display of architectural

-    expenditure. The same amount of human force has perhaps never been

-    expended in this direction since, though higher conceptions of

-    beauty have been developed in architecture with increasing

-    intellectuality.

-

-    Man has passed through the block-and-brick building period of his

-    boyhood, and should rise to higher conceptions of what is the true

-    disposition of power for “him who builds for aye,” and learn that

-    “spectacle” is often the unwilling friend of progress.

-

-    No traces of metallic implements have ever been found in the

-    salt-mines of Armenia, the turquoise-quarries in Arabia, the cities

-    of Central America or the excavations for mica in North Carolina,

-    while the direct evidence points to the conclusion that in those

-    places flint was exclusively used.

-

-    The simplest occupations, as requiring the least exercise of mind,

-    are the pursuit of the chase and the tending of flocks and herds.

-    Accordingly, we find our first parents engaged in these occupations.

-    Cain, we are told, was, in addition, a tiller of the ground.

-    Agriculture in its simplest forms requires but little more

-    intelligence than the pursuits just mentioned, though no employment

-    is capable of higher development. If we look at the savage nations

-    at present occupying nearly half the land surface of the earth, we

-    shall find many examples of the former industrial condition of our

-    race preserved to the present day. Many of them had no knowledge of

-    the use of metals until they obtained it from civilized men who

-    visited them, while their pursuits were and are those of the chase,

-    tending domestic animals, and rudimental agriculture.

-

-                    γ. The Development of Language.

-

-    In this department the fact of development from the simple to the

-    complex has been so satisfactorily demonstrated by philologists as

-    scarcely to require notice here. The course of that development has

-    been from monosyllabic to polysyllabic forms, and also in a process

-    of differentiation, as derivative races were broken off from the

-    original stock and scattered widely apart. The evidence is clear

-    that simple words for distinct objects formed the bases of the

-    primal languages, just as the ground, tree, sun and moon represent

-    the character of the first words the infant lisps. In this

-    department also the facts point to an infancy of the human race.

-

-                    δ. Development of the Fine Arts.

-

-    If we look at representation by drawing or sculpture, we find that

-    the efforts of the earliest races of which we have any knowledge

-    were quite similar to those which the untaught hand of infancy

-    traces on its slate or the savage depicts on the rocky faces of

-    hills. The circle or triangle for the head and body, and straight

-    lines for the limbs, have been preserved as the first attempts of

-    the men of the stone period, as they are to this day the sole

-    representations of the human form which the North American Indian

-    places on his buffalo robe or mountain precipice. The stiff,

-    barely-outlined form of the deer, the turtle, etc., are literally

-    those of the infancy of civilized man.

-

-    The first attempts at sculpture were marred by the influence of

-    modism. Thus the idols of Coban and Palenque, with human faces of

-    some merit, are overloaded with absurd ornament, and deformed into

-    frightful asymmetry, in compliance with the demand of some imperious

-    mode. In later days we have the stiff, conventionalized figures of

-    the palaces of Nineveh and the temples of Egypt, where the

-    representation of form has somewhat improved, but is too often

-    distorted by false fashion or imitation of some unnatural standard,

-    real or artistic. This is distinguished as the day of archaic

-    sculpture, which disappeared with the Etruscan nation. So the

-    drawings of the child, when he abandons the simple lines, are stiff

-    and awkward, and but a stage nearer true representation; and how

-    often does he repeat some peculiarity or absurdity of his own! So

-    much easier is it to copy than to conceive.

-

-    The introduction of the action and pose of life into sculpture was

-    not known before the early days of Greece, and it was there that the

-    art was brought to perfection. When art rose from its mediæval

-    slumber, much the same succession of development may be discovered.

-    First, the stiff figures, with straightened limbs and cylindric

-    drapery, found in the old Northern churches—then the forms of life

-    that now adorn the porticoes and palaces of the cities of Germany.

-

-            ε. Rationale of the Development of Intelligence.

-

-    The history of material development shows that the transition from

-    stage to stage of development, experienced by the most perfect forms

-    of animals and plants in their growth from the primordial cell, is

-    similar to the succession of created beings which the geological

-    epochs produced. It also shows that the slow assumption of main

-    characters in the line of succession in early geological periods

-    produced the condition of inferiority, while an increased rapidity

-    of growth in later days has resulted in an attainment of

-    superiority. It is not to be supposed that in “acceleration” the

-    period of growth is shortened: on the contrary, it continues the

-    same. Of two beings whose characters are assumed at the same rate of

-    succession, that with the quickest or shortest growth is necessarily

-    inferior. “Acceleration” means a gradual increase of the rate of

-    assumption of successive characters in the same period of time. A

-    fixed rate of assumption of characters, with gradual increase in the

-    length of the period of growth, would produce the same result—viz.,

-    a longer developmental scale and the attainment of an advanced

-    position. The first is in part the relation of sexes of a species;

-    the last of genera, and of other types of creation. If from an

-    observed relation of many facts we derive a law, we are permitted,

-    when we see in another class of facts similar relations, to suspect

-    that a similar law has operated, differing only in its objects. We

-    find a marked resemblance between the facts of structural progress

-    in matter and the phenomena of intellectual and spiritual progress.

-

-    If the facts entering into the categories enumerated in the

-    preceding section bear us out, we conclude that in the beginning of

-    human history the progress of the individual man was very slow, and

-    that but little was attained to; that through the profitable

-    direction of human energy, means were discovered from time to time

-    by which the process of individual development in all metaphysical

-    qualities has been accelerated; and that up to the present time the

-    consequent advance of the whole race has been at an increasing rate

-    of progress, This is in accordance with the general principle, that

-    high development in intellectual things is accomplished by rapidity

-    in traversing the preliminary stages of inferiority common to all,

-    while low development signifies sluggishness in that progress, and a

-    corresponding retention of inferiority.

-

-    How much meaning may we not see, from this stand-point, in the

-    history of the intelligence of our little ones! First they crawl,

-    they walk on all fours: when they first assume the erect position

-    they are generally speechless, and utter only inarticulate sounds.

-    When they run about, stones and dirt, the objects that first meet

-    the eye, are the delight of their awakening powers, but these are

-    all cast aside when the boy obtains his first jackknife. Soon,

-    however, reading and writing open a new world to him; and finally as

-    a mature man he seizes the forces of nature, and steam and

-    electricity do his bidding in the active pursuit of power for still

-    better and higher ends.

-

-    So with the history of the species: first the quadrumane—then the

-    speaking man, whose humble industry was, however, confined to the

-    objects that came first to hand, this being the “stone age” of

-    pre-historic time. When the use of metals was discovered, the range

-    of industries expanded wonderfully, and the “iron age” saw many

-    striking efforts of human power. With the introduction of letters it

-    became possible to record events and experiences, and the spread of

-    knowledge was thereby greatly increased, and the delays and mistakes

-    of ignorance correspondingly diminished in the fields of the world’s

-    activity.

-

-    From the first we see in history a slow advance as knowledge gained

-    by the accumulation of tradition and by improvements in habit based

-    on experience; but how slow was this advance while the use of the

-    metals was still unknown! The iron age brought with it not only new

-    conveniences, but increased means of future progress; and here we

-    have an acceleration in the rate of advance. With the introduction

-    of letters this rate was increased many fold, and in the application

-    of steam we have a change equal in utility to any that has preceded

-    it, and adding more than any to the possibilities of future advance

-    in many directions. By its power, knowledge and means of happiness

-    were to be distributed among the many.

-

-    The uses to which human intelligence has successively applied the

-    materials furnished by nature have been—First, subsistence and

-    defence: second, the accumulation of power in the shape of a

-    representative of that labor which the use of matter involves; in

-    other words, the accumulation of wealth. The possession of this

-    power involves new possibilities, for opportunity is offered for the

-    special pursuits of knowledge and the assistance of the weak or

-    undeveloped part of mankind in its struggles.

-

-    Thus, while the first men possessed the power of speech, and could

-    advance a little in knowledge through the accumulation of the

-    experiences of their predecessors, they possessed no means of

-    accumulating the power of labor, no control over the activity of

-    numbers—in other words, no wealth.

-

-    But the accumulation of knowledge finally brought this advance

-    about. The extraction and utilization of the metals, especially

-    iron, formed the most important step, since labor was thus

-    facilitated and its productiveness increased in an incalculable

-    degree. We have little evidence of the existence of a medium of

-    exchange during the first or stone period, and no doubt barter was

-    the only form of trade. Before the use of metals, shells and other

-    objects were used: remains of money of baked clay have been found in

-    Mexico. Finally, though in still ancient times, the possession of

-    wealth in money gradually became possible and more common, and from

-    that day to this avenues for reaching this stage in social progress

-    has ever been opening.

-

-    But wealth merely indicates a stage of progress, since it is but a

-    comparative term. All men could not become rich, for in that case

-    all would be equally poor. But labor has a still higher goal; for,

-    thirdly, as capital, it constructs and employs machinery, which does

-    the work of many hands, and thus cheapens products, which is

-    equivalent in effect to an accumulation of wealth to the consumer.

-    And this increase of power may be used for the intellectual and

-    spiritual advance of men, or otherwise, at the will of the men thus

-    favored. Machinery places man in the position of a creator,

-    operating on Nature through an increased number of “secondary

-    causes.”

-

-    Development of intelligence is seen, then, in the following

-    directions: First, in the knowledge of facts, including science;

-    second, in language; third, in the apprehension of beauty; and, as

-    consequences of the first of these, the accumulation of power by

-    development—First, of means of subsistence; and second, of

-    mechanical invention.

-

-    Thus we have two terms to start with in estimating the beginning of

-    human development in knowledge and power: First, the primary

-    capacities of the human mind itself; second, a material world, whose

-    infinitely varied components are so arranged as to yield results to

-    the energies of that mind. For example, the transition points of

-    vaporization and liquefaction are so placed as to be within the

-    reach of man’s agents; their weights are so fixed as to accord with

-    the muscular or other forces which he is able to exert; and other

-    living organizations are subject to his convenience and rule, and

-    not, as in previous geological periods, entirely beyond his control.

-    These two terms being given, it is maintained that the present

-    situation of the most civilized men has been attained through the

-    operation of a law of mutual action and reaction—a law whose

-    results, seen at the present time, have depended on the acceleration

-    or retardation of its rate of action; which rate has been regulated,

-    according to the degree in which a third great term, viz., the law

-    of moral or (what is the same thing) true religious development has

-    been combined in the plan. What it is necessary to establish in

-    order to prove the above hypothesis is—

-

-    I. That in each of the particulars above enumerated the development

-    of the human species is similar to that of the individual from

-    infancy to maturity.

-

-    II. That from a condition of subserviency to the laws of matter,

-    man’s intelligence enables him, by an accumulation of power, to

-    become in a sense independent of those laws, and to increase greatly

-    the rate of intellectual and spiritual progress.

-

-    III. That failure to accomplish a moral or spiritual development

-    will again reduce him to a subserviency to the laws of matter.

-

-    This brings us to the subject of moral development. And here I may

-    be allowed to suggest that the weight of the evidence is opposed to

-    the philosophy, “falsely so called,” of necessitarianism, which

-    asserts that the first two terms alone were sufficient to work out

-    man’s salvation in this world and the next; and, on the other hand,

-    to that anti-philosophy which asserts that all things in the

-    progress of the human race, social and civil, are regulated by

-    immediate Divine interposition instead of through instrumentalities.

-    Hence the subject divides itself at once into two great

-    departments—viz., that of the development of mind or intelligence,

-    and that of the development of morality.

-

-    That these laws are distinct there can be no doubt, since in the

-    individual man one of them may produce results without the aid of

-    the other. Yet it can be shown that each is the most invaluable aid

-    and stimulant to the other, and most favorable to the rapid advance

-    of the mind in either direction.

-

-

-                  III. SPIRITUAL OR MORAL DEVELOPMENT.

-

-    In examining this subject, we first inquire (Sect. _α_) whether

-    there is any connection between physical and moral or religious

-    development; then (_β_), what indications of moral development may

-    be derived from history. Finally (_γ_), a correlation of the results

-    of these inquiries, with the nature of the religious development in

-    the individual, is attempted. Of course in so stupendous an inquiry

-    but a few leading points can be presented here.

-

-    If it be true that the period of human existence on the earth has

-    seen a gradually increasing predominance of higher motives over

-    lower ones among the mass of mankind, and if any parts of our

-    metaphysical being have been derived by inheritance from preëxistent

-    beings, we are incited to the inquiry whether any of the moral

-    qualities are included among the latter; and whether there be any

-    resemblance between moral and intellectual development.

-

-    Thus, if there have been a physical derivation from a preëxistent

-    genus, and an embryonic condition of those physical characters which

-    distinguish Homo—if there has been also an embryonic or infantile

-    stage in intellectual qualities—we are led to inquire whether the

-    development of the individual in moral nature will furnish us with a

-    standard of estimation of the successive conditions or present

-    relations of the human species in this aspect also.

-

-              _a. Relations of Physical and Moral Nature._

-

-    Although men are much alike in the deeper qualities of their nature,

-    there is a range of variation which is best understood by a

-    consideration of the extremes of such variation, as seen in men of

-    different latitudes, and women and children.

-

-    (_a._) _In Children._ Youth is distinguished by a peculiarity, which

-    no doubt depends upon an immature condition of the nervous center

-    concerned, which might be called _nervous impressibility_. It is

-    exhibited in a greater tendency to tearfulness, in timidity, less

-    mental endurance, a greater facility in acquiring knowledge, and

-    more ready susceptibility to the influence of sights, sounds and

-    sensations. In both sexes the emotional nature predominates over the

-    intelligence and judgment. In those years the _character_ is said to

-    be in embryo, and theologians in using the phrase, “reaching years

-    of religious understanding,” mean that in early years the religious

-    _capacities_ undergo development coincidentally with those of the

-    body.

-

-    (_b._) _In Women._ If we examine the metaphysical characteristics of

-    women, we observe two classes of traits—namely, those which are also

-    found in men, and those which are absent or but weakly developed in

-    men. Those of the first class are very similar in essential nature

-    to those which men exhibit at an early stage of development. This

-    may be in some way related to the fact that physical maturity occurs

-    earlier in women.

-

-    The gentler sex is characterized by a greater impressibility, often

-    seen in the influence exercised by a stronger character, as well as

-    by music, color or spectacle generally; warmth of emotion,

-    submission to its influence rather than that of logic; timidity and

-    irregularity of action in the outer world. All these qualities

-    belong to the male sex, as a general rule, at some period of life,

-    though different individuals lose them at very various periods.

-    Ruggedness and sternness may rarely be developed in infancy, yet at

-    some still prior time they certainly do not exist in any.

-

-    Probably most men can recollect some early period of their lives

-    when the emotional nature predominated—a time when emotion at the

-    sight of suffering was more easily stirred than in maturer years. I

-    do not now allude to the benevolence inspired, kept alive or

-    developed by the influence of the Christian religion on the heart,

-    but rather to that which belongs to the natural man. Perhaps all men

-    can recall a period of youth when they were hero-worshipers—when

-    they felt the need of a stronger arm, and loved to look up to the

-    powerful friend who could sympathize with and aid them. This is the

-    “woman stage” of character: in a large number of cases it is early

-    passed; in some it lasts longer; while in a very few men it persists

-    through life. Severe discipline and labor are unfavorable to its

-    persistence. Luxury preserves its bad qualities without its good,

-    while Christianity preserves its good elements without its bad.

-

-    It is not designed to say that woman in her emotional nature does

-    not differ from the undeveloped man. On the contrary, though she

-    does not differ in kind, she differs greatly in degree, for her

-    qualities grow with her growth, and exceed in _power_ many fold

-    those exhibited by her companion at the original point of departure.

-    Hence, since it might be said that man is the undeveloped woman, a

-    word of explanation will be useful. Embryonic types abound in the

-    fields of nature, but they are not therefore immature in the usual

-    sense. Maintaining the lower essential quality, they yet exhibit the

-    usual results of growth in individual characters; that is, increase

-    of strength, powers of support and protection, size and beauty. In

-    order to maintain that the masculine character coincides with that

-    of the undeveloped woman, it would be necessary to show that the

-    latter during her infancy possesses the male characters

-    predominating—that is, unimpressibility, judgment, physical courage,

-    and the like.

-

-    If we look at the second class of female characters—namely, those

-    which are imperfectly developed or absent in men, and in respect to

-    which man may be called undeveloped woman—we note three prominent

-    points: facility in language, tact or finesse, and the love of

-    children. The first two appear to me to be altogether developed

-    results of “impressibility,” already considered as an indication of

-    immaturity. Imagination is also a quality of impressibility, and,

-    associated with finesse, is apt to degenerate into duplicity and

-    untruthfulness.

-

-    The third quality is different. It generally appears at a very early

-    period of life. Who does not know how soon the little girl selects

-    the doll, and the boy the toy-horse or machine? Here man truly never

-    gets beyond undeveloped woman. Nevertheless, “impressibility” seems

-    to have a great deal to do with this quality also.

-

-    Thus the metaphysical relation of the sexes would appear to be one

-    of _inexact parallelism_, as defined in Sect. I. That the physical

-    relation is a remote one of the same kind, several characters seem

-    to point out. The case of the vocal organs will suffice. Their

-    structure is identical in both sexes in early youth, and both

-    produce nearly similar sounds. They remain in this condition in the

-    woman, while they undergo a metamorphosis and change both in

-    structure and vocal power in the man. In the same way, in many of

-    the lower creation, the females possess a majority of embryonic

-    features, though not invariably. A common example is to be found in

-    the plumage of birds, where the females and young males are often

-    undistinguishable.[48] But there are few points in the physical

-    structure of man also in which the male condition is the immature

-    one. In regard to structure, the point at which the relation between

-    the sexes is that of _exact parallelism_, or where the mature

-    condition of the one sex accords with the undeveloped condition of

-    the other, is when reproduction is no longer accomplished by budding

-    or gemmation, but requires distinct organs. Metaphysically, this

-    relation is to be found where distinct individuality of the sexes

-    first appears; that is, where we pass from the hermaphrodite to the

-    bisexual condition.

-

-Footnote 48:

-

-      Meehan states that the upper limbs and strong laterals in coniferæ

-      and other trees produce female flowers and cones, and the lower

-      and more interior branches the male flowers. What he points out is

-      in harmony with the position here maintained—namely, that the

-      female characters include more of those which are embryonic in the

-      males, than the male characters include of those which are

-      embryonic in the female: the female flowers are the product of the

-      younger and more growing portions of the tree—that is, those last

-      produced (the upper limbs and new branches)—while the male flowers

-      are produced by the older or more mature portions—that is, lower

-      limbs or more axial regions.

-

-      Meehan’s observations coincide with those of Thury and others on

-      the origin of sexes in animals and plants, which it appears to

-      admit of a similar explanation.

-

-    But let us put the whole interpretation on this partial

-    undevelopment of woman.

-

-    The types or conditions of organic life which have been the most

-    prominent in the world’s history—the Ganoids of the first, the

-    Dinosaurs of the second, and the Mammoths of the third period—have

-    generally died with their day. The line of succession has not been

-    from them. The law of anatomy and paleontology is, that we must seek

-    the point of departure of the type which is to predominate in the

-    future, at lower stages on the line, in less decided forms, or in

-    what, in scientific parlance, are called generalized types. In the

-    same way, though the adults of the tailless apes are in a physical

-    sense more highly developed than their young, yet the latter far

-    more closely resemble the human species in their large facial angle

-    and shortened jaws.

-

-    How much significance, then, is added to the law uttered by

-    Christ!—“Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the

-    kingdom of heaven.” Submission of will, loving trust, confiding

-    faith—these belong to the child: how strange they appear to the

-    executing, commanding, reasoning man! Are they so strange to the

-    woman? We all know the answer. Woman is nearer to the point of

-    departure of that development which outlives time and peoples

-    heaven; and if man would find it, he must retrace his steps, regain

-    something he lost in youth, and join to the powers and energies of

-    his character the submission, love and faith which the new birth

-    alone can give.

-

-    Thus the summing up of the metaphysical qualities of woman would be

-    thus expressed: In the emotional world, man’s superior; in the moral

-    world, his equal; in the laboring world, his inferior.

-

-    There are, however, vast differences in women in respect to the

-    number of masculine traits they may have assumed before being

-    determined into their own special development. Woman also, under the

-    influence of necessity, in later years of life, may add more or less

-    to those qualities in her which are fully developed in the man.

-

-    The relation of these facts to the principles stated as the two

-    opposing laws of development is, it appears to me, to be explained

-    thus: First, that woman’s most inherent peculiarities are _not_ the

-    result of the external circumstances with which she has been placed

-    in contact, as the _conflict theory_ would indicate. Such

-    circumstances are said to be her involuntary subserviency to the

-    physically more powerful man, and the effect of a compulsory mode of

-    life in preventing her from attaining a position of equality in the

-    activities of the world. Second, that they _are_ the result of the

-    different distributions of qualities as already indicated by the

-    _harmonic theory_ of development; that is, of the unequal possession

-    of features which belong to different periods in the developmental

-    succession of the highest. And here it might be further shown that

-    this relation involves no disadvantage to either sex, but that the

-    principle of compensation holds in moral organization and in social

-    order, as elsewhere. There is then another beautiful harmony which

-    will ever remain, let the development of each sex be extended as far

-    as it may.

-

-    (_c._) _In Men._ If we look at the male sex, we shall find various

-    exceptional approximations to the female in mental constitution.

-    Further, there can be little doubt that in the Indo-European race

-    maturity in some respects appears earlier in tropical than in

-    northern regions; and though subject to many exceptions, this is

-    sufficiently general to be looked upon as a rule. Accordingly, we

-    find in that race—at least in the warmer regions of Europe and

-    America—a larger proportion of certain qualities which are more

-    universal in women; as greater activity of the emotional nature when

-    compared with the judgment; an impressibility of the nervous center,

-    which, _cæteris paribus_, appreciates quickly the harmonies of

-    sound, form and color; answers most quickly to the friendly greeting

-    or the hostile menace; is more careless of consequences in the

-    material expression of generosity or hatred, and more indifferent to

-    truth under the influence of personal relations. The movements of

-    the body and expressions of the countenance answer to the

-    temperament. More of grace and elegance in the bearing mark the

-    Greek, the Italian and the Creole, than the German, the Englishman

-    or the Green Mountain man. More of vivacity and fire, for better or

-    for worse, are displayed in the countenance.

-

-    Perhaps the more northern type left all that behind in its youth.

-    The rugged, angular character which appreciates force better than

-    harmony, the strong intellect which delights in forethought and

-    calculation, the less impressibility, reaching stolidity in the

-    uneducated, are its well-known traits. If in such a character

-    generosity is less prompt, and there is but little chivalry, there

-    is persistency and unwavering fidelity, not readily interrupted by

-    the lightning of passion or the dark surmises of an active

-    imagination.

-

-    All these peculiarities appear to result, _first_, from different

-    degrees of quickness and depth in appreciating impressions from

-    without; and, _second_, from differing degrees of attention to the

-    intelligent judgment in consequent action. (I leave conscience out,

-    as not belonging to the category of inherited qualities.)

-

-    The first is the basis of an emotional nature, and the predominance

-    of the second is the usual indication of maturity. That the first is

-    largely dependent on an impressible condition of the nervous system

-    can be asserted by those who reduce their nervous centers to a

-    sensitive condition by a rapid consumption of the nutritive

-    materials necessary to the production of thought-force, and perhaps

-    of brain-tissue itself, induced by close and prolonged mental labor.

-    The condition of over-work, though but an imitation of immaturity,

-    without its joy-giving nutrition, is nevertheless very instructive.

-    The sensitiveness, both physically, emotionally and morally, is

-    often remarkable, and a weakening of the understanding is often

-    coincident with it.

-

-    It is necessary here to introduce a caution, that the meaning of the

-    words high and low be not misunderstood. Great impressibility is an

-    essential constituent of many of the highest forms of genius, and

-    the combination of this quality with strong reflective intelligence,

-    constitutes the most complete and efficient type of mind—therefore

-    the highest in the common sense. It is not, however, the highest—or

-    extremest—in an evolutional sense, it is not masculine, but

-    hermaphrodite; in other words, its _kinetic_ force exceeds its

-    _bathmic_.[49] It is therefore certain that a partial diminution of

-    bathmic vigor is an advantage to some kinds of intellect.

-

-Footnote 49:

-

-      _Bathmic force_ is analogous to the _potential_ force of chemists,

-      but is no doubt entirely different in its nature. It is converted

-      into active energy or _kinetic_ force only during the years of

-      growth: it is in large amount in _acceleration_, in small amount

-      in _retardation_.

-

-    The above observations have been confined to the Indo-European race.

-    It may be objected to the theory that savagery means immaturity in

-    the senses above described, as dependent largely on

-    “impressibility,” while savages in general display the least

-    “impressibility,” as that word is generally understood. This cannot

-    be asserted of the Africans, who, so far as we know them, possess

-    this peculiarity in a high degree. Moreover, it must be remembered

-    that the state of indifference which precedes that of impressibility

-    in the individual may characterize many savages; while their varied

-    peculiarities may be largely accounted for by recollecting that many

-    combinations of different species of emotions and kinds of

-    intelligence go to make up the complete result in each case.

-

-    (_d._) _Conclusions._ Three types of religion may be selected from

-    the developmental conditions of man: first, an absence of

-    sensibility (early infancy); second, an emotional stage more

-    productive of faith than of works; thirdly, an intellectual type,

-    more favorable to works than to faith. Though in regard to

-    responsibility these states may be equal, there is absolutely no

-    gain to laboring humanity from the first type, and a serious loss in

-    actual results from the second, taken alone, as compared with the

-    third.

-

-    These, then, are the _physical vehicles of religion_—the “_earthen

-    vessels_” of Paul—which give character and tone to the deeper

-    spiritual life, as the color of the transparent vessel is

-    communicated to the light which radiates from within.

-

-    But if evolution has taken place, there is evidently a provision for

-    the progress from the lower to the higher states, either in the

-    education of circumstances (“conflict,”) or in the power of an

-    interior spiritual influence “harmony,”) or both.

-

-                  _β. Evidence Derived from History._

-

-    We trace the development of Morality in—First, the family or social

-    order; second, the civil order, or government.

-

-    Whatever may have been the extent of moral ignorance before the

-    Deluge, it does not appear that the earth was yet prepared for the

-    permanent habitation of the human race. All nations preserve

-    traditions of the drowning of the early peoples by floods, such as

-    have occurred frequently during geologic time. At the close of each

-    period of dry land, a period of submergence has set in, and the

-    depression of the level of the earth, and consequent overflow by the

-    sea, has caused the death and subsequent preservation of the remains

-    of the fauna and flora living upon it, while the elevation of the

-    same has produced that interruption in the process of deposit in the

-    same region which marks the intervals between geologic periods.

-    Change in these respects do not occur to any very material extent at

-    the present time in the regions inhabited by the most highly

-    developed portions of the human race; and as the last which occurred

-    seems to have been expressly designed for the preparation of the

-    earth’s surface for the occupation of organized human society, it

-    may be doubted whether many such changes are to be looked for in the

-    future. The last great flooding was that which stratified the drift

-    materials of the north, and carried the finer portions far over the

-    south, determining the minor topography of the surface and supplying

-    it with soils.

-

-    The existence of floods which drowned many races of men may be

-    considered as established. The men destroyed by the one recorded by

-    Moses are described by him as exceedingly wicked, so that “the earth

-    was filled with violence.” In his eyes the Flood was designed for

-    their extermination.

-

-    That their condition was evil must be fully believed if they were

-    condemned by the executive of the Jewish law. This law, it will be

-    remembered, permitted polygamy, slavery, revenge, aggressive war.

-    The Jews were expected to rob their neighbors the Egyptians of

-    jewels, and they were allowed “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a

-    tooth.” They were expected to butcher other nations, with their

-    women and children, their flocks and their herds. If we look at the

-    lives of men recorded in the Old Testament as examples of

-    distinguished excellence, we find that their standard, however

-    superior to that of the people around them, would ill accord with

-    the morality of the present day. They were all polygamists,

-    slaveholders and warriors. Abraham treated Hagar and Ishmael with

-    inhumanity. Jacob, with his mother’s aid, deceived Isaac, and

-    received thereby a blessing which extended to the whole Jewish

-    nation. David, a man whom Paul tells us the Lord found to be after

-    his own heart, slew the messenger who brought tidings of the death

-    of Saul, and committed other acts which would stain the reputation

-    of a Christian beyond redemption. It is scarcely necessary to turn

-    to other nations if this be true of the chosen men of a chosen

-    people. History indeed presents us with no people prior to, or

-    contemporary with, the Jews who were not morally their inferiors.

-

-    If we turn to more modern periods, an examination of the morality of

-    Greece and Rome reveals a curious intermixture of lower and higher

-    moral conditions. While each of these nations produced excellent

-    moralists, the influence of their teachings was not sufficient to

-    elevate the masses above what would now be regarded as a very low

-    standard. The popularity of those scenes of cruelty, the

-    gladiatorial shows and the combats with wild beasts, sufficiently

-    attests this. The Roman virtue of patriotism, while productive of

-    many noble deeds, is in itself far from being a disinterested one,

-    but partakes rather of the nature of partisanship and selfishness.

-    If the Greeks were superior to the Romans in humanity, they were

-    apparently their inferiors in the social virtues, and were much

-    below the standard of Christian nations in both respects.

-

-    Ancient history points to a state of chronic war, in which the

-    social relations were in confusion, and the development of the

-    useful arts was almost impossible. Savage races, which continue to

-    this day in a similar moral condition, are, we may easily believe,

-    most unhappy. They are generally divided into tribes, which are

-    mutually hostile, or friendly only with the view of injuring some

-    other tribe. Might is their law, and robbery, rapine and murder

-    express their mutual relations. This is the history of the lowest

-    grade of barbarism, and the history of primeval man so far as it has

-    come down to us in sacred and profane records. Man as a species

-    first appears in history as a sinful being. Then a race maintaining

-    a contest with the prevailing corruption and exhibiting a higher

-    moral ideal is presented to us in Jewish history. Finally, early

-    Christian society exhibits a greatly superior condition of things.

-    In it polygamy scarcely existed, and slavery and war were condemned.

-    But progress did not end here, for our Lord said, “I have yet many

-    things to say unto you, _but ye cannot bear them now_. Howbeit, when

-    He, the spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.”

-

-    The progress revealed to us by history is truly great, and if a

-    similar difference existed between the first of the human species

-    and the first of whose condition we have information, we can

-    conceive how low the origin must have been. History begins with a

-    considerable progress in civilization, and from this we must infer a

-    long preceding period of human existence, such as a gradual

-    evolution would require.

-

-                   γ. Rationale of Moral Development.

-

-    I. _Of the Species._ Let us now look at the moral condition of the

-    infant man of the present time. We know his small accountability,

-    his trust, his innocence. We know that he is free from the law that

-    when he “would do good, evil is present with him,” for good and evil

-    are alike unknown. We know that until growth has progressed to a

-    certain degree he fully deserves the praise pronounced by Our

-    Saviour, that “of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Growth, however,

-    generally sees a change. We know that the buddings of evil appear

-    but too soon: the lapse of a few months sees exhibitions of anger,

-    disobedience, malice, falsehood, and their attendants—the fruit of a

-    corruption within not manifested before.

-

-    In early youth it may be said that moral susceptibility is often in

-    inverse ratio to physical vigor. But with growth the more physically

-    vigorous are often sooner taught the lessons of life, for their

-    energy brings them into earlier conflict with the antagonisms and

-    contradictions of the world. Here is a beautiful example of the

-    benevolent principle of compensation.

-

-    1. _Innocence and the Fall._ If physical evolution be a reality, we

-    have reason to believe that the infantile stage of human morals, as

-    well as of human intellect, was much prolonged in the history of our

-    first parents. This constitutes the period of human purity, when we

-    are told by Moses that the first pair dwelt in Eden. But the growth

-    to maturity saw the development of all the qualities inherited from

-    the irresponsible denizen of the forest. Man inherits from his

-    predecessors in the creation the buddings of reason: he inherits

-    passions, propensities and appetites. His corruption is that of his

-    animal progenitors, and his sin is the low and bestial instinct of

-    the brute creation. Thus only is the origin of sin made clear—a

-    problem which the pride of man would have explained in any other way

-    had it been possible.

-

-    But how startling the exhibition of evil by this new being as

-    compared with the scenes of the countless ages already past! Then

-    the right of the strongest was God’s law, and rapine and destruction

-    were the history of life. But into man had been “breathed the breath

-    of life,” and he had “become a living soul.” The law of right, the

-    Divine Spirit, was planted within him, and the laws of the beast

-    were in antagonism to that law. The natural development of his

-    inherited qualities necessarily brought him into collision with that

-    higher standard planted within him, and that war was commenced which

-    shall never cease “till He hath put all things under His feet.” The

-    first act of man’s disobedience constituted the Fall, and with it

-    would come the first _intellectual_ “knowledge of good and of

-    evil”—an apprehension up to that time derived exclusively from the

-    divinity within, or conscience.[50]

-

-Footnote 50:

-

-      In our present translation of Genesis, the Fall is ascribed to the

-      influence of Satan assuming the form of the serpent, and this

-      animal was cursed in consequence, and compelled to assume a prone

-      position. This rendering may well be revised, since serpents,

-      prone like others, existed in both America and Europe during the

-      Eocene epoch, five times as great a period before Adam as has

-      elapsed since his day. Clark states, with great probability, that

-      “serpent” should be translated monkey or ape—a conclusion, it will

-      be observed, exactly coinciding with our inductions on the basis

-      of evolution. The instigation to evil by an ape merely states

-      inheritance in another form. His curse, then, refers to the

-      retention of the horizontal position by all other quadrumana, as

-      we find it at the present day.

-

-    2. _Free Agency._ Heretofore development had been that of physical

-    types, but the Lord had rested on the seventh day, for man closed

-    the line of the physical creation. Now a new development was to

-    begin—the development of mind, of morality and of grace.

-

-    On the previous days of Creation all had progressed in accordance

-    with inevitable law apart from its objects. Now two lines of

-    development were at the disposal of this being, between which his

-    _free will_ was to choose. Did he choose the courses dictated by the

-    spirit of the brute, he was to be subject to the old law of the

-    brute creation—the right of the strongest and spiritual death. Did

-    he choose the guidance of the Divine Guest in his heart, he became

-    subject to the laws which are to guide—I. the human species to an

-    ultimate perfection, so far as consistent with this world; and II.

-    the individual man to a higher life, where a new existence awaits

-    him as a spiritual being, freed from the laws of terrestrial matter.

-

-    The charge brought against the theory of development, that it

-    implies a necessary progress of man to all perfection without his

-    coöperation—or _necessitarianism_, as it is called—is unfounded.

-

-    The free will of man remains the source alike of his progress and

-    his relapse. But the choice once made, the laws of spiritual

-    development are apparently as inevitable as those of matter. Thus

-    men whose religious capacities are increased by attention to the

-    Divine Monitor within are in the advance of progress—progress

-    coinciding with that which in material things is called the

-    _harmonic_. On the other hand, those whose motives are of the lower

-    origin fall under the working of the law of _conflict_.

-

-    The lesson derivable from the preceding considerations would seem to

-    be “necessitarian” as respects the whole human race, considered by

-    itself; and I believe it is to be truly so interpreted. That is, the

-    Creator of all things has set agencies at work which will slowly

-    develop a perfect humanity out of His lower creation, and nothing

-    can thwart the process or alter the result. “My word shall not

-    return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please,

-    and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” This is our

-    great encouragement, our noblest hope—second only to that which

-    looks to a blessed inheritance in another world. It is this thought

-    that should inspire the farmer, who as he toils wonders, “Why all

-    this labor? The Good Father could have made me like the lilies, who,

-    though they toil not, neither spin, are yet clothed in glory; and

-    why should I, a nobler being, be subject to the dust and the sweat

-    of labor?” This thought should enlighten every artisan of the

-    thousands that people the factories and guide their whirling

-    machinery in our modern cities. Every revolution of a wheel is

-    moving the car of progress, and the timed stroke of the crank and

-    the rhythmic throw of the shuttle are but the music the spheres have

-    sung since time began. A new significance then appears in the prayer

-    of David: “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and

-    establish Thou the work of our hands upon us: the work of our hands,

-    O Lord, establish Thou it.” But beware of the catastrophe, for “He

-    will sit as a refiner:” “the wheat shall be gathered into barns, but

-    the chaff shall be burned with unquenchable fire.” If this be true,

-    let us look for—

-

-    3. _The Extinction of Evil._ How is necessitarianism to be

-    reconciled with free will? It appears to me, thus: When a being

-    whose safety depends on the perfection of a system of laws abandons

-    the system by which he lives, he becomes subject to that lower grade

-    of laws which govern lower intelligences. Man, falling from the laws

-    of right, comes under the dominion of the laws of brute force; as

-    said our Saviour: “Salt is good, but if the salt have lost his

-    savor, it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast forth and

-    trodden under foot of men.”

-

-    Evil, being unsatisfying to the human heart, is in its nature ever

-    progressive, whether in the individual or the nation; and in

-    estimating the practical results to man of the actions prompted by

-    the lower portion of our nature, it is only necessary to carry out

-    to its full development each of those animal qualities which may in

-    certain states of society be restrained by the social system. In

-    human history those qualities have repeatedly had this development,

-    and the battle of progress is fought to decide whether they shall

-    overthrow the system that restrains them, or be overthrown by it.

-

-    Entire obedience to the lower instincts of our nature ensures

-    destruction to the weaker, and generally to the stronger also. A

-    most marked case of this kind is seen where the developed vices of

-    civilization are introduced among a savage people—as, for example,

-    the North American Indians. These seem in consequence to be

-    hastening to extinction.

-

-    But a system or a circuit of existence has been allotted to the

-    civil associations of the animal species man, independently of his

-    moral development. It may be briefly stated thus: Races begin as

-    poor offshoots or emigrants from a parent stock. The law of labor

-    develops their powers, and increases their wealth and numbers. These

-    will be diminished by their various vices; but on the whole, in

-    proportion as the intellectual and economical elements prevail,

-    wealth will increase; that is, they accumulate power. When this has

-    been accomplished, and before activity has slackened its speed, the

-    nation has reached the culminating point, and then it enters upon

-    the period of decline. The restraints imposed by economy and active

-    occupation being removed, the beastly traits find in accumulated

-    power only increased means of gratification, and industry and

-    prosperity sink together. Power is squandered, little is

-    accumulated, and the nation goes down to its extinction amid scenes

-    of internal strife and vice. Its cycle is soon fulfilled, and other

-    nations, fresh from scenes of labor, assault it, absorb its

-    fragments, and it dies. This has been the world’s history, and it

-    remains to be seen whether the virtues of the nations now existing

-    will be sufficient to save them from a like fate.

-

-    Thus the history of the animal man in nations is wonderfully like

-    that of the type or families of the animal and vegetable kingdoms

-    during geologic ages. They rise, they increase and reach a period of

-    multiplication and power. The force allotted to them becoming

-    exhausted, they diminish and sink and die.

-

-    II. _Of the Individual._ In discussing physical development, we are

-    as yet compelled to restrict ourselves to the evidence of its

-    existence and some laws observed in the operation of its causative

-    force. What that force is, or what are its primary laws, we know

-    not.

-

-    So in the progress of moral development we endeavor to prove its

-    existence and the mode of its operation, but why that mode should

-    exist, rather than some other mode, we cannot explain.

-

-    The moral progress of the species depends, of course, on the moral

-    progress of the individuals embraced in it. Religion is the sum of

-    those influences which determine the motives of men’s actions into

-    harmony with the Divine perfection and the Divine will. Obedience to

-    these influences constitutes the practice of religion, while the

-    statement of the growth and operation of these influences

-    constitutes the theory of religion, or doctrine.

-

-    The Divine Spirit planted in man shows him that which is in harmony

-    with the Divine Mind, and it remains for his free will to conform to

-    it or reject it. This harmony is man’s highest ideal of happiness,

-    and in seeking it, as well as in desiring to flee from dissonance or

-    pain, he but obeys the disposition common to all conscious beings.

-    If, however, he attempts to conform to it, he will find the law of

-    evil present, and frequently obtaining the mastery. If now he be in

-    any degree observing, he will find that the laws of morality and

-    right are the only ones by which human society exists in a condition

-    superior to that of the lower animals, and in which the capacities

-    of man for happiness can approach a state of satisfaction. He may be

-    then said to be “awakened” to the importance of religion. If he

-    carry on the struggle to attain to the high goal presented to his

-    spiritual vision, he will be deeply grieved and humbled at his

-    failures: then he is said to be “convicted.” Under these

-    circumstances the necessity of a deliverance becomes clear, and is

-    willingly accepted in the only way in which it has pleased the

-    Author of all to present it, which has been epitomized by Paul as

-    “the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit through

-    Jesus Christ.” Thus a life of advanced and ever-advancing moral

-    excellence becomes possible, and the man makes nearer approaches to

-    the “image of God.”

-

-    Thus is opened a new era in spiritual development, which we are led

-    to believe leads to an ultimate condition in which the nature

-    inherited from our origin is entirely overcome, and an existence of

-    moral perfection entered on. Thus in the book of Mark the simile

-    occurs: “First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in

-    the ear;” and Solomon says that the development of righteousness

-    “shines more and more unto the perfect day.”

-

-                              δ. Summary.

-

-    If it be true that general development in morality proceeds in spite

-    of the original predominance of evil in the world, through the

-    self-destructive nature of the latter, it is only necessary to

-    examine the reasons why the excellence of the good may have been

-    subject also to progress, and how the remainder of the race may have

-    been influenced thereby.

-

-    The development of morality is then probably to be understood in the

-    following sense: Since the Divine Spirit, as the prime force in

-    moral progress, cannot in itself be supposed to have been in any way

-    under the influence of natural laws, its capacities were no doubt as

-    eternal and unerring in the first man as in the last. But the facts

-    and probabilities discussed above point to development of _religious

-    sensibility_, or capacity to appreciate moral good, or to receive

-    impressions from the source of good.

-

-    The evidence of this is supposed to be seen in—_First_, improvement

-    in man’s views of his duty to his neighbor; and _Second_, the

-    substitution of spiritual for symbolic religions: in other words,

-    improvement in the capacity for receiving spiritual impressions.

-

-    What the primary cause of this supposed development of religious

-    sensibility may have been, is a question we reverently leave

-    untouched. That it is intimately connected in some way with, and in

-    part dependent on, the evolution of the intelligence, appears very

-    probable: for this evolution is seen—_First_, in a better

-    understanding of the consequences of action, and of good and of evil

-    in many things; and _Second_, in the production of means for the

-    spread of the special instrumentalities of good. The following may

-    be enumerated as such instrumentalities:

-

-    1. Furnishing literary means of record and distribution of the

-    truths of religion, morality and science.

-

-    2. Creating and increasing modes of transportation of teachers and

-    literary means of disseminating truth.

-

-    3. Facilitating the migration and the spread of nations holding the

-    highest position in the scale of morality.

-

-    4. The increase of wealth, which multiplies the extent of the

-    preceding means.

-

-    And now, let no man attempt to set bounds to this development. Let

-    no man say even that morality accomplished is all that is required

-    of mankind, since that is not necessarily the evidence of a

-    spiritual development. If a man possess the capacity for progress

-    beyond the condition in which he finds himself, in refusing to enter

-    upon it he declines to conform to the Divine law. And “from those to

-    whom little is given, little is required, but from those to whom

-    much is given, much shall be required.”

-

-

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-

-

-

-                          _SCIENTIFIC ADDRESSES._

-

-

-

-

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-

-

-

-

-                          TYNDALL’S ADDRESSES.

-

-

-                                   I.

-

-       _On the Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation._

-

-    The celebrated Fichte, in his lectures on the “Vocation of the

-    Scholar,” insisted on a culture for the scholar which should not be

-    one-sided, but all-sided. His intellectual nature was to expand

-    spherically, and not in a single direction. In one direction,

-    however, Fichte required that the scholar should apply himself

-    directly to nature, become a creator of knowledge, and thus repay,

-    by original labors of his own, the immense debt he owed to the

-    labors of others. It was these which enabled him to supplement the

-    knowledge derived from his own researches, so as to render his

-    culture rounded, and not one-sided.

-

-    Fichte’s idea is to some extent illustrated by the constitution and

-    the labors of the British Association. We have here a body of men

-    engaged in the pursuit of natural knowledge, but variously engaged.

-    While sympathizing with each of its departments, and supplementing

-    his culture by knowledge drawn from all of them, each student

-    amongst us selects one subject for the exercise of his own original

-    faculty—one line along which he may carry the light of his private

-    intelligence a little way into the darkness by which all knowledge

-    is surrounded. Thus, the geologist faces the rocks; the biologist

-    fronts the conditions and phenomena of life; the astronomer, stellar

-    masses and motions; the mathematician the properties of space and

-    number; the chemist pursues his atoms, while the physical

-    investigator has his own large field in optical, thermal,

-    electrical, acoustical, and other phenomena. The British

-    Association, then, faces nature on all sides, and pushes knowledge

-    centrifugally outwards, while, through circumstance or natural bent,

-    each of its working members takes up a certain line of research in

-    which he aspires to be an original producer, being content in all

-    other directions to accept instruction from his fellow-men. The sum

-    of our labors constitutes what Fichte might call the sphere of

-    natural knowledge. In the meetings of the Association it is found

-    necessary to resolve this sphere into its component parts, which

-    take concrete form under the respective letters of our sections.

-

-    This section (A) is called the Mathematical and Physical section.

-    Mathematics and Physics have been long accustomed to coalesce, and

-    hence this grouping. For while mathematics, as a product of the

-    human mind, is self-sustaining and nobly self-rewarding,—while the

-    pure mathematician may never trouble his mind with considerations

-    regarding the phenomena of the material universe, still the form of

-    reasoning which he employs, the power which the organization of that

-    reasoning confers, the applicability of his abstract conceptions to

-    actual phenomena, render his science one of the most potent

-    instruments in the solution of natural problems. Indeed, without

-    mathematics, expressed or implied, our knowledge of physical science

-    would be friable in the extreme.

-

-    Side by side with the mathematical method, we have the method of

-    experiment. Here, from a starting-point furnished by his own

-    researches or those of others, the investigator proceeds by

-    combining intuition and verification. He ponders the knowledge he

-    possesses and tries to push it further, he guesses and checks his

-    guess, he conjectures and confirms or explodes his conjecture. These

-    guesses and conjectures are by no means leaps in the dark; for

-    knowledge once gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate

-    boundaries. There is no discovery so limited as not to illuminate

-    something beyond itself. The force of intellectual penetration into

-    this penumbral region which surrounds actual knowledge is not

-    dependent upon method, but is proportional to the genius of the

-    investigator. There is, however, no genius so gifted as not to need

-    control and verification. The profoundest minds know best that

-    nature’s ways are not at all times their ways, and that the

-    brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they

-    have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.

-    The vocation of the true experimentalist is the incessant correction

-    and realization of his insight; his experiments finally constituting

-    a body, of which his purified intuitions are, as it were, the soul.

-

-    Partly through mathematical, and partly through experimental

-    research, physical science has of late years assumed a momentous

-    position in the world. Both in a material and in an intellectual

-    point of view it has produced, and it is destined to produce,

-    immense changes, vast social ameliorations, and vast alterations in

-    the popular conception of the origin, rule, and governance of

-    things. Miracles are wrought by science in the physical world, while

-    philosophy is forsaking its ancient metaphysical channels, and

-    pursuing those opened or indicated by scientific research. This must

-    become more and more the case as philosophic writers become more

-    deeply imbued with the methods of science, better acquainted with

-    the facts which scientific men have won, and with the great theories

-    which they have elaborated.

-

-    If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour and

-    minute-hands, and possibly also a second-hand, moving over the

-    graduated dial. Why do these hands move, and why are their relative

-    motions such as they are observed to be? These questions cannot be

-    answered without opening the watch, mastering its various parts, and

-    ascertaining their relationship to each other. When this is done, we

-    find that the observed motion of the hands follows of necessity from

-    the inner mechanism of the watch when acted upon by the force

-    invested in the spring.

-

-    This motion of the hands may be called a phenomenon of art, but the

-    case is similar with the phenomena of Nature. These also have their

-    inner mechanism, and their store of force to set that mechanism

-    going. The ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this

-    mechanism, to discern this store, and to show that from the combined

-    action of both, the phenomena of which they constitute the basis

-    must of necessity flow.

-

-    I thought that an attempt to give you even a brief and sketchy

-    illustration of the manner in which scientific thinkers regard this

-    problem would not be uninteresting to you on the present occasion;

-    more especially as it will give me occasion to say a word or two on

-    the tendencies and limits of modern science, to point out the region

-    which men of science claim as their own, and where it is mere waste

-    of time to oppose their advance, and also to define, if possible,

-    the bourne between this and that other region to which the

-    questionings and yearnings of the scientific intellect are directed

-    in vain.

-

-    But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the American Emerson,

-    I think, who said that it is hardly possible to state any truth

-    strongly without apparent injury to some other truth. Under the

-    circumstances, the proper course appears to be to state both truths

-    strongly, and allow each its fair share, in the formation of the

-    resultant conviction. For truth is often of a dual character, taking

-    the form of a magnet with two poles; and many of the differences

-    which agitate the thinking part of mankind are to be traced to the

-    exclusiveness with which different parties affirm one half of the

-    duality in forgetfulness of the other half. But this waiting for the

-    statement of the two sides of a question implies patience. It

-    implies a resolution to suppress indignation if the statement of the

-    one half should clash with our convictions, and not to suffer

-    ourselves to be unduly elated if the half-statement should chime in

-    with our views. It implies a determination to wait calmly for the

-    statement of the whole before we pronounce judgment either in the

-    form of acquiescence or dissent.

-

-    This premised, let us enter upon our task. There have been writers

-    who affirmed that the pyramids of Egypt were the productions of

-    nature; and in his early youth Alexander Von Humboldt wrote an essay

-    with the express object of refuting this notion. We now regard the

-    pyramids as the work of men’s hands, aided probably by machinery of

-    which no record remains. We picture to ourselves the swarming

-    workers toiling at those vast erections, lifting the inert stones,

-    and, guided by the volition, the skill, and possibly at times by the

-    whip of the architect, placing the stones in their proper positions.

-    The blocks in this case were moved by a power external to

-    themselves, and the final form of the pyramid expressed the thought

-    of its human builder.

-

-    Let us pass from this illustration of building power to another of a

-    different kind. When a solution of common salt is slowly evaporated,

-    the water which holds the salt in solution disappears, but the salt

-    itself remains behind. At a certain stage of concentration, the salt

-    can no longer retain the liquid form; its particles, or molecules,

-    as they are called, begin to deposit themselves as minute solids, so

-    minute, indeed, as to defy all microscopic power. As evaporation

-    continues solidification goes on, and we finally obtain, through the

-    clustering together of innumerable molecules, a finite mass of salt

-    of a definite form. What is this form? It sometimes seems a mimicry

-    of the architecture of Egypt. We have little pyramids built by the

-    salt, terrace above terrace from base to apex, forming thus a series

-    of steps resembling those up which the Egyptian traveler is dragged

-    by his guides. The human mind is as little disposed to look at these

-    pyramidal salt-crystals without further question as to look at the

-    pyramids of Egypt without inquiring whence they came. How, then, are

-    those salt pyramids built up?

-

-    Guided by analogy, you may suppose that, swarming among the

-    constituent molecules of the salt, there is an invisible population,

-    guided and coerced by some invisible master, and placing the atomic

-    blocks in their positions. This, however, is not the scientific

-    idea, nor do I think your good sense will accept it as a likely one.

-    The scientific idea is that the molecules act upon each other

-    without the intervention of slave labor; that they attract each

-    other and repel each other at certain definite points, and in

-    certain definite directions; and that the pyramidal form is the

-    result of this play of attraction and repulsion. While, then, the

-    blocks of Egypt were laid down by a power external to themselves,

-    these molecular blocks of salt are self-posited, being fixed in

-    their places by the forces with which they act upon each other.

-

-    I take common salt as an illustration, because it is so familiar to

-    us all; but almost any other substance would answer my purpose

-    equally well. In fact, throughout inorganic nature, we have this

-    formative power, as Fichte would call it—this structural energy

-    ready to come into play, and build the ultimate particles of matter

-    into definite shapes. It is present everywhere. The ice of our

-    winters and of our polar regions is its hand-work, and so equally

-    are the quartz, feldspar, and mica of our rocks. Our chalk-beds are

-    for the most part composed of minute shells, which are also the

-    product of structural energy; but behind the shell, as a whole, lies

-    the result of another and more subtle formative act. These shells

-    are built up of little crystals of calc-spar, and to form these the

-    structural force had to deal with the intangible molecules of

-    carbonate of lime. This tendency on the part of matter to organize

-    itself, to grow into shape, to assume definite forms in obedience to

-    the definite action of force, is, as I have said, all-pervading. It

-    is in the ground on which you tread, in the water you drink, in the

-    air you breathe. Incipient life, in fact, manifests itself

-    throughout the whole of what we call inorganic nature.

-

-    The forms of minerals resulting from this play of forces are

-    various, and exhibit different degrees of complexity. Men of science

-    avail themselves of all possible means of exploring this molecular

-    architecture. For this purpose they employ in turn as agents of

-    exploration, light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and sound.

-    Polarized light is especially useful and powerful here. A beam of

-    such light, when sent in among the molecules of a crystal, is acted

-    on by them, and from this action we infer with more or less of

-    clearness the manner in which the molecules are arranged. The

-    difference, for example, between the inner structure of a plate of

-    rock-salt and a plate of crystalized sugar or sugar-candy is thus

-    strikingly revealed. These differences may be made to display

-    themselves in phenomena of color of great splendor, the play of

-    molecular force being so regulated as to remove certain of the

-    colored constituents of white light, and to leave others with

-    increased intensity behind.

-

-    And now let us pass from what we are accustomed to regard as a dead

-    mineral to a living grain of corn. When it is examined by polarized

-    light, chromatic phenomena similar to those noticed in crystals are

-    observed. And why? Because the architecture of the grain resembles

-    in some degree the architecture of the crystal. In the corn the

-    molecules are also set in definite positions, from which they act

-    upon the light. But what has built together the molecules of the

-    corn? I have already said, regarding crystalline architecture, that

-    you may, if you please, consider the atoms and molecules to be

-    placed in position by a power external to themselves. The same

-    hypothesis is open to you now. But, if in the case of crystals you

-    have rejected this notion of an external architect, I think you are

-    bound to reject it now, and to conclude that the molecules of the

-    corn are self-posited by the forces with which they act upon each

-    other. It would be poor philosophy to invoke an external agent in

-    the one case and to reject it in the other.

-

-    Instead of cutting our grain into thin slices and subjecting it to

-    the action of polarized light, let us place it in the earth and

-    subject it to a certain degree of warmth. In other words, let the

-    molecules, both of the corn and of the surrounding earth, be kept in

-    a state of agitation; for warmth, as most of you know, is, in the

-    eye of science, tremulous molecular motion. Under these

-    circumstances, the grain and the substances which surround it

-    interact, and a molecular architecture is the result of this

-    interaction. A bud is formed; this bud reaches the surface, where it

-    is exposed to the sun’s rays, which are also to be regarded as a

-    kind of vibratory motion. And as the common motion of heat with

-    which the grain and the substances surrounding it were first

-    endowed, enable the grain and these substances to coalesce, so the

-    specific motion of the sun’s rays now enables the green bud to feed

-    upon the carbonic acid and the aqueous vapor of the air,

-    appropriating those constituents of both for which the blade has an

-    elective attraction, and permitting the other constituent to resume

-    its place in the air. Thus forces are active at the root, forces are

-    active in the blade, the matter of the earth and the matter of the

-    atmosphere are drawn towards the plant, and the plant augments in

-    size. We have in succession, the bud, the stalk, the ear, the full

-    corn in the ear. For the forces here at play act in a cycle, which

-    is completed by the production of grains similar to that with which

-    the process began.

-

-    Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily eludes the

-    power of mind as we know it. An intellect the same kind as our own,

-    would, if only sufficiently expanded, be able to follow the whole

-    process from beginning to end. No entirely new intellectual faculty

-    would be needed for this purpose. The duly expanded mind would see

-    in the process and its consummation an instance of the play of

-    molecular force. It would see every molecule placed in its position

-    by the specific attractions and repulsions exerted between it and

-    other molecules. Nay, given the grain and its environment, an

-    intellect the same in kind as our own, but sufficiently expanded,

-    might trace out _à priori_ every step of the process, and by the

-    application of mechanical principles would be able to demonstrate

-    that the cycle of actions must end, as it is seen to end, in the

-    reproduction of forms like that with which the operation began. A

-    similar necessity rules here to that which rules the planets in

-    their circuits round the sun.

-

-    You will notice that I am stating my truth strongly, as at the

-    beginning we agreed it should be stated. But I must go still

-    further, and affirm that in the eye of science the animal body is

-    just as much the product of molecular force as the stalk and ear of

-    corn, or as the crystal of salt or sugar. Many of its parts are

-    obviously mechanical. Take the human heart, for example, with its

-    exquisite system of valves, or take the eye or the hand. Animal

-    heat, moreover, is the same in kind as the heat of a fire, being

-    produced by the same chemical process. Animal motion, too, is as

-    directly derived from the food of the animal, as the motion of

-    Trevethyck’s walking-engine from the fuel in its furnace. As regards

-    matter, the animal body creates nothing; as regards force, it

-    creates nothing. Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to

-    his stature? All that has been said regarding the plant may be

-    re-stated with regard to the animal. Every particle that enters into

-    the composition of the muscle, a nerve, or a bone, has been placed

-    in its position by molecular force. And unless the existence of law

-    in these matters be denied, and the element of caprice be

-    introduced, we must conclude that, given the relation of any

-    molecule of the body to its environment, its position in the body

-    might be predicted. Our difficulty is not with the quality of the

-    problem, but with its complexity; and this difficulty might be met

-    by the simple expansion of the faculties which man now possesses.

-    Given this expansion, and given the necessary molecular data, and

-    the chick might be deduced as rigorously and as logically from the

-    egg as the existence of Neptune was deduced from the disturbances of

-    Uranus, or as conical refraction was deduced from the undulatory

-    theory of light.

-

-    You see I am not mincing matters, but avowing nakedly what many

-    scientific thinkers more or less distinctly believe. The formation

-    of a crystal, a plant, or an animal, is in their eyes a purely

-    mechanical problem, which differs from the problems of ordinary

-    mechanics in the smallness of the masses and the complexity of the

-    processes involved. Here you have one half of our dual truth; let us

-    now glance at the other half. Associated with this wonderful

-    mechanism of the animal body we have phenomena no less certain than

-    those of physics, but between which and the mechanism we discern no

-    necessary connection. A man, for example, can say I feel, I think, I

-    love; but how does consciousness infuse itself into the problem? The

-    human brain is said to be the organ of thought and feeling; when we

-    are hurt the brain feels it, when we ponder it is the brain that

-    thinks, when our passions or affections are excited it is through

-    the instrumentality of the brain. Let us endeavor to be a little

-    more precise here. I hardly imagine that any profound scientific

-    thinker who has reflected upon the subject exists, who would not

-    admit the extreme probability of the hypothesis, that for every fact

-    of consciousness, whether in the domain of sense, of thought, or of

-    emotion, a certain definite molecular condition is set up in the

-    brain; that this relation of physics to consciousness is invariable,

-    so that, given the state of the brain, the corresponding thought or

-    feeling might be inferred; or, given the thought or feeling, the

-    corresponding state of the brain might be inferred. But how

-    inferred? It is at bottom not a case of logical inference at all,

-    but of empirical association. You may reply that many of the

-    inferences of science are of this character; the inference, for

-    example, that an electric current of a given direction will deflect

-    a magnetic needle in a definite way; but the cases differ in this,

-    that the passage from the current to the needle, if not

-    demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the

-    final mechanical solution of the problem; but the passage from the

-    physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is

-    unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite

-    molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not

-    possess the intellectual organ, nor, apparently, any rudiment of the

-    organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from

-    the one phenomenon to the other. They appear together, but we do not

-    know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and

-    illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of

-    the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their

-    groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were

-    we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought

-    and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the

-    problem. “How are these physical processes connected with the facts

-    of consciousness?” The chasm between the two classes of phenomena

-    would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the consciousness

-    of love, for example, be associated with a right-handed spiral

-    motion of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of hate

-    with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know when we love

-    that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate that the

-    motion is in the other; but the “WHY?” would still remain

-    unanswered.

-

-    In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, and that

-    thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of

-    the brain, I think the position of the “Materialist” is stated as

-    far as that position is a tenable one. I think the materialist will

-    be able finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but I

-    do not think, as the human mind is at present constituted, that he

-    can pass beyond it. I do not think he is entitled to say that his

-    molecular groupings and his molecular motions explain everything. In

-    reality they explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the

-    association of two classes of phenomena of whose real bond of union

-    he is in absolute ignorance. The problem of the connection of the

-    body and soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the

-    pre-scientific ages. Phosphorus is known to enter into the

-    composition of the human brain, and a courageous writer has

-    exclaimed, in his trenchant German, “Ohne phosphor kein gedanke.”

-    That may or may not be the case; but even if we knew it to be the

-    case, the knowledge would not lighten our darkness. On both sides of

-    the zone here assigned to the materialist he is equally helpless. If

-    you ask him whence is this “matter” of which we have been

-    discoursing, who or what divided it into molecules, who or what

-    impressed upon them this necessity of running into organic forms, he

-    has no answer. Science also is mute in reply to these questions. But

-    if the materialist is confounded, and science rendered dumb, who

-    else is entitled to answer? To whom has the secret been revealed?

-    Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance, one and all.

-    Perhaps the mystery may resolve itself into knowledge at some future

-    day. The process of things upon this earth has been one of

-    amelioration. It is a long way from the Iguanodon and his

-    contemporaries to the president and members of the British

-    Association. And whether we regard the improvement from the

-    scientific or from the theological point of view as the result of

-    progressive development, or as the result of successive exhibitions

-    of creative energy, neither view entitles us to assume that man’s

-    present faculties end the series—that the process of amelioration

-    stops at him. A time may therefore come when this ultra-scientific

-    region by which we are now enfolded may offer itself to terrestrial,

-    if not to human investigation. Two-thirds of the rays emitted by the

-    sun fail to arouse in the eye the sense of vision. The rays exist,

-    but the visual organ requisite for their translation into light does

-    not exist. And so from this region of darkness and mystery which

-    surrounds us, rays may now be darting which require but the

-    development of the proper intellectual organs to translate them into

-    knowledge as far surpassing ours as ours does that of the wallowing

-    reptiles which once held possession of this planet. Meanwhile the

-    mystery is not without its uses. It certainly may be made a power in

-    the human soul; but it is a power which has feeling, not knowledge,

-    for its base. It may be, and will be, and we hope is turned to

-    account, both in steadying and strengthening the intellect, and in

-    rescuing man from that littleness to which, in the struggle for

-    existence or for precedence in the world, he is continually prone.

-

-                                  II.

-

-                           On Haze and Dust.

-

-    Solar light in passing through a dark room reveals its track by

-    illuminating the dust floating in the air. “The sun,” says Daniel

-    Culverwell, “discovers atomes, though they be invisible by

-    candle-light, and makes them dance naked in his beams.”

-

-    In my researches on the decomposition of vapors by light, I was

-    compelled to remove these “atomes” and this dust. It was essential

-    that the space containing the vapors should embrace no visible

-    thing; that no substance capable of scattering the light in the

-    slightest sensible degree should, at the outset of an experiment, be

-    found in the “experimental tube” traversed by the luminous beam.

-

-    For a long time I was troubled by the appearance there of floating

-    dust, which, though invisible in diffuse daylight, was at once

-    revealed by a powerfully condensed beam. Two tubes were placed in

-    succession in the path of the dust: the one containing fragments of

-    glass wetted with concentrated sulphuric acid; the other, fragments

-    of marble wetted with a strong solution of caustic potash. To my

-    astonishment it passed through both. The air of the Royal

-    Institution, sent through these tubes at a rate sufficiently slow to

-    dry it and to remove its carbonic acid, carried into the

-    experimental tube a considerable amount of mechanically-suspended

-    matter, which was illuminated when the beam passed through the tube.

-    The effect was substantially the same when the air was permitted to

-    bubble through the liquid acid and through the solution of potash.

-

-    Thus, on the 5th of October, 1868, successive charges of air were

-    admitted through the potash and sulphuric acid into the exhausted

-    experimental tube. Prior to the admission of the air the tube was

-    _optically empty_; it contained nothing competent to scatter the

-    light. After the air had entered the tube, the conical track of the

-    electric beam was in all cases clearly revealed. This, indeed, was a

-    daily observation at the time to which I now refer.

-

-    I tried to intercept this floating matter in various ways; and on

-    the day just mentioned, prior to sending the air through the drying

-    apparatus, I carefully permitted it to pass over the tip of a

-    spirit-lamp flame. The floating matter no longer appeared, having

-    been burnt up by the flame. It was, therefore, _organic matter_.

-    When the air was sent too rapidly through the flame, a fine blue

-    cloud was found in the experimental tube. This was the _smoke_ of

-    the organic particles. I was by no means prepared for this result;

-    for I had thought, with the rest of the world, that the dust of our

-    air was, in great part, inorganic and non-combustible.

-

-    Mr. Valentin had the kindness to procure for me a small gas-furnace,

-    containing a platinum tube, which could be heated to vivid redness.

-    The tube also contained a roll of platinum gauze, which, while it

-    permitted the air to pass through it, insured the practical contact

-    of the dust with the incandescent metal. The air of the laboratory

-    was permitted to enter the experimental tube, sometimes through the

-    cold, and sometimes through the heated tube of platinum. The

-    rapidity of admission was also varied. In the first column of the

-    following table the quantity of air operated on is expressed by the

-    number of inches which the mercury gauge of the air-pump sank when

-    the air entered. In the second column the condition of the platinum

-    tube is mentioned, and in the third the state of the air which

-    entered the experimental tube.

-

-                        State of        State of

-             Quantity   Platinum        Experimental

-             of Air.    Tube.           Tube.

-

-             15 inches  Cold            Full of particles.

-

-             15 inches  Red-hot         Optically empty.

-

-             15 inches  Cold            Full of particles.

-

-             15 inches  Red-hot         Optically empty.

-

-             15 inches  Cold            Full of particles.

-

-             15 inches  Red-hot         Optically empty.

-

-

-    The phrase “optically empty” shows that when the conditions of

-    perfect combustion were present, the floating matter totally

-    disappeared. It was wholly burnt up, leaving not a trace of residue.

-    From spectrum analysis, however, we know that soda floats in the

-    air; these organic dust particles are, I believe, the _rafts_ that

-    support it, and when they are removed it sinks and vanishes.

-

-    When the passage of the air was so rapid as to render imperfect the

-    combustion of the floating matter, instead of optical emptiness a

-    fine blue cloud made its appearance in the experimental tube. The

-    following series of results illustrate this point:

-

-

-        Quantity.         Platinum Tube.    Experimental Tube.

-        15 inches, slow   Cold              Full of particles.

-        15 inches, slow   Red-hot           Optically empty.

-        15 inches, quick  Red-hot           A blue cloud.

-        15 inches, quick  Intensely hot     A fine blue cloud.

-

-

-    The optical character of these clouds was totally different from

-    that of the dust which produced them. At right angles to the

-    illuminating beam they discharged perfectly polarized light The

-    cloud could be utterly quenched by a transparent Nicol’s prism, and

-    the tube containing it reduced to optical emptiness.

-

-    The particles floating in the air of London being thus proved to be

-    organic, I sought to burn them up at the focus of a concave

-    reflector. One of the powerfully convergent mirrors employed in my

-    experiments on combustion by dark rays was here made use of, but I

-    failed in the attempt. Doubtless the floating particles are in part

-    transparent to radiant heat, and are so far incombustible by such

-    heat. Their rapid motion through the focus also aids their escape.

-    They do not linger there sufficiently long to be consumed. A flame

-    it was evident would burn them up, but I thought the presence of the

-    flame would mask its own action among the particles.

-

-    In a cylindrical beam, which powerfully illuminated the dust of the

-    laboratory, was placed an ignited spirit-lamp. Mingling with the

-    flame, and round its rim, were seen wreaths of darkness resembling

-    an intensely black smoke. On lowering the flame below the beam the

-    same dark masses stormed upwards. They were at times blacker than

-    the blackest smoke that I have ever seen issuing from the funnel of

-    a steamer, and their resemblance to smoke was so perfect as to lead

-    the most practiced observer to conclude that the apparently pure

-    flame of the alcohol lamp required but a beam of sufficient

-    intensity to reveal its clouds of liberated carbon.

-

-    But is the blackness smoke? The question presented itself in a

-    moment. A red-hot poker was placed underneath the beam, and from it

-    the black wreaths also ascended. A large hydrogen flame was next

-    employed, and it produced those whirling masses of darkness far more

-    copiously than either the spirit-flame or poker. Smoke was,

-    therefore, out of the question.

-

-    What, then, was the blackness? It was simply that of stellar space;

-    that is to say, blackness resulting from the absence from the track

-    of the beam of all matter competent to scatter its light. When the

-    flame was placed below the beam the floating matter was destroyed

-    _in situ_; and the air, freed from this matter, rose into the beam,

-    jostled aside the illuminated particles and substituted for their

-    light the darkness due to its own perfect transparency. Nothing

-    could more forcibly illustrate the invisibility of the agent which

-    renders all things visible. The beam crossed, unseen, the black

-    chasm formed by the transparent air, while at both sides of the gap

-    the thick-strewn particles shone out like a luminous solid under the

-    powerful illumination.

-

-    But here a difficulty meets us. It is not necessary to burn the

-    particles to produce a stream of darkness. Without actual

-    combustion, currents may be generated which shall exclude the

-    floating matter, and therefore appear dark amid the surrounding

-    brightness. I noticed this effect first on placing a red-hot copper

-    ball below the beam, and permitting it to remain there until its

-    temperature had fallen below that of boiling water. The dark

-    currents, though much enfeebled, were still produced. They may also

-    be produced by a flask filled with hot water.

-

-    To study this effect a platinum wire was stretched across the beam,

-    the two ends of the wire being connected with the two poles of a

-    voltaic battery. To regulate the strength of the current a rheostat

-    was placed in the circuit. Beginning with a feeble current the

-    temperature of the wire was gradually augmented, but before it

-    reached the heat of ignition, a flat stream of air rose from it,

-    which when looked at edgeways appeared darker and sharper than one

-    of the blackest lines of Fraunhofer in the solar spectrum. Right and

-    left of this dark vertical band the floating matter rose upwards,

-    bounding definitely the non-luminous stream of air. What is the

-    explanation? Simply this. The hot wire rarefied the air in contact

-    with it, but it did not equally lighten the floating matter. The

-    convection current of pure air therefore passed upwards _among the

-    particles_, dragging them after it right and left, but forming

-    between them an impassable black partition. In this way we render an

-    account of the dark currents produced by bodies at a temperature

-    below that of combustion.

-

-    Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, so prepared as to exclude

-    all floating particles, produce the darkness when poured or blown

-    into the beam. Coal-gas does the same. An ordinary glass shade

-    placed in the air with its mouth downwards permits the track of the

-    beam to be seen crossing it. Let coal-gas or hydrogen enter the

-    shade by a tube reaching to its top, the gas gradually fills the

-    shade from the top downwards. As soon as it occupies the space

-    crossed by the beam, the luminous track is instantly abolished.

-    Lifting the shade so as to bring the common boundary of gas and air

-    above the beam, the track flashes forth. After the shade is full, if

-    it be inverted, the gas passes upwards like a black smoke among the

-    illuminated particles.

-

-    The air of our London rooms is loaded with this organic dust, nor is

-    the country air free from its pollution. However ordinary daylight

-    may permit it to disguise itself, a sufficiently powerful beam

-    causes the air in which the dust is suspended to appear as a

-    semi-solid rather than as a gas. Nobody could, in the first

-    instance, without repugnance place the mouth at the illuminated

-    focus of the electric beam and inhale the dirt revealed there. Nor

-    is the disgust abolished by the reflection that, although we do not

-    see the nastiness, we are churning it in our lungs every hour and

-    minute of our lives. There is no respite to this contact with dirt;

-    and the wonder is, not that we should from time to time suffer from

-    its presence, but that so small a portion of it would appear to be

-    deadly to man.

-

-    And what is this portion? It was some time ago the current belief

-    that epidemic diseases generally were propagated by a kind of

-    malaria, which consisted of organic matter in a state of

-    _motor-decay_; that when such matter was taken into the body through

-    the lungs or skin, it had the power of spreading there the

-    destroying process which had attacked itself. Such a spreading power

-    was visibly exerted in the case of yeast. A little leaven was seen

-    to leaven the whole lump, a mere speck of matter in this supposed

-    state of decomposition being apparently competent to propagate

-    indefinitely its own decay. Why should not a bit of rotten malaria

-    work in a similar manner within the human frame? In 1836 a very

-    wonderful reply was given to this question. In that year Cagniard de

-    la Tour discovered the _yeast plant_, a living organism, which, when

-    placed in a proper medium, feeds, grows, and reproduces itself, and

-    in this way carries on the process which we name fermentation.

-    Fermentation was thus proved to be a product of life instead of a

-    process of decay.

-

-    Schwann, of Berlin, discovered the yeast plant independently, and in

-    February, 1837, he also announced the important result, that when a

-    decoction of meat is effectually screened from ordinary air, and

-    supplied solely with air which has been raised to a high

-    temperature, putrefaction never sets in. Putrefaction, therefore, he

-    affirmed to be caused by something derived from the air, which

-    something could be destroyed by a sufficiently high temperature. The

-    experiments of Schwann were repeated and confirmed by Helmholtz and

-    Ure. But as regards fermentation, the minds of chemists, influenced

-    probably by the great authority of Gay-Lussac, who ascribed

-    putrefaction to the action of oxygen, fell back upon the old notion

-    of matter in a state of decay. It was not the living yeast plant,

-    but the dead or dying parts of it, which, assailed by oxygen,

-    produced the fermentation. This notion was finally exploded by

-    Pasteur. He proved that the so-called “ferments” are not such; that

-    the true ferments are organized beings which find in the reputed

-    ferments their necessary food.

-

-    Side by side with these researches and discoveries, and fortified by

-    them and others, has run the _germ theory_ of epidemic disease. The

-    notion was expressed by Kircher, and favored by Linnæus, that

-    epidemic diseases are due to germs which float in the atmosphere,

-    enter the body, and produce disturbance by the development within

-    the body of parasitic life. While it was still struggling against

-    great odds, this theory found an expounder and a defender in the

-    President of this Institution. At a time when most of his medical

-    brethren considered it a wild dream, Sir Henry Holland contended

-    that some form of the germ theory was probably true. The strength of

-    this theory consists in the perfect parallelism of the phenomena of

-    contagious disease with those of life. As a planted acorn gives

-    birth to an oak competent to produce a whole crop of acorns, each

-    gifted with the power of reproducing its parent tree, and as thus

-    from a single seedling a whole forest may spring, so these epidemic

-    diseases literally plant their seeds, grow, and shake abroad new

-    germs, which, meeting in the human body their proper food and

-    temperature, finally take possession of whole populations. Thus

-    Asiatic cholera, beginning in a small way in the Delta of the

-    Ganges, contrived in seventeen years to spread itself over nearly

-    the whole habitable world. The development from an infinitesimal

-    speck of the virus of small-pox of a crop of pustules, each charged

-    with the original poison, is another illustration. The reappearance

-    of the scourge, as in the case of the _Dreadnought_ at Greenwich,

-    reported on so ably by Dr. Budd and Mr. Busk, receives a

-    satisfactory explanation from the theory which ascribes it to the

-    lingering of germs about the infected place.

-

-    Surgeons have long known the danger of permitting air to enter an

-    open abscess. To prevent its entrance they employ a tube called a

-    cannula, to which is attached a sharp steel point called a trocar.

-    They puncture with the steel point, and by gentle pressure they

-    force the pus through the cannula. It is necessary to be very

-    careful in cleansing the instrument; and it is difficult to see how

-    it can be cleansed by ordinary methods in air loaded with organic

-    impurities, as we have proved our air to be. The instrument ought,

-    in fact, to be made as hot as its temper will bear. But this is not

-    done, and hence, notwithstanding all the surgeon’s care,

-    inflammation often sets in after the first operation, rendering

-    necessary a second and a third. Rapid putrefaction is found to

-    accompany this new inflammation. The pus, moreover, which was sweet

-    at first, and showed no trace of animal life, is now fetid, and

-    swarming with active little organisms called vibrios. Prof. Lister,

-    from whose recent lecture this fact is derived, contends, with every

-    show of reason, that this rapid putrefaction and this astounding

-    development of animal life are due to the entry of germs into the

-    abscess during the first operation, and their subsequent nurture and

-    development under favorable conditions of food and temperature. The

-    celebrated physiologist and physicist, Helmholtz, is attacked

-    annually by hay-fever. From the 20th of May to the end of June he

-    suffers from a catarrh of the upper air-passages; and he has found

-    during this period, and at no other, that his nasal secretions are

-    peopled by these vibrios. They appear to nestle by preference in the

-    cavities and recesses of the nose, for a strong sneeze is necessary

-    to dislodge them.

-

-    These statements sound uncomfortable; but by disclosing our enemy

-    they enable us to fight him. When he clearly eyes his quarry the

-    eagle’s strength is doubled, and his swoop is rendered sure. If the

-    germ theory be proved true, it will give a definiteness to our

-    efforts to stamp out disease which they could not previously

-    possess. And it is only by definite effort under its guidance that

-    its truth or falsehood can be established. It is difficult for an

-    outsider like myself to read without sympathetic emotion such papers

-    as those of Dr. Budd, of Bristol, on cholera, scarlet-fever, and

-    small-pox. He is a man of strong imagination, and may occasionally

-    take a flight beyond his facts; but without this dynamic heat of

-    heart, the stolid inertia of the free-born Briton cannot be

-    overcome. And as long as the heat is employed to warm up the truth

-    without singeing it overmuch; as long as this enthusiasm can

-    overmatch its mistakes by unequivocal examples of success, so long

-    am I disposed to give it a fair field to work in, and to wish it God

-    speed.

-

-    But let us return to our dust. It is needless to remark that it

-    cannot be blown away by an ordinary bellows; or, more correctly, the

-    place of the particles blown away is in this case supplied by others

-    ejected from the bellows, so that the track of the beam remains

-    unimpaired. But if the nozzle of a good bellows be filled with

-    cotton wool not too tightly packed, the air urged through the wool

-    is filtered of its floating matter, and it then forms a clean band

-    of darkness in the illuminated dust. This was the filter used by

-    Schroëder in his experiments on spontaneous generation, and turned

-    subsequently to account in the excellent researches of Pasteur.

-    Since 1868 I have constantly employed it myself.

-

-    But by far the most interesting and important illustration of this

-    filtering process is furnished by the human breath. I fill my lungs

-    with ordinary air and breathe through a glass tube across the

-    electric beam. The condensation of the aqueous vapor of the breath

-    is shown by the formation of a luminous white cloud of delicate

-    texture. It is necessary to abolish this cloud, and this may be done

-    by drying the breath previous to its entering into the beam; or

-    still more simply, by warming the glass tube. When this is done the

-    luminous track of the beam is for a time uninterrupted. The breath

-    impresses upon the floating matter a transverse motion, but the dust

-    from the lungs makes good the particles displaced. But after some

-    time an obscure disc appears upon the beam, the darkness of which

-    increases, until finally, towards the end of the expiration, the

-    beam is, as it were, pierced by an intensely black hole, in which no

-    particles whatever can be discerned. The air, in fact, has so lodged

-    its dirt within the lungs as to render the last portions of the

-    expired breath absolutely free from suspended matter. This

-    experiment may be repeated any number of times with the same result.

-    It renders the distribution of the dirt within the lungs as manifest

-    as if the chest were transparent.

-

-    I now empty my lungs as perfectly as possible, and placing a handful

-    of cotton wool against my mouth and nostrils, inhale through it.

-    There is no difficulty in thus filling the lungs with air. On

-    expiring this air through the glass tube, its freedom from floating

-    matter is at once manifest. From the very beginning of the act of

-    expiration the beam is pierced by a black aperture. The first puff

-    from the lungs abolishes the illuminated dust and puts a patch of

-    darkness in its place, and the darkness continues throughout the

-    entire course of the expiration. When the tube is placed below the

-    beam and moved to and fro, the same smoke-like appearance as that

-    obtained with a flame is observed. In short, the cotton wool, when

-    used in sufficient quantity, completely intercepts the floating

-    matter on its way to the lungs.

-

-    And here we have revealed to us the true philosophy of a practice

-    followed by medical men, more from instinct than from actual

-    knowledge. In a contagious atmosphere the physician places a

-    handkerchief to his mouth and inhales through it. In doing so he

-    unconsciously holds back the dirt and germs of the air. If the

-    poison were a gas it would not be thus intercepted. On showing this

-    experiment with the cotton wool to Dr. Bence Jones, he immediately

-    repeated it with a silk handkerchief. The result was substantially

-    the same, though, as might be expected, the wool is by far the

-    surest filter. The application of these experiments is obvious. If a

-    physician wishes to hold back from the lungs of his patient, or from

-    his own, the germs by which contagious disease is said to be

-    propagated, he will employ a cotton wool respirator. After the

-    revelations of this evening, such respirators must, I think, come

-    into general use as a defence against contagion. In the crowded

-    dwellings of the London poor, where the isolation of the sick is

-    difficult, if not impossible, the noxious air around the patient

-    may, by this simple means, be restored to practical purity. Thus

-    filtered, attendants may breathe the air unharmed. In all

-    probability the protection of the lungs will be protection of the

-    entire system. For it is exceedingly probable that the germs which

-    lodge in the air-passages, and which, at their leisure, can work

-    their way across the mucous membrane, are those which sow in the

-    body epidemic disease. If this be so, then disease can certainly be

-    warded off by filters of cotton wool. I should be most willing to

-    test their efficacy in my own person. And time will decide whether

-    in lung diseases also the woolen respirator cannot abate irritation,

-    if not arrest decay. By its means, so far as the germs are

-    concerned, the air of the highest Alps may be brought into the

-    chamber of the invalid.

-

-                                  III.

-

-                   Scientific Use of the Imagination.

-

-    I carried with me to the Alps this year the heavy burden of this

-    evening’s work. In the way of new investigation I had nothing

-    complete enough to be brought before you; so all that remained to me

-    was to fall back upon such residues as I could find in the depths of

-    consciousness, and out of them to spin the fiber and weave the web

-    of this discourse. Save from memory I had no direct aid upon the

-    mountains; but to spur up the emotions, on which so much depends, as

-    well as to nourish indirectly the intellect and will, I took with me

-    two volumes of poetry, Goethe’s “Farbenlehre,” and the work on

-    “Logic” recently published by Mr. Alexander Bain. The spur, I am

-    sorry to say, was no match for the integument of dullness it had to

-    pierce.

-

-    In Goethe, so glorious otherwise, I chiefly noticed the

-    self-inflicted hurts of genius, as it broke itself in vain against

-    the philosophy of Newton. For a time Mr. Bain became my principal

-    companion. I found him learned and practical, shining generally with

-    a dry light, but exhibiting at times a flush of emotional strength,

-    which proved that even logicians share the common fire of humanity.

-    He interested me most when he became the mirror of my own condition.

-    Neither intellectually nor socially is it good for man to be alone,

-    and the griefs of thought are more patiently borne when we find that

-    they have been experienced by another. From certain passages in his

-    book I could infer that Mr. Bain was no stranger to such sorrows.

-    Take this passage as an illustration. Speaking of the ebb of

-    intellectual force which we all from time to time experience, Mr.

-    Bain says: “The uncertainty where to look for the next opening of

-    discovery brings the pain of conflict and the debility of

-    indecision.” These words have in them the true ring of personal

-    experience.

-

-    The action of the investigator is periodic. He grapples with a

-    subject of inquiry, wrestles with it, overcomes it, exhausts, it may

-    be, both himself and it for the time being. He breathes a space, and

-    then renews the struggle in another field. Now this period of

-    halting between two investigations is not always one of pure repose.

-    It is often a period of doubt and discomfort, of gloom and ennui.

-    “The uncertainty where to look for the next opening of discovery

-    brings the pain of conflict and the debility of indecision.” Such

-    was my precise condition in the Alps this year; in a score of words

-    Mr. Bain has here sketched my mental diagnosis; and it was under

-    these evil circumstances that I had to equip myself for the hour and

-    the ordeal that are now come.

-

-    Gladly, however, as I should have seen this duty in other hands, I

-    could by no means shrink from it. Disloyalty would have been worse

-    than failure. In some fashion or other—feebly or strongly, meanly or

-    manfully, on the higher levels of thought, or on the flats of

-    commonplace—the task had to be accomplished. I looked in various

-    directions for help and furtherance; but without me for a time I saw

-    only “antres vast,” and within me “deserts idle.” My case resembled

-    that of a sick doctor who had forgotten his art, and sorely needed

-    the prescription of a friend. Mr. Bain wrote one for me. He said:

-    “Your present knowledge must forge the links of connection between

-    what has been already achieved and what is now required.”

-

-    In these words he admonished me to review the past and recover from

-    it the broken ends of former investigations. I tried to do so.

-    Previous to going to Switzerland I had been thinking much of light

-    and heat, of magnetism and electricity, of organic germs, atoms,

-    molecules, spontaneous generation, comets and skies. With one or

-    another of these I now sought to re-form an alliance, and finally

-    succeeded in establishing a kind of cohesion between thought and

-    light. The wish grew within me to trace, and to enable you to trace,

-    some of the more occult operations of this agent. I wished, if

-    possible, to take you behind the drop-scene of the senses, and to

-    show you the hidden mechanism of optical action. For I take it to be

-    well worth the while of the scientific teacher to take some pains,

-    and even great pains, to make those whom he addresses co-partners of

-    his thoughts. To clear his own mind in the first place from all haze

-    and vagueness, and then to project into language which shall leave

-    no mistake as to his meaning—which shall leave even his errors

-    naked—the definite ideas he has shaped.

-

-    A great deal is, I think, possible to scientific exposition

-    conducted in this way. It is possible, I believe, even before an

-    audience like the present, to uncover to some extent the unseen

-    things of nature, and thus to give, not only to professed students,

-    but to others with the necessary bias, industry and capacity, an

-    intelligent interest in the operations of science. Time and labor

-    are necessary to this result, but science is the gainer from the

-    public sympathy thus created.

-

-    How then are those hidden things to be revealed? How, for example,

-    are we to lay hold of the physical basis of light, since, like that

-    of life itself, it lies entirely without the domain of the senses?

-    Now, philosophers may be right in affirming that we cannot transcend

-    experience. But we can, at all events, carry it a long way from its

-    origin. We can also magnify, diminish, qualify, and combine

-    experiences, so as to render them fit for purposes entirely new. We

-    are gifted with the power of imagination, combining what the Germans

-    called _Anschauungsgabe_ and _Einbildungskraft_, and by this power

-    we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world of the senses.

-

-    There are tories even in science who regard imagination as a faculty

-    to be feared and avoided rather than employed. They had observed its

-    action in weak vessels and were unduly impressed by its disasters.

-    But they might with equal justice point to exploded boilers as an

-    argument against the use of steam. Bounded and conditioned by

-    coöperant reason, imagination becomes the mightiest instrument of

-    the physical discoverer. Newton’s passage from a falling apple to a

-    falling moon was a leap of the imagination. When William Thomson

-    tries to place the ultimate particles of matter between his compass

-    points, and to apply to them a scale of millimeters, it is an

-    exercise of the imagination. And in much that has been recently said

-    about protoplasm and life, we have the outgoings of the imagination

-    guided and controlled by the known analogies of science. In fact,

-    without this power our knowledge of nature would be a mere

-    tabulation of coëxistences and sequences. We should still believe in

-    the succession of day and night, of summer and winter; but the soul

-    of force would be dislodged from our universe; casual relations

-    would disappear, and with them that science which is now binding the

-    parts of nature to an organic whole.

-

-    I should like to illustrate by a few simple instances the use that

-    scientific men have already made of this power of imagination, and

-    to indicate afterwards some of the further uses that they are likely

-    to make of it. Let us begin with the rudimentary experiences.

-    Observe the falling of heavy rain drops into a tranquil pond. Each

-    drop as it strikes the water becomes a center of disturbance, from

-    which a series of ring ripples expands outwards. Gravity and inertia

-    are the agents by which this wave motion is produced, and a rough

-    experiment will suffice to show that the rate of propagation does

-    not amount to a foot a second.

-

-    A series of slight mechanical shocks is experienced by a body

-    plunged in the water as the wavelets reach it in succession. But a

-    finer motion is at the same time set up and propagated. If the head

-    and ears be immersed in the water, as in an experiment of

-    Franklin’s, the shock of the drop is communicated to the auditory

-    nerve—the _tick_ of the drop is heard. Now this sonorous impulse is

-    propagated, not at the rate of a foot a second, but at the rate of

-    4,700 feet a second. In this case it is not the gravity but the

-    _elasticity_ of the water that is the urging force. Every liquid

-    particle pushed against its neighbor delivers up its motion with

-    extreme rapidity, and the pulse is propagated as a thrill. The

-    incompressibility of water, as illustrated by the famous Florentine

-    experiment, is a measure of its elasticity, and to the possession of

-    this property in so high a degree the rapid transmission of a

-    sound-pulse through water is to be ascribed.

-

-    But water, as you know, is not necessary to the conduction of sound;

-    air is its most common vehicle. And you know that when the air

-    possesses the particular density and elasticity corresponding to the

-    temperature of freezing water, the velocity of sound in it is 1,090

-    feet a second. It is almost exactly one-fourth of the velocity in

-    water; the reason being that though the greater weight of the water

-    tends to diminish the velocity, the enormous molecular elasticity of

-    the liquid far more than atones for the disadvantage due to weight.

-    By various contrivances we can compel the vibrations of the air to

-    declare themselves; we know the length and frequency of sonorous

-    waves, and we have also obtained great mastery over the various

-    methods by which the air is thrown into vibration. We know the

-    phenomena and laws of vibrating rods, of organ pipes, strings,

-    membranes, plates, and bells. We can abolish one sound by another.

-    We know the physical meaning of music and noise, of harmony and

-    discord. In short, as regards sound we have a very clear notion of

-    the external physical processes which correspond to our sensations.

-

-    In these phenomena of sound we travel a very little way from

-    downright sensible experience. Still the imagination is to some

-    extent exercised. The bodily eye, for example, cannot see the

-    condensations and rarefactions of the waves of sound. We construct

-    them in thought, and we believe as firmly in their existence as in

-    that of the air itself. But now our experience has to be carried

-    into a new region, where a new use is to be made of it.

-

-    Having mastered the cause and mechanism of sound, we desire to know

-    the cause and mechanism of light. We wish to extend our inquiries

-    from the auditory nerve to the optic nerve. Now there is in the

-    human intellect a power of expansion—I might almost call it a power

-    of creation—which is brought into play by the simple brooding upon

-    facts. The legend of the Spirit brooding over chaos may have

-    originated in a knowledge of this power. In the case now before us

-    it has manifested itself by transplanting into space, for the

-    purposes of light, an adequately modified form of the mechanism of

-    sound. We know intimately whereon the velocity of sound depends.

-    When we lessen the density of a medium and preserve its elasticity

-    constant, we augment the velocity. When we highten the elasticity

-    and keep the density constant, we also augment the velocity. A small

-    density, therefore, and a great elasticity are the two things

-    necessary to rapid propagation.

-

-    Now light is known to move with the astounding velocity of 185,000

-    miles a second. How is such a velocity to be obtained? By boldly

-    diffusing in space a medium of the requisite tenuity and elasticity.

-    Let us make such a medium our starting point, endowing it with one

-    or two other necessary qualities; let us handle it in accordance

-    with strict mechanical laws; give to every step of your deduction

-    the surety of the syllogism; carry it thus forth from the world of

-    imagination to the world of sense, and see whether the final outcrop

-    of the deduction be not the very phenomena of light which ordinary

-    knowledge and skilled experiment reveal. If in all the multiplied

-    varieties of these phenomena, including those of the most remote and

-    entangled description, this fundamental conception always brings us

-    face to face with the truth; if no contradiction to our deductions

-    from it be found in external nature; if, moreover, it has actually

-    forced upon our attention phenomena which no eye had previously

-    seen, and which no mind had previously imagined; if by it we are

-    gifted with a power of prescience which has never failed when

-    brought to an experimental test; such a conception, which never

-    disappoints us, but always lands us on the solid shores of fact,

-    must, we think, be something more than a mere figment of the

-    scientific fancy. In forming it that composite and creative unity in

-    which reason and imagination are together blent, has, we believe,

-    led us into a world not less real than that of the senses, and of

-    which the world of sense itself is the suggestion and justification.

-

-    Far be it from me, however, to wish to fix you immovably in this or

-    in any other theoretic conception. With all our belief of it, it

-    will be well to keep the theory plastic and capable of change. You

-    may, moreover, urge that although the phenomena occur _as if_ the

-    medium existed, the absolute demonstration of its existence is still

-    wanting. Far be it from me to deny to this reasoning such validity

-    as it may fairly claim. Let us endeavor by means of analogy to form

-    a fair estimate of its force.

-

-    You believe that in society you are surrounded by reasonable beings

-    like yourself. You are, perhaps, as firmly convinced of this as of

-    anything. What is your warrant for this conviction? Simply and

-    solely this, your fellow-creatures behave as if they were

-    reasonable; the hypothesis, for it is nothing more, accounts for the

-    facts. To take an eminent example, you believe that our president is

-    a reasonable being. Why? There is no known method of superposition

-    by which any one of us can apply himself intellectually to another

-    so as to demonstrate coincidence as regards the possession of

-    reason. If, therefore, you hold our president to be reasonable, it

-    is because he behaves _as if_ he were reasonable. As in the case of

-    the ether, beyond the “_as if_” you cannot go. Nay, I should not

-    wonder if a close comparison of the data on which both inferences

-    rest caused many respectable persons to conclude that the ether had

-    the best of it.

-

-    This universal medium, this light-ether as it is called, is a

-    vehicle, not an origin of wave motion. It receives and transmits,

-    but it does not create. Whence does it derive the motions it

-    conveys? For the most part from luminous bodies. By this motion of a

-    luminous body I do not mean its sensible motion, such as the flicker

-    of a candle, or the shooting out of red prominences from the limb of

-    the sun. I mean an intestine motion of the atoms or molecules of the

-    luminous body. But here a certain reserve is necessary. Many

-    chemists of the present day refuse to speak of atoms and molecules

-    as real things. Their caution leads them to stop short of the clear,

-    sharp, mechanically intelligible atomic theory enunciated by Dalton,

-    or any form of that theory, and to make the doctrine of multiple

-    proportions their intellectual bourne. I respect the caution, though

-    I think it is here misplaced. The chemists who recoil from these

-    notions of atoms and molecules accept without hesitation the

-    undulatory theory of light. Like you and me they one and all believe

-    in an ether and its light-producing waves. Let us consider what this

-    belief involves.

-

-    Bring your imaginations once more into play and figure a series of

-    sound waves passing through air. Follow them up to their origin, and

-    what do you there find? A definite, tangible, vibrating body. It may

-    be the vocal chords of a human being, it may be an organ pipe, or it

-    may be a stretched string. Follow in the same manner a train of

-    ether waves to their source, remembering at the same time that your

-    ether is matter, dense, elastic, and capable of motions subject to

-    and determined by mechanical laws. What then do you expect to find

-    as the source of a series of ether waves? Ask your imagination if it

-    will accept a vibrating multiple proportion—a numerical ratio in a

-    state of oscillation? I do not think it will. You cannot crown the

-    edifice by this abstraction. The scientific imagination, which is

-    here authoritative, demands as the origin and cause of a series of

-    ether waves a particle of vibrating matter quite as definite, though

-    it may be excessively minute, as that which gives origin to a

-    musical sound. Such a particle we name an atom or a molecule. I

-    think the imagination when focused so as to give definition without

-    penumbral haze is sure to realize this image at last.

-

-    To preserve thought continuous throughout this discourse, to prevent

-    either lack of knowledge or failure of memory from producing any

-    rent in our picture, I here propose to run rapidly over a bit of

-    ground which is probably familiar to most of you, but which I am

-    anxious to make familiar to you all.

-

-    The waves generated in the ether by the swinging atoms of luminous

-    bodies are of different lengths and amplitudes. The amplitude is the

-    width of swing of the individual particles of the wave. In water

-    waves it is the hight of the crest above the trough, while the

-    length of the wave is the distance between two consecutive crests.

-    The aggregate of waves emitted by the sun may be broadly divided

-    into two classes, the one class competent, the other incompetent, to

-    excite vision.

-

-    But the light-producing waves differ markedly among themselves in

-    size, form, and force. The length of the largest of these waves is

-    about twice that of the smallest, but the amplitude of the largest

-    is probably a hundred times that of the smallest. Now the force or

-    energy of the wave, which, expressed with reference to sensation,

-    means the intensity of the light, is proportional to the square of

-    the amplitude. Hence the amplitude being one hundred-fold, the

-    energy of the largest light-giving waves would be ten thousand-fold

-    that of the smallest. This is not improbable. I use these figures,

-    not with a view to numerical accuracy, but to give you definite

-    ideas of the differences that probably exist among the light-giving

-    waves. And if we take the whole range of solar radiation into

-    account—its non-visual as well as its visual waves—I think it

-    probable that the force or energy of the largest wave is a million

-    times that of the smallest.

-

-    Turned into their equivalents of sensation, the different light

-    waves produce different colors. Red, for example, is produced by the

-    largest waves, violet by the smallest, while green is produced by a

-    wave of intermediate length and amplitude. On entering from air into

-    more highly refracting substances, such as glass or water or the

-    sulphide of carbon, all the waves are retarded, but the smallest

-    ones most. This furnishes a means of separating the different

-    classes of waves from each other—in other words, of analyzing the

-    light. Sent through a refracting prism, the waves of the sun are

-    turned aside in different degrees from their direct course, the red

-    least, the violet most. They are virtually pulled asunder, and they

-    paint upon a white screen placed to receive them “the solar

-    spectrum.”

-

-    Strictly speaking, the spectrum embraces an infinity of colors, but

-    the limits of language and of our powers of distinction cause it to

-    be divided into seven segments: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue,

-    indigo, violet. These are the seven primary or prismatic colors.

-    Separately, or mixed in various proportions, the solar waves yield

-    all the colors observed in nature and employed in art. Collectively

-    they give us the impression of whiteness. Pure unsifted solar light

-    is white; and if all the wave constituents of such light be reduced

-    in the same proportion, the light, though diminished in intensity,

-    will still be white. The whiteness of Alpine snow with the sun

-    shining upon it is barely tolerable to the eye. The same snow under

-    an overcast firmament is still white. Such a firmament enfeebles the

-    light by reflection, and when we lift ourselves above a

-    cloud-field—to an Alpine summit, for instance, or to the top of

-    Snowdon—and see, in the proper direction, the sun shining on the

-    clouds, they appear dazzlingly white. Ordinary clouds, in fact,

-    divide the solar light impinging on them into two parts—a reflected

-    part and a transmitted part, in each of which the proportions of

-    wave motion which produce the impression of whiteness are sensibly

-    preserved.

-

-    It will be understood that the conditions of whiteness would fail if

-    all the waves were diminished _equally_, or by the same absolute

-    quantity. They must be reduced _proportionately_ instead of equally.

-    If by the act of reflection the waves of red light are split into

-    exact halves, then, to preserve the light white, the waves of

-    yellow, orange, green, and blue must also be split into exact

-    halves. In short, the reduction must take place, not by absolutely

-    equal quantities, but by equal fractional parts. In white light the

-    preponderance as regards energy of the larger over the smaller waves

-    must always be immense. Were the case otherwise, the physiological

-    correlative, _blue_, of the smaller waves would have the upper hand

-    in our sensations.

-

-    My wish to render our mental images complete, causes me to dwell

-    briefly upon these known points, and the same wish will cause me to

-    linger a little longer among others. But here I am disturbed by my

-    reflections. When I consider the effect of dinner upon the nervous

-    system, and the relation of that system to the intellectual powers I

-    am now invoking; when I remember that the universal experience of

-    mankind has fixed upon certain definite elements of perfection in an

-    after-dinner speech, and when I think how conspicuous by their

-    absence these elements are on the present occasion, the thought is

-    not comforting to a man who wishes to stand well with his

-    fellow-creatures in general, and with the members of the British

-    Association in particular. My condition might well resemble that of

-    the ether, which is scientifically defined as an assemblage of

-    vibrations. And the worst of it is that, unless you reverse the

-    general verdict regarding the effect of dinner, and prove in your

-    own persons that a uniform experience need not continue

-    uniform—which will be a great point gained for some people—these

-    tremors of mine are likely to become more and more painful. But I

-    call to mind the comforting words of an inspired, though uncanonical

-    writer, who admonishes us in the Apocrypha that fear is a bad

-    counsellor. Let me then cast him out, and let me trustfully assume

-    that you will one and all postpone that balmy sleep, of which dinner

-    might, under the circumstances, be regarded as the indissoluble

-    antecedent, and that you will manfully and womanfully prolong your

-    investigations of the ether and its waves into regions which have

-    been hitherto crossed by the pioneers of science alone.

-

-    Not only are the waves of ether reflected by clouds, by solids, and

-    by liquids, but when they pass from light air to dense, or from

-    dense air to light, a portion of the wave motion is always

-    reflected. Now our atmosphere changes continually in density from

-    top to bottom. It will help our conceptions if we regard it as made

-    up of a series of thin concentric layers or shells of air, each

-    shell being of the same density throughout, and a small and sudden

-    change of density occurring in passing from shell to shell. Light

-    would be reflected at the limiting surfaces of all these shells, and

-    their action would be practically the same as that of the real

-    atmosphere.

-

-    And now I would ask your imagination to picture this act of

-    reflection. What must become of the reflected light? The atmospheric

-    layers turn their convex surfaces towards the sun; they are so many

-    convex mirrors of feeble power, and you will immediately perceive

-    that the light regularly reflected from these surfaces cannot reach

-    the earth at all, but is dispersed in space.

-

-    But though the sun’s light is not reflected in this fashion from the

-    ærial layers to the earth, there is indubitable evidence to show

-    that the light of our firmament is reflected light. Proofs of the

-    most cogent description could be here adduced; but we need only

-    consider that we receive light at the same time from all parts of

-    the hemisphere of heaven. The light of the firmament comes to us

-    across the direction of the solar rays, and even against the

-    direction of the solar rays; and this lateral and opposing rush of

-    wave motion can only be due to the rebound of the waves from the air

-    itself, or from something suspended in the air. It is also evident

-    that, unlike the action of clouds, the solar light is not reflected

-    by the sky in the proportions which produce white. The sky is blue,

-    which indicates a deficiency on the part of the larger waves. In

-    accounting for the color of the sky, the first question suggested by

-    analogy would undoubtedly be, is not the air blue? The blueness of

-    the air has, in fact, been given as a solution of the blueness of

-    the sky. But reason basing itself on observation asks in reply, How,

-    if the air be blue, can the light of sunrise and sunset, which

-    travels through vast distances of air, be yellow, orange, or even

-    red? The passage of the white solar light through a blue medium

-    could by no possibility redden the light. The hypothesis of a blue

-    air is therefore untenable. In fact, the agent, whatever it is,

-    which sends us the light of the sky, exercises in so doing a

-    dichroitic action. The light reflected is blue, the light

-    transmitted is orange or red. A marked distinction is thus exhibited

-    between the matter of the sky and that of an ordinary cloud, which

-    latter exercises no such dichroitic action.

-

-    By the force of imagination and reason combined we may penetrate

-    this mystery also. The cloud takes no note of size on the part of

-    the waves of ether, but reflects them all alike. It exercises no

-    selective action. Now the cause of this may be that the cloud

-    particles are so large in comparison with the size of the waves of

-    ether as to reflect them all indifferently. A broad cliff reflects

-    an Atlantic roller as easily as a ripple produced by a sea bird’s

-    wing; and in the presence of large reflecting surfaces the existing

-    differences of magnitude among the waves of ether may disappear. But

-    supposing the reflecting particles, instead of being very large, to

-    be very small, in comparison with the size of the waves. In this

-    case, instead of the whole wave being fronted and in great part

-    thrown back, a small portion only is shivered off. The great mass of

-    the wave passes over such a particle without reflection. Scatter

-    then, a handful of such minute foreign particles in our atmosphere,

-    and set imagination to watch their action upon the solar waves.

-    Waves of all sizes impinge upon the particles, and you see at every

-    collision a portion of the impinging wave struck off by reflection.

-    All the waves of the spectrum, from the extreme red to the extreme

-    violet, are thus acted upon. But in what proportions will the waves

-    be scattered? A clear picture will enable us to anticipate the

-    experimental answer. Remembering that the red waves are to the blue

-    much in the relation of billows to ripples, let us consider whether

-    those extremely small particles are competent to scatter all the

-    waves in the same proportion. If they be not—and a little reflection

-    will make it clear to you that they are not—the production of color

-    must be an incident of the scattering. Largeness is a thing of

-    relation; and the smaller the wave the greater is the relative size

-    of any particle on which the wave impinges, and the greater also the

-    ratio of the reflected portion to the total wave.

-

-    A pebble placed in the way of the ring-ripples produced by our heavy

-    rain-drops on a tranquil pond will throw back a large fraction of

-    the ripple incident upon it, while the fractional part of a larger

-    wave thrown back by the same pebble might be infinitesimal. Now we

-    have already made it clear to our minds that to preserve the solar

-    light white, its constituent proportions must not be altered; but in

-    the act of division performed by these very small particles we see

-    that the proportions _are_ altered; an undue fraction of the smaller

-    waves is scattered by the particles, and, as a consequence, in the

-    scattered light blue will be the predominant color. The other colors

-    of the spectrum must, to some extent, be associated with the blue.

-    They are not absent, but deficient. We ought, in fact, to have them

-    all, but in diminishing proportions, from the violet to the red.

-

-    We have here presented a case to the imagination, and assuming the

-    undulatory theory to be a reality, we have, I think, fairly reasoned

-    our way to the conclusion that, were particles, small in comparison

-    to the size of the ether waves, sown in our atmosphere, the light

-    scattered by those particles would be exactly such as we observe in

-    our azure skies. When this light is analyzed all the colors of the

-    spectrum are found; but they are found in the proportions indicated

-    by our conclusion.

-

-    Let us now turn our attention to the light which passes unscattered

-    among the particles. How must it be finally affected? By its

-    successive collisions with the particles, the white light is more

-    and more robbed of its shorter waves; it therefore loses more and

-    more of its due proportion of blue. The result may be anticipated.

-    The transmitted light, where short distances are involved, will

-    appear yellowish. But as the sun sinks towards the horizon, the

-    atmospheric distances increase, and consequently the number of the

-    scattering particles. They abstract, in succession, the violet, the

-    indigo, the blue, and even disturb the proportions of green. The

-    transmitted light under such circumstances must pass from yellow

-    through orange to red. This also is exactly what we find in nature.

-    Thus, while the reflected light gives us at noon the deep azure of

-    the Alpine skies, the transmitted light gives us at sunset the warm

-    crimson of the Alpine snows. The phenomena certainly occur _as if_

-    our atmosphere were a medium rendered slightly turbid by the

-    mechanical suspension of exceedingly small foreign particles.

-

-    Here, as before, we encounter our skeptical “as if.” It is one of

-    the parasites of science, ever at hand, and ready to plant itself

-    and sprout, if it can, on the weak points of our philosophy. But a

-    strong constitution defies the parasite, and in our case, as we

-    question the phenomena, probability grows like growing health, until

-    in the end the malady of doubt is completely extirpated.

-

-    The first question that naturally arises is, Can small particles be

-    really proved to act in the manner indicated? No doubt of it. Each

-    one of you can submit the question to an experimental test. Water

-    will not dissolve resin, but spirit will, and when spirit which

-    holds resin in solution is dropped into water the resin immediately

-    separates in solid particles, which render the water milky. The

-    coarseness of this precipitate depends on the quantity of the

-    dissolved resin. You can cause it to separate in thick clots or in

-    exceedingly fine particles. Professor Brücke has given us the

-    proportions which produce particles particularly suited to our

-    present purpose. One gramme of clean mastic is dissolved in

-    eighty-seven grammes of absolute alcohol, and the transparent

-    solution is allowed to drop into a beaker containing clear water

-    kept briskly stirred. An exceedingly fine precipitate is thus

-    formed, which declares its presence by its action upon light.

-    Placing a dark surface behind the beaker, and permitting the light

-    to fall into it from the top or front, the medium is seen to be

-    distinctly blue. It is not, perhaps, so perfect a blue as I have

-    seen on exceptional days, this year, among the Alps, but it is a

-    very fair sky blue. A trace of soap in water gives a tint of blue.

-    London, and I fear Liverpool milk, makes an approximation to the

-    same color through the operation of the same cause; and Helmholtz

-    has irreverently disclosed the fact that a blue eye is simply a

-    turbid medium.

-

-    Numerous instances of the kind might be cited. The action of turbid

-    media upon light was fully and beautifully illustrated by Goethe,

-    who, though unacquainted with the undulatory theory, was led by his

-    experiments to regard the blue of the firmament as caused by an

-    illuminated turbid medium with the darkness of space behind it. He

-    describes glasses showing a bright yellow by transmitted, and a

-    beautiful blue by reflected light. Professor Stokes, who was

-    probably the first to discern the real nature of the action of small

-    particles on the waves of ether, describes a glass of a similar

-    kind. What artists call “chill” is no doubt an effect of this

-    description. Through the action of minute particles, the browns of a

-    picture often present the appearance of the bloom of a plum. By

-    rubbing the varnish with a silk handkerchief optical continuity is

-    established and the chill disappears.

-

-    Some years ago I witnessed Mr. Hirst experimenting at Zermatt on the

-    turbid water of the Visp, which was charged with the finely divided

-    matter ground down by the glaciers. When kept still for a day or so

-    the grosser matter sank, but the finer matter remained suspended,

-    and gave a distinctly blue tinge to the water. No doubt the blueness

-    of certain Alpine lakes is in part due to this cause. Professor

-    Roscoe has noticed several striking cases of a similar kind. In a

-    very remarkable paper the late Principal Forbes showed that steam

-    issuing from the safety valve of a locomotive, when favorably

-    observed, exhibits at a certain stage of its condensation the colors

-    of the sky. It is blue by reflected light, and orange or red by

-    transmitted light. The effect, as pointed out by Goethe, is to some

-    extent exhibited by peat smoke.

-

-    More than ten years ago I amused myself at Killarney, by observing

-    on a calm day, the straight smoke columns rising from the chimneys

-    of the cabins. It was easy to project the lower portion of a column

-    against a bright cloud. The smoke in the former case was blue, being

-    seen mainly by reflected light; in the latter case it was reddish,

-    being seen mainly by transmitted light. Such smoke was not in

-    exactly the condition to give us the glow of the Alps, but it was a

-    step in this direction. Brücke’s fine precipitate above referred to

-    looks yellowish by transmitted light, but by duly strengthening the

-    precipitate you may render the white light of noon as ruby colored

-    as the sun when seen through Liverpool smoke or upon Alpine

-    horizons.

-

-    I do not, however, point to the gross smoke arising from coal as an

-    illustration of the action of small particles, because such smoke

-    soon absorbs and destroys the waves of blue instead of sending them

-    to the eyes of the observer.

-

-    These multifarious facts, and numberless others which cannot now be

-    referred to, are explained by reference to the single principle that

-    where the scattering particles are small in comparison to the size

-    of the waves, we have in the reflected light a greater proportion of

-    the smaller waves, and in the transmitted light a greater proportion

-    of the larger waves, than existed in the original white light. The

-    physiological consequence is that in the one light blue is

-    predominant, and in the other light orange or red. And now let us

-    push our inquiries forward. Our best microscopes can readily reveal

-    objects not more than 1/50000 of an inch in diameter. This is less

-    than the length of a wave of red light. Indeed, a first-rate

-    microscope would enable us to discern objects not exceeding in

-    diameter the length of the smallest waves of the visible spectrum.

-    By the microscope, therefore, we can submit our particles to an

-    experimental test. If they are as large as the light-waves they will

-    infallibly be seen; and if they are not seen it is because they are

-    smaller.

-

-    I placed in the hands of our president a bottle containing Brücke’s

-    particles in greater number and coarseness than those examined by

-    Brücke himself. The liquid was a milky blue, and Mr. Huxley applied

-    to it his highest microscopic power. He satisfied me at the time

-    that had particles of even 1/100000 of an inch in diameter existed

-    in the liquid they could not have escaped detection. But no

-    particles were seen. Under the microscope the turbid liquid was not

-    to be distinguished from distilled water. Brücke, I may say, also

-    found the particles to be of ultra microscopic magnitude.

-

-    But we have it in our power to imitate far more closely than we have

-    hitherto done the natural conditions of this problem. We can

-    generate in air, as many of you know, artificial skies, and prove

-    their perfect identity with the natural one as regards the

-    exhibition of a number of wholly unexpected phenomena. By a

-    continuous process of growth, moreover, we are able to connect sky

-    matter, if I may use the term, with molecular matter on the one

-    side, and with molar matter, or matter in sensible masses, on the

-    other.

-

-    In illustration of this, I will take an experiment described by M.

-    Morren, of Marseilles, at the last meeting of the British

-    Association. Sulphur and oxygen combine to form sulphurous acid gas.

-    It is this choking gas that is smelt when a sulphur match is burnt

-    in air. Two atoms of oxygen and one of sulphur constitute the

-    molecule of sulphurous acid. Now it has been recently shown in a

-    great number of instances that waves of ether issuing from a strong

-    source, such as the sun or the electric light, are competent to

-    shake asunder the atoms of gaseous molecules. A chemist would call

-    this “decomposition” by light; but it behooves us, who are examining

-    the power and function of the imagination, to keep constantly before

-    us the physical images which we hold to underlie our terms.

-    Therefore I say, sharply and definitely, that the components of the

-    molecules of sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by the ether waves.

-    Enclosing the substance in a suitable vessel, placing it in a dark

-    room, and sending through it a powerful beam of light, we at first

-    see nothing; the vessel containing the gas is as empty as a vacuum.

-    Soon, however, along the track of the beam a beautiful sky-blue

-    color is observed, which is due to the liberated particles of

-    sulphur. For a time the blue grows more intense; it then becomes

-    whitish; and from a whitish blue it passes to a more or less perfect

-    white. If the action be continued long enough, we end by filling the

-    tube with a dense cloud of sulphur particles, which by the

-    application of proper means may be rendered visible.

-

-    Here, then, our ether waves untie the bond of chemical affinity, and

-    liberate a body—sulphur—which at ordinary temperatures is a solid,

-    and which therefore soon becomes an object of the senses. We have

-    first of all the free atoms of sulphur, which are both invisible and

-    incompetent to stir the retina sensibly with scattered light. But

-    these atoms gradually coalesce and form particles, which grow larger

-    by continual accretion until after a minute or two they appear as

-    sky matter. In this condition they are invisible themselves, but

-    competent to send an amount of wave motion to the retina sufficient

-    to produce the firmamental blue. The particles continue, or may be

-    caused to continue, in this condition for a considerable time,

-    during which no microscope can cope with them. But they continually

-    grow larger, and pass by insensible gradations into the state of

-    _cloud_, when they can no longer elude the armed eye. Thus, without

-    solution of continuity, we start with matter in the molecule, and

-    end with matter in the mass, sky matter being the middle term of the

-    series of transformations.

-

-    Instead of sulphurous acid we might choose from a dozen other

-    substances, and produce the same effect with any of them. In the

-    case of some—probably in the case of all—it is possible to preserve

-    matter in the skyey condition for fifteen or twenty minutes under

-    the continual operation of the light. During these fifteen or twenty

-    minutes the particles are constantly growing larger, without ever

-    exceeding the size requisite to the production of the celestial

-    blue. Now when two vessels are placed before you, each containing

-    sky matter, it is possible to state with great distinctness which

-    vessel contains the largest particles.

-

-    The eye is very sensitive to differences of light, when, as here,

-    the eye is in comparative darkness, and when the quantities of wave

-    motion thrown against the retina are small. The larger particles

-    declare themselves by the greater whiteness of their scattered

-    light. Call now to mind the observation, or effort at observation,

-    made by our president when he failed to distinguish the particles of

-    resin in Brücke’s medium, and when you have done so follow me. I

-    permitted a beam of light to act upon a certain vapor. In two

-    minutes the azure appeared, but at the end of fifteen minutes it had

-    not ceased to be azure. After fifteen minutes, for example, its

-    color and some other phenomena pronounced it to be a blue of

-    distinctly smaller particles than those sought for in vain by Mr.

-    Huxley. These particles, as already stated, must have been less than

-    1/100000 of an inch in diameter.

-

-    And now I want you to submit to your imagination the following

-    question: Here are particles which have been growing continually for

-    fifteen minutes, and at the end of that time are demonstrably

-    smaller than those which defied the microscope of Mr. Huxley. What

-    must have been the size of these particles at the beginning of their

-    growth? What notion can you form of the magnitude of such particles?

-    As the distances of stellar space give us simply a bewildering sense

-    of vastness without leaving any distinct impression on the mind, so

-    the magnitudes with which we have here to do impress us with a

-    bewildering sense of smallness. We are dealing with infinitesimals

-    compared with which the test objects of the microscope are literally

-    immense.

-

-    From their perviousness to stellar light, and other considerations,

-    Sir John Herschel drew some startling conclusions regarding the

-    density and weight of comets. You know that these extraordinary and

-    mysterious bodies sometimes throw out tails 100,000,000 of miles in

-    length, and 50,000 miles in diameter. The diameter of our earth is

-    8,000 miles. Both it and the sky, and a good portion of space beyond

-    the sky, would certainly be included in a sphere 10,000 miles

-    across. Let us fill this sphere with cometary matter, and make it

-    our unit of measure. An easy calculation informs us that to produce

-    a comet’s tail of the size just mentioned, about 300,000 such

-    measures would have to be emptied into space. Now suppose the whole

-    of this stuff to be swept together, and suitably compressed, what do

-    you suppose its volume would be? Sir John Herschel would probably

-    tell you that the whole mass might be carted away at a single effort

-    by one of your dray-horses. In fact, I do not know that he would

-    require more than a small fraction of a horse-power to remove the

-    cometary dust. After this you will hardly regard as monstrous a

-    notion I have sometimes entertained concerning the quantity of

-    matter in our sky. Suppose a shell, then, to surround the earth at a

-    hight above the surface which would place it beyond the grosser

-    matter that hangs in the lower regions of the air—say at the hight

-    of the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc. Outside this shell we have the deep

-    blue firmament. Let the atmospheric space beyond the shell be swept

-    clean, and let the sky matter be properly gathered up. What is its

-    probable amount? I have sometimes thought that a lady’s portmanteau

-    would contain it all. I have thought that even a gentleman’s

-    portmanteau—possibly his snuff-box—might take it in. And whether the

-    actual sky be capable of this amount of condensation or not, I

-    entertain no doubt that a sky quite as vast as ours, and as good in

-    appearance, could be formed from a quantity of matter which might be

-    held in the hollow of the hand.

-

-    Small in mass, the vastness in point of number of the particles of

-    our sky may be inferred from the continuity of its light. It is not

-    in broken patches nor at scattered points that the heavenly azure is

-    revealed. To the observer on the summit of Mont Blanc the blue is as

-    uniform and coherent as if it formed the surface of the most

-    close-grained solid. A marble dome would not exhibit a stricter

-    continuity. And Mr. Glaisher will inform you that if our

-    hypothetical shell were lifted to twice the hight of Mont Blanc

-    above the earth’s surface, we should still have the azure overhead.

-    Everywhere through the atmosphere those sky particles are strewn.

-    They fill the Alpine valleys, spreading like a delicate gauze in

-    front of the slopes of pine. They sometimes so swathe the peaks with

-    light as to abolish their definition. This year I have seen the

-    Weisshorn thus dissolved in opalescent air.

-

-    By proper instruments the glare thrown from the sky particles

-    against the retina may be quenched, and then the mountain which it

-    obliterated starts into sudden definition. Its extinction in front

-    of a dark mountain resembles exactly the withdrawal of a veil. It is

-    the light then taking possession of the eye, and not the particles

-    acting as opaque bodies, that interfere with the definition.

-

-    By day this light quenches the stars; even by moonlight it is able

-    to exclude from vision all stars between the fifth and the eleventh

-    magnitude. It may be likened to a noise, and the stellar radiance to

-    a whisper drowned by the noise. What is the nature of the particles

-    which shed this light? On points of controversy I will not here

-    enter, but I may say that De la Rive ascribes the haze of the Alps

-    in fine weather to floating organic germs. Now the possible

-    existence of germs in such profusion has been held up as an

-    absurdity. It has been affirmed that they would darken the air, and

-    on the assumed impossibility of their existence in the requisite

-    numbers, without invasion of the solar light, a powerful argument

-    has been based by believers in spontaneous generation.

-

-    Similar arguments have been used by the opponents of the germ theory

-    of epidemic disease, and both parties have triumphantly challenged

-    an appeal to the microscope and the chemist’s balance to decide the

-    question. Without committing myself in the least to De la Rive’s

-    notion, without offering any objection here to the doctrine of

-    spontaneous generation, without expressing any adherence to the germ

-    theory of disease, I would simply draw attention to the fact that in

-    the atmosphere we have particles which defy both the microscope and

-    the balance, which do not darken the air, and which exist,

-    nevertheless, in multitudes sufficient to reduce to insignificance

-    the Israelitish hyperbole regarding the sands upon the seashore.

-

-    The varying judgments of men on these and other questions may

-    perhaps be, to some extent, accounted for by that doctrine of

-    relativity which plays so important a part in philosophy. This

-    doctrine affirms that the impressions made upon us by any

-    circumstance, or combination of circumstances, depends upon our

-    previous state. Two travelers upon the same peak, the one having

-    ascended to it from the plain, the other having descended to it from

-    a higher elevation, will be differently affected by the scene around

-    them. To the one nature is expanding, to the other it is

-    contracting, and feelings are sure to differ which have two such

-    different antecedent states.

-

-    In our scientific judgments the law of relativity may also play an

-    important part. To two men, one educated in the school of the

-    senses, who has mainly occupied himself with observation, and the

-    other educated in the school of imagination as well, and exercised

-    in the conception of atoms and molecules to which we have so

-    frequently referred, a bit of matter, say 1/50000 of an inch in

-    diameter, will present itself differently. The one descends to it

-    from his molar hights, the other climbs to it from his molecular

-    lowlands. To the one it appears small, to the other large. So also

-    as regards the appreciation of the most minute forms of life

-    revealed by the microscope. To one of these men they naturally

-    appear conterminous with the ultimate particles of matter, and he

-    readily figures the molecules from which they directly spring; with

-    him there is but a step from the atom to the organism. The other

-    discerns numberless organic gradations between both. Compared with

-    his atoms, the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the microscopic

-    field are as behemoth and leviathan.

-

-    The law of relativity may to some extent explain the different

-    attitudes of these two men with regard to the question of

-    spontaneous generation. An amount of evidence which satisfies the

-    one entirely fails to satisfy the other; and while to the one the

-    last bold defense and startling expansion of the doctrine will

-    appear perfectly conclusive, to the other it will present itself as

-    imposing a profitless labor of demolition on subsequent

-    investigators. The proper and possible attitude of these two men is

-    that each of them should work as if it were his aim and object to

-    establish the view entertained by the other.

-

-    I trust, Mr. President, that you—whom untoward circumstances have

-    made a biologist, but who still keep alive your sympathy with that

-    class of inquiries which nature intended you to pursue and

-    adorn—will excuse me to your brethren if I say that some of them

-    seem to form an inadequate estimate of the distance which separates

-    the microscopic from the molecular limit, and that, as a

-    consequence, they sometimes employ a phraseology which is calculated

-    to mislead.

-

-    When, for example, the contents of a cell are described as perfectly

-    homogeneous, as absolutely structureless, because the microscope

-    fails to distinguish any structure, then I think the microscope

-    begins to play a mischievous part. A little consideration will make

-    it plain to all of you that the microscope can have no voice in the

-    real question of germ structure. Distilled water is more perfectly

-    homogeneous than the contents of any possible organic germ. What

-    causes the liquid to cease contracting at 39° F., and to grow bigger

-    until it freezes? It is a structural process of which the microscope

-    can take no note, nor is it likely to do so by any conceivable

-    extension of its powers. Place this distilled water in the field of

-    an electro-magnet, and bring a microscope to bear upon it. Will any

-    change be observed when the magnet is excited? Absolutely none; and

-    still profound and complex changes have occurred.

-

-    First of all, the particles of water are rendered diamagnetically

-    polar; and secondly, in virtue of the structure impressed upon it by

-    the magnetic strain of its molecules, the liquid twists a ray of

-    light in a fashion perfectly determinate both as to quantity and

-    direction. It would be immensely interesting to both you and me if

-    one here present, who has brought his brilliant imagination to bear

-    upon this subject, could make us see as he sees the entangled

-    molecular processes involved in the rotation of the plane of

-    polarization by magnetic force. While dealing with this question he

-    lived in a world of matter and of motion to which the microscope has

-    no passport, and in which it can offer no aid. The cases in which

-    similar conditions hold are simply numberless. Have the diamond, the

-    amethyst, and the countless other crystals formed in the

-    laboratories of nature and of man, no structure? Assuredly they

-    have, but what can the microscope make of it? Nothing. It cannot be

-    too distinctly borne in mind that between the microscopic limit and

-    the true molecular limit there is room for infinite permutations and

-    combinations. It is in this region that the poles of the atoms are

-    arranged, that tendency is given to their powers, so that when these

-    poles and powers have free action and proper stimulus in a suitable

-    environment, they determine first the germ and afterwards the

-    complete organism. This first marshaling of the atoms on which all

-    subsequent action depends baffles a keener power than that of the

-    microscope. Through pure excess of complexity, and long before

-    observation can have any voice in the matter, the most highly

-    trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination,

-    retires in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem. We

-    are struck dumb by an astonishment which no microscope can relieve,

-    doubting not only the power of our instrument, but even whether we

-    ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever enable

-    us to grapple with the ultimate structural energies of nature.

-

-    But the speculative faculty, of which imagination forms so large a

-    part, will nevertheless wander into regions where the hope of

-    certainty would seem to be entirely shut out. We think that though

-    the detailed analysis may be, and may ever remain, beyond us,

-    general notions may be attainable. At all events, it is plain that

-    beyond the present outposts of microscopic inquiry lies an immense

-    field for the exercise of the imagination. It is only, however, the

-    privileged spirits who know how to use their liberty without abusing

-    it, who are able to surround imagination by the firm frontiers of

-    reason, that are likely to work with any profit here. But freedom to

-    them is of such paramount importance that, for the sake of securing

-    it, a good deal of wildness on the part of weaker brethren may be

-    overlooked. In more senses than one Mr. Darwin has drawn heavily

-    upon the scientific tolerance of his age. He has drawn heavily upon

-    _time_ in his development of species, and he has drawn adventurously

-    upon _matter_ in his theory of pan-genesis. According to this

-    theory, a germ already microscopic is a world of minor germs. Not

-    only is the organism as a whole wrapped up in the germ, but every

-    organ of the organism has there its special seed.

-

-    This, I say, is an adventurous draft on the power of matter to

-    divide itself and distribute its forces. But, unless we are

-    perfectly sure that he is overstepping the bounds of reason, that he

-    is unwittingly sinning against observed fact or demonstrated law—for

-    a mind like that of Darwin can never sin wittingly against either

-    fact or law—we ought, I think, to be cautious in limiting his

-    intellectual horizon. If there be the least doubt in the matter, it

-    ought to be given in favor of the freedom of such a mind. To it a

-    vast possibility is in itself a dynamic power, though the

-    possibility may never be drawn upon.

-

-    It gives me pleasure to think that the facts and reasonings of this

-    discourse tend rather towards the justification of Mr. Darwin than

-    towards his condemnation, that they tend rather to augment than to

-    diminish the cubic space demanded by this soaring speculator; for

-    they seem to show the perfect competence of matter and force, as

-    regards divisibility and distribution, to bear the heaviest strain

-    that he has hitherto imposed upon them.

-

-    In the case of Mr. Darwin, observation, imagination, and reason

-    combined have run back with wonderful sagacity and success over a

-    certain length of the line of biological succession. Guided by

-    analogy, in his “Origin of Species” he placed as the root of life a

-    primordial germ, from which he conceived the amazing richness and

-    variety of the life that now is upon the earth’s surface, might be

-    deduced. If this were true it would not be final. The human

-    imagination would infallibly look behind the germ, and inquire into

-    the history of its genesis.

-

-    Certainty is here hopeless, but the materials for an opinion may be

-    attainable. In this dim twilight of speculation the inquirer

-    welcomes every gleam, and seeks to augment his light by indirect

-    incidences. He studies the methods of nature in the ages and the

-    worlds within his reach, in order to shape the course of imagination

-    in the antecedent ages and worlds. And though the certainty

-    possessed by experimental inquiry is here shut out, the imagination

-    is not left entirely without guidance. From the examination of the

-    solar system, Kant and Laplace came to the conclusion that its

-    various bodies once formed parts of the same undislocated mass; that

-    matter in a nebulous form preceded matter in a dense form; that as

-    the ages rolled away heat was wasted, condensation followed, planets

-    were detached, and that finally the chief portion of the fiery cloud

-    reached, by self-compression, the magnitude and density of our sun.

-    The earth itself offers evidence of a fiery origin; and in our day

-    the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace receives the independent

-    countenance of spectrum analysis, which proves the same substances

-    to be common to the earth and sun. Accepting some such view of the

-    construction of our system as probable, a desire immediately arises

-    to connect the present life of our planet with the past. We wish to

-    know something of our remotest ancestry.

-

-    On its first detachment from the central mass, life, as we

-    understand it, could hardly have been present on the earth. How then

-    did it come there? The thing to be encouraged here is a reverent

-    freedom—a freedom preceded by the hard discipline which checks

-    licentiousness in speculation—while the thing to be repressed, both

-    in science and out of it, is dogmatism. And here I am in the hands

-    of the meeting—willing to end, but ready to go on. I have no right

-    to intrude upon you, unasked, the unformed notions which are

-    floating like clouds or gathering to more solid consistency in the

-    modern speculative scientific mind. But if you wish me to speak

-    plainly, honestly, and undisputatiously, I am willing to do so. On

-    the present occasion

-

-                  You are ordained to call, and I to come.

-

-    Two views, then, offer themselves to us. Life was present

-    potentially in matter when in the nebulous form, and was unfolded

-    from it by the way of natural development, or it is a principle

-    inserted into matter at a later date. With regard to the question of

-    time, the views of men have changed remarkably in our day and

-    generation; and I must say as regards courage also, and a manful

-    willingness to engage in open contest, with fair weapons, a great

-    change has also occurred.

-

-    The clergy of England—at all events the clergy of London—have nerve

-    enough to listen to the strongest views which any one amongst us

-    would care to utter; and they invite, if they do not challenge, men

-    of the most decided opinions to state and stand by those opinions in

-    open court. No theory upsets them. Let the most destructive

-    hypothesis be stated only in the language current among gentlemen,

-    and they look it in the face. They forego alike the thunders of

-    heaven and the terrors of the other place, smiting the theory, if

-    they do not like it, with honest secular strength. In fact, the

-    greatest cowards of the present day are not to be found among the

-    clergy, but within the pale of science itself.

-

-    Two or three years ago in an ancient London college—a clerical

-    institution—I heard a very remarkable lecture by a very remarkable

-    man. Three or four hundred clergymen were present at the lecture.

-    The orator began with the civilization of Egypt in the time of

-    Joseph; pointing out that the very perfect organization of the

-    kingdom, and the possession of chariots, in one of which Joseph

-    rode, indicated a long antecedent period of civilization. He then

-    passed on to the mud of the Nile, its rate of augmentation, its

-    present thickness, and the remains of human handiwork found therein;

-    thence to the rocks which bound the Nile valley, and which team with

-    organic remains. Thus, in his own clear and admirable way, he caused

-    the idea of the world’s age to expand itself indefinitely before the

-    mind of his audience, and he contrasted this with the age usually

-    assigned to the world.

-

-    During his discourse he seemed to be swimming against a stream; he

-    manifestly thought that he was opposing a general conviction. He

-    expected resistance; so did I. But it was all a mistake; there was

-    no adverse current, no opposing conviction, no resistance, merely

-    here and there a half humorous but unsuccessful attempt to entangle

-    him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said

-    regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had,

-    indeed, known it all long ago, and they good-humoredly rallied the

-    lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite

-    plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, the

-    finest samples of their class, had entirely given up the ancient

-    landmarks, and transported the conception of life’s origin to an

-    indefinitely distant past.

-

-    In fact, clergymen, if I might be allowed a parenthesis to say so,

-    have as strong a leaning towards scientific truth as other men, only

-    the resistance to this bent—a resistance due to education—is

-    generally stronger in their case than in others. They do not lack

-    the positive element, namely, the love of truth, but the negative

-    element, the fear of error, preponderates.

-

-    The strength of an electric current is determined by two things—the

-    electro-motive force, and the resistance that force has to overcome.

-    A fraction, with the former as numerator and the latter as

-    denominator, expresses the current-strength. The “current-strength”

-    of the clergy towards science may also be expressed by making the

-    positive element just referred to the numerator, and the negative

-    one the denominator of a fraction. The numerator is not zero nor is

-    it even small, but the denominator is large; and hence the current

-    strength is such as we find it to be. Slowness of conception, even

-    open hostility, may be thus accounted for. They are for the most

-    part errors of judgment, and not sins against truth. To most of us

-    it may appear very simple, but to a few of us it appears

-    transcendently wonderful, that in all classes of society truth

-    should have this power and fascination. From the countless

-    modifications that life has undergone through natural selection and

-    the integration of infinitesimal steps, emerges finally the grand

-    result that the strength of truth is greater than the strength of

-    error, and that we have only to make the truth clear to the world to

-    gain the world to our side. Probably no one wonders more at this

-    result than the propounder of the law of natural selection himself.

-    Reverting to an old acquaintance of ours, it would seem, on purely

-    scientific grounds, as if a Veracity were at the heart of things; as

-    if, after ages of latent working, it had finally unfolded itself in

-    the life of man; as if it were still destined to unfold itself,

-    growing in girth, throwing out stronger branches and thicker leaves,

-    and tending more and more by its overshadowing presence to starve

-    the weeds of error from the intellectual soil.

-

-    But this is parenthetical; and the gist of our present inquiry

-    regarding the introduction of life is this: Does it belong to what

-    we call matter, or is it an independent principle inserted into

-    matter at some suitable epoch—say when the physical conditions

-    become such as to permit of the development of life? Let us put the

-    question with all the reverence due to a faith and culture in which

-    we all were cradled—a faith and culture, moreover, which are the

-    undeniable historic antecedents of our present enlightenment. I say,

-    let us put the question reverently, but let us also put it clearly

-    and definitely.

-

-    There are the strongest grounds for believing that during a certain

-    period of its history the earth was not, nor was it fit to be, the

-    theater of life. Whether this was ever a nebulous period, or merely

-    a molten period, does not much matter; and if we revert to the

-    nebulous condition, it is because the probabilities are really on

-    its side. Our question is this: Did creative energy pause until the

-    nebulous matter had condensed, until the earth had been detached,

-    until the solar fire had so far withdrawn from the earth’s vicinity

-    as to permit a crust to gather round a planet? Did it wait until the

-    air was isolated, until the seas were formed, until evaporation,

-    condensation, and the descent of rain had begun, until the eroding

-    forces of the atmosphere had weathered and decomposed the molten

-    rocks so as to form soils, until the sun’s rays had become so

-    tempered by distance and by waste as to be chemically fit for the

-    decompositions necessary to vegetable life? Having waited through

-    those æons until the proper conditions had set in, did it send the

-    fiat forth, “Let life be!”? These questions define a hypothesis not

-    without its difficulties, but the dignity of which was demonstrated

-    by the nobleness of the men whom it sustained.

-

-    Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide between this

-    hypothesis and another; and public thought generally will afterwards

-    be called upon to do the same. You may, however, rest secure in the

-    belief that the hypothesis just sketched can never be stormed, and

-    that it is sure, if it yield at all, to yield to a prolonged siege.

-    To gain new territory, modern argument requires more time than

-    modern arms, though both of them move with greater rapidity than of

-    yore.

-

-    But however the convictions of individuals here and there may be

-    influenced, the process must be slow and secular which commends the

-    rival hypothesis of natural evolution to the public mind. For what

-    are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you

-    stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble

-    forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the nobler forms of

-    the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism

-    of the human body, but that the human mind itself—emotion,

-    intellect, will, and all their phenomena—were once latent in a fiery

-    cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a motion is more than a

-    refutation. But the hypothesis would probably go even further than

-    this. Many who hold it would probably assent to the position that at

-    the present moment all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our

-    science, and all our art—Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael—are

-    potential in the fires of the sun.

-

-    We long to learn something of our origin. If the evolution

-    hypothesis be correct, even this unsatisfied yearning must have come

-    to us across the ages which separate the unconscious primeval mist

-    from the consciousness of to-day. I do not think that any holder of

-    the evolution hypothesis would say that I overstate it or overstrain

-    it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, and bring before

-    you, unclothed and unvarnished, the notions by which it must stand

-    or fall.

-

-    Surely these notions represent an absurdity too monstrous to be

-    entertained by any sane mind. Let us, however, give them fair play.

-    Let us steady ourselves in front of the hypothesis, and, dismissing

-    all terror and excitement from our minds, let us look firmly into it

-    with the hard, sharp eye of intellect alone. Why are these notions

-    absurd, and why should sanity reject them? The law of relativity, of

-    which we have previously spoken, may find its application here.

-    These evolution notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the

-    intellectual gibbet in relation to the ideas concerning matter which

-    were drilled into us when young. Spirit and matter have ever been

-    presented to us in the rudest contrast, the one as all noble, the

-    other as all vile. But is this correct? Does it represent what our

-    mightiest spiritual teacher would call the eternal fact of the

-    universe? Upon the answer to this question all depends.

-

-    Supposing, instead of having the foregoing antithesis of spirit and

-    matter presented to our youthful minds, we had been taught to regard

-    them as equally worthy and equally wonderful; to consider them, in

-    fact, as two opposite faces of the self-same mystery. Supposing that

-    in youth we had been impregnated with the notion of the poet Goethe,

-    instead of the notion of the poet Young, looking at matter, not as

-    brute matter, but as “the living garment of God;” do you not think

-    that under these altered circumstances the law of relativity might

-    have had an outcome different from its present one? Is it not

-    probable that our repugnance to the idea of primeval union between

-    spirit and matter might be considerably abated? Without this total

-    revolution of the notions now prevalent the evolution hypothesis

-    must stand condemned; but in many profoundly thoughtful minds such a

-    revolution has already taken place. They degrade neither member of

-    the mysterious duality referred to; but they exalt one of them from

-    its abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto existing between

-    both. In substance, if not in words, their position as regards

-    spirit and matter is: “What God hath joined together let not man put

-    asunder.”

-

-    I have thus led you to the outer rim of speculative science, for

-    beyond the nebula scientific thought has never ventured hitherto,

-    and have tried to state that which I considered ought, in fairness,

-    to be outspoken. I do not think this evolution hypothesis is to be

-    flouted away contemptuously; I do not think it is to be denounced as

-    wicked. It is to be brought before the bar of disciplined reason,

-    and there justified or condemned. Let us hearken to those who wisely

-    support it, and to those who wisely oppose it; and let us tolerate

-    those, and they are many, who foolishly try to do neither of these

-    things.

-

-    The only thing out of place in the discussion is dogmatism on either

-    side. Fear not the evolution hypothesis. Steady yourselves in its

-    presence upon that faith in the ultimate triumph of truth which was

-    expressed by old Gamaliel when he said: “If it be of God, ye cannot

-    overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to naught.” Under the

-    fierce light of scientific inquiry this hypothesis is sure to be

-    dissipated if it possess not a core of truth. Trust me, its

-    existence as an hypothesis in the mind is quite compatible with the

-    simultaneous existence of all those virtues to which the term

-    Christian has been applied. It does not solve—it does not profess to

-    solve—the ultimate mystery untouched. At bottom it does nothing more

-    than “transport the conception of life’s origin to an indefinitely

-    distant past.”

-

-    For, granting the nebula and its potential life, the question,

-    whence came they? would still remain to baffle and bewilder us. And

-    with regard to the ages of forgetfulness which lie between the

-    conscious life of the nebula and the conscious life of the earth, it

-    is but an extension of that forgetfulness which preceded the birth

-    of us all. Those who hold the doctrine of evolution are by no means

-    ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they yield no more to

-    it than a provisional assent. They regard the nebular hypothesis as

-    probable, and in the utter absence of any evidence to prove the act

-    illegal, they extend the method of nature from the present into the

-    past. Here the observed uniformity of nature is their only guide.

-    Within the long range of physical inquiry they have never discerned

-    in nature the insertion of caprice. Throughout this range the laws

-    of physical and intellectual continuity have run side by side.

-    Having thus determined the elements of their curve in this world of

-    observation and experiment, they prolong that curve into an

-    antecedent world, and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of

-    development from the nebula to the present time.

-

-    You never hear the really philosophical defenders of the doctrine of

-    uniformity speaking of _impossibilities_ in nature. They never say,

-    what they are constantly charged with saying, that it is impossible

-    for the builder of the universe to alter His work. Their business is

-    not with the possible, but the actual; not with a world which

-    _might_ be, but with a world which _is_. This they explore with a

-    courage not unmixed with reverence, and according to methods which,

-    like the quality of a tree, are tested by their fruits. They have

-    but one desire—to know the truth. They have but one fear—to believe

-    a lie. And if they know the strength of science, and rely upon it

-    with unswerving trust, they also know the limits beyond which

-    science ceases to be strong. They best know that questions offer

-    themselves to thought which science, as now prosecuted, has not even

-    the tendency to solve. They keep such questions open, and will not

-    tolerate any unlawful limitation of the horizon of their souls. They

-    have as little fellowship with the atheist who says there is no God

-    as with the theist who professes to know the mind of God.

-

-    “Two things,” said Immanuel Kant, “fill me with awe: the starry

-    heavens and the sense of moral responsibility in man.” And in his

-    hours of health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of action

-    has ceased and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific

-    investigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe. Breaking

-    contact with the hampering details of earth, it associates him with

-    a power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which he

-    can neither analyze nor comprehend.

-

-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

-

-

-

-    ● Transcriber’s Notes:

-       ○ The first 44 footnotes are gathered together in the “NOTES AND

-         REFERENCES” section. The following footnotes appear in the text

-         where they are referenced.

-       ○ The mid dot—“·” is used in numbers to separate the whole part

-         from the decimal fraction of the number.

-       ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.

-       ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.

-       ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only

-         when a predominant form was found in this book.

-       ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores

-         (_italics_).

-       ○ The use of a caret (^) before a letter, or letters, shows that

-         the following letter or letters was intended to be a

-         superscript, as in S^t Bartholomew or 10^{th} Century.

-       ○ Superscripts are used to indicate numbers raised to a power. In

-         this plain text document, they are represented by characters

-         like this: “MV^2” or “10^{18}”, i.e. MV squared or 10 to the

-         18th power.

-

-

-

-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALF HOURS WITH MODERN

-SCIENTISTS ***

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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 66177 ***
+
+                               HALF HOURS
+
+                                  WITH
+
+                           MODERN SCIENTISTS.
+
+
+                          LECTURES AND ESSAYS
+
+
+                                   BY
+
+           PROFS. HUXLEY, BARKER, STIRLING, COPE AND TYNDALL.
+
+
+                                  WITH
+
+
+                         A GENERAL INTRODUCTION
+
+
+                                   BY
+
+                       NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D.,
+
+                       PRESIDENT OF YALE COLLEGE.
+
+
+
+                             FIRST SERIES.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+                           NEW HAVEN, CONN.:
+                      CHARLES C. CHATFIELD & CO.,
+                                 1872.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+                      ────────────────────────────
+       Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
+
+                      CHARLES C. CHATFIELD & CO.,
+
+    In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
+                      ────────────────────────────
+
+
+
+
+    ──────────────
+             NEW HAVEN, CONN.:
+    THE COLLEGE COURANT PRINT.
+    ──────────────
+
+
+
+
+                           ──────────────────
+            Electrotyped by E. B. Sheldon, New Haven, Conn.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS.
+
+            GENERAL INTRODUCTION. BY PREST. PORTER,       v
+
+            ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE.                1
+              PROF. T. H. HUXLEY,
+
+            CORRELATION OF VITAL AND PHYSICAL            37
+              FORCES.
+              PROF. G. F. BARKER, M.D.,
+
+            AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM—REPLY TO HUXLEY.       73
+              JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING,
+
+            ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION.             145
+              PROF. E. D. COPE,
+
+            SCIENTIFIC ADDRESSES.
+
+            ON THE METHODS AND TENDENCIES OF            219
+              PHYSICAL INVESTIGATION,
+
+            ON HAZE AND DUST,                           234
+
+            ON THE SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE                247
+              IMAGINATION,
+
+            PROF. JOHN TYNDALL, LL.D., F.R.S.,          217
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+ INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION OF HALF HOURS WITH MODERN SCIENTISTS.
+
+
+The title of this Series of Essays—_Half Hours with Modern
+Scientists_—suggests a variety of thoughts, some of which may not be
+inappropriate for a brief introduction to a new edition. _Scientist_ is
+a modern appellation which has been specially selected to designate a
+devotee to one or more branches of physical science. Strictly
+interpreted it might properly be applied to the student of any
+department of knowledge when prosecuted in a scientific method, but for
+convenience it is limited to the student of some branch of physics. It
+is not thereby conceded that nature, _i.e._, physical or material nature
+is any more legitimately or exclusively the field for scientific
+enquiries than spirit, or that whether the objects of science are
+material or spiritual, the assumptions and processes of science
+themselves should not be subjected to scientific analysis and
+justification. There are so-called philosophers who adopt both these
+conclusions. There are those who reason and dogmatize as though nature
+were synonymous with matter, or as though spirit, if there be such an
+essence, must be conceived and explained after the principles and
+analogies of matter;—others assume that a science of scientific method
+can be nothing better than the mist or moonshine which they vilify by
+the name of metaphysics. But unfortunately for such opinions the fact is
+constantly forced upon the attention of scientists of every description,
+that the agent by which they examine matter is more than matter, and
+that this agent, whatever be its substance, asserts its prerogatives to
+determine the conceptions which the scientist forms of matter as well as
+to the methods by which he investigates material properties. Even the
+positivist philosopher who not only denounces metaphysics as
+illegitimate, but also contends that the metaphysical era of human
+inquiry, has in the development of scientific progress been outgrown
+like the measles, which is experienced but once in a life-time; finds
+when his positivist theory is brought to the test that positivism itself
+in its very problem and its solutions, is but the last adopted
+metaphysical theory of science.
+
+We also notice that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the
+inquisitive scientist to limit himself strictly to the object-matter of
+his own chosen field, and not to enquire more or less earnestly—not
+infrequently to dogmatize more or less positively—respecting the results
+of other sciences and even respecting the foundations and processes of
+scientific inquiry itself. Thus Mr. Huxley in the first Essay of this
+Series on _The Physical Basis of Life_, leaves the discussion of his
+appropriate theme in order to deliver sundry very positive and
+pronounced assertions respecting the “limits of philosophical inquiry,”
+and quotes with manifest satisfaction a dictum of David Hume that is
+sufficiently dogmatic and positive, as to what these limits are. In more
+than one of his Lay sermons, he rushes headlong into the most pronounced
+assertions in respect to the nature of matter and of spirit. The
+eloquent Tyndall, in No. 5, expounds at length _The Methods and
+Tendencies of Physical Investigation_ and discourses eloquently, if
+occasionally somewhat poetically, of _The Scientific use of the
+Imagination_. But Messrs. Huxley and Tyndall are eminent examples of
+scientists who are severely and successfully devoted respectively to
+physiology and the higher physics. No one will contend that they have
+not faithfully cultivated their appropriate fields of inquiry. The fact
+that neither can be content to confine himself within his special field,
+forcibly illustrates the tendency of every modern science to concern
+itself with its relations to its neighbors, and the unresistible
+necessity which forces the most rigid physicist to become a
+metaphysician in spite of himself. So much for the appellation
+“_Scientists_.”
+
+“_Half Hours_” suggests the very natural inquiry—What can a scientist
+communicate in half an hour, especially to a reader who may be ignorant
+of the elements of the science which he would expound? Does not the
+phrase _Half Hours with Modern Scientists_ stultify itself and suggest
+the folly of any attempt to treat of science with effect in a series of
+essays? In reply we would ask the attention of the reader to the
+following considerations.
+
+The tendency is universal among the scientific men of all nations, to
+present the principles of science in such brief summaries or statements
+as may bring them within the reach of common readers. The tendency
+indicates that there is a large body of readers who are so far
+instructed in the elements of science as to be able to understand these
+summaries. In England, Germany, France and this country such brief
+essays are abundant, either in the form of contributions to popular and
+scientific journals, or in that of popular lectures, or in that of brief
+manuals, or of monographs on separate topics; especially such topics as
+are novel, or are interesting to the public for their theoretic
+brilliancy, or their applications to industry and art.
+
+These essays need not be and they are not always superficial, because
+they are brief. They often are the more profound on account of their
+conciseness, as when they contain a condensed summary of the main
+principles of the art or science in question, or a brief history of the
+successive experiments which have issued in some brilliant discovery.
+These essays are very generally read, even though they are both concise
+and profound. But they could not be read even though they were less
+profound than they are, were there not provided a numerous company of
+readers who are sufficiently instructed in science to appreciate them.
+That such a body of readers exists in the countries referred to, is
+easily explained by the existence of public schools and schools of
+science and technology, by the enormous extension of the knowledge of
+machinery, engineering, mining, dyeing, etc., etc., all of which imply a
+more or less distinct recognition of scientific principles and stimulate
+the curiosity in regard to scientific truth. Popular lectures also,
+illustrated by experiments, have been repeated before thousands of
+excited listeners, and the eager and inventive minds of multitudes of
+ingenious youths have been trained by this distribution of science, to
+the capacity to comprehend the compact and pointed scientific essay,
+even though it taxes the attention and suspends the breath for a
+half-hour by its closeness and severity.
+
+The fact is also worthy of notice, that many of the ablest scientists of
+our times have made a special study of the art of expounding and
+presenting scientific truth. Some of them have schooled themselves to
+that lucid and orderly method by which a science seems to spring into
+being a second time, under the creative hand of its skilful expositor.
+Others have made a special study of philosophic diction. Others have
+learned how to adorn scientific truth with the embellishments of an
+affluent imagination. Some of the ablest writers of our time are found
+among the devotees of physical science. That a few scientific writers
+and lecturers may have exemplified some of the most offensive features
+of the demagogue and the sophist cannot be denied, but we may not forget
+that many have attained to the consummate skill of the accomplished
+essayist and impressive and eloquent orator.
+
+One advantage cannot be denied of this now popular and established
+method of setting forth scientific truth, viz., that it prescribes a
+convenient method of bringing into contrast the arguments _for_ and
+_against_ any disputed position in science. If materialism can furnish
+its ready advocate with a convenient vehicle for its ready diffusion,
+the antagonist theory can avail itself of a similar vehicle for the
+communication of the decisive and pungent reply. The one is certain to
+call forth the other, and if the two are present side by side in the
+same series, so much the better is it for the truth and so much the
+worse for the error. The teacher before his class, the lecturer in the
+presence of his audience, has the argument usually to himself; he allows
+few questionings and admits no reply. An erroneous theory may entrench
+itself within a folio against arguments which would annihilate its
+positions if these were condensed in a tract.
+
+This consideration should dispel all the alarm that is felt by the
+defenders of religion in view of the general diffusion of popular
+scientific treatises. The brief statement of a false or groundless
+scientific theory, even by its defender, is often its most effectual
+refutation. A magnificently imposing argument often shrinks into
+insignificance when its advocate is forced to state its substance in a
+compact and close-jointed outline. The articulations are seen to be
+defective, the joints do not fit one another, the coherence is
+conspicuously wanting. Let then error do its utmost in the field of
+science. Its deficient data and its illogical processes are certain to
+be exposed, sometimes even by its own advocates. If this does not happen
+the defender of that scientific truth which seems to be essential to the
+teachings and faiths of religion, must scrutinize its reasonings by the
+rules and methods of scientific inquiry. If science seems to be hostile
+to religion, this very seeming should arouse the defender of Theism and
+Christianity to examine into the grounds both by the light and methods
+which are appropriate to science itself. The more brief and compact and
+popular is the argument which he is to refute, the more feasible is the
+task of exposure and reply. Only let this be a cardinal maxim with the
+defender of the truth, that whatever is scientifically defended and
+maintained must be scientifically refuted and overthrown. The great
+Master of our faith never uttered a more comprehensive or a grander
+maxim than the memorable words, “_To this end was I born and for this
+cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.
+Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice._” It would be easy to
+show that the belief in moral and religious truth and the freedom in
+searching for and defending it which was inspired by these words have
+been most efficient in training the human mind to that faith in the
+results of scientific investigation which characterize the modern
+scientist. That Christian believer must either have a very imperfect
+view of the spirit of his own faith, or a very narrow conception of the
+evidences and the effect of its teachings, who imagines that the freest
+spirit of scientific inquiry, or the most penetrating insight into the
+secrets of matter or of spirit can have any other consequence than to
+strengthen and brighten the evidence for Christian truth.
+
+                                                                   N. P.
+
+    YALE COLLEGE, _May_, 1872.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                  PUBLISHERS’ NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.
+
+
+The five lectures embodied in this First Series of Half Hours with
+Modern Scientists were first published as Nos. I.—V. of the University
+Scientific Series. In this series the publishers have aimed to give to
+the public in a cheap pamphlet form, the advance thought in the
+Scientific world. The intrinsic value of these lectures has created a
+very general desire to have them put in a permanent form. They therefore
+have brought them out in this style. Each five succeeding numbers of
+this celebrated series will be printed and bound in uniform style with
+this volume, and be designated as second series, third series, and so
+on. Henceforth it will be the design of the publishers to give
+preference to those lectures and essays of American scientists which
+contain original research and discovery, rather than to reprinting from
+European sources. The lectures in the second series will be (1) On
+Natural Selection as Applied to Man, by Alfred Russel Wallace; (2) three
+profoundly interesting lectures on Spectrum Analysis, by Profs. Roscoe,
+Huggins, and Lockyer; (3) the Sun and its Different Atmospheres, a
+lecture by Prof. C. A. Young, Ph.D., of Dartmouth College; (4) the Earth
+a great Magnet, by Prof. A. M. Mayer, Ph.D., of Stevens Institute; and
+(5) the Mysteries of the Voice and Ear, by Prof. Ogden N. Rood, of
+Columbia College. The last three lectures contain many original
+discoveries and brilliant experiments, and are finely illustrated.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                             ──────────────
+                    _ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE._
+                             ──────────────
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                             INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+The following remarkable discourse was originally delivered in
+Edinburgh, November 18th, 1868, as the first of a series of Sunday
+evening addresses, upon non-religious topics, instituted by the Rev. J.
+Cranbrook. It was subsequently published in London as the leading
+article in the _Fortnightly Review_, for February, 1869, and attracted
+so much attention that five editions of that number of the magazine have
+already been issued. It is now re-printed in this country, in permanent
+form, for the first time, and will doubtless prove of great interest to
+American readers. The author is Thomas Henry Huxley, of London,
+Professor of Natural History in the Royal School of Mines, and of
+Comparative Anatomy and Physiology in the Royal College of Surgeons. He
+is also President of the Geological Society of London. Although
+comparatively a young man, his numerous and valuable contributions to
+Natural Science entitle him to be considered one of the first of living
+Naturalists, especially in the departments of Zoölogy and Paleontology,
+to which he has mainly devoted himself. He is undoubtedly the ablest
+English advocate of Darwin’s theory of the Origin of Species,
+particularly with reference to its application to the human race, which
+he believes to be nearly related to the higher apes. It is, indeed,
+through his discussion of this question that he is, perhaps, best known
+to the general public, as his late work entitled “Man’s Place in
+Nature,” and other writings on similar topics, have been very widely
+read in this country and in Europe. In the present lecture Professor
+Huxley discusses a kindred subject of no less interest and importance,
+and should have an equally candid hearing.
+
+YALE COLLEGE, _March_ 30_th_, 1869.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                     On the Physical Basis of Life.
+
+
+In order to make the title of this discourse generally intelligible, I
+have translated the term “Protoplasm,” which is the scientific name of
+the substance of which I am about to speak, by the words “the physical
+basis of life.” I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is such a
+thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novel—so widely
+spread is the conception of life as a something which works through
+matter, but is independent of it; and even those who are aware that
+matter and life are inseparably connected, may not be prepared for the
+conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase “the physical basis or matter
+of life,” that there is some one kind of matter which is common to all
+living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by
+a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first apprehended,
+such a doctrine as this appears almost shocking to common sense. What,
+truly, can seem to be more obviously different from one another in
+faculty, in form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living
+beings? What community of faculty can there be between the
+brightly-colored lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral
+incrustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to
+whom it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with
+knowledge?
+
+Again, think of the microscopic fungus—a mere infinitesimal ovoid
+particle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply into
+countless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth
+of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this
+bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the
+dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres
+with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and
+go around its vast circumference! Or, turning to the other half of the
+world of life, picture to yourselves the great finner whale, hugest of
+beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of
+bone, muscle and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the
+stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would founder hopelessly; and
+contrast him with the invisible animalcules—mere gelatinous specks,
+multitudes of which could, in fact, dance upon the point of a needle
+with the same ease as the angels of the schoolmen could, in imagination.
+With these images before your minds, you may well ask what community of
+form, or structure, is there between the animalcule and the whale, or
+between the fungus and fig-tree? And, _a fortiori_, between all four?
+
+Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition, what hidden
+bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her hair and the blood
+which courses through her youthful veins; or, what is there in common
+between the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of
+the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seen
+pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere
+films in the hand which raises them out of their element? Such
+objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every one who
+ponders, for the first time, upon the conception of a single physical
+basis of life underlying all the diversities of vital existence; but I
+propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent
+difficulties, a threefold unity—namely, a unity of power or faculty, a
+unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition—does pervade the
+whole living world. No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the
+first place, to prove that the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of
+living matter, diverse as they may be in degree, are substantially
+similar in kind. Goethe has condensed a survey of all the powers of
+mankind into the well-known epigram:
+
+    “Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich
+    ernähren Kinder zeugen, und sie nähren so gut es vermag.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich, wie er auch will.”
+
+In physiological language this means, that all the multifarious and
+complicated activities of man are comprehensible under three categories.
+Either they are immediately directed towards the maintenance and
+development of the body, or they effect transitory changes in the
+relative positions of parts of the body, or they tend towards the
+continuance of the species. Even those manifestations of intellect, of
+feeling, and of will, which we rightly name the higher faculties, are
+not excluded from this classification, inasmuch as to every one but the
+subject of them, they are known only as transitory changes in the
+relative positions of parts of the body. Speech, gesture, and every
+other form of human action are, in the long run, resolvable into
+muscular contraction, and muscular contraction is but a transitory
+change in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. But the
+scheme, which is large enough to embrace the activities of the highest
+form of life, covers all those of the lower creatures. The lowest plant,
+or animalcule, feeds, grows and reproduces its kind. In addition, all
+animals manifest those transitory changes of form which we class under
+irritability and contractility; and it is more than probable, that when
+the vegetable world is thoroughly explored, we shall find all plants in
+possession of the same powers, at one time or other of their existence.
+I am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare and conspicuous,
+as those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plant, or the
+stamens of the barberry, but to much more widely-spread, and, at the
+same time, more subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable
+contractility. You are doubtless aware that the common nettle owes its
+stinging property to the innumerable stiff and needle-like, though
+exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover its surface. Each
+stinging-needle tapers from a broad base to a slender summit, which,
+though rounded at the end, is of such microscopic fineness that it
+readily penetrates, and breaks off in, the skin. The whole hair consists
+of a very delicate outer case of wood, closely applied to the inner
+surface of which is a layer of semi-fluid matter, full of innumerable
+granules of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm,
+which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid, and
+roughly corresponding in form with the interior of the hair which it
+fills. When viewed with a sufficiently high magnifying power, the
+protoplasmic layer of the nettle hair is seen to be in a condition of
+unceasing activity. Local contractions of the whole thickness of its
+substance pass slowly and gradually from point to point, and give rise
+to the appearance of progressive waves, just as the bending of
+successive stalks of corn by a breeze produces the apparent billows of a
+corn-field. But, in addition to these movements, and independently of
+them, the granules are driven, in relatively rapid streams, through
+channels in the protoplasm which seem to have a considerable amount of
+persistence. Most commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the
+protoplasm take similar directions; and, thus, there is a general stream
+up one side of the hair and down the other. But this does not prevent
+the existence of partial currents which take different routes; and,
+sometimes, trains of granules may be seen coursing swiftly in opposite
+directions, within a twenty-thousandth of an inch of one another; while,
+occasionally, opposite streams come into direct collision, and, after a
+longer or shorter struggle, one predominates. The cause of these
+currents seem to lie in contractions of the protoplasm which bounds the
+channels in which they flow, but which are so minute that the best
+microscopes show only their effects, and not themselves.
+
+The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned within the
+compass of the microscopic hair of a plant, which we commonly regard as
+a merely passive organism, is not easily forgotten by one who has
+watched its display continued hour after hour, without pause or sign of
+weakening. The possible complexity of many other organic forms,
+seemingly as simple as the protoplasm of the nettle, dawns upon one; and
+the comparison of such a protoplasm to a body with an internal
+circulation, which has been put forward by an eminent physiologist,
+loses much of its startling character. Currents similar to those of the
+hairs of the nettle have been observed in a great multitude of very
+different plants, and weighty authorities have suggested that they
+probably occur, in more or less perfection, in all young vegetable
+cells. If such be the case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical
+forest is, after all, due only to the dullness of our hearing; and could
+our ears catch the murmur of these tiny maelstroms, as they whirl in the
+innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we
+should be stunned, as with the roar of a great city.
+
+Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the exception, that
+contractility should be still more openly manifested at some periods of
+their existence. The protoplasm of _Algæ_ and _Fungi_ becomes, under
+many circumstances, partially, or completely, freed from its woody case,
+and exhibits movements of its whole mass, or is propelled by the
+contractility of one or more hair-like prolongations of its body, which
+are called vibratile cilia. And, so far as the conditions of the
+manifestation of the phenomena of contractility have yet been studied,
+they are the same for the plant as for the animal. Heat and electric
+shocks influence both, and in the same way, though it may be in
+different degrees. It is by no means my intention to suggest that there
+is no difference in faculty between the lowest plant and the highest, or
+between plants and animals. But the difference between the powers of the
+lowest plant, or animal, and those of the highest is one of degree, not
+of kind, and depends, as Milne-Edwards long ago so well pointed out,
+upon the extent to which the principle of the division of labor is
+carried out in the living economy. In the lowest organism all parts are
+competent to perform all functions, and one and the same portion of
+protoplasm may successively take on the function of feeding, moving, or
+reproducing apparatus. In the highest, on the contrary, a great number
+of parts combine to perform each function, each part doing its allotted
+share of the work with great accuracy and efficiency, but being useless
+for any other purpose. On the other hand, notwithstanding all the
+fundamental resemblances which exist between the powers of the
+protoplasm in plants and in animals, they present a striking difference
+(to which I shall advert more at length presently,) in the fact that
+plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of mineral compounds,
+whereas animals are obliged to procure it ready-made, and hence, in the
+long run, depend upon plants. Upon what condition this difference in the
+powers of the two great divisions of the world of life depends, nothing
+is at present known.
+
+With such qualification as arises out of the last-mentioned fact, it may
+be truly said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally one.
+Is any such unity predicable of their forms? Let us seek in easily
+verified facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be drawn
+by pricking one’s finger, and viewed with proper precautions and under a
+sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be seen, among the
+innumerable multitude of little, circular, discoidal bodies, or
+corpuscles, which float in it and give it its color, a comparatively
+small number of colorless corpuscles, of somewhat larger size and very
+irregular shape. If the drop of blood be kept at the temperature of the
+body, these colorless corpuscles will be seen to exhibit a marvelous
+activity, changing their forms with great rapidity, drawing in and
+thrusting out prolongations of their substance, and creeping about as if
+they were independent organisms. The substance which is thus active is a
+mass of protoplasm, and its activity differs in detail, rather than in
+principle, from that of the protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry
+circumstances the corpuscle dies and becomes distended into a round
+mass, in the midst of which is seen a smaller spherical body, which
+existed, but was more or less hidden, in the living corpuscle, and is
+called its _nucleus_. Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are to
+be found in the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and scattered through
+the whole frame work of the body. Nay, more; in the earliest condition
+of the human organism, in that state in which it has just become
+distinguishable from the egg in which it arises, it is nothing but an
+aggregation of such corpuscles, and every organ of the body was, once,
+no more than such an aggregation. Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm
+turns out to be what may be termed the structural unit of the human
+body. As a matter of fact, the body, in its earliest state, is a mere
+multiple of such units; and, in its perfect condition, it is a multiple
+of such units, variously modified. But does the formula which expresses
+the essential structural character of the highest animal cover all the
+rest, as the statement of its powers and faculties covered that of all
+others? Very nearly. Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm,
+and polype, are all composed of structural units of the same character,
+namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There are sundry very low
+animals, each of which, structurally, is a mere colorless
+blood-corpuscle, leading an independent life. But, at the very bottom of
+the animal scale, even this simplicity becomes simplified, and all the
+phenomena of life are manifested by a particle of protoplasm without a
+nucleus. Nor are such organisms insignificant by reason of their want of
+complexity. It is a fair question whether the protoplasm of those
+simplest forms of life, which people an immense extent of the bottom of
+the sea, would not outweigh that of all the higher living beings which
+inhabit the land, put together. And in ancient times, no less than at
+the present day, such living beings as these have been the greatest of
+rock builders.
+
+What has been said of the animal world is no less true of plants.
+Imbedded in the protoplasm at the broad, or attached, end of the nettle
+hair, there lies a spheroidal nucleus. Careful examination further
+proves that the whole substance of the nettle is made up of a repetition
+of such masses of nucleated protoplasm, each contained in a wooden case,
+which is modified in form, sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes into
+a duct or spiral vessel, sometimes into a pollen grain, or an ovule.
+Traced back to its earliest state, the nettle arises as the man does, in
+a particle of nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest plants, as in the
+lowest animals, a single mass of such protoplasm may constitute the
+whole plant, or the protoplasm may exist without a nucleus. Under these
+circumstances it may well be asked, how is one mass of non-nucleated
+protoplasm to be distinguished from another? why call one “plant” and
+the other “animal?” The only reply is that, so far as form is concerned,
+plants and animals are not separable, and that, in many cases, it is a
+mere matter of convention whether we call a given organism an animal or
+a plant.
+
+There is a living body called _Æthalium septicum_, which appears upon
+decaying vegetable substances, and in one of its forms, is common upon
+the surface of tan pits. In this condition it is, to all intents and
+purposes, a fungus, and formerly was always regarded as such; but the
+remarkable investigations of De Bary have shown that, in another
+condition, the _Æthalium_ is an actively locomotive creature, and takes
+in solid matters, upon which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the
+most characteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant, or is it an
+animal? Is it both, or is it neither? Some decide in favor of the last
+supposition, and establish an intermediate kingdom, a sort of biological
+No Man’s Land for all these questionable forms. But, as it is admittedly
+impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between this no man’s land
+and the vegetable world on the one hand, or the animal, on the other, it
+appears to me that this proceeding merely doubles the difficulty which,
+before, was single. Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis
+of all life. It is the clay of the potter; which, bake it and paint it
+as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from
+the commonest brick or sun-dried clod. Thus it becomes clear that all
+living powers are cognate, and that all living forms are fundamentally
+of one character.
+
+The researches of the chemist have revealed a no less striking
+uniformity of material composition in living matter. In perfect
+strictness, it is true that chemical investigation can tell us little or
+nothing, directly, of the composition of living matter, inasmuch as such
+matter must needs die in the act of analysis, and upon this very obvious
+ground, objections, which I confess seem to me to be somewhat frivolous,
+have been raised to the drawing of any conclusions whatever respecting
+the composition of actually living matter from that of the dead matter
+of life, which alone is accessible to us. But objectors of this class do
+not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true that we know
+nothing about the composition of any body whatever, as it is. The
+statement that a crystal of calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime, is
+quite true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes, it may be
+resolved into carbonic acid and quicklime. If you pass the same carbonic
+acid over the very quicklime thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of
+lime again; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it. Can it,
+therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing about the
+chemical composition of calc-spar? Such a statement would be absurd; but
+it is hardly more so than the talk one occasionally hears about the
+uselessness of applying the results of chemical analysis to the living
+bodies which have yielded them. One fact, at any rate, is out of reach
+of such refinements, and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which
+have yet been examined contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union, and that they behave
+similarly towards several reagents. To this complex combination, the
+nature of which has never been determined with exactness, the name of
+Protein has been applied. And if we use this term with such caution as
+may properly arise out of our comparative ignorance of the things for
+which it stands, it may be truly said, that all protoplasm is
+proteinaceous; or, as the white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the
+commonest examples of a nearly pure protein matter, we may say that all
+living matter is more or less albuminoid. Perhaps it would not yet be
+safe to say that all forms of protoplasm are affected by the direct
+action of electric shocks; and yet the number of cases in which the
+contraction of protoplasm is shown to be affected by this agency
+increases, every day. Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence
+that all forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar
+coagulation at the temperature of 40 degrees—50 degrees centigrade,
+which has been called “heat-stiffening,” though Kühne’s beautiful
+researches have proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such
+diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the law
+holds good for all. Enough has, perhaps, been said to prove the
+existence of a general uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or
+physical basis of life, in whatever group of living beings it may be
+studied. But it will be understood that this general uniformity by no
+means excludes any amount of special modifications of the fundamental
+substance. The mineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity
+of characters, though no one doubts that under all these Protean changes
+it is one and the same thing.
+
+And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin of the matter of
+life? Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused
+throughout the universe in molecules, which are indestructible and
+unchangeable in themselves; but, in endless transmigration, unite in
+innumerable permutations, into the diversified forms of life we know?
+Or, is the matter of life composed of ordinary matter, differing from it
+only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated? Is it built up of
+ordinary matter, and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work
+is done? Modern science does not hesitate a moment between these
+alternatives. Physiology writes over the portals of life,
+
+                     “Debemur morti nos nostraque,”
+
+with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to that
+melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, whether fungus
+or oak, worm or man, the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and
+is resolved into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always
+dying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it
+died. In the wonderful story of the “Peau de Chagrin,” the hero becomes
+possessed of a magical wild ass’s skin, which yields him the means of
+gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of
+the proprietor’s life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks
+in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the
+last handbreadth of the “Peau de Chagrin,” disappear with the
+gratification of a last wish. Balzac’s studies had led him over a wide
+range of thought and speculation, and his shadowing forth of
+physiological truth in this strange story may have been intentional. At
+any rate, the matter of life is a veritable “Peau de Chagrin,” and for
+every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and
+the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of
+protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical
+loss; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have
+light—so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic
+acid, water and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure
+cannot go on forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic _peau de chagrin_
+differs from Balzac’s in its capacity of being repaired, and brought
+back to its full size, after every exertion. For example, this present
+lecture, whatever its intellectual worth to you, has a certain physical
+value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains
+of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital
+processes during its delivery. My _peau de chagrin_ will be distinctly
+smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the beginning.
+By-and-by, I shall probably have recourse to the substance commonly
+called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its original
+size. Now this mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or less
+modified, of another animal—a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the same
+matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure to sundry artificial
+operations in the process of cooking. But these changes, whatever be
+their extent, have not rendered it incompetent to resume its old
+functions as matter of life. A singular inward laboratory, which I
+possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the modified protoplasm, the
+solution so formed will pass into my veins; and the subtle influences to
+which it will then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into
+living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man. Nor is this all.
+If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I might sup upon lobster,
+and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergo the same
+wonderful metamorphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my own
+place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacea might, and probably
+would, return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature by
+turning my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were to
+be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I should find the
+protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible into man, with no more
+trouble than that of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of
+the lobster. Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what
+animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm, and the
+fact speaks volumes for the general identity of that substance in all
+living beings. I share this catholicity of assimilation with other
+animals, all of which, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on
+the protoplasm of any of their fellows, or of any plant; but here the
+assimilative powers of the animal world cease.
+
+A solution of smelling-salts in water with an infinitesimal proportion
+of some other saline matters, contains all the elementary bodies which
+enter into the composition of protoplasm; but, as I need hardly say, a
+hogshead of that fluid would not keep a hungry man from starving, nor
+would it save any animal whatever from a like fate. An animal cannot
+make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from some other animal, or
+some plant—the animal’s highest feat of constructive chemistry being to
+convert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is
+appropriate to itself. Therefore, in seeking for the origin of
+protoplasm, we must eventually turn to the vegetable world. The fluid
+containing carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, which offers such a
+barmecide feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes of
+plants; and with a due supply of only such materials, many a plant will
+not only maintain itself in vigor, but grow and multiply until it has
+increased a million-fold, or a million million-fold, the quantity of
+protoplasm which it originally possessed; in this way building up the
+matter of life, to an indefinite extent, from the common matter of the
+universe. Thus the animal can only raise the complex substance of dead
+protoplasm to the higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm;
+while the plant can raise the less complex substances—carbonic acid,
+water, and ammonia—to the same stage of living protoplasm, if not to the
+same level. But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi,
+for example, appear to need higher compounds to start with, and no known
+plant can live upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. A plant
+supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus,
+sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal in his bath
+of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded by all the constituents
+of protoplasm. Nor, indeed, need the process of simplification of
+vegetable food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at the
+limit of the plant’s thaumaturgy.
+
+Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful constituents, be
+supplied without ammonia, and an ordinary plant will still be unable to
+manufacture protoplasm. Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it
+(and we have no right to speculate on any other) breaks up in
+consequence of that continual death which is the condition of its
+manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, which
+certainly possess no properties but those of ordinary matter; and out of
+these same forms of ordinary matter and from none which are simpler, the
+vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which keeps the animal
+world agoing. Plants are the accumulators of the power which animals
+distribute and disperse.
+
+But it will be observed, that the existence of the matter of life
+depends on the preëxistence of certain compounds, namely, carbonic acid,
+water, and ammonia. Withdraw any one of these three from the world and
+all vital phenomena come to an end. They are related to the protoplasm
+of the plant, as the protoplasm of the plant is to that of the animal.
+Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of
+these, carbon and oxygen unite in certain proportion and under certain
+conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen and oxygen produce
+water; nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to ammonia. These new compounds,
+like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless. But
+when they are brought together, under certain conditions they give rise
+to the still more complex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits
+the phenomena of life. I see no break in this series of steps in
+molecular complication, and I am unable to understand why the language
+which is applicable to any one term of the series may not be used to any
+of the others. We think fit to call different kinds of matter carbon,
+oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers and
+activities of these substances as the properties of the matter of which
+they are composed. When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain
+proportion, and the electric spark is passed through them, they
+disappear and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the sum of their
+weights, appears in their place. There is not the slightest parity
+between the passive and active powers of the water and those of the
+oxygen and hydrogen which have given rise to it. At 32 degrees
+Fahrenheit, and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen are
+elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to rush away from one
+another with great force. Water, at the same temperature, is a strong
+though brittle solid, whose particles tend to cohere into definite
+geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty imitations of the most
+complex forms of vegetable foliage. Nevertheless we call these, and many
+other strange phenomena, the properties of the water, and we do not
+hesitate to believe that, in some way or another, they result from the
+properties of the component elements of the water. We do not assume that
+a something called “aquosity” entered into and took possession of the
+oxide of hydrogen as soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous
+particles to their places in the facets of the crystal, or amongst the
+leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the contrary, we live in the hope and in
+the faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by
+be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the
+properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a
+watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put
+together. Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water and
+ammonia disappear, and in their place, under the influence of
+preëxisting living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the matter of
+life makes its appearance? It is true that there is no sort of parity
+between the properties of the components and the properties of the
+resultant, but neither was there in the case of the water. It is also
+true that what I have spoken of as the influence of preëxisting living
+matter is something quite unintelligible; but does any body quite
+comprehend the _modus operandi_ of an electric spark, which traverses a
+mixture of oxygen and hydrogen? What justification is there, then, for
+the assumption of the existence in the living matter of a something
+which has no representative or correlative in the not living matter
+which gave rise to it? What better philosophical status has “vitality”
+than “aquosity?” And why should “vitality” hope for a better fate than
+the other “itys” which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus
+accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its inherent “meat
+roasting quality,” and scorned the “materialism” of those who explained
+the turning of the spit by a certain mechanism worked by the draught of
+the chimney? If scientific language is to possess a definite and
+constant signification whenever it is employed, it seems to me that we
+are logically bound to apply to the protoplasm, or physical basis of
+life, the same conceptions as those which are held to be legitimate
+elsewhere. If the phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so
+are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties. If
+the properties of water may be properly said to result from the nature
+and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no intelligible
+ground for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm result from
+the nature and disposition of its molecules. But I bid you beware that,
+in accepting these conclusions, you are placing your feet on the first
+rung of a ladder which, in most people’s estimation, is the reverse of
+Jacob’s, and leads to the antipodes of heaven. It may seem a small thing
+to admit that the dull vital actions of a fungus, or a foraminifer, are
+the properties of their protoplasm, and are the direct results of the
+nature of the matter of which they are composed.
+
+But if, as I have endeavored to prove to you, their protoplasm is
+essentially identical with, and most readily converted into, that of any
+animal, I can discover no logical halting place between the admission
+that such is the case, and the further concession that all vital action
+may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of the molecular
+forces of the protoplasm which displays it. And if so, it must be true,
+in the same sense and to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I
+am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are the
+expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the
+source of our other vital phenomena. Past experience leads me to be
+tolerably certain that, when the propositions I have just placed before
+you are accessible to public comment and criticism, they will be
+condemned by many zealous persons, and perhaps by some few of the wise
+and thoughtful. I should not wonder if “gross and brutal materialism”
+were the mildest phrase applied to them in certain quarters. And most
+undoubtedly the terms of the propositions are distinctly materialistic.
+Nevertheless, two things are certain: the one, that I hold the
+statements to be substantially true; the other, that I, individually, am
+no materialist, but, on the contrary, believe materialism to involve
+grave philosophical error.
+
+This union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation of
+materialistic philosophy I share with some of the most thoughtful men
+with whom I am acquainted. And, when I first undertook to deliver the
+present discourse, it appeared to me to be a fitting opportunity to
+explain how such an union is not only consistent with, but necessitated
+by sound logic. I purposed to lead you through the territory of vital
+phenomena to the materialistic slough in which you find yourselves now
+plunged, and then to point out to you the sole path by which, in my
+judgment, extrication is possible. An occurrence, of which I was unaware
+until my arrival here last night, renders this line of argument
+singularly opportune. I found in your papers the eloquent address “On
+the Limits of Philosophical Inquiry,” which a distinguished prelate of
+the English Church delivered before the members of the Philosophical
+Institution on the previous day. My argument, also, turns upon this very
+point of limits of philosophical inquiry; and I cannot bring out my own
+views better than by contrasting them with those so plainly, and, in the
+main, fairly stated by the Archbishop of York. But I may be permitted to
+make a preliminary comment upon an occurrence that greatly astonished
+me. Applying the name of “the New Philosophy” to that estimate of the
+limits of philosophical inquiry which I, in common with many other men
+of science, hold to be just, the Archbishop opens his address by
+identifying this “new philosophy” with the positive philosophy of M.
+Comte (of whom he speaks as its “founder”); and then proceeds to attack
+that philosopher and his doctrine vigorously. Now, so far as I am
+concerned, the most Reverend prelate might dialectically hew M. Comte in
+pieces, as a modern Agag, and I should not attempt to stay his hand. In
+so far as my study of what specially characterizes the Positive
+Philosophy has led me, I find therein little or nothing of any
+scientific value, and a great deal which is as thoroughly antagonistic
+to the very essence of science as anything in ultramontane Catholicism.
+In fact, M. Comte’s philosophy in practice might be compendiously
+described as Catholicism _minus_ Christianity. But what has Comptism to
+do with the “New Philosophy,” as the Archbishop defines it in the
+following passage?
+
+“Let me briefly remind you of the leading principles of this new
+philosophy.
+
+“All knowledge is experience of facts acquired by the senses. The
+traditions of older philosophies have obscured our experience by mixing
+with it much that the senses cannot observe, and until these additions
+are discarded our knowledge is impure. Thus, metaphysics tells us that
+one fact which we observe is a cause, and another is the effect of that
+cause; but upon a rigid analysis we find that our senses observe nothing
+of cause or effect; they observe, first, that one fact succeeds another,
+and, after some opportunity, that this fact has never failed to
+follow—that for cause and effect we should substitute invariable
+succession. An older philosophy teaches us to define an object by
+distinguishing its essential from its accidental qualities; but
+experience knows nothing of essential and accidental; she sees only that
+certain marks attach to an object, and, after many observations, that
+some of them attach invariably, whilst others may at times be absent. *
+* * * * As all knowledge is relative, the notion of anything being
+necessary must be banished with other traditions.”
+
+There is much here that expresses the spirit of the “New Philosophy,” if
+by that term be meant the spirit of modern science; but I cannot but
+marvel that the assembled wisdom and learning of Edinburgh should have
+uttered no sign of dissent, when Comte was declared to be the founder of
+these doctrines. No one will accuse Scotchmen of habitually forgetting
+their great countrymen; but it was enough to make David Hume turn in his
+grave, that here, almost within ear-shot of his house, an instructed
+audience should have listened, without a murmur, while his most
+characteristic doctrines were attributed to a French writer of fifty
+years later date, in whose dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the
+vigor of thought and the exquisite clearness of the style of the man
+whom I make bold to term the most acute thinker of the eighteenth
+century—even though that century produced Kant. But I did not come to
+Scotland to vindicate the honor of one of the greatest men she has ever
+produced. My business is to point out to you that the only way of escape
+out of the crass materialism in which we just now landed is the adoption
+and strict working out of the very principles which the Archbishop holds
+up to reprobation.
+
+Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not relative, and
+therefore, that our conception of matter represents that which it really
+is. Let us suppose, further, that we do know more of cause and effect
+than a certain definite order of succession among facts, and that we
+have a knowledge of the necessity of that succession—and hence, of
+necessary laws—and I, for my part, do not see what escape there is from
+utter materialism and necessitarianism. For it is obvious that our
+knowledge of what we call the material world is, to begin with, at least
+as certain and definite as that of the spiritual world, and that our
+acquaintance with the law is of as old a date as our knowledge of
+spontaneity.
+
+Further, I take it to be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible to
+prove that anything whatever may not be the effect of a material and
+necessary cause, and that human logic is equally incompetent to prove
+that any act is really spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is one
+which, by the assumption, has no cause; and the attempt to prove such a
+negative as this is, on the face of the matter, absurd. And while it is
+thus a philosophical impossibility to demonstrate that any given
+phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any one who is
+acquainted with the history of science will admit, that its progress
+has, in all ages, meant, and now more than ever means, the extension of
+the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant
+gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call
+spirit and spontaneity.
+
+I have endeavored, in the first part of this discourse, to give you a
+conception of the direction towards which modern physiology is tending;
+and I ask you, what is the difference between the conception of life as
+the product of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the old
+notion of an Archæus governing and directing blind matter within each
+living body, except this—that here, as elsewhere, matter and law have
+devoured spirit and spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out
+of past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually
+extend the realm of matter and law until it is coëxtensive with
+knowledge, with feeling, and with action. The consciousness of this
+great truth weighs like a nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best
+minds of these days. They watch what they conceive to be the progress of
+materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels, when,
+during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The
+advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls; the tightening
+grasp of law impedes their freedom; they are alarmed lest man’s moral
+nature be debased by the increase of his wisdom.
+
+If the “New Philosophy” be worthy of the reprobation with which it is
+visited, I confess their fears seem to me to be well founded. While, on
+the contrary, could David Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at
+their perplexities, and chide them for doing even as the heathen, and
+falling down in terror before the hideous idols their own hands have
+raised. For, after all, what do we know of this terrible “matter,”
+except as a name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our
+own consciousness? And what do we know of that “spirit” over whose
+threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising, like
+that which was heard at the death of Pan, except that it is also a name
+for an unknown and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of
+consciousness? In other words, matter and spirit are but names for the
+imaginary substrata of groups of natural phenomena. And what is the dire
+necessity and “iron” law under which men groan? Truly, most gratuitously
+invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an “iron” law, it is that of
+gravitation; and if there be a physical necessity, it is that a stone,
+unsupported, must fall to the ground. But what is all we really know and
+can know about the latter phenomenon? Simply, that, in all human
+experience, stones have fallen to the ground under these conditions;
+that we have not the smallest reason for believing that any stone so
+circumstanced will not fall to the ground, and that we have, on the
+contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very
+convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been
+fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that unsupported stones
+will fall to the ground, “a law of nature.” But when, as commonly
+happens, we change will into must, we introduce an idea of necessity
+which most assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no
+warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I utterly repudiate
+and anathematize the intruder. Fact, I know; and Law I know; but what is
+this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind’s throwing? But, if
+it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either
+matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity is something
+illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate conception of law,
+the materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but
+matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as
+the most baseless of theological dogmas.
+
+The fundamental doctrines of materialism, like those of spiritualism,
+and most other “isms,” lie outside “the limits of philosophical
+inquiry,” and David Hume’s great service to humanity is his irrefragable
+demonstration of what these limits are. Hume called himself a sceptic,
+and therefore others cannot be blamed if they apply the same title to
+him; but that does not alter the fact that the name, with its existing
+implications, does him gross injustice. If a man asks me what the
+politics of the inhabitants of the moon are, and I reply that I do not
+know; that neither I, nor any one else have any means of knowing; and
+that, under these circumstances I decline to trouble myself about the
+subject at all, I do not think he has any right to call me a sceptic. On
+the contrary, in replying thus, I conceive that I am simply honest and
+truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy of time. So Hume’s
+strong and subtle intellect takes up a great many problems about which
+we are naturally curious, and shows us that they are essentially
+questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable of being
+answered, and therefore not worth the attention of men who have work to
+do in the world. And thus ends one of his essays:
+
+    “If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school
+    metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, _Does it contain any
+    abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?_ No. _Does it
+    contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and
+    existence?_ No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain
+    nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
+
+Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble ourselves about
+matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and
+can know nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and
+ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make
+the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat
+less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually
+it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first,
+that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent
+which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for
+something as a condition of the course of events. Each of these beliefs
+can be verified experimentally, as often as we like to try. Each,
+therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which any belief
+can rest; and forms one of our highest truths.
+
+If we find that the ascertainment of the order of nature is facilitated
+by using one terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it
+is our clear duty to use the former, and no harm can accrue so long as
+we bear in mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols. In
+itself it is of little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter
+in terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in terms of matter;
+matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as
+a property of matter—each statement has a certain relative truth. But
+with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology is
+in every way to be preferred. For it connects thought with the other
+phenomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those
+physical conditions or concomitants of thought, which are more or less
+accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to
+exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought as we
+already possess in respect of the material world; whereas, the
+alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads
+to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas. Thus there can be
+little doubt that the further science advances, the more extensively and
+consistently will all the phenomena of nature be represented by
+materialistic formulæ and symbols. But the man of science, who,
+forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these
+formulæ and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism,
+seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathematician, who
+should mistake the _x’s_ and _y’s_, with which he works his problems,
+for real entities—and with this further disadvantage as compared with
+the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical
+consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyze the
+energies and destroy the beauty of a life.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+            _THE CORRELATION OF VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES._
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                            THE CORRELATION
+
+                                   OF
+
+                       VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES.
+
+
+In the Syracusan Poecile, says Alexander von Humboldt in his beautiful
+little allegory of the Rhodian Genius, hung a painting, which, for full
+a century, had continued to attract the attention of every visitor. In
+the foreground of this picture a numerous company of youths and maidens
+of earthly and sensuous appearance gazed fixedly upon a haloed Genius
+who hovered in their midst. A butterfly rested upon his shoulder, and he
+held in his hand a flaming torch. His every lineament bespoke a
+celestial origin. The attempts to solve the enigma of this
+painting—whose origin even was unknown—though numerous, were all in
+vain, when one day a ship arriving from Rhodes, laden with works of art,
+brought another picture, at once recognized as its companion. As before,
+the Genius stood in the center, but the butterfly had disappeared, and
+the torch was reversed and extinguished. The youths and maidens were no
+longer sad and submissive, their mutual embraces announcing their entire
+emancipation from restraint. Still unable to solve the riddle, Dionysius
+sent the pictures to the Pythagorean sage, Epicharmus. After gazing upon
+them long and earnestly, he said: Sixty years long have I pondered on
+the internal springs of nature, and on the differences inherent in
+matter; but it is only this day that the Rhodian Genius has taught me to
+see clearly that which before I had only conjectured. In inanimate
+nature, everything seeks its like. Everything, as soon as formed,
+hastens to enter into new combinations, and nought save the disjoining
+art of man can present in a separate state ingredients which ye would
+vainly seek in the interior of the earth or in the moving oceans of air
+and water. Different, however, is the blending of the same substances in
+animal and vegetable bodies. Here vital force imperatively asserts its
+rights, and heedless of the affinity and antagonism of the atoms, unites
+substances which in inanimate nature ever flee from each other, and
+separates that which is incessantly striving to unite. Recognize,
+therefore, in the Rhodian Genius, in the expression of his youthful
+vigor, in the butterfly on his shoulder, in the commanding glance of his
+eye, the symbol of vital force as it animates every germ of organic
+creation. The earthly elements at his feet are striving to gratify their
+own desires and to mingle with one another. Imperiously the Genius
+threatens them with upraised and high-flaming torch, and compels them
+regardless of their ancient rights, to obey his laws. Look now on the
+new work of art; turn from life to death. The butterfly has soared
+upward, the extinguished torch is reversed, and the head of the youth is
+drooping; the spirit has fled to other spheres, and the vital force is
+extinct. Now the youths and maidens join their hands in joyous accord.
+Earthly matter again resumes its rights. Released from all bonds, they
+impetuously follow their natural instincts, and the day of his death is
+to them a day of nuptials.[1]
+
+The view here put by Humboldt into the mouth of Epicharmus may be taken
+as a fair representation of the current opinion of all ages concerning
+vital force. To-day, as truly as seventy-five years ago when Humboldt
+wrote, the mysterious and awful phenomena of life are commonly
+attributed to some controlling agent residing in the organism—to some
+independent presiding deity, holding it in absolute subjection. Such a
+notion it was which prompted Heraclitus to talk of a universal fire, Van
+Helmont to propose his Archæus, Hofmann his vital fluid, Hunter his
+_materia vitæ diffusa_, and Humboldt his vital force.[2] All these names
+assume the existence of a material or immaterial something, more or less
+separable from the material body, and more or less identical with the
+mind or soul, which is the cause of the phenomena of living beings. But
+as science moved irresistibly onward, and it became evident that the
+forces of inorganic nature were neither deities nor imponderable fluids,
+separable from matter, but were simple affections of it, analogy
+demanded a like concession in behalf of vital force.[3] From the notion
+that the effects of heat were due to an imponderable fluid called
+caloric, discovery passed to the conviction that heat was but a motion
+of material particles, and hence inseparable from matter. To a like
+assumption concerning vitality it was now but a step. The more advanced
+thinkers in science of to-day, therefore, look upon the life of the
+living form as inseparable from its substance, and believe that the
+former is purely phenomenal, and only a manifestation of the latter.
+Denying the existence of a special vital force as such, they retain the
+term only to express the sum of the phenomena of living beings.
+
+In calling your attention this evening to the Correlation of the
+Physical and the Vital Forces, I have a twofold object in view. On the
+one hand, I would seek to interest you in a comparatively recent
+discovery of Science, and one which is destined to play a most important
+part in promoting man’s welfare; and on the other I would inquire what
+part our own country has had in these discoveries.
+
+In the first place, then, let us consider what the evidences are that
+vital and physical forces are correlated. Let us inquire how far
+inorganic and organic forces may be considered mutually convertible, and
+hence, in so far, mutually identical. This may best be done by
+considering, first, what is to be understood by correlation: and second,
+how far are the physical forces themselves correlated to each other.
+
+At the outset of our discussion, we are met by an unfortunate ambiguity
+of language. The word Force, as commonly used, has three distinct
+meanings; in the first place, it is used to express the cause of motion,
+as when we speak of the force of gunpowder; it is also used to indicate
+motion itself, as when we refer to the force of a moving cannon-ball;
+and lastly it is employed to express the effect of motion, as when we
+speak of the blow which the moving body gives.[4] Because of this
+confusion, it has been found convenient to adopt Rankine’s
+suggestion,[5] and to substitute the word ‘energy’ therefor. And
+precisely as all force upon the earth’s surface—using the term force in
+its widest sense—may be divided into attraction and motion, so all
+energy is divided into potential and actual energy, synonymous with
+those terms. It is the chemical attraction of the atoms, or their
+potential energy, which makes gunpowder so powerful; it is the
+attraction or potential energy of gravitation which gives the power to a
+raised weight. If now, the impediments be removed, the power just now
+latent becomes active, attraction is converted into motion, potential
+into actual energy, and the desired effect is accomplished. The energy
+of gunpowder or of a raised weight is potential, is capable of acting;
+that of exploding gunpowder or of a falling weight is actual energy or
+motion. By applying a match to the gunpowder, by cutting the string
+which sustains the weight, we convert potential into actual energy. By
+potential energy, therefore, is meant attraction; and by actual energy,
+motion. It is in the latter sense that we shall use the word force in
+this lecture; and we shall speak of the forces of heat, light,
+electricity and mechanical motion, and of the attractions of
+gravitation, cohesion, chemism.
+
+From what has now been said, it is obvious that when we speak of the
+forces of heat, light, electricity or motion, we mean simply the
+different modes of motion called by these names. And when we say that
+they are correlated to each other, we mean simply that the mode of
+motion called heat, light, electricity, is convertible into any of the
+others, at pleasure. Correlation therefore implies convertibility, and
+mutual dependence and relationship.
+
+Having now defined the use of the term force, and shown that forces are
+correlated which are convertible and mutually dependent, we go on to
+study the evidences of such correlation among the motions of inorganic
+nature usually called physical forces; and to ask what proof science can
+furnish us that mechanical motion, heat, light, and electricity are thus
+mutually convertible. As we have already hinted, the time was when these
+forces were believed to be various kinds of imponderable matter, and
+chemists and physicists talked of the union of iron with caloric as they
+talked of its union with sulphur, regarding the caloric as much a
+distinct and inconvertible entity as the iron and sulphur themselves.
+Gradually, however, the idea of the indestructibility of matter extended
+itself to force. And as it was believed that no material particle could
+ever be lost, so, it was argued, no portion of the force existing in
+nature can disappear. Hence arose the idea of the indestructibility of
+force. But, of course, it was quite impossible to stop here. If force
+cannot be lost, the question at once arises, what becomes of it when it
+passes beyond our recognition? This question led to experiment, and out
+of experiment came the great fact of force-correlation; a fact which
+distinguished authority has pronounced the most important discovery of
+the present century.[6] These experiments distinctly proved that when
+any one of these forces disappeared, another took its place; that when
+motion was arrested, for example, heat, light or electricity was
+developed. In short, that these forces were so intimately related or
+correlated—to use the word then proposed by Mr. Grove[7]—that when one
+of them vanished, it did so only to reappear in terms of another. But
+one step more was necessary to complete this magnificent theory. What
+can produce motion but motion itself? Into what can motion be converted,
+but motion? May not these forces, thus mutually convertible, be simply
+different modes of motion of the molecules of matter, precisely as
+mechanical motion is a motion of its mass? Thus was born the dynamic
+theory of force, first brought out in any completeness by Mr. Grove, in
+1842, in a lecture on the “Progress of Physical Science,” delivered at
+the London Institution. In that lecture he said: “Light, heat,
+electricity, magnetism, motion, are all convertible material affections.
+Assuming either as the cause, one of the others will be the effect. Thus
+heat may be said to produce electricity, electricity to produce heat;
+magnetism to produce electricity, electricity magnetism; and so of the
+rest.”[8]
+
+A few simple experiments will help us to fix in our minds the great fact
+of the convertibility of force. Starting with actual visible motion,
+correlation requires that when it disappears as motion, it should
+reappear as heat, light, or electricity. If the moving body be elastic
+like this rubber ball, then its motion is not destroyed when it strikes,
+but is only changed in direction. But if it be non-elastic, like this
+ball of lead, then it does not rebound; its motion is converted into
+heat. The motion of this sledge-hammer, for example, which if received
+upon this anvil would be simply changed in direction, if allowed to fall
+upon this bar of lead, is converted into heat; the evidence of which is
+that a piece of phosphorus placed upon the lead is at once inflamed. So
+too, if motion be arrested by the cushion of air in this cylinder, the
+heat evolved fires the tinder carried in the plunger. But it is not
+necessary that the arrest of motion should be sudden; it may be gradual,
+as in the case of friction. If this cylinder containing water or alcohol
+be caused to revolve rapidly between the two sides of this wooden
+rubber, the heat due to the arrested motion will raise the temperature
+of the liquid to the boiling point, and the cork will be expelled. But
+motion may also be converted into electricity. Indeed electricity is
+always the result of friction between heterogeneous particles.[9] When
+this piece of hard rubber, for example, is rubbed with the fur of a cat,
+it is at once electrified; and now if it be caused to communicate a
+portion of its charge to this glass plate, to which at the same time we
+add the mechanical motion of rotation, the strong sparks produced give
+evidence of the conversion.
+
+So, too, taking heat as the initial force, motion, light, electricity
+may be produced. In every steam-engine the steam which leaves the
+cylinder is cooler than that which entered it, and cooler by exactly the
+amount of work done. The motion of the piston’s mass is precisely that
+lost by the steam molecules which batter against it. The conversion of
+heat into electricity, too, is also easily effected. When the junction
+of two metals is heated, electricity is developed. If the two metals be
+bismuth and antimony, as represented in this diagram, the currents flow
+as indicated by the arrows; and by multiplying the number of pairs, the
+effect may be proportionately increased. Such an arrangement, called a
+thermo-electric battery, we have here; and by it the heat of a single
+gas-burner may be made to move, when converted, this little electric
+bell-engine. Moreover, heat and light have the very closest analogy;
+exalt the rapidity with which the molecules move and light appears, the
+difference being only one of intensity.
+
+Again, if electricity be our starting point, we may accomplish its
+conversion into the other forces. Heat results whenever its passage is
+interrupted or resisted; a wire of the poorly conducting metal platinum
+becoming even red-hot by the converted electricity. To produce light, of
+course, we need only to intensify this action; the brightest artificial
+light known, results from a direct conversion of electricity.
+
+Enough has now been said to establish our point. What is to be
+particularly observed of these pieces of apparatus is that they are
+machines especially designed for the conversion of some one force into
+another. And we expect of them only that conversion. We pass on to
+consider for a moment the quantitative relations of this mutual
+convertibility. We notice, in the first place, that in all cases save
+one, the conversion is not perfect, a part of the force used not being
+utilized, on the one hand, and on the other, other forces making their
+appearance simultaneously. While, for example, the conversion of motion
+into heat is quite complete, the inverse conversion is not at all so.
+And on the other hand, when motion is converted into electricity, a part
+of it appears as heat. This simultaneous production of many forces is
+well illustrated by our little bell-engine, which converts the
+electricity of the thermo-battery into magnetism, and this into motion,
+a part of which expends itself as sound. For these reasons the question
+“How much?” is one not easily answered in all cases. The best known of
+these relations is that between motion and heat, which was first
+established by Mr. Joule in 1849, after seven years of patient
+investigation.[10] The apparatus which he used is shown in the diagram.
+It consists of a cylindrical box of metal, through the cover of which
+passes a shaft, carrying upon its lower end a set of paddles, immersed
+in water within the box, and upon its upper portion a drum, on which are
+wound two cords, which, passing in opposite directions, run over
+pulleys, and are attached to known weights. The temperature of the water
+within the box being carefully noted, the weights are then allowed to
+fall a certain number of times, of course in their fall turning the
+paddles against the friction of the liquid. At the close of the
+experiment the water is found to be warmer than before. And by measuring
+the amount of this rise in temperature, knowing the distance through
+which the weights have fallen, it is easy to calculate the quantity of
+heat which corresponds to a given amount of motion. In this way, and as
+a mean of a large number of experiments, Mr. Joule found that the amount
+of mass motion in a body weighing one pound, which had fallen from a
+hight of 772 feet, was exactly equal to the molecular motion which must
+be added to a pound of water, in order to heat it one degree Fahrenheit.
+If we call the actual energy of a body weighing one pound which has
+fallen one foot, a foot-pound, then we may speak of the mechanical
+equivalent of heat as being 772 foot-pounds.
+
+The significance and value of this numerical constant will appear more
+clearly if we apply it to the solution of one or two simple problems.
+During the recent war two immense iron guns were cast in Pittsburgh,
+whose weight was nearly 112,000 pounds each, and which had a caliber of
+20 inches.[11] Upon this diagram is a calculation of the effective blow
+which the solid shot of such a gun, assuming its weight to be 1,000
+pounds and its velocity 1,100 feet per second, would give; it is 902,797
+tons![12] Now, if it were possible to convert the whole of this enormous
+mechanical power into heat, to how much would it correspond? This
+question may be answered by the aid of the mechanical equivalent of
+heat; here is the calculation, from which we see that when 17 gallons of
+ice-cold water are heated to the boiling point, as much energy is
+communicated as is contained in the death-dealing missile at its highest
+velocity.[13] Again, if we take the impact of a larger cannon-ball, our
+earth, which is whirling through space with a velocity of 19 miles a
+second, we find it to be 98,416,136,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
+tons![14] Were this energy all converted into heat, it would equal that
+produced by the combustion of 14 earths of solid coal.[15]
+
+The conversion of heat into motion, however, as already stated, is not
+as perfect. The best steam-engines economize only one-twentieth of the
+heat of the fuel.[16] Hence if a steamship require 600 tons of coal to
+carry her across the Atlantic, 570 tons will be expended in heating the
+waters of the ocean, the heat of the remaining 30 tons only being
+converted into work.
+
+One other quantitative determination of force has also been made. Prof.
+Julius Thomsen, of Copenhagen, has fixed experimentally the mechanical
+equivalent of light.[17] He finds that the energy of the light of a
+spermaceti candle burning 126½ grains per hour, is equal in mechanical
+value to 13·1 foot-pounds per minute. The same conclusion has been
+reached by Mr. Farmer, of Boston, from different data.[18]
+
+If we pass from the actual physical energies or motions to consider for
+a moment the potential energies or attractions, we find, also, an
+intimate correlation. Since all energy not active in motion is potential
+in attraction, it follows that in the attractions we have energy stored
+up for subsequent use. The sun is thus storing up energy: every minute
+it raises 2,000,000,000 tons of water to the mean hight of the clouds,
+3½ miles; and the actual energy set free when this water falls is equal
+to 2,757,000,000,000 horse-powers.[19] So when the oxygen and the zinc
+of the ore are separated in the furnace, the actual energy of heat
+becomes the potential energy of chemical attraction, which again becomes
+actual in the form of electricity when the zinc is dissolved in an acid.
+We see, then, that not only may any form of force or actual energy be
+stored up as any form of attraction or potential energy, but that the
+latter, from whatsoever source derived, may appear as heat, light,
+electricity, or mechanical motion.
+
+Having now established the fact of correlation for the physical forces,
+we have next to inquire what are the evidences of the correlation of the
+vital forces with them. But in the first place it must be remarked that
+life is not a simple term like heat or electricity; it is a complex
+term, and includes all those phenomena which a living body exhibits. In
+this discussion, therefore, we shall use the term vital force to express
+only the actual energy of the body, however manifested. As to the
+attractions or the potential energy of the organism, nothing is more
+fully settled in science than the fact that these are precisely the same
+within the body as without it. Every particle of matter within the body
+obeys implicitly the laws of the chemical and physical attractions. No
+overpowering or supernatural agency comes in to complicate their action,
+which is modified only by the action of the others. Vitality, therefore,
+is the sum of the energies of a living body, both potential and actual.
+
+Moreover, the important fact must be fully recognized that in living
+beings we have to do with no new elementary forms of matter. Precisely
+the same atoms which build up the inorganic fabric, compose the organic.
+In the early days of chemistry, indeed, it was supposed that the
+complicated molecules which life produced were beyond the reach of
+simple chemical law. But as more and more complex molecules have been,
+one after another, produced, chemistry has become re-assured, and now
+doubts not her ability to produce them all. A few years hence, and she
+will doubtless give us quinine and protagon, as she now gives us
+coumarin and neurine, substances the synthesis of which was but
+yesterday an impossibility.[20]
+
+In studying the phenomena of living beings, it is important also to bear
+in mind the different and at the same time the coördinate purposes
+subserved by the two great kingdoms of nature. The food of the plant is
+matter whose energy is all expended; it is a fallen weight. But the
+plant-organism receives it, exposes it to the sun’s ray, and, in a way
+yet mysterious to us, converts the actual energy of the sunlight into
+potential energy within it. The fallen weight is thus raised, and energy
+is stored up in substances which now are alone competent to become the
+food of the animal. This food is not such because any new atoms have
+been added to it; it is food because it contains within it potential
+energy, which at any time may become actual as force. This food the
+animal now appropriates; he brings it in contact with oxygen, and the
+potential energy becomes actual; he cuts the string, the weight falls,
+and what was just now only attraction, has become actual force; this
+force he uses for his own purposes, and hands back the oxidized matter,
+the fallen weight, to the plant to be again de-oxidized, to be again
+raised. The plant then is to be regarded as a machine for converting
+sunlight into potential energy; the animal, a machine for setting the
+potential energy free as actual, and economizing it. The force which the
+plant stores up is undeniably physical; must not the force which the
+animal sets free by its conversion, be intimately correlated to it?
+
+But approaching our question still more closely, let us, in illustration
+of the vital forces of the animal economy, choose three forms of its
+manifestation in which to seek for the evidences of correlation; these
+shall be heat, evolved within the body; muscular energy or motion; and
+lastly, nervous energy, or that form of force which, on the one hand,
+stimulates a muscle to contract, and on the other, appears in forms
+called mental.
+
+The heat which is produced by the living body is obviously of the same
+nature as heat from any other source; it is recognized by the same
+tests, and may be applied for the same purposes. As to its origin, it is
+evident that since potential energy exists in the food which enters the
+body, and is there converted into force, a portion of it may become the
+actual energy of heat. And since, too, the heat produced in the body is
+precisely such as would be set free by the combustion of this food
+outside of it, it is fair to assume that it thus originates. To this may
+be added the chemical argument that while food capable of yielding heat
+by combustion is taken into the body, its constituents are completely or
+almost completely, oxidized before leaving it; and since oxidation
+always evolves heat, the heat of the body must have its origin in the
+oxidation of the food. Moreover, careful measurements have demonstrated
+that the amount of heat given off by the body of a man weighing 180
+pounds is about 2,500,000 units. Accurate calculations have shown, on
+the other hand, that 288·4 grams of carbon and 12·56 grams of hydrogen
+are available in the daily food for the production of heat. If burned
+out of the body, these quantities of carbon and hydrogen would yield
+2,765,134 heat units. Burned within it, as we have just seen, 2,500,000
+units appear as heat; the rest in other forms of energy.[21] We
+conceive, however, that no long argument is necessary to prove that
+animal heat results from a conversion of energy within the body; or that
+the vital force heat, is as truly correlated to the other forces as when
+it has a purely physical origin.
+
+The belief that the muscular force exerted by an animal is created by
+him is by no means confined to the very earliest ages of history.
+Traces of it appear to the careful observer even now, although, as Dr.
+Frankland says, science has proved that “an animal can no more
+generate an amount of force capable of moving a grain of sand than a
+stone can fall upward or a locomotive drive a train without fuel.”[22]
+In studying the characters of muscular action we notice, first, that,
+as in the case of heat, the force which it develops is in no wise
+different from motion in inorganic nature. In the early part of the
+lecture, motion produced by the contraction of muscle, was used to
+show the conversion of mass-force into molecular force. No one in this
+room believes, I presume, that the result would have been at all
+different, had the motion been supplied by a steam-engine or a
+water-wheel. Again, food, as we have seen, is of value for the
+potential energy it contains, which may become actual in the body.
+Liebig, in 1842, asserted that for the production of muscular force,
+the food must first be converted into muscular tissue,[23] a view
+until recently accepted by physiologists.[24] It has been conclusively
+shown, however, within a few years, that muscular force cannot come
+from the oxidation of its own substance, since the products of this
+metamorphosis are not increased in amount by muscular exertion.[25]
+Indeed, reasoning from the whole amount of such products excreted, the
+oxidation of the amount of muscle which they represent would furnish
+scarcely one-fifth of the mechanical force of the body. But while the
+products of tissue-oxidation do not increase with the increase of
+muscular exertion, the amount of carbonic gas exhaled by the lungs is
+increased in the exact ratio of the work done.[26] No doubt can be
+entertained, therefore, that the actual energy of the muscle is simply
+the converted potential energy of the carbon of the food. A muscle,
+therefore, like a steam-engine, is a machine for converting the
+potential energy of carbon into motion. But unlike a steam-engine, the
+muscle accomplishes this conversion directly, the energy not passing
+through the intermediate stage of heat. For this reason, the muscle is
+the most economical producer of mechanical force known. While no
+machine whatever can transform all of the energy into motion—the most
+economical steam-engines utilizing only one-twentieth of the heat—the
+muscle is able to convert one-fifth of the energy of the food into
+work.[27] The other four-fifths must, therefore, appear as heat.
+Whenever a muscle contracts, then, four times as much energy appears
+as heat as is converted into motion. Direct experiments by Heidenhain
+have confirmed this, by showing that an important rise of temperature
+attends muscular contraction;[28] a fact, however, apparent to any one
+who has ever taken active exercise. The work done by the animal body
+is of two sorts, internal and external. The former includes the action
+of the heart, of the respiratory muscles, and of those assisting the
+digestive process. The latter refers to the useful work the body may
+perform. Careful estimates place the entire work of the body at about
+800 foot-tons daily; of which 450 foot-tons is internal, 350 foot-tons
+external work. And since the internal work ultimately appears as heat
+within the body, the actual loss of heat by the production of motion
+is the equivalent of the 350 foot-tons which represents external work.
+This by a simple calculation will be found to be 250,000 heat units,
+almost the precise amount by which the heat yielded by the food when
+burned without the body, exceeds that actually evolved by the
+organism. Moreover, while the total heat given off by the body is
+2,500,000 units, the amount of energy evolved as work is equal to
+about 600,000 heat units; hence the amount of work done by a muscle is
+as above stated, one-fifth of the actual energy derivable from the
+food. One point further. The law of correlation requires that the heat
+set free when a muscle in contracting does work, shall be less than
+when it effects nothing; this fact, too, has been experimentally
+established by Heidenhain.[29] So, again, when muscular contraction
+does not result in motion, as when one tries to raise a weight too
+heavy for him, the energy which would have appeared as work, takes the
+form of heat: a result deducible by the law of correlation from the
+steam-engine.
+
+The last of the so-called vital forces which we are to examine, is that
+produced by the nerves and nervous centers. In the nerve which
+stimulates a muscle to contract, this force is undeniably motion, since
+it is propagated along this nerve from one extremity to the other. In
+common language, too, this idea finds currency in the comparison of this
+force to electricity; the gray or cellular matter being the battery, the
+white or fibrous matter the conductors. That this force is not
+electricity, however, Du Bois-Reymond has demonstrated by showing that
+its velocity is only 97 feet in a second, a speed equaled by the
+greyhound and the race-horse.[30] In his opinion, the propagation of a
+nervous impulse is a sort of successive molecular polarization, like
+magnetism. But that this agent is a force, as analogous to electricity
+as is magnetism, is shown not only by the fact that the transmission of
+electricity along a nerve will cause the contraction of the muscle to
+which it leads, but also by the more important fact that the contraction
+of a muscle is excited by diminishing its normal electrical current;[31]
+a result which could take place only with a stimulus closely allied to
+electricity. Nerve-force, therefore, must be a transmuted potential
+energy.
+
+What, now, shall we say of that highest manifestation of animal life,
+thought-power? Has the upper region called intelligence and reason, any
+relations to physical force? This realm has not escaped the searching
+investigation of modern science; and although in it investigations are
+vastly more difficult than in any of the regions thus far considered,
+yet some results of great value have been obtained, which may help us to
+a solution of our problem. It is to be observed at the outset that every
+external manifestation of thought-force is a muscular one, as a word
+spoken or written, a gesture, or an expression of the face; and hence
+this force must be intimately correlated with nerve-force. These
+manifestations, reaching the mind through the avenues of sense, awaken
+accordant trains of thought only when this muscular evidence is
+understood. A blank sheet of paper excites no emotion; even covered with
+Assyrian cuneiform characters, its alternations of black and white
+awaken no response in the ordinary brain. It is only when, by a frequent
+repetition of these impressions, the brain-cell has been educated, that
+these before meaningless characters awaken thought. Is thought, then,
+simply a cell action which may or may not result in muscular
+expression—an action which originates new combinations of truth only,
+precisely as a calculating machine evolves new combinations of figures?
+Whatever we define thought to be, this fact appears certain, that it is
+capable of external manifestation by conversion into the actual energy
+of motion, and only by this conversion. But here the question arises,
+Can it be manifested inwardly without such a transformation of energy?
+Or is the evolution of thought entirely independent of the matter of the
+brain? Experiments, ingenious and reliable, have answered this question.
+The importance of the results will, I trust, warrant me in examining the
+methods employed in these experiments somewhat in detail. Inasmuch as
+our methods for measuring minute amounts of electricity are very
+perfect, and the methods for the conversion of heat into electricity are
+equally delicate, it has been found that smaller differences of
+temperature may be recognized by converting the heat into electricity,
+than can be detected thermometrically. The apparatus, first used by
+Melloni in 1832,[32] is very simple, consisting first, of a pair of
+metallic bars like those described in the early part of the lecture, for
+effecting the conversion of the heat; and second, of a delicate
+galvanometer, for measuring the electricity produced. In the experiments
+in question one of the bars used was made of bismuth, the other of an
+alloy of antimony and zinc.[33] Preliminary trials having shown that any
+change of temperature within the skull was soonest manifested externally
+in that depression which exists just above the occipital protuberance, a
+pair of these little bars was fastened to the head at this point; and to
+neutralize the results of a general rise of temperature over the whole
+body, a second pair, reversed in direction, was attached to the leg or
+arm, so that if a like increase of heat came to both, the electricity
+developed by one would be neutralized by the other, and no effect be
+produced upon the needle unless only one was affected. By long practice
+it was ascertained that a state of mental torpor could be induced,
+lasting for hours, in which the needle remained stationary. But let a
+person knock on the door outside the room, or speak a single word, even
+though the experimenter remained absolutely passive, and the reception
+of the intelligence caused the needle to swing through 20 degrees.[34]
+In explanation of this production of heat, the analogy of the muscle at
+once suggests itself. No conversion of energy is complete; and as the
+heat of muscular action represents force which has escaped conversion
+into motion, so the heat evolved during the reception of an idea, is
+energy which has escaped conversion into thought, from precisely the
+same cause. Moreover, these experiments have shown that ideas which
+affect the emotions, produce most heat in their reception; “a few
+minutes’ recitation to one’s self of emotional poetry, producing more
+effect than several hours of deep thought.” Hence it is evident that the
+mechanism for the production of deep thought, accomplishes this
+conversion of energy far more perfectly than that which produces simply
+emotion. But we may take a step further in this same direction. A
+muscle, precisely as the law of correlation requires, develops less heat
+when doing work than when it contracts without doing it. Suppose, now,
+that beside the simple reception of an idea by the brain, the thought is
+expressed outwardly by some muscular sign. The conversion now takes two
+directions, and in addition to the production of thought, a portion of
+the energy appears as nerve and muscle-power; less, therefore, should
+appear as heat, according to our law of correlation. Dr. Lombard’s
+experiments have shown that the amount of heat developed by the
+recitation to one’s self of emotional poetry, was in every case less
+when that recitation was oral; _i.e._, had a muscular expression. These
+results are in accordance with the well-known fact that emotion often
+finds relief in physical demonstrations; thus diminishing the emotional
+energy by converting it into muscular. Nor do these facts rest upon
+physical evidence alone. Chemistry teaches that thought-force, like
+muscle-force, comes from the food; and demonstrates that the force
+evolved by the brain, like that produced by the muscle, comes not from
+the disintegration of its own tissue, but is the converted energy of
+burning carbon.[35] Can we longer doubt, then, that the brain, too, is a
+machine for the conversion of energy? Can we longer refuse to believe
+that even thought is, in some mysterious way, correlated to the other
+natural forces? and this, even in face of the fact that it has never yet
+been measured?[36]
+
+I cannot close without saying a word concerning the part which our own
+country has had in the development of these great truths. Beginning with
+heat, we find that the material theory of caloric is indebted for its
+overthrow more to the distinguished Count Rumford than to any other one
+man. While superintending the boring of cannon at the Munich Arsenal
+towards the close of the last century, he was struck by the large amount
+of heat developed, and instituted a careful series of experiments to
+ascertain its origin. These experiments led him to the conclusion that
+“anything which any insulated body or system of bodies can continue to
+furnish without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance.”
+But this man, to whom must be ascribed the discovery of the first great
+law of the correlation of energy, was an American. Born in Woburn,
+Mass., in 1753, he, under the name of Benjamin Thompson, taught school
+afterward at Concord, N. H., then called Rumford. Unjustly suspected of
+toryism during our Revolutionary war, he went abroad and distinguished
+himself in the service of several of the Governments of Europe. He did
+not forget his native land, though she had treated him so unfairly; when
+the honor of knighthood was tendered him, he chose as his title the name
+of the Yankee village where he had taught school, and was thenceforward
+known as Count Rumford. And at his death, by founding a professorship in
+Harvard College, and donating a prize-fund to the American Academy of
+Arts and Sciences at Boston, he showed his interest in her prosperity
+and advancement.[37] Nor has the field of vital forces been without
+earnest workers belonging to our own country. Professors John W.
+Draper[38] and Joseph Henry[39] were among its earliest explorers. And
+in 1851, Dr. J. H. Watters, now of St. Louis, published a theory of the
+origin of vital force, almost identical with that for which Dr.
+Carpenter, of London, has of late received so much credit. Indeed, there
+is some reason to believe that Dr. Watters’s essay may have suggested to
+the distinguished English physiologist the germs of his own theory.[40]
+A paper on this subject by Prof. Joseph Leconte, of Columbia, S. C.,
+published in 1859, attracted much attention abroad.[41] The remarkable
+results already given on the relation of heat to mental work, which thus
+far are unique in science, we owe to Professor J. S. Lombard, of Harvard
+College;[42] the very combination of metals used in his apparatus being
+devised by our distinguished electrical engineer, Mr. Moses G. Farmer.
+Finally, researches conducted by Dr. T. R. Noyes in the Physiological
+Laboratory of Yale College, have confirmed the theory that muscular
+tissue does not wear during action, up to the point of fatigue;[43] and
+other researches by Dr. L. H. Wood have first established the same great
+truth for brain-tissue.[44] We need not be ashamed, then, of our part in
+this advance in science. Our workers are, indeed, but few; but both they
+and their results will live in the records of the world’s progress. More
+would there be now of them were such studies more fostered and
+encouraged. Self-denying, earnest men are ready to give themselves up to
+the solution of these problems, if only the means of a bare subsistence
+be allowed them. When wealth shall foster science, science will increase
+wealth—wealth pecuniary, it is true: but also wealth of knowledge, which
+is far better.
+
+In looking back over the whole of this discussion, I trust that it is
+possible to see that the objects which we had in view at its
+commencement have been more or less fully attained. I would fain believe
+that we now see more clearly the beautiful harmonies of bounteous
+nature; that on her many-stringed instrument force answers to force,
+like the notes of a great symphony; disappearing now in potential
+energy, and anon reappearing as actual energy, in a multitude of forms.
+I would hope that this wonderful unity and mutual interaction of force
+in the dead forms of inorganic nature, appears to you identical in the
+living forms of animal and vegetable life, which make of our earth an
+Eden. That even that mysterious, and in many aspects awful, power of
+thought, by which man influences the present and future ages, is a part
+of this great ocean of energy. But here the great question rolls upon
+us, Is it only this? Is there not behind this material substance, a
+higher than molecular power in the thoughts which are immortalized in
+the poetry of a Milton or a Shakespeare, the art creations of a Michael
+Angelo or a Titian, the harmonies of a Mozart or a Beethoven? Is there
+really no immortal portion separable from this brain-tissue, though yet
+mysteriously united to it? In a word, does this curiously-fashioned body
+inclose a soul, God-given and to God returning? Here Science veils her
+face and bows in reverence before the Almighty. We have passed the
+boundaries by which physical science is enclosed. No crucible, no subtle
+magnetic needle can answer now our questions. No word but His who formed
+us, can break the awful silence. In presence of such a revelation
+Science is dumb, and faith comes in joyfully to accept that higher truth
+which can never be the object of physical demonstration.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                         NOTES AND REFERENCES.
+
+
+Footnote 1:
+
+  HUMBOLDT, Views of Nature, Bohn’s ed., London, 1850, p. 380. This
+  allegory did not appear in the first edition of the Views of Nature.
+  In the preface to the second edition the author gives the following
+  account of its origin: “Schiller,” he says, “in remembrance of his
+  youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me, during my long
+  stay at Jena, on physiological subjects.” * * * “It was at this period
+  that I wrote the little allegory on Vital Force, called The Rhodian
+  Genius. The predilection which Schiller entertained for this piece,
+  which he admitted into his periodical, _Die Horen_, gave me courage to
+  introduce it here.” It was published in _Die Horen_ in 1795.
+
+Footnote 2:
+
+  HUMBOLDT, _op. cit._, p. 386. In his _Aphorismi ex doctrina
+  Physiologiæ chemicæ Plantarum_, appended to his _Flora Fribergensis
+  subterranea_, published in 1793, Humboldt had said “Vim internam, quæ
+  chymicæ affinitatis vincula resolvit, atque obstat, quominus elementa
+  corporum libere conjungantur, vitalem vocamus.” “That internal force,
+  which dissolves the bonds of chemical affinity, and prevents the
+  elements of bodies from freely uniting, we call vital.” But in a note
+  to the allegory above mentioned, added to the third edition of the
+  Views of Nature in 1849, he says: “Reflection and prolonged study in
+  the departments of physiology and chemistry have deeply shaken my
+  earlier belief in peculiar so-called vital forces. In the year 1797, *
+  * * I already declared that I by no means regarded the existence of
+  these peculiar vital forces as established.” And again: “The
+  difficulty of satisfactorily referring the vital phenomena of the
+  organism to physical and chemical laws depends chiefly (and almost in
+  the same manner as the prediction of meteorological processes in the
+  atmosphere) on the complication of the phenomena, and on the great
+  number of the simultaneously acting forces as well as the conditions
+  of their activity.”
+
+Footnote 3:
+
+  Compare HENRY BENCE JONES, Croonian Lectures on Matter and Force.
+  London, 1868, John Churchill & Sons.
+
+Footnote 4:
+
+  Ib., Preface, p. vi.
+
+Footnote 5:
+
+  RANKINE, W. J. M., Philosophical Magazine, Feb., 1853. Also Edinburgh
+  Philosophical Journal, July, 1855.
+
+Footnote 6:
+
+  ARMSTRONG, Sir WM. In his address as President of the British
+  Association for the Advancement of Science. Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1863,
+  li.
+
+Footnote 7:
+
+  GROVE, W. R., in 1842. Compare “Nature” i, 335, Jan. 27, 1870. Also
+  Appleton’s Journal, iii, 324, Mch. 19, 1870.
+
+Footnote 8:
+
+  Id., in Preface to The Correlation of Physical Forces, 4th ed.
+  Reprinted in The Correlation and Conservation of Forces, edited by E.
+  L. Youmans, p. 7. New York, 1865, D. Appleton & Co.
+
+Footnote 9:
+
+  Id., ib., Am. ed., p. 33 et seq.
+
+Footnote 10:
+
+  JOULE, J. P., Philosophical Transactions, 1850, p. 61.
+
+Footnote 11:
+
+  See American Journal of Science, II, xxxvii, 296, 1864.
+
+Footnote 12:
+
+  The work (W) done by a moving body is commonly expressed by the
+  formula W = MV^2, in which M, or the mass of the body, is equal to
+  w/2g; _i.e._, to the weight divided by twice the intensity of gravity.
+  The work done by our cannon-ball then, would be (1 × (1100)^2)/(2 ×
+  64⅓) = 9,404·14 foot-tons. If, further, we assume the resisting body
+  to be of such a character as to bring the ball to rest in moving ¼ of
+  an inch, then the final pressure would be 9,404·14 × 12 × 4 =
+  451,398·7 tons. But since, “in the case of a perfectly elastic body,
+  or of a resistance proportional to the advance of the center of
+  gravity of the impinging body from the point at which contact first
+  takes place, the final pressure (provided the body struck is perfectly
+  rigid) is double what would occur were the stoppage to occur at the
+  end of a corresponding advance against a uniform resistance,” this
+  result must be multiplied by two; and we get (451,398·7 × 2) 902,797
+  tons as the crushing pressure of the ball under these conditions.
+  Note: The author’s thanks are due to his friends Pres. F. A. P.
+  Barnard and Mr. J. J. Skinner for suggestions on the relation of
+  impact to statical pressure.
+
+Footnote 13:
+
+  The unit of impact being that given by a body weighing one pound and
+  moving one foot a second, the impact of such a body falling from a
+  hight of 772 feet—the velocity acquired being 222¼ feet per second
+  (=√(2sg))—would be 1 × (222¼)^2 = 49,408 units, the equivalent in
+  impact of one heat-unit. A cannon-ball weighing 1000 lbs. and moving
+  1100 feet a second would have an impact of (1100)^2 × 1000 =
+  1,210,000,000 units. Dividing this by 49,408, the quotient is 24489
+  heat units, the equivalent of the impact. The specific heat of iron
+  being ·1138, this amount of heat would raise the temperature of one
+  pound of iron 215.191° F. (24,489 × ·1138) or of 1000 pounds of iron
+  215° F. 24489 pounds of water heated one degree, is equal to 136½
+  pounds, or 17 gallons U. S., heated 180 degrees; _i.e._, from 32° to
+  212° F.
+
+Footnote 14:
+
+  Assuming the density of the earth to be 5·5, its weight would be
+  6,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, and its impact—by the formula
+  given above—would be 1,025,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
+  foot-tons. Making the same supposition as in the case of our
+  cannon-ball, the final pressure would be that here stated.
+
+Footnote 15:
+
+  TYNDALL, J., Heat considered as a mode of Motion; Am. ed., p. 57, New
+  York, 1863.
+
+Footnote 16:
+
+  RANKINE (The Steam-engine and other prime Movers, London, 1866,) gives
+  the efficiency of Steam-engines as from 1-15th to 1-20th of the heat
+  of the fuel.
+
+  ARMSTRONG, Sir WM., places this efficiency at 1-10th as the maximum.
+  In practice, the average result is only 1-30th. Rep. Brit. Assoc.,
+  1863, p. liv.
+
+  HELMHOLTZ, H. L. F., says: “The best expansive engines give back as
+  mechanical work only eighteen per cent. of the heat generated by the
+  fuel.” Interaction of Natural Forces, in Correlation and Conservation
+  of Forces, p. 227.
+
+Footnote 17:
+
+  THOMSEN, JULIUS, Poggendorff’s Annalen, cxxv, 348. Also in abstract in
+  Am. J. Sci., II, xli, 396, May, 1866.
+
+Footnote 18:
+
+  American Journal of Science, II, xli, 214, March, 1866.
+
+Footnote 19:
+
+  In this calculation the annual evaporation from the ocean is assumed
+  to be about 9 feet. (See Dr. BUIST, quoted in Maury’s Phys. Geography
+  of the Sea, New York, 1861, p. 11.) Calling the water-area of our
+  globe 150,000,000 square miles, the total evaporation in tons per
+  minute, would be that here given. Inasmuch as 30,000 pounds raised
+  one-foot high is a horse-power, the number of horse-powers necessary
+  to raise this quantity of water 3½ miles in one minute is
+  2,757,000,000,000. This amount of energy is precisely that set free
+  again when this water falls as rain.
+
+Footnote 20:
+
+  Compare ODLING, WM., Lectures on Animal Chemistry, London, 1866. “In
+  broad antagonism to the doctrines which only a few years back were
+  regarded as indisputable, we now find that the chemist, like the
+  plant, is capable of producing from carbonic acid and water a whole
+  host of organic bodies, and we see no reason to question his ultimate
+  ability to reproduce all animal and vegetable principles whatsoever.”
+  (p. 52.)
+
+  “Already hundreds of organic principles have been built up from their
+  constituent elements, and there is now no reason to doubt our
+  capability of producing all organic principles whatsoever in a similar
+  manner.” (p. 58.)
+
+  Dr. Odling is the successor of Faraday as Fullerian Professor of
+  Chemistry in the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
+
+Footnote 21:
+
+  MARSHALL, JOHN, Outlines of Physiology, American edition, 1868, p.
+  916.
+
+Footnote 22:
+
+  FRANKLAND, EDWARD, On the Source of Muscular Power, Proc. Roy. Inst.,
+  June 8, 1866; Am. J. Sci., II, xlii, 393, Nov. 1866.
+
+Footnote 23:
+
+  LIEBIG, JUSTUS VON, Die organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf
+  Physiologie und Pathologie, Braunschweig, 1842. Also in his Animal
+  Chemistry, edition of 1852 (Am. ed., p. 26), where he says “Every
+  motion increases the amount of organized tissue which undergoes
+  metamorphosis.”
+
+Footnote 24:
+
+  Compare DRAPER, JOHN WM. Human Physiology.
+
+  PLAYFAIR, LYON, On the Food of Man in relation to his useful work,
+  Edinburgh, 1865. Proc. Roy. Inst., Apr. 28, 1865.
+
+  RANKE, Tetanus eine Physiologische Studie, Leipzig, 1865.
+
+  ODLING, _op. cit._
+
+Footnote 25:
+
+  VOIT, E., Untersuchungen über den Einfluss des Kochsalzes, des
+  Kaffees, und der Muskelbewegungen auf den Stoffwechsel, Munich, 1860.
+
+  SMITH, E., Philosophical Transactions, 1861, 747.
+
+  FICK, A., and WISLICENUS, J., Phil. Mag., IV, xxxi, 485.
+
+  FRANKLAND, E., _loc. cit._
+
+  NOYES, T. R., American Journal Medical Sciences, Oct. 1867.
+
+  PARKES, E. A., Proceedings Royal Society, xv, 339; xvi, 44.
+
+Footnote 26:
+
+  SMITH, EDWARD, Philosophical Transactions, 1859, 709.
+
+Footnote 27:
+
+  Authorities differ as to the amount of energy converted by the
+  steam-engine. (See Note 16.) Compare MARSHALL, _op. cit._, p. 918.
+  “Whilst, therefore, in an engine one-twentieth part only of the fuel
+  consumed is utilized as mechanical power, one-fifth of the food
+  absorbed by man is so appropriated.”
+
+Footnote 28:
+
+  HEIDENHAIN, Mechanische Leistung Wärmeentwickelung und Stoffumsatz bei
+  der Muskelthätigkeit, Breslau, 1864.
+
+  See also HAUGHTON, SAMUEL, On the Relation of Food to work, published
+  in “Medicine in Modern Times,” London, 1869, Macmillan & Co.
+
+Footnote 29:
+
+  HEIDENHAIN, _op. cit._ Also by FICK, Untersuchungen über
+  Muskel-arbeit, Basel, 1867. Compare also “Nature,” i, 159, Dec. 9,
+  1869.
+
+Footnote 30:
+
+  DU BOIS-REYMOND, EMIL, On the time required for the transmission of
+  volition and sensation through the nerves, Proc. Roy. Inst. Also in
+  Appendix to Bence Jones’s Croonian lectures.
+
+Footnote 31:
+
+  MARSHALL, _op. cit._, p. 227.
+
+Footnote 32:
+
+  MELLONI, Ann. Ch. Phys., xlviii, 198.
+
+  See also NOBILI, Bibl. Univ., xliv, 225, 1830; lvii, 1, 1834.
+
+Footnote 33:
+
+  The apparatus employed is illustrated and fully described in
+  Brown-Sequard’s Archives de Physiologie, i, 498, June, 1868. By it the
+  1-4000th of a degree Centigrade may be indicated.
+
+Footnote 34:
+
+  LOMBARD, J. S., New York Medical Journal, v, 198, June, 1867. [A part
+  of these facts were communicated to me directly by their discoverer.]
+
+Footnote 35:
+
+  WOOD, L. H., On the influence of Mental activity on the Excretion of
+  Phosphoric acid by the Kidneys. Proceedings Connecticut Medical
+  Society for 1869, p. 197.
+
+Footnote 36:
+
+  On this question of vital force, see LIEBIG, Animal Chemistry. “The
+  increase of mass in a plant is determined by the occurrence of a
+  decomposition which takes place in certain parts of the plant under
+  the influence of light and heat.”
+
+  “The modern science of Physiology has left the track of Aristotle. To
+  the eternal advantage of science, and to the benefit of mankind it no
+  longer invents a _horror vacui_, a _quinta essentia_, in order to
+  furnish credulous hearers with solutions and explanations of
+  phenomena, whose true connection with others, whose ultimate cause is
+  still unknown.”
+
+  “All the parts of the animal body are produced from a peculiar fluid
+  circulating in its organism, by virtue of an influence residing in
+  every cell, in every organ, or part of an organ.”
+
+  “Physiology has sufficiently decisive grounds for the opinion that
+  every motion, every manifestation of force, is the result of a
+  transformation of the structure or of its substance; that every
+  conception, every mental affection, is followed by changes in the
+  chemical nature of the secreted fluids; that every thought, every
+  sensation is accompanied by a change in the composition of the
+  substance of the brain.”
+
+  “All vital activity arises from the mutual action of the oxygen of the
+  atmosphere and the elements of the food.”
+
+  “As, in the closed galvanic circuit, in consequence of certain changes
+  which an inorganic body, a metal, undergoes when placed in contact
+  with an acid, a certain something becomes cognizable by our senses,
+  which we call a current of electricity; so in the animal body, in
+  consequence of transformations and changes undergone by matter
+  previously constituting a part of the organism, certain phenomena of
+  motion and activity are perceived, and these we call life, or
+  vitality.”
+
+  “In the animal body we recognize as the ultimate cause of all force
+  only one cause, the chemical action which the elements of the food and
+  the oxygen of the air mutually exercise on each other. The only known
+  ultimate cause of vital force, either in animals or in plants, is a
+  chemical process.”
+
+  “If we consider the force which determines the vital phenomena as a
+  property of certain substances, this view leads of itself to a new and
+  more rigorous consideration of certain singular phenomena, which these
+  very substances exhibit, in circumstances in which they no longer make
+  a part of living organisms.”
+
+  Also OWEN, RICHARD, (Derivative Hypothesis of Life and Species,
+  forming the 40th chapter of his Anatomy of Vertebrates, republished in
+  Am. J. Sci., II, xlvii, 33, Jan. 1869.) “In the endeavor to clearly
+  comprehend and explain the functions of the combination of forces
+  called ‘brain,’ the physiologist is hindered and troubled by the views
+  of the nature of those cerebral forces which the needs of dogmatic
+  theology have imposed on mankind.” * *
+
+  “Religion pure and undefiled, can best answer how far it is righteous
+  or just to charge a neighbor with being unsound in his principles who
+  holds the term ‘life’ to be a sound expressing the sum of living
+  phenomena; and who maintains these phenomena to be modes of force into
+  which other forms of force have passed, from potential to active
+  states, and reciprocally, through the agency of these sums or
+  combinations of forces impressing the mind with the ideas signified by
+  the terms ‘monad,’ ‘moss,’ ‘plant,’ or ‘animal.’”
+
+  And HUXLEY, THOS. H., “On the Physical Basis of Life,” University
+  Series, No. 1. College Courant, 1870.
+
+  _Per contra_, see the Address of Dr. F. A. P. Barnard, as retiring
+  President, before the Am. Assoc. for the Advancement of Science,
+  Chicago meeting, August, 1868. “Thought cannot be a physical force,
+  because thought admits of no measure.”
+
+  GOULD, BENJ. APTHORP, Address as retiring President, before the
+  American Association at its Salem meeting, Aug., 1869.
+
+  BEALE, LIONEL S., “Protoplasm, or Life, Matter, and Mind.” London,
+  1870. John Churchill & Sons.
+
+Footnote 37:
+
+  For an excellent account of this distinguished man, see Youmans’s
+  Introduction to the Correlation and Conservation of Forces, p. xvii.
+
+Footnote 38:
+
+  DRAPER, J. W., _loc. cit._
+
+Footnote 39:
+
+  HENRY, JOSEPH, Agric. Rep. Patent Office, 1857, 440.
+
+Footnote 40:
+
+  WATTERS, J. H., An Essay on Organic, or Life-force. Written for the
+  degree of Doctor of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania,
+  Philadelphia, 1851. See also St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal,
+  II, v, Nos. 3 and 4, 1868; Dec. 1868, and Nov. 10, 1869.
+
+Footnote 41:
+
+  LECONTE, JOSEPH, The Correlation of Physical, Chemical and Vital
+  Force, and the Conservation of Force in Vital Phenomena. American
+  Journal of Science, II, xxviii, 305, Nov. 1859.
+
+Footnote 42:
+
+  LOMBARD, J. S., _loc. cit._
+
+Footnote 43:
+
+  NOYES, T. R., _loc. cit._
+
+Footnote 44:
+
+  WOOD, L. H., _loc. cit._
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                     _AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC._
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                            PREFATORY NOTE.
+
+
+The substance of the greater part of this paper, which has been in the
+present form for some time, was delivered, as a lecture, at a
+Conversazione of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, in the
+Hall of the College, on the evening of Friday, the 30th of April last.
+
+It will be found to support itself, so far as the facts are concerned,
+on the most recent German physiological literature, as represented by
+Rindfleisch, Kühne, and especially Stricker, with which last, for the
+production of his “Handbuch,” there is associated every great
+histological name in Germany.
+
+    EDINBURGH, _October, 1869_.
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                      AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC.
+
+
+It is a pleasure to perceive Mr. Huxley open his clear little essay with
+what we may hold, perhaps, to be the manly and orthodox view of the
+character and products of the French writer, Auguste Comte. “In applying
+the name of ‘the new philosophy’ to that estimate of the limits of
+philosophical inquiry which he” (Professor Huxley), “in common with many
+other men of science, holds to be just,” the Archbishop of York
+confounds, it seems, this new philosophy with the Positive philosophy of
+M. Comte; and thereat Mr. Huxley expresses himself as greatly
+astonished. Some of us, for our parts, may be inclined at first to feel
+astonished at Mr. Huxley’s astonishment; for the school to which, at
+least on the philosophical side, Mr. Huxley seems to belong, is even
+notorious for its prostration before Auguste Comte, whom, especially, so
+far as method and systematization are concerned, it regards as the
+greatest intellect since Bacon. For such, as it was the opinion of Mr.
+Buckle, is understood to be the opinion also of Messrs. Grote, Bain, and
+Mill. In fact, we may say that such is commonly and currently considered
+the characteristic and distinctive opinion of that whole perverted or
+inverted reaction which has been called the _Revulsion_. That is to say,
+to give this word a moment’s explanation, that the Voltaires and Humes
+and Gibbons having long enjoyed an immunity of sneer at man’s blind
+pride and wretched superstition—at _his_ silly non-natural honor and
+_her_ silly non-natural virtue—a reaction had set in, exulting in
+poetry, in the splendor of nature, the nobleness of man, and the purity
+of woman, from which reaction again we have, almost within the last
+decennium, been revulsively, as it were, called back,—shall we say by
+some “bolder” spirits—the Buckles, the Mills, &c.?—to the old
+illumination or enlightenment of a hundred years ago, in regard to the
+weakness and stupidity of man’s pretensions over the animality and
+materiality that limit him. Of this revulsion, then, as said, a main
+feature, especially in England, has been prostration before the vast
+bulk of Comte; and so it was that Mr. Huxley’s protest in this
+reference, considering the philosophy he professed, had that in it to
+surprise at first. But if there was surprise, there was also pleasure;
+for Mr. Huxley’s estimate of Comte is undoubtedly the right one. “So far
+as I am concerned,” he says, “the most reverend prelate” (the Archbishop
+of York) “might dialectically hew M. Comte in pieces as a modern Agag,
+and I should not attempt to stay his hand; for, so far as my study of
+what specially characterizes the Positive philosophy has led me, I find
+therein little or nothing of any scientific value, and a great deal
+which is as thoroughly antagonistic to the very essence of science as
+anything in ultramontane Catholicism.” “It was enough,” he says again,
+“to make David Hume turn in his grave, that here, almost within earshot
+of his house, an instructed audience should have listened without a
+murmur while his most characteristic doctrines were attributed to a
+French writer of fifty years’ later date, in whose dreary and verbose
+pages we miss alike the vigor of thought and the exquisite clearness of
+style of the man whom I make bold to term the most acute thinker of the
+eighteenth century—even though that century produced Kant.”
+
+Of the doctrines themselves which are alluded to here, I shall say
+nothing now; but of much else that is said, there is only to be
+expressed a hearty and even gratified approval. I demur, to be sure, to
+the exaltation of Hume over Kant—high as I place the former. Hume, with
+infinite fertility, surprised us, it may be said, perhaps, into
+attention on a great variety of points which had hitherto passed
+unquestioned; but, even on these points, his success was of an
+interrupted, scattered and inconclusive nature. He set the world adrift,
+but he set man too, reeling and miserable, adrift with it. Kant, again,
+with gravity and reverence, desired to refix, but in purity and truth,
+all those relations and institutions which alone give value to
+existence—which alone _are_ humanity, in fact—but which Hume, with
+levity and mockery, had approached to shake. Kant built up again an
+entire new world for us of knowledge and duty, and, in a certain way,
+even belief; whereas Hume had sought to dispossess us of every support
+that man as man could hope to cling to. In a word, with _at least_ equal
+fertility, Kant was, as compared with Hume, a graver, deeper, and, so to
+speak, a more consecutive, more comprehensive spirit. Graces there were
+indeed, or even, it may be said, subtleties, in which Hume had the
+advantage perhaps. He is still in England an unsurpassed master of
+expression—this, certainly, in his History, if in his Essays he somewhat
+baffles his own self by a certain labored breadth of conscious fine
+writing, often singularly inexact and infelicitous. Still Kant, with
+reference to his products, must be allowed much the greater importance.
+In the history of philosophy he will probably always command as
+influential a place in the modern world as Socrates in the ancient;
+while, as probably, Hume will occupy at best some such position as that
+of Heraclitus or Protagoras. Hume, nevertheless, if equal to Kant, must,
+in view at once of his own subjective ability and his enormous
+influence, be pronounced one of the most important of writers. It would
+be difficult to rate too high the value of his French predecessors and
+contemporaries as regards purification of their oppressed and corrupt
+country; and Hume must be allowed, though with less call, to have
+subserved some such function in the land we live in. In preferring Kant,
+indeed, I must be acquitted of an undue partiality; for all that
+appertains to personal bias was naturally, and by reason of early and
+numerous associations, on the side of my countryman.
+
+Demurring, then, to Mr. Huxley’s opinion on this matter, and postponing
+remark on the doctrines to which he alludes, I must express a hearty
+concurrence with every word he utters on Comte. In him I too “find
+little or nothing of any scientific value.” I too have been lost in the
+mere mirage and sands of “those dreary and verbose pages;” and I
+acknowledge in Mr. Huxley’s every word the ring of a genuine experience.
+M. Comte was certainly a man of some mathematical and scientific
+proficiency, as well as of quick but biased intelligence. A member of
+the _Aufklärung_, he had seen the immense advance of physical science
+since Newton, under, as is usually said, the method of Bacon; and, like
+Hume, like Reid, like Kant, _who had all anticipated him in this_, he
+sought to transfer that method to the domain of mind. In this he failed;
+and though in a sociological aspect he is not without true glances into
+the present disintegration of society and the conditions of it, anything
+of importance cannot be claimed for him. There is not a sentence in his
+book that, in the hollow elaboration and windy pretentiousness of its
+build, is not an exact type of its own constructor. On the whole,
+indeed, when we consider the little to which he attained, the empty
+inflation of his claims, the monstrous and maniacal self-conceit into
+which he was _exalted_, it may appear, perhaps, that charity to M. Comte
+himself, to say nothing of the world, should induce us to wish that both
+his name and his works were buried in oblivion. Now, truly, that Mr.
+Huxley (the “call” being for the moment his) has so pronounced himself,
+especially as the facts of the case are exactly and absolutely what he
+indicates, perhaps we may expect this consummation not to be so very
+long delayed. More than those members of the revulsion already
+mentioned, one is apt to suspect, will be anxious now to beat a retreat.
+Not that this, however, is so certain to be allowed them; for their
+estimate of M. Comte is a valuable element in the estimate of
+themselves.
+
+Frankness on the part of Mr. Huxley is not limited to his opinion of M.
+Comte; it accompanies us throughout his whole essay. He seems even to
+take pride, indeed, in naming always and everywhere his object at the
+plainest. That object, in a general point of view, relates, he tells us,
+solely to materialism, but with a double issue. While it is his declared
+purpose, in the first place, namely, to lead us into materialism, it is
+equally his declared purpose, in the second place, to lead us out of
+materialism. On the first issue, for example, he directly warns his
+audience that to accept the conclusions which he conceives himself to
+have established on Protoplasm, is to accept these also: That “all vital
+action” is but “the result of the molecular forces” of the physical
+basis; and that, by consequence, to use his own words to his audience,
+“the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts
+regarding them, are but the expression of molecular changes in that
+matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena.” And,
+so far, I think, we shall not disagree with Mr. Huxley when he says that
+“most undoubtedly the terms of his propositions are distinctly
+materialistic.” Still, on the second issue, Mr. Huxley asserts that he
+is “individually no materialist.” “On the contrary, he believes
+materialism to involve grave philosophical error;” and the “union of
+materialistic terminology with the repudiation of materialistic
+philosophy” he conceives himself to share “with some of the most
+thoughtful men with whom he is acquainted.” In short, to unite both
+issues, we have it in Mr. Huxley’s own words, that it is the single
+object of his essay “to explain how such a union is not only consistent
+with, but necessitated by, sound logic;” and that, accordingly, he will,
+in the first place, “lead us through the territory of vital phenomena to
+the materialistic slough,” while pointing out, in the second, “the sole
+path by which, in his judgment, extrication is possible.” Mr. Huxley’s
+essay, then, falls evidently into two parts; and of these two parts we
+may say, further, that while the one—that in which he leads us into
+materialism—will be predominatingly physiological, the other—or that in
+which he leads us out of materialism—will be predominatingly
+philosophical. Two corresponding parts would thus seem to be prescribed
+to any full discussion of the essay; and of these, in the present needs
+of the world, it is evidently the latter that has the more promising
+theme. The truth is, however, that Mr. Huxley, after having exerted all
+his strength in his first part to throw us into “the materialistic
+slough,” by _clear necessity of knowledge_, only calls to us, in his
+second part, to come out of this slough again, on the somewhat _obscure
+necessity of ignorance_. This, then, is but a lop-sided balance, where a
+scale in the air only seems to struggle vainly to raise its
+well-weighted fellow on the ground. Mr. Huxley, in fact, possesses no
+remedy for materialism but what lies in the expression that, while he
+knows not what matter is in itself, he certainly knows that casualty is
+but contingent succession; and thus, like the so-called “philosophy” of
+the Revulsion, Mr. Huxley would only mock us into the intensest
+dogmatism on the one side by a fallacious reference to the intensest
+scepticism on the other.
+
+The present paper, then, will regard mainly Mr. Huxley’s argument _for_
+materialism, but say what is required, at the same time, on his alleged
+argument—which is merely the imaginary, or imaginative, impregnation of
+ignorance—_against_ it.
+
+Following Mr. Huxley’s own steps in his essay, the course of his
+positions will be found to run, in summary, thus:—
+
+What is meant by the physical basis of life is, that there is one kind
+of matter common to all living beings, and it is named protoplasm. No
+doubt it may appear at first sight that, in the various kinds of living
+beings, we have only _difference_ before us, as in the lichen on the
+rock and the painter that paints it,—the microscopic animalcule or
+fungus and the Finner whale or Indian fig,—the flower in the hair of a
+girl and the blood in her veins, etc. Nevertheless, throughout these and
+all other diversities, there really exists a threefold _unity_—a unity
+of faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substance.
+
+On the first head, for example, or as regards faculty, power, the
+action exhibited, there are but three categories of _human_
+activity—contractility, alimentation, and reproduction; and there are
+no fewer for the _lower_ forms of life, whether animal or vegetable.
+In the nettle, for instance, we find the woody case of its sting lined
+by a granulated, semi-fluid layer, that is possessed of contractility.
+But in this respect—that is, in the possession of contractile
+substance—other plants are as the nettle, and all animals are as
+plants. Protoplasm—for the nettle-layer alluded to is protoplasm—is
+common to the whole of them. The difference, in short between the
+powers of the lowest plant or animal and those of the highest is one
+only of degree and not of kind.
+
+But, on the second head, it is not otherwise in form, or manifested
+external appearance and structure. Not the sting only, but the whole
+nettle, is made up of protoplasm; and of all the other vegetables the
+nettle is but a type. Nor are animals different. The colorless
+blood-corpuscles in man and the rest are identical with the protoplasm
+of the nettle; and both he and they consisted at first only of an
+aggregation of such. Protoplasm is the common constituent—the common
+origin. At last, as at first, all that lives, and every part of all that
+lives, are but nucleated or unnucleated, modified or unmodified,
+protoplasm.
+
+But, on the third head, or with reference to unity of substance, to
+internal composition, chemistry establishes this also. All forms of
+protoplasm, that is, consist alike of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
+nitrogen, and behave similarly under similar reagents.
+
+So, now, a uniform character having in this threefold manner been proved
+for protoplasm, what is its origin, and what its fate? Of these the
+latter is not far to seek. The fate of protoplasm is death—death into
+its chemical constituents; and this determines its origin also.
+Protoplasm can originate only in that into which it dies,—the
+elements—the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen—of which it was
+found to consist. Hydrogen, with oxygen, forms water; carbon, with
+oxygen, carbonic acid; and hydrogen, with nitrogen, ammonia. Similarly,
+water, carbonic acid and ammonia form, in union, protoplasm. The
+influence of pre-existing protoplasm only determines combination in
+_its_ case, as that of the electric spark determines combination in the
+case of water. Protoplasm, then, is but an aggregate of physical
+materials, exhibiting in combination—only as was to be expected—new
+properties. The properties of water are not more different from those of
+hydrogen and oxygen than the properties of protoplasm are different from
+those of water, carbonic acid, and ammonia. We have the same warrant to
+attribute the consequences to the premises in the one case as in the
+other. If, on the first stage of combination, represented by that of
+water, _simples_ could unite into something so different from
+themselves, why, on the second stage of combination, represented by that
+of protoplasm, should not _compounds_ similarly unite into something
+equally different from themselves? If the constituents are credited with
+the properties _there_, why refuse to credit the constituents with the
+properties _here_? To the constituents of protoplasm, in truth, any new
+element, named vitality, has no more been added, than to the
+constituents of water any new element, named aquosity. Nor is there any
+logical halting place between this conclusion and the further and final
+one: That all vital action whatever, intellectual included, is but the
+result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it.
+
+These sentences will be acknowledged, I think, fairly to represent Mr.
+Huxley’s relative deliverances, and, consequently, as I may be allowed
+to explain again, the only important—while much the larger—part of the
+whole essay. Mr. Huxley, that is, while devoting fifty paragraphs to our
+physiological immersion in the “materialistic slough,” grants but
+one-and-twenty towards our philosophical escape from it; the fifty
+besides being, so to speak, in reality the wind, and the one-and-twenty
+only the whistle for it. What these latter say, in effect, is no more
+than this, that,—matter being known not in itself but only in its
+qualities, and cause and effect not in their nexus but only in their
+sequence,—matter may be spirit or spirit matter, cause effect or effect
+cause—in short, for aught that Mr. Huxley more than phenomenally knows,
+this may be that or that this, first second, or second first, but the
+conclusion shall be this, that he will lay out all our knowledge
+materially, and we may lay out all our ignorance immaterially—if we
+will. Which reasoning and conclusion, I may merely remark, come
+precisely to this: That Mr. Huxley—who, hoping yet to see each object (a
+pin, say) not in its qualities but in _itself_, still, consistently
+antithetic, cannot believe in the extinction of fire by water or of life
+by the rope, for any _reason_ or for any _necessity_ that lies in the
+nature of the case, but simply for the habit of the thing—has not yet
+put himself at home with the metaphysical categories of _substance_ and
+_casualty_; thanks, perhaps, to those guides of his whom we, the amusing
+Britons that we are, bravely proclaim “the foremost thinkers of the
+day”!
+
+The matter and manner of the whole essay are now fairly before us, and I
+think that, with the approbation of the reader, its procedure,
+generally, may be described as an attempt to establish, not by any
+complete and systematic induction, but by a variety of partial and
+illustrative assertions, two propositions. Of these propositions the
+first is, That all animal and vegetable organisms are essentially alike
+in power, in form, and in substance; and the second, That all vital and
+intellectual functions are the properties of the molecular disposition
+and changes of the material basis (protoplasm) of which the various
+animals and vegetables consist. In both propositions, the agent of proof
+is this same alleged material basis of life, or protoplasm. For the
+first of them, all animal and vegetable organisms shall be identified in
+protoplasm; and for the second, a simple chemical analogy shall assign
+intellect and vitality to the molecular constituents of the protoplasm,
+in connection with which they are at least exhibited.
+
+In order, then, to obtain a footing on the ground offered us, the first
+question we naturally put is, What is Protoplasm? And an answer to this
+question can be obtained only by a reference to the historical progress
+of the physiological cell theory.
+
+That theory may be said to have wholly grown up since John Hunter wrote
+his celebrated work ‘On the Nature of the Blood,’ etc. New growths, to
+Hunter, depended on an exudation of the plasma of the blood, in which,
+by virtue of its own _plasticity_, vessels formed, and conditioned the
+further progress. The influence of these ideas seems to have still
+acted, even after a conception of the cell was arrived at. For starting
+element, Schleiden required an intracellular plasma, and Schwann a
+structureless exudation, in which minute granules, if not indeed already
+pre-existent, formed, and by aggregation grew into nuclei, round which
+singly the production of a membrane at length enclosed a cell. It was
+then that, in this connection, we heard of the terms blastema and
+cyto-blastema. The theory of the vegetable cell was completed earlier
+than that of the animal one. Completion of this latter, again, seems to
+have been first effected by Schwann, after Müller had insisted on the
+analogy between animal and vegetable tissue, and Valentin had
+demonstrated a nucleus in the animal cell, as previously Brown in the
+vegetable one. But assuming Schwann’s labor, and what surrounded it, to
+have been a first stage, the wonderful ability of Virchow may be said to
+have raised the theory of the cell fully to a second stage. Now, of this
+second stage, it is the dissolution or resolution that has led to the
+emergence of the word Protoplasm.
+
+The body, to Virchow, constituted a free state of individual subjects,
+with equal rights but unequal capacities. These were the cells, which
+consisted each of an enclosing membrane, and an enclosed nucleus with
+surrounding intracellular matrix or matter. These cells, further,
+propagated themselves, chiefly by partition or division; and the
+fundamental principle of the whole theory was expressed in the dictum,
+“_Omnis cellula e cellulâ_.” That is, the nucleus, becoming gradually
+elongated, at last parted in the midst; and each half, acting as center
+of attraction to the surrounding intracellular matrix or contained
+matter, stood forth as a new nucleus to a new cell, formed by division
+at length of the original cell.
+
+The first step taken in resolution of this theory was completed by Max
+Schultze, preceded by Leydig. This was the elimination of an investing
+membrane. Such membrane may, and does, ultimately form; but in the first
+instance, it appears, the cell is naked. The second step in the
+resolution belongs perhaps to Brücke, though preceded by Bergmann, and
+though Max Schultze, Kühne, Haeckel, and others ought to be mentioned in
+the same connection. This step was the elimination, or at least
+subordination, of the nucleus. The nucleus, we are to understand now, is
+necessary neither to the division nor to the existence of the cell.
+
+Thus, then, stripped of its membrane, relieved of its nucleus, what now
+remains for the cell? Why, nothing but what _was_ the contained matter,
+the intracellular matrix, and _is_—Protoplasm.
+
+In the application of this word itself, however, to the element in
+question, there are also a step or two to be noticed. The first step was
+Dujardin’s discovery of sarcode; and the second the introduction of the
+term protoplasm as the name for the layer of the _vegetable_ cell that
+lined the cellulose, and enclosed the nucleus. Sarcode, found in certain
+of the lower forms of life, was a simple substance that exhibited powers
+of spontaneous contraction and movement. Thus, processes of such simple,
+soft, contractile matter are protruded by the rhizopods, and locomotion
+by their means effected. Remak first extended the use of the term
+protoplasm from the layer which bore that name in the vegetable cell to
+the analogous element in the animal cell; but it was Max Schultze, in
+particular, who, by applying the name to the intracellular matrix, or
+contained matter, when divested of membrane, and by identifying this
+substance itself with sarcode, first fairly established protoplasm, name
+and thing, in its present prominence.
+
+In this account I have necessarily omitted many subordinate and
+intervening steps in the successive establishment of the
+_contractility_, superior _importance_, and complete _isolation_ of this
+thing to which, under the name of protoplasm, Mr. Huxley of late has
+called such vast attention. Besides the names mentioned, there are
+others of great eminence in this connection, such as Meyen, Siebold,
+Reichert, Ecker, Henle, and Kölliker among the Germans; and among
+ourselves, Beale and Huxley himself. John Goodsir will be mentioned
+again.
+
+We have now, perhaps, obtained a general idea of protoplasm. Brücke,
+when he talks of it as “living cell-body or elementary organism,” comes
+very near the leading idea of Mr. Huxley as expressed in his phrase,
+“the physiological basis, or matter, of life.” Living cell-body,
+elementary organism, primitive living matter—that, evidently, is the
+quest of Mr. Huxley. There is aqueous matter, he would say, perhaps,
+composed of hydrogen and oxygen, and it is the same thing whether in the
+rain-drop or the ocean; so, similarly, there is vital matter, which,
+composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, is the same thing
+whether in cryptogams or in elephants, in animalcules or in men. What,
+in fact, Mr. Huxley seeks, probably, is living protein—protein, so to
+speak, struck into life. Just such appears to him to be the nature of
+protoplasm, and in it he believes himself to possess at last _a living
+clay_ wherewith to build the whole organic world.
+
+The question, What is Protoplasm? is answered, then; but, for the
+understanding of what is to follow, there is still one general
+consideration to be premised.
+
+Mr. Huxley’s conception of protoplasm, as we have seen, is that of
+living matter, living protein; what we may call, perhaps, elementary
+life-stuff. Now, is it quite certain that Mr. Huxley is correct in this
+conception? Are we to understand, for example, that cells have now
+definitively vanished, and left in their place only a uniform and
+universal _matter_ of quite indefinite proportions? No; such an
+understanding would be quite wrong. Whatever may be the opinion of the
+adherents of the molecular theory of generation, it is certain that all
+the great German histologists still hold by the cell, and can hardly
+open their mouths without mention of it. I do not allude here to any
+special adherents of either nucleus or membrane, but to the most
+advanced innovators in both respects; to such men as Schultze and Brücke
+and Kühne. These, as we have seen, pretty well confine their attention,
+like Mr. Huxley, to the protoplasm. But they do not the less on that
+account talk of the cell. For them, it is only in cells that protoplasm
+exists. To their view, we cannot fancy protoplasm as so much matter in a
+pot, in an ointment-box, any portion of which scooped out in an
+ear-picker would be so much life-stuff, and, though a part, quite as
+good as the whole. This seems to be Mr. Huxley’s conception, but it is
+not theirs. A certain _measure_ goes with protoplasm to constitute it an
+organism to them, and worthy of their attention. They refuse to give
+consideration to any mere protoplasm-_shred_ that may not have yet
+ceased, perhaps, to exhibit all sign of contractility under the
+microscope, and demand a protoplasm-_cell_. In short, protoplasm is to
+them still distributed into cells, and only that measure of protoplasm
+is cell that is adequate to the whole group of vital manifestations.
+Brücke, for example, of all innovators probably the most innovating, and
+denying, or inclined to deny, both nucleus and membrane, does not
+hesitate, according to Stricker, to speak still of cells as
+self-complete organisms, that move and grow, that nourish and reproduce
+themselves, and that perform specific function. “Omnis cellula e
+cellulâ,” is the rubric they work under as much now as ever. The heart
+of a turtle, they say, is not a turtle; so neither is a protoplasm-shred
+a protoplasm-cell.
+
+This, then, is the general consideration which I think it necessary to
+premise; and it seems, almost of itself, to negate Mr. Huxley’s
+reasonings in advance, for it warrants us in denying that physiological
+clay of which all living things are but bricks baked, Mr. Huxley
+intimates, and in establishing in its place cells as before—living cells
+that differ infinitely the one from the other, and so differ from the
+very first moment of their existence. This consideration shall not be
+allowed to pre-termit, however, an examination of Mr. Huxley’s own
+proofs, which will only the more and more avail to indicate the
+difference suggested.
+
+These proofs, as has been said, would, by means of the single fulcrum of
+protoplasm, establish, first, the identity, and, second, the
+materiality, of all vegetable and animal life. These are, shortly, the
+two propositions which we have already seen, and to which, in their
+order, we now pass.
+
+All organisms, then, whether animal or vegetable, have been understood
+for some time back to originate in and consist of cells; but the
+progress of physiology has _seemed_ now to substitute for cells a single
+matter of life, protoplasm; and it is here that Mr. Huxley sees his cue.
+Mr. Huxley’s very first word is the “physical basis or matter of life;”
+and he supposes “that to many the idea that there is such a thing may be
+novel.” This, then, so far, is what is _new_ in Mr. Huxley’s
+contribution. He seems to have said to himself, if formerly the whole
+world was thought kin in an “ideal” or formal element, organization, I
+shall now finally complete this identification in a “physical” or
+material element, protoplasm. In short, what at this stage we are asked
+to witness in the essay is, the identification of all living beings
+whatever in the identity of protoplasm. As there is a single matter,
+clay, which is the matter of all bricks, so there is a single matter,
+protoplasm, which is the matter of all organisms. “Protoplasm is the
+clay of the potter, which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains
+clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick
+or sun-dried clod.” Now here I cannot help stopping a moment to remark
+that Mr. Huxley puts emphatically his whole soul into this sentence, and
+evidently believes it to be, if we may use the word, a _clincher_. But,
+after all, does it say much? or rather, does it say anything? To the
+question, “Of what are you made?” the answer, for a long time now, and
+by the great mass of human beings who are supposed civilized, has been
+“Dust.” Dust, and the same dust, has been allowed to constitute us all.
+But materialism has not on that account been the irresistible result.
+Attention hitherto—and surely excusably, or even laudably in such a
+case—has been given not so much to the dust as to the “potter,” and the
+“artifice” by which he could so transform, or, as Mr. Huxley will have
+it, _modify_ it. To ask us to say, instead of dust, clay, or even
+protoplasm, is not to ask us for much, then, seeing that even to Mr.
+Huxley there still remain both the “potter” and his “artifice.”
+
+But to return: To Mr. Huxley, when he says all bricks, being made of
+clay, are the same thing, we answer, Yes, undoubtedly, if they are made
+of the same clay. That is, the bricks are identical if the clay is
+identical; but, on the other hand, by as much as the clay differs will
+the bricks differ. And, similarly, all organisms can be identified only
+if their composing protoplasm can be identified. To this stake is the
+argument of Mr. Huxley bound.
+
+This argument itself takes, as we have seen, a threefold course: Mr.
+Huxley will prove his position in this place by reference, firstly, to
+unity of faculty; secondly, to unity of form; and thirdly, to unity of
+substance. It is this course of proof, then, which we have now to
+follow, but taking the question of substance, as simplest, first, and
+the others later.
+
+By substance, Mr. Huxley understands the internal or chemical
+composition; and, with a mere reference to the action of reagents, he
+asserts the protoplasm of all living beings to be an identical
+combination of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is for us to
+ask, then, Are all samples of protoplasm identical, first, in their
+chemical composition, and, second, under the action of the various
+reagents?
+
+On the first clause, we may say, in the first place, towards a proof of
+difference which will only cumulate, I hope, that, even should we grant
+in all protoplasm an identity of chemical ingredients, what is called
+_Allotropy_ may still have introduced no inconsiderable variety. Ozone
+is not antozone, nor is oxygen either, though in chemical constitution
+all are alike. In the second place, again, we may say that, with
+_varying proportions_, the same component parts produce very various
+results. By way of illustration, it will suffice to refer to such
+different things as the proteids, gluten, albumen, fibrin, gelatine,
+etc., compared with the urinary products, urea and uric acid; or with
+the biliary products, glycocol, glycocolic acid, bili-rubin,
+bili-verdin, etc.; and yet all these substances, varying so much the one
+from the other, are, as protoplasm is, compounds of carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen. But, in the third place, we are not limited to a
+_may say_; we can assert the fact that all protoplasm is not chemically
+identical. All the tissues of the organism are called protoplasm by Mr.
+Huxley; but can we predicate chemical identity of muscle and bone, for
+example? In such cases Mr. Huxley, it is true, may bring the word
+“modified” into use; but the objection of modification we shall examine
+later. In the mean time, we are justified, by Mr. Huxley’s very
+argument, in regarding all organized tissues whatever as protoplasm; for
+if these tissues are not to be identified in protoplasm, we must suppose
+denied what it was his one business to affirm. And it is against that
+affirmation that we point to the fact of much chemical difference
+obtaining among the tissues, not only in the _proportions_ of their
+fundamental elements, but also in the _addition_ (and proportions as
+well) of such others as chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, potash, soda,
+lime, magnesia, iron, etc. Vast differences vitally must be legitimately
+assumed for tissues that are so different chemically. But, in the fourth
+place, we have the authority of the Germans for asserting that the cells
+themselves—and they now, to the most advanced, are only protoplasm—do
+differ chemically, some being found to contain glycogen, some
+cholesterine, some protogon, and some myosin. Now such substances, let
+the chemical analogy be what it may, must still be allowed to introduce
+chemical difference. In the last place, Mr. Huxley’s analysis is an
+analysis of _dead_ protoplasm, and indecisive, consequently, for that
+which lives. Mr. Huxley betrays sensitiveness in advance to this
+objection; for he seeks to rise above the sensitiveness and the
+objection at once by styling the latter “frivolous.” Nevertheless the
+Germans say pointedly that it is unknown whether the same elements are
+to be referred to the cells after as before death. Kühne does not
+consider it proved that living muscle contains syntonin; yet Mr. Huxley
+tells us, in his Physiology, that “syntonin is the chief constituent of
+muscle and flesh.” In general, we may say, according to Stricker, that
+all weight is put now on the examination of living tissue, and that the
+difference is fully allowed between that and dead tissue.
+
+On the second clause now, or with regard to the action of reagents,
+these must be denied to produce the like result on the various forms of
+protoplasm. With reference to temperature, for example, Kühne reports
+the movements of the amoeba to be arrested in iced water; while, in the
+same medium, the ova of the trout furrow famously, but perish even in a
+warmed room. Others, again, we are told, may be actually dried, and yet
+live. Of ova in general, in this connection, it is said that they live
+or die according as the temperature to which they are exposed differs
+little or much from that which is natural to the organisms producing
+them. In some, according to Max Schultze, even distilled water is enough
+to arrest movement. Now, not to dwell longer here, both amoeba and ova
+are to Mr. Huxley pure protoplasm; and such difference of result,
+according to difference of temperature, etc., must assuredly be allowed
+to point to a difference of original nature. Any conclusion so far,
+then, in regard to unity of substance, whether the chemical composition
+or the action of reagents be considered, cannot be said to bear out the
+views of Mr. Huxley.
+
+What now of the unities of form and power in protoplasm? By form, Mr.
+Huxley will be found to mean the general appearance and structure; and
+by faculty or power, the action exhibited. Now it will be very easy to
+prove that, in neither respect, do all specimens of protoplasm agree.
+Mr. Huxley’s representative protoplasm, it appears, is that of the
+nettle-sting; and he describes it as a granulated, semi-fluid body,
+contractile in mass, and contractile also in detail to the development
+of a species of circulation. Stricker, again, speaks of it as a
+homogeneous substance, in which any granules that may appear must be
+considered of foreign importation, and in which there are no evidences
+of circulation. In this last respect, then, that Mr. Huxley should talk
+of “tiny Maelstroms,” such as even in the silence of a tropical noon
+might stun us, if heard, as “with the roar of a great city,” may be
+viewed, perhaps, as a rise into poetry beyond the occasion.
+
+Further, according to Stricker, protoplasm varies almost infinitely in
+consistence, in shape, in structure, and in function. In consistence, it
+is sometimes so fluid as to be capable of forming in drops; sometimes
+semi-fluid and gelatinous; sometimes of considerable resistance. In
+shape—for to Stricker the cells are now protoplasm—we have club-shaped
+protoplasm, globe-shaped protoplasm, cup-shaped protoplasm,
+bottle-shaped protoplasm, spindle-shaped protoplasm—branched, threaded,
+ciliated protoplasm,—circle-headed protoplasm—flat, conical,
+cylindrical, longitudinal, prismatic, polyhedral, and palisade-like
+protoplasm. In structure, again, it is sometimes uniform and sometimes
+reticulated into interspaces that contain fluid. In function, lastly—and
+here we have entered on the consideration of faculty or power—some
+protoplasm is vagrant (so to translate _wandernd_), and of unknown use,
+like the colorless blood-corpuscles.
+
+In reference to these, as strengthening the argument, and throwing much
+light generally, I break off a moment to say that, very interesting as
+they are in themselves, and as Recklinghausen, in especial, has made
+them, Mr. Huxley’s theory of them disagrees considerably with the
+prevalent German one. He speaks of them as the source of the body in
+general, yet, in his Physiology, he talks of the spleen, the lymphatics,
+and even the liver—_parts_ of the body—as _their_ source. They are so
+few in number that, while Mr. Huxley is thankful to be able to point to
+the inside of the lips as a seat for them, they bear to the red
+corpuscles only the proportion of 1 to 450. This disproportion, however,
+is no bar to Mr. Huxley’s derivation of the latter from the former. But
+the fact is questioned. The Germans, generally, for their, part,
+describe the colorless, or vagrant, blood-corpuscles as probably media
+of conjugation or reparation, but acknowledge their function to be as
+yet quite unknown; while Rindfleisch, characterizing the spleen as the
+grave of the red, and the womb of the white, corpuscles, evidently
+refers the latter to the former. This, indeed, is a matter of direct
+assertion with Preyer, who has “shown that pieces of red
+blood-corpuscles may be eaten by the amoeboid cells of the frog,” and
+holds that the latter (the white corpuscles) proceed directly from the
+former (the red corpuscles); so that it seems to be determined in the
+mean time that there is no proof of the reverse being the fact.
+
+In function, then, to resume, some protoplasm is vagrant, and of unknown
+use. Some again produces pepsine, and some fat. Some at least contains
+pigment. Then there is nerve-protoplasm, brain-protoplasm,
+bone-protoplasm, muscle-protoplasm, and protoplasm of all the other
+tissues, no one of which but produces only its own kind, and is
+uninterchangeable with the rest. Lastly, on this head, we have to point
+to the overwhelming fact that there is the infinitely different
+protoplasm of the various infinitely different plants and animals, in
+each of which its own protoplasm, as in the case of that of the various
+tissues, but produces its own kind, and is uninterchangeable with that
+of the rest.
+
+It may be objected, indeed, that these latter are examples of modified
+protoplasm. The objection of modification, as said, we have to see by
+itself later; but, in the mean time, it may be asked, Where are we to
+begin, _not_ to have modified protoplasm? We have the example of Mr.
+Huxley himself, who, in the nettle-sting, begins already with modified
+protoplasm; and we have the authority of Rindfleisch for asserting that
+“in every different tissue we must look for a different initial term of
+the productive series.” This, evidently, is a very strong light on the
+original multiplicity of protoplasm, which the consideration, as we have
+seen, of the various plants and animals, has made, further, infinite.
+This is enough; but there is no wish to evade beginning with the very
+beginning—with absolutely pure initial protoplasm, if it can but be
+given us in any reference. The simple egg—that, probably is the
+beginning—that, probably, is the original identity; yet even there we
+find already distribution of the identity into infinite difference.
+This, certainly, with reference to the various organisms, but with
+reference also to the various tissues. That we regard the egg as the
+beginning, and that we do not start, like the smaller exceptional
+physiological school, with molecules themselves, depends on this, that
+the great Germans so often alluded to, Kühne among them, still trust in
+the experiments of Pasteur; and while they do not deny the possibility,
+or even the fact, of molecular generation, still feel justified in
+denying the existence of any observation that yet unassailably attests a
+_generatio æquivoca_. By such authority as this the simple philosophical
+spectator has no choice but to take his stand; and therefore it is that
+I assume the egg as the established beginning, so far, of all vegetable
+and animal organisms. To the egg, too, as the beginning, Mr. Huxley,
+though the lining of the nettle-sting is his representative protoplasm,
+at least refers. “In the earliest condition of the human organism,” he
+says, in allusion to the white (vagrant) corpuscles of the blood, “in
+that state in which it has but just become distinguished from the egg in
+which it arises, it is nothing but an aggregation of such corpuscles,
+and every organ of the body was once no more than such an aggregation.”
+Now, in beginning with the egg—an absolute beginning being denied us in
+consequence of the pre-existent infinite difference of the egg or eggs
+themselves—we may gather from the German physiologists some such account
+of the actual facts as this.
+
+The first change signalized in the impregnated egg seems that of
+_Furchung_, or furrowing—what the Germans call the _Furchungskugeln_,
+the _Dotterkugeln_, form. Then these _Kugeln_—clumps, eminences,
+monticles, we may translate the word—break into cells; and these are the
+cells of the embryo. Mr. Huxley, as quoted, refers to the whole body,
+and every organ of the body, as at first but an aggregation of colorless
+blood-corpuscles; but in the very statement which would render the
+identity alone explicit, the difference is quite as plainly implicit. As
+much as this lies in the word “organs,” to say nothing of “human.” The
+cells of the “organs,” to which he refers, are even then
+uninterchangeable, and produce but themselves. The Germans tell us of
+the _Keimblatt_, the germ-leaf, in which all these organs originate.
+This _Blatt_, or leaf, is threefold, it seems; but even these folds are
+not indifferent. The various cells have their distinct places in them
+from the first. While what in this connection are called the epithelial
+and endorthelial tissues spring respectively from the _upper_ and
+_under_ leaf, connective tissues, with muscle and blood, spring from the
+_middle_ one. Surely in such facts we have a perfect warrant to assert
+the initial non-identity of protoplasm, and to insist on this, that,
+from the very earliest moment—even literally _ab ovo_—brain-cells only
+generate brain-cells, bone-cells bone-cells, and so on.
+
+These considerations on function all concern faculty or power; but we
+have to notice now that the characteristic and fundamental form of power
+is to Mr. Huxley _contractility_. He even quotes Goethe in proof of
+contractility being the main power or faculty of _Man_! Nevertheless it
+is to be said at once that, while there are differences in what
+protoplasm _is_ contractile, all protoplasm is not contractile, nor
+dependent on contractility for its functions. In the former respect, for
+example, muscle, while it is the contractile tissue special, is also to
+Mr. Huxley protoplasm; yet Stricker asserts the inner construction of
+the contractile substance, of which muscle-fibre virtually consists, to
+be essentially different from contractile protoplasm. Here, then, we
+have the contractile _substance_ proper “essentially different” from the
+contractile _source_ proper. In the latter respect, again, we shall not
+call in the _un_contractible substances which Mr. Huxley himself
+denominates protoplasm—bread, namely, roast mutton, and boiled lobster;
+but we may ask where—even in the case of a living body—is the
+contractility of white of egg? In this reference, too, we may remark
+that Kühne, who divides the protoplasm of the epidermis into three
+classes, has been unable to distinguish contractility in his own third
+class. Lastly, where, in relation to the protoplasm of the nervous
+system, is there evidence of its contractility? Has any one pretended
+that thought is but the contraction of the brain; or is it by
+contraction that the very nerves operate contraction—the nerves that
+supply muscles, namely? Mr. Huxley himself, in his Physiology, describes
+nervous action very differently. There _conduction_ is spoken of without
+a hint of contraction. Of the higher faculties of man I have to speak
+again; but let us just ask where, in the case of any pure
+sensation—smell, taste, touch, sound, color—is there proof of any
+contraction? Are we to suppose that between the physical cause of heat
+without and the mental sensation of heat within, contraction is anywhere
+interpolated? Generally, in conclusion here, while reminding of
+Virchow’s testimony to the inherent inequalities of cell-capacity, let
+us but, on the question of faculty, contrast the kidney and the brain,
+even as these organs are viewed by Mr. Huxley. To him the one is but a
+sieve for the extrusion of refuse: the other thinks Newton’s ‘Principia’
+and Iliads of Homer.
+
+Probably, then, in regard to any continuity in protoplasm of power, of
+form, or of substance, we have seen _lacunæ_ enow. Nay, Mr. Huxley
+himself can be adduced in evidence on the same side. Not rarely do we
+find in his essay admissions of _probability_ where it is _certainty_
+that is alone in place. He says, for example, “It is more than probable
+that _when_ the vegetable world _is_ thoroughly explored we _shall_ find
+all plants in possession of the same powers.” When a conclusion is
+decidedly announced, it is rather disappointing to be told, as here,
+that the premises are still to collect. “_So far_,” he says again, “as
+the conditions of the manifestations of the phenomena of contractility
+have _yet_ been studied.” Now, such a _so far_ need not be _very far_;
+and we may confess in passing, that from Mr. Huxley the phrase, “the
+conditions of the _manifestations_ of the _phenomena_” grates. We hear
+again that it is “the rule _rather_ than the exception,” or that
+“weighty authorities have _suggested_” that such and such things
+“probably occur,” or, while contemplating the nettle-sting, that such
+“_possible_ complexity” in other cases “_dawns_ upon one.” On other
+occasions he expresses himself to the effect that “perhaps it would not
+yet be safe to say that _all_ forms,” etc. Nay, not only does he
+directly _say_ that “it is by no means his intention to suggest that
+there is no difference between the lowest plant and the highest, or
+between plants and animals,” but he directly proves what he says, for he
+demonstrates in plants and animals an _essential difference of power_.
+Plants _can_ assimilate inorganic matters, animals can _not_, etc.
+Again, here is a passage in which he is seen to cut his own “_basis_”
+from beneath his own feet. After telling us that all forms of protoplasm
+consist of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen “in very complex
+union,” he continues, “To this complex combination, _the nature of which
+has never been determined with exactness_, the name of protein has been
+applied.” This, plainly, is an identification, on Mr. Huxley’s own part,
+of protoplasm and protein; and what is said of the one being necessarily
+true of the other, it follows that Mr. Huxley admits the nature of
+protoplasm never to have been determined with exactness, and that, even
+in his eyes, the _lis_ is still _sub judice_. This admission is
+strengthened by the words, too, “If we use this term” (protein) “with
+such _caution_ as may properly arise out of our _comparative ignorance_
+of the things for which it stands;” which entitle us to recommend, in
+consequence “of our _comparative ignorance_ of the things for which it
+stands,” “_caution_” in the use of the term protoplasm. In such a state
+of the case we cannot wonder that Mr. Huxley’s own conclusion here is:
+Therefore “all living matter is more or less albuminoid.” All living
+matter is more or less albuminoid! That, indeed, is the single
+conclusion of Mr. Huxley’s whole industry; but it is a conclusion that,
+far from requiring the intervention of protoplasm, had been reached long
+before the word itself had been, in this connection, used.
+
+It is in this way, then, that Mr. Huxley can be adduced in refutation of
+himself; and I think his resort to an epigram of Goethe’s for reduction
+of the powers of man to those of contraction, digestion, and
+reproduction, can be regarded as an admission to the same effect. The
+epigram runs thus:—
+
+   “Warum treibt sich das Volk so, und schreit? Es will sich ernähren,
+    Kinder zeugen, und die nähren so gut es vermag.
+    Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich wie er auch will.”
+
+That means, quite literally translated, “Why do the folks bustle and
+bawl? They want to feed themselves, get children, and then feed them as
+best they can; no man does more, let him do as he may.” This, really, is
+Mr. Huxley’s sole proof for his classification of the powers of man. Is
+it sufficient? Does it not apply rather to the birds of the air, the
+fish of the sea, and the beasts of the field, than to man? Did Newton
+only feed himself, beget children, and then feed them? Was it impossible
+for him to do any more, let him do as he might? And what we ask of
+Newton we may ask of all the rest. To elevate, therefore, the passing
+whim of mere literary _Laune_ into a cosmical axiom and a proof in
+place—this we cannot help adding to the other productions here in which
+Mr. Huxley appears against himself.
+
+But were it impossible either for him or us to point to these _lacunæ_,
+it would still be our right and our duty to refer to the present
+conditions of microscopic science in general as well as in particular,
+and to demur to the erection of its _dicta_, constituted as they yet
+are, into established columns and buttresses in support of any theory of
+life, material or other.
+
+The most delicate and dubious of all the sciences, it is also the
+youngest. In its manipulations the slightest change may operate as a
+destructive drought, or an equally destructive deluge. Its very tools
+may positively create the structure it actually examines. The present
+state of the science, and what warrant it gives Mr. Huxley to dogmatize
+on protoplasm, we may understand from this avowal of Kühne’s: “To-day we
+believe that we see” such or such fact, “but know not that further
+improvements in the means of observation will not reveal what is assumed
+for certainty to be only illusion.” With such authority to lean on—and
+it is the highest we can have—we may be allowed to entertain the
+conjecture, that it is just possible that some certainties, even of Mr.
+Huxley, may yet reveal themselves as illusions.
+
+But, in resistance to any sweeping conclusions built on it, we are not
+confined to a reference to the imperfections involved in the very nature
+and epoch of the science itself in general. With yet greater assurance
+of carrying conviction with us, we may point in particular to the actual
+opinions of its present professors. We have seen already, in the
+consideration premised, that Mr. Huxley’s hypothesis of a protoplasm
+_matter_ is unsupported, even by the most innovating Germans, who as yet
+will not advance, the most advanced of them, beyond a protoplasm-cell;
+and that his whole argument is thus sapped in advance. But what
+threatens more absolute extinction of this argument still, _all_ the
+German physiologists do _not_ accept even the protoplasm-cell.
+Rindfleisch, for example, in his recently-published ‘Lehrbuch der
+pathologischen Gewebelehre’ speaks of the cell very much as we
+understand Virchow to have spoken of it. To him there is in the cell not
+only protoplasm but nucleus, and perhaps membrane as well. To him, too,
+the cell propagates itself quite as we have been hitherto fancying it to
+do, by division of the nucleus, increase of the protoplasm, and ultimate
+partition of the cell itself. Yet he knows withal of the opinions of
+others, and accepts them in a manner. He mentions Kühne’s account of the
+membrane as at first but a mere physical limit of two fluids—a mere
+peripheral film or curdling; still he assumes a formal and decided
+membrane at last. Even Leydig and Schultze, who shall be the express
+eliminators of the membrane—the one by initiation and the other by
+consummation—confess that, as regards the cells of certain tissues, they
+have never been able to detect in them the absence of a membrane.
+
+As regards the nucleus again, the case is very much stronger. When we
+have admitted with Brücke that certain cryptogam cells, with Haeckel
+that certain protists, with Cienkowsky that two monads, and with
+Schultze that one amoeba, are without nucleus—when we have admitted that
+division of the cell _may_ take place without implicating that of the
+nucleus—that the movements of the nucleus _may_ be passive and due to
+those of the protoplasm—that Baer and Stricker demonstrate the
+disappearance of the original nucleus in the impregnated egg,—when we
+have admitted this, we have admitted also all that can be said in
+degradation of the nucleus. Even those who say all this still attribute
+to the nucleus an important and unknown _rôle_, and describe the
+formation in the impregnated egg of a new nucleus; while there are
+others again who resist every attempt to degrade it. Böttcher asserts
+movement for the nucleus, even when wholly removed from the cell;
+Neumann points to such movement in dead or dying cells; and there is
+other testimony to a like effect, as well as to peculiarities of the
+nucleus otherwise that indicate spontaneity. In this reference we may
+allude to the weighty opinion of the late Professor Goodsir, who
+anticipated in so remarkable a manner certain of the determinations of
+Virchow. Goodsir, in that anticipation, wonderfully rich and ingenious
+as he is everywhere, is perhaps nowhere more interesting and successful
+than in what concerns the nucleus. Of the whole cell, the nucleus is to
+him, as it was to Schleiden, Schwann, and others, the most important
+element. And this is the view to which I, who have little business to
+speak, wish success. This universe is not an accidental cavity, in which
+an accidental dust has been accidentally swept into heaps for the
+accidental evolution of the majestic spectacle of organic and inorganic
+life. That majestic spectacle is a spectacle as plainly for the eye of
+reason as any diagram of the mathematician. That majestic spectacle
+could have been constructed, was constructed, only in reason, for
+reason, and by reason. From beyond Orion and the Pleiades, across the
+green hem of earth, up to the imperial personality of man, all, the
+furthest, the deadest, the dustiest, is for fusion in the invisible
+point of the single Ego—_which alone glorifies it_. _For_ the subject,
+and on the model of the subject, all is made. Therefore it is
+that—though, precisely as there are acephalous monsters by way of
+exception and deformity, there may be also at the very extremity of
+animated existence cells without a nucleus—I cannot help believing that
+this nucleus itself, as analogue of the subject will yet be proved the
+most important and indispensable of all the normal cell-elements. Even
+the phenomena of the impregnated egg seem to me to support this view. In
+the egg, on impregnation, it seems to me natural (I say it with a smile)
+that the old sun that ruled it should go down, and that a new sun,
+stronger in the combination of the new and the old, should ascend into
+its place!
+
+Be these things as they may, we have now overwhelming evidence before us
+for concluding, with reference to Mr. Huxley’s first proposition,
+that—in view of the nature of microscopic science—in view of the state
+of belief that obtains at present as regards nucleus, membrane, and
+entire cell—even in view of the supporters of protoplasm itself—Mr.
+Huxley is not authorized to speak of a physical matter of life; which,
+for the rest, if granted, would, for innumerable and, as it appears to
+me, irrefragable reasons, be obliged to acknowledge for itself, not
+identity, but an infinite diversity in power, in form and in substance.
+
+So much for the first proposition in Mr. Huxley’s essay, or that which
+concerns protoplasm, as a supposed matter of life, identical itself, and
+involving the identity of all the various organs and organisms which it
+is assumed to compose. What now of the second proposition, or that which
+concerns the materiality at once of protoplasm, and of all that is
+conceived to derive from protoplasm? In other words, though, so to
+speak, for organic bricks anything like an organic clay still awaits the
+proof, I ask, if the bricks are not the same because the clay is not the
+same, what if the materiality of the former is equally unsupported by
+the materiality of the latter? Or what if the functions of protoplasm
+are not properties of its mere molecular constitution?
+
+For this is Mr. Huxley’s second proposition, namely, That all vital and
+intellectual functions are but the properties of the molecular
+disposition and changes of the material basis (protoplasm) of which the
+various animals and vegetables consist. With the conclusions now before
+us, it is evident that to enter at all on this part of Mr. Huxley’s
+argumentation is, so far as we are concerned, only a matter of grace. In
+order that it should have any weight, we must grant the fact, at once of
+the existence of a matter of life, and of all organs and organisms being
+but aggregates of it. This, obviously, we cannot now do. By way of
+hypothesis, however, we may assume it. Let it be granted, then, that
+_pro hac vice_ there _is_ a physical basis of life with all the
+consequences named; and now let us see how Mr. Huxley proceeds to
+establish its materiality.
+
+The whole former part of Mr. Huxley’s essay consists (as said) of fifty
+paragraphs, and the argument immediately concerned is confined to the
+latter ten of them. This argument is the simple chemical analogy that,
+under stimulus of an electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen uniting into an
+equivalent weight of water, and, under stimulus of preëxisting
+protoplasm, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen uniting into an
+equivalent weight of protoplasm, there is the same warrant for
+attributing the properties of the consequent to the properties of the
+antecedents in the latter case as in the former. The properties of
+protoplasm are, in origin and character, precisely on the same level as
+the properties of water. The cases are perfectly parallel. It is as
+absurd to attribute a new entity vitality to protoplasm, as a new entity
+aquosity to water. Or, if it is by its mere chemical and physical
+structure that water exhibits certain properties called aqueous, it is
+also by its mere chemical and physical structure that protoplasm
+exhibits certain properties called vital. All that is necessary in
+either case is, “under certain conditions,” to bring the chemical
+constituents together. If water is a molecular complication, protoplasm
+is equally a molecular complication, and for the description of the one
+or the other there is no change of language required. A new substance
+with new qualities results in precisely the same way here, as a new
+substance with new qualities there; and the derivative qualities are not
+more different from the primitive qualities in the one instance, than
+the derivative qualities are different from the primitive qualities in
+the other. Lastly, the _modus operandi_ of preëxistent protoplasm is not
+more unintelligible than that of the electric spark. The conclusion is
+irresistible, then, that all protoplasm being reciprocally convertible,
+and consequently identical, the properties it displays, vitality and
+intellect included, are as much the result of molecular constitution as
+those of water itself.
+
+It is evident, then, that the fulcrum on which Mr. Huxley’s second
+proposition rests, is a single inference from a chemical analogy.
+Analogy, however, being never identity, is apt to betray. The difference
+it hides may be essential, that is, while the likeness it shows may be
+inessential—so far as the conclusion is concerned. That this mischance
+has overtaken Mr. Huxley here, it will, I fancy, not be difficult to
+demonstrate.
+
+The analogy to which Mr. Huxley trusts has two references: one, to
+chemical composition, and one to a certain stimulus that determines it.
+As regards chemical composition, we are asked, by virtue of the analogy
+obtaining, to identify, as equally simple instances of it, protoplasm
+here and water there; and, as regards the stimulus in question, we are
+asked to admit the action of the electric spark in the one case to be
+quite analogous to the action of preëxisting protoplasm in the other. In
+both references I shall endeavor to point out that the analogy fails;
+or, as we may say it also, that, even to Mr. Huxley, it can only seem to
+succeed by discounting the elements of difference that still subsist.
+
+To begin with chemical combination, it is not unjust to demand that the
+analogy which must be admitted to exist in that, and a general physical
+respect, should not be strained beyond its legitimate limits. Protoplasm
+cannot be denied to be a chemical substance; protoplasm cannot be denied
+to be a physical substance. As a compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen
+and nitrogen, it comports itself chemically—at least in ultimate
+instance—in a manner not essentially different from that in which water,
+as a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, comports itself chemically. In
+mere physical aspect, again, it may count quality for quality with water
+in the same aspect. In short, so far as it is on chemical and physical
+structure that the possession of distinctive properties in any case
+depends, both bodies may be allowed to be pretty well on a par. The
+analogy must be allowed to hold so far: so far but no farther. One step
+farther and we see not only that protoplasm has, like water, a chemical
+and physical structure; but that, unlike water, it has also an organized
+or organic structure. Now this, on the part of protoplasm, is a
+possession in excess; and with relation to that excess there can be no
+grounds for analogy. This, perhaps, is what Mr. Huxley has omitted to
+consider. When insisting on attributing to protoplasm the qualities it
+possessed, because of its chemical and physical structure, if it was for
+chemical and physical structure that we attributed to water _its_
+qualities, he has simply forgotten the addition to protoplasm of a third
+structure that can only be named organic. “If the phenomena exhibited by
+water are its properties, so are those presented by protoplasm, living
+or dead, its properties.” When Mr. Huxley speaks thus, Exactly so, we
+may answer: “living or dead!” That alternative is simply slipped in and
+passed; but it is in that alternative that the whole matter lies.
+Chemically, dead protoplasm is to Mr. Huxley quite as good as living
+protoplasm. As a sample of the article, he is quite content with dead
+protoplasm, and even swallows it, he says, in the shape of bread,
+lobster, mutton, etc., with all the satisfactory results to be
+desired.—Still, as concerns the argument, it must be pointed out that it
+is only these that can be placed on the same level as water; and that
+living protoplasm is not only unlike water, but it is unlike dead
+protoplasm. Living protoplasm, namely, is identical with dead protoplasm
+only so far as its chemistry is concerned (if even so much as that); and
+it is quite evident, consequently, that difference between the two
+cannot depend on that in which they are identical—cannot depend on the
+chemistry. Life, then, is no affair of chemical and physical structure,
+and must find its explanation in something else. It is thus that, lifted
+high enough, the light of the analogy between water and protoplasm is
+seen to go out. Water, in fact, when formed from hydrogen and oxygen,
+is, in a certain way and in relation to them, no new product; it has
+still, like them, only chemical and physical qualities; it is still, as
+they are, inorganic. So far as _kind_ of power is concerned, they are
+still on the same level. But not so protoplasm, where, with preservation
+of the chemical and physical likeness there is the addition of the
+unlikeness of life, of organization, and of ideas. But the addition is a
+new world—a new and higher world, the world of a self-realizing thought,
+the world of an _entelechy_. The change of language objected to by Mr.
+Huxley is thus a matter of necessity, for it is _not_ mere molecular
+complication that we have any longer before us, and the qualities of the
+derivative are essentially and absolutely different from the qualities
+of the primitive. If we did invent the term aquosity, then, as an
+abstract sign for all the qualities of water, we should really do very
+little harm; but aquosity and vitality would still remain essentially
+unlike. While for the invention of aquosity there is little or no call,
+however, the fact in the other case is that we are not only compelled to
+invent, but to _perceive_ vitality. We are quite willing to do as Mr.
+Huxley would have us to do: look on, watch the phenomena, and name the
+results. But just in proportion to our faithfulness in these respects is
+the necessity for the recognition of a new world and a new nomenclature.
+There are certainly different states of water, as ice and steam; but the
+relation of the solid to the liquid, or of either to the vapor, surely
+offers no analogy to the relation of protoplasm dead to protoplasm
+alive. That relation is not an analogy but an antithesis, the antithesis
+of antitheses. In it, in fact, we are in presence of the one
+incommunicable gulf—the gulf of all gulfs—that gulf which Mr. Huxley’s
+protoplasm is as powerless to efface as any other material expedient
+that has ever been suggested since the eyes of men first looked into
+it—the mighty gulf between death and life.
+
+The differences alluded to (they are, in order, organization and life,
+the objective idea—design, and the subjective idea—thought), it may be
+remarked, are admitted by those very Germans to whom protoplasm, name
+and thing, is due. They, the most advanced and innovating of them,
+directly avow that there is present in the cell “an architectonic
+principle that has not yet been detected.” In pronouncing protoplasm
+capable of active or vital movements, they do by that refer, they admit
+also, to an immaterial force, and they ascribe the processes exhibited
+by protoplasm—in so many words—not to the molecules, but to organization
+and life. It is remarked by Kant that “the reason of the specific mode
+of existence of every part of a living body lies in the whole, whilst
+with dead masses each part bears this reason within itself;” and this
+indeed is how the two worlds are differentiated. A drop of water, once
+formed, is there passive for ever, susceptible to influence, but
+indifferent to influence, and what influence reaches it is wholly from
+without. It may be added to, it may be subtracted from; but infinitely
+apathetic quantitatively, it is qualitatively independent. It is
+indifferent to its own physical parts. It is without contractility,
+without alimentation, without reproduction, without specific function.
+Not so the cell, in which the parts are dependent on the whole, and the
+whole on the parts; which has its activity and _raison d’être_ within;
+which manifests all the powers which we have described water to want;
+and which requires for its continuance conditions of which water is
+independent. It is only so far as organization and life are concerned,
+however, that the cell is thus different from water. Chemically and
+physically, as said, it can show with it quality for quality. How
+strangely Mr. Huxley’s deliverances show beside these facts! He can “see
+no break in the series of steps in molecular complication;” but,
+glaringly obvious, there is a step added that is not molecular at all,
+and that has its supporting conditions completely elsewhere. The
+molecules are as fully accounted for in protoplasm as in water; but the
+sum of qualities, thus exhausted in the latter, is not so exhausted in
+the former, in which there are qualities due, plainly, not to the
+molecules as molecules, but to the form into which they are thrown, and
+the force that makes that form one. When the chemical elements are
+brought together, Mr. Huxley says, protoplasm is formed, “and this
+protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life;” but he ought to have added
+that these phenomena are themselves added to the phenomena for which all
+that relates to chemistry stands, and are there, consequently, only by
+reason of some other determinant. New consequents necessarily demand new
+antecedents. “We think fit to call different kinds of matter carbon,
+oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers and
+activities of these substances as the properties of the matter of which
+they are composed.” That, doubtless, is true, we say; but such
+statements do not exhaust the facts. We call water hydrogen and oxygen,
+and attribute _its_ properties to the properties of them. In a chemical
+point of view, we ought to do the same thing for ice and steam; yet, for
+all the chemical identity, water is not ice, nor is either steam. Do we,
+then, in these cases, make nothing of the _difference_, and in its
+despite enjoy the satisfaction of viewing the three as one? Not so; we
+ask a reason for the difference; we demand an antecedent that shall
+render the consequent intelligible. The chemistry of oxygen and hydrogen
+is not enough in explanation of the threefold form; and by the very
+necessity of the facts we are driven to the addition of heat. It is
+precisely so with protoplasm in its twofold form. The chemistry
+remaining the same in each (if it really does so), we are compelled to
+seek elsewhere a reason for the difference of living from dead
+protoplasm. As the differences of ice and steam from water lay not in
+the hydrogen and oxygen, but in the heat, so the difference of living
+from dead protoplasm lies not in the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen,
+and the nitrogen, but in the vital organization. In all cases, for the
+new quality, plainly, we must have a new explanation. The qualities of a
+steam-engine are not the results of its simple chemistry. We do apply to
+protoplasm the same conceptions, then, that are legitimate elsewhere,
+and in allocating properties and explaining phenomena we simply insist
+on Mr. Huxley’s own distinction of “living or dead.” That, in fact, is
+to us the distinction of distinctions, and we admit no vital action
+whatever, not even the dullest, to be the result of the _molecular_
+action of the protoplasm that displays it. The very protoplasm of the
+nettle-sting, with which Mr. Huxley begins, is already vitally
+organized, and in that organization as much superior to its own
+molecules as the steam-engine, in its mechanism, to its own wood and
+iron. It were indeed as rational to say that there is no principle
+concerned in a steam-engine or a watch but that of its molecular forces,
+as to make this assertion of organized matter. Still there are degrees
+in organization, and the highest forms of life are widely different from
+the lowest. Degrees similar we see even in the inorganic world. The
+persistent flow of a river is, to the mighty reason of the solar system,
+in some such proportion, perhaps, as the rhizopod to man. In protoplasm,
+even the lowest, then, but much more conspicuously in the highest, there
+is, in addition to the molecular force, another force unsignalized by
+Mr. Huxley—the force of vital organization.
+
+But this force is a rational unity, and that is an idea; and this I
+would point to as a second form of the addition to the chemistry and
+physics of protoplasm. We have just seen, it is true, that an idea may
+be found in inorganic matter, as in the solar and sidereal systems
+generally. But the idea in organized matter is not one operative, so to
+speak, from without: it is one operative from within, and in an
+infinitely more intimate and pervading manner. The units that form the
+complement of an inorganic system are but independently and externally
+in place, like units in a procession; but in what is organized there is
+no individual that is not sublated into the unity of the single life.
+This is so even in protoplasm. Mr. Huxley, it is true, desiderates, as
+result of mere ordinary chemical process, a life-stuff in mass, as it
+were in the web, to which he has only to resort for cuttings and
+cuttings in order to produce, by aggregation, what organized individual
+he pleases. But the facts are not so: we cannot have protoplasm in the
+web, but the piece. There is as yet no _matter_ of life; there are still
+_cells_ of life. It is no shred of protoplasm—no spoonful or
+toothpickful—that can be recognized as adequate to the function and the
+name. Such shred may wriggle a moment, but it produces nought, and it
+dies. In the smallest, lowest protoplasm-cell, then, we have this
+rational unity of a complement of individuals that only are for the
+whole and exist in the whole. This is an idea, therefore; this is
+design: the organized concert of many to a single common purpose. The
+rudest savage that should, as in Paley’s illustration, find a watch, and
+should observe the various contrivances all controlled by the single end
+in view, would be obliged to acknowledge—though in his own way—that what
+he had before him was no mere physical, no mere molecular product. So in
+protoplasm: even from the first, but, quite undeniably, in the completed
+organization at last, which alone it was there to produce; for a single
+idea has been its one manifestation throughout. And in what machinery
+does it not at length issue? Was it molecular powers that invented a
+respiration—that perforated the posterior ear to give a balance of
+air—that compensated the _fenestra ovalis_ by a _fenestra rotunda_—that
+placed in the auricular sacs those _otolithes_, those express stones for
+hearing? Such machinery! The _chordæ tendineæ_ are to the valves of the
+heart exactly adjusted check-strings; and the contractile _columnæ
+carneæ_ are set in, under contraction and expansion, to equalize their
+length to their office. Membranes, rods, and liquids—it required the
+express experiment of man to make good the fact that the inventor of the
+ear had availed himself of the most perfect apparatus possible for his
+purpose. And are we to conceive such machinery, such apparatus, such
+contrivances merely molecular? Are molecules adequate to such
+things—molecules in their blind passivity, and dead, dull insensibility?
+Is it to molecular agency Mr. Huxley himself owes that “singular inward
+laboratory” of which he speaks, and without which all the protoplasm in
+the world would be useless to him? Surely, in the presence of these
+manifest ideas, it is impossible to attribute the single peculiar
+feature of protoplasm—its vitality, namely—to mere molecular chemistry.
+Protoplasm, it is true, breaks up into carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
+nitrogen, as water does into hydrogen and oxygen; but the watch breaks
+similarly up into mere brass, and steel, and glass. The loose materials
+of the watch—even its chemical material if you will—replace its weight,
+quite as accurately as the constituents carbon, etc., replace the weight
+of the protoplasm. But neither these nor those replace the vanished
+idea, which was alone the important element. Mr. Huxley saw no break in
+the series of steps in molecular complication; but, though not
+molecular, it is difficult to understand what more striding, what more
+absolute break could be desired than the break into an idea. It is of
+that break alone that we think in the watch; and it is of that break
+alone that we should think in the protoplasm which, far more cunningly,
+far more rationally, constructs a heart, an eye or an ear. That is the
+break of breaks, and explain it as we may, we shall never explain it by
+molecules.
+
+But, if inorganic elements as such are inadequate to account either for
+vital organization or the objective idea of design, much more are they
+inadequate, in the third place, to account for the subjective idea, for
+the phenomena of thought as thought. Yet Mr. Huxley tells us that
+thought is but the expression of the molecular changes of protoplasm.
+This he only tells us; this he does not prove. He merely says that, if
+we admit the functions of the lowest forms of life to be but “direct
+results of the nature of the matter of which they are composed,” we must
+admit as much for the functions of the highest. We have not admitted Mr.
+Huxley’s presupposition; but, even with its admission, we should not
+feel bound to admit his conclusion. In such a mighty system of
+differences, there are ample room and verge enough for the introduction
+of new motives. We can say here at once, in fact, that as thought, let
+its connection be what it may with, has never been proved to result
+from, organization, no improvement of the proof required will be found
+in protoplasm. No one power that Mr. Huxley signalizes in protoplasm can
+account for thought: not alimentation, and not reproduction, certainly;
+but not even contractility. We have seen already that there is no proof
+of contraction being necessary even for the simplest sensation; but much
+less is there any proof of a necessity of contraction for the inner and
+independent operations of the mind. Mr. Huxley himself admits this. He
+says: “Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action are, in the
+long-run, resolvable into muscular contraction;” and so, “even those
+manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will, which we rightly
+name the higher faculties, are not excluded from this classification,
+inasmuch as to every one _but the subject of them_, they are known only
+as transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body.”
+The concession is made here, we see that these manifestations are
+differently known to the subject of them. But we may first object that,
+if even that privileged “every one but the subject” were limited to a
+knowledge of contractions, he would not know much. It is only because he
+knows, first of all, a thinker and willer of contractions that these
+themselves cease to be but passing externalities, and transitory
+contingencies. Neither is it reasonable to assert an identity of nature
+for contractions, and for that which they only represent. It would
+hardly be fair to confound either the receiver or the sender of a
+telegraphic message, with the movements which alone bore it, and without
+which it would have been impossible. The sign is not the thing
+signified, it is but the servant of the signifier—his own arbitrary
+mark—and intelligible, in the first place, only to him. It is the
+meaning, in all cases, that is alone vital; the sign is but an accident.
+To convert the internality into the arbitrary externality that simply
+expresses it, is for Mr. Huxley only an oversight. Your ideas are made
+known to your neighbors by contractions, therefore your ideas are of the
+same nature as contractions! Or, even to take it from the other side,
+your neighbor perceives in you contractions only, and therefore your
+ideas are contractions! Are not the vital elements here present the two
+correspondent internalities, between which the contractions constitute
+but an arbitrary chain of external communication, that is so now, but
+may be otherwise again? The ringing of the bell at the window is not
+precisely the dwarf within. Nor are Engineer Chappe’s “wooden arms and
+elbow-joints jerking and fugling in the air,” to be identified with
+Engineer Chappe himself. For the higher faculties, even for speech,
+etc., assuredly Mr. Huxley might have well spared himself this
+superfluous and inapplicable reference to contraction.
+
+But, in the middle of it, as we have seen, Mr. Huxley concedes that
+these manifestations are differently known to the subject of them. If
+so, what becomes of his assertion of but a certain number of powers for
+protoplasm? The manifestations of the higher faculties are not known to
+the subject of them by contraction, etc. By what, then, are they known?
+According to Mr. Huxley, they can only be known by the powers of
+protoplasm; and therefore, by his own showing, protoplasm must possess
+powers other than those of his own assertion. Mr. Huxley’s one great
+power of contractility, Mr. Huxley himself confesses to be inapplicable
+here. Indeed, in his Physiology (p. 193), he makes such an avowal as
+this: “We class _sensations_, along with _emotions_, and _volitions_,
+and _thoughts_, under the common head of states of _consciousness_; but
+what consciousness is we know not, and how it is that anything so
+remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of
+irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of
+the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the story.” Consciousness
+plainly was not muscular contraction to Mr. Huxley when he wrote his
+Physiology; it is only since then that he has gone over to the assertion
+of no power in protoplasm but the triple power, contractility, etc. But
+the truth is only as his Physiology has it—the cleft is simply, as Mr.
+Huxley acknowledges it there, absolute. On one side, there is the world
+of externality, where all is body by body, and away from one another—the
+boundless reciprocal exclusion of the infinite object. On the other
+side, there is the world of internality, where all is soul to soul, and
+away into one another—the boundless reciprocal inclusion of the infinite
+subject. This—even while it is true that, for subject to be subject, and
+object, object, the boundless intussuscepted multiplicity of the single
+invisible point of the one is but the dimensionless casket into which
+the illimitable Genius of the other must retract and withdraw itself—is
+the difference of differences; and certainly it is not internality that
+can be abolished before externality. The proof for the absoluteness of
+thought, the subject, the mind, is, on its side, pretty well perfect. It
+is not necessary here, however, to enter into that proof at length.
+Before passing on, I may simply point to the fact that, if thought is to
+be called a function of matter, it must be acknowledged to be a function
+wholly peculiar and unlike any other. In all other functions, we are
+present to processes which are in the same sense physical as the organs
+themselves. So it is with lung, stomach, liver, kidney, where every step
+can be followed, so to speak, with eye and hand; but all is changed when
+we have to do with mind as the function of brain. Then, indeed, as Mr.
+Huxley thought in his Physiology, we are admitted, as if by touch of
+Aladdin’s lamp, to a world absolutely different and essentially new—to a
+world, on its side of the incommunicable cleft, as complete, entire,
+independent, self-contained, and absolutely _sui generis_, as the world
+of matter on the other side. It will be sufficient here to allude to as
+much as this, with special reference to the fact that, so far as this
+argument is concerned, protoplasm has not introduced any the very
+slightest difference. All the ancient reasons for the independence of
+thought as against organization, can be used with even more striking
+effect as against protoplasm; but it will be sufficient to indicate
+this, so much are the arguments in question a common property now.
+Thought, in fact, brings with it its own warrant; or it brings with it,
+to use the phrase of Burns, “its patent of nobility direct from Almighty
+God.” And that is the strongest argument on this whole side. Throughout
+the entire universe, organic and inorganic, thought is the controlling
+sovereign; nor does matter anywhere refuse its allegiance. So it is in
+thought, too, that man has _his_ patent of nobility, believes that he is
+created in the image of God, and knows himself a free-man of infinitude.
+
+But the analogy, in the hands of Mr. Huxley, has, we have seen, a second
+reference—that, namely, to the excitants, if we may call them so, which
+_determine_ combination. The _modus operandi_, Mr. Huxley tells us, of
+preëxisting protoplasm in determining the formation of new protoplasm,
+is not more unintelligible than the _modus operandi_ of the electric
+spark in determining the formation of water; and so both, we are left to
+infer, are perfectly analogous. The inferential turn here is rather a
+favorite with Mr. Huxley. “But objectors of this class,” he says on an
+earlier occasion, in allusion to those who hesitate to conclude from
+dead to living matter, “do not seem to reflect that it is also, in
+strictness, true that we know nothing about the composition of any body
+whatever as it is.” In the same neighborhood, too, he argues that,
+though impotent to restore to decomposed calc-spar its original form, we
+do not hesitate to accept the chemical analysis assigned to it, and
+should not, consequently, any more hesitate because of any mere
+difference of form to accept the analysis of dead for that of living
+protoplasm. It is certainly fair to point out that, if we bear ignorance
+and impotence with equanimity in one case, we may equally so bear them
+in another; but it is not fair to convert ignorance into knowledge, nor
+impotence into power. Yet it is usual to take such statements loosely,
+and let them pass. It is not considered that, if we know nothing about
+the composition of any body whatever as it is, then we do know nothing,
+and that it is strangely idle to offer absolute ignorance as a support
+for the most dogmatic knowledge. If such statements are, as is really
+expected for them, to be accepted, yet not accepted, they are the
+stultification of all logic. Is the chemistry of living to be seen to be
+the same as the chemistry of dead protoplasm, because we know nothing
+about the composition of any body whatever as it is? We know perfectly
+well that black is white, for we are absolutely ignorant of either as it
+is! The _form_ of the calc-spar, which (the spar) we _can_ analyze, we
+cannot restore; therefore the _form_ of the protoplasm, which we
+_cannot_ analyze, has nothing to do with the matter in hand; and the
+chemistry of what is dead may be accepted as the chemistry of what is
+living! In the case of reasoning so irrelevant it is hardly worth while
+referring to what concerns the forms themselves; that they are totally
+incommensurable, that in all forms of calc-spar there is no question but
+of what is physical, while in protoplasm the change of form is
+introduction into an entire new world. As in these illustrations, so in
+the case immediately before us. No appeal to ignorance in regard to
+something else, the electric spark, should be allowed to transform
+another ignorance, that of the action of preëxisting protoplasm, into
+knowledge, here into _the_ knowledge that the two unknown things,
+because of non-knowledge, are—perfectly analogous! That this analogy
+does not exist—that the electric spark and preëxisting protoplasm are,
+in their relative places, _not_ on the same chemical level—this is the
+main point for us to see; and Mr. Huxley’s allusion to our ignorance
+must not be allowed to blind us to it. Here we have in a glass vessel so
+much hydrogen and oxygen, into which we discharge an electric spark, and
+water is the result. Now what analogy is it possible to perceive between
+this production of water by external experiment and the production of
+protoplasm by protoplasm? The discrepancy is so palpable that it were
+impertinent to enlarge on it. The truth is just this, that the measured
+and mixed gases, the vessel, and the spark, in the one case, are as
+unlike the fortuitous food, the living organs, and the long process of
+assimilation in the other case, as the product water is unlike the
+product protoplasm. No; that the action of the electric spark should be
+unknown, is no reason why we should not insist on protoplasm for
+protoplasm, on life for life. Protoplasm can only be produced by
+protoplasm, and each of all the innumerable varieties of protoplasm,
+only by its own kind. For the protoplasm of the worm we must go to the
+worm, and for that of the toad-stool to the toad-stool. In fact, if all
+living beings come from protoplasm, it is quite as certain that, but for
+living beings, protoplasm would disappear. Without an egg you cannot
+have a hen—that is true; but it is equally true that, without a hen, you
+cannot have an egg. So in protoplasm; which, consequently, in the
+production of itself, offers no analogy to the production, or
+precipitation by the electric spark, not of itself, but of water.
+Besides, if for protoplasm, preëxisting protoplasm, is always necessary,
+how was there ever a first protoplasm?
+
+Generally, then, Mr. Huxley’s analogy does not hold, whether in the one
+reference or the other, and Mr. Huxley has no warrant for the reduction
+of protoplasm to the mere chemical level which he assigns it in either.
+That level is brought very prominently forward in such expressions as
+these: That it is only necessary to bring the chemical elements
+“together,” “under certain conditions,” to give rise to the more complex
+body, protoplasm, just as there is a similar expedient to give rise to
+water; and that, under the influence of preëxisting living protoplasm,
+carbonic acid, water, and ammonia disappear, and an equivalent weight of
+protoplasm makes its appearance, just as, under the influence of the
+electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen disappear, and an equivalent weight
+of water makes its appearance. All this, plainly, is to assume for
+protoplasm such mere chemical place and nature as consist not with the
+facts. The cases are, in truth, not parallel, and the “certain
+conditions” are wholly diverse. All that is said we can do at will for
+water, but nothing of what is said can we do at will for protoplasm. To
+say we can feed protoplasm, and so make protoplasm at will produce
+protoplasm, is very much, in the circumstances, only to say, and is not
+to say, that, in this way, we make a chemical experiment. To insist on a
+chemical analogy, in fact, between water and protoplasm, is to omit the
+differences not covered by the analogy at all—thought, design, life, and
+all the processes of organization; and it is but simple procedure to
+omit these differences only by an appeal to ignorance elsewhere.
+
+It is hardly worth while, perhaps, to refer now again to the
+difference—here, however, once more incidentally suggested—between
+protoplasm and protoplasm. Mr. Huxley, that is, almost in his very last
+word on this part of the argument, seems to become aware of the bearing
+of this on what relates to materiality, and he would again stamp
+protoplasm (and with it life and intellect), into an indifferent
+identity. In order that there should be no break between the lowest
+functions and the highest (the functions of the fungus and the functions
+of man), he has “endeavored to prove,” he says, that the protoplasm of
+the lowest organisms is “essentially identical with, and most readily
+converted into that of any animal.” On this alleged reciprocal
+_convertibility_ of protoplasm, then, Mr. Huxley would again found as
+well an inference of identity, as the further conclusion that the
+functions of the highest, not less than those of the lowest animals, are
+but the molecular manifestations of their common protoplasm.
+
+Plainly here it is only the consideration, not of function, but of the
+alleged reciprocal _convertibility_ that is left us now. Is this true,
+then? Is it true that every organism can digest every other organism,
+and that thus a relation of identity is established between that which
+digests and whatever is digested? These questions place Mr. Huxley’s
+general enterprise, perhaps, in the most glaring light yet; for it is
+very evident that there is an end of the argument if all foods and all
+feeders are essentially identical both with themselves and with each
+other. The facts of the case, however, I believe to be too well known to
+require a single word here on my part. It is not long since Mr. Huxley
+himself pointed out the great difference between the foods of plants and
+the foods of animals; and the reader may be safely left to think for
+himself of _ruminantia_ and _carnivora_, of soft bills and hard bills,
+of molluscs and men. Mr. Huxley talks feelingly of the possibility of
+himself feeding the lobster quite as much as of the lobster feeding him;
+but such pathos is not always applicable; it is not likely that a sponge
+would be to the stomach of Mr. Huxley any more than Mr. Huxley to the
+stomach of a sponge.
+
+But a more important point is this, that the functions themselves remain
+quite apart from the alleged convertibility. We can neither acquire the
+functions of what we eat, nor impart our functions to what eats us. We
+shall not come to fly by feeding on vultures, nor they to speak by
+feeding on us. No possible manure of human brains will enable a
+corn-field to reason. But if functions are inconvertible, the
+convertibility of the protoplasm is idle. In this inconvertibility,
+indeed, functions will be seen to be independent of mere chemical
+composition. And that is the truth: for functions there is more required
+than either chemistry or physics.
+
+It is to be acknowledged—to notice one other incidental suggestion, for
+the sake of completeness, and by way of transition to the final
+consideration of possible objections—that Mr. Huxley would be very much
+assisted in his identification of differences, were but the theories of
+the molecularists, on the one hand, and of Mr. Darwin, on the other,
+once for all established. The three modes of theorizing indicated,
+indeed, are not without a tendency to approach one another; and it is
+precisely their union that would secure a definitive triumph for the
+doctrine of materialism. Mr. Huxley, as we have seen—though what he
+desiderates is an auto-plastic living _matter_ that, produced by
+ordinary chemical processes, is yet capable of continuing and developing
+itself into new and higher forms—still begins with the egg. Now the
+theory of the molecularists would, for its part, remove all the
+difficulties that, for materialism, are involved in this beginning; it
+would place protoplasm undeniably at length on a merely chemical level;
+and would fairly enable Mr. Darwin, supplemented by such a life-stuff,
+to account by natural means for everything like an idea or thought that
+appears in creation. The misfortune is, however, that we must believe
+the theory of the molecularists still to await the proof; while the
+theory of Mr. Darwin has many difficulties peculiar to itself. This
+theory, philosophically, or in ultimate analysis, is an attempt to prove
+that design, or the objective idea, especially in the organic world, is
+developed _in time_ by natural means. The time which Mr. Darwin demands,
+it is true, is an infinite time; and he thus gains the advantage of his
+processes being allowed greater _clearness_ for the understanding, in
+consequence of the _obscurity_ of the infinite past in which they are
+placed, and of which it is difficult in the first instance to deny any
+possibility whatever. Still it remains to be asked, Are such processes
+credible in any time? What Mr. Darwin has done in aid of his view is,
+first, to lay before us a knowledge of facts in natural history of
+surprising richness; and, second, to support this knowledge by an
+inexhaustible ingenuity of hypothesis in arrangement of appearances.
+Now, in both respects, whether for information or even interest, the
+value of Mr. Darwin’s contribution will probably always remain
+independent of the argument or arguments that might destroy his leading
+proposition; and it is with this proposition that we have here alone to
+do. As said, we ask only, Is it true that the objective idea, the design
+which we see in the organized world, is the result in infinite time of
+the necessary adaption of living structures to the peculiarities of the
+conditions by which they are surrounded?
+
+Against this theory, then, its own absolute generalization may be viewed
+as our first objection. In ultimate abstraction, that is, the only
+agency postulated by Mr. Darwin is time—infinite time; and as regards
+actually existent beings and actually existent conditions, it is hardly
+possible to deny any possibility whatever to infinitude. If told, for
+example, that the elephant, if only obliged _infinitely_ to run, might
+be converted into the stag, how should we be able to deny? So also, if
+the lengthening of the giraffe’s neck were hypothetically attributed to
+a succession of dearths in infinite time that only left the leaves of
+trees for long-necked animals to live on, we should be similarly
+situated as regards denial. Still it can be pointed out that ingenuity
+of natural conjecture has, in such cases, no less wide a field for the
+negation than for the affirmation; and that, on the question of fact,
+nothing is capable of being determined. But we can also say more than
+that—we can say that any fruitful application even of _infinite time_ to
+the _general problem of difference_ in the world is inconceivable. To
+explain all from an absolute beginning requires us to commence with
+nothing; but to this nothing time itself is an addition. Time is an
+entity, a something, a difference added to the original identity: whence
+or how came time? Time cannot account for its own self; how is it that
+there is such a thing as time? Then no conceivable brooding even of
+infinite time could hatch the infinitude of space. How is it there is
+such a thing as space? No possible clasps of time and space, further,
+could ever conceivably thicken into matter. How is it there is such a
+thing as matter? Lastly, so far, no conceivable brooding, or even
+gyrating, of a single matter in time and space could account for the
+specification of matter—carbon, gold, iodine, etc.—as we see and know
+it. Time, space, matter, and the whole inorganic world, thus remain
+impassive to the action even of infinite time; all _these_ differences
+remain incapable of being accounted for so.
+
+But suppose no curiosity had ever been felt in this reference, which,
+though scientifically indefensible, is quite possible, how about the
+transition of the inorganic into the organic? Mr. Huxley tells us that,
+for food, the plant needs nothing but its bath of smelling-salts.
+Suppose this bath now—a pool of a solution of carbonate of ammonia; can
+any action of sun, or air, or electricity, be conceived to develop a
+cell—or even so much lump-protoplasm—in this solution? The production of
+an initial cell in any such manner will not allow itself to be realized
+to thought. Then we have just to think for a moment of the vast
+differences into which, for the production of the present organized
+world, this cell must be distributed, to shake our heads and say we
+cannot well refuse anything to an infinite time, but still we must
+pronounce a problem of this reach hopeless.
+
+It is precisely in conditions, however, that Mr. Darwin claims a
+solution of this problem. Conditions concern all that relates to air,
+heat, light, land, water, and whatever they imply. Our second objection,
+consequently, is, that conditions are quite inadequate to account for
+present organized differences, from a single cell. Geological time, for
+example, falls short, after all, of infinite time; or, in known
+geological eras, let us calculate them as liberally as we may, there is
+not time enough to account for the presently-existing varieties, from
+one, or even several, primordial forms. So to speak, it is not _in_
+geological time to account for the transformation of the elephant into
+the stag from acceleration, or for that of the stag into the elephant
+from retardation, of movement. And we may speak similarly of the growth
+of the neck of the giraffe, or even of the elevation of the monkey into
+man. Moreover, time apart, conditions have no such power in themselves.
+It is impossible to conceive of animal or vegetable effluvia ever
+creating the nerve by which they are felt, and so gradually the
+Schneiderian membrane, nose, and whole olfactory apparatus. Yet these
+effluvia are the conditions of smell, and, _ex hypothesi_, ought to have
+created it. Did light, or did the pulsations of the air, ever by any
+length of time, indent into the sensitive cell, eyes, and a pair of
+eyes—ears, and a pair of ears? Light conceivably might shine for ever
+without such a wonderfully complicated result as an eye. Similarly, for
+delicacy and marvellous ingenuity of structure, the ear is scarcely
+inferior to the eye; and surely it is possible to think of a whole
+infinitude of those fitful and fortuitous air-tremblings, which we call
+sound, without indentation into anything whatever of such an organ.
+
+A third objection to Mr. Darwin’s theory is, that the play of natural
+contingency in regard to the vicissitudes of conditions, has no title to
+be named _selection_. Naturalists have long known and spoken of the
+“influence of accidental causes;” but Mr. Darwin was the first to apply
+the term _selection_ to the action of these, and thus convert accident
+into design. The agency to which Mr. Darwin attributes all the changes
+which he would signalize in animals is really the fortuitous contingency
+of brute nature; and it is altogether fallacious to call such process,
+or such non-process, by a term involving foresight and a purpose. We
+have here, indeed, only a metaphor wholly misapplied. The German writer
+who, many years ago, said “even the _genera_ are wholly a prey to the
+changes of the external universal life,” saw precisely what Mr. Darwin
+sees, but it never struck him to style contingency selection. Yet, how
+dangerous, how infectious, has not this ungrounded metaphor proved! It
+has become a _principle_, a _law_, and been transferred by very genuine
+men into their own sciences of philology and what not. People will
+wonder at all this by-and-by. But to point out the inapplicability of
+such a word to the processes of nature referred to by Mr. Darwin, is to
+point out also the impossibility of any such contingencies proceeding,
+by graduated rise, from stage to stage, into the great symmetrical
+organic system—the vast plan—the grand harmonious whole—by which we are
+surrounded. This rise, this system, is really the objective idea; but it
+is utterly incapable of being accounted for by any such agency as
+natural contingency in geological, or infinite, or any time. But it is
+this which the word selection tends to conceal.
+
+We may say, lastly, in objection, here, that, in the fact of “reversion”
+or “atavism,” Mr. Darwin acknowledges his own failure. We thus see that
+the species as species is something independent, and holds its own
+_insita vis naturæ_ within itself.
+
+Probably it is not his theory, then, that gives value to Mr. Darwin’s
+book; nor even his ready ingenuity, whatever interest it may lend: it is
+the material information it contains. The ingenuity, namely, verges
+somewhat on that Humian expedient of natural conjecture so copiously
+exemplified, on occasion of a few trite texts, in Mr. Buckle. But that
+natural conjecture is always insecure, equivocal, and many-sided. It may
+be said that ancient warfare, for example, giving victory always to the
+personally ablest and bravest, must have resulted in the improvement of
+the race; or that, the weakest being always necessarily left at home,
+the improvement was balanced by deterioration; or that the ablest were
+necessarily the most exposed to danger, and so, etc., etc., according,
+to ingenuity _usque ad infinitum_. Trustworthy conclusion is not
+possible to this method, but only to the induction of facts, or to
+scientific demonstration.
+
+Neither molecularists nor Darwinians, then, are able to level out the
+difference between organic and inorganic, or between genera and genera
+or species and species. The differences persist despite of both; the
+distributed identity remains unaccounted for. Nor, consequently, is Mr.
+Darwin’s theory competent to explain the objective idea by any reference
+to time and conditions. Living beings do exist in a mighty chain from
+the moss to the man; but that chain, far from founding, is founded in
+the idea, and is not the result of any mere natural _growth_ of this
+into that. That chain is itself the most brilliant stamp, the
+sign-manual, of design. On every ledge of nature, from the lowest to the
+highest, there is a life that is _its_,—a creature to represent it,
+reflect it—so to speak, pasture on it. The last, highest, brightest link
+of this chain is man; the incarnation of thought itself, which is the
+summation of this universe; man, that includes in himself all other
+links and their single secret—the personified universe, the subject of
+the world. Mr. Huxley makes but small reference to thought; he only
+tucks it in, as it were, as a mere appendicle of course.
+
+It may be objected, indeed—to reach the last stage in this
+discussion—that, if Mr. Huxley has not disproved the conception of
+thought and life “as a something which works through matter, but is
+independent of it,” neither have we proved it. But it is easy for us to
+reply that, if “_independent of_” means here “_unconnected with_,” we
+have had no such object. We have had no object whatever, in fact, but to
+resist, now the extravagant assertion that all organized tissue, from
+the lichen to Leibnitz, is alike in faculty, and again the equally
+extravagant assertion that life and thought are but ordinary products of
+molecular chemistry. As regards the latter assertion, we have endeavored
+to show that the processes of vital organization (as self-production,
+etc.) belong to another sphere, higher than, and very different from,
+those of mechanical juxtaposition or chemical neutralization; that life,
+then, is no mere product of matter as matter; that if no life can be
+pointed to independent of matter, neither is there any life-stuff
+independent of life; and that life, consequently, adds a new and higher
+force to chemistry, as chemistry a new and higher force to mechanics,
+etc. As for thought, the endeavor was to show that it was as independent
+on the one side as matter on the other, that it controlled, used,
+summed, and was the reason of matter. Thought, then, is not to be
+reached by any bridge from matter, that is a hybrid of both, and
+explains the connection. The relation of matter to mind is not to be
+explained as a transition, but as a _contrecoup_. In this relation,
+however, it is not the material, but the mental side, which the whole
+universe declares to be the dominant one.
+
+As regards any objection to the arguments which we have brought against
+the identity of protoplasm, again, these will lie in the phrase,
+probably, “difference not of kind, but degree,” or in the word
+“modification.” The “phrase” may be now passed, for generic or specific
+difference must be allowed in protoplasm, if not for the overwhelming
+reason that an infinitude of various kinds exist in it, each of which is
+self-productive and uninterchangeable with the rest, then for Mr.
+Huxley’s own reason, that plants assimilate inorganic matter and animals
+only organic. As for the objection “modification,” again, the same
+consideration of generic difference must prove fatal to it. This were
+otherwise, indeed, could but the molecularists and Mr. Darwin succeed in
+destroying generic difference; but in this, as we have seen, they have
+failed. And this will be always so: who dogs identity, difference dogs
+him. It is quite a justifiable endeavor, for example, to point out the
+identity that obtains between veins and arteries on the one hand, as
+between these and capillaries on the other; but all the time the
+difference is behind us; and when we turn to look, we see, for
+circulation, the valves of the veins and the elastic coats of the
+arteries as opposed to one another, and, for irrigation, the permeable
+walls of the capillaries as opposed to both.
+
+Generic differences exist then, and we cannot allow the word
+“modification” to efface them in the interest of the identity claimed
+for protoplasm. Brain-protoplasm is not bone-protoplasm, nor the
+protoplasm of the fungus the protoplasm of man. Similarly, it is very
+questionable how far the word “modification” will warrant us in
+regarding with Mr. Huxley the “ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the
+nettle as identical with the protoplasm of its sting. Things that
+originate alike may surely eventuate in others which, chemically and
+vitally, far from being mere modifications, must be pronounced totally
+different. Such eventuation must be held competent to what can only be
+named generic or specific difference. The “child” is only “_father_ of
+the man”—it is not the man; who, moreover, in the course of an ordinary
+life, we are told, has totally changed himself, not once, but many
+times, retaining at the last not one single particle of matter with
+which he set out. Such eventuations, whether called modifications or
+not, certainly involve essential difference. And so situated are the
+“ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the nettle, which, whether
+compared with the protoplasm of the nettle-sting, or with that in which
+they originated, must be held to here assumed, by their own actions,
+indisputable differences, physical, chemical, and vital, or in form,
+substance, and faculty.
+
+Much, in fact, depends on definition here; and, in reference to
+modification, it may be regarded as arbitrary when identity shall be
+admitted to cease and difference to begin. There are the old Greek
+puzzles of the Bald Head and the Heap, for example. How many grains, or
+how many hairs, may we remove before a heap of wheat is no heap, or a
+head of hair bald? These concern quantity alone; but, in other cases,
+bone, muscle, brain, fungus, tree, man, there is not only a
+quantitative, but a qualitative difference; and in regard to such
+differences, the word modification can be regarded as but a cloak, under
+which identity is to be shuffled into difference, but remain identity
+all the same. The brick is but modified clay, Mr. Huxley intimates, bake
+it and paint it as you may; but is the difference introduced by the
+baking and painting to be ignored? Is what Mr. Huxley calls the
+“artifice” not to be taken into account, leave alone the “potter?” The
+strong firm rope is about as exact an example of modification
+proper—modification of the weak loose hemp—as can well be found; but are
+we to exclude from our consideration the whole element of difference due
+to the hand and brain of man? Not far from Burn’s Monument, on the
+Calton Hill of Edinburgh, there lies a mass of stones which is
+potentially a church, the former Trinity College Church. Were this
+church again realized, would it be fair to call it a mere modification
+of the previous stones? Look now to the egg and the full-feathered fowl.
+Chaucer describes to us the cock, “hight chaunteclere,” that was to his
+“faire Pertelotte” so dear:—
+
+            “His comb was redder than the fine corall,
+             Embattled, as it were a castle-wall;
+             His bill was black, and as the jet it shone;
+             Like azure were his legges and his tone (toes);
+             His nailes whiter than the lilie flour,
+             And like the burned gold was his color.”
+
+Would it be even as fair to call this fine fellow—comb, wattles, spurs,
+and all—a modified yolk, as to call the church but modified stones? If,
+in the latter case, an element of difference, altogether undeniable,
+seems to have intervened, is not such intervention at least quite as
+well marked in the former? It requires but a slight analysis to detect
+that all the stones in question are marked and numbered; but will any
+analysis point out within the shell the various parts that only need
+arrangement to become the fowl? Are the men that may take the stones,
+and, in a re-erected Trinity College Church, realize anew the idea of
+its architect, in any respect more wonderful than the unknown disposers
+of the materials of the fowl? That what realizes the idea should, in the
+one case, be from without, and, in the other, from within, is no reason
+for seeing more modification and less wonder in the latter than the
+former. There is certainly no more reason for seeing the fowl in the
+egg, and as identical with the egg, than for seeing a re-built Trinity
+College Church as identical with its unarranged materials. A part cannot
+be taken for the whole, whether in space _or in time_. Mr. Huxley misses
+this. He is so absorbed in the identity out of which, that he will not
+see the difference into which, progress is made. As the idea of the
+church has the stones, so the idea of the fowl has the egg, for its
+commencement. But to this idea, and in both cases, the terminal
+additions belong, quite as much as the initial materials. If the idea,
+then, add sulphur, phosphorus, iron, and what not, it must be credited
+with these not less than with the carbon, hydrogen, etc., with which it
+began. It is not fair to mutter modification, as if it were a charm to
+destroy all the industry of time. The protoplasm of the egg of the fowl
+is no more the fowl than the stones the church; and to identify, by
+juggle of a mere word, parts in time and wholes in time so different, is
+but self-deception. Nay, in protoplasm, as we have so often seen,
+difference is as much present at first as at last. Even in its germ,
+even in its initial identity, to call it so, protoplasm is already
+different, for it issues in differences infinite.
+
+Omission of the consideration of difference, it is to be acknowledged,
+is not now-a-days restricted to Mr. Huxley. In the wonder that is
+usually expressed, for example, at Oken’s _identification_ of the skull
+with so many vertebræ, it is forgot that there is still implicated the
+wonder which we ought to feel at the unknown power that could, in the
+end, so _differentiate_ them. If the cornea of the eye and the enamel of
+the teeth are alike but modified protoplasm, we must be pardoned for
+thinking more of the adjective than of the substantive. Our wonder is
+how, for one idea, protoplasm could become one thing here, and, for
+another idea, another so different thing there. We are more curious
+about the modification than the protoplasm. In the difference, rather
+than in the identity, it is, indeed, that the wonder lies. Here are
+several thousand pieces of protoplasm; analysis can detect no difference
+in them. They are to us, let us say, as they are to Mr. Huxley,
+identical in power, in form, and in substance; and yet on all these
+several thousand little bits of apparently indistinguishable matter an
+element of difference so pervading and so persistent has been impressed,
+that, of them all, not one is interchangeable with another! Each seed
+feeds its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more grow into
+the fly than it will grow into an elephant. Protoplasm is protoplasm:
+yes, but man’s protoplasm is man’s protoplasm, and the mushroom’s the
+mushroom’s. In short, it is quite evident that the word modification, if
+it would conceal, is powerless to withdraw, the difference; which
+difference, moreover, is one of kind and not of degree.
+
+This consideration of possible objections, then, is the last we have to
+attend to; and it only remains to draw the general conclusion. All
+animal and vegetable organisms are alike in power, in form, and in
+substance, only if the protoplasm of which they are composed is
+similarly alike; and the functions of all animal and vegetable organisms
+are but properties of the molecular affections of their chemical
+constituents, only if the functions of the protoplasm, of which they are
+composed, are but properties of the molecular affections of _its_
+chemical constituents. In disproof of the affirmative in both clauses,
+there has been no object but to demonstrate, on the one hand, the
+infinite non-identity of protoplasm, and, on the other, the dependence
+of its functions upon other factors than its molecular constituents.
+
+In short, the whole position of Mr. Huxley, that all organisms consist
+alike of the same life-matter, which life-matter is, for its part, due
+only to chemistry, must be pronounced untenable—nor less untenable the
+materialism he would found on it.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                   _ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION_:
+
+                       PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL.
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                                 ON THE
+
+                        HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION:
+
+                      _PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL_.
+
+“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
+    out of the mouth of God shall man live.” ch-hd-end There is
+    apparently considerable repugnance in the minds of many excellent
+    people to the acceptance, or even consideration, of the hypothesis
+    of development, or that of the gradual creation by descent, with
+    modification from the simplest beginnings, of the different forms of
+    the organic world. This objection probably results from two
+    considerations: first, that the human species is certainly involved,
+    and man’s descent from an ape asserted; and, secondly, that the
+    scheme in general seems to conflict with that presented by the
+    Mosaic account of the Creation, which is regarded as communicated to
+    its author by an infallible inspiration.
+
+    As the truth of the hypothesis is held to be infinitely probable by
+    a majority of the exponents of the natural sciences at the present
+    day, and is held as absolutely demonstrated by another portion, it
+    behooves those interested to restrain their condemnation, and on the
+    other hand to examine its evidences, and look any consequent
+    necessary modification of our metaphysical or theological views
+    squarely in the face.
+
+    The following pages state a few of the former; if they suggest some
+    of the latter, it is hoped that they may be such as any logical mind
+    would deduce from the premises. That they will coincide with the
+    spirit of the most advanced Christianity, I have no doubt; and that
+    they will add an appeal through the reason to that direct influence
+    of the Divine Spirit which should control the motives of human
+    action, seems an unavoidable conclusion.
+
+
+                         I. PHYSICAL EVOLUTION.
+
+    It is well known that a species is usually represented by a great
+    number of individuals, distinguished from all other similar
+    associations by more or less numerous points of structure, color,
+    size, etc., and by habits and instincts also, to a certain extent;
+    that the individuals of such associations reproduce their like, and
+    cannot be produced by individuals of associations or species which
+    present differences of structure, color, etc., as defined by
+    naturalists; that the individuals of any such series or species are
+    incapable of reproducing with those of any other species, with some
+    exceptions; and that in the latter cases the offspring are usually
+    entirely infertile.
+
+    The hypothesis of Cuvier assumes that each species was created by
+    Divine power as we now find it at some definite point of geologic
+    time. The paleontologist holding this view sees, in accordance
+    therewith, a succession of creations and destructions marking the
+    history of life on our planet from its commencement.
+
+    The development hypothesis states that all existing species have
+    been derived from species of preëxistent geological periods, as
+    offspring or by direct descent; that there have been no total
+    destructions of life in past time, but only a transfer of it from
+    place to place, owing to changes of circumstance; that the types of
+    structure become simpler and more similar to each other as we trace
+    them from later to earlier periods; and that finally we reach the
+    simplest forms consistent with one or several original parent types
+    of the great divisions into which living beings naturally fall.
+
+    It is evident, therefore, that the hypothesis does not include
+    change of species by hybridization, nor allow the descent of living
+    species from any other _living_ species: both these propositions are
+    errors of misapprehension or misrepresentation.
+
+    In order to understand the history of creation of a complex being,
+    it is necessary to analyze it and ascertain of what it consists. In
+    analyzing the construction of an animal or plant we readily arrange
+    its characters into those which it possesses in common with other
+    animals or plants, and those in which it resembles none other: the
+    latter are its _individual_ characters, constituting its
+    individuality. Next we find a large body of characters, generally of
+    a very obvious kind, which it possesses in common with a generally
+    large number of individuals, which, taken collectively, all men are
+    accustomed to call a species; these characters we consequently name
+    _specific_. Thirdly, we find characters, generally in parts of the
+    body which are of importance in the activities of the animal, or
+    which lie in near relation to its mechanical construction in
+    details, which are shared by a still larger number of individuals
+    than those which were similar in specific characters. In other
+    words, it is common to a large number of species. This kind of
+    character we call _generic_, and the grouping it indicates is a
+    genus.
+
+    Farther analysis brings to light characters of organism which are
+    common to a still greater number of individuals; this we call a
+    _family_ character. Those which are common to still more numerous
+    individuals are the _ordinal_: they are usually found in parts of
+    the structure which have the closest connection with the whole
+    life-history of the being. Finally, the individuals composing many
+    orders will be found identical in some important character of the
+    systems by which ordinary life is maintained, as in the nervous and
+    circulatory: the divisions thus outlined are called _classes_.
+
+    By this process of analysis we reach in our animal or plant those
+    peculiarities which are common to the whole animal or vegetable
+    kingdom, and then we have exhausted the structure so completely that
+    we have nothing remaining to take into account beyond the
+    cell-structure or homogeneous protoplasm by which we know that it is
+    organic, and not a mineral.
+
+    The history of the origin of a type, as species, genus, order, etc.,
+    is simply the history of the origin of the structure or structures
+    which define those groups respectively. It is nothing more nor less
+    than this, whether a man or an insect be the object of
+    investigation.
+
+
+                        EVIDENCES OF DERIVATION.
+
+                       α. Of Specific Characters.
+
+    The evidences of derivation of species from species, within the
+    limits of the genus, are abundant and conclusive. In the first
+    place, the rule which naturalists observe in defining species is a
+    clear consequence of such a state of things. It is not amount and
+    degree of difference that determine the definition of species from
+    species, but it is the _permanency_ of the characters in all cases
+    and under all circumstances. Many species of the systems include
+    varieties and extremes of form, etc., which, were they at all times
+    distinct, and not connected by intermediate forms, would be
+    estimated as species by the same and other writers, as can be easily
+    seen by reference to their works.
+
+    Thus, species are either “restricted” or “protean,” the latter
+    embracing many, the former few variations; and the varieties
+    included by the protean species are often as different from each
+    other in their typical forms as are the “restricted” species. As an
+    example, the species _Homo sapiens_ (man) will suffice. His primary
+    varieties are as distinct as the species of many well-known genera,
+    but cannot be defined, owing to the existence of innumerable
+    intermediate forms between them.
+
+    As to the common origin of such “varieties” of the protean species,
+    naturalists never had any doubt, yet when it comes to the restricted
+    “species,” the anti-developmentalist denies it _in toto_. Thus the
+    varieties of most of the domesticated animals are some of them
+    known—others held with great probability to have had a common
+    origin. Varieties of plumage in fowls and canaries are of every-day
+    occurrence, and are produced under our eyes. The cart-horse and
+    racer, the Shetland pony and the Norman, are without doubt derived
+    from the same parentage. The varieties of pigeons and ducks are of
+    the same kind, but not every one is aware of the extent and amount
+    of such variations. The varieties in many characters seen in hogs
+    and cattle, especially when examples from distant countries are
+    compared, are very striking, and are confessedly equal in degree to
+    those found to _define_ species in a state of nature: here, however,
+    they are not _definitive_.
+
+    It is easy to see that all that is necessary to produce in the mind
+    of the anti-developmentalist the illusion of distinct origin by
+    creation of many of these forms, would be to destroy a number of the
+    intermediate conditions of specific form and structure, and thus to
+    leave remaining definable groups of individuals, and therefore
+    “species.”
+
+    That such destructions and extinctions have been going on ever since
+    the existence of life on the globe is well known. That it should
+    affect intermediate forms, such as bind together the types of a
+    protean species as well as restricted species, is equally certain.
+    That its result has been to produce _definable_ species cannot be
+    denied, especially in consideration of the following facts: Protean
+    species nearly always have a wide geographical distribution. They
+    exist under more varied circumstances than do individuals of a more
+    restricted species. The subordinate variations of the protean
+    species are generally, like the restricted species, confined to
+    distinct subdivisions of the geographical area which the whole
+    occupies. As in geological time changes of level have separated
+    areas once continuous by bodies of water or high mountain ranges, so
+    have vast numbers of individuals occupying such areas been
+    destroyed. Important alterations of temperature, or great changes in
+    abundance or character of vegetable life over given areas, would
+    produce the same result.
+
+    This part of the subject might be prolonged, were it necessary, but
+    it has been ably discussed by Darwin. The _rationale_ of the “origin
+    of species” as stated by him may be examined a few pages farther on.
+
+                 β. Of the Characters of Higher Groups.
+
+    _a. Relations of Structures._ The evidences of derivative origin of
+    the structures defining the groups called genera, and all those of
+    higher grade, are of a very different character from those discussed
+    in relation to specific characters; they are more difficult of
+    observation and explanation.
+
+    Firstly: It would appear to be supposed by many that the creation of
+    organic types was an irregular and capricious process, variously
+    pursued by its Author as regards time and place, and without
+    definite final aim; and this notwithstanding the wonderful evidences
+    we possess, in the facts of astronomy, chemistry, sound, etc., of
+    His adhesion to harmonious and symmetrical sequences in His modes
+    and plans.
+
+    Such regularity of plan is found to exist in the relations of the
+    great divisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms as at present
+    existing on the earth. Thus, with animals we have a great class of
+    species which consists of nothing more than masses or cells of
+    protoplasmic matter, without distinct organs; or the Protozoa. We
+    have then the Cœlenterata (example, corals,) where the organism is
+    composed of many cells arranged in distinct parts, but where a
+    single very simple system of organs, forming the only internal
+    cavity of the body, does the work of the many systems of the more
+    complex animals. Next, the Echinodermata (such as star-fish) present
+    us with a body containing distinct systems of organs enclosed in a
+    visceral cavity, including a rudimental nervous system in the form
+    of a ring. In the Molluscs to this condition is added additional
+    complication, including extensions of the nervous system from the
+    ring as a starting-point, and a special organ for a heart. In the
+    Articulates (crabs, insects,) we have like complications, and a long
+    distinct nervous axis on the lower surface of the body. The last
+    branch or division of animals is considered to be higher, because
+    all the systems of life organs are most complex or specialized. The
+    nervous ring is almost obliterated by a great enlargement of its
+    usual ganglia, thus become a brain, which is succeeded by a long
+    axis on the upper side of the body. This and other points define the
+    Vertebrata.
+
+    Plans of structure, independent of the simplicity or perfection of
+    the special arrangement or structure of organs, also define these
+    great groups. Thus the Protozoa present a spiral, the Cœlenterata a
+    radiate, the Echinodermata a bilateral radiate plan. The Articulates
+    are a series of external rings, each in one or more respects
+    repeating the others. The Molluscs are a sac, while a ring above a
+    ring, joined together by a solid center-piece, represents the plan
+    of each of the many segments of the Vertebrates which give the
+    members of that branch their form.
+
+    These bulwarks of distinction of animal types are entered into here
+    simply because they are the most inviolable and radical of those
+    with which we have to deal, and to give the anti-developmentalist
+    the best foothold for his position. I will only allude to the
+    relations of their points of approach, as these are affected by
+    considerations afterward introduced.
+
+    The Vertebrates approach the Molluscs at the lowest extreme of the
+    former and higher of the latter. The lamprey eels of the one possess
+    several characters in common with the cuttle-fish or squids of the
+    latter. The amphioxus is called the lowest Vertebrate, and though it
+    is nothing else, the definition of the division must be altered to
+    receive it; it has no brain!
+
+    The lowest forms of the Molluscs and Articulates are scarcely
+    distinguishable from each other, so far as adhesion to the “plan” is
+    concerned, and some of the latter division are very near certain
+    Echinodermata. As we approach the boundary-lines of the two lowest
+    divisions, the approaches become equally close, and the boundaries
+    very obscure.
+
+    More instructive is the evidence of the relation of the subordinate
+    classes of any one of these divisions. The conditions of those
+    organs or parts which define classes exhibit a regular relation,
+    commencing with simplicity and ending with complication; first
+    associated with weak exhibitions of the highest functions of the
+    nervous system—at the last displaying the most exalted traits found
+    in the series.
+
+    For example: In the classes of Vertebrates we find the lowest
+    nervous system presents great simplicity—the brain cannot be
+    recognized; next (in lampreys), the end of the nervous axis is
+    subdivided, but scarcely according to the complex type that follows.
+    In fishes the cerebellum and cerebral hemispheres are minute, and
+    the intermediate or optic lobes very large: in the reptiles the
+    cerebral hemispheres exceed the optic lobes, while the cerebellum is
+    smaller. In birds the cerebellum becomes complex and the cerebrum
+    greatly increases. In mammals the cerebellum increases in complexity
+    or number of parts, the optic lobes diminish, while the cerebral
+    hemispheres become wonderfully complex and enlarged, bringing us to
+    the highest development, in man.
+
+    The history of the circulatory system in the Vertebrates is the
+    same.[45] First, a heart with one chamber, then one with two
+    divisions: three divisions belong to a large series, and the highest
+    possess four. The origins of the great artery of the body, the
+    aorta, are first five on each side: they lose one in the succeeding
+    class in the ascending scale, and one in each succeeding class or
+    order, till the Mammalia, including man, present us with but one on
+    one side.
+
+Footnote 45:
+
+      See a homological system of the circulatory system in the author’s
+      Origin of Genera, p. 22.
+
+    From an infinitude of such considerations as the above, we derive
+    the certainty that the general arrangement of the various groups of
+    the organic world is in scales, the subordinate within the more
+    comprehensive divisions. The identification of all the parts in such
+    a complexity of organism as the highest animals present, is a matter
+    requiring much care and attention, and constitutes the study of
+    homologies. Its pursuit has resulted in the demonstration that every
+    individual of every species of a given branch of the animal kingdom
+    is composed of elements common to all, and that the differences
+    which are so radical in the higher groups are but the modifications
+    of the same elemental parts, representing completeness or
+    incompleteness, obliteration or subdivision. Of the former character
+    are rudimental organs, of which almost every species possesses an
+    example in some part of its structure.
+
+    But we have other and still more satisfactory evidence of the
+    meaning of these relations. By the study of embryology we can prove
+    most indubitably that the simple and less complex are inferior to
+    the more complex. Selecting the Vertebrates again as an example, the
+    highest form of mammal—_e.g._, man—presents in his earliest stages
+    of embryonic growth a skeleton of cartilage, like that of the
+    lamprey: he also possesses five origins of the aorta and five slits
+    on the neck, both which characters belong to the lamprey and the
+    shark. If the whole number of these parts does not coexist in the
+    embryonic man, we find in embryos of lower forms more nearly related
+    to the lamprey that they do. Later in the life of the mammal but
+    four aortic origins are found, which arrangement, with the heart now
+    divided into two chambers, from a beginning as a simple tube, is
+    characteristic of the class of Vertebrates next in order—the bony
+    fishes. The optic lobes of the human brain have also at this time a
+    great predominance in size—a character above stated to be that of
+    the same class. With advancing development the infant mammal follows
+    the scale already pointed out. Three chambers of the heart and three
+    aortic origins follow, presenting the condition permanent in the
+    batrachia; and two origins, with enlarged cerebral hemispheres of
+    the brain, resemble the reptilian condition. Four heart-chambers,
+    and one aortic root on each side, with slight development of the
+    cerebellum, follow all characters defining the crocodiles, and
+    immediately precede the special conditions defining the mammals.
+    These are, the single aorta root from one side, and the full
+    development of the cerebellum: later comes that of the cerebrum also
+    in its higher mammalian and human traits.
+
+    Thus we see the order already pointed out to be true, and to be an
+    ascending one. This is the more evident as each type or class passes
+    through the conditions of those below it, as did the mammal; each
+    scale being shorter as its highest terminus is lower. Thus the
+    crocodile passes through the stage of the lamprey, the fish, the
+    batrachian and the reptile proper.
+
+    _b. In Time._ We have thus a scale of relations of existing forms of
+    animals and plants of a remarkable kind, and such as to stimulate
+    greatly our inquiries as to its significance. When we turn to the
+    remains of the past creation preserved to us in the deposits
+    continued throughout geologic time, we are not disappointed, for
+    great light is at once thrown upon the subject.
+
+    We find, in brief, that the lowest division of the animal kingdom
+    appeared first, and long before any type of a higher character was
+    created. The Protozoön, Eozoön, is the earliest of animals in
+    geologic time, and represents the lowest type of animal life now
+    existing. We learn also that the highest branch appeared last. No
+    remains of Vertebrates have been found below the lower Devonian
+    period, or not until the Echinoderms and Molluscs had reached a
+    great preëminence. It is difficult to be sure whether the Protozoa
+    had a greater numerical extent in the earliest periods than now, but
+    there can be no doubt that the Cœlenterata (corals) and Echinoderms
+    (crinoids) greatly exceeded their present bounds, in Paleozoic time,
+    so that those at present existing are but a feeble remnant. If we
+    examine the subdivisions known as classes, evidence of the nature of
+    the succession of creation is still more conclusive. The most
+    polyp-like of the Molluscs (brachiopoda) constituted the great mass
+    of its representatives during Paleozoic time. Among Vertebrates the
+    fishes appear first, and had their greatest development in size and
+    numbers during the earliest periods of the existence of the
+    division. Batrachia were much the largest and most important of land
+    animals during the Carboniferous period, while the higher
+    Vertebrates were unknown. The later Mesozoic periods saw the reign
+    of reptiles, whose position in structural development has been
+    already stated. Finally, the most perfect, the mammal, came upon the
+    scene, and in his humblest representatives. In Tertiary times
+    mammalia supplanted the reptiles entirely, and the unspiritual
+    mammals now yield to man, the only one of his class in whom the
+    Divine image appears.
+
+    Thus the structural relations, the embryonic characters, and the
+    successive appearance in time of animals coincide. The same is very
+    probably true of plants.
+
+    That the existing state of the geological record of organic types
+    should be regarded as anything but a fragment is, from our
+    stand-point, quite preposterous. And more, it may be assumed with
+    safety that when completed it will furnish us with a series of
+    regular successions, with but slight and regular interruptions, if
+    any, from the species which represented the simplest beginnings of
+    life at the dawn of creation, to those which have displayed
+    complication and power in later or in the present period.
+
+    For the labors of the paleontologist are daily bringing to light
+    structures intermediate between those never before so connected, and
+    thus creating lines of succession where before were only
+    interruptions. Many such instances might be adduced: two may be
+    selected as examples from American paleontology;[46] _i.e._, the
+    near approach to birds made by the reptiles Lælaps and Megadactylus;
+    and the combination of characters of the sub-orders of Cryptodire
+    and Pleurodire Tortoises in the Adocus of New Jersey.
+
+Footnote 46:
+
+      Professor Huxley, in the last anniversary lecture before the
+      Geological Society of London, recalls his opinion, enunciated in
+      1862, that “the positively-ascertained truths of Paleontology”
+      negative “the doctrines of progressive modification, which suppose
+      that modification to have taken place by a necessary progress from
+      more to less embryonic forms, from more to less generalized types,
+      within the limits of the period represented by the fossiliferous
+      rocks; that it shows no evidence of such modification; and as to
+      the nature of that modification, it yields no evidence whatsoever
+      that the earlier members of any long-continued group were more
+      generalized in structure than the later ones.”
+
+      Respecting this position, he says: “Thus far I have endeavored to
+      expand and enforce by fresh arguments, but not to modify in any
+      important respect, the ideas submitted to you on a former
+      occasion. But when I come to the propositions respecting
+      progressive modification, it appears to me, with the help of the
+      new light which has broken from various quarters, that there is
+      much ground for softening the somewhat Brutus-like severity with
+      which I have dealt with a doctrine for the truth of which I should
+      have been glad enough to be able to find a good foundation in
+      1862. So far indeed as the Invertebrata and the lower Vertebrata
+      are concerned, the facts, and the conclusions which are to be
+      drawn from them, appear to me to remain what they were. For
+      anything that as yet appears to the contrary, the earliest known
+      marsupials may have been as highly organized as their living
+      congeners; the Permian lizards show no signs of inferiority to
+      those of the present day; the labyrinthodonts cannot be placed
+      below the living salamander and triton; the Devonian ganoids are
+      closely related to polypterus and lepidosiren.”
+
+      To this it may be replied: 1. The scale of progression of the
+      Vertebrata is measured by the conditions of the circulatory
+      system, and in some measure by the nervous, and not by the
+      osseous: tested by this scale, there has been successional
+      complication of structure among Vertebrata in time. 2. The
+      question with the evolutionist is, not what types have persisted
+      to the present day, but the order in which types appeared in time.
+      3. The Marsupials, Permian saurians, labyrinthodonts and Devonian
+      ganoids are remarkably generalized groups, and predecessors of
+      types widely separated in the present period. 4. Professor Huxley
+      adduces many such examples among the mammalian subdivisions in the
+      remaining portion of his lecture. 5. Two alternatives are yet open
+      in the explanation of the process of evolution: since generalized
+      types, which combine the characters of higher and lower groups of
+      later periods, must thus be superior to the lower, the lower must
+      (first) be descended from such a generalized form by degradation;
+      or (second) not descended from it at all, but from some lower
+      contemporaneous type by advance; the higher only of the two being
+      derived from the first-mentioned. The last I suspect to be a true
+      explanation, as it is in accordance with the homologous groups.
+      This law will shorten the demands of paleontologists for time,
+      since, instead of deriving all reptilia, batrachia, etc., from
+      common origins, it points to the derivation of higher reptilia of
+      a higher order from higher reptilia of a lower order, lower
+      reptilia of the first from lower reptilia of the second; finally,
+      the several groups of the lowest or most generalized order of
+      reptilia from a parallel series of the class below, or batrachia.
+
+    We had no more reason to look for intermediate or connecting forms
+    between such types as these, than between any others of similar
+    degree of remove from each other with which we are acquainted. And
+    inasmuch as almost all groups, as genera, orders, etc., which are
+    held to be distinct, but adjacent, present certain points of
+    approximation to each other, the almost daily discovery of
+    intermediate forms gives us confidence to believe that the pointings
+    in other cases will also be realized.
+
+                           γ. Of Transitions.
+
+    The preceding statements were necessary to the comprehension of the
+    supposed mode of metamorphosis or development of the various types
+    of living beings, or, in other words, of the single structural
+    features which define them.... As it is evident that the more
+    comprehensive groups, or those of highest rank, have had their
+    origin in remote ages, cases of transition from one to the other by
+    change of character cannot be witnessed at the present day. We
+    therefore look to the most nearly related divisions, or those of the
+    lowest rank, for evidence of such change.
+
+    It is necessary to premise that embryology teaches that all the
+    species of a given branch of the animal kingdom (_e.g._, Vertebrate,
+    Mollusc, etc.) are quite identical in structural character at their
+    first appearance on the germinal layer of the yolk of the parent
+    egg. It shows that the character of the respective groups of high
+    rank appear first, then those of less grade, and last of all those
+    structures which distinguish them as genera. But among the earliest
+    characters which appear are those of the species, and some of those
+    of the individual.
+
+    We find the characters of different _genera_ to bear the same
+    relation to each other that we have already seen in the case of
+    those definitive of orders, etc. In a natural assemblage of related
+    genera we discover that some are defined by characters found only in
+    the embryonic stages of others; while a second will present a
+    permanent condition of its definitive part, which marks a more
+    advanced stage of that highest. In this manner many stages of the
+    highest genus appear to be represented by permanent genera in all
+    natural groups. Generally, however, this resemblance does not
+    involve, an entire identity, there being some other immaturities
+    found in the highest genus at the time it presents the character
+    preserved in permanency by the lower, which the lower loses. Thus
+    (to use a very coarse example) a frog at one stage of growth has
+    four legs and a tail: the salamander always preserves four legs and
+    a tail, thus resembling the young frog. The latter is, however, not
+    a salamander at that time, because, among other things, the skeleton
+    is represented by cartilage only, and the salamander’s is ossified.
+    This relation is therefore an imitation only, and is called _inexact
+    parallelism_.
+
+    As we compare nearer and nearer relations—_i.e._, the genera which
+    present fewest points of difference—we find the differences between
+    undeveloped stages of the higher and permanent conditions of the
+    lower to grow fewer and fewer, until we find numerous instances
+    where the lower genus is exactly the same as the undeveloped stage
+    of the higher. This relation is called that of _exact parallelism_.
+
+    It must now be remembered that the permanence of a character is what
+    gives it its value in defining genus, order, etc., in the eyes of
+    the systematist. So long as the condition is permanent no transition
+    can be seen: there is therefore no development. If the condition is
+    transitional, it defines nothing, and nothing is developed; at
+    least, so says the anti-developmentalist. It is the old story of the
+    settler and the Indian: “Will you take owl and I take turkey, or I
+    take turkey and you owl?”
+
+    If we find a relation of _exact parallelism_ to exist between two
+    sets of species in the condition of a certain organ, and the
+    difference so expressed the only one which distinguishes them as
+    sets from each other—if that condition is always the same in each
+    set—we call them two genera: if in any species the condition is
+    variable at maturity, or sometimes the undeveloped condition of the
+    part is persistent and sometimes transitory, the sets characterized
+    by this difference must be united by the systematist, and the whole
+    is called a single genus.
+
+    We know numerous cases where different individuals of the same
+    species present this relation of _exact parallelism_ to each other;
+    and as we ascribe common origin to the individuals of a species, we
+    are assured that the condition of the inferior individual is, in
+    this case, simply one of repressed growth, or a failure to fulfill
+    the course accomplished by the highest. Thus, certain species of the
+    salamandrine genus amblystoma undergo a metamorphosis involving
+    several parts of the osseous and circulatory systems, etc., while
+    half grown; others delay it till fully grown; one or two species
+    remain indifferently unchanged or changed, and breed in either
+    condition, while another species breeds unchanged, and has never
+    been known to complete a metamorphosis.
+
+    The nature of the relation of _exact parallelism_ is thus explained
+    to be that of checked or advanced growth of individuals having a
+    common origin. The relation of _inexact parallelism_ is readily
+    explained as follows: With a case of _exact parallelism_ in the
+    mind, let the repression producing the character of the lower,
+    parallelize the latter with a stage of the former in which a second
+    part is not quite mature: we will have a slight want of
+    correspondence between the two. The lower will be immature in but
+    one point, the incompleteness of the higher being seen in two
+    points. If we suppose the immaturity to consist in a repression at a
+    still earlier point in the history of the higher, the latter will be
+    undeveloped in other points also: thus, the spike-horned deer of
+    South America have the horn of the second year of the North American
+    genus. They would be generically identical with that stage of the
+    latter, were it not that these still possess their milk dentition at
+    two years of age. In the same way the nature of the parallelisms
+    seen in higher groups, as orders, etc., may be accounted for.
+
+    The theory of homologous groups furnishes important evidence in
+    favor of derivation. Many orders of animals (probably all, when we
+    come to know them) are divisible into two or more sections, which I
+    have called _homologous_. These are series of genera or families,
+    which differ from each other by some marked character, but whose
+    contained genera or families differ from each other in the same
+    points of detail, and in fact correspond exactly. So striking is
+    this correspondence that were it not for the general and common
+    character separating the homologous series, they would be regarded
+    as the same, each to each. Now it is remarkable that where studied
+    the difference common to all the terms of two homologous groups is
+    found to be one of _inexact parallelism_, which has been shown above
+    to be evidence of descent. Homologous groups always occupy different
+    geographical areas on the earth’s surface, and their relation is
+    precisely that which holds between successive groups of life in the
+    periods of geologic time.
+
+    In a word, we learn from this source that distinct geologic epochs
+    coexist at the same time on the earth. I have been forced to this
+    conclusion[47] by a study of the structure of terrestrial life, and
+    it has been remarkably confirmed by the results of recent deep-sea
+    dredgings made by the United States Coast Survey in the Gulf Stream,
+    and by the British naturalists in the North Atlantic. These have
+    brought to light types of Tertiary life, and of even the still more
+    ancient Cretaceous periods, living at the present day. That this
+    discovery invalidates in any wise the conclusions of geology
+    respecting lapse of time is an unwarranted assumption that some are
+    forward to make. If it changes the views of some respecting the
+    parallelism or coëxistence of faunæ in different regions of the
+    earth, it is only the anti-developmentalists whose position must be
+    changed.
+
+Footnote 47:
+
+      _Origin of Genera_, pages 70, 77, 79.
+
+    For, if we find distinct geologic faunæ, or epochs defined by faunæ,
+    coëxisting during the present period, and fading or emerging into
+    one another as they do at their geographical boundaries, it is proof
+    positive that the geologic epochs and periods of past ages had in
+    like manner no trenchant boundaries, but also passed the one into
+    the other. The assumption that the apparent interruptions are the
+    result of transfer of life rather than destruction, or of want of
+    opportunities of preservation, is no doubt the true one.
+
+                      δ. Rationale of Development.
+
+    _a. In Characters of Higher Groups._ It is evident in the case of
+    the species in which there is an irregularity in the time of
+    completion of metamorphosis that some individuals traverse a longer
+    developmental line than those who remain more or less incomplete. As
+    both accomplish growth in the same length of time, it is obvious
+    that it proceeds with greater rapidity in one sense in that which
+    accomplishes most: its growth is said to be accelerated. This
+    phenomenon is especially common among insects, where the females of
+    perfect males are sometimes larvæ or nearly so, or pupæ, or lack
+    wings or some character of final development. Quite as frequently,
+    some males assume characters in advance of others, sometimes in
+    connection with a peculiar geographical range.
+
+    In cases of _exact parallelism_ we reasonably suppose the cause to
+    be the same, since the conditions are identical, as has been shown;
+    that is, the higher conditions have been produced by a crowding back
+    of the earlier characters and an acceleration of growth, so that a
+    given succession in order of advance has extended over a longer
+    range of growth than its predecessor in the same allotted time. That
+    allotted time is the period before maturity and reproduction, and it
+    is evident that as fast as modifications or characters should be
+    assumed sufficiently in advance of that period, so certainly would
+    they be conferred upon the offspring by reproduction. The
+    _acceleration_ in the assumption of a character, progressing more
+    rapidly than the same in another character, must soon produce, in a
+    type whose stages were once the exact parallel of a permanent lower
+    form, the condition of _inexact parallelism_. As all the more
+    comprehensive groups present this relation to each other, we are
+    compelled to believe that _acceleration_ has been the principle of
+    their successive evolution during the long ages of geologic time.
+
+    Each type has, however, its day of supremacy and perfection of
+    organism, and a retrogression in these respects has succeeded. This
+    has no doubt followed a law the reverse of acceleration, which has
+    been called _retardation_. By the increasing slowness of the growth
+    of the individuals of a genus, and later and later assumption of the
+    characters of the latter, they would be successively lost.
+
+    To what power shall we ascribe this acceleration, by which the first
+    beginnings of structure have accumulated to themselves through the
+    long geologic ages complication and power, till from the germ that
+    was scarcely born into a sand-lance, a human being climbed the
+    complete scale, and stood easily the chief of the whole?
+
+    In the cases of species, where some individuals develop farther than
+    others, we say the former possess more growth-force, or “vigor,”
+    than the latter. We may therefore say that higher types of structure
+    possess more “vigor” than the lower. This, however, we do not know
+    to be true, nor can we readily find means to demonstrate it.
+
+    The food which is taken by an adult animal is either assimilated, to
+    be consumed in immediate activity of some kind, or stored for future
+    use, and the excess is rejected from the body. We have no reason to
+    suppose that the same kind of material could be made to subserve the
+    production of life-force by any other means than that furnished by a
+    living animal organism. The material from which this organism is
+    constructed is derived first from the parent, and afterward from the
+    food, etc., assimilated by the individual itself so long as growth
+    continues. As it is the activity of assimilation directed to a
+    special end during this latter period which we suppose to be
+    increased in accelerated development, the acceleration is evidently
+    not brought about by increased facilities for obtaining the means of
+    life which the same individual possesses as an adult. That it is not
+    in consequence of such increased facilities possessed by its parents
+    over those of the type preceding it, seems equally improbable when
+    we consider that the characters in which the parent’s advance has
+    appeared are rarely of a nature to increase those facilities.
+
+    The nearest approach to an explanation that can be offered appears
+    to be somewhat in the following direction:
+
+    There is every reason to believe that the character of the
+    atmosphere has gradually changed during geologic time, and that
+    various constituents of the mixture have been successively removed
+    from it, and been stored in the solid material of the earth’s crust
+    in a state of combination. Geological chemistry has shown that the
+    cooling of the earth has been accompanied by the precipitation of
+    many substances only gaseous at high temperatures. Hydrochloric and
+    sulphuric acids have been transferred to mineral deposits or aqueous
+    solutions. The removal of carbonic acid gas and the vapor of water
+    has been a process of much slower progress, and after the expiration
+    of all the ages a proportion of both yet remains. Evidence of the
+    abundance of the former in the earliest periods is seen in the vast
+    deposits of limestone rock; later, in the prodigious quantities of
+    shells which have been elaborated from the same in solution. Proof
+    of its abundance in the atmosphere in later periods is seen in the
+    extensive deposits of coal of the Carboniferous, Triassic and
+    Jurassic periods. If the most luxuriant vegetation of the present
+    day takes but fifty tons of carbon from the atmosphere in a century,
+    per acre, thus producing a layer over that extent of less than a
+    third of an inch in thickness, what amount of carbon must be
+    abstracted in order to produce strata of thirty-five feet in depth?
+    No doubt it occupied a long period, but the atmosphere, thus
+    deprived of a large proportion of carbonic acid, would in subsequent
+    periods undoubtedly possess an improved capacity for the support of
+    animal life.
+
+    The successively higher degree of oxidization of the blood in the
+    organs designed for that function, whether performing it in water or
+    air, would certainly accelerate the performances of all the vital
+    functions, and among others that of growth. Thus it may be that
+    _acceleration_ can be accounted for, and the process of the
+    development of the orders and sundry lesser groups of the Vertebrate
+    kingdom indicated; for, as already pointed out, the definitions of
+    such are radically placed in the different structures of the organs
+    which aerate the blood and distribute it to its various
+    destinations.
+
+    But the great question, What determined the direction of this
+    acceleration? remains unanswered. One cannot understand why more
+    highly-oxidized blood should hasten the growth of partition of the
+    ventricle of the heart in the serpent, the more perfectly to
+    separate the aerated from the impure fluid; nor can we see why a
+    more perfectly-constructed circulatory system, sending purer blood
+    to the brain, should direct accelerated growth to the cerebellum or
+    cerebral hemispheres in the crocodile.
+
+    _b. In Characters of the Specific Kind._ Some of the characters
+    usually placed in the specific category have been shown to be the
+    same in kind as those of higher categories. The majority are,
+    however, of a different kind, and have been discussed several pages
+    back.
+
+    The cause of the origin of these characters is shrouded in as much
+    mystery as that of those which have occupied the pages immediately
+    preceding. As in that case, we have to assume, as Darwin has done, a
+    tendency in Nature to their production. This is what he terms “the
+    principle of variation.” Against an unlimited variation the great
+    law of heredity or atavism has ever been opposed, as a conservator
+    and multiplier of type. This principle is exemplified in the fact
+    that like produces like—that children are like their parents,
+    frequently even in minutiæ. It may be compared to habit in
+    metaphysical matters, or to that singular love of time or rhythm
+    seen in man and lower animals, in both of which the tendency is to
+    repeat in continual cycles a motion or state of the mind or sense.
+
+    Further, but a proportion of the lines of variation is supposed to
+    have been perpetuated, and the extinction of intermediate forms, as
+    already stated, has left isolated groups or species.
+
+    The effective cause of these extinctions is stated by Darwin to have
+    been a “natural selection”—a proposition which distinguishes his
+    theory from other development hypotheses, and which is stated in
+    brief by the expression, “the preservation of the fittest.” Its
+    meaning is this: that those characters appearing as results of this
+    spontaneous variation which are little adapted to the conflict for
+    subsistence, with the nature of the supply, or with rivals in its
+    pursuit, dwindle and are sooner or later extirpated; while those
+    which are adapted to their surroundings, and favored in the struggle
+    for means of life and increase, predominate, and ultimately become
+    the centers of new variation. “I am convinced,” says Darwin, “that
+    natural selection has been the main, but not exclusive, means of
+    modification.”
+
+    That it has been to a large extent the means of preservation of
+    those structures known as specific, must, I think, be admitted. They
+    are related to their peculiar surroundings very closely, and are
+    therefore more likely to exist under their influence. Thus, if a
+    given genus extends its range over a continent, it is usually found
+    to be represented by peculiar species—one in a maritime division,
+    another in the desert, others in the forest, in the swamp or the
+    elevated areas of the region. The wonderful interdependence shown by
+    Darwin to exist between insects and plants in the fertilization of
+    the latter, or between animals and their food-plants, would almost
+    induce one to believe that it were the true expression of the whole
+    law of development.
+
+    But the following are serious objections to its universal
+    application:
+
+    First: The characters of the higher groups, from genera up, are
+    rarely of a character to fit their possessors especially for
+    surrounding circumstances; that is, the differences which separate
+    genus from genus, order from order, etc., in the ascending scale of
+    each, do not seem to present a superior adaptation to surrounding
+    circumstances in the higher genus to that seen in the lower genus,
+    etc. Hence, superior adaptation could scarcely have caused their
+    selection above other forms not existing. Or, in other words, the
+    different structures which indicate successional relation, or which
+    measure the steps of progress, seem to be equally well fitted for
+    the same surroundings.
+
+    Second: The higher groups, as orders, classes, etc., have been in
+    each geologic period alike distributed over the whole earth, under
+    all the varied circumstances offered by climate and food. Their
+    characters do not seem to have been modified in reference to these.
+    Species, and often genera, are, on the other hand, eminently
+    restricted according to climate, and consequently vegetable and
+    animal food.
+
+    The law of development which we seek is indeed not that which
+    preserves the higher forms and rejects the lower after their
+    creation, but that which explains why higher forms were created at
+    all. Why in the results of a creation we see any relation of higher
+    and lower, and not rather a world of distinct types, each perfectly
+    adapted to its situation, but none properly higher than another in
+    an ascending scale, is the primary question. Given the principle of
+    advance, then natural selection has no doubt modified the details;
+    but in the successive advances we can scarcely believe such a
+    principle to be influential. _We look rather upon a progress as the
+    result of the expenditure of some force fore-arranged for that end._
+
+    It may become, then, a question whether in characters of high grade
+    the habit or use is not rather the result of the acquisition of the
+    structure than the structure the result of the encouragement offered
+    to its assumed beginnings by use, or by liberal nutrition derived
+    from the increasingly superior advantages it offers.
+
+                     ε. The Physical Origin of Man.
+
+    If the hypothesis here maintained be true, man is the descendant of
+    some preëxistent generic type, the which, if it were now living, we
+    would probably call an ape.
+
+    Man and the chimpanzee were in Linnæus’ system only two species of
+    the same genus, but a truer anatomy places them in separate genera
+    and distinct families. There is no doubt, however, that Cuvier went
+    much too far when he proposed to consider Homo as the representative
+    of an order distinct from the quadrumana, under the name of bimana.
+    The structural differences will not bear any such interpretation,
+    and have not the same value as those distinguishing the orders of
+    mammalia; as, for instance, between carnivora and bats, or the
+    cloven-footed animals and the rodents, or rodents and edentates. The
+    differences between man and the chimpanzee are, as Huxley well puts
+    it, much less than those between the chimpanzee and lower
+    quadrumana, as lemurs, etc. In fact, man is the type of a family,
+    Hominidæ, of the order Quadrumana, as indicated by the characters of
+    the dentition, extremities, brain, etc. The reader who may have any
+    doubts on this score may read the dissections of Geoffroy St.
+    Hilaire, made in 1856, before the issue of Darwin’s _Origin of
+    Species_. He informs us that the brain of man is nearer in structure
+    to that of the orang than the orang’s is to that of the South
+    American howler, and that the orang and howler are more nearly
+    related in this regard than are the howler and the marmoset.
+
+    The modifications presented by man have, then, resulted from an
+    acceleration in development in some respects, and retardation
+    perhaps in others. But until the _combination_ now characteristic of
+    the genus Homo was attained the being could not properly be called
+    man.
+
+    And here it must be observed that as an organic type is
+    characterized by the coëxistence of a number of peculiarities which
+    have been developed independently of each other, its distinctive
+    features and striking functions are not exhibited until that
+    coëxistence is attained which is necessary for these ends.
+
+    Hence, the characters of the human genus were probably developed
+    successively; but few of the indications of human superiority
+    appeared until the combination was accomplished. Let the opposable
+    thumb be first perfected, but of what use would it be in human
+    affairs without a mind to direct? And of what use a mind without
+    speech to unlock it? And speech could not be possible though all the
+    muscles of the larynx but one were developed, or but a slight
+    abnormal convexity in one pair of cartilages remained.
+
+    It would be an objection of little weight could it be truly urged
+    that there have as yet no remains of apelike men been discovered,
+    for we have frequently been called upon in the course of
+    paleontological discovery to bridge greater gaps than this, and
+    greater remain, which we expect to fill. But we _have_ apelike
+    characters exhibited by more than one race of men yet existing.
+
+    But the remains of that being which is supposed to have been the
+    progenitor of man may have been discovered a short time since in the
+    cave of Naulette, Belgium, with the bones of the extinct rhinoceros
+    and elephant.
+
+    We all admit the existence of higher and lower races, the latter
+    being those which we now find to present greater or less
+    approximations to the apes. The peculiar structural characters that
+    belong to the negro in his most typical form are of that kind,
+    however great may be the distance of his remove therefrom. The
+    flattening of the nose and prolongation of the jaws constitute such
+    a resemblance; so are the deficiency of the calf of the leg, and the
+    obliquity of the pelvis, which approaches more the horizontal
+    position than it does in the Caucasian. The investigations made at
+    Washington during the war with reference to the physical
+    characteristics of the soldiers show that the arms of the negro are
+    from one to two inches longer than those of the whites: another
+    approximation to the ape. In fact, this race is a species of the
+    genus Homo, as distinct in character from the Caucasian as those we
+    are accustomed to recognize in other departments of the animal
+    kingdom; but he is not distinct by isolation, since intermediate
+    form’s between him and the other species can be abundantly found.
+
+    And here let it be particularly observed that two of the most
+    prominent characters of the negro are those of immature stages of
+    the Indo-European race in its characteristic types. The deficient
+    calf is the character of infants at a very early stage; but, what is
+    more important, the flattened bridge of the nose and shortened nasal
+    cartilages are universally immature conditions of the same parts in
+    the Indo-European. Any one may convince himself of that by examining
+    the physiognomies of infants. In some races—_e.g._, the Slavic—this
+    undeveloped character persists later than in some others. The Greek
+    nose, with its elevated bridge, coincides not only with æsthetic
+    beauty, but with developmental perfection.
+
+    This is, however, only “_inexact_ parallelism,” as the characters of
+    the hair, etc., cannot be explained on this principle _among
+    existing races_. The embryonic characters mentioned are probably a
+    remnant of those characteristic of the primordial race or species.
+
+    But the man of Naulette, if he be not a monstrosity, in a still more
+    distinct and apelike species. The chin, that marked character of
+    other species of men, is totally wanting, and the dentition is quite
+    approximate to the man-like apes, and different from that of modern
+    men. The form is very massive, as in apes. That he was not abnormal
+    is rendered probable by approximate characters seen in a jaw from
+    the cave of Puy-sur-Aube, and less marked in the lowest races of
+    Australia and New Caledonia.
+
+    As to the single or multiple origin of man, science as yet furnishes
+    no answer. It is very probable that, in many cases, the species of
+    one genus have descended from corresponding species of another by
+    change of generic characters only. It is a remarkable fact that the
+    orang possesses the peculiarly developed malar bones and the copper
+    color characteristic of the Mongolian inhabitants of the regions in
+    which this animal is found, while the gorilla exhibits the
+    prognathic jaws and black hue of the African races near whom he
+    dwells. This kind of geographical imitation is very common in the
+    animal kingdom.
+
+                         ζ. The Mosaic Account.
+
+    As some persons imagine that this hypothesis conflicts with the
+    account of the creation of man given in Genesis, a comparison of
+    some of the points involved is made below.
+
+    First: In Genesis i. 26, 27, we read, “And God said, Let us make man
+    in our image, after our likeness,” etc. “So God created man in his
+    own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female
+    created he them.” Those who believe that this “image” is a physical,
+    material form, are not disposed to admit the entrance of anything
+    apelike into its constitution, for the ascription of any such
+    appearance to the Creator would be impious and revolting. But we are
+    told that “God is a Spirit,” and Christ said to his disciples after
+    his resurrection, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me
+    have.” Luke xxiv. 39. It will require little further argument to
+    show that a mental and spiritual image is what is meant, as it is
+    what truly exists. Man’s conscience, intelligence and creative
+    ingenuity show that he possesses an “image of God” within him, the
+    possession of which is really necessary to his limited comprehension
+    of God and of God’s ways to man.
+
+    Second: In Genesis ii. 7, the text reads, “And the Lord God formed
+    man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
+    breath of life; and man became a living soul.” The fact that man is
+    the result of the modification of an apelike predecessor nowise
+    conflicts with the above statement as to the materials of which his
+    body is composed. Independently of origin, if the body of man be
+    composed of dust, so must that of the ape be, since the composition
+    of the two is identical. But the statement simply asserts that man
+    was created of the same materials which compose the earth: their
+    condition as “dust” depending merely on temperature and subdivision.
+    The declaration, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,”
+    must be taken in a similar sense, for we know that the decaying body
+    is resolved not only into its earthly constituents, but also into
+    carbonic acid gas and water.
+
+    When God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, we are
+    informed that he became, not a living body, but “a living soul.” His
+    descent from a preëxistent being involved the possession of a living
+    body; but when the Creator breathed into him we may suppose for the
+    present that He infused into this body the immortal part, and at
+    that moment man became a conscientious and responsible being.
+
+
+                      II. METAPHYSICAL EVOLUTION.
+
+    It is infinitely improbable that a being endowed with such
+    capacities for gradual progress as man has exhibited, should have
+    been full fledged in accomplishments at the moment when he could
+    first claim his high title, and abandon that of his simious
+    ancestors. We are therefore required to admit the growth of human
+    intelligence from a primitive state of inactivity and absolute
+    ignorance; including the development of one important mode of its
+    expression—speech; as well as that of the moral qualities, and of
+    man’s social system—the form in which his ideas of morality were
+    first displayed.
+
+    The expression “evolution of morality” need not offend, for the
+    question in regard to the _laws_ of this evolution is the really
+    important part of the discussion, and it is to the opposing views on
+    this point that the most serious interest attaches.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The two views of evolution already treated of, held separately, are
+    quite opposed to each other. The first (and generally received) lays
+    stress on the influence of external surroundings, as the stimulus to
+    and guidance of development: it is the counterpart of Darwin’s
+    principle called Natural Selection in material progress. This might
+    be called the _Conflict theory_. The second view recognizes the
+    workings of a force whose nature we do not know, whose exhibitions
+    accord perfectly with their external surroundings (or other
+    exhibitions of itself), without being under their influence or more
+    related to them, as effect to cause, than the notes of the musical
+    octave or the colors of the spectrum are to each other. This is the
+    _Harmonic theory_. In other words, the first principle deduces
+    perfection from struggle and discord; the second, from the
+    coincident progress of many parts, forming together a divine harmony
+    comparable to music. That these principles are both true is rendered
+    extremely probable by the actual phenomena of development, material
+    and immaterial. In other words, struggle and discord ever await that
+    which is not in the advance, and which fails to keep pace with the
+    harmonious development of the whole.
+
+    All who have studied the phenomena of the creation believe that
+    there exists in it a grand and noble harmony, such as was described
+    to Job when he was told that “the morning stars sang together, and
+    all the sons of God shouted for joy.”
+
+                    α. Development of Intelligence.
+
+    If the brain is the organ of mind, we may be surprised to find that
+    the brain of the intelligent man scarcely differs in structure from
+    that of the ape. Whence, then, the difference of power? Though no
+    one will now deny that many of the Mammalia are capable of reasoning
+    upon observed facts, yet how greatly the results of this capacity
+    differ in number and importance from those achieved by human
+    intelligence! Like water at the temperatures of 50° and 53°, where
+    we perceive no difference in essential character, so between the
+    brains of the lower and higher monkeys no difference of function or
+    of intelligence is perceptible. But what a difference do the two
+    degrees of temperature from 33° to 31° produce in water! In like
+    manner the difference between the brain of the higher ape and that
+    of man is accompanied by a difference in function and power, on
+    which, man’s earthly destiny depends. In development, as with the
+    water so with the higher ape: some Rubicon has been crossed, some
+    floodgate has been opened, which marks one of Nature’s great
+    transitions, such as have been called “Expression points” of
+    progress.
+
+    What point of progress in such a history would account for this
+    accession of the powers of the human intelligence? It has been
+    answered, with considerable confidence, The power of speech. Let us
+    picture man without speech. Each generation would learn nothing from
+    its predecessors. Whatever originality or observation might yield to
+    a man would die with him. Each intellectual life would begin where
+    every other life began, and would end at a point only differing with
+    its original capacity. Concert of action, by which man’s power over
+    the material world is maintained, would not exceed, if it equaled,
+    that which is seen among the bees; and the material results of his
+    labors would not extend beyond securing the means of life and the
+    employment of the simplest modes of defence and attack.
+
+    The first men, therefore, are looked upon by the developmentalists
+    as extremely embryonic in all that characterizes humanity, and they
+    appeal to the facts of history in support of this view. If they do
+    not derive much assistance from written history, evidence is found
+    in the more enduring relics of human handiwork.
+
+    The opposing view is, that the races which present or have presented
+    this condition of inferiority or savagery have reached it by a
+    process of degradation from a higher state—as some believe, through
+    moral delinquency. This position may be true in certain cases, which
+    represent perhaps a condition of senility, but in general we believe
+    that savagery was the condition of the first man, which has in some
+    races continued to the present day.
+
+                     _β. Evidence from Archæology._
+
+    As the object of the present essay is not to examine fully into the
+    evidences for the theories of evolution here stated, but rather to
+    give a sketch of such theories and their connection, a few facts
+    only will be noticed.
+
+    _Improvement in the use of Materials._ As is well known, the remains
+    of human handiwork of the earliest periods consist of nothing but
+    rude implements of stone and bone, useful only in procuring food and
+    preparing it for use. Even when enterprise extended beyond the
+    ordinary routine, it was restrained by the want of proper
+    instruments. Knives and other cutting implements of flint still
+    attest the skill of the early races of men from Java to the Cape of
+    Good Hope, from Egypt to Ireland, and through North and South
+    America. Hatchets, spear-heads and ornaments of serpentine, granite,
+    silex, clay slates, and all other suitable rock materials, are found
+    to have been used by the first men, to the exclusion of metals, in
+    most of the regions of the earth.
+
+    Later, the probably accidental discovery of the superiority of some
+    of the metals resulted in the substitution of them for stone as a
+    material for cutting implements. Copper—the only metal which, while
+    malleable, is hard enough to bear an imperfect edge—was used by
+    succeeding races in the Old World and the New. Implements of this
+    material are found scattered over extensive regions. So desirable,
+    however, did the hardening of the material appear for the
+    improvement of the cutting edge that combinations with other metals
+    were sought for and discovered. The alloy with tin, forming bronze
+    and brass, was discovered and used in Europe, while that with silver
+    appears to have been most readily produced in America, and was
+    consequently used by the Peruvians and other nations.
+
+    The discovery of the modes of reducing iron ores placed in the hands
+    of man the best material for bringing to a shape, convenient for his
+    needs the raw material of the world. All improvements in this
+    direction made since that time have been in the quality of iron
+    itself, and not through the introduction of any new metal.
+
+    The prevalent phenomena of any given period are those which give it
+    its character, and by which we distinguish it. But this fact does
+    not exclude the coëxistence of other phenomena belonging to prior or
+    subsequent stages. Thus, during the many stages of human progress
+    there have been men more or less in advance of the general body, and
+    their characteristics have given a peculiar stamp to the later and
+    higher condition of the whole. It furnishes no objection to this
+    view that we find, as might have been anticipated, the stone, bronze
+    and iron periods overlaping one another, or men of an inferior
+    culture supplanting in some cases a superior people. A case of this
+    kind is seen in North America, where the existing “Indians,”
+    stone-men, have succeeded the mound-builders, copper-men. The
+    successional relation of discoveries is all that it is necessary to
+    prove, and this seems to be established.
+
+    The period at which the use of metallic implements was introduced is
+    unknown, but Whitney says that the language of the Aryans, the
+    ancestors of all the modern Indo-Europeans, indicates an
+    acquaintance with such implements, though it is not certain whether
+    those of iron are to be included. The dispersion of the daughter
+    races, the Hindoos, the Pelasgi, Teutons, Celts, etc., could not, it
+    is thought, have taken place later than 3000 B. C.—a date seven
+    hundred years prior, to that assigned by the old chronology to the
+    Deluge. Those races coëxisted with the Egyptian and Chinese nations,
+    already civilized, and as distinct from each other in feature as
+    they are now.
+
+    _Improvement in Architecture._ The earliest periods, then, were
+    characterized by the utmost simplicity of invention and
+    construction. Later, the efforts for defence from enemies and for
+    architectural display, which have always employed so much time and
+    power, began to be made. The megalithic period has left traces over
+    much of the earth. The great masses of stone piled on each other in
+    the simplest form in Southern India, and the circles of stones
+    planted on end in England at Stonehenge and Abury, and in Peru at
+    Sillustani, are relics of that period. More complex are the great
+    Himyaritic walls of Arabia, the works of the ancestors of the
+    Phœnicians in Asia Minor, and the titanic workmanship of the Pelasgi
+    in Greece and Italy. In the iron age we find granitic hills shaped
+    or excavated into temples; as, for example, everywhere in Southern
+    India. Near Madura the circumference of an acropolis-like hill is
+    cut into a series of statues in high relief, of sixty feet in
+    elevation. Easter Island, composed of two volcanic cones, one
+    thousand miles from the west coast of South America, in the bosom of
+    the Pacific, possesses several colossi cut from the intrusive
+    basalt, some in high relief on the face of the rock, others in
+    detached blocks removed by human art from their original positions
+    and brought nearer the sea-shore.
+
+    Finally, at a more advanced stage, the more ornate and complex
+    structures of Central America, of Cambodia, Nineveh and Egypt,
+    represent the period of greatest display of architectural
+    expenditure. The same amount of human force has perhaps never been
+    expended in this direction since, though higher conceptions of
+    beauty have been developed in architecture with increasing
+    intellectuality.
+
+    Man has passed through the block-and-brick building period of his
+    boyhood, and should rise to higher conceptions of what is the true
+    disposition of power for “him who builds for aye,” and learn that
+    “spectacle” is often the unwilling friend of progress.
+
+    No traces of metallic implements have ever been found in the
+    salt-mines of Armenia, the turquoise-quarries in Arabia, the cities
+    of Central America or the excavations for mica in North Carolina,
+    while the direct evidence points to the conclusion that in those
+    places flint was exclusively used.
+
+    The simplest occupations, as requiring the least exercise of mind,
+    are the pursuit of the chase and the tending of flocks and herds.
+    Accordingly, we find our first parents engaged in these occupations.
+    Cain, we are told, was, in addition, a tiller of the ground.
+    Agriculture in its simplest forms requires but little more
+    intelligence than the pursuits just mentioned, though no employment
+    is capable of higher development. If we look at the savage nations
+    at present occupying nearly half the land surface of the earth, we
+    shall find many examples of the former industrial condition of our
+    race preserved to the present day. Many of them had no knowledge of
+    the use of metals until they obtained it from civilized men who
+    visited them, while their pursuits were and are those of the chase,
+    tending domestic animals, and rudimental agriculture.
+
+                    γ. The Development of Language.
+
+    In this department the fact of development from the simple to the
+    complex has been so satisfactorily demonstrated by philologists as
+    scarcely to require notice here. The course of that development has
+    been from monosyllabic to polysyllabic forms, and also in a process
+    of differentiation, as derivative races were broken off from the
+    original stock and scattered widely apart. The evidence is clear
+    that simple words for distinct objects formed the bases of the
+    primal languages, just as the ground, tree, sun and moon represent
+    the character of the first words the infant lisps. In this
+    department also the facts point to an infancy of the human race.
+
+                    δ. Development of the Fine Arts.
+
+    If we look at representation by drawing or sculpture, we find that
+    the efforts of the earliest races of which we have any knowledge
+    were quite similar to those which the untaught hand of infancy
+    traces on its slate or the savage depicts on the rocky faces of
+    hills. The circle or triangle for the head and body, and straight
+    lines for the limbs, have been preserved as the first attempts of
+    the men of the stone period, as they are to this day the sole
+    representations of the human form which the North American Indian
+    places on his buffalo robe or mountain precipice. The stiff,
+    barely-outlined form of the deer, the turtle, etc., are literally
+    those of the infancy of civilized man.
+
+    The first attempts at sculpture were marred by the influence of
+    modism. Thus the idols of Coban and Palenque, with human faces of
+    some merit, are overloaded with absurd ornament, and deformed into
+    frightful asymmetry, in compliance with the demand of some imperious
+    mode. In later days we have the stiff, conventionalized figures of
+    the palaces of Nineveh and the temples of Egypt, where the
+    representation of form has somewhat improved, but is too often
+    distorted by false fashion or imitation of some unnatural standard,
+    real or artistic. This is distinguished as the day of archaic
+    sculpture, which disappeared with the Etruscan nation. So the
+    drawings of the child, when he abandons the simple lines, are stiff
+    and awkward, and but a stage nearer true representation; and how
+    often does he repeat some peculiarity or absurdity of his own! So
+    much easier is it to copy than to conceive.
+
+    The introduction of the action and pose of life into sculpture was
+    not known before the early days of Greece, and it was there that the
+    art was brought to perfection. When art rose from its mediæval
+    slumber, much the same succession of development may be discovered.
+    First, the stiff figures, with straightened limbs and cylindric
+    drapery, found in the old Northern churches—then the forms of life
+    that now adorn the porticoes and palaces of the cities of Germany.
+
+            ε. Rationale of the Development of Intelligence.
+
+    The history of material development shows that the transition from
+    stage to stage of development, experienced by the most perfect forms
+    of animals and plants in their growth from the primordial cell, is
+    similar to the succession of created beings which the geological
+    epochs produced. It also shows that the slow assumption of main
+    characters in the line of succession in early geological periods
+    produced the condition of inferiority, while an increased rapidity
+    of growth in later days has resulted in an attainment of
+    superiority. It is not to be supposed that in “acceleration” the
+    period of growth is shortened: on the contrary, it continues the
+    same. Of two beings whose characters are assumed at the same rate of
+    succession, that with the quickest or shortest growth is necessarily
+    inferior. “Acceleration” means a gradual increase of the rate of
+    assumption of successive characters in the same period of time. A
+    fixed rate of assumption of characters, with gradual increase in the
+    length of the period of growth, would produce the same result—viz.,
+    a longer developmental scale and the attainment of an advanced
+    position. The first is in part the relation of sexes of a species;
+    the last of genera, and of other types of creation. If from an
+    observed relation of many facts we derive a law, we are permitted,
+    when we see in another class of facts similar relations, to suspect
+    that a similar law has operated, differing only in its objects. We
+    find a marked resemblance between the facts of structural progress
+    in matter and the phenomena of intellectual and spiritual progress.
+
+    If the facts entering into the categories enumerated in the
+    preceding section bear us out, we conclude that in the beginning of
+    human history the progress of the individual man was very slow, and
+    that but little was attained to; that through the profitable
+    direction of human energy, means were discovered from time to time
+    by which the process of individual development in all metaphysical
+    qualities has been accelerated; and that up to the present time the
+    consequent advance of the whole race has been at an increasing rate
+    of progress, This is in accordance with the general principle, that
+    high development in intellectual things is accomplished by rapidity
+    in traversing the preliminary stages of inferiority common to all,
+    while low development signifies sluggishness in that progress, and a
+    corresponding retention of inferiority.
+
+    How much meaning may we not see, from this stand-point, in the
+    history of the intelligence of our little ones! First they crawl,
+    they walk on all fours: when they first assume the erect position
+    they are generally speechless, and utter only inarticulate sounds.
+    When they run about, stones and dirt, the objects that first meet
+    the eye, are the delight of their awakening powers, but these are
+    all cast aside when the boy obtains his first jackknife. Soon,
+    however, reading and writing open a new world to him; and finally as
+    a mature man he seizes the forces of nature, and steam and
+    electricity do his bidding in the active pursuit of power for still
+    better and higher ends.
+
+    So with the history of the species: first the quadrumane—then the
+    speaking man, whose humble industry was, however, confined to the
+    objects that came first to hand, this being the “stone age” of
+    pre-historic time. When the use of metals was discovered, the range
+    of industries expanded wonderfully, and the “iron age” saw many
+    striking efforts of human power. With the introduction of letters it
+    became possible to record events and experiences, and the spread of
+    knowledge was thereby greatly increased, and the delays and mistakes
+    of ignorance correspondingly diminished in the fields of the world’s
+    activity.
+
+    From the first we see in history a slow advance as knowledge gained
+    by the accumulation of tradition and by improvements in habit based
+    on experience; but how slow was this advance while the use of the
+    metals was still unknown! The iron age brought with it not only new
+    conveniences, but increased means of future progress; and here we
+    have an acceleration in the rate of advance. With the introduction
+    of letters this rate was increased many fold, and in the application
+    of steam we have a change equal in utility to any that has preceded
+    it, and adding more than any to the possibilities of future advance
+    in many directions. By its power, knowledge and means of happiness
+    were to be distributed among the many.
+
+    The uses to which human intelligence has successively applied the
+    materials furnished by nature have been—First, subsistence and
+    defence: second, the accumulation of power in the shape of a
+    representative of that labor which the use of matter involves; in
+    other words, the accumulation of wealth. The possession of this
+    power involves new possibilities, for opportunity is offered for the
+    special pursuits of knowledge and the assistance of the weak or
+    undeveloped part of mankind in its struggles.
+
+    Thus, while the first men possessed the power of speech, and could
+    advance a little in knowledge through the accumulation of the
+    experiences of their predecessors, they possessed no means of
+    accumulating the power of labor, no control over the activity of
+    numbers—in other words, no wealth.
+
+    But the accumulation of knowledge finally brought this advance
+    about. The extraction and utilization of the metals, especially
+    iron, formed the most important step, since labor was thus
+    facilitated and its productiveness increased in an incalculable
+    degree. We have little evidence of the existence of a medium of
+    exchange during the first or stone period, and no doubt barter was
+    the only form of trade. Before the use of metals, shells and other
+    objects were used: remains of money of baked clay have been found in
+    Mexico. Finally, though in still ancient times, the possession of
+    wealth in money gradually became possible and more common, and from
+    that day to this avenues for reaching this stage in social progress
+    has ever been opening.
+
+    But wealth merely indicates a stage of progress, since it is but a
+    comparative term. All men could not become rich, for in that case
+    all would be equally poor. But labor has a still higher goal; for,
+    thirdly, as capital, it constructs and employs machinery, which does
+    the work of many hands, and thus cheapens products, which is
+    equivalent in effect to an accumulation of wealth to the consumer.
+    And this increase of power may be used for the intellectual and
+    spiritual advance of men, or otherwise, at the will of the men thus
+    favored. Machinery places man in the position of a creator,
+    operating on Nature through an increased number of “secondary
+    causes.”
+
+    Development of intelligence is seen, then, in the following
+    directions: First, in the knowledge of facts, including science;
+    second, in language; third, in the apprehension of beauty; and, as
+    consequences of the first of these, the accumulation of power by
+    development—First, of means of subsistence; and second, of
+    mechanical invention.
+
+    Thus we have two terms to start with in estimating the beginning of
+    human development in knowledge and power: First, the primary
+    capacities of the human mind itself; second, a material world, whose
+    infinitely varied components are so arranged as to yield results to
+    the energies of that mind. For example, the transition points of
+    vaporization and liquefaction are so placed as to be within the
+    reach of man’s agents; their weights are so fixed as to accord with
+    the muscular or other forces which he is able to exert; and other
+    living organizations are subject to his convenience and rule, and
+    not, as in previous geological periods, entirely beyond his control.
+    These two terms being given, it is maintained that the present
+    situation of the most civilized men has been attained through the
+    operation of a law of mutual action and reaction—a law whose
+    results, seen at the present time, have depended on the acceleration
+    or retardation of its rate of action; which rate has been regulated,
+    according to the degree in which a third great term, viz., the law
+    of moral or (what is the same thing) true religious development has
+    been combined in the plan. What it is necessary to establish in
+    order to prove the above hypothesis is—
+
+    I. That in each of the particulars above enumerated the development
+    of the human species is similar to that of the individual from
+    infancy to maturity.
+
+    II. That from a condition of subserviency to the laws of matter,
+    man’s intelligence enables him, by an accumulation of power, to
+    become in a sense independent of those laws, and to increase greatly
+    the rate of intellectual and spiritual progress.
+
+    III. That failure to accomplish a moral or spiritual development
+    will again reduce him to a subserviency to the laws of matter.
+
+    This brings us to the subject of moral development. And here I may
+    be allowed to suggest that the weight of the evidence is opposed to
+    the philosophy, “falsely so called,” of necessitarianism, which
+    asserts that the first two terms alone were sufficient to work out
+    man’s salvation in this world and the next; and, on the other hand,
+    to that anti-philosophy which asserts that all things in the
+    progress of the human race, social and civil, are regulated by
+    immediate Divine interposition instead of through instrumentalities.
+    Hence the subject divides itself at once into two great
+    departments—viz., that of the development of mind or intelligence,
+    and that of the development of morality.
+
+    That these laws are distinct there can be no doubt, since in the
+    individual man one of them may produce results without the aid of
+    the other. Yet it can be shown that each is the most invaluable aid
+    and stimulant to the other, and most favorable to the rapid advance
+    of the mind in either direction.
+
+
+                  III. SPIRITUAL OR MORAL DEVELOPMENT.
+
+    In examining this subject, we first inquire (Sect. _α_) whether
+    there is any connection between physical and moral or religious
+    development; then (_β_), what indications of moral development may
+    be derived from history. Finally (_γ_), a correlation of the results
+    of these inquiries, with the nature of the religious development in
+    the individual, is attempted. Of course in so stupendous an inquiry
+    but a few leading points can be presented here.
+
+    If it be true that the period of human existence on the earth has
+    seen a gradually increasing predominance of higher motives over
+    lower ones among the mass of mankind, and if any parts of our
+    metaphysical being have been derived by inheritance from preëxistent
+    beings, we are incited to the inquiry whether any of the moral
+    qualities are included among the latter; and whether there be any
+    resemblance between moral and intellectual development.
+
+    Thus, if there have been a physical derivation from a preëxistent
+    genus, and an embryonic condition of those physical characters which
+    distinguish Homo—if there has been also an embryonic or infantile
+    stage in intellectual qualities—we are led to inquire whether the
+    development of the individual in moral nature will furnish us with a
+    standard of estimation of the successive conditions or present
+    relations of the human species in this aspect also.
+
+              _a. Relations of Physical and Moral Nature._
+
+    Although men are much alike in the deeper qualities of their nature,
+    there is a range of variation which is best understood by a
+    consideration of the extremes of such variation, as seen in men of
+    different latitudes, and women and children.
+
+    (_a._) _In Children._ Youth is distinguished by a peculiarity, which
+    no doubt depends upon an immature condition of the nervous center
+    concerned, which might be called _nervous impressibility_. It is
+    exhibited in a greater tendency to tearfulness, in timidity, less
+    mental endurance, a greater facility in acquiring knowledge, and
+    more ready susceptibility to the influence of sights, sounds and
+    sensations. In both sexes the emotional nature predominates over the
+    intelligence and judgment. In those years the _character_ is said to
+    be in embryo, and theologians in using the phrase, “reaching years
+    of religious understanding,” mean that in early years the religious
+    _capacities_ undergo development coincidentally with those of the
+    body.
+
+    (_b._) _In Women._ If we examine the metaphysical characteristics of
+    women, we observe two classes of traits—namely, those which are also
+    found in men, and those which are absent or but weakly developed in
+    men. Those of the first class are very similar in essential nature
+    to those which men exhibit at an early stage of development. This
+    may be in some way related to the fact that physical maturity occurs
+    earlier in women.
+
+    The gentler sex is characterized by a greater impressibility, often
+    seen in the influence exercised by a stronger character, as well as
+    by music, color or spectacle generally; warmth of emotion,
+    submission to its influence rather than that of logic; timidity and
+    irregularity of action in the outer world. All these qualities
+    belong to the male sex, as a general rule, at some period of life,
+    though different individuals lose them at very various periods.
+    Ruggedness and sternness may rarely be developed in infancy, yet at
+    some still prior time they certainly do not exist in any.
+
+    Probably most men can recollect some early period of their lives
+    when the emotional nature predominated—a time when emotion at the
+    sight of suffering was more easily stirred than in maturer years. I
+    do not now allude to the benevolence inspired, kept alive or
+    developed by the influence of the Christian religion on the heart,
+    but rather to that which belongs to the natural man. Perhaps all men
+    can recall a period of youth when they were hero-worshipers—when
+    they felt the need of a stronger arm, and loved to look up to the
+    powerful friend who could sympathize with and aid them. This is the
+    “woman stage” of character: in a large number of cases it is early
+    passed; in some it lasts longer; while in a very few men it persists
+    through life. Severe discipline and labor are unfavorable to its
+    persistence. Luxury preserves its bad qualities without its good,
+    while Christianity preserves its good elements without its bad.
+
+    It is not designed to say that woman in her emotional nature does
+    not differ from the undeveloped man. On the contrary, though she
+    does not differ in kind, she differs greatly in degree, for her
+    qualities grow with her growth, and exceed in _power_ many fold
+    those exhibited by her companion at the original point of departure.
+    Hence, since it might be said that man is the undeveloped woman, a
+    word of explanation will be useful. Embryonic types abound in the
+    fields of nature, but they are not therefore immature in the usual
+    sense. Maintaining the lower essential quality, they yet exhibit the
+    usual results of growth in individual characters; that is, increase
+    of strength, powers of support and protection, size and beauty. In
+    order to maintain that the masculine character coincides with that
+    of the undeveloped woman, it would be necessary to show that the
+    latter during her infancy possesses the male characters
+    predominating—that is, unimpressibility, judgment, physical courage,
+    and the like.
+
+    If we look at the second class of female characters—namely, those
+    which are imperfectly developed or absent in men, and in respect to
+    which man may be called undeveloped woman—we note three prominent
+    points: facility in language, tact or finesse, and the love of
+    children. The first two appear to me to be altogether developed
+    results of “impressibility,” already considered as an indication of
+    immaturity. Imagination is also a quality of impressibility, and,
+    associated with finesse, is apt to degenerate into duplicity and
+    untruthfulness.
+
+    The third quality is different. It generally appears at a very early
+    period of life. Who does not know how soon the little girl selects
+    the doll, and the boy the toy-horse or machine? Here man truly never
+    gets beyond undeveloped woman. Nevertheless, “impressibility” seems
+    to have a great deal to do with this quality also.
+
+    Thus the metaphysical relation of the sexes would appear to be one
+    of _inexact parallelism_, as defined in Sect. I. That the physical
+    relation is a remote one of the same kind, several characters seem
+    to point out. The case of the vocal organs will suffice. Their
+    structure is identical in both sexes in early youth, and both
+    produce nearly similar sounds. They remain in this condition in the
+    woman, while they undergo a metamorphosis and change both in
+    structure and vocal power in the man. In the same way, in many of
+    the lower creation, the females possess a majority of embryonic
+    features, though not invariably. A common example is to be found in
+    the plumage of birds, where the females and young males are often
+    undistinguishable.[48] But there are few points in the physical
+    structure of man also in which the male condition is the immature
+    one. In regard to structure, the point at which the relation between
+    the sexes is that of _exact parallelism_, or where the mature
+    condition of the one sex accords with the undeveloped condition of
+    the other, is when reproduction is no longer accomplished by budding
+    or gemmation, but requires distinct organs. Metaphysically, this
+    relation is to be found where distinct individuality of the sexes
+    first appears; that is, where we pass from the hermaphrodite to the
+    bisexual condition.
+
+Footnote 48:
+
+      Meehan states that the upper limbs and strong laterals in coniferæ
+      and other trees produce female flowers and cones, and the lower
+      and more interior branches the male flowers. What he points out is
+      in harmony with the position here maintained—namely, that the
+      female characters include more of those which are embryonic in the
+      males, than the male characters include of those which are
+      embryonic in the female: the female flowers are the product of the
+      younger and more growing portions of the tree—that is, those last
+      produced (the upper limbs and new branches)—while the male flowers
+      are produced by the older or more mature portions—that is, lower
+      limbs or more axial regions.
+
+      Meehan’s observations coincide with those of Thury and others on
+      the origin of sexes in animals and plants, which it appears to
+      admit of a similar explanation.
+
+    But let us put the whole interpretation on this partial
+    undevelopment of woman.
+
+    The types or conditions of organic life which have been the most
+    prominent in the world’s history—the Ganoids of the first, the
+    Dinosaurs of the second, and the Mammoths of the third period—have
+    generally died with their day. The line of succession has not been
+    from them. The law of anatomy and paleontology is, that we must seek
+    the point of departure of the type which is to predominate in the
+    future, at lower stages on the line, in less decided forms, or in
+    what, in scientific parlance, are called generalized types. In the
+    same way, though the adults of the tailless apes are in a physical
+    sense more highly developed than their young, yet the latter far
+    more closely resemble the human species in their large facial angle
+    and shortened jaws.
+
+    How much significance, then, is added to the law uttered by
+    Christ!—“Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the
+    kingdom of heaven.” Submission of will, loving trust, confiding
+    faith—these belong to the child: how strange they appear to the
+    executing, commanding, reasoning man! Are they so strange to the
+    woman? We all know the answer. Woman is nearer to the point of
+    departure of that development which outlives time and peoples
+    heaven; and if man would find it, he must retrace his steps, regain
+    something he lost in youth, and join to the powers and energies of
+    his character the submission, love and faith which the new birth
+    alone can give.
+
+    Thus the summing up of the metaphysical qualities of woman would be
+    thus expressed: In the emotional world, man’s superior; in the moral
+    world, his equal; in the laboring world, his inferior.
+
+    There are, however, vast differences in women in respect to the
+    number of masculine traits they may have assumed before being
+    determined into their own special development. Woman also, under the
+    influence of necessity, in later years of life, may add more or less
+    to those qualities in her which are fully developed in the man.
+
+    The relation of these facts to the principles stated as the two
+    opposing laws of development is, it appears to me, to be explained
+    thus: First, that woman’s most inherent peculiarities are _not_ the
+    result of the external circumstances with which she has been placed
+    in contact, as the _conflict theory_ would indicate. Such
+    circumstances are said to be her involuntary subserviency to the
+    physically more powerful man, and the effect of a compulsory mode of
+    life in preventing her from attaining a position of equality in the
+    activities of the world. Second, that they _are_ the result of the
+    different distributions of qualities as already indicated by the
+    _harmonic theory_ of development; that is, of the unequal possession
+    of features which belong to different periods in the developmental
+    succession of the highest. And here it might be further shown that
+    this relation involves no disadvantage to either sex, but that the
+    principle of compensation holds in moral organization and in social
+    order, as elsewhere. There is then another beautiful harmony which
+    will ever remain, let the development of each sex be extended as far
+    as it may.
+
+    (_c._) _In Men._ If we look at the male sex, we shall find various
+    exceptional approximations to the female in mental constitution.
+    Further, there can be little doubt that in the Indo-European race
+    maturity in some respects appears earlier in tropical than in
+    northern regions; and though subject to many exceptions, this is
+    sufficiently general to be looked upon as a rule. Accordingly, we
+    find in that race—at least in the warmer regions of Europe and
+    America—a larger proportion of certain qualities which are more
+    universal in women; as greater activity of the emotional nature when
+    compared with the judgment; an impressibility of the nervous center,
+    which, _cæteris paribus_, appreciates quickly the harmonies of
+    sound, form and color; answers most quickly to the friendly greeting
+    or the hostile menace; is more careless of consequences in the
+    material expression of generosity or hatred, and more indifferent to
+    truth under the influence of personal relations. The movements of
+    the body and expressions of the countenance answer to the
+    temperament. More of grace and elegance in the bearing mark the
+    Greek, the Italian and the Creole, than the German, the Englishman
+    or the Green Mountain man. More of vivacity and fire, for better or
+    for worse, are displayed in the countenance.
+
+    Perhaps the more northern type left all that behind in its youth.
+    The rugged, angular character which appreciates force better than
+    harmony, the strong intellect which delights in forethought and
+    calculation, the less impressibility, reaching stolidity in the
+    uneducated, are its well-known traits. If in such a character
+    generosity is less prompt, and there is but little chivalry, there
+    is persistency and unwavering fidelity, not readily interrupted by
+    the lightning of passion or the dark surmises of an active
+    imagination.
+
+    All these peculiarities appear to result, _first_, from different
+    degrees of quickness and depth in appreciating impressions from
+    without; and, _second_, from differing degrees of attention to the
+    intelligent judgment in consequent action. (I leave conscience out,
+    as not belonging to the category of inherited qualities.)
+
+    The first is the basis of an emotional nature, and the predominance
+    of the second is the usual indication of maturity. That the first is
+    largely dependent on an impressible condition of the nervous system
+    can be asserted by those who reduce their nervous centers to a
+    sensitive condition by a rapid consumption of the nutritive
+    materials necessary to the production of thought-force, and perhaps
+    of brain-tissue itself, induced by close and prolonged mental labor.
+    The condition of over-work, though but an imitation of immaturity,
+    without its joy-giving nutrition, is nevertheless very instructive.
+    The sensitiveness, both physically, emotionally and morally, is
+    often remarkable, and a weakening of the understanding is often
+    coincident with it.
+
+    It is necessary here to introduce a caution, that the meaning of the
+    words high and low be not misunderstood. Great impressibility is an
+    essential constituent of many of the highest forms of genius, and
+    the combination of this quality with strong reflective intelligence,
+    constitutes the most complete and efficient type of mind—therefore
+    the highest in the common sense. It is not, however, the highest—or
+    extremest—in an evolutional sense, it is not masculine, but
+    hermaphrodite; in other words, its _kinetic_ force exceeds its
+    _bathmic_.[49] It is therefore certain that a partial diminution of
+    bathmic vigor is an advantage to some kinds of intellect.
+
+Footnote 49:
+
+      _Bathmic force_ is analogous to the _potential_ force of chemists,
+      but is no doubt entirely different in its nature. It is converted
+      into active energy or _kinetic_ force only during the years of
+      growth: it is in large amount in _acceleration_, in small amount
+      in _retardation_.
+
+    The above observations have been confined to the Indo-European race.
+    It may be objected to the theory that savagery means immaturity in
+    the senses above described, as dependent largely on
+    “impressibility,” while savages in general display the least
+    “impressibility,” as that word is generally understood. This cannot
+    be asserted of the Africans, who, so far as we know them, possess
+    this peculiarity in a high degree. Moreover, it must be remembered
+    that the state of indifference which precedes that of impressibility
+    in the individual may characterize many savages; while their varied
+    peculiarities may be largely accounted for by recollecting that many
+    combinations of different species of emotions and kinds of
+    intelligence go to make up the complete result in each case.
+
+    (_d._) _Conclusions._ Three types of religion may be selected from
+    the developmental conditions of man: first, an absence of
+    sensibility (early infancy); second, an emotional stage more
+    productive of faith than of works; thirdly, an intellectual type,
+    more favorable to works than to faith. Though in regard to
+    responsibility these states may be equal, there is absolutely no
+    gain to laboring humanity from the first type, and a serious loss in
+    actual results from the second, taken alone, as compared with the
+    third.
+
+    These, then, are the _physical vehicles of religion_—the “_earthen
+    vessels_” of Paul—which give character and tone to the deeper
+    spiritual life, as the color of the transparent vessel is
+    communicated to the light which radiates from within.
+
+    But if evolution has taken place, there is evidently a provision for
+    the progress from the lower to the higher states, either in the
+    education of circumstances (“conflict,”) or in the power of an
+    interior spiritual influence “harmony,”) or both.
+
+                  _β. Evidence Derived from History._
+
+    We trace the development of Morality in—First, the family or social
+    order; second, the civil order, or government.
+
+    Whatever may have been the extent of moral ignorance before the
+    Deluge, it does not appear that the earth was yet prepared for the
+    permanent habitation of the human race. All nations preserve
+    traditions of the drowning of the early peoples by floods, such as
+    have occurred frequently during geologic time. At the close of each
+    period of dry land, a period of submergence has set in, and the
+    depression of the level of the earth, and consequent overflow by the
+    sea, has caused the death and subsequent preservation of the remains
+    of the fauna and flora living upon it, while the elevation of the
+    same has produced that interruption in the process of deposit in the
+    same region which marks the intervals between geologic periods.
+    Change in these respects do not occur to any very material extent at
+    the present time in the regions inhabited by the most highly
+    developed portions of the human race; and as the last which occurred
+    seems to have been expressly designed for the preparation of the
+    earth’s surface for the occupation of organized human society, it
+    may be doubted whether many such changes are to be looked for in the
+    future. The last great flooding was that which stratified the drift
+    materials of the north, and carried the finer portions far over the
+    south, determining the minor topography of the surface and supplying
+    it with soils.
+
+    The existence of floods which drowned many races of men may be
+    considered as established. The men destroyed by the one recorded by
+    Moses are described by him as exceedingly wicked, so that “the earth
+    was filled with violence.” In his eyes the Flood was designed for
+    their extermination.
+
+    That their condition was evil must be fully believed if they were
+    condemned by the executive of the Jewish law. This law, it will be
+    remembered, permitted polygamy, slavery, revenge, aggressive war.
+    The Jews were expected to rob their neighbors the Egyptians of
+    jewels, and they were allowed “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
+    tooth.” They were expected to butcher other nations, with their
+    women and children, their flocks and their herds. If we look at the
+    lives of men recorded in the Old Testament as examples of
+    distinguished excellence, we find that their standard, however
+    superior to that of the people around them, would ill accord with
+    the morality of the present day. They were all polygamists,
+    slaveholders and warriors. Abraham treated Hagar and Ishmael with
+    inhumanity. Jacob, with his mother’s aid, deceived Isaac, and
+    received thereby a blessing which extended to the whole Jewish
+    nation. David, a man whom Paul tells us the Lord found to be after
+    his own heart, slew the messenger who brought tidings of the death
+    of Saul, and committed other acts which would stain the reputation
+    of a Christian beyond redemption. It is scarcely necessary to turn
+    to other nations if this be true of the chosen men of a chosen
+    people. History indeed presents us with no people prior to, or
+    contemporary with, the Jews who were not morally their inferiors.
+
+    If we turn to more modern periods, an examination of the morality of
+    Greece and Rome reveals a curious intermixture of lower and higher
+    moral conditions. While each of these nations produced excellent
+    moralists, the influence of their teachings was not sufficient to
+    elevate the masses above what would now be regarded as a very low
+    standard. The popularity of those scenes of cruelty, the
+    gladiatorial shows and the combats with wild beasts, sufficiently
+    attests this. The Roman virtue of patriotism, while productive of
+    many noble deeds, is in itself far from being a disinterested one,
+    but partakes rather of the nature of partisanship and selfishness.
+    If the Greeks were superior to the Romans in humanity, they were
+    apparently their inferiors in the social virtues, and were much
+    below the standard of Christian nations in both respects.
+
+    Ancient history points to a state of chronic war, in which the
+    social relations were in confusion, and the development of the
+    useful arts was almost impossible. Savage races, which continue to
+    this day in a similar moral condition, are, we may easily believe,
+    most unhappy. They are generally divided into tribes, which are
+    mutually hostile, or friendly only with the view of injuring some
+    other tribe. Might is their law, and robbery, rapine and murder
+    express their mutual relations. This is the history of the lowest
+    grade of barbarism, and the history of primeval man so far as it has
+    come down to us in sacred and profane records. Man as a species
+    first appears in history as a sinful being. Then a race maintaining
+    a contest with the prevailing corruption and exhibiting a higher
+    moral ideal is presented to us in Jewish history. Finally, early
+    Christian society exhibits a greatly superior condition of things.
+    In it polygamy scarcely existed, and slavery and war were condemned.
+    But progress did not end here, for our Lord said, “I have yet many
+    things to say unto you, _but ye cannot bear them now_. Howbeit, when
+    He, the spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.”
+
+    The progress revealed to us by history is truly great, and if a
+    similar difference existed between the first of the human species
+    and the first of whose condition we have information, we can
+    conceive how low the origin must have been. History begins with a
+    considerable progress in civilization, and from this we must infer a
+    long preceding period of human existence, such as a gradual
+    evolution would require.
+
+                   γ. Rationale of Moral Development.
+
+    I. _Of the Species._ Let us now look at the moral condition of the
+    infant man of the present time. We know his small accountability,
+    his trust, his innocence. We know that he is free from the law that
+    when he “would do good, evil is present with him,” for good and evil
+    are alike unknown. We know that until growth has progressed to a
+    certain degree he fully deserves the praise pronounced by Our
+    Saviour, that “of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Growth, however,
+    generally sees a change. We know that the buddings of evil appear
+    but too soon: the lapse of a few months sees exhibitions of anger,
+    disobedience, malice, falsehood, and their attendants—the fruit of a
+    corruption within not manifested before.
+
+    In early youth it may be said that moral susceptibility is often in
+    inverse ratio to physical vigor. But with growth the more physically
+    vigorous are often sooner taught the lessons of life, for their
+    energy brings them into earlier conflict with the antagonisms and
+    contradictions of the world. Here is a beautiful example of the
+    benevolent principle of compensation.
+
+    1. _Innocence and the Fall._ If physical evolution be a reality, we
+    have reason to believe that the infantile stage of human morals, as
+    well as of human intellect, was much prolonged in the history of our
+    first parents. This constitutes the period of human purity, when we
+    are told by Moses that the first pair dwelt in Eden. But the growth
+    to maturity saw the development of all the qualities inherited from
+    the irresponsible denizen of the forest. Man inherits from his
+    predecessors in the creation the buddings of reason: he inherits
+    passions, propensities and appetites. His corruption is that of his
+    animal progenitors, and his sin is the low and bestial instinct of
+    the brute creation. Thus only is the origin of sin made clear—a
+    problem which the pride of man would have explained in any other way
+    had it been possible.
+
+    But how startling the exhibition of evil by this new being as
+    compared with the scenes of the countless ages already past! Then
+    the right of the strongest was God’s law, and rapine and destruction
+    were the history of life. But into man had been “breathed the breath
+    of life,” and he had “become a living soul.” The law of right, the
+    Divine Spirit, was planted within him, and the laws of the beast
+    were in antagonism to that law. The natural development of his
+    inherited qualities necessarily brought him into collision with that
+    higher standard planted within him, and that war was commenced which
+    shall never cease “till He hath put all things under His feet.” The
+    first act of man’s disobedience constituted the Fall, and with it
+    would come the first _intellectual_ “knowledge of good and of
+    evil”—an apprehension up to that time derived exclusively from the
+    divinity within, or conscience.[50]
+
+Footnote 50:
+
+      In our present translation of Genesis, the Fall is ascribed to the
+      influence of Satan assuming the form of the serpent, and this
+      animal was cursed in consequence, and compelled to assume a prone
+      position. This rendering may well be revised, since serpents,
+      prone like others, existed in both America and Europe during the
+      Eocene epoch, five times as great a period before Adam as has
+      elapsed since his day. Clark states, with great probability, that
+      “serpent” should be translated monkey or ape—a conclusion, it will
+      be observed, exactly coinciding with our inductions on the basis
+      of evolution. The instigation to evil by an ape merely states
+      inheritance in another form. His curse, then, refers to the
+      retention of the horizontal position by all other quadrumana, as
+      we find it at the present day.
+
+    2. _Free Agency._ Heretofore development had been that of physical
+    types, but the Lord had rested on the seventh day, for man closed
+    the line of the physical creation. Now a new development was to
+    begin—the development of mind, of morality and of grace.
+
+    On the previous days of Creation all had progressed in accordance
+    with inevitable law apart from its objects. Now two lines of
+    development were at the disposal of this being, between which his
+    _free will_ was to choose. Did he choose the courses dictated by the
+    spirit of the brute, he was to be subject to the old law of the
+    brute creation—the right of the strongest and spiritual death. Did
+    he choose the guidance of the Divine Guest in his heart, he became
+    subject to the laws which are to guide—I. the human species to an
+    ultimate perfection, so far as consistent with this world; and II.
+    the individual man to a higher life, where a new existence awaits
+    him as a spiritual being, freed from the laws of terrestrial matter.
+
+    The charge brought against the theory of development, that it
+    implies a necessary progress of man to all perfection without his
+    coöperation—or _necessitarianism_, as it is called—is unfounded.
+
+    The free will of man remains the source alike of his progress and
+    his relapse. But the choice once made, the laws of spiritual
+    development are apparently as inevitable as those of matter. Thus
+    men whose religious capacities are increased by attention to the
+    Divine Monitor within are in the advance of progress—progress
+    coinciding with that which in material things is called the
+    _harmonic_. On the other hand, those whose motives are of the lower
+    origin fall under the working of the law of _conflict_.
+
+    The lesson derivable from the preceding considerations would seem to
+    be “necessitarian” as respects the whole human race, considered by
+    itself; and I believe it is to be truly so interpreted. That is, the
+    Creator of all things has set agencies at work which will slowly
+    develop a perfect humanity out of His lower creation, and nothing
+    can thwart the process or alter the result. “My word shall not
+    return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please,
+    and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” This is our
+    great encouragement, our noblest hope—second only to that which
+    looks to a blessed inheritance in another world. It is this thought
+    that should inspire the farmer, who as he toils wonders, “Why all
+    this labor? The Good Father could have made me like the lilies, who,
+    though they toil not, neither spin, are yet clothed in glory; and
+    why should I, a nobler being, be subject to the dust and the sweat
+    of labor?” This thought should enlighten every artisan of the
+    thousands that people the factories and guide their whirling
+    machinery in our modern cities. Every revolution of a wheel is
+    moving the car of progress, and the timed stroke of the crank and
+    the rhythmic throw of the shuttle are but the music the spheres have
+    sung since time began. A new significance then appears in the prayer
+    of David: “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and
+    establish Thou the work of our hands upon us: the work of our hands,
+    O Lord, establish Thou it.” But beware of the catastrophe, for “He
+    will sit as a refiner:” “the wheat shall be gathered into barns, but
+    the chaff shall be burned with unquenchable fire.” If this be true,
+    let us look for—
+
+    3. _The Extinction of Evil._ How is necessitarianism to be
+    reconciled with free will? It appears to me, thus: When a being
+    whose safety depends on the perfection of a system of laws abandons
+    the system by which he lives, he becomes subject to that lower grade
+    of laws which govern lower intelligences. Man, falling from the laws
+    of right, comes under the dominion of the laws of brute force; as
+    said our Saviour: “Salt is good, but if the salt have lost his
+    savor, it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast forth and
+    trodden under foot of men.”
+
+    Evil, being unsatisfying to the human heart, is in its nature ever
+    progressive, whether in the individual or the nation; and in
+    estimating the practical results to man of the actions prompted by
+    the lower portion of our nature, it is only necessary to carry out
+    to its full development each of those animal qualities which may in
+    certain states of society be restrained by the social system. In
+    human history those qualities have repeatedly had this development,
+    and the battle of progress is fought to decide whether they shall
+    overthrow the system that restrains them, or be overthrown by it.
+
+    Entire obedience to the lower instincts of our nature ensures
+    destruction to the weaker, and generally to the stronger also. A
+    most marked case of this kind is seen where the developed vices of
+    civilization are introduced among a savage people—as, for example,
+    the North American Indians. These seem in consequence to be
+    hastening to extinction.
+
+    But a system or a circuit of existence has been allotted to the
+    civil associations of the animal species man, independently of his
+    moral development. It may be briefly stated thus: Races begin as
+    poor offshoots or emigrants from a parent stock. The law of labor
+    develops their powers, and increases their wealth and numbers. These
+    will be diminished by their various vices; but on the whole, in
+    proportion as the intellectual and economical elements prevail,
+    wealth will increase; that is, they accumulate power. When this has
+    been accomplished, and before activity has slackened its speed, the
+    nation has reached the culminating point, and then it enters upon
+    the period of decline. The restraints imposed by economy and active
+    occupation being removed, the beastly traits find in accumulated
+    power only increased means of gratification, and industry and
+    prosperity sink together. Power is squandered, little is
+    accumulated, and the nation goes down to its extinction amid scenes
+    of internal strife and vice. Its cycle is soon fulfilled, and other
+    nations, fresh from scenes of labor, assault it, absorb its
+    fragments, and it dies. This has been the world’s history, and it
+    remains to be seen whether the virtues of the nations now existing
+    will be sufficient to save them from a like fate.
+
+    Thus the history of the animal man in nations is wonderfully like
+    that of the type or families of the animal and vegetable kingdoms
+    during geologic ages. They rise, they increase and reach a period of
+    multiplication and power. The force allotted to them becoming
+    exhausted, they diminish and sink and die.
+
+    II. _Of the Individual._ In discussing physical development, we are
+    as yet compelled to restrict ourselves to the evidence of its
+    existence and some laws observed in the operation of its causative
+    force. What that force is, or what are its primary laws, we know
+    not.
+
+    So in the progress of moral development we endeavor to prove its
+    existence and the mode of its operation, but why that mode should
+    exist, rather than some other mode, we cannot explain.
+
+    The moral progress of the species depends, of course, on the moral
+    progress of the individuals embraced in it. Religion is the sum of
+    those influences which determine the motives of men’s actions into
+    harmony with the Divine perfection and the Divine will. Obedience to
+    these influences constitutes the practice of religion, while the
+    statement of the growth and operation of these influences
+    constitutes the theory of religion, or doctrine.
+
+    The Divine Spirit planted in man shows him that which is in harmony
+    with the Divine Mind, and it remains for his free will to conform to
+    it or reject it. This harmony is man’s highest ideal of happiness,
+    and in seeking it, as well as in desiring to flee from dissonance or
+    pain, he but obeys the disposition common to all conscious beings.
+    If, however, he attempts to conform to it, he will find the law of
+    evil present, and frequently obtaining the mastery. If now he be in
+    any degree observing, he will find that the laws of morality and
+    right are the only ones by which human society exists in a condition
+    superior to that of the lower animals, and in which the capacities
+    of man for happiness can approach a state of satisfaction. He may be
+    then said to be “awakened” to the importance of religion. If he
+    carry on the struggle to attain to the high goal presented to his
+    spiritual vision, he will be deeply grieved and humbled at his
+    failures: then he is said to be “convicted.” Under these
+    circumstances the necessity of a deliverance becomes clear, and is
+    willingly accepted in the only way in which it has pleased the
+    Author of all to present it, which has been epitomized by Paul as
+    “the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit through
+    Jesus Christ.” Thus a life of advanced and ever-advancing moral
+    excellence becomes possible, and the man makes nearer approaches to
+    the “image of God.”
+
+    Thus is opened a new era in spiritual development, which we are led
+    to believe leads to an ultimate condition in which the nature
+    inherited from our origin is entirely overcome, and an existence of
+    moral perfection entered on. Thus in the book of Mark the simile
+    occurs: “First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in
+    the ear;” and Solomon says that the development of righteousness
+    “shines more and more unto the perfect day.”
+
+                              δ. Summary.
+
+    If it be true that general development in morality proceeds in spite
+    of the original predominance of evil in the world, through the
+    self-destructive nature of the latter, it is only necessary to
+    examine the reasons why the excellence of the good may have been
+    subject also to progress, and how the remainder of the race may have
+    been influenced thereby.
+
+    The development of morality is then probably to be understood in the
+    following sense: Since the Divine Spirit, as the prime force in
+    moral progress, cannot in itself be supposed to have been in any way
+    under the influence of natural laws, its capacities were no doubt as
+    eternal and unerring in the first man as in the last. But the facts
+    and probabilities discussed above point to development of _religious
+    sensibility_, or capacity to appreciate moral good, or to receive
+    impressions from the source of good.
+
+    The evidence of this is supposed to be seen in—_First_, improvement
+    in man’s views of his duty to his neighbor; and _Second_, the
+    substitution of spiritual for symbolic religions: in other words,
+    improvement in the capacity for receiving spiritual impressions.
+
+    What the primary cause of this supposed development of religious
+    sensibility may have been, is a question we reverently leave
+    untouched. That it is intimately connected in some way with, and in
+    part dependent on, the evolution of the intelligence, appears very
+    probable: for this evolution is seen—_First_, in a better
+    understanding of the consequences of action, and of good and of evil
+    in many things; and _Second_, in the production of means for the
+    spread of the special instrumentalities of good. The following may
+    be enumerated as such instrumentalities:
+
+    1. Furnishing literary means of record and distribution of the
+    truths of religion, morality and science.
+
+    2. Creating and increasing modes of transportation of teachers and
+    literary means of disseminating truth.
+
+    3. Facilitating the migration and the spread of nations holding the
+    highest position in the scale of morality.
+
+    4. The increase of wealth, which multiplies the extent of the
+    preceding means.
+
+    And now, let no man attempt to set bounds to this development. Let
+    no man say even that morality accomplished is all that is required
+    of mankind, since that is not necessarily the evidence of a
+    spiritual development. If a man possess the capacity for progress
+    beyond the condition in which he finds himself, in refusing to enter
+    upon it he declines to conform to the Divine law. And “from those to
+    whom little is given, little is required, but from those to whom
+    much is given, much shall be required.”
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          _SCIENTIFIC ADDRESSES._
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          TYNDALL’S ADDRESSES.
+
+
+                                   I.
+
+       _On the Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation._
+
+    The celebrated Fichte, in his lectures on the “Vocation of the
+    Scholar,” insisted on a culture for the scholar which should not be
+    one-sided, but all-sided. His intellectual nature was to expand
+    spherically, and not in a single direction. In one direction,
+    however, Fichte required that the scholar should apply himself
+    directly to nature, become a creator of knowledge, and thus repay,
+    by original labors of his own, the immense debt he owed to the
+    labors of others. It was these which enabled him to supplement the
+    knowledge derived from his own researches, so as to render his
+    culture rounded, and not one-sided.
+
+    Fichte’s idea is to some extent illustrated by the constitution and
+    the labors of the British Association. We have here a body of men
+    engaged in the pursuit of natural knowledge, but variously engaged.
+    While sympathizing with each of its departments, and supplementing
+    his culture by knowledge drawn from all of them, each student
+    amongst us selects one subject for the exercise of his own original
+    faculty—one line along which he may carry the light of his private
+    intelligence a little way into the darkness by which all knowledge
+    is surrounded. Thus, the geologist faces the rocks; the biologist
+    fronts the conditions and phenomena of life; the astronomer, stellar
+    masses and motions; the mathematician the properties of space and
+    number; the chemist pursues his atoms, while the physical
+    investigator has his own large field in optical, thermal,
+    electrical, acoustical, and other phenomena. The British
+    Association, then, faces nature on all sides, and pushes knowledge
+    centrifugally outwards, while, through circumstance or natural bent,
+    each of its working members takes up a certain line of research in
+    which he aspires to be an original producer, being content in all
+    other directions to accept instruction from his fellow-men. The sum
+    of our labors constitutes what Fichte might call the sphere of
+    natural knowledge. In the meetings of the Association it is found
+    necessary to resolve this sphere into its component parts, which
+    take concrete form under the respective letters of our sections.
+
+    This section (A) is called the Mathematical and Physical section.
+    Mathematics and Physics have been long accustomed to coalesce, and
+    hence this grouping. For while mathematics, as a product of the
+    human mind, is self-sustaining and nobly self-rewarding,—while the
+    pure mathematician may never trouble his mind with considerations
+    regarding the phenomena of the material universe, still the form of
+    reasoning which he employs, the power which the organization of that
+    reasoning confers, the applicability of his abstract conceptions to
+    actual phenomena, render his science one of the most potent
+    instruments in the solution of natural problems. Indeed, without
+    mathematics, expressed or implied, our knowledge of physical science
+    would be friable in the extreme.
+
+    Side by side with the mathematical method, we have the method of
+    experiment. Here, from a starting-point furnished by his own
+    researches or those of others, the investigator proceeds by
+    combining intuition and verification. He ponders the knowledge he
+    possesses and tries to push it further, he guesses and checks his
+    guess, he conjectures and confirms or explodes his conjecture. These
+    guesses and conjectures are by no means leaps in the dark; for
+    knowledge once gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate
+    boundaries. There is no discovery so limited as not to illuminate
+    something beyond itself. The force of intellectual penetration into
+    this penumbral region which surrounds actual knowledge is not
+    dependent upon method, but is proportional to the genius of the
+    investigator. There is, however, no genius so gifted as not to need
+    control and verification. The profoundest minds know best that
+    nature’s ways are not at all times their ways, and that the
+    brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they
+    have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.
+    The vocation of the true experimentalist is the incessant correction
+    and realization of his insight; his experiments finally constituting
+    a body, of which his purified intuitions are, as it were, the soul.
+
+    Partly through mathematical, and partly through experimental
+    research, physical science has of late years assumed a momentous
+    position in the world. Both in a material and in an intellectual
+    point of view it has produced, and it is destined to produce,
+    immense changes, vast social ameliorations, and vast alterations in
+    the popular conception of the origin, rule, and governance of
+    things. Miracles are wrought by science in the physical world, while
+    philosophy is forsaking its ancient metaphysical channels, and
+    pursuing those opened or indicated by scientific research. This must
+    become more and more the case as philosophic writers become more
+    deeply imbued with the methods of science, better acquainted with
+    the facts which scientific men have won, and with the great theories
+    which they have elaborated.
+
+    If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour and
+    minute-hands, and possibly also a second-hand, moving over the
+    graduated dial. Why do these hands move, and why are their relative
+    motions such as they are observed to be? These questions cannot be
+    answered without opening the watch, mastering its various parts, and
+    ascertaining their relationship to each other. When this is done, we
+    find that the observed motion of the hands follows of necessity from
+    the inner mechanism of the watch when acted upon by the force
+    invested in the spring.
+
+    This motion of the hands may be called a phenomenon of art, but the
+    case is similar with the phenomena of Nature. These also have their
+    inner mechanism, and their store of force to set that mechanism
+    going. The ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this
+    mechanism, to discern this store, and to show that from the combined
+    action of both, the phenomena of which they constitute the basis
+    must of necessity flow.
+
+    I thought that an attempt to give you even a brief and sketchy
+    illustration of the manner in which scientific thinkers regard this
+    problem would not be uninteresting to you on the present occasion;
+    more especially as it will give me occasion to say a word or two on
+    the tendencies and limits of modern science, to point out the region
+    which men of science claim as their own, and where it is mere waste
+    of time to oppose their advance, and also to define, if possible,
+    the bourne between this and that other region to which the
+    questionings and yearnings of the scientific intellect are directed
+    in vain.
+
+    But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the American Emerson,
+    I think, who said that it is hardly possible to state any truth
+    strongly without apparent injury to some other truth. Under the
+    circumstances, the proper course appears to be to state both truths
+    strongly, and allow each its fair share, in the formation of the
+    resultant conviction. For truth is often of a dual character, taking
+    the form of a magnet with two poles; and many of the differences
+    which agitate the thinking part of mankind are to be traced to the
+    exclusiveness with which different parties affirm one half of the
+    duality in forgetfulness of the other half. But this waiting for the
+    statement of the two sides of a question implies patience. It
+    implies a resolution to suppress indignation if the statement of the
+    one half should clash with our convictions, and not to suffer
+    ourselves to be unduly elated if the half-statement should chime in
+    with our views. It implies a determination to wait calmly for the
+    statement of the whole before we pronounce judgment either in the
+    form of acquiescence or dissent.
+
+    This premised, let us enter upon our task. There have been writers
+    who affirmed that the pyramids of Egypt were the productions of
+    nature; and in his early youth Alexander Von Humboldt wrote an essay
+    with the express object of refuting this notion. We now regard the
+    pyramids as the work of men’s hands, aided probably by machinery of
+    which no record remains. We picture to ourselves the swarming
+    workers toiling at those vast erections, lifting the inert stones,
+    and, guided by the volition, the skill, and possibly at times by the
+    whip of the architect, placing the stones in their proper positions.
+    The blocks in this case were moved by a power external to
+    themselves, and the final form of the pyramid expressed the thought
+    of its human builder.
+
+    Let us pass from this illustration of building power to another of a
+    different kind. When a solution of common salt is slowly evaporated,
+    the water which holds the salt in solution disappears, but the salt
+    itself remains behind. At a certain stage of concentration, the salt
+    can no longer retain the liquid form; its particles, or molecules,
+    as they are called, begin to deposit themselves as minute solids, so
+    minute, indeed, as to defy all microscopic power. As evaporation
+    continues solidification goes on, and we finally obtain, through the
+    clustering together of innumerable molecules, a finite mass of salt
+    of a definite form. What is this form? It sometimes seems a mimicry
+    of the architecture of Egypt. We have little pyramids built by the
+    salt, terrace above terrace from base to apex, forming thus a series
+    of steps resembling those up which the Egyptian traveler is dragged
+    by his guides. The human mind is as little disposed to look at these
+    pyramidal salt-crystals without further question as to look at the
+    pyramids of Egypt without inquiring whence they came. How, then, are
+    those salt pyramids built up?
+
+    Guided by analogy, you may suppose that, swarming among the
+    constituent molecules of the salt, there is an invisible population,
+    guided and coerced by some invisible master, and placing the atomic
+    blocks in their positions. This, however, is not the scientific
+    idea, nor do I think your good sense will accept it as a likely one.
+    The scientific idea is that the molecules act upon each other
+    without the intervention of slave labor; that they attract each
+    other and repel each other at certain definite points, and in
+    certain definite directions; and that the pyramidal form is the
+    result of this play of attraction and repulsion. While, then, the
+    blocks of Egypt were laid down by a power external to themselves,
+    these molecular blocks of salt are self-posited, being fixed in
+    their places by the forces with which they act upon each other.
+
+    I take common salt as an illustration, because it is so familiar to
+    us all; but almost any other substance would answer my purpose
+    equally well. In fact, throughout inorganic nature, we have this
+    formative power, as Fichte would call it—this structural energy
+    ready to come into play, and build the ultimate particles of matter
+    into definite shapes. It is present everywhere. The ice of our
+    winters and of our polar regions is its hand-work, and so equally
+    are the quartz, feldspar, and mica of our rocks. Our chalk-beds are
+    for the most part composed of minute shells, which are also the
+    product of structural energy; but behind the shell, as a whole, lies
+    the result of another and more subtle formative act. These shells
+    are built up of little crystals of calc-spar, and to form these the
+    structural force had to deal with the intangible molecules of
+    carbonate of lime. This tendency on the part of matter to organize
+    itself, to grow into shape, to assume definite forms in obedience to
+    the definite action of force, is, as I have said, all-pervading. It
+    is in the ground on which you tread, in the water you drink, in the
+    air you breathe. Incipient life, in fact, manifests itself
+    throughout the whole of what we call inorganic nature.
+
+    The forms of minerals resulting from this play of forces are
+    various, and exhibit different degrees of complexity. Men of science
+    avail themselves of all possible means of exploring this molecular
+    architecture. For this purpose they employ in turn as agents of
+    exploration, light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and sound.
+    Polarized light is especially useful and powerful here. A beam of
+    such light, when sent in among the molecules of a crystal, is acted
+    on by them, and from this action we infer with more or less of
+    clearness the manner in which the molecules are arranged. The
+    difference, for example, between the inner structure of a plate of
+    rock-salt and a plate of crystalized sugar or sugar-candy is thus
+    strikingly revealed. These differences may be made to display
+    themselves in phenomena of color of great splendor, the play of
+    molecular force being so regulated as to remove certain of the
+    colored constituents of white light, and to leave others with
+    increased intensity behind.
+
+    And now let us pass from what we are accustomed to regard as a dead
+    mineral to a living grain of corn. When it is examined by polarized
+    light, chromatic phenomena similar to those noticed in crystals are
+    observed. And why? Because the architecture of the grain resembles
+    in some degree the architecture of the crystal. In the corn the
+    molecules are also set in definite positions, from which they act
+    upon the light. But what has built together the molecules of the
+    corn? I have already said, regarding crystalline architecture, that
+    you may, if you please, consider the atoms and molecules to be
+    placed in position by a power external to themselves. The same
+    hypothesis is open to you now. But, if in the case of crystals you
+    have rejected this notion of an external architect, I think you are
+    bound to reject it now, and to conclude that the molecules of the
+    corn are self-posited by the forces with which they act upon each
+    other. It would be poor philosophy to invoke an external agent in
+    the one case and to reject it in the other.
+
+    Instead of cutting our grain into thin slices and subjecting it to
+    the action of polarized light, let us place it in the earth and
+    subject it to a certain degree of warmth. In other words, let the
+    molecules, both of the corn and of the surrounding earth, be kept in
+    a state of agitation; for warmth, as most of you know, is, in the
+    eye of science, tremulous molecular motion. Under these
+    circumstances, the grain and the substances which surround it
+    interact, and a molecular architecture is the result of this
+    interaction. A bud is formed; this bud reaches the surface, where it
+    is exposed to the sun’s rays, which are also to be regarded as a
+    kind of vibratory motion. And as the common motion of heat with
+    which the grain and the substances surrounding it were first
+    endowed, enable the grain and these substances to coalesce, so the
+    specific motion of the sun’s rays now enables the green bud to feed
+    upon the carbonic acid and the aqueous vapor of the air,
+    appropriating those constituents of both for which the blade has an
+    elective attraction, and permitting the other constituent to resume
+    its place in the air. Thus forces are active at the root, forces are
+    active in the blade, the matter of the earth and the matter of the
+    atmosphere are drawn towards the plant, and the plant augments in
+    size. We have in succession, the bud, the stalk, the ear, the full
+    corn in the ear. For the forces here at play act in a cycle, which
+    is completed by the production of grains similar to that with which
+    the process began.
+
+    Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily eludes the
+    power of mind as we know it. An intellect the same kind as our own,
+    would, if only sufficiently expanded, be able to follow the whole
+    process from beginning to end. No entirely new intellectual faculty
+    would be needed for this purpose. The duly expanded mind would see
+    in the process and its consummation an instance of the play of
+    molecular force. It would see every molecule placed in its position
+    by the specific attractions and repulsions exerted between it and
+    other molecules. Nay, given the grain and its environment, an
+    intellect the same in kind as our own, but sufficiently expanded,
+    might trace out _à priori_ every step of the process, and by the
+    application of mechanical principles would be able to demonstrate
+    that the cycle of actions must end, as it is seen to end, in the
+    reproduction of forms like that with which the operation began. A
+    similar necessity rules here to that which rules the planets in
+    their circuits round the sun.
+
+    You will notice that I am stating my truth strongly, as at the
+    beginning we agreed it should be stated. But I must go still
+    further, and affirm that in the eye of science the animal body is
+    just as much the product of molecular force as the stalk and ear of
+    corn, or as the crystal of salt or sugar. Many of its parts are
+    obviously mechanical. Take the human heart, for example, with its
+    exquisite system of valves, or take the eye or the hand. Animal
+    heat, moreover, is the same in kind as the heat of a fire, being
+    produced by the same chemical process. Animal motion, too, is as
+    directly derived from the food of the animal, as the motion of
+    Trevethyck’s walking-engine from the fuel in its furnace. As regards
+    matter, the animal body creates nothing; as regards force, it
+    creates nothing. Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to
+    his stature? All that has been said regarding the plant may be
+    re-stated with regard to the animal. Every particle that enters into
+    the composition of the muscle, a nerve, or a bone, has been placed
+    in its position by molecular force. And unless the existence of law
+    in these matters be denied, and the element of caprice be
+    introduced, we must conclude that, given the relation of any
+    molecule of the body to its environment, its position in the body
+    might be predicted. Our difficulty is not with the quality of the
+    problem, but with its complexity; and this difficulty might be met
+    by the simple expansion of the faculties which man now possesses.
+    Given this expansion, and given the necessary molecular data, and
+    the chick might be deduced as rigorously and as logically from the
+    egg as the existence of Neptune was deduced from the disturbances of
+    Uranus, or as conical refraction was deduced from the undulatory
+    theory of light.
+
+    You see I am not mincing matters, but avowing nakedly what many
+    scientific thinkers more or less distinctly believe. The formation
+    of a crystal, a plant, or an animal, is in their eyes a purely
+    mechanical problem, which differs from the problems of ordinary
+    mechanics in the smallness of the masses and the complexity of the
+    processes involved. Here you have one half of our dual truth; let us
+    now glance at the other half. Associated with this wonderful
+    mechanism of the animal body we have phenomena no less certain than
+    those of physics, but between which and the mechanism we discern no
+    necessary connection. A man, for example, can say I feel, I think, I
+    love; but how does consciousness infuse itself into the problem? The
+    human brain is said to be the organ of thought and feeling; when we
+    are hurt the brain feels it, when we ponder it is the brain that
+    thinks, when our passions or affections are excited it is through
+    the instrumentality of the brain. Let us endeavor to be a little
+    more precise here. I hardly imagine that any profound scientific
+    thinker who has reflected upon the subject exists, who would not
+    admit the extreme probability of the hypothesis, that for every fact
+    of consciousness, whether in the domain of sense, of thought, or of
+    emotion, a certain definite molecular condition is set up in the
+    brain; that this relation of physics to consciousness is invariable,
+    so that, given the state of the brain, the corresponding thought or
+    feeling might be inferred; or, given the thought or feeling, the
+    corresponding state of the brain might be inferred. But how
+    inferred? It is at bottom not a case of logical inference at all,
+    but of empirical association. You may reply that many of the
+    inferences of science are of this character; the inference, for
+    example, that an electric current of a given direction will deflect
+    a magnetic needle in a definite way; but the cases differ in this,
+    that the passage from the current to the needle, if not
+    demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the
+    final mechanical solution of the problem; but the passage from the
+    physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is
+    unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite
+    molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not
+    possess the intellectual organ, nor, apparently, any rudiment of the
+    organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from
+    the one phenomenon to the other. They appear together, but we do not
+    know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and
+    illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of
+    the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their
+    groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were
+    we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought
+    and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the
+    problem. “How are these physical processes connected with the facts
+    of consciousness?” The chasm between the two classes of phenomena
+    would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the consciousness
+    of love, for example, be associated with a right-handed spiral
+    motion of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of hate
+    with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know when we love
+    that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate that the
+    motion is in the other; but the “WHY?” would still remain
+    unanswered.
+
+    In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, and that
+    thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of
+    the brain, I think the position of the “Materialist” is stated as
+    far as that position is a tenable one. I think the materialist will
+    be able finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but I
+    do not think, as the human mind is at present constituted, that he
+    can pass beyond it. I do not think he is entitled to say that his
+    molecular groupings and his molecular motions explain everything. In
+    reality they explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the
+    association of two classes of phenomena of whose real bond of union
+    he is in absolute ignorance. The problem of the connection of the
+    body and soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the
+    pre-scientific ages. Phosphorus is known to enter into the
+    composition of the human brain, and a courageous writer has
+    exclaimed, in his trenchant German, “Ohne phosphor kein gedanke.”
+    That may or may not be the case; but even if we knew it to be the
+    case, the knowledge would not lighten our darkness. On both sides of
+    the zone here assigned to the materialist he is equally helpless. If
+    you ask him whence is this “matter” of which we have been
+    discoursing, who or what divided it into molecules, who or what
+    impressed upon them this necessity of running into organic forms, he
+    has no answer. Science also is mute in reply to these questions. But
+    if the materialist is confounded, and science rendered dumb, who
+    else is entitled to answer? To whom has the secret been revealed?
+    Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance, one and all.
+    Perhaps the mystery may resolve itself into knowledge at some future
+    day. The process of things upon this earth has been one of
+    amelioration. It is a long way from the Iguanodon and his
+    contemporaries to the president and members of the British
+    Association. And whether we regard the improvement from the
+    scientific or from the theological point of view as the result of
+    progressive development, or as the result of successive exhibitions
+    of creative energy, neither view entitles us to assume that man’s
+    present faculties end the series—that the process of amelioration
+    stops at him. A time may therefore come when this ultra-scientific
+    region by which we are now enfolded may offer itself to terrestrial,
+    if not to human investigation. Two-thirds of the rays emitted by the
+    sun fail to arouse in the eye the sense of vision. The rays exist,
+    but the visual organ requisite for their translation into light does
+    not exist. And so from this region of darkness and mystery which
+    surrounds us, rays may now be darting which require but the
+    development of the proper intellectual organs to translate them into
+    knowledge as far surpassing ours as ours does that of the wallowing
+    reptiles which once held possession of this planet. Meanwhile the
+    mystery is not without its uses. It certainly may be made a power in
+    the human soul; but it is a power which has feeling, not knowledge,
+    for its base. It may be, and will be, and we hope is turned to
+    account, both in steadying and strengthening the intellect, and in
+    rescuing man from that littleness to which, in the struggle for
+    existence or for precedence in the world, he is continually prone.
+
+                                  II.
+
+                           On Haze and Dust.
+
+    Solar light in passing through a dark room reveals its track by
+    illuminating the dust floating in the air. “The sun,” says Daniel
+    Culverwell, “discovers atomes, though they be invisible by
+    candle-light, and makes them dance naked in his beams.”
+
+    In my researches on the decomposition of vapors by light, I was
+    compelled to remove these “atomes” and this dust. It was essential
+    that the space containing the vapors should embrace no visible
+    thing; that no substance capable of scattering the light in the
+    slightest sensible degree should, at the outset of an experiment, be
+    found in the “experimental tube” traversed by the luminous beam.
+
+    For a long time I was troubled by the appearance there of floating
+    dust, which, though invisible in diffuse daylight, was at once
+    revealed by a powerfully condensed beam. Two tubes were placed in
+    succession in the path of the dust: the one containing fragments of
+    glass wetted with concentrated sulphuric acid; the other, fragments
+    of marble wetted with a strong solution of caustic potash. To my
+    astonishment it passed through both. The air of the Royal
+    Institution, sent through these tubes at a rate sufficiently slow to
+    dry it and to remove its carbonic acid, carried into the
+    experimental tube a considerable amount of mechanically-suspended
+    matter, which was illuminated when the beam passed through the tube.
+    The effect was substantially the same when the air was permitted to
+    bubble through the liquid acid and through the solution of potash.
+
+    Thus, on the 5th of October, 1868, successive charges of air were
+    admitted through the potash and sulphuric acid into the exhausted
+    experimental tube. Prior to the admission of the air the tube was
+    _optically empty_; it contained nothing competent to scatter the
+    light. After the air had entered the tube, the conical track of the
+    electric beam was in all cases clearly revealed. This, indeed, was a
+    daily observation at the time to which I now refer.
+
+    I tried to intercept this floating matter in various ways; and on
+    the day just mentioned, prior to sending the air through the drying
+    apparatus, I carefully permitted it to pass over the tip of a
+    spirit-lamp flame. The floating matter no longer appeared, having
+    been burnt up by the flame. It was, therefore, _organic matter_.
+    When the air was sent too rapidly through the flame, a fine blue
+    cloud was found in the experimental tube. This was the _smoke_ of
+    the organic particles. I was by no means prepared for this result;
+    for I had thought, with the rest of the world, that the dust of our
+    air was, in great part, inorganic and non-combustible.
+
+    Mr. Valentin had the kindness to procure for me a small gas-furnace,
+    containing a platinum tube, which could be heated to vivid redness.
+    The tube also contained a roll of platinum gauze, which, while it
+    permitted the air to pass through it, insured the practical contact
+    of the dust with the incandescent metal. The air of the laboratory
+    was permitted to enter the experimental tube, sometimes through the
+    cold, and sometimes through the heated tube of platinum. The
+    rapidity of admission was also varied. In the first column of the
+    following table the quantity of air operated on is expressed by the
+    number of inches which the mercury gauge of the air-pump sank when
+    the air entered. In the second column the condition of the platinum
+    tube is mentioned, and in the third the state of the air which
+    entered the experimental tube.
+
+                        State of        State of
+             Quantity   Platinum        Experimental
+             of Air.    Tube.           Tube.
+
+             15 inches  Cold            Full of particles.
+
+             15 inches  Red-hot         Optically empty.
+
+             15 inches  Cold            Full of particles.
+
+             15 inches  Red-hot         Optically empty.
+
+             15 inches  Cold            Full of particles.
+
+             15 inches  Red-hot         Optically empty.
+
+
+    The phrase “optically empty” shows that when the conditions of
+    perfect combustion were present, the floating matter totally
+    disappeared. It was wholly burnt up, leaving not a trace of residue.
+    From spectrum analysis, however, we know that soda floats in the
+    air; these organic dust particles are, I believe, the _rafts_ that
+    support it, and when they are removed it sinks and vanishes.
+
+    When the passage of the air was so rapid as to render imperfect the
+    combustion of the floating matter, instead of optical emptiness a
+    fine blue cloud made its appearance in the experimental tube. The
+    following series of results illustrate this point:
+
+
+        Quantity.         Platinum Tube.    Experimental Tube.
+        15 inches, slow   Cold              Full of particles.
+        15 inches, slow   Red-hot           Optically empty.
+        15 inches, quick  Red-hot           A blue cloud.
+        15 inches, quick  Intensely hot     A fine blue cloud.
+
+
+    The optical character of these clouds was totally different from
+    that of the dust which produced them. At right angles to the
+    illuminating beam they discharged perfectly polarized light The
+    cloud could be utterly quenched by a transparent Nicol’s prism, and
+    the tube containing it reduced to optical emptiness.
+
+    The particles floating in the air of London being thus proved to be
+    organic, I sought to burn them up at the focus of a concave
+    reflector. One of the powerfully convergent mirrors employed in my
+    experiments on combustion by dark rays was here made use of, but I
+    failed in the attempt. Doubtless the floating particles are in part
+    transparent to radiant heat, and are so far incombustible by such
+    heat. Their rapid motion through the focus also aids their escape.
+    They do not linger there sufficiently long to be consumed. A flame
+    it was evident would burn them up, but I thought the presence of the
+    flame would mask its own action among the particles.
+
+    In a cylindrical beam, which powerfully illuminated the dust of the
+    laboratory, was placed an ignited spirit-lamp. Mingling with the
+    flame, and round its rim, were seen wreaths of darkness resembling
+    an intensely black smoke. On lowering the flame below the beam the
+    same dark masses stormed upwards. They were at times blacker than
+    the blackest smoke that I have ever seen issuing from the funnel of
+    a steamer, and their resemblance to smoke was so perfect as to lead
+    the most practiced observer to conclude that the apparently pure
+    flame of the alcohol lamp required but a beam of sufficient
+    intensity to reveal its clouds of liberated carbon.
+
+    But is the blackness smoke? The question presented itself in a
+    moment. A red-hot poker was placed underneath the beam, and from it
+    the black wreaths also ascended. A large hydrogen flame was next
+    employed, and it produced those whirling masses of darkness far more
+    copiously than either the spirit-flame or poker. Smoke was,
+    therefore, out of the question.
+
+    What, then, was the blackness? It was simply that of stellar space;
+    that is to say, blackness resulting from the absence from the track
+    of the beam of all matter competent to scatter its light. When the
+    flame was placed below the beam the floating matter was destroyed
+    _in situ_; and the air, freed from this matter, rose into the beam,
+    jostled aside the illuminated particles and substituted for their
+    light the darkness due to its own perfect transparency. Nothing
+    could more forcibly illustrate the invisibility of the agent which
+    renders all things visible. The beam crossed, unseen, the black
+    chasm formed by the transparent air, while at both sides of the gap
+    the thick-strewn particles shone out like a luminous solid under the
+    powerful illumination.
+
+    But here a difficulty meets us. It is not necessary to burn the
+    particles to produce a stream of darkness. Without actual
+    combustion, currents may be generated which shall exclude the
+    floating matter, and therefore appear dark amid the surrounding
+    brightness. I noticed this effect first on placing a red-hot copper
+    ball below the beam, and permitting it to remain there until its
+    temperature had fallen below that of boiling water. The dark
+    currents, though much enfeebled, were still produced. They may also
+    be produced by a flask filled with hot water.
+
+    To study this effect a platinum wire was stretched across the beam,
+    the two ends of the wire being connected with the two poles of a
+    voltaic battery. To regulate the strength of the current a rheostat
+    was placed in the circuit. Beginning with a feeble current the
+    temperature of the wire was gradually augmented, but before it
+    reached the heat of ignition, a flat stream of air rose from it,
+    which when looked at edgeways appeared darker and sharper than one
+    of the blackest lines of Fraunhofer in the solar spectrum. Right and
+    left of this dark vertical band the floating matter rose upwards,
+    bounding definitely the non-luminous stream of air. What is the
+    explanation? Simply this. The hot wire rarefied the air in contact
+    with it, but it did not equally lighten the floating matter. The
+    convection current of pure air therefore passed upwards _among the
+    particles_, dragging them after it right and left, but forming
+    between them an impassable black partition. In this way we render an
+    account of the dark currents produced by bodies at a temperature
+    below that of combustion.
+
+    Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, so prepared as to exclude
+    all floating particles, produce the darkness when poured or blown
+    into the beam. Coal-gas does the same. An ordinary glass shade
+    placed in the air with its mouth downwards permits the track of the
+    beam to be seen crossing it. Let coal-gas or hydrogen enter the
+    shade by a tube reaching to its top, the gas gradually fills the
+    shade from the top downwards. As soon as it occupies the space
+    crossed by the beam, the luminous track is instantly abolished.
+    Lifting the shade so as to bring the common boundary of gas and air
+    above the beam, the track flashes forth. After the shade is full, if
+    it be inverted, the gas passes upwards like a black smoke among the
+    illuminated particles.
+
+    The air of our London rooms is loaded with this organic dust, nor is
+    the country air free from its pollution. However ordinary daylight
+    may permit it to disguise itself, a sufficiently powerful beam
+    causes the air in which the dust is suspended to appear as a
+    semi-solid rather than as a gas. Nobody could, in the first
+    instance, without repugnance place the mouth at the illuminated
+    focus of the electric beam and inhale the dirt revealed there. Nor
+    is the disgust abolished by the reflection that, although we do not
+    see the nastiness, we are churning it in our lungs every hour and
+    minute of our lives. There is no respite to this contact with dirt;
+    and the wonder is, not that we should from time to time suffer from
+    its presence, but that so small a portion of it would appear to be
+    deadly to man.
+
+    And what is this portion? It was some time ago the current belief
+    that epidemic diseases generally were propagated by a kind of
+    malaria, which consisted of organic matter in a state of
+    _motor-decay_; that when such matter was taken into the body through
+    the lungs or skin, it had the power of spreading there the
+    destroying process which had attacked itself. Such a spreading power
+    was visibly exerted in the case of yeast. A little leaven was seen
+    to leaven the whole lump, a mere speck of matter in this supposed
+    state of decomposition being apparently competent to propagate
+    indefinitely its own decay. Why should not a bit of rotten malaria
+    work in a similar manner within the human frame? In 1836 a very
+    wonderful reply was given to this question. In that year Cagniard de
+    la Tour discovered the _yeast plant_, a living organism, which, when
+    placed in a proper medium, feeds, grows, and reproduces itself, and
+    in this way carries on the process which we name fermentation.
+    Fermentation was thus proved to be a product of life instead of a
+    process of decay.
+
+    Schwann, of Berlin, discovered the yeast plant independently, and in
+    February, 1837, he also announced the important result, that when a
+    decoction of meat is effectually screened from ordinary air, and
+    supplied solely with air which has been raised to a high
+    temperature, putrefaction never sets in. Putrefaction, therefore, he
+    affirmed to be caused by something derived from the air, which
+    something could be destroyed by a sufficiently high temperature. The
+    experiments of Schwann were repeated and confirmed by Helmholtz and
+    Ure. But as regards fermentation, the minds of chemists, influenced
+    probably by the great authority of Gay-Lussac, who ascribed
+    putrefaction to the action of oxygen, fell back upon the old notion
+    of matter in a state of decay. It was not the living yeast plant,
+    but the dead or dying parts of it, which, assailed by oxygen,
+    produced the fermentation. This notion was finally exploded by
+    Pasteur. He proved that the so-called “ferments” are not such; that
+    the true ferments are organized beings which find in the reputed
+    ferments their necessary food.
+
+    Side by side with these researches and discoveries, and fortified by
+    them and others, has run the _germ theory_ of epidemic disease. The
+    notion was expressed by Kircher, and favored by Linnæus, that
+    epidemic diseases are due to germs which float in the atmosphere,
+    enter the body, and produce disturbance by the development within
+    the body of parasitic life. While it was still struggling against
+    great odds, this theory found an expounder and a defender in the
+    President of this Institution. At a time when most of his medical
+    brethren considered it a wild dream, Sir Henry Holland contended
+    that some form of the germ theory was probably true. The strength of
+    this theory consists in the perfect parallelism of the phenomena of
+    contagious disease with those of life. As a planted acorn gives
+    birth to an oak competent to produce a whole crop of acorns, each
+    gifted with the power of reproducing its parent tree, and as thus
+    from a single seedling a whole forest may spring, so these epidemic
+    diseases literally plant their seeds, grow, and shake abroad new
+    germs, which, meeting in the human body their proper food and
+    temperature, finally take possession of whole populations. Thus
+    Asiatic cholera, beginning in a small way in the Delta of the
+    Ganges, contrived in seventeen years to spread itself over nearly
+    the whole habitable world. The development from an infinitesimal
+    speck of the virus of small-pox of a crop of pustules, each charged
+    with the original poison, is another illustration. The reappearance
+    of the scourge, as in the case of the _Dreadnought_ at Greenwich,
+    reported on so ably by Dr. Budd and Mr. Busk, receives a
+    satisfactory explanation from the theory which ascribes it to the
+    lingering of germs about the infected place.
+
+    Surgeons have long known the danger of permitting air to enter an
+    open abscess. To prevent its entrance they employ a tube called a
+    cannula, to which is attached a sharp steel point called a trocar.
+    They puncture with the steel point, and by gentle pressure they
+    force the pus through the cannula. It is necessary to be very
+    careful in cleansing the instrument; and it is difficult to see how
+    it can be cleansed by ordinary methods in air loaded with organic
+    impurities, as we have proved our air to be. The instrument ought,
+    in fact, to be made as hot as its temper will bear. But this is not
+    done, and hence, notwithstanding all the surgeon’s care,
+    inflammation often sets in after the first operation, rendering
+    necessary a second and a third. Rapid putrefaction is found to
+    accompany this new inflammation. The pus, moreover, which was sweet
+    at first, and showed no trace of animal life, is now fetid, and
+    swarming with active little organisms called vibrios. Prof. Lister,
+    from whose recent lecture this fact is derived, contends, with every
+    show of reason, that this rapid putrefaction and this astounding
+    development of animal life are due to the entry of germs into the
+    abscess during the first operation, and their subsequent nurture and
+    development under favorable conditions of food and temperature. The
+    celebrated physiologist and physicist, Helmholtz, is attacked
+    annually by hay-fever. From the 20th of May to the end of June he
+    suffers from a catarrh of the upper air-passages; and he has found
+    during this period, and at no other, that his nasal secretions are
+    peopled by these vibrios. They appear to nestle by preference in the
+    cavities and recesses of the nose, for a strong sneeze is necessary
+    to dislodge them.
+
+    These statements sound uncomfortable; but by disclosing our enemy
+    they enable us to fight him. When he clearly eyes his quarry the
+    eagle’s strength is doubled, and his swoop is rendered sure. If the
+    germ theory be proved true, it will give a definiteness to our
+    efforts to stamp out disease which they could not previously
+    possess. And it is only by definite effort under its guidance that
+    its truth or falsehood can be established. It is difficult for an
+    outsider like myself to read without sympathetic emotion such papers
+    as those of Dr. Budd, of Bristol, on cholera, scarlet-fever, and
+    small-pox. He is a man of strong imagination, and may occasionally
+    take a flight beyond his facts; but without this dynamic heat of
+    heart, the stolid inertia of the free-born Briton cannot be
+    overcome. And as long as the heat is employed to warm up the truth
+    without singeing it overmuch; as long as this enthusiasm can
+    overmatch its mistakes by unequivocal examples of success, so long
+    am I disposed to give it a fair field to work in, and to wish it God
+    speed.
+
+    But let us return to our dust. It is needless to remark that it
+    cannot be blown away by an ordinary bellows; or, more correctly, the
+    place of the particles blown away is in this case supplied by others
+    ejected from the bellows, so that the track of the beam remains
+    unimpaired. But if the nozzle of a good bellows be filled with
+    cotton wool not too tightly packed, the air urged through the wool
+    is filtered of its floating matter, and it then forms a clean band
+    of darkness in the illuminated dust. This was the filter used by
+    Schroëder in his experiments on spontaneous generation, and turned
+    subsequently to account in the excellent researches of Pasteur.
+    Since 1868 I have constantly employed it myself.
+
+    But by far the most interesting and important illustration of this
+    filtering process is furnished by the human breath. I fill my lungs
+    with ordinary air and breathe through a glass tube across the
+    electric beam. The condensation of the aqueous vapor of the breath
+    is shown by the formation of a luminous white cloud of delicate
+    texture. It is necessary to abolish this cloud, and this may be done
+    by drying the breath previous to its entering into the beam; or
+    still more simply, by warming the glass tube. When this is done the
+    luminous track of the beam is for a time uninterrupted. The breath
+    impresses upon the floating matter a transverse motion, but the dust
+    from the lungs makes good the particles displaced. But after some
+    time an obscure disc appears upon the beam, the darkness of which
+    increases, until finally, towards the end of the expiration, the
+    beam is, as it were, pierced by an intensely black hole, in which no
+    particles whatever can be discerned. The air, in fact, has so lodged
+    its dirt within the lungs as to render the last portions of the
+    expired breath absolutely free from suspended matter. This
+    experiment may be repeated any number of times with the same result.
+    It renders the distribution of the dirt within the lungs as manifest
+    as if the chest were transparent.
+
+    I now empty my lungs as perfectly as possible, and placing a handful
+    of cotton wool against my mouth and nostrils, inhale through it.
+    There is no difficulty in thus filling the lungs with air. On
+    expiring this air through the glass tube, its freedom from floating
+    matter is at once manifest. From the very beginning of the act of
+    expiration the beam is pierced by a black aperture. The first puff
+    from the lungs abolishes the illuminated dust and puts a patch of
+    darkness in its place, and the darkness continues throughout the
+    entire course of the expiration. When the tube is placed below the
+    beam and moved to and fro, the same smoke-like appearance as that
+    obtained with a flame is observed. In short, the cotton wool, when
+    used in sufficient quantity, completely intercepts the floating
+    matter on its way to the lungs.
+
+    And here we have revealed to us the true philosophy of a practice
+    followed by medical men, more from instinct than from actual
+    knowledge. In a contagious atmosphere the physician places a
+    handkerchief to his mouth and inhales through it. In doing so he
+    unconsciously holds back the dirt and germs of the air. If the
+    poison were a gas it would not be thus intercepted. On showing this
+    experiment with the cotton wool to Dr. Bence Jones, he immediately
+    repeated it with a silk handkerchief. The result was substantially
+    the same, though, as might be expected, the wool is by far the
+    surest filter. The application of these experiments is obvious. If a
+    physician wishes to hold back from the lungs of his patient, or from
+    his own, the germs by which contagious disease is said to be
+    propagated, he will employ a cotton wool respirator. After the
+    revelations of this evening, such respirators must, I think, come
+    into general use as a defence against contagion. In the crowded
+    dwellings of the London poor, where the isolation of the sick is
+    difficult, if not impossible, the noxious air around the patient
+    may, by this simple means, be restored to practical purity. Thus
+    filtered, attendants may breathe the air unharmed. In all
+    probability the protection of the lungs will be protection of the
+    entire system. For it is exceedingly probable that the germs which
+    lodge in the air-passages, and which, at their leisure, can work
+    their way across the mucous membrane, are those which sow in the
+    body epidemic disease. If this be so, then disease can certainly be
+    warded off by filters of cotton wool. I should be most willing to
+    test their efficacy in my own person. And time will decide whether
+    in lung diseases also the woolen respirator cannot abate irritation,
+    if not arrest decay. By its means, so far as the germs are
+    concerned, the air of the highest Alps may be brought into the
+    chamber of the invalid.
+
+                                  III.
+
+                   Scientific Use of the Imagination.
+
+    I carried with me to the Alps this year the heavy burden of this
+    evening’s work. In the way of new investigation I had nothing
+    complete enough to be brought before you; so all that remained to me
+    was to fall back upon such residues as I could find in the depths of
+    consciousness, and out of them to spin the fiber and weave the web
+    of this discourse. Save from memory I had no direct aid upon the
+    mountains; but to spur up the emotions, on which so much depends, as
+    well as to nourish indirectly the intellect and will, I took with me
+    two volumes of poetry, Goethe’s “Farbenlehre,” and the work on
+    “Logic” recently published by Mr. Alexander Bain. The spur, I am
+    sorry to say, was no match for the integument of dullness it had to
+    pierce.
+
+    In Goethe, so glorious otherwise, I chiefly noticed the
+    self-inflicted hurts of genius, as it broke itself in vain against
+    the philosophy of Newton. For a time Mr. Bain became my principal
+    companion. I found him learned and practical, shining generally with
+    a dry light, but exhibiting at times a flush of emotional strength,
+    which proved that even logicians share the common fire of humanity.
+    He interested me most when he became the mirror of my own condition.
+    Neither intellectually nor socially is it good for man to be alone,
+    and the griefs of thought are more patiently borne when we find that
+    they have been experienced by another. From certain passages in his
+    book I could infer that Mr. Bain was no stranger to such sorrows.
+    Take this passage as an illustration. Speaking of the ebb of
+    intellectual force which we all from time to time experience, Mr.
+    Bain says: “The uncertainty where to look for the next opening of
+    discovery brings the pain of conflict and the debility of
+    indecision.” These words have in them the true ring of personal
+    experience.
+
+    The action of the investigator is periodic. He grapples with a
+    subject of inquiry, wrestles with it, overcomes it, exhausts, it may
+    be, both himself and it for the time being. He breathes a space, and
+    then renews the struggle in another field. Now this period of
+    halting between two investigations is not always one of pure repose.
+    It is often a period of doubt and discomfort, of gloom and ennui.
+    “The uncertainty where to look for the next opening of discovery
+    brings the pain of conflict and the debility of indecision.” Such
+    was my precise condition in the Alps this year; in a score of words
+    Mr. Bain has here sketched my mental diagnosis; and it was under
+    these evil circumstances that I had to equip myself for the hour and
+    the ordeal that are now come.
+
+    Gladly, however, as I should have seen this duty in other hands, I
+    could by no means shrink from it. Disloyalty would have been worse
+    than failure. In some fashion or other—feebly or strongly, meanly or
+    manfully, on the higher levels of thought, or on the flats of
+    commonplace—the task had to be accomplished. I looked in various
+    directions for help and furtherance; but without me for a time I saw
+    only “antres vast,” and within me “deserts idle.” My case resembled
+    that of a sick doctor who had forgotten his art, and sorely needed
+    the prescription of a friend. Mr. Bain wrote one for me. He said:
+    “Your present knowledge must forge the links of connection between
+    what has been already achieved and what is now required.”
+
+    In these words he admonished me to review the past and recover from
+    it the broken ends of former investigations. I tried to do so.
+    Previous to going to Switzerland I had been thinking much of light
+    and heat, of magnetism and electricity, of organic germs, atoms,
+    molecules, spontaneous generation, comets and skies. With one or
+    another of these I now sought to re-form an alliance, and finally
+    succeeded in establishing a kind of cohesion between thought and
+    light. The wish grew within me to trace, and to enable you to trace,
+    some of the more occult operations of this agent. I wished, if
+    possible, to take you behind the drop-scene of the senses, and to
+    show you the hidden mechanism of optical action. For I take it to be
+    well worth the while of the scientific teacher to take some pains,
+    and even great pains, to make those whom he addresses co-partners of
+    his thoughts. To clear his own mind in the first place from all haze
+    and vagueness, and then to project into language which shall leave
+    no mistake as to his meaning—which shall leave even his errors
+    naked—the definite ideas he has shaped.
+
+    A great deal is, I think, possible to scientific exposition
+    conducted in this way. It is possible, I believe, even before an
+    audience like the present, to uncover to some extent the unseen
+    things of nature, and thus to give, not only to professed students,
+    but to others with the necessary bias, industry and capacity, an
+    intelligent interest in the operations of science. Time and labor
+    are necessary to this result, but science is the gainer from the
+    public sympathy thus created.
+
+    How then are those hidden things to be revealed? How, for example,
+    are we to lay hold of the physical basis of light, since, like that
+    of life itself, it lies entirely without the domain of the senses?
+    Now, philosophers may be right in affirming that we cannot transcend
+    experience. But we can, at all events, carry it a long way from its
+    origin. We can also magnify, diminish, qualify, and combine
+    experiences, so as to render them fit for purposes entirely new. We
+    are gifted with the power of imagination, combining what the Germans
+    called _Anschauungsgabe_ and _Einbildungskraft_, and by this power
+    we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world of the senses.
+
+    There are tories even in science who regard imagination as a faculty
+    to be feared and avoided rather than employed. They had observed its
+    action in weak vessels and were unduly impressed by its disasters.
+    But they might with equal justice point to exploded boilers as an
+    argument against the use of steam. Bounded and conditioned by
+    coöperant reason, imagination becomes the mightiest instrument of
+    the physical discoverer. Newton’s passage from a falling apple to a
+    falling moon was a leap of the imagination. When William Thomson
+    tries to place the ultimate particles of matter between his compass
+    points, and to apply to them a scale of millimeters, it is an
+    exercise of the imagination. And in much that has been recently said
+    about protoplasm and life, we have the outgoings of the imagination
+    guided and controlled by the known analogies of science. In fact,
+    without this power our knowledge of nature would be a mere
+    tabulation of coëxistences and sequences. We should still believe in
+    the succession of day and night, of summer and winter; but the soul
+    of force would be dislodged from our universe; casual relations
+    would disappear, and with them that science which is now binding the
+    parts of nature to an organic whole.
+
+    I should like to illustrate by a few simple instances the use that
+    scientific men have already made of this power of imagination, and
+    to indicate afterwards some of the further uses that they are likely
+    to make of it. Let us begin with the rudimentary experiences.
+    Observe the falling of heavy rain drops into a tranquil pond. Each
+    drop as it strikes the water becomes a center of disturbance, from
+    which a series of ring ripples expands outwards. Gravity and inertia
+    are the agents by which this wave motion is produced, and a rough
+    experiment will suffice to show that the rate of propagation does
+    not amount to a foot a second.
+
+    A series of slight mechanical shocks is experienced by a body
+    plunged in the water as the wavelets reach it in succession. But a
+    finer motion is at the same time set up and propagated. If the head
+    and ears be immersed in the water, as in an experiment of
+    Franklin’s, the shock of the drop is communicated to the auditory
+    nerve—the _tick_ of the drop is heard. Now this sonorous impulse is
+    propagated, not at the rate of a foot a second, but at the rate of
+    4,700 feet a second. In this case it is not the gravity but the
+    _elasticity_ of the water that is the urging force. Every liquid
+    particle pushed against its neighbor delivers up its motion with
+    extreme rapidity, and the pulse is propagated as a thrill. The
+    incompressibility of water, as illustrated by the famous Florentine
+    experiment, is a measure of its elasticity, and to the possession of
+    this property in so high a degree the rapid transmission of a
+    sound-pulse through water is to be ascribed.
+
+    But water, as you know, is not necessary to the conduction of sound;
+    air is its most common vehicle. And you know that when the air
+    possesses the particular density and elasticity corresponding to the
+    temperature of freezing water, the velocity of sound in it is 1,090
+    feet a second. It is almost exactly one-fourth of the velocity in
+    water; the reason being that though the greater weight of the water
+    tends to diminish the velocity, the enormous molecular elasticity of
+    the liquid far more than atones for the disadvantage due to weight.
+    By various contrivances we can compel the vibrations of the air to
+    declare themselves; we know the length and frequency of sonorous
+    waves, and we have also obtained great mastery over the various
+    methods by which the air is thrown into vibration. We know the
+    phenomena and laws of vibrating rods, of organ pipes, strings,
+    membranes, plates, and bells. We can abolish one sound by another.
+    We know the physical meaning of music and noise, of harmony and
+    discord. In short, as regards sound we have a very clear notion of
+    the external physical processes which correspond to our sensations.
+
+    In these phenomena of sound we travel a very little way from
+    downright sensible experience. Still the imagination is to some
+    extent exercised. The bodily eye, for example, cannot see the
+    condensations and rarefactions of the waves of sound. We construct
+    them in thought, and we believe as firmly in their existence as in
+    that of the air itself. But now our experience has to be carried
+    into a new region, where a new use is to be made of it.
+
+    Having mastered the cause and mechanism of sound, we desire to know
+    the cause and mechanism of light. We wish to extend our inquiries
+    from the auditory nerve to the optic nerve. Now there is in the
+    human intellect a power of expansion—I might almost call it a power
+    of creation—which is brought into play by the simple brooding upon
+    facts. The legend of the Spirit brooding over chaos may have
+    originated in a knowledge of this power. In the case now before us
+    it has manifested itself by transplanting into space, for the
+    purposes of light, an adequately modified form of the mechanism of
+    sound. We know intimately whereon the velocity of sound depends.
+    When we lessen the density of a medium and preserve its elasticity
+    constant, we augment the velocity. When we highten the elasticity
+    and keep the density constant, we also augment the velocity. A small
+    density, therefore, and a great elasticity are the two things
+    necessary to rapid propagation.
+
+    Now light is known to move with the astounding velocity of 185,000
+    miles a second. How is such a velocity to be obtained? By boldly
+    diffusing in space a medium of the requisite tenuity and elasticity.
+    Let us make such a medium our starting point, endowing it with one
+    or two other necessary qualities; let us handle it in accordance
+    with strict mechanical laws; give to every step of your deduction
+    the surety of the syllogism; carry it thus forth from the world of
+    imagination to the world of sense, and see whether the final outcrop
+    of the deduction be not the very phenomena of light which ordinary
+    knowledge and skilled experiment reveal. If in all the multiplied
+    varieties of these phenomena, including those of the most remote and
+    entangled description, this fundamental conception always brings us
+    face to face with the truth; if no contradiction to our deductions
+    from it be found in external nature; if, moreover, it has actually
+    forced upon our attention phenomena which no eye had previously
+    seen, and which no mind had previously imagined; if by it we are
+    gifted with a power of prescience which has never failed when
+    brought to an experimental test; such a conception, which never
+    disappoints us, but always lands us on the solid shores of fact,
+    must, we think, be something more than a mere figment of the
+    scientific fancy. In forming it that composite and creative unity in
+    which reason and imagination are together blent, has, we believe,
+    led us into a world not less real than that of the senses, and of
+    which the world of sense itself is the suggestion and justification.
+
+    Far be it from me, however, to wish to fix you immovably in this or
+    in any other theoretic conception. With all our belief of it, it
+    will be well to keep the theory plastic and capable of change. You
+    may, moreover, urge that although the phenomena occur _as if_ the
+    medium existed, the absolute demonstration of its existence is still
+    wanting. Far be it from me to deny to this reasoning such validity
+    as it may fairly claim. Let us endeavor by means of analogy to form
+    a fair estimate of its force.
+
+    You believe that in society you are surrounded by reasonable beings
+    like yourself. You are, perhaps, as firmly convinced of this as of
+    anything. What is your warrant for this conviction? Simply and
+    solely this, your fellow-creatures behave as if they were
+    reasonable; the hypothesis, for it is nothing more, accounts for the
+    facts. To take an eminent example, you believe that our president is
+    a reasonable being. Why? There is no known method of superposition
+    by which any one of us can apply himself intellectually to another
+    so as to demonstrate coincidence as regards the possession of
+    reason. If, therefore, you hold our president to be reasonable, it
+    is because he behaves _as if_ he were reasonable. As in the case of
+    the ether, beyond the “_as if_” you cannot go. Nay, I should not
+    wonder if a close comparison of the data on which both inferences
+    rest caused many respectable persons to conclude that the ether had
+    the best of it.
+
+    This universal medium, this light-ether as it is called, is a
+    vehicle, not an origin of wave motion. It receives and transmits,
+    but it does not create. Whence does it derive the motions it
+    conveys? For the most part from luminous bodies. By this motion of a
+    luminous body I do not mean its sensible motion, such as the flicker
+    of a candle, or the shooting out of red prominences from the limb of
+    the sun. I mean an intestine motion of the atoms or molecules of the
+    luminous body. But here a certain reserve is necessary. Many
+    chemists of the present day refuse to speak of atoms and molecules
+    as real things. Their caution leads them to stop short of the clear,
+    sharp, mechanically intelligible atomic theory enunciated by Dalton,
+    or any form of that theory, and to make the doctrine of multiple
+    proportions their intellectual bourne. I respect the caution, though
+    I think it is here misplaced. The chemists who recoil from these
+    notions of atoms and molecules accept without hesitation the
+    undulatory theory of light. Like you and me they one and all believe
+    in an ether and its light-producing waves. Let us consider what this
+    belief involves.
+
+    Bring your imaginations once more into play and figure a series of
+    sound waves passing through air. Follow them up to their origin, and
+    what do you there find? A definite, tangible, vibrating body. It may
+    be the vocal chords of a human being, it may be an organ pipe, or it
+    may be a stretched string. Follow in the same manner a train of
+    ether waves to their source, remembering at the same time that your
+    ether is matter, dense, elastic, and capable of motions subject to
+    and determined by mechanical laws. What then do you expect to find
+    as the source of a series of ether waves? Ask your imagination if it
+    will accept a vibrating multiple proportion—a numerical ratio in a
+    state of oscillation? I do not think it will. You cannot crown the
+    edifice by this abstraction. The scientific imagination, which is
+    here authoritative, demands as the origin and cause of a series of
+    ether waves a particle of vibrating matter quite as definite, though
+    it may be excessively minute, as that which gives origin to a
+    musical sound. Such a particle we name an atom or a molecule. I
+    think the imagination when focused so as to give definition without
+    penumbral haze is sure to realize this image at last.
+
+    To preserve thought continuous throughout this discourse, to prevent
+    either lack of knowledge or failure of memory from producing any
+    rent in our picture, I here propose to run rapidly over a bit of
+    ground which is probably familiar to most of you, but which I am
+    anxious to make familiar to you all.
+
+    The waves generated in the ether by the swinging atoms of luminous
+    bodies are of different lengths and amplitudes. The amplitude is the
+    width of swing of the individual particles of the wave. In water
+    waves it is the hight of the crest above the trough, while the
+    length of the wave is the distance between two consecutive crests.
+    The aggregate of waves emitted by the sun may be broadly divided
+    into two classes, the one class competent, the other incompetent, to
+    excite vision.
+
+    But the light-producing waves differ markedly among themselves in
+    size, form, and force. The length of the largest of these waves is
+    about twice that of the smallest, but the amplitude of the largest
+    is probably a hundred times that of the smallest. Now the force or
+    energy of the wave, which, expressed with reference to sensation,
+    means the intensity of the light, is proportional to the square of
+    the amplitude. Hence the amplitude being one hundred-fold, the
+    energy of the largest light-giving waves would be ten thousand-fold
+    that of the smallest. This is not improbable. I use these figures,
+    not with a view to numerical accuracy, but to give you definite
+    ideas of the differences that probably exist among the light-giving
+    waves. And if we take the whole range of solar radiation into
+    account—its non-visual as well as its visual waves—I think it
+    probable that the force or energy of the largest wave is a million
+    times that of the smallest.
+
+    Turned into their equivalents of sensation, the different light
+    waves produce different colors. Red, for example, is produced by the
+    largest waves, violet by the smallest, while green is produced by a
+    wave of intermediate length and amplitude. On entering from air into
+    more highly refracting substances, such as glass or water or the
+    sulphide of carbon, all the waves are retarded, but the smallest
+    ones most. This furnishes a means of separating the different
+    classes of waves from each other—in other words, of analyzing the
+    light. Sent through a refracting prism, the waves of the sun are
+    turned aside in different degrees from their direct course, the red
+    least, the violet most. They are virtually pulled asunder, and they
+    paint upon a white screen placed to receive them “the solar
+    spectrum.”
+
+    Strictly speaking, the spectrum embraces an infinity of colors, but
+    the limits of language and of our powers of distinction cause it to
+    be divided into seven segments: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
+    indigo, violet. These are the seven primary or prismatic colors.
+    Separately, or mixed in various proportions, the solar waves yield
+    all the colors observed in nature and employed in art. Collectively
+    they give us the impression of whiteness. Pure unsifted solar light
+    is white; and if all the wave constituents of such light be reduced
+    in the same proportion, the light, though diminished in intensity,
+    will still be white. The whiteness of Alpine snow with the sun
+    shining upon it is barely tolerable to the eye. The same snow under
+    an overcast firmament is still white. Such a firmament enfeebles the
+    light by reflection, and when we lift ourselves above a
+    cloud-field—to an Alpine summit, for instance, or to the top of
+    Snowdon—and see, in the proper direction, the sun shining on the
+    clouds, they appear dazzlingly white. Ordinary clouds, in fact,
+    divide the solar light impinging on them into two parts—a reflected
+    part and a transmitted part, in each of which the proportions of
+    wave motion which produce the impression of whiteness are sensibly
+    preserved.
+
+    It will be understood that the conditions of whiteness would fail if
+    all the waves were diminished _equally_, or by the same absolute
+    quantity. They must be reduced _proportionately_ instead of equally.
+    If by the act of reflection the waves of red light are split into
+    exact halves, then, to preserve the light white, the waves of
+    yellow, orange, green, and blue must also be split into exact
+    halves. In short, the reduction must take place, not by absolutely
+    equal quantities, but by equal fractional parts. In white light the
+    preponderance as regards energy of the larger over the smaller waves
+    must always be immense. Were the case otherwise, the physiological
+    correlative, _blue_, of the smaller waves would have the upper hand
+    in our sensations.
+
+    My wish to render our mental images complete, causes me to dwell
+    briefly upon these known points, and the same wish will cause me to
+    linger a little longer among others. But here I am disturbed by my
+    reflections. When I consider the effect of dinner upon the nervous
+    system, and the relation of that system to the intellectual powers I
+    am now invoking; when I remember that the universal experience of
+    mankind has fixed upon certain definite elements of perfection in an
+    after-dinner speech, and when I think how conspicuous by their
+    absence these elements are on the present occasion, the thought is
+    not comforting to a man who wishes to stand well with his
+    fellow-creatures in general, and with the members of the British
+    Association in particular. My condition might well resemble that of
+    the ether, which is scientifically defined as an assemblage of
+    vibrations. And the worst of it is that, unless you reverse the
+    general verdict regarding the effect of dinner, and prove in your
+    own persons that a uniform experience need not continue
+    uniform—which will be a great point gained for some people—these
+    tremors of mine are likely to become more and more painful. But I
+    call to mind the comforting words of an inspired, though uncanonical
+    writer, who admonishes us in the Apocrypha that fear is a bad
+    counsellor. Let me then cast him out, and let me trustfully assume
+    that you will one and all postpone that balmy sleep, of which dinner
+    might, under the circumstances, be regarded as the indissoluble
+    antecedent, and that you will manfully and womanfully prolong your
+    investigations of the ether and its waves into regions which have
+    been hitherto crossed by the pioneers of science alone.
+
+    Not only are the waves of ether reflected by clouds, by solids, and
+    by liquids, but when they pass from light air to dense, or from
+    dense air to light, a portion of the wave motion is always
+    reflected. Now our atmosphere changes continually in density from
+    top to bottom. It will help our conceptions if we regard it as made
+    up of a series of thin concentric layers or shells of air, each
+    shell being of the same density throughout, and a small and sudden
+    change of density occurring in passing from shell to shell. Light
+    would be reflected at the limiting surfaces of all these shells, and
+    their action would be practically the same as that of the real
+    atmosphere.
+
+    And now I would ask your imagination to picture this act of
+    reflection. What must become of the reflected light? The atmospheric
+    layers turn their convex surfaces towards the sun; they are so many
+    convex mirrors of feeble power, and you will immediately perceive
+    that the light regularly reflected from these surfaces cannot reach
+    the earth at all, but is dispersed in space.
+
+    But though the sun’s light is not reflected in this fashion from the
+    ærial layers to the earth, there is indubitable evidence to show
+    that the light of our firmament is reflected light. Proofs of the
+    most cogent description could be here adduced; but we need only
+    consider that we receive light at the same time from all parts of
+    the hemisphere of heaven. The light of the firmament comes to us
+    across the direction of the solar rays, and even against the
+    direction of the solar rays; and this lateral and opposing rush of
+    wave motion can only be due to the rebound of the waves from the air
+    itself, or from something suspended in the air. It is also evident
+    that, unlike the action of clouds, the solar light is not reflected
+    by the sky in the proportions which produce white. The sky is blue,
+    which indicates a deficiency on the part of the larger waves. In
+    accounting for the color of the sky, the first question suggested by
+    analogy would undoubtedly be, is not the air blue? The blueness of
+    the air has, in fact, been given as a solution of the blueness of
+    the sky. But reason basing itself on observation asks in reply, How,
+    if the air be blue, can the light of sunrise and sunset, which
+    travels through vast distances of air, be yellow, orange, or even
+    red? The passage of the white solar light through a blue medium
+    could by no possibility redden the light. The hypothesis of a blue
+    air is therefore untenable. In fact, the agent, whatever it is,
+    which sends us the light of the sky, exercises in so doing a
+    dichroitic action. The light reflected is blue, the light
+    transmitted is orange or red. A marked distinction is thus exhibited
+    between the matter of the sky and that of an ordinary cloud, which
+    latter exercises no such dichroitic action.
+
+    By the force of imagination and reason combined we may penetrate
+    this mystery also. The cloud takes no note of size on the part of
+    the waves of ether, but reflects them all alike. It exercises no
+    selective action. Now the cause of this may be that the cloud
+    particles are so large in comparison with the size of the waves of
+    ether as to reflect them all indifferently. A broad cliff reflects
+    an Atlantic roller as easily as a ripple produced by a sea bird’s
+    wing; and in the presence of large reflecting surfaces the existing
+    differences of magnitude among the waves of ether may disappear. But
+    supposing the reflecting particles, instead of being very large, to
+    be very small, in comparison with the size of the waves. In this
+    case, instead of the whole wave being fronted and in great part
+    thrown back, a small portion only is shivered off. The great mass of
+    the wave passes over such a particle without reflection. Scatter
+    then, a handful of such minute foreign particles in our atmosphere,
+    and set imagination to watch their action upon the solar waves.
+    Waves of all sizes impinge upon the particles, and you see at every
+    collision a portion of the impinging wave struck off by reflection.
+    All the waves of the spectrum, from the extreme red to the extreme
+    violet, are thus acted upon. But in what proportions will the waves
+    be scattered? A clear picture will enable us to anticipate the
+    experimental answer. Remembering that the red waves are to the blue
+    much in the relation of billows to ripples, let us consider whether
+    those extremely small particles are competent to scatter all the
+    waves in the same proportion. If they be not—and a little reflection
+    will make it clear to you that they are not—the production of color
+    must be an incident of the scattering. Largeness is a thing of
+    relation; and the smaller the wave the greater is the relative size
+    of any particle on which the wave impinges, and the greater also the
+    ratio of the reflected portion to the total wave.
+
+    A pebble placed in the way of the ring-ripples produced by our heavy
+    rain-drops on a tranquil pond will throw back a large fraction of
+    the ripple incident upon it, while the fractional part of a larger
+    wave thrown back by the same pebble might be infinitesimal. Now we
+    have already made it clear to our minds that to preserve the solar
+    light white, its constituent proportions must not be altered; but in
+    the act of division performed by these very small particles we see
+    that the proportions _are_ altered; an undue fraction of the smaller
+    waves is scattered by the particles, and, as a consequence, in the
+    scattered light blue will be the predominant color. The other colors
+    of the spectrum must, to some extent, be associated with the blue.
+    They are not absent, but deficient. We ought, in fact, to have them
+    all, but in diminishing proportions, from the violet to the red.
+
+    We have here presented a case to the imagination, and assuming the
+    undulatory theory to be a reality, we have, I think, fairly reasoned
+    our way to the conclusion that, were particles, small in comparison
+    to the size of the ether waves, sown in our atmosphere, the light
+    scattered by those particles would be exactly such as we observe in
+    our azure skies. When this light is analyzed all the colors of the
+    spectrum are found; but they are found in the proportions indicated
+    by our conclusion.
+
+    Let us now turn our attention to the light which passes unscattered
+    among the particles. How must it be finally affected? By its
+    successive collisions with the particles, the white light is more
+    and more robbed of its shorter waves; it therefore loses more and
+    more of its due proportion of blue. The result may be anticipated.
+    The transmitted light, where short distances are involved, will
+    appear yellowish. But as the sun sinks towards the horizon, the
+    atmospheric distances increase, and consequently the number of the
+    scattering particles. They abstract, in succession, the violet, the
+    indigo, the blue, and even disturb the proportions of green. The
+    transmitted light under such circumstances must pass from yellow
+    through orange to red. This also is exactly what we find in nature.
+    Thus, while the reflected light gives us at noon the deep azure of
+    the Alpine skies, the transmitted light gives us at sunset the warm
+    crimson of the Alpine snows. The phenomena certainly occur _as if_
+    our atmosphere were a medium rendered slightly turbid by the
+    mechanical suspension of exceedingly small foreign particles.
+
+    Here, as before, we encounter our skeptical “as if.” It is one of
+    the parasites of science, ever at hand, and ready to plant itself
+    and sprout, if it can, on the weak points of our philosophy. But a
+    strong constitution defies the parasite, and in our case, as we
+    question the phenomena, probability grows like growing health, until
+    in the end the malady of doubt is completely extirpated.
+
+    The first question that naturally arises is, Can small particles be
+    really proved to act in the manner indicated? No doubt of it. Each
+    one of you can submit the question to an experimental test. Water
+    will not dissolve resin, but spirit will, and when spirit which
+    holds resin in solution is dropped into water the resin immediately
+    separates in solid particles, which render the water milky. The
+    coarseness of this precipitate depends on the quantity of the
+    dissolved resin. You can cause it to separate in thick clots or in
+    exceedingly fine particles. Professor Brücke has given us the
+    proportions which produce particles particularly suited to our
+    present purpose. One gramme of clean mastic is dissolved in
+    eighty-seven grammes of absolute alcohol, and the transparent
+    solution is allowed to drop into a beaker containing clear water
+    kept briskly stirred. An exceedingly fine precipitate is thus
+    formed, which declares its presence by its action upon light.
+    Placing a dark surface behind the beaker, and permitting the light
+    to fall into it from the top or front, the medium is seen to be
+    distinctly blue. It is not, perhaps, so perfect a blue as I have
+    seen on exceptional days, this year, among the Alps, but it is a
+    very fair sky blue. A trace of soap in water gives a tint of blue.
+    London, and I fear Liverpool milk, makes an approximation to the
+    same color through the operation of the same cause; and Helmholtz
+    has irreverently disclosed the fact that a blue eye is simply a
+    turbid medium.
+
+    Numerous instances of the kind might be cited. The action of turbid
+    media upon light was fully and beautifully illustrated by Goethe,
+    who, though unacquainted with the undulatory theory, was led by his
+    experiments to regard the blue of the firmament as caused by an
+    illuminated turbid medium with the darkness of space behind it. He
+    describes glasses showing a bright yellow by transmitted, and a
+    beautiful blue by reflected light. Professor Stokes, who was
+    probably the first to discern the real nature of the action of small
+    particles on the waves of ether, describes a glass of a similar
+    kind. What artists call “chill” is no doubt an effect of this
+    description. Through the action of minute particles, the browns of a
+    picture often present the appearance of the bloom of a plum. By
+    rubbing the varnish with a silk handkerchief optical continuity is
+    established and the chill disappears.
+
+    Some years ago I witnessed Mr. Hirst experimenting at Zermatt on the
+    turbid water of the Visp, which was charged with the finely divided
+    matter ground down by the glaciers. When kept still for a day or so
+    the grosser matter sank, but the finer matter remained suspended,
+    and gave a distinctly blue tinge to the water. No doubt the blueness
+    of certain Alpine lakes is in part due to this cause. Professor
+    Roscoe has noticed several striking cases of a similar kind. In a
+    very remarkable paper the late Principal Forbes showed that steam
+    issuing from the safety valve of a locomotive, when favorably
+    observed, exhibits at a certain stage of its condensation the colors
+    of the sky. It is blue by reflected light, and orange or red by
+    transmitted light. The effect, as pointed out by Goethe, is to some
+    extent exhibited by peat smoke.
+
+    More than ten years ago I amused myself at Killarney, by observing
+    on a calm day, the straight smoke columns rising from the chimneys
+    of the cabins. It was easy to project the lower portion of a column
+    against a bright cloud. The smoke in the former case was blue, being
+    seen mainly by reflected light; in the latter case it was reddish,
+    being seen mainly by transmitted light. Such smoke was not in
+    exactly the condition to give us the glow of the Alps, but it was a
+    step in this direction. Brücke’s fine precipitate above referred to
+    looks yellowish by transmitted light, but by duly strengthening the
+    precipitate you may render the white light of noon as ruby colored
+    as the sun when seen through Liverpool smoke or upon Alpine
+    horizons.
+
+    I do not, however, point to the gross smoke arising from coal as an
+    illustration of the action of small particles, because such smoke
+    soon absorbs and destroys the waves of blue instead of sending them
+    to the eyes of the observer.
+
+    These multifarious facts, and numberless others which cannot now be
+    referred to, are explained by reference to the single principle that
+    where the scattering particles are small in comparison to the size
+    of the waves, we have in the reflected light a greater proportion of
+    the smaller waves, and in the transmitted light a greater proportion
+    of the larger waves, than existed in the original white light. The
+    physiological consequence is that in the one light blue is
+    predominant, and in the other light orange or red. And now let us
+    push our inquiries forward. Our best microscopes can readily reveal
+    objects not more than 1/50000 of an inch in diameter. This is less
+    than the length of a wave of red light. Indeed, a first-rate
+    microscope would enable us to discern objects not exceeding in
+    diameter the length of the smallest waves of the visible spectrum.
+    By the microscope, therefore, we can submit our particles to an
+    experimental test. If they are as large as the light-waves they will
+    infallibly be seen; and if they are not seen it is because they are
+    smaller.
+
+    I placed in the hands of our president a bottle containing Brücke’s
+    particles in greater number and coarseness than those examined by
+    Brücke himself. The liquid was a milky blue, and Mr. Huxley applied
+    to it his highest microscopic power. He satisfied me at the time
+    that had particles of even 1/100000 of an inch in diameter existed
+    in the liquid they could not have escaped detection. But no
+    particles were seen. Under the microscope the turbid liquid was not
+    to be distinguished from distilled water. Brücke, I may say, also
+    found the particles to be of ultra microscopic magnitude.
+
+    But we have it in our power to imitate far more closely than we have
+    hitherto done the natural conditions of this problem. We can
+    generate in air, as many of you know, artificial skies, and prove
+    their perfect identity with the natural one as regards the
+    exhibition of a number of wholly unexpected phenomena. By a
+    continuous process of growth, moreover, we are able to connect sky
+    matter, if I may use the term, with molecular matter on the one
+    side, and with molar matter, or matter in sensible masses, on the
+    other.
+
+    In illustration of this, I will take an experiment described by M.
+    Morren, of Marseilles, at the last meeting of the British
+    Association. Sulphur and oxygen combine to form sulphurous acid gas.
+    It is this choking gas that is smelt when a sulphur match is burnt
+    in air. Two atoms of oxygen and one of sulphur constitute the
+    molecule of sulphurous acid. Now it has been recently shown in a
+    great number of instances that waves of ether issuing from a strong
+    source, such as the sun or the electric light, are competent to
+    shake asunder the atoms of gaseous molecules. A chemist would call
+    this “decomposition” by light; but it behooves us, who are examining
+    the power and function of the imagination, to keep constantly before
+    us the physical images which we hold to underlie our terms.
+    Therefore I say, sharply and definitely, that the components of the
+    molecules of sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by the ether waves.
+    Enclosing the substance in a suitable vessel, placing it in a dark
+    room, and sending through it a powerful beam of light, we at first
+    see nothing; the vessel containing the gas is as empty as a vacuum.
+    Soon, however, along the track of the beam a beautiful sky-blue
+    color is observed, which is due to the liberated particles of
+    sulphur. For a time the blue grows more intense; it then becomes
+    whitish; and from a whitish blue it passes to a more or less perfect
+    white. If the action be continued long enough, we end by filling the
+    tube with a dense cloud of sulphur particles, which by the
+    application of proper means may be rendered visible.
+
+    Here, then, our ether waves untie the bond of chemical affinity, and
+    liberate a body—sulphur—which at ordinary temperatures is a solid,
+    and which therefore soon becomes an object of the senses. We have
+    first of all the free atoms of sulphur, which are both invisible and
+    incompetent to stir the retina sensibly with scattered light. But
+    these atoms gradually coalesce and form particles, which grow larger
+    by continual accretion until after a minute or two they appear as
+    sky matter. In this condition they are invisible themselves, but
+    competent to send an amount of wave motion to the retina sufficient
+    to produce the firmamental blue. The particles continue, or may be
+    caused to continue, in this condition for a considerable time,
+    during which no microscope can cope with them. But they continually
+    grow larger, and pass by insensible gradations into the state of
+    _cloud_, when they can no longer elude the armed eye. Thus, without
+    solution of continuity, we start with matter in the molecule, and
+    end with matter in the mass, sky matter being the middle term of the
+    series of transformations.
+
+    Instead of sulphurous acid we might choose from a dozen other
+    substances, and produce the same effect with any of them. In the
+    case of some—probably in the case of all—it is possible to preserve
+    matter in the skyey condition for fifteen or twenty minutes under
+    the continual operation of the light. During these fifteen or twenty
+    minutes the particles are constantly growing larger, without ever
+    exceeding the size requisite to the production of the celestial
+    blue. Now when two vessels are placed before you, each containing
+    sky matter, it is possible to state with great distinctness which
+    vessel contains the largest particles.
+
+    The eye is very sensitive to differences of light, when, as here,
+    the eye is in comparative darkness, and when the quantities of wave
+    motion thrown against the retina are small. The larger particles
+    declare themselves by the greater whiteness of their scattered
+    light. Call now to mind the observation, or effort at observation,
+    made by our president when he failed to distinguish the particles of
+    resin in Brücke’s medium, and when you have done so follow me. I
+    permitted a beam of light to act upon a certain vapor. In two
+    minutes the azure appeared, but at the end of fifteen minutes it had
+    not ceased to be azure. After fifteen minutes, for example, its
+    color and some other phenomena pronounced it to be a blue of
+    distinctly smaller particles than those sought for in vain by Mr.
+    Huxley. These particles, as already stated, must have been less than
+    1/100000 of an inch in diameter.
+
+    And now I want you to submit to your imagination the following
+    question: Here are particles which have been growing continually for
+    fifteen minutes, and at the end of that time are demonstrably
+    smaller than those which defied the microscope of Mr. Huxley. What
+    must have been the size of these particles at the beginning of their
+    growth? What notion can you form of the magnitude of such particles?
+    As the distances of stellar space give us simply a bewildering sense
+    of vastness without leaving any distinct impression on the mind, so
+    the magnitudes with which we have here to do impress us with a
+    bewildering sense of smallness. We are dealing with infinitesimals
+    compared with which the test objects of the microscope are literally
+    immense.
+
+    From their perviousness to stellar light, and other considerations,
+    Sir John Herschel drew some startling conclusions regarding the
+    density and weight of comets. You know that these extraordinary and
+    mysterious bodies sometimes throw out tails 100,000,000 of miles in
+    length, and 50,000 miles in diameter. The diameter of our earth is
+    8,000 miles. Both it and the sky, and a good portion of space beyond
+    the sky, would certainly be included in a sphere 10,000 miles
+    across. Let us fill this sphere with cometary matter, and make it
+    our unit of measure. An easy calculation informs us that to produce
+    a comet’s tail of the size just mentioned, about 300,000 such
+    measures would have to be emptied into space. Now suppose the whole
+    of this stuff to be swept together, and suitably compressed, what do
+    you suppose its volume would be? Sir John Herschel would probably
+    tell you that the whole mass might be carted away at a single effort
+    by one of your dray-horses. In fact, I do not know that he would
+    require more than a small fraction of a horse-power to remove the
+    cometary dust. After this you will hardly regard as monstrous a
+    notion I have sometimes entertained concerning the quantity of
+    matter in our sky. Suppose a shell, then, to surround the earth at a
+    hight above the surface which would place it beyond the grosser
+    matter that hangs in the lower regions of the air—say at the hight
+    of the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc. Outside this shell we have the deep
+    blue firmament. Let the atmospheric space beyond the shell be swept
+    clean, and let the sky matter be properly gathered up. What is its
+    probable amount? I have sometimes thought that a lady’s portmanteau
+    would contain it all. I have thought that even a gentleman’s
+    portmanteau—possibly his snuff-box—might take it in. And whether the
+    actual sky be capable of this amount of condensation or not, I
+    entertain no doubt that a sky quite as vast as ours, and as good in
+    appearance, could be formed from a quantity of matter which might be
+    held in the hollow of the hand.
+
+    Small in mass, the vastness in point of number of the particles of
+    our sky may be inferred from the continuity of its light. It is not
+    in broken patches nor at scattered points that the heavenly azure is
+    revealed. To the observer on the summit of Mont Blanc the blue is as
+    uniform and coherent as if it formed the surface of the most
+    close-grained solid. A marble dome would not exhibit a stricter
+    continuity. And Mr. Glaisher will inform you that if our
+    hypothetical shell were lifted to twice the hight of Mont Blanc
+    above the earth’s surface, we should still have the azure overhead.
+    Everywhere through the atmosphere those sky particles are strewn.
+    They fill the Alpine valleys, spreading like a delicate gauze in
+    front of the slopes of pine. They sometimes so swathe the peaks with
+    light as to abolish their definition. This year I have seen the
+    Weisshorn thus dissolved in opalescent air.
+
+    By proper instruments the glare thrown from the sky particles
+    against the retina may be quenched, and then the mountain which it
+    obliterated starts into sudden definition. Its extinction in front
+    of a dark mountain resembles exactly the withdrawal of a veil. It is
+    the light then taking possession of the eye, and not the particles
+    acting as opaque bodies, that interfere with the definition.
+
+    By day this light quenches the stars; even by moonlight it is able
+    to exclude from vision all stars between the fifth and the eleventh
+    magnitude. It may be likened to a noise, and the stellar radiance to
+    a whisper drowned by the noise. What is the nature of the particles
+    which shed this light? On points of controversy I will not here
+    enter, but I may say that De la Rive ascribes the haze of the Alps
+    in fine weather to floating organic germs. Now the possible
+    existence of germs in such profusion has been held up as an
+    absurdity. It has been affirmed that they would darken the air, and
+    on the assumed impossibility of their existence in the requisite
+    numbers, without invasion of the solar light, a powerful argument
+    has been based by believers in spontaneous generation.
+
+    Similar arguments have been used by the opponents of the germ theory
+    of epidemic disease, and both parties have triumphantly challenged
+    an appeal to the microscope and the chemist’s balance to decide the
+    question. Without committing myself in the least to De la Rive’s
+    notion, without offering any objection here to the doctrine of
+    spontaneous generation, without expressing any adherence to the germ
+    theory of disease, I would simply draw attention to the fact that in
+    the atmosphere we have particles which defy both the microscope and
+    the balance, which do not darken the air, and which exist,
+    nevertheless, in multitudes sufficient to reduce to insignificance
+    the Israelitish hyperbole regarding the sands upon the seashore.
+
+    The varying judgments of men on these and other questions may
+    perhaps be, to some extent, accounted for by that doctrine of
+    relativity which plays so important a part in philosophy. This
+    doctrine affirms that the impressions made upon us by any
+    circumstance, or combination of circumstances, depends upon our
+    previous state. Two travelers upon the same peak, the one having
+    ascended to it from the plain, the other having descended to it from
+    a higher elevation, will be differently affected by the scene around
+    them. To the one nature is expanding, to the other it is
+    contracting, and feelings are sure to differ which have two such
+    different antecedent states.
+
+    In our scientific judgments the law of relativity may also play an
+    important part. To two men, one educated in the school of the
+    senses, who has mainly occupied himself with observation, and the
+    other educated in the school of imagination as well, and exercised
+    in the conception of atoms and molecules to which we have so
+    frequently referred, a bit of matter, say 1/50000 of an inch in
+    diameter, will present itself differently. The one descends to it
+    from his molar hights, the other climbs to it from his molecular
+    lowlands. To the one it appears small, to the other large. So also
+    as regards the appreciation of the most minute forms of life
+    revealed by the microscope. To one of these men they naturally
+    appear conterminous with the ultimate particles of matter, and he
+    readily figures the molecules from which they directly spring; with
+    him there is but a step from the atom to the organism. The other
+    discerns numberless organic gradations between both. Compared with
+    his atoms, the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the microscopic
+    field are as behemoth and leviathan.
+
+    The law of relativity may to some extent explain the different
+    attitudes of these two men with regard to the question of
+    spontaneous generation. An amount of evidence which satisfies the
+    one entirely fails to satisfy the other; and while to the one the
+    last bold defense and startling expansion of the doctrine will
+    appear perfectly conclusive, to the other it will present itself as
+    imposing a profitless labor of demolition on subsequent
+    investigators. The proper and possible attitude of these two men is
+    that each of them should work as if it were his aim and object to
+    establish the view entertained by the other.
+
+    I trust, Mr. President, that you—whom untoward circumstances have
+    made a biologist, but who still keep alive your sympathy with that
+    class of inquiries which nature intended you to pursue and
+    adorn—will excuse me to your brethren if I say that some of them
+    seem to form an inadequate estimate of the distance which separates
+    the microscopic from the molecular limit, and that, as a
+    consequence, they sometimes employ a phraseology which is calculated
+    to mislead.
+
+    When, for example, the contents of a cell are described as perfectly
+    homogeneous, as absolutely structureless, because the microscope
+    fails to distinguish any structure, then I think the microscope
+    begins to play a mischievous part. A little consideration will make
+    it plain to all of you that the microscope can have no voice in the
+    real question of germ structure. Distilled water is more perfectly
+    homogeneous than the contents of any possible organic germ. What
+    causes the liquid to cease contracting at 39° F., and to grow bigger
+    until it freezes? It is a structural process of which the microscope
+    can take no note, nor is it likely to do so by any conceivable
+    extension of its powers. Place this distilled water in the field of
+    an electro-magnet, and bring a microscope to bear upon it. Will any
+    change be observed when the magnet is excited? Absolutely none; and
+    still profound and complex changes have occurred.
+
+    First of all, the particles of water are rendered diamagnetically
+    polar; and secondly, in virtue of the structure impressed upon it by
+    the magnetic strain of its molecules, the liquid twists a ray of
+    light in a fashion perfectly determinate both as to quantity and
+    direction. It would be immensely interesting to both you and me if
+    one here present, who has brought his brilliant imagination to bear
+    upon this subject, could make us see as he sees the entangled
+    molecular processes involved in the rotation of the plane of
+    polarization by magnetic force. While dealing with this question he
+    lived in a world of matter and of motion to which the microscope has
+    no passport, and in which it can offer no aid. The cases in which
+    similar conditions hold are simply numberless. Have the diamond, the
+    amethyst, and the countless other crystals formed in the
+    laboratories of nature and of man, no structure? Assuredly they
+    have, but what can the microscope make of it? Nothing. It cannot be
+    too distinctly borne in mind that between the microscopic limit and
+    the true molecular limit there is room for infinite permutations and
+    combinations. It is in this region that the poles of the atoms are
+    arranged, that tendency is given to their powers, so that when these
+    poles and powers have free action and proper stimulus in a suitable
+    environment, they determine first the germ and afterwards the
+    complete organism. This first marshaling of the atoms on which all
+    subsequent action depends baffles a keener power than that of the
+    microscope. Through pure excess of complexity, and long before
+    observation can have any voice in the matter, the most highly
+    trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination,
+    retires in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem. We
+    are struck dumb by an astonishment which no microscope can relieve,
+    doubting not only the power of our instrument, but even whether we
+    ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever enable
+    us to grapple with the ultimate structural energies of nature.
+
+    But the speculative faculty, of which imagination forms so large a
+    part, will nevertheless wander into regions where the hope of
+    certainty would seem to be entirely shut out. We think that though
+    the detailed analysis may be, and may ever remain, beyond us,
+    general notions may be attainable. At all events, it is plain that
+    beyond the present outposts of microscopic inquiry lies an immense
+    field for the exercise of the imagination. It is only, however, the
+    privileged spirits who know how to use their liberty without abusing
+    it, who are able to surround imagination by the firm frontiers of
+    reason, that are likely to work with any profit here. But freedom to
+    them is of such paramount importance that, for the sake of securing
+    it, a good deal of wildness on the part of weaker brethren may be
+    overlooked. In more senses than one Mr. Darwin has drawn heavily
+    upon the scientific tolerance of his age. He has drawn heavily upon
+    _time_ in his development of species, and he has drawn adventurously
+    upon _matter_ in his theory of pan-genesis. According to this
+    theory, a germ already microscopic is a world of minor germs. Not
+    only is the organism as a whole wrapped up in the germ, but every
+    organ of the organism has there its special seed.
+
+    This, I say, is an adventurous draft on the power of matter to
+    divide itself and distribute its forces. But, unless we are
+    perfectly sure that he is overstepping the bounds of reason, that he
+    is unwittingly sinning against observed fact or demonstrated law—for
+    a mind like that of Darwin can never sin wittingly against either
+    fact or law—we ought, I think, to be cautious in limiting his
+    intellectual horizon. If there be the least doubt in the matter, it
+    ought to be given in favor of the freedom of such a mind. To it a
+    vast possibility is in itself a dynamic power, though the
+    possibility may never be drawn upon.
+
+    It gives me pleasure to think that the facts and reasonings of this
+    discourse tend rather towards the justification of Mr. Darwin than
+    towards his condemnation, that they tend rather to augment than to
+    diminish the cubic space demanded by this soaring speculator; for
+    they seem to show the perfect competence of matter and force, as
+    regards divisibility and distribution, to bear the heaviest strain
+    that he has hitherto imposed upon them.
+
+    In the case of Mr. Darwin, observation, imagination, and reason
+    combined have run back with wonderful sagacity and success over a
+    certain length of the line of biological succession. Guided by
+    analogy, in his “Origin of Species” he placed as the root of life a
+    primordial germ, from which he conceived the amazing richness and
+    variety of the life that now is upon the earth’s surface, might be
+    deduced. If this were true it would not be final. The human
+    imagination would infallibly look behind the germ, and inquire into
+    the history of its genesis.
+
+    Certainty is here hopeless, but the materials for an opinion may be
+    attainable. In this dim twilight of speculation the inquirer
+    welcomes every gleam, and seeks to augment his light by indirect
+    incidences. He studies the methods of nature in the ages and the
+    worlds within his reach, in order to shape the course of imagination
+    in the antecedent ages and worlds. And though the certainty
+    possessed by experimental inquiry is here shut out, the imagination
+    is not left entirely without guidance. From the examination of the
+    solar system, Kant and Laplace came to the conclusion that its
+    various bodies once formed parts of the same undislocated mass; that
+    matter in a nebulous form preceded matter in a dense form; that as
+    the ages rolled away heat was wasted, condensation followed, planets
+    were detached, and that finally the chief portion of the fiery cloud
+    reached, by self-compression, the magnitude and density of our sun.
+    The earth itself offers evidence of a fiery origin; and in our day
+    the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace receives the independent
+    countenance of spectrum analysis, which proves the same substances
+    to be common to the earth and sun. Accepting some such view of the
+    construction of our system as probable, a desire immediately arises
+    to connect the present life of our planet with the past. We wish to
+    know something of our remotest ancestry.
+
+    On its first detachment from the central mass, life, as we
+    understand it, could hardly have been present on the earth. How then
+    did it come there? The thing to be encouraged here is a reverent
+    freedom—a freedom preceded by the hard discipline which checks
+    licentiousness in speculation—while the thing to be repressed, both
+    in science and out of it, is dogmatism. And here I am in the hands
+    of the meeting—willing to end, but ready to go on. I have no right
+    to intrude upon you, unasked, the unformed notions which are
+    floating like clouds or gathering to more solid consistency in the
+    modern speculative scientific mind. But if you wish me to speak
+    plainly, honestly, and undisputatiously, I am willing to do so. On
+    the present occasion
+
+                  You are ordained to call, and I to come.
+
+    Two views, then, offer themselves to us. Life was present
+    potentially in matter when in the nebulous form, and was unfolded
+    from it by the way of natural development, or it is a principle
+    inserted into matter at a later date. With regard to the question of
+    time, the views of men have changed remarkably in our day and
+    generation; and I must say as regards courage also, and a manful
+    willingness to engage in open contest, with fair weapons, a great
+    change has also occurred.
+
+    The clergy of England—at all events the clergy of London—have nerve
+    enough to listen to the strongest views which any one amongst us
+    would care to utter; and they invite, if they do not challenge, men
+    of the most decided opinions to state and stand by those opinions in
+    open court. No theory upsets them. Let the most destructive
+    hypothesis be stated only in the language current among gentlemen,
+    and they look it in the face. They forego alike the thunders of
+    heaven and the terrors of the other place, smiting the theory, if
+    they do not like it, with honest secular strength. In fact, the
+    greatest cowards of the present day are not to be found among the
+    clergy, but within the pale of science itself.
+
+    Two or three years ago in an ancient London college—a clerical
+    institution—I heard a very remarkable lecture by a very remarkable
+    man. Three or four hundred clergymen were present at the lecture.
+    The orator began with the civilization of Egypt in the time of
+    Joseph; pointing out that the very perfect organization of the
+    kingdom, and the possession of chariots, in one of which Joseph
+    rode, indicated a long antecedent period of civilization. He then
+    passed on to the mud of the Nile, its rate of augmentation, its
+    present thickness, and the remains of human handiwork found therein;
+    thence to the rocks which bound the Nile valley, and which team with
+    organic remains. Thus, in his own clear and admirable way, he caused
+    the idea of the world’s age to expand itself indefinitely before the
+    mind of his audience, and he contrasted this with the age usually
+    assigned to the world.
+
+    During his discourse he seemed to be swimming against a stream; he
+    manifestly thought that he was opposing a general conviction. He
+    expected resistance; so did I. But it was all a mistake; there was
+    no adverse current, no opposing conviction, no resistance, merely
+    here and there a half humorous but unsuccessful attempt to entangle
+    him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said
+    regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had,
+    indeed, known it all long ago, and they good-humoredly rallied the
+    lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite
+    plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, the
+    finest samples of their class, had entirely given up the ancient
+    landmarks, and transported the conception of life’s origin to an
+    indefinitely distant past.
+
+    In fact, clergymen, if I might be allowed a parenthesis to say so,
+    have as strong a leaning towards scientific truth as other men, only
+    the resistance to this bent—a resistance due to education—is
+    generally stronger in their case than in others. They do not lack
+    the positive element, namely, the love of truth, but the negative
+    element, the fear of error, preponderates.
+
+    The strength of an electric current is determined by two things—the
+    electro-motive force, and the resistance that force has to overcome.
+    A fraction, with the former as numerator and the latter as
+    denominator, expresses the current-strength. The “current-strength”
+    of the clergy towards science may also be expressed by making the
+    positive element just referred to the numerator, and the negative
+    one the denominator of a fraction. The numerator is not zero nor is
+    it even small, but the denominator is large; and hence the current
+    strength is such as we find it to be. Slowness of conception, even
+    open hostility, may be thus accounted for. They are for the most
+    part errors of judgment, and not sins against truth. To most of us
+    it may appear very simple, but to a few of us it appears
+    transcendently wonderful, that in all classes of society truth
+    should have this power and fascination. From the countless
+    modifications that life has undergone through natural selection and
+    the integration of infinitesimal steps, emerges finally the grand
+    result that the strength of truth is greater than the strength of
+    error, and that we have only to make the truth clear to the world to
+    gain the world to our side. Probably no one wonders more at this
+    result than the propounder of the law of natural selection himself.
+    Reverting to an old acquaintance of ours, it would seem, on purely
+    scientific grounds, as if a Veracity were at the heart of things; as
+    if, after ages of latent working, it had finally unfolded itself in
+    the life of man; as if it were still destined to unfold itself,
+    growing in girth, throwing out stronger branches and thicker leaves,
+    and tending more and more by its overshadowing presence to starve
+    the weeds of error from the intellectual soil.
+
+    But this is parenthetical; and the gist of our present inquiry
+    regarding the introduction of life is this: Does it belong to what
+    we call matter, or is it an independent principle inserted into
+    matter at some suitable epoch—say when the physical conditions
+    become such as to permit of the development of life? Let us put the
+    question with all the reverence due to a faith and culture in which
+    we all were cradled—a faith and culture, moreover, which are the
+    undeniable historic antecedents of our present enlightenment. I say,
+    let us put the question reverently, but let us also put it clearly
+    and definitely.
+
+    There are the strongest grounds for believing that during a certain
+    period of its history the earth was not, nor was it fit to be, the
+    theater of life. Whether this was ever a nebulous period, or merely
+    a molten period, does not much matter; and if we revert to the
+    nebulous condition, it is because the probabilities are really on
+    its side. Our question is this: Did creative energy pause until the
+    nebulous matter had condensed, until the earth had been detached,
+    until the solar fire had so far withdrawn from the earth’s vicinity
+    as to permit a crust to gather round a planet? Did it wait until the
+    air was isolated, until the seas were formed, until evaporation,
+    condensation, and the descent of rain had begun, until the eroding
+    forces of the atmosphere had weathered and decomposed the molten
+    rocks so as to form soils, until the sun’s rays had become so
+    tempered by distance and by waste as to be chemically fit for the
+    decompositions necessary to vegetable life? Having waited through
+    those æons until the proper conditions had set in, did it send the
+    fiat forth, “Let life be!”? These questions define a hypothesis not
+    without its difficulties, but the dignity of which was demonstrated
+    by the nobleness of the men whom it sustained.
+
+    Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide between this
+    hypothesis and another; and public thought generally will afterwards
+    be called upon to do the same. You may, however, rest secure in the
+    belief that the hypothesis just sketched can never be stormed, and
+    that it is sure, if it yield at all, to yield to a prolonged siege.
+    To gain new territory, modern argument requires more time than
+    modern arms, though both of them move with greater rapidity than of
+    yore.
+
+    But however the convictions of individuals here and there may be
+    influenced, the process must be slow and secular which commends the
+    rival hypothesis of natural evolution to the public mind. For what
+    are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you
+    stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble
+    forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the nobler forms of
+    the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism
+    of the human body, but that the human mind itself—emotion,
+    intellect, will, and all their phenomena—were once latent in a fiery
+    cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a motion is more than a
+    refutation. But the hypothesis would probably go even further than
+    this. Many who hold it would probably assent to the position that at
+    the present moment all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our
+    science, and all our art—Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael—are
+    potential in the fires of the sun.
+
+    We long to learn something of our origin. If the evolution
+    hypothesis be correct, even this unsatisfied yearning must have come
+    to us across the ages which separate the unconscious primeval mist
+    from the consciousness of to-day. I do not think that any holder of
+    the evolution hypothesis would say that I overstate it or overstrain
+    it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, and bring before
+    you, unclothed and unvarnished, the notions by which it must stand
+    or fall.
+
+    Surely these notions represent an absurdity too monstrous to be
+    entertained by any sane mind. Let us, however, give them fair play.
+    Let us steady ourselves in front of the hypothesis, and, dismissing
+    all terror and excitement from our minds, let us look firmly into it
+    with the hard, sharp eye of intellect alone. Why are these notions
+    absurd, and why should sanity reject them? The law of relativity, of
+    which we have previously spoken, may find its application here.
+    These evolution notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the
+    intellectual gibbet in relation to the ideas concerning matter which
+    were drilled into us when young. Spirit and matter have ever been
+    presented to us in the rudest contrast, the one as all noble, the
+    other as all vile. But is this correct? Does it represent what our
+    mightiest spiritual teacher would call the eternal fact of the
+    universe? Upon the answer to this question all depends.
+
+    Supposing, instead of having the foregoing antithesis of spirit and
+    matter presented to our youthful minds, we had been taught to regard
+    them as equally worthy and equally wonderful; to consider them, in
+    fact, as two opposite faces of the self-same mystery. Supposing that
+    in youth we had been impregnated with the notion of the poet Goethe,
+    instead of the notion of the poet Young, looking at matter, not as
+    brute matter, but as “the living garment of God;” do you not think
+    that under these altered circumstances the law of relativity might
+    have had an outcome different from its present one? Is it not
+    probable that our repugnance to the idea of primeval union between
+    spirit and matter might be considerably abated? Without this total
+    revolution of the notions now prevalent the evolution hypothesis
+    must stand condemned; but in many profoundly thoughtful minds such a
+    revolution has already taken place. They degrade neither member of
+    the mysterious duality referred to; but they exalt one of them from
+    its abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto existing between
+    both. In substance, if not in words, their position as regards
+    spirit and matter is: “What God hath joined together let not man put
+    asunder.”
+
+    I have thus led you to the outer rim of speculative science, for
+    beyond the nebula scientific thought has never ventured hitherto,
+    and have tried to state that which I considered ought, in fairness,
+    to be outspoken. I do not think this evolution hypothesis is to be
+    flouted away contemptuously; I do not think it is to be denounced as
+    wicked. It is to be brought before the bar of disciplined reason,
+    and there justified or condemned. Let us hearken to those who wisely
+    support it, and to those who wisely oppose it; and let us tolerate
+    those, and they are many, who foolishly try to do neither of these
+    things.
+
+    The only thing out of place in the discussion is dogmatism on either
+    side. Fear not the evolution hypothesis. Steady yourselves in its
+    presence upon that faith in the ultimate triumph of truth which was
+    expressed by old Gamaliel when he said: “If it be of God, ye cannot
+    overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to naught.” Under the
+    fierce light of scientific inquiry this hypothesis is sure to be
+    dissipated if it possess not a core of truth. Trust me, its
+    existence as an hypothesis in the mind is quite compatible with the
+    simultaneous existence of all those virtues to which the term
+    Christian has been applied. It does not solve—it does not profess to
+    solve—the ultimate mystery untouched. At bottom it does nothing more
+    than “transport the conception of life’s origin to an indefinitely
+    distant past.”
+
+    For, granting the nebula and its potential life, the question,
+    whence came they? would still remain to baffle and bewilder us. And
+    with regard to the ages of forgetfulness which lie between the
+    conscious life of the nebula and the conscious life of the earth, it
+    is but an extension of that forgetfulness which preceded the birth
+    of us all. Those who hold the doctrine of evolution are by no means
+    ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they yield no more to
+    it than a provisional assent. They regard the nebular hypothesis as
+    probable, and in the utter absence of any evidence to prove the act
+    illegal, they extend the method of nature from the present into the
+    past. Here the observed uniformity of nature is their only guide.
+    Within the long range of physical inquiry they have never discerned
+    in nature the insertion of caprice. Throughout this range the laws
+    of physical and intellectual continuity have run side by side.
+    Having thus determined the elements of their curve in this world of
+    observation and experiment, they prolong that curve into an
+    antecedent world, and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of
+    development from the nebula to the present time.
+
+    You never hear the really philosophical defenders of the doctrine of
+    uniformity speaking of _impossibilities_ in nature. They never say,
+    what they are constantly charged with saying, that it is impossible
+    for the builder of the universe to alter His work. Their business is
+    not with the possible, but the actual; not with a world which
+    _might_ be, but with a world which _is_. This they explore with a
+    courage not unmixed with reverence, and according to methods which,
+    like the quality of a tree, are tested by their fruits. They have
+    but one desire—to know the truth. They have but one fear—to believe
+    a lie. And if they know the strength of science, and rely upon it
+    with unswerving trust, they also know the limits beyond which
+    science ceases to be strong. They best know that questions offer
+    themselves to thought which science, as now prosecuted, has not even
+    the tendency to solve. They keep such questions open, and will not
+    tolerate any unlawful limitation of the horizon of their souls. They
+    have as little fellowship with the atheist who says there is no God
+    as with the theist who professes to know the mind of God.
+
+    “Two things,” said Immanuel Kant, “fill me with awe: the starry
+    heavens and the sense of moral responsibility in man.” And in his
+    hours of health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of action
+    has ceased and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific
+    investigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe. Breaking
+    contact with the hampering details of earth, it associates him with
+    a power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which he
+    can neither analyze nor comprehend.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+    ● Transcriber’s Notes:
+       ○ The first 44 footnotes are gathered together in the “NOTES AND
+         REFERENCES” section. The following footnotes appear in the text
+         where they are referenced.
+       ○ The mid dot—“·” is used in numbers to separate the whole part
+         from the decimal fraction of the number.
+       ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
+       ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
+       ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
+         when a predominant form was found in this book.
+       ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores
+         (_italics_).
+       ○ The use of a caret (^) before a letter, or letters, shows that
+         the following letter or letters was intended to be a
+         superscript, as in S^t Bartholomew or 10^{th} Century.
+       ○ Superscripts are used to indicate numbers raised to a power. In
+         this plain text document, they are represented by characters
+         like this: “MV^2” or “10^{18}”, i.e. MV squared or 10 to the
+         18th power.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 66177 ***
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-

-<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Half Hours with Modern Scientists, by T. H. Huxley</div>

-

-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and

-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms

-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online

-at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you

-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the

-country where you are located before using this eBook.

-</div>

-

-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Half Hours with Modern Scientists</p>

-

-<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: T. H. Huxley, G. F. Barker, James Hutchinson Sterling, E. D. Cope and John Tyndall</div>

-

-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August 30, 2021 [eBook #66177]</div>

-

-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>

-

-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>

-

-<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: deaurider, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</div>

-

-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALF HOURS WITH MODERN SCIENTISTS ***</div>

-

-<div  class='figcenter id001'>

-<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />

-<div class='ic001'>

-<p><span class='small'>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</span></p>

-</div>

-</div>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c000' />

-</div>

-<div>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_I'>I</span>

-  <h1 class='c001'><span class='c002'>HALF HOURS</span><br /> <br />WITH<br /> <br /><span class='c002'><span class='sc'>Modern Scientists</span>.</span></h1>

-</div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c003'>

-    <div><span class='c004'>LECTURES AND ESSAYS</span></div>

-    <div class='c003'>BY</div>

-    <div class='c000'>PROFS. HUXLEY, BARKER, STIRLING, COPE AND TYNDALL.</div>

-    <div class='c003'>WITH</div>

-    <div class='c003'><span class='c004'>A GENERAL INTRODUCTION</span></div>

-    <div class='c003'>BY</div>

-    <div class='c000'>NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D.,</div>

-    <div class='c000'><span class='small'>PRESIDENT OF YALE COLLEGE.</span></div>

-    <div class='c005'><span class='c004'>FIRST SERIES.</span></div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div  class='figcenter id002'>

-<img src='images/publogo.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />

-</div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c005'>

-    <div><span class='c004'>NEW HAVEN, CONN.:</span></div>

-    <div><span class='sc'>Charles C. Chatfield &amp; Co.</span>,</div>

-    <div>1872.</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c003'>

-    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_II'>II</span><span class='large'>────────────────────────────</span></div>

-    <div><span class='large'>Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1872, by</span></div>

-    <div class='c000'><span class='large'><span class='sc'>Charles C. Chatfield &amp; Co.</span>,</span></div>

-    <div class='c000'><span class='large'>In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.</span></div>

-    <div><span class='large'>────────────────────────────</span></div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='lg-container-l c006'>

-  <div class='linegroup'>

-    <div class='group'>

-      <div class='line'>──────────────</div>

-      <div class='line'><span class='small'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW HAVEN, CONN.:</span></div>

-      <div class='line'><span class='small'>THE COLLEGE COURANT PRINT.</span></div>

-      <div class='line'>──────────────</div>

-    </div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c006'>

-    <div>──────────────────</div>

-    <div><i>Electrotyped by E. B. Sheldon, New Haven, Conn.</i></div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_III'>III</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>CONTENTS.</h2>

-</div>

-

-<table class='table0' summary=''>

-<colgroup>

-<col width='86%' />

-<col width='13%' />

-</colgroup>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>General Introduction.</span> <span class='small'>BY PREST. PORTER,</span></td>

-    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_v'>v</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On The Physical Basis of Life.</span><br /> <span class='small'>PROF. T. H. HUXLEY,</span></td>

-    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>Correlation of Vital and Physical Forces.</span><br /> <span class='small'>PROF. G. F. BARKER, M.D.,</span></td>

-    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_37'>37</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>As Regards Protoplasm—Reply to Huxley.</span><br /> <span class='small'>JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING,</span></td>

-    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_73'>73</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On The Hypothesis of Evolution.</span><br /> <span class='small'>PROF. E. D. COPE,</span></td>

-    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_145'>145</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>Scientific Addresses.</span></td>

-    <td class='c009'>&nbsp;</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On the Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation</span>,</td>

-    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_219'>219</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On Haze and Dust</span>,</td>

-    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_234'>234</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On the Scientific Use of the Imagination</span>,</td>

-    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_247'>247</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c008'><span class='small'>PROF. JOHN TYNDALL, LL.D., F.R.S.,</span></td>

-    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_217'>217</a></td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_v'>v</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION OF HALF HOURS WITH MODERN SCIENTISTS.</h2>

-</div>

-<p class='c010'>The title of this Series of Essays—<i>Half Hours

-with Modern Scientists</i>—suggests a variety of

-thoughts, some of which may not be inappropriate

-for a brief introduction to a new edition. <i>Scientist</i>

-is a modern appellation which has been specially

-selected to designate a devotee to one or more

-branches of physical science. Strictly interpreted

-it might properly be applied to the student of any

-department of knowledge when prosecuted in a

-scientific method, but for convenience it is limited

-to the student of some branch of physics. It is

-not thereby conceded that nature, <i>i.e.</i>, physical or

-material nature is any more legitimately or exclusively

-the field for scientific enquiries than spirit,

-or that whether the objects of science are material

-or spiritual, the assumptions and processes of

-science themselves should not be subjected to scientific

-analysis and justification. There are so-called

-philosophers who adopt both these conclusions.

-There are those who reason and dogmatize as

-though nature were synonymous with matter, or as

-though spirit, if there be such an essence, must be

-conceived and explained after the principles and

-analogies of matter;—others assume that a science

-of scientific method can be nothing better than the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_vi'>vi</span>mist or moonshine which they vilify by the name of

-metaphysics. But unfortunately for such opinions

-the fact is constantly forced upon the attention of

-scientists of every description, that the agent by

-which they examine matter is more than matter,

-and that this agent, whatever be its substance, asserts

-its prerogatives to determine the conceptions

-which the scientist forms of matter as well as to

-the methods by which he investigates material properties.

-Even the positivist philosopher who not

-only denounces metaphysics as illegitimate, but also

-contends that the metaphysical era of human inquiry,

-has in the development of scientific progress

-been outgrown like the measles, which is experienced

-but once in a life-time; finds when his

-positivist theory is brought to the test that positivism

-itself in its very problem and its solutions, is

-but the last adopted metaphysical theory of science.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>We also notice that it is very difficult, if not impossible,

-for the inquisitive scientist to limit himself

-strictly to the object-matter of his own chosen field,

-and not to enquire more or less earnestly—not infrequently

-to dogmatize more or less positively—respecting

-the results of other sciences and even

-respecting the foundations and processes of scientific

-inquiry itself. Thus Mr. Huxley in the first

-Essay of this Series on <i>The Physical Basis of Life</i>,

-leaves the discussion of his appropriate theme in

-order to deliver sundry very positive and pronounced

-assertions respecting the “limits of philosophical

-inquiry,” and quotes with manifest satisfaction

-a dictum of David Hume that is sufficiently

-dogmatic and positive, as to what these limits are.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span>In more than one of his Lay sermons, he rushes

-headlong into the most pronounced assertions in respect

-to the nature of matter and of spirit. The eloquent

-Tyndall, in No. 5, expounds at length <i>The

-Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation</i> and

-discourses eloquently, if occasionally somewhat poetically,

-of <i>The Scientific use of the Imagination</i>. But

-Messrs. Huxley and Tyndall are eminent examples

-of scientists who are severely and successfully

-devoted respectively to physiology and the higher

-physics. No one will contend that they have not

-faithfully cultivated their appropriate fields of inquiry.

-The fact that neither can be content to confine

-himself within his special field, forcibly illustrates

-the tendency of every modern science to

-concern itself with its relations to its neighbors,

-and the unresistible necessity which forces the most

-rigid physicist to become a metaphysician in spite of

-himself. So much for the appellation “<i>Scientists</i>.”</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>“<i>Half Hours</i>” suggests the very natural inquiry—What

-can a scientist communicate in half an

-hour, especially to a reader who may be ignorant

-of the elements of the science which he would expound?

-Does not the phrase <i>Half Hours with

-Modern Scientists</i> stultify itself and suggest the

-folly of any attempt to treat of science with effect

-in a series of essays? In reply we would ask the

-attention of the reader to the following considerations.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The tendency is universal among the scientific

-men of all nations, to present the principles of

-science in such brief summaries or statements as

-may bring them within the reach of common readers.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_viii'>viii</span>The tendency indicates that there is a large body of

-readers who are so far instructed in the elements of

-science as to be able to understand these summaries.

-In England, Germany, France and this country such

-brief essays are abundant, either in the form of contributions

-to popular and scientific journals, or in

-that of popular lectures, or in that of brief manuals,

-or of monographs on separate topics; especially

-such topics as are novel, or are interesting to the

-public for their theoretic brilliancy, or their applications

-to industry and art.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>These essays need not be and they are not always

-superficial, because they are brief. They often are

-the more profound on account of their conciseness,

-as when they contain a condensed summary of the

-main principles of the art or science in question,

-or a brief history of the successive experiments

-which have issued in some brilliant discovery.

-These essays are very generally read, even though

-they are both concise and profound. But they could

-not be read even though they were less profound

-than they are, were there not provided a numerous

-company of readers who are sufficiently instructed

-in science to appreciate them. That such a body

-of readers exists in the countries referred to, is

-easily explained by the existence of public schools

-and schools of science and technology, by the

-enormous extension of the knowledge of machinery,

-engineering, mining, dyeing, etc., etc., all of which

-imply a more or less distinct recognition of scientific

-principles and stimulate the curiosity in regard

-to scientific truth. Popular lectures also, illustrated

-by experiments, have been repeated before thousands

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span>of excited listeners, and the eager and inventive

-minds of multitudes of ingenious youths have been

-trained by this distribution of science, to the capacity

-to comprehend the compact and pointed

-scientific essay, even though it taxes the attention

-and suspends the breath for a half-hour by its closeness

-and severity.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The fact is also worthy of notice, that many of

-the ablest scientists of our times have made a special

-study of the art of expounding and presenting scientific

-truth. Some of them have schooled themselves

-to that lucid and orderly method by which a science

-seems to spring into being a second time, under

-the creative hand of its skilful expositor. Others

-have made a special study of philosophic diction.

-Others have learned how to adorn scientific truth

-with the embellishments of an affluent imagination.

-Some of the ablest writers of our time are found

-among the devotees of physical science. That a

-few scientific writers and lecturers may have exemplified

-some of the most offensive features of the

-demagogue and the sophist cannot be denied, but

-we may not forget that many have attained to the

-consummate skill of the accomplished essayist and

-impressive and eloquent orator.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>One advantage cannot be denied of this now

-popular and established method of setting forth

-scientific truth, viz., that it prescribes a convenient

-method of bringing into contrast the arguments <i>for</i>

-and <i>against</i> any disputed position in science. If

-materialism can furnish its ready advocate with a

-convenient vehicle for its ready diffusion, the antagonist

-theory can avail itself of a similar vehicle

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_x'>x</span>for the communication of the decisive and pungent

-reply. The one is certain to call forth the other,

-and if the two are present side by side in the same

-series, so much the better is it for the truth and so

-much the worse for the error. The teacher before

-his class, the lecturer in the presence of his audience,

-has the argument usually to himself; he allows few

-questionings and admits no reply. An erroneous

-theory may entrench itself within a folio against

-arguments which would annihilate its positions if

-these were condensed in a tract.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>This consideration should dispel all the alarm

-that is felt by the defenders of religion in view of

-the general diffusion of popular scientific treatises.

-The brief statement of a false or groundless scientific

-theory, even by its defender, is often its most

-effectual refutation. A magnificently imposing

-argument often shrinks into insignificance when its

-advocate is forced to state its substance in a compact

-and close-jointed outline. The articulations

-are seen to be defective, the joints do not fit one

-another, the coherence is conspicuously wanting.

-Let then error do its utmost in the field of science.

-Its deficient data and its illogical processes are certain

-to be exposed, sometimes even by its own advocates.

-If this does not happen the defender of that

-scientific truth which seems to be essential to the

-teachings and faiths of religion, must scrutinize its

-reasonings by the rules and methods of scientific

-inquiry. If science seems to be hostile to religion,

-this very seeming should arouse the defender of

-Theism and Christianity to examine into the grounds

-both by the light and methods which are appropriate

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span>to science itself. The more brief and compact and

-popular is the argument which he is to refute, the

-more feasible is the task of exposure and reply.

-Only let this be a cardinal maxim with the defender

-of the truth, that whatever is scientifically defended

-and maintained must be scientifically refuted and

-overthrown. The great Master of our faith never

-uttered a more comprehensive or a grander maxim

-than the memorable words, “<i>To this end was I born

-and for this cause came I into the world, that I should

-bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the

-truth heareth my voice.</i>” It would be easy to show

-that the belief in moral and religious truth and the

-freedom in searching for and defending it which was

-inspired by these words have been most efficient in

-training the human mind to that faith in the results

-of scientific investigation which characterize the

-modern scientist. That Christian believer must

-either have a very imperfect view of the spirit of

-his own faith, or a very narrow conception of the

-evidences and the effect of its teachings, who imagines

-that the freest spirit of scientific inquiry, or

-the most penetrating insight into the secrets of

-matter or of spirit can have any other consequence

-than to strengthen and brighten the evidence for

-Christian truth.</p>

-<div class='c012'>N. P.</div>

-<p class='c013'><span class='sc'>Yale College</span>, <i>May</i>, 1872.</p>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_xiii'>xiii</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>PUBLISHERS’ NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.</h2>

-</div>

-<p class='c010'>The five lectures embodied in this First Series of Half Hours

-with Modern Scientists were first published as Nos. I.—V. of the

-University Scientific Series. In this series the publishers have

-aimed to give to the public in a cheap pamphlet form, the advance

-thought in the Scientific world. The intrinsic value of these lectures

-has created a very general desire to have them put in a permanent

-form. They therefore have brought them out in this style.

-Each five succeeding numbers of this celebrated series will be

-printed and bound in uniform style with this volume, and be designated

-as second series, third series, and so on. Henceforth it will

-be the design of the publishers to give preference to those lectures

-and essays of American scientists which contain original research

-and discovery, rather than to reprinting from European sources. The

-lectures in the second series will be (1) On Natural Selection as

-Applied to Man, by Alfred Russel Wallace; (2) three profoundly

-interesting lectures on Spectrum Analysis, by Profs. Roscoe, Huggins,

-and Lockyer; (3) the Sun and its Different Atmospheres,

-a lecture by Prof. C. A. Young, Ph.D., of Dartmouth College; (4)

-the Earth a great Magnet, by Prof. A. M. Mayer, Ph.D., of Stevens

-Institute; and (5) the Mysteries of the Voice and Ear, by Prof.

-Ogden N. Rood, of Columbia College. The last three lectures

-contain many original discoveries and brilliant experiments, and are

-finely illustrated.</p>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c006'>

-    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span>──────────────</div>

-    <div><span class='xlarge'><i>ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE.</i></span></div>

-    <div>──────────────</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c006' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <h2 class='c007'>INTRODUCTION.</h2>

-</div>

-<p class='c010'>The following remarkable discourse was originally delivered in

-Edinburgh, November 18th, 1868, as the first of a series of Sunday

-evening addresses, upon non-religious topics, instituted by the Rev.

-J. Cranbrook. It was subsequently published in London as the

-leading article in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, for February, 1869, and attracted

-so much attention that five editions of that number of the

-magazine have already been issued. It is now re-printed in this

-country, in permanent form, for the first time, and will doubtless

-prove of great interest to American readers. The author is

-Thomas Henry Huxley, of London, Professor of Natural History

-in the Royal School of Mines, and of Comparative Anatomy and

-Physiology in the Royal College of Surgeons. He is also President

-of the Geological Society of London. Although comparatively

-a young man, his numerous and valuable contributions to Natural

-Science entitle him to be considered one of the first of living Naturalists,

-especially in the departments of Zoölogy and Paleontology,

-to which he has mainly devoted himself. He is undoubtedly

-the ablest English advocate of Darwin’s theory of the Origin of

-Species, particularly with reference to its application to the human

-race, which he believes to be nearly related to the higher apes. It

-is, indeed, through his discussion of this question that he is, perhaps,

-best known to the general public, as his late work entitled

-“Man’s Place in Nature,” and other writings on similar topics,

-have been very widely read in this country and in Europe. In the

-present lecture Professor Huxley discusses a kindred subject of no

-less interest and importance, and should have an equally candid

-hearing.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Yale College</span>, <i>March</i> 30<i>th</i>, 1869.</p>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>On the Physical Basis of Life.</h2>

-</div>

-<p class='c010'>In order to make the title of this discourse generally

-intelligible, I have translated the term “Protoplasm,”

-which is the scientific name of the substance of which I

-am about to speak, by the words “the physical basis of

-life.” I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is

-such a thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life may

-be novel—so widely spread is the conception of life as

-a something which works through matter, but is independent

-of it; and even those who are aware that matter

-and life are inseparably connected, may not be prepared

-for the conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase

-“the physical basis or matter of life,” that there is some

-one kind of matter which is common to all living beings,

-and that their endless diversities are bound together by

-a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first

-apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears almost

-shocking to common sense. What, truly, can seem to be

-more obviously different from one another in faculty, in

-form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living

-beings? What community of faculty can there be between

-the brightly-colored lichen, which so nearly resembles

-a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock on

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with

-beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge?</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Again, think of the microscopic fungus—a mere infinitesimal

-ovoid particle, which finds space and duration

-enough to multiply into countless millions in the body

-of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the

-luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this

-bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California,

-towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the

-Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow,

-and endures while nations and empires come and go

-around its vast circumference! Or, turning to the other

-half of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great

-finner whale, hugest of beasts that live, or have lived,

-disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle and

-blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest

-ship that ever left dockyard would founder hopelessly;

-and contrast him with the invisible animalcules—mere

-gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could, in

-fact, dance upon the point of a needle with the same ease

-as the angels of the schoolmen could, in imagination.

-With these images before your minds, you may well ask

-what community of form, or structure, is there between

-the animalcule and the whale, or between the fungus and

-fig-tree? And, <i>a fortiori</i>, between all four?</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition,

-what hidden bond can connect the flower which a

-girl wears in her hair and the blood which courses through

-her youthful veins; or, what is there in common between

-the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong

-fabric of the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>jelly which may be seen pulsating through the waters of

-a calm sea, but which drain away to mere films in the

-hand which raises them out of their element? Such objections

-as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every

-one who ponders, for the first time, upon the conception

-of a single physical basis of life underlying all the diversities

-of vital existence; but I propose to demonstrate

-to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties,

-a threefold unity—namely, a unity of power or faculty,

-a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition—does

-pervade the whole living world. No very abstruse

-argumentation is needed, in the first place, to prove that

-the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of living matter, diverse

-as they may be in degree, are substantially similar

-in kind. Goethe has condensed a survey of all the powers

-of mankind into the well-known epigram:</p>

-

-<p class='c014'>“Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich ernähren

- Kinder zeugen, und sie nähren so gut es vermag.</p>

-<hr class='c015' />

-<p class='c016'>Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich, wie er auch will.”</p>

-

-<p class='c017'>In physiological language this means, that all the multifarious

-and complicated activities of man are comprehensible

-under three categories. Either they are immediately

-directed towards the maintenance and development

-of the body, or they effect transitory changes

-in the relative positions of parts of the body, or they

-tend towards the continuance of the species. Even

-those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will,

-which we rightly name the higher faculties, are not excluded

-from this classification, inasmuch as to every one

-but the subject of them, they are known only as transitory

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>changes in the relative positions of parts of the body.

-Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action

-are, in the long run, resolvable into muscular contraction,

-and muscular contraction is but a transitory change

-in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. But

-the scheme, which is large enough to embrace the activities

-of the highest form of life, covers all those of the

-lower creatures. The lowest plant, or animalcule, feeds,

-grows and reproduces its kind. In addition, all animals

-manifest those transitory changes of form which we class

-under irritability and contractility; and it is more than

-probable, that when the vegetable world is thoroughly

-explored, we shall find all plants in possession of the

-same powers, at one time or other of their existence. I

-am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare

-and conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of

-the sensitive plant, or the stamens of the barberry, but

-to much more widely-spread, and, at the same time, more

-subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable contractility.

-You are doubtless aware that the common nettle

-owes its stinging property to the innumerable stiff and

-needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover

-its surface. Each stinging-needle tapers from a broad

-base to a slender summit, which, though rounded at the

-end, is of such microscopic fineness that it readily penetrates,

-and breaks off in, the skin. The whole hair

-consists of a very delicate outer case of wood, closely

-applied to the inner surface of which is a layer of semi-fluid

-matter, full of innumerable granules of extreme

-minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm, which

-thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of

-the hair which it fills. When viewed with a sufficiently

-high magnifying power, the protoplasmic layer of the

-nettle hair is seen to be in a condition of unceasing activity.

-Local contractions of the whole thickness of its

-substance pass slowly and gradually from point to point,

-and give rise to the appearance of progressive waves,

-just as the bending of successive stalks of corn by a

-breeze produces the apparent billows of a corn-field.

-But, in addition to these movements, and independently

-of them, the granules are driven, in relatively rapid

-streams, through channels in the protoplasm which seem

-to have a considerable amount of persistence. Most

-commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the protoplasm

-take similar directions; and, thus, there is a general

-stream up one side of the hair and down the other.

-But this does not prevent the existence of partial currents

-which take different routes; and, sometimes, trains

-of granules may be seen coursing swiftly in opposite

-directions, within a twenty-thousandth of an inch of one

-another; while, occasionally, opposite streams come

-into direct collision, and, after a longer or shorter struggle,

-one predominates. The cause of these currents

-seem to lie in contractions of the protoplasm which

-bounds the channels in which they flow, but which are

-so minute that the best microscopes show only their

-effects, and not themselves.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned

-within the compass of the microscopic hair of a

-plant, which we commonly regard as a merely passive

-organism, is not easily forgotten by one who has watched

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>its display continued hour after hour, without pause or

-sign of weakening. The possible complexity of many

-other organic forms, seemingly as simple as the protoplasm

-of the nettle, dawns upon one; and the comparison

-of such a protoplasm to a body with an internal

-circulation, which has been put forward by an eminent

-physiologist, loses much of its startling character. Currents

-similar to those of the hairs of the nettle have

-been observed in a great multitude of very different

-plants, and weighty authorities have suggested that they

-probably occur, in more or less perfection, in all young

-vegetable cells. If such be the case, the wonderful

-noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only

-to the dullness of our hearing; and could our ears catch

-the murmur of these tiny maelstroms, as they whirl in

-the innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute

-each tree, we should be stunned, as with the roar of a

-great city.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the

-exception, that contractility should be still more openly

-manifested at some periods of their existence. The

-protoplasm of <i>Algæ</i> and <i>Fungi</i> becomes, under many

-circumstances, partially, or completely, freed from its

-woody case, and exhibits movements of its whole mass,

-or is propelled by the contractility of one or more hair-like

-prolongations of its body, which are called vibratile

-cilia. And, so far as the conditions of the manifestation

-of the phenomena of contractility have yet been

-studied, they are the same for the plant as for the animal.

-Heat and electric shocks influence both, and in

-the same way, though it may be in different degrees. It

-is by no means my intention to suggest that there is no

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>difference in faculty between the lowest plant and the

-highest, or between plants and animals. But the difference

-between the powers of the lowest plant, or animal,

-and those of the highest is one of degree, not of kind,

-and depends, as Milne-Edwards long ago so well pointed

-out, upon the extent to which the principle of the division

-of labor is carried out in the living economy. In the

-lowest organism all parts are competent to perform all

-functions, and one and the same portion of protoplasm

-may successively take on the function of feeding, moving,

-or reproducing apparatus. In the highest, on the

-contrary, a great number of parts combine to perform

-each function, each part doing its allotted share of the

-work with great accuracy and efficiency, but being useless

-for any other purpose. On the other hand, notwithstanding

-all the fundamental resemblances which exist

-between the powers of the protoplasm in plants and in

-animals, they present a striking difference (to which I

-shall advert more at length presently,) in the fact that

-plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of mineral

-compounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it

-ready-made, and hence, in the long run, depend upon

-plants. Upon what condition this difference in the powers

-of the two great divisions of the world of life depends,

-nothing is at present known.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>With such qualification as arises out of the last-mentioned

-fact, it may be truly said that the acts of all

-living things are fundamentally one. Is any such unity

-predicable of their forms? Let us seek in easily verified

-facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be

-drawn by pricking one’s finger, and viewed with proper

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>precautions and under a sufficiently high microscopic

-power, there will be seen, among the innumerable multitude

-of little, circular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles,

-which float in it and give it its color, a comparatively

-small number of colorless corpuscles, of somewhat larger

-size and very irregular shape. If the drop of blood

-be kept at the temperature of the body, these colorless

-corpuscles will be seen to exhibit a marvelous activity,

-changing their forms with great rapidity, drawing in and

-thrusting out prolongations of their substance, and creeping

-about as if they were independent organisms. The

-substance which is thus active is a mass of protoplasm,

-and its activity differs in detail, rather than in principle,

-from that of the protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry

-circumstances the corpuscle dies and becomes distended

-into a round mass, in the midst of which is seen

-a smaller spherical body, which existed, but was more or

-less hidden, in the living corpuscle, and is called its

-<i>nucleus</i>. Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are

-to be found in the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and

-scattered through the whole frame work of the body.

-Nay, more; in the earliest condition of the human organism,

-in that state in which it has just become distinguishable

-from the egg in which it arises, it is nothing

-but an aggregation of such corpuscles, and every organ

-of the body was, once, no more than such an aggregation.

-Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out

-to be what may be termed the structural unit of the human

-body. As a matter of fact, the body, in its earliest

-state, is a mere multiple of such units; and, in its perfect

-condition, it is a multiple of such units, variously

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>modified. But does the formula which expresses the essential

-structural character of the highest animal cover

-all the rest, as the statement of its powers and faculties

-covered that of all others? Very nearly. Beast and

-fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm, and polype, are all

-composed of structural units of the same character,

-namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There

-are sundry very low animals, each of which, structurally,

-is a mere colorless blood-corpuscle, leading an independent

-life. But, at the very bottom of the animal scale,

-even this simplicity becomes simplified, and all the phenomena

-of life are manifested by a particle of protoplasm

-without a nucleus. Nor are such organisms

-insignificant by reason of their want of complexity. It

-is a fair question whether the protoplasm of those simplest

-forms of life, which people an immense extent of

-the bottom of the sea, would not outweigh that of all

-the higher living beings which inhabit the land, put together.

-And in ancient times, no less than at the present

-day, such living beings as these have been the greatest

-of rock builders.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>What has been said of the animal world is no less

-true of plants. Imbedded in the protoplasm at the

-broad, or attached, end of the nettle hair, there lies a

-spheroidal nucleus. Careful examination further proves

-that the whole substance of the nettle is made up of a

-repetition of such masses of nucleated protoplasm, each

-contained in a wooden case, which is modified in form,

-sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes into a duct

-or spiral vessel, sometimes into a pollen grain, or an

-ovule. Traced back to its earliest state, the nettle arises

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>as the man does, in a particle of nucleated protoplasm.

-And in the lowest plants, as in the lowest animals, a

-single mass of such protoplasm may constitute the whole

-plant, or the protoplasm may exist without a nucleus.

-Under these circumstances it may well be asked, how

-is one mass of non-nucleated protoplasm to be distinguished

-from another? why call one “plant” and the

-other “animal?” The only reply is that, so far as form

-is concerned, plants and animals are not separable, and

-that, in many cases, it is a mere matter of convention

-whether we call a given organism an animal or a plant.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>There is a living body called <i>Æthalium septicum</i>, which

-appears upon decaying vegetable substances, and in one

-of its forms, is common upon the surface of tan pits.

-In this condition it is, to all intents and purposes, a fungus,

-and formerly was always regarded as such; but the

-remarkable investigations of De Bary have shown that,

-in another condition, the <i>Æthalium</i> is an actively locomotive

-creature, and takes in solid matters, upon which,

-apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the most characteristic

-feature of animality. Is this a plant, or is it an

-animal? Is it both, or is it neither? Some decide in

-favor of the last supposition, and establish an intermediate

-kingdom, a sort of biological No Man’s Land for

-all these questionable forms. But, as it is admittedly

-impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between

-this no man’s land and the vegetable world on the one

-hand, or the animal, on the other, it appears to me that

-this proceeding merely doubles the difficulty which, before,

-was single. Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is

-the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter;

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated

-by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest

-brick or sun-dried clod. Thus it becomes clear that

-all living powers are cognate, and that all living forms

-are fundamentally of one character.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The researches of the chemist have revealed a no less

-striking uniformity of material composition in living matter.

-In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investigation

-can tell us little or nothing, directly, of the composition

-of living matter, inasmuch as such matter must

-needs die in the act of analysis, and upon this very obvious

-ground, objections, which I confess seem to me to

-be somewhat frivolous, have been raised to the drawing

-of any conclusions whatever respecting the composition

-of actually living matter from that of the dead matter

-of life, which alone is accessible to us. But objectors

-of this class do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness,

-true that we know nothing about the composition

-of any body whatever, as it is. The statement that a

-crystal of calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime, is

-quite true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes,

-it may be resolved into carbonic acid and quicklime.

-If you pass the same carbonic acid over the very quicklime

-thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of lime

-again; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it.

-Can it, therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches

-nothing about the chemical composition of calc-spar?

-Such a statement would be absurd; but it is hardly more

-so than the talk one occasionally hears about the uselessness

-of applying the results of chemical analysis to the

-living bodies which have yielded them. One fact, at

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>any rate, is out of reach of such refinements, and this

-is, that all the forms of protoplasm which have yet been

-examined contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen,

-oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union, and that

-they behave similarly towards several reagents. To this

-complex combination, the nature of which has never

-been determined with exactness, the name of Protein

-has been applied. And if we use this term with such

-caution as may properly arise out of our comparative

-ignorance of the things for which it stands, it may be

-truly said, that all protoplasm is proteinaceous; or, as

-the white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the commonest

-examples of a nearly pure protein matter, we may

-say that all living matter is more or less albuminoid.

-Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all forms of

-protoplasm are affected by the direct action of electric

-shocks; and yet the number of cases in which the contraction

-of protoplasm is shown to be affected by this

-agency increases, every day. Nor can it be affirmed with

-perfect confidence that all forms of protoplasm are liable

-to undergo that peculiar coagulation at the temperature

-of 40 degrees—50 degrees centigrade, which has been

-called “heat-stiffening,” though Kühne’s beautiful researches

-have proved this occurrence to take place in so

-many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash

-to expect that the law holds good for all. Enough has,

-perhaps, been said to prove the existence of a general

-uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or physical

-basis of life, in whatever group of living beings it

-may be studied. But it will be understood that this general

-uniformity by no means excludes any amount of

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>special modifications of the fundamental substance. The

-mineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity

-of characters, though no one doubts that under all

-these Protean changes it is one and the same thing.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin

-of the matter of life? Is it, as some of the older

-naturalists supposed, diffused throughout the universe in

-molecules, which are indestructible and unchangeable in

-themselves; but, in endless transmigration, unite in innumerable

-permutations, into the diversified forms of life

-we know? Or, is the matter of life composed of ordinary

-matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its

-atoms are aggregated? Is it built up of ordinary matter,

-and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is

-done? Modern science does not hesitate a moment between

-these alternatives. Physiology writes over the

-portals of life,</p>

-

-<div class='lg-container-b c018'>

-  <div class='linegroup'>

-    <div class='group'>

-      <div class='line'>“Debemur morti nos nostraque,”</div>

-    </div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c019'>with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached

-to that melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it

-takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the

-living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved

-into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always

-dying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not

-live unless it died. In the wonderful story of the “Peau

-de Chagrin,” the hero becomes possessed of a magical

-wild ass’s skin, which yields him the means of gratifying

-all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration

-of the proprietor’s life; and for every satisfied desire

-the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition,

-until at length life and the last handbreadth of the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>“Peau de Chagrin,” disappear with the gratification of

-a last wish. Balzac’s studies had led him over a wide

-range of thought and speculation, and his shadowing

-forth of physiological truth in this strange story may

-have been intentional. At any rate, the matter of life is

-a veritable “Peau de Chagrin,” and for every vital act it

-is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and

-the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the

-waste of protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker

-costs him some physical loss; and, in the strictest sense,

-he burns that others may have light—so much eloquence,

-so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid,

-water and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure

-cannot go on forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic

-<i>peau de chagrin</i> differs from Balzac’s in its capacity of

-being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after

-every exertion. For example, this present lecture, whatever

-its intellectual worth to you, has a certain physical

-value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the

-number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance

-wasted in maintaining my vital processes during

-its delivery. My <i>peau de chagrin</i> will be distinctly

-smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the

-beginning. By-and-by, I shall probably have recourse

-to the substance commonly called mutton, for the purpose

-of stretching it back to its original size. Now this

-mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or less modified,

-of another animal—a sheep. As I shall eat it, it

-is the same matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure

-to sundry artificial operations in the process of

-cooking. But these changes, whatever be their extent,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>have not rendered it incompetent to resume its old functions

-as matter of life. A singular inward laboratory,

-which I possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the

-modified protoplasm, the solution so formed will pass

-into my veins; and the subtle influences to which it will

-then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into

-living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man.

-Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled

-with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of

-the crustacean would undergo the same wonderful metamorphosis

-into humanity. And were I to return to my

-own place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacea

-might, and probably would, return the compliment, and

-demonstrate our common nature by turning my protoplasm

-into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were to

-be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I

-should find the protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible

-into man, with no more trouble than that of the

-sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of the lobster.

-Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what

-animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm,

-and the fact speaks volumes for the general identity

-of that substance in all living beings. I share this

-catholicity of assimilation with other animals, all of

-which, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the

-protoplasm of any of their fellows, or of any plant; but

-here the assimilative powers of the animal world cease.</p>

-<p class='c011'>A solution of smelling-salts in water with an infinitesimal

-proportion of some other saline matters, contains

-all the elementary bodies which enter into the composition

-of protoplasm; but, as I need hardly say, a hogshead

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>of that fluid would not keep a hungry man from

-starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from a

-like fate. An animal cannot make protoplasm, but must

-take it ready-made from some other animal, or some plant—the

-animal’s highest feat of constructive chemistry being

-to convert dead protoplasm into that living matter

-of life which is appropriate to itself. Therefore, in seeking

-for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventually turn

-to the vegetable world. The fluid containing carbonic

-acid, water, and ammonia, which offers such a barmecide

-feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes

-of plants; and with a due supply of only such materials,

-many a plant will not only maintain itself in vigor, but

-grow and multiply until it has increased a million-fold,

-or a million million-fold, the quantity of protoplasm

-which it originally possessed; in this way building up

-the matter of life, to an indefinite extent, from the common

-matter of the universe. Thus the animal can only

-raise the complex substance of dead protoplasm to the

-higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm;

-while the plant can raise the less complex substances—carbonic

-acid, water, and ammonia—to the same stage

-of living protoplasm, if not to the same level. But the

-plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example,

-appear to need higher compounds to start with,

-and no known plant can live upon the uncompounded

-elements of protoplasm. A plant supplied with pure carbon,

-hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur,

-and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal

-in his bath of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded

-by all the constituents of protoplasm. Nor,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>indeed, need the process of simplification of vegetable

-food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at the

-limit of the plant’s thaumaturgy.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful

-constituents, be supplied without ammonia, and an ordinary

-plant will still be unable to manufacture protoplasm.

-Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it

-(and we have no right to speculate on any other) breaks

-up in consequence of that continual death which is the

-condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid,

-water, and ammonia, which certainly possess no properties

-but those of ordinary matter; and out of these

-same forms of ordinary matter and from none which

-are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm

-which keeps the animal world agoing. Plants are

-the accumulators of the power which animals distribute

-and disperse.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But it will be observed, that the existence of the matter

-of life depends on the preëxistence of certain compounds,

-namely, carbonic acid, water, and ammonia.

-Withdraw any one of these three from the world and all

-vital phenomena come to an end. They are related to

-the protoplasm of the plant, as the protoplasm of the

-plant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,

-and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon

-and oxygen unite in certain proportion and under

-certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen

-and oxygen produce water; nitrogen and hydrogen

-give rise to ammonia. These new compounds, like the

-elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless.

-But when they are brought together, under certain

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>conditions they give rise to the still more complex body,

-protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena

-of life. I see no break in this series of steps in molecular

-complication, and I am unable to understand why the

-language which is applicable to any one term of the series

-may not be used to any of the others. We think fit

-to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen,

-and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers

-and activities of these substances as the properties of

-the matter of which they are composed. When hydrogen

-and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion, and

-the electric spark is passed through them, they disappear

-and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the sum of

-their weights, appears in their place. There is not the

-slightest parity between the passive and active powers

-of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen

-which have given rise to it. At 32 degrees Fahrenheit,

-and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen

-are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to rush

-away from one another with great force. Water, at the

-same temperature, is a strong though brittle solid, whose

-particles tend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes,

-and sometimes build up frosty imitations of the most

-complex forms of vegetable foliage. Nevertheless we

-call these, and many other strange phenomena, the

-properties of the water, and we do not hesitate to believe

-that, in some way or another, they result from the

-properties of the component elements of the water. We

-do not assume that a something called “aquosity” entered

-into and took possession of the oxide of hydrogen

-as soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>particles to their places in the facets of the crystal, or

-amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the contrary,

-we live in the hope and in the faith that, by the advance

-of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see

-our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the

-properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the

-operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the

-manner in which they are put together. Is the case in

-any way changed when carbonic acid, water and ammonia

-disappear, and in their place, under the influence of

-preëxisting living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the

-matter of life makes its appearance? It is true that there

-is no sort of parity between the properties of the components

-and the properties of the resultant, but neither was

-there in the case of the water. It is also true that what

-I have spoken of as the influence of preëxisting living

-matter is something quite unintelligible; but does any

-body quite comprehend the <i>modus operandi</i> of an electric

-spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen?

-What justification is there, then, for the assumption

-of the existence in the living matter of a something

-which has no representative or correlative in the not

-living matter which gave rise to it? What better philosophical

-status has “vitality” than “aquosity?” And

-why should “vitality” hope for a better fate than the other

-“itys” which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus

-accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its inherent

-“meat roasting quality,” and scorned the “materialism”

-of those who explained the turning of the spit by

-a certain mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney?

-If scientific language is to possess a definite and

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>constant signification whenever it is employed, it seems

-to me that we are logically bound to apply to the protoplasm,

-or physical basis of life, the same conceptions as

-those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the

-phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so are

-those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties.

-If the properties of water may be properly said

-to result from the nature and disposition of its component

-molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing

-to say that the properties of protoplasm result

-from the nature and disposition of its molecules. But I

-bid you beware that, in accepting these conclusions, you

-are placing your feet on the first rung of a ladder which,

-in most people’s estimation, is the reverse of Jacob’s,

-and leads to the antipodes of heaven. It may seem a

-small thing to admit that the dull vital actions of a fungus,

-or a foraminifer, are the properties of their protoplasm,

-and are the direct results of the nature of the

-matter of which they are composed.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But if, as I have endeavored to prove to you, their

-protoplasm is essentially identical with, and most readily

-converted into, that of any animal, I can discover no

-logical halting place between the admission that such is

-the case, and the further concession that all vital action

-may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of

-the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays

-it. And if so, it must be true, in the same sense and

-to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I am now

-giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are

-the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life

-which is the source of our other vital phenomena. Past

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>experience leads me to be tolerably certain that, when

-the propositions I have just placed before you are accessible

-to public comment and criticism, they will be condemned

-by many zealous persons, and perhaps by some

-few of the wise and thoughtful. I should not wonder if

-“gross and brutal materialism” were the mildest phrase

-applied to them in certain quarters. And most undoubtedly

-the terms of the propositions are distinctly

-materialistic. Nevertheless, two things are certain: the

-one, that I hold the statements to be substantially true;

-the other, that I, individually, am no materialist, but, on

-the contrary, believe materialism to involve grave philosophical

-error.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>This union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation

-of materialistic philosophy I share with some of

-the most thoughtful men with whom I am acquainted.

-And, when I first undertook to deliver the present discourse,

-it appeared to me to be a fitting opportunity to

-explain how such an union is not only consistent with,

-but necessitated by sound logic. I purposed to lead you

-through the territory of vital phenomena to the materialistic

-slough in which you find yourselves now plunged,

-and then to point out to you the sole path by which, in

-my judgment, extrication is possible. An occurrence,

-of which I was unaware until my arrival here last night,

-renders this line of argument singularly opportune. I

-found in your papers the eloquent address “On the

-Limits of Philosophical Inquiry,” which a distinguished

-prelate of the English Church delivered before the members

-of the Philosophical Institution on the previous

-day. My argument, also, turns upon this very point of

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>limits of philosophical inquiry; and I cannot bring out

-my own views better than by contrasting them with

-those so plainly, and, in the main, fairly stated by the

-Archbishop of York. But I may be permitted to make

-a preliminary comment upon an occurrence that greatly

-astonished me. Applying the name of “the New Philosophy”

-to that estimate of the limits of philosophical

-inquiry which I, in common with many other men of science,

-hold to be just, the Archbishop opens his address

-by identifying this “new philosophy” with the positive

-philosophy of M. Comte (of whom he speaks as its “founder”);

-and then proceeds to attack that philosopher and

-his doctrine vigorously. Now, so far as I am concerned,

-the most Reverend prelate might dialectically hew M.

-Comte in pieces, as a modern Agag, and I should not

-attempt to stay his hand. In so far as my study of what

-specially characterizes the Positive Philosophy has led

-me, I find therein little or nothing of any scientific value,

-and a great deal which is as thoroughly antagonistic to

-the very essence of science as anything in ultramontane

-Catholicism. In fact, M. Comte’s philosophy in

-practice might be compendiously described as Catholicism

-<i>minus</i> Christianity. But what has Comptism to do

-with the “New Philosophy,” as the Archbishop defines

-it in the following passage?</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>“Let me briefly remind you of the leading principles

-of this new philosophy.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>“All knowledge is experience of facts acquired by the

-senses. The traditions of older philosophies have obscured

-our experience by mixing with it much that the

-senses cannot observe, and until these additions are discarded

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>our knowledge is impure. Thus, metaphysics

-tells us that one fact which we observe is a cause, and

-another is the effect of that cause; but upon a rigid

-analysis we find that our senses observe nothing of cause

-or effect; they observe, first, that one fact succeeds another,

-and, after some opportunity, that this fact has

-never failed to follow—that for cause and effect we

-should substitute invariable succession. An older philosophy

-teaches us to define an object by distinguishing

-its essential from its accidental qualities; but experience

-knows nothing of essential and accidental; she sees

-only that certain marks attach to an object, and, after

-many observations, that some of them attach invariably,

-whilst others may at times be absent. * * * * *

-As all knowledge is relative, the notion of anything

-being necessary must be banished with other traditions.”</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>There is much here that expresses the spirit of the

-“New Philosophy,” if by that term be meant the spirit

-of modern science; but I cannot but marvel that the

-assembled wisdom and learning of Edinburgh should have

-uttered no sign of dissent, when Comte was declared to

-be the founder of these doctrines. No one will accuse

-Scotchmen of habitually forgetting their great countrymen;

-but it was enough to make David Hume turn in

-his grave, that here, almost within ear-shot of his house,

-an instructed audience should have listened, without a

-murmur, while his most characteristic doctrines were attributed

-to a French writer of fifty years later date, in

-whose dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the vigor

-of thought and the exquisite clearness of the style of the

-man whom I make bold to term the most acute thinker

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>of the eighteenth century—even though that century produced

-Kant. But I did not come to Scotland to vindicate

-the honor of one of the greatest men she has ever

-produced. My business is to point out to you that the

-only way of escape out of the crass materialism in which

-we just now landed is the adoption and strict working

-out of the very principles which the Archbishop holds

-up to reprobation.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not

-relative, and therefore, that our conception of matter represents

-that which it really is. Let us suppose, further,

-that we do know more of cause and effect than a certain

-definite order of succession among facts, and that we

-have a knowledge of the necessity of that succession—and

-hence, of necessary laws—and I, for my part, do not

-see what escape there is from utter materialism and necessitarianism.

-For it is obvious that our knowledge of

-what we call the material world is, to begin with, at least

-as certain and definite as that of the spiritual world, and

-that our acquaintance with the law is of as old a date as

-our knowledge of spontaneity.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Further, I take it to be demonstrable that it is utterly

-impossible to prove that anything whatever may not

-be the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that

-human logic is equally incompetent to prove that any

-act is really spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is

-one which, by the assumption, has no cause; and the

-attempt to prove such a negative as this is, on the face

-of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical

-impossibility to demonstrate that any given

-phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>one who is acquainted with the history of science will

-admit, that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now

-more than ever means, the extension of the province of

-what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant

-gradual banishment from all regions of human thought

-of what we call spirit and spontaneity.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>I have endeavored, in the first part of this discourse, to

-give you a conception of the direction towards which modern

-physiology is tending; and I ask you, what is the difference

-between the conception of life as the product of a

-certain disposition of material molecules, and the old notion

-of an Archæus governing and directing blind matter

-within each living body, except this—that here, as

-elsewhere, matter and law have devoured spirit and

-spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out

-of past and present, so will the physiology of the future

-gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is

-coëxtensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.

-The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a

-nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best minds of

-these days. They watch what they conceive to be the

-progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless

-anger as a savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the

-great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The advancing

-tide of matter threatens to drown their souls;

-the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom; they

-are alarmed lest man’s moral nature be debased by the

-increase of his wisdom.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>If the “New Philosophy” be worthy of the reprobation

-with which it is visited, I confess their fears seem to

-me to be well founded. While, on the contrary, could

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>David Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at their

-perplexities, and chide them for doing even as the heathen,

-and falling down in terror before the hideous idols their

-own hands have raised. For, after all, what do we know

-of this terrible “matter,” except as a name for the unknown

-and hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness?

-And what do we know of that “spirit”

-over whose threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation

-is arising, like that which was heard at the death

-of Pan, except that it is also a name for an unknown

-and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of consciousness?

-In other words, matter and spirit are but

-names for the imaginary substrata of groups of natural

-phenomena. And what is the dire necessity and “iron”

-law under which men groan? Truly, most gratuitously

-invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an “iron” law,

-it is that of gravitation; and if there be a physical necessity,

-it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the

-ground. But what is all we really know and can know

-about the latter phenomenon? Simply, that, in all human

-experience, stones have fallen to the ground under these

-conditions; that we have not the smallest reason for believing

-that any stone so circumstanced will not fall to

-the ground, and that we have, on the contrary, every

-reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very convenient

-to indicate that all the conditions of belief have

-been fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that

-unsupported stones will fall to the ground, “a law of nature.”

-But when, as commonly happens, we change will

-into must, we introduce an idea of necessity which most

-assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I

-utterly repudiate and anathematize the intruder. Fact,

-I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity,

-save an empty shadow of my own mind’s throwing?

-But, if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of

-the nature of either matter or spirit, and that the notion

-of necessity is something illegitimately thrust into the

-perfectly legitimate conception of law, the materialistic

-position that there is nothing in the world but matter,

-force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification

-as the most baseless of theological dogmas.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The fundamental doctrines of materialism, like those

-of spiritualism, and most other “isms,” lie outside “the

-limits of philosophical inquiry,” and David Hume’s great

-service to humanity is his irrefragable demonstration of

-what these limits are. Hume called himself a sceptic,

-and therefore others cannot be blamed if they apply the

-same title to him; but that does not alter the fact

-that the name, with its existing implications, does him

-gross injustice. If a man asks me what the politics of

-the inhabitants of the moon are, and I reply that I do

-not know; that neither I, nor any one else have any

-means of knowing; and that, under these circumstances

-I decline to trouble myself about the subject at all, I do

-not think he has any right to call me a sceptic. On

-the contrary, in replying thus, I conceive that I am simply

-honest and truthful, and show a proper regard for

-the economy of time. So Hume’s strong and subtle intellect

-takes up a great many problems about which we

-are naturally curious, and shows us that they are essentially

-questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>of being answered, and therefore not worth the

-attention of men who have work to do in the world.

-And thus ends one of his essays:</p>

-

-<p class='c014'>“If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school

-metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, <i>Does it contain any

-abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?</i> No.

-<i>Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter

-of fact and existence?</i> No. Commit it then to the

-flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”</p>

-

-<p class='c017'>Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why

-trouble ourselves about matters of which, however important

-they may be, we do know nothing, and can know

-nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and

-ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to

-try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat

-less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was

-before he entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary

-to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that

-the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to

-an extent which is practically unlimited; the second,

-that our volition counts for something as a condition of

-the course of events. Each of these beliefs can be verified

-experimentally, as often as we like to try. Each,

-therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon

-which any belief can rest; and forms one of our highest

-truths.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>If we find that the ascertainment of the order of nature

-is facilitated by using one terminology, or one set of symbols,

-rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the

-former, and no harm can accrue so long as we bear in

-mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>In itself it is of little moment whether we express the

-phenomena of matter in terms of spirit, or the phenomena

-of spirit in terms of matter; matter may be regarded as

-a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property

-of matter—each statement has a certain relative truth.

-But with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic

-terminology is in every way to be preferred. For it

-connects thought with the other phenomena of the universe,

-and suggests inquiry into the nature of those physical

-conditions or concomitants of thought, which are

-more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which

-may, in future, help us to exercise the same kind of control

-over the world of thought as we already possess in

-respect of the material world; whereas, the alternative,

-or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads

-to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas. Thus

-there can be little doubt that the further science advances,

-the more extensively and consistently will all the

-phenomena of nature be represented by materialistic

-formulæ and symbols. But the man of science, who,

-forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from

-these formulæ and symbols into what is commonly understood

-by materialism, seems to me to place himself

-on a level with the mathematician, who should mistake

-the <i>x’s</i> and <i>y’s</i>, with which he works his problems, for

-real entities—and with this further disadvantage as compared

-with the mathematician, that the blunders of the

-latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors

-of systematic materialism may paralyze the energies and

-destroy the beauty of a life.</p>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c006'>

-    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span><span class='c004'><i>THE CORRELATION OF VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES.</i></span></div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c006' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'><span class='sc'>The Correlation<br /> <br />of<br /> <br />Vital and Physical Forces.</span></h2>

-</div>

-<p class='c010'>In the Syracusan Poecile, says Alexander von Humboldt

-in his beautiful little allegory of the Rhodian

-Genius, hung a painting, which, for full a century, had

-continued to attract the attention of every visitor. In

-the foreground of this picture a numerous company of

-youths and maidens of earthly and sensuous appearance

-gazed fixedly upon a haloed Genius who hovered in

-their midst. A butterfly rested upon his shoulder, and

-he held in his hand a flaming torch. His every lineament

-bespoke a celestial origin. The attempts to solve the

-enigma of this painting—whose origin even was unknown—though

-numerous, were all in vain, when one day a

-ship arriving from Rhodes, laden with works of art,

-brought another picture, at once recognized as its companion.

-As before, the Genius stood in the center, but

-the butterfly had disappeared, and the torch was reversed

-and extinguished. The youths and maidens were no

-longer sad and submissive, their mutual embraces announcing

-their entire emancipation from restraint. Still

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>unable to solve the riddle, Dionysius sent the pictures to

-the Pythagorean sage, Epicharmus. After gazing upon

-them long and earnestly, he said: Sixty years long have

-I pondered on the internal springs of nature, and on

-the differences inherent in matter; but it is only this

-day that the Rhodian Genius has taught me to see

-clearly that which before I had only conjectured. In

-inanimate nature, everything seeks its like. Everything,

-as soon as formed, hastens to enter into new combinations,

-and nought save the disjoining art of man can

-present in a separate state ingredients which ye would

-vainly seek in the interior of the earth or in the moving

-oceans of air and water. Different, however, is the

-blending of the same substances in animal and vegetable

-bodies. Here vital force imperatively asserts its rights,

-and heedless of the affinity and antagonism of the atoms,

-unites substances which in inanimate nature ever flee

-from each other, and separates that which is incessantly

-striving to unite. Recognize, therefore, in the Rhodian

-Genius, in the expression of his youthful vigor, in the

-butterfly on his shoulder, in the commanding glance of

-his eye, the symbol of vital force as it animates every

-germ of organic creation. The earthly elements at his

-feet are striving to gratify their own desires and to

-mingle with one another. Imperiously the Genius

-threatens them with upraised and high-flaming torch,

-and compels them regardless of their ancient rights, to

-obey his laws. Look now on the new work of art;

-turn from life to death. The butterfly has soared upward,

-the extinguished torch is reversed, and the head

-of the youth is drooping; the spirit has fled to other

-spheres, and the vital force is extinct. Now the youths

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>and maidens join their hands in joyous accord. Earthly

-matter again resumes its rights. Released from all

-bonds, they impetuously follow their natural instincts,

-and the day of his death is to them a day of nuptials.<a id='r1' /><a href='#f1' class='c020'><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The view here put by Humboldt into the mouth of

-Epicharmus may be taken as a fair representation of the

-current opinion of all ages concerning vital force. To-day,

-as truly as seventy-five years ago when Humboldt

-wrote, the mysterious and awful phenomena of life are

-commonly attributed to some controlling agent residing

-in the organism—to some independent presiding deity,

-holding it in absolute subjection. Such a notion it was

-which prompted Heraclitus to talk of a universal fire,

-Van Helmont to propose his Archæus, Hofmann his

-vital fluid, Hunter his <i>materia vitæ diffusa</i>, and Humboldt

-his vital force.<a id='r2' /><a href='#f2' class='c020'><sup>[2]</sup></a> All these names assume the existence

-of a material or immaterial something, more or

-less separable from the material body, and more or less

-identical with the mind or soul, which is the cause of

-the phenomena of living beings. But as science moved

-irresistibly onward, and it became evident that the forces

-of inorganic nature were neither deities nor imponderable

-fluids, separable from matter, but were simple affections

-of it, analogy demanded a like concession in

-behalf of vital force.<a id='r3' /><a href='#f3' class='c020'><sup>[3]</sup></a> From the notion that the effects

-of heat were due to an imponderable fluid called caloric,

-discovery passed to the conviction that heat was but a

-motion of material particles, and hence inseparable

-from matter. To a like assumption concerning vitality

-it was now but a step. The more advanced thinkers in

-science of to-day, therefore, look upon the life of the

-living form as inseparable from its substance, and believe

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>that the former is purely phenomenal, and only a

-manifestation of the latter. Denying the existence of a

-special vital force as such, they retain the term only to

-express the sum of the phenomena of living beings.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>In calling your attention this evening to the Correlation

-of the Physical and the Vital Forces, I have a twofold

-object in view. On the one hand, I would seek to

-interest you in a comparatively recent discovery of Science,

-and one which is destined to play a most important

-part in promoting man’s welfare; and on the other

-I would inquire what part our own country has had in

-these discoveries.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>In the first place, then, let us consider what the evidences

-are that vital and physical forces are correlated.

-Let us inquire how far inorganic and organic forces may

-be considered mutually convertible, and hence, in so

-far, mutually identical. This may best be done by considering,

-first, what is to be understood by correlation:

-and second, how far are the physical forces themselves

-correlated to each other.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>At the outset of our discussion, we are met by an unfortunate

-ambiguity of language. The word Force, as

-commonly used, has three distinct meanings; in the

-first place, it is used to express the cause of motion, as

-when we speak of the force of gunpowder; it is also

-used to indicate motion itself, as when we refer to the

-force of a moving cannon-ball; and lastly it is employed

-to express the effect of motion, as when we speak of the

-blow which the moving body gives.<a id='r4' /><a href='#f4' class='c020'><sup>[4]</sup></a> Because of this confusion,

-it has been found convenient to adopt Rankine’s

-suggestion,<a id='r5' /><a href='#f5' class='c020'><sup>[5]</sup></a> and to substitute the word ‘energy’ therefor.

-And precisely as all force upon the earth’s surface—using

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>the term force in its widest sense—may be divided

-into attraction and motion, so all energy is divided into

-potential and actual energy, synonymous with those

-terms. It is the chemical attraction of the atoms, or

-their potential energy, which makes gunpowder so powerful;

-it is the attraction or potential energy of gravitation

-which gives the power to a raised weight. If now,

-the impediments be removed, the power just now latent

-becomes active, attraction is converted into motion,

-potential into actual energy, and the desired effect is

-accomplished. The energy of gunpowder or of a raised

-weight is potential, is capable of acting; that of exploding

-gunpowder or of a falling weight is actual energy

-or motion. By applying a match to the gunpowder, by

-cutting the string which sustains the weight, we convert

-potential into actual energy. By potential energy, therefore,

-is meant attraction; and by actual energy, motion.

-It is in the latter sense that we shall use the word force

-in this lecture; and we shall speak of the forces of

-heat, light, electricity and mechanical motion, and of

-the attractions of gravitation, cohesion, chemism.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>From what has now been said, it is obvious that when

-we speak of the forces of heat, light, electricity or motion,

-we mean simply the different modes of motion

-called by these names. And when we say that they

-are correlated to each other, we mean simply that the

-mode of motion called heat, light, electricity, is convertible

-into any of the others, at pleasure. Correlation

-therefore implies convertibility, and mutual dependence

-and relationship.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Having now defined the use of the term force, and

-shown that forces are correlated which are convertible

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>and mutually dependent, we go on to study the evidences

-of such correlation among the motions of inorganic nature

-usually called physical forces; and to ask what

-proof science can furnish us that mechanical motion,

-heat, light, and electricity are thus mutually convertible.

-As we have already hinted, the time was when these

-forces were believed to be various kinds of imponderable

-matter, and chemists and physicists talked of the

-union of iron with caloric as they talked of its union

-with sulphur, regarding the caloric as much a distinct

-and inconvertible entity as the iron and sulphur themselves.

-Gradually, however, the idea of the indestructibility

-of matter extended itself to force. And as it

-was believed that no material particle could ever be

-lost, so, it was argued, no portion of the force existing

-in nature can disappear. Hence arose the idea of the

-indestructibility of force. But, of course, it was quite

-impossible to stop here. If force cannot be lost, the

-question at once arises, what becomes of it when it

-passes beyond our recognition? This question led to

-experiment, and out of experiment came the great fact

-of force-correlation; a fact which distinguished authority

-has pronounced the most important discovery of the

-present century.<a id='r6' /><a href='#f6' class='c020'><sup>[6]</sup></a> These experiments distinctly proved

-that when any one of these forces disappeared, another

-took its place; that when motion was arrested, for example,

-heat, light or electricity was developed. In short,

-that these forces were so intimately related or correlated—to

-use the word then proposed by Mr. Grove<a id='r7' /><a href='#f7' class='c020'><sup>[7]</sup></a>—that

-when one of them vanished, it did so only to reappear

-in terms of another. But one step more was necessary

-to complete this magnificent theory. What can produce

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>motion but motion itself? Into what can motion be converted,

-but motion? May not these forces, thus mutually

-convertible, be simply different modes of motion of

-the molecules of matter, precisely as mechanical motion

-is a motion of its mass? Thus was born the dynamic

-theory of force, first brought out in any completeness by

-Mr. Grove, in 1842, in a lecture on the “Progress of

-Physical Science,” delivered at the London Institution.

-In that lecture he said: “Light, heat, electricity, magnetism,

-motion, are all convertible material affections.

-Assuming either as the cause, one of the others will be

-the effect. Thus heat may be said to produce electricity,

-electricity to produce heat; magnetism to produce electricity,

-electricity magnetism; and so of the rest.”<a id='r8' /><a href='#f8' class='c020'><sup>[8]</sup></a></p>

-

-<p class='c011'>A few simple experiments will help us to fix in our

-minds the great fact of the convertibility of force.

-Starting with actual visible motion, correlation requires

-that when it disappears as motion, it should reappear as

-heat, light, or electricity. If the moving body be elastic

-like this rubber ball, then its motion is not destroyed

-when it strikes, but is only changed in direction. But

-if it be non-elastic, like this ball of lead, then it does

-not rebound; its motion is converted into heat. The

-motion of this sledge-hammer, for example, which if received

-upon this anvil would be simply changed in

-direction, if allowed to fall upon this bar of lead, is

-converted into heat; the evidence of which is that a

-piece of phosphorus placed upon the lead is at once inflamed.

-So too, if motion be arrested by the cushion

-of air in this cylinder, the heat evolved fires the tinder

-carried in the plunger. But it is not necessary that the

-arrest of motion should be sudden; it may be gradual,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>as in the case of friction. If this cylinder containing

-water or alcohol be caused to revolve rapidly between

-the two sides of this wooden rubber, the heat due to the

-arrested motion will raise the temperature of the liquid

-to the boiling point, and the cork will be expelled. But

-motion may also be converted into electricity. Indeed

-electricity is always the result of friction between heterogeneous

-particles.<a id='r9' /><a href='#f9' class='c020'><sup>[9]</sup></a> When this piece of hard rubber,

-for example, is rubbed with the fur of a cat, it is at once

-electrified; and now if it be caused to communicate a

-portion of its charge to this glass plate, to which at the

-same time we add the mechanical motion of rotation,

-the strong sparks produced give evidence of the conversion.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>So, too, taking heat as the initial force, motion, light,

-electricity may be produced. In every steam-engine

-the steam which leaves the cylinder is cooler than that

-which entered it, and cooler by exactly the amount of

-work done. The motion of the piston’s mass is precisely

-that lost by the steam molecules which batter

-against it. The conversion of heat into electricity, too,

-is also easily effected. When the junction of two metals

-is heated, electricity is developed. If the two metals

-be bismuth and antimony, as represented in this diagram,

-the currents flow as indicated by the arrows; and

-by multiplying the number of pairs, the effect may be

-proportionately increased. Such an arrangement, called

-a thermo-electric battery, we have here; and by it the

-heat of a single gas-burner may be made to move, when

-converted, this little electric bell-engine. Moreover,

-heat and light have the very closest analogy; exalt the

-rapidity with which the molecules move and light appears,

-the difference being only one of intensity.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>Again, if electricity be our starting point, we may accomplish

-its conversion into the other forces. Heat

-results whenever its passage is interrupted or resisted;

-a wire of the poorly conducting metal platinum becoming

-even red-hot by the converted electricity. To produce

-light, of course, we need only to intensify this

-action; the brightest artificial light known, results from

-a direct conversion of electricity.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Enough has now been said to establish our point.

-What is to be particularly observed of these pieces

-of apparatus is that they are machines especially designed

-for the conversion of some one force into another.

-And we expect of them only that conversion.

-We pass on to consider for a moment the quantitative

-relations of this mutual convertibility. We notice,

-in the first place, that in all cases save one, the

-conversion is not perfect, a part of the force used not

-being utilized, on the one hand, and on the other,

-other forces making their appearance simultaneously.

-While, for example, the conversion of motion into heat

-is quite complete, the inverse conversion is not at all so.

-And on the other hand, when motion is converted into

-electricity, a part of it appears as heat. This simultaneous

-production of many forces is well illustrated by

-our little bell-engine, which converts the electricity of

-the thermo-battery into magnetism, and this into motion,

-a part of which expends itself as sound. For these

-reasons the question “How much?” is one not easily

-answered in all cases. The best known of these relations

-is that between motion and heat, which was first

-established by Mr. Joule in 1849, after seven years of

-patient investigation.<a id='r10' /><a href='#f10' class='c020'><sup>[10]</sup></a> The apparatus which he used is

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>shown in the diagram. It consists of a cylindrical box

-of metal, through the cover of which passes a shaft,

-carrying upon its lower end a set of paddles, immersed

-in water within the box, and upon its upper portion a

-drum, on which are wound two cords, which, passing in

-opposite directions, run over pulleys, and are attached

-to known weights. The temperature of the water within

-the box being carefully noted, the weights are then

-allowed to fall a certain number of times, of course in

-their fall turning the paddles against the friction of the

-liquid. At the close of the experiment the water is

-found to be warmer than before. And by measuring

-the amount of this rise in temperature, knowing the distance

-through which the weights have fallen, it is easy

-to calculate the quantity of heat which corresponds to a

-given amount of motion. In this way, and as a mean

-of a large number of experiments, Mr. Joule found that

-the amount of mass motion in a body weighing one

-pound, which had fallen from a hight of 772 feet, was

-exactly equal to the molecular motion which must be

-added to a pound of water, in order to heat it one degree

-Fahrenheit. If we call the actual energy of a

-body weighing one pound which has fallen one foot, a

-foot-pound, then we may speak of the mechanical equivalent

-of heat as being 772 foot-pounds.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The significance and value of this numerical constant

-will appear more clearly if we apply it to the solution of

-one or two simple problems. During the recent war two

-immense iron guns were cast in Pittsburgh, whose weight

-was nearly 112,000 pounds each, and which had a caliber

-of 20 inches.<a id='r11' /><a href='#f11' class='c020'><sup>[11]</sup></a> Upon this diagram is a calculation of the

-effective blow which the solid shot of such a gun, assuming

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>its weight to be 1,000 pounds and its velocity 1,100

-feet per second, would give; it is 902,797 tons!<a id='r12' /><a href='#f12' class='c020'><sup>[12]</sup></a> Now,

-if it were possible to convert the whole of this enormous

-mechanical power into heat, to how much would it correspond?

-This question may be answered by the aid

-of the mechanical equivalent of heat; here is the calculation,

-from which we see that when 17 gallons of

-ice-cold water are heated to the boiling point, as much

-energy is communicated as is contained in the death-dealing

-missile at its highest velocity.<a id='r13' /><a href='#f13' class='c020'><sup>[13]</sup></a> Again, if we take

-the impact of a larger cannon-ball, our earth, which is

-whirling through space with a velocity of 19 miles a

-second, we find it to be 98,416,136,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

-tons!<a id='r14' /><a href='#f14' class='c020'><sup>[14]</sup></a> Were this energy all converted into

-heat, it would equal that produced by the combustion

-of 14 earths of solid coal.<a id='r15' /><a href='#f15' class='c020'><sup>[15]</sup></a></p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The conversion of heat into motion, however, as already

-stated, is not as perfect. The best steam-engines

-economize only one-twentieth of the heat of the fuel.<a id='r16' /><a href='#f16' class='c020'><sup>[16]</sup></a>

-Hence if a steamship require 600 tons of coal to carry

-her across the Atlantic, 570 tons will be expended in

-heating the waters of the ocean, the heat of the remaining

-30 tons only being converted into work.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>One other quantitative determination of force has

-also been made. Prof. Julius Thomsen, of Copenhagen,

-has fixed experimentally the mechanical equivalent of

-light.<a id='r17' /><a href='#f17' class='c020'><sup>[17]</sup></a> He finds that the energy of the light of a spermaceti

-candle burning 126½ grains per hour, is equal

-in mechanical value to 13·1 foot-pounds per minute.

-The same conclusion has been reached by Mr. Farmer,

-of Boston, from different data.<a id='r18' /><a href='#f18' class='c020'><sup>[18]</sup></a></p>

-

-<p class='c011'>If we pass from the actual physical energies or motions

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>to consider for a moment the potential energies or

-attractions, we find, also, an intimate correlation. Since

-all energy not active in motion is potential in attraction,

-it follows that in the attractions we have energy stored

-up for subsequent use. The sun is thus storing up

-energy: every minute it raises 2,000,000,000 tons of

-water to the mean hight of the clouds, 3½ miles; and

-the actual energy set free when this water falls is equal

-to 2,757,000,000,000 horse-powers.<a id='r19' /><a href='#f19' class='c020'><sup>[19]</sup></a> So when the oxygen

-and the zinc of the ore are separated in the furnace,

-the actual energy of heat becomes the potential energy of

-chemical attraction, which again becomes actual in the

-form of electricity when the zinc is dissolved in an acid.

-We see, then, that not only may any form of force or

-actual energy be stored up as any form of attraction or

-potential energy, but that the latter, from whatsoever

-source derived, may appear as heat, light, electricity, or

-mechanical motion.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Having now established the fact of correlation for

-the physical forces, we have next to inquire what are

-the evidences of the correlation of the vital forces with

-them. But in the first place it must be remarked that

-life is not a simple term like heat or electricity; it is

-a complex term, and includes all those phenomena

-which a living body exhibits. In this discussion, therefore,

-we shall use the term vital force to express only

-the actual energy of the body, however manifested. As

-to the attractions or the potential energy of the organism,

-nothing is more fully settled in science than the

-fact that these are precisely the same within the body

-as without it. Every particle of matter within the body

-obeys implicitly the laws of the chemical and physical

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>attractions. No overpowering or supernatural agency

-comes in to complicate their action, which is modified

-only by the action of the others. Vitality, therefore, is

-the sum of the energies of a living body, both potential

-and actual.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Moreover, the important fact must be fully recognized

-that in living beings we have to do with no new elementary

-forms of matter. Precisely the same atoms which

-build up the inorganic fabric, compose the organic. In

-the early days of chemistry, indeed, it was supposed

-that the complicated molecules which life produced

-were beyond the reach of simple chemical law. But as

-more and more complex molecules have been, one after

-another, produced, chemistry has become re-assured, and

-now doubts not her ability to produce them all. A few

-years hence, and she will doubtless give us quinine and

-protagon, as she now gives us coumarin and neurine,

-substances the synthesis of which was but yesterday an

-impossibility.<a id='r20' /><a href='#f20' class='c020'><sup>[20]</sup></a></p>

-

-<p class='c011'>In studying the phenomena of living beings, it is important

-also to bear in mind the different and at the

-same time the coördinate purposes subserved by the

-two great kingdoms of nature. The food of the plant

-is matter whose energy is all expended; it is a fallen

-weight. But the plant-organism receives it, exposes it

-to the sun’s ray, and, in a way yet mysterious to us, converts

-the actual energy of the sunlight into potential energy

-within it. The fallen weight is thus raised, and

-energy is stored up in substances which now are alone

-competent to become the food of the animal. This food

-is not such because any new atoms have been added to

-it; it is food because it contains within it potential energy,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>which at any time may become actual as force.

-This food the animal now appropriates; he brings it in

-contact with oxygen, and the potential energy becomes

-actual; he cuts the string, the weight falls, and what was

-just now only attraction, has become actual force; this

-force he uses for his own purposes, and hands back the

-oxidized matter, the fallen weight, to the plant to be

-again de-oxidized, to be again raised. The plant then

-is to be regarded as a machine for converting sunlight into

-potential energy; the animal, a machine for setting the

-potential energy free as actual, and economizing it. The

-force which the plant stores up is undeniably physical;

-must not the force which the animal sets free by its conversion,

-be intimately correlated to it?</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But approaching our question still more closely, let

-us, in illustration of the vital forces of the animal economy,

-choose three forms of its manifestation in which

-to seek for the evidences of correlation; these shall be

-heat, evolved within the body; muscular energy or motion;

-and lastly, nervous energy, or that form of force

-which, on the one hand, stimulates a muscle to contract,

-and on the other, appears in forms called mental.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The heat which is produced by the living body is obviously

-of the same nature as heat from any other source;

-it is recognized by the same tests, and may be applied for

-the same purposes. As to its origin, it is evident that

-since potential energy exists in the food which enters

-the body, and is there converted into force, a portion of

-it may become the actual energy of heat. And since,

-too, the heat produced in the body is precisely such as

-would be set free by the combustion of this food outside

-of it, it is fair to assume that it thus originates. To

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>this may be added the chemical argument that while

-food capable of yielding heat by combustion is taken

-into the body, its constituents are completely or almost

-completely, oxidized before leaving it; and since oxidation

-always evolves heat, the heat of the body must

-have its origin in the oxidation of the food. Moreover,

-careful measurements have demonstrated that the amount

-of heat given off by the body of a man weighing 180

-pounds is about 2,500,000 units. Accurate calculations

-have shown, on the other hand, that 288·4 grams of carbon

-and 12·56 grams of hydrogen are available in the

-daily food for the production of heat. If burned out of

-the body, these quantities of carbon and hydrogen would

-yield 2,765,134 heat units. Burned within it, as we have

-just seen, 2,500,000 units appear as heat; the rest in

-other forms of energy.<a id='r21' /><a href='#f21' class='c020'><sup>[21]</sup></a> We conceive, however, that no

-long argument is necessary to prove that animal heat

-results from a conversion of energy within the body; or

-that the vital force heat, is as truly correlated to the

-other forces as when it has a purely physical origin.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The belief that the muscular force exerted by an animal

-is created by him is by no means confined to the

-very earliest ages of history. Traces of it appear to

-the careful observer even now, although, as Dr. Frankland

-says, science has proved that “an animal can no

-more generate an amount of force capable of moving a

-grain of sand than a stone can fall upward or a locomotive

-drive a train without fuel.”<a id='r22' /><a href='#f22' class='c020'><sup>[22]</sup></a> In studying the

-characters of muscular action we notice, first, that, as

-in the case of heat, the force which it develops is in no

-wise different from motion in inorganic nature. In the

-early part of the lecture, motion produced by the contraction

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>of muscle, was used to show the conversion of

-mass-force into molecular force. No one in this room

-believes, I presume, that the result would have been at

-all different, had the motion been supplied by a steam-engine

-or a water-wheel. Again, food, as we have seen,

-is of value for the potential energy it contains, which

-may become actual in the body. Liebig, in 1842, asserted

-that for the production of muscular force, the

-food must first be converted into muscular tissue,<a id='r23' /><a href='#f23' class='c020'><sup>[23]</sup></a> a

-view until recently accepted by physiologists.<a id='r24' /><a href='#f24' class='c020'><sup>[24]</sup></a> It has

-been conclusively shown, however, within a few years,

-that muscular force cannot come from the oxidation of

-its own substance, since the products of this metamorphosis

-are not increased in amount by muscular exertion.<a id='r25' /><a href='#f25' class='c020'><sup>[25]</sup></a>

-Indeed, reasoning from the whole amount of such

-products excreted, the oxidation of the amount of muscle

-which they represent would furnish scarcely one-fifth

-of the mechanical force of the body. But while

-the products of tissue-oxidation do not increase with

-the increase of muscular exertion, the amount of carbonic

-gas exhaled by the lungs is increased in the exact

-ratio of the work done.<a id='r26' /><a href='#f26' class='c020'><sup>[26]</sup></a> No doubt can be entertained,

-therefore, that the actual energy of the muscle is simply

-the converted potential energy of the carbon of the food.

-A muscle, therefore, like a steam-engine, is a machine

-for converting the potential energy of carbon into motion.

-But unlike a steam-engine, the muscle accomplishes this

-conversion directly, the energy not passing through the

-intermediate stage of heat. For this reason, the muscle

-is the most economical producer of mechanical force

-known. While no machine whatever can transform all

-of the energy into motion—the most economical steam-engines

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>utilizing only one-twentieth of the heat—the

-muscle is able to convert one-fifth of the energy of the

-food into work.<a id='r27' /><a href='#f27' class='c020'><sup>[27]</sup></a> The other four-fifths must, therefore,

-appear as heat. Whenever a muscle contracts, then,

-four times as much energy appears as heat as is converted

-into motion. Direct experiments by Heidenhain

-have confirmed this, by showing that an important rise

-of temperature attends muscular contraction;<a id='r28' /><a href='#f28' class='c020'><sup>[28]</sup></a> a fact,

-however, apparent to any one who has ever taken active

-exercise. The work done by the animal body is of two

-sorts, internal and external. The former includes the

-action of the heart, of the respiratory muscles, and of

-those assisting the digestive process. The latter refers

-to the useful work the body may perform. Careful estimates

-place the entire work of the body at about 800

-foot-tons daily; of which 450 foot-tons is internal, 350

-foot-tons external work. And since the internal work

-ultimately appears as heat within the body, the actual

-loss of heat by the production of motion is the equivalent

-of the 350 foot-tons which represents external

-work. This by a simple calculation will be found to be

-250,000 heat units, almost the precise amount by which

-the heat yielded by the food when burned without the

-body, exceeds that actually evolved by the organism.

-Moreover, while the total heat given off by the body is

-2,500,000 units, the amount of energy evolved as work

-is equal to about 600,000 heat units; hence the amount

-of work done by a muscle is as above stated, one-fifth

-of the actual energy derivable from the food. One point

-further. The law of correlation requires that the heat set

-free when a muscle in contracting does work, shall be

-less than when it effects nothing; this fact, too, has been

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>experimentally established by Heidenhain.<a id='r29' /><a href='#f29' class='c020'><sup>[29]</sup></a> So, again,

-when muscular contraction does not result in motion,

-as when one tries to raise a weight too heavy for him,

-the energy which would have appeared as work, takes

-the form of heat: a result deducible by the law of correlation

-from the steam-engine.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The last of the so-called vital forces which we are to

-examine, is that produced by the nerves and nervous

-centers. In the nerve which stimulates a muscle to

-contract, this force is undeniably motion, since it is

-propagated along this nerve from one extremity to the

-other. In common language, too, this idea finds currency

-in the comparison of this force to electricity; the

-gray or cellular matter being the battery, the white or

-fibrous matter the conductors. That this force is not

-electricity, however, Du Bois-Reymond has demonstrated

-by showing that its velocity is only 97 feet in a second,

-a speed equaled by the greyhound and the race-horse.<a id='r30' /><a href='#f30' class='c020'><sup>[30]</sup></a>

-In his opinion, the propagation of a nervous impulse is

-a sort of successive molecular polarization, like magnetism.

-But that this agent is a force, as analogous to

-electricity as is magnetism, is shown not only by the

-fact that the transmission of electricity along a nerve

-will cause the contraction of the muscle to which it

-leads, but also by the more important fact that the contraction

-of a muscle is excited by diminishing its normal

-electrical current;<a id='r31' /><a href='#f31' class='c020'><sup>[31]</sup></a> a result which could take place

-only with a stimulus closely allied to electricity. Nerve-force,

-therefore, must be a transmuted potential energy.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>What, now, shall we say of that highest manifestation

-of animal life, thought-power? Has the upper region

-called intelligence and reason, any relations to physical

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>force? This realm has not escaped the searching investigation

-of modern science; and although in it investigations

-are vastly more difficult than in any of the

-regions thus far considered, yet some results of great

-value have been obtained, which may help us to a solution

-of our problem. It is to be observed at the outset

-that every external manifestation of thought-force is a

-muscular one, as a word spoken or written, a gesture, or

-an expression of the face; and hence this force must

-be intimately correlated with nerve-force. These manifestations,

-reaching the mind through the avenues of

-sense, awaken accordant trains of thought only when

-this muscular evidence is understood. A blank sheet

-of paper excites no emotion; even covered with Assyrian

-cuneiform characters, its alternations of black and

-white awaken no response in the ordinary brain. It is

-only when, by a frequent repetition of these impressions,

-the brain-cell has been educated, that these before

-meaningless characters awaken thought. Is thought,

-then, simply a cell action which may or may not result

-in muscular expression—an action which originates new

-combinations of truth only, precisely as a calculating

-machine evolves new combinations of figures? Whatever

-we define thought to be, this fact appears certain,

-that it is capable of external manifestation by conversion

-into the actual energy of motion, and only by this

-conversion. But here the question arises, Can it be

-manifested inwardly without such a transformation of

-energy? Or is the evolution of thought entirely independent

-of the matter of the brain? Experiments, ingenious

-and reliable, have answered this question. The

-importance of the results will, I trust, warrant me in

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>examining the methods employed in these experiments

-somewhat in detail. Inasmuch as our methods for

-measuring minute amounts of electricity are very perfect,

-and the methods for the conversion of heat into electricity

-are equally delicate, it has been found that smaller

-differences of temperature may be recognized by converting

-the heat into electricity, than can be detected

-thermometrically. The apparatus, first used by Melloni

-in 1832,<a id='r32' /><a href='#f32' class='c020'><sup>[32]</sup></a> is very simple, consisting first, of a pair of

-metallic bars like those described in the early part of

-the lecture, for effecting the conversion of the heat; and

-second, of a delicate galvanometer, for measuring the

-electricity produced. In the experiments in question

-one of the bars used was made of bismuth, the other

-of an alloy of antimony and zinc.<a id='r33' /><a href='#f33' class='c020'><sup>[33]</sup></a> Preliminary trials

-having shown that any change of temperature within

-the skull was soonest manifested externally in that depression

-which exists just above the occipital protuberance,

-a pair of these little bars was fastened to the head

-at this point; and to neutralize the results of a general

-rise of temperature over the whole body, a second pair,

-reversed in direction, was attached to the leg or arm, so

-that if a like increase of heat came to both, the electricity

-developed by one would be neutralized by the

-other, and no effect be produced upon the needle unless

-only one was affected. By long practice it was ascertained

-that a state of mental torpor could be induced,

-lasting for hours, in which the needle remained stationary.

-But let a person knock on the door outside

-the room, or speak a single word, even though the experimenter

-remained absolutely passive, and the reception

-of the intelligence caused the needle to swing

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>through 20 degrees.<a id='r34' /><a href='#f34' class='c020'><sup>[34]</sup></a> In explanation of this production

-of heat, the analogy of the muscle at once suggests

-itself. No conversion of energy is complete; and as

-the heat of muscular action represents force which has

-escaped conversion into motion, so the heat evolved

-during the reception of an idea, is energy which has escaped

-conversion into thought, from precisely the same

-cause. Moreover, these experiments have shown that

-ideas which affect the emotions, produce most heat in

-their reception; “a few minutes’ recitation to one’s self

-of emotional poetry, producing more effect than several

-hours of deep thought.” Hence it is evident that the

-mechanism for the production of deep thought, accomplishes

-this conversion of energy far more perfectly

-than that which produces simply emotion. But we may

-take a step further in this same direction. A muscle,

-precisely as the law of correlation requires, develops

-less heat when doing work than when it contracts without

-doing it. Suppose, now, that beside the simple reception

-of an idea by the brain, the thought is expressed

-outwardly by some muscular sign. The conversion now

-takes two directions, and in addition to the production

-of thought, a portion of the energy appears as nerve and

-muscle-power; less, therefore, should appear as heat,

-according to our law of correlation. Dr. Lombard’s experiments

-have shown that the amount of heat developed

-by the recitation to one’s self of emotional poetry,

-was in every case less when that recitation was oral;

-<i>i.e.</i>, had a muscular expression. These results are in

-accordance with the well-known fact that emotion often

-finds relief in physical demonstrations; thus diminishing

-the emotional energy by converting it into muscular.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>Nor do these facts rest upon physical evidence alone.

-Chemistry teaches that thought-force, like muscle-force,

-comes from the food; and demonstrates that the force

-evolved by the brain, like that produced by the muscle,

-comes not from the disintegration of its own tissue, but

-is the converted energy of burning carbon.<a id='r35' /><a href='#f35' class='c020'><sup>[35]</sup></a> Can we

-longer doubt, then, that the brain, too, is a machine for

-the conversion of energy? Can we longer refuse to believe

-that even thought is, in some mysterious way, correlated

-to the other natural forces? and this, even in

-face of the fact that it has never yet been measured?<a id='r36' /><a href='#f36' class='c020'><sup>[36]</sup></a></p>

-

-<p class='c011'>I cannot close without saying a word concerning the

-part which our own country has had in the development

-of these great truths. Beginning with heat, we find that

-the material theory of caloric is indebted for its overthrow

-more to the distinguished Count Rumford than to

-any other one man. While superintending the boring

-of cannon at the Munich Arsenal towards the close of

-the last century, he was struck by the large amount of

-heat developed, and instituted a careful series of experiments

-to ascertain its origin. These experiments led

-him to the conclusion that “anything which any insulated

-body or system of bodies can continue to furnish

-without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance.”

-But this man, to whom must be ascribed the

-discovery of the first great law of the correlation of

-energy, was an American. Born in Woburn, Mass., in

-1753, he, under the name of Benjamin Thompson,

-taught school afterward at Concord, N. H., then called

-Rumford. Unjustly suspected of toryism during our

-Revolutionary war, he went abroad and distinguished

-himself in the service of several of the Governments of

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>Europe. He did not forget his native land, though she

-had treated him so unfairly; when the honor of knighthood

-was tendered him, he chose as his title the name

-of the Yankee village where he had taught school, and

-was thenceforward known as Count Rumford. And at

-his death, by founding a professorship in Harvard College,

-and donating a prize-fund to the American Academy

-of Arts and Sciences at Boston, he showed his interest

-in her prosperity and advancement.<a id='r37' /><a href='#f37' class='c020'><sup>[37]</sup></a> Nor has

-the field of vital forces been without earnest workers

-belonging to our own country. Professors John W.

-Draper<a id='r38' /><a href='#f38' class='c020'><sup>[38]</sup></a> and Joseph Henry<a id='r39' /><a href='#f39' class='c020'><sup>[39]</sup></a> were among its earliest

-explorers. And in 1851, Dr. J. H. Watters, now of St.

-Louis, published a theory of the origin of vital force,

-almost identical with that for which Dr. Carpenter, of

-London, has of late received so much credit. Indeed,

-there is some reason to believe that Dr. Watters’s essay

-may have suggested to the distinguished English physiologist

-the germs of his own theory.<a id='r40' /><a href='#f40' class='c020'><sup>[40]</sup></a> A paper on this

-subject by Prof. Joseph Leconte, of Columbia, S. C., published

-in 1859, attracted much attention abroad.<a id='r41' /><a href='#f41' class='c020'><sup>[41]</sup></a> The

-remarkable results already given on the relation of heat

-to mental work, which thus far are unique in science, we

-owe to Professor J. S. Lombard, of Harvard College;<a id='r42' /><a href='#f42' class='c020'><sup>[42]</sup></a>

-the very combination of metals used in his apparatus

-being devised by our distinguished electrical engineer,

-Mr. Moses G. Farmer. Finally, researches conducted

-by Dr. T. R. Noyes in the Physiological Laboratory of

-Yale College, have confirmed the theory that muscular

-tissue does not wear during action, up to the point of

-fatigue;<a id='r43' /><a href='#f43' class='c020'><sup>[43]</sup></a> and other researches by Dr. L. H. Wood have

-first established the same great truth for brain-tissue.<a id='r44' /><a href='#f44' class='c020'><sup>[44]</sup></a>

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>We need not be ashamed, then, of our part in this advance

-in science. Our workers are, indeed, but few;

-but both they and their results will live in the records

-of the world’s progress. More would there be now of

-them were such studies more fostered and encouraged.

-Self-denying, earnest men are ready to give themselves

-up to the solution of these problems, if only the means

-of a bare subsistence be allowed them. When wealth

-shall foster science, science will increase wealth—wealth

-pecuniary, it is true: but also wealth of knowledge,

-which is far better.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>In looking back over the whole of this discussion, I

-trust that it is possible to see that the objects which we

-had in view at its commencement have been more or

-less fully attained. I would fain believe that we now

-see more clearly the beautiful harmonies of bounteous

-nature; that on her many-stringed instrument force answers

-to force, like the notes of a great symphony; disappearing

-now in potential energy, and anon reappearing

-as actual energy, in a multitude of forms. I would

-hope that this wonderful unity and mutual interaction

-of force in the dead forms of inorganic nature, appears

-to you identical in the living forms of animal and vegetable

-life, which make of our earth an Eden. That

-even that mysterious, and in many aspects awful, power

-of thought, by which man influences the present and

-future ages, is a part of this great ocean of energy. But

-here the great question rolls upon us, Is it only this?

-Is there not behind this material substance, a higher

-than molecular power in the thoughts which are immortalized

-in the poetry of a Milton or a Shakespeare, the

-art creations of a Michael Angelo or a Titian, the harmonies

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>of a Mozart or a Beethoven? Is there really

-no immortal portion separable from this brain-tissue,

-though yet mysteriously united to it? In a word, does

-this curiously-fashioned body inclose a soul, God-given

-and to God returning? Here Science veils her face

-and bows in reverence before the Almighty. We have

-passed the boundaries by which physical science is enclosed.

-No crucible, no subtle magnetic needle can

-answer now our questions. No word but His who

-formed us, can break the awful silence. In presence of

-such a revelation Science is dumb, and faith comes in

-joyfully to accept that higher truth which can never be

-the object of physical demonstration.</p>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>

-  <h2 id='notes' class='c007'><span class='sc'>Notes and References.</span></h2>

-</div>

-<div class='footnote c003' id='f1'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r1'>1</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Humboldt</span>, Views of Nature, Bohn’s ed., London, 1850, p. 380.

-This allegory did not appear in the first edition of the Views of

-Nature. In the preface to the second edition the author gives the

-following account of its origin: “Schiller,” he says, “in remembrance

-of his youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me,

-during my long stay at Jena, on physiological subjects.” * * *

-“It was at this period that I wrote the little allegory on Vital Force,

-called The Rhodian Genius. The predilection which Schiller entertained

-for this piece, which he admitted into his periodical, <i>Die

-Horen</i>, gave me courage to introduce it here.” It was published in

-<i>Die Horen</i> in 1795.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f2'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r2'>2</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Humboldt</span>, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 386. In his <i>Aphorismi ex doctrina Physiologiæ

-chemicæ Plantarum</i>, appended to his <i>Flora Fribergensis subterranea</i>,

-published in 1793, Humboldt had said “Vim internam,

-quæ chymicæ affinitatis vincula resolvit, atque obstat, quominus

-elementa corporum libere conjungantur, vitalem vocamus.” “That

-internal force, which dissolves the bonds of chemical affinity, and

-prevents the elements of bodies from freely uniting, we call vital.”

-But in a note to the allegory above mentioned, added to the third edition

-of the Views of Nature in 1849, he says: “Reflection and prolonged

-study in the departments of physiology and chemistry have

-deeply shaken my earlier belief in peculiar so-called vital forces. In

-the year 1797, * * * I already declared that I by no means regarded

-the existence of these peculiar vital forces as established.”

-And again: “The difficulty of satisfactorily referring the vital phenomena

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>of the organism to physical and chemical laws depends chiefly

-(and almost in the same manner as the prediction of meteorological

-processes in the atmosphere) on the complication of the phenomena,

-and on the great number of the simultaneously acting forces as well

-as the conditions of their activity.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f3'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r3'>3</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Compare <span class='sc'>Henry Bence Jones</span>, Croonian Lectures on Matter

-and Force. London, 1868, John Churchill &amp; Sons.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f4'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r4'>4</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Ib., Preface, p. vi.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f5'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r5'>5</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Rankine, W. J. M.</span>, Philosophical Magazine, Feb., 1853.

-Also Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, July, 1855.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f6'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r6'>6</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Armstrong</span>, Sir <span class='sc'>Wm.</span> In his address as President of the

-British Association for the Advancement of Science. Rep. Brit.

-Assoc., 1863, li.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f7'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r7'>7</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Grove, W. R.</span>, in 1842. Compare “Nature” i, 335, Jan. 27,

-1870. Also Appleton’s Journal, iii, 324, Mch. 19, 1870.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f8'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r8'>8</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Id., in Preface to The Correlation of Physical Forces, 4th ed.

-Reprinted in The Correlation and Conservation of Forces, edited

-by E. L. Youmans, p. 7. New York, 1865, D. Appleton &amp; Co.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f9'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r9'>9</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Id., ib., Am. ed., p. 33 et seq.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f10'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r10'>10</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Joule, J. P.</span>, Philosophical Transactions, 1850, p. 61.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f11'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r11'>11</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>See American Journal of Science, II, xxxvii, 296, 1864.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f12'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r12'>12</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>The work (W) done by a moving body is commonly expressed

-by the formula W = MV<sup>2</sup>, in which M, or the mass of the body, is

-equal to w/2g; <i>i.e.</i>, to the weight divided by twice the intensity

-of gravity. The work done by our cannon-ball then, would be

-(1 × (1100)<sup>2</sup>)/(2 × 64⅓) = 9,404·14 foot-tons. If, further, we assume the resisting

-body to be of such a character as to bring the ball to

-rest in moving ¼ of an inch, then the final pressure would be

-9,404·14 × 12 × 4 = 451,398·7 tons. But since, “in the case of a perfectly

-elastic body, or of a resistance proportional to the advance of

-the center of gravity of the impinging body from the point at which

-contact first takes place, the final pressure (provided the body struck

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>is perfectly rigid) is double what would occur were the stoppage

-to occur at the end of a corresponding advance against a uniform

-resistance,” this result must be multiplied by two; and we get

-(451,398·7 × 2) 902,797 tons as the crushing pressure of the ball under

-these conditions. Note: The author’s thanks are due to his friends

-Pres. F. A. P. Barnard and Mr. J. J. Skinner for suggestions on

-the relation of impact to statical pressure.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f13'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r13'>13</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>The unit of impact being that given by a body weighing one

-pound and moving one foot a second, the impact of such a body

-falling from a hight of 772 feet—the velocity acquired being 222¼

-feet per second (=√(2sg))—would be 1 × (222¼)<sup>2</sup> = 49,408 units, the

-equivalent in impact of one heat-unit. A cannon-ball weighing

-1000 lbs. and moving 1100 feet a second would have an impact of

-(1100)<sup>2</sup> × 1000 = 1,210,000,000 units. Dividing this by 49,408, the

-quotient is 24489 heat units, the equivalent of the impact. The

-specific heat of iron being ·1138, this amount of heat would raise

-the temperature of one pound of iron 215.191° F. (24,489 × ·1138) or

-of 1000 pounds of iron 215° F. 24489 pounds of water heated one

-degree, is equal to 136½ pounds, or 17 gallons U. S., heated 180

-degrees; <i>i.e.</i>, from 32° to 212° F.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f14'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r14'>14</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Assuming the density of the earth to be 5·5, its weight would

-be 6,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, and its impact—by the formula

-given above—would be 1,025,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

-foot-tons. Making the same supposition as in the case of our

-cannon-ball, the final pressure would be that here stated.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f15'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r15'>15</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Tyndall, J.</span>, Heat considered as a mode of Motion; Am. ed.,

-p. 57, New York, 1863.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f16'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r16'>16</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Rankine</span> (The Steam-engine and other prime Movers, London,

-1866,) gives the efficiency of Steam-engines as from 1-15th to

-1-20th of the heat of the fuel.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Armstrong</span>, Sir <span class='sc'>Wm.</span>, places this efficiency at 1-10th as the

-maximum. In practice, the average result is only 1-30th. Rep.

-Brit. Assoc., 1863, p. liv.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Helmholtz, H. L. F.</span>, says: “The best expansive engines give

-back as mechanical work only eighteen per cent. of the heat generated

-by the fuel.” Interaction of Natural Forces, in Correlation

-and Conservation of Forces, p. 227.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f17'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r17'>17</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span><span class='sc'>Thomsen, Julius</span>, Poggendorff’s Annalen, cxxv, 348. Also

-in abstract in Am. J. Sci., II, xli, 396, May, 1866.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f18'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r18'>18</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>American Journal of Science, II, xli, 214, March, 1866.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f19'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r19'>19</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>In this calculation the annual evaporation from the ocean is

-assumed to be about 9 feet. (See Dr. <span class='sc'>Buist</span>, quoted in Maury’s

-Phys. Geography of the Sea, New York, 1861, p. 11.) Calling the

-water-area of our globe 150,000,000 square miles, the total evaporation

-in tons per minute, would be that here given. Inasmuch

-as 30,000 pounds raised one-foot high is a horse-power, the number

-of horse-powers necessary to raise this quantity of water 3½ miles

-in one minute is 2,757,000,000,000. This amount of energy is precisely

-that set free again when this water falls as rain.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f20'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r20'>20</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Compare <span class='sc'>Odling, Wm.</span>, Lectures on Animal Chemistry, London,

-1866. “In broad antagonism to the doctrines which only a

-few years back were regarded as indisputable, we now find that the

-chemist, like the plant, is capable of producing from carbonic acid

-and water a whole host of organic bodies, and we see no reason to

-question his ultimate ability to reproduce all animal and vegetable

-principles whatsoever.” (p. 52.)</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>“Already hundreds of organic principles have been built up from

-their constituent elements, and there is now no reason to doubt our

-capability of producing all organic principles whatsoever in a similar

-manner.” (p. 58.)</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>Dr. Odling is the successor of Faraday as Fullerian Professor

-of Chemistry in the Royal Institution of Great Britain.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f21'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r21'>21</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Marshall, John</span>, Outlines of Physiology, American edition,

-1868, p. 916.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f22'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r22'>22</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Frankland, Edward</span>, On the Source of Muscular Power,

-Proc. Roy. Inst., June 8, 1866; Am. J. Sci., II, xlii, 393, Nov. 1866.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f23'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r23'>23</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Liebig, Justus von</span>, Die organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung

-auf Physiologie und Pathologie, Braunschweig, 1842. Also

-in his Animal Chemistry, edition of 1852 (Am. ed., p. 26), where he

-says “Every motion increases the amount of organized tissue which

-undergoes metamorphosis.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f24'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r24'>24</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Compare <span class='sc'>Draper, John Wm.</span> Human Physiology.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Playfair, Lyon</span>, On the Food of Man in relation to his useful

-work, Edinburgh, 1865. Proc. Roy. Inst., Apr. 28, 1865.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Ranke</span>, Tetanus eine Physiologische Studie, Leipzig, 1865.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Odling</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f25'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r25'>25</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span><span class='sc'>Voit, E.</span>, Untersuchungen über den Einfluss des Kochsalzes,

-des Kaffees, und der Muskelbewegungen auf den Stoffwechsel,

-Munich, 1860.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Smith, E.</span>, Philosophical Transactions, 1861, 747.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Fick, A.</span>, and <span class='sc'>Wislicenus, J.</span>, Phil. Mag., IV, xxxi, 485.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Frankland, E.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Noyes, T. R.</span>, American Journal Medical Sciences, Oct. 1867.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Parkes, E. A.</span>, Proceedings Royal Society, xv, 339; xvi, 44.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f26'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r26'>26</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Smith, Edward</span>, Philosophical Transactions, 1859, 709.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f27'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r27'>27</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Authorities differ as to the amount of energy converted

-by the steam-engine. (See Note 16.) Compare <span class='sc'>Marshall</span>,

-<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 918. “Whilst, therefore, in an engine one-twentieth

-part only of the fuel consumed is utilized as mechanical power, one-fifth

-of the food absorbed by man is so appropriated.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f28'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r28'>28</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Heidenhain</span>, Mechanische Leistung Wärmeentwickelung

-und Stoffumsatz bei der Muskelthätigkeit, Breslau, 1864.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>See also <span class='sc'>Haughton, Samuel</span>, On the Relation of Food to

-work, published in “Medicine in Modern Times,” London, 1869,

-Macmillan &amp; Co.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f29'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r29'>29</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Heidenhain</span>, <i>op. cit.</i> Also by <span class='sc'>Fick</span>, Untersuchungen über

-Muskel-arbeit, Basel, 1867. Compare also “Nature,” i, 159, Dec.

-9, 1869.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f30'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r30'>30</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Du Bois-Reymond, Emil</span>, On the time required for the transmission

-of volition and sensation through the nerves, Proc. Roy.

-Inst. Also in Appendix to Bence Jones’s Croonian lectures.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f31'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r31'>31</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Marshall</span>, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 227.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f32'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r32'>32</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Melloni</span>, Ann. Ch. Phys., xlviii, 198.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>See also <span class='sc'>Nobili</span>, Bibl. Univ., xliv, 225, 1830; lvii, 1, 1834.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f33'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r33'>33</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>The apparatus employed is illustrated and fully described in

-Brown-Sequard’s Archives de Physiologie, i, 498, June, 1868. By

-it the 1-4000th of a degree Centigrade may be indicated.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f34'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r34'>34</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span><span class='sc'>Lombard, J. S.</span>, New York Medical Journal, v, 198, June, 1867.

-[A part of these facts were communicated to me directly by their

-discoverer.]</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f35'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r35'>35</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Wood, L. H.</span>, On the influence of Mental activity on the Excretion

-of Phosphoric acid by the Kidneys. Proceedings Connecticut

-Medical Society for 1869, p. 197.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f36'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r36'>36</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>On this question of vital force, see <span class='sc'>Liebig</span>, Animal Chemistry.

-“The increase of mass in a plant is determined by the occurrence

-of a decomposition which takes place in certain parts of the plant

-under the influence of light and heat.”</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>“The modern science of Physiology has left the track of Aristotle.

-To the eternal advantage of science, and to the benefit of mankind

-it no longer invents a <i>horror vacui</i>, a <i>quinta essentia</i>, in order to furnish

-credulous hearers with solutions and explanations of phenomena,

-whose true connection with others, whose ultimate cause is still

-unknown.”</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>“All the parts of the animal body are produced from a peculiar

-fluid circulating in its organism, by virtue of an influence residing

-in every cell, in every organ, or part of an organ.”</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>“Physiology has sufficiently decisive grounds for the opinion that

-every motion, every manifestation of force, is the result of a transformation

-of the structure or of its substance; that every conception,

-every mental affection, is followed by changes in the chemical

-nature of the secreted fluids; that every thought, every sensation

-is accompanied by a change in the composition of the substance of

-the brain.”</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>“All vital activity arises from the mutual action of the oxygen of

-the atmosphere and the elements of the food.”</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>“As, in the closed galvanic circuit, in consequence of certain

-changes which an inorganic body, a metal, undergoes when placed

-in contact with an acid, a certain something becomes cognizable by

-our senses, which we call a current of electricity; so in the animal

-body, in consequence of transformations and changes undergone by

-matter previously constituting a part of the organism, certain phenomena

-of motion and activity are perceived, and these we call life,

-or vitality.”</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>“In the animal body we recognize as the ultimate cause of all

-force only one cause, the chemical action which the elements of the

-food and the oxygen of the air mutually exercise on each other.

-The only known ultimate cause of vital force, either in animals or

-in plants, is a chemical process.”</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>“If we consider the force which determines the vital phenomena

-as a property of certain substances, this view leads of itself to a new

-and more rigorous consideration of certain singular phenomena,

-which these very substances exhibit, in circumstances in which they

-no longer make a part of living organisms.”</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>Also <span class='sc'>Owen, Richard</span>, (Derivative Hypothesis of Life and

-Species, forming the 40th chapter of his Anatomy of Vertebrates,

-republished in Am. J. Sci., II, xlvii, 33, Jan. 1869.) “In the endeavor

-to clearly comprehend and explain the functions of the combination

-of forces called ‘brain,’ the physiologist is hindered and

-troubled by the views of the nature of those cerebral forces which

-the needs of dogmatic theology have imposed on mankind.” * *</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>“Religion pure and undefiled, can best answer how far it is righteous

-or just to charge a neighbor with being unsound in his principles

-who holds the term ‘life’ to be a sound expressing the sum

-of living phenomena; and who maintains these phenomena to be

-modes of force into which other forms of force have passed, from

-potential to active states, and reciprocally, through the agency of

-these sums or combinations of forces impressing the mind with the

-ideas signified by the terms ‘monad,’ ‘moss,’ ‘plant,’ or ‘animal.’”</p>

-

-<p class='c021'>And <span class='sc'>Huxley, Thos. H.</span>, “On the Physical Basis of Life,” University

-Series, No. 1. College Courant, 1870.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><i>Per contra</i>, see the Address of Dr. F. A. P. Barnard, as retiring

-President, before the Am. Assoc. for the Advancement of Science,

-Chicago meeting, August, 1868. “Thought cannot be a

-physical force, because thought admits of no measure.”</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Gould, Benj. Apthorp</span>, Address as retiring President, before

-the American Association at its Salem meeting, Aug., 1869.</p>

-

-<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Beale, Lionel S.</span>, “Protoplasm, or Life, Matter, and Mind.”

-London, 1870. John Churchill &amp; Sons.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f37'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r37'>37</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>For an excellent account of this distinguished man, see Youmans’s

-Introduction to the Correlation and Conservation of Forces,

-p. xvii.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f38'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r38'>38</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span><span class='sc'>Draper, J. W.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f39'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r39'>39</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Henry, Joseph</span>, Agric. Rep. Patent Office, 1857, 440.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f40'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r40'>40</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Watters, J. H.</span>, An Essay on Organic, or Life-force. Written

-for the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania,

-Philadelphia, 1851. See also St. Louis Medical and Surgical

-Journal, II, v, Nos. 3 and 4, 1868; Dec. 1868, and Nov. 10,

-1869.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f41'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r41'>41</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>LeConte, Joseph</span>, The Correlation of Physical, Chemical and

-Vital Force, and the Conservation of Force in Vital Phenomena.

-American Journal of Science, II, xxviii, 305, Nov. 1859.</p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f42'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r42'>42</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Lombard, J. S.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f43'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r43'>43</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Noyes, T. R.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>

-</div>

-

-<div class='footnote' id='f44'>

-<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r44'>44</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Wood, L. H.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>

-</div>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c006'>

-    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span><span class='c022'><i>AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC.</i></span></div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c006' />

-</div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c006'>

-    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>PREFATORY NOTE.</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c010'>The substance of the greater part of this paper, which has

-been in the present form for some time, was delivered, as a

-lecture, at a Conversazione of the Royal College of Physicians

-of Edinburgh, in the Hall of the College, on the evening of

-Friday, the 30th of April last.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>It will be found to support itself, so far as the facts are

-concerned, on the most recent German physiological literature,

-as represented by Rindfleisch, Kühne, and especially Stricker,

-with which last, for the production of his “Handbuch,” there

-is associated every great histological name in Germany.</p>

-<p class='c013'><span class='sc'>Edinburgh</span>, <i>October, 1869</i>.</p>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c006' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'><span class='sc'>As Regards Protoplasm, etc.</span></h2>

-</div>

-<p class='c010'>It is a pleasure to perceive Mr. Huxley open his clear

-little essay with what we may hold, perhaps, to be the

-manly and orthodox view of the character and products

-of the French writer, Auguste Comte. “In applying

-the name of ‘the new philosophy’ to that estimate of

-the limits of philosophical inquiry which he” (Professor

-Huxley), “in common with many other men of science,

-holds to be just,” the Archbishop of York confounds, it

-seems, this new philosophy with the Positive philosophy

-of M. Comte; and thereat Mr. Huxley expresses himself

-as greatly astonished. Some of us, for our parts,

-may be inclined at first to feel astonished at Mr. Huxley’s

-astonishment; for the school to which, at least on

-the philosophical side, Mr. Huxley seems to belong, is

-even notorious for its prostration before Auguste Comte,

-whom, especially, so far as method and systematization

-are concerned, it regards as the greatest intellect since

-Bacon. For such, as it was the opinion of Mr. Buckle,

-is understood to be the opinion also of Messrs. Grote,

-Bain, and Mill. In fact, we may say that such is commonly

-and currently considered the characteristic and

-distinctive opinion of that whole perverted or inverted

-reaction which has been called the <i>Revulsion</i>. That is

-to say, to give this word a moment’s explanation, that

-the Voltaires and Humes and Gibbons having long

-enjoyed an immunity of sneer at man’s blind pride and

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>wretched superstition—at <i>his</i> silly non-natural honor

-and <i>her</i> silly non-natural virtue—a reaction had set in,

-exulting in poetry, in the splendor of nature, the nobleness

-of man, and the purity of woman, from which reaction

-again we have, almost within the last decennium,

-been revulsively, as it were, called back,—shall we say

-by some “bolder” spirits—the Buckles, the Mills, &amp;c.?—to

-the old illumination or enlightenment of a hundred

-years ago, in regard to the weakness and stupidity of

-man’s pretensions over the animality and materiality

-that limit him. Of this revulsion, then, as said, a main

-feature, especially in England, has been prostration

-before the vast bulk of Comte; and so it was that Mr.

-Huxley’s protest in this reference, considering the philosophy

-he professed, had that in it to surprise at first.

-But if there was surprise, there was also pleasure; for

-Mr. Huxley’s estimate of Comte is undoubtedly the

-right one. “So far as I am concerned,” he says, “the

-most reverend prelate” (the Archbishop of York)

-“might dialectically hew M. Comte in pieces as a modern

-Agag, and I should not attempt to stay his hand;

-for, so far as my study of what specially characterizes

-the Positive philosophy has led me, I find therein little

-or nothing of any scientific value, and a great deal

-which is as thoroughly antagonistic to the very essence

-of science as anything in ultramontane Catholicism.”

-“It was enough,” he says again, “to make David Hume

-turn in his grave, that here, almost within earshot of

-his house, an instructed audience should have listened

-without a murmur while his most characteristic doctrines

-were attributed to a French writer of fifty years’

-later date, in whose dreary and verbose pages we miss

-alike the vigor of thought and the exquisite clearness

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>of style of the man whom I make bold to term the

-most acute thinker of the eighteenth century—even

-though that century produced Kant.”</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Of the doctrines themselves which are alluded to

-here, I shall say nothing now; but of much else that is

-said, there is only to be expressed a hearty and even

-gratified approval. I demur, to be sure, to the exaltation

-of Hume over Kant—high as I place the former.

-Hume, with infinite fertility, surprised us, it may be

-said, perhaps, into attention on a great variety of points

-which had hitherto passed unquestioned; but, even on

-these points, his success was of an interrupted, scattered

-and inconclusive nature. He set the world adrift, but

-he set man too, reeling and miserable, adrift with it.

-Kant, again, with gravity and reverence, desired to refix,

-but in purity and truth, all those relations and institutions

-which alone give value to existence—which alone

-<i>are</i> humanity, in fact—but which Hume, with levity and

-mockery, had approached to shake. Kant built up

-again an entire new world for us of knowledge and

-duty, and, in a certain way, even belief; whereas Hume

-had sought to dispossess us of every support that man

-as man could hope to cling to. In a word, with <i>at least</i>

-equal fertility, Kant was, as compared with Hume, a

-graver, deeper, and, so to speak, a more consecutive,

-more comprehensive spirit. Graces there were indeed,

-or even, it may be said, subtleties, in which Hume had

-the advantage perhaps. He is still in England an

-unsurpassed master of expression—this, certainly, in

-his History, if in his Essays he somewhat baffles his

-own self by a certain labored breadth of conscious fine

-writing, often singularly inexact and infelicitous. Still

-Kant, with reference to his products, must be allowed

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>much the greater importance. In the history of philosophy

-he will probably always command as influential

-a place in the modern world as Socrates in the ancient;

-while, as probably, Hume will occupy at best some such

-position as that of Heraclitus or Protagoras. Hume,

-nevertheless, if equal to Kant, must, in view at once of

-his own subjective ability and his enormous influence,

-be pronounced one of the most important of writers.

-It would be difficult to rate too high the value of his

-French predecessors and contemporaries as regards purification

-of their oppressed and corrupt country; and

-Hume must be allowed, though with less call, to have

-subserved some such function in the land we live in.

-In preferring Kant, indeed, I must be acquitted of an

-undue partiality; for all that appertains to personal

-bias was naturally, and by reason of early and numerous

-associations, on the side of my countryman.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Demurring, then, to Mr. Huxley’s opinion on this

-matter, and postponing remark on the doctrines to

-which he alludes, I must express a hearty concurrence

-with every word he utters on Comte. In him I too

-“find little or nothing of any scientific value.” I too

-have been lost in the mere mirage and sands of “those

-dreary and verbose pages;” and I acknowledge in Mr.

-Huxley’s every word the ring of a genuine experience.

-M. Comte was certainly a man of some mathematical

-and scientific proficiency, as well as of quick but biased

-intelligence. A member of the <i>Aufklärung</i>, he had

-seen the immense advance of physical science since

-Newton, under, as is usually said, the method of Bacon;

-and, like Hume, like Reid, like Kant, <i>who had all anticipated

-him in this</i>, he sought to transfer that method to

-the domain of mind. In this he failed; and though in

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>a sociological aspect he is not without true glances into

-the present disintegration of society and the conditions

-of it, anything of importance cannot be claimed for

-him. There is not a sentence in his book that, in the

-hollow elaboration and windy pretentiousness of its

-build, is not an exact type of its own constructor. On

-the whole, indeed, when we consider the little to which

-he attained, the empty inflation of his claims, the monstrous

-and maniacal self-conceit into which he was

-<i>exalted</i>, it may appear, perhaps, that charity to M.

-Comte himself, to say nothing of the world, should

-induce us to wish that both his name and his works

-were buried in oblivion. Now, truly, that Mr. Huxley

-(the “call” being for the moment his) has so pronounced

-himself, especially as the facts of the case are exactly

-and absolutely what he indicates, perhaps we may

-expect this consummation not to be so very long

-delayed. More than those members of the revulsion

-already mentioned, one is apt to suspect, will be anxious

-now to beat a retreat. Not that this, however, is so

-certain to be allowed them; for their estimate of M.

-Comte is a valuable element in the estimate of themselves.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Frankness on the part of Mr. Huxley is not limited

-to his opinion of M. Comte; it accompanies us throughout

-his whole essay. He seems even to take pride,

-indeed, in naming always and everywhere his object at

-the plainest. That object, in a general point of view,

-relates, he tells us, solely to materialism, but with a

-double issue. While it is his declared purpose, in the

-first place, namely, to lead us into materialism, it is

-equally his declared purpose, in the second place, to

-lead us out of materialism. On the first issue, for

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>example, he directly warns his audience that to accept

-the conclusions which he conceives himself to have

-established on Protoplasm, is to accept these also:

-That “all vital action” is but “the result of the molecular

-forces” of the physical basis; and that, by consequence,

-to use his own words to his audience, “the

-thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your

-thoughts regarding them, are but the expression of

-molecular changes in that matter of life which is the

-source of our other vital phenomena.” And, so far,

-I think, we shall not disagree with Mr. Huxley when

-he says that “most undoubtedly the terms of his propositions

-are distinctly materialistic.” Still, on the second

-issue, Mr. Huxley asserts that he is “individually no

-materialist.” “On the contrary, he believes materialism

-to involve grave philosophical error;” and the

-“union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation

-of materialistic philosophy” he conceives himself

-to share “with some of the most thoughtful men with

-whom he is acquainted.” In short, to unite both issues,

-we have it in Mr. Huxley’s own words, that it is the

-single object of his essay “to explain how such a union

-is not only consistent with, but necessitated by, sound

-logic;” and that, accordingly, he will, in the first place,

-“lead us through the territory of vital phenomena to

-the materialistic slough,” while pointing out, in the second,

-“the sole path by which, in his judgment, extrication

-is possible.” Mr. Huxley’s essay, then, falls evidently

-into two parts; and of these two parts we may

-say, further, that while the one—that in which he leads

-us into materialism—will be predominatingly physiological,

-the other—or that in which he leads us out

-of materialism—will be predominatingly philosophical.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>Two corresponding parts would thus seem to be prescribed

-to any full discussion of the essay; and of

-these, in the present needs of the world, it is evidently

-the latter that has the more promising theme. The

-truth is, however, that Mr. Huxley, after having exerted

-all his strength in his first part to throw us into “the

-materialistic slough,” by <i>clear necessity of knowledge</i>,

-only calls to us, in his second part, to come out of this

-slough again, on the somewhat <i>obscure necessity of ignorance</i>.

-This, then, is but a lop-sided balance, where a

-scale in the air only seems to struggle vainly to raise

-its well-weighted fellow on the ground. Mr. Huxley,

-in fact, possesses no remedy for materialism but what

-lies in the expression that, while he knows not what

-matter is in itself, he certainly knows that casualty is

-but contingent succession; and thus, like the so-called

-“philosophy” of the Revulsion, Mr. Huxley would only

-mock us into the intensest dogmatism on the one side

-by a fallacious reference to the intensest scepticism on

-the other.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The present paper, then, will regard mainly Mr. Huxley’s

-argument <i>for</i> materialism, but say what is required,

-at the same time, on his alleged argument—which is

-merely the imaginary, or imaginative, impregnation of

-ignorance—<i>against</i> it.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Following Mr. Huxley’s own steps in his essay, the

-course of his positions will be found to run, in summary,

-thus:—</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>What is meant by the physical basis of life is, that

-there is one kind of matter common to all living beings,

-and it is named protoplasm. No doubt it may appear

-at first sight that, in the various kinds of living beings,

-we have only <i>difference</i> before us, as in the lichen on the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>rock and the painter that paints it,—the microscopic

-animalcule or fungus and the Finner whale or Indian

-fig,—the flower in the hair of a girl and the blood in her

-veins, etc. Nevertheless, throughout these and all other

-diversities, there really exists a threefold <i>unity</i>—a unity

-of faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substance.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>On the first head, for example, or as regards faculty,

-power, the action exhibited, there are but three categories

-of <i>human</i> activity—contractility, alimentation, and

-reproduction; and there are no fewer for the <i>lower</i> forms

-of life, whether animal or vegetable. In the nettle, for

-instance, we find the woody case of its sting lined by a

-granulated, semi-fluid layer, that is possessed of contractility.

-But in this respect—that is, in the possession

-of contractile substance—other plants are as the

-nettle, and all animals are as plants. Protoplasm—for

-the nettle-layer alluded to is protoplasm—is common

-to the whole of them. The difference, in short between

-the powers of the lowest plant or animal and those of

-the highest is one only of degree and not of kind.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But, on the second head, it is not otherwise in form,

-or manifested external appearance and structure. Not

-the sting only, but the whole nettle, is made up of protoplasm;

-and of all the other vegetables the nettle is

-but a type. Nor are animals different. The colorless

-blood-corpuscles in man and the rest are identical with

-the protoplasm of the nettle; and both he and they

-consisted at first only of an aggregation of such. Protoplasm

-is the common constituent—the common origin.

-At last, as at first, all that lives, and every part of all

-that lives, are but nucleated or unnucleated, modified

-or unmodified, protoplasm.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But, on the third head, or with reference to unity of

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>substance, to internal composition, chemistry establishes

-this also. All forms of protoplasm, that is, consist

-alike of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, and

-behave similarly under similar reagents.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>So, now, a uniform character having in this threefold

-manner been proved for protoplasm, what is its origin,

-and what its fate? Of these the latter is not far to

-seek. The fate of protoplasm is death—death into its

-chemical constituents; and this determines its origin

-also. Protoplasm can originate only in that into which

-it dies,—the elements—the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,

-and nitrogen—of which it was found to consist. Hydrogen,

-with oxygen, forms water; carbon, with oxygen,

-carbonic acid; and hydrogen, with nitrogen, ammonia.

-Similarly, water, carbonic acid and ammonia form, in

-union, protoplasm. The influence of pre-existing protoplasm

-only determines combination in <i>its</i> case, as that

-of the electric spark determines combination in the

-case of water. Protoplasm, then, is but an aggregate

-of physical materials, exhibiting in combination—only

-as was to be expected—new properties. The properties

-of water are not more different from those of

-hydrogen and oxygen than the properties of protoplasm

-are different from those of water, carbonic acid, and

-ammonia. We have the same warrant to attribute the

-consequences to the premises in the one case as in the

-other. If, on the first stage of combination, represented

-by that of water, <i>simples</i> could unite into something

-so different from themselves, why, on the second

-stage of combination, represented by that of protoplasm,

-should not <i>compounds</i> similarly unite into something

-equally different from themselves? If the constituents

-are credited with the properties <i>there</i>, why

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>refuse to credit the constituents with the properties

-<i>here</i>? To the constituents of protoplasm, in truth, any

-new element, named vitality, has no more been added,

-than to the constituents of water any new element,

-named aquosity. Nor is there any logical halting place

-between this conclusion and the further and final one:

-That all vital action whatever, intellectual included, is

-but the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm

-which displays it.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>These sentences will be acknowledged, I think, fairly

-to represent Mr. Huxley’s relative deliverances, and,

-consequently, as I may be allowed to explain again, the

-only important—while much the larger—part of the

-whole essay. Mr. Huxley, that is, while devoting fifty

-paragraphs to our physiological immersion in the “materialistic

-slough,” grants but one-and-twenty towards our

-philosophical escape from it; the fifty besides being, so

-to speak, in reality the wind, and the one-and-twenty

-only the whistle for it. What these latter say, in effect,

-is no more than this, that,—matter being known not in

-itself but only in its qualities, and cause and effect not

-in their nexus but only in their sequence,—matter may

-be spirit or spirit matter, cause effect or effect cause—in

-short, for aught that Mr. Huxley more than phenomenally

-knows, this may be that or that this, first second,

-or second first, but the conclusion shall be this, that he

-will lay out all our knowledge materially, and we may

-lay out all our ignorance immaterially—if we will.

-Which reasoning and conclusion, I may merely remark,

-come precisely to this: That Mr. Huxley—who, hoping

-yet to see each object (a pin, say) not in its qualities

-but in <i>itself</i>, still, consistently antithetic, cannot believe

-in the extinction of fire by water or of life by the rope,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>for any <i>reason</i> or for any <i>necessity</i> that lies in the nature

-of the case, but simply for the habit of the thing—has

-not yet put himself at home with the metaphysical categories

-of <i>substance</i> and <i>casualty</i>; thanks, perhaps, to

-those guides of his whom we, the amusing Britons that

-we are, bravely proclaim “the foremost thinkers of the

-day”!</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The matter and manner of the whole essay are now

-fairly before us, and I think that, with the approbation

-of the reader, its procedure, generally, may be described

-as an attempt to establish, not by any complete and

-systematic induction, but by a variety of partial and

-illustrative assertions, two propositions. Of these

-propositions the first is, That all animal and vegetable

-organisms are essentially alike in power, in form, and

-in substance; and the second, That all vital and intellectual

-functions are the properties of the molecular

-disposition and changes of the material basis (protoplasm)

-of which the various animals and vegetables

-consist. In both propositions, the agent of proof is

-this same alleged material basis of life, or protoplasm.

-For the first of them, all animal and vegetable organisms

-shall be identified in protoplasm; and for the second,

-a simple chemical analogy shall assign intellect

-and vitality to the molecular constituents of the protoplasm,

-in connection with which they are at least exhibited.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>In order, then, to obtain a footing on the ground

-offered us, the first question we naturally put is, What

-is Protoplasm? And an answer to this question can be

-obtained only by a reference to the historical progress

-of the physiological cell theory.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>That theory may be said to have wholly grown up

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>since John Hunter wrote his celebrated work ‘On the

-Nature of the Blood,’ etc. New growths, to Hunter,

-depended on an exudation of the plasma of the blood,

-in which, by virtue of its own <i>plasticity</i>, vessels formed,

-and conditioned the further progress. The influence of

-these ideas seems to have still acted, even after a conception

-of the cell was arrived at. For starting element,

-Schleiden required an intracellular plasma, and Schwann

-a structureless exudation, in which minute granules, if

-not indeed already pre-existent, formed, and by aggregation

-grew into nuclei, round which singly the production

-of a membrane at length enclosed a cell. It was

-then that, in this connection, we heard of the terms

-blastema and cyto-blastema. The theory of the vegetable

-cell was completed earlier than that of the animal

-one. Completion of this latter, again, seems to have

-been first effected by Schwann, after Müller had insisted

-on the analogy between animal and vegetable tissue,

-and Valentin had demonstrated a nucleus in the animal

-cell, as previously Brown in the vegetable one. But

-assuming Schwann’s labor, and what surrounded it, to

-have been a first stage, the wonderful ability of Virchow

-may be said to have raised the theory of the cell fully

-to a second stage. Now, of this second stage, it is the

-dissolution or resolution that has led to the emergence

-of the word Protoplasm.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The body, to Virchow, constituted a free state of individual

-subjects, with equal rights but unequal capacities.

-These were the cells, which consisted each of

-an enclosing membrane, and an enclosed nucleus with

-surrounding intracellular matrix or matter. These

-cells, further, propagated themselves, chiefly by partition

-or division; and the fundamental principle of the whole

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>theory was expressed in the dictum, “<i>Omnis cellula e

-cellulâ</i>.” That is, the nucleus, becoming gradually elongated,

-at last parted in the midst; and each half, acting

-as center of attraction to the surrounding intracellular

-matrix or contained matter, stood forth as a new

-nucleus to a new cell, formed by division at length of

-the original cell.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The first step taken in resolution of this theory was

-completed by Max Schultze, preceded by Leydig. This

-was the elimination of an investing membrane. Such

-membrane may, and does, ultimately form; but in the

-first instance, it appears, the cell is naked. The second

-step in the resolution belongs perhaps to Brücke, though

-preceded by Bergmann, and though Max Schultze,

-Kühne, Haeckel, and others ought to be mentioned in

-the same connection. This step was the elimination,

-or at least subordination, of the nucleus. The nucleus,

-we are to understand now, is necessary neither to the

-division nor to the existence of the cell.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Thus, then, stripped of its membrane, relieved of its

-nucleus, what now remains for the cell? Why, nothing

-but what <i>was</i> the contained matter, the intracellular

-matrix, and <i>is</i>—Protoplasm.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>In the application of this word itself, however, to the

-element in question, there are also a step or two to be

-noticed. The first step was Dujardin’s discovery of sarcode;

-and the second the introduction of the term protoplasm

-as the name for the layer of the <i>vegetable</i> cell

-that lined the cellulose, and enclosed the nucleus. Sarcode,

-found in certain of the lower forms of life, was a

-simple substance that exhibited powers of spontaneous

-contraction and movement. Thus, processes of such

-simple, soft, contractile matter are protruded by the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>rhizopods, and locomotion by their means effected.

-Remak first extended the use of the term protoplasm

-from the layer which bore that name in the vegetable

-cell to the analogous element in the animal cell; but it

-was Max Schultze, in particular, who, by applying the

-name to the intracellular matrix, or contained matter,

-when divested of membrane, and by identifying this

-substance itself with sarcode, first fairly established protoplasm,

-name and thing, in its present prominence.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>In this account I have necessarily omitted many subordinate

-and intervening steps in the successive establishment

-of the <i>contractility</i>, superior <i>importance</i>, and

-complete <i>isolation</i> of this thing to which, under the

-name of protoplasm, Mr. Huxley of late has called

-such vast attention. Besides the names mentioned,

-there are others of great eminence in this connection,

-such as Meyen, Siebold, Reichert, Ecker, Henle, and

-Kölliker among the Germans; and among ourselves,

-Beale and Huxley himself. John Goodsir will be mentioned

-again.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>We have now, perhaps, obtained a general idea of

-protoplasm. Brücke, when he talks of it as “living

-cell-body or elementary organism,” comes very near the

-leading idea of Mr. Huxley as expressed in his phrase,

-“the physiological basis, or matter, of life.” Living

-cell-body, elementary organism, primitive living matter—that,

-evidently, is the quest of Mr. Huxley. There is

-aqueous matter, he would say, perhaps, composed of

-hydrogen and oxygen, and it is the same thing whether

-in the rain-drop or the ocean; so, similarly, there is

-vital matter, which, composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,

-and nitrogen, is the same thing whether in cryptogams

-or in elephants, in animalcules or in men. What,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>in fact, Mr. Huxley seeks, probably, is living protein—protein,

-so to speak, struck into life. Just such appears

-to him to be the nature of protoplasm, and in it he believes

-himself to possess at last <i>a living clay</i> wherewith

-to build the whole organic world.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The question, What is Protoplasm? is answered,

-then; but, for the understanding of what is to follow,

-there is still one general consideration to be premised.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Mr. Huxley’s conception of protoplasm, as we have

-seen, is that of living matter, living protein; what we

-may call, perhaps, elementary life-stuff. Now, is it

-quite certain that Mr. Huxley is correct in this conception?

-Are we to understand, for example, that cells

-have now definitively vanished, and left in their place

-only a uniform and universal <i>matter</i> of quite indefinite

-proportions? No; such an understanding would be

-quite wrong. Whatever may be the opinion of the adherents

-of the molecular theory of generation, it is certain

-that all the great German histologists still hold by

-the cell, and can hardly open their mouths without mention

-of it. I do not allude here to any special adherents

-of either nucleus or membrane, but to the most

-advanced innovators in both respects; to such men as

-Schultze and Brücke and Kühne. These, as we have

-seen, pretty well confine their attention, like Mr. Huxley,

-to the protoplasm. But they do not the less on

-that account talk of the cell. For them, it is only in

-cells that protoplasm exists. To their view, we cannot

-fancy protoplasm as so much matter in a pot, in an ointment-box,

-any portion of which scooped out in an ear-picker

-would be so much life-stuff, and, though a part,

-quite as good as the whole. This seems to be Mr.

-Huxley’s conception, but it is not theirs. A certain

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span><i>measure</i> goes with protoplasm to constitute it an organism

-to them, and worthy of their attention. They refuse

-to give consideration to any mere protoplasm-<i>shred</i>

-that may not have yet ceased, perhaps, to exhibit all

-sign of contractility under the microscope, and demand

-a protoplasm-<i>cell</i>. In short, protoplasm is to them still

-distributed into cells, and only that measure of protoplasm

-is cell that is adequate to the whole group of

-vital manifestations. Brücke, for example, of all innovators

-probably the most innovating, and denying, or

-inclined to deny, both nucleus and membrane, does not

-hesitate, according to Stricker, to speak still of cells as

-self-complete organisms, that move and grow, that nourish

-and reproduce themselves, and that perform specific

-function. “Omnis cellula e cellulâ,” is the rubric they

-work under as much now as ever. The heart of a turtle,

-they say, is not a turtle; so neither is a protoplasm-shred

-a protoplasm-cell.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>This, then, is the general consideration which I think

-it necessary to premise; and it seems, almost of itself,

-to negate Mr. Huxley’s reasonings in advance, for it

-warrants us in denying that physiological clay of which

-all living things are but bricks baked, Mr. Huxley intimates,

-and in establishing in its place cells as before—living

-cells that differ infinitely the one from the other,

-and so differ from the very first moment of their existence.

-This consideration shall not be allowed to pre-termit,

-however, an examination of Mr. Huxley’s own

-proofs, which will only the more and more avail to indicate

-the difference suggested.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>These proofs, as has been said, would, by means of

-the single fulcrum of protoplasm, establish, first, the

-identity, and, second, the materiality, of all vegetable

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>and animal life. These are, shortly, the two propositions

-which we have already seen, and to which, in their

-order, we now pass.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>All organisms, then, whether animal or vegetable,

-have been understood for some time back to originate

-in and consist of cells; but the progress of physiology

-has <i>seemed</i> now to substitute for cells a single matter of

-life, protoplasm; and it is here that Mr. Huxley sees his

-cue. Mr. Huxley’s very first word is the “physical basis

-or matter of life;” and he supposes “that to many the

-idea that there is such a thing may be novel.” This, then,

-so far, is what is <i>new</i> in Mr. Huxley’s contribution. He

-seems to have said to himself, if formerly the whole

-world was thought kin in an “ideal” or formal element,

-organization, I shall now finally complete this identification

-in a “physical” or material element, protoplasm.

-In short, what at this stage we are asked to witness in

-the essay is, the identification of all living beings whatever

-in the identity of protoplasm. As there is a

-single matter, clay, which is the matter of all bricks, so

-there is a single matter, protoplasm, which is the matter

-of all organisms. “Protoplasm is the clay of the potter,

-which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay,

-separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest

-brick or sun-dried clod.” Now here I cannot

-help stopping a moment to remark that Mr. Huxley

-puts emphatically his whole soul into this sentence, and

-evidently believes it to be, if we may use the word, a

-<i>clincher</i>. But, after all, does it say much? or rather,

-does it say anything? To the question, “Of what are

-you made?” the answer, for a long time now, and by

-the great mass of human beings who are supposed civilized,

-has been “Dust.” Dust, and the same dust, has

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>been allowed to constitute us all. But materialism has

-not on that account been the irresistible result. Attention

-hitherto—and surely excusably, or even laudably in

-such a case—has been given not so much to the dust as

-to the “potter,” and the “artifice” by which he could

-so transform, or, as Mr. Huxley will have it, <i>modify</i> it.

-To ask us to say, instead of dust, clay, or even protoplasm,

-is not to ask us for much, then, seeing that even

-to Mr. Huxley there still remain both the “potter” and

-his “artifice.”</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But to return: To Mr. Huxley, when he says all

-bricks, being made of clay, are the same thing, we answer,

-Yes, undoubtedly, if they are made of the same

-clay. That is, the bricks are identical if the clay is

-identical; but, on the other hand, by as much as the

-clay differs will the bricks differ. And, similarly, all

-organisms can be identified only if their composing protoplasm

-can be identified. To this stake is the argument

-of Mr. Huxley bound.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>This argument itself takes, as we have seen, a threefold

-course: Mr. Huxley will prove his position in this

-place by reference, firstly, to unity of faculty; secondly,

-to unity of form; and thirdly, to unity of substance. It

-is this course of proof, then, which we have now to follow,

-but taking the question of substance, as simplest,

-first, and the others later.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>By substance, Mr. Huxley understands the internal

-or chemical composition; and, with a mere reference to

-the action of reagents, he asserts the protoplasm of all

-living beings to be an identical combination of carbon,

-hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is for us to ask,

-then, Are all samples of protoplasm identical, first, in

-their chemical composition, and, second, under the action

-of the various reagents?</p>

-

-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>On the first clause, we may say, in the first place, towards

-a proof of difference which will only cumulate, I

-hope, that, even should we grant in all protoplasm an

-identity of chemical ingredients, what is called <i>Allotropy</i>

-may still have introduced no inconsiderable variety.

-Ozone is not antozone, nor is oxygen either, though in

-chemical constitution all are alike. In the second

-place, again, we may say that, with <i>varying proportions</i>,

-the same component parts produce very various results.

-By way of illustration, it will suffice to refer to such different

-things as the proteids, gluten, albumen, fibrin,

-gelatine, etc., compared with the urinary products, urea

-and uric acid; or with the biliary products, glycocol,

-glycocolic acid, bili-rubin, bili-verdin, etc.; and yet all

-these substances, varying so much the one from the

-other, are, as protoplasm is, compounds of carbon, hydrogen,

-oxygen, and nitrogen. But, in the third place,

-we are not limited to a <i>may say</i>; we can assert the fact

-that all protoplasm is not chemically identical. All the

-tissues of the organism are called protoplasm by Mr.

-Huxley; but can we predicate chemical identity of

-muscle and bone, for example? In such cases Mr.

-Huxley, it is true, may bring the word “modified” into

-use; but the objection of modification we shall examine

-later. In the mean time, we are justified, by Mr. Huxley’s

-very argument, in regarding all organized tissues

-whatever as protoplasm; for if these tissues are not to

-be identified in protoplasm, we must suppose denied

-what it was his one business to affirm. And it is

-against that affirmation that we point to the fact of

-much chemical difference obtaining among the tissues,

-not only in the <i>proportions</i> of their fundamental elements,

-but also in the <i>addition</i> (and proportions as well)

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>of such others as chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, potash,

-soda, lime, magnesia, iron, etc. Vast differences vitally

-must be legitimately assumed for tissues that are so different

-chemically. But, in the fourth place, we have the

-authority of the Germans for asserting that the cells

-themselves—and they now, to the most advanced, are

-only protoplasm—do differ chemically, some being

-found to contain glycogen, some cholesterine, some protogon,

-and some myosin. Now such substances, let the

-chemical analogy be what it may, must still be allowed

-to introduce chemical difference. In the last place, Mr.

-Huxley’s analysis is an analysis of <i>dead</i> protoplasm, and

-indecisive, consequently, for that which lives. Mr. Huxley

-betrays sensitiveness in advance to this objection;

-for he seeks to rise above the sensitiveness and the objection

-at once by styling the latter “frivolous.” Nevertheless

-the Germans say pointedly that it is unknown

-whether the same elements are to be referred to the

-cells after as before death. Kühne does not consider

-it proved that living muscle contains syntonin; yet Mr.

-Huxley tells us, in his Physiology, that “syntonin is the

-chief constituent of muscle and flesh.” In general, we

-may say, according to Stricker, that all weight is put

-now on the examination of living tissue, and that the

-difference is fully allowed between that and dead tissue.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>On the second clause now, or with regard to the action

-of reagents, these must be denied to produce the

-like result on the various forms of protoplasm. With

-reference to temperature, for example, Kühne reports

-the movements of the amoeba to be arrested in iced

-water; while, in the same medium, the ova of the trout

-furrow famously, but perish even in a warmed room.

-Others, again, we are told, may be actually dried, and

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>yet live. Of ova in general, in this connection, it is

-said that they live or die according as the temperature

-to which they are exposed differs little or much from

-that which is natural to the organisms producing them.

-In some, according to Max Schultze, even distilled

-water is enough to arrest movement. Now, not to

-dwell longer here, both amoeba and ova are to Mr.

-Huxley pure protoplasm; and such difference of result,

-according to difference of temperature, etc., must assuredly

-be allowed to point to a difference of original

-nature. Any conclusion so far, then, in regard to unity

-of substance, whether the chemical composition or the

-action of reagents be considered, cannot be said to bear

-out the views of Mr. Huxley.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>What now of the unities of form and power in protoplasm?

-By form, Mr. Huxley will be found to mean

-the general appearance and structure; and by faculty

-or power, the action exhibited. Now it will be very

-easy to prove that, in neither respect, do all specimens

-of protoplasm agree. Mr. Huxley’s representative protoplasm,

-it appears, is that of the nettle-sting; and he

-describes it as a granulated, semi-fluid body, contractile

-in mass, and contractile also in detail to the development

-of a species of circulation. Stricker, again,

-speaks of it as a homogeneous substance, in which any

-granules that may appear must be considered of foreign

-importation, and in which there are no evidences of circulation.

-In this last respect, then, that Mr. Huxley

-should talk of “tiny Maelstroms,” such as even in the

-silence of a tropical noon might stun us, if heard, as

-“with the roar of a great city,” may be viewed, perhaps,

-as a rise into poetry beyond the occasion.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Further, according to Stricker, protoplasm varies almost

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>infinitely in consistence, in shape, in structure, and

-in function. In consistence, it is sometimes so fluid as

-to be capable of forming in drops; sometimes semi-fluid

-and gelatinous; sometimes of considerable resistance.

-In shape—for to Stricker the cells are now protoplasm—we

-have club-shaped protoplasm, globe-shaped

-protoplasm, cup-shaped protoplasm, bottle-shaped protoplasm,

-spindle-shaped protoplasm—branched, threaded,

-ciliated protoplasm,—circle-headed protoplasm—flat,

-conical, cylindrical, longitudinal, prismatic, polyhedral,

-and palisade-like protoplasm. In structure, again, it is

-sometimes uniform and sometimes reticulated into interspaces

-that contain fluid. In function, lastly—and here

-we have entered on the consideration of faculty or power—some

-protoplasm is vagrant (so to translate <i>wandernd</i>),

-and of unknown use, like the colorless blood-corpuscles.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>In reference to these, as strengthening the argument,

-and throwing much light generally, I break off a moment

-to say that, very interesting as they are in themselves,

-and as Recklinghausen, in especial, has made

-them, Mr. Huxley’s theory of them disagrees considerably

-with the prevalent German one. He speaks of

-them as the source of the body in general, yet, in his

-Physiology, he talks of the spleen, the lymphatics, and

-even the liver—<i>parts</i> of the body—as <i>their</i> source.

-They are so few in number that, while Mr. Huxley is

-thankful to be able to point to the inside of the lips as

-a seat for them, they bear to the red corpuscles only

-the proportion of 1 to 450. This disproportion, however,

-is no bar to Mr. Huxley’s derivation of the latter

-from the former. But the fact is questioned. The

-Germans, generally, for their, part, describe the colorless,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>or vagrant, blood-corpuscles as probably media of

-conjugation or reparation, but acknowledge their function

-to be as yet quite unknown; while Rindfleisch,

-characterizing the spleen as the grave of the red, and

-the womb of the white, corpuscles, evidently refers the

-latter to the former. This, indeed, is a matter of direct

-assertion with Preyer, who has “shown that pieces of

-red blood-corpuscles may be eaten by the amoeboid cells

-of the frog,” and holds that the latter (the white corpuscles)

-proceed directly from the former (the red corpuscles);

-so that it seems to be determined in the

-mean time that there is no proof of the reverse being

-the fact.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>In function, then, to resume, some protoplasm is vagrant,

-and of unknown use. Some again produces pepsine,

-and some fat. Some at least contains pigment.

-Then there is nerve-protoplasm, brain-protoplasm, bone-protoplasm,

-muscle-protoplasm, and protoplasm of all

-the other tissues, no one of which but produces only

-its own kind, and is uninterchangeable with the rest.

-Lastly, on this head, we have to point to the overwhelming

-fact that there is the infinitely different protoplasm

-of the various infinitely different plants and

-animals, in each of which its own protoplasm, as in the

-case of that of the various tissues, but produces its

-own kind, and is uninterchangeable with that of the

-rest.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>It may be objected, indeed, that these latter are examples

-of modified protoplasm. The objection of

-modification, as said, we have to see by itself later;

-but, in the mean time, it may be asked, Where are we

-to begin, <i>not</i> to have modified protoplasm? We have

-the example of Mr. Huxley himself, who, in the nettle-sting,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>begins already with modified protoplasm; and

-we have the authority of Rindfleisch for asserting that

-“in every different tissue we must look for a different

-initial term of the productive series.” This, evidently,

-is a very strong light on the original multiplicity of

-protoplasm, which the consideration, as we have seen,

-of the various plants and animals, has made, further,

-infinite. This is enough; but there is no wish to evade

-beginning with the very beginning—with absolutely

-pure initial protoplasm, if it can but be given us in any

-reference. The simple egg—that, probably is the beginning—that,

-probably, is the original identity; yet

-even there we find already distribution of the identity

-into infinite difference. This, certainly, with reference

-to the various organisms, but with reference also to the

-various tissues. That we regard the egg as the beginning,

-and that we do not start, like the smaller exceptional

-physiological school, with molecules themselves,

-depends on this, that the great Germans so often alluded

-to, Kühne among them, still trust in the experiments

-of Pasteur; and while they do not deny the possibility,

-or even the fact, of molecular generation, still

-feel justified in denying the existence of any observation

-that yet unassailably attests a <i>generatio æquivoca</i>.

-By such authority as this the simple philosophical spectator

-has no choice but to take his stand; and therefore

-it is that I assume the egg as the established beginning,

-so far, of all vegetable and animal organisms. To the

-egg, too, as the beginning, Mr. Huxley, though the

-lining of the nettle-sting is his representative protoplasm,

-at least refers. “In the earliest condition of

-the human organism,” he says, in allusion to the white

-(vagrant) corpuscles of the blood, “in that state in

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>which it has but just become distinguished from the

-egg in which it arises, it is nothing but an aggregation

-of such corpuscles, and every organ of the body was

-once no more than such an aggregation.” Now, in beginning

-with the egg—an absolute beginning being denied

-us in consequence of the pre-existent infinite

-difference of the egg or eggs themselves—we may

-gather from the German physiologists some such account

-of the actual facts as this.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The first change signalized in the impregnated egg

-seems that of <i>Furchung</i>, or furrowing—what the Germans

-call the <i>Furchungskugeln</i>, the <i>Dotterkugeln</i>, form.

-Then these <i>Kugeln</i>—clumps, eminences, monticles, we

-may translate the word—break into cells; and these

-are the cells of the embryo. Mr. Huxley, as quoted,

-refers to the whole body, and every organ of the body,

-as at first but an aggregation of colorless blood-corpuscles;

-but in the very statement which would render

-the identity alone explicit, the difference is quite as

-plainly implicit. As much as this lies in the word “organs,”

-to say nothing of “human.” The cells of the

-“organs,” to which he refers, are even then uninterchangeable,

-and produce but themselves. The Germans

-tell us of the <i>Keimblatt</i>, the germ-leaf, in which

-all these organs originate. This <i>Blatt</i>, or leaf, is threefold,

-it seems; but even these folds are not indifferent.

-The various cells have their distinct places in them from

-the first. While what in this connection are called the

-epithelial and endorthelial tissues spring respectively

-from the <i>upper</i> and <i>under</i> leaf, connective tissues, with

-muscle and blood, spring from the <i>middle</i> one. Surely

-in such facts we have a perfect warrant to assert the

-initial non-identity of protoplasm, and to insist on this,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>that, from the very earliest moment—even literally <i>ab

-ovo</i>—brain-cells only generate brain-cells, bone-cells

-bone-cells, and so on.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>These considerations on function all concern faculty

-or power; but we have to notice now that the characteristic

-and fundamental form of power is to Mr. Huxley

-<i>contractility</i>. He even quotes Goethe in proof of contractility

-being the main power or faculty of <i>Man</i>!

-Nevertheless it is to be said at once that, while there

-are differences in what protoplasm <i>is</i> contractile, all

-protoplasm is not contractile, nor dependent on contractility

-for its functions. In the former respect, for example,

-muscle, while it is the contractile tissue special, is

-also to Mr. Huxley protoplasm; yet Stricker asserts

-the inner construction of the contractile substance, of

-which muscle-fibre virtually consists, to be essentially

-different from contractile protoplasm. Here, then, we

-have the contractile <i>substance</i> proper “essentially different”

-from the contractile <i>source</i> proper. In the latter

-respect, again, we shall not call in the <i>un</i>contractible

-substances which Mr. Huxley himself denominates

-protoplasm—bread, namely, roast mutton, and boiled

-lobster; but we may ask where—even in the case of a

-living body—is the contractility of white of egg? In

-this reference, too, we may remark that Kühne, who divides

-the protoplasm of the epidermis into three classes,

-has been unable to distinguish contractility in his

-own third class. Lastly, where, in relation to the protoplasm

-of the nervous system, is there evidence of its

-contractility? Has any one pretended that thought is

-but the contraction of the brain; or is it by contraction

-that the very nerves operate contraction—the nerves

-that supply muscles, namely? Mr. Huxley himself, in

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>his Physiology, describes nervous action very differently.

-There <i>conduction</i> is spoken of without a hint of contraction.

-Of the higher faculties of man I have to speak

-again; but let us just ask where, in the case of any

-pure sensation—smell, taste, touch, sound, color—is

-there proof of any contraction? Are we to suppose

-that between the physical cause of heat without and the

-mental sensation of heat within, contraction is anywhere

-interpolated? Generally, in conclusion here, while reminding

-of Virchow’s testimony to the inherent inequalities

-of cell-capacity, let us but, on the question of

-faculty, contrast the kidney and the brain, even as these

-organs are viewed by Mr. Huxley. To him the one is

-but a sieve for the extrusion of refuse: the other thinks

-Newton’s ‘Principia’ and Iliads of Homer.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Probably, then, in regard to any continuity in protoplasm

-of power, of form, or of substance, we have seen

-<i>lacunæ</i> enow. Nay, Mr. Huxley himself can be adduced

-in evidence on the same side. Not rarely do we

-find in his essay admissions of <i>probability</i> where it is

-<i>certainty</i> that is alone in place. He says, for example,

-“It is more than probable that <i>when</i> the vegetable world

-<i>is</i> thoroughly explored we <i>shall</i> find all plants in possession

-of the same powers.” When a conclusion is

-decidedly announced, it is rather disappointing to be

-told, as here, that the premises are still to collect. “<i>So

-far</i>,” he says again, “as the conditions of the manifestations

-of the phenomena of contractility have <i>yet</i> been

-studied.” Now, such a <i>so far</i> need not be <i>very far</i>;

-and we may confess in passing, that from Mr. Huxley

-the phrase, “the conditions of the <i>manifestations</i> of the

-<i>phenomena</i>” grates. We hear again that it is “the rule

-<i>rather</i> than the exception,” or that “weighty authorities

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>have <i>suggested</i>” that such and such things “probably

-occur,” or, while contemplating the nettle-sting, that

-such “<i>possible</i> complexity” in other cases “<i>dawns</i>

-upon one.” On other occasions he expresses himself

-to the effect that “perhaps it would not yet be safe to

-say that <i>all</i> forms,” etc. Nay, not only does he directly

-<i>say</i> that “it is by no means his intention to suggest

-that there is no difference between the lowest plant and

-the highest, or between plants and animals,” but he directly

-proves what he says, for he demonstrates in plants

-and animals an <i>essential difference of power</i>. Plants <i>can</i>

-assimilate inorganic matters, animals can <i>not</i>, etc.

-Again, here is a passage in which he is seen to cut his

-own “<i>basis</i>” from beneath his own feet. After telling

-us that all forms of protoplasm consist of carbon, hydrogen,

-oxygen, and nitrogen “in very complex union,”

-he continues, “To this complex combination, <i>the nature

-of which has never been determined with exactness</i>, the

-name of protein has been applied.” This, plainly, is

-an identification, on Mr. Huxley’s own part, of protoplasm

-and protein; and what is said of the one being

-necessarily true of the other, it follows that Mr. Huxley

-admits the nature of protoplasm never to have been

-determined with exactness, and that, even in his eyes,

-the <i>lis</i> is still <i>sub judice</i>. This admission is strengthened

-by the words, too, “If we use this term” (protein)

-“with such <i>caution</i> as may properly arise out of our

-<i>comparative ignorance</i> of the things for which it stands;”

-which entitle us to recommend, in consequence “of our

-<i>comparative ignorance</i> of the things for which it

-stands,” “<i>caution</i>” in the use of the term protoplasm.

-In such a state of the case we cannot wonder that Mr.

-Huxley’s own conclusion here is: Therefore “all living

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>matter is more or less albuminoid.” All living matter

-is more or less albuminoid! That, indeed, is the single

-conclusion of Mr. Huxley’s whole industry; but it is a

-conclusion that, far from requiring the intervention of

-protoplasm, had been reached long before the word

-itself had been, in this connection, used.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>It is in this way, then, that Mr. Huxley can be adduced

-in refutation of himself; and I think his resort

-to an epigram of Goethe’s for reduction of the powers

-of man to those of contraction, digestion, and reproduction,

-can be regarded as an admission to the same

-effect. The epigram runs thus:—</p>

-

-<div class='lg-container-b c018'>

-  <div class='linegroup'>

-    <div class='group'>

-      <div class='line'>“Warum treibt sich das Volk so, und schreit? Es will sich ernähren,</div>

-      <div class='line in1'>Kinder zeugen, und die nähren so gut es vermag.</div>

-      <div class='line in1'>Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich wie er auch will.”</div>

-    </div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c017'>That means, quite literally translated, “Why do the

-folks bustle and bawl? They want to feed themselves,

-get children, and then feed them as best they can; no

-man does more, let him do as he may.” This, really,

-is Mr. Huxley’s sole proof for his classification of the

-powers of man. Is it sufficient? Does it not apply

-rather to the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and

-the beasts of the field, than to man? Did Newton only

-feed himself, beget children, and then feed them? Was

-it impossible for him to do any more, let him do as

-he might? And what we ask of Newton we may ask

-of all the rest. To elevate, therefore, the passing whim

-of mere literary <i>Laune</i> into a cosmical axiom and a

-proof in place—this we cannot help adding to the other

-productions here in which Mr. Huxley appears against

-himself.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But were it impossible either for him or us to point

-to these <i>lacunæ</i>, it would still be our right and our duty

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>to refer to the present conditions of microscopic science

-in general as well as in particular, and to demur

-to the erection of its <i>dicta</i>, constituted as they yet are,

-into established columns and buttresses in support of

-any theory of life, material or other.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The most delicate and dubious of all the sciences, it

-is also the youngest. In its manipulations the slightest

-change may operate as a destructive drought, or an

-equally destructive deluge. Its very tools may positively

-create the structure it actually examines. The

-present state of the science, and what warrant it gives

-Mr. Huxley to dogmatize on protoplasm, we may understand

-from this avowal of Kühne’s: “To-day we believe

-that we see” such or such fact, “but know not

-that further improvements in the means of observation

-will not reveal what is assumed for certainty to be only

-illusion.” With such authority to lean on—and it is the

-highest we can have—we may be allowed to entertain

-the conjecture, that it is just possible that some certainties,

-even of Mr. Huxley, may yet reveal themselves as

-illusions.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But, in resistance to any sweeping conclusions built

-on it, we are not confined to a reference to the imperfections

-involved in the very nature and epoch of the

-science itself in general. With yet greater assurance

-of carrying conviction with us, we may point in particular

-to the actual opinions of its present professors.

-We have seen already, in the consideration premised,

-that Mr. Huxley’s hypothesis of a protoplasm <i>matter</i> is

-unsupported, even by the most innovating Germans,

-who as yet will not advance, the most advanced of them,

-beyond a protoplasm-cell; and that his whole argument

-is thus sapped in advance. But what threatens more

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>absolute extinction of this argument still, <i>all</i> the German

-physiologists do <i>not</i> accept even the protoplasm-cell.

-Rindfleisch, for example, in his recently-published

-‘Lehrbuch der pathologischen Gewebelehre’ speaks of

-the cell very much as we understand Virchow to have

-spoken of it. To him there is in the cell not only protoplasm

-but nucleus, and perhaps membrane as well.

-To him, too, the cell propagates itself quite as we have

-been hitherto fancying it to do, by division of the nucleus,

-increase of the protoplasm, and ultimate partition

-of the cell itself. Yet he knows withal of the

-opinions of others, and accepts them in a manner. He

-mentions Kühne’s account of the membrane as at first

-but a mere physical limit of two fluids—a mere peripheral

-film or curdling; still he assumes a formal and

-decided membrane at last. Even Leydig and Schultze,

-who shall be the express eliminators of the membrane—the

-one by initiation and the other by consummation—confess

-that, as regards the cells of certain tissues, they

-have never been able to detect in them the absence of

-a membrane.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>As regards the nucleus again, the case is very much

-stronger. When we have admitted with Brücke that

-certain cryptogam cells, with Haeckel that certain protists,

-with Cienkowsky that two monads, and with Schultze

-that one amoeba, are without nucleus—when

-we have admitted that division of the cell <i>may</i> take

-place without implicating that of the nucleus—that the

-movements of the nucleus <i>may</i> be passive and due to

-those of the protoplasm—that Baer and Stricker demonstrate

-the disappearance of the original nucleus in

-the impregnated egg,—when we have admitted this, we

-have admitted also all that can be said in degradation

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>of the nucleus. Even those who say all this still attribute

-to the nucleus an important and unknown <i>rôle</i>,

-and describe the formation in the impregnated egg of a

-new nucleus; while there are others again who resist

-every attempt to degrade it. Böttcher asserts movement

-for the nucleus, even when wholly removed from

-the cell; Neumann points to such movement in dead

-or dying cells; and there is other testimony to a like

-effect, as well as to peculiarities of the nucleus otherwise

-that indicate spontaneity. In this reference we

-may allude to the weighty opinion of the late Professor

-Goodsir, who anticipated in so remarkable a manner

-certain of the determinations of Virchow. Goodsir, in

-that anticipation, wonderfully rich and ingenious as he

-is everywhere, is perhaps nowhere more interesting and

-successful than in what concerns the nucleus. Of the

-whole cell, the nucleus is to him, as it was to Schleiden,

-Schwann, and others, the most important element.

-And this is the view to which I, who have little business

-to speak, wish success. This universe is not an

-accidental cavity, in which an accidental dust has been

-accidentally swept into heaps for the accidental evolution

-of the majestic spectacle of organic and inorganic

-life. That majestic spectacle is a spectacle as plainly

-for the eye of reason as any diagram of the mathematician.

-That majestic spectacle could have been constructed,

-was constructed, only in reason, for reason,

-and by reason. From beyond Orion and the Pleiades,

-across the green hem of earth, up to the imperial personality

-of man, all, the furthest, the deadest, the dustiest,

-is for fusion in the invisible point of the single

-Ego—<i>which alone glorifies it</i>. <i>For</i> the subject, and on

-the model of the subject, all is made. Therefore it is

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>that—though, precisely as there are acephalous monsters

-by way of exception and deformity, there may be

-also at the very extremity of animated existence cells

-without a nucleus—I cannot help believing that this

-nucleus itself, as analogue of the subject will yet be

-proved the most important and indispensable of all the

-normal cell-elements. Even the phenomena of the impregnated

-egg seem to me to support this view. In the

-egg, on impregnation, it seems to me natural (I say it

-with a smile) that the old sun that ruled it should go

-down, and that a new sun, stronger in the combination

-of the new and the old, should ascend into its place!</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Be these things as they may, we have now overwhelming

-evidence before us for concluding, with reference to

-Mr. Huxley’s first proposition, that—in view of the nature

-of microscopic science—in view of the state of

-belief that obtains at present as regards nucleus, membrane,

-and entire cell—even in view of the supporters

-of protoplasm itself—Mr. Huxley is not authorized to

-speak of a physical matter of life; which, for the rest,

-if granted, would, for innumerable and, as it appears to

-me, irrefragable reasons, be obliged to acknowledge for

-itself, not identity, but an infinite diversity in power, in

-form and in substance.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>So much for the first proposition in Mr. Huxley’s essay,

-or that which concerns protoplasm, as a supposed

-matter of life, identical itself, and involving the identity

-of all the various organs and organisms which it is assumed

-to compose. What now of the second proposition,

-or that which concerns the materiality at once of

-protoplasm, and of all that is conceived to derive from

-protoplasm? In other words, though, so to speak, for

-organic bricks anything like an organic clay still awaits

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>the proof, I ask, if the bricks are not the same because

-the clay is not the same, what if the materiality of the

-former is equally unsupported by the materiality of the

-latter? Or what if the functions of protoplasm are not

-properties of its mere molecular constitution?</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>For this is Mr. Huxley’s second proposition, namely,

-That all vital and intellectual functions are but the

-properties of the molecular disposition and changes of

-the material basis (protoplasm) of which the various

-animals and vegetables consist. With the conclusions

-now before us, it is evident that to enter at all on this

-part of Mr. Huxley’s argumentation is, so far as we

-are concerned, only a matter of grace. In order that

-it should have any weight, we must grant the fact, at

-once of the existence of a matter of life, and of all organs

-and organisms being but aggregates of it. This,

-obviously, we cannot now do. By way of hypothesis,

-however, we may assume it. Let it be granted, then,

-that <i>pro hac vice</i> there <i>is</i> a physical basis of life with all

-the consequences named; and now let us see how Mr.

-Huxley proceeds to establish its materiality.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The whole former part of Mr. Huxley’s essay consists

-(as said) of fifty paragraphs, and the argument immediately

-concerned is confined to the latter ten of them.

-This argument is the simple chemical analogy that, under

-stimulus of an electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen

-uniting into an equivalent weight of water, and, under

-stimulus of preëxisting protoplasm, carbon, hydrogen,

-oxygen, and nitrogen uniting into an equivalent weight

-of protoplasm, there is the same warrant for attributing

-the properties of the consequent to the properties

-of the antecedents in the latter case as in the former.

-The properties of protoplasm are, in origin and character,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>precisely on the same level as the properties of water.

-The cases are perfectly parallel. It is as absurd

-to attribute a new entity vitality to protoplasm, as a new

-entity aquosity to water. Or, if it is by its mere chemical

-and physical structure that water exhibits certain

-properties called aqueous, it is also by its mere chemical

-and physical structure that protoplasm exhibits certain

-properties called vital. All that is necessary in

-either case is, “under certain conditions,” to bring the

-chemical constituents together. If water is a molecular

-complication, protoplasm is equally a molecular complication,

-and for the description of the one or the

-other there is no change of language required. A new

-substance with new qualities results in precisely the

-same way here, as a new substance with new qualities

-there; and the derivative qualities are not more different

-from the primitive qualities in the one instance,

-than the derivative qualities are different from the primitive

-qualities in the other. Lastly, the <i>modus operandi</i>

-of preëxistent protoplasm is not more unintelligible than

-that of the electric spark. The conclusion is irresistible,

-then, that all protoplasm being reciprocally convertible,

-and consequently identical, the properties it

-displays, vitality and intellect included, are as much

-the result of molecular constitution as those of water

-itself.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>It is evident, then, that the fulcrum on which Mr.

-Huxley’s second proposition rests, is a single inference

-from a chemical analogy. Analogy, however, being

-never identity, is apt to betray. The difference it hides

-may be essential, that is, while the likeness it shows

-may be inessential—so far as the conclusion is concerned.

-That this mischance has overtaken Mr. Huxley

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>here, it will, I fancy, not be difficult to demonstrate.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The analogy to which Mr. Huxley trusts has two references:

-one, to chemical composition, and one to a

-certain stimulus that determines it. As regards chemical

-composition, we are asked, by virtue of the analogy

-obtaining, to identify, as equally simple instances of it,

-protoplasm here and water there; and, as regards the

-stimulus in question, we are asked to admit the action

-of the electric spark in the one case to be quite analogous

-to the action of preëxisting protoplasm in the

-other. In both references I shall endeavor to point

-out that the analogy fails; or, as we may say it also,

-that, even to Mr. Huxley, it can only seem to succeed

-by discounting the elements of difference that still

-subsist.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>To begin with chemical combination, it is not unjust

-to demand that the analogy which must be admitted to

-exist in that, and a general physical respect, should not

-be strained beyond its legitimate limits. Protoplasm

-cannot be denied to be a chemical substance; protoplasm

-cannot be denied to be a physical substance. As

-a compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen,

-it comports itself chemically—at least in ultimate instance—in

-a manner not essentially different from that

-in which water, as a compound of hydrogen and oxygen,

-comports itself chemically. In mere physical aspect,

-again, it may count quality for quality with water

-in the same aspect. In short, so far as it is on chemical

-and physical structure that the possession of distinctive

-properties in any case depends, both bodies

-may be allowed to be pretty well on a par. The analogy

-must be allowed to hold so far: so far but no

-farther. One step farther and we see not only that

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>protoplasm has, like water, a chemical and physical

-structure; but that, unlike water, it has also an organized

-or organic structure. Now this, on the part of

-protoplasm, is a possession in excess; and with relation

-to that excess there can be no grounds for analogy.

-This, perhaps, is what Mr. Huxley has omitted

-to consider. When insisting on attributing to protoplasm

-the qualities it possessed, because of its chemical

-and physical structure, if it was for chemical and physical

-structure that we attributed to water <i>its</i> qualities,

-he has simply forgotten the addition to protoplasm of a

-third structure that can only be named organic. “If

-the phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so

-are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its

-properties.” When Mr. Huxley speaks thus, Exactly

-so, we may answer: “living or dead!” That alternative

-is simply slipped in and passed; but it is in that

-alternative that the whole matter lies. Chemically,

-dead protoplasm is to Mr. Huxley quite as good as

-living protoplasm. As a sample of the article, he is

-quite content with dead protoplasm, and even swallows

-it, he says, in the shape of bread, lobster, mutton, etc.,

-with all the satisfactory results to be desired.—Still, as

-concerns the argument, it must be pointed out that it is

-only these that can be placed on the same level as water;

-and that living protoplasm is not only unlike water,

-but it is unlike dead protoplasm. Living protoplasm,

-namely, is identical with dead protoplasm only so far as

-its chemistry is concerned (if even so much as that);

-and it is quite evident, consequently, that difference between

-the two cannot depend on that in which they are

-identical—cannot depend on the chemistry. Life, then,

-is no affair of chemical and physical structure, and must

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>find its explanation in something else. It is thus that,

-lifted high enough, the light of the analogy between

-water and protoplasm is seen to go out. Water, in fact,

-when formed from hydrogen and oxygen, is, in a certain

-way and in relation to them, no new product; it

-has still, like them, only chemical and physical qualities;

-it is still, as they are, inorganic. So far as <i>kind</i>

-of power is concerned, they are still on the same level.

-But not so protoplasm, where, with preservation of the

-chemical and physical likeness there is the addition of

-the unlikeness of life, of organization, and of ideas.

-But the addition is a new world—a new and higher

-world, the world of a self-realizing thought, the world

-of an <i>entelechy</i>. The change of language objected to

-by Mr. Huxley is thus a matter of necessity, for it is

-<i>not</i> mere molecular complication that we have any

-longer before us, and the qualities of the derivative are

-essentially and absolutely different from the qualities

-of the primitive. If we did invent the term aquosity,

-then, as an abstract sign for all the qualities of water,

-we should really do very little harm; but aquosity and

-vitality would still remain essentially unlike. While for

-the invention of aquosity there is little or no call, however,

-the fact in the other case is that we are not only

-compelled to invent, but to <i>perceive</i> vitality. We are

-quite willing to do as Mr. Huxley would have us to do:

-look on, watch the phenomena, and name the results.

-But just in proportion to our faithfulness in these respects

-is the necessity for the recognition of a new

-world and a new nomenclature. There are certainly

-different states of water, as ice and steam; but the relation

-of the solid to the liquid, or of either to the vapor,

-surely offers no analogy to the relation of protoplasm

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>dead to protoplasm alive. That relation is not

-an analogy but an antithesis, the antithesis of antitheses.

-In it, in fact, we are in presence of the one incommunicable

-gulf—the gulf of all gulfs—that gulf

-which Mr. Huxley’s protoplasm is as powerless to

-efface as any other material expedient that has ever

-been suggested since the eyes of men first looked into

-it—the mighty gulf between death and life.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>The differences alluded to (they are, in order, organization

-and life, the objective idea—design, and the subjective

-idea—thought), it may be remarked, are admitted

-by those very Germans to whom protoplasm, name

-and thing, is due. They, the most advanced and innovating

-of them, directly avow that there is present in

-the cell “an architectonic principle that has not yet

-been detected.” In pronouncing protoplasm capable

-of active or vital movements, they do by that refer, they

-admit also, to an immaterial force, and they ascribe the

-processes exhibited by protoplasm—in so many words—not

-to the molecules, but to organization and life. It is

-remarked by Kant that “the reason of the specific

-mode of existence of every part of a living body lies in

-the whole, whilst with dead masses each part bears this

-reason within itself;” and this indeed is how the two

-worlds are differentiated. A drop of water, once

-formed, is there passive for ever, susceptible to influence,

-but indifferent to influence, and what influence

-reaches it is wholly from without. It may be added to,

-it may be subtracted from; but infinitely apathetic

-quantitatively, it is qualitatively independent. It is indifferent

-to its own physical parts. It is without contractility,

-without alimentation, without reproduction,

-without specific function. Not so the cell, in which the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>parts are dependent on the whole, and the whole on

-the parts; which has its activity and <i>raison d’être</i> within;

-which manifests all the powers which we have described

-water to want; and which requires for its continuance

-conditions of which water is independent. It is only

-so far as organization and life are concerned, however,

-that the cell is thus different from water. Chemically

-and physically, as said, it can show with it quality

-for quality. How strangely Mr. Huxley’s deliverances

-show beside these facts! He can “see no break in the

-series of steps in molecular complication;” but, glaringly

-obvious, there is a step added that is not molecular

-at all, and that has its supporting conditions completely

-elsewhere. The molecules are as fully accounted

-for in protoplasm as in water; but the sum of qualities,

-thus exhausted in the latter, is not so exhausted in the

-former, in which there are qualities due, plainly, not to

-the molecules as molecules, but to the form into which

-they are thrown, and the force that makes that form

-one. When the chemical elements are brought together,

-Mr. Huxley says, protoplasm is formed, “and this protoplasm

-exhibits the phenomena of life;” but he ought

-to have added that these phenomena are themselves

-added to the phenomena for which all that relates to

-chemistry stands, and are there, consequently, only by

-reason of some other determinant. New consequents

-necessarily demand new antecedents. “We think fit

-to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen,

-and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers

-and activities of these substances as the properties of

-the matter of which they are composed.” That, doubtless,

-is true, we say; but such statements do not exhaust

-the facts. We call water hydrogen and oxygen,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>and attribute <i>its</i> properties to the properties of them.

-In a chemical point of view, we ought to do the same

-thing for ice and steam; yet, for all the chemical identity,

-water is not ice, nor is either steam. Do we, then,

-in these cases, make nothing of the <i>difference</i>, and in

-its despite enjoy the satisfaction of viewing the three

-as one? Not so; we ask a reason for the difference;

-we demand an antecedent that shall render the consequent

-intelligible. The chemistry of oxygen and hydrogen

-is not enough in explanation of the threefold

-form; and by the very necessity of the facts we are

-driven to the addition of heat. It is precisely so with

-protoplasm in its twofold form. The chemistry remaining

-the same in each (if it really does so), we are compelled

-to seek elsewhere a reason for the difference of

-living from dead protoplasm. As the differences of ice

-and steam from water lay not in the hydrogen and oxygen,

-but in the heat, so the difference of living from

-dead protoplasm lies not in the carbon, the hydrogen,

-the oxygen, and the nitrogen, but in the vital organization.

-In all cases, for the new quality, plainly, we must

-have a new explanation. The qualities of a steam-engine

-are not the results of its simple chemistry. We

-do apply to protoplasm the same conceptions, then, that

-are legitimate elsewhere, and in allocating properties

-and explaining phenomena we simply insist on Mr.

-Huxley’s own distinction of “living or dead.” That,

-in fact, is to us the distinction of distinctions, and we

-admit no vital action whatever, not even the dullest, to

-be the result of the <i>molecular</i> action of the protoplasm

-that displays it. The very protoplasm of the nettle-sting,

-with which Mr. Huxley begins, is already vitally

-organized, and in that organization as much superior to

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>its own molecules as the steam-engine, in its mechanism,

-to its own wood and iron. It were indeed as rational

-to say that there is no principle concerned in a

-steam-engine or a watch but that of its molecular

-forces, as to make this assertion of organized matter.

-Still there are degrees in organization, and the highest

-forms of life are widely different from the lowest. Degrees

-similar we see even in the inorganic world. The

-persistent flow of a river is, to the mighty reason of the

-solar system, in some such proportion, perhaps, as the

-rhizopod to man. In protoplasm, even the lowest, then,

-but much more conspicuously in the highest, there is,

-in addition to the molecular force, another force unsignalized

-by Mr. Huxley—the force of vital organization.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But this force is a rational unity, and that is an idea;

-and this I would point to as a second form of the addition

-to the chemistry and physics of protoplasm. We

-have just seen, it is true, that an idea may be found in

-inorganic matter, as in the solar and sidereal systems

-generally. But the idea in organized matter is not one

-operative, so to speak, from without: it is one operative

-from within, and in an infinitely more intimate and pervading

-manner. The units that form the complement

-of an inorganic system are but independently and externally

-in place, like units in a procession; but in what

-is organized there is no individual that is not sublated

-into the unity of the single life. This is so even in protoplasm.

-Mr. Huxley, it is true, desiderates, as result

-of mere ordinary chemical process, a life-stuff in mass,

-as it were in the web, to which he has only to resort for

-cuttings and cuttings in order to produce, by aggregation,

-what organized individual he pleases. But the

-facts are not so: we cannot have protoplasm in the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>web, but the piece. There is as yet no <i>matter</i> of life;

-there are still <i>cells</i> of life. It is no shred of protoplasm—no

-spoonful or toothpickful—that can be recognized

-as adequate to the function and the name. Such shred

-may wriggle a moment, but it produces nought, and it

-dies. In the smallest, lowest protoplasm-cell, then, we

-have this rational unity of a complement of individuals

-that only are for the whole and exist in the whole.

-This is an idea, therefore; this is design: the organized

-concert of many to a single common purpose. The

-rudest savage that should, as in Paley’s illustration,

-find a watch, and should observe the various contrivances

-all controlled by the single end in view, would be

-obliged to acknowledge—though in his own way—that

-what he had before him was no mere physical, no mere

-molecular product. So in protoplasm: even from the

-first, but, quite undeniably, in the completed organization

-at last, which alone it was there to produce; for a

-single idea has been its one manifestation throughout.

-And in what machinery does it not at length issue?

-Was it molecular powers that invented a respiration—that

-perforated the posterior ear to give a balance of

-air—that compensated the <i>fenestra ovalis</i> by a <i>fenestra

-rotunda</i>—that placed in the auricular sacs those <i>otolithes</i>,

-those express stones for hearing? Such machinery!

-The <i>chordæ tendineæ</i> are to the valves of the heart exactly

-adjusted check-strings; and the contractile

-<i>columnæ carneæ</i> are set in, under contraction and expansion,

-to equalize their length to their office. Membranes,

-rods, and liquids—it required the express experiment

-of man to make good the fact that the

-inventor of the ear had availed himself of the most

-perfect apparatus possible for his purpose. And are we

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>to conceive such machinery, such apparatus, such contrivances

-merely molecular? Are molecules adequate

-to such things—molecules in their blind passivity, and

-dead, dull insensibility? Is it to molecular agency Mr.

-Huxley himself owes that “singular inward laboratory”

-of which he speaks, and without which all the protoplasm

-in the world would be useless to him? Surely,

-in the presence of these manifest ideas, it is impossible

-to attribute the single peculiar feature of protoplasm—its

-vitality, namely—to mere molecular chemistry. Protoplasm,

-it is true, breaks up into carbon, hydrogen,

-oxygen, and nitrogen, as water does into hydrogen and

-oxygen; but the watch breaks similarly up into mere

-brass, and steel, and glass. The loose materials of

-the watch—even its chemical material if you will—replace

-its weight, quite as accurately as the constituents

-carbon, etc., replace the weight of the protoplasm.

-But neither these nor those replace the vanished idea,

-which was alone the important element. Mr. Huxley

-saw no break in the series of steps in molecular complication;

-but, though not molecular, it is difficult to

-understand what more striding, what more absolute

-break could be desired than the break into an idea. It

-is of that break alone that we think in the watch; and

-it is of that break alone that we should think in the

-protoplasm which, far more cunningly, far more rationally,

-constructs a heart, an eye or an ear. That is the

-break of breaks, and explain it as we may, we shall

-never explain it by molecules.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But, if inorganic elements as such are inadequate to

-account either for vital organization or the objective

-idea of design, much more are they inadequate, in the

-third place, to account for the subjective idea, for the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>phenomena of thought as thought. Yet Mr. Huxley

-tells us that thought is but the expression of the molecular

-changes of protoplasm. This he only tells us;

-this he does not prove. He merely says that, if we admit

-the functions of the lowest forms of life to be but

-“direct results of the nature of the matter of which

-they are composed,” we must admit as much for the

-functions of the highest. We have not admitted Mr.

-Huxley’s presupposition; but, even with its admission,

-we should not feel bound to admit his conclusion. In

-such a mighty system of differences, there are ample

-room and verge enough for the introduction of new motives.

-We can say here at once, in fact, that as thought,

-let its connection be what it may with, has never been

-proved to result from, organization, no improvement of

-the proof required will be found in protoplasm. No one

-power that Mr. Huxley signalizes in protoplasm can account

-for thought: not alimentation, and not reproduction,

-certainly; but not even contractility. We have

-seen already that there is no proof of contraction being

-necessary even for the simplest sensation; but much

-less is there any proof of a necessity of contraction for

-the inner and independent operations of the mind. Mr.

-Huxley himself admits this. He says: “Speech, gesture,

-and every other form of human action are, in the

-long-run, resolvable into muscular contraction;” and so,

-“even those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and

-of will, which we rightly name the higher faculties, are

-not excluded from this classification, inasmuch as to

-every one <i>but the subject of them</i>, they are known only as

-transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of

-the body.” The concession is made here, we see that

-these manifestations are differently known to the subject

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>of them. But we may first object that, if even that

-privileged “every one but the subject” were limited to

-a knowledge of contractions, he would not know much.

-It is only because he knows, first of all, a thinker and

-willer of contractions that these themselves cease to be

-but passing externalities, and transitory contingencies.

-Neither is it reasonable to assert an identity of nature

-for contractions, and for that which they only represent.

-It would hardly be fair to confound either the receiver

-or the sender of a telegraphic message, with the movements

-which alone bore it, and without which it would

-have been impossible. The sign is not the thing signified,

-it is but the servant of the signifier—his own arbitrary

-mark—and intelligible, in the first place, only to

-him. It is the meaning, in all cases, that is alone vital;

-the sign is but an accident. To convert the internality

-into the arbitrary externality that simply expresses it, is

-for Mr. Huxley only an oversight. Your ideas are

-made known to your neighbors by contractions, therefore

-your ideas are of the same nature as contractions!

-Or, even to take it from the other side, your neighbor

-perceives in you contractions only, and therefore your

-ideas are contractions! Are not the vital elements

-here present the two correspondent internalities, between

-which the contractions constitute but an arbitrary

-chain of external communication, that is so now, but

-may be otherwise again? The ringing of the bell at

-the window is not precisely the dwarf within. Nor are

-Engineer Chappe’s “wooden arms and elbow-joints

-jerking and fugling in the air,” to be identified with

-Engineer Chappe himself. For the higher faculties,

-even for speech, etc., assuredly Mr. Huxley might have

-well spared himself this superfluous and inapplicable

-reference to contraction.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>But, in the middle of it, as we have seen, Mr. Huxley

-concedes that these manifestations are differently known

-to the subject of them. If so, what becomes of his

-assertion of but a certain number of powers for protoplasm?

-The manifestations of the higher faculties are

-not known to the subject of them by contraction, etc.

-By what, then, are they known? According to Mr.

-Huxley, they can only be known by the powers of protoplasm;

-and therefore, by his own showing, protoplasm

-must possess powers other than those of his own assertion.

-Mr. Huxley’s one great power of contractility,

-Mr. Huxley himself confesses to be inapplicable here.

-Indeed, in his Physiology (p. 193), he makes such an

-avowal as this: “We class <i>sensations</i>, along with <i>emotions</i>,

-and <i>volitions</i>, and <i>thoughts</i>, under the common

-head of states of <i>consciousness</i>; but what consciousness

-is we know not, and how it is that anything so remarkable

-as a state of consciousness comes about as the result

-of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable

-as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed

-his lamp in the story.” Consciousness plainly was not

-muscular contraction to Mr. Huxley when he wrote his

-Physiology; it is only since then that he has gone over

-to the assertion of no power in protoplasm but the triple

-power, contractility, etc. But the truth is only as his

-Physiology has it—the cleft is simply, as Mr. Huxley

-acknowledges it there, absolute. On one side, there is

-the world of externality, where all is body by body,

-and away from one another—the boundless reciprocal

-exclusion of the infinite object. On the other side,

-there is the world of internality, where all is soul to

-soul, and away into one another—the boundless reciprocal

-inclusion of the infinite subject. This—even

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>while it is true that, for subject to be subject, and object,

-object, the boundless intussuscepted multiplicity

-of the single invisible point of the one is but the dimensionless

-casket into which the illimitable Genius of the

-other must retract and withdraw itself—is the difference

-of differences; and certainly it is not internality

-that can be abolished before externality. The proof

-for the absoluteness of thought, the subject, the mind,

-is, on its side, pretty well perfect. It is not necessary

-here, however, to enter into that proof at length. Before

-passing on, I may simply point to the fact that, if

-thought is to be called a function of matter, it must be

-acknowledged to be a function wholly peculiar and unlike

-any other. In all other functions, we are present

-to processes which are in the same sense physical as

-the organs themselves. So it is with lung, stomach,

-liver, kidney, where every step can be followed, so to

-speak, with eye and hand; but all is changed when we

-have to do with mind as the function of brain. Then,

-indeed, as Mr. Huxley thought in his Physiology, we are

-admitted, as if by touch of Aladdin’s lamp, to a world

-absolutely different and essentially new—to a world, on

-its side of the incommunicable cleft, as complete, entire,

-independent, self-contained, and absolutely <i>sui

-generis</i>, as the world of matter on the other side. It

-will be sufficient here to allude to as much as this, with

-special reference to the fact that, so far as this argument

-is concerned, protoplasm has not introduced any

-the very slightest difference. All the ancient reasons

-for the independence of thought as against organization,

-can be used with even more striking effect as

-against protoplasm; but it will be sufficient to indicate

-this, so much are the arguments in question a common

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>property now. Thought, in fact, brings with it its own

-warrant; or it brings with it, to use the phrase of Burns,

-“its patent of nobility direct from Almighty God.”

-And that is the strongest argument on this whole side.

-Throughout the entire universe, organic and inorganic,

-thought is the controlling sovereign; nor does matter

-anywhere refuse its allegiance. So it is in thought, too,

-that man has <i>his</i> patent of nobility, believes that he is

-created in the image of God, and knows himself a free-man

-of infinitude.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But the analogy, in the hands of Mr. Huxley, has, we

-have seen, a second reference—that, namely, to the excitants,

-if we may call them so, which <i>determine</i> combination.

-The <i>modus operandi</i>, Mr. Huxley tells us, of

-preëxisting protoplasm in determining the formation of

-new protoplasm, is not more unintelligible than the

-<i>modus operandi</i> of the electric spark in determining the

-formation of water; and so both, we are left to infer,

-are perfectly analogous. The inferential turn here is

-rather a favorite with Mr. Huxley. “But objectors of

-this class,” he says on an earlier occasion, in allusion

-to those who hesitate to conclude from dead to living

-matter, “do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness,

-true that we know nothing about the composition

-of any body whatever as it is.” In the same neighborhood,

-too, he argues that, though impotent to restore

-to decomposed calc-spar its original form, we do not

-hesitate to accept the chemical analysis assigned to it,

-and should not, consequently, any more hesitate because

-of any mere difference of form to accept the analysis

-of dead for that of living protoplasm. It is certainly

-fair to point out that, if we bear ignorance and

-impotence with equanimity in one case, we may equally

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>so bear them in another; but it is not fair to convert

-ignorance into knowledge, nor impotence into power.

-Yet it is usual to take such statements loosely, and let

-them pass. It is not considered that, if we know nothing

-about the composition of any body whatever as it

-is, then we do know nothing, and that it is strangely

-idle to offer absolute ignorance as a support for the

-most dogmatic knowledge. If such statements are, as

-is really expected for them, to be accepted, yet not accepted,

-they are the stultification of all logic. Is the

-chemistry of living to be seen to be the same as the

-chemistry of dead protoplasm, because we know nothing

-about the composition of any body whatever as it

-is? We know perfectly well that black is white, for we

-are absolutely ignorant of either as it is! The <i>form</i> of

-the calc-spar, which (the spar) we <i>can</i> analyze, we cannot

-restore; therefore the <i>form</i> of the protoplasm, which

-we <i>cannot</i> analyze, has nothing to do with the matter in

-hand; and the chemistry of what is dead may be accepted

-as the chemistry of what is living! In the case

-of reasoning so irrelevant it is hardly worth while referring

-to what concerns the forms themselves; that they

-are totally incommensurable, that in all forms of calc-spar

-there is no question but of what is physical, while

-in protoplasm the change of form is introduction into

-an entire new world. As in these illustrations, so in

-the case immediately before us. No appeal to ignorance

-in regard to something else, the electric spark,

-should be allowed to transform another ignorance, that

-of the action of preëxisting protoplasm, into knowledge,

-here into <i>the</i> knowledge that the two unknown things,

-because of non-knowledge, are—perfectly analogous!

-That this analogy does not exist—that the electric spark

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>and preëxisting protoplasm are, in their relative places,

-<i>not</i> on the same chemical level—this is the main point

-for us to see; and Mr. Huxley’s allusion to our ignorance

-must not be allowed to blind us to it. Here we

-have in a glass vessel so much hydrogen and oxygen,

-into which we discharge an electric spark, and water is

-the result. Now what analogy is it possible to perceive

-between this production of water by external experiment

-and the production of protoplasm by protoplasm?

-The discrepancy is so palpable that it were impertinent

-to enlarge on it. The truth is just this, that the measured

-and mixed gases, the vessel, and the spark, in the

-one case, are as unlike the fortuitous food, the living

-organs, and the long process of assimilation in the

-other case, as the product water is unlike the product

-protoplasm. No; that the action of the electric spark

-should be unknown, is no reason why we should not insist

-on protoplasm for protoplasm, on life for life. Protoplasm

-can only be produced by protoplasm, and each

-of all the innumerable varieties of protoplasm, only by

-its own kind. For the protoplasm of the worm we

-must go to the worm, and for that of the toad-stool to

-the toad-stool. In fact, if all living beings come from

-protoplasm, it is quite as certain that, but for living beings,

-protoplasm would disappear. Without an egg you

-cannot have a hen—that is true; but it is equally true

-that, without a hen, you cannot have an egg. So in

-protoplasm; which, consequently, in the production of

-itself, offers no analogy to the production, or precipitation

-by the electric spark, not of itself, but of water.

-Besides, if for protoplasm, preëxisting protoplasm, is

-always necessary, how was there ever a first protoplasm?</p>

-

-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>Generally, then, Mr. Huxley’s analogy does not hold,

-whether in the one reference or the other, and Mr.

-Huxley has no warrant for the reduction of protoplasm

-to the mere chemical level which he assigns it in either.

-That level is brought very prominently forward in such

-expressions as these: That it is only necessary to

-bring the chemical elements “together,” “under certain

-conditions,” to give rise to the more complex body,

-protoplasm, just as there is a similar expedient to give

-rise to water; and that, under the influence of preëxisting

-living protoplasm, carbonic acid, water, and

-ammonia disappear, and an equivalent weight of protoplasm

-makes its appearance, just as, under the influence

-of the electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen disappear,

-and an equivalent weight of water makes its appearance.

-All this, plainly, is to assume for protoplasm

-such mere chemical place and nature as consist not

-with the facts. The cases are, in truth, not parallel,

-and the “certain conditions” are wholly diverse. All

-that is said we can do at will for water, but nothing of

-what is said can we do at will for protoplasm. To say

-we can feed protoplasm, and so make protoplasm at will

-produce protoplasm, is very much, in the circumstances,

-only to say, and is not to say, that, in this way, we make

-a chemical experiment. To insist on a chemical analogy,

-in fact, between water and protoplasm, is to omit

-the differences not covered by the analogy at all—thought,

-design, life, and all the processes of organization;

-and it is but simple procedure to omit these differences

-only by an appeal to ignorance elsewhere.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>It is hardly worth while, perhaps, to refer now again

-to the difference—here, however, once more incidentally

-suggested—between protoplasm and protoplasm.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>Mr. Huxley, that is, almost in his very last word on this

-part of the argument, seems to become aware of the

-bearing of this on what relates to materiality, and he

-would again stamp protoplasm (and with it life and intellect),

-into an indifferent identity. In order that there

-should be no break between the lowest functions and

-the highest (the functions of the fungus and the functions

-of man), he has “endeavored to prove,” he says,

-that the protoplasm of the lowest organisms is “essentially

-identical with, and most readily converted into

-that of any animal.” On this alleged reciprocal <i>convertibility</i>

-of protoplasm, then, Mr. Huxley would again

-found as well an inference of identity, as the further

-conclusion that the functions of the highest, not less

-than those of the lowest animals, are but the molecular

-manifestations of their common protoplasm.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Plainly here it is only the consideration, not of function,

-but of the alleged reciprocal <i>convertibility</i> that is

-left us now. Is this true, then? Is it true that every

-organism can digest every other organism, and that

-thus a relation of identity is established between that

-which digests and whatever is digested? These questions

-place Mr. Huxley’s general enterprise, perhaps,

-in the most glaring light yet; for it is very evident that

-there is an end of the argument if all foods and all

-feeders are essentially identical both with themselves

-and with each other. The facts of the case, however,

-I believe to be too well known to require a single word

-here on my part. It is not long since Mr. Huxley himself

-pointed out the great difference between the foods

-of plants and the foods of animals; and the reader

-may be safely left to think for himself of <i>ruminantia</i>

-and <i>carnivora</i>, of soft bills and hard bills, of molluscs

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>and men. Mr. Huxley talks feelingly of the possibility

-of himself feeding the lobster quite as much as of the

-lobster feeding him; but such pathos is not always applicable;

-it is not likely that a sponge would be to the

-stomach of Mr. Huxley any more than Mr. Huxley to

-the stomach of a sponge.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But a more important point is this, that the functions

-themselves remain quite apart from the alleged convertibility.

-We can neither acquire the functions of what

-we eat, nor impart our functions to what eats us. We

-shall not come to fly by feeding on vultures, nor they to

-speak by feeding on us. No possible manure of human

-brains will enable a corn-field to reason. But if

-functions are inconvertible, the convertibility of the protoplasm

-is idle. In this inconvertibility, indeed, functions

-will be seen to be independent of mere chemical composition.

-And that is the truth: for functions there is more

-required than either chemistry or physics.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>It is to be acknowledged—to notice one other incidental

-suggestion, for the sake of completeness, and by

-way of transition to the final consideration of possible

-objections—that Mr. Huxley would be very much assisted

-in his identification of differences, were but the

-theories of the molecularists, on the one hand, and of

-Mr. Darwin, on the other, once for all established. The

-three modes of theorizing indicated, indeed, are not

-without a tendency to approach one another; and it is

-precisely their union that would secure a definitive triumph

-for the doctrine of materialism. Mr. Huxley, as

-we have seen—though what he desiderates is an auto-plastic

-living <i>matter</i> that, produced by ordinary chemical

-processes, is yet capable of continuing and developing

-itself into new and higher forms—still begins with

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>the egg. Now the theory of the molecularists would,

-for its part, remove all the difficulties that, for materialism,

-are involved in this beginning; it would place protoplasm

-undeniably at length on a merely chemical

-level; and would fairly enable Mr. Darwin, supplemented

-by such a life-stuff, to account by natural means

-for everything like an idea or thought that appears in

-creation. The misfortune is, however, that we must

-believe the theory of the molecularists still to await the

-proof; while the theory of Mr. Darwin has many difficulties

-peculiar to itself. This theory, philosophically,

-or in ultimate analysis, is an attempt to prove that design,

-or the objective idea, especially in the organic

-world, is developed <i>in time</i> by natural means. The time

-which Mr. Darwin demands, it is true, is an infinite

-time; and he thus gains the advantage of his processes

-being allowed greater <i>clearness</i> for the understanding, in

-consequence of the <i>obscurity</i> of the infinite past in

-which they are placed, and of which it is difficult in the

-first instance to deny any possibility whatever. Still it

-remains to be asked, Are such processes credible in any

-time? What Mr. Darwin has done in aid of his view

-is, first, to lay before us a knowledge of facts in natural

-history of surprising richness; and, second, to support

-this knowledge by an inexhaustible ingenuity of hypothesis

-in arrangement of appearances. Now, in both respects,

-whether for information or even interest, the

-value of Mr. Darwin’s contribution will probably always

-remain independent of the argument or arguments that

-might destroy his leading proposition; and it is with

-this proposition that we have here alone to do. As

-said, we ask only, Is it true that the objective idea, the

-design which we see in the organized world, is the result

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>in infinite time of the necessary adaption of living

-structures to the peculiarities of the conditions by which

-they are surrounded?</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Against this theory, then, its own absolute generalization

-may be viewed as our first objection. In ultimate

-abstraction, that is, the only agency postulated by

-Mr. Darwin is time—infinite time; and as regards actually

-existent beings and actually existent conditions,

-it is hardly possible to deny any possibility whatever to

-infinitude. If told, for example, that the elephant, if

-only obliged <i>infinitely</i> to run, might be converted into

-the stag, how should we be able to deny? So also, if

-the lengthening of the giraffe’s neck were hypothetically

-attributed to a succession of dearths in infinite time

-that only left the leaves of trees for long-necked animals

-to live on, we should be similarly situated as regards

-denial. Still it can be pointed out that ingenuity

-of natural conjecture has, in such cases, no less wide a

-field for the negation than for the affirmation; and

-that, on the question of fact, nothing is capable of being

-determined. But we can also say more than that—we

-can say that any fruitful application even of <i>infinite

-time</i> to the <i>general problem of difference</i> in the world is

-inconceivable. To explain all from an absolute beginning

-requires us to commence with nothing; but to this

-nothing time itself is an addition. Time is an entity, a

-something, a difference added to the original identity:

-whence or how came time? Time cannot account for

-its own self; how is it that there is such a thing as time?

-Then no conceivable brooding even of infinite time

-could hatch the infinitude of space. How is it there is

-such a thing as space? No possible clasps of time and

-space, further, could ever conceivably thicken into matter.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>How is it there is such a thing as matter? Lastly,

-so far, no conceivable brooding, or even gyrating, of a

-single matter in time and space could account for the

-specification of matter—carbon, gold, iodine, etc.—as

-we see and know it. Time, space, matter, and the

-whole inorganic world, thus remain impassive to the action

-even of infinite time; all <i>these</i> differences remain

-incapable of being accounted for so.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>But suppose no curiosity had ever been felt in this

-reference, which, though scientifically indefensible, is

-quite possible, how about the transition of the inorganic

-into the organic? Mr. Huxley tells us that, for food,

-the plant needs nothing but its bath of smelling-salts.

-Suppose this bath now—a pool of a solution of carbonate

-of ammonia; can any action of sun, or air, or electricity,

-be conceived to develop a cell—or even so much

-lump-protoplasm—in this solution? The production of

-an initial cell in any such manner will not allow itself to

-be realized to thought. Then we have just to think for

-a moment of the vast differences into which, for the

-production of the present organized world, this cell

-must be distributed, to shake our heads and say we cannot

-well refuse anything to an infinite time, but still we

-must pronounce a problem of this reach hopeless.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>It is precisely in conditions, however, that Mr. Darwin

-claims a solution of this problem. Conditions concern

-all that relates to air, heat, light, land, water, and

-whatever they imply. Our second objection, consequently,

-is, that conditions are quite inadequate to account

-for present organized differences, from a single

-cell. Geological time, for example, falls short, after all,

-of infinite time; or, in known geological eras, let us

-calculate them as liberally as we may, there is not time

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>enough to account for the presently-existing varieties,

-from one, or even several, primordial forms. So to

-speak, it is not <i>in</i> geological time to account for the

-transformation of the elephant into the stag from acceleration,

-or for that of the stag into the elephant from

-retardation, of movement. And we may speak similarly

-of the growth of the neck of the giraffe, or even

-of the elevation of the monkey into man. Moreover,

-time apart, conditions have no such power in themselves.

-It is impossible to conceive of animal or vegetable

-effluvia ever creating the nerve by which they are felt,

-and so gradually the Schneiderian membrane, nose, and

-whole olfactory apparatus. Yet these effluvia are the

-conditions of smell, and, <i>ex hypothesi</i>, ought to have

-created it. Did light, or did the pulsations of the air,

-ever by any length of time, indent into the sensitive

-cell, eyes, and a pair of eyes—ears, and a pair of ears?

-Light conceivably might shine for ever without such a

-wonderfully complicated result as an eye. Similarly,

-for delicacy and marvellous ingenuity of structure, the

-ear is scarcely inferior to the eye; and surely it is possible

-to think of a whole infinitude of those fitful and

-fortuitous air-tremblings, which we call sound, without

-indentation into anything whatever of such an organ.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>A third objection to Mr. Darwin’s theory is, that the

-play of natural contingency in regard to the vicissitudes

-of conditions, has no title to be named <i>selection</i>.

-Naturalists have long known and spoken of the “influence

-of accidental causes;” but Mr. Darwin was the

-first to apply the term <i>selection</i> to the action of these,

-and thus convert accident into design. The agency to

-which Mr. Darwin attributes all the changes which he

-would signalize in animals is really the fortuitous contingency

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>of brute nature; and it is altogether fallacious

-to call such process, or such non-process, by a term involving

-foresight and a purpose. We have here, indeed,

-only a metaphor wholly misapplied. The German writer

-who, many years ago, said “even the <i>genera</i> are

-wholly a prey to the changes of the external universal

-life,” saw precisely what Mr. Darwin sees, but it never

-struck him to style contingency selection. Yet, how

-dangerous, how infectious, has not this ungrounded

-metaphor proved! It has become a <i>principle</i>, a <i>law</i>, and

-been transferred by very genuine men into their own

-sciences of philology and what not. People will wonder

-at all this by-and-by. But to point out the inapplicability

-of such a word to the processes of nature referred

-to by Mr. Darwin, is to point out also the impossibility

-of any such contingencies proceeding, by

-graduated rise, from stage to stage, into the great symmetrical

-organic system—the vast plan—the grand harmonious

-whole—by which we are surrounded. This

-rise, this system, is really the objective idea; but it is

-utterly incapable of being accounted for by any such

-agency as natural contingency in geological, or infinite,

-or any time. But it is this which the word selection

-tends to conceal.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>We may say, lastly, in objection, here, that, in the fact

-of “reversion” or “atavism,” Mr. Darwin acknowledges

-his own failure. We thus see that the species as species

-is something independent, and holds its own <i>insita

-vis naturæ</i> within itself.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Probably it is not his theory, then, that gives value

-to Mr. Darwin’s book; nor even his ready ingenuity,

-whatever interest it may lend: it is the material information

-it contains. The ingenuity, namely, verges

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>somewhat on that Humian expedient of natural conjecture

-so copiously exemplified, on occasion of a few

-trite texts, in Mr. Buckle. But that natural conjecture

-is always insecure, equivocal, and many-sided. It may

-be said that ancient warfare, for example, giving victory

-always to the personally ablest and bravest, must have

-resulted in the improvement of the race; or that, the

-weakest being always necessarily left at home, the improvement

-was balanced by deterioration; or that the

-ablest were necessarily the most exposed to danger, and

-so, etc., etc., according, to ingenuity <i>usque ad infinitum</i>.

-Trustworthy conclusion is not possible to this method,

-but only to the induction of facts, or to scientific demonstration.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Neither molecularists nor Darwinians, then, are able

-to level out the difference between organic and inorganic,

-or between genera and genera or species and species.

-The differences persist despite of both; the distributed

-identity remains unaccounted for. Nor, consequently,

-is Mr. Darwin’s theory competent to explain the objective

-idea by any reference to time and conditions. Living

-beings do exist in a mighty chain from the moss to

-the man; but that chain, far from founding, is founded

-in the idea, and is not the result of any mere natural

-<i>growth</i> of this into that. That chain is itself the most

-brilliant stamp, the sign-manual, of design. On every

-ledge of nature, from the lowest to the highest, there is

-a life that is <i>its</i>,—a creature to represent it, reflect it—so

-to speak, pasture on it. The last, highest, brightest

-link of this chain is man; the incarnation of thought itself,

-which is the summation of this universe; man, that

-includes in himself all other links and their single secret—the

-personified universe, the subject of the world.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>Mr. Huxley makes but small reference to thought; he

-only tucks it in, as it were, as a mere appendicle of

-course.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>It may be objected, indeed—to reach the last stage in

-this discussion—that, if Mr. Huxley has not disproved

-the conception of thought and life “as a something

-which works through matter, but is independent of it,”

-neither have we proved it. But it is easy for us to reply

-that, if “<i>independent of</i>” means here “<i>unconnected

-with</i>,” we have had no such object. We have had no

-object whatever, in fact, but to resist, now the extravagant

-assertion that all organized tissue, from the lichen

-to Leibnitz, is alike in faculty, and again the equally extravagant

-assertion that life and thought are but ordinary

-products of molecular chemistry. As regards the

-latter assertion, we have endeavored to show that the

-processes of vital organization (as self-production, etc.)

-belong to another sphere, higher than, and very different

-from, those of mechanical juxtaposition or chemical

-neutralization; that life, then, is no mere product of

-matter as matter; that if no life can be pointed to independent

-of matter, neither is there any life-stuff independent

-of life; and that life, consequently, adds a new

-and higher force to chemistry, as chemistry a new and

-higher force to mechanics, etc. As for thought, the endeavor

-was to show that it was as independent on the

-one side as matter on the other, that it controlled, used,

-summed, and was the reason of matter. Thought, then,

-is not to be reached by any bridge from matter, that is

-a hybrid of both, and explains the connection. The relation

-of matter to mind is not to be explained as a

-transition, but as a <i>contrecoup</i>. In this relation, however,

-it is not the material, but the mental side, which

-the whole universe declares to be the dominant one.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>As regards any objection to the arguments which we

-have brought against the identity of protoplasm, again,

-these will lie in the phrase, probably, “difference not of

-kind, but degree,” or in the word “modification.” The

-“phrase” may be now passed, for generic or specific

-difference must be allowed in protoplasm, if not for the

-overwhelming reason that an infinitude of various kinds

-exist in it, each of which is self-productive and uninterchangeable

-with the rest, then for Mr. Huxley’s own

-reason, that plants assimilate inorganic matter and animals

-only organic. As for the objection “modification,”

-again, the same consideration of generic difference

-must prove fatal to it. This were otherwise, indeed,

-could but the molecularists and Mr. Darwin succeed in

-destroying generic difference; but in this, as we have

-seen, they have failed. And this will be always so:

-who dogs identity, difference dogs him. It is quite a

-justifiable endeavor, for example, to point out the identity

-that obtains between veins and arteries on the one

-hand, as between these and capillaries on the other;

-but all the time the difference is behind us; and when

-we turn to look, we see, for circulation, the valves of the

-veins and the elastic coats of the arteries as opposed to

-one another, and, for irrigation, the permeable walls of

-the capillaries as opposed to both.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Generic differences exist then, and we cannot allow

-the word “modification” to efface them in the interest

-of the identity claimed for protoplasm. Brain-protoplasm

-is not bone-protoplasm, nor the protoplasm of

-the fungus the protoplasm of man. Similarly, it is very

-questionable how far the word “modification” will warrant

-us in regarding with Mr. Huxley the “ducts, fibres,

-pollen, and ovules” of the nettle as identical with the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>protoplasm of its sting. Things that originate alike

-may surely eventuate in others which, chemically and

-vitally, far from being mere modifications, must be pronounced

-totally different. Such eventuation must be

-held competent to what can only be named generic or

-specific difference. The “child” is only “<i>father</i> of the

-man”—it is not the man; who, moreover, in the course

-of an ordinary life, we are told, has totally changed himself,

-not once, but many times, retaining at the last not

-one single particle of matter with which he set out.

-Such eventuations, whether called modifications or not,

-certainly involve essential difference. And so situated

-are the “ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the nettle,

-which, whether compared with the protoplasm of the

-nettle-sting, or with that in which they originated, must

-be held to here assumed, by their own actions, indisputable

-differences, physical, chemical, and vital, or in form,

-substance, and faculty.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Much, in fact, depends on definition here; and, in

-reference to modification, it may be regarded as arbitrary

-when identity shall be admitted to cease and difference

-to begin. There are the old Greek puzzles of

-the Bald Head and the Heap, for example. How many

-grains, or how many hairs, may we remove before a heap

-of wheat is no heap, or a head of hair bald? These

-concern quantity alone; but, in other cases, bone, muscle,

-brain, fungus, tree, man, there is not only a quantitative,

-but a qualitative difference; and in regard to such

-differences, the word modification can be regarded as

-but a cloak, under which identity is to be shuffled into

-difference, but remain identity all the same. The brick

-is but modified clay, Mr. Huxley intimates, bake it and

-paint it as you may; but is the difference introduced by

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>the baking and painting to be ignored? Is what Mr.

-Huxley calls the “artifice” not to be taken into account,

-leave alone the “potter?” The strong firm rope is

-about as exact an example of modification proper—modification

-of the weak loose hemp—as can well be

-found; but are we to exclude from our consideration

-the whole element of difference due to the hand and

-brain of man? Not far from Burn’s Monument, on the

-Calton Hill of Edinburgh, there lies a mass of stones

-which is potentially a church, the former Trinity College

-Church. Were this church again realized, would

-it be fair to call it a mere modification of the previous

-stones? Look now to the egg and the full-feathered

-fowl. Chaucer describes to us the cock, “hight chaunteclere,”

-that was to his “faire Pertelotte” so dear:—</p>

-

-<div class='lg-container-b c018'>

-  <div class='linegroup'>

-    <div class='group'>

-      <div class='line'>“His comb was redder than the fine corall,</div>

-      <div class='line in1'>Embattled, as it were a castle-wall;</div>

-      <div class='line in1'>His bill was black, and as the jet it shone;</div>

-      <div class='line in1'>Like azure were his legges and his tone (toes);</div>

-      <div class='line in1'>His nailes whiter than the lilie flour,</div>

-      <div class='line in1'>And like the burned gold was his color.”</div>

-    </div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c017'>Would it be even as fair to call this fine fellow—comb,

-wattles, spurs, and all—a modified yolk, as to

-call the church but modified stones? If, in the latter

-case, an element of difference, altogether undeniable,

-seems to have intervened, is not such intervention at

-least quite as well marked in the former? It requires

-but a slight analysis to detect that all the stones in

-question are marked and numbered; but will any analysis

-point out within the shell the various parts that only

-need arrangement to become the fowl? Are the men

-that may take the stones, and, in a re-erected Trinity

-College Church, realize anew the idea of its architect,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>in any respect more wonderful than the unknown disposers

-of the materials of the fowl? That what realizes

-the idea should, in the one case, be from without,

-and, in the other, from within, is no reason for seeing

-more modification and less wonder in the latter than the

-former. There is certainly no more reason for seeing

-the fowl in the egg, and as identical with the egg, than

-for seeing a re-built Trinity College Church as identical

-with its unarranged materials. A part cannot be taken

-for the whole, whether in space <i>or in time</i>. Mr. Huxley

-misses this. He is so absorbed in the identity out of

-which, that he will not see the difference into which,

-progress is made. As the idea of the church has the

-stones, so the idea of the fowl has the egg, for its commencement.

-But to this idea, and in both cases, the

-terminal additions belong, quite as much as the initial

-materials. If the idea, then, add sulphur, phosphorus,

-iron, and what not, it must be credited with these not

-less than with the carbon, hydrogen, etc., with which it

-began. It is not fair to mutter modification, as if it

-were a charm to destroy all the industry of time. The

-protoplasm of the egg of the fowl is no more the fowl

-than the stones the church; and to identify, by juggle

-of a mere word, parts in time and wholes in time so different,

-is but self-deception. Nay, in protoplasm, as we

-have so often seen, difference is as much present at first

-as at last. Even in its germ, even in its initial identity,

-to call it so, protoplasm is already different, for it issues

-in differences infinite.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>Omission of the consideration of difference, it is to be

-acknowledged, is not now-a-days restricted to Mr. Huxley.

-In the wonder that is usually expressed, for example,

-at Oken’s <i>identification</i> of the skull with so many

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>vertebræ, it is forgot that there is still implicated the

-wonder which we ought to feel at the unknown power

-that could, in the end, so <i>differentiate</i> them. If the

-cornea of the eye and the enamel of the teeth are alike

-but modified protoplasm, we must be pardoned for

-thinking more of the adjective than of the substantive.

-Our wonder is how, for one idea, protoplasm could become

-one thing here, and, for another idea, another so

-different thing there. We are more curious about the

-modification than the protoplasm. In the difference,

-rather than in the identity, it is, indeed, that the wonder

-lies. Here are several thousand pieces of protoplasm;

-analysis can detect no difference in them. They are to

-us, let us say, as they are to Mr. Huxley, identical in

-power, in form, and in substance; and yet on all these

-several thousand little bits of apparently indistinguishable

-matter an element of difference so pervading and

-so persistent has been impressed, that, of them all, not

-one is interchangeable with another! Each seed feeds

-its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more

-grow into the fly than it will grow into an elephant.

-Protoplasm is protoplasm: yes, but man’s protoplasm

-is man’s protoplasm, and the mushroom’s the mushroom’s.

-In short, it is quite evident that the word

-modification, if it would conceal, is powerless to withdraw,

-the difference; which difference, moreover, is one

-of kind and not of degree.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>This consideration of possible objections, then, is the

-last we have to attend to; and it only remains to draw

-the general conclusion. All animal and vegetable organisms

-are alike in power, in form, and in substance,

-only if the protoplasm of which they are composed is

-similarly alike; and the functions of all animal and

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>vegetable organisms are but properties of the molecular

-affections of their chemical constituents, only if the functions

-of the protoplasm, of which they are composed,

-are but properties of the molecular affections of <i>its</i>

-chemical constituents. In disproof of the affirmative

-in both clauses, there has been no object but to demonstrate,

-on the one hand, the infinite non-identity of protoplasm,

-and, on the other, the dependence of its functions

-upon other factors than its molecular constituents.</p>

-

-<p class='c011'>In short, the whole position of Mr. Huxley, that all

-organisms consist alike of the same life-matter, which

-life-matter is, for its part, due only to chemistry, must

-be pronounced untenable—nor less untenable the materialism

-he would found on it.</p>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c006'>

-    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span><span class='c022'><i>ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION</i>:</span></div>

-    <div class='c000'>PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL.</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c006' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'>ON THE<br /> <br /><span class='c004'>HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION:</span><br /> <br /><i>PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL</i>.</h2>

-</div>

-<p class='c023'>“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth

-out of the mouth of God shall man live.”

-ch-hd-end

-There is apparently considerable repugnance in the

-minds of many excellent people to the acceptance, or

-even consideration, of the hypothesis of development,

-or that of the gradual creation by descent, with modification

-from the simplest beginnings, of the different

-forms of the organic world. This objection probably

-results from two considerations: first, that the human

-species is certainly involved, and man’s descent from

-an ape asserted; and, secondly, that the scheme in

-general seems to conflict with that presented by the

-Mosaic account of the Creation, which is regarded as

-communicated to its author by an infallible inspiration.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>As the truth of the hypothesis is held to be infinitely

-probable by a majority of the exponents of the natural

-sciences at the present day, and is held as absolutely

-demonstrated by another portion, it behooves those interested

-to restrain their condemnation, and on the

-other hand to examine its evidences, and look any consequent

-necessary modification of our metaphysical or

-theological views squarely in the face.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>The following pages state a few of the former; if

-they suggest some of the latter, it is hoped that they

-may be such as any logical mind would deduce from

-the premises. That they will coincide with the spirit

-of the most advanced Christianity, I have no doubt;

-and that they will add an appeal through the reason to

-that direct influence of the Divine Spirit which should

-control the motives of human action, seems an unavoidable

-conclusion.</p>

-<h3 class='c001'>I. <span class='sc'>Physical Evolution.</span></h3>

-

-<p class='c025'>It is well known that a species is usually represented

-by a great number of individuals, distinguished from

-all other similar associations by more or less numerous

-points of structure, color, size, etc., and by habits and

-instincts also, to a certain extent; that the individuals

-of such associations reproduce their like, and cannot be

-produced by individuals of associations or species

-which present differences of structure, color, etc., as

-defined by naturalists; that the individuals of any such

-series or species are incapable of reproducing with

-those of any other species, with some exceptions; and

-that in the latter cases the offspring are usually entirely

-infertile.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The hypothesis of Cuvier assumes that each species

-was created by Divine power as we now find it at some

-definite point of geologic time. The paleontologist

-holding this view sees, in accordance therewith, a succession

-of creations and destructions marking the history

-of life on our planet from its commencement.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The development hypothesis states that all existing

-species have been derived from species of preëxistent

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>geological periods, as offspring or by direct descent;

-that there have been no total destructions of life in past

-time, but only a transfer of it from place to place, owing

-to changes of circumstance; that the types of structure

-become simpler and more similar to each other as we

-trace them from later to earlier periods; and that

-finally we reach the simplest forms consistent with one

-or several original parent types of the great divisions

-into which living beings naturally fall.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>It is evident, therefore, that the hypothesis does not

-include change of species by hybridization, nor allow

-the descent of living species from any other <i>living</i>

-species: both these propositions are errors of misapprehension

-or misrepresentation.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In order to understand the history of creation of a

-complex being, it is necessary to analyze it and ascertain

-of what it consists. In analyzing the construction

-of an animal or plant we readily arrange its characters

-into those which it possesses in common with other animals

-or plants, and those in which it resembles none

-other: the latter are its <i>individual</i> characters, constituting

-its individuality. Next we find a large body of

-characters, generally of a very obvious kind, which it

-possesses in common with a generally large number of

-individuals, which, taken collectively, all men are accustomed

-to call a species; these characters we consequently

-name <i>specific</i>. Thirdly, we find characters,

-generally in parts of the body which are of importance

-in the activities of the animal, or which lie in near relation

-to its mechanical construction in details, which are

-shared by a still larger number of individuals than those

-which were similar in specific characters. In other

-words, it is common to a large number of species. This

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>kind of character we call <i>generic</i>, and the grouping it

-indicates is a genus.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Farther analysis brings to light characters of organism

-which are common to a still greater number of individuals;

-this we call a <i>family</i> character. Those which

-are common to still more numerous individuals are the

-<i>ordinal</i>: they are usually found in parts of the structure

-which have the closest connection with the whole life-history

-of the being. Finally, the individuals composing

-many orders will be found identical in some important

-character of the systems by which ordinary life is

-maintained, as in the nervous and circulatory: the

-divisions thus outlined are called <i>classes</i>.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>By this process of analysis we reach in our animal or

-plant those peculiarities which are common to the whole

-animal or vegetable kingdom, and then we have exhausted

-the structure so completely that we have nothing

-remaining to take into account beyond the cell-structure

-or homogeneous protoplasm by which we

-know that it is organic, and not a mineral.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The history of the origin of a type, as species, genus,

-order, etc., is simply the history of the origin of the

-structure or structures which define those groups respectively.

-It is nothing more nor less than this,

-whether a man or an insect be the object of investigation.</p>

-<h3 class='c001'>EVIDENCES OF DERIVATION.</h3>

-<h4 class='c026'>α. Of Specific Characters.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>The evidences of derivation of species from species,

-within the limits of the genus, are abundant and conclusive.

-In the first place, the rule which naturalists

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>observe in defining species is a clear consequence of

-such a state of things. It is not amount and degree of

-difference that determine the definition of species from

-species, but it is the <i>permanency</i> of the characters in all

-cases and under all circumstances. Many species of

-the systems include varieties and extremes of form, etc.,

-which, were they at all times distinct, and not connected

-by intermediate forms, would be estimated as species by

-the same and other writers, as can be easily seen by

-reference to their works.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Thus, species are either “restricted” or “protean,”

-the latter embracing many, the former few variations;

-and the varieties included by the protean species are

-often as different from each other in their typical forms

-as are the “restricted” species. As an example, the

-species <i>Homo sapiens</i> (man) will suffice. His primary

-varieties are as distinct as the species of many well-known

-genera, but cannot be defined, owing to the existence

-of innumerable intermediate forms between

-them.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>As to the common origin of such “varieties” of the

-protean species, naturalists never had any doubt, yet

-when it comes to the restricted “species,” the anti-developmentalist

-denies it <i>in toto</i>. Thus the varieties of

-most of the domesticated animals are some of them

-known—others held with great probability to have had a

-common origin. Varieties of plumage in fowls and

-canaries are of every-day occurrence, and are produced

-under our eyes. The cart-horse and racer, the Shetland

-pony and the Norman, are without doubt derived

-from the same parentage. The varieties of pigeons and

-ducks are of the same kind, but not every one is aware

-of the extent and amount of such variations. The

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>varieties in many characters seen in hogs and cattle,

-especially when examples from distant countries are

-compared, are very striking, and are confessedly equal

-in degree to those found to <i>define</i> species in a state of

-nature: here, however, they are not <i>definitive</i>.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>It is easy to see that all that is necessary to produce

-in the mind of the anti-developmentalist the illusion of

-distinct origin by creation of many of these forms,

-would be to destroy a number of the intermediate conditions

-of specific form and structure, and thus to leave

-remaining definable groups of individuals, and therefore

-“species.”</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>That such destructions and extinctions have been

-going on ever since the existence of life on the globe is

-well known. That it should affect intermediate forms,

-such as bind together the types of a protean species as

-well as restricted species, is equally certain. That its

-result has been to produce <i>definable</i> species cannot be

-denied, especially in consideration of the following

-facts: Protean species nearly always have a wide geographical

-distribution. They exist under more varied

-circumstances than do individuals of a more restricted

-species. The subordinate variations of the protean

-species are generally, like the restricted species, confined

-to distinct subdivisions of the geographical area

-which the whole occupies. As in geological time

-changes of level have separated areas once continuous

-by bodies of water or high mountain ranges, so have

-vast numbers of individuals occupying such areas been

-destroyed. Important alterations of temperature, or

-great changes in abundance or character of vegetable

-life over given areas, would produce the same result.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>This part of the subject might be prolonged, were it

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>necessary, but it has been ably discussed by Darwin.

-The <i>rationale</i> of the “origin of species” as stated by

-him may be examined a few pages farther on.</p>

-

-<h4 class='c026'>β. Of the Characters of Higher Groups.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'><i>a. Relations of Structures.</i> The evidences of derivative

-origin of the structures defining the groups called

-genera, and all those of higher grade, are of a very different

-character from those discussed in relation to specific

-characters; they are more difficult of observation

-and explanation.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Firstly: It would appear to be supposed by many

-that the creation of organic types was an irregular and

-capricious process, variously pursued by its Author as

-regards time and place, and without definite final aim;

-and this notwithstanding the wonderful evidences we

-possess, in the facts of astronomy, chemistry, sound,

-etc., of His adhesion to harmonious and symmetrical

-sequences in His modes and plans.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Such regularity of plan is found to exist in the relations

-of the great divisions of the animal and vegetable

-kingdoms as at present existing on the earth. Thus,

-with animals we have a great class of species which

-consists of nothing more than masses or cells of protoplasmic

-matter, without distinct organs; or the Protozoa.

-We have then the Cœlenterata (example, corals,)

-where the organism is composed of many cells arranged

-in distinct parts, but where a single very simple system

-of organs, forming the only internal cavity of the body,

-does the work of the many systems of the more complex

-animals. Next, the Echinodermata (such as star-fish)

-present us with a body containing distinct systems

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>of organs enclosed in a visceral cavity, including a rudimental

-nervous system in the form of a ring. In the

-Molluscs to this condition is added additional complication,

-including extensions of the nervous system from

-the ring as a starting-point, and a special organ for a

-heart. In the Articulates (crabs, insects,) we have like

-complications, and a long distinct nervous axis on the

-lower surface of the body. The last branch or division

-of animals is considered to be higher, because all the

-systems of life organs are most complex or specialized.

-The nervous ring is almost obliterated by a great enlargement

-of its usual ganglia, thus become a brain,

-which is succeeded by a long axis on the upper side

-of the body. This and other points define the Vertebrata.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Plans of structure, independent of the simplicity or

-perfection of the special arrangement or structure of

-organs, also define these great groups. Thus the Protozoa

-present a spiral, the Cœlenterata a radiate, the

-Echinodermata a bilateral radiate plan. The Articulates

-are a series of external rings, each in one or more

-respects repeating the others. The Molluscs are a sac,

-while a ring above a ring, joined together by a solid

-center-piece, represents the plan of each of the many

-segments of the Vertebrates which give the members of

-that branch their form.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>These bulwarks of distinction of animal types are

-entered into here simply because they are the most inviolable

-and radical of those with which we have to

-deal, and to give the anti-developmentalist the best foothold

-for his position. I will only allude to the relations

-of their points of approach, as these are affected by

-considerations afterward introduced.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>The Vertebrates approach the Molluscs at the lowest

-extreme of the former and higher of the latter.

-The lamprey eels of the one possess several characters

-in common with the cuttle-fish or squids of the latter.

-The amphioxus is called the lowest Vertebrate, and

-though it is nothing else, the definition of the division

-must be altered to receive it; it has no brain!</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The lowest forms of the Molluscs and Articulates are

-scarcely distinguishable from each other, so far as adhesion

-to the “plan” is concerned, and some of the latter

-division are very near certain Echinodermata. As

-we approach the boundary-lines of the two lowest divisions,

-the approaches become equally close, and the boundaries

-very obscure.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>More instructive is the evidence of the relation of

-the subordinate classes of any one of these divisions.

-The conditions of those organs or parts which define

-classes exhibit a regular relation, commencing with

-simplicity and ending with complication; first associated

-with weak exhibitions of the highest functions of

-the nervous system—at the last displaying the most exalted

-traits found in the series.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>For example: In the classes of Vertebrates we find

-the lowest nervous system presents great simplicity—the

-brain cannot be recognized; next (in lampreys), the

-end of the nervous axis is subdivided, but scarcely according

-to the complex type that follows. In fishes the

-cerebellum and cerebral hemispheres are minute, and

-the intermediate or optic lobes very large: in the reptiles

-the cerebral hemispheres exceed the optic lobes,

-while the cerebellum is smaller. In birds the cerebellum

-becomes complex and the cerebrum greatly increases.

-In mammals the cerebellum increases in complexity

-or number of parts, the optic lobes diminish,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>while the cerebral hemispheres become wonderfully

-complex and enlarged, bringing us to the highest development,

-in man.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The history of the circulatory system in the Vertebrates

-is the same.<a id='r45' /><a href='#f45' class='c020'><sup>[45]</sup></a> First, a heart with one chamber,

-then one with two divisions: three divisions belong to

-a large series, and the highest possess four. The origins

-of the great artery of the body, the aorta, are first five

-on each side: they lose one in the succeeding class in

-the ascending scale, and one in each succeeding class

-or order, till the Mammalia, including man, present us

-with but one on one side.</p>

-

-<div class='footnote c027' id='f45'>

-<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r45'>45</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>See a homological system of the circulatory system in the author’s Origin

-of Genera, p. 22.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c024'>From an infinitude of such considerations as the

-above, we derive the certainty that the general arrangement

-of the various groups of the organic world is in

-scales, the subordinate within the more comprehensive

-divisions. The identification of all the parts in such a

-complexity of organism as the highest animals present,

-is a matter requiring much care and attention, and constitutes

-the study of homologies. Its pursuit has resulted

-in the demonstration that every individual of

-every species of a given branch of the animal kingdom

-is composed of elements common to all, and that the

-differences which are so radical in the higher groups

-are but the modifications of the same elemental parts,

-representing completeness or incompleteness, obliteration

-or subdivision. Of the former character are rudimental

-organs, of which almost every species possesses

-an example in some part of its structure.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But we have other and still more satisfactory evidence

-of the meaning of these relations. By the study of embryology

-we can prove most indubitably that the simple

-and less complex are inferior to the more complex.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>Selecting the Vertebrates again as an example, the highest

-form of mammal—<i>e.g.</i>, man—presents in his earliest

-stages of embryonic growth a skeleton of cartilage, like

-that of the lamprey: he also possesses five origins of

-the aorta and five slits on the neck, both which characters

-belong to the lamprey and the shark. If the whole

-number of these parts does not coexist in the embryonic

-man, we find in embryos of lower forms more

-nearly related to the lamprey that they do. Later in

-the life of the mammal but four aortic origins are found,

-which arrangement, with the heart now divided into two

-chambers, from a beginning as a simple tube, is characteristic

-of the class of Vertebrates next in order—the

-bony fishes. The optic lobes of the human brain have

-also at this time a great predominance in size—a character

-above stated to be that of the same class. With

-advancing development the infant mammal follows the

-scale already pointed out. Three chambers of the

-heart and three aortic origins follow, presenting the

-condition permanent in the batrachia; and two origins,

-with enlarged cerebral hemispheres of the brain, resemble

-the reptilian condition. Four heart-chambers, and

-one aortic root on each side, with slight development of

-the cerebellum, follow all characters defining the crocodiles,

-and immediately precede the special conditions

-defining the mammals. These are, the single aorta

-root from one side, and the full development of the

-cerebellum: later comes that of the cerebrum also in

-its higher mammalian and human traits.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Thus we see the order already pointed out to be true,

-and to be an ascending one. This is the more evident

-as each type or class passes through the conditions of

-those below it, as did the mammal; each scale being

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>shorter as its highest terminus is lower. Thus the crocodile

-passes through the stage of the lamprey, the fish,

-the batrachian and the reptile proper.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><i>b. In Time.</i> We have thus a scale of relations of

-existing forms of animals and plants of a remarkable

-kind, and such as to stimulate greatly our inquiries as

-to its significance. When we turn to the remains of the

-past creation preserved to us in the deposits continued

-throughout geologic time, we are not disappointed, for

-great light is at once thrown upon the subject.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>We find, in brief, that the lowest division of the animal

-kingdom appeared first, and long before any type

-of a higher character was created. The Protozoön,

-Eozoön, is the earliest of animals in geologic time, and

-represents the lowest type of animal life now existing.

-We learn also that the highest branch appeared last.

-No remains of Vertebrates have been found below the

-lower Devonian period, or not until the Echinoderms

-and Molluscs had reached a great preëminence. It is

-difficult to be sure whether the Protozoa had a greater

-numerical extent in the earliest periods than now, but

-there can be no doubt that the Cœlenterata (corals) and

-Echinoderms (crinoids) greatly exceeded their present

-bounds, in Paleozoic time, so that those at present existing

-are but a feeble remnant. If we examine the

-subdivisions known as classes, evidence of the nature

-of the succession of creation is still more conclusive.

-The most polyp-like of the Molluscs (brachiopoda) constituted

-the great mass of its representatives during

-Paleozoic time. Among Vertebrates the fishes appear

-first, and had their greatest development in size and

-numbers during the earliest periods of the existence of

-the division. Batrachia were much the largest and

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>most important of land animals during the Carboniferous

-period, while the higher Vertebrates were unknown.

-The later Mesozoic periods saw the reign of

-reptiles, whose position in structural development has

-been already stated. Finally, the most perfect, the

-mammal, came upon the scene, and in his humblest

-representatives. In Tertiary times mammalia supplanted

-the reptiles entirely, and the unspiritual mammals

-now yield to man, the only one of his class in

-whom the Divine image appears.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Thus the structural relations, the embryonic characters,

-and the successive appearance in time of animals

-coincide. The same is very probably true of plants.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>That the existing state of the geological record of

-organic types should be regarded as anything but a

-fragment is, from our stand-point, quite preposterous.

-And more, it may be assumed with safety that when

-completed it will furnish us with a series of regular successions,

-with but slight and regular interruptions, if

-any, from the species which represented the simplest

-beginnings of life at the dawn of creation, to those

-which have displayed complication and power in later

-or in the present period.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>For the labors of the paleontologist are daily bringing

-to light structures intermediate between those never

-before so connected, and thus creating lines of succession

-where before were only interruptions. Many such

-instances might be adduced: two may be selected as

-examples from American paleontology;<a id='r46' /><a href='#f46' class='c020'><sup>[46]</sup></a> <i>i.e.</i>, the near

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>approach to birds made by the reptiles Lælaps and

-Megadactylus; and the combination of characters of

-the sub-orders of Cryptodire and Pleurodire Tortoises

-in the Adocus of New Jersey.</p>

-

-<div class='footnote c027' id='f46'>

-<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r46'>46</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Professor Huxley, in the last anniversary lecture before the

-Geological Society of London, recalls his opinion, enunciated in

-1862, that “the positively-ascertained truths of Paleontology”

-negative “the doctrines of progressive modification, which suppose

-that modification to have taken place by a necessary progress from

-more to less embryonic forms, from more to less generalized types,

-within the limits of the period represented by the fossiliferous

-rocks; that it shows no evidence of such modification; and as to

-the nature of that modification, it yields no evidence whatsoever

-that the earlier members of any long-continued group were more

-generalized in structure than the later ones.”</p>

-

-<p class='c028'>Respecting this position, he says: “Thus far I have endeavored

-to expand and enforce by fresh arguments, but not to modify in any

-important respect, the ideas submitted to you on a former occasion.

-But when I come to the propositions respecting progressive modification,

-it appears to me, with the help of the new light which has

-broken from various quarters, that there is much ground for softening

-the somewhat Brutus-like severity with which I have dealt with

-a doctrine for the truth of which I should have been glad enough

-to be able to find a good foundation in 1862. So far indeed as the

-Invertebrata and the lower Vertebrata are concerned, the facts, and

-the conclusions which are to be drawn from them, appear to me to

-remain what they were. For anything that as yet appears to the contrary,

-the earliest known marsupials may have been as highly organized

-as their living congeners; the Permian lizards show no signs

-of inferiority to those of the present day; the labyrinthodonts cannot

-be placed below the living salamander and triton; the Devonian

-ganoids are closely related to polypterus and lepidosiren.”</p>

-

-<p class='c028'>To this it may be replied: 1. The scale of progression of the

-Vertebrata is measured by the conditions of the circulatory system,

-and in some measure by the nervous, and not by the osseous:

-tested by this scale, there has been successional complication of

-structure among Vertebrata in time. 2. The question with the

-evolutionist is, not what types have persisted to the present day,

-but the order in which types appeared in time. 3. The Marsupials,

-Permian saurians, labyrinthodonts and Devonian ganoids are remarkably

-generalized groups, and predecessors of types widely

-separated in the present period. 4. Professor Huxley adduces

-many such examples among the mammalian subdivisions in the

-remaining portion of his lecture. 5. Two alternatives are yet open

-in the explanation of the process of evolution: since generalized

-types, which combine the characters of higher and lower groups of

-later periods, must thus be superior to the lower, the lower must

-(first) be descended from such a generalized form by degradation; or

-(second) not descended from it at all, but from some lower contemporaneous

-type by advance; the higher only of the two being derived

-from the first-mentioned. The last I suspect to be a true explanation,

-as it is in accordance with the homologous groups. This

-law will shorten the demands of paleontologists for time, since,

-instead of deriving all reptilia, batrachia, etc., from common origins,

-it points to the derivation of higher reptilia of a higher order

-from higher reptilia of a lower order, lower reptilia of the first from

-lower reptilia of the second; finally, the several groups of the lowest

-or most generalized order of reptilia from a parallel series of

-the class below, or batrachia.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>We had no more reason to look for intermediate or

-connecting forms between such types as these, than between

-any others of similar degree of remove from each

-other with which we are acquainted. And inasmuch as

-almost all groups, as genera, orders, etc., which are held

-to be distinct, but adjacent, present certain points of

-approximation to each other, the almost daily discovery

-of intermediate forms gives us confidence to believe

-that the pointings in other cases will also be realized.</p>

-

-<h4 class='c026'>γ. Of Transitions.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>The preceding statements were necessary to the comprehension

-of the supposed mode of metamorphosis or

-development of the various types of living beings, or,

-in other words, of the single structural features which

-define them.... As it is evident that the more

-comprehensive groups, or those of highest rank, have

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>had their origin in remote ages, cases of transition from

-one to the other by change of character cannot be witnessed

-at the present day. We therefore look to the

-most nearly related divisions, or those of the lowest

-rank, for evidence of such change.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>It is necessary to premise that embryology teaches

-that all the species of a given branch of the animal kingdom

-(<i>e.g.</i>, Vertebrate, Mollusc, etc.) are quite identical

-in structural character at their first appearance on the

-germinal layer of the yolk of the parent egg. It shows

-that the character of the respective groups of high rank

-appear first, then those of less grade, and last of all

-those structures which distinguish them as genera. But

-among the earliest characters which appear are those of

-the species, and some of those of the individual.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>We find the characters of different <i>genera</i> to bear the

-same relation to each other that we have already seen

-in the case of those definitive of orders, etc. In a natural

-assemblage of related genera we discover that some

-are defined by characters found only in the embryonic

-stages of others; while a second will present a permanent

-condition of its definitive part, which marks a more

-advanced stage of that highest. In this manner many

-stages of the highest genus appear to be represented by

-permanent genera in all natural groups. Generally,

-however, this resemblance does not involve, an entire

-identity, there being some other immaturities found in

-the highest genus at the time it presents the character

-preserved in permanency by the lower, which the lower

-loses. Thus (to use a very coarse example) a frog at

-one stage of growth has four legs and a tail: the salamander

-always preserves four legs and a tail, thus resembling

-the young frog. The latter is, however, not a

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>salamander at that time, because, among other things,

-the skeleton is represented by cartilage only, and the

-salamander’s is ossified. This relation is therefore an

-imitation only, and is called <i>inexact parallelism</i>.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>As we compare nearer and nearer relations—<i>i.e.</i>, the

-genera which present fewest points of difference—we

-find the differences between undeveloped stages of the

-higher and permanent conditions of the lower to grow

-fewer and fewer, until we find numerous instances where

-the lower genus is exactly the same as the undeveloped

-stage of the higher. This relation is called that of

-<i>exact parallelism</i>.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>It must now be remembered that the permanence of

-a character is what gives it its value in defining genus,

-order, etc., in the eyes of the systematist. So long as

-the condition is permanent no transition can be seen:

-there is therefore no development. If the condition is

-transitional, it defines nothing, and nothing is developed;

-at least, so says the anti-developmentalist. It is

-the old story of the settler and the Indian: “Will you

-take owl and I take turkey, or I take turkey and you

-owl?”</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>If we find a relation of <i>exact parallelism</i> to exist between

-two sets of species in the condition of a certain

-organ, and the difference so expressed the only one

-which distinguishes them as sets from each other—if

-that condition is always the same in each set—we call

-them two genera: if in any species the condition is variable

-at maturity, or sometimes the undeveloped condition

-of the part is persistent and sometimes transitory,

-the sets characterized by this difference must be united

-by the systematist, and the whole is called a single

-genus.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>We know numerous cases where different individuals

-of the same species present this relation of <i>exact parallelism</i>

-to each other; and as we ascribe common origin

-to the individuals of a species, we are assured that the

-condition of the inferior individual is, in this case,

-simply one of repressed growth, or a failure to fulfill

-the course accomplished by the highest. Thus, certain

-species of the salamandrine genus amblystoma undergo

-a metamorphosis involving several parts of the osseous

-and circulatory systems, etc., while half grown; others

-delay it till fully grown; one or two species remain indifferently

-unchanged or changed, and breed in either

-condition, while another species breeds unchanged, and

-has never been known to complete a metamorphosis.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The nature of the relation of <i>exact parallelism</i> is thus

-explained to be that of checked or advanced growth of

-individuals having a common origin. The relation of

-<i>inexact parallelism</i> is readily explained as follows: With

-a case of <i>exact parallelism</i> in the mind, let the repression

-producing the character of the lower, parallelize

-the latter with a stage of the former in which a second

-part is not quite mature: we will have a slight want of

-correspondence between the two. The lower will be

-immature in but one point, the incompleteness of the

-higher being seen in two points. If we suppose the immaturity

-to consist in a repression at a still earlier point

-in the history of the higher, the latter will be undeveloped

-in other points also: thus, the spike-horned deer

-of South America have the horn of the second year of

-the North American genus. They would be generically

-identical with that stage of the latter, were it not that

-these still possess their milk dentition at two years of age.

-In the same way the nature of the parallelisms seen

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>in higher groups, as orders, etc., may be accounted for.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The theory of homologous groups furnishes important

-evidence in favor of derivation. Many orders of

-animals (probably all, when we come to know them) are

-divisible into two or more sections, which I have called

-<i>homologous</i>. These are series of genera or families,

-which differ from each other by some marked character,

-but whose contained genera or families differ from each

-other in the same points of detail, and in fact correspond

-exactly. So striking is this correspondence that

-were it not for the general and common character separating

-the homologous series, they would be regarded as

-the same, each to each. Now it is remarkable that

-where studied the difference common to all the terms of

-two homologous groups is found to be one of <i>inexact

-parallelism</i>, which has been shown above to be evidence

-of descent. Homologous groups always occupy different

-geographical areas on the earth’s surface, and their

-relation is precisely that which holds between successive

-groups of life in the periods of geologic time.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In a word, we learn from this source that distinct geologic

-epochs coexist at the same time on the earth. I

-have been forced to this conclusion<a id='r47' /><a href='#f47' class='c020'><sup>[47]</sup></a> by a study of the

-structure of terrestrial life, and it has been remarkably

-confirmed by the results of recent deep-sea dredgings

-made by the United States Coast Survey in the Gulf

-Stream, and by the British naturalists in the North Atlantic.

-These have brought to light types of Tertiary

-life, and of even the still more ancient Cretaceous periods,

-living at the present day. That this discovery

-invalidates in any wise the conclusions of geology respecting

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>lapse of time is an unwarranted assumption

-that some are forward to make. If it changes the views

-of some respecting the parallelism or coëxistence of

-faunæ in different regions of the earth, it is only the

-anti-developmentalists whose position must be changed.</p>

-

-<div class='footnote c027' id='f47'>

-<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r47'>47</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><i>Origin of Genera</i>, pages 70, 77, 79.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c024'>For, if we find distinct geologic faunæ, or epochs defined

-by faunæ, coëxisting during the present period, and

-fading or emerging into one another as they do at their

-geographical boundaries, it is proof positive that the

-geologic epochs and periods of past ages had in like

-manner no trenchant boundaries, but also passed the

-one into the other. The assumption that the apparent

-interruptions are the result of transfer of life rather than

-destruction, or of want of opportunities of preservation,

-is no doubt the true one.</p>

-

-<h4 class='c026'>δ. Rationale of Development.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'><i>a. In Characters of Higher Groups.</i> It is evident in

-the case of the species in which there is an irregularity

-in the time of completion of metamorphosis that some

-individuals traverse a longer developmental line than

-those who remain more or less incomplete. As both

-accomplish growth in the same length of time, it is obvious

-that it proceeds with greater rapidity in one sense

-in that which accomplishes most: its growth is said to

-be accelerated. This phenomenon is especially common

-among insects, where the females of perfect males

-are sometimes larvæ or nearly so, or pupæ, or lack

-wings or some character of final development. Quite

-as frequently, some males assume characters in advance

-of others, sometimes in connection with a peculiar geographical

-range.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>In cases of <i>exact parallelism</i> we reasonably suppose

-the cause to be the same, since the conditions are identical,

-as has been shown; that is, the higher conditions

-have been produced by a crowding back of the earlier

-characters and an acceleration of growth, so that a given

-succession in order of advance has extended over a

-longer range of growth than its predecessor in the same

-allotted time. That allotted time is the period before

-maturity and reproduction, and it is evident that as fast

-as modifications or characters should be assumed sufficiently

-in advance of that period, so certainly would

-they be conferred upon the offspring by reproduction.

-The <i>acceleration</i> in the assumption of a character, progressing

-more rapidly than the same in another character,

-must soon produce, in a type whose stages were

-once the exact parallel of a permanent lower form, the

-condition of <i>inexact parallelism</i>. As all the more comprehensive

-groups present this relation to each other,

-we are compelled to believe that <i>acceleration</i> has been

-the principle of their successive evolution during the

-long ages of geologic time.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Each type has, however, its day of supremacy and

-perfection of organism, and a retrogression in these respects

-has succeeded. This has no doubt followed a law

-the reverse of acceleration, which has been called <i>retardation</i>.

-By the increasing slowness of the growth of

-the individuals of a genus, and later and later assumption

-of the characters of the latter, they would be successively

-lost.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>To what power shall we ascribe this acceleration, by

-which the first beginnings of structure have accumulated

-to themselves through the long geologic ages

-complication and power, till from the germ that was

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>scarcely born into a sand-lance, a human being climbed

-the complete scale, and stood easily the chief of the

-whole?</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In the cases of species, where some individuals develop

-farther than others, we say the former possess

-more growth-force, or “vigor,” than the latter. We

-may therefore say that higher types of structure possess

-more “vigor” than the lower. This, however, we do

-not know to be true, nor can we readily find means to

-demonstrate it.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The food which is taken by an adult animal is either

-assimilated, to be consumed in immediate activity of

-some kind, or stored for future use, and the excess is

-rejected from the body. We have no reason to suppose

-that the same kind of material could be made to subserve

-the production of life-force by any other means than

-that furnished by a living animal organism. The material

-from which this organism is constructed is derived

-first from the parent, and afterward from the food, etc.,

-assimilated by the individual itself so long as growth

-continues. As it is the activity of assimilation directed

-to a special end during this latter period which we suppose

-to be increased in accelerated development, the

-acceleration is evidently not brought about by increased

-facilities for obtaining the means of life which the same

-individual possesses as an adult. That it is not in consequence

-of such increased facilities possessed by its

-parents over those of the type preceding it, seems

-equally improbable when we consider that the characters

-in which the parent’s advance has appeared are

-rarely of a nature to increase those facilities.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The nearest approach to an explanation that can be

-offered appears to be somewhat in the following direction:</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>There is every reason to believe that the character of

-the atmosphere has gradually changed during geologic

-time, and that various constituents of the mixture have

-been successively removed from it, and been stored in

-the solid material of the earth’s crust in a state of combination.

-Geological chemistry has shown that the

-cooling of the earth has been accompanied by the precipitation

-of many substances only gaseous at high temperatures.

-Hydrochloric and sulphuric acids have been

-transferred to mineral deposits or aqueous solutions.

-The removal of carbonic acid gas and the vapor of

-water has been a process of much slower progress, and

-after the expiration of all the ages a proportion of both

-yet remains. Evidence of the abundance of the former

-in the earliest periods is seen in the vast deposits of

-limestone rock; later, in the prodigious quantities of

-shells which have been elaborated from the same in solution.

-Proof of its abundance in the atmosphere in

-later periods is seen in the extensive deposits of coal of

-the Carboniferous, Triassic and Jurassic periods. If the

-most luxuriant vegetation of the present day takes but

-fifty tons of carbon from the atmosphere in a century,

-per acre, thus producing a layer over that extent of less

-than a third of an inch in thickness, what amount of

-carbon must be abstracted in order to produce strata of

-thirty-five feet in depth? No doubt it occupied a long

-period, but the atmosphere, thus deprived of a large

-proportion of carbonic acid, would in subsequent periods

-undoubtedly possess an improved capacity for the support

-of animal life.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The successively higher degree of oxidization of the

-blood in the organs designed for that function, whether

-performing it in water or air, would certainly accelerate

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>the performances of all the vital functions, and among

-others that of growth. Thus it may be that <i>acceleration</i>

-can be accounted for, and the process of the development

-of the orders and sundry lesser groups of the Vertebrate

-kingdom indicated; for, as already pointed out,

-the definitions of such are radically placed in the different

-structures of the organs which aerate the blood and

-distribute it to its various destinations.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But the great question, What determined the direction

-of this acceleration? remains unanswered. One

-cannot understand why more highly-oxidized blood

-should hasten the growth of partition of the ventricle

-of the heart in the serpent, the more perfectly to separate

-the aerated from the impure fluid; nor can we see

-why a more perfectly-constructed circulatory system,

-sending purer blood to the brain, should direct accelerated

-growth to the cerebellum or cerebral hemispheres

-in the crocodile.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><i>b. In Characters of the Specific Kind.</i> Some of the

-characters usually placed in the specific category have

-been shown to be the same in kind as those of higher

-categories. The majority are, however, of a different

-kind, and have been discussed several pages back.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The cause of the origin of these characters is shrouded

-in as much mystery as that of those which have occupied

-the pages immediately preceding. As in that case,

-we have to assume, as Darwin has done, a tendency in

-Nature to their production. This is what he terms “the

-principle of variation.” Against an unlimited variation

-the great law of heredity or atavism has ever been opposed,

-as a conservator and multiplier of type. This

-principle is exemplified in the fact that like produces

-like—that children are like their parents, frequently even

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>in minutiæ. It may be compared to habit in metaphysical

-matters, or to that singular love of time or rhythm

-seen in man and lower animals, in both of which the

-tendency is to repeat in continual cycles a motion or

-state of the mind or sense.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Further, but a proportion of the lines of variation is

-supposed to have been perpetuated, and the extinction

-of intermediate forms, as already stated, has left isolated

-groups or species.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The effective cause of these extinctions is stated by

-Darwin to have been a “natural selection”—a proposition

-which distinguishes his theory from other development

-hypotheses, and which is stated in brief by the

-expression, “the preservation of the fittest.” Its meaning

-is this: that those characters appearing as results

-of this spontaneous variation which are little adapted to

-the conflict for subsistence, with the nature of the supply,

-or with rivals in its pursuit, dwindle and are sooner

-or later extirpated; while those which are adapted to

-their surroundings, and favored in the struggle for means

-of life and increase, predominate, and ultimately become

-the centers of new variation. “I am convinced,”

-says Darwin, “that natural selection has been the main,

-but not exclusive, means of modification.”</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>That it has been to a large extent the means of preservation

-of those structures known as specific, must, I

-think, be admitted. They are related to their peculiar

-surroundings very closely, and are therefore more likely

-to exist under their influence. Thus, if a given genus

-extends its range over a continent, it is usually found to

-be represented by peculiar species—one in a maritime

-division, another in the desert, others in the forest, in

-the swamp or the elevated areas of the region. The

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>wonderful interdependence shown by Darwin to exist

-between insects and plants in the fertilization of the latter,

-or between animals and their food-plants, would almost

-induce one to believe that it were the true expression

-of the whole law of development.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But the following are serious objections to its universal

-application:</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>First: The characters of the higher groups, from genera

-up, are rarely of a character to fit their possessors

-especially for surrounding circumstances; that is, the

-differences which separate genus from genus, order from

-order, etc., in the ascending scale of each, do not seem

-to present a superior adaptation to surrounding circumstances

-in the higher genus to that seen in the lower

-genus, etc. Hence, superior adaptation could scarcely

-have caused their selection above other forms not existing.

-Or, in other words, the different structures which

-indicate successional relation, or which measure the

-steps of progress, seem to be equally well fitted for the

-same surroundings.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Second: The higher groups, as orders, classes, etc.,

-have been in each geologic period alike distributed over

-the whole earth, under all the varied circumstances offered

-by climate and food. Their characters do not

-seem to have been modified in reference to these. Species,

-and often genera, are, on the other hand, eminently

-restricted according to climate, and consequently vegetable

-and animal food.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The law of development which we seek is indeed not

-that which preserves the higher forms and rejects the

-lower after their creation, but that which explains why

-higher forms were created at all. Why in the results

-of a creation we see any relation of higher and lower,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>and not rather a world of distinct types, each perfectly

-adapted to its situation, but none properly higher than

-another in an ascending scale, is the primary question.

-Given the principle of advance, then natural selection

-has no doubt modified the details; but in the successive

-advances we can scarcely believe such a principle

-to be influential. <i>We look rather upon a progress as

-the result of the expenditure of some force fore-arranged

-for that end.</i></p>

-

-<p class='c024'>It may become, then, a question whether in characters

-of high grade the habit or use is not rather the result

-of the acquisition of the structure than the structure

-the result of the encouragement offered to its

-assumed beginnings by use, or by liberal nutrition derived

-from the increasingly superior advantages it offers.</p>

-

-<h4 class='c026'>ε. The Physical Origin of Man.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>If the hypothesis here maintained be true, man is the

-descendant of some preëxistent generic type, the which,

-if it were now living, we would probably call an ape.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Man and the chimpanzee were in Linnæus’ system

-only two species of the same genus, but a truer anatomy

-places them in separate genera and distinct families.

-There is no doubt, however, that Cuvier went much too

-far when he proposed to consider Homo as the representative

-of an order distinct from the quadrumana, under

-the name of bimana. The structural differences

-will not bear any such interpretation, and have not the

-same value as those distinguishing the orders of mammalia;

-as, for instance, between carnivora and bats, or

-the cloven-footed animals and the rodents, or rodents

-and edentates. The differences between man and the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>chimpanzee are, as Huxley well puts it, much less than

-those between the chimpanzee and lower quadrumana,

-as lemurs, etc. In fact, man is the type of a family,

-Hominidæ, of the order Quadrumana, as indicated by

-the characters of the dentition, extremities, brain, etc.

-The reader who may have any doubts on this score may

-read the dissections of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, made in

-1856, before the issue of Darwin’s <i>Origin of Species</i>.

-He informs us that the brain of man is nearer in structure

-to that of the orang than the orang’s is to that of

-the South American howler, and that the orang and

-howler are more nearly related in this regard than are

-the howler and the marmoset.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The modifications presented by man have, then, resulted

-from an acceleration in development in some

-respects, and retardation perhaps in others. But until

-the <i>combination</i> now characteristic of the genus Homo

-was attained the being could not properly be called man.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>And here it must be observed that as an organic type

-is characterized by the coëxistence of a number of peculiarities

-which have been developed independently of

-each other, its distinctive features and striking functions

-are not exhibited until that coëxistence is attained which

-is necessary for these ends.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Hence, the characters of the human genus were probably

-developed successively; but few of the indications

-of human superiority appeared until the combination

-was accomplished. Let the opposable thumb be first

-perfected, but of what use would it be in human affairs

-without a mind to direct? And of what use a mind

-without speech to unlock it? And speech could not be

-possible though all the muscles of the larynx but one

-were developed, or but a slight abnormal convexity in

-one pair of cartilages remained.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>It would be an objection of little weight could it be

-truly urged that there have as yet no remains of apelike

-men been discovered, for we have frequently been

-called upon in the course of paleontological discovery

-to bridge greater gaps than this, and greater remain,

-which we expect to fill. But we <i>have</i> apelike characters

-exhibited by more than one race of men yet existing.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But the remains of that being which is supposed to

-have been the progenitor of man may have been discovered

-a short time since in the cave of Naulette, Belgium,

-with the bones of the extinct rhinoceros and

-elephant.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>We all admit the existence of higher and lower races,

-the latter being those which we now find to present

-greater or less approximations to the apes. The peculiar

-structural characters that belong to the negro in his

-most typical form are of that kind, however great may

-be the distance of his remove therefrom. The flattening

-of the nose and prolongation of the jaws constitute

-such a resemblance; so are the deficiency of the calf of

-the leg, and the obliquity of the pelvis, which approaches

-more the horizontal position than it does in the Caucasian.

-The investigations made at Washington during

-the war with reference to the physical characteristics of

-the soldiers show that the arms of the negro are from

-one to two inches longer than those of the whites:

-another approximation to the ape. In fact, this race is

-a species of the genus Homo, as distinct in character

-from the Caucasian as those we are accustomed to recognize

-in other departments of the animal kingdom;

-but he is not distinct by isolation, since intermediate

-form’s between him and the other species can be abundantly

-found.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>And here let it be particularly observed that two of

-the most prominent characters of the negro are those of

-immature stages of the Indo-European race in its characteristic

-types. The deficient calf is the character of

-infants at a very early stage; but, what is more important,

-the flattened bridge of the nose and shortened nasal

-cartilages are universally immature conditions of the

-same parts in the Indo-European. Any one may convince

-himself of that by examining the physiognomies

-of infants. In some races—<i>e.g.</i>, the Slavic—this undeveloped

-character persists later than in some others.

-The Greek nose, with its elevated bridge, coincides not

-only with æsthetic beauty, but with developmental perfection.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>This is, however, only “<i>inexact</i> parallelism,” as the

-characters of the hair, etc., cannot be explained on this

-principle <i>among existing races</i>. The embryonic characters

-mentioned are probably a remnant of those characteristic

-of the primordial race or species.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But the man of Naulette, if he be not a monstrosity,

-in a still more distinct and apelike species. The chin,

-that marked character of other species of men, is totally

-wanting, and the dentition is quite approximate to the

-man-like apes, and different from that of modern men.

-The form is very massive, as in apes. That he was not

-abnormal is rendered probable by approximate characters

-seen in a jaw from the cave of Puy-sur-Aube, and

-less marked in the lowest races of Australia and New

-Caledonia.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>As to the single or multiple origin of man, science as

-yet furnishes no answer. It is very probable that, in

-many cases, the species of one genus have descended

-from corresponding species of another by change of

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>generic characters only. It is a remarkable fact that the

-orang possesses the peculiarly developed malar bones

-and the copper color characteristic of the Mongolian inhabitants

-of the regions in which this animal is found,

-while the gorilla exhibits the prognathic jaws and black

-hue of the African races near whom he dwells. This

-kind of geographical imitation is very common in the

-animal kingdom.</p>

-

-<h4 class='c026'>ζ. The Mosaic Account.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>As some persons imagine that this hypothesis conflicts

-with the account of the creation of man given in

-Genesis, a comparison of some of the points involved

-is made below.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>First: In Genesis i. 26, 27, we read, “And God said,

-Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” etc.

-“So God created man in his own image, in the image

-of God created he him; male and female created he

-them.” Those who believe that this “image” is a

-physical, material form, are not disposed to admit the

-entrance of anything apelike into its constitution, for the

-ascription of any such appearance to the Creator would

-be impious and revolting. But we are told that “God

-is a Spirit,” and Christ said to his disciples after his

-resurrection, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye

-see me have.” Luke xxiv. 39. It will require little

-further argument to show that a mental and spiritual

-image is what is meant, as it is what truly exists. Man’s

-conscience, intelligence and creative ingenuity show that

-he possesses an “image of God” within him, the possession

-of which is really necessary to his limited comprehension

-of God and of God’s ways to man.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>Second: In Genesis ii. 7, the text reads, “And the

-Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and

-breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man

-became a living soul.” The fact that man is the result

-of the modification of an apelike predecessor nowise

-conflicts with the above statement as to the materials of

-which his body is composed. Independently of origin,

-if the body of man be composed of dust, so must that

-of the ape be, since the composition of the two is identical.

-But the statement simply asserts that man was

-created of the same materials which compose the earth:

-their condition as “dust” depending merely on temperature

-and subdivision. The declaration, “Dust thou art,

-and unto dust thou shalt return,” must be taken in a

-similar sense, for we know that the decaying body is resolved

-not only into its earthly constituents, but also into

-carbonic acid gas and water.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>When God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of

-life, we are informed that he became, not a living body,

-but “a living soul.” His descent from a preëxistent

-being involved the possession of a living body; but

-when the Creator breathed into him we may suppose

-for the present that He infused into this body the immortal

-part, and at that moment man became a conscientious

-and responsible being.</p>

-<h3 class='c001'>II. <span class='sc'>Metaphysical Evolution.</span></h3>

-

-<p class='c025'>It is infinitely improbable that a being endowed with

-such capacities for gradual progress as man has exhibited,

-should have been full fledged in accomplishments

-at the moment when he could first claim his high title,

-and abandon that of his simious ancestors. We are

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>therefore required to admit the growth of human intelligence

-from a primitive state of inactivity and absolute

-ignorance; including the development of one important

-mode of its expression—speech; as well as that of the

-moral qualities, and of man’s social system—the form in

-which his ideas of morality were first displayed.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The expression “evolution of morality” need not

-offend, for the question in regard to the <i>laws</i> of this

-evolution is the really important part of the discussion,

-and it is to the opposing views on this point that the

-most serious interest attaches.</p>

-

-<hr class='c015' />

-

-<p class='c024'>The two views of evolution already treated of, held

-separately, are quite opposed to each other. The first

-(and generally received) lays stress on the influence of

-external surroundings, as the stimulus to and guidance

-of development: it is the counterpart of Darwin’s principle

-called Natural Selection in material progress.

-This might be called the <i>Conflict theory</i>. The second

-view recognizes the workings of a force whose nature

-we do not know, whose exhibitions accord perfectly with

-their external surroundings (or other exhibitions of itself),

-without being under their influence or more related

-to them, as effect to cause, than the notes of the

-musical octave or the colors of the spectrum are to each

-other. This is the <i>Harmonic theory</i>. In other words,

-the first principle deduces perfection from struggle and

-discord; the second, from the coincident progress of

-many parts, forming together a divine harmony comparable

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>to music. That these principles are both true

-is rendered extremely probable by the actual phenomena

-of development, material and immaterial. In other

-words, struggle and discord ever await that which is

-not in the advance, and which fails to keep pace with

-the harmonious development of the whole.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>All who have studied the phenomena of the creation

-believe that there exists in it a grand and noble harmony,

-such as was described to Job when he was told

-that “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons

-of God shouted for joy.”</p>

-

-<h4 class='c026'>α. Development of Intelligence.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>If the brain is the organ of mind, we may be surprised

-to find that the brain of the intelligent man

-scarcely differs in structure from that of the ape.

-Whence, then, the difference of power? Though no

-one will now deny that many of the Mammalia are

-capable of reasoning upon observed facts, yet how

-greatly the results of this capacity differ in number

-and importance from those achieved by human intelligence!

-Like water at the temperatures of 50° and 53°,

-where we perceive no difference in essential character,

-so between the brains of the lower and higher monkeys

-no difference of function or of intelligence is perceptible.

-But what a difference do the two degrees of temperature

-from 33° to 31° produce in water! In like manner

-the difference between the brain of the higher ape and

-that of man is accompanied by a difference in function

-and power, on which, man’s earthly destiny depends.

-In development, as with the water so with the higher

-ape: some Rubicon has been crossed, some floodgate

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>has been opened, which marks one of Nature’s great

-transitions, such as have been called “Expression

-points” of progress.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>What point of progress in such a history would account

-for this accession of the powers of the human intelligence?

-It has been answered, with considerable

-confidence, The power of speech. Let us picture man

-without speech. Each generation would learn nothing

-from its predecessors. Whatever originality or observation

-might yield to a man would die with him. Each intellectual

-life would begin where every other life began,

-and would end at a point only differing with its original

-capacity. Concert of action, by which man’s power

-over the material world is maintained, would not exceed,

-if it equaled, that which is seen among the bees; and

-the material results of his labors would not extend beyond

-securing the means of life and the employment of

-the simplest modes of defence and attack.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The first men, therefore, are looked upon by the developmentalists

-as extremely embryonic in all that characterizes

-humanity, and they appeal to the facts of history

-in support of this view. If they do not derive

-much assistance from written history, evidence is found

-in the more enduring relics of human handiwork.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The opposing view is, that the races which present

-or have presented this condition of inferiority or savagery

-have reached it by a process of degradation from

-a higher state—as some believe, through moral delinquency.

-This position may be true in certain cases,

-which represent perhaps a condition of senility, but in

-general we believe that savagery was the condition of

-the first man, which has in some races continued to the

-present day.</p>

-

-<div>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>

-  <h4 class='c026'><i>β. Evidence from Archæology.</i></h4>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c025'>As the object of the present essay is not to examine

-fully into the evidences for the theories of evolution here

-stated, but rather to give a sketch of such theories and

-their connection, a few facts only will be noticed.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><i>Improvement in the use of Materials.</i> As is well

-known, the remains of human handiwork of the earliest

-periods consist of nothing but rude implements of stone

-and bone, useful only in procuring food and preparing

-it for use. Even when enterprise extended beyond the

-ordinary routine, it was restrained by the want of proper

-instruments. Knives and other cutting implements of

-flint still attest the skill of the early races of men from

-Java to the Cape of Good Hope, from Egypt to Ireland,

-and through North and South America. Hatchets,

-spear-heads and ornaments of serpentine, granite, silex,

-clay slates, and all other suitable rock materials, are

-found to have been used by the first men, to the exclusion

-of metals, in most of the regions of the earth.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Later, the probably accidental discovery of the superiority

-of some of the metals resulted in the substitution

-of them for stone as a material for cutting implements.

-Copper—the only metal which, while malleable, is hard

-enough to bear an imperfect edge—was used by succeeding

-races in the Old World and the New. Implements

-of this material are found scattered over extensive

-regions. So desirable, however, did the hardening of

-the material appear for the improvement of the cutting

-edge that combinations with other metals were sought

-for and discovered. The alloy with tin, forming bronze

-and brass, was discovered and used in Europe, while

-that with silver appears to have been most readily produced

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>in America, and was consequently used by the

-Peruvians and other nations.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The discovery of the modes of reducing iron ores

-placed in the hands of man the best material for bringing

-to a shape, convenient for his needs the raw material

-of the world. All improvements in this direction

-made since that time have been in the quality of iron

-itself, and not through the introduction of any new

-metal.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The prevalent phenomena of any given period are

-those which give it its character, and by which we distinguish

-it. But this fact does not exclude the coëxistence

-of other phenomena belonging to prior or subsequent

-stages. Thus, during the many stages of human

-progress there have been men more or less in advance

-of the general body, and their characteristics have given

-a peculiar stamp to the later and higher condition of the

-whole. It furnishes no objection to this view that we

-find, as might have been anticipated, the stone, bronze

-and iron periods overlaping one another, or men of an

-inferior culture supplanting in some cases a superior

-people. A case of this kind is seen in North America,

-where the existing “Indians,” stone-men, have succeeded

-the mound-builders, copper-men. The successional relation

-of discoveries is all that it is necessary to prove,

-and this seems to be established.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The period at which the use of metallic implements

-was introduced is unknown, but Whitney says that the

-language of the Aryans, the ancestors of all the modern

-Indo-Europeans, indicates an acquaintance with such

-implements, though it is not certain whether those of

-iron are to be included. The dispersion of the daughter

-races, the Hindoos, the Pelasgi, Teutons, Celts, etc.,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>could not, it is thought, have taken place later than

-3000 <span class='fss'>B. C.</span>—a date seven hundred years prior, to that assigned

-by the old chronology to the Deluge. Those

-races coëxisted with the Egyptian and Chinese nations,

-already civilized, and as distinct from each other in

-feature as they are now.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><i>Improvement in Architecture.</i> The earliest periods,

-then, were characterized by the utmost simplicity of invention

-and construction. Later, the efforts for defence

-from enemies and for architectural display, which have

-always employed so much time and power, began to be

-made. The megalithic period has left traces over much

-of the earth. The great masses of stone piled on each

-other in the simplest form in Southern India, and the

-circles of stones planted on end in England at Stonehenge

-and Abury, and in Peru at Sillustani, are relics

-of that period. More complex are the great Himyaritic

-walls of Arabia, the works of the ancestors of the

-Phœnicians in Asia Minor, and the titanic workmanship

-of the Pelasgi in Greece and Italy. In the iron

-age we find granitic hills shaped or excavated into temples;

-as, for example, everywhere in Southern India.

-Near Madura the circumference of an acropolis-like hill

-is cut into a series of statues in high relief, of sixty feet

-in elevation. Easter Island, composed of two volcanic

-cones, one thousand miles from the west coast of South

-America, in the bosom of the Pacific, possesses several

-colossi cut from the intrusive basalt, some in high relief

-on the face of the rock, others in detached blocks removed

-by human art from their original positions and

-brought nearer the sea-shore.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Finally, at a more advanced stage, the more ornate

-and complex structures of Central America, of Cambodia,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>Nineveh and Egypt, represent the period of

-greatest display of architectural expenditure. The

-same amount of human force has perhaps never been

-expended in this direction since, though higher conceptions

-of beauty have been developed in architecture

-with increasing intellectuality.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Man has passed through the block-and-brick building

-period of his boyhood, and should rise to higher conceptions

-of what is the true disposition of power for

-“him who builds for aye,” and learn that “spectacle”

-is often the unwilling friend of progress.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>No traces of metallic implements have ever been

-found in the salt-mines of Armenia, the turquoise-quarries

-in Arabia, the cities of Central America or the excavations

-for mica in North Carolina, while the direct

-evidence points to the conclusion that in those places

-flint was exclusively used.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The simplest occupations, as requiring the least exercise

-of mind, are the pursuit of the chase and the tending

-of flocks and herds. Accordingly, we find our first

-parents engaged in these occupations. Cain, we are

-told, was, in addition, a tiller of the ground. Agriculture

-in its simplest forms requires but little more intelligence

-than the pursuits just mentioned, though no employment

-is capable of higher development. If we

-look at the savage nations at present occupying nearly

-half the land surface of the earth, we shall find many

-examples of the former industrial condition of our race

-preserved to the present day. Many of them had no

-knowledge of the use of metals until they obtained it

-from civilized men who visited them, while their pursuits

-were and are those of the chase, tending domestic

-animals, and rudimental agriculture.</p>

-

-<div>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>

-  <h4 class='c026'>γ. The Development of Language.</h4>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c025'>In this department the fact of development from the

-simple to the complex has been so satisfactorily demonstrated

-by philologists as scarcely to require notice here.

-The course of that development has been from monosyllabic

-to polysyllabic forms, and also in a process of

-differentiation, as derivative races were broken off from

-the original stock and scattered widely apart. The

-evidence is clear that simple words for distinct objects

-formed the bases of the primal languages, just as the

-ground, tree, sun and moon represent the character of

-the first words the infant lisps. In this department also

-the facts point to an infancy of the human race.</p>

-

-<h4 class='c026'>δ. Development of the Fine Arts.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>If we look at representation by drawing or sculpture,

-we find that the efforts of the earliest races of which we

-have any knowledge were quite similar to those which

-the untaught hand of infancy traces on its slate or the

-savage depicts on the rocky faces of hills. The circle

-or triangle for the head and body, and straight lines for

-the limbs, have been preserved as the first attempts of

-the men of the stone period, as they are to this day the

-sole representations of the human form which the North

-American Indian places on his buffalo robe or mountain

-precipice. The stiff, barely-outlined form of the deer,

-the turtle, etc., are literally those of the infancy of civilized

-man.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The first attempts at sculpture were marred by the

-influence of modism. Thus the idols of Coban and

-Palenque, with human faces of some merit, are overloaded

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>with absurd ornament, and deformed into frightful

-asymmetry, in compliance with the demand of some

-imperious mode. In later days we have the stiff, conventionalized

-figures of the palaces of Nineveh and

-the temples of Egypt, where the representation of form

-has somewhat improved, but is too often distorted by

-false fashion or imitation of some unnatural standard,

-real or artistic. This is distinguished as the day of

-archaic sculpture, which disappeared with the Etruscan

-nation. So the drawings of the child, when he abandons

-the simple lines, are stiff and awkward, and but a

-stage nearer true representation; and how often does

-he repeat some peculiarity or absurdity of his own! So

-much easier is it to copy than to conceive.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The introduction of the action and pose of life into

-sculpture was not known before the early days of

-Greece, and it was there that the art was brought to

-perfection. When art rose from its mediæval slumber,

-much the same succession of development may be discovered.

-First, the stiff figures, with straightened limbs

-and cylindric drapery, found in the old Northern

-churches—then the forms of life that now adorn the

-porticoes and palaces of the cities of Germany.</p>

-

-<h4 class='c026'>ε. Rationale of the Development of Intelligence.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>The history of material development shows that the

-transition from stage to stage of development, experienced

-by the most perfect forms of animals and plants

-in their growth from the primordial cell, is similar to the

-succession of created beings which the geological

-epochs produced. It also shows that the slow assumption

-of main characters in the line of succession in

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>early geological periods produced the condition of inferiority,

-while an increased rapidity of growth in later

-days has resulted in an attainment of superiority. It is

-not to be supposed that in “acceleration” the period

-of growth is shortened: on the contrary, it continues

-the same. Of two beings whose characters are assumed

-at the same rate of succession, that with the quickest or

-shortest growth is necessarily inferior. “Acceleration”

-means a gradual increase of the rate of assumption of

-successive characters in the same period of time. A

-fixed rate of assumption of characters, with gradual increase

-in the length of the period of growth, would

-produce the same result—viz., a longer developmental

-scale and the attainment of an advanced position. The

-first is in part the relation of sexes of a species; the

-last of genera, and of other types of creation. If from

-an observed relation of many facts we derive a law, we

-are permitted, when we see in another class of facts

-similar relations, to suspect that a similar law has operated,

-differing only in its objects. We find a marked

-resemblance between the facts of structural progress

-in matter and the phenomena of intellectual and spiritual

-progress.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>If the facts entering into the categories enumerated

-in the preceding section bear us out, we conclude that

-in the beginning of human history the progress of the

-individual man was very slow, and that but little was

-attained to; that through the profitable direction of human

-energy, means were discovered from time to time

-by which the process of individual development in all

-metaphysical qualities has been accelerated; and that

-up to the present time the consequent advance of the

-whole race has been at an increasing rate of progress,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>This is in accordance with the general principle, that

-high development in intellectual things is accomplished

-by rapidity in traversing the preliminary stages of inferiority

-common to all, while low development signifies

-sluggishness in that progress, and a corresponding retention

-of inferiority.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>How much meaning may we not see, from this stand-point,

-in the history of the intelligence of our little

-ones! First they crawl, they walk on all fours: when

-they first assume the erect position they are generally

-speechless, and utter only inarticulate sounds. When

-they run about, stones and dirt, the objects that first

-meet the eye, are the delight of their awakening powers,

-but these are all cast aside when the boy obtains his

-first jackknife. Soon, however, reading and writing

-open a new world to him; and finally as a mature man

-he seizes the forces of nature, and steam and electricity

-do his bidding in the active pursuit of power for still

-better and higher ends.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>So with the history of the species: first the quadrumane—then

-the speaking man, whose humble industry

-was, however, confined to the objects that came first to

-hand, this being the “stone age” of pre-historic time.

-When the use of metals was discovered, the range of

-industries expanded wonderfully, and the “iron age”

-saw many striking efforts of human power. With the

-introduction of letters it became possible to record

-events and experiences, and the spread of knowledge

-was thereby greatly increased, and the delays and mistakes

-of ignorance correspondingly diminished in the

-fields of the world’s activity.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>From the first we see in history a slow advance as

-knowledge gained by the accumulation of tradition and

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>by improvements in habit based on experience; but

-how slow was this advance while the use of the metals

-was still unknown! The iron age brought with it not

-only new conveniences, but increased means of future

-progress; and here we have an acceleration in the rate

-of advance. With the introduction of letters this rate

-was increased many fold, and in the application of steam

-we have a change equal in utility to any that has preceded

-it, and adding more than any to the possibilities

-of future advance in many directions. By its power,

-knowledge and means of happiness were to be distributed

-among the many.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The uses to which human intelligence has successively

-applied the materials furnished by nature have been—First,

-subsistence and defence: second, the accumulation

-of power in the shape of a representative of that

-labor which the use of matter involves; in other words,

-the accumulation of wealth. The possession of this

-power involves new possibilities, for opportunity is

-offered for the special pursuits of knowledge and the

-assistance of the weak or undeveloped part of mankind

-in its struggles.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Thus, while the first men possessed the power of

-speech, and could advance a little in knowledge through

-the accumulation of the experiences of their predecessors,

-they possessed no means of accumulating the

-power of labor, no control over the activity of numbers—in

-other words, no wealth.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But the accumulation of knowledge finally brought

-this advance about. The extraction and utilization of

-the metals, especially iron, formed the most important

-step, since labor was thus facilitated and its productiveness

-increased in an incalculable degree. We have

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>little evidence of the existence of a medium of exchange

-during the first or stone period, and no doubt

-barter was the only form of trade. Before the use of

-metals, shells and other objects were used: remains of

-money of baked clay have been found in Mexico. Finally,

-though in still ancient times, the possession of

-wealth in money gradually became possible and more

-common, and from that day to this avenues for reaching

-this stage in social progress has ever been opening.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But wealth merely indicates a stage of progress, since

-it is but a comparative term. All men could not become

-rich, for in that case all would be equally poor. But

-labor has a still higher goal; for, thirdly, as capital, it

-constructs and employs machinery, which does the work

-of many hands, and thus cheapens products, which is

-equivalent in effect to an accumulation of wealth to the

-consumer. And this increase of power may be used

-for the intellectual and spiritual advance of men, or

-otherwise, at the will of the men thus favored. Machinery

-places man in the position of a creator, operating

-on Nature through an increased number of “secondary

-causes.”</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Development of intelligence is seen, then, in the

-following directions: First, in the knowledge of facts,

-including science; second, in language; third, in the

-apprehension of beauty; and, as consequences of the

-first of these, the accumulation of power by development—First,

-of means of subsistence; and second, of

-mechanical invention.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Thus we have two terms to start with in estimating

-the beginning of human development in knowledge and

-power: First, the primary capacities of the human mind

-itself; second, a material world, whose infinitely varied

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>components are so arranged as to yield results to the

-energies of that mind. For example, the transition

-points of vaporization and liquefaction are so placed as

-to be within the reach of man’s agents; their weights

-are so fixed as to accord with the muscular or other

-forces which he is able to exert; and other living organizations

-are subject to his convenience and rule, and

-not, as in previous geological periods, entirely beyond

-his control. These two terms being given, it is maintained

-that the present situation of the most civilized

-men has been attained through the operation of a law

-of mutual action and reaction—a law whose results,

-seen at the present time, have depended on the acceleration

-or retardation of its rate of action; which rate

-has been regulated, according to the degree in which a

-third great term, viz., the law of moral or (what is the

-same thing) true religious development has been combined

-in the plan. What it is necessary to establish in

-order to prove the above hypothesis is—</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>I. That in each of the particulars above enumerated

-the development of the human species is similar to that

-of the individual from infancy to maturity.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>II. That from a condition of subserviency to the laws

-of matter, man’s intelligence enables him, by an accumulation

-of power, to become in a sense independent

-of those laws, and to increase greatly the rate of intellectual

-and spiritual progress.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>III. That failure to accomplish a moral or spiritual

-development will again reduce him to a subserviency to

-the laws of matter.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>This brings us to the subject of moral development.

-And here I may be allowed to suggest that the weight

-of the evidence is opposed to the philosophy, “falsely

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>so called,” of necessitarianism, which asserts that the

-first two terms alone were sufficient to work out man’s

-salvation in this world and the next; and, on the other

-hand, to that anti-philosophy which asserts that all

-things in the progress of the human race, social and

-civil, are regulated by immediate Divine interposition

-instead of through instrumentalities. Hence the subject

-divides itself at once into two great departments—viz.,

-that of the development of mind or intelligence,

-and that of the development of morality.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>That these laws are distinct there can be no doubt,

-since in the individual man one of them may produce

-results without the aid of the other. Yet it can be

-shown that each is the most invaluable aid and stimulant

-to the other, and most favorable to the rapid

-advance of the mind in either direction.</p>

-<h3 class='c001'>III. <span class='sc'>Spiritual or Moral Development.</span></h3>

-

-<p class='c025'>In examining this subject, we first inquire (Sect. <i>α</i>)

-whether there is any connection between physical and

-moral or religious development; then (<i>β</i>), what indications

-of moral development may be derived from history.

-Finally (<i>γ</i>), a correlation of the results of these inquiries,

-with the nature of the religious development in the

-individual, is attempted. Of course in so stupendous

-an inquiry but a few leading points can be presented

-here.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>If it be true that the period of human existence on

-the earth has seen a gradually increasing predominance

-of higher motives over lower ones among the mass of

-mankind, and if any parts of our metaphysical being

-have been derived by inheritance from preëxistent

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>beings, we are incited to the inquiry whether any of the

-moral qualities are included among the latter; and

-whether there be any resemblance between moral and

-intellectual development.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Thus, if there have been a physical derivation from a

-preëxistent genus, and an embryonic condition of those

-physical characters which distinguish Homo—if there

-has been also an embryonic or infantile stage in intellectual

-qualities—we are led to inquire whether the

-development of the individual in moral nature will furnish

-us with a standard of estimation of the successive

-conditions or present relations of the human species in

-this aspect also.</p>

-

-<h4 class='c026'><i>a. Relations of Physical and Moral Nature.</i></h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>Although men are much alike in the deeper qualities

-of their nature, there is a range of variation which is

-best understood by a consideration of the extremes of

-such variation, as seen in men of different latitudes, and

-women and children.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>(<i>a.</i>) <i>In Children.</i> Youth is distinguished by a peculiarity,

-which no doubt depends upon an immature condition

-of the nervous center concerned, which might be

-called <i>nervous impressibility</i>. It is exhibited in a greater

-tendency to tearfulness, in timidity, less mental endurance,

-a greater facility in acquiring knowledge, and more

-ready susceptibility to the influence of sights, sounds

-and sensations. In both sexes the emotional nature

-predominates over the intelligence and judgment. In

-those years the <i>character</i> is said to be in embryo, and

-theologians in using the phrase, “reaching years of

-religious understanding,” mean that in early years the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>religious <i>capacities</i> undergo development coincidentally

-with those of the body.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>(<i>b.</i>) <i>In Women.</i> If we examine the metaphysical

-characteristics of women, we observe two classes of

-traits—namely, those which are also found in men, and

-those which are absent or but weakly developed in men.

-Those of the first class are very similar in essential

-nature to those which men exhibit at an early stage of

-development. This may be in some way related to the

-fact that physical maturity occurs earlier in women.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The gentler sex is characterized by a greater impressibility,

-often seen in the influence exercised by a

-stronger character, as well as by music, color or spectacle

-generally; warmth of emotion, submission to its

-influence rather than that of logic; timidity and irregularity

-of action in the outer world. All these qualities

-belong to the male sex, as a general rule, at some period

-of life, though different individuals lose them at very

-various periods. Ruggedness and sternness may rarely

-be developed in infancy, yet at some still prior time

-they certainly do not exist in any.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Probably most men can recollect some early period of

-their lives when the emotional nature predominated—a

-time when emotion at the sight of suffering was more

-easily stirred than in maturer years. I do not now

-allude to the benevolence inspired, kept alive or developed

-by the influence of the Christian religion on the

-heart, but rather to that which belongs to the natural

-man. Perhaps all men can recall a period of youth

-when they were hero-worshipers—when they felt the

-need of a stronger arm, and loved to look up to the

-powerful friend who could sympathize with and aid them.

-This is the “woman stage” of character: in a large

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>number of cases it is early passed; in some it lasts

-longer; while in a very few men it persists through life.

-Severe discipline and labor are unfavorable to its persistence.

-Luxury preserves its bad qualities without its

-good, while Christianity preserves its good elements

-without its bad.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>It is not designed to say that woman in her emotional

-nature does not differ from the undeveloped man. On

-the contrary, though she does not differ in kind, she

-differs greatly in degree, for her qualities grow with her

-growth, and exceed in <i>power</i> many fold those exhibited

-by her companion at the original point of departure.

-Hence, since it might be said that man is the undeveloped

-woman, a word of explanation will be useful.

-Embryonic types abound in the fields of nature, but

-they are not therefore immature in the usual sense.

-Maintaining the lower essential quality, they yet exhibit

-the usual results of growth in individual characters;

-that is, increase of strength, powers of support and protection,

-size and beauty. In order to maintain that the

-masculine character coincides with that of the undeveloped

-woman, it would be necessary to show that the

-latter during her infancy possesses the male characters

-predominating—that is, unimpressibility, judgment,

-physical courage, and the like.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>If we look at the second class of female characters—namely,

-those which are imperfectly developed or

-absent in men, and in respect to which man may be

-called undeveloped woman—we note three prominent

-points: facility in language, tact or finesse, and the love

-of children. The first two appear to me to be altogether

-developed results of “impressibility,” already

-considered as an indication of immaturity. Imagination

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>is also a quality of impressibility, and, associated

-with finesse, is apt to degenerate into duplicity and untruthfulness.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The third quality is different. It generally appears

-at a very early period of life. Who does not know how

-soon the little girl selects the doll, and the boy the toy-horse

-or machine? Here man truly never gets beyond

-undeveloped woman. Nevertheless, “impressibility”

-seems to have a great deal to do with this quality also.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Thus the metaphysical relation of the sexes would

-appear to be one of <i>inexact parallelism</i>, as defined in

-Sect. I. That the physical relation is a remote one of

-the same kind, several characters seem to point out.

-The case of the vocal organs will suffice. Their structure

-is identical in both sexes in early youth, and both

-produce nearly similar sounds. They remain in this

-condition in the woman, while they undergo a metamorphosis

-and change both in structure and vocal

-power in the man. In the same way, in many of the

-lower creation, the females possess a majority of embryonic

-features, though not invariably. A common

-example is to be found in the plumage of birds, where

-the females and young males are often undistinguishable.<a id='r48' /><a href='#f48' class='c020'><sup>[48]</sup></a>

-But there are few points in the physical structure

-of man also in which the male condition is the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>immature one. In regard to structure, the point at

-which the relation between the sexes is that of <i>exact

-parallelism</i>, or where the mature condition of the one

-sex accords with the undeveloped condition of the

-other, is when reproduction is no longer accomplished

-by budding or gemmation, but requires distinct organs.

-Metaphysically, this relation is to be found where distinct

-individuality of the sexes first appears; that is,

-where we pass from the hermaphrodite to the bisexual

-condition.</p>

-

-<div class='footnote c027' id='f48'>

-<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r48'>48</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Meehan states that the upper limbs and strong laterals in coniferæ

-and other trees produce female flowers and cones, and the

-lower and more interior branches the male flowers. What he points

-out is in harmony with the position here maintained—namely,

-that the female characters include more of those which are embryonic

-in the males, than the male characters include of those which

-are embryonic in the female: the female flowers are the product of

-the younger and more growing portions of the tree—that is, those

-last produced (the upper limbs and new branches)—while the male

-flowers are produced by the older or more mature portions—that

-is, lower limbs or more axial regions.</p>

-

-<p class='c028'>Meehan’s observations coincide with those of Thury and others

-on the origin of sexes in animals and plants, which it appears to

-admit of a similar explanation.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c024'>But let us put the whole interpretation on this partial

-undevelopment of woman.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The types or conditions of organic life which have

-been the most prominent in the world’s history—the

-Ganoids of the first, the Dinosaurs of the second, and

-the Mammoths of the third period—have generally died

-with their day. The line of succession has not been

-from them. The law of anatomy and paleontology is,

-that we must seek the point of departure of the type

-which is to predominate in the future, at lower stages on

-the line, in less decided forms, or in what, in scientific

-parlance, are called generalized types. In the same

-way, though the adults of the tailless apes are in a

-physical sense more highly developed than their young,

-yet the latter far more closely resemble the human

-species in their large facial angle and shortened jaws.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>How much significance, then, is added to the law

-uttered by Christ!—“Except ye become as little children,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Submission

-of will, loving trust, confiding faith—these

-belong to the child: how strange they appear to the

-executing, commanding, reasoning man! Are they so

-strange to the woman? We all know the answer.

-Woman is nearer to the point of departure of that development

-which outlives time and peoples heaven; and

-if man would find it, he must retrace his steps, regain

-something he lost in youth, and join to the powers and

-energies of his character the submission, love and faith

-which the new birth alone can give.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Thus the summing up of the metaphysical qualities of

-woman would be thus expressed: In the emotional

-world, man’s superior; in the moral world, his equal;

-in the laboring world, his inferior.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>There are, however, vast differences in women in respect

-to the number of masculine traits they may have

-assumed before being determined into their own special

-development. Woman also, under the influence of necessity,

-in later years of life, may add more or less to

-those qualities in her which are fully developed in the

-man.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The relation of these facts to the principles stated as

-the two opposing laws of development is, it appears to

-me, to be explained thus: First, that woman’s most inherent

-peculiarities are <i>not</i> the result of the external

-circumstances with which she has been placed in contact,

-as the <i>conflict theory</i> would indicate. Such circumstances

-are said to be her involuntary subserviency to

-the physically more powerful man, and the effect of a

-compulsory mode of life in preventing her from attaining

-a position of equality in the activities of the world.

-Second, that they <i>are</i> the result of the different distributions

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span>of qualities as already indicated by the <i>harmonic

-theory</i> of development; that is, of the unequal possession

-of features which belong to different periods in the

-developmental succession of the highest. And here it

-might be further shown that this relation involves no

-disadvantage to either sex, but that the principle of

-compensation holds in moral organization and in social

-order, as elsewhere. There is then another beautiful

-harmony which will ever remain, let the development of

-each sex be extended as far as it may.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>(<i>c.</i>) <i>In Men.</i> If we look at the male sex, we shall

-find various exceptional approximations to the female in

-mental constitution. Further, there can be little doubt

-that in the Indo-European race maturity in some respects

-appears earlier in tropical than in northern

-regions; and though subject to many exceptions, this is

-sufficiently general to be looked upon as a rule. Accordingly,

-we find in that race—at least in the warmer

-regions of Europe and America—a larger proportion of

-certain qualities which are more universal in women;

-as greater activity of the emotional nature when compared

-with the judgment; an impressibility of the nervous

-center, which, <i>cæteris paribus</i>, appreciates quickly

-the harmonies of sound, form and color; answers most

-quickly to the friendly greeting or the hostile menace;

-is more careless of consequences in the material expression

-of generosity or hatred, and more indifferent to

-truth under the influence of personal relations. The

-movements of the body and expressions of the countenance

-answer to the temperament. More of grace and

-elegance in the bearing mark the Greek, the Italian

-and the Creole, than the German, the Englishman or the

-Green Mountain man. More of vivacity and fire, for

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>better or for worse, are displayed in the countenance.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Perhaps the more northern type left all that behind

-in its youth. The rugged, angular character which appreciates

-force better than harmony, the strong intellect

-which delights in forethought and calculation, the less

-impressibility, reaching stolidity in the uneducated, are

-its well-known traits. If in such a character generosity

-is less prompt, and there is but little chivalry, there is

-persistency and unwavering fidelity, not readily interrupted

-by the lightning of passion or the dark surmises

-of an active imagination.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>All these peculiarities appear to result, <i>first</i>, from

-different degrees of quickness and depth in appreciating

-impressions from without; and, <i>second</i>, from differing

-degrees of attention to the intelligent judgment in consequent

-action. (I leave conscience out, as not belonging

-to the category of inherited qualities.)</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The first is the basis of an emotional nature, and the

-predominance of the second is the usual indication of

-maturity. That the first is largely dependent on an

-impressible condition of the nervous system can be asserted

-by those who reduce their nervous centers to a

-sensitive condition by a rapid consumption of the nutritive

-materials necessary to the production of thought-force,

-and perhaps of brain-tissue itself, induced by close

-and prolonged mental labor. The condition of over-work,

-though but an imitation of immaturity, without its

-joy-giving nutrition, is nevertheless very instructive.

-The sensitiveness, both physically, emotionally and morally,

-is often remarkable, and a weakening of the understanding

-is often coincident with it.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>It is necessary here to introduce a caution, that the

-meaning of the words high and low be not misunderstood.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>Great impressibility is an essential constituent of many

-of the highest forms of genius, and the combination of

-this quality with strong reflective intelligence, constitutes

-the most complete and efficient type of mind—therefore

-the highest in the common sense. It is not, however,

-the highest—or extremest—in an evolutional

-sense, it is not masculine, but hermaphrodite; in other

-words, its <i>kinetic</i> force exceeds its <i>bathmic</i>.<a id='r49' /><a href='#f49' class='c020'><sup>[49]</sup></a> It is therefore

-certain that a partial diminution of bathmic vigor

-is an advantage to some kinds of intellect.</p>

-

-<div class='footnote c027' id='f49'>

-<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r49'>49</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><i>Bathmic force</i> is analogous to the <i>potential</i> force of chemists,

-but is no doubt entirely different in its nature. It is converted

-into active energy or <i>kinetic</i> force only during the years of growth:

-it is in large amount in <i>acceleration</i>, in small amount in <i>retardation</i>.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c024'>The above observations have been confined to the

-Indo-European race. It may be objected to the theory

-that savagery means immaturity in the senses above

-described, as dependent largely on “impressibility,”

-while savages in general display the least “impressibility,”

-as that word is generally understood. This

-cannot be asserted of the Africans, who, so far as we

-know them, possess this peculiarity in a high degree.

-Moreover, it must be remembered that the state of indifference

-which precedes that of impressibility in the

-individual may characterize many savages; while their

-varied peculiarities may be largely accounted for by

-recollecting that many combinations of different species

-of emotions and kinds of intelligence go to make up

-the complete result in each case.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>(<i>d.</i>) <i>Conclusions.</i> Three types of religion may be

-selected from the developmental conditions of man:

-first, an absence of sensibility (early infancy); second,

-an emotional stage more productive of faith than of

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>works; thirdly, an intellectual type, more favorable to

-works than to faith. Though in regard to responsibility

-these states may be equal, there is absolutely no gain to

-laboring humanity from the first type, and a serious loss

-in actual results from the second, taken alone, as compared

-with the third.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>These, then, are the <i>physical vehicles of religion</i>—the

-“<i>earthen vessels</i>” of Paul—which give character and

-tone to the deeper spiritual life, as the color of the

-transparent vessel is communicated to the light which

-radiates from within.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But if evolution has taken place, there is evidently a

-provision for the progress from the lower to the higher

-states, either in the education of circumstances (“conflict,”)

-or in the power of an interior spiritual influence

-“harmony,”) or both.</p>

-

-<h4 class='c026'><i>β. Evidence Derived from History.</i></h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>We trace the development of Morality in—First, the

-family or social order; second, the civil order, or government.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Whatever may have been the extent of moral ignorance

-before the Deluge, it does not appear that the

-earth was yet prepared for the permanent habitation of

-the human race. All nations preserve traditions of the

-drowning of the early peoples by floods, such as have

-occurred frequently during geologic time. At the close

-of each period of dry land, a period of submergence

-has set in, and the depression of the level of the earth,

-and consequent overflow by the sea, has caused the

-death and subsequent preservation of the remains of

-the fauna and flora living upon it, while the elevation of

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>the same has produced that interruption in the process

-of deposit in the same region which marks the intervals

-between geologic periods. Change in these respects do

-not occur to any very material extent at the present

-time in the regions inhabited by the most highly developed

-portions of the human race; and as the last which

-occurred seems to have been expressly designed for the

-preparation of the earth’s surface for the occupation of

-organized human society, it may be doubted whether

-many such changes are to be looked for in the future.

-The last great flooding was that which stratified the

-drift materials of the north, and carried the finer portions

-far over the south, determining the minor topography

-of the surface and supplying it with soils.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The existence of floods which drowned many races

-of men may be considered as established. The men

-destroyed by the one recorded by Moses are described

-by him as exceedingly wicked, so that “the earth was

-filled with violence.” In his eyes the Flood was designed

-for their extermination.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>That their condition was evil must be fully believed

-if they were condemned by the executive of the Jewish

-law. This law, it will be remembered, permitted polygamy,

-slavery, revenge, aggressive war. The Jews were

-expected to rob their neighbors the Egyptians of jewels,

-and they were allowed “an eye for an eye and a tooth

-for a tooth.” They were expected to butcher other nations,

-with their women and children, their flocks and

-their herds. If we look at the lives of men recorded

-in the Old Testament as examples of distinguished excellence,

-we find that their standard, however superior

-to that of the people around them, would ill accord

-with the morality of the present day. They were all

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>polygamists, slaveholders and warriors. Abraham

-treated Hagar and Ishmael with inhumanity. Jacob,

-with his mother’s aid, deceived Isaac, and received

-thereby a blessing which extended to the whole Jewish

-nation. David, a man whom Paul tells us the Lord

-found to be after his own heart, slew the messenger who

-brought tidings of the death of Saul, and committed

-other acts which would stain the reputation of a Christian

-beyond redemption. It is scarcely necessary to

-turn to other nations if this be true of the chosen men

-of a chosen people. History indeed presents us with

-no people prior to, or contemporary with, the Jews who

-were not morally their inferiors.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>If we turn to more modern periods, an examination

-of the morality of Greece and Rome reveals a curious

-intermixture of lower and higher moral conditions.

-While each of these nations produced excellent moralists,

-the influence of their teachings was not sufficient

-to elevate the masses above what would now be regarded

-as a very low standard. The popularity of those scenes

-of cruelty, the gladiatorial shows and the combats with

-wild beasts, sufficiently attests this. The Roman virtue

-of patriotism, while productive of many noble deeds, is

-in itself far from being a disinterested one, but partakes

-rather of the nature of partisanship and selfishness. If

-the Greeks were superior to the Romans in humanity,

-they were apparently their inferiors in the social virtues,

-and were much below the standard of Christian nations

-in both respects.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Ancient history points to a state of chronic war, in

-which the social relations were in confusion, and the

-development of the useful arts was almost impossible.

-Savage races, which continue to this day in a similar

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>moral condition, are, we may easily believe, most unhappy.

-They are generally divided into tribes, which

-are mutually hostile, or friendly only with the view of

-injuring some other tribe. Might is their law, and robbery,

-rapine and murder express their mutual relations.

-This is the history of the lowest grade of barbarism,

-and the history of primeval man so far as it has come

-down to us in sacred and profane records. Man as a

-species first appears in history as a sinful being. Then

-a race maintaining a contest with the prevailing corruption

-and exhibiting a higher moral ideal is presented to

-us in Jewish history. Finally, early Christian society

-exhibits a greatly superior condition of things. In it

-polygamy scarcely existed, and slavery and war were

-condemned. But progress did not end here, for our

-Lord said, “I have yet many things to say unto you,

-<i>but ye cannot bear them now</i>. Howbeit, when He, the

-spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.”</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The progress revealed to us by history is truly great,

-and if a similar difference existed between the first of

-the human species and the first of whose condition we

-have information, we can conceive how low the origin

-must have been. History begins with a considerable

-progress in civilization, and from this we must infer a

-long preceding period of human existence, such as a

-gradual evolution would require.</p>

-

-<h4 class='c026'>γ. Rationale of Moral Development.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>I. <i>Of the Species.</i> Let us now look at the moral condition

-of the infant man of the present time. We know

-his small accountability, his trust, his innocence. We

-know that he is free from the law that when he “would

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>do good, evil is present with him,” for good and evil

-are alike unknown. We know that until growth has

-progressed to a certain degree he fully deserves the

-praise pronounced by Our Saviour, that “of such is the

-kingdom of heaven.” Growth, however, generally sees

-a change. We know that the buddings of evil appear

-but too soon: the lapse of a few months sees exhibitions

-of anger, disobedience, malice, falsehood, and

-their attendants—the fruit of a corruption within not

-manifested before.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In early youth it may be said that moral susceptibility

-is often in inverse ratio to physical vigor. But

-with growth the more physically vigorous are often

-sooner taught the lessons of life, for their energy brings

-them into earlier conflict with the antagonisms and contradictions

-of the world. Here is a beautiful example

-of the benevolent principle of compensation.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>1. <i>Innocence and the Fall.</i> If physical evolution be a

-reality, we have reason to believe that the infantile

-stage of human morals, as well as of human intellect,

-was much prolonged in the history of our first parents.

-This constitutes the period of human purity, when we

-are told by Moses that the first pair dwelt in Eden.

-But the growth to maturity saw the development of all

-the qualities inherited from the irresponsible denizen of

-the forest. Man inherits from his predecessors in the

-creation the buddings of reason: he inherits passions,

-propensities and appetites. His corruption is that of

-his animal progenitors, and his sin is the low and bestial

-instinct of the brute creation. Thus only is the origin

-of sin made clear—a problem which the pride of man

-would have explained in any other way had it been

-possible.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>But how startling the exhibition of evil by this new

-being as compared with the scenes of the countless ages

-already past! Then the right of the strongest was

-God’s law, and rapine and destruction were the history

-of life. But into man had been “breathed the breath

-of life,” and he had “become a living soul.” The law

-of right, the Divine Spirit, was planted within him, and

-the laws of the beast were in antagonism to that law.

-The natural development of his inherited qualities

-necessarily brought him into collision with that higher

-standard planted within him, and that war was commenced

-which shall never cease “till He hath put all

-things under His feet.” The first act of man’s disobedience

-constituted the Fall, and with it would come the

-first <i>intellectual</i> “knowledge of good and of evil”—an

-apprehension up to that time derived exclusively

-from the divinity within, or conscience.<a id='r50' /><a href='#f50' class='c020'><sup>[50]</sup></a></p>

-

-<div class='footnote c027' id='f50'>

-<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r50'>50</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>In our present translation of Genesis, the Fall is ascribed to

-the influence of Satan assuming the form of the serpent, and this

-animal was cursed in consequence, and compelled to assume a

-prone position. This rendering may well be revised, since serpents,

-prone like others, existed in both America and Europe during the

-Eocene epoch, five times as great a period before Adam as has

-elapsed since his day. Clark states, with great probability, that

-“serpent” should be translated monkey or ape—a conclusion, it

-will be observed, exactly coinciding with our inductions on the basis

-of evolution. The instigation to evil by an ape merely states inheritance

-in another form. His curse, then, refers to the retention

-of the horizontal position by all other quadrumana, as we find it

-at the present day.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c024'>2. <i>Free Agency.</i> Heretofore development had been

-that of physical types, but the Lord had rested on the

-seventh day, for man closed the line of the physical

-creation. Now a new development was to begin—the

-development of mind, of morality and of grace.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>On the previous days of Creation all had progressed

-in accordance with inevitable law apart from its objects.

-Now two lines of development were at the disposal of

-this being, between which his <i>free will</i> was to choose.

-Did he choose the courses dictated by the spirit of the

-brute, he was to be subject to the old law of the brute

-creation—the right of the strongest and spiritual death.

-Did he choose the guidance of the Divine Guest in his

-heart, he became subject to the laws which are to guide—I.

-the human species to an ultimate perfection, so far

-as consistent with this world; and II. the individual

-man to a higher life, where a new existence awaits him

-as a spiritual being, freed from the laws of terrestrial

-matter.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The charge brought against the theory of development,

-that it implies a necessary progress of man to all

-perfection without his coöperation—or <i>necessitarianism</i>,

-as it is called—is unfounded.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The free will of man remains the source alike of his

-progress and his relapse. But the choice once made,

-the laws of spiritual development are apparently as inevitable

-as those of matter. Thus men whose religious

-capacities are increased by attention to the Divine Monitor

-within are in the advance of progress—progress

-coinciding with that which in material things is called

-the <i>harmonic</i>. On the other hand, those whose motives

-are of the lower origin fall under the working of the

-law of <i>conflict</i>.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The lesson derivable from the preceding considerations

-would seem to be “necessitarian” as respects the

-whole human race, considered by itself; and I believe

-it is to be truly so interpreted. That is, the Creator of

-all things has set agencies at work which will slowly

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>develop a perfect humanity out of His lower creation,

-and nothing can thwart the process or alter the result.

-“My word shall not return unto Me void, but it shall

-accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in

-the thing whereto I sent it.” This is our great encouragement,

-our noblest hope—second only to that which

-looks to a blessed inheritance in another world. It is

-this thought that should inspire the farmer, who as he

-toils wonders, “Why all this labor? The Good Father

-could have made me like the lilies, who, though they

-toil not, neither spin, are yet clothed in glory; and why

-should I, a nobler being, be subject to the dust and the

-sweat of labor?” This thought should enlighten every

-artisan of the thousands that people the factories and

-guide their whirling machinery in our modern cities.

-Every revolution of a wheel is moving the car of progress,

-and the timed stroke of the crank and the

-rhythmic throw of the shuttle are but the music the

-spheres have sung since time began. A new significance

-then appears in the prayer of David: “Let the beauty

-of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish Thou the

-work of our hands upon us: the work of our hands,

-O Lord, establish Thou it.” But beware of the catastrophe,

-for “He will sit as a refiner:” “the wheat shall

-be gathered into barns, but the chaff shall be burned

-with unquenchable fire.” If this be true, let us look

-for—</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>3. <i>The Extinction of Evil.</i> How is necessitarianism

-to be reconciled with free will? It appears to me, thus:

-When a being whose safety depends on the perfection

-of a system of laws abandons the system by which he

-lives, he becomes subject to that lower grade of laws

-which govern lower intelligences. Man, falling from

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>the laws of right, comes under the dominion of the

-laws of brute force; as said our Saviour: “Salt is good,

-but if the salt have lost his savor, it is thenceforth good

-for nothing but to be cast forth and trodden under foot

-of men.”</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Evil, being unsatisfying to the human heart, is in its

-nature ever progressive, whether in the individual or the

-nation; and in estimating the practical results to man

-of the actions prompted by the lower portion of our

-nature, it is only necessary to carry out to its full development

-each of those animal qualities which may in certain

-states of society be restrained by the social system.

-In human history those qualities have repeatedly had

-this development, and the battle of progress is fought

-to decide whether they shall overthrow the system that

-restrains them, or be overthrown by it.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Entire obedience to the lower instincts of our nature

-ensures destruction to the weaker, and generally to the

-stronger also. A most marked case of this kind is seen

-where the developed vices of civilization are introduced

-among a savage people—as, for example, the North

-American Indians. These seem in consequence to be

-hastening to extinction.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But a system or a circuit of existence has been

-allotted to the civil associations of the animal species

-man, independently of his moral development. It may

-be briefly stated thus: Races begin as poor offshoots or

-emigrants from a parent stock. The law of labor develops

-their powers, and increases their wealth and

-numbers. These will be diminished by their various

-vices; but on the whole, in proportion as the intellectual

-and economical elements prevail, wealth will increase;

-that is, they accumulate power. When this has

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>been accomplished, and before activity has slackened

-its speed, the nation has reached the culminating point,

-and then it enters upon the period of decline. The restraints

-imposed by economy and active occupation being

-removed, the beastly traits find in accumulated

-power only increased means of gratification, and industry

-and prosperity sink together. Power is squandered,

-little is accumulated, and the nation goes down to its

-extinction amid scenes of internal strife and vice. Its

-cycle is soon fulfilled, and other nations, fresh from

-scenes of labor, assault it, absorb its fragments, and it

-dies. This has been the world’s history, and it remains

-to be seen whether the virtues of the nations now existing

-will be sufficient to save them from a like fate.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Thus the history of the animal man in nations is

-wonderfully like that of the type or families of the animal

-and vegetable kingdoms during geologic ages.

-They rise, they increase and reach a period of multiplication

-and power. The force allotted to them becoming

-exhausted, they diminish and sink and die.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>II. <i>Of the Individual.</i> In discussing physical development,

-we are as yet compelled to restrict ourselves to

-the evidence of its existence and some laws observed in

-the operation of its causative force. What that force

-is, or what are its primary laws, we know not.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>So in the progress of moral development we endeavor

-to prove its existence and the mode of its operation,

-but why that mode should exist, rather than some other

-mode, we cannot explain.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The moral progress of the species depends, of course,

-on the moral progress of the individuals embraced in it.

-Religion is the sum of those influences which determine

-the motives of men’s actions into harmony with the Divine

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>perfection and the Divine will. Obedience to these

-influences constitutes the practice of religion, while the

-statement of the growth and operation of these influences

-constitutes the theory of religion, or doctrine.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The Divine Spirit planted in man shows him that

-which is in harmony with the Divine Mind, and it remains

-for his free will to conform to it or reject it. This

-harmony is man’s highest ideal of happiness, and in

-seeking it, as well as in desiring to flee from dissonance

-or pain, he but obeys the disposition common to all

-conscious beings. If, however, he attempts to conform

-to it, he will find the law of evil present, and frequently

-obtaining the mastery. If now he be in any degree observing,

-he will find that the laws of morality and right

-are the only ones by which human society exists in a

-condition superior to that of the lower animals, and in

-which the capacities of man for happiness can approach

-a state of satisfaction. He may be then said to be

-“awakened” to the importance of religion. If he carry

-on the struggle to attain to the high goal presented to

-his spiritual vision, he will be deeply grieved and humbled

-at his failures: then he is said to be “convicted.”

-Under these circumstances the necessity of a deliverance

-becomes clear, and is willingly accepted in the

-only way in which it has pleased the Author of all to

-present it, which has been epitomized by Paul as “the

-washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit

-through Jesus Christ.” Thus a life of advanced and

-ever-advancing moral excellence becomes possible, and

-the man makes nearer approaches to the “image of

-God.”</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Thus is opened a new era in spiritual development,

-which we are led to believe leads to an ultimate condition

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>in which the nature inherited from our origin is entirely

-overcome, and an existence of moral perfection

-entered on. Thus in the book of Mark the simile occurs:

-“First the blade, then the ear, after that the full

-corn in the ear;” and Solomon says that the development

-of righteousness “shines more and more unto the

-perfect day.”</p>

-

-<h4 class='c026'>δ. Summary.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>If it be true that general development in morality

-proceeds in spite of the original predominance of evil

-in the world, through the self-destructive nature of the

-latter, it is only necessary to examine the reasons why

-the excellence of the good may have been subject also

-to progress, and how the remainder of the race may

-have been influenced thereby.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The development of morality is then probably to be

-understood in the following sense: Since the Divine

-Spirit, as the prime force in moral progress, cannot in

-itself be supposed to have been in any way under

-the influence of natural laws, its capacities were no

-doubt as eternal and unerring in the first man as in the

-last. But the facts and probabilities discussed above

-point to development of <i>religious sensibility</i>, or capacity

-to appreciate moral good, or to receive impressions from

-the source of good.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The evidence of this is supposed to be seen in—<i>First</i>,

-improvement in man’s views of his duty to his

-neighbor; and <i>Second</i>, the substitution of spiritual for

-symbolic religions: in other words, improvement in the

-capacity for receiving spiritual impressions.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>What the primary cause of this supposed development

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>of religious sensibility may have been, is a question

-we reverently leave untouched. That it is intimately

-connected in some way with, and in part

-dependent on, the evolution of the intelligence, appears

-very probable: for this evolution is seen—<i>First</i>,

-in a better understanding of the consequences of action,

-and of good and of evil in many things; and <i>Second</i>, in

-the production of means for the spread of the special

-instrumentalities of good. The following may be enumerated

-as such instrumentalities:</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>1. Furnishing literary means of record and distribution

-of the truths of religion, morality and science.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>2. Creating and increasing modes of transportation

-of teachers and literary means of disseminating truth.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>3. Facilitating the migration and the spread of nations

-holding the highest position in the scale of

-morality.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>4. The increase of wealth, which multiplies the extent

-of the preceding means.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>And now, let no man attempt to set bounds to this

-development. Let no man say even that morality accomplished

-is all that is required of mankind, since

-that is not necessarily the evidence of a spiritual development.

-If a man possess the capacity for progress

-beyond the condition in which he finds himself, in refusing

-to enter upon it he declines to conform to the

-Divine law. And “from those to whom little is given,

-little is required, but from those to whom much is given,

-much shall be required.”</p>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-

-<div class='nf-center-c0'>

-<div class='nf-center c029'>

-    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span><span class='c022'><i>SCIENTIFIC ADDRESSES.</i></span></div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c006' />

-</div>

-<div class='chapter'>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>

-  <h2 class='c007'><span class='sc'>Tyndall’s Addresses.</span></h2>

-</div>

-<h3 class='c001'>I.<br /> <br /><i>On the Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation.</i></h3>

-

-<p class='c025'>The celebrated Fichte, in his lectures on the “Vocation

-of the Scholar,” insisted on a culture for the scholar

-which should not be one-sided, but all-sided. His intellectual

-nature was to expand spherically, and not in a

-single direction. In one direction, however, Fichte required

-that the scholar should apply himself directly to

-nature, become a creator of knowledge, and thus repay,

-by original labors of his own, the immense debt he owed

-to the labors of others. It was these which enabled him

-to supplement the knowledge derived from his own researches,

-so as to render his culture rounded, and not

-one-sided.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Fichte’s idea is to some extent illustrated by the constitution

-and the labors of the British Association. We

-have here a body of men engaged in the pursuit of natural

-knowledge, but variously engaged. While sympathizing

-with each of its departments, and supplementing

-his culture by knowledge drawn from all of them,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>each student amongst us selects one subject for the exercise

-of his own original faculty—one line along which

-he may carry the light of his private intelligence a little

-way into the darkness by which all knowledge is surrounded.

-Thus, the geologist faces the rocks; the biologist

-fronts the conditions and phenomena of life; the

-astronomer, stellar masses and motions; the mathematician

-the properties of space and number; the chemist

-pursues his atoms, while the physical investigator has

-his own large field in optical, thermal, electrical, acoustical,

-and other phenomena. The British Association,

-then, faces nature on all sides, and pushes knowledge

-centrifugally outwards, while, through circumstance or

-natural bent, each of its working members takes up a

-certain line of research in which he aspires to be an

-original producer, being content in all other directions

-to accept instruction from his fellow-men. The sum of

-our labors constitutes what Fichte might call the sphere

-of natural knowledge. In the meetings of the Association

-it is found necessary to resolve this sphere into its

-component parts, which take concrete form under the

-respective letters of our sections.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>This section (A) is called the Mathematical and Physical

-section. Mathematics and Physics have been long

-accustomed to coalesce, and hence this grouping. For

-while mathematics, as a product of the human mind, is

-self-sustaining and nobly self-rewarding,—while the pure

-mathematician may never trouble his mind with considerations

-regarding the phenomena of the material universe,

-still the form of reasoning which he employs, the

-power which the organization of that reasoning confers,

-the applicability of his abstract conceptions to actual

-phenomena, render his science one of the most potent

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>instruments in the solution of natural problems. Indeed,

-without mathematics, expressed or implied, our

-knowledge of physical science would be friable in the

-extreme.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Side by side with the mathematical method, we have

-the method of experiment. Here, from a starting-point

-furnished by his own researches or those of others, the

-investigator proceeds by combining intuition and verification.

-He ponders the knowledge he possesses and

-tries to push it further, he guesses and checks his guess,

-he conjectures and confirms or explodes his conjecture.

-These guesses and conjectures are by no means leaps in

-the dark; for knowledge once gained casts a faint light

-beyond its own immediate boundaries. There is no discovery

-so limited as not to illuminate something beyond

-itself. The force of intellectual penetration into this

-penumbral region which surrounds actual knowledge is

-not dependent upon method, but is proportional to the

-genius of the investigator. There is, however, no genius

-so gifted as not to need control and verification. The

-profoundest minds know best that nature’s ways are not

-at all times their ways, and that the brightest flashes in

-the world of thought are incomplete until they have

-been proved to have their counterparts in the world of

-fact. The vocation of the true experimentalist is the

-incessant correction and realization of his insight; his

-experiments finally constituting a body, of which his

-purified intuitions are, as it were, the soul.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Partly through mathematical, and partly through experimental

-research, physical science has of late years

-assumed a momentous position in the world. Both in

-a material and in an intellectual point of view it has produced,

-and it is destined to produce, immense changes,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>vast social ameliorations, and vast alterations in the

-popular conception of the origin, rule, and governance

-of things. Miracles are wrought by science in the physical

-world, while philosophy is forsaking its ancient metaphysical

-channels, and pursuing those opened or indicated

-by scientific research. This must become more and

-more the case as philosophic writers become more deeply

-imbued with the methods of science, better acquainted

-with the facts which scientific men have won, and with

-the great theories which they have elaborated.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour

-and minute-hands, and possibly also a second-hand,

-moving over the graduated dial. Why do these hands

-move, and why are their relative motions such as they

-are observed to be? These questions cannot be answered

-without opening the watch, mastering its various

-parts, and ascertaining their relationship to each other.

-When this is done, we find that the observed motion of

-the hands follows of necessity from the inner mechanism

-of the watch when acted upon by the force invested in

-the spring.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>This motion of the hands may be called a phenomenon

-of art, but the case is similar with the phenomena

-of Nature. These also have their inner mechanism, and

-their store of force to set that mechanism going. The

-ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this

-mechanism, to discern this store, and to show that from

-the combined action of both, the phenomena of which

-they constitute the basis must of necessity flow.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>I thought that an attempt to give you even a brief and

-sketchy illustration of the manner in which scientific

-thinkers regard this problem would not be uninteresting

-to you on the present occasion; more especially as it

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>will give me occasion to say a word or two on the tendencies

-and limits of modern science, to point out the

-region which men of science claim as their own, and

-where it is mere waste of time to oppose their advance,

-and also to define, if possible, the bourne between this

-and that other region to which the questionings and

-yearnings of the scientific intellect are directed in vain.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the

-American Emerson, I think, who said that it is hardly

-possible to state any truth strongly without apparent injury

-to some other truth. Under the circumstances, the

-proper course appears to be to state both truths strongly,

-and allow each its fair share, in the formation of the resultant

-conviction. For truth is often of a dual character,

-taking the form of a magnet with two poles; and

-many of the differences which agitate the thinking part

-of mankind are to be traced to the exclusiveness with

-which different parties affirm one half of the duality in

-forgetfulness of the other half. But this waiting for the

-statement of the two sides of a question implies patience.

-It implies a resolution to suppress indignation if

-the statement of the one half should clash with our convictions,

-and not to suffer ourselves to be unduly elated

-if the half-statement should chime in with our views.

-It implies a determination to wait calmly for the statement

-of the whole before we pronounce judgment either

-in the form of acquiescence or dissent.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>This premised, let us enter upon our task. There

-have been writers who affirmed that the pyramids of

-Egypt were the productions of nature; and in his early

-youth Alexander Von Humboldt wrote an essay with

-the express object of refuting this notion. We now regard

-the pyramids as the work of men’s hands, aided

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>probably by machinery of which no record remains.

-We picture to ourselves the swarming workers toiling at

-those vast erections, lifting the inert stones, and, guided

-by the volition, the skill, and possibly at times by the

-whip of the architect, placing the stones in their proper

-positions. The blocks in this case were moved by a

-power external to themselves, and the final form of the

-pyramid expressed the thought of its human builder.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Let us pass from this illustration of building power to

-another of a different kind. When a solution of common

-salt is slowly evaporated, the water which holds the

-salt in solution disappears, but the salt itself remains

-behind. At a certain stage of concentration, the salt

-can no longer retain the liquid form; its particles, or

-molecules, as they are called, begin to deposit themselves

-as minute solids, so minute, indeed, as to defy all

-microscopic power. As evaporation continues solidification

-goes on, and we finally obtain, through the clustering

-together of innumerable molecules, a finite mass

-of salt of a definite form. What is this form? It sometimes

-seems a mimicry of the architecture of Egypt.

-We have little pyramids built by the salt, terrace above

-terrace from base to apex, forming thus a series of steps

-resembling those up which the Egyptian traveler is

-dragged by his guides. The human mind is as little disposed

-to look at these pyramidal salt-crystals without

-further question as to look at the pyramids of Egypt

-without inquiring whence they came. How, then, are

-those salt pyramids built up?</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Guided by analogy, you may suppose that, swarming

-among the constituent molecules of the salt, there is an

-invisible population, guided and coerced by some invisible

-master, and placing the atomic blocks in their positions.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>This, however, is not the scientific idea, nor do

-I think your good sense will accept it as a likely one.

-The scientific idea is that the molecules act upon each

-other without the intervention of slave labor; that they

-attract each other and repel each other at certain

-definite points, and in certain definite directions; and

-that the pyramidal form is the result of this play of attraction

-and repulsion. While, then, the blocks of

-Egypt were laid down by a power external to themselves,

-these molecular blocks of salt are self-posited,

-being fixed in their places by the forces with which they

-act upon each other.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>I take common salt as an illustration, because it is so

-familiar to us all; but almost any other substance would

-answer my purpose equally well. In fact, throughout

-inorganic nature, we have this formative power, as

-Fichte would call it—this structural energy ready to

-come into play, and build the ultimate particles of matter

-into definite shapes. It is present everywhere. The

-ice of our winters and of our polar regions is its hand-work,

-and so equally are the quartz, feldspar, and mica

-of our rocks. Our chalk-beds are for the most part

-composed of minute shells, which are also the product

-of structural energy; but behind the shell, as a whole,

-lies the result of another and more subtle formative act.

-These shells are built up of little crystals of calc-spar,

-and to form these the structural force had to deal with

-the intangible molecules of carbonate of lime. This tendency

-on the part of matter to organize itself, to grow

-into shape, to assume definite forms in obedience to the

-definite action of force, is, as I have said, all-pervading.

-It is in the ground on which you tread, in the water you

-drink, in the air you breathe. Incipient life, in fact,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span>manifests itself throughout the whole of what we call

-inorganic nature.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The forms of minerals resulting from this play of

-forces are various, and exhibit different degrees of complexity.

-Men of science avail themselves of all possible

-means of exploring this molecular architecture. For

-this purpose they employ in turn as agents of exploration,

-light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and sound.

-Polarized light is especially useful and powerful here.

-A beam of such light, when sent in among the molecules

-of a crystal, is acted on by them, and from this action

-we infer with more or less of clearness the manner

-in which the molecules are arranged. The difference,

-for example, between the inner structure of a plate of

-rock-salt and a plate of crystalized sugar or sugar-candy

-is thus strikingly revealed. These differences may be

-made to display themselves in phenomena of color of

-great splendor, the play of molecular force being so regulated

-as to remove certain of the colored constituents

-of white light, and to leave others with increased intensity

-behind.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>And now let us pass from what we are accustomed to

-regard as a dead mineral to a living grain of corn.

-When it is examined by polarized light, chromatic phenomena

-similar to those noticed in crystals are observed.

-And why? Because the architecture of the grain resembles

-in some degree the architecture of the crystal.

-In the corn the molecules are also set in definite positions,

-from which they act upon the light. But what

-has built together the molecules of the corn? I have

-already said, regarding crystalline architecture, that you

-may, if you please, consider the atoms and molecules to

-be placed in position by a power external to themselves.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>The same hypothesis is open to you now. But, if in the

-case of crystals you have rejected this notion of an external

-architect, I think you are bound to reject it now,

-and to conclude that the molecules of the corn are self-posited

-by the forces with which they act upon each

-other. It would be poor philosophy to invoke an external

-agent in the one case and to reject it in the other.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Instead of cutting our grain into thin slices and subjecting

-it to the action of polarized light, let us place it

-in the earth and subject it to a certain degree of warmth.

-In other words, let the molecules, both of the corn and

-of the surrounding earth, be kept in a state of agitation;

-for warmth, as most of you know, is, in the eye of

-science, tremulous molecular motion. Under these circumstances,

-the grain and the substances which surround

-it interact, and a molecular architecture is the result of

-this interaction. A bud is formed; this bud reaches

-the surface, where it is exposed to the sun’s rays, which

-are also to be regarded as a kind of vibratory motion.

-And as the common motion of heat with which the grain

-and the substances surrounding it were first endowed,

-enable the grain and these substances to coalesce, so the

-specific motion of the sun’s rays now enables the green

-bud to feed upon the carbonic acid and the aqueous

-vapor of the air, appropriating those constituents of

-both for which the blade has an elective attraction, and

-permitting the other constituent to resume its place in

-the air. Thus forces are active at the root, forces are

-active in the blade, the matter of the earth and the

-matter of the atmosphere are drawn towards the plant,

-and the plant augments in size. We have in succession,

-the bud, the stalk, the ear, the full corn in the ear. For

-the forces here at play act in a cycle, which is completed

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>by the production of grains similar to that with which

-the process began.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily

-eludes the power of mind as we know it. An intellect

-the same kind as our own, would, if only sufficiently expanded,

-be able to follow the whole process from beginning

-to end. No entirely new intellectual faculty would

-be needed for this purpose. The duly expanded mind

-would see in the process and its consummation an instance

-of the play of molecular force. It would see

-every molecule placed in its position by the specific attractions

-and repulsions exerted between it and other

-molecules. Nay, given the grain and its environment,

-an intellect the same in kind as our own, but sufficiently

-expanded, might trace out <i>à priori</i> every step of the process,

-and by the application of mechanical principles

-would be able to demonstrate that the cycle of actions

-must end, as it is seen to end, in the reproduction of

-forms like that with which the operation began. A similar

-necessity rules here to that which rules the planets

-in their circuits round the sun.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>You will notice that I am stating my truth strongly,

-as at the beginning we agreed it should be stated. But

-I must go still further, and affirm that in the eye of

-science the animal body is just as much the product of

-molecular force as the stalk and ear of corn, or as the

-crystal of salt or sugar. Many of its parts are obviously

-mechanical. Take the human heart, for example, with

-its exquisite system of valves, or take the eye or the

-hand. Animal heat, moreover, is the same in kind as

-the heat of a fire, being produced by the same chemical

-process. Animal motion, too, is as directly derived

-from the food of the animal, as the motion of Trevethyck’s

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span>walking-engine from the fuel in its furnace. As

-regards matter, the animal body creates nothing; as regards

-force, it creates nothing. Which of you by taking

-thought can add one cubit to his stature? All that

-has been said regarding the plant may be re-stated with

-regard to the animal. Every particle that enters into

-the composition of the muscle, a nerve, or a bone, has

-been placed in its position by molecular force. And

-unless the existence of law in these matters be denied,

-and the element of caprice be introduced, we must conclude

-that, given the relation of any molecule of the

-body to its environment, its position in the body might

-be predicted. Our difficulty is not with the quality of

-the problem, but with its complexity; and this difficulty

-might be met by the simple expansion of the faculties

-which man now possesses. Given this expansion, and

-given the necessary molecular data, and the chick might

-be deduced as rigorously and as logically from the egg

-as the existence of Neptune was deduced from the disturbances

-of Uranus, or as conical refraction was deduced

-from the undulatory theory of light.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>You see I am not mincing matters, but avowing

-nakedly what many scientific thinkers more or less distinctly

-believe. The formation of a crystal, a plant, or

-an animal, is in their eyes a purely mechanical problem,

-which differs from the problems of ordinary mechanics in

-the smallness of the masses and the complexity of the

-processes involved. Here you have one half of our

-dual truth; let us now glance at the other half. Associated

-with this wonderful mechanism of the animal

-body we have phenomena no less certain than those of

-physics, but between which and the mechanism we discern

-no necessary connection. A man, for example,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_230'>230</span>can say I feel, I think, I love; but how does consciousness

-infuse itself into the problem? The human brain

-is said to be the organ of thought and feeling; when

-we are hurt the brain feels it, when we ponder it is the

-brain that thinks, when our passions or affections are

-excited it is through the instrumentality of the brain.

-Let us endeavor to be a little more precise here. I

-hardly imagine that any profound scientific thinker who

-has reflected upon the subject exists, who would not admit

-the extreme probability of the hypothesis, that for

-every fact of consciousness, whether in the domain of

-sense, of thought, or of emotion, a certain definite

-molecular condition is set up in the brain; that this relation

-of physics to consciousness is invariable, so that,

-given the state of the brain, the corresponding thought

-or feeling might be inferred; or, given the thought or

-feeling, the corresponding state of the brain might be

-inferred. But how inferred? It is at bottom not a case

-of logical inference at all, but of empirical association.

-You may reply that many of the inferences of science

-are of this character; the inference, for example, that

-an electric current of a given direction will deflect a

-magnetic needle in a definite way; but the cases differ

-in this, that the passage from the current to the needle,

-if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain

-no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem;

-but the passage from the physics of the brain to

-the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable.

-Granted that a definite thought and a definite

-molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we

-do not possess the intellectual organ, nor, apparently,

-any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to

-pass by a process of reasoning from the one phenomenon

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>to the other. They appear together, but we do not

-know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded,

-strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and

-feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable

-of following all their motions, all their groupings, all

-their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we

-intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of

-thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from

-the solution of the problem. “How are these physical

-processes connected with the facts of consciousness?”

-The chasm between the two classes of phenomena

-would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the

-consciousness of love, for example, be associated with

-a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the

-brain, and the consciousness of hate with a left-handed

-spiral motion. We should then know when we love

-that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate

-that the motion is in the other; but the “<span class='fss'>WHY?</span>” would

-still remain unanswered.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical,

-and that thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative

-in the physics of the brain, I think the position

-of the “Materialist” is stated as far as that position is

-a tenable one. I think the materialist will be able

-finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but

-I do not think, as the human mind is at present constituted,

-that he can pass beyond it. I do not think he is

-entitled to say that his molecular groupings and his

-molecular motions explain everything. In reality they

-explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the association

-of two classes of phenomena of whose real bond

-of union he is in absolute ignorance. The problem of

-the connection of the body and soul is as insoluble in

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>its modern form as it was in the pre-scientific ages.

-Phosphorus is known to enter into the composition of

-the human brain, and a courageous writer has exclaimed,

-in his trenchant German, “Ohne phosphor kein gedanke.”

-That may or may not be the case; but even if

-we knew it to be the case, the knowledge would not

-lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone here

-assigned to the materialist he is equally helpless. If

-you ask him whence is this “matter” of which we have

-been discoursing, who or what divided it into molecules,

-who or what impressed upon them this necessity of running

-into organic forms, he has no answer. Science

-also is mute in reply to these questions. But if the

-materialist is confounded, and science rendered dumb,

-who else is entitled to answer? To whom has the

-secret been revealed? Let us lower our heads and acknowledge

-our ignorance, one and all. Perhaps the

-mystery may resolve itself into knowledge at some

-future day. The process of things upon this earth has

-been one of amelioration. It is a long way from the

-Iguanodon and his contemporaries to the president and

-members of the British Association. And whether we

-regard the improvement from the scientific or from the

-theological point of view as the result of progressive

-development, or as the result of successive exhibitions

-of creative energy, neither view entitles us to assume

-that man’s present faculties end the series—that the

-process of amelioration stops at him. A time may

-therefore come when this ultra-scientific region by which

-we are now enfolded may offer itself to terrestrial, if

-not to human investigation. Two-thirds of the rays

-emitted by the sun fail to arouse in the eye the sense of

-vision. The rays exist, but the visual organ requisite

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>for their translation into light does not exist. And so

-from this region of darkness and mystery which surrounds

-us, rays may now be darting which require but

-the development of the proper intellectual organs to

-translate them into knowledge as far surpassing ours as

-ours does that of the wallowing reptiles which once

-held possession of this planet. Meanwhile the mystery

-is not without its uses. It certainly may be made a

-power in the human soul; but it is a power which has

-feeling, not knowledge, for its base. It may be, and

-will be, and we hope is turned to account, both in steadying

-and strengthening the intellect, and in rescuing man

-from that littleness to which, in the struggle for existence

-or for precedence in the world, he is continually

-prone.</p>

-

-<div>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>

-  <h3 class='c001'>II.</h3>

-</div>

-<h4 class='c026'>On Haze and Dust.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>Solar light in passing through a dark room reveals its

-track by illuminating the dust floating in the air. “The

-sun,” says Daniel Culverwell, “discovers atomes, though

-they be invisible by candle-light, and makes them dance

-naked in his beams.”</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In my researches on the decomposition of vapors by

-light, I was compelled to remove these “atomes” and

-this dust. It was essential that the space containing

-the vapors should embrace no visible thing; that no

-substance capable of scattering the light in the slightest

-sensible degree should, at the outset of an experiment,

-be found in the “experimental tube” traversed by the

-luminous beam.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>For a long time I was troubled by the appearance

-there of floating dust, which, though invisible in diffuse

-daylight, was at once revealed by a powerfully condensed

-beam. Two tubes were placed in succession in the

-path of the dust: the one containing fragments of glass

-wetted with concentrated sulphuric acid; the other,

-fragments of marble wetted with a strong solution of

-caustic potash. To my astonishment it passed through

-both. The air of the Royal Institution, sent through

-these tubes at a rate sufficiently slow to dry it and to remove

-its carbonic acid, carried into the experimental

-tube a considerable amount of mechanically-suspended

-matter, which was illuminated when the beam passed

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>through the tube. The effect was substantially the

-same when the air was permitted to bubble through the

-liquid acid and through the solution of potash.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Thus, on the 5th of October, 1868, successive charges

-of air were admitted through the potash and sulphuric

-acid into the exhausted experimental tube. Prior to the

-admission of the air the tube was <i>optically empty</i>; it contained

-nothing competent to scatter the light. After

-the air had entered the tube, the conical track of the

-electric beam was in all cases clearly revealed. This,

-indeed, was a daily observation at the time to which I

-now refer.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>I tried to intercept this floating matter in various

-ways; and on the day just mentioned, prior to sending

-the air through the drying apparatus, I carefully permitted

-it to pass over the tip of a spirit-lamp flame.

-The floating matter no longer appeared, having been

-burnt up by the flame. It was, therefore, <i>organic matter</i>.

-When the air was sent too rapidly through the flame, a

-fine blue cloud was found in the experimental tube.

-This was the <i>smoke</i> of the organic particles. I was by

-no means prepared for this result; for I had thought,

-with the rest of the world, that the dust of our air was,

-in great part, inorganic and non-combustible.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Mr. Valentin had the kindness to procure for me a

-small gas-furnace, containing a platinum tube, which

-could be heated to vivid redness. The tube also contained

-a roll of platinum gauze, which, while it permitted

-the air to pass through it, insured the practical

-contact of the dust with the incandescent metal. The

-air of the laboratory was permitted to enter the experimental

-tube, sometimes through the cold, and sometimes

-through the heated tube of platinum. The rapidity

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>of admission was also varied. In the first column

-of the following table the quantity of air operated on is

-expressed by the number of inches which the mercury

-gauge of the air-pump sank when the air entered. In

-the second column the condition of the platinum tube is

-mentioned, and in the third the state of the air which

-entered the experimental tube.</p>

-

-<div class='std-table c030'>

-

-<table class='table1' summary=''>

-<colgroup>

-<col width='22%' />

-<col width='34%' />

-<col width='43%' />

-</colgroup>

-  <tr>

-    <th class='c031'><br />Quantity<br />of Air.</th>

-    <th class='c031'>State of<br />Platinum<br />Tube.</th>

-    <th class='c032'>State of<br />Experimental<br /> Tube.</th>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>

-    <td class='c031'>Cold</td>

-    <td class='c032'>Full of particles.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>

-    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>

-    <td class='c032'>Optically empty.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>

-    <td class='c031'>Cold</td>

-    <td class='c032'>Full of particles.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>

-    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>

-    <td class='c032'>Optically empty.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>

-    <td class='c031'>Cold</td>

-    <td class='c032'>Full of particles.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>

-    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>

-    <td class='c032'>Optically empty.</td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-

-</div>

-<p class='c033'>The phrase “optically empty” shows that when the

-conditions of perfect combustion were present, the floating

-matter totally disappeared. It was wholly burnt up,

-leaving not a trace of residue. From spectrum analysis,

-however, we know that soda floats in the air; these organic

-dust particles are, I believe, the <i>rafts</i> that support

-it, and when they are removed it sinks and vanishes.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>When the passage of the air was so rapid as to render

-imperfect the combustion of the floating matter, instead

-of optical emptiness a fine blue cloud made its appearance

-in the experimental tube. The following

-series of results illustrate this point:</p>

-<div class='std-table c030'>

-

-<table class='table2' summary=''>

-<colgroup>

-<col width='31%' />

-<col width='31%' />

-<col width='37%' />

-</colgroup>

-  <tr>

-    <th class='c031'><span class='small'>Quantity.</span></th>

-    <th class='c031'><span class='small'>Platinum Tube.</span></th>

-    <th class='c032'><span class='small'>Experimental Tube.</span></th>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c031'>15 inches, slow</td>

-    <td class='c031'>Cold</td>

-    <td class='c032'>Full of particles.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c031'>15 inches, slow</td>

-    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>

-    <td class='c032'>Optically empty.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c031'>15 inches, quick</td>

-    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>

-    <td class='c032'>A blue cloud.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class='c031'>15 inches, quick</td>

-    <td class='c031'>Intensely hot</td>

-    <td class='c032'>A fine blue cloud.</td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-

-</div>

-<p class='c033'>The optical character of these clouds was totally different

-from that of the dust which produced them. At

-right angles to the illuminating beam they discharged

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>perfectly polarized light The cloud could be utterly

-quenched by a transparent Nicol’s prism, and the tube

-containing it reduced to optical emptiness.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The particles floating in the air of London being thus

-proved to be organic, I sought to burn them up at the

-focus of a concave reflector. One of the powerfully

-convergent mirrors employed in my experiments on

-combustion by dark rays was here made use of, but I

-failed in the attempt. Doubtless the floating particles

-are in part transparent to radiant heat, and are so far

-incombustible by such heat. Their rapid motion through

-the focus also aids their escape. They do not linger

-there sufficiently long to be consumed. A flame it was

-evident would burn them up, but I thought the presence

-of the flame would mask its own action among the particles.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In a cylindrical beam, which powerfully illuminated

-the dust of the laboratory, was placed an ignited spirit-lamp.

-Mingling with the flame, and round its rim, were

-seen wreaths of darkness resembling an intensely black

-smoke. On lowering the flame below the beam the

-same dark masses stormed upwards. They were at times

-blacker than the blackest smoke that I have ever seen

-issuing from the funnel of a steamer, and their resemblance

-to smoke was so perfect as to lead the most practiced

-observer to conclude that the apparently pure

-flame of the alcohol lamp required but a beam of sufficient

-intensity to reveal its clouds of liberated carbon.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But is the blackness smoke? The question presented

-itself in a moment. A red-hot poker was placed underneath

-the beam, and from it the black wreaths also

-ascended. A large hydrogen flame was next employed,

-and it produced those whirling masses of darkness far

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>more copiously than either the spirit-flame or poker.

-Smoke was, therefore, out of the question.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>What, then, was the blackness? It was simply that

-of stellar space; that is to say, blackness resulting from

-the absence from the track of the beam of all matter

-competent to scatter its light. When the flame was

-placed below the beam the floating matter was destroyed

-<i>in situ</i>; and the air, freed from this matter, rose into the

-beam, jostled aside the illuminated particles and substituted

-for their light the darkness due to its own perfect

-transparency. Nothing could more forcibly illustrate

-the invisibility of the agent which renders all things visible.

-The beam crossed, unseen, the black chasm formed

-by the transparent air, while at both sides of the gap

-the thick-strewn particles shone out like a luminous solid

-under the powerful illumination.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But here a difficulty meets us. It is not necessary to

-burn the particles to produce a stream of darkness.

-Without actual combustion, currents may be generated

-which shall exclude the floating matter, and therefore

-appear dark amid the surrounding brightness. I noticed

-this effect first on placing a red-hot copper ball below

-the beam, and permitting it to remain there until its

-temperature had fallen below that of boiling water.

-The dark currents, though much enfeebled, were still

-produced. They may also be produced by a flask filled

-with hot water.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>To study this effect a platinum wire was stretched

-across the beam, the two ends of the wire being connected

-with the two poles of a voltaic battery. To regulate

-the strength of the current a rheostat was placed

-in the circuit. Beginning with a feeble current the

-temperature of the wire was gradually augmented, but

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>before it reached the heat of ignition, a flat stream of

-air rose from it, which when looked at edgeways appeared

-darker and sharper than one of the blackest

-lines of Fraunhofer in the solar spectrum. Right and

-left of this dark vertical band the floating matter rose

-upwards, bounding definitely the non-luminous stream

-of air. What is the explanation? Simply this. The

-hot wire rarefied the air in contact with it, but it did not

-equally lighten the floating matter. The convection

-current of pure air therefore passed upwards <i>among the

-particles</i>, dragging them after it right and left, but forming

-between them an impassable black partition. In

-this way we render an account of the dark currents produced

-by bodies at a temperature below that of combustion.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, so prepared

-as to exclude all floating particles, produce the

-darkness when poured or blown into the beam. Coal-gas

-does the same. An ordinary glass shade placed in

-the air with its mouth downwards permits the track of

-the beam to be seen crossing it. Let coal-gas or hydrogen

-enter the shade by a tube reaching to its top, the

-gas gradually fills the shade from the top downwards.

-As soon as it occupies the space crossed by the beam,

-the luminous track is instantly abolished. Lifting the

-shade so as to bring the common boundary of gas and

-air above the beam, the track flashes forth. After the

-shade is full, if it be inverted, the gas passes upwards

-like a black smoke among the illuminated particles.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The air of our London rooms is loaded with this organic

-dust, nor is the country air free from its pollution.

-However ordinary daylight may permit it to disguise

-itself, a sufficiently powerful beam causes the air in

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>which the dust is suspended to appear as a semi-solid

-rather than as a gas. Nobody could, in the first instance,

-without repugnance place the mouth at the

-illuminated focus of the electric beam and inhale the

-dirt revealed there. Nor is the disgust abolished by the

-reflection that, although we do not see the nastiness, we

-are churning it in our lungs every hour and minute of

-our lives. There is no respite to this contact with dirt;

-and the wonder is, not that we should from time to time

-suffer from its presence, but that so small a portion of

-it would appear to be deadly to man.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>And what is this portion? It was some time ago the

-current belief that epidemic diseases generally were propagated

-by a kind of malaria, which consisted of organic

-matter in a state of <i>motor-decay</i>; that when such

-matter was taken into the body through the lungs or

-skin, it had the power of spreading there the destroying

-process which had attacked itself. Such a spreading

-power was visibly exerted in the case of yeast. A little

-leaven was seen to leaven the whole lump, a mere speck

-of matter in this supposed state of decomposition being

-apparently competent to propagate indefinitely its own

-decay. Why should not a bit of rotten malaria work in

-a similar manner within the human frame? In 1836 a

-very wonderful reply was given to this question. In

-that year Cagniard de la Tour discovered the <i>yeast plant</i>,

-a living organism, which, when placed in a proper

-medium, feeds, grows, and reproduces itself, and in this

-way carries on the process which we name fermentation.

-Fermentation was thus proved to be a product of life

-instead of a process of decay.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Schwann, of Berlin, discovered the yeast plant independently,

-and in February, 1837, he also announced the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>important result, that when a decoction of meat is effectually

-screened from ordinary air, and supplied solely

-with air which has been raised to a high temperature,

-putrefaction never sets in. Putrefaction, therefore, he

-affirmed to be caused by something derived from the air,

-which something could be destroyed by a sufficiently

-high temperature. The experiments of Schwann were

-repeated and confirmed by Helmholtz and Ure. But

-as regards fermentation, the minds of chemists, influenced

-probably by the great authority of Gay-Lussac,

-who ascribed putrefaction to the action of oxygen, fell

-back upon the old notion of matter in a state of decay.

-It was not the living yeast plant, but the dead or dying

-parts of it, which, assailed by oxygen, produced the fermentation.

-This notion was finally exploded by Pasteur.

-He proved that the so-called “ferments” are not such;

-that the true ferments are organized beings which find

-in the reputed ferments their necessary food.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Side by side with these researches and discoveries, and

-fortified by them and others, has run the <i>germ theory</i> of

-epidemic disease. The notion was expressed by Kircher,

-and favored by Linnæus, that epidemic diseases are due

-to germs which float in the atmosphere, enter the body,

-and produce disturbance by the development within the

-body of parasitic life. While it was still struggling

-against great odds, this theory found an expounder and

-a defender in the President of this Institution. At a

-time when most of his medical brethren considered

-it a wild dream, Sir Henry Holland contended that

-some form of the germ theory was probably true. The

-strength of this theory consists in the perfect parallelism

-of the phenomena of contagious disease with those of

-life. As a planted acorn gives birth to an oak competent

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span>to produce a whole crop of acorns, each gifted with

-the power of reproducing its parent tree, and as thus

-from a single seedling a whole forest may spring, so

-these epidemic diseases literally plant their seeds, grow,

-and shake abroad new germs, which, meeting in the

-human body their proper food and temperature, finally

-take possession of whole populations. Thus Asiatic

-cholera, beginning in a small way in the Delta of the

-Ganges, contrived in seventeen years to spread itself

-over nearly the whole habitable world. The development

-from an infinitesimal speck of the virus of small-pox

-of a crop of pustules, each charged with the original

-poison, is another illustration. The reappearance

-of the scourge, as in the case of the <i>Dreadnought</i> at

-Greenwich, reported on so ably by Dr. Budd and Mr.

-Busk, receives a satisfactory explanation from the theory

-which ascribes it to the lingering of germs about the infected

-place.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Surgeons have long known the danger of permitting

-air to enter an open abscess. To prevent its entrance

-they employ a tube called a cannula, to which is attached

-a sharp steel point called a trocar. They puncture

-with the steel point, and by gentle pressure they

-force the pus through the cannula. It is necessary to

-be very careful in cleansing the instrument; and it is

-difficult to see how it can be cleansed by ordinary

-methods in air loaded with organic impurities, as we

-have proved our air to be. The instrument ought, in

-fact, to be made as hot as its temper will bear. But

-this is not done, and hence, notwithstanding all the surgeon’s

-care, inflammation often sets in after the first operation,

-rendering necessary a second and a third.

-Rapid putrefaction is found to accompany this new inflammation.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span>The pus, moreover, which was sweet at

-first, and showed no trace of animal life, is now fetid,

-and swarming with active little organisms called vibrios.

-Prof. Lister, from whose recent lecture this fact is derived,

-contends, with every show of reason, that this

-rapid putrefaction and this astounding development of

-animal life are due to the entry of germs into the abscess

-during the first operation, and their subsequent nurture

-and development under favorable conditions of food and

-temperature. The celebrated physiologist and physicist,

-Helmholtz, is attacked annually by hay-fever. From

-the 20th of May to the end of June he suffers from a

-catarrh of the upper air-passages; and he has found

-during this period, and at no other, that his nasal secretions

-are peopled by these vibrios. They appear to

-nestle by preference in the cavities and recesses of the

-nose, for a strong sneeze is necessary to dislodge them.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>These statements sound uncomfortable; but by disclosing

-our enemy they enable us to fight him. When

-he clearly eyes his quarry the eagle’s strength is doubled,

-and his swoop is rendered sure. If the germ theory be

-proved true, it will give a definiteness to our efforts to

-stamp out disease which they could not previously possess.

-And it is only by definite effort under its guidance

-that its truth or falsehood can be established. It

-is difficult for an outsider like myself to read without

-sympathetic emotion such papers as those of Dr. Budd,

-of Bristol, on cholera, scarlet-fever, and small-pox. He

-is a man of strong imagination, and may occasionally

-take a flight beyond his facts; but without this dynamic

-heat of heart, the stolid inertia of the free-born Briton

-cannot be overcome. And as long as the heat is employed

-to warm up the truth without singeing it overmuch;

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_244'>244</span>as long as this enthusiasm can overmatch its

-mistakes by unequivocal examples of success, so long

-am I disposed to give it a fair field to work in, and to

-wish it God speed.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But let us return to our dust. It is needless to remark

-that it cannot be blown away by an ordinary bellows;

-or, more correctly, the place of the particles

-blown away is in this case supplied by others ejected

-from the bellows, so that the track of the beam remains

-unimpaired. But if the nozzle of a good bellows be

-filled with cotton wool not too tightly packed, the air

-urged through the wool is filtered of its floating matter,

-and it then forms a clean band of darkness in the illuminated

-dust. This was the filter used by Schroëder in

-his experiments on spontaneous generation, and turned

-subsequently to account in the excellent researches of

-Pasteur. Since 1868 I have constantly employed it

-myself.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But by far the most interesting and important illustration

-of this filtering process is furnished by the human

-breath. I fill my lungs with ordinary air and

-breathe through a glass tube across the electric beam.

-The condensation of the aqueous vapor of the breath is

-shown by the formation of a luminous white cloud of

-delicate texture. It is necessary to abolish this cloud,

-and this may be done by drying the breath previous to

-its entering into the beam; or still more simply, by

-warming the glass tube. When this is done the luminous

-track of the beam is for a time uninterrupted. The

-breath impresses upon the floating matter a transverse motion,

-but the dust from the lungs makes good the particles

-displaced. But after some time an obscure disc appears

-upon the beam, the darkness of which increases, until

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span>finally, towards the end of the expiration, the beam is,

-as it were, pierced by an intensely black hole, in which

-no particles whatever can be discerned. The air, in

-fact, has so lodged its dirt within the lungs as to render

-the last portions of the expired breath absolutely free

-from suspended matter. This experiment may be repeated

-any number of times with the same result. It

-renders the distribution of the dirt within the lungs as

-manifest as if the chest were transparent.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>I now empty my lungs as perfectly as possible, and

-placing a handful of cotton wool against my mouth and

-nostrils, inhale through it. There is no difficulty in

-thus filling the lungs with air. On expiring this air

-through the glass tube, its freedom from floating matter

-is at once manifest. From the very beginning of the

-act of expiration the beam is pierced by a black aperture.

-The first puff from the lungs abolishes the illuminated

-dust and puts a patch of darkness in its place,

-and the darkness continues throughout the entire course

-of the expiration. When the tube is placed below the

-beam and moved to and fro, the same smoke-like appearance

-as that obtained with a flame is observed. In

-short, the cotton wool, when used in sufficient quantity,

-completely intercepts the floating matter on its way to

-the lungs.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>And here we have revealed to us the true philosophy

-of a practice followed by medical men, more from instinct

-than from actual knowledge. In a contagious atmosphere

-the physician places a handkerchief to his

-mouth and inhales through it. In doing so he unconsciously

-holds back the dirt and germs of the air. If the

-poison were a gas it would not be thus intercepted.

-On showing this experiment with the cotton wool to Dr.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span>Bence Jones, he immediately repeated it with a silk

-handkerchief. The result was substantially the same,

-though, as might be expected, the wool is by far the

-surest filter. The application of these experiments is

-obvious. If a physician wishes to hold back from the

-lungs of his patient, or from his own, the germs by

-which contagious disease is said to be propagated, he

-will employ a cotton wool respirator. After the revelations

-of this evening, such respirators must, I think,

-come into general use as a defence against contagion.

-In the crowded dwellings of the London poor, where

-the isolation of the sick is difficult, if not impossible,

-the noxious air around the patient may, by this simple

-means, be restored to practical purity. Thus filtered,

-attendants may breathe the air unharmed. In all probability

-the protection of the lungs will be protection

-of the entire system. For it is exceedingly

-probable that the germs which lodge in the air-passages,

-and which, at their leisure, can work their

-way across the mucous membrane, are those which sow

-in the body epidemic disease. If this be so, then

-disease can certainly be warded off by filters of cotton

-wool. I should be most willing to test their efficacy in

-my own person. And time will decide whether in lung

-diseases also the woolen respirator cannot abate irritation,

-if not arrest decay. By its means, so far as the

-germs are concerned, the air of the highest Alps may

-be brought into the chamber of the invalid.</p>

-

-<div>

-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span>

-  <h3 class='c001'>III.</h3>

-</div>

-<h4 class='c026'>Scientific Use of the Imagination.</h4>

-

-<p class='c025'>I carried with me to the Alps this year the heavy burden

-of this evening’s work. In the way of new investigation

-I had nothing complete enough to be brought

-before you; so all that remained to me was to fall back

-upon such residues as I could find in the depths of consciousness,

-and out of them to spin the fiber and weave

-the web of this discourse. Save from memory I had no

-direct aid upon the mountains; but to spur up the emotions,

-on which so much depends, as well as to nourish

-indirectly the intellect and will, I took with me two

-volumes of poetry, Goethe’s “Farbenlehre,” and the work

-on “Logic” recently published by Mr. Alexander Bain.

-The spur, I am sorry to say, was no match for the integument

-of dullness it had to pierce.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In Goethe, so glorious otherwise, I chiefly noticed the

-self-inflicted hurts of genius, as it broke itself in vain

-against the philosophy of Newton. For a time Mr.

-Bain became my principal companion. I found him

-learned and practical, shining generally with a dry light,

-but exhibiting at times a flush of emotional strength,

-which proved that even logicians share the common fire

-of humanity. He interested me most when he became

-the mirror of my own condition. Neither intellectually

-nor socially is it good for man to be alone, and the

-griefs of thought are more patiently borne when we find

-that they have been experienced by another. From certain

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>passages in his book I could infer that Mr. Bain

-was no stranger to such sorrows. Take this passage as

-an illustration. Speaking of the ebb of intellectual

-force which we all from time to time experience, Mr.

-Bain says: “The uncertainty where to look for the next

-opening of discovery brings the pain of conflict and the

-debility of indecision.” These words have in them the

-true ring of personal experience.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The action of the investigator is periodic. He grapples

-with a subject of inquiry, wrestles with it, overcomes

-it, exhausts, it may be, both himself and it for

-the time being. He breathes a space, and then renews

-the struggle in another field. Now this period of halting

-between two investigations is not always one of pure

-repose. It is often a period of doubt and discomfort,

-of gloom and ennui. “The uncertainty where to look

-for the next opening of discovery brings the pain of conflict

-and the debility of indecision.” Such was my precise

-condition in the Alps this year; in a score of words

-Mr. Bain has here sketched my mental diagnosis; and

-it was under these evil circumstances that I had to

-equip myself for the hour and the ordeal that are now

-come.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Gladly, however, as I should have seen this duty in

-other hands, I could by no means shrink from it. Disloyalty

-would have been worse than failure. In some

-fashion or other—feebly or strongly, meanly or manfully,

-on the higher levels of thought, or on the flats of commonplace—the

-task had to be accomplished. I looked

-in various directions for help and furtherance; but without

-me for a time I saw only “antres vast,” and within

-me “deserts idle.” My case resembled that of a sick

-doctor who had forgotten his art, and sorely needed the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>prescription of a friend. Mr. Bain wrote one for me.

-He said: “Your present knowledge must forge the links

-of connection between what has been already achieved

-and what is now required.”</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In these words he admonished me to review the past

-and recover from it the broken ends of former investigations.

-I tried to do so. Previous to going to Switzerland

-I had been thinking much of light and heat, of

-magnetism and electricity, of organic germs, atoms,

-molecules, spontaneous generation, comets and skies.

-With one or another of these I now sought to re-form

-an alliance, and finally succeeded in establishing a kind

-of cohesion between thought and light. The wish grew

-within me to trace, and to enable you to trace, some of

-the more occult operations of this agent. I wished, if

-possible, to take you behind the drop-scene of the senses,

-and to show you the hidden mechanism of optical

-action. For I take it to be well worth the while of the

-scientific teacher to take some pains, and even great

-pains, to make those whom he addresses co-partners of

-his thoughts. To clear his own mind in the first place

-from all haze and vagueness, and then to project into

-language which shall leave no mistake as to his meaning—which

-shall leave even his errors naked—the definite

-ideas he has shaped.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>A great deal is, I think, possible to scientific exposition

-conducted in this way. It is possible, I believe,

-even before an audience like the present, to uncover to

-some extent the unseen things of nature, and thus to

-give, not only to professed students, but to others with

-the necessary bias, industry and capacity, an intelligent

-interest in the operations of science. Time and labor

-are necessary to this result, but science is the gainer

-from the public sympathy thus created.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>How then are those hidden things to be revealed?

-How, for example, are we to lay hold of the physical

-basis of light, since, like that of life itself, it lies entirely

-without the domain of the senses? Now, philosophers

-may be right in affirming that we cannot transcend experience.

-But we can, at all events, carry it a long way

-from its origin. We can also magnify, diminish, qualify,

-and combine experiences, so as to render them fit for

-purposes entirely new. We are gifted with the power of

-imagination, combining what the Germans called <i>Anschauungsgabe</i>

-and <i>Einbildungskraft</i>, and by this power

-we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world

-of the senses.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>There are tories even in science who regard imagination

-as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than

-employed. They had observed its action in weak vessels

-and were unduly impressed by its disasters. But

-they might with equal justice point to exploded boilers

-as an argument against the use of steam. Bounded and

-conditioned by coöperant reason, imagination becomes

-the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer.

-Newton’s passage from a falling apple to a falling moon

-was a leap of the imagination. When William Thomson

-tries to place the ultimate particles of matter between

-his compass points, and to apply to them a scale

-of millimeters, it is an exercise of the imagination.

-And in much that has been recently said about protoplasm

-and life, we have the outgoings of the imagination

-guided and controlled by the known analogies of science.

-In fact, without this power our knowledge of nature

-would be a mere tabulation of coëxistences and sequences.

-We should still believe in the succession of day and

-night, of summer and winter; but the soul of force

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>would be dislodged from our universe; casual relations

-would disappear, and with them that science which is

-now binding the parts of nature to an organic whole.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>I should like to illustrate by a few simple instances

-the use that scientific men have already made of this

-power of imagination, and to indicate afterwards some

-of the further uses that they are likely to make of it.

-Let us begin with the rudimentary experiences. Observe

-the falling of heavy rain drops into a tranquil pond.

-Each drop as it strikes the water becomes a center of

-disturbance, from which a series of ring ripples expands

-outwards. Gravity and inertia are the agents by which

-this wave motion is produced, and a rough experiment

-will suffice to show that the rate of propagation does

-not amount to a foot a second.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>A series of slight mechanical shocks is experienced

-by a body plunged in the water as the wavelets reach it

-in succession. But a finer motion is at the same time

-set up and propagated. If the head and ears be immersed

-in the water, as in an experiment of Franklin’s,

-the shock of the drop is communicated to the auditory

-nerve—the <i>tick</i> of the drop is heard. Now this

-sonorous impulse is propagated, not at the rate of a

-foot a second, but at the rate of 4,700 feet a

-second. In this case it is not the gravity but the

-<i>elasticity</i> of the water that is the urging force. Every

-liquid particle pushed against its neighbor delivers up

-its motion with extreme rapidity, and the pulse is propagated

-as a thrill. The incompressibility of water, as

-illustrated by the famous Florentine experiment, is a

-measure of its elasticity, and to the possession of this

-property in so high a degree the rapid transmission of

-a sound-pulse through water is to be ascribed.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span>But water, as you know, is not necessary to the conduction

-of sound; air is its most common vehicle. And

-you know that when the air possesses the particular

-density and elasticity corresponding to the temperature

-of freezing water, the velocity of sound in it is 1,090 feet

-a second. It is almost exactly one-fourth of the velocity

-in water; the reason being that though the greater

-weight of the water tends to diminish the velocity, the

-enormous molecular elasticity of the liquid far more

-than atones for the disadvantage due to weight. By

-various contrivances we can compel the vibrations of

-the air to declare themselves; we know the length and

-frequency of sonorous waves, and we have also obtained

-great mastery over the various methods by which the

-air is thrown into vibration. We know the phenomena

-and laws of vibrating rods, of organ pipes, strings,

-membranes, plates, and bells. We can abolish one

-sound by another. We know the physical meaning of

-music and noise, of harmony and discord. In short, as

-regards sound we have a very clear notion of the external

-physical processes which correspond to our sensations.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In these phenomena of sound we travel a very little

-way from downright sensible experience. Still the imagination

-is to some extent exercised. The bodily eye,

-for example, cannot see the condensations and rarefactions

-of the waves of sound. We construct them in

-thought, and we believe as firmly in their existence as

-in that of the air itself. But now our experience has to

-be carried into a new region, where a new use is to be

-made of it.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Having mastered the cause and mechanism of

-sound, we desire to know the cause and mechanism

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>of light. We wish to extend our inquiries from the auditory

-nerve to the optic nerve. Now there is in the

-human intellect a power of expansion—I might almost

-call it a power of creation—which is brought into play

-by the simple brooding upon facts. The legend of the

-Spirit brooding over chaos may have originated in a

-knowledge of this power. In the case now before us it

-has manifested itself by transplanting into space, for

-the purposes of light, an adequately modified form of

-the mechanism of sound. We know intimately whereon

-the velocity of sound depends. When we lessen the

-density of a medium and preserve its elasticity constant,

-we augment the velocity. When we highten the

-elasticity and keep the density constant, we also augment

-the velocity. A small density, therefore, and

-a great elasticity are the two things necessary to rapid

-propagation.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Now light is known to move with the astounding

-velocity of 185,000 miles a second. How is such a

-velocity to be obtained? By boldly diffusing in space

-a medium of the requisite tenuity and elasticity. Let

-us make such a medium our starting point, endowing it

-with one or two other necessary qualities; let us handle

-it in accordance with strict mechanical laws; give to

-every step of your deduction the surety of the syllogism;

-carry it thus forth from the world of imagination to the

-world of sense, and see whether the final outcrop of the

-deduction be not the very phenomena of light which

-ordinary knowledge and skilled experiment reveal. If

-in all the multiplied varieties of these phenomena, including

-those of the most remote and entangled description,

-this fundamental conception always brings us face

-to face with the truth; if no contradiction to our deductions

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>from it be found in external nature; if, moreover,

-it has actually forced upon our attention phenomena

-which no eye had previously seen, and which no mind

-had previously imagined; if by it we are gifted with a

-power of prescience which has never failed when

-brought to an experimental test; such a conception,

-which never disappoints us, but always lands us on the

-solid shores of fact, must, we think, be something more

-than a mere figment of the scientific fancy. In forming

-it that composite and creative unity in which reason and

-imagination are together blent, has, we believe, led us

-into a world not less real than that of the senses, and

-of which the world of sense itself is the suggestion and

-justification.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Far be it from me, however, to wish to fix you immovably

-in this or in any other theoretic conception. With

-all our belief of it, it will be well to keep the theory

-plastic and capable of change. You may, moreover,

-urge that although the phenomena occur <i>as if</i> the medium

-existed, the absolute demonstration of its existence

-is still wanting. Far be it from me to deny to this

-reasoning such validity as it may fairly claim. Let us

-endeavor by means of analogy to form a fair estimate

-of its force.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>You believe that in society you are surrounded by

-reasonable beings like yourself. You are, perhaps, as

-firmly convinced of this as of anything. What is your

-warrant for this conviction? Simply and solely this, your

-fellow-creatures behave as if they were reasonable; the

-hypothesis, for it is nothing more, accounts for the facts.

-To take an eminent example, you believe that our president

-is a reasonable being. Why? There is no known

-method of superposition by which any one of us can

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>apply himself intellectually to another so as to demonstrate

-coincidence as regards the possession of reason.

-If, therefore, you hold our president to be reasonable,

-it is because he behaves <i>as if</i> he were reasonable. As

-in the case of the ether, beyond the “<i>as if</i>” you cannot

-go. Nay, I should not wonder if a close comparison of

-the data on which both inferences rest caused many respectable

-persons to conclude that the ether had the

-best of it.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>This universal medium, this light-ether as it is called,

-is a vehicle, not an origin of wave motion. It receives

-and transmits, but it does not create. Whence does it

-derive the motions it conveys? For the most part from

-luminous bodies. By this motion of a luminous body I

-do not mean its sensible motion, such as the flicker of a

-candle, or the shooting out of red prominences from the

-limb of the sun. I mean an intestine motion of the

-atoms or molecules of the luminous body. But here a

-certain reserve is necessary. Many chemists of the

-present day refuse to speak of atoms and molecules as

-real things. Their caution leads them to stop short of

-the clear, sharp, mechanically intelligible atomic theory

-enunciated by Dalton, or any form of that theory, and

-to make the doctrine of multiple proportions their intellectual

-bourne. I respect the caution, though I think it

-is here misplaced. The chemists who recoil from these

-notions of atoms and molecules accept without hesitation

-the undulatory theory of light. Like you and me

-they one and all believe in an ether and its light-producing

-waves. Let us consider what this belief involves.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Bring your imaginations once more into play and

-figure a series of sound waves passing through air.

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>Follow them up to their origin, and what do you there

-find? A definite, tangible, vibrating body. It may be

-the vocal chords of a human being, it may be an organ

-pipe, or it may be a stretched string. Follow in the

-same manner a train of ether waves to their source, remembering

-at the same time that your ether is matter,

-dense, elastic, and capable of motions subject to and

-determined by mechanical laws. What then do you expect

-to find as the source of a series of ether waves?

-Ask your imagination if it will accept a vibrating multiple

-proportion—a numerical ratio in a state of oscillation?

-I do not think it will. You cannot crown the

-edifice by this abstraction. The scientific imagination,

-which is here authoritative, demands as the origin and

-cause of a series of ether waves a particle of vibrating

-matter quite as definite, though it may be excessively

-minute, as that which gives origin to a musical sound.

-Such a particle we name an atom or a molecule. I

-think the imagination when focused so as to give definition

-without penumbral haze is sure to realize this image

-at last.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>To preserve thought continuous throughout this discourse,

-to prevent either lack of knowledge or failure of

-memory from producing any rent in our picture, I here

-propose to run rapidly over a bit of ground which is

-probably familiar to most of you, but which I am anxious

-to make familiar to you all.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The waves generated in the ether by the swinging

-atoms of luminous bodies are of different lengths and

-amplitudes. The amplitude is the width of swing of

-the individual particles of the wave. In water waves

-it is the hight of the crest above the trough, while the

-length of the wave is the distance between two consecutive

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>crests. The aggregate of waves emitted by the

-sun may be broadly divided into two classes, the one

-class competent, the other incompetent, to excite vision.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But the light-producing waves differ markedly among

-themselves in size, form, and force. The length of the

-largest of these waves is about twice that of the smallest,

-but the amplitude of the largest is probably a hundred

-times that of the smallest. Now the force or energy

-of the wave, which, expressed with reference to sensation,

-means the intensity of the light, is proportional to

-the square of the amplitude. Hence the amplitude

-being one hundred-fold, the energy of the largest light-giving

-waves would be ten thousand-fold that of the

-smallest. This is not improbable. I use these figures,

-not with a view to numerical accuracy, but to give you

-definite ideas of the differences that probably exist

-among the light-giving waves. And if we take the

-whole range of solar radiation into account—its non-visual

-as well as its visual waves—I think it probable

-that the force or energy of the largest wave is a million

-times that of the smallest.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Turned into their equivalents of sensation, the different

-light waves produce different colors. Red, for example,

-is produced by the largest waves, violet by the

-smallest, while green is produced by a wave of intermediate

-length and amplitude. On entering from air into

-more highly refracting substances, such as glass or water

-or the sulphide of carbon, all the waves are retarded,

-but the smallest ones most. This furnishes a means of

-separating the different classes of waves from each

-other—in other words, of analyzing the light. Sent

-through a refracting prism, the waves of the sun are

-turned aside in different degrees from their direct course,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>the red least, the violet most. They are virtually pulled

-asunder, and they paint upon a white screen placed to

-receive them “the solar spectrum.”</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Strictly speaking, the spectrum embraces an infinity

-of colors, but the limits of language and of our powers

-of distinction cause it to be divided into seven segments:

-Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. These

-are the seven primary or prismatic colors. Separately,

-or mixed in various proportions, the solar waves yield

-all the colors observed in nature and employed in art.

-Collectively they give us the impression of whiteness.

-Pure unsifted solar light is white; and if all the wave

-constituents of such light be reduced in the same proportion,

-the light, though diminished in intensity, will

-still be white. The whiteness of Alpine snow with the

-sun shining upon it is barely tolerable to the eye. The

-same snow under an overcast firmament is still white.

-Such a firmament enfeebles the light by reflection, and

-when we lift ourselves above a cloud-field—to an Alpine

-summit, for instance, or to the top of Snowdon—and

-see, in the proper direction, the sun shining on the

-clouds, they appear dazzlingly white. Ordinary clouds,

-in fact, divide the solar light impinging on them into

-two parts—a reflected part and a transmitted part, in

-each of which the proportions of wave motion which

-produce the impression of whiteness are sensibly preserved.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>It will be understood that the conditions of whiteness

-would fail if all the waves were diminished <i>equally</i>, or

-by the same absolute quantity. They must be reduced

-<i>proportionately</i> instead of equally. If by the act of reflection

-the waves of red light are split into exact halves,

-then, to preserve the light white, the waves of yellow,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span>orange, green, and blue must also be split into exact

-halves. In short, the reduction must take place, not by

-absolutely equal quantities, but by equal fractional parts.

-In white light the preponderance as regards energy of

-the larger over the smaller waves must always be

-immense. Were the case otherwise, the physiological

-correlative, <i>blue</i>, of the smaller waves would have the

-upper hand in our sensations.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>My wish to render our mental images complete, causes

-me to dwell briefly upon these known points, and the

-same wish will cause me to linger a little longer among

-others. But here I am disturbed by my reflections. When

-I consider the effect of dinner upon the nervous system,

-and the relation of that system to the intellectual powers I

-am now invoking; when I remember that the universal

-experience of mankind has fixed upon certain definite

-elements of perfection in an after-dinner speech, and

-when I think how conspicuous by their absence these

-elements are on the present occasion, the thought is not

-comforting to a man who wishes to stand well with his

-fellow-creatures in general, and with the members of the

-British Association in particular. My condition might

-well resemble that of the ether, which is scientifically

-defined as an assemblage of vibrations. And the worst

-of it is that, unless you reverse the general verdict regarding

-the effect of dinner, and prove in your own persons

-that a uniform experience need not continue uniform—which

-will be a great point gained for some

-people—these tremors of mine are likely to become

-more and more painful. But I call to mind the comforting

-words of an inspired, though uncanonical writer,

-who admonishes us in the Apocrypha that fear is a bad

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_260'>260</span>counsellor. Let me then cast him out, and let me trustfully

-assume that you will one and all postpone that

-balmy sleep, of which dinner might, under the circumstances,

-be regarded as the indissoluble antecedent, and

-that you will manfully and womanfully prolong your investigations

-of the ether and its waves into regions

-which have been hitherto crossed by the pioneers of

-science alone.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Not only are the waves of ether reflected by clouds,

-by solids, and by liquids, but when they pass from light

-air to dense, or from dense air to light, a portion of the

-wave motion is always reflected. Now our atmosphere

-changes continually in density from top to bottom. It

-will help our conceptions if we regard it as made up of

-a series of thin concentric layers or shells of air, each

-shell being of the same density throughout, and a small

-and sudden change of density occurring in passing from

-shell to shell. Light would be reflected at the limiting

-surfaces of all these shells, and their action would be

-practically the same as that of the real atmosphere.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>And now I would ask your imagination to picture this

-act of reflection. What must become of the reflected

-light? The atmospheric layers turn their convex surfaces

-towards the sun; they are so many convex mirrors

-of feeble power, and you will immediately perceive

-that the light regularly reflected from these surfaces

-cannot reach the earth at all, but is dispersed in space.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But though the sun’s light is not reflected in this

-fashion from the ærial layers to the earth, there is indubitable

-evidence to show that the light of our firmament

-is reflected light. Proofs of the most cogent description

-could be here adduced; but we need only consider

-that we receive light at the same time from all parts of

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>the hemisphere of heaven. The light of the firmament

-comes to us across the direction of the solar rays, and

-even against the direction of the solar rays; and this

-lateral and opposing rush of wave motion can only be

-due to the rebound of the waves from the air itself, or

-from something suspended in the air. It is also evident

-that, unlike the action of clouds, the solar light is not

-reflected by the sky in the proportions which produce

-white. The sky is blue, which indicates a deficiency

-on the part of the larger waves. In accounting for the

-color of the sky, the first question suggested by analogy

-would undoubtedly be, is not the air blue? The blueness

-of the air has, in fact, been given as a solution of

-the blueness of the sky. But reason basing itself on

-observation asks in reply, How, if the air be blue, can

-the light of sunrise and sunset, which travels through

-vast distances of air, be yellow, orange, or even red?

-The passage of the white solar light through a blue medium

-could by no possibility redden the light. The

-hypothesis of a blue air is therefore untenable. In fact,

-the agent, whatever it is, which sends us the light of the

-sky, exercises in so doing a dichroitic action. The light

-reflected is blue, the light transmitted is orange or red.

-A marked distinction is thus exhibited between the matter

-of the sky and that of an ordinary cloud, which latter

-exercises no such dichroitic action.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>By the force of imagination and reason combined we

-may penetrate this mystery also. The cloud takes no

-note of size on the part of the waves of ether, but reflects

-them all alike. It exercises no selective action. Now

-the cause of this may be that the cloud particles are so

-large in comparison with the size of the waves of ether

-as to reflect them all indifferently. A broad cliff reflects

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>an Atlantic roller as easily as a ripple produced

-by a sea bird’s wing; and in the presence of large reflecting

-surfaces the existing differences of magnitude

-among the waves of ether may disappear. But supposing

-the reflecting particles, instead of being very large,

-to be very small, in comparison with the size of the

-waves. In this case, instead of the whole wave being

-fronted and in great part thrown back, a small portion

-only is shivered off. The great mass of the wave passes

-over such a particle without reflection. Scatter then, a

-handful of such minute foreign particles in our atmosphere,

-and set imagination to watch their action upon

-the solar waves. Waves of all sizes impinge upon the

-particles, and you see at every collision a portion of the

-impinging wave struck off by reflection. All the waves

-of the spectrum, from the extreme red to the extreme

-violet, are thus acted upon. But in what proportions

-will the waves be scattered? A clear picture will enable

-us to anticipate the experimental answer. Remembering

-that the red waves are to the blue much in the relation

-of billows to ripples, let us consider whether those

-extremely small particles are competent to scatter all

-the waves in the same proportion. If they be not—and

-a little reflection will make it clear to you that they are

-not—the production of color must be an incident of the

-scattering. Largeness is a thing of relation; and the

-smaller the wave the greater is the relative size of any

-particle on which the wave impinges, and the greater

-also the ratio of the reflected portion to the total wave.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>A pebble placed in the way of the ring-ripples produced

-by our heavy rain-drops on a tranquil pond will

-throw back a large fraction of the ripple incident upon

-it, while the fractional part of a larger wave thrown back

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>by the same pebble might be infinitesimal. Now we

-have already made it clear to our minds that to preserve

-the solar light white, its constituent proportions must

-not be altered; but in the act of division performed by

-these very small particles we see that the proportions

-<i>are</i> altered; an undue fraction of the smaller waves is

-scattered by the particles, and, as a consequence, in the

-scattered light blue will be the predominant color. The

-other colors of the spectrum must, to some extent, be

-associated with the blue. They are not absent, but deficient.

-We ought, in fact, to have them all, but in diminishing

-proportions, from the violet to the red.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>We have here presented a case to the imagination,

-and assuming the undulatory theory to be a reality, we

-have, I think, fairly reasoned our way to the conclusion

-that, were particles, small in comparison to the size of

-the ether waves, sown in our atmosphere, the light scattered

-by those particles would be exactly such as we observe

-in our azure skies. When this light is analyzed

-all the colors of the spectrum are found; but they are

-found in the proportions indicated by our conclusion.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Let us now turn our attention to the light which passes

-unscattered among the particles. How must it be finally

-affected? By its successive collisions with the particles,

-the white light is more and more robbed of its shorter

-waves; it therefore loses more and more of its due proportion

-of blue. The result may be anticipated. The

-transmitted light, where short distances are involved,

-will appear yellowish. But as the sun sinks towards the

-horizon, the atmospheric distances increase, and consequently

-the number of the scattering particles. They

-abstract, in succession, the violet, the indigo, the blue,

-and even disturb the proportions of green. The transmitted

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>light under such circumstances must pass from

-yellow through orange to red. This also is exactly

-what we find in nature. Thus, while the reflected light

-gives us at noon the deep azure of the Alpine skies, the

-transmitted light gives us at sunset the warm crimson of

-the Alpine snows. The phenomena certainly occur <i>as

-if</i> our atmosphere were a medium rendered slightly turbid

-by the mechanical suspension of exceedingly small

-foreign particles.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Here, as before, we encounter our skeptical “as if.”

-It is one of the parasites of science, ever at hand, and

-ready to plant itself and sprout, if it can, on the weak

-points of our philosophy. But a strong constitution

-defies the parasite, and in our case, as we question the

-phenomena, probability grows like growing health, until

-in the end the malady of doubt is completely extirpated.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The first question that naturally arises is, Can small

-particles be really proved to act in the manner indicated?

-No doubt of it. Each one of you can submit the question

-to an experimental test. Water will not dissolve

-resin, but spirit will, and when spirit which holds

-resin in solution is dropped into water the resin immediately

-separates in solid particles, which render the

-water milky. The coarseness of this precipitate depends

-on the quantity of the dissolved resin. You can

-cause it to separate in thick clots or in exceedingly fine

-particles. Professor Brücke has given us the proportions

-which produce particles particularly suited to our

-present purpose. One gramme of clean mastic is dissolved

-in eighty-seven grammes of absolute alcohol, and

-the transparent solution is allowed to drop into a beaker

-containing clear water kept briskly stirred. An exceedingly

-fine precipitate is thus formed, which declares its

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span>presence by its action upon light. Placing a dark surface

-behind the beaker, and permitting the light to fall into it

-from the top or front, the medium is seen to be distinctly

-blue. It is not, perhaps, so perfect a blue as I have seen on

-exceptional days, this year, among the Alps, but it is a

-very fair sky blue. A trace of soap in water gives a tint

-of blue. London, and I fear Liverpool milk, makes an

-approximation to the same color through the operation

-of the same cause; and Helmholtz has irreverently disclosed

-the fact that a blue eye is simply a turbid medium.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Numerous instances of the kind might be cited. The

-action of turbid media upon light was fully and beautifully

-illustrated by Goethe, who, though unacquainted

-with the undulatory theory, was led by his experiments

-to regard the blue of the firmament as caused by an

-illuminated turbid medium with the darkness of space

-behind it. He describes glasses showing a bright yellow

-by transmitted, and a beautiful blue by reflected light.

-Professor Stokes, who was probably the first to discern

-the real nature of the action of small particles on the

-waves of ether, describes a glass of a similar kind.

-What artists call “chill” is no doubt an effect of this

-description. Through the action of minute particles,

-the browns of a picture often present the appearance of

-the bloom of a plum. By rubbing the varnish with a

-silk handkerchief optical continuity is established and

-the chill disappears.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Some years ago I witnessed Mr. Hirst experimenting

-at Zermatt on the turbid water of the Visp, which was

-charged with the finely divided matter ground down by

-the glaciers. When kept still for a day or so the grosser

-matter sank, but the finer matter remained suspended,

-and gave a distinctly blue tinge to the water. No doubt

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>the blueness of certain Alpine lakes is in part due to

-this cause. Professor Roscoe has noticed several striking

-cases of a similar kind. In a very remarkable paper

-the late Principal Forbes showed that steam issuing

-from the safety valve of a locomotive, when favorably observed,

-exhibits at a certain stage of its condensation

-the colors of the sky. It is blue by reflected light, and

-orange or red by transmitted light. The effect, as

-pointed out by Goethe, is to some extent exhibited by

-peat smoke.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>More than ten years ago I amused myself at Killarney,

-by observing on a calm day, the straight smoke columns

-rising from the chimneys of the cabins. It was

-easy to project the lower portion of a column against

-a bright cloud. The smoke in the former case

-was blue, being seen mainly by reflected light; in

-the latter case it was reddish, being seen mainly

-by transmitted light. Such smoke was not in exactly

-the condition to give us the glow of the Alps,

-but it was a step in this direction. Brücke’s fine precipitate

-above referred to looks yellowish by transmitted

-light, but by duly strengthening the precipitate you may

-render the white light of noon as ruby colored as the

-sun when seen through Liverpool smoke or upon Alpine

-horizons.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>I do not, however, point to the gross smoke arising

-from coal as an illustration of the action of small particles,

-because such smoke soon absorbs and destroys the

-waves of blue instead of sending them to the eyes of the

-observer.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>These multifarious facts, and numberless others which

-cannot now be referred to, are explained by reference to

-the single principle that where the scattering particles

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>are small in comparison to the size of the waves, we

-have in the reflected light a greater proportion of the

-smaller waves, and in the transmitted light a greater proportion

-of the larger waves, than existed in the original

-white light. The physiological consequence is that in the

-one light blue is predominant, and in the other light orange

-or red. And now let us push our inquiries forward. Our

-best microscopes can readily reveal objects not more

-than 1/50000 of an inch in diameter. This is less than

-the length of a wave of red light. Indeed, a first-rate

-microscope would enable us to discern objects not exceeding

-in diameter the length of the smallest waves of

-the visible spectrum. By the microscope, therefore, we

-can submit our particles to an experimental test. If

-they are as large as the light-waves they will infallibly

-be seen; and if they are not seen it is because they are

-smaller.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>I placed in the hands of our president a bottle containing

-Brücke’s particles in greater number and coarseness

-than those examined by Brücke himself. The

-liquid was a milky blue, and Mr. Huxley applied to it

-his highest microscopic power. He satisfied me at the

-time that had particles of even 1/100000 of an inch in

-diameter existed in the liquid they could not have

-escaped detection. But no particles were seen. Under

-the microscope the turbid liquid was not to be distinguished

-from distilled water. Brücke, I may say, also

-found the particles to be of ultra microscopic magnitude.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But we have it in our power to imitate far more closely

-than we have hitherto done the natural conditions of

-this problem. We can generate in air, as many of you

-know, artificial skies, and prove their perfect identity with

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_268'>268</span>the natural one as regards the exhibition of a number

-of wholly unexpected phenomena. By a continuous

-process of growth, moreover, we are able to connect

-sky matter, if I may use the term, with molecular matter

-on the one side, and with molar matter, or matter in

-sensible masses, on the other.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In illustration of this, I will take an experiment described

-by M. Morren, of Marseilles, at the last meeting

-of the British Association. Sulphur and oxygen

-combine to form sulphurous acid gas. It is this choking

-gas that is smelt when a sulphur match is burnt in

-air. Two atoms of oxygen and one of sulphur constitute

-the molecule of sulphurous acid. Now it has been

-recently shown in a great number of instances that

-waves of ether issuing from a strong source, such as the

-sun or the electric light, are competent to shake asunder

-the atoms of gaseous molecules. A chemist would call

-this “decomposition” by light; but it behooves us, who

-are examining the power and function of the imagination,

-to keep constantly before us the physical images which

-we hold to underlie our terms. Therefore I say, sharply

-and definitely, that the components of the molecules

-of sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by the ether

-waves. Enclosing the substance in a suitable vessel,

-placing it in a dark room, and sending through it a

-powerful beam of light, we at first see nothing; the vessel

-containing the gas is as empty as a vacuum. Soon,

-however, along the track of the beam a beautiful sky-blue

-color is observed, which is due to the liberated

-particles of sulphur. For a time the blue grows more

-intense; it then becomes whitish; and from a whitish blue

-it passes to a more or less perfect white. If the action

-be continued long enough, we end by filling the tube

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>with a dense cloud of sulphur particles, which by the

-application of proper means may be rendered visible.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Here, then, our ether waves untie the bond of chemical

-affinity, and liberate a body—sulphur—which at ordinary

-temperatures is a solid, and which therefore soon

-becomes an object of the senses. We have first of all

-the free atoms of sulphur, which are both invisible and

-incompetent to stir the retina sensibly with scattered

-light. But these atoms gradually coalesce and form

-particles, which grow larger by continual accretion until

-after a minute or two they appear as sky matter. In

-this condition they are invisible themselves, but competent

-to send an amount of wave motion to the retina

-sufficient to produce the firmamental blue. The particles

-continue, or may be caused to continue, in this condition

-for a considerable time, during which no microscope

-can cope with them. But they continually grow

-larger, and pass by insensible gradations into the state of

-<i>cloud</i>, when they can no longer elude the armed eye.

-Thus, without solution of continuity, we start with matter

-in the molecule, and end with matter in the mass,

-sky matter being the middle term of the series of transformations.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Instead of sulphurous acid we might choose from a

-dozen other substances, and produce the same effect

-with any of them. In the case of some—probably in

-the case of all—it is possible to preserve matter in the

-skyey condition for fifteen or twenty minutes under the

-continual operation of the light. During these fifteen or

-twenty minutes the particles are constantly growing

-larger, without ever exceeding the size requisite to the

-production of the celestial blue. Now when two vessels

-are placed before you, each containing sky matter,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>it is possible to state with great distinctness which vessel

-contains the largest particles.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The eye is very sensitive to differences of light, when,

-as here, the eye is in comparative darkness, and when

-the quantities of wave motion thrown against the retina

-are small. The larger particles declare themselves by

-the greater whiteness of their scattered light. Call now

-to mind the observation, or effort at observation, made by

-our president when he failed to distinguish the particles

-of resin in Brücke’s medium, and when you have done

-so follow me. I permitted a beam of light to act upon

-a certain vapor. In two minutes the azure appeared,

-but at the end of fifteen minutes it had not ceased to

-be azure. After fifteen minutes, for example, its color

-and some other phenomena pronounced it to be a blue

-of distinctly smaller particles than those sought for in

-vain by Mr. Huxley. These particles, as already stated,

-must have been less than 1/100000 of an inch in diameter.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>And now I want you to submit to your imagination

-the following question: Here are particles which have

-been growing continually for fifteen minutes, and at the

-end of that time are demonstrably smaller than those

-which defied the microscope of Mr. Huxley. What

-must have been the size of these particles at the beginning

-of their growth? What notion can you form of

-the magnitude of such particles? As the distances of

-stellar space give us simply a bewildering sense of vastness

-without leaving any distinct impression on the mind,

-so the magnitudes with which we have here to do impress

-us with a bewildering sense of smallness. We

-are dealing with infinitesimals compared with which the

-test objects of the microscope are literally immense.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>From their perviousness to stellar light, and other

-considerations, Sir John Herschel drew some startling

-conclusions regarding the density and weight of comets.

-You know that these extraordinary and mysterious bodies

-sometimes throw out tails 100,000,000 of miles in

-length, and 50,000 miles in diameter. The diameter of

-our earth is 8,000 miles. Both it and the sky, and a

-good portion of space beyond the sky, would certainly

-be included in a sphere 10,000 miles across. Let us fill

-this sphere with cometary matter, and make it our unit

-of measure. An easy calculation informs us that to

-produce a comet’s tail of the size just mentioned, about

-300,000 such measures would have to be emptied into

-space. Now suppose the whole of this stuff to be swept

-together, and suitably compressed, what do you suppose

-its volume would be? Sir John Herschel would probably

-tell you that the whole mass might be carted away

-at a single effort by one of your dray-horses. In fact, I

-do not know that he would require more than a small

-fraction of a horse-power to remove the cometary dust.

-After this you will hardly regard as monstrous a notion

-I have sometimes entertained concerning the quantity

-of matter in our sky. Suppose a shell, then, to surround

-the earth at a hight above the surface which

-would place it beyond the grosser matter that hangs in

-the lower regions of the air—say at the hight of the

-Matterhorn or Mont Blanc. Outside this shell we have

-the deep blue firmament. Let the atmospheric space

-beyond the shell be swept clean, and let the sky matter

-be properly gathered up. What is its probable amount?

-I have sometimes thought that a lady’s portmanteau

-would contain it all. I have thought that even a gentleman’s

-portmanteau—possibly his snuff-box—might take it

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_272'>272</span>in. And whether the actual sky be capable of this amount

-of condensation or not, I entertain no doubt that a sky

-quite as vast as ours, and as good in appearance, could

-be formed from a quantity of matter which might be

-held in the hollow of the hand.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Small in mass, the vastness in point of number of the

-particles of our sky may be inferred from the continuity

-of its light. It is not in broken patches nor at scattered

-points that the heavenly azure is revealed. To the observer

-on the summit of Mont Blanc the blue is as uniform

-and coherent as if it formed the surface of the most

-close-grained solid. A marble dome would not exhibit

-a stricter continuity. And Mr. Glaisher will inform you

-that if our hypothetical shell were lifted to twice the

-hight of Mont Blanc above the earth’s surface, we

-should still have the azure overhead. Everywhere

-through the atmosphere those sky particles are strewn.

-They fill the Alpine valleys, spreading like a delicate

-gauze in front of the slopes of pine. They sometimes

-so swathe the peaks with light as to abolish their definition.

-This year I have seen the Weisshorn thus dissolved

-in opalescent air.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>By proper instruments the glare thrown from the sky

-particles against the retina may be quenched, and then

-the mountain which it obliterated starts into sudden

-definition. Its extinction in front of a dark mountain

-resembles exactly the withdrawal of a veil. It is the

-light then taking possession of the eye, and not the

-particles acting as opaque bodies, that interfere with the

-definition.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>By day this light quenches the stars; even by moonlight

-it is able to exclude from vision all stars between

-the fifth and the eleventh magnitude. It may be likened

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span>to a noise, and the stellar radiance to a whisper drowned

-by the noise. What is the nature of the particles which

-shed this light? On points of controversy I will not

-here enter, but I may say that De la Rive ascribes the

-haze of the Alps in fine weather to floating organic

-germs. Now the possible existence of germs in such

-profusion has been held up as an absurdity. It has

-been affirmed that they would darken the air, and on

-the assumed impossibility of their existence in the

-requisite numbers, without invasion of the solar light, a

-powerful argument has been based by believers in spontaneous

-generation.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Similar arguments have been used by the opponents

-of the germ theory of epidemic disease, and both parties

-have triumphantly challenged an appeal to the

-microscope and the chemist’s balance to decide the question.

-Without committing myself in the least to De la

-Rive’s notion, without offering any objection here to

-the doctrine of spontaneous generation, without expressing

-any adherence to the germ theory of disease, I

-would simply draw attention to the fact that in the atmosphere

-we have particles which defy both the microscope

-and the balance, which do not darken the air, and

-which exist, nevertheless, in multitudes sufficient to reduce

-to insignificance the Israelitish hyperbole regarding

-the sands upon the seashore.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The varying judgments of men on these and other

-questions may perhaps be, to some extent, accounted for

-by that doctrine of relativity which plays so important

-a part in philosophy. This doctrine affirms that the impressions

-made upon us by any circumstance, or combination

-of circumstances, depends upon our previous

-state. Two travelers upon the same peak, the one having

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span>ascended to it from the plain, the other having descended

-to it from a higher elevation, will be differently

-affected by the scene around them. To the one nature

-is expanding, to the other it is contracting, and feelings

-are sure to differ which have two such different antecedent

-states.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In our scientific judgments the law of relativity may

-also play an important part. To two men, one educated

-in the school of the senses, who has mainly occupied

-himself with observation, and the other educated in the

-school of imagination as well, and exercised in the conception

-of atoms and molecules to which we have so

-frequently referred, a bit of matter, say 1/50000 of an inch

-in diameter, will present itself differently. The one descends

-to it from his molar hights, the other climbs to

-it from his molecular lowlands. To the one it appears

-small, to the other large. So also as regards the appreciation

-of the most minute forms of life revealed by the

-microscope. To one of these men they naturally appear

-conterminous with the ultimate particles of matter,

-and he readily figures the molecules from which they directly

-spring; with him there is but a step from the

-atom to the organism. The other discerns numberless

-organic gradations between both. Compared with his

-atoms, the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the microscopic

-field are as behemoth and leviathan.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>The law of relativity may to some extent explain the

-different attitudes of these two men with regard to the

-question of spontaneous generation. An amount of

-evidence which satisfies the one entirely fails to satisfy

-the other; and while to the one the last bold defense

-and startling expansion of the doctrine will appear perfectly

-conclusive, to the other it will present itself as imposing

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>a profitless labor of demolition on subsequent investigators.

-The proper and possible attitude of these

-two men is that each of them should work as if it were

-his aim and object to establish the view entertained by

-the other.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>I trust, Mr. President, that you—whom untoward circumstances

-have made a biologist, but who still keep

-alive your sympathy with that class of inquiries which

-nature intended you to pursue and adorn—will excuse

-me to your brethren if I say that some of them seem to

-form an inadequate estimate of the distance which separates

-the microscopic from the molecular limit, and

-that, as a consequence, they sometimes employ a phraseology

-which is calculated to mislead.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>When, for example, the contents of a cell are described

-as perfectly homogeneous, as absolutely structureless,

-because the microscope fails to distinguish any

-structure, then I think the microscope begins to play a

-mischievous part. A little consideration will make it

-plain to all of you that the microscope can have no voice

-in the real question of germ structure. Distilled

-water is more perfectly homogeneous than the contents

-of any possible organic germ. What causes the liquid

-to cease contracting at 39° F., and to grow bigger until

-it freezes? It is a structural process of which the

-microscope can take no note, nor is it likely to do so

-by any conceivable extension of its powers. Place this

-distilled water in the field of an electro-magnet, and

-bring a microscope to bear upon it. Will any change

-be observed when the magnet is excited? Absolutely

-none; and still profound and complex changes have

-occurred.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>First of all, the particles of water are rendered diamagnetically

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_276'>276</span>polar; and secondly, in virtue of the structure

-impressed upon it by the magnetic strain of its

-molecules, the liquid twists a ray of light in a fashion

-perfectly determinate both as to quantity and direction.

-It would be immensely interesting to both you and me

-if one here present, who has brought his brilliant imagination

-to bear upon this subject, could make us see as

-he sees the entangled molecular processes involved in

-the rotation of the plane of polarization by magnetic

-force. While dealing with this question he lived in a

-world of matter and of motion to which the microscope

-has no passport, and in which it can offer no aid. The

-cases in which similar conditions hold are simply numberless.

-Have the diamond, the amethyst, and the

-countless other crystals formed in the laboratories of

-nature and of man, no structure? Assuredly they have,

-but what can the microscope make of it? Nothing. It

-cannot be too distinctly borne in mind that between the

-microscopic limit and the true molecular limit there is

-room for infinite permutations and combinations. It is

-in this region that the poles of the atoms are arranged,

-that tendency is given to their powers, so that when

-these poles and powers have free action and proper

-stimulus in a suitable environment, they determine first

-the germ and afterwards the complete organism. This

-first marshaling of the atoms on which all subsequent

-action depends baffles a keener power than that of the

-microscope. Through pure excess of complexity, and

-long before observation can have any voice in the matter,

-the most highly trained intellect, the most refined

-and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment

-from the contemplation of the problem. We are struck

-dumb by an astonishment which no microscope can relieve,

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span>doubting not only the power of our instrument,

-but even whether we ourselves possess the intellectual

-elements which will ever enable us to grapple with the

-ultimate structural energies of nature.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>But the speculative faculty, of which imagination

-forms so large a part, will nevertheless wander into

-regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be

-entirely shut out. We think that though the detailed

-analysis may be, and may ever remain, beyond us, general

-notions may be attainable. At all events, it is plain

-that beyond the present outposts of microscopic inquiry

-lies an immense field for the exercise of the imagination.

-It is only, however, the privileged spirits who know how

-to use their liberty without abusing it, who are able to

-surround imagination by the firm frontiers of reason,

-that are likely to work with any profit here. But freedom

-to them is of such paramount importance that, for

-the sake of securing it, a good deal of wildness on the

-part of weaker brethren may be overlooked. In more

-senses than one Mr. Darwin has drawn heavily upon

-the scientific tolerance of his age. He has drawn heavily

-upon <i>time</i> in his development of species, and he has

-drawn adventurously upon <i>matter</i> in his theory of pan-genesis.

-According to this theory, a germ already microscopic

-is a world of minor germs. Not only is the

-organism as a whole wrapped up in the germ, but every

-organ of the organism has there its special seed.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>This, I say, is an adventurous draft on the power of

-matter to divide itself and distribute its forces. But,

-unless we are perfectly sure that he is overstepping the

-bounds of reason, that he is unwittingly sinning against

-observed fact or demonstrated law—for a mind like that

-of Darwin can never sin wittingly against either fact or

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>law—we ought, I think, to be cautious in limiting his

-intellectual horizon. If there be the least doubt in the

-matter, it ought to be given in favor of the freedom of

-such a mind. To it a vast possibility is in itself a

-dynamic power, though the possibility may never be

-drawn upon.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>It gives me pleasure to think that the facts and

-reasonings of this discourse tend rather towards the

-justification of Mr. Darwin than towards his condemnation,

-that they tend rather to augment than to diminish

-the cubic space demanded by this soaring speculator;

-for they seem to show the perfect competence of matter

-and force, as regards divisibility and distribution, to bear

-the heaviest strain that he has hitherto imposed upon

-them.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>In the case of Mr. Darwin, observation, imagination,

-and reason combined have run back with wonderful

-sagacity and success over a certain length of the line of

-biological succession. Guided by analogy, in his “Origin

-of Species” he placed as the root of life a primordial

-germ, from which he conceived the amazing richness

-and variety of the life that now is upon the earth’s

-surface, might be deduced. If this were true it would

-not be final. The human imagination would infallibly

-look behind the germ, and inquire into the history of its

-genesis.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>Certainty is here hopeless, but the materials for an

-opinion may be attainable. In this dim twilight of

-speculation the inquirer welcomes every gleam, and seeks

-to augment his light by indirect incidences. He studies

-the methods of nature in the ages and the worlds within

-his reach, in order to shape the course of imagination

-in the antecedent ages and worlds. And though the

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span>certainty possessed by experimental inquiry is here shut

-out, the imagination is not left entirely without guidance.

-From the examination of the solar system, Kant and

-Laplace came to the conclusion that its various bodies

-once formed parts of the same undislocated mass; that

-matter in a nebulous form preceded matter in a dense

-form; that as the ages rolled away heat was wasted,

-condensation followed, planets were detached, and that

-finally the chief portion of the fiery cloud reached, by

-self-compression, the magnitude and density of our sun.

-The earth itself offers evidence of a fiery origin; and

-in our day the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace receives

-the independent countenance of spectrum analysis,

-which proves the same substances to be common to the

-earth and sun. Accepting some such view of the construction

-of our system as probable, a desire immediately

-arises to connect the present life of our planet with the

-past. We wish to know something of our remotest ancestry.</p>

-

-<p class='c024'>On its first detachment from the central mass, life, as

-we understand it, could hardly have been present on the

-earth. How then did it come there? The thing to be

-encouraged here is a reverent freedom—a freedom preceded

-by the hard discipline which checks licentiousness

-in speculation—while the thing to be repressed, both in

-science and out of it, is dogmatism. And here I am in

-the hands of the meeting—willing to end, but ready to

-go on. I have no right to intrude upon you, unasked,

-the unformed notions which are floating like clouds or

-gathering to more solid consistency in the modern speculative

-scientific mind. But if you wish me to speak

-plainly, honestly, and undisputatiously, I am willing to

-do so. On the present occasion</p>

-

-<div class='lg-container-b c034'>

-  <div class='linegroup'>

-    <div class='group'>

-      <div class='line'>You are ordained to call, and I to come.</div>

-    </div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-

-<p class='c035'><span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>Two views, then, offer themselves to us. Life was

-present potentially in matter when in the nebulous form,

-and was unfolded from it by the way of natural development,

-or it is a principle inserted into matter at a later

-date. With regard to the question of time, the views of

-men have changed remarkably in our day and generation;

-and I must say as regards courage also, and a

-manful willingness to engage in open contest, with fair

-weapons, a great change has also occurred.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>The clergy of England—at all events the clergy of

-London—have nerve enough to listen to the strongest

-views which any one amongst us would care to utter;

-and they invite, if they do not challenge, men of the

-most decided opinions to state and stand by those opinions

-in open court. No theory upsets them. Let the

-most destructive hypothesis be stated only in the language

-current among gentlemen, and they look it in the

-face. They forego alike the thunders of heaven and the

-terrors of the other place, smiting the theory, if they do

-not like it, with honest secular strength. In fact, the

-greatest cowards of the present day are not to be found

-among the clergy, but within the pale of science itself.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>Two or three years ago in an ancient London college—a

-clerical institution—I heard a very remarkable lecture

-by a very remarkable man. Three or four hundred

-clergymen were present at the lecture. The orator

-began with the civilization of Egypt in the time of

-Joseph; pointing out that the very perfect organization

-of the kingdom, and the possession of chariots, in one

-of which Joseph rode, indicated a long antecedent

-period of civilization. He then passed on to the mud

-of the Nile, its rate of augmentation, its present thickness,

-and the remains of human handiwork found therein;

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span>thence to the rocks which bound the Nile valley, and

-which team with organic remains. Thus, in his own

-clear and admirable way, he caused the idea of the

-world’s age to expand itself indefinitely before the mind

-of his audience, and he contrasted this with the age

-usually assigned to the world.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>During his discourse he seemed to be swimming

-against a stream; he manifestly thought that he was opposing

-a general conviction. He expected resistance;

-so did I. But it was all a mistake; there was no adverse

-current, no opposing conviction, no resistance,

-merely here and there a half humorous but unsuccessful

-attempt to entangle him in his talk. The meeting

-agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity

-of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed,

-known it all long ago, and they good-humoredly rallied

-the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a

-story. It was quite plain that this large body of clergymen,

-who were, I should say, the finest samples of their

-class, had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and

-transported the conception of life’s origin to an indefinitely

-distant past.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>In fact, clergymen, if I might be allowed a parenthesis

-to say so, have as strong a leaning towards scientific

-truth as other men, only the resistance to this bent—a

-resistance due to education—is generally stronger

-in their case than in others. They do not lack the positive

-element, namely, the love of truth, but the negative

-element, the fear of error, preponderates.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>The strength of an electric current is determined by

-two things—the electro-motive force, and the resistance

-that force has to overcome. A fraction, with the former

-as numerator and the latter as denominator, expresses

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span>the current-strength. The “current-strength” of the

-clergy towards science may also be expressed by making

-the positive element just referred to the numerator,

-and the negative one the denominator of a fraction.

-The numerator is not zero nor is it even small, but the denominator

-is large; and hence the current strength is

-such as we find it to be. Slowness of conception, even

-open hostility, may be thus accounted for. They are

-for the most part errors of judgment, and not sins

-against truth. To most of us it may appear very simple,

-but to a few of us it appears transcendently wonderful,

-that in all classes of society truth should have

-this power and fascination. From the countless modifications

-that life has undergone through natural selection

-and the integration of infinitesimal steps, emerges

-finally the grand result that the strength of truth is

-greater than the strength of error, and that we have

-only to make the truth clear to the world to gain the

-world to our side. Probably no one wonders more at

-this result than the propounder of the law of natural

-selection himself. Reverting to an old acquaintance of

-ours, it would seem, on purely scientific grounds, as if

-a Veracity were at the heart of things; as if, after ages of

-latent working, it had finally unfolded itself in the life of

-man; as if it were still destined to unfold itself, growing in

-girth, throwing out stronger branches and thicker leaves,

-and tending more and more by its overshadowing presence

-to starve the weeds of error from the intellectual

-soil.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>But this is parenthetical; and the gist of our present

-inquiry regarding the introduction of life is this: Does

-it belong to what we call matter, or is it an independent

-principle inserted into matter at some suitable epoch—say

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>when the physical conditions become such as to

-permit of the development of life? Let us put the

-question with all the reverence due to a faith and culture

-in which we all were cradled—a faith and culture,

-moreover, which are the undeniable historic antecedents

-of our present enlightenment. I say, let us put the

-question reverently, but let us also put it clearly and

-definitely.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>There are the strongest grounds for believing that

-during a certain period of its history the earth was not,

-nor was it fit to be, the theater of life. Whether this

-was ever a nebulous period, or merely a molten period,

-does not much matter; and if we revert to the nebulous

-condition, it is because the probabilities are really on its

-side. Our question is this: Did creative energy pause

-until the nebulous matter had condensed, until the earth

-had been detached, until the solar fire had so far withdrawn

-from the earth’s vicinity as to permit a crust to

-gather round a planet? Did it wait until the air was isolated,

-until the seas were formed, until evaporation,

-condensation, and the descent of rain had begun, until

-the eroding forces of the atmosphere had weathered and

-decomposed the molten rocks so as to form soils, until

-the sun’s rays had become so tempered by distance and

-by waste as to be chemically fit for the decompositions

-necessary to vegetable life? Having waited through

-those æons until the proper conditions had set in, did

-it send the fiat forth, “Let life be!”? These questions

-define a hypothesis not without its difficulties, but the

-dignity of which was demonstrated by the nobleness of

-the men whom it sustained.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide between

-this hypothesis and another; and public thought

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_284'>284</span>generally will afterwards be called upon to do the same.

-You may, however, rest secure in the belief that the

-hypothesis just sketched can never be stormed, and that

-it is sure, if it yield at all, to yield to a prolonged siege.

-To gain new territory, modern argument requires more

-time than modern arms, though both of them move with

-greater rapidity than of yore.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>But however the convictions of individuals here and

-there may be influenced, the process must be slow and

-secular which commends the rival hypothesis of natural

-evolution to the public mind. For what are the core

-and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and

-you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the

-more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not

-alone the nobler forms of the horse and lion, not alone

-the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human

-body, but that the human mind itself—emotion, intellect,

-will, and all their phenomena—were once latent in

-a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a

-motion is more than a refutation. But the hypothesis

-would probably go even further than this. Many who

-hold it would probably assent to the position that at the

-present moment all our philosophy, all our poetry, all

-our science, and all our art—Plato, Shakespeare, Newton,

-and Raphael—are potential in the fires of the sun.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>We long to learn something of our origin. If the

-evolution hypothesis be correct, even this unsatisfied

-yearning must have come to us across the ages which

-separate the unconscious primeval mist from the consciousness

-of to-day. I do not think that any holder of

-the evolution hypothesis would say that I overstate it or

-overstrain it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness,

-and bring before you, unclothed and unvarnished,

-the notions by which it must stand or fall.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'><span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span>Surely these notions represent an absurdity too monstrous

-to be entertained by any sane mind. Let us,

-however, give them fair play. Let us steady ourselves

-in front of the hypothesis, and, dismissing all terror and

-excitement from our minds, let us look firmly into it with

-the hard, sharp eye of intellect alone. Why are these

-notions absurd, and why should sanity reject them?

-The law of relativity, of which we have previously

-spoken, may find its application here. These evolution

-notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the

-intellectual gibbet in relation to the ideas concerning

-matter which were drilled into us when young. Spirit

-and matter have ever been presented to us in the rudest

-contrast, the one as all noble, the other as all vile. But

-is this correct? Does it represent what our mightiest

-spiritual teacher would call the eternal fact of the universe?

-Upon the answer to this question all depends.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>Supposing, instead of having the foregoing antithesis

-of spirit and matter presented to our youthful minds, we

-had been taught to regard them as equally worthy and

-equally wonderful; to consider them, in fact, as two opposite

-faces of the self-same mystery. Supposing that

-in youth we had been impregnated with the notion of

-the poet Goethe, instead of the notion of the poet

-Young, looking at matter, not as brute matter, but as

-“the living garment of God;” do you not think that

-under these altered circumstances the law of relativity

-might have had an outcome different from its present

-one? Is it not probable that our repugnance to the

-idea of primeval union between spirit and matter might

-be considerably abated? Without this total revolution

-of the notions now prevalent the evolution hypothesis

-must stand condemned; but in many profoundly

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_286'>286</span>thoughtful minds such a revolution has already taken

-place. They degrade neither member of the mysterious

-duality referred to; but they exalt one of them

-from its abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto existing

-between both. In substance, if not in words,

-their position as regards spirit and matter is: “What

-God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>I have thus led you to the outer rim of speculative

-science, for beyond the nebula scientific thought has

-never ventured hitherto, and have tried to state that

-which I considered ought, in fairness, to be outspoken.

-I do not think this evolution hypothesis is to be flouted

-away contemptuously; I do not think it is to be denounced

-as wicked. It is to be brought before the bar

-of disciplined reason, and there justified or condemned.

-Let us hearken to those who wisely support it, and to

-those who wisely oppose it; and let us tolerate those,

-and they are many, who foolishly try to do neither of

-these things.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>The only thing out of place in the discussion is dogmatism

-on either side. Fear not the evolution hypothesis.

-Steady yourselves in its presence upon that faith

-in the ultimate triumph of truth which was expressed by

-old Gamaliel when he said: “If it be of God, ye cannot

-overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to naught.”

-Under the fierce light of scientific inquiry this hypothesis

-is sure to be dissipated if it possess not a core of

-truth. Trust me, its existence as an hypothesis in the

-mind is quite compatible with the simultaneous existence

-of all those virtues to which the term Christian

-has been applied. It does not solve—it does not profess

-to solve—the ultimate mystery untouched. At bottom

-it does nothing more than “transport the conception

-of life’s origin to an indefinitely distant past.”</p>

-

-<p class='c036'><span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span>For, granting the nebula and its potential life, the

-question, whence came they? would still remain to

-baffle and bewilder us. And with regard to the ages of

-forgetfulness which lie between the conscious life of the

-nebula and the conscious life of the earth, it is but an

-extension of that forgetfulness which preceded the birth

-of us all. Those who hold the doctrine of evolution

-are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their

-data, and they yield no more to it than a provisional

-assent. They regard the nebular hypothesis as probable,

-and in the utter absence of any evidence to prove

-the act illegal, they extend the method of nature from

-the present into the past. Here the observed uniformity

-of nature is their only guide. Within the long range

-of physical inquiry they have never discerned in nature

-the insertion of caprice. Throughout this range the

-laws of physical and intellectual continuity have run

-side by side. Having thus determined the elements of

-their curve in this world of observation and experiment,

-they prolong that curve into an antecedent world, and

-accept as probable the unbroken sequence of development

-from the nebula to the present time.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>You never hear the really philosophical defenders of

-the doctrine of uniformity speaking of <i>impossibilities</i> in

-nature. They never say, what they are constantly

-charged with saying, that it is impossible for the builder

-of the universe to alter His work. Their business is

-not with the possible, but the actual; not with a world

-which <i>might</i> be, but with a world which <i>is</i>. This they

-explore with a courage not unmixed with reverence, and

-according to methods which, like the quality of a tree,

-are tested by their fruits. They have but one desire—to

-know the truth. They have but one fear—to believe

-<span class='pageno' id='Page_288'>288</span>a lie. And if they know the strength of science, and

-rely upon it with unswerving trust, they also know the

-limits beyond which science ceases to be strong. They

-best know that questions offer themselves to thought

-which science, as now prosecuted, has not even the tendency

-to solve. They keep such questions open, and

-will not tolerate any unlawful limitation of the horizon

-of their souls. They have as little fellowship with the

-atheist who says there is no God as with the theist who

-professes to know the mind of God.</p>

-

-<p class='c036'>“Two things,” said Immanuel Kant, “fill me with

-awe: the starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility

-in man.” And in his hours of health and

-strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has

-ceased and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific

-investigator finds himself overshadowed by the

-same awe. Breaking contact with the hampering details

-of earth, it associates him with a power which gives

-fulness and tone to his existence, but which he can

-neither analyze nor comprehend.</p>

-<div class='pbb'>

- <hr class='pb c003' />

-</div>

-<p class='c036'>&nbsp;</p>

-<div class='tnbox'>

-

- <ul class='ul_1 c003'>

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+       .std-table {font-size:75%; }
+    </style>
+  </head>
+  <body>   
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 66177 ***</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p><span class='small'>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_I'>I</span>
+  <h1 class='c001'><span class='c002'>HALF HOURS</span><br /> <br />WITH<br /> <br /><span class='c002'><span class='sc'>Modern Scientists</span>.</span></h1>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c003'>
+    <div><span class='c004'>LECTURES AND ESSAYS</span></div>
+    <div class='c003'>BY</div>
+    <div class='c000'>PROFS. HUXLEY, BARKER, STIRLING, COPE AND TYNDALL.</div>
+    <div class='c003'>WITH</div>
+    <div class='c003'><span class='c004'>A GENERAL INTRODUCTION</span></div>
+    <div class='c003'>BY</div>
+    <div class='c000'>NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D.,</div>
+    <div class='c000'><span class='small'>PRESIDENT OF YALE COLLEGE.</span></div>
+    <div class='c005'><span class='c004'>FIRST SERIES.</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/publogo.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c005'>
+    <div><span class='c004'>NEW HAVEN, CONN.:</span></div>
+    <div><span class='sc'>Charles C. Chatfield &amp; Co.</span>,</div>
+    <div>1872.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c003'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_II'>II</span><span class='large'>────────────────────────────</span></div>
+    <div><span class='large'>Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1872, by</span></div>
+    <div class='c000'><span class='large'><span class='sc'>Charles C. Chatfield &amp; Co.</span>,</span></div>
+    <div class='c000'><span class='large'>In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.</span></div>
+    <div><span class='large'>────────────────────────────</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-l c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>──────────────</div>
+      <div class='line'><span class='small'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW HAVEN, CONN.:</span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span class='small'>THE COLLEGE COURANT PRINT.</span></div>
+      <div class='line'>──────────────</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div>──────────────────</div>
+    <div><i>Electrotyped by E. B. Sheldon, New Haven, Conn.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_III'>III</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CONTENTS.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class='table0' summary=''>
+<colgroup>
+<col width='86%' />
+<col width='13%' />
+</colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>General Introduction.</span> <span class='small'>BY PREST. PORTER,</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_v'>v</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On The Physical Basis of Life.</span><br /> <span class='small'>PROF. T. H. HUXLEY,</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>Correlation of Vital and Physical Forces.</span><br /> <span class='small'>PROF. G. F. BARKER, M.D.,</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_37'>37</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>As Regards Protoplasm—Reply to Huxley.</span><br /> <span class='small'>JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING,</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_73'>73</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On The Hypothesis of Evolution.</span><br /> <span class='small'>PROF. E. D. COPE,</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_145'>145</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>Scientific Addresses.</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On the Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_219'>219</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On Haze and Dust</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_234'>234</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On the Scientific Use of the Imagination</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_247'>247</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='small'>PROF. JOHN TYNDALL, LL.D., F.R.S.,</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_217'>217</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_v'>v</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION OF HALF HOURS WITH MODERN SCIENTISTS.</h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c010'>The title of this Series of Essays—<i>Half Hours
+with Modern Scientists</i>—suggests a variety of
+thoughts, some of which may not be inappropriate
+for a brief introduction to a new edition. <i>Scientist</i>
+is a modern appellation which has been specially
+selected to designate a devotee to one or more
+branches of physical science. Strictly interpreted
+it might properly be applied to the student of any
+department of knowledge when prosecuted in a
+scientific method, but for convenience it is limited
+to the student of some branch of physics. It is
+not thereby conceded that nature, <i>i.e.</i>, physical or
+material nature is any more legitimately or exclusively
+the field for scientific enquiries than spirit,
+or that whether the objects of science are material
+or spiritual, the assumptions and processes of
+science themselves should not be subjected to scientific
+analysis and justification. There are so-called
+philosophers who adopt both these conclusions.
+There are those who reason and dogmatize as
+though nature were synonymous with matter, or as
+though spirit, if there be such an essence, must be
+conceived and explained after the principles and
+analogies of matter;—others assume that a science
+of scientific method can be nothing better than the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_vi'>vi</span>mist or moonshine which they vilify by the name of
+metaphysics. But unfortunately for such opinions
+the fact is constantly forced upon the attention of
+scientists of every description, that the agent by
+which they examine matter is more than matter,
+and that this agent, whatever be its substance, asserts
+its prerogatives to determine the conceptions
+which the scientist forms of matter as well as to
+the methods by which he investigates material properties.
+Even the positivist philosopher who not
+only denounces metaphysics as illegitimate, but also
+contends that the metaphysical era of human inquiry,
+has in the development of scientific progress
+been outgrown like the measles, which is experienced
+but once in a life-time; finds when his
+positivist theory is brought to the test that positivism
+itself in its very problem and its solutions, is
+but the last adopted metaphysical theory of science.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We also notice that it is very difficult, if not impossible,
+for the inquisitive scientist to limit himself
+strictly to the object-matter of his own chosen field,
+and not to enquire more or less earnestly—not infrequently
+to dogmatize more or less positively—respecting
+the results of other sciences and even
+respecting the foundations and processes of scientific
+inquiry itself. Thus Mr. Huxley in the first
+Essay of this Series on <i>The Physical Basis of Life</i>,
+leaves the discussion of his appropriate theme in
+order to deliver sundry very positive and pronounced
+assertions respecting the “limits of philosophical
+inquiry,” and quotes with manifest satisfaction
+a dictum of David Hume that is sufficiently
+dogmatic and positive, as to what these limits are.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span>In more than one of his Lay sermons, he rushes
+headlong into the most pronounced assertions in respect
+to the nature of matter and of spirit. The eloquent
+Tyndall, in No. 5, expounds at length <i>The
+Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation</i> and
+discourses eloquently, if occasionally somewhat poetically,
+of <i>The Scientific use of the Imagination</i>. But
+Messrs. Huxley and Tyndall are eminent examples
+of scientists who are severely and successfully
+devoted respectively to physiology and the higher
+physics. No one will contend that they have not
+faithfully cultivated their appropriate fields of inquiry.
+The fact that neither can be content to confine
+himself within his special field, forcibly illustrates
+the tendency of every modern science to
+concern itself with its relations to its neighbors,
+and the unresistible necessity which forces the most
+rigid physicist to become a metaphysician in spite of
+himself. So much for the appellation “<i>Scientists</i>.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“<i>Half Hours</i>” suggests the very natural inquiry—What
+can a scientist communicate in half an
+hour, especially to a reader who may be ignorant
+of the elements of the science which he would expound?
+Does not the phrase <i>Half Hours with
+Modern Scientists</i> stultify itself and suggest the
+folly of any attempt to treat of science with effect
+in a series of essays? In reply we would ask the
+attention of the reader to the following considerations.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The tendency is universal among the scientific
+men of all nations, to present the principles of
+science in such brief summaries or statements as
+may bring them within the reach of common readers.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_viii'>viii</span>The tendency indicates that there is a large body of
+readers who are so far instructed in the elements of
+science as to be able to understand these summaries.
+In England, Germany, France and this country such
+brief essays are abundant, either in the form of contributions
+to popular and scientific journals, or in
+that of popular lectures, or in that of brief manuals,
+or of monographs on separate topics; especially
+such topics as are novel, or are interesting to the
+public for their theoretic brilliancy, or their applications
+to industry and art.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>These essays need not be and they are not always
+superficial, because they are brief. They often are
+the more profound on account of their conciseness,
+as when they contain a condensed summary of the
+main principles of the art or science in question,
+or a brief history of the successive experiments
+which have issued in some brilliant discovery.
+These essays are very generally read, even though
+they are both concise and profound. But they could
+not be read even though they were less profound
+than they are, were there not provided a numerous
+company of readers who are sufficiently instructed
+in science to appreciate them. That such a body
+of readers exists in the countries referred to, is
+easily explained by the existence of public schools
+and schools of science and technology, by the
+enormous extension of the knowledge of machinery,
+engineering, mining, dyeing, etc., etc., all of which
+imply a more or less distinct recognition of scientific
+principles and stimulate the curiosity in regard
+to scientific truth. Popular lectures also, illustrated
+by experiments, have been repeated before thousands
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span>of excited listeners, and the eager and inventive
+minds of multitudes of ingenious youths have been
+trained by this distribution of science, to the capacity
+to comprehend the compact and pointed
+scientific essay, even though it taxes the attention
+and suspends the breath for a half-hour by its closeness
+and severity.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The fact is also worthy of notice, that many of
+the ablest scientists of our times have made a special
+study of the art of expounding and presenting scientific
+truth. Some of them have schooled themselves
+to that lucid and orderly method by which a science
+seems to spring into being a second time, under
+the creative hand of its skilful expositor. Others
+have made a special study of philosophic diction.
+Others have learned how to adorn scientific truth
+with the embellishments of an affluent imagination.
+Some of the ablest writers of our time are found
+among the devotees of physical science. That a
+few scientific writers and lecturers may have exemplified
+some of the most offensive features of the
+demagogue and the sophist cannot be denied, but
+we may not forget that many have attained to the
+consummate skill of the accomplished essayist and
+impressive and eloquent orator.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One advantage cannot be denied of this now
+popular and established method of setting forth
+scientific truth, viz., that it prescribes a convenient
+method of bringing into contrast the arguments <i>for</i>
+and <i>against</i> any disputed position in science. If
+materialism can furnish its ready advocate with a
+convenient vehicle for its ready diffusion, the antagonist
+theory can avail itself of a similar vehicle
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_x'>x</span>for the communication of the decisive and pungent
+reply. The one is certain to call forth the other,
+and if the two are present side by side in the same
+series, so much the better is it for the truth and so
+much the worse for the error. The teacher before
+his class, the lecturer in the presence of his audience,
+has the argument usually to himself; he allows few
+questionings and admits no reply. An erroneous
+theory may entrench itself within a folio against
+arguments which would annihilate its positions if
+these were condensed in a tract.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This consideration should dispel all the alarm
+that is felt by the defenders of religion in view of
+the general diffusion of popular scientific treatises.
+The brief statement of a false or groundless scientific
+theory, even by its defender, is often its most
+effectual refutation. A magnificently imposing
+argument often shrinks into insignificance when its
+advocate is forced to state its substance in a compact
+and close-jointed outline. The articulations
+are seen to be defective, the joints do not fit one
+another, the coherence is conspicuously wanting.
+Let then error do its utmost in the field of science.
+Its deficient data and its illogical processes are certain
+to be exposed, sometimes even by its own advocates.
+If this does not happen the defender of that
+scientific truth which seems to be essential to the
+teachings and faiths of religion, must scrutinize its
+reasonings by the rules and methods of scientific
+inquiry. If science seems to be hostile to religion,
+this very seeming should arouse the defender of
+Theism and Christianity to examine into the grounds
+both by the light and methods which are appropriate
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span>to science itself. The more brief and compact and
+popular is the argument which he is to refute, the
+more feasible is the task of exposure and reply.
+Only let this be a cardinal maxim with the defender
+of the truth, that whatever is scientifically defended
+and maintained must be scientifically refuted and
+overthrown. The great Master of our faith never
+uttered a more comprehensive or a grander maxim
+than the memorable words, “<i>To this end was I born
+and for this cause came I into the world, that I should
+bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the
+truth heareth my voice.</i>” It would be easy to show
+that the belief in moral and religious truth and the
+freedom in searching for and defending it which was
+inspired by these words have been most efficient in
+training the human mind to that faith in the results
+of scientific investigation which characterize the
+modern scientist. That Christian believer must
+either have a very imperfect view of the spirit of
+his own faith, or a very narrow conception of the
+evidences and the effect of its teachings, who imagines
+that the freest spirit of scientific inquiry, or
+the most penetrating insight into the secrets of
+matter or of spirit can have any other consequence
+than to strengthen and brighten the evidence for
+Christian truth.</p>
+<div class='c012'>N. P.</div>
+<p class='c013'><span class='sc'>Yale College</span>, <i>May</i>, 1872.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_xiii'>xiii</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>PUBLISHERS’ NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.</h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c010'>The five lectures embodied in this First Series of Half Hours
+with Modern Scientists were first published as Nos. I.—V. of the
+University Scientific Series. In this series the publishers have
+aimed to give to the public in a cheap pamphlet form, the advance
+thought in the Scientific world. The intrinsic value of these lectures
+has created a very general desire to have them put in a permanent
+form. They therefore have brought them out in this style.
+Each five succeeding numbers of this celebrated series will be
+printed and bound in uniform style with this volume, and be designated
+as second series, third series, and so on. Henceforth it will
+be the design of the publishers to give preference to those lectures
+and essays of American scientists which contain original research
+and discovery, rather than to reprinting from European sources. The
+lectures in the second series will be (1) On Natural Selection as
+Applied to Man, by Alfred Russel Wallace; (2) three profoundly
+interesting lectures on Spectrum Analysis, by Profs. Roscoe, Huggins,
+and Lockyer; (3) the Sun and its Different Atmospheres,
+a lecture by Prof. C. A. Young, Ph.D., of Dartmouth College; (4)
+the Earth a great Magnet, by Prof. A. M. Mayer, Ph.D., of Stevens
+Institute; and (5) the Mysteries of the Voice and Ear, by Prof.
+Ogden N. Rood, of Columbia College. The last three lectures
+contain many original discoveries and brilliant experiments, and are
+finely illustrated.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span>──────────────</div>
+    <div><span class='xlarge'><i>ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE.</i></span></div>
+    <div>──────────────</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c006' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c010'>The following remarkable discourse was originally delivered in
+Edinburgh, November 18th, 1868, as the first of a series of Sunday
+evening addresses, upon non-religious topics, instituted by the Rev.
+J. Cranbrook. It was subsequently published in London as the
+leading article in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, for February, 1869, and attracted
+so much attention that five editions of that number of the
+magazine have already been issued. It is now re-printed in this
+country, in permanent form, for the first time, and will doubtless
+prove of great interest to American readers. The author is
+Thomas Henry Huxley, of London, Professor of Natural History
+in the Royal School of Mines, and of Comparative Anatomy and
+Physiology in the Royal College of Surgeons. He is also President
+of the Geological Society of London. Although comparatively
+a young man, his numerous and valuable contributions to Natural
+Science entitle him to be considered one of the first of living Naturalists,
+especially in the departments of Zoölogy and Paleontology,
+to which he has mainly devoted himself. He is undoubtedly
+the ablest English advocate of Darwin’s theory of the Origin of
+Species, particularly with reference to its application to the human
+race, which he believes to be nearly related to the higher apes. It
+is, indeed, through his discussion of this question that he is, perhaps,
+best known to the general public, as his late work entitled
+“Man’s Place in Nature,” and other writings on similar topics,
+have been very widely read in this country and in Europe. In the
+present lecture Professor Huxley discusses a kindred subject of no
+less interest and importance, and should have an equally candid
+hearing.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Yale College</span>, <i>March</i> 30<i>th</i>, 1869.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>On the Physical Basis of Life.</h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c010'>In order to make the title of this discourse generally
+intelligible, I have translated the term “Protoplasm,”
+which is the scientific name of the substance of which I
+am about to speak, by the words “the physical basis of
+life.” I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is
+such a thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life may
+be novel—so widely spread is the conception of life as
+a something which works through matter, but is independent
+of it; and even those who are aware that matter
+and life are inseparably connected, may not be prepared
+for the conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase
+“the physical basis or matter of life,” that there is some
+one kind of matter which is common to all living beings,
+and that their endless diversities are bound together by
+a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first
+apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears almost
+shocking to common sense. What, truly, can seem to be
+more obviously different from one another in faculty, in
+form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living
+beings? What community of faculty can there be between
+the brightly-colored lichen, which so nearly resembles
+a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock on
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with
+beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Again, think of the microscopic fungus—a mere infinitesimal
+ovoid particle, which finds space and duration
+enough to multiply into countless millions in the body
+of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the
+luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this
+bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California,
+towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the
+Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow,
+and endures while nations and empires come and go
+around its vast circumference! Or, turning to the other
+half of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great
+finner whale, hugest of beasts that live, or have lived,
+disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle and
+blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest
+ship that ever left dockyard would founder hopelessly;
+and contrast him with the invisible animalcules—mere
+gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could, in
+fact, dance upon the point of a needle with the same ease
+as the angels of the schoolmen could, in imagination.
+With these images before your minds, you may well ask
+what community of form, or structure, is there between
+the animalcule and the whale, or between the fungus and
+fig-tree? And, <i>a fortiori</i>, between all four?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition,
+what hidden bond can connect the flower which a
+girl wears in her hair and the blood which courses through
+her youthful veins; or, what is there in common between
+the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong
+fabric of the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>jelly which may be seen pulsating through the waters of
+a calm sea, but which drain away to mere films in the
+hand which raises them out of their element? Such objections
+as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every
+one who ponders, for the first time, upon the conception
+of a single physical basis of life underlying all the diversities
+of vital existence; but I propose to demonstrate
+to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties,
+a threefold unity—namely, a unity of power or faculty,
+a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition—does
+pervade the whole living world. No very abstruse
+argumentation is needed, in the first place, to prove that
+the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of living matter, diverse
+as they may be in degree, are substantially similar
+in kind. Goethe has condensed a survey of all the powers
+of mankind into the well-known epigram:</p>
+
+<p class='c014'>“Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich ernähren
+ Kinder zeugen, und sie nähren so gut es vermag.</p>
+<hr class='c015' />
+<p class='c016'>Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich, wie er auch will.”</p>
+
+<p class='c017'>In physiological language this means, that all the multifarious
+and complicated activities of man are comprehensible
+under three categories. Either they are immediately
+directed towards the maintenance and development
+of the body, or they effect transitory changes
+in the relative positions of parts of the body, or they
+tend towards the continuance of the species. Even
+those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will,
+which we rightly name the higher faculties, are not excluded
+from this classification, inasmuch as to every one
+but the subject of them, they are known only as transitory
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>changes in the relative positions of parts of the body.
+Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action
+are, in the long run, resolvable into muscular contraction,
+and muscular contraction is but a transitory change
+in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. But
+the scheme, which is large enough to embrace the activities
+of the highest form of life, covers all those of the
+lower creatures. The lowest plant, or animalcule, feeds,
+grows and reproduces its kind. In addition, all animals
+manifest those transitory changes of form which we class
+under irritability and contractility; and it is more than
+probable, that when the vegetable world is thoroughly
+explored, we shall find all plants in possession of the
+same powers, at one time or other of their existence. I
+am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare
+and conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of
+the sensitive plant, or the stamens of the barberry, but
+to much more widely-spread, and, at the same time, more
+subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable contractility.
+You are doubtless aware that the common nettle
+owes its stinging property to the innumerable stiff and
+needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover
+its surface. Each stinging-needle tapers from a broad
+base to a slender summit, which, though rounded at the
+end, is of such microscopic fineness that it readily penetrates,
+and breaks off in, the skin. The whole hair
+consists of a very delicate outer case of wood, closely
+applied to the inner surface of which is a layer of semi-fluid
+matter, full of innumerable granules of extreme
+minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm, which
+thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of
+the hair which it fills. When viewed with a sufficiently
+high magnifying power, the protoplasmic layer of the
+nettle hair is seen to be in a condition of unceasing activity.
+Local contractions of the whole thickness of its
+substance pass slowly and gradually from point to point,
+and give rise to the appearance of progressive waves,
+just as the bending of successive stalks of corn by a
+breeze produces the apparent billows of a corn-field.
+But, in addition to these movements, and independently
+of them, the granules are driven, in relatively rapid
+streams, through channels in the protoplasm which seem
+to have a considerable amount of persistence. Most
+commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the protoplasm
+take similar directions; and, thus, there is a general
+stream up one side of the hair and down the other.
+But this does not prevent the existence of partial currents
+which take different routes; and, sometimes, trains
+of granules may be seen coursing swiftly in opposite
+directions, within a twenty-thousandth of an inch of one
+another; while, occasionally, opposite streams come
+into direct collision, and, after a longer or shorter struggle,
+one predominates. The cause of these currents
+seem to lie in contractions of the protoplasm which
+bounds the channels in which they flow, but which are
+so minute that the best microscopes show only their
+effects, and not themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned
+within the compass of the microscopic hair of a
+plant, which we commonly regard as a merely passive
+organism, is not easily forgotten by one who has watched
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>its display continued hour after hour, without pause or
+sign of weakening. The possible complexity of many
+other organic forms, seemingly as simple as the protoplasm
+of the nettle, dawns upon one; and the comparison
+of such a protoplasm to a body with an internal
+circulation, which has been put forward by an eminent
+physiologist, loses much of its startling character. Currents
+similar to those of the hairs of the nettle have
+been observed in a great multitude of very different
+plants, and weighty authorities have suggested that they
+probably occur, in more or less perfection, in all young
+vegetable cells. If such be the case, the wonderful
+noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only
+to the dullness of our hearing; and could our ears catch
+the murmur of these tiny maelstroms, as they whirl in
+the innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute
+each tree, we should be stunned, as with the roar of a
+great city.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the
+exception, that contractility should be still more openly
+manifested at some periods of their existence. The
+protoplasm of <i>Algæ</i> and <i>Fungi</i> becomes, under many
+circumstances, partially, or completely, freed from its
+woody case, and exhibits movements of its whole mass,
+or is propelled by the contractility of one or more hair-like
+prolongations of its body, which are called vibratile
+cilia. And, so far as the conditions of the manifestation
+of the phenomena of contractility have yet been
+studied, they are the same for the plant as for the animal.
+Heat and electric shocks influence both, and in
+the same way, though it may be in different degrees. It
+is by no means my intention to suggest that there is no
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>difference in faculty between the lowest plant and the
+highest, or between plants and animals. But the difference
+between the powers of the lowest plant, or animal,
+and those of the highest is one of degree, not of kind,
+and depends, as Milne-Edwards long ago so well pointed
+out, upon the extent to which the principle of the division
+of labor is carried out in the living economy. In the
+lowest organism all parts are competent to perform all
+functions, and one and the same portion of protoplasm
+may successively take on the function of feeding, moving,
+or reproducing apparatus. In the highest, on the
+contrary, a great number of parts combine to perform
+each function, each part doing its allotted share of the
+work with great accuracy and efficiency, but being useless
+for any other purpose. On the other hand, notwithstanding
+all the fundamental resemblances which exist
+between the powers of the protoplasm in plants and in
+animals, they present a striking difference (to which I
+shall advert more at length presently,) in the fact that
+plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of mineral
+compounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it
+ready-made, and hence, in the long run, depend upon
+plants. Upon what condition this difference in the powers
+of the two great divisions of the world of life depends,
+nothing is at present known.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>With such qualification as arises out of the last-mentioned
+fact, it may be truly said that the acts of all
+living things are fundamentally one. Is any such unity
+predicable of their forms? Let us seek in easily verified
+facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be
+drawn by pricking one’s finger, and viewed with proper
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>precautions and under a sufficiently high microscopic
+power, there will be seen, among the innumerable multitude
+of little, circular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles,
+which float in it and give it its color, a comparatively
+small number of colorless corpuscles, of somewhat larger
+size and very irregular shape. If the drop of blood
+be kept at the temperature of the body, these colorless
+corpuscles will be seen to exhibit a marvelous activity,
+changing their forms with great rapidity, drawing in and
+thrusting out prolongations of their substance, and creeping
+about as if they were independent organisms. The
+substance which is thus active is a mass of protoplasm,
+and its activity differs in detail, rather than in principle,
+from that of the protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry
+circumstances the corpuscle dies and becomes distended
+into a round mass, in the midst of which is seen
+a smaller spherical body, which existed, but was more or
+less hidden, in the living corpuscle, and is called its
+<i>nucleus</i>. Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are
+to be found in the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and
+scattered through the whole frame work of the body.
+Nay, more; in the earliest condition of the human organism,
+in that state in which it has just become distinguishable
+from the egg in which it arises, it is nothing
+but an aggregation of such corpuscles, and every organ
+of the body was, once, no more than such an aggregation.
+Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out
+to be what may be termed the structural unit of the human
+body. As a matter of fact, the body, in its earliest
+state, is a mere multiple of such units; and, in its perfect
+condition, it is a multiple of such units, variously
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>modified. But does the formula which expresses the essential
+structural character of the highest animal cover
+all the rest, as the statement of its powers and faculties
+covered that of all others? Very nearly. Beast and
+fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm, and polype, are all
+composed of structural units of the same character,
+namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There
+are sundry very low animals, each of which, structurally,
+is a mere colorless blood-corpuscle, leading an independent
+life. But, at the very bottom of the animal scale,
+even this simplicity becomes simplified, and all the phenomena
+of life are manifested by a particle of protoplasm
+without a nucleus. Nor are such organisms
+insignificant by reason of their want of complexity. It
+is a fair question whether the protoplasm of those simplest
+forms of life, which people an immense extent of
+the bottom of the sea, would not outweigh that of all
+the higher living beings which inhabit the land, put together.
+And in ancient times, no less than at the present
+day, such living beings as these have been the greatest
+of rock builders.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>What has been said of the animal world is no less
+true of plants. Imbedded in the protoplasm at the
+broad, or attached, end of the nettle hair, there lies a
+spheroidal nucleus. Careful examination further proves
+that the whole substance of the nettle is made up of a
+repetition of such masses of nucleated protoplasm, each
+contained in a wooden case, which is modified in form,
+sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes into a duct
+or spiral vessel, sometimes into a pollen grain, or an
+ovule. Traced back to its earliest state, the nettle arises
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>as the man does, in a particle of nucleated protoplasm.
+And in the lowest plants, as in the lowest animals, a
+single mass of such protoplasm may constitute the whole
+plant, or the protoplasm may exist without a nucleus.
+Under these circumstances it may well be asked, how
+is one mass of non-nucleated protoplasm to be distinguished
+from another? why call one “plant” and the
+other “animal?” The only reply is that, so far as form
+is concerned, plants and animals are not separable, and
+that, in many cases, it is a mere matter of convention
+whether we call a given organism an animal or a plant.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There is a living body called <i>Æthalium septicum</i>, which
+appears upon decaying vegetable substances, and in one
+of its forms, is common upon the surface of tan pits.
+In this condition it is, to all intents and purposes, a fungus,
+and formerly was always regarded as such; but the
+remarkable investigations of De Bary have shown that,
+in another condition, the <i>Æthalium</i> is an actively locomotive
+creature, and takes in solid matters, upon which,
+apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the most characteristic
+feature of animality. Is this a plant, or is it an
+animal? Is it both, or is it neither? Some decide in
+favor of the last supposition, and establish an intermediate
+kingdom, a sort of biological No Man’s Land for
+all these questionable forms. But, as it is admittedly
+impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between
+this no man’s land and the vegetable world on the one
+hand, or the animal, on the other, it appears to me that
+this proceeding merely doubles the difficulty which, before,
+was single. Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is
+the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated
+by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest
+brick or sun-dried clod. Thus it becomes clear that
+all living powers are cognate, and that all living forms
+are fundamentally of one character.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The researches of the chemist have revealed a no less
+striking uniformity of material composition in living matter.
+In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investigation
+can tell us little or nothing, directly, of the composition
+of living matter, inasmuch as such matter must
+needs die in the act of analysis, and upon this very obvious
+ground, objections, which I confess seem to me to
+be somewhat frivolous, have been raised to the drawing
+of any conclusions whatever respecting the composition
+of actually living matter from that of the dead matter
+of life, which alone is accessible to us. But objectors
+of this class do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness,
+true that we know nothing about the composition
+of any body whatever, as it is. The statement that a
+crystal of calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime, is
+quite true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes,
+it may be resolved into carbonic acid and quicklime.
+If you pass the same carbonic acid over the very quicklime
+thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of lime
+again; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it.
+Can it, therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches
+nothing about the chemical composition of calc-spar?
+Such a statement would be absurd; but it is hardly more
+so than the talk one occasionally hears about the uselessness
+of applying the results of chemical analysis to the
+living bodies which have yielded them. One fact, at
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>any rate, is out of reach of such refinements, and this
+is, that all the forms of protoplasm which have yet been
+examined contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union, and that
+they behave similarly towards several reagents. To this
+complex combination, the nature of which has never
+been determined with exactness, the name of Protein
+has been applied. And if we use this term with such
+caution as may properly arise out of our comparative
+ignorance of the things for which it stands, it may be
+truly said, that all protoplasm is proteinaceous; or, as
+the white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the commonest
+examples of a nearly pure protein matter, we may
+say that all living matter is more or less albuminoid.
+Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all forms of
+protoplasm are affected by the direct action of electric
+shocks; and yet the number of cases in which the contraction
+of protoplasm is shown to be affected by this
+agency increases, every day. Nor can it be affirmed with
+perfect confidence that all forms of protoplasm are liable
+to undergo that peculiar coagulation at the temperature
+of 40 degrees—50 degrees centigrade, which has been
+called “heat-stiffening,” though Kühne’s beautiful researches
+have proved this occurrence to take place in so
+many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash
+to expect that the law holds good for all. Enough has,
+perhaps, been said to prove the existence of a general
+uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or physical
+basis of life, in whatever group of living beings it
+may be studied. But it will be understood that this general
+uniformity by no means excludes any amount of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>special modifications of the fundamental substance. The
+mineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity
+of characters, though no one doubts that under all
+these Protean changes it is one and the same thing.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin
+of the matter of life? Is it, as some of the older
+naturalists supposed, diffused throughout the universe in
+molecules, which are indestructible and unchangeable in
+themselves; but, in endless transmigration, unite in innumerable
+permutations, into the diversified forms of life
+we know? Or, is the matter of life composed of ordinary
+matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its
+atoms are aggregated? Is it built up of ordinary matter,
+and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is
+done? Modern science does not hesitate a moment between
+these alternatives. Physiology writes over the
+portals of life,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c018'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Debemur morti nos nostraque,”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c019'>with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached
+to that melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it
+takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the
+living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved
+into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always
+dying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not
+live unless it died. In the wonderful story of the “Peau
+de Chagrin,” the hero becomes possessed of a magical
+wild ass’s skin, which yields him the means of gratifying
+all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration
+of the proprietor’s life; and for every satisfied desire
+the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition,
+until at length life and the last handbreadth of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>“Peau de Chagrin,” disappear with the gratification of
+a last wish. Balzac’s studies had led him over a wide
+range of thought and speculation, and his shadowing
+forth of physiological truth in this strange story may
+have been intentional. At any rate, the matter of life is
+a veritable “Peau de Chagrin,” and for every vital act it
+is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and
+the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the
+waste of protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker
+costs him some physical loss; and, in the strictest sense,
+he burns that others may have light—so much eloquence,
+so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid,
+water and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure
+cannot go on forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic
+<i>peau de chagrin</i> differs from Balzac’s in its capacity of
+being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after
+every exertion. For example, this present lecture, whatever
+its intellectual worth to you, has a certain physical
+value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the
+number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance
+wasted in maintaining my vital processes during
+its delivery. My <i>peau de chagrin</i> will be distinctly
+smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the
+beginning. By-and-by, I shall probably have recourse
+to the substance commonly called mutton, for the purpose
+of stretching it back to its original size. Now this
+mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or less modified,
+of another animal—a sheep. As I shall eat it, it
+is the same matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure
+to sundry artificial operations in the process of
+cooking. But these changes, whatever be their extent,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>have not rendered it incompetent to resume its old functions
+as matter of life. A singular inward laboratory,
+which I possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the
+modified protoplasm, the solution so formed will pass
+into my veins; and the subtle influences to which it will
+then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into
+living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man.
+Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled
+with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of
+the crustacean would undergo the same wonderful metamorphosis
+into humanity. And were I to return to my
+own place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacea
+might, and probably would, return the compliment, and
+demonstrate our common nature by turning my protoplasm
+into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were to
+be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I
+should find the protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible
+into man, with no more trouble than that of the
+sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of the lobster.
+Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what
+animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm,
+and the fact speaks volumes for the general identity
+of that substance in all living beings. I share this
+catholicity of assimilation with other animals, all of
+which, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the
+protoplasm of any of their fellows, or of any plant; but
+here the assimilative powers of the animal world cease.</p>
+<p class='c011'>A solution of smelling-salts in water with an infinitesimal
+proportion of some other saline matters, contains
+all the elementary bodies which enter into the composition
+of protoplasm; but, as I need hardly say, a hogshead
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>of that fluid would not keep a hungry man from
+starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from a
+like fate. An animal cannot make protoplasm, but must
+take it ready-made from some other animal, or some plant—the
+animal’s highest feat of constructive chemistry being
+to convert dead protoplasm into that living matter
+of life which is appropriate to itself. Therefore, in seeking
+for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventually turn
+to the vegetable world. The fluid containing carbonic
+acid, water, and ammonia, which offers such a barmecide
+feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes
+of plants; and with a due supply of only such materials,
+many a plant will not only maintain itself in vigor, but
+grow and multiply until it has increased a million-fold,
+or a million million-fold, the quantity of protoplasm
+which it originally possessed; in this way building up
+the matter of life, to an indefinite extent, from the common
+matter of the universe. Thus the animal can only
+raise the complex substance of dead protoplasm to the
+higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm;
+while the plant can raise the less complex substances—carbonic
+acid, water, and ammonia—to the same stage
+of living protoplasm, if not to the same level. But the
+plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example,
+appear to need higher compounds to start with,
+and no known plant can live upon the uncompounded
+elements of protoplasm. A plant supplied with pure carbon,
+hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur,
+and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal
+in his bath of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded
+by all the constituents of protoplasm. Nor,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>indeed, need the process of simplification of vegetable
+food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at the
+limit of the plant’s thaumaturgy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful
+constituents, be supplied without ammonia, and an ordinary
+plant will still be unable to manufacture protoplasm.
+Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it
+(and we have no right to speculate on any other) breaks
+up in consequence of that continual death which is the
+condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid,
+water, and ammonia, which certainly possess no properties
+but those of ordinary matter; and out of these
+same forms of ordinary matter and from none which
+are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm
+which keeps the animal world agoing. Plants are
+the accumulators of the power which animals distribute
+and disperse.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But it will be observed, that the existence of the matter
+of life depends on the preëxistence of certain compounds,
+namely, carbonic acid, water, and ammonia.
+Withdraw any one of these three from the world and all
+vital phenomena come to an end. They are related to
+the protoplasm of the plant, as the protoplasm of the
+plant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,
+and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon
+and oxygen unite in certain proportion and under
+certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen
+and oxygen produce water; nitrogen and hydrogen
+give rise to ammonia. These new compounds, like the
+elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless.
+But when they are brought together, under certain
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>conditions they give rise to the still more complex body,
+protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena
+of life. I see no break in this series of steps in molecular
+complication, and I am unable to understand why the
+language which is applicable to any one term of the series
+may not be used to any of the others. We think fit
+to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen,
+and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers
+and activities of these substances as the properties of
+the matter of which they are composed. When hydrogen
+and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion, and
+the electric spark is passed through them, they disappear
+and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the sum of
+their weights, appears in their place. There is not the
+slightest parity between the passive and active powers
+of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen
+which have given rise to it. At 32 degrees Fahrenheit,
+and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen
+are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to rush
+away from one another with great force. Water, at the
+same temperature, is a strong though brittle solid, whose
+particles tend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes,
+and sometimes build up frosty imitations of the most
+complex forms of vegetable foliage. Nevertheless we
+call these, and many other strange phenomena, the
+properties of the water, and we do not hesitate to believe
+that, in some way or another, they result from the
+properties of the component elements of the water. We
+do not assume that a something called “aquosity” entered
+into and took possession of the oxide of hydrogen
+as soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>particles to their places in the facets of the crystal, or
+amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the contrary,
+we live in the hope and in the faith that, by the advance
+of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see
+our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the
+properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the
+operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the
+manner in which they are put together. Is the case in
+any way changed when carbonic acid, water and ammonia
+disappear, and in their place, under the influence of
+preëxisting living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the
+matter of life makes its appearance? It is true that there
+is no sort of parity between the properties of the components
+and the properties of the resultant, but neither was
+there in the case of the water. It is also true that what
+I have spoken of as the influence of preëxisting living
+matter is something quite unintelligible; but does any
+body quite comprehend the <i>modus operandi</i> of an electric
+spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen?
+What justification is there, then, for the assumption
+of the existence in the living matter of a something
+which has no representative or correlative in the not
+living matter which gave rise to it? What better philosophical
+status has “vitality” than “aquosity?” And
+why should “vitality” hope for a better fate than the other
+“itys” which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus
+accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its inherent
+“meat roasting quality,” and scorned the “materialism”
+of those who explained the turning of the spit by
+a certain mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney?
+If scientific language is to possess a definite and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>constant signification whenever it is employed, it seems
+to me that we are logically bound to apply to the protoplasm,
+or physical basis of life, the same conceptions as
+those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the
+phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so are
+those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties.
+If the properties of water may be properly said
+to result from the nature and disposition of its component
+molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing
+to say that the properties of protoplasm result
+from the nature and disposition of its molecules. But I
+bid you beware that, in accepting these conclusions, you
+are placing your feet on the first rung of a ladder which,
+in most people’s estimation, is the reverse of Jacob’s,
+and leads to the antipodes of heaven. It may seem a
+small thing to admit that the dull vital actions of a fungus,
+or a foraminifer, are the properties of their protoplasm,
+and are the direct results of the nature of the
+matter of which they are composed.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But if, as I have endeavored to prove to you, their
+protoplasm is essentially identical with, and most readily
+converted into, that of any animal, I can discover no
+logical halting place between the admission that such is
+the case, and the further concession that all vital action
+may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of
+the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays
+it. And if so, it must be true, in the same sense and
+to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I am now
+giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are
+the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life
+which is the source of our other vital phenomena. Past
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>experience leads me to be tolerably certain that, when
+the propositions I have just placed before you are accessible
+to public comment and criticism, they will be condemned
+by many zealous persons, and perhaps by some
+few of the wise and thoughtful. I should not wonder if
+“gross and brutal materialism” were the mildest phrase
+applied to them in certain quarters. And most undoubtedly
+the terms of the propositions are distinctly
+materialistic. Nevertheless, two things are certain: the
+one, that I hold the statements to be substantially true;
+the other, that I, individually, am no materialist, but, on
+the contrary, believe materialism to involve grave philosophical
+error.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation
+of materialistic philosophy I share with some of
+the most thoughtful men with whom I am acquainted.
+And, when I first undertook to deliver the present discourse,
+it appeared to me to be a fitting opportunity to
+explain how such an union is not only consistent with,
+but necessitated by sound logic. I purposed to lead you
+through the territory of vital phenomena to the materialistic
+slough in which you find yourselves now plunged,
+and then to point out to you the sole path by which, in
+my judgment, extrication is possible. An occurrence,
+of which I was unaware until my arrival here last night,
+renders this line of argument singularly opportune. I
+found in your papers the eloquent address “On the
+Limits of Philosophical Inquiry,” which a distinguished
+prelate of the English Church delivered before the members
+of the Philosophical Institution on the previous
+day. My argument, also, turns upon this very point of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>limits of philosophical inquiry; and I cannot bring out
+my own views better than by contrasting them with
+those so plainly, and, in the main, fairly stated by the
+Archbishop of York. But I may be permitted to make
+a preliminary comment upon an occurrence that greatly
+astonished me. Applying the name of “the New Philosophy”
+to that estimate of the limits of philosophical
+inquiry which I, in common with many other men of science,
+hold to be just, the Archbishop opens his address
+by identifying this “new philosophy” with the positive
+philosophy of M. Comte (of whom he speaks as its “founder”);
+and then proceeds to attack that philosopher and
+his doctrine vigorously. Now, so far as I am concerned,
+the most Reverend prelate might dialectically hew M.
+Comte in pieces, as a modern Agag, and I should not
+attempt to stay his hand. In so far as my study of what
+specially characterizes the Positive Philosophy has led
+me, I find therein little or nothing of any scientific value,
+and a great deal which is as thoroughly antagonistic to
+the very essence of science as anything in ultramontane
+Catholicism. In fact, M. Comte’s philosophy in
+practice might be compendiously described as Catholicism
+<i>minus</i> Christianity. But what has Comptism to do
+with the “New Philosophy,” as the Archbishop defines
+it in the following passage?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Let me briefly remind you of the leading principles
+of this new philosophy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“All knowledge is experience of facts acquired by the
+senses. The traditions of older philosophies have obscured
+our experience by mixing with it much that the
+senses cannot observe, and until these additions are discarded
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>our knowledge is impure. Thus, metaphysics
+tells us that one fact which we observe is a cause, and
+another is the effect of that cause; but upon a rigid
+analysis we find that our senses observe nothing of cause
+or effect; they observe, first, that one fact succeeds another,
+and, after some opportunity, that this fact has
+never failed to follow—that for cause and effect we
+should substitute invariable succession. An older philosophy
+teaches us to define an object by distinguishing
+its essential from its accidental qualities; but experience
+knows nothing of essential and accidental; she sees
+only that certain marks attach to an object, and, after
+many observations, that some of them attach invariably,
+whilst others may at times be absent. * * * * *
+As all knowledge is relative, the notion of anything
+being necessary must be banished with other traditions.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There is much here that expresses the spirit of the
+“New Philosophy,” if by that term be meant the spirit
+of modern science; but I cannot but marvel that the
+assembled wisdom and learning of Edinburgh should have
+uttered no sign of dissent, when Comte was declared to
+be the founder of these doctrines. No one will accuse
+Scotchmen of habitually forgetting their great countrymen;
+but it was enough to make David Hume turn in
+his grave, that here, almost within ear-shot of his house,
+an instructed audience should have listened, without a
+murmur, while his most characteristic doctrines were attributed
+to a French writer of fifty years later date, in
+whose dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the vigor
+of thought and the exquisite clearness of the style of the
+man whom I make bold to term the most acute thinker
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>of the eighteenth century—even though that century produced
+Kant. But I did not come to Scotland to vindicate
+the honor of one of the greatest men she has ever
+produced. My business is to point out to you that the
+only way of escape out of the crass materialism in which
+we just now landed is the adoption and strict working
+out of the very principles which the Archbishop holds
+up to reprobation.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not
+relative, and therefore, that our conception of matter represents
+that which it really is. Let us suppose, further,
+that we do know more of cause and effect than a certain
+definite order of succession among facts, and that we
+have a knowledge of the necessity of that succession—and
+hence, of necessary laws—and I, for my part, do not
+see what escape there is from utter materialism and necessitarianism.
+For it is obvious that our knowledge of
+what we call the material world is, to begin with, at least
+as certain and definite as that of the spiritual world, and
+that our acquaintance with the law is of as old a date as
+our knowledge of spontaneity.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Further, I take it to be demonstrable that it is utterly
+impossible to prove that anything whatever may not
+be the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that
+human logic is equally incompetent to prove that any
+act is really spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is
+one which, by the assumption, has no cause; and the
+attempt to prove such a negative as this is, on the face
+of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical
+impossibility to demonstrate that any given
+phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>one who is acquainted with the history of science will
+admit, that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now
+more than ever means, the extension of the province of
+what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant
+gradual banishment from all regions of human thought
+of what we call spirit and spontaneity.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I have endeavored, in the first part of this discourse, to
+give you a conception of the direction towards which modern
+physiology is tending; and I ask you, what is the difference
+between the conception of life as the product of a
+certain disposition of material molecules, and the old notion
+of an Archæus governing and directing blind matter
+within each living body, except this—that here, as
+elsewhere, matter and law have devoured spirit and
+spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out
+of past and present, so will the physiology of the future
+gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is
+coëxtensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.
+The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a
+nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best minds of
+these days. They watch what they conceive to be the
+progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless
+anger as a savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the
+great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The advancing
+tide of matter threatens to drown their souls;
+the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom; they
+are alarmed lest man’s moral nature be debased by the
+increase of his wisdom.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>If the “New Philosophy” be worthy of the reprobation
+with which it is visited, I confess their fears seem to
+me to be well founded. While, on the contrary, could
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>David Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at their
+perplexities, and chide them for doing even as the heathen,
+and falling down in terror before the hideous idols their
+own hands have raised. For, after all, what do we know
+of this terrible “matter,” except as a name for the unknown
+and hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness?
+And what do we know of that “spirit”
+over whose threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation
+is arising, like that which was heard at the death
+of Pan, except that it is also a name for an unknown
+and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of consciousness?
+In other words, matter and spirit are but
+names for the imaginary substrata of groups of natural
+phenomena. And what is the dire necessity and “iron”
+law under which men groan? Truly, most gratuitously
+invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an “iron” law,
+it is that of gravitation; and if there be a physical necessity,
+it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the
+ground. But what is all we really know and can know
+about the latter phenomenon? Simply, that, in all human
+experience, stones have fallen to the ground under these
+conditions; that we have not the smallest reason for believing
+that any stone so circumstanced will not fall to
+the ground, and that we have, on the contrary, every
+reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very convenient
+to indicate that all the conditions of belief have
+been fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that
+unsupported stones will fall to the ground, “a law of nature.”
+But when, as commonly happens, we change will
+into must, we introduce an idea of necessity which most
+assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I
+utterly repudiate and anathematize the intruder. Fact,
+I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity,
+save an empty shadow of my own mind’s throwing?
+But, if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of
+the nature of either matter or spirit, and that the notion
+of necessity is something illegitimately thrust into the
+perfectly legitimate conception of law, the materialistic
+position that there is nothing in the world but matter,
+force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification
+as the most baseless of theological dogmas.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The fundamental doctrines of materialism, like those
+of spiritualism, and most other “isms,” lie outside “the
+limits of philosophical inquiry,” and David Hume’s great
+service to humanity is his irrefragable demonstration of
+what these limits are. Hume called himself a sceptic,
+and therefore others cannot be blamed if they apply the
+same title to him; but that does not alter the fact
+that the name, with its existing implications, does him
+gross injustice. If a man asks me what the politics of
+the inhabitants of the moon are, and I reply that I do
+not know; that neither I, nor any one else have any
+means of knowing; and that, under these circumstances
+I decline to trouble myself about the subject at all, I do
+not think he has any right to call me a sceptic. On
+the contrary, in replying thus, I conceive that I am simply
+honest and truthful, and show a proper regard for
+the economy of time. So Hume’s strong and subtle intellect
+takes up a great many problems about which we
+are naturally curious, and shows us that they are essentially
+questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>of being answered, and therefore not worth the
+attention of men who have work to do in the world.
+And thus ends one of his essays:</p>
+
+<p class='c014'>“If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school
+metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, <i>Does it contain any
+abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?</i> No.
+<i>Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter
+of fact and existence?</i> No. Commit it then to the
+flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”</p>
+
+<p class='c017'>Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why
+trouble ourselves about matters of which, however important
+they may be, we do know nothing, and can know
+nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and
+ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to
+try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat
+less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was
+before he entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary
+to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that
+the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to
+an extent which is practically unlimited; the second,
+that our volition counts for something as a condition of
+the course of events. Each of these beliefs can be verified
+experimentally, as often as we like to try. Each,
+therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon
+which any belief can rest; and forms one of our highest
+truths.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>If we find that the ascertainment of the order of nature
+is facilitated by using one terminology, or one set of symbols,
+rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the
+former, and no harm can accrue so long as we bear in
+mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>In itself it is of little moment whether we express the
+phenomena of matter in terms of spirit, or the phenomena
+of spirit in terms of matter; matter may be regarded as
+a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property
+of matter—each statement has a certain relative truth.
+But with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic
+terminology is in every way to be preferred. For it
+connects thought with the other phenomena of the universe,
+and suggests inquiry into the nature of those physical
+conditions or concomitants of thought, which are
+more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which
+may, in future, help us to exercise the same kind of control
+over the world of thought as we already possess in
+respect of the material world; whereas, the alternative,
+or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads
+to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas. Thus
+there can be little doubt that the further science advances,
+the more extensively and consistently will all the
+phenomena of nature be represented by materialistic
+formulæ and symbols. But the man of science, who,
+forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from
+these formulæ and symbols into what is commonly understood
+by materialism, seems to me to place himself
+on a level with the mathematician, who should mistake
+the <i>x’s</i> and <i>y’s</i>, with which he works his problems, for
+real entities—and with this further disadvantage as compared
+with the mathematician, that the blunders of the
+latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors
+of systematic materialism may paralyze the energies and
+destroy the beauty of a life.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span><span class='c004'><i>THE CORRELATION OF VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES.</i></span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c006' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'><span class='sc'>The Correlation<br /> <br />of<br /> <br />Vital and Physical Forces.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c010'>In the Syracusan Poecile, says Alexander von Humboldt
+in his beautiful little allegory of the Rhodian
+Genius, hung a painting, which, for full a century, had
+continued to attract the attention of every visitor. In
+the foreground of this picture a numerous company of
+youths and maidens of earthly and sensuous appearance
+gazed fixedly upon a haloed Genius who hovered in
+their midst. A butterfly rested upon his shoulder, and
+he held in his hand a flaming torch. His every lineament
+bespoke a celestial origin. The attempts to solve the
+enigma of this painting—whose origin even was unknown—though
+numerous, were all in vain, when one day a
+ship arriving from Rhodes, laden with works of art,
+brought another picture, at once recognized as its companion.
+As before, the Genius stood in the center, but
+the butterfly had disappeared, and the torch was reversed
+and extinguished. The youths and maidens were no
+longer sad and submissive, their mutual embraces announcing
+their entire emancipation from restraint. Still
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>unable to solve the riddle, Dionysius sent the pictures to
+the Pythagorean sage, Epicharmus. After gazing upon
+them long and earnestly, he said: Sixty years long have
+I pondered on the internal springs of nature, and on
+the differences inherent in matter; but it is only this
+day that the Rhodian Genius has taught me to see
+clearly that which before I had only conjectured. In
+inanimate nature, everything seeks its like. Everything,
+as soon as formed, hastens to enter into new combinations,
+and nought save the disjoining art of man can
+present in a separate state ingredients which ye would
+vainly seek in the interior of the earth or in the moving
+oceans of air and water. Different, however, is the
+blending of the same substances in animal and vegetable
+bodies. Here vital force imperatively asserts its rights,
+and heedless of the affinity and antagonism of the atoms,
+unites substances which in inanimate nature ever flee
+from each other, and separates that which is incessantly
+striving to unite. Recognize, therefore, in the Rhodian
+Genius, in the expression of his youthful vigor, in the
+butterfly on his shoulder, in the commanding glance of
+his eye, the symbol of vital force as it animates every
+germ of organic creation. The earthly elements at his
+feet are striving to gratify their own desires and to
+mingle with one another. Imperiously the Genius
+threatens them with upraised and high-flaming torch,
+and compels them regardless of their ancient rights, to
+obey his laws. Look now on the new work of art;
+turn from life to death. The butterfly has soared upward,
+the extinguished torch is reversed, and the head
+of the youth is drooping; the spirit has fled to other
+spheres, and the vital force is extinct. Now the youths
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>and maidens join their hands in joyous accord. Earthly
+matter again resumes its rights. Released from all
+bonds, they impetuously follow their natural instincts,
+and the day of his death is to them a day of nuptials.<a id='r1' /><a href='#f1' class='c020'><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The view here put by Humboldt into the mouth of
+Epicharmus may be taken as a fair representation of the
+current opinion of all ages concerning vital force. To-day,
+as truly as seventy-five years ago when Humboldt
+wrote, the mysterious and awful phenomena of life are
+commonly attributed to some controlling agent residing
+in the organism—to some independent presiding deity,
+holding it in absolute subjection. Such a notion it was
+which prompted Heraclitus to talk of a universal fire,
+Van Helmont to propose his Archæus, Hofmann his
+vital fluid, Hunter his <i>materia vitæ diffusa</i>, and Humboldt
+his vital force.<a id='r2' /><a href='#f2' class='c020'><sup>[2]</sup></a> All these names assume the existence
+of a material or immaterial something, more or
+less separable from the material body, and more or less
+identical with the mind or soul, which is the cause of
+the phenomena of living beings. But as science moved
+irresistibly onward, and it became evident that the forces
+of inorganic nature were neither deities nor imponderable
+fluids, separable from matter, but were simple affections
+of it, analogy demanded a like concession in
+behalf of vital force.<a id='r3' /><a href='#f3' class='c020'><sup>[3]</sup></a> From the notion that the effects
+of heat were due to an imponderable fluid called caloric,
+discovery passed to the conviction that heat was but a
+motion of material particles, and hence inseparable
+from matter. To a like assumption concerning vitality
+it was now but a step. The more advanced thinkers in
+science of to-day, therefore, look upon the life of the
+living form as inseparable from its substance, and believe
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>that the former is purely phenomenal, and only a
+manifestation of the latter. Denying the existence of a
+special vital force as such, they retain the term only to
+express the sum of the phenomena of living beings.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In calling your attention this evening to the Correlation
+of the Physical and the Vital Forces, I have a twofold
+object in view. On the one hand, I would seek to
+interest you in a comparatively recent discovery of Science,
+and one which is destined to play a most important
+part in promoting man’s welfare; and on the other
+I would inquire what part our own country has had in
+these discoveries.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the first place, then, let us consider what the evidences
+are that vital and physical forces are correlated.
+Let us inquire how far inorganic and organic forces may
+be considered mutually convertible, and hence, in so
+far, mutually identical. This may best be done by considering,
+first, what is to be understood by correlation:
+and second, how far are the physical forces themselves
+correlated to each other.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>At the outset of our discussion, we are met by an unfortunate
+ambiguity of language. The word Force, as
+commonly used, has three distinct meanings; in the
+first place, it is used to express the cause of motion, as
+when we speak of the force of gunpowder; it is also
+used to indicate motion itself, as when we refer to the
+force of a moving cannon-ball; and lastly it is employed
+to express the effect of motion, as when we speak of the
+blow which the moving body gives.<a id='r4' /><a href='#f4' class='c020'><sup>[4]</sup></a> Because of this confusion,
+it has been found convenient to adopt Rankine’s
+suggestion,<a id='r5' /><a href='#f5' class='c020'><sup>[5]</sup></a> and to substitute the word ‘energy’ therefor.
+And precisely as all force upon the earth’s surface—using
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>the term force in its widest sense—may be divided
+into attraction and motion, so all energy is divided into
+potential and actual energy, synonymous with those
+terms. It is the chemical attraction of the atoms, or
+their potential energy, which makes gunpowder so powerful;
+it is the attraction or potential energy of gravitation
+which gives the power to a raised weight. If now,
+the impediments be removed, the power just now latent
+becomes active, attraction is converted into motion,
+potential into actual energy, and the desired effect is
+accomplished. The energy of gunpowder or of a raised
+weight is potential, is capable of acting; that of exploding
+gunpowder or of a falling weight is actual energy
+or motion. By applying a match to the gunpowder, by
+cutting the string which sustains the weight, we convert
+potential into actual energy. By potential energy, therefore,
+is meant attraction; and by actual energy, motion.
+It is in the latter sense that we shall use the word force
+in this lecture; and we shall speak of the forces of
+heat, light, electricity and mechanical motion, and of
+the attractions of gravitation, cohesion, chemism.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>From what has now been said, it is obvious that when
+we speak of the forces of heat, light, electricity or motion,
+we mean simply the different modes of motion
+called by these names. And when we say that they
+are correlated to each other, we mean simply that the
+mode of motion called heat, light, electricity, is convertible
+into any of the others, at pleasure. Correlation
+therefore implies convertibility, and mutual dependence
+and relationship.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Having now defined the use of the term force, and
+shown that forces are correlated which are convertible
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>and mutually dependent, we go on to study the evidences
+of such correlation among the motions of inorganic nature
+usually called physical forces; and to ask what
+proof science can furnish us that mechanical motion,
+heat, light, and electricity are thus mutually convertible.
+As we have already hinted, the time was when these
+forces were believed to be various kinds of imponderable
+matter, and chemists and physicists talked of the
+union of iron with caloric as they talked of its union
+with sulphur, regarding the caloric as much a distinct
+and inconvertible entity as the iron and sulphur themselves.
+Gradually, however, the idea of the indestructibility
+of matter extended itself to force. And as it
+was believed that no material particle could ever be
+lost, so, it was argued, no portion of the force existing
+in nature can disappear. Hence arose the idea of the
+indestructibility of force. But, of course, it was quite
+impossible to stop here. If force cannot be lost, the
+question at once arises, what becomes of it when it
+passes beyond our recognition? This question led to
+experiment, and out of experiment came the great fact
+of force-correlation; a fact which distinguished authority
+has pronounced the most important discovery of the
+present century.<a id='r6' /><a href='#f6' class='c020'><sup>[6]</sup></a> These experiments distinctly proved
+that when any one of these forces disappeared, another
+took its place; that when motion was arrested, for example,
+heat, light or electricity was developed. In short,
+that these forces were so intimately related or correlated—to
+use the word then proposed by Mr. Grove<a id='r7' /><a href='#f7' class='c020'><sup>[7]</sup></a>—that
+when one of them vanished, it did so only to reappear
+in terms of another. But one step more was necessary
+to complete this magnificent theory. What can produce
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>motion but motion itself? Into what can motion be converted,
+but motion? May not these forces, thus mutually
+convertible, be simply different modes of motion of
+the molecules of matter, precisely as mechanical motion
+is a motion of its mass? Thus was born the dynamic
+theory of force, first brought out in any completeness by
+Mr. Grove, in 1842, in a lecture on the “Progress of
+Physical Science,” delivered at the London Institution.
+In that lecture he said: “Light, heat, electricity, magnetism,
+motion, are all convertible material affections.
+Assuming either as the cause, one of the others will be
+the effect. Thus heat may be said to produce electricity,
+electricity to produce heat; magnetism to produce electricity,
+electricity magnetism; and so of the rest.”<a id='r8' /><a href='#f8' class='c020'><sup>[8]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A few simple experiments will help us to fix in our
+minds the great fact of the convertibility of force.
+Starting with actual visible motion, correlation requires
+that when it disappears as motion, it should reappear as
+heat, light, or electricity. If the moving body be elastic
+like this rubber ball, then its motion is not destroyed
+when it strikes, but is only changed in direction. But
+if it be non-elastic, like this ball of lead, then it does
+not rebound; its motion is converted into heat. The
+motion of this sledge-hammer, for example, which if received
+upon this anvil would be simply changed in
+direction, if allowed to fall upon this bar of lead, is
+converted into heat; the evidence of which is that a
+piece of phosphorus placed upon the lead is at once inflamed.
+So too, if motion be arrested by the cushion
+of air in this cylinder, the heat evolved fires the tinder
+carried in the plunger. But it is not necessary that the
+arrest of motion should be sudden; it may be gradual,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>as in the case of friction. If this cylinder containing
+water or alcohol be caused to revolve rapidly between
+the two sides of this wooden rubber, the heat due to the
+arrested motion will raise the temperature of the liquid
+to the boiling point, and the cork will be expelled. But
+motion may also be converted into electricity. Indeed
+electricity is always the result of friction between heterogeneous
+particles.<a id='r9' /><a href='#f9' class='c020'><sup>[9]</sup></a> When this piece of hard rubber,
+for example, is rubbed with the fur of a cat, it is at once
+electrified; and now if it be caused to communicate a
+portion of its charge to this glass plate, to which at the
+same time we add the mechanical motion of rotation,
+the strong sparks produced give evidence of the conversion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>So, too, taking heat as the initial force, motion, light,
+electricity may be produced. In every steam-engine
+the steam which leaves the cylinder is cooler than that
+which entered it, and cooler by exactly the amount of
+work done. The motion of the piston’s mass is precisely
+that lost by the steam molecules which batter
+against it. The conversion of heat into electricity, too,
+is also easily effected. When the junction of two metals
+is heated, electricity is developed. If the two metals
+be bismuth and antimony, as represented in this diagram,
+the currents flow as indicated by the arrows; and
+by multiplying the number of pairs, the effect may be
+proportionately increased. Such an arrangement, called
+a thermo-electric battery, we have here; and by it the
+heat of a single gas-burner may be made to move, when
+converted, this little electric bell-engine. Moreover,
+heat and light have the very closest analogy; exalt the
+rapidity with which the molecules move and light appears,
+the difference being only one of intensity.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>Again, if electricity be our starting point, we may accomplish
+its conversion into the other forces. Heat
+results whenever its passage is interrupted or resisted;
+a wire of the poorly conducting metal platinum becoming
+even red-hot by the converted electricity. To produce
+light, of course, we need only to intensify this
+action; the brightest artificial light known, results from
+a direct conversion of electricity.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Enough has now been said to establish our point.
+What is to be particularly observed of these pieces
+of apparatus is that they are machines especially designed
+for the conversion of some one force into another.
+And we expect of them only that conversion.
+We pass on to consider for a moment the quantitative
+relations of this mutual convertibility. We notice,
+in the first place, that in all cases save one, the
+conversion is not perfect, a part of the force used not
+being utilized, on the one hand, and on the other,
+other forces making their appearance simultaneously.
+While, for example, the conversion of motion into heat
+is quite complete, the inverse conversion is not at all so.
+And on the other hand, when motion is converted into
+electricity, a part of it appears as heat. This simultaneous
+production of many forces is well illustrated by
+our little bell-engine, which converts the electricity of
+the thermo-battery into magnetism, and this into motion,
+a part of which expends itself as sound. For these
+reasons the question “How much?” is one not easily
+answered in all cases. The best known of these relations
+is that between motion and heat, which was first
+established by Mr. Joule in 1849, after seven years of
+patient investigation.<a id='r10' /><a href='#f10' class='c020'><sup>[10]</sup></a> The apparatus which he used is
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>shown in the diagram. It consists of a cylindrical box
+of metal, through the cover of which passes a shaft,
+carrying upon its lower end a set of paddles, immersed
+in water within the box, and upon its upper portion a
+drum, on which are wound two cords, which, passing in
+opposite directions, run over pulleys, and are attached
+to known weights. The temperature of the water within
+the box being carefully noted, the weights are then
+allowed to fall a certain number of times, of course in
+their fall turning the paddles against the friction of the
+liquid. At the close of the experiment the water is
+found to be warmer than before. And by measuring
+the amount of this rise in temperature, knowing the distance
+through which the weights have fallen, it is easy
+to calculate the quantity of heat which corresponds to a
+given amount of motion. In this way, and as a mean
+of a large number of experiments, Mr. Joule found that
+the amount of mass motion in a body weighing one
+pound, which had fallen from a hight of 772 feet, was
+exactly equal to the molecular motion which must be
+added to a pound of water, in order to heat it one degree
+Fahrenheit. If we call the actual energy of a
+body weighing one pound which has fallen one foot, a
+foot-pound, then we may speak of the mechanical equivalent
+of heat as being 772 foot-pounds.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The significance and value of this numerical constant
+will appear more clearly if we apply it to the solution of
+one or two simple problems. During the recent war two
+immense iron guns were cast in Pittsburgh, whose weight
+was nearly 112,000 pounds each, and which had a caliber
+of 20 inches.<a id='r11' /><a href='#f11' class='c020'><sup>[11]</sup></a> Upon this diagram is a calculation of the
+effective blow which the solid shot of such a gun, assuming
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>its weight to be 1,000 pounds and its velocity 1,100
+feet per second, would give; it is 902,797 tons!<a id='r12' /><a href='#f12' class='c020'><sup>[12]</sup></a> Now,
+if it were possible to convert the whole of this enormous
+mechanical power into heat, to how much would it correspond?
+This question may be answered by the aid
+of the mechanical equivalent of heat; here is the calculation,
+from which we see that when 17 gallons of
+ice-cold water are heated to the boiling point, as much
+energy is communicated as is contained in the death-dealing
+missile at its highest velocity.<a id='r13' /><a href='#f13' class='c020'><sup>[13]</sup></a> Again, if we take
+the impact of a larger cannon-ball, our earth, which is
+whirling through space with a velocity of 19 miles a
+second, we find it to be 98,416,136,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
+tons!<a id='r14' /><a href='#f14' class='c020'><sup>[14]</sup></a> Were this energy all converted into
+heat, it would equal that produced by the combustion
+of 14 earths of solid coal.<a id='r15' /><a href='#f15' class='c020'><sup>[15]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The conversion of heat into motion, however, as already
+stated, is not as perfect. The best steam-engines
+economize only one-twentieth of the heat of the fuel.<a id='r16' /><a href='#f16' class='c020'><sup>[16]</sup></a>
+Hence if a steamship require 600 tons of coal to carry
+her across the Atlantic, 570 tons will be expended in
+heating the waters of the ocean, the heat of the remaining
+30 tons only being converted into work.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One other quantitative determination of force has
+also been made. Prof. Julius Thomsen, of Copenhagen,
+has fixed experimentally the mechanical equivalent of
+light.<a id='r17' /><a href='#f17' class='c020'><sup>[17]</sup></a> He finds that the energy of the light of a spermaceti
+candle burning 126½ grains per hour, is equal
+in mechanical value to 13·1 foot-pounds per minute.
+The same conclusion has been reached by Mr. Farmer,
+of Boston, from different data.<a id='r18' /><a href='#f18' class='c020'><sup>[18]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>If we pass from the actual physical energies or motions
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>to consider for a moment the potential energies or
+attractions, we find, also, an intimate correlation. Since
+all energy not active in motion is potential in attraction,
+it follows that in the attractions we have energy stored
+up for subsequent use. The sun is thus storing up
+energy: every minute it raises 2,000,000,000 tons of
+water to the mean hight of the clouds, 3½ miles; and
+the actual energy set free when this water falls is equal
+to 2,757,000,000,000 horse-powers.<a id='r19' /><a href='#f19' class='c020'><sup>[19]</sup></a> So when the oxygen
+and the zinc of the ore are separated in the furnace,
+the actual energy of heat becomes the potential energy of
+chemical attraction, which again becomes actual in the
+form of electricity when the zinc is dissolved in an acid.
+We see, then, that not only may any form of force or
+actual energy be stored up as any form of attraction or
+potential energy, but that the latter, from whatsoever
+source derived, may appear as heat, light, electricity, or
+mechanical motion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Having now established the fact of correlation for
+the physical forces, we have next to inquire what are
+the evidences of the correlation of the vital forces with
+them. But in the first place it must be remarked that
+life is not a simple term like heat or electricity; it is
+a complex term, and includes all those phenomena
+which a living body exhibits. In this discussion, therefore,
+we shall use the term vital force to express only
+the actual energy of the body, however manifested. As
+to the attractions or the potential energy of the organism,
+nothing is more fully settled in science than the
+fact that these are precisely the same within the body
+as without it. Every particle of matter within the body
+obeys implicitly the laws of the chemical and physical
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>attractions. No overpowering or supernatural agency
+comes in to complicate their action, which is modified
+only by the action of the others. Vitality, therefore, is
+the sum of the energies of a living body, both potential
+and actual.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Moreover, the important fact must be fully recognized
+that in living beings we have to do with no new elementary
+forms of matter. Precisely the same atoms which
+build up the inorganic fabric, compose the organic. In
+the early days of chemistry, indeed, it was supposed
+that the complicated molecules which life produced
+were beyond the reach of simple chemical law. But as
+more and more complex molecules have been, one after
+another, produced, chemistry has become re-assured, and
+now doubts not her ability to produce them all. A few
+years hence, and she will doubtless give us quinine and
+protagon, as she now gives us coumarin and neurine,
+substances the synthesis of which was but yesterday an
+impossibility.<a id='r20' /><a href='#f20' class='c020'><sup>[20]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In studying the phenomena of living beings, it is important
+also to bear in mind the different and at the
+same time the coördinate purposes subserved by the
+two great kingdoms of nature. The food of the plant
+is matter whose energy is all expended; it is a fallen
+weight. But the plant-organism receives it, exposes it
+to the sun’s ray, and, in a way yet mysterious to us, converts
+the actual energy of the sunlight into potential energy
+within it. The fallen weight is thus raised, and
+energy is stored up in substances which now are alone
+competent to become the food of the animal. This food
+is not such because any new atoms have been added to
+it; it is food because it contains within it potential energy,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>which at any time may become actual as force.
+This food the animal now appropriates; he brings it in
+contact with oxygen, and the potential energy becomes
+actual; he cuts the string, the weight falls, and what was
+just now only attraction, has become actual force; this
+force he uses for his own purposes, and hands back the
+oxidized matter, the fallen weight, to the plant to be
+again de-oxidized, to be again raised. The plant then
+is to be regarded as a machine for converting sunlight into
+potential energy; the animal, a machine for setting the
+potential energy free as actual, and economizing it. The
+force which the plant stores up is undeniably physical;
+must not the force which the animal sets free by its conversion,
+be intimately correlated to it?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But approaching our question still more closely, let
+us, in illustration of the vital forces of the animal economy,
+choose three forms of its manifestation in which
+to seek for the evidences of correlation; these shall be
+heat, evolved within the body; muscular energy or motion;
+and lastly, nervous energy, or that form of force
+which, on the one hand, stimulates a muscle to contract,
+and on the other, appears in forms called mental.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The heat which is produced by the living body is obviously
+of the same nature as heat from any other source;
+it is recognized by the same tests, and may be applied for
+the same purposes. As to its origin, it is evident that
+since potential energy exists in the food which enters
+the body, and is there converted into force, a portion of
+it may become the actual energy of heat. And since,
+too, the heat produced in the body is precisely such as
+would be set free by the combustion of this food outside
+of it, it is fair to assume that it thus originates. To
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>this may be added the chemical argument that while
+food capable of yielding heat by combustion is taken
+into the body, its constituents are completely or almost
+completely, oxidized before leaving it; and since oxidation
+always evolves heat, the heat of the body must
+have its origin in the oxidation of the food. Moreover,
+careful measurements have demonstrated that the amount
+of heat given off by the body of a man weighing 180
+pounds is about 2,500,000 units. Accurate calculations
+have shown, on the other hand, that 288·4 grams of carbon
+and 12·56 grams of hydrogen are available in the
+daily food for the production of heat. If burned out of
+the body, these quantities of carbon and hydrogen would
+yield 2,765,134 heat units. Burned within it, as we have
+just seen, 2,500,000 units appear as heat; the rest in
+other forms of energy.<a id='r21' /><a href='#f21' class='c020'><sup>[21]</sup></a> We conceive, however, that no
+long argument is necessary to prove that animal heat
+results from a conversion of energy within the body; or
+that the vital force heat, is as truly correlated to the
+other forces as when it has a purely physical origin.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The belief that the muscular force exerted by an animal
+is created by him is by no means confined to the
+very earliest ages of history. Traces of it appear to
+the careful observer even now, although, as Dr. Frankland
+says, science has proved that “an animal can no
+more generate an amount of force capable of moving a
+grain of sand than a stone can fall upward or a locomotive
+drive a train without fuel.”<a id='r22' /><a href='#f22' class='c020'><sup>[22]</sup></a> In studying the
+characters of muscular action we notice, first, that, as
+in the case of heat, the force which it develops is in no
+wise different from motion in inorganic nature. In the
+early part of the lecture, motion produced by the contraction
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>of muscle, was used to show the conversion of
+mass-force into molecular force. No one in this room
+believes, I presume, that the result would have been at
+all different, had the motion been supplied by a steam-engine
+or a water-wheel. Again, food, as we have seen,
+is of value for the potential energy it contains, which
+may become actual in the body. Liebig, in 1842, asserted
+that for the production of muscular force, the
+food must first be converted into muscular tissue,<a id='r23' /><a href='#f23' class='c020'><sup>[23]</sup></a> a
+view until recently accepted by physiologists.<a id='r24' /><a href='#f24' class='c020'><sup>[24]</sup></a> It has
+been conclusively shown, however, within a few years,
+that muscular force cannot come from the oxidation of
+its own substance, since the products of this metamorphosis
+are not increased in amount by muscular exertion.<a id='r25' /><a href='#f25' class='c020'><sup>[25]</sup></a>
+Indeed, reasoning from the whole amount of such
+products excreted, the oxidation of the amount of muscle
+which they represent would furnish scarcely one-fifth
+of the mechanical force of the body. But while
+the products of tissue-oxidation do not increase with
+the increase of muscular exertion, the amount of carbonic
+gas exhaled by the lungs is increased in the exact
+ratio of the work done.<a id='r26' /><a href='#f26' class='c020'><sup>[26]</sup></a> No doubt can be entertained,
+therefore, that the actual energy of the muscle is simply
+the converted potential energy of the carbon of the food.
+A muscle, therefore, like a steam-engine, is a machine
+for converting the potential energy of carbon into motion.
+But unlike a steam-engine, the muscle accomplishes this
+conversion directly, the energy not passing through the
+intermediate stage of heat. For this reason, the muscle
+is the most economical producer of mechanical force
+known. While no machine whatever can transform all
+of the energy into motion—the most economical steam-engines
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>utilizing only one-twentieth of the heat—the
+muscle is able to convert one-fifth of the energy of the
+food into work.<a id='r27' /><a href='#f27' class='c020'><sup>[27]</sup></a> The other four-fifths must, therefore,
+appear as heat. Whenever a muscle contracts, then,
+four times as much energy appears as heat as is converted
+into motion. Direct experiments by Heidenhain
+have confirmed this, by showing that an important rise
+of temperature attends muscular contraction;<a id='r28' /><a href='#f28' class='c020'><sup>[28]</sup></a> a fact,
+however, apparent to any one who has ever taken active
+exercise. The work done by the animal body is of two
+sorts, internal and external. The former includes the
+action of the heart, of the respiratory muscles, and of
+those assisting the digestive process. The latter refers
+to the useful work the body may perform. Careful estimates
+place the entire work of the body at about 800
+foot-tons daily; of which 450 foot-tons is internal, 350
+foot-tons external work. And since the internal work
+ultimately appears as heat within the body, the actual
+loss of heat by the production of motion is the equivalent
+of the 350 foot-tons which represents external
+work. This by a simple calculation will be found to be
+250,000 heat units, almost the precise amount by which
+the heat yielded by the food when burned without the
+body, exceeds that actually evolved by the organism.
+Moreover, while the total heat given off by the body is
+2,500,000 units, the amount of energy evolved as work
+is equal to about 600,000 heat units; hence the amount
+of work done by a muscle is as above stated, one-fifth
+of the actual energy derivable from the food. One point
+further. The law of correlation requires that the heat set
+free when a muscle in contracting does work, shall be
+less than when it effects nothing; this fact, too, has been
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>experimentally established by Heidenhain.<a id='r29' /><a href='#f29' class='c020'><sup>[29]</sup></a> So, again,
+when muscular contraction does not result in motion,
+as when one tries to raise a weight too heavy for him,
+the energy which would have appeared as work, takes
+the form of heat: a result deducible by the law of correlation
+from the steam-engine.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The last of the so-called vital forces which we are to
+examine, is that produced by the nerves and nervous
+centers. In the nerve which stimulates a muscle to
+contract, this force is undeniably motion, since it is
+propagated along this nerve from one extremity to the
+other. In common language, too, this idea finds currency
+in the comparison of this force to electricity; the
+gray or cellular matter being the battery, the white or
+fibrous matter the conductors. That this force is not
+electricity, however, Du Bois-Reymond has demonstrated
+by showing that its velocity is only 97 feet in a second,
+a speed equaled by the greyhound and the race-horse.<a id='r30' /><a href='#f30' class='c020'><sup>[30]</sup></a>
+In his opinion, the propagation of a nervous impulse is
+a sort of successive molecular polarization, like magnetism.
+But that this agent is a force, as analogous to
+electricity as is magnetism, is shown not only by the
+fact that the transmission of electricity along a nerve
+will cause the contraction of the muscle to which it
+leads, but also by the more important fact that the contraction
+of a muscle is excited by diminishing its normal
+electrical current;<a id='r31' /><a href='#f31' class='c020'><sup>[31]</sup></a> a result which could take place
+only with a stimulus closely allied to electricity. Nerve-force,
+therefore, must be a transmuted potential energy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>What, now, shall we say of that highest manifestation
+of animal life, thought-power? Has the upper region
+called intelligence and reason, any relations to physical
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>force? This realm has not escaped the searching investigation
+of modern science; and although in it investigations
+are vastly more difficult than in any of the
+regions thus far considered, yet some results of great
+value have been obtained, which may help us to a solution
+of our problem. It is to be observed at the outset
+that every external manifestation of thought-force is a
+muscular one, as a word spoken or written, a gesture, or
+an expression of the face; and hence this force must
+be intimately correlated with nerve-force. These manifestations,
+reaching the mind through the avenues of
+sense, awaken accordant trains of thought only when
+this muscular evidence is understood. A blank sheet
+of paper excites no emotion; even covered with Assyrian
+cuneiform characters, its alternations of black and
+white awaken no response in the ordinary brain. It is
+only when, by a frequent repetition of these impressions,
+the brain-cell has been educated, that these before
+meaningless characters awaken thought. Is thought,
+then, simply a cell action which may or may not result
+in muscular expression—an action which originates new
+combinations of truth only, precisely as a calculating
+machine evolves new combinations of figures? Whatever
+we define thought to be, this fact appears certain,
+that it is capable of external manifestation by conversion
+into the actual energy of motion, and only by this
+conversion. But here the question arises, Can it be
+manifested inwardly without such a transformation of
+energy? Or is the evolution of thought entirely independent
+of the matter of the brain? Experiments, ingenious
+and reliable, have answered this question. The
+importance of the results will, I trust, warrant me in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>examining the methods employed in these experiments
+somewhat in detail. Inasmuch as our methods for
+measuring minute amounts of electricity are very perfect,
+and the methods for the conversion of heat into electricity
+are equally delicate, it has been found that smaller
+differences of temperature may be recognized by converting
+the heat into electricity, than can be detected
+thermometrically. The apparatus, first used by Melloni
+in 1832,<a id='r32' /><a href='#f32' class='c020'><sup>[32]</sup></a> is very simple, consisting first, of a pair of
+metallic bars like those described in the early part of
+the lecture, for effecting the conversion of the heat; and
+second, of a delicate galvanometer, for measuring the
+electricity produced. In the experiments in question
+one of the bars used was made of bismuth, the other
+of an alloy of antimony and zinc.<a id='r33' /><a href='#f33' class='c020'><sup>[33]</sup></a> Preliminary trials
+having shown that any change of temperature within
+the skull was soonest manifested externally in that depression
+which exists just above the occipital protuberance,
+a pair of these little bars was fastened to the head
+at this point; and to neutralize the results of a general
+rise of temperature over the whole body, a second pair,
+reversed in direction, was attached to the leg or arm, so
+that if a like increase of heat came to both, the electricity
+developed by one would be neutralized by the
+other, and no effect be produced upon the needle unless
+only one was affected. By long practice it was ascertained
+that a state of mental torpor could be induced,
+lasting for hours, in which the needle remained stationary.
+But let a person knock on the door outside
+the room, or speak a single word, even though the experimenter
+remained absolutely passive, and the reception
+of the intelligence caused the needle to swing
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>through 20 degrees.<a id='r34' /><a href='#f34' class='c020'><sup>[34]</sup></a> In explanation of this production
+of heat, the analogy of the muscle at once suggests
+itself. No conversion of energy is complete; and as
+the heat of muscular action represents force which has
+escaped conversion into motion, so the heat evolved
+during the reception of an idea, is energy which has escaped
+conversion into thought, from precisely the same
+cause. Moreover, these experiments have shown that
+ideas which affect the emotions, produce most heat in
+their reception; “a few minutes’ recitation to one’s self
+of emotional poetry, producing more effect than several
+hours of deep thought.” Hence it is evident that the
+mechanism for the production of deep thought, accomplishes
+this conversion of energy far more perfectly
+than that which produces simply emotion. But we may
+take a step further in this same direction. A muscle,
+precisely as the law of correlation requires, develops
+less heat when doing work than when it contracts without
+doing it. Suppose, now, that beside the simple reception
+of an idea by the brain, the thought is expressed
+outwardly by some muscular sign. The conversion now
+takes two directions, and in addition to the production
+of thought, a portion of the energy appears as nerve and
+muscle-power; less, therefore, should appear as heat,
+according to our law of correlation. Dr. Lombard’s experiments
+have shown that the amount of heat developed
+by the recitation to one’s self of emotional poetry,
+was in every case less when that recitation was oral;
+<i>i.e.</i>, had a muscular expression. These results are in
+accordance with the well-known fact that emotion often
+finds relief in physical demonstrations; thus diminishing
+the emotional energy by converting it into muscular.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>Nor do these facts rest upon physical evidence alone.
+Chemistry teaches that thought-force, like muscle-force,
+comes from the food; and demonstrates that the force
+evolved by the brain, like that produced by the muscle,
+comes not from the disintegration of its own tissue, but
+is the converted energy of burning carbon.<a id='r35' /><a href='#f35' class='c020'><sup>[35]</sup></a> Can we
+longer doubt, then, that the brain, too, is a machine for
+the conversion of energy? Can we longer refuse to believe
+that even thought is, in some mysterious way, correlated
+to the other natural forces? and this, even in
+face of the fact that it has never yet been measured?<a id='r36' /><a href='#f36' class='c020'><sup>[36]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I cannot close without saying a word concerning the
+part which our own country has had in the development
+of these great truths. Beginning with heat, we find that
+the material theory of caloric is indebted for its overthrow
+more to the distinguished Count Rumford than to
+any other one man. While superintending the boring
+of cannon at the Munich Arsenal towards the close of
+the last century, he was struck by the large amount of
+heat developed, and instituted a careful series of experiments
+to ascertain its origin. These experiments led
+him to the conclusion that “anything which any insulated
+body or system of bodies can continue to furnish
+without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance.”
+But this man, to whom must be ascribed the
+discovery of the first great law of the correlation of
+energy, was an American. Born in Woburn, Mass., in
+1753, he, under the name of Benjamin Thompson,
+taught school afterward at Concord, N. H., then called
+Rumford. Unjustly suspected of toryism during our
+Revolutionary war, he went abroad and distinguished
+himself in the service of several of the Governments of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>Europe. He did not forget his native land, though she
+had treated him so unfairly; when the honor of knighthood
+was tendered him, he chose as his title the name
+of the Yankee village where he had taught school, and
+was thenceforward known as Count Rumford. And at
+his death, by founding a professorship in Harvard College,
+and donating a prize-fund to the American Academy
+of Arts and Sciences at Boston, he showed his interest
+in her prosperity and advancement.<a id='r37' /><a href='#f37' class='c020'><sup>[37]</sup></a> Nor has
+the field of vital forces been without earnest workers
+belonging to our own country. Professors John W.
+Draper<a id='r38' /><a href='#f38' class='c020'><sup>[38]</sup></a> and Joseph Henry<a id='r39' /><a href='#f39' class='c020'><sup>[39]</sup></a> were among its earliest
+explorers. And in 1851, Dr. J. H. Watters, now of St.
+Louis, published a theory of the origin of vital force,
+almost identical with that for which Dr. Carpenter, of
+London, has of late received so much credit. Indeed,
+there is some reason to believe that Dr. Watters’s essay
+may have suggested to the distinguished English physiologist
+the germs of his own theory.<a id='r40' /><a href='#f40' class='c020'><sup>[40]</sup></a> A paper on this
+subject by Prof. Joseph Leconte, of Columbia, S. C., published
+in 1859, attracted much attention abroad.<a id='r41' /><a href='#f41' class='c020'><sup>[41]</sup></a> The
+remarkable results already given on the relation of heat
+to mental work, which thus far are unique in science, we
+owe to Professor J. S. Lombard, of Harvard College;<a id='r42' /><a href='#f42' class='c020'><sup>[42]</sup></a>
+the very combination of metals used in his apparatus
+being devised by our distinguished electrical engineer,
+Mr. Moses G. Farmer. Finally, researches conducted
+by Dr. T. R. Noyes in the Physiological Laboratory of
+Yale College, have confirmed the theory that muscular
+tissue does not wear during action, up to the point of
+fatigue;<a id='r43' /><a href='#f43' class='c020'><sup>[43]</sup></a> and other researches by Dr. L. H. Wood have
+first established the same great truth for brain-tissue.<a id='r44' /><a href='#f44' class='c020'><sup>[44]</sup></a>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>We need not be ashamed, then, of our part in this advance
+in science. Our workers are, indeed, but few;
+but both they and their results will live in the records
+of the world’s progress. More would there be now of
+them were such studies more fostered and encouraged.
+Self-denying, earnest men are ready to give themselves
+up to the solution of these problems, if only the means
+of a bare subsistence be allowed them. When wealth
+shall foster science, science will increase wealth—wealth
+pecuniary, it is true: but also wealth of knowledge,
+which is far better.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In looking back over the whole of this discussion, I
+trust that it is possible to see that the objects which we
+had in view at its commencement have been more or
+less fully attained. I would fain believe that we now
+see more clearly the beautiful harmonies of bounteous
+nature; that on her many-stringed instrument force answers
+to force, like the notes of a great symphony; disappearing
+now in potential energy, and anon reappearing
+as actual energy, in a multitude of forms. I would
+hope that this wonderful unity and mutual interaction
+of force in the dead forms of inorganic nature, appears
+to you identical in the living forms of animal and vegetable
+life, which make of our earth an Eden. That
+even that mysterious, and in many aspects awful, power
+of thought, by which man influences the present and
+future ages, is a part of this great ocean of energy. But
+here the great question rolls upon us, Is it only this?
+Is there not behind this material substance, a higher
+than molecular power in the thoughts which are immortalized
+in the poetry of a Milton or a Shakespeare, the
+art creations of a Michael Angelo or a Titian, the harmonies
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>of a Mozart or a Beethoven? Is there really
+no immortal portion separable from this brain-tissue,
+though yet mysteriously united to it? In a word, does
+this curiously-fashioned body inclose a soul, God-given
+and to God returning? Here Science veils her face
+and bows in reverence before the Almighty. We have
+passed the boundaries by which physical science is enclosed.
+No crucible, no subtle magnetic needle can
+answer now our questions. No word but His who
+formed us, can break the awful silence. In presence of
+such a revelation Science is dumb, and faith comes in
+joyfully to accept that higher truth which can never be
+the object of physical demonstration.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>
+  <h2 id='notes' class='c007'><span class='sc'>Notes and References.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote c003' id='f1'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r1'>1</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Humboldt</span>, Views of Nature, Bohn’s ed., London, 1850, p. 380.
+This allegory did not appear in the first edition of the Views of
+Nature. In the preface to the second edition the author gives the
+following account of its origin: “Schiller,” he says, “in remembrance
+of his youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me,
+during my long stay at Jena, on physiological subjects.” * * *
+“It was at this period that I wrote the little allegory on Vital Force,
+called The Rhodian Genius. The predilection which Schiller entertained
+for this piece, which he admitted into his periodical, <i>Die
+Horen</i>, gave me courage to introduce it here.” It was published in
+<i>Die Horen</i> in 1795.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f2'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r2'>2</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Humboldt</span>, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 386. In his <i>Aphorismi ex doctrina Physiologiæ
+chemicæ Plantarum</i>, appended to his <i>Flora Fribergensis subterranea</i>,
+published in 1793, Humboldt had said “Vim internam,
+quæ chymicæ affinitatis vincula resolvit, atque obstat, quominus
+elementa corporum libere conjungantur, vitalem vocamus.” “That
+internal force, which dissolves the bonds of chemical affinity, and
+prevents the elements of bodies from freely uniting, we call vital.”
+But in a note to the allegory above mentioned, added to the third edition
+of the Views of Nature in 1849, he says: “Reflection and prolonged
+study in the departments of physiology and chemistry have
+deeply shaken my earlier belief in peculiar so-called vital forces. In
+the year 1797, * * * I already declared that I by no means regarded
+the existence of these peculiar vital forces as established.”
+And again: “The difficulty of satisfactorily referring the vital phenomena
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>of the organism to physical and chemical laws depends chiefly
+(and almost in the same manner as the prediction of meteorological
+processes in the atmosphere) on the complication of the phenomena,
+and on the great number of the simultaneously acting forces as well
+as the conditions of their activity.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f3'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r3'>3</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Compare <span class='sc'>Henry Bence Jones</span>, Croonian Lectures on Matter
+and Force. London, 1868, John Churchill &amp; Sons.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f4'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r4'>4</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Ib., Preface, p. vi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f5'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r5'>5</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Rankine, W. J. M.</span>, Philosophical Magazine, Feb., 1853.
+Also Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, July, 1855.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f6'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r6'>6</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Armstrong</span>, Sir <span class='sc'>Wm.</span> In his address as President of the
+British Association for the Advancement of Science. Rep. Brit.
+Assoc., 1863, li.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f7'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r7'>7</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Grove, W. R.</span>, in 1842. Compare “Nature” i, 335, Jan. 27,
+1870. Also Appleton’s Journal, iii, 324, Mch. 19, 1870.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f8'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r8'>8</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Id., in Preface to The Correlation of Physical Forces, 4th ed.
+Reprinted in The Correlation and Conservation of Forces, edited
+by E. L. Youmans, p. 7. New York, 1865, D. Appleton &amp; Co.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f9'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r9'>9</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Id., ib., Am. ed., p. 33 et seq.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f10'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r10'>10</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Joule, J. P.</span>, Philosophical Transactions, 1850, p. 61.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f11'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r11'>11</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>See American Journal of Science, II, xxxvii, 296, 1864.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f12'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r12'>12</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>The work (W) done by a moving body is commonly expressed
+by the formula W = MV<sup>2</sup>, in which M, or the mass of the body, is
+equal to w/2g; <i>i.e.</i>, to the weight divided by twice the intensity
+of gravity. The work done by our cannon-ball then, would be
+(1 × (1100)<sup>2</sup>)/(2 × 64⅓) = 9,404·14 foot-tons. If, further, we assume the resisting
+body to be of such a character as to bring the ball to
+rest in moving ¼ of an inch, then the final pressure would be
+9,404·14 × 12 × 4 = 451,398·7 tons. But since, “in the case of a perfectly
+elastic body, or of a resistance proportional to the advance of
+the center of gravity of the impinging body from the point at which
+contact first takes place, the final pressure (provided the body struck
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>is perfectly rigid) is double what would occur were the stoppage
+to occur at the end of a corresponding advance against a uniform
+resistance,” this result must be multiplied by two; and we get
+(451,398·7 × 2) 902,797 tons as the crushing pressure of the ball under
+these conditions. Note: The author’s thanks are due to his friends
+Pres. F. A. P. Barnard and Mr. J. J. Skinner for suggestions on
+the relation of impact to statical pressure.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f13'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r13'>13</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>The unit of impact being that given by a body weighing one
+pound and moving one foot a second, the impact of such a body
+falling from a hight of 772 feet—the velocity acquired being 222¼
+feet per second (=√(2sg))—would be 1 × (222¼)<sup>2</sup> = 49,408 units, the
+equivalent in impact of one heat-unit. A cannon-ball weighing
+1000 lbs. and moving 1100 feet a second would have an impact of
+(1100)<sup>2</sup> × 1000 = 1,210,000,000 units. Dividing this by 49,408, the
+quotient is 24489 heat units, the equivalent of the impact. The
+specific heat of iron being ·1138, this amount of heat would raise
+the temperature of one pound of iron 215.191° F. (24,489 × ·1138) or
+of 1000 pounds of iron 215° F. 24489 pounds of water heated one
+degree, is equal to 136½ pounds, or 17 gallons U. S., heated 180
+degrees; <i>i.e.</i>, from 32° to 212° F.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f14'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r14'>14</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Assuming the density of the earth to be 5·5, its weight would
+be 6,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, and its impact—by the formula
+given above—would be 1,025,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
+foot-tons. Making the same supposition as in the case of our
+cannon-ball, the final pressure would be that here stated.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f15'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r15'>15</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Tyndall, J.</span>, Heat considered as a mode of Motion; Am. ed.,
+p. 57, New York, 1863.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f16'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r16'>16</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Rankine</span> (The Steam-engine and other prime Movers, London,
+1866,) gives the efficiency of Steam-engines as from 1-15th to
+1-20th of the heat of the fuel.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Armstrong</span>, Sir <span class='sc'>Wm.</span>, places this efficiency at 1-10th as the
+maximum. In practice, the average result is only 1-30th. Rep.
+Brit. Assoc., 1863, p. liv.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Helmholtz, H. L. F.</span>, says: “The best expansive engines give
+back as mechanical work only eighteen per cent. of the heat generated
+by the fuel.” Interaction of Natural Forces, in Correlation
+and Conservation of Forces, p. 227.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f17'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r17'>17</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span><span class='sc'>Thomsen, Julius</span>, Poggendorff’s Annalen, cxxv, 348. Also
+in abstract in Am. J. Sci., II, xli, 396, May, 1866.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f18'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r18'>18</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>American Journal of Science, II, xli, 214, March, 1866.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f19'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r19'>19</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>In this calculation the annual evaporation from the ocean is
+assumed to be about 9 feet. (See Dr. <span class='sc'>Buist</span>, quoted in Maury’s
+Phys. Geography of the Sea, New York, 1861, p. 11.) Calling the
+water-area of our globe 150,000,000 square miles, the total evaporation
+in tons per minute, would be that here given. Inasmuch
+as 30,000 pounds raised one-foot high is a horse-power, the number
+of horse-powers necessary to raise this quantity of water 3½ miles
+in one minute is 2,757,000,000,000. This amount of energy is precisely
+that set free again when this water falls as rain.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f20'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r20'>20</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Compare <span class='sc'>Odling, Wm.</span>, Lectures on Animal Chemistry, London,
+1866. “In broad antagonism to the doctrines which only a
+few years back were regarded as indisputable, we now find that the
+chemist, like the plant, is capable of producing from carbonic acid
+and water a whole host of organic bodies, and we see no reason to
+question his ultimate ability to reproduce all animal and vegetable
+principles whatsoever.” (p. 52.)</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“Already hundreds of organic principles have been built up from
+their constituent elements, and there is now no reason to doubt our
+capability of producing all organic principles whatsoever in a similar
+manner.” (p. 58.)</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>Dr. Odling is the successor of Faraday as Fullerian Professor
+of Chemistry in the Royal Institution of Great Britain.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f21'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r21'>21</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Marshall, John</span>, Outlines of Physiology, American edition,
+1868, p. 916.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f22'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r22'>22</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Frankland, Edward</span>, On the Source of Muscular Power,
+Proc. Roy. Inst., June 8, 1866; Am. J. Sci., II, xlii, 393, Nov. 1866.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f23'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r23'>23</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Liebig, Justus von</span>, Die organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung
+auf Physiologie und Pathologie, Braunschweig, 1842. Also
+in his Animal Chemistry, edition of 1852 (Am. ed., p. 26), where he
+says “Every motion increases the amount of organized tissue which
+undergoes metamorphosis.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f24'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r24'>24</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Compare <span class='sc'>Draper, John Wm.</span> Human Physiology.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Playfair, Lyon</span>, On the Food of Man in relation to his useful
+work, Edinburgh, 1865. Proc. Roy. Inst., Apr. 28, 1865.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Ranke</span>, Tetanus eine Physiologische Studie, Leipzig, 1865.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Odling</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f25'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r25'>25</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span><span class='sc'>Voit, E.</span>, Untersuchungen über den Einfluss des Kochsalzes,
+des Kaffees, und der Muskelbewegungen auf den Stoffwechsel,
+Munich, 1860.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Smith, E.</span>, Philosophical Transactions, 1861, 747.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Fick, A.</span>, and <span class='sc'>Wislicenus, J.</span>, Phil. Mag., IV, xxxi, 485.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Frankland, E.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Noyes, T. R.</span>, American Journal Medical Sciences, Oct. 1867.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Parkes, E. A.</span>, Proceedings Royal Society, xv, 339; xvi, 44.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f26'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r26'>26</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Smith, Edward</span>, Philosophical Transactions, 1859, 709.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f27'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r27'>27</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Authorities differ as to the amount of energy converted
+by the steam-engine. (See Note 16.) Compare <span class='sc'>Marshall</span>,
+<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 918. “Whilst, therefore, in an engine one-twentieth
+part only of the fuel consumed is utilized as mechanical power, one-fifth
+of the food absorbed by man is so appropriated.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f28'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r28'>28</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Heidenhain</span>, Mechanische Leistung Wärmeentwickelung
+und Stoffumsatz bei der Muskelthätigkeit, Breslau, 1864.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>See also <span class='sc'>Haughton, Samuel</span>, On the Relation of Food to
+work, published in “Medicine in Modern Times,” London, 1869,
+Macmillan &amp; Co.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f29'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r29'>29</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Heidenhain</span>, <i>op. cit.</i> Also by <span class='sc'>Fick</span>, Untersuchungen über
+Muskel-arbeit, Basel, 1867. Compare also “Nature,” i, 159, Dec.
+9, 1869.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f30'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r30'>30</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Du Bois-Reymond, Emil</span>, On the time required for the transmission
+of volition and sensation through the nerves, Proc. Roy.
+Inst. Also in Appendix to Bence Jones’s Croonian lectures.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f31'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r31'>31</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Marshall</span>, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 227.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f32'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r32'>32</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Melloni</span>, Ann. Ch. Phys., xlviii, 198.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>See also <span class='sc'>Nobili</span>, Bibl. Univ., xliv, 225, 1830; lvii, 1, 1834.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f33'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r33'>33</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>The apparatus employed is illustrated and fully described in
+Brown-Sequard’s Archives de Physiologie, i, 498, June, 1868. By
+it the 1-4000th of a degree Centigrade may be indicated.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f34'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r34'>34</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span><span class='sc'>Lombard, J. S.</span>, New York Medical Journal, v, 198, June, 1867.
+[A part of these facts were communicated to me directly by their
+discoverer.]</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f35'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r35'>35</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Wood, L. H.</span>, On the influence of Mental activity on the Excretion
+of Phosphoric acid by the Kidneys. Proceedings Connecticut
+Medical Society for 1869, p. 197.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f36'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r36'>36</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>On this question of vital force, see <span class='sc'>Liebig</span>, Animal Chemistry.
+“The increase of mass in a plant is determined by the occurrence
+of a decomposition which takes place in certain parts of the plant
+under the influence of light and heat.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“The modern science of Physiology has left the track of Aristotle.
+To the eternal advantage of science, and to the benefit of mankind
+it no longer invents a <i>horror vacui</i>, a <i>quinta essentia</i>, in order to furnish
+credulous hearers with solutions and explanations of phenomena,
+whose true connection with others, whose ultimate cause is still
+unknown.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“All the parts of the animal body are produced from a peculiar
+fluid circulating in its organism, by virtue of an influence residing
+in every cell, in every organ, or part of an organ.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“Physiology has sufficiently decisive grounds for the opinion that
+every motion, every manifestation of force, is the result of a transformation
+of the structure or of its substance; that every conception,
+every mental affection, is followed by changes in the chemical
+nature of the secreted fluids; that every thought, every sensation
+is accompanied by a change in the composition of the substance of
+the brain.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“All vital activity arises from the mutual action of the oxygen of
+the atmosphere and the elements of the food.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“As, in the closed galvanic circuit, in consequence of certain
+changes which an inorganic body, a metal, undergoes when placed
+in contact with an acid, a certain something becomes cognizable by
+our senses, which we call a current of electricity; so in the animal
+body, in consequence of transformations and changes undergone by
+matter previously constituting a part of the organism, certain phenomena
+of motion and activity are perceived, and these we call life,
+or vitality.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“In the animal body we recognize as the ultimate cause of all
+force only one cause, the chemical action which the elements of the
+food and the oxygen of the air mutually exercise on each other.
+The only known ultimate cause of vital force, either in animals or
+in plants, is a chemical process.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>“If we consider the force which determines the vital phenomena
+as a property of certain substances, this view leads of itself to a new
+and more rigorous consideration of certain singular phenomena,
+which these very substances exhibit, in circumstances in which they
+no longer make a part of living organisms.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>Also <span class='sc'>Owen, Richard</span>, (Derivative Hypothesis of Life and
+Species, forming the 40th chapter of his Anatomy of Vertebrates,
+republished in Am. J. Sci., II, xlvii, 33, Jan. 1869.) “In the endeavor
+to clearly comprehend and explain the functions of the combination
+of forces called ‘brain,’ the physiologist is hindered and
+troubled by the views of the nature of those cerebral forces which
+the needs of dogmatic theology have imposed on mankind.” * *</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“Religion pure and undefiled, can best answer how far it is righteous
+or just to charge a neighbor with being unsound in his principles
+who holds the term ‘life’ to be a sound expressing the sum
+of living phenomena; and who maintains these phenomena to be
+modes of force into which other forms of force have passed, from
+potential to active states, and reciprocally, through the agency of
+these sums or combinations of forces impressing the mind with the
+ideas signified by the terms ‘monad,’ ‘moss,’ ‘plant,’ or ‘animal.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>And <span class='sc'>Huxley, Thos. H.</span>, “On the Physical Basis of Life,” University
+Series, No. 1. College Courant, 1870.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><i>Per contra</i>, see the Address of Dr. F. A. P. Barnard, as retiring
+President, before the Am. Assoc. for the Advancement of Science,
+Chicago meeting, August, 1868. “Thought cannot be a
+physical force, because thought admits of no measure.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Gould, Benj. Apthorp</span>, Address as retiring President, before
+the American Association at its Salem meeting, Aug., 1869.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Beale, Lionel S.</span>, “Protoplasm, or Life, Matter, and Mind.”
+London, 1870. John Churchill &amp; Sons.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f37'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r37'>37</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>For an excellent account of this distinguished man, see Youmans’s
+Introduction to the Correlation and Conservation of Forces,
+p. xvii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f38'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r38'>38</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span><span class='sc'>Draper, J. W.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f39'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r39'>39</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Henry, Joseph</span>, Agric. Rep. Patent Office, 1857, 440.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f40'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r40'>40</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Watters, J. H.</span>, An Essay on Organic, or Life-force. Written
+for the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania,
+Philadelphia, 1851. See also St. Louis Medical and Surgical
+Journal, II, v, Nos. 3 and 4, 1868; Dec. 1868, and Nov. 10,
+1869.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f41'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r41'>41</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>LeConte, Joseph</span>, The Correlation of Physical, Chemical and
+Vital Force, and the Conservation of Force in Vital Phenomena.
+American Journal of Science, II, xxviii, 305, Nov. 1859.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f42'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r42'>42</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Lombard, J. S.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f43'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r43'>43</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Noyes, T. R.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f44'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r44'>44</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Wood, L. H.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>
+</div>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span><span class='c022'><i>AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC.</i></span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c006' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>PREFATORY NOTE.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c010'>The substance of the greater part of this paper, which has
+been in the present form for some time, was delivered, as a
+lecture, at a Conversazione of the Royal College of Physicians
+of Edinburgh, in the Hall of the College, on the evening of
+Friday, the 30th of April last.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It will be found to support itself, so far as the facts are
+concerned, on the most recent German physiological literature,
+as represented by Rindfleisch, Kühne, and especially Stricker,
+with which last, for the production of his “Handbuch,” there
+is associated every great histological name in Germany.</p>
+<p class='c013'><span class='sc'>Edinburgh</span>, <i>October, 1869</i>.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c006' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'><span class='sc'>As Regards Protoplasm, etc.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c010'>It is a pleasure to perceive Mr. Huxley open his clear
+little essay with what we may hold, perhaps, to be the
+manly and orthodox view of the character and products
+of the French writer, Auguste Comte. “In applying
+the name of ‘the new philosophy’ to that estimate of
+the limits of philosophical inquiry which he” (Professor
+Huxley), “in common with many other men of science,
+holds to be just,” the Archbishop of York confounds, it
+seems, this new philosophy with the Positive philosophy
+of M. Comte; and thereat Mr. Huxley expresses himself
+as greatly astonished. Some of us, for our parts,
+may be inclined at first to feel astonished at Mr. Huxley’s
+astonishment; for the school to which, at least on
+the philosophical side, Mr. Huxley seems to belong, is
+even notorious for its prostration before Auguste Comte,
+whom, especially, so far as method and systematization
+are concerned, it regards as the greatest intellect since
+Bacon. For such, as it was the opinion of Mr. Buckle,
+is understood to be the opinion also of Messrs. Grote,
+Bain, and Mill. In fact, we may say that such is commonly
+and currently considered the characteristic and
+distinctive opinion of that whole perverted or inverted
+reaction which has been called the <i>Revulsion</i>. That is
+to say, to give this word a moment’s explanation, that
+the Voltaires and Humes and Gibbons having long
+enjoyed an immunity of sneer at man’s blind pride and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>wretched superstition—at <i>his</i> silly non-natural honor
+and <i>her</i> silly non-natural virtue—a reaction had set in,
+exulting in poetry, in the splendor of nature, the nobleness
+of man, and the purity of woman, from which reaction
+again we have, almost within the last decennium,
+been revulsively, as it were, called back,—shall we say
+by some “bolder” spirits—the Buckles, the Mills, &amp;c.?—to
+the old illumination or enlightenment of a hundred
+years ago, in regard to the weakness and stupidity of
+man’s pretensions over the animality and materiality
+that limit him. Of this revulsion, then, as said, a main
+feature, especially in England, has been prostration
+before the vast bulk of Comte; and so it was that Mr.
+Huxley’s protest in this reference, considering the philosophy
+he professed, had that in it to surprise at first.
+But if there was surprise, there was also pleasure; for
+Mr. Huxley’s estimate of Comte is undoubtedly the
+right one. “So far as I am concerned,” he says, “the
+most reverend prelate” (the Archbishop of York)
+“might dialectically hew M. Comte in pieces as a modern
+Agag, and I should not attempt to stay his hand;
+for, so far as my study of what specially characterizes
+the Positive philosophy has led me, I find therein little
+or nothing of any scientific value, and a great deal
+which is as thoroughly antagonistic to the very essence
+of science as anything in ultramontane Catholicism.”
+“It was enough,” he says again, “to make David Hume
+turn in his grave, that here, almost within earshot of
+his house, an instructed audience should have listened
+without a murmur while his most characteristic doctrines
+were attributed to a French writer of fifty years’
+later date, in whose dreary and verbose pages we miss
+alike the vigor of thought and the exquisite clearness
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>of style of the man whom I make bold to term the
+most acute thinker of the eighteenth century—even
+though that century produced Kant.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Of the doctrines themselves which are alluded to
+here, I shall say nothing now; but of much else that is
+said, there is only to be expressed a hearty and even
+gratified approval. I demur, to be sure, to the exaltation
+of Hume over Kant—high as I place the former.
+Hume, with infinite fertility, surprised us, it may be
+said, perhaps, into attention on a great variety of points
+which had hitherto passed unquestioned; but, even on
+these points, his success was of an interrupted, scattered
+and inconclusive nature. He set the world adrift, but
+he set man too, reeling and miserable, adrift with it.
+Kant, again, with gravity and reverence, desired to refix,
+but in purity and truth, all those relations and institutions
+which alone give value to existence—which alone
+<i>are</i> humanity, in fact—but which Hume, with levity and
+mockery, had approached to shake. Kant built up
+again an entire new world for us of knowledge and
+duty, and, in a certain way, even belief; whereas Hume
+had sought to dispossess us of every support that man
+as man could hope to cling to. In a word, with <i>at least</i>
+equal fertility, Kant was, as compared with Hume, a
+graver, deeper, and, so to speak, a more consecutive,
+more comprehensive spirit. Graces there were indeed,
+or even, it may be said, subtleties, in which Hume had
+the advantage perhaps. He is still in England an
+unsurpassed master of expression—this, certainly, in
+his History, if in his Essays he somewhat baffles his
+own self by a certain labored breadth of conscious fine
+writing, often singularly inexact and infelicitous. Still
+Kant, with reference to his products, must be allowed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>much the greater importance. In the history of philosophy
+he will probably always command as influential
+a place in the modern world as Socrates in the ancient;
+while, as probably, Hume will occupy at best some such
+position as that of Heraclitus or Protagoras. Hume,
+nevertheless, if equal to Kant, must, in view at once of
+his own subjective ability and his enormous influence,
+be pronounced one of the most important of writers.
+It would be difficult to rate too high the value of his
+French predecessors and contemporaries as regards purification
+of their oppressed and corrupt country; and
+Hume must be allowed, though with less call, to have
+subserved some such function in the land we live in.
+In preferring Kant, indeed, I must be acquitted of an
+undue partiality; for all that appertains to personal
+bias was naturally, and by reason of early and numerous
+associations, on the side of my countryman.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Demurring, then, to Mr. Huxley’s opinion on this
+matter, and postponing remark on the doctrines to
+which he alludes, I must express a hearty concurrence
+with every word he utters on Comte. In him I too
+“find little or nothing of any scientific value.” I too
+have been lost in the mere mirage and sands of “those
+dreary and verbose pages;” and I acknowledge in Mr.
+Huxley’s every word the ring of a genuine experience.
+M. Comte was certainly a man of some mathematical
+and scientific proficiency, as well as of quick but biased
+intelligence. A member of the <i>Aufklärung</i>, he had
+seen the immense advance of physical science since
+Newton, under, as is usually said, the method of Bacon;
+and, like Hume, like Reid, like Kant, <i>who had all anticipated
+him in this</i>, he sought to transfer that method to
+the domain of mind. In this he failed; and though in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>a sociological aspect he is not without true glances into
+the present disintegration of society and the conditions
+of it, anything of importance cannot be claimed for
+him. There is not a sentence in his book that, in the
+hollow elaboration and windy pretentiousness of its
+build, is not an exact type of its own constructor. On
+the whole, indeed, when we consider the little to which
+he attained, the empty inflation of his claims, the monstrous
+and maniacal self-conceit into which he was
+<i>exalted</i>, it may appear, perhaps, that charity to M.
+Comte himself, to say nothing of the world, should
+induce us to wish that both his name and his works
+were buried in oblivion. Now, truly, that Mr. Huxley
+(the “call” being for the moment his) has so pronounced
+himself, especially as the facts of the case are exactly
+and absolutely what he indicates, perhaps we may
+expect this consummation not to be so very long
+delayed. More than those members of the revulsion
+already mentioned, one is apt to suspect, will be anxious
+now to beat a retreat. Not that this, however, is so
+certain to be allowed them; for their estimate of M.
+Comte is a valuable element in the estimate of themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Frankness on the part of Mr. Huxley is not limited
+to his opinion of M. Comte; it accompanies us throughout
+his whole essay. He seems even to take pride,
+indeed, in naming always and everywhere his object at
+the plainest. That object, in a general point of view,
+relates, he tells us, solely to materialism, but with a
+double issue. While it is his declared purpose, in the
+first place, namely, to lead us into materialism, it is
+equally his declared purpose, in the second place, to
+lead us out of materialism. On the first issue, for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>example, he directly warns his audience that to accept
+the conclusions which he conceives himself to have
+established on Protoplasm, is to accept these also:
+That “all vital action” is but “the result of the molecular
+forces” of the physical basis; and that, by consequence,
+to use his own words to his audience, “the
+thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your
+thoughts regarding them, are but the expression of
+molecular changes in that matter of life which is the
+source of our other vital phenomena.” And, so far,
+I think, we shall not disagree with Mr. Huxley when
+he says that “most undoubtedly the terms of his propositions
+are distinctly materialistic.” Still, on the second
+issue, Mr. Huxley asserts that he is “individually no
+materialist.” “On the contrary, he believes materialism
+to involve grave philosophical error;” and the
+“union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation
+of materialistic philosophy” he conceives himself
+to share “with some of the most thoughtful men with
+whom he is acquainted.” In short, to unite both issues,
+we have it in Mr. Huxley’s own words, that it is the
+single object of his essay “to explain how such a union
+is not only consistent with, but necessitated by, sound
+logic;” and that, accordingly, he will, in the first place,
+“lead us through the territory of vital phenomena to
+the materialistic slough,” while pointing out, in the second,
+“the sole path by which, in his judgment, extrication
+is possible.” Mr. Huxley’s essay, then, falls evidently
+into two parts; and of these two parts we may
+say, further, that while the one—that in which he leads
+us into materialism—will be predominatingly physiological,
+the other—or that in which he leads us out
+of materialism—will be predominatingly philosophical.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>Two corresponding parts would thus seem to be prescribed
+to any full discussion of the essay; and of
+these, in the present needs of the world, it is evidently
+the latter that has the more promising theme. The
+truth is, however, that Mr. Huxley, after having exerted
+all his strength in his first part to throw us into “the
+materialistic slough,” by <i>clear necessity of knowledge</i>,
+only calls to us, in his second part, to come out of this
+slough again, on the somewhat <i>obscure necessity of ignorance</i>.
+This, then, is but a lop-sided balance, where a
+scale in the air only seems to struggle vainly to raise
+its well-weighted fellow on the ground. Mr. Huxley,
+in fact, possesses no remedy for materialism but what
+lies in the expression that, while he knows not what
+matter is in itself, he certainly knows that casualty is
+but contingent succession; and thus, like the so-called
+“philosophy” of the Revulsion, Mr. Huxley would only
+mock us into the intensest dogmatism on the one side
+by a fallacious reference to the intensest scepticism on
+the other.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The present paper, then, will regard mainly Mr. Huxley’s
+argument <i>for</i> materialism, but say what is required,
+at the same time, on his alleged argument—which is
+merely the imaginary, or imaginative, impregnation of
+ignorance—<i>against</i> it.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Following Mr. Huxley’s own steps in his essay, the
+course of his positions will be found to run, in summary,
+thus:—</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>What is meant by the physical basis of life is, that
+there is one kind of matter common to all living beings,
+and it is named protoplasm. No doubt it may appear
+at first sight that, in the various kinds of living beings,
+we have only <i>difference</i> before us, as in the lichen on the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>rock and the painter that paints it,—the microscopic
+animalcule or fungus and the Finner whale or Indian
+fig,—the flower in the hair of a girl and the blood in her
+veins, etc. Nevertheless, throughout these and all other
+diversities, there really exists a threefold <i>unity</i>—a unity
+of faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substance.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On the first head, for example, or as regards faculty,
+power, the action exhibited, there are but three categories
+of <i>human</i> activity—contractility, alimentation, and
+reproduction; and there are no fewer for the <i>lower</i> forms
+of life, whether animal or vegetable. In the nettle, for
+instance, we find the woody case of its sting lined by a
+granulated, semi-fluid layer, that is possessed of contractility.
+But in this respect—that is, in the possession
+of contractile substance—other plants are as the
+nettle, and all animals are as plants. Protoplasm—for
+the nettle-layer alluded to is protoplasm—is common
+to the whole of them. The difference, in short between
+the powers of the lowest plant or animal and those of
+the highest is one only of degree and not of kind.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But, on the second head, it is not otherwise in form,
+or manifested external appearance and structure. Not
+the sting only, but the whole nettle, is made up of protoplasm;
+and of all the other vegetables the nettle is
+but a type. Nor are animals different. The colorless
+blood-corpuscles in man and the rest are identical with
+the protoplasm of the nettle; and both he and they
+consisted at first only of an aggregation of such. Protoplasm
+is the common constituent—the common origin.
+At last, as at first, all that lives, and every part of all
+that lives, are but nucleated or unnucleated, modified
+or unmodified, protoplasm.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But, on the third head, or with reference to unity of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>substance, to internal composition, chemistry establishes
+this also. All forms of protoplasm, that is, consist
+alike of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, and
+behave similarly under similar reagents.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>So, now, a uniform character having in this threefold
+manner been proved for protoplasm, what is its origin,
+and what its fate? Of these the latter is not far to
+seek. The fate of protoplasm is death—death into its
+chemical constituents; and this determines its origin
+also. Protoplasm can originate only in that into which
+it dies,—the elements—the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,
+and nitrogen—of which it was found to consist. Hydrogen,
+with oxygen, forms water; carbon, with oxygen,
+carbonic acid; and hydrogen, with nitrogen, ammonia.
+Similarly, water, carbonic acid and ammonia form, in
+union, protoplasm. The influence of pre-existing protoplasm
+only determines combination in <i>its</i> case, as that
+of the electric spark determines combination in the
+case of water. Protoplasm, then, is but an aggregate
+of physical materials, exhibiting in combination—only
+as was to be expected—new properties. The properties
+of water are not more different from those of
+hydrogen and oxygen than the properties of protoplasm
+are different from those of water, carbonic acid, and
+ammonia. We have the same warrant to attribute the
+consequences to the premises in the one case as in the
+other. If, on the first stage of combination, represented
+by that of water, <i>simples</i> could unite into something
+so different from themselves, why, on the second
+stage of combination, represented by that of protoplasm,
+should not <i>compounds</i> similarly unite into something
+equally different from themselves? If the constituents
+are credited with the properties <i>there</i>, why
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>refuse to credit the constituents with the properties
+<i>here</i>? To the constituents of protoplasm, in truth, any
+new element, named vitality, has no more been added,
+than to the constituents of water any new element,
+named aquosity. Nor is there any logical halting place
+between this conclusion and the further and final one:
+That all vital action whatever, intellectual included, is
+but the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm
+which displays it.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>These sentences will be acknowledged, I think, fairly
+to represent Mr. Huxley’s relative deliverances, and,
+consequently, as I may be allowed to explain again, the
+only important—while much the larger—part of the
+whole essay. Mr. Huxley, that is, while devoting fifty
+paragraphs to our physiological immersion in the “materialistic
+slough,” grants but one-and-twenty towards our
+philosophical escape from it; the fifty besides being, so
+to speak, in reality the wind, and the one-and-twenty
+only the whistle for it. What these latter say, in effect,
+is no more than this, that,—matter being known not in
+itself but only in its qualities, and cause and effect not
+in their nexus but only in their sequence,—matter may
+be spirit or spirit matter, cause effect or effect cause—in
+short, for aught that Mr. Huxley more than phenomenally
+knows, this may be that or that this, first second,
+or second first, but the conclusion shall be this, that he
+will lay out all our knowledge materially, and we may
+lay out all our ignorance immaterially—if we will.
+Which reasoning and conclusion, I may merely remark,
+come precisely to this: That Mr. Huxley—who, hoping
+yet to see each object (a pin, say) not in its qualities
+but in <i>itself</i>, still, consistently antithetic, cannot believe
+in the extinction of fire by water or of life by the rope,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>for any <i>reason</i> or for any <i>necessity</i> that lies in the nature
+of the case, but simply for the habit of the thing—has
+not yet put himself at home with the metaphysical categories
+of <i>substance</i> and <i>casualty</i>; thanks, perhaps, to
+those guides of his whom we, the amusing Britons that
+we are, bravely proclaim “the foremost thinkers of the
+day”!</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The matter and manner of the whole essay are now
+fairly before us, and I think that, with the approbation
+of the reader, its procedure, generally, may be described
+as an attempt to establish, not by any complete and
+systematic induction, but by a variety of partial and
+illustrative assertions, two propositions. Of these
+propositions the first is, That all animal and vegetable
+organisms are essentially alike in power, in form, and
+in substance; and the second, That all vital and intellectual
+functions are the properties of the molecular
+disposition and changes of the material basis (protoplasm)
+of which the various animals and vegetables
+consist. In both propositions, the agent of proof is
+this same alleged material basis of life, or protoplasm.
+For the first of them, all animal and vegetable organisms
+shall be identified in protoplasm; and for the second,
+a simple chemical analogy shall assign intellect
+and vitality to the molecular constituents of the protoplasm,
+in connection with which they are at least exhibited.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In order, then, to obtain a footing on the ground
+offered us, the first question we naturally put is, What
+is Protoplasm? And an answer to this question can be
+obtained only by a reference to the historical progress
+of the physiological cell theory.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>That theory may be said to have wholly grown up
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>since John Hunter wrote his celebrated work ‘On the
+Nature of the Blood,’ etc. New growths, to Hunter,
+depended on an exudation of the plasma of the blood,
+in which, by virtue of its own <i>plasticity</i>, vessels formed,
+and conditioned the further progress. The influence of
+these ideas seems to have still acted, even after a conception
+of the cell was arrived at. For starting element,
+Schleiden required an intracellular plasma, and Schwann
+a structureless exudation, in which minute granules, if
+not indeed already pre-existent, formed, and by aggregation
+grew into nuclei, round which singly the production
+of a membrane at length enclosed a cell. It was
+then that, in this connection, we heard of the terms
+blastema and cyto-blastema. The theory of the vegetable
+cell was completed earlier than that of the animal
+one. Completion of this latter, again, seems to have
+been first effected by Schwann, after Müller had insisted
+on the analogy between animal and vegetable tissue,
+and Valentin had demonstrated a nucleus in the animal
+cell, as previously Brown in the vegetable one. But
+assuming Schwann’s labor, and what surrounded it, to
+have been a first stage, the wonderful ability of Virchow
+may be said to have raised the theory of the cell fully
+to a second stage. Now, of this second stage, it is the
+dissolution or resolution that has led to the emergence
+of the word Protoplasm.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The body, to Virchow, constituted a free state of individual
+subjects, with equal rights but unequal capacities.
+These were the cells, which consisted each of
+an enclosing membrane, and an enclosed nucleus with
+surrounding intracellular matrix or matter. These
+cells, further, propagated themselves, chiefly by partition
+or division; and the fundamental principle of the whole
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>theory was expressed in the dictum, “<i>Omnis cellula e
+cellulâ</i>.” That is, the nucleus, becoming gradually elongated,
+at last parted in the midst; and each half, acting
+as center of attraction to the surrounding intracellular
+matrix or contained matter, stood forth as a new
+nucleus to a new cell, formed by division at length of
+the original cell.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The first step taken in resolution of this theory was
+completed by Max Schultze, preceded by Leydig. This
+was the elimination of an investing membrane. Such
+membrane may, and does, ultimately form; but in the
+first instance, it appears, the cell is naked. The second
+step in the resolution belongs perhaps to Brücke, though
+preceded by Bergmann, and though Max Schultze,
+Kühne, Haeckel, and others ought to be mentioned in
+the same connection. This step was the elimination,
+or at least subordination, of the nucleus. The nucleus,
+we are to understand now, is necessary neither to the
+division nor to the existence of the cell.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Thus, then, stripped of its membrane, relieved of its
+nucleus, what now remains for the cell? Why, nothing
+but what <i>was</i> the contained matter, the intracellular
+matrix, and <i>is</i>—Protoplasm.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the application of this word itself, however, to the
+element in question, there are also a step or two to be
+noticed. The first step was Dujardin’s discovery of sarcode;
+and the second the introduction of the term protoplasm
+as the name for the layer of the <i>vegetable</i> cell
+that lined the cellulose, and enclosed the nucleus. Sarcode,
+found in certain of the lower forms of life, was a
+simple substance that exhibited powers of spontaneous
+contraction and movement. Thus, processes of such
+simple, soft, contractile matter are protruded by the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>rhizopods, and locomotion by their means effected.
+Remak first extended the use of the term protoplasm
+from the layer which bore that name in the vegetable
+cell to the analogous element in the animal cell; but it
+was Max Schultze, in particular, who, by applying the
+name to the intracellular matrix, or contained matter,
+when divested of membrane, and by identifying this
+substance itself with sarcode, first fairly established protoplasm,
+name and thing, in its present prominence.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In this account I have necessarily omitted many subordinate
+and intervening steps in the successive establishment
+of the <i>contractility</i>, superior <i>importance</i>, and
+complete <i>isolation</i> of this thing to which, under the
+name of protoplasm, Mr. Huxley of late has called
+such vast attention. Besides the names mentioned,
+there are others of great eminence in this connection,
+such as Meyen, Siebold, Reichert, Ecker, Henle, and
+Kölliker among the Germans; and among ourselves,
+Beale and Huxley himself. John Goodsir will be mentioned
+again.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We have now, perhaps, obtained a general idea of
+protoplasm. Brücke, when he talks of it as “living
+cell-body or elementary organism,” comes very near the
+leading idea of Mr. Huxley as expressed in his phrase,
+“the physiological basis, or matter, of life.” Living
+cell-body, elementary organism, primitive living matter—that,
+evidently, is the quest of Mr. Huxley. There is
+aqueous matter, he would say, perhaps, composed of
+hydrogen and oxygen, and it is the same thing whether
+in the rain-drop or the ocean; so, similarly, there is
+vital matter, which, composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,
+and nitrogen, is the same thing whether in cryptogams
+or in elephants, in animalcules or in men. What,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>in fact, Mr. Huxley seeks, probably, is living protein—protein,
+so to speak, struck into life. Just such appears
+to him to be the nature of protoplasm, and in it he believes
+himself to possess at last <i>a living clay</i> wherewith
+to build the whole organic world.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The question, What is Protoplasm? is answered,
+then; but, for the understanding of what is to follow,
+there is still one general consideration to be premised.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mr. Huxley’s conception of protoplasm, as we have
+seen, is that of living matter, living protein; what we
+may call, perhaps, elementary life-stuff. Now, is it
+quite certain that Mr. Huxley is correct in this conception?
+Are we to understand, for example, that cells
+have now definitively vanished, and left in their place
+only a uniform and universal <i>matter</i> of quite indefinite
+proportions? No; such an understanding would be
+quite wrong. Whatever may be the opinion of the adherents
+of the molecular theory of generation, it is certain
+that all the great German histologists still hold by
+the cell, and can hardly open their mouths without mention
+of it. I do not allude here to any special adherents
+of either nucleus or membrane, but to the most
+advanced innovators in both respects; to such men as
+Schultze and Brücke and Kühne. These, as we have
+seen, pretty well confine their attention, like Mr. Huxley,
+to the protoplasm. But they do not the less on
+that account talk of the cell. For them, it is only in
+cells that protoplasm exists. To their view, we cannot
+fancy protoplasm as so much matter in a pot, in an ointment-box,
+any portion of which scooped out in an ear-picker
+would be so much life-stuff, and, though a part,
+quite as good as the whole. This seems to be Mr.
+Huxley’s conception, but it is not theirs. A certain
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span><i>measure</i> goes with protoplasm to constitute it an organism
+to them, and worthy of their attention. They refuse
+to give consideration to any mere protoplasm-<i>shred</i>
+that may not have yet ceased, perhaps, to exhibit all
+sign of contractility under the microscope, and demand
+a protoplasm-<i>cell</i>. In short, protoplasm is to them still
+distributed into cells, and only that measure of protoplasm
+is cell that is adequate to the whole group of
+vital manifestations. Brücke, for example, of all innovators
+probably the most innovating, and denying, or
+inclined to deny, both nucleus and membrane, does not
+hesitate, according to Stricker, to speak still of cells as
+self-complete organisms, that move and grow, that nourish
+and reproduce themselves, and that perform specific
+function. “Omnis cellula e cellulâ,” is the rubric they
+work under as much now as ever. The heart of a turtle,
+they say, is not a turtle; so neither is a protoplasm-shred
+a protoplasm-cell.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This, then, is the general consideration which I think
+it necessary to premise; and it seems, almost of itself,
+to negate Mr. Huxley’s reasonings in advance, for it
+warrants us in denying that physiological clay of which
+all living things are but bricks baked, Mr. Huxley intimates,
+and in establishing in its place cells as before—living
+cells that differ infinitely the one from the other,
+and so differ from the very first moment of their existence.
+This consideration shall not be allowed to pre-termit,
+however, an examination of Mr. Huxley’s own
+proofs, which will only the more and more avail to indicate
+the difference suggested.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>These proofs, as has been said, would, by means of
+the single fulcrum of protoplasm, establish, first, the
+identity, and, second, the materiality, of all vegetable
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>and animal life. These are, shortly, the two propositions
+which we have already seen, and to which, in their
+order, we now pass.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>All organisms, then, whether animal or vegetable,
+have been understood for some time back to originate
+in and consist of cells; but the progress of physiology
+has <i>seemed</i> now to substitute for cells a single matter of
+life, protoplasm; and it is here that Mr. Huxley sees his
+cue. Mr. Huxley’s very first word is the “physical basis
+or matter of life;” and he supposes “that to many the
+idea that there is such a thing may be novel.” This, then,
+so far, is what is <i>new</i> in Mr. Huxley’s contribution. He
+seems to have said to himself, if formerly the whole
+world was thought kin in an “ideal” or formal element,
+organization, I shall now finally complete this identification
+in a “physical” or material element, protoplasm.
+In short, what at this stage we are asked to witness in
+the essay is, the identification of all living beings whatever
+in the identity of protoplasm. As there is a
+single matter, clay, which is the matter of all bricks, so
+there is a single matter, protoplasm, which is the matter
+of all organisms. “Protoplasm is the clay of the potter,
+which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay,
+separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest
+brick or sun-dried clod.” Now here I cannot
+help stopping a moment to remark that Mr. Huxley
+puts emphatically his whole soul into this sentence, and
+evidently believes it to be, if we may use the word, a
+<i>clincher</i>. But, after all, does it say much? or rather,
+does it say anything? To the question, “Of what are
+you made?” the answer, for a long time now, and by
+the great mass of human beings who are supposed civilized,
+has been “Dust.” Dust, and the same dust, has
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>been allowed to constitute us all. But materialism has
+not on that account been the irresistible result. Attention
+hitherto—and surely excusably, or even laudably in
+such a case—has been given not so much to the dust as
+to the “potter,” and the “artifice” by which he could
+so transform, or, as Mr. Huxley will have it, <i>modify</i> it.
+To ask us to say, instead of dust, clay, or even protoplasm,
+is not to ask us for much, then, seeing that even
+to Mr. Huxley there still remain both the “potter” and
+his “artifice.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But to return: To Mr. Huxley, when he says all
+bricks, being made of clay, are the same thing, we answer,
+Yes, undoubtedly, if they are made of the same
+clay. That is, the bricks are identical if the clay is
+identical; but, on the other hand, by as much as the
+clay differs will the bricks differ. And, similarly, all
+organisms can be identified only if their composing protoplasm
+can be identified. To this stake is the argument
+of Mr. Huxley bound.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This argument itself takes, as we have seen, a threefold
+course: Mr. Huxley will prove his position in this
+place by reference, firstly, to unity of faculty; secondly,
+to unity of form; and thirdly, to unity of substance. It
+is this course of proof, then, which we have now to follow,
+but taking the question of substance, as simplest,
+first, and the others later.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>By substance, Mr. Huxley understands the internal
+or chemical composition; and, with a mere reference to
+the action of reagents, he asserts the protoplasm of all
+living beings to be an identical combination of carbon,
+hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is for us to ask,
+then, Are all samples of protoplasm identical, first, in
+their chemical composition, and, second, under the action
+of the various reagents?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>On the first clause, we may say, in the first place, towards
+a proof of difference which will only cumulate, I
+hope, that, even should we grant in all protoplasm an
+identity of chemical ingredients, what is called <i>Allotropy</i>
+may still have introduced no inconsiderable variety.
+Ozone is not antozone, nor is oxygen either, though in
+chemical constitution all are alike. In the second
+place, again, we may say that, with <i>varying proportions</i>,
+the same component parts produce very various results.
+By way of illustration, it will suffice to refer to such different
+things as the proteids, gluten, albumen, fibrin,
+gelatine, etc., compared with the urinary products, urea
+and uric acid; or with the biliary products, glycocol,
+glycocolic acid, bili-rubin, bili-verdin, etc.; and yet all
+these substances, varying so much the one from the
+other, are, as protoplasm is, compounds of carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen. But, in the third place,
+we are not limited to a <i>may say</i>; we can assert the fact
+that all protoplasm is not chemically identical. All the
+tissues of the organism are called protoplasm by Mr.
+Huxley; but can we predicate chemical identity of
+muscle and bone, for example? In such cases Mr.
+Huxley, it is true, may bring the word “modified” into
+use; but the objection of modification we shall examine
+later. In the mean time, we are justified, by Mr. Huxley’s
+very argument, in regarding all organized tissues
+whatever as protoplasm; for if these tissues are not to
+be identified in protoplasm, we must suppose denied
+what it was his one business to affirm. And it is
+against that affirmation that we point to the fact of
+much chemical difference obtaining among the tissues,
+not only in the <i>proportions</i> of their fundamental elements,
+but also in the <i>addition</i> (and proportions as well)
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>of such others as chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, potash,
+soda, lime, magnesia, iron, etc. Vast differences vitally
+must be legitimately assumed for tissues that are so different
+chemically. But, in the fourth place, we have the
+authority of the Germans for asserting that the cells
+themselves—and they now, to the most advanced, are
+only protoplasm—do differ chemically, some being
+found to contain glycogen, some cholesterine, some protogon,
+and some myosin. Now such substances, let the
+chemical analogy be what it may, must still be allowed
+to introduce chemical difference. In the last place, Mr.
+Huxley’s analysis is an analysis of <i>dead</i> protoplasm, and
+indecisive, consequently, for that which lives. Mr. Huxley
+betrays sensitiveness in advance to this objection;
+for he seeks to rise above the sensitiveness and the objection
+at once by styling the latter “frivolous.” Nevertheless
+the Germans say pointedly that it is unknown
+whether the same elements are to be referred to the
+cells after as before death. Kühne does not consider
+it proved that living muscle contains syntonin; yet Mr.
+Huxley tells us, in his Physiology, that “syntonin is the
+chief constituent of muscle and flesh.” In general, we
+may say, according to Stricker, that all weight is put
+now on the examination of living tissue, and that the
+difference is fully allowed between that and dead tissue.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On the second clause now, or with regard to the action
+of reagents, these must be denied to produce the
+like result on the various forms of protoplasm. With
+reference to temperature, for example, Kühne reports
+the movements of the amoeba to be arrested in iced
+water; while, in the same medium, the ova of the trout
+furrow famously, but perish even in a warmed room.
+Others, again, we are told, may be actually dried, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>yet live. Of ova in general, in this connection, it is
+said that they live or die according as the temperature
+to which they are exposed differs little or much from
+that which is natural to the organisms producing them.
+In some, according to Max Schultze, even distilled
+water is enough to arrest movement. Now, not to
+dwell longer here, both amoeba and ova are to Mr.
+Huxley pure protoplasm; and such difference of result,
+according to difference of temperature, etc., must assuredly
+be allowed to point to a difference of original
+nature. Any conclusion so far, then, in regard to unity
+of substance, whether the chemical composition or the
+action of reagents be considered, cannot be said to bear
+out the views of Mr. Huxley.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>What now of the unities of form and power in protoplasm?
+By form, Mr. Huxley will be found to mean
+the general appearance and structure; and by faculty
+or power, the action exhibited. Now it will be very
+easy to prove that, in neither respect, do all specimens
+of protoplasm agree. Mr. Huxley’s representative protoplasm,
+it appears, is that of the nettle-sting; and he
+describes it as a granulated, semi-fluid body, contractile
+in mass, and contractile also in detail to the development
+of a species of circulation. Stricker, again,
+speaks of it as a homogeneous substance, in which any
+granules that may appear must be considered of foreign
+importation, and in which there are no evidences of circulation.
+In this last respect, then, that Mr. Huxley
+should talk of “tiny Maelstroms,” such as even in the
+silence of a tropical noon might stun us, if heard, as
+“with the roar of a great city,” may be viewed, perhaps,
+as a rise into poetry beyond the occasion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Further, according to Stricker, protoplasm varies almost
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>infinitely in consistence, in shape, in structure, and
+in function. In consistence, it is sometimes so fluid as
+to be capable of forming in drops; sometimes semi-fluid
+and gelatinous; sometimes of considerable resistance.
+In shape—for to Stricker the cells are now protoplasm—we
+have club-shaped protoplasm, globe-shaped
+protoplasm, cup-shaped protoplasm, bottle-shaped protoplasm,
+spindle-shaped protoplasm—branched, threaded,
+ciliated protoplasm,—circle-headed protoplasm—flat,
+conical, cylindrical, longitudinal, prismatic, polyhedral,
+and palisade-like protoplasm. In structure, again, it is
+sometimes uniform and sometimes reticulated into interspaces
+that contain fluid. In function, lastly—and here
+we have entered on the consideration of faculty or power—some
+protoplasm is vagrant (so to translate <i>wandernd</i>),
+and of unknown use, like the colorless blood-corpuscles.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In reference to these, as strengthening the argument,
+and throwing much light generally, I break off a moment
+to say that, very interesting as they are in themselves,
+and as Recklinghausen, in especial, has made
+them, Mr. Huxley’s theory of them disagrees considerably
+with the prevalent German one. He speaks of
+them as the source of the body in general, yet, in his
+Physiology, he talks of the spleen, the lymphatics, and
+even the liver—<i>parts</i> of the body—as <i>their</i> source.
+They are so few in number that, while Mr. Huxley is
+thankful to be able to point to the inside of the lips as
+a seat for them, they bear to the red corpuscles only
+the proportion of 1 to 450. This disproportion, however,
+is no bar to Mr. Huxley’s derivation of the latter
+from the former. But the fact is questioned. The
+Germans, generally, for their, part, describe the colorless,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>or vagrant, blood-corpuscles as probably media of
+conjugation or reparation, but acknowledge their function
+to be as yet quite unknown; while Rindfleisch,
+characterizing the spleen as the grave of the red, and
+the womb of the white, corpuscles, evidently refers the
+latter to the former. This, indeed, is a matter of direct
+assertion with Preyer, who has “shown that pieces of
+red blood-corpuscles may be eaten by the amoeboid cells
+of the frog,” and holds that the latter (the white corpuscles)
+proceed directly from the former (the red corpuscles);
+so that it seems to be determined in the
+mean time that there is no proof of the reverse being
+the fact.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In function, then, to resume, some protoplasm is vagrant,
+and of unknown use. Some again produces pepsine,
+and some fat. Some at least contains pigment.
+Then there is nerve-protoplasm, brain-protoplasm, bone-protoplasm,
+muscle-protoplasm, and protoplasm of all
+the other tissues, no one of which but produces only
+its own kind, and is uninterchangeable with the rest.
+Lastly, on this head, we have to point to the overwhelming
+fact that there is the infinitely different protoplasm
+of the various infinitely different plants and
+animals, in each of which its own protoplasm, as in the
+case of that of the various tissues, but produces its
+own kind, and is uninterchangeable with that of the
+rest.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It may be objected, indeed, that these latter are examples
+of modified protoplasm. The objection of
+modification, as said, we have to see by itself later;
+but, in the mean time, it may be asked, Where are we
+to begin, <i>not</i> to have modified protoplasm? We have
+the example of Mr. Huxley himself, who, in the nettle-sting,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>begins already with modified protoplasm; and
+we have the authority of Rindfleisch for asserting that
+“in every different tissue we must look for a different
+initial term of the productive series.” This, evidently,
+is a very strong light on the original multiplicity of
+protoplasm, which the consideration, as we have seen,
+of the various plants and animals, has made, further,
+infinite. This is enough; but there is no wish to evade
+beginning with the very beginning—with absolutely
+pure initial protoplasm, if it can but be given us in any
+reference. The simple egg—that, probably is the beginning—that,
+probably, is the original identity; yet
+even there we find already distribution of the identity
+into infinite difference. This, certainly, with reference
+to the various organisms, but with reference also to the
+various tissues. That we regard the egg as the beginning,
+and that we do not start, like the smaller exceptional
+physiological school, with molecules themselves,
+depends on this, that the great Germans so often alluded
+to, Kühne among them, still trust in the experiments
+of Pasteur; and while they do not deny the possibility,
+or even the fact, of molecular generation, still
+feel justified in denying the existence of any observation
+that yet unassailably attests a <i>generatio æquivoca</i>.
+By such authority as this the simple philosophical spectator
+has no choice but to take his stand; and therefore
+it is that I assume the egg as the established beginning,
+so far, of all vegetable and animal organisms. To the
+egg, too, as the beginning, Mr. Huxley, though the
+lining of the nettle-sting is his representative protoplasm,
+at least refers. “In the earliest condition of
+the human organism,” he says, in allusion to the white
+(vagrant) corpuscles of the blood, “in that state in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>which it has but just become distinguished from the
+egg in which it arises, it is nothing but an aggregation
+of such corpuscles, and every organ of the body was
+once no more than such an aggregation.” Now, in beginning
+with the egg—an absolute beginning being denied
+us in consequence of the pre-existent infinite
+difference of the egg or eggs themselves—we may
+gather from the German physiologists some such account
+of the actual facts as this.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The first change signalized in the impregnated egg
+seems that of <i>Furchung</i>, or furrowing—what the Germans
+call the <i>Furchungskugeln</i>, the <i>Dotterkugeln</i>, form.
+Then these <i>Kugeln</i>—clumps, eminences, monticles, we
+may translate the word—break into cells; and these
+are the cells of the embryo. Mr. Huxley, as quoted,
+refers to the whole body, and every organ of the body,
+as at first but an aggregation of colorless blood-corpuscles;
+but in the very statement which would render
+the identity alone explicit, the difference is quite as
+plainly implicit. As much as this lies in the word “organs,”
+to say nothing of “human.” The cells of the
+“organs,” to which he refers, are even then uninterchangeable,
+and produce but themselves. The Germans
+tell us of the <i>Keimblatt</i>, the germ-leaf, in which
+all these organs originate. This <i>Blatt</i>, or leaf, is threefold,
+it seems; but even these folds are not indifferent.
+The various cells have their distinct places in them from
+the first. While what in this connection are called the
+epithelial and endorthelial tissues spring respectively
+from the <i>upper</i> and <i>under</i> leaf, connective tissues, with
+muscle and blood, spring from the <i>middle</i> one. Surely
+in such facts we have a perfect warrant to assert the
+initial non-identity of protoplasm, and to insist on this,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>that, from the very earliest moment—even literally <i>ab
+ovo</i>—brain-cells only generate brain-cells, bone-cells
+bone-cells, and so on.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>These considerations on function all concern faculty
+or power; but we have to notice now that the characteristic
+and fundamental form of power is to Mr. Huxley
+<i>contractility</i>. He even quotes Goethe in proof of contractility
+being the main power or faculty of <i>Man</i>!
+Nevertheless it is to be said at once that, while there
+are differences in what protoplasm <i>is</i> contractile, all
+protoplasm is not contractile, nor dependent on contractility
+for its functions. In the former respect, for example,
+muscle, while it is the contractile tissue special, is
+also to Mr. Huxley protoplasm; yet Stricker asserts
+the inner construction of the contractile substance, of
+which muscle-fibre virtually consists, to be essentially
+different from contractile protoplasm. Here, then, we
+have the contractile <i>substance</i> proper “essentially different”
+from the contractile <i>source</i> proper. In the latter
+respect, again, we shall not call in the <i>un</i>contractible
+substances which Mr. Huxley himself denominates
+protoplasm—bread, namely, roast mutton, and boiled
+lobster; but we may ask where—even in the case of a
+living body—is the contractility of white of egg? In
+this reference, too, we may remark that Kühne, who divides
+the protoplasm of the epidermis into three classes,
+has been unable to distinguish contractility in his
+own third class. Lastly, where, in relation to the protoplasm
+of the nervous system, is there evidence of its
+contractility? Has any one pretended that thought is
+but the contraction of the brain; or is it by contraction
+that the very nerves operate contraction—the nerves
+that supply muscles, namely? Mr. Huxley himself, in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>his Physiology, describes nervous action very differently.
+There <i>conduction</i> is spoken of without a hint of contraction.
+Of the higher faculties of man I have to speak
+again; but let us just ask where, in the case of any
+pure sensation—smell, taste, touch, sound, color—is
+there proof of any contraction? Are we to suppose
+that between the physical cause of heat without and the
+mental sensation of heat within, contraction is anywhere
+interpolated? Generally, in conclusion here, while reminding
+of Virchow’s testimony to the inherent inequalities
+of cell-capacity, let us but, on the question of
+faculty, contrast the kidney and the brain, even as these
+organs are viewed by Mr. Huxley. To him the one is
+but a sieve for the extrusion of refuse: the other thinks
+Newton’s ‘Principia’ and Iliads of Homer.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Probably, then, in regard to any continuity in protoplasm
+of power, of form, or of substance, we have seen
+<i>lacunæ</i> enow. Nay, Mr. Huxley himself can be adduced
+in evidence on the same side. Not rarely do we
+find in his essay admissions of <i>probability</i> where it is
+<i>certainty</i> that is alone in place. He says, for example,
+“It is more than probable that <i>when</i> the vegetable world
+<i>is</i> thoroughly explored we <i>shall</i> find all plants in possession
+of the same powers.” When a conclusion is
+decidedly announced, it is rather disappointing to be
+told, as here, that the premises are still to collect. “<i>So
+far</i>,” he says again, “as the conditions of the manifestations
+of the phenomena of contractility have <i>yet</i> been
+studied.” Now, such a <i>so far</i> need not be <i>very far</i>;
+and we may confess in passing, that from Mr. Huxley
+the phrase, “the conditions of the <i>manifestations</i> of the
+<i>phenomena</i>” grates. We hear again that it is “the rule
+<i>rather</i> than the exception,” or that “weighty authorities
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>have <i>suggested</i>” that such and such things “probably
+occur,” or, while contemplating the nettle-sting, that
+such “<i>possible</i> complexity” in other cases “<i>dawns</i>
+upon one.” On other occasions he expresses himself
+to the effect that “perhaps it would not yet be safe to
+say that <i>all</i> forms,” etc. Nay, not only does he directly
+<i>say</i> that “it is by no means his intention to suggest
+that there is no difference between the lowest plant and
+the highest, or between plants and animals,” but he directly
+proves what he says, for he demonstrates in plants
+and animals an <i>essential difference of power</i>. Plants <i>can</i>
+assimilate inorganic matters, animals can <i>not</i>, etc.
+Again, here is a passage in which he is seen to cut his
+own “<i>basis</i>” from beneath his own feet. After telling
+us that all forms of protoplasm consist of carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen “in very complex union,”
+he continues, “To this complex combination, <i>the nature
+of which has never been determined with exactness</i>, the
+name of protein has been applied.” This, plainly, is
+an identification, on Mr. Huxley’s own part, of protoplasm
+and protein; and what is said of the one being
+necessarily true of the other, it follows that Mr. Huxley
+admits the nature of protoplasm never to have been
+determined with exactness, and that, even in his eyes,
+the <i>lis</i> is still <i>sub judice</i>. This admission is strengthened
+by the words, too, “If we use this term” (protein)
+“with such <i>caution</i> as may properly arise out of our
+<i>comparative ignorance</i> of the things for which it stands;”
+which entitle us to recommend, in consequence “of our
+<i>comparative ignorance</i> of the things for which it
+stands,” “<i>caution</i>” in the use of the term protoplasm.
+In such a state of the case we cannot wonder that Mr.
+Huxley’s own conclusion here is: Therefore “all living
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>matter is more or less albuminoid.” All living matter
+is more or less albuminoid! That, indeed, is the single
+conclusion of Mr. Huxley’s whole industry; but it is a
+conclusion that, far from requiring the intervention of
+protoplasm, had been reached long before the word
+itself had been, in this connection, used.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is in this way, then, that Mr. Huxley can be adduced
+in refutation of himself; and I think his resort
+to an epigram of Goethe’s for reduction of the powers
+of man to those of contraction, digestion, and reproduction,
+can be regarded as an admission to the same
+effect. The epigram runs thus:—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c018'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Warum treibt sich das Volk so, und schreit? Es will sich ernähren,</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>Kinder zeugen, und die nähren so gut es vermag.</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich wie er auch will.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c017'>That means, quite literally translated, “Why do the
+folks bustle and bawl? They want to feed themselves,
+get children, and then feed them as best they can; no
+man does more, let him do as he may.” This, really,
+is Mr. Huxley’s sole proof for his classification of the
+powers of man. Is it sufficient? Does it not apply
+rather to the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and
+the beasts of the field, than to man? Did Newton only
+feed himself, beget children, and then feed them? Was
+it impossible for him to do any more, let him do as
+he might? And what we ask of Newton we may ask
+of all the rest. To elevate, therefore, the passing whim
+of mere literary <i>Laune</i> into a cosmical axiom and a
+proof in place—this we cannot help adding to the other
+productions here in which Mr. Huxley appears against
+himself.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But were it impossible either for him or us to point
+to these <i>lacunæ</i>, it would still be our right and our duty
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>to refer to the present conditions of microscopic science
+in general as well as in particular, and to demur
+to the erection of its <i>dicta</i>, constituted as they yet are,
+into established columns and buttresses in support of
+any theory of life, material or other.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The most delicate and dubious of all the sciences, it
+is also the youngest. In its manipulations the slightest
+change may operate as a destructive drought, or an
+equally destructive deluge. Its very tools may positively
+create the structure it actually examines. The
+present state of the science, and what warrant it gives
+Mr. Huxley to dogmatize on protoplasm, we may understand
+from this avowal of Kühne’s: “To-day we believe
+that we see” such or such fact, “but know not
+that further improvements in the means of observation
+will not reveal what is assumed for certainty to be only
+illusion.” With such authority to lean on—and it is the
+highest we can have—we may be allowed to entertain
+the conjecture, that it is just possible that some certainties,
+even of Mr. Huxley, may yet reveal themselves as
+illusions.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But, in resistance to any sweeping conclusions built
+on it, we are not confined to a reference to the imperfections
+involved in the very nature and epoch of the
+science itself in general. With yet greater assurance
+of carrying conviction with us, we may point in particular
+to the actual opinions of its present professors.
+We have seen already, in the consideration premised,
+that Mr. Huxley’s hypothesis of a protoplasm <i>matter</i> is
+unsupported, even by the most innovating Germans,
+who as yet will not advance, the most advanced of them,
+beyond a protoplasm-cell; and that his whole argument
+is thus sapped in advance. But what threatens more
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>absolute extinction of this argument still, <i>all</i> the German
+physiologists do <i>not</i> accept even the protoplasm-cell.
+Rindfleisch, for example, in his recently-published
+‘Lehrbuch der pathologischen Gewebelehre’ speaks of
+the cell very much as we understand Virchow to have
+spoken of it. To him there is in the cell not only protoplasm
+but nucleus, and perhaps membrane as well.
+To him, too, the cell propagates itself quite as we have
+been hitherto fancying it to do, by division of the nucleus,
+increase of the protoplasm, and ultimate partition
+of the cell itself. Yet he knows withal of the
+opinions of others, and accepts them in a manner. He
+mentions Kühne’s account of the membrane as at first
+but a mere physical limit of two fluids—a mere peripheral
+film or curdling; still he assumes a formal and
+decided membrane at last. Even Leydig and Schultze,
+who shall be the express eliminators of the membrane—the
+one by initiation and the other by consummation—confess
+that, as regards the cells of certain tissues, they
+have never been able to detect in them the absence of
+a membrane.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>As regards the nucleus again, the case is very much
+stronger. When we have admitted with Brücke that
+certain cryptogam cells, with Haeckel that certain protists,
+with Cienkowsky that two monads, and with Schultze
+that one amoeba, are without nucleus—when
+we have admitted that division of the cell <i>may</i> take
+place without implicating that of the nucleus—that the
+movements of the nucleus <i>may</i> be passive and due to
+those of the protoplasm—that Baer and Stricker demonstrate
+the disappearance of the original nucleus in
+the impregnated egg,—when we have admitted this, we
+have admitted also all that can be said in degradation
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>of the nucleus. Even those who say all this still attribute
+to the nucleus an important and unknown <i>rôle</i>,
+and describe the formation in the impregnated egg of a
+new nucleus; while there are others again who resist
+every attempt to degrade it. Böttcher asserts movement
+for the nucleus, even when wholly removed from
+the cell; Neumann points to such movement in dead
+or dying cells; and there is other testimony to a like
+effect, as well as to peculiarities of the nucleus otherwise
+that indicate spontaneity. In this reference we
+may allude to the weighty opinion of the late Professor
+Goodsir, who anticipated in so remarkable a manner
+certain of the determinations of Virchow. Goodsir, in
+that anticipation, wonderfully rich and ingenious as he
+is everywhere, is perhaps nowhere more interesting and
+successful than in what concerns the nucleus. Of the
+whole cell, the nucleus is to him, as it was to Schleiden,
+Schwann, and others, the most important element.
+And this is the view to which I, who have little business
+to speak, wish success. This universe is not an
+accidental cavity, in which an accidental dust has been
+accidentally swept into heaps for the accidental evolution
+of the majestic spectacle of organic and inorganic
+life. That majestic spectacle is a spectacle as plainly
+for the eye of reason as any diagram of the mathematician.
+That majestic spectacle could have been constructed,
+was constructed, only in reason, for reason,
+and by reason. From beyond Orion and the Pleiades,
+across the green hem of earth, up to the imperial personality
+of man, all, the furthest, the deadest, the dustiest,
+is for fusion in the invisible point of the single
+Ego—<i>which alone glorifies it</i>. <i>For</i> the subject, and on
+the model of the subject, all is made. Therefore it is
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>that—though, precisely as there are acephalous monsters
+by way of exception and deformity, there may be
+also at the very extremity of animated existence cells
+without a nucleus—I cannot help believing that this
+nucleus itself, as analogue of the subject will yet be
+proved the most important and indispensable of all the
+normal cell-elements. Even the phenomena of the impregnated
+egg seem to me to support this view. In the
+egg, on impregnation, it seems to me natural (I say it
+with a smile) that the old sun that ruled it should go
+down, and that a new sun, stronger in the combination
+of the new and the old, should ascend into its place!</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Be these things as they may, we have now overwhelming
+evidence before us for concluding, with reference to
+Mr. Huxley’s first proposition, that—in view of the nature
+of microscopic science—in view of the state of
+belief that obtains at present as regards nucleus, membrane,
+and entire cell—even in view of the supporters
+of protoplasm itself—Mr. Huxley is not authorized to
+speak of a physical matter of life; which, for the rest,
+if granted, would, for innumerable and, as it appears to
+me, irrefragable reasons, be obliged to acknowledge for
+itself, not identity, but an infinite diversity in power, in
+form and in substance.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>So much for the first proposition in Mr. Huxley’s essay,
+or that which concerns protoplasm, as a supposed
+matter of life, identical itself, and involving the identity
+of all the various organs and organisms which it is assumed
+to compose. What now of the second proposition,
+or that which concerns the materiality at once of
+protoplasm, and of all that is conceived to derive from
+protoplasm? In other words, though, so to speak, for
+organic bricks anything like an organic clay still awaits
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>the proof, I ask, if the bricks are not the same because
+the clay is not the same, what if the materiality of the
+former is equally unsupported by the materiality of the
+latter? Or what if the functions of protoplasm are not
+properties of its mere molecular constitution?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>For this is Mr. Huxley’s second proposition, namely,
+That all vital and intellectual functions are but the
+properties of the molecular disposition and changes of
+the material basis (protoplasm) of which the various
+animals and vegetables consist. With the conclusions
+now before us, it is evident that to enter at all on this
+part of Mr. Huxley’s argumentation is, so far as we
+are concerned, only a matter of grace. In order that
+it should have any weight, we must grant the fact, at
+once of the existence of a matter of life, and of all organs
+and organisms being but aggregates of it. This,
+obviously, we cannot now do. By way of hypothesis,
+however, we may assume it. Let it be granted, then,
+that <i>pro hac vice</i> there <i>is</i> a physical basis of life with all
+the consequences named; and now let us see how Mr.
+Huxley proceeds to establish its materiality.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The whole former part of Mr. Huxley’s essay consists
+(as said) of fifty paragraphs, and the argument immediately
+concerned is confined to the latter ten of them.
+This argument is the simple chemical analogy that, under
+stimulus of an electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen
+uniting into an equivalent weight of water, and, under
+stimulus of preëxisting protoplasm, carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen uniting into an equivalent weight
+of protoplasm, there is the same warrant for attributing
+the properties of the consequent to the properties
+of the antecedents in the latter case as in the former.
+The properties of protoplasm are, in origin and character,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>precisely on the same level as the properties of water.
+The cases are perfectly parallel. It is as absurd
+to attribute a new entity vitality to protoplasm, as a new
+entity aquosity to water. Or, if it is by its mere chemical
+and physical structure that water exhibits certain
+properties called aqueous, it is also by its mere chemical
+and physical structure that protoplasm exhibits certain
+properties called vital. All that is necessary in
+either case is, “under certain conditions,” to bring the
+chemical constituents together. If water is a molecular
+complication, protoplasm is equally a molecular complication,
+and for the description of the one or the
+other there is no change of language required. A new
+substance with new qualities results in precisely the
+same way here, as a new substance with new qualities
+there; and the derivative qualities are not more different
+from the primitive qualities in the one instance,
+than the derivative qualities are different from the primitive
+qualities in the other. Lastly, the <i>modus operandi</i>
+of preëxistent protoplasm is not more unintelligible than
+that of the electric spark. The conclusion is irresistible,
+then, that all protoplasm being reciprocally convertible,
+and consequently identical, the properties it
+displays, vitality and intellect included, are as much
+the result of molecular constitution as those of water
+itself.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is evident, then, that the fulcrum on which Mr.
+Huxley’s second proposition rests, is a single inference
+from a chemical analogy. Analogy, however, being
+never identity, is apt to betray. The difference it hides
+may be essential, that is, while the likeness it shows
+may be inessential—so far as the conclusion is concerned.
+That this mischance has overtaken Mr. Huxley
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>here, it will, I fancy, not be difficult to demonstrate.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The analogy to which Mr. Huxley trusts has two references:
+one, to chemical composition, and one to a
+certain stimulus that determines it. As regards chemical
+composition, we are asked, by virtue of the analogy
+obtaining, to identify, as equally simple instances of it,
+protoplasm here and water there; and, as regards the
+stimulus in question, we are asked to admit the action
+of the electric spark in the one case to be quite analogous
+to the action of preëxisting protoplasm in the
+other. In both references I shall endeavor to point
+out that the analogy fails; or, as we may say it also,
+that, even to Mr. Huxley, it can only seem to succeed
+by discounting the elements of difference that still
+subsist.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>To begin with chemical combination, it is not unjust
+to demand that the analogy which must be admitted to
+exist in that, and a general physical respect, should not
+be strained beyond its legitimate limits. Protoplasm
+cannot be denied to be a chemical substance; protoplasm
+cannot be denied to be a physical substance. As
+a compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen,
+it comports itself chemically—at least in ultimate instance—in
+a manner not essentially different from that
+in which water, as a compound of hydrogen and oxygen,
+comports itself chemically. In mere physical aspect,
+again, it may count quality for quality with water
+in the same aspect. In short, so far as it is on chemical
+and physical structure that the possession of distinctive
+properties in any case depends, both bodies
+may be allowed to be pretty well on a par. The analogy
+must be allowed to hold so far: so far but no
+farther. One step farther and we see not only that
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>protoplasm has, like water, a chemical and physical
+structure; but that, unlike water, it has also an organized
+or organic structure. Now this, on the part of
+protoplasm, is a possession in excess; and with relation
+to that excess there can be no grounds for analogy.
+This, perhaps, is what Mr. Huxley has omitted
+to consider. When insisting on attributing to protoplasm
+the qualities it possessed, because of its chemical
+and physical structure, if it was for chemical and physical
+structure that we attributed to water <i>its</i> qualities,
+he has simply forgotten the addition to protoplasm of a
+third structure that can only be named organic. “If
+the phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so
+are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its
+properties.” When Mr. Huxley speaks thus, Exactly
+so, we may answer: “living or dead!” That alternative
+is simply slipped in and passed; but it is in that
+alternative that the whole matter lies. Chemically,
+dead protoplasm is to Mr. Huxley quite as good as
+living protoplasm. As a sample of the article, he is
+quite content with dead protoplasm, and even swallows
+it, he says, in the shape of bread, lobster, mutton, etc.,
+with all the satisfactory results to be desired.—Still, as
+concerns the argument, it must be pointed out that it is
+only these that can be placed on the same level as water;
+and that living protoplasm is not only unlike water,
+but it is unlike dead protoplasm. Living protoplasm,
+namely, is identical with dead protoplasm only so far as
+its chemistry is concerned (if even so much as that);
+and it is quite evident, consequently, that difference between
+the two cannot depend on that in which they are
+identical—cannot depend on the chemistry. Life, then,
+is no affair of chemical and physical structure, and must
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>find its explanation in something else. It is thus that,
+lifted high enough, the light of the analogy between
+water and protoplasm is seen to go out. Water, in fact,
+when formed from hydrogen and oxygen, is, in a certain
+way and in relation to them, no new product; it
+has still, like them, only chemical and physical qualities;
+it is still, as they are, inorganic. So far as <i>kind</i>
+of power is concerned, they are still on the same level.
+But not so protoplasm, where, with preservation of the
+chemical and physical likeness there is the addition of
+the unlikeness of life, of organization, and of ideas.
+But the addition is a new world—a new and higher
+world, the world of a self-realizing thought, the world
+of an <i>entelechy</i>. The change of language objected to
+by Mr. Huxley is thus a matter of necessity, for it is
+<i>not</i> mere molecular complication that we have any
+longer before us, and the qualities of the derivative are
+essentially and absolutely different from the qualities
+of the primitive. If we did invent the term aquosity,
+then, as an abstract sign for all the qualities of water,
+we should really do very little harm; but aquosity and
+vitality would still remain essentially unlike. While for
+the invention of aquosity there is little or no call, however,
+the fact in the other case is that we are not only
+compelled to invent, but to <i>perceive</i> vitality. We are
+quite willing to do as Mr. Huxley would have us to do:
+look on, watch the phenomena, and name the results.
+But just in proportion to our faithfulness in these respects
+is the necessity for the recognition of a new
+world and a new nomenclature. There are certainly
+different states of water, as ice and steam; but the relation
+of the solid to the liquid, or of either to the vapor,
+surely offers no analogy to the relation of protoplasm
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>dead to protoplasm alive. That relation is not
+an analogy but an antithesis, the antithesis of antitheses.
+In it, in fact, we are in presence of the one incommunicable
+gulf—the gulf of all gulfs—that gulf
+which Mr. Huxley’s protoplasm is as powerless to
+efface as any other material expedient that has ever
+been suggested since the eyes of men first looked into
+it—the mighty gulf between death and life.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The differences alluded to (they are, in order, organization
+and life, the objective idea—design, and the subjective
+idea—thought), it may be remarked, are admitted
+by those very Germans to whom protoplasm, name
+and thing, is due. They, the most advanced and innovating
+of them, directly avow that there is present in
+the cell “an architectonic principle that has not yet
+been detected.” In pronouncing protoplasm capable
+of active or vital movements, they do by that refer, they
+admit also, to an immaterial force, and they ascribe the
+processes exhibited by protoplasm—in so many words—not
+to the molecules, but to organization and life. It is
+remarked by Kant that “the reason of the specific
+mode of existence of every part of a living body lies in
+the whole, whilst with dead masses each part bears this
+reason within itself;” and this indeed is how the two
+worlds are differentiated. A drop of water, once
+formed, is there passive for ever, susceptible to influence,
+but indifferent to influence, and what influence
+reaches it is wholly from without. It may be added to,
+it may be subtracted from; but infinitely apathetic
+quantitatively, it is qualitatively independent. It is indifferent
+to its own physical parts. It is without contractility,
+without alimentation, without reproduction,
+without specific function. Not so the cell, in which the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>parts are dependent on the whole, and the whole on
+the parts; which has its activity and <i>raison d’être</i> within;
+which manifests all the powers which we have described
+water to want; and which requires for its continuance
+conditions of which water is independent. It is only
+so far as organization and life are concerned, however,
+that the cell is thus different from water. Chemically
+and physically, as said, it can show with it quality
+for quality. How strangely Mr. Huxley’s deliverances
+show beside these facts! He can “see no break in the
+series of steps in molecular complication;” but, glaringly
+obvious, there is a step added that is not molecular
+at all, and that has its supporting conditions completely
+elsewhere. The molecules are as fully accounted
+for in protoplasm as in water; but the sum of qualities,
+thus exhausted in the latter, is not so exhausted in the
+former, in which there are qualities due, plainly, not to
+the molecules as molecules, but to the form into which
+they are thrown, and the force that makes that form
+one. When the chemical elements are brought together,
+Mr. Huxley says, protoplasm is formed, “and this protoplasm
+exhibits the phenomena of life;” but he ought
+to have added that these phenomena are themselves
+added to the phenomena for which all that relates to
+chemistry stands, and are there, consequently, only by
+reason of some other determinant. New consequents
+necessarily demand new antecedents. “We think fit
+to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen,
+and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers
+and activities of these substances as the properties of
+the matter of which they are composed.” That, doubtless,
+is true, we say; but such statements do not exhaust
+the facts. We call water hydrogen and oxygen,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>and attribute <i>its</i> properties to the properties of them.
+In a chemical point of view, we ought to do the same
+thing for ice and steam; yet, for all the chemical identity,
+water is not ice, nor is either steam. Do we, then,
+in these cases, make nothing of the <i>difference</i>, and in
+its despite enjoy the satisfaction of viewing the three
+as one? Not so; we ask a reason for the difference;
+we demand an antecedent that shall render the consequent
+intelligible. The chemistry of oxygen and hydrogen
+is not enough in explanation of the threefold
+form; and by the very necessity of the facts we are
+driven to the addition of heat. It is precisely so with
+protoplasm in its twofold form. The chemistry remaining
+the same in each (if it really does so), we are compelled
+to seek elsewhere a reason for the difference of
+living from dead protoplasm. As the differences of ice
+and steam from water lay not in the hydrogen and oxygen,
+but in the heat, so the difference of living from
+dead protoplasm lies not in the carbon, the hydrogen,
+the oxygen, and the nitrogen, but in the vital organization.
+In all cases, for the new quality, plainly, we must
+have a new explanation. The qualities of a steam-engine
+are not the results of its simple chemistry. We
+do apply to protoplasm the same conceptions, then, that
+are legitimate elsewhere, and in allocating properties
+and explaining phenomena we simply insist on Mr.
+Huxley’s own distinction of “living or dead.” That,
+in fact, is to us the distinction of distinctions, and we
+admit no vital action whatever, not even the dullest, to
+be the result of the <i>molecular</i> action of the protoplasm
+that displays it. The very protoplasm of the nettle-sting,
+with which Mr. Huxley begins, is already vitally
+organized, and in that organization as much superior to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>its own molecules as the steam-engine, in its mechanism,
+to its own wood and iron. It were indeed as rational
+to say that there is no principle concerned in a
+steam-engine or a watch but that of its molecular
+forces, as to make this assertion of organized matter.
+Still there are degrees in organization, and the highest
+forms of life are widely different from the lowest. Degrees
+similar we see even in the inorganic world. The
+persistent flow of a river is, to the mighty reason of the
+solar system, in some such proportion, perhaps, as the
+rhizopod to man. In protoplasm, even the lowest, then,
+but much more conspicuously in the highest, there is,
+in addition to the molecular force, another force unsignalized
+by Mr. Huxley—the force of vital organization.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But this force is a rational unity, and that is an idea;
+and this I would point to as a second form of the addition
+to the chemistry and physics of protoplasm. We
+have just seen, it is true, that an idea may be found in
+inorganic matter, as in the solar and sidereal systems
+generally. But the idea in organized matter is not one
+operative, so to speak, from without: it is one operative
+from within, and in an infinitely more intimate and pervading
+manner. The units that form the complement
+of an inorganic system are but independently and externally
+in place, like units in a procession; but in what
+is organized there is no individual that is not sublated
+into the unity of the single life. This is so even in protoplasm.
+Mr. Huxley, it is true, desiderates, as result
+of mere ordinary chemical process, a life-stuff in mass,
+as it were in the web, to which he has only to resort for
+cuttings and cuttings in order to produce, by aggregation,
+what organized individual he pleases. But the
+facts are not so: we cannot have protoplasm in the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>web, but the piece. There is as yet no <i>matter</i> of life;
+there are still <i>cells</i> of life. It is no shred of protoplasm—no
+spoonful or toothpickful—that can be recognized
+as adequate to the function and the name. Such shred
+may wriggle a moment, but it produces nought, and it
+dies. In the smallest, lowest protoplasm-cell, then, we
+have this rational unity of a complement of individuals
+that only are for the whole and exist in the whole.
+This is an idea, therefore; this is design: the organized
+concert of many to a single common purpose. The
+rudest savage that should, as in Paley’s illustration,
+find a watch, and should observe the various contrivances
+all controlled by the single end in view, would be
+obliged to acknowledge—though in his own way—that
+what he had before him was no mere physical, no mere
+molecular product. So in protoplasm: even from the
+first, but, quite undeniably, in the completed organization
+at last, which alone it was there to produce; for a
+single idea has been its one manifestation throughout.
+And in what machinery does it not at length issue?
+Was it molecular powers that invented a respiration—that
+perforated the posterior ear to give a balance of
+air—that compensated the <i>fenestra ovalis</i> by a <i>fenestra
+rotunda</i>—that placed in the auricular sacs those <i>otolithes</i>,
+those express stones for hearing? Such machinery!
+The <i>chordæ tendineæ</i> are to the valves of the heart exactly
+adjusted check-strings; and the contractile
+<i>columnæ carneæ</i> are set in, under contraction and expansion,
+to equalize their length to their office. Membranes,
+rods, and liquids—it required the express experiment
+of man to make good the fact that the
+inventor of the ear had availed himself of the most
+perfect apparatus possible for his purpose. And are we
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>to conceive such machinery, such apparatus, such contrivances
+merely molecular? Are molecules adequate
+to such things—molecules in their blind passivity, and
+dead, dull insensibility? Is it to molecular agency Mr.
+Huxley himself owes that “singular inward laboratory”
+of which he speaks, and without which all the protoplasm
+in the world would be useless to him? Surely,
+in the presence of these manifest ideas, it is impossible
+to attribute the single peculiar feature of protoplasm—its
+vitality, namely—to mere molecular chemistry. Protoplasm,
+it is true, breaks up into carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen, as water does into hydrogen and
+oxygen; but the watch breaks similarly up into mere
+brass, and steel, and glass. The loose materials of
+the watch—even its chemical material if you will—replace
+its weight, quite as accurately as the constituents
+carbon, etc., replace the weight of the protoplasm.
+But neither these nor those replace the vanished idea,
+which was alone the important element. Mr. Huxley
+saw no break in the series of steps in molecular complication;
+but, though not molecular, it is difficult to
+understand what more striding, what more absolute
+break could be desired than the break into an idea. It
+is of that break alone that we think in the watch; and
+it is of that break alone that we should think in the
+protoplasm which, far more cunningly, far more rationally,
+constructs a heart, an eye or an ear. That is the
+break of breaks, and explain it as we may, we shall
+never explain it by molecules.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But, if inorganic elements as such are inadequate to
+account either for vital organization or the objective
+idea of design, much more are they inadequate, in the
+third place, to account for the subjective idea, for the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>phenomena of thought as thought. Yet Mr. Huxley
+tells us that thought is but the expression of the molecular
+changes of protoplasm. This he only tells us;
+this he does not prove. He merely says that, if we admit
+the functions of the lowest forms of life to be but
+“direct results of the nature of the matter of which
+they are composed,” we must admit as much for the
+functions of the highest. We have not admitted Mr.
+Huxley’s presupposition; but, even with its admission,
+we should not feel bound to admit his conclusion. In
+such a mighty system of differences, there are ample
+room and verge enough for the introduction of new motives.
+We can say here at once, in fact, that as thought,
+let its connection be what it may with, has never been
+proved to result from, organization, no improvement of
+the proof required will be found in protoplasm. No one
+power that Mr. Huxley signalizes in protoplasm can account
+for thought: not alimentation, and not reproduction,
+certainly; but not even contractility. We have
+seen already that there is no proof of contraction being
+necessary even for the simplest sensation; but much
+less is there any proof of a necessity of contraction for
+the inner and independent operations of the mind. Mr.
+Huxley himself admits this. He says: “Speech, gesture,
+and every other form of human action are, in the
+long-run, resolvable into muscular contraction;” and so,
+“even those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and
+of will, which we rightly name the higher faculties, are
+not excluded from this classification, inasmuch as to
+every one <i>but the subject of them</i>, they are known only as
+transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of
+the body.” The concession is made here, we see that
+these manifestations are differently known to the subject
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>of them. But we may first object that, if even that
+privileged “every one but the subject” were limited to
+a knowledge of contractions, he would not know much.
+It is only because he knows, first of all, a thinker and
+willer of contractions that these themselves cease to be
+but passing externalities, and transitory contingencies.
+Neither is it reasonable to assert an identity of nature
+for contractions, and for that which they only represent.
+It would hardly be fair to confound either the receiver
+or the sender of a telegraphic message, with the movements
+which alone bore it, and without which it would
+have been impossible. The sign is not the thing signified,
+it is but the servant of the signifier—his own arbitrary
+mark—and intelligible, in the first place, only to
+him. It is the meaning, in all cases, that is alone vital;
+the sign is but an accident. To convert the internality
+into the arbitrary externality that simply expresses it, is
+for Mr. Huxley only an oversight. Your ideas are
+made known to your neighbors by contractions, therefore
+your ideas are of the same nature as contractions!
+Or, even to take it from the other side, your neighbor
+perceives in you contractions only, and therefore your
+ideas are contractions! Are not the vital elements
+here present the two correspondent internalities, between
+which the contractions constitute but an arbitrary
+chain of external communication, that is so now, but
+may be otherwise again? The ringing of the bell at
+the window is not precisely the dwarf within. Nor are
+Engineer Chappe’s “wooden arms and elbow-joints
+jerking and fugling in the air,” to be identified with
+Engineer Chappe himself. For the higher faculties,
+even for speech, etc., assuredly Mr. Huxley might have
+well spared himself this superfluous and inapplicable
+reference to contraction.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>But, in the middle of it, as we have seen, Mr. Huxley
+concedes that these manifestations are differently known
+to the subject of them. If so, what becomes of his
+assertion of but a certain number of powers for protoplasm?
+The manifestations of the higher faculties are
+not known to the subject of them by contraction, etc.
+By what, then, are they known? According to Mr.
+Huxley, they can only be known by the powers of protoplasm;
+and therefore, by his own showing, protoplasm
+must possess powers other than those of his own assertion.
+Mr. Huxley’s one great power of contractility,
+Mr. Huxley himself confesses to be inapplicable here.
+Indeed, in his Physiology (p. 193), he makes such an
+avowal as this: “We class <i>sensations</i>, along with <i>emotions</i>,
+and <i>volitions</i>, and <i>thoughts</i>, under the common
+head of states of <i>consciousness</i>; but what consciousness
+is we know not, and how it is that anything so remarkable
+as a state of consciousness comes about as the result
+of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable
+as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed
+his lamp in the story.” Consciousness plainly was not
+muscular contraction to Mr. Huxley when he wrote his
+Physiology; it is only since then that he has gone over
+to the assertion of no power in protoplasm but the triple
+power, contractility, etc. But the truth is only as his
+Physiology has it—the cleft is simply, as Mr. Huxley
+acknowledges it there, absolute. On one side, there is
+the world of externality, where all is body by body,
+and away from one another—the boundless reciprocal
+exclusion of the infinite object. On the other side,
+there is the world of internality, where all is soul to
+soul, and away into one another—the boundless reciprocal
+inclusion of the infinite subject. This—even
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>while it is true that, for subject to be subject, and object,
+object, the boundless intussuscepted multiplicity
+of the single invisible point of the one is but the dimensionless
+casket into which the illimitable Genius of the
+other must retract and withdraw itself—is the difference
+of differences; and certainly it is not internality
+that can be abolished before externality. The proof
+for the absoluteness of thought, the subject, the mind,
+is, on its side, pretty well perfect. It is not necessary
+here, however, to enter into that proof at length. Before
+passing on, I may simply point to the fact that, if
+thought is to be called a function of matter, it must be
+acknowledged to be a function wholly peculiar and unlike
+any other. In all other functions, we are present
+to processes which are in the same sense physical as
+the organs themselves. So it is with lung, stomach,
+liver, kidney, where every step can be followed, so to
+speak, with eye and hand; but all is changed when we
+have to do with mind as the function of brain. Then,
+indeed, as Mr. Huxley thought in his Physiology, we are
+admitted, as if by touch of Aladdin’s lamp, to a world
+absolutely different and essentially new—to a world, on
+its side of the incommunicable cleft, as complete, entire,
+independent, self-contained, and absolutely <i>sui
+generis</i>, as the world of matter on the other side. It
+will be sufficient here to allude to as much as this, with
+special reference to the fact that, so far as this argument
+is concerned, protoplasm has not introduced any
+the very slightest difference. All the ancient reasons
+for the independence of thought as against organization,
+can be used with even more striking effect as
+against protoplasm; but it will be sufficient to indicate
+this, so much are the arguments in question a common
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>property now. Thought, in fact, brings with it its own
+warrant; or it brings with it, to use the phrase of Burns,
+“its patent of nobility direct from Almighty God.”
+And that is the strongest argument on this whole side.
+Throughout the entire universe, organic and inorganic,
+thought is the controlling sovereign; nor does matter
+anywhere refuse its allegiance. So it is in thought, too,
+that man has <i>his</i> patent of nobility, believes that he is
+created in the image of God, and knows himself a free-man
+of infinitude.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But the analogy, in the hands of Mr. Huxley, has, we
+have seen, a second reference—that, namely, to the excitants,
+if we may call them so, which <i>determine</i> combination.
+The <i>modus operandi</i>, Mr. Huxley tells us, of
+preëxisting protoplasm in determining the formation of
+new protoplasm, is not more unintelligible than the
+<i>modus operandi</i> of the electric spark in determining the
+formation of water; and so both, we are left to infer,
+are perfectly analogous. The inferential turn here is
+rather a favorite with Mr. Huxley. “But objectors of
+this class,” he says on an earlier occasion, in allusion
+to those who hesitate to conclude from dead to living
+matter, “do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness,
+true that we know nothing about the composition
+of any body whatever as it is.” In the same neighborhood,
+too, he argues that, though impotent to restore
+to decomposed calc-spar its original form, we do not
+hesitate to accept the chemical analysis assigned to it,
+and should not, consequently, any more hesitate because
+of any mere difference of form to accept the analysis
+of dead for that of living protoplasm. It is certainly
+fair to point out that, if we bear ignorance and
+impotence with equanimity in one case, we may equally
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>so bear them in another; but it is not fair to convert
+ignorance into knowledge, nor impotence into power.
+Yet it is usual to take such statements loosely, and let
+them pass. It is not considered that, if we know nothing
+about the composition of any body whatever as it
+is, then we do know nothing, and that it is strangely
+idle to offer absolute ignorance as a support for the
+most dogmatic knowledge. If such statements are, as
+is really expected for them, to be accepted, yet not accepted,
+they are the stultification of all logic. Is the
+chemistry of living to be seen to be the same as the
+chemistry of dead protoplasm, because we know nothing
+about the composition of any body whatever as it
+is? We know perfectly well that black is white, for we
+are absolutely ignorant of either as it is! The <i>form</i> of
+the calc-spar, which (the spar) we <i>can</i> analyze, we cannot
+restore; therefore the <i>form</i> of the protoplasm, which
+we <i>cannot</i> analyze, has nothing to do with the matter in
+hand; and the chemistry of what is dead may be accepted
+as the chemistry of what is living! In the case
+of reasoning so irrelevant it is hardly worth while referring
+to what concerns the forms themselves; that they
+are totally incommensurable, that in all forms of calc-spar
+there is no question but of what is physical, while
+in protoplasm the change of form is introduction into
+an entire new world. As in these illustrations, so in
+the case immediately before us. No appeal to ignorance
+in regard to something else, the electric spark,
+should be allowed to transform another ignorance, that
+of the action of preëxisting protoplasm, into knowledge,
+here into <i>the</i> knowledge that the two unknown things,
+because of non-knowledge, are—perfectly analogous!
+That this analogy does not exist—that the electric spark
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>and preëxisting protoplasm are, in their relative places,
+<i>not</i> on the same chemical level—this is the main point
+for us to see; and Mr. Huxley’s allusion to our ignorance
+must not be allowed to blind us to it. Here we
+have in a glass vessel so much hydrogen and oxygen,
+into which we discharge an electric spark, and water is
+the result. Now what analogy is it possible to perceive
+between this production of water by external experiment
+and the production of protoplasm by protoplasm?
+The discrepancy is so palpable that it were impertinent
+to enlarge on it. The truth is just this, that the measured
+and mixed gases, the vessel, and the spark, in the
+one case, are as unlike the fortuitous food, the living
+organs, and the long process of assimilation in the
+other case, as the product water is unlike the product
+protoplasm. No; that the action of the electric spark
+should be unknown, is no reason why we should not insist
+on protoplasm for protoplasm, on life for life. Protoplasm
+can only be produced by protoplasm, and each
+of all the innumerable varieties of protoplasm, only by
+its own kind. For the protoplasm of the worm we
+must go to the worm, and for that of the toad-stool to
+the toad-stool. In fact, if all living beings come from
+protoplasm, it is quite as certain that, but for living beings,
+protoplasm would disappear. Without an egg you
+cannot have a hen—that is true; but it is equally true
+that, without a hen, you cannot have an egg. So in
+protoplasm; which, consequently, in the production of
+itself, offers no analogy to the production, or precipitation
+by the electric spark, not of itself, but of water.
+Besides, if for protoplasm, preëxisting protoplasm, is
+always necessary, how was there ever a first protoplasm?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>Generally, then, Mr. Huxley’s analogy does not hold,
+whether in the one reference or the other, and Mr.
+Huxley has no warrant for the reduction of protoplasm
+to the mere chemical level which he assigns it in either.
+That level is brought very prominently forward in such
+expressions as these: That it is only necessary to
+bring the chemical elements “together,” “under certain
+conditions,” to give rise to the more complex body,
+protoplasm, just as there is a similar expedient to give
+rise to water; and that, under the influence of preëxisting
+living protoplasm, carbonic acid, water, and
+ammonia disappear, and an equivalent weight of protoplasm
+makes its appearance, just as, under the influence
+of the electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen disappear,
+and an equivalent weight of water makes its appearance.
+All this, plainly, is to assume for protoplasm
+such mere chemical place and nature as consist not
+with the facts. The cases are, in truth, not parallel,
+and the “certain conditions” are wholly diverse. All
+that is said we can do at will for water, but nothing of
+what is said can we do at will for protoplasm. To say
+we can feed protoplasm, and so make protoplasm at will
+produce protoplasm, is very much, in the circumstances,
+only to say, and is not to say, that, in this way, we make
+a chemical experiment. To insist on a chemical analogy,
+in fact, between water and protoplasm, is to omit
+the differences not covered by the analogy at all—thought,
+design, life, and all the processes of organization;
+and it is but simple procedure to omit these differences
+only by an appeal to ignorance elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is hardly worth while, perhaps, to refer now again
+to the difference—here, however, once more incidentally
+suggested—between protoplasm and protoplasm.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>Mr. Huxley, that is, almost in his very last word on this
+part of the argument, seems to become aware of the
+bearing of this on what relates to materiality, and he
+would again stamp protoplasm (and with it life and intellect),
+into an indifferent identity. In order that there
+should be no break between the lowest functions and
+the highest (the functions of the fungus and the functions
+of man), he has “endeavored to prove,” he says,
+that the protoplasm of the lowest organisms is “essentially
+identical with, and most readily converted into
+that of any animal.” On this alleged reciprocal <i>convertibility</i>
+of protoplasm, then, Mr. Huxley would again
+found as well an inference of identity, as the further
+conclusion that the functions of the highest, not less
+than those of the lowest animals, are but the molecular
+manifestations of their common protoplasm.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plainly here it is only the consideration, not of function,
+but of the alleged reciprocal <i>convertibility</i> that is
+left us now. Is this true, then? Is it true that every
+organism can digest every other organism, and that
+thus a relation of identity is established between that
+which digests and whatever is digested? These questions
+place Mr. Huxley’s general enterprise, perhaps,
+in the most glaring light yet; for it is very evident that
+there is an end of the argument if all foods and all
+feeders are essentially identical both with themselves
+and with each other. The facts of the case, however,
+I believe to be too well known to require a single word
+here on my part. It is not long since Mr. Huxley himself
+pointed out the great difference between the foods
+of plants and the foods of animals; and the reader
+may be safely left to think for himself of <i>ruminantia</i>
+and <i>carnivora</i>, of soft bills and hard bills, of molluscs
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>and men. Mr. Huxley talks feelingly of the possibility
+of himself feeding the lobster quite as much as of the
+lobster feeding him; but such pathos is not always applicable;
+it is not likely that a sponge would be to the
+stomach of Mr. Huxley any more than Mr. Huxley to
+the stomach of a sponge.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But a more important point is this, that the functions
+themselves remain quite apart from the alleged convertibility.
+We can neither acquire the functions of what
+we eat, nor impart our functions to what eats us. We
+shall not come to fly by feeding on vultures, nor they to
+speak by feeding on us. No possible manure of human
+brains will enable a corn-field to reason. But if
+functions are inconvertible, the convertibility of the protoplasm
+is idle. In this inconvertibility, indeed, functions
+will be seen to be independent of mere chemical composition.
+And that is the truth: for functions there is more
+required than either chemistry or physics.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is to be acknowledged—to notice one other incidental
+suggestion, for the sake of completeness, and by
+way of transition to the final consideration of possible
+objections—that Mr. Huxley would be very much assisted
+in his identification of differences, were but the
+theories of the molecularists, on the one hand, and of
+Mr. Darwin, on the other, once for all established. The
+three modes of theorizing indicated, indeed, are not
+without a tendency to approach one another; and it is
+precisely their union that would secure a definitive triumph
+for the doctrine of materialism. Mr. Huxley, as
+we have seen—though what he desiderates is an auto-plastic
+living <i>matter</i> that, produced by ordinary chemical
+processes, is yet capable of continuing and developing
+itself into new and higher forms—still begins with
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>the egg. Now the theory of the molecularists would,
+for its part, remove all the difficulties that, for materialism,
+are involved in this beginning; it would place protoplasm
+undeniably at length on a merely chemical
+level; and would fairly enable Mr. Darwin, supplemented
+by such a life-stuff, to account by natural means
+for everything like an idea or thought that appears in
+creation. The misfortune is, however, that we must
+believe the theory of the molecularists still to await the
+proof; while the theory of Mr. Darwin has many difficulties
+peculiar to itself. This theory, philosophically,
+or in ultimate analysis, is an attempt to prove that design,
+or the objective idea, especially in the organic
+world, is developed <i>in time</i> by natural means. The time
+which Mr. Darwin demands, it is true, is an infinite
+time; and he thus gains the advantage of his processes
+being allowed greater <i>clearness</i> for the understanding, in
+consequence of the <i>obscurity</i> of the infinite past in
+which they are placed, and of which it is difficult in the
+first instance to deny any possibility whatever. Still it
+remains to be asked, Are such processes credible in any
+time? What Mr. Darwin has done in aid of his view
+is, first, to lay before us a knowledge of facts in natural
+history of surprising richness; and, second, to support
+this knowledge by an inexhaustible ingenuity of hypothesis
+in arrangement of appearances. Now, in both respects,
+whether for information or even interest, the
+value of Mr. Darwin’s contribution will probably always
+remain independent of the argument or arguments that
+might destroy his leading proposition; and it is with
+this proposition that we have here alone to do. As
+said, we ask only, Is it true that the objective idea, the
+design which we see in the organized world, is the result
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>in infinite time of the necessary adaption of living
+structures to the peculiarities of the conditions by which
+they are surrounded?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Against this theory, then, its own absolute generalization
+may be viewed as our first objection. In ultimate
+abstraction, that is, the only agency postulated by
+Mr. Darwin is time—infinite time; and as regards actually
+existent beings and actually existent conditions,
+it is hardly possible to deny any possibility whatever to
+infinitude. If told, for example, that the elephant, if
+only obliged <i>infinitely</i> to run, might be converted into
+the stag, how should we be able to deny? So also, if
+the lengthening of the giraffe’s neck were hypothetically
+attributed to a succession of dearths in infinite time
+that only left the leaves of trees for long-necked animals
+to live on, we should be similarly situated as regards
+denial. Still it can be pointed out that ingenuity
+of natural conjecture has, in such cases, no less wide a
+field for the negation than for the affirmation; and
+that, on the question of fact, nothing is capable of being
+determined. But we can also say more than that—we
+can say that any fruitful application even of <i>infinite
+time</i> to the <i>general problem of difference</i> in the world is
+inconceivable. To explain all from an absolute beginning
+requires us to commence with nothing; but to this
+nothing time itself is an addition. Time is an entity, a
+something, a difference added to the original identity:
+whence or how came time? Time cannot account for
+its own self; how is it that there is such a thing as time?
+Then no conceivable brooding even of infinite time
+could hatch the infinitude of space. How is it there is
+such a thing as space? No possible clasps of time and
+space, further, could ever conceivably thicken into matter.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>How is it there is such a thing as matter? Lastly,
+so far, no conceivable brooding, or even gyrating, of a
+single matter in time and space could account for the
+specification of matter—carbon, gold, iodine, etc.—as
+we see and know it. Time, space, matter, and the
+whole inorganic world, thus remain impassive to the action
+even of infinite time; all <i>these</i> differences remain
+incapable of being accounted for so.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But suppose no curiosity had ever been felt in this
+reference, which, though scientifically indefensible, is
+quite possible, how about the transition of the inorganic
+into the organic? Mr. Huxley tells us that, for food,
+the plant needs nothing but its bath of smelling-salts.
+Suppose this bath now—a pool of a solution of carbonate
+of ammonia; can any action of sun, or air, or electricity,
+be conceived to develop a cell—or even so much
+lump-protoplasm—in this solution? The production of
+an initial cell in any such manner will not allow itself to
+be realized to thought. Then we have just to think for
+a moment of the vast differences into which, for the
+production of the present organized world, this cell
+must be distributed, to shake our heads and say we cannot
+well refuse anything to an infinite time, but still we
+must pronounce a problem of this reach hopeless.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is precisely in conditions, however, that Mr. Darwin
+claims a solution of this problem. Conditions concern
+all that relates to air, heat, light, land, water, and
+whatever they imply. Our second objection, consequently,
+is, that conditions are quite inadequate to account
+for present organized differences, from a single
+cell. Geological time, for example, falls short, after all,
+of infinite time; or, in known geological eras, let us
+calculate them as liberally as we may, there is not time
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>enough to account for the presently-existing varieties,
+from one, or even several, primordial forms. So to
+speak, it is not <i>in</i> geological time to account for the
+transformation of the elephant into the stag from acceleration,
+or for that of the stag into the elephant from
+retardation, of movement. And we may speak similarly
+of the growth of the neck of the giraffe, or even
+of the elevation of the monkey into man. Moreover,
+time apart, conditions have no such power in themselves.
+It is impossible to conceive of animal or vegetable
+effluvia ever creating the nerve by which they are felt,
+and so gradually the Schneiderian membrane, nose, and
+whole olfactory apparatus. Yet these effluvia are the
+conditions of smell, and, <i>ex hypothesi</i>, ought to have
+created it. Did light, or did the pulsations of the air,
+ever by any length of time, indent into the sensitive
+cell, eyes, and a pair of eyes—ears, and a pair of ears?
+Light conceivably might shine for ever without such a
+wonderfully complicated result as an eye. Similarly,
+for delicacy and marvellous ingenuity of structure, the
+ear is scarcely inferior to the eye; and surely it is possible
+to think of a whole infinitude of those fitful and
+fortuitous air-tremblings, which we call sound, without
+indentation into anything whatever of such an organ.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A third objection to Mr. Darwin’s theory is, that the
+play of natural contingency in regard to the vicissitudes
+of conditions, has no title to be named <i>selection</i>.
+Naturalists have long known and spoken of the “influence
+of accidental causes;” but Mr. Darwin was the
+first to apply the term <i>selection</i> to the action of these,
+and thus convert accident into design. The agency to
+which Mr. Darwin attributes all the changes which he
+would signalize in animals is really the fortuitous contingency
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>of brute nature; and it is altogether fallacious
+to call such process, or such non-process, by a term involving
+foresight and a purpose. We have here, indeed,
+only a metaphor wholly misapplied. The German writer
+who, many years ago, said “even the <i>genera</i> are
+wholly a prey to the changes of the external universal
+life,” saw precisely what Mr. Darwin sees, but it never
+struck him to style contingency selection. Yet, how
+dangerous, how infectious, has not this ungrounded
+metaphor proved! It has become a <i>principle</i>, a <i>law</i>, and
+been transferred by very genuine men into their own
+sciences of philology and what not. People will wonder
+at all this by-and-by. But to point out the inapplicability
+of such a word to the processes of nature referred
+to by Mr. Darwin, is to point out also the impossibility
+of any such contingencies proceeding, by
+graduated rise, from stage to stage, into the great symmetrical
+organic system—the vast plan—the grand harmonious
+whole—by which we are surrounded. This
+rise, this system, is really the objective idea; but it is
+utterly incapable of being accounted for by any such
+agency as natural contingency in geological, or infinite,
+or any time. But it is this which the word selection
+tends to conceal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We may say, lastly, in objection, here, that, in the fact
+of “reversion” or “atavism,” Mr. Darwin acknowledges
+his own failure. We thus see that the species as species
+is something independent, and holds its own <i>insita
+vis naturæ</i> within itself.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Probably it is not his theory, then, that gives value
+to Mr. Darwin’s book; nor even his ready ingenuity,
+whatever interest it may lend: it is the material information
+it contains. The ingenuity, namely, verges
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>somewhat on that Humian expedient of natural conjecture
+so copiously exemplified, on occasion of a few
+trite texts, in Mr. Buckle. But that natural conjecture
+is always insecure, equivocal, and many-sided. It may
+be said that ancient warfare, for example, giving victory
+always to the personally ablest and bravest, must have
+resulted in the improvement of the race; or that, the
+weakest being always necessarily left at home, the improvement
+was balanced by deterioration; or that the
+ablest were necessarily the most exposed to danger, and
+so, etc., etc., according, to ingenuity <i>usque ad infinitum</i>.
+Trustworthy conclusion is not possible to this method,
+but only to the induction of facts, or to scientific demonstration.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Neither molecularists nor Darwinians, then, are able
+to level out the difference between organic and inorganic,
+or between genera and genera or species and species.
+The differences persist despite of both; the distributed
+identity remains unaccounted for. Nor, consequently,
+is Mr. Darwin’s theory competent to explain the objective
+idea by any reference to time and conditions. Living
+beings do exist in a mighty chain from the moss to
+the man; but that chain, far from founding, is founded
+in the idea, and is not the result of any mere natural
+<i>growth</i> of this into that. That chain is itself the most
+brilliant stamp, the sign-manual, of design. On every
+ledge of nature, from the lowest to the highest, there is
+a life that is <i>its</i>,—a creature to represent it, reflect it—so
+to speak, pasture on it. The last, highest, brightest
+link of this chain is man; the incarnation of thought itself,
+which is the summation of this universe; man, that
+includes in himself all other links and their single secret—the
+personified universe, the subject of the world.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>Mr. Huxley makes but small reference to thought; he
+only tucks it in, as it were, as a mere appendicle of
+course.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It may be objected, indeed—to reach the last stage in
+this discussion—that, if Mr. Huxley has not disproved
+the conception of thought and life “as a something
+which works through matter, but is independent of it,”
+neither have we proved it. But it is easy for us to reply
+that, if “<i>independent of</i>” means here “<i>unconnected
+with</i>,” we have had no such object. We have had no
+object whatever, in fact, but to resist, now the extravagant
+assertion that all organized tissue, from the lichen
+to Leibnitz, is alike in faculty, and again the equally extravagant
+assertion that life and thought are but ordinary
+products of molecular chemistry. As regards the
+latter assertion, we have endeavored to show that the
+processes of vital organization (as self-production, etc.)
+belong to another sphere, higher than, and very different
+from, those of mechanical juxtaposition or chemical
+neutralization; that life, then, is no mere product of
+matter as matter; that if no life can be pointed to independent
+of matter, neither is there any life-stuff independent
+of life; and that life, consequently, adds a new
+and higher force to chemistry, as chemistry a new and
+higher force to mechanics, etc. As for thought, the endeavor
+was to show that it was as independent on the
+one side as matter on the other, that it controlled, used,
+summed, and was the reason of matter. Thought, then,
+is not to be reached by any bridge from matter, that is
+a hybrid of both, and explains the connection. The relation
+of matter to mind is not to be explained as a
+transition, but as a <i>contrecoup</i>. In this relation, however,
+it is not the material, but the mental side, which
+the whole universe declares to be the dominant one.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>As regards any objection to the arguments which we
+have brought against the identity of protoplasm, again,
+these will lie in the phrase, probably, “difference not of
+kind, but degree,” or in the word “modification.” The
+“phrase” may be now passed, for generic or specific
+difference must be allowed in protoplasm, if not for the
+overwhelming reason that an infinitude of various kinds
+exist in it, each of which is self-productive and uninterchangeable
+with the rest, then for Mr. Huxley’s own
+reason, that plants assimilate inorganic matter and animals
+only organic. As for the objection “modification,”
+again, the same consideration of generic difference
+must prove fatal to it. This were otherwise, indeed,
+could but the molecularists and Mr. Darwin succeed in
+destroying generic difference; but in this, as we have
+seen, they have failed. And this will be always so:
+who dogs identity, difference dogs him. It is quite a
+justifiable endeavor, for example, to point out the identity
+that obtains between veins and arteries on the one
+hand, as between these and capillaries on the other;
+but all the time the difference is behind us; and when
+we turn to look, we see, for circulation, the valves of the
+veins and the elastic coats of the arteries as opposed to
+one another, and, for irrigation, the permeable walls of
+the capillaries as opposed to both.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Generic differences exist then, and we cannot allow
+the word “modification” to efface them in the interest
+of the identity claimed for protoplasm. Brain-protoplasm
+is not bone-protoplasm, nor the protoplasm of
+the fungus the protoplasm of man. Similarly, it is very
+questionable how far the word “modification” will warrant
+us in regarding with Mr. Huxley the “ducts, fibres,
+pollen, and ovules” of the nettle as identical with the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>protoplasm of its sting. Things that originate alike
+may surely eventuate in others which, chemically and
+vitally, far from being mere modifications, must be pronounced
+totally different. Such eventuation must be
+held competent to what can only be named generic or
+specific difference. The “child” is only “<i>father</i> of the
+man”—it is not the man; who, moreover, in the course
+of an ordinary life, we are told, has totally changed himself,
+not once, but many times, retaining at the last not
+one single particle of matter with which he set out.
+Such eventuations, whether called modifications or not,
+certainly involve essential difference. And so situated
+are the “ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the nettle,
+which, whether compared with the protoplasm of the
+nettle-sting, or with that in which they originated, must
+be held to here assumed, by their own actions, indisputable
+differences, physical, chemical, and vital, or in form,
+substance, and faculty.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Much, in fact, depends on definition here; and, in
+reference to modification, it may be regarded as arbitrary
+when identity shall be admitted to cease and difference
+to begin. There are the old Greek puzzles of
+the Bald Head and the Heap, for example. How many
+grains, or how many hairs, may we remove before a heap
+of wheat is no heap, or a head of hair bald? These
+concern quantity alone; but, in other cases, bone, muscle,
+brain, fungus, tree, man, there is not only a quantitative,
+but a qualitative difference; and in regard to such
+differences, the word modification can be regarded as
+but a cloak, under which identity is to be shuffled into
+difference, but remain identity all the same. The brick
+is but modified clay, Mr. Huxley intimates, bake it and
+paint it as you may; but is the difference introduced by
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>the baking and painting to be ignored? Is what Mr.
+Huxley calls the “artifice” not to be taken into account,
+leave alone the “potter?” The strong firm rope is
+about as exact an example of modification proper—modification
+of the weak loose hemp—as can well be
+found; but are we to exclude from our consideration
+the whole element of difference due to the hand and
+brain of man? Not far from Burn’s Monument, on the
+Calton Hill of Edinburgh, there lies a mass of stones
+which is potentially a church, the former Trinity College
+Church. Were this church again realized, would
+it be fair to call it a mere modification of the previous
+stones? Look now to the egg and the full-feathered
+fowl. Chaucer describes to us the cock, “hight chaunteclere,”
+that was to his “faire Pertelotte” so dear:—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c018'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“His comb was redder than the fine corall,</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>Embattled, as it were a castle-wall;</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>His bill was black, and as the jet it shone;</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>Like azure were his legges and his tone (toes);</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>His nailes whiter than the lilie flour,</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>And like the burned gold was his color.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c017'>Would it be even as fair to call this fine fellow—comb,
+wattles, spurs, and all—a modified yolk, as to
+call the church but modified stones? If, in the latter
+case, an element of difference, altogether undeniable,
+seems to have intervened, is not such intervention at
+least quite as well marked in the former? It requires
+but a slight analysis to detect that all the stones in
+question are marked and numbered; but will any analysis
+point out within the shell the various parts that only
+need arrangement to become the fowl? Are the men
+that may take the stones, and, in a re-erected Trinity
+College Church, realize anew the idea of its architect,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>in any respect more wonderful than the unknown disposers
+of the materials of the fowl? That what realizes
+the idea should, in the one case, be from without,
+and, in the other, from within, is no reason for seeing
+more modification and less wonder in the latter than the
+former. There is certainly no more reason for seeing
+the fowl in the egg, and as identical with the egg, than
+for seeing a re-built Trinity College Church as identical
+with its unarranged materials. A part cannot be taken
+for the whole, whether in space <i>or in time</i>. Mr. Huxley
+misses this. He is so absorbed in the identity out of
+which, that he will not see the difference into which,
+progress is made. As the idea of the church has the
+stones, so the idea of the fowl has the egg, for its commencement.
+But to this idea, and in both cases, the
+terminal additions belong, quite as much as the initial
+materials. If the idea, then, add sulphur, phosphorus,
+iron, and what not, it must be credited with these not
+less than with the carbon, hydrogen, etc., with which it
+began. It is not fair to mutter modification, as if it
+were a charm to destroy all the industry of time. The
+protoplasm of the egg of the fowl is no more the fowl
+than the stones the church; and to identify, by juggle
+of a mere word, parts in time and wholes in time so different,
+is but self-deception. Nay, in protoplasm, as we
+have so often seen, difference is as much present at first
+as at last. Even in its germ, even in its initial identity,
+to call it so, protoplasm is already different, for it issues
+in differences infinite.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Omission of the consideration of difference, it is to be
+acknowledged, is not now-a-days restricted to Mr. Huxley.
+In the wonder that is usually expressed, for example,
+at Oken’s <i>identification</i> of the skull with so many
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>vertebræ, it is forgot that there is still implicated the
+wonder which we ought to feel at the unknown power
+that could, in the end, so <i>differentiate</i> them. If the
+cornea of the eye and the enamel of the teeth are alike
+but modified protoplasm, we must be pardoned for
+thinking more of the adjective than of the substantive.
+Our wonder is how, for one idea, protoplasm could become
+one thing here, and, for another idea, another so
+different thing there. We are more curious about the
+modification than the protoplasm. In the difference,
+rather than in the identity, it is, indeed, that the wonder
+lies. Here are several thousand pieces of protoplasm;
+analysis can detect no difference in them. They are to
+us, let us say, as they are to Mr. Huxley, identical in
+power, in form, and in substance; and yet on all these
+several thousand little bits of apparently indistinguishable
+matter an element of difference so pervading and
+so persistent has been impressed, that, of them all, not
+one is interchangeable with another! Each seed feeds
+its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more
+grow into the fly than it will grow into an elephant.
+Protoplasm is protoplasm: yes, but man’s protoplasm
+is man’s protoplasm, and the mushroom’s the mushroom’s.
+In short, it is quite evident that the word
+modification, if it would conceal, is powerless to withdraw,
+the difference; which difference, moreover, is one
+of kind and not of degree.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This consideration of possible objections, then, is the
+last we have to attend to; and it only remains to draw
+the general conclusion. All animal and vegetable organisms
+are alike in power, in form, and in substance,
+only if the protoplasm of which they are composed is
+similarly alike; and the functions of all animal and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>vegetable organisms are but properties of the molecular
+affections of their chemical constituents, only if the functions
+of the protoplasm, of which they are composed,
+are but properties of the molecular affections of <i>its</i>
+chemical constituents. In disproof of the affirmative
+in both clauses, there has been no object but to demonstrate,
+on the one hand, the infinite non-identity of protoplasm,
+and, on the other, the dependence of its functions
+upon other factors than its molecular constituents.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In short, the whole position of Mr. Huxley, that all
+organisms consist alike of the same life-matter, which
+life-matter is, for its part, due only to chemistry, must
+be pronounced untenable—nor less untenable the materialism
+he would found on it.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span><span class='c022'><i>ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION</i>:</span></div>
+    <div class='c000'>PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c006' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>ON THE<br /> <br /><span class='c004'>HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION:</span><br /> <br /><i>PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL</i>.</h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c023'>“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
+out of the mouth of God shall man live.”
+ch-hd-end
+There is apparently considerable repugnance in the
+minds of many excellent people to the acceptance, or
+even consideration, of the hypothesis of development,
+or that of the gradual creation by descent, with modification
+from the simplest beginnings, of the different
+forms of the organic world. This objection probably
+results from two considerations: first, that the human
+species is certainly involved, and man’s descent from
+an ape asserted; and, secondly, that the scheme in
+general seems to conflict with that presented by the
+Mosaic account of the Creation, which is regarded as
+communicated to its author by an infallible inspiration.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>As the truth of the hypothesis is held to be infinitely
+probable by a majority of the exponents of the natural
+sciences at the present day, and is held as absolutely
+demonstrated by another portion, it behooves those interested
+to restrain their condemnation, and on the
+other hand to examine its evidences, and look any consequent
+necessary modification of our metaphysical or
+theological views squarely in the face.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>The following pages state a few of the former; if
+they suggest some of the latter, it is hoped that they
+may be such as any logical mind would deduce from
+the premises. That they will coincide with the spirit
+of the most advanced Christianity, I have no doubt;
+and that they will add an appeal through the reason to
+that direct influence of the Divine Spirit which should
+control the motives of human action, seems an unavoidable
+conclusion.</p>
+<h3 class='c001'>I. <span class='sc'>Physical Evolution.</span></h3>
+
+<p class='c025'>It is well known that a species is usually represented
+by a great number of individuals, distinguished from
+all other similar associations by more or less numerous
+points of structure, color, size, etc., and by habits and
+instincts also, to a certain extent; that the individuals
+of such associations reproduce their like, and cannot be
+produced by individuals of associations or species
+which present differences of structure, color, etc., as
+defined by naturalists; that the individuals of any such
+series or species are incapable of reproducing with
+those of any other species, with some exceptions; and
+that in the latter cases the offspring are usually entirely
+infertile.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The hypothesis of Cuvier assumes that each species
+was created by Divine power as we now find it at some
+definite point of geologic time. The paleontologist
+holding this view sees, in accordance therewith, a succession
+of creations and destructions marking the history
+of life on our planet from its commencement.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The development hypothesis states that all existing
+species have been derived from species of preëxistent
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>geological periods, as offspring or by direct descent;
+that there have been no total destructions of life in past
+time, but only a transfer of it from place to place, owing
+to changes of circumstance; that the types of structure
+become simpler and more similar to each other as we
+trace them from later to earlier periods; and that
+finally we reach the simplest forms consistent with one
+or several original parent types of the great divisions
+into which living beings naturally fall.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It is evident, therefore, that the hypothesis does not
+include change of species by hybridization, nor allow
+the descent of living species from any other <i>living</i>
+species: both these propositions are errors of misapprehension
+or misrepresentation.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In order to understand the history of creation of a
+complex being, it is necessary to analyze it and ascertain
+of what it consists. In analyzing the construction
+of an animal or plant we readily arrange its characters
+into those which it possesses in common with other animals
+or plants, and those in which it resembles none
+other: the latter are its <i>individual</i> characters, constituting
+its individuality. Next we find a large body of
+characters, generally of a very obvious kind, which it
+possesses in common with a generally large number of
+individuals, which, taken collectively, all men are accustomed
+to call a species; these characters we consequently
+name <i>specific</i>. Thirdly, we find characters,
+generally in parts of the body which are of importance
+in the activities of the animal, or which lie in near relation
+to its mechanical construction in details, which are
+shared by a still larger number of individuals than those
+which were similar in specific characters. In other
+words, it is common to a large number of species. This
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>kind of character we call <i>generic</i>, and the grouping it
+indicates is a genus.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Farther analysis brings to light characters of organism
+which are common to a still greater number of individuals;
+this we call a <i>family</i> character. Those which
+are common to still more numerous individuals are the
+<i>ordinal</i>: they are usually found in parts of the structure
+which have the closest connection with the whole life-history
+of the being. Finally, the individuals composing
+many orders will be found identical in some important
+character of the systems by which ordinary life is
+maintained, as in the nervous and circulatory: the
+divisions thus outlined are called <i>classes</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>By this process of analysis we reach in our animal or
+plant those peculiarities which are common to the whole
+animal or vegetable kingdom, and then we have exhausted
+the structure so completely that we have nothing
+remaining to take into account beyond the cell-structure
+or homogeneous protoplasm by which we
+know that it is organic, and not a mineral.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The history of the origin of a type, as species, genus,
+order, etc., is simply the history of the origin of the
+structure or structures which define those groups respectively.
+It is nothing more nor less than this,
+whether a man or an insect be the object of investigation.</p>
+<h3 class='c001'>EVIDENCES OF DERIVATION.</h3>
+<h4 class='c026'>α. Of Specific Characters.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>The evidences of derivation of species from species,
+within the limits of the genus, are abundant and conclusive.
+In the first place, the rule which naturalists
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>observe in defining species is a clear consequence of
+such a state of things. It is not amount and degree of
+difference that determine the definition of species from
+species, but it is the <i>permanency</i> of the characters in all
+cases and under all circumstances. Many species of
+the systems include varieties and extremes of form, etc.,
+which, were they at all times distinct, and not connected
+by intermediate forms, would be estimated as species by
+the same and other writers, as can be easily seen by
+reference to their works.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus, species are either “restricted” or “protean,”
+the latter embracing many, the former few variations;
+and the varieties included by the protean species are
+often as different from each other in their typical forms
+as are the “restricted” species. As an example, the
+species <i>Homo sapiens</i> (man) will suffice. His primary
+varieties are as distinct as the species of many well-known
+genera, but cannot be defined, owing to the existence
+of innumerable intermediate forms between
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>As to the common origin of such “varieties” of the
+protean species, naturalists never had any doubt, yet
+when it comes to the restricted “species,” the anti-developmentalist
+denies it <i>in toto</i>. Thus the varieties of
+most of the domesticated animals are some of them
+known—others held with great probability to have had a
+common origin. Varieties of plumage in fowls and
+canaries are of every-day occurrence, and are produced
+under our eyes. The cart-horse and racer, the Shetland
+pony and the Norman, are without doubt derived
+from the same parentage. The varieties of pigeons and
+ducks are of the same kind, but not every one is aware
+of the extent and amount of such variations. The
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>varieties in many characters seen in hogs and cattle,
+especially when examples from distant countries are
+compared, are very striking, and are confessedly equal
+in degree to those found to <i>define</i> species in a state of
+nature: here, however, they are not <i>definitive</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It is easy to see that all that is necessary to produce
+in the mind of the anti-developmentalist the illusion of
+distinct origin by creation of many of these forms,
+would be to destroy a number of the intermediate conditions
+of specific form and structure, and thus to leave
+remaining definable groups of individuals, and therefore
+“species.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>That such destructions and extinctions have been
+going on ever since the existence of life on the globe is
+well known. That it should affect intermediate forms,
+such as bind together the types of a protean species as
+well as restricted species, is equally certain. That its
+result has been to produce <i>definable</i> species cannot be
+denied, especially in consideration of the following
+facts: Protean species nearly always have a wide geographical
+distribution. They exist under more varied
+circumstances than do individuals of a more restricted
+species. The subordinate variations of the protean
+species are generally, like the restricted species, confined
+to distinct subdivisions of the geographical area
+which the whole occupies. As in geological time
+changes of level have separated areas once continuous
+by bodies of water or high mountain ranges, so have
+vast numbers of individuals occupying such areas been
+destroyed. Important alterations of temperature, or
+great changes in abundance or character of vegetable
+life over given areas, would produce the same result.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This part of the subject might be prolonged, were it
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>necessary, but it has been ably discussed by Darwin.
+The <i>rationale</i> of the “origin of species” as stated by
+him may be examined a few pages farther on.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>β. Of the Characters of Higher Groups.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'><i>a. Relations of Structures.</i> The evidences of derivative
+origin of the structures defining the groups called
+genera, and all those of higher grade, are of a very different
+character from those discussed in relation to specific
+characters; they are more difficult of observation
+and explanation.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Firstly: It would appear to be supposed by many
+that the creation of organic types was an irregular and
+capricious process, variously pursued by its Author as
+regards time and place, and without definite final aim;
+and this notwithstanding the wonderful evidences we
+possess, in the facts of astronomy, chemistry, sound,
+etc., of His adhesion to harmonious and symmetrical
+sequences in His modes and plans.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Such regularity of plan is found to exist in the relations
+of the great divisions of the animal and vegetable
+kingdoms as at present existing on the earth. Thus,
+with animals we have a great class of species which
+consists of nothing more than masses or cells of protoplasmic
+matter, without distinct organs; or the Protozoa.
+We have then the Cœlenterata (example, corals,)
+where the organism is composed of many cells arranged
+in distinct parts, but where a single very simple system
+of organs, forming the only internal cavity of the body,
+does the work of the many systems of the more complex
+animals. Next, the Echinodermata (such as star-fish)
+present us with a body containing distinct systems
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>of organs enclosed in a visceral cavity, including a rudimental
+nervous system in the form of a ring. In the
+Molluscs to this condition is added additional complication,
+including extensions of the nervous system from
+the ring as a starting-point, and a special organ for a
+heart. In the Articulates (crabs, insects,) we have like
+complications, and a long distinct nervous axis on the
+lower surface of the body. The last branch or division
+of animals is considered to be higher, because all the
+systems of life organs are most complex or specialized.
+The nervous ring is almost obliterated by a great enlargement
+of its usual ganglia, thus become a brain,
+which is succeeded by a long axis on the upper side
+of the body. This and other points define the Vertebrata.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Plans of structure, independent of the simplicity or
+perfection of the special arrangement or structure of
+organs, also define these great groups. Thus the Protozoa
+present a spiral, the Cœlenterata a radiate, the
+Echinodermata a bilateral radiate plan. The Articulates
+are a series of external rings, each in one or more
+respects repeating the others. The Molluscs are a sac,
+while a ring above a ring, joined together by a solid
+center-piece, represents the plan of each of the many
+segments of the Vertebrates which give the members of
+that branch their form.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>These bulwarks of distinction of animal types are
+entered into here simply because they are the most inviolable
+and radical of those with which we have to
+deal, and to give the anti-developmentalist the best foothold
+for his position. I will only allude to the relations
+of their points of approach, as these are affected by
+considerations afterward introduced.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>The Vertebrates approach the Molluscs at the lowest
+extreme of the former and higher of the latter.
+The lamprey eels of the one possess several characters
+in common with the cuttle-fish or squids of the latter.
+The amphioxus is called the lowest Vertebrate, and
+though it is nothing else, the definition of the division
+must be altered to receive it; it has no brain!</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The lowest forms of the Molluscs and Articulates are
+scarcely distinguishable from each other, so far as adhesion
+to the “plan” is concerned, and some of the latter
+division are very near certain Echinodermata. As
+we approach the boundary-lines of the two lowest divisions,
+the approaches become equally close, and the boundaries
+very obscure.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>More instructive is the evidence of the relation of
+the subordinate classes of any one of these divisions.
+The conditions of those organs or parts which define
+classes exhibit a regular relation, commencing with
+simplicity and ending with complication; first associated
+with weak exhibitions of the highest functions of
+the nervous system—at the last displaying the most exalted
+traits found in the series.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>For example: In the classes of Vertebrates we find
+the lowest nervous system presents great simplicity—the
+brain cannot be recognized; next (in lampreys), the
+end of the nervous axis is subdivided, but scarcely according
+to the complex type that follows. In fishes the
+cerebellum and cerebral hemispheres are minute, and
+the intermediate or optic lobes very large: in the reptiles
+the cerebral hemispheres exceed the optic lobes,
+while the cerebellum is smaller. In birds the cerebellum
+becomes complex and the cerebrum greatly increases.
+In mammals the cerebellum increases in complexity
+or number of parts, the optic lobes diminish,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>while the cerebral hemispheres become wonderfully
+complex and enlarged, bringing us to the highest development,
+in man.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The history of the circulatory system in the Vertebrates
+is the same.<a id='r45' /><a href='#f45' class='c020'><sup>[45]</sup></a> First, a heart with one chamber,
+then one with two divisions: three divisions belong to
+a large series, and the highest possess four. The origins
+of the great artery of the body, the aorta, are first five
+on each side: they lose one in the succeeding class in
+the ascending scale, and one in each succeeding class
+or order, till the Mammalia, including man, present us
+with but one on one side.</p>
+
+<div class='footnote c027' id='f45'>
+<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r45'>45</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>See a homological system of the circulatory system in the author’s Origin
+of Genera, p. 22.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c024'>From an infinitude of such considerations as the
+above, we derive the certainty that the general arrangement
+of the various groups of the organic world is in
+scales, the subordinate within the more comprehensive
+divisions. The identification of all the parts in such a
+complexity of organism as the highest animals present,
+is a matter requiring much care and attention, and constitutes
+the study of homologies. Its pursuit has resulted
+in the demonstration that every individual of
+every species of a given branch of the animal kingdom
+is composed of elements common to all, and that the
+differences which are so radical in the higher groups
+are but the modifications of the same elemental parts,
+representing completeness or incompleteness, obliteration
+or subdivision. Of the former character are rudimental
+organs, of which almost every species possesses
+an example in some part of its structure.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But we have other and still more satisfactory evidence
+of the meaning of these relations. By the study of embryology
+we can prove most indubitably that the simple
+and less complex are inferior to the more complex.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>Selecting the Vertebrates again as an example, the highest
+form of mammal—<i>e.g.</i>, man—presents in his earliest
+stages of embryonic growth a skeleton of cartilage, like
+that of the lamprey: he also possesses five origins of
+the aorta and five slits on the neck, both which characters
+belong to the lamprey and the shark. If the whole
+number of these parts does not coexist in the embryonic
+man, we find in embryos of lower forms more
+nearly related to the lamprey that they do. Later in
+the life of the mammal but four aortic origins are found,
+which arrangement, with the heart now divided into two
+chambers, from a beginning as a simple tube, is characteristic
+of the class of Vertebrates next in order—the
+bony fishes. The optic lobes of the human brain have
+also at this time a great predominance in size—a character
+above stated to be that of the same class. With
+advancing development the infant mammal follows the
+scale already pointed out. Three chambers of the
+heart and three aortic origins follow, presenting the
+condition permanent in the batrachia; and two origins,
+with enlarged cerebral hemispheres of the brain, resemble
+the reptilian condition. Four heart-chambers, and
+one aortic root on each side, with slight development of
+the cerebellum, follow all characters defining the crocodiles,
+and immediately precede the special conditions
+defining the mammals. These are, the single aorta
+root from one side, and the full development of the
+cerebellum: later comes that of the cerebrum also in
+its higher mammalian and human traits.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus we see the order already pointed out to be true,
+and to be an ascending one. This is the more evident
+as each type or class passes through the conditions of
+those below it, as did the mammal; each scale being
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>shorter as its highest terminus is lower. Thus the crocodile
+passes through the stage of the lamprey, the fish,
+the batrachian and the reptile proper.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><i>b. In Time.</i> We have thus a scale of relations of
+existing forms of animals and plants of a remarkable
+kind, and such as to stimulate greatly our inquiries as
+to its significance. When we turn to the remains of the
+past creation preserved to us in the deposits continued
+throughout geologic time, we are not disappointed, for
+great light is at once thrown upon the subject.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>We find, in brief, that the lowest division of the animal
+kingdom appeared first, and long before any type
+of a higher character was created. The Protozoön,
+Eozoön, is the earliest of animals in geologic time, and
+represents the lowest type of animal life now existing.
+We learn also that the highest branch appeared last.
+No remains of Vertebrates have been found below the
+lower Devonian period, or not until the Echinoderms
+and Molluscs had reached a great preëminence. It is
+difficult to be sure whether the Protozoa had a greater
+numerical extent in the earliest periods than now, but
+there can be no doubt that the Cœlenterata (corals) and
+Echinoderms (crinoids) greatly exceeded their present
+bounds, in Paleozoic time, so that those at present existing
+are but a feeble remnant. If we examine the
+subdivisions known as classes, evidence of the nature
+of the succession of creation is still more conclusive.
+The most polyp-like of the Molluscs (brachiopoda) constituted
+the great mass of its representatives during
+Paleozoic time. Among Vertebrates the fishes appear
+first, and had their greatest development in size and
+numbers during the earliest periods of the existence of
+the division. Batrachia were much the largest and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>most important of land animals during the Carboniferous
+period, while the higher Vertebrates were unknown.
+The later Mesozoic periods saw the reign of
+reptiles, whose position in structural development has
+been already stated. Finally, the most perfect, the
+mammal, came upon the scene, and in his humblest
+representatives. In Tertiary times mammalia supplanted
+the reptiles entirely, and the unspiritual mammals
+now yield to man, the only one of his class in
+whom the Divine image appears.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus the structural relations, the embryonic characters,
+and the successive appearance in time of animals
+coincide. The same is very probably true of plants.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>That the existing state of the geological record of
+organic types should be regarded as anything but a
+fragment is, from our stand-point, quite preposterous.
+And more, it may be assumed with safety that when
+completed it will furnish us with a series of regular successions,
+with but slight and regular interruptions, if
+any, from the species which represented the simplest
+beginnings of life at the dawn of creation, to those
+which have displayed complication and power in later
+or in the present period.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>For the labors of the paleontologist are daily bringing
+to light structures intermediate between those never
+before so connected, and thus creating lines of succession
+where before were only interruptions. Many such
+instances might be adduced: two may be selected as
+examples from American paleontology;<a id='r46' /><a href='#f46' class='c020'><sup>[46]</sup></a> <i>i.e.</i>, the near
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>approach to birds made by the reptiles Lælaps and
+Megadactylus; and the combination of characters of
+the sub-orders of Cryptodire and Pleurodire Tortoises
+in the Adocus of New Jersey.</p>
+
+<div class='footnote c027' id='f46'>
+<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r46'>46</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Professor Huxley, in the last anniversary lecture before the
+Geological Society of London, recalls his opinion, enunciated in
+1862, that “the positively-ascertained truths of Paleontology”
+negative “the doctrines of progressive modification, which suppose
+that modification to have taken place by a necessary progress from
+more to less embryonic forms, from more to less generalized types,
+within the limits of the period represented by the fossiliferous
+rocks; that it shows no evidence of such modification; and as to
+the nature of that modification, it yields no evidence whatsoever
+that the earlier members of any long-continued group were more
+generalized in structure than the later ones.”</p>
+
+<p class='c028'>Respecting this position, he says: “Thus far I have endeavored
+to expand and enforce by fresh arguments, but not to modify in any
+important respect, the ideas submitted to you on a former occasion.
+But when I come to the propositions respecting progressive modification,
+it appears to me, with the help of the new light which has
+broken from various quarters, that there is much ground for softening
+the somewhat Brutus-like severity with which I have dealt with
+a doctrine for the truth of which I should have been glad enough
+to be able to find a good foundation in 1862. So far indeed as the
+Invertebrata and the lower Vertebrata are concerned, the facts, and
+the conclusions which are to be drawn from them, appear to me to
+remain what they were. For anything that as yet appears to the contrary,
+the earliest known marsupials may have been as highly organized
+as their living congeners; the Permian lizards show no signs
+of inferiority to those of the present day; the labyrinthodonts cannot
+be placed below the living salamander and triton; the Devonian
+ganoids are closely related to polypterus and lepidosiren.”</p>
+
+<p class='c028'>To this it may be replied: 1. The scale of progression of the
+Vertebrata is measured by the conditions of the circulatory system,
+and in some measure by the nervous, and not by the osseous:
+tested by this scale, there has been successional complication of
+structure among Vertebrata in time. 2. The question with the
+evolutionist is, not what types have persisted to the present day,
+but the order in which types appeared in time. 3. The Marsupials,
+Permian saurians, labyrinthodonts and Devonian ganoids are remarkably
+generalized groups, and predecessors of types widely
+separated in the present period. 4. Professor Huxley adduces
+many such examples among the mammalian subdivisions in the
+remaining portion of his lecture. 5. Two alternatives are yet open
+in the explanation of the process of evolution: since generalized
+types, which combine the characters of higher and lower groups of
+later periods, must thus be superior to the lower, the lower must
+(first) be descended from such a generalized form by degradation; or
+(second) not descended from it at all, but from some lower contemporaneous
+type by advance; the higher only of the two being derived
+from the first-mentioned. The last I suspect to be a true explanation,
+as it is in accordance with the homologous groups. This
+law will shorten the demands of paleontologists for time, since,
+instead of deriving all reptilia, batrachia, etc., from common origins,
+it points to the derivation of higher reptilia of a higher order
+from higher reptilia of a lower order, lower reptilia of the first from
+lower reptilia of the second; finally, the several groups of the lowest
+or most generalized order of reptilia from a parallel series of
+the class below, or batrachia.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>We had no more reason to look for intermediate or
+connecting forms between such types as these, than between
+any others of similar degree of remove from each
+other with which we are acquainted. And inasmuch as
+almost all groups, as genera, orders, etc., which are held
+to be distinct, but adjacent, present certain points of
+approximation to each other, the almost daily discovery
+of intermediate forms gives us confidence to believe
+that the pointings in other cases will also be realized.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>γ. Of Transitions.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>The preceding statements were necessary to the comprehension
+of the supposed mode of metamorphosis or
+development of the various types of living beings, or,
+in other words, of the single structural features which
+define them.... As it is evident that the more
+comprehensive groups, or those of highest rank, have
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>had their origin in remote ages, cases of transition from
+one to the other by change of character cannot be witnessed
+at the present day. We therefore look to the
+most nearly related divisions, or those of the lowest
+rank, for evidence of such change.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It is necessary to premise that embryology teaches
+that all the species of a given branch of the animal kingdom
+(<i>e.g.</i>, Vertebrate, Mollusc, etc.) are quite identical
+in structural character at their first appearance on the
+germinal layer of the yolk of the parent egg. It shows
+that the character of the respective groups of high rank
+appear first, then those of less grade, and last of all
+those structures which distinguish them as genera. But
+among the earliest characters which appear are those of
+the species, and some of those of the individual.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>We find the characters of different <i>genera</i> to bear the
+same relation to each other that we have already seen
+in the case of those definitive of orders, etc. In a natural
+assemblage of related genera we discover that some
+are defined by characters found only in the embryonic
+stages of others; while a second will present a permanent
+condition of its definitive part, which marks a more
+advanced stage of that highest. In this manner many
+stages of the highest genus appear to be represented by
+permanent genera in all natural groups. Generally,
+however, this resemblance does not involve, an entire
+identity, there being some other immaturities found in
+the highest genus at the time it presents the character
+preserved in permanency by the lower, which the lower
+loses. Thus (to use a very coarse example) a frog at
+one stage of growth has four legs and a tail: the salamander
+always preserves four legs and a tail, thus resembling
+the young frog. The latter is, however, not a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>salamander at that time, because, among other things,
+the skeleton is represented by cartilage only, and the
+salamander’s is ossified. This relation is therefore an
+imitation only, and is called <i>inexact parallelism</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>As we compare nearer and nearer relations—<i>i.e.</i>, the
+genera which present fewest points of difference—we
+find the differences between undeveloped stages of the
+higher and permanent conditions of the lower to grow
+fewer and fewer, until we find numerous instances where
+the lower genus is exactly the same as the undeveloped
+stage of the higher. This relation is called that of
+<i>exact parallelism</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It must now be remembered that the permanence of
+a character is what gives it its value in defining genus,
+order, etc., in the eyes of the systematist. So long as
+the condition is permanent no transition can be seen:
+there is therefore no development. If the condition is
+transitional, it defines nothing, and nothing is developed;
+at least, so says the anti-developmentalist. It is
+the old story of the settler and the Indian: “Will you
+take owl and I take turkey, or I take turkey and you
+owl?”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>If we find a relation of <i>exact parallelism</i> to exist between
+two sets of species in the condition of a certain
+organ, and the difference so expressed the only one
+which distinguishes them as sets from each other—if
+that condition is always the same in each set—we call
+them two genera: if in any species the condition is variable
+at maturity, or sometimes the undeveloped condition
+of the part is persistent and sometimes transitory,
+the sets characterized by this difference must be united
+by the systematist, and the whole is called a single
+genus.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>We know numerous cases where different individuals
+of the same species present this relation of <i>exact parallelism</i>
+to each other; and as we ascribe common origin
+to the individuals of a species, we are assured that the
+condition of the inferior individual is, in this case,
+simply one of repressed growth, or a failure to fulfill
+the course accomplished by the highest. Thus, certain
+species of the salamandrine genus amblystoma undergo
+a metamorphosis involving several parts of the osseous
+and circulatory systems, etc., while half grown; others
+delay it till fully grown; one or two species remain indifferently
+unchanged or changed, and breed in either
+condition, while another species breeds unchanged, and
+has never been known to complete a metamorphosis.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The nature of the relation of <i>exact parallelism</i> is thus
+explained to be that of checked or advanced growth of
+individuals having a common origin. The relation of
+<i>inexact parallelism</i> is readily explained as follows: With
+a case of <i>exact parallelism</i> in the mind, let the repression
+producing the character of the lower, parallelize
+the latter with a stage of the former in which a second
+part is not quite mature: we will have a slight want of
+correspondence between the two. The lower will be
+immature in but one point, the incompleteness of the
+higher being seen in two points. If we suppose the immaturity
+to consist in a repression at a still earlier point
+in the history of the higher, the latter will be undeveloped
+in other points also: thus, the spike-horned deer
+of South America have the horn of the second year of
+the North American genus. They would be generically
+identical with that stage of the latter, were it not that
+these still possess their milk dentition at two years of age.
+In the same way the nature of the parallelisms seen
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>in higher groups, as orders, etc., may be accounted for.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The theory of homologous groups furnishes important
+evidence in favor of derivation. Many orders of
+animals (probably all, when we come to know them) are
+divisible into two or more sections, which I have called
+<i>homologous</i>. These are series of genera or families,
+which differ from each other by some marked character,
+but whose contained genera or families differ from each
+other in the same points of detail, and in fact correspond
+exactly. So striking is this correspondence that
+were it not for the general and common character separating
+the homologous series, they would be regarded as
+the same, each to each. Now it is remarkable that
+where studied the difference common to all the terms of
+two homologous groups is found to be one of <i>inexact
+parallelism</i>, which has been shown above to be evidence
+of descent. Homologous groups always occupy different
+geographical areas on the earth’s surface, and their
+relation is precisely that which holds between successive
+groups of life in the periods of geologic time.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In a word, we learn from this source that distinct geologic
+epochs coexist at the same time on the earth. I
+have been forced to this conclusion<a id='r47' /><a href='#f47' class='c020'><sup>[47]</sup></a> by a study of the
+structure of terrestrial life, and it has been remarkably
+confirmed by the results of recent deep-sea dredgings
+made by the United States Coast Survey in the Gulf
+Stream, and by the British naturalists in the North Atlantic.
+These have brought to light types of Tertiary
+life, and of even the still more ancient Cretaceous periods,
+living at the present day. That this discovery
+invalidates in any wise the conclusions of geology respecting
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>lapse of time is an unwarranted assumption
+that some are forward to make. If it changes the views
+of some respecting the parallelism or coëxistence of
+faunæ in different regions of the earth, it is only the
+anti-developmentalists whose position must be changed.</p>
+
+<div class='footnote c027' id='f47'>
+<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r47'>47</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><i>Origin of Genera</i>, pages 70, 77, 79.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c024'>For, if we find distinct geologic faunæ, or epochs defined
+by faunæ, coëxisting during the present period, and
+fading or emerging into one another as they do at their
+geographical boundaries, it is proof positive that the
+geologic epochs and periods of past ages had in like
+manner no trenchant boundaries, but also passed the
+one into the other. The assumption that the apparent
+interruptions are the result of transfer of life rather than
+destruction, or of want of opportunities of preservation,
+is no doubt the true one.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>δ. Rationale of Development.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'><i>a. In Characters of Higher Groups.</i> It is evident in
+the case of the species in which there is an irregularity
+in the time of completion of metamorphosis that some
+individuals traverse a longer developmental line than
+those who remain more or less incomplete. As both
+accomplish growth in the same length of time, it is obvious
+that it proceeds with greater rapidity in one sense
+in that which accomplishes most: its growth is said to
+be accelerated. This phenomenon is especially common
+among insects, where the females of perfect males
+are sometimes larvæ or nearly so, or pupæ, or lack
+wings or some character of final development. Quite
+as frequently, some males assume characters in advance
+of others, sometimes in connection with a peculiar geographical
+range.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>In cases of <i>exact parallelism</i> we reasonably suppose
+the cause to be the same, since the conditions are identical,
+as has been shown; that is, the higher conditions
+have been produced by a crowding back of the earlier
+characters and an acceleration of growth, so that a given
+succession in order of advance has extended over a
+longer range of growth than its predecessor in the same
+allotted time. That allotted time is the period before
+maturity and reproduction, and it is evident that as fast
+as modifications or characters should be assumed sufficiently
+in advance of that period, so certainly would
+they be conferred upon the offspring by reproduction.
+The <i>acceleration</i> in the assumption of a character, progressing
+more rapidly than the same in another character,
+must soon produce, in a type whose stages were
+once the exact parallel of a permanent lower form, the
+condition of <i>inexact parallelism</i>. As all the more comprehensive
+groups present this relation to each other,
+we are compelled to believe that <i>acceleration</i> has been
+the principle of their successive evolution during the
+long ages of geologic time.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Each type has, however, its day of supremacy and
+perfection of organism, and a retrogression in these respects
+has succeeded. This has no doubt followed a law
+the reverse of acceleration, which has been called <i>retardation</i>.
+By the increasing slowness of the growth of
+the individuals of a genus, and later and later assumption
+of the characters of the latter, they would be successively
+lost.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>To what power shall we ascribe this acceleration, by
+which the first beginnings of structure have accumulated
+to themselves through the long geologic ages
+complication and power, till from the germ that was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>scarcely born into a sand-lance, a human being climbed
+the complete scale, and stood easily the chief of the
+whole?</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In the cases of species, where some individuals develop
+farther than others, we say the former possess
+more growth-force, or “vigor,” than the latter. We
+may therefore say that higher types of structure possess
+more “vigor” than the lower. This, however, we do
+not know to be true, nor can we readily find means to
+demonstrate it.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The food which is taken by an adult animal is either
+assimilated, to be consumed in immediate activity of
+some kind, or stored for future use, and the excess is
+rejected from the body. We have no reason to suppose
+that the same kind of material could be made to subserve
+the production of life-force by any other means than
+that furnished by a living animal organism. The material
+from which this organism is constructed is derived
+first from the parent, and afterward from the food, etc.,
+assimilated by the individual itself so long as growth
+continues. As it is the activity of assimilation directed
+to a special end during this latter period which we suppose
+to be increased in accelerated development, the
+acceleration is evidently not brought about by increased
+facilities for obtaining the means of life which the same
+individual possesses as an adult. That it is not in consequence
+of such increased facilities possessed by its
+parents over those of the type preceding it, seems
+equally improbable when we consider that the characters
+in which the parent’s advance has appeared are
+rarely of a nature to increase those facilities.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The nearest approach to an explanation that can be
+offered appears to be somewhat in the following direction:</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>There is every reason to believe that the character of
+the atmosphere has gradually changed during geologic
+time, and that various constituents of the mixture have
+been successively removed from it, and been stored in
+the solid material of the earth’s crust in a state of combination.
+Geological chemistry has shown that the
+cooling of the earth has been accompanied by the precipitation
+of many substances only gaseous at high temperatures.
+Hydrochloric and sulphuric acids have been
+transferred to mineral deposits or aqueous solutions.
+The removal of carbonic acid gas and the vapor of
+water has been a process of much slower progress, and
+after the expiration of all the ages a proportion of both
+yet remains. Evidence of the abundance of the former
+in the earliest periods is seen in the vast deposits of
+limestone rock; later, in the prodigious quantities of
+shells which have been elaborated from the same in solution.
+Proof of its abundance in the atmosphere in
+later periods is seen in the extensive deposits of coal of
+the Carboniferous, Triassic and Jurassic periods. If the
+most luxuriant vegetation of the present day takes but
+fifty tons of carbon from the atmosphere in a century,
+per acre, thus producing a layer over that extent of less
+than a third of an inch in thickness, what amount of
+carbon must be abstracted in order to produce strata of
+thirty-five feet in depth? No doubt it occupied a long
+period, but the atmosphere, thus deprived of a large
+proportion of carbonic acid, would in subsequent periods
+undoubtedly possess an improved capacity for the support
+of animal life.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The successively higher degree of oxidization of the
+blood in the organs designed for that function, whether
+performing it in water or air, would certainly accelerate
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>the performances of all the vital functions, and among
+others that of growth. Thus it may be that <i>acceleration</i>
+can be accounted for, and the process of the development
+of the orders and sundry lesser groups of the Vertebrate
+kingdom indicated; for, as already pointed out,
+the definitions of such are radically placed in the different
+structures of the organs which aerate the blood and
+distribute it to its various destinations.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the great question, What determined the direction
+of this acceleration? remains unanswered. One
+cannot understand why more highly-oxidized blood
+should hasten the growth of partition of the ventricle
+of the heart in the serpent, the more perfectly to separate
+the aerated from the impure fluid; nor can we see
+why a more perfectly-constructed circulatory system,
+sending purer blood to the brain, should direct accelerated
+growth to the cerebellum or cerebral hemispheres
+in the crocodile.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><i>b. In Characters of the Specific Kind.</i> Some of the
+characters usually placed in the specific category have
+been shown to be the same in kind as those of higher
+categories. The majority are, however, of a different
+kind, and have been discussed several pages back.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The cause of the origin of these characters is shrouded
+in as much mystery as that of those which have occupied
+the pages immediately preceding. As in that case,
+we have to assume, as Darwin has done, a tendency in
+Nature to their production. This is what he terms “the
+principle of variation.” Against an unlimited variation
+the great law of heredity or atavism has ever been opposed,
+as a conservator and multiplier of type. This
+principle is exemplified in the fact that like produces
+like—that children are like their parents, frequently even
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>in minutiæ. It may be compared to habit in metaphysical
+matters, or to that singular love of time or rhythm
+seen in man and lower animals, in both of which the
+tendency is to repeat in continual cycles a motion or
+state of the mind or sense.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Further, but a proportion of the lines of variation is
+supposed to have been perpetuated, and the extinction
+of intermediate forms, as already stated, has left isolated
+groups or species.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The effective cause of these extinctions is stated by
+Darwin to have been a “natural selection”—a proposition
+which distinguishes his theory from other development
+hypotheses, and which is stated in brief by the
+expression, “the preservation of the fittest.” Its meaning
+is this: that those characters appearing as results
+of this spontaneous variation which are little adapted to
+the conflict for subsistence, with the nature of the supply,
+or with rivals in its pursuit, dwindle and are sooner
+or later extirpated; while those which are adapted to
+their surroundings, and favored in the struggle for means
+of life and increase, predominate, and ultimately become
+the centers of new variation. “I am convinced,”
+says Darwin, “that natural selection has been the main,
+but not exclusive, means of modification.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>That it has been to a large extent the means of preservation
+of those structures known as specific, must, I
+think, be admitted. They are related to their peculiar
+surroundings very closely, and are therefore more likely
+to exist under their influence. Thus, if a given genus
+extends its range over a continent, it is usually found to
+be represented by peculiar species—one in a maritime
+division, another in the desert, others in the forest, in
+the swamp or the elevated areas of the region. The
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>wonderful interdependence shown by Darwin to exist
+between insects and plants in the fertilization of the latter,
+or between animals and their food-plants, would almost
+induce one to believe that it were the true expression
+of the whole law of development.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the following are serious objections to its universal
+application:</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>First: The characters of the higher groups, from genera
+up, are rarely of a character to fit their possessors
+especially for surrounding circumstances; that is, the
+differences which separate genus from genus, order from
+order, etc., in the ascending scale of each, do not seem
+to present a superior adaptation to surrounding circumstances
+in the higher genus to that seen in the lower
+genus, etc. Hence, superior adaptation could scarcely
+have caused their selection above other forms not existing.
+Or, in other words, the different structures which
+indicate successional relation, or which measure the
+steps of progress, seem to be equally well fitted for the
+same surroundings.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Second: The higher groups, as orders, classes, etc.,
+have been in each geologic period alike distributed over
+the whole earth, under all the varied circumstances offered
+by climate and food. Their characters do not
+seem to have been modified in reference to these. Species,
+and often genera, are, on the other hand, eminently
+restricted according to climate, and consequently vegetable
+and animal food.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The law of development which we seek is indeed not
+that which preserves the higher forms and rejects the
+lower after their creation, but that which explains why
+higher forms were created at all. Why in the results
+of a creation we see any relation of higher and lower,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>and not rather a world of distinct types, each perfectly
+adapted to its situation, but none properly higher than
+another in an ascending scale, is the primary question.
+Given the principle of advance, then natural selection
+has no doubt modified the details; but in the successive
+advances we can scarcely believe such a principle
+to be influential. <i>We look rather upon a progress as
+the result of the expenditure of some force fore-arranged
+for that end.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It may become, then, a question whether in characters
+of high grade the habit or use is not rather the result
+of the acquisition of the structure than the structure
+the result of the encouragement offered to its
+assumed beginnings by use, or by liberal nutrition derived
+from the increasingly superior advantages it offers.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>ε. The Physical Origin of Man.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>If the hypothesis here maintained be true, man is the
+descendant of some preëxistent generic type, the which,
+if it were now living, we would probably call an ape.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Man and the chimpanzee were in Linnæus’ system
+only two species of the same genus, but a truer anatomy
+places them in separate genera and distinct families.
+There is no doubt, however, that Cuvier went much too
+far when he proposed to consider Homo as the representative
+of an order distinct from the quadrumana, under
+the name of bimana. The structural differences
+will not bear any such interpretation, and have not the
+same value as those distinguishing the orders of mammalia;
+as, for instance, between carnivora and bats, or
+the cloven-footed animals and the rodents, or rodents
+and edentates. The differences between man and the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>chimpanzee are, as Huxley well puts it, much less than
+those between the chimpanzee and lower quadrumana,
+as lemurs, etc. In fact, man is the type of a family,
+Hominidæ, of the order Quadrumana, as indicated by
+the characters of the dentition, extremities, brain, etc.
+The reader who may have any doubts on this score may
+read the dissections of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, made in
+1856, before the issue of Darwin’s <i>Origin of Species</i>.
+He informs us that the brain of man is nearer in structure
+to that of the orang than the orang’s is to that of
+the South American howler, and that the orang and
+howler are more nearly related in this regard than are
+the howler and the marmoset.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The modifications presented by man have, then, resulted
+from an acceleration in development in some
+respects, and retardation perhaps in others. But until
+the <i>combination</i> now characteristic of the genus Homo
+was attained the being could not properly be called man.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And here it must be observed that as an organic type
+is characterized by the coëxistence of a number of peculiarities
+which have been developed independently of
+each other, its distinctive features and striking functions
+are not exhibited until that coëxistence is attained which
+is necessary for these ends.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Hence, the characters of the human genus were probably
+developed successively; but few of the indications
+of human superiority appeared until the combination
+was accomplished. Let the opposable thumb be first
+perfected, but of what use would it be in human affairs
+without a mind to direct? And of what use a mind
+without speech to unlock it? And speech could not be
+possible though all the muscles of the larynx but one
+were developed, or but a slight abnormal convexity in
+one pair of cartilages remained.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>It would be an objection of little weight could it be
+truly urged that there have as yet no remains of apelike
+men been discovered, for we have frequently been
+called upon in the course of paleontological discovery
+to bridge greater gaps than this, and greater remain,
+which we expect to fill. But we <i>have</i> apelike characters
+exhibited by more than one race of men yet existing.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the remains of that being which is supposed to
+have been the progenitor of man may have been discovered
+a short time since in the cave of Naulette, Belgium,
+with the bones of the extinct rhinoceros and
+elephant.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>We all admit the existence of higher and lower races,
+the latter being those which we now find to present
+greater or less approximations to the apes. The peculiar
+structural characters that belong to the negro in his
+most typical form are of that kind, however great may
+be the distance of his remove therefrom. The flattening
+of the nose and prolongation of the jaws constitute
+such a resemblance; so are the deficiency of the calf of
+the leg, and the obliquity of the pelvis, which approaches
+more the horizontal position than it does in the Caucasian.
+The investigations made at Washington during
+the war with reference to the physical characteristics of
+the soldiers show that the arms of the negro are from
+one to two inches longer than those of the whites:
+another approximation to the ape. In fact, this race is
+a species of the genus Homo, as distinct in character
+from the Caucasian as those we are accustomed to recognize
+in other departments of the animal kingdom;
+but he is not distinct by isolation, since intermediate
+form’s between him and the other species can be abundantly
+found.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>And here let it be particularly observed that two of
+the most prominent characters of the negro are those of
+immature stages of the Indo-European race in its characteristic
+types. The deficient calf is the character of
+infants at a very early stage; but, what is more important,
+the flattened bridge of the nose and shortened nasal
+cartilages are universally immature conditions of the
+same parts in the Indo-European. Any one may convince
+himself of that by examining the physiognomies
+of infants. In some races—<i>e.g.</i>, the Slavic—this undeveloped
+character persists later than in some others.
+The Greek nose, with its elevated bridge, coincides not
+only with æsthetic beauty, but with developmental perfection.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This is, however, only “<i>inexact</i> parallelism,” as the
+characters of the hair, etc., cannot be explained on this
+principle <i>among existing races</i>. The embryonic characters
+mentioned are probably a remnant of those characteristic
+of the primordial race or species.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the man of Naulette, if he be not a monstrosity,
+in a still more distinct and apelike species. The chin,
+that marked character of other species of men, is totally
+wanting, and the dentition is quite approximate to the
+man-like apes, and different from that of modern men.
+The form is very massive, as in apes. That he was not
+abnormal is rendered probable by approximate characters
+seen in a jaw from the cave of Puy-sur-Aube, and
+less marked in the lowest races of Australia and New
+Caledonia.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>As to the single or multiple origin of man, science as
+yet furnishes no answer. It is very probable that, in
+many cases, the species of one genus have descended
+from corresponding species of another by change of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>generic characters only. It is a remarkable fact that the
+orang possesses the peculiarly developed malar bones
+and the copper color characteristic of the Mongolian inhabitants
+of the regions in which this animal is found,
+while the gorilla exhibits the prognathic jaws and black
+hue of the African races near whom he dwells. This
+kind of geographical imitation is very common in the
+animal kingdom.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>ζ. The Mosaic Account.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>As some persons imagine that this hypothesis conflicts
+with the account of the creation of man given in
+Genesis, a comparison of some of the points involved
+is made below.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>First: In Genesis i. 26, 27, we read, “And God said,
+Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” etc.
+“So God created man in his own image, in the image
+of God created he him; male and female created he
+them.” Those who believe that this “image” is a
+physical, material form, are not disposed to admit the
+entrance of anything apelike into its constitution, for the
+ascription of any such appearance to the Creator would
+be impious and revolting. But we are told that “God
+is a Spirit,” and Christ said to his disciples after his
+resurrection, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye
+see me have.” Luke xxiv. 39. It will require little
+further argument to show that a mental and spiritual
+image is what is meant, as it is what truly exists. Man’s
+conscience, intelligence and creative ingenuity show that
+he possesses an “image of God” within him, the possession
+of which is really necessary to his limited comprehension
+of God and of God’s ways to man.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>Second: In Genesis ii. 7, the text reads, “And the
+Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
+breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
+became a living soul.” The fact that man is the result
+of the modification of an apelike predecessor nowise
+conflicts with the above statement as to the materials of
+which his body is composed. Independently of origin,
+if the body of man be composed of dust, so must that
+of the ape be, since the composition of the two is identical.
+But the statement simply asserts that man was
+created of the same materials which compose the earth:
+their condition as “dust” depending merely on temperature
+and subdivision. The declaration, “Dust thou art,
+and unto dust thou shalt return,” must be taken in a
+similar sense, for we know that the decaying body is resolved
+not only into its earthly constituents, but also into
+carbonic acid gas and water.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>When God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of
+life, we are informed that he became, not a living body,
+but “a living soul.” His descent from a preëxistent
+being involved the possession of a living body; but
+when the Creator breathed into him we may suppose
+for the present that He infused into this body the immortal
+part, and at that moment man became a conscientious
+and responsible being.</p>
+<h3 class='c001'>II. <span class='sc'>Metaphysical Evolution.</span></h3>
+
+<p class='c025'>It is infinitely improbable that a being endowed with
+such capacities for gradual progress as man has exhibited,
+should have been full fledged in accomplishments
+at the moment when he could first claim his high title,
+and abandon that of his simious ancestors. We are
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>therefore required to admit the growth of human intelligence
+from a primitive state of inactivity and absolute
+ignorance; including the development of one important
+mode of its expression—speech; as well as that of the
+moral qualities, and of man’s social system—the form in
+which his ideas of morality were first displayed.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The expression “evolution of morality” need not
+offend, for the question in regard to the <i>laws</i> of this
+evolution is the really important part of the discussion,
+and it is to the opposing views on this point that the
+most serious interest attaches.</p>
+
+<hr class='c015' />
+
+<p class='c024'>The two views of evolution already treated of, held
+separately, are quite opposed to each other. The first
+(and generally received) lays stress on the influence of
+external surroundings, as the stimulus to and guidance
+of development: it is the counterpart of Darwin’s principle
+called Natural Selection in material progress.
+This might be called the <i>Conflict theory</i>. The second
+view recognizes the workings of a force whose nature
+we do not know, whose exhibitions accord perfectly with
+their external surroundings (or other exhibitions of itself),
+without being under their influence or more related
+to them, as effect to cause, than the notes of the
+musical octave or the colors of the spectrum are to each
+other. This is the <i>Harmonic theory</i>. In other words,
+the first principle deduces perfection from struggle and
+discord; the second, from the coincident progress of
+many parts, forming together a divine harmony comparable
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>to music. That these principles are both true
+is rendered extremely probable by the actual phenomena
+of development, material and immaterial. In other
+words, struggle and discord ever await that which is
+not in the advance, and which fails to keep pace with
+the harmonious development of the whole.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>All who have studied the phenomena of the creation
+believe that there exists in it a grand and noble harmony,
+such as was described to Job when he was told
+that “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons
+of God shouted for joy.”</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>α. Development of Intelligence.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>If the brain is the organ of mind, we may be surprised
+to find that the brain of the intelligent man
+scarcely differs in structure from that of the ape.
+Whence, then, the difference of power? Though no
+one will now deny that many of the Mammalia are
+capable of reasoning upon observed facts, yet how
+greatly the results of this capacity differ in number
+and importance from those achieved by human intelligence!
+Like water at the temperatures of 50° and 53°,
+where we perceive no difference in essential character,
+so between the brains of the lower and higher monkeys
+no difference of function or of intelligence is perceptible.
+But what a difference do the two degrees of temperature
+from 33° to 31° produce in water! In like manner
+the difference between the brain of the higher ape and
+that of man is accompanied by a difference in function
+and power, on which, man’s earthly destiny depends.
+In development, as with the water so with the higher
+ape: some Rubicon has been crossed, some floodgate
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>has been opened, which marks one of Nature’s great
+transitions, such as have been called “Expression
+points” of progress.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>What point of progress in such a history would account
+for this accession of the powers of the human intelligence?
+It has been answered, with considerable
+confidence, The power of speech. Let us picture man
+without speech. Each generation would learn nothing
+from its predecessors. Whatever originality or observation
+might yield to a man would die with him. Each intellectual
+life would begin where every other life began,
+and would end at a point only differing with its original
+capacity. Concert of action, by which man’s power
+over the material world is maintained, would not exceed,
+if it equaled, that which is seen among the bees; and
+the material results of his labors would not extend beyond
+securing the means of life and the employment of
+the simplest modes of defence and attack.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The first men, therefore, are looked upon by the developmentalists
+as extremely embryonic in all that characterizes
+humanity, and they appeal to the facts of history
+in support of this view. If they do not derive
+much assistance from written history, evidence is found
+in the more enduring relics of human handiwork.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The opposing view is, that the races which present
+or have presented this condition of inferiority or savagery
+have reached it by a process of degradation from
+a higher state—as some believe, through moral delinquency.
+This position may be true in certain cases,
+which represent perhaps a condition of senility, but in
+general we believe that savagery was the condition of
+the first man, which has in some races continued to the
+present day.</p>
+
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>
+  <h4 class='c026'><i>β. Evidence from Archæology.</i></h4>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c025'>As the object of the present essay is not to examine
+fully into the evidences for the theories of evolution here
+stated, but rather to give a sketch of such theories and
+their connection, a few facts only will be noticed.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><i>Improvement in the use of Materials.</i> As is well
+known, the remains of human handiwork of the earliest
+periods consist of nothing but rude implements of stone
+and bone, useful only in procuring food and preparing
+it for use. Even when enterprise extended beyond the
+ordinary routine, it was restrained by the want of proper
+instruments. Knives and other cutting implements of
+flint still attest the skill of the early races of men from
+Java to the Cape of Good Hope, from Egypt to Ireland,
+and through North and South America. Hatchets,
+spear-heads and ornaments of serpentine, granite, silex,
+clay slates, and all other suitable rock materials, are
+found to have been used by the first men, to the exclusion
+of metals, in most of the regions of the earth.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Later, the probably accidental discovery of the superiority
+of some of the metals resulted in the substitution
+of them for stone as a material for cutting implements.
+Copper—the only metal which, while malleable, is hard
+enough to bear an imperfect edge—was used by succeeding
+races in the Old World and the New. Implements
+of this material are found scattered over extensive
+regions. So desirable, however, did the hardening of
+the material appear for the improvement of the cutting
+edge that combinations with other metals were sought
+for and discovered. The alloy with tin, forming bronze
+and brass, was discovered and used in Europe, while
+that with silver appears to have been most readily produced
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>in America, and was consequently used by the
+Peruvians and other nations.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The discovery of the modes of reducing iron ores
+placed in the hands of man the best material for bringing
+to a shape, convenient for his needs the raw material
+of the world. All improvements in this direction
+made since that time have been in the quality of iron
+itself, and not through the introduction of any new
+metal.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The prevalent phenomena of any given period are
+those which give it its character, and by which we distinguish
+it. But this fact does not exclude the coëxistence
+of other phenomena belonging to prior or subsequent
+stages. Thus, during the many stages of human
+progress there have been men more or less in advance
+of the general body, and their characteristics have given
+a peculiar stamp to the later and higher condition of the
+whole. It furnishes no objection to this view that we
+find, as might have been anticipated, the stone, bronze
+and iron periods overlaping one another, or men of an
+inferior culture supplanting in some cases a superior
+people. A case of this kind is seen in North America,
+where the existing “Indians,” stone-men, have succeeded
+the mound-builders, copper-men. The successional relation
+of discoveries is all that it is necessary to prove,
+and this seems to be established.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The period at which the use of metallic implements
+was introduced is unknown, but Whitney says that the
+language of the Aryans, the ancestors of all the modern
+Indo-Europeans, indicates an acquaintance with such
+implements, though it is not certain whether those of
+iron are to be included. The dispersion of the daughter
+races, the Hindoos, the Pelasgi, Teutons, Celts, etc.,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>could not, it is thought, have taken place later than
+3000 <span class='fss'>B. C.</span>—a date seven hundred years prior, to that assigned
+by the old chronology to the Deluge. Those
+races coëxisted with the Egyptian and Chinese nations,
+already civilized, and as distinct from each other in
+feature as they are now.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><i>Improvement in Architecture.</i> The earliest periods,
+then, were characterized by the utmost simplicity of invention
+and construction. Later, the efforts for defence
+from enemies and for architectural display, which have
+always employed so much time and power, began to be
+made. The megalithic period has left traces over much
+of the earth. The great masses of stone piled on each
+other in the simplest form in Southern India, and the
+circles of stones planted on end in England at Stonehenge
+and Abury, and in Peru at Sillustani, are relics
+of that period. More complex are the great Himyaritic
+walls of Arabia, the works of the ancestors of the
+Phœnicians in Asia Minor, and the titanic workmanship
+of the Pelasgi in Greece and Italy. In the iron
+age we find granitic hills shaped or excavated into temples;
+as, for example, everywhere in Southern India.
+Near Madura the circumference of an acropolis-like hill
+is cut into a series of statues in high relief, of sixty feet
+in elevation. Easter Island, composed of two volcanic
+cones, one thousand miles from the west coast of South
+America, in the bosom of the Pacific, possesses several
+colossi cut from the intrusive basalt, some in high relief
+on the face of the rock, others in detached blocks removed
+by human art from their original positions and
+brought nearer the sea-shore.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Finally, at a more advanced stage, the more ornate
+and complex structures of Central America, of Cambodia,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>Nineveh and Egypt, represent the period of
+greatest display of architectural expenditure. The
+same amount of human force has perhaps never been
+expended in this direction since, though higher conceptions
+of beauty have been developed in architecture
+with increasing intellectuality.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Man has passed through the block-and-brick building
+period of his boyhood, and should rise to higher conceptions
+of what is the true disposition of power for
+“him who builds for aye,” and learn that “spectacle”
+is often the unwilling friend of progress.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>No traces of metallic implements have ever been
+found in the salt-mines of Armenia, the turquoise-quarries
+in Arabia, the cities of Central America or the excavations
+for mica in North Carolina, while the direct
+evidence points to the conclusion that in those places
+flint was exclusively used.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The simplest occupations, as requiring the least exercise
+of mind, are the pursuit of the chase and the tending
+of flocks and herds. Accordingly, we find our first
+parents engaged in these occupations. Cain, we are
+told, was, in addition, a tiller of the ground. Agriculture
+in its simplest forms requires but little more intelligence
+than the pursuits just mentioned, though no employment
+is capable of higher development. If we
+look at the savage nations at present occupying nearly
+half the land surface of the earth, we shall find many
+examples of the former industrial condition of our race
+preserved to the present day. Many of them had no
+knowledge of the use of metals until they obtained it
+from civilized men who visited them, while their pursuits
+were and are those of the chase, tending domestic
+animals, and rudimental agriculture.</p>
+
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>
+  <h4 class='c026'>γ. The Development of Language.</h4>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c025'>In this department the fact of development from the
+simple to the complex has been so satisfactorily demonstrated
+by philologists as scarcely to require notice here.
+The course of that development has been from monosyllabic
+to polysyllabic forms, and also in a process of
+differentiation, as derivative races were broken off from
+the original stock and scattered widely apart. The
+evidence is clear that simple words for distinct objects
+formed the bases of the primal languages, just as the
+ground, tree, sun and moon represent the character of
+the first words the infant lisps. In this department also
+the facts point to an infancy of the human race.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>δ. Development of the Fine Arts.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>If we look at representation by drawing or sculpture,
+we find that the efforts of the earliest races of which we
+have any knowledge were quite similar to those which
+the untaught hand of infancy traces on its slate or the
+savage depicts on the rocky faces of hills. The circle
+or triangle for the head and body, and straight lines for
+the limbs, have been preserved as the first attempts of
+the men of the stone period, as they are to this day the
+sole representations of the human form which the North
+American Indian places on his buffalo robe or mountain
+precipice. The stiff, barely-outlined form of the deer,
+the turtle, etc., are literally those of the infancy of civilized
+man.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The first attempts at sculpture were marred by the
+influence of modism. Thus the idols of Coban and
+Palenque, with human faces of some merit, are overloaded
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>with absurd ornament, and deformed into frightful
+asymmetry, in compliance with the demand of some
+imperious mode. In later days we have the stiff, conventionalized
+figures of the palaces of Nineveh and
+the temples of Egypt, where the representation of form
+has somewhat improved, but is too often distorted by
+false fashion or imitation of some unnatural standard,
+real or artistic. This is distinguished as the day of
+archaic sculpture, which disappeared with the Etruscan
+nation. So the drawings of the child, when he abandons
+the simple lines, are stiff and awkward, and but a
+stage nearer true representation; and how often does
+he repeat some peculiarity or absurdity of his own! So
+much easier is it to copy than to conceive.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The introduction of the action and pose of life into
+sculpture was not known before the early days of
+Greece, and it was there that the art was brought to
+perfection. When art rose from its mediæval slumber,
+much the same succession of development may be discovered.
+First, the stiff figures, with straightened limbs
+and cylindric drapery, found in the old Northern
+churches—then the forms of life that now adorn the
+porticoes and palaces of the cities of Germany.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>ε. Rationale of the Development of Intelligence.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>The history of material development shows that the
+transition from stage to stage of development, experienced
+by the most perfect forms of animals and plants
+in their growth from the primordial cell, is similar to the
+succession of created beings which the geological
+epochs produced. It also shows that the slow assumption
+of main characters in the line of succession in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>early geological periods produced the condition of inferiority,
+while an increased rapidity of growth in later
+days has resulted in an attainment of superiority. It is
+not to be supposed that in “acceleration” the period
+of growth is shortened: on the contrary, it continues
+the same. Of two beings whose characters are assumed
+at the same rate of succession, that with the quickest or
+shortest growth is necessarily inferior. “Acceleration”
+means a gradual increase of the rate of assumption of
+successive characters in the same period of time. A
+fixed rate of assumption of characters, with gradual increase
+in the length of the period of growth, would
+produce the same result—viz., a longer developmental
+scale and the attainment of an advanced position. The
+first is in part the relation of sexes of a species; the
+last of genera, and of other types of creation. If from
+an observed relation of many facts we derive a law, we
+are permitted, when we see in another class of facts
+similar relations, to suspect that a similar law has operated,
+differing only in its objects. We find a marked
+resemblance between the facts of structural progress
+in matter and the phenomena of intellectual and spiritual
+progress.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>If the facts entering into the categories enumerated
+in the preceding section bear us out, we conclude that
+in the beginning of human history the progress of the
+individual man was very slow, and that but little was
+attained to; that through the profitable direction of human
+energy, means were discovered from time to time
+by which the process of individual development in all
+metaphysical qualities has been accelerated; and that
+up to the present time the consequent advance of the
+whole race has been at an increasing rate of progress,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>This is in accordance with the general principle, that
+high development in intellectual things is accomplished
+by rapidity in traversing the preliminary stages of inferiority
+common to all, while low development signifies
+sluggishness in that progress, and a corresponding retention
+of inferiority.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>How much meaning may we not see, from this stand-point,
+in the history of the intelligence of our little
+ones! First they crawl, they walk on all fours: when
+they first assume the erect position they are generally
+speechless, and utter only inarticulate sounds. When
+they run about, stones and dirt, the objects that first
+meet the eye, are the delight of their awakening powers,
+but these are all cast aside when the boy obtains his
+first jackknife. Soon, however, reading and writing
+open a new world to him; and finally as a mature man
+he seizes the forces of nature, and steam and electricity
+do his bidding in the active pursuit of power for still
+better and higher ends.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>So with the history of the species: first the quadrumane—then
+the speaking man, whose humble industry
+was, however, confined to the objects that came first to
+hand, this being the “stone age” of pre-historic time.
+When the use of metals was discovered, the range of
+industries expanded wonderfully, and the “iron age”
+saw many striking efforts of human power. With the
+introduction of letters it became possible to record
+events and experiences, and the spread of knowledge
+was thereby greatly increased, and the delays and mistakes
+of ignorance correspondingly diminished in the
+fields of the world’s activity.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>From the first we see in history a slow advance as
+knowledge gained by the accumulation of tradition and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>by improvements in habit based on experience; but
+how slow was this advance while the use of the metals
+was still unknown! The iron age brought with it not
+only new conveniences, but increased means of future
+progress; and here we have an acceleration in the rate
+of advance. With the introduction of letters this rate
+was increased many fold, and in the application of steam
+we have a change equal in utility to any that has preceded
+it, and adding more than any to the possibilities
+of future advance in many directions. By its power,
+knowledge and means of happiness were to be distributed
+among the many.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The uses to which human intelligence has successively
+applied the materials furnished by nature have been—First,
+subsistence and defence: second, the accumulation
+of power in the shape of a representative of that
+labor which the use of matter involves; in other words,
+the accumulation of wealth. The possession of this
+power involves new possibilities, for opportunity is
+offered for the special pursuits of knowledge and the
+assistance of the weak or undeveloped part of mankind
+in its struggles.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus, while the first men possessed the power of
+speech, and could advance a little in knowledge through
+the accumulation of the experiences of their predecessors,
+they possessed no means of accumulating the
+power of labor, no control over the activity of numbers—in
+other words, no wealth.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the accumulation of knowledge finally brought
+this advance about. The extraction and utilization of
+the metals, especially iron, formed the most important
+step, since labor was thus facilitated and its productiveness
+increased in an incalculable degree. We have
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>little evidence of the existence of a medium of exchange
+during the first or stone period, and no doubt
+barter was the only form of trade. Before the use of
+metals, shells and other objects were used: remains of
+money of baked clay have been found in Mexico. Finally,
+though in still ancient times, the possession of
+wealth in money gradually became possible and more
+common, and from that day to this avenues for reaching
+this stage in social progress has ever been opening.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But wealth merely indicates a stage of progress, since
+it is but a comparative term. All men could not become
+rich, for in that case all would be equally poor. But
+labor has a still higher goal; for, thirdly, as capital, it
+constructs and employs machinery, which does the work
+of many hands, and thus cheapens products, which is
+equivalent in effect to an accumulation of wealth to the
+consumer. And this increase of power may be used
+for the intellectual and spiritual advance of men, or
+otherwise, at the will of the men thus favored. Machinery
+places man in the position of a creator, operating
+on Nature through an increased number of “secondary
+causes.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Development of intelligence is seen, then, in the
+following directions: First, in the knowledge of facts,
+including science; second, in language; third, in the
+apprehension of beauty; and, as consequences of the
+first of these, the accumulation of power by development—First,
+of means of subsistence; and second, of
+mechanical invention.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus we have two terms to start with in estimating
+the beginning of human development in knowledge and
+power: First, the primary capacities of the human mind
+itself; second, a material world, whose infinitely varied
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>components are so arranged as to yield results to the
+energies of that mind. For example, the transition
+points of vaporization and liquefaction are so placed as
+to be within the reach of man’s agents; their weights
+are so fixed as to accord with the muscular or other
+forces which he is able to exert; and other living organizations
+are subject to his convenience and rule, and
+not, as in previous geological periods, entirely beyond
+his control. These two terms being given, it is maintained
+that the present situation of the most civilized
+men has been attained through the operation of a law
+of mutual action and reaction—a law whose results,
+seen at the present time, have depended on the acceleration
+or retardation of its rate of action; which rate
+has been regulated, according to the degree in which a
+third great term, viz., the law of moral or (what is the
+same thing) true religious development has been combined
+in the plan. What it is necessary to establish in
+order to prove the above hypothesis is—</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I. That in each of the particulars above enumerated
+the development of the human species is similar to that
+of the individual from infancy to maturity.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>II. That from a condition of subserviency to the laws
+of matter, man’s intelligence enables him, by an accumulation
+of power, to become in a sense independent
+of those laws, and to increase greatly the rate of intellectual
+and spiritual progress.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>III. That failure to accomplish a moral or spiritual
+development will again reduce him to a subserviency to
+the laws of matter.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This brings us to the subject of moral development.
+And here I may be allowed to suggest that the weight
+of the evidence is opposed to the philosophy, “falsely
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>so called,” of necessitarianism, which asserts that the
+first two terms alone were sufficient to work out man’s
+salvation in this world and the next; and, on the other
+hand, to that anti-philosophy which asserts that all
+things in the progress of the human race, social and
+civil, are regulated by immediate Divine interposition
+instead of through instrumentalities. Hence the subject
+divides itself at once into two great departments—viz.,
+that of the development of mind or intelligence,
+and that of the development of morality.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>That these laws are distinct there can be no doubt,
+since in the individual man one of them may produce
+results without the aid of the other. Yet it can be
+shown that each is the most invaluable aid and stimulant
+to the other, and most favorable to the rapid
+advance of the mind in either direction.</p>
+<h3 class='c001'>III. <span class='sc'>Spiritual or Moral Development.</span></h3>
+
+<p class='c025'>In examining this subject, we first inquire (Sect. <i>α</i>)
+whether there is any connection between physical and
+moral or religious development; then (<i>β</i>), what indications
+of moral development may be derived from history.
+Finally (<i>γ</i>), a correlation of the results of these inquiries,
+with the nature of the religious development in the
+individual, is attempted. Of course in so stupendous
+an inquiry but a few leading points can be presented
+here.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>If it be true that the period of human existence on
+the earth has seen a gradually increasing predominance
+of higher motives over lower ones among the mass of
+mankind, and if any parts of our metaphysical being
+have been derived by inheritance from preëxistent
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>beings, we are incited to the inquiry whether any of the
+moral qualities are included among the latter; and
+whether there be any resemblance between moral and
+intellectual development.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus, if there have been a physical derivation from a
+preëxistent genus, and an embryonic condition of those
+physical characters which distinguish Homo—if there
+has been also an embryonic or infantile stage in intellectual
+qualities—we are led to inquire whether the
+development of the individual in moral nature will furnish
+us with a standard of estimation of the successive
+conditions or present relations of the human species in
+this aspect also.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'><i>a. Relations of Physical and Moral Nature.</i></h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>Although men are much alike in the deeper qualities
+of their nature, there is a range of variation which is
+best understood by a consideration of the extremes of
+such variation, as seen in men of different latitudes, and
+women and children.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>(<i>a.</i>) <i>In Children.</i> Youth is distinguished by a peculiarity,
+which no doubt depends upon an immature condition
+of the nervous center concerned, which might be
+called <i>nervous impressibility</i>. It is exhibited in a greater
+tendency to tearfulness, in timidity, less mental endurance,
+a greater facility in acquiring knowledge, and more
+ready susceptibility to the influence of sights, sounds
+and sensations. In both sexes the emotional nature
+predominates over the intelligence and judgment. In
+those years the <i>character</i> is said to be in embryo, and
+theologians in using the phrase, “reaching years of
+religious understanding,” mean that in early years the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>religious <i>capacities</i> undergo development coincidentally
+with those of the body.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>(<i>b.</i>) <i>In Women.</i> If we examine the metaphysical
+characteristics of women, we observe two classes of
+traits—namely, those which are also found in men, and
+those which are absent or but weakly developed in men.
+Those of the first class are very similar in essential
+nature to those which men exhibit at an early stage of
+development. This may be in some way related to the
+fact that physical maturity occurs earlier in women.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The gentler sex is characterized by a greater impressibility,
+often seen in the influence exercised by a
+stronger character, as well as by music, color or spectacle
+generally; warmth of emotion, submission to its
+influence rather than that of logic; timidity and irregularity
+of action in the outer world. All these qualities
+belong to the male sex, as a general rule, at some period
+of life, though different individuals lose them at very
+various periods. Ruggedness and sternness may rarely
+be developed in infancy, yet at some still prior time
+they certainly do not exist in any.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Probably most men can recollect some early period of
+their lives when the emotional nature predominated—a
+time when emotion at the sight of suffering was more
+easily stirred than in maturer years. I do not now
+allude to the benevolence inspired, kept alive or developed
+by the influence of the Christian religion on the
+heart, but rather to that which belongs to the natural
+man. Perhaps all men can recall a period of youth
+when they were hero-worshipers—when they felt the
+need of a stronger arm, and loved to look up to the
+powerful friend who could sympathize with and aid them.
+This is the “woman stage” of character: in a large
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>number of cases it is early passed; in some it lasts
+longer; while in a very few men it persists through life.
+Severe discipline and labor are unfavorable to its persistence.
+Luxury preserves its bad qualities without its
+good, while Christianity preserves its good elements
+without its bad.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It is not designed to say that woman in her emotional
+nature does not differ from the undeveloped man. On
+the contrary, though she does not differ in kind, she
+differs greatly in degree, for her qualities grow with her
+growth, and exceed in <i>power</i> many fold those exhibited
+by her companion at the original point of departure.
+Hence, since it might be said that man is the undeveloped
+woman, a word of explanation will be useful.
+Embryonic types abound in the fields of nature, but
+they are not therefore immature in the usual sense.
+Maintaining the lower essential quality, they yet exhibit
+the usual results of growth in individual characters;
+that is, increase of strength, powers of support and protection,
+size and beauty. In order to maintain that the
+masculine character coincides with that of the undeveloped
+woman, it would be necessary to show that the
+latter during her infancy possesses the male characters
+predominating—that is, unimpressibility, judgment,
+physical courage, and the like.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>If we look at the second class of female characters—namely,
+those which are imperfectly developed or
+absent in men, and in respect to which man may be
+called undeveloped woman—we note three prominent
+points: facility in language, tact or finesse, and the love
+of children. The first two appear to me to be altogether
+developed results of “impressibility,” already
+considered as an indication of immaturity. Imagination
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>is also a quality of impressibility, and, associated
+with finesse, is apt to degenerate into duplicity and untruthfulness.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The third quality is different. It generally appears
+at a very early period of life. Who does not know how
+soon the little girl selects the doll, and the boy the toy-horse
+or machine? Here man truly never gets beyond
+undeveloped woman. Nevertheless, “impressibility”
+seems to have a great deal to do with this quality also.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus the metaphysical relation of the sexes would
+appear to be one of <i>inexact parallelism</i>, as defined in
+Sect. I. That the physical relation is a remote one of
+the same kind, several characters seem to point out.
+The case of the vocal organs will suffice. Their structure
+is identical in both sexes in early youth, and both
+produce nearly similar sounds. They remain in this
+condition in the woman, while they undergo a metamorphosis
+and change both in structure and vocal
+power in the man. In the same way, in many of the
+lower creation, the females possess a majority of embryonic
+features, though not invariably. A common
+example is to be found in the plumage of birds, where
+the females and young males are often undistinguishable.<a id='r48' /><a href='#f48' class='c020'><sup>[48]</sup></a>
+But there are few points in the physical structure
+of man also in which the male condition is the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>immature one. In regard to structure, the point at
+which the relation between the sexes is that of <i>exact
+parallelism</i>, or where the mature condition of the one
+sex accords with the undeveloped condition of the
+other, is when reproduction is no longer accomplished
+by budding or gemmation, but requires distinct organs.
+Metaphysically, this relation is to be found where distinct
+individuality of the sexes first appears; that is,
+where we pass from the hermaphrodite to the bisexual
+condition.</p>
+
+<div class='footnote c027' id='f48'>
+<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r48'>48</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Meehan states that the upper limbs and strong laterals in coniferæ
+and other trees produce female flowers and cones, and the
+lower and more interior branches the male flowers. What he points
+out is in harmony with the position here maintained—namely,
+that the female characters include more of those which are embryonic
+in the males, than the male characters include of those which
+are embryonic in the female: the female flowers are the product of
+the younger and more growing portions of the tree—that is, those
+last produced (the upper limbs and new branches)—while the male
+flowers are produced by the older or more mature portions—that
+is, lower limbs or more axial regions.</p>
+
+<p class='c028'>Meehan’s observations coincide with those of Thury and others
+on the origin of sexes in animals and plants, which it appears to
+admit of a similar explanation.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c024'>But let us put the whole interpretation on this partial
+undevelopment of woman.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The types or conditions of organic life which have
+been the most prominent in the world’s history—the
+Ganoids of the first, the Dinosaurs of the second, and
+the Mammoths of the third period—have generally died
+with their day. The line of succession has not been
+from them. The law of anatomy and paleontology is,
+that we must seek the point of departure of the type
+which is to predominate in the future, at lower stages on
+the line, in less decided forms, or in what, in scientific
+parlance, are called generalized types. In the same
+way, though the adults of the tailless apes are in a
+physical sense more highly developed than their young,
+yet the latter far more closely resemble the human
+species in their large facial angle and shortened jaws.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>How much significance, then, is added to the law
+uttered by Christ!—“Except ye become as little children,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Submission
+of will, loving trust, confiding faith—these
+belong to the child: how strange they appear to the
+executing, commanding, reasoning man! Are they so
+strange to the woman? We all know the answer.
+Woman is nearer to the point of departure of that development
+which outlives time and peoples heaven; and
+if man would find it, he must retrace his steps, regain
+something he lost in youth, and join to the powers and
+energies of his character the submission, love and faith
+which the new birth alone can give.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus the summing up of the metaphysical qualities of
+woman would be thus expressed: In the emotional
+world, man’s superior; in the moral world, his equal;
+in the laboring world, his inferior.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>There are, however, vast differences in women in respect
+to the number of masculine traits they may have
+assumed before being determined into their own special
+development. Woman also, under the influence of necessity,
+in later years of life, may add more or less to
+those qualities in her which are fully developed in the
+man.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The relation of these facts to the principles stated as
+the two opposing laws of development is, it appears to
+me, to be explained thus: First, that woman’s most inherent
+peculiarities are <i>not</i> the result of the external
+circumstances with which she has been placed in contact,
+as the <i>conflict theory</i> would indicate. Such circumstances
+are said to be her involuntary subserviency to
+the physically more powerful man, and the effect of a
+compulsory mode of life in preventing her from attaining
+a position of equality in the activities of the world.
+Second, that they <i>are</i> the result of the different distributions
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span>of qualities as already indicated by the <i>harmonic
+theory</i> of development; that is, of the unequal possession
+of features which belong to different periods in the
+developmental succession of the highest. And here it
+might be further shown that this relation involves no
+disadvantage to either sex, but that the principle of
+compensation holds in moral organization and in social
+order, as elsewhere. There is then another beautiful
+harmony which will ever remain, let the development of
+each sex be extended as far as it may.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>(<i>c.</i>) <i>In Men.</i> If we look at the male sex, we shall
+find various exceptional approximations to the female in
+mental constitution. Further, there can be little doubt
+that in the Indo-European race maturity in some respects
+appears earlier in tropical than in northern
+regions; and though subject to many exceptions, this is
+sufficiently general to be looked upon as a rule. Accordingly,
+we find in that race—at least in the warmer
+regions of Europe and America—a larger proportion of
+certain qualities which are more universal in women;
+as greater activity of the emotional nature when compared
+with the judgment; an impressibility of the nervous
+center, which, <i>cæteris paribus</i>, appreciates quickly
+the harmonies of sound, form and color; answers most
+quickly to the friendly greeting or the hostile menace;
+is more careless of consequences in the material expression
+of generosity or hatred, and more indifferent to
+truth under the influence of personal relations. The
+movements of the body and expressions of the countenance
+answer to the temperament. More of grace and
+elegance in the bearing mark the Greek, the Italian
+and the Creole, than the German, the Englishman or the
+Green Mountain man. More of vivacity and fire, for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>better or for worse, are displayed in the countenance.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Perhaps the more northern type left all that behind
+in its youth. The rugged, angular character which appreciates
+force better than harmony, the strong intellect
+which delights in forethought and calculation, the less
+impressibility, reaching stolidity in the uneducated, are
+its well-known traits. If in such a character generosity
+is less prompt, and there is but little chivalry, there is
+persistency and unwavering fidelity, not readily interrupted
+by the lightning of passion or the dark surmises
+of an active imagination.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>All these peculiarities appear to result, <i>first</i>, from
+different degrees of quickness and depth in appreciating
+impressions from without; and, <i>second</i>, from differing
+degrees of attention to the intelligent judgment in consequent
+action. (I leave conscience out, as not belonging
+to the category of inherited qualities.)</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The first is the basis of an emotional nature, and the
+predominance of the second is the usual indication of
+maturity. That the first is largely dependent on an
+impressible condition of the nervous system can be asserted
+by those who reduce their nervous centers to a
+sensitive condition by a rapid consumption of the nutritive
+materials necessary to the production of thought-force,
+and perhaps of brain-tissue itself, induced by close
+and prolonged mental labor. The condition of over-work,
+though but an imitation of immaturity, without its
+joy-giving nutrition, is nevertheless very instructive.
+The sensitiveness, both physically, emotionally and morally,
+is often remarkable, and a weakening of the understanding
+is often coincident with it.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It is necessary here to introduce a caution, that the
+meaning of the words high and low be not misunderstood.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>Great impressibility is an essential constituent of many
+of the highest forms of genius, and the combination of
+this quality with strong reflective intelligence, constitutes
+the most complete and efficient type of mind—therefore
+the highest in the common sense. It is not, however,
+the highest—or extremest—in an evolutional
+sense, it is not masculine, but hermaphrodite; in other
+words, its <i>kinetic</i> force exceeds its <i>bathmic</i>.<a id='r49' /><a href='#f49' class='c020'><sup>[49]</sup></a> It is therefore
+certain that a partial diminution of bathmic vigor
+is an advantage to some kinds of intellect.</p>
+
+<div class='footnote c027' id='f49'>
+<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r49'>49</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><i>Bathmic force</i> is analogous to the <i>potential</i> force of chemists,
+but is no doubt entirely different in its nature. It is converted
+into active energy or <i>kinetic</i> force only during the years of growth:
+it is in large amount in <i>acceleration</i>, in small amount in <i>retardation</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c024'>The above observations have been confined to the
+Indo-European race. It may be objected to the theory
+that savagery means immaturity in the senses above
+described, as dependent largely on “impressibility,”
+while savages in general display the least “impressibility,”
+as that word is generally understood. This
+cannot be asserted of the Africans, who, so far as we
+know them, possess this peculiarity in a high degree.
+Moreover, it must be remembered that the state of indifference
+which precedes that of impressibility in the
+individual may characterize many savages; while their
+varied peculiarities may be largely accounted for by
+recollecting that many combinations of different species
+of emotions and kinds of intelligence go to make up
+the complete result in each case.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>(<i>d.</i>) <i>Conclusions.</i> Three types of religion may be
+selected from the developmental conditions of man:
+first, an absence of sensibility (early infancy); second,
+an emotional stage more productive of faith than of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>works; thirdly, an intellectual type, more favorable to
+works than to faith. Though in regard to responsibility
+these states may be equal, there is absolutely no gain to
+laboring humanity from the first type, and a serious loss
+in actual results from the second, taken alone, as compared
+with the third.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>These, then, are the <i>physical vehicles of religion</i>—the
+“<i>earthen vessels</i>” of Paul—which give character and
+tone to the deeper spiritual life, as the color of the
+transparent vessel is communicated to the light which
+radiates from within.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But if evolution has taken place, there is evidently a
+provision for the progress from the lower to the higher
+states, either in the education of circumstances (“conflict,”)
+or in the power of an interior spiritual influence
+“harmony,”) or both.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'><i>β. Evidence Derived from History.</i></h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>We trace the development of Morality in—First, the
+family or social order; second, the civil order, or government.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Whatever may have been the extent of moral ignorance
+before the Deluge, it does not appear that the
+earth was yet prepared for the permanent habitation of
+the human race. All nations preserve traditions of the
+drowning of the early peoples by floods, such as have
+occurred frequently during geologic time. At the close
+of each period of dry land, a period of submergence
+has set in, and the depression of the level of the earth,
+and consequent overflow by the sea, has caused the
+death and subsequent preservation of the remains of
+the fauna and flora living upon it, while the elevation of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>the same has produced that interruption in the process
+of deposit in the same region which marks the intervals
+between geologic periods. Change in these respects do
+not occur to any very material extent at the present
+time in the regions inhabited by the most highly developed
+portions of the human race; and as the last which
+occurred seems to have been expressly designed for the
+preparation of the earth’s surface for the occupation of
+organized human society, it may be doubted whether
+many such changes are to be looked for in the future.
+The last great flooding was that which stratified the
+drift materials of the north, and carried the finer portions
+far over the south, determining the minor topography
+of the surface and supplying it with soils.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The existence of floods which drowned many races
+of men may be considered as established. The men
+destroyed by the one recorded by Moses are described
+by him as exceedingly wicked, so that “the earth was
+filled with violence.” In his eyes the Flood was designed
+for their extermination.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>That their condition was evil must be fully believed
+if they were condemned by the executive of the Jewish
+law. This law, it will be remembered, permitted polygamy,
+slavery, revenge, aggressive war. The Jews were
+expected to rob their neighbors the Egyptians of jewels,
+and they were allowed “an eye for an eye and a tooth
+for a tooth.” They were expected to butcher other nations,
+with their women and children, their flocks and
+their herds. If we look at the lives of men recorded
+in the Old Testament as examples of distinguished excellence,
+we find that their standard, however superior
+to that of the people around them, would ill accord
+with the morality of the present day. They were all
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>polygamists, slaveholders and warriors. Abraham
+treated Hagar and Ishmael with inhumanity. Jacob,
+with his mother’s aid, deceived Isaac, and received
+thereby a blessing which extended to the whole Jewish
+nation. David, a man whom Paul tells us the Lord
+found to be after his own heart, slew the messenger who
+brought tidings of the death of Saul, and committed
+other acts which would stain the reputation of a Christian
+beyond redemption. It is scarcely necessary to
+turn to other nations if this be true of the chosen men
+of a chosen people. History indeed presents us with
+no people prior to, or contemporary with, the Jews who
+were not morally their inferiors.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>If we turn to more modern periods, an examination
+of the morality of Greece and Rome reveals a curious
+intermixture of lower and higher moral conditions.
+While each of these nations produced excellent moralists,
+the influence of their teachings was not sufficient
+to elevate the masses above what would now be regarded
+as a very low standard. The popularity of those scenes
+of cruelty, the gladiatorial shows and the combats with
+wild beasts, sufficiently attests this. The Roman virtue
+of patriotism, while productive of many noble deeds, is
+in itself far from being a disinterested one, but partakes
+rather of the nature of partisanship and selfishness. If
+the Greeks were superior to the Romans in humanity,
+they were apparently their inferiors in the social virtues,
+and were much below the standard of Christian nations
+in both respects.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Ancient history points to a state of chronic war, in
+which the social relations were in confusion, and the
+development of the useful arts was almost impossible.
+Savage races, which continue to this day in a similar
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>moral condition, are, we may easily believe, most unhappy.
+They are generally divided into tribes, which
+are mutually hostile, or friendly only with the view of
+injuring some other tribe. Might is their law, and robbery,
+rapine and murder express their mutual relations.
+This is the history of the lowest grade of barbarism,
+and the history of primeval man so far as it has come
+down to us in sacred and profane records. Man as a
+species first appears in history as a sinful being. Then
+a race maintaining a contest with the prevailing corruption
+and exhibiting a higher moral ideal is presented to
+us in Jewish history. Finally, early Christian society
+exhibits a greatly superior condition of things. In it
+polygamy scarcely existed, and slavery and war were
+condemned. But progress did not end here, for our
+Lord said, “I have yet many things to say unto you,
+<i>but ye cannot bear them now</i>. Howbeit, when He, the
+spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The progress revealed to us by history is truly great,
+and if a similar difference existed between the first of
+the human species and the first of whose condition we
+have information, we can conceive how low the origin
+must have been. History begins with a considerable
+progress in civilization, and from this we must infer a
+long preceding period of human existence, such as a
+gradual evolution would require.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>γ. Rationale of Moral Development.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>I. <i>Of the Species.</i> Let us now look at the moral condition
+of the infant man of the present time. We know
+his small accountability, his trust, his innocence. We
+know that he is free from the law that when he “would
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>do good, evil is present with him,” for good and evil
+are alike unknown. We know that until growth has
+progressed to a certain degree he fully deserves the
+praise pronounced by Our Saviour, that “of such is the
+kingdom of heaven.” Growth, however, generally sees
+a change. We know that the buddings of evil appear
+but too soon: the lapse of a few months sees exhibitions
+of anger, disobedience, malice, falsehood, and
+their attendants—the fruit of a corruption within not
+manifested before.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In early youth it may be said that moral susceptibility
+is often in inverse ratio to physical vigor. But
+with growth the more physically vigorous are often
+sooner taught the lessons of life, for their energy brings
+them into earlier conflict with the antagonisms and contradictions
+of the world. Here is a beautiful example
+of the benevolent principle of compensation.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>1. <i>Innocence and the Fall.</i> If physical evolution be a
+reality, we have reason to believe that the infantile
+stage of human morals, as well as of human intellect,
+was much prolonged in the history of our first parents.
+This constitutes the period of human purity, when we
+are told by Moses that the first pair dwelt in Eden.
+But the growth to maturity saw the development of all
+the qualities inherited from the irresponsible denizen of
+the forest. Man inherits from his predecessors in the
+creation the buddings of reason: he inherits passions,
+propensities and appetites. His corruption is that of
+his animal progenitors, and his sin is the low and bestial
+instinct of the brute creation. Thus only is the origin
+of sin made clear—a problem which the pride of man
+would have explained in any other way had it been
+possible.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>But how startling the exhibition of evil by this new
+being as compared with the scenes of the countless ages
+already past! Then the right of the strongest was
+God’s law, and rapine and destruction were the history
+of life. But into man had been “breathed the breath
+of life,” and he had “become a living soul.” The law
+of right, the Divine Spirit, was planted within him, and
+the laws of the beast were in antagonism to that law.
+The natural development of his inherited qualities
+necessarily brought him into collision with that higher
+standard planted within him, and that war was commenced
+which shall never cease “till He hath put all
+things under His feet.” The first act of man’s disobedience
+constituted the Fall, and with it would come the
+first <i>intellectual</i> “knowledge of good and of evil”—an
+apprehension up to that time derived exclusively
+from the divinity within, or conscience.<a id='r50' /><a href='#f50' class='c020'><sup>[50]</sup></a></p>
+
+<div class='footnote c027' id='f50'>
+<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r50'>50</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>In our present translation of Genesis, the Fall is ascribed to
+the influence of Satan assuming the form of the serpent, and this
+animal was cursed in consequence, and compelled to assume a
+prone position. This rendering may well be revised, since serpents,
+prone like others, existed in both America and Europe during the
+Eocene epoch, five times as great a period before Adam as has
+elapsed since his day. Clark states, with great probability, that
+“serpent” should be translated monkey or ape—a conclusion, it
+will be observed, exactly coinciding with our inductions on the basis
+of evolution. The instigation to evil by an ape merely states inheritance
+in another form. His curse, then, refers to the retention
+of the horizontal position by all other quadrumana, as we find it
+at the present day.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c024'>2. <i>Free Agency.</i> Heretofore development had been
+that of physical types, but the Lord had rested on the
+seventh day, for man closed the line of the physical
+creation. Now a new development was to begin—the
+development of mind, of morality and of grace.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>On the previous days of Creation all had progressed
+in accordance with inevitable law apart from its objects.
+Now two lines of development were at the disposal of
+this being, between which his <i>free will</i> was to choose.
+Did he choose the courses dictated by the spirit of the
+brute, he was to be subject to the old law of the brute
+creation—the right of the strongest and spiritual death.
+Did he choose the guidance of the Divine Guest in his
+heart, he became subject to the laws which are to guide—I.
+the human species to an ultimate perfection, so far
+as consistent with this world; and II. the individual
+man to a higher life, where a new existence awaits him
+as a spiritual being, freed from the laws of terrestrial
+matter.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The charge brought against the theory of development,
+that it implies a necessary progress of man to all
+perfection without his coöperation—or <i>necessitarianism</i>,
+as it is called—is unfounded.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The free will of man remains the source alike of his
+progress and his relapse. But the choice once made,
+the laws of spiritual development are apparently as inevitable
+as those of matter. Thus men whose religious
+capacities are increased by attention to the Divine Monitor
+within are in the advance of progress—progress
+coinciding with that which in material things is called
+the <i>harmonic</i>. On the other hand, those whose motives
+are of the lower origin fall under the working of the
+law of <i>conflict</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The lesson derivable from the preceding considerations
+would seem to be “necessitarian” as respects the
+whole human race, considered by itself; and I believe
+it is to be truly so interpreted. That is, the Creator of
+all things has set agencies at work which will slowly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>develop a perfect humanity out of His lower creation,
+and nothing can thwart the process or alter the result.
+“My word shall not return unto Me void, but it shall
+accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in
+the thing whereto I sent it.” This is our great encouragement,
+our noblest hope—second only to that which
+looks to a blessed inheritance in another world. It is
+this thought that should inspire the farmer, who as he
+toils wonders, “Why all this labor? The Good Father
+could have made me like the lilies, who, though they
+toil not, neither spin, are yet clothed in glory; and why
+should I, a nobler being, be subject to the dust and the
+sweat of labor?” This thought should enlighten every
+artisan of the thousands that people the factories and
+guide their whirling machinery in our modern cities.
+Every revolution of a wheel is moving the car of progress,
+and the timed stroke of the crank and the
+rhythmic throw of the shuttle are but the music the
+spheres have sung since time began. A new significance
+then appears in the prayer of David: “Let the beauty
+of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish Thou the
+work of our hands upon us: the work of our hands,
+O Lord, establish Thou it.” But beware of the catastrophe,
+for “He will sit as a refiner:” “the wheat shall
+be gathered into barns, but the chaff shall be burned
+with unquenchable fire.” If this be true, let us look
+for—</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>3. <i>The Extinction of Evil.</i> How is necessitarianism
+to be reconciled with free will? It appears to me, thus:
+When a being whose safety depends on the perfection
+of a system of laws abandons the system by which he
+lives, he becomes subject to that lower grade of laws
+which govern lower intelligences. Man, falling from
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>the laws of right, comes under the dominion of the
+laws of brute force; as said our Saviour: “Salt is good,
+but if the salt have lost his savor, it is thenceforth good
+for nothing but to be cast forth and trodden under foot
+of men.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Evil, being unsatisfying to the human heart, is in its
+nature ever progressive, whether in the individual or the
+nation; and in estimating the practical results to man
+of the actions prompted by the lower portion of our
+nature, it is only necessary to carry out to its full development
+each of those animal qualities which may in certain
+states of society be restrained by the social system.
+In human history those qualities have repeatedly had
+this development, and the battle of progress is fought
+to decide whether they shall overthrow the system that
+restrains them, or be overthrown by it.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Entire obedience to the lower instincts of our nature
+ensures destruction to the weaker, and generally to the
+stronger also. A most marked case of this kind is seen
+where the developed vices of civilization are introduced
+among a savage people—as, for example, the North
+American Indians. These seem in consequence to be
+hastening to extinction.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But a system or a circuit of existence has been
+allotted to the civil associations of the animal species
+man, independently of his moral development. It may
+be briefly stated thus: Races begin as poor offshoots or
+emigrants from a parent stock. The law of labor develops
+their powers, and increases their wealth and
+numbers. These will be diminished by their various
+vices; but on the whole, in proportion as the intellectual
+and economical elements prevail, wealth will increase;
+that is, they accumulate power. When this has
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>been accomplished, and before activity has slackened
+its speed, the nation has reached the culminating point,
+and then it enters upon the period of decline. The restraints
+imposed by economy and active occupation being
+removed, the beastly traits find in accumulated
+power only increased means of gratification, and industry
+and prosperity sink together. Power is squandered,
+little is accumulated, and the nation goes down to its
+extinction amid scenes of internal strife and vice. Its
+cycle is soon fulfilled, and other nations, fresh from
+scenes of labor, assault it, absorb its fragments, and it
+dies. This has been the world’s history, and it remains
+to be seen whether the virtues of the nations now existing
+will be sufficient to save them from a like fate.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus the history of the animal man in nations is
+wonderfully like that of the type or families of the animal
+and vegetable kingdoms during geologic ages.
+They rise, they increase and reach a period of multiplication
+and power. The force allotted to them becoming
+exhausted, they diminish and sink and die.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>II. <i>Of the Individual.</i> In discussing physical development,
+we are as yet compelled to restrict ourselves to
+the evidence of its existence and some laws observed in
+the operation of its causative force. What that force
+is, or what are its primary laws, we know not.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>So in the progress of moral development we endeavor
+to prove its existence and the mode of its operation,
+but why that mode should exist, rather than some other
+mode, we cannot explain.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The moral progress of the species depends, of course,
+on the moral progress of the individuals embraced in it.
+Religion is the sum of those influences which determine
+the motives of men’s actions into harmony with the Divine
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>perfection and the Divine will. Obedience to these
+influences constitutes the practice of religion, while the
+statement of the growth and operation of these influences
+constitutes the theory of religion, or doctrine.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The Divine Spirit planted in man shows him that
+which is in harmony with the Divine Mind, and it remains
+for his free will to conform to it or reject it. This
+harmony is man’s highest ideal of happiness, and in
+seeking it, as well as in desiring to flee from dissonance
+or pain, he but obeys the disposition common to all
+conscious beings. If, however, he attempts to conform
+to it, he will find the law of evil present, and frequently
+obtaining the mastery. If now he be in any degree observing,
+he will find that the laws of morality and right
+are the only ones by which human society exists in a
+condition superior to that of the lower animals, and in
+which the capacities of man for happiness can approach
+a state of satisfaction. He may be then said to be
+“awakened” to the importance of religion. If he carry
+on the struggle to attain to the high goal presented to
+his spiritual vision, he will be deeply grieved and humbled
+at his failures: then he is said to be “convicted.”
+Under these circumstances the necessity of a deliverance
+becomes clear, and is willingly accepted in the
+only way in which it has pleased the Author of all to
+present it, which has been epitomized by Paul as “the
+washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit
+through Jesus Christ.” Thus a life of advanced and
+ever-advancing moral excellence becomes possible, and
+the man makes nearer approaches to the “image of
+God.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus is opened a new era in spiritual development,
+which we are led to believe leads to an ultimate condition
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>in which the nature inherited from our origin is entirely
+overcome, and an existence of moral perfection
+entered on. Thus in the book of Mark the simile occurs:
+“First the blade, then the ear, after that the full
+corn in the ear;” and Solomon says that the development
+of righteousness “shines more and more unto the
+perfect day.”</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>δ. Summary.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>If it be true that general development in morality
+proceeds in spite of the original predominance of evil
+in the world, through the self-destructive nature of the
+latter, it is only necessary to examine the reasons why
+the excellence of the good may have been subject also
+to progress, and how the remainder of the race may
+have been influenced thereby.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The development of morality is then probably to be
+understood in the following sense: Since the Divine
+Spirit, as the prime force in moral progress, cannot in
+itself be supposed to have been in any way under
+the influence of natural laws, its capacities were no
+doubt as eternal and unerring in the first man as in the
+last. But the facts and probabilities discussed above
+point to development of <i>religious sensibility</i>, or capacity
+to appreciate moral good, or to receive impressions from
+the source of good.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The evidence of this is supposed to be seen in—<i>First</i>,
+improvement in man’s views of his duty to his
+neighbor; and <i>Second</i>, the substitution of spiritual for
+symbolic religions: in other words, improvement in the
+capacity for receiving spiritual impressions.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>What the primary cause of this supposed development
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>of religious sensibility may have been, is a question
+we reverently leave untouched. That it is intimately
+connected in some way with, and in part
+dependent on, the evolution of the intelligence, appears
+very probable: for this evolution is seen—<i>First</i>,
+in a better understanding of the consequences of action,
+and of good and of evil in many things; and <i>Second</i>, in
+the production of means for the spread of the special
+instrumentalities of good. The following may be enumerated
+as such instrumentalities:</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>1. Furnishing literary means of record and distribution
+of the truths of religion, morality and science.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>2. Creating and increasing modes of transportation
+of teachers and literary means of disseminating truth.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>3. Facilitating the migration and the spread of nations
+holding the highest position in the scale of
+morality.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>4. The increase of wealth, which multiplies the extent
+of the preceding means.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And now, let no man attempt to set bounds to this
+development. Let no man say even that morality accomplished
+is all that is required of mankind, since
+that is not necessarily the evidence of a spiritual development.
+If a man possess the capacity for progress
+beyond the condition in which he finds himself, in refusing
+to enter upon it he declines to conform to the
+Divine law. And “from those to whom little is given,
+little is required, but from those to whom much is given,
+much shall be required.”</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c029'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span><span class='c022'><i>SCIENTIFIC ADDRESSES.</i></span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c006' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'><span class='sc'>Tyndall’s Addresses.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<h3 class='c001'>I.<br /> <br /><i>On the Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation.</i></h3>
+
+<p class='c025'>The celebrated Fichte, in his lectures on the “Vocation
+of the Scholar,” insisted on a culture for the scholar
+which should not be one-sided, but all-sided. His intellectual
+nature was to expand spherically, and not in a
+single direction. In one direction, however, Fichte required
+that the scholar should apply himself directly to
+nature, become a creator of knowledge, and thus repay,
+by original labors of his own, the immense debt he owed
+to the labors of others. It was these which enabled him
+to supplement the knowledge derived from his own researches,
+so as to render his culture rounded, and not
+one-sided.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Fichte’s idea is to some extent illustrated by the constitution
+and the labors of the British Association. We
+have here a body of men engaged in the pursuit of natural
+knowledge, but variously engaged. While sympathizing
+with each of its departments, and supplementing
+his culture by knowledge drawn from all of them,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>each student amongst us selects one subject for the exercise
+of his own original faculty—one line along which
+he may carry the light of his private intelligence a little
+way into the darkness by which all knowledge is surrounded.
+Thus, the geologist faces the rocks; the biologist
+fronts the conditions and phenomena of life; the
+astronomer, stellar masses and motions; the mathematician
+the properties of space and number; the chemist
+pursues his atoms, while the physical investigator has
+his own large field in optical, thermal, electrical, acoustical,
+and other phenomena. The British Association,
+then, faces nature on all sides, and pushes knowledge
+centrifugally outwards, while, through circumstance or
+natural bent, each of its working members takes up a
+certain line of research in which he aspires to be an
+original producer, being content in all other directions
+to accept instruction from his fellow-men. The sum of
+our labors constitutes what Fichte might call the sphere
+of natural knowledge. In the meetings of the Association
+it is found necessary to resolve this sphere into its
+component parts, which take concrete form under the
+respective letters of our sections.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This section (A) is called the Mathematical and Physical
+section. Mathematics and Physics have been long
+accustomed to coalesce, and hence this grouping. For
+while mathematics, as a product of the human mind, is
+self-sustaining and nobly self-rewarding,—while the pure
+mathematician may never trouble his mind with considerations
+regarding the phenomena of the material universe,
+still the form of reasoning which he employs, the
+power which the organization of that reasoning confers,
+the applicability of his abstract conceptions to actual
+phenomena, render his science one of the most potent
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>instruments in the solution of natural problems. Indeed,
+without mathematics, expressed or implied, our
+knowledge of physical science would be friable in the
+extreme.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Side by side with the mathematical method, we have
+the method of experiment. Here, from a starting-point
+furnished by his own researches or those of others, the
+investigator proceeds by combining intuition and verification.
+He ponders the knowledge he possesses and
+tries to push it further, he guesses and checks his guess,
+he conjectures and confirms or explodes his conjecture.
+These guesses and conjectures are by no means leaps in
+the dark; for knowledge once gained casts a faint light
+beyond its own immediate boundaries. There is no discovery
+so limited as not to illuminate something beyond
+itself. The force of intellectual penetration into this
+penumbral region which surrounds actual knowledge is
+not dependent upon method, but is proportional to the
+genius of the investigator. There is, however, no genius
+so gifted as not to need control and verification. The
+profoundest minds know best that nature’s ways are not
+at all times their ways, and that the brightest flashes in
+the world of thought are incomplete until they have
+been proved to have their counterparts in the world of
+fact. The vocation of the true experimentalist is the
+incessant correction and realization of his insight; his
+experiments finally constituting a body, of which his
+purified intuitions are, as it were, the soul.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Partly through mathematical, and partly through experimental
+research, physical science has of late years
+assumed a momentous position in the world. Both in
+a material and in an intellectual point of view it has produced,
+and it is destined to produce, immense changes,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>vast social ameliorations, and vast alterations in the
+popular conception of the origin, rule, and governance
+of things. Miracles are wrought by science in the physical
+world, while philosophy is forsaking its ancient metaphysical
+channels, and pursuing those opened or indicated
+by scientific research. This must become more and
+more the case as philosophic writers become more deeply
+imbued with the methods of science, better acquainted
+with the facts which scientific men have won, and with
+the great theories which they have elaborated.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour
+and minute-hands, and possibly also a second-hand,
+moving over the graduated dial. Why do these hands
+move, and why are their relative motions such as they
+are observed to be? These questions cannot be answered
+without opening the watch, mastering its various
+parts, and ascertaining their relationship to each other.
+When this is done, we find that the observed motion of
+the hands follows of necessity from the inner mechanism
+of the watch when acted upon by the force invested in
+the spring.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This motion of the hands may be called a phenomenon
+of art, but the case is similar with the phenomena
+of Nature. These also have their inner mechanism, and
+their store of force to set that mechanism going. The
+ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this
+mechanism, to discern this store, and to show that from
+the combined action of both, the phenomena of which
+they constitute the basis must of necessity flow.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I thought that an attempt to give you even a brief and
+sketchy illustration of the manner in which scientific
+thinkers regard this problem would not be uninteresting
+to you on the present occasion; more especially as it
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>will give me occasion to say a word or two on the tendencies
+and limits of modern science, to point out the
+region which men of science claim as their own, and
+where it is mere waste of time to oppose their advance,
+and also to define, if possible, the bourne between this
+and that other region to which the questionings and
+yearnings of the scientific intellect are directed in vain.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the
+American Emerson, I think, who said that it is hardly
+possible to state any truth strongly without apparent injury
+to some other truth. Under the circumstances, the
+proper course appears to be to state both truths strongly,
+and allow each its fair share, in the formation of the resultant
+conviction. For truth is often of a dual character,
+taking the form of a magnet with two poles; and
+many of the differences which agitate the thinking part
+of mankind are to be traced to the exclusiveness with
+which different parties affirm one half of the duality in
+forgetfulness of the other half. But this waiting for the
+statement of the two sides of a question implies patience.
+It implies a resolution to suppress indignation if
+the statement of the one half should clash with our convictions,
+and not to suffer ourselves to be unduly elated
+if the half-statement should chime in with our views.
+It implies a determination to wait calmly for the statement
+of the whole before we pronounce judgment either
+in the form of acquiescence or dissent.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This premised, let us enter upon our task. There
+have been writers who affirmed that the pyramids of
+Egypt were the productions of nature; and in his early
+youth Alexander Von Humboldt wrote an essay with
+the express object of refuting this notion. We now regard
+the pyramids as the work of men’s hands, aided
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>probably by machinery of which no record remains.
+We picture to ourselves the swarming workers toiling at
+those vast erections, lifting the inert stones, and, guided
+by the volition, the skill, and possibly at times by the
+whip of the architect, placing the stones in their proper
+positions. The blocks in this case were moved by a
+power external to themselves, and the final form of the
+pyramid expressed the thought of its human builder.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Let us pass from this illustration of building power to
+another of a different kind. When a solution of common
+salt is slowly evaporated, the water which holds the
+salt in solution disappears, but the salt itself remains
+behind. At a certain stage of concentration, the salt
+can no longer retain the liquid form; its particles, or
+molecules, as they are called, begin to deposit themselves
+as minute solids, so minute, indeed, as to defy all
+microscopic power. As evaporation continues solidification
+goes on, and we finally obtain, through the clustering
+together of innumerable molecules, a finite mass
+of salt of a definite form. What is this form? It sometimes
+seems a mimicry of the architecture of Egypt.
+We have little pyramids built by the salt, terrace above
+terrace from base to apex, forming thus a series of steps
+resembling those up which the Egyptian traveler is
+dragged by his guides. The human mind is as little disposed
+to look at these pyramidal salt-crystals without
+further question as to look at the pyramids of Egypt
+without inquiring whence they came. How, then, are
+those salt pyramids built up?</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Guided by analogy, you may suppose that, swarming
+among the constituent molecules of the salt, there is an
+invisible population, guided and coerced by some invisible
+master, and placing the atomic blocks in their positions.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>This, however, is not the scientific idea, nor do
+I think your good sense will accept it as a likely one.
+The scientific idea is that the molecules act upon each
+other without the intervention of slave labor; that they
+attract each other and repel each other at certain
+definite points, and in certain definite directions; and
+that the pyramidal form is the result of this play of attraction
+and repulsion. While, then, the blocks of
+Egypt were laid down by a power external to themselves,
+these molecular blocks of salt are self-posited,
+being fixed in their places by the forces with which they
+act upon each other.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I take common salt as an illustration, because it is so
+familiar to us all; but almost any other substance would
+answer my purpose equally well. In fact, throughout
+inorganic nature, we have this formative power, as
+Fichte would call it—this structural energy ready to
+come into play, and build the ultimate particles of matter
+into definite shapes. It is present everywhere. The
+ice of our winters and of our polar regions is its hand-work,
+and so equally are the quartz, feldspar, and mica
+of our rocks. Our chalk-beds are for the most part
+composed of minute shells, which are also the product
+of structural energy; but behind the shell, as a whole,
+lies the result of another and more subtle formative act.
+These shells are built up of little crystals of calc-spar,
+and to form these the structural force had to deal with
+the intangible molecules of carbonate of lime. This tendency
+on the part of matter to organize itself, to grow
+into shape, to assume definite forms in obedience to the
+definite action of force, is, as I have said, all-pervading.
+It is in the ground on which you tread, in the water you
+drink, in the air you breathe. Incipient life, in fact,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span>manifests itself throughout the whole of what we call
+inorganic nature.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The forms of minerals resulting from this play of
+forces are various, and exhibit different degrees of complexity.
+Men of science avail themselves of all possible
+means of exploring this molecular architecture. For
+this purpose they employ in turn as agents of exploration,
+light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and sound.
+Polarized light is especially useful and powerful here.
+A beam of such light, when sent in among the molecules
+of a crystal, is acted on by them, and from this action
+we infer with more or less of clearness the manner
+in which the molecules are arranged. The difference,
+for example, between the inner structure of a plate of
+rock-salt and a plate of crystalized sugar or sugar-candy
+is thus strikingly revealed. These differences may be
+made to display themselves in phenomena of color of
+great splendor, the play of molecular force being so regulated
+as to remove certain of the colored constituents
+of white light, and to leave others with increased intensity
+behind.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And now let us pass from what we are accustomed to
+regard as a dead mineral to a living grain of corn.
+When it is examined by polarized light, chromatic phenomena
+similar to those noticed in crystals are observed.
+And why? Because the architecture of the grain resembles
+in some degree the architecture of the crystal.
+In the corn the molecules are also set in definite positions,
+from which they act upon the light. But what
+has built together the molecules of the corn? I have
+already said, regarding crystalline architecture, that you
+may, if you please, consider the atoms and molecules to
+be placed in position by a power external to themselves.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>The same hypothesis is open to you now. But, if in the
+case of crystals you have rejected this notion of an external
+architect, I think you are bound to reject it now,
+and to conclude that the molecules of the corn are self-posited
+by the forces with which they act upon each
+other. It would be poor philosophy to invoke an external
+agent in the one case and to reject it in the other.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Instead of cutting our grain into thin slices and subjecting
+it to the action of polarized light, let us place it
+in the earth and subject it to a certain degree of warmth.
+In other words, let the molecules, both of the corn and
+of the surrounding earth, be kept in a state of agitation;
+for warmth, as most of you know, is, in the eye of
+science, tremulous molecular motion. Under these circumstances,
+the grain and the substances which surround
+it interact, and a molecular architecture is the result of
+this interaction. A bud is formed; this bud reaches
+the surface, where it is exposed to the sun’s rays, which
+are also to be regarded as a kind of vibratory motion.
+And as the common motion of heat with which the grain
+and the substances surrounding it were first endowed,
+enable the grain and these substances to coalesce, so the
+specific motion of the sun’s rays now enables the green
+bud to feed upon the carbonic acid and the aqueous
+vapor of the air, appropriating those constituents of
+both for which the blade has an elective attraction, and
+permitting the other constituent to resume its place in
+the air. Thus forces are active at the root, forces are
+active in the blade, the matter of the earth and the
+matter of the atmosphere are drawn towards the plant,
+and the plant augments in size. We have in succession,
+the bud, the stalk, the ear, the full corn in the ear. For
+the forces here at play act in a cycle, which is completed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>by the production of grains similar to that with which
+the process began.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily
+eludes the power of mind as we know it. An intellect
+the same kind as our own, would, if only sufficiently expanded,
+be able to follow the whole process from beginning
+to end. No entirely new intellectual faculty would
+be needed for this purpose. The duly expanded mind
+would see in the process and its consummation an instance
+of the play of molecular force. It would see
+every molecule placed in its position by the specific attractions
+and repulsions exerted between it and other
+molecules. Nay, given the grain and its environment,
+an intellect the same in kind as our own, but sufficiently
+expanded, might trace out <i>à priori</i> every step of the process,
+and by the application of mechanical principles
+would be able to demonstrate that the cycle of actions
+must end, as it is seen to end, in the reproduction of
+forms like that with which the operation began. A similar
+necessity rules here to that which rules the planets
+in their circuits round the sun.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>You will notice that I am stating my truth strongly,
+as at the beginning we agreed it should be stated. But
+I must go still further, and affirm that in the eye of
+science the animal body is just as much the product of
+molecular force as the stalk and ear of corn, or as the
+crystal of salt or sugar. Many of its parts are obviously
+mechanical. Take the human heart, for example, with
+its exquisite system of valves, or take the eye or the
+hand. Animal heat, moreover, is the same in kind as
+the heat of a fire, being produced by the same chemical
+process. Animal motion, too, is as directly derived
+from the food of the animal, as the motion of Trevethyck’s
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span>walking-engine from the fuel in its furnace. As
+regards matter, the animal body creates nothing; as regards
+force, it creates nothing. Which of you by taking
+thought can add one cubit to his stature? All that
+has been said regarding the plant may be re-stated with
+regard to the animal. Every particle that enters into
+the composition of the muscle, a nerve, or a bone, has
+been placed in its position by molecular force. And
+unless the existence of law in these matters be denied,
+and the element of caprice be introduced, we must conclude
+that, given the relation of any molecule of the
+body to its environment, its position in the body might
+be predicted. Our difficulty is not with the quality of
+the problem, but with its complexity; and this difficulty
+might be met by the simple expansion of the faculties
+which man now possesses. Given this expansion, and
+given the necessary molecular data, and the chick might
+be deduced as rigorously and as logically from the egg
+as the existence of Neptune was deduced from the disturbances
+of Uranus, or as conical refraction was deduced
+from the undulatory theory of light.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>You see I am not mincing matters, but avowing
+nakedly what many scientific thinkers more or less distinctly
+believe. The formation of a crystal, a plant, or
+an animal, is in their eyes a purely mechanical problem,
+which differs from the problems of ordinary mechanics in
+the smallness of the masses and the complexity of the
+processes involved. Here you have one half of our
+dual truth; let us now glance at the other half. Associated
+with this wonderful mechanism of the animal
+body we have phenomena no less certain than those of
+physics, but between which and the mechanism we discern
+no necessary connection. A man, for example,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_230'>230</span>can say I feel, I think, I love; but how does consciousness
+infuse itself into the problem? The human brain
+is said to be the organ of thought and feeling; when
+we are hurt the brain feels it, when we ponder it is the
+brain that thinks, when our passions or affections are
+excited it is through the instrumentality of the brain.
+Let us endeavor to be a little more precise here. I
+hardly imagine that any profound scientific thinker who
+has reflected upon the subject exists, who would not admit
+the extreme probability of the hypothesis, that for
+every fact of consciousness, whether in the domain of
+sense, of thought, or of emotion, a certain definite
+molecular condition is set up in the brain; that this relation
+of physics to consciousness is invariable, so that,
+given the state of the brain, the corresponding thought
+or feeling might be inferred; or, given the thought or
+feeling, the corresponding state of the brain might be
+inferred. But how inferred? It is at bottom not a case
+of logical inference at all, but of empirical association.
+You may reply that many of the inferences of science
+are of this character; the inference, for example, that
+an electric current of a given direction will deflect a
+magnetic needle in a definite way; but the cases differ
+in this, that the passage from the current to the needle,
+if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain
+no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem;
+but the passage from the physics of the brain to
+the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable.
+Granted that a definite thought and a definite
+molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we
+do not possess the intellectual organ, nor, apparently,
+any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to
+pass by a process of reasoning from the one phenomenon
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>to the other. They appear together, but we do not
+know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded,
+strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and
+feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable
+of following all their motions, all their groupings, all
+their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we
+intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of
+thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from
+the solution of the problem. “How are these physical
+processes connected with the facts of consciousness?”
+The chasm between the two classes of phenomena
+would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the
+consciousness of love, for example, be associated with
+a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the
+brain, and the consciousness of hate with a left-handed
+spiral motion. We should then know when we love
+that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate
+that the motion is in the other; but the “<span class='fss'>WHY?</span>” would
+still remain unanswered.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical,
+and that thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative
+in the physics of the brain, I think the position
+of the “Materialist” is stated as far as that position is
+a tenable one. I think the materialist will be able
+finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but
+I do not think, as the human mind is at present constituted,
+that he can pass beyond it. I do not think he is
+entitled to say that his molecular groupings and his
+molecular motions explain everything. In reality they
+explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the association
+of two classes of phenomena of whose real bond
+of union he is in absolute ignorance. The problem of
+the connection of the body and soul is as insoluble in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>its modern form as it was in the pre-scientific ages.
+Phosphorus is known to enter into the composition of
+the human brain, and a courageous writer has exclaimed,
+in his trenchant German, “Ohne phosphor kein gedanke.”
+That may or may not be the case; but even if
+we knew it to be the case, the knowledge would not
+lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone here
+assigned to the materialist he is equally helpless. If
+you ask him whence is this “matter” of which we have
+been discoursing, who or what divided it into molecules,
+who or what impressed upon them this necessity of running
+into organic forms, he has no answer. Science
+also is mute in reply to these questions. But if the
+materialist is confounded, and science rendered dumb,
+who else is entitled to answer? To whom has the
+secret been revealed? Let us lower our heads and acknowledge
+our ignorance, one and all. Perhaps the
+mystery may resolve itself into knowledge at some
+future day. The process of things upon this earth has
+been one of amelioration. It is a long way from the
+Iguanodon and his contemporaries to the president and
+members of the British Association. And whether we
+regard the improvement from the scientific or from the
+theological point of view as the result of progressive
+development, or as the result of successive exhibitions
+of creative energy, neither view entitles us to assume
+that man’s present faculties end the series—that the
+process of amelioration stops at him. A time may
+therefore come when this ultra-scientific region by which
+we are now enfolded may offer itself to terrestrial, if
+not to human investigation. Two-thirds of the rays
+emitted by the sun fail to arouse in the eye the sense of
+vision. The rays exist, but the visual organ requisite
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>for their translation into light does not exist. And so
+from this region of darkness and mystery which surrounds
+us, rays may now be darting which require but
+the development of the proper intellectual organs to
+translate them into knowledge as far surpassing ours as
+ours does that of the wallowing reptiles which once
+held possession of this planet. Meanwhile the mystery
+is not without its uses. It certainly may be made a
+power in the human soul; but it is a power which has
+feeling, not knowledge, for its base. It may be, and
+will be, and we hope is turned to account, both in steadying
+and strengthening the intellect, and in rescuing man
+from that littleness to which, in the struggle for existence
+or for precedence in the world, he is continually
+prone.</p>
+
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>
+  <h3 class='c001'>II.</h3>
+</div>
+<h4 class='c026'>On Haze and Dust.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>Solar light in passing through a dark room reveals its
+track by illuminating the dust floating in the air. “The
+sun,” says Daniel Culverwell, “discovers atomes, though
+they be invisible by candle-light, and makes them dance
+naked in his beams.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In my researches on the decomposition of vapors by
+light, I was compelled to remove these “atomes” and
+this dust. It was essential that the space containing
+the vapors should embrace no visible thing; that no
+substance capable of scattering the light in the slightest
+sensible degree should, at the outset of an experiment,
+be found in the “experimental tube” traversed by the
+luminous beam.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>For a long time I was troubled by the appearance
+there of floating dust, which, though invisible in diffuse
+daylight, was at once revealed by a powerfully condensed
+beam. Two tubes were placed in succession in the
+path of the dust: the one containing fragments of glass
+wetted with concentrated sulphuric acid; the other,
+fragments of marble wetted with a strong solution of
+caustic potash. To my astonishment it passed through
+both. The air of the Royal Institution, sent through
+these tubes at a rate sufficiently slow to dry it and to remove
+its carbonic acid, carried into the experimental
+tube a considerable amount of mechanically-suspended
+matter, which was illuminated when the beam passed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>through the tube. The effect was substantially the
+same when the air was permitted to bubble through the
+liquid acid and through the solution of potash.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus, on the 5th of October, 1868, successive charges
+of air were admitted through the potash and sulphuric
+acid into the exhausted experimental tube. Prior to the
+admission of the air the tube was <i>optically empty</i>; it contained
+nothing competent to scatter the light. After
+the air had entered the tube, the conical track of the
+electric beam was in all cases clearly revealed. This,
+indeed, was a daily observation at the time to which I
+now refer.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I tried to intercept this floating matter in various
+ways; and on the day just mentioned, prior to sending
+the air through the drying apparatus, I carefully permitted
+it to pass over the tip of a spirit-lamp flame.
+The floating matter no longer appeared, having been
+burnt up by the flame. It was, therefore, <i>organic matter</i>.
+When the air was sent too rapidly through the flame, a
+fine blue cloud was found in the experimental tube.
+This was the <i>smoke</i> of the organic particles. I was by
+no means prepared for this result; for I had thought,
+with the rest of the world, that the dust of our air was,
+in great part, inorganic and non-combustible.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Mr. Valentin had the kindness to procure for me a
+small gas-furnace, containing a platinum tube, which
+could be heated to vivid redness. The tube also contained
+a roll of platinum gauze, which, while it permitted
+the air to pass through it, insured the practical
+contact of the dust with the incandescent metal. The
+air of the laboratory was permitted to enter the experimental
+tube, sometimes through the cold, and sometimes
+through the heated tube of platinum. The rapidity
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>of admission was also varied. In the first column
+of the following table the quantity of air operated on is
+expressed by the number of inches which the mercury
+gauge of the air-pump sank when the air entered. In
+the second column the condition of the platinum tube is
+mentioned, and in the third the state of the air which
+entered the experimental tube.</p>
+
+<div class='std-table c030'>
+
+<table class='table1' summary=''>
+<colgroup>
+<col width='22%' />
+<col width='34%' />
+<col width='43%' />
+</colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c031'><br />Quantity<br />of Air.</th>
+    <th class='c031'>State of<br />Platinum<br />Tube.</th>
+    <th class='c032'>State of<br />Experimental<br /> Tube.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Cold</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Full of particles.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Optically empty.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Cold</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Full of particles.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Optically empty.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Cold</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Full of particles.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Optically empty.</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c033'>The phrase “optically empty” shows that when the
+conditions of perfect combustion were present, the floating
+matter totally disappeared. It was wholly burnt up,
+leaving not a trace of residue. From spectrum analysis,
+however, we know that soda floats in the air; these organic
+dust particles are, I believe, the <i>rafts</i> that support
+it, and when they are removed it sinks and vanishes.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>When the passage of the air was so rapid as to render
+imperfect the combustion of the floating matter, instead
+of optical emptiness a fine blue cloud made its appearance
+in the experimental tube. The following
+series of results illustrate this point:</p>
+<div class='std-table c030'>
+
+<table class='table2' summary=''>
+<colgroup>
+<col width='31%' />
+<col width='31%' />
+<col width='37%' />
+</colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c031'><span class='small'>Quantity.</span></th>
+    <th class='c031'><span class='small'>Platinum Tube.</span></th>
+    <th class='c032'><span class='small'>Experimental Tube.</span></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches, slow</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Cold</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Full of particles.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches, slow</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Optically empty.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches, quick</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>
+    <td class='c032'>A blue cloud.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches, quick</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Intensely hot</td>
+    <td class='c032'>A fine blue cloud.</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c033'>The optical character of these clouds was totally different
+from that of the dust which produced them. At
+right angles to the illuminating beam they discharged
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>perfectly polarized light The cloud could be utterly
+quenched by a transparent Nicol’s prism, and the tube
+containing it reduced to optical emptiness.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The particles floating in the air of London being thus
+proved to be organic, I sought to burn them up at the
+focus of a concave reflector. One of the powerfully
+convergent mirrors employed in my experiments on
+combustion by dark rays was here made use of, but I
+failed in the attempt. Doubtless the floating particles
+are in part transparent to radiant heat, and are so far
+incombustible by such heat. Their rapid motion through
+the focus also aids their escape. They do not linger
+there sufficiently long to be consumed. A flame it was
+evident would burn them up, but I thought the presence
+of the flame would mask its own action among the particles.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In a cylindrical beam, which powerfully illuminated
+the dust of the laboratory, was placed an ignited spirit-lamp.
+Mingling with the flame, and round its rim, were
+seen wreaths of darkness resembling an intensely black
+smoke. On lowering the flame below the beam the
+same dark masses stormed upwards. They were at times
+blacker than the blackest smoke that I have ever seen
+issuing from the funnel of a steamer, and their resemblance
+to smoke was so perfect as to lead the most practiced
+observer to conclude that the apparently pure
+flame of the alcohol lamp required but a beam of sufficient
+intensity to reveal its clouds of liberated carbon.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But is the blackness smoke? The question presented
+itself in a moment. A red-hot poker was placed underneath
+the beam, and from it the black wreaths also
+ascended. A large hydrogen flame was next employed,
+and it produced those whirling masses of darkness far
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>more copiously than either the spirit-flame or poker.
+Smoke was, therefore, out of the question.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>What, then, was the blackness? It was simply that
+of stellar space; that is to say, blackness resulting from
+the absence from the track of the beam of all matter
+competent to scatter its light. When the flame was
+placed below the beam the floating matter was destroyed
+<i>in situ</i>; and the air, freed from this matter, rose into the
+beam, jostled aside the illuminated particles and substituted
+for their light the darkness due to its own perfect
+transparency. Nothing could more forcibly illustrate
+the invisibility of the agent which renders all things visible.
+The beam crossed, unseen, the black chasm formed
+by the transparent air, while at both sides of the gap
+the thick-strewn particles shone out like a luminous solid
+under the powerful illumination.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But here a difficulty meets us. It is not necessary to
+burn the particles to produce a stream of darkness.
+Without actual combustion, currents may be generated
+which shall exclude the floating matter, and therefore
+appear dark amid the surrounding brightness. I noticed
+this effect first on placing a red-hot copper ball below
+the beam, and permitting it to remain there until its
+temperature had fallen below that of boiling water.
+The dark currents, though much enfeebled, were still
+produced. They may also be produced by a flask filled
+with hot water.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>To study this effect a platinum wire was stretched
+across the beam, the two ends of the wire being connected
+with the two poles of a voltaic battery. To regulate
+the strength of the current a rheostat was placed
+in the circuit. Beginning with a feeble current the
+temperature of the wire was gradually augmented, but
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>before it reached the heat of ignition, a flat stream of
+air rose from it, which when looked at edgeways appeared
+darker and sharper than one of the blackest
+lines of Fraunhofer in the solar spectrum. Right and
+left of this dark vertical band the floating matter rose
+upwards, bounding definitely the non-luminous stream
+of air. What is the explanation? Simply this. The
+hot wire rarefied the air in contact with it, but it did not
+equally lighten the floating matter. The convection
+current of pure air therefore passed upwards <i>among the
+particles</i>, dragging them after it right and left, but forming
+between them an impassable black partition. In
+this way we render an account of the dark currents produced
+by bodies at a temperature below that of combustion.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, so prepared
+as to exclude all floating particles, produce the
+darkness when poured or blown into the beam. Coal-gas
+does the same. An ordinary glass shade placed in
+the air with its mouth downwards permits the track of
+the beam to be seen crossing it. Let coal-gas or hydrogen
+enter the shade by a tube reaching to its top, the
+gas gradually fills the shade from the top downwards.
+As soon as it occupies the space crossed by the beam,
+the luminous track is instantly abolished. Lifting the
+shade so as to bring the common boundary of gas and
+air above the beam, the track flashes forth. After the
+shade is full, if it be inverted, the gas passes upwards
+like a black smoke among the illuminated particles.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The air of our London rooms is loaded with this organic
+dust, nor is the country air free from its pollution.
+However ordinary daylight may permit it to disguise
+itself, a sufficiently powerful beam causes the air in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>which the dust is suspended to appear as a semi-solid
+rather than as a gas. Nobody could, in the first instance,
+without repugnance place the mouth at the
+illuminated focus of the electric beam and inhale the
+dirt revealed there. Nor is the disgust abolished by the
+reflection that, although we do not see the nastiness, we
+are churning it in our lungs every hour and minute of
+our lives. There is no respite to this contact with dirt;
+and the wonder is, not that we should from time to time
+suffer from its presence, but that so small a portion of
+it would appear to be deadly to man.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And what is this portion? It was some time ago the
+current belief that epidemic diseases generally were propagated
+by a kind of malaria, which consisted of organic
+matter in a state of <i>motor-decay</i>; that when such
+matter was taken into the body through the lungs or
+skin, it had the power of spreading there the destroying
+process which had attacked itself. Such a spreading
+power was visibly exerted in the case of yeast. A little
+leaven was seen to leaven the whole lump, a mere speck
+of matter in this supposed state of decomposition being
+apparently competent to propagate indefinitely its own
+decay. Why should not a bit of rotten malaria work in
+a similar manner within the human frame? In 1836 a
+very wonderful reply was given to this question. In
+that year Cagniard de la Tour discovered the <i>yeast plant</i>,
+a living organism, which, when placed in a proper
+medium, feeds, grows, and reproduces itself, and in this
+way carries on the process which we name fermentation.
+Fermentation was thus proved to be a product of life
+instead of a process of decay.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Schwann, of Berlin, discovered the yeast plant independently,
+and in February, 1837, he also announced the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>important result, that when a decoction of meat is effectually
+screened from ordinary air, and supplied solely
+with air which has been raised to a high temperature,
+putrefaction never sets in. Putrefaction, therefore, he
+affirmed to be caused by something derived from the air,
+which something could be destroyed by a sufficiently
+high temperature. The experiments of Schwann were
+repeated and confirmed by Helmholtz and Ure. But
+as regards fermentation, the minds of chemists, influenced
+probably by the great authority of Gay-Lussac,
+who ascribed putrefaction to the action of oxygen, fell
+back upon the old notion of matter in a state of decay.
+It was not the living yeast plant, but the dead or dying
+parts of it, which, assailed by oxygen, produced the fermentation.
+This notion was finally exploded by Pasteur.
+He proved that the so-called “ferments” are not such;
+that the true ferments are organized beings which find
+in the reputed ferments their necessary food.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Side by side with these researches and discoveries, and
+fortified by them and others, has run the <i>germ theory</i> of
+epidemic disease. The notion was expressed by Kircher,
+and favored by Linnæus, that epidemic diseases are due
+to germs which float in the atmosphere, enter the body,
+and produce disturbance by the development within the
+body of parasitic life. While it was still struggling
+against great odds, this theory found an expounder and
+a defender in the President of this Institution. At a
+time when most of his medical brethren considered
+it a wild dream, Sir Henry Holland contended that
+some form of the germ theory was probably true. The
+strength of this theory consists in the perfect parallelism
+of the phenomena of contagious disease with those of
+life. As a planted acorn gives birth to an oak competent
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span>to produce a whole crop of acorns, each gifted with
+the power of reproducing its parent tree, and as thus
+from a single seedling a whole forest may spring, so
+these epidemic diseases literally plant their seeds, grow,
+and shake abroad new germs, which, meeting in the
+human body their proper food and temperature, finally
+take possession of whole populations. Thus Asiatic
+cholera, beginning in a small way in the Delta of the
+Ganges, contrived in seventeen years to spread itself
+over nearly the whole habitable world. The development
+from an infinitesimal speck of the virus of small-pox
+of a crop of pustules, each charged with the original
+poison, is another illustration. The reappearance
+of the scourge, as in the case of the <i>Dreadnought</i> at
+Greenwich, reported on so ably by Dr. Budd and Mr.
+Busk, receives a satisfactory explanation from the theory
+which ascribes it to the lingering of germs about the infected
+place.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Surgeons have long known the danger of permitting
+air to enter an open abscess. To prevent its entrance
+they employ a tube called a cannula, to which is attached
+a sharp steel point called a trocar. They puncture
+with the steel point, and by gentle pressure they
+force the pus through the cannula. It is necessary to
+be very careful in cleansing the instrument; and it is
+difficult to see how it can be cleansed by ordinary
+methods in air loaded with organic impurities, as we
+have proved our air to be. The instrument ought, in
+fact, to be made as hot as its temper will bear. But
+this is not done, and hence, notwithstanding all the surgeon’s
+care, inflammation often sets in after the first operation,
+rendering necessary a second and a third.
+Rapid putrefaction is found to accompany this new inflammation.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span>The pus, moreover, which was sweet at
+first, and showed no trace of animal life, is now fetid,
+and swarming with active little organisms called vibrios.
+Prof. Lister, from whose recent lecture this fact is derived,
+contends, with every show of reason, that this
+rapid putrefaction and this astounding development of
+animal life are due to the entry of germs into the abscess
+during the first operation, and their subsequent nurture
+and development under favorable conditions of food and
+temperature. The celebrated physiologist and physicist,
+Helmholtz, is attacked annually by hay-fever. From
+the 20th of May to the end of June he suffers from a
+catarrh of the upper air-passages; and he has found
+during this period, and at no other, that his nasal secretions
+are peopled by these vibrios. They appear to
+nestle by preference in the cavities and recesses of the
+nose, for a strong sneeze is necessary to dislodge them.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>These statements sound uncomfortable; but by disclosing
+our enemy they enable us to fight him. When
+he clearly eyes his quarry the eagle’s strength is doubled,
+and his swoop is rendered sure. If the germ theory be
+proved true, it will give a definiteness to our efforts to
+stamp out disease which they could not previously possess.
+And it is only by definite effort under its guidance
+that its truth or falsehood can be established. It
+is difficult for an outsider like myself to read without
+sympathetic emotion such papers as those of Dr. Budd,
+of Bristol, on cholera, scarlet-fever, and small-pox. He
+is a man of strong imagination, and may occasionally
+take a flight beyond his facts; but without this dynamic
+heat of heart, the stolid inertia of the free-born Briton
+cannot be overcome. And as long as the heat is employed
+to warm up the truth without singeing it overmuch;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_244'>244</span>as long as this enthusiasm can overmatch its
+mistakes by unequivocal examples of success, so long
+am I disposed to give it a fair field to work in, and to
+wish it God speed.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But let us return to our dust. It is needless to remark
+that it cannot be blown away by an ordinary bellows;
+or, more correctly, the place of the particles
+blown away is in this case supplied by others ejected
+from the bellows, so that the track of the beam remains
+unimpaired. But if the nozzle of a good bellows be
+filled with cotton wool not too tightly packed, the air
+urged through the wool is filtered of its floating matter,
+and it then forms a clean band of darkness in the illuminated
+dust. This was the filter used by Schroëder in
+his experiments on spontaneous generation, and turned
+subsequently to account in the excellent researches of
+Pasteur. Since 1868 I have constantly employed it
+myself.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But by far the most interesting and important illustration
+of this filtering process is furnished by the human
+breath. I fill my lungs with ordinary air and
+breathe through a glass tube across the electric beam.
+The condensation of the aqueous vapor of the breath is
+shown by the formation of a luminous white cloud of
+delicate texture. It is necessary to abolish this cloud,
+and this may be done by drying the breath previous to
+its entering into the beam; or still more simply, by
+warming the glass tube. When this is done the luminous
+track of the beam is for a time uninterrupted. The
+breath impresses upon the floating matter a transverse motion,
+but the dust from the lungs makes good the particles
+displaced. But after some time an obscure disc appears
+upon the beam, the darkness of which increases, until
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span>finally, towards the end of the expiration, the beam is,
+as it were, pierced by an intensely black hole, in which
+no particles whatever can be discerned. The air, in
+fact, has so lodged its dirt within the lungs as to render
+the last portions of the expired breath absolutely free
+from suspended matter. This experiment may be repeated
+any number of times with the same result. It
+renders the distribution of the dirt within the lungs as
+manifest as if the chest were transparent.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I now empty my lungs as perfectly as possible, and
+placing a handful of cotton wool against my mouth and
+nostrils, inhale through it. There is no difficulty in
+thus filling the lungs with air. On expiring this air
+through the glass tube, its freedom from floating matter
+is at once manifest. From the very beginning of the
+act of expiration the beam is pierced by a black aperture.
+The first puff from the lungs abolishes the illuminated
+dust and puts a patch of darkness in its place,
+and the darkness continues throughout the entire course
+of the expiration. When the tube is placed below the
+beam and moved to and fro, the same smoke-like appearance
+as that obtained with a flame is observed. In
+short, the cotton wool, when used in sufficient quantity,
+completely intercepts the floating matter on its way to
+the lungs.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And here we have revealed to us the true philosophy
+of a practice followed by medical men, more from instinct
+than from actual knowledge. In a contagious atmosphere
+the physician places a handkerchief to his
+mouth and inhales through it. In doing so he unconsciously
+holds back the dirt and germs of the air. If the
+poison were a gas it would not be thus intercepted.
+On showing this experiment with the cotton wool to Dr.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span>Bence Jones, he immediately repeated it with a silk
+handkerchief. The result was substantially the same,
+though, as might be expected, the wool is by far the
+surest filter. The application of these experiments is
+obvious. If a physician wishes to hold back from the
+lungs of his patient, or from his own, the germs by
+which contagious disease is said to be propagated, he
+will employ a cotton wool respirator. After the revelations
+of this evening, such respirators must, I think,
+come into general use as a defence against contagion.
+In the crowded dwellings of the London poor, where
+the isolation of the sick is difficult, if not impossible,
+the noxious air around the patient may, by this simple
+means, be restored to practical purity. Thus filtered,
+attendants may breathe the air unharmed. In all probability
+the protection of the lungs will be protection
+of the entire system. For it is exceedingly
+probable that the germs which lodge in the air-passages,
+and which, at their leisure, can work their
+way across the mucous membrane, are those which sow
+in the body epidemic disease. If this be so, then
+disease can certainly be warded off by filters of cotton
+wool. I should be most willing to test their efficacy in
+my own person. And time will decide whether in lung
+diseases also the woolen respirator cannot abate irritation,
+if not arrest decay. By its means, so far as the
+germs are concerned, the air of the highest Alps may
+be brought into the chamber of the invalid.</p>
+
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span>
+  <h3 class='c001'>III.</h3>
+</div>
+<h4 class='c026'>Scientific Use of the Imagination.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>I carried with me to the Alps this year the heavy burden
+of this evening’s work. In the way of new investigation
+I had nothing complete enough to be brought
+before you; so all that remained to me was to fall back
+upon such residues as I could find in the depths of consciousness,
+and out of them to spin the fiber and weave
+the web of this discourse. Save from memory I had no
+direct aid upon the mountains; but to spur up the emotions,
+on which so much depends, as well as to nourish
+indirectly the intellect and will, I took with me two
+volumes of poetry, Goethe’s “Farbenlehre,” and the work
+on “Logic” recently published by Mr. Alexander Bain.
+The spur, I am sorry to say, was no match for the integument
+of dullness it had to pierce.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In Goethe, so glorious otherwise, I chiefly noticed the
+self-inflicted hurts of genius, as it broke itself in vain
+against the philosophy of Newton. For a time Mr.
+Bain became my principal companion. I found him
+learned and practical, shining generally with a dry light,
+but exhibiting at times a flush of emotional strength,
+which proved that even logicians share the common fire
+of humanity. He interested me most when he became
+the mirror of my own condition. Neither intellectually
+nor socially is it good for man to be alone, and the
+griefs of thought are more patiently borne when we find
+that they have been experienced by another. From certain
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>passages in his book I could infer that Mr. Bain
+was no stranger to such sorrows. Take this passage as
+an illustration. Speaking of the ebb of intellectual
+force which we all from time to time experience, Mr.
+Bain says: “The uncertainty where to look for the next
+opening of discovery brings the pain of conflict and the
+debility of indecision.” These words have in them the
+true ring of personal experience.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The action of the investigator is periodic. He grapples
+with a subject of inquiry, wrestles with it, overcomes
+it, exhausts, it may be, both himself and it for
+the time being. He breathes a space, and then renews
+the struggle in another field. Now this period of halting
+between two investigations is not always one of pure
+repose. It is often a period of doubt and discomfort,
+of gloom and ennui. “The uncertainty where to look
+for the next opening of discovery brings the pain of conflict
+and the debility of indecision.” Such was my precise
+condition in the Alps this year; in a score of words
+Mr. Bain has here sketched my mental diagnosis; and
+it was under these evil circumstances that I had to
+equip myself for the hour and the ordeal that are now
+come.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Gladly, however, as I should have seen this duty in
+other hands, I could by no means shrink from it. Disloyalty
+would have been worse than failure. In some
+fashion or other—feebly or strongly, meanly or manfully,
+on the higher levels of thought, or on the flats of commonplace—the
+task had to be accomplished. I looked
+in various directions for help and furtherance; but without
+me for a time I saw only “antres vast,” and within
+me “deserts idle.” My case resembled that of a sick
+doctor who had forgotten his art, and sorely needed the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>prescription of a friend. Mr. Bain wrote one for me.
+He said: “Your present knowledge must forge the links
+of connection between what has been already achieved
+and what is now required.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In these words he admonished me to review the past
+and recover from it the broken ends of former investigations.
+I tried to do so. Previous to going to Switzerland
+I had been thinking much of light and heat, of
+magnetism and electricity, of organic germs, atoms,
+molecules, spontaneous generation, comets and skies.
+With one or another of these I now sought to re-form
+an alliance, and finally succeeded in establishing a kind
+of cohesion between thought and light. The wish grew
+within me to trace, and to enable you to trace, some of
+the more occult operations of this agent. I wished, if
+possible, to take you behind the drop-scene of the senses,
+and to show you the hidden mechanism of optical
+action. For I take it to be well worth the while of the
+scientific teacher to take some pains, and even great
+pains, to make those whom he addresses co-partners of
+his thoughts. To clear his own mind in the first place
+from all haze and vagueness, and then to project into
+language which shall leave no mistake as to his meaning—which
+shall leave even his errors naked—the definite
+ideas he has shaped.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>A great deal is, I think, possible to scientific exposition
+conducted in this way. It is possible, I believe,
+even before an audience like the present, to uncover to
+some extent the unseen things of nature, and thus to
+give, not only to professed students, but to others with
+the necessary bias, industry and capacity, an intelligent
+interest in the operations of science. Time and labor
+are necessary to this result, but science is the gainer
+from the public sympathy thus created.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>How then are those hidden things to be revealed?
+How, for example, are we to lay hold of the physical
+basis of light, since, like that of life itself, it lies entirely
+without the domain of the senses? Now, philosophers
+may be right in affirming that we cannot transcend experience.
+But we can, at all events, carry it a long way
+from its origin. We can also magnify, diminish, qualify,
+and combine experiences, so as to render them fit for
+purposes entirely new. We are gifted with the power of
+imagination, combining what the Germans called <i>Anschauungsgabe</i>
+and <i>Einbildungskraft</i>, and by this power
+we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world
+of the senses.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>There are tories even in science who regard imagination
+as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than
+employed. They had observed its action in weak vessels
+and were unduly impressed by its disasters. But
+they might with equal justice point to exploded boilers
+as an argument against the use of steam. Bounded and
+conditioned by coöperant reason, imagination becomes
+the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer.
+Newton’s passage from a falling apple to a falling moon
+was a leap of the imagination. When William Thomson
+tries to place the ultimate particles of matter between
+his compass points, and to apply to them a scale
+of millimeters, it is an exercise of the imagination.
+And in much that has been recently said about protoplasm
+and life, we have the outgoings of the imagination
+guided and controlled by the known analogies of science.
+In fact, without this power our knowledge of nature
+would be a mere tabulation of coëxistences and sequences.
+We should still believe in the succession of day and
+night, of summer and winter; but the soul of force
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>would be dislodged from our universe; casual relations
+would disappear, and with them that science which is
+now binding the parts of nature to an organic whole.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I should like to illustrate by a few simple instances
+the use that scientific men have already made of this
+power of imagination, and to indicate afterwards some
+of the further uses that they are likely to make of it.
+Let us begin with the rudimentary experiences. Observe
+the falling of heavy rain drops into a tranquil pond.
+Each drop as it strikes the water becomes a center of
+disturbance, from which a series of ring ripples expands
+outwards. Gravity and inertia are the agents by which
+this wave motion is produced, and a rough experiment
+will suffice to show that the rate of propagation does
+not amount to a foot a second.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>A series of slight mechanical shocks is experienced
+by a body plunged in the water as the wavelets reach it
+in succession. But a finer motion is at the same time
+set up and propagated. If the head and ears be immersed
+in the water, as in an experiment of Franklin’s,
+the shock of the drop is communicated to the auditory
+nerve—the <i>tick</i> of the drop is heard. Now this
+sonorous impulse is propagated, not at the rate of a
+foot a second, but at the rate of 4,700 feet a
+second. In this case it is not the gravity but the
+<i>elasticity</i> of the water that is the urging force. Every
+liquid particle pushed against its neighbor delivers up
+its motion with extreme rapidity, and the pulse is propagated
+as a thrill. The incompressibility of water, as
+illustrated by the famous Florentine experiment, is a
+measure of its elasticity, and to the possession of this
+property in so high a degree the rapid transmission of
+a sound-pulse through water is to be ascribed.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span>But water, as you know, is not necessary to the conduction
+of sound; air is its most common vehicle. And
+you know that when the air possesses the particular
+density and elasticity corresponding to the temperature
+of freezing water, the velocity of sound in it is 1,090 feet
+a second. It is almost exactly one-fourth of the velocity
+in water; the reason being that though the greater
+weight of the water tends to diminish the velocity, the
+enormous molecular elasticity of the liquid far more
+than atones for the disadvantage due to weight. By
+various contrivances we can compel the vibrations of
+the air to declare themselves; we know the length and
+frequency of sonorous waves, and we have also obtained
+great mastery over the various methods by which the
+air is thrown into vibration. We know the phenomena
+and laws of vibrating rods, of organ pipes, strings,
+membranes, plates, and bells. We can abolish one
+sound by another. We know the physical meaning of
+music and noise, of harmony and discord. In short, as
+regards sound we have a very clear notion of the external
+physical processes which correspond to our sensations.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In these phenomena of sound we travel a very little
+way from downright sensible experience. Still the imagination
+is to some extent exercised. The bodily eye,
+for example, cannot see the condensations and rarefactions
+of the waves of sound. We construct them in
+thought, and we believe as firmly in their existence as
+in that of the air itself. But now our experience has to
+be carried into a new region, where a new use is to be
+made of it.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Having mastered the cause and mechanism of
+sound, we desire to know the cause and mechanism
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>of light. We wish to extend our inquiries from the auditory
+nerve to the optic nerve. Now there is in the
+human intellect a power of expansion—I might almost
+call it a power of creation—which is brought into play
+by the simple brooding upon facts. The legend of the
+Spirit brooding over chaos may have originated in a
+knowledge of this power. In the case now before us it
+has manifested itself by transplanting into space, for
+the purposes of light, an adequately modified form of
+the mechanism of sound. We know intimately whereon
+the velocity of sound depends. When we lessen the
+density of a medium and preserve its elasticity constant,
+we augment the velocity. When we highten the
+elasticity and keep the density constant, we also augment
+the velocity. A small density, therefore, and
+a great elasticity are the two things necessary to rapid
+propagation.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Now light is known to move with the astounding
+velocity of 185,000 miles a second. How is such a
+velocity to be obtained? By boldly diffusing in space
+a medium of the requisite tenuity and elasticity. Let
+us make such a medium our starting point, endowing it
+with one or two other necessary qualities; let us handle
+it in accordance with strict mechanical laws; give to
+every step of your deduction the surety of the syllogism;
+carry it thus forth from the world of imagination to the
+world of sense, and see whether the final outcrop of the
+deduction be not the very phenomena of light which
+ordinary knowledge and skilled experiment reveal. If
+in all the multiplied varieties of these phenomena, including
+those of the most remote and entangled description,
+this fundamental conception always brings us face
+to face with the truth; if no contradiction to our deductions
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>from it be found in external nature; if, moreover,
+it has actually forced upon our attention phenomena
+which no eye had previously seen, and which no mind
+had previously imagined; if by it we are gifted with a
+power of prescience which has never failed when
+brought to an experimental test; such a conception,
+which never disappoints us, but always lands us on the
+solid shores of fact, must, we think, be something more
+than a mere figment of the scientific fancy. In forming
+it that composite and creative unity in which reason and
+imagination are together blent, has, we believe, led us
+into a world not less real than that of the senses, and
+of which the world of sense itself is the suggestion and
+justification.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Far be it from me, however, to wish to fix you immovably
+in this or in any other theoretic conception. With
+all our belief of it, it will be well to keep the theory
+plastic and capable of change. You may, moreover,
+urge that although the phenomena occur <i>as if</i> the medium
+existed, the absolute demonstration of its existence
+is still wanting. Far be it from me to deny to this
+reasoning such validity as it may fairly claim. Let us
+endeavor by means of analogy to form a fair estimate
+of its force.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>You believe that in society you are surrounded by
+reasonable beings like yourself. You are, perhaps, as
+firmly convinced of this as of anything. What is your
+warrant for this conviction? Simply and solely this, your
+fellow-creatures behave as if they were reasonable; the
+hypothesis, for it is nothing more, accounts for the facts.
+To take an eminent example, you believe that our president
+is a reasonable being. Why? There is no known
+method of superposition by which any one of us can
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>apply himself intellectually to another so as to demonstrate
+coincidence as regards the possession of reason.
+If, therefore, you hold our president to be reasonable,
+it is because he behaves <i>as if</i> he were reasonable. As
+in the case of the ether, beyond the “<i>as if</i>” you cannot
+go. Nay, I should not wonder if a close comparison of
+the data on which both inferences rest caused many respectable
+persons to conclude that the ether had the
+best of it.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This universal medium, this light-ether as it is called,
+is a vehicle, not an origin of wave motion. It receives
+and transmits, but it does not create. Whence does it
+derive the motions it conveys? For the most part from
+luminous bodies. By this motion of a luminous body I
+do not mean its sensible motion, such as the flicker of a
+candle, or the shooting out of red prominences from the
+limb of the sun. I mean an intestine motion of the
+atoms or molecules of the luminous body. But here a
+certain reserve is necessary. Many chemists of the
+present day refuse to speak of atoms and molecules as
+real things. Their caution leads them to stop short of
+the clear, sharp, mechanically intelligible atomic theory
+enunciated by Dalton, or any form of that theory, and
+to make the doctrine of multiple proportions their intellectual
+bourne. I respect the caution, though I think it
+is here misplaced. The chemists who recoil from these
+notions of atoms and molecules accept without hesitation
+the undulatory theory of light. Like you and me
+they one and all believe in an ether and its light-producing
+waves. Let us consider what this belief involves.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Bring your imaginations once more into play and
+figure a series of sound waves passing through air.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>Follow them up to their origin, and what do you there
+find? A definite, tangible, vibrating body. It may be
+the vocal chords of a human being, it may be an organ
+pipe, or it may be a stretched string. Follow in the
+same manner a train of ether waves to their source, remembering
+at the same time that your ether is matter,
+dense, elastic, and capable of motions subject to and
+determined by mechanical laws. What then do you expect
+to find as the source of a series of ether waves?
+Ask your imagination if it will accept a vibrating multiple
+proportion—a numerical ratio in a state of oscillation?
+I do not think it will. You cannot crown the
+edifice by this abstraction. The scientific imagination,
+which is here authoritative, demands as the origin and
+cause of a series of ether waves a particle of vibrating
+matter quite as definite, though it may be excessively
+minute, as that which gives origin to a musical sound.
+Such a particle we name an atom or a molecule. I
+think the imagination when focused so as to give definition
+without penumbral haze is sure to realize this image
+at last.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>To preserve thought continuous throughout this discourse,
+to prevent either lack of knowledge or failure of
+memory from producing any rent in our picture, I here
+propose to run rapidly over a bit of ground which is
+probably familiar to most of you, but which I am anxious
+to make familiar to you all.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The waves generated in the ether by the swinging
+atoms of luminous bodies are of different lengths and
+amplitudes. The amplitude is the width of swing of
+the individual particles of the wave. In water waves
+it is the hight of the crest above the trough, while the
+length of the wave is the distance between two consecutive
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>crests. The aggregate of waves emitted by the
+sun may be broadly divided into two classes, the one
+class competent, the other incompetent, to excite vision.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the light-producing waves differ markedly among
+themselves in size, form, and force. The length of the
+largest of these waves is about twice that of the smallest,
+but the amplitude of the largest is probably a hundred
+times that of the smallest. Now the force or energy
+of the wave, which, expressed with reference to sensation,
+means the intensity of the light, is proportional to
+the square of the amplitude. Hence the amplitude
+being one hundred-fold, the energy of the largest light-giving
+waves would be ten thousand-fold that of the
+smallest. This is not improbable. I use these figures,
+not with a view to numerical accuracy, but to give you
+definite ideas of the differences that probably exist
+among the light-giving waves. And if we take the
+whole range of solar radiation into account—its non-visual
+as well as its visual waves—I think it probable
+that the force or energy of the largest wave is a million
+times that of the smallest.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Turned into their equivalents of sensation, the different
+light waves produce different colors. Red, for example,
+is produced by the largest waves, violet by the
+smallest, while green is produced by a wave of intermediate
+length and amplitude. On entering from air into
+more highly refracting substances, such as glass or water
+or the sulphide of carbon, all the waves are retarded,
+but the smallest ones most. This furnishes a means of
+separating the different classes of waves from each
+other—in other words, of analyzing the light. Sent
+through a refracting prism, the waves of the sun are
+turned aside in different degrees from their direct course,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>the red least, the violet most. They are virtually pulled
+asunder, and they paint upon a white screen placed to
+receive them “the solar spectrum.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Strictly speaking, the spectrum embraces an infinity
+of colors, but the limits of language and of our powers
+of distinction cause it to be divided into seven segments:
+Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. These
+are the seven primary or prismatic colors. Separately,
+or mixed in various proportions, the solar waves yield
+all the colors observed in nature and employed in art.
+Collectively they give us the impression of whiteness.
+Pure unsifted solar light is white; and if all the wave
+constituents of such light be reduced in the same proportion,
+the light, though diminished in intensity, will
+still be white. The whiteness of Alpine snow with the
+sun shining upon it is barely tolerable to the eye. The
+same snow under an overcast firmament is still white.
+Such a firmament enfeebles the light by reflection, and
+when we lift ourselves above a cloud-field—to an Alpine
+summit, for instance, or to the top of Snowdon—and
+see, in the proper direction, the sun shining on the
+clouds, they appear dazzlingly white. Ordinary clouds,
+in fact, divide the solar light impinging on them into
+two parts—a reflected part and a transmitted part, in
+each of which the proportions of wave motion which
+produce the impression of whiteness are sensibly preserved.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It will be understood that the conditions of whiteness
+would fail if all the waves were diminished <i>equally</i>, or
+by the same absolute quantity. They must be reduced
+<i>proportionately</i> instead of equally. If by the act of reflection
+the waves of red light are split into exact halves,
+then, to preserve the light white, the waves of yellow,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span>orange, green, and blue must also be split into exact
+halves. In short, the reduction must take place, not by
+absolutely equal quantities, but by equal fractional parts.
+In white light the preponderance as regards energy of
+the larger over the smaller waves must always be
+immense. Were the case otherwise, the physiological
+correlative, <i>blue</i>, of the smaller waves would have the
+upper hand in our sensations.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>My wish to render our mental images complete, causes
+me to dwell briefly upon these known points, and the
+same wish will cause me to linger a little longer among
+others. But here I am disturbed by my reflections. When
+I consider the effect of dinner upon the nervous system,
+and the relation of that system to the intellectual powers I
+am now invoking; when I remember that the universal
+experience of mankind has fixed upon certain definite
+elements of perfection in an after-dinner speech, and
+when I think how conspicuous by their absence these
+elements are on the present occasion, the thought is not
+comforting to a man who wishes to stand well with his
+fellow-creatures in general, and with the members of the
+British Association in particular. My condition might
+well resemble that of the ether, which is scientifically
+defined as an assemblage of vibrations. And the worst
+of it is that, unless you reverse the general verdict regarding
+the effect of dinner, and prove in your own persons
+that a uniform experience need not continue uniform—which
+will be a great point gained for some
+people—these tremors of mine are likely to become
+more and more painful. But I call to mind the comforting
+words of an inspired, though uncanonical writer,
+who admonishes us in the Apocrypha that fear is a bad
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_260'>260</span>counsellor. Let me then cast him out, and let me trustfully
+assume that you will one and all postpone that
+balmy sleep, of which dinner might, under the circumstances,
+be regarded as the indissoluble antecedent, and
+that you will manfully and womanfully prolong your investigations
+of the ether and its waves into regions
+which have been hitherto crossed by the pioneers of
+science alone.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Not only are the waves of ether reflected by clouds,
+by solids, and by liquids, but when they pass from light
+air to dense, or from dense air to light, a portion of the
+wave motion is always reflected. Now our atmosphere
+changes continually in density from top to bottom. It
+will help our conceptions if we regard it as made up of
+a series of thin concentric layers or shells of air, each
+shell being of the same density throughout, and a small
+and sudden change of density occurring in passing from
+shell to shell. Light would be reflected at the limiting
+surfaces of all these shells, and their action would be
+practically the same as that of the real atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And now I would ask your imagination to picture this
+act of reflection. What must become of the reflected
+light? The atmospheric layers turn their convex surfaces
+towards the sun; they are so many convex mirrors
+of feeble power, and you will immediately perceive
+that the light regularly reflected from these surfaces
+cannot reach the earth at all, but is dispersed in space.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But though the sun’s light is not reflected in this
+fashion from the ærial layers to the earth, there is indubitable
+evidence to show that the light of our firmament
+is reflected light. Proofs of the most cogent description
+could be here adduced; but we need only consider
+that we receive light at the same time from all parts of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>the hemisphere of heaven. The light of the firmament
+comes to us across the direction of the solar rays, and
+even against the direction of the solar rays; and this
+lateral and opposing rush of wave motion can only be
+due to the rebound of the waves from the air itself, or
+from something suspended in the air. It is also evident
+that, unlike the action of clouds, the solar light is not
+reflected by the sky in the proportions which produce
+white. The sky is blue, which indicates a deficiency
+on the part of the larger waves. In accounting for the
+color of the sky, the first question suggested by analogy
+would undoubtedly be, is not the air blue? The blueness
+of the air has, in fact, been given as a solution of
+the blueness of the sky. But reason basing itself on
+observation asks in reply, How, if the air be blue, can
+the light of sunrise and sunset, which travels through
+vast distances of air, be yellow, orange, or even red?
+The passage of the white solar light through a blue medium
+could by no possibility redden the light. The
+hypothesis of a blue air is therefore untenable. In fact,
+the agent, whatever it is, which sends us the light of the
+sky, exercises in so doing a dichroitic action. The light
+reflected is blue, the light transmitted is orange or red.
+A marked distinction is thus exhibited between the matter
+of the sky and that of an ordinary cloud, which latter
+exercises no such dichroitic action.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>By the force of imagination and reason combined we
+may penetrate this mystery also. The cloud takes no
+note of size on the part of the waves of ether, but reflects
+them all alike. It exercises no selective action. Now
+the cause of this may be that the cloud particles are so
+large in comparison with the size of the waves of ether
+as to reflect them all indifferently. A broad cliff reflects
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>an Atlantic roller as easily as a ripple produced
+by a sea bird’s wing; and in the presence of large reflecting
+surfaces the existing differences of magnitude
+among the waves of ether may disappear. But supposing
+the reflecting particles, instead of being very large,
+to be very small, in comparison with the size of the
+waves. In this case, instead of the whole wave being
+fronted and in great part thrown back, a small portion
+only is shivered off. The great mass of the wave passes
+over such a particle without reflection. Scatter then, a
+handful of such minute foreign particles in our atmosphere,
+and set imagination to watch their action upon
+the solar waves. Waves of all sizes impinge upon the
+particles, and you see at every collision a portion of the
+impinging wave struck off by reflection. All the waves
+of the spectrum, from the extreme red to the extreme
+violet, are thus acted upon. But in what proportions
+will the waves be scattered? A clear picture will enable
+us to anticipate the experimental answer. Remembering
+that the red waves are to the blue much in the relation
+of billows to ripples, let us consider whether those
+extremely small particles are competent to scatter all
+the waves in the same proportion. If they be not—and
+a little reflection will make it clear to you that they are
+not—the production of color must be an incident of the
+scattering. Largeness is a thing of relation; and the
+smaller the wave the greater is the relative size of any
+particle on which the wave impinges, and the greater
+also the ratio of the reflected portion to the total wave.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>A pebble placed in the way of the ring-ripples produced
+by our heavy rain-drops on a tranquil pond will
+throw back a large fraction of the ripple incident upon
+it, while the fractional part of a larger wave thrown back
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>by the same pebble might be infinitesimal. Now we
+have already made it clear to our minds that to preserve
+the solar light white, its constituent proportions must
+not be altered; but in the act of division performed by
+these very small particles we see that the proportions
+<i>are</i> altered; an undue fraction of the smaller waves is
+scattered by the particles, and, as a consequence, in the
+scattered light blue will be the predominant color. The
+other colors of the spectrum must, to some extent, be
+associated with the blue. They are not absent, but deficient.
+We ought, in fact, to have them all, but in diminishing
+proportions, from the violet to the red.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>We have here presented a case to the imagination,
+and assuming the undulatory theory to be a reality, we
+have, I think, fairly reasoned our way to the conclusion
+that, were particles, small in comparison to the size of
+the ether waves, sown in our atmosphere, the light scattered
+by those particles would be exactly such as we observe
+in our azure skies. When this light is analyzed
+all the colors of the spectrum are found; but they are
+found in the proportions indicated by our conclusion.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Let us now turn our attention to the light which passes
+unscattered among the particles. How must it be finally
+affected? By its successive collisions with the particles,
+the white light is more and more robbed of its shorter
+waves; it therefore loses more and more of its due proportion
+of blue. The result may be anticipated. The
+transmitted light, where short distances are involved,
+will appear yellowish. But as the sun sinks towards the
+horizon, the atmospheric distances increase, and consequently
+the number of the scattering particles. They
+abstract, in succession, the violet, the indigo, the blue,
+and even disturb the proportions of green. The transmitted
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>light under such circumstances must pass from
+yellow through orange to red. This also is exactly
+what we find in nature. Thus, while the reflected light
+gives us at noon the deep azure of the Alpine skies, the
+transmitted light gives us at sunset the warm crimson of
+the Alpine snows. The phenomena certainly occur <i>as
+if</i> our atmosphere were a medium rendered slightly turbid
+by the mechanical suspension of exceedingly small
+foreign particles.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Here, as before, we encounter our skeptical “as if.”
+It is one of the parasites of science, ever at hand, and
+ready to plant itself and sprout, if it can, on the weak
+points of our philosophy. But a strong constitution
+defies the parasite, and in our case, as we question the
+phenomena, probability grows like growing health, until
+in the end the malady of doubt is completely extirpated.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The first question that naturally arises is, Can small
+particles be really proved to act in the manner indicated?
+No doubt of it. Each one of you can submit the question
+to an experimental test. Water will not dissolve
+resin, but spirit will, and when spirit which holds
+resin in solution is dropped into water the resin immediately
+separates in solid particles, which render the
+water milky. The coarseness of this precipitate depends
+on the quantity of the dissolved resin. You can
+cause it to separate in thick clots or in exceedingly fine
+particles. Professor Brücke has given us the proportions
+which produce particles particularly suited to our
+present purpose. One gramme of clean mastic is dissolved
+in eighty-seven grammes of absolute alcohol, and
+the transparent solution is allowed to drop into a beaker
+containing clear water kept briskly stirred. An exceedingly
+fine precipitate is thus formed, which declares its
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span>presence by its action upon light. Placing a dark surface
+behind the beaker, and permitting the light to fall into it
+from the top or front, the medium is seen to be distinctly
+blue. It is not, perhaps, so perfect a blue as I have seen on
+exceptional days, this year, among the Alps, but it is a
+very fair sky blue. A trace of soap in water gives a tint
+of blue. London, and I fear Liverpool milk, makes an
+approximation to the same color through the operation
+of the same cause; and Helmholtz has irreverently disclosed
+the fact that a blue eye is simply a turbid medium.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Numerous instances of the kind might be cited. The
+action of turbid media upon light was fully and beautifully
+illustrated by Goethe, who, though unacquainted
+with the undulatory theory, was led by his experiments
+to regard the blue of the firmament as caused by an
+illuminated turbid medium with the darkness of space
+behind it. He describes glasses showing a bright yellow
+by transmitted, and a beautiful blue by reflected light.
+Professor Stokes, who was probably the first to discern
+the real nature of the action of small particles on the
+waves of ether, describes a glass of a similar kind.
+What artists call “chill” is no doubt an effect of this
+description. Through the action of minute particles,
+the browns of a picture often present the appearance of
+the bloom of a plum. By rubbing the varnish with a
+silk handkerchief optical continuity is established and
+the chill disappears.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Some years ago I witnessed Mr. Hirst experimenting
+at Zermatt on the turbid water of the Visp, which was
+charged with the finely divided matter ground down by
+the glaciers. When kept still for a day or so the grosser
+matter sank, but the finer matter remained suspended,
+and gave a distinctly blue tinge to the water. No doubt
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>the blueness of certain Alpine lakes is in part due to
+this cause. Professor Roscoe has noticed several striking
+cases of a similar kind. In a very remarkable paper
+the late Principal Forbes showed that steam issuing
+from the safety valve of a locomotive, when favorably observed,
+exhibits at a certain stage of its condensation
+the colors of the sky. It is blue by reflected light, and
+orange or red by transmitted light. The effect, as
+pointed out by Goethe, is to some extent exhibited by
+peat smoke.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>More than ten years ago I amused myself at Killarney,
+by observing on a calm day, the straight smoke columns
+rising from the chimneys of the cabins. It was
+easy to project the lower portion of a column against
+a bright cloud. The smoke in the former case
+was blue, being seen mainly by reflected light; in
+the latter case it was reddish, being seen mainly
+by transmitted light. Such smoke was not in exactly
+the condition to give us the glow of the Alps,
+but it was a step in this direction. Brücke’s fine precipitate
+above referred to looks yellowish by transmitted
+light, but by duly strengthening the precipitate you may
+render the white light of noon as ruby colored as the
+sun when seen through Liverpool smoke or upon Alpine
+horizons.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I do not, however, point to the gross smoke arising
+from coal as an illustration of the action of small particles,
+because such smoke soon absorbs and destroys the
+waves of blue instead of sending them to the eyes of the
+observer.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>These multifarious facts, and numberless others which
+cannot now be referred to, are explained by reference to
+the single principle that where the scattering particles
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>are small in comparison to the size of the waves, we
+have in the reflected light a greater proportion of the
+smaller waves, and in the transmitted light a greater proportion
+of the larger waves, than existed in the original
+white light. The physiological consequence is that in the
+one light blue is predominant, and in the other light orange
+or red. And now let us push our inquiries forward. Our
+best microscopes can readily reveal objects not more
+than 1/50000 of an inch in diameter. This is less than
+the length of a wave of red light. Indeed, a first-rate
+microscope would enable us to discern objects not exceeding
+in diameter the length of the smallest waves of
+the visible spectrum. By the microscope, therefore, we
+can submit our particles to an experimental test. If
+they are as large as the light-waves they will infallibly
+be seen; and if they are not seen it is because they are
+smaller.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I placed in the hands of our president a bottle containing
+Brücke’s particles in greater number and coarseness
+than those examined by Brücke himself. The
+liquid was a milky blue, and Mr. Huxley applied to it
+his highest microscopic power. He satisfied me at the
+time that had particles of even 1/100000 of an inch in
+diameter existed in the liquid they could not have
+escaped detection. But no particles were seen. Under
+the microscope the turbid liquid was not to be distinguished
+from distilled water. Brücke, I may say, also
+found the particles to be of ultra microscopic magnitude.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But we have it in our power to imitate far more closely
+than we have hitherto done the natural conditions of
+this problem. We can generate in air, as many of you
+know, artificial skies, and prove their perfect identity with
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_268'>268</span>the natural one as regards the exhibition of a number
+of wholly unexpected phenomena. By a continuous
+process of growth, moreover, we are able to connect
+sky matter, if I may use the term, with molecular matter
+on the one side, and with molar matter, or matter in
+sensible masses, on the other.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In illustration of this, I will take an experiment described
+by M. Morren, of Marseilles, at the last meeting
+of the British Association. Sulphur and oxygen
+combine to form sulphurous acid gas. It is this choking
+gas that is smelt when a sulphur match is burnt in
+air. Two atoms of oxygen and one of sulphur constitute
+the molecule of sulphurous acid. Now it has been
+recently shown in a great number of instances that
+waves of ether issuing from a strong source, such as the
+sun or the electric light, are competent to shake asunder
+the atoms of gaseous molecules. A chemist would call
+this “decomposition” by light; but it behooves us, who
+are examining the power and function of the imagination,
+to keep constantly before us the physical images which
+we hold to underlie our terms. Therefore I say, sharply
+and definitely, that the components of the molecules
+of sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by the ether
+waves. Enclosing the substance in a suitable vessel,
+placing it in a dark room, and sending through it a
+powerful beam of light, we at first see nothing; the vessel
+containing the gas is as empty as a vacuum. Soon,
+however, along the track of the beam a beautiful sky-blue
+color is observed, which is due to the liberated
+particles of sulphur. For a time the blue grows more
+intense; it then becomes whitish; and from a whitish blue
+it passes to a more or less perfect white. If the action
+be continued long enough, we end by filling the tube
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>with a dense cloud of sulphur particles, which by the
+application of proper means may be rendered visible.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Here, then, our ether waves untie the bond of chemical
+affinity, and liberate a body—sulphur—which at ordinary
+temperatures is a solid, and which therefore soon
+becomes an object of the senses. We have first of all
+the free atoms of sulphur, which are both invisible and
+incompetent to stir the retina sensibly with scattered
+light. But these atoms gradually coalesce and form
+particles, which grow larger by continual accretion until
+after a minute or two they appear as sky matter. In
+this condition they are invisible themselves, but competent
+to send an amount of wave motion to the retina
+sufficient to produce the firmamental blue. The particles
+continue, or may be caused to continue, in this condition
+for a considerable time, during which no microscope
+can cope with them. But they continually grow
+larger, and pass by insensible gradations into the state of
+<i>cloud</i>, when they can no longer elude the armed eye.
+Thus, without solution of continuity, we start with matter
+in the molecule, and end with matter in the mass,
+sky matter being the middle term of the series of transformations.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Instead of sulphurous acid we might choose from a
+dozen other substances, and produce the same effect
+with any of them. In the case of some—probably in
+the case of all—it is possible to preserve matter in the
+skyey condition for fifteen or twenty minutes under the
+continual operation of the light. During these fifteen or
+twenty minutes the particles are constantly growing
+larger, without ever exceeding the size requisite to the
+production of the celestial blue. Now when two vessels
+are placed before you, each containing sky matter,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>it is possible to state with great distinctness which vessel
+contains the largest particles.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The eye is very sensitive to differences of light, when,
+as here, the eye is in comparative darkness, and when
+the quantities of wave motion thrown against the retina
+are small. The larger particles declare themselves by
+the greater whiteness of their scattered light. Call now
+to mind the observation, or effort at observation, made by
+our president when he failed to distinguish the particles
+of resin in Brücke’s medium, and when you have done
+so follow me. I permitted a beam of light to act upon
+a certain vapor. In two minutes the azure appeared,
+but at the end of fifteen minutes it had not ceased to
+be azure. After fifteen minutes, for example, its color
+and some other phenomena pronounced it to be a blue
+of distinctly smaller particles than those sought for in
+vain by Mr. Huxley. These particles, as already stated,
+must have been less than 1/100000 of an inch in diameter.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And now I want you to submit to your imagination
+the following question: Here are particles which have
+been growing continually for fifteen minutes, and at the
+end of that time are demonstrably smaller than those
+which defied the microscope of Mr. Huxley. What
+must have been the size of these particles at the beginning
+of their growth? What notion can you form of
+the magnitude of such particles? As the distances of
+stellar space give us simply a bewildering sense of vastness
+without leaving any distinct impression on the mind,
+so the magnitudes with which we have here to do impress
+us with a bewildering sense of smallness. We
+are dealing with infinitesimals compared with which the
+test objects of the microscope are literally immense.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>From their perviousness to stellar light, and other
+considerations, Sir John Herschel drew some startling
+conclusions regarding the density and weight of comets.
+You know that these extraordinary and mysterious bodies
+sometimes throw out tails 100,000,000 of miles in
+length, and 50,000 miles in diameter. The diameter of
+our earth is 8,000 miles. Both it and the sky, and a
+good portion of space beyond the sky, would certainly
+be included in a sphere 10,000 miles across. Let us fill
+this sphere with cometary matter, and make it our unit
+of measure. An easy calculation informs us that to
+produce a comet’s tail of the size just mentioned, about
+300,000 such measures would have to be emptied into
+space. Now suppose the whole of this stuff to be swept
+together, and suitably compressed, what do you suppose
+its volume would be? Sir John Herschel would probably
+tell you that the whole mass might be carted away
+at a single effort by one of your dray-horses. In fact, I
+do not know that he would require more than a small
+fraction of a horse-power to remove the cometary dust.
+After this you will hardly regard as monstrous a notion
+I have sometimes entertained concerning the quantity
+of matter in our sky. Suppose a shell, then, to surround
+the earth at a hight above the surface which
+would place it beyond the grosser matter that hangs in
+the lower regions of the air—say at the hight of the
+Matterhorn or Mont Blanc. Outside this shell we have
+the deep blue firmament. Let the atmospheric space
+beyond the shell be swept clean, and let the sky matter
+be properly gathered up. What is its probable amount?
+I have sometimes thought that a lady’s portmanteau
+would contain it all. I have thought that even a gentleman’s
+portmanteau—possibly his snuff-box—might take it
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_272'>272</span>in. And whether the actual sky be capable of this amount
+of condensation or not, I entertain no doubt that a sky
+quite as vast as ours, and as good in appearance, could
+be formed from a quantity of matter which might be
+held in the hollow of the hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Small in mass, the vastness in point of number of the
+particles of our sky may be inferred from the continuity
+of its light. It is not in broken patches nor at scattered
+points that the heavenly azure is revealed. To the observer
+on the summit of Mont Blanc the blue is as uniform
+and coherent as if it formed the surface of the most
+close-grained solid. A marble dome would not exhibit
+a stricter continuity. And Mr. Glaisher will inform you
+that if our hypothetical shell were lifted to twice the
+hight of Mont Blanc above the earth’s surface, we
+should still have the azure overhead. Everywhere
+through the atmosphere those sky particles are strewn.
+They fill the Alpine valleys, spreading like a delicate
+gauze in front of the slopes of pine. They sometimes
+so swathe the peaks with light as to abolish their definition.
+This year I have seen the Weisshorn thus dissolved
+in opalescent air.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>By proper instruments the glare thrown from the sky
+particles against the retina may be quenched, and then
+the mountain which it obliterated starts into sudden
+definition. Its extinction in front of a dark mountain
+resembles exactly the withdrawal of a veil. It is the
+light then taking possession of the eye, and not the
+particles acting as opaque bodies, that interfere with the
+definition.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>By day this light quenches the stars; even by moonlight
+it is able to exclude from vision all stars between
+the fifth and the eleventh magnitude. It may be likened
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span>to a noise, and the stellar radiance to a whisper drowned
+by the noise. What is the nature of the particles which
+shed this light? On points of controversy I will not
+here enter, but I may say that De la Rive ascribes the
+haze of the Alps in fine weather to floating organic
+germs. Now the possible existence of germs in such
+profusion has been held up as an absurdity. It has
+been affirmed that they would darken the air, and on
+the assumed impossibility of their existence in the
+requisite numbers, without invasion of the solar light, a
+powerful argument has been based by believers in spontaneous
+generation.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Similar arguments have been used by the opponents
+of the germ theory of epidemic disease, and both parties
+have triumphantly challenged an appeal to the
+microscope and the chemist’s balance to decide the question.
+Without committing myself in the least to De la
+Rive’s notion, without offering any objection here to
+the doctrine of spontaneous generation, without expressing
+any adherence to the germ theory of disease, I
+would simply draw attention to the fact that in the atmosphere
+we have particles which defy both the microscope
+and the balance, which do not darken the air, and
+which exist, nevertheless, in multitudes sufficient to reduce
+to insignificance the Israelitish hyperbole regarding
+the sands upon the seashore.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The varying judgments of men on these and other
+questions may perhaps be, to some extent, accounted for
+by that doctrine of relativity which plays so important
+a part in philosophy. This doctrine affirms that the impressions
+made upon us by any circumstance, or combination
+of circumstances, depends upon our previous
+state. Two travelers upon the same peak, the one having
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span>ascended to it from the plain, the other having descended
+to it from a higher elevation, will be differently
+affected by the scene around them. To the one nature
+is expanding, to the other it is contracting, and feelings
+are sure to differ which have two such different antecedent
+states.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In our scientific judgments the law of relativity may
+also play an important part. To two men, one educated
+in the school of the senses, who has mainly occupied
+himself with observation, and the other educated in the
+school of imagination as well, and exercised in the conception
+of atoms and molecules to which we have so
+frequently referred, a bit of matter, say 1/50000 of an inch
+in diameter, will present itself differently. The one descends
+to it from his molar hights, the other climbs to
+it from his molecular lowlands. To the one it appears
+small, to the other large. So also as regards the appreciation
+of the most minute forms of life revealed by the
+microscope. To one of these men they naturally appear
+conterminous with the ultimate particles of matter,
+and he readily figures the molecules from which they directly
+spring; with him there is but a step from the
+atom to the organism. The other discerns numberless
+organic gradations between both. Compared with his
+atoms, the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the microscopic
+field are as behemoth and leviathan.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The law of relativity may to some extent explain the
+different attitudes of these two men with regard to the
+question of spontaneous generation. An amount of
+evidence which satisfies the one entirely fails to satisfy
+the other; and while to the one the last bold defense
+and startling expansion of the doctrine will appear perfectly
+conclusive, to the other it will present itself as imposing
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>a profitless labor of demolition on subsequent investigators.
+The proper and possible attitude of these
+two men is that each of them should work as if it were
+his aim and object to establish the view entertained by
+the other.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I trust, Mr. President, that you—whom untoward circumstances
+have made a biologist, but who still keep
+alive your sympathy with that class of inquiries which
+nature intended you to pursue and adorn—will excuse
+me to your brethren if I say that some of them seem to
+form an inadequate estimate of the distance which separates
+the microscopic from the molecular limit, and
+that, as a consequence, they sometimes employ a phraseology
+which is calculated to mislead.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>When, for example, the contents of a cell are described
+as perfectly homogeneous, as absolutely structureless,
+because the microscope fails to distinguish any
+structure, then I think the microscope begins to play a
+mischievous part. A little consideration will make it
+plain to all of you that the microscope can have no voice
+in the real question of germ structure. Distilled
+water is more perfectly homogeneous than the contents
+of any possible organic germ. What causes the liquid
+to cease contracting at 39° F., and to grow bigger until
+it freezes? It is a structural process of which the
+microscope can take no note, nor is it likely to do so
+by any conceivable extension of its powers. Place this
+distilled water in the field of an electro-magnet, and
+bring a microscope to bear upon it. Will any change
+be observed when the magnet is excited? Absolutely
+none; and still profound and complex changes have
+occurred.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>First of all, the particles of water are rendered diamagnetically
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_276'>276</span>polar; and secondly, in virtue of the structure
+impressed upon it by the magnetic strain of its
+molecules, the liquid twists a ray of light in a fashion
+perfectly determinate both as to quantity and direction.
+It would be immensely interesting to both you and me
+if one here present, who has brought his brilliant imagination
+to bear upon this subject, could make us see as
+he sees the entangled molecular processes involved in
+the rotation of the plane of polarization by magnetic
+force. While dealing with this question he lived in a
+world of matter and of motion to which the microscope
+has no passport, and in which it can offer no aid. The
+cases in which similar conditions hold are simply numberless.
+Have the diamond, the amethyst, and the
+countless other crystals formed in the laboratories of
+nature and of man, no structure? Assuredly they have,
+but what can the microscope make of it? Nothing. It
+cannot be too distinctly borne in mind that between the
+microscopic limit and the true molecular limit there is
+room for infinite permutations and combinations. It is
+in this region that the poles of the atoms are arranged,
+that tendency is given to their powers, so that when
+these poles and powers have free action and proper
+stimulus in a suitable environment, they determine first
+the germ and afterwards the complete organism. This
+first marshaling of the atoms on which all subsequent
+action depends baffles a keener power than that of the
+microscope. Through pure excess of complexity, and
+long before observation can have any voice in the matter,
+the most highly trained intellect, the most refined
+and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment
+from the contemplation of the problem. We are struck
+dumb by an astonishment which no microscope can relieve,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span>doubting not only the power of our instrument,
+but even whether we ourselves possess the intellectual
+elements which will ever enable us to grapple with the
+ultimate structural energies of nature.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the speculative faculty, of which imagination
+forms so large a part, will nevertheless wander into
+regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be
+entirely shut out. We think that though the detailed
+analysis may be, and may ever remain, beyond us, general
+notions may be attainable. At all events, it is plain
+that beyond the present outposts of microscopic inquiry
+lies an immense field for the exercise of the imagination.
+It is only, however, the privileged spirits who know how
+to use their liberty without abusing it, who are able to
+surround imagination by the firm frontiers of reason,
+that are likely to work with any profit here. But freedom
+to them is of such paramount importance that, for
+the sake of securing it, a good deal of wildness on the
+part of weaker brethren may be overlooked. In more
+senses than one Mr. Darwin has drawn heavily upon
+the scientific tolerance of his age. He has drawn heavily
+upon <i>time</i> in his development of species, and he has
+drawn adventurously upon <i>matter</i> in his theory of pan-genesis.
+According to this theory, a germ already microscopic
+is a world of minor germs. Not only is the
+organism as a whole wrapped up in the germ, but every
+organ of the organism has there its special seed.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This, I say, is an adventurous draft on the power of
+matter to divide itself and distribute its forces. But,
+unless we are perfectly sure that he is overstepping the
+bounds of reason, that he is unwittingly sinning against
+observed fact or demonstrated law—for a mind like that
+of Darwin can never sin wittingly against either fact or
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>law—we ought, I think, to be cautious in limiting his
+intellectual horizon. If there be the least doubt in the
+matter, it ought to be given in favor of the freedom of
+such a mind. To it a vast possibility is in itself a
+dynamic power, though the possibility may never be
+drawn upon.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It gives me pleasure to think that the facts and
+reasonings of this discourse tend rather towards the
+justification of Mr. Darwin than towards his condemnation,
+that they tend rather to augment than to diminish
+the cubic space demanded by this soaring speculator;
+for they seem to show the perfect competence of matter
+and force, as regards divisibility and distribution, to bear
+the heaviest strain that he has hitherto imposed upon
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In the case of Mr. Darwin, observation, imagination,
+and reason combined have run back with wonderful
+sagacity and success over a certain length of the line of
+biological succession. Guided by analogy, in his “Origin
+of Species” he placed as the root of life a primordial
+germ, from which he conceived the amazing richness
+and variety of the life that now is upon the earth’s
+surface, might be deduced. If this were true it would
+not be final. The human imagination would infallibly
+look behind the germ, and inquire into the history of its
+genesis.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Certainty is here hopeless, but the materials for an
+opinion may be attainable. In this dim twilight of
+speculation the inquirer welcomes every gleam, and seeks
+to augment his light by indirect incidences. He studies
+the methods of nature in the ages and the worlds within
+his reach, in order to shape the course of imagination
+in the antecedent ages and worlds. And though the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span>certainty possessed by experimental inquiry is here shut
+out, the imagination is not left entirely without guidance.
+From the examination of the solar system, Kant and
+Laplace came to the conclusion that its various bodies
+once formed parts of the same undislocated mass; that
+matter in a nebulous form preceded matter in a dense
+form; that as the ages rolled away heat was wasted,
+condensation followed, planets were detached, and that
+finally the chief portion of the fiery cloud reached, by
+self-compression, the magnitude and density of our sun.
+The earth itself offers evidence of a fiery origin; and
+in our day the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace receives
+the independent countenance of spectrum analysis,
+which proves the same substances to be common to the
+earth and sun. Accepting some such view of the construction
+of our system as probable, a desire immediately
+arises to connect the present life of our planet with the
+past. We wish to know something of our remotest ancestry.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>On its first detachment from the central mass, life, as
+we understand it, could hardly have been present on the
+earth. How then did it come there? The thing to be
+encouraged here is a reverent freedom—a freedom preceded
+by the hard discipline which checks licentiousness
+in speculation—while the thing to be repressed, both in
+science and out of it, is dogmatism. And here I am in
+the hands of the meeting—willing to end, but ready to
+go on. I have no right to intrude upon you, unasked,
+the unformed notions which are floating like clouds or
+gathering to more solid consistency in the modern speculative
+scientific mind. But if you wish me to speak
+plainly, honestly, and undisputatiously, I am willing to
+do so. On the present occasion</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c034'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>You are ordained to call, and I to come.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c035'><span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>Two views, then, offer themselves to us. Life was
+present potentially in matter when in the nebulous form,
+and was unfolded from it by the way of natural development,
+or it is a principle inserted into matter at a later
+date. With regard to the question of time, the views of
+men have changed remarkably in our day and generation;
+and I must say as regards courage also, and a
+manful willingness to engage in open contest, with fair
+weapons, a great change has also occurred.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>The clergy of England—at all events the clergy of
+London—have nerve enough to listen to the strongest
+views which any one amongst us would care to utter;
+and they invite, if they do not challenge, men of the
+most decided opinions to state and stand by those opinions
+in open court. No theory upsets them. Let the
+most destructive hypothesis be stated only in the language
+current among gentlemen, and they look it in the
+face. They forego alike the thunders of heaven and the
+terrors of the other place, smiting the theory, if they do
+not like it, with honest secular strength. In fact, the
+greatest cowards of the present day are not to be found
+among the clergy, but within the pale of science itself.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>Two or three years ago in an ancient London college—a
+clerical institution—I heard a very remarkable lecture
+by a very remarkable man. Three or four hundred
+clergymen were present at the lecture. The orator
+began with the civilization of Egypt in the time of
+Joseph; pointing out that the very perfect organization
+of the kingdom, and the possession of chariots, in one
+of which Joseph rode, indicated a long antecedent
+period of civilization. He then passed on to the mud
+of the Nile, its rate of augmentation, its present thickness,
+and the remains of human handiwork found therein;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span>thence to the rocks which bound the Nile valley, and
+which team with organic remains. Thus, in his own
+clear and admirable way, he caused the idea of the
+world’s age to expand itself indefinitely before the mind
+of his audience, and he contrasted this with the age
+usually assigned to the world.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>During his discourse he seemed to be swimming
+against a stream; he manifestly thought that he was opposing
+a general conviction. He expected resistance;
+so did I. But it was all a mistake; there was no adverse
+current, no opposing conviction, no resistance,
+merely here and there a half humorous but unsuccessful
+attempt to entangle him in his talk. The meeting
+agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity
+of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed,
+known it all long ago, and they good-humoredly rallied
+the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a
+story. It was quite plain that this large body of clergymen,
+who were, I should say, the finest samples of their
+class, had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and
+transported the conception of life’s origin to an indefinitely
+distant past.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>In fact, clergymen, if I might be allowed a parenthesis
+to say so, have as strong a leaning towards scientific
+truth as other men, only the resistance to this bent—a
+resistance due to education—is generally stronger
+in their case than in others. They do not lack the positive
+element, namely, the love of truth, but the negative
+element, the fear of error, preponderates.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>The strength of an electric current is determined by
+two things—the electro-motive force, and the resistance
+that force has to overcome. A fraction, with the former
+as numerator and the latter as denominator, expresses
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span>the current-strength. The “current-strength” of the
+clergy towards science may also be expressed by making
+the positive element just referred to the numerator,
+and the negative one the denominator of a fraction.
+The numerator is not zero nor is it even small, but the denominator
+is large; and hence the current strength is
+such as we find it to be. Slowness of conception, even
+open hostility, may be thus accounted for. They are
+for the most part errors of judgment, and not sins
+against truth. To most of us it may appear very simple,
+but to a few of us it appears transcendently wonderful,
+that in all classes of society truth should have
+this power and fascination. From the countless modifications
+that life has undergone through natural selection
+and the integration of infinitesimal steps, emerges
+finally the grand result that the strength of truth is
+greater than the strength of error, and that we have
+only to make the truth clear to the world to gain the
+world to our side. Probably no one wonders more at
+this result than the propounder of the law of natural
+selection himself. Reverting to an old acquaintance of
+ours, it would seem, on purely scientific grounds, as if
+a Veracity were at the heart of things; as if, after ages of
+latent working, it had finally unfolded itself in the life of
+man; as if it were still destined to unfold itself, growing in
+girth, throwing out stronger branches and thicker leaves,
+and tending more and more by its overshadowing presence
+to starve the weeds of error from the intellectual
+soil.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>But this is parenthetical; and the gist of our present
+inquiry regarding the introduction of life is this: Does
+it belong to what we call matter, or is it an independent
+principle inserted into matter at some suitable epoch—say
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>when the physical conditions become such as to
+permit of the development of life? Let us put the
+question with all the reverence due to a faith and culture
+in which we all were cradled—a faith and culture,
+moreover, which are the undeniable historic antecedents
+of our present enlightenment. I say, let us put the
+question reverently, but let us also put it clearly and
+definitely.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>There are the strongest grounds for believing that
+during a certain period of its history the earth was not,
+nor was it fit to be, the theater of life. Whether this
+was ever a nebulous period, or merely a molten period,
+does not much matter; and if we revert to the nebulous
+condition, it is because the probabilities are really on its
+side. Our question is this: Did creative energy pause
+until the nebulous matter had condensed, until the earth
+had been detached, until the solar fire had so far withdrawn
+from the earth’s vicinity as to permit a crust to
+gather round a planet? Did it wait until the air was isolated,
+until the seas were formed, until evaporation,
+condensation, and the descent of rain had begun, until
+the eroding forces of the atmosphere had weathered and
+decomposed the molten rocks so as to form soils, until
+the sun’s rays had become so tempered by distance and
+by waste as to be chemically fit for the decompositions
+necessary to vegetable life? Having waited through
+those æons until the proper conditions had set in, did
+it send the fiat forth, “Let life be!”? These questions
+define a hypothesis not without its difficulties, but the
+dignity of which was demonstrated by the nobleness of
+the men whom it sustained.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide between
+this hypothesis and another; and public thought
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_284'>284</span>generally will afterwards be called upon to do the same.
+You may, however, rest secure in the belief that the
+hypothesis just sketched can never be stormed, and that
+it is sure, if it yield at all, to yield to a prolonged siege.
+To gain new territory, modern argument requires more
+time than modern arms, though both of them move with
+greater rapidity than of yore.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>But however the convictions of individuals here and
+there may be influenced, the process must be slow and
+secular which commends the rival hypothesis of natural
+evolution to the public mind. For what are the core
+and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and
+you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the
+more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not
+alone the nobler forms of the horse and lion, not alone
+the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human
+body, but that the human mind itself—emotion, intellect,
+will, and all their phenomena—were once latent in
+a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a
+motion is more than a refutation. But the hypothesis
+would probably go even further than this. Many who
+hold it would probably assent to the position that at the
+present moment all our philosophy, all our poetry, all
+our science, and all our art—Plato, Shakespeare, Newton,
+and Raphael—are potential in the fires of the sun.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>We long to learn something of our origin. If the
+evolution hypothesis be correct, even this unsatisfied
+yearning must have come to us across the ages which
+separate the unconscious primeval mist from the consciousness
+of to-day. I do not think that any holder of
+the evolution hypothesis would say that I overstate it or
+overstrain it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness,
+and bring before you, unclothed and unvarnished,
+the notions by which it must stand or fall.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'><span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span>Surely these notions represent an absurdity too monstrous
+to be entertained by any sane mind. Let us,
+however, give them fair play. Let us steady ourselves
+in front of the hypothesis, and, dismissing all terror and
+excitement from our minds, let us look firmly into it with
+the hard, sharp eye of intellect alone. Why are these
+notions absurd, and why should sanity reject them?
+The law of relativity, of which we have previously
+spoken, may find its application here. These evolution
+notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the
+intellectual gibbet in relation to the ideas concerning
+matter which were drilled into us when young. Spirit
+and matter have ever been presented to us in the rudest
+contrast, the one as all noble, the other as all vile. But
+is this correct? Does it represent what our mightiest
+spiritual teacher would call the eternal fact of the universe?
+Upon the answer to this question all depends.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>Supposing, instead of having the foregoing antithesis
+of spirit and matter presented to our youthful minds, we
+had been taught to regard them as equally worthy and
+equally wonderful; to consider them, in fact, as two opposite
+faces of the self-same mystery. Supposing that
+in youth we had been impregnated with the notion of
+the poet Goethe, instead of the notion of the poet
+Young, looking at matter, not as brute matter, but as
+“the living garment of God;” do you not think that
+under these altered circumstances the law of relativity
+might have had an outcome different from its present
+one? Is it not probable that our repugnance to the
+idea of primeval union between spirit and matter might
+be considerably abated? Without this total revolution
+of the notions now prevalent the evolution hypothesis
+must stand condemned; but in many profoundly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_286'>286</span>thoughtful minds such a revolution has already taken
+place. They degrade neither member of the mysterious
+duality referred to; but they exalt one of them
+from its abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto existing
+between both. In substance, if not in words,
+their position as regards spirit and matter is: “What
+God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>I have thus led you to the outer rim of speculative
+science, for beyond the nebula scientific thought has
+never ventured hitherto, and have tried to state that
+which I considered ought, in fairness, to be outspoken.
+I do not think this evolution hypothesis is to be flouted
+away contemptuously; I do not think it is to be denounced
+as wicked. It is to be brought before the bar
+of disciplined reason, and there justified or condemned.
+Let us hearken to those who wisely support it, and to
+those who wisely oppose it; and let us tolerate those,
+and they are many, who foolishly try to do neither of
+these things.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>The only thing out of place in the discussion is dogmatism
+on either side. Fear not the evolution hypothesis.
+Steady yourselves in its presence upon that faith
+in the ultimate triumph of truth which was expressed by
+old Gamaliel when he said: “If it be of God, ye cannot
+overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to naught.”
+Under the fierce light of scientific inquiry this hypothesis
+is sure to be dissipated if it possess not a core of
+truth. Trust me, its existence as an hypothesis in the
+mind is quite compatible with the simultaneous existence
+of all those virtues to which the term Christian
+has been applied. It does not solve—it does not profess
+to solve—the ultimate mystery untouched. At bottom
+it does nothing more than “transport the conception
+of life’s origin to an indefinitely distant past.”</p>
+
+<p class='c036'><span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span>For, granting the nebula and its potential life, the
+question, whence came they? would still remain to
+baffle and bewilder us. And with regard to the ages of
+forgetfulness which lie between the conscious life of the
+nebula and the conscious life of the earth, it is but an
+extension of that forgetfulness which preceded the birth
+of us all. Those who hold the doctrine of evolution
+are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their
+data, and they yield no more to it than a provisional
+assent. They regard the nebular hypothesis as probable,
+and in the utter absence of any evidence to prove
+the act illegal, they extend the method of nature from
+the present into the past. Here the observed uniformity
+of nature is their only guide. Within the long range
+of physical inquiry they have never discerned in nature
+the insertion of caprice. Throughout this range the
+laws of physical and intellectual continuity have run
+side by side. Having thus determined the elements of
+their curve in this world of observation and experiment,
+they prolong that curve into an antecedent world, and
+accept as probable the unbroken sequence of development
+from the nebula to the present time.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>You never hear the really philosophical defenders of
+the doctrine of uniformity speaking of <i>impossibilities</i> in
+nature. They never say, what they are constantly
+charged with saying, that it is impossible for the builder
+of the universe to alter His work. Their business is
+not with the possible, but the actual; not with a world
+which <i>might</i> be, but with a world which <i>is</i>. This they
+explore with a courage not unmixed with reverence, and
+according to methods which, like the quality of a tree,
+are tested by their fruits. They have but one desire—to
+know the truth. They have but one fear—to believe
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_288'>288</span>a lie. And if they know the strength of science, and
+rely upon it with unswerving trust, they also know the
+limits beyond which science ceases to be strong. They
+best know that questions offer themselves to thought
+which science, as now prosecuted, has not even the tendency
+to solve. They keep such questions open, and
+will not tolerate any unlawful limitation of the horizon
+of their souls. They have as little fellowship with the
+atheist who says there is no God as with the theist who
+professes to know the mind of God.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>“Two things,” said Immanuel Kant, “fill me with
+awe: the starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility
+in man.” And in his hours of health and
+strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has
+ceased and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific
+investigator finds himself overshadowed by the
+same awe. Breaking contact with the hampering details
+of earth, it associates him with a power which gives
+fulness and tone to his existence, but which he can
+neither analyze nor comprehend.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<p class='c036'>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class='tnbox'>
+
+ <ul class='ul_1 c003'>
+    <li>Transcriber’s Notes:
+      <ul  class='ul_2'>
+        <li>The first 44 footnotes are gathered together in the “<a href='#notes'>NOTES AND REFERENCES</a>” 
+        section. The following footnotes appear in the text where they are referenced.
+        </li>
+        <li>The mid dot—“·” is used in numbers to separate the whole part from the decimal 
+        fraction of the number.
+        </li>
+        <li>Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
+        </li>
+        <li>Typographical errors were silently corrected.
+        </li>
+        <li>Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant 
+        form was found in this book.
+        </li>
+      </ul>
+    </li>
+  </ul>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c036'>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 66177 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Half Hours with Modern Scientists, by T. H.
+Huxley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Half Hours with Modern Scientists
+
+Author: T. H. Huxley
+        G. F. Barker
+        James Hutchinson Sterling
+        E. D. Cope
+        John Tyndall
+
+Release Date: August 30, 2021 [eBook #66177]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: deaurider, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed
+             Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+             produced from images generously made available by The Internet
+             Archive)
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALF HOURS WITH MODERN
+SCIENTISTS ***
+
+
+                               HALF HOURS
+
+                                  WITH
+
+                           MODERN SCIENTISTS.
+
+
+                          LECTURES AND ESSAYS
+
+
+                                   BY
+
+           PROFS. HUXLEY, BARKER, STIRLING, COPE AND TYNDALL.
+
+
+                                  WITH
+
+
+                         A GENERAL INTRODUCTION
+
+
+                                   BY
+
+                       NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D.,
+
+                       PRESIDENT OF YALE COLLEGE.
+
+
+
+                             FIRST SERIES.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+                           NEW HAVEN, CONN.:
+                      CHARLES C. CHATFIELD & CO.,
+                                 1872.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+                      ────────────────────────────
+       Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
+
+                      CHARLES C. CHATFIELD & CO.,
+
+    In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
+                      ────────────────────────────
+
+
+
+
+    ──────────────
+             NEW HAVEN, CONN.:
+    THE COLLEGE COURANT PRINT.
+    ──────────────
+
+
+
+
+                           ──────────────────
+            Electrotyped by E. B. Sheldon, New Haven, Conn.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS.
+
+            GENERAL INTRODUCTION. BY PREST. PORTER,       v
+
+            ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE.                1
+              PROF. T. H. HUXLEY,
+
+            CORRELATION OF VITAL AND PHYSICAL            37
+              FORCES.
+              PROF. G. F. BARKER, M.D.,
+
+            AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM—REPLY TO HUXLEY.       73
+              JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING,
+
+            ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION.             145
+              PROF. E. D. COPE,
+
+            SCIENTIFIC ADDRESSES.
+
+            ON THE METHODS AND TENDENCIES OF            219
+              PHYSICAL INVESTIGATION,
+
+            ON HAZE AND DUST,                           234
+
+            ON THE SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE                247
+              IMAGINATION,
+
+            PROF. JOHN TYNDALL, LL.D., F.R.S.,          217
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+ INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION OF HALF HOURS WITH MODERN SCIENTISTS.
+
+
+The title of this Series of Essays—_Half Hours with Modern
+Scientists_—suggests a variety of thoughts, some of which may not be
+inappropriate for a brief introduction to a new edition. _Scientist_ is
+a modern appellation which has been specially selected to designate a
+devotee to one or more branches of physical science. Strictly
+interpreted it might properly be applied to the student of any
+department of knowledge when prosecuted in a scientific method, but for
+convenience it is limited to the student of some branch of physics. It
+is not thereby conceded that nature, _i.e._, physical or material nature
+is any more legitimately or exclusively the field for scientific
+enquiries than spirit, or that whether the objects of science are
+material or spiritual, the assumptions and processes of science
+themselves should not be subjected to scientific analysis and
+justification. There are so-called philosophers who adopt both these
+conclusions. There are those who reason and dogmatize as though nature
+were synonymous with matter, or as though spirit, if there be such an
+essence, must be conceived and explained after the principles and
+analogies of matter;—others assume that a science of scientific method
+can be nothing better than the mist or moonshine which they vilify by
+the name of metaphysics. But unfortunately for such opinions the fact is
+constantly forced upon the attention of scientists of every description,
+that the agent by which they examine matter is more than matter, and
+that this agent, whatever be its substance, asserts its prerogatives to
+determine the conceptions which the scientist forms of matter as well as
+to the methods by which he investigates material properties. Even the
+positivist philosopher who not only denounces metaphysics as
+illegitimate, but also contends that the metaphysical era of human
+inquiry, has in the development of scientific progress been outgrown
+like the measles, which is experienced but once in a life-time; finds
+when his positivist theory is brought to the test that positivism itself
+in its very problem and its solutions, is but the last adopted
+metaphysical theory of science.
+
+We also notice that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the
+inquisitive scientist to limit himself strictly to the object-matter of
+his own chosen field, and not to enquire more or less earnestly—not
+infrequently to dogmatize more or less positively—respecting the results
+of other sciences and even respecting the foundations and processes of
+scientific inquiry itself. Thus Mr. Huxley in the first Essay of this
+Series on _The Physical Basis of Life_, leaves the discussion of his
+appropriate theme in order to deliver sundry very positive and
+pronounced assertions respecting the “limits of philosophical inquiry,”
+and quotes with manifest satisfaction a dictum of David Hume that is
+sufficiently dogmatic and positive, as to what these limits are. In more
+than one of his Lay sermons, he rushes headlong into the most pronounced
+assertions in respect to the nature of matter and of spirit. The
+eloquent Tyndall, in No. 5, expounds at length _The Methods and
+Tendencies of Physical Investigation_ and discourses eloquently, if
+occasionally somewhat poetically, of _The Scientific use of the
+Imagination_. But Messrs. Huxley and Tyndall are eminent examples of
+scientists who are severely and successfully devoted respectively to
+physiology and the higher physics. No one will contend that they have
+not faithfully cultivated their appropriate fields of inquiry. The fact
+that neither can be content to confine himself within his special field,
+forcibly illustrates the tendency of every modern science to concern
+itself with its relations to its neighbors, and the unresistible
+necessity which forces the most rigid physicist to become a
+metaphysician in spite of himself. So much for the appellation
+“_Scientists_.”
+
+“_Half Hours_” suggests the very natural inquiry—What can a scientist
+communicate in half an hour, especially to a reader who may be ignorant
+of the elements of the science which he would expound? Does not the
+phrase _Half Hours with Modern Scientists_ stultify itself and suggest
+the folly of any attempt to treat of science with effect in a series of
+essays? In reply we would ask the attention of the reader to the
+following considerations.
+
+The tendency is universal among the scientific men of all nations, to
+present the principles of science in such brief summaries or statements
+as may bring them within the reach of common readers. The tendency
+indicates that there is a large body of readers who are so far
+instructed in the elements of science as to be able to understand these
+summaries. In England, Germany, France and this country such brief
+essays are abundant, either in the form of contributions to popular and
+scientific journals, or in that of popular lectures, or in that of brief
+manuals, or of monographs on separate topics; especially such topics as
+are novel, or are interesting to the public for their theoretic
+brilliancy, or their applications to industry and art.
+
+These essays need not be and they are not always superficial, because
+they are brief. They often are the more profound on account of their
+conciseness, as when they contain a condensed summary of the main
+principles of the art or science in question, or a brief history of the
+successive experiments which have issued in some brilliant discovery.
+These essays are very generally read, even though they are both concise
+and profound. But they could not be read even though they were less
+profound than they are, were there not provided a numerous company of
+readers who are sufficiently instructed in science to appreciate them.
+That such a body of readers exists in the countries referred to, is
+easily explained by the existence of public schools and schools of
+science and technology, by the enormous extension of the knowledge of
+machinery, engineering, mining, dyeing, etc., etc., all of which imply a
+more or less distinct recognition of scientific principles and stimulate
+the curiosity in regard to scientific truth. Popular lectures also,
+illustrated by experiments, have been repeated before thousands of
+excited listeners, and the eager and inventive minds of multitudes of
+ingenious youths have been trained by this distribution of science, to
+the capacity to comprehend the compact and pointed scientific essay,
+even though it taxes the attention and suspends the breath for a
+half-hour by its closeness and severity.
+
+The fact is also worthy of notice, that many of the ablest scientists of
+our times have made a special study of the art of expounding and
+presenting scientific truth. Some of them have schooled themselves to
+that lucid and orderly method by which a science seems to spring into
+being a second time, under the creative hand of its skilful expositor.
+Others have made a special study of philosophic diction. Others have
+learned how to adorn scientific truth with the embellishments of an
+affluent imagination. Some of the ablest writers of our time are found
+among the devotees of physical science. That a few scientific writers
+and lecturers may have exemplified some of the most offensive features
+of the demagogue and the sophist cannot be denied, but we may not forget
+that many have attained to the consummate skill of the accomplished
+essayist and impressive and eloquent orator.
+
+One advantage cannot be denied of this now popular and established
+method of setting forth scientific truth, viz., that it prescribes a
+convenient method of bringing into contrast the arguments _for_ and
+_against_ any disputed position in science. If materialism can furnish
+its ready advocate with a convenient vehicle for its ready diffusion,
+the antagonist theory can avail itself of a similar vehicle for the
+communication of the decisive and pungent reply. The one is certain to
+call forth the other, and if the two are present side by side in the
+same series, so much the better is it for the truth and so much the
+worse for the error. The teacher before his class, the lecturer in the
+presence of his audience, has the argument usually to himself; he allows
+few questionings and admits no reply. An erroneous theory may entrench
+itself within a folio against arguments which would annihilate its
+positions if these were condensed in a tract.
+
+This consideration should dispel all the alarm that is felt by the
+defenders of religion in view of the general diffusion of popular
+scientific treatises. The brief statement of a false or groundless
+scientific theory, even by its defender, is often its most effectual
+refutation. A magnificently imposing argument often shrinks into
+insignificance when its advocate is forced to state its substance in a
+compact and close-jointed outline. The articulations are seen to be
+defective, the joints do not fit one another, the coherence is
+conspicuously wanting. Let then error do its utmost in the field of
+science. Its deficient data and its illogical processes are certain to
+be exposed, sometimes even by its own advocates. If this does not happen
+the defender of that scientific truth which seems to be essential to the
+teachings and faiths of religion, must scrutinize its reasonings by the
+rules and methods of scientific inquiry. If science seems to be hostile
+to religion, this very seeming should arouse the defender of Theism and
+Christianity to examine into the grounds both by the light and methods
+which are appropriate to science itself. The more brief and compact and
+popular is the argument which he is to refute, the more feasible is the
+task of exposure and reply. Only let this be a cardinal maxim with the
+defender of the truth, that whatever is scientifically defended and
+maintained must be scientifically refuted and overthrown. The great
+Master of our faith never uttered a more comprehensive or a grander
+maxim than the memorable words, “_To this end was I born and for this
+cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.
+Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice._” It would be easy to
+show that the belief in moral and religious truth and the freedom in
+searching for and defending it which was inspired by these words have
+been most efficient in training the human mind to that faith in the
+results of scientific investigation which characterize the modern
+scientist. That Christian believer must either have a very imperfect
+view of the spirit of his own faith, or a very narrow conception of the
+evidences and the effect of its teachings, who imagines that the freest
+spirit of scientific inquiry, or the most penetrating insight into the
+secrets of matter or of spirit can have any other consequence than to
+strengthen and brighten the evidence for Christian truth.
+
+                                                                   N. P.
+
+    YALE COLLEGE, _May_, 1872.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                  PUBLISHERS’ NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.
+
+
+The five lectures embodied in this First Series of Half Hours with
+Modern Scientists were first published as Nos. I.—V. of the University
+Scientific Series. In this series the publishers have aimed to give to
+the public in a cheap pamphlet form, the advance thought in the
+Scientific world. The intrinsic value of these lectures has created a
+very general desire to have them put in a permanent form. They therefore
+have brought them out in this style. Each five succeeding numbers of
+this celebrated series will be printed and bound in uniform style with
+this volume, and be designated as second series, third series, and so
+on. Henceforth it will be the design of the publishers to give
+preference to those lectures and essays of American scientists which
+contain original research and discovery, rather than to reprinting from
+European sources. The lectures in the second series will be (1) On
+Natural Selection as Applied to Man, by Alfred Russel Wallace; (2) three
+profoundly interesting lectures on Spectrum Analysis, by Profs. Roscoe,
+Huggins, and Lockyer; (3) the Sun and its Different Atmospheres, a
+lecture by Prof. C. A. Young, Ph.D., of Dartmouth College; (4) the Earth
+a great Magnet, by Prof. A. M. Mayer, Ph.D., of Stevens Institute; and
+(5) the Mysteries of the Voice and Ear, by Prof. Ogden N. Rood, of
+Columbia College. The last three lectures contain many original
+discoveries and brilliant experiments, and are finely illustrated.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                             ──────────────
+                    _ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE._
+                             ──────────────
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                             INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+The following remarkable discourse was originally delivered in
+Edinburgh, November 18th, 1868, as the first of a series of Sunday
+evening addresses, upon non-religious topics, instituted by the Rev. J.
+Cranbrook. It was subsequently published in London as the leading
+article in the _Fortnightly Review_, for February, 1869, and attracted
+so much attention that five editions of that number of the magazine have
+already been issued. It is now re-printed in this country, in permanent
+form, for the first time, and will doubtless prove of great interest to
+American readers. The author is Thomas Henry Huxley, of London,
+Professor of Natural History in the Royal School of Mines, and of
+Comparative Anatomy and Physiology in the Royal College of Surgeons. He
+is also President of the Geological Society of London. Although
+comparatively a young man, his numerous and valuable contributions to
+Natural Science entitle him to be considered one of the first of living
+Naturalists, especially in the departments of Zoölogy and Paleontology,
+to which he has mainly devoted himself. He is undoubtedly the ablest
+English advocate of Darwin’s theory of the Origin of Species,
+particularly with reference to its application to the human race, which
+he believes to be nearly related to the higher apes. It is, indeed,
+through his discussion of this question that he is, perhaps, best known
+to the general public, as his late work entitled “Man’s Place in
+Nature,” and other writings on similar topics, have been very widely
+read in this country and in Europe. In the present lecture Professor
+Huxley discusses a kindred subject of no less interest and importance,
+and should have an equally candid hearing.
+
+YALE COLLEGE, _March_ 30_th_, 1869.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                     On the Physical Basis of Life.
+
+
+In order to make the title of this discourse generally intelligible, I
+have translated the term “Protoplasm,” which is the scientific name of
+the substance of which I am about to speak, by the words “the physical
+basis of life.” I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is such a
+thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novel—so widely
+spread is the conception of life as a something which works through
+matter, but is independent of it; and even those who are aware that
+matter and life are inseparably connected, may not be prepared for the
+conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase “the physical basis or matter
+of life,” that there is some one kind of matter which is common to all
+living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by
+a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first apprehended,
+such a doctrine as this appears almost shocking to common sense. What,
+truly, can seem to be more obviously different from one another in
+faculty, in form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living
+beings? What community of faculty can there be between the
+brightly-colored lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral
+incrustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to
+whom it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with
+knowledge?
+
+Again, think of the microscopic fungus—a mere infinitesimal ovoid
+particle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply into
+countless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth
+of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this
+bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the
+dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres
+with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and
+go around its vast circumference! Or, turning to the other half of the
+world of life, picture to yourselves the great finner whale, hugest of
+beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of
+bone, muscle and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the
+stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would founder hopelessly; and
+contrast him with the invisible animalcules—mere gelatinous specks,
+multitudes of which could, in fact, dance upon the point of a needle
+with the same ease as the angels of the schoolmen could, in imagination.
+With these images before your minds, you may well ask what community of
+form, or structure, is there between the animalcule and the whale, or
+between the fungus and fig-tree? And, _a fortiori_, between all four?
+
+Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition, what hidden
+bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her hair and the blood
+which courses through her youthful veins; or, what is there in common
+between the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of
+the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seen
+pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere
+films in the hand which raises them out of their element? Such
+objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every one who
+ponders, for the first time, upon the conception of a single physical
+basis of life underlying all the diversities of vital existence; but I
+propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent
+difficulties, a threefold unity—namely, a unity of power or faculty, a
+unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition—does pervade the
+whole living world. No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the
+first place, to prove that the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of
+living matter, diverse as they may be in degree, are substantially
+similar in kind. Goethe has condensed a survey of all the powers of
+mankind into the well-known epigram:
+
+    “Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich
+    ernähren Kinder zeugen, und sie nähren so gut es vermag.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich, wie er auch will.”
+
+In physiological language this means, that all the multifarious and
+complicated activities of man are comprehensible under three categories.
+Either they are immediately directed towards the maintenance and
+development of the body, or they effect transitory changes in the
+relative positions of parts of the body, or they tend towards the
+continuance of the species. Even those manifestations of intellect, of
+feeling, and of will, which we rightly name the higher faculties, are
+not excluded from this classification, inasmuch as to every one but the
+subject of them, they are known only as transitory changes in the
+relative positions of parts of the body. Speech, gesture, and every
+other form of human action are, in the long run, resolvable into
+muscular contraction, and muscular contraction is but a transitory
+change in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. But the
+scheme, which is large enough to embrace the activities of the highest
+form of life, covers all those of the lower creatures. The lowest plant,
+or animalcule, feeds, grows and reproduces its kind. In addition, all
+animals manifest those transitory changes of form which we class under
+irritability and contractility; and it is more than probable, that when
+the vegetable world is thoroughly explored, we shall find all plants in
+possession of the same powers, at one time or other of their existence.
+I am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare and conspicuous,
+as those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plant, or the
+stamens of the barberry, but to much more widely-spread, and, at the
+same time, more subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable
+contractility. You are doubtless aware that the common nettle owes its
+stinging property to the innumerable stiff and needle-like, though
+exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover its surface. Each
+stinging-needle tapers from a broad base to a slender summit, which,
+though rounded at the end, is of such microscopic fineness that it
+readily penetrates, and breaks off in, the skin. The whole hair consists
+of a very delicate outer case of wood, closely applied to the inner
+surface of which is a layer of semi-fluid matter, full of innumerable
+granules of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm,
+which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid, and
+roughly corresponding in form with the interior of the hair which it
+fills. When viewed with a sufficiently high magnifying power, the
+protoplasmic layer of the nettle hair is seen to be in a condition of
+unceasing activity. Local contractions of the whole thickness of its
+substance pass slowly and gradually from point to point, and give rise
+to the appearance of progressive waves, just as the bending of
+successive stalks of corn by a breeze produces the apparent billows of a
+corn-field. But, in addition to these movements, and independently of
+them, the granules are driven, in relatively rapid streams, through
+channels in the protoplasm which seem to have a considerable amount of
+persistence. Most commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the
+protoplasm take similar directions; and, thus, there is a general stream
+up one side of the hair and down the other. But this does not prevent
+the existence of partial currents which take different routes; and,
+sometimes, trains of granules may be seen coursing swiftly in opposite
+directions, within a twenty-thousandth of an inch of one another; while,
+occasionally, opposite streams come into direct collision, and, after a
+longer or shorter struggle, one predominates. The cause of these
+currents seem to lie in contractions of the protoplasm which bounds the
+channels in which they flow, but which are so minute that the best
+microscopes show only their effects, and not themselves.
+
+The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned within the
+compass of the microscopic hair of a plant, which we commonly regard as
+a merely passive organism, is not easily forgotten by one who has
+watched its display continued hour after hour, without pause or sign of
+weakening. The possible complexity of many other organic forms,
+seemingly as simple as the protoplasm of the nettle, dawns upon one; and
+the comparison of such a protoplasm to a body with an internal
+circulation, which has been put forward by an eminent physiologist,
+loses much of its startling character. Currents similar to those of the
+hairs of the nettle have been observed in a great multitude of very
+different plants, and weighty authorities have suggested that they
+probably occur, in more or less perfection, in all young vegetable
+cells. If such be the case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical
+forest is, after all, due only to the dullness of our hearing; and could
+our ears catch the murmur of these tiny maelstroms, as they whirl in the
+innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we
+should be stunned, as with the roar of a great city.
+
+Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the exception, that
+contractility should be still more openly manifested at some periods of
+their existence. The protoplasm of _Algæ_ and _Fungi_ becomes, under
+many circumstances, partially, or completely, freed from its woody case,
+and exhibits movements of its whole mass, or is propelled by the
+contractility of one or more hair-like prolongations of its body, which
+are called vibratile cilia. And, so far as the conditions of the
+manifestation of the phenomena of contractility have yet been studied,
+they are the same for the plant as for the animal. Heat and electric
+shocks influence both, and in the same way, though it may be in
+different degrees. It is by no means my intention to suggest that there
+is no difference in faculty between the lowest plant and the highest, or
+between plants and animals. But the difference between the powers of the
+lowest plant, or animal, and those of the highest is one of degree, not
+of kind, and depends, as Milne-Edwards long ago so well pointed out,
+upon the extent to which the principle of the division of labor is
+carried out in the living economy. In the lowest organism all parts are
+competent to perform all functions, and one and the same portion of
+protoplasm may successively take on the function of feeding, moving, or
+reproducing apparatus. In the highest, on the contrary, a great number
+of parts combine to perform each function, each part doing its allotted
+share of the work with great accuracy and efficiency, but being useless
+for any other purpose. On the other hand, notwithstanding all the
+fundamental resemblances which exist between the powers of the
+protoplasm in plants and in animals, they present a striking difference
+(to which I shall advert more at length presently,) in the fact that
+plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of mineral compounds,
+whereas animals are obliged to procure it ready-made, and hence, in the
+long run, depend upon plants. Upon what condition this difference in the
+powers of the two great divisions of the world of life depends, nothing
+is at present known.
+
+With such qualification as arises out of the last-mentioned fact, it may
+be truly said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally one.
+Is any such unity predicable of their forms? Let us seek in easily
+verified facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be drawn
+by pricking one’s finger, and viewed with proper precautions and under a
+sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be seen, among the
+innumerable multitude of little, circular, discoidal bodies, or
+corpuscles, which float in it and give it its color, a comparatively
+small number of colorless corpuscles, of somewhat larger size and very
+irregular shape. If the drop of blood be kept at the temperature of the
+body, these colorless corpuscles will be seen to exhibit a marvelous
+activity, changing their forms with great rapidity, drawing in and
+thrusting out prolongations of their substance, and creeping about as if
+they were independent organisms. The substance which is thus active is a
+mass of protoplasm, and its activity differs in detail, rather than in
+principle, from that of the protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry
+circumstances the corpuscle dies and becomes distended into a round
+mass, in the midst of which is seen a smaller spherical body, which
+existed, but was more or less hidden, in the living corpuscle, and is
+called its _nucleus_. Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are to
+be found in the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and scattered through
+the whole frame work of the body. Nay, more; in the earliest condition
+of the human organism, in that state in which it has just become
+distinguishable from the egg in which it arises, it is nothing but an
+aggregation of such corpuscles, and every organ of the body was, once,
+no more than such an aggregation. Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm
+turns out to be what may be termed the structural unit of the human
+body. As a matter of fact, the body, in its earliest state, is a mere
+multiple of such units; and, in its perfect condition, it is a multiple
+of such units, variously modified. But does the formula which expresses
+the essential structural character of the highest animal cover all the
+rest, as the statement of its powers and faculties covered that of all
+others? Very nearly. Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm,
+and polype, are all composed of structural units of the same character,
+namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There are sundry very low
+animals, each of which, structurally, is a mere colorless
+blood-corpuscle, leading an independent life. But, at the very bottom of
+the animal scale, even this simplicity becomes simplified, and all the
+phenomena of life are manifested by a particle of protoplasm without a
+nucleus. Nor are such organisms insignificant by reason of their want of
+complexity. It is a fair question whether the protoplasm of those
+simplest forms of life, which people an immense extent of the bottom of
+the sea, would not outweigh that of all the higher living beings which
+inhabit the land, put together. And in ancient times, no less than at
+the present day, such living beings as these have been the greatest of
+rock builders.
+
+What has been said of the animal world is no less true of plants.
+Imbedded in the protoplasm at the broad, or attached, end of the nettle
+hair, there lies a spheroidal nucleus. Careful examination further
+proves that the whole substance of the nettle is made up of a repetition
+of such masses of nucleated protoplasm, each contained in a wooden case,
+which is modified in form, sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes into
+a duct or spiral vessel, sometimes into a pollen grain, or an ovule.
+Traced back to its earliest state, the nettle arises as the man does, in
+a particle of nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest plants, as in the
+lowest animals, a single mass of such protoplasm may constitute the
+whole plant, or the protoplasm may exist without a nucleus. Under these
+circumstances it may well be asked, how is one mass of non-nucleated
+protoplasm to be distinguished from another? why call one “plant” and
+the other “animal?” The only reply is that, so far as form is concerned,
+plants and animals are not separable, and that, in many cases, it is a
+mere matter of convention whether we call a given organism an animal or
+a plant.
+
+There is a living body called _Æthalium septicum_, which appears upon
+decaying vegetable substances, and in one of its forms, is common upon
+the surface of tan pits. In this condition it is, to all intents and
+purposes, a fungus, and formerly was always regarded as such; but the
+remarkable investigations of De Bary have shown that, in another
+condition, the _Æthalium_ is an actively locomotive creature, and takes
+in solid matters, upon which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the
+most characteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant, or is it an
+animal? Is it both, or is it neither? Some decide in favor of the last
+supposition, and establish an intermediate kingdom, a sort of biological
+No Man’s Land for all these questionable forms. But, as it is admittedly
+impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between this no man’s land
+and the vegetable world on the one hand, or the animal, on the other, it
+appears to me that this proceeding merely doubles the difficulty which,
+before, was single. Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis
+of all life. It is the clay of the potter; which, bake it and paint it
+as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from
+the commonest brick or sun-dried clod. Thus it becomes clear that all
+living powers are cognate, and that all living forms are fundamentally
+of one character.
+
+The researches of the chemist have revealed a no less striking
+uniformity of material composition in living matter. In perfect
+strictness, it is true that chemical investigation can tell us little or
+nothing, directly, of the composition of living matter, inasmuch as such
+matter must needs die in the act of analysis, and upon this very obvious
+ground, objections, which I confess seem to me to be somewhat frivolous,
+have been raised to the drawing of any conclusions whatever respecting
+the composition of actually living matter from that of the dead matter
+of life, which alone is accessible to us. But objectors of this class do
+not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true that we know
+nothing about the composition of any body whatever, as it is. The
+statement that a crystal of calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime, is
+quite true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes, it may be
+resolved into carbonic acid and quicklime. If you pass the same carbonic
+acid over the very quicklime thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of
+lime again; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it. Can it,
+therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing about the
+chemical composition of calc-spar? Such a statement would be absurd; but
+it is hardly more so than the talk one occasionally hears about the
+uselessness of applying the results of chemical analysis to the living
+bodies which have yielded them. One fact, at any rate, is out of reach
+of such refinements, and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which
+have yet been examined contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union, and that they behave
+similarly towards several reagents. To this complex combination, the
+nature of which has never been determined with exactness, the name of
+Protein has been applied. And if we use this term with such caution as
+may properly arise out of our comparative ignorance of the things for
+which it stands, it may be truly said, that all protoplasm is
+proteinaceous; or, as the white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the
+commonest examples of a nearly pure protein matter, we may say that all
+living matter is more or less albuminoid. Perhaps it would not yet be
+safe to say that all forms of protoplasm are affected by the direct
+action of electric shocks; and yet the number of cases in which the
+contraction of protoplasm is shown to be affected by this agency
+increases, every day. Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence
+that all forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar
+coagulation at the temperature of 40 degrees—50 degrees centigrade,
+which has been called “heat-stiffening,” though Kühne’s beautiful
+researches have proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such
+diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the law
+holds good for all. Enough has, perhaps, been said to prove the
+existence of a general uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or
+physical basis of life, in whatever group of living beings it may be
+studied. But it will be understood that this general uniformity by no
+means excludes any amount of special modifications of the fundamental
+substance. The mineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity
+of characters, though no one doubts that under all these Protean changes
+it is one and the same thing.
+
+And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin of the matter of
+life? Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused
+throughout the universe in molecules, which are indestructible and
+unchangeable in themselves; but, in endless transmigration, unite in
+innumerable permutations, into the diversified forms of life we know?
+Or, is the matter of life composed of ordinary matter, differing from it
+only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated? Is it built up of
+ordinary matter, and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work
+is done? Modern science does not hesitate a moment between these
+alternatives. Physiology writes over the portals of life,
+
+                     “Debemur morti nos nostraque,”
+
+with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to that
+melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, whether fungus
+or oak, worm or man, the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and
+is resolved into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always
+dying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it
+died. In the wonderful story of the “Peau de Chagrin,” the hero becomes
+possessed of a magical wild ass’s skin, which yields him the means of
+gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of
+the proprietor’s life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks
+in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the
+last handbreadth of the “Peau de Chagrin,” disappear with the
+gratification of a last wish. Balzac’s studies had led him over a wide
+range of thought and speculation, and his shadowing forth of
+physiological truth in this strange story may have been intentional. At
+any rate, the matter of life is a veritable “Peau de Chagrin,” and for
+every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and
+the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of
+protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical
+loss; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have
+light—so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic
+acid, water and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure
+cannot go on forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic _peau de chagrin_
+differs from Balzac’s in its capacity of being repaired, and brought
+back to its full size, after every exertion. For example, this present
+lecture, whatever its intellectual worth to you, has a certain physical
+value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains
+of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital
+processes during its delivery. My _peau de chagrin_ will be distinctly
+smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the beginning.
+By-and-by, I shall probably have recourse to the substance commonly
+called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its original
+size. Now this mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or less
+modified, of another animal—a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the same
+matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure to sundry artificial
+operations in the process of cooking. But these changes, whatever be
+their extent, have not rendered it incompetent to resume its old
+functions as matter of life. A singular inward laboratory, which I
+possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the modified protoplasm, the
+solution so formed will pass into my veins; and the subtle influences to
+which it will then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into
+living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man. Nor is this all.
+If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I might sup upon lobster,
+and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergo the same
+wonderful metamorphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my own
+place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacea might, and probably
+would, return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature by
+turning my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were to
+be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I should find the
+protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible into man, with no more
+trouble than that of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of
+the lobster. Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what
+animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm, and the
+fact speaks volumes for the general identity of that substance in all
+living beings. I share this catholicity of assimilation with other
+animals, all of which, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on
+the protoplasm of any of their fellows, or of any plant; but here the
+assimilative powers of the animal world cease.
+
+A solution of smelling-salts in water with an infinitesimal proportion
+of some other saline matters, contains all the elementary bodies which
+enter into the composition of protoplasm; but, as I need hardly say, a
+hogshead of that fluid would not keep a hungry man from starving, nor
+would it save any animal whatever from a like fate. An animal cannot
+make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from some other animal, or
+some plant—the animal’s highest feat of constructive chemistry being to
+convert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is
+appropriate to itself. Therefore, in seeking for the origin of
+protoplasm, we must eventually turn to the vegetable world. The fluid
+containing carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, which offers such a
+barmecide feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes of
+plants; and with a due supply of only such materials, many a plant will
+not only maintain itself in vigor, but grow and multiply until it has
+increased a million-fold, or a million million-fold, the quantity of
+protoplasm which it originally possessed; in this way building up the
+matter of life, to an indefinite extent, from the common matter of the
+universe. Thus the animal can only raise the complex substance of dead
+protoplasm to the higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm;
+while the plant can raise the less complex substances—carbonic acid,
+water, and ammonia—to the same stage of living protoplasm, if not to the
+same level. But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi,
+for example, appear to need higher compounds to start with, and no known
+plant can live upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. A plant
+supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus,
+sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal in his bath
+of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded by all the constituents
+of protoplasm. Nor, indeed, need the process of simplification of
+vegetable food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at the
+limit of the plant’s thaumaturgy.
+
+Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful constituents, be
+supplied without ammonia, and an ordinary plant will still be unable to
+manufacture protoplasm. Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it
+(and we have no right to speculate on any other) breaks up in
+consequence of that continual death which is the condition of its
+manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, which
+certainly possess no properties but those of ordinary matter; and out of
+these same forms of ordinary matter and from none which are simpler, the
+vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which keeps the animal
+world agoing. Plants are the accumulators of the power which animals
+distribute and disperse.
+
+But it will be observed, that the existence of the matter of life
+depends on the preëxistence of certain compounds, namely, carbonic acid,
+water, and ammonia. Withdraw any one of these three from the world and
+all vital phenomena come to an end. They are related to the protoplasm
+of the plant, as the protoplasm of the plant is to that of the animal.
+Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of
+these, carbon and oxygen unite in certain proportion and under certain
+conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen and oxygen produce
+water; nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to ammonia. These new compounds,
+like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless. But
+when they are brought together, under certain conditions they give rise
+to the still more complex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits
+the phenomena of life. I see no break in this series of steps in
+molecular complication, and I am unable to understand why the language
+which is applicable to any one term of the series may not be used to any
+of the others. We think fit to call different kinds of matter carbon,
+oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers and
+activities of these substances as the properties of the matter of which
+they are composed. When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain
+proportion, and the electric spark is passed through them, they
+disappear and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the sum of their
+weights, appears in their place. There is not the slightest parity
+between the passive and active powers of the water and those of the
+oxygen and hydrogen which have given rise to it. At 32 degrees
+Fahrenheit, and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen are
+elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to rush away from one
+another with great force. Water, at the same temperature, is a strong
+though brittle solid, whose particles tend to cohere into definite
+geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty imitations of the most
+complex forms of vegetable foliage. Nevertheless we call these, and many
+other strange phenomena, the properties of the water, and we do not
+hesitate to believe that, in some way or another, they result from the
+properties of the component elements of the water. We do not assume that
+a something called “aquosity” entered into and took possession of the
+oxide of hydrogen as soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous
+particles to their places in the facets of the crystal, or amongst the
+leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the contrary, we live in the hope and in
+the faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by
+be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the
+properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a
+watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put
+together. Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water and
+ammonia disappear, and in their place, under the influence of
+preëxisting living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the matter of
+life makes its appearance? It is true that there is no sort of parity
+between the properties of the components and the properties of the
+resultant, but neither was there in the case of the water. It is also
+true that what I have spoken of as the influence of preëxisting living
+matter is something quite unintelligible; but does any body quite
+comprehend the _modus operandi_ of an electric spark, which traverses a
+mixture of oxygen and hydrogen? What justification is there, then, for
+the assumption of the existence in the living matter of a something
+which has no representative or correlative in the not living matter
+which gave rise to it? What better philosophical status has “vitality”
+than “aquosity?” And why should “vitality” hope for a better fate than
+the other “itys” which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus
+accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its inherent “meat
+roasting quality,” and scorned the “materialism” of those who explained
+the turning of the spit by a certain mechanism worked by the draught of
+the chimney? If scientific language is to possess a definite and
+constant signification whenever it is employed, it seems to me that we
+are logically bound to apply to the protoplasm, or physical basis of
+life, the same conceptions as those which are held to be legitimate
+elsewhere. If the phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so
+are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties. If
+the properties of water may be properly said to result from the nature
+and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no intelligible
+ground for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm result from
+the nature and disposition of its molecules. But I bid you beware that,
+in accepting these conclusions, you are placing your feet on the first
+rung of a ladder which, in most people’s estimation, is the reverse of
+Jacob’s, and leads to the antipodes of heaven. It may seem a small thing
+to admit that the dull vital actions of a fungus, or a foraminifer, are
+the properties of their protoplasm, and are the direct results of the
+nature of the matter of which they are composed.
+
+But if, as I have endeavored to prove to you, their protoplasm is
+essentially identical with, and most readily converted into, that of any
+animal, I can discover no logical halting place between the admission
+that such is the case, and the further concession that all vital action
+may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of the molecular
+forces of the protoplasm which displays it. And if so, it must be true,
+in the same sense and to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I
+am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are the
+expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the
+source of our other vital phenomena. Past experience leads me to be
+tolerably certain that, when the propositions I have just placed before
+you are accessible to public comment and criticism, they will be
+condemned by many zealous persons, and perhaps by some few of the wise
+and thoughtful. I should not wonder if “gross and brutal materialism”
+were the mildest phrase applied to them in certain quarters. And most
+undoubtedly the terms of the propositions are distinctly materialistic.
+Nevertheless, two things are certain: the one, that I hold the
+statements to be substantially true; the other, that I, individually, am
+no materialist, but, on the contrary, believe materialism to involve
+grave philosophical error.
+
+This union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation of
+materialistic philosophy I share with some of the most thoughtful men
+with whom I am acquainted. And, when I first undertook to deliver the
+present discourse, it appeared to me to be a fitting opportunity to
+explain how such an union is not only consistent with, but necessitated
+by sound logic. I purposed to lead you through the territory of vital
+phenomena to the materialistic slough in which you find yourselves now
+plunged, and then to point out to you the sole path by which, in my
+judgment, extrication is possible. An occurrence, of which I was unaware
+until my arrival here last night, renders this line of argument
+singularly opportune. I found in your papers the eloquent address “On
+the Limits of Philosophical Inquiry,” which a distinguished prelate of
+the English Church delivered before the members of the Philosophical
+Institution on the previous day. My argument, also, turns upon this very
+point of limits of philosophical inquiry; and I cannot bring out my own
+views better than by contrasting them with those so plainly, and, in the
+main, fairly stated by the Archbishop of York. But I may be permitted to
+make a preliminary comment upon an occurrence that greatly astonished
+me. Applying the name of “the New Philosophy” to that estimate of the
+limits of philosophical inquiry which I, in common with many other men
+of science, hold to be just, the Archbishop opens his address by
+identifying this “new philosophy” with the positive philosophy of M.
+Comte (of whom he speaks as its “founder”); and then proceeds to attack
+that philosopher and his doctrine vigorously. Now, so far as I am
+concerned, the most Reverend prelate might dialectically hew M. Comte in
+pieces, as a modern Agag, and I should not attempt to stay his hand. In
+so far as my study of what specially characterizes the Positive
+Philosophy has led me, I find therein little or nothing of any
+scientific value, and a great deal which is as thoroughly antagonistic
+to the very essence of science as anything in ultramontane Catholicism.
+In fact, M. Comte’s philosophy in practice might be compendiously
+described as Catholicism _minus_ Christianity. But what has Comptism to
+do with the “New Philosophy,” as the Archbishop defines it in the
+following passage?
+
+“Let me briefly remind you of the leading principles of this new
+philosophy.
+
+“All knowledge is experience of facts acquired by the senses. The
+traditions of older philosophies have obscured our experience by mixing
+with it much that the senses cannot observe, and until these additions
+are discarded our knowledge is impure. Thus, metaphysics tells us that
+one fact which we observe is a cause, and another is the effect of that
+cause; but upon a rigid analysis we find that our senses observe nothing
+of cause or effect; they observe, first, that one fact succeeds another,
+and, after some opportunity, that this fact has never failed to
+follow—that for cause and effect we should substitute invariable
+succession. An older philosophy teaches us to define an object by
+distinguishing its essential from its accidental qualities; but
+experience knows nothing of essential and accidental; she sees only that
+certain marks attach to an object, and, after many observations, that
+some of them attach invariably, whilst others may at times be absent. *
+* * * * As all knowledge is relative, the notion of anything being
+necessary must be banished with other traditions.”
+
+There is much here that expresses the spirit of the “New Philosophy,” if
+by that term be meant the spirit of modern science; but I cannot but
+marvel that the assembled wisdom and learning of Edinburgh should have
+uttered no sign of dissent, when Comte was declared to be the founder of
+these doctrines. No one will accuse Scotchmen of habitually forgetting
+their great countrymen; but it was enough to make David Hume turn in his
+grave, that here, almost within ear-shot of his house, an instructed
+audience should have listened, without a murmur, while his most
+characteristic doctrines were attributed to a French writer of fifty
+years later date, in whose dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the
+vigor of thought and the exquisite clearness of the style of the man
+whom I make bold to term the most acute thinker of the eighteenth
+century—even though that century produced Kant. But I did not come to
+Scotland to vindicate the honor of one of the greatest men she has ever
+produced. My business is to point out to you that the only way of escape
+out of the crass materialism in which we just now landed is the adoption
+and strict working out of the very principles which the Archbishop holds
+up to reprobation.
+
+Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not relative, and
+therefore, that our conception of matter represents that which it really
+is. Let us suppose, further, that we do know more of cause and effect
+than a certain definite order of succession among facts, and that we
+have a knowledge of the necessity of that succession—and hence, of
+necessary laws—and I, for my part, do not see what escape there is from
+utter materialism and necessitarianism. For it is obvious that our
+knowledge of what we call the material world is, to begin with, at least
+as certain and definite as that of the spiritual world, and that our
+acquaintance with the law is of as old a date as our knowledge of
+spontaneity.
+
+Further, I take it to be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible to
+prove that anything whatever may not be the effect of a material and
+necessary cause, and that human logic is equally incompetent to prove
+that any act is really spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is one
+which, by the assumption, has no cause; and the attempt to prove such a
+negative as this is, on the face of the matter, absurd. And while it is
+thus a philosophical impossibility to demonstrate that any given
+phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any one who is
+acquainted with the history of science will admit, that its progress
+has, in all ages, meant, and now more than ever means, the extension of
+the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant
+gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call
+spirit and spontaneity.
+
+I have endeavored, in the first part of this discourse, to give you a
+conception of the direction towards which modern physiology is tending;
+and I ask you, what is the difference between the conception of life as
+the product of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the old
+notion of an Archæus governing and directing blind matter within each
+living body, except this—that here, as elsewhere, matter and law have
+devoured spirit and spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out
+of past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually
+extend the realm of matter and law until it is coëxtensive with
+knowledge, with feeling, and with action. The consciousness of this
+great truth weighs like a nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best
+minds of these days. They watch what they conceive to be the progress of
+materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels, when,
+during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The
+advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls; the tightening
+grasp of law impedes their freedom; they are alarmed lest man’s moral
+nature be debased by the increase of his wisdom.
+
+If the “New Philosophy” be worthy of the reprobation with which it is
+visited, I confess their fears seem to me to be well founded. While, on
+the contrary, could David Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at
+their perplexities, and chide them for doing even as the heathen, and
+falling down in terror before the hideous idols their own hands have
+raised. For, after all, what do we know of this terrible “matter,”
+except as a name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our
+own consciousness? And what do we know of that “spirit” over whose
+threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising, like
+that which was heard at the death of Pan, except that it is also a name
+for an unknown and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of
+consciousness? In other words, matter and spirit are but names for the
+imaginary substrata of groups of natural phenomena. And what is the dire
+necessity and “iron” law under which men groan? Truly, most gratuitously
+invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an “iron” law, it is that of
+gravitation; and if there be a physical necessity, it is that a stone,
+unsupported, must fall to the ground. But what is all we really know and
+can know about the latter phenomenon? Simply, that, in all human
+experience, stones have fallen to the ground under these conditions;
+that we have not the smallest reason for believing that any stone so
+circumstanced will not fall to the ground, and that we have, on the
+contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very
+convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been
+fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that unsupported stones
+will fall to the ground, “a law of nature.” But when, as commonly
+happens, we change will into must, we introduce an idea of necessity
+which most assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no
+warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I utterly repudiate
+and anathematize the intruder. Fact, I know; and Law I know; but what is
+this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind’s throwing? But, if
+it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either
+matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity is something
+illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate conception of law,
+the materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but
+matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as
+the most baseless of theological dogmas.
+
+The fundamental doctrines of materialism, like those of spiritualism,
+and most other “isms,” lie outside “the limits of philosophical
+inquiry,” and David Hume’s great service to humanity is his irrefragable
+demonstration of what these limits are. Hume called himself a sceptic,
+and therefore others cannot be blamed if they apply the same title to
+him; but that does not alter the fact that the name, with its existing
+implications, does him gross injustice. If a man asks me what the
+politics of the inhabitants of the moon are, and I reply that I do not
+know; that neither I, nor any one else have any means of knowing; and
+that, under these circumstances I decline to trouble myself about the
+subject at all, I do not think he has any right to call me a sceptic. On
+the contrary, in replying thus, I conceive that I am simply honest and
+truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy of time. So Hume’s
+strong and subtle intellect takes up a great many problems about which
+we are naturally curious, and shows us that they are essentially
+questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable of being
+answered, and therefore not worth the attention of men who have work to
+do in the world. And thus ends one of his essays:
+
+    “If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school
+    metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, _Does it contain any
+    abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?_ No. _Does it
+    contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and
+    existence?_ No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain
+    nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
+
+Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble ourselves about
+matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and
+can know nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and
+ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make
+the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat
+less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually
+it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first,
+that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent
+which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for
+something as a condition of the course of events. Each of these beliefs
+can be verified experimentally, as often as we like to try. Each,
+therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which any belief
+can rest; and forms one of our highest truths.
+
+If we find that the ascertainment of the order of nature is facilitated
+by using one terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it
+is our clear duty to use the former, and no harm can accrue so long as
+we bear in mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols. In
+itself it is of little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter
+in terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in terms of matter;
+matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as
+a property of matter—each statement has a certain relative truth. But
+with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology is
+in every way to be preferred. For it connects thought with the other
+phenomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those
+physical conditions or concomitants of thought, which are more or less
+accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to
+exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought as we
+already possess in respect of the material world; whereas, the
+alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads
+to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas. Thus there can be
+little doubt that the further science advances, the more extensively and
+consistently will all the phenomena of nature be represented by
+materialistic formulæ and symbols. But the man of science, who,
+forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these
+formulæ and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism,
+seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathematician, who
+should mistake the _x’s_ and _y’s_, with which he works his problems,
+for real entities—and with this further disadvantage as compared with
+the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical
+consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyze the
+energies and destroy the beauty of a life.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+            _THE CORRELATION OF VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES._
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                            THE CORRELATION
+
+                                   OF
+
+                       VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES.
+
+
+In the Syracusan Poecile, says Alexander von Humboldt in his beautiful
+little allegory of the Rhodian Genius, hung a painting, which, for full
+a century, had continued to attract the attention of every visitor. In
+the foreground of this picture a numerous company of youths and maidens
+of earthly and sensuous appearance gazed fixedly upon a haloed Genius
+who hovered in their midst. A butterfly rested upon his shoulder, and he
+held in his hand a flaming torch. His every lineament bespoke a
+celestial origin. The attempts to solve the enigma of this
+painting—whose origin even was unknown—though numerous, were all in
+vain, when one day a ship arriving from Rhodes, laden with works of art,
+brought another picture, at once recognized as its companion. As before,
+the Genius stood in the center, but the butterfly had disappeared, and
+the torch was reversed and extinguished. The youths and maidens were no
+longer sad and submissive, their mutual embraces announcing their entire
+emancipation from restraint. Still unable to solve the riddle, Dionysius
+sent the pictures to the Pythagorean sage, Epicharmus. After gazing upon
+them long and earnestly, he said: Sixty years long have I pondered on
+the internal springs of nature, and on the differences inherent in
+matter; but it is only this day that the Rhodian Genius has taught me to
+see clearly that which before I had only conjectured. In inanimate
+nature, everything seeks its like. Everything, as soon as formed,
+hastens to enter into new combinations, and nought save the disjoining
+art of man can present in a separate state ingredients which ye would
+vainly seek in the interior of the earth or in the moving oceans of air
+and water. Different, however, is the blending of the same substances in
+animal and vegetable bodies. Here vital force imperatively asserts its
+rights, and heedless of the affinity and antagonism of the atoms, unites
+substances which in inanimate nature ever flee from each other, and
+separates that which is incessantly striving to unite. Recognize,
+therefore, in the Rhodian Genius, in the expression of his youthful
+vigor, in the butterfly on his shoulder, in the commanding glance of his
+eye, the symbol of vital force as it animates every germ of organic
+creation. The earthly elements at his feet are striving to gratify their
+own desires and to mingle with one another. Imperiously the Genius
+threatens them with upraised and high-flaming torch, and compels them
+regardless of their ancient rights, to obey his laws. Look now on the
+new work of art; turn from life to death. The butterfly has soared
+upward, the extinguished torch is reversed, and the head of the youth is
+drooping; the spirit has fled to other spheres, and the vital force is
+extinct. Now the youths and maidens join their hands in joyous accord.
+Earthly matter again resumes its rights. Released from all bonds, they
+impetuously follow their natural instincts, and the day of his death is
+to them a day of nuptials.[1]
+
+The view here put by Humboldt into the mouth of Epicharmus may be taken
+as a fair representation of the current opinion of all ages concerning
+vital force. To-day, as truly as seventy-five years ago when Humboldt
+wrote, the mysterious and awful phenomena of life are commonly
+attributed to some controlling agent residing in the organism—to some
+independent presiding deity, holding it in absolute subjection. Such a
+notion it was which prompted Heraclitus to talk of a universal fire, Van
+Helmont to propose his Archæus, Hofmann his vital fluid, Hunter his
+_materia vitæ diffusa_, and Humboldt his vital force.[2] All these names
+assume the existence of a material or immaterial something, more or less
+separable from the material body, and more or less identical with the
+mind or soul, which is the cause of the phenomena of living beings. But
+as science moved irresistibly onward, and it became evident that the
+forces of inorganic nature were neither deities nor imponderable fluids,
+separable from matter, but were simple affections of it, analogy
+demanded a like concession in behalf of vital force.[3] From the notion
+that the effects of heat were due to an imponderable fluid called
+caloric, discovery passed to the conviction that heat was but a motion
+of material particles, and hence inseparable from matter. To a like
+assumption concerning vitality it was now but a step. The more advanced
+thinkers in science of to-day, therefore, look upon the life of the
+living form as inseparable from its substance, and believe that the
+former is purely phenomenal, and only a manifestation of the latter.
+Denying the existence of a special vital force as such, they retain the
+term only to express the sum of the phenomena of living beings.
+
+In calling your attention this evening to the Correlation of the
+Physical and the Vital Forces, I have a twofold object in view. On the
+one hand, I would seek to interest you in a comparatively recent
+discovery of Science, and one which is destined to play a most important
+part in promoting man’s welfare; and on the other I would inquire what
+part our own country has had in these discoveries.
+
+In the first place, then, let us consider what the evidences are that
+vital and physical forces are correlated. Let us inquire how far
+inorganic and organic forces may be considered mutually convertible, and
+hence, in so far, mutually identical. This may best be done by
+considering, first, what is to be understood by correlation: and second,
+how far are the physical forces themselves correlated to each other.
+
+At the outset of our discussion, we are met by an unfortunate ambiguity
+of language. The word Force, as commonly used, has three distinct
+meanings; in the first place, it is used to express the cause of motion,
+as when we speak of the force of gunpowder; it is also used to indicate
+motion itself, as when we refer to the force of a moving cannon-ball;
+and lastly it is employed to express the effect of motion, as when we
+speak of the blow which the moving body gives.[4] Because of this
+confusion, it has been found convenient to adopt Rankine’s
+suggestion,[5] and to substitute the word ‘energy’ therefor. And
+precisely as all force upon the earth’s surface—using the term force in
+its widest sense—may be divided into attraction and motion, so all
+energy is divided into potential and actual energy, synonymous with
+those terms. It is the chemical attraction of the atoms, or their
+potential energy, which makes gunpowder so powerful; it is the
+attraction or potential energy of gravitation which gives the power to a
+raised weight. If now, the impediments be removed, the power just now
+latent becomes active, attraction is converted into motion, potential
+into actual energy, and the desired effect is accomplished. The energy
+of gunpowder or of a raised weight is potential, is capable of acting;
+that of exploding gunpowder or of a falling weight is actual energy or
+motion. By applying a match to the gunpowder, by cutting the string
+which sustains the weight, we convert potential into actual energy. By
+potential energy, therefore, is meant attraction; and by actual energy,
+motion. It is in the latter sense that we shall use the word force in
+this lecture; and we shall speak of the forces of heat, light,
+electricity and mechanical motion, and of the attractions of
+gravitation, cohesion, chemism.
+
+From what has now been said, it is obvious that when we speak of the
+forces of heat, light, electricity or motion, we mean simply the
+different modes of motion called by these names. And when we say that
+they are correlated to each other, we mean simply that the mode of
+motion called heat, light, electricity, is convertible into any of the
+others, at pleasure. Correlation therefore implies convertibility, and
+mutual dependence and relationship.
+
+Having now defined the use of the term force, and shown that forces are
+correlated which are convertible and mutually dependent, we go on to
+study the evidences of such correlation among the motions of inorganic
+nature usually called physical forces; and to ask what proof science can
+furnish us that mechanical motion, heat, light, and electricity are thus
+mutually convertible. As we have already hinted, the time was when these
+forces were believed to be various kinds of imponderable matter, and
+chemists and physicists talked of the union of iron with caloric as they
+talked of its union with sulphur, regarding the caloric as much a
+distinct and inconvertible entity as the iron and sulphur themselves.
+Gradually, however, the idea of the indestructibility of matter extended
+itself to force. And as it was believed that no material particle could
+ever be lost, so, it was argued, no portion of the force existing in
+nature can disappear. Hence arose the idea of the indestructibility of
+force. But, of course, it was quite impossible to stop here. If force
+cannot be lost, the question at once arises, what becomes of it when it
+passes beyond our recognition? This question led to experiment, and out
+of experiment came the great fact of force-correlation; a fact which
+distinguished authority has pronounced the most important discovery of
+the present century.[6] These experiments distinctly proved that when
+any one of these forces disappeared, another took its place; that when
+motion was arrested, for example, heat, light or electricity was
+developed. In short, that these forces were so intimately related or
+correlated—to use the word then proposed by Mr. Grove[7]—that when one
+of them vanished, it did so only to reappear in terms of another. But
+one step more was necessary to complete this magnificent theory. What
+can produce motion but motion itself? Into what can motion be converted,
+but motion? May not these forces, thus mutually convertible, be simply
+different modes of motion of the molecules of matter, precisely as
+mechanical motion is a motion of its mass? Thus was born the dynamic
+theory of force, first brought out in any completeness by Mr. Grove, in
+1842, in a lecture on the “Progress of Physical Science,” delivered at
+the London Institution. In that lecture he said: “Light, heat,
+electricity, magnetism, motion, are all convertible material affections.
+Assuming either as the cause, one of the others will be the effect. Thus
+heat may be said to produce electricity, electricity to produce heat;
+magnetism to produce electricity, electricity magnetism; and so of the
+rest.”[8]
+
+A few simple experiments will help us to fix in our minds the great fact
+of the convertibility of force. Starting with actual visible motion,
+correlation requires that when it disappears as motion, it should
+reappear as heat, light, or electricity. If the moving body be elastic
+like this rubber ball, then its motion is not destroyed when it strikes,
+but is only changed in direction. But if it be non-elastic, like this
+ball of lead, then it does not rebound; its motion is converted into
+heat. The motion of this sledge-hammer, for example, which if received
+upon this anvil would be simply changed in direction, if allowed to fall
+upon this bar of lead, is converted into heat; the evidence of which is
+that a piece of phosphorus placed upon the lead is at once inflamed. So
+too, if motion be arrested by the cushion of air in this cylinder, the
+heat evolved fires the tinder carried in the plunger. But it is not
+necessary that the arrest of motion should be sudden; it may be gradual,
+as in the case of friction. If this cylinder containing water or alcohol
+be caused to revolve rapidly between the two sides of this wooden
+rubber, the heat due to the arrested motion will raise the temperature
+of the liquid to the boiling point, and the cork will be expelled. But
+motion may also be converted into electricity. Indeed electricity is
+always the result of friction between heterogeneous particles.[9] When
+this piece of hard rubber, for example, is rubbed with the fur of a cat,
+it is at once electrified; and now if it be caused to communicate a
+portion of its charge to this glass plate, to which at the same time we
+add the mechanical motion of rotation, the strong sparks produced give
+evidence of the conversion.
+
+So, too, taking heat as the initial force, motion, light, electricity
+may be produced. In every steam-engine the steam which leaves the
+cylinder is cooler than that which entered it, and cooler by exactly the
+amount of work done. The motion of the piston’s mass is precisely that
+lost by the steam molecules which batter against it. The conversion of
+heat into electricity, too, is also easily effected. When the junction
+of two metals is heated, electricity is developed. If the two metals be
+bismuth and antimony, as represented in this diagram, the currents flow
+as indicated by the arrows; and by multiplying the number of pairs, the
+effect may be proportionately increased. Such an arrangement, called a
+thermo-electric battery, we have here; and by it the heat of a single
+gas-burner may be made to move, when converted, this little electric
+bell-engine. Moreover, heat and light have the very closest analogy;
+exalt the rapidity with which the molecules move and light appears, the
+difference being only one of intensity.
+
+Again, if electricity be our starting point, we may accomplish its
+conversion into the other forces. Heat results whenever its passage is
+interrupted or resisted; a wire of the poorly conducting metal platinum
+becoming even red-hot by the converted electricity. To produce light, of
+course, we need only to intensify this action; the brightest artificial
+light known, results from a direct conversion of electricity.
+
+Enough has now been said to establish our point. What is to be
+particularly observed of these pieces of apparatus is that they are
+machines especially designed for the conversion of some one force into
+another. And we expect of them only that conversion. We pass on to
+consider for a moment the quantitative relations of this mutual
+convertibility. We notice, in the first place, that in all cases save
+one, the conversion is not perfect, a part of the force used not being
+utilized, on the one hand, and on the other, other forces making their
+appearance simultaneously. While, for example, the conversion of motion
+into heat is quite complete, the inverse conversion is not at all so.
+And on the other hand, when motion is converted into electricity, a part
+of it appears as heat. This simultaneous production of many forces is
+well illustrated by our little bell-engine, which converts the
+electricity of the thermo-battery into magnetism, and this into motion,
+a part of which expends itself as sound. For these reasons the question
+“How much?” is one not easily answered in all cases. The best known of
+these relations is that between motion and heat, which was first
+established by Mr. Joule in 1849, after seven years of patient
+investigation.[10] The apparatus which he used is shown in the diagram.
+It consists of a cylindrical box of metal, through the cover of which
+passes a shaft, carrying upon its lower end a set of paddles, immersed
+in water within the box, and upon its upper portion a drum, on which are
+wound two cords, which, passing in opposite directions, run over
+pulleys, and are attached to known weights. The temperature of the water
+within the box being carefully noted, the weights are then allowed to
+fall a certain number of times, of course in their fall turning the
+paddles against the friction of the liquid. At the close of the
+experiment the water is found to be warmer than before. And by measuring
+the amount of this rise in temperature, knowing the distance through
+which the weights have fallen, it is easy to calculate the quantity of
+heat which corresponds to a given amount of motion. In this way, and as
+a mean of a large number of experiments, Mr. Joule found that the amount
+of mass motion in a body weighing one pound, which had fallen from a
+hight of 772 feet, was exactly equal to the molecular motion which must
+be added to a pound of water, in order to heat it one degree Fahrenheit.
+If we call the actual energy of a body weighing one pound which has
+fallen one foot, a foot-pound, then we may speak of the mechanical
+equivalent of heat as being 772 foot-pounds.
+
+The significance and value of this numerical constant will appear more
+clearly if we apply it to the solution of one or two simple problems.
+During the recent war two immense iron guns were cast in Pittsburgh,
+whose weight was nearly 112,000 pounds each, and which had a caliber of
+20 inches.[11] Upon this diagram is a calculation of the effective blow
+which the solid shot of such a gun, assuming its weight to be 1,000
+pounds and its velocity 1,100 feet per second, would give; it is 902,797
+tons![12] Now, if it were possible to convert the whole of this enormous
+mechanical power into heat, to how much would it correspond? This
+question may be answered by the aid of the mechanical equivalent of
+heat; here is the calculation, from which we see that when 17 gallons of
+ice-cold water are heated to the boiling point, as much energy is
+communicated as is contained in the death-dealing missile at its highest
+velocity.[13] Again, if we take the impact of a larger cannon-ball, our
+earth, which is whirling through space with a velocity of 19 miles a
+second, we find it to be 98,416,136,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
+tons![14] Were this energy all converted into heat, it would equal that
+produced by the combustion of 14 earths of solid coal.[15]
+
+The conversion of heat into motion, however, as already stated, is not
+as perfect. The best steam-engines economize only one-twentieth of the
+heat of the fuel.[16] Hence if a steamship require 600 tons of coal to
+carry her across the Atlantic, 570 tons will be expended in heating the
+waters of the ocean, the heat of the remaining 30 tons only being
+converted into work.
+
+One other quantitative determination of force has also been made. Prof.
+Julius Thomsen, of Copenhagen, has fixed experimentally the mechanical
+equivalent of light.[17] He finds that the energy of the light of a
+spermaceti candle burning 126½ grains per hour, is equal in mechanical
+value to 13·1 foot-pounds per minute. The same conclusion has been
+reached by Mr. Farmer, of Boston, from different data.[18]
+
+If we pass from the actual physical energies or motions to consider for
+a moment the potential energies or attractions, we find, also, an
+intimate correlation. Since all energy not active in motion is potential
+in attraction, it follows that in the attractions we have energy stored
+up for subsequent use. The sun is thus storing up energy: every minute
+it raises 2,000,000,000 tons of water to the mean hight of the clouds,
+3½ miles; and the actual energy set free when this water falls is equal
+to 2,757,000,000,000 horse-powers.[19] So when the oxygen and the zinc
+of the ore are separated in the furnace, the actual energy of heat
+becomes the potential energy of chemical attraction, which again becomes
+actual in the form of electricity when the zinc is dissolved in an acid.
+We see, then, that not only may any form of force or actual energy be
+stored up as any form of attraction or potential energy, but that the
+latter, from whatsoever source derived, may appear as heat, light,
+electricity, or mechanical motion.
+
+Having now established the fact of correlation for the physical forces,
+we have next to inquire what are the evidences of the correlation of the
+vital forces with them. But in the first place it must be remarked that
+life is not a simple term like heat or electricity; it is a complex
+term, and includes all those phenomena which a living body exhibits. In
+this discussion, therefore, we shall use the term vital force to express
+only the actual energy of the body, however manifested. As to the
+attractions or the potential energy of the organism, nothing is more
+fully settled in science than the fact that these are precisely the same
+within the body as without it. Every particle of matter within the body
+obeys implicitly the laws of the chemical and physical attractions. No
+overpowering or supernatural agency comes in to complicate their action,
+which is modified only by the action of the others. Vitality, therefore,
+is the sum of the energies of a living body, both potential and actual.
+
+Moreover, the important fact must be fully recognized that in living
+beings we have to do with no new elementary forms of matter. Precisely
+the same atoms which build up the inorganic fabric, compose the organic.
+In the early days of chemistry, indeed, it was supposed that the
+complicated molecules which life produced were beyond the reach of
+simple chemical law. But as more and more complex molecules have been,
+one after another, produced, chemistry has become re-assured, and now
+doubts not her ability to produce them all. A few years hence, and she
+will doubtless give us quinine and protagon, as she now gives us
+coumarin and neurine, substances the synthesis of which was but
+yesterday an impossibility.[20]
+
+In studying the phenomena of living beings, it is important also to bear
+in mind the different and at the same time the coördinate purposes
+subserved by the two great kingdoms of nature. The food of the plant is
+matter whose energy is all expended; it is a fallen weight. But the
+plant-organism receives it, exposes it to the sun’s ray, and, in a way
+yet mysterious to us, converts the actual energy of the sunlight into
+potential energy within it. The fallen weight is thus raised, and energy
+is stored up in substances which now are alone competent to become the
+food of the animal. This food is not such because any new atoms have
+been added to it; it is food because it contains within it potential
+energy, which at any time may become actual as force. This food the
+animal now appropriates; he brings it in contact with oxygen, and the
+potential energy becomes actual; he cuts the string, the weight falls,
+and what was just now only attraction, has become actual force; this
+force he uses for his own purposes, and hands back the oxidized matter,
+the fallen weight, to the plant to be again de-oxidized, to be again
+raised. The plant then is to be regarded as a machine for converting
+sunlight into potential energy; the animal, a machine for setting the
+potential energy free as actual, and economizing it. The force which the
+plant stores up is undeniably physical; must not the force which the
+animal sets free by its conversion, be intimately correlated to it?
+
+But approaching our question still more closely, let us, in illustration
+of the vital forces of the animal economy, choose three forms of its
+manifestation in which to seek for the evidences of correlation; these
+shall be heat, evolved within the body; muscular energy or motion; and
+lastly, nervous energy, or that form of force which, on the one hand,
+stimulates a muscle to contract, and on the other, appears in forms
+called mental.
+
+The heat which is produced by the living body is obviously of the same
+nature as heat from any other source; it is recognized by the same
+tests, and may be applied for the same purposes. As to its origin, it is
+evident that since potential energy exists in the food which enters the
+body, and is there converted into force, a portion of it may become the
+actual energy of heat. And since, too, the heat produced in the body is
+precisely such as would be set free by the combustion of this food
+outside of it, it is fair to assume that it thus originates. To this may
+be added the chemical argument that while food capable of yielding heat
+by combustion is taken into the body, its constituents are completely or
+almost completely, oxidized before leaving it; and since oxidation
+always evolves heat, the heat of the body must have its origin in the
+oxidation of the food. Moreover, careful measurements have demonstrated
+that the amount of heat given off by the body of a man weighing 180
+pounds is about 2,500,000 units. Accurate calculations have shown, on
+the other hand, that 288·4 grams of carbon and 12·56 grams of hydrogen
+are available in the daily food for the production of heat. If burned
+out of the body, these quantities of carbon and hydrogen would yield
+2,765,134 heat units. Burned within it, as we have just seen, 2,500,000
+units appear as heat; the rest in other forms of energy.[21] We
+conceive, however, that no long argument is necessary to prove that
+animal heat results from a conversion of energy within the body; or that
+the vital force heat, is as truly correlated to the other forces as when
+it has a purely physical origin.
+
+The belief that the muscular force exerted by an animal is created by
+him is by no means confined to the very earliest ages of history.
+Traces of it appear to the careful observer even now, although, as Dr.
+Frankland says, science has proved that “an animal can no more
+generate an amount of force capable of moving a grain of sand than a
+stone can fall upward or a locomotive drive a train without fuel.”[22]
+In studying the characters of muscular action we notice, first, that,
+as in the case of heat, the force which it develops is in no wise
+different from motion in inorganic nature. In the early part of the
+lecture, motion produced by the contraction of muscle, was used to
+show the conversion of mass-force into molecular force. No one in this
+room believes, I presume, that the result would have been at all
+different, had the motion been supplied by a steam-engine or a
+water-wheel. Again, food, as we have seen, is of value for the
+potential energy it contains, which may become actual in the body.
+Liebig, in 1842, asserted that for the production of muscular force,
+the food must first be converted into muscular tissue,[23] a view
+until recently accepted by physiologists.[24] It has been conclusively
+shown, however, within a few years, that muscular force cannot come
+from the oxidation of its own substance, since the products of this
+metamorphosis are not increased in amount by muscular exertion.[25]
+Indeed, reasoning from the whole amount of such products excreted, the
+oxidation of the amount of muscle which they represent would furnish
+scarcely one-fifth of the mechanical force of the body. But while the
+products of tissue-oxidation do not increase with the increase of
+muscular exertion, the amount of carbonic gas exhaled by the lungs is
+increased in the exact ratio of the work done.[26] No doubt can be
+entertained, therefore, that the actual energy of the muscle is simply
+the converted potential energy of the carbon of the food. A muscle,
+therefore, like a steam-engine, is a machine for converting the
+potential energy of carbon into motion. But unlike a steam-engine, the
+muscle accomplishes this conversion directly, the energy not passing
+through the intermediate stage of heat. For this reason, the muscle is
+the most economical producer of mechanical force known. While no
+machine whatever can transform all of the energy into motion—the most
+economical steam-engines utilizing only one-twentieth of the heat—the
+muscle is able to convert one-fifth of the energy of the food into
+work.[27] The other four-fifths must, therefore, appear as heat.
+Whenever a muscle contracts, then, four times as much energy appears
+as heat as is converted into motion. Direct experiments by Heidenhain
+have confirmed this, by showing that an important rise of temperature
+attends muscular contraction;[28] a fact, however, apparent to any one
+who has ever taken active exercise. The work done by the animal body
+is of two sorts, internal and external. The former includes the action
+of the heart, of the respiratory muscles, and of those assisting the
+digestive process. The latter refers to the useful work the body may
+perform. Careful estimates place the entire work of the body at about
+800 foot-tons daily; of which 450 foot-tons is internal, 350 foot-tons
+external work. And since the internal work ultimately appears as heat
+within the body, the actual loss of heat by the production of motion
+is the equivalent of the 350 foot-tons which represents external work.
+This by a simple calculation will be found to be 250,000 heat units,
+almost the precise amount by which the heat yielded by the food when
+burned without the body, exceeds that actually evolved by the
+organism. Moreover, while the total heat given off by the body is
+2,500,000 units, the amount of energy evolved as work is equal to
+about 600,000 heat units; hence the amount of work done by a muscle is
+as above stated, one-fifth of the actual energy derivable from the
+food. One point further. The law of correlation requires that the heat
+set free when a muscle in contracting does work, shall be less than
+when it effects nothing; this fact, too, has been experimentally
+established by Heidenhain.[29] So, again, when muscular contraction
+does not result in motion, as when one tries to raise a weight too
+heavy for him, the energy which would have appeared as work, takes the
+form of heat: a result deducible by the law of correlation from the
+steam-engine.
+
+The last of the so-called vital forces which we are to examine, is that
+produced by the nerves and nervous centers. In the nerve which
+stimulates a muscle to contract, this force is undeniably motion, since
+it is propagated along this nerve from one extremity to the other. In
+common language, too, this idea finds currency in the comparison of this
+force to electricity; the gray or cellular matter being the battery, the
+white or fibrous matter the conductors. That this force is not
+electricity, however, Du Bois-Reymond has demonstrated by showing that
+its velocity is only 97 feet in a second, a speed equaled by the
+greyhound and the race-horse.[30] In his opinion, the propagation of a
+nervous impulse is a sort of successive molecular polarization, like
+magnetism. But that this agent is a force, as analogous to electricity
+as is magnetism, is shown not only by the fact that the transmission of
+electricity along a nerve will cause the contraction of the muscle to
+which it leads, but also by the more important fact that the contraction
+of a muscle is excited by diminishing its normal electrical current;[31]
+a result which could take place only with a stimulus closely allied to
+electricity. Nerve-force, therefore, must be a transmuted potential
+energy.
+
+What, now, shall we say of that highest manifestation of animal life,
+thought-power? Has the upper region called intelligence and reason, any
+relations to physical force? This realm has not escaped the searching
+investigation of modern science; and although in it investigations are
+vastly more difficult than in any of the regions thus far considered,
+yet some results of great value have been obtained, which may help us to
+a solution of our problem. It is to be observed at the outset that every
+external manifestation of thought-force is a muscular one, as a word
+spoken or written, a gesture, or an expression of the face; and hence
+this force must be intimately correlated with nerve-force. These
+manifestations, reaching the mind through the avenues of sense, awaken
+accordant trains of thought only when this muscular evidence is
+understood. A blank sheet of paper excites no emotion; even covered with
+Assyrian cuneiform characters, its alternations of black and white
+awaken no response in the ordinary brain. It is only when, by a frequent
+repetition of these impressions, the brain-cell has been educated, that
+these before meaningless characters awaken thought. Is thought, then,
+simply a cell action which may or may not result in muscular
+expression—an action which originates new combinations of truth only,
+precisely as a calculating machine evolves new combinations of figures?
+Whatever we define thought to be, this fact appears certain, that it is
+capable of external manifestation by conversion into the actual energy
+of motion, and only by this conversion. But here the question arises,
+Can it be manifested inwardly without such a transformation of energy?
+Or is the evolution of thought entirely independent of the matter of the
+brain? Experiments, ingenious and reliable, have answered this question.
+The importance of the results will, I trust, warrant me in examining the
+methods employed in these experiments somewhat in detail. Inasmuch as
+our methods for measuring minute amounts of electricity are very
+perfect, and the methods for the conversion of heat into electricity are
+equally delicate, it has been found that smaller differences of
+temperature may be recognized by converting the heat into electricity,
+than can be detected thermometrically. The apparatus, first used by
+Melloni in 1832,[32] is very simple, consisting first, of a pair of
+metallic bars like those described in the early part of the lecture, for
+effecting the conversion of the heat; and second, of a delicate
+galvanometer, for measuring the electricity produced. In the experiments
+in question one of the bars used was made of bismuth, the other of an
+alloy of antimony and zinc.[33] Preliminary trials having shown that any
+change of temperature within the skull was soonest manifested externally
+in that depression which exists just above the occipital protuberance, a
+pair of these little bars was fastened to the head at this point; and to
+neutralize the results of a general rise of temperature over the whole
+body, a second pair, reversed in direction, was attached to the leg or
+arm, so that if a like increase of heat came to both, the electricity
+developed by one would be neutralized by the other, and no effect be
+produced upon the needle unless only one was affected. By long practice
+it was ascertained that a state of mental torpor could be induced,
+lasting for hours, in which the needle remained stationary. But let a
+person knock on the door outside the room, or speak a single word, even
+though the experimenter remained absolutely passive, and the reception
+of the intelligence caused the needle to swing through 20 degrees.[34]
+In explanation of this production of heat, the analogy of the muscle at
+once suggests itself. No conversion of energy is complete; and as the
+heat of muscular action represents force which has escaped conversion
+into motion, so the heat evolved during the reception of an idea, is
+energy which has escaped conversion into thought, from precisely the
+same cause. Moreover, these experiments have shown that ideas which
+affect the emotions, produce most heat in their reception; “a few
+minutes’ recitation to one’s self of emotional poetry, producing more
+effect than several hours of deep thought.” Hence it is evident that the
+mechanism for the production of deep thought, accomplishes this
+conversion of energy far more perfectly than that which produces simply
+emotion. But we may take a step further in this same direction. A
+muscle, precisely as the law of correlation requires, develops less heat
+when doing work than when it contracts without doing it. Suppose, now,
+that beside the simple reception of an idea by the brain, the thought is
+expressed outwardly by some muscular sign. The conversion now takes two
+directions, and in addition to the production of thought, a portion of
+the energy appears as nerve and muscle-power; less, therefore, should
+appear as heat, according to our law of correlation. Dr. Lombard’s
+experiments have shown that the amount of heat developed by the
+recitation to one’s self of emotional poetry, was in every case less
+when that recitation was oral; _i.e._, had a muscular expression. These
+results are in accordance with the well-known fact that emotion often
+finds relief in physical demonstrations; thus diminishing the emotional
+energy by converting it into muscular. Nor do these facts rest upon
+physical evidence alone. Chemistry teaches that thought-force, like
+muscle-force, comes from the food; and demonstrates that the force
+evolved by the brain, like that produced by the muscle, comes not from
+the disintegration of its own tissue, but is the converted energy of
+burning carbon.[35] Can we longer doubt, then, that the brain, too, is a
+machine for the conversion of energy? Can we longer refuse to believe
+that even thought is, in some mysterious way, correlated to the other
+natural forces? and this, even in face of the fact that it has never yet
+been measured?[36]
+
+I cannot close without saying a word concerning the part which our own
+country has had in the development of these great truths. Beginning with
+heat, we find that the material theory of caloric is indebted for its
+overthrow more to the distinguished Count Rumford than to any other one
+man. While superintending the boring of cannon at the Munich Arsenal
+towards the close of the last century, he was struck by the large amount
+of heat developed, and instituted a careful series of experiments to
+ascertain its origin. These experiments led him to the conclusion that
+“anything which any insulated body or system of bodies can continue to
+furnish without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance.”
+But this man, to whom must be ascribed the discovery of the first great
+law of the correlation of energy, was an American. Born in Woburn,
+Mass., in 1753, he, under the name of Benjamin Thompson, taught school
+afterward at Concord, N. H., then called Rumford. Unjustly suspected of
+toryism during our Revolutionary war, he went abroad and distinguished
+himself in the service of several of the Governments of Europe. He did
+not forget his native land, though she had treated him so unfairly; when
+the honor of knighthood was tendered him, he chose as his title the name
+of the Yankee village where he had taught school, and was thenceforward
+known as Count Rumford. And at his death, by founding a professorship in
+Harvard College, and donating a prize-fund to the American Academy of
+Arts and Sciences at Boston, he showed his interest in her prosperity
+and advancement.[37] Nor has the field of vital forces been without
+earnest workers belonging to our own country. Professors John W.
+Draper[38] and Joseph Henry[39] were among its earliest explorers. And
+in 1851, Dr. J. H. Watters, now of St. Louis, published a theory of the
+origin of vital force, almost identical with that for which Dr.
+Carpenter, of London, has of late received so much credit. Indeed, there
+is some reason to believe that Dr. Watters’s essay may have suggested to
+the distinguished English physiologist the germs of his own theory.[40]
+A paper on this subject by Prof. Joseph Leconte, of Columbia, S. C.,
+published in 1859, attracted much attention abroad.[41] The remarkable
+results already given on the relation of heat to mental work, which thus
+far are unique in science, we owe to Professor J. S. Lombard, of Harvard
+College;[42] the very combination of metals used in his apparatus being
+devised by our distinguished electrical engineer, Mr. Moses G. Farmer.
+Finally, researches conducted by Dr. T. R. Noyes in the Physiological
+Laboratory of Yale College, have confirmed the theory that muscular
+tissue does not wear during action, up to the point of fatigue;[43] and
+other researches by Dr. L. H. Wood have first established the same great
+truth for brain-tissue.[44] We need not be ashamed, then, of our part in
+this advance in science. Our workers are, indeed, but few; but both they
+and their results will live in the records of the world’s progress. More
+would there be now of them were such studies more fostered and
+encouraged. Self-denying, earnest men are ready to give themselves up to
+the solution of these problems, if only the means of a bare subsistence
+be allowed them. When wealth shall foster science, science will increase
+wealth—wealth pecuniary, it is true: but also wealth of knowledge, which
+is far better.
+
+In looking back over the whole of this discussion, I trust that it is
+possible to see that the objects which we had in view at its
+commencement have been more or less fully attained. I would fain believe
+that we now see more clearly the beautiful harmonies of bounteous
+nature; that on her many-stringed instrument force answers to force,
+like the notes of a great symphony; disappearing now in potential
+energy, and anon reappearing as actual energy, in a multitude of forms.
+I would hope that this wonderful unity and mutual interaction of force
+in the dead forms of inorganic nature, appears to you identical in the
+living forms of animal and vegetable life, which make of our earth an
+Eden. That even that mysterious, and in many aspects awful, power of
+thought, by which man influences the present and future ages, is a part
+of this great ocean of energy. But here the great question rolls upon
+us, Is it only this? Is there not behind this material substance, a
+higher than molecular power in the thoughts which are immortalized in
+the poetry of a Milton or a Shakespeare, the art creations of a Michael
+Angelo or a Titian, the harmonies of a Mozart or a Beethoven? Is there
+really no immortal portion separable from this brain-tissue, though yet
+mysteriously united to it? In a word, does this curiously-fashioned body
+inclose a soul, God-given and to God returning? Here Science veils her
+face and bows in reverence before the Almighty. We have passed the
+boundaries by which physical science is enclosed. No crucible, no subtle
+magnetic needle can answer now our questions. No word but His who formed
+us, can break the awful silence. In presence of such a revelation
+Science is dumb, and faith comes in joyfully to accept that higher truth
+which can never be the object of physical demonstration.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                         NOTES AND REFERENCES.
+
+
+Footnote 1:
+
+  HUMBOLDT, Views of Nature, Bohn’s ed., London, 1850, p. 380. This
+  allegory did not appear in the first edition of the Views of Nature.
+  In the preface to the second edition the author gives the following
+  account of its origin: “Schiller,” he says, “in remembrance of his
+  youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me, during my long
+  stay at Jena, on physiological subjects.” * * * “It was at this period
+  that I wrote the little allegory on Vital Force, called The Rhodian
+  Genius. The predilection which Schiller entertained for this piece,
+  which he admitted into his periodical, _Die Horen_, gave me courage to
+  introduce it here.” It was published in _Die Horen_ in 1795.
+
+Footnote 2:
+
+  HUMBOLDT, _op. cit._, p. 386. In his _Aphorismi ex doctrina
+  Physiologiæ chemicæ Plantarum_, appended to his _Flora Fribergensis
+  subterranea_, published in 1793, Humboldt had said “Vim internam, quæ
+  chymicæ affinitatis vincula resolvit, atque obstat, quominus elementa
+  corporum libere conjungantur, vitalem vocamus.” “That internal force,
+  which dissolves the bonds of chemical affinity, and prevents the
+  elements of bodies from freely uniting, we call vital.” But in a note
+  to the allegory above mentioned, added to the third edition of the
+  Views of Nature in 1849, he says: “Reflection and prolonged study in
+  the departments of physiology and chemistry have deeply shaken my
+  earlier belief in peculiar so-called vital forces. In the year 1797, *
+  * * I already declared that I by no means regarded the existence of
+  these peculiar vital forces as established.” And again: “The
+  difficulty of satisfactorily referring the vital phenomena of the
+  organism to physical and chemical laws depends chiefly (and almost in
+  the same manner as the prediction of meteorological processes in the
+  atmosphere) on the complication of the phenomena, and on the great
+  number of the simultaneously acting forces as well as the conditions
+  of their activity.”
+
+Footnote 3:
+
+  Compare HENRY BENCE JONES, Croonian Lectures on Matter and Force.
+  London, 1868, John Churchill & Sons.
+
+Footnote 4:
+
+  Ib., Preface, p. vi.
+
+Footnote 5:
+
+  RANKINE, W. J. M., Philosophical Magazine, Feb., 1853. Also Edinburgh
+  Philosophical Journal, July, 1855.
+
+Footnote 6:
+
+  ARMSTRONG, Sir WM. In his address as President of the British
+  Association for the Advancement of Science. Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1863,
+  li.
+
+Footnote 7:
+
+  GROVE, W. R., in 1842. Compare “Nature” i, 335, Jan. 27, 1870. Also
+  Appleton’s Journal, iii, 324, Mch. 19, 1870.
+
+Footnote 8:
+
+  Id., in Preface to The Correlation of Physical Forces, 4th ed.
+  Reprinted in The Correlation and Conservation of Forces, edited by E.
+  L. Youmans, p. 7. New York, 1865, D. Appleton & Co.
+
+Footnote 9:
+
+  Id., ib., Am. ed., p. 33 et seq.
+
+Footnote 10:
+
+  JOULE, J. P., Philosophical Transactions, 1850, p. 61.
+
+Footnote 11:
+
+  See American Journal of Science, II, xxxvii, 296, 1864.
+
+Footnote 12:
+
+  The work (W) done by a moving body is commonly expressed by the
+  formula W = MV^2, in which M, or the mass of the body, is equal to
+  w/2g; _i.e._, to the weight divided by twice the intensity of gravity.
+  The work done by our cannon-ball then, would be (1 × (1100)^2)/(2 ×
+  64⅓) = 9,404·14 foot-tons. If, further, we assume the resisting body
+  to be of such a character as to bring the ball to rest in moving ¼ of
+  an inch, then the final pressure would be 9,404·14 × 12 × 4 =
+  451,398·7 tons. But since, “in the case of a perfectly elastic body,
+  or of a resistance proportional to the advance of the center of
+  gravity of the impinging body from the point at which contact first
+  takes place, the final pressure (provided the body struck is perfectly
+  rigid) is double what would occur were the stoppage to occur at the
+  end of a corresponding advance against a uniform resistance,” this
+  result must be multiplied by two; and we get (451,398·7 × 2) 902,797
+  tons as the crushing pressure of the ball under these conditions.
+  Note: The author’s thanks are due to his friends Pres. F. A. P.
+  Barnard and Mr. J. J. Skinner for suggestions on the relation of
+  impact to statical pressure.
+
+Footnote 13:
+
+  The unit of impact being that given by a body weighing one pound and
+  moving one foot a second, the impact of such a body falling from a
+  hight of 772 feet—the velocity acquired being 222¼ feet per second
+  (=√(2sg))—would be 1 × (222¼)^2 = 49,408 units, the equivalent in
+  impact of one heat-unit. A cannon-ball weighing 1000 lbs. and moving
+  1100 feet a second would have an impact of (1100)^2 × 1000 =
+  1,210,000,000 units. Dividing this by 49,408, the quotient is 24489
+  heat units, the equivalent of the impact. The specific heat of iron
+  being ·1138, this amount of heat would raise the temperature of one
+  pound of iron 215.191° F. (24,489 × ·1138) or of 1000 pounds of iron
+  215° F. 24489 pounds of water heated one degree, is equal to 136½
+  pounds, or 17 gallons U. S., heated 180 degrees; _i.e._, from 32° to
+  212° F.
+
+Footnote 14:
+
+  Assuming the density of the earth to be 5·5, its weight would be
+  6,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, and its impact—by the formula
+  given above—would be 1,025,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
+  foot-tons. Making the same supposition as in the case of our
+  cannon-ball, the final pressure would be that here stated.
+
+Footnote 15:
+
+  TYNDALL, J., Heat considered as a mode of Motion; Am. ed., p. 57, New
+  York, 1863.
+
+Footnote 16:
+
+  RANKINE (The Steam-engine and other prime Movers, London, 1866,) gives
+  the efficiency of Steam-engines as from 1-15th to 1-20th of the heat
+  of the fuel.
+
+  ARMSTRONG, Sir WM., places this efficiency at 1-10th as the maximum.
+  In practice, the average result is only 1-30th. Rep. Brit. Assoc.,
+  1863, p. liv.
+
+  HELMHOLTZ, H. L. F., says: “The best expansive engines give back as
+  mechanical work only eighteen per cent. of the heat generated by the
+  fuel.” Interaction of Natural Forces, in Correlation and Conservation
+  of Forces, p. 227.
+
+Footnote 17:
+
+  THOMSEN, JULIUS, Poggendorff’s Annalen, cxxv, 348. Also in abstract in
+  Am. J. Sci., II, xli, 396, May, 1866.
+
+Footnote 18:
+
+  American Journal of Science, II, xli, 214, March, 1866.
+
+Footnote 19:
+
+  In this calculation the annual evaporation from the ocean is assumed
+  to be about 9 feet. (See Dr. BUIST, quoted in Maury’s Phys. Geography
+  of the Sea, New York, 1861, p. 11.) Calling the water-area of our
+  globe 150,000,000 square miles, the total evaporation in tons per
+  minute, would be that here given. Inasmuch as 30,000 pounds raised
+  one-foot high is a horse-power, the number of horse-powers necessary
+  to raise this quantity of water 3½ miles in one minute is
+  2,757,000,000,000. This amount of energy is precisely that set free
+  again when this water falls as rain.
+
+Footnote 20:
+
+  Compare ODLING, WM., Lectures on Animal Chemistry, London, 1866. “In
+  broad antagonism to the doctrines which only a few years back were
+  regarded as indisputable, we now find that the chemist, like the
+  plant, is capable of producing from carbonic acid and water a whole
+  host of organic bodies, and we see no reason to question his ultimate
+  ability to reproduce all animal and vegetable principles whatsoever.”
+  (p. 52.)
+
+  “Already hundreds of organic principles have been built up from their
+  constituent elements, and there is now no reason to doubt our
+  capability of producing all organic principles whatsoever in a similar
+  manner.” (p. 58.)
+
+  Dr. Odling is the successor of Faraday as Fullerian Professor of
+  Chemistry in the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
+
+Footnote 21:
+
+  MARSHALL, JOHN, Outlines of Physiology, American edition, 1868, p.
+  916.
+
+Footnote 22:
+
+  FRANKLAND, EDWARD, On the Source of Muscular Power, Proc. Roy. Inst.,
+  June 8, 1866; Am. J. Sci., II, xlii, 393, Nov. 1866.
+
+Footnote 23:
+
+  LIEBIG, JUSTUS VON, Die organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf
+  Physiologie und Pathologie, Braunschweig, 1842. Also in his Animal
+  Chemistry, edition of 1852 (Am. ed., p. 26), where he says “Every
+  motion increases the amount of organized tissue which undergoes
+  metamorphosis.”
+
+Footnote 24:
+
+  Compare DRAPER, JOHN WM. Human Physiology.
+
+  PLAYFAIR, LYON, On the Food of Man in relation to his useful work,
+  Edinburgh, 1865. Proc. Roy. Inst., Apr. 28, 1865.
+
+  RANKE, Tetanus eine Physiologische Studie, Leipzig, 1865.
+
+  ODLING, _op. cit._
+
+Footnote 25:
+
+  VOIT, E., Untersuchungen über den Einfluss des Kochsalzes, des
+  Kaffees, und der Muskelbewegungen auf den Stoffwechsel, Munich, 1860.
+
+  SMITH, E., Philosophical Transactions, 1861, 747.
+
+  FICK, A., and WISLICENUS, J., Phil. Mag., IV, xxxi, 485.
+
+  FRANKLAND, E., _loc. cit._
+
+  NOYES, T. R., American Journal Medical Sciences, Oct. 1867.
+
+  PARKES, E. A., Proceedings Royal Society, xv, 339; xvi, 44.
+
+Footnote 26:
+
+  SMITH, EDWARD, Philosophical Transactions, 1859, 709.
+
+Footnote 27:
+
+  Authorities differ as to the amount of energy converted by the
+  steam-engine. (See Note 16.) Compare MARSHALL, _op. cit._, p. 918.
+  “Whilst, therefore, in an engine one-twentieth part only of the fuel
+  consumed is utilized as mechanical power, one-fifth of the food
+  absorbed by man is so appropriated.”
+
+Footnote 28:
+
+  HEIDENHAIN, Mechanische Leistung Wärmeentwickelung und Stoffumsatz bei
+  der Muskelthätigkeit, Breslau, 1864.
+
+  See also HAUGHTON, SAMUEL, On the Relation of Food to work, published
+  in “Medicine in Modern Times,” London, 1869, Macmillan & Co.
+
+Footnote 29:
+
+  HEIDENHAIN, _op. cit._ Also by FICK, Untersuchungen über
+  Muskel-arbeit, Basel, 1867. Compare also “Nature,” i, 159, Dec. 9,
+  1869.
+
+Footnote 30:
+
+  DU BOIS-REYMOND, EMIL, On the time required for the transmission of
+  volition and sensation through the nerves, Proc. Roy. Inst. Also in
+  Appendix to Bence Jones’s Croonian lectures.
+
+Footnote 31:
+
+  MARSHALL, _op. cit._, p. 227.
+
+Footnote 32:
+
+  MELLONI, Ann. Ch. Phys., xlviii, 198.
+
+  See also NOBILI, Bibl. Univ., xliv, 225, 1830; lvii, 1, 1834.
+
+Footnote 33:
+
+  The apparatus employed is illustrated and fully described in
+  Brown-Sequard’s Archives de Physiologie, i, 498, June, 1868. By it the
+  1-4000th of a degree Centigrade may be indicated.
+
+Footnote 34:
+
+  LOMBARD, J. S., New York Medical Journal, v, 198, June, 1867. [A part
+  of these facts were communicated to me directly by their discoverer.]
+
+Footnote 35:
+
+  WOOD, L. H., On the influence of Mental activity on the Excretion of
+  Phosphoric acid by the Kidneys. Proceedings Connecticut Medical
+  Society for 1869, p. 197.
+
+Footnote 36:
+
+  On this question of vital force, see LIEBIG, Animal Chemistry. “The
+  increase of mass in a plant is determined by the occurrence of a
+  decomposition which takes place in certain parts of the plant under
+  the influence of light and heat.”
+
+  “The modern science of Physiology has left the track of Aristotle. To
+  the eternal advantage of science, and to the benefit of mankind it no
+  longer invents a _horror vacui_, a _quinta essentia_, in order to
+  furnish credulous hearers with solutions and explanations of
+  phenomena, whose true connection with others, whose ultimate cause is
+  still unknown.”
+
+  “All the parts of the animal body are produced from a peculiar fluid
+  circulating in its organism, by virtue of an influence residing in
+  every cell, in every organ, or part of an organ.”
+
+  “Physiology has sufficiently decisive grounds for the opinion that
+  every motion, every manifestation of force, is the result of a
+  transformation of the structure or of its substance; that every
+  conception, every mental affection, is followed by changes in the
+  chemical nature of the secreted fluids; that every thought, every
+  sensation is accompanied by a change in the composition of the
+  substance of the brain.”
+
+  “All vital activity arises from the mutual action of the oxygen of the
+  atmosphere and the elements of the food.”
+
+  “As, in the closed galvanic circuit, in consequence of certain changes
+  which an inorganic body, a metal, undergoes when placed in contact
+  with an acid, a certain something becomes cognizable by our senses,
+  which we call a current of electricity; so in the animal body, in
+  consequence of transformations and changes undergone by matter
+  previously constituting a part of the organism, certain phenomena of
+  motion and activity are perceived, and these we call life, or
+  vitality.”
+
+  “In the animal body we recognize as the ultimate cause of all force
+  only one cause, the chemical action which the elements of the food and
+  the oxygen of the air mutually exercise on each other. The only known
+  ultimate cause of vital force, either in animals or in plants, is a
+  chemical process.”
+
+  “If we consider the force which determines the vital phenomena as a
+  property of certain substances, this view leads of itself to a new and
+  more rigorous consideration of certain singular phenomena, which these
+  very substances exhibit, in circumstances in which they no longer make
+  a part of living organisms.”
+
+  Also OWEN, RICHARD, (Derivative Hypothesis of Life and Species,
+  forming the 40th chapter of his Anatomy of Vertebrates, republished in
+  Am. J. Sci., II, xlvii, 33, Jan. 1869.) “In the endeavor to clearly
+  comprehend and explain the functions of the combination of forces
+  called ‘brain,’ the physiologist is hindered and troubled by the views
+  of the nature of those cerebral forces which the needs of dogmatic
+  theology have imposed on mankind.” * *
+
+  “Religion pure and undefiled, can best answer how far it is righteous
+  or just to charge a neighbor with being unsound in his principles who
+  holds the term ‘life’ to be a sound expressing the sum of living
+  phenomena; and who maintains these phenomena to be modes of force into
+  which other forms of force have passed, from potential to active
+  states, and reciprocally, through the agency of these sums or
+  combinations of forces impressing the mind with the ideas signified by
+  the terms ‘monad,’ ‘moss,’ ‘plant,’ or ‘animal.’”
+
+  And HUXLEY, THOS. H., “On the Physical Basis of Life,” University
+  Series, No. 1. College Courant, 1870.
+
+  _Per contra_, see the Address of Dr. F. A. P. Barnard, as retiring
+  President, before the Am. Assoc. for the Advancement of Science,
+  Chicago meeting, August, 1868. “Thought cannot be a physical force,
+  because thought admits of no measure.”
+
+  GOULD, BENJ. APTHORP, Address as retiring President, before the
+  American Association at its Salem meeting, Aug., 1869.
+
+  BEALE, LIONEL S., “Protoplasm, or Life, Matter, and Mind.” London,
+  1870. John Churchill & Sons.
+
+Footnote 37:
+
+  For an excellent account of this distinguished man, see Youmans’s
+  Introduction to the Correlation and Conservation of Forces, p. xvii.
+
+Footnote 38:
+
+  DRAPER, J. W., _loc. cit._
+
+Footnote 39:
+
+  HENRY, JOSEPH, Agric. Rep. Patent Office, 1857, 440.
+
+Footnote 40:
+
+  WATTERS, J. H., An Essay on Organic, or Life-force. Written for the
+  degree of Doctor of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania,
+  Philadelphia, 1851. See also St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal,
+  II, v, Nos. 3 and 4, 1868; Dec. 1868, and Nov. 10, 1869.
+
+Footnote 41:
+
+  LECONTE, JOSEPH, The Correlation of Physical, Chemical and Vital
+  Force, and the Conservation of Force in Vital Phenomena. American
+  Journal of Science, II, xxviii, 305, Nov. 1859.
+
+Footnote 42:
+
+  LOMBARD, J. S., _loc. cit._
+
+Footnote 43:
+
+  NOYES, T. R., _loc. cit._
+
+Footnote 44:
+
+  WOOD, L. H., _loc. cit._
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                     _AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC._
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                            PREFATORY NOTE.
+
+
+The substance of the greater part of this paper, which has been in the
+present form for some time, was delivered, as a lecture, at a
+Conversazione of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, in the
+Hall of the College, on the evening of Friday, the 30th of April last.
+
+It will be found to support itself, so far as the facts are concerned,
+on the most recent German physiological literature, as represented by
+Rindfleisch, Kühne, and especially Stricker, with which last, for the
+production of his “Handbuch,” there is associated every great
+histological name in Germany.
+
+    EDINBURGH, _October, 1869_.
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                      AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC.
+
+
+It is a pleasure to perceive Mr. Huxley open his clear little essay with
+what we may hold, perhaps, to be the manly and orthodox view of the
+character and products of the French writer, Auguste Comte. “In applying
+the name of ‘the new philosophy’ to that estimate of the limits of
+philosophical inquiry which he” (Professor Huxley), “in common with many
+other men of science, holds to be just,” the Archbishop of York
+confounds, it seems, this new philosophy with the Positive philosophy of
+M. Comte; and thereat Mr. Huxley expresses himself as greatly
+astonished. Some of us, for our parts, may be inclined at first to feel
+astonished at Mr. Huxley’s astonishment; for the school to which, at
+least on the philosophical side, Mr. Huxley seems to belong, is even
+notorious for its prostration before Auguste Comte, whom, especially, so
+far as method and systematization are concerned, it regards as the
+greatest intellect since Bacon. For such, as it was the opinion of Mr.
+Buckle, is understood to be the opinion also of Messrs. Grote, Bain, and
+Mill. In fact, we may say that such is commonly and currently considered
+the characteristic and distinctive opinion of that whole perverted or
+inverted reaction which has been called the _Revulsion_. That is to say,
+to give this word a moment’s explanation, that the Voltaires and Humes
+and Gibbons having long enjoyed an immunity of sneer at man’s blind
+pride and wretched superstition—at _his_ silly non-natural honor and
+_her_ silly non-natural virtue—a reaction had set in, exulting in
+poetry, in the splendor of nature, the nobleness of man, and the purity
+of woman, from which reaction again we have, almost within the last
+decennium, been revulsively, as it were, called back,—shall we say by
+some “bolder” spirits—the Buckles, the Mills, &c.?—to the old
+illumination or enlightenment of a hundred years ago, in regard to the
+weakness and stupidity of man’s pretensions over the animality and
+materiality that limit him. Of this revulsion, then, as said, a main
+feature, especially in England, has been prostration before the vast
+bulk of Comte; and so it was that Mr. Huxley’s protest in this
+reference, considering the philosophy he professed, had that in it to
+surprise at first. But if there was surprise, there was also pleasure;
+for Mr. Huxley’s estimate of Comte is undoubtedly the right one. “So far
+as I am concerned,” he says, “the most reverend prelate” (the Archbishop
+of York) “might dialectically hew M. Comte in pieces as a modern Agag,
+and I should not attempt to stay his hand; for, so far as my study of
+what specially characterizes the Positive philosophy has led me, I find
+therein little or nothing of any scientific value, and a great deal
+which is as thoroughly antagonistic to the very essence of science as
+anything in ultramontane Catholicism.” “It was enough,” he says again,
+“to make David Hume turn in his grave, that here, almost within earshot
+of his house, an instructed audience should have listened without a
+murmur while his most characteristic doctrines were attributed to a
+French writer of fifty years’ later date, in whose dreary and verbose
+pages we miss alike the vigor of thought and the exquisite clearness of
+style of the man whom I make bold to term the most acute thinker of the
+eighteenth century—even though that century produced Kant.”
+
+Of the doctrines themselves which are alluded to here, I shall say
+nothing now; but of much else that is said, there is only to be
+expressed a hearty and even gratified approval. I demur, to be sure, to
+the exaltation of Hume over Kant—high as I place the former. Hume, with
+infinite fertility, surprised us, it may be said, perhaps, into
+attention on a great variety of points which had hitherto passed
+unquestioned; but, even on these points, his success was of an
+interrupted, scattered and inconclusive nature. He set the world adrift,
+but he set man too, reeling and miserable, adrift with it. Kant, again,
+with gravity and reverence, desired to refix, but in purity and truth,
+all those relations and institutions which alone give value to
+existence—which alone _are_ humanity, in fact—but which Hume, with
+levity and mockery, had approached to shake. Kant built up again an
+entire new world for us of knowledge and duty, and, in a certain way,
+even belief; whereas Hume had sought to dispossess us of every support
+that man as man could hope to cling to. In a word, with _at least_ equal
+fertility, Kant was, as compared with Hume, a graver, deeper, and, so to
+speak, a more consecutive, more comprehensive spirit. Graces there were
+indeed, or even, it may be said, subtleties, in which Hume had the
+advantage perhaps. He is still in England an unsurpassed master of
+expression—this, certainly, in his History, if in his Essays he somewhat
+baffles his own self by a certain labored breadth of conscious fine
+writing, often singularly inexact and infelicitous. Still Kant, with
+reference to his products, must be allowed much the greater importance.
+In the history of philosophy he will probably always command as
+influential a place in the modern world as Socrates in the ancient;
+while, as probably, Hume will occupy at best some such position as that
+of Heraclitus or Protagoras. Hume, nevertheless, if equal to Kant, must,
+in view at once of his own subjective ability and his enormous
+influence, be pronounced one of the most important of writers. It would
+be difficult to rate too high the value of his French predecessors and
+contemporaries as regards purification of their oppressed and corrupt
+country; and Hume must be allowed, though with less call, to have
+subserved some such function in the land we live in. In preferring Kant,
+indeed, I must be acquitted of an undue partiality; for all that
+appertains to personal bias was naturally, and by reason of early and
+numerous associations, on the side of my countryman.
+
+Demurring, then, to Mr. Huxley’s opinion on this matter, and postponing
+remark on the doctrines to which he alludes, I must express a hearty
+concurrence with every word he utters on Comte. In him I too “find
+little or nothing of any scientific value.” I too have been lost in the
+mere mirage and sands of “those dreary and verbose pages;” and I
+acknowledge in Mr. Huxley’s every word the ring of a genuine experience.
+M. Comte was certainly a man of some mathematical and scientific
+proficiency, as well as of quick but biased intelligence. A member of
+the _Aufklärung_, he had seen the immense advance of physical science
+since Newton, under, as is usually said, the method of Bacon; and, like
+Hume, like Reid, like Kant, _who had all anticipated him in this_, he
+sought to transfer that method to the domain of mind. In this he failed;
+and though in a sociological aspect he is not without true glances into
+the present disintegration of society and the conditions of it, anything
+of importance cannot be claimed for him. There is not a sentence in his
+book that, in the hollow elaboration and windy pretentiousness of its
+build, is not an exact type of its own constructor. On the whole,
+indeed, when we consider the little to which he attained, the empty
+inflation of his claims, the monstrous and maniacal self-conceit into
+which he was _exalted_, it may appear, perhaps, that charity to M. Comte
+himself, to say nothing of the world, should induce us to wish that both
+his name and his works were buried in oblivion. Now, truly, that Mr.
+Huxley (the “call” being for the moment his) has so pronounced himself,
+especially as the facts of the case are exactly and absolutely what he
+indicates, perhaps we may expect this consummation not to be so very
+long delayed. More than those members of the revulsion already
+mentioned, one is apt to suspect, will be anxious now to beat a retreat.
+Not that this, however, is so certain to be allowed them; for their
+estimate of M. Comte is a valuable element in the estimate of
+themselves.
+
+Frankness on the part of Mr. Huxley is not limited to his opinion of M.
+Comte; it accompanies us throughout his whole essay. He seems even to
+take pride, indeed, in naming always and everywhere his object at the
+plainest. That object, in a general point of view, relates, he tells us,
+solely to materialism, but with a double issue. While it is his declared
+purpose, in the first place, namely, to lead us into materialism, it is
+equally his declared purpose, in the second place, to lead us out of
+materialism. On the first issue, for example, he directly warns his
+audience that to accept the conclusions which he conceives himself to
+have established on Protoplasm, is to accept these also: That “all vital
+action” is but “the result of the molecular forces” of the physical
+basis; and that, by consequence, to use his own words to his audience,
+“the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts
+regarding them, are but the expression of molecular changes in that
+matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena.” And,
+so far, I think, we shall not disagree with Mr. Huxley when he says that
+“most undoubtedly the terms of his propositions are distinctly
+materialistic.” Still, on the second issue, Mr. Huxley asserts that he
+is “individually no materialist.” “On the contrary, he believes
+materialism to involve grave philosophical error;” and the “union of
+materialistic terminology with the repudiation of materialistic
+philosophy” he conceives himself to share “with some of the most
+thoughtful men with whom he is acquainted.” In short, to unite both
+issues, we have it in Mr. Huxley’s own words, that it is the single
+object of his essay “to explain how such a union is not only consistent
+with, but necessitated by, sound logic;” and that, accordingly, he will,
+in the first place, “lead us through the territory of vital phenomena to
+the materialistic slough,” while pointing out, in the second, “the sole
+path by which, in his judgment, extrication is possible.” Mr. Huxley’s
+essay, then, falls evidently into two parts; and of these two parts we
+may say, further, that while the one—that in which he leads us into
+materialism—will be predominatingly physiological, the other—or that in
+which he leads us out of materialism—will be predominatingly
+philosophical. Two corresponding parts would thus seem to be prescribed
+to any full discussion of the essay; and of these, in the present needs
+of the world, it is evidently the latter that has the more promising
+theme. The truth is, however, that Mr. Huxley, after having exerted all
+his strength in his first part to throw us into “the materialistic
+slough,” by _clear necessity of knowledge_, only calls to us, in his
+second part, to come out of this slough again, on the somewhat _obscure
+necessity of ignorance_. This, then, is but a lop-sided balance, where a
+scale in the air only seems to struggle vainly to raise its
+well-weighted fellow on the ground. Mr. Huxley, in fact, possesses no
+remedy for materialism but what lies in the expression that, while he
+knows not what matter is in itself, he certainly knows that casualty is
+but contingent succession; and thus, like the so-called “philosophy” of
+the Revulsion, Mr. Huxley would only mock us into the intensest
+dogmatism on the one side by a fallacious reference to the intensest
+scepticism on the other.
+
+The present paper, then, will regard mainly Mr. Huxley’s argument _for_
+materialism, but say what is required, at the same time, on his alleged
+argument—which is merely the imaginary, or imaginative, impregnation of
+ignorance—_against_ it.
+
+Following Mr. Huxley’s own steps in his essay, the course of his
+positions will be found to run, in summary, thus:—
+
+What is meant by the physical basis of life is, that there is one kind
+of matter common to all living beings, and it is named protoplasm. No
+doubt it may appear at first sight that, in the various kinds of living
+beings, we have only _difference_ before us, as in the lichen on the
+rock and the painter that paints it,—the microscopic animalcule or
+fungus and the Finner whale or Indian fig,—the flower in the hair of a
+girl and the blood in her veins, etc. Nevertheless, throughout these and
+all other diversities, there really exists a threefold _unity_—a unity
+of faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substance.
+
+On the first head, for example, or as regards faculty, power, the
+action exhibited, there are but three categories of _human_
+activity—contractility, alimentation, and reproduction; and there are
+no fewer for the _lower_ forms of life, whether animal or vegetable.
+In the nettle, for instance, we find the woody case of its sting lined
+by a granulated, semi-fluid layer, that is possessed of contractility.
+But in this respect—that is, in the possession of contractile
+substance—other plants are as the nettle, and all animals are as
+plants. Protoplasm—for the nettle-layer alluded to is protoplasm—is
+common to the whole of them. The difference, in short between the
+powers of the lowest plant or animal and those of the highest is one
+only of degree and not of kind.
+
+But, on the second head, it is not otherwise in form, or manifested
+external appearance and structure. Not the sting only, but the whole
+nettle, is made up of protoplasm; and of all the other vegetables the
+nettle is but a type. Nor are animals different. The colorless
+blood-corpuscles in man and the rest are identical with the protoplasm
+of the nettle; and both he and they consisted at first only of an
+aggregation of such. Protoplasm is the common constituent—the common
+origin. At last, as at first, all that lives, and every part of all that
+lives, are but nucleated or unnucleated, modified or unmodified,
+protoplasm.
+
+But, on the third head, or with reference to unity of substance, to
+internal composition, chemistry establishes this also. All forms of
+protoplasm, that is, consist alike of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
+nitrogen, and behave similarly under similar reagents.
+
+So, now, a uniform character having in this threefold manner been proved
+for protoplasm, what is its origin, and what its fate? Of these the
+latter is not far to seek. The fate of protoplasm is death—death into
+its chemical constituents; and this determines its origin also.
+Protoplasm can originate only in that into which it dies,—the
+elements—the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen—of which it was
+found to consist. Hydrogen, with oxygen, forms water; carbon, with
+oxygen, carbonic acid; and hydrogen, with nitrogen, ammonia. Similarly,
+water, carbonic acid and ammonia form, in union, protoplasm. The
+influence of pre-existing protoplasm only determines combination in
+_its_ case, as that of the electric spark determines combination in the
+case of water. Protoplasm, then, is but an aggregate of physical
+materials, exhibiting in combination—only as was to be expected—new
+properties. The properties of water are not more different from those of
+hydrogen and oxygen than the properties of protoplasm are different from
+those of water, carbonic acid, and ammonia. We have the same warrant to
+attribute the consequences to the premises in the one case as in the
+other. If, on the first stage of combination, represented by that of
+water, _simples_ could unite into something so different from
+themselves, why, on the second stage of combination, represented by that
+of protoplasm, should not _compounds_ similarly unite into something
+equally different from themselves? If the constituents are credited with
+the properties _there_, why refuse to credit the constituents with the
+properties _here_? To the constituents of protoplasm, in truth, any new
+element, named vitality, has no more been added, than to the
+constituents of water any new element, named aquosity. Nor is there any
+logical halting place between this conclusion and the further and final
+one: That all vital action whatever, intellectual included, is but the
+result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it.
+
+These sentences will be acknowledged, I think, fairly to represent Mr.
+Huxley’s relative deliverances, and, consequently, as I may be allowed
+to explain again, the only important—while much the larger—part of the
+whole essay. Mr. Huxley, that is, while devoting fifty paragraphs to our
+physiological immersion in the “materialistic slough,” grants but
+one-and-twenty towards our philosophical escape from it; the fifty
+besides being, so to speak, in reality the wind, and the one-and-twenty
+only the whistle for it. What these latter say, in effect, is no more
+than this, that,—matter being known not in itself but only in its
+qualities, and cause and effect not in their nexus but only in their
+sequence,—matter may be spirit or spirit matter, cause effect or effect
+cause—in short, for aught that Mr. Huxley more than phenomenally knows,
+this may be that or that this, first second, or second first, but the
+conclusion shall be this, that he will lay out all our knowledge
+materially, and we may lay out all our ignorance immaterially—if we
+will. Which reasoning and conclusion, I may merely remark, come
+precisely to this: That Mr. Huxley—who, hoping yet to see each object (a
+pin, say) not in its qualities but in _itself_, still, consistently
+antithetic, cannot believe in the extinction of fire by water or of life
+by the rope, for any _reason_ or for any _necessity_ that lies in the
+nature of the case, but simply for the habit of the thing—has not yet
+put himself at home with the metaphysical categories of _substance_ and
+_casualty_; thanks, perhaps, to those guides of his whom we, the amusing
+Britons that we are, bravely proclaim “the foremost thinkers of the
+day”!
+
+The matter and manner of the whole essay are now fairly before us, and I
+think that, with the approbation of the reader, its procedure,
+generally, may be described as an attempt to establish, not by any
+complete and systematic induction, but by a variety of partial and
+illustrative assertions, two propositions. Of these propositions the
+first is, That all animal and vegetable organisms are essentially alike
+in power, in form, and in substance; and the second, That all vital and
+intellectual functions are the properties of the molecular disposition
+and changes of the material basis (protoplasm) of which the various
+animals and vegetables consist. In both propositions, the agent of proof
+is this same alleged material basis of life, or protoplasm. For the
+first of them, all animal and vegetable organisms shall be identified in
+protoplasm; and for the second, a simple chemical analogy shall assign
+intellect and vitality to the molecular constituents of the protoplasm,
+in connection with which they are at least exhibited.
+
+In order, then, to obtain a footing on the ground offered us, the first
+question we naturally put is, What is Protoplasm? And an answer to this
+question can be obtained only by a reference to the historical progress
+of the physiological cell theory.
+
+That theory may be said to have wholly grown up since John Hunter wrote
+his celebrated work ‘On the Nature of the Blood,’ etc. New growths, to
+Hunter, depended on an exudation of the plasma of the blood, in which,
+by virtue of its own _plasticity_, vessels formed, and conditioned the
+further progress. The influence of these ideas seems to have still
+acted, even after a conception of the cell was arrived at. For starting
+element, Schleiden required an intracellular plasma, and Schwann a
+structureless exudation, in which minute granules, if not indeed already
+pre-existent, formed, and by aggregation grew into nuclei, round which
+singly the production of a membrane at length enclosed a cell. It was
+then that, in this connection, we heard of the terms blastema and
+cyto-blastema. The theory of the vegetable cell was completed earlier
+than that of the animal one. Completion of this latter, again, seems to
+have been first effected by Schwann, after Müller had insisted on the
+analogy between animal and vegetable tissue, and Valentin had
+demonstrated a nucleus in the animal cell, as previously Brown in the
+vegetable one. But assuming Schwann’s labor, and what surrounded it, to
+have been a first stage, the wonderful ability of Virchow may be said to
+have raised the theory of the cell fully to a second stage. Now, of this
+second stage, it is the dissolution or resolution that has led to the
+emergence of the word Protoplasm.
+
+The body, to Virchow, constituted a free state of individual subjects,
+with equal rights but unequal capacities. These were the cells, which
+consisted each of an enclosing membrane, and an enclosed nucleus with
+surrounding intracellular matrix or matter. These cells, further,
+propagated themselves, chiefly by partition or division; and the
+fundamental principle of the whole theory was expressed in the dictum,
+“_Omnis cellula e cellulâ_.” That is, the nucleus, becoming gradually
+elongated, at last parted in the midst; and each half, acting as center
+of attraction to the surrounding intracellular matrix or contained
+matter, stood forth as a new nucleus to a new cell, formed by division
+at length of the original cell.
+
+The first step taken in resolution of this theory was completed by Max
+Schultze, preceded by Leydig. This was the elimination of an investing
+membrane. Such membrane may, and does, ultimately form; but in the first
+instance, it appears, the cell is naked. The second step in the
+resolution belongs perhaps to Brücke, though preceded by Bergmann, and
+though Max Schultze, Kühne, Haeckel, and others ought to be mentioned in
+the same connection. This step was the elimination, or at least
+subordination, of the nucleus. The nucleus, we are to understand now, is
+necessary neither to the division nor to the existence of the cell.
+
+Thus, then, stripped of its membrane, relieved of its nucleus, what now
+remains for the cell? Why, nothing but what _was_ the contained matter,
+the intracellular matrix, and _is_—Protoplasm.
+
+In the application of this word itself, however, to the element in
+question, there are also a step or two to be noticed. The first step was
+Dujardin’s discovery of sarcode; and the second the introduction of the
+term protoplasm as the name for the layer of the _vegetable_ cell that
+lined the cellulose, and enclosed the nucleus. Sarcode, found in certain
+of the lower forms of life, was a simple substance that exhibited powers
+of spontaneous contraction and movement. Thus, processes of such simple,
+soft, contractile matter are protruded by the rhizopods, and locomotion
+by their means effected. Remak first extended the use of the term
+protoplasm from the layer which bore that name in the vegetable cell to
+the analogous element in the animal cell; but it was Max Schultze, in
+particular, who, by applying the name to the intracellular matrix, or
+contained matter, when divested of membrane, and by identifying this
+substance itself with sarcode, first fairly established protoplasm, name
+and thing, in its present prominence.
+
+In this account I have necessarily omitted many subordinate and
+intervening steps in the successive establishment of the
+_contractility_, superior _importance_, and complete _isolation_ of this
+thing to which, under the name of protoplasm, Mr. Huxley of late has
+called such vast attention. Besides the names mentioned, there are
+others of great eminence in this connection, such as Meyen, Siebold,
+Reichert, Ecker, Henle, and Kölliker among the Germans; and among
+ourselves, Beale and Huxley himself. John Goodsir will be mentioned
+again.
+
+We have now, perhaps, obtained a general idea of protoplasm. Brücke,
+when he talks of it as “living cell-body or elementary organism,” comes
+very near the leading idea of Mr. Huxley as expressed in his phrase,
+“the physiological basis, or matter, of life.” Living cell-body,
+elementary organism, primitive living matter—that, evidently, is the
+quest of Mr. Huxley. There is aqueous matter, he would say, perhaps,
+composed of hydrogen and oxygen, and it is the same thing whether in the
+rain-drop or the ocean; so, similarly, there is vital matter, which,
+composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, is the same thing
+whether in cryptogams or in elephants, in animalcules or in men. What,
+in fact, Mr. Huxley seeks, probably, is living protein—protein, so to
+speak, struck into life. Just such appears to him to be the nature of
+protoplasm, and in it he believes himself to possess at last _a living
+clay_ wherewith to build the whole organic world.
+
+The question, What is Protoplasm? is answered, then; but, for the
+understanding of what is to follow, there is still one general
+consideration to be premised.
+
+Mr. Huxley’s conception of protoplasm, as we have seen, is that of
+living matter, living protein; what we may call, perhaps, elementary
+life-stuff. Now, is it quite certain that Mr. Huxley is correct in this
+conception? Are we to understand, for example, that cells have now
+definitively vanished, and left in their place only a uniform and
+universal _matter_ of quite indefinite proportions? No; such an
+understanding would be quite wrong. Whatever may be the opinion of the
+adherents of the molecular theory of generation, it is certain that all
+the great German histologists still hold by the cell, and can hardly
+open their mouths without mention of it. I do not allude here to any
+special adherents of either nucleus or membrane, but to the most
+advanced innovators in both respects; to such men as Schultze and Brücke
+and Kühne. These, as we have seen, pretty well confine their attention,
+like Mr. Huxley, to the protoplasm. But they do not the less on that
+account talk of the cell. For them, it is only in cells that protoplasm
+exists. To their view, we cannot fancy protoplasm as so much matter in a
+pot, in an ointment-box, any portion of which scooped out in an
+ear-picker would be so much life-stuff, and, though a part, quite as
+good as the whole. This seems to be Mr. Huxley’s conception, but it is
+not theirs. A certain _measure_ goes with protoplasm to constitute it an
+organism to them, and worthy of their attention. They refuse to give
+consideration to any mere protoplasm-_shred_ that may not have yet
+ceased, perhaps, to exhibit all sign of contractility under the
+microscope, and demand a protoplasm-_cell_. In short, protoplasm is to
+them still distributed into cells, and only that measure of protoplasm
+is cell that is adequate to the whole group of vital manifestations.
+Brücke, for example, of all innovators probably the most innovating, and
+denying, or inclined to deny, both nucleus and membrane, does not
+hesitate, according to Stricker, to speak still of cells as
+self-complete organisms, that move and grow, that nourish and reproduce
+themselves, and that perform specific function. “Omnis cellula e
+cellulâ,” is the rubric they work under as much now as ever. The heart
+of a turtle, they say, is not a turtle; so neither is a protoplasm-shred
+a protoplasm-cell.
+
+This, then, is the general consideration which I think it necessary to
+premise; and it seems, almost of itself, to negate Mr. Huxley’s
+reasonings in advance, for it warrants us in denying that physiological
+clay of which all living things are but bricks baked, Mr. Huxley
+intimates, and in establishing in its place cells as before—living cells
+that differ infinitely the one from the other, and so differ from the
+very first moment of their existence. This consideration shall not be
+allowed to pre-termit, however, an examination of Mr. Huxley’s own
+proofs, which will only the more and more avail to indicate the
+difference suggested.
+
+These proofs, as has been said, would, by means of the single fulcrum of
+protoplasm, establish, first, the identity, and, second, the
+materiality, of all vegetable and animal life. These are, shortly, the
+two propositions which we have already seen, and to which, in their
+order, we now pass.
+
+All organisms, then, whether animal or vegetable, have been understood
+for some time back to originate in and consist of cells; but the
+progress of physiology has _seemed_ now to substitute for cells a single
+matter of life, protoplasm; and it is here that Mr. Huxley sees his cue.
+Mr. Huxley’s very first word is the “physical basis or matter of life;”
+and he supposes “that to many the idea that there is such a thing may be
+novel.” This, then, so far, is what is _new_ in Mr. Huxley’s
+contribution. He seems to have said to himself, if formerly the whole
+world was thought kin in an “ideal” or formal element, organization, I
+shall now finally complete this identification in a “physical” or
+material element, protoplasm. In short, what at this stage we are asked
+to witness in the essay is, the identification of all living beings
+whatever in the identity of protoplasm. As there is a single matter,
+clay, which is the matter of all bricks, so there is a single matter,
+protoplasm, which is the matter of all organisms. “Protoplasm is the
+clay of the potter, which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains
+clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick
+or sun-dried clod.” Now here I cannot help stopping a moment to remark
+that Mr. Huxley puts emphatically his whole soul into this sentence, and
+evidently believes it to be, if we may use the word, a _clincher_. But,
+after all, does it say much? or rather, does it say anything? To the
+question, “Of what are you made?” the answer, for a long time now, and
+by the great mass of human beings who are supposed civilized, has been
+“Dust.” Dust, and the same dust, has been allowed to constitute us all.
+But materialism has not on that account been the irresistible result.
+Attention hitherto—and surely excusably, or even laudably in such a
+case—has been given not so much to the dust as to the “potter,” and the
+“artifice” by which he could so transform, or, as Mr. Huxley will have
+it, _modify_ it. To ask us to say, instead of dust, clay, or even
+protoplasm, is not to ask us for much, then, seeing that even to Mr.
+Huxley there still remain both the “potter” and his “artifice.”
+
+But to return: To Mr. Huxley, when he says all bricks, being made of
+clay, are the same thing, we answer, Yes, undoubtedly, if they are made
+of the same clay. That is, the bricks are identical if the clay is
+identical; but, on the other hand, by as much as the clay differs will
+the bricks differ. And, similarly, all organisms can be identified only
+if their composing protoplasm can be identified. To this stake is the
+argument of Mr. Huxley bound.
+
+This argument itself takes, as we have seen, a threefold course: Mr.
+Huxley will prove his position in this place by reference, firstly, to
+unity of faculty; secondly, to unity of form; and thirdly, to unity of
+substance. It is this course of proof, then, which we have now to
+follow, but taking the question of substance, as simplest, first, and
+the others later.
+
+By substance, Mr. Huxley understands the internal or chemical
+composition; and, with a mere reference to the action of reagents, he
+asserts the protoplasm of all living beings to be an identical
+combination of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is for us to
+ask, then, Are all samples of protoplasm identical, first, in their
+chemical composition, and, second, under the action of the various
+reagents?
+
+On the first clause, we may say, in the first place, towards a proof of
+difference which will only cumulate, I hope, that, even should we grant
+in all protoplasm an identity of chemical ingredients, what is called
+_Allotropy_ may still have introduced no inconsiderable variety. Ozone
+is not antozone, nor is oxygen either, though in chemical constitution
+all are alike. In the second place, again, we may say that, with
+_varying proportions_, the same component parts produce very various
+results. By way of illustration, it will suffice to refer to such
+different things as the proteids, gluten, albumen, fibrin, gelatine,
+etc., compared with the urinary products, urea and uric acid; or with
+the biliary products, glycocol, glycocolic acid, bili-rubin,
+bili-verdin, etc.; and yet all these substances, varying so much the one
+from the other, are, as protoplasm is, compounds of carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen. But, in the third place, we are not limited to a
+_may say_; we can assert the fact that all protoplasm is not chemically
+identical. All the tissues of the organism are called protoplasm by Mr.
+Huxley; but can we predicate chemical identity of muscle and bone, for
+example? In such cases Mr. Huxley, it is true, may bring the word
+“modified” into use; but the objection of modification we shall examine
+later. In the mean time, we are justified, by Mr. Huxley’s very
+argument, in regarding all organized tissues whatever as protoplasm; for
+if these tissues are not to be identified in protoplasm, we must suppose
+denied what it was his one business to affirm. And it is against that
+affirmation that we point to the fact of much chemical difference
+obtaining among the tissues, not only in the _proportions_ of their
+fundamental elements, but also in the _addition_ (and proportions as
+well) of such others as chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, potash, soda,
+lime, magnesia, iron, etc. Vast differences vitally must be legitimately
+assumed for tissues that are so different chemically. But, in the fourth
+place, we have the authority of the Germans for asserting that the cells
+themselves—and they now, to the most advanced, are only protoplasm—do
+differ chemically, some being found to contain glycogen, some
+cholesterine, some protogon, and some myosin. Now such substances, let
+the chemical analogy be what it may, must still be allowed to introduce
+chemical difference. In the last place, Mr. Huxley’s analysis is an
+analysis of _dead_ protoplasm, and indecisive, consequently, for that
+which lives. Mr. Huxley betrays sensitiveness in advance to this
+objection; for he seeks to rise above the sensitiveness and the
+objection at once by styling the latter “frivolous.” Nevertheless the
+Germans say pointedly that it is unknown whether the same elements are
+to be referred to the cells after as before death. Kühne does not
+consider it proved that living muscle contains syntonin; yet Mr. Huxley
+tells us, in his Physiology, that “syntonin is the chief constituent of
+muscle and flesh.” In general, we may say, according to Stricker, that
+all weight is put now on the examination of living tissue, and that the
+difference is fully allowed between that and dead tissue.
+
+On the second clause now, or with regard to the action of reagents,
+these must be denied to produce the like result on the various forms of
+protoplasm. With reference to temperature, for example, Kühne reports
+the movements of the amoeba to be arrested in iced water; while, in the
+same medium, the ova of the trout furrow famously, but perish even in a
+warmed room. Others, again, we are told, may be actually dried, and yet
+live. Of ova in general, in this connection, it is said that they live
+or die according as the temperature to which they are exposed differs
+little or much from that which is natural to the organisms producing
+them. In some, according to Max Schultze, even distilled water is enough
+to arrest movement. Now, not to dwell longer here, both amoeba and ova
+are to Mr. Huxley pure protoplasm; and such difference of result,
+according to difference of temperature, etc., must assuredly be allowed
+to point to a difference of original nature. Any conclusion so far,
+then, in regard to unity of substance, whether the chemical composition
+or the action of reagents be considered, cannot be said to bear out the
+views of Mr. Huxley.
+
+What now of the unities of form and power in protoplasm? By form, Mr.
+Huxley will be found to mean the general appearance and structure; and
+by faculty or power, the action exhibited. Now it will be very easy to
+prove that, in neither respect, do all specimens of protoplasm agree.
+Mr. Huxley’s representative protoplasm, it appears, is that of the
+nettle-sting; and he describes it as a granulated, semi-fluid body,
+contractile in mass, and contractile also in detail to the development
+of a species of circulation. Stricker, again, speaks of it as a
+homogeneous substance, in which any granules that may appear must be
+considered of foreign importation, and in which there are no evidences
+of circulation. In this last respect, then, that Mr. Huxley should talk
+of “tiny Maelstroms,” such as even in the silence of a tropical noon
+might stun us, if heard, as “with the roar of a great city,” may be
+viewed, perhaps, as a rise into poetry beyond the occasion.
+
+Further, according to Stricker, protoplasm varies almost infinitely in
+consistence, in shape, in structure, and in function. In consistence, it
+is sometimes so fluid as to be capable of forming in drops; sometimes
+semi-fluid and gelatinous; sometimes of considerable resistance. In
+shape—for to Stricker the cells are now protoplasm—we have club-shaped
+protoplasm, globe-shaped protoplasm, cup-shaped protoplasm,
+bottle-shaped protoplasm, spindle-shaped protoplasm—branched, threaded,
+ciliated protoplasm,—circle-headed protoplasm—flat, conical,
+cylindrical, longitudinal, prismatic, polyhedral, and palisade-like
+protoplasm. In structure, again, it is sometimes uniform and sometimes
+reticulated into interspaces that contain fluid. In function, lastly—and
+here we have entered on the consideration of faculty or power—some
+protoplasm is vagrant (so to translate _wandernd_), and of unknown use,
+like the colorless blood-corpuscles.
+
+In reference to these, as strengthening the argument, and throwing much
+light generally, I break off a moment to say that, very interesting as
+they are in themselves, and as Recklinghausen, in especial, has made
+them, Mr. Huxley’s theory of them disagrees considerably with the
+prevalent German one. He speaks of them as the source of the body in
+general, yet, in his Physiology, he talks of the spleen, the lymphatics,
+and even the liver—_parts_ of the body—as _their_ source. They are so
+few in number that, while Mr. Huxley is thankful to be able to point to
+the inside of the lips as a seat for them, they bear to the red
+corpuscles only the proportion of 1 to 450. This disproportion, however,
+is no bar to Mr. Huxley’s derivation of the latter from the former. But
+the fact is questioned. The Germans, generally, for their, part,
+describe the colorless, or vagrant, blood-corpuscles as probably media
+of conjugation or reparation, but acknowledge their function to be as
+yet quite unknown; while Rindfleisch, characterizing the spleen as the
+grave of the red, and the womb of the white, corpuscles, evidently
+refers the latter to the former. This, indeed, is a matter of direct
+assertion with Preyer, who has “shown that pieces of red
+blood-corpuscles may be eaten by the amoeboid cells of the frog,” and
+holds that the latter (the white corpuscles) proceed directly from the
+former (the red corpuscles); so that it seems to be determined in the
+mean time that there is no proof of the reverse being the fact.
+
+In function, then, to resume, some protoplasm is vagrant, and of unknown
+use. Some again produces pepsine, and some fat. Some at least contains
+pigment. Then there is nerve-protoplasm, brain-protoplasm,
+bone-protoplasm, muscle-protoplasm, and protoplasm of all the other
+tissues, no one of which but produces only its own kind, and is
+uninterchangeable with the rest. Lastly, on this head, we have to point
+to the overwhelming fact that there is the infinitely different
+protoplasm of the various infinitely different plants and animals, in
+each of which its own protoplasm, as in the case of that of the various
+tissues, but produces its own kind, and is uninterchangeable with that
+of the rest.
+
+It may be objected, indeed, that these latter are examples of modified
+protoplasm. The objection of modification, as said, we have to see by
+itself later; but, in the mean time, it may be asked, Where are we to
+begin, _not_ to have modified protoplasm? We have the example of Mr.
+Huxley himself, who, in the nettle-sting, begins already with modified
+protoplasm; and we have the authority of Rindfleisch for asserting that
+“in every different tissue we must look for a different initial term of
+the productive series.” This, evidently, is a very strong light on the
+original multiplicity of protoplasm, which the consideration, as we have
+seen, of the various plants and animals, has made, further, infinite.
+This is enough; but there is no wish to evade beginning with the very
+beginning—with absolutely pure initial protoplasm, if it can but be
+given us in any reference. The simple egg—that, probably is the
+beginning—that, probably, is the original identity; yet even there we
+find already distribution of the identity into infinite difference.
+This, certainly, with reference to the various organisms, but with
+reference also to the various tissues. That we regard the egg as the
+beginning, and that we do not start, like the smaller exceptional
+physiological school, with molecules themselves, depends on this, that
+the great Germans so often alluded to, Kühne among them, still trust in
+the experiments of Pasteur; and while they do not deny the possibility,
+or even the fact, of molecular generation, still feel justified in
+denying the existence of any observation that yet unassailably attests a
+_generatio æquivoca_. By such authority as this the simple philosophical
+spectator has no choice but to take his stand; and therefore it is that
+I assume the egg as the established beginning, so far, of all vegetable
+and animal organisms. To the egg, too, as the beginning, Mr. Huxley,
+though the lining of the nettle-sting is his representative protoplasm,
+at least refers. “In the earliest condition of the human organism,” he
+says, in allusion to the white (vagrant) corpuscles of the blood, “in
+that state in which it has but just become distinguished from the egg in
+which it arises, it is nothing but an aggregation of such corpuscles,
+and every organ of the body was once no more than such an aggregation.”
+Now, in beginning with the egg—an absolute beginning being denied us in
+consequence of the pre-existent infinite difference of the egg or eggs
+themselves—we may gather from the German physiologists some such account
+of the actual facts as this.
+
+The first change signalized in the impregnated egg seems that of
+_Furchung_, or furrowing—what the Germans call the _Furchungskugeln_,
+the _Dotterkugeln_, form. Then these _Kugeln_—clumps, eminences,
+monticles, we may translate the word—break into cells; and these are the
+cells of the embryo. Mr. Huxley, as quoted, refers to the whole body,
+and every organ of the body, as at first but an aggregation of colorless
+blood-corpuscles; but in the very statement which would render the
+identity alone explicit, the difference is quite as plainly implicit. As
+much as this lies in the word “organs,” to say nothing of “human.” The
+cells of the “organs,” to which he refers, are even then
+uninterchangeable, and produce but themselves. The Germans tell us of
+the _Keimblatt_, the germ-leaf, in which all these organs originate.
+This _Blatt_, or leaf, is threefold, it seems; but even these folds are
+not indifferent. The various cells have their distinct places in them
+from the first. While what in this connection are called the epithelial
+and endorthelial tissues spring respectively from the _upper_ and
+_under_ leaf, connective tissues, with muscle and blood, spring from the
+_middle_ one. Surely in such facts we have a perfect warrant to assert
+the initial non-identity of protoplasm, and to insist on this, that,
+from the very earliest moment—even literally _ab ovo_—brain-cells only
+generate brain-cells, bone-cells bone-cells, and so on.
+
+These considerations on function all concern faculty or power; but we
+have to notice now that the characteristic and fundamental form of power
+is to Mr. Huxley _contractility_. He even quotes Goethe in proof of
+contractility being the main power or faculty of _Man_! Nevertheless it
+is to be said at once that, while there are differences in what
+protoplasm _is_ contractile, all protoplasm is not contractile, nor
+dependent on contractility for its functions. In the former respect, for
+example, muscle, while it is the contractile tissue special, is also to
+Mr. Huxley protoplasm; yet Stricker asserts the inner construction of
+the contractile substance, of which muscle-fibre virtually consists, to
+be essentially different from contractile protoplasm. Here, then, we
+have the contractile _substance_ proper “essentially different” from the
+contractile _source_ proper. In the latter respect, again, we shall not
+call in the _un_contractible substances which Mr. Huxley himself
+denominates protoplasm—bread, namely, roast mutton, and boiled lobster;
+but we may ask where—even in the case of a living body—is the
+contractility of white of egg? In this reference, too, we may remark
+that Kühne, who divides the protoplasm of the epidermis into three
+classes, has been unable to distinguish contractility in his own third
+class. Lastly, where, in relation to the protoplasm of the nervous
+system, is there evidence of its contractility? Has any one pretended
+that thought is but the contraction of the brain; or is it by
+contraction that the very nerves operate contraction—the nerves that
+supply muscles, namely? Mr. Huxley himself, in his Physiology, describes
+nervous action very differently. There _conduction_ is spoken of without
+a hint of contraction. Of the higher faculties of man I have to speak
+again; but let us just ask where, in the case of any pure
+sensation—smell, taste, touch, sound, color—is there proof of any
+contraction? Are we to suppose that between the physical cause of heat
+without and the mental sensation of heat within, contraction is anywhere
+interpolated? Generally, in conclusion here, while reminding of
+Virchow’s testimony to the inherent inequalities of cell-capacity, let
+us but, on the question of faculty, contrast the kidney and the brain,
+even as these organs are viewed by Mr. Huxley. To him the one is but a
+sieve for the extrusion of refuse: the other thinks Newton’s ‘Principia’
+and Iliads of Homer.
+
+Probably, then, in regard to any continuity in protoplasm of power, of
+form, or of substance, we have seen _lacunæ_ enow. Nay, Mr. Huxley
+himself can be adduced in evidence on the same side. Not rarely do we
+find in his essay admissions of _probability_ where it is _certainty_
+that is alone in place. He says, for example, “It is more than probable
+that _when_ the vegetable world _is_ thoroughly explored we _shall_ find
+all plants in possession of the same powers.” When a conclusion is
+decidedly announced, it is rather disappointing to be told, as here,
+that the premises are still to collect. “_So far_,” he says again, “as
+the conditions of the manifestations of the phenomena of contractility
+have _yet_ been studied.” Now, such a _so far_ need not be _very far_;
+and we may confess in passing, that from Mr. Huxley the phrase, “the
+conditions of the _manifestations_ of the _phenomena_” grates. We hear
+again that it is “the rule _rather_ than the exception,” or that
+“weighty authorities have _suggested_” that such and such things
+“probably occur,” or, while contemplating the nettle-sting, that such
+“_possible_ complexity” in other cases “_dawns_ upon one.” On other
+occasions he expresses himself to the effect that “perhaps it would not
+yet be safe to say that _all_ forms,” etc. Nay, not only does he
+directly _say_ that “it is by no means his intention to suggest that
+there is no difference between the lowest plant and the highest, or
+between plants and animals,” but he directly proves what he says, for he
+demonstrates in plants and animals an _essential difference of power_.
+Plants _can_ assimilate inorganic matters, animals can _not_, etc.
+Again, here is a passage in which he is seen to cut his own “_basis_”
+from beneath his own feet. After telling us that all forms of protoplasm
+consist of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen “in very complex
+union,” he continues, “To this complex combination, _the nature of which
+has never been determined with exactness_, the name of protein has been
+applied.” This, plainly, is an identification, on Mr. Huxley’s own part,
+of protoplasm and protein; and what is said of the one being necessarily
+true of the other, it follows that Mr. Huxley admits the nature of
+protoplasm never to have been determined with exactness, and that, even
+in his eyes, the _lis_ is still _sub judice_. This admission is
+strengthened by the words, too, “If we use this term” (protein) “with
+such _caution_ as may properly arise out of our _comparative ignorance_
+of the things for which it stands;” which entitle us to recommend, in
+consequence “of our _comparative ignorance_ of the things for which it
+stands,” “_caution_” in the use of the term protoplasm. In such a state
+of the case we cannot wonder that Mr. Huxley’s own conclusion here is:
+Therefore “all living matter is more or less albuminoid.” All living
+matter is more or less albuminoid! That, indeed, is the single
+conclusion of Mr. Huxley’s whole industry; but it is a conclusion that,
+far from requiring the intervention of protoplasm, had been reached long
+before the word itself had been, in this connection, used.
+
+It is in this way, then, that Mr. Huxley can be adduced in refutation of
+himself; and I think his resort to an epigram of Goethe’s for reduction
+of the powers of man to those of contraction, digestion, and
+reproduction, can be regarded as an admission to the same effect. The
+epigram runs thus:—
+
+   “Warum treibt sich das Volk so, und schreit? Es will sich ernähren,
+    Kinder zeugen, und die nähren so gut es vermag.
+    Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich wie er auch will.”
+
+That means, quite literally translated, “Why do the folks bustle and
+bawl? They want to feed themselves, get children, and then feed them as
+best they can; no man does more, let him do as he may.” This, really, is
+Mr. Huxley’s sole proof for his classification of the powers of man. Is
+it sufficient? Does it not apply rather to the birds of the air, the
+fish of the sea, and the beasts of the field, than to man? Did Newton
+only feed himself, beget children, and then feed them? Was it impossible
+for him to do any more, let him do as he might? And what we ask of
+Newton we may ask of all the rest. To elevate, therefore, the passing
+whim of mere literary _Laune_ into a cosmical axiom and a proof in
+place—this we cannot help adding to the other productions here in which
+Mr. Huxley appears against himself.
+
+But were it impossible either for him or us to point to these _lacunæ_,
+it would still be our right and our duty to refer to the present
+conditions of microscopic science in general as well as in particular,
+and to demur to the erection of its _dicta_, constituted as they yet
+are, into established columns and buttresses in support of any theory of
+life, material or other.
+
+The most delicate and dubious of all the sciences, it is also the
+youngest. In its manipulations the slightest change may operate as a
+destructive drought, or an equally destructive deluge. Its very tools
+may positively create the structure it actually examines. The present
+state of the science, and what warrant it gives Mr. Huxley to dogmatize
+on protoplasm, we may understand from this avowal of Kühne’s: “To-day we
+believe that we see” such or such fact, “but know not that further
+improvements in the means of observation will not reveal what is assumed
+for certainty to be only illusion.” With such authority to lean on—and
+it is the highest we can have—we may be allowed to entertain the
+conjecture, that it is just possible that some certainties, even of Mr.
+Huxley, may yet reveal themselves as illusions.
+
+But, in resistance to any sweeping conclusions built on it, we are not
+confined to a reference to the imperfections involved in the very nature
+and epoch of the science itself in general. With yet greater assurance
+of carrying conviction with us, we may point in particular to the actual
+opinions of its present professors. We have seen already, in the
+consideration premised, that Mr. Huxley’s hypothesis of a protoplasm
+_matter_ is unsupported, even by the most innovating Germans, who as yet
+will not advance, the most advanced of them, beyond a protoplasm-cell;
+and that his whole argument is thus sapped in advance. But what
+threatens more absolute extinction of this argument still, _all_ the
+German physiologists do _not_ accept even the protoplasm-cell.
+Rindfleisch, for example, in his recently-published ‘Lehrbuch der
+pathologischen Gewebelehre’ speaks of the cell very much as we
+understand Virchow to have spoken of it. To him there is in the cell not
+only protoplasm but nucleus, and perhaps membrane as well. To him, too,
+the cell propagates itself quite as we have been hitherto fancying it to
+do, by division of the nucleus, increase of the protoplasm, and ultimate
+partition of the cell itself. Yet he knows withal of the opinions of
+others, and accepts them in a manner. He mentions Kühne’s account of the
+membrane as at first but a mere physical limit of two fluids—a mere
+peripheral film or curdling; still he assumes a formal and decided
+membrane at last. Even Leydig and Schultze, who shall be the express
+eliminators of the membrane—the one by initiation and the other by
+consummation—confess that, as regards the cells of certain tissues, they
+have never been able to detect in them the absence of a membrane.
+
+As regards the nucleus again, the case is very much stronger. When we
+have admitted with Brücke that certain cryptogam cells, with Haeckel
+that certain protists, with Cienkowsky that two monads, and with
+Schultze that one amoeba, are without nucleus—when we have admitted that
+division of the cell _may_ take place without implicating that of the
+nucleus—that the movements of the nucleus _may_ be passive and due to
+those of the protoplasm—that Baer and Stricker demonstrate the
+disappearance of the original nucleus in the impregnated egg,—when we
+have admitted this, we have admitted also all that can be said in
+degradation of the nucleus. Even those who say all this still attribute
+to the nucleus an important and unknown _rôle_, and describe the
+formation in the impregnated egg of a new nucleus; while there are
+others again who resist every attempt to degrade it. Böttcher asserts
+movement for the nucleus, even when wholly removed from the cell;
+Neumann points to such movement in dead or dying cells; and there is
+other testimony to a like effect, as well as to peculiarities of the
+nucleus otherwise that indicate spontaneity. In this reference we may
+allude to the weighty opinion of the late Professor Goodsir, who
+anticipated in so remarkable a manner certain of the determinations of
+Virchow. Goodsir, in that anticipation, wonderfully rich and ingenious
+as he is everywhere, is perhaps nowhere more interesting and successful
+than in what concerns the nucleus. Of the whole cell, the nucleus is to
+him, as it was to Schleiden, Schwann, and others, the most important
+element. And this is the view to which I, who have little business to
+speak, wish success. This universe is not an accidental cavity, in which
+an accidental dust has been accidentally swept into heaps for the
+accidental evolution of the majestic spectacle of organic and inorganic
+life. That majestic spectacle is a spectacle as plainly for the eye of
+reason as any diagram of the mathematician. That majestic spectacle
+could have been constructed, was constructed, only in reason, for
+reason, and by reason. From beyond Orion and the Pleiades, across the
+green hem of earth, up to the imperial personality of man, all, the
+furthest, the deadest, the dustiest, is for fusion in the invisible
+point of the single Ego—_which alone glorifies it_. _For_ the subject,
+and on the model of the subject, all is made. Therefore it is
+that—though, precisely as there are acephalous monsters by way of
+exception and deformity, there may be also at the very extremity of
+animated existence cells without a nucleus—I cannot help believing that
+this nucleus itself, as analogue of the subject will yet be proved the
+most important and indispensable of all the normal cell-elements. Even
+the phenomena of the impregnated egg seem to me to support this view. In
+the egg, on impregnation, it seems to me natural (I say it with a smile)
+that the old sun that ruled it should go down, and that a new sun,
+stronger in the combination of the new and the old, should ascend into
+its place!
+
+Be these things as they may, we have now overwhelming evidence before us
+for concluding, with reference to Mr. Huxley’s first proposition,
+that—in view of the nature of microscopic science—in view of the state
+of belief that obtains at present as regards nucleus, membrane, and
+entire cell—even in view of the supporters of protoplasm itself—Mr.
+Huxley is not authorized to speak of a physical matter of life; which,
+for the rest, if granted, would, for innumerable and, as it appears to
+me, irrefragable reasons, be obliged to acknowledge for itself, not
+identity, but an infinite diversity in power, in form and in substance.
+
+So much for the first proposition in Mr. Huxley’s essay, or that which
+concerns protoplasm, as a supposed matter of life, identical itself, and
+involving the identity of all the various organs and organisms which it
+is assumed to compose. What now of the second proposition, or that which
+concerns the materiality at once of protoplasm, and of all that is
+conceived to derive from protoplasm? In other words, though, so to
+speak, for organic bricks anything like an organic clay still awaits the
+proof, I ask, if the bricks are not the same because the clay is not the
+same, what if the materiality of the former is equally unsupported by
+the materiality of the latter? Or what if the functions of protoplasm
+are not properties of its mere molecular constitution?
+
+For this is Mr. Huxley’s second proposition, namely, That all vital and
+intellectual functions are but the properties of the molecular
+disposition and changes of the material basis (protoplasm) of which the
+various animals and vegetables consist. With the conclusions now before
+us, it is evident that to enter at all on this part of Mr. Huxley’s
+argumentation is, so far as we are concerned, only a matter of grace. In
+order that it should have any weight, we must grant the fact, at once of
+the existence of a matter of life, and of all organs and organisms being
+but aggregates of it. This, obviously, we cannot now do. By way of
+hypothesis, however, we may assume it. Let it be granted, then, that
+_pro hac vice_ there _is_ a physical basis of life with all the
+consequences named; and now let us see how Mr. Huxley proceeds to
+establish its materiality.
+
+The whole former part of Mr. Huxley’s essay consists (as said) of fifty
+paragraphs, and the argument immediately concerned is confined to the
+latter ten of them. This argument is the simple chemical analogy that,
+under stimulus of an electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen uniting into an
+equivalent weight of water, and, under stimulus of preëxisting
+protoplasm, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen uniting into an
+equivalent weight of protoplasm, there is the same warrant for
+attributing the properties of the consequent to the properties of the
+antecedents in the latter case as in the former. The properties of
+protoplasm are, in origin and character, precisely on the same level as
+the properties of water. The cases are perfectly parallel. It is as
+absurd to attribute a new entity vitality to protoplasm, as a new entity
+aquosity to water. Or, if it is by its mere chemical and physical
+structure that water exhibits certain properties called aqueous, it is
+also by its mere chemical and physical structure that protoplasm
+exhibits certain properties called vital. All that is necessary in
+either case is, “under certain conditions,” to bring the chemical
+constituents together. If water is a molecular complication, protoplasm
+is equally a molecular complication, and for the description of the one
+or the other there is no change of language required. A new substance
+with new qualities results in precisely the same way here, as a new
+substance with new qualities there; and the derivative qualities are not
+more different from the primitive qualities in the one instance, than
+the derivative qualities are different from the primitive qualities in
+the other. Lastly, the _modus operandi_ of preëxistent protoplasm is not
+more unintelligible than that of the electric spark. The conclusion is
+irresistible, then, that all protoplasm being reciprocally convertible,
+and consequently identical, the properties it displays, vitality and
+intellect included, are as much the result of molecular constitution as
+those of water itself.
+
+It is evident, then, that the fulcrum on which Mr. Huxley’s second
+proposition rests, is a single inference from a chemical analogy.
+Analogy, however, being never identity, is apt to betray. The difference
+it hides may be essential, that is, while the likeness it shows may be
+inessential—so far as the conclusion is concerned. That this mischance
+has overtaken Mr. Huxley here, it will, I fancy, not be difficult to
+demonstrate.
+
+The analogy to which Mr. Huxley trusts has two references: one, to
+chemical composition, and one to a certain stimulus that determines it.
+As regards chemical composition, we are asked, by virtue of the analogy
+obtaining, to identify, as equally simple instances of it, protoplasm
+here and water there; and, as regards the stimulus in question, we are
+asked to admit the action of the electric spark in the one case to be
+quite analogous to the action of preëxisting protoplasm in the other. In
+both references I shall endeavor to point out that the analogy fails;
+or, as we may say it also, that, even to Mr. Huxley, it can only seem to
+succeed by discounting the elements of difference that still subsist.
+
+To begin with chemical combination, it is not unjust to demand that the
+analogy which must be admitted to exist in that, and a general physical
+respect, should not be strained beyond its legitimate limits. Protoplasm
+cannot be denied to be a chemical substance; protoplasm cannot be denied
+to be a physical substance. As a compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen
+and nitrogen, it comports itself chemically—at least in ultimate
+instance—in a manner not essentially different from that in which water,
+as a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, comports itself chemically. In
+mere physical aspect, again, it may count quality for quality with water
+in the same aspect. In short, so far as it is on chemical and physical
+structure that the possession of distinctive properties in any case
+depends, both bodies may be allowed to be pretty well on a par. The
+analogy must be allowed to hold so far: so far but no farther. One step
+farther and we see not only that protoplasm has, like water, a chemical
+and physical structure; but that, unlike water, it has also an organized
+or organic structure. Now this, on the part of protoplasm, is a
+possession in excess; and with relation to that excess there can be no
+grounds for analogy. This, perhaps, is what Mr. Huxley has omitted to
+consider. When insisting on attributing to protoplasm the qualities it
+possessed, because of its chemical and physical structure, if it was for
+chemical and physical structure that we attributed to water _its_
+qualities, he has simply forgotten the addition to protoplasm of a third
+structure that can only be named organic. “If the phenomena exhibited by
+water are its properties, so are those presented by protoplasm, living
+or dead, its properties.” When Mr. Huxley speaks thus, Exactly so, we
+may answer: “living or dead!” That alternative is simply slipped in and
+passed; but it is in that alternative that the whole matter lies.
+Chemically, dead protoplasm is to Mr. Huxley quite as good as living
+protoplasm. As a sample of the article, he is quite content with dead
+protoplasm, and even swallows it, he says, in the shape of bread,
+lobster, mutton, etc., with all the satisfactory results to be
+desired.—Still, as concerns the argument, it must be pointed out that it
+is only these that can be placed on the same level as water; and that
+living protoplasm is not only unlike water, but it is unlike dead
+protoplasm. Living protoplasm, namely, is identical with dead protoplasm
+only so far as its chemistry is concerned (if even so much as that); and
+it is quite evident, consequently, that difference between the two
+cannot depend on that in which they are identical—cannot depend on the
+chemistry. Life, then, is no affair of chemical and physical structure,
+and must find its explanation in something else. It is thus that, lifted
+high enough, the light of the analogy between water and protoplasm is
+seen to go out. Water, in fact, when formed from hydrogen and oxygen,
+is, in a certain way and in relation to them, no new product; it has
+still, like them, only chemical and physical qualities; it is still, as
+they are, inorganic. So far as _kind_ of power is concerned, they are
+still on the same level. But not so protoplasm, where, with preservation
+of the chemical and physical likeness there is the addition of the
+unlikeness of life, of organization, and of ideas. But the addition is a
+new world—a new and higher world, the world of a self-realizing thought,
+the world of an _entelechy_. The change of language objected to by Mr.
+Huxley is thus a matter of necessity, for it is _not_ mere molecular
+complication that we have any longer before us, and the qualities of the
+derivative are essentially and absolutely different from the qualities
+of the primitive. If we did invent the term aquosity, then, as an
+abstract sign for all the qualities of water, we should really do very
+little harm; but aquosity and vitality would still remain essentially
+unlike. While for the invention of aquosity there is little or no call,
+however, the fact in the other case is that we are not only compelled to
+invent, but to _perceive_ vitality. We are quite willing to do as Mr.
+Huxley would have us to do: look on, watch the phenomena, and name the
+results. But just in proportion to our faithfulness in these respects is
+the necessity for the recognition of a new world and a new nomenclature.
+There are certainly different states of water, as ice and steam; but the
+relation of the solid to the liquid, or of either to the vapor, surely
+offers no analogy to the relation of protoplasm dead to protoplasm
+alive. That relation is not an analogy but an antithesis, the antithesis
+of antitheses. In it, in fact, we are in presence of the one
+incommunicable gulf—the gulf of all gulfs—that gulf which Mr. Huxley’s
+protoplasm is as powerless to efface as any other material expedient
+that has ever been suggested since the eyes of men first looked into
+it—the mighty gulf between death and life.
+
+The differences alluded to (they are, in order, organization and life,
+the objective idea—design, and the subjective idea—thought), it may be
+remarked, are admitted by those very Germans to whom protoplasm, name
+and thing, is due. They, the most advanced and innovating of them,
+directly avow that there is present in the cell “an architectonic
+principle that has not yet been detected.” In pronouncing protoplasm
+capable of active or vital movements, they do by that refer, they admit
+also, to an immaterial force, and they ascribe the processes exhibited
+by protoplasm—in so many words—not to the molecules, but to organization
+and life. It is remarked by Kant that “the reason of the specific mode
+of existence of every part of a living body lies in the whole, whilst
+with dead masses each part bears this reason within itself;” and this
+indeed is how the two worlds are differentiated. A drop of water, once
+formed, is there passive for ever, susceptible to influence, but
+indifferent to influence, and what influence reaches it is wholly from
+without. It may be added to, it may be subtracted from; but infinitely
+apathetic quantitatively, it is qualitatively independent. It is
+indifferent to its own physical parts. It is without contractility,
+without alimentation, without reproduction, without specific function.
+Not so the cell, in which the parts are dependent on the whole, and the
+whole on the parts; which has its activity and _raison d’être_ within;
+which manifests all the powers which we have described water to want;
+and which requires for its continuance conditions of which water is
+independent. It is only so far as organization and life are concerned,
+however, that the cell is thus different from water. Chemically and
+physically, as said, it can show with it quality for quality. How
+strangely Mr. Huxley’s deliverances show beside these facts! He can “see
+no break in the series of steps in molecular complication;” but,
+glaringly obvious, there is a step added that is not molecular at all,
+and that has its supporting conditions completely elsewhere. The
+molecules are as fully accounted for in protoplasm as in water; but the
+sum of qualities, thus exhausted in the latter, is not so exhausted in
+the former, in which there are qualities due, plainly, not to the
+molecules as molecules, but to the form into which they are thrown, and
+the force that makes that form one. When the chemical elements are
+brought together, Mr. Huxley says, protoplasm is formed, “and this
+protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life;” but he ought to have added
+that these phenomena are themselves added to the phenomena for which all
+that relates to chemistry stands, and are there, consequently, only by
+reason of some other determinant. New consequents necessarily demand new
+antecedents. “We think fit to call different kinds of matter carbon,
+oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers and
+activities of these substances as the properties of the matter of which
+they are composed.” That, doubtless, is true, we say; but such
+statements do not exhaust the facts. We call water hydrogen and oxygen,
+and attribute _its_ properties to the properties of them. In a chemical
+point of view, we ought to do the same thing for ice and steam; yet, for
+all the chemical identity, water is not ice, nor is either steam. Do we,
+then, in these cases, make nothing of the _difference_, and in its
+despite enjoy the satisfaction of viewing the three as one? Not so; we
+ask a reason for the difference; we demand an antecedent that shall
+render the consequent intelligible. The chemistry of oxygen and hydrogen
+is not enough in explanation of the threefold form; and by the very
+necessity of the facts we are driven to the addition of heat. It is
+precisely so with protoplasm in its twofold form. The chemistry
+remaining the same in each (if it really does so), we are compelled to
+seek elsewhere a reason for the difference of living from dead
+protoplasm. As the differences of ice and steam from water lay not in
+the hydrogen and oxygen, but in the heat, so the difference of living
+from dead protoplasm lies not in the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen,
+and the nitrogen, but in the vital organization. In all cases, for the
+new quality, plainly, we must have a new explanation. The qualities of a
+steam-engine are not the results of its simple chemistry. We do apply to
+protoplasm the same conceptions, then, that are legitimate elsewhere,
+and in allocating properties and explaining phenomena we simply insist
+on Mr. Huxley’s own distinction of “living or dead.” That, in fact, is
+to us the distinction of distinctions, and we admit no vital action
+whatever, not even the dullest, to be the result of the _molecular_
+action of the protoplasm that displays it. The very protoplasm of the
+nettle-sting, with which Mr. Huxley begins, is already vitally
+organized, and in that organization as much superior to its own
+molecules as the steam-engine, in its mechanism, to its own wood and
+iron. It were indeed as rational to say that there is no principle
+concerned in a steam-engine or a watch but that of its molecular forces,
+as to make this assertion of organized matter. Still there are degrees
+in organization, and the highest forms of life are widely different from
+the lowest. Degrees similar we see even in the inorganic world. The
+persistent flow of a river is, to the mighty reason of the solar system,
+in some such proportion, perhaps, as the rhizopod to man. In protoplasm,
+even the lowest, then, but much more conspicuously in the highest, there
+is, in addition to the molecular force, another force unsignalized by
+Mr. Huxley—the force of vital organization.
+
+But this force is a rational unity, and that is an idea; and this I
+would point to as a second form of the addition to the chemistry and
+physics of protoplasm. We have just seen, it is true, that an idea may
+be found in inorganic matter, as in the solar and sidereal systems
+generally. But the idea in organized matter is not one operative, so to
+speak, from without: it is one operative from within, and in an
+infinitely more intimate and pervading manner. The units that form the
+complement of an inorganic system are but independently and externally
+in place, like units in a procession; but in what is organized there is
+no individual that is not sublated into the unity of the single life.
+This is so even in protoplasm. Mr. Huxley, it is true, desiderates, as
+result of mere ordinary chemical process, a life-stuff in mass, as it
+were in the web, to which he has only to resort for cuttings and
+cuttings in order to produce, by aggregation, what organized individual
+he pleases. But the facts are not so: we cannot have protoplasm in the
+web, but the piece. There is as yet no _matter_ of life; there are still
+_cells_ of life. It is no shred of protoplasm—no spoonful or
+toothpickful—that can be recognized as adequate to the function and the
+name. Such shred may wriggle a moment, but it produces nought, and it
+dies. In the smallest, lowest protoplasm-cell, then, we have this
+rational unity of a complement of individuals that only are for the
+whole and exist in the whole. This is an idea, therefore; this is
+design: the organized concert of many to a single common purpose. The
+rudest savage that should, as in Paley’s illustration, find a watch, and
+should observe the various contrivances all controlled by the single end
+in view, would be obliged to acknowledge—though in his own way—that what
+he had before him was no mere physical, no mere molecular product. So in
+protoplasm: even from the first, but, quite undeniably, in the completed
+organization at last, which alone it was there to produce; for a single
+idea has been its one manifestation throughout. And in what machinery
+does it not at length issue? Was it molecular powers that invented a
+respiration—that perforated the posterior ear to give a balance of
+air—that compensated the _fenestra ovalis_ by a _fenestra rotunda_—that
+placed in the auricular sacs those _otolithes_, those express stones for
+hearing? Such machinery! The _chordæ tendineæ_ are to the valves of the
+heart exactly adjusted check-strings; and the contractile _columnæ
+carneæ_ are set in, under contraction and expansion, to equalize their
+length to their office. Membranes, rods, and liquids—it required the
+express experiment of man to make good the fact that the inventor of the
+ear had availed himself of the most perfect apparatus possible for his
+purpose. And are we to conceive such machinery, such apparatus, such
+contrivances merely molecular? Are molecules adequate to such
+things—molecules in their blind passivity, and dead, dull insensibility?
+Is it to molecular agency Mr. Huxley himself owes that “singular inward
+laboratory” of which he speaks, and without which all the protoplasm in
+the world would be useless to him? Surely, in the presence of these
+manifest ideas, it is impossible to attribute the single peculiar
+feature of protoplasm—its vitality, namely—to mere molecular chemistry.
+Protoplasm, it is true, breaks up into carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
+nitrogen, as water does into hydrogen and oxygen; but the watch breaks
+similarly up into mere brass, and steel, and glass. The loose materials
+of the watch—even its chemical material if you will—replace its weight,
+quite as accurately as the constituents carbon, etc., replace the weight
+of the protoplasm. But neither these nor those replace the vanished
+idea, which was alone the important element. Mr. Huxley saw no break in
+the series of steps in molecular complication; but, though not
+molecular, it is difficult to understand what more striding, what more
+absolute break could be desired than the break into an idea. It is of
+that break alone that we think in the watch; and it is of that break
+alone that we should think in the protoplasm which, far more cunningly,
+far more rationally, constructs a heart, an eye or an ear. That is the
+break of breaks, and explain it as we may, we shall never explain it by
+molecules.
+
+But, if inorganic elements as such are inadequate to account either for
+vital organization or the objective idea of design, much more are they
+inadequate, in the third place, to account for the subjective idea, for
+the phenomena of thought as thought. Yet Mr. Huxley tells us that
+thought is but the expression of the molecular changes of protoplasm.
+This he only tells us; this he does not prove. He merely says that, if
+we admit the functions of the lowest forms of life to be but “direct
+results of the nature of the matter of which they are composed,” we must
+admit as much for the functions of the highest. We have not admitted Mr.
+Huxley’s presupposition; but, even with its admission, we should not
+feel bound to admit his conclusion. In such a mighty system of
+differences, there are ample room and verge enough for the introduction
+of new motives. We can say here at once, in fact, that as thought, let
+its connection be what it may with, has never been proved to result
+from, organization, no improvement of the proof required will be found
+in protoplasm. No one power that Mr. Huxley signalizes in protoplasm can
+account for thought: not alimentation, and not reproduction, certainly;
+but not even contractility. We have seen already that there is no proof
+of contraction being necessary even for the simplest sensation; but much
+less is there any proof of a necessity of contraction for the inner and
+independent operations of the mind. Mr. Huxley himself admits this. He
+says: “Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action are, in the
+long-run, resolvable into muscular contraction;” and so, “even those
+manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will, which we rightly
+name the higher faculties, are not excluded from this classification,
+inasmuch as to every one _but the subject of them_, they are known only
+as transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body.”
+The concession is made here, we see that these manifestations are
+differently known to the subject of them. But we may first object that,
+if even that privileged “every one but the subject” were limited to a
+knowledge of contractions, he would not know much. It is only because he
+knows, first of all, a thinker and willer of contractions that these
+themselves cease to be but passing externalities, and transitory
+contingencies. Neither is it reasonable to assert an identity of nature
+for contractions, and for that which they only represent. It would
+hardly be fair to confound either the receiver or the sender of a
+telegraphic message, with the movements which alone bore it, and without
+which it would have been impossible. The sign is not the thing
+signified, it is but the servant of the signifier—his own arbitrary
+mark—and intelligible, in the first place, only to him. It is the
+meaning, in all cases, that is alone vital; the sign is but an accident.
+To convert the internality into the arbitrary externality that simply
+expresses it, is for Mr. Huxley only an oversight. Your ideas are made
+known to your neighbors by contractions, therefore your ideas are of the
+same nature as contractions! Or, even to take it from the other side,
+your neighbor perceives in you contractions only, and therefore your
+ideas are contractions! Are not the vital elements here present the two
+correspondent internalities, between which the contractions constitute
+but an arbitrary chain of external communication, that is so now, but
+may be otherwise again? The ringing of the bell at the window is not
+precisely the dwarf within. Nor are Engineer Chappe’s “wooden arms and
+elbow-joints jerking and fugling in the air,” to be identified with
+Engineer Chappe himself. For the higher faculties, even for speech,
+etc., assuredly Mr. Huxley might have well spared himself this
+superfluous and inapplicable reference to contraction.
+
+But, in the middle of it, as we have seen, Mr. Huxley concedes that
+these manifestations are differently known to the subject of them. If
+so, what becomes of his assertion of but a certain number of powers for
+protoplasm? The manifestations of the higher faculties are not known to
+the subject of them by contraction, etc. By what, then, are they known?
+According to Mr. Huxley, they can only be known by the powers of
+protoplasm; and therefore, by his own showing, protoplasm must possess
+powers other than those of his own assertion. Mr. Huxley’s one great
+power of contractility, Mr. Huxley himself confesses to be inapplicable
+here. Indeed, in his Physiology (p. 193), he makes such an avowal as
+this: “We class _sensations_, along with _emotions_, and _volitions_,
+and _thoughts_, under the common head of states of _consciousness_; but
+what consciousness is we know not, and how it is that anything so
+remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of
+irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of
+the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the story.” Consciousness
+plainly was not muscular contraction to Mr. Huxley when he wrote his
+Physiology; it is only since then that he has gone over to the assertion
+of no power in protoplasm but the triple power, contractility, etc. But
+the truth is only as his Physiology has it—the cleft is simply, as Mr.
+Huxley acknowledges it there, absolute. On one side, there is the world
+of externality, where all is body by body, and away from one another—the
+boundless reciprocal exclusion of the infinite object. On the other
+side, there is the world of internality, where all is soul to soul, and
+away into one another—the boundless reciprocal inclusion of the infinite
+subject. This—even while it is true that, for subject to be subject, and
+object, object, the boundless intussuscepted multiplicity of the single
+invisible point of the one is but the dimensionless casket into which
+the illimitable Genius of the other must retract and withdraw itself—is
+the difference of differences; and certainly it is not internality that
+can be abolished before externality. The proof for the absoluteness of
+thought, the subject, the mind, is, on its side, pretty well perfect. It
+is not necessary here, however, to enter into that proof at length.
+Before passing on, I may simply point to the fact that, if thought is to
+be called a function of matter, it must be acknowledged to be a function
+wholly peculiar and unlike any other. In all other functions, we are
+present to processes which are in the same sense physical as the organs
+themselves. So it is with lung, stomach, liver, kidney, where every step
+can be followed, so to speak, with eye and hand; but all is changed when
+we have to do with mind as the function of brain. Then, indeed, as Mr.
+Huxley thought in his Physiology, we are admitted, as if by touch of
+Aladdin’s lamp, to a world absolutely different and essentially new—to a
+world, on its side of the incommunicable cleft, as complete, entire,
+independent, self-contained, and absolutely _sui generis_, as the world
+of matter on the other side. It will be sufficient here to allude to as
+much as this, with special reference to the fact that, so far as this
+argument is concerned, protoplasm has not introduced any the very
+slightest difference. All the ancient reasons for the independence of
+thought as against organization, can be used with even more striking
+effect as against protoplasm; but it will be sufficient to indicate
+this, so much are the arguments in question a common property now.
+Thought, in fact, brings with it its own warrant; or it brings with it,
+to use the phrase of Burns, “its patent of nobility direct from Almighty
+God.” And that is the strongest argument on this whole side. Throughout
+the entire universe, organic and inorganic, thought is the controlling
+sovereign; nor does matter anywhere refuse its allegiance. So it is in
+thought, too, that man has _his_ patent of nobility, believes that he is
+created in the image of God, and knows himself a free-man of infinitude.
+
+But the analogy, in the hands of Mr. Huxley, has, we have seen, a second
+reference—that, namely, to the excitants, if we may call them so, which
+_determine_ combination. The _modus operandi_, Mr. Huxley tells us, of
+preëxisting protoplasm in determining the formation of new protoplasm,
+is not more unintelligible than the _modus operandi_ of the electric
+spark in determining the formation of water; and so both, we are left to
+infer, are perfectly analogous. The inferential turn here is rather a
+favorite with Mr. Huxley. “But objectors of this class,” he says on an
+earlier occasion, in allusion to those who hesitate to conclude from
+dead to living matter, “do not seem to reflect that it is also, in
+strictness, true that we know nothing about the composition of any body
+whatever as it is.” In the same neighborhood, too, he argues that,
+though impotent to restore to decomposed calc-spar its original form, we
+do not hesitate to accept the chemical analysis assigned to it, and
+should not, consequently, any more hesitate because of any mere
+difference of form to accept the analysis of dead for that of living
+protoplasm. It is certainly fair to point out that, if we bear ignorance
+and impotence with equanimity in one case, we may equally so bear them
+in another; but it is not fair to convert ignorance into knowledge, nor
+impotence into power. Yet it is usual to take such statements loosely,
+and let them pass. It is not considered that, if we know nothing about
+the composition of any body whatever as it is, then we do know nothing,
+and that it is strangely idle to offer absolute ignorance as a support
+for the most dogmatic knowledge. If such statements are, as is really
+expected for them, to be accepted, yet not accepted, they are the
+stultification of all logic. Is the chemistry of living to be seen to be
+the same as the chemistry of dead protoplasm, because we know nothing
+about the composition of any body whatever as it is? We know perfectly
+well that black is white, for we are absolutely ignorant of either as it
+is! The _form_ of the calc-spar, which (the spar) we _can_ analyze, we
+cannot restore; therefore the _form_ of the protoplasm, which we
+_cannot_ analyze, has nothing to do with the matter in hand; and the
+chemistry of what is dead may be accepted as the chemistry of what is
+living! In the case of reasoning so irrelevant it is hardly worth while
+referring to what concerns the forms themselves; that they are totally
+incommensurable, that in all forms of calc-spar there is no question but
+of what is physical, while in protoplasm the change of form is
+introduction into an entire new world. As in these illustrations, so in
+the case immediately before us. No appeal to ignorance in regard to
+something else, the electric spark, should be allowed to transform
+another ignorance, that of the action of preëxisting protoplasm, into
+knowledge, here into _the_ knowledge that the two unknown things,
+because of non-knowledge, are—perfectly analogous! That this analogy
+does not exist—that the electric spark and preëxisting protoplasm are,
+in their relative places, _not_ on the same chemical level—this is the
+main point for us to see; and Mr. Huxley’s allusion to our ignorance
+must not be allowed to blind us to it. Here we have in a glass vessel so
+much hydrogen and oxygen, into which we discharge an electric spark, and
+water is the result. Now what analogy is it possible to perceive between
+this production of water by external experiment and the production of
+protoplasm by protoplasm? The discrepancy is so palpable that it were
+impertinent to enlarge on it. The truth is just this, that the measured
+and mixed gases, the vessel, and the spark, in the one case, are as
+unlike the fortuitous food, the living organs, and the long process of
+assimilation in the other case, as the product water is unlike the
+product protoplasm. No; that the action of the electric spark should be
+unknown, is no reason why we should not insist on protoplasm for
+protoplasm, on life for life. Protoplasm can only be produced by
+protoplasm, and each of all the innumerable varieties of protoplasm,
+only by its own kind. For the protoplasm of the worm we must go to the
+worm, and for that of the toad-stool to the toad-stool. In fact, if all
+living beings come from protoplasm, it is quite as certain that, but for
+living beings, protoplasm would disappear. Without an egg you cannot
+have a hen—that is true; but it is equally true that, without a hen, you
+cannot have an egg. So in protoplasm; which, consequently, in the
+production of itself, offers no analogy to the production, or
+precipitation by the electric spark, not of itself, but of water.
+Besides, if for protoplasm, preëxisting protoplasm, is always necessary,
+how was there ever a first protoplasm?
+
+Generally, then, Mr. Huxley’s analogy does not hold, whether in the one
+reference or the other, and Mr. Huxley has no warrant for the reduction
+of protoplasm to the mere chemical level which he assigns it in either.
+That level is brought very prominently forward in such expressions as
+these: That it is only necessary to bring the chemical elements
+“together,” “under certain conditions,” to give rise to the more complex
+body, protoplasm, just as there is a similar expedient to give rise to
+water; and that, under the influence of preëxisting living protoplasm,
+carbonic acid, water, and ammonia disappear, and an equivalent weight of
+protoplasm makes its appearance, just as, under the influence of the
+electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen disappear, and an equivalent weight
+of water makes its appearance. All this, plainly, is to assume for
+protoplasm such mere chemical place and nature as consist not with the
+facts. The cases are, in truth, not parallel, and the “certain
+conditions” are wholly diverse. All that is said we can do at will for
+water, but nothing of what is said can we do at will for protoplasm. To
+say we can feed protoplasm, and so make protoplasm at will produce
+protoplasm, is very much, in the circumstances, only to say, and is not
+to say, that, in this way, we make a chemical experiment. To insist on a
+chemical analogy, in fact, between water and protoplasm, is to omit the
+differences not covered by the analogy at all—thought, design, life, and
+all the processes of organization; and it is but simple procedure to
+omit these differences only by an appeal to ignorance elsewhere.
+
+It is hardly worth while, perhaps, to refer now again to the
+difference—here, however, once more incidentally suggested—between
+protoplasm and protoplasm. Mr. Huxley, that is, almost in his very last
+word on this part of the argument, seems to become aware of the bearing
+of this on what relates to materiality, and he would again stamp
+protoplasm (and with it life and intellect), into an indifferent
+identity. In order that there should be no break between the lowest
+functions and the highest (the functions of the fungus and the functions
+of man), he has “endeavored to prove,” he says, that the protoplasm of
+the lowest organisms is “essentially identical with, and most readily
+converted into that of any animal.” On this alleged reciprocal
+_convertibility_ of protoplasm, then, Mr. Huxley would again found as
+well an inference of identity, as the further conclusion that the
+functions of the highest, not less than those of the lowest animals, are
+but the molecular manifestations of their common protoplasm.
+
+Plainly here it is only the consideration, not of function, but of the
+alleged reciprocal _convertibility_ that is left us now. Is this true,
+then? Is it true that every organism can digest every other organism,
+and that thus a relation of identity is established between that which
+digests and whatever is digested? These questions place Mr. Huxley’s
+general enterprise, perhaps, in the most glaring light yet; for it is
+very evident that there is an end of the argument if all foods and all
+feeders are essentially identical both with themselves and with each
+other. The facts of the case, however, I believe to be too well known to
+require a single word here on my part. It is not long since Mr. Huxley
+himself pointed out the great difference between the foods of plants and
+the foods of animals; and the reader may be safely left to think for
+himself of _ruminantia_ and _carnivora_, of soft bills and hard bills,
+of molluscs and men. Mr. Huxley talks feelingly of the possibility of
+himself feeding the lobster quite as much as of the lobster feeding him;
+but such pathos is not always applicable; it is not likely that a sponge
+would be to the stomach of Mr. Huxley any more than Mr. Huxley to the
+stomach of a sponge.
+
+But a more important point is this, that the functions themselves remain
+quite apart from the alleged convertibility. We can neither acquire the
+functions of what we eat, nor impart our functions to what eats us. We
+shall not come to fly by feeding on vultures, nor they to speak by
+feeding on us. No possible manure of human brains will enable a
+corn-field to reason. But if functions are inconvertible, the
+convertibility of the protoplasm is idle. In this inconvertibility,
+indeed, functions will be seen to be independent of mere chemical
+composition. And that is the truth: for functions there is more required
+than either chemistry or physics.
+
+It is to be acknowledged—to notice one other incidental suggestion, for
+the sake of completeness, and by way of transition to the final
+consideration of possible objections—that Mr. Huxley would be very much
+assisted in his identification of differences, were but the theories of
+the molecularists, on the one hand, and of Mr. Darwin, on the other,
+once for all established. The three modes of theorizing indicated,
+indeed, are not without a tendency to approach one another; and it is
+precisely their union that would secure a definitive triumph for the
+doctrine of materialism. Mr. Huxley, as we have seen—though what he
+desiderates is an auto-plastic living _matter_ that, produced by
+ordinary chemical processes, is yet capable of continuing and developing
+itself into new and higher forms—still begins with the egg. Now the
+theory of the molecularists would, for its part, remove all the
+difficulties that, for materialism, are involved in this beginning; it
+would place protoplasm undeniably at length on a merely chemical level;
+and would fairly enable Mr. Darwin, supplemented by such a life-stuff,
+to account by natural means for everything like an idea or thought that
+appears in creation. The misfortune is, however, that we must believe
+the theory of the molecularists still to await the proof; while the
+theory of Mr. Darwin has many difficulties peculiar to itself. This
+theory, philosophically, or in ultimate analysis, is an attempt to prove
+that design, or the objective idea, especially in the organic world, is
+developed _in time_ by natural means. The time which Mr. Darwin demands,
+it is true, is an infinite time; and he thus gains the advantage of his
+processes being allowed greater _clearness_ for the understanding, in
+consequence of the _obscurity_ of the infinite past in which they are
+placed, and of which it is difficult in the first instance to deny any
+possibility whatever. Still it remains to be asked, Are such processes
+credible in any time? What Mr. Darwin has done in aid of his view is,
+first, to lay before us a knowledge of facts in natural history of
+surprising richness; and, second, to support this knowledge by an
+inexhaustible ingenuity of hypothesis in arrangement of appearances.
+Now, in both respects, whether for information or even interest, the
+value of Mr. Darwin’s contribution will probably always remain
+independent of the argument or arguments that might destroy his leading
+proposition; and it is with this proposition that we have here alone to
+do. As said, we ask only, Is it true that the objective idea, the design
+which we see in the organized world, is the result in infinite time of
+the necessary adaption of living structures to the peculiarities of the
+conditions by which they are surrounded?
+
+Against this theory, then, its own absolute generalization may be viewed
+as our first objection. In ultimate abstraction, that is, the only
+agency postulated by Mr. Darwin is time—infinite time; and as regards
+actually existent beings and actually existent conditions, it is hardly
+possible to deny any possibility whatever to infinitude. If told, for
+example, that the elephant, if only obliged _infinitely_ to run, might
+be converted into the stag, how should we be able to deny? So also, if
+the lengthening of the giraffe’s neck were hypothetically attributed to
+a succession of dearths in infinite time that only left the leaves of
+trees for long-necked animals to live on, we should be similarly
+situated as regards denial. Still it can be pointed out that ingenuity
+of natural conjecture has, in such cases, no less wide a field for the
+negation than for the affirmation; and that, on the question of fact,
+nothing is capable of being determined. But we can also say more than
+that—we can say that any fruitful application even of _infinite time_ to
+the _general problem of difference_ in the world is inconceivable. To
+explain all from an absolute beginning requires us to commence with
+nothing; but to this nothing time itself is an addition. Time is an
+entity, a something, a difference added to the original identity: whence
+or how came time? Time cannot account for its own self; how is it that
+there is such a thing as time? Then no conceivable brooding even of
+infinite time could hatch the infinitude of space. How is it there is
+such a thing as space? No possible clasps of time and space, further,
+could ever conceivably thicken into matter. How is it there is such a
+thing as matter? Lastly, so far, no conceivable brooding, or even
+gyrating, of a single matter in time and space could account for the
+specification of matter—carbon, gold, iodine, etc.—as we see and know
+it. Time, space, matter, and the whole inorganic world, thus remain
+impassive to the action even of infinite time; all _these_ differences
+remain incapable of being accounted for so.
+
+But suppose no curiosity had ever been felt in this reference, which,
+though scientifically indefensible, is quite possible, how about the
+transition of the inorganic into the organic? Mr. Huxley tells us that,
+for food, the plant needs nothing but its bath of smelling-salts.
+Suppose this bath now—a pool of a solution of carbonate of ammonia; can
+any action of sun, or air, or electricity, be conceived to develop a
+cell—or even so much lump-protoplasm—in this solution? The production of
+an initial cell in any such manner will not allow itself to be realized
+to thought. Then we have just to think for a moment of the vast
+differences into which, for the production of the present organized
+world, this cell must be distributed, to shake our heads and say we
+cannot well refuse anything to an infinite time, but still we must
+pronounce a problem of this reach hopeless.
+
+It is precisely in conditions, however, that Mr. Darwin claims a
+solution of this problem. Conditions concern all that relates to air,
+heat, light, land, water, and whatever they imply. Our second objection,
+consequently, is, that conditions are quite inadequate to account for
+present organized differences, from a single cell. Geological time, for
+example, falls short, after all, of infinite time; or, in known
+geological eras, let us calculate them as liberally as we may, there is
+not time enough to account for the presently-existing varieties, from
+one, or even several, primordial forms. So to speak, it is not _in_
+geological time to account for the transformation of the elephant into
+the stag from acceleration, or for that of the stag into the elephant
+from retardation, of movement. And we may speak similarly of the growth
+of the neck of the giraffe, or even of the elevation of the monkey into
+man. Moreover, time apart, conditions have no such power in themselves.
+It is impossible to conceive of animal or vegetable effluvia ever
+creating the nerve by which they are felt, and so gradually the
+Schneiderian membrane, nose, and whole olfactory apparatus. Yet these
+effluvia are the conditions of smell, and, _ex hypothesi_, ought to have
+created it. Did light, or did the pulsations of the air, ever by any
+length of time, indent into the sensitive cell, eyes, and a pair of
+eyes—ears, and a pair of ears? Light conceivably might shine for ever
+without such a wonderfully complicated result as an eye. Similarly, for
+delicacy and marvellous ingenuity of structure, the ear is scarcely
+inferior to the eye; and surely it is possible to think of a whole
+infinitude of those fitful and fortuitous air-tremblings, which we call
+sound, without indentation into anything whatever of such an organ.
+
+A third objection to Mr. Darwin’s theory is, that the play of natural
+contingency in regard to the vicissitudes of conditions, has no title to
+be named _selection_. Naturalists have long known and spoken of the
+“influence of accidental causes;” but Mr. Darwin was the first to apply
+the term _selection_ to the action of these, and thus convert accident
+into design. The agency to which Mr. Darwin attributes all the changes
+which he would signalize in animals is really the fortuitous contingency
+of brute nature; and it is altogether fallacious to call such process,
+or such non-process, by a term involving foresight and a purpose. We
+have here, indeed, only a metaphor wholly misapplied. The German writer
+who, many years ago, said “even the _genera_ are wholly a prey to the
+changes of the external universal life,” saw precisely what Mr. Darwin
+sees, but it never struck him to style contingency selection. Yet, how
+dangerous, how infectious, has not this ungrounded metaphor proved! It
+has become a _principle_, a _law_, and been transferred by very genuine
+men into their own sciences of philology and what not. People will
+wonder at all this by-and-by. But to point out the inapplicability of
+such a word to the processes of nature referred to by Mr. Darwin, is to
+point out also the impossibility of any such contingencies proceeding,
+by graduated rise, from stage to stage, into the great symmetrical
+organic system—the vast plan—the grand harmonious whole—by which we are
+surrounded. This rise, this system, is really the objective idea; but it
+is utterly incapable of being accounted for by any such agency as
+natural contingency in geological, or infinite, or any time. But it is
+this which the word selection tends to conceal.
+
+We may say, lastly, in objection, here, that, in the fact of “reversion”
+or “atavism,” Mr. Darwin acknowledges his own failure. We thus see that
+the species as species is something independent, and holds its own
+_insita vis naturæ_ within itself.
+
+Probably it is not his theory, then, that gives value to Mr. Darwin’s
+book; nor even his ready ingenuity, whatever interest it may lend: it is
+the material information it contains. The ingenuity, namely, verges
+somewhat on that Humian expedient of natural conjecture so copiously
+exemplified, on occasion of a few trite texts, in Mr. Buckle. But that
+natural conjecture is always insecure, equivocal, and many-sided. It may
+be said that ancient warfare, for example, giving victory always to the
+personally ablest and bravest, must have resulted in the improvement of
+the race; or that, the weakest being always necessarily left at home,
+the improvement was balanced by deterioration; or that the ablest were
+necessarily the most exposed to danger, and so, etc., etc., according,
+to ingenuity _usque ad infinitum_. Trustworthy conclusion is not
+possible to this method, but only to the induction of facts, or to
+scientific demonstration.
+
+Neither molecularists nor Darwinians, then, are able to level out the
+difference between organic and inorganic, or between genera and genera
+or species and species. The differences persist despite of both; the
+distributed identity remains unaccounted for. Nor, consequently, is Mr.
+Darwin’s theory competent to explain the objective idea by any reference
+to time and conditions. Living beings do exist in a mighty chain from
+the moss to the man; but that chain, far from founding, is founded in
+the idea, and is not the result of any mere natural _growth_ of this
+into that. That chain is itself the most brilliant stamp, the
+sign-manual, of design. On every ledge of nature, from the lowest to the
+highest, there is a life that is _its_,—a creature to represent it,
+reflect it—so to speak, pasture on it. The last, highest, brightest link
+of this chain is man; the incarnation of thought itself, which is the
+summation of this universe; man, that includes in himself all other
+links and their single secret—the personified universe, the subject of
+the world. Mr. Huxley makes but small reference to thought; he only
+tucks it in, as it were, as a mere appendicle of course.
+
+It may be objected, indeed—to reach the last stage in this
+discussion—that, if Mr. Huxley has not disproved the conception of
+thought and life “as a something which works through matter, but is
+independent of it,” neither have we proved it. But it is easy for us to
+reply that, if “_independent of_” means here “_unconnected with_,” we
+have had no such object. We have had no object whatever, in fact, but to
+resist, now the extravagant assertion that all organized tissue, from
+the lichen to Leibnitz, is alike in faculty, and again the equally
+extravagant assertion that life and thought are but ordinary products of
+molecular chemistry. As regards the latter assertion, we have endeavored
+to show that the processes of vital organization (as self-production,
+etc.) belong to another sphere, higher than, and very different from,
+those of mechanical juxtaposition or chemical neutralization; that life,
+then, is no mere product of matter as matter; that if no life can be
+pointed to independent of matter, neither is there any life-stuff
+independent of life; and that life, consequently, adds a new and higher
+force to chemistry, as chemistry a new and higher force to mechanics,
+etc. As for thought, the endeavor was to show that it was as independent
+on the one side as matter on the other, that it controlled, used,
+summed, and was the reason of matter. Thought, then, is not to be
+reached by any bridge from matter, that is a hybrid of both, and
+explains the connection. The relation of matter to mind is not to be
+explained as a transition, but as a _contrecoup_. In this relation,
+however, it is not the material, but the mental side, which the whole
+universe declares to be the dominant one.
+
+As regards any objection to the arguments which we have brought against
+the identity of protoplasm, again, these will lie in the phrase,
+probably, “difference not of kind, but degree,” or in the word
+“modification.” The “phrase” may be now passed, for generic or specific
+difference must be allowed in protoplasm, if not for the overwhelming
+reason that an infinitude of various kinds exist in it, each of which is
+self-productive and uninterchangeable with the rest, then for Mr.
+Huxley’s own reason, that plants assimilate inorganic matter and animals
+only organic. As for the objection “modification,” again, the same
+consideration of generic difference must prove fatal to it. This were
+otherwise, indeed, could but the molecularists and Mr. Darwin succeed in
+destroying generic difference; but in this, as we have seen, they have
+failed. And this will be always so: who dogs identity, difference dogs
+him. It is quite a justifiable endeavor, for example, to point out the
+identity that obtains between veins and arteries on the one hand, as
+between these and capillaries on the other; but all the time the
+difference is behind us; and when we turn to look, we see, for
+circulation, the valves of the veins and the elastic coats of the
+arteries as opposed to one another, and, for irrigation, the permeable
+walls of the capillaries as opposed to both.
+
+Generic differences exist then, and we cannot allow the word
+“modification” to efface them in the interest of the identity claimed
+for protoplasm. Brain-protoplasm is not bone-protoplasm, nor the
+protoplasm of the fungus the protoplasm of man. Similarly, it is very
+questionable how far the word “modification” will warrant us in
+regarding with Mr. Huxley the “ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the
+nettle as identical with the protoplasm of its sting. Things that
+originate alike may surely eventuate in others which, chemically and
+vitally, far from being mere modifications, must be pronounced totally
+different. Such eventuation must be held competent to what can only be
+named generic or specific difference. The “child” is only “_father_ of
+the man”—it is not the man; who, moreover, in the course of an ordinary
+life, we are told, has totally changed himself, not once, but many
+times, retaining at the last not one single particle of matter with
+which he set out. Such eventuations, whether called modifications or
+not, certainly involve essential difference. And so situated are the
+“ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the nettle, which, whether
+compared with the protoplasm of the nettle-sting, or with that in which
+they originated, must be held to here assumed, by their own actions,
+indisputable differences, physical, chemical, and vital, or in form,
+substance, and faculty.
+
+Much, in fact, depends on definition here; and, in reference to
+modification, it may be regarded as arbitrary when identity shall be
+admitted to cease and difference to begin. There are the old Greek
+puzzles of the Bald Head and the Heap, for example. How many grains, or
+how many hairs, may we remove before a heap of wheat is no heap, or a
+head of hair bald? These concern quantity alone; but, in other cases,
+bone, muscle, brain, fungus, tree, man, there is not only a
+quantitative, but a qualitative difference; and in regard to such
+differences, the word modification can be regarded as but a cloak, under
+which identity is to be shuffled into difference, but remain identity
+all the same. The brick is but modified clay, Mr. Huxley intimates, bake
+it and paint it as you may; but is the difference introduced by the
+baking and painting to be ignored? Is what Mr. Huxley calls the
+“artifice” not to be taken into account, leave alone the “potter?” The
+strong firm rope is about as exact an example of modification
+proper—modification of the weak loose hemp—as can well be found; but are
+we to exclude from our consideration the whole element of difference due
+to the hand and brain of man? Not far from Burn’s Monument, on the
+Calton Hill of Edinburgh, there lies a mass of stones which is
+potentially a church, the former Trinity College Church. Were this
+church again realized, would it be fair to call it a mere modification
+of the previous stones? Look now to the egg and the full-feathered fowl.
+Chaucer describes to us the cock, “hight chaunteclere,” that was to his
+“faire Pertelotte” so dear:—
+
+            “His comb was redder than the fine corall,
+             Embattled, as it were a castle-wall;
+             His bill was black, and as the jet it shone;
+             Like azure were his legges and his tone (toes);
+             His nailes whiter than the lilie flour,
+             And like the burned gold was his color.”
+
+Would it be even as fair to call this fine fellow—comb, wattles, spurs,
+and all—a modified yolk, as to call the church but modified stones? If,
+in the latter case, an element of difference, altogether undeniable,
+seems to have intervened, is not such intervention at least quite as
+well marked in the former? It requires but a slight analysis to detect
+that all the stones in question are marked and numbered; but will any
+analysis point out within the shell the various parts that only need
+arrangement to become the fowl? Are the men that may take the stones,
+and, in a re-erected Trinity College Church, realize anew the idea of
+its architect, in any respect more wonderful than the unknown disposers
+of the materials of the fowl? That what realizes the idea should, in the
+one case, be from without, and, in the other, from within, is no reason
+for seeing more modification and less wonder in the latter than the
+former. There is certainly no more reason for seeing the fowl in the
+egg, and as identical with the egg, than for seeing a re-built Trinity
+College Church as identical with its unarranged materials. A part cannot
+be taken for the whole, whether in space _or in time_. Mr. Huxley misses
+this. He is so absorbed in the identity out of which, that he will not
+see the difference into which, progress is made. As the idea of the
+church has the stones, so the idea of the fowl has the egg, for its
+commencement. But to this idea, and in both cases, the terminal
+additions belong, quite as much as the initial materials. If the idea,
+then, add sulphur, phosphorus, iron, and what not, it must be credited
+with these not less than with the carbon, hydrogen, etc., with which it
+began. It is not fair to mutter modification, as if it were a charm to
+destroy all the industry of time. The protoplasm of the egg of the fowl
+is no more the fowl than the stones the church; and to identify, by
+juggle of a mere word, parts in time and wholes in time so different, is
+but self-deception. Nay, in protoplasm, as we have so often seen,
+difference is as much present at first as at last. Even in its germ,
+even in its initial identity, to call it so, protoplasm is already
+different, for it issues in differences infinite.
+
+Omission of the consideration of difference, it is to be acknowledged,
+is not now-a-days restricted to Mr. Huxley. In the wonder that is
+usually expressed, for example, at Oken’s _identification_ of the skull
+with so many vertebræ, it is forgot that there is still implicated the
+wonder which we ought to feel at the unknown power that could, in the
+end, so _differentiate_ them. If the cornea of the eye and the enamel of
+the teeth are alike but modified protoplasm, we must be pardoned for
+thinking more of the adjective than of the substantive. Our wonder is
+how, for one idea, protoplasm could become one thing here, and, for
+another idea, another so different thing there. We are more curious
+about the modification than the protoplasm. In the difference, rather
+than in the identity, it is, indeed, that the wonder lies. Here are
+several thousand pieces of protoplasm; analysis can detect no difference
+in them. They are to us, let us say, as they are to Mr. Huxley,
+identical in power, in form, and in substance; and yet on all these
+several thousand little bits of apparently indistinguishable matter an
+element of difference so pervading and so persistent has been impressed,
+that, of them all, not one is interchangeable with another! Each seed
+feeds its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more grow into
+the fly than it will grow into an elephant. Protoplasm is protoplasm:
+yes, but man’s protoplasm is man’s protoplasm, and the mushroom’s the
+mushroom’s. In short, it is quite evident that the word modification, if
+it would conceal, is powerless to withdraw, the difference; which
+difference, moreover, is one of kind and not of degree.
+
+This consideration of possible objections, then, is the last we have to
+attend to; and it only remains to draw the general conclusion. All
+animal and vegetable organisms are alike in power, in form, and in
+substance, only if the protoplasm of which they are composed is
+similarly alike; and the functions of all animal and vegetable organisms
+are but properties of the molecular affections of their chemical
+constituents, only if the functions of the protoplasm, of which they are
+composed, are but properties of the molecular affections of _its_
+chemical constituents. In disproof of the affirmative in both clauses,
+there has been no object but to demonstrate, on the one hand, the
+infinite non-identity of protoplasm, and, on the other, the dependence
+of its functions upon other factors than its molecular constituents.
+
+In short, the whole position of Mr. Huxley, that all organisms consist
+alike of the same life-matter, which life-matter is, for its part, due
+only to chemistry, must be pronounced untenable—nor less untenable the
+materialism he would found on it.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                   _ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION_:
+
+                       PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL.
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                                 ON THE
+
+                        HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION:
+
+                      _PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL_.
+
+“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
+    out of the mouth of God shall man live.” ch-hd-end There is
+    apparently considerable repugnance in the minds of many excellent
+    people to the acceptance, or even consideration, of the hypothesis
+    of development, or that of the gradual creation by descent, with
+    modification from the simplest beginnings, of the different forms of
+    the organic world. This objection probably results from two
+    considerations: first, that the human species is certainly involved,
+    and man’s descent from an ape asserted; and, secondly, that the
+    scheme in general seems to conflict with that presented by the
+    Mosaic account of the Creation, which is regarded as communicated to
+    its author by an infallible inspiration.
+
+    As the truth of the hypothesis is held to be infinitely probable by
+    a majority of the exponents of the natural sciences at the present
+    day, and is held as absolutely demonstrated by another portion, it
+    behooves those interested to restrain their condemnation, and on the
+    other hand to examine its evidences, and look any consequent
+    necessary modification of our metaphysical or theological views
+    squarely in the face.
+
+    The following pages state a few of the former; if they suggest some
+    of the latter, it is hoped that they may be such as any logical mind
+    would deduce from the premises. That they will coincide with the
+    spirit of the most advanced Christianity, I have no doubt; and that
+    they will add an appeal through the reason to that direct influence
+    of the Divine Spirit which should control the motives of human
+    action, seems an unavoidable conclusion.
+
+
+                         I. PHYSICAL EVOLUTION.
+
+    It is well known that a species is usually represented by a great
+    number of individuals, distinguished from all other similar
+    associations by more or less numerous points of structure, color,
+    size, etc., and by habits and instincts also, to a certain extent;
+    that the individuals of such associations reproduce their like, and
+    cannot be produced by individuals of associations or species which
+    present differences of structure, color, etc., as defined by
+    naturalists; that the individuals of any such series or species are
+    incapable of reproducing with those of any other species, with some
+    exceptions; and that in the latter cases the offspring are usually
+    entirely infertile.
+
+    The hypothesis of Cuvier assumes that each species was created by
+    Divine power as we now find it at some definite point of geologic
+    time. The paleontologist holding this view sees, in accordance
+    therewith, a succession of creations and destructions marking the
+    history of life on our planet from its commencement.
+
+    The development hypothesis states that all existing species have
+    been derived from species of preëxistent geological periods, as
+    offspring or by direct descent; that there have been no total
+    destructions of life in past time, but only a transfer of it from
+    place to place, owing to changes of circumstance; that the types of
+    structure become simpler and more similar to each other as we trace
+    them from later to earlier periods; and that finally we reach the
+    simplest forms consistent with one or several original parent types
+    of the great divisions into which living beings naturally fall.
+
+    It is evident, therefore, that the hypothesis does not include
+    change of species by hybridization, nor allow the descent of living
+    species from any other _living_ species: both these propositions are
+    errors of misapprehension or misrepresentation.
+
+    In order to understand the history of creation of a complex being,
+    it is necessary to analyze it and ascertain of what it consists. In
+    analyzing the construction of an animal or plant we readily arrange
+    its characters into those which it possesses in common with other
+    animals or plants, and those in which it resembles none other: the
+    latter are its _individual_ characters, constituting its
+    individuality. Next we find a large body of characters, generally of
+    a very obvious kind, which it possesses in common with a generally
+    large number of individuals, which, taken collectively, all men are
+    accustomed to call a species; these characters we consequently name
+    _specific_. Thirdly, we find characters, generally in parts of the
+    body which are of importance in the activities of the animal, or
+    which lie in near relation to its mechanical construction in
+    details, which are shared by a still larger number of individuals
+    than those which were similar in specific characters. In other
+    words, it is common to a large number of species. This kind of
+    character we call _generic_, and the grouping it indicates is a
+    genus.
+
+    Farther analysis brings to light characters of organism which are
+    common to a still greater number of individuals; this we call a
+    _family_ character. Those which are common to still more numerous
+    individuals are the _ordinal_: they are usually found in parts of
+    the structure which have the closest connection with the whole
+    life-history of the being. Finally, the individuals composing many
+    orders will be found identical in some important character of the
+    systems by which ordinary life is maintained, as in the nervous and
+    circulatory: the divisions thus outlined are called _classes_.
+
+    By this process of analysis we reach in our animal or plant those
+    peculiarities which are common to the whole animal or vegetable
+    kingdom, and then we have exhausted the structure so completely that
+    we have nothing remaining to take into account beyond the
+    cell-structure or homogeneous protoplasm by which we know that it is
+    organic, and not a mineral.
+
+    The history of the origin of a type, as species, genus, order, etc.,
+    is simply the history of the origin of the structure or structures
+    which define those groups respectively. It is nothing more nor less
+    than this, whether a man or an insect be the object of
+    investigation.
+
+
+                        EVIDENCES OF DERIVATION.
+
+                       α. Of Specific Characters.
+
+    The evidences of derivation of species from species, within the
+    limits of the genus, are abundant and conclusive. In the first
+    place, the rule which naturalists observe in defining species is a
+    clear consequence of such a state of things. It is not amount and
+    degree of difference that determine the definition of species from
+    species, but it is the _permanency_ of the characters in all cases
+    and under all circumstances. Many species of the systems include
+    varieties and extremes of form, etc., which, were they at all times
+    distinct, and not connected by intermediate forms, would be
+    estimated as species by the same and other writers, as can be easily
+    seen by reference to their works.
+
+    Thus, species are either “restricted” or “protean,” the latter
+    embracing many, the former few variations; and the varieties
+    included by the protean species are often as different from each
+    other in their typical forms as are the “restricted” species. As an
+    example, the species _Homo sapiens_ (man) will suffice. His primary
+    varieties are as distinct as the species of many well-known genera,
+    but cannot be defined, owing to the existence of innumerable
+    intermediate forms between them.
+
+    As to the common origin of such “varieties” of the protean species,
+    naturalists never had any doubt, yet when it comes to the restricted
+    “species,” the anti-developmentalist denies it _in toto_. Thus the
+    varieties of most of the domesticated animals are some of them
+    known—others held with great probability to have had a common
+    origin. Varieties of plumage in fowls and canaries are of every-day
+    occurrence, and are produced under our eyes. The cart-horse and
+    racer, the Shetland pony and the Norman, are without doubt derived
+    from the same parentage. The varieties of pigeons and ducks are of
+    the same kind, but not every one is aware of the extent and amount
+    of such variations. The varieties in many characters seen in hogs
+    and cattle, especially when examples from distant countries are
+    compared, are very striking, and are confessedly equal in degree to
+    those found to _define_ species in a state of nature: here, however,
+    they are not _definitive_.
+
+    It is easy to see that all that is necessary to produce in the mind
+    of the anti-developmentalist the illusion of distinct origin by
+    creation of many of these forms, would be to destroy a number of the
+    intermediate conditions of specific form and structure, and thus to
+    leave remaining definable groups of individuals, and therefore
+    “species.”
+
+    That such destructions and extinctions have been going on ever since
+    the existence of life on the globe is well known. That it should
+    affect intermediate forms, such as bind together the types of a
+    protean species as well as restricted species, is equally certain.
+    That its result has been to produce _definable_ species cannot be
+    denied, especially in consideration of the following facts: Protean
+    species nearly always have a wide geographical distribution. They
+    exist under more varied circumstances than do individuals of a more
+    restricted species. The subordinate variations of the protean
+    species are generally, like the restricted species, confined to
+    distinct subdivisions of the geographical area which the whole
+    occupies. As in geological time changes of level have separated
+    areas once continuous by bodies of water or high mountain ranges, so
+    have vast numbers of individuals occupying such areas been
+    destroyed. Important alterations of temperature, or great changes in
+    abundance or character of vegetable life over given areas, would
+    produce the same result.
+
+    This part of the subject might be prolonged, were it necessary, but
+    it has been ably discussed by Darwin. The _rationale_ of the “origin
+    of species” as stated by him may be examined a few pages farther on.
+
+                 β. Of the Characters of Higher Groups.
+
+    _a. Relations of Structures._ The evidences of derivative origin of
+    the structures defining the groups called genera, and all those of
+    higher grade, are of a very different character from those discussed
+    in relation to specific characters; they are more difficult of
+    observation and explanation.
+
+    Firstly: It would appear to be supposed by many that the creation of
+    organic types was an irregular and capricious process, variously
+    pursued by its Author as regards time and place, and without
+    definite final aim; and this notwithstanding the wonderful evidences
+    we possess, in the facts of astronomy, chemistry, sound, etc., of
+    His adhesion to harmonious and symmetrical sequences in His modes
+    and plans.
+
+    Such regularity of plan is found to exist in the relations of the
+    great divisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms as at present
+    existing on the earth. Thus, with animals we have a great class of
+    species which consists of nothing more than masses or cells of
+    protoplasmic matter, without distinct organs; or the Protozoa. We
+    have then the Cœlenterata (example, corals,) where the organism is
+    composed of many cells arranged in distinct parts, but where a
+    single very simple system of organs, forming the only internal
+    cavity of the body, does the work of the many systems of the more
+    complex animals. Next, the Echinodermata (such as star-fish) present
+    us with a body containing distinct systems of organs enclosed in a
+    visceral cavity, including a rudimental nervous system in the form
+    of a ring. In the Molluscs to this condition is added additional
+    complication, including extensions of the nervous system from the
+    ring as a starting-point, and a special organ for a heart. In the
+    Articulates (crabs, insects,) we have like complications, and a long
+    distinct nervous axis on the lower surface of the body. The last
+    branch or division of animals is considered to be higher, because
+    all the systems of life organs are most complex or specialized. The
+    nervous ring is almost obliterated by a great enlargement of its
+    usual ganglia, thus become a brain, which is succeeded by a long
+    axis on the upper side of the body. This and other points define the
+    Vertebrata.
+
+    Plans of structure, independent of the simplicity or perfection of
+    the special arrangement or structure of organs, also define these
+    great groups. Thus the Protozoa present a spiral, the Cœlenterata a
+    radiate, the Echinodermata a bilateral radiate plan. The Articulates
+    are a series of external rings, each in one or more respects
+    repeating the others. The Molluscs are a sac, while a ring above a
+    ring, joined together by a solid center-piece, represents the plan
+    of each of the many segments of the Vertebrates which give the
+    members of that branch their form.
+
+    These bulwarks of distinction of animal types are entered into here
+    simply because they are the most inviolable and radical of those
+    with which we have to deal, and to give the anti-developmentalist
+    the best foothold for his position. I will only allude to the
+    relations of their points of approach, as these are affected by
+    considerations afterward introduced.
+
+    The Vertebrates approach the Molluscs at the lowest extreme of the
+    former and higher of the latter. The lamprey eels of the one possess
+    several characters in common with the cuttle-fish or squids of the
+    latter. The amphioxus is called the lowest Vertebrate, and though it
+    is nothing else, the definition of the division must be altered to
+    receive it; it has no brain!
+
+    The lowest forms of the Molluscs and Articulates are scarcely
+    distinguishable from each other, so far as adhesion to the “plan” is
+    concerned, and some of the latter division are very near certain
+    Echinodermata. As we approach the boundary-lines of the two lowest
+    divisions, the approaches become equally close, and the boundaries
+    very obscure.
+
+    More instructive is the evidence of the relation of the subordinate
+    classes of any one of these divisions. The conditions of those
+    organs or parts which define classes exhibit a regular relation,
+    commencing with simplicity and ending with complication; first
+    associated with weak exhibitions of the highest functions of the
+    nervous system—at the last displaying the most exalted traits found
+    in the series.
+
+    For example: In the classes of Vertebrates we find the lowest
+    nervous system presents great simplicity—the brain cannot be
+    recognized; next (in lampreys), the end of the nervous axis is
+    subdivided, but scarcely according to the complex type that follows.
+    In fishes the cerebellum and cerebral hemispheres are minute, and
+    the intermediate or optic lobes very large: in the reptiles the
+    cerebral hemispheres exceed the optic lobes, while the cerebellum is
+    smaller. In birds the cerebellum becomes complex and the cerebrum
+    greatly increases. In mammals the cerebellum increases in complexity
+    or number of parts, the optic lobes diminish, while the cerebral
+    hemispheres become wonderfully complex and enlarged, bringing us to
+    the highest development, in man.
+
+    The history of the circulatory system in the Vertebrates is the
+    same.[45] First, a heart with one chamber, then one with two
+    divisions: three divisions belong to a large series, and the highest
+    possess four. The origins of the great artery of the body, the
+    aorta, are first five on each side: they lose one in the succeeding
+    class in the ascending scale, and one in each succeeding class or
+    order, till the Mammalia, including man, present us with but one on
+    one side.
+
+Footnote 45:
+
+      See a homological system of the circulatory system in the author’s
+      Origin of Genera, p. 22.
+
+    From an infinitude of such considerations as the above, we derive
+    the certainty that the general arrangement of the various groups of
+    the organic world is in scales, the subordinate within the more
+    comprehensive divisions. The identification of all the parts in such
+    a complexity of organism as the highest animals present, is a matter
+    requiring much care and attention, and constitutes the study of
+    homologies. Its pursuit has resulted in the demonstration that every
+    individual of every species of a given branch of the animal kingdom
+    is composed of elements common to all, and that the differences
+    which are so radical in the higher groups are but the modifications
+    of the same elemental parts, representing completeness or
+    incompleteness, obliteration or subdivision. Of the former character
+    are rudimental organs, of which almost every species possesses an
+    example in some part of its structure.
+
+    But we have other and still more satisfactory evidence of the
+    meaning of these relations. By the study of embryology we can prove
+    most indubitably that the simple and less complex are inferior to
+    the more complex. Selecting the Vertebrates again as an example, the
+    highest form of mammal—_e.g._, man—presents in his earliest stages
+    of embryonic growth a skeleton of cartilage, like that of the
+    lamprey: he also possesses five origins of the aorta and five slits
+    on the neck, both which characters belong to the lamprey and the
+    shark. If the whole number of these parts does not coexist in the
+    embryonic man, we find in embryos of lower forms more nearly related
+    to the lamprey that they do. Later in the life of the mammal but
+    four aortic origins are found, which arrangement, with the heart now
+    divided into two chambers, from a beginning as a simple tube, is
+    characteristic of the class of Vertebrates next in order—the bony
+    fishes. The optic lobes of the human brain have also at this time a
+    great predominance in size—a character above stated to be that of
+    the same class. With advancing development the infant mammal follows
+    the scale already pointed out. Three chambers of the heart and three
+    aortic origins follow, presenting the condition permanent in the
+    batrachia; and two origins, with enlarged cerebral hemispheres of
+    the brain, resemble the reptilian condition. Four heart-chambers,
+    and one aortic root on each side, with slight development of the
+    cerebellum, follow all characters defining the crocodiles, and
+    immediately precede the special conditions defining the mammals.
+    These are, the single aorta root from one side, and the full
+    development of the cerebellum: later comes that of the cerebrum also
+    in its higher mammalian and human traits.
+
+    Thus we see the order already pointed out to be true, and to be an
+    ascending one. This is the more evident as each type or class passes
+    through the conditions of those below it, as did the mammal; each
+    scale being shorter as its highest terminus is lower. Thus the
+    crocodile passes through the stage of the lamprey, the fish, the
+    batrachian and the reptile proper.
+
+    _b. In Time._ We have thus a scale of relations of existing forms of
+    animals and plants of a remarkable kind, and such as to stimulate
+    greatly our inquiries as to its significance. When we turn to the
+    remains of the past creation preserved to us in the deposits
+    continued throughout geologic time, we are not disappointed, for
+    great light is at once thrown upon the subject.
+
+    We find, in brief, that the lowest division of the animal kingdom
+    appeared first, and long before any type of a higher character was
+    created. The Protozoön, Eozoön, is the earliest of animals in
+    geologic time, and represents the lowest type of animal life now
+    existing. We learn also that the highest branch appeared last. No
+    remains of Vertebrates have been found below the lower Devonian
+    period, or not until the Echinoderms and Molluscs had reached a
+    great preëminence. It is difficult to be sure whether the Protozoa
+    had a greater numerical extent in the earliest periods than now, but
+    there can be no doubt that the Cœlenterata (corals) and Echinoderms
+    (crinoids) greatly exceeded their present bounds, in Paleozoic time,
+    so that those at present existing are but a feeble remnant. If we
+    examine the subdivisions known as classes, evidence of the nature of
+    the succession of creation is still more conclusive. The most
+    polyp-like of the Molluscs (brachiopoda) constituted the great mass
+    of its representatives during Paleozoic time. Among Vertebrates the
+    fishes appear first, and had their greatest development in size and
+    numbers during the earliest periods of the existence of the
+    division. Batrachia were much the largest and most important of land
+    animals during the Carboniferous period, while the higher
+    Vertebrates were unknown. The later Mesozoic periods saw the reign
+    of reptiles, whose position in structural development has been
+    already stated. Finally, the most perfect, the mammal, came upon the
+    scene, and in his humblest representatives. In Tertiary times
+    mammalia supplanted the reptiles entirely, and the unspiritual
+    mammals now yield to man, the only one of his class in whom the
+    Divine image appears.
+
+    Thus the structural relations, the embryonic characters, and the
+    successive appearance in time of animals coincide. The same is very
+    probably true of plants.
+
+    That the existing state of the geological record of organic types
+    should be regarded as anything but a fragment is, from our
+    stand-point, quite preposterous. And more, it may be assumed with
+    safety that when completed it will furnish us with a series of
+    regular successions, with but slight and regular interruptions, if
+    any, from the species which represented the simplest beginnings of
+    life at the dawn of creation, to those which have displayed
+    complication and power in later or in the present period.
+
+    For the labors of the paleontologist are daily bringing to light
+    structures intermediate between those never before so connected, and
+    thus creating lines of succession where before were only
+    interruptions. Many such instances might be adduced: two may be
+    selected as examples from American paleontology;[46] _i.e._, the
+    near approach to birds made by the reptiles Lælaps and Megadactylus;
+    and the combination of characters of the sub-orders of Cryptodire
+    and Pleurodire Tortoises in the Adocus of New Jersey.
+
+Footnote 46:
+
+      Professor Huxley, in the last anniversary lecture before the
+      Geological Society of London, recalls his opinion, enunciated in
+      1862, that “the positively-ascertained truths of Paleontology”
+      negative “the doctrines of progressive modification, which suppose
+      that modification to have taken place by a necessary progress from
+      more to less embryonic forms, from more to less generalized types,
+      within the limits of the period represented by the fossiliferous
+      rocks; that it shows no evidence of such modification; and as to
+      the nature of that modification, it yields no evidence whatsoever
+      that the earlier members of any long-continued group were more
+      generalized in structure than the later ones.”
+
+      Respecting this position, he says: “Thus far I have endeavored to
+      expand and enforce by fresh arguments, but not to modify in any
+      important respect, the ideas submitted to you on a former
+      occasion. But when I come to the propositions respecting
+      progressive modification, it appears to me, with the help of the
+      new light which has broken from various quarters, that there is
+      much ground for softening the somewhat Brutus-like severity with
+      which I have dealt with a doctrine for the truth of which I should
+      have been glad enough to be able to find a good foundation in
+      1862. So far indeed as the Invertebrata and the lower Vertebrata
+      are concerned, the facts, and the conclusions which are to be
+      drawn from them, appear to me to remain what they were. For
+      anything that as yet appears to the contrary, the earliest known
+      marsupials may have been as highly organized as their living
+      congeners; the Permian lizards show no signs of inferiority to
+      those of the present day; the labyrinthodonts cannot be placed
+      below the living salamander and triton; the Devonian ganoids are
+      closely related to polypterus and lepidosiren.”
+
+      To this it may be replied: 1. The scale of progression of the
+      Vertebrata is measured by the conditions of the circulatory
+      system, and in some measure by the nervous, and not by the
+      osseous: tested by this scale, there has been successional
+      complication of structure among Vertebrata in time. 2. The
+      question with the evolutionist is, not what types have persisted
+      to the present day, but the order in which types appeared in time.
+      3. The Marsupials, Permian saurians, labyrinthodonts and Devonian
+      ganoids are remarkably generalized groups, and predecessors of
+      types widely separated in the present period. 4. Professor Huxley
+      adduces many such examples among the mammalian subdivisions in the
+      remaining portion of his lecture. 5. Two alternatives are yet open
+      in the explanation of the process of evolution: since generalized
+      types, which combine the characters of higher and lower groups of
+      later periods, must thus be superior to the lower, the lower must
+      (first) be descended from such a generalized form by degradation;
+      or (second) not descended from it at all, but from some lower
+      contemporaneous type by advance; the higher only of the two being
+      derived from the first-mentioned. The last I suspect to be a true
+      explanation, as it is in accordance with the homologous groups.
+      This law will shorten the demands of paleontologists for time,
+      since, instead of deriving all reptilia, batrachia, etc., from
+      common origins, it points to the derivation of higher reptilia of
+      a higher order from higher reptilia of a lower order, lower
+      reptilia of the first from lower reptilia of the second; finally,
+      the several groups of the lowest or most generalized order of
+      reptilia from a parallel series of the class below, or batrachia.
+
+    We had no more reason to look for intermediate or connecting forms
+    between such types as these, than between any others of similar
+    degree of remove from each other with which we are acquainted. And
+    inasmuch as almost all groups, as genera, orders, etc., which are
+    held to be distinct, but adjacent, present certain points of
+    approximation to each other, the almost daily discovery of
+    intermediate forms gives us confidence to believe that the pointings
+    in other cases will also be realized.
+
+                           γ. Of Transitions.
+
+    The preceding statements were necessary to the comprehension of the
+    supposed mode of metamorphosis or development of the various types
+    of living beings, or, in other words, of the single structural
+    features which define them.... As it is evident that the more
+    comprehensive groups, or those of highest rank, have had their
+    origin in remote ages, cases of transition from one to the other by
+    change of character cannot be witnessed at the present day. We
+    therefore look to the most nearly related divisions, or those of the
+    lowest rank, for evidence of such change.
+
+    It is necessary to premise that embryology teaches that all the
+    species of a given branch of the animal kingdom (_e.g._, Vertebrate,
+    Mollusc, etc.) are quite identical in structural character at their
+    first appearance on the germinal layer of the yolk of the parent
+    egg. It shows that the character of the respective groups of high
+    rank appear first, then those of less grade, and last of all those
+    structures which distinguish them as genera. But among the earliest
+    characters which appear are those of the species, and some of those
+    of the individual.
+
+    We find the characters of different _genera_ to bear the same
+    relation to each other that we have already seen in the case of
+    those definitive of orders, etc. In a natural assemblage of related
+    genera we discover that some are defined by characters found only in
+    the embryonic stages of others; while a second will present a
+    permanent condition of its definitive part, which marks a more
+    advanced stage of that highest. In this manner many stages of the
+    highest genus appear to be represented by permanent genera in all
+    natural groups. Generally, however, this resemblance does not
+    involve, an entire identity, there being some other immaturities
+    found in the highest genus at the time it presents the character
+    preserved in permanency by the lower, which the lower loses. Thus
+    (to use a very coarse example) a frog at one stage of growth has
+    four legs and a tail: the salamander always preserves four legs and
+    a tail, thus resembling the young frog. The latter is, however, not
+    a salamander at that time, because, among other things, the skeleton
+    is represented by cartilage only, and the salamander’s is ossified.
+    This relation is therefore an imitation only, and is called _inexact
+    parallelism_.
+
+    As we compare nearer and nearer relations—_i.e._, the genera which
+    present fewest points of difference—we find the differences between
+    undeveloped stages of the higher and permanent conditions of the
+    lower to grow fewer and fewer, until we find numerous instances
+    where the lower genus is exactly the same as the undeveloped stage
+    of the higher. This relation is called that of _exact parallelism_.
+
+    It must now be remembered that the permanence of a character is what
+    gives it its value in defining genus, order, etc., in the eyes of
+    the systematist. So long as the condition is permanent no transition
+    can be seen: there is therefore no development. If the condition is
+    transitional, it defines nothing, and nothing is developed; at
+    least, so says the anti-developmentalist. It is the old story of the
+    settler and the Indian: “Will you take owl and I take turkey, or I
+    take turkey and you owl?”
+
+    If we find a relation of _exact parallelism_ to exist between two
+    sets of species in the condition of a certain organ, and the
+    difference so expressed the only one which distinguishes them as
+    sets from each other—if that condition is always the same in each
+    set—we call them two genera: if in any species the condition is
+    variable at maturity, or sometimes the undeveloped condition of the
+    part is persistent and sometimes transitory, the sets characterized
+    by this difference must be united by the systematist, and the whole
+    is called a single genus.
+
+    We know numerous cases where different individuals of the same
+    species present this relation of _exact parallelism_ to each other;
+    and as we ascribe common origin to the individuals of a species, we
+    are assured that the condition of the inferior individual is, in
+    this case, simply one of repressed growth, or a failure to fulfill
+    the course accomplished by the highest. Thus, certain species of the
+    salamandrine genus amblystoma undergo a metamorphosis involving
+    several parts of the osseous and circulatory systems, etc., while
+    half grown; others delay it till fully grown; one or two species
+    remain indifferently unchanged or changed, and breed in either
+    condition, while another species breeds unchanged, and has never
+    been known to complete a metamorphosis.
+
+    The nature of the relation of _exact parallelism_ is thus explained
+    to be that of checked or advanced growth of individuals having a
+    common origin. The relation of _inexact parallelism_ is readily
+    explained as follows: With a case of _exact parallelism_ in the
+    mind, let the repression producing the character of the lower,
+    parallelize the latter with a stage of the former in which a second
+    part is not quite mature: we will have a slight want of
+    correspondence between the two. The lower will be immature in but
+    one point, the incompleteness of the higher being seen in two
+    points. If we suppose the immaturity to consist in a repression at a
+    still earlier point in the history of the higher, the latter will be
+    undeveloped in other points also: thus, the spike-horned deer of
+    South America have the horn of the second year of the North American
+    genus. They would be generically identical with that stage of the
+    latter, were it not that these still possess their milk dentition at
+    two years of age. In the same way the nature of the parallelisms
+    seen in higher groups, as orders, etc., may be accounted for.
+
+    The theory of homologous groups furnishes important evidence in
+    favor of derivation. Many orders of animals (probably all, when we
+    come to know them) are divisible into two or more sections, which I
+    have called _homologous_. These are series of genera or families,
+    which differ from each other by some marked character, but whose
+    contained genera or families differ from each other in the same
+    points of detail, and in fact correspond exactly. So striking is
+    this correspondence that were it not for the general and common
+    character separating the homologous series, they would be regarded
+    as the same, each to each. Now it is remarkable that where studied
+    the difference common to all the terms of two homologous groups is
+    found to be one of _inexact parallelism_, which has been shown above
+    to be evidence of descent. Homologous groups always occupy different
+    geographical areas on the earth’s surface, and their relation is
+    precisely that which holds between successive groups of life in the
+    periods of geologic time.
+
+    In a word, we learn from this source that distinct geologic epochs
+    coexist at the same time on the earth. I have been forced to this
+    conclusion[47] by a study of the structure of terrestrial life, and
+    it has been remarkably confirmed by the results of recent deep-sea
+    dredgings made by the United States Coast Survey in the Gulf Stream,
+    and by the British naturalists in the North Atlantic. These have
+    brought to light types of Tertiary life, and of even the still more
+    ancient Cretaceous periods, living at the present day. That this
+    discovery invalidates in any wise the conclusions of geology
+    respecting lapse of time is an unwarranted assumption that some are
+    forward to make. If it changes the views of some respecting the
+    parallelism or coëxistence of faunæ in different regions of the
+    earth, it is only the anti-developmentalists whose position must be
+    changed.
+
+Footnote 47:
+
+      _Origin of Genera_, pages 70, 77, 79.
+
+    For, if we find distinct geologic faunæ, or epochs defined by faunæ,
+    coëxisting during the present period, and fading or emerging into
+    one another as they do at their geographical boundaries, it is proof
+    positive that the geologic epochs and periods of past ages had in
+    like manner no trenchant boundaries, but also passed the one into
+    the other. The assumption that the apparent interruptions are the
+    result of transfer of life rather than destruction, or of want of
+    opportunities of preservation, is no doubt the true one.
+
+                      δ. Rationale of Development.
+
+    _a. In Characters of Higher Groups._ It is evident in the case of
+    the species in which there is an irregularity in the time of
+    completion of metamorphosis that some individuals traverse a longer
+    developmental line than those who remain more or less incomplete. As
+    both accomplish growth in the same length of time, it is obvious
+    that it proceeds with greater rapidity in one sense in that which
+    accomplishes most: its growth is said to be accelerated. This
+    phenomenon is especially common among insects, where the females of
+    perfect males are sometimes larvæ or nearly so, or pupæ, or lack
+    wings or some character of final development. Quite as frequently,
+    some males assume characters in advance of others, sometimes in
+    connection with a peculiar geographical range.
+
+    In cases of _exact parallelism_ we reasonably suppose the cause to
+    be the same, since the conditions are identical, as has been shown;
+    that is, the higher conditions have been produced by a crowding back
+    of the earlier characters and an acceleration of growth, so that a
+    given succession in order of advance has extended over a longer
+    range of growth than its predecessor in the same allotted time. That
+    allotted time is the period before maturity and reproduction, and it
+    is evident that as fast as modifications or characters should be
+    assumed sufficiently in advance of that period, so certainly would
+    they be conferred upon the offspring by reproduction. The
+    _acceleration_ in the assumption of a character, progressing more
+    rapidly than the same in another character, must soon produce, in a
+    type whose stages were once the exact parallel of a permanent lower
+    form, the condition of _inexact parallelism_. As all the more
+    comprehensive groups present this relation to each other, we are
+    compelled to believe that _acceleration_ has been the principle of
+    their successive evolution during the long ages of geologic time.
+
+    Each type has, however, its day of supremacy and perfection of
+    organism, and a retrogression in these respects has succeeded. This
+    has no doubt followed a law the reverse of acceleration, which has
+    been called _retardation_. By the increasing slowness of the growth
+    of the individuals of a genus, and later and later assumption of the
+    characters of the latter, they would be successively lost.
+
+    To what power shall we ascribe this acceleration, by which the first
+    beginnings of structure have accumulated to themselves through the
+    long geologic ages complication and power, till from the germ that
+    was scarcely born into a sand-lance, a human being climbed the
+    complete scale, and stood easily the chief of the whole?
+
+    In the cases of species, where some individuals develop farther than
+    others, we say the former possess more growth-force, or “vigor,”
+    than the latter. We may therefore say that higher types of structure
+    possess more “vigor” than the lower. This, however, we do not know
+    to be true, nor can we readily find means to demonstrate it.
+
+    The food which is taken by an adult animal is either assimilated, to
+    be consumed in immediate activity of some kind, or stored for future
+    use, and the excess is rejected from the body. We have no reason to
+    suppose that the same kind of material could be made to subserve the
+    production of life-force by any other means than that furnished by a
+    living animal organism. The material from which this organism is
+    constructed is derived first from the parent, and afterward from the
+    food, etc., assimilated by the individual itself so long as growth
+    continues. As it is the activity of assimilation directed to a
+    special end during this latter period which we suppose to be
+    increased in accelerated development, the acceleration is evidently
+    not brought about by increased facilities for obtaining the means of
+    life which the same individual possesses as an adult. That it is not
+    in consequence of such increased facilities possessed by its parents
+    over those of the type preceding it, seems equally improbable when
+    we consider that the characters in which the parent’s advance has
+    appeared are rarely of a nature to increase those facilities.
+
+    The nearest approach to an explanation that can be offered appears
+    to be somewhat in the following direction:
+
+    There is every reason to believe that the character of the
+    atmosphere has gradually changed during geologic time, and that
+    various constituents of the mixture have been successively removed
+    from it, and been stored in the solid material of the earth’s crust
+    in a state of combination. Geological chemistry has shown that the
+    cooling of the earth has been accompanied by the precipitation of
+    many substances only gaseous at high temperatures. Hydrochloric and
+    sulphuric acids have been transferred to mineral deposits or aqueous
+    solutions. The removal of carbonic acid gas and the vapor of water
+    has been a process of much slower progress, and after the expiration
+    of all the ages a proportion of both yet remains. Evidence of the
+    abundance of the former in the earliest periods is seen in the vast
+    deposits of limestone rock; later, in the prodigious quantities of
+    shells which have been elaborated from the same in solution. Proof
+    of its abundance in the atmosphere in later periods is seen in the
+    extensive deposits of coal of the Carboniferous, Triassic and
+    Jurassic periods. If the most luxuriant vegetation of the present
+    day takes but fifty tons of carbon from the atmosphere in a century,
+    per acre, thus producing a layer over that extent of less than a
+    third of an inch in thickness, what amount of carbon must be
+    abstracted in order to produce strata of thirty-five feet in depth?
+    No doubt it occupied a long period, but the atmosphere, thus
+    deprived of a large proportion of carbonic acid, would in subsequent
+    periods undoubtedly possess an improved capacity for the support of
+    animal life.
+
+    The successively higher degree of oxidization of the blood in the
+    organs designed for that function, whether performing it in water or
+    air, would certainly accelerate the performances of all the vital
+    functions, and among others that of growth. Thus it may be that
+    _acceleration_ can be accounted for, and the process of the
+    development of the orders and sundry lesser groups of the Vertebrate
+    kingdom indicated; for, as already pointed out, the definitions of
+    such are radically placed in the different structures of the organs
+    which aerate the blood and distribute it to its various
+    destinations.
+
+    But the great question, What determined the direction of this
+    acceleration? remains unanswered. One cannot understand why more
+    highly-oxidized blood should hasten the growth of partition of the
+    ventricle of the heart in the serpent, the more perfectly to
+    separate the aerated from the impure fluid; nor can we see why a
+    more perfectly-constructed circulatory system, sending purer blood
+    to the brain, should direct accelerated growth to the cerebellum or
+    cerebral hemispheres in the crocodile.
+
+    _b. In Characters of the Specific Kind._ Some of the characters
+    usually placed in the specific category have been shown to be the
+    same in kind as those of higher categories. The majority are,
+    however, of a different kind, and have been discussed several pages
+    back.
+
+    The cause of the origin of these characters is shrouded in as much
+    mystery as that of those which have occupied the pages immediately
+    preceding. As in that case, we have to assume, as Darwin has done, a
+    tendency in Nature to their production. This is what he terms “the
+    principle of variation.” Against an unlimited variation the great
+    law of heredity or atavism has ever been opposed, as a conservator
+    and multiplier of type. This principle is exemplified in the fact
+    that like produces like—that children are like their parents,
+    frequently even in minutiæ. It may be compared to habit in
+    metaphysical matters, or to that singular love of time or rhythm
+    seen in man and lower animals, in both of which the tendency is to
+    repeat in continual cycles a motion or state of the mind or sense.
+
+    Further, but a proportion of the lines of variation is supposed to
+    have been perpetuated, and the extinction of intermediate forms, as
+    already stated, has left isolated groups or species.
+
+    The effective cause of these extinctions is stated by Darwin to have
+    been a “natural selection”—a proposition which distinguishes his
+    theory from other development hypotheses, and which is stated in
+    brief by the expression, “the preservation of the fittest.” Its
+    meaning is this: that those characters appearing as results of this
+    spontaneous variation which are little adapted to the conflict for
+    subsistence, with the nature of the supply, or with rivals in its
+    pursuit, dwindle and are sooner or later extirpated; while those
+    which are adapted to their surroundings, and favored in the struggle
+    for means of life and increase, predominate, and ultimately become
+    the centers of new variation. “I am convinced,” says Darwin, “that
+    natural selection has been the main, but not exclusive, means of
+    modification.”
+
+    That it has been to a large extent the means of preservation of
+    those structures known as specific, must, I think, be admitted. They
+    are related to their peculiar surroundings very closely, and are
+    therefore more likely to exist under their influence. Thus, if a
+    given genus extends its range over a continent, it is usually found
+    to be represented by peculiar species—one in a maritime division,
+    another in the desert, others in the forest, in the swamp or the
+    elevated areas of the region. The wonderful interdependence shown by
+    Darwin to exist between insects and plants in the fertilization of
+    the latter, or between animals and their food-plants, would almost
+    induce one to believe that it were the true expression of the whole
+    law of development.
+
+    But the following are serious objections to its universal
+    application:
+
+    First: The characters of the higher groups, from genera up, are
+    rarely of a character to fit their possessors especially for
+    surrounding circumstances; that is, the differences which separate
+    genus from genus, order from order, etc., in the ascending scale of
+    each, do not seem to present a superior adaptation to surrounding
+    circumstances in the higher genus to that seen in the lower genus,
+    etc. Hence, superior adaptation could scarcely have caused their
+    selection above other forms not existing. Or, in other words, the
+    different structures which indicate successional relation, or which
+    measure the steps of progress, seem to be equally well fitted for
+    the same surroundings.
+
+    Second: The higher groups, as orders, classes, etc., have been in
+    each geologic period alike distributed over the whole earth, under
+    all the varied circumstances offered by climate and food. Their
+    characters do not seem to have been modified in reference to these.
+    Species, and often genera, are, on the other hand, eminently
+    restricted according to climate, and consequently vegetable and
+    animal food.
+
+    The law of development which we seek is indeed not that which
+    preserves the higher forms and rejects the lower after their
+    creation, but that which explains why higher forms were created at
+    all. Why in the results of a creation we see any relation of higher
+    and lower, and not rather a world of distinct types, each perfectly
+    adapted to its situation, but none properly higher than another in
+    an ascending scale, is the primary question. Given the principle of
+    advance, then natural selection has no doubt modified the details;
+    but in the successive advances we can scarcely believe such a
+    principle to be influential. _We look rather upon a progress as the
+    result of the expenditure of some force fore-arranged for that end._
+
+    It may become, then, a question whether in characters of high grade
+    the habit or use is not rather the result of the acquisition of the
+    structure than the structure the result of the encouragement offered
+    to its assumed beginnings by use, or by liberal nutrition derived
+    from the increasingly superior advantages it offers.
+
+                     ε. The Physical Origin of Man.
+
+    If the hypothesis here maintained be true, man is the descendant of
+    some preëxistent generic type, the which, if it were now living, we
+    would probably call an ape.
+
+    Man and the chimpanzee were in Linnæus’ system only two species of
+    the same genus, but a truer anatomy places them in separate genera
+    and distinct families. There is no doubt, however, that Cuvier went
+    much too far when he proposed to consider Homo as the representative
+    of an order distinct from the quadrumana, under the name of bimana.
+    The structural differences will not bear any such interpretation,
+    and have not the same value as those distinguishing the orders of
+    mammalia; as, for instance, between carnivora and bats, or the
+    cloven-footed animals and the rodents, or rodents and edentates. The
+    differences between man and the chimpanzee are, as Huxley well puts
+    it, much less than those between the chimpanzee and lower
+    quadrumana, as lemurs, etc. In fact, man is the type of a family,
+    Hominidæ, of the order Quadrumana, as indicated by the characters of
+    the dentition, extremities, brain, etc. The reader who may have any
+    doubts on this score may read the dissections of Geoffroy St.
+    Hilaire, made in 1856, before the issue of Darwin’s _Origin of
+    Species_. He informs us that the brain of man is nearer in structure
+    to that of the orang than the orang’s is to that of the South
+    American howler, and that the orang and howler are more nearly
+    related in this regard than are the howler and the marmoset.
+
+    The modifications presented by man have, then, resulted from an
+    acceleration in development in some respects, and retardation
+    perhaps in others. But until the _combination_ now characteristic of
+    the genus Homo was attained the being could not properly be called
+    man.
+
+    And here it must be observed that as an organic type is
+    characterized by the coëxistence of a number of peculiarities which
+    have been developed independently of each other, its distinctive
+    features and striking functions are not exhibited until that
+    coëxistence is attained which is necessary for these ends.
+
+    Hence, the characters of the human genus were probably developed
+    successively; but few of the indications of human superiority
+    appeared until the combination was accomplished. Let the opposable
+    thumb be first perfected, but of what use would it be in human
+    affairs without a mind to direct? And of what use a mind without
+    speech to unlock it? And speech could not be possible though all the
+    muscles of the larynx but one were developed, or but a slight
+    abnormal convexity in one pair of cartilages remained.
+
+    It would be an objection of little weight could it be truly urged
+    that there have as yet no remains of apelike men been discovered,
+    for we have frequently been called upon in the course of
+    paleontological discovery to bridge greater gaps than this, and
+    greater remain, which we expect to fill. But we _have_ apelike
+    characters exhibited by more than one race of men yet existing.
+
+    But the remains of that being which is supposed to have been the
+    progenitor of man may have been discovered a short time since in the
+    cave of Naulette, Belgium, with the bones of the extinct rhinoceros
+    and elephant.
+
+    We all admit the existence of higher and lower races, the latter
+    being those which we now find to present greater or less
+    approximations to the apes. The peculiar structural characters that
+    belong to the negro in his most typical form are of that kind,
+    however great may be the distance of his remove therefrom. The
+    flattening of the nose and prolongation of the jaws constitute such
+    a resemblance; so are the deficiency of the calf of the leg, and the
+    obliquity of the pelvis, which approaches more the horizontal
+    position than it does in the Caucasian. The investigations made at
+    Washington during the war with reference to the physical
+    characteristics of the soldiers show that the arms of the negro are
+    from one to two inches longer than those of the whites: another
+    approximation to the ape. In fact, this race is a species of the
+    genus Homo, as distinct in character from the Caucasian as those we
+    are accustomed to recognize in other departments of the animal
+    kingdom; but he is not distinct by isolation, since intermediate
+    form’s between him and the other species can be abundantly found.
+
+    And here let it be particularly observed that two of the most
+    prominent characters of the negro are those of immature stages of
+    the Indo-European race in its characteristic types. The deficient
+    calf is the character of infants at a very early stage; but, what is
+    more important, the flattened bridge of the nose and shortened nasal
+    cartilages are universally immature conditions of the same parts in
+    the Indo-European. Any one may convince himself of that by examining
+    the physiognomies of infants. In some races—_e.g._, the Slavic—this
+    undeveloped character persists later than in some others. The Greek
+    nose, with its elevated bridge, coincides not only with æsthetic
+    beauty, but with developmental perfection.
+
+    This is, however, only “_inexact_ parallelism,” as the characters of
+    the hair, etc., cannot be explained on this principle _among
+    existing races_. The embryonic characters mentioned are probably a
+    remnant of those characteristic of the primordial race or species.
+
+    But the man of Naulette, if he be not a monstrosity, in a still more
+    distinct and apelike species. The chin, that marked character of
+    other species of men, is totally wanting, and the dentition is quite
+    approximate to the man-like apes, and different from that of modern
+    men. The form is very massive, as in apes. That he was not abnormal
+    is rendered probable by approximate characters seen in a jaw from
+    the cave of Puy-sur-Aube, and less marked in the lowest races of
+    Australia and New Caledonia.
+
+    As to the single or multiple origin of man, science as yet furnishes
+    no answer. It is very probable that, in many cases, the species of
+    one genus have descended from corresponding species of another by
+    change of generic characters only. It is a remarkable fact that the
+    orang possesses the peculiarly developed malar bones and the copper
+    color characteristic of the Mongolian inhabitants of the regions in
+    which this animal is found, while the gorilla exhibits the
+    prognathic jaws and black hue of the African races near whom he
+    dwells. This kind of geographical imitation is very common in the
+    animal kingdom.
+
+                         ζ. The Mosaic Account.
+
+    As some persons imagine that this hypothesis conflicts with the
+    account of the creation of man given in Genesis, a comparison of
+    some of the points involved is made below.
+
+    First: In Genesis i. 26, 27, we read, “And God said, Let us make man
+    in our image, after our likeness,” etc. “So God created man in his
+    own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female
+    created he them.” Those who believe that this “image” is a physical,
+    material form, are not disposed to admit the entrance of anything
+    apelike into its constitution, for the ascription of any such
+    appearance to the Creator would be impious and revolting. But we are
+    told that “God is a Spirit,” and Christ said to his disciples after
+    his resurrection, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me
+    have.” Luke xxiv. 39. It will require little further argument to
+    show that a mental and spiritual image is what is meant, as it is
+    what truly exists. Man’s conscience, intelligence and creative
+    ingenuity show that he possesses an “image of God” within him, the
+    possession of which is really necessary to his limited comprehension
+    of God and of God’s ways to man.
+
+    Second: In Genesis ii. 7, the text reads, “And the Lord God formed
+    man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
+    breath of life; and man became a living soul.” The fact that man is
+    the result of the modification of an apelike predecessor nowise
+    conflicts with the above statement as to the materials of which his
+    body is composed. Independently of origin, if the body of man be
+    composed of dust, so must that of the ape be, since the composition
+    of the two is identical. But the statement simply asserts that man
+    was created of the same materials which compose the earth: their
+    condition as “dust” depending merely on temperature and subdivision.
+    The declaration, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,”
+    must be taken in a similar sense, for we know that the decaying body
+    is resolved not only into its earthly constituents, but also into
+    carbonic acid gas and water.
+
+    When God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, we are
+    informed that he became, not a living body, but “a living soul.” His
+    descent from a preëxistent being involved the possession of a living
+    body; but when the Creator breathed into him we may suppose for the
+    present that He infused into this body the immortal part, and at
+    that moment man became a conscientious and responsible being.
+
+
+                      II. METAPHYSICAL EVOLUTION.
+
+    It is infinitely improbable that a being endowed with such
+    capacities for gradual progress as man has exhibited, should have
+    been full fledged in accomplishments at the moment when he could
+    first claim his high title, and abandon that of his simious
+    ancestors. We are therefore required to admit the growth of human
+    intelligence from a primitive state of inactivity and absolute
+    ignorance; including the development of one important mode of its
+    expression—speech; as well as that of the moral qualities, and of
+    man’s social system—the form in which his ideas of morality were
+    first displayed.
+
+    The expression “evolution of morality” need not offend, for the
+    question in regard to the _laws_ of this evolution is the really
+    important part of the discussion, and it is to the opposing views on
+    this point that the most serious interest attaches.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The two views of evolution already treated of, held separately, are
+    quite opposed to each other. The first (and generally received) lays
+    stress on the influence of external surroundings, as the stimulus to
+    and guidance of development: it is the counterpart of Darwin’s
+    principle called Natural Selection in material progress. This might
+    be called the _Conflict theory_. The second view recognizes the
+    workings of a force whose nature we do not know, whose exhibitions
+    accord perfectly with their external surroundings (or other
+    exhibitions of itself), without being under their influence or more
+    related to them, as effect to cause, than the notes of the musical
+    octave or the colors of the spectrum are to each other. This is the
+    _Harmonic theory_. In other words, the first principle deduces
+    perfection from struggle and discord; the second, from the
+    coincident progress of many parts, forming together a divine harmony
+    comparable to music. That these principles are both true is rendered
+    extremely probable by the actual phenomena of development, material
+    and immaterial. In other words, struggle and discord ever await that
+    which is not in the advance, and which fails to keep pace with the
+    harmonious development of the whole.
+
+    All who have studied the phenomena of the creation believe that
+    there exists in it a grand and noble harmony, such as was described
+    to Job when he was told that “the morning stars sang together, and
+    all the sons of God shouted for joy.”
+
+                    α. Development of Intelligence.
+
+    If the brain is the organ of mind, we may be surprised to find that
+    the brain of the intelligent man scarcely differs in structure from
+    that of the ape. Whence, then, the difference of power? Though no
+    one will now deny that many of the Mammalia are capable of reasoning
+    upon observed facts, yet how greatly the results of this capacity
+    differ in number and importance from those achieved by human
+    intelligence! Like water at the temperatures of 50° and 53°, where
+    we perceive no difference in essential character, so between the
+    brains of the lower and higher monkeys no difference of function or
+    of intelligence is perceptible. But what a difference do the two
+    degrees of temperature from 33° to 31° produce in water! In like
+    manner the difference between the brain of the higher ape and that
+    of man is accompanied by a difference in function and power, on
+    which, man’s earthly destiny depends. In development, as with the
+    water so with the higher ape: some Rubicon has been crossed, some
+    floodgate has been opened, which marks one of Nature’s great
+    transitions, such as have been called “Expression points” of
+    progress.
+
+    What point of progress in such a history would account for this
+    accession of the powers of the human intelligence? It has been
+    answered, with considerable confidence, The power of speech. Let us
+    picture man without speech. Each generation would learn nothing from
+    its predecessors. Whatever originality or observation might yield to
+    a man would die with him. Each intellectual life would begin where
+    every other life began, and would end at a point only differing with
+    its original capacity. Concert of action, by which man’s power over
+    the material world is maintained, would not exceed, if it equaled,
+    that which is seen among the bees; and the material results of his
+    labors would not extend beyond securing the means of life and the
+    employment of the simplest modes of defence and attack.
+
+    The first men, therefore, are looked upon by the developmentalists
+    as extremely embryonic in all that characterizes humanity, and they
+    appeal to the facts of history in support of this view. If they do
+    not derive much assistance from written history, evidence is found
+    in the more enduring relics of human handiwork.
+
+    The opposing view is, that the races which present or have presented
+    this condition of inferiority or savagery have reached it by a
+    process of degradation from a higher state—as some believe, through
+    moral delinquency. This position may be true in certain cases, which
+    represent perhaps a condition of senility, but in general we believe
+    that savagery was the condition of the first man, which has in some
+    races continued to the present day.
+
+                     _β. Evidence from Archæology._
+
+    As the object of the present essay is not to examine fully into the
+    evidences for the theories of evolution here stated, but rather to
+    give a sketch of such theories and their connection, a few facts
+    only will be noticed.
+
+    _Improvement in the use of Materials._ As is well known, the remains
+    of human handiwork of the earliest periods consist of nothing but
+    rude implements of stone and bone, useful only in procuring food and
+    preparing it for use. Even when enterprise extended beyond the
+    ordinary routine, it was restrained by the want of proper
+    instruments. Knives and other cutting implements of flint still
+    attest the skill of the early races of men from Java to the Cape of
+    Good Hope, from Egypt to Ireland, and through North and South
+    America. Hatchets, spear-heads and ornaments of serpentine, granite,
+    silex, clay slates, and all other suitable rock materials, are found
+    to have been used by the first men, to the exclusion of metals, in
+    most of the regions of the earth.
+
+    Later, the probably accidental discovery of the superiority of some
+    of the metals resulted in the substitution of them for stone as a
+    material for cutting implements. Copper—the only metal which, while
+    malleable, is hard enough to bear an imperfect edge—was used by
+    succeeding races in the Old World and the New. Implements of this
+    material are found scattered over extensive regions. So desirable,
+    however, did the hardening of the material appear for the
+    improvement of the cutting edge that combinations with other metals
+    were sought for and discovered. The alloy with tin, forming bronze
+    and brass, was discovered and used in Europe, while that with silver
+    appears to have been most readily produced in America, and was
+    consequently used by the Peruvians and other nations.
+
+    The discovery of the modes of reducing iron ores placed in the hands
+    of man the best material for bringing to a shape, convenient for his
+    needs the raw material of the world. All improvements in this
+    direction made since that time have been in the quality of iron
+    itself, and not through the introduction of any new metal.
+
+    The prevalent phenomena of any given period are those which give it
+    its character, and by which we distinguish it. But this fact does
+    not exclude the coëxistence of other phenomena belonging to prior or
+    subsequent stages. Thus, during the many stages of human progress
+    there have been men more or less in advance of the general body, and
+    their characteristics have given a peculiar stamp to the later and
+    higher condition of the whole. It furnishes no objection to this
+    view that we find, as might have been anticipated, the stone, bronze
+    and iron periods overlaping one another, or men of an inferior
+    culture supplanting in some cases a superior people. A case of this
+    kind is seen in North America, where the existing “Indians,”
+    stone-men, have succeeded the mound-builders, copper-men. The
+    successional relation of discoveries is all that it is necessary to
+    prove, and this seems to be established.
+
+    The period at which the use of metallic implements was introduced is
+    unknown, but Whitney says that the language of the Aryans, the
+    ancestors of all the modern Indo-Europeans, indicates an
+    acquaintance with such implements, though it is not certain whether
+    those of iron are to be included. The dispersion of the daughter
+    races, the Hindoos, the Pelasgi, Teutons, Celts, etc., could not, it
+    is thought, have taken place later than 3000 B. C.—a date seven
+    hundred years prior, to that assigned by the old chronology to the
+    Deluge. Those races coëxisted with the Egyptian and Chinese nations,
+    already civilized, and as distinct from each other in feature as
+    they are now.
+
+    _Improvement in Architecture._ The earliest periods, then, were
+    characterized by the utmost simplicity of invention and
+    construction. Later, the efforts for defence from enemies and for
+    architectural display, which have always employed so much time and
+    power, began to be made. The megalithic period has left traces over
+    much of the earth. The great masses of stone piled on each other in
+    the simplest form in Southern India, and the circles of stones
+    planted on end in England at Stonehenge and Abury, and in Peru at
+    Sillustani, are relics of that period. More complex are the great
+    Himyaritic walls of Arabia, the works of the ancestors of the
+    Phœnicians in Asia Minor, and the titanic workmanship of the Pelasgi
+    in Greece and Italy. In the iron age we find granitic hills shaped
+    or excavated into temples; as, for example, everywhere in Southern
+    India. Near Madura the circumference of an acropolis-like hill is
+    cut into a series of statues in high relief, of sixty feet in
+    elevation. Easter Island, composed of two volcanic cones, one
+    thousand miles from the west coast of South America, in the bosom of
+    the Pacific, possesses several colossi cut from the intrusive
+    basalt, some in high relief on the face of the rock, others in
+    detached blocks removed by human art from their original positions
+    and brought nearer the sea-shore.
+
+    Finally, at a more advanced stage, the more ornate and complex
+    structures of Central America, of Cambodia, Nineveh and Egypt,
+    represent the period of greatest display of architectural
+    expenditure. The same amount of human force has perhaps never been
+    expended in this direction since, though higher conceptions of
+    beauty have been developed in architecture with increasing
+    intellectuality.
+
+    Man has passed through the block-and-brick building period of his
+    boyhood, and should rise to higher conceptions of what is the true
+    disposition of power for “him who builds for aye,” and learn that
+    “spectacle” is often the unwilling friend of progress.
+
+    No traces of metallic implements have ever been found in the
+    salt-mines of Armenia, the turquoise-quarries in Arabia, the cities
+    of Central America or the excavations for mica in North Carolina,
+    while the direct evidence points to the conclusion that in those
+    places flint was exclusively used.
+
+    The simplest occupations, as requiring the least exercise of mind,
+    are the pursuit of the chase and the tending of flocks and herds.
+    Accordingly, we find our first parents engaged in these occupations.
+    Cain, we are told, was, in addition, a tiller of the ground.
+    Agriculture in its simplest forms requires but little more
+    intelligence than the pursuits just mentioned, though no employment
+    is capable of higher development. If we look at the savage nations
+    at present occupying nearly half the land surface of the earth, we
+    shall find many examples of the former industrial condition of our
+    race preserved to the present day. Many of them had no knowledge of
+    the use of metals until they obtained it from civilized men who
+    visited them, while their pursuits were and are those of the chase,
+    tending domestic animals, and rudimental agriculture.
+
+                    γ. The Development of Language.
+
+    In this department the fact of development from the simple to the
+    complex has been so satisfactorily demonstrated by philologists as
+    scarcely to require notice here. The course of that development has
+    been from monosyllabic to polysyllabic forms, and also in a process
+    of differentiation, as derivative races were broken off from the
+    original stock and scattered widely apart. The evidence is clear
+    that simple words for distinct objects formed the bases of the
+    primal languages, just as the ground, tree, sun and moon represent
+    the character of the first words the infant lisps. In this
+    department also the facts point to an infancy of the human race.
+
+                    δ. Development of the Fine Arts.
+
+    If we look at representation by drawing or sculpture, we find that
+    the efforts of the earliest races of which we have any knowledge
+    were quite similar to those which the untaught hand of infancy
+    traces on its slate or the savage depicts on the rocky faces of
+    hills. The circle or triangle for the head and body, and straight
+    lines for the limbs, have been preserved as the first attempts of
+    the men of the stone period, as they are to this day the sole
+    representations of the human form which the North American Indian
+    places on his buffalo robe or mountain precipice. The stiff,
+    barely-outlined form of the deer, the turtle, etc., are literally
+    those of the infancy of civilized man.
+
+    The first attempts at sculpture were marred by the influence of
+    modism. Thus the idols of Coban and Palenque, with human faces of
+    some merit, are overloaded with absurd ornament, and deformed into
+    frightful asymmetry, in compliance with the demand of some imperious
+    mode. In later days we have the stiff, conventionalized figures of
+    the palaces of Nineveh and the temples of Egypt, where the
+    representation of form has somewhat improved, but is too often
+    distorted by false fashion or imitation of some unnatural standard,
+    real or artistic. This is distinguished as the day of archaic
+    sculpture, which disappeared with the Etruscan nation. So the
+    drawings of the child, when he abandons the simple lines, are stiff
+    and awkward, and but a stage nearer true representation; and how
+    often does he repeat some peculiarity or absurdity of his own! So
+    much easier is it to copy than to conceive.
+
+    The introduction of the action and pose of life into sculpture was
+    not known before the early days of Greece, and it was there that the
+    art was brought to perfection. When art rose from its mediæval
+    slumber, much the same succession of development may be discovered.
+    First, the stiff figures, with straightened limbs and cylindric
+    drapery, found in the old Northern churches—then the forms of life
+    that now adorn the porticoes and palaces of the cities of Germany.
+
+            ε. Rationale of the Development of Intelligence.
+
+    The history of material development shows that the transition from
+    stage to stage of development, experienced by the most perfect forms
+    of animals and plants in their growth from the primordial cell, is
+    similar to the succession of created beings which the geological
+    epochs produced. It also shows that the slow assumption of main
+    characters in the line of succession in early geological periods
+    produced the condition of inferiority, while an increased rapidity
+    of growth in later days has resulted in an attainment of
+    superiority. It is not to be supposed that in “acceleration” the
+    period of growth is shortened: on the contrary, it continues the
+    same. Of two beings whose characters are assumed at the same rate of
+    succession, that with the quickest or shortest growth is necessarily
+    inferior. “Acceleration” means a gradual increase of the rate of
+    assumption of successive characters in the same period of time. A
+    fixed rate of assumption of characters, with gradual increase in the
+    length of the period of growth, would produce the same result—viz.,
+    a longer developmental scale and the attainment of an advanced
+    position. The first is in part the relation of sexes of a species;
+    the last of genera, and of other types of creation. If from an
+    observed relation of many facts we derive a law, we are permitted,
+    when we see in another class of facts similar relations, to suspect
+    that a similar law has operated, differing only in its objects. We
+    find a marked resemblance between the facts of structural progress
+    in matter and the phenomena of intellectual and spiritual progress.
+
+    If the facts entering into the categories enumerated in the
+    preceding section bear us out, we conclude that in the beginning of
+    human history the progress of the individual man was very slow, and
+    that but little was attained to; that through the profitable
+    direction of human energy, means were discovered from time to time
+    by which the process of individual development in all metaphysical
+    qualities has been accelerated; and that up to the present time the
+    consequent advance of the whole race has been at an increasing rate
+    of progress, This is in accordance with the general principle, that
+    high development in intellectual things is accomplished by rapidity
+    in traversing the preliminary stages of inferiority common to all,
+    while low development signifies sluggishness in that progress, and a
+    corresponding retention of inferiority.
+
+    How much meaning may we not see, from this stand-point, in the
+    history of the intelligence of our little ones! First they crawl,
+    they walk on all fours: when they first assume the erect position
+    they are generally speechless, and utter only inarticulate sounds.
+    When they run about, stones and dirt, the objects that first meet
+    the eye, are the delight of their awakening powers, but these are
+    all cast aside when the boy obtains his first jackknife. Soon,
+    however, reading and writing open a new world to him; and finally as
+    a mature man he seizes the forces of nature, and steam and
+    electricity do his bidding in the active pursuit of power for still
+    better and higher ends.
+
+    So with the history of the species: first the quadrumane—then the
+    speaking man, whose humble industry was, however, confined to the
+    objects that came first to hand, this being the “stone age” of
+    pre-historic time. When the use of metals was discovered, the range
+    of industries expanded wonderfully, and the “iron age” saw many
+    striking efforts of human power. With the introduction of letters it
+    became possible to record events and experiences, and the spread of
+    knowledge was thereby greatly increased, and the delays and mistakes
+    of ignorance correspondingly diminished in the fields of the world’s
+    activity.
+
+    From the first we see in history a slow advance as knowledge gained
+    by the accumulation of tradition and by improvements in habit based
+    on experience; but how slow was this advance while the use of the
+    metals was still unknown! The iron age brought with it not only new
+    conveniences, but increased means of future progress; and here we
+    have an acceleration in the rate of advance. With the introduction
+    of letters this rate was increased many fold, and in the application
+    of steam we have a change equal in utility to any that has preceded
+    it, and adding more than any to the possibilities of future advance
+    in many directions. By its power, knowledge and means of happiness
+    were to be distributed among the many.
+
+    The uses to which human intelligence has successively applied the
+    materials furnished by nature have been—First, subsistence and
+    defence: second, the accumulation of power in the shape of a
+    representative of that labor which the use of matter involves; in
+    other words, the accumulation of wealth. The possession of this
+    power involves new possibilities, for opportunity is offered for the
+    special pursuits of knowledge and the assistance of the weak or
+    undeveloped part of mankind in its struggles.
+
+    Thus, while the first men possessed the power of speech, and could
+    advance a little in knowledge through the accumulation of the
+    experiences of their predecessors, they possessed no means of
+    accumulating the power of labor, no control over the activity of
+    numbers—in other words, no wealth.
+
+    But the accumulation of knowledge finally brought this advance
+    about. The extraction and utilization of the metals, especially
+    iron, formed the most important step, since labor was thus
+    facilitated and its productiveness increased in an incalculable
+    degree. We have little evidence of the existence of a medium of
+    exchange during the first or stone period, and no doubt barter was
+    the only form of trade. Before the use of metals, shells and other
+    objects were used: remains of money of baked clay have been found in
+    Mexico. Finally, though in still ancient times, the possession of
+    wealth in money gradually became possible and more common, and from
+    that day to this avenues for reaching this stage in social progress
+    has ever been opening.
+
+    But wealth merely indicates a stage of progress, since it is but a
+    comparative term. All men could not become rich, for in that case
+    all would be equally poor. But labor has a still higher goal; for,
+    thirdly, as capital, it constructs and employs machinery, which does
+    the work of many hands, and thus cheapens products, which is
+    equivalent in effect to an accumulation of wealth to the consumer.
+    And this increase of power may be used for the intellectual and
+    spiritual advance of men, or otherwise, at the will of the men thus
+    favored. Machinery places man in the position of a creator,
+    operating on Nature through an increased number of “secondary
+    causes.”
+
+    Development of intelligence is seen, then, in the following
+    directions: First, in the knowledge of facts, including science;
+    second, in language; third, in the apprehension of beauty; and, as
+    consequences of the first of these, the accumulation of power by
+    development—First, of means of subsistence; and second, of
+    mechanical invention.
+
+    Thus we have two terms to start with in estimating the beginning of
+    human development in knowledge and power: First, the primary
+    capacities of the human mind itself; second, a material world, whose
+    infinitely varied components are so arranged as to yield results to
+    the energies of that mind. For example, the transition points of
+    vaporization and liquefaction are so placed as to be within the
+    reach of man’s agents; their weights are so fixed as to accord with
+    the muscular or other forces which he is able to exert; and other
+    living organizations are subject to his convenience and rule, and
+    not, as in previous geological periods, entirely beyond his control.
+    These two terms being given, it is maintained that the present
+    situation of the most civilized men has been attained through the
+    operation of a law of mutual action and reaction—a law whose
+    results, seen at the present time, have depended on the acceleration
+    or retardation of its rate of action; which rate has been regulated,
+    according to the degree in which a third great term, viz., the law
+    of moral or (what is the same thing) true religious development has
+    been combined in the plan. What it is necessary to establish in
+    order to prove the above hypothesis is—
+
+    I. That in each of the particulars above enumerated the development
+    of the human species is similar to that of the individual from
+    infancy to maturity.
+
+    II. That from a condition of subserviency to the laws of matter,
+    man’s intelligence enables him, by an accumulation of power, to
+    become in a sense independent of those laws, and to increase greatly
+    the rate of intellectual and spiritual progress.
+
+    III. That failure to accomplish a moral or spiritual development
+    will again reduce him to a subserviency to the laws of matter.
+
+    This brings us to the subject of moral development. And here I may
+    be allowed to suggest that the weight of the evidence is opposed to
+    the philosophy, “falsely so called,” of necessitarianism, which
+    asserts that the first two terms alone were sufficient to work out
+    man’s salvation in this world and the next; and, on the other hand,
+    to that anti-philosophy which asserts that all things in the
+    progress of the human race, social and civil, are regulated by
+    immediate Divine interposition instead of through instrumentalities.
+    Hence the subject divides itself at once into two great
+    departments—viz., that of the development of mind or intelligence,
+    and that of the development of morality.
+
+    That these laws are distinct there can be no doubt, since in the
+    individual man one of them may produce results without the aid of
+    the other. Yet it can be shown that each is the most invaluable aid
+    and stimulant to the other, and most favorable to the rapid advance
+    of the mind in either direction.
+
+
+                  III. SPIRITUAL OR MORAL DEVELOPMENT.
+
+    In examining this subject, we first inquire (Sect. _α_) whether
+    there is any connection between physical and moral or religious
+    development; then (_β_), what indications of moral development may
+    be derived from history. Finally (_γ_), a correlation of the results
+    of these inquiries, with the nature of the religious development in
+    the individual, is attempted. Of course in so stupendous an inquiry
+    but a few leading points can be presented here.
+
+    If it be true that the period of human existence on the earth has
+    seen a gradually increasing predominance of higher motives over
+    lower ones among the mass of mankind, and if any parts of our
+    metaphysical being have been derived by inheritance from preëxistent
+    beings, we are incited to the inquiry whether any of the moral
+    qualities are included among the latter; and whether there be any
+    resemblance between moral and intellectual development.
+
+    Thus, if there have been a physical derivation from a preëxistent
+    genus, and an embryonic condition of those physical characters which
+    distinguish Homo—if there has been also an embryonic or infantile
+    stage in intellectual qualities—we are led to inquire whether the
+    development of the individual in moral nature will furnish us with a
+    standard of estimation of the successive conditions or present
+    relations of the human species in this aspect also.
+
+              _a. Relations of Physical and Moral Nature._
+
+    Although men are much alike in the deeper qualities of their nature,
+    there is a range of variation which is best understood by a
+    consideration of the extremes of such variation, as seen in men of
+    different latitudes, and women and children.
+
+    (_a._) _In Children._ Youth is distinguished by a peculiarity, which
+    no doubt depends upon an immature condition of the nervous center
+    concerned, which might be called _nervous impressibility_. It is
+    exhibited in a greater tendency to tearfulness, in timidity, less
+    mental endurance, a greater facility in acquiring knowledge, and
+    more ready susceptibility to the influence of sights, sounds and
+    sensations. In both sexes the emotional nature predominates over the
+    intelligence and judgment. In those years the _character_ is said to
+    be in embryo, and theologians in using the phrase, “reaching years
+    of religious understanding,” mean that in early years the religious
+    _capacities_ undergo development coincidentally with those of the
+    body.
+
+    (_b._) _In Women._ If we examine the metaphysical characteristics of
+    women, we observe two classes of traits—namely, those which are also
+    found in men, and those which are absent or but weakly developed in
+    men. Those of the first class are very similar in essential nature
+    to those which men exhibit at an early stage of development. This
+    may be in some way related to the fact that physical maturity occurs
+    earlier in women.
+
+    The gentler sex is characterized by a greater impressibility, often
+    seen in the influence exercised by a stronger character, as well as
+    by music, color or spectacle generally; warmth of emotion,
+    submission to its influence rather than that of logic; timidity and
+    irregularity of action in the outer world. All these qualities
+    belong to the male sex, as a general rule, at some period of life,
+    though different individuals lose them at very various periods.
+    Ruggedness and sternness may rarely be developed in infancy, yet at
+    some still prior time they certainly do not exist in any.
+
+    Probably most men can recollect some early period of their lives
+    when the emotional nature predominated—a time when emotion at the
+    sight of suffering was more easily stirred than in maturer years. I
+    do not now allude to the benevolence inspired, kept alive or
+    developed by the influence of the Christian religion on the heart,
+    but rather to that which belongs to the natural man. Perhaps all men
+    can recall a period of youth when they were hero-worshipers—when
+    they felt the need of a stronger arm, and loved to look up to the
+    powerful friend who could sympathize with and aid them. This is the
+    “woman stage” of character: in a large number of cases it is early
+    passed; in some it lasts longer; while in a very few men it persists
+    through life. Severe discipline and labor are unfavorable to its
+    persistence. Luxury preserves its bad qualities without its good,
+    while Christianity preserves its good elements without its bad.
+
+    It is not designed to say that woman in her emotional nature does
+    not differ from the undeveloped man. On the contrary, though she
+    does not differ in kind, she differs greatly in degree, for her
+    qualities grow with her growth, and exceed in _power_ many fold
+    those exhibited by her companion at the original point of departure.
+    Hence, since it might be said that man is the undeveloped woman, a
+    word of explanation will be useful. Embryonic types abound in the
+    fields of nature, but they are not therefore immature in the usual
+    sense. Maintaining the lower essential quality, they yet exhibit the
+    usual results of growth in individual characters; that is, increase
+    of strength, powers of support and protection, size and beauty. In
+    order to maintain that the masculine character coincides with that
+    of the undeveloped woman, it would be necessary to show that the
+    latter during her infancy possesses the male characters
+    predominating—that is, unimpressibility, judgment, physical courage,
+    and the like.
+
+    If we look at the second class of female characters—namely, those
+    which are imperfectly developed or absent in men, and in respect to
+    which man may be called undeveloped woman—we note three prominent
+    points: facility in language, tact or finesse, and the love of
+    children. The first two appear to me to be altogether developed
+    results of “impressibility,” already considered as an indication of
+    immaturity. Imagination is also a quality of impressibility, and,
+    associated with finesse, is apt to degenerate into duplicity and
+    untruthfulness.
+
+    The third quality is different. It generally appears at a very early
+    period of life. Who does not know how soon the little girl selects
+    the doll, and the boy the toy-horse or machine? Here man truly never
+    gets beyond undeveloped woman. Nevertheless, “impressibility” seems
+    to have a great deal to do with this quality also.
+
+    Thus the metaphysical relation of the sexes would appear to be one
+    of _inexact parallelism_, as defined in Sect. I. That the physical
+    relation is a remote one of the same kind, several characters seem
+    to point out. The case of the vocal organs will suffice. Their
+    structure is identical in both sexes in early youth, and both
+    produce nearly similar sounds. They remain in this condition in the
+    woman, while they undergo a metamorphosis and change both in
+    structure and vocal power in the man. In the same way, in many of
+    the lower creation, the females possess a majority of embryonic
+    features, though not invariably. A common example is to be found in
+    the plumage of birds, where the females and young males are often
+    undistinguishable.[48] But there are few points in the physical
+    structure of man also in which the male condition is the immature
+    one. In regard to structure, the point at which the relation between
+    the sexes is that of _exact parallelism_, or where the mature
+    condition of the one sex accords with the undeveloped condition of
+    the other, is when reproduction is no longer accomplished by budding
+    or gemmation, but requires distinct organs. Metaphysically, this
+    relation is to be found where distinct individuality of the sexes
+    first appears; that is, where we pass from the hermaphrodite to the
+    bisexual condition.
+
+Footnote 48:
+
+      Meehan states that the upper limbs and strong laterals in coniferæ
+      and other trees produce female flowers and cones, and the lower
+      and more interior branches the male flowers. What he points out is
+      in harmony with the position here maintained—namely, that the
+      female characters include more of those which are embryonic in the
+      males, than the male characters include of those which are
+      embryonic in the female: the female flowers are the product of the
+      younger and more growing portions of the tree—that is, those last
+      produced (the upper limbs and new branches)—while the male flowers
+      are produced by the older or more mature portions—that is, lower
+      limbs or more axial regions.
+
+      Meehan’s observations coincide with those of Thury and others on
+      the origin of sexes in animals and plants, which it appears to
+      admit of a similar explanation.
+
+    But let us put the whole interpretation on this partial
+    undevelopment of woman.
+
+    The types or conditions of organic life which have been the most
+    prominent in the world’s history—the Ganoids of the first, the
+    Dinosaurs of the second, and the Mammoths of the third period—have
+    generally died with their day. The line of succession has not been
+    from them. The law of anatomy and paleontology is, that we must seek
+    the point of departure of the type which is to predominate in the
+    future, at lower stages on the line, in less decided forms, or in
+    what, in scientific parlance, are called generalized types. In the
+    same way, though the adults of the tailless apes are in a physical
+    sense more highly developed than their young, yet the latter far
+    more closely resemble the human species in their large facial angle
+    and shortened jaws.
+
+    How much significance, then, is added to the law uttered by
+    Christ!—“Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the
+    kingdom of heaven.” Submission of will, loving trust, confiding
+    faith—these belong to the child: how strange they appear to the
+    executing, commanding, reasoning man! Are they so strange to the
+    woman? We all know the answer. Woman is nearer to the point of
+    departure of that development which outlives time and peoples
+    heaven; and if man would find it, he must retrace his steps, regain
+    something he lost in youth, and join to the powers and energies of
+    his character the submission, love and faith which the new birth
+    alone can give.
+
+    Thus the summing up of the metaphysical qualities of woman would be
+    thus expressed: In the emotional world, man’s superior; in the moral
+    world, his equal; in the laboring world, his inferior.
+
+    There are, however, vast differences in women in respect to the
+    number of masculine traits they may have assumed before being
+    determined into their own special development. Woman also, under the
+    influence of necessity, in later years of life, may add more or less
+    to those qualities in her which are fully developed in the man.
+
+    The relation of these facts to the principles stated as the two
+    opposing laws of development is, it appears to me, to be explained
+    thus: First, that woman’s most inherent peculiarities are _not_ the
+    result of the external circumstances with which she has been placed
+    in contact, as the _conflict theory_ would indicate. Such
+    circumstances are said to be her involuntary subserviency to the
+    physically more powerful man, and the effect of a compulsory mode of
+    life in preventing her from attaining a position of equality in the
+    activities of the world. Second, that they _are_ the result of the
+    different distributions of qualities as already indicated by the
+    _harmonic theory_ of development; that is, of the unequal possession
+    of features which belong to different periods in the developmental
+    succession of the highest. And here it might be further shown that
+    this relation involves no disadvantage to either sex, but that the
+    principle of compensation holds in moral organization and in social
+    order, as elsewhere. There is then another beautiful harmony which
+    will ever remain, let the development of each sex be extended as far
+    as it may.
+
+    (_c._) _In Men._ If we look at the male sex, we shall find various
+    exceptional approximations to the female in mental constitution.
+    Further, there can be little doubt that in the Indo-European race
+    maturity in some respects appears earlier in tropical than in
+    northern regions; and though subject to many exceptions, this is
+    sufficiently general to be looked upon as a rule. Accordingly, we
+    find in that race—at least in the warmer regions of Europe and
+    America—a larger proportion of certain qualities which are more
+    universal in women; as greater activity of the emotional nature when
+    compared with the judgment; an impressibility of the nervous center,
+    which, _cæteris paribus_, appreciates quickly the harmonies of
+    sound, form and color; answers most quickly to the friendly greeting
+    or the hostile menace; is more careless of consequences in the
+    material expression of generosity or hatred, and more indifferent to
+    truth under the influence of personal relations. The movements of
+    the body and expressions of the countenance answer to the
+    temperament. More of grace and elegance in the bearing mark the
+    Greek, the Italian and the Creole, than the German, the Englishman
+    or the Green Mountain man. More of vivacity and fire, for better or
+    for worse, are displayed in the countenance.
+
+    Perhaps the more northern type left all that behind in its youth.
+    The rugged, angular character which appreciates force better than
+    harmony, the strong intellect which delights in forethought and
+    calculation, the less impressibility, reaching stolidity in the
+    uneducated, are its well-known traits. If in such a character
+    generosity is less prompt, and there is but little chivalry, there
+    is persistency and unwavering fidelity, not readily interrupted by
+    the lightning of passion or the dark surmises of an active
+    imagination.
+
+    All these peculiarities appear to result, _first_, from different
+    degrees of quickness and depth in appreciating impressions from
+    without; and, _second_, from differing degrees of attention to the
+    intelligent judgment in consequent action. (I leave conscience out,
+    as not belonging to the category of inherited qualities.)
+
+    The first is the basis of an emotional nature, and the predominance
+    of the second is the usual indication of maturity. That the first is
+    largely dependent on an impressible condition of the nervous system
+    can be asserted by those who reduce their nervous centers to a
+    sensitive condition by a rapid consumption of the nutritive
+    materials necessary to the production of thought-force, and perhaps
+    of brain-tissue itself, induced by close and prolonged mental labor.
+    The condition of over-work, though but an imitation of immaturity,
+    without its joy-giving nutrition, is nevertheless very instructive.
+    The sensitiveness, both physically, emotionally and morally, is
+    often remarkable, and a weakening of the understanding is often
+    coincident with it.
+
+    It is necessary here to introduce a caution, that the meaning of the
+    words high and low be not misunderstood. Great impressibility is an
+    essential constituent of many of the highest forms of genius, and
+    the combination of this quality with strong reflective intelligence,
+    constitutes the most complete and efficient type of mind—therefore
+    the highest in the common sense. It is not, however, the highest—or
+    extremest—in an evolutional sense, it is not masculine, but
+    hermaphrodite; in other words, its _kinetic_ force exceeds its
+    _bathmic_.[49] It is therefore certain that a partial diminution of
+    bathmic vigor is an advantage to some kinds of intellect.
+
+Footnote 49:
+
+      _Bathmic force_ is analogous to the _potential_ force of chemists,
+      but is no doubt entirely different in its nature. It is converted
+      into active energy or _kinetic_ force only during the years of
+      growth: it is in large amount in _acceleration_, in small amount
+      in _retardation_.
+
+    The above observations have been confined to the Indo-European race.
+    It may be objected to the theory that savagery means immaturity in
+    the senses above described, as dependent largely on
+    “impressibility,” while savages in general display the least
+    “impressibility,” as that word is generally understood. This cannot
+    be asserted of the Africans, who, so far as we know them, possess
+    this peculiarity in a high degree. Moreover, it must be remembered
+    that the state of indifference which precedes that of impressibility
+    in the individual may characterize many savages; while their varied
+    peculiarities may be largely accounted for by recollecting that many
+    combinations of different species of emotions and kinds of
+    intelligence go to make up the complete result in each case.
+
+    (_d._) _Conclusions._ Three types of religion may be selected from
+    the developmental conditions of man: first, an absence of
+    sensibility (early infancy); second, an emotional stage more
+    productive of faith than of works; thirdly, an intellectual type,
+    more favorable to works than to faith. Though in regard to
+    responsibility these states may be equal, there is absolutely no
+    gain to laboring humanity from the first type, and a serious loss in
+    actual results from the second, taken alone, as compared with the
+    third.
+
+    These, then, are the _physical vehicles of religion_—the “_earthen
+    vessels_” of Paul—which give character and tone to the deeper
+    spiritual life, as the color of the transparent vessel is
+    communicated to the light which radiates from within.
+
+    But if evolution has taken place, there is evidently a provision for
+    the progress from the lower to the higher states, either in the
+    education of circumstances (“conflict,”) or in the power of an
+    interior spiritual influence “harmony,”) or both.
+
+                  _β. Evidence Derived from History._
+
+    We trace the development of Morality in—First, the family or social
+    order; second, the civil order, or government.
+
+    Whatever may have been the extent of moral ignorance before the
+    Deluge, it does not appear that the earth was yet prepared for the
+    permanent habitation of the human race. All nations preserve
+    traditions of the drowning of the early peoples by floods, such as
+    have occurred frequently during geologic time. At the close of each
+    period of dry land, a period of submergence has set in, and the
+    depression of the level of the earth, and consequent overflow by the
+    sea, has caused the death and subsequent preservation of the remains
+    of the fauna and flora living upon it, while the elevation of the
+    same has produced that interruption in the process of deposit in the
+    same region which marks the intervals between geologic periods.
+    Change in these respects do not occur to any very material extent at
+    the present time in the regions inhabited by the most highly
+    developed portions of the human race; and as the last which occurred
+    seems to have been expressly designed for the preparation of the
+    earth’s surface for the occupation of organized human society, it
+    may be doubted whether many such changes are to be looked for in the
+    future. The last great flooding was that which stratified the drift
+    materials of the north, and carried the finer portions far over the
+    south, determining the minor topography of the surface and supplying
+    it with soils.
+
+    The existence of floods which drowned many races of men may be
+    considered as established. The men destroyed by the one recorded by
+    Moses are described by him as exceedingly wicked, so that “the earth
+    was filled with violence.” In his eyes the Flood was designed for
+    their extermination.
+
+    That their condition was evil must be fully believed if they were
+    condemned by the executive of the Jewish law. This law, it will be
+    remembered, permitted polygamy, slavery, revenge, aggressive war.
+    The Jews were expected to rob their neighbors the Egyptians of
+    jewels, and they were allowed “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
+    tooth.” They were expected to butcher other nations, with their
+    women and children, their flocks and their herds. If we look at the
+    lives of men recorded in the Old Testament as examples of
+    distinguished excellence, we find that their standard, however
+    superior to that of the people around them, would ill accord with
+    the morality of the present day. They were all polygamists,
+    slaveholders and warriors. Abraham treated Hagar and Ishmael with
+    inhumanity. Jacob, with his mother’s aid, deceived Isaac, and
+    received thereby a blessing which extended to the whole Jewish
+    nation. David, a man whom Paul tells us the Lord found to be after
+    his own heart, slew the messenger who brought tidings of the death
+    of Saul, and committed other acts which would stain the reputation
+    of a Christian beyond redemption. It is scarcely necessary to turn
+    to other nations if this be true of the chosen men of a chosen
+    people. History indeed presents us with no people prior to, or
+    contemporary with, the Jews who were not morally their inferiors.
+
+    If we turn to more modern periods, an examination of the morality of
+    Greece and Rome reveals a curious intermixture of lower and higher
+    moral conditions. While each of these nations produced excellent
+    moralists, the influence of their teachings was not sufficient to
+    elevate the masses above what would now be regarded as a very low
+    standard. The popularity of those scenes of cruelty, the
+    gladiatorial shows and the combats with wild beasts, sufficiently
+    attests this. The Roman virtue of patriotism, while productive of
+    many noble deeds, is in itself far from being a disinterested one,
+    but partakes rather of the nature of partisanship and selfishness.
+    If the Greeks were superior to the Romans in humanity, they were
+    apparently their inferiors in the social virtues, and were much
+    below the standard of Christian nations in both respects.
+
+    Ancient history points to a state of chronic war, in which the
+    social relations were in confusion, and the development of the
+    useful arts was almost impossible. Savage races, which continue to
+    this day in a similar moral condition, are, we may easily believe,
+    most unhappy. They are generally divided into tribes, which are
+    mutually hostile, or friendly only with the view of injuring some
+    other tribe. Might is their law, and robbery, rapine and murder
+    express their mutual relations. This is the history of the lowest
+    grade of barbarism, and the history of primeval man so far as it has
+    come down to us in sacred and profane records. Man as a species
+    first appears in history as a sinful being. Then a race maintaining
+    a contest with the prevailing corruption and exhibiting a higher
+    moral ideal is presented to us in Jewish history. Finally, early
+    Christian society exhibits a greatly superior condition of things.
+    In it polygamy scarcely existed, and slavery and war were condemned.
+    But progress did not end here, for our Lord said, “I have yet many
+    things to say unto you, _but ye cannot bear them now_. Howbeit, when
+    He, the spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.”
+
+    The progress revealed to us by history is truly great, and if a
+    similar difference existed between the first of the human species
+    and the first of whose condition we have information, we can
+    conceive how low the origin must have been. History begins with a
+    considerable progress in civilization, and from this we must infer a
+    long preceding period of human existence, such as a gradual
+    evolution would require.
+
+                   γ. Rationale of Moral Development.
+
+    I. _Of the Species._ Let us now look at the moral condition of the
+    infant man of the present time. We know his small accountability,
+    his trust, his innocence. We know that he is free from the law that
+    when he “would do good, evil is present with him,” for good and evil
+    are alike unknown. We know that until growth has progressed to a
+    certain degree he fully deserves the praise pronounced by Our
+    Saviour, that “of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Growth, however,
+    generally sees a change. We know that the buddings of evil appear
+    but too soon: the lapse of a few months sees exhibitions of anger,
+    disobedience, malice, falsehood, and their attendants—the fruit of a
+    corruption within not manifested before.
+
+    In early youth it may be said that moral susceptibility is often in
+    inverse ratio to physical vigor. But with growth the more physically
+    vigorous are often sooner taught the lessons of life, for their
+    energy brings them into earlier conflict with the antagonisms and
+    contradictions of the world. Here is a beautiful example of the
+    benevolent principle of compensation.
+
+    1. _Innocence and the Fall._ If physical evolution be a reality, we
+    have reason to believe that the infantile stage of human morals, as
+    well as of human intellect, was much prolonged in the history of our
+    first parents. This constitutes the period of human purity, when we
+    are told by Moses that the first pair dwelt in Eden. But the growth
+    to maturity saw the development of all the qualities inherited from
+    the irresponsible denizen of the forest. Man inherits from his
+    predecessors in the creation the buddings of reason: he inherits
+    passions, propensities and appetites. His corruption is that of his
+    animal progenitors, and his sin is the low and bestial instinct of
+    the brute creation. Thus only is the origin of sin made clear—a
+    problem which the pride of man would have explained in any other way
+    had it been possible.
+
+    But how startling the exhibition of evil by this new being as
+    compared with the scenes of the countless ages already past! Then
+    the right of the strongest was God’s law, and rapine and destruction
+    were the history of life. But into man had been “breathed the breath
+    of life,” and he had “become a living soul.” The law of right, the
+    Divine Spirit, was planted within him, and the laws of the beast
+    were in antagonism to that law. The natural development of his
+    inherited qualities necessarily brought him into collision with that
+    higher standard planted within him, and that war was commenced which
+    shall never cease “till He hath put all things under His feet.” The
+    first act of man’s disobedience constituted the Fall, and with it
+    would come the first _intellectual_ “knowledge of good and of
+    evil”—an apprehension up to that time derived exclusively from the
+    divinity within, or conscience.[50]
+
+Footnote 50:
+
+      In our present translation of Genesis, the Fall is ascribed to the
+      influence of Satan assuming the form of the serpent, and this
+      animal was cursed in consequence, and compelled to assume a prone
+      position. This rendering may well be revised, since serpents,
+      prone like others, existed in both America and Europe during the
+      Eocene epoch, five times as great a period before Adam as has
+      elapsed since his day. Clark states, with great probability, that
+      “serpent” should be translated monkey or ape—a conclusion, it will
+      be observed, exactly coinciding with our inductions on the basis
+      of evolution. The instigation to evil by an ape merely states
+      inheritance in another form. His curse, then, refers to the
+      retention of the horizontal position by all other quadrumana, as
+      we find it at the present day.
+
+    2. _Free Agency._ Heretofore development had been that of physical
+    types, but the Lord had rested on the seventh day, for man closed
+    the line of the physical creation. Now a new development was to
+    begin—the development of mind, of morality and of grace.
+
+    On the previous days of Creation all had progressed in accordance
+    with inevitable law apart from its objects. Now two lines of
+    development were at the disposal of this being, between which his
+    _free will_ was to choose. Did he choose the courses dictated by the
+    spirit of the brute, he was to be subject to the old law of the
+    brute creation—the right of the strongest and spiritual death. Did
+    he choose the guidance of the Divine Guest in his heart, he became
+    subject to the laws which are to guide—I. the human species to an
+    ultimate perfection, so far as consistent with this world; and II.
+    the individual man to a higher life, where a new existence awaits
+    him as a spiritual being, freed from the laws of terrestrial matter.
+
+    The charge brought against the theory of development, that it
+    implies a necessary progress of man to all perfection without his
+    coöperation—or _necessitarianism_, as it is called—is unfounded.
+
+    The free will of man remains the source alike of his progress and
+    his relapse. But the choice once made, the laws of spiritual
+    development are apparently as inevitable as those of matter. Thus
+    men whose religious capacities are increased by attention to the
+    Divine Monitor within are in the advance of progress—progress
+    coinciding with that which in material things is called the
+    _harmonic_. On the other hand, those whose motives are of the lower
+    origin fall under the working of the law of _conflict_.
+
+    The lesson derivable from the preceding considerations would seem to
+    be “necessitarian” as respects the whole human race, considered by
+    itself; and I believe it is to be truly so interpreted. That is, the
+    Creator of all things has set agencies at work which will slowly
+    develop a perfect humanity out of His lower creation, and nothing
+    can thwart the process or alter the result. “My word shall not
+    return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please,
+    and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” This is our
+    great encouragement, our noblest hope—second only to that which
+    looks to a blessed inheritance in another world. It is this thought
+    that should inspire the farmer, who as he toils wonders, “Why all
+    this labor? The Good Father could have made me like the lilies, who,
+    though they toil not, neither spin, are yet clothed in glory; and
+    why should I, a nobler being, be subject to the dust and the sweat
+    of labor?” This thought should enlighten every artisan of the
+    thousands that people the factories and guide their whirling
+    machinery in our modern cities. Every revolution of a wheel is
+    moving the car of progress, and the timed stroke of the crank and
+    the rhythmic throw of the shuttle are but the music the spheres have
+    sung since time began. A new significance then appears in the prayer
+    of David: “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and
+    establish Thou the work of our hands upon us: the work of our hands,
+    O Lord, establish Thou it.” But beware of the catastrophe, for “He
+    will sit as a refiner:” “the wheat shall be gathered into barns, but
+    the chaff shall be burned with unquenchable fire.” If this be true,
+    let us look for—
+
+    3. _The Extinction of Evil._ How is necessitarianism to be
+    reconciled with free will? It appears to me, thus: When a being
+    whose safety depends on the perfection of a system of laws abandons
+    the system by which he lives, he becomes subject to that lower grade
+    of laws which govern lower intelligences. Man, falling from the laws
+    of right, comes under the dominion of the laws of brute force; as
+    said our Saviour: “Salt is good, but if the salt have lost his
+    savor, it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast forth and
+    trodden under foot of men.”
+
+    Evil, being unsatisfying to the human heart, is in its nature ever
+    progressive, whether in the individual or the nation; and in
+    estimating the practical results to man of the actions prompted by
+    the lower portion of our nature, it is only necessary to carry out
+    to its full development each of those animal qualities which may in
+    certain states of society be restrained by the social system. In
+    human history those qualities have repeatedly had this development,
+    and the battle of progress is fought to decide whether they shall
+    overthrow the system that restrains them, or be overthrown by it.
+
+    Entire obedience to the lower instincts of our nature ensures
+    destruction to the weaker, and generally to the stronger also. A
+    most marked case of this kind is seen where the developed vices of
+    civilization are introduced among a savage people—as, for example,
+    the North American Indians. These seem in consequence to be
+    hastening to extinction.
+
+    But a system or a circuit of existence has been allotted to the
+    civil associations of the animal species man, independently of his
+    moral development. It may be briefly stated thus: Races begin as
+    poor offshoots or emigrants from a parent stock. The law of labor
+    develops their powers, and increases their wealth and numbers. These
+    will be diminished by their various vices; but on the whole, in
+    proportion as the intellectual and economical elements prevail,
+    wealth will increase; that is, they accumulate power. When this has
+    been accomplished, and before activity has slackened its speed, the
+    nation has reached the culminating point, and then it enters upon
+    the period of decline. The restraints imposed by economy and active
+    occupation being removed, the beastly traits find in accumulated
+    power only increased means of gratification, and industry and
+    prosperity sink together. Power is squandered, little is
+    accumulated, and the nation goes down to its extinction amid scenes
+    of internal strife and vice. Its cycle is soon fulfilled, and other
+    nations, fresh from scenes of labor, assault it, absorb its
+    fragments, and it dies. This has been the world’s history, and it
+    remains to be seen whether the virtues of the nations now existing
+    will be sufficient to save them from a like fate.
+
+    Thus the history of the animal man in nations is wonderfully like
+    that of the type or families of the animal and vegetable kingdoms
+    during geologic ages. They rise, they increase and reach a period of
+    multiplication and power. The force allotted to them becoming
+    exhausted, they diminish and sink and die.
+
+    II. _Of the Individual._ In discussing physical development, we are
+    as yet compelled to restrict ourselves to the evidence of its
+    existence and some laws observed in the operation of its causative
+    force. What that force is, or what are its primary laws, we know
+    not.
+
+    So in the progress of moral development we endeavor to prove its
+    existence and the mode of its operation, but why that mode should
+    exist, rather than some other mode, we cannot explain.
+
+    The moral progress of the species depends, of course, on the moral
+    progress of the individuals embraced in it. Religion is the sum of
+    those influences which determine the motives of men’s actions into
+    harmony with the Divine perfection and the Divine will. Obedience to
+    these influences constitutes the practice of religion, while the
+    statement of the growth and operation of these influences
+    constitutes the theory of religion, or doctrine.
+
+    The Divine Spirit planted in man shows him that which is in harmony
+    with the Divine Mind, and it remains for his free will to conform to
+    it or reject it. This harmony is man’s highest ideal of happiness,
+    and in seeking it, as well as in desiring to flee from dissonance or
+    pain, he but obeys the disposition common to all conscious beings.
+    If, however, he attempts to conform to it, he will find the law of
+    evil present, and frequently obtaining the mastery. If now he be in
+    any degree observing, he will find that the laws of morality and
+    right are the only ones by which human society exists in a condition
+    superior to that of the lower animals, and in which the capacities
+    of man for happiness can approach a state of satisfaction. He may be
+    then said to be “awakened” to the importance of religion. If he
+    carry on the struggle to attain to the high goal presented to his
+    spiritual vision, he will be deeply grieved and humbled at his
+    failures: then he is said to be “convicted.” Under these
+    circumstances the necessity of a deliverance becomes clear, and is
+    willingly accepted in the only way in which it has pleased the
+    Author of all to present it, which has been epitomized by Paul as
+    “the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit through
+    Jesus Christ.” Thus a life of advanced and ever-advancing moral
+    excellence becomes possible, and the man makes nearer approaches to
+    the “image of God.”
+
+    Thus is opened a new era in spiritual development, which we are led
+    to believe leads to an ultimate condition in which the nature
+    inherited from our origin is entirely overcome, and an existence of
+    moral perfection entered on. Thus in the book of Mark the simile
+    occurs: “First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in
+    the ear;” and Solomon says that the development of righteousness
+    “shines more and more unto the perfect day.”
+
+                              δ. Summary.
+
+    If it be true that general development in morality proceeds in spite
+    of the original predominance of evil in the world, through the
+    self-destructive nature of the latter, it is only necessary to
+    examine the reasons why the excellence of the good may have been
+    subject also to progress, and how the remainder of the race may have
+    been influenced thereby.
+
+    The development of morality is then probably to be understood in the
+    following sense: Since the Divine Spirit, as the prime force in
+    moral progress, cannot in itself be supposed to have been in any way
+    under the influence of natural laws, its capacities were no doubt as
+    eternal and unerring in the first man as in the last. But the facts
+    and probabilities discussed above point to development of _religious
+    sensibility_, or capacity to appreciate moral good, or to receive
+    impressions from the source of good.
+
+    The evidence of this is supposed to be seen in—_First_, improvement
+    in man’s views of his duty to his neighbor; and _Second_, the
+    substitution of spiritual for symbolic religions: in other words,
+    improvement in the capacity for receiving spiritual impressions.
+
+    What the primary cause of this supposed development of religious
+    sensibility may have been, is a question we reverently leave
+    untouched. That it is intimately connected in some way with, and in
+    part dependent on, the evolution of the intelligence, appears very
+    probable: for this evolution is seen—_First_, in a better
+    understanding of the consequences of action, and of good and of evil
+    in many things; and _Second_, in the production of means for the
+    spread of the special instrumentalities of good. The following may
+    be enumerated as such instrumentalities:
+
+    1. Furnishing literary means of record and distribution of the
+    truths of religion, morality and science.
+
+    2. Creating and increasing modes of transportation of teachers and
+    literary means of disseminating truth.
+
+    3. Facilitating the migration and the spread of nations holding the
+    highest position in the scale of morality.
+
+    4. The increase of wealth, which multiplies the extent of the
+    preceding means.
+
+    And now, let no man attempt to set bounds to this development. Let
+    no man say even that morality accomplished is all that is required
+    of mankind, since that is not necessarily the evidence of a
+    spiritual development. If a man possess the capacity for progress
+    beyond the condition in which he finds himself, in refusing to enter
+    upon it he declines to conform to the Divine law. And “from those to
+    whom little is given, little is required, but from those to whom
+    much is given, much shall be required.”
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          _SCIENTIFIC ADDRESSES._
+
+
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          TYNDALL’S ADDRESSES.
+
+
+                                   I.
+
+       _On the Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation._
+
+    The celebrated Fichte, in his lectures on the “Vocation of the
+    Scholar,” insisted on a culture for the scholar which should not be
+    one-sided, but all-sided. His intellectual nature was to expand
+    spherically, and not in a single direction. In one direction,
+    however, Fichte required that the scholar should apply himself
+    directly to nature, become a creator of knowledge, and thus repay,
+    by original labors of his own, the immense debt he owed to the
+    labors of others. It was these which enabled him to supplement the
+    knowledge derived from his own researches, so as to render his
+    culture rounded, and not one-sided.
+
+    Fichte’s idea is to some extent illustrated by the constitution and
+    the labors of the British Association. We have here a body of men
+    engaged in the pursuit of natural knowledge, but variously engaged.
+    While sympathizing with each of its departments, and supplementing
+    his culture by knowledge drawn from all of them, each student
+    amongst us selects one subject for the exercise of his own original
+    faculty—one line along which he may carry the light of his private
+    intelligence a little way into the darkness by which all knowledge
+    is surrounded. Thus, the geologist faces the rocks; the biologist
+    fronts the conditions and phenomena of life; the astronomer, stellar
+    masses and motions; the mathematician the properties of space and
+    number; the chemist pursues his atoms, while the physical
+    investigator has his own large field in optical, thermal,
+    electrical, acoustical, and other phenomena. The British
+    Association, then, faces nature on all sides, and pushes knowledge
+    centrifugally outwards, while, through circumstance or natural bent,
+    each of its working members takes up a certain line of research in
+    which he aspires to be an original producer, being content in all
+    other directions to accept instruction from his fellow-men. The sum
+    of our labors constitutes what Fichte might call the sphere of
+    natural knowledge. In the meetings of the Association it is found
+    necessary to resolve this sphere into its component parts, which
+    take concrete form under the respective letters of our sections.
+
+    This section (A) is called the Mathematical and Physical section.
+    Mathematics and Physics have been long accustomed to coalesce, and
+    hence this grouping. For while mathematics, as a product of the
+    human mind, is self-sustaining and nobly self-rewarding,—while the
+    pure mathematician may never trouble his mind with considerations
+    regarding the phenomena of the material universe, still the form of
+    reasoning which he employs, the power which the organization of that
+    reasoning confers, the applicability of his abstract conceptions to
+    actual phenomena, render his science one of the most potent
+    instruments in the solution of natural problems. Indeed, without
+    mathematics, expressed or implied, our knowledge of physical science
+    would be friable in the extreme.
+
+    Side by side with the mathematical method, we have the method of
+    experiment. Here, from a starting-point furnished by his own
+    researches or those of others, the investigator proceeds by
+    combining intuition and verification. He ponders the knowledge he
+    possesses and tries to push it further, he guesses and checks his
+    guess, he conjectures and confirms or explodes his conjecture. These
+    guesses and conjectures are by no means leaps in the dark; for
+    knowledge once gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate
+    boundaries. There is no discovery so limited as not to illuminate
+    something beyond itself. The force of intellectual penetration into
+    this penumbral region which surrounds actual knowledge is not
+    dependent upon method, but is proportional to the genius of the
+    investigator. There is, however, no genius so gifted as not to need
+    control and verification. The profoundest minds know best that
+    nature’s ways are not at all times their ways, and that the
+    brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they
+    have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.
+    The vocation of the true experimentalist is the incessant correction
+    and realization of his insight; his experiments finally constituting
+    a body, of which his purified intuitions are, as it were, the soul.
+
+    Partly through mathematical, and partly through experimental
+    research, physical science has of late years assumed a momentous
+    position in the world. Both in a material and in an intellectual
+    point of view it has produced, and it is destined to produce,
+    immense changes, vast social ameliorations, and vast alterations in
+    the popular conception of the origin, rule, and governance of
+    things. Miracles are wrought by science in the physical world, while
+    philosophy is forsaking its ancient metaphysical channels, and
+    pursuing those opened or indicated by scientific research. This must
+    become more and more the case as philosophic writers become more
+    deeply imbued with the methods of science, better acquainted with
+    the facts which scientific men have won, and with the great theories
+    which they have elaborated.
+
+    If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour and
+    minute-hands, and possibly also a second-hand, moving over the
+    graduated dial. Why do these hands move, and why are their relative
+    motions such as they are observed to be? These questions cannot be
+    answered without opening the watch, mastering its various parts, and
+    ascertaining their relationship to each other. When this is done, we
+    find that the observed motion of the hands follows of necessity from
+    the inner mechanism of the watch when acted upon by the force
+    invested in the spring.
+
+    This motion of the hands may be called a phenomenon of art, but the
+    case is similar with the phenomena of Nature. These also have their
+    inner mechanism, and their store of force to set that mechanism
+    going. The ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this
+    mechanism, to discern this store, and to show that from the combined
+    action of both, the phenomena of which they constitute the basis
+    must of necessity flow.
+
+    I thought that an attempt to give you even a brief and sketchy
+    illustration of the manner in which scientific thinkers regard this
+    problem would not be uninteresting to you on the present occasion;
+    more especially as it will give me occasion to say a word or two on
+    the tendencies and limits of modern science, to point out the region
+    which men of science claim as their own, and where it is mere waste
+    of time to oppose their advance, and also to define, if possible,
+    the bourne between this and that other region to which the
+    questionings and yearnings of the scientific intellect are directed
+    in vain.
+
+    But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the American Emerson,
+    I think, who said that it is hardly possible to state any truth
+    strongly without apparent injury to some other truth. Under the
+    circumstances, the proper course appears to be to state both truths
+    strongly, and allow each its fair share, in the formation of the
+    resultant conviction. For truth is often of a dual character, taking
+    the form of a magnet with two poles; and many of the differences
+    which agitate the thinking part of mankind are to be traced to the
+    exclusiveness with which different parties affirm one half of the
+    duality in forgetfulness of the other half. But this waiting for the
+    statement of the two sides of a question implies patience. It
+    implies a resolution to suppress indignation if the statement of the
+    one half should clash with our convictions, and not to suffer
+    ourselves to be unduly elated if the half-statement should chime in
+    with our views. It implies a determination to wait calmly for the
+    statement of the whole before we pronounce judgment either in the
+    form of acquiescence or dissent.
+
+    This premised, let us enter upon our task. There have been writers
+    who affirmed that the pyramids of Egypt were the productions of
+    nature; and in his early youth Alexander Von Humboldt wrote an essay
+    with the express object of refuting this notion. We now regard the
+    pyramids as the work of men’s hands, aided probably by machinery of
+    which no record remains. We picture to ourselves the swarming
+    workers toiling at those vast erections, lifting the inert stones,
+    and, guided by the volition, the skill, and possibly at times by the
+    whip of the architect, placing the stones in their proper positions.
+    The blocks in this case were moved by a power external to
+    themselves, and the final form of the pyramid expressed the thought
+    of its human builder.
+
+    Let us pass from this illustration of building power to another of a
+    different kind. When a solution of common salt is slowly evaporated,
+    the water which holds the salt in solution disappears, but the salt
+    itself remains behind. At a certain stage of concentration, the salt
+    can no longer retain the liquid form; its particles, or molecules,
+    as they are called, begin to deposit themselves as minute solids, so
+    minute, indeed, as to defy all microscopic power. As evaporation
+    continues solidification goes on, and we finally obtain, through the
+    clustering together of innumerable molecules, a finite mass of salt
+    of a definite form. What is this form? It sometimes seems a mimicry
+    of the architecture of Egypt. We have little pyramids built by the
+    salt, terrace above terrace from base to apex, forming thus a series
+    of steps resembling those up which the Egyptian traveler is dragged
+    by his guides. The human mind is as little disposed to look at these
+    pyramidal salt-crystals without further question as to look at the
+    pyramids of Egypt without inquiring whence they came. How, then, are
+    those salt pyramids built up?
+
+    Guided by analogy, you may suppose that, swarming among the
+    constituent molecules of the salt, there is an invisible population,
+    guided and coerced by some invisible master, and placing the atomic
+    blocks in their positions. This, however, is not the scientific
+    idea, nor do I think your good sense will accept it as a likely one.
+    The scientific idea is that the molecules act upon each other
+    without the intervention of slave labor; that they attract each
+    other and repel each other at certain definite points, and in
+    certain definite directions; and that the pyramidal form is the
+    result of this play of attraction and repulsion. While, then, the
+    blocks of Egypt were laid down by a power external to themselves,
+    these molecular blocks of salt are self-posited, being fixed in
+    their places by the forces with which they act upon each other.
+
+    I take common salt as an illustration, because it is so familiar to
+    us all; but almost any other substance would answer my purpose
+    equally well. In fact, throughout inorganic nature, we have this
+    formative power, as Fichte would call it—this structural energy
+    ready to come into play, and build the ultimate particles of matter
+    into definite shapes. It is present everywhere. The ice of our
+    winters and of our polar regions is its hand-work, and so equally
+    are the quartz, feldspar, and mica of our rocks. Our chalk-beds are
+    for the most part composed of minute shells, which are also the
+    product of structural energy; but behind the shell, as a whole, lies
+    the result of another and more subtle formative act. These shells
+    are built up of little crystals of calc-spar, and to form these the
+    structural force had to deal with the intangible molecules of
+    carbonate of lime. This tendency on the part of matter to organize
+    itself, to grow into shape, to assume definite forms in obedience to
+    the definite action of force, is, as I have said, all-pervading. It
+    is in the ground on which you tread, in the water you drink, in the
+    air you breathe. Incipient life, in fact, manifests itself
+    throughout the whole of what we call inorganic nature.
+
+    The forms of minerals resulting from this play of forces are
+    various, and exhibit different degrees of complexity. Men of science
+    avail themselves of all possible means of exploring this molecular
+    architecture. For this purpose they employ in turn as agents of
+    exploration, light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and sound.
+    Polarized light is especially useful and powerful here. A beam of
+    such light, when sent in among the molecules of a crystal, is acted
+    on by them, and from this action we infer with more or less of
+    clearness the manner in which the molecules are arranged. The
+    difference, for example, between the inner structure of a plate of
+    rock-salt and a plate of crystalized sugar or sugar-candy is thus
+    strikingly revealed. These differences may be made to display
+    themselves in phenomena of color of great splendor, the play of
+    molecular force being so regulated as to remove certain of the
+    colored constituents of white light, and to leave others with
+    increased intensity behind.
+
+    And now let us pass from what we are accustomed to regard as a dead
+    mineral to a living grain of corn. When it is examined by polarized
+    light, chromatic phenomena similar to those noticed in crystals are
+    observed. And why? Because the architecture of the grain resembles
+    in some degree the architecture of the crystal. In the corn the
+    molecules are also set in definite positions, from which they act
+    upon the light. But what has built together the molecules of the
+    corn? I have already said, regarding crystalline architecture, that
+    you may, if you please, consider the atoms and molecules to be
+    placed in position by a power external to themselves. The same
+    hypothesis is open to you now. But, if in the case of crystals you
+    have rejected this notion of an external architect, I think you are
+    bound to reject it now, and to conclude that the molecules of the
+    corn are self-posited by the forces with which they act upon each
+    other. It would be poor philosophy to invoke an external agent in
+    the one case and to reject it in the other.
+
+    Instead of cutting our grain into thin slices and subjecting it to
+    the action of polarized light, let us place it in the earth and
+    subject it to a certain degree of warmth. In other words, let the
+    molecules, both of the corn and of the surrounding earth, be kept in
+    a state of agitation; for warmth, as most of you know, is, in the
+    eye of science, tremulous molecular motion. Under these
+    circumstances, the grain and the substances which surround it
+    interact, and a molecular architecture is the result of this
+    interaction. A bud is formed; this bud reaches the surface, where it
+    is exposed to the sun’s rays, which are also to be regarded as a
+    kind of vibratory motion. And as the common motion of heat with
+    which the grain and the substances surrounding it were first
+    endowed, enable the grain and these substances to coalesce, so the
+    specific motion of the sun’s rays now enables the green bud to feed
+    upon the carbonic acid and the aqueous vapor of the air,
+    appropriating those constituents of both for which the blade has an
+    elective attraction, and permitting the other constituent to resume
+    its place in the air. Thus forces are active at the root, forces are
+    active in the blade, the matter of the earth and the matter of the
+    atmosphere are drawn towards the plant, and the plant augments in
+    size. We have in succession, the bud, the stalk, the ear, the full
+    corn in the ear. For the forces here at play act in a cycle, which
+    is completed by the production of grains similar to that with which
+    the process began.
+
+    Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily eludes the
+    power of mind as we know it. An intellect the same kind as our own,
+    would, if only sufficiently expanded, be able to follow the whole
+    process from beginning to end. No entirely new intellectual faculty
+    would be needed for this purpose. The duly expanded mind would see
+    in the process and its consummation an instance of the play of
+    molecular force. It would see every molecule placed in its position
+    by the specific attractions and repulsions exerted between it and
+    other molecules. Nay, given the grain and its environment, an
+    intellect the same in kind as our own, but sufficiently expanded,
+    might trace out _à priori_ every step of the process, and by the
+    application of mechanical principles would be able to demonstrate
+    that the cycle of actions must end, as it is seen to end, in the
+    reproduction of forms like that with which the operation began. A
+    similar necessity rules here to that which rules the planets in
+    their circuits round the sun.
+
+    You will notice that I am stating my truth strongly, as at the
+    beginning we agreed it should be stated. But I must go still
+    further, and affirm that in the eye of science the animal body is
+    just as much the product of molecular force as the stalk and ear of
+    corn, or as the crystal of salt or sugar. Many of its parts are
+    obviously mechanical. Take the human heart, for example, with its
+    exquisite system of valves, or take the eye or the hand. Animal
+    heat, moreover, is the same in kind as the heat of a fire, being
+    produced by the same chemical process. Animal motion, too, is as
+    directly derived from the food of the animal, as the motion of
+    Trevethyck’s walking-engine from the fuel in its furnace. As regards
+    matter, the animal body creates nothing; as regards force, it
+    creates nothing. Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to
+    his stature? All that has been said regarding the plant may be
+    re-stated with regard to the animal. Every particle that enters into
+    the composition of the muscle, a nerve, or a bone, has been placed
+    in its position by molecular force. And unless the existence of law
+    in these matters be denied, and the element of caprice be
+    introduced, we must conclude that, given the relation of any
+    molecule of the body to its environment, its position in the body
+    might be predicted. Our difficulty is not with the quality of the
+    problem, but with its complexity; and this difficulty might be met
+    by the simple expansion of the faculties which man now possesses.
+    Given this expansion, and given the necessary molecular data, and
+    the chick might be deduced as rigorously and as logically from the
+    egg as the existence of Neptune was deduced from the disturbances of
+    Uranus, or as conical refraction was deduced from the undulatory
+    theory of light.
+
+    You see I am not mincing matters, but avowing nakedly what many
+    scientific thinkers more or less distinctly believe. The formation
+    of a crystal, a plant, or an animal, is in their eyes a purely
+    mechanical problem, which differs from the problems of ordinary
+    mechanics in the smallness of the masses and the complexity of the
+    processes involved. Here you have one half of our dual truth; let us
+    now glance at the other half. Associated with this wonderful
+    mechanism of the animal body we have phenomena no less certain than
+    those of physics, but between which and the mechanism we discern no
+    necessary connection. A man, for example, can say I feel, I think, I
+    love; but how does consciousness infuse itself into the problem? The
+    human brain is said to be the organ of thought and feeling; when we
+    are hurt the brain feels it, when we ponder it is the brain that
+    thinks, when our passions or affections are excited it is through
+    the instrumentality of the brain. Let us endeavor to be a little
+    more precise here. I hardly imagine that any profound scientific
+    thinker who has reflected upon the subject exists, who would not
+    admit the extreme probability of the hypothesis, that for every fact
+    of consciousness, whether in the domain of sense, of thought, or of
+    emotion, a certain definite molecular condition is set up in the
+    brain; that this relation of physics to consciousness is invariable,
+    so that, given the state of the brain, the corresponding thought or
+    feeling might be inferred; or, given the thought or feeling, the
+    corresponding state of the brain might be inferred. But how
+    inferred? It is at bottom not a case of logical inference at all,
+    but of empirical association. You may reply that many of the
+    inferences of science are of this character; the inference, for
+    example, that an electric current of a given direction will deflect
+    a magnetic needle in a definite way; but the cases differ in this,
+    that the passage from the current to the needle, if not
+    demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the
+    final mechanical solution of the problem; but the passage from the
+    physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is
+    unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite
+    molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not
+    possess the intellectual organ, nor, apparently, any rudiment of the
+    organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from
+    the one phenomenon to the other. They appear together, but we do not
+    know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and
+    illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of
+    the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their
+    groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were
+    we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought
+    and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the
+    problem. “How are these physical processes connected with the facts
+    of consciousness?” The chasm between the two classes of phenomena
+    would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the consciousness
+    of love, for example, be associated with a right-handed spiral
+    motion of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of hate
+    with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know when we love
+    that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate that the
+    motion is in the other; but the “WHY?” would still remain
+    unanswered.
+
+    In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, and that
+    thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of
+    the brain, I think the position of the “Materialist” is stated as
+    far as that position is a tenable one. I think the materialist will
+    be able finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but I
+    do not think, as the human mind is at present constituted, that he
+    can pass beyond it. I do not think he is entitled to say that his
+    molecular groupings and his molecular motions explain everything. In
+    reality they explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the
+    association of two classes of phenomena of whose real bond of union
+    he is in absolute ignorance. The problem of the connection of the
+    body and soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the
+    pre-scientific ages. Phosphorus is known to enter into the
+    composition of the human brain, and a courageous writer has
+    exclaimed, in his trenchant German, “Ohne phosphor kein gedanke.”
+    That may or may not be the case; but even if we knew it to be the
+    case, the knowledge would not lighten our darkness. On both sides of
+    the zone here assigned to the materialist he is equally helpless. If
+    you ask him whence is this “matter” of which we have been
+    discoursing, who or what divided it into molecules, who or what
+    impressed upon them this necessity of running into organic forms, he
+    has no answer. Science also is mute in reply to these questions. But
+    if the materialist is confounded, and science rendered dumb, who
+    else is entitled to answer? To whom has the secret been revealed?
+    Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance, one and all.
+    Perhaps the mystery may resolve itself into knowledge at some future
+    day. The process of things upon this earth has been one of
+    amelioration. It is a long way from the Iguanodon and his
+    contemporaries to the president and members of the British
+    Association. And whether we regard the improvement from the
+    scientific or from the theological point of view as the result of
+    progressive development, or as the result of successive exhibitions
+    of creative energy, neither view entitles us to assume that man’s
+    present faculties end the series—that the process of amelioration
+    stops at him. A time may therefore come when this ultra-scientific
+    region by which we are now enfolded may offer itself to terrestrial,
+    if not to human investigation. Two-thirds of the rays emitted by the
+    sun fail to arouse in the eye the sense of vision. The rays exist,
+    but the visual organ requisite for their translation into light does
+    not exist. And so from this region of darkness and mystery which
+    surrounds us, rays may now be darting which require but the
+    development of the proper intellectual organs to translate them into
+    knowledge as far surpassing ours as ours does that of the wallowing
+    reptiles which once held possession of this planet. Meanwhile the
+    mystery is not without its uses. It certainly may be made a power in
+    the human soul; but it is a power which has feeling, not knowledge,
+    for its base. It may be, and will be, and we hope is turned to
+    account, both in steadying and strengthening the intellect, and in
+    rescuing man from that littleness to which, in the struggle for
+    existence or for precedence in the world, he is continually prone.
+
+                                  II.
+
+                           On Haze and Dust.
+
+    Solar light in passing through a dark room reveals its track by
+    illuminating the dust floating in the air. “The sun,” says Daniel
+    Culverwell, “discovers atomes, though they be invisible by
+    candle-light, and makes them dance naked in his beams.”
+
+    In my researches on the decomposition of vapors by light, I was
+    compelled to remove these “atomes” and this dust. It was essential
+    that the space containing the vapors should embrace no visible
+    thing; that no substance capable of scattering the light in the
+    slightest sensible degree should, at the outset of an experiment, be
+    found in the “experimental tube” traversed by the luminous beam.
+
+    For a long time I was troubled by the appearance there of floating
+    dust, which, though invisible in diffuse daylight, was at once
+    revealed by a powerfully condensed beam. Two tubes were placed in
+    succession in the path of the dust: the one containing fragments of
+    glass wetted with concentrated sulphuric acid; the other, fragments
+    of marble wetted with a strong solution of caustic potash. To my
+    astonishment it passed through both. The air of the Royal
+    Institution, sent through these tubes at a rate sufficiently slow to
+    dry it and to remove its carbonic acid, carried into the
+    experimental tube a considerable amount of mechanically-suspended
+    matter, which was illuminated when the beam passed through the tube.
+    The effect was substantially the same when the air was permitted to
+    bubble through the liquid acid and through the solution of potash.
+
+    Thus, on the 5th of October, 1868, successive charges of air were
+    admitted through the potash and sulphuric acid into the exhausted
+    experimental tube. Prior to the admission of the air the tube was
+    _optically empty_; it contained nothing competent to scatter the
+    light. After the air had entered the tube, the conical track of the
+    electric beam was in all cases clearly revealed. This, indeed, was a
+    daily observation at the time to which I now refer.
+
+    I tried to intercept this floating matter in various ways; and on
+    the day just mentioned, prior to sending the air through the drying
+    apparatus, I carefully permitted it to pass over the tip of a
+    spirit-lamp flame. The floating matter no longer appeared, having
+    been burnt up by the flame. It was, therefore, _organic matter_.
+    When the air was sent too rapidly through the flame, a fine blue
+    cloud was found in the experimental tube. This was the _smoke_ of
+    the organic particles. I was by no means prepared for this result;
+    for I had thought, with the rest of the world, that the dust of our
+    air was, in great part, inorganic and non-combustible.
+
+    Mr. Valentin had the kindness to procure for me a small gas-furnace,
+    containing a platinum tube, which could be heated to vivid redness.
+    The tube also contained a roll of platinum gauze, which, while it
+    permitted the air to pass through it, insured the practical contact
+    of the dust with the incandescent metal. The air of the laboratory
+    was permitted to enter the experimental tube, sometimes through the
+    cold, and sometimes through the heated tube of platinum. The
+    rapidity of admission was also varied. In the first column of the
+    following table the quantity of air operated on is expressed by the
+    number of inches which the mercury gauge of the air-pump sank when
+    the air entered. In the second column the condition of the platinum
+    tube is mentioned, and in the third the state of the air which
+    entered the experimental tube.
+
+                        State of        State of
+             Quantity   Platinum        Experimental
+             of Air.    Tube.           Tube.
+
+             15 inches  Cold            Full of particles.
+
+             15 inches  Red-hot         Optically empty.
+
+             15 inches  Cold            Full of particles.
+
+             15 inches  Red-hot         Optically empty.
+
+             15 inches  Cold            Full of particles.
+
+             15 inches  Red-hot         Optically empty.
+
+
+    The phrase “optically empty” shows that when the conditions of
+    perfect combustion were present, the floating matter totally
+    disappeared. It was wholly burnt up, leaving not a trace of residue.
+    From spectrum analysis, however, we know that soda floats in the
+    air; these organic dust particles are, I believe, the _rafts_ that
+    support it, and when they are removed it sinks and vanishes.
+
+    When the passage of the air was so rapid as to render imperfect the
+    combustion of the floating matter, instead of optical emptiness a
+    fine blue cloud made its appearance in the experimental tube. The
+    following series of results illustrate this point:
+
+
+        Quantity.         Platinum Tube.    Experimental Tube.
+        15 inches, slow   Cold              Full of particles.
+        15 inches, slow   Red-hot           Optically empty.
+        15 inches, quick  Red-hot           A blue cloud.
+        15 inches, quick  Intensely hot     A fine blue cloud.
+
+
+    The optical character of these clouds was totally different from
+    that of the dust which produced them. At right angles to the
+    illuminating beam they discharged perfectly polarized light The
+    cloud could be utterly quenched by a transparent Nicol’s prism, and
+    the tube containing it reduced to optical emptiness.
+
+    The particles floating in the air of London being thus proved to be
+    organic, I sought to burn them up at the focus of a concave
+    reflector. One of the powerfully convergent mirrors employed in my
+    experiments on combustion by dark rays was here made use of, but I
+    failed in the attempt. Doubtless the floating particles are in part
+    transparent to radiant heat, and are so far incombustible by such
+    heat. Their rapid motion through the focus also aids their escape.
+    They do not linger there sufficiently long to be consumed. A flame
+    it was evident would burn them up, but I thought the presence of the
+    flame would mask its own action among the particles.
+
+    In a cylindrical beam, which powerfully illuminated the dust of the
+    laboratory, was placed an ignited spirit-lamp. Mingling with the
+    flame, and round its rim, were seen wreaths of darkness resembling
+    an intensely black smoke. On lowering the flame below the beam the
+    same dark masses stormed upwards. They were at times blacker than
+    the blackest smoke that I have ever seen issuing from the funnel of
+    a steamer, and their resemblance to smoke was so perfect as to lead
+    the most practiced observer to conclude that the apparently pure
+    flame of the alcohol lamp required but a beam of sufficient
+    intensity to reveal its clouds of liberated carbon.
+
+    But is the blackness smoke? The question presented itself in a
+    moment. A red-hot poker was placed underneath the beam, and from it
+    the black wreaths also ascended. A large hydrogen flame was next
+    employed, and it produced those whirling masses of darkness far more
+    copiously than either the spirit-flame or poker. Smoke was,
+    therefore, out of the question.
+
+    What, then, was the blackness? It was simply that of stellar space;
+    that is to say, blackness resulting from the absence from the track
+    of the beam of all matter competent to scatter its light. When the
+    flame was placed below the beam the floating matter was destroyed
+    _in situ_; and the air, freed from this matter, rose into the beam,
+    jostled aside the illuminated particles and substituted for their
+    light the darkness due to its own perfect transparency. Nothing
+    could more forcibly illustrate the invisibility of the agent which
+    renders all things visible. The beam crossed, unseen, the black
+    chasm formed by the transparent air, while at both sides of the gap
+    the thick-strewn particles shone out like a luminous solid under the
+    powerful illumination.
+
+    But here a difficulty meets us. It is not necessary to burn the
+    particles to produce a stream of darkness. Without actual
+    combustion, currents may be generated which shall exclude the
+    floating matter, and therefore appear dark amid the surrounding
+    brightness. I noticed this effect first on placing a red-hot copper
+    ball below the beam, and permitting it to remain there until its
+    temperature had fallen below that of boiling water. The dark
+    currents, though much enfeebled, were still produced. They may also
+    be produced by a flask filled with hot water.
+
+    To study this effect a platinum wire was stretched across the beam,
+    the two ends of the wire being connected with the two poles of a
+    voltaic battery. To regulate the strength of the current a rheostat
+    was placed in the circuit. Beginning with a feeble current the
+    temperature of the wire was gradually augmented, but before it
+    reached the heat of ignition, a flat stream of air rose from it,
+    which when looked at edgeways appeared darker and sharper than one
+    of the blackest lines of Fraunhofer in the solar spectrum. Right and
+    left of this dark vertical band the floating matter rose upwards,
+    bounding definitely the non-luminous stream of air. What is the
+    explanation? Simply this. The hot wire rarefied the air in contact
+    with it, but it did not equally lighten the floating matter. The
+    convection current of pure air therefore passed upwards _among the
+    particles_, dragging them after it right and left, but forming
+    between them an impassable black partition. In this way we render an
+    account of the dark currents produced by bodies at a temperature
+    below that of combustion.
+
+    Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, so prepared as to exclude
+    all floating particles, produce the darkness when poured or blown
+    into the beam. Coal-gas does the same. An ordinary glass shade
+    placed in the air with its mouth downwards permits the track of the
+    beam to be seen crossing it. Let coal-gas or hydrogen enter the
+    shade by a tube reaching to its top, the gas gradually fills the
+    shade from the top downwards. As soon as it occupies the space
+    crossed by the beam, the luminous track is instantly abolished.
+    Lifting the shade so as to bring the common boundary of gas and air
+    above the beam, the track flashes forth. After the shade is full, if
+    it be inverted, the gas passes upwards like a black smoke among the
+    illuminated particles.
+
+    The air of our London rooms is loaded with this organic dust, nor is
+    the country air free from its pollution. However ordinary daylight
+    may permit it to disguise itself, a sufficiently powerful beam
+    causes the air in which the dust is suspended to appear as a
+    semi-solid rather than as a gas. Nobody could, in the first
+    instance, without repugnance place the mouth at the illuminated
+    focus of the electric beam and inhale the dirt revealed there. Nor
+    is the disgust abolished by the reflection that, although we do not
+    see the nastiness, we are churning it in our lungs every hour and
+    minute of our lives. There is no respite to this contact with dirt;
+    and the wonder is, not that we should from time to time suffer from
+    its presence, but that so small a portion of it would appear to be
+    deadly to man.
+
+    And what is this portion? It was some time ago the current belief
+    that epidemic diseases generally were propagated by a kind of
+    malaria, which consisted of organic matter in a state of
+    _motor-decay_; that when such matter was taken into the body through
+    the lungs or skin, it had the power of spreading there the
+    destroying process which had attacked itself. Such a spreading power
+    was visibly exerted in the case of yeast. A little leaven was seen
+    to leaven the whole lump, a mere speck of matter in this supposed
+    state of decomposition being apparently competent to propagate
+    indefinitely its own decay. Why should not a bit of rotten malaria
+    work in a similar manner within the human frame? In 1836 a very
+    wonderful reply was given to this question. In that year Cagniard de
+    la Tour discovered the _yeast plant_, a living organism, which, when
+    placed in a proper medium, feeds, grows, and reproduces itself, and
+    in this way carries on the process which we name fermentation.
+    Fermentation was thus proved to be a product of life instead of a
+    process of decay.
+
+    Schwann, of Berlin, discovered the yeast plant independently, and in
+    February, 1837, he also announced the important result, that when a
+    decoction of meat is effectually screened from ordinary air, and
+    supplied solely with air which has been raised to a high
+    temperature, putrefaction never sets in. Putrefaction, therefore, he
+    affirmed to be caused by something derived from the air, which
+    something could be destroyed by a sufficiently high temperature. The
+    experiments of Schwann were repeated and confirmed by Helmholtz and
+    Ure. But as regards fermentation, the minds of chemists, influenced
+    probably by the great authority of Gay-Lussac, who ascribed
+    putrefaction to the action of oxygen, fell back upon the old notion
+    of matter in a state of decay. It was not the living yeast plant,
+    but the dead or dying parts of it, which, assailed by oxygen,
+    produced the fermentation. This notion was finally exploded by
+    Pasteur. He proved that the so-called “ferments” are not such; that
+    the true ferments are organized beings which find in the reputed
+    ferments their necessary food.
+
+    Side by side with these researches and discoveries, and fortified by
+    them and others, has run the _germ theory_ of epidemic disease. The
+    notion was expressed by Kircher, and favored by Linnæus, that
+    epidemic diseases are due to germs which float in the atmosphere,
+    enter the body, and produce disturbance by the development within
+    the body of parasitic life. While it was still struggling against
+    great odds, this theory found an expounder and a defender in the
+    President of this Institution. At a time when most of his medical
+    brethren considered it a wild dream, Sir Henry Holland contended
+    that some form of the germ theory was probably true. The strength of
+    this theory consists in the perfect parallelism of the phenomena of
+    contagious disease with those of life. As a planted acorn gives
+    birth to an oak competent to produce a whole crop of acorns, each
+    gifted with the power of reproducing its parent tree, and as thus
+    from a single seedling a whole forest may spring, so these epidemic
+    diseases literally plant their seeds, grow, and shake abroad new
+    germs, which, meeting in the human body their proper food and
+    temperature, finally take possession of whole populations. Thus
+    Asiatic cholera, beginning in a small way in the Delta of the
+    Ganges, contrived in seventeen years to spread itself over nearly
+    the whole habitable world. The development from an infinitesimal
+    speck of the virus of small-pox of a crop of pustules, each charged
+    with the original poison, is another illustration. The reappearance
+    of the scourge, as in the case of the _Dreadnought_ at Greenwich,
+    reported on so ably by Dr. Budd and Mr. Busk, receives a
+    satisfactory explanation from the theory which ascribes it to the
+    lingering of germs about the infected place.
+
+    Surgeons have long known the danger of permitting air to enter an
+    open abscess. To prevent its entrance they employ a tube called a
+    cannula, to which is attached a sharp steel point called a trocar.
+    They puncture with the steel point, and by gentle pressure they
+    force the pus through the cannula. It is necessary to be very
+    careful in cleansing the instrument; and it is difficult to see how
+    it can be cleansed by ordinary methods in air loaded with organic
+    impurities, as we have proved our air to be. The instrument ought,
+    in fact, to be made as hot as its temper will bear. But this is not
+    done, and hence, notwithstanding all the surgeon’s care,
+    inflammation often sets in after the first operation, rendering
+    necessary a second and a third. Rapid putrefaction is found to
+    accompany this new inflammation. The pus, moreover, which was sweet
+    at first, and showed no trace of animal life, is now fetid, and
+    swarming with active little organisms called vibrios. Prof. Lister,
+    from whose recent lecture this fact is derived, contends, with every
+    show of reason, that this rapid putrefaction and this astounding
+    development of animal life are due to the entry of germs into the
+    abscess during the first operation, and their subsequent nurture and
+    development under favorable conditions of food and temperature. The
+    celebrated physiologist and physicist, Helmholtz, is attacked
+    annually by hay-fever. From the 20th of May to the end of June he
+    suffers from a catarrh of the upper air-passages; and he has found
+    during this period, and at no other, that his nasal secretions are
+    peopled by these vibrios. They appear to nestle by preference in the
+    cavities and recesses of the nose, for a strong sneeze is necessary
+    to dislodge them.
+
+    These statements sound uncomfortable; but by disclosing our enemy
+    they enable us to fight him. When he clearly eyes his quarry the
+    eagle’s strength is doubled, and his swoop is rendered sure. If the
+    germ theory be proved true, it will give a definiteness to our
+    efforts to stamp out disease which they could not previously
+    possess. And it is only by definite effort under its guidance that
+    its truth or falsehood can be established. It is difficult for an
+    outsider like myself to read without sympathetic emotion such papers
+    as those of Dr. Budd, of Bristol, on cholera, scarlet-fever, and
+    small-pox. He is a man of strong imagination, and may occasionally
+    take a flight beyond his facts; but without this dynamic heat of
+    heart, the stolid inertia of the free-born Briton cannot be
+    overcome. And as long as the heat is employed to warm up the truth
+    without singeing it overmuch; as long as this enthusiasm can
+    overmatch its mistakes by unequivocal examples of success, so long
+    am I disposed to give it a fair field to work in, and to wish it God
+    speed.
+
+    But let us return to our dust. It is needless to remark that it
+    cannot be blown away by an ordinary bellows; or, more correctly, the
+    place of the particles blown away is in this case supplied by others
+    ejected from the bellows, so that the track of the beam remains
+    unimpaired. But if the nozzle of a good bellows be filled with
+    cotton wool not too tightly packed, the air urged through the wool
+    is filtered of its floating matter, and it then forms a clean band
+    of darkness in the illuminated dust. This was the filter used by
+    Schroëder in his experiments on spontaneous generation, and turned
+    subsequently to account in the excellent researches of Pasteur.
+    Since 1868 I have constantly employed it myself.
+
+    But by far the most interesting and important illustration of this
+    filtering process is furnished by the human breath. I fill my lungs
+    with ordinary air and breathe through a glass tube across the
+    electric beam. The condensation of the aqueous vapor of the breath
+    is shown by the formation of a luminous white cloud of delicate
+    texture. It is necessary to abolish this cloud, and this may be done
+    by drying the breath previous to its entering into the beam; or
+    still more simply, by warming the glass tube. When this is done the
+    luminous track of the beam is for a time uninterrupted. The breath
+    impresses upon the floating matter a transverse motion, but the dust
+    from the lungs makes good the particles displaced. But after some
+    time an obscure disc appears upon the beam, the darkness of which
+    increases, until finally, towards the end of the expiration, the
+    beam is, as it were, pierced by an intensely black hole, in which no
+    particles whatever can be discerned. The air, in fact, has so lodged
+    its dirt within the lungs as to render the last portions of the
+    expired breath absolutely free from suspended matter. This
+    experiment may be repeated any number of times with the same result.
+    It renders the distribution of the dirt within the lungs as manifest
+    as if the chest were transparent.
+
+    I now empty my lungs as perfectly as possible, and placing a handful
+    of cotton wool against my mouth and nostrils, inhale through it.
+    There is no difficulty in thus filling the lungs with air. On
+    expiring this air through the glass tube, its freedom from floating
+    matter is at once manifest. From the very beginning of the act of
+    expiration the beam is pierced by a black aperture. The first puff
+    from the lungs abolishes the illuminated dust and puts a patch of
+    darkness in its place, and the darkness continues throughout the
+    entire course of the expiration. When the tube is placed below the
+    beam and moved to and fro, the same smoke-like appearance as that
+    obtained with a flame is observed. In short, the cotton wool, when
+    used in sufficient quantity, completely intercepts the floating
+    matter on its way to the lungs.
+
+    And here we have revealed to us the true philosophy of a practice
+    followed by medical men, more from instinct than from actual
+    knowledge. In a contagious atmosphere the physician places a
+    handkerchief to his mouth and inhales through it. In doing so he
+    unconsciously holds back the dirt and germs of the air. If the
+    poison were a gas it would not be thus intercepted. On showing this
+    experiment with the cotton wool to Dr. Bence Jones, he immediately
+    repeated it with a silk handkerchief. The result was substantially
+    the same, though, as might be expected, the wool is by far the
+    surest filter. The application of these experiments is obvious. If a
+    physician wishes to hold back from the lungs of his patient, or from
+    his own, the germs by which contagious disease is said to be
+    propagated, he will employ a cotton wool respirator. After the
+    revelations of this evening, such respirators must, I think, come
+    into general use as a defence against contagion. In the crowded
+    dwellings of the London poor, where the isolation of the sick is
+    difficult, if not impossible, the noxious air around the patient
+    may, by this simple means, be restored to practical purity. Thus
+    filtered, attendants may breathe the air unharmed. In all
+    probability the protection of the lungs will be protection of the
+    entire system. For it is exceedingly probable that the germs which
+    lodge in the air-passages, and which, at their leisure, can work
+    their way across the mucous membrane, are those which sow in the
+    body epidemic disease. If this be so, then disease can certainly be
+    warded off by filters of cotton wool. I should be most willing to
+    test their efficacy in my own person. And time will decide whether
+    in lung diseases also the woolen respirator cannot abate irritation,
+    if not arrest decay. By its means, so far as the germs are
+    concerned, the air of the highest Alps may be brought into the
+    chamber of the invalid.
+
+                                  III.
+
+                   Scientific Use of the Imagination.
+
+    I carried with me to the Alps this year the heavy burden of this
+    evening’s work. In the way of new investigation I had nothing
+    complete enough to be brought before you; so all that remained to me
+    was to fall back upon such residues as I could find in the depths of
+    consciousness, and out of them to spin the fiber and weave the web
+    of this discourse. Save from memory I had no direct aid upon the
+    mountains; but to spur up the emotions, on which so much depends, as
+    well as to nourish indirectly the intellect and will, I took with me
+    two volumes of poetry, Goethe’s “Farbenlehre,” and the work on
+    “Logic” recently published by Mr. Alexander Bain. The spur, I am
+    sorry to say, was no match for the integument of dullness it had to
+    pierce.
+
+    In Goethe, so glorious otherwise, I chiefly noticed the
+    self-inflicted hurts of genius, as it broke itself in vain against
+    the philosophy of Newton. For a time Mr. Bain became my principal
+    companion. I found him learned and practical, shining generally with
+    a dry light, but exhibiting at times a flush of emotional strength,
+    which proved that even logicians share the common fire of humanity.
+    He interested me most when he became the mirror of my own condition.
+    Neither intellectually nor socially is it good for man to be alone,
+    and the griefs of thought are more patiently borne when we find that
+    they have been experienced by another. From certain passages in his
+    book I could infer that Mr. Bain was no stranger to such sorrows.
+    Take this passage as an illustration. Speaking of the ebb of
+    intellectual force which we all from time to time experience, Mr.
+    Bain says: “The uncertainty where to look for the next opening of
+    discovery brings the pain of conflict and the debility of
+    indecision.” These words have in them the true ring of personal
+    experience.
+
+    The action of the investigator is periodic. He grapples with a
+    subject of inquiry, wrestles with it, overcomes it, exhausts, it may
+    be, both himself and it for the time being. He breathes a space, and
+    then renews the struggle in another field. Now this period of
+    halting between two investigations is not always one of pure repose.
+    It is often a period of doubt and discomfort, of gloom and ennui.
+    “The uncertainty where to look for the next opening of discovery
+    brings the pain of conflict and the debility of indecision.” Such
+    was my precise condition in the Alps this year; in a score of words
+    Mr. Bain has here sketched my mental diagnosis; and it was under
+    these evil circumstances that I had to equip myself for the hour and
+    the ordeal that are now come.
+
+    Gladly, however, as I should have seen this duty in other hands, I
+    could by no means shrink from it. Disloyalty would have been worse
+    than failure. In some fashion or other—feebly or strongly, meanly or
+    manfully, on the higher levels of thought, or on the flats of
+    commonplace—the task had to be accomplished. I looked in various
+    directions for help and furtherance; but without me for a time I saw
+    only “antres vast,” and within me “deserts idle.” My case resembled
+    that of a sick doctor who had forgotten his art, and sorely needed
+    the prescription of a friend. Mr. Bain wrote one for me. He said:
+    “Your present knowledge must forge the links of connection between
+    what has been already achieved and what is now required.”
+
+    In these words he admonished me to review the past and recover from
+    it the broken ends of former investigations. I tried to do so.
+    Previous to going to Switzerland I had been thinking much of light
+    and heat, of magnetism and electricity, of organic germs, atoms,
+    molecules, spontaneous generation, comets and skies. With one or
+    another of these I now sought to re-form an alliance, and finally
+    succeeded in establishing a kind of cohesion between thought and
+    light. The wish grew within me to trace, and to enable you to trace,
+    some of the more occult operations of this agent. I wished, if
+    possible, to take you behind the drop-scene of the senses, and to
+    show you the hidden mechanism of optical action. For I take it to be
+    well worth the while of the scientific teacher to take some pains,
+    and even great pains, to make those whom he addresses co-partners of
+    his thoughts. To clear his own mind in the first place from all haze
+    and vagueness, and then to project into language which shall leave
+    no mistake as to his meaning—which shall leave even his errors
+    naked—the definite ideas he has shaped.
+
+    A great deal is, I think, possible to scientific exposition
+    conducted in this way. It is possible, I believe, even before an
+    audience like the present, to uncover to some extent the unseen
+    things of nature, and thus to give, not only to professed students,
+    but to others with the necessary bias, industry and capacity, an
+    intelligent interest in the operations of science. Time and labor
+    are necessary to this result, but science is the gainer from the
+    public sympathy thus created.
+
+    How then are those hidden things to be revealed? How, for example,
+    are we to lay hold of the physical basis of light, since, like that
+    of life itself, it lies entirely without the domain of the senses?
+    Now, philosophers may be right in affirming that we cannot transcend
+    experience. But we can, at all events, carry it a long way from its
+    origin. We can also magnify, diminish, qualify, and combine
+    experiences, so as to render them fit for purposes entirely new. We
+    are gifted with the power of imagination, combining what the Germans
+    called _Anschauungsgabe_ and _Einbildungskraft_, and by this power
+    we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world of the senses.
+
+    There are tories even in science who regard imagination as a faculty
+    to be feared and avoided rather than employed. They had observed its
+    action in weak vessels and were unduly impressed by its disasters.
+    But they might with equal justice point to exploded boilers as an
+    argument against the use of steam. Bounded and conditioned by
+    coöperant reason, imagination becomes the mightiest instrument of
+    the physical discoverer. Newton’s passage from a falling apple to a
+    falling moon was a leap of the imagination. When William Thomson
+    tries to place the ultimate particles of matter between his compass
+    points, and to apply to them a scale of millimeters, it is an
+    exercise of the imagination. And in much that has been recently said
+    about protoplasm and life, we have the outgoings of the imagination
+    guided and controlled by the known analogies of science. In fact,
+    without this power our knowledge of nature would be a mere
+    tabulation of coëxistences and sequences. We should still believe in
+    the succession of day and night, of summer and winter; but the soul
+    of force would be dislodged from our universe; casual relations
+    would disappear, and with them that science which is now binding the
+    parts of nature to an organic whole.
+
+    I should like to illustrate by a few simple instances the use that
+    scientific men have already made of this power of imagination, and
+    to indicate afterwards some of the further uses that they are likely
+    to make of it. Let us begin with the rudimentary experiences.
+    Observe the falling of heavy rain drops into a tranquil pond. Each
+    drop as it strikes the water becomes a center of disturbance, from
+    which a series of ring ripples expands outwards. Gravity and inertia
+    are the agents by which this wave motion is produced, and a rough
+    experiment will suffice to show that the rate of propagation does
+    not amount to a foot a second.
+
+    A series of slight mechanical shocks is experienced by a body
+    plunged in the water as the wavelets reach it in succession. But a
+    finer motion is at the same time set up and propagated. If the head
+    and ears be immersed in the water, as in an experiment of
+    Franklin’s, the shock of the drop is communicated to the auditory
+    nerve—the _tick_ of the drop is heard. Now this sonorous impulse is
+    propagated, not at the rate of a foot a second, but at the rate of
+    4,700 feet a second. In this case it is not the gravity but the
+    _elasticity_ of the water that is the urging force. Every liquid
+    particle pushed against its neighbor delivers up its motion with
+    extreme rapidity, and the pulse is propagated as a thrill. The
+    incompressibility of water, as illustrated by the famous Florentine
+    experiment, is a measure of its elasticity, and to the possession of
+    this property in so high a degree the rapid transmission of a
+    sound-pulse through water is to be ascribed.
+
+    But water, as you know, is not necessary to the conduction of sound;
+    air is its most common vehicle. And you know that when the air
+    possesses the particular density and elasticity corresponding to the
+    temperature of freezing water, the velocity of sound in it is 1,090
+    feet a second. It is almost exactly one-fourth of the velocity in
+    water; the reason being that though the greater weight of the water
+    tends to diminish the velocity, the enormous molecular elasticity of
+    the liquid far more than atones for the disadvantage due to weight.
+    By various contrivances we can compel the vibrations of the air to
+    declare themselves; we know the length and frequency of sonorous
+    waves, and we have also obtained great mastery over the various
+    methods by which the air is thrown into vibration. We know the
+    phenomena and laws of vibrating rods, of organ pipes, strings,
+    membranes, plates, and bells. We can abolish one sound by another.
+    We know the physical meaning of music and noise, of harmony and
+    discord. In short, as regards sound we have a very clear notion of
+    the external physical processes which correspond to our sensations.
+
+    In these phenomena of sound we travel a very little way from
+    downright sensible experience. Still the imagination is to some
+    extent exercised. The bodily eye, for example, cannot see the
+    condensations and rarefactions of the waves of sound. We construct
+    them in thought, and we believe as firmly in their existence as in
+    that of the air itself. But now our experience has to be carried
+    into a new region, where a new use is to be made of it.
+
+    Having mastered the cause and mechanism of sound, we desire to know
+    the cause and mechanism of light. We wish to extend our inquiries
+    from the auditory nerve to the optic nerve. Now there is in the
+    human intellect a power of expansion—I might almost call it a power
+    of creation—which is brought into play by the simple brooding upon
+    facts. The legend of the Spirit brooding over chaos may have
+    originated in a knowledge of this power. In the case now before us
+    it has manifested itself by transplanting into space, for the
+    purposes of light, an adequately modified form of the mechanism of
+    sound. We know intimately whereon the velocity of sound depends.
+    When we lessen the density of a medium and preserve its elasticity
+    constant, we augment the velocity. When we highten the elasticity
+    and keep the density constant, we also augment the velocity. A small
+    density, therefore, and a great elasticity are the two things
+    necessary to rapid propagation.
+
+    Now light is known to move with the astounding velocity of 185,000
+    miles a second. How is such a velocity to be obtained? By boldly
+    diffusing in space a medium of the requisite tenuity and elasticity.
+    Let us make such a medium our starting point, endowing it with one
+    or two other necessary qualities; let us handle it in accordance
+    with strict mechanical laws; give to every step of your deduction
+    the surety of the syllogism; carry it thus forth from the world of
+    imagination to the world of sense, and see whether the final outcrop
+    of the deduction be not the very phenomena of light which ordinary
+    knowledge and skilled experiment reveal. If in all the multiplied
+    varieties of these phenomena, including those of the most remote and
+    entangled description, this fundamental conception always brings us
+    face to face with the truth; if no contradiction to our deductions
+    from it be found in external nature; if, moreover, it has actually
+    forced upon our attention phenomena which no eye had previously
+    seen, and which no mind had previously imagined; if by it we are
+    gifted with a power of prescience which has never failed when
+    brought to an experimental test; such a conception, which never
+    disappoints us, but always lands us on the solid shores of fact,
+    must, we think, be something more than a mere figment of the
+    scientific fancy. In forming it that composite and creative unity in
+    which reason and imagination are together blent, has, we believe,
+    led us into a world not less real than that of the senses, and of
+    which the world of sense itself is the suggestion and justification.
+
+    Far be it from me, however, to wish to fix you immovably in this or
+    in any other theoretic conception. With all our belief of it, it
+    will be well to keep the theory plastic and capable of change. You
+    may, moreover, urge that although the phenomena occur _as if_ the
+    medium existed, the absolute demonstration of its existence is still
+    wanting. Far be it from me to deny to this reasoning such validity
+    as it may fairly claim. Let us endeavor by means of analogy to form
+    a fair estimate of its force.
+
+    You believe that in society you are surrounded by reasonable beings
+    like yourself. You are, perhaps, as firmly convinced of this as of
+    anything. What is your warrant for this conviction? Simply and
+    solely this, your fellow-creatures behave as if they were
+    reasonable; the hypothesis, for it is nothing more, accounts for the
+    facts. To take an eminent example, you believe that our president is
+    a reasonable being. Why? There is no known method of superposition
+    by which any one of us can apply himself intellectually to another
+    so as to demonstrate coincidence as regards the possession of
+    reason. If, therefore, you hold our president to be reasonable, it
+    is because he behaves _as if_ he were reasonable. As in the case of
+    the ether, beyond the “_as if_” you cannot go. Nay, I should not
+    wonder if a close comparison of the data on which both inferences
+    rest caused many respectable persons to conclude that the ether had
+    the best of it.
+
+    This universal medium, this light-ether as it is called, is a
+    vehicle, not an origin of wave motion. It receives and transmits,
+    but it does not create. Whence does it derive the motions it
+    conveys? For the most part from luminous bodies. By this motion of a
+    luminous body I do not mean its sensible motion, such as the flicker
+    of a candle, or the shooting out of red prominences from the limb of
+    the sun. I mean an intestine motion of the atoms or molecules of the
+    luminous body. But here a certain reserve is necessary. Many
+    chemists of the present day refuse to speak of atoms and molecules
+    as real things. Their caution leads them to stop short of the clear,
+    sharp, mechanically intelligible atomic theory enunciated by Dalton,
+    or any form of that theory, and to make the doctrine of multiple
+    proportions their intellectual bourne. I respect the caution, though
+    I think it is here misplaced. The chemists who recoil from these
+    notions of atoms and molecules accept without hesitation the
+    undulatory theory of light. Like you and me they one and all believe
+    in an ether and its light-producing waves. Let us consider what this
+    belief involves.
+
+    Bring your imaginations once more into play and figure a series of
+    sound waves passing through air. Follow them up to their origin, and
+    what do you there find? A definite, tangible, vibrating body. It may
+    be the vocal chords of a human being, it may be an organ pipe, or it
+    may be a stretched string. Follow in the same manner a train of
+    ether waves to their source, remembering at the same time that your
+    ether is matter, dense, elastic, and capable of motions subject to
+    and determined by mechanical laws. What then do you expect to find
+    as the source of a series of ether waves? Ask your imagination if it
+    will accept a vibrating multiple proportion—a numerical ratio in a
+    state of oscillation? I do not think it will. You cannot crown the
+    edifice by this abstraction. The scientific imagination, which is
+    here authoritative, demands as the origin and cause of a series of
+    ether waves a particle of vibrating matter quite as definite, though
+    it may be excessively minute, as that which gives origin to a
+    musical sound. Such a particle we name an atom or a molecule. I
+    think the imagination when focused so as to give definition without
+    penumbral haze is sure to realize this image at last.
+
+    To preserve thought continuous throughout this discourse, to prevent
+    either lack of knowledge or failure of memory from producing any
+    rent in our picture, I here propose to run rapidly over a bit of
+    ground which is probably familiar to most of you, but which I am
+    anxious to make familiar to you all.
+
+    The waves generated in the ether by the swinging atoms of luminous
+    bodies are of different lengths and amplitudes. The amplitude is the
+    width of swing of the individual particles of the wave. In water
+    waves it is the hight of the crest above the trough, while the
+    length of the wave is the distance between two consecutive crests.
+    The aggregate of waves emitted by the sun may be broadly divided
+    into two classes, the one class competent, the other incompetent, to
+    excite vision.
+
+    But the light-producing waves differ markedly among themselves in
+    size, form, and force. The length of the largest of these waves is
+    about twice that of the smallest, but the amplitude of the largest
+    is probably a hundred times that of the smallest. Now the force or
+    energy of the wave, which, expressed with reference to sensation,
+    means the intensity of the light, is proportional to the square of
+    the amplitude. Hence the amplitude being one hundred-fold, the
+    energy of the largest light-giving waves would be ten thousand-fold
+    that of the smallest. This is not improbable. I use these figures,
+    not with a view to numerical accuracy, but to give you definite
+    ideas of the differences that probably exist among the light-giving
+    waves. And if we take the whole range of solar radiation into
+    account—its non-visual as well as its visual waves—I think it
+    probable that the force or energy of the largest wave is a million
+    times that of the smallest.
+
+    Turned into their equivalents of sensation, the different light
+    waves produce different colors. Red, for example, is produced by the
+    largest waves, violet by the smallest, while green is produced by a
+    wave of intermediate length and amplitude. On entering from air into
+    more highly refracting substances, such as glass or water or the
+    sulphide of carbon, all the waves are retarded, but the smallest
+    ones most. This furnishes a means of separating the different
+    classes of waves from each other—in other words, of analyzing the
+    light. Sent through a refracting prism, the waves of the sun are
+    turned aside in different degrees from their direct course, the red
+    least, the violet most. They are virtually pulled asunder, and they
+    paint upon a white screen placed to receive them “the solar
+    spectrum.”
+
+    Strictly speaking, the spectrum embraces an infinity of colors, but
+    the limits of language and of our powers of distinction cause it to
+    be divided into seven segments: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
+    indigo, violet. These are the seven primary or prismatic colors.
+    Separately, or mixed in various proportions, the solar waves yield
+    all the colors observed in nature and employed in art. Collectively
+    they give us the impression of whiteness. Pure unsifted solar light
+    is white; and if all the wave constituents of such light be reduced
+    in the same proportion, the light, though diminished in intensity,
+    will still be white. The whiteness of Alpine snow with the sun
+    shining upon it is barely tolerable to the eye. The same snow under
+    an overcast firmament is still white. Such a firmament enfeebles the
+    light by reflection, and when we lift ourselves above a
+    cloud-field—to an Alpine summit, for instance, or to the top of
+    Snowdon—and see, in the proper direction, the sun shining on the
+    clouds, they appear dazzlingly white. Ordinary clouds, in fact,
+    divide the solar light impinging on them into two parts—a reflected
+    part and a transmitted part, in each of which the proportions of
+    wave motion which produce the impression of whiteness are sensibly
+    preserved.
+
+    It will be understood that the conditions of whiteness would fail if
+    all the waves were diminished _equally_, or by the same absolute
+    quantity. They must be reduced _proportionately_ instead of equally.
+    If by the act of reflection the waves of red light are split into
+    exact halves, then, to preserve the light white, the waves of
+    yellow, orange, green, and blue must also be split into exact
+    halves. In short, the reduction must take place, not by absolutely
+    equal quantities, but by equal fractional parts. In white light the
+    preponderance as regards energy of the larger over the smaller waves
+    must always be immense. Were the case otherwise, the physiological
+    correlative, _blue_, of the smaller waves would have the upper hand
+    in our sensations.
+
+    My wish to render our mental images complete, causes me to dwell
+    briefly upon these known points, and the same wish will cause me to
+    linger a little longer among others. But here I am disturbed by my
+    reflections. When I consider the effect of dinner upon the nervous
+    system, and the relation of that system to the intellectual powers I
+    am now invoking; when I remember that the universal experience of
+    mankind has fixed upon certain definite elements of perfection in an
+    after-dinner speech, and when I think how conspicuous by their
+    absence these elements are on the present occasion, the thought is
+    not comforting to a man who wishes to stand well with his
+    fellow-creatures in general, and with the members of the British
+    Association in particular. My condition might well resemble that of
+    the ether, which is scientifically defined as an assemblage of
+    vibrations. And the worst of it is that, unless you reverse the
+    general verdict regarding the effect of dinner, and prove in your
+    own persons that a uniform experience need not continue
+    uniform—which will be a great point gained for some people—these
+    tremors of mine are likely to become more and more painful. But I
+    call to mind the comforting words of an inspired, though uncanonical
+    writer, who admonishes us in the Apocrypha that fear is a bad
+    counsellor. Let me then cast him out, and let me trustfully assume
+    that you will one and all postpone that balmy sleep, of which dinner
+    might, under the circumstances, be regarded as the indissoluble
+    antecedent, and that you will manfully and womanfully prolong your
+    investigations of the ether and its waves into regions which have
+    been hitherto crossed by the pioneers of science alone.
+
+    Not only are the waves of ether reflected by clouds, by solids, and
+    by liquids, but when they pass from light air to dense, or from
+    dense air to light, a portion of the wave motion is always
+    reflected. Now our atmosphere changes continually in density from
+    top to bottom. It will help our conceptions if we regard it as made
+    up of a series of thin concentric layers or shells of air, each
+    shell being of the same density throughout, and a small and sudden
+    change of density occurring in passing from shell to shell. Light
+    would be reflected at the limiting surfaces of all these shells, and
+    their action would be practically the same as that of the real
+    atmosphere.
+
+    And now I would ask your imagination to picture this act of
+    reflection. What must become of the reflected light? The atmospheric
+    layers turn their convex surfaces towards the sun; they are so many
+    convex mirrors of feeble power, and you will immediately perceive
+    that the light regularly reflected from these surfaces cannot reach
+    the earth at all, but is dispersed in space.
+
+    But though the sun’s light is not reflected in this fashion from the
+    ærial layers to the earth, there is indubitable evidence to show
+    that the light of our firmament is reflected light. Proofs of the
+    most cogent description could be here adduced; but we need only
+    consider that we receive light at the same time from all parts of
+    the hemisphere of heaven. The light of the firmament comes to us
+    across the direction of the solar rays, and even against the
+    direction of the solar rays; and this lateral and opposing rush of
+    wave motion can only be due to the rebound of the waves from the air
+    itself, or from something suspended in the air. It is also evident
+    that, unlike the action of clouds, the solar light is not reflected
+    by the sky in the proportions which produce white. The sky is blue,
+    which indicates a deficiency on the part of the larger waves. In
+    accounting for the color of the sky, the first question suggested by
+    analogy would undoubtedly be, is not the air blue? The blueness of
+    the air has, in fact, been given as a solution of the blueness of
+    the sky. But reason basing itself on observation asks in reply, How,
+    if the air be blue, can the light of sunrise and sunset, which
+    travels through vast distances of air, be yellow, orange, or even
+    red? The passage of the white solar light through a blue medium
+    could by no possibility redden the light. The hypothesis of a blue
+    air is therefore untenable. In fact, the agent, whatever it is,
+    which sends us the light of the sky, exercises in so doing a
+    dichroitic action. The light reflected is blue, the light
+    transmitted is orange or red. A marked distinction is thus exhibited
+    between the matter of the sky and that of an ordinary cloud, which
+    latter exercises no such dichroitic action.
+
+    By the force of imagination and reason combined we may penetrate
+    this mystery also. The cloud takes no note of size on the part of
+    the waves of ether, but reflects them all alike. It exercises no
+    selective action. Now the cause of this may be that the cloud
+    particles are so large in comparison with the size of the waves of
+    ether as to reflect them all indifferently. A broad cliff reflects
+    an Atlantic roller as easily as a ripple produced by a sea bird’s
+    wing; and in the presence of large reflecting surfaces the existing
+    differences of magnitude among the waves of ether may disappear. But
+    supposing the reflecting particles, instead of being very large, to
+    be very small, in comparison with the size of the waves. In this
+    case, instead of the whole wave being fronted and in great part
+    thrown back, a small portion only is shivered off. The great mass of
+    the wave passes over such a particle without reflection. Scatter
+    then, a handful of such minute foreign particles in our atmosphere,
+    and set imagination to watch their action upon the solar waves.
+    Waves of all sizes impinge upon the particles, and you see at every
+    collision a portion of the impinging wave struck off by reflection.
+    All the waves of the spectrum, from the extreme red to the extreme
+    violet, are thus acted upon. But in what proportions will the waves
+    be scattered? A clear picture will enable us to anticipate the
+    experimental answer. Remembering that the red waves are to the blue
+    much in the relation of billows to ripples, let us consider whether
+    those extremely small particles are competent to scatter all the
+    waves in the same proportion. If they be not—and a little reflection
+    will make it clear to you that they are not—the production of color
+    must be an incident of the scattering. Largeness is a thing of
+    relation; and the smaller the wave the greater is the relative size
+    of any particle on which the wave impinges, and the greater also the
+    ratio of the reflected portion to the total wave.
+
+    A pebble placed in the way of the ring-ripples produced by our heavy
+    rain-drops on a tranquil pond will throw back a large fraction of
+    the ripple incident upon it, while the fractional part of a larger
+    wave thrown back by the same pebble might be infinitesimal. Now we
+    have already made it clear to our minds that to preserve the solar
+    light white, its constituent proportions must not be altered; but in
+    the act of division performed by these very small particles we see
+    that the proportions _are_ altered; an undue fraction of the smaller
+    waves is scattered by the particles, and, as a consequence, in the
+    scattered light blue will be the predominant color. The other colors
+    of the spectrum must, to some extent, be associated with the blue.
+    They are not absent, but deficient. We ought, in fact, to have them
+    all, but in diminishing proportions, from the violet to the red.
+
+    We have here presented a case to the imagination, and assuming the
+    undulatory theory to be a reality, we have, I think, fairly reasoned
+    our way to the conclusion that, were particles, small in comparison
+    to the size of the ether waves, sown in our atmosphere, the light
+    scattered by those particles would be exactly such as we observe in
+    our azure skies. When this light is analyzed all the colors of the
+    spectrum are found; but they are found in the proportions indicated
+    by our conclusion.
+
+    Let us now turn our attention to the light which passes unscattered
+    among the particles. How must it be finally affected? By its
+    successive collisions with the particles, the white light is more
+    and more robbed of its shorter waves; it therefore loses more and
+    more of its due proportion of blue. The result may be anticipated.
+    The transmitted light, where short distances are involved, will
+    appear yellowish. But as the sun sinks towards the horizon, the
+    atmospheric distances increase, and consequently the number of the
+    scattering particles. They abstract, in succession, the violet, the
+    indigo, the blue, and even disturb the proportions of green. The
+    transmitted light under such circumstances must pass from yellow
+    through orange to red. This also is exactly what we find in nature.
+    Thus, while the reflected light gives us at noon the deep azure of
+    the Alpine skies, the transmitted light gives us at sunset the warm
+    crimson of the Alpine snows. The phenomena certainly occur _as if_
+    our atmosphere were a medium rendered slightly turbid by the
+    mechanical suspension of exceedingly small foreign particles.
+
+    Here, as before, we encounter our skeptical “as if.” It is one of
+    the parasites of science, ever at hand, and ready to plant itself
+    and sprout, if it can, on the weak points of our philosophy. But a
+    strong constitution defies the parasite, and in our case, as we
+    question the phenomena, probability grows like growing health, until
+    in the end the malady of doubt is completely extirpated.
+
+    The first question that naturally arises is, Can small particles be
+    really proved to act in the manner indicated? No doubt of it. Each
+    one of you can submit the question to an experimental test. Water
+    will not dissolve resin, but spirit will, and when spirit which
+    holds resin in solution is dropped into water the resin immediately
+    separates in solid particles, which render the water milky. The
+    coarseness of this precipitate depends on the quantity of the
+    dissolved resin. You can cause it to separate in thick clots or in
+    exceedingly fine particles. Professor Brücke has given us the
+    proportions which produce particles particularly suited to our
+    present purpose. One gramme of clean mastic is dissolved in
+    eighty-seven grammes of absolute alcohol, and the transparent
+    solution is allowed to drop into a beaker containing clear water
+    kept briskly stirred. An exceedingly fine precipitate is thus
+    formed, which declares its presence by its action upon light.
+    Placing a dark surface behind the beaker, and permitting the light
+    to fall into it from the top or front, the medium is seen to be
+    distinctly blue. It is not, perhaps, so perfect a blue as I have
+    seen on exceptional days, this year, among the Alps, but it is a
+    very fair sky blue. A trace of soap in water gives a tint of blue.
+    London, and I fear Liverpool milk, makes an approximation to the
+    same color through the operation of the same cause; and Helmholtz
+    has irreverently disclosed the fact that a blue eye is simply a
+    turbid medium.
+
+    Numerous instances of the kind might be cited. The action of turbid
+    media upon light was fully and beautifully illustrated by Goethe,
+    who, though unacquainted with the undulatory theory, was led by his
+    experiments to regard the blue of the firmament as caused by an
+    illuminated turbid medium with the darkness of space behind it. He
+    describes glasses showing a bright yellow by transmitted, and a
+    beautiful blue by reflected light. Professor Stokes, who was
+    probably the first to discern the real nature of the action of small
+    particles on the waves of ether, describes a glass of a similar
+    kind. What artists call “chill” is no doubt an effect of this
+    description. Through the action of minute particles, the browns of a
+    picture often present the appearance of the bloom of a plum. By
+    rubbing the varnish with a silk handkerchief optical continuity is
+    established and the chill disappears.
+
+    Some years ago I witnessed Mr. Hirst experimenting at Zermatt on the
+    turbid water of the Visp, which was charged with the finely divided
+    matter ground down by the glaciers. When kept still for a day or so
+    the grosser matter sank, but the finer matter remained suspended,
+    and gave a distinctly blue tinge to the water. No doubt the blueness
+    of certain Alpine lakes is in part due to this cause. Professor
+    Roscoe has noticed several striking cases of a similar kind. In a
+    very remarkable paper the late Principal Forbes showed that steam
+    issuing from the safety valve of a locomotive, when favorably
+    observed, exhibits at a certain stage of its condensation the colors
+    of the sky. It is blue by reflected light, and orange or red by
+    transmitted light. The effect, as pointed out by Goethe, is to some
+    extent exhibited by peat smoke.
+
+    More than ten years ago I amused myself at Killarney, by observing
+    on a calm day, the straight smoke columns rising from the chimneys
+    of the cabins. It was easy to project the lower portion of a column
+    against a bright cloud. The smoke in the former case was blue, being
+    seen mainly by reflected light; in the latter case it was reddish,
+    being seen mainly by transmitted light. Such smoke was not in
+    exactly the condition to give us the glow of the Alps, but it was a
+    step in this direction. Brücke’s fine precipitate above referred to
+    looks yellowish by transmitted light, but by duly strengthening the
+    precipitate you may render the white light of noon as ruby colored
+    as the sun when seen through Liverpool smoke or upon Alpine
+    horizons.
+
+    I do not, however, point to the gross smoke arising from coal as an
+    illustration of the action of small particles, because such smoke
+    soon absorbs and destroys the waves of blue instead of sending them
+    to the eyes of the observer.
+
+    These multifarious facts, and numberless others which cannot now be
+    referred to, are explained by reference to the single principle that
+    where the scattering particles are small in comparison to the size
+    of the waves, we have in the reflected light a greater proportion of
+    the smaller waves, and in the transmitted light a greater proportion
+    of the larger waves, than existed in the original white light. The
+    physiological consequence is that in the one light blue is
+    predominant, and in the other light orange or red. And now let us
+    push our inquiries forward. Our best microscopes can readily reveal
+    objects not more than 1/50000 of an inch in diameter. This is less
+    than the length of a wave of red light. Indeed, a first-rate
+    microscope would enable us to discern objects not exceeding in
+    diameter the length of the smallest waves of the visible spectrum.
+    By the microscope, therefore, we can submit our particles to an
+    experimental test. If they are as large as the light-waves they will
+    infallibly be seen; and if they are not seen it is because they are
+    smaller.
+
+    I placed in the hands of our president a bottle containing Brücke’s
+    particles in greater number and coarseness than those examined by
+    Brücke himself. The liquid was a milky blue, and Mr. Huxley applied
+    to it his highest microscopic power. He satisfied me at the time
+    that had particles of even 1/100000 of an inch in diameter existed
+    in the liquid they could not have escaped detection. But no
+    particles were seen. Under the microscope the turbid liquid was not
+    to be distinguished from distilled water. Brücke, I may say, also
+    found the particles to be of ultra microscopic magnitude.
+
+    But we have it in our power to imitate far more closely than we have
+    hitherto done the natural conditions of this problem. We can
+    generate in air, as many of you know, artificial skies, and prove
+    their perfect identity with the natural one as regards the
+    exhibition of a number of wholly unexpected phenomena. By a
+    continuous process of growth, moreover, we are able to connect sky
+    matter, if I may use the term, with molecular matter on the one
+    side, and with molar matter, or matter in sensible masses, on the
+    other.
+
+    In illustration of this, I will take an experiment described by M.
+    Morren, of Marseilles, at the last meeting of the British
+    Association. Sulphur and oxygen combine to form sulphurous acid gas.
+    It is this choking gas that is smelt when a sulphur match is burnt
+    in air. Two atoms of oxygen and one of sulphur constitute the
+    molecule of sulphurous acid. Now it has been recently shown in a
+    great number of instances that waves of ether issuing from a strong
+    source, such as the sun or the electric light, are competent to
+    shake asunder the atoms of gaseous molecules. A chemist would call
+    this “decomposition” by light; but it behooves us, who are examining
+    the power and function of the imagination, to keep constantly before
+    us the physical images which we hold to underlie our terms.
+    Therefore I say, sharply and definitely, that the components of the
+    molecules of sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by the ether waves.
+    Enclosing the substance in a suitable vessel, placing it in a dark
+    room, and sending through it a powerful beam of light, we at first
+    see nothing; the vessel containing the gas is as empty as a vacuum.
+    Soon, however, along the track of the beam a beautiful sky-blue
+    color is observed, which is due to the liberated particles of
+    sulphur. For a time the blue grows more intense; it then becomes
+    whitish; and from a whitish blue it passes to a more or less perfect
+    white. If the action be continued long enough, we end by filling the
+    tube with a dense cloud of sulphur particles, which by the
+    application of proper means may be rendered visible.
+
+    Here, then, our ether waves untie the bond of chemical affinity, and
+    liberate a body—sulphur—which at ordinary temperatures is a solid,
+    and which therefore soon becomes an object of the senses. We have
+    first of all the free atoms of sulphur, which are both invisible and
+    incompetent to stir the retina sensibly with scattered light. But
+    these atoms gradually coalesce and form particles, which grow larger
+    by continual accretion until after a minute or two they appear as
+    sky matter. In this condition they are invisible themselves, but
+    competent to send an amount of wave motion to the retina sufficient
+    to produce the firmamental blue. The particles continue, or may be
+    caused to continue, in this condition for a considerable time,
+    during which no microscope can cope with them. But they continually
+    grow larger, and pass by insensible gradations into the state of
+    _cloud_, when they can no longer elude the armed eye. Thus, without
+    solution of continuity, we start with matter in the molecule, and
+    end with matter in the mass, sky matter being the middle term of the
+    series of transformations.
+
+    Instead of sulphurous acid we might choose from a dozen other
+    substances, and produce the same effect with any of them. In the
+    case of some—probably in the case of all—it is possible to preserve
+    matter in the skyey condition for fifteen or twenty minutes under
+    the continual operation of the light. During these fifteen or twenty
+    minutes the particles are constantly growing larger, without ever
+    exceeding the size requisite to the production of the celestial
+    blue. Now when two vessels are placed before you, each containing
+    sky matter, it is possible to state with great distinctness which
+    vessel contains the largest particles.
+
+    The eye is very sensitive to differences of light, when, as here,
+    the eye is in comparative darkness, and when the quantities of wave
+    motion thrown against the retina are small. The larger particles
+    declare themselves by the greater whiteness of their scattered
+    light. Call now to mind the observation, or effort at observation,
+    made by our president when he failed to distinguish the particles of
+    resin in Brücke’s medium, and when you have done so follow me. I
+    permitted a beam of light to act upon a certain vapor. In two
+    minutes the azure appeared, but at the end of fifteen minutes it had
+    not ceased to be azure. After fifteen minutes, for example, its
+    color and some other phenomena pronounced it to be a blue of
+    distinctly smaller particles than those sought for in vain by Mr.
+    Huxley. These particles, as already stated, must have been less than
+    1/100000 of an inch in diameter.
+
+    And now I want you to submit to your imagination the following
+    question: Here are particles which have been growing continually for
+    fifteen minutes, and at the end of that time are demonstrably
+    smaller than those which defied the microscope of Mr. Huxley. What
+    must have been the size of these particles at the beginning of their
+    growth? What notion can you form of the magnitude of such particles?
+    As the distances of stellar space give us simply a bewildering sense
+    of vastness without leaving any distinct impression on the mind, so
+    the magnitudes with which we have here to do impress us with a
+    bewildering sense of smallness. We are dealing with infinitesimals
+    compared with which the test objects of the microscope are literally
+    immense.
+
+    From their perviousness to stellar light, and other considerations,
+    Sir John Herschel drew some startling conclusions regarding the
+    density and weight of comets. You know that these extraordinary and
+    mysterious bodies sometimes throw out tails 100,000,000 of miles in
+    length, and 50,000 miles in diameter. The diameter of our earth is
+    8,000 miles. Both it and the sky, and a good portion of space beyond
+    the sky, would certainly be included in a sphere 10,000 miles
+    across. Let us fill this sphere with cometary matter, and make it
+    our unit of measure. An easy calculation informs us that to produce
+    a comet’s tail of the size just mentioned, about 300,000 such
+    measures would have to be emptied into space. Now suppose the whole
+    of this stuff to be swept together, and suitably compressed, what do
+    you suppose its volume would be? Sir John Herschel would probably
+    tell you that the whole mass might be carted away at a single effort
+    by one of your dray-horses. In fact, I do not know that he would
+    require more than a small fraction of a horse-power to remove the
+    cometary dust. After this you will hardly regard as monstrous a
+    notion I have sometimes entertained concerning the quantity of
+    matter in our sky. Suppose a shell, then, to surround the earth at a
+    hight above the surface which would place it beyond the grosser
+    matter that hangs in the lower regions of the air—say at the hight
+    of the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc. Outside this shell we have the deep
+    blue firmament. Let the atmospheric space beyond the shell be swept
+    clean, and let the sky matter be properly gathered up. What is its
+    probable amount? I have sometimes thought that a lady’s portmanteau
+    would contain it all. I have thought that even a gentleman’s
+    portmanteau—possibly his snuff-box—might take it in. And whether the
+    actual sky be capable of this amount of condensation or not, I
+    entertain no doubt that a sky quite as vast as ours, and as good in
+    appearance, could be formed from a quantity of matter which might be
+    held in the hollow of the hand.
+
+    Small in mass, the vastness in point of number of the particles of
+    our sky may be inferred from the continuity of its light. It is not
+    in broken patches nor at scattered points that the heavenly azure is
+    revealed. To the observer on the summit of Mont Blanc the blue is as
+    uniform and coherent as if it formed the surface of the most
+    close-grained solid. A marble dome would not exhibit a stricter
+    continuity. And Mr. Glaisher will inform you that if our
+    hypothetical shell were lifted to twice the hight of Mont Blanc
+    above the earth’s surface, we should still have the azure overhead.
+    Everywhere through the atmosphere those sky particles are strewn.
+    They fill the Alpine valleys, spreading like a delicate gauze in
+    front of the slopes of pine. They sometimes so swathe the peaks with
+    light as to abolish their definition. This year I have seen the
+    Weisshorn thus dissolved in opalescent air.
+
+    By proper instruments the glare thrown from the sky particles
+    against the retina may be quenched, and then the mountain which it
+    obliterated starts into sudden definition. Its extinction in front
+    of a dark mountain resembles exactly the withdrawal of a veil. It is
+    the light then taking possession of the eye, and not the particles
+    acting as opaque bodies, that interfere with the definition.
+
+    By day this light quenches the stars; even by moonlight it is able
+    to exclude from vision all stars between the fifth and the eleventh
+    magnitude. It may be likened to a noise, and the stellar radiance to
+    a whisper drowned by the noise. What is the nature of the particles
+    which shed this light? On points of controversy I will not here
+    enter, but I may say that De la Rive ascribes the haze of the Alps
+    in fine weather to floating organic germs. Now the possible
+    existence of germs in such profusion has been held up as an
+    absurdity. It has been affirmed that they would darken the air, and
+    on the assumed impossibility of their existence in the requisite
+    numbers, without invasion of the solar light, a powerful argument
+    has been based by believers in spontaneous generation.
+
+    Similar arguments have been used by the opponents of the germ theory
+    of epidemic disease, and both parties have triumphantly challenged
+    an appeal to the microscope and the chemist’s balance to decide the
+    question. Without committing myself in the least to De la Rive’s
+    notion, without offering any objection here to the doctrine of
+    spontaneous generation, without expressing any adherence to the germ
+    theory of disease, I would simply draw attention to the fact that in
+    the atmosphere we have particles which defy both the microscope and
+    the balance, which do not darken the air, and which exist,
+    nevertheless, in multitudes sufficient to reduce to insignificance
+    the Israelitish hyperbole regarding the sands upon the seashore.
+
+    The varying judgments of men on these and other questions may
+    perhaps be, to some extent, accounted for by that doctrine of
+    relativity which plays so important a part in philosophy. This
+    doctrine affirms that the impressions made upon us by any
+    circumstance, or combination of circumstances, depends upon our
+    previous state. Two travelers upon the same peak, the one having
+    ascended to it from the plain, the other having descended to it from
+    a higher elevation, will be differently affected by the scene around
+    them. To the one nature is expanding, to the other it is
+    contracting, and feelings are sure to differ which have two such
+    different antecedent states.
+
+    In our scientific judgments the law of relativity may also play an
+    important part. To two men, one educated in the school of the
+    senses, who has mainly occupied himself with observation, and the
+    other educated in the school of imagination as well, and exercised
+    in the conception of atoms and molecules to which we have so
+    frequently referred, a bit of matter, say 1/50000 of an inch in
+    diameter, will present itself differently. The one descends to it
+    from his molar hights, the other climbs to it from his molecular
+    lowlands. To the one it appears small, to the other large. So also
+    as regards the appreciation of the most minute forms of life
+    revealed by the microscope. To one of these men they naturally
+    appear conterminous with the ultimate particles of matter, and he
+    readily figures the molecules from which they directly spring; with
+    him there is but a step from the atom to the organism. The other
+    discerns numberless organic gradations between both. Compared with
+    his atoms, the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the microscopic
+    field are as behemoth and leviathan.
+
+    The law of relativity may to some extent explain the different
+    attitudes of these two men with regard to the question of
+    spontaneous generation. An amount of evidence which satisfies the
+    one entirely fails to satisfy the other; and while to the one the
+    last bold defense and startling expansion of the doctrine will
+    appear perfectly conclusive, to the other it will present itself as
+    imposing a profitless labor of demolition on subsequent
+    investigators. The proper and possible attitude of these two men is
+    that each of them should work as if it were his aim and object to
+    establish the view entertained by the other.
+
+    I trust, Mr. President, that you—whom untoward circumstances have
+    made a biologist, but who still keep alive your sympathy with that
+    class of inquiries which nature intended you to pursue and
+    adorn—will excuse me to your brethren if I say that some of them
+    seem to form an inadequate estimate of the distance which separates
+    the microscopic from the molecular limit, and that, as a
+    consequence, they sometimes employ a phraseology which is calculated
+    to mislead.
+
+    When, for example, the contents of a cell are described as perfectly
+    homogeneous, as absolutely structureless, because the microscope
+    fails to distinguish any structure, then I think the microscope
+    begins to play a mischievous part. A little consideration will make
+    it plain to all of you that the microscope can have no voice in the
+    real question of germ structure. Distilled water is more perfectly
+    homogeneous than the contents of any possible organic germ. What
+    causes the liquid to cease contracting at 39° F., and to grow bigger
+    until it freezes? It is a structural process of which the microscope
+    can take no note, nor is it likely to do so by any conceivable
+    extension of its powers. Place this distilled water in the field of
+    an electro-magnet, and bring a microscope to bear upon it. Will any
+    change be observed when the magnet is excited? Absolutely none; and
+    still profound and complex changes have occurred.
+
+    First of all, the particles of water are rendered diamagnetically
+    polar; and secondly, in virtue of the structure impressed upon it by
+    the magnetic strain of its molecules, the liquid twists a ray of
+    light in a fashion perfectly determinate both as to quantity and
+    direction. It would be immensely interesting to both you and me if
+    one here present, who has brought his brilliant imagination to bear
+    upon this subject, could make us see as he sees the entangled
+    molecular processes involved in the rotation of the plane of
+    polarization by magnetic force. While dealing with this question he
+    lived in a world of matter and of motion to which the microscope has
+    no passport, and in which it can offer no aid. The cases in which
+    similar conditions hold are simply numberless. Have the diamond, the
+    amethyst, and the countless other crystals formed in the
+    laboratories of nature and of man, no structure? Assuredly they
+    have, but what can the microscope make of it? Nothing. It cannot be
+    too distinctly borne in mind that between the microscopic limit and
+    the true molecular limit there is room for infinite permutations and
+    combinations. It is in this region that the poles of the atoms are
+    arranged, that tendency is given to their powers, so that when these
+    poles and powers have free action and proper stimulus in a suitable
+    environment, they determine first the germ and afterwards the
+    complete organism. This first marshaling of the atoms on which all
+    subsequent action depends baffles a keener power than that of the
+    microscope. Through pure excess of complexity, and long before
+    observation can have any voice in the matter, the most highly
+    trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination,
+    retires in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem. We
+    are struck dumb by an astonishment which no microscope can relieve,
+    doubting not only the power of our instrument, but even whether we
+    ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever enable
+    us to grapple with the ultimate structural energies of nature.
+
+    But the speculative faculty, of which imagination forms so large a
+    part, will nevertheless wander into regions where the hope of
+    certainty would seem to be entirely shut out. We think that though
+    the detailed analysis may be, and may ever remain, beyond us,
+    general notions may be attainable. At all events, it is plain that
+    beyond the present outposts of microscopic inquiry lies an immense
+    field for the exercise of the imagination. It is only, however, the
+    privileged spirits who know how to use their liberty without abusing
+    it, who are able to surround imagination by the firm frontiers of
+    reason, that are likely to work with any profit here. But freedom to
+    them is of such paramount importance that, for the sake of securing
+    it, a good deal of wildness on the part of weaker brethren may be
+    overlooked. In more senses than one Mr. Darwin has drawn heavily
+    upon the scientific tolerance of his age. He has drawn heavily upon
+    _time_ in his development of species, and he has drawn adventurously
+    upon _matter_ in his theory of pan-genesis. According to this
+    theory, a germ already microscopic is a world of minor germs. Not
+    only is the organism as a whole wrapped up in the germ, but every
+    organ of the organism has there its special seed.
+
+    This, I say, is an adventurous draft on the power of matter to
+    divide itself and distribute its forces. But, unless we are
+    perfectly sure that he is overstepping the bounds of reason, that he
+    is unwittingly sinning against observed fact or demonstrated law—for
+    a mind like that of Darwin can never sin wittingly against either
+    fact or law—we ought, I think, to be cautious in limiting his
+    intellectual horizon. If there be the least doubt in the matter, it
+    ought to be given in favor of the freedom of such a mind. To it a
+    vast possibility is in itself a dynamic power, though the
+    possibility may never be drawn upon.
+
+    It gives me pleasure to think that the facts and reasonings of this
+    discourse tend rather towards the justification of Mr. Darwin than
+    towards his condemnation, that they tend rather to augment than to
+    diminish the cubic space demanded by this soaring speculator; for
+    they seem to show the perfect competence of matter and force, as
+    regards divisibility and distribution, to bear the heaviest strain
+    that he has hitherto imposed upon them.
+
+    In the case of Mr. Darwin, observation, imagination, and reason
+    combined have run back with wonderful sagacity and success over a
+    certain length of the line of biological succession. Guided by
+    analogy, in his “Origin of Species” he placed as the root of life a
+    primordial germ, from which he conceived the amazing richness and
+    variety of the life that now is upon the earth’s surface, might be
+    deduced. If this were true it would not be final. The human
+    imagination would infallibly look behind the germ, and inquire into
+    the history of its genesis.
+
+    Certainty is here hopeless, but the materials for an opinion may be
+    attainable. In this dim twilight of speculation the inquirer
+    welcomes every gleam, and seeks to augment his light by indirect
+    incidences. He studies the methods of nature in the ages and the
+    worlds within his reach, in order to shape the course of imagination
+    in the antecedent ages and worlds. And though the certainty
+    possessed by experimental inquiry is here shut out, the imagination
+    is not left entirely without guidance. From the examination of the
+    solar system, Kant and Laplace came to the conclusion that its
+    various bodies once formed parts of the same undislocated mass; that
+    matter in a nebulous form preceded matter in a dense form; that as
+    the ages rolled away heat was wasted, condensation followed, planets
+    were detached, and that finally the chief portion of the fiery cloud
+    reached, by self-compression, the magnitude and density of our sun.
+    The earth itself offers evidence of a fiery origin; and in our day
+    the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace receives the independent
+    countenance of spectrum analysis, which proves the same substances
+    to be common to the earth and sun. Accepting some such view of the
+    construction of our system as probable, a desire immediately arises
+    to connect the present life of our planet with the past. We wish to
+    know something of our remotest ancestry.
+
+    On its first detachment from the central mass, life, as we
+    understand it, could hardly have been present on the earth. How then
+    did it come there? The thing to be encouraged here is a reverent
+    freedom—a freedom preceded by the hard discipline which checks
+    licentiousness in speculation—while the thing to be repressed, both
+    in science and out of it, is dogmatism. And here I am in the hands
+    of the meeting—willing to end, but ready to go on. I have no right
+    to intrude upon you, unasked, the unformed notions which are
+    floating like clouds or gathering to more solid consistency in the
+    modern speculative scientific mind. But if you wish me to speak
+    plainly, honestly, and undisputatiously, I am willing to do so. On
+    the present occasion
+
+                  You are ordained to call, and I to come.
+
+    Two views, then, offer themselves to us. Life was present
+    potentially in matter when in the nebulous form, and was unfolded
+    from it by the way of natural development, or it is a principle
+    inserted into matter at a later date. With regard to the question of
+    time, the views of men have changed remarkably in our day and
+    generation; and I must say as regards courage also, and a manful
+    willingness to engage in open contest, with fair weapons, a great
+    change has also occurred.
+
+    The clergy of England—at all events the clergy of London—have nerve
+    enough to listen to the strongest views which any one amongst us
+    would care to utter; and they invite, if they do not challenge, men
+    of the most decided opinions to state and stand by those opinions in
+    open court. No theory upsets them. Let the most destructive
+    hypothesis be stated only in the language current among gentlemen,
+    and they look it in the face. They forego alike the thunders of
+    heaven and the terrors of the other place, smiting the theory, if
+    they do not like it, with honest secular strength. In fact, the
+    greatest cowards of the present day are not to be found among the
+    clergy, but within the pale of science itself.
+
+    Two or three years ago in an ancient London college—a clerical
+    institution—I heard a very remarkable lecture by a very remarkable
+    man. Three or four hundred clergymen were present at the lecture.
+    The orator began with the civilization of Egypt in the time of
+    Joseph; pointing out that the very perfect organization of the
+    kingdom, and the possession of chariots, in one of which Joseph
+    rode, indicated a long antecedent period of civilization. He then
+    passed on to the mud of the Nile, its rate of augmentation, its
+    present thickness, and the remains of human handiwork found therein;
+    thence to the rocks which bound the Nile valley, and which team with
+    organic remains. Thus, in his own clear and admirable way, he caused
+    the idea of the world’s age to expand itself indefinitely before the
+    mind of his audience, and he contrasted this with the age usually
+    assigned to the world.
+
+    During his discourse he seemed to be swimming against a stream; he
+    manifestly thought that he was opposing a general conviction. He
+    expected resistance; so did I. But it was all a mistake; there was
+    no adverse current, no opposing conviction, no resistance, merely
+    here and there a half humorous but unsuccessful attempt to entangle
+    him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said
+    regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had,
+    indeed, known it all long ago, and they good-humoredly rallied the
+    lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite
+    plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, the
+    finest samples of their class, had entirely given up the ancient
+    landmarks, and transported the conception of life’s origin to an
+    indefinitely distant past.
+
+    In fact, clergymen, if I might be allowed a parenthesis to say so,
+    have as strong a leaning towards scientific truth as other men, only
+    the resistance to this bent—a resistance due to education—is
+    generally stronger in their case than in others. They do not lack
+    the positive element, namely, the love of truth, but the negative
+    element, the fear of error, preponderates.
+
+    The strength of an electric current is determined by two things—the
+    electro-motive force, and the resistance that force has to overcome.
+    A fraction, with the former as numerator and the latter as
+    denominator, expresses the current-strength. The “current-strength”
+    of the clergy towards science may also be expressed by making the
+    positive element just referred to the numerator, and the negative
+    one the denominator of a fraction. The numerator is not zero nor is
+    it even small, but the denominator is large; and hence the current
+    strength is such as we find it to be. Slowness of conception, even
+    open hostility, may be thus accounted for. They are for the most
+    part errors of judgment, and not sins against truth. To most of us
+    it may appear very simple, but to a few of us it appears
+    transcendently wonderful, that in all classes of society truth
+    should have this power and fascination. From the countless
+    modifications that life has undergone through natural selection and
+    the integration of infinitesimal steps, emerges finally the grand
+    result that the strength of truth is greater than the strength of
+    error, and that we have only to make the truth clear to the world to
+    gain the world to our side. Probably no one wonders more at this
+    result than the propounder of the law of natural selection himself.
+    Reverting to an old acquaintance of ours, it would seem, on purely
+    scientific grounds, as if a Veracity were at the heart of things; as
+    if, after ages of latent working, it had finally unfolded itself in
+    the life of man; as if it were still destined to unfold itself,
+    growing in girth, throwing out stronger branches and thicker leaves,
+    and tending more and more by its overshadowing presence to starve
+    the weeds of error from the intellectual soil.
+
+    But this is parenthetical; and the gist of our present inquiry
+    regarding the introduction of life is this: Does it belong to what
+    we call matter, or is it an independent principle inserted into
+    matter at some suitable epoch—say when the physical conditions
+    become such as to permit of the development of life? Let us put the
+    question with all the reverence due to a faith and culture in which
+    we all were cradled—a faith and culture, moreover, which are the
+    undeniable historic antecedents of our present enlightenment. I say,
+    let us put the question reverently, but let us also put it clearly
+    and definitely.
+
+    There are the strongest grounds for believing that during a certain
+    period of its history the earth was not, nor was it fit to be, the
+    theater of life. Whether this was ever a nebulous period, or merely
+    a molten period, does not much matter; and if we revert to the
+    nebulous condition, it is because the probabilities are really on
+    its side. Our question is this: Did creative energy pause until the
+    nebulous matter had condensed, until the earth had been detached,
+    until the solar fire had so far withdrawn from the earth’s vicinity
+    as to permit a crust to gather round a planet? Did it wait until the
+    air was isolated, until the seas were formed, until evaporation,
+    condensation, and the descent of rain had begun, until the eroding
+    forces of the atmosphere had weathered and decomposed the molten
+    rocks so as to form soils, until the sun’s rays had become so
+    tempered by distance and by waste as to be chemically fit for the
+    decompositions necessary to vegetable life? Having waited through
+    those æons until the proper conditions had set in, did it send the
+    fiat forth, “Let life be!”? These questions define a hypothesis not
+    without its difficulties, but the dignity of which was demonstrated
+    by the nobleness of the men whom it sustained.
+
+    Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide between this
+    hypothesis and another; and public thought generally will afterwards
+    be called upon to do the same. You may, however, rest secure in the
+    belief that the hypothesis just sketched can never be stormed, and
+    that it is sure, if it yield at all, to yield to a prolonged siege.
+    To gain new territory, modern argument requires more time than
+    modern arms, though both of them move with greater rapidity than of
+    yore.
+
+    But however the convictions of individuals here and there may be
+    influenced, the process must be slow and secular which commends the
+    rival hypothesis of natural evolution to the public mind. For what
+    are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you
+    stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble
+    forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the nobler forms of
+    the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism
+    of the human body, but that the human mind itself—emotion,
+    intellect, will, and all their phenomena—were once latent in a fiery
+    cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a motion is more than a
+    refutation. But the hypothesis would probably go even further than
+    this. Many who hold it would probably assent to the position that at
+    the present moment all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our
+    science, and all our art—Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael—are
+    potential in the fires of the sun.
+
+    We long to learn something of our origin. If the evolution
+    hypothesis be correct, even this unsatisfied yearning must have come
+    to us across the ages which separate the unconscious primeval mist
+    from the consciousness of to-day. I do not think that any holder of
+    the evolution hypothesis would say that I overstate it or overstrain
+    it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, and bring before
+    you, unclothed and unvarnished, the notions by which it must stand
+    or fall.
+
+    Surely these notions represent an absurdity too monstrous to be
+    entertained by any sane mind. Let us, however, give them fair play.
+    Let us steady ourselves in front of the hypothesis, and, dismissing
+    all terror and excitement from our minds, let us look firmly into it
+    with the hard, sharp eye of intellect alone. Why are these notions
+    absurd, and why should sanity reject them? The law of relativity, of
+    which we have previously spoken, may find its application here.
+    These evolution notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the
+    intellectual gibbet in relation to the ideas concerning matter which
+    were drilled into us when young. Spirit and matter have ever been
+    presented to us in the rudest contrast, the one as all noble, the
+    other as all vile. But is this correct? Does it represent what our
+    mightiest spiritual teacher would call the eternal fact of the
+    universe? Upon the answer to this question all depends.
+
+    Supposing, instead of having the foregoing antithesis of spirit and
+    matter presented to our youthful minds, we had been taught to regard
+    them as equally worthy and equally wonderful; to consider them, in
+    fact, as two opposite faces of the self-same mystery. Supposing that
+    in youth we had been impregnated with the notion of the poet Goethe,
+    instead of the notion of the poet Young, looking at matter, not as
+    brute matter, but as “the living garment of God;” do you not think
+    that under these altered circumstances the law of relativity might
+    have had an outcome different from its present one? Is it not
+    probable that our repugnance to the idea of primeval union between
+    spirit and matter might be considerably abated? Without this total
+    revolution of the notions now prevalent the evolution hypothesis
+    must stand condemned; but in many profoundly thoughtful minds such a
+    revolution has already taken place. They degrade neither member of
+    the mysterious duality referred to; but they exalt one of them from
+    its abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto existing between
+    both. In substance, if not in words, their position as regards
+    spirit and matter is: “What God hath joined together let not man put
+    asunder.”
+
+    I have thus led you to the outer rim of speculative science, for
+    beyond the nebula scientific thought has never ventured hitherto,
+    and have tried to state that which I considered ought, in fairness,
+    to be outspoken. I do not think this evolution hypothesis is to be
+    flouted away contemptuously; I do not think it is to be denounced as
+    wicked. It is to be brought before the bar of disciplined reason,
+    and there justified or condemned. Let us hearken to those who wisely
+    support it, and to those who wisely oppose it; and let us tolerate
+    those, and they are many, who foolishly try to do neither of these
+    things.
+
+    The only thing out of place in the discussion is dogmatism on either
+    side. Fear not the evolution hypothesis. Steady yourselves in its
+    presence upon that faith in the ultimate triumph of truth which was
+    expressed by old Gamaliel when he said: “If it be of God, ye cannot
+    overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to naught.” Under the
+    fierce light of scientific inquiry this hypothesis is sure to be
+    dissipated if it possess not a core of truth. Trust me, its
+    existence as an hypothesis in the mind is quite compatible with the
+    simultaneous existence of all those virtues to which the term
+    Christian has been applied. It does not solve—it does not profess to
+    solve—the ultimate mystery untouched. At bottom it does nothing more
+    than “transport the conception of life’s origin to an indefinitely
+    distant past.”
+
+    For, granting the nebula and its potential life, the question,
+    whence came they? would still remain to baffle and bewilder us. And
+    with regard to the ages of forgetfulness which lie between the
+    conscious life of the nebula and the conscious life of the earth, it
+    is but an extension of that forgetfulness which preceded the birth
+    of us all. Those who hold the doctrine of evolution are by no means
+    ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they yield no more to
+    it than a provisional assent. They regard the nebular hypothesis as
+    probable, and in the utter absence of any evidence to prove the act
+    illegal, they extend the method of nature from the present into the
+    past. Here the observed uniformity of nature is their only guide.
+    Within the long range of physical inquiry they have never discerned
+    in nature the insertion of caprice. Throughout this range the laws
+    of physical and intellectual continuity have run side by side.
+    Having thus determined the elements of their curve in this world of
+    observation and experiment, they prolong that curve into an
+    antecedent world, and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of
+    development from the nebula to the present time.
+
+    You never hear the really philosophical defenders of the doctrine of
+    uniformity speaking of _impossibilities_ in nature. They never say,
+    what they are constantly charged with saying, that it is impossible
+    for the builder of the universe to alter His work. Their business is
+    not with the possible, but the actual; not with a world which
+    _might_ be, but with a world which _is_. This they explore with a
+    courage not unmixed with reverence, and according to methods which,
+    like the quality of a tree, are tested by their fruits. They have
+    but one desire—to know the truth. They have but one fear—to believe
+    a lie. And if they know the strength of science, and rely upon it
+    with unswerving trust, they also know the limits beyond which
+    science ceases to be strong. They best know that questions offer
+    themselves to thought which science, as now prosecuted, has not even
+    the tendency to solve. They keep such questions open, and will not
+    tolerate any unlawful limitation of the horizon of their souls. They
+    have as little fellowship with the atheist who says there is no God
+    as with the theist who professes to know the mind of God.
+
+    “Two things,” said Immanuel Kant, “fill me with awe: the starry
+    heavens and the sense of moral responsibility in man.” And in his
+    hours of health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of action
+    has ceased and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific
+    investigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe. Breaking
+    contact with the hampering details of earth, it associates him with
+    a power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which he
+    can neither analyze nor comprehend.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+    ● Transcriber’s Notes:
+       ○ The first 44 footnotes are gathered together in the “NOTES AND
+         REFERENCES” section. The following footnotes appear in the text
+         where they are referenced.
+       ○ The mid dot—“·” is used in numbers to separate the whole part
+         from the decimal fraction of the number.
+       ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
+       ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
+       ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
+         when a predominant form was found in this book.
+       ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores
+         (_italics_).
+       ○ The use of a caret (^) before a letter, or letters, shows that
+         the following letter or letters was intended to be a
+         superscript, as in S^t Bartholomew or 10^{th} Century.
+       ○ Superscripts are used to indicate numbers raised to a power. In
+         this plain text document, they are represented by characters
+         like this: “MV^2” or “10^{18}”, i.e. MV squared or 10 to the
+         18th power.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALF HOURS WITH MODERN
+SCIENTISTS ***
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Half Hours with Modern Scientists, by T. H. Huxley</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
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+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Half Hours with Modern Scientists</p>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: T. H. Huxley, G. F. Barker, James Hutchinson Sterling, E. D. Cope and John Tyndall</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August 30, 2021 [eBook #66177]</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: deaurider, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</div>
+
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALF HOURS WITH MODERN SCIENTISTS ***</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p><span class='small'>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c000' />
+</div>
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_I'>I</span>
+  <h1 class='c001'><span class='c002'>HALF HOURS</span><br /> <br />WITH<br /> <br /><span class='c002'><span class='sc'>Modern Scientists</span>.</span></h1>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c003'>
+    <div><span class='c004'>LECTURES AND ESSAYS</span></div>
+    <div class='c003'>BY</div>
+    <div class='c000'>PROFS. HUXLEY, BARKER, STIRLING, COPE AND TYNDALL.</div>
+    <div class='c003'>WITH</div>
+    <div class='c003'><span class='c004'>A GENERAL INTRODUCTION</span></div>
+    <div class='c003'>BY</div>
+    <div class='c000'>NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D.,</div>
+    <div class='c000'><span class='small'>PRESIDENT OF YALE COLLEGE.</span></div>
+    <div class='c005'><span class='c004'>FIRST SERIES.</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/publogo.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c005'>
+    <div><span class='c004'>NEW HAVEN, CONN.:</span></div>
+    <div><span class='sc'>Charles C. Chatfield &amp; Co.</span>,</div>
+    <div>1872.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c003'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_II'>II</span><span class='large'>────────────────────────────</span></div>
+    <div><span class='large'>Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1872, by</span></div>
+    <div class='c000'><span class='large'><span class='sc'>Charles C. Chatfield &amp; Co.</span>,</span></div>
+    <div class='c000'><span class='large'>In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.</span></div>
+    <div><span class='large'>────────────────────────────</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-l c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>──────────────</div>
+      <div class='line'><span class='small'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW HAVEN, CONN.:</span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span class='small'>THE COLLEGE COURANT PRINT.</span></div>
+      <div class='line'>──────────────</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div>──────────────────</div>
+    <div><i>Electrotyped by E. B. Sheldon, New Haven, Conn.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_III'>III</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CONTENTS.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class='table0' summary=''>
+<colgroup>
+<col width='86%' />
+<col width='13%' />
+</colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>General Introduction.</span> <span class='small'>BY PREST. PORTER,</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_v'>v</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On The Physical Basis of Life.</span><br /> <span class='small'>PROF. T. H. HUXLEY,</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>Correlation of Vital and Physical Forces.</span><br /> <span class='small'>PROF. G. F. BARKER, M.D.,</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_37'>37</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>As Regards Protoplasm—Reply to Huxley.</span><br /> <span class='small'>JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING,</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_73'>73</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On The Hypothesis of Evolution.</span><br /> <span class='small'>PROF. E. D. COPE,</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_145'>145</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>Scientific Addresses.</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On the Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_219'>219</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On Haze and Dust</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_234'>234</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='sc'>On the Scientific Use of the Imagination</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_247'>247</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><span class='small'>PROF. JOHN TYNDALL, LL.D., F.R.S.,</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_217'>217</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_v'>v</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION OF HALF HOURS WITH MODERN SCIENTISTS.</h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c010'>The title of this Series of Essays—<i>Half Hours
+with Modern Scientists</i>—suggests a variety of
+thoughts, some of which may not be inappropriate
+for a brief introduction to a new edition. <i>Scientist</i>
+is a modern appellation which has been specially
+selected to designate a devotee to one or more
+branches of physical science. Strictly interpreted
+it might properly be applied to the student of any
+department of knowledge when prosecuted in a
+scientific method, but for convenience it is limited
+to the student of some branch of physics. It is
+not thereby conceded that nature, <i>i.e.</i>, physical or
+material nature is any more legitimately or exclusively
+the field for scientific enquiries than spirit,
+or that whether the objects of science are material
+or spiritual, the assumptions and processes of
+science themselves should not be subjected to scientific
+analysis and justification. There are so-called
+philosophers who adopt both these conclusions.
+There are those who reason and dogmatize as
+though nature were synonymous with matter, or as
+though spirit, if there be such an essence, must be
+conceived and explained after the principles and
+analogies of matter;—others assume that a science
+of scientific method can be nothing better than the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_vi'>vi</span>mist or moonshine which they vilify by the name of
+metaphysics. But unfortunately for such opinions
+the fact is constantly forced upon the attention of
+scientists of every description, that the agent by
+which they examine matter is more than matter,
+and that this agent, whatever be its substance, asserts
+its prerogatives to determine the conceptions
+which the scientist forms of matter as well as to
+the methods by which he investigates material properties.
+Even the positivist philosopher who not
+only denounces metaphysics as illegitimate, but also
+contends that the metaphysical era of human inquiry,
+has in the development of scientific progress
+been outgrown like the measles, which is experienced
+but once in a life-time; finds when his
+positivist theory is brought to the test that positivism
+itself in its very problem and its solutions, is
+but the last adopted metaphysical theory of science.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We also notice that it is very difficult, if not impossible,
+for the inquisitive scientist to limit himself
+strictly to the object-matter of his own chosen field,
+and not to enquire more or less earnestly—not infrequently
+to dogmatize more or less positively—respecting
+the results of other sciences and even
+respecting the foundations and processes of scientific
+inquiry itself. Thus Mr. Huxley in the first
+Essay of this Series on <i>The Physical Basis of Life</i>,
+leaves the discussion of his appropriate theme in
+order to deliver sundry very positive and pronounced
+assertions respecting the “limits of philosophical
+inquiry,” and quotes with manifest satisfaction
+a dictum of David Hume that is sufficiently
+dogmatic and positive, as to what these limits are.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span>In more than one of his Lay sermons, he rushes
+headlong into the most pronounced assertions in respect
+to the nature of matter and of spirit. The eloquent
+Tyndall, in No. 5, expounds at length <i>The
+Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation</i> and
+discourses eloquently, if occasionally somewhat poetically,
+of <i>The Scientific use of the Imagination</i>. But
+Messrs. Huxley and Tyndall are eminent examples
+of scientists who are severely and successfully
+devoted respectively to physiology and the higher
+physics. No one will contend that they have not
+faithfully cultivated their appropriate fields of inquiry.
+The fact that neither can be content to confine
+himself within his special field, forcibly illustrates
+the tendency of every modern science to
+concern itself with its relations to its neighbors,
+and the unresistible necessity which forces the most
+rigid physicist to become a metaphysician in spite of
+himself. So much for the appellation “<i>Scientists</i>.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“<i>Half Hours</i>” suggests the very natural inquiry—What
+can a scientist communicate in half an
+hour, especially to a reader who may be ignorant
+of the elements of the science which he would expound?
+Does not the phrase <i>Half Hours with
+Modern Scientists</i> stultify itself and suggest the
+folly of any attempt to treat of science with effect
+in a series of essays? In reply we would ask the
+attention of the reader to the following considerations.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The tendency is universal among the scientific
+men of all nations, to present the principles of
+science in such brief summaries or statements as
+may bring them within the reach of common readers.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_viii'>viii</span>The tendency indicates that there is a large body of
+readers who are so far instructed in the elements of
+science as to be able to understand these summaries.
+In England, Germany, France and this country such
+brief essays are abundant, either in the form of contributions
+to popular and scientific journals, or in
+that of popular lectures, or in that of brief manuals,
+or of monographs on separate topics; especially
+such topics as are novel, or are interesting to the
+public for their theoretic brilliancy, or their applications
+to industry and art.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>These essays need not be and they are not always
+superficial, because they are brief. They often are
+the more profound on account of their conciseness,
+as when they contain a condensed summary of the
+main principles of the art or science in question,
+or a brief history of the successive experiments
+which have issued in some brilliant discovery.
+These essays are very generally read, even though
+they are both concise and profound. But they could
+not be read even though they were less profound
+than they are, were there not provided a numerous
+company of readers who are sufficiently instructed
+in science to appreciate them. That such a body
+of readers exists in the countries referred to, is
+easily explained by the existence of public schools
+and schools of science and technology, by the
+enormous extension of the knowledge of machinery,
+engineering, mining, dyeing, etc., etc., all of which
+imply a more or less distinct recognition of scientific
+principles and stimulate the curiosity in regard
+to scientific truth. Popular lectures also, illustrated
+by experiments, have been repeated before thousands
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span>of excited listeners, and the eager and inventive
+minds of multitudes of ingenious youths have been
+trained by this distribution of science, to the capacity
+to comprehend the compact and pointed
+scientific essay, even though it taxes the attention
+and suspends the breath for a half-hour by its closeness
+and severity.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The fact is also worthy of notice, that many of
+the ablest scientists of our times have made a special
+study of the art of expounding and presenting scientific
+truth. Some of them have schooled themselves
+to that lucid and orderly method by which a science
+seems to spring into being a second time, under
+the creative hand of its skilful expositor. Others
+have made a special study of philosophic diction.
+Others have learned how to adorn scientific truth
+with the embellishments of an affluent imagination.
+Some of the ablest writers of our time are found
+among the devotees of physical science. That a
+few scientific writers and lecturers may have exemplified
+some of the most offensive features of the
+demagogue and the sophist cannot be denied, but
+we may not forget that many have attained to the
+consummate skill of the accomplished essayist and
+impressive and eloquent orator.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One advantage cannot be denied of this now
+popular and established method of setting forth
+scientific truth, viz., that it prescribes a convenient
+method of bringing into contrast the arguments <i>for</i>
+and <i>against</i> any disputed position in science. If
+materialism can furnish its ready advocate with a
+convenient vehicle for its ready diffusion, the antagonist
+theory can avail itself of a similar vehicle
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_x'>x</span>for the communication of the decisive and pungent
+reply. The one is certain to call forth the other,
+and if the two are present side by side in the same
+series, so much the better is it for the truth and so
+much the worse for the error. The teacher before
+his class, the lecturer in the presence of his audience,
+has the argument usually to himself; he allows few
+questionings and admits no reply. An erroneous
+theory may entrench itself within a folio against
+arguments which would annihilate its positions if
+these were condensed in a tract.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This consideration should dispel all the alarm
+that is felt by the defenders of religion in view of
+the general diffusion of popular scientific treatises.
+The brief statement of a false or groundless scientific
+theory, even by its defender, is often its most
+effectual refutation. A magnificently imposing
+argument often shrinks into insignificance when its
+advocate is forced to state its substance in a compact
+and close-jointed outline. The articulations
+are seen to be defective, the joints do not fit one
+another, the coherence is conspicuously wanting.
+Let then error do its utmost in the field of science.
+Its deficient data and its illogical processes are certain
+to be exposed, sometimes even by its own advocates.
+If this does not happen the defender of that
+scientific truth which seems to be essential to the
+teachings and faiths of religion, must scrutinize its
+reasonings by the rules and methods of scientific
+inquiry. If science seems to be hostile to religion,
+this very seeming should arouse the defender of
+Theism and Christianity to examine into the grounds
+both by the light and methods which are appropriate
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span>to science itself. The more brief and compact and
+popular is the argument which he is to refute, the
+more feasible is the task of exposure and reply.
+Only let this be a cardinal maxim with the defender
+of the truth, that whatever is scientifically defended
+and maintained must be scientifically refuted and
+overthrown. The great Master of our faith never
+uttered a more comprehensive or a grander maxim
+than the memorable words, “<i>To this end was I born
+and for this cause came I into the world, that I should
+bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the
+truth heareth my voice.</i>” It would be easy to show
+that the belief in moral and religious truth and the
+freedom in searching for and defending it which was
+inspired by these words have been most efficient in
+training the human mind to that faith in the results
+of scientific investigation which characterize the
+modern scientist. That Christian believer must
+either have a very imperfect view of the spirit of
+his own faith, or a very narrow conception of the
+evidences and the effect of its teachings, who imagines
+that the freest spirit of scientific inquiry, or
+the most penetrating insight into the secrets of
+matter or of spirit can have any other consequence
+than to strengthen and brighten the evidence for
+Christian truth.</p>
+<div class='c012'>N. P.</div>
+<p class='c013'><span class='sc'>Yale College</span>, <i>May</i>, 1872.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_xiii'>xiii</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>PUBLISHERS’ NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.</h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c010'>The five lectures embodied in this First Series of Half Hours
+with Modern Scientists were first published as Nos. I.—V. of the
+University Scientific Series. In this series the publishers have
+aimed to give to the public in a cheap pamphlet form, the advance
+thought in the Scientific world. The intrinsic value of these lectures
+has created a very general desire to have them put in a permanent
+form. They therefore have brought them out in this style.
+Each five succeeding numbers of this celebrated series will be
+printed and bound in uniform style with this volume, and be designated
+as second series, third series, and so on. Henceforth it will
+be the design of the publishers to give preference to those lectures
+and essays of American scientists which contain original research
+and discovery, rather than to reprinting from European sources. The
+lectures in the second series will be (1) On Natural Selection as
+Applied to Man, by Alfred Russel Wallace; (2) three profoundly
+interesting lectures on Spectrum Analysis, by Profs. Roscoe, Huggins,
+and Lockyer; (3) the Sun and its Different Atmospheres,
+a lecture by Prof. C. A. Young, Ph.D., of Dartmouth College; (4)
+the Earth a great Magnet, by Prof. A. M. Mayer, Ph.D., of Stevens
+Institute; and (5) the Mysteries of the Voice and Ear, by Prof.
+Ogden N. Rood, of Columbia College. The last three lectures
+contain many original discoveries and brilliant experiments, and are
+finely illustrated.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span>──────────────</div>
+    <div><span class='xlarge'><i>ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE.</i></span></div>
+    <div>──────────────</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c006' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c010'>The following remarkable discourse was originally delivered in
+Edinburgh, November 18th, 1868, as the first of a series of Sunday
+evening addresses, upon non-religious topics, instituted by the Rev.
+J. Cranbrook. It was subsequently published in London as the
+leading article in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, for February, 1869, and attracted
+so much attention that five editions of that number of the
+magazine have already been issued. It is now re-printed in this
+country, in permanent form, for the first time, and will doubtless
+prove of great interest to American readers. The author is
+Thomas Henry Huxley, of London, Professor of Natural History
+in the Royal School of Mines, and of Comparative Anatomy and
+Physiology in the Royal College of Surgeons. He is also President
+of the Geological Society of London. Although comparatively
+a young man, his numerous and valuable contributions to Natural
+Science entitle him to be considered one of the first of living Naturalists,
+especially in the departments of Zoölogy and Paleontology,
+to which he has mainly devoted himself. He is undoubtedly
+the ablest English advocate of Darwin’s theory of the Origin of
+Species, particularly with reference to its application to the human
+race, which he believes to be nearly related to the higher apes. It
+is, indeed, through his discussion of this question that he is, perhaps,
+best known to the general public, as his late work entitled
+“Man’s Place in Nature,” and other writings on similar topics,
+have been very widely read in this country and in Europe. In the
+present lecture Professor Huxley discusses a kindred subject of no
+less interest and importance, and should have an equally candid
+hearing.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='sc'>Yale College</span>, <i>March</i> 30<i>th</i>, 1869.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>On the Physical Basis of Life.</h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c010'>In order to make the title of this discourse generally
+intelligible, I have translated the term “Protoplasm,”
+which is the scientific name of the substance of which I
+am about to speak, by the words “the physical basis of
+life.” I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is
+such a thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life may
+be novel—so widely spread is the conception of life as
+a something which works through matter, but is independent
+of it; and even those who are aware that matter
+and life are inseparably connected, may not be prepared
+for the conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase
+“the physical basis or matter of life,” that there is some
+one kind of matter which is common to all living beings,
+and that their endless diversities are bound together by
+a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first
+apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears almost
+shocking to common sense. What, truly, can seem to be
+more obviously different from one another in faculty, in
+form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living
+beings? What community of faculty can there be between
+the brightly-colored lichen, which so nearly resembles
+a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock on
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with
+beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Again, think of the microscopic fungus—a mere infinitesimal
+ovoid particle, which finds space and duration
+enough to multiply into countless millions in the body
+of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the
+luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this
+bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California,
+towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the
+Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow,
+and endures while nations and empires come and go
+around its vast circumference! Or, turning to the other
+half of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great
+finner whale, hugest of beasts that live, or have lived,
+disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle and
+blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest
+ship that ever left dockyard would founder hopelessly;
+and contrast him with the invisible animalcules—mere
+gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could, in
+fact, dance upon the point of a needle with the same ease
+as the angels of the schoolmen could, in imagination.
+With these images before your minds, you may well ask
+what community of form, or structure, is there between
+the animalcule and the whale, or between the fungus and
+fig-tree? And, <i>a fortiori</i>, between all four?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition,
+what hidden bond can connect the flower which a
+girl wears in her hair and the blood which courses through
+her youthful veins; or, what is there in common between
+the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong
+fabric of the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>jelly which may be seen pulsating through the waters of
+a calm sea, but which drain away to mere films in the
+hand which raises them out of their element? Such objections
+as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every
+one who ponders, for the first time, upon the conception
+of a single physical basis of life underlying all the diversities
+of vital existence; but I propose to demonstrate
+to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties,
+a threefold unity—namely, a unity of power or faculty,
+a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition—does
+pervade the whole living world. No very abstruse
+argumentation is needed, in the first place, to prove that
+the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of living matter, diverse
+as they may be in degree, are substantially similar
+in kind. Goethe has condensed a survey of all the powers
+of mankind into the well-known epigram:</p>
+
+<p class='c014'>“Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich ernähren
+ Kinder zeugen, und sie nähren so gut es vermag.</p>
+<hr class='c015' />
+<p class='c016'>Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich, wie er auch will.”</p>
+
+<p class='c017'>In physiological language this means, that all the multifarious
+and complicated activities of man are comprehensible
+under three categories. Either they are immediately
+directed towards the maintenance and development
+of the body, or they effect transitory changes
+in the relative positions of parts of the body, or they
+tend towards the continuance of the species. Even
+those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will,
+which we rightly name the higher faculties, are not excluded
+from this classification, inasmuch as to every one
+but the subject of them, they are known only as transitory
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>changes in the relative positions of parts of the body.
+Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action
+are, in the long run, resolvable into muscular contraction,
+and muscular contraction is but a transitory change
+in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. But
+the scheme, which is large enough to embrace the activities
+of the highest form of life, covers all those of the
+lower creatures. The lowest plant, or animalcule, feeds,
+grows and reproduces its kind. In addition, all animals
+manifest those transitory changes of form which we class
+under irritability and contractility; and it is more than
+probable, that when the vegetable world is thoroughly
+explored, we shall find all plants in possession of the
+same powers, at one time or other of their existence. I
+am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare
+and conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of
+the sensitive plant, or the stamens of the barberry, but
+to much more widely-spread, and, at the same time, more
+subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable contractility.
+You are doubtless aware that the common nettle
+owes its stinging property to the innumerable stiff and
+needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover
+its surface. Each stinging-needle tapers from a broad
+base to a slender summit, which, though rounded at the
+end, is of such microscopic fineness that it readily penetrates,
+and breaks off in, the skin. The whole hair
+consists of a very delicate outer case of wood, closely
+applied to the inner surface of which is a layer of semi-fluid
+matter, full of innumerable granules of extreme
+minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm, which
+thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of
+the hair which it fills. When viewed with a sufficiently
+high magnifying power, the protoplasmic layer of the
+nettle hair is seen to be in a condition of unceasing activity.
+Local contractions of the whole thickness of its
+substance pass slowly and gradually from point to point,
+and give rise to the appearance of progressive waves,
+just as the bending of successive stalks of corn by a
+breeze produces the apparent billows of a corn-field.
+But, in addition to these movements, and independently
+of them, the granules are driven, in relatively rapid
+streams, through channels in the protoplasm which seem
+to have a considerable amount of persistence. Most
+commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the protoplasm
+take similar directions; and, thus, there is a general
+stream up one side of the hair and down the other.
+But this does not prevent the existence of partial currents
+which take different routes; and, sometimes, trains
+of granules may be seen coursing swiftly in opposite
+directions, within a twenty-thousandth of an inch of one
+another; while, occasionally, opposite streams come
+into direct collision, and, after a longer or shorter struggle,
+one predominates. The cause of these currents
+seem to lie in contractions of the protoplasm which
+bounds the channels in which they flow, but which are
+so minute that the best microscopes show only their
+effects, and not themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned
+within the compass of the microscopic hair of a
+plant, which we commonly regard as a merely passive
+organism, is not easily forgotten by one who has watched
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>its display continued hour after hour, without pause or
+sign of weakening. The possible complexity of many
+other organic forms, seemingly as simple as the protoplasm
+of the nettle, dawns upon one; and the comparison
+of such a protoplasm to a body with an internal
+circulation, which has been put forward by an eminent
+physiologist, loses much of its startling character. Currents
+similar to those of the hairs of the nettle have
+been observed in a great multitude of very different
+plants, and weighty authorities have suggested that they
+probably occur, in more or less perfection, in all young
+vegetable cells. If such be the case, the wonderful
+noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only
+to the dullness of our hearing; and could our ears catch
+the murmur of these tiny maelstroms, as they whirl in
+the innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute
+each tree, we should be stunned, as with the roar of a
+great city.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the
+exception, that contractility should be still more openly
+manifested at some periods of their existence. The
+protoplasm of <i>Algæ</i> and <i>Fungi</i> becomes, under many
+circumstances, partially, or completely, freed from its
+woody case, and exhibits movements of its whole mass,
+or is propelled by the contractility of one or more hair-like
+prolongations of its body, which are called vibratile
+cilia. And, so far as the conditions of the manifestation
+of the phenomena of contractility have yet been
+studied, they are the same for the plant as for the animal.
+Heat and electric shocks influence both, and in
+the same way, though it may be in different degrees. It
+is by no means my intention to suggest that there is no
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>difference in faculty between the lowest plant and the
+highest, or between plants and animals. But the difference
+between the powers of the lowest plant, or animal,
+and those of the highest is one of degree, not of kind,
+and depends, as Milne-Edwards long ago so well pointed
+out, upon the extent to which the principle of the division
+of labor is carried out in the living economy. In the
+lowest organism all parts are competent to perform all
+functions, and one and the same portion of protoplasm
+may successively take on the function of feeding, moving,
+or reproducing apparatus. In the highest, on the
+contrary, a great number of parts combine to perform
+each function, each part doing its allotted share of the
+work with great accuracy and efficiency, but being useless
+for any other purpose. On the other hand, notwithstanding
+all the fundamental resemblances which exist
+between the powers of the protoplasm in plants and in
+animals, they present a striking difference (to which I
+shall advert more at length presently,) in the fact that
+plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of mineral
+compounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it
+ready-made, and hence, in the long run, depend upon
+plants. Upon what condition this difference in the powers
+of the two great divisions of the world of life depends,
+nothing is at present known.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>With such qualification as arises out of the last-mentioned
+fact, it may be truly said that the acts of all
+living things are fundamentally one. Is any such unity
+predicable of their forms? Let us seek in easily verified
+facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be
+drawn by pricking one’s finger, and viewed with proper
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>precautions and under a sufficiently high microscopic
+power, there will be seen, among the innumerable multitude
+of little, circular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles,
+which float in it and give it its color, a comparatively
+small number of colorless corpuscles, of somewhat larger
+size and very irregular shape. If the drop of blood
+be kept at the temperature of the body, these colorless
+corpuscles will be seen to exhibit a marvelous activity,
+changing their forms with great rapidity, drawing in and
+thrusting out prolongations of their substance, and creeping
+about as if they were independent organisms. The
+substance which is thus active is a mass of protoplasm,
+and its activity differs in detail, rather than in principle,
+from that of the protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry
+circumstances the corpuscle dies and becomes distended
+into a round mass, in the midst of which is seen
+a smaller spherical body, which existed, but was more or
+less hidden, in the living corpuscle, and is called its
+<i>nucleus</i>. Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are
+to be found in the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and
+scattered through the whole frame work of the body.
+Nay, more; in the earliest condition of the human organism,
+in that state in which it has just become distinguishable
+from the egg in which it arises, it is nothing
+but an aggregation of such corpuscles, and every organ
+of the body was, once, no more than such an aggregation.
+Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out
+to be what may be termed the structural unit of the human
+body. As a matter of fact, the body, in its earliest
+state, is a mere multiple of such units; and, in its perfect
+condition, it is a multiple of such units, variously
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>modified. But does the formula which expresses the essential
+structural character of the highest animal cover
+all the rest, as the statement of its powers and faculties
+covered that of all others? Very nearly. Beast and
+fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm, and polype, are all
+composed of structural units of the same character,
+namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There
+are sundry very low animals, each of which, structurally,
+is a mere colorless blood-corpuscle, leading an independent
+life. But, at the very bottom of the animal scale,
+even this simplicity becomes simplified, and all the phenomena
+of life are manifested by a particle of protoplasm
+without a nucleus. Nor are such organisms
+insignificant by reason of their want of complexity. It
+is a fair question whether the protoplasm of those simplest
+forms of life, which people an immense extent of
+the bottom of the sea, would not outweigh that of all
+the higher living beings which inhabit the land, put together.
+And in ancient times, no less than at the present
+day, such living beings as these have been the greatest
+of rock builders.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>What has been said of the animal world is no less
+true of plants. Imbedded in the protoplasm at the
+broad, or attached, end of the nettle hair, there lies a
+spheroidal nucleus. Careful examination further proves
+that the whole substance of the nettle is made up of a
+repetition of such masses of nucleated protoplasm, each
+contained in a wooden case, which is modified in form,
+sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes into a duct
+or spiral vessel, sometimes into a pollen grain, or an
+ovule. Traced back to its earliest state, the nettle arises
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>as the man does, in a particle of nucleated protoplasm.
+And in the lowest plants, as in the lowest animals, a
+single mass of such protoplasm may constitute the whole
+plant, or the protoplasm may exist without a nucleus.
+Under these circumstances it may well be asked, how
+is one mass of non-nucleated protoplasm to be distinguished
+from another? why call one “plant” and the
+other “animal?” The only reply is that, so far as form
+is concerned, plants and animals are not separable, and
+that, in many cases, it is a mere matter of convention
+whether we call a given organism an animal or a plant.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There is a living body called <i>Æthalium septicum</i>, which
+appears upon decaying vegetable substances, and in one
+of its forms, is common upon the surface of tan pits.
+In this condition it is, to all intents and purposes, a fungus,
+and formerly was always regarded as such; but the
+remarkable investigations of De Bary have shown that,
+in another condition, the <i>Æthalium</i> is an actively locomotive
+creature, and takes in solid matters, upon which,
+apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the most characteristic
+feature of animality. Is this a plant, or is it an
+animal? Is it both, or is it neither? Some decide in
+favor of the last supposition, and establish an intermediate
+kingdom, a sort of biological No Man’s Land for
+all these questionable forms. But, as it is admittedly
+impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between
+this no man’s land and the vegetable world on the one
+hand, or the animal, on the other, it appears to me that
+this proceeding merely doubles the difficulty which, before,
+was single. Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is
+the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated
+by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest
+brick or sun-dried clod. Thus it becomes clear that
+all living powers are cognate, and that all living forms
+are fundamentally of one character.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The researches of the chemist have revealed a no less
+striking uniformity of material composition in living matter.
+In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investigation
+can tell us little or nothing, directly, of the composition
+of living matter, inasmuch as such matter must
+needs die in the act of analysis, and upon this very obvious
+ground, objections, which I confess seem to me to
+be somewhat frivolous, have been raised to the drawing
+of any conclusions whatever respecting the composition
+of actually living matter from that of the dead matter
+of life, which alone is accessible to us. But objectors
+of this class do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness,
+true that we know nothing about the composition
+of any body whatever, as it is. The statement that a
+crystal of calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime, is
+quite true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes,
+it may be resolved into carbonic acid and quicklime.
+If you pass the same carbonic acid over the very quicklime
+thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of lime
+again; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it.
+Can it, therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches
+nothing about the chemical composition of calc-spar?
+Such a statement would be absurd; but it is hardly more
+so than the talk one occasionally hears about the uselessness
+of applying the results of chemical analysis to the
+living bodies which have yielded them. One fact, at
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>any rate, is out of reach of such refinements, and this
+is, that all the forms of protoplasm which have yet been
+examined contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union, and that
+they behave similarly towards several reagents. To this
+complex combination, the nature of which has never
+been determined with exactness, the name of Protein
+has been applied. And if we use this term with such
+caution as may properly arise out of our comparative
+ignorance of the things for which it stands, it may be
+truly said, that all protoplasm is proteinaceous; or, as
+the white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the commonest
+examples of a nearly pure protein matter, we may
+say that all living matter is more or less albuminoid.
+Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all forms of
+protoplasm are affected by the direct action of electric
+shocks; and yet the number of cases in which the contraction
+of protoplasm is shown to be affected by this
+agency increases, every day. Nor can it be affirmed with
+perfect confidence that all forms of protoplasm are liable
+to undergo that peculiar coagulation at the temperature
+of 40 degrees—50 degrees centigrade, which has been
+called “heat-stiffening,” though Kühne’s beautiful researches
+have proved this occurrence to take place in so
+many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash
+to expect that the law holds good for all. Enough has,
+perhaps, been said to prove the existence of a general
+uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or physical
+basis of life, in whatever group of living beings it
+may be studied. But it will be understood that this general
+uniformity by no means excludes any amount of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>special modifications of the fundamental substance. The
+mineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity
+of characters, though no one doubts that under all
+these Protean changes it is one and the same thing.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin
+of the matter of life? Is it, as some of the older
+naturalists supposed, diffused throughout the universe in
+molecules, which are indestructible and unchangeable in
+themselves; but, in endless transmigration, unite in innumerable
+permutations, into the diversified forms of life
+we know? Or, is the matter of life composed of ordinary
+matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its
+atoms are aggregated? Is it built up of ordinary matter,
+and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is
+done? Modern science does not hesitate a moment between
+these alternatives. Physiology writes over the
+portals of life,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c018'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Debemur morti nos nostraque,”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c019'>with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached
+to that melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it
+takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the
+living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved
+into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always
+dying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not
+live unless it died. In the wonderful story of the “Peau
+de Chagrin,” the hero becomes possessed of a magical
+wild ass’s skin, which yields him the means of gratifying
+all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration
+of the proprietor’s life; and for every satisfied desire
+the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition,
+until at length life and the last handbreadth of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>“Peau de Chagrin,” disappear with the gratification of
+a last wish. Balzac’s studies had led him over a wide
+range of thought and speculation, and his shadowing
+forth of physiological truth in this strange story may
+have been intentional. At any rate, the matter of life is
+a veritable “Peau de Chagrin,” and for every vital act it
+is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and
+the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the
+waste of protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker
+costs him some physical loss; and, in the strictest sense,
+he burns that others may have light—so much eloquence,
+so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid,
+water and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure
+cannot go on forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic
+<i>peau de chagrin</i> differs from Balzac’s in its capacity of
+being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after
+every exertion. For example, this present lecture, whatever
+its intellectual worth to you, has a certain physical
+value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the
+number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance
+wasted in maintaining my vital processes during
+its delivery. My <i>peau de chagrin</i> will be distinctly
+smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the
+beginning. By-and-by, I shall probably have recourse
+to the substance commonly called mutton, for the purpose
+of stretching it back to its original size. Now this
+mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or less modified,
+of another animal—a sheep. As I shall eat it, it
+is the same matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure
+to sundry artificial operations in the process of
+cooking. But these changes, whatever be their extent,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>have not rendered it incompetent to resume its old functions
+as matter of life. A singular inward laboratory,
+which I possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the
+modified protoplasm, the solution so formed will pass
+into my veins; and the subtle influences to which it will
+then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into
+living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man.
+Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled
+with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of
+the crustacean would undergo the same wonderful metamorphosis
+into humanity. And were I to return to my
+own place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacea
+might, and probably would, return the compliment, and
+demonstrate our common nature by turning my protoplasm
+into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were to
+be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I
+should find the protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible
+into man, with no more trouble than that of the
+sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of the lobster.
+Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what
+animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm,
+and the fact speaks volumes for the general identity
+of that substance in all living beings. I share this
+catholicity of assimilation with other animals, all of
+which, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the
+protoplasm of any of their fellows, or of any plant; but
+here the assimilative powers of the animal world cease.</p>
+<p class='c011'>A solution of smelling-salts in water with an infinitesimal
+proportion of some other saline matters, contains
+all the elementary bodies which enter into the composition
+of protoplasm; but, as I need hardly say, a hogshead
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>of that fluid would not keep a hungry man from
+starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from a
+like fate. An animal cannot make protoplasm, but must
+take it ready-made from some other animal, or some plant—the
+animal’s highest feat of constructive chemistry being
+to convert dead protoplasm into that living matter
+of life which is appropriate to itself. Therefore, in seeking
+for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventually turn
+to the vegetable world. The fluid containing carbonic
+acid, water, and ammonia, which offers such a barmecide
+feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes
+of plants; and with a due supply of only such materials,
+many a plant will not only maintain itself in vigor, but
+grow and multiply until it has increased a million-fold,
+or a million million-fold, the quantity of protoplasm
+which it originally possessed; in this way building up
+the matter of life, to an indefinite extent, from the common
+matter of the universe. Thus the animal can only
+raise the complex substance of dead protoplasm to the
+higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm;
+while the plant can raise the less complex substances—carbonic
+acid, water, and ammonia—to the same stage
+of living protoplasm, if not to the same level. But the
+plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example,
+appear to need higher compounds to start with,
+and no known plant can live upon the uncompounded
+elements of protoplasm. A plant supplied with pure carbon,
+hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur,
+and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal
+in his bath of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded
+by all the constituents of protoplasm. Nor,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>indeed, need the process of simplification of vegetable
+food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at the
+limit of the plant’s thaumaturgy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful
+constituents, be supplied without ammonia, and an ordinary
+plant will still be unable to manufacture protoplasm.
+Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it
+(and we have no right to speculate on any other) breaks
+up in consequence of that continual death which is the
+condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid,
+water, and ammonia, which certainly possess no properties
+but those of ordinary matter; and out of these
+same forms of ordinary matter and from none which
+are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm
+which keeps the animal world agoing. Plants are
+the accumulators of the power which animals distribute
+and disperse.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But it will be observed, that the existence of the matter
+of life depends on the preëxistence of certain compounds,
+namely, carbonic acid, water, and ammonia.
+Withdraw any one of these three from the world and all
+vital phenomena come to an end. They are related to
+the protoplasm of the plant, as the protoplasm of the
+plant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,
+and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon
+and oxygen unite in certain proportion and under
+certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen
+and oxygen produce water; nitrogen and hydrogen
+give rise to ammonia. These new compounds, like the
+elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless.
+But when they are brought together, under certain
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>conditions they give rise to the still more complex body,
+protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena
+of life. I see no break in this series of steps in molecular
+complication, and I am unable to understand why the
+language which is applicable to any one term of the series
+may not be used to any of the others. We think fit
+to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen,
+and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers
+and activities of these substances as the properties of
+the matter of which they are composed. When hydrogen
+and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion, and
+the electric spark is passed through them, they disappear
+and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the sum of
+their weights, appears in their place. There is not the
+slightest parity between the passive and active powers
+of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen
+which have given rise to it. At 32 degrees Fahrenheit,
+and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen
+are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to rush
+away from one another with great force. Water, at the
+same temperature, is a strong though brittle solid, whose
+particles tend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes,
+and sometimes build up frosty imitations of the most
+complex forms of vegetable foliage. Nevertheless we
+call these, and many other strange phenomena, the
+properties of the water, and we do not hesitate to believe
+that, in some way or another, they result from the
+properties of the component elements of the water. We
+do not assume that a something called “aquosity” entered
+into and took possession of the oxide of hydrogen
+as soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>particles to their places in the facets of the crystal, or
+amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the contrary,
+we live in the hope and in the faith that, by the advance
+of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see
+our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the
+properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the
+operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the
+manner in which they are put together. Is the case in
+any way changed when carbonic acid, water and ammonia
+disappear, and in their place, under the influence of
+preëxisting living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the
+matter of life makes its appearance? It is true that there
+is no sort of parity between the properties of the components
+and the properties of the resultant, but neither was
+there in the case of the water. It is also true that what
+I have spoken of as the influence of preëxisting living
+matter is something quite unintelligible; but does any
+body quite comprehend the <i>modus operandi</i> of an electric
+spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen?
+What justification is there, then, for the assumption
+of the existence in the living matter of a something
+which has no representative or correlative in the not
+living matter which gave rise to it? What better philosophical
+status has “vitality” than “aquosity?” And
+why should “vitality” hope for a better fate than the other
+“itys” which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus
+accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its inherent
+“meat roasting quality,” and scorned the “materialism”
+of those who explained the turning of the spit by
+a certain mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney?
+If scientific language is to possess a definite and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>constant signification whenever it is employed, it seems
+to me that we are logically bound to apply to the protoplasm,
+or physical basis of life, the same conceptions as
+those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the
+phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so are
+those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties.
+If the properties of water may be properly said
+to result from the nature and disposition of its component
+molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing
+to say that the properties of protoplasm result
+from the nature and disposition of its molecules. But I
+bid you beware that, in accepting these conclusions, you
+are placing your feet on the first rung of a ladder which,
+in most people’s estimation, is the reverse of Jacob’s,
+and leads to the antipodes of heaven. It may seem a
+small thing to admit that the dull vital actions of a fungus,
+or a foraminifer, are the properties of their protoplasm,
+and are the direct results of the nature of the
+matter of which they are composed.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But if, as I have endeavored to prove to you, their
+protoplasm is essentially identical with, and most readily
+converted into, that of any animal, I can discover no
+logical halting place between the admission that such is
+the case, and the further concession that all vital action
+may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of
+the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays
+it. And if so, it must be true, in the same sense and
+to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I am now
+giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are
+the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life
+which is the source of our other vital phenomena. Past
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>experience leads me to be tolerably certain that, when
+the propositions I have just placed before you are accessible
+to public comment and criticism, they will be condemned
+by many zealous persons, and perhaps by some
+few of the wise and thoughtful. I should not wonder if
+“gross and brutal materialism” were the mildest phrase
+applied to them in certain quarters. And most undoubtedly
+the terms of the propositions are distinctly
+materialistic. Nevertheless, two things are certain: the
+one, that I hold the statements to be substantially true;
+the other, that I, individually, am no materialist, but, on
+the contrary, believe materialism to involve grave philosophical
+error.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation
+of materialistic philosophy I share with some of
+the most thoughtful men with whom I am acquainted.
+And, when I first undertook to deliver the present discourse,
+it appeared to me to be a fitting opportunity to
+explain how such an union is not only consistent with,
+but necessitated by sound logic. I purposed to lead you
+through the territory of vital phenomena to the materialistic
+slough in which you find yourselves now plunged,
+and then to point out to you the sole path by which, in
+my judgment, extrication is possible. An occurrence,
+of which I was unaware until my arrival here last night,
+renders this line of argument singularly opportune. I
+found in your papers the eloquent address “On the
+Limits of Philosophical Inquiry,” which a distinguished
+prelate of the English Church delivered before the members
+of the Philosophical Institution on the previous
+day. My argument, also, turns upon this very point of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>limits of philosophical inquiry; and I cannot bring out
+my own views better than by contrasting them with
+those so plainly, and, in the main, fairly stated by the
+Archbishop of York. But I may be permitted to make
+a preliminary comment upon an occurrence that greatly
+astonished me. Applying the name of “the New Philosophy”
+to that estimate of the limits of philosophical
+inquiry which I, in common with many other men of science,
+hold to be just, the Archbishop opens his address
+by identifying this “new philosophy” with the positive
+philosophy of M. Comte (of whom he speaks as its “founder”);
+and then proceeds to attack that philosopher and
+his doctrine vigorously. Now, so far as I am concerned,
+the most Reverend prelate might dialectically hew M.
+Comte in pieces, as a modern Agag, and I should not
+attempt to stay his hand. In so far as my study of what
+specially characterizes the Positive Philosophy has led
+me, I find therein little or nothing of any scientific value,
+and a great deal which is as thoroughly antagonistic to
+the very essence of science as anything in ultramontane
+Catholicism. In fact, M. Comte’s philosophy in
+practice might be compendiously described as Catholicism
+<i>minus</i> Christianity. But what has Comptism to do
+with the “New Philosophy,” as the Archbishop defines
+it in the following passage?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Let me briefly remind you of the leading principles
+of this new philosophy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“All knowledge is experience of facts acquired by the
+senses. The traditions of older philosophies have obscured
+our experience by mixing with it much that the
+senses cannot observe, and until these additions are discarded
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>our knowledge is impure. Thus, metaphysics
+tells us that one fact which we observe is a cause, and
+another is the effect of that cause; but upon a rigid
+analysis we find that our senses observe nothing of cause
+or effect; they observe, first, that one fact succeeds another,
+and, after some opportunity, that this fact has
+never failed to follow—that for cause and effect we
+should substitute invariable succession. An older philosophy
+teaches us to define an object by distinguishing
+its essential from its accidental qualities; but experience
+knows nothing of essential and accidental; she sees
+only that certain marks attach to an object, and, after
+many observations, that some of them attach invariably,
+whilst others may at times be absent. * * * * *
+As all knowledge is relative, the notion of anything
+being necessary must be banished with other traditions.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There is much here that expresses the spirit of the
+“New Philosophy,” if by that term be meant the spirit
+of modern science; but I cannot but marvel that the
+assembled wisdom and learning of Edinburgh should have
+uttered no sign of dissent, when Comte was declared to
+be the founder of these doctrines. No one will accuse
+Scotchmen of habitually forgetting their great countrymen;
+but it was enough to make David Hume turn in
+his grave, that here, almost within ear-shot of his house,
+an instructed audience should have listened, without a
+murmur, while his most characteristic doctrines were attributed
+to a French writer of fifty years later date, in
+whose dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the vigor
+of thought and the exquisite clearness of the style of the
+man whom I make bold to term the most acute thinker
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>of the eighteenth century—even though that century produced
+Kant. But I did not come to Scotland to vindicate
+the honor of one of the greatest men she has ever
+produced. My business is to point out to you that the
+only way of escape out of the crass materialism in which
+we just now landed is the adoption and strict working
+out of the very principles which the Archbishop holds
+up to reprobation.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not
+relative, and therefore, that our conception of matter represents
+that which it really is. Let us suppose, further,
+that we do know more of cause and effect than a certain
+definite order of succession among facts, and that we
+have a knowledge of the necessity of that succession—and
+hence, of necessary laws—and I, for my part, do not
+see what escape there is from utter materialism and necessitarianism.
+For it is obvious that our knowledge of
+what we call the material world is, to begin with, at least
+as certain and definite as that of the spiritual world, and
+that our acquaintance with the law is of as old a date as
+our knowledge of spontaneity.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Further, I take it to be demonstrable that it is utterly
+impossible to prove that anything whatever may not
+be the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that
+human logic is equally incompetent to prove that any
+act is really spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is
+one which, by the assumption, has no cause; and the
+attempt to prove such a negative as this is, on the face
+of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical
+impossibility to demonstrate that any given
+phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>one who is acquainted with the history of science will
+admit, that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now
+more than ever means, the extension of the province of
+what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant
+gradual banishment from all regions of human thought
+of what we call spirit and spontaneity.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I have endeavored, in the first part of this discourse, to
+give you a conception of the direction towards which modern
+physiology is tending; and I ask you, what is the difference
+between the conception of life as the product of a
+certain disposition of material molecules, and the old notion
+of an Archæus governing and directing blind matter
+within each living body, except this—that here, as
+elsewhere, matter and law have devoured spirit and
+spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out
+of past and present, so will the physiology of the future
+gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is
+coëxtensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.
+The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a
+nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best minds of
+these days. They watch what they conceive to be the
+progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless
+anger as a savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the
+great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The advancing
+tide of matter threatens to drown their souls;
+the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom; they
+are alarmed lest man’s moral nature be debased by the
+increase of his wisdom.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>If the “New Philosophy” be worthy of the reprobation
+with which it is visited, I confess their fears seem to
+me to be well founded. While, on the contrary, could
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>David Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at their
+perplexities, and chide them for doing even as the heathen,
+and falling down in terror before the hideous idols their
+own hands have raised. For, after all, what do we know
+of this terrible “matter,” except as a name for the unknown
+and hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness?
+And what do we know of that “spirit”
+over whose threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation
+is arising, like that which was heard at the death
+of Pan, except that it is also a name for an unknown
+and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of consciousness?
+In other words, matter and spirit are but
+names for the imaginary substrata of groups of natural
+phenomena. And what is the dire necessity and “iron”
+law under which men groan? Truly, most gratuitously
+invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an “iron” law,
+it is that of gravitation; and if there be a physical necessity,
+it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the
+ground. But what is all we really know and can know
+about the latter phenomenon? Simply, that, in all human
+experience, stones have fallen to the ground under these
+conditions; that we have not the smallest reason for believing
+that any stone so circumstanced will not fall to
+the ground, and that we have, on the contrary, every
+reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very convenient
+to indicate that all the conditions of belief have
+been fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that
+unsupported stones will fall to the ground, “a law of nature.”
+But when, as commonly happens, we change will
+into must, we introduce an idea of necessity which most
+assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I
+utterly repudiate and anathematize the intruder. Fact,
+I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity,
+save an empty shadow of my own mind’s throwing?
+But, if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of
+the nature of either matter or spirit, and that the notion
+of necessity is something illegitimately thrust into the
+perfectly legitimate conception of law, the materialistic
+position that there is nothing in the world but matter,
+force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification
+as the most baseless of theological dogmas.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The fundamental doctrines of materialism, like those
+of spiritualism, and most other “isms,” lie outside “the
+limits of philosophical inquiry,” and David Hume’s great
+service to humanity is his irrefragable demonstration of
+what these limits are. Hume called himself a sceptic,
+and therefore others cannot be blamed if they apply the
+same title to him; but that does not alter the fact
+that the name, with its existing implications, does him
+gross injustice. If a man asks me what the politics of
+the inhabitants of the moon are, and I reply that I do
+not know; that neither I, nor any one else have any
+means of knowing; and that, under these circumstances
+I decline to trouble myself about the subject at all, I do
+not think he has any right to call me a sceptic. On
+the contrary, in replying thus, I conceive that I am simply
+honest and truthful, and show a proper regard for
+the economy of time. So Hume’s strong and subtle intellect
+takes up a great many problems about which we
+are naturally curious, and shows us that they are essentially
+questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>of being answered, and therefore not worth the
+attention of men who have work to do in the world.
+And thus ends one of his essays:</p>
+
+<p class='c014'>“If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school
+metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, <i>Does it contain any
+abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?</i> No.
+<i>Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter
+of fact and existence?</i> No. Commit it then to the
+flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”</p>
+
+<p class='c017'>Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why
+trouble ourselves about matters of which, however important
+they may be, we do know nothing, and can know
+nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and
+ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to
+try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat
+less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was
+before he entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary
+to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that
+the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to
+an extent which is practically unlimited; the second,
+that our volition counts for something as a condition of
+the course of events. Each of these beliefs can be verified
+experimentally, as often as we like to try. Each,
+therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon
+which any belief can rest; and forms one of our highest
+truths.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>If we find that the ascertainment of the order of nature
+is facilitated by using one terminology, or one set of symbols,
+rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the
+former, and no harm can accrue so long as we bear in
+mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>In itself it is of little moment whether we express the
+phenomena of matter in terms of spirit, or the phenomena
+of spirit in terms of matter; matter may be regarded as
+a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property
+of matter—each statement has a certain relative truth.
+But with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic
+terminology is in every way to be preferred. For it
+connects thought with the other phenomena of the universe,
+and suggests inquiry into the nature of those physical
+conditions or concomitants of thought, which are
+more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which
+may, in future, help us to exercise the same kind of control
+over the world of thought as we already possess in
+respect of the material world; whereas, the alternative,
+or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads
+to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas. Thus
+there can be little doubt that the further science advances,
+the more extensively and consistently will all the
+phenomena of nature be represented by materialistic
+formulæ and symbols. But the man of science, who,
+forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from
+these formulæ and symbols into what is commonly understood
+by materialism, seems to me to place himself
+on a level with the mathematician, who should mistake
+the <i>x’s</i> and <i>y’s</i>, with which he works his problems, for
+real entities—and with this further disadvantage as compared
+with the mathematician, that the blunders of the
+latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors
+of systematic materialism may paralyze the energies and
+destroy the beauty of a life.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span><span class='c004'><i>THE CORRELATION OF VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES.</i></span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c006' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'><span class='sc'>The Correlation<br /> <br />of<br /> <br />Vital and Physical Forces.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c010'>In the Syracusan Poecile, says Alexander von Humboldt
+in his beautiful little allegory of the Rhodian
+Genius, hung a painting, which, for full a century, had
+continued to attract the attention of every visitor. In
+the foreground of this picture a numerous company of
+youths and maidens of earthly and sensuous appearance
+gazed fixedly upon a haloed Genius who hovered in
+their midst. A butterfly rested upon his shoulder, and
+he held in his hand a flaming torch. His every lineament
+bespoke a celestial origin. The attempts to solve the
+enigma of this painting—whose origin even was unknown—though
+numerous, were all in vain, when one day a
+ship arriving from Rhodes, laden with works of art,
+brought another picture, at once recognized as its companion.
+As before, the Genius stood in the center, but
+the butterfly had disappeared, and the torch was reversed
+and extinguished. The youths and maidens were no
+longer sad and submissive, their mutual embraces announcing
+their entire emancipation from restraint. Still
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>unable to solve the riddle, Dionysius sent the pictures to
+the Pythagorean sage, Epicharmus. After gazing upon
+them long and earnestly, he said: Sixty years long have
+I pondered on the internal springs of nature, and on
+the differences inherent in matter; but it is only this
+day that the Rhodian Genius has taught me to see
+clearly that which before I had only conjectured. In
+inanimate nature, everything seeks its like. Everything,
+as soon as formed, hastens to enter into new combinations,
+and nought save the disjoining art of man can
+present in a separate state ingredients which ye would
+vainly seek in the interior of the earth or in the moving
+oceans of air and water. Different, however, is the
+blending of the same substances in animal and vegetable
+bodies. Here vital force imperatively asserts its rights,
+and heedless of the affinity and antagonism of the atoms,
+unites substances which in inanimate nature ever flee
+from each other, and separates that which is incessantly
+striving to unite. Recognize, therefore, in the Rhodian
+Genius, in the expression of his youthful vigor, in the
+butterfly on his shoulder, in the commanding glance of
+his eye, the symbol of vital force as it animates every
+germ of organic creation. The earthly elements at his
+feet are striving to gratify their own desires and to
+mingle with one another. Imperiously the Genius
+threatens them with upraised and high-flaming torch,
+and compels them regardless of their ancient rights, to
+obey his laws. Look now on the new work of art;
+turn from life to death. The butterfly has soared upward,
+the extinguished torch is reversed, and the head
+of the youth is drooping; the spirit has fled to other
+spheres, and the vital force is extinct. Now the youths
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>and maidens join their hands in joyous accord. Earthly
+matter again resumes its rights. Released from all
+bonds, they impetuously follow their natural instincts,
+and the day of his death is to them a day of nuptials.<a id='r1' /><a href='#f1' class='c020'><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The view here put by Humboldt into the mouth of
+Epicharmus may be taken as a fair representation of the
+current opinion of all ages concerning vital force. To-day,
+as truly as seventy-five years ago when Humboldt
+wrote, the mysterious and awful phenomena of life are
+commonly attributed to some controlling agent residing
+in the organism—to some independent presiding deity,
+holding it in absolute subjection. Such a notion it was
+which prompted Heraclitus to talk of a universal fire,
+Van Helmont to propose his Archæus, Hofmann his
+vital fluid, Hunter his <i>materia vitæ diffusa</i>, and Humboldt
+his vital force.<a id='r2' /><a href='#f2' class='c020'><sup>[2]</sup></a> All these names assume the existence
+of a material or immaterial something, more or
+less separable from the material body, and more or less
+identical with the mind or soul, which is the cause of
+the phenomena of living beings. But as science moved
+irresistibly onward, and it became evident that the forces
+of inorganic nature were neither deities nor imponderable
+fluids, separable from matter, but were simple affections
+of it, analogy demanded a like concession in
+behalf of vital force.<a id='r3' /><a href='#f3' class='c020'><sup>[3]</sup></a> From the notion that the effects
+of heat were due to an imponderable fluid called caloric,
+discovery passed to the conviction that heat was but a
+motion of material particles, and hence inseparable
+from matter. To a like assumption concerning vitality
+it was now but a step. The more advanced thinkers in
+science of to-day, therefore, look upon the life of the
+living form as inseparable from its substance, and believe
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>that the former is purely phenomenal, and only a
+manifestation of the latter. Denying the existence of a
+special vital force as such, they retain the term only to
+express the sum of the phenomena of living beings.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In calling your attention this evening to the Correlation
+of the Physical and the Vital Forces, I have a twofold
+object in view. On the one hand, I would seek to
+interest you in a comparatively recent discovery of Science,
+and one which is destined to play a most important
+part in promoting man’s welfare; and on the other
+I would inquire what part our own country has had in
+these discoveries.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the first place, then, let us consider what the evidences
+are that vital and physical forces are correlated.
+Let us inquire how far inorganic and organic forces may
+be considered mutually convertible, and hence, in so
+far, mutually identical. This may best be done by considering,
+first, what is to be understood by correlation:
+and second, how far are the physical forces themselves
+correlated to each other.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>At the outset of our discussion, we are met by an unfortunate
+ambiguity of language. The word Force, as
+commonly used, has three distinct meanings; in the
+first place, it is used to express the cause of motion, as
+when we speak of the force of gunpowder; it is also
+used to indicate motion itself, as when we refer to the
+force of a moving cannon-ball; and lastly it is employed
+to express the effect of motion, as when we speak of the
+blow which the moving body gives.<a id='r4' /><a href='#f4' class='c020'><sup>[4]</sup></a> Because of this confusion,
+it has been found convenient to adopt Rankine’s
+suggestion,<a id='r5' /><a href='#f5' class='c020'><sup>[5]</sup></a> and to substitute the word ‘energy’ therefor.
+And precisely as all force upon the earth’s surface—using
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>the term force in its widest sense—may be divided
+into attraction and motion, so all energy is divided into
+potential and actual energy, synonymous with those
+terms. It is the chemical attraction of the atoms, or
+their potential energy, which makes gunpowder so powerful;
+it is the attraction or potential energy of gravitation
+which gives the power to a raised weight. If now,
+the impediments be removed, the power just now latent
+becomes active, attraction is converted into motion,
+potential into actual energy, and the desired effect is
+accomplished. The energy of gunpowder or of a raised
+weight is potential, is capable of acting; that of exploding
+gunpowder or of a falling weight is actual energy
+or motion. By applying a match to the gunpowder, by
+cutting the string which sustains the weight, we convert
+potential into actual energy. By potential energy, therefore,
+is meant attraction; and by actual energy, motion.
+It is in the latter sense that we shall use the word force
+in this lecture; and we shall speak of the forces of
+heat, light, electricity and mechanical motion, and of
+the attractions of gravitation, cohesion, chemism.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>From what has now been said, it is obvious that when
+we speak of the forces of heat, light, electricity or motion,
+we mean simply the different modes of motion
+called by these names. And when we say that they
+are correlated to each other, we mean simply that the
+mode of motion called heat, light, electricity, is convertible
+into any of the others, at pleasure. Correlation
+therefore implies convertibility, and mutual dependence
+and relationship.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Having now defined the use of the term force, and
+shown that forces are correlated which are convertible
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>and mutually dependent, we go on to study the evidences
+of such correlation among the motions of inorganic nature
+usually called physical forces; and to ask what
+proof science can furnish us that mechanical motion,
+heat, light, and electricity are thus mutually convertible.
+As we have already hinted, the time was when these
+forces were believed to be various kinds of imponderable
+matter, and chemists and physicists talked of the
+union of iron with caloric as they talked of its union
+with sulphur, regarding the caloric as much a distinct
+and inconvertible entity as the iron and sulphur themselves.
+Gradually, however, the idea of the indestructibility
+of matter extended itself to force. And as it
+was believed that no material particle could ever be
+lost, so, it was argued, no portion of the force existing
+in nature can disappear. Hence arose the idea of the
+indestructibility of force. But, of course, it was quite
+impossible to stop here. If force cannot be lost, the
+question at once arises, what becomes of it when it
+passes beyond our recognition? This question led to
+experiment, and out of experiment came the great fact
+of force-correlation; a fact which distinguished authority
+has pronounced the most important discovery of the
+present century.<a id='r6' /><a href='#f6' class='c020'><sup>[6]</sup></a> These experiments distinctly proved
+that when any one of these forces disappeared, another
+took its place; that when motion was arrested, for example,
+heat, light or electricity was developed. In short,
+that these forces were so intimately related or correlated—to
+use the word then proposed by Mr. Grove<a id='r7' /><a href='#f7' class='c020'><sup>[7]</sup></a>—that
+when one of them vanished, it did so only to reappear
+in terms of another. But one step more was necessary
+to complete this magnificent theory. What can produce
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>motion but motion itself? Into what can motion be converted,
+but motion? May not these forces, thus mutually
+convertible, be simply different modes of motion of
+the molecules of matter, precisely as mechanical motion
+is a motion of its mass? Thus was born the dynamic
+theory of force, first brought out in any completeness by
+Mr. Grove, in 1842, in a lecture on the “Progress of
+Physical Science,” delivered at the London Institution.
+In that lecture he said: “Light, heat, electricity, magnetism,
+motion, are all convertible material affections.
+Assuming either as the cause, one of the others will be
+the effect. Thus heat may be said to produce electricity,
+electricity to produce heat; magnetism to produce electricity,
+electricity magnetism; and so of the rest.”<a id='r8' /><a href='#f8' class='c020'><sup>[8]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A few simple experiments will help us to fix in our
+minds the great fact of the convertibility of force.
+Starting with actual visible motion, correlation requires
+that when it disappears as motion, it should reappear as
+heat, light, or electricity. If the moving body be elastic
+like this rubber ball, then its motion is not destroyed
+when it strikes, but is only changed in direction. But
+if it be non-elastic, like this ball of lead, then it does
+not rebound; its motion is converted into heat. The
+motion of this sledge-hammer, for example, which if received
+upon this anvil would be simply changed in
+direction, if allowed to fall upon this bar of lead, is
+converted into heat; the evidence of which is that a
+piece of phosphorus placed upon the lead is at once inflamed.
+So too, if motion be arrested by the cushion
+of air in this cylinder, the heat evolved fires the tinder
+carried in the plunger. But it is not necessary that the
+arrest of motion should be sudden; it may be gradual,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>as in the case of friction. If this cylinder containing
+water or alcohol be caused to revolve rapidly between
+the two sides of this wooden rubber, the heat due to the
+arrested motion will raise the temperature of the liquid
+to the boiling point, and the cork will be expelled. But
+motion may also be converted into electricity. Indeed
+electricity is always the result of friction between heterogeneous
+particles.<a id='r9' /><a href='#f9' class='c020'><sup>[9]</sup></a> When this piece of hard rubber,
+for example, is rubbed with the fur of a cat, it is at once
+electrified; and now if it be caused to communicate a
+portion of its charge to this glass plate, to which at the
+same time we add the mechanical motion of rotation,
+the strong sparks produced give evidence of the conversion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>So, too, taking heat as the initial force, motion, light,
+electricity may be produced. In every steam-engine
+the steam which leaves the cylinder is cooler than that
+which entered it, and cooler by exactly the amount of
+work done. The motion of the piston’s mass is precisely
+that lost by the steam molecules which batter
+against it. The conversion of heat into electricity, too,
+is also easily effected. When the junction of two metals
+is heated, electricity is developed. If the two metals
+be bismuth and antimony, as represented in this diagram,
+the currents flow as indicated by the arrows; and
+by multiplying the number of pairs, the effect may be
+proportionately increased. Such an arrangement, called
+a thermo-electric battery, we have here; and by it the
+heat of a single gas-burner may be made to move, when
+converted, this little electric bell-engine. Moreover,
+heat and light have the very closest analogy; exalt the
+rapidity with which the molecules move and light appears,
+the difference being only one of intensity.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>Again, if electricity be our starting point, we may accomplish
+its conversion into the other forces. Heat
+results whenever its passage is interrupted or resisted;
+a wire of the poorly conducting metal platinum becoming
+even red-hot by the converted electricity. To produce
+light, of course, we need only to intensify this
+action; the brightest artificial light known, results from
+a direct conversion of electricity.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Enough has now been said to establish our point.
+What is to be particularly observed of these pieces
+of apparatus is that they are machines especially designed
+for the conversion of some one force into another.
+And we expect of them only that conversion.
+We pass on to consider for a moment the quantitative
+relations of this mutual convertibility. We notice,
+in the first place, that in all cases save one, the
+conversion is not perfect, a part of the force used not
+being utilized, on the one hand, and on the other,
+other forces making their appearance simultaneously.
+While, for example, the conversion of motion into heat
+is quite complete, the inverse conversion is not at all so.
+And on the other hand, when motion is converted into
+electricity, a part of it appears as heat. This simultaneous
+production of many forces is well illustrated by
+our little bell-engine, which converts the electricity of
+the thermo-battery into magnetism, and this into motion,
+a part of which expends itself as sound. For these
+reasons the question “How much?” is one not easily
+answered in all cases. The best known of these relations
+is that between motion and heat, which was first
+established by Mr. Joule in 1849, after seven years of
+patient investigation.<a id='r10' /><a href='#f10' class='c020'><sup>[10]</sup></a> The apparatus which he used is
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>shown in the diagram. It consists of a cylindrical box
+of metal, through the cover of which passes a shaft,
+carrying upon its lower end a set of paddles, immersed
+in water within the box, and upon its upper portion a
+drum, on which are wound two cords, which, passing in
+opposite directions, run over pulleys, and are attached
+to known weights. The temperature of the water within
+the box being carefully noted, the weights are then
+allowed to fall a certain number of times, of course in
+their fall turning the paddles against the friction of the
+liquid. At the close of the experiment the water is
+found to be warmer than before. And by measuring
+the amount of this rise in temperature, knowing the distance
+through which the weights have fallen, it is easy
+to calculate the quantity of heat which corresponds to a
+given amount of motion. In this way, and as a mean
+of a large number of experiments, Mr. Joule found that
+the amount of mass motion in a body weighing one
+pound, which had fallen from a hight of 772 feet, was
+exactly equal to the molecular motion which must be
+added to a pound of water, in order to heat it one degree
+Fahrenheit. If we call the actual energy of a
+body weighing one pound which has fallen one foot, a
+foot-pound, then we may speak of the mechanical equivalent
+of heat as being 772 foot-pounds.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The significance and value of this numerical constant
+will appear more clearly if we apply it to the solution of
+one or two simple problems. During the recent war two
+immense iron guns were cast in Pittsburgh, whose weight
+was nearly 112,000 pounds each, and which had a caliber
+of 20 inches.<a id='r11' /><a href='#f11' class='c020'><sup>[11]</sup></a> Upon this diagram is a calculation of the
+effective blow which the solid shot of such a gun, assuming
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>its weight to be 1,000 pounds and its velocity 1,100
+feet per second, would give; it is 902,797 tons!<a id='r12' /><a href='#f12' class='c020'><sup>[12]</sup></a> Now,
+if it were possible to convert the whole of this enormous
+mechanical power into heat, to how much would it correspond?
+This question may be answered by the aid
+of the mechanical equivalent of heat; here is the calculation,
+from which we see that when 17 gallons of
+ice-cold water are heated to the boiling point, as much
+energy is communicated as is contained in the death-dealing
+missile at its highest velocity.<a id='r13' /><a href='#f13' class='c020'><sup>[13]</sup></a> Again, if we take
+the impact of a larger cannon-ball, our earth, which is
+whirling through space with a velocity of 19 miles a
+second, we find it to be 98,416,136,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
+tons!<a id='r14' /><a href='#f14' class='c020'><sup>[14]</sup></a> Were this energy all converted into
+heat, it would equal that produced by the combustion
+of 14 earths of solid coal.<a id='r15' /><a href='#f15' class='c020'><sup>[15]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The conversion of heat into motion, however, as already
+stated, is not as perfect. The best steam-engines
+economize only one-twentieth of the heat of the fuel.<a id='r16' /><a href='#f16' class='c020'><sup>[16]</sup></a>
+Hence if a steamship require 600 tons of coal to carry
+her across the Atlantic, 570 tons will be expended in
+heating the waters of the ocean, the heat of the remaining
+30 tons only being converted into work.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One other quantitative determination of force has
+also been made. Prof. Julius Thomsen, of Copenhagen,
+has fixed experimentally the mechanical equivalent of
+light.<a id='r17' /><a href='#f17' class='c020'><sup>[17]</sup></a> He finds that the energy of the light of a spermaceti
+candle burning 126½ grains per hour, is equal
+in mechanical value to 13·1 foot-pounds per minute.
+The same conclusion has been reached by Mr. Farmer,
+of Boston, from different data.<a id='r18' /><a href='#f18' class='c020'><sup>[18]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>If we pass from the actual physical energies or motions
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>to consider for a moment the potential energies or
+attractions, we find, also, an intimate correlation. Since
+all energy not active in motion is potential in attraction,
+it follows that in the attractions we have energy stored
+up for subsequent use. The sun is thus storing up
+energy: every minute it raises 2,000,000,000 tons of
+water to the mean hight of the clouds, 3½ miles; and
+the actual energy set free when this water falls is equal
+to 2,757,000,000,000 horse-powers.<a id='r19' /><a href='#f19' class='c020'><sup>[19]</sup></a> So when the oxygen
+and the zinc of the ore are separated in the furnace,
+the actual energy of heat becomes the potential energy of
+chemical attraction, which again becomes actual in the
+form of electricity when the zinc is dissolved in an acid.
+We see, then, that not only may any form of force or
+actual energy be stored up as any form of attraction or
+potential energy, but that the latter, from whatsoever
+source derived, may appear as heat, light, electricity, or
+mechanical motion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Having now established the fact of correlation for
+the physical forces, we have next to inquire what are
+the evidences of the correlation of the vital forces with
+them. But in the first place it must be remarked that
+life is not a simple term like heat or electricity; it is
+a complex term, and includes all those phenomena
+which a living body exhibits. In this discussion, therefore,
+we shall use the term vital force to express only
+the actual energy of the body, however manifested. As
+to the attractions or the potential energy of the organism,
+nothing is more fully settled in science than the
+fact that these are precisely the same within the body
+as without it. Every particle of matter within the body
+obeys implicitly the laws of the chemical and physical
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>attractions. No overpowering or supernatural agency
+comes in to complicate their action, which is modified
+only by the action of the others. Vitality, therefore, is
+the sum of the energies of a living body, both potential
+and actual.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Moreover, the important fact must be fully recognized
+that in living beings we have to do with no new elementary
+forms of matter. Precisely the same atoms which
+build up the inorganic fabric, compose the organic. In
+the early days of chemistry, indeed, it was supposed
+that the complicated molecules which life produced
+were beyond the reach of simple chemical law. But as
+more and more complex molecules have been, one after
+another, produced, chemistry has become re-assured, and
+now doubts not her ability to produce them all. A few
+years hence, and she will doubtless give us quinine and
+protagon, as she now gives us coumarin and neurine,
+substances the synthesis of which was but yesterday an
+impossibility.<a id='r20' /><a href='#f20' class='c020'><sup>[20]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In studying the phenomena of living beings, it is important
+also to bear in mind the different and at the
+same time the coördinate purposes subserved by the
+two great kingdoms of nature. The food of the plant
+is matter whose energy is all expended; it is a fallen
+weight. But the plant-organism receives it, exposes it
+to the sun’s ray, and, in a way yet mysterious to us, converts
+the actual energy of the sunlight into potential energy
+within it. The fallen weight is thus raised, and
+energy is stored up in substances which now are alone
+competent to become the food of the animal. This food
+is not such because any new atoms have been added to
+it; it is food because it contains within it potential energy,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>which at any time may become actual as force.
+This food the animal now appropriates; he brings it in
+contact with oxygen, and the potential energy becomes
+actual; he cuts the string, the weight falls, and what was
+just now only attraction, has become actual force; this
+force he uses for his own purposes, and hands back the
+oxidized matter, the fallen weight, to the plant to be
+again de-oxidized, to be again raised. The plant then
+is to be regarded as a machine for converting sunlight into
+potential energy; the animal, a machine for setting the
+potential energy free as actual, and economizing it. The
+force which the plant stores up is undeniably physical;
+must not the force which the animal sets free by its conversion,
+be intimately correlated to it?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But approaching our question still more closely, let
+us, in illustration of the vital forces of the animal economy,
+choose three forms of its manifestation in which
+to seek for the evidences of correlation; these shall be
+heat, evolved within the body; muscular energy or motion;
+and lastly, nervous energy, or that form of force
+which, on the one hand, stimulates a muscle to contract,
+and on the other, appears in forms called mental.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The heat which is produced by the living body is obviously
+of the same nature as heat from any other source;
+it is recognized by the same tests, and may be applied for
+the same purposes. As to its origin, it is evident that
+since potential energy exists in the food which enters
+the body, and is there converted into force, a portion of
+it may become the actual energy of heat. And since,
+too, the heat produced in the body is precisely such as
+would be set free by the combustion of this food outside
+of it, it is fair to assume that it thus originates. To
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>this may be added the chemical argument that while
+food capable of yielding heat by combustion is taken
+into the body, its constituents are completely or almost
+completely, oxidized before leaving it; and since oxidation
+always evolves heat, the heat of the body must
+have its origin in the oxidation of the food. Moreover,
+careful measurements have demonstrated that the amount
+of heat given off by the body of a man weighing 180
+pounds is about 2,500,000 units. Accurate calculations
+have shown, on the other hand, that 288·4 grams of carbon
+and 12·56 grams of hydrogen are available in the
+daily food for the production of heat. If burned out of
+the body, these quantities of carbon and hydrogen would
+yield 2,765,134 heat units. Burned within it, as we have
+just seen, 2,500,000 units appear as heat; the rest in
+other forms of energy.<a id='r21' /><a href='#f21' class='c020'><sup>[21]</sup></a> We conceive, however, that no
+long argument is necessary to prove that animal heat
+results from a conversion of energy within the body; or
+that the vital force heat, is as truly correlated to the
+other forces as when it has a purely physical origin.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The belief that the muscular force exerted by an animal
+is created by him is by no means confined to the
+very earliest ages of history. Traces of it appear to
+the careful observer even now, although, as Dr. Frankland
+says, science has proved that “an animal can no
+more generate an amount of force capable of moving a
+grain of sand than a stone can fall upward or a locomotive
+drive a train without fuel.”<a id='r22' /><a href='#f22' class='c020'><sup>[22]</sup></a> In studying the
+characters of muscular action we notice, first, that, as
+in the case of heat, the force which it develops is in no
+wise different from motion in inorganic nature. In the
+early part of the lecture, motion produced by the contraction
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>of muscle, was used to show the conversion of
+mass-force into molecular force. No one in this room
+believes, I presume, that the result would have been at
+all different, had the motion been supplied by a steam-engine
+or a water-wheel. Again, food, as we have seen,
+is of value for the potential energy it contains, which
+may become actual in the body. Liebig, in 1842, asserted
+that for the production of muscular force, the
+food must first be converted into muscular tissue,<a id='r23' /><a href='#f23' class='c020'><sup>[23]</sup></a> a
+view until recently accepted by physiologists.<a id='r24' /><a href='#f24' class='c020'><sup>[24]</sup></a> It has
+been conclusively shown, however, within a few years,
+that muscular force cannot come from the oxidation of
+its own substance, since the products of this metamorphosis
+are not increased in amount by muscular exertion.<a id='r25' /><a href='#f25' class='c020'><sup>[25]</sup></a>
+Indeed, reasoning from the whole amount of such
+products excreted, the oxidation of the amount of muscle
+which they represent would furnish scarcely one-fifth
+of the mechanical force of the body. But while
+the products of tissue-oxidation do not increase with
+the increase of muscular exertion, the amount of carbonic
+gas exhaled by the lungs is increased in the exact
+ratio of the work done.<a id='r26' /><a href='#f26' class='c020'><sup>[26]</sup></a> No doubt can be entertained,
+therefore, that the actual energy of the muscle is simply
+the converted potential energy of the carbon of the food.
+A muscle, therefore, like a steam-engine, is a machine
+for converting the potential energy of carbon into motion.
+But unlike a steam-engine, the muscle accomplishes this
+conversion directly, the energy not passing through the
+intermediate stage of heat. For this reason, the muscle
+is the most economical producer of mechanical force
+known. While no machine whatever can transform all
+of the energy into motion—the most economical steam-engines
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>utilizing only one-twentieth of the heat—the
+muscle is able to convert one-fifth of the energy of the
+food into work.<a id='r27' /><a href='#f27' class='c020'><sup>[27]</sup></a> The other four-fifths must, therefore,
+appear as heat. Whenever a muscle contracts, then,
+four times as much energy appears as heat as is converted
+into motion. Direct experiments by Heidenhain
+have confirmed this, by showing that an important rise
+of temperature attends muscular contraction;<a id='r28' /><a href='#f28' class='c020'><sup>[28]</sup></a> a fact,
+however, apparent to any one who has ever taken active
+exercise. The work done by the animal body is of two
+sorts, internal and external. The former includes the
+action of the heart, of the respiratory muscles, and of
+those assisting the digestive process. The latter refers
+to the useful work the body may perform. Careful estimates
+place the entire work of the body at about 800
+foot-tons daily; of which 450 foot-tons is internal, 350
+foot-tons external work. And since the internal work
+ultimately appears as heat within the body, the actual
+loss of heat by the production of motion is the equivalent
+of the 350 foot-tons which represents external
+work. This by a simple calculation will be found to be
+250,000 heat units, almost the precise amount by which
+the heat yielded by the food when burned without the
+body, exceeds that actually evolved by the organism.
+Moreover, while the total heat given off by the body is
+2,500,000 units, the amount of energy evolved as work
+is equal to about 600,000 heat units; hence the amount
+of work done by a muscle is as above stated, one-fifth
+of the actual energy derivable from the food. One point
+further. The law of correlation requires that the heat set
+free when a muscle in contracting does work, shall be
+less than when it effects nothing; this fact, too, has been
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>experimentally established by Heidenhain.<a id='r29' /><a href='#f29' class='c020'><sup>[29]</sup></a> So, again,
+when muscular contraction does not result in motion,
+as when one tries to raise a weight too heavy for him,
+the energy which would have appeared as work, takes
+the form of heat: a result deducible by the law of correlation
+from the steam-engine.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The last of the so-called vital forces which we are to
+examine, is that produced by the nerves and nervous
+centers. In the nerve which stimulates a muscle to
+contract, this force is undeniably motion, since it is
+propagated along this nerve from one extremity to the
+other. In common language, too, this idea finds currency
+in the comparison of this force to electricity; the
+gray or cellular matter being the battery, the white or
+fibrous matter the conductors. That this force is not
+electricity, however, Du Bois-Reymond has demonstrated
+by showing that its velocity is only 97 feet in a second,
+a speed equaled by the greyhound and the race-horse.<a id='r30' /><a href='#f30' class='c020'><sup>[30]</sup></a>
+In his opinion, the propagation of a nervous impulse is
+a sort of successive molecular polarization, like magnetism.
+But that this agent is a force, as analogous to
+electricity as is magnetism, is shown not only by the
+fact that the transmission of electricity along a nerve
+will cause the contraction of the muscle to which it
+leads, but also by the more important fact that the contraction
+of a muscle is excited by diminishing its normal
+electrical current;<a id='r31' /><a href='#f31' class='c020'><sup>[31]</sup></a> a result which could take place
+only with a stimulus closely allied to electricity. Nerve-force,
+therefore, must be a transmuted potential energy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>What, now, shall we say of that highest manifestation
+of animal life, thought-power? Has the upper region
+called intelligence and reason, any relations to physical
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>force? This realm has not escaped the searching investigation
+of modern science; and although in it investigations
+are vastly more difficult than in any of the
+regions thus far considered, yet some results of great
+value have been obtained, which may help us to a solution
+of our problem. It is to be observed at the outset
+that every external manifestation of thought-force is a
+muscular one, as a word spoken or written, a gesture, or
+an expression of the face; and hence this force must
+be intimately correlated with nerve-force. These manifestations,
+reaching the mind through the avenues of
+sense, awaken accordant trains of thought only when
+this muscular evidence is understood. A blank sheet
+of paper excites no emotion; even covered with Assyrian
+cuneiform characters, its alternations of black and
+white awaken no response in the ordinary brain. It is
+only when, by a frequent repetition of these impressions,
+the brain-cell has been educated, that these before
+meaningless characters awaken thought. Is thought,
+then, simply a cell action which may or may not result
+in muscular expression—an action which originates new
+combinations of truth only, precisely as a calculating
+machine evolves new combinations of figures? Whatever
+we define thought to be, this fact appears certain,
+that it is capable of external manifestation by conversion
+into the actual energy of motion, and only by this
+conversion. But here the question arises, Can it be
+manifested inwardly without such a transformation of
+energy? Or is the evolution of thought entirely independent
+of the matter of the brain? Experiments, ingenious
+and reliable, have answered this question. The
+importance of the results will, I trust, warrant me in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>examining the methods employed in these experiments
+somewhat in detail. Inasmuch as our methods for
+measuring minute amounts of electricity are very perfect,
+and the methods for the conversion of heat into electricity
+are equally delicate, it has been found that smaller
+differences of temperature may be recognized by converting
+the heat into electricity, than can be detected
+thermometrically. The apparatus, first used by Melloni
+in 1832,<a id='r32' /><a href='#f32' class='c020'><sup>[32]</sup></a> is very simple, consisting first, of a pair of
+metallic bars like those described in the early part of
+the lecture, for effecting the conversion of the heat; and
+second, of a delicate galvanometer, for measuring the
+electricity produced. In the experiments in question
+one of the bars used was made of bismuth, the other
+of an alloy of antimony and zinc.<a id='r33' /><a href='#f33' class='c020'><sup>[33]</sup></a> Preliminary trials
+having shown that any change of temperature within
+the skull was soonest manifested externally in that depression
+which exists just above the occipital protuberance,
+a pair of these little bars was fastened to the head
+at this point; and to neutralize the results of a general
+rise of temperature over the whole body, a second pair,
+reversed in direction, was attached to the leg or arm, so
+that if a like increase of heat came to both, the electricity
+developed by one would be neutralized by the
+other, and no effect be produced upon the needle unless
+only one was affected. By long practice it was ascertained
+that a state of mental torpor could be induced,
+lasting for hours, in which the needle remained stationary.
+But let a person knock on the door outside
+the room, or speak a single word, even though the experimenter
+remained absolutely passive, and the reception
+of the intelligence caused the needle to swing
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>through 20 degrees.<a id='r34' /><a href='#f34' class='c020'><sup>[34]</sup></a> In explanation of this production
+of heat, the analogy of the muscle at once suggests
+itself. No conversion of energy is complete; and as
+the heat of muscular action represents force which has
+escaped conversion into motion, so the heat evolved
+during the reception of an idea, is energy which has escaped
+conversion into thought, from precisely the same
+cause. Moreover, these experiments have shown that
+ideas which affect the emotions, produce most heat in
+their reception; “a few minutes’ recitation to one’s self
+of emotional poetry, producing more effect than several
+hours of deep thought.” Hence it is evident that the
+mechanism for the production of deep thought, accomplishes
+this conversion of energy far more perfectly
+than that which produces simply emotion. But we may
+take a step further in this same direction. A muscle,
+precisely as the law of correlation requires, develops
+less heat when doing work than when it contracts without
+doing it. Suppose, now, that beside the simple reception
+of an idea by the brain, the thought is expressed
+outwardly by some muscular sign. The conversion now
+takes two directions, and in addition to the production
+of thought, a portion of the energy appears as nerve and
+muscle-power; less, therefore, should appear as heat,
+according to our law of correlation. Dr. Lombard’s experiments
+have shown that the amount of heat developed
+by the recitation to one’s self of emotional poetry,
+was in every case less when that recitation was oral;
+<i>i.e.</i>, had a muscular expression. These results are in
+accordance with the well-known fact that emotion often
+finds relief in physical demonstrations; thus diminishing
+the emotional energy by converting it into muscular.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>Nor do these facts rest upon physical evidence alone.
+Chemistry teaches that thought-force, like muscle-force,
+comes from the food; and demonstrates that the force
+evolved by the brain, like that produced by the muscle,
+comes not from the disintegration of its own tissue, but
+is the converted energy of burning carbon.<a id='r35' /><a href='#f35' class='c020'><sup>[35]</sup></a> Can we
+longer doubt, then, that the brain, too, is a machine for
+the conversion of energy? Can we longer refuse to believe
+that even thought is, in some mysterious way, correlated
+to the other natural forces? and this, even in
+face of the fact that it has never yet been measured?<a id='r36' /><a href='#f36' class='c020'><sup>[36]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I cannot close without saying a word concerning the
+part which our own country has had in the development
+of these great truths. Beginning with heat, we find that
+the material theory of caloric is indebted for its overthrow
+more to the distinguished Count Rumford than to
+any other one man. While superintending the boring
+of cannon at the Munich Arsenal towards the close of
+the last century, he was struck by the large amount of
+heat developed, and instituted a careful series of experiments
+to ascertain its origin. These experiments led
+him to the conclusion that “anything which any insulated
+body or system of bodies can continue to furnish
+without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance.”
+But this man, to whom must be ascribed the
+discovery of the first great law of the correlation of
+energy, was an American. Born in Woburn, Mass., in
+1753, he, under the name of Benjamin Thompson,
+taught school afterward at Concord, N. H., then called
+Rumford. Unjustly suspected of toryism during our
+Revolutionary war, he went abroad and distinguished
+himself in the service of several of the Governments of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>Europe. He did not forget his native land, though she
+had treated him so unfairly; when the honor of knighthood
+was tendered him, he chose as his title the name
+of the Yankee village where he had taught school, and
+was thenceforward known as Count Rumford. And at
+his death, by founding a professorship in Harvard College,
+and donating a prize-fund to the American Academy
+of Arts and Sciences at Boston, he showed his interest
+in her prosperity and advancement.<a id='r37' /><a href='#f37' class='c020'><sup>[37]</sup></a> Nor has
+the field of vital forces been without earnest workers
+belonging to our own country. Professors John W.
+Draper<a id='r38' /><a href='#f38' class='c020'><sup>[38]</sup></a> and Joseph Henry<a id='r39' /><a href='#f39' class='c020'><sup>[39]</sup></a> were among its earliest
+explorers. And in 1851, Dr. J. H. Watters, now of St.
+Louis, published a theory of the origin of vital force,
+almost identical with that for which Dr. Carpenter, of
+London, has of late received so much credit. Indeed,
+there is some reason to believe that Dr. Watters’s essay
+may have suggested to the distinguished English physiologist
+the germs of his own theory.<a id='r40' /><a href='#f40' class='c020'><sup>[40]</sup></a> A paper on this
+subject by Prof. Joseph Leconte, of Columbia, S. C., published
+in 1859, attracted much attention abroad.<a id='r41' /><a href='#f41' class='c020'><sup>[41]</sup></a> The
+remarkable results already given on the relation of heat
+to mental work, which thus far are unique in science, we
+owe to Professor J. S. Lombard, of Harvard College;<a id='r42' /><a href='#f42' class='c020'><sup>[42]</sup></a>
+the very combination of metals used in his apparatus
+being devised by our distinguished electrical engineer,
+Mr. Moses G. Farmer. Finally, researches conducted
+by Dr. T. R. Noyes in the Physiological Laboratory of
+Yale College, have confirmed the theory that muscular
+tissue does not wear during action, up to the point of
+fatigue;<a id='r43' /><a href='#f43' class='c020'><sup>[43]</sup></a> and other researches by Dr. L. H. Wood have
+first established the same great truth for brain-tissue.<a id='r44' /><a href='#f44' class='c020'><sup>[44]</sup></a>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>We need not be ashamed, then, of our part in this advance
+in science. Our workers are, indeed, but few;
+but both they and their results will live in the records
+of the world’s progress. More would there be now of
+them were such studies more fostered and encouraged.
+Self-denying, earnest men are ready to give themselves
+up to the solution of these problems, if only the means
+of a bare subsistence be allowed them. When wealth
+shall foster science, science will increase wealth—wealth
+pecuniary, it is true: but also wealth of knowledge,
+which is far better.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In looking back over the whole of this discussion, I
+trust that it is possible to see that the objects which we
+had in view at its commencement have been more or
+less fully attained. I would fain believe that we now
+see more clearly the beautiful harmonies of bounteous
+nature; that on her many-stringed instrument force answers
+to force, like the notes of a great symphony; disappearing
+now in potential energy, and anon reappearing
+as actual energy, in a multitude of forms. I would
+hope that this wonderful unity and mutual interaction
+of force in the dead forms of inorganic nature, appears
+to you identical in the living forms of animal and vegetable
+life, which make of our earth an Eden. That
+even that mysterious, and in many aspects awful, power
+of thought, by which man influences the present and
+future ages, is a part of this great ocean of energy. But
+here the great question rolls upon us, Is it only this?
+Is there not behind this material substance, a higher
+than molecular power in the thoughts which are immortalized
+in the poetry of a Milton or a Shakespeare, the
+art creations of a Michael Angelo or a Titian, the harmonies
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>of a Mozart or a Beethoven? Is there really
+no immortal portion separable from this brain-tissue,
+though yet mysteriously united to it? In a word, does
+this curiously-fashioned body inclose a soul, God-given
+and to God returning? Here Science veils her face
+and bows in reverence before the Almighty. We have
+passed the boundaries by which physical science is enclosed.
+No crucible, no subtle magnetic needle can
+answer now our questions. No word but His who
+formed us, can break the awful silence. In presence of
+such a revelation Science is dumb, and faith comes in
+joyfully to accept that higher truth which can never be
+the object of physical demonstration.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>
+  <h2 id='notes' class='c007'><span class='sc'>Notes and References.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote c003' id='f1'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r1'>1</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Humboldt</span>, Views of Nature, Bohn’s ed., London, 1850, p. 380.
+This allegory did not appear in the first edition of the Views of
+Nature. In the preface to the second edition the author gives the
+following account of its origin: “Schiller,” he says, “in remembrance
+of his youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me,
+during my long stay at Jena, on physiological subjects.” * * *
+“It was at this period that I wrote the little allegory on Vital Force,
+called The Rhodian Genius. The predilection which Schiller entertained
+for this piece, which he admitted into his periodical, <i>Die
+Horen</i>, gave me courage to introduce it here.” It was published in
+<i>Die Horen</i> in 1795.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f2'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r2'>2</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Humboldt</span>, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 386. In his <i>Aphorismi ex doctrina Physiologiæ
+chemicæ Plantarum</i>, appended to his <i>Flora Fribergensis subterranea</i>,
+published in 1793, Humboldt had said “Vim internam,
+quæ chymicæ affinitatis vincula resolvit, atque obstat, quominus
+elementa corporum libere conjungantur, vitalem vocamus.” “That
+internal force, which dissolves the bonds of chemical affinity, and
+prevents the elements of bodies from freely uniting, we call vital.”
+But in a note to the allegory above mentioned, added to the third edition
+of the Views of Nature in 1849, he says: “Reflection and prolonged
+study in the departments of physiology and chemistry have
+deeply shaken my earlier belief in peculiar so-called vital forces. In
+the year 1797, * * * I already declared that I by no means regarded
+the existence of these peculiar vital forces as established.”
+And again: “The difficulty of satisfactorily referring the vital phenomena
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>of the organism to physical and chemical laws depends chiefly
+(and almost in the same manner as the prediction of meteorological
+processes in the atmosphere) on the complication of the phenomena,
+and on the great number of the simultaneously acting forces as well
+as the conditions of their activity.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f3'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r3'>3</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Compare <span class='sc'>Henry Bence Jones</span>, Croonian Lectures on Matter
+and Force. London, 1868, John Churchill &amp; Sons.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f4'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r4'>4</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Ib., Preface, p. vi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f5'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r5'>5</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Rankine, W. J. M.</span>, Philosophical Magazine, Feb., 1853.
+Also Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, July, 1855.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f6'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r6'>6</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Armstrong</span>, Sir <span class='sc'>Wm.</span> In his address as President of the
+British Association for the Advancement of Science. Rep. Brit.
+Assoc., 1863, li.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f7'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r7'>7</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Grove, W. R.</span>, in 1842. Compare “Nature” i, 335, Jan. 27,
+1870. Also Appleton’s Journal, iii, 324, Mch. 19, 1870.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f8'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r8'>8</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Id., in Preface to The Correlation of Physical Forces, 4th ed.
+Reprinted in The Correlation and Conservation of Forces, edited
+by E. L. Youmans, p. 7. New York, 1865, D. Appleton &amp; Co.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f9'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r9'>9</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Id., ib., Am. ed., p. 33 et seq.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f10'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r10'>10</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Joule, J. P.</span>, Philosophical Transactions, 1850, p. 61.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f11'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r11'>11</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>See American Journal of Science, II, xxxvii, 296, 1864.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f12'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r12'>12</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>The work (W) done by a moving body is commonly expressed
+by the formula W = MV<sup>2</sup>, in which M, or the mass of the body, is
+equal to w/2g; <i>i.e.</i>, to the weight divided by twice the intensity
+of gravity. The work done by our cannon-ball then, would be
+(1 × (1100)<sup>2</sup>)/(2 × 64⅓) = 9,404·14 foot-tons. If, further, we assume the resisting
+body to be of such a character as to bring the ball to
+rest in moving ¼ of an inch, then the final pressure would be
+9,404·14 × 12 × 4 = 451,398·7 tons. But since, “in the case of a perfectly
+elastic body, or of a resistance proportional to the advance of
+the center of gravity of the impinging body from the point at which
+contact first takes place, the final pressure (provided the body struck
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>is perfectly rigid) is double what would occur were the stoppage
+to occur at the end of a corresponding advance against a uniform
+resistance,” this result must be multiplied by two; and we get
+(451,398·7 × 2) 902,797 tons as the crushing pressure of the ball under
+these conditions. Note: The author’s thanks are due to his friends
+Pres. F. A. P. Barnard and Mr. J. J. Skinner for suggestions on
+the relation of impact to statical pressure.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f13'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r13'>13</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>The unit of impact being that given by a body weighing one
+pound and moving one foot a second, the impact of such a body
+falling from a hight of 772 feet—the velocity acquired being 222¼
+feet per second (=√(2sg))—would be 1 × (222¼)<sup>2</sup> = 49,408 units, the
+equivalent in impact of one heat-unit. A cannon-ball weighing
+1000 lbs. and moving 1100 feet a second would have an impact of
+(1100)<sup>2</sup> × 1000 = 1,210,000,000 units. Dividing this by 49,408, the
+quotient is 24489 heat units, the equivalent of the impact. The
+specific heat of iron being ·1138, this amount of heat would raise
+the temperature of one pound of iron 215.191° F. (24,489 × ·1138) or
+of 1000 pounds of iron 215° F. 24489 pounds of water heated one
+degree, is equal to 136½ pounds, or 17 gallons U. S., heated 180
+degrees; <i>i.e.</i>, from 32° to 212° F.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f14'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r14'>14</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Assuming the density of the earth to be 5·5, its weight would
+be 6,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, and its impact—by the formula
+given above—would be 1,025,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
+foot-tons. Making the same supposition as in the case of our
+cannon-ball, the final pressure would be that here stated.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f15'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r15'>15</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Tyndall, J.</span>, Heat considered as a mode of Motion; Am. ed.,
+p. 57, New York, 1863.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f16'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r16'>16</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Rankine</span> (The Steam-engine and other prime Movers, London,
+1866,) gives the efficiency of Steam-engines as from 1-15th to
+1-20th of the heat of the fuel.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Armstrong</span>, Sir <span class='sc'>Wm.</span>, places this efficiency at 1-10th as the
+maximum. In practice, the average result is only 1-30th. Rep.
+Brit. Assoc., 1863, p. liv.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Helmholtz, H. L. F.</span>, says: “The best expansive engines give
+back as mechanical work only eighteen per cent. of the heat generated
+by the fuel.” Interaction of Natural Forces, in Correlation
+and Conservation of Forces, p. 227.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f17'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r17'>17</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span><span class='sc'>Thomsen, Julius</span>, Poggendorff’s Annalen, cxxv, 348. Also
+in abstract in Am. J. Sci., II, xli, 396, May, 1866.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f18'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r18'>18</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>American Journal of Science, II, xli, 214, March, 1866.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f19'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r19'>19</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>In this calculation the annual evaporation from the ocean is
+assumed to be about 9 feet. (See Dr. <span class='sc'>Buist</span>, quoted in Maury’s
+Phys. Geography of the Sea, New York, 1861, p. 11.) Calling the
+water-area of our globe 150,000,000 square miles, the total evaporation
+in tons per minute, would be that here given. Inasmuch
+as 30,000 pounds raised one-foot high is a horse-power, the number
+of horse-powers necessary to raise this quantity of water 3½ miles
+in one minute is 2,757,000,000,000. This amount of energy is precisely
+that set free again when this water falls as rain.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f20'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r20'>20</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Compare <span class='sc'>Odling, Wm.</span>, Lectures on Animal Chemistry, London,
+1866. “In broad antagonism to the doctrines which only a
+few years back were regarded as indisputable, we now find that the
+chemist, like the plant, is capable of producing from carbonic acid
+and water a whole host of organic bodies, and we see no reason to
+question his ultimate ability to reproduce all animal and vegetable
+principles whatsoever.” (p. 52.)</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“Already hundreds of organic principles have been built up from
+their constituent elements, and there is now no reason to doubt our
+capability of producing all organic principles whatsoever in a similar
+manner.” (p. 58.)</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>Dr. Odling is the successor of Faraday as Fullerian Professor
+of Chemistry in the Royal Institution of Great Britain.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f21'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r21'>21</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Marshall, John</span>, Outlines of Physiology, American edition,
+1868, p. 916.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f22'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r22'>22</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Frankland, Edward</span>, On the Source of Muscular Power,
+Proc. Roy. Inst., June 8, 1866; Am. J. Sci., II, xlii, 393, Nov. 1866.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f23'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r23'>23</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Liebig, Justus von</span>, Die organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung
+auf Physiologie und Pathologie, Braunschweig, 1842. Also
+in his Animal Chemistry, edition of 1852 (Am. ed., p. 26), where he
+says “Every motion increases the amount of organized tissue which
+undergoes metamorphosis.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f24'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r24'>24</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Compare <span class='sc'>Draper, John Wm.</span> Human Physiology.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Playfair, Lyon</span>, On the Food of Man in relation to his useful
+work, Edinburgh, 1865. Proc. Roy. Inst., Apr. 28, 1865.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Ranke</span>, Tetanus eine Physiologische Studie, Leipzig, 1865.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Odling</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f25'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r25'>25</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span><span class='sc'>Voit, E.</span>, Untersuchungen über den Einfluss des Kochsalzes,
+des Kaffees, und der Muskelbewegungen auf den Stoffwechsel,
+Munich, 1860.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Smith, E.</span>, Philosophical Transactions, 1861, 747.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Fick, A.</span>, and <span class='sc'>Wislicenus, J.</span>, Phil. Mag., IV, xxxi, 485.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Frankland, E.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Noyes, T. R.</span>, American Journal Medical Sciences, Oct. 1867.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Parkes, E. A.</span>, Proceedings Royal Society, xv, 339; xvi, 44.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f26'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r26'>26</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Smith, Edward</span>, Philosophical Transactions, 1859, 709.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f27'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r27'>27</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Authorities differ as to the amount of energy converted
+by the steam-engine. (See Note 16.) Compare <span class='sc'>Marshall</span>,
+<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 918. “Whilst, therefore, in an engine one-twentieth
+part only of the fuel consumed is utilized as mechanical power, one-fifth
+of the food absorbed by man is so appropriated.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f28'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r28'>28</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Heidenhain</span>, Mechanische Leistung Wärmeentwickelung
+und Stoffumsatz bei der Muskelthätigkeit, Breslau, 1864.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>See also <span class='sc'>Haughton, Samuel</span>, On the Relation of Food to
+work, published in “Medicine in Modern Times,” London, 1869,
+Macmillan &amp; Co.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f29'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r29'>29</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Heidenhain</span>, <i>op. cit.</i> Also by <span class='sc'>Fick</span>, Untersuchungen über
+Muskel-arbeit, Basel, 1867. Compare also “Nature,” i, 159, Dec.
+9, 1869.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f30'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r30'>30</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Du Bois-Reymond, Emil</span>, On the time required for the transmission
+of volition and sensation through the nerves, Proc. Roy.
+Inst. Also in Appendix to Bence Jones’s Croonian lectures.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f31'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r31'>31</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Marshall</span>, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 227.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f32'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r32'>32</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Melloni</span>, Ann. Ch. Phys., xlviii, 198.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>See also <span class='sc'>Nobili</span>, Bibl. Univ., xliv, 225, 1830; lvii, 1, 1834.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f33'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r33'>33</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>The apparatus employed is illustrated and fully described in
+Brown-Sequard’s Archives de Physiologie, i, 498, June, 1868. By
+it the 1-4000th of a degree Centigrade may be indicated.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f34'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r34'>34</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span><span class='sc'>Lombard, J. S.</span>, New York Medical Journal, v, 198, June, 1867.
+[A part of these facts were communicated to me directly by their
+discoverer.]</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f35'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r35'>35</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Wood, L. H.</span>, On the influence of Mental activity on the Excretion
+of Phosphoric acid by the Kidneys. Proceedings Connecticut
+Medical Society for 1869, p. 197.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f36'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r36'>36</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>On this question of vital force, see <span class='sc'>Liebig</span>, Animal Chemistry.
+“The increase of mass in a plant is determined by the occurrence
+of a decomposition which takes place in certain parts of the plant
+under the influence of light and heat.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“The modern science of Physiology has left the track of Aristotle.
+To the eternal advantage of science, and to the benefit of mankind
+it no longer invents a <i>horror vacui</i>, a <i>quinta essentia</i>, in order to furnish
+credulous hearers with solutions and explanations of phenomena,
+whose true connection with others, whose ultimate cause is still
+unknown.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“All the parts of the animal body are produced from a peculiar
+fluid circulating in its organism, by virtue of an influence residing
+in every cell, in every organ, or part of an organ.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“Physiology has sufficiently decisive grounds for the opinion that
+every motion, every manifestation of force, is the result of a transformation
+of the structure or of its substance; that every conception,
+every mental affection, is followed by changes in the chemical
+nature of the secreted fluids; that every thought, every sensation
+is accompanied by a change in the composition of the substance of
+the brain.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“All vital activity arises from the mutual action of the oxygen of
+the atmosphere and the elements of the food.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“As, in the closed galvanic circuit, in consequence of certain
+changes which an inorganic body, a metal, undergoes when placed
+in contact with an acid, a certain something becomes cognizable by
+our senses, which we call a current of electricity; so in the animal
+body, in consequence of transformations and changes undergone by
+matter previously constituting a part of the organism, certain phenomena
+of motion and activity are perceived, and these we call life,
+or vitality.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“In the animal body we recognize as the ultimate cause of all
+force only one cause, the chemical action which the elements of the
+food and the oxygen of the air mutually exercise on each other.
+The only known ultimate cause of vital force, either in animals or
+in plants, is a chemical process.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>“If we consider the force which determines the vital phenomena
+as a property of certain substances, this view leads of itself to a new
+and more rigorous consideration of certain singular phenomena,
+which these very substances exhibit, in circumstances in which they
+no longer make a part of living organisms.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>Also <span class='sc'>Owen, Richard</span>, (Derivative Hypothesis of Life and
+Species, forming the 40th chapter of his Anatomy of Vertebrates,
+republished in Am. J. Sci., II, xlvii, 33, Jan. 1869.) “In the endeavor
+to clearly comprehend and explain the functions of the combination
+of forces called ‘brain,’ the physiologist is hindered and
+troubled by the views of the nature of those cerebral forces which
+the needs of dogmatic theology have imposed on mankind.” * *</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>“Religion pure and undefiled, can best answer how far it is righteous
+or just to charge a neighbor with being unsound in his principles
+who holds the term ‘life’ to be a sound expressing the sum
+of living phenomena; and who maintains these phenomena to be
+modes of force into which other forms of force have passed, from
+potential to active states, and reciprocally, through the agency of
+these sums or combinations of forces impressing the mind with the
+ideas signified by the terms ‘monad,’ ‘moss,’ ‘plant,’ or ‘animal.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'>And <span class='sc'>Huxley, Thos. H.</span>, “On the Physical Basis of Life,” University
+Series, No. 1. College Courant, 1870.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><i>Per contra</i>, see the Address of Dr. F. A. P. Barnard, as retiring
+President, before the Am. Assoc. for the Advancement of Science,
+Chicago meeting, August, 1868. “Thought cannot be a
+physical force, because thought admits of no measure.”</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Gould, Benj. Apthorp</span>, Address as retiring President, before
+the American Association at its Salem meeting, Aug., 1869.</p>
+
+<p class='c021'><span class='sc'>Beale, Lionel S.</span>, “Protoplasm, or Life, Matter, and Mind.”
+London, 1870. John Churchill &amp; Sons.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f37'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r37'>37</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>For an excellent account of this distinguished man, see Youmans’s
+Introduction to the Correlation and Conservation of Forces,
+p. xvii.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f38'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r38'>38</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span><span class='sc'>Draper, J. W.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f39'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r39'>39</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Henry, Joseph</span>, Agric. Rep. Patent Office, 1857, 440.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f40'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r40'>40</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Watters, J. H.</span>, An Essay on Organic, or Life-force. Written
+for the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania,
+Philadelphia, 1851. See also St. Louis Medical and Surgical
+Journal, II, v, Nos. 3 and 4, 1868; Dec. 1868, and Nov. 10,
+1869.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f41'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r41'>41</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>LeConte, Joseph</span>, The Correlation of Physical, Chemical and
+Vital Force, and the Conservation of Force in Vital Phenomena.
+American Journal of Science, II, xxviii, 305, Nov. 1859.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f42'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r42'>42</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Lombard, J. S.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f43'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r43'>43</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Noyes, T. R.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote' id='f44'>
+<p class='c021'><span class='label'><a href='#r44'>44</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class='sc'>Wood, L. H.</span>, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>
+</div>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span><span class='c022'><i>AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC.</i></span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c006' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>PREFATORY NOTE.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c010'>The substance of the greater part of this paper, which has
+been in the present form for some time, was delivered, as a
+lecture, at a Conversazione of the Royal College of Physicians
+of Edinburgh, in the Hall of the College, on the evening of
+Friday, the 30th of April last.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It will be found to support itself, so far as the facts are
+concerned, on the most recent German physiological literature,
+as represented by Rindfleisch, Kühne, and especially Stricker,
+with which last, for the production of his “Handbuch,” there
+is associated every great histological name in Germany.</p>
+<p class='c013'><span class='sc'>Edinburgh</span>, <i>October, 1869</i>.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c006' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'><span class='sc'>As Regards Protoplasm, etc.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c010'>It is a pleasure to perceive Mr. Huxley open his clear
+little essay with what we may hold, perhaps, to be the
+manly and orthodox view of the character and products
+of the French writer, Auguste Comte. “In applying
+the name of ‘the new philosophy’ to that estimate of
+the limits of philosophical inquiry which he” (Professor
+Huxley), “in common with many other men of science,
+holds to be just,” the Archbishop of York confounds, it
+seems, this new philosophy with the Positive philosophy
+of M. Comte; and thereat Mr. Huxley expresses himself
+as greatly astonished. Some of us, for our parts,
+may be inclined at first to feel astonished at Mr. Huxley’s
+astonishment; for the school to which, at least on
+the philosophical side, Mr. Huxley seems to belong, is
+even notorious for its prostration before Auguste Comte,
+whom, especially, so far as method and systematization
+are concerned, it regards as the greatest intellect since
+Bacon. For such, as it was the opinion of Mr. Buckle,
+is understood to be the opinion also of Messrs. Grote,
+Bain, and Mill. In fact, we may say that such is commonly
+and currently considered the characteristic and
+distinctive opinion of that whole perverted or inverted
+reaction which has been called the <i>Revulsion</i>. That is
+to say, to give this word a moment’s explanation, that
+the Voltaires and Humes and Gibbons having long
+enjoyed an immunity of sneer at man’s blind pride and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>wretched superstition—at <i>his</i> silly non-natural honor
+and <i>her</i> silly non-natural virtue—a reaction had set in,
+exulting in poetry, in the splendor of nature, the nobleness
+of man, and the purity of woman, from which reaction
+again we have, almost within the last decennium,
+been revulsively, as it were, called back,—shall we say
+by some “bolder” spirits—the Buckles, the Mills, &amp;c.?—to
+the old illumination or enlightenment of a hundred
+years ago, in regard to the weakness and stupidity of
+man’s pretensions over the animality and materiality
+that limit him. Of this revulsion, then, as said, a main
+feature, especially in England, has been prostration
+before the vast bulk of Comte; and so it was that Mr.
+Huxley’s protest in this reference, considering the philosophy
+he professed, had that in it to surprise at first.
+But if there was surprise, there was also pleasure; for
+Mr. Huxley’s estimate of Comte is undoubtedly the
+right one. “So far as I am concerned,” he says, “the
+most reverend prelate” (the Archbishop of York)
+“might dialectically hew M. Comte in pieces as a modern
+Agag, and I should not attempt to stay his hand;
+for, so far as my study of what specially characterizes
+the Positive philosophy has led me, I find therein little
+or nothing of any scientific value, and a great deal
+which is as thoroughly antagonistic to the very essence
+of science as anything in ultramontane Catholicism.”
+“It was enough,” he says again, “to make David Hume
+turn in his grave, that here, almost within earshot of
+his house, an instructed audience should have listened
+without a murmur while his most characteristic doctrines
+were attributed to a French writer of fifty years’
+later date, in whose dreary and verbose pages we miss
+alike the vigor of thought and the exquisite clearness
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>of style of the man whom I make bold to term the
+most acute thinker of the eighteenth century—even
+though that century produced Kant.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Of the doctrines themselves which are alluded to
+here, I shall say nothing now; but of much else that is
+said, there is only to be expressed a hearty and even
+gratified approval. I demur, to be sure, to the exaltation
+of Hume over Kant—high as I place the former.
+Hume, with infinite fertility, surprised us, it may be
+said, perhaps, into attention on a great variety of points
+which had hitherto passed unquestioned; but, even on
+these points, his success was of an interrupted, scattered
+and inconclusive nature. He set the world adrift, but
+he set man too, reeling and miserable, adrift with it.
+Kant, again, with gravity and reverence, desired to refix,
+but in purity and truth, all those relations and institutions
+which alone give value to existence—which alone
+<i>are</i> humanity, in fact—but which Hume, with levity and
+mockery, had approached to shake. Kant built up
+again an entire new world for us of knowledge and
+duty, and, in a certain way, even belief; whereas Hume
+had sought to dispossess us of every support that man
+as man could hope to cling to. In a word, with <i>at least</i>
+equal fertility, Kant was, as compared with Hume, a
+graver, deeper, and, so to speak, a more consecutive,
+more comprehensive spirit. Graces there were indeed,
+or even, it may be said, subtleties, in which Hume had
+the advantage perhaps. He is still in England an
+unsurpassed master of expression—this, certainly, in
+his History, if in his Essays he somewhat baffles his
+own self by a certain labored breadth of conscious fine
+writing, often singularly inexact and infelicitous. Still
+Kant, with reference to his products, must be allowed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>much the greater importance. In the history of philosophy
+he will probably always command as influential
+a place in the modern world as Socrates in the ancient;
+while, as probably, Hume will occupy at best some such
+position as that of Heraclitus or Protagoras. Hume,
+nevertheless, if equal to Kant, must, in view at once of
+his own subjective ability and his enormous influence,
+be pronounced one of the most important of writers.
+It would be difficult to rate too high the value of his
+French predecessors and contemporaries as regards purification
+of their oppressed and corrupt country; and
+Hume must be allowed, though with less call, to have
+subserved some such function in the land we live in.
+In preferring Kant, indeed, I must be acquitted of an
+undue partiality; for all that appertains to personal
+bias was naturally, and by reason of early and numerous
+associations, on the side of my countryman.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Demurring, then, to Mr. Huxley’s opinion on this
+matter, and postponing remark on the doctrines to
+which he alludes, I must express a hearty concurrence
+with every word he utters on Comte. In him I too
+“find little or nothing of any scientific value.” I too
+have been lost in the mere mirage and sands of “those
+dreary and verbose pages;” and I acknowledge in Mr.
+Huxley’s every word the ring of a genuine experience.
+M. Comte was certainly a man of some mathematical
+and scientific proficiency, as well as of quick but biased
+intelligence. A member of the <i>Aufklärung</i>, he had
+seen the immense advance of physical science since
+Newton, under, as is usually said, the method of Bacon;
+and, like Hume, like Reid, like Kant, <i>who had all anticipated
+him in this</i>, he sought to transfer that method to
+the domain of mind. In this he failed; and though in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>a sociological aspect he is not without true glances into
+the present disintegration of society and the conditions
+of it, anything of importance cannot be claimed for
+him. There is not a sentence in his book that, in the
+hollow elaboration and windy pretentiousness of its
+build, is not an exact type of its own constructor. On
+the whole, indeed, when we consider the little to which
+he attained, the empty inflation of his claims, the monstrous
+and maniacal self-conceit into which he was
+<i>exalted</i>, it may appear, perhaps, that charity to M.
+Comte himself, to say nothing of the world, should
+induce us to wish that both his name and his works
+were buried in oblivion. Now, truly, that Mr. Huxley
+(the “call” being for the moment his) has so pronounced
+himself, especially as the facts of the case are exactly
+and absolutely what he indicates, perhaps we may
+expect this consummation not to be so very long
+delayed. More than those members of the revulsion
+already mentioned, one is apt to suspect, will be anxious
+now to beat a retreat. Not that this, however, is so
+certain to be allowed them; for their estimate of M.
+Comte is a valuable element in the estimate of themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Frankness on the part of Mr. Huxley is not limited
+to his opinion of M. Comte; it accompanies us throughout
+his whole essay. He seems even to take pride,
+indeed, in naming always and everywhere his object at
+the plainest. That object, in a general point of view,
+relates, he tells us, solely to materialism, but with a
+double issue. While it is his declared purpose, in the
+first place, namely, to lead us into materialism, it is
+equally his declared purpose, in the second place, to
+lead us out of materialism. On the first issue, for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>example, he directly warns his audience that to accept
+the conclusions which he conceives himself to have
+established on Protoplasm, is to accept these also:
+That “all vital action” is but “the result of the molecular
+forces” of the physical basis; and that, by consequence,
+to use his own words to his audience, “the
+thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your
+thoughts regarding them, are but the expression of
+molecular changes in that matter of life which is the
+source of our other vital phenomena.” And, so far,
+I think, we shall not disagree with Mr. Huxley when
+he says that “most undoubtedly the terms of his propositions
+are distinctly materialistic.” Still, on the second
+issue, Mr. Huxley asserts that he is “individually no
+materialist.” “On the contrary, he believes materialism
+to involve grave philosophical error;” and the
+“union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation
+of materialistic philosophy” he conceives himself
+to share “with some of the most thoughtful men with
+whom he is acquainted.” In short, to unite both issues,
+we have it in Mr. Huxley’s own words, that it is the
+single object of his essay “to explain how such a union
+is not only consistent with, but necessitated by, sound
+logic;” and that, accordingly, he will, in the first place,
+“lead us through the territory of vital phenomena to
+the materialistic slough,” while pointing out, in the second,
+“the sole path by which, in his judgment, extrication
+is possible.” Mr. Huxley’s essay, then, falls evidently
+into two parts; and of these two parts we may
+say, further, that while the one—that in which he leads
+us into materialism—will be predominatingly physiological,
+the other—or that in which he leads us out
+of materialism—will be predominatingly philosophical.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>Two corresponding parts would thus seem to be prescribed
+to any full discussion of the essay; and of
+these, in the present needs of the world, it is evidently
+the latter that has the more promising theme. The
+truth is, however, that Mr. Huxley, after having exerted
+all his strength in his first part to throw us into “the
+materialistic slough,” by <i>clear necessity of knowledge</i>,
+only calls to us, in his second part, to come out of this
+slough again, on the somewhat <i>obscure necessity of ignorance</i>.
+This, then, is but a lop-sided balance, where a
+scale in the air only seems to struggle vainly to raise
+its well-weighted fellow on the ground. Mr. Huxley,
+in fact, possesses no remedy for materialism but what
+lies in the expression that, while he knows not what
+matter is in itself, he certainly knows that casualty is
+but contingent succession; and thus, like the so-called
+“philosophy” of the Revulsion, Mr. Huxley would only
+mock us into the intensest dogmatism on the one side
+by a fallacious reference to the intensest scepticism on
+the other.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The present paper, then, will regard mainly Mr. Huxley’s
+argument <i>for</i> materialism, but say what is required,
+at the same time, on his alleged argument—which is
+merely the imaginary, or imaginative, impregnation of
+ignorance—<i>against</i> it.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Following Mr. Huxley’s own steps in his essay, the
+course of his positions will be found to run, in summary,
+thus:—</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>What is meant by the physical basis of life is, that
+there is one kind of matter common to all living beings,
+and it is named protoplasm. No doubt it may appear
+at first sight that, in the various kinds of living beings,
+we have only <i>difference</i> before us, as in the lichen on the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>rock and the painter that paints it,—the microscopic
+animalcule or fungus and the Finner whale or Indian
+fig,—the flower in the hair of a girl and the blood in her
+veins, etc. Nevertheless, throughout these and all other
+diversities, there really exists a threefold <i>unity</i>—a unity
+of faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substance.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On the first head, for example, or as regards faculty,
+power, the action exhibited, there are but three categories
+of <i>human</i> activity—contractility, alimentation, and
+reproduction; and there are no fewer for the <i>lower</i> forms
+of life, whether animal or vegetable. In the nettle, for
+instance, we find the woody case of its sting lined by a
+granulated, semi-fluid layer, that is possessed of contractility.
+But in this respect—that is, in the possession
+of contractile substance—other plants are as the
+nettle, and all animals are as plants. Protoplasm—for
+the nettle-layer alluded to is protoplasm—is common
+to the whole of them. The difference, in short between
+the powers of the lowest plant or animal and those of
+the highest is one only of degree and not of kind.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But, on the second head, it is not otherwise in form,
+or manifested external appearance and structure. Not
+the sting only, but the whole nettle, is made up of protoplasm;
+and of all the other vegetables the nettle is
+but a type. Nor are animals different. The colorless
+blood-corpuscles in man and the rest are identical with
+the protoplasm of the nettle; and both he and they
+consisted at first only of an aggregation of such. Protoplasm
+is the common constituent—the common origin.
+At last, as at first, all that lives, and every part of all
+that lives, are but nucleated or unnucleated, modified
+or unmodified, protoplasm.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But, on the third head, or with reference to unity of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>substance, to internal composition, chemistry establishes
+this also. All forms of protoplasm, that is, consist
+alike of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, and
+behave similarly under similar reagents.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>So, now, a uniform character having in this threefold
+manner been proved for protoplasm, what is its origin,
+and what its fate? Of these the latter is not far to
+seek. The fate of protoplasm is death—death into its
+chemical constituents; and this determines its origin
+also. Protoplasm can originate only in that into which
+it dies,—the elements—the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,
+and nitrogen—of which it was found to consist. Hydrogen,
+with oxygen, forms water; carbon, with oxygen,
+carbonic acid; and hydrogen, with nitrogen, ammonia.
+Similarly, water, carbonic acid and ammonia form, in
+union, protoplasm. The influence of pre-existing protoplasm
+only determines combination in <i>its</i> case, as that
+of the electric spark determines combination in the
+case of water. Protoplasm, then, is but an aggregate
+of physical materials, exhibiting in combination—only
+as was to be expected—new properties. The properties
+of water are not more different from those of
+hydrogen and oxygen than the properties of protoplasm
+are different from those of water, carbonic acid, and
+ammonia. We have the same warrant to attribute the
+consequences to the premises in the one case as in the
+other. If, on the first stage of combination, represented
+by that of water, <i>simples</i> could unite into something
+so different from themselves, why, on the second
+stage of combination, represented by that of protoplasm,
+should not <i>compounds</i> similarly unite into something
+equally different from themselves? If the constituents
+are credited with the properties <i>there</i>, why
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>refuse to credit the constituents with the properties
+<i>here</i>? To the constituents of protoplasm, in truth, any
+new element, named vitality, has no more been added,
+than to the constituents of water any new element,
+named aquosity. Nor is there any logical halting place
+between this conclusion and the further and final one:
+That all vital action whatever, intellectual included, is
+but the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm
+which displays it.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>These sentences will be acknowledged, I think, fairly
+to represent Mr. Huxley’s relative deliverances, and,
+consequently, as I may be allowed to explain again, the
+only important—while much the larger—part of the
+whole essay. Mr. Huxley, that is, while devoting fifty
+paragraphs to our physiological immersion in the “materialistic
+slough,” grants but one-and-twenty towards our
+philosophical escape from it; the fifty besides being, so
+to speak, in reality the wind, and the one-and-twenty
+only the whistle for it. What these latter say, in effect,
+is no more than this, that,—matter being known not in
+itself but only in its qualities, and cause and effect not
+in their nexus but only in their sequence,—matter may
+be spirit or spirit matter, cause effect or effect cause—in
+short, for aught that Mr. Huxley more than phenomenally
+knows, this may be that or that this, first second,
+or second first, but the conclusion shall be this, that he
+will lay out all our knowledge materially, and we may
+lay out all our ignorance immaterially—if we will.
+Which reasoning and conclusion, I may merely remark,
+come precisely to this: That Mr. Huxley—who, hoping
+yet to see each object (a pin, say) not in its qualities
+but in <i>itself</i>, still, consistently antithetic, cannot believe
+in the extinction of fire by water or of life by the rope,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>for any <i>reason</i> or for any <i>necessity</i> that lies in the nature
+of the case, but simply for the habit of the thing—has
+not yet put himself at home with the metaphysical categories
+of <i>substance</i> and <i>casualty</i>; thanks, perhaps, to
+those guides of his whom we, the amusing Britons that
+we are, bravely proclaim “the foremost thinkers of the
+day”!</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The matter and manner of the whole essay are now
+fairly before us, and I think that, with the approbation
+of the reader, its procedure, generally, may be described
+as an attempt to establish, not by any complete and
+systematic induction, but by a variety of partial and
+illustrative assertions, two propositions. Of these
+propositions the first is, That all animal and vegetable
+organisms are essentially alike in power, in form, and
+in substance; and the second, That all vital and intellectual
+functions are the properties of the molecular
+disposition and changes of the material basis (protoplasm)
+of which the various animals and vegetables
+consist. In both propositions, the agent of proof is
+this same alleged material basis of life, or protoplasm.
+For the first of them, all animal and vegetable organisms
+shall be identified in protoplasm; and for the second,
+a simple chemical analogy shall assign intellect
+and vitality to the molecular constituents of the protoplasm,
+in connection with which they are at least exhibited.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In order, then, to obtain a footing on the ground
+offered us, the first question we naturally put is, What
+is Protoplasm? And an answer to this question can be
+obtained only by a reference to the historical progress
+of the physiological cell theory.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>That theory may be said to have wholly grown up
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>since John Hunter wrote his celebrated work ‘On the
+Nature of the Blood,’ etc. New growths, to Hunter,
+depended on an exudation of the plasma of the blood,
+in which, by virtue of its own <i>plasticity</i>, vessels formed,
+and conditioned the further progress. The influence of
+these ideas seems to have still acted, even after a conception
+of the cell was arrived at. For starting element,
+Schleiden required an intracellular plasma, and Schwann
+a structureless exudation, in which minute granules, if
+not indeed already pre-existent, formed, and by aggregation
+grew into nuclei, round which singly the production
+of a membrane at length enclosed a cell. It was
+then that, in this connection, we heard of the terms
+blastema and cyto-blastema. The theory of the vegetable
+cell was completed earlier than that of the animal
+one. Completion of this latter, again, seems to have
+been first effected by Schwann, after Müller had insisted
+on the analogy between animal and vegetable tissue,
+and Valentin had demonstrated a nucleus in the animal
+cell, as previously Brown in the vegetable one. But
+assuming Schwann’s labor, and what surrounded it, to
+have been a first stage, the wonderful ability of Virchow
+may be said to have raised the theory of the cell fully
+to a second stage. Now, of this second stage, it is the
+dissolution or resolution that has led to the emergence
+of the word Protoplasm.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The body, to Virchow, constituted a free state of individual
+subjects, with equal rights but unequal capacities.
+These were the cells, which consisted each of
+an enclosing membrane, and an enclosed nucleus with
+surrounding intracellular matrix or matter. These
+cells, further, propagated themselves, chiefly by partition
+or division; and the fundamental principle of the whole
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>theory was expressed in the dictum, “<i>Omnis cellula e
+cellulâ</i>.” That is, the nucleus, becoming gradually elongated,
+at last parted in the midst; and each half, acting
+as center of attraction to the surrounding intracellular
+matrix or contained matter, stood forth as a new
+nucleus to a new cell, formed by division at length of
+the original cell.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The first step taken in resolution of this theory was
+completed by Max Schultze, preceded by Leydig. This
+was the elimination of an investing membrane. Such
+membrane may, and does, ultimately form; but in the
+first instance, it appears, the cell is naked. The second
+step in the resolution belongs perhaps to Brücke, though
+preceded by Bergmann, and though Max Schultze,
+Kühne, Haeckel, and others ought to be mentioned in
+the same connection. This step was the elimination,
+or at least subordination, of the nucleus. The nucleus,
+we are to understand now, is necessary neither to the
+division nor to the existence of the cell.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Thus, then, stripped of its membrane, relieved of its
+nucleus, what now remains for the cell? Why, nothing
+but what <i>was</i> the contained matter, the intracellular
+matrix, and <i>is</i>—Protoplasm.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the application of this word itself, however, to the
+element in question, there are also a step or two to be
+noticed. The first step was Dujardin’s discovery of sarcode;
+and the second the introduction of the term protoplasm
+as the name for the layer of the <i>vegetable</i> cell
+that lined the cellulose, and enclosed the nucleus. Sarcode,
+found in certain of the lower forms of life, was a
+simple substance that exhibited powers of spontaneous
+contraction and movement. Thus, processes of such
+simple, soft, contractile matter are protruded by the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>rhizopods, and locomotion by their means effected.
+Remak first extended the use of the term protoplasm
+from the layer which bore that name in the vegetable
+cell to the analogous element in the animal cell; but it
+was Max Schultze, in particular, who, by applying the
+name to the intracellular matrix, or contained matter,
+when divested of membrane, and by identifying this
+substance itself with sarcode, first fairly established protoplasm,
+name and thing, in its present prominence.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In this account I have necessarily omitted many subordinate
+and intervening steps in the successive establishment
+of the <i>contractility</i>, superior <i>importance</i>, and
+complete <i>isolation</i> of this thing to which, under the
+name of protoplasm, Mr. Huxley of late has called
+such vast attention. Besides the names mentioned,
+there are others of great eminence in this connection,
+such as Meyen, Siebold, Reichert, Ecker, Henle, and
+Kölliker among the Germans; and among ourselves,
+Beale and Huxley himself. John Goodsir will be mentioned
+again.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We have now, perhaps, obtained a general idea of
+protoplasm. Brücke, when he talks of it as “living
+cell-body or elementary organism,” comes very near the
+leading idea of Mr. Huxley as expressed in his phrase,
+“the physiological basis, or matter, of life.” Living
+cell-body, elementary organism, primitive living matter—that,
+evidently, is the quest of Mr. Huxley. There is
+aqueous matter, he would say, perhaps, composed of
+hydrogen and oxygen, and it is the same thing whether
+in the rain-drop or the ocean; so, similarly, there is
+vital matter, which, composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,
+and nitrogen, is the same thing whether in cryptogams
+or in elephants, in animalcules or in men. What,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>in fact, Mr. Huxley seeks, probably, is living protein—protein,
+so to speak, struck into life. Just such appears
+to him to be the nature of protoplasm, and in it he believes
+himself to possess at last <i>a living clay</i> wherewith
+to build the whole organic world.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The question, What is Protoplasm? is answered,
+then; but, for the understanding of what is to follow,
+there is still one general consideration to be premised.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mr. Huxley’s conception of protoplasm, as we have
+seen, is that of living matter, living protein; what we
+may call, perhaps, elementary life-stuff. Now, is it
+quite certain that Mr. Huxley is correct in this conception?
+Are we to understand, for example, that cells
+have now definitively vanished, and left in their place
+only a uniform and universal <i>matter</i> of quite indefinite
+proportions? No; such an understanding would be
+quite wrong. Whatever may be the opinion of the adherents
+of the molecular theory of generation, it is certain
+that all the great German histologists still hold by
+the cell, and can hardly open their mouths without mention
+of it. I do not allude here to any special adherents
+of either nucleus or membrane, but to the most
+advanced innovators in both respects; to such men as
+Schultze and Brücke and Kühne. These, as we have
+seen, pretty well confine their attention, like Mr. Huxley,
+to the protoplasm. But they do not the less on
+that account talk of the cell. For them, it is only in
+cells that protoplasm exists. To their view, we cannot
+fancy protoplasm as so much matter in a pot, in an ointment-box,
+any portion of which scooped out in an ear-picker
+would be so much life-stuff, and, though a part,
+quite as good as the whole. This seems to be Mr.
+Huxley’s conception, but it is not theirs. A certain
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span><i>measure</i> goes with protoplasm to constitute it an organism
+to them, and worthy of their attention. They refuse
+to give consideration to any mere protoplasm-<i>shred</i>
+that may not have yet ceased, perhaps, to exhibit all
+sign of contractility under the microscope, and demand
+a protoplasm-<i>cell</i>. In short, protoplasm is to them still
+distributed into cells, and only that measure of protoplasm
+is cell that is adequate to the whole group of
+vital manifestations. Brücke, for example, of all innovators
+probably the most innovating, and denying, or
+inclined to deny, both nucleus and membrane, does not
+hesitate, according to Stricker, to speak still of cells as
+self-complete organisms, that move and grow, that nourish
+and reproduce themselves, and that perform specific
+function. “Omnis cellula e cellulâ,” is the rubric they
+work under as much now as ever. The heart of a turtle,
+they say, is not a turtle; so neither is a protoplasm-shred
+a protoplasm-cell.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This, then, is the general consideration which I think
+it necessary to premise; and it seems, almost of itself,
+to negate Mr. Huxley’s reasonings in advance, for it
+warrants us in denying that physiological clay of which
+all living things are but bricks baked, Mr. Huxley intimates,
+and in establishing in its place cells as before—living
+cells that differ infinitely the one from the other,
+and so differ from the very first moment of their existence.
+This consideration shall not be allowed to pre-termit,
+however, an examination of Mr. Huxley’s own
+proofs, which will only the more and more avail to indicate
+the difference suggested.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>These proofs, as has been said, would, by means of
+the single fulcrum of protoplasm, establish, first, the
+identity, and, second, the materiality, of all vegetable
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>and animal life. These are, shortly, the two propositions
+which we have already seen, and to which, in their
+order, we now pass.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>All organisms, then, whether animal or vegetable,
+have been understood for some time back to originate
+in and consist of cells; but the progress of physiology
+has <i>seemed</i> now to substitute for cells a single matter of
+life, protoplasm; and it is here that Mr. Huxley sees his
+cue. Mr. Huxley’s very first word is the “physical basis
+or matter of life;” and he supposes “that to many the
+idea that there is such a thing may be novel.” This, then,
+so far, is what is <i>new</i> in Mr. Huxley’s contribution. He
+seems to have said to himself, if formerly the whole
+world was thought kin in an “ideal” or formal element,
+organization, I shall now finally complete this identification
+in a “physical” or material element, protoplasm.
+In short, what at this stage we are asked to witness in
+the essay is, the identification of all living beings whatever
+in the identity of protoplasm. As there is a
+single matter, clay, which is the matter of all bricks, so
+there is a single matter, protoplasm, which is the matter
+of all organisms. “Protoplasm is the clay of the potter,
+which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay,
+separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest
+brick or sun-dried clod.” Now here I cannot
+help stopping a moment to remark that Mr. Huxley
+puts emphatically his whole soul into this sentence, and
+evidently believes it to be, if we may use the word, a
+<i>clincher</i>. But, after all, does it say much? or rather,
+does it say anything? To the question, “Of what are
+you made?” the answer, for a long time now, and by
+the great mass of human beings who are supposed civilized,
+has been “Dust.” Dust, and the same dust, has
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>been allowed to constitute us all. But materialism has
+not on that account been the irresistible result. Attention
+hitherto—and surely excusably, or even laudably in
+such a case—has been given not so much to the dust as
+to the “potter,” and the “artifice” by which he could
+so transform, or, as Mr. Huxley will have it, <i>modify</i> it.
+To ask us to say, instead of dust, clay, or even protoplasm,
+is not to ask us for much, then, seeing that even
+to Mr. Huxley there still remain both the “potter” and
+his “artifice.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But to return: To Mr. Huxley, when he says all
+bricks, being made of clay, are the same thing, we answer,
+Yes, undoubtedly, if they are made of the same
+clay. That is, the bricks are identical if the clay is
+identical; but, on the other hand, by as much as the
+clay differs will the bricks differ. And, similarly, all
+organisms can be identified only if their composing protoplasm
+can be identified. To this stake is the argument
+of Mr. Huxley bound.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This argument itself takes, as we have seen, a threefold
+course: Mr. Huxley will prove his position in this
+place by reference, firstly, to unity of faculty; secondly,
+to unity of form; and thirdly, to unity of substance. It
+is this course of proof, then, which we have now to follow,
+but taking the question of substance, as simplest,
+first, and the others later.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>By substance, Mr. Huxley understands the internal
+or chemical composition; and, with a mere reference to
+the action of reagents, he asserts the protoplasm of all
+living beings to be an identical combination of carbon,
+hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is for us to ask,
+then, Are all samples of protoplasm identical, first, in
+their chemical composition, and, second, under the action
+of the various reagents?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>On the first clause, we may say, in the first place, towards
+a proof of difference which will only cumulate, I
+hope, that, even should we grant in all protoplasm an
+identity of chemical ingredients, what is called <i>Allotropy</i>
+may still have introduced no inconsiderable variety.
+Ozone is not antozone, nor is oxygen either, though in
+chemical constitution all are alike. In the second
+place, again, we may say that, with <i>varying proportions</i>,
+the same component parts produce very various results.
+By way of illustration, it will suffice to refer to such different
+things as the proteids, gluten, albumen, fibrin,
+gelatine, etc., compared with the urinary products, urea
+and uric acid; or with the biliary products, glycocol,
+glycocolic acid, bili-rubin, bili-verdin, etc.; and yet all
+these substances, varying so much the one from the
+other, are, as protoplasm is, compounds of carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen. But, in the third place,
+we are not limited to a <i>may say</i>; we can assert the fact
+that all protoplasm is not chemically identical. All the
+tissues of the organism are called protoplasm by Mr.
+Huxley; but can we predicate chemical identity of
+muscle and bone, for example? In such cases Mr.
+Huxley, it is true, may bring the word “modified” into
+use; but the objection of modification we shall examine
+later. In the mean time, we are justified, by Mr. Huxley’s
+very argument, in regarding all organized tissues
+whatever as protoplasm; for if these tissues are not to
+be identified in protoplasm, we must suppose denied
+what it was his one business to affirm. And it is
+against that affirmation that we point to the fact of
+much chemical difference obtaining among the tissues,
+not only in the <i>proportions</i> of their fundamental elements,
+but also in the <i>addition</i> (and proportions as well)
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>of such others as chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, potash,
+soda, lime, magnesia, iron, etc. Vast differences vitally
+must be legitimately assumed for tissues that are so different
+chemically. But, in the fourth place, we have the
+authority of the Germans for asserting that the cells
+themselves—and they now, to the most advanced, are
+only protoplasm—do differ chemically, some being
+found to contain glycogen, some cholesterine, some protogon,
+and some myosin. Now such substances, let the
+chemical analogy be what it may, must still be allowed
+to introduce chemical difference. In the last place, Mr.
+Huxley’s analysis is an analysis of <i>dead</i> protoplasm, and
+indecisive, consequently, for that which lives. Mr. Huxley
+betrays sensitiveness in advance to this objection;
+for he seeks to rise above the sensitiveness and the objection
+at once by styling the latter “frivolous.” Nevertheless
+the Germans say pointedly that it is unknown
+whether the same elements are to be referred to the
+cells after as before death. Kühne does not consider
+it proved that living muscle contains syntonin; yet Mr.
+Huxley tells us, in his Physiology, that “syntonin is the
+chief constituent of muscle and flesh.” In general, we
+may say, according to Stricker, that all weight is put
+now on the examination of living tissue, and that the
+difference is fully allowed between that and dead tissue.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On the second clause now, or with regard to the action
+of reagents, these must be denied to produce the
+like result on the various forms of protoplasm. With
+reference to temperature, for example, Kühne reports
+the movements of the amoeba to be arrested in iced
+water; while, in the same medium, the ova of the trout
+furrow famously, but perish even in a warmed room.
+Others, again, we are told, may be actually dried, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>yet live. Of ova in general, in this connection, it is
+said that they live or die according as the temperature
+to which they are exposed differs little or much from
+that which is natural to the organisms producing them.
+In some, according to Max Schultze, even distilled
+water is enough to arrest movement. Now, not to
+dwell longer here, both amoeba and ova are to Mr.
+Huxley pure protoplasm; and such difference of result,
+according to difference of temperature, etc., must assuredly
+be allowed to point to a difference of original
+nature. Any conclusion so far, then, in regard to unity
+of substance, whether the chemical composition or the
+action of reagents be considered, cannot be said to bear
+out the views of Mr. Huxley.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>What now of the unities of form and power in protoplasm?
+By form, Mr. Huxley will be found to mean
+the general appearance and structure; and by faculty
+or power, the action exhibited. Now it will be very
+easy to prove that, in neither respect, do all specimens
+of protoplasm agree. Mr. Huxley’s representative protoplasm,
+it appears, is that of the nettle-sting; and he
+describes it as a granulated, semi-fluid body, contractile
+in mass, and contractile also in detail to the development
+of a species of circulation. Stricker, again,
+speaks of it as a homogeneous substance, in which any
+granules that may appear must be considered of foreign
+importation, and in which there are no evidences of circulation.
+In this last respect, then, that Mr. Huxley
+should talk of “tiny Maelstroms,” such as even in the
+silence of a tropical noon might stun us, if heard, as
+“with the roar of a great city,” may be viewed, perhaps,
+as a rise into poetry beyond the occasion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Further, according to Stricker, protoplasm varies almost
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>infinitely in consistence, in shape, in structure, and
+in function. In consistence, it is sometimes so fluid as
+to be capable of forming in drops; sometimes semi-fluid
+and gelatinous; sometimes of considerable resistance.
+In shape—for to Stricker the cells are now protoplasm—we
+have club-shaped protoplasm, globe-shaped
+protoplasm, cup-shaped protoplasm, bottle-shaped protoplasm,
+spindle-shaped protoplasm—branched, threaded,
+ciliated protoplasm,—circle-headed protoplasm—flat,
+conical, cylindrical, longitudinal, prismatic, polyhedral,
+and palisade-like protoplasm. In structure, again, it is
+sometimes uniform and sometimes reticulated into interspaces
+that contain fluid. In function, lastly—and here
+we have entered on the consideration of faculty or power—some
+protoplasm is vagrant (so to translate <i>wandernd</i>),
+and of unknown use, like the colorless blood-corpuscles.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In reference to these, as strengthening the argument,
+and throwing much light generally, I break off a moment
+to say that, very interesting as they are in themselves,
+and as Recklinghausen, in especial, has made
+them, Mr. Huxley’s theory of them disagrees considerably
+with the prevalent German one. He speaks of
+them as the source of the body in general, yet, in his
+Physiology, he talks of the spleen, the lymphatics, and
+even the liver—<i>parts</i> of the body—as <i>their</i> source.
+They are so few in number that, while Mr. Huxley is
+thankful to be able to point to the inside of the lips as
+a seat for them, they bear to the red corpuscles only
+the proportion of 1 to 450. This disproportion, however,
+is no bar to Mr. Huxley’s derivation of the latter
+from the former. But the fact is questioned. The
+Germans, generally, for their, part, describe the colorless,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>or vagrant, blood-corpuscles as probably media of
+conjugation or reparation, but acknowledge their function
+to be as yet quite unknown; while Rindfleisch,
+characterizing the spleen as the grave of the red, and
+the womb of the white, corpuscles, evidently refers the
+latter to the former. This, indeed, is a matter of direct
+assertion with Preyer, who has “shown that pieces of
+red blood-corpuscles may be eaten by the amoeboid cells
+of the frog,” and holds that the latter (the white corpuscles)
+proceed directly from the former (the red corpuscles);
+so that it seems to be determined in the
+mean time that there is no proof of the reverse being
+the fact.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In function, then, to resume, some protoplasm is vagrant,
+and of unknown use. Some again produces pepsine,
+and some fat. Some at least contains pigment.
+Then there is nerve-protoplasm, brain-protoplasm, bone-protoplasm,
+muscle-protoplasm, and protoplasm of all
+the other tissues, no one of which but produces only
+its own kind, and is uninterchangeable with the rest.
+Lastly, on this head, we have to point to the overwhelming
+fact that there is the infinitely different protoplasm
+of the various infinitely different plants and
+animals, in each of which its own protoplasm, as in the
+case of that of the various tissues, but produces its
+own kind, and is uninterchangeable with that of the
+rest.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It may be objected, indeed, that these latter are examples
+of modified protoplasm. The objection of
+modification, as said, we have to see by itself later;
+but, in the mean time, it may be asked, Where are we
+to begin, <i>not</i> to have modified protoplasm? We have
+the example of Mr. Huxley himself, who, in the nettle-sting,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>begins already with modified protoplasm; and
+we have the authority of Rindfleisch for asserting that
+“in every different tissue we must look for a different
+initial term of the productive series.” This, evidently,
+is a very strong light on the original multiplicity of
+protoplasm, which the consideration, as we have seen,
+of the various plants and animals, has made, further,
+infinite. This is enough; but there is no wish to evade
+beginning with the very beginning—with absolutely
+pure initial protoplasm, if it can but be given us in any
+reference. The simple egg—that, probably is the beginning—that,
+probably, is the original identity; yet
+even there we find already distribution of the identity
+into infinite difference. This, certainly, with reference
+to the various organisms, but with reference also to the
+various tissues. That we regard the egg as the beginning,
+and that we do not start, like the smaller exceptional
+physiological school, with molecules themselves,
+depends on this, that the great Germans so often alluded
+to, Kühne among them, still trust in the experiments
+of Pasteur; and while they do not deny the possibility,
+or even the fact, of molecular generation, still
+feel justified in denying the existence of any observation
+that yet unassailably attests a <i>generatio æquivoca</i>.
+By such authority as this the simple philosophical spectator
+has no choice but to take his stand; and therefore
+it is that I assume the egg as the established beginning,
+so far, of all vegetable and animal organisms. To the
+egg, too, as the beginning, Mr. Huxley, though the
+lining of the nettle-sting is his representative protoplasm,
+at least refers. “In the earliest condition of
+the human organism,” he says, in allusion to the white
+(vagrant) corpuscles of the blood, “in that state in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>which it has but just become distinguished from the
+egg in which it arises, it is nothing but an aggregation
+of such corpuscles, and every organ of the body was
+once no more than such an aggregation.” Now, in beginning
+with the egg—an absolute beginning being denied
+us in consequence of the pre-existent infinite
+difference of the egg or eggs themselves—we may
+gather from the German physiologists some such account
+of the actual facts as this.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The first change signalized in the impregnated egg
+seems that of <i>Furchung</i>, or furrowing—what the Germans
+call the <i>Furchungskugeln</i>, the <i>Dotterkugeln</i>, form.
+Then these <i>Kugeln</i>—clumps, eminences, monticles, we
+may translate the word—break into cells; and these
+are the cells of the embryo. Mr. Huxley, as quoted,
+refers to the whole body, and every organ of the body,
+as at first but an aggregation of colorless blood-corpuscles;
+but in the very statement which would render
+the identity alone explicit, the difference is quite as
+plainly implicit. As much as this lies in the word “organs,”
+to say nothing of “human.” The cells of the
+“organs,” to which he refers, are even then uninterchangeable,
+and produce but themselves. The Germans
+tell us of the <i>Keimblatt</i>, the germ-leaf, in which
+all these organs originate. This <i>Blatt</i>, or leaf, is threefold,
+it seems; but even these folds are not indifferent.
+The various cells have their distinct places in them from
+the first. While what in this connection are called the
+epithelial and endorthelial tissues spring respectively
+from the <i>upper</i> and <i>under</i> leaf, connective tissues, with
+muscle and blood, spring from the <i>middle</i> one. Surely
+in such facts we have a perfect warrant to assert the
+initial non-identity of protoplasm, and to insist on this,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>that, from the very earliest moment—even literally <i>ab
+ovo</i>—brain-cells only generate brain-cells, bone-cells
+bone-cells, and so on.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>These considerations on function all concern faculty
+or power; but we have to notice now that the characteristic
+and fundamental form of power is to Mr. Huxley
+<i>contractility</i>. He even quotes Goethe in proof of contractility
+being the main power or faculty of <i>Man</i>!
+Nevertheless it is to be said at once that, while there
+are differences in what protoplasm <i>is</i> contractile, all
+protoplasm is not contractile, nor dependent on contractility
+for its functions. In the former respect, for example,
+muscle, while it is the contractile tissue special, is
+also to Mr. Huxley protoplasm; yet Stricker asserts
+the inner construction of the contractile substance, of
+which muscle-fibre virtually consists, to be essentially
+different from contractile protoplasm. Here, then, we
+have the contractile <i>substance</i> proper “essentially different”
+from the contractile <i>source</i> proper. In the latter
+respect, again, we shall not call in the <i>un</i>contractible
+substances which Mr. Huxley himself denominates
+protoplasm—bread, namely, roast mutton, and boiled
+lobster; but we may ask where—even in the case of a
+living body—is the contractility of white of egg? In
+this reference, too, we may remark that Kühne, who divides
+the protoplasm of the epidermis into three classes,
+has been unable to distinguish contractility in his
+own third class. Lastly, where, in relation to the protoplasm
+of the nervous system, is there evidence of its
+contractility? Has any one pretended that thought is
+but the contraction of the brain; or is it by contraction
+that the very nerves operate contraction—the nerves
+that supply muscles, namely? Mr. Huxley himself, in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>his Physiology, describes nervous action very differently.
+There <i>conduction</i> is spoken of without a hint of contraction.
+Of the higher faculties of man I have to speak
+again; but let us just ask where, in the case of any
+pure sensation—smell, taste, touch, sound, color—is
+there proof of any contraction? Are we to suppose
+that between the physical cause of heat without and the
+mental sensation of heat within, contraction is anywhere
+interpolated? Generally, in conclusion here, while reminding
+of Virchow’s testimony to the inherent inequalities
+of cell-capacity, let us but, on the question of
+faculty, contrast the kidney and the brain, even as these
+organs are viewed by Mr. Huxley. To him the one is
+but a sieve for the extrusion of refuse: the other thinks
+Newton’s ‘Principia’ and Iliads of Homer.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Probably, then, in regard to any continuity in protoplasm
+of power, of form, or of substance, we have seen
+<i>lacunæ</i> enow. Nay, Mr. Huxley himself can be adduced
+in evidence on the same side. Not rarely do we
+find in his essay admissions of <i>probability</i> where it is
+<i>certainty</i> that is alone in place. He says, for example,
+“It is more than probable that <i>when</i> the vegetable world
+<i>is</i> thoroughly explored we <i>shall</i> find all plants in possession
+of the same powers.” When a conclusion is
+decidedly announced, it is rather disappointing to be
+told, as here, that the premises are still to collect. “<i>So
+far</i>,” he says again, “as the conditions of the manifestations
+of the phenomena of contractility have <i>yet</i> been
+studied.” Now, such a <i>so far</i> need not be <i>very far</i>;
+and we may confess in passing, that from Mr. Huxley
+the phrase, “the conditions of the <i>manifestations</i> of the
+<i>phenomena</i>” grates. We hear again that it is “the rule
+<i>rather</i> than the exception,” or that “weighty authorities
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>have <i>suggested</i>” that such and such things “probably
+occur,” or, while contemplating the nettle-sting, that
+such “<i>possible</i> complexity” in other cases “<i>dawns</i>
+upon one.” On other occasions he expresses himself
+to the effect that “perhaps it would not yet be safe to
+say that <i>all</i> forms,” etc. Nay, not only does he directly
+<i>say</i> that “it is by no means his intention to suggest
+that there is no difference between the lowest plant and
+the highest, or between plants and animals,” but he directly
+proves what he says, for he demonstrates in plants
+and animals an <i>essential difference of power</i>. Plants <i>can</i>
+assimilate inorganic matters, animals can <i>not</i>, etc.
+Again, here is a passage in which he is seen to cut his
+own “<i>basis</i>” from beneath his own feet. After telling
+us that all forms of protoplasm consist of carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen “in very complex union,”
+he continues, “To this complex combination, <i>the nature
+of which has never been determined with exactness</i>, the
+name of protein has been applied.” This, plainly, is
+an identification, on Mr. Huxley’s own part, of protoplasm
+and protein; and what is said of the one being
+necessarily true of the other, it follows that Mr. Huxley
+admits the nature of protoplasm never to have been
+determined with exactness, and that, even in his eyes,
+the <i>lis</i> is still <i>sub judice</i>. This admission is strengthened
+by the words, too, “If we use this term” (protein)
+“with such <i>caution</i> as may properly arise out of our
+<i>comparative ignorance</i> of the things for which it stands;”
+which entitle us to recommend, in consequence “of our
+<i>comparative ignorance</i> of the things for which it
+stands,” “<i>caution</i>” in the use of the term protoplasm.
+In such a state of the case we cannot wonder that Mr.
+Huxley’s own conclusion here is: Therefore “all living
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>matter is more or less albuminoid.” All living matter
+is more or less albuminoid! That, indeed, is the single
+conclusion of Mr. Huxley’s whole industry; but it is a
+conclusion that, far from requiring the intervention of
+protoplasm, had been reached long before the word
+itself had been, in this connection, used.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is in this way, then, that Mr. Huxley can be adduced
+in refutation of himself; and I think his resort
+to an epigram of Goethe’s for reduction of the powers
+of man to those of contraction, digestion, and reproduction,
+can be regarded as an admission to the same
+effect. The epigram runs thus:—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c018'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Warum treibt sich das Volk so, und schreit? Es will sich ernähren,</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>Kinder zeugen, und die nähren so gut es vermag.</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich wie er auch will.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c017'>That means, quite literally translated, “Why do the
+folks bustle and bawl? They want to feed themselves,
+get children, and then feed them as best they can; no
+man does more, let him do as he may.” This, really,
+is Mr. Huxley’s sole proof for his classification of the
+powers of man. Is it sufficient? Does it not apply
+rather to the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and
+the beasts of the field, than to man? Did Newton only
+feed himself, beget children, and then feed them? Was
+it impossible for him to do any more, let him do as
+he might? And what we ask of Newton we may ask
+of all the rest. To elevate, therefore, the passing whim
+of mere literary <i>Laune</i> into a cosmical axiom and a
+proof in place—this we cannot help adding to the other
+productions here in which Mr. Huxley appears against
+himself.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But were it impossible either for him or us to point
+to these <i>lacunæ</i>, it would still be our right and our duty
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>to refer to the present conditions of microscopic science
+in general as well as in particular, and to demur
+to the erection of its <i>dicta</i>, constituted as they yet are,
+into established columns and buttresses in support of
+any theory of life, material or other.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The most delicate and dubious of all the sciences, it
+is also the youngest. In its manipulations the slightest
+change may operate as a destructive drought, or an
+equally destructive deluge. Its very tools may positively
+create the structure it actually examines. The
+present state of the science, and what warrant it gives
+Mr. Huxley to dogmatize on protoplasm, we may understand
+from this avowal of Kühne’s: “To-day we believe
+that we see” such or such fact, “but know not
+that further improvements in the means of observation
+will not reveal what is assumed for certainty to be only
+illusion.” With such authority to lean on—and it is the
+highest we can have—we may be allowed to entertain
+the conjecture, that it is just possible that some certainties,
+even of Mr. Huxley, may yet reveal themselves as
+illusions.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But, in resistance to any sweeping conclusions built
+on it, we are not confined to a reference to the imperfections
+involved in the very nature and epoch of the
+science itself in general. With yet greater assurance
+of carrying conviction with us, we may point in particular
+to the actual opinions of its present professors.
+We have seen already, in the consideration premised,
+that Mr. Huxley’s hypothesis of a protoplasm <i>matter</i> is
+unsupported, even by the most innovating Germans,
+who as yet will not advance, the most advanced of them,
+beyond a protoplasm-cell; and that his whole argument
+is thus sapped in advance. But what threatens more
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>absolute extinction of this argument still, <i>all</i> the German
+physiologists do <i>not</i> accept even the protoplasm-cell.
+Rindfleisch, for example, in his recently-published
+‘Lehrbuch der pathologischen Gewebelehre’ speaks of
+the cell very much as we understand Virchow to have
+spoken of it. To him there is in the cell not only protoplasm
+but nucleus, and perhaps membrane as well.
+To him, too, the cell propagates itself quite as we have
+been hitherto fancying it to do, by division of the nucleus,
+increase of the protoplasm, and ultimate partition
+of the cell itself. Yet he knows withal of the
+opinions of others, and accepts them in a manner. He
+mentions Kühne’s account of the membrane as at first
+but a mere physical limit of two fluids—a mere peripheral
+film or curdling; still he assumes a formal and
+decided membrane at last. Even Leydig and Schultze,
+who shall be the express eliminators of the membrane—the
+one by initiation and the other by consummation—confess
+that, as regards the cells of certain tissues, they
+have never been able to detect in them the absence of
+a membrane.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>As regards the nucleus again, the case is very much
+stronger. When we have admitted with Brücke that
+certain cryptogam cells, with Haeckel that certain protists,
+with Cienkowsky that two monads, and with Schultze
+that one amoeba, are without nucleus—when
+we have admitted that division of the cell <i>may</i> take
+place without implicating that of the nucleus—that the
+movements of the nucleus <i>may</i> be passive and due to
+those of the protoplasm—that Baer and Stricker demonstrate
+the disappearance of the original nucleus in
+the impregnated egg,—when we have admitted this, we
+have admitted also all that can be said in degradation
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>of the nucleus. Even those who say all this still attribute
+to the nucleus an important and unknown <i>rôle</i>,
+and describe the formation in the impregnated egg of a
+new nucleus; while there are others again who resist
+every attempt to degrade it. Böttcher asserts movement
+for the nucleus, even when wholly removed from
+the cell; Neumann points to such movement in dead
+or dying cells; and there is other testimony to a like
+effect, as well as to peculiarities of the nucleus otherwise
+that indicate spontaneity. In this reference we
+may allude to the weighty opinion of the late Professor
+Goodsir, who anticipated in so remarkable a manner
+certain of the determinations of Virchow. Goodsir, in
+that anticipation, wonderfully rich and ingenious as he
+is everywhere, is perhaps nowhere more interesting and
+successful than in what concerns the nucleus. Of the
+whole cell, the nucleus is to him, as it was to Schleiden,
+Schwann, and others, the most important element.
+And this is the view to which I, who have little business
+to speak, wish success. This universe is not an
+accidental cavity, in which an accidental dust has been
+accidentally swept into heaps for the accidental evolution
+of the majestic spectacle of organic and inorganic
+life. That majestic spectacle is a spectacle as plainly
+for the eye of reason as any diagram of the mathematician.
+That majestic spectacle could have been constructed,
+was constructed, only in reason, for reason,
+and by reason. From beyond Orion and the Pleiades,
+across the green hem of earth, up to the imperial personality
+of man, all, the furthest, the deadest, the dustiest,
+is for fusion in the invisible point of the single
+Ego—<i>which alone glorifies it</i>. <i>For</i> the subject, and on
+the model of the subject, all is made. Therefore it is
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>that—though, precisely as there are acephalous monsters
+by way of exception and deformity, there may be
+also at the very extremity of animated existence cells
+without a nucleus—I cannot help believing that this
+nucleus itself, as analogue of the subject will yet be
+proved the most important and indispensable of all the
+normal cell-elements. Even the phenomena of the impregnated
+egg seem to me to support this view. In the
+egg, on impregnation, it seems to me natural (I say it
+with a smile) that the old sun that ruled it should go
+down, and that a new sun, stronger in the combination
+of the new and the old, should ascend into its place!</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Be these things as they may, we have now overwhelming
+evidence before us for concluding, with reference to
+Mr. Huxley’s first proposition, that—in view of the nature
+of microscopic science—in view of the state of
+belief that obtains at present as regards nucleus, membrane,
+and entire cell—even in view of the supporters
+of protoplasm itself—Mr. Huxley is not authorized to
+speak of a physical matter of life; which, for the rest,
+if granted, would, for innumerable and, as it appears to
+me, irrefragable reasons, be obliged to acknowledge for
+itself, not identity, but an infinite diversity in power, in
+form and in substance.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>So much for the first proposition in Mr. Huxley’s essay,
+or that which concerns protoplasm, as a supposed
+matter of life, identical itself, and involving the identity
+of all the various organs and organisms which it is assumed
+to compose. What now of the second proposition,
+or that which concerns the materiality at once of
+protoplasm, and of all that is conceived to derive from
+protoplasm? In other words, though, so to speak, for
+organic bricks anything like an organic clay still awaits
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>the proof, I ask, if the bricks are not the same because
+the clay is not the same, what if the materiality of the
+former is equally unsupported by the materiality of the
+latter? Or what if the functions of protoplasm are not
+properties of its mere molecular constitution?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>For this is Mr. Huxley’s second proposition, namely,
+That all vital and intellectual functions are but the
+properties of the molecular disposition and changes of
+the material basis (protoplasm) of which the various
+animals and vegetables consist. With the conclusions
+now before us, it is evident that to enter at all on this
+part of Mr. Huxley’s argumentation is, so far as we
+are concerned, only a matter of grace. In order that
+it should have any weight, we must grant the fact, at
+once of the existence of a matter of life, and of all organs
+and organisms being but aggregates of it. This,
+obviously, we cannot now do. By way of hypothesis,
+however, we may assume it. Let it be granted, then,
+that <i>pro hac vice</i> there <i>is</i> a physical basis of life with all
+the consequences named; and now let us see how Mr.
+Huxley proceeds to establish its materiality.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The whole former part of Mr. Huxley’s essay consists
+(as said) of fifty paragraphs, and the argument immediately
+concerned is confined to the latter ten of them.
+This argument is the simple chemical analogy that, under
+stimulus of an electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen
+uniting into an equivalent weight of water, and, under
+stimulus of preëxisting protoplasm, carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen uniting into an equivalent weight
+of protoplasm, there is the same warrant for attributing
+the properties of the consequent to the properties
+of the antecedents in the latter case as in the former.
+The properties of protoplasm are, in origin and character,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>precisely on the same level as the properties of water.
+The cases are perfectly parallel. It is as absurd
+to attribute a new entity vitality to protoplasm, as a new
+entity aquosity to water. Or, if it is by its mere chemical
+and physical structure that water exhibits certain
+properties called aqueous, it is also by its mere chemical
+and physical structure that protoplasm exhibits certain
+properties called vital. All that is necessary in
+either case is, “under certain conditions,” to bring the
+chemical constituents together. If water is a molecular
+complication, protoplasm is equally a molecular complication,
+and for the description of the one or the
+other there is no change of language required. A new
+substance with new qualities results in precisely the
+same way here, as a new substance with new qualities
+there; and the derivative qualities are not more different
+from the primitive qualities in the one instance,
+than the derivative qualities are different from the primitive
+qualities in the other. Lastly, the <i>modus operandi</i>
+of preëxistent protoplasm is not more unintelligible than
+that of the electric spark. The conclusion is irresistible,
+then, that all protoplasm being reciprocally convertible,
+and consequently identical, the properties it
+displays, vitality and intellect included, are as much
+the result of molecular constitution as those of water
+itself.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is evident, then, that the fulcrum on which Mr.
+Huxley’s second proposition rests, is a single inference
+from a chemical analogy. Analogy, however, being
+never identity, is apt to betray. The difference it hides
+may be essential, that is, while the likeness it shows
+may be inessential—so far as the conclusion is concerned.
+That this mischance has overtaken Mr. Huxley
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>here, it will, I fancy, not be difficult to demonstrate.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The analogy to which Mr. Huxley trusts has two references:
+one, to chemical composition, and one to a
+certain stimulus that determines it. As regards chemical
+composition, we are asked, by virtue of the analogy
+obtaining, to identify, as equally simple instances of it,
+protoplasm here and water there; and, as regards the
+stimulus in question, we are asked to admit the action
+of the electric spark in the one case to be quite analogous
+to the action of preëxisting protoplasm in the
+other. In both references I shall endeavor to point
+out that the analogy fails; or, as we may say it also,
+that, even to Mr. Huxley, it can only seem to succeed
+by discounting the elements of difference that still
+subsist.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>To begin with chemical combination, it is not unjust
+to demand that the analogy which must be admitted to
+exist in that, and a general physical respect, should not
+be strained beyond its legitimate limits. Protoplasm
+cannot be denied to be a chemical substance; protoplasm
+cannot be denied to be a physical substance. As
+a compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen,
+it comports itself chemically—at least in ultimate instance—in
+a manner not essentially different from that
+in which water, as a compound of hydrogen and oxygen,
+comports itself chemically. In mere physical aspect,
+again, it may count quality for quality with water
+in the same aspect. In short, so far as it is on chemical
+and physical structure that the possession of distinctive
+properties in any case depends, both bodies
+may be allowed to be pretty well on a par. The analogy
+must be allowed to hold so far: so far but no
+farther. One step farther and we see not only that
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>protoplasm has, like water, a chemical and physical
+structure; but that, unlike water, it has also an organized
+or organic structure. Now this, on the part of
+protoplasm, is a possession in excess; and with relation
+to that excess there can be no grounds for analogy.
+This, perhaps, is what Mr. Huxley has omitted
+to consider. When insisting on attributing to protoplasm
+the qualities it possessed, because of its chemical
+and physical structure, if it was for chemical and physical
+structure that we attributed to water <i>its</i> qualities,
+he has simply forgotten the addition to protoplasm of a
+third structure that can only be named organic. “If
+the phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so
+are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its
+properties.” When Mr. Huxley speaks thus, Exactly
+so, we may answer: “living or dead!” That alternative
+is simply slipped in and passed; but it is in that
+alternative that the whole matter lies. Chemically,
+dead protoplasm is to Mr. Huxley quite as good as
+living protoplasm. As a sample of the article, he is
+quite content with dead protoplasm, and even swallows
+it, he says, in the shape of bread, lobster, mutton, etc.,
+with all the satisfactory results to be desired.—Still, as
+concerns the argument, it must be pointed out that it is
+only these that can be placed on the same level as water;
+and that living protoplasm is not only unlike water,
+but it is unlike dead protoplasm. Living protoplasm,
+namely, is identical with dead protoplasm only so far as
+its chemistry is concerned (if even so much as that);
+and it is quite evident, consequently, that difference between
+the two cannot depend on that in which they are
+identical—cannot depend on the chemistry. Life, then,
+is no affair of chemical and physical structure, and must
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>find its explanation in something else. It is thus that,
+lifted high enough, the light of the analogy between
+water and protoplasm is seen to go out. Water, in fact,
+when formed from hydrogen and oxygen, is, in a certain
+way and in relation to them, no new product; it
+has still, like them, only chemical and physical qualities;
+it is still, as they are, inorganic. So far as <i>kind</i>
+of power is concerned, they are still on the same level.
+But not so protoplasm, where, with preservation of the
+chemical and physical likeness there is the addition of
+the unlikeness of life, of organization, and of ideas.
+But the addition is a new world—a new and higher
+world, the world of a self-realizing thought, the world
+of an <i>entelechy</i>. The change of language objected to
+by Mr. Huxley is thus a matter of necessity, for it is
+<i>not</i> mere molecular complication that we have any
+longer before us, and the qualities of the derivative are
+essentially and absolutely different from the qualities
+of the primitive. If we did invent the term aquosity,
+then, as an abstract sign for all the qualities of water,
+we should really do very little harm; but aquosity and
+vitality would still remain essentially unlike. While for
+the invention of aquosity there is little or no call, however,
+the fact in the other case is that we are not only
+compelled to invent, but to <i>perceive</i> vitality. We are
+quite willing to do as Mr. Huxley would have us to do:
+look on, watch the phenomena, and name the results.
+But just in proportion to our faithfulness in these respects
+is the necessity for the recognition of a new
+world and a new nomenclature. There are certainly
+different states of water, as ice and steam; but the relation
+of the solid to the liquid, or of either to the vapor,
+surely offers no analogy to the relation of protoplasm
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>dead to protoplasm alive. That relation is not
+an analogy but an antithesis, the antithesis of antitheses.
+In it, in fact, we are in presence of the one incommunicable
+gulf—the gulf of all gulfs—that gulf
+which Mr. Huxley’s protoplasm is as powerless to
+efface as any other material expedient that has ever
+been suggested since the eyes of men first looked into
+it—the mighty gulf between death and life.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The differences alluded to (they are, in order, organization
+and life, the objective idea—design, and the subjective
+idea—thought), it may be remarked, are admitted
+by those very Germans to whom protoplasm, name
+and thing, is due. They, the most advanced and innovating
+of them, directly avow that there is present in
+the cell “an architectonic principle that has not yet
+been detected.” In pronouncing protoplasm capable
+of active or vital movements, they do by that refer, they
+admit also, to an immaterial force, and they ascribe the
+processes exhibited by protoplasm—in so many words—not
+to the molecules, but to organization and life. It is
+remarked by Kant that “the reason of the specific
+mode of existence of every part of a living body lies in
+the whole, whilst with dead masses each part bears this
+reason within itself;” and this indeed is how the two
+worlds are differentiated. A drop of water, once
+formed, is there passive for ever, susceptible to influence,
+but indifferent to influence, and what influence
+reaches it is wholly from without. It may be added to,
+it may be subtracted from; but infinitely apathetic
+quantitatively, it is qualitatively independent. It is indifferent
+to its own physical parts. It is without contractility,
+without alimentation, without reproduction,
+without specific function. Not so the cell, in which the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>parts are dependent on the whole, and the whole on
+the parts; which has its activity and <i>raison d’être</i> within;
+which manifests all the powers which we have described
+water to want; and which requires for its continuance
+conditions of which water is independent. It is only
+so far as organization and life are concerned, however,
+that the cell is thus different from water. Chemically
+and physically, as said, it can show with it quality
+for quality. How strangely Mr. Huxley’s deliverances
+show beside these facts! He can “see no break in the
+series of steps in molecular complication;” but, glaringly
+obvious, there is a step added that is not molecular
+at all, and that has its supporting conditions completely
+elsewhere. The molecules are as fully accounted
+for in protoplasm as in water; but the sum of qualities,
+thus exhausted in the latter, is not so exhausted in the
+former, in which there are qualities due, plainly, not to
+the molecules as molecules, but to the form into which
+they are thrown, and the force that makes that form
+one. When the chemical elements are brought together,
+Mr. Huxley says, protoplasm is formed, “and this protoplasm
+exhibits the phenomena of life;” but he ought
+to have added that these phenomena are themselves
+added to the phenomena for which all that relates to
+chemistry stands, and are there, consequently, only by
+reason of some other determinant. New consequents
+necessarily demand new antecedents. “We think fit
+to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen,
+and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers
+and activities of these substances as the properties of
+the matter of which they are composed.” That, doubtless,
+is true, we say; but such statements do not exhaust
+the facts. We call water hydrogen and oxygen,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>and attribute <i>its</i> properties to the properties of them.
+In a chemical point of view, we ought to do the same
+thing for ice and steam; yet, for all the chemical identity,
+water is not ice, nor is either steam. Do we, then,
+in these cases, make nothing of the <i>difference</i>, and in
+its despite enjoy the satisfaction of viewing the three
+as one? Not so; we ask a reason for the difference;
+we demand an antecedent that shall render the consequent
+intelligible. The chemistry of oxygen and hydrogen
+is not enough in explanation of the threefold
+form; and by the very necessity of the facts we are
+driven to the addition of heat. It is precisely so with
+protoplasm in its twofold form. The chemistry remaining
+the same in each (if it really does so), we are compelled
+to seek elsewhere a reason for the difference of
+living from dead protoplasm. As the differences of ice
+and steam from water lay not in the hydrogen and oxygen,
+but in the heat, so the difference of living from
+dead protoplasm lies not in the carbon, the hydrogen,
+the oxygen, and the nitrogen, but in the vital organization.
+In all cases, for the new quality, plainly, we must
+have a new explanation. The qualities of a steam-engine
+are not the results of its simple chemistry. We
+do apply to protoplasm the same conceptions, then, that
+are legitimate elsewhere, and in allocating properties
+and explaining phenomena we simply insist on Mr.
+Huxley’s own distinction of “living or dead.” That,
+in fact, is to us the distinction of distinctions, and we
+admit no vital action whatever, not even the dullest, to
+be the result of the <i>molecular</i> action of the protoplasm
+that displays it. The very protoplasm of the nettle-sting,
+with which Mr. Huxley begins, is already vitally
+organized, and in that organization as much superior to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>its own molecules as the steam-engine, in its mechanism,
+to its own wood and iron. It were indeed as rational
+to say that there is no principle concerned in a
+steam-engine or a watch but that of its molecular
+forces, as to make this assertion of organized matter.
+Still there are degrees in organization, and the highest
+forms of life are widely different from the lowest. Degrees
+similar we see even in the inorganic world. The
+persistent flow of a river is, to the mighty reason of the
+solar system, in some such proportion, perhaps, as the
+rhizopod to man. In protoplasm, even the lowest, then,
+but much more conspicuously in the highest, there is,
+in addition to the molecular force, another force unsignalized
+by Mr. Huxley—the force of vital organization.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But this force is a rational unity, and that is an idea;
+and this I would point to as a second form of the addition
+to the chemistry and physics of protoplasm. We
+have just seen, it is true, that an idea may be found in
+inorganic matter, as in the solar and sidereal systems
+generally. But the idea in organized matter is not one
+operative, so to speak, from without: it is one operative
+from within, and in an infinitely more intimate and pervading
+manner. The units that form the complement
+of an inorganic system are but independently and externally
+in place, like units in a procession; but in what
+is organized there is no individual that is not sublated
+into the unity of the single life. This is so even in protoplasm.
+Mr. Huxley, it is true, desiderates, as result
+of mere ordinary chemical process, a life-stuff in mass,
+as it were in the web, to which he has only to resort for
+cuttings and cuttings in order to produce, by aggregation,
+what organized individual he pleases. But the
+facts are not so: we cannot have protoplasm in the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>web, but the piece. There is as yet no <i>matter</i> of life;
+there are still <i>cells</i> of life. It is no shred of protoplasm—no
+spoonful or toothpickful—that can be recognized
+as adequate to the function and the name. Such shred
+may wriggle a moment, but it produces nought, and it
+dies. In the smallest, lowest protoplasm-cell, then, we
+have this rational unity of a complement of individuals
+that only are for the whole and exist in the whole.
+This is an idea, therefore; this is design: the organized
+concert of many to a single common purpose. The
+rudest savage that should, as in Paley’s illustration,
+find a watch, and should observe the various contrivances
+all controlled by the single end in view, would be
+obliged to acknowledge—though in his own way—that
+what he had before him was no mere physical, no mere
+molecular product. So in protoplasm: even from the
+first, but, quite undeniably, in the completed organization
+at last, which alone it was there to produce; for a
+single idea has been its one manifestation throughout.
+And in what machinery does it not at length issue?
+Was it molecular powers that invented a respiration—that
+perforated the posterior ear to give a balance of
+air—that compensated the <i>fenestra ovalis</i> by a <i>fenestra
+rotunda</i>—that placed in the auricular sacs those <i>otolithes</i>,
+those express stones for hearing? Such machinery!
+The <i>chordæ tendineæ</i> are to the valves of the heart exactly
+adjusted check-strings; and the contractile
+<i>columnæ carneæ</i> are set in, under contraction and expansion,
+to equalize their length to their office. Membranes,
+rods, and liquids—it required the express experiment
+of man to make good the fact that the
+inventor of the ear had availed himself of the most
+perfect apparatus possible for his purpose. And are we
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>to conceive such machinery, such apparatus, such contrivances
+merely molecular? Are molecules adequate
+to such things—molecules in their blind passivity, and
+dead, dull insensibility? Is it to molecular agency Mr.
+Huxley himself owes that “singular inward laboratory”
+of which he speaks, and without which all the protoplasm
+in the world would be useless to him? Surely,
+in the presence of these manifest ideas, it is impossible
+to attribute the single peculiar feature of protoplasm—its
+vitality, namely—to mere molecular chemistry. Protoplasm,
+it is true, breaks up into carbon, hydrogen,
+oxygen, and nitrogen, as water does into hydrogen and
+oxygen; but the watch breaks similarly up into mere
+brass, and steel, and glass. The loose materials of
+the watch—even its chemical material if you will—replace
+its weight, quite as accurately as the constituents
+carbon, etc., replace the weight of the protoplasm.
+But neither these nor those replace the vanished idea,
+which was alone the important element. Mr. Huxley
+saw no break in the series of steps in molecular complication;
+but, though not molecular, it is difficult to
+understand what more striding, what more absolute
+break could be desired than the break into an idea. It
+is of that break alone that we think in the watch; and
+it is of that break alone that we should think in the
+protoplasm which, far more cunningly, far more rationally,
+constructs a heart, an eye or an ear. That is the
+break of breaks, and explain it as we may, we shall
+never explain it by molecules.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But, if inorganic elements as such are inadequate to
+account either for vital organization or the objective
+idea of design, much more are they inadequate, in the
+third place, to account for the subjective idea, for the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>phenomena of thought as thought. Yet Mr. Huxley
+tells us that thought is but the expression of the molecular
+changes of protoplasm. This he only tells us;
+this he does not prove. He merely says that, if we admit
+the functions of the lowest forms of life to be but
+“direct results of the nature of the matter of which
+they are composed,” we must admit as much for the
+functions of the highest. We have not admitted Mr.
+Huxley’s presupposition; but, even with its admission,
+we should not feel bound to admit his conclusion. In
+such a mighty system of differences, there are ample
+room and verge enough for the introduction of new motives.
+We can say here at once, in fact, that as thought,
+let its connection be what it may with, has never been
+proved to result from, organization, no improvement of
+the proof required will be found in protoplasm. No one
+power that Mr. Huxley signalizes in protoplasm can account
+for thought: not alimentation, and not reproduction,
+certainly; but not even contractility. We have
+seen already that there is no proof of contraction being
+necessary even for the simplest sensation; but much
+less is there any proof of a necessity of contraction for
+the inner and independent operations of the mind. Mr.
+Huxley himself admits this. He says: “Speech, gesture,
+and every other form of human action are, in the
+long-run, resolvable into muscular contraction;” and so,
+“even those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and
+of will, which we rightly name the higher faculties, are
+not excluded from this classification, inasmuch as to
+every one <i>but the subject of them</i>, they are known only as
+transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of
+the body.” The concession is made here, we see that
+these manifestations are differently known to the subject
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>of them. But we may first object that, if even that
+privileged “every one but the subject” were limited to
+a knowledge of contractions, he would not know much.
+It is only because he knows, first of all, a thinker and
+willer of contractions that these themselves cease to be
+but passing externalities, and transitory contingencies.
+Neither is it reasonable to assert an identity of nature
+for contractions, and for that which they only represent.
+It would hardly be fair to confound either the receiver
+or the sender of a telegraphic message, with the movements
+which alone bore it, and without which it would
+have been impossible. The sign is not the thing signified,
+it is but the servant of the signifier—his own arbitrary
+mark—and intelligible, in the first place, only to
+him. It is the meaning, in all cases, that is alone vital;
+the sign is but an accident. To convert the internality
+into the arbitrary externality that simply expresses it, is
+for Mr. Huxley only an oversight. Your ideas are
+made known to your neighbors by contractions, therefore
+your ideas are of the same nature as contractions!
+Or, even to take it from the other side, your neighbor
+perceives in you contractions only, and therefore your
+ideas are contractions! Are not the vital elements
+here present the two correspondent internalities, between
+which the contractions constitute but an arbitrary
+chain of external communication, that is so now, but
+may be otherwise again? The ringing of the bell at
+the window is not precisely the dwarf within. Nor are
+Engineer Chappe’s “wooden arms and elbow-joints
+jerking and fugling in the air,” to be identified with
+Engineer Chappe himself. For the higher faculties,
+even for speech, etc., assuredly Mr. Huxley might have
+well spared himself this superfluous and inapplicable
+reference to contraction.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>But, in the middle of it, as we have seen, Mr. Huxley
+concedes that these manifestations are differently known
+to the subject of them. If so, what becomes of his
+assertion of but a certain number of powers for protoplasm?
+The manifestations of the higher faculties are
+not known to the subject of them by contraction, etc.
+By what, then, are they known? According to Mr.
+Huxley, they can only be known by the powers of protoplasm;
+and therefore, by his own showing, protoplasm
+must possess powers other than those of his own assertion.
+Mr. Huxley’s one great power of contractility,
+Mr. Huxley himself confesses to be inapplicable here.
+Indeed, in his Physiology (p. 193), he makes such an
+avowal as this: “We class <i>sensations</i>, along with <i>emotions</i>,
+and <i>volitions</i>, and <i>thoughts</i>, under the common
+head of states of <i>consciousness</i>; but what consciousness
+is we know not, and how it is that anything so remarkable
+as a state of consciousness comes about as the result
+of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable
+as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed
+his lamp in the story.” Consciousness plainly was not
+muscular contraction to Mr. Huxley when he wrote his
+Physiology; it is only since then that he has gone over
+to the assertion of no power in protoplasm but the triple
+power, contractility, etc. But the truth is only as his
+Physiology has it—the cleft is simply, as Mr. Huxley
+acknowledges it there, absolute. On one side, there is
+the world of externality, where all is body by body,
+and away from one another—the boundless reciprocal
+exclusion of the infinite object. On the other side,
+there is the world of internality, where all is soul to
+soul, and away into one another—the boundless reciprocal
+inclusion of the infinite subject. This—even
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>while it is true that, for subject to be subject, and object,
+object, the boundless intussuscepted multiplicity
+of the single invisible point of the one is but the dimensionless
+casket into which the illimitable Genius of the
+other must retract and withdraw itself—is the difference
+of differences; and certainly it is not internality
+that can be abolished before externality. The proof
+for the absoluteness of thought, the subject, the mind,
+is, on its side, pretty well perfect. It is not necessary
+here, however, to enter into that proof at length. Before
+passing on, I may simply point to the fact that, if
+thought is to be called a function of matter, it must be
+acknowledged to be a function wholly peculiar and unlike
+any other. In all other functions, we are present
+to processes which are in the same sense physical as
+the organs themselves. So it is with lung, stomach,
+liver, kidney, where every step can be followed, so to
+speak, with eye and hand; but all is changed when we
+have to do with mind as the function of brain. Then,
+indeed, as Mr. Huxley thought in his Physiology, we are
+admitted, as if by touch of Aladdin’s lamp, to a world
+absolutely different and essentially new—to a world, on
+its side of the incommunicable cleft, as complete, entire,
+independent, self-contained, and absolutely <i>sui
+generis</i>, as the world of matter on the other side. It
+will be sufficient here to allude to as much as this, with
+special reference to the fact that, so far as this argument
+is concerned, protoplasm has not introduced any
+the very slightest difference. All the ancient reasons
+for the independence of thought as against organization,
+can be used with even more striking effect as
+against protoplasm; but it will be sufficient to indicate
+this, so much are the arguments in question a common
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>property now. Thought, in fact, brings with it its own
+warrant; or it brings with it, to use the phrase of Burns,
+“its patent of nobility direct from Almighty God.”
+And that is the strongest argument on this whole side.
+Throughout the entire universe, organic and inorganic,
+thought is the controlling sovereign; nor does matter
+anywhere refuse its allegiance. So it is in thought, too,
+that man has <i>his</i> patent of nobility, believes that he is
+created in the image of God, and knows himself a free-man
+of infinitude.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But the analogy, in the hands of Mr. Huxley, has, we
+have seen, a second reference—that, namely, to the excitants,
+if we may call them so, which <i>determine</i> combination.
+The <i>modus operandi</i>, Mr. Huxley tells us, of
+preëxisting protoplasm in determining the formation of
+new protoplasm, is not more unintelligible than the
+<i>modus operandi</i> of the electric spark in determining the
+formation of water; and so both, we are left to infer,
+are perfectly analogous. The inferential turn here is
+rather a favorite with Mr. Huxley. “But objectors of
+this class,” he says on an earlier occasion, in allusion
+to those who hesitate to conclude from dead to living
+matter, “do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness,
+true that we know nothing about the composition
+of any body whatever as it is.” In the same neighborhood,
+too, he argues that, though impotent to restore
+to decomposed calc-spar its original form, we do not
+hesitate to accept the chemical analysis assigned to it,
+and should not, consequently, any more hesitate because
+of any mere difference of form to accept the analysis
+of dead for that of living protoplasm. It is certainly
+fair to point out that, if we bear ignorance and
+impotence with equanimity in one case, we may equally
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>so bear them in another; but it is not fair to convert
+ignorance into knowledge, nor impotence into power.
+Yet it is usual to take such statements loosely, and let
+them pass. It is not considered that, if we know nothing
+about the composition of any body whatever as it
+is, then we do know nothing, and that it is strangely
+idle to offer absolute ignorance as a support for the
+most dogmatic knowledge. If such statements are, as
+is really expected for them, to be accepted, yet not accepted,
+they are the stultification of all logic. Is the
+chemistry of living to be seen to be the same as the
+chemistry of dead protoplasm, because we know nothing
+about the composition of any body whatever as it
+is? We know perfectly well that black is white, for we
+are absolutely ignorant of either as it is! The <i>form</i> of
+the calc-spar, which (the spar) we <i>can</i> analyze, we cannot
+restore; therefore the <i>form</i> of the protoplasm, which
+we <i>cannot</i> analyze, has nothing to do with the matter in
+hand; and the chemistry of what is dead may be accepted
+as the chemistry of what is living! In the case
+of reasoning so irrelevant it is hardly worth while referring
+to what concerns the forms themselves; that they
+are totally incommensurable, that in all forms of calc-spar
+there is no question but of what is physical, while
+in protoplasm the change of form is introduction into
+an entire new world. As in these illustrations, so in
+the case immediately before us. No appeal to ignorance
+in regard to something else, the electric spark,
+should be allowed to transform another ignorance, that
+of the action of preëxisting protoplasm, into knowledge,
+here into <i>the</i> knowledge that the two unknown things,
+because of non-knowledge, are—perfectly analogous!
+That this analogy does not exist—that the electric spark
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>and preëxisting protoplasm are, in their relative places,
+<i>not</i> on the same chemical level—this is the main point
+for us to see; and Mr. Huxley’s allusion to our ignorance
+must not be allowed to blind us to it. Here we
+have in a glass vessel so much hydrogen and oxygen,
+into which we discharge an electric spark, and water is
+the result. Now what analogy is it possible to perceive
+between this production of water by external experiment
+and the production of protoplasm by protoplasm?
+The discrepancy is so palpable that it were impertinent
+to enlarge on it. The truth is just this, that the measured
+and mixed gases, the vessel, and the spark, in the
+one case, are as unlike the fortuitous food, the living
+organs, and the long process of assimilation in the
+other case, as the product water is unlike the product
+protoplasm. No; that the action of the electric spark
+should be unknown, is no reason why we should not insist
+on protoplasm for protoplasm, on life for life. Protoplasm
+can only be produced by protoplasm, and each
+of all the innumerable varieties of protoplasm, only by
+its own kind. For the protoplasm of the worm we
+must go to the worm, and for that of the toad-stool to
+the toad-stool. In fact, if all living beings come from
+protoplasm, it is quite as certain that, but for living beings,
+protoplasm would disappear. Without an egg you
+cannot have a hen—that is true; but it is equally true
+that, without a hen, you cannot have an egg. So in
+protoplasm; which, consequently, in the production of
+itself, offers no analogy to the production, or precipitation
+by the electric spark, not of itself, but of water.
+Besides, if for protoplasm, preëxisting protoplasm, is
+always necessary, how was there ever a first protoplasm?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>Generally, then, Mr. Huxley’s analogy does not hold,
+whether in the one reference or the other, and Mr.
+Huxley has no warrant for the reduction of protoplasm
+to the mere chemical level which he assigns it in either.
+That level is brought very prominently forward in such
+expressions as these: That it is only necessary to
+bring the chemical elements “together,” “under certain
+conditions,” to give rise to the more complex body,
+protoplasm, just as there is a similar expedient to give
+rise to water; and that, under the influence of preëxisting
+living protoplasm, carbonic acid, water, and
+ammonia disappear, and an equivalent weight of protoplasm
+makes its appearance, just as, under the influence
+of the electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen disappear,
+and an equivalent weight of water makes its appearance.
+All this, plainly, is to assume for protoplasm
+such mere chemical place and nature as consist not
+with the facts. The cases are, in truth, not parallel,
+and the “certain conditions” are wholly diverse. All
+that is said we can do at will for water, but nothing of
+what is said can we do at will for protoplasm. To say
+we can feed protoplasm, and so make protoplasm at will
+produce protoplasm, is very much, in the circumstances,
+only to say, and is not to say, that, in this way, we make
+a chemical experiment. To insist on a chemical analogy,
+in fact, between water and protoplasm, is to omit
+the differences not covered by the analogy at all—thought,
+design, life, and all the processes of organization;
+and it is but simple procedure to omit these differences
+only by an appeal to ignorance elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is hardly worth while, perhaps, to refer now again
+to the difference—here, however, once more incidentally
+suggested—between protoplasm and protoplasm.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>Mr. Huxley, that is, almost in his very last word on this
+part of the argument, seems to become aware of the
+bearing of this on what relates to materiality, and he
+would again stamp protoplasm (and with it life and intellect),
+into an indifferent identity. In order that there
+should be no break between the lowest functions and
+the highest (the functions of the fungus and the functions
+of man), he has “endeavored to prove,” he says,
+that the protoplasm of the lowest organisms is “essentially
+identical with, and most readily converted into
+that of any animal.” On this alleged reciprocal <i>convertibility</i>
+of protoplasm, then, Mr. Huxley would again
+found as well an inference of identity, as the further
+conclusion that the functions of the highest, not less
+than those of the lowest animals, are but the molecular
+manifestations of their common protoplasm.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plainly here it is only the consideration, not of function,
+but of the alleged reciprocal <i>convertibility</i> that is
+left us now. Is this true, then? Is it true that every
+organism can digest every other organism, and that
+thus a relation of identity is established between that
+which digests and whatever is digested? These questions
+place Mr. Huxley’s general enterprise, perhaps,
+in the most glaring light yet; for it is very evident that
+there is an end of the argument if all foods and all
+feeders are essentially identical both with themselves
+and with each other. The facts of the case, however,
+I believe to be too well known to require a single word
+here on my part. It is not long since Mr. Huxley himself
+pointed out the great difference between the foods
+of plants and the foods of animals; and the reader
+may be safely left to think for himself of <i>ruminantia</i>
+and <i>carnivora</i>, of soft bills and hard bills, of molluscs
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>and men. Mr. Huxley talks feelingly of the possibility
+of himself feeding the lobster quite as much as of the
+lobster feeding him; but such pathos is not always applicable;
+it is not likely that a sponge would be to the
+stomach of Mr. Huxley any more than Mr. Huxley to
+the stomach of a sponge.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But a more important point is this, that the functions
+themselves remain quite apart from the alleged convertibility.
+We can neither acquire the functions of what
+we eat, nor impart our functions to what eats us. We
+shall not come to fly by feeding on vultures, nor they to
+speak by feeding on us. No possible manure of human
+brains will enable a corn-field to reason. But if
+functions are inconvertible, the convertibility of the protoplasm
+is idle. In this inconvertibility, indeed, functions
+will be seen to be independent of mere chemical composition.
+And that is the truth: for functions there is more
+required than either chemistry or physics.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is to be acknowledged—to notice one other incidental
+suggestion, for the sake of completeness, and by
+way of transition to the final consideration of possible
+objections—that Mr. Huxley would be very much assisted
+in his identification of differences, were but the
+theories of the molecularists, on the one hand, and of
+Mr. Darwin, on the other, once for all established. The
+three modes of theorizing indicated, indeed, are not
+without a tendency to approach one another; and it is
+precisely their union that would secure a definitive triumph
+for the doctrine of materialism. Mr. Huxley, as
+we have seen—though what he desiderates is an auto-plastic
+living <i>matter</i> that, produced by ordinary chemical
+processes, is yet capable of continuing and developing
+itself into new and higher forms—still begins with
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>the egg. Now the theory of the molecularists would,
+for its part, remove all the difficulties that, for materialism,
+are involved in this beginning; it would place protoplasm
+undeniably at length on a merely chemical
+level; and would fairly enable Mr. Darwin, supplemented
+by such a life-stuff, to account by natural means
+for everything like an idea or thought that appears in
+creation. The misfortune is, however, that we must
+believe the theory of the molecularists still to await the
+proof; while the theory of Mr. Darwin has many difficulties
+peculiar to itself. This theory, philosophically,
+or in ultimate analysis, is an attempt to prove that design,
+or the objective idea, especially in the organic
+world, is developed <i>in time</i> by natural means. The time
+which Mr. Darwin demands, it is true, is an infinite
+time; and he thus gains the advantage of his processes
+being allowed greater <i>clearness</i> for the understanding, in
+consequence of the <i>obscurity</i> of the infinite past in
+which they are placed, and of which it is difficult in the
+first instance to deny any possibility whatever. Still it
+remains to be asked, Are such processes credible in any
+time? What Mr. Darwin has done in aid of his view
+is, first, to lay before us a knowledge of facts in natural
+history of surprising richness; and, second, to support
+this knowledge by an inexhaustible ingenuity of hypothesis
+in arrangement of appearances. Now, in both respects,
+whether for information or even interest, the
+value of Mr. Darwin’s contribution will probably always
+remain independent of the argument or arguments that
+might destroy his leading proposition; and it is with
+this proposition that we have here alone to do. As
+said, we ask only, Is it true that the objective idea, the
+design which we see in the organized world, is the result
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>in infinite time of the necessary adaption of living
+structures to the peculiarities of the conditions by which
+they are surrounded?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Against this theory, then, its own absolute generalization
+may be viewed as our first objection. In ultimate
+abstraction, that is, the only agency postulated by
+Mr. Darwin is time—infinite time; and as regards actually
+existent beings and actually existent conditions,
+it is hardly possible to deny any possibility whatever to
+infinitude. If told, for example, that the elephant, if
+only obliged <i>infinitely</i> to run, might be converted into
+the stag, how should we be able to deny? So also, if
+the lengthening of the giraffe’s neck were hypothetically
+attributed to a succession of dearths in infinite time
+that only left the leaves of trees for long-necked animals
+to live on, we should be similarly situated as regards
+denial. Still it can be pointed out that ingenuity
+of natural conjecture has, in such cases, no less wide a
+field for the negation than for the affirmation; and
+that, on the question of fact, nothing is capable of being
+determined. But we can also say more than that—we
+can say that any fruitful application even of <i>infinite
+time</i> to the <i>general problem of difference</i> in the world is
+inconceivable. To explain all from an absolute beginning
+requires us to commence with nothing; but to this
+nothing time itself is an addition. Time is an entity, a
+something, a difference added to the original identity:
+whence or how came time? Time cannot account for
+its own self; how is it that there is such a thing as time?
+Then no conceivable brooding even of infinite time
+could hatch the infinitude of space. How is it there is
+such a thing as space? No possible clasps of time and
+space, further, could ever conceivably thicken into matter.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>How is it there is such a thing as matter? Lastly,
+so far, no conceivable brooding, or even gyrating, of a
+single matter in time and space could account for the
+specification of matter—carbon, gold, iodine, etc.—as
+we see and know it. Time, space, matter, and the
+whole inorganic world, thus remain impassive to the action
+even of infinite time; all <i>these</i> differences remain
+incapable of being accounted for so.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But suppose no curiosity had ever been felt in this
+reference, which, though scientifically indefensible, is
+quite possible, how about the transition of the inorganic
+into the organic? Mr. Huxley tells us that, for food,
+the plant needs nothing but its bath of smelling-salts.
+Suppose this bath now—a pool of a solution of carbonate
+of ammonia; can any action of sun, or air, or electricity,
+be conceived to develop a cell—or even so much
+lump-protoplasm—in this solution? The production of
+an initial cell in any such manner will not allow itself to
+be realized to thought. Then we have just to think for
+a moment of the vast differences into which, for the
+production of the present organized world, this cell
+must be distributed, to shake our heads and say we cannot
+well refuse anything to an infinite time, but still we
+must pronounce a problem of this reach hopeless.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is precisely in conditions, however, that Mr. Darwin
+claims a solution of this problem. Conditions concern
+all that relates to air, heat, light, land, water, and
+whatever they imply. Our second objection, consequently,
+is, that conditions are quite inadequate to account
+for present organized differences, from a single
+cell. Geological time, for example, falls short, after all,
+of infinite time; or, in known geological eras, let us
+calculate them as liberally as we may, there is not time
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>enough to account for the presently-existing varieties,
+from one, or even several, primordial forms. So to
+speak, it is not <i>in</i> geological time to account for the
+transformation of the elephant into the stag from acceleration,
+or for that of the stag into the elephant from
+retardation, of movement. And we may speak similarly
+of the growth of the neck of the giraffe, or even
+of the elevation of the monkey into man. Moreover,
+time apart, conditions have no such power in themselves.
+It is impossible to conceive of animal or vegetable
+effluvia ever creating the nerve by which they are felt,
+and so gradually the Schneiderian membrane, nose, and
+whole olfactory apparatus. Yet these effluvia are the
+conditions of smell, and, <i>ex hypothesi</i>, ought to have
+created it. Did light, or did the pulsations of the air,
+ever by any length of time, indent into the sensitive
+cell, eyes, and a pair of eyes—ears, and a pair of ears?
+Light conceivably might shine for ever without such a
+wonderfully complicated result as an eye. Similarly,
+for delicacy and marvellous ingenuity of structure, the
+ear is scarcely inferior to the eye; and surely it is possible
+to think of a whole infinitude of those fitful and
+fortuitous air-tremblings, which we call sound, without
+indentation into anything whatever of such an organ.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A third objection to Mr. Darwin’s theory is, that the
+play of natural contingency in regard to the vicissitudes
+of conditions, has no title to be named <i>selection</i>.
+Naturalists have long known and spoken of the “influence
+of accidental causes;” but Mr. Darwin was the
+first to apply the term <i>selection</i> to the action of these,
+and thus convert accident into design. The agency to
+which Mr. Darwin attributes all the changes which he
+would signalize in animals is really the fortuitous contingency
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>of brute nature; and it is altogether fallacious
+to call such process, or such non-process, by a term involving
+foresight and a purpose. We have here, indeed,
+only a metaphor wholly misapplied. The German writer
+who, many years ago, said “even the <i>genera</i> are
+wholly a prey to the changes of the external universal
+life,” saw precisely what Mr. Darwin sees, but it never
+struck him to style contingency selection. Yet, how
+dangerous, how infectious, has not this ungrounded
+metaphor proved! It has become a <i>principle</i>, a <i>law</i>, and
+been transferred by very genuine men into their own
+sciences of philology and what not. People will wonder
+at all this by-and-by. But to point out the inapplicability
+of such a word to the processes of nature referred
+to by Mr. Darwin, is to point out also the impossibility
+of any such contingencies proceeding, by
+graduated rise, from stage to stage, into the great symmetrical
+organic system—the vast plan—the grand harmonious
+whole—by which we are surrounded. This
+rise, this system, is really the objective idea; but it is
+utterly incapable of being accounted for by any such
+agency as natural contingency in geological, or infinite,
+or any time. But it is this which the word selection
+tends to conceal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We may say, lastly, in objection, here, that, in the fact
+of “reversion” or “atavism,” Mr. Darwin acknowledges
+his own failure. We thus see that the species as species
+is something independent, and holds its own <i>insita
+vis naturæ</i> within itself.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Probably it is not his theory, then, that gives value
+to Mr. Darwin’s book; nor even his ready ingenuity,
+whatever interest it may lend: it is the material information
+it contains. The ingenuity, namely, verges
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>somewhat on that Humian expedient of natural conjecture
+so copiously exemplified, on occasion of a few
+trite texts, in Mr. Buckle. But that natural conjecture
+is always insecure, equivocal, and many-sided. It may
+be said that ancient warfare, for example, giving victory
+always to the personally ablest and bravest, must have
+resulted in the improvement of the race; or that, the
+weakest being always necessarily left at home, the improvement
+was balanced by deterioration; or that the
+ablest were necessarily the most exposed to danger, and
+so, etc., etc., according, to ingenuity <i>usque ad infinitum</i>.
+Trustworthy conclusion is not possible to this method,
+but only to the induction of facts, or to scientific demonstration.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Neither molecularists nor Darwinians, then, are able
+to level out the difference between organic and inorganic,
+or between genera and genera or species and species.
+The differences persist despite of both; the distributed
+identity remains unaccounted for. Nor, consequently,
+is Mr. Darwin’s theory competent to explain the objective
+idea by any reference to time and conditions. Living
+beings do exist in a mighty chain from the moss to
+the man; but that chain, far from founding, is founded
+in the idea, and is not the result of any mere natural
+<i>growth</i> of this into that. That chain is itself the most
+brilliant stamp, the sign-manual, of design. On every
+ledge of nature, from the lowest to the highest, there is
+a life that is <i>its</i>,—a creature to represent it, reflect it—so
+to speak, pasture on it. The last, highest, brightest
+link of this chain is man; the incarnation of thought itself,
+which is the summation of this universe; man, that
+includes in himself all other links and their single secret—the
+personified universe, the subject of the world.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>Mr. Huxley makes but small reference to thought; he
+only tucks it in, as it were, as a mere appendicle of
+course.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It may be objected, indeed—to reach the last stage in
+this discussion—that, if Mr. Huxley has not disproved
+the conception of thought and life “as a something
+which works through matter, but is independent of it,”
+neither have we proved it. But it is easy for us to reply
+that, if “<i>independent of</i>” means here “<i>unconnected
+with</i>,” we have had no such object. We have had no
+object whatever, in fact, but to resist, now the extravagant
+assertion that all organized tissue, from the lichen
+to Leibnitz, is alike in faculty, and again the equally extravagant
+assertion that life and thought are but ordinary
+products of molecular chemistry. As regards the
+latter assertion, we have endeavored to show that the
+processes of vital organization (as self-production, etc.)
+belong to another sphere, higher than, and very different
+from, those of mechanical juxtaposition or chemical
+neutralization; that life, then, is no mere product of
+matter as matter; that if no life can be pointed to independent
+of matter, neither is there any life-stuff independent
+of life; and that life, consequently, adds a new
+and higher force to chemistry, as chemistry a new and
+higher force to mechanics, etc. As for thought, the endeavor
+was to show that it was as independent on the
+one side as matter on the other, that it controlled, used,
+summed, and was the reason of matter. Thought, then,
+is not to be reached by any bridge from matter, that is
+a hybrid of both, and explains the connection. The relation
+of matter to mind is not to be explained as a
+transition, but as a <i>contrecoup</i>. In this relation, however,
+it is not the material, but the mental side, which
+the whole universe declares to be the dominant one.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>As regards any objection to the arguments which we
+have brought against the identity of protoplasm, again,
+these will lie in the phrase, probably, “difference not of
+kind, but degree,” or in the word “modification.” The
+“phrase” may be now passed, for generic or specific
+difference must be allowed in protoplasm, if not for the
+overwhelming reason that an infinitude of various kinds
+exist in it, each of which is self-productive and uninterchangeable
+with the rest, then for Mr. Huxley’s own
+reason, that plants assimilate inorganic matter and animals
+only organic. As for the objection “modification,”
+again, the same consideration of generic difference
+must prove fatal to it. This were otherwise, indeed,
+could but the molecularists and Mr. Darwin succeed in
+destroying generic difference; but in this, as we have
+seen, they have failed. And this will be always so:
+who dogs identity, difference dogs him. It is quite a
+justifiable endeavor, for example, to point out the identity
+that obtains between veins and arteries on the one
+hand, as between these and capillaries on the other;
+but all the time the difference is behind us; and when
+we turn to look, we see, for circulation, the valves of the
+veins and the elastic coats of the arteries as opposed to
+one another, and, for irrigation, the permeable walls of
+the capillaries as opposed to both.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Generic differences exist then, and we cannot allow
+the word “modification” to efface them in the interest
+of the identity claimed for protoplasm. Brain-protoplasm
+is not bone-protoplasm, nor the protoplasm of
+the fungus the protoplasm of man. Similarly, it is very
+questionable how far the word “modification” will warrant
+us in regarding with Mr. Huxley the “ducts, fibres,
+pollen, and ovules” of the nettle as identical with the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>protoplasm of its sting. Things that originate alike
+may surely eventuate in others which, chemically and
+vitally, far from being mere modifications, must be pronounced
+totally different. Such eventuation must be
+held competent to what can only be named generic or
+specific difference. The “child” is only “<i>father</i> of the
+man”—it is not the man; who, moreover, in the course
+of an ordinary life, we are told, has totally changed himself,
+not once, but many times, retaining at the last not
+one single particle of matter with which he set out.
+Such eventuations, whether called modifications or not,
+certainly involve essential difference. And so situated
+are the “ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the nettle,
+which, whether compared with the protoplasm of the
+nettle-sting, or with that in which they originated, must
+be held to here assumed, by their own actions, indisputable
+differences, physical, chemical, and vital, or in form,
+substance, and faculty.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Much, in fact, depends on definition here; and, in
+reference to modification, it may be regarded as arbitrary
+when identity shall be admitted to cease and difference
+to begin. There are the old Greek puzzles of
+the Bald Head and the Heap, for example. How many
+grains, or how many hairs, may we remove before a heap
+of wheat is no heap, or a head of hair bald? These
+concern quantity alone; but, in other cases, bone, muscle,
+brain, fungus, tree, man, there is not only a quantitative,
+but a qualitative difference; and in regard to such
+differences, the word modification can be regarded as
+but a cloak, under which identity is to be shuffled into
+difference, but remain identity all the same. The brick
+is but modified clay, Mr. Huxley intimates, bake it and
+paint it as you may; but is the difference introduced by
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>the baking and painting to be ignored? Is what Mr.
+Huxley calls the “artifice” not to be taken into account,
+leave alone the “potter?” The strong firm rope is
+about as exact an example of modification proper—modification
+of the weak loose hemp—as can well be
+found; but are we to exclude from our consideration
+the whole element of difference due to the hand and
+brain of man? Not far from Burn’s Monument, on the
+Calton Hill of Edinburgh, there lies a mass of stones
+which is potentially a church, the former Trinity College
+Church. Were this church again realized, would
+it be fair to call it a mere modification of the previous
+stones? Look now to the egg and the full-feathered
+fowl. Chaucer describes to us the cock, “hight chaunteclere,”
+that was to his “faire Pertelotte” so dear:—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c018'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“His comb was redder than the fine corall,</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>Embattled, as it were a castle-wall;</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>His bill was black, and as the jet it shone;</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>Like azure were his legges and his tone (toes);</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>His nailes whiter than the lilie flour,</div>
+      <div class='line in1'>And like the burned gold was his color.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c017'>Would it be even as fair to call this fine fellow—comb,
+wattles, spurs, and all—a modified yolk, as to
+call the church but modified stones? If, in the latter
+case, an element of difference, altogether undeniable,
+seems to have intervened, is not such intervention at
+least quite as well marked in the former? It requires
+but a slight analysis to detect that all the stones in
+question are marked and numbered; but will any analysis
+point out within the shell the various parts that only
+need arrangement to become the fowl? Are the men
+that may take the stones, and, in a re-erected Trinity
+College Church, realize anew the idea of its architect,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>in any respect more wonderful than the unknown disposers
+of the materials of the fowl? That what realizes
+the idea should, in the one case, be from without,
+and, in the other, from within, is no reason for seeing
+more modification and less wonder in the latter than the
+former. There is certainly no more reason for seeing
+the fowl in the egg, and as identical with the egg, than
+for seeing a re-built Trinity College Church as identical
+with its unarranged materials. A part cannot be taken
+for the whole, whether in space <i>or in time</i>. Mr. Huxley
+misses this. He is so absorbed in the identity out of
+which, that he will not see the difference into which,
+progress is made. As the idea of the church has the
+stones, so the idea of the fowl has the egg, for its commencement.
+But to this idea, and in both cases, the
+terminal additions belong, quite as much as the initial
+materials. If the idea, then, add sulphur, phosphorus,
+iron, and what not, it must be credited with these not
+less than with the carbon, hydrogen, etc., with which it
+began. It is not fair to mutter modification, as if it
+were a charm to destroy all the industry of time. The
+protoplasm of the egg of the fowl is no more the fowl
+than the stones the church; and to identify, by juggle
+of a mere word, parts in time and wholes in time so different,
+is but self-deception. Nay, in protoplasm, as we
+have so often seen, difference is as much present at first
+as at last. Even in its germ, even in its initial identity,
+to call it so, protoplasm is already different, for it issues
+in differences infinite.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Omission of the consideration of difference, it is to be
+acknowledged, is not now-a-days restricted to Mr. Huxley.
+In the wonder that is usually expressed, for example,
+at Oken’s <i>identification</i> of the skull with so many
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>vertebræ, it is forgot that there is still implicated the
+wonder which we ought to feel at the unknown power
+that could, in the end, so <i>differentiate</i> them. If the
+cornea of the eye and the enamel of the teeth are alike
+but modified protoplasm, we must be pardoned for
+thinking more of the adjective than of the substantive.
+Our wonder is how, for one idea, protoplasm could become
+one thing here, and, for another idea, another so
+different thing there. We are more curious about the
+modification than the protoplasm. In the difference,
+rather than in the identity, it is, indeed, that the wonder
+lies. Here are several thousand pieces of protoplasm;
+analysis can detect no difference in them. They are to
+us, let us say, as they are to Mr. Huxley, identical in
+power, in form, and in substance; and yet on all these
+several thousand little bits of apparently indistinguishable
+matter an element of difference so pervading and
+so persistent has been impressed, that, of them all, not
+one is interchangeable with another! Each seed feeds
+its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more
+grow into the fly than it will grow into an elephant.
+Protoplasm is protoplasm: yes, but man’s protoplasm
+is man’s protoplasm, and the mushroom’s the mushroom’s.
+In short, it is quite evident that the word
+modification, if it would conceal, is powerless to withdraw,
+the difference; which difference, moreover, is one
+of kind and not of degree.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This consideration of possible objections, then, is the
+last we have to attend to; and it only remains to draw
+the general conclusion. All animal and vegetable organisms
+are alike in power, in form, and in substance,
+only if the protoplasm of which they are composed is
+similarly alike; and the functions of all animal and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>vegetable organisms are but properties of the molecular
+affections of their chemical constituents, only if the functions
+of the protoplasm, of which they are composed,
+are but properties of the molecular affections of <i>its</i>
+chemical constituents. In disproof of the affirmative
+in both clauses, there has been no object but to demonstrate,
+on the one hand, the infinite non-identity of protoplasm,
+and, on the other, the dependence of its functions
+upon other factors than its molecular constituents.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In short, the whole position of Mr. Huxley, that all
+organisms consist alike of the same life-matter, which
+life-matter is, for its part, due only to chemistry, must
+be pronounced untenable—nor less untenable the materialism
+he would found on it.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span><span class='c022'><i>ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION</i>:</span></div>
+    <div class='c000'>PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c006' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>ON THE<br /> <br /><span class='c004'>HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION:</span><br /> <br /><i>PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL</i>.</h2>
+</div>
+<p class='c023'>“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
+out of the mouth of God shall man live.”
+ch-hd-end
+There is apparently considerable repugnance in the
+minds of many excellent people to the acceptance, or
+even consideration, of the hypothesis of development,
+or that of the gradual creation by descent, with modification
+from the simplest beginnings, of the different
+forms of the organic world. This objection probably
+results from two considerations: first, that the human
+species is certainly involved, and man’s descent from
+an ape asserted; and, secondly, that the scheme in
+general seems to conflict with that presented by the
+Mosaic account of the Creation, which is regarded as
+communicated to its author by an infallible inspiration.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>As the truth of the hypothesis is held to be infinitely
+probable by a majority of the exponents of the natural
+sciences at the present day, and is held as absolutely
+demonstrated by another portion, it behooves those interested
+to restrain their condemnation, and on the
+other hand to examine its evidences, and look any consequent
+necessary modification of our metaphysical or
+theological views squarely in the face.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>The following pages state a few of the former; if
+they suggest some of the latter, it is hoped that they
+may be such as any logical mind would deduce from
+the premises. That they will coincide with the spirit
+of the most advanced Christianity, I have no doubt;
+and that they will add an appeal through the reason to
+that direct influence of the Divine Spirit which should
+control the motives of human action, seems an unavoidable
+conclusion.</p>
+<h3 class='c001'>I. <span class='sc'>Physical Evolution.</span></h3>
+
+<p class='c025'>It is well known that a species is usually represented
+by a great number of individuals, distinguished from
+all other similar associations by more or less numerous
+points of structure, color, size, etc., and by habits and
+instincts also, to a certain extent; that the individuals
+of such associations reproduce their like, and cannot be
+produced by individuals of associations or species
+which present differences of structure, color, etc., as
+defined by naturalists; that the individuals of any such
+series or species are incapable of reproducing with
+those of any other species, with some exceptions; and
+that in the latter cases the offspring are usually entirely
+infertile.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The hypothesis of Cuvier assumes that each species
+was created by Divine power as we now find it at some
+definite point of geologic time. The paleontologist
+holding this view sees, in accordance therewith, a succession
+of creations and destructions marking the history
+of life on our planet from its commencement.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The development hypothesis states that all existing
+species have been derived from species of preëxistent
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>geological periods, as offspring or by direct descent;
+that there have been no total destructions of life in past
+time, but only a transfer of it from place to place, owing
+to changes of circumstance; that the types of structure
+become simpler and more similar to each other as we
+trace them from later to earlier periods; and that
+finally we reach the simplest forms consistent with one
+or several original parent types of the great divisions
+into which living beings naturally fall.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It is evident, therefore, that the hypothesis does not
+include change of species by hybridization, nor allow
+the descent of living species from any other <i>living</i>
+species: both these propositions are errors of misapprehension
+or misrepresentation.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In order to understand the history of creation of a
+complex being, it is necessary to analyze it and ascertain
+of what it consists. In analyzing the construction
+of an animal or plant we readily arrange its characters
+into those which it possesses in common with other animals
+or plants, and those in which it resembles none
+other: the latter are its <i>individual</i> characters, constituting
+its individuality. Next we find a large body of
+characters, generally of a very obvious kind, which it
+possesses in common with a generally large number of
+individuals, which, taken collectively, all men are accustomed
+to call a species; these characters we consequently
+name <i>specific</i>. Thirdly, we find characters,
+generally in parts of the body which are of importance
+in the activities of the animal, or which lie in near relation
+to its mechanical construction in details, which are
+shared by a still larger number of individuals than those
+which were similar in specific characters. In other
+words, it is common to a large number of species. This
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>kind of character we call <i>generic</i>, and the grouping it
+indicates is a genus.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Farther analysis brings to light characters of organism
+which are common to a still greater number of individuals;
+this we call a <i>family</i> character. Those which
+are common to still more numerous individuals are the
+<i>ordinal</i>: they are usually found in parts of the structure
+which have the closest connection with the whole life-history
+of the being. Finally, the individuals composing
+many orders will be found identical in some important
+character of the systems by which ordinary life is
+maintained, as in the nervous and circulatory: the
+divisions thus outlined are called <i>classes</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>By this process of analysis we reach in our animal or
+plant those peculiarities which are common to the whole
+animal or vegetable kingdom, and then we have exhausted
+the structure so completely that we have nothing
+remaining to take into account beyond the cell-structure
+or homogeneous protoplasm by which we
+know that it is organic, and not a mineral.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The history of the origin of a type, as species, genus,
+order, etc., is simply the history of the origin of the
+structure or structures which define those groups respectively.
+It is nothing more nor less than this,
+whether a man or an insect be the object of investigation.</p>
+<h3 class='c001'>EVIDENCES OF DERIVATION.</h3>
+<h4 class='c026'>α. Of Specific Characters.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>The evidences of derivation of species from species,
+within the limits of the genus, are abundant and conclusive.
+In the first place, the rule which naturalists
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>observe in defining species is a clear consequence of
+such a state of things. It is not amount and degree of
+difference that determine the definition of species from
+species, but it is the <i>permanency</i> of the characters in all
+cases and under all circumstances. Many species of
+the systems include varieties and extremes of form, etc.,
+which, were they at all times distinct, and not connected
+by intermediate forms, would be estimated as species by
+the same and other writers, as can be easily seen by
+reference to their works.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus, species are either “restricted” or “protean,”
+the latter embracing many, the former few variations;
+and the varieties included by the protean species are
+often as different from each other in their typical forms
+as are the “restricted” species. As an example, the
+species <i>Homo sapiens</i> (man) will suffice. His primary
+varieties are as distinct as the species of many well-known
+genera, but cannot be defined, owing to the existence
+of innumerable intermediate forms between
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>As to the common origin of such “varieties” of the
+protean species, naturalists never had any doubt, yet
+when it comes to the restricted “species,” the anti-developmentalist
+denies it <i>in toto</i>. Thus the varieties of
+most of the domesticated animals are some of them
+known—others held with great probability to have had a
+common origin. Varieties of plumage in fowls and
+canaries are of every-day occurrence, and are produced
+under our eyes. The cart-horse and racer, the Shetland
+pony and the Norman, are without doubt derived
+from the same parentage. The varieties of pigeons and
+ducks are of the same kind, but not every one is aware
+of the extent and amount of such variations. The
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>varieties in many characters seen in hogs and cattle,
+especially when examples from distant countries are
+compared, are very striking, and are confessedly equal
+in degree to those found to <i>define</i> species in a state of
+nature: here, however, they are not <i>definitive</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It is easy to see that all that is necessary to produce
+in the mind of the anti-developmentalist the illusion of
+distinct origin by creation of many of these forms,
+would be to destroy a number of the intermediate conditions
+of specific form and structure, and thus to leave
+remaining definable groups of individuals, and therefore
+“species.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>That such destructions and extinctions have been
+going on ever since the existence of life on the globe is
+well known. That it should affect intermediate forms,
+such as bind together the types of a protean species as
+well as restricted species, is equally certain. That its
+result has been to produce <i>definable</i> species cannot be
+denied, especially in consideration of the following
+facts: Protean species nearly always have a wide geographical
+distribution. They exist under more varied
+circumstances than do individuals of a more restricted
+species. The subordinate variations of the protean
+species are generally, like the restricted species, confined
+to distinct subdivisions of the geographical area
+which the whole occupies. As in geological time
+changes of level have separated areas once continuous
+by bodies of water or high mountain ranges, so have
+vast numbers of individuals occupying such areas been
+destroyed. Important alterations of temperature, or
+great changes in abundance or character of vegetable
+life over given areas, would produce the same result.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This part of the subject might be prolonged, were it
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>necessary, but it has been ably discussed by Darwin.
+The <i>rationale</i> of the “origin of species” as stated by
+him may be examined a few pages farther on.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>β. Of the Characters of Higher Groups.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'><i>a. Relations of Structures.</i> The evidences of derivative
+origin of the structures defining the groups called
+genera, and all those of higher grade, are of a very different
+character from those discussed in relation to specific
+characters; they are more difficult of observation
+and explanation.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Firstly: It would appear to be supposed by many
+that the creation of organic types was an irregular and
+capricious process, variously pursued by its Author as
+regards time and place, and without definite final aim;
+and this notwithstanding the wonderful evidences we
+possess, in the facts of astronomy, chemistry, sound,
+etc., of His adhesion to harmonious and symmetrical
+sequences in His modes and plans.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Such regularity of plan is found to exist in the relations
+of the great divisions of the animal and vegetable
+kingdoms as at present existing on the earth. Thus,
+with animals we have a great class of species which
+consists of nothing more than masses or cells of protoplasmic
+matter, without distinct organs; or the Protozoa.
+We have then the Cœlenterata (example, corals,)
+where the organism is composed of many cells arranged
+in distinct parts, but where a single very simple system
+of organs, forming the only internal cavity of the body,
+does the work of the many systems of the more complex
+animals. Next, the Echinodermata (such as star-fish)
+present us with a body containing distinct systems
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>of organs enclosed in a visceral cavity, including a rudimental
+nervous system in the form of a ring. In the
+Molluscs to this condition is added additional complication,
+including extensions of the nervous system from
+the ring as a starting-point, and a special organ for a
+heart. In the Articulates (crabs, insects,) we have like
+complications, and a long distinct nervous axis on the
+lower surface of the body. The last branch or division
+of animals is considered to be higher, because all the
+systems of life organs are most complex or specialized.
+The nervous ring is almost obliterated by a great enlargement
+of its usual ganglia, thus become a brain,
+which is succeeded by a long axis on the upper side
+of the body. This and other points define the Vertebrata.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Plans of structure, independent of the simplicity or
+perfection of the special arrangement or structure of
+organs, also define these great groups. Thus the Protozoa
+present a spiral, the Cœlenterata a radiate, the
+Echinodermata a bilateral radiate plan. The Articulates
+are a series of external rings, each in one or more
+respects repeating the others. The Molluscs are a sac,
+while a ring above a ring, joined together by a solid
+center-piece, represents the plan of each of the many
+segments of the Vertebrates which give the members of
+that branch their form.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>These bulwarks of distinction of animal types are
+entered into here simply because they are the most inviolable
+and radical of those with which we have to
+deal, and to give the anti-developmentalist the best foothold
+for his position. I will only allude to the relations
+of their points of approach, as these are affected by
+considerations afterward introduced.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>The Vertebrates approach the Molluscs at the lowest
+extreme of the former and higher of the latter.
+The lamprey eels of the one possess several characters
+in common with the cuttle-fish or squids of the latter.
+The amphioxus is called the lowest Vertebrate, and
+though it is nothing else, the definition of the division
+must be altered to receive it; it has no brain!</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The lowest forms of the Molluscs and Articulates are
+scarcely distinguishable from each other, so far as adhesion
+to the “plan” is concerned, and some of the latter
+division are very near certain Echinodermata. As
+we approach the boundary-lines of the two lowest divisions,
+the approaches become equally close, and the boundaries
+very obscure.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>More instructive is the evidence of the relation of
+the subordinate classes of any one of these divisions.
+The conditions of those organs or parts which define
+classes exhibit a regular relation, commencing with
+simplicity and ending with complication; first associated
+with weak exhibitions of the highest functions of
+the nervous system—at the last displaying the most exalted
+traits found in the series.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>For example: In the classes of Vertebrates we find
+the lowest nervous system presents great simplicity—the
+brain cannot be recognized; next (in lampreys), the
+end of the nervous axis is subdivided, but scarcely according
+to the complex type that follows. In fishes the
+cerebellum and cerebral hemispheres are minute, and
+the intermediate or optic lobes very large: in the reptiles
+the cerebral hemispheres exceed the optic lobes,
+while the cerebellum is smaller. In birds the cerebellum
+becomes complex and the cerebrum greatly increases.
+In mammals the cerebellum increases in complexity
+or number of parts, the optic lobes diminish,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>while the cerebral hemispheres become wonderfully
+complex and enlarged, bringing us to the highest development,
+in man.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The history of the circulatory system in the Vertebrates
+is the same.<a id='r45' /><a href='#f45' class='c020'><sup>[45]</sup></a> First, a heart with one chamber,
+then one with two divisions: three divisions belong to
+a large series, and the highest possess four. The origins
+of the great artery of the body, the aorta, are first five
+on each side: they lose one in the succeeding class in
+the ascending scale, and one in each succeeding class
+or order, till the Mammalia, including man, present us
+with but one on one side.</p>
+
+<div class='footnote c027' id='f45'>
+<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r45'>45</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>See a homological system of the circulatory system in the author’s Origin
+of Genera, p. 22.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c024'>From an infinitude of such considerations as the
+above, we derive the certainty that the general arrangement
+of the various groups of the organic world is in
+scales, the subordinate within the more comprehensive
+divisions. The identification of all the parts in such a
+complexity of organism as the highest animals present,
+is a matter requiring much care and attention, and constitutes
+the study of homologies. Its pursuit has resulted
+in the demonstration that every individual of
+every species of a given branch of the animal kingdom
+is composed of elements common to all, and that the
+differences which are so radical in the higher groups
+are but the modifications of the same elemental parts,
+representing completeness or incompleteness, obliteration
+or subdivision. Of the former character are rudimental
+organs, of which almost every species possesses
+an example in some part of its structure.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But we have other and still more satisfactory evidence
+of the meaning of these relations. By the study of embryology
+we can prove most indubitably that the simple
+and less complex are inferior to the more complex.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>Selecting the Vertebrates again as an example, the highest
+form of mammal—<i>e.g.</i>, man—presents in his earliest
+stages of embryonic growth a skeleton of cartilage, like
+that of the lamprey: he also possesses five origins of
+the aorta and five slits on the neck, both which characters
+belong to the lamprey and the shark. If the whole
+number of these parts does not coexist in the embryonic
+man, we find in embryos of lower forms more
+nearly related to the lamprey that they do. Later in
+the life of the mammal but four aortic origins are found,
+which arrangement, with the heart now divided into two
+chambers, from a beginning as a simple tube, is characteristic
+of the class of Vertebrates next in order—the
+bony fishes. The optic lobes of the human brain have
+also at this time a great predominance in size—a character
+above stated to be that of the same class. With
+advancing development the infant mammal follows the
+scale already pointed out. Three chambers of the
+heart and three aortic origins follow, presenting the
+condition permanent in the batrachia; and two origins,
+with enlarged cerebral hemispheres of the brain, resemble
+the reptilian condition. Four heart-chambers, and
+one aortic root on each side, with slight development of
+the cerebellum, follow all characters defining the crocodiles,
+and immediately precede the special conditions
+defining the mammals. These are, the single aorta
+root from one side, and the full development of the
+cerebellum: later comes that of the cerebrum also in
+its higher mammalian and human traits.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus we see the order already pointed out to be true,
+and to be an ascending one. This is the more evident
+as each type or class passes through the conditions of
+those below it, as did the mammal; each scale being
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>shorter as its highest terminus is lower. Thus the crocodile
+passes through the stage of the lamprey, the fish,
+the batrachian and the reptile proper.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><i>b. In Time.</i> We have thus a scale of relations of
+existing forms of animals and plants of a remarkable
+kind, and such as to stimulate greatly our inquiries as
+to its significance. When we turn to the remains of the
+past creation preserved to us in the deposits continued
+throughout geologic time, we are not disappointed, for
+great light is at once thrown upon the subject.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>We find, in brief, that the lowest division of the animal
+kingdom appeared first, and long before any type
+of a higher character was created. The Protozoön,
+Eozoön, is the earliest of animals in geologic time, and
+represents the lowest type of animal life now existing.
+We learn also that the highest branch appeared last.
+No remains of Vertebrates have been found below the
+lower Devonian period, or not until the Echinoderms
+and Molluscs had reached a great preëminence. It is
+difficult to be sure whether the Protozoa had a greater
+numerical extent in the earliest periods than now, but
+there can be no doubt that the Cœlenterata (corals) and
+Echinoderms (crinoids) greatly exceeded their present
+bounds, in Paleozoic time, so that those at present existing
+are but a feeble remnant. If we examine the
+subdivisions known as classes, evidence of the nature
+of the succession of creation is still more conclusive.
+The most polyp-like of the Molluscs (brachiopoda) constituted
+the great mass of its representatives during
+Paleozoic time. Among Vertebrates the fishes appear
+first, and had their greatest development in size and
+numbers during the earliest periods of the existence of
+the division. Batrachia were much the largest and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>most important of land animals during the Carboniferous
+period, while the higher Vertebrates were unknown.
+The later Mesozoic periods saw the reign of
+reptiles, whose position in structural development has
+been already stated. Finally, the most perfect, the
+mammal, came upon the scene, and in his humblest
+representatives. In Tertiary times mammalia supplanted
+the reptiles entirely, and the unspiritual mammals
+now yield to man, the only one of his class in
+whom the Divine image appears.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus the structural relations, the embryonic characters,
+and the successive appearance in time of animals
+coincide. The same is very probably true of plants.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>That the existing state of the geological record of
+organic types should be regarded as anything but a
+fragment is, from our stand-point, quite preposterous.
+And more, it may be assumed with safety that when
+completed it will furnish us with a series of regular successions,
+with but slight and regular interruptions, if
+any, from the species which represented the simplest
+beginnings of life at the dawn of creation, to those
+which have displayed complication and power in later
+or in the present period.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>For the labors of the paleontologist are daily bringing
+to light structures intermediate between those never
+before so connected, and thus creating lines of succession
+where before were only interruptions. Many such
+instances might be adduced: two may be selected as
+examples from American paleontology;<a id='r46' /><a href='#f46' class='c020'><sup>[46]</sup></a> <i>i.e.</i>, the near
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>approach to birds made by the reptiles Lælaps and
+Megadactylus; and the combination of characters of
+the sub-orders of Cryptodire and Pleurodire Tortoises
+in the Adocus of New Jersey.</p>
+
+<div class='footnote c027' id='f46'>
+<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r46'>46</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Professor Huxley, in the last anniversary lecture before the
+Geological Society of London, recalls his opinion, enunciated in
+1862, that “the positively-ascertained truths of Paleontology”
+negative “the doctrines of progressive modification, which suppose
+that modification to have taken place by a necessary progress from
+more to less embryonic forms, from more to less generalized types,
+within the limits of the period represented by the fossiliferous
+rocks; that it shows no evidence of such modification; and as to
+the nature of that modification, it yields no evidence whatsoever
+that the earlier members of any long-continued group were more
+generalized in structure than the later ones.”</p>
+
+<p class='c028'>Respecting this position, he says: “Thus far I have endeavored
+to expand and enforce by fresh arguments, but not to modify in any
+important respect, the ideas submitted to you on a former occasion.
+But when I come to the propositions respecting progressive modification,
+it appears to me, with the help of the new light which has
+broken from various quarters, that there is much ground for softening
+the somewhat Brutus-like severity with which I have dealt with
+a doctrine for the truth of which I should have been glad enough
+to be able to find a good foundation in 1862. So far indeed as the
+Invertebrata and the lower Vertebrata are concerned, the facts, and
+the conclusions which are to be drawn from them, appear to me to
+remain what they were. For anything that as yet appears to the contrary,
+the earliest known marsupials may have been as highly organized
+as their living congeners; the Permian lizards show no signs
+of inferiority to those of the present day; the labyrinthodonts cannot
+be placed below the living salamander and triton; the Devonian
+ganoids are closely related to polypterus and lepidosiren.”</p>
+
+<p class='c028'>To this it may be replied: 1. The scale of progression of the
+Vertebrata is measured by the conditions of the circulatory system,
+and in some measure by the nervous, and not by the osseous:
+tested by this scale, there has been successional complication of
+structure among Vertebrata in time. 2. The question with the
+evolutionist is, not what types have persisted to the present day,
+but the order in which types appeared in time. 3. The Marsupials,
+Permian saurians, labyrinthodonts and Devonian ganoids are remarkably
+generalized groups, and predecessors of types widely
+separated in the present period. 4. Professor Huxley adduces
+many such examples among the mammalian subdivisions in the
+remaining portion of his lecture. 5. Two alternatives are yet open
+in the explanation of the process of evolution: since generalized
+types, which combine the characters of higher and lower groups of
+later periods, must thus be superior to the lower, the lower must
+(first) be descended from such a generalized form by degradation; or
+(second) not descended from it at all, but from some lower contemporaneous
+type by advance; the higher only of the two being derived
+from the first-mentioned. The last I suspect to be a true explanation,
+as it is in accordance with the homologous groups. This
+law will shorten the demands of paleontologists for time, since,
+instead of deriving all reptilia, batrachia, etc., from common origins,
+it points to the derivation of higher reptilia of a higher order
+from higher reptilia of a lower order, lower reptilia of the first from
+lower reptilia of the second; finally, the several groups of the lowest
+or most generalized order of reptilia from a parallel series of
+the class below, or batrachia.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>We had no more reason to look for intermediate or
+connecting forms between such types as these, than between
+any others of similar degree of remove from each
+other with which we are acquainted. And inasmuch as
+almost all groups, as genera, orders, etc., which are held
+to be distinct, but adjacent, present certain points of
+approximation to each other, the almost daily discovery
+of intermediate forms gives us confidence to believe
+that the pointings in other cases will also be realized.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>γ. Of Transitions.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>The preceding statements were necessary to the comprehension
+of the supposed mode of metamorphosis or
+development of the various types of living beings, or,
+in other words, of the single structural features which
+define them.... As it is evident that the more
+comprehensive groups, or those of highest rank, have
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>had their origin in remote ages, cases of transition from
+one to the other by change of character cannot be witnessed
+at the present day. We therefore look to the
+most nearly related divisions, or those of the lowest
+rank, for evidence of such change.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It is necessary to premise that embryology teaches
+that all the species of a given branch of the animal kingdom
+(<i>e.g.</i>, Vertebrate, Mollusc, etc.) are quite identical
+in structural character at their first appearance on the
+germinal layer of the yolk of the parent egg. It shows
+that the character of the respective groups of high rank
+appear first, then those of less grade, and last of all
+those structures which distinguish them as genera. But
+among the earliest characters which appear are those of
+the species, and some of those of the individual.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>We find the characters of different <i>genera</i> to bear the
+same relation to each other that we have already seen
+in the case of those definitive of orders, etc. In a natural
+assemblage of related genera we discover that some
+are defined by characters found only in the embryonic
+stages of others; while a second will present a permanent
+condition of its definitive part, which marks a more
+advanced stage of that highest. In this manner many
+stages of the highest genus appear to be represented by
+permanent genera in all natural groups. Generally,
+however, this resemblance does not involve, an entire
+identity, there being some other immaturities found in
+the highest genus at the time it presents the character
+preserved in permanency by the lower, which the lower
+loses. Thus (to use a very coarse example) a frog at
+one stage of growth has four legs and a tail: the salamander
+always preserves four legs and a tail, thus resembling
+the young frog. The latter is, however, not a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>salamander at that time, because, among other things,
+the skeleton is represented by cartilage only, and the
+salamander’s is ossified. This relation is therefore an
+imitation only, and is called <i>inexact parallelism</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>As we compare nearer and nearer relations—<i>i.e.</i>, the
+genera which present fewest points of difference—we
+find the differences between undeveloped stages of the
+higher and permanent conditions of the lower to grow
+fewer and fewer, until we find numerous instances where
+the lower genus is exactly the same as the undeveloped
+stage of the higher. This relation is called that of
+<i>exact parallelism</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It must now be remembered that the permanence of
+a character is what gives it its value in defining genus,
+order, etc., in the eyes of the systematist. So long as
+the condition is permanent no transition can be seen:
+there is therefore no development. If the condition is
+transitional, it defines nothing, and nothing is developed;
+at least, so says the anti-developmentalist. It is
+the old story of the settler and the Indian: “Will you
+take owl and I take turkey, or I take turkey and you
+owl?”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>If we find a relation of <i>exact parallelism</i> to exist between
+two sets of species in the condition of a certain
+organ, and the difference so expressed the only one
+which distinguishes them as sets from each other—if
+that condition is always the same in each set—we call
+them two genera: if in any species the condition is variable
+at maturity, or sometimes the undeveloped condition
+of the part is persistent and sometimes transitory,
+the sets characterized by this difference must be united
+by the systematist, and the whole is called a single
+genus.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>We know numerous cases where different individuals
+of the same species present this relation of <i>exact parallelism</i>
+to each other; and as we ascribe common origin
+to the individuals of a species, we are assured that the
+condition of the inferior individual is, in this case,
+simply one of repressed growth, or a failure to fulfill
+the course accomplished by the highest. Thus, certain
+species of the salamandrine genus amblystoma undergo
+a metamorphosis involving several parts of the osseous
+and circulatory systems, etc., while half grown; others
+delay it till fully grown; one or two species remain indifferently
+unchanged or changed, and breed in either
+condition, while another species breeds unchanged, and
+has never been known to complete a metamorphosis.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The nature of the relation of <i>exact parallelism</i> is thus
+explained to be that of checked or advanced growth of
+individuals having a common origin. The relation of
+<i>inexact parallelism</i> is readily explained as follows: With
+a case of <i>exact parallelism</i> in the mind, let the repression
+producing the character of the lower, parallelize
+the latter with a stage of the former in which a second
+part is not quite mature: we will have a slight want of
+correspondence between the two. The lower will be
+immature in but one point, the incompleteness of the
+higher being seen in two points. If we suppose the immaturity
+to consist in a repression at a still earlier point
+in the history of the higher, the latter will be undeveloped
+in other points also: thus, the spike-horned deer
+of South America have the horn of the second year of
+the North American genus. They would be generically
+identical with that stage of the latter, were it not that
+these still possess their milk dentition at two years of age.
+In the same way the nature of the parallelisms seen
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>in higher groups, as orders, etc., may be accounted for.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The theory of homologous groups furnishes important
+evidence in favor of derivation. Many orders of
+animals (probably all, when we come to know them) are
+divisible into two or more sections, which I have called
+<i>homologous</i>. These are series of genera or families,
+which differ from each other by some marked character,
+but whose contained genera or families differ from each
+other in the same points of detail, and in fact correspond
+exactly. So striking is this correspondence that
+were it not for the general and common character separating
+the homologous series, they would be regarded as
+the same, each to each. Now it is remarkable that
+where studied the difference common to all the terms of
+two homologous groups is found to be one of <i>inexact
+parallelism</i>, which has been shown above to be evidence
+of descent. Homologous groups always occupy different
+geographical areas on the earth’s surface, and their
+relation is precisely that which holds between successive
+groups of life in the periods of geologic time.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In a word, we learn from this source that distinct geologic
+epochs coexist at the same time on the earth. I
+have been forced to this conclusion<a id='r47' /><a href='#f47' class='c020'><sup>[47]</sup></a> by a study of the
+structure of terrestrial life, and it has been remarkably
+confirmed by the results of recent deep-sea dredgings
+made by the United States Coast Survey in the Gulf
+Stream, and by the British naturalists in the North Atlantic.
+These have brought to light types of Tertiary
+life, and of even the still more ancient Cretaceous periods,
+living at the present day. That this discovery
+invalidates in any wise the conclusions of geology respecting
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>lapse of time is an unwarranted assumption
+that some are forward to make. If it changes the views
+of some respecting the parallelism or coëxistence of
+faunæ in different regions of the earth, it is only the
+anti-developmentalists whose position must be changed.</p>
+
+<div class='footnote c027' id='f47'>
+<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r47'>47</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><i>Origin of Genera</i>, pages 70, 77, 79.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c024'>For, if we find distinct geologic faunæ, or epochs defined
+by faunæ, coëxisting during the present period, and
+fading or emerging into one another as they do at their
+geographical boundaries, it is proof positive that the
+geologic epochs and periods of past ages had in like
+manner no trenchant boundaries, but also passed the
+one into the other. The assumption that the apparent
+interruptions are the result of transfer of life rather than
+destruction, or of want of opportunities of preservation,
+is no doubt the true one.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>δ. Rationale of Development.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'><i>a. In Characters of Higher Groups.</i> It is evident in
+the case of the species in which there is an irregularity
+in the time of completion of metamorphosis that some
+individuals traverse a longer developmental line than
+those who remain more or less incomplete. As both
+accomplish growth in the same length of time, it is obvious
+that it proceeds with greater rapidity in one sense
+in that which accomplishes most: its growth is said to
+be accelerated. This phenomenon is especially common
+among insects, where the females of perfect males
+are sometimes larvæ or nearly so, or pupæ, or lack
+wings or some character of final development. Quite
+as frequently, some males assume characters in advance
+of others, sometimes in connection with a peculiar geographical
+range.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>In cases of <i>exact parallelism</i> we reasonably suppose
+the cause to be the same, since the conditions are identical,
+as has been shown; that is, the higher conditions
+have been produced by a crowding back of the earlier
+characters and an acceleration of growth, so that a given
+succession in order of advance has extended over a
+longer range of growth than its predecessor in the same
+allotted time. That allotted time is the period before
+maturity and reproduction, and it is evident that as fast
+as modifications or characters should be assumed sufficiently
+in advance of that period, so certainly would
+they be conferred upon the offspring by reproduction.
+The <i>acceleration</i> in the assumption of a character, progressing
+more rapidly than the same in another character,
+must soon produce, in a type whose stages were
+once the exact parallel of a permanent lower form, the
+condition of <i>inexact parallelism</i>. As all the more comprehensive
+groups present this relation to each other,
+we are compelled to believe that <i>acceleration</i> has been
+the principle of their successive evolution during the
+long ages of geologic time.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Each type has, however, its day of supremacy and
+perfection of organism, and a retrogression in these respects
+has succeeded. This has no doubt followed a law
+the reverse of acceleration, which has been called <i>retardation</i>.
+By the increasing slowness of the growth of
+the individuals of a genus, and later and later assumption
+of the characters of the latter, they would be successively
+lost.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>To what power shall we ascribe this acceleration, by
+which the first beginnings of structure have accumulated
+to themselves through the long geologic ages
+complication and power, till from the germ that was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>scarcely born into a sand-lance, a human being climbed
+the complete scale, and stood easily the chief of the
+whole?</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In the cases of species, where some individuals develop
+farther than others, we say the former possess
+more growth-force, or “vigor,” than the latter. We
+may therefore say that higher types of structure possess
+more “vigor” than the lower. This, however, we do
+not know to be true, nor can we readily find means to
+demonstrate it.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The food which is taken by an adult animal is either
+assimilated, to be consumed in immediate activity of
+some kind, or stored for future use, and the excess is
+rejected from the body. We have no reason to suppose
+that the same kind of material could be made to subserve
+the production of life-force by any other means than
+that furnished by a living animal organism. The material
+from which this organism is constructed is derived
+first from the parent, and afterward from the food, etc.,
+assimilated by the individual itself so long as growth
+continues. As it is the activity of assimilation directed
+to a special end during this latter period which we suppose
+to be increased in accelerated development, the
+acceleration is evidently not brought about by increased
+facilities for obtaining the means of life which the same
+individual possesses as an adult. That it is not in consequence
+of such increased facilities possessed by its
+parents over those of the type preceding it, seems
+equally improbable when we consider that the characters
+in which the parent’s advance has appeared are
+rarely of a nature to increase those facilities.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The nearest approach to an explanation that can be
+offered appears to be somewhat in the following direction:</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>There is every reason to believe that the character of
+the atmosphere has gradually changed during geologic
+time, and that various constituents of the mixture have
+been successively removed from it, and been stored in
+the solid material of the earth’s crust in a state of combination.
+Geological chemistry has shown that the
+cooling of the earth has been accompanied by the precipitation
+of many substances only gaseous at high temperatures.
+Hydrochloric and sulphuric acids have been
+transferred to mineral deposits or aqueous solutions.
+The removal of carbonic acid gas and the vapor of
+water has been a process of much slower progress, and
+after the expiration of all the ages a proportion of both
+yet remains. Evidence of the abundance of the former
+in the earliest periods is seen in the vast deposits of
+limestone rock; later, in the prodigious quantities of
+shells which have been elaborated from the same in solution.
+Proof of its abundance in the atmosphere in
+later periods is seen in the extensive deposits of coal of
+the Carboniferous, Triassic and Jurassic periods. If the
+most luxuriant vegetation of the present day takes but
+fifty tons of carbon from the atmosphere in a century,
+per acre, thus producing a layer over that extent of less
+than a third of an inch in thickness, what amount of
+carbon must be abstracted in order to produce strata of
+thirty-five feet in depth? No doubt it occupied a long
+period, but the atmosphere, thus deprived of a large
+proportion of carbonic acid, would in subsequent periods
+undoubtedly possess an improved capacity for the support
+of animal life.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The successively higher degree of oxidization of the
+blood in the organs designed for that function, whether
+performing it in water or air, would certainly accelerate
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>the performances of all the vital functions, and among
+others that of growth. Thus it may be that <i>acceleration</i>
+can be accounted for, and the process of the development
+of the orders and sundry lesser groups of the Vertebrate
+kingdom indicated; for, as already pointed out,
+the definitions of such are radically placed in the different
+structures of the organs which aerate the blood and
+distribute it to its various destinations.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the great question, What determined the direction
+of this acceleration? remains unanswered. One
+cannot understand why more highly-oxidized blood
+should hasten the growth of partition of the ventricle
+of the heart in the serpent, the more perfectly to separate
+the aerated from the impure fluid; nor can we see
+why a more perfectly-constructed circulatory system,
+sending purer blood to the brain, should direct accelerated
+growth to the cerebellum or cerebral hemispheres
+in the crocodile.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><i>b. In Characters of the Specific Kind.</i> Some of the
+characters usually placed in the specific category have
+been shown to be the same in kind as those of higher
+categories. The majority are, however, of a different
+kind, and have been discussed several pages back.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The cause of the origin of these characters is shrouded
+in as much mystery as that of those which have occupied
+the pages immediately preceding. As in that case,
+we have to assume, as Darwin has done, a tendency in
+Nature to their production. This is what he terms “the
+principle of variation.” Against an unlimited variation
+the great law of heredity or atavism has ever been opposed,
+as a conservator and multiplier of type. This
+principle is exemplified in the fact that like produces
+like—that children are like their parents, frequently even
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>in minutiæ. It may be compared to habit in metaphysical
+matters, or to that singular love of time or rhythm
+seen in man and lower animals, in both of which the
+tendency is to repeat in continual cycles a motion or
+state of the mind or sense.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Further, but a proportion of the lines of variation is
+supposed to have been perpetuated, and the extinction
+of intermediate forms, as already stated, has left isolated
+groups or species.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The effective cause of these extinctions is stated by
+Darwin to have been a “natural selection”—a proposition
+which distinguishes his theory from other development
+hypotheses, and which is stated in brief by the
+expression, “the preservation of the fittest.” Its meaning
+is this: that those characters appearing as results
+of this spontaneous variation which are little adapted to
+the conflict for subsistence, with the nature of the supply,
+or with rivals in its pursuit, dwindle and are sooner
+or later extirpated; while those which are adapted to
+their surroundings, and favored in the struggle for means
+of life and increase, predominate, and ultimately become
+the centers of new variation. “I am convinced,”
+says Darwin, “that natural selection has been the main,
+but not exclusive, means of modification.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>That it has been to a large extent the means of preservation
+of those structures known as specific, must, I
+think, be admitted. They are related to their peculiar
+surroundings very closely, and are therefore more likely
+to exist under their influence. Thus, if a given genus
+extends its range over a continent, it is usually found to
+be represented by peculiar species—one in a maritime
+division, another in the desert, others in the forest, in
+the swamp or the elevated areas of the region. The
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>wonderful interdependence shown by Darwin to exist
+between insects and plants in the fertilization of the latter,
+or between animals and their food-plants, would almost
+induce one to believe that it were the true expression
+of the whole law of development.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the following are serious objections to its universal
+application:</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>First: The characters of the higher groups, from genera
+up, are rarely of a character to fit their possessors
+especially for surrounding circumstances; that is, the
+differences which separate genus from genus, order from
+order, etc., in the ascending scale of each, do not seem
+to present a superior adaptation to surrounding circumstances
+in the higher genus to that seen in the lower
+genus, etc. Hence, superior adaptation could scarcely
+have caused their selection above other forms not existing.
+Or, in other words, the different structures which
+indicate successional relation, or which measure the
+steps of progress, seem to be equally well fitted for the
+same surroundings.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Second: The higher groups, as orders, classes, etc.,
+have been in each geologic period alike distributed over
+the whole earth, under all the varied circumstances offered
+by climate and food. Their characters do not
+seem to have been modified in reference to these. Species,
+and often genera, are, on the other hand, eminently
+restricted according to climate, and consequently vegetable
+and animal food.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The law of development which we seek is indeed not
+that which preserves the higher forms and rejects the
+lower after their creation, but that which explains why
+higher forms were created at all. Why in the results
+of a creation we see any relation of higher and lower,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>and not rather a world of distinct types, each perfectly
+adapted to its situation, but none properly higher than
+another in an ascending scale, is the primary question.
+Given the principle of advance, then natural selection
+has no doubt modified the details; but in the successive
+advances we can scarcely believe such a principle
+to be influential. <i>We look rather upon a progress as
+the result of the expenditure of some force fore-arranged
+for that end.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It may become, then, a question whether in characters
+of high grade the habit or use is not rather the result
+of the acquisition of the structure than the structure
+the result of the encouragement offered to its
+assumed beginnings by use, or by liberal nutrition derived
+from the increasingly superior advantages it offers.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>ε. The Physical Origin of Man.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>If the hypothesis here maintained be true, man is the
+descendant of some preëxistent generic type, the which,
+if it were now living, we would probably call an ape.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Man and the chimpanzee were in Linnæus’ system
+only two species of the same genus, but a truer anatomy
+places them in separate genera and distinct families.
+There is no doubt, however, that Cuvier went much too
+far when he proposed to consider Homo as the representative
+of an order distinct from the quadrumana, under
+the name of bimana. The structural differences
+will not bear any such interpretation, and have not the
+same value as those distinguishing the orders of mammalia;
+as, for instance, between carnivora and bats, or
+the cloven-footed animals and the rodents, or rodents
+and edentates. The differences between man and the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>chimpanzee are, as Huxley well puts it, much less than
+those between the chimpanzee and lower quadrumana,
+as lemurs, etc. In fact, man is the type of a family,
+Hominidæ, of the order Quadrumana, as indicated by
+the characters of the dentition, extremities, brain, etc.
+The reader who may have any doubts on this score may
+read the dissections of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, made in
+1856, before the issue of Darwin’s <i>Origin of Species</i>.
+He informs us that the brain of man is nearer in structure
+to that of the orang than the orang’s is to that of
+the South American howler, and that the orang and
+howler are more nearly related in this regard than are
+the howler and the marmoset.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The modifications presented by man have, then, resulted
+from an acceleration in development in some
+respects, and retardation perhaps in others. But until
+the <i>combination</i> now characteristic of the genus Homo
+was attained the being could not properly be called man.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And here it must be observed that as an organic type
+is characterized by the coëxistence of a number of peculiarities
+which have been developed independently of
+each other, its distinctive features and striking functions
+are not exhibited until that coëxistence is attained which
+is necessary for these ends.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Hence, the characters of the human genus were probably
+developed successively; but few of the indications
+of human superiority appeared until the combination
+was accomplished. Let the opposable thumb be first
+perfected, but of what use would it be in human affairs
+without a mind to direct? And of what use a mind
+without speech to unlock it? And speech could not be
+possible though all the muscles of the larynx but one
+were developed, or but a slight abnormal convexity in
+one pair of cartilages remained.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>It would be an objection of little weight could it be
+truly urged that there have as yet no remains of apelike
+men been discovered, for we have frequently been
+called upon in the course of paleontological discovery
+to bridge greater gaps than this, and greater remain,
+which we expect to fill. But we <i>have</i> apelike characters
+exhibited by more than one race of men yet existing.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the remains of that being which is supposed to
+have been the progenitor of man may have been discovered
+a short time since in the cave of Naulette, Belgium,
+with the bones of the extinct rhinoceros and
+elephant.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>We all admit the existence of higher and lower races,
+the latter being those which we now find to present
+greater or less approximations to the apes. The peculiar
+structural characters that belong to the negro in his
+most typical form are of that kind, however great may
+be the distance of his remove therefrom. The flattening
+of the nose and prolongation of the jaws constitute
+such a resemblance; so are the deficiency of the calf of
+the leg, and the obliquity of the pelvis, which approaches
+more the horizontal position than it does in the Caucasian.
+The investigations made at Washington during
+the war with reference to the physical characteristics of
+the soldiers show that the arms of the negro are from
+one to two inches longer than those of the whites:
+another approximation to the ape. In fact, this race is
+a species of the genus Homo, as distinct in character
+from the Caucasian as those we are accustomed to recognize
+in other departments of the animal kingdom;
+but he is not distinct by isolation, since intermediate
+form’s between him and the other species can be abundantly
+found.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>And here let it be particularly observed that two of
+the most prominent characters of the negro are those of
+immature stages of the Indo-European race in its characteristic
+types. The deficient calf is the character of
+infants at a very early stage; but, what is more important,
+the flattened bridge of the nose and shortened nasal
+cartilages are universally immature conditions of the
+same parts in the Indo-European. Any one may convince
+himself of that by examining the physiognomies
+of infants. In some races—<i>e.g.</i>, the Slavic—this undeveloped
+character persists later than in some others.
+The Greek nose, with its elevated bridge, coincides not
+only with æsthetic beauty, but with developmental perfection.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This is, however, only “<i>inexact</i> parallelism,” as the
+characters of the hair, etc., cannot be explained on this
+principle <i>among existing races</i>. The embryonic characters
+mentioned are probably a remnant of those characteristic
+of the primordial race or species.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the man of Naulette, if he be not a monstrosity,
+in a still more distinct and apelike species. The chin,
+that marked character of other species of men, is totally
+wanting, and the dentition is quite approximate to the
+man-like apes, and different from that of modern men.
+The form is very massive, as in apes. That he was not
+abnormal is rendered probable by approximate characters
+seen in a jaw from the cave of Puy-sur-Aube, and
+less marked in the lowest races of Australia and New
+Caledonia.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>As to the single or multiple origin of man, science as
+yet furnishes no answer. It is very probable that, in
+many cases, the species of one genus have descended
+from corresponding species of another by change of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>generic characters only. It is a remarkable fact that the
+orang possesses the peculiarly developed malar bones
+and the copper color characteristic of the Mongolian inhabitants
+of the regions in which this animal is found,
+while the gorilla exhibits the prognathic jaws and black
+hue of the African races near whom he dwells. This
+kind of geographical imitation is very common in the
+animal kingdom.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>ζ. The Mosaic Account.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>As some persons imagine that this hypothesis conflicts
+with the account of the creation of man given in
+Genesis, a comparison of some of the points involved
+is made below.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>First: In Genesis i. 26, 27, we read, “And God said,
+Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” etc.
+“So God created man in his own image, in the image
+of God created he him; male and female created he
+them.” Those who believe that this “image” is a
+physical, material form, are not disposed to admit the
+entrance of anything apelike into its constitution, for the
+ascription of any such appearance to the Creator would
+be impious and revolting. But we are told that “God
+is a Spirit,” and Christ said to his disciples after his
+resurrection, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye
+see me have.” Luke xxiv. 39. It will require little
+further argument to show that a mental and spiritual
+image is what is meant, as it is what truly exists. Man’s
+conscience, intelligence and creative ingenuity show that
+he possesses an “image of God” within him, the possession
+of which is really necessary to his limited comprehension
+of God and of God’s ways to man.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>Second: In Genesis ii. 7, the text reads, “And the
+Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
+breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
+became a living soul.” The fact that man is the result
+of the modification of an apelike predecessor nowise
+conflicts with the above statement as to the materials of
+which his body is composed. Independently of origin,
+if the body of man be composed of dust, so must that
+of the ape be, since the composition of the two is identical.
+But the statement simply asserts that man was
+created of the same materials which compose the earth:
+their condition as “dust” depending merely on temperature
+and subdivision. The declaration, “Dust thou art,
+and unto dust thou shalt return,” must be taken in a
+similar sense, for we know that the decaying body is resolved
+not only into its earthly constituents, but also into
+carbonic acid gas and water.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>When God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of
+life, we are informed that he became, not a living body,
+but “a living soul.” His descent from a preëxistent
+being involved the possession of a living body; but
+when the Creator breathed into him we may suppose
+for the present that He infused into this body the immortal
+part, and at that moment man became a conscientious
+and responsible being.</p>
+<h3 class='c001'>II. <span class='sc'>Metaphysical Evolution.</span></h3>
+
+<p class='c025'>It is infinitely improbable that a being endowed with
+such capacities for gradual progress as man has exhibited,
+should have been full fledged in accomplishments
+at the moment when he could first claim his high title,
+and abandon that of his simious ancestors. We are
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>therefore required to admit the growth of human intelligence
+from a primitive state of inactivity and absolute
+ignorance; including the development of one important
+mode of its expression—speech; as well as that of the
+moral qualities, and of man’s social system—the form in
+which his ideas of morality were first displayed.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The expression “evolution of morality” need not
+offend, for the question in regard to the <i>laws</i> of this
+evolution is the really important part of the discussion,
+and it is to the opposing views on this point that the
+most serious interest attaches.</p>
+
+<hr class='c015' />
+
+<p class='c024'>The two views of evolution already treated of, held
+separately, are quite opposed to each other. The first
+(and generally received) lays stress on the influence of
+external surroundings, as the stimulus to and guidance
+of development: it is the counterpart of Darwin’s principle
+called Natural Selection in material progress.
+This might be called the <i>Conflict theory</i>. The second
+view recognizes the workings of a force whose nature
+we do not know, whose exhibitions accord perfectly with
+their external surroundings (or other exhibitions of itself),
+without being under their influence or more related
+to them, as effect to cause, than the notes of the
+musical octave or the colors of the spectrum are to each
+other. This is the <i>Harmonic theory</i>. In other words,
+the first principle deduces perfection from struggle and
+discord; the second, from the coincident progress of
+many parts, forming together a divine harmony comparable
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>to music. That these principles are both true
+is rendered extremely probable by the actual phenomena
+of development, material and immaterial. In other
+words, struggle and discord ever await that which is
+not in the advance, and which fails to keep pace with
+the harmonious development of the whole.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>All who have studied the phenomena of the creation
+believe that there exists in it a grand and noble harmony,
+such as was described to Job when he was told
+that “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons
+of God shouted for joy.”</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>α. Development of Intelligence.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>If the brain is the organ of mind, we may be surprised
+to find that the brain of the intelligent man
+scarcely differs in structure from that of the ape.
+Whence, then, the difference of power? Though no
+one will now deny that many of the Mammalia are
+capable of reasoning upon observed facts, yet how
+greatly the results of this capacity differ in number
+and importance from those achieved by human intelligence!
+Like water at the temperatures of 50° and 53°,
+where we perceive no difference in essential character,
+so between the brains of the lower and higher monkeys
+no difference of function or of intelligence is perceptible.
+But what a difference do the two degrees of temperature
+from 33° to 31° produce in water! In like manner
+the difference between the brain of the higher ape and
+that of man is accompanied by a difference in function
+and power, on which, man’s earthly destiny depends.
+In development, as with the water so with the higher
+ape: some Rubicon has been crossed, some floodgate
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>has been opened, which marks one of Nature’s great
+transitions, such as have been called “Expression
+points” of progress.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>What point of progress in such a history would account
+for this accession of the powers of the human intelligence?
+It has been answered, with considerable
+confidence, The power of speech. Let us picture man
+without speech. Each generation would learn nothing
+from its predecessors. Whatever originality or observation
+might yield to a man would die with him. Each intellectual
+life would begin where every other life began,
+and would end at a point only differing with its original
+capacity. Concert of action, by which man’s power
+over the material world is maintained, would not exceed,
+if it equaled, that which is seen among the bees; and
+the material results of his labors would not extend beyond
+securing the means of life and the employment of
+the simplest modes of defence and attack.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The first men, therefore, are looked upon by the developmentalists
+as extremely embryonic in all that characterizes
+humanity, and they appeal to the facts of history
+in support of this view. If they do not derive
+much assistance from written history, evidence is found
+in the more enduring relics of human handiwork.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The opposing view is, that the races which present
+or have presented this condition of inferiority or savagery
+have reached it by a process of degradation from
+a higher state—as some believe, through moral delinquency.
+This position may be true in certain cases,
+which represent perhaps a condition of senility, but in
+general we believe that savagery was the condition of
+the first man, which has in some races continued to the
+present day.</p>
+
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>
+  <h4 class='c026'><i>β. Evidence from Archæology.</i></h4>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c025'>As the object of the present essay is not to examine
+fully into the evidences for the theories of evolution here
+stated, but rather to give a sketch of such theories and
+their connection, a few facts only will be noticed.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><i>Improvement in the use of Materials.</i> As is well
+known, the remains of human handiwork of the earliest
+periods consist of nothing but rude implements of stone
+and bone, useful only in procuring food and preparing
+it for use. Even when enterprise extended beyond the
+ordinary routine, it was restrained by the want of proper
+instruments. Knives and other cutting implements of
+flint still attest the skill of the early races of men from
+Java to the Cape of Good Hope, from Egypt to Ireland,
+and through North and South America. Hatchets,
+spear-heads and ornaments of serpentine, granite, silex,
+clay slates, and all other suitable rock materials, are
+found to have been used by the first men, to the exclusion
+of metals, in most of the regions of the earth.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Later, the probably accidental discovery of the superiority
+of some of the metals resulted in the substitution
+of them for stone as a material for cutting implements.
+Copper—the only metal which, while malleable, is hard
+enough to bear an imperfect edge—was used by succeeding
+races in the Old World and the New. Implements
+of this material are found scattered over extensive
+regions. So desirable, however, did the hardening of
+the material appear for the improvement of the cutting
+edge that combinations with other metals were sought
+for and discovered. The alloy with tin, forming bronze
+and brass, was discovered and used in Europe, while
+that with silver appears to have been most readily produced
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>in America, and was consequently used by the
+Peruvians and other nations.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The discovery of the modes of reducing iron ores
+placed in the hands of man the best material for bringing
+to a shape, convenient for his needs the raw material
+of the world. All improvements in this direction
+made since that time have been in the quality of iron
+itself, and not through the introduction of any new
+metal.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The prevalent phenomena of any given period are
+those which give it its character, and by which we distinguish
+it. But this fact does not exclude the coëxistence
+of other phenomena belonging to prior or subsequent
+stages. Thus, during the many stages of human
+progress there have been men more or less in advance
+of the general body, and their characteristics have given
+a peculiar stamp to the later and higher condition of the
+whole. It furnishes no objection to this view that we
+find, as might have been anticipated, the stone, bronze
+and iron periods overlaping one another, or men of an
+inferior culture supplanting in some cases a superior
+people. A case of this kind is seen in North America,
+where the existing “Indians,” stone-men, have succeeded
+the mound-builders, copper-men. The successional relation
+of discoveries is all that it is necessary to prove,
+and this seems to be established.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The period at which the use of metallic implements
+was introduced is unknown, but Whitney says that the
+language of the Aryans, the ancestors of all the modern
+Indo-Europeans, indicates an acquaintance with such
+implements, though it is not certain whether those of
+iron are to be included. The dispersion of the daughter
+races, the Hindoos, the Pelasgi, Teutons, Celts, etc.,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>could not, it is thought, have taken place later than
+3000 <span class='fss'>B. C.</span>—a date seven hundred years prior, to that assigned
+by the old chronology to the Deluge. Those
+races coëxisted with the Egyptian and Chinese nations,
+already civilized, and as distinct from each other in
+feature as they are now.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><i>Improvement in Architecture.</i> The earliest periods,
+then, were characterized by the utmost simplicity of invention
+and construction. Later, the efforts for defence
+from enemies and for architectural display, which have
+always employed so much time and power, began to be
+made. The megalithic period has left traces over much
+of the earth. The great masses of stone piled on each
+other in the simplest form in Southern India, and the
+circles of stones planted on end in England at Stonehenge
+and Abury, and in Peru at Sillustani, are relics
+of that period. More complex are the great Himyaritic
+walls of Arabia, the works of the ancestors of the
+Phœnicians in Asia Minor, and the titanic workmanship
+of the Pelasgi in Greece and Italy. In the iron
+age we find granitic hills shaped or excavated into temples;
+as, for example, everywhere in Southern India.
+Near Madura the circumference of an acropolis-like hill
+is cut into a series of statues in high relief, of sixty feet
+in elevation. Easter Island, composed of two volcanic
+cones, one thousand miles from the west coast of South
+America, in the bosom of the Pacific, possesses several
+colossi cut from the intrusive basalt, some in high relief
+on the face of the rock, others in detached blocks removed
+by human art from their original positions and
+brought nearer the sea-shore.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Finally, at a more advanced stage, the more ornate
+and complex structures of Central America, of Cambodia,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>Nineveh and Egypt, represent the period of
+greatest display of architectural expenditure. The
+same amount of human force has perhaps never been
+expended in this direction since, though higher conceptions
+of beauty have been developed in architecture
+with increasing intellectuality.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Man has passed through the block-and-brick building
+period of his boyhood, and should rise to higher conceptions
+of what is the true disposition of power for
+“him who builds for aye,” and learn that “spectacle”
+is often the unwilling friend of progress.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>No traces of metallic implements have ever been
+found in the salt-mines of Armenia, the turquoise-quarries
+in Arabia, the cities of Central America or the excavations
+for mica in North Carolina, while the direct
+evidence points to the conclusion that in those places
+flint was exclusively used.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The simplest occupations, as requiring the least exercise
+of mind, are the pursuit of the chase and the tending
+of flocks and herds. Accordingly, we find our first
+parents engaged in these occupations. Cain, we are
+told, was, in addition, a tiller of the ground. Agriculture
+in its simplest forms requires but little more intelligence
+than the pursuits just mentioned, though no employment
+is capable of higher development. If we
+look at the savage nations at present occupying nearly
+half the land surface of the earth, we shall find many
+examples of the former industrial condition of our race
+preserved to the present day. Many of them had no
+knowledge of the use of metals until they obtained it
+from civilized men who visited them, while their pursuits
+were and are those of the chase, tending domestic
+animals, and rudimental agriculture.</p>
+
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>
+  <h4 class='c026'>γ. The Development of Language.</h4>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c025'>In this department the fact of development from the
+simple to the complex has been so satisfactorily demonstrated
+by philologists as scarcely to require notice here.
+The course of that development has been from monosyllabic
+to polysyllabic forms, and also in a process of
+differentiation, as derivative races were broken off from
+the original stock and scattered widely apart. The
+evidence is clear that simple words for distinct objects
+formed the bases of the primal languages, just as the
+ground, tree, sun and moon represent the character of
+the first words the infant lisps. In this department also
+the facts point to an infancy of the human race.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>δ. Development of the Fine Arts.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>If we look at representation by drawing or sculpture,
+we find that the efforts of the earliest races of which we
+have any knowledge were quite similar to those which
+the untaught hand of infancy traces on its slate or the
+savage depicts on the rocky faces of hills. The circle
+or triangle for the head and body, and straight lines for
+the limbs, have been preserved as the first attempts of
+the men of the stone period, as they are to this day the
+sole representations of the human form which the North
+American Indian places on his buffalo robe or mountain
+precipice. The stiff, barely-outlined form of the deer,
+the turtle, etc., are literally those of the infancy of civilized
+man.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The first attempts at sculpture were marred by the
+influence of modism. Thus the idols of Coban and
+Palenque, with human faces of some merit, are overloaded
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>with absurd ornament, and deformed into frightful
+asymmetry, in compliance with the demand of some
+imperious mode. In later days we have the stiff, conventionalized
+figures of the palaces of Nineveh and
+the temples of Egypt, where the representation of form
+has somewhat improved, but is too often distorted by
+false fashion or imitation of some unnatural standard,
+real or artistic. This is distinguished as the day of
+archaic sculpture, which disappeared with the Etruscan
+nation. So the drawings of the child, when he abandons
+the simple lines, are stiff and awkward, and but a
+stage nearer true representation; and how often does
+he repeat some peculiarity or absurdity of his own! So
+much easier is it to copy than to conceive.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The introduction of the action and pose of life into
+sculpture was not known before the early days of
+Greece, and it was there that the art was brought to
+perfection. When art rose from its mediæval slumber,
+much the same succession of development may be discovered.
+First, the stiff figures, with straightened limbs
+and cylindric drapery, found in the old Northern
+churches—then the forms of life that now adorn the
+porticoes and palaces of the cities of Germany.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>ε. Rationale of the Development of Intelligence.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>The history of material development shows that the
+transition from stage to stage of development, experienced
+by the most perfect forms of animals and plants
+in their growth from the primordial cell, is similar to the
+succession of created beings which the geological
+epochs produced. It also shows that the slow assumption
+of main characters in the line of succession in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>early geological periods produced the condition of inferiority,
+while an increased rapidity of growth in later
+days has resulted in an attainment of superiority. It is
+not to be supposed that in “acceleration” the period
+of growth is shortened: on the contrary, it continues
+the same. Of two beings whose characters are assumed
+at the same rate of succession, that with the quickest or
+shortest growth is necessarily inferior. “Acceleration”
+means a gradual increase of the rate of assumption of
+successive characters in the same period of time. A
+fixed rate of assumption of characters, with gradual increase
+in the length of the period of growth, would
+produce the same result—viz., a longer developmental
+scale and the attainment of an advanced position. The
+first is in part the relation of sexes of a species; the
+last of genera, and of other types of creation. If from
+an observed relation of many facts we derive a law, we
+are permitted, when we see in another class of facts
+similar relations, to suspect that a similar law has operated,
+differing only in its objects. We find a marked
+resemblance between the facts of structural progress
+in matter and the phenomena of intellectual and spiritual
+progress.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>If the facts entering into the categories enumerated
+in the preceding section bear us out, we conclude that
+in the beginning of human history the progress of the
+individual man was very slow, and that but little was
+attained to; that through the profitable direction of human
+energy, means were discovered from time to time
+by which the process of individual development in all
+metaphysical qualities has been accelerated; and that
+up to the present time the consequent advance of the
+whole race has been at an increasing rate of progress,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>This is in accordance with the general principle, that
+high development in intellectual things is accomplished
+by rapidity in traversing the preliminary stages of inferiority
+common to all, while low development signifies
+sluggishness in that progress, and a corresponding retention
+of inferiority.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>How much meaning may we not see, from this stand-point,
+in the history of the intelligence of our little
+ones! First they crawl, they walk on all fours: when
+they first assume the erect position they are generally
+speechless, and utter only inarticulate sounds. When
+they run about, stones and dirt, the objects that first
+meet the eye, are the delight of their awakening powers,
+but these are all cast aside when the boy obtains his
+first jackknife. Soon, however, reading and writing
+open a new world to him; and finally as a mature man
+he seizes the forces of nature, and steam and electricity
+do his bidding in the active pursuit of power for still
+better and higher ends.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>So with the history of the species: first the quadrumane—then
+the speaking man, whose humble industry
+was, however, confined to the objects that came first to
+hand, this being the “stone age” of pre-historic time.
+When the use of metals was discovered, the range of
+industries expanded wonderfully, and the “iron age”
+saw many striking efforts of human power. With the
+introduction of letters it became possible to record
+events and experiences, and the spread of knowledge
+was thereby greatly increased, and the delays and mistakes
+of ignorance correspondingly diminished in the
+fields of the world’s activity.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>From the first we see in history a slow advance as
+knowledge gained by the accumulation of tradition and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>by improvements in habit based on experience; but
+how slow was this advance while the use of the metals
+was still unknown! The iron age brought with it not
+only new conveniences, but increased means of future
+progress; and here we have an acceleration in the rate
+of advance. With the introduction of letters this rate
+was increased many fold, and in the application of steam
+we have a change equal in utility to any that has preceded
+it, and adding more than any to the possibilities
+of future advance in many directions. By its power,
+knowledge and means of happiness were to be distributed
+among the many.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The uses to which human intelligence has successively
+applied the materials furnished by nature have been—First,
+subsistence and defence: second, the accumulation
+of power in the shape of a representative of that
+labor which the use of matter involves; in other words,
+the accumulation of wealth. The possession of this
+power involves new possibilities, for opportunity is
+offered for the special pursuits of knowledge and the
+assistance of the weak or undeveloped part of mankind
+in its struggles.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus, while the first men possessed the power of
+speech, and could advance a little in knowledge through
+the accumulation of the experiences of their predecessors,
+they possessed no means of accumulating the
+power of labor, no control over the activity of numbers—in
+other words, no wealth.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the accumulation of knowledge finally brought
+this advance about. The extraction and utilization of
+the metals, especially iron, formed the most important
+step, since labor was thus facilitated and its productiveness
+increased in an incalculable degree. We have
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>little evidence of the existence of a medium of exchange
+during the first or stone period, and no doubt
+barter was the only form of trade. Before the use of
+metals, shells and other objects were used: remains of
+money of baked clay have been found in Mexico. Finally,
+though in still ancient times, the possession of
+wealth in money gradually became possible and more
+common, and from that day to this avenues for reaching
+this stage in social progress has ever been opening.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But wealth merely indicates a stage of progress, since
+it is but a comparative term. All men could not become
+rich, for in that case all would be equally poor. But
+labor has a still higher goal; for, thirdly, as capital, it
+constructs and employs machinery, which does the work
+of many hands, and thus cheapens products, which is
+equivalent in effect to an accumulation of wealth to the
+consumer. And this increase of power may be used
+for the intellectual and spiritual advance of men, or
+otherwise, at the will of the men thus favored. Machinery
+places man in the position of a creator, operating
+on Nature through an increased number of “secondary
+causes.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Development of intelligence is seen, then, in the
+following directions: First, in the knowledge of facts,
+including science; second, in language; third, in the
+apprehension of beauty; and, as consequences of the
+first of these, the accumulation of power by development—First,
+of means of subsistence; and second, of
+mechanical invention.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus we have two terms to start with in estimating
+the beginning of human development in knowledge and
+power: First, the primary capacities of the human mind
+itself; second, a material world, whose infinitely varied
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>components are so arranged as to yield results to the
+energies of that mind. For example, the transition
+points of vaporization and liquefaction are so placed as
+to be within the reach of man’s agents; their weights
+are so fixed as to accord with the muscular or other
+forces which he is able to exert; and other living organizations
+are subject to his convenience and rule, and
+not, as in previous geological periods, entirely beyond
+his control. These two terms being given, it is maintained
+that the present situation of the most civilized
+men has been attained through the operation of a law
+of mutual action and reaction—a law whose results,
+seen at the present time, have depended on the acceleration
+or retardation of its rate of action; which rate
+has been regulated, according to the degree in which a
+third great term, viz., the law of moral or (what is the
+same thing) true religious development has been combined
+in the plan. What it is necessary to establish in
+order to prove the above hypothesis is—</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I. That in each of the particulars above enumerated
+the development of the human species is similar to that
+of the individual from infancy to maturity.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>II. That from a condition of subserviency to the laws
+of matter, man’s intelligence enables him, by an accumulation
+of power, to become in a sense independent
+of those laws, and to increase greatly the rate of intellectual
+and spiritual progress.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>III. That failure to accomplish a moral or spiritual
+development will again reduce him to a subserviency to
+the laws of matter.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This brings us to the subject of moral development.
+And here I may be allowed to suggest that the weight
+of the evidence is opposed to the philosophy, “falsely
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>so called,” of necessitarianism, which asserts that the
+first two terms alone were sufficient to work out man’s
+salvation in this world and the next; and, on the other
+hand, to that anti-philosophy which asserts that all
+things in the progress of the human race, social and
+civil, are regulated by immediate Divine interposition
+instead of through instrumentalities. Hence the subject
+divides itself at once into two great departments—viz.,
+that of the development of mind or intelligence,
+and that of the development of morality.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>That these laws are distinct there can be no doubt,
+since in the individual man one of them may produce
+results without the aid of the other. Yet it can be
+shown that each is the most invaluable aid and stimulant
+to the other, and most favorable to the rapid
+advance of the mind in either direction.</p>
+<h3 class='c001'>III. <span class='sc'>Spiritual or Moral Development.</span></h3>
+
+<p class='c025'>In examining this subject, we first inquire (Sect. <i>α</i>)
+whether there is any connection between physical and
+moral or religious development; then (<i>β</i>), what indications
+of moral development may be derived from history.
+Finally (<i>γ</i>), a correlation of the results of these inquiries,
+with the nature of the religious development in the
+individual, is attempted. Of course in so stupendous
+an inquiry but a few leading points can be presented
+here.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>If it be true that the period of human existence on
+the earth has seen a gradually increasing predominance
+of higher motives over lower ones among the mass of
+mankind, and if any parts of our metaphysical being
+have been derived by inheritance from preëxistent
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>beings, we are incited to the inquiry whether any of the
+moral qualities are included among the latter; and
+whether there be any resemblance between moral and
+intellectual development.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus, if there have been a physical derivation from a
+preëxistent genus, and an embryonic condition of those
+physical characters which distinguish Homo—if there
+has been also an embryonic or infantile stage in intellectual
+qualities—we are led to inquire whether the
+development of the individual in moral nature will furnish
+us with a standard of estimation of the successive
+conditions or present relations of the human species in
+this aspect also.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'><i>a. Relations of Physical and Moral Nature.</i></h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>Although men are much alike in the deeper qualities
+of their nature, there is a range of variation which is
+best understood by a consideration of the extremes of
+such variation, as seen in men of different latitudes, and
+women and children.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>(<i>a.</i>) <i>In Children.</i> Youth is distinguished by a peculiarity,
+which no doubt depends upon an immature condition
+of the nervous center concerned, which might be
+called <i>nervous impressibility</i>. It is exhibited in a greater
+tendency to tearfulness, in timidity, less mental endurance,
+a greater facility in acquiring knowledge, and more
+ready susceptibility to the influence of sights, sounds
+and sensations. In both sexes the emotional nature
+predominates over the intelligence and judgment. In
+those years the <i>character</i> is said to be in embryo, and
+theologians in using the phrase, “reaching years of
+religious understanding,” mean that in early years the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>religious <i>capacities</i> undergo development coincidentally
+with those of the body.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>(<i>b.</i>) <i>In Women.</i> If we examine the metaphysical
+characteristics of women, we observe two classes of
+traits—namely, those which are also found in men, and
+those which are absent or but weakly developed in men.
+Those of the first class are very similar in essential
+nature to those which men exhibit at an early stage of
+development. This may be in some way related to the
+fact that physical maturity occurs earlier in women.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The gentler sex is characterized by a greater impressibility,
+often seen in the influence exercised by a
+stronger character, as well as by music, color or spectacle
+generally; warmth of emotion, submission to its
+influence rather than that of logic; timidity and irregularity
+of action in the outer world. All these qualities
+belong to the male sex, as a general rule, at some period
+of life, though different individuals lose them at very
+various periods. Ruggedness and sternness may rarely
+be developed in infancy, yet at some still prior time
+they certainly do not exist in any.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Probably most men can recollect some early period of
+their lives when the emotional nature predominated—a
+time when emotion at the sight of suffering was more
+easily stirred than in maturer years. I do not now
+allude to the benevolence inspired, kept alive or developed
+by the influence of the Christian religion on the
+heart, but rather to that which belongs to the natural
+man. Perhaps all men can recall a period of youth
+when they were hero-worshipers—when they felt the
+need of a stronger arm, and loved to look up to the
+powerful friend who could sympathize with and aid them.
+This is the “woman stage” of character: in a large
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>number of cases it is early passed; in some it lasts
+longer; while in a very few men it persists through life.
+Severe discipline and labor are unfavorable to its persistence.
+Luxury preserves its bad qualities without its
+good, while Christianity preserves its good elements
+without its bad.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It is not designed to say that woman in her emotional
+nature does not differ from the undeveloped man. On
+the contrary, though she does not differ in kind, she
+differs greatly in degree, for her qualities grow with her
+growth, and exceed in <i>power</i> many fold those exhibited
+by her companion at the original point of departure.
+Hence, since it might be said that man is the undeveloped
+woman, a word of explanation will be useful.
+Embryonic types abound in the fields of nature, but
+they are not therefore immature in the usual sense.
+Maintaining the lower essential quality, they yet exhibit
+the usual results of growth in individual characters;
+that is, increase of strength, powers of support and protection,
+size and beauty. In order to maintain that the
+masculine character coincides with that of the undeveloped
+woman, it would be necessary to show that the
+latter during her infancy possesses the male characters
+predominating—that is, unimpressibility, judgment,
+physical courage, and the like.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>If we look at the second class of female characters—namely,
+those which are imperfectly developed or
+absent in men, and in respect to which man may be
+called undeveloped woman—we note three prominent
+points: facility in language, tact or finesse, and the love
+of children. The first two appear to me to be altogether
+developed results of “impressibility,” already
+considered as an indication of immaturity. Imagination
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>is also a quality of impressibility, and, associated
+with finesse, is apt to degenerate into duplicity and untruthfulness.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The third quality is different. It generally appears
+at a very early period of life. Who does not know how
+soon the little girl selects the doll, and the boy the toy-horse
+or machine? Here man truly never gets beyond
+undeveloped woman. Nevertheless, “impressibility”
+seems to have a great deal to do with this quality also.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus the metaphysical relation of the sexes would
+appear to be one of <i>inexact parallelism</i>, as defined in
+Sect. I. That the physical relation is a remote one of
+the same kind, several characters seem to point out.
+The case of the vocal organs will suffice. Their structure
+is identical in both sexes in early youth, and both
+produce nearly similar sounds. They remain in this
+condition in the woman, while they undergo a metamorphosis
+and change both in structure and vocal
+power in the man. In the same way, in many of the
+lower creation, the females possess a majority of embryonic
+features, though not invariably. A common
+example is to be found in the plumage of birds, where
+the females and young males are often undistinguishable.<a id='r48' /><a href='#f48' class='c020'><sup>[48]</sup></a>
+But there are few points in the physical structure
+of man also in which the male condition is the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>immature one. In regard to structure, the point at
+which the relation between the sexes is that of <i>exact
+parallelism</i>, or where the mature condition of the one
+sex accords with the undeveloped condition of the
+other, is when reproduction is no longer accomplished
+by budding or gemmation, but requires distinct organs.
+Metaphysically, this relation is to be found where distinct
+individuality of the sexes first appears; that is,
+where we pass from the hermaphrodite to the bisexual
+condition.</p>
+
+<div class='footnote c027' id='f48'>
+<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r48'>48</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Meehan states that the upper limbs and strong laterals in coniferæ
+and other trees produce female flowers and cones, and the
+lower and more interior branches the male flowers. What he points
+out is in harmony with the position here maintained—namely,
+that the female characters include more of those which are embryonic
+in the males, than the male characters include of those which
+are embryonic in the female: the female flowers are the product of
+the younger and more growing portions of the tree—that is, those
+last produced (the upper limbs and new branches)—while the male
+flowers are produced by the older or more mature portions—that
+is, lower limbs or more axial regions.</p>
+
+<p class='c028'>Meehan’s observations coincide with those of Thury and others
+on the origin of sexes in animals and plants, which it appears to
+admit of a similar explanation.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c024'>But let us put the whole interpretation on this partial
+undevelopment of woman.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The types or conditions of organic life which have
+been the most prominent in the world’s history—the
+Ganoids of the first, the Dinosaurs of the second, and
+the Mammoths of the third period—have generally died
+with their day. The line of succession has not been
+from them. The law of anatomy and paleontology is,
+that we must seek the point of departure of the type
+which is to predominate in the future, at lower stages on
+the line, in less decided forms, or in what, in scientific
+parlance, are called generalized types. In the same
+way, though the adults of the tailless apes are in a
+physical sense more highly developed than their young,
+yet the latter far more closely resemble the human
+species in their large facial angle and shortened jaws.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>How much significance, then, is added to the law
+uttered by Christ!—“Except ye become as little children,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Submission
+of will, loving trust, confiding faith—these
+belong to the child: how strange they appear to the
+executing, commanding, reasoning man! Are they so
+strange to the woman? We all know the answer.
+Woman is nearer to the point of departure of that development
+which outlives time and peoples heaven; and
+if man would find it, he must retrace his steps, regain
+something he lost in youth, and join to the powers and
+energies of his character the submission, love and faith
+which the new birth alone can give.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus the summing up of the metaphysical qualities of
+woman would be thus expressed: In the emotional
+world, man’s superior; in the moral world, his equal;
+in the laboring world, his inferior.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>There are, however, vast differences in women in respect
+to the number of masculine traits they may have
+assumed before being determined into their own special
+development. Woman also, under the influence of necessity,
+in later years of life, may add more or less to
+those qualities in her which are fully developed in the
+man.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The relation of these facts to the principles stated as
+the two opposing laws of development is, it appears to
+me, to be explained thus: First, that woman’s most inherent
+peculiarities are <i>not</i> the result of the external
+circumstances with which she has been placed in contact,
+as the <i>conflict theory</i> would indicate. Such circumstances
+are said to be her involuntary subserviency to
+the physically more powerful man, and the effect of a
+compulsory mode of life in preventing her from attaining
+a position of equality in the activities of the world.
+Second, that they <i>are</i> the result of the different distributions
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span>of qualities as already indicated by the <i>harmonic
+theory</i> of development; that is, of the unequal possession
+of features which belong to different periods in the
+developmental succession of the highest. And here it
+might be further shown that this relation involves no
+disadvantage to either sex, but that the principle of
+compensation holds in moral organization and in social
+order, as elsewhere. There is then another beautiful
+harmony which will ever remain, let the development of
+each sex be extended as far as it may.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>(<i>c.</i>) <i>In Men.</i> If we look at the male sex, we shall
+find various exceptional approximations to the female in
+mental constitution. Further, there can be little doubt
+that in the Indo-European race maturity in some respects
+appears earlier in tropical than in northern
+regions; and though subject to many exceptions, this is
+sufficiently general to be looked upon as a rule. Accordingly,
+we find in that race—at least in the warmer
+regions of Europe and America—a larger proportion of
+certain qualities which are more universal in women;
+as greater activity of the emotional nature when compared
+with the judgment; an impressibility of the nervous
+center, which, <i>cæteris paribus</i>, appreciates quickly
+the harmonies of sound, form and color; answers most
+quickly to the friendly greeting or the hostile menace;
+is more careless of consequences in the material expression
+of generosity or hatred, and more indifferent to
+truth under the influence of personal relations. The
+movements of the body and expressions of the countenance
+answer to the temperament. More of grace and
+elegance in the bearing mark the Greek, the Italian
+and the Creole, than the German, the Englishman or the
+Green Mountain man. More of vivacity and fire, for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>better or for worse, are displayed in the countenance.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Perhaps the more northern type left all that behind
+in its youth. The rugged, angular character which appreciates
+force better than harmony, the strong intellect
+which delights in forethought and calculation, the less
+impressibility, reaching stolidity in the uneducated, are
+its well-known traits. If in such a character generosity
+is less prompt, and there is but little chivalry, there is
+persistency and unwavering fidelity, not readily interrupted
+by the lightning of passion or the dark surmises
+of an active imagination.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>All these peculiarities appear to result, <i>first</i>, from
+different degrees of quickness and depth in appreciating
+impressions from without; and, <i>second</i>, from differing
+degrees of attention to the intelligent judgment in consequent
+action. (I leave conscience out, as not belonging
+to the category of inherited qualities.)</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The first is the basis of an emotional nature, and the
+predominance of the second is the usual indication of
+maturity. That the first is largely dependent on an
+impressible condition of the nervous system can be asserted
+by those who reduce their nervous centers to a
+sensitive condition by a rapid consumption of the nutritive
+materials necessary to the production of thought-force,
+and perhaps of brain-tissue itself, induced by close
+and prolonged mental labor. The condition of over-work,
+though but an imitation of immaturity, without its
+joy-giving nutrition, is nevertheless very instructive.
+The sensitiveness, both physically, emotionally and morally,
+is often remarkable, and a weakening of the understanding
+is often coincident with it.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It is necessary here to introduce a caution, that the
+meaning of the words high and low be not misunderstood.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>Great impressibility is an essential constituent of many
+of the highest forms of genius, and the combination of
+this quality with strong reflective intelligence, constitutes
+the most complete and efficient type of mind—therefore
+the highest in the common sense. It is not, however,
+the highest—or extremest—in an evolutional
+sense, it is not masculine, but hermaphrodite; in other
+words, its <i>kinetic</i> force exceeds its <i>bathmic</i>.<a id='r49' /><a href='#f49' class='c020'><sup>[49]</sup></a> It is therefore
+certain that a partial diminution of bathmic vigor
+is an advantage to some kinds of intellect.</p>
+
+<div class='footnote c027' id='f49'>
+<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r49'>49</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><i>Bathmic force</i> is analogous to the <i>potential</i> force of chemists,
+but is no doubt entirely different in its nature. It is converted
+into active energy or <i>kinetic</i> force only during the years of growth:
+it is in large amount in <i>acceleration</i>, in small amount in <i>retardation</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c024'>The above observations have been confined to the
+Indo-European race. It may be objected to the theory
+that savagery means immaturity in the senses above
+described, as dependent largely on “impressibility,”
+while savages in general display the least “impressibility,”
+as that word is generally understood. This
+cannot be asserted of the Africans, who, so far as we
+know them, possess this peculiarity in a high degree.
+Moreover, it must be remembered that the state of indifference
+which precedes that of impressibility in the
+individual may characterize many savages; while their
+varied peculiarities may be largely accounted for by
+recollecting that many combinations of different species
+of emotions and kinds of intelligence go to make up
+the complete result in each case.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>(<i>d.</i>) <i>Conclusions.</i> Three types of religion may be
+selected from the developmental conditions of man:
+first, an absence of sensibility (early infancy); second,
+an emotional stage more productive of faith than of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>works; thirdly, an intellectual type, more favorable to
+works than to faith. Though in regard to responsibility
+these states may be equal, there is absolutely no gain to
+laboring humanity from the first type, and a serious loss
+in actual results from the second, taken alone, as compared
+with the third.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>These, then, are the <i>physical vehicles of religion</i>—the
+“<i>earthen vessels</i>” of Paul—which give character and
+tone to the deeper spiritual life, as the color of the
+transparent vessel is communicated to the light which
+radiates from within.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But if evolution has taken place, there is evidently a
+provision for the progress from the lower to the higher
+states, either in the education of circumstances (“conflict,”)
+or in the power of an interior spiritual influence
+“harmony,”) or both.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'><i>β. Evidence Derived from History.</i></h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>We trace the development of Morality in—First, the
+family or social order; second, the civil order, or government.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Whatever may have been the extent of moral ignorance
+before the Deluge, it does not appear that the
+earth was yet prepared for the permanent habitation of
+the human race. All nations preserve traditions of the
+drowning of the early peoples by floods, such as have
+occurred frequently during geologic time. At the close
+of each period of dry land, a period of submergence
+has set in, and the depression of the level of the earth,
+and consequent overflow by the sea, has caused the
+death and subsequent preservation of the remains of
+the fauna and flora living upon it, while the elevation of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>the same has produced that interruption in the process
+of deposit in the same region which marks the intervals
+between geologic periods. Change in these respects do
+not occur to any very material extent at the present
+time in the regions inhabited by the most highly developed
+portions of the human race; and as the last which
+occurred seems to have been expressly designed for the
+preparation of the earth’s surface for the occupation of
+organized human society, it may be doubted whether
+many such changes are to be looked for in the future.
+The last great flooding was that which stratified the
+drift materials of the north, and carried the finer portions
+far over the south, determining the minor topography
+of the surface and supplying it with soils.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The existence of floods which drowned many races
+of men may be considered as established. The men
+destroyed by the one recorded by Moses are described
+by him as exceedingly wicked, so that “the earth was
+filled with violence.” In his eyes the Flood was designed
+for their extermination.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>That their condition was evil must be fully believed
+if they were condemned by the executive of the Jewish
+law. This law, it will be remembered, permitted polygamy,
+slavery, revenge, aggressive war. The Jews were
+expected to rob their neighbors the Egyptians of jewels,
+and they were allowed “an eye for an eye and a tooth
+for a tooth.” They were expected to butcher other nations,
+with their women and children, their flocks and
+their herds. If we look at the lives of men recorded
+in the Old Testament as examples of distinguished excellence,
+we find that their standard, however superior
+to that of the people around them, would ill accord
+with the morality of the present day. They were all
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>polygamists, slaveholders and warriors. Abraham
+treated Hagar and Ishmael with inhumanity. Jacob,
+with his mother’s aid, deceived Isaac, and received
+thereby a blessing which extended to the whole Jewish
+nation. David, a man whom Paul tells us the Lord
+found to be after his own heart, slew the messenger who
+brought tidings of the death of Saul, and committed
+other acts which would stain the reputation of a Christian
+beyond redemption. It is scarcely necessary to
+turn to other nations if this be true of the chosen men
+of a chosen people. History indeed presents us with
+no people prior to, or contemporary with, the Jews who
+were not morally their inferiors.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>If we turn to more modern periods, an examination
+of the morality of Greece and Rome reveals a curious
+intermixture of lower and higher moral conditions.
+While each of these nations produced excellent moralists,
+the influence of their teachings was not sufficient
+to elevate the masses above what would now be regarded
+as a very low standard. The popularity of those scenes
+of cruelty, the gladiatorial shows and the combats with
+wild beasts, sufficiently attests this. The Roman virtue
+of patriotism, while productive of many noble deeds, is
+in itself far from being a disinterested one, but partakes
+rather of the nature of partisanship and selfishness. If
+the Greeks were superior to the Romans in humanity,
+they were apparently their inferiors in the social virtues,
+and were much below the standard of Christian nations
+in both respects.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Ancient history points to a state of chronic war, in
+which the social relations were in confusion, and the
+development of the useful arts was almost impossible.
+Savage races, which continue to this day in a similar
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>moral condition, are, we may easily believe, most unhappy.
+They are generally divided into tribes, which
+are mutually hostile, or friendly only with the view of
+injuring some other tribe. Might is their law, and robbery,
+rapine and murder express their mutual relations.
+This is the history of the lowest grade of barbarism,
+and the history of primeval man so far as it has come
+down to us in sacred and profane records. Man as a
+species first appears in history as a sinful being. Then
+a race maintaining a contest with the prevailing corruption
+and exhibiting a higher moral ideal is presented to
+us in Jewish history. Finally, early Christian society
+exhibits a greatly superior condition of things. In it
+polygamy scarcely existed, and slavery and war were
+condemned. But progress did not end here, for our
+Lord said, “I have yet many things to say unto you,
+<i>but ye cannot bear them now</i>. Howbeit, when He, the
+spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The progress revealed to us by history is truly great,
+and if a similar difference existed between the first of
+the human species and the first of whose condition we
+have information, we can conceive how low the origin
+must have been. History begins with a considerable
+progress in civilization, and from this we must infer a
+long preceding period of human existence, such as a
+gradual evolution would require.</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>γ. Rationale of Moral Development.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>I. <i>Of the Species.</i> Let us now look at the moral condition
+of the infant man of the present time. We know
+his small accountability, his trust, his innocence. We
+know that he is free from the law that when he “would
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>do good, evil is present with him,” for good and evil
+are alike unknown. We know that until growth has
+progressed to a certain degree he fully deserves the
+praise pronounced by Our Saviour, that “of such is the
+kingdom of heaven.” Growth, however, generally sees
+a change. We know that the buddings of evil appear
+but too soon: the lapse of a few months sees exhibitions
+of anger, disobedience, malice, falsehood, and
+their attendants—the fruit of a corruption within not
+manifested before.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In early youth it may be said that moral susceptibility
+is often in inverse ratio to physical vigor. But
+with growth the more physically vigorous are often
+sooner taught the lessons of life, for their energy brings
+them into earlier conflict with the antagonisms and contradictions
+of the world. Here is a beautiful example
+of the benevolent principle of compensation.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>1. <i>Innocence and the Fall.</i> If physical evolution be a
+reality, we have reason to believe that the infantile
+stage of human morals, as well as of human intellect,
+was much prolonged in the history of our first parents.
+This constitutes the period of human purity, when we
+are told by Moses that the first pair dwelt in Eden.
+But the growth to maturity saw the development of all
+the qualities inherited from the irresponsible denizen of
+the forest. Man inherits from his predecessors in the
+creation the buddings of reason: he inherits passions,
+propensities and appetites. His corruption is that of
+his animal progenitors, and his sin is the low and bestial
+instinct of the brute creation. Thus only is the origin
+of sin made clear—a problem which the pride of man
+would have explained in any other way had it been
+possible.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>But how startling the exhibition of evil by this new
+being as compared with the scenes of the countless ages
+already past! Then the right of the strongest was
+God’s law, and rapine and destruction were the history
+of life. But into man had been “breathed the breath
+of life,” and he had “become a living soul.” The law
+of right, the Divine Spirit, was planted within him, and
+the laws of the beast were in antagonism to that law.
+The natural development of his inherited qualities
+necessarily brought him into collision with that higher
+standard planted within him, and that war was commenced
+which shall never cease “till He hath put all
+things under His feet.” The first act of man’s disobedience
+constituted the Fall, and with it would come the
+first <i>intellectual</i> “knowledge of good and of evil”—an
+apprehension up to that time derived exclusively
+from the divinity within, or conscience.<a id='r50' /><a href='#f50' class='c020'><sup>[50]</sup></a></p>
+
+<div class='footnote c027' id='f50'>
+<p class='c028'><span class='label'><a href='#r50'>50</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>In our present translation of Genesis, the Fall is ascribed to
+the influence of Satan assuming the form of the serpent, and this
+animal was cursed in consequence, and compelled to assume a
+prone position. This rendering may well be revised, since serpents,
+prone like others, existed in both America and Europe during the
+Eocene epoch, five times as great a period before Adam as has
+elapsed since his day. Clark states, with great probability, that
+“serpent” should be translated monkey or ape—a conclusion, it
+will be observed, exactly coinciding with our inductions on the basis
+of evolution. The instigation to evil by an ape merely states inheritance
+in another form. His curse, then, refers to the retention
+of the horizontal position by all other quadrumana, as we find it
+at the present day.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c024'>2. <i>Free Agency.</i> Heretofore development had been
+that of physical types, but the Lord had rested on the
+seventh day, for man closed the line of the physical
+creation. Now a new development was to begin—the
+development of mind, of morality and of grace.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>On the previous days of Creation all had progressed
+in accordance with inevitable law apart from its objects.
+Now two lines of development were at the disposal of
+this being, between which his <i>free will</i> was to choose.
+Did he choose the courses dictated by the spirit of the
+brute, he was to be subject to the old law of the brute
+creation—the right of the strongest and spiritual death.
+Did he choose the guidance of the Divine Guest in his
+heart, he became subject to the laws which are to guide—I.
+the human species to an ultimate perfection, so far
+as consistent with this world; and II. the individual
+man to a higher life, where a new existence awaits him
+as a spiritual being, freed from the laws of terrestrial
+matter.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The charge brought against the theory of development,
+that it implies a necessary progress of man to all
+perfection without his coöperation—or <i>necessitarianism</i>,
+as it is called—is unfounded.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The free will of man remains the source alike of his
+progress and his relapse. But the choice once made,
+the laws of spiritual development are apparently as inevitable
+as those of matter. Thus men whose religious
+capacities are increased by attention to the Divine Monitor
+within are in the advance of progress—progress
+coinciding with that which in material things is called
+the <i>harmonic</i>. On the other hand, those whose motives
+are of the lower origin fall under the working of the
+law of <i>conflict</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The lesson derivable from the preceding considerations
+would seem to be “necessitarian” as respects the
+whole human race, considered by itself; and I believe
+it is to be truly so interpreted. That is, the Creator of
+all things has set agencies at work which will slowly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>develop a perfect humanity out of His lower creation,
+and nothing can thwart the process or alter the result.
+“My word shall not return unto Me void, but it shall
+accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in
+the thing whereto I sent it.” This is our great encouragement,
+our noblest hope—second only to that which
+looks to a blessed inheritance in another world. It is
+this thought that should inspire the farmer, who as he
+toils wonders, “Why all this labor? The Good Father
+could have made me like the lilies, who, though they
+toil not, neither spin, are yet clothed in glory; and why
+should I, a nobler being, be subject to the dust and the
+sweat of labor?” This thought should enlighten every
+artisan of the thousands that people the factories and
+guide their whirling machinery in our modern cities.
+Every revolution of a wheel is moving the car of progress,
+and the timed stroke of the crank and the
+rhythmic throw of the shuttle are but the music the
+spheres have sung since time began. A new significance
+then appears in the prayer of David: “Let the beauty
+of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish Thou the
+work of our hands upon us: the work of our hands,
+O Lord, establish Thou it.” But beware of the catastrophe,
+for “He will sit as a refiner:” “the wheat shall
+be gathered into barns, but the chaff shall be burned
+with unquenchable fire.” If this be true, let us look
+for—</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>3. <i>The Extinction of Evil.</i> How is necessitarianism
+to be reconciled with free will? It appears to me, thus:
+When a being whose safety depends on the perfection
+of a system of laws abandons the system by which he
+lives, he becomes subject to that lower grade of laws
+which govern lower intelligences. Man, falling from
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>the laws of right, comes under the dominion of the
+laws of brute force; as said our Saviour: “Salt is good,
+but if the salt have lost his savor, it is thenceforth good
+for nothing but to be cast forth and trodden under foot
+of men.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Evil, being unsatisfying to the human heart, is in its
+nature ever progressive, whether in the individual or the
+nation; and in estimating the practical results to man
+of the actions prompted by the lower portion of our
+nature, it is only necessary to carry out to its full development
+each of those animal qualities which may in certain
+states of society be restrained by the social system.
+In human history those qualities have repeatedly had
+this development, and the battle of progress is fought
+to decide whether they shall overthrow the system that
+restrains them, or be overthrown by it.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Entire obedience to the lower instincts of our nature
+ensures destruction to the weaker, and generally to the
+stronger also. A most marked case of this kind is seen
+where the developed vices of civilization are introduced
+among a savage people—as, for example, the North
+American Indians. These seem in consequence to be
+hastening to extinction.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But a system or a circuit of existence has been
+allotted to the civil associations of the animal species
+man, independently of his moral development. It may
+be briefly stated thus: Races begin as poor offshoots or
+emigrants from a parent stock. The law of labor develops
+their powers, and increases their wealth and
+numbers. These will be diminished by their various
+vices; but on the whole, in proportion as the intellectual
+and economical elements prevail, wealth will increase;
+that is, they accumulate power. When this has
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>been accomplished, and before activity has slackened
+its speed, the nation has reached the culminating point,
+and then it enters upon the period of decline. The restraints
+imposed by economy and active occupation being
+removed, the beastly traits find in accumulated
+power only increased means of gratification, and industry
+and prosperity sink together. Power is squandered,
+little is accumulated, and the nation goes down to its
+extinction amid scenes of internal strife and vice. Its
+cycle is soon fulfilled, and other nations, fresh from
+scenes of labor, assault it, absorb its fragments, and it
+dies. This has been the world’s history, and it remains
+to be seen whether the virtues of the nations now existing
+will be sufficient to save them from a like fate.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus the history of the animal man in nations is
+wonderfully like that of the type or families of the animal
+and vegetable kingdoms during geologic ages.
+They rise, they increase and reach a period of multiplication
+and power. The force allotted to them becoming
+exhausted, they diminish and sink and die.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>II. <i>Of the Individual.</i> In discussing physical development,
+we are as yet compelled to restrict ourselves to
+the evidence of its existence and some laws observed in
+the operation of its causative force. What that force
+is, or what are its primary laws, we know not.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>So in the progress of moral development we endeavor
+to prove its existence and the mode of its operation,
+but why that mode should exist, rather than some other
+mode, we cannot explain.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The moral progress of the species depends, of course,
+on the moral progress of the individuals embraced in it.
+Religion is the sum of those influences which determine
+the motives of men’s actions into harmony with the Divine
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>perfection and the Divine will. Obedience to these
+influences constitutes the practice of religion, while the
+statement of the growth and operation of these influences
+constitutes the theory of religion, or doctrine.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The Divine Spirit planted in man shows him that
+which is in harmony with the Divine Mind, and it remains
+for his free will to conform to it or reject it. This
+harmony is man’s highest ideal of happiness, and in
+seeking it, as well as in desiring to flee from dissonance
+or pain, he but obeys the disposition common to all
+conscious beings. If, however, he attempts to conform
+to it, he will find the law of evil present, and frequently
+obtaining the mastery. If now he be in any degree observing,
+he will find that the laws of morality and right
+are the only ones by which human society exists in a
+condition superior to that of the lower animals, and in
+which the capacities of man for happiness can approach
+a state of satisfaction. He may be then said to be
+“awakened” to the importance of religion. If he carry
+on the struggle to attain to the high goal presented to
+his spiritual vision, he will be deeply grieved and humbled
+at his failures: then he is said to be “convicted.”
+Under these circumstances the necessity of a deliverance
+becomes clear, and is willingly accepted in the
+only way in which it has pleased the Author of all to
+present it, which has been epitomized by Paul as “the
+washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit
+through Jesus Christ.” Thus a life of advanced and
+ever-advancing moral excellence becomes possible, and
+the man makes nearer approaches to the “image of
+God.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus is opened a new era in spiritual development,
+which we are led to believe leads to an ultimate condition
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>in which the nature inherited from our origin is entirely
+overcome, and an existence of moral perfection
+entered on. Thus in the book of Mark the simile occurs:
+“First the blade, then the ear, after that the full
+corn in the ear;” and Solomon says that the development
+of righteousness “shines more and more unto the
+perfect day.”</p>
+
+<h4 class='c026'>δ. Summary.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>If it be true that general development in morality
+proceeds in spite of the original predominance of evil
+in the world, through the self-destructive nature of the
+latter, it is only necessary to examine the reasons why
+the excellence of the good may have been subject also
+to progress, and how the remainder of the race may
+have been influenced thereby.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The development of morality is then probably to be
+understood in the following sense: Since the Divine
+Spirit, as the prime force in moral progress, cannot in
+itself be supposed to have been in any way under
+the influence of natural laws, its capacities were no
+doubt as eternal and unerring in the first man as in the
+last. But the facts and probabilities discussed above
+point to development of <i>religious sensibility</i>, or capacity
+to appreciate moral good, or to receive impressions from
+the source of good.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The evidence of this is supposed to be seen in—<i>First</i>,
+improvement in man’s views of his duty to his
+neighbor; and <i>Second</i>, the substitution of spiritual for
+symbolic religions: in other words, improvement in the
+capacity for receiving spiritual impressions.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>What the primary cause of this supposed development
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>of religious sensibility may have been, is a question
+we reverently leave untouched. That it is intimately
+connected in some way with, and in part
+dependent on, the evolution of the intelligence, appears
+very probable: for this evolution is seen—<i>First</i>,
+in a better understanding of the consequences of action,
+and of good and of evil in many things; and <i>Second</i>, in
+the production of means for the spread of the special
+instrumentalities of good. The following may be enumerated
+as such instrumentalities:</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>1. Furnishing literary means of record and distribution
+of the truths of religion, morality and science.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>2. Creating and increasing modes of transportation
+of teachers and literary means of disseminating truth.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>3. Facilitating the migration and the spread of nations
+holding the highest position in the scale of
+morality.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>4. The increase of wealth, which multiplies the extent
+of the preceding means.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And now, let no man attempt to set bounds to this
+development. Let no man say even that morality accomplished
+is all that is required of mankind, since
+that is not necessarily the evidence of a spiritual development.
+If a man possess the capacity for progress
+beyond the condition in which he finds himself, in refusing
+to enter upon it he declines to conform to the
+Divine law. And “from those to whom little is given,
+little is required, but from those to whom much is given,
+much shall be required.”</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c029'>
+    <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span><span class='c022'><i>SCIENTIFIC ADDRESSES.</i></span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c006' />
+</div>
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'><span class='sc'>Tyndall’s Addresses.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<h3 class='c001'>I.<br /> <br /><i>On the Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation.</i></h3>
+
+<p class='c025'>The celebrated Fichte, in his lectures on the “Vocation
+of the Scholar,” insisted on a culture for the scholar
+which should not be one-sided, but all-sided. His intellectual
+nature was to expand spherically, and not in a
+single direction. In one direction, however, Fichte required
+that the scholar should apply himself directly to
+nature, become a creator of knowledge, and thus repay,
+by original labors of his own, the immense debt he owed
+to the labors of others. It was these which enabled him
+to supplement the knowledge derived from his own researches,
+so as to render his culture rounded, and not
+one-sided.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Fichte’s idea is to some extent illustrated by the constitution
+and the labors of the British Association. We
+have here a body of men engaged in the pursuit of natural
+knowledge, but variously engaged. While sympathizing
+with each of its departments, and supplementing
+his culture by knowledge drawn from all of them,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>each student amongst us selects one subject for the exercise
+of his own original faculty—one line along which
+he may carry the light of his private intelligence a little
+way into the darkness by which all knowledge is surrounded.
+Thus, the geologist faces the rocks; the biologist
+fronts the conditions and phenomena of life; the
+astronomer, stellar masses and motions; the mathematician
+the properties of space and number; the chemist
+pursues his atoms, while the physical investigator has
+his own large field in optical, thermal, electrical, acoustical,
+and other phenomena. The British Association,
+then, faces nature on all sides, and pushes knowledge
+centrifugally outwards, while, through circumstance or
+natural bent, each of its working members takes up a
+certain line of research in which he aspires to be an
+original producer, being content in all other directions
+to accept instruction from his fellow-men. The sum of
+our labors constitutes what Fichte might call the sphere
+of natural knowledge. In the meetings of the Association
+it is found necessary to resolve this sphere into its
+component parts, which take concrete form under the
+respective letters of our sections.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This section (A) is called the Mathematical and Physical
+section. Mathematics and Physics have been long
+accustomed to coalesce, and hence this grouping. For
+while mathematics, as a product of the human mind, is
+self-sustaining and nobly self-rewarding,—while the pure
+mathematician may never trouble his mind with considerations
+regarding the phenomena of the material universe,
+still the form of reasoning which he employs, the
+power which the organization of that reasoning confers,
+the applicability of his abstract conceptions to actual
+phenomena, render his science one of the most potent
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>instruments in the solution of natural problems. Indeed,
+without mathematics, expressed or implied, our
+knowledge of physical science would be friable in the
+extreme.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Side by side with the mathematical method, we have
+the method of experiment. Here, from a starting-point
+furnished by his own researches or those of others, the
+investigator proceeds by combining intuition and verification.
+He ponders the knowledge he possesses and
+tries to push it further, he guesses and checks his guess,
+he conjectures and confirms or explodes his conjecture.
+These guesses and conjectures are by no means leaps in
+the dark; for knowledge once gained casts a faint light
+beyond its own immediate boundaries. There is no discovery
+so limited as not to illuminate something beyond
+itself. The force of intellectual penetration into this
+penumbral region which surrounds actual knowledge is
+not dependent upon method, but is proportional to the
+genius of the investigator. There is, however, no genius
+so gifted as not to need control and verification. The
+profoundest minds know best that nature’s ways are not
+at all times their ways, and that the brightest flashes in
+the world of thought are incomplete until they have
+been proved to have their counterparts in the world of
+fact. The vocation of the true experimentalist is the
+incessant correction and realization of his insight; his
+experiments finally constituting a body, of which his
+purified intuitions are, as it were, the soul.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Partly through mathematical, and partly through experimental
+research, physical science has of late years
+assumed a momentous position in the world. Both in
+a material and in an intellectual point of view it has produced,
+and it is destined to produce, immense changes,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>vast social ameliorations, and vast alterations in the
+popular conception of the origin, rule, and governance
+of things. Miracles are wrought by science in the physical
+world, while philosophy is forsaking its ancient metaphysical
+channels, and pursuing those opened or indicated
+by scientific research. This must become more and
+more the case as philosophic writers become more deeply
+imbued with the methods of science, better acquainted
+with the facts which scientific men have won, and with
+the great theories which they have elaborated.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour
+and minute-hands, and possibly also a second-hand,
+moving over the graduated dial. Why do these hands
+move, and why are their relative motions such as they
+are observed to be? These questions cannot be answered
+without opening the watch, mastering its various
+parts, and ascertaining their relationship to each other.
+When this is done, we find that the observed motion of
+the hands follows of necessity from the inner mechanism
+of the watch when acted upon by the force invested in
+the spring.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This motion of the hands may be called a phenomenon
+of art, but the case is similar with the phenomena
+of Nature. These also have their inner mechanism, and
+their store of force to set that mechanism going. The
+ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this
+mechanism, to discern this store, and to show that from
+the combined action of both, the phenomena of which
+they constitute the basis must of necessity flow.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I thought that an attempt to give you even a brief and
+sketchy illustration of the manner in which scientific
+thinkers regard this problem would not be uninteresting
+to you on the present occasion; more especially as it
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>will give me occasion to say a word or two on the tendencies
+and limits of modern science, to point out the
+region which men of science claim as their own, and
+where it is mere waste of time to oppose their advance,
+and also to define, if possible, the bourne between this
+and that other region to which the questionings and
+yearnings of the scientific intellect are directed in vain.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the
+American Emerson, I think, who said that it is hardly
+possible to state any truth strongly without apparent injury
+to some other truth. Under the circumstances, the
+proper course appears to be to state both truths strongly,
+and allow each its fair share, in the formation of the resultant
+conviction. For truth is often of a dual character,
+taking the form of a magnet with two poles; and
+many of the differences which agitate the thinking part
+of mankind are to be traced to the exclusiveness with
+which different parties affirm one half of the duality in
+forgetfulness of the other half. But this waiting for the
+statement of the two sides of a question implies patience.
+It implies a resolution to suppress indignation if
+the statement of the one half should clash with our convictions,
+and not to suffer ourselves to be unduly elated
+if the half-statement should chime in with our views.
+It implies a determination to wait calmly for the statement
+of the whole before we pronounce judgment either
+in the form of acquiescence or dissent.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This premised, let us enter upon our task. There
+have been writers who affirmed that the pyramids of
+Egypt were the productions of nature; and in his early
+youth Alexander Von Humboldt wrote an essay with
+the express object of refuting this notion. We now regard
+the pyramids as the work of men’s hands, aided
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>probably by machinery of which no record remains.
+We picture to ourselves the swarming workers toiling at
+those vast erections, lifting the inert stones, and, guided
+by the volition, the skill, and possibly at times by the
+whip of the architect, placing the stones in their proper
+positions. The blocks in this case were moved by a
+power external to themselves, and the final form of the
+pyramid expressed the thought of its human builder.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Let us pass from this illustration of building power to
+another of a different kind. When a solution of common
+salt is slowly evaporated, the water which holds the
+salt in solution disappears, but the salt itself remains
+behind. At a certain stage of concentration, the salt
+can no longer retain the liquid form; its particles, or
+molecules, as they are called, begin to deposit themselves
+as minute solids, so minute, indeed, as to defy all
+microscopic power. As evaporation continues solidification
+goes on, and we finally obtain, through the clustering
+together of innumerable molecules, a finite mass
+of salt of a definite form. What is this form? It sometimes
+seems a mimicry of the architecture of Egypt.
+We have little pyramids built by the salt, terrace above
+terrace from base to apex, forming thus a series of steps
+resembling those up which the Egyptian traveler is
+dragged by his guides. The human mind is as little disposed
+to look at these pyramidal salt-crystals without
+further question as to look at the pyramids of Egypt
+without inquiring whence they came. How, then, are
+those salt pyramids built up?</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Guided by analogy, you may suppose that, swarming
+among the constituent molecules of the salt, there is an
+invisible population, guided and coerced by some invisible
+master, and placing the atomic blocks in their positions.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>This, however, is not the scientific idea, nor do
+I think your good sense will accept it as a likely one.
+The scientific idea is that the molecules act upon each
+other without the intervention of slave labor; that they
+attract each other and repel each other at certain
+definite points, and in certain definite directions; and
+that the pyramidal form is the result of this play of attraction
+and repulsion. While, then, the blocks of
+Egypt were laid down by a power external to themselves,
+these molecular blocks of salt are self-posited,
+being fixed in their places by the forces with which they
+act upon each other.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I take common salt as an illustration, because it is so
+familiar to us all; but almost any other substance would
+answer my purpose equally well. In fact, throughout
+inorganic nature, we have this formative power, as
+Fichte would call it—this structural energy ready to
+come into play, and build the ultimate particles of matter
+into definite shapes. It is present everywhere. The
+ice of our winters and of our polar regions is its hand-work,
+and so equally are the quartz, feldspar, and mica
+of our rocks. Our chalk-beds are for the most part
+composed of minute shells, which are also the product
+of structural energy; but behind the shell, as a whole,
+lies the result of another and more subtle formative act.
+These shells are built up of little crystals of calc-spar,
+and to form these the structural force had to deal with
+the intangible molecules of carbonate of lime. This tendency
+on the part of matter to organize itself, to grow
+into shape, to assume definite forms in obedience to the
+definite action of force, is, as I have said, all-pervading.
+It is in the ground on which you tread, in the water you
+drink, in the air you breathe. Incipient life, in fact,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span>manifests itself throughout the whole of what we call
+inorganic nature.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The forms of minerals resulting from this play of
+forces are various, and exhibit different degrees of complexity.
+Men of science avail themselves of all possible
+means of exploring this molecular architecture. For
+this purpose they employ in turn as agents of exploration,
+light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and sound.
+Polarized light is especially useful and powerful here.
+A beam of such light, when sent in among the molecules
+of a crystal, is acted on by them, and from this action
+we infer with more or less of clearness the manner
+in which the molecules are arranged. The difference,
+for example, between the inner structure of a plate of
+rock-salt and a plate of crystalized sugar or sugar-candy
+is thus strikingly revealed. These differences may be
+made to display themselves in phenomena of color of
+great splendor, the play of molecular force being so regulated
+as to remove certain of the colored constituents
+of white light, and to leave others with increased intensity
+behind.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And now let us pass from what we are accustomed to
+regard as a dead mineral to a living grain of corn.
+When it is examined by polarized light, chromatic phenomena
+similar to those noticed in crystals are observed.
+And why? Because the architecture of the grain resembles
+in some degree the architecture of the crystal.
+In the corn the molecules are also set in definite positions,
+from which they act upon the light. But what
+has built together the molecules of the corn? I have
+already said, regarding crystalline architecture, that you
+may, if you please, consider the atoms and molecules to
+be placed in position by a power external to themselves.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>The same hypothesis is open to you now. But, if in the
+case of crystals you have rejected this notion of an external
+architect, I think you are bound to reject it now,
+and to conclude that the molecules of the corn are self-posited
+by the forces with which they act upon each
+other. It would be poor philosophy to invoke an external
+agent in the one case and to reject it in the other.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Instead of cutting our grain into thin slices and subjecting
+it to the action of polarized light, let us place it
+in the earth and subject it to a certain degree of warmth.
+In other words, let the molecules, both of the corn and
+of the surrounding earth, be kept in a state of agitation;
+for warmth, as most of you know, is, in the eye of
+science, tremulous molecular motion. Under these circumstances,
+the grain and the substances which surround
+it interact, and a molecular architecture is the result of
+this interaction. A bud is formed; this bud reaches
+the surface, where it is exposed to the sun’s rays, which
+are also to be regarded as a kind of vibratory motion.
+And as the common motion of heat with which the grain
+and the substances surrounding it were first endowed,
+enable the grain and these substances to coalesce, so the
+specific motion of the sun’s rays now enables the green
+bud to feed upon the carbonic acid and the aqueous
+vapor of the air, appropriating those constituents of
+both for which the blade has an elective attraction, and
+permitting the other constituent to resume its place in
+the air. Thus forces are active at the root, forces are
+active in the blade, the matter of the earth and the
+matter of the atmosphere are drawn towards the plant,
+and the plant augments in size. We have in succession,
+the bud, the stalk, the ear, the full corn in the ear. For
+the forces here at play act in a cycle, which is completed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>by the production of grains similar to that with which
+the process began.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily
+eludes the power of mind as we know it. An intellect
+the same kind as our own, would, if only sufficiently expanded,
+be able to follow the whole process from beginning
+to end. No entirely new intellectual faculty would
+be needed for this purpose. The duly expanded mind
+would see in the process and its consummation an instance
+of the play of molecular force. It would see
+every molecule placed in its position by the specific attractions
+and repulsions exerted between it and other
+molecules. Nay, given the grain and its environment,
+an intellect the same in kind as our own, but sufficiently
+expanded, might trace out <i>à priori</i> every step of the process,
+and by the application of mechanical principles
+would be able to demonstrate that the cycle of actions
+must end, as it is seen to end, in the reproduction of
+forms like that with which the operation began. A similar
+necessity rules here to that which rules the planets
+in their circuits round the sun.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>You will notice that I am stating my truth strongly,
+as at the beginning we agreed it should be stated. But
+I must go still further, and affirm that in the eye of
+science the animal body is just as much the product of
+molecular force as the stalk and ear of corn, or as the
+crystal of salt or sugar. Many of its parts are obviously
+mechanical. Take the human heart, for example, with
+its exquisite system of valves, or take the eye or the
+hand. Animal heat, moreover, is the same in kind as
+the heat of a fire, being produced by the same chemical
+process. Animal motion, too, is as directly derived
+from the food of the animal, as the motion of Trevethyck’s
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span>walking-engine from the fuel in its furnace. As
+regards matter, the animal body creates nothing; as regards
+force, it creates nothing. Which of you by taking
+thought can add one cubit to his stature? All that
+has been said regarding the plant may be re-stated with
+regard to the animal. Every particle that enters into
+the composition of the muscle, a nerve, or a bone, has
+been placed in its position by molecular force. And
+unless the existence of law in these matters be denied,
+and the element of caprice be introduced, we must conclude
+that, given the relation of any molecule of the
+body to its environment, its position in the body might
+be predicted. Our difficulty is not with the quality of
+the problem, but with its complexity; and this difficulty
+might be met by the simple expansion of the faculties
+which man now possesses. Given this expansion, and
+given the necessary molecular data, and the chick might
+be deduced as rigorously and as logically from the egg
+as the existence of Neptune was deduced from the disturbances
+of Uranus, or as conical refraction was deduced
+from the undulatory theory of light.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>You see I am not mincing matters, but avowing
+nakedly what many scientific thinkers more or less distinctly
+believe. The formation of a crystal, a plant, or
+an animal, is in their eyes a purely mechanical problem,
+which differs from the problems of ordinary mechanics in
+the smallness of the masses and the complexity of the
+processes involved. Here you have one half of our
+dual truth; let us now glance at the other half. Associated
+with this wonderful mechanism of the animal
+body we have phenomena no less certain than those of
+physics, but between which and the mechanism we discern
+no necessary connection. A man, for example,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_230'>230</span>can say I feel, I think, I love; but how does consciousness
+infuse itself into the problem? The human brain
+is said to be the organ of thought and feeling; when
+we are hurt the brain feels it, when we ponder it is the
+brain that thinks, when our passions or affections are
+excited it is through the instrumentality of the brain.
+Let us endeavor to be a little more precise here. I
+hardly imagine that any profound scientific thinker who
+has reflected upon the subject exists, who would not admit
+the extreme probability of the hypothesis, that for
+every fact of consciousness, whether in the domain of
+sense, of thought, or of emotion, a certain definite
+molecular condition is set up in the brain; that this relation
+of physics to consciousness is invariable, so that,
+given the state of the brain, the corresponding thought
+or feeling might be inferred; or, given the thought or
+feeling, the corresponding state of the brain might be
+inferred. But how inferred? It is at bottom not a case
+of logical inference at all, but of empirical association.
+You may reply that many of the inferences of science
+are of this character; the inference, for example, that
+an electric current of a given direction will deflect a
+magnetic needle in a definite way; but the cases differ
+in this, that the passage from the current to the needle,
+if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain
+no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem;
+but the passage from the physics of the brain to
+the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable.
+Granted that a definite thought and a definite
+molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we
+do not possess the intellectual organ, nor, apparently,
+any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to
+pass by a process of reasoning from the one phenomenon
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>to the other. They appear together, but we do not
+know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded,
+strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and
+feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable
+of following all their motions, all their groupings, all
+their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we
+intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of
+thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from
+the solution of the problem. “How are these physical
+processes connected with the facts of consciousness?”
+The chasm between the two classes of phenomena
+would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the
+consciousness of love, for example, be associated with
+a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the
+brain, and the consciousness of hate with a left-handed
+spiral motion. We should then know when we love
+that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate
+that the motion is in the other; but the “<span class='fss'>WHY?</span>” would
+still remain unanswered.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical,
+and that thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative
+in the physics of the brain, I think the position
+of the “Materialist” is stated as far as that position is
+a tenable one. I think the materialist will be able
+finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but
+I do not think, as the human mind is at present constituted,
+that he can pass beyond it. I do not think he is
+entitled to say that his molecular groupings and his
+molecular motions explain everything. In reality they
+explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the association
+of two classes of phenomena of whose real bond
+of union he is in absolute ignorance. The problem of
+the connection of the body and soul is as insoluble in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>its modern form as it was in the pre-scientific ages.
+Phosphorus is known to enter into the composition of
+the human brain, and a courageous writer has exclaimed,
+in his trenchant German, “Ohne phosphor kein gedanke.”
+That may or may not be the case; but even if
+we knew it to be the case, the knowledge would not
+lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone here
+assigned to the materialist he is equally helpless. If
+you ask him whence is this “matter” of which we have
+been discoursing, who or what divided it into molecules,
+who or what impressed upon them this necessity of running
+into organic forms, he has no answer. Science
+also is mute in reply to these questions. But if the
+materialist is confounded, and science rendered dumb,
+who else is entitled to answer? To whom has the
+secret been revealed? Let us lower our heads and acknowledge
+our ignorance, one and all. Perhaps the
+mystery may resolve itself into knowledge at some
+future day. The process of things upon this earth has
+been one of amelioration. It is a long way from the
+Iguanodon and his contemporaries to the president and
+members of the British Association. And whether we
+regard the improvement from the scientific or from the
+theological point of view as the result of progressive
+development, or as the result of successive exhibitions
+of creative energy, neither view entitles us to assume
+that man’s present faculties end the series—that the
+process of amelioration stops at him. A time may
+therefore come when this ultra-scientific region by which
+we are now enfolded may offer itself to terrestrial, if
+not to human investigation. Two-thirds of the rays
+emitted by the sun fail to arouse in the eye the sense of
+vision. The rays exist, but the visual organ requisite
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>for their translation into light does not exist. And so
+from this region of darkness and mystery which surrounds
+us, rays may now be darting which require but
+the development of the proper intellectual organs to
+translate them into knowledge as far surpassing ours as
+ours does that of the wallowing reptiles which once
+held possession of this planet. Meanwhile the mystery
+is not without its uses. It certainly may be made a
+power in the human soul; but it is a power which has
+feeling, not knowledge, for its base. It may be, and
+will be, and we hope is turned to account, both in steadying
+and strengthening the intellect, and in rescuing man
+from that littleness to which, in the struggle for existence
+or for precedence in the world, he is continually
+prone.</p>
+
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>
+  <h3 class='c001'>II.</h3>
+</div>
+<h4 class='c026'>On Haze and Dust.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>Solar light in passing through a dark room reveals its
+track by illuminating the dust floating in the air. “The
+sun,” says Daniel Culverwell, “discovers atomes, though
+they be invisible by candle-light, and makes them dance
+naked in his beams.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In my researches on the decomposition of vapors by
+light, I was compelled to remove these “atomes” and
+this dust. It was essential that the space containing
+the vapors should embrace no visible thing; that no
+substance capable of scattering the light in the slightest
+sensible degree should, at the outset of an experiment,
+be found in the “experimental tube” traversed by the
+luminous beam.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>For a long time I was troubled by the appearance
+there of floating dust, which, though invisible in diffuse
+daylight, was at once revealed by a powerfully condensed
+beam. Two tubes were placed in succession in the
+path of the dust: the one containing fragments of glass
+wetted with concentrated sulphuric acid; the other,
+fragments of marble wetted with a strong solution of
+caustic potash. To my astonishment it passed through
+both. The air of the Royal Institution, sent through
+these tubes at a rate sufficiently slow to dry it and to remove
+its carbonic acid, carried into the experimental
+tube a considerable amount of mechanically-suspended
+matter, which was illuminated when the beam passed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>through the tube. The effect was substantially the
+same when the air was permitted to bubble through the
+liquid acid and through the solution of potash.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Thus, on the 5th of October, 1868, successive charges
+of air were admitted through the potash and sulphuric
+acid into the exhausted experimental tube. Prior to the
+admission of the air the tube was <i>optically empty</i>; it contained
+nothing competent to scatter the light. After
+the air had entered the tube, the conical track of the
+electric beam was in all cases clearly revealed. This,
+indeed, was a daily observation at the time to which I
+now refer.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I tried to intercept this floating matter in various
+ways; and on the day just mentioned, prior to sending
+the air through the drying apparatus, I carefully permitted
+it to pass over the tip of a spirit-lamp flame.
+The floating matter no longer appeared, having been
+burnt up by the flame. It was, therefore, <i>organic matter</i>.
+When the air was sent too rapidly through the flame, a
+fine blue cloud was found in the experimental tube.
+This was the <i>smoke</i> of the organic particles. I was by
+no means prepared for this result; for I had thought,
+with the rest of the world, that the dust of our air was,
+in great part, inorganic and non-combustible.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Mr. Valentin had the kindness to procure for me a
+small gas-furnace, containing a platinum tube, which
+could be heated to vivid redness. The tube also contained
+a roll of platinum gauze, which, while it permitted
+the air to pass through it, insured the practical
+contact of the dust with the incandescent metal. The
+air of the laboratory was permitted to enter the experimental
+tube, sometimes through the cold, and sometimes
+through the heated tube of platinum. The rapidity
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>of admission was also varied. In the first column
+of the following table the quantity of air operated on is
+expressed by the number of inches which the mercury
+gauge of the air-pump sank when the air entered. In
+the second column the condition of the platinum tube is
+mentioned, and in the third the state of the air which
+entered the experimental tube.</p>
+
+<div class='std-table c030'>
+
+<table class='table1' summary=''>
+<colgroup>
+<col width='22%' />
+<col width='34%' />
+<col width='43%' />
+</colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c031'><br />Quantity<br />of Air.</th>
+    <th class='c031'>State of<br />Platinum<br />Tube.</th>
+    <th class='c032'>State of<br />Experimental<br /> Tube.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Cold</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Full of particles.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Optically empty.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Cold</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Full of particles.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Optically empty.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Cold</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Full of particles.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Optically empty.</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c033'>The phrase “optically empty” shows that when the
+conditions of perfect combustion were present, the floating
+matter totally disappeared. It was wholly burnt up,
+leaving not a trace of residue. From spectrum analysis,
+however, we know that soda floats in the air; these organic
+dust particles are, I believe, the <i>rafts</i> that support
+it, and when they are removed it sinks and vanishes.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>When the passage of the air was so rapid as to render
+imperfect the combustion of the floating matter, instead
+of optical emptiness a fine blue cloud made its appearance
+in the experimental tube. The following
+series of results illustrate this point:</p>
+<div class='std-table c030'>
+
+<table class='table2' summary=''>
+<colgroup>
+<col width='31%' />
+<col width='31%' />
+<col width='37%' />
+</colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c031'><span class='small'>Quantity.</span></th>
+    <th class='c031'><span class='small'>Platinum Tube.</span></th>
+    <th class='c032'><span class='small'>Experimental Tube.</span></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches, slow</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Cold</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Full of particles.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches, slow</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>
+    <td class='c032'>Optically empty.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches, quick</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Red-hot</td>
+    <td class='c032'>A blue cloud.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>15 inches, quick</td>
+    <td class='c031'>Intensely hot</td>
+    <td class='c032'>A fine blue cloud.</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c033'>The optical character of these clouds was totally different
+from that of the dust which produced them. At
+right angles to the illuminating beam they discharged
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>perfectly polarized light The cloud could be utterly
+quenched by a transparent Nicol’s prism, and the tube
+containing it reduced to optical emptiness.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The particles floating in the air of London being thus
+proved to be organic, I sought to burn them up at the
+focus of a concave reflector. One of the powerfully
+convergent mirrors employed in my experiments on
+combustion by dark rays was here made use of, but I
+failed in the attempt. Doubtless the floating particles
+are in part transparent to radiant heat, and are so far
+incombustible by such heat. Their rapid motion through
+the focus also aids their escape. They do not linger
+there sufficiently long to be consumed. A flame it was
+evident would burn them up, but I thought the presence
+of the flame would mask its own action among the particles.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In a cylindrical beam, which powerfully illuminated
+the dust of the laboratory, was placed an ignited spirit-lamp.
+Mingling with the flame, and round its rim, were
+seen wreaths of darkness resembling an intensely black
+smoke. On lowering the flame below the beam the
+same dark masses stormed upwards. They were at times
+blacker than the blackest smoke that I have ever seen
+issuing from the funnel of a steamer, and their resemblance
+to smoke was so perfect as to lead the most practiced
+observer to conclude that the apparently pure
+flame of the alcohol lamp required but a beam of sufficient
+intensity to reveal its clouds of liberated carbon.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But is the blackness smoke? The question presented
+itself in a moment. A red-hot poker was placed underneath
+the beam, and from it the black wreaths also
+ascended. A large hydrogen flame was next employed,
+and it produced those whirling masses of darkness far
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>more copiously than either the spirit-flame or poker.
+Smoke was, therefore, out of the question.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>What, then, was the blackness? It was simply that
+of stellar space; that is to say, blackness resulting from
+the absence from the track of the beam of all matter
+competent to scatter its light. When the flame was
+placed below the beam the floating matter was destroyed
+<i>in situ</i>; and the air, freed from this matter, rose into the
+beam, jostled aside the illuminated particles and substituted
+for their light the darkness due to its own perfect
+transparency. Nothing could more forcibly illustrate
+the invisibility of the agent which renders all things visible.
+The beam crossed, unseen, the black chasm formed
+by the transparent air, while at both sides of the gap
+the thick-strewn particles shone out like a luminous solid
+under the powerful illumination.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But here a difficulty meets us. It is not necessary to
+burn the particles to produce a stream of darkness.
+Without actual combustion, currents may be generated
+which shall exclude the floating matter, and therefore
+appear dark amid the surrounding brightness. I noticed
+this effect first on placing a red-hot copper ball below
+the beam, and permitting it to remain there until its
+temperature had fallen below that of boiling water.
+The dark currents, though much enfeebled, were still
+produced. They may also be produced by a flask filled
+with hot water.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>To study this effect a platinum wire was stretched
+across the beam, the two ends of the wire being connected
+with the two poles of a voltaic battery. To regulate
+the strength of the current a rheostat was placed
+in the circuit. Beginning with a feeble current the
+temperature of the wire was gradually augmented, but
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>before it reached the heat of ignition, a flat stream of
+air rose from it, which when looked at edgeways appeared
+darker and sharper than one of the blackest
+lines of Fraunhofer in the solar spectrum. Right and
+left of this dark vertical band the floating matter rose
+upwards, bounding definitely the non-luminous stream
+of air. What is the explanation? Simply this. The
+hot wire rarefied the air in contact with it, but it did not
+equally lighten the floating matter. The convection
+current of pure air therefore passed upwards <i>among the
+particles</i>, dragging them after it right and left, but forming
+between them an impassable black partition. In
+this way we render an account of the dark currents produced
+by bodies at a temperature below that of combustion.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, so prepared
+as to exclude all floating particles, produce the
+darkness when poured or blown into the beam. Coal-gas
+does the same. An ordinary glass shade placed in
+the air with its mouth downwards permits the track of
+the beam to be seen crossing it. Let coal-gas or hydrogen
+enter the shade by a tube reaching to its top, the
+gas gradually fills the shade from the top downwards.
+As soon as it occupies the space crossed by the beam,
+the luminous track is instantly abolished. Lifting the
+shade so as to bring the common boundary of gas and
+air above the beam, the track flashes forth. After the
+shade is full, if it be inverted, the gas passes upwards
+like a black smoke among the illuminated particles.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The air of our London rooms is loaded with this organic
+dust, nor is the country air free from its pollution.
+However ordinary daylight may permit it to disguise
+itself, a sufficiently powerful beam causes the air in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>which the dust is suspended to appear as a semi-solid
+rather than as a gas. Nobody could, in the first instance,
+without repugnance place the mouth at the
+illuminated focus of the electric beam and inhale the
+dirt revealed there. Nor is the disgust abolished by the
+reflection that, although we do not see the nastiness, we
+are churning it in our lungs every hour and minute of
+our lives. There is no respite to this contact with dirt;
+and the wonder is, not that we should from time to time
+suffer from its presence, but that so small a portion of
+it would appear to be deadly to man.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And what is this portion? It was some time ago the
+current belief that epidemic diseases generally were propagated
+by a kind of malaria, which consisted of organic
+matter in a state of <i>motor-decay</i>; that when such
+matter was taken into the body through the lungs or
+skin, it had the power of spreading there the destroying
+process which had attacked itself. Such a spreading
+power was visibly exerted in the case of yeast. A little
+leaven was seen to leaven the whole lump, a mere speck
+of matter in this supposed state of decomposition being
+apparently competent to propagate indefinitely its own
+decay. Why should not a bit of rotten malaria work in
+a similar manner within the human frame? In 1836 a
+very wonderful reply was given to this question. In
+that year Cagniard de la Tour discovered the <i>yeast plant</i>,
+a living organism, which, when placed in a proper
+medium, feeds, grows, and reproduces itself, and in this
+way carries on the process which we name fermentation.
+Fermentation was thus proved to be a product of life
+instead of a process of decay.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Schwann, of Berlin, discovered the yeast plant independently,
+and in February, 1837, he also announced the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>important result, that when a decoction of meat is effectually
+screened from ordinary air, and supplied solely
+with air which has been raised to a high temperature,
+putrefaction never sets in. Putrefaction, therefore, he
+affirmed to be caused by something derived from the air,
+which something could be destroyed by a sufficiently
+high temperature. The experiments of Schwann were
+repeated and confirmed by Helmholtz and Ure. But
+as regards fermentation, the minds of chemists, influenced
+probably by the great authority of Gay-Lussac,
+who ascribed putrefaction to the action of oxygen, fell
+back upon the old notion of matter in a state of decay.
+It was not the living yeast plant, but the dead or dying
+parts of it, which, assailed by oxygen, produced the fermentation.
+This notion was finally exploded by Pasteur.
+He proved that the so-called “ferments” are not such;
+that the true ferments are organized beings which find
+in the reputed ferments their necessary food.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Side by side with these researches and discoveries, and
+fortified by them and others, has run the <i>germ theory</i> of
+epidemic disease. The notion was expressed by Kircher,
+and favored by Linnæus, that epidemic diseases are due
+to germs which float in the atmosphere, enter the body,
+and produce disturbance by the development within the
+body of parasitic life. While it was still struggling
+against great odds, this theory found an expounder and
+a defender in the President of this Institution. At a
+time when most of his medical brethren considered
+it a wild dream, Sir Henry Holland contended that
+some form of the germ theory was probably true. The
+strength of this theory consists in the perfect parallelism
+of the phenomena of contagious disease with those of
+life. As a planted acorn gives birth to an oak competent
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span>to produce a whole crop of acorns, each gifted with
+the power of reproducing its parent tree, and as thus
+from a single seedling a whole forest may spring, so
+these epidemic diseases literally plant their seeds, grow,
+and shake abroad new germs, which, meeting in the
+human body their proper food and temperature, finally
+take possession of whole populations. Thus Asiatic
+cholera, beginning in a small way in the Delta of the
+Ganges, contrived in seventeen years to spread itself
+over nearly the whole habitable world. The development
+from an infinitesimal speck of the virus of small-pox
+of a crop of pustules, each charged with the original
+poison, is another illustration. The reappearance
+of the scourge, as in the case of the <i>Dreadnought</i> at
+Greenwich, reported on so ably by Dr. Budd and Mr.
+Busk, receives a satisfactory explanation from the theory
+which ascribes it to the lingering of germs about the infected
+place.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Surgeons have long known the danger of permitting
+air to enter an open abscess. To prevent its entrance
+they employ a tube called a cannula, to which is attached
+a sharp steel point called a trocar. They puncture
+with the steel point, and by gentle pressure they
+force the pus through the cannula. It is necessary to
+be very careful in cleansing the instrument; and it is
+difficult to see how it can be cleansed by ordinary
+methods in air loaded with organic impurities, as we
+have proved our air to be. The instrument ought, in
+fact, to be made as hot as its temper will bear. But
+this is not done, and hence, notwithstanding all the surgeon’s
+care, inflammation often sets in after the first operation,
+rendering necessary a second and a third.
+Rapid putrefaction is found to accompany this new inflammation.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span>The pus, moreover, which was sweet at
+first, and showed no trace of animal life, is now fetid,
+and swarming with active little organisms called vibrios.
+Prof. Lister, from whose recent lecture this fact is derived,
+contends, with every show of reason, that this
+rapid putrefaction and this astounding development of
+animal life are due to the entry of germs into the abscess
+during the first operation, and their subsequent nurture
+and development under favorable conditions of food and
+temperature. The celebrated physiologist and physicist,
+Helmholtz, is attacked annually by hay-fever. From
+the 20th of May to the end of June he suffers from a
+catarrh of the upper air-passages; and he has found
+during this period, and at no other, that his nasal secretions
+are peopled by these vibrios. They appear to
+nestle by preference in the cavities and recesses of the
+nose, for a strong sneeze is necessary to dislodge them.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>These statements sound uncomfortable; but by disclosing
+our enemy they enable us to fight him. When
+he clearly eyes his quarry the eagle’s strength is doubled,
+and his swoop is rendered sure. If the germ theory be
+proved true, it will give a definiteness to our efforts to
+stamp out disease which they could not previously possess.
+And it is only by definite effort under its guidance
+that its truth or falsehood can be established. It
+is difficult for an outsider like myself to read without
+sympathetic emotion such papers as those of Dr. Budd,
+of Bristol, on cholera, scarlet-fever, and small-pox. He
+is a man of strong imagination, and may occasionally
+take a flight beyond his facts; but without this dynamic
+heat of heart, the stolid inertia of the free-born Briton
+cannot be overcome. And as long as the heat is employed
+to warm up the truth without singeing it overmuch;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_244'>244</span>as long as this enthusiasm can overmatch its
+mistakes by unequivocal examples of success, so long
+am I disposed to give it a fair field to work in, and to
+wish it God speed.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But let us return to our dust. It is needless to remark
+that it cannot be blown away by an ordinary bellows;
+or, more correctly, the place of the particles
+blown away is in this case supplied by others ejected
+from the bellows, so that the track of the beam remains
+unimpaired. But if the nozzle of a good bellows be
+filled with cotton wool not too tightly packed, the air
+urged through the wool is filtered of its floating matter,
+and it then forms a clean band of darkness in the illuminated
+dust. This was the filter used by Schroëder in
+his experiments on spontaneous generation, and turned
+subsequently to account in the excellent researches of
+Pasteur. Since 1868 I have constantly employed it
+myself.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But by far the most interesting and important illustration
+of this filtering process is furnished by the human
+breath. I fill my lungs with ordinary air and
+breathe through a glass tube across the electric beam.
+The condensation of the aqueous vapor of the breath is
+shown by the formation of a luminous white cloud of
+delicate texture. It is necessary to abolish this cloud,
+and this may be done by drying the breath previous to
+its entering into the beam; or still more simply, by
+warming the glass tube. When this is done the luminous
+track of the beam is for a time uninterrupted. The
+breath impresses upon the floating matter a transverse motion,
+but the dust from the lungs makes good the particles
+displaced. But after some time an obscure disc appears
+upon the beam, the darkness of which increases, until
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span>finally, towards the end of the expiration, the beam is,
+as it were, pierced by an intensely black hole, in which
+no particles whatever can be discerned. The air, in
+fact, has so lodged its dirt within the lungs as to render
+the last portions of the expired breath absolutely free
+from suspended matter. This experiment may be repeated
+any number of times with the same result. It
+renders the distribution of the dirt within the lungs as
+manifest as if the chest were transparent.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I now empty my lungs as perfectly as possible, and
+placing a handful of cotton wool against my mouth and
+nostrils, inhale through it. There is no difficulty in
+thus filling the lungs with air. On expiring this air
+through the glass tube, its freedom from floating matter
+is at once manifest. From the very beginning of the
+act of expiration the beam is pierced by a black aperture.
+The first puff from the lungs abolishes the illuminated
+dust and puts a patch of darkness in its place,
+and the darkness continues throughout the entire course
+of the expiration. When the tube is placed below the
+beam and moved to and fro, the same smoke-like appearance
+as that obtained with a flame is observed. In
+short, the cotton wool, when used in sufficient quantity,
+completely intercepts the floating matter on its way to
+the lungs.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And here we have revealed to us the true philosophy
+of a practice followed by medical men, more from instinct
+than from actual knowledge. In a contagious atmosphere
+the physician places a handkerchief to his
+mouth and inhales through it. In doing so he unconsciously
+holds back the dirt and germs of the air. If the
+poison were a gas it would not be thus intercepted.
+On showing this experiment with the cotton wool to Dr.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span>Bence Jones, he immediately repeated it with a silk
+handkerchief. The result was substantially the same,
+though, as might be expected, the wool is by far the
+surest filter. The application of these experiments is
+obvious. If a physician wishes to hold back from the
+lungs of his patient, or from his own, the germs by
+which contagious disease is said to be propagated, he
+will employ a cotton wool respirator. After the revelations
+of this evening, such respirators must, I think,
+come into general use as a defence against contagion.
+In the crowded dwellings of the London poor, where
+the isolation of the sick is difficult, if not impossible,
+the noxious air around the patient may, by this simple
+means, be restored to practical purity. Thus filtered,
+attendants may breathe the air unharmed. In all probability
+the protection of the lungs will be protection
+of the entire system. For it is exceedingly
+probable that the germs which lodge in the air-passages,
+and which, at their leisure, can work their
+way across the mucous membrane, are those which sow
+in the body epidemic disease. If this be so, then
+disease can certainly be warded off by filters of cotton
+wool. I should be most willing to test their efficacy in
+my own person. And time will decide whether in lung
+diseases also the woolen respirator cannot abate irritation,
+if not arrest decay. By its means, so far as the
+germs are concerned, the air of the highest Alps may
+be brought into the chamber of the invalid.</p>
+
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span>
+  <h3 class='c001'>III.</h3>
+</div>
+<h4 class='c026'>Scientific Use of the Imagination.</h4>
+
+<p class='c025'>I carried with me to the Alps this year the heavy burden
+of this evening’s work. In the way of new investigation
+I had nothing complete enough to be brought
+before you; so all that remained to me was to fall back
+upon such residues as I could find in the depths of consciousness,
+and out of them to spin the fiber and weave
+the web of this discourse. Save from memory I had no
+direct aid upon the mountains; but to spur up the emotions,
+on which so much depends, as well as to nourish
+indirectly the intellect and will, I took with me two
+volumes of poetry, Goethe’s “Farbenlehre,” and the work
+on “Logic” recently published by Mr. Alexander Bain.
+The spur, I am sorry to say, was no match for the integument
+of dullness it had to pierce.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In Goethe, so glorious otherwise, I chiefly noticed the
+self-inflicted hurts of genius, as it broke itself in vain
+against the philosophy of Newton. For a time Mr.
+Bain became my principal companion. I found him
+learned and practical, shining generally with a dry light,
+but exhibiting at times a flush of emotional strength,
+which proved that even logicians share the common fire
+of humanity. He interested me most when he became
+the mirror of my own condition. Neither intellectually
+nor socially is it good for man to be alone, and the
+griefs of thought are more patiently borne when we find
+that they have been experienced by another. From certain
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>passages in his book I could infer that Mr. Bain
+was no stranger to such sorrows. Take this passage as
+an illustration. Speaking of the ebb of intellectual
+force which we all from time to time experience, Mr.
+Bain says: “The uncertainty where to look for the next
+opening of discovery brings the pain of conflict and the
+debility of indecision.” These words have in them the
+true ring of personal experience.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The action of the investigator is periodic. He grapples
+with a subject of inquiry, wrestles with it, overcomes
+it, exhausts, it may be, both himself and it for
+the time being. He breathes a space, and then renews
+the struggle in another field. Now this period of halting
+between two investigations is not always one of pure
+repose. It is often a period of doubt and discomfort,
+of gloom and ennui. “The uncertainty where to look
+for the next opening of discovery brings the pain of conflict
+and the debility of indecision.” Such was my precise
+condition in the Alps this year; in a score of words
+Mr. Bain has here sketched my mental diagnosis; and
+it was under these evil circumstances that I had to
+equip myself for the hour and the ordeal that are now
+come.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Gladly, however, as I should have seen this duty in
+other hands, I could by no means shrink from it. Disloyalty
+would have been worse than failure. In some
+fashion or other—feebly or strongly, meanly or manfully,
+on the higher levels of thought, or on the flats of commonplace—the
+task had to be accomplished. I looked
+in various directions for help and furtherance; but without
+me for a time I saw only “antres vast,” and within
+me “deserts idle.” My case resembled that of a sick
+doctor who had forgotten his art, and sorely needed the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>prescription of a friend. Mr. Bain wrote one for me.
+He said: “Your present knowledge must forge the links
+of connection between what has been already achieved
+and what is now required.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In these words he admonished me to review the past
+and recover from it the broken ends of former investigations.
+I tried to do so. Previous to going to Switzerland
+I had been thinking much of light and heat, of
+magnetism and electricity, of organic germs, atoms,
+molecules, spontaneous generation, comets and skies.
+With one or another of these I now sought to re-form
+an alliance, and finally succeeded in establishing a kind
+of cohesion between thought and light. The wish grew
+within me to trace, and to enable you to trace, some of
+the more occult operations of this agent. I wished, if
+possible, to take you behind the drop-scene of the senses,
+and to show you the hidden mechanism of optical
+action. For I take it to be well worth the while of the
+scientific teacher to take some pains, and even great
+pains, to make those whom he addresses co-partners of
+his thoughts. To clear his own mind in the first place
+from all haze and vagueness, and then to project into
+language which shall leave no mistake as to his meaning—which
+shall leave even his errors naked—the definite
+ideas he has shaped.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>A great deal is, I think, possible to scientific exposition
+conducted in this way. It is possible, I believe,
+even before an audience like the present, to uncover to
+some extent the unseen things of nature, and thus to
+give, not only to professed students, but to others with
+the necessary bias, industry and capacity, an intelligent
+interest in the operations of science. Time and labor
+are necessary to this result, but science is the gainer
+from the public sympathy thus created.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>How then are those hidden things to be revealed?
+How, for example, are we to lay hold of the physical
+basis of light, since, like that of life itself, it lies entirely
+without the domain of the senses? Now, philosophers
+may be right in affirming that we cannot transcend experience.
+But we can, at all events, carry it a long way
+from its origin. We can also magnify, diminish, qualify,
+and combine experiences, so as to render them fit for
+purposes entirely new. We are gifted with the power of
+imagination, combining what the Germans called <i>Anschauungsgabe</i>
+and <i>Einbildungskraft</i>, and by this power
+we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world
+of the senses.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>There are tories even in science who regard imagination
+as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than
+employed. They had observed its action in weak vessels
+and were unduly impressed by its disasters. But
+they might with equal justice point to exploded boilers
+as an argument against the use of steam. Bounded and
+conditioned by coöperant reason, imagination becomes
+the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer.
+Newton’s passage from a falling apple to a falling moon
+was a leap of the imagination. When William Thomson
+tries to place the ultimate particles of matter between
+his compass points, and to apply to them a scale
+of millimeters, it is an exercise of the imagination.
+And in much that has been recently said about protoplasm
+and life, we have the outgoings of the imagination
+guided and controlled by the known analogies of science.
+In fact, without this power our knowledge of nature
+would be a mere tabulation of coëxistences and sequences.
+We should still believe in the succession of day and
+night, of summer and winter; but the soul of force
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>would be dislodged from our universe; casual relations
+would disappear, and with them that science which is
+now binding the parts of nature to an organic whole.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I should like to illustrate by a few simple instances
+the use that scientific men have already made of this
+power of imagination, and to indicate afterwards some
+of the further uses that they are likely to make of it.
+Let us begin with the rudimentary experiences. Observe
+the falling of heavy rain drops into a tranquil pond.
+Each drop as it strikes the water becomes a center of
+disturbance, from which a series of ring ripples expands
+outwards. Gravity and inertia are the agents by which
+this wave motion is produced, and a rough experiment
+will suffice to show that the rate of propagation does
+not amount to a foot a second.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>A series of slight mechanical shocks is experienced
+by a body plunged in the water as the wavelets reach it
+in succession. But a finer motion is at the same time
+set up and propagated. If the head and ears be immersed
+in the water, as in an experiment of Franklin’s,
+the shock of the drop is communicated to the auditory
+nerve—the <i>tick</i> of the drop is heard. Now this
+sonorous impulse is propagated, not at the rate of a
+foot a second, but at the rate of 4,700 feet a
+second. In this case it is not the gravity but the
+<i>elasticity</i> of the water that is the urging force. Every
+liquid particle pushed against its neighbor delivers up
+its motion with extreme rapidity, and the pulse is propagated
+as a thrill. The incompressibility of water, as
+illustrated by the famous Florentine experiment, is a
+measure of its elasticity, and to the possession of this
+property in so high a degree the rapid transmission of
+a sound-pulse through water is to be ascribed.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span>But water, as you know, is not necessary to the conduction
+of sound; air is its most common vehicle. And
+you know that when the air possesses the particular
+density and elasticity corresponding to the temperature
+of freezing water, the velocity of sound in it is 1,090 feet
+a second. It is almost exactly one-fourth of the velocity
+in water; the reason being that though the greater
+weight of the water tends to diminish the velocity, the
+enormous molecular elasticity of the liquid far more
+than atones for the disadvantage due to weight. By
+various contrivances we can compel the vibrations of
+the air to declare themselves; we know the length and
+frequency of sonorous waves, and we have also obtained
+great mastery over the various methods by which the
+air is thrown into vibration. We know the phenomena
+and laws of vibrating rods, of organ pipes, strings,
+membranes, plates, and bells. We can abolish one
+sound by another. We know the physical meaning of
+music and noise, of harmony and discord. In short, as
+regards sound we have a very clear notion of the external
+physical processes which correspond to our sensations.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In these phenomena of sound we travel a very little
+way from downright sensible experience. Still the imagination
+is to some extent exercised. The bodily eye,
+for example, cannot see the condensations and rarefactions
+of the waves of sound. We construct them in
+thought, and we believe as firmly in their existence as
+in that of the air itself. But now our experience has to
+be carried into a new region, where a new use is to be
+made of it.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Having mastered the cause and mechanism of
+sound, we desire to know the cause and mechanism
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>of light. We wish to extend our inquiries from the auditory
+nerve to the optic nerve. Now there is in the
+human intellect a power of expansion—I might almost
+call it a power of creation—which is brought into play
+by the simple brooding upon facts. The legend of the
+Spirit brooding over chaos may have originated in a
+knowledge of this power. In the case now before us it
+has manifested itself by transplanting into space, for
+the purposes of light, an adequately modified form of
+the mechanism of sound. We know intimately whereon
+the velocity of sound depends. When we lessen the
+density of a medium and preserve its elasticity constant,
+we augment the velocity. When we highten the
+elasticity and keep the density constant, we also augment
+the velocity. A small density, therefore, and
+a great elasticity are the two things necessary to rapid
+propagation.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Now light is known to move with the astounding
+velocity of 185,000 miles a second. How is such a
+velocity to be obtained? By boldly diffusing in space
+a medium of the requisite tenuity and elasticity. Let
+us make such a medium our starting point, endowing it
+with one or two other necessary qualities; let us handle
+it in accordance with strict mechanical laws; give to
+every step of your deduction the surety of the syllogism;
+carry it thus forth from the world of imagination to the
+world of sense, and see whether the final outcrop of the
+deduction be not the very phenomena of light which
+ordinary knowledge and skilled experiment reveal. If
+in all the multiplied varieties of these phenomena, including
+those of the most remote and entangled description,
+this fundamental conception always brings us face
+to face with the truth; if no contradiction to our deductions
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>from it be found in external nature; if, moreover,
+it has actually forced upon our attention phenomena
+which no eye had previously seen, and which no mind
+had previously imagined; if by it we are gifted with a
+power of prescience which has never failed when
+brought to an experimental test; such a conception,
+which never disappoints us, but always lands us on the
+solid shores of fact, must, we think, be something more
+than a mere figment of the scientific fancy. In forming
+it that composite and creative unity in which reason and
+imagination are together blent, has, we believe, led us
+into a world not less real than that of the senses, and
+of which the world of sense itself is the suggestion and
+justification.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Far be it from me, however, to wish to fix you immovably
+in this or in any other theoretic conception. With
+all our belief of it, it will be well to keep the theory
+plastic and capable of change. You may, moreover,
+urge that although the phenomena occur <i>as if</i> the medium
+existed, the absolute demonstration of its existence
+is still wanting. Far be it from me to deny to this
+reasoning such validity as it may fairly claim. Let us
+endeavor by means of analogy to form a fair estimate
+of its force.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>You believe that in society you are surrounded by
+reasonable beings like yourself. You are, perhaps, as
+firmly convinced of this as of anything. What is your
+warrant for this conviction? Simply and solely this, your
+fellow-creatures behave as if they were reasonable; the
+hypothesis, for it is nothing more, accounts for the facts.
+To take an eminent example, you believe that our president
+is a reasonable being. Why? There is no known
+method of superposition by which any one of us can
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>apply himself intellectually to another so as to demonstrate
+coincidence as regards the possession of reason.
+If, therefore, you hold our president to be reasonable,
+it is because he behaves <i>as if</i> he were reasonable. As
+in the case of the ether, beyond the “<i>as if</i>” you cannot
+go. Nay, I should not wonder if a close comparison of
+the data on which both inferences rest caused many respectable
+persons to conclude that the ether had the
+best of it.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This universal medium, this light-ether as it is called,
+is a vehicle, not an origin of wave motion. It receives
+and transmits, but it does not create. Whence does it
+derive the motions it conveys? For the most part from
+luminous bodies. By this motion of a luminous body I
+do not mean its sensible motion, such as the flicker of a
+candle, or the shooting out of red prominences from the
+limb of the sun. I mean an intestine motion of the
+atoms or molecules of the luminous body. But here a
+certain reserve is necessary. Many chemists of the
+present day refuse to speak of atoms and molecules as
+real things. Their caution leads them to stop short of
+the clear, sharp, mechanically intelligible atomic theory
+enunciated by Dalton, or any form of that theory, and
+to make the doctrine of multiple proportions their intellectual
+bourne. I respect the caution, though I think it
+is here misplaced. The chemists who recoil from these
+notions of atoms and molecules accept without hesitation
+the undulatory theory of light. Like you and me
+they one and all believe in an ether and its light-producing
+waves. Let us consider what this belief involves.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Bring your imaginations once more into play and
+figure a series of sound waves passing through air.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>Follow them up to their origin, and what do you there
+find? A definite, tangible, vibrating body. It may be
+the vocal chords of a human being, it may be an organ
+pipe, or it may be a stretched string. Follow in the
+same manner a train of ether waves to their source, remembering
+at the same time that your ether is matter,
+dense, elastic, and capable of motions subject to and
+determined by mechanical laws. What then do you expect
+to find as the source of a series of ether waves?
+Ask your imagination if it will accept a vibrating multiple
+proportion—a numerical ratio in a state of oscillation?
+I do not think it will. You cannot crown the
+edifice by this abstraction. The scientific imagination,
+which is here authoritative, demands as the origin and
+cause of a series of ether waves a particle of vibrating
+matter quite as definite, though it may be excessively
+minute, as that which gives origin to a musical sound.
+Such a particle we name an atom or a molecule. I
+think the imagination when focused so as to give definition
+without penumbral haze is sure to realize this image
+at last.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>To preserve thought continuous throughout this discourse,
+to prevent either lack of knowledge or failure of
+memory from producing any rent in our picture, I here
+propose to run rapidly over a bit of ground which is
+probably familiar to most of you, but which I am anxious
+to make familiar to you all.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The waves generated in the ether by the swinging
+atoms of luminous bodies are of different lengths and
+amplitudes. The amplitude is the width of swing of
+the individual particles of the wave. In water waves
+it is the hight of the crest above the trough, while the
+length of the wave is the distance between two consecutive
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>crests. The aggregate of waves emitted by the
+sun may be broadly divided into two classes, the one
+class competent, the other incompetent, to excite vision.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the light-producing waves differ markedly among
+themselves in size, form, and force. The length of the
+largest of these waves is about twice that of the smallest,
+but the amplitude of the largest is probably a hundred
+times that of the smallest. Now the force or energy
+of the wave, which, expressed with reference to sensation,
+means the intensity of the light, is proportional to
+the square of the amplitude. Hence the amplitude
+being one hundred-fold, the energy of the largest light-giving
+waves would be ten thousand-fold that of the
+smallest. This is not improbable. I use these figures,
+not with a view to numerical accuracy, but to give you
+definite ideas of the differences that probably exist
+among the light-giving waves. And if we take the
+whole range of solar radiation into account—its non-visual
+as well as its visual waves—I think it probable
+that the force or energy of the largest wave is a million
+times that of the smallest.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Turned into their equivalents of sensation, the different
+light waves produce different colors. Red, for example,
+is produced by the largest waves, violet by the
+smallest, while green is produced by a wave of intermediate
+length and amplitude. On entering from air into
+more highly refracting substances, such as glass or water
+or the sulphide of carbon, all the waves are retarded,
+but the smallest ones most. This furnishes a means of
+separating the different classes of waves from each
+other—in other words, of analyzing the light. Sent
+through a refracting prism, the waves of the sun are
+turned aside in different degrees from their direct course,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>the red least, the violet most. They are virtually pulled
+asunder, and they paint upon a white screen placed to
+receive them “the solar spectrum.”</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Strictly speaking, the spectrum embraces an infinity
+of colors, but the limits of language and of our powers
+of distinction cause it to be divided into seven segments:
+Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. These
+are the seven primary or prismatic colors. Separately,
+or mixed in various proportions, the solar waves yield
+all the colors observed in nature and employed in art.
+Collectively they give us the impression of whiteness.
+Pure unsifted solar light is white; and if all the wave
+constituents of such light be reduced in the same proportion,
+the light, though diminished in intensity, will
+still be white. The whiteness of Alpine snow with the
+sun shining upon it is barely tolerable to the eye. The
+same snow under an overcast firmament is still white.
+Such a firmament enfeebles the light by reflection, and
+when we lift ourselves above a cloud-field—to an Alpine
+summit, for instance, or to the top of Snowdon—and
+see, in the proper direction, the sun shining on the
+clouds, they appear dazzlingly white. Ordinary clouds,
+in fact, divide the solar light impinging on them into
+two parts—a reflected part and a transmitted part, in
+each of which the proportions of wave motion which
+produce the impression of whiteness are sensibly preserved.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It will be understood that the conditions of whiteness
+would fail if all the waves were diminished <i>equally</i>, or
+by the same absolute quantity. They must be reduced
+<i>proportionately</i> instead of equally. If by the act of reflection
+the waves of red light are split into exact halves,
+then, to preserve the light white, the waves of yellow,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span>orange, green, and blue must also be split into exact
+halves. In short, the reduction must take place, not by
+absolutely equal quantities, but by equal fractional parts.
+In white light the preponderance as regards energy of
+the larger over the smaller waves must always be
+immense. Were the case otherwise, the physiological
+correlative, <i>blue</i>, of the smaller waves would have the
+upper hand in our sensations.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>My wish to render our mental images complete, causes
+me to dwell briefly upon these known points, and the
+same wish will cause me to linger a little longer among
+others. But here I am disturbed by my reflections. When
+I consider the effect of dinner upon the nervous system,
+and the relation of that system to the intellectual powers I
+am now invoking; when I remember that the universal
+experience of mankind has fixed upon certain definite
+elements of perfection in an after-dinner speech, and
+when I think how conspicuous by their absence these
+elements are on the present occasion, the thought is not
+comforting to a man who wishes to stand well with his
+fellow-creatures in general, and with the members of the
+British Association in particular. My condition might
+well resemble that of the ether, which is scientifically
+defined as an assemblage of vibrations. And the worst
+of it is that, unless you reverse the general verdict regarding
+the effect of dinner, and prove in your own persons
+that a uniform experience need not continue uniform—which
+will be a great point gained for some
+people—these tremors of mine are likely to become
+more and more painful. But I call to mind the comforting
+words of an inspired, though uncanonical writer,
+who admonishes us in the Apocrypha that fear is a bad
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_260'>260</span>counsellor. Let me then cast him out, and let me trustfully
+assume that you will one and all postpone that
+balmy sleep, of which dinner might, under the circumstances,
+be regarded as the indissoluble antecedent, and
+that you will manfully and womanfully prolong your investigations
+of the ether and its waves into regions
+which have been hitherto crossed by the pioneers of
+science alone.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Not only are the waves of ether reflected by clouds,
+by solids, and by liquids, but when they pass from light
+air to dense, or from dense air to light, a portion of the
+wave motion is always reflected. Now our atmosphere
+changes continually in density from top to bottom. It
+will help our conceptions if we regard it as made up of
+a series of thin concentric layers or shells of air, each
+shell being of the same density throughout, and a small
+and sudden change of density occurring in passing from
+shell to shell. Light would be reflected at the limiting
+surfaces of all these shells, and their action would be
+practically the same as that of the real atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And now I would ask your imagination to picture this
+act of reflection. What must become of the reflected
+light? The atmospheric layers turn their convex surfaces
+towards the sun; they are so many convex mirrors
+of feeble power, and you will immediately perceive
+that the light regularly reflected from these surfaces
+cannot reach the earth at all, but is dispersed in space.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But though the sun’s light is not reflected in this
+fashion from the ærial layers to the earth, there is indubitable
+evidence to show that the light of our firmament
+is reflected light. Proofs of the most cogent description
+could be here adduced; but we need only consider
+that we receive light at the same time from all parts of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>the hemisphere of heaven. The light of the firmament
+comes to us across the direction of the solar rays, and
+even against the direction of the solar rays; and this
+lateral and opposing rush of wave motion can only be
+due to the rebound of the waves from the air itself, or
+from something suspended in the air. It is also evident
+that, unlike the action of clouds, the solar light is not
+reflected by the sky in the proportions which produce
+white. The sky is blue, which indicates a deficiency
+on the part of the larger waves. In accounting for the
+color of the sky, the first question suggested by analogy
+would undoubtedly be, is not the air blue? The blueness
+of the air has, in fact, been given as a solution of
+the blueness of the sky. But reason basing itself on
+observation asks in reply, How, if the air be blue, can
+the light of sunrise and sunset, which travels through
+vast distances of air, be yellow, orange, or even red?
+The passage of the white solar light through a blue medium
+could by no possibility redden the light. The
+hypothesis of a blue air is therefore untenable. In fact,
+the agent, whatever it is, which sends us the light of the
+sky, exercises in so doing a dichroitic action. The light
+reflected is blue, the light transmitted is orange or red.
+A marked distinction is thus exhibited between the matter
+of the sky and that of an ordinary cloud, which latter
+exercises no such dichroitic action.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>By the force of imagination and reason combined we
+may penetrate this mystery also. The cloud takes no
+note of size on the part of the waves of ether, but reflects
+them all alike. It exercises no selective action. Now
+the cause of this may be that the cloud particles are so
+large in comparison with the size of the waves of ether
+as to reflect them all indifferently. A broad cliff reflects
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>an Atlantic roller as easily as a ripple produced
+by a sea bird’s wing; and in the presence of large reflecting
+surfaces the existing differences of magnitude
+among the waves of ether may disappear. But supposing
+the reflecting particles, instead of being very large,
+to be very small, in comparison with the size of the
+waves. In this case, instead of the whole wave being
+fronted and in great part thrown back, a small portion
+only is shivered off. The great mass of the wave passes
+over such a particle without reflection. Scatter then, a
+handful of such minute foreign particles in our atmosphere,
+and set imagination to watch their action upon
+the solar waves. Waves of all sizes impinge upon the
+particles, and you see at every collision a portion of the
+impinging wave struck off by reflection. All the waves
+of the spectrum, from the extreme red to the extreme
+violet, are thus acted upon. But in what proportions
+will the waves be scattered? A clear picture will enable
+us to anticipate the experimental answer. Remembering
+that the red waves are to the blue much in the relation
+of billows to ripples, let us consider whether those
+extremely small particles are competent to scatter all
+the waves in the same proportion. If they be not—and
+a little reflection will make it clear to you that they are
+not—the production of color must be an incident of the
+scattering. Largeness is a thing of relation; and the
+smaller the wave the greater is the relative size of any
+particle on which the wave impinges, and the greater
+also the ratio of the reflected portion to the total wave.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>A pebble placed in the way of the ring-ripples produced
+by our heavy rain-drops on a tranquil pond will
+throw back a large fraction of the ripple incident upon
+it, while the fractional part of a larger wave thrown back
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>by the same pebble might be infinitesimal. Now we
+have already made it clear to our minds that to preserve
+the solar light white, its constituent proportions must
+not be altered; but in the act of division performed by
+these very small particles we see that the proportions
+<i>are</i> altered; an undue fraction of the smaller waves is
+scattered by the particles, and, as a consequence, in the
+scattered light blue will be the predominant color. The
+other colors of the spectrum must, to some extent, be
+associated with the blue. They are not absent, but deficient.
+We ought, in fact, to have them all, but in diminishing
+proportions, from the violet to the red.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>We have here presented a case to the imagination,
+and assuming the undulatory theory to be a reality, we
+have, I think, fairly reasoned our way to the conclusion
+that, were particles, small in comparison to the size of
+the ether waves, sown in our atmosphere, the light scattered
+by those particles would be exactly such as we observe
+in our azure skies. When this light is analyzed
+all the colors of the spectrum are found; but they are
+found in the proportions indicated by our conclusion.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Let us now turn our attention to the light which passes
+unscattered among the particles. How must it be finally
+affected? By its successive collisions with the particles,
+the white light is more and more robbed of its shorter
+waves; it therefore loses more and more of its due proportion
+of blue. The result may be anticipated. The
+transmitted light, where short distances are involved,
+will appear yellowish. But as the sun sinks towards the
+horizon, the atmospheric distances increase, and consequently
+the number of the scattering particles. They
+abstract, in succession, the violet, the indigo, the blue,
+and even disturb the proportions of green. The transmitted
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>light under such circumstances must pass from
+yellow through orange to red. This also is exactly
+what we find in nature. Thus, while the reflected light
+gives us at noon the deep azure of the Alpine skies, the
+transmitted light gives us at sunset the warm crimson of
+the Alpine snows. The phenomena certainly occur <i>as
+if</i> our atmosphere were a medium rendered slightly turbid
+by the mechanical suspension of exceedingly small
+foreign particles.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Here, as before, we encounter our skeptical “as if.”
+It is one of the parasites of science, ever at hand, and
+ready to plant itself and sprout, if it can, on the weak
+points of our philosophy. But a strong constitution
+defies the parasite, and in our case, as we question the
+phenomena, probability grows like growing health, until
+in the end the malady of doubt is completely extirpated.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The first question that naturally arises is, Can small
+particles be really proved to act in the manner indicated?
+No doubt of it. Each one of you can submit the question
+to an experimental test. Water will not dissolve
+resin, but spirit will, and when spirit which holds
+resin in solution is dropped into water the resin immediately
+separates in solid particles, which render the
+water milky. The coarseness of this precipitate depends
+on the quantity of the dissolved resin. You can
+cause it to separate in thick clots or in exceedingly fine
+particles. Professor Brücke has given us the proportions
+which produce particles particularly suited to our
+present purpose. One gramme of clean mastic is dissolved
+in eighty-seven grammes of absolute alcohol, and
+the transparent solution is allowed to drop into a beaker
+containing clear water kept briskly stirred. An exceedingly
+fine precipitate is thus formed, which declares its
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span>presence by its action upon light. Placing a dark surface
+behind the beaker, and permitting the light to fall into it
+from the top or front, the medium is seen to be distinctly
+blue. It is not, perhaps, so perfect a blue as I have seen on
+exceptional days, this year, among the Alps, but it is a
+very fair sky blue. A trace of soap in water gives a tint
+of blue. London, and I fear Liverpool milk, makes an
+approximation to the same color through the operation
+of the same cause; and Helmholtz has irreverently disclosed
+the fact that a blue eye is simply a turbid medium.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Numerous instances of the kind might be cited. The
+action of turbid media upon light was fully and beautifully
+illustrated by Goethe, who, though unacquainted
+with the undulatory theory, was led by his experiments
+to regard the blue of the firmament as caused by an
+illuminated turbid medium with the darkness of space
+behind it. He describes glasses showing a bright yellow
+by transmitted, and a beautiful blue by reflected light.
+Professor Stokes, who was probably the first to discern
+the real nature of the action of small particles on the
+waves of ether, describes a glass of a similar kind.
+What artists call “chill” is no doubt an effect of this
+description. Through the action of minute particles,
+the browns of a picture often present the appearance of
+the bloom of a plum. By rubbing the varnish with a
+silk handkerchief optical continuity is established and
+the chill disappears.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Some years ago I witnessed Mr. Hirst experimenting
+at Zermatt on the turbid water of the Visp, which was
+charged with the finely divided matter ground down by
+the glaciers. When kept still for a day or so the grosser
+matter sank, but the finer matter remained suspended,
+and gave a distinctly blue tinge to the water. No doubt
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>the blueness of certain Alpine lakes is in part due to
+this cause. Professor Roscoe has noticed several striking
+cases of a similar kind. In a very remarkable paper
+the late Principal Forbes showed that steam issuing
+from the safety valve of a locomotive, when favorably observed,
+exhibits at a certain stage of its condensation
+the colors of the sky. It is blue by reflected light, and
+orange or red by transmitted light. The effect, as
+pointed out by Goethe, is to some extent exhibited by
+peat smoke.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>More than ten years ago I amused myself at Killarney,
+by observing on a calm day, the straight smoke columns
+rising from the chimneys of the cabins. It was
+easy to project the lower portion of a column against
+a bright cloud. The smoke in the former case
+was blue, being seen mainly by reflected light; in
+the latter case it was reddish, being seen mainly
+by transmitted light. Such smoke was not in exactly
+the condition to give us the glow of the Alps,
+but it was a step in this direction. Brücke’s fine precipitate
+above referred to looks yellowish by transmitted
+light, but by duly strengthening the precipitate you may
+render the white light of noon as ruby colored as the
+sun when seen through Liverpool smoke or upon Alpine
+horizons.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I do not, however, point to the gross smoke arising
+from coal as an illustration of the action of small particles,
+because such smoke soon absorbs and destroys the
+waves of blue instead of sending them to the eyes of the
+observer.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>These multifarious facts, and numberless others which
+cannot now be referred to, are explained by reference to
+the single principle that where the scattering particles
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>are small in comparison to the size of the waves, we
+have in the reflected light a greater proportion of the
+smaller waves, and in the transmitted light a greater proportion
+of the larger waves, than existed in the original
+white light. The physiological consequence is that in the
+one light blue is predominant, and in the other light orange
+or red. And now let us push our inquiries forward. Our
+best microscopes can readily reveal objects not more
+than 1/50000 of an inch in diameter. This is less than
+the length of a wave of red light. Indeed, a first-rate
+microscope would enable us to discern objects not exceeding
+in diameter the length of the smallest waves of
+the visible spectrum. By the microscope, therefore, we
+can submit our particles to an experimental test. If
+they are as large as the light-waves they will infallibly
+be seen; and if they are not seen it is because they are
+smaller.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I placed in the hands of our president a bottle containing
+Brücke’s particles in greater number and coarseness
+than those examined by Brücke himself. The
+liquid was a milky blue, and Mr. Huxley applied to it
+his highest microscopic power. He satisfied me at the
+time that had particles of even 1/100000 of an inch in
+diameter existed in the liquid they could not have
+escaped detection. But no particles were seen. Under
+the microscope the turbid liquid was not to be distinguished
+from distilled water. Brücke, I may say, also
+found the particles to be of ultra microscopic magnitude.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But we have it in our power to imitate far more closely
+than we have hitherto done the natural conditions of
+this problem. We can generate in air, as many of you
+know, artificial skies, and prove their perfect identity with
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_268'>268</span>the natural one as regards the exhibition of a number
+of wholly unexpected phenomena. By a continuous
+process of growth, moreover, we are able to connect
+sky matter, if I may use the term, with molecular matter
+on the one side, and with molar matter, or matter in
+sensible masses, on the other.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In illustration of this, I will take an experiment described
+by M. Morren, of Marseilles, at the last meeting
+of the British Association. Sulphur and oxygen
+combine to form sulphurous acid gas. It is this choking
+gas that is smelt when a sulphur match is burnt in
+air. Two atoms of oxygen and one of sulphur constitute
+the molecule of sulphurous acid. Now it has been
+recently shown in a great number of instances that
+waves of ether issuing from a strong source, such as the
+sun or the electric light, are competent to shake asunder
+the atoms of gaseous molecules. A chemist would call
+this “decomposition” by light; but it behooves us, who
+are examining the power and function of the imagination,
+to keep constantly before us the physical images which
+we hold to underlie our terms. Therefore I say, sharply
+and definitely, that the components of the molecules
+of sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by the ether
+waves. Enclosing the substance in a suitable vessel,
+placing it in a dark room, and sending through it a
+powerful beam of light, we at first see nothing; the vessel
+containing the gas is as empty as a vacuum. Soon,
+however, along the track of the beam a beautiful sky-blue
+color is observed, which is due to the liberated
+particles of sulphur. For a time the blue grows more
+intense; it then becomes whitish; and from a whitish blue
+it passes to a more or less perfect white. If the action
+be continued long enough, we end by filling the tube
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>with a dense cloud of sulphur particles, which by the
+application of proper means may be rendered visible.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Here, then, our ether waves untie the bond of chemical
+affinity, and liberate a body—sulphur—which at ordinary
+temperatures is a solid, and which therefore soon
+becomes an object of the senses. We have first of all
+the free atoms of sulphur, which are both invisible and
+incompetent to stir the retina sensibly with scattered
+light. But these atoms gradually coalesce and form
+particles, which grow larger by continual accretion until
+after a minute or two they appear as sky matter. In
+this condition they are invisible themselves, but competent
+to send an amount of wave motion to the retina
+sufficient to produce the firmamental blue. The particles
+continue, or may be caused to continue, in this condition
+for a considerable time, during which no microscope
+can cope with them. But they continually grow
+larger, and pass by insensible gradations into the state of
+<i>cloud</i>, when they can no longer elude the armed eye.
+Thus, without solution of continuity, we start with matter
+in the molecule, and end with matter in the mass,
+sky matter being the middle term of the series of transformations.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Instead of sulphurous acid we might choose from a
+dozen other substances, and produce the same effect
+with any of them. In the case of some—probably in
+the case of all—it is possible to preserve matter in the
+skyey condition for fifteen or twenty minutes under the
+continual operation of the light. During these fifteen or
+twenty minutes the particles are constantly growing
+larger, without ever exceeding the size requisite to the
+production of the celestial blue. Now when two vessels
+are placed before you, each containing sky matter,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>it is possible to state with great distinctness which vessel
+contains the largest particles.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The eye is very sensitive to differences of light, when,
+as here, the eye is in comparative darkness, and when
+the quantities of wave motion thrown against the retina
+are small. The larger particles declare themselves by
+the greater whiteness of their scattered light. Call now
+to mind the observation, or effort at observation, made by
+our president when he failed to distinguish the particles
+of resin in Brücke’s medium, and when you have done
+so follow me. I permitted a beam of light to act upon
+a certain vapor. In two minutes the azure appeared,
+but at the end of fifteen minutes it had not ceased to
+be azure. After fifteen minutes, for example, its color
+and some other phenomena pronounced it to be a blue
+of distinctly smaller particles than those sought for in
+vain by Mr. Huxley. These particles, as already stated,
+must have been less than 1/100000 of an inch in diameter.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>And now I want you to submit to your imagination
+the following question: Here are particles which have
+been growing continually for fifteen minutes, and at the
+end of that time are demonstrably smaller than those
+which defied the microscope of Mr. Huxley. What
+must have been the size of these particles at the beginning
+of their growth? What notion can you form of
+the magnitude of such particles? As the distances of
+stellar space give us simply a bewildering sense of vastness
+without leaving any distinct impression on the mind,
+so the magnitudes with which we have here to do impress
+us with a bewildering sense of smallness. We
+are dealing with infinitesimals compared with which the
+test objects of the microscope are literally immense.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'><span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>From their perviousness to stellar light, and other
+considerations, Sir John Herschel drew some startling
+conclusions regarding the density and weight of comets.
+You know that these extraordinary and mysterious bodies
+sometimes throw out tails 100,000,000 of miles in
+length, and 50,000 miles in diameter. The diameter of
+our earth is 8,000 miles. Both it and the sky, and a
+good portion of space beyond the sky, would certainly
+be included in a sphere 10,000 miles across. Let us fill
+this sphere with cometary matter, and make it our unit
+of measure. An easy calculation informs us that to
+produce a comet’s tail of the size just mentioned, about
+300,000 such measures would have to be emptied into
+space. Now suppose the whole of this stuff to be swept
+together, and suitably compressed, what do you suppose
+its volume would be? Sir John Herschel would probably
+tell you that the whole mass might be carted away
+at a single effort by one of your dray-horses. In fact, I
+do not know that he would require more than a small
+fraction of a horse-power to remove the cometary dust.
+After this you will hardly regard as monstrous a notion
+I have sometimes entertained concerning the quantity
+of matter in our sky. Suppose a shell, then, to surround
+the earth at a hight above the surface which
+would place it beyond the grosser matter that hangs in
+the lower regions of the air—say at the hight of the
+Matterhorn or Mont Blanc. Outside this shell we have
+the deep blue firmament. Let the atmospheric space
+beyond the shell be swept clean, and let the sky matter
+be properly gathered up. What is its probable amount?
+I have sometimes thought that a lady’s portmanteau
+would contain it all. I have thought that even a gentleman’s
+portmanteau—possibly his snuff-box—might take it
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_272'>272</span>in. And whether the actual sky be capable of this amount
+of condensation or not, I entertain no doubt that a sky
+quite as vast as ours, and as good in appearance, could
+be formed from a quantity of matter which might be
+held in the hollow of the hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Small in mass, the vastness in point of number of the
+particles of our sky may be inferred from the continuity
+of its light. It is not in broken patches nor at scattered
+points that the heavenly azure is revealed. To the observer
+on the summit of Mont Blanc the blue is as uniform
+and coherent as if it formed the surface of the most
+close-grained solid. A marble dome would not exhibit
+a stricter continuity. And Mr. Glaisher will inform you
+that if our hypothetical shell were lifted to twice the
+hight of Mont Blanc above the earth’s surface, we
+should still have the azure overhead. Everywhere
+through the atmosphere those sky particles are strewn.
+They fill the Alpine valleys, spreading like a delicate
+gauze in front of the slopes of pine. They sometimes
+so swathe the peaks with light as to abolish their definition.
+This year I have seen the Weisshorn thus dissolved
+in opalescent air.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>By proper instruments the glare thrown from the sky
+particles against the retina may be quenched, and then
+the mountain which it obliterated starts into sudden
+definition. Its extinction in front of a dark mountain
+resembles exactly the withdrawal of a veil. It is the
+light then taking possession of the eye, and not the
+particles acting as opaque bodies, that interfere with the
+definition.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>By day this light quenches the stars; even by moonlight
+it is able to exclude from vision all stars between
+the fifth and the eleventh magnitude. It may be likened
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span>to a noise, and the stellar radiance to a whisper drowned
+by the noise. What is the nature of the particles which
+shed this light? On points of controversy I will not
+here enter, but I may say that De la Rive ascribes the
+haze of the Alps in fine weather to floating organic
+germs. Now the possible existence of germs in such
+profusion has been held up as an absurdity. It has
+been affirmed that they would darken the air, and on
+the assumed impossibility of their existence in the
+requisite numbers, without invasion of the solar light, a
+powerful argument has been based by believers in spontaneous
+generation.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Similar arguments have been used by the opponents
+of the germ theory of epidemic disease, and both parties
+have triumphantly challenged an appeal to the
+microscope and the chemist’s balance to decide the question.
+Without committing myself in the least to De la
+Rive’s notion, without offering any objection here to
+the doctrine of spontaneous generation, without expressing
+any adherence to the germ theory of disease, I
+would simply draw attention to the fact that in the atmosphere
+we have particles which defy both the microscope
+and the balance, which do not darken the air, and
+which exist, nevertheless, in multitudes sufficient to reduce
+to insignificance the Israelitish hyperbole regarding
+the sands upon the seashore.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The varying judgments of men on these and other
+questions may perhaps be, to some extent, accounted for
+by that doctrine of relativity which plays so important
+a part in philosophy. This doctrine affirms that the impressions
+made upon us by any circumstance, or combination
+of circumstances, depends upon our previous
+state. Two travelers upon the same peak, the one having
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span>ascended to it from the plain, the other having descended
+to it from a higher elevation, will be differently
+affected by the scene around them. To the one nature
+is expanding, to the other it is contracting, and feelings
+are sure to differ which have two such different antecedent
+states.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In our scientific judgments the law of relativity may
+also play an important part. To two men, one educated
+in the school of the senses, who has mainly occupied
+himself with observation, and the other educated in the
+school of imagination as well, and exercised in the conception
+of atoms and molecules to which we have so
+frequently referred, a bit of matter, say 1/50000 of an inch
+in diameter, will present itself differently. The one descends
+to it from his molar hights, the other climbs to
+it from his molecular lowlands. To the one it appears
+small, to the other large. So also as regards the appreciation
+of the most minute forms of life revealed by the
+microscope. To one of these men they naturally appear
+conterminous with the ultimate particles of matter,
+and he readily figures the molecules from which they directly
+spring; with him there is but a step from the
+atom to the organism. The other discerns numberless
+organic gradations between both. Compared with his
+atoms, the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the microscopic
+field are as behemoth and leviathan.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>The law of relativity may to some extent explain the
+different attitudes of these two men with regard to the
+question of spontaneous generation. An amount of
+evidence which satisfies the one entirely fails to satisfy
+the other; and while to the one the last bold defense
+and startling expansion of the doctrine will appear perfectly
+conclusive, to the other it will present itself as imposing
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>a profitless labor of demolition on subsequent investigators.
+The proper and possible attitude of these
+two men is that each of them should work as if it were
+his aim and object to establish the view entertained by
+the other.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>I trust, Mr. President, that you—whom untoward circumstances
+have made a biologist, but who still keep
+alive your sympathy with that class of inquiries which
+nature intended you to pursue and adorn—will excuse
+me to your brethren if I say that some of them seem to
+form an inadequate estimate of the distance which separates
+the microscopic from the molecular limit, and
+that, as a consequence, they sometimes employ a phraseology
+which is calculated to mislead.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>When, for example, the contents of a cell are described
+as perfectly homogeneous, as absolutely structureless,
+because the microscope fails to distinguish any
+structure, then I think the microscope begins to play a
+mischievous part. A little consideration will make it
+plain to all of you that the microscope can have no voice
+in the real question of germ structure. Distilled
+water is more perfectly homogeneous than the contents
+of any possible organic germ. What causes the liquid
+to cease contracting at 39° F., and to grow bigger until
+it freezes? It is a structural process of which the
+microscope can take no note, nor is it likely to do so
+by any conceivable extension of its powers. Place this
+distilled water in the field of an electro-magnet, and
+bring a microscope to bear upon it. Will any change
+be observed when the magnet is excited? Absolutely
+none; and still profound and complex changes have
+occurred.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>First of all, the particles of water are rendered diamagnetically
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_276'>276</span>polar; and secondly, in virtue of the structure
+impressed upon it by the magnetic strain of its
+molecules, the liquid twists a ray of light in a fashion
+perfectly determinate both as to quantity and direction.
+It would be immensely interesting to both you and me
+if one here present, who has brought his brilliant imagination
+to bear upon this subject, could make us see as
+he sees the entangled molecular processes involved in
+the rotation of the plane of polarization by magnetic
+force. While dealing with this question he lived in a
+world of matter and of motion to which the microscope
+has no passport, and in which it can offer no aid. The
+cases in which similar conditions hold are simply numberless.
+Have the diamond, the amethyst, and the
+countless other crystals formed in the laboratories of
+nature and of man, no structure? Assuredly they have,
+but what can the microscope make of it? Nothing. It
+cannot be too distinctly borne in mind that between the
+microscopic limit and the true molecular limit there is
+room for infinite permutations and combinations. It is
+in this region that the poles of the atoms are arranged,
+that tendency is given to their powers, so that when
+these poles and powers have free action and proper
+stimulus in a suitable environment, they determine first
+the germ and afterwards the complete organism. This
+first marshaling of the atoms on which all subsequent
+action depends baffles a keener power than that of the
+microscope. Through pure excess of complexity, and
+long before observation can have any voice in the matter,
+the most highly trained intellect, the most refined
+and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment
+from the contemplation of the problem. We are struck
+dumb by an astonishment which no microscope can relieve,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span>doubting not only the power of our instrument,
+but even whether we ourselves possess the intellectual
+elements which will ever enable us to grapple with the
+ultimate structural energies of nature.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>But the speculative faculty, of which imagination
+forms so large a part, will nevertheless wander into
+regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be
+entirely shut out. We think that though the detailed
+analysis may be, and may ever remain, beyond us, general
+notions may be attainable. At all events, it is plain
+that beyond the present outposts of microscopic inquiry
+lies an immense field for the exercise of the imagination.
+It is only, however, the privileged spirits who know how
+to use their liberty without abusing it, who are able to
+surround imagination by the firm frontiers of reason,
+that are likely to work with any profit here. But freedom
+to them is of such paramount importance that, for
+the sake of securing it, a good deal of wildness on the
+part of weaker brethren may be overlooked. In more
+senses than one Mr. Darwin has drawn heavily upon
+the scientific tolerance of his age. He has drawn heavily
+upon <i>time</i> in his development of species, and he has
+drawn adventurously upon <i>matter</i> in his theory of pan-genesis.
+According to this theory, a germ already microscopic
+is a world of minor germs. Not only is the
+organism as a whole wrapped up in the germ, but every
+organ of the organism has there its special seed.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>This, I say, is an adventurous draft on the power of
+matter to divide itself and distribute its forces. But,
+unless we are perfectly sure that he is overstepping the
+bounds of reason, that he is unwittingly sinning against
+observed fact or demonstrated law—for a mind like that
+of Darwin can never sin wittingly against either fact or
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>law—we ought, I think, to be cautious in limiting his
+intellectual horizon. If there be the least doubt in the
+matter, it ought to be given in favor of the freedom of
+such a mind. To it a vast possibility is in itself a
+dynamic power, though the possibility may never be
+drawn upon.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>It gives me pleasure to think that the facts and
+reasonings of this discourse tend rather towards the
+justification of Mr. Darwin than towards his condemnation,
+that they tend rather to augment than to diminish
+the cubic space demanded by this soaring speculator;
+for they seem to show the perfect competence of matter
+and force, as regards divisibility and distribution, to bear
+the heaviest strain that he has hitherto imposed upon
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>In the case of Mr. Darwin, observation, imagination,
+and reason combined have run back with wonderful
+sagacity and success over a certain length of the line of
+biological succession. Guided by analogy, in his “Origin
+of Species” he placed as the root of life a primordial
+germ, from which he conceived the amazing richness
+and variety of the life that now is upon the earth’s
+surface, might be deduced. If this were true it would
+not be final. The human imagination would infallibly
+look behind the germ, and inquire into the history of its
+genesis.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>Certainty is here hopeless, but the materials for an
+opinion may be attainable. In this dim twilight of
+speculation the inquirer welcomes every gleam, and seeks
+to augment his light by indirect incidences. He studies
+the methods of nature in the ages and the worlds within
+his reach, in order to shape the course of imagination
+in the antecedent ages and worlds. And though the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span>certainty possessed by experimental inquiry is here shut
+out, the imagination is not left entirely without guidance.
+From the examination of the solar system, Kant and
+Laplace came to the conclusion that its various bodies
+once formed parts of the same undislocated mass; that
+matter in a nebulous form preceded matter in a dense
+form; that as the ages rolled away heat was wasted,
+condensation followed, planets were detached, and that
+finally the chief portion of the fiery cloud reached, by
+self-compression, the magnitude and density of our sun.
+The earth itself offers evidence of a fiery origin; and
+in our day the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace receives
+the independent countenance of spectrum analysis,
+which proves the same substances to be common to the
+earth and sun. Accepting some such view of the construction
+of our system as probable, a desire immediately
+arises to connect the present life of our planet with the
+past. We wish to know something of our remotest ancestry.</p>
+
+<p class='c024'>On its first detachment from the central mass, life, as
+we understand it, could hardly have been present on the
+earth. How then did it come there? The thing to be
+encouraged here is a reverent freedom—a freedom preceded
+by the hard discipline which checks licentiousness
+in speculation—while the thing to be repressed, both in
+science and out of it, is dogmatism. And here I am in
+the hands of the meeting—willing to end, but ready to
+go on. I have no right to intrude upon you, unasked,
+the unformed notions which are floating like clouds or
+gathering to more solid consistency in the modern speculative
+scientific mind. But if you wish me to speak
+plainly, honestly, and undisputatiously, I am willing to
+do so. On the present occasion</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c034'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>You are ordained to call, and I to come.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c035'><span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>Two views, then, offer themselves to us. Life was
+present potentially in matter when in the nebulous form,
+and was unfolded from it by the way of natural development,
+or it is a principle inserted into matter at a later
+date. With regard to the question of time, the views of
+men have changed remarkably in our day and generation;
+and I must say as regards courage also, and a
+manful willingness to engage in open contest, with fair
+weapons, a great change has also occurred.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>The clergy of England—at all events the clergy of
+London—have nerve enough to listen to the strongest
+views which any one amongst us would care to utter;
+and they invite, if they do not challenge, men of the
+most decided opinions to state and stand by those opinions
+in open court. No theory upsets them. Let the
+most destructive hypothesis be stated only in the language
+current among gentlemen, and they look it in the
+face. They forego alike the thunders of heaven and the
+terrors of the other place, smiting the theory, if they do
+not like it, with honest secular strength. In fact, the
+greatest cowards of the present day are not to be found
+among the clergy, but within the pale of science itself.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>Two or three years ago in an ancient London college—a
+clerical institution—I heard a very remarkable lecture
+by a very remarkable man. Three or four hundred
+clergymen were present at the lecture. The orator
+began with the civilization of Egypt in the time of
+Joseph; pointing out that the very perfect organization
+of the kingdom, and the possession of chariots, in one
+of which Joseph rode, indicated a long antecedent
+period of civilization. He then passed on to the mud
+of the Nile, its rate of augmentation, its present thickness,
+and the remains of human handiwork found therein;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span>thence to the rocks which bound the Nile valley, and
+which team with organic remains. Thus, in his own
+clear and admirable way, he caused the idea of the
+world’s age to expand itself indefinitely before the mind
+of his audience, and he contrasted this with the age
+usually assigned to the world.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>During his discourse he seemed to be swimming
+against a stream; he manifestly thought that he was opposing
+a general conviction. He expected resistance;
+so did I. But it was all a mistake; there was no adverse
+current, no opposing conviction, no resistance,
+merely here and there a half humorous but unsuccessful
+attempt to entangle him in his talk. The meeting
+agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity
+of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed,
+known it all long ago, and they good-humoredly rallied
+the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a
+story. It was quite plain that this large body of clergymen,
+who were, I should say, the finest samples of their
+class, had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and
+transported the conception of life’s origin to an indefinitely
+distant past.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>In fact, clergymen, if I might be allowed a parenthesis
+to say so, have as strong a leaning towards scientific
+truth as other men, only the resistance to this bent—a
+resistance due to education—is generally stronger
+in their case than in others. They do not lack the positive
+element, namely, the love of truth, but the negative
+element, the fear of error, preponderates.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>The strength of an electric current is determined by
+two things—the electro-motive force, and the resistance
+that force has to overcome. A fraction, with the former
+as numerator and the latter as denominator, expresses
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span>the current-strength. The “current-strength” of the
+clergy towards science may also be expressed by making
+the positive element just referred to the numerator,
+and the negative one the denominator of a fraction.
+The numerator is not zero nor is it even small, but the denominator
+is large; and hence the current strength is
+such as we find it to be. Slowness of conception, even
+open hostility, may be thus accounted for. They are
+for the most part errors of judgment, and not sins
+against truth. To most of us it may appear very simple,
+but to a few of us it appears transcendently wonderful,
+that in all classes of society truth should have
+this power and fascination. From the countless modifications
+that life has undergone through natural selection
+and the integration of infinitesimal steps, emerges
+finally the grand result that the strength of truth is
+greater than the strength of error, and that we have
+only to make the truth clear to the world to gain the
+world to our side. Probably no one wonders more at
+this result than the propounder of the law of natural
+selection himself. Reverting to an old acquaintance of
+ours, it would seem, on purely scientific grounds, as if
+a Veracity were at the heart of things; as if, after ages of
+latent working, it had finally unfolded itself in the life of
+man; as if it were still destined to unfold itself, growing in
+girth, throwing out stronger branches and thicker leaves,
+and tending more and more by its overshadowing presence
+to starve the weeds of error from the intellectual
+soil.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>But this is parenthetical; and the gist of our present
+inquiry regarding the introduction of life is this: Does
+it belong to what we call matter, or is it an independent
+principle inserted into matter at some suitable epoch—say
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>when the physical conditions become such as to
+permit of the development of life? Let us put the
+question with all the reverence due to a faith and culture
+in which we all were cradled—a faith and culture,
+moreover, which are the undeniable historic antecedents
+of our present enlightenment. I say, let us put the
+question reverently, but let us also put it clearly and
+definitely.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>There are the strongest grounds for believing that
+during a certain period of its history the earth was not,
+nor was it fit to be, the theater of life. Whether this
+was ever a nebulous period, or merely a molten period,
+does not much matter; and if we revert to the nebulous
+condition, it is because the probabilities are really on its
+side. Our question is this: Did creative energy pause
+until the nebulous matter had condensed, until the earth
+had been detached, until the solar fire had so far withdrawn
+from the earth’s vicinity as to permit a crust to
+gather round a planet? Did it wait until the air was isolated,
+until the seas were formed, until evaporation,
+condensation, and the descent of rain had begun, until
+the eroding forces of the atmosphere had weathered and
+decomposed the molten rocks so as to form soils, until
+the sun’s rays had become so tempered by distance and
+by waste as to be chemically fit for the decompositions
+necessary to vegetable life? Having waited through
+those æons until the proper conditions had set in, did
+it send the fiat forth, “Let life be!”? These questions
+define a hypothesis not without its difficulties, but the
+dignity of which was demonstrated by the nobleness of
+the men whom it sustained.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide between
+this hypothesis and another; and public thought
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_284'>284</span>generally will afterwards be called upon to do the same.
+You may, however, rest secure in the belief that the
+hypothesis just sketched can never be stormed, and that
+it is sure, if it yield at all, to yield to a prolonged siege.
+To gain new territory, modern argument requires more
+time than modern arms, though both of them move with
+greater rapidity than of yore.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>But however the convictions of individuals here and
+there may be influenced, the process must be slow and
+secular which commends the rival hypothesis of natural
+evolution to the public mind. For what are the core
+and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and
+you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the
+more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not
+alone the nobler forms of the horse and lion, not alone
+the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human
+body, but that the human mind itself—emotion, intellect,
+will, and all their phenomena—were once latent in
+a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a
+motion is more than a refutation. But the hypothesis
+would probably go even further than this. Many who
+hold it would probably assent to the position that at the
+present moment all our philosophy, all our poetry, all
+our science, and all our art—Plato, Shakespeare, Newton,
+and Raphael—are potential in the fires of the sun.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>We long to learn something of our origin. If the
+evolution hypothesis be correct, even this unsatisfied
+yearning must have come to us across the ages which
+separate the unconscious primeval mist from the consciousness
+of to-day. I do not think that any holder of
+the evolution hypothesis would say that I overstate it or
+overstrain it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness,
+and bring before you, unclothed and unvarnished,
+the notions by which it must stand or fall.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'><span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span>Surely these notions represent an absurdity too monstrous
+to be entertained by any sane mind. Let us,
+however, give them fair play. Let us steady ourselves
+in front of the hypothesis, and, dismissing all terror and
+excitement from our minds, let us look firmly into it with
+the hard, sharp eye of intellect alone. Why are these
+notions absurd, and why should sanity reject them?
+The law of relativity, of which we have previously
+spoken, may find its application here. These evolution
+notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the
+intellectual gibbet in relation to the ideas concerning
+matter which were drilled into us when young. Spirit
+and matter have ever been presented to us in the rudest
+contrast, the one as all noble, the other as all vile. But
+is this correct? Does it represent what our mightiest
+spiritual teacher would call the eternal fact of the universe?
+Upon the answer to this question all depends.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>Supposing, instead of having the foregoing antithesis
+of spirit and matter presented to our youthful minds, we
+had been taught to regard them as equally worthy and
+equally wonderful; to consider them, in fact, as two opposite
+faces of the self-same mystery. Supposing that
+in youth we had been impregnated with the notion of
+the poet Goethe, instead of the notion of the poet
+Young, looking at matter, not as brute matter, but as
+“the living garment of God;” do you not think that
+under these altered circumstances the law of relativity
+might have had an outcome different from its present
+one? Is it not probable that our repugnance to the
+idea of primeval union between spirit and matter might
+be considerably abated? Without this total revolution
+of the notions now prevalent the evolution hypothesis
+must stand condemned; but in many profoundly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_286'>286</span>thoughtful minds such a revolution has already taken
+place. They degrade neither member of the mysterious
+duality referred to; but they exalt one of them
+from its abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto existing
+between both. In substance, if not in words,
+their position as regards spirit and matter is: “What
+God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>I have thus led you to the outer rim of speculative
+science, for beyond the nebula scientific thought has
+never ventured hitherto, and have tried to state that
+which I considered ought, in fairness, to be outspoken.
+I do not think this evolution hypothesis is to be flouted
+away contemptuously; I do not think it is to be denounced
+as wicked. It is to be brought before the bar
+of disciplined reason, and there justified or condemned.
+Let us hearken to those who wisely support it, and to
+those who wisely oppose it; and let us tolerate those,
+and they are many, who foolishly try to do neither of
+these things.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>The only thing out of place in the discussion is dogmatism
+on either side. Fear not the evolution hypothesis.
+Steady yourselves in its presence upon that faith
+in the ultimate triumph of truth which was expressed by
+old Gamaliel when he said: “If it be of God, ye cannot
+overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to naught.”
+Under the fierce light of scientific inquiry this hypothesis
+is sure to be dissipated if it possess not a core of
+truth. Trust me, its existence as an hypothesis in the
+mind is quite compatible with the simultaneous existence
+of all those virtues to which the term Christian
+has been applied. It does not solve—it does not profess
+to solve—the ultimate mystery untouched. At bottom
+it does nothing more than “transport the conception
+of life’s origin to an indefinitely distant past.”</p>
+
+<p class='c036'><span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span>For, granting the nebula and its potential life, the
+question, whence came they? would still remain to
+baffle and bewilder us. And with regard to the ages of
+forgetfulness which lie between the conscious life of the
+nebula and the conscious life of the earth, it is but an
+extension of that forgetfulness which preceded the birth
+of us all. Those who hold the doctrine of evolution
+are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their
+data, and they yield no more to it than a provisional
+assent. They regard the nebular hypothesis as probable,
+and in the utter absence of any evidence to prove
+the act illegal, they extend the method of nature from
+the present into the past. Here the observed uniformity
+of nature is their only guide. Within the long range
+of physical inquiry they have never discerned in nature
+the insertion of caprice. Throughout this range the
+laws of physical and intellectual continuity have run
+side by side. Having thus determined the elements of
+their curve in this world of observation and experiment,
+they prolong that curve into an antecedent world, and
+accept as probable the unbroken sequence of development
+from the nebula to the present time.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>You never hear the really philosophical defenders of
+the doctrine of uniformity speaking of <i>impossibilities</i> in
+nature. They never say, what they are constantly
+charged with saying, that it is impossible for the builder
+of the universe to alter His work. Their business is
+not with the possible, but the actual; not with a world
+which <i>might</i> be, but with a world which <i>is</i>. This they
+explore with a courage not unmixed with reverence, and
+according to methods which, like the quality of a tree,
+are tested by their fruits. They have but one desire—to
+know the truth. They have but one fear—to believe
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_288'>288</span>a lie. And if they know the strength of science, and
+rely upon it with unswerving trust, they also know the
+limits beyond which science ceases to be strong. They
+best know that questions offer themselves to thought
+which science, as now prosecuted, has not even the tendency
+to solve. They keep such questions open, and
+will not tolerate any unlawful limitation of the horizon
+of their souls. They have as little fellowship with the
+atheist who says there is no God as with the theist who
+professes to know the mind of God.</p>
+
+<p class='c036'>“Two things,” said Immanuel Kant, “fill me with
+awe: the starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility
+in man.” And in his hours of health and
+strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has
+ceased and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific
+investigator finds himself overshadowed by the
+same awe. Breaking contact with the hampering details
+of earth, it associates him with a power which gives
+fulness and tone to his existence, but which he can
+neither analyze nor comprehend.</p>
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003' />
+</div>
+<p class='c036'>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class='tnbox'>
+
+ <ul class='ul_1 c003'>
+    <li>Transcriber’s Notes:
+      <ul  class='ul_2'>
+        <li>The first 44 footnotes are gathered together in the “<a href='#notes'>NOTES AND REFERENCES</a>” 
+        section. The following footnotes appear in the text where they are referenced.
+        </li>
+        <li>The mid dot—“·” is used in numbers to separate the whole part from the decimal 
+        fraction of the number.
+        </li>
+        <li>Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
+        </li>
+        <li>Typographical errors were silently corrected.
+        </li>
+        <li>Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant 
+        form was found in this book.
+        </li>
+      </ul>
+    </li>
+  </ul>
+
+</div>
+<p class='c036'>&nbsp;</p>
+
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