given us even as the green herb, and as the green herb we will use them. We know that "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together till now," but we also know that a portion at least of that misery is occasioned by ourselves, and can be prevented if we please. We shall not, we believe, when the matter is again brought before Parliament, hesitate to do what is in our power to remove the portion of that misery for which human cruelty is responsible. ROBERT LOWE. OCTRINES which, like those under discussion, reject the ultimate data of consciousness as untrustworthy, oppose the aggregate convictions and experience of men, and ignore the fundamental principles upon which society is constituted, are not necessarily to be rejected as false for these reasons, nor on account of any other "logical consequences" whatever, however serious It is well, however, not to lose sight of the "consequences," seeing that they serve as an incentive to investigation, and also as a preventive to feeble attempts at compromise, and at harmonizing views between which there is and must ever be an unresolvable discord-attempts which work nothing but evil to the cause they are intended to The following quotations from Dr. Büchner's "Force and Matter" (Kraft und Stoff will indicate the tendency of what is to-day called "philosophical thought: serve. "That the world is not governed, as frequently expressed, but that the changes and motions of matter obey a necessity inherent in it, which admits of no exception, cannot be denied by any person who is but superficially acquainted with the natural sciences." -Translation by J. F. Collingwood, p. 5. "Matter is the origin of all that exists; all natural and mental forces are inherent in it." (P. 32.) "What this or that man may understand by a governing reason, an absolute power, a universal soul, a personal God, &c., is his own affair. The theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to themselves." (P. 43.) "Nature, the all-engendering and all-devouring, is its own beginning and end, birth and death. She produced man by her own power, and takes him again." (P. 88.) "There exists a phrase, repeated ad nauseam, of mortal body and immortal spirit.' A closer examination causes us with more truth to reverse the sentence. The body is certainly mortal in its own individual form, but not in its constituents. It changes not merely in death, but also . . . during life; however, in a higher sense it is immortal, since the smallest particle of which it is composed, cannot be destroyed. On the contrary, that which we call 'spirit' disappears with the dissolution of the individual material combination; and it must appear to any unprejudiced intellect, as if the concurrent action of many particles of matter had produced any effect which ceases with the cause. Though' (says Fechner) we are not annihilated by death, we cannot save from death our previous mode of existence. We return visibly to the earth from which we were taken."" (P. 13.) 6 6 they may appear; unless such consequences involve a reductio ad absurdum aut impossibile. If science declares them true, they must be accepted as such, ruat cælum; there is no appeal. But if they are only advanced on the authority of scientific men, however eminent, the case is different. They may still be true; there is a certain presumption in their favour; but to insure acceptance they must be supported by irrefragable scientific proof. Mr. Huxley affirms the Automatism of man; and brings to the support of his views a wealth of learning and illustration, a force and grace of style, and a dialectic skill, which make him a most formidable champion of any doctrine that he may propound. His arguments are chiefly derived from four sources:-(1) from physiology, in relation to molecular changes in nerve and muscle, during action; (2) from pathology, as illustrated by the case of the French sergeant; (3) from comparative physiology, as in certain automatic actions of the frog; and (4) from considerations connected with man's origin and history. If, in this discussion, precedence and prominence have been given to the last division of the argument, it is for this reason, that this alone can lead to a final and decisive result. The greater includes the less; and the doctrine of Evolution, if itself demonstrated, will prove all that the rest could hope to accomplish, and very much more. The history of the frog gives an instructive and interesting view of Automatism in a concrete form, but has no bearing upon general action. The case of the French sergeant is full of interest and mystery; but will afford at least as powerful an argument against general human Automatism, as in its favour; as may be inferred from the following extract from his history. He had been wounded in the head, and had been paralyzed for two years. He recovered to a great extent, but from that time he began to live "two lives, a normal life and an abnormal life. In his normal life he is perfectly well, cheerful, and a capital hospital attendant, does all his work well, and is a respectable well-conducted man. That normal life lasts for seven-and-twenty days, or thereabouts, out of every month; but for a day or two in each month-generally at intervals of about that time-he passes into another life, suddenly and without any warning or intimation. In this life he is still active, goes about just as usual, and is to all appearance just the same man as before, goes to bed and undresses himself, gets up, makes his cigarette and smokes it, and eats and drinks. But in this condition he neither sees, nor hears, nor tastes, nor smells, nor is he conscious of anything whatever, and has only one sense-organ in a state of activity, viz., that of touch, which is exceedingly delicate. If you put an obstacle in his way, he knocks against it, feels it, and goes to the one side; if you push him in any direction he goes straight on, illustrating, as well as he can, the first law of motion. You see I have said he makes his cigarettes, but you may make his tobacco of shavings or of anything else you like, and still he will go on making his cigarettes as usual. His action is purely mechanical. And what is the most remarkable fact of all is the modifica tions which this injury has made in the man's moral nature. In his normal life he is one of the most upright and honest of men. In his abnormal state, however, he is an inveterate thief. He will steal everything he can lay his hands upon; and if he cannot steal anything else, he will steal his own things and hide them away."* It may fairly be urged, if this man in his abnormal state, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling nothing, acting mechanically, and being an "inveterate thief" is an automaton, what is he when he has all his senses in full operation, and when he is an upright and honest man? Surely something very different from an automaton-as are all other men who comport themselves in a manner so opposed to this kind of Automatism. The argument from the physiology of the nervous system, if pursued to the uttermost, would probably only lead to a "drawn battle," in a scientific aspect; and then the general tendency of men to think that they possess some power of voluntary action would turn the scale against Automatism. In Mr. Huxley's essay on the "Scientific Aspects of Positivism," the position is thus stated, in the writer's peculiarly forcible and nervous style :— "As the ages lengthen, the borders of Physicism increase. . Even theology, in her purer forms, has ceased to be anthropomorphic, however she may talk. Anthropomorphism has taken stand in its last fortressman himself. But science closely invests the walls; and philosophers gird themselves for battle upon the last and greatest of all speculative problems-Does human nature possess any free volitional or truly anthropomorphic element, or is it only the cunningest of all nature's clocks? Some, among whom I count myself, think that the battle will for ever remain a drawn one, and that, for all practical purposes, this result is as good as anthropomorphism winning the day."+ But the final struggle of Automatism, and what is here called Anthropomorphism, will have to be fought on the field of Evolution, and the battle cannot be a drawn one. Being in direct opposition to the instincts and convictions of humanity, the aggressive doctrine must prove its right to acceptance, or it will infallibly be rejected. If, on the other hand, the doctrine of Evolution, as now set forth, be a true doctrine, I see (and wish to see) no escape from its logical and inevitable corollary, Automatism, in its fullest sense. Mr. Huxley's conclusion, from his own premises, is equally cogent and perspicuous. "But," says he, "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 British Medical Journal, August 24th, 1874. matter of which they are composed. But if, as I have endeavoured 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."* The "conclusions" referred to in the opening of this passage were those noticed at the end of the first part of this inquiry, and it becomes necessary now to examine them further. Mr. Huxley proposes † to demonstrate that "a three-fold unitynamely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition"-pervades the whole living world. In expanding the first idea as to unity of power or faculty, he affirms that "all the multifarious 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;"—that is to say, all the faculties of man consist in nutrition, motion, or reproduction of the species. And this classification is propounded as exhaustive, and not excluding "intellect, feeling, and will, which we rightly name the higher faculties, . . . inasmuch as to every one but the subject of them they are known only as transitory changes in the relative position of parts of the body." ... It might not be inopportune here to inquire whether Mr. Huxley has borne in mind, in this most marvellous of statements, his own far-famed canon, that "it is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible." In the absence of any explanation, or any attempt at proof, unless Goethe's well-known epigram be intended for either, it is difficult to conjecture what the passage may mean. It seems equally to defy exegesis, commentary, or criticism. If the meaning be, as superficially considered it would appear, that mental operations are identical with muscular motion, because without this latter the former cannot be communicated to others, I confess my entire inability to discuss it. If it possesses any more recondite meaning, it must be such as has no close bearing upon the doctrine in question, inasmuch as there is no further reference to it; and it is only illustrated by some interesting details of contraction in animal and vegetable tissues. By a "unity of form," Mr. Huxley seems to imply that all organisms, at some period of their existence, present themselves as particles of protoplasm, with or without a nucleus. If the position means more than this it is untenable. It appears to have but Lay Sermons, &c., p. 138. † Op. cit. p. 122. |