about seven years of age. "If it be not so, then am I a deliberate deceiver." After this we can ask but one question :-Why does the man need a larger hat than the child? The answer is, that "the greater development of bones, muscles, and hair renders the adult head considerably larger than that of the child at seven. Another inquirer tried to refute this by another induction and table of brains. But the Professor detected that the difference of sex had been overlooked, or, as he phrases it, in triumphant scorn of his adversary-and, for once, in round Saxon -"he lumps the male and female brains together!" وو As another instance of the value of independent observation, he notices that, whereas he found a common fowl's brain to be to its body as 1 to 500, some twenty physiologists, including Cuvier, had followed each other in making it as 1 to 25, owing to an original mismeasurement by one-half, and a subsequent loss of a cypher. Such is the "sequacity" of anatomical authors. Yet, on the agreeable subject of maggots breeding in the frontal sinus, or cavity of the human forehead, Sir W. Hamilton thought it worth while, after an affected apology for his medical ignorance, to give a list of seventy-five writers who have discussed the matter, including "Olaus Wormius, who himself ejected a worm from the nose, Smetius, who relates his own case," &c. The import of this passage, which it would be unpleasant to quote, is to show the absurdity of phrenologists in ranging seventeen of the smallest organs, "like peas in a pod," along that part of the head where there is an empty space within, such that "no one can predict from external observation, whether it shall be a lodging scanty for a fly, or roomy for a mouse." Nor were his experiments confined to probing the foreheads of the dead, or "weighing the brain of a young and healthy convict, who was hanged, and afterwards weighing the sand which his prepared cranium contained." His own person was not spared. To test the association of ideas, he made his friends repeatedly wake him when dozing off in an arm-chair—a self-sacrifice which those who indulge that habit will appreciate. To try whether the mind is always active, he caused himself to be roused at different seasons of the night, and had the satisfaction of finding that he was always in the middle of a dream. To determine how many objects at once the mind can distinctly survey, he set himself to attend to marbles on the floor, and by an effort took in seven at most, beating Abraham Tucker by three, Degerando by two, and Bonnet and Destutt Tracy by one. Perhaps his most remarkable discovery of this kind is a law of mind which he has thus enunciated : "Knowledge and feeling, perception and sensation, though always co-existent, are always in the inverse ratio of each other. Thus, in sight there is more perception, less sensation; in smell there Man's Proper Place in Creation. 35 is more sensation, less perception. In the finger-points, tactile perception is at its height; but there is hardly another part of the body in which sensation is not more acute." Sir W. Hamilton was not aware that this law had been announced and referred to its cause (the passive nature of sensation and active nature of perception) by De Biran, now nearly half a century ago. With what qualifications it is true of the sense of touch, is examined in the notes to Reid. Here again, with his usual zeal, Sir W. Hamilton seems to have tried upon various parts of his own body the effect of "pressure with a subacute point" and of "puncture." The latter, in seeming contradiction to the law, produced most pain in the tongue and finger, where perception is also the highest. But an explanation was soon ready. Either nerves of feeling lie beneath the nerves of touch, or the same nerves commence their energy as feeling only at the pitch where their energy as touch concludes." At any rate, he was reassured by finding that, in proportion to the soreness of the tongue or the finger under such treatment, it is incapacitated for the time as an organ of external touch.* 66 CONSUMPTION AND LONGEVITY. Sir Edward Wilmot the physician, was when a youth, so far gone in a consumption, that Dr. Radcliffe, whom he consulted, gave his friends no hopes of his recovery, yet he lived to the age of 93; and Dr. Heberden notes" this has been the case with some others who had many symptoms of consumption in youth." MAN'S PROPER PLACE IN CREATION. Professor Daubeny has observed, with equal force and beauty: When we reflect within what a narrow area our researches are necessarily circumscribed; when we perceive that we are bounded in space almost to the surface of the planet in which we reside, itself merely a speck in the universe, one of innumerable worlds invisible from the nearest of the fixed stars; when we recollect, too, that we are limited in point of time to a few short years of life and activity,-that our records of the past history of the globe and of its inhabitants are comprised within a minute portion of the latest of the many epochs which the world has gone through; and that, with regard to the future, the most durable monuments we can raise to hand down our names to posterity are liable at any time to be overthrown by an earthquake, and would be obliterated as if they had never been by any of those processes of metamorphic action which geology tells us form a part of the cycle of changes which the globe is destined to undergo,-the more lost in wonder we may be at the vast fecundity of nature, which within so narrow a sphere can crowd together phenomena so various and so imposing, the more sensible shall we become of the small proportion which our highest powers and their happiest results bear, not only to the cause of all causation, but even to other created beings, higher in the scale than ourselves, which we may conceive to exist. * Selected and abridged from the Saturday Review. Nature of the Soul. 66 It was a dictum of Aristotle's that "in infancy the soul of man differs in nothing from that of the brutes." But then he also says that one animal alone, man, can reflect and deliberate; " and the latter statement has found most favour with modern philosophers. Thus we are now informed that "the brute is sensitive but not self-conscious;" and powers and faculties are continually pointed to in man, which it is positively asserted can be found in none lower than himself. May we not ask the assertors how they know these things? Have they ever visited the chambers of thought within the penetralia of the brute? They are hardly likely to be right, if Sir Benjamin Brodie apprehends correctly that "the mental principle in animals is of the same essence as that of human beings; so that even in the humbler classes we may trace the rudiments of those faculties to which, in their state of more complete development, we are indebted for the grandest results of human genius."-(Psychological Inquiries, p. 164.) Again: "I am inclined to believe that the minds of the inferior animals are essentially of the same nature with that of the human race."-(Ibid. p. 166.) The Rev. John Wesley's conclusion as to the nature of "the living soul" imparted to Adam, was that "God gave him such life as other animals enjoy."—(Notes to the New Testament, p. 497.) Dr. Cromwell, in "the Philosophic Argument " of his work, The Soul and the Future Life, introduces, in a note, the following definitions of "spirit," or, as he terms it, "abstract self-subsistence." Substances, said Dr. Watts, speaking after the Schoolmen (Philosophical Essays, p. 51) are "such things, or beings, which we conceive as the subjects or supporters of distinct qualities, and which subsist of themselves, without dependence upon any creature." This notion of substance is commonly accepted by Immaterialists as applying to mans' soul. Coleridge, in his Theory of Life, (p. 94,) admits that he regards the soul as "a thing, a self-subsistent hypostasis." Belsham, much less consistently, either with Priestley, whom he professed to follow, or himself, defined Spirit as "thinking substance." (Elements of the Philosophy of the Mind, prefixed to a Compendium of Logic.) Stewart saw an objection to the word "substance," but it was only "as implying a greater degree of knowledge of the nature of mind than our faculties are fitted to attain" (Dissertation, Sir William Hamilton's, ed. p. 116); and his proposed substitute, thinking being," can be admitted to offer no material alteration. Reid also preferred, throughout his 66 Nature of the Soul. 37 Inquiry into the Human Mind, such expressions as "thinking being" and "thinking principle." But Sir William Hamilton continued to employ the old scholastic term. With him Mind was still "hyperphysical substance" (Discussions on Philosophy, &c. p. 307); notwithstanding his remark, made with equal reference to Mind and Matter, that "absolute substance and absolute quality are both inconceivable as more than negations of the conceivable." (Ibid. p. 605.) Plato instituted a classification into the soul of the appetites, that of the passions, and that of the knowing faculties, each having its own seat in the body, and each its peculiar motions; and Aristotle had his souls, vegetable, sentient, and rational. Under all Grecian physiology and psychology lay the assumption that whatever was self-motional was life or soul, matter being essentially inactive. And thus it became necessary to suppose a vital agent, whether activity was manifested, and that equally in the cases of mere physical function, sentience, and intellect; this being the supposition on which alike rested Plato's three kinds of soul and Aristotle's three souls; for to so much the theory of the last-mentioned philosopher seems very nearly, if not literally, to amount. Galen limited the term "soul: " to the agent of the sentient and intelligent functions, and made "nature" the operator in the simply physical: but Aristotle reigned over the schools; and his doctrine of the vegetable, sentient, and rational souls, variously modified, may be traced in very many medico-physiological theories down to recent times. The Stagirite's "vegetable. soul" especially, as Galen had merely given it another name in calling it "nature," or "the natural faculties," so was it substantially one with the "archæus," or "governing principle" of Paracelsus and Helmont; and "the animating and organizing principle" of Harvey. Yet, more lately, Müller has set up an organic force," which "exists even in the germ, and creates in it the essential parts of the future animal; and Prout an "organic agent," or "ultimate principle," "endowed with a faculty little short of intelligence," &c. And if Hunter, in his theory of Life, did not commit the last-cited extravagance, yet his highly-attenuated substance" pervaded and gave vital properties to both solids and fluids; and, according to his zealous disciple and successor, the late Mr. Abernethy, "actually constructed the very means by which it carried on its various processes." The discovery of Electricity made known a new class of beings or entities which seemed to exist between the opposite confines of matter and spirit, and to partake in a degree of the nature of both. Dr. Prichard says: The "vital principle" was imagined to be a substance of a similar kind in many respects, if not to be absolutely identified, with the electric fluid. As the electric fluid appears to be endowed with the property of modifying, under particular circumstances, the ordinary influence of chemical affinity, and of controlling in a certain degree the usual operation of its laws, so "the vital principle," which was supposed to be diffused through the body in the living state; and to pervade every texture and every part, was imagined to protect the whole from the chemical agencies of the surrounding elements.-Review of the Doctrine of a Vital Principle, sect. ii. This passage gives a fair exposition of the doctrine inculcated by Mr. Abernethy, on the subject of Life as taught by Hunter; and Abernethy imagined that if philosophers once saw reason to believe that Life was something of an invisible and active nature superadded to organisation, They would see equal reason to believe that Mind might be superadded to Life, as life is to structure. They would then, indeed, still further, perceive how Mind and Matter might reciprocally operate on each other, by means of an inhering substance" (viz. the "matter of life"). Phys. Lect. and Disc. p. 95. (Again: "The consideration of the phenomena of Mind, as well as that of the phenomena of Life, equally enforces the opinion of their distinct and independent nature. Uneducated reason, and the most scientific research, equally induce us to believe that we are composed of an assemblage of organs formed of common inert matter, a principle of life and action, and a sentient and rational faculty; all intimately connected, yet each distinct from the other."-Phys. Lect. and Disc., p. 401.) Yet, adds Dr. Cromwell, "the notion of any distinct agent or principle, to account for Life at least, has already become obsolete, and is now commonly abandoned." (The Soul and the Future Life, p. 40.) THE IMPRISONED SOUL. Cowley, in his Davideis, book iv., says of Saul, His soul was ne'er unbent from weighty care; Upon which he notes-" According to the old senseless opinion, that the heavens were divided into several orbs or spheres, and that a particular Intelligence or Angel was assigned to each of them, to turn it round (like a mill-horse, as Scaliger says,) to all eternity." In his Pindaric Ode-Life, Cowley thus describes the imprisoned soul. Upon the text from Euripides, "Who knows whether to live be not to die; and to die to live?" he says: We grow at last by custom to believe That really we live : Whilst all these shadows that for things we take, Are but the empty dreams which in death's sleep we make. Lead us to solid wrong; We pray God our friends' torments to prolong, And wish uncharitably for them To be as long a dying as Methusalem. |