VITAL DYNAMICS 
 
 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION BEFORE THE ROYAL 
 
 COLLEGE OF SURGEONS IN LONDON 
 
 14th FEBRUARY 1840 
 
VITAL DYNAMICS 
 
 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION BEFORE THE ROYAL 
 
 COLLEGE OF SURGEONS IN LONDON 
 
 14th FEBRUARY 1840 
 
 / 
 BY JOSEPH HENRY GREEN F. R. S. 
 
 LATE PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY AND SURGERY TO THE COLLEGE : PRO- 
 FESSOR OF ANATOMY TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY : ONE OF 
 THE SURGEONS TO ST. TIlOMAS's HOSPITAL 
 
 
 LONDON 
 WILLIAM PICKEIUNG 
 
 1B40 
 
^ 
 
 ix.^'^^ 
 
 ^1 
 
 Cr^Q^ 
 
 C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, 
 

 PREFACE. 
 
 Notwithstanding the favourable testimony 
 of friends, on whose judgment I rely, to the 
 success of the Oration which I now offer to 
 the candid and impartial criticism of those 
 engaged in scientific pursuits, I shall neither 
 be surprised nor offended, if it should appear 
 that some of my auditors deemed it unsuited 
 to the occasion on which it was delivered, or, 
 that many of my readers consider it unsuited 
 to any occasion. I cannot conceal from my- 
 self the fact, that the students of philosophy, 
 to whom I address myself, are few in number ; 
 and that in this country men, even of appa- 
 rently high cultivation, turn with scorn or in- 
 difference from what are called metaphysical 
 pursuits. And if indeed, by the term meta- 
 physics, we designate unmeaning subtleties, 
 vague fancies, and, in general, speculations 
 which properly transcend the human faculties, 
 we might well be content to turn from them 
 as a mere waste of time and abuse of the mind. 
 But if by this term we mean (as in all reason 
 we should) that which, in contradistinction to 
 sensuous facts and appearances, is therefore 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 supersensuous, because it can be no object of 
 the senses, and necessarily includes the prin- 
 ciples which legitimately give to the results 
 of sensuous experience their connexion and 
 intelligibility, — the demand will scarcely ap- 
 pear extravagant, if we ask the students of 
 natural science to examine the philosophical 
 grounds of the postulates and data from which 
 they proceed ; and to subject to philosophical 
 criticism the reasonings necessary to their in- 
 ferences and conclusions, nay, the very lan- 
 guage in and by which they convey and re- 
 cord the results of their experience. 
 
 The aim of this address is avowedly to aid 
 the student in this requisite inquiry, and, I do 
 not hesitate to add, in the indispensable duty 
 of this TrpoTratSeta and preparatory discipline of 
 science. That the attempt to penetrate, for 
 this purpose, into a region of thought, little, 
 alas! frequented by the English reader, will 
 expose me to the charge of obscurity, almost 
 inseparable from the nature of the under- 
 taking, I have as little ground to doubt as dis- 
 position to avoid ; and should it proceed merely 
 from the mental indolence which too often 
 induces the many to reject truth, because it is 
 irreconcilable with their prejudices and pre- 
 vious habits of thinking, I shall be ready to 
 bear the imputation without attempting either 
 defence or apology. I am not, indeed, vain 
 
PREFACE. VU 
 
 enough to imagine that, had the limits of the 
 Address permitted it, my powers would have 
 enabled me to set forth the truths, which I 
 proposed to vindicate, in the clear and con- 
 vincing manner to which they are entitled. 
 Any obscurity arising from defects of my own 
 I should be ready at all times to confess : and 
 no less, should the charge of perplexity and 
 obscurity be substantiated by the exposure 
 of error or ignorance, of erroneous statements 
 or inconclusive reasonings, will the same love 
 of truth, which inspired the courage to avow 
 my conviction, prompt me to admit, without 
 hesitation, their falsehood or imperfections. 
 
 If, however, after a more careful investigation 
 of the grounds of natural science, it should, on 
 the other hand, appear that the charge of ob- 
 scurity may be more fitly retorted on a philo- 
 sophy, tacitly, if not openly, adopted as the 
 guide of observation and experiment, which, 
 if I am not grossly deceived, has retarded the 
 progress of science by fictions, fancies, and 
 arbitrary assumptions, it will not be an un- 
 founded hope, that the prejudices will be dis- 
 missed which have hitherto prevented the 
 admission of the Dynamic Principles here in- 
 culcated. The limits of a preface forbid the 
 attempt to expose the inconsistencies and con- 
 tradictions that perplex and bewilder the mind, 
 in the futile endeavours to construct a scheme 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 of the facts and phsenomena of nature from 
 merely sensuous data ; though it would not be 
 difficult to shew, that the pretended appeal to 
 the senses is, in many instances, merely the 
 substitution of the sensuous fancy for expe- 
 rience, and of pictures and figments for sen- 
 suous realities. What other name, for instance, 
 than that of a figment can w^e give to the so 
 called " matter" of physical reasoners? For 
 the notion of a materia prima, — of a substance, 
 standing sub appareutibus,— oi a noumenon in 
 contradistinction to its phcenomenon, — supposes 
 something beyond the qualities and forces with 
 which it may have been endowed, and by 
 means of which only it can act upon us, or 
 become thereby a possible object of sensuous 
 experience: and what possible object, con- 
 ceptual or sensible, can remain after the ab- 
 straction of all and every property? How can 
 we imagine even this residuum, except by mis- 
 taking the effort of straining the fancy for the 
 notion it strives to realize? Has the natural 
 philosopher satisfied himself that he derives 
 any advantage in behoof of physics from the 
 assumption of a material substratum? Will 
 not some doubt mingle with his belief in ex- 
 amining this question, when he considers that 
 our great Newton could admit that the par- 
 ticles of matter are infinitely small in propor- 
 tion to the distances between them ; and that 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 Others have thought it no objection to the 
 doctrine, that the material universe might be 
 compressed within the compass of a nutshell ? 
 Will he find any authority or support for the 
 opinion in the speculations of the materialist, 
 Priestley, who leaves us in doubt whether the 
 question between matter and spirit be not a 
 mere verbal dispute? Let me entreat him, 
 lastly, to weigh, whether the investigations of 
 physics are not ever really and truly directed 
 to the powers and forces with which matter 
 is endowed, rather than to this imagined sub- 
 stratuiUy which the modern science of physics 
 at least is content to keep out of view, as far 
 as its doubtful nature renders it desirable, 
 and to waive the boast of Ralpho, w ho 
 
 ** profest 
 He had First Matter seen undrest : 
 He took her naked, all alone, 
 Before one ra«j of form was on." 
 
 It is very true that the metaphysical question 
 of the nature of the matter is one which has 
 been lost sight of, or banished, by modern 
 physics, and that the experimental school has 
 been content to take matter as a daliim unex- 
 plained, or not requiring elucidation. It is, 
 however, more than a question, whether the 
 inherent difficulties of a sensuous and essen- 
 tially mechanical philosophy of nature have 
 been removed, by substituting or giving pro- 
 minence to the Aloinic Docli inc. 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 The modern experimentalist assumes or be- 
 lieves that the material constitution of the 
 universe essentially consists in an original 
 number of physical atoms, each distinguished 
 by its specific properties; that these are so 
 aggregated as to constitute bodies ; that the 
 physical atoms are so disposed, arranged and 
 connected, as to produce the differences of 
 solid, with all the modifications of density, of 
 liquid and aeriform, and that in all instances 
 they are disposed segregately with interstices, 
 which permit the permeation of the body by 
 other material molecules, and allow of separa- 
 tion, division, or reconj unction, without change 
 or destruction of the individual molecules. 
 Now it is very true that the supposed nature 
 and arrangement of the atoms answer two very 
 important purposes, and offer a sensuous in- 
 tuition on the one hand, of the porosity, per- 
 meability and separability, and on the other, 
 of the solidity, impenetrability, and continuity 
 of bodily existence ; and the condition under 
 which such phenomena are possible, is un- 
 doubtedly a necessary postulate of the human 
 mind. But it by no means follows that the 
 atomic constitution of matter is the condition 
 which justifies and necessitates its assumption. 
 In order to conceive a body, its composition 
 and decomposition, it is necessary to contem- 
 plate it as a possible partible and continuum. 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 But what, after all, is this but to say, that an 
 extended whole or body must be conceived as 
 separable or divisible into parts, and that, 
 viewing the whole as an aggregate of parts, 
 that which we predicate of all must be predi- 
 cated of each ? Does the atomic doctrine bring 
 us one whit nearer to a solution of the remark- 
 able fact of the interpenetration of aeriform 
 bodies, of their rapid diffusion through each 
 other's masses, so that there is no limit to their 
 incorporation ; — *' one gas," as Dalton ex- 
 presses it, '* acting as a vacuum with respect to 
 another?" Does it add any insight into the 
 nature of the quantitative minima in the 
 combining ingredients of chemical compounds, 
 which the law of definite proportions has dis- 
 closed ? It may be convenient for the natural 
 philosopher to call these parts elementary 
 molecules or atoms, but he should never forget 
 that these physical atoms are contrivances of 
 the sensuous imagination, for the purpose of 
 presenting the constitution and changes of 
 bodies as an image ; or, if he forget it, he must 
 be reminded that, so far from explaining the 
 material constitution of bodies, they are, in 
 truth, themselves little bodies, of which the 
 parts just as much require explanation as those 
 of larger; and that the difficulty would be the 
 same in respect of a mote dancing in the sun- 
 beam, as of the solar system itself, if, how- 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 ever, the atomic doctrine pretends to be more 
 than a language, the naturalist will find that 
 he has only exchanged the inconvenient specu- 
 lation regarding matter for the no less intract- 
 able problem which body offers, and which 
 the assumption of physical atoms renders no- 
 wise intelligible ; an exchange, oppressed with 
 similar difficulties, and which must ever beset 
 a natural philosophy appealing to the senses 
 for facts that cannot be matters of experience, 
 referring to the authority of the senses for 
 data that are beyond the capability of the 
 senses to determine, and — not the least of the 
 difficulties, — endowing these molecules with 
 forces that render the physical atoms them- 
 selves the superfluous accessories of a natural 
 philosophy too lazy to investigate its primary 
 data and postulates, and to render them con- 
 sistent with each other. 
 
 If it should be objected that the experi- 
 mentalist finds no necessity for troubling him- 
 self with metaphysical questions, which he 
 assumes to lie beyond the sphere within which 
 he limits his exertions, and that he adopts the 
 atomic, or other theory, only as a convenient 
 hypothesis, or serviceable language, for con- 
 veying or recording a knowledge of the facts 
 which he observes, or has the good fortune to 
 discover, — that, in short, they answer a logical 
 purpose, which it would be difficult otherwise 
 
PREFACE. XIII 
 
 to supply, in contemplating the constitution 
 and changes of Nature ; let him bear in mind 
 that he is adopting a picture language, which, 
 like the paintings on the walls of Egyptian 
 tombs, or like Mr. Bowles' Bibles, may have 
 the advantage of vividly affecting the senses, 
 but is incapable of expressing more or other 
 than what affects the senses ; and therefore (if 
 our views be correct) calculated to withdraw the 
 mind from the true objects of physical inquiry, 
 namely, powers, forces, causes, laws the at- 
 tempt to express which adequately in a lan- 
 guage of the senses cannot but be a failure, 
 attended with the disadvantage of misleading 
 the mind from the true aims of inductive 
 science. Shall we not, however, rather say 
 that hypotheses, as founded upon arbitrary or 
 insufficient data, are positive causes of error, 
 and by the false semblance of knowledge, re- 
 tard the progress of science. Opinions neces- 
 sarily influence the statement of facts, and 
 may keep us in ignorance of the truth, and 
 perpetuate error, unless they have been pre- 
 viously subjected to philosophical criticism. 
 It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader 
 of the mischief of hypothetical reasoning, and 
 how much farther its influence may extend 
 beyond a mere logical mode of connecting 
 facts, in the instances of the protracted autho- 
 rity of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. 
 
Xiv PREFACE. 
 
 of the doctrine of the elements and humors 
 in medicine, and of the mechanical physiology 
 of the school of Boerhaave ; — and equivalent 
 examples are not wanting in modern times, of 
 which the acidifying principle of Lavoisier's 
 Chemistry is a notable instance. It may be 
 said, indeed, that the errors here adduced were 
 corrected by a further and more searching 
 appeal to sensuous experience ; but were I 
 bound to grant the objection, I might still ask ; 
 — Whence did the errors originate, except in 
 the too exclusive authority of the senses, and of 
 the faculty judging according to sense ; and 
 what is to guard us in future against similar 
 errors, except a philosophy which, in deter- 
 mining the grounds and aims of natural science, 
 shall render the human mind consistent with 
 itself, as the proof of its coincidence with uni- 
 versal and permanent truth. 
 
 This then was the primary object of this 
 Address, to recommend the study of Nature, in 
 the light of a dynamic philosophy, as a scheme 
 of Causes and Laws in the unity and with the 
 connections of reason. And in aid of this 
 purpose, I flatter myself that I have rendered 
 an acceptable service to the student of natural 
 science, in drawing his attention to the all im- 
 portant distinction of the Reason and Under- 
 standing, which has been so ably and fully 
 elucidated by the philosophic acumen of Cole* 
 
PREFACF. XV 
 
 ridge, and which, though recognized by our 
 elder writers, and adopted by the philosophers 
 of Germany, has been lost sight of or neg- 
 lected by the more recent cultivators of intel- 
 lectual philosophy in our country. And in 
 order to this dynamic method, we have urged 
 the student to penetrate deeper than the mere 
 surfaces offered to his senses ; and to unsen- 
 sualize his mind, by contemplating the powers 
 working in and to the phcetiomena, which are 
 their signs and results ; and we earnestly ex- 
 hort him not to take the mere data of sensuous 
 intuition as the only legitimate objects of 
 knowledge, and cognitions, extrinsic and sen- 
 suous, as the limits beyond which it w^ould 
 be idle to push his inquiries. But if these 
 views claim the serious attention of all those 
 who are engaged in pursuits which have the 
 operations and changes of nature for their 
 object, most especially are they forced on the 
 consideration of those who, in the study of 
 living agents and of organic being, are per- 
 petually reminded that the realities which 
 they seek are not the immediate objects of 
 the senses. What is it that constitutes the 
 reality of our body, or of any organ of the 
 body, say the eye? Is it to be sought in the 
 materials of which it is composed? ** No- 
 thing," says Coleridge, *' would be more easy 
 than so to construct tlie paper, ink, painted 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 capitals, and the like, of a printed disquisi- 
 tion on the eye, or the muscles and cellular 
 texture (that is, the flesh) of the human body, 
 as to bring together every one of the sensible 
 and ponderable stuffs or elements, that are 
 sensuously perceived in the eye itself, or in 
 the flesh itself. Carbon and nitrogen, oxygen 
 and hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, and one 
 or two metals and metallic bases, constitute 
 the whole. It cannot be these, therefore, that 
 we mean by an eye, by our body. But perhaps 
 it may be a particular combination of these ? 
 But here comes a question : In this term do 
 you or do you not include the principle, the 
 operating cause, of the combination ? If not, 
 then detach this eye from the body. Look 
 steadily at it — as it might lie on the marble 
 slab of a dissecting room. Say it were the eye 
 of a murderer, a Bellingham : or the eye of 
 a murdered patriot, a Sidney ! — Behold it, 
 handle it, with its various accompaniments or 
 constituent parts, of tendon, ligament, mem- 
 brane, blood-vessel, gland, humors ; its nerves 
 of sense, of sensation, and of motion. Alas ! 
 all these names, like that of the organ itself, 
 are so many anachronisms, figures of speech, 
 to express that which has been : as when the 
 guide points with his finger to a heap of stones, 
 and tells the traveller, ' That is Babylon, or 
 Persepolis.' — Is this cold jelly * the light of 
 
PREFACE. XVII 
 
 the body?' Is this the micranthropos in the 
 marvellous microcosm ? Is this what you mean 
 when you well define the eye as the telescope 
 and the mirror of the soul, the seat and agent 
 of an almost magical power? 
 
 " Pursue the same inquisition with every 
 other part of the body, whether integral or 
 simply ingredient ; and let a Berzelius or a 
 Hatchett be your interpreter, and demonstrate 
 to you what it is that in each actually meets 
 your senses. And when you have heard the 
 scanty catalogue, ask yourself if these are in- 
 deed the living flesh, the blood of life? Or not 
 far rather — I speak of what, as a man of com- 
 mon sense, you really do, not what, as a phi- 
 losopher, you ought to believe — is it not, I 
 say, far rather the distinct and individualized 
 agency that by the given combinations utters 
 and bespeaks its presence? Justly and with 
 strictest propriety of language may I say, 
 speaks. It is to the coarseness of our senses, 
 or rather to the defect and limitation of our 
 percipient faculty, that the visible object ap- 
 pears the same even for a moment. The cha- 
 racters which I am now shaping on this paper 
 abide. Not only the forms remain the same, 
 but the particles of the coloring stuff are fixed, 
 and, for an indefinite j)eriod at least, remain 
 the same. But the partichs that constitute 
 the size, the visibility, of an or<ranic structure 
 
 h 
 
XVlll PREFACE. 
 
 are in perpetual flux. They are to the com- 
 bining and constitutive power as the pulses of 
 air to the voice of a discourser ; or of one who 
 sings a roundelay. The same words may be 
 repeated ; but in each second of time the arti- 
 culated air hath passed away, and each act of 
 articulation appropriates and gives momentary 
 form to a new and other portion. As the 
 column of blue smoke from a cottage chimney 
 in the breathless summer noon, or the stedfast- 
 seeming cloud on the edge-point of a hill in 
 the driving air-current, which momently con- 
 densed and recomposed is the common phan- 
 tom of a thousand successors; — such is the 
 flesh which our bodily eyes transmit to us ; 
 which our palates taste; which our hands 
 touch. 
 
 " But perhaps the material particles possess 
 this combining power by inherent reciprocal 
 attractions, repulsions, and elective affinities ; 
 and are themselves the joint artists of their 
 own combinations? I will not reply, though 
 well I might, that this would be to solve one 
 problem by another, and merely to shift the 
 mystery. It will be sufficient to remind the 
 thoughtful querist, that even herein consists 
 the essential difference, the contradistinction, 
 of an organ from a machine; that not only 
 the characteristic shape is evolved from the 
 invisible central power, but the material mass 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 itself is acquired by assimilation. The germinal 
 power of the plant transmutes the fixed air and 
 the elementary base of water into grass or 
 leaves ; and on these the organific principle in 
 the ox or the elephant exercises an alchemy 
 still more stupendous. As the unseen agency 
 weaves its magic eddies, the foliage becomes 
 indifferently the bone and its marrow, the 
 pulpy brain, or the solid ivory. That what you 
 see is blood, is flesh, is itself the work, or shall 
 I say, the translucence, of the invisible energy, 
 which soon surrenders or abandons them to 
 inferior powers, (for there is no pause nor 
 chasm in the activities of Nature) which re- 
 peat a similar metamorphosis according to 
 their kind ; — these are not fancies, conjec- 
 tures, or even hypotheses, but facts ; to deny 
 which is impossible, not to reflect on which is 
 ignominious. And we need only reflect on 
 them with a calm and silent spirit to learn the 
 utter emptiness and unmeaningness of the 
 vaunted INIechanico-corpuscular philosophy, 
 with both its twins, Materialism on the one 
 hand, and Idealism, rightlier named subjective 
 Idolism,on the other: the one obtruding on us 
 a world of spectres and aj)pariti()ns ; the other 
 a mazy dream !" 
 
 I will not, however, concc^al from my readers 
 that J have had an ulterior object in the fol- 
 lowin": address, and — in addition to its |)urpose, 
 
XX PREFACE. 
 
 in connection with the intention of the founders 
 of the Hunterian Oration, of vindicating the 
 original merit of John Hunter as a philoso- 
 phical physiologist, — that it was composed with 
 a view to the larger design, to which his labors 
 most importantly contributed, of reconciling 
 the study of Nature with the requirements of 
 our moral being, and of connecting science, — 
 which even as the noblest offspring of our 
 intellect is but a fragment of our humanity, — 
 with the philosophy of Coleridge ; which, as far 
 as my knowledge extends, pre-eminently, if 
 not alone, gives life and reality to metaphysical 
 pursuits, by showing their birth, growth, and 
 requisite foundation in the whole man, head 
 and heart. It must be reserved, indeed, for 
 a more suitable occasion, to set forth with 
 fuller and clearer evidence the comprehensive 
 scheme and method of its great and good Au- 
 thor, as far as such a supplement may be 
 necessary to his inestimable published writings ; 
 and I am not without hope that sufficient will 
 have been done in this address to convince the 
 student of the true import of the doctrine of 
 Ideas, as eternal truths, which are, indeed, 
 actuating powers, in the faith of the correlation 
 of the human mind with the Divine Reason, 
 with that Intelligence whose thoughts are acts, 
 with that Mind which is the identity of truth 
 and reality. 
 
PREFACE. XXI 
 
 It is in aid of this more vital philosophy, 
 that the doctrine of Ideas has been introduced: 
 and if the word sound strangely to those for 
 whom " Idea"' has no other meaning than, 
 ** w^hatsoever is the object of the understanding 
 when a man thinks,"* — the advantage of ex- 
 changing it would be equivocal ; since this 
 term, or some substitute less authorized by 
 philosophical usage, is imperatively required 
 in dynamic philosophy, in order to designate 
 powers as predetermining and constructive, as 
 intelligential acts, ^wa/iisig voipal Kal voi^rai, and 
 as formce formaules, or laws. It is however 
 worthy of notice, that the necessity of con- 
 veying the meaning here intended has led to 
 the adoption of expressions, the familiar use 
 of w^liich, whilst it renders them less prefer- 
 able for a technical purpose, happily aids us 
 in explaining the peculiar force of the term 
 " Idea," in accordance with the usage of the 
 Platonic School, in which it first acquired cur- 
 rency. I'hus the word '* Principle" is some- 
 times employed as in some respects equivalent 
 to Idea; and it will be admitted that if this 
 term have any appropriate meaning, it is that 
 of a causative first, which predetermines its 
 consequents and results, and therefore poten- 
 tially contains them, — that is, has the power of 
 
 * Ix)cke, Human Umleibtanding, chap. i. ^. 8. 
 
XXU PREFACE. 
 
 producing them, though the power may not 
 have been actually exerted in realizing them. 
 We speak of the *' principles" of moral con- 
 duct, and assign to the agent a good or bad 
 principle, as that which influences or prede- 
 termines his actions. Again, we infer a " prin- 
 ciple" of vitality in all living beings, as that 
 which, antecedent in order of operance to any 
 visible product, is the power which builds up 
 the living fabric, and remains as its conser- 
 vative " principle" or energy : nay, where the 
 term is used sensu improprio, as when morphia 
 in opium is called its active " principle," still 
 we mean the power which produces and acts 
 in and by the so called material substance. It 
 will be seen then, that the term is used for the 
 purpose of designating the character of a pri- 
 mal causative, which is known by, and pre- 
 supposed in, the results which it produces 
 and predetermines. 
 
 Another example of a term sometimes sub- 
 stituted for Idea, we find in the word " Spirit," 
 as it is not unfrequently employed ; for both 
 alike may designate a one power, manifesting 
 itself in a diversity of forms, and in a manifold 
 of changing results. Thus we speak of the 
 ** Spirit or Idea of the British Constitution :" 
 and though the Idea has perhaps never been 
 distinctly recognized, or raised into distinct 
 consciousness, if indeed we except in the Idea 
 
PREFACE. XXUl 
 
 of Church and State, by Coleridge ; yet, mean- 
 while the seed, semen genet icum, having found 
 an appropriate soil, has grown and evolved 
 itself, as it were, by a blind and silent life ; and, 
 notwithstanding the occasional frost-blight, the 
 shock of the blast, and the stroke of the 
 lightning, has reared itself amid faction, inva- 
 sion, and revolution, into a growth as stately 
 as the native oak of its soil. And I have still 
 faith enough in the English heart of my coun- 
 try to believe, that, as long as its *^ Spirit" 
 remains national, in that best sense of the 
 word nation, which respects not a particular 
 generation, — not the people at one time ex- 
 isting, but the unity of the generations, the 
 type of our inward humanity in the flux of 
 our outward mortality, — the Constitution will 
 continue to expand, prosper, and perfect itself 
 harmoniously as by an organic life. In like 
 manner, the use of the phrase, the *' Spirit of 
 the Scriptures" is accompanied by no fear of 
 being misunderstood : we appeal to the one 
 spirit pervading them as evidence of the inspira- 
 tion of the writers, and we refer confidently all 
 its recorded events, all its prophetic assurances, 
 promised blessings and awful denunciations, 
 all its precepts, doctrinal and practical, all that 
 elevates hope, enlightens faith, or enlivens 
 charity, in its radiant pages, — we attribute all 
 its varied workings to One Holy Power, re- 
 
XXIV PREFACE. 
 
 vealing Himself as the moral Providence of 
 the world in the redemption of humanity. 
 
 Again, the terms, " Type, Pattern, Exem- 
 plar, Model, TrapaSay^a," havc been used as in 
 some degree synonymous with Idea, since they 
 imply that, according to which any result or 
 product is perfected. This may be illustrated 
 by the conception of an artist working ac- 
 cording to a pattern, or ideal in his mind ; and 
 thus, a Praxiteles in forming a statue embody- 
 ing all that is lovely in the female form, or a 
 Fra Angelico, in realizing his supposed vision 
 of the ^eatified Virgin, might be said to have 
 an Idea in his mind, which was the '' standard" 
 according to which he judged of female forms ; 
 the ** pattern" according to which he worked ; 
 and the " ultimate end" which he had proposed 
 to himself from the beginning, and had guided 
 his labors throughout. Though we may say 
 to the artist, as well as to the philosopher, in 
 the words of Scripture, And look that thou 
 make them after theii pattern, which ivas shelved 
 thee in the mount,^ — For the demand is here no 
 less than that of giving a living presence to that, 
 of which all the forms within our experience 
 are but approximations ; and if, therefore, such 
 ideal types can be contemplamina for the human 
 mind, they must be derived from a higher 
 
 * ExoduSy XXV. 40. 
 
PREFACE. XXV 
 
 source, and more excellent birth-place; and 
 whether we look to the works of nature or to 
 the Ideas, which actuate man in his strivings, 
 and become for him the ultimate aims that 
 guide his endeavors towards perfection in his 
 acts and deeds, we cannot but admit that the 
 end and aim are present, and contained in the 
 intention and design at the commencement, 
 predetermine the means to their attainment, 
 and secure the result. Such then is an Idea ; 
 and we may describe it as a causative prin- 
 ciple, combining both power and intelligence, 
 containing, predetermining, and producing its 
 actual result in all its manifold relations, in 
 reference to a final purpose ; and realized in a 
 whole of parts, in which the Idea, as the con- 
 stitutive energy, is evolved and set forth in its 
 unity, totality, finality, and permanent effi- 
 ciency. 
 
 In the ensuing discourse, an attempt has 
 been made to determine the import of Ideas, 
 in connexion with the powers of nature, as a 
 scheme of living forces ; and the term has been 
 employed to designate those energic acts of 
 C)mnii)otent wisdom, which, as laws of nature, 
 forma; fonnantes, are at once creative and con- 
 servative of a nature, ever changing, and yet 
 ever essentially the same. If we contemj)latc 
 them as thoughts of the Divine Intelligence, 
 they arc Ideas, the archetypes and preexisting 
 
XXVI PREFACE. 
 
 models ; if as acts of the Divine Will mani- 
 fested in nature, they are laws. But the 
 student, in humbly raising his apprehension to 
 the Supreme source of Ideas, must never forget 
 the Divine Unity, nor the identity therein of 
 unerring Intelligence, which transcends choice, 
 and of Omnipotent Will, causative of all 
 reahty, in eternal act transcending all pause 
 of deliberation. In surveying the works of 
 nature as the impress of Perfect Wisdom, 
 which is Almighty Power, and whose thoughts 
 are acts ; no breach of unity may be conceived 
 in the design and realization, and we can only 
 say that the will of God is, — at once actualized, 
 and in one act identifying originative power, 
 final intention, and completed reality, in its 
 highest perfection of being. God does, and 
 then sees that it is good ; for that which is 
 done, can be only the reflex of the perfect 
 agent. 
 
 Although it would be here out of place to 
 attempt to reconcile the discrepancies of com- 
 mentators on the Platonic Ideas, enough, it is 
 hoped, has been done, in evolving the essential 
 character of a law of nature, to rescue the 
 speculations of Plato from the opprobrium of 
 extravagance, even of absurdity, which has 
 been too often imputed to them, and to vindi- 
 cate, as far as sound philosophy may sanction 
 it, his doctrine; — that Ideas, IBiaiy are the eter- 
 
PREFACE. XXVU 
 
 iial types, TrapaSa'y^iara, in the divine mind, 
 according to which, and the principles, apy^ai, 
 by the efficiency of which, all things became ; 
 and which Ideas, infused into the human 
 mind, and recognized by a sort of recollection, 
 it is the business of philosophy to bring into 
 distinct consciousness. St. Augustine has with 
 better wisdom, indeed, assigned a more suffi- 
 cient cause than memory for their presence in 
 the minds of men, in saying: ** Credibilius est 
 quia prcesens est eis, quantum id capere possuiit. 
 Lumen Rationis ceterncB, nbi hcec immutabilia 
 vera conspiciunt, non quod noverant aliquando et 
 obliti sunt, quod Platoni vel talibus visum est.''* 
 For, in truth, it is a statement of the Christian 
 doctrine, that the Word, by whom all things 
 were made, is essential light and life to his 
 
 creatures \ — iravra St avTOv eyiviTOf /cat \<^piQ avrov 
 tyevtTO oi»o£ tv o yiyovi:V. Ev aiiTio ^w?) r)v, Kai t) ^w^ 
 7/ J' TO (l>ior TLJV avOf)tL>ir(i)v. Jolin, cli. i. V. .*3, 4. As 
 
 a farther exposition of the same doctrine, we 
 otter the following definition by Coleridge : 
 ** That which contemplated objectively, (that 
 is, as existing externally to the mind,) we call 
 a Law ; the same contemplated subjectively, 
 (that is, as existing in a subject or mind,) is an 
 Idea. Hence Plato often names Ideas, laws ; 
 and Lord Bacon, the British Plato, describes 
 
 " Retract, lib. i, caj). -1. 
 
XXVIU PREFACE. 
 
 the laws of the material universe as the Ideas 
 in nature. Quod in natura naturata lex, in 
 natura naturante idea dicitur.''^ And it is in 
 accordance with this truth that I have endea- 
 vored to show in the following Address, that, 
 as all within the sphere of our sensible expe- 
 rience bears the character of the transient and 
 fluxive, it is only by the aid of the Reason, 
 ^wc TO dXriOivov, that we are enabled to look 
 beyond and deeper, to discover the laws which 
 give permanence and regularity, to discern the 
 eternal Ideas, which are the regulating types 
 and standards of a nature ever tending to lapse 
 into the imperfect and arbitrary, and to raise 
 ourselves to the contemplation of the true 
 causes, the divine acts themselves, which, in 
 our experience of the sensible world, are 
 hidden under the veil of the unreal and perish- 
 ing representatives of the realities, from which 
 they are derived. 
 
 * Church and State, p. 12. Edited by H. N. Coleridge, 
 1 839. Compare The Statesman's Manual, Appendix E. 
 
 And the following" comment on the Platonic doctrine, though 
 not unobjectionable in its phraseology, may be acceptable 
 to the reader, as offering* a different kind of illustration : 
 *' La theorie Platonicienne est Vunite de Vexistence univer- 
 selle, par consequent Vharmonie de Vesprit hurnain et de la 
 nature, des conceptions de Vun et du plan de Vautre, et le 
 double caractcre de Videe, prise au sens de Platon, comme 
 conception generale dans le sujet pensant, et comme lot ou 
 forme gtnerale dans Vohjet externeJ" V. Cousin Metaphy- 
 sique d'Aristote, p. 49. 
 
PREFACE. XXIX 
 
 Lastly, if the Author has succeeded in 
 drawing the attention of the student to the 
 import of Ideas, and in exhibiting their im- 
 portance in aid of a dynamic method of a 
 philosophy and science of nature, he cannot 
 better conclude this prefatory address, than by 
 a passage from Schelling, in the language of 
 Coleridge : " The highest perfection of natural 
 philosophy would consist in the perfect spi- 
 ritualization of all the laws of nature into laws 
 of intuition and intellect. The phcenomena 
 rthe material) must wholly disappear, and the 
 laws alone (the formal) must remain. Thence 
 it comes, that in nature itself the more the 
 principle of law breaks forth, the more does 
 the husk drop off, the plicenomena themselves 
 become more spiritual, and, at length, cease 
 altogether in our consciousness. The optical 
 phcenomena are but a geometry, the lines of 
 which are drawn by light, and the materiality 
 of this light itself has already become matter 
 of doubt. In the appearances of magnetism, 
 all trace of matter is lost, and of the phceno- 
 mena of gravitation, which not a few among 
 the most illustrious Newtonians have declared 
 no otherwise comprehensible than as an imme- 
 diate spiritual influence, there remains nothing 
 but its law, the execution of which, on a vast 
 scale, is the mechanism of the heavcMily mo- 
 tions. The theory of natural i)hilosophy would 
 
XXX PREFACE. 
 
 then be completed, when all nature was de- 
 monstrated to be identical in essence with that 
 which, in its highest known power, exists in 
 man as intelligence and self-consciousness; 
 when the heavens and the earth shall declare 
 not only the power of their Maker, but the 
 glory and the presence of their God, even as 
 He appeared to the great prophet during the 
 vision of the mount, in the skirts of his di- 
 vinity."* 
 
 * Biographia Literaria, v. i. p. 257. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 HuNTERiAN Oration 3 
 
 Appendix A. Evolution of the Idea of Power 51 
 
 B. Transcendental Anatomy 56 
 
 C. Gradation of Animal Life 58 
 
 D. Characteristics of Man's Bodily Frame. . 60 
 
 E. Hunter's Pathology 79 
 
 F. Instinct 88 
 
 Recapitulatory Lecture , 97 
 
HUNTERIAN ORATION. 
 
 MDCCCXL. 
 
 Prudeotibus haec Patis foie, imprudentibus auteni ne plura 
 quideni. BACON, NOVUM organum. 
 
HUNTERIAN ORATION. 
 
 MR. PRKSIDENT AND GENTLEMEN. 
 
 On this, tlie twenty-fiftli, occasion of our 
 assembling to commemorate the birth of John 
 Hunter, by renewing our acknowledgment 
 of his merits, — an occasion signalized by the 
 presence of a gracious Prince,* whose many 
 personal claims on our loyal affection are 
 enforced by gratitude to the revered Monarch, 
 his excellent and illustrious father, to whom 
 this College owes its existence, — on this the 
 twenty-fifth commemorative occasion, 1 might 
 claim some indulgence in the performance of 
 the duty entrusted to me, when I remind you 
 of the ditiiculty which the talents and elo- 
 (pience of more than twenty predecessors have 
 imposed on the task. But, though I do not 
 hesitate to solicit your forbearance in a com- 
 parison, which 1 fear would prove unfavour- 
 able to him who has now the honour of ad- 
 <lressing you, I dare not attempt to vindicate 
 my inability to do justice to Hunter's eminent 
 merits by pleading any diminution in tlic in- 
 terest, still less any exhaustion of the materials 
 
 ♦ H. R. H. the Duke of Cambridge. 
 
THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 of the subject, however frequently set forth 
 and impressively urged. The discoveries of 
 science, the triumphs of genius, the revelation 
 of truth, seem to partake of the permanent 
 being, which is their source ; they are peren- 
 nial, living growths, which ever put forth anew 
 their foliage, blossom, and golden fruit ; and 
 we collect from year to year the harvest, that 
 owes its birth to those divine seeds of wisdom, 
 which the gifted individuals of our race have 
 been permitted to plant, which have been 
 watered by the dews of heaven, and have been 
 fostered by the light and genial warmth of a 
 sun, that sheds on them the blessing of Pro- 
 vidence. 
 
 Among those individuals, to whom have 
 been granted creative genius, power of insight^ 
 and the faculty of interpreting the Laws^ by 
 which their divine Author works in Nature, — 
 among the foremost of those favoured indi- 
 viduals may be ranked the great man whonx 
 we now meet to honour. We claim for him 
 the enlightened approbation of those whose 
 scientific attainments enable them to appre- 
 ciate his transcendant merits : we claim for 
 him the gratitude of mankind : and, if it be in 
 any proportion to the benefit conferred, they 
 will award to him the name of a benefactor, as 
 having enlarged the boundaries, multiplied the 
 resources, and elevated the aims of a science, 
 eminently calculated for the benefit, and ex- 
 clusively devoted to remove or alleviate the 
 
CONNECTED W ITH VITAL DYNAMICS. O 
 
 ills, of suffering man. If, however, our praise 
 is to be discriminative and appropriate to the 
 occasion, we must essay, in the humble hope 
 of some inspiration of the same power, to scan 
 the genius which animated and directed his 
 bold, original, and profound researches, and to 
 trace, with kindred spirit, the mind of him who 
 conceived, planned, and, in a great measure, 
 constructed (what yet indeed remains to be 
 fully achieved) the mighty work of a philo- 
 sophy and science of life and living being. 
 The mere personal character of the man has, 
 meanwhile, almost ceased to be a matter of 
 interest ; of those who personally knew him, 
 whom we regard with the affectionate re- 
 verence due to those who have communed 
 with a gifted seer, there still linger only a few 
 amongst us; and even now it is my painful 
 duty to remind you of the loss of one of these 
 distinguished pupils of Hunter, of one whose 
 memory is hallowed to me by recollections of 
 personal and of family friendship. 
 
 Edward Coleman had shown early in his 
 professional career originality and ability in 
 physiological research ; and having obtained, 
 at the joint recommendation of Mr. Hunter 
 and of Mr. Cline, the appointment of professor 
 at the Veterinary College, he was thereby 
 enabled at once to follow his favourite pursuits, 
 and to j)r()nH)te the interests of the profession 
 to which he had become attached. And it is 
 not too much to say, that it wns cniincntly, 
 
b THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 by the Hunterian Physiology, evinced in his 
 lectures and published works, that the veteri- 
 nary art, in being based on its proper science, 
 has been elevated in this country into a pro- 
 fession, and that its practitioners have thereby 
 obtained that title to the rank of gentlemen, 
 which mainly, at his instance, was recognized 
 by the Government in granting to veterinary 
 surgeons commissions as officers of cavalry. 
 The charm of Professor Coleman's intellectual 
 character was its freshness, originality, and 
 enthusiasm ; he had that instinctive philo- 
 sophy which consists in the unprepossessed 
 susceptibility to, and love of, truth ; and we 
 shall not withhold from him the attribute of 
 genius, if (as has been happily said) its cha- 
 racter be that of the " feelings of childhood 
 taken up and matured into the powers of man- 
 hood."^ In his social intercourse he was play- 
 fid, unassuming, genial, and amiable. His 
 amenity of manners and kindness of dispo- 
 sition continually engaged new friends, whilst 
 he ever cherished those attachments which he 
 had once formed : and by all those who en- 
 joyed his friendship and knew his worth, his 
 memory will be preserved in that enduring 
 regret, in which grief disguises itself as the 
 fond remembrance of the excellence it laments. 
 That those of Hunter's pupils whom he has 
 left behind for our respect and affection may 
 
 * Coleridge's Biog". Lit. I. 85. 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 7 
 
 long continue to cheer us by their presence, be 
 our fervent prayer ! But with them the imme- 
 diate interest in the peculiarities of the private 
 and personal character of the man himself 
 must cease. Henceforward the name of John 
 Hunter will remain as the symbol of a produc- 
 tive power and of a constructive function in the 
 organic development of science: and it is my 
 intention, on the present occasion, in support 
 of this larger and more permanent ground of 
 interest, and in behalf of Hunter's claims as a 
 medical philosopher, to address you on the 
 scientific Idea or aim which guided his physio- 
 logical investigations, in connexion with the 
 philosophical grounds of natural science : — not 
 unmindful of the lessons of my great teacher 
 and revered friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
 who long since earned the gratitude of the ad- 
 mirers of Hunter by asserting the dynamic 
 spirit of his views, and who stands pre-eminent 
 in our country in recalling its better minds 
 from that sensual misnamed philosophy, that 
 tendency to empiricism and empirical novel- 
 ties, unsteadied by science, in wliicli a 
 specious name of Utility usurps the Idea of 
 fontal and abiding Good : 
 
 Yea, oft alone, 
 Piorcing- the lont^- neglected holy cave, 
 The haunt obscure of old Philosophy, 
 We hade with lifted torch its starry walls 
 Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame 
 Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Saj^e. 
 O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts ! 
 
D THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 O studious Poet, eloquent for truth ! 
 Philosopher ! contemning wealth and death, 
 Yet docile, childlike, full of Life and Love !"* 
 
 And if the contemplation of Nature is to be 
 other and more than a mere description of 
 appearances, a catalogue raisonne of facts^ 
 or a memoria technica of phsenomena, formed 
 by generalization and classification ; if it aim 
 at connexion and unity, it requires an appeal 
 to philosophy, in order that insight may be 
 superadded to sightf The business of philo- 
 sophy, I say, is to discover truths^ which, as 
 first principles, are to give intelligibility, and 
 which, therefore, cannot be deduced from the 
 facts of experience, which they are intended 
 to explain, and to which they are to give 
 unity and connexion: — they are truths su- 
 
 * Coleridge's Poet. Works, vol. i. p. 201. 
 
 ■\ Intellectual unity is indeed supplied by science ; but science 
 can be predicated only of any scheme of knowledge, connected 
 as a chain of necessarily dependent truths, so that any link of 
 the chain being given, any other may be deduced as a neces- 
 sary consequence of the principle, which determines the rela- 
 tions of all, and which gives to its possessor the power of antici- 
 pating and predicting its results in any given case. And if the 
 essential character of science consists in the necessary connec- 
 tion and dependency of the links in any scheme of knowledge, 
 it will be equally evident that, in order to complete and perfect 
 it as truth, the principle which serves as the staple to the chain 
 must itself be established and vindicated. This, however, is the 
 business of philosophy ; the object of which is to investigate 
 and determine first principles, and to bring them into the unity 
 of the rational mind and of truth one and universal: principles 
 are the postulates of science and the problems of philosophy. 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 9 
 
 persensiioiis. But in referring to truths, which 
 transcend our sensible experience, do I there- 
 fore seduce the student to wander, 
 
 extra flammantia mcp.nia mnndi, 
 
 after an ignis fatuus of vain metaphysical 
 speculation? On the contrary, I refer him to 
 facts of his own consciousness, whereon to 
 ground his assurance of the truth and reality 
 of the principles, which the insight of nature 
 requires. We demand, and the rational mind 
 cannot be satisfied with less, that the facts, 
 phaenomena, and changes, which form the 
 sphere of our sensible experience, and, collec- 
 tively, are called Nature, shall be rendered 
 intelligible to, and rationally accounted for by, 
 our mind. This cannot be said to have been 
 accomplished, whilst they are for us phaeno- 
 mena only, mere appearances, or impressions 
 on the senses ; nay ! they cannot be said to 
 have for us even the dignity of facts, until 
 they have been named, collected, sorted, 
 arranged and classified, or have received some 
 impress of intellectual unity.* But we recjuire 
 more than this. The instincts of reason I lead 
 
 • A particular, that is, any specific impression on the senses, 
 l)ecomes a fact for the mind when it has heen named, and 
 thereby included in a yenus, or designated as a g-eneric con- 
 ception. To think is to g-eneralize, and language is the 
 instrument of the process. Hence all words are, in truth, 
 general terms. 
 
 t The phrase " instincts of reason" is intended to imply 
 that men may be actuated hy ideas, truths or principles of 
 
10 THE IMPORT OI IDEAS 
 
 US to investigate what the realities are of which 
 the phsenomena are the outward signs, and we 
 ask : What the permanent is amid the per- 
 plexing variety of change? How, and by what 
 efficiency, the operations offered to our in- 
 quiries are wrought ! What enables us to anti- 
 cipate as certain the observed recurrence of 
 events? And why, or for what purpose, the 
 complexus of physical actions and reactions is 
 perpetually renewed before us in all the mar- 
 vellous variety, order, and beauty of nature ? 
 In short, we must soon arrive at the conclusion 
 that, in order to any rational insight of the 
 facts of sensible experience, we are to view 
 them, and seek their intelligibility * in their 
 Laws and Causes. And this leads me at once 
 to the consideration of the nature of those Laws, 
 which have been appointed by the Creator, 
 and which it is the aim and humble hope of 
 
 reason, of which they have not conscious possession or insight, 
 and that they may be possessed by such, and their thoug-hts 
 and acts governed by these powers of truth, though they may 
 not possess them, nor have the capability of legitimating the 
 possession by conscious insight of their truth and reality. 
 
 And the Reader is requested to observe, that the weight of 
 the argument here proposed depends mainly upon a distinction, 
 throughout implied in this discourse, and adopted by our elder 
 writers, though, alas ! neglected by those of the present day in 
 England, namely, the essential distinction between Reason and 
 the Understanding ; this, however, has been so fully and ably 
 established by Coleridge, that I have only to recommend to at- 
 tentive perusal his Aids to Reflection, 4th Edit. p. 157 ; — on the 
 difference in kind of Reason and the Understanding. 
 
 * See Appendix A. 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 1 1 
 
 his rational creatures to discover, in firm reli- 
 ance on his aid, (Xu^Trparrftv TT/DO^" ^topSw<Tiv aKpi(5i] 
 Tov iv rifxiv Xoyou, Kai ivioaiv avrov wpoq ra 6vT(vg 
 ovra, Ota tov ttjc aXij^Hag tptoTOij. 
 
 It is to our incomparable countryman Bacon 
 that, by the unanimous suffrage of natural phi- 
 losophers, the merit is conceded of having 
 turned men's minds from the mere logical leger- 
 demain, which, during the period of the School- 
 philosophy, usurped the name of natural 
 science, to observation and experiment, and of 
 having established the principle of Induction 
 as the legitimate process by which we are to 
 arrive at insight of the laws of Nature. Shall 
 we, however, adopt the now generally received 
 opinion, that the inductive process which Lord 
 Bacon recommends, consists entirely of " ge- 
 neralizations, commencing with the most cir- 
 cumstantially stated particulars, and carried 
 up to universal laws and axioms, which com- 
 prehend in their statements every subordinate 
 degree of generality ;"t and thus, that a law is 
 only a generalization from the facts and pliaeno- 
 mena of sensii)le experience, a mere result of, 
 and belonging to, the human understanding? 
 Assuredly, Lord Bacon's philosophy had a 
 nobler aim, and requires, in order to a science 
 
 • Simplicii Comin. in ILpicteti li^iicliiridiou Schweij^liUiiser, 
 Tom. i. p. 526. 
 
 t See Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philo- 
 sophy, by I. F. \V. Hcrschel, London, 1830. Chap. iii. p. 104 ; 
 (>mpare\Vheweir»IIi8tor)'oftheInductiveScit»nces,V()l,i.p.(i. 
 
12 TttE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 of nature, that man should also interpret the 
 facts offered to his senses. If we ask how he 
 attains to this power of Interpretation and of 
 insight, the answer is, by the lux intellectus^ 
 the lumen siccuni^ the pure and impersonal 
 reason, freed from all the various idols, enume- 
 rated by our great legislator of science, the 
 idola tribus, specus.fori^ theatri, — that is, freed 
 from the limits, the passions, the prejudices, 
 the peculiar habits of the human understand- 
 ing, natural or acquired ; but, above all, from 
 the idola intellectus, from the arrogance which 
 leads man to take the forms and mechanism 
 of his own mere reflective faculty as the 
 measure of nature and' Deity. For, says 
 Bacon : " Non leve quiddam interest inter 
 humance mentis idola et divines mentis Ideas, 
 hoc est, inter placita qucedam inania, et veras 
 signaturas atque impressiones factas in creaturis, 
 prout inveiiiuntur.''* And thus, if in order 
 to the interpretation of nature, he requires that 
 man should know and apprehend by the light 
 of reason the import of sensuous facts as the 
 signatures and impressions of divine Ideas, we 
 may safely affirm that the Induction, which 
 Lord Bacon proposed, though forming the steps 
 to the needful vantage ground for the '* inqui- 
 
 * Nov. Org* Aph. 23. Compare Essay IX. of Coleridg-e's 
 Friend, 3rd Edit, in which the arg-iiment is more fully stated 
 and carried out. And the reader is earnestly invited to peruse 
 the whole treatise on Methodology in that work, of which Essay 
 IX. forms a part. 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. T.*^ 
 
 sitio fonnarmii, quce sunt ralione certa et sua lege 
 ceternce et immobiles,'^'^ had in truth, for its final 
 object, the discovery of those Ideas, which as 
 laws of nature, are the impress of the Creator's 
 power and wisdom, and as such, are neces- 
 sarily somewhat other and more than the 
 mental substantiation of facts under whatever 
 degree of generality. 
 
 Again, does the history of the grand disco- 
 veries of science offer any sufficient evidence 
 that they w^ere only the result of a laborious 
 collection of facts and observations of par- 
 ticulars. If indeed that great master-piece of 
 the generalizing faculty, the Ptolemaic System 
 of Astronomy, still retained its authority, it 
 might have been held up as a triumphant 
 proof of the success of the method : but, alas ! 
 "" its cycles and epicycles, orb within orb," 
 have vanished like a summer morning's mist 
 before the piercing glance of him, who, pene- 
 trating deeper than appearances, solem di- 
 cerefdlsum aiisus esty — have vanished before a 
 reason, which can correct experience, and has 
 authority to annul the reports of the senses, 
 and the (lictd of the faculty judging according 
 to sense. i " What, for instance, could be ap- 
 
 ♦ Nov. Org. lib. ii. Aph. 9. 
 
 f " Wc arrive at conclusions which outrun oxj)LMiciu;o, and 
 (Inscribe beforehand what will happen under new combinations, 
 or even correct imperfect experiments, and load us to a know- 
 ledge of facts contrary to received analogieh drawn from an 
 experience wrongly interpreted, or overhastily generalized.' 
 —Ilrrschrl, ib. p. 'J9. 
 
14 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 parently more unprofitable than the dry spe- 
 culations of the ancient geometers on the pro- 
 perties of the conic sections, or than the 
 dreams of Kepler, (as they would naturally 
 appear to his contemporaries) about the nume- 
 rical harmonies of the imiverse ? Yet, (says 
 Sir John Herschel, from whom I quote,*) these 
 are the steps by which we have risen to a 
 knowledge of the elliptic motions of the 
 planets, and the law of gravitation, with all its 
 splendid theoretical consequences and its in- 
 estimable practical results. "t The same high 
 authority tells us\ that '* the law of definite 
 proportions (in Chemistry), after the laws of 
 mechanics, perhaps the most important which 
 the study of nature has disclosed, was an- 
 nounced at once by Mr. Dalton in its most 
 general terms, without passing through sub- 
 ordinate stages of painful inductive ascent."§ 
 And a dispassionate inquiry into the origin 
 of the discoveries of science will convince 
 us that, so far from their being in general 
 
 * Herschel, ib. p. 11. 
 
 f Condorcet, quoted by Conte, says : '* Le matelot, quune 
 exacte observation de la longitude preserve du naufragCy doit 
 la vie d une theorie con^^ue, deux mille ans auparavant,par des 
 hommes de genie, qui avaient en vue de simples speculations 
 geometriques." — Cours de Philosopliie positive, par M. A. 
 Conte, Tome i. p. 65. 
 
 X Herschel, ib. p. 305. 
 
 § " A remarkable instance of such a relation" (says Sir John 
 Herschel, speaking- of the relations amon^- the data of physics, 
 which show them to be quantities not arbiti^arily assumed, but 
 depending' on laws and causes, which they may be the means 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 15 
 
 the offspring of a generalization from parti- 
 culars, they oftener originate in observations 
 apparently trivial and accidental, in occur- 
 rences sudden and unexpected, frequently 
 in the pursuit of fanciful analogies, or in the 
 trial and rejection of arbitrary hypotheses, 
 and are the result of a mind excited to react 
 upon its experience, unsatisfied with the 
 hitherto adopted connexion of facts and their 
 want of unity, and its inventive and origi- 
 native powers, thereby roused to enlarge its 
 apprehension beyond the perspective which 
 its own mechanism implies : and hence the 
 discovery of any great law of nature has 
 uniformly the character of felicity, and of a 
 revelation, as by a flash of divine light, of the 
 legislative wisdom of the Creator. 
 
 This view will acquire additional evidence 
 by further meditation on the nature of Law. 
 The human mind recognizes a law, wherever 
 it attributes unity to a manifold of facts and 
 pha^nomena, contemplates the connexion of 
 
 of at length disclosing) '* a remarkable instance of such a re- 
 lation is the curious law, which Bode obsened to obtain in the 
 progression of the magnitudes of the several planetary orbits. 
 This law was interrupted between Mars and Jupiter, so as to 
 induce him to consider a planet as wanting in that interval ; — 
 a deficiency, long afterwards strangely supplied by the disco- 
 very of four new planets in that very interval, all of whose 
 orbits conform in dimensions to the law in (question, within 
 such moderate limits of error as may be due to causes indepen- 
 'l<>nt of those on which the law itself ultimately rests." — Her- 
 kcl, ib. p. 308. 
 
16 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 each and all in relation to the same as neces- 
 sary, regular, and invariable, and is thereby 
 rendered capable of anticipating and pre- 
 dicting a constant order of succession or of 
 simultaneous co-operation in their recurrence. 
 A glorious instance already adduced, of the 
 establishment of a law, answering to this de- 
 finition, we owe to our immortal countryman 
 Newton. Not only has it been shown that the 
 movements of the planetary bodies, of which our 
 system consists, are ordered by the law of gra- 
 vitation, even that the inequalities of the pla- 
 netary movements may be explained and pre- 
 determined by the same ; but that the law of 
 gravitation enables the astronomer to demon- 
 strate with predictive insight, the stability and 
 permanence of the system under all the accu- 
 mulating influence of its perturbations.* 
 
 It is in attaining to the knowledge derived 
 from the possession of such laws, that man 
 becomes, as Lord Bacon expresses it, the 
 '* Interpreter of nature." But do we not derive 
 this gift of power and prophecy from some- 
 what far higher than from any mere exercise 
 of the human understanding or faculty judging 
 according to sense? A law not only implies 
 what is, and must be, the result of universal 
 experience according to the essential consti- 
 tution of human mind, but that more excellent 
 knowledge of an operance, which would be 
 
 * Compare Herschel, ib. p. 272. 
 
t:ONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 17 
 
 real and effective whether man contemplate its 
 effects in the works of nature or not, and which 
 is constitutive in nature.* Without the ad- 
 mission of this incontrovertible truth, all sense 
 of an outward, necessary, and efficient con- 
 nexion would be lost. Instead of a rational 
 and unshaken faith in an invariable order of 
 nature, we could only claim for a patch-work 
 of experience that faintest mode of combina- 
 tion arising from a habit of association in our 
 own mind ; and a mere belief in probabilities 
 would usurp the place and name of law, with 
 
 * " Every law is a provision for cases which may occur, and 
 has relation to an infinite number of cases that never have oc- 
 curred and never will. Now it is this provision, a priori, for 
 conting^encies, this contemplation of possible occurrences, and 
 predisposal of what shall happen, that impresses us with the 
 notion of a law and a cause. Among all the possible combi- 
 nations of the fifty or sixty elements which chemistry shows 
 to exist on the earth, it is likely, nay, almost certain, that 
 some have never been formed ; that some elements, in some 
 proportions, and under some circumstances, have never yet been 
 placed in relation with one another. Yet no chemist can 
 doubt that it is already fixed what they will do when the case 
 does occur. They will obey certain laws, of which we know 
 nothing at present, but which must he already fixed, or they 
 could not be laws. It is not by habit, or by trial and failure, 
 that they will learn what to do. When the contingency 
 occurs, there will be no hesitation, no consultation ; — their 
 course will at once be decided, and will always be the same if 
 it occur ever so often in succession, or in ever so many places 
 at one and the same instant. This is the perfection of a law, 
 that it includes all possible contingencies, and ensures im- 
 plicit obedience,— and of this kind are the laws of nature." — 
 Herschel, ibid. p. 3^. 
 
 C 
 
18 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 doubt or utter disbelief of all that is beyond 
 or above the senses. 
 
 And in the world do we not see everywhere 
 evidences of a unity, which the component 
 parts are so far from explaining, that they 
 necessarily presuppose the unity as the cause 
 and condition of their existing at all ? Every 
 whole of parts, be it the minutest crystal, a 
 plant, an animal, the globe which sustains us, 
 the solar system of which it is a part, or the 
 universe itself, in the infinitude of which that 
 system is less than a mote, every whole of 
 parts demands for its intelligibility a cause or 
 principle of each union, a power and unity, 
 antecedent in the order of efficiency, and re- 
 maining present, as the sustaining and conser- 
 vative energy ; it implies a legislative act, pre- 
 determining the result, compelling implicit 
 obedience, and excluding all contingency ; — 
 an act combining the foresight of wisdom and 
 the power of irresistible will as immutable pur- 
 pose and persistent function ; and that (saith 
 the judicious Hooker) " which doth assign unto 
 each thing the kind, that which doth moderate 
 the force and power, that which doth appoint 
 the form and measure of working, the same 
 we term a law."* Reflect on the exquisite 
 harmony of all surrounding things and the co- 
 herence of all to the Kotr/i/oc, to the order and 
 
 * Ecclesiastical Politj'^, B. I. c. ij. See Coleridge's Note on 
 Hooker, Literary Remains, vol. iii. p. '29. Compare Aids to 
 Reflection, 4th Edit. p. 44. 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 19 
 
 beauty of the world ! How else could a whole, 
 a system of manifold agencies, result in se- 
 quence invariable, in connexion necessary, in 
 order permanent, in co-operation harmonious, 
 in government immutable, unless by a will, 
 manifested in acts causative and intelligential, 
 predetermining the final purpose, and pro- 
 viding the means to the ultimate aim, already 
 contemplated in the antecedent unity of the 
 legislative act ? 
 
 And, if such be the nature of the laws that 
 govern the universe, can it be doubted that 
 man may raise his apprehension to the creative 
 thought and energy, which produces and sus- 
 tains, and that he is permitted to contemplate 
 the wisdom and power which framed the w orlds, 
 in those energic acts, ideas or laws, which con- 
 stitute the divine operance ? Will it be denied 
 that the ultimate aim of man's knowledge can 
 be no other than the first principles, call them 
 truths or powers, which by Bacon and Plato 
 were called Ideas of the divine mind? 
 
 But shall we say that man, by any faculties 
 that he dare call his own, can comprehend, 
 or apprehend, the infinite power and wisdom 
 of Deity ? I shrink from the temerity and rash- 
 ness of such an assertion. My position is this : 
 — Man finds, in examining the facts of his 
 consciousness, and as the essential character of 
 his rationality, the capability of aj)prehend- 
 ing truths universal, necessary, absolute; the 
 grounds of which bcintj: underived from, must 
 
20 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 be antecedent, and presupposed in order, to ex- 
 perience : — man finds in himself the capability 
 of inferring the reality of that which transcends 
 his sensuous experience, and of contemplating 
 causality, efficiency, permanent being, law, 
 order, finality, unity : — man finds in himself 
 the capability of apprehending, in a world of 
 relations, the supra-relative ; in a world of de- 
 pendencies, the unconditional ; in a world of 
 flux and change, the immutable ; in a w^orld of 
 imperfections, the perfect: — man recognizes in 
 himself, as the privilege and need of a rational 
 mind, the capability of enlarging his thoughts 
 to the universe, infinite as the omnipresence of 
 God, " upholding all things by the word of 
 his power ;" the capability of raising his mind 
 to the Supreme, as the Absolute Will, causa- 
 tive of all reality in the eternal plenitude of 
 being. And it is in meditating on the condi- 
 tions and cause of this capability that man be- 
 comes conscious of an operance in and on his 
 own mind, of the downshine of a light from 
 above, which is the power of Living Truth, 
 and which, in irradiating and actuating the 
 human mind, becomes for it Reason;* — yea! 
 
 * The Reader will bear in mind that the object of the Author 
 is limited to a description of the relations of human science to 
 eternal truth ; but that his meaning* fully and adequately ex- 
 pressed, is no less than the sublime doctrine revealed by St. 
 John, that the reason is the light and spiritual presence of the 
 Logos, TO (pug TO a?^yj9ivoVf o ^cori^ei Travra oivQpcoTTOv ipx^f^^vov 
 tig rov HocTjuov, John, chap. i. v. 9. 
 
rONSECTfc:!) WITH VriAL DYNAMHS. 2\ 
 
 which is the revelation of those divine acts, 
 at once causative and intelligential, which he 
 recognizes as first principles, ultimate truths, 
 as ideas for the human mind, and constitutive 
 laws in nature. It is by virtue of this Reason, 
 that we hear the voice and legislative words of 
 the Creator, sounding through the universe ; 
 and it is in the sabbath stillness of our intel- 
 lectual being, when the busy hum of the world 
 is hushed, that the strains of this divine music 
 penetrate the soul attuned by meditation to 
 move responsive to its harmony ! 
 
 If, then, a science of nature exist at all, I do 
 not hesitate to avow my conviction that it must 
 be under the informing light of Ideas. And 
 it may be safely asserted from the premisses, 
 that the method of the science must be dyna- 
 mic ; that is, by contemplating nature as a 
 scheme of causes and laws with the connec- 
 tions, and in the unity, of reason. 
 
 Difficult, no doubt, will it be for the stu- 
 dent, who desires to enter on this attractive 
 field of thought, to discipline his mind thereto ; 
 but aid, encouragement, and example will not 
 be found wanting, if he seriously incline his 
 attention to the proofs of the evident dynamic 
 tendency of physical science, especially under 
 the auspices of its recent and present cultiva- 
 tors. Witness the advancement and revolu- 
 tion of the science of Astronomy after the 
 promulgation of the great ideas of Kepler, 
 
22 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 and the perfecting of these by the sublime 
 geometry of Newton. Trace the progress of 
 Chemistry : to bhnd empiricism succeeded ex- 
 periment, guided by scientific aims, till at 
 length, in Dalton's announcement of the law 
 of definite proportions, Chemistry has been 
 raised into the conditions of a science, and its 
 combinations have been shown to be regulated 
 by laws of quantity,* which arm the inquirer 
 with foresight and anticipative certainty. With- 
 in a short period, however, a new light has 
 been thrown upon this interesting department 
 of knowledge ; and our illustrious countryman 
 Faraday, following the path of his great prede- 
 cessor Davy, even now is lifting the veil, which, 
 under the vague and empirical phrase, *' elec- 
 tive affinity," has hitherto hidden the nature 
 and operation of chemical forces, and has 
 already shown that *' bodies are held together 
 
 * *' Optime autem cedit inquisitio naturalis, quando physi- 
 cum terminatur in mathematico." Nov. Org. Lib. ii. Aph. 8. 
 
 " And (says Herschel, ibid. p. 123.) it is a character of all 
 the higher laws of nature to assume the form of precise quan- 
 titative statement." Nor shall we wonder that man has acquired 
 insight into nature and her laws, in proportion as he has been 
 enabled to reduce them to distinct quantitative statement, and 
 has brought them within the mental constructions of mathe- 
 matical science, if, as in the instance before us, " the observed 
 relations among the data of physics show them to be quantities 
 not arbitrarily assumed, but depending on laws and causes, which 
 they may be the means of disclosing." Need we remind the 
 reader of the speculations of the Pythagorean School, or of the 
 sublime saying, Niimero, pondcrc^ et mensura (jenerantur cccli 
 et terra? 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 23 
 
 by a definite power, which, when it ceases to 
 discharge that office, may be thrown into the 
 condition of an electric current, "t And if he 
 has succeeded in thus establishing the identity 
 of electrical and cliemical action, how greatly 
 augmented, and how rapidly extending, is our 
 knowledge of this power, and with it of all those 
 agents, which, refusing to be evoked by any 
 other name than that which reserves to them 
 their dynamic character, are called even by the 
 empirical inquirer " imponderable.'' The age 
 of man might almost suffice to recall to our re- 
 collection the time when electricity was little 
 better than a scientific plaything ; but the dis- 
 coveries of Oerstedt, of Faraday, and of their 
 noble compeers, whilst they have shown us 
 that in electricity. Voltaic action, magnetism 
 and chemical attraction, the same power is at 
 work under different conditions of operance, 
 have only left us in doubt how few of the 
 phaBnomena and changes of nature may be 
 left by future investigation unexplained by its 
 agency. Meanwhile we see that as science 
 advances it more and more penetrates beyond 
 the mere objects of sense, and, in order to 
 obtain the intelligibility of their causes, directs 
 its inquiries to the powers and forces, of which 
 the sensuous phaenomcna are only the signs, 
 and to the laws, under which the powers are 
 manifested in their results. 
 
 t Faraday's Rebearchcs, Fliil. Trans. Art. 855. 
 
24 THi: IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 Now if this position admit of verification in 
 the sciences strictly physical, it will obtain 
 evidence more full and striking, — though from 
 the nature of the subject the scientific idea 
 must longer await its perfected form, — in those 
 which have for their object the problem of life 
 and organization. It was the peculiar and 
 eminent merit of John Hunter, that he had 
 raised his mind to the apprehension of life as 
 a law, in aid of a science of vital dynamics, 
 and as the means of giving scientific unity to 
 the facts of living nature. In what other 
 sense can we understand either his assertion 
 that " life is a principle independent of orga- 
 nization," or the purport of the magnificent 
 commentary on his system, the Hunterian 
 Museum?* The incalculable advantage of 
 philosophizing in this spirit is plain, if we 
 consider that Hunter at once got rid of all 
 hypotheses, fictions, and arbitrary assump- 
 tions. By contemplating life, as Newton had 
 taught the mechanic philosophers to contem- 
 plate gravitation, not as a thing, nor as a spi- 
 rit, neither as a subtle fluid, nor as an intel- 
 ligent soul, but as a law, he laid the foun- 
 dation of scientific physiology; and in that 
 very conception of a law taught us that life 
 is a power anterior in the order of thought to 
 the organization, which it animates, sustains 
 and repairs, — a power originative and construc- 
 
 * Compare Coleridge's Friend, vol. iii. p. 173. 
 
rONNKCTED WITH VI lAL DYNAMICS. 'Ih 
 
 live of the organization, in which it continues 
 to manifest itself in all the forms and functions 
 of animated being. This great Idea never 
 ceased to work in him as his genius and 
 governing spirit ; and if in his printed works 
 the one directing thought seems occasionally 
 to elude his grasp, yet in the astonishing pre- 
 parations for his Museum we find him con- 
 structing it for scientific apprehension out 
 of the *' unspoken alphabet of nature," and 
 exhibiting the legislative idea in the '' mode 
 and measure of its working," by bringing to- 
 gether the significant forms and types of life 
 and organic existence. A better comment on 
 the aim of Hunter we cannot offer than in the 
 words of the celebrated Cuvier : " Celui, qui 
 posscderait rationnellemeyit les lois de Vcconomie 
 organique pourrait refaire tout Vanimcd.''* For 
 what else does he here assert, than that in the 
 light of a law, according to which the animated 
 being was originally constructed, we obtain 
 insight into the forms and relations of organic 
 
 • Cuvier Revolutions du Globe, p. 99. It was the percep- 
 tion of a Law that enabled Cuvier to say, that it is " le pri?icipe 
 de la correlation des formes dans les ctres organises, au moyen 
 duquel chague sorte d'etre pourrait, a la riyueur, vtre re- 
 connue par chuque frafjment de chacune de ses parties.'' 
 
 *' Tout itre org anise forme un ensemble, un systeme unique 
 ct clos, dont les parties se correspondent mutuellement, et 
 concourent a la meme action definitive par une reaction red- 
 proque. Aucune de ses parties ne peut chamjer sans que les 
 autres changent aussi ; et par consequent chacune d'elleSy 
 prise separcment, indiqur et dntnie toutcs les «M/re5."— Cuvier, 
 ibid. p. 95. 
 
26 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 structure, and of their necessary interdepen- 
 
 dency?t 
 
 For proofs of the pregnancy of the idea, 
 which animated Hunter's labors, turn to the 
 magnificent assemblage of facts contained in 
 the Museum, which by the munificence of 
 Parliament is now deposited within these walls, 
 and which by the liberality of this College, 
 mindful of its sacred trust, aided by the taste 
 and judgment of the architect, Mr. Barry, has 
 been provided with an abode worthy of the 
 means employed and of the object in view. In 
 speaking of the Museum you would, however, 
 justly deem it an omission did I not notice the 
 excellent preservation and admirable order of 
 its contents, which we owe to the zeal and 
 ability of the Conservators : and it would be un- 
 
 t A no less instructive illustration might be offered in the 
 idea, in the light of which the law of the metamorphosis of 
 plants rose up before the mind of the poet Goethe ; nor needed 
 he to have felt any irritation when Schiller, to whom he was 
 expounding it, " shook his head and said, That is not experience, 
 that is an idea." See the anecdote in Whewell's Hist, of the 
 Inductive Sciences, vol. iii. p. 435 ; for the idea is the mental 
 possession of the law under which the results are realized which 
 are the object of experience. And if the germ which Goethe 
 planted, became in the hands of Decandolle and others one of 
 the most important elements of physiological botany, in giving 
 intelligibility to growth and development, which are the essen- 
 tial character of vegetable life, it has mainly contributed to 
 raise Botany into the rank of a dynamic science, and to give 
 scientific connection to the accumulative labours of Linnspus, of 
 Jussieu, and others, to whom we are indebted for the indispen- 
 sable work of classification and generalization. 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 2/ 
 
 grateful were I not to express the deep sense, 
 which in common with the profession T must 
 ever feel, of the singular merits of Mr. Clift, to 
 whose affectionate devotion of a life under many 
 former privations we are indebted for its jealous 
 guardianship, and in whom as the genius loci 
 each preparatioQ lives, and the soul of all is 
 as it were impersonated in a living individuality, 
 the substantiated echo of Hunter's self. It is 
 impossible in taking a cursory view of this store- 
 house of physiological wealth to repress our 
 admiration of the founder himself, who at the 
 sacrifice of fortune and of present enjoyment to 
 the cause of science, labored with undaunted 
 perseverance amid the sneers of his contempo- 
 raries* in the execution of this great work ; it 
 is impossible in a more leisurely survey of its 
 treasures not to appreciate the judgment he 
 displayed in culling that which is choicest in 
 illustrative fact ; it is impossible in examining 
 his preparatory labors for the description and 
 explanation of the collection, now in the course 
 of publication with the catalogue, to withhold 
 our unqualified praise of the genius, which thus 
 brought together this epitome of animated na- 
 ture in the unity of a scientific idea ! 
 
 It is in this Museum that we find the pledge 
 
 * It is reported that a surgeon of no inconsiderable repute 
 at the time ventured to say— that Mr. Hunter's preparations 
 were just as vahiable as so many pif::'s petty toes. And I can 
 state on good authority that it was thought even discreditable to 
 attend Mr. Hunter's lecturct. 
 
28 THK IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 and proof of John Hunter's pre-eminent and 
 original merit, that of having first presented the 
 facts of comparative anatomy in and as a con- 
 nected scheme of graduated development, the 
 connexion supplied and the aim anticipated in 
 the antecedent unity of the causative law of 
 life. He has thus furnished the grounds of a 
 new science, the science of Comparative or 
 Universal Physiology, and with it the well 
 founded and not unconfirmed hope of making 
 every part of the organized creation give intel- 
 ligibility to every other part, and all to the 
 crown and consummation of all, the human 
 frame. 
 
 It would be worse than idle to say that his 
 great predecessors from Aristotle and Galen 
 down to Haller, Daubenton, and Pallas, and 
 amongst whom we proudly point to our im- 
 mortal Harvey, had not collected many and 
 most valuable materials, or had not been guided 
 by the instincts of science in the direction of 
 its true aim ; but it would require other bold- 
 ness than that of truth to aver that hitherto 
 any induction of law had given connexion 
 and scientific unity to the facts of comparative 
 anatomy and physiology. It would be alike 
 base and purposeless to deny the well earned 
 merits of his contemporaries and successors ; 
 and without any invidious attempt to detract 
 from the fair fame of the illustrious Cuvier, as 
 the great lexicographer of comparative ana- 
 tomy, or to lessen the high character of his 
 
CONNECTRD WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 29 
 
 distinguished fellow laborers, French, Italian 
 and German, especially the last in their rare 
 combination of the minutest accuracy with the 
 boldest speculation, — and certainly without 
 any desire to obscure the reputation of our 
 own countrymen, — we may justly claim for 
 Hunter the praise of originality and of priority 
 in the scientific development of comparative 
 physiology ; even though it may be true, that 
 by the aid of subsequent inquirers we see more 
 clearly than he himself did the final aim im- 
 plied iij his researches, and approach nearer 
 to the goal toward which he led the way. 
 That ho^vever he had also more largely con- 
 tributed to the wealth of facts, that form the 
 capital of the science, than has been hitherto 
 admitted, — nay that he had anticipated much 
 of recent discovery, — can scarcely now be 
 doubted, though it will be unnecessary for me 
 to enter into details, unsuited to the present 
 occasion, as this College has best provided for 
 establishing his claims by the foundation of 
 the Hunterian chair, which, filled by its present 
 and first professor, Richard Owen,* the able 
 vindicator of Hunter's fame, is calculated to 
 form a glorious epoch in the annals of science, 
 reflecting honor alike on this College and on 
 
 • Palmer's edition of Hunter's works, vol- vi. Observations 
 on certain parts of the animal economy, with preface and notes 
 by Richard Owen. An invaluable commentary on Hunter, in 
 connection with the descriptive catalogue of the physioloj^icftl 
 series of coniparatixr anatomy in the Hiintciian Museum. 
 
30 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 the country. Sufficient for my present purpose, 
 if I am permitted to sketch briefly the scope, 
 tendency and main result of Hunter's prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 We gather from Hunter's researches, that 
 even in *' animal substances devoid of apparent 
 organization," such as a germ, a seed or an 
 egg, there is what Hunter calls a *' simple 
 principle of life ;" and we learn from these 
 instances that, though the force of vitality be 
 latent, in all life existence must begin from 
 itself, — (I do not say caused by itself,) — and 
 depends upon an appetence to be, or to 
 fill a pre-determined sphere ; in other words, 
 living existence implies a subject or power 
 which, actuated and directed by the law or 
 idea, becomes a causative agency formative 
 and productive, and this under the condition 
 of being excited to act, and at the same time 
 of resisting the excitant, as long as it remains 
 an alien power, either by repelling or appro- 
 priating the same. The living germ is excited 
 by the surrounding heat, light, air and 
 moisture, under circumstances in which these 
 alien agents form an appropriate element ; 
 and whilst therein the materials are acquired 
 from without by assimilation, the form is 
 evolved by a shaping energy from within, and 
 the living subject, like a blind artist working- 
 after an invisible pattern, constructs the organ- 
 ization in which it dwells. 
 
 This is the first character of all life, Pro- 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 31 
 
 ductivity, and this so eminently that we cannot, 
 except by abstraction, conceive of hfe other- 
 wise than as manifested inseparably in a pro- 
 duct. But the living thing, though beginning 
 from itself, would exist but imperfectly did it 
 not exist likewise for itself; but this it cannot 
 do except for another, and in and by an out- 
 ward world. This relation to an outward world 
 is indeed attained in growth ; but as we see 
 throughout the vegetable kingdom, of which 
 growth is the essential character, the result is 
 imperfect : the whole living energy is produc- 
 tivity, and exhausts itself in outward products; 
 but the plant has no inward reflex on itself, 
 and remains to and for itself an alien and unin- 
 telligible thing. In order to that potentiation 
 of living existence, which we name animated, 
 or to any grade of being in that scale, which 
 culminates in, and is throughout rendered in- 
 telligible by, mind and will, the living subject 
 must at least so far know as to find or feel its 
 own state. Sensibility is the predominant, say 
 rather the essential, characteristic of animated 
 being; sensation is indeed an imperfect reflex, 
 but yet is the nascent consciousness of a self, 
 though again of a self, which as life we dare 
 not call other or more than the craving, whicli 
 arises from want and the appetence of being. 
 But in whatever degree this want is disclosed, 
 and the craving awakened, that which the self 
 or subject does not, and cannot, find in itself, 
 it is impelled to lio out of itself to seek and to 
 
32 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 procure; and to this going forth the living sub- 
 ject is roused by the multiform excitants of 
 the outward world, attracted by that which 
 it desires, repelled by the alien, and in the 
 seizure or resistance compelled to adapt its own 
 state to its manifold exigences inward or out- 
 ward. Here then rise upon us the powers and 
 functions of IrritalTility and muscular action, 
 of free-motion, of adaptive agencies, and of 
 instinctive contrivance, as the necessary cor- 
 respondents of Sensibility by which, under the 
 influence of pleasure and of pain, occasioned 
 by needs, allurements and resistances, which 
 attract the subject from, or repell it to, its 
 centre, the living being feels its own state, and 
 though imperfectly finds a self. 
 
 Growth, motion and feeling, — such are the 
 universal characters, under which animated 
 being is alone conceivable. And it is in 
 contemplating these functions as forces of one 
 subject or power that we learn the aim and 
 purpose of the actuating idea, in the develop- 
 ment of an organism, as intending a living 
 body, that is, a sphere of act and existence, 
 as the indispensable medium and condition 
 of the manifestation and working of that which 
 in and of itself is essentially supersensuous 
 — a living subject or power. But if growth, 
 motion and feeling, constitute the universal 
 characters of animated beings, and must there- 
 fore be predicated of the lowest, we shall 
 find, in bringing before our minds the different 
 
CONNECTED WITH VHAL DYNAMICS. 33 
 
 orders of creatures and ranks of animals, that 
 these are differenced by a relative subordina- 
 tion of these forces. If in the germ the living 
 subject exist in and from itself; if in a higher 
 form of development, first of growth, and then 
 of growth with instinctive motion, it exist for 
 others ; and if in the form of sensibility it exist 
 for itself; — by comparing' 1 say, the various 
 groups of the animal kingdom, we shall find 
 that they may be ranged in an ascending 
 scale, of which the degrees are marked by a 
 relative balance and proportion of the vital 
 forces, and in which the ascent is determined 
 by the evolution of life into Sensibility, and by 
 the superordinalion of sensibility as the highest 
 force and most essential form of living exist- 
 ence. 
 
 In the lowest forms of life, m hich seem al- 
 most exhaustless in the Protozoa, nature may 
 be said to measure space, and in realizing its 
 dimensions to take possession of and fill it 
 with an experimental variety of living shapes. 
 And thus are presented to us forms, which 
 remind us, first of lifeless nature, the disc, the 
 star, the globe, the cylinder, animated as it 
 were into living being; and which next rise 
 into shapes, imitative of the lowest form of 
 vitality in vegetation, the vase, the bell, and 
 the various flowerlike forms of the inhabitants 
 of the corals, and their housings.* 
 
 Here the shaping energy is predominantly active, and it 
 orthy of notice, as significant of its operation through the 
 D 
 
34 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 But while life is thus busy in multiplying 
 shapes, its inward activity is at work in se- 
 curing the conditions of organic function and 
 of the self renewal of existence, by building up 
 the organs instrumental to the reproduction of 
 the animal and to its relations with the out- 
 ward world. And if in the lower orders of the 
 Invertebrated Series this inward activity is sub- 
 ordinated to that which manifests itself in out- 
 ward shape, it is in the higher order of the 
 same, namely in the insects and molluscous 
 animals, that the vital striving in both direc- 
 
 whole ascent of formation, that as Cams has sagaciously ob- 
 served, '^ the most simple and primary form of all organization 
 is the spherical, and that whilst the flattening of the sphere 
 into shapes, bounded by plane surfaces, denotes elanguescence 
 of an idio-centric or vital action, as in crystals, the expansion of 
 the sphere, its elongation into the ellipse, its protrusions, or the 
 multiplication of its centre or periphery, express an increase of 
 vital energy and exhibit the formation of living bodies," See 
 Grundzuge der ve-fgleichenden Anatomie und Physiologie, p. 
 12. Compare his work Von den Urtheilendes Knochengeriists. 
 In this evolution of the animated globe or sphere, we must not 
 however forget, that in the constructive act the straight line, as 
 the radius, is equally a coefficient with the curvilineal, and claims 
 a place in the order and perfection of nature, as the form of 
 motion radiant or extroitive and as the symbol of act and func- 
 tion. This primary form of evolution, of which the spherical is 
 the ground, we notice in the germ and e^^, the globules of the 
 blood, and globular infusoria ; and in the radiated order of 
 animals, this as a character of the formative law of life is still 
 preserved in the equal development and symmetrical arrange- 
 ment about a central axis, as if the shaping energy were still 
 bound by, and could not altogether free itself from, the limits 
 imposed by the scheme of equal development from a centre. 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 35 
 
 lions becomes more apparent, energetic and 
 significant. In Iiisecta the life is thrown out- 
 ward, not in order to shape, but to perfect the 
 relations of the animal to the outward world, 
 in organizing it for free motion, for instinctive 
 and adaptive actions, for the eminently outward 
 existence, which is the main character of the 
 whole class : hence in connexion with it the 
 multiplicity and variety of locomotive and in- 
 strumental organs, so that the animal in many 
 instances is a whole workshop of tools ; hence, 
 the perfecting especially of the respiratory 
 apparatus, and the aeriform structure of the 
 whole body ; hence its metamorphoses, or out- 
 wardly exhibited embryogeny ; hence its de- 
 fect of inward unity and the exhibition of a 
 life relatively persisting in sections, as in the 
 familiar example of a divided wasp. The 
 insect is indeed the representative of irrita- 
 bility, of a life excited to outward reaction ; 
 and hence in the insects we find Instinct fully 
 developed, and therewith one of the great pur- 
 poses of animated existence disclosed, as that 
 of acquiring a sphere of action by the adaptation 
 of means to mediate ends ; a character equally 
 applicable to the human understanding in tlie 
 absence of ultimate aims under the abeyance 
 of the reason.* 
 
 In the Mollusca, on the other hand, the 
 
 * Sco Aids to Reflection; 4th edition, p. 157. On the 
 difference in kind of Reason and the rinderstandincr. and on the 
 connexion of Instinct with the latter. 
 
30 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 energy of life is drawn inward, and we are 
 presented with what by a bold metaphor we 
 may call, the tentative experiments of nature 
 in perfecting the internal organs. Witness 
 especially the progressive complication and 
 advancing perfection of the digestive, respi- 
 ratory and circulating organs : but this not so 
 much in reference to the animal itself as to 
 prepare those organic relations, which in the 
 next stage of the ascent are necessary for the 
 development of the apparatus of sensibility. 
 And if, when we compare the Mollusca with 
 the insects, there is an apparent sinking back, 
 it is in order as it were to draw inward and 
 concentrate the orgauiiic energies for the 
 higher and more complete ascent of which 
 they are the promise. 
 
 In the Invertebrated Series of animals, we 
 trace already a structure fitted in a higher 
 stage to become typical of an inward and 
 central unity, namely the nervous system and 
 brain. But the development and perfecting 
 of these is the main character of those animals^ 
 which in connexion with it are provided with 
 a skeleton, hence called Vertebrated, and in 
 which, though attained by grades and suc- 
 cessive steps, the process is completed of the 
 evolution of life into sensibility ; that is, when 
 the power of sensibility becomes central and 
 predominant, and is manifested in its appro- 
 priate structure of Nervous System and Brain. 
 This process, as one of experimenting the 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. o7 
 
 different proportions and harmonies of the 
 three powers of life under various relations, 
 we trace in the fishes, reptiles and birds, and 
 finally in the Mmnmalia, in whom the super- 
 ordination of the Sensibility is ultimately ac- 
 complished.* 
 
 It is in the light of this scientific Idea, as 
 supplying unity and connexion to the facts of 
 organic structure exhibited in Hunter's Mu- 
 seum, that we contemplate nature as a Physi- 
 ogony or genetic process ; and if it be possible 
 to convey in one sentence the sort and degree of 
 interest, which the final aim of such a history 
 of nature is calculated to inspire, I might say, 
 that the object is, to exhibit every order of 
 living beings, from the " rudimental chaos of 
 life" to the Mammalia, as so many embryonic 
 
 * These views formed the basis, and explaiu the purport, of 
 the Lectures on comparati\e anatomy, which the Author had 
 the honor of delivering:, when Professor of anatomy and sur- 
 gery, at the Royal College of Sur<^eons. The publication of 
 these Lectures has been rendered unnecessary by various works, 
 which oflfer to the student the means of more extensive infor- 
 mation on this important branch of knowledge, than they 
 claimed to possess ; but he hopes at no distant period to set 
 forth more at large the principles here enunciated, and which 
 those lectures were intended to vindicate in connection with 
 Hunter's labors. In the meanwhile he refers the Reader to the 
 Catalogue, descriptive and illustrative of the physiological series 
 of comparative anatomy, for illustrations of his views; and he 
 especially entreats his attention to the third volume, and its 
 admirable preface, in corroboration of their accordance with the 
 spirit of Hunter's researches. A lecture containing u brief re- 
 capitulation of the above mentioned course will be found at the 
 end of the volume. 
 
38 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 States of an Organism, to which nature from the 
 beginning had tended ; to exhibit nature as 
 labouring in birth with man, and her living 
 products as so many significant types of the 
 great process, which she is ever tending to com- 
 plete in the evolution of the organic realm.* 
 And in recognizing by the light of this idea 
 man as the ultimate aim and consummation of 
 nature, we shall see in each stage of the ascend- 
 ing scale, with evidence increasing directly as 
 the ascent, at once the opposition and harmony 
 
 * A similar view is taken by the German philosopher Schel- 
 ling, whose speculations produced a revolution in the minds of 
 his countrymen, not less remarkable than that effected by his 
 predecessor Kant, and which, whatever may be thought other- 
 wise of their worth, cannot but be admitted to have had an in- 
 vigorating influence on the progress of natural science ; wit- 
 ness, as more or less intimately connected with his school, the 
 names of Steffens, Ritter,Oerstedt, Oken, Carus, Kieser, Will- 
 brand, Link, Marcus, Reil, Walther, Dollinger, Sprengel, &c. 
 
 He says, " Der Anatom begreife das Symbolische aller 
 Gestalten, und dass auch in dem Besondern immer eine all- 
 gemeine Form, wic in dem Aussern ein innerer Typus ausge- 
 driickt ist. Bestdndig sey in ihm die Idee von der Einheit und 
 inneren Verwandtschaft aller Organisationen, der Abstam- 
 rnung von einem Urbild, dessen Objectives allein verdnder- 
 lich, das Subjective aber unver Under lich ist : undjene dar- 
 zustellen, halte er fur sein einziges wakres Geschdft.'' The 
 philosophical anatomist should strive to apprehend the symbolical 
 character of all organic forms, and learn that in every particular 
 form a universal form, and in every outward an inward type, is 
 revealed. The idea should be constantly present to his mind of 
 the unity and inward alliance of all organisms, and of their deri- 
 vation from one prototype, objectively only changeable, but 
 subjectively, or as a subject, invariable ; and to exhibit this idea 
 should be his aim, and is his true vocation. — Sckelling Academ- 
 isches Studiuni, p. 300. 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 39 
 
 of two great tendencies ; — on the one hand that 
 of nature to integrate all into one compre- 
 hensive whole, and consequently retaining each 
 part; — and on the other hand, the tendency 
 to integration in the parts, or that by which 
 each more and more secures the privilege of 
 being in, from, and for itself, as the anticipated 
 type of its final achievement in the Indivi- 
 duality of man. 
 
 And in further support of the truth of this 
 principle of advancing Integration, I confi- 
 dently refer you to the researches of Wolff, 
 Meckel and others in embryology. They have 
 successfully established the law, already an- 
 ticipated by Hunter,* that the progressive 
 phases of the embryo correspond to the abid- 
 ing forms, which are preserved in the total 
 organism of animated nature, as typical of its 
 gradative evolution ; and that as the embryo 
 of each higher animal passes rapidly through 
 the forms of the animals inferior to it, in order 
 to attain its maturity and specific rank of 
 
 * " If we were capable of following the progress of increase 
 of the number of the parts of the most perfect animal, as they 
 first formed in succession, from the very first, to its state of 
 full perfection, we should probably be able to compare it with 
 some one of the incomplete animals themselves, of every order 
 of animals in the creation, being; at no stag^e different from 
 some of those inferior orders ; or, in other words, if we were 
 to take a series of animals from the more imperfect to the 
 perfect, we siiould probably find an imperfect animal corres- 
 ponding with some stage of the most perfect." Hunterian 
 MSS. See Preface to the Physiological Cataloyuc, vol. i. 
 p. iv. 
 
40 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 being, that of man is transitively the compen- 
 dium of all ; not indeed without a difference, — 
 since in each instance the changing form of 
 the embryo bears the impress of its transi- 
 tional and incomplete character, while it ever 
 preserves the promise and prophecy of the 
 being into which it is to be finally evolved. 
 And it did not escape Hunter, as a conse- 
 quence of the same law, that Congenital De- 
 fects, hitherto comprehended under the vague 
 designation of monstrosity, are to be explained 
 by the development of the embryo being in- 
 terrupted and arrested at some early stage of 
 its regular evolution, and that the defective 
 form, which is the result, is analogous to the 
 form and structure of an inferior class. And 
 thus if in the human embryo these defective 
 forms constitute a series of transient epochs, 
 which are repetitions of the types, that denote 
 the grades of the ascending scale of ani- 
 mated being, in like manner all the lower 
 forms in relation to the highest may be re- 
 garded as abortions, by anticipation of nature's 
 mature work, the human frame.* 
 
 Again, in meditating farther on the in- 
 creasing perfection of being, as measured by 
 its adequateness to the principle of Integration 
 and Totality in each part, which nature aims 
 at in the whole, we acknowledge, in the evi- 
 dence offered throughout the ascending scale 
 of animated existence the following points if 
 
 * See Appendix B. f See Appendix C. 
 
CONNECTLID WITH VITAL DYNAiMU s. t\ 
 
 1st. That every organic whole, from the 
 polype up to man, indicates a higher and more 
 effective principle of unity, and therefore of 
 more perfect individuality, in proportion as the 
 parts are more numerous, yet at the same time 
 more various, each having a several end ; while 
 yet the interdependence of each on the other, 
 the subordination of the lower to the higher, 
 and the intimate union of all shall be perfected 
 in an equal proportion : — 
 
 2dly. That, as every organic whole is the 
 result of an antecedent principle or power, 
 which, considered as power, is exclusive of parts, 
 another mark of advancing perfection w ill be 
 when the partless and indivisible unity is itself 
 represented by some visible and central pro- 
 duct, to which all the various parts converge 
 as the bond, medium and condition of the 
 communion and interdependence of all in their 
 constitution to one. Such is the Brain, which 
 represents in respect of power that unity which 
 the total shape or exterior exhibits in respect 
 of sight or sense : — 
 
 And, '3rdly. If the aim of animated being 
 be the achievement of sensibility, and of the 
 subordination of the inferior powers thereto, 
 by which the animal exists from itself, in 
 itself, and though imperfectly for itself, in 
 order to the full presentation of this ultimate 
 end, nature must not only feel, — she must 
 know— her own being, that is, Mind must be 
 uperadded to life. 
 
42 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 If then we take these as the characters of 
 the advancing perfection of nature towards 
 Individuality, as the final purpose of divine 
 law, it is plain that we alone find them fully 
 realized in that being, whom we dare no longer 
 consider merely as a part of nature, over 
 which he is destined to *' have dominion," but 
 rather as its crown and epitome. In man, we 
 find the organic structure completed, and the 
 total organization exhibiting the most perfect 
 attainment of corporeal existence, as the me- 
 dium and condition of the operance and self- 
 potentiation of soul, spirit or power : — in man 
 alone the organic frame is so constituted that 
 no one part is predominantly or disproportion- 
 ately developed, and therefore permits, and 
 requires beyond that of any other animal the 
 adjustment of all the living powers and facul- 
 ties to a balance, in the control of which we 
 recognize the condition, mark, and privilege of 
 his free agency ; in all the animated beings 
 below man the body may be said to constitute 
 the animal, in him it is the organ and instru- 
 ment of mind; in short, the organization of 
 man is no longer the mere perfecting, but the 
 apotheosis, of the animal structure.* In him 
 alone the analoga of rational mind and of will, 
 — and more we cannot attribute to the most 
 intelligent animals, — cease to be mere analoga ; 
 
 * See Appendix D, on the characteristics of the human 
 frame. 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMIC S. 43 
 
 and in each of these twin factors are we to 
 look for the consummation of the great aim 
 towards which nature tends from the be- 
 ginning. In the sjDhere of the intellect, indi- 
 viduality appears consummated in Genius; in 
 the sphere of the will, Individuality has its 
 acme in integrity, — moral worth. It is in man 
 finally that individuality becomes Personality ; 
 that is, the capability of self-affirmation in the 
 image of the invisible Supreme, implying the 
 command that he should unite his powers of 
 intellect and of act to perfect himself ac- 
 cording to that divine pattern and Idea in order 
 to his high destiny. 
 
 The physiologist must indeed here reveren- 
 tially pause, as having reached the limits of 
 his science, yet his researches would want the 
 light of their final aim should he pass unno- 
 ticed their common end, in which is disclosed 
 to us the object of the history of nature as 
 preface and portion of the history of man, the 
 knowledge of nature as a branch of self- 
 knowledge and the outwardly realized history 
 of our own consciousness and conscious being. 
 It was to this as its goal that John Hunter's 
 labors undoubtedly tended, and it is not too 
 much to say, that in presenting the facts of 
 comparative anatomy, as a connected scheme 
 of graduated development in the unity of 
 predetermining law, he justly claims our 
 homage as the founder of the science of Com- 
 
44 THE IMPORl OF IDEAS 
 
 parative or Universal Physiology, in which 
 every part of the creation derives its intelligi- 
 bility from the final purpose revealed in 
 earth's noblest creature, —as aspiring heaven- 
 ward — Man. 
 
 And if Hunter left the physiological part of 
 his great work incomplete, it was only because 
 in obedience to the more pressing exigencies 
 of the profession to which he belonged, he 
 projected a revolution in Pathology, by car- 
 rying into the obscure recesses of disease the 
 torch of the same philosophy, by which he 
 had already successfully shed a light upon the 
 hitherto mysterious agencies of vitality. We 
 may date from his original views the rise of 
 scientific surgery : but invaluable as his re- 
 searches w^ere, and most happy as their effects 
 have been, in the especial improvement and 
 increased light, power, and courage of surgery, 
 may we not rather say, that he achieved the 
 more important service of bringing the whole 
 art of healing into an immediate connexion 
 with the sciences, which have nature for their 
 object, by exhibiting its requisite foundation 
 on an enlightened physiology ? And if the attri- 
 bute of inventive genius be his, who unequivo- 
 cally establishes a principle, as including, 
 anticipating, and explaining all, and even its 
 possible and yet unknown results, we venture 
 to claim this distinction for Hunter, in extend- 
 ing to pathology the same principle which had 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 45 
 
 happily guided his physiological researches, 
 by treating disease as a problem of vital dy- 
 namics, and by seeking its intelligibility in 
 the unity of the law of life.* The limits of 
 this address compel me indeed, though reluc- 
 tantly, to relinquish as hopeless the attempt to 
 elucidate the philosophical tendency of his 
 pathological labors : but I do not hesitate to 
 affirm that one of the main aids in construct- 
 ing a science of pathology will be by adopting 
 as its ground the principle throughout implied 
 in Hunter's researches ; that is, by recogni- 
 zing in life a power as of an agent at once 
 contrariant to, and coerced by, the law, which 
 actuates and directs it ; and by treating 
 disease as a problem, the solution of which is 
 to be sought in the great laws of life, as per- 
 turbations indeed of the order, which these 
 laws maintain, derived from the imperfection 
 of the subject, but perturbations to be ex- 
 plained by laws, which, like those of the solar 
 system, at once permit and correct the de- 
 viations. And if after witnessing the vain 
 strivings of this contrariant agency, betrayed 
 in disorder, deformity, degeneracy and disease, 
 the medical philosopher meditates, on the laws 
 which produce the order, |)erniancncc, regu- 
 larity and beauty of organic life, he will feel as 
 if, after the toils, vexations, and annoyances of 
 the day, he had withdrawn with the astronomer 
 
 * See Appendix K. 
 
46 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 to his observatory, and in the hushed stilhiess 
 of some balmy night, directing his delighted 
 gaze to the serene spectacle of the star-lit 
 sky, contemplated the mystic planetary dance, 
 which reveals more sensibly, though not more 
 certainly than animated being, the eternal and 
 unchangeable laws impressed on nature by 
 nature's Architect and Creator. Thence turn- 
 ing back on his own pursuits, he will accord to 
 Hunter the high merit of being at least the 
 Kepler of his science, which only awaits its 
 Newton in order to complete the scientific 
 unity, already instinctively anticipated by 
 Hunter's genius I 
 
 Finally ; the aim of this address has been 
 to exhibit to you John Hunter as a medical 
 philosopher, by vindicating the philosophical 
 tendency and spirit of his labors ; and its pur- 
 port will need no apology to those w^ho love 
 and honor the Profession, and are ambitious 
 that it should possess that honor and dignity 
 in the estimation of society at large, which 
 nothing but its scientific character, as a 
 branch from the common trunk of universal 
 truth, can confer ; that rank which it first ac- 
 quired, and which it can only retain by its 
 intimate connexion with the liberal arts and 
 sciences, the possession and application of 
 which constitute and continue the civilization 
 of a country. And as such, and because 
 they all contain as a necessary element a 
 
CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 4l 
 
 knowledge, which is its own reward, and 
 needs no higher or accidental benefit as a 
 motive for its cultivation, they acquire and 
 merit the name of liberal ; and without which, 
 we might still have most useful trades with 
 ingenious and well informed tradesmen, ope- 
 ratives, and artizans, but no professions, and 
 no claim from the profession to the name of 
 gentlemen. 
 
 The relative wants and afflictions of man 
 constitute the necessity of the healing art; 
 and its application in detail to the removal or 
 alleviation of the mishaps and ailments, that 
 *' flesh is heir to," forms its marketable value. 
 In every particular calling there is a particular 
 kind or quantum of skill and technical know- 
 ledge, arising out of the specific wants or 
 desires of our fellow creatures, which every 
 member of the calling, be it what it may, is 
 under a virtual contract to possess. If this be 
 the case generally, most especially must it 
 be so with the members of the medical and 
 surgical profession ; and as far as this sort and 
 quantity of professional skill and knowledge 
 are concerned, ignorance and incompetence 
 are worse than disreputable, — they are dis- 
 honest. But for this very reason, the pos- 
 session of these alone can confer no honor. It 
 never can be a distinction to possess what it 
 would be ignominy to want. Consequently in 
 whatever calling this is all, where the calling 
 neither requires nor admits of more, — however 
 
48 THC IMPORT OF IDEAS 
 
 great and evident its utility may be, however 
 indisputable for mankind its services, — it never 
 did, it never can, obtain or deserve the rank 
 or character of a liberal profession. 
 
 There was a period even in Christendom, 
 when the art of medicine, made up of super- 
 stition and the crudest empiricism, left wise 
 men in doubt, whether it were better than an 
 art of cheating and poisoning. Nevertheless 
 it was connected with what at that time passed 
 for philosophy, science, and the liberal arts, 
 and in consequence of this connexion physi- 
 cians enjoyed at all times a high rank and con- 
 sideration as members of society. On the other 
 hand, there never was a time, or ever could be, 
 when Surgery, even in its rudest form, could 
 have been otherwise than most useful, nay, ne- 
 cessary for mankind ; under all circumstances 
 it was and must have been a blessing. But 
 it was mere chirurgery, that is, hand-craft, 
 handy-M^ork. It was not engrafted on the 
 great trunk of universal science, of which all 
 particular knowledges are but so many di- 
 verging branches, not yet ennobled by being 
 permeated as it were by those general truths, 
 of which the rules and maxims of medicine 
 and surgery are but so many specific appli- 
 cations and embodyings. The connexion in 
 which the name stood in the privileged Guild 
 or Company of Surgeons, explains and in- 
 stances the consequence : our unphilosophic, 
 unspeculative predecessors carried on the trade 
 of Barber-surgeons. 
 
(ONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 49 
 
 If on the one hand, every profession has a 
 deep interest in tiie character of its professors ; 
 — for as the artists generally, such will be the 
 general estimation of the art ; and a profession 
 will soon sink into the predicament of a trade, 
 where the majority of its professors derive 
 their njotives from, and confine their attain- 
 ments to, the demands and interests of their 
 own shop, and study only the good opinion of 
 their customers : — so, on the other hand, has 
 every professional man a deep interest in the 
 
 neral estimation and accredited rank of his 
 profession.* But knowledge and skill, exclu- 
 sively practical and empirical, did not raise 
 our art into, and never can maintain it in, the 
 
 * A liberal profession may be defined as " the application 
 of science, by the actual possessors of the same, to the needs 
 and commodities of social man ; that is, by a learned class, 
 among' whom, as far as the boundaries of existing" knowledge 
 extend, skill is grounded on, or accompanied by, insight." 
 And we may add, that the cultivation of science for its own 
 sake, as the predominant aim, must ever constitute the essen- 
 tial difference between a profession and a trade ; for as in the 
 latter the art is rightfully considered exclusively as the means 
 of gain, 80 the former must inevitably be degraded into a 
 trade, whenever mercenary and sordid motives superse<le the 
 scientific aim. Nor can it be deemed of slight importance in 
 the formation of a professional class, such as we have ventured 
 to describe it, that those destined for the medical profession 
 should partakp of that education which is required in common 
 for the liberal profossions, as an integral part of the gentry of 
 the <'ountrv, with the 8«*nse and habit of a common training in 
 their duties, moral and religious, in tlieir obligations as citizens, 
 and in their sentiments of professional honour as gentlemen. 
 L 
 
50 THE IMPORT OF IDl.AS. 
 
 dignity of a liberal profession. This I repeat ; 
 and I call the name of John Hunter to wit- 
 ness, that the present rank possessed by all 
 the members of our profession, as such, was 
 achieved by the union therewith of compara- 
 tive anatomy and physiology, the science of 
 which is, by the essential nature of the pursuit, 
 philosophy. And had Hunter performed no 
 other service than that of thus bringing the 
 w hole art of healing, medical and chirurgical, 
 into an immediate connexion with the specu- 
 lative sciences of nature, which, without refe- 
 rence to their immediate practical application, 
 are cultivated by the first and noblest minds 
 for their own worth ; — if he had done no more 
 than connect the medical profession with all- 
 ennobling science by a bond of alliance, w hich 
 never, without ignominy to the profession, and 
 forfeiture of its best and most legitimate claim 
 to that title, can henceforward be dissolved or 
 broken ; — John Hunter would rightfully take 
 his place among the most eminent benefactors 
 of mankind, and have left a name which 
 every naturalist must hear with reverence, and 
 which no physician or surgeon can pronounce 
 w^ithout gratitude and filial awe. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 A. 
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF POWEll. 
 
 If Causes and Laws be riglitly assigned as the 
 legitimate objects of inquiry in order to natural 
 science; if the determination of these require some- 
 what other and more than the mental substan- 
 tiation of sensuous facts, under whatever degree 
 of generality, by the understanding or faculty 
 judging according to sense ; if they imply the 
 apprehension of permanent being, of efficiency, of 
 necessity, of finality, of unity, which, if they exist 
 in nature, cannot be derived from, but must be 
 presupposed in order to, sensible experience ; and 
 if these, as principles of reasoning on nature, and 
 of explainino^ its changes, be the result, and con- 
 stitute essentially the character, of rational mind ; 
 then it will not be denied that physical science is 
 grounded on truths supersensuous and metaphy- 
 sical, which we obtain by meditation on our own 
 |)owers in and by the light of reason. 
 
 This position cannot be better illustrated than 
 by investigating the origin of our notion of cause 
 and efficiency ; for the thought, which the term 
 power designates, is one, which is neither de- 
 rived nor deduced from our sensible experience. 
 
52 EVOLUriON OF THE 
 
 The presentations to the senses are the effects and 
 supposed manifestations of the powers adequate 
 to produce them, but of the powers themselves 
 we are thereby no wise cognizant : we see an 
 apple, detached from the branch on which it 
 hung-, fall to the ground, and we say that the fall 
 is produced by the power of gravity ; we see the 
 change, the motion, but the cause or power pro- 
 ducing the phcEiiomenon is wholly beyond the 
 limits of the senses. But neither can we in 
 strictness deduce the existence of power from any 
 change in outward nature, or from the corres- 
 ponding impression on our senses; for the know- 
 ledge afforded by the senses can convey no notion 
 of that which is beyond and above all sensible 
 experience. If therefore the notion of causative 
 power be a legitimate assumption, occasioned in- 
 deed by the presentation to the senses, though 
 not obtained by them, it must be inferred, brought 
 in, made use of, by the mind for its own purposes, 
 namely for explaining or giving intelligibility to 
 the phcEnomena. It is then in the human mind 
 that we seek the ground and origin of the assump- 
 tion of power, cause, efficiency ; and this ground 
 we readily trace in the mind as that ultimate fact 
 of the consciousness, which we call Will, as the 
 power essentially of origination. Of this fact we 
 can offer no proof, we can adduce no evidence 
 beyond that of referring the inquirer to the facts 
 of his own consciousness ; beyond this we cannot 
 ascend, since it is an ultimate fact, and this so 
 eminently that if we suppose any antecedent the 
 term loses its meaning and contradicts itself. It is 
 
IDEA OF POWER. 53 
 
 indeed true that the conscious will, of which we 
 are now speaking, is mind, and is indissolubly con- 
 nected in our thoughts with intelligence, though 
 at the same time we have no difficulty in distin- 
 guishing the will (as the originative and causative) 
 from the intellect, which directs and guides it ; 
 and hence indeed arises our capability of consi- 
 dering the will abstractedly from intelligence, but 
 in so doing it ceases to be all that which we mean 
 by the term will, we give it a different name, and 
 in this manner form to ourselves the notion of 
 power, and as soon as this power manifests itself 
 sensibly, of force. 
 
 If however such be the true ground of our 
 notion of power, it cannot be denied that, in attri- 
 buting powers to outward nature, and in ascribing 
 its changes to these as causes, the human mind 
 silently transfers its own constitution to the out- 
 ward, and assumes that the subjective ground of 
 nature is in kind one with man's inward being. 
 But how should this be otherwise? Man can 
 acquire no knowledge except under the conditions 
 of his own consciousness, and nothing can be in- 
 telligible to him except by virtue of his own in- 
 telligence ; he cannot conceive of any power or 
 mode of action, of which he has not the ana- 
 logon in his own powers and in the modes of 
 agency of which he is conscious. He knows that 
 his will is influenced, urged, nay, sometimes com- 
 pelled by outward powers and agencies, and this 
 experience, whilst it is for him the very ground 
 of his belief in the reality of an outward world, 
 convinces him that the influence, of which lit- 
 
54 EVOLUTION OF THE 
 
 is conscious being the same as that of his own 
 will, the cause must be of the same kind. " We 
 are conscious," (says Herscliel''^, " of a power to 
 move our limbs, and by their intervention other 
 bodies ; and that this eifect is the result of a 
 certain inexplicable process which we are aware 
 of, but can in no way describe in words, by which 
 we exert force." And he adds : " Though it may 
 seem strange that matter should be capable of 
 exerting on matter the same kind of effort, which 
 judging alone from this consciousness, we might 
 be led to regard as a mental one ; yet we cannot 
 refuse the evidence of our senses, which show us 
 that when we keep a spring stretched with one 
 hand we feel an effort opposed exactly in the same 
 way, as if we had ourselves opposed it with the 
 other hand, or as it would be by that of another 
 person." 
 
 It must be recollected, however, that, if as we 
 believe, the notion of power have no other origin 
 than that of will as disclosed by our own consci- 
 ousness, it has no other meaning when attributed 
 to outward nature than that of will with the ab- 
 straction of intelligence. But though it would be 
 manifestly absurd to attribute to the powers of na- 
 ture any conscious design, yet by the constitution 
 of our own mind we are constrained to admit that 
 their agencies so far partake of intelligence that 
 they are adaptations to relative ends, in the unity 
 of some final aim or purpose. Hence it is that we 
 distinguish the power or agent from the mind that 
 
 * Intr. to Nat. Phil. p. 86. 
 
IDEA OF POWER. 55 
 
 directs it, and we say that the powers of nature, in 
 and of themselves blind, brute, and unintelligent, 
 act under Laws, by which we express the con- 
 straint and forced subjection of a power or agent 
 to an intelligence guiding and governing it as 
 an alien and subject. 
 
 And if by the examination of the facts of his 
 consciousness, man comes unavoidably to the con- 
 viction that the powers of nature are of the same 
 kind in their essential ground as his own will, 
 it will be scarcely possible for him, in meditating 
 further on the mysterious agency at work in 
 nature, not to consider it as part of the same 
 moral operance, which his conscience reveals to 
 him ; and whilst his moral being bears involun- 
 tary testimony to the fact of the moral order and 
 governance of the universe, recognized in the laws 
 appointed by the wisdom of the Creator, he can- 
 not but be convinced of the existence in nature 
 of a contrariant and alien agency striving, though 
 vainly striving, against the beauty, order and har- 
 mony of the world. If, I say, in the light of our 
 moral being we may rightly interpret the cha- 
 racter of the physical world, and if in all the 
 forms of nature the pravity of the subject is 
 betrayed by evidences of the in)permanent, the 
 unsufficing, the arbitrary, — of weakness, degene- 
 racy and imperfection, — are we not bound to 
 assume as a principle, for the purposes of physical 
 science, and in behoof of that unity of the mind, 
 which truth implies, the contrariety of the agent 
 or subject in nature, and of the divine laws, by 
 which it is at once actuated, coerced, and directed ? 
 
56 EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF POWER. 
 
 At all events the assumption of a perfect law, 
 coercing an imperfect subject, offers a solution of 
 the difficulties, which must arise from denying 
 the imperfections in nature : nor need we appre- 
 hend any well founded religious objection to a 
 view, which, in admitting the existence and in- 
 fluence of evil no less in the physical than in 
 the moral world, at the same time asserts its 
 uniform conversion to good, by the benevolent 
 all-might of the divine Legislator, whilst it offers 
 the means and condition of reconciling physical 
 science with the stedfast faith of Christianity. 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL ANATOMY. 
 
 This parallel scale of evolution in the transient 
 forms of embryonic life, and in the relatively 
 abiding forms, which are constituent parts of 
 nature's totality, has been tested by the accurate 
 anatomical investigations of Meckel, Tiedemann, 
 Miiller and others, in the development of every 
 organ and system. They have most successfully 
 vindicated this department of knowledge from the 
 censure of the " mira indiligentia homimiin ,'' ex- 
 pressed by Lord Bacon, who could hardly have 
 anticipated the splendid achievements of embry- 
 ogeny, by which the student of nature is privi- 
 leged to enter the workshop, and *' prcesens esse 
 
TRAXSCEXDENTAL ANATOMY. 57 
 
 cum art'ifex operatur et opus suum promovct:'* 
 By the aid of comparative anatomy the process 
 itself of the construction of organs has been un- 
 folded to the armed eye of science, and therein the 
 ground laid of a science, which, under the recently 
 admitted name of transcendental anatomy, aims at 
 establishing the law of organic genesis by substi- 
 tuting the certainty of a scientific idea for the 
 results of empirical observation, and at discovering 
 the pattern and pre-existing model, according to 
 which, and the genetic process itself by which, 
 organic forms are constructed. In adopting, how- 
 ever, this idea, which had its origin in the genial 
 mind of the great poet Goethe, and which has 
 been expanded by Oken, Spix, Cams, and others 
 into the principle that all the varied organic 
 forms are but modifications of one simple primary 
 form, and that for instance, the osseous system 
 in every part, and in its most complicated total 
 result, is but the repetition of a simple vertebra, 
 — in adopting, I say, the principle of organic mo- 
 difiability and unity of composition, we must 
 
 * *' Mira enim est hominum circa hanc rem indiligentia. 
 Contemplantur siquidem naturam tantummodo desultorie et 
 per periodos, et postquam corpora fuerint ahsoluta ac com- 
 pleta, et non in operatione sua. Quod si artijicis alicujus 
 ingenia et industriam explorare et contemplari quis cuperet, 
 is non tantuni materias rudes artis, at que delude opera per- 
 fecta, conspicere desideraret ; sed potius prcesens esse cum 
 artifex operatur et opus suum promovet. Atque simile quid- 
 dam circa naturam faciendum est." Nov. Org. Lib. ii. p. 3,5.5. 
 Vol. iv. 4to edit. 
 
58 TRANSCENDENTAL ANATOMY. 
 
 never forget that insight of the law, to any useful 
 purpose of science, must be completed by a know- 
 ledge of the conditions which determine the varia- 
 tion and differences of form and structure.* 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 GRADATION OF ANIMAL LIFE. 
 
 The marks of advancing perfection may be thus 
 more fully stated : 
 
 1st. The necessity of grades. The resistance 
 of a contrariant subject in nature is throughout 
 implied ; and if the process be that of converting 
 resistance into willing subjection and cooperation, 
 it cannot, from the imperfection of the subject, be 
 effected otherwise than gradatively. The divine 
 law can only compel and coerce the brute and 
 unintelligent powers of nature ; — in infusing light 
 and life on the same, as in the bee and elephant, 
 it may induce and guide, and finally on rational 
 man it acts by obligation and conviction. 
 
 2nd. As nature tends to integrate all organic 
 forms into one comprehensive whole, in like manner 
 every type of organic being is the expression and 
 measure of its tendency to represent, and to in- 
 tegrate itself as, the whole of which it is a part; 
 and the grades in the ascending scale of integra- 
 
 * A useful summary of these views for the English reader 
 will be found in Anderson on the Comparative Anatomy of 
 the Nervous System, London, 1837. 
 
GRADATION OF ANIMAL LIFE. 59 
 
 tion, which are retained and exhibited at once in 
 the total organism of nature, each organic being 
 has to pass through successively, in a series of 
 which, each transient form is superseded by ano- 
 ther of greater perfection, until it has attained its 
 specific rank in the scale of individuality. 
 
 3rd. Every organic whole, from the polyp up 
 to man, indicates a higher and more effective 
 power of unity, and, therefore, of more perfect 
 individuality in proportion as the parts are more 
 numerous, yet at the same time more various, 
 each having a several end ; while yet the inter- 
 dependence of each on the other, the subordina- 
 tion of the lower to the higher, and the intimate 
 union of all to the constitution of One, shall be 
 perfected in an equal proportion. 
 
 4th. As every organic whole is the result of 
 an antecedent principle, which, as power, is ex- 
 clusive of parts, another mark of advancing per- 
 fection will be when the partless and indivisible 
 unity is itself represented by some visible and 
 central product, to which all the various parts 
 converge, as the bond, medium and condition of 
 the union and communion, and of the interdepen- 
 dence of all in their constitution to One. Such is 
 the brain, which represents, in respect of power, 
 tliat unity which the total shape or exterior ex- 
 liibits in respect of sight or sense. 
 
 5th. As every finite creature has external rela- 
 tions, tljc comparative perfection will consist in 
 the emancipation and independence of the creature 
 from the alirn external powers, and its compara- 
 tive superiority over tiieni and power of com- 
 
60 GRADATIOX OF AMMAL LIFE. 
 
 manding them, with the facility of adapting itself 
 to its external relations in the greatest variety, 
 and under the greatest change of these relations. 
 And when we add to this the power of using 
 external nature as an alien, of using what it 
 neither assimilates nor admits, it is more than 
 independence, it is sovereignty. 
 
 6th. If the aim of animated being be the 
 achievement of sensibility, and of the subordi- 
 nation of the inferior powers thereto, by which 
 the animal exists from itself, in itself, and, though 
 imperfectly, for itself, in order to the full presen- 
 tation of this ultimate end, nature must not only 
 feel, she must know her own being; that is, mind 
 must be superadded to life. 
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF MAn's BODILY FRAME. 
 
 In a comparison of the frame and capabilities 
 of man with those of the inferior animals, if we 
 take the human frame as the ideal standard of 
 form, it will be found that all others present so 
 many declensions from the Idea, by exaggeration 
 or defect : and it will be found from this survey, 
 that man is unquestionably endowed with that 
 structure, the perfection of which is revealed in 
 such a balanced relation of the parts to a whole 
 as may best fit it for a being exercising intelligent 
 choice, and destined for moral freedom. It is not, 
 
man's kodily frame. 61 
 
 therefore, an absolute perfection of the consti* 
 tuents singly, but the proportional development 
 of all, and their harmonious constitution to One, 
 for which we contend ; — a constitution which im- 
 plies, in a far higher degree than in any other 
 animal, a balanced relation of the living powers 
 and faculties, and which requires, therefore, in 
 man pre-eminently the endowment of rational will 
 as necessary for the control and adjustment of 
 the balance. Man has not the quick hearing of 
 the timid herbivorous animals, but it was not 
 intended that he should catch the sound of dis- 
 tant danger and be governed by his fears; he 
 has not the piercing sight of the eagle, nor the 
 keen scent of the beast of prey, but neither was 
 man intended to be the fellow of the tiger, or 
 a denizen of the forest. Hence the departure 
 from the perfect proportion of man, which we 
 observe in the inferior animals, may be regarded 
 as Deformities by exaggeration or defect, de- 
 pendent upon a preponderance of a part that 
 necessitates a particular use, or the absence of a 
 part that deprives the animal of a power, and in 
 both instances alike abrogates that freedom, for 
 which provision is made in the balanced relation 
 of the constituents of the human fabric, which 
 permits the free choice of means, and the adap* 
 tation to any purpose determined by an intelligent 
 free-will. Dilate the head, and you have a symptom 
 of disease : protrude the jaws, you have a vora- 
 cious animal : lengthen the ears, timidity is ex- 
 pressed : let the nose project, and the animal is 
 governed by its scent : enlarge the belly, and you 
 
62 CHAKACTEllISTICS OF 
 
 are reminded of the animal appetites : long arms 
 may fit him for an inhabitant of the trees, and a 
 fit companion for the ape ; and predominant length 
 of legs are infallibly associated with the habits of 
 the wading or leaping animals. In all, regarding 
 man's form with reference to his destination as 
 the ideal standard, the means become ends, de 
 formity prevails, and becomes the badge of unin- 
 telligent slavery to the mere animal nature. 
 
 This may be further illustrated by a general 
 and brief comparison of the components of the 
 skeleton in the vertebrated animals with that of 
 man.* In considering the skull, it will be found, 
 that man, of all animals, has the largest and 
 roundest cranium ; from the ape to the fish, the 
 brain case decreases in capacity, in correspon- 
 dence with a proportionably diminishing develop- 
 ment. But in the same ratio, the parts allotted 
 to the senses, and the parts merely subservient to 
 the preparation of the food, increase in size. In 
 looking at the head of the horse and the dog, it will 
 be readily observed how much the cranium recedes, 
 and the jaws protrude ; but in birds, reptiles, and 
 fish, the proportions are so altered by the diminu- 
 tion of the cranium, that the whole head appears al- 
 most to consist of the jaws ; — witness the mand ibles 
 of the stork and pelican, and the enormous jaws of 
 the crocodile and shark. And we may add, that 
 man is the only animal that has a prominent chin. 
 
 * The Author gladly emhraces this opportunity of acknou- 
 ledging his obligation to that distinf^uished cultivator of phy- 
 siolof^ical science, Tiedemann. See his Zoologie V" Band. 
 
MAX's BODILY FRAiME. 63 
 
 This distinguishing character of the human skull, 
 found in the proportion of the brain case to the 
 jaws when compared with the same in the inferior 
 animals, the ingenious Camper devised the method 
 of more accurately determining, by means of what 
 has been called the Facial Angle. It consists in 
 drawing one line from the most prominent part of 
 the forehead, to the sockets of the upper incisor 
 teeth and a second, which describes the ground 
 plane of the cranium, through the external meatus 
 of the ear, and lower edge of the nose, and which, 
 cutting the first on the upper jaw, forms with it a 
 determinate angle : and it is evident that this angle 
 will be greater in proportion to the development of 
 the forehead and recession of the superior maxilla, 
 less or more acute in proportion to the projection 
 of the upper jaw and recession of the forehead.* 
 According to this mode of relative admeasurement, 
 it appears that the facial angle in the European, 
 exceeds that in the Negro ; and, it is worthy of 
 notice, that the Greek sculptors, who were careful 
 to mark strongly, or even exaggerate those circum- 
 stances which peculiarly mark the human character, 
 have often exceeded the rij^rht antrle in the ideal 
 anatomy of their deities, though at the same time 
 with the discriminative taste, which prevented 
 them from exceeding the limit, beyond which the 
 
 • See Camper's Treatise Uber dett natur lichen Unterschied 
 der Gcsichtsziuje im Menschen. Compare Ciivicr on the view 
 of the profile and tranverse section of the cranium: Lemons 
 d' Anatom'u: Coi/ijtartc, Tom. ii. p. 0. aru) liluineiil)ach'8 view 
 from abovf, or hinl's-eyo view of the cranium : Dc generis 
 liumtiny vdrirtnlr vtitivd. 
 
64 CHARACTEtllSTlCS OF 
 
 form would have become a symptom of disease. 
 It follows then, that the size of the brain case in 
 man, proportionate to the development of the 
 brain, indicates the predominance of this organ 
 over those of the senses, which may be regarded 
 as the measure of the subserviency of the animal 
 to the outward excitants, and over the organs for 
 the preparation of the food, the preponderance 
 of which mark the subjugation of the creature to 
 the mere animal needs, — that the predominant 
 development of the cranium, I say, is the mark, 
 symbol and condition of man's characteristic excel- 
 lence, as pre-eminently gifted with mind. 
 
 In order, however, to prevent any misconception 
 with regard to the meaning of the above position, 
 the reader is requested not to confound it with the 
 attempt which has been made to found a physiog- 
 nomical system on the form of the cranium ; and 
 without pretending to give an opinion on the value 
 and merits of that system, it will not be out of 
 place to draw the attention of its supporters to 
 a question, which, sooner or later, must claim 
 their serious consideration. It is well known 
 that Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, from numerous 
 observations, have been led to determine that 
 there are certain regions or parts of the skull 
 which are more or less developed in different in- 
 dividuals. They believe that, where these parts 
 are peculiarly prominent, it is the indication of a 
 greater development of the brain at that spot ; and 
 that such being uniformly connected with the 
 manifestation of certain dispositions or faculties, 
 they infer that the portion of brain at that part is 
 
man's bodily frame. 65 
 
 the organ of that faculty, intellectual activity, or 
 moral sentiment. Hence, in their opinion, the 
 relative prominence of the different cranial regions 
 may be used as the measure, or serve as the indi- 
 cation, of the predominant propensities, feelings, 
 or mental endowments of the individual. 
 
 It has been generally admitted that there is a 
 mutual relation and interdependence between the 
 brain and the manifestation of the intellectual 
 powers, and that the greater size of the brain in 
 man is in some connexion with his higher mental 
 endowments. The admission, however, involves a 
 far more difficult question respecting the nature of 
 this connexion : and we may here inquire, whether 
 the views of Gall and Spurzheim tend in any de- 
 gree to solve this difficulty ; and whether their 
 system is adequate to its proposed object, — that of 
 determining the condition of the reciprocal rela- 
 tion between the brain and our moral and intel- 
 lectual nature, and of forming a physiognomical 
 scheme, whereby tlie configuration and develop- 
 ment of the brain shall be shown to be a safe 
 index of our propensities and faculties. 
 
 They tell us that the brain is composed of a 
 plurality of organs, each of which has its appro- 
 priate functions. Now, what are we to understand 
 by the word Organ, of which they have given us 
 no definite meaning or explanation ? In some 
 sense or other, an organ must be instrumental or 
 conditional, however, laxly we employ the term. 
 It may be as in a musical instrument, where 
 tlie sound or utterance is given by the player ; 
 and in which all that is expressed belongs to the 
 
 F 
 
66 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 performer, and might be accomplished by the aid 
 of various instruments indifferently. It may be 
 again as in a machine, wherein, by the contrivance 
 and adjustment of the mechanism, the power and 
 its results reside wholly in the instrument. Or it 
 may be as in the animal body, where there is 
 indeed a mechanism, but which is at the same 
 time, the product of a vital power ; and thus be- 
 comes the organ in and by which the vital power 
 continues to manifest itself as the appropriate 
 function of the same. If a cerebral organ exist 
 at all, it must be of the latter kind. In this we 
 have three things which especially are to be noted, 
 as fulfilling the conception of an organ ; — namely, 
 1. the power which sets the organ in motion, the 
 principle of its activity and action; — 2. the struc- 
 ture in and by which this principle is manifested or 
 becomes an act ; — and, lastly, the product of that 
 act. Perhaps the best illustration, in the present 
 instance, is that of an organ for motion, a muscle ; 
 this consists of a bundle of fibres, with the pro- 
 perty of contractility, attached at the extremities 
 to one or more moveable parts, and to which a 
 nerve proceeds for the purpose of conveying the 
 influence producing the contraction. In this in- 
 stance we have that which is incorporeal, mani- 
 festing itself in and by a corporeal organ : in con- 
 sequence of some mental operation, volition deter- 
 mines the contraction of the muscular fibres, and 
 the part to which they are attached is moved 
 according to its mechanical condition. Thus an 
 organ, in its product, its mode of action or appli- 
 cation, has uniformly reference to the forms of 
 sensuous intuition. 
 
man's bodily frame. 67 
 
 But how is it with the cerebral organs, described 
 by Gall and Spurzheim, with the organs of secre- 
 tiveness, approbation, or ideality ? What is the 
 function of that particular packet of medullary 
 fibres, entitled the organ of Self-esteem ? Is self- 
 esteem some particular motion of these fibres ; and 
 if so, what sort of motion ? Is self-esteem the 
 product or the cause of that motion ? If it be 
 the cause of the motion, what end or purpose 
 does the motion answer ? If it be a product, what 
 evidence can be brought to the senses that it 
 is so ? 
 
 It will be said, perhaps, that this mode of ques- 
 tioning is unfair, and that a kind of evidence is 
 required, which is not only not demanded, but is 
 not applicable to the subject in question ; and that 
 although the mode of activity cannot be demon- 
 strated, yet that the conception of the brain or its 
 parts being a condition of thought or feeling is not 
 invalidated. It will be said, perhaps, that we 
 have abundant proof of the exercise of the intellect 
 being rendered impossible, or its operations dis- 
 turbed, by causes manifestly referable solely to the 
 condition of the brain, — and therefore, that the 
 brain is that part upon which the exercise and ope- 
 rations of the intellect depend ; and if attributable 
 to the whole mass, we may assign, upon proper 
 evidence, particular functions to particular parts. 
 
 But if we admit the premises, is the conclusion 
 legitimate? If we grant that thinking is sus- 
 pended or disturbed because the brain is injured 
 or injuriously affected, are we therefore to con- 
 clude that thinkinof is the function of the brain ? 
 
68 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 Are we, in other words, to believe that thought 
 is effected by, or is the result of, any operation 
 or mode of action of the brain ? This, surely, 
 does not follow from the data, and if asserted, 
 it would be perfectly fair to ask what intelligible 
 conception could be formed of a process in which 
 no conceivable mode of cerebral action could pro- 
 duce the result? For, imagine any possible sort 
 of material operation in the bundles of medullary 
 fibres, — conceive them to be analogous to muscles, 
 to glands, to an electrical or galvanic machine ; — 
 what is the common mark in the operation of all 
 these as material agents ? This ; — that the result 
 is a phcenomenon, that it is, or might be, presented 
 to the senses : whereas thought, being in its very 
 nature and conception that which can never be- 
 come the object of the senses, wants that common 
 mark, which would characterize it as the possible 
 result of a material agency. The assumption, in 
 fact, of an organ of thinking, is the confounding 
 of things which are essentially disparate, and of 
 different kinds. 
 
 It might still be supposed, that there was some 
 lurking power in the term " condition," where 
 we have admitted that the exercise of the in- 
 tellect may be disturbed or altered by causes re- 
 ferable to the state of the brain, and that, there- 
 fore, the brain influences the intellectual process, 
 or that the latter is, in some sense, dependent upon 
 the brain. But the utmost that can be legiti- 
 mately inferred, is, that the brain is the condition 
 of the corporeal manifestation of mind, of the 
 mind as far as it has relation to the body. To go 
 
man's BODILY FRAMf:. 69 
 
 further would be to confound condition with effi- 
 cient cause, and we should be no more justified 
 in stating the brain to be the efficient and ope- 
 rative source of mind, than in stating the stomach 
 to be so, because it is the condition of the con- 
 tinued bodily existence of an intelligent being. 
 
 Passing on to the consideration of the other 
 components of the skeleton, we may next examine 
 the Trunk ; and it is evident that in man we have 
 mainly to regard the Spine in relation to its pur- 
 poses as a central column of support, in aid of his 
 erect position. Now this, the vertebral column, 
 consists of a pile of bones, named vertebra, dis- 
 tinguished as those of the neck, of the back, and 
 of the loins, and the pillar rests below upon the 
 wedge-shaped sacrum, having the coccyx as an 
 appendage, which forms the tail in inferior 
 animals. And in the human spine, characterized 
 especially by its serpentine bend, the various re- 
 gions thus named are proportionately and harmo- 
 niously developed ; but in the inferior orders of 
 animals, each region acquires some peculiar pro- 
 minence, in obvious relation to some necessitating 
 purpose, influencive of the character and habits 
 of the agent. In birds, the region of the neck is 
 peculiarly long, serving as a balancing pole in 
 flight, or as in the aquatic birds answering the 
 purpose of a fishing-rod ; whilst the region of the 
 back is very short, and that of the loins is wanting 
 altogether. In the Mammalia, various proportions 
 are observed : in the Cetacea, the neck is so short 
 that it appears to he wanting ; in the giraffe, it is 
 
70 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 as remarkably long, serving to lift the head of the 
 animal as a browsing apparatus ; and in many, the 
 tail is extraordinarily developed, answering the 
 purpose of a ** prehensile hand to the monkey, a 
 trowel to the beaver, a rudder to the whale, and a 
 leaping-pole to the kangaroo." Of the pelvis, 
 we need observe no more, than that in man it is 
 the most complete ; for its breadth and develop- 
 ment form a necessary part of the adaptation of 
 his frame to the erect posture. In looking to the 
 chest, we find in man a structure peculiarly ap- 
 propriate to respiration, and this in connexion 
 with speech and with the expression of feelings 
 and emotions, as characteristic of a life raised 
 into intimate union with mind : whilst in the 
 inferior animals it has subsidiary offices, which 
 bring it in closer relation to the organs of loco- 
 motion ; in some quadrupeds, by a greater number 
 of vertebrce and ribs ; in birds, by an expansion 
 of the sternum ; in serpents, by a multiplicity 
 of ribs, whieh serve the purpose of feet ; or it 
 bears the traces of imperfect development, as in 
 the frogs ; and fish cannot be said to have a tho-^ 
 rax at all. 
 
 If we compare the lower limbs of man with the 
 hinder extremities of quadrupeds, we again find 
 the peculiar character and perfection of the former 
 in their adaptation and appropriation to maintain 
 the balance of the body in the erect posture. In 
 some, indeed, the hinder limbs are so formed as to 
 permit the creature to obtain, for a time, the free 
 use of the fore extremities ; but the endowment 
 serves but to mark, as in the monkey, that it was 
 
man's bodily fhame. :71 
 
 intended for a climbing animal ; and the extra- 
 ordinary length and strength of the legs of the 
 kangaroo show only its aptitude to leap. And if, 
 in birds, the support of the body is effected by two 
 legs, it leaves the anterior extremities free only for 
 the purpose of aiding in, and of executing, a diffe- 
 rent mode of locomotion. In man alone the lower 
 extremities, providing wholly the means of support 
 and progression, leave the upper limbs as instru- 
 ments, the use of which is entirely at the choice of 
 the agent. 
 
 And in aid of this purpose, we find in man the 
 most perfect upper extremity. From the ape to 
 the fish, the different components diminish in 
 number, development, and variety of motion. 
 This is especially noticeable in the hand ; which, 
 in consequence of the length of the fingers, the 
 number of articulations, and the multiplicity of 
 their movements, especially in consequence of the 
 capability of opposing the thumb to the fingers, 
 becomes an instrument fitted for the most delicate 
 and varied operations directed by the skill and 
 intellect of man. Compare, in this respect, this 
 flexile and modifiable apparatus with the single 
 digit of the extremity of the horse, on the horny, 
 tip of which the weight of the animal (by an 
 admirable mechanism indeed) is supported and 
 carried ; or with the abortive hand of the whale, 
 suflRciently like the human to be so called, but 
 retracted, enveloped in skin, and degenerated into 
 a fin, that merely serves as an oar in propelling 
 the animal through the water. It might be said, 
 perhaps, that the hand of the monkey claims the 
 
72 CHARACTEKISTICS OF 
 
 praise of as great perfection as that of man, but 
 the dwindled thumb marks its imperfection for 
 handling and for touch ; and the arms even of the 
 anthropoeid oran otan, lengthened to deformity, 
 irresistibly prove their use to be little else than 
 for grasping and climbing. 
 
 In the contemplation of the human skeleton, its 
 most striking characteristic, however, and that 
 which contradistinguishes it from the bony fabric 
 of all other animals, is its adaptation to the erect 
 position ; an attribute not only peculiar to man, 
 but without which, his structure could not cor- 
 respond to his spiritual endowments, since it is 
 at once the need and symbol of a being raised 
 above the servile condition of the mere animal 
 nature. 
 
 Thus the skull is poised, with only a slight 
 preponderance anteriorly, at the top of the ver- 
 tebral column ; and a plumb line, dropped from the 
 point of its support, falls through the centre of 
 gravity between the feet, which present the base 
 of support to the whole towering fabric. We re- 
 mark, however, that the supporting parts do not 
 range with this line. The spine is bent like an 
 italic S ; it recedes at the chest, in order to give 
 room to its cavity, and at the same time is har- 
 moniously inflected forwards at the loins and 
 neck, in order to facilitate its balance over the 
 points of support ; and it cannot be doubted that 
 these curves contribute to the capability of bending 
 and changing the position of the trunk, without 
 endangering the loss of balance. But the balance 
 
man's bodily frame. 73 
 
 of the body is also greatly aided by the breadth 
 of the human pelvis, which, supplying a broad 
 base of support, permits the inclinations of the 
 trunk without the necessity of altering the posi- 
 tion of the lower limbs. The lateral breadth of 
 the pelvis, however, throws the heads of the thigh 
 bones, upon which the weight of the body is 
 transmitted, to some distance on each side of the 
 line, that falls through the centre of gravity ; and 
 in order to provide a compensating adjustment, the 
 thigh bones are placed obliquely, inclining to- 
 wards each other, so that in the upright posture 
 with the feet together, they touch at the knees, 
 and the weight is then received upon the heads 
 of the leg bones or tibice, which stand perpen- 
 dicularly under the centre of gravity. And these 
 again are planted upon the arch of the foot or 
 instep, on which the whole weight of the body 
 securely rests. Then, in order to secure in the 
 foot the requisite firmness in standing, we find 
 that it is articulated with the leg at right angles, 
 so that both the heel and toes touch the ground ; 
 and the joint is placed nearer the posterior than 
 the anterior part of the foot, so as to increase the 
 base of support in that direction towards which 
 the body tends most to fall ; besides which, the 
 weight is here received on the inner side of the 
 foot, where it is most arched, thereby offering not 
 only the advantage of a strong support, but one 
 which is highly elastic, yielding without injury 
 in alighting upon the feet, and acting as a spring 
 in progression. 
 
 Thus the majestic column of the human form 
 
74 CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 
 is raised and built up upon its pedestal, and the 
 living pillar, readily maintaining its equipoise, bears 
 aloft its capital, whilst the upper limbs are left 
 free to adlibitive motion. Thus the place of the 
 head, as the corporeal representative of that which 
 perceives and wills, the disposition of the senses 
 therein as the media of intelligence, and of the or- 
 gans of speech as the interpreters of thought, and 
 the arrangement of the upper limbs as instruments 
 of volition, no longer subservient to mere animal 
 needs, — all impress us with the conviction that 
 even the skeleton cannot be intelligible to us, 
 without admitting that the human bodily frame 
 was designed for the instrument and dwelling of a 
 . being contradistinguished from and elevated above 
 all other animals : — 
 
 A creature, who, not prone, 
 And brute as other creatures, but endued 
 With sanctity of reason, might erect 
 His stature, and upright, with front serene, 
 Govern the rest, self knowing. 
 
 Man alone is erect. It is to this posture that 
 the body of man owes the character, impressed on 
 the whole frame, of its emancipation from subser- 
 viency to the mere animal needs, and becomes 
 expressive of mind and of free and intelligent 
 action. It will be seen that the lower limbs, 
 answering the purposes of support and locomo- 
 tion, have alone any obvious or necessitated 
 utility ; while the upper extremities are, in con- 
 sequence, left at liberty as the ready and facile 
 instruments of his will. Hence too the senses are 
 best freed from their servitude to the bodily wants, 
 
man's bodily frame. 75 
 
 and the countenance is raised as the expressive 
 exponent of thoughts and feelings, which the 
 mouth declares and interprets by words. And 
 thus as the stem bears the corolla, the head is 
 carried on high, as the most noble part of the 
 frame, which it surmounts; all the rest of the 
 body seems as if intended to carry it ; and when 
 considered in its fitness for expression, it may 
 be said to be representative of the whole man. 
 
 If principally connected with erect posture the 
 body is admirable and acquires its human charac- 
 ter, w^e shall no less find, in directing our attention 
 to the organs of motion in man, the aptitude and 
 capabilities of a being designed for intelligent 
 freedom. We find in man the organic structure 
 adapted for the greatest variety of motion. It is 
 true, indeed, that many of the mammalia are so 
 constituted, as greatly to excel man in particular 
 kinds of locomotion ; but we shall in vain look for 
 the same combination and mastery of his powers, 
 which the ere^t posture implies. The monkey 
 climbs and jumps with a facility truly extraordi- 
 nary ; but it is with difficulty, or only for a short 
 time, that he raises himself into the erect position. 
 Dogs, horses, deer, excel man in swiftness, but 
 they cannot climb nor walk erect. The otter, the 
 beaver, and the seal, swim well, but it is their only 
 boast above creatures of their own kind. And 
 whales or other cetaceous animals, though admi- 
 rably adapted for swimming, have no other mode 
 of locomotion. Man, on the other hand, stands 
 and walks erect, runs, jumps, climbs, swims, — 
 
76 CHARACTEKISTICS OF 
 
 man alone, can so modify his frame, that it is 
 in his power to waive the high privilege of the 
 harmony and balance of his faculties ; and by 
 concentering his volition to any one property or 
 perfection, we have reason to believe that he 
 might equal or excel the beast, most characterized 
 by that perfection, — outrun the deer, outwrestle 
 the bear, climb with the monkey. In short, man 
 has the most modifiable organs of motion, and 
 is most capable of subjugating them to his will, 
 and of rendering them the instruments of his 
 varied purposes. 
 
 The capability of varied motion in man depends 
 greatly upon the facility with which the different 
 parts of the body, especially the limbs, move at 
 the same time in opposite directions ; a power, 
 which not only permits variety of movement, and 
 confers an aptitude of expressive action, but like- 
 wise gives preeminently a character of suppleness, 
 ease, and freedom to the total motion. But it is 
 the equipoise of his body in connection with the 
 erect position, which gives the unity to any totality 
 of movement, and determines the attitude or car- 
 riage necessary to preserve its balance. In order 
 to balance the body, whether at rest or in motion, it 
 is necessary that man should exert an incomparably 
 greater number of muscles than the inferior animals ; 
 and for the same reason a far greater effort of his 
 volition is required for adjusting the proportional 
 action of each, and for combining and harmoni- 
 zing the actions of all ; in short, of all animals 
 man must be most the master of his own body. 
 
 It is further deserving of notice that the inflec- 
 
man's bodily frame. 77 
 
 tions of the trunk, the motions of the limbs, and the 
 play of the several joints, all tend to the circular 
 and curvilineal in their movements, a circumstance 
 which mainly tends to confer on human motion the 
 character of Beauty. And it may be safely affirmed 
 that, under all the varieties of expressive movement, 
 the very structure and mechanism of the body 
 tend to reduce its motions to the form of the 
 beautiful, or resolve them into grace ; a fact of 
 which we may convince ourselves in watching the 
 sinuous movements of the dance, wherein, aided 
 by the totality of motion in the dancer, they pre- 
 sent a harmony by continuity, a problem of grace 
 which is ever solving and ever beginning anew. 
 
 Beauty of attitude, and grace of carriage, are, 
 however, intimately connected with the mainte- 
 nance of the balance and equipoise of the body. 
 No attitude can be beautiful in which the idea of 
 rest is not conveyed by that permanence and se- 
 curity, which results from a perfectly felt balance. 
 '* Grace of carriage, requires not only a perfect 
 freedom of motion, but also a firmness of step, 
 arising from a constant bearing of the centre of 
 gravity over the base of support ;"* it includes 
 ease and security. And in both, whether it be 
 motion becoming fixed as attitude, or attitudes 
 presenting themselves in the shaping flow of 
 motion, beauty and grace reveal themselves in self- 
 command and in freedom made manifest by self- 
 control. In short, look at the body in any position 
 or attitude, in any of the incidental or casual forms 
 
 • Arnott's PhvRirs, p. 128. 
 
78 man's bodily frame. 
 
 arising out of the free and unconstrained move- 
 ments of man healthy in frame and unshackled by 
 conventional usages, and the truth will force it- 
 self on your conviction. Pass in revievr the pon- 
 derous strength of the Hercules, the agile Mercury, 
 the graceful ease of the Antinous, the reclining 
 Ilyssus, all the animated forms of the frieze of the 
 Parthenon, — w^hatever Greek art has signalized or 
 modern genius has realized, — witness the sports of 
 children, or go even to the wild denizens of the 
 American forest, — and proof will no longer be 
 needed that grace and beauty are inherent in, not 
 accidents of, the human body, as the fit instrument 
 of human freedom and intelligence, and the trans- 
 lucent medium, as it were, of man's proper and 
 spiritual being. 
 
 I conclude with the profound observation of 
 Rudolphi : " Es ist eine grosse Kluft zwischen dem 
 Menschen und den Thieren, die durxh 7iichts aus- 
 gefullt wird,'' There is a chasm between man and 
 animals which no ingenuity can fill up or over-' 
 bridge.* And we pause with wondering awe, 
 when the refined researches of anatomy bring us 
 suddenly back with startling evidence to that re- 
 cord of primeval wisdom, which marks emphati- 
 cally the distinctive epoch of creation : God created 
 man in his own image. 
 
 * Physiologic 1*" Band, p. 37. 
 
79 
 
 APPENDIX E. 
 
 HUNTERS PATHOLOGY. 
 
 In tracing the revival of Medicine in the middle 
 ages from the Alchemists to the morning twilight 
 of the Helmonts, and thence to Sydenham, Boer- 
 haave, Hoffmann, and Stahl, — the main feature of 
 its history is the obstinate struggle of the Rational 
 or Galenic Schools, with the daring half-en- 
 lightened empirics of the Chemical sect. But 
 what hope of science could Medicine lay claim 
 to in the hasty generalizations and the mistaken 
 theory of the elements, humors, and qualities, ad- 
 vanced by the Rationalists, Galenists, or by those 
 under whatever other name who governed the 
 profession with the leaden sceptre of a pedantic 
 routine during the reign of the so called Aristo- 
 telian Logic ? What approach to the certainty of 
 science could medicine boast under the audacious 
 and blundering quackery of their rivals the che- 
 mical sect? What advance in truth could be ex- 
 pected even from the great mind of Boerhaave, 
 whilst trammelled by the errors of the latro-che- 
 mical school, of which he was the founder? Or 
 what progress in knowledge could be anticipated 
 from his no less illustrious contemporary Stahl, 
 who confounded life with the conscious soul ? 
 
 It was a great step in the advancement of our 
 profession, and a blessing to it in this country, 
 
80 HUNTERS PATHOLOGY. 
 
 when Sydenham, following the example of the 
 Father of medicine, united with science common 
 sense, observation, and experience. It was a great 
 improvement in the study of disease when morbid 
 anatomy began to be cultivated, and the appear- 
 ances after death were studied in connexion with 
 the peculiar symptoms and sufferings during life, 
 as has been done by Morgagni, Portal, and Baillie. 
 And it is not without a feeling of congratulation, 
 that we find men's minds turned from the merely 
 logical methods of system and nosological arrange- 
 ment, and the study of names exchanged for that 
 of diseases, our knowledge of which is at present 
 too imperfect to permit successful generalization 
 and classification; though, in avoiding the error of 
 our predecessors, who forgot that their systems 
 of Nosology were only provisional, we are perhaps 
 too much disposed to overlook the advantage of 
 these as needful aids in the study of medicine. But 
 the source from which we must expect the great 
 light in constructing the science of Pathology, is 
 the investigation of the latent processes (as Bacon 
 named them*) by which disease is produced, or 
 rather in which it essentially consists, and which 
 correspond to what have been technically and less 
 happily called proximate causes. If we are not 
 to blunder on empirically, we must begin with 
 
 * ** Inventio, in omni generatione et motu^ latentis pro- 
 cessus continuati ab efficiente manifesto et materia manifesta 
 usque ad forman inditayn." Nov. Org. Lib. Aph. i. Bacon 
 uses the term forma, as forma formans, natura naturans, 
 fons emanationis, and equivalent to law. 
 
hunter's pathology. 81 
 
 Disease, not as a datum, but as a problem to be 
 solved ; and in order to its solution, the phaeno- 
 mena of disordered functions must be studied, as 
 signs of the decrement of vital energy by excess 
 or defect, and by altered balance or changed pre- 
 dominance, of the vital forces. 
 
 It was alone from a philosophical physiology, 
 like that of Hunter, that such a study of disease in 
 behoof of a scientific pathology could originate, 
 and it was upon this basis that he prosecuted his 
 pathological researches. The appeal to philoso- 
 phical principles in Hunter's works was indeed 
 the cause of their being a closed volume to his 
 less enlightened contemporaries : but, though the 
 principles implied or expressed subjected them 
 to the scorn and neglect of those less embued 
 with the spirit of philosophy, the results of those 
 principles, verified as they were by facts, have 
 gradually and insensibly forced themselves on the 
 conviction of the Profession ; and though adopted 
 silently, and without acknowledgment, as if the 
 authors themselves had forgotten or were ignorant 
 from whence they were derived, they now form 
 the very groundwork of all books, treatises, and 
 lectures on professional subjects. 
 
 In his pathology Hunter, by contemplating life 
 as an agency working under the control of law, 
 remained true to the principle already established 
 in his physiology. And one of the first fruits of 
 this pregnant principle was the clear perception of 
 the unity of the living body as a Constitution, by 
 virtue of which it forms a system of interdependent 
 part<;, and a constitution of balanced forces mutually 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 HUXTER S P ATHOrOGY 
 
 reacting- and combining to one end. This is the 
 very meaning of the term '' Constitution," as applied 
 to the animal economy ; and it may not be amiss 
 here to remind the Reader that hence we obtain, 
 likewise, the meaning of the term " Health," as 
 that state, which consists in the balance of the 
 powers constituting the life of an animated body, 
 and an accordant state of the structures and organs, 
 in and by means of which the functions of these 
 powers are exercised and directed. But these 
 powers may and do exist in various degrees of 
 intensity and of relative subordination in different 
 individuals; the result is what we call the indi- 
 vidual's constitution, and all diseases and dis- 
 orders referable to any disturbance of this specific 
 harmony are Constitutional Diseases. 
 
 Hunter saw, however, that, in order to the satis- 
 factory solution of the problem of disease in ac- 
 cordance with the laws of Vital Dynamics, the 
 conditions of its origin and progress required a more 
 searching inquiry than had hitherto been attempted. 
 In his account of Susceptibility we may note not 
 only the important observations on the specific 
 susceptibility of particular parts, and of parti- 
 cularly constituted individuals to special causes of 
 morbid action ; but in connecting it with the uni- 
 versal law of Excitability and Resistance, we see 
 the scientific ground on which was placed his dis- 
 tinction of Power and Action. He saw too the 
 necessity of assuming a Disposition or proneness 
 in the individual to this or that form of disease, 
 as to gout or scrofula; and with this was con- 
 nected his pliilosophical view of Hereditary ten- 
 
hunter's pathology. 83 
 
 dencies, announced in the just observation that 
 the term '' hereditary,'' should be applied not to 
 the disease, which becomes the heir-loom, but to 
 the predisposition in which it originates. A preg- 
 nant subject not only unexhausted, but scarcely 
 opened, farther insight into which might not 
 only aid us in the discovery of the law of the pro- 
 pagation, and transmission by descent, of mal- 
 formation, of disease, and of insanity, but might 
 throw a light on the obscure problem of the 
 variety of the human races, of degeneracy, and of 
 the awful mystery of a life admitting, and be- 
 coming permanently possessed by, an alien and 
 hostile power.* 
 
 But the principles thus obtained would have 
 been incomplete without bringing the various 
 perturbations and disorders of function, which con- 
 stitute the phaenomena of disease, under the law 
 of the unity of life. And so fully was Hunter im- 
 pressed with the importance of this subject, that 
 we find him frequently recurring, and devoting a 
 considerable portion of his lectures, to a con- 
 sideration of Sympathy, the term being intended 
 to express the community, and, as it were, consent 
 of feeling and action, which preserves the bond of 
 
 • Some further explanation may be deemed requisite for the 
 elucidation of the latter part of this paragraph ; the Reader, 
 however, is requested to accept provisionally, in lieu of a more 
 detailed comment, a statement of the Author's view that the 
 various forms of Degeneracy form part of the problem, and 
 admit of satisfactory explanation from the principle of evil 
 renitency, indicated in a former note on the evolution of the 
 idea of Power. 
 
84 hunter's pathology, 
 
 interdependence in all the parts and actions of a- 
 living body, in their constitution to one organic 
 whole. He saw that it was from a knowledge 
 of Morbid Sympathy that we are enabled to 
 anticipate and discriminate the immediate and 
 remote effects of injury, or to understand the means 
 by which a removal of the injurious cause, or a 
 restoration from its effects may be accomplished ; 
 and that in the conditions of sympathy we are to 
 study the nature and end of Constitutional Irri- 
 tation. 
 
 It was probably during this study of the relations 
 and nature of disordered functions that Hunter 
 framed for himself a language, which, if it exposes 
 him to the charge of minting terms, objectionable 
 from their novelty and obscurity, ought not in 
 candour to be condemned without weighing the 
 counterbalancing advantages they may possess of 
 philosophical accuracy. We are at first startled 
 with such phrases, as the " stimulus of necessity," 
 the " stimulus of death ; " but the perplexity will 
 be greatly removed, if the student reflect that, as 
 all appetence implies want, and as therefore the 
 living subject may be excited by the absence of 
 what it needs, so likewise that the sense of depri- 
 vation may become no less a stimulus than that 
 which acts as a positive excitant. Again, by the 
 term " action," which has called forth much 
 severe criticism, he seems to have intended what, 
 in the received phraseology of the Schools, is 
 called a proximate cause. But instead of being a 
 fanciful assumption, like Boerhaave's or Cullen's 
 hypothesis of the proximate cause of inflammation. 
 
HUNTLK's PAIHOLOGV. 8o 
 
 he confines the desi^rnation to the morbid act or 
 process in which the disease may be supposed es- 
 sentially to consist, as far only as it is made sensible, 
 or may be legitimately inferred by an induction 
 from facts, without admitting aught that the facts 
 do not warrant or require. And thus, if we 
 look to his investigation of the nature of the in- 
 flammatory process, can we enough admire the 
 almost wearisome collation of facts by which he 
 removes, point by point, all the intervening ob- 
 scurity which separates, in our view, the morbid 
 from the natural action of vessels, and brings them 
 into luminous and intelligible connexion? An 
 instance of the boldest use of the term, and which 
 well illustrates that use, is that of calling mortifi- 
 cation an " act of death ;" but the accuracy of the 
 apparent paradox will be acknowledged, if we con- 
 trast with the immediate and direct destruction of 
 a part, by fire or caustic, a process of mortification, 
 which consists of living actions throughout, and 
 of which the last act is that of excluding a part 
 from participating in the conditions of vitality 
 which it is no longer capable of maintaining, and 
 of throwing off", as a slough, that which can have 
 no community with life and living existence. 
 
 And lastly, if this unity of life, which ever tends 
 to preserve the bond of living action, be evinced 
 in that interdependence of the parts which is ex- 
 hibited in sympathy, it is no less revealed in the 
 ever present tendency to Integration, which it is 
 evidently the purpose of many of the actions ex- 
 cited by sympathy to effect in the natural pro- 
 cesses which lead to the repair of local injuries 
 
86 hun'iek's pathologv. 
 
 and to the cure of many diseases. This power of 
 restoration, under certain limits, has scarcely been 
 denied by any, and most pathologists have been 
 content to admit that the phaenomena of disease 
 must be explained in part by disturbing forces, 
 and in part by a reacting and restorative power, 
 under the name of a vis medicatriv naturo'. ; but 
 the latter, under this or whatever other appel- 
 lation, will be but an unexplained and mysterious 
 agency, a mere facultas occulta, unless we appre- 
 hend it in the light of an antecedent unity, or 
 law of integrity, which in all life having produced 
 a whole, ever tends to preserve and restore that 
 which it had produced ; though as the subject 
 or agent is imperfect — that is, a mere spontaneity 
 actuated into an instinctive adaptivity — and tends 
 to lapse from the law which actuates and directs 
 it, its power of restoration is limited, the actions 
 by which it is intended to be accomplished may 
 be excessive or defective, and thus its ends frus- 
 trated. And here the province of the healing 
 art commences ; to the principles of which Mr. 
 Hunter so largely contributed in teaching us 
 where we are not to interfere with the ordinary 
 course of events, and where, neither trusting too 
 much nor too little to the powers of nature, the 
 Practitioner is to incite where they are defective, 
 is to restrain and allay where they are excessive; 
 that, guided by a knowledge of the laws of life, 
 he may conduct the disease to a successful termi- 
 nation by restoring the balance in which health 
 consists. 
 
 If it were necessary to enter more at large into 
 
HUNTKr's PATIiOLOGY. 87 
 
 the detail of Hunter's labours, I might refer you 
 to his work on the Fundamental Principles of In- 
 flammation, as to one of the most masterly per- 
 formances of inductive investigation, and unpre- 
 cedented in the science to w^hich it is a contri- 
 bution. But since my already exceeded limits 
 only permit me to select one or tw^o instances in 
 further illustration of the merits of a work, which 
 first deserved the title of an investigation of the 
 Principles of inflammation, let me remind you 
 that, if in his researches on Ulceration, in con- 
 nexion with the functions of the absorbent vessels, 
 we find him creating a new branch of science, it 
 was by his elucidation of the process of Adhesion 
 that he principally conferred on surgery a scien- 
 tific character. The knowledge of this mode of 
 union in wounds has eminently contributed to 
 rescue surgery from the opprobrium of unsuccess- 
 ful operations, and to simplify and give success 
 to their after-treatment ; and has been no less in- 
 fluential in raising surgery from a rude and me- 
 chanical art to the dignity of a science. 
 
 Recollect too, that in tracing the nature and 
 results of inflammatory action, Hunter has eluci- 
 dated the principles by which we obtain insight 
 into the largest and most important class of dis- 
 eases, which the physician no less than the surgeon 
 has to treat, and to the knowledge of wliich, his 
 successful, because scientific treatment is, alas ! 
 jdmost exclusively confined. We are too apt to 
 forget what we owe to Hunter's industry, sagacity, 
 and genius ; but the value of his pathological 
 labors may be estimated by contrasting the in- 
 
88 hunter's pathology. 
 
 creased power, insight, and security of medical 
 science, since these latent processes have been 
 understood, with the feebleness, indecision, and 
 timidity of a '* medecine expectante,''' or with the 
 ignorance and blundering rashness of our prede- 
 cessors. 
 
 APPENDIX F. 
 
 INSTINCT. 
 
 The following remarks on the import of instinct 
 are those to which Coleridge refers in the Aids to 
 Reflection, (p. 177, last edit.) as in accordance 
 with his view of the understanding, differing in 
 degree from instinct, and in kind from reason ; 
 and whatever merit they possess must have been 
 derived from his instructive conversation. They 
 are here inserted, in the hope that they may interest 
 the reader in connexion both with the passages of 
 the preceding discourse, and with the writings of 
 Coleridge, on this important subject. 
 
 What is Instinct ? As I am not quite of Bon- 
 net's opinion, " that philosophers will in vain 
 torment themselves to define instinct, until they 
 have spent some time in the head of the animal, 
 without actually being that animal,'' I shall en- 
 deavour to explain the use of the term. I shall 
 not think it necessary to controvert the opinions 
 which have been offered on this subject, whether 
 the ancient doctrine of Descartes, who supposed 
 
INSTINCT. 89 
 
 that animals were mere machines ; or the modern 
 one of Lamarck, who attributes instincts to habits 
 impressed upon the organs of animals, by the con- 
 stant efflux of the nervous fluid to these organs, to 
 which it has been determined in their efforts to 
 perform certain actions, to which their necessities 
 have given birth. And it will be here premature, 
 to offer any refutation of the opinions of those who 
 contend for the identity of this faculty with reason, 
 and maintain that all the actions of animals are the 
 result of invention and experience ; an opinion 
 maintained with considerable plausibility by Dr. 
 Darwin. 
 
 Perhaps the most ready and certain mode of 
 coming to a conclusion in this intricate enquiry, 
 will be by the apparently circuitous route of de- 
 termining, first, what we do not mean by the word. 
 Now we certainly do not mean, in the use of the 
 term, any act of the vital power in the production 
 or maintenance of an organ : nobody thinks of 
 saying that the teeth grow by instinct, or that 
 when the muscles are increased in vigour and size 
 in consequence of exercise, it is from such a cause 
 or principle. Neither do we attribute instinct to 
 the direct functions of the organs in providing for 
 the continuance and sustentation of the whole co- 
 organized body. No one talks of the liver secreting 
 bile, or of the heart acting for the propulsion of 
 the blood, by instinct. Some, indeed, have main- 
 tained that breathing, even voiding the excrement 
 and urine are instinctive operations ; but surely 
 these, as well as the former, are automatic, or at 
 least are th<' necessary result of the organization 
 
90 INSTINCT. 
 
 of the parts in and by which the actions are pro- 
 duced. These instances seem to be, if I may so 
 say, below instinct. But again, we do not attri- 
 bute instinct to any actions preceded by a will 
 conscious of its whole purpose, calculating its 
 effects, and predetermining its consequences, nor 
 to any exercise of the intellectual powers, of which 
 the whole scope, aim, and end are intellectual. In 
 other terms, no man, who values his words, will 
 talk of the instinct of a Howard, or of the in- 
 stinctive operations of a Newton or Leibnitz in 
 those sublime efforts, which ennoble and cast a 
 lustre, not less on the individuals than on the 
 whole human race. 
 
 To what kind or mode of action shall we then 
 look for the legitimate application of the term ? 
 In answer to this query, we may, I think, without 
 fear of the consequences, put the following cases, 
 as exemplifying and justifying the use of the term 
 Instinct in an appropriate sense. First : when 
 there appears an action, not included either in the 
 mere functions of life acting within the sphere of 
 its own organismus ; nor yet an action attributable 
 to the intelligent will or reason ; yet, at the same 
 time, not referable to any particular organ, — we 
 then declare the presence of an Instinct. We might 
 illustrate this in the instance of a bull-calf butting 
 before he has horns, in which the action can have 
 no reference to its internal ceconomy, to the pre- 
 sence of a particular organ, or to an intelligent will. 
 Secondly, likewise (if it be not indeed included in 
 the first) we attribute Instinct, where the organ 
 is present; if only the act is equally anterior to all 
 
INSTINCT. 91 
 
 possible experience on the part of the individual 
 agent, as for instance, when the beaver employs 
 its tail for the construction of its dwelling, the 
 tailor-bird its bill for the formation of its pensile 
 habitation, the spider its spinning organ for fabri- 
 cating its artfully woven nets, or the viper its 
 poison fang for its defence. And lastly, generally 
 where there is an act of the whole body as one ani- 
 mal, not referable to a will conscious of its purpose, 
 nor to its mechanism, or to a habit derived from 
 experience, or previous frequent use. Here with 
 most satisfaction, and without doubt of the propriety 
 of the word, we declare an Instinct ; as examples of 
 which, we may adduce the migratory habits of 
 birds ; the social instincts of the bees, the con- 
 struction of their habitations composed of cells 
 formed with geometrical precision, adapted in 
 capacity to different orders of the society, and 
 forming storehouses for containing a supply of 
 provisions, — not to mention similar instances in 
 wasps, ants, termites ; and the endless contrivances 
 for protecting the future progeny. 
 
 But if it be admitted that we have rightly stated 
 the application of the term, what we may ask is 
 contained in the examples adduced, or what infe- 
 rences are we to make as to the nature of Instinct 
 itself, as a source and principle of action ? We 
 shall perhaps best aid ourselves in the enquiry by 
 an example, and let us take a very familiar one of 
 a caterpiUar taking its food. The caterpillar seeks 
 at once the plant, which furnislies the appropriate 
 aliment, and this even as soon as it creeps from 
 the ovum ; and the food being taken into the 
 
92 INSTINCT. 
 
 stomach, the nutritious part is separated from the 
 innutritious, and is disposed of for the support of 
 the animal. The question then is, what is con- 
 tained in this instance of instinct? In the first 
 place, what does the vital power in the stomach 
 do, if we generalize the account of the process, or 
 express it in its most general terms ? Manifestly 
 it selects and applies appropriate means to an im- 
 mediate end prescribed by the constitution — first, 
 of the particular organ, and then of the whole 
 body or organismus. This we have admitted is not 
 instinct. But what does the caterpillar do ? Does 
 it not also select and apply appropriate means 
 to an immediate end, prescribed by its particular 
 organization and constitution? But there is some- 
 thing more, it does this according to circum- 
 stances ; — and this we call Instinct. But may there 
 not be still something more invplved ? What shall 
 we say of Hiiber's Humble-bees? A dozen of 
 these were put under a bell glass along with a 
 comb, of about ten silken coccoons, so unequal in 
 height as not to be capable of standing steadily. 
 To remedy this, two or three of the humble bees 
 got upon the comb, stretched themselves over its 
 edge, and with their heads downwards, fixed their 
 fore feet on the table on which the comb stood, 
 and so with their hind feet kept the comb from 
 falling. When these were weary others took their 
 places. In this constrained and painful posture, 
 fresh bees relieving their comrades at intervals, 
 and each working in its turn, did these aflPectionate 
 little insects support the comb for nearly three 
 days ; at the end of which time they had prepared 
 
INSTIXCT. 93 
 
 sufficient wax to build pillars with it. And what 
 is still further curious, the first pillars having got 
 displaced, the bees had again recourse to the same 
 manoeuvre. What then is involved in this case ? 
 Evidently the same selection and appropriation 
 of means to an immediate end as before ; but, 
 observe ! according to varyinor circumstances. 
 
 And here we are puzzled ; — for this becomes 
 understanding. At least no naturalist, however 
 predetermined to contrast and oppose instinct to 
 understanding, but ends at last in facts, in which 
 he himself can make out no difference. But are 
 we hence to conclude that the instinct is the 
 same, and identical with the human understand- 
 ing? — Certainly not; — though the difference is 
 not in the essential of the definition, but in an 
 addition to, or modification of, that which is 
 essentially the same in both. In those cases 
 namely, as that which we have last adduced, in 
 which instinct assumes the semblance of under- 
 standing, the act indicative of instinct is not clearly 
 prescribed by the constitution or laws of the 
 animals peculiar organization, but arises out of 
 the constitution and previous circumstances of 
 the animal, and those habits, wants, and that pre- 
 determined sphere of acti( n and operation which 
 belong to the Race, and beyond the limits of 
 which it does not pass. If this be the case, I may 
 venture to assert that I have determined an appro- 
 priate sense for Instinct : — namely, that it is a 
 Power of selecting and applying appropriate means 
 to an immediate end, according to (;ircumstances, 
 and the c han^cs of circumstances, \\\vsv \w\nix 
 
94 IXSTTNCT. 
 
 variable and varying ; but yet so as to be referable 
 to the general habits, arising out of the constitution 
 and previous circumstances of the animal, con- 
 sidered not as an individual, but as a Race. 
 
 We may here, perhaps, most fitly explain the 
 error of those who contend for the identity of 
 Reason and Instinct, and believe that the actions 
 of animals are the result of invention and expe- 
 rience. They have no doubt been deceived in 
 their investigation of instinct, by an efficient cause 
 simulating a final cause ; and the defect in their 
 reasoning has arisen, in consequence of observing 
 in the instinctive operations of animals the adap- 
 tation of means to a relative end, from the assump- 
 tion of a deliberate purpose. To this freedom or 
 choice in action and purpose, instinct, in any ap- 
 propriate sense of the word, cannot apply, and to 
 justify and explain its introduction, we must have 
 recourse to other and higher faculties than any 
 manifested in the operations of instinct. It is 
 evident, namely, in turning our attention to the 
 distinguishing character of human actions, that 
 there is, as in the inferior animals, a selection and 
 appropriation of means to ends — but it is (not 
 only according to circumstances, not only accord- 
 ing to varying circumstances, but it is) according 
 to varying Purposes. But this is an attribute of 
 the intelligent will, and no longer even mere 
 understanding. 
 
 And here let me observe that the difficulty and 
 delicacy of this investigation are greatly increased 
 by our not considering the understanding (even our 
 own) in itself, and as it would be were it not 
 
IXSTINCT. 95 
 
 accompanied with, and modified by, the coopera- 
 tion of the will, the moral feeling, and that faculty, 
 perhaps best distinguished by the name of Reason, 
 of determining that which is universal and neces- 
 sary, of fixing laws and principles whether specu- 
 lative or practical, and of contemplating a final 
 purpose or end. This intelligent will, — having a 
 self-conscious purpose, under the guidance and 
 light of the reason, by which its acts are made to 
 bear as a whole upon some end in and for itself, 
 and to which the understanding is subservient as 
 an organ or the faculty of selecting and appro- 
 priating the means — seems best to account for that 
 progressiveness of the human race, which so 
 evidently marks an insurmountable distinction and 
 impassable barrier between man and the inferior 
 animals ; but which would be inexplicable were 
 there no other diflerence than in the degree of 
 their intellectual faculties. 
 
 Man doubtless has his instincts, even in com- 
 mon with the inferior animals, and many of these 
 are the germs of some of the best feelings of his 
 nature. What, amongst many, might 1 present 
 as a better illustration, or more beautiful instance, 
 than the storge or maternal instinct ? But man's 
 instincts are elevated and ennobled by the moral 
 ends and purposes of his being. He is not des- 
 tined to be the slave of blind impulses, a vessel 
 purpose-less, unmeant. He is constituted, by his 
 moral and intelligent will, to be the first freed 
 being, the master-work and the end, of nature ; 
 but this freedom and high office can only co-exist 
 with fenltv and devotion, to the service of truth 
 
96 i>fsTrNCT. 
 
 and virtue. And though we may even be per- 
 mitted to use the term Instinct, in order to desig- 
 nate those high impulses, vi^hich in the minority 
 of man's rational being shape his acts uncon- 
 sciously to ultimate ends, and vs^hich in consti- 
 tuting the very character and impress of the hu- 
 manity reveal the guidance of Providence ; yet 
 the convenience of the phrase, and the vs^ant of 
 any other distinctive appellation for an influence 
 de supra working unconsciously in and on the 
 whole human race, should not induce us to forget 
 that the term Instinct is only strictly applicable to 
 the Adaptive Power, as the faculty, even in its 
 highest proper form, of selecting and adapting 
 appropriate means to proximate ends according to 
 varying circumstances, — a faculty which however 
 only differs from human understanding, in con- 
 sequence of the latter being enlightened by rea- 
 son, — and that the principles, which actuate man 
 as ultimate ends, and are designed for his con- 
 scious possession and guidance, are best and 
 most properly named Ideas. 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Life as a Law. — Division of natural science into Physiography, Physi- 
 ology, and Physiogony. — Import of Pliysiogony as History of Nature. 
 Types, as significant forms of Organization, and as a language of Na- 
 ture. — Scheme of the ascent of animal Life. — Organic Types of 
 Zoophyta: Articulata: MoUusca : Pisces: Aves : Reptilia: Mammalia. 
 — Gradative perfection and final aim of animated being. — Principle of 
 the multiplication of forms. — Intermediate state of life and mind in the 
 Passions. — Concluding observations. 
 
" It is with sciences as with trees. If it be your purpose to make 
 some particular use of the tree, you need not concern yourself about 
 the roots. But if you wish to transfer it into another soil, it is then 
 safer to employ the roots than the scions. Thus the mode of teaching, 
 most common at present, exhibits clearly enough the trunks, as it were, 
 of the sciences, and those too of handsome growth ; but, nevertheless, 
 without the roots, valuable and convenient as they undoubtedly are to 
 the carpenter, they are useless to the planter. But if you have at heart 
 the advancement of education, as that which proposes to itself the 
 general discipline of the mind for its end and aim, be less anxious 
 concerning the trunks, and let it be your care that the roots should be 
 extracted entire, even though a small portion of the soil should adhere 
 to them : so that, at all events, you may be able, by this means, both 
 to review your own scientific acquirements, remeasuring as it were the 
 steps of your knowledge for your own satisfaction, and at the same 
 time transplant it into the minds of others, just as it grew in your 
 
 own." BACON. 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 In the course of lectures of this year, I now 
 proceed to the concluding portion of the ardu- 
 ous undertaking of explaining to an enlight- 
 ened audience the structure and economy of 
 the animal creation at large ; — an undertaking 
 from which I should have shrunk except from 
 a sense of duty and of what I owed to my 
 character, and to the promotion of the objects 
 of our College, in the cultivation of science, 
 and the advancement of our own profession. I 
 will add, too, that I have been encouraged by 
 the hope that I might excite in the minds of 
 my junior auditors a love and an enthusiasm 
 for the cultivation of natural science, not 
 merely for the pha?nomena, and particular 
 facts which it presents, however interesting in 
 themselves, but as they are the workings and 
 manifestations of Laws, and the revelations of 
 Reason and of Will. 
 
 Besides, without the observation and study 
 of nature, our thoughts want an external reality 
 which the mind of itself cannot afford. As 
 (according to our imniorlal Shakspcarc), 
 
 the eye sees not itself 
 But by reflection, by some outward thinpr, 
 
100 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 SO external nature serves as a mirror, in and 
 by which our inward being is reflected and 
 made intelligible. At the same time, in the 
 calm and disinterested pursuit of truth af- 
 forded by nature, we may fortify our minds 
 against the allurements of the world, and find 
 consolation under its disappointments and 
 afflictions. 
 
 If I have in any degree succeeded in what 
 I conceived to be the legitimate design of these 
 Lectures, I shall have contributed to rescue 
 Hunter's character from the charge of ill 
 founded and visionary opinions, and to main- 
 tain his peculiar and almost exclusive merit, in 
 laying the foundation and in fixing the princi- 
 ples of scientific physiology, by banishing hy- 
 potheses, fictions, and arbitrary assumptions, 
 and by considering Life as a Law — assigning 
 to it a perpetual antecedence to all the sensible 
 phoenomena of animation, — and as a measure 
 common to all its agencies and particular 
 manifestations; and, in that very conception 
 of a Law, implying that it is a power anterior 
 (in the order of thought) to organization, which 
 yet it animates, sustains, and repairs, — a power 
 originative, and constructive of an organiza- 
 tion, in which it continues to manifest itself in 
 all the forms and actions of animated beings. 
 
 This idea, which led Hunter, step by step, 
 for its illustration to the formation of the 
 great assemblage of significant facts contained 
 within these walls, cheered and emboldened 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 101 
 
 me in the difficult task of presenting to you, 
 in a scientific form, the facts disclosed by 
 the organic and animated world. Under the 
 light of this Idea, and with a view to its in- 
 telligible development, allow me to remind 
 you that the three great divisions into one or 
 other of which all natural science resolves 
 itself are : 
 
 Physiography, or Description of Nature ; 
 
 Physiology, or Theory of Nature; and, lastly, 
 
 Physiogony, or History of Nature. 
 
 The office of the first, or Physiography, is 
 to enumerate and delineate the effects and 
 products of nature as they appear. Its sphere 
 is that of sensible experience, of appearances, 
 in contradistinction from truths drawn from 
 immediate facts by inference. The subject 
 matter is not unhappily entitled by elder 
 naturalists Natura iiahuata, or nature consi- 
 dered passively ; and the result may be com- 
 pared to an immense family piece, the figures 
 of which are all portraits. 
 
 The office of the second, or of Physiology, 
 is, first, to deduce by inference the rules or 
 principles by which the innumerable facts of 
 physiography may be reduced into manage- 
 able order, either in reference to the conveni- 
 ence of our faculties, which is tiie principle of 
 all artificial classification, or in relation to the 
 objects themselves, which (should it ever be 
 realized) will be the ground of a natural classi- 
 fication. Secondly, it is the office of physio- 
 
102 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 logy likewise to ascertain the powers, which 
 must be inferred from the phsenomena, and 
 the laws under which they act ; in other words, 
 to ascertain the idea of life and its constituent 
 forces as far as it is common to all living 
 bodies. 
 
 The third, or Physiogony, regards the facts 
 and appearances of the natural world as a 
 series of actions, and Nature itself as an agent, 
 acting under the analogy of a will and the pur- 
 suit of a purpose ; — in what sense, and whether 
 by a necessary fiction of science, or with some 
 more substantial ground, we leave here unde- 
 termined. Physiogony too, no less than phy- 
 siology, investigates the principles of life ; 
 but this again principally in reference to the 
 original construction of living bodies, and to 
 the productive powers, or their formative prin- 
 ciple. The distinctive aim, then, of physio- 
 gony is to present a History of Nature, and, 
 as in all other history, to discover in the past 
 the solution of the present, and in both the an- 
 ticipation of the future. If it be possible in 
 one sentence to convey the sort and degree of 
 interest, which the object of physiogony or the 
 history of Nature is calculated to inspire, I 
 might say, that its object is to exhibit every 
 order of living beings, from the polypi to the 
 mammalia, as so many embryonic states of an 
 organism, to which nature from the beginning- 
 had tended, but which Nature alone could not 
 realize — to exhibit Nature as labouring in 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 103 
 
 birth with man. It was this Idea which 
 enabled me, in former lectures, to present to 
 you Nature's living products, as so many 
 significant Types of the great process which 
 she is ever tending to complete in the evolution 
 of the organic realm. In each stage of the 
 ascending scale of living beings we see, w4th 
 evidence increasing directly as the ascent, at 
 once the opposition and the harmony of the 
 two great tendencies w liich must be regarded 
 as the main factors or constitutive agents in 
 this great work of Nature, namely — that of 
 Nature tending to integrate all into one com- 
 prehensive whole, and, consequently, retaining 
 each part, and, as in vegetation, building upon 
 herself; and on the other hand, the tendency to 
 individuality in the parts, and for this purpose 
 the iiisus in each to detach itself from the pre- 
 ceding or to supersede them, now by building 
 the new edifice out of the materials of its more 
 rude predecessor, and now by destruction, as 
 one who, by the force of the vault, should 
 crush the platform from which he had taken 
 the spring. Hence the states, which the indi- 
 vidual passes through in all the epochs of its 
 embryonic being, and which having been dis- 
 appear, are preserved in Nature, and maintain 
 the rank of external and abiding forms. And 
 thus the aim of physiogony is to present the 
 history of Nature as preface and portion of 
 the history of man, the knowledge of Nature 
 as a branch of self-knowledge. 
 
104 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 Such were the motives that incited me, and 
 the prospects that encouraged me, to introduce 
 the physiographic details, which form the main 
 body of these Lectures, with an attempt to de- 
 cypher the forms and characters impressed 
 thereon. Not that I could expect to exhibit a 
 system of natural history, or was rash enough 
 to attempt it ; but, endeavouring to follow the 
 steps of the immortal Hunter, that I might 
 map out the bounds and limits of the science, 
 and attempt to demonstrate the principles upon 
 which such a science might be constructed, 
 and the main operative powers into which the 
 agency of nature must distinguish itself. And 
 if attempts of this kind may be regarded, like 
 certain geometrical curves, as endless approx- 
 imations without the possibility of attainment 
 or coincidence ; yet, be it remembered, that 
 approximations may be made, and that every 
 step is one of ascent, widening both the retro- 
 spect and prospect, and giving us power and 
 insight for the further discovery of truth. 
 
 I have not indeed hidden from myself the 
 difficulties and discouragements of my under- 
 taking. Under the training, and with the dis- 
 cipline and habits of mind general in this 
 country, and from causes in the main highly 
 honorable to our character, an almost exclusive 
 value has been given to pursuits and inven- 
 tions of immediate and palpable utility. Our 
 highest aim is to be men of sense : and this is 
 as it should be, were it not that too often the 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 105 
 
 man of the senses, who resolutely confines his 
 knowledge to the mipressions on his senses, 
 is mistaken for the man of sense;— so often, 
 indeed, that it is not unfrequently expedient 
 to remind a disputant, that the most certain, 
 and hitherto the most important of all sciences, 
 the Mathematics I mean, is grounded on the 
 intuitions of the sense, in contradistinction 
 from, and exclusive of, the impressions on the 
 senses. It is well that we should be men of 
 sense, but not, even in the highest import of 
 the term, men of sense exclusively ; and I 
 venture to assert, that the man who acknow- 
 ledges no truth and no reality in any subject, 
 which he cannot reduce, in imagination at 
 least, to weight, measure, or colour, lives in 
 the eclipse of the better half of his intellectual 
 being. He may be a tolerable mathematician, 
 a philosopher he cannot be. With the dia- 
 grams of abstraction he may be conversant 
 and even familiar, but not with that sublimer 
 geometry and universal arithmetic, the real con- 
 structions of which form the history of nature. 
 To the diagrams, such as preserved beneath 
 this roof formed the study, and fixed and 
 guided the inward constructions of Hunter, — 
 which demonstrate in succession that individu- 
 ality and integration to a whole are the great 
 polar forces of organic nature, that every the 
 minutest living creature and every integral 
 part thereof acts by a lil'e of its own, and yet 
 that all are permeated and sustained by a 
 
106 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 common life, — to these he must for ever remain 
 a stranger, and too probably will become an 
 enemy. The philosopher, who dissatisfied 
 with lifeless abstract science seeks after real 
 knowledge, and will not confine his inquiry 
 to the impressions received through his senses 
 and generalized under the name of facts, with 
 now and then a theological make weight, a 
 few religious phrases introduced as substitutes 
 for the ideas that constitute Religion, or inev- 
 itably lead to it, — he must consent to remain 
 unintelligible for the many, and to be repre- 
 sented by the many as a man who has sunk 
 out of the light of common day, and out of the 
 view of common sense. 
 
 And such, above all, must be the case of 
 every man who undertakes the department of 
 natural history, under the full and distinct 
 conception of the words — Nature, History. 
 For History has for its subject actions, and 
 the results and products of powers in action : 
 but actions imply or suppose a Will, a Pur- 
 pose, and must be interpreted by desires, 
 motives, tendencies, by a something at least 
 analogous to purpose, will, desire, and which 
 can only be rendered intelligible by a reference 
 to these as known in ourselves. But Physi- 
 ogony, or the History of Nature, has for its 
 peculiar subject the activity of productive 
 powers, or the sum and series of those actions 
 of which the facts and pheenomena of Physi- 
 ography are the product — under the rule that 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 107 
 
 the product of every given power is to be 
 received as the measure of its force and the 
 index of its direction. If Natural History, then, 
 be not a misnomer, an erratum in the nomen- 
 clature of science, it must be either the history 
 of nature assumed as an agent, or tiie history 
 of a phirality of productive powers considered 
 severally as agents, but which taken collec- 
 tively are called Nature, in the active sense 
 of the term ; just as the collective products and 
 results are called Nature, passively under- 
 stood. The same reasoning applies to the 
 immediate subject of these remarks — the in- 
 vestigation of the significant forms of organi- 
 zation, contemplated as so many Types or 
 characters impressed on animal bodies, or into 
 which tliey are as it were cast. Now Types 
 and characters, variously yet significantly com- 
 bined, form a visual language. The Types of 
 nature are a natural language, a language of 
 nature. But a language is as little conceiv- 
 able without reference to an intelligence, if 
 not immediately yet ultimately, than a series 
 of determinate actions can be imagined with- 
 out reference to a Will ; and a consistent and 
 connected language no less supposes intelli- 
 gence for its existence than it rcciuircs an 
 intelligence for its actual intelligibility. And 
 though the language should not, like conven- 
 tional language, stand in oj)positi()n to llie 
 things intended, but be one with thcni, this 
 would prove nothing more than that it was 
 
108 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 not a language only. And this, I scarcely 
 need say, forms but one among very many 
 objects which we recognize in nature, and the 
 number of which acknowledges no other bound 
 but the sphere which comprehends life, enjoy- 
 ment, protection, and perpetuation. 
 
 I have judged it right thus once again to offer 
 to your notice the grounds that led me to adopt 
 the scheme upon which the several courses of 
 Lectures have been conducted ; and I will 
 now complete this introduction to the present 
 course by a brief recapitulation of the facts 
 that have formed the physiographical part of 
 the Lectures, and may serve to justify the 
 arrangement of organic beings as a series 
 of evolutions from the lowest to the highest. 
 Not, allow me to remind you, in supposing that 
 there is any power in the lower to become, or 
 to assume the rank and privileges of, the higher, 
 upon any such fanciful scheme as that pro- 
 posed for the invertebrated animals by that 
 laborious and otherwise meritorious naturalist, 
 Lamarck, — a scheme in which the ground and 
 cause is everywhere meaner and feebler than 
 the effect, and in which blindness is made 
 the source of sight, and ignorance would be 
 the parent of mind and thought ; — but in as- 
 suming that the ascent is the indication of a 
 law, and the manifestation of a higher power 
 acting in and by nature. 
 
 Proceeding upon these prhiciples, I adopted, 
 as the most convenient, the divisions of Cu- 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURi:. \09 
 
 vier's Rhgne animal, and I presented to you 
 a scheme of the ascent of animal life, as indi- 
 cative of the law regidating the series of deve- 
 lopments of organic beings, — of a law, which 
 may be discovered in all the manifold varieties, 
 diversities, and richness of the productions of 
 nature ; in all preserving a unity in diversity, 
 a plan and method in the seeming irregulari- 
 ties and even sports of this productive ferti- 
 lity. The resulting forms of animal life present 
 not a plan which we can consider as the effect 
 of any arbitrary combination, or of a regularity 
 imposed upon nature by the human fancy or 
 understanding ; — it is neither a scale, nor a 
 ladder, nor a network; it is neither like the 
 combination of a kaleidoscope, nor the pattern 
 of a patchwork ; it is no process by increase 
 or superaddition : — but it is, as in all nature's 
 acts, a growth, and the symmetry, proportion, 
 and plan, arise out of an internal organizing 
 principle. This gradation and evolution of 
 animated nature is not simple and uniform ; 
 nature is ever rich, fertile, and varied in act 
 and product : — and we might perhaps venture 
 to symbolize the system of the aninud creation 
 as some monarch of the forest, whose roots, 
 firmly planted in a vivifying soil, S|)read be- 
 yond our ken ; whose trunk, proudly erected, 
 points its summit to a region of purer light, 
 and whose wide-spreading branches, twigs, 
 sprays, andleallets, infinitely diversili(^d, mani- 
 fest the energy of the life within. In the great 
 
110 RECAPITULATORY LFCTURE. 
 
 march of nature nothing is left behind, and 
 every former step contains the promise and 
 prophecy of that which is to follow, even as 
 the oak exists potentially in the acorn ; and if 
 nature seems at any part to recede, it is only 
 as it were to gather strength for a higher and 
 more determined ascent. 
 
 Without at all presuming to have traced 
 adequately in all its parts and proportions this 
 evolution of the forms of animal life, I now 
 proceed to give a brief outline of the main 
 facts of the preceding Lectures in the genetic 
 order, \^hich, at the outset, I proposed. 
 
 In the first great division of the animal 
 kingdom, or the invertebrated series, the great 
 variety, both of external form and internal 
 structure, presents us rather with the tentative 
 experiments and preparations for the formation 
 and construction of living beings, than with 
 such fixed types as are manifested in the ver- 
 tebrated classes of animals. 
 
 Of the Zoophytes, we found in the Infu- 
 soria or animalcida of infusions, as the lowest, 
 only a body of a uniform gelatinous consistence, 
 at first without special organization ; and then 
 as the first attempt, the hollowing out of a 
 cavity, which, in its functions, combined the 
 office of stomach, heart, and sexual organ.* 
 
 * It is right to apprize the Reader that this Lecture was 
 delivered in the year 1828 ; the first course having been given 
 in the year 1824. The author is indebted to Professor Owen, 
 
RECAPITl'LATORY LECTDRE. Ill 
 
 This cavity we found again more distinctly 
 evolved in the Polypi of the group of radiated 
 animals, as in the kydva or water polype for 
 instance, or in the acalephce, of which the 
 actinia or sea anemone may serve as an ex- 
 ample. But around the central cavity, as the 
 first organic part, we saw the other organic 
 structures develope themselves, namely, around 
 this centre radiated tentacula, feelers, or arms, 
 and a special organ for reproduction. And 
 here, namely, in the first distinctive stage of 
 
 to whom he offers his grateful acknowledgment, for the fol- 
 lowing-valuable note on the curious additions, which our know- 
 ledge of the infusory animalcula has since that time received. 
 " The researches of Professor Ehrenberg, and their con- 
 firmation in most points by subsequent observers, have estab- 
 lished the fact that the Infusories possess an organization of a 
 strictly animal grade, of a moderate degree of complication 
 even in the minutest monads, with a mutual dependence of 
 the different systems, and a general subserviency to the well- 
 being of the whole. An alimentary cavity or canal compli- 
 cated with many digestive sacs characterizes all the lower Infu- 
 sories, hence called Polygastria : these have also an extensive 
 reticulated ovarium, a large spermatic gland, and two or more 
 extremely irritable and contractile spermatic reservoirs. The 
 Polyrjastria manifest such modifications of their outward form 
 and inward structure, that they can be divided into twenty-two 
 families, of which eleven are naked, and eleven are covered 
 by a siliceous case. Most, if not all, the species possess loco- 
 motive vibratile cilia: many have a maxillary apparatus of 
 sharp teeth. In forty-eight species, referable to twenty-one 
 distinct genera, Ehrenberg has discovered ocelli, or coloured 
 eye-specks; beneath which, in Avihbjophis and Enylena^ 
 nervous ganglia arc discernible. The Infusories are very te- 
 nacious of life ; and possess astonishing powers of propagation 
 by spontaneous fission, gemmation, and fertile ova." 
 
112 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 the organific process, we might expect the 
 first appearance of a nervous system : and 
 accordingly, we found around the central cavity 
 a nervous ring, which henceforth in all the 
 invertebrated animals forms the principal con- 
 stituent of a nervous system. We pointed out 
 this in the actinia, and in one of the lowest 
 kinds, in which we found it distinct, the aste- 
 rias ; the nervous ring surrounds the alimen- 
 tary cavity, and sends two threads to each of 
 the five rays of its star-shaped body. 
 
 Then in the worm-like animals, the Entozoa 
 and Vermes, we found that the organic struc- 
 tures become more separate in structure and 
 distinct in function. The alimentary canal and 
 skin, as the first representatives of the di- 
 gestive and respiratory systems, a vascular sys- 
 tem as the link between both, and a more 
 distinct nervous system became manifest. In 
 the lowest of the Vermes the alimentary canal, 
 though still without subsidiary organs, extends 
 itself through the lengthened body, and instead 
 of a single aperture, we found distinct aper- 
 tures for mouth, anus, and sexual organs. The 
 nervous ring, with which the nervous system 
 begins, here appears throughout around the 
 (Esophagus or entrance of the alimentary canal ; 
 but in addition, double or single threads ex- 
 tend along the sides of this canal, and we have 
 the first approach to centrality of the nervous 
 system in the formation of ganglia or central 
 points. 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 113 
 
 Again, in the Insecta and Crustacea, forming 
 a link with the Vermes, and a diverging branch 
 of development, we were presented with the 
 especial perfecting of the respiratory system, 
 and of the locomotive and instrumental organs, 
 as if nature seemed here to perfect the relations 
 of the animal with the external world. In 
 these, the skin becomes a hard tegument, 
 ceases to be itself the organ of respiration, 
 and the respiratory organs are separated and 
 evolved as gills in the Crustacea, or as stigmata 
 and trachecB in the Insects. The firm horny 
 tegument is divided into moveable segments, 
 and the soft uniform feelers of the lower 
 orders are evolved into jointed antennce, max- 
 illce, feet, and the various instrumental organs. 
 Tlie muscles are distinct, numerous, and their 
 arrangement complex ; and the organs of the 
 senses become distinct, and acquire a perfec- 
 tion \\ Inch we do not find even in the imme- 
 diately higher forms of animal life. But with 
 this perfection of the external organs, the di- 
 gestive and the vascular systems seem scarcely 
 to advance. With respect to the nervous sys- 
 tem in these, in correspondence with the arti- 
 culated type or form of the organism, the 
 nervous collar becomes rej)eated in each seg- 
 ment of the body, and with the longitudinal 
 disposition of the last becomes further per- 
 fected. In the first joint, or head, there is a 
 complete nervous ring, the u])per part ol' u Inch 
 enlarges into a two-lobed gangtiou, fi oni \\ hich 
 1 
 
114 KECAPIiULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 proceed the nerves of the antennce and eyes, 
 and below forms a second ^awi;7^07^, from which 
 the principal nervous cord of the body goes 
 forth as two nerves, which in the next articu- 
 lation are again united into a ganglion, and 
 from this two cords again issue, again to be 
 united at another joint, and so repeated through- 
 out the body. 
 
 In the next type of organization, the organs 
 of growth and reproduction become more 
 evolved ; and in the 3Iollusca, we are presented 
 with a perfecting of the internal organs, which 
 is to prepare for, and to be more fully developed 
 in the higher animals. There is a sinking 
 back as it were, in order to draw inward, and 
 concentrate the organific energies for a higher 
 and more complete ascent. In the Mollusca, 
 namely, and first in the Mollusca acephala, as 
 the oyster and muscle, the organic structure 
 is characterized by the more perfect evolution 
 of the respiratory, digestive, and circulating 
 organs, and with a correspondent development 
 of the nervous system. We find the same 
 nervous collar about the cesophagus ; but the 
 ganglia are enlarged, especially the inferior : 
 there are then two nervous cords that extend 
 along the body : and, lastly, as especially 
 noticeable, we discovered a posterior ganglion, 
 which becomes intelligible as a correspondent 
 to the heart, situated at the posterior extremity. 
 Again, in the Gasteropoda, we found the vas- 
 cular system more complex, the nervous sys- 
 
KKCAPITULATORY LECTURt:. llo 
 
 tern more perfect, and the sexual organs more 
 evolved in the distinction of the sexes, although 
 still in one individual. But, both in the Ace- 
 p/iala, and Gasteropoda, the organs of sense 
 and locomotion, as marking the relation of the 
 animal to the external world, are imperfect 
 or scarcely appear, and only in the latter we 
 find a more perfect organ of touch, and that 
 of vision indicated only in the same part. 
 
 In the Cephalopoda the organic structure 
 attains a higher degree of development. This 
 is observed, in an especial degree, in the ner- 
 vous system and senses. In the former we 
 find what reminds us even of the brain of the 
 higher animals, and in the organs of sense we 
 find the eyes partake of this perfection, and 
 even an organ of hearing becomes manifest, 
 though in a rudimental form. The organs of 
 generation become more evolved, and the sexes 
 are separated in different individuals. Even 
 the rudiment of a skeleton is observed in the 
 cartilages, which surrounds the brain, and thus 
 first appears as a defence to the noblest organ. 
 
 Such are the steps and gradual advance- 
 ment of the development of organic structure 
 in the lower classes of animals ; of those, 
 namely, that form the great division of the 
 Jmei Itbrata. And thus, in contenjplating the 
 series, we are presented with the great prepa- 
 rations for individuality and integration, which 
 we have described as the aim and tendency 
 of nature's productivity in the construction 
 
116 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 of organic beings : — and we trace already a 
 structure, fitted in a higher stage, to become 
 typical of an inward and central unity, namely, 
 the nervous system and brain, the develop- 
 ment and perfecting of which is the main 
 characteristic of the vertebrated series of ani- 
 mals. 
 
 In this second great division of the animal 
 kingdom, or of those possessing a skeleton, 
 comprising fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammalia, 
 the total organism becomes more completely 
 evolved, and in man finds that most perfect 
 evolution of the different organs, which is in 
 accordance with the most perfect balance of 
 all, and a resulting harmony of the whole. The 
 nervous system here again becomes the repre- 
 sentative in its modifications of the more and 
 more increasing centrality and unity. The first 
 and most significant modification is that the 
 central masses of the nervous system, which 
 we have seen in the lower classes uniformly 
 on the lower or ventral surface, here uniformly 
 and throughout take their station on the upper 
 surface. Here too we find that the separated 
 centres, and chain of ganglia, are fused (as it 
 were) into one continuous mass and form, the 
 spinal cord, whilst the former arrangement is 
 only repeated or retained in the ganglionic 
 system. But both are to be subjected to a 
 brain, evolved from the spinal cord, and re- 
 peating in its highest form the medullary 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURK. 117 
 
 collar, and thus producing the more or less 
 perfected unity of the nervous system. 
 
 But this perfection is only attained by 
 grades and successive steps of evolution, and 
 we are still reminded, even in the higher 
 classes, of the lower types of organization. 
 Thus as in tJie first and lowest, the whole 
 organific power was concentrated in the pro- 
 duction of a central cavity, as the rudimental 
 representation of viscera, the organs of motion 
 were scarcely yet evolved, and of senses and 
 nervous system scarcely a trace was as yet 
 discovered : so in fish, — as the lowest of the 
 vertebrated series, distinguished by having a 
 nervous central mass extending along the 
 dorsal or upper surface, — we find the cavity 
 for the reception of the alimentary and sexual 
 organs, the abdominal cavity, namely, the most 
 important ; the organs of njotion imperfectly 
 evolved, the flesh itself gelatinous, the vertebral 
 column answering chiefly the purpose of a 
 locomotive organ in the tail, whilst the fins 
 but imperfectly represent the extremities of 
 the liigher animals ; and the evolution of the 
 respiratory system (which holds equal pace 
 with the motive) presents itself only as scarcely 
 enclosed gills. In the nervous system tlie 
 iiigher type of formation is indeed presented, 
 but still only indicated : the first great counter- 
 parts, the brain and spinal cord, as the centres 
 for sensation and motion, arc; scarcely sepa- 
 
118 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 rated ; the spinal marrow, which in the highest 
 is subordinated to the brain, here predominates 
 in mass and extent, the ganglionic system is 
 present, but its branches minute and without 
 distinct ^aw^/m, and the brain itself is scarcely 
 more than a series oi ganglia, and a prolonga- 
 tion of the spinal cord. The more perfect 
 evolution of the organs of sense here but begins : 
 the organ of hearing is still imperfect, the organ 
 of smelling stands in no communication with 
 the respiratory apparatus, and the only faint 
 resemblance to an organ of touch is in the 
 feelers about the mouth of some kinds. 
 
 Again, as we next found in the lower classes, 
 especially in the mollnsca, the perfecting of 
 the respiratory apparatus and its dependent 
 organs, so in the next higher class of the verte- 
 brata, Reptiles, we found the imperfect gills 
 converted into a true lung : external organs of 
 locomotion become developed, and the bony 
 compages becomes a more complex and pliant 
 frame -work, adapted to the varying form and 
 moving of frog, of tortoise, serpent, or lizard. 
 The senses are variously perfected : the eye 
 approaches in structure to that of birds ; the 
 organ of hearing acquires an external orifice ; 
 the olfactory organ becomes the external 
 opening of the air passages; and the nervous 
 system, especially in the more connected and 
 united structure of the brain, manifests its 
 more perfect arrangement and structure. 
 
 In the next higher class, that of Birds, we 
 
RFXAPITULATOKY LECTURE. 119 
 
 found the same process repeated which we have 
 noted in the insects, the evolution of the respi- 
 ratory and locomotive apparatus. The most 
 important characteristic of birds is that which 
 is derived from the important relation between 
 their economy and the atmospheric air, ob- 
 served in their respiration, circulation, muscular 
 energy, hearing, and voice. Their respiratory 
 apparatus is extensive ; the lungs consist of 
 minute cells, and communicate with cavities 
 and air cells, which extend through the chest 
 and abdomen, and are connected with the cells 
 of the hollow bones;— in short, the body is 
 permeated by the atmospheric air. Their blood 
 is warmer, and circulates more quickly than in 
 any other animal. In the organs of locomotion 
 we found the muscles endowed with heightened 
 irritability and energy ; the skeleton, light to 
 facilitate motion, and the anterior extremities 
 especially developed and adapted to flight. 
 We found the vocal apparatus perfected, and 
 the animal gifted with voice and song. The 
 senses also are farther developed, especially 
 the ear and eye. And the nervous system no 
 less marks their higher rank ; the mass of brain 
 exceeds that of the spinal cord, and is distin- 
 guished by its breadth and rounded form, and 
 by tlie more intimate connexion of the cerebral 
 divisions. 
 
 In the fourth and last division of the higher 
 classes, that of the Mammalia, so named from 
 their having mammfP, and suckling their young, 
 
120 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 we find still farther grounds in the manifold 
 and more perfected organization for adopting 
 a graduated scale and series of evolutions. In 
 their structure they closely resemble man ; 
 and the differences between the organization 
 of these animals and that of man, consist gene- 
 rally in the want of harmonious combination 
 of the component parts of the former to a 
 whole, rather than in the presence or absence 
 of particular organs. In all, there are the 
 same organs as in man, but the relative deve- 
 lopment of these varies considerably in the 
 different kinds, and with the perfection of one 
 organ or system of organs, there is a propor- 
 tionate defect of other organic constituents. 
 The organs for the circulation and aeration of 
 the blood have a less predominant influence 
 on the economy of the mammalia than in birds; 
 but they are warm-blooded, have a heart with 
 four cavities, and consequently a double cir- 
 culation ; and they breathe by means of com- 
 plex lungs, with minute and multitudinous air 
 cells. In the organs of locomotion, we notice 
 an adaptation to a far greater variety of free 
 motion than in birds. The symmetry of the 
 skeleton is more perfect than in any other 
 class of animals ; and the collocation and me- 
 chanism of its parts, together with the subser- 
 vient muscular apparatus, enable these ani- 
 mals, according to their needs, habits, and 
 jnodes of life, to run, spring, climb, burrow, 
 swim, or even fly. But the perfecting of these 
 
RKCAPIirLATORY LECTURE. 121 
 
 organs is especially evidenced in the formation 
 of a Hand ; and in its evolution we trace a 
 series from the Rodentia, most of which have a 
 clavicle, and indications at least of a power 
 of pronation and supination of the fore-arm, 
 through the squirrels to the Quadrumana, in 
 whom it bears the closest resemblance to the 
 liuman organ, as the most complete instrument 
 for varied handling and delicate touch. All have 
 live senses, though it will be unnecessary to 
 enter into details, which tend to show that the 
 organs are more perfected than in the preced- 
 ing classes ; and we may safely affirm that, in 
 the whole organic development of the Mam- 
 malia, as the highest class, there is a manifest 
 tendency to the most varied organization, with 
 increasing centrality and unity of the parts. 
 This is, however, most clearly evinced in the 
 type of the nervous system : the brain predo- 
 minates in size, becomes more distinct in its 
 parts, and more united as a whole ; and whilst 
 some of its components are more developed, 
 others are superadded ; the spinal chord is 
 more subordinated, and in the ganglionic 
 system we have even a central focus in the 
 semilunar ganglion and solar plexus. Thus, 
 in comparing the brain of the mammalia with 
 its innniiture form in the inferior classes of the 
 Vcrtebrata, we find that ihe gaitglia,\\\w\\, in 
 the fish, are rudiments only of the hemis- 
 ])hores, have been ex})anded into the now 
 iirently j)reponderating masses of the cere- 
 
122 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 brum, and their shape completed by the wind- 
 ing convolutions of the surface ; we observe 
 that the large ganglia, which correspond to 
 the quadrigeminous bodies, have become rela- 
 tively diminished in size, and hidden by the 
 development of the cerebral hemispheres,— that 
 the cerebellum, with its various appendages 
 and offsets, has acquired magnitude and cha- 
 racteristic form, — and that the connecting struc- 
 tures or commissures, especially the foriiix and 
 corpus callosum, hitherto wanting, have been 
 superadded, — in short, that by expansion and 
 addition, by concentration and change of pro- 
 portion, the brain in the mammalia has attained 
 its completed form.* And if we have seen 
 the organs of reproduction especially evolved 
 in the fish and reptiles ; and if, in birds, the 
 musculo-arterial system be predominant, with 
 a correspondent high degree of irritability, and 
 with accordant endowments of free motion and 
 of organic capabilities upon which it is depen- 
 dent ; it is the nervous system with a propor- 
 tionate perfecting of the sensibility, which is 
 the characteristic of the mammalia. 
 
 * If the facts in question were evidence less decisive of a 
 process of development, the deficiency would be abundantly 
 supplied by the curious researches of Tiedemann, on the for- 
 mation of the foetal brain {Bildungsgeschichte des Gehirns). 
 In tracing the evolution of the brain, he has satisfactorily 
 shown the correspondence of the temporary stag-es of its con- 
 struction in the foetus to the permanent forms of the organ 
 characterizing the inferior classes. 
 
RECAPITULATORY LEC'Tl'RE. 123 
 
 Here then we arrive at the last consumma- 
 tion in Nature, or rather the point in which 
 the cycle is completed, when that which exists 
 in itself begins to exist likewise for itself. 
 We have seen this instanced in the principle 
 of life as a productive power ; and, though 
 we are neither permitted by our reason, nor 
 enabled by our imagination, to conceive the 
 productive power at any moment in entire 
 detachment and perfect abstraction from its 
 product, yet, by reducing the product to its 
 imaginable minimuw, (and supposing the 
 power to exert itself only in the narrowest 
 cycle of reproduction) we obtain the concep- 
 tion of a seed or germ existing in itself. In the 
 ascending stages — first of growth, as in the 
 vegetable realm, and then of growth combined 
 with instinctive free motion, as in the insect 
 tribes, in more abstract terms, in the powers of 
 reproduction and of irritability, we see this germ 
 existing for otiiers. Lastly, in the form of sensi- 
 bility, we have the power reflected on its own 
 centre, and the living thing exists for itself. 
 Now there is nothing which can prevent us from 
 repeating the same process in a higher form, 
 and in which — that which was the apex of 
 the former scries having become the base, that 
 which was the goal having become the startiug 
 fK)8t, and here commencing witli life self-re- 
 flected, as already existing for itself, — we are to 
 trace it in its progress to a knowledge of its own 
 existence. In other words, in the functions of 
 
124 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 sensibility, it exists for itself as life ; but the 
 self-existence still remains an alien and inex- 
 plicable thing, unless it shall exist for itself 
 likewise reflectively, not as life merely, but 
 as mind. The self-reflection must itself be 
 reflected. 
 
 But before this cycle is completed, and in 
 the pause and silence, as it were, of expec- 
 tancy, the physiologist has finished his course, 
 he has reached his boundary line, and must 
 either turn back to repeat and perfect his 
 former investigations, or if he stop at the 
 boundary, it is as a spectator and admirer with 
 a human, and not merely with a professional, 
 interest. Nevertheless this does not prevent 
 the commencement of the latter process, of 
 the evidently progressive march in a direction 
 determined by this ulterior end, from being 
 included in the scheme of his proper science. 
 Nay, he will have omitted the noblest and most 
 interesting subject of physiology, if he pass it 
 unnoticed, for there is no possibility of ac- 
 counting for a series of phcenomena, but by 
 the discovery of some common end. The 
 eflicient causes, separately and exclusively 
 taken, would no more explain them, than an 
 acquaintance with the properties of the wood, 
 stone, and cement, with motions of the saw, 
 the hammer, and the trowel, would explain an 
 edifice, or enable us to determine why it was a 
 simple dwelling house, or a palace, or a church. 
 The conclusion 1 draw from these remarks is 
 
RECAPITULATORY LEC IL RE. 125 
 
 this : — that as all the phcenomena of organized 
 Nature, from the zoophyte to the creatures 
 that connect, as by intermediate links, the 
 fish with the mammalia, are to be regarded as 
 the gradual evolution of life into sensibility, — 
 which process is completed when the power 
 of sensibility shall have become central and 
 predominant, and have manifested itself in a 
 peculiar structure forming a connected system 
 in itself — in other words, as soon as there 
 exist a brain and spinal cord with abducent 
 and adducent nerves distributed throughout the 
 organism, so as to be manifestly the superior 
 and governing power of the system ; — so, and 
 on the same grounds of reason, we must regard 
 the mammalia as a process in which, through 
 a variety of forms, Nature is experimenting 
 the different proportions and possible har- 
 monies of the three powers in relative corres- 
 pondence to circumstances of soil, climate, and 
 habitation, then in reference to the various 
 pursuits, in which one class supplies an object 
 of desire to another, next in correspondence 
 to the free established appetites of the dif- 
 ferent classes ; but likewise, and histly, as 
 an increased perfection in itself, as measured 
 by its more or less perfect adequateness to the 
 (irst great principle, from which we have 
 deduced organic Nature, and to which we 
 must now bring it bark, — the principle, I mean, 
 of totality and absoluteness which Natiire 
 aims at in the whole, and of \\ Inch, therefore, 
 
126 RECAPITULATORY LFXTUHE. 
 
 we must seek the measures in a right compre- 
 hension of the points that constitute the per- 
 fection of a whole, and its comparative ex- 
 cellence. 
 
 Now we know that every whole, whether 
 of a plant, an animal, or a planetary system, 
 indicates a greater power as its producing 
 cause, in proportion as the parts are more 
 numerous, yet at the same time more vari- 
 ous, each having a several end, while yet the 
 interdependence of each on the other, the su- 
 bordination of the lower to the higher, and 
 the intimate union of all in the constitution of 
 one, shall be perfected in an equal proportion. 
 But as it has been shown before, that every 
 whole that is really such, — and not the creature 
 of accident, as a pebble for instance, or where 
 the wholeness subsists merely in the perci- 
 pient, as in a heap of corn or the types of a 
 printed sentence, — that every actual whole is 
 but the result or (to borrow an illustration from 
 the convex mirror) the projected image of 
 some antecedent principle, the unity of which 
 is exclusive of parts, — there is yet another 
 mark of advancing perfection, namely when 
 this partless and therefore necessarily invisible 
 unity is itself represented by some visible and 
 central product, to which all the various parts 
 converge, and which therefore represents in 
 respect of power that which the total shape or 
 exterior exhibits in respect of sight and sense. 
 These, T say, give the canons Iw which the 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 127 
 
 comparative interior perfection of every whole 
 or integer is to be measured. But every finite 
 integer has likewise external relations, and 
 here the canons of measurement are obvious, 
 namely, the comparative emancipation and 
 independence of the integer, from the alien 
 external powers, and its comparative supe- 
 riority over them, and power of commanding 
 them ; — these two being connected by an in- 
 termediate faculty, or facility, namely, that of 
 adapting itself to its external relations in the 
 greatest variety, and under the greatest change 
 of these relations. The first is a negative 
 superiority of the animal over nature, and of 
 itself can never rise beyond diminished de- 
 pendency. Thus the amphibious animals are 
 comparatively less dependent than the fish, 
 which can exist only in one elementary habi- 
 tation. Actual independence of Nature would 
 exclude the animal from the system altogether : 
 it could neither exist as a point in a circum- 
 ference, nor yet as a centre in itself, to which 
 all other nature formed an endless series of 
 concentric circles. Yet as long as it is a 
 dependence for its own purposes, and not for 
 purposes external to itself, and while it is con- 
 nected with choice, or an (nialogon of choice, 
 selecting what it can assimilate and repelling 
 whatever would interfere with its processes, 
 this dependence in the ])hysical sense of the 
 word becomes independence in thc^ moral 
 use. And \^ hen in rifldition to this a power 
 
128 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 exists of using external Nature as an alien, of 
 using what it neither assimilates nor admits, 
 this is more than independence, it is sove- 
 reignty. 
 
 In applying these rules to the higher 
 animals, to all namely in which the three 
 powers or functions of life, reproduction, irrita- 
 bility and sensibility, not only co-exist but co- 
 exist in a subordination of the former two to 
 the third, we shall soon be reminded of a truth 
 to which I directed your attention in a previous 
 Lecture, the existence, namely, of a variety of 
 classes evidently not essential to the system of 
 nature in the Idea, but to be explained as 
 parts of a process hereafter to disappear, and 
 consequently arising from the absence of some 
 other result hereafter to come, or if come, yet 
 from its imperfection and immaturity incapable 
 of exerting its appropriate influences. And 
 here it is that we are met by the principle 
 of variety, or the tendency to multiplication 
 of forms, to which comparative anatomists of 
 the greatest celebrity so often appeal in the 
 lower orders, the zoophytes, mollusca, and in- 
 sects, but without explaining the fact by any 
 \ higher principle ; — this same principle, but in 
 a more intelligible form, again presents itself 
 in this last stage of our investigation ; and I 
 venture to assert that it admits of no other 
 explanation than in one or other of the two 
 following modes, or perhaps in both conjointly. 
 The first we have already described under the 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 1*29 
 
 bold but justifiable language of a natural ex- 
 perimenting, as if nature were learning what 
 harmonies of functions could exist under dif- 
 ferent ratios of sub- and co-ordination, what 
 the resulting character of the whole would 
 be, and what the resulting type or physiog- 
 nomic expression of this character. Nor are 
 the products of this experiment without their 
 justifying use : the same absence of the crea- 
 ture, which implies this experimental process 
 in order to the completed type of the same, 
 requires these temporary orders of animals, as 
 proxies and vicegerents in the performance of 
 those lower ends, by which a bound or limit is 
 placed to the multiplication of yet inferior 
 life,— and by which, it may be added, the 
 health of the creation is preserved, which 
 would be endangered by the excessive multi- 
 plication of any one kind, not only in refer- 
 ence to the other classes of animals, but to the 
 kind itself so multiplied. The other is that 
 variety of type, instead of being measured, as 
 in all the orders of animals hitherto, by evi 
 dences of ascension in the scale of life, admits 
 the application of a canon of progressive per- 
 fection only to a small number of the mam- 
 malia; while the rest nmst be contemplated as 
 a degradation, or, to use the language of crys- 
 tallography, as decrements from the human, 
 assuming the human form as the ideal type of 
 the whole class. In short, in all those classes 
 or rrenera of the mammalia which would remain, 
 
 K 
 
130 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 and which could not without derangement of 
 the universal organismus be lost, even when 
 men, and men in the full prerogatives of hu- 
 manity, shall exist in all the climes of the 
 earth, and shall every where have civilized 
 and humanized nature — in these, I say, the 
 former scale of gradual ascent will still be 
 demonstrable ; but the rest can be considered 
 only as mutilated and imperfect copies by an- 
 ticipation of the human, to be measured, not 
 so much by what is possessed in each, as by 
 what is wanted, and by the necessary influ- 
 ence and modifying effect of the latter on the 
 former, — even as in the human being, that 
 which would have been perseverance and for- 
 titude, if a proportionate power of comparative 
 judgment had been added, by the mere ab- 
 sence of this gift degenerates into brute and 
 dogged obstinacy. 
 
 There is yet another point of too great im- 
 portance to be wholly omitted, but to which, 
 in this stage of my Lecture, I can do little 
 more than allude. I have before asserted that 
 entire intelligibility can only be given to the 
 system of nature by an insight into an ultimate 
 end, to which all preceding ends must be 
 regarded as at once means and approxima- 
 tions, — that this ultimate end of organic nature 
 is presented in the achievement of that sen- 
 sibility, and the subordination of the two in- 
 ferior powers thereunto, by which the animal 
 exists from itself, in itself, and, though imper- 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURR. 131 
 
 fectly, for itself — and that in order to the full 
 presentation of this ultimate end, nature must 
 not only feel, but must know her own being. 
 Now, this position is the same as to assert that 
 a mind must be added to life, and consequently, 
 that a transition from life to mind, at all events 
 to a state in which it shall be receptive of 
 mind, must be assumed — a transitional state, 
 a life still retaining its essential and distinc- 
 tive characters as life, but participant of mind. 
 And in a process of such deep importance, the 
 last step to the consummation of all that we 
 still might dare call nature, it may be con- 
 fidently expected that even the beginnings, the 
 nascent or initial quantities, will be marked or 
 revealed in some appropriate fact or phaeno- 
 menon. Now I affirm that this indifferency, 
 or intermediate state of life and mind, is given 
 in the Passions. For I know no other defini- 
 tion of a Passion as distinguished from a mere 
 appetite (though 1 have looked into the nume- 
 rous disquisitions and essays on the passions, 
 from Descartes downwards) but this : — That 
 a passion is an affection of life having its 
 immediate occasion, not in things, but in the 
 thoughts or judgments respecting the things. 
 This definition, which 1 offer with considerable 
 contidence, is however, I scarcely need say, a 
 definition of the passions in their completed 
 form ; though even of these the mammalia will 
 not be found deficient in striking examples, 
 such as the vanity of the peacock, the jealousy 
 
132 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 SO amusingly displayed in dogs, the rage, which 
 animals of the feline kind connect with both 
 the appetites, — and our friends the phrenolo- 
 gists would assist us to multiply instances. 
 But these are the branches of the tree ; we 
 must go lower to the trunk, and learn to con- 
 template passion as the common ground of all 
 the passions ; and this ground, or passion in its 
 unity, may perhaps be defined as a Predispo- 
 sition influencing the volitions, pursuits, and 
 acts of an animal, derived from its total life 
 and from the obscure half-conscious sense of 
 the same in its own character. For the life 
 of every animal doubtless has an individual 
 character of its own, though it may not be pos- 
 sible to designate it bywords, or rather though 
 the animal itself is the true word, the only 
 appropriate and untranslateable exponent. In 
 this, I repeat, I find one great character, and I 
 might add end, of the mammalia; and here, 
 too, the peculiar connection of the mammalia 
 with man is still preserved. We find here the 
 base of those mighty agencies by which man, 
 in the minority of his humanity, is impelled and 
 governed, and which, even in his highest state 
 hitherto realized, have not yet come to be 
 superfluous : the Reason, which has conquered 
 them, has taken them into the household as 
 useful and even needful servants, though out 
 of that household, like the wild dogs and cattle 
 of the uncivilized earth, they are among the 
 most dangerous of wild beasts. 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 133 
 
 I have merely announced the subject, though 
 a fuller inquisition into the passions, as themes 
 not separable from any enlarged views of phy- 
 siology or even of medical pathology, must 
 find a fitter place and opportunity ; and I 
 will now conclude, by giving an explanation 
 on two points, on which I am very likely to 
 be encountered or put to the question. 
 
 The first has reference to my frequent asser- 
 tions of the different degrees of perfection in 
 animals ; and I may be told, perhaps, that in 
 nature all things are alike perfect. Let them 
 be so : — the sense in which I have used the 
 word neither assumes nor contradicts it. Each 
 individual creature, considered singly, and in 
 relation to its powers and its circumstances, 
 may be perfect (though I confess that the 
 argument by which the perfection is proved, 
 borders somewhat on the argmnentum in cir- 
 culo); — but, assuredly, in relation to some 
 one or more ends of the whole system of ani- 
 mal life, the perfection must needs be as the 
 development, and no physiologist hesitates 
 to use this language when speaking of the 
 human embryo : and the philosophic view, 
 which I have had the honour of presenting, 
 regards the whole chain of ascending life as 
 so many embryonic forms of the animal man. 
 
 In close connection with this is the objec- 
 tion to the use of the word Nature, and tlie 
 somewhat irreverent boldness, it seems, with 
 which 1 have spoken of her bhnd tendencies 
 
134 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 
 
 and imperfect strivings after form;— in short, 
 it is by no means uncommon to meet with 
 persons, who consider Nature, but as a safe 
 way of introducing the idea of the Supreme 
 Being on the most trivial occasions without 
 taking His name in vain. Now this sense of 
 the word Nature is not my sense of it. I have, 
 in the very commencement of these Lectures, 
 distinctly declared, that by Nature, I meant 
 no more than the active powers impressed on 
 matter by the Creator, brought into a form 
 of unity for the purposes of science, and im- 
 personated for the convenience of language. 
 Any other use of the word I reject as false, and 
 denounce as no less injurious in science, than 
 as erroneous and unsafe in religion. That 
 he, who gives a history of nature, must sup- 
 pose a nature existing, and that as an agent, is 
 to my mind perfectly evident. And as to the 
 question between me and those, who contend 
 that nature is rightly defined '' The Power 
 and Wisdom of God in the creation," and who 
 consider it as perfectly synonymous with the 
 divine omnipresence, I will propose a very 
 short and easy, but very decisive test. Let 
 these adorers of Nature, without risk of ido- 
 latry, take any volume of physiology or patho- 
 logy, and every time the word nature occurs, 
 erase it, and put in its place the name of the 
 Creator ; and, if before they have proceeded 
 a dozen pages, their own moral feelings and 
 mere habits of decorum do not render them 
 
RECAPITULATORY LECTUkE. 135 
 
 sceptical respecting both the truth and pro- 
 priety of their assumption, I will cheerfully 
 promise to revise my own, with all due dispo- 
 sition to the exchanging it for a more correct 
 one. 
 
 To add a few serious words : — That system, 
 that view, which makes us feel most, and most 
 clearly understand, the dependence of all law, 
 order, permanence, beauty in nature on a 
 power higher than nature, is the most favour- 
 able to religion, and the feelings that arise out 
 of religious truths. And I trust that this effect 
 will rather be aided, than interrupted, by con- 
 tending that powers are manifested on their 
 opposites, light on darkness, order on confu- 
 sion, beauty on indistinction — the Spirit of God 
 on the faces of the dark waters, and the con- 
 trolling, informing Word of God on a blindly 
 striving, but divinely coerced and directed. 
 Nature. 
 
 C. Whitlinghan), looks C'ouit, (Jliaiicery Lane, I.oniloii. 
 
,nv 2^^ i^J^^