UJ^IVE^^SITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS I Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation i http://www.archive.org/details/bookofnatureOOgoodrich 3Bar|ier»« Stereot2?e JStittcru THE BOOK OF NATURE. JOHN MASON GOOD, M.D. F.R.S. F.R.S.L. MEM. A^I. PHIL. SOC. A^O F.L.S. OF PHILADELPHIA. FROM THE LAST LONDON EDITION. TO WHICH 18 NOW PREFIXED, A SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. HARTFORD. PUBLISHED BY BELKNAP AND HAMERSLEY. 184L ^ • LIQKAKY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SOCTHEIIN niSTRICT Of NEW-TORK, *». BE IT HEMEMBEREP, Tnal on the 3d day of January, A. B. 1831, in the fifty-fiflh year of Hie in leiien trare of »he Vnlttc States of America, J. & J. HARPER. u( lite said district, bar* deported in this office tbe •.■Ue of a book, tbe rijflil wbereuf tbry claim ax Proprietors, in the wonls fnllo-.vin;, to wit : «•• The Book of Naiure. By John M-uton Gno.1, M.l). F.R.S. F.R.S.L. Mem. Am. i hiL Soc. and F.L.S. of Phila: Coni^ress nf the Uni'ed States, entitled " An Art lor the encnura^ment of l.«!am!ni;. by strurinf ttt copies of maps, charts, ami books, to the authors ami proprietors of such copies, during ;he tinxx therein ineiitioned." An* also to an Art «niitled, " An Art, supplruientary to an Ac!, entitle>l an Act for 'he encnuraiceiiient of I.earning. t>y secu>-uiiK ih< copies nf maps, chart*, and books, to tbe authors and proprietors of sui^i copies, durint the times therein mentioned, and ex- Indiu ttt* beotltt Uicreof to tbe art* cf dewcuinjt, encnviox, aiid etcbiog aiatoncal acd othei prints." IKKDCRICK J. BETTS, Clerk cf M* jMMlAwn Dittrta n/ A'tw-TerU SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. In attempting to furnish the readers of " The Book of Nature" with a delineuliun of tlie life and character of its distinguished author, even a more experienced biographer might approach the task with hcsitsncy. The writer of the following sketch will not therefore affect to conceal his apprehensions that m so brief a space as is allotted to him, he may fail of donig justice to the name and memory of one possessed of such rare in- tellectual and moral endowments. Happily, however, the name of Dr. John Mason Good has become identified with the history of our own times, and his numerous and able contributions to our stock of knowledge, of a literary, professi.mal, and religious nature, furnish a monument to his me- mory more imperishable than brass. His friend and contemporary. Dr. Olinthus Gregory, in his "Memoirs," embracing his life, writings, and character, has given to the world ample testimonials of his siirprising genius, imtiring industry, and extraordinary erudition. And though the lines are iraced by the hand of affection, yet we discover no marks of ful- some adulation or enthusiastic eulogy. The writer seemed to feel that to depart from the simple and artless narrative of facts would but detract from the merits of the individual whose learning and virtues constif.ced his theme, liittle else than a summary of this interesting biography will be attempted in the present sketch. Dr. John Mason Good was the son of the Rev. Peter Good, a minister of the Independent or Congregational class of Dissenters, at Epping, in Essex. He was born May 25th, 1764, and received his name from the celebrated John Mason, author of the treatise on " Self-knowledge," who was his maternal uncle. His first studies were under the superintendence of his fatlicr ; who, for the sake of educating his sons to his own mind, organized a semi- nary, in which were also the sons of a few of his peisonal friends, — the number of pupils being limited to sixteen. There he very early acquired those habits of study, and that taste for literary ])ursuits, in which he was destined to excel in after-life. He acquired, while very young, an accurate knowledge of the Latin, Greek, and French languages, and thus (aid tlie foundation for his subsequent high attainments as a linguist. AVhen he was a little more than twelve years of age, his indefatigable studies began very seriously to impair his healtli, and his sedentary liabits produced a curvature of the spine, which interrupted his growth, and well nigh destroyed his constitution. But even then, it was only at the fervent importunity of his honoured father, that he consented to paitake A2 rr SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. with his companions of those rural and healthful sports, so necessary to mental relaxation and corporeal strength. And although he seemed to have no rehsh for these puerile pursuits at first, yet their effect upon his body and mind was such, that he soon engaged in them with his (characteristic ardour, and became as healthful, agile, and erect as any of his youthful associates. At fifteen years of age he was apprenticed to Mr. Johnson, a surgeon apothecary, at Gosport. Here he quickly acquired and j)erformed the pharmaceutic functions ; and, by reading and practice, very soon became a very valuable assistant to his master. Within the first year, notwithstand- ing his multifarious avocations, he commenced his career as a writer, by composing a "Dictionary of Poetic Endings," and a number of little poems of sterling merit. Next, he employed his leisure hours in drawing up " An abstracted View of the principal Tropes and Figures of Rhetoric in their Origin and Powers," illustrated by a variety of examples. Before he had completed his sixteenth year, Mr. Johnson's illness threw upon his apprentice an unusual weight of responsibility ; and the business of conducting the estabUshment, almost entirely williout super- mtendence, engrossed most of his time. He nevertheless began under these embarrassing circumstances to study the Italian language, of-vhich he soon made himself master ; and his commonplace book shows with what zeal, industry, and eflect he pursued this and his other studies. Shortly afterward, however, Mr. Johnson's continued indisposition ren- dered it necessary to engage a gentleman of skill and experience to con- duct his extensive business ; and he selected for this pur[)Ose Mr. Babington, then an assistant-surgeon at Harlem Hospital, and since well known as a physician of high reputation in London. The death of Mr. Johnson occurring soon after the consummation of this arrangement. Dr. Babington and Mr. Good were separated, after having foiled a m.utual and endearing attachment, each having availed himself of opening prospects which simul taneously presented themselves. After pursuing his studies a short time under the direction of a skilful surgeon at Havant, into whose family he was received, he was offered a partnership with a repu- table surgeon at Sudbury. To qualify himself for this situation he went to London in 1783, and attended the lectures of Dr. Fordyce, Dr. Lowder, and other eminent professors ; and availing himself of the advantages of hos- pital practice, he became an active member of a society for the promotion of natural philosophy, then existing among the students of Guy's Hospital. He soon distinguished himself by the part he took in the discussions, and by his original essays, one of whicJli, " On the Theory of Earthquakes," is said to have been peculiarly ingenious, elaborate, and classical. The following summer of 1784, he commenced his professional career ik Sudbury, and though but twenty years of age, soon gave striking proofs of his surgical skill, which gained him the confidence of the public ; and his partner soon after retired from the business, and resigned the practice in his favour. In 1785, he married Miss Godfrey, of Coggeshall, a young lady of accomplished mind and fascinating manners. But scarce had the joyous festivity of his youthful heart commenced, which he so beautifully expresses in the poem writt^ on his marriage, before he found, aias ! " a worm waa SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. t in the bud of this sweet rose." In a little more than six months his beloved companioa died of consumption. Suiih was the shook upon his sensibilities produced by this sad and mc;- laiicholy bereavement, that it seemed to have paralyzed his mental energies ; during the four years of his solitary condition, he seemed to suspend those active literary employments, of which he had given so hopeful promise. In 1781), he married a second time. The object of his choice wa§ the diughter of Thomas Fenn, Esq., a highly respectable banker at Sudbury. With this l.uiy, who possessed superior excellence and worth, he shared t'le conjugal endearments during the last thirty-eight years of his life. The fruits of tills marriage were six children, two only of whom with their widowed mother survive. The year after this marriage. Dr. Good commenced the study of the Hebrew language, of which he soon acquired a critical knowledge, as was exhibited in some of the most valuable productions of his pen. The sphere of his professional labour became very extensive, and a pros- ])cct of competence and even wealth was opened before him. But loo soon lie proved the versatility of all human possessions; for in 1792,by becora- iag legally bound for the debts of others, or by lending a large sum of money «o peisonal friends which they were unable to pay, he became involved in great pecuniary embarrassment. Instead, however, of availing him- self of the entire relief which was promptly otfereil by Mr. Fenn, he esti- in.ited his loss as the penal infliction ibr his imprudence, and therefore de- tenniiied to tax his mental resources for his penance ; and to his misfor- tiias he was indebted for the developement of genius and talent of which he was till then unconscious. He began with increasing assiduity a course of literary activity almost without a parallel. He wrote pla3's, made translations, compose- -^^^ms and philoso})hical essays, which, though possessed of acknowledged nic. , all failed to yield him pecuniary remuneration to any extent. At length, how- ever, he published his fugitive pieces in " The World," the Morning Post of that day, and under the signature of the " Rural Bard," he introduced himself to popular favour. In the year 1793, having unsuccessfully contended against the frowns of adversity, he was fortunate enough to receive a proposition to remove to liiu.loa, and engage in partnership with a surgeon and apothecary of ex- iv;asive practice in the metropolis, and to obtain an official connexion as surgeon in one of the prisons. He availed himself of this opening, and went to London, his spirits buoyant with hope, that a fairer and brighter day was about to dawn upon him. Bill again he was doomed to the sad and unavoidable defeat of his apparently well-founded expectations ; for, Inving been admitted the same year a member of the College of Surgeons, and having received other marks of professional distinction, his partner became jealous of his rising popularity, and his envy caused him to pursue a course of conduct which resulted in the failure of their business and the dissolution of their partnership. Still he concealed from his father in-law, and even from his own family, the extent of his embarrassments, and shrunk from receiving full relief, though perfectly within his reach; and resolved to incur no obligation, but rely upon his own resources. fi SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. Although he was surrounded by an increasing family, frequent and unexpected vexations, and the defeat of all his favourite projects, each in its turn did not in the least dishearten him, but, on the contrary, were ccn- tinual incentives to his professional activity and to the most exteiidea literar}' research. For nearly four years, thus circumstanced, he concealed his anxieties from those he most loved, maintained a cheerful demeanoui among his friends, pursued his theoretical and practical inquiries into every accessible channel ; and, at length, by his exertions, and the blessing of God, surmounted every difficuhy, and obtained professional reputation and emo- lument, sufficient to satisfy his thirst for fame, and to place him in what are regarded as reputable and easy circumstances. In 1795, he gained a premium of twenty guineas by successfully com peting before the Medical Society ; having presented the best dissertation on the question, " What are the diseases most frequent in workhouses, poor- houses, and similar institutions, and what are the best means of euro and of prevention." Soon after, his talents and acquirements began to be highly appreciated, and in 1797 he commenced his translation of Lucretius. To his knowledge of the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and Italian, he now added that of the German, Spanish, and Portuguese; and, by the year 1800, he had made considerable attainments in the Arabic and Persian languages. Very soon he gave evidence in some of the Reviews of his success in these difficult languages, and attracted the attention and secured the kind offices of many of the literati of Great Britain. He next published his " History of Medicine," which has not since been surpassed either in accuracy or style. During the few years which in- tervened between his temporal embarrassments and his final triumph over them, in 1812, besides multiplied productions of his pen in prose and poetry, of which a catalogue would be too prolix for our present purpose, he made a transl'Ation of the Song of Songs or Sacred Idyls, Essay on Medical Tech- nology, Translation of the Book of Job; and, in conjunction with Dr. Gregory and Mr. Bosworth, prepared for the press the Pantologia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Words, in twelve volumes, royal octavo. In the year 1810, he was invited to deliver a series of lectures at the Surrey Institution, " on any subjects, literary or scientific, which would be agreeable to himself." He complied with the request of the directors, and delivered a first, second, and third series of lectures during three successive winters, to crowded audiences which attended with gratification and de- light. His subjects were — of the first series, "The Nature of the Material World ;" the second, " The Nature of the Animate AVorld ;" and the third, " The Nature of the Mind." To these 1-ectures we are indebted for the nucleus upon which Dr. Good afterward amplified, until the " Book of Nature" was the finished product. He continued, in addition to these immense intellectual labours, to perform the duties of surgeon and apothecary, walking twelve or fifleen miles a day through the streets of London, until the year 1820, when he adiled the more elevated character of a physician, and, in his own language, " began the world afresh, with good omens and a fair breeze." Immediately afterward, he published his " Physiological System of Nosology," and witliih two years, " The Study of Medicine" was finished. This work the British SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. ya Medical Reviews pronounce " beyond all comparison the best of the kind in the English language," and its author " one who could devour whole libraries." Such were the perpetual occupations of this eminent man, literarj'- and professional, and such the splendid acquirements which he gained by liis gonius anfl industry, even amid a larger share of perplexities and disap- pointments than have served to damp the energies of many who might other- wise have shone as stars of the first magnitude. Thus illustrating his claims to true merit, which, according to Oliver Goldsmith, " consists, not in a man's never falling, but in rising as often as he falls." So great a variety of occupations would have thrown most men into confusion ; but such was the energy of Dr. Good's mind, such his habits of order and activity, that he carried them all forward simultaneously, and suffered none to be neglected, or inadequately executed. Indeed, his prac- tical maxim was akin to that of another eminent individual of indefatigable application, the late Dr. E. D. Clarke, who said, " I have lived to know the great secret of human happiness is this, — never suffer your energies to stagnate. The old adage of ' too many irons in the fire' conveys an abo- minable lie. You cannot have too many; poker, tongs, and all — keep them all going." Hence we find him at one and the same time engaged in acquiring several distinct languages ; translating largely from others ; editing and sustaining Reviews ; contributing to other periodicals on various and dis- tinct branches of polite literature ; preparing for the press original works ; enriching his commonplace book with " elegant extracts," the result of his immense reading, besides daily performing the arduous duties of a general practitioner, to an extent of which many would have complained, though they had no other occupations; and which thousands make a suffi- cient apology for neglecting to read even the professional improvements of their own time. The great secret of his distinguished career was, in having adopted early in life Mr. Mason's " Rules for Students," as commended by the example of his father ; that, for eminence and success in literary pursuits. " five things are necessary ; viz. a proper distribution and ma- n igement of his time ; a right method of reading to advantage ; the order and regulation of his studies ; the proper way of collecting and preserving useful sentiments from books and conversation ; and the improvement of his thoughts when alone." In these five particulars it will be perceived that Dr. Good greatly ex- celled ; and his eminence as a scholar, philosopher, linguist, and physician was, no doubt, the result of his perseverance in practising them, rather than of any extraordinary originality of genius, or splendid endowments of nature. Among the rare excellences of the character of Dr. Good, and by no means the least interesting traits of his history, may be mentioned his extraordinary temperance, fortitude, humility, and devotion. Amid all the oc-cupations of his professional life, and all his application to literary pur- suits as a student and an author, he still found time and inclination to in- vestigate the claims of Christianity ; and, having become convinced of its truth and importance, practised upon its precepts with rigid scrupulous- fill SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. ] ess, and was eventually led to embrace its doctrines and its spirit as the great ultimatum of lujman attainments. In the language of his i)io- grapher, he had " sought for intelligence at the Great Fountain of intellect, and had found Him whom to know is life eternal." It is true, that in the former part of his life. Dr. Good was led into many- errors of opinion, which he found reason to recant ; and he afterward de- precated the errors in practice resulting from those opinions. But although, at that time, the ranks of infidelity were most numerously, and, we may add, ably occupied, and by many of his literary associates ; yet he could never altogether overcome the principles impressed upon his mind by the early instructions of his father : and hence he was preserved from those fatal errors, which, if received into his mind at that time, would doubtless have led him into a labyrinth of metaphysical subtlety, from which he might never have extricated himself. But he avoided these dangers to which by his early associations he was exposed ; being protected by the impressions made on his nnnd under his pa- ternal roof, in favour of the truth and authenticity of the sacred Scriptures; and he wrote an essay on the " Credibility of Revelation," which is still extant : but, it seems, he either wanted the opportunity, or perhaps the moral courage, to publish it, although it was admirably calculated to be useful, judg- ing from the extracts furnished by his biographer. Still, however much as h^ admired the general system of revelation, and ably as he could defend it, it would seem that he vacillated in his creed fr(»m one error to another, and wandered in the mazes of intellectual and moral obscurity, in full view of the Light which could alone illuminate his path. He acknowledged its existence, occasionally glanced towards it, which only served to make his *' darkness visible ;" yet still he sought not for tranquillity and peace by implicitly yielding to its influence. In an essay " On Happiness," written about this time, he reasons himself very elabo- rately into the persuasion that there is an intimate connexion " between morals and natural philosophy ;" that " the same spark that shoots through the mind the rays of science and information, diffuses through the heart the softer energies of nature," and he thus exhibits the final issue of this momentous inquiry : " From such considerations as these, then, it results, that he is pursuing the m0'?t probable path to human felicity, who, blessed by nature with a soul moderately alive to the social affections, and an understanding that elevates him above the prejudices and passions of the ignorant, cultivates with a sedulous attention the one that he may best enjoy the capacities of the other." With these views of the nature of happiness and the best method of securing it, he was led to the avowal of the system of Materialism, and that of the Universalists, with respect to future punishment ; and becoming asso- ciated with a number of gentlemen who professed their belief in the doc- trines of modern So(Mnianism, he soon acquired a kindred spirit, and on his removal to London, in 1793, he joined the congregation of Mr. Belsham, a distinguished minister of that persuasion in the metropolis, where he con- stantly attended worship until the year 1807. During the fourteen years he was thus connected with this Socinian con- SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'^ LIFE. Iz gregation, his religious belief was in nowise settled ; and by his early fami- liarity with the truth, he was preserved to a great extent from the worst ten- dencies of this system. Hence, says his biographer, " He was too learned and too honest ever to affirm that the belief of the Divinity and atonement of our Lord was unknown in the purest ages of the church, but was engen- dered among other corruptions by false philosophy ; and he had uniformly too great a regard for the scriptures of tlie New Testament, to assert that the apostles indulged in far-fetched reasoning, or made use of a Greek word [^l')voyevr]i) wliich couvcyed an erroneous notion, from want of knowledge of the term they ought to have employed : he never contended that St. Paul did not mean to teach the doctrine of the resurrection of the body in the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians ; never sported the pernicious sopliism that * where mystery begins religion ends.' Being ' buried alive' in occupations, and immersed in vexations of no ordinary occurrence, he did not commune frequently with his own heart, and too naturally sunk into a lamentable indifference to religion, at least, if that word correctly imply ' converse with God ;' but he never evinced indif- ference to truth and rectitude, nor ever, I believe, became involved in the more awful perplexities of skepticism. " Indeed, the Bible was always with him a favourite book ; though for many years, it is to be feared, he turned to it rather as a source of liternry amusement, or of critical speculation, than for any higher purposes. After his death there was found an interleaved Pocket Bible, bound in two volumes, in which he often entered notes and observations. This hilercst- ing relic is now in my possession. The annotations are very numerous, and, by the variations in the handwriting and the appearance of the ink, mark with sufficient accuracy the dates of their insertion, from 1790, when they were commenced, until about 1 824, when he found the type in which the Bible is printed too small for him to continue reading it with comfort. These notes present decisive proofs of the nature of his sentiments in dif- ferent periods of his life ; and in some cases mark his solicitude in later age to correct the errors of the season of speculation and thoughtlessness." Although he had become bewildered by adopthig erroneous sentiments, yet he never entirely lost his Icve of truth ; and hence the forced and unna- tural criticisms in which liis theological friends indulged, and the skeptical spirit which some of them manifested, by shocking his uprightness, contri- buted to his ultimate emancipation. After contending against the conflict within him for fourteen years, the j)reaching at the Socinian chapel at length gave him serious pain ; and lan- guage from the pulpit, which Dr. Good regarded as equivalent to the recom- mendaiion of skepticism, led to the following correspondence. "To THE Reverend . " Caroline Place, Jan, 2Gthj 1807. " Dear Sir, " It is with much regret I feel myself compelled to discontmue my attendance at the chapel in , and to break off my connexion with a socieiy with which I have cordially associated for nearly fourteen years " I sincerely respect your talents, and the indefatigable attention you have 4 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. paid to Biblical and theological subjecis i I have the fullest conviction of your sincerity and desire to promote what you believe to be the great cause of truth and Christianity ; but I feel severely that our minds are not con- stituted alike ; and l)8ing totally incapable of entering into that spirit of skepticism which you deem it your duty to inculcate from the pulpit, I should be guilty of hypocrisy if I were any longer to countenance, by a personal attendance on your minisiry, a system which (even admitting it to be right in itself) is, at least, repugnant to my own heart, and my own understanding. " Without adverting to subjects which have hurt me on former occasions, I now directly allude to various opinions delivered in your very elaborate and, in many respects, excellent sermon of Sunday last ; and especially to the assertion that it is impossible to demonstrate the existence and attributes of a God ; that all who have attempted such demonstrations have only in- volved themselves in perplexity ; and that though a Christian may see enough to satisfy himself upon the subject, from a survey of the works of nature, he never can prove to himself the being and attributes of a God, cloarly and free from all dpubt. " I mean merely to repeat what I understood to be the general sense of t\\c proposition ; and not to contend that my memory has furnished me with your own woids. And here permit me to observe, that I have been so long taught a different creed, not only from the reasonings of St. Paul, Rom. i. 20, and elsewhere, but from many of the best theologians and philosophers of our own country, from Sir I. Newton, Clarke, Barrow, and Locke, that I cannot, without pain, hear what appears to me a principle irrefragably esta- blished, treated with skepticism, and especially with such skepticism circu- lated from a Christian pulpit. " I have thus, privately, unbosomed my motives to you, because, both as a minister and as a gentleman, you are entitled to them ; and because I should be sorry to be thought to have acted without motives, and even without sufficient motives. My esteem and best wishes, however, you will always possess, notwithstanding my secession from the chapel ; for I am persuaded of the integrity of your efforts. I am obliged to you for every attention you have shown me, and shall, at all times, be happy to return you any service in my power. " I remain, Dear Sir, " Your obliged and faitliful friend and servant, " J. M. Good." *' To John Mason Gtood, Esq. Caroline Place. " , Jan. 27th, 1807. " Dear Sir, " I am obliged to you for your polite communication of your intention to withdraw from chapel, and of your motives for that deter- mination. Having myself exercised to so great an extent the right of pii- vate judgment, I would be the last person to object to the exercise of thai riglit in others. " I cannot, however, help considering myself as peculiarly unfortunate, that after all the pains which I have taken to establish the truth of the SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. zl Christian revelation, I sJiould, in the estimation of an intelligent and, I would hope, not uncandid hearer, lie open to the charge of inculcating from the pulpit a spirit of skepticism^ and that the allusion which I made on Sun- day last to the unsatisfactory nature of the exploded d priori demonstration of the Divine existence, should have been understood as a declaration of a deficiency in the proper evidence of the being and attributes of God. " 1 certainly would not myself attend the ministry of a preacher who was skeptical either in regard to the Divine existence, or the truth of the Chris- tian revelation. I must, therefore, completely justify you in withdrawing from my ministry while you entertain your present views. I can only regret, that I have expressed myself inadvertently in a manner so liable to be mis- understood ; and sincerely wishing you health and happiness, " I am. Dear Sir, " Your obedient servant, " To THE Reverend . " Caroline Place, Jan. 29tk, 1807. " Dear Sir, " I am obHged to you for your letter, and add only a word or two, in ex- planation of a single phrase which you seem to regard as uncandid. The term skepticism I have not used opprobriously, but in the very sense in which you yourself seem to have applied it, in the discourse in question, to tiie apostle Thomas, by asserting, upon his refusal to admit the evidence of his fellow-disciples, as to our Saviour's resurrection, that * it is possible, per- haps, that the skepticism of Thomas may, in this instance, have been car- ried a little too far.' " I quote your idea, and, I believe, your words. A.nd here, without ad- verting to other expressions of a similar nature, suffer me to close with ask- ing you, whether 1 can legitimately draw any other conclusion from such a proposition, than that a skepticism, hi some small degree short of that manifested by St. Thomas, is, in the opinion of him who advances that proposition, not only justifiable, but an act of duty ? and that, to a certain extent, he means to inculcate the spirit or disposition on which it is founded? " It only remains that I repeat my sincere wishes for your happiness, and that I am, »* Dear Sir, " Your obedient serv'ant, "John Mason Good." To this letter Mr. Good received no reply. Soon after, he surrendered all the characteristics of the Socinian creed, and became a constant attendant upon Divine worship at Temple church ; and in a few years afterward, he wrote another essay " On Happiness," dif- fering very widely from that to which reference has been made in a former part of this memoir, and furnishing a happy commentary on the advantages he had derived from the evangelical reformation in his creed. It was not, nowever, until 1815, that Dr. Good distinctly communicated to his friends ills cordial persuasion, that the evangelical representation of the doctnnea xii SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. of Scripture was that which alone accorded with the system of reA'ealed truth, and declared his conviction, " that there was no intermediate ground upon which a sound reasoner coukl make a fair stand between that of pure Deism, and that of moderate orthodoxy, as held by the evangelical ciassc? both of churchmen and dissenters." It is but candid to remind the reader, that this great change of sentiment, followed as it was by a correspondent change of practice, took place when its subject was in the vigour of manhood, and the maturity ol his intellectual acquirements. And to exhibit this change, as it was, thorough and radical, notwithstanding it has been insinuated otherwise, the following notes in his Bible are inserted, written by himself. " HfciBREWs X. 19,20. The spirit of man is concealed by the veil of the flesh : the spiritual things of the law, the holy of holies, were concealed by the veil of the temple. Christ is the end and sum of the whole ; and as the high-priest entered into the holy of holies by the veil of the temple under the law, so we can only enter into the holiest by ' the blood of Jesus,' by the veil of his flesh, or incarnation, of which the veil of the temple was a striking type. And never did type and antitype more completely har- monize with each other, and prove theii- relation : for when Christ exclaimed upon the cross, 'It is finished,' and gave up the ghost — when the veil of his flesh was rent, the veil of the temple was rent at the same moment. The former entrance into the holy of holies, which was only temporary and typical, then vanished — and the 'new and living way,' the way everlasting, was then opened ; and what under the old dispensation was only open to the liigh-priest, and that but once a year, was, from that moment, open to us all, and open for all times and all occasions — a consecrated way, in which we are exliorted to enter with all boldness, in full assurance of faith; having ' our hearts first sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.' " " Gi:\Esis ii. 23, 24. Under the figurative langur.ge contained in these two verses is a concealed representation of the whole mystery of the gospel — the union of Clirist with the church, the glorious bride, that in the fulness of the trnies he will present to himself, free from spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish. St. Paul expressly tells us, Eph. v. 30, 31, that this mo- mentous fact is here referred to, and spoken of in veiled or esoteric lan- guage. It is the first reference in the Old Testament — the earliest history of man, therefore, opens with it ; it was the mystery of Paradise — ' the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto his own glory.' " " Genesis iii. 7. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig-leaves," &c. " It is so in every age and every part of the world. The moment a man becomes consciously guilty, his eyes arc opened to the knowledge of evil ; he feels himself naked, and seeks a cover or a hiding-place : he is full of shame, and cannot endure to be looked at even by his fellows ; — he endeavours by some flimsy pretext, some apron of fig-leaves, to screen fither himself or the deed he has committed from their eyes. But mosi of all does he feel his nakedness-before God, and endeavour to hide from his presence. Happy, indeed, is he, who, with this consciousness of guilt and shame, is able by any means to discern a covering that may conceal tlie SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR' S LIFE. xiii naked deformity of his person from the penetrating eye of his Maker. One such covering there is, and but one, and blessed is he wlio is permitted to lay hold of it, and to put it on— it is the -obe of the Redeemer's righteousness." For the same purpose, we here insert a specimen of his devotional poetry ; not so much for its poetic merit, as for the distinct and decided expression of sentiment it contains. I.V THE BEGINNING WAS TMR WORD ; AND TIIR WORD WAS WITH COD, AND THE WORD WAS GOD. O WORD ! O WISDOM I heaven's high theme! Where must the theme be^iri? — Milker and Sufterer !— Lord Supreme ! Yet sacrifice for sin ! Now, Rkason I trim thy brightest lamp, Thy boldest powers excite ; Muster thy di)ubts, a copious camp — And arm thee for the fight. View nature through — and, from the round Of things to sense reveard. Contend t is lliine alike to sound Th'' abyss of things concealed. Hold, and affirm that God must heed The sinner's contrite sighs, Though never victim were to bleed, Or frankincense to rise. Prove by the plummet, rule, and lino, By logic's nicest plan. That Man could ne'er be half divino Nor aught divine be man : That he who holds the worlds in awe. Whose fiat formed the sky, Could ne'er be subjugate to law, Nor breathe, and groan, and die. This prove till all the leam'd submit : Here learning I despise, Or only own what Holy Writ To heavenly minds supplies, O Word ! O Wisdom I — boundless Ihemo Of rapture and of grief: — Lord, I believe the truth supreme, O, help my unbelief. This devotional effusion furnishes ns a satisfactory and conclusive demon- stration of the entire revolution which his sentiments had undergone; and the emotions of his heart seemed very frequently to prompt his muse, for a great number of [)oetical pieces were found among his private papers. " For the last seven or eight years of his life. Dr. Good, persuaded of the incalculable benefits, of the highest order, likely to accrue from Bible and Missionary Societies, gave to them his most cordial support ; on many occasions advocating their cause at public meetings, and on others employ xxr SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. ing his pen in their defence. To the concerns of " the Church Missionary Society" especially, he devoted himself with the utmost activity and ardour, as a most judicious, learned, and able member of its committee. He sug- gested some useful plans for the instruction of missionaries, and, in certain cases, of their wives, in the general principles of medical science, the nature and operation of the simpler remedies, and in the safe practical application of such knowledge to numerous cases which may obviously occur among the inhabitants of the dark and uncivilized regions in which Christian missionaries most frequently labour. These suggestions were not merely proposed in general terms, in the committee ; but, in many instances, carried into the minutia; of detail, by instructions which Dr. Good gave personally to the missionaries themselves. Nor was the advice thus given confined to professional topics. The stores ot his richly endowed mind were opened to their use on subjects of general literature, biblical criticism, the rules of translation, the principles of geology, botany, zooiog}-, nay, every department of knowledge calculated to fit them thoroughly for their noble and arduous undertaking. Nor, again, were these kind and valuable offices confined to individuals of the Church Missionary Society alone. His soul was too liberal and capacious, and his conviction of the j)aucity of the labourers too deep, to induce him for a moment to \^ ish or to imagine that the glorious object could be accomplished entirely by mis- sionaries of any one persuasion. On different occasions I have introduced to him missionaries and others connected with various religious societies, who were anxious to profit by his advice, on topics respecting which they scarcely knew where else to apply; and, uniformly, the individuals who thus availed themselves of the privilege, have testified in the most lively terms their grateful sense of the affectionate kindness of his demeanour, and the value of his suggestions." His piety exhibited itself in his intercourse with his patients ; for, in pre- scribing for an intricate disease, he was in the habit of praying for Divine direction ; on administering a medicine himself, he was known frequeiuly to utter a short ejaculatory prayer ; and, in cases where a fatal issue was inevitable, he most scrupulously avoided the cruel delusion too common on such occasions, and with the utmost delicacy and feeling, announced his apprehensions. As an evidence of his devotional character, the following, bearing d^te July 27th, 1823, is here inserted. "FORM OF PRAYKR, " AVhich I purpose to use, among others, every morning, so long as it may please God that I shall continue in the exercise of my profession ; and which is here copied out, not so much to assist my own memory, as to give a hint to many who may perhaps feel thankful for it when J am removed to a state where personal vanity can have no access, and the opinion of tlie worid can be no longer of any importance. I should wisli it to close the ^ubseijuent editions of my * Study of Medicine.' " O thou great Bestower of health, strengtli, and comfort ! grant thy bless- ing upon the professional duties in which this day I may engage. Give me SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. xv judgment to discern disease, and skill to treat it ; and crown with thy favour the means ihat may be devised for recovery ; for, with thine assistance, the humblest instrument may succeed, as, without it, the ablest must prove unavailing. " Save me from all sordid motives; and endow me with a sj)irit of pity and liberality towards the poor, and of tenderness and sympathy towards all ; that I may enter into the various feelings by which they are respectively tried ; may weep with those that weep, and rejoice with those that rejoice. " And sanctify thou their souls, as well as heal their bodies. Let faith and patience, and every Christian virtue they arc called upon to exercise, have their perfect work : so that in the gracious dealings of thy Spirit and of thy providence, they may find in the end, whatever that end may be, that it has been good for them to have been afflicted. " Grant this, heavenly Father, for the love of that adorable Redeemer, who, while on earth, went about doing good, and now ever liveth to make intercession for us in heaven. Amen." One cannot help being struck with the resemblance of character between the great Boerhaave and Dr. Good ; but that excellent man Baron Haller resembled him still closer. This great and learned physician in the early part of his life, likewise, had doubts concerning the objects of the Christian faith. " But these doubts were dispelled by a successful application to every branch of science on the one hand, and by a candid examination of the sacred oracles on the other. The first, by purging his soul, according to his own emphatic language, of arrogance and pride, filled it with true poverty of spirit. The second convinced him that the Divine Revelation conveyed in the Holy Scriptures is a boon worthy of the merciful Author of our nature to give, and such as is fit for guilty mortals to receive with humble gratitude and reverence." The parallel between these great and good men, devoted as they were to the work of doing good to the bodies and souls of their fellow-men, is still greater, from the circumstance that Dr. Good, like Boerhaave and Haller, had envious and malignant enemies. But he never regarded calumny and detraction, nor ever thought it necessary to confute them. He adoptpd the sentiment of Boerhaave, who said, " They are sparks which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves. The surest remedy against scan- dal is, to live it down by perseverance in well-doing ; and by praying to Qod that he would cure the distempered minds of those who traduce and mjuie us." After a life of virtue and consistent piety, such*as characterized Dr. John Mason Good, the reader may anticipate a peaceful termination, even in the light of nature itself. But, illuminated as were the dark valley and shadow of death by the resplendent light and glory of the Christian revelation, his patli seemed, like "that of the just," to " shine brighter and brighter even to the perfect day." Maik the humility, devotion, and faith which were exhibited in the hour of hi« approaciiing dissolution. He called the members of his family around his bed, and thus addressed them : " I have taken what unfortunately the generality of Christians too much take — I have taken the middle walk of Christianity — I have endeavoured to live ud to its duties and doctrines, xv\ SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. hat I have lived below its privileges. I have had large opportunities given ^ nie, but I have not improved them as I might. I have been led astrd\ by the vanity oj ttuman learnings and by the love of human applause.'^'* How insignificant are the highest mtellectual endowments, and the most extensive erudition, when compared with the Christian character. In the light of the invisible world just dawning upon his vision, he exclaimed, more than once, "0, the vanity of human learning?" " O, tlie folly of human applause?" And then he would dwell with evident satisfaction upon the text, which he so often repeated in his last moments — " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." And after the power of distinct arliculaiion was gone, and he was almost in the embrace of death, when his kind clergyman repe?ted the words, " Behold the Lamb of God !" he added, as the last elTort of his expiring breath, "who taketh away the sins of the world." For this brief outline of the life and death of the learned and excellent author of the " Book of Nature," I am indebted chiefly to " Dr. Gregory's Memoirs," and to the able review of that work in the " Christian Spec- tator." And although precluded by the limits of this sketch from entering into numerous details of his writings, learning, and virtues, which possess an enduring interest ; yet enough is here recorded to afford matter for much useful reflection and improvement to the philosopher, the philanthropist, and the Christian. And the profession of medicine is here seen to be honoured in the life of one of its most enlightened and zealous votaries, who superadded to his high literary and professional attainments the still higher character of a sincere and consistent Christian philosopher, bequeathing to us and to posterity his bright example, to be inscribed with those of Boerhaave, Ha Her, Mead, and Rush, on the tablet of our memories, stimulating us to emulate their virtues, that we may, like them, have a peaceful death, cheered bv the hope of a bhssful immoitality. PREFACE. The present volume, which is designed to take a systematic, but popular, survey of the most interesting features of the general science of nature, for the purpose of elucidating what has been found obscure, controverting and correctiiig what has been felt erroneous, and developing, by new and original views and hypotheses, much of what yet remains to be more satis- factorily explained, derives its origin from the following circumstances : — Towards the close of the year 1810, the author had the honour of receiving a visit from a deputation of the Directors of the Surrey Insti- tution, founded on what had been antecedently the Leverian Museum, with a request on the part of their Chairman, Dr. Adam Clarke, that he would undertake a department of lectures in that literary and scientific establishment ; with the generous offer of leaving to himself a nomination of time, terms, and subject. He regretted his inability of acceding to so kind a request at that particular period ; but being a little more at liberty not long afterward, he readily consented, on a second application by Dr. Lettsom and other Directors ; and the ensuing volume contains the course of study he ventured to make choice of; the lectures having been divided into series, and delivered in successive years. It was his intention to have carried the plan to a somewhat more pro- tracted extent, though the present is sufficiently complete for the outline laid down ; but, though earnestly and repeatedly pressed to proceed farther, or even to go over the same lectures again, an augmented sphere of pro- fessional duties compelled him, with much reluctance, to decline the invita- tion ; and the same cause has prevented him,* till the present period, from fulfilling a subsequent request to submit them to the public ; though he has always intended to do so as soon as he could find leisure. As the lectures were delivered from general recollection, though with the author's manuscript at hand, it is possible that those who took notes may find a few passages in the presti text slightly varied from what was XVIU PREFACE. Uttered at the time. Yet he believes that, upon an accurate examination, such discrepancies will be found but few, and of no importance. The Institution has had its day, but it set in glory, and had the satis- faction of reaping its own reward. Its proprietary shares, like those of every other literary institution in this metropolis, were soon found to have been fixed at too low a price. And, a difficulty having been experienced in obtaining the consent of every proprietor to an adequate additional sub- scriptiop, it was wisely resolved, almost from the first, to make a yearly encroachment upon the capital, and to maintain the Institution at its zenith of vigour and activity till the whole of such capital should be expended, rather than to let it live through a feeble and inefficient existence, though for a longer period of time, by limiting it to the narrow scale of its annual income alone. To the crowded and persevering audience by which, from year to year, the author had the gratification of being surrounded, many of whom are yet within the circle of his acquaintance and friendship, he still looks back with gratitude ; and can never forget the ardour and punctuality of their attendance. It is a lively recollection, indeed, of the manner in which his labours were received, when dehvered, that chiefly induces him to hope for a favourable reception of them in their present form. The progress of tune, and the mental activity with which it has been followed up, have strikingly confirmed various hints and opinions which he ventured to suggest as he proceeded, and have introduced a few novel- ties into one or two branches of science since the period referred to ; but the interval which has hereby occurred has enabled the author to keep pace with the general march of the day, and to pay due attention to such doc- trines or discoveries in their respective positions of time and place. TABJLE OF CONTENTS* SERIES I. NATURE OP THE MATERIAL WORLD ; AND THE SCALE OF UNORGANIZED AND ORGANIZED TRIBES THAT ISSUE FROM IT. Lect. Page I. On Matter, and the Material World 25 II. On the Elementary and Constituent Principles of Things ... 34 III. The Subject continued 42 IV. On the Properties of Matter, essential and peculiar 50 V. The Subject continued ^. . 67 VI. On Geology 65 VII. The Subject continued 73 VIII. On Organized Bodies, and the Structure of Plants compared with that of Animals 81 JX. On the general Analogy of Animal and Vegetable Life .... 93 X. On the Principle of Life, Irritability, and Muscular Power . . . 102 XI. On the Bones, Cartilages, Teeth, Hair, Wool, Silk, Feathers, and other hard or solid Parts of the Animal Frame 113 XII. On the Digestive Function, and the Organs contributory to it ; the different Kinds of Food employed by different Animals ; and the "Continuance of Life through long Periods of Fasting . . 125 XIII. On the Circulation of the Blood, Respiration, and Animalization . 138 XIV. On the Processes of Assimilation and Nutrition, and the interest- ing Effects to which they lead 151 XV. On the External Senses of Animals 159 SERIES IL NATURE OF THE ANIMATE WORLD ; ITS PECULIAR POWERS, AND EXTERNAL RELATIONS ; MEANS OP COMMUNICATING IDEAS ; FORMATION OF SOCIETY. Lect. Page I. On Zoological Systems, and the distinctive Characters of Animals 172 II. The Subject continued 183 III. On the Varieties of the Human Race 198 IV. On Instinct 211 V. On the distinguishing Characters of Instinct, Sensation, and Intelligence 220 VI. On Sympathy and Fascination 5i3l VII. On Sleep, Dreaming, Revery, and Trance; Sleep-walking, arid Sleep-talking 243 XX CONTENTS. LecL Page VIII. On Voice and Language ; Vocal Imitations, and Ventriloquism . 254 IX. On natural and inarticulate Language, or that of Animals ; arti- ficial and articulate Language, or that of Man 262 X. On legible Language, imitative and symbolical 274 XL On the literary Education of former Times ; and especially that of Greece and Rome 289 XIL On the Dark or Middle Ages 299 XIIL On the Revival of Literature 312 SERIES m. NATURE OP THE MIND: ITS GENERAL FACULTIES AND FURNITURE. Lect. Page I. On Materialism and Immaterialism 322 II. On the Nature and Duration of the Soul, as explained by popular Tradition, by various Schools of Philosophy, and by Revelation 332 [II. On Human Understanding 342 IV. The Subject continued 351 V. On Ancient and Modem Skeptics .361 VI. On the Hypothesis of Common Sense 374 VII. On Human Happiness 388 VIII. On the general Faculties and Free-agency of the Mind .... 398 IX. On the Origin, Connnexion, and Character of the Passions . . 407 X. On the leading Characters and Passions of savage and civilized Life 415 XI. On Temperaments and Constitutional Propensities 422 XII. On Pathognomy, or the Expression of the Passions 429 XIIL On Physiognomy and Craniognomy, or the Expression of the • Temper and Disposition 437 XIV. On the Language of the Passions 448 XV. On Taste, Genius, and Imagination 460 THE BOOK OF NATURE. ISERIE8 I. LECTURE I. ON MATTER, AND A MATERIAL WORLD. In the comprehensive range of science proposed to be treated of in the Surrey Institution, the department to which I shall have the honour of be- seeching your attention will be that of natural philosophy, or physics, in the most extensive sense of these terms : that branch of science which makes use of the individual principles and discoveries of every other branch within the range of nature^ as the architect makes use of the bricks, the mortar, the wood, and the marble of different artisans, and builds up the whole into a per- fect edifice ; which takes a bird's eye view, as it were, of a picturesque and spreading landscape from some commanding eminence ; and, without having laboured in the details of arranging the ground, of cultivating the soil, of planting the woods, of winding the rivers, of enriching the scenery with flocks, herds, bridges, and buildings, points out the general connexion of part with part, and 'the harmony which flows from their combined effect. This, indeed, is to employ these terms in a somewhat wider sense than has been assigned to them in modern times ; for even the Natural Philosophy of Lord Bacon, though it embraces the two divisions of special physic and metaphysic, as he calls them, does not extend to the doctrine of " the nature and state of man," which is transferred to another division of general science ;* yet that the study of physics, or natural philosophy, had this more extended meaning among the Greeks and Romans, is clear, since the poem of Empedocles on " Nature," and that of Lucretius, on " the Nature of Things," the two most complete physiological works of which we have any account in antiquity, were ex- pressly formed upon this comprehensive scale ; and hence the philosophy of geology and mineralogy, the philosophy of botany and zoology, the philosophy of human understanding, the philosophy of society and whatever relates to it, or general and synthetical surveys of these different departments of science, are as equally branches of physics, or the nature of things, as equally part of the book of nature, as any separate branch which is more ordinarily so arranged. Thus explained, the scope of the study before us is almost universal, and only a small portion of it can be engaged in during a single series. I shall endeavour to advance in it as I am able-; and the infinite variety it presents to us will at all times, I trust, prevent the pursuit from proving dull or unin- teresting. Could it indeed be completed as it ought, it would constitute the PHiLosoPHiA prima, or unlvcrsal science of the great author I have just ad- verted to. My sole object, however, is to communicate information so far as I may * Advancement of Learning, b. ii. p. 52. 56. vol. i. 4to. General science is here divided into three classes : L Doctrina de numine, or Divine Philosophy. II. Doctrina de naturi, or Natural Philosophy. III. Doctrina de homine, or Human Philosophy. The common stem from which they ramify is deaomi nated philosophia prima, primitive, summary, or universal philosophy. 16 ON MATTER, AND be able ; to exhaust nothing", but to touch upon many things ; to g-ive a desire for learning, rather than to consummate the learning that may be desirable ; to run over the vast volume of nature, not in its separate pages, but in its table of contents, so that we may hereafter be the better prepared for studying it more minutely, and for feeling in some measure at home upon the various subjects it presents to us. Yet, after all, lectures alone can do but little, whatever the energy or per- spicuity with which they may be delivered. They may, perhaps, awaken a latent propensity, or enkindle a transient inclination ; but unless the new- born flame be fed and fostered, unless it be nourished by study, as well as excited by hearing, it will perish as soon as lighted up ; or, if it continue, will only blaze forth in a foppery of knowledge far more contemptible than the grossest ignorance. Let us, then, enter upon our respective duties with equal ardour. The path of science is open to every variety of age, and almost to every variety of educa- tion. Thousands at this m.oment behind are pressing forward, and will surpass those that are before ; and the richest and most gratifying reward I can ever receive will be, to find that many to whom this course of study is delivered will hereafter be able to communicate to me the same proportion of informa- tion, which it is my duty to suppose I can at present communicate to them. One of the first inquiries that can ever press upon the mind must relate to the nature of matter, and the origin of the world around us : what is this common substance from which everything visible has proceeded, and to which every thing visible is reducible ? has it existed from all eternity ? or has it been called into being by the voice of an Omnipotent Creator ? and in either case, has it uniformly exhibited its present harmony and arrangement, or has there been a period in which it was destitute of form and order, a waste and shapeless chaos 1 These are questions which have tried the wisdom of man in all ages ; and, I may add, which in all ages have proved its littleness, and the need we stand in of illumination from a superior source. Such, upon one or two points, we have received ; upon the rest we are still ignorant ; and, but for what we have received, we should have been still ignorant upon the whole. If we search into the systems of all the ancient schools of philosophy, amid an infinite variety of jarring opinions in other respects, we find them, perhaps without an exception, concurring in a belief of the eternity of mat- ter, or that general substance which constitutes the visible world around us ; which was sometimes conceived to be intelligent in many of its corpuscles, and unintelligent in the rest, as was taught by Democritus ; sometimes intelli- gent as a whole, though unintelligent in its separate parts, as taught both by Aristotle and Plato ; and sometimes unintelligent in all its parts and particles, whether united or disjoined, which formed the dogma of Epicurus. Under some modification or other, however, the doctrine of the eternity of matter appears to have been universal among the philosophers of ancient nations. That a loose and floating idea of its creation, by the energy of a pure intelli- gence, is occasionally to be met with, and which probably existed as a rem- nant of patriarchal tradition, must be admitted; for the Tuscans were generally allowed to have entertained such an. idea, and we find it frequently adverted to and opposed by the leaders of the different schools ; but in no instance does it seem to have been imbodied or promulgated as a doctrine of philosophy. The grand motive for this general belief appears to have been a supposed absurdity in conceiving that any thing could be created out of nothing.* The Epicureans, and many other schools of philosophers, who borrowed it from them, perpetually appeal to this position. It was current, however, among many of the philosophers of Greece at a much earlier period ; for Democritus expressly asserted, according to Diogenes Eaertius, "that nothing could * This, and two or three subsequent passages in the present lecture, are given summarily firom an ampler and more recondite view of the subject in the author's prolegomena to his translation of "thb «A.TURK CP things" A MATERIAL WORLD. 27 spring from nothing, or could ever return to nothing." Epicurus, in the few fragments of his that have reached us, echoed the tenet in the following terms : " Know first of all, that nothing can spring from nonentity." It was thus given by Aristotle : " To suppose what has been created has been created from nothing, is to divest it of all power; for it is a dogma of those who pre- tend thus to think, that every thing must still possess its own nature." From the Greelu it passed to the Romans, and appears as follows in Lucretius : — ubi viderimus nihil posse creari De nihilo, turn, quod sequimur, jam reclius inde Perspiciemus.* Admit this truth, that naught from nothing springs, And ail is clear. And it was thus long afterward reiterated by Persius, as the common doc- trine of his day : — gigni De nihilo nil, In nihilum nil posse reverti.t Naught springs from naught, and can to naught return. The Greeks themselves, however, seem to have received it from the East, and to have become acquainted with it as a branch of gymnosophy ; for it constitutes, even in the present day, a distinct doctrine of Brahminical reli- gion, and is thus urged in univocal terms in the Yajur Veid, in the course of an address to Brahm, or the Supreme Being : " The ignorant assert that the universe, in the beginning, did not exist in its author, and that it was created out of nothing. O ye, whose hearts are pure ! how could something arise out of nothing .^"J This reasoning seems, indeed, to have spread almost universally, and per- haps from the same quarter; for we find many of the Jewish theologians, and not a few of the Christian fathers, too much influenced by Platonic principles,, giving countenance to the same doctrine, though probably not to the full ex- tent of the Platonic school. Thus, the author of the Book of Wisdom, a book written in Greek instead of in Hebrew, and hereby proving his own era as well as the school in which he had studied, expressly asserts that " The almighty hand of the Lord created the world out of unfashioned (amorphous) matter j"" i^ &ix6p4>ov v\t}5;§ while Athenagoras, Tatian, rfheophilus of Antioch, Athanasius, and Gregory Nazianzen, appear to have concurred in the same opinion ; and Justin Martyr affirms it to have been the general creed of his own era : " For that the word of God," says he, ^^ formed the world out of un- fashioned matter^ Moses distinctly asserts, Plato and his adherents maintain, and ourselves have been taught to believe." This is one specimen of the very common attempt in the writings of the fathers to blend the narrative* and doctrines of Moses with the principles of Platonism, which, in truth, had been embraced by many of them before their conversion. The text of Moses, when accurately examined, will be found, if I mistake not, to lead us to a very different conclusion. This text consists of the first and second verses of the book of Genesis, and is as fol^ws ; " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth ; and the earth was with- out form and void, and darkness was upon, the face of the deep (or abyss) ; and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Now in this pas- sage we seem to have a statement of three distinct facts, each following the other in a regular series : first, an absolute creation of the heaven and the earth, which, we are expressly told, took place foremost, or in the beginning; next, the condition of the earth when it was thus primarily created, being amorphous and waste, or in the words before us, " without form and void ;" and, thirdly, the earliest creative effort to reduce it from this shapeless and * De Rer. Nat. i. 157. t Sat. iii. 83. t The passage is quoted from M. Anquetil du Perron's Latin version. The reader may find various similar extracts in Sir William Jones's works, vol. vi. 4to. edit. § Cap. xi. 17. ftS ~ ON MATTER, AND void or waste condition into a state of order and productiveness—" the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." And hence, to maintain from the Mosaic narration that the heaven or the earth existed in a waste and amorphous mass antecedently to the first act of creation, is to derange the series of such narration, and to put that process first which Moses has put second. I enter not here into the correctness of the general rendering, nor into the exact import of the word xi3> "created;" for whatever be the rendering, the same consecutive order of events must be adhered to, and the same conclu- sion must follow. I am perfectly ready, however, to admit that t^'i^ does by no means at all times import an absolute creation out of nothing, but, like create in our own language, that it occasionally denotes the formation of one thing out of another; yet when we are told that, if Moses had really intended to express an absolute creation of the earth out of nothing, he would have used some other word, which should have limited us to this idea, I confidently put it to any critic, what word he could have employed specially appropriated to such a purpose, and limited to such a sense, at the time he wrote 1 or even what word, thus restrained, he could select in our own day, from any spoken language throughout the world ? Words are not invented for an exclusive expression of solitary facts, but for general use. The creation of the world, or of any thing whatever, out of nothing, is a fact of this kind; and no language ever had or ever will have a term precisely struck out for the purpose of re- presenting such an idea, and exclusively appropriated to it : and assuredly there could be no such word at the time Moses first spoke of the fact, and communicated the doctrine ; as, antecedently to this, it could not have been called for. And it will not be questioned, I think, that there is more sound sense end judgment in employing, as on the present occasion, a well under- stood term, that comes nearest to the full extent of the idea intended to be conveyed, than to invent a new word for the purpose, that nobody has ever heard of, and, consequently, that nobody can comprehend the meaning of, till the very term that is thus objected to, or some other word from the vulgar dialect, shall be had recourse to as its interpreter. Yet although, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the word x-)3 is occasionally used synonymously with our own terms, "to make, produce, or cause to be," to import a formation from a sub- stance already in existence, we have sufficient proof that it was also under- stood of old to import emphatically, like our own word "create," an absolute formation out of nothing. Maimonides expressly tells us, that it was thus un- derstood in the passage before us, as well as in all others that have a reference to it, by the ancient Hebrews ; while Origen alfirms, that such was its import among many of the Christian fathers, whatever might be the opinion of the rest, and forcibly objects to the passage just quoted from the Book of Wis- dom, as a book not admitted into the established canon of Scripture. Still, however, the doctrine of a creation of something out of nothing was generally held to be a palpable absurdity ; and a variety of hypotheses were invented to avoid it, of which the three following appear to have been tlie chief; each of them, however, if I mistake not, plunging us into an absurdity ten timekeeper and more inextricable. The first is that of an absolute anrl independMt eternity of matter, to which I have already referred ; the second, that of its emanation from the essence of the Creator; the third that of idealism, or the non-existence of ^material world. I have already remarked, that the- first of these was modified under the plastic hands of different philosophers of antiquity into a great variety of shapes ; and hence, in some form or other, is to be traced through most of the Grecian schools, whether of the Ionic or Italic sect — or, in other words, whether derived from Thales or from Pythagoras. In no shape, however, is it for a moment capable of standing the test of sober inquiry. We may re- gard matter as essentially and eternally intelligent, or as essentially and eter- nally unintelligent ; as essentially intelligent in its several parts, or as essen- tially intelligent as a whole. The dilemnjia is equal in all these cases. Mat- ter cannot be intelligent as a whole, without being intelligent in every atom. A MATERIAL WORLD. «^ for a concourse of unintelligent atoms can never produce intelligence ; but it it be intelligent in every atom, then are we perpetually meeting with unintel- ligent compounds resulting from, intelligent elements. If, again, matter be esspQtially eternal, but at the same time essentially unintelligent, both sepa- rately and collectively, then, an intelligent principle being traced in the world, and even in man himself, we are put into possession of two coeternal inde- pendent principles, destitute of all relative connexion and common medium of action. The SECOND HYPOTHESIS to which I have adverted is not less crowded with difficulties and absurdities ; but it has a more imposing appearance, and has hence, in many periods and among many nations, been more popular, and was perpetually leading away a multitude of the philosophers from the pre- ceding system. According to this hypothesis, the universe is an emanation or extension of the essence of the Creator. Now, under this belief, however modified, the Creator himself is rendered material ; or, in other words, mat- ter itself, or the visible substance of the world, is rendered the Creator ; and we merely shift the burden, without getting rid of it. There can be no diffi- culty in tracing this doctrine to its source. It runs, as I have already ob- served, through the whole texture of that species of materialism which con- stitutes the two grand religions of the East — Brahmism and Buddhism ; and was undoubtedly conveyed by Pythagoras, and, perhaps, antecedently, by Orpheus (if such an individual ever existed, which Cicero* seems to have disbelieved, from a passage of Aristotle, not to be found, however, in any of his writings that have descended to us), into different parts of Greece, in con- sequence of their communications with the gymnosophists. From Pythago- ras it descended to Plato and Xenophanes, and, under different modifications, became a tenet of the academic and eleatic schools. I have already quoted the principle on which it is founded, from M. Anquetil du Perron's transla- tion of the Oupnek'-hat, or Abridgment of the Veids ;t the passage at large is as follows, and developes the entire doctrine as well as the principle : " The whole universe is the Creator, proceeds from the Creator, exists in him, and returns to him. The ignorant assert that the universe, in the begin- ning, did not exist in its Author, and that it was created out of nothing. ye, whose hearts are pu;e ! how could something arise out of notliing 1 This First Being alone, and without likeness, was the all in the beginning: he could multiply himself under different forms ; he created fire from his essence, which is light," &c. So, in another passage of the Yagur Veid, "Thou art Brahma! thou art Vishnu! thou art Kodra ! thou art Prajapat ! thou art De'ionta ! thou art air ! thou art Andri ! thou art the moon ! thou art substance ! thou art Djam ! thou art the earth ! thou art the world ! lord of the world! to thee humble adoration! O soul of the world! thou who super- intendest the actions of the world ! who destroyest the world ! who createst the pleasures of the world ! O life of the world ! the visible and invisible worlds are the sport of thy power ! Thou art the sovereign, O universal soul ! to thee humble adoration! thou, of all mysteries the most mysterious! thou who art exalted beyond all perception or imagination ! thou who hast neither beginning nor end ! to thee humble adoration !"J As this doctrine became embraced by many of the Greek and Roman phi- losophers, it is not to be wondered at that it captivated still more of their poets ; and hence we find it, with perhaps the exception of Empedocles and Lucretius, more or less pervading all of them, from Orpheus to Virgil. It is in reference to this that Aratus opens his Phenomena with that beautiful passage which is so forcibly appealed to by St. Paul in the course of his ad- dress to the Athenians on Mar's Hill,§ of which I will beg your acceptance of the following version : — From God we spring, whom man can never trace, Though seen, heard, tasted, felt in every place ; • De Nat. Deor. 1. i. t Tom. i. Paris, 1802 t See Transl. of Lucr. i. p. 282. $ Acts, xvii. 28. 90 ON MATTER, AND The loneliest path, by mortal seldom trod. The crowded city, all is full of God ; , Oceans and lakes, for God is all in all, And we are all his offspring.* So .Eschylus, in a passage still stronger in point, and imbued with the full spirit of Brahmism : — Jupiter is the air ; Jupiter is the earthy Jupiter is the heaven ; • All is Jupiter.f But perhaps the passage most express is one contained in a very ancient ' Greek poem entitled De Mundo, and ascribed to Orpheus, in the original highly beautiful, and of which, for want of a better, I must trouble you with the fol lowing translation : — Jove first exists, whose thunders roll above ; Jove last, Jove midmost, uU proceeds from Jove. Female is Jove, iinmortal Jove is male ; Jove the broad earth — the heaven's irradiate pale. Jove is the boundless spirit, Jove the fire That warms the world with feeling and desire. The sea is Jove, the sun, the lunar ball ; Jove king supreme, the sovereign source of all. All power is his ; to him all glory give. For his vast form embraces all that live.J This doctrine has not been confined to ancient times, or to the boundaries of India and the republics of Greece and Rome ; it has descended through every age, and has its votaries even in the present day. M. Anquetil du Per- ron, whom I have already spoken of, as the Latin translator of the Oupnek'- hat, or Upanishad, from the Persian version, has himself distinctly avowed an inclination to it ; the writings of M. Neckar are full of it ;^ and M. Isnard has professedly advanced and supported it in his work, " Sur I'lmmortalite de TAme," printed at Paris in 1803. I do not know that it exists at present to any great extent in our own country ; but if we look back to something less than a century, we shall find it current among the philosophers of various schools, and especially that of which Lord Bolingbroke has been placed at the head ; and hence running through every page of the celebrated Essay on Man, in the composition of which it is probable that Mr. Pope was imposed upon by his noble patron, and was not sufliciently alive to the full tendency of its principles. The critics on the Continent, however, perceived the ten- dency on its first appearance ; and hence its author was generally, though in- correctly, denominated the modern Lucretius, and the poem itself was re- garded as one of the most dangerous productions that ever issued from the press ; as a most insidious attempt, by confining the whole of our views, our reasonings, and our expectations to the present state of things, to undermine * 'E>c Aibi afyxfiiit(yOa, rbv oiSiiror^ avSpes tZfitv ''Apl)TjTov uearal 6e Aids iraaai /lev ayviai, llaaai 6' avOpdTTuJv dyopai ixeaifi 6f ^dXatrcra, Kot Ai/icvcs" Trdvrr] de Aids K£XP^I^£da Trdvres' Tow ydp Kal ycvos iafiev. Lib. i. 1. t Zcvs ecTiv aWfip, Zevs TE yf)' • Zevs if ovpavbsi Zevs Tct TrdvTa. X Zeis TrpSroj yeviro, Zeis ScTaros apxiKEnaivos' Zws KE(})a\h, Ztvs nhaa' Aids 6' cK irdvra ThvKTai' Zcts aparjv yeviTO, Zeiss afiSporos errXero vvix£ life and happiness to infinite orders of beings ; while every one may, at the same time, be as distinct from every other, as the whole may be from matter, or as matter is from what, without knowing any thing farther of, we commonly denominate spirit. Spirit, as generally used among modern metaphysicians, is, to say the most of it, but a negative term employed to express something that is not matter ; but there may be ten thousand some- things, and substrates of being, and moral excellence and felicity, which are not matter, none of which, however, we can otherwise characterize. Yet why, between all or any of these and matter itself, there should be such an utter opposition and discrepancy as was contended for by Des Cartes, and has since been maintained by most metaphysicians, I cannot possibly conjecture ; nor conceive why it should be universally thought necessary, as it still ap- pears to be thought, that the essence of the eternal Creator himself must in- dispensably consist of the essence of some one of the orders of beings whom he has created. — Why may it not be as distinct from that of an archangel as from that of a mortal 1 from the whole of these various substances, which I have just supposed, and which we cannot otherwise contemplate or charac terize than by the negative term Spirit, as it is from matter, which is more im- mediately submitted to our eyes, and constitutes the substrate of our own being and sensations 1 Matter, then, we are compelled to regard as a substance created out of no- thing by an intelligent first cause ; himself immaterial, self-existent, eternal, and alone ; and of matter the whole visible universe is composed. It is ar- ranged and regulated by an extensive code of laws, of which, however, we know but a few ; and which give birth to a multiplicity of concrete forms, under which alone we are capable of contemplating it : for no effort has hitherto succeeded in ultimately enucleating the compound and tracing it to its elementary particles. We may divide and subdivide as we please ; but when we have followed it up into its subtlest rudiments, its most retiring principles, by the aid of the best glasses which the best art of man can pro- vide for us, we learn no more of the real nature of its primitive essence than we do from an acorn or a pebble. But we are as ignorant of matter in its total scope as we are of it in its elementary particles. We can examine it as it exists in the globe, but the globe on which we tread is but as a drop to the ocean ; the earth is surrounded by other planets, by other worlds, by other systems of worlds ; all of which, we have reason to believe, are composed of the same substance, and regu- lated by the same laws. We stretch out our view on every side, but there are still worlds beyond us ; we call in the aid of the best glasses, but they still A MATERIAL WORLD. 33 surpass our reach ; till at length we resign ourselves to imagination, and in the confusion of our thoughts and the weakness of our language, we speak ' of space as being filled, and of matter as being infinite. This view of the subject has given rise to a variety of magnificent specu- lations, at which I shall just glance, without meaning to'dwell upon them. Is all this immensity of matter, this universe of worlds within worlds, and sys- tems within systems, the result of one single fiat of the great Creator 1 Did the Power that spake it into existence give it from the first the general order and harmony and perfection that prevail at present ? or did he merely produce a vast central and aggregate chaos, as the rude basis of future worlds, the parent-stock or storehouse from which they have since issued by a series of distinct efforts and evolutions ? or, thirdly, has every separate system of worlds, or every separate planet, been the result of a separate birth, and a separate act of creation ? It is of little importance which of these splendid fancies we adopt ; for aM of them are but fancies, and built upon conjecture alone. In a course of philosophical inquiry, however, it becomes us to be acquainted with their ex- istence ; and to be informed, beyond this, that the second is the speculation which has been more generally espoused by philosophers ; that, I mean, which conceives the existence of a central and primary chaos, from which all the heavenly bodies have successively proceeded, of whatever kind or description, whether suns, stars, comets, or planets ; though the mode by which such efforts have been produced has been variously accounted for. Des Cartes seems to have supposed stars to have preceded planets in the order of creation ; and that the earth was at first a star, and continued so till rendered opaque by having its bright surface incrusted with grosser and untransparent matter, and drawn into the vortex of the solar system ; and Leibnitz adopted his conjecture. Whiston conceived it to have been originally a comet, the rude materials of which constituted the chaos of the earth ; and Buffbn, to have consisted of a comet and a portion of the sun's exterior limb or edge carried off" by such comet, in consequence of its having given the sun an oblique stroke in the course of its orbit ; the chaos of the earth being thus formed by the vapoury substance of the impinging comet uniting with a por- tion of the sun's igneous mass ; and in this manner he endeavoured to account for the production of every other planet of the solar system. But of all this class of speculations (for assuredly they deserve no higher character), the most splendid and comprehensive is that which was first em- braced by Dr. Herschel, and was perhaps an improvement on a prior hypo- thesis of M. Buffon ; but which, so precarious is the life of a philosophical hypothesis, he himself discarded, not many years afterward, for something newer. It supposes the existence of an immense mass of opaque but igneous matter, seated in the centre of universal nature ; that the sun and every other star were originally portions of this common substance ; that it is volcanic in its structure, and subject to eruptions of inconceivable force and violence ; that the sun and every other luminary of every other system were thrown forth from it at different times, by the operation of such projectile powers ; and that these, possessing in a great degree the qualities of the parent body, threw forth afterward at different times, by means of similar volcanoes, portions of their own substance, each of which, by the common laws of projectiles, assumed an orbicular motion, constituted a distinct planet, and became the chaos of a rising world.* Hence, according to this comprehensive and daring hypothesis, the existing universe has acquired its birth; hence new systems of worlds are perpetually rising into being, and new planets are added to sys- tems already created. But worlds and systems of worlds are not only perpetually creating, they are also perpetually diminishing and disappearing. It is an extraordinary fact, that within the period of the last century, not less than thirteen stars in different constellations, none of them below the sixth magnitude, seem totally * Phil. Trans, vol. Ixxriv. C 34 ON THE ELEMiSNTARr AND CONSTITUENT to have perished : forty to have changed their magnitude by becoming either much larger or much smaller; and ten new stars to have supplied the place of those that are lost.* Some of these changes may perhaps be accoumed for by supposing a proper motion in the solar or siderial systems by which the relative positions of several of the heavenly bodies have varied. J3ut this ex planation, though it may apply to several of the cases, will by no means apply to all of them ; in many instances it is unquestionable, that the stars them- selves, the supposed habitations of other kinds or orders of intelligent beings, together with the different planets by which it is probable they were sur- rounded, and to which they may have given light and fructifying seasons, as the sun gives light and fruitfulness to the earth, have utterly vanished, and the spots which they occupied in the heavens have become blanks. What has thus befallen other systems will assuredly befall our own; of the time and the manner we know nothing, but the fact is incontrovertible ; it is fore- told by revelation, it is inscribed in the heavens, u is felt throughout the earth. Such is the awful and daily text; what then ought to be the com ment ? LECTURE II. ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT PRINCIPLES OP THINGS. Our study for the present lecture is the first or simplest principles of bodies, so far as we have hitherto been able to obtain any degree of knowledge upon this recondite inquiry, and the means by which they are combined or separated from each other, so as to produce different kinds and orders of sensible objects. A very slight contemplation of nature is sufficient to show us that matter under every visible form and modification, when regarded in its general mass, is perpetually changing ; alternately living, dying, and reviving ; decomposing into elements that elude our pursuit ; and recombining into new shapes and energies and modes of existence. The purest and most compact metals be- come tarnished or converted into a calx or oxide on its surface, and the most durable and crystallized rocks crumble into granules ; and the matter constituting these oxides and granules, by an additional series of operations, is still farther decomposed, till every vestige of their late character is lost, and the elementary principles of which they consisted are appropriated to other purposes, and spring to view under other forms and faculties. The same process takes place in the organized world. The germ becomes a seed, the seed a sapling, the sapling a tree ; the embryo becomes an infant, the infant a youth, the youth a man: and having thus ascended the scale of maturity, both, in like manner, begin the downward path to decay ; and, so far as relates to the visible materials of which they consist, both at length moul- der into one common elementary mass, and furnish fresh fuel for fresh gene- rations of animal or vegetable existence ; so that all is in motion, all is striving to burst the bonds of its present state ; not an atom is idle ; and the frugal eco- nomy of nature makes one set of materials answer the purpose of many, and moulds it into every diversified figure of being and beaut^ and happiness. It has hence been said, that matter is necessarily corruptible, and is per- petually changing from its intrinsic nature, and that the physical and moral evils of life are mainly attributable to this perverse and incorrigible propen- sity. Such was the doctrine of many of the most eminent schools of ancient philosophy, both of Greece and Asia, and such continues to be the doctrine of various schools of the present day ; a doctrine which has not unfrequently been considered as of the utmost importance, and as forming the best defence of the benevolence of the Supreme Architect ; who, we are told, notwith- • Bee Dr. Herschel's Observations compared with Flamsleed's, Phil. Trana. vbl. IxxiiL art. 17 PRINCIPLES OF THINGS. 35 standing all the pains and calamities, the tumults and disorders of nature, has made the most of matter that it would admit of, and has tempered it not only with a positive predominancy of good over evil, but with as much and as real good as could possibly be infused into it. To argue thus is to revive the theory of pure Platonism, far too extensively introduced into the Christian world, as I hinted in our last lecture, upon the first conversion of the Grecian philosophers, who had been chiefly students in the Platonic school ; and to suppose the existence of matter as an inde- pendent and eternal principle. " God," says the sublime but naistaken foun- der of this school, " wills, as far as it is possible, every thing good and nothing evil ;"* " but it cannot be that evil should be destroyed, for there must always be a something contrary to good,"f a lvn acquainted with their respective natures, every beast of the field and every fowl of the air; to all of whom he gave names as soon as their respective characters became known to him. Subsequently to which (for at this time, v. 20, there was not found a help-meet for him), he was plunged into a deep sleep, when the woman was formed out of a part of himself, which completed the creative labour of this last day alone. That the same Almighty Power who created light by a word, saying 11X "TT'I mx TT' " be light ! and hght was,"* could have ruled the whole of this, or even iormed the universe, by a word, as well, is not to be doubted ; but as both the book of revelation and the book of nature concur in telling us that such was not the fact, and that the work of creation went on progres- sively, and under the influence of a code of natural laws, we are called upon to examine into the march of this marvellous progress by the laws of nature jeferred to, and to understand it by their operations. Nor is it more deroga- tory to Him with whom a thousand years are a^s one day, and one day as a thousand years, to suppose that He allotted six hundred or six thousand years to the completion of his design, than that He took six solar days for the purpose ; and surely there is something far more magnificent in conceiv- ing the world to have gradually attained form, order, and vitality, by the meic operation of powers communicated to it in a state of chaos, through a single command, which instantly took effect and commenced, and persevered and perfected the design proposed, than in conceiving the Almighty engaged in personal and continuous exertions, though for a more limited period of time. Thus, in progressive order, uprose the stupendous system of the world : the bright host of morning stars shouted together on its birth-day; and the eternal Creator looked down with complacency on the finished fabric, and ** saw that it was good." LECTURE VIII. ON ORGANIZED BODIES, AND THE STRUCTURE OF PLANTS COMPARED WITH THAT OF ANIMALS. From the unorganized world, which has formed the main subject of our last two lectures, let us now rise a step higher in the scale of creation ; and ascend from insentient matter to life, under the various modifications it as- sumes, and the means by which it is upheld and transmitted. If I dig up a stone, and remove it from one place to another, the stone will suffer no alteration by the change of place ; but if I dig up a plant and remove it, the plant will instantly sicken, and perhaps die. What is the cause of this • Gen. i. 3 F 82 ON ORGANIZED BODIES. difference 1 Both have proceeded from a minute molecule, a nucleus or a germ ; both have a tendency to preserve their derivative or family config'ura- tion, and, both have been augmented and perfected from one common soil. If I break the stone to pieces, every individual fragment will be found pos- sessed of the characteristic powers of the aggregate mass ; it is only altered in its shape and magnitude : but if I tear off a branch from the plant, the branch will instantly wither, and lose the specific properties of the parent stock. No external examination, or reasoning d priori will explain this difference of effect. It is only by a minute attention to the relative histories, interior structures, and modes of growth of the two substances, that we are enabled to offer any thing like a satisfactory answer ; and by such examination we find that the stone has been produced fortuitously, has grovyn by external accretion, and can only be destroyed by mechanical or chemical force ; while the plant has been produced by generation, has grown by nutrition, and been destroyed by death : that it has been actuated by an internal power, and pos- sessed of parts mutually dependent and contributDry to each other's functions. In what this internal power consists we know not. Differently modified, we meet with it in both plants and animals ; and wherever we find it we de- nominate it the j^rmapZe o/^ /i/e, and distinguish the individual substance it actuates by the name of an organized being. And hence, all the various bodies in nature arrange themselves under the two divisions of organized and unorganized : the former possessing an origin by generation, growth by nutrition, and a termination by death; and the latter a fortuitous origin, ex- ternal growth, and a termination by chemical or mechanical force. This distinction is clear, and it forms a boundary that does not seem to be broken in upon by a single exception. In what, indeed, that wonderful power of crystallization consists, or by what means it operates, which gives a definite and geometrical figure to the nucleus or primary molecule of every distinct species of crystal; and which, with an accuracy that laughs at all human precision, continues to impress the same figure upon the growing crystal through every stage of its enlargement, thus naturally separating one spe- cies from another, and enabling us to discriminate each by its geometrical shape alone — we know not : but even here, where we meet with an approach towards that formative effort, that internal action and consent of parts which peculiarly characterize the living substance, there is not the smallest trace of an organized arrangement ; while the origin is clearly fortuitous, and the growth altogether external, from the mere apposition of surrounding matter. So, on the other hand, in corals, sponges, and fuci, v/hich form the lowest natural orders among animals and vegetables, and the first of which seems to constitute the link that connects the animal and vegetable with the mmeral world, — for it has in different periods been ascribed to each, — simple as is their structure, and obtuse as is the living principle that actuates them, we have still sufficient marks of an organized make ; of an origin by generation, the gene- ration of buds or bulbs, of growth by nutrition, and of termination by death. But the animal world differs from the vegetable as widely as both these differ from the mineral. How are we to distinguish the organization of ani- mals from that of plants 1 — In what does their difference consist ] and here I am obliged to confess, that the boundary is by no means so clearly marked out ; and that we are for the most part compelled to characterize the differ- ence rather by description than by definition. Nothing, indeed, is easier than to distinguish animals and vegetables in their more perfect states : we can make no mistake between a horse and a horse-chestnut tree, a butterfly and a blade of grass. We behold the plant confined to a particular spot, deriving the whole of its nutriment from such spot, and affording no mark either of consciousness or sensation ; we behold the animal, on the contrary, capable of moving at pleasure from one place to another, and exhibiting not only marks of consciousness and sensation, but often of a very high degree of mtelligence as well. Yet, if we hence lay down consciousness or sen. sation, and locomotion, as the two characteristic features of animal life, we AND THE STRUCTURE OF PLANTS. 83 uhall soon find our definition untenable ; for while the Linnaean class of worms affords instances, in perhaps every one of its orders, of animals destitute of locomotion, and evincing no mark of consciousness or sensation, there are various species of plants that are strictly locomotive, and that discover a much nearer approach to a sensitive faculty. However striking, therefore, the distinctions between animal and vegetable life, in their more perfect and elaborate forms, as we approach the contiguous extremities of the two kingdoms we find these distinctions fading awav so gradually, Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade, and the mutual advances so close and intimate, that it becomes a task of no common difficulty to draw a line of distinction between them, or to determine to wluch of them an individual may belong. And it is probable, that that ex- traordinary order of beings called zoophytes, or animated plants, as the term imports, and which by Woodward and Beaumont were arranged as minerals,* and by Ray and Lister as vegetables, have at last obtained an introduction into the animal kingdom,! l^ss on account of any other property they possess, than of their affording, on being burnt, an ammoniacal smell like that which issues from burnt bones, or any other animal organs, and which is seldom or never observed from burnt vegetable substances of a decided and unquestion- able character. Ammonia, however, upon destructive distillation, is met with in small quantities in particular parts of most if not of all vegetables, though never perhaps in the whole plant. Thus it occurs slightly in the wood or vegetable fibre ; in extract, gum-mucilage, camphor, resin, and balsam ; gum- resin, gluten, and caoutchouc : besides those substances that are common to both animals and vegetables, as sugar, fixed oil, albumen, fibrine, and gelatine. There are some plants, however, that even in their open exposure to a burning heat give forth an ammoniacal smell closely approaching to that of animal substance. The clavarias or club-tops, and many other funguses, do this. But a distinction in the degree of odour may even here be observed, if accurately attended to. Yet the clavarias were once regarded as zoophytes, and are arranged by Millar in the same division as the corals and corallines.^ M. de Mirbel, in his very excellent treatise " On the Anatomy and Physio- logy of Plants," has endeavoured to lay down a distinction between the ani- mal and the vegetable world in the following terms, and it is a distinction which seems to be approved by Sir Edward Smith ; " Plants alone have a power of drawing nourishment from inorganic matter, mere earths, salts, or airs ; substances incapable of nourishing animals, which only feed on what is or has been organized matter, either of a vegetable or animal nature. So that it should seem to be the office of vegetable life alone to transform dead matter into organized living bodies."'^ Whence another learned French phy- siologist, M. Richerand, has observed that the aliments by which animals are nourished are selected from vegetable or animal substances alone; the elen>ents of the mineral kingdom being too heterogeneous to the nature of animals to be converted into their own substance without being first elabo- rated by vegetable life ; whence plants, says M. Richerand, may be considered as the laboratory in which nature prepares aliment for animals. 1| * Phil. Trans, xiii. 277. f Parkinson's Organic Remains, i. 23, ii. 157, 158. t Several specii s of this genus of fungi have very singular properties : thus the c. hoBmatodes has so near a resemblance to tanned leather, though somewhat thinner and softer, as to be named oak-leather tlub-top, from its being chiefly found in the clefts and hollows of oak-trees. In Ireland, it is employed as leather to dress wounds with ; and, in Virginia, to spread plasters upon. There are some cryptogamic plants, and especially among the mosses, that can be hardly made to burn by -uy means. Such is the fontinella antipyreticn, so called on this very account ; and which is hence In common use among the Scandinavians, as a lining for their chimney sides, and the inside of their chim- ney?, by way of preservation. So that here we have an approach to mineral instead of to animal sub- stances, and especially to the asbestos and oiher species of talcose enrths. There is one species of byssus, another curious genus of mo >.ses, that t;ikes the specific name of asbestos from this very property. It is found in the Swedish eojjper mines of Westmann-land in large quantities, and when exposed to a red heat, mstcad of heing consumed, is vitrified. ^ Traite d'Anatomie et dc Physiologie Veg^tale, i. 19. El(iineas de Physiologie, &c. cap de la Digestion F3 84 ON ORGANIZED BODIES, I concur with these elegant writers in admitting the beautiful and harmo- nious relation so obviously established between minerals, plants, and ani- mals; but it is, at the same time impossible to allow of the distinction between vegetable and animal life here laid down; because, first, vegetables are by no means nourished exclusively, as, indeed, M. Mirbel himself frankly allows, from terrene elements ; and, secondly, because animals are as little nourished exclusively from vegetable materials. Among insects, worms, and even fishes, there are many tribes that derive by far the greater portion of their increase from the mineral kingdom alone ; while even in man him- self, air, water, common salt, and lime, which last is almost always an ingre- dient of common salt, are substances indispensable to his growth, and are derived immediately from the mineral kingdom. In laying down, therefore, a distinctive character for animals and plants, we ave compelled to derive it from the more perfect of each kind ; and to leave the extreme cases to be determined by the chemical components elimi- nated on their decomposition. And under this broadview of the subject I now proceed to observe, that while they agree in an origin by generation, a growth by nutrition, and a termination by death ;' in an organized structure, and an internal living principle ; they differ in the powers with which the living principle is endowed, and the effects it is capable of exerting. In the plant it is limited, so far as we are capable of tracing it, to the proper- ties of irritability, contractility, and simple instincts; in the animal it su- peradds to these properties those of muscularity, sensation, and voluntary motion. There have been, indeed, and there still are, physiologists who, — not ad- verting to the extraordinary effects which the power of irritability is capable of producing when roused by different stimulants, and under the influence of an internal and all-pervading principle of life, operating by instinctive laws and instinctive actions, or those, as we shall show hereafter, which are spe- cially directed to the growth, preservation, or reproduction of a living frame, or any particular part of it, — have conceived plants as well as animals to be possessed of sensation and muscular fibres ; and as sensation is the result of a particular organ, and the organ producing it is connected with various others, have at the same time liberally endowed them with a brain, a heart, and a stomach ; and have very obligingly permitted them to possess ideas, and the means of communicating ideas ; to fall in love and to marry, and thus far to exercise the distinctive faculty of volition. The whole of which, how ever, is mere fancy, grounded altogether upon an erroneous and contracted view of the effects of the principle of irritability when powerfully excited by the influence of light, heat, air, moisture, and other causes. In reality, such kinds of loves and intermarriages are not peculiar to plants, but are common to all nature : they exist between atom and atom, and the philosopher calls them attractions ; they exist between congeries and congeries, and the chemist calls them affinities ; they exist between the iron and the loadstone, and every one denominates them magnetism. Nor let it be said that in these cases of mutual union we have nothing more than a mere aggregation of body ; for we have often a third substance produced, and actually geiierated, as the result of such union, /ar more discrepant from the parent substances both in quality and feature than are ever to be met with in vegetable or animal life. Thus, if an acid be married to an alkali, the pro- geny brought forth will be a neutral salt, possessing not the remotest resem- blance to the virtues of either of its parents. In like manner, if alkohol be married to any of the more powerful acids, and the banns be solemnized over an altar of fire, but not otherwise, the offspring engendered will be a sub- stance called ether, equally unlike both its parents in its disposition. But the form or features are as frequently changed as the temper. Thus, if we unite olive oil, which is a liquid, with some of the oxides of lead, whk'.h are pow- ders, the result is neither a liquid nor a powder, nor a medium of the two, which would be a paste, but the hard adhesive plaster usually called diachy- jon. So, again, if muriatic acid, which is a liquid, sport in dalliance with th^s AND THE STRUCTURE OF PLANTS. d5 volatile nymph ammonia, which is an invisible gas, the fruit of their embraces will be still more extraordinary in point of form, for the gas and the liquid will engender that solid substance commonly known by the name of sal am- moniac, or, in the new nomenclature, muriate of ammonia. In like manner, our common smelling salts, or carbonate of ammonia, though a hard, concrete crystallization, are the mere result of the union of two invisible gases, am- monia and carbonic acid gas, or fixed air ; and which, having duly paid their court to each other, give birth to this solid substance. But in all this it may be said that we have no instance of a multiplication of species ; nor in reality of any thing more than the production of a third substance, issuing, like the fabled phoenix of antiquity, out of the ashes or decomposition of the parent stock ; yet in many cases we have instances of multiplication also — and instances far more extraordinary and far more prolific than are ever to be found in the multiplication of either animals or vegetables. Such especially are those wonderful increases that occur in the case of ferments and of contagions. A few particles of yest lying dormant in a dessert-spoon are introduced into a barrel of beer, or of any other fer- mentable fluid, and in a few hours propagate their kind through the largest vessel that was ever manufactured ; so that at length every particle of the fluid is converted into a substance of their own nature. A few pestilential miasms are thrown forth from a stagnant marsh or a foul prison, and give birth instantaneously to myriads and myriads of the same species of particles, till the atmosphere becomes impregnated with them through a range of many miles in diameter. Two or three particles of the matter of plague are packed up in a bag of cotton at Aleppo, and are many months afterward set at liberty in Great Britain. Aided by the stimulus of the air, they instantly set to work, and procreate so rapidly, that the whole country in less than a week is laid prostrate by the enormity of their increase. Now the terms loves and marriages will just as well apply to all these as to the vegetable creation. The cause of the respective unions, and of the changes that take place in consequence of such unions, are in both cases nothing more than elective attractions : in the mineral and gaseous kingdoms, produced by what chemists have denominated the principle oi affinity, and in the vegetable by what physiologists have called the principle of irritability; a principle far nicer and nobler and more delicate than that of affinity, and under the influence of an internal, an all-pervading, and identifying vital power, capable, as differently excited by different stimulants, of producing far nicer and nobler, more delicate and more complicated effects ; but which in itself is not more different from the principle of affinity ih^n it is from that' of sensation. No experiment or observation has hitherto proved vegetables to be pos- sessed of any higher powers than those of irritability, contractility, and those instinctive energies which we shall hereafter show are dependent upon the principle of life. It is almost superfluous to observe, in this place, that there are also powers and faculties of a much higher character than any I have yet noticed, apper- taining to the nobler ranks of animals; for at present I am only pointing out the leading characters by which animals in general may be distinguished from vegetables in general, and shall have sufficient opportunities, as we pro- ceed, of adverting to these additional faculties, and of investigating their respective excellencies. Our immediate concern, then, is with vegetable life ; its general laws, structure, and phenomena. And upon this subject 1 shall touch as briefly as possible, intending it as a mere vestibule or introduction to the more impor lant study of animal philosophy. Plants, then, like animals, as I have already observed, are produced by generation, and through the medium of ova, or eggs. The exceptions to this common rule are few, and they occur equally in both kingdoms. The egg of the plant is its seed ; a doctrine not of modern origin, but taught and un- ierstood quite as clearly, and with as close a reference to the rise of animal 86 ON ORGANIZED BODIES. life, by the ancients, as in the present day.* The seed is sometimes naked, but more generally covered with a pericarp, whence plants become naturally divided into the two grand arrangements of gymnospermous and angiosper- mous. The pericarp is of various forms and structures ; and of these the more common are the legume, silique, or silicle, being merely varieties of what, among ourselves, is denominated in popular language cod or pod ; the loment which is a kind of pod not so frequent as either of the former, but of which we have an instance in the mimosas and the cassis. Jistula ; the pome or core-apple, of which we have instances in the common apple and the pear; the drupe, or stone-apple, instances of which occur to us in the plum, cherry, and almond ; the glume or chaff; the berry ; the acinus or conglomerate berry, as in the rasp ; the nut ; and the capsule. f Stripping off this outer covering, we find the seed to consist internally of a corculunii or heartlet, and externally of a fleshy or parenchymatous sub- stance, surrounded with a double integument, sometimes single, sometimes .bifid, and sometimes more than bifid ; and hence denominated monocotyle- donous, dicotyledonous, polycotyledonous. In popular language these are called seed-lobes, or seed-leaves : and in the phaseolous vulgaris, or common kidney-bean, we have as striking an instance as in any plant, and which every one must have noticed, just peeping in two distinct segments above the ground, as soon as the seed has begun to germinate. It was very generally supposed formerly, and is still supposed by some botanists, that the seeds of various orders of plants, as the mosses, fungi, and algae, are acotyledonous, or totally destitute of a cotyledon of any kind. But as many, perhaps most, plants of this kind have of late been found to possess some such parenchyma, we have great reason for believing that this organ is universal, and that there is no such thing as an acotyledonous seed in the whole vegetable kingdom. In reality, the cotyledon appears absolutely necessary for the germination and future growth of the seed, and may hence be denominated its lungs or pla- centule. Like the perfect plant, it possesses lymphatics and air-vessels. Through the former of these it absorbs the moisture of the soil into which it is plunged, decomposes a part of it into its elementary principles, and conducts those principles, together with the undecomposed water, to the corcle or heartlet, which becomes stimulated to the process of germination by the oxy- gen thus set at liberty. Mrs. Ibbetson has attempted to prove that the cotyledon is of no use whatever for the purpose of nourishment ; which, according to her observa- tions, is only conveyed to the corcle by what she calls a system of nourishing "vessels, altogether distinct from the cotyledon. It is not very clear, however, what is here meant by nourishing vessels ; nor can we for a moment admit that so large an organ as the cotyledon, and apparently so important, can be designed for no other oflice than merely, as this lady conjectures, to screen the primordial leaves from the light and air on their first formation."! According to Mr. Mirbel's experiments, as detailed in the Memoirs of the National Institute, the soil and the albumen in the cotyledon are both con- cerned in the developement of the germ ; and both continue to contribute conjointly till the albumen is entirely absorbed: at which time the plant has strength enough to derive from the soil or the atmosphere the nourishment it requires from this period. In this respect the albumen of the cotyledon cor- responds with the vitellus of the hen's egg. In marine plants that are destitute of a radicle, as the water caltrop (trapa * Ourw 6' woTOKet jxiKpa SivSpea TrpZrov iXalag. So plants, like animals, uprise to air, Anil in green eggs young olives olives bear And upon this beautiful verse, which he has preserved as a fragment, Aristotle remarks, t6 rt yile one com- mon derivation from one common and Almighty Cause. Having, therefore. VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE. 95 in our last lecture, submitted to your attention a brief outline of the structure of plants, I shall now proceed to point out a few of these general resem- blances, and shall endeavour to select those which are either most curious or most prominent.* Plants, then, like animals, are 'produced by ordinary generation; and though we meet with various instances of production by the generation of buds and bulbs, or of slips and offsets, the parallelism, instead of being hereby diminished, is only drawn the closer; for we meet with just as many instances of the same varieties of propagation among animals. Thus the hydra, or polype, as it is more generally called, the asterias, and several spe- cies of the leech, as the hlrudo viridis, for example, are uniformly propagated by lateral sections, or pullulating slips or offsets;! while almost every genus of zoophytic worms is only capable of increase by buds, bulbs, or layers ; and some of these animals, like the houseleek and various grasses, by spontane- ous separation. In effect, most of the kinds now referred to, whether ani- mals or vegetables, may be regarded less as single individuals than as assem- blages or congeries of individuals ; for in most of them every part exists dis- tinctly of every other part, and is often a miniature of the general form. The various branches of a tree offer a similar example, and present a striking contrast with the various branches of a perfect animal. In the latter every distinct part contributes to one perfect whole : the arm of a man has no heart, no lungs, no stomach ; but the branch of a tree has a complete system of or- gans to itself, and is hence capable in many cases of existing by itself, and producing buds, layers, and other kinds of offspring, when separated from the trunk. The different parts of the polype are equally independent, and are hence equally capable of a separate increase. It is owing to this princi- ple that we are able to graft and bud : and M. Trembly, having applied the same kind of operation to the animals we are novv speaking of, found that, by numerous grafts of different kinds upon each other, he was enabled to pro- duce monsters as wild and extravagant as the most visionary poet or fabulist ever dreamed of. The blood of plants, like that of animals, instead of being simple is com- pound, and consists of a great multitude of compacter corpuscles, globules for the most part, but not always globules, floating in a looser and almost diaphanous fluid. From this common current of vitality, plants, like animals, secrete a variety of substances of different, and frequently of opposite powers and qualities, — substances nutritive, medicinal, or destructive. And, as in animal life, so also in vegetable, it is often observed that the very same tribe, or even individual, that in some of its organs secretes a wholesome aliment, in other organs secretes a deadly poison. As the viper pours into the reser- voir situated at the bottom of his hollow tusk a fluid fatal to other animals, while in the general substance of his body he offers us not only a healthful nutriment, but, in some sort, an antidote for the venom of his jaws : so the Jatropha manihot, or Indian cassava, secretes a juice or oil extremely poison- ous in its root, while its leaves are regarded as a common esculent in the country, and are eaten like spinach-leaves among ourselves ; though the root, when deprived, by exposure to heat, of this poisonous and volatile oil, is one of the most valuable foods in the world, and gives bread to the natives, and tapioca as an article of commerce. Its starch is like that of the finest wheat- flour, and, combined with potatoes and sugar, yields a very excellent cider and perry, according to the proportions employed. In like manner, while the Dark of the cinnamon tree (laurus cinnarnomum) is exquisitely fragrant, the smell of the flowers is highly offensive, and by most persons is compared to that of newly-sawn bones, — by St. Pierre to that of human excrement.^ So * Consult also Mr. Knight's article, Phil. Trang. 1810, part it. p. 179—181. I Thus Aristotle, lipon a subject which is generally supposed to be of modem discovery, "Slantp ydp rd iPvTii Kai Tavrd (scilicet) hrona Siaipovfieva Svvutui l,7jV '* For, like plants, such insects also maintain lifj oiler slips or cuttings."— Hist. Anim. lib. iv. ch. 8. See a variety of other curious instances in the author's translation of Lucretius, note to b. ii. ver. 880 % Mr. Marshall's account delivered to the Royal Society. See Thomson's Annals, Sept. p. 242. 96 ON THE GENERAL ANALOGY OF the cascarilla bark and castor oil are obtained from plants poisonous in some part or other. The amyris, in one of its species, offers the balm-of-gilead tree ; in another, the gum-elemi tree ; and in a third,* the poison-ash, that secretes a liquid gum as black as ink It is from a fourth species of this genus, I will just ob- serve as I pass along, in order the more completely to familiarize it to us that we obtain that beautiful plant which, under the name of rose-wood,t is now so great a favourite in our drawing-rooms. The acacia nilotica,% or gum-arabic tree, is a rich instance in proof of the same observation. Its root throws forth a fluid that smells as oifensively as asafoetida ; the juice of its stem is severely sour and astringent ; the se cernments of its cutis exude a sweet, saccharine, nutritive gum, the common gum-arabic of the shops, and its flowers diffuse a highly fragrant and regal- ing odour. So the arenga palm produces sugar, an excellent sago, and a poisonous juice that even irritates tlie skin. But perhaps the laurus, as a genus, offers us the most extensi\'e variety of substances of different qualities. This elegant plant, in one of its species, gives us the cinnamon tree ^^ in another, the cassia, or wild cinnamon ;|1 in a third, the camphor tree ;][• in a fourth, the alligator-pear ;** in a fifth, the sassafras ;tf in a sixth, a sort of gum-be njamin,|| though not the real gum- benjamin, which is a styrax ; while in a seventh, the L. caustica, it exhibits a tree with a sap as poisonous as that of the manchineel. And truly extraordinary is it, and highly worthy of notice, that various plants, or juices of plants, which are fatally poisonous to some animals, may not only be eaten with impunity by others, but will afford them a sound and wholesome nutriment. How numerous are the insect tribes that feed and fatten on all the species of euphorbia, or noxious spurge ! The dhanesa, or Indian buceros, feeds to excess on the nux vomica; the land-crab'^6 on the berries of the hippomane or manchineel-tree, and the loxia (grossbeak) of the Bahamas on the fruit of the amyris toxifera, or poison- ash. ||| The leaves of the kalmia latifolia are feasted on by the deer and the round-horned elk, but are mortally poisonous to sheep, to horned cattle, to horses, and to man. The bee extracts honey without injury from its nectary, but the adventurer v/ho partakes of that honey after it is deposited in the hive-cells falls a vic- tim to his repast. There are some tribes of animals that exfoliate their cuticle annually, such as grasshoppers, spiders, several species of crabs and serpents. Among vege- tables we meet with a similar variation from the common rule in the shrubby cinquefoil,lf]r indigenous to Yorkshire, and the plane-tree of the West In- dies,*** which most readers know sends forih every spring new colonies by means of runners, as we usually denojiiinate them, in ever>' direction, that, shortly after they have obtained a settlement for themselves, break off all connexion with the parent stock. Among animals, some are locomotive or migratory, and others sta- tionary or permanent ; the same variety is to be traced among vegetables. Unquestionably the greater number of animals are of the migratory kind, yet * A, toxifera. t A. halsamiferc t Mimosa nilotica, Linn. § L. cinnamomium. . !| 1>. cassia. M L. camphora. ** L.persea. i^ l.. sassafras. it T^- benzoin. ^^ Cancer runcoZa. nil See on this subject the following curious papers in the Swedish Amcenitates Academicae, vol. ii. art. 25, par Sueisens, by N. L. Ilesselgren. The same subject continued by G. P. Tengmalon, Amcen. Acad, vol. X. art. X. Usus Historiie Naturalis, by M. Aphonin, art. 147. lb. in respect to birds, entitled Esca Avium domesticarum, by P. Ilolmbergen, p. 481, art. 163. Jt is also well worthy of remark, that variotis herbaceous plants which spring up among others that are escule'vl yet are rejected by cattle when offered alone, give a higher relish and even salubrity to the fodder with which they are intermixed. This, as Sir J. E. Smith has admirably observed, is particularly the case with the grasses. "As man cannot live on tasteless unmixed flour alone, so neither can cattle in general be supported by mere grass, without the addition of various plants in themselves too acid, bitter, salt, or narcotic to be eaten unmixed. Spices and a portion of animal food supply us with the requisite stimuhxs or additional nutriment, as the ranunculus tribes, and many others, season the pasturage and fodder of cat' tie. — Engl. Flora, \o\. 1. ITir PotentUla/rMiicosa. ••• Platanus occidentalia VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE. 97 in every order of worms we meet with some instances that naturally appertain to the latter, while almost every g-enus and species of the zoophytic order, its millepores, madrepores, tubipores, gorgonias, isises, corallines, and sponges, can only be included under it. Plants, on the contrary, are for the most part stationary, yet there are many that are fairly entitled to be re- garded as locomotive or migratory. The natural order senticos^, the icosan- DRiA poLYGYNiA of the sexual system, offers us avariety of instances of which the fragana or strawberry genus may be selected as a familiar example. The palmate, the testicular, and the premorse rooted tribes afford us similar proofs : — many of these grow from a new bulb, or knob, or radicle, while the old root, of whatever description it may be, dies away; in consequence of which we can only conclude that the vital principle of the plant has quitted an old, dilapidated, and ruinous mansion, to take possession of a new one. Insomuch that were a person, on the point of travelling to the East Indies, to plant the root of an orchis,* or a scabious,f in a particular spot in his garden, and to search for it in the same spot on his return* home, he would be in no small degree disappointed ; and if he were to remain abroad long, he must carry his pursuit to half an acre's distance, for thus far would some of these roots perhaps have travelled in a few years. • The male valisneria sails from shore to shore over the water in pursuit of his female. And a multitude of sea-plants float through the ocean, and having plenty of food wherever they go, send out no roots in order to search for it. Plants, like animals, have a wonderful power of maintaining their proper temperature, whatever be the temperature of the atmosphere that surrounds them ; and hence occasionally of raising the thermometer, and occasionally of depressing it. Like animals, too, they are found to exist in most astonish- ing degrees of heat and cold, and to accommodate themselves accordingly. Wherever the interest or curiosity of man has led him into climates of the highest northern latitudes ; wherever he has been able to exist himself, or to trace a vestige of animal being around him ; there, too, has he beheld plants of an exquisite beauty and perfection: perfuming, in many instances, the dead and silent atmosphere with their fragrances, and embellishing the barren scenery with their corols. It is said that animals of a certain character, the cold-blooded and amphi- bious, have a stronger tenacity to life than vegetables of any kind. But the assertion seems to have been hazarded too precipitately ; for admitting that the common water-newtj has been occasionally found imbedded in large masses of ice, perfectly torpid and apparently frozen; and that the common eel,^ when equally frozen and torpified, is capable of being conveyed a thou- sand miles up the country, as from St. Petersburgh, for example, to Moscow, in which country, we are told, it is a common practice thus to convey it ; and that both, on being carefully thawed, may be restored to as full a possession of health and activity as ever ; yet the torpitude hereby induced can only be compared to that of deciduous plants in the winter months ; during which season we all know that, if proper care be exercised, they may be removed to any distance whatever without the smallest inconvenience. Plants, again, are capable of existing in very high degrees of heat. M. Sonnerat found the vitex agnus castus, and two species of aspalathus, on the banks of a thermal rivulet in the island of Lucon, the heat of which raised the thermometer to 174° of Fahrenheit and so near the water, that its roots swept into it. Around the borders of a volcano in the isle of Tanna, where the thermometer stood at 210°, Mr. Forster found a variety of flowers flou- rishing in the highest state of perfection ; and confervas, and other water- plants, are by no means unfrequently traced in the boiling springs of Italy, raising the thermometer to 212° or the boiling point. Animals are capable of enduring a heat quite as extreme. Air has ofteu been breathed by the human species with impunity at 264°, Tillet mentions • Orchis morio, or latifolia. t Scabiosa succisa, or devil's bit ♦ Lacerta aquatica. ^ Muraena anguilla G 98 ON THE GENERAL ANALOGY OF its having been respired at 300° ; the Royal Academy asserts at 307°, or 130° Reaumur, in an oven, for the space of ten minutes ;* and Morantin gives a case at 325° Fahr., and that for a space of five ipinutes. Even in the denser medium of water, animals of various kinds, and especially fishes, have been occasionally traced alive and in health in very high temperatures. Thus Dr. Clarke asserts, that in one of the tepid springs of Bonarbashy, situated near the Scamander, or Mender, as it is now called, notwithstanding the thermo- meter was raised to 62° Fahr., fishes were seen sporting in the reservoir.f So in the thermal springs of Bahia in Brazil many small fishes are seen swimming in a rivulet that raises the thermometer to 88°, the temperature of the air being only 77^°. Sonnerat, however, found fishes existing in a hot spring at the Manillas at 158° Fahr. :"| and M. Humboldt and M. Bonpland, in travelling through the province of Quito in South America, perceived other fishes thrown up alive, and apparently in health, from the bottom of a volcano, in the course of its explosions, along with water and heated vapour that raised the thermometer to 210°, being only two degrees short of the boiling point.^ In reality, without wandering from our own country, we may at times meet with a variety of other -phenomena perfectly consonant in their nature, and altogether as extraordinary, if we only attend to them as they rise before us. Thus the eggs of the musca vomitoria, our common flesh-fly, or blow-fly, are often deposited in the heat of summer upon putrescent meat, and broiled with such meat over a gridiron in the form of steaks, in a heat not merely of 212°, but of three or four times 212^; and yet, instead of being hereby destroyed, we sometimes find them quickened by this very exposure into their larve or grub state. And although I am ready to allow that, in the simple form of seeds or eggs, plants or animals may be expected to sustain a far higher de- gree of heat or cold with impunity, than in their subsequent and more perfect state, yet it cannot appear more extraordinary that in such perfect state they should be able to resist a heat of 210° or 212°, than that in the state of seeds or eggs they should be able to exist in, and to derive benefit from, a heat three or four times as excessive. In the vegetable world we meet with other peculiarities quite as singular, and which gives them an approach to the mineral kingdom : we have already observed that some of them, and especially among the algs and the mosses, are nearly or altogether incombustible, as the byssus asbestos, which, on being thrown into the fire, instead of burning, is converted into glass ; and the fon- tinalis antipyreiica, a plant indigenous to the Highlands, but more frequent in Scandinavia, where from its difficulty of combustion it is used by the poor as a lining for their chimneys, to prevent them from catching fire. Animals are often contemplated under the three divisions of terrestrial, aquatic, and aerial. Plants may be contemplated in the same manner. Among animals it is probable that the largest number consists of the first division; yet from the great variety of submarine genera that are known, and from nearly an equal variety, perhaps, that are not known, this is uncertain. Among vegetables, however, it is highly probable that the largest number belongs to the submarine section, if we may judge from the almost countless species of fuci and other equally prolific tribes of an aqueous and subaqueous origin, and the incalculable individuals that appertain to each species ; and more especially if we take into consideration the greater equality of tempe- rature which must necessarily exist in the submarine hills and valleys. Many animals are amphibious, or capable of preserving life in either ele- ment ; the vegetable world is not without instances of a similar power. The algae, and especially in the ulva and fucus tribes, offer us a multitude of examples. The j uncus, or rush, in many of its species, is an amphibious plant; so, too, is the oryza or rice-plant. In other words, all these will • Hist, de l'Acavpeos Odvaros, Or puvple death, of Homer, and the purpurea amma, or purple life, of Virgil (phrases evidently derived from this theory), are commonplace terms amid all of them : but the real fact is, that among the philosophers, we do not know of more than two, Empedocles and Critias, who may be fairly said to have embraced it. In modern times, however, this hypothesis has again dawned forth, and risen even to meridian splendour, under auspices that entitle it to our most attentive consideration. Harvey, to whom we are indebted for a full knowledge of the circulation of the blood, may be regarded as the phosphor of its uprising ; Hoffman speedily became a convert to the revived doctrine ; Huxham not only adopted it, but pursued it with so much ardour, as, in his own belief, to trace the immediate part of the blood in which the principle of life is dis- tinctly seated, and which he supposed to be its red particles. But it is to that accurate and truly original physiologist, Mr. John Hunter, that we can only look for a fair restoration of this sy^em to the favour of the present day, or for its erection upon any thing like" a rational basis. By a variety of import- ant experiments, this indefatigable and accurate observer succeeded in proving incontrovertibly that the blood contributes in a far greater degree, not only to the vital action, but to the vital material of the system, than any other con- stituent part of it, whether fluid or solid. But he went beyond this discovery, and afforded equal proof, not only that the blood is a means of life to every other part, but that it is actually alive itself. " The difficulty," says he, "of conceiving that the blood is endowed with life, while circulating, arises merely from its being a fluid, and the mind not being accustomed to the idea of a living fluid. — I shall endeavour," he continues, " to show that organiza- tion and life do not in the least depend upon each other ; that organization may arise out of living parts and produce action, but that life can never arise out of or produce organization."* This is a bold speculation, and some part of it is advanced too hastily : for instead of its being true, " that life can never arise out of or produce organ- ization," the most cursory glance into nature will be sufficient to convince every man that organization is the ordinary, perhaps the only, means by which life is transmitted ; and that wherever life appears, its tendency, if not its actual result, is nothing else than organization. But though he failed in his reasoning, he completely succeeded in his facts, and abundantly proved that the blood itseli[^ though a fluid and in a state of circulation, is actually endowed with life : for he proved, first, that it is capable of being acted upon and con- tracting, like the solid muscular fibre, upon the application of a stimulus ; of which every one has an instance in that cake or coagulum into which the blood contracts itself when drawn from the arm, probably in consequence of the stimulus of the atmosphere. He proved, next, that in all degrees of atmospherical temperature whatever, whether of heat or cold, which the body is capable of enduring, it preserves an equality in its own temperature ; and in addition to this very curious phenomenon, he proved also, that a new-laid egg, the vessels of which are merely in a nascent state, has a power of pre- serving its proper temperature, and of resisting cold, heat, or putrefaction, for a considerable period longer than an egg that has been frozen, or in any other "way deprived of its vital principle. Thirdly, he proved, in the instance of paralytic limbs, that the blood is capable of preserving vitality when every • Hunter on the Blood, p. 20 IRRITABILITY, AND MUSCULAR POWER. 105 other part of an organ has lost its vital power, and is the only cause of its not becoming corrupt. Fourthly, that though not vascular itself, it is capable, by its own energy, of producing new vessels out of its own substance, and vessels of every description, as lymphatics, arteries, veins, and even nerves.* Finally, he proved, that the blood, when in a state of health, is not only, like the muscular fibre, capable of contracting upon the application of a certain degree of appropriate stimulus, but that, like the muscular fibre also, it is instantly exhausted of its vital power whenever such stimulus is excessive; and that the same stroke of lightning that destroys the muscular fibre, and leaves it flaccid and uncontracted, destroys the blood, and leaves it loose and uncoaguhUed. Important, however, as these facts are, they do not reach home to the question before us. They sufficiently establish the blood to be alive, but they do not tell us what it is that makes it alive : on the contrary, they rather drive us into a pursuit after some foreign and superadded principle ; for that which is at one time alive, and at another time dead, cannot be life itself. The next theory, therefore, to which I have adverted, undertakes to explain in what this foreign and superadded principle consists. Some exquisitely SUBTLE GAS or AURA — somc fiuc, clastic, invisible fluid, sublimed by nature in the deepest and most unapproachable recesses of her laboratory, and spirited with the most active of her energies. An approach towards this hypothesis is also of great antiquity ; for it constituted one of the leading features of the Epicurean philosophy, and is curiously developed by Lucretius in his poem on the Nature of Things. According to him, it is a gas or aura, for which in his day there was no name, diffiised through every part of the living fabric, swifter and more attenuate than heat, air, or vapour, with all which it con- curs in forming the soul or mind as its chief elementary principle : — Far from all vision this profoundly lurks, Through the whole system's utmost depth diffus'd, And lives as soul of e'en the soul itself.t But it is to the astonishing discoveries of modern chemistry alone that we are indebted for any fair application of any such fluid to account for the phenomena of life. Among the numerous gases which modern chemistry has detected, there are three which are pre-eminently entitled to our attention, though they seem to have been glanced at by the Epicureans : caloric, or the matter of heat, chiefly characterized in our own day as a distinct substance, by the labours of Dr. Black and Dr. Crawford ; oxygen, or the vital part of atmospheric air, first discovered by Priestly, and explained by Lavoisier ; and the fluid which is collected by the Voltaic trough, and which is probably nothing more than the electric fluid under a peculiar form. Of these, caloric, as a distinct entity, was detected first. It was found to be a gas of most astonishing energy and activity, and, at the same time, to be of the utmost consequence to the living substance ; to exist manifestly wherever life exists, and to disappear on its cessation. It was hence con ceived to be the principle of life itself. But oxygen began now to start into notice, and the curious and indispen- sable part it performs in the respiration, as well as in various other functions of both animal and vegetable existence, to be minutely explored and ascer- tained, and especially by the microscopic eye of M. Girtanner.J The genius of Crawford fell prostrate before that of Lavoisier. Oxygen was now regarded as the principle of life, and heat as its mere attendant or handmaid. About the year 1790, Professor Galvani, of Bologna, accidentally discovered • Dr. Munro has proved, that the limb of a frog can live and be nourished, and its wounds heal, without any nerve. t Nam penitus prorsum latet haec natura, subestque ; Nee magis hac infra quidquam est in corpore nostro ; Atque anima est animae proporro totius ipsa. De Rer. Nat. iii. 274. X M6moires but rirritabilit6, consideree comme principe de vie dans la nature orgatus6e Paris, 1730 106 ON THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, that the crural nerve of a frog, which had heen cut up for his dinner, con- tracted and became convulsed on the application of a knife wetted with water ; and following* up this simple fact, he soon discovered also, that a similar kind of contraction or convulsion might be produced in the muscles of other animals, when in like manner prepared for the experiment, not only during life, but for a considerable period after death; and that in all such cases a fluid of some sort or other was either given to the contracting body or taken from it. And Professor Volta, about the same period, succeeded in proving: that the fluid thus traced to be given or received was a true electric aura ; that it might, in like manner, be obtained by a pile of metallic plates, of two or three different kinds, separated from each other by water, or wetted cloth or wadding; and be so accumulated by a multiplication of such plates, as to produce the most powerful agency in all chemistry. It is not necessary to pursue this subject any farther. Every one in the present day has some knowledge of Galvanism and Voltaism ; every one has witnessed some of those curious and astonishing effects which the Voltaic fluid is capable of operating on the muscles of an animal for many hours after death : and it only remains to be added, that since the discovery of this extraordinary power, oxygen has in its turn fallen a sacrifice to the Voltaic fluid, and this last has been contemplated by numerous physiologists as constituting the principle of life ; as a fluid received into the animal system from without, and stimulating its different organs into vital action. " The identity," says Dr. Wilson Phillip, "of Galvanic electricity and nervous influence is established by these experiments." The result of the whole appears to be, that neither physiology nor chemistry, with all the accuracy and assiduity with which these sciences have been pur- sued of late years, has been able to arrest or develope the fugitive principle of life. They have unfolded to us the means by which life, perhaps, is pro- duced and maintained in the animal frame, but they have given us no informa- tion as to the thing itself; we behold the instrument before us, and see something of the fingers that play upon it, but we know nothing whatever of the mysterious essence that dwells in the vital tubes, and constitutes the vital harmony. It seems to'be on this account, chiefly, that the existence of such a princi- ple as a substantive essence has been of late years denied by MM. Dumas, Bichat,Richerand, Magendie, and, indeed, most of the physiologists of France; whose hypothesis has been caught up and pretty widely circulated in our own country, as though nothing in natural science can be a fair doctrine of belief, unless its subject be matter of clear developement and explanation. But this uncalled-for skepticism has involved these philosophers in a dilemma from which it seems impossible for them to extricate themselves, and which we shall have occasion to notice more fully hereafter : I mean the existence of powers and faculties without an entity or substantial base to which they belong, and from which they originate. They allow themselves to employ the term, and cannot, indeed, do without it ; but after all they mean nothing hy it. " No one in the present day," says M. Richerand, " contests the ex- istence OF A PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, which subjects the beings who enjoy it to an order of laws different from, those which are obeyed by inanimate beings; by means of which, among its principal characteristics, the bodies which it ani- mates are withdrawn from the absolute government of chemical affinities, and are capable of maintaining their temperature at a near degree of equality, whatever be that of the surrounding atmosphere. Its essence is not designed to preserve the aggregation of constituent molecules, but to collect other molecules which, by assimilating themselves to the organs that it vivifies, may replace those which daily losses carry off, and which are employed in • It is a singular fact, that this identical discovery was not only made, but completed in all its bearings, and by the same means of a recent) y-dissected frog, bv Dr. Alexander Stuart, physician to the queen, in 1732, though no advantage was taken of it. A minute account of Dr. Stewart's experiments is given in the PML Trans, for 1732. See the author's Study of Medicine, vol. ui. p. 29, 2d edit. IRRITABILITY, AND MUSCULAR POWER. 107 repairing and augmenting them."* Yet, when we come to examine into the subject more closely, we find that all these terms, so expressive of a specific being and distinct reality — this essence that vivifies and animates, has neither being, nor essence, nor vivification, nor animation, nor reality of any kind that the whole of these expressions are metaphysical ; and that the word VITAL PRINCIPLE is not designed to express a distinct being, but is merely an abridged formula, denoting the totality of powers alone which animate liv- ing bodies, and distinguish them from inert matter, the totality of properties and LAWS which govern the animal economy.f So that we have here not only the employment of terras that have no meaning, but properties and laws, powers and principles, without any source, — a superstructure without a foun- dation, — effects without a cause. But what is this curious and delicate instrument itself? — this machine that so nicely responds to the impressions communicated to it, and visibly enve- lopes so invisible a constituent 1 It is not my intention in this series of popular study to enter into any mi- nute history of the animal frame, but shall confine myself to those general views of it which are requisite to show by what means it is operated upon by the delicate powers we have just contemplated, and the more curious phe- nomena which result from such an impulse. The animal frame, then, is a combination of living solids and fluids, duly harmonized, and equally contributory to each other's perfection. The prin- ciple of life, whatever it consists of, exists equally in both ; in some kinds in a greater, in others in a less degree. In the fluids, Mr. Hunter has traced it down to their first and lowest stage of existence, for he has traced it in the chyle ;J and there are evident proofs of its accompanying several of those which are eliminated from the body ; in the blood it is found, as we have already had occasion to notice, in a high degree of activity, and probably in a still higher in the nervous fluid. In the solids it varies equally. There are some in which it can scarcely be traced at all, excepting from their increasing growth, as the cellular mem- brane, and the bones ; in others, we find a perpetual internal activity, or sus- ceptibility to external impressions. But it is in those irritable threads or fibres which constitute the general substance of the muscles or flesh of an animal, that the principle of life exerts itself in its most extraordinary manner, and which it more immediately, therefore, falls within the scope of the present lecture to investigate. The muscle of an animal is a bundle of these irritable fibres, or soft, red, cylindrical, and nearly inelastic threads, formed out of a substance which the chemists, from the use to which it is applied, denominate fibrine ; and which, when examined microscopically, are seen to divide and subdivide, as far as the power of glasses will carry the eye, into minuter bundles of fibrils, or still smaller threads, parallel to each other, and bound together by a delicate cel- lular web-work, obviously of a different nature. They are uniformly accom- panied through their course by a number of very minute nerves, which are chords or tubes that originate from the brain, and branch out in every direc- tion, either immediately from the brain itself, or from some part of the spinal marrow, which is a continuation of this organ ; by which means a perpetual communication is kept up between the sensorium and the remotest part of the body, as we shall have farther occasion to notice hereafter.^ Upon the * " Personne aujourd'hui ne conteste 1'existenck d'un principe de vie qui soumet les 6tres qui en jouisscnt^ un ordre de lois difFereiites de ce.Ues auxquelles obeissent les 6tres inanimcs, force A laquelle on pourroit assigner, comme principaux caract^res, de soustraire les corps qu'Ki,LK anime, A I'empire absolu des affinitHB chimiques, auxquelles ils auroient tant de ter.dance d coder, en virtu de la multiplicite de leurs ^Itmens ; et de maintenir leur temperature A un degre presque ^gal, quelle que soit d'ailleurs celle de I'at- mospWre. Son kssenck n'est point de conserver I'aggregation des molecules constitutives, mais d'attirer d'autres molecules qui, s'assiinilant aux organcs qu'KLLE vivifie, remplacent celle qu'entralnent les pertes jouniali^res, et sont employees a les nourrir et A les accroitre." — Nouveaux Elf^m^ns de Physiologie, torn. i. p. 81. Paris, 8vo. 1804. t "Le mot de pkincipe vital, force vitale, &;c. n'exprime point un 6tre existant par lui-m6me, et ind6- pendammcnt des actions par lesquelles il se manifeste : il ne faut I'employer que comme une formule abregee dont on se sert pour designer I'ensemble des forces qui animent les corps vivaus et les distinguent de la matj^re inertc :— I'ensemble des proprietes et des loix qui regissent r»';conomie aniinale."— lb. p. 80 t On the Blood, p. 91 § Series i. Lecture xv. 108 ON THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, application of any irritating or stimulating power, these fibres immediately contract in their length, and upon the cessation of such power return to their former state of relaxation : and it is chiefly by this curious contrivance that the animal system is enabled to fulfil all its functions. The stimuli by which the fibres, whether of motion or of sensation, are roused into action, are per- haps innumerable in the whole; but a few general classes may easily be de- vised to comprise all those by which they are ordinarily affected. And while by an admirable diversity of construction, some sets of fibres are only affected by some sets of stimuli, other sets are only affected by others ; and in this manner all the organs are compelled, as it were, to execute the different offices intrusted to them, and no one interferes with that of another. Thus the fibres of the external senses are affected by external objects ; they contract and give notice of the presence and degree of power of such objects to the brain, through the medium of the nerves, which, as I have just observed, always accompany them, and which either terminate in or arise from that organ : but while the irritative and sensitive fibres of the ear are excited only by the stimulus of sound, and have no impression produced upon them by that of light, those of the eye are excited only by the stimulus of light, and remain uninfluenced by that of sound : and so of the other organs of external sense. And hence we obtain a knowledge of one set or class of stimuli, which from their acting upon the organs of sense, are called sensitive stimuli, and the motions to which they give rise sensitive motions. Again, the very substances naturally introduced into many of the muscular organs of the body, and especially the hollow muscles, are sufficient to ex cite them to a due performance of their functions : thus, the lungs are excited to the act of respiration by the stimulus of the air we breathe, the stomach to that of digestion by the stimulus of the food introduced into it ; so the heart and blood-vessels are excited by the stimulus of the blood ; and the vessels that carry off the recremental materials by the different stimuli which these materials contain in themselves. We hence obtain another class of stimuli, which are denominated stimuli of simple irritation ; and the motions they produce, simple irritative motions, or motions of irritation. But the sensory, or brain, which thus receives notice generally, or is im- pressed upon by the different actions that are perpetually taking place all over the system, through the medium of its own ramifications, or nerves, that uni- formly acccompany the irritable fibres, in many instances originates motions, and thus proves a stimulus in itself. All voluntary motions are of this kind; the will, which is a faculty of the sensorium, being the exciting cause, and thus giving birth to a third class of stimuli, and of a very extensive range, which are called stimuli of volition. While habit or association becomes, in a variety of instances, a suflicient impulse to other motions, and thus con- stitutes a fourth class ; which are hence named associate stimuli, or stimuli of association. But though the muscular fibre is, perhaps, more irritable than any other part of the system, the principle of irritability and a fibrous structure are by no means necessarily connected ; for, while the cellular membrane is fibrous but has no irritability whatever, the skin is not fibrous but is highly irritable. Hence solids and fluids are equally necessary to the perfection of the living system. Food, aii", and the ethereal gases, caloric, oxygen, and the medium of electricity, are the stimuli by which it is chiefly excited to action ; and, by their combination, contribute in some degree to the matter of the system itself; but of the mysterious power that developes the organs and applies the stimuli, that harmonizes the action and constitutes the life, we know nothing. We see clearly, however, that the moving powers are, for the most part, the muscles ; and it is a subject of perpetual astonishment to the physiologist to observe the prodigious force which these vital cords are made capable of exerting, and the infinite variety of purposes to which they thus become sub- servient. And were it not that the whole universe swarms with proofs of intelligence and design — were it not that there exists, to adopt the beautiful words of the poet — IRRITABILITY, AND MUSCULAR POWER. 10» Books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing— this, perhaps, might be the part of creation which we could best select in proof of the wisdom of the Creator. It was formerly too much the custom to regard the animal frame as a mere mechanical machine ; whence, in that spirit of absurdity with which the wisest of mankind are occasionally afflicted, Descartes affected to believe that brutes are as destitute of consciousness as a block of wood, and that it is exactly the same sort of necessity which drives a dog forward in pursuit of a hare, that compels the different pipes of an organ to give forth different tones upon a pressure of the fingers against its different keys. It is not every one, however, in modern times wiio has adopted the mechanical theory that has carried it to this extremity of absurdity; but all of them are still carry ing it too far who reason concerning the principal motions of the body as mere mechanical motions, and the powers which the muscles exert as mere mechanical powers ; in which the bones are the levers, the joints the fulcra, and the muscles the moving cords ; for it so happens that all the effects for which the whole of this complicated machinery is absolutely necessary out of the body, are in many instances performed by a single part of it within the body, namely, by the moving cords or muscles alone, without either bones or joints, levers or fulcra. I do not mean to contend that there is no kind of resemblance or conformity of principle between the laws of animate and inanimate mechanics, for I well know that in a variety of points the two sys- tems very closely concur ; but I am obliged to contend that they are still two distinct systems, and that in the one case the living power exercises an influ- ence which finds no sort of similitude in the other. It is, indeed, curious to observe the difference of result which has flowed from the calculations of the different promoters of this theory ; and which alone, were there nothing else to oppose them, would be sufficient to prove the fallacy of their reasoning. Among those who have adopted this mode of explanation, and have pursued it with most acuteness, and may be re- prded as the fathers of the school, I may be allowed to mention Borelli and Keil ; but while the former, in order to account for the circulation of the blood in man, calculated the force with which the heart contracts to be equal to not less than a hundred and eighty thousand pounds weight at every con- Iraction, the latter could not estimate it at more than eight ounces. In like manner Borelli, in applying the same theory to the power with jvhich the human stomach triturates, or, as we now call it, digests its food, ^calculated it, in conjunction with the assistance it receives from the auxiliary Hnuscles, which he conceived to divide the labour about equally with itself, 48 equal to two hundred and sixty-one thousand one hundred and eighty-six pounds ; and Pitcairn has made it very little less, since he estimates the moiety contributed by the stomach alone at one hundred and seventeen thou- sand and eighty-eight pounds ; which gives to these organs jointly a force more than equal to that of twenty mill-stones ! " Had he,*? says Dr. Munro, " assigned Hve ounces as the weight of the stomach, he had been nearer the truth."* The fallacy of this theory, however, and especially as it applies to the sto- mach, has been completely exposed in our own day, by the well-ascertained fact, that though the muscular coat of the stomach in most animals bears some part in the process of digestion, this important operation is almost en- tirely performed by a powerful chemical solvent secreted by the stomach itself for this very purpose, and hence denominated the gastric juice ; and which answers all the purposes of the most violent muscular pressure we can conceive, and with a curious simplicity of contrivance. The laws of physical force will certainly better apply to the action of the heart and arteries than to that of the stomach, and in some measure assist us * Comp. Anat. pref. p. viii. note. no ON THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, in accounting for the circulation of the blood ; but the moment we reflect that one-half of this very circulation, that I mean which depends upon the veins and which has for the most part to contend against the attraction of gravita- tion, instead of being able to avail itself of its assistance, is produced with- out any muscular propulsion that we are able to discover, and that even the arteries do not, when uninfluenced by pressure, appear to change their diame- ter in a state of health,* we are necessarily driven to the conclusion, that there is in animal statics, as well as in animal mechanics, a something dis- tinct and independent, and which the laws of physical force are altogether incompetent to explain. Dr. Young, in his excellent Croonian lecture, read before the Royal Society in 1809,t has endeavoured to revive the mechanical theory ; but he is still compelled to admit a variety of phenomena in the ani- mal machine, and especially in the circulatory system, which are altogether unaccountable upon any of the known principles of common hydraulics, and which can never fail to reduce us to the same result. So far, therefore, as we at present know, the circulation of the blood is performed by a double projectile power; one moiety being dependent on the action of the living principle in the heart, and perhaps the arteries ; and the other moiety on the common law of hydraulics, or the vacuum produced in the heart by that very contraction or systole which has just propelled the blood returned from the lungs into the arterial system. Whence the heart itself becomes alternately a forcing and a suction pump ; being the former in respect to the arteries, and the latter in respect to the veins.;}: Upon a moderate estimate, the common labourer may be said to employ a force capable of raising a weight of ten pounds to the height of ten feet in a second, and continued for ten hours a day. A moderate horizontal weight for a strong porter, walking at the rate of three miles an hour, is 200 pounds : the chairman walks four miles an hour, and carries 150 pounds. The daily work of a horse is equal to that of five or six men upon a plane ; but from his horizontal figure in drawing up a steep ascent, it does not exceed the power of three or four men. In working windmills, twenty-five square feet of the sails is equivalent to the work of a single labourer ; whence a full-sized mill, provided it could be made to work eight hours a day, would be equiva- lent to the daily labour of thirty-four men. A steam engine of the best con- struction, with a thirty inch C3dinder, has the force of forty horses ; and as it acts without intermission, will perform the work of 120 horses, or of 600 men ; every square inch of the piston being equivalent to the power of a labourer. There are many muscles given to us which the common customs and habits of life seldom render it necessary to exert, and which in consequence grow stiff" and immoveable. Tumblers and buffoons are well aware of this fact ; and it is principally by a cultivation of these neglected muscles that they are able to assume those outrageous postures and grimaces, and exhibit those feats of agility, which so often amuse or surprise us. The same muscles of different persons, however, though of the same length and thickness, and, so far as we are able to trace, composed of the same number of fibres, are by no means uniformly possessed of the same degree of power ; and we here meet with an express deviation from the law of physical mechanics ; as we do also in the curious fact, that whatever be the power they possess, they grow stronger in proportion to their being used, provided they are well used, and not exhausted by violence or over-exertion. I have calculated the average weight carried by a stout porter in this me- tropolis at 200 povmds ; but we are told there are porters in Turkey, who by accustoming themselves to this kind of burden from an early period, are able to carry from 700 to 900 pounds, though they walk at a slower rate, and only carry the burden a short distance. " The weakest man can lift with his hands about 125 pounds, a strong man 400. Topham, a carpenter, men- * See Lect vm p. 91, as also the Author's Study of Medicine, vol. ii. p. 16. Edit. 2d, 1825. t On the Functions of the Heart and Arteries, Phil. Trans. 1809, p. 1. t See Study of Med. vol. u. p. 19. Ed. 2d. IRRITABILITY, AND MUSCULAR POWER. 11 tioned by Desagiiliers, could lift 800 pounds. He rolled up a strong pewter dish with his fingers. He lifted with his teeth and knees a table six feet long with a half hundred weight at the end. He bent a poker, three inches in circumference, to a right angle, by striking it upon bis left forearm ; another he bent and unbent about his neck, and snapped a hempen rope two inches in circumference. A few years ago there was a person at Oxford who could hold his arm extended for half a minute, with half a hundred weight hanging on his little finger."* We are also told by Desaguliers of a man who, by bend- ing his body into an arch, and having a harness fitted to his hips, was capable of sustaining a cannon weighing two or three thousand pounds. And not many winters ago, the celebrated Belzoni, when first entering on public life, exhi- bited himself to the theatres of this metropolis, and by a similar kind of har- nessing was capable of supporting, even in an upright position, a pyramid of ten or twelve men surmounted by two or three children, whose aggregate weight could not be much less than 2000 pounds ; with which weight he walked repeatedly towards the front of the stage. The prodigious powers thus exerted by human muscles will lead us to be- hold with less surprise the proofs of far superior powers exerted by the muscles of other animals, though it will by no means lead us to the means of accounting for such facts. The elephant, which may be contemplated as a huge concentration of animal excellencies, is capable of carrying with ease a burden of between three and four thousand pounds. With its stupendous trunk (which has been calculated by Cuvier to consist of upwards of thirty thousand distinct mus- cles) it snaps .off the stoutest branches from the stoutest trees, and tears up the trees themselves with its tusks. How accumulated the power that is lodged in the muscles of the lion ! With a single stroke of his paw he breaks the back- bone of a horse, and runs off with a buffalo in his jaws at full speed : he crushes the bones between his teeth, and swallows them as a part of his food. Nor is it necessary, in the mystery of the animal economy, that the muscles should always have the benefit of a bony lever. The tail of the whale is merely muscular and ligamentous; and yet this is the instrument of its chief and most powerful attack ; and, possessed of this instrument, to adopt the language of an old and accurate observer,! " a long-boat he valueth no more than dust, for he can beat it all in shatters at a blow." The skeleton of the shark is-.entirely cartilaginous, and totally destitute of proper bone ; yet is it the most dreadful tyrant of the ocean: it devours with its cartilaginous jaws whatever falls in its way ; and in one of its species, the squalus carcharias, or white shark, which is often found thirty feet long, and of not less than four thousand pounds weight, has been known to swallow a man whole at a mouthful. The sepia octopodia, or eight-armed cuttlefish — the polypus of Aristotle — is found occasionally of an enormous size in the Mediterranean and Indian seas, its arms being at times nine fathoms in length, and so prodi- gious in their muscular power, that when lashed round a man, or even a New- foundland dog, there is great difiiculty in extricating themselves ; and hence the Indians never venture out without hatchets in their boats, to cut off the animal's holders, should he attempt to fasten on them, and drag them under water. But this subject would require a large volume, instead of occupying the close of a single lecture. Let us turn from the great to the diminutive. How confounding to the skill of man is the muscular arrangement of the insect class ! Minute as is their form, there are innumerable tribes that unite in themselves all the powers of motion that characterize the whole of the other classes ; and are able, as their own will directs, to walk, run, leap, swim, or fly, with as much facility as quadrupeds, birds, and fishes exercise these faculties separately. But such a combination of func- tions demands a more complicated combination of motive powers; and what • Young's Lcct. on Nat. PWl. i. 129. t Frederick Martens. See Shaw, U. U. 4S9. 112 ON THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, &c. it demands it receives. In the mere larve or caterpillar of a cossus, or insect approaching to the butterfly, Lyonet has detected not less than four thousand and sixty-one distinct muscles, which is about ten times the number that be- long to the whole human body ; and yet it is probable that these do not con- stitute any thing like the number that appertain to the same insect in its perfect state. The elator noctilucus, or phosphorescent springer, is a winged insect ; but it has also a set of elastic muscles, which enable it, when laid on its back, to spring up nearly half a foot at a bound, in order to recover its position. This insect is also entitled to notice in consequence of its secreting a light, M'hich is so much beyond that of our own glow-worm, that a person may see to read the smallest print by it at midnight. The cicada spumariat or spumous grasshopper, is in like manner endowed with a double power of motion ; and when attempted to be caught will either fly completely off", at its option, or bound away at the distance of two or three yards at every leap. This insect is indigenous to our own country, and is one of those which in their larve and pupe states discharge, from the numerous pores about the tail, that frothy material upon plants which is commonly known by the name of euckow-spit. Crabs and spiders have a strong muscular power of throwing off an entire limb whenever seized by it, in order to extricate themselves from confine- ment; and most of them throw off" also, once a year, their skin or crusta- ceous covering, and secrete a new one. The muscular elasticity of the young spider gives it, moreover, the power of wings ; whence it is often seen, in the autumn, ascending to a considerable elevation, wafted about by the breeze, and filling the atmosphere with its fine threads. The land-crab (cancer ruricola) inhabits the woods and mountains of a country ; but its musculai structure enables it to travel once a year to the seacoast to wash ofl" its spawn in the waters. The spawn or eggs thus deposited sink into the sands at the bottom of the sea, and are soon hatched ; after which millions of little crabs are seen quitting their native element for a new and untried one, and roving instinctively towards the woodlands. The hinge of the common oyster is a single muscle ; and it is no more than a single muscle in the chama gigas, or great clamp-fish, an animal of the oyster form, but the largest testaceous worm we are acquainted with. It has been taken in the Indian Ocean of a weight not less than 532 pounds ; the fish, or inhabitant, being large enough to furnish 120 men with a meal, and strong enough to lop off a hand with ease, and to cut asunder the cable of a large ship. Nor is the muscular power allotted to the worm tribes less wonderful than that of insects, or its variety less striking and appropriate. The leech and other sucker-worms are as well acquainted with the nature of a vacuum as Torricelli ; and move from place to place by alternately converting the mus- cular disks of their head and tail into air-pumps. The sucker of the cyclopterus, a genus of fishes denominated suckers from their wonderfully adhesive property, is perhaps the most powerful, for the size of the fish, of any we are acquainted with ; and is formed at will, by merely uniting the peculiar muscles of its ventral fins into an oval con- cavity. In this state, if pulled by the tail, it will raise a pailful of water rather than resign its hold. The teredo navalis, or ship-worm, is seldom six inches in length, but the muscles and armour with which its head is provided enables it to penetrate readily into the stoutest oak planks of a vessel, committing dreadful havoc among her timbers, and chiefly producing the necessity for her being copper- bottomed. This animal is a native of India; it is gregarious, and always commences its attack in innumerable multitudes ; every worm, in labouring, confining itself to its own cell, which is divided from that of the next by a partition not thicker than a piece of writing-paper. The seaman, as he be- holds the ruin before him, vents his spleen against the little tribes that have produced it, and denounces them as the most mischievous vermin in the ocean. But a tornado arises— the strength of the whirlwind is abroad— the clouds ON THE BONES, &c. OF THE ANIMAL FRAME. 113 pour down a deluge over the mountains— and whole forests fall prostrate be- fore its fury. Down rolls the gathering wreck towards the deep, and blocks up the mouth of that very creek the seaman has entered, and where he now finds himself in a state of captivity. How shall he extricate himself from his imprisonment 1 — an imprisonment as rigid as that of the Baltic in the winter season. But the hosts of the teredo are in motion : — thousands of little augurs are applied to the floating barrier, and attack it in every direc- tion. It is perforated, it is lightened, it becomes weak ; it is dispersed, or precipitated to the bottom ; and what man could not effect, is the work of a worm. Thus it is that nothing is made in vain ; and that in physics, as well as in morals, although evil is intermingled with good, the good ever maintains a predominancy. LECTURE XI. ON THE BONES, CARTILAGES, TEETH, ARTICULATION, INTEGUMENTATION, HAIR, WOOL, SILK, FEATHERS, AND OTHER HARD OR SOLID PARTS OF THE ANIMAL FRAME. In a former lecture we took a general survey of the characteristic features that distinguish the unorganized from the organized world, and the vege- table kingdom from the animal: we examined into the nice structure of plants, and the resemblances which they bear to the animated form. In our last lecture we proceeded to an inquiry into the nature of the living principle, took a glance at a few of the theories that have been invented to explain its essence and mode of operation, and contemplated the origin and powers of the muscular fibre, which may be denominated its grand executive organ. The muscles of an animal, however, are not the only instruments of animal motion ; the bones, cartilages, and ligaments contribute very largely to the action, and the skin is not unfrequently a substitute for the muscle itself. These, therefore, as well as a variety of other bodies minutely connected with them, - or evincing a similarity of construction, — as the teeth, hair, nails, horns, shells, and membranes, — are now to pass under our review, and are entitled to our closest attention ; and I may add, that their diversity of uses and ope- rations, and the curious phenomena to which they give rise, are calculated to affbrd not less amusement than instruction. I had occasion to remark lately,* that lime is a substance absolutely neces- sary to the growth of man. It is, in truth, absolutely necessary to the growth of almost all animals; even soft-bodied or molluscous worms, except in a few instances, are not free from it ; nay, even infusory animals, so minute as to be only discerned by the microscope, still affbrd -a trace of it in the calcare- ous speck which constitutes their snout ; but it is in the bones and shells of animals that lime is chiefly to be found ; and hence those animals possess most of it in whom these organs are most abundant. Bone, shell, cartilage, and membrane, however, in their nascent state, are all the same substance, and originate from a viscid fluid, usually supposed to be the coagulable lymph, or more liquid part of the blood ; which, secreted in one manner, constitutes jelly, or gelatine, a material characterized by its solu- bility in warm water, heated to about half the boiling point ; and secreted in another manner, forms albumen, or the material of the white of the egg^ cha- racterized by its coagulating instead of dissolving in about the same heat ; the difference, ho\vever, between the two, consisting merely, perhaps, in the dif- ferent proportion of oxygen they contain. Membrane, is gelatin, with a small proportion of albumen to give it a certain degree of solidity ; cartilage * Series i. Lect. vi. On Geology, p. 73, and passim ; and Lect viii. On Organized Bodies and thm Structureof Plants compared to that of A nitnalF, p. 81. i uu uiw H 114 ON THE BONES, &c. is membrane, with a larger proportion of albumen to g-ive it a still greater deg-ree of solidity; and bone and shell are mere cartilage, hardened by the insertion of lime into their interior, the lime being secreted for this purpose by a particular set of vessels, and absorbed by the bony or shelly rudiments in their soft state. And hence any substances which, like the mineral acids, for example, have a power of dissolving the earthy matter of the two last, and of leaving the car- tilage untouched, may be readily employed as reagents, to reduce them to their primary softness : and it was by this means that Cleopatra, as we are told by Pliny, dissolved one of the costly pair of pearls that formed her ear- rings, each of which was valued at upwards of eighty thousand pounds {centies sestertium), at a feast given to Mark Antony, and then presented it to him in a goblet, with an equal mixture of wine.* In the adult state, however, as well as in the embryo state, it is necessary that the bones, like every other substance of the animal frame, should be punctually supplied with the elementary matter, or the means of forming the elementary matter, of which it essentially consists, the old matter of every kind being worn out by use, and carried away by a distinct set of vessels, called lymphatics or absorbents. It is the office of the digestive organs to receive such supply from without, and to prepare it for the general use. And hence, if we could conceive it possible for these organs, or any organs dependent upon them, to be so peculiarly diseased as to be incapable of pre- paring or conveying to the bones a sufficient quantity of lime (of which some portion is contained in almost every kind of food) to supply the place of that which is perpetually passing off, the necessary consequence would be, that the bones would progressively lose their hardness, and become cartilaginous and pliable. Now we sometimes do meet with the digestive or the secretory organs affected by such a kind of disease, and that both in children and adults. In children it is more common, and is called rickets; in grown persons it is simply called a softness of the bones, or mollities ossium. In the formei case, the softened spine becomes bent from the weight of the head, and other extremities, which it is now no longer able to sustain, while the chest and most of the limbs partake of the general distortion. In the latter case many of the bones are sometimes reduced to imperfect cartilages, and can be bent and unbent in any direction. Lime, however, is never found in the animal system in its pure state, and is certainly never introduced into it in such a state. It is usually combined with some acid, either the phosphoric, in which case the compound is called phosphate of lime ; or carbonic acid gas, when it is called carbonate of lime, or common chalk. It is of no small importance to attend to the nature of these two acids ; for it is the difference between them that chiefly constitutes the difference be- tween bones and shells ; bones uniformly consisting of a larger proportion of phosphate of lime, or lime and phosphoric acid, and a less proportion of car- bonate ; and shells of a larger proportion of carbonate of lime, and a less pro- portion of phosphate. There are a few other ingredients that enter into the composition of both these substances, and which are chiefly obtained from the materials of common salt, as sulphuric acid and soda ; but the proportion? are too small to render it necessary to dwell upon them in a course of popu- lar study. Bones, shells, cartilages, and membranes may therefore be re- garded as substances of the same kind, differing only in degree of solidity from the different proportions that they possess of albumen and salts of lime. Teeth, horn, coral, tortoise-shell, fish-scales, and the crustaceous integu- ments of crabs, millepedes, and beetles, are all compounds of the same ele- ments combined in different proportions, and rendered harder or softer as they possess a larger or smaller quantity of calcareous salts ; ivory and the * This was on a trial who could cive the most sumptuous banquet. Munacius Plancus was the arbiter. The expense of Mark Antony's, already bestowed, had been valued at just tlie price of this single pearl, Cleopatra was proceeding to dissolve its fellow, when she was suddenly stopped by the umpire, who de> clared the victory to be hers. Plin Hist Nat lib ix.35. OF THE ANIMAL FRAME. 115 ename\ of teeth possessing- the largest quantity, and consisting- almost exclu- sively of phosphate of lime, with a small proportion of animal matter. The gelatin and albumen are unquestionably generated in the animal sys- tem itself from the different substances it receives under the form of food ; and it is curious to observe the facility and rapidity with which some animals are capable of producing- them. The gastrobranchus ccecus, or hag-fish, a small lamprey-like animal of not more than eight inches long, will convert a large vessel of water in a short period of time into size or mucilage, of such a thickness that it may be drawn out in threads. The form and habits of this little animal are singular: Linnaeus re-garded it as a worm ; but Bloch has removed it, and with apparent propriety, into the class of fishes. It is a cun- ning attendant upon the hooks of the fisherman ; and as soon as it perceives a larger fish to be taken, and by its captivity rendered incapable of resistance, it darts into its mouth, preys voraciously, like the fabled vultures of Prome- theus, on its inside, and works its way out through the fish's skin. But though gelatin and albumen are unquestionably animal productions, the one a secretion from the blood, and the other a constituent principle of it, there is a doubt whether lime ought ever to be regarded in the same charac- ter. A very large portion is perpetually introduced into the stomach from without. In our lecture on the analogy between the structure of plants and of animals,* I had occasion to observe, that it forms an ingredient in common salt; not, indeed, necessarily so, but from the difiSculty of separating the other ingredients from their combination with it : yet it enters not more freely into common salt than into almost every other article, whether animal, vege- table, or mineral of which our diet is usually composed. And upon this com- mon fact it is more generally conceived, at present, to be a substance com- municated to the animal frame, than generated by it. This opinion, however, is by no means established; and there are many circumstances that may lead us to a contrary conclusion. Though almost every kind of food contains some portion of lime, it by no means contains an equal portion ; and yet we find that a healthy young animal, whatever be the sort of food on which it is fed, will still provide lime enough from some quar- ter or other to satisfy the demand of its growing bones, and to maintain them in a due degree of solidity and hardness. Again, the soil of some countries, as the mountains of Spain, for example, consists almost entirely of gypsum or some other species of limestone ; while in other countries these are substances very rarely to be met with. It is a curious fact, that in that vast part of the globe which has been latest dis- covered, and to which modern geographers have given the name of Australia, comprising New-Holland and the islands with which its shores are studded, not a single bed or stratum of limestone has hitherto been detected, and the builders are obliged to make use of burnt shells for their mortar, for which I have lately advised them to substitute burnt coral.f Now, it would be natural to suppose that the animals and vegetables of such a country would partake of the deficiency of its soil, and that the shells and bones which it produces would be less compact in their texture than those of other countries ; yet this supposition is not verified by fact : nature is still adequate to her own work ; the bones of animals are as indurated and perfect in these regions as in any parts of the old world ; while the shells are not only as perfect, but far more numerous ; and the frequent reefs of coral, altogether an animal pro- duction, that shoot forth from the shores in bold and massy projections, prove clearly that a coral rock, largely as it consists of lime, forms the basis of almost every island. The prodigious quantity of lime, moreover, that is secreted by some ani- mals at stated periods, beyond what they secrete at other times, seems to indicate a power of generating this earth in their own bodies. The stag, elk, and several other species of the deer-tribe, cast their antlers annually, and * Series i. Lect. viii. t It is understood that some beds of chalk ha^ye since been discovered on the farther side of the Blue Mountains, but none is still to be traced on the hitlier side in any of the settlements of the colonv. H2 116 ON THE BONES, &c. renew them in full perfection in about twelve weeks. These antlers are real bones ; and those of the elk are sometimes as heavy as half a hundred pounds weight, and in a fossil state in Ireland have been dug up still heavier, and of the enormous measure of eig-ht feet long-, and fourteen feet from tip to tip , on beholding which, we may well, indeed, exclaim with Waller, — O fertile head ! which every year Could such a crop of wonders bear. In like manner, many species of the crab and lobster tribes annually throw off and renew the whole of their crustaceous covering, and apparently with- out any very great degree of trouble. The animal at this time retires to some lonely and sheltered place, where, m its naked and defenceless state, it may avoid the attack of others of the same tribe which are not in the- same situation : a line instinctively drawn now separates the shell into two parts, which are easily shaken off, when the secernent vessels of the skin pour forth a copious efflux or sweat of calcareous matter all over the body, the more liquid parts of which are as rapidly drunk up by the absorbent vessels, so that a new calcareous membrane is very soon produced, which as speedily hardens into a new calcareous crust, and the entire process is completed in about a fortnight. This genus, also, in many of its species, is capable of re- producing an entire limb, with the whole of its calcareous casing, whenever deprived of it by accident or disease, or it voluntarily throws it off, as 1 have already observed it is capable of doing, to extricate itself from being seized hold of; though the new limb is seldom so large or powerful as the origin"al. So, in other animals, we sometimes find a large and preternatural secretion of calcareous matter, in consequence of a diseased habit of particular organs, or of the system generally. The human kidneys are too often subject to a mor- bid affection of this kind, whence a frequent necessity for one of the most painful operations in surgery. The chalkstones, as they are erroneously called, that are often produced in protracted fits of gout and rheumatism, are rather lithate of soda than any compound of lime ; but instances are not wanting in which one of the lungs has been found converted into an entire quarry of limestone. In the Transactions of the Royal Society there are several cases related of young persons who, in consequence of a morbid habit, threw out a variety of calcareous excrescences, either over the hands and feet, or over the whole body ;* and about four years since, a Leicestershire heifer was exhibited for a show in this metropolis, the head and neck of which were completely im- bedded in horny excrescences of this kind, and the back and limbs profusely sprinkled over with them : some of the horns, and especially those about the dew-lap, were as long and as large as the natural horns of the forehead, but they were much more calcareous and brittle. A calcareous scurf, moreover, was secreted over every part of the skin, which, whenever the skin was scratched or bitten, united with the fluid that oozed forth, "ramified, and diva- ricated into masses of small roses. At the request of thciproprietor I took an account of this extraordinary animal, and have since communicated it to the Royal Society. In all other respects it was in good health ; its size was proportionate to its age, and its appetite enabled it to digest foods of every kind equally; and though, in consequence of this, its diet had been frequently varied, the propensity to a secretion of calcareous matter continued the same under every change. It appears, therefore, very doubtful whether the animal economy be not at times capable of generating lime, as well as gelatin or albumen, out of the different materials introduced into the stomach in the form of food. Vauquelin endeavoured to decide the question by a variety of experiments upon the nature of the egg-shells of a sitting hen, and an examination into the propor- tion of calcareous matter contained in a given weight of shells, compared with the calcareous matter furnished by her food, and that discharged as a • See also Mr. Baker's account of the porcupine- man, Phil. Trans, for 1755 OF THE ANIMAL FRAME- 117 recrement ; and, so far as these experiments g-o, they support tlie opinion of a generation of lime, and that in very considerable abundance, the weight secreted appearing to have been five times as much as that introduced into the stomach. But to determine the question incontrovertibly requires so nice a precision in the mode of conducting such experiments, as from a variety of circumstances, it seems almost impossible to attain. It is to the power which the living principle possesses, either of secreting or generating the substance of lime by its natural action, that we are indebted for all those elegant shells that enrich the cabinet of the conchologist, and seem to vie with each other in the beauty of their spots, the splendour and irridescence of their colours, and the graceful inflection of their wreaths. And it is to the power which the same principle possesses, of forming this substance by a morbid action, that we owe not only those unsightly excres- cences I have just mentioned, but some of the most costly ornaments of su- perstition or luxury : those agate-formed bezoards which in Spain, Portugal^ and even Holland were lately worn as amulets against contagion, and which have been let out for hire at a ducat a day, and been sold as high as three hundred guineas a piece ; and those delicate pearls which constitute an object of desire among the fair sex of every country, and which give additional attraction to the most finished form. The first are usually obtained from the stomach or intestines of the goat or antelope ; in the latter case being called oriental bezoards, and possessing the highest value. The most esteemed are those obtained from the stomach of that species of the oriental antelope called the gazel, to which the Persian and Arabian poets are perpetually adverting whenever they stand in need of an image to express elegance of form, fleetness of speed, or captivating soft- ness of the eyes. The second are obtained from the inside of the shells of the mytilus margaritiferus and mya margaritifera, pearl-muscle and pearl- oyster ; the former, producing the largest and consequently the richest, is found most commonly on the coast of Ceylon ; the latter not unfrequently on that of our own country, and was traced some centuries ago in great abundance in the river Conway in Wal^s. Linnaeus is said to have been ac- quainted with a process by which he could excite at pleasure a secretion of new pearls in the pearl-oysters which he kept in his reservoirs. It is gene- rally supposed to be a diseased secretion somewhat similar to that of the stone in the human bladder. The murex tritonis, or musical murex, is here also worth noticing. Its calcareous shell is ventricose, oblong, smooth, with rounded whorls, toothed aperture, and short beak, about fifteen inches long, white, and appearing as if covered with brown, yellow, and black scales. It inhabits India and the South Seas, and is used by the New-Zealanders as a musical shell, and by the Africans and many nations of the East as a military horn. Before we quit this subject, I will just observe, that it is to the same tribe we are indebted for our nacre or mother-of-pearl which is nothing more than the innermost layers of the shell, in which the morbid works or concretions which we call pearls lie imbedded ; and that to the same order of shells the Indians owe their wampum or pieces of common money, which are formed of the Venus mercenaria, or clam-shell, found in a fossil state ; and that our own heralds owe the scallop, ostrea maxima, that so often figures in the field of our family arms, and was formerly worn by pilgrims on the hat or coat, in its natural state, as a mark that they had crossed the sea for the purpose of paying their devotions at the Holy Land. From these facts and observations we cannot but behold the great import- ance of lime in the construction of the animal frame, the extensive use which is made of it, and the variety of purposes to which it is applied : combined in diflferent proportions with gluten and albumen it affords equally the means of strength and protection, produces the bones within and the shells without, the external and internal skeleton, and is discoverable in every class, order, and even genus of animals, except a very few of the soft worms and insects in their first and unfinished state. . IB ON THE BONES, &c. It is hence the cerambyx, and several other tribes of insects, are able tc make that shrill sound which they give forth on being taken, and which ap- pears like a cry from the mouth, but is in reality nothing- more than the fric- tion of the chest of the insect against the upper part of its abdomen and wing- shells. And it is hence, also, that the ptinus Jatidicvs, or death-watch, pro- duces those measured strokes against the head or other part of a bed in the middle of the night, which are so alarming to the fearful and superstitious ; but which, in truth, are nothing more than a call or signal by which the one sex is enticed to the other, and is merely produced by the insect's striking the bony or horny front of its head against the bed-post, or some other hard substance. Having, then, taken a brief survey of the elementary nature and chemi- cal composition of these harder parts of the animal frame, I shall proceed to make a few remarks upon the relative powers of each, and their diversified applications amid the different kinds of animals in which they are em- ployed. The BONES in their colour are usually white ; but this does not hold uni- versally, for those of the gar-pike (esox belone) are green ; and in some varie- ties of the common fowl they approach to a black : Abelfazel remarks this of the fowls of Berar, and Niebuhr of those of Persepolis. The bones of an animal, wherever they exist, are unquestionably the levers of its organs of motion : and so far the mechanical theorists are correct. In man and quadrupeds, whose habits require solidity of strength rather than flexibility of accommodation, they are hard, firm, and unpliant, and consist of gluten fully saturated with phosphate and carbonate of lime. In serpents aAd fishes, whose habits, on the contrary, demand flexibility of motion, they are supple and cartilaginous ; the gluten is in excess, and the phosphate of lime but small in proportion to it, and in some fishes altogether deficient in the composition of their skeleton, though still traceable in their scales and several other parts. In birds, whose natural habits demand levity, the bones are skilfully hollowed out and communicate with the lungs, and instead of being filled with marrow are filled with air, so that the purpose for which the structure of birds was designed is as obvious, and as deeply marked, in the bones as in the wings, whose quills also are for the same reason left hol- low, or rather are filled with air, and in many tribes communicate with the lungs as the bones do. The skeleton of the cuttle-fish (sepia officinalis) is extremely singular : its back bone, for some purpose unknown to us, is much broader than that of any other aquatic animal of the same size, and of course would be much heavier but for a curious contrivance to prevent this effect, which consists in its being exquisitely porous and cellular, and capable, like the bones of birds, of becoming filled with air, or exhausted of it, at the option of the animal, in or- der to ascend or descend with the greater facility. It is an animal of this kind, or closely akin to it,* that inhabits the shell of the beautiful paper-nau- tilus, and still more beautiful pearl-nautilus (argonauta and nautilus tribes), and which hence obtain no inconsiderable portion of that lightness which en- ables them, with their extended sails, to scud so dexterously before the wind. In the calamary (sepia loligo) we meet with an approach towards the same contrivance, in a kind of leafy plate introduced into the body of the animal ; and even in the cloak of the slug-tribe we trace something of the same sort, though proportionably smaller, and verging to the nature of horn. Generally speaking, the bones grow cartilaginous towards their extremi- ties, and the muscles tendinous ; by which means the fleshy and osseous parts of the organs of motion become assimilated, and fitted for that insertion * The animal has commonly been supposed to be a real sepia or cuttie-flah ; but several naturalists have of late doubted this, inasmuch as there are a few marks of distinction that seem to take it out of this genus. Rafinesque has hence made another genus, for the purpose of receiving those which possess these dis tinctive signs ; and Dr. Leach has lately distinguished it specifically, in consequence ,of sfiecimens sent home from the unfortunate Congo expedition as collected by Cranch, by the name of Ocythoe Cranchiu Even this animal, however, is regarded as a parasite in the shell, and only possessing it when empty. Tht proper animal is not known to the present hour.— See Phil. Trans. 1817, p. 293 OF THE ANIMAL FRAME. 19 of the one part into the other upon which their mutual action depends. The extent and nature of the motion is determined by the nature of the articula- tion, which is varied with the nicest skill to answer the purpose intended. In ostraceous worms the only articulation is that of the hinge : in the cancer tribes the tendon is articulated with the crust, whence the wonderful strength and activity of the claws ; and it is articulated in a similar manner with the scaly plates of some species of the tortoise. In insects the part received and the part receiving form each a segment of a spheroid ; whence the motion may be either rotatory or lateral, at pleasure. In mammalian anim.als the lower jaw only has a power of motion ; but in birds, serpents, and fishes, the upper jaw in a greater or less degree possesses a similar power. The motion of serpents is produced, according to Sir Everard Home, by their ribs, which for the most part accompany them, not only as organs of respira- tion, but from the hind extremity to the neck, and are possessed of a peculiar power of motion by means of peculiar muscles. "The vertebrae are'articu- lated by ball and socket joints (the ball being formed upon the lower, and the socket on the upper one), and have therefore much more extensive motion than in other animals." In the draco volans the skeleton of the wings is formed out of ribs which " are superadded for this purpose, and make no part of the organs of respiration ; the ribs in these animals appear to work in suc- cession, like the feet of a caterpillar." The TEETH vary in their form and position almost as much as the bones. Where jaw-bones exist they are usually fixed immoveably in their sockets ; but in some animals a few of them are left moveable, and in others the whole. The mus maritimus, or African rat, the largest species of this genus which has hitherto been discovered, and seldom less than a full-sized rabbit, has the singular property of separating at pleasure to a considerable distance the two front teeth of the lower jaw, which are not less than an inch and a quarter long. That elegant and extraordinary creature the kangaroo, which, from the increase that has lately taken place in his Majesty's gardens at Kew, we may soon hope to see naturalized in our own country, is possessed of a simi- lar faculty. And the hollow tusks or poisoning fangs of the rattlesnake, and other deadly serpents, are situated in a peculiar bone on each side of the upper jaw, so articulated with the rest, that the animal can either depress or elevate them at his option. In a quiescent state they are recumbent, with their points directed inwards ; but whenever the animal is irritated he in- stantly raises them ; and at the moment they inflict a wound, the poison, which lies in a reservoir immediately below, is injected through their tubes by the act of pressure itself. In the shark and ray genera the whole of the- teeth are moveable, and lie imbedded in jaw-cartilages instead of in jaw-bones, and like the fangs of the poisonous serpents are raised or depressed at pleasure. The teeth of the xiphias gladius., or sword-fish, are similarly inserted ; while his long sword- like snout is armed externally, and on each side, with a taper row of sharp, strong, pointed spines or hooks, which are sometimes called his teeth, and which give rise to his popular name. The ant-eater and manis swallow their aliment whole ; and in many ani- mals the jaws themselves perform the. office of teeth, at least with the assist- ance of the tongue. In birds this is generally the case, sometimes in insects, whose jaws are for this purpose serrated or denticulated at the edge, and fre- quently in molluscous worms. The jaws of the triton genus act like the blades of a pair of scissors. The snail and slug have only a single jaw, semilunar in its form, and denticulated : but the mouth of the nereis has several bony pieces. The sea-mouse (aphrodita aculeata) has its teeth, which are four, fixed upon its proboscis, and is of course able to extend and retract them at pleasure ; and the leech has three pointed cartilaginous teeth, which it is able to employ in the same way, and by means of which it draws blood freely. In like manner, though insects cheifly depend upon a serrated jaw, yet many of them are also possessed of very powerful fangs, of which we have a striking instance in the aranea avicularia, or bird-spider, an inhabitant 120 ON THE BONES, &c. of South America, found among trees, and a devourer of other insects and even small birds. It is of so enormous a size that its fangs are equal to the talons of a hawk ; and its eyes, which are eight in number, arranged as a smaller square in the middle of a larger, are capable of being set in the manner of lenses, and used as microscopes. In many animals, especially the herbivorous, the tongue itself is armed with a serrated apparatus, the papillae being pointed and recurvated, and ena- bling them to tear up the grass with much greater facility. In the cat-kind the tongue is covered with sharp and strong prickles, which enable the ani- mal to take a stronghold; and similar processes are met with in the bat and the opossum. In the lamprey and myxine families, the tongue itself is co- vered with teeth. In that grotesque and monstrous bird the toucan, whose bill is nearly as large as its whole body, the tongue is lined with a bundle of feathers, of the use of which, however, we are totally ignorant, though it is probably an organ of taste. In the crab and lobster tribes the teeth are placed in the stomach, the whole of which is a very singular organ. It is formed on a bony apparatus, and hence does not collapse when empty. The teeth are inserted into it round its lower aperture or pylorus : their surface is extremely hard, and their mar- gin serrated or denticulated, so that nothing can pass through the opening without being perfectly comminuted. The bones and teeth are moved by peculiar muscles. It is a curious fact, that at the time the animal throws off its shell, it also disgorges its bony stomach and secretes a new one. The teeth of the cuttle-fish are arranged not very differently, being situated in the centre of the lower part of the body ; they are two in number, and homy, and in their figure exactly resemble the bill of a parrot. The teeth of the echinus genus (sea-hedgehog) are of a very singular arrange- ment. A round opening is left in the centre Of the shell for the entrance of the food : a bony structure, in which five teeth are inserted, fills up this aper- ture ; and as these parts are moveable by numerous muscles, they form a very complete organ of mastication. Such is the variety which the hand of nature, sometimes, perhaps, sportive, but always skilful, has introduced into the structure and arrangement of the teeth of animals, or the organs that are meant to supply their place. The SKIN AND ITS APPENDAGES olfcr au cqual diversity, and constitute the next subject of our inquiry. All living bodies, whether animal or vegetable, are furnished with this inte- gument : in all of them it is intended as a defence against the injuries to which, by their situation, they are commonly exposed; and in most of them it also answers the purpose of an emunctory organ, and throws off from the body a variety of fluids, which either serve by their odour to distinguish the individual, or are a recrement eliminated from its living materials. This integument accompanies animals and vegetables from their first forma- tion: it involves equally the seed and the egg; and possessing a nature less corruptible than the parts it encloses, often preserves them uninjured for many years, till they can meet with the proper soil or season for their healthy and perfect evolution. This is a curious subject, and must not be too hastily passed over. After fish-ponds have been frozen to the very bottom, and all the fishes contained in them destroyed ; or after they have been completely emptied, and cleared of their mud; eels and other fishes have been again found in them, thougn no attempt has been made to restock the ponds. Whence has proceeded this reproduction ? Many of the ancient schools of philosophy, and even some of those of more modern date, refer us to the doctrine of spontaneous gene- lation, and believe that they have here a clear proof of its truth. But this is to account for a diflSculty by involving ourselves in one of a much greatei magnitude. It is -a. peiitio principii which we stand in no need of, and which we should be careful how we concede. The reproduced fishes have alone arisen from the ova of those which formerly inhabited the fish-pond ; and which, from some cause or other, had sunk so deep into the soil, as to be OF THE ANIMAL FRAME 121 beyond the germinating influence of the warmth and air contained in the super- natant water, communicated to it by the sun and the atmosphere. But the inde- structible texture of the integument which enclosed the fecundated ova has preserved them, perhaps for years, from injury and corruption ; and they have only waited for that very exposure to light, air, and warmth, which the re- moval of the superior stratum of mud has produced, to awaken from their dormant state into life, form, and enjoyment ; and but for which they would have remained in the same state, dorn^ant but not destroyed, for ten or twelve times as long a period. So, in the hollows upon our waste lands, when they have been for some time filled with stagnant water, we not unfrequently find eels, minnows, and other small species of the carp genus, leeches,* and water insects, and won- der how they could get into such a situation. But the mud which has been emptied out of the preceding fish-pond has perhaps been thrown into these very hollows ; or the ova of the animals have been carried into the same place by some more recondite cause ; and they have been waiting, year after year, for the accidental circumstance which has at length arrived, and given them the full influence of warmth, water, light, and air. The ova of many kinds are peculiarly light, and almost invisibly minute. They are hence, when the mud, which has been removed from fish-ponds becomes dry and decomposed into powder, swept by the breeze into the atmosphere, from which they have occasionally descended into the large tanks which] are made in India as reservoirs for rain-water; and producing their respective kinds in this situation, have appeared, to the astonishment of all beholders, to have fallen from the clouds with the rain itself. Dr. Thom- son, in adverting to this curious fact, observes that it is difficult to account for it satisfactorily.f The explanation now offered will, if I mistake not, sufficiently meet the case. Many insects can only be hatched in a particular animal organ ; and it is the office of the integument of the ovum to preserve it in a perfect state till it has an opportunity of reaching its proper nidus. Thus the horse-gadfly, or oestrus equi, deposites its eggs on the hairs of this animal, and sticks them to the hair-roots by a viscous matter whicli it secretes for this purpose. But here they could never be hatched, though they were to remain through the whole life of the horse : their proper nidus is the horse's stomach or intes- tines, and to this nidus they must be conveyed by some means or other ; and in their first situation they must remain and be preserved, free from injury or corruption, till they can obtain such a conveyance. The integument in which they are wrapped up gives them the protection they stand in need of; and the itching which they excite in the horse's skin compels him to lick the itching part with his tongue; and by this simple contrivance the ova of the gadfly are at once conveyed to his mouth, and pass with the food into the very nidus which is designed for them. It is the same integument that, by its incorruptibility, preserves the cater- pillar during the torpitude of its chrysalid state, while suspended by a single thread from the eaves of an incumbent roof; and which thus enables the worm to be transformed into a butterfly. The larve of the gnat, when ap- proaching the same defenceless state, dives boldly into the water, and is protected by the same indestructible sheath from the dangers of an untried element. In several species the insect remains in its chrysalid state for many years .• the locust, in one of its species at least, the cicada septendecim, appears in numbers once only in seventeen years, and the palmer-worm once only in thirty years ; cycles not recognised by the meteorologist, but which are well entitled to his attention : and, through the whole range of their duration, it is the integument we are now speaking of that furnishes the animal with a secure protection. Whence comes it that plants of distant and opposite climates (for every • See Willd. p. 120, note. t Annals of Philos. viii. p, 70. '22 ON THK BONES, &c. climate has its indigenous plants as well as its indigenous animals) should so frequently meet together in the same region ? that those which naturally be long to the Cape of Good Hope should be found wild in New-Holland 1 and those of Africa on the coast of Norway 1 and that the Floras of every climate under the heavens should consociate in the stoves and gardens of our own country 1 It is the imperishable nature of the integument that surrounds their seeds by which this wonder is chiefly effected. Some of these seeds are provided with little hooks, and fasten themselves to the skins of animals, and are thus carried about from place to place ; others adhere by a native glue to the feathers of water-fowls, and are washed off in distant seas; while a third sort are provided by nature with little downy wings, and hence rise into the atmosphere, and are blown about by the breezes towards every quarter of the compass* Of this last kind is the light seed of the betula alba, or birch-tree ; which, in consequence, is occasionally seen germinating on the summit of the loftiest rocks and the tops of the highest steeples.* But it is to man himself that this dissemination of plants is chiefly owing. He who in some sort commands nature— who changes the desert into a beautiful land- scape — who lays waste whole countries, and restores them to their former fruitfulness— is the principal instrument of enriching one country with the botanical treasures of all the rest. Wars^ migrations, and crusades, travel, curiosity, and commerce, have all contributed to store Europe with a multi- tude of foreign productions, and to transplant our own productions into foreign quarters. Almost all the culinary plants of England, and the greater number of our species of corn, have reached us from Italy or the East ;t America has sin(;e added some ; and it is possible that Australia may yet add a few more. The utmost period of time to which seeds may hereby be kept, and be en- abled to retain their vital principle, and consequently their power of germina- tion, has not been accurately determined ; but we have proofs enough to show that the duration may be very long. Thus, M. Triewald relates that a paper of melon-seeds, found in 1762, in the cabinet of Lord Mortimer, and appa- rently collected in 1660, were then sown, and produced flowers and excellent fruit ;J and Mr. R. Gale gives an instance of a like effect from similai seeds after having been kept thirty-three years. § M. Saint-Hilaire sowed various seeds belonging to the collection of Ber- nard de Jussieu, forty-five years after the collection had been made. They consisted of three hundred and fifty distinct species ; of these many, though not the whole, proved productive. In some the cotyledon appeared to have nearly, but not entirely, perished : in which, therefore, though the seeds swelled, and promised fairly at first, they died away gradually. And as it is a well-known fact that melons improve from seeds that have been kept for two or three years, he conceives that in this case the cotyledons have been ripened during such period. || Animal seeds or eggs, when perfectly impregnated, appear capable of pre- servation as long. Bomare, indeed, aflirms, that he himself found three eggs, which, protected from the action of the air, had continued fresh in the wall of a church in which they must have remained for a period of three hundred years.f The integument which covers seeds, eggs, insects, and worms, seldom con- sists of more than two distinct layers, and is sometimes only a single one ; but in the four classes of red-blooded animals it consists almost uniformly of three layers, which are as follows : first, the true skin, which lies lower- most, is the basis of the whole, and may be regarded as the condensed exter- nal surface of the cellular substance, with nerves, blood-vessels, and absorbents interwoven in its texture ; secondly, a mucous web frete mucosum), which gives the different colours to the skin, but which can only be traced as a distinct •There is an interesting article on this subject published long since the above was delivered; an accoun. of which may be found in the Journal of Science and the Arts, No. vii. p. 3. t Willdenow, Principles, &c. § 357. I Phil. Trans, vol. xlii. ^ lb. vol. xliii. U lilloch's Phil. Mag. vol. xlii. p. 208, article of M. Saint-Hilaire, IT Dictionnaire, art. Oeuf OF THE ANIMAL FRAME. 123 layer in warm-blooded animals ; and, thirdly, the cuticle, which covers the whole, and is furnished in the different classes with peculiar organs for the formation and excretion of a variety of ornamental or defensive materials— as hairs, feathers, wool, and silk. The CUTIS, or true skin, is seldom uniformly thick, even in the same ani- mal: thus, in man, and other mammals, it is much thicker on the back than in the front of the body ; but in the different classes or genera of animals it offers us every possible variety. Generally speaking, it is thinnest in birds, excepting in the duck tribe and in birds of prey. Its consistency and elasti- city in horses, oxen, sheep, and other cattle, render it an object of high value, and lay a foundation for a variety of our most important trades and manufac- tures. In many animals it is so thick and tough, as to be proof against a musket-ball. It is sometimes found so in the elk, but usually so in the ele- phant, which, at the same time, possesses the singularity of being sensible to the sting of flies. The skin of the rhinoceros despises equally the assault of swords, musket-balls, and arrows. I have observed already, that in many animals the skin performs the office of a muscle, though it is seldom that any thing like a fibrous structure can be traced in it. The skin of man offers a few partial instances of this power, as in the forehead and about the neck. In most quadrupeds we trace the power extending over the whole body, and enabling them to throw off at their option insects and other small animals that irritate them. The skin of the horse shudders through every point of it at the sound of a whip, and is said to be generally convulsed on the appearance of a lion or tiger. Birds, and espe- cially the cockatoo and heron tribes, derive hence a power of moving at plea- sure the feathers of the crest, neck, and tail ; and the hedgehog, of rolling himself into a ball, and erecting his bristles by way of defence. The colour of the skin is derived from the rete mucosum, or mucous web, which, as I have already remarked, is disposed between the true skin and the cuticle. The name of rete, or web, however, does not properly apply to this substance, for it has no vascularity, and is a mere butter-like material, which, when black, has a near resemblance in colour, as well as consistency, to the grease introduced between the nave of a wheel and its axletree. It is to this we owe the beautiful red or violet that tinges the nose and hind-quarters of some baboons, and the exquisite silver that whitens the belly of the dolphin and other cetaceous fishes.' In the toes and tarsal membrane of ravens and turkeys it is frequently black ; in hares and peacocks, gray ; blue in the tit- mouse; green in the waterhen; yellow in the eagle; orange in the stork; and red in some species of scolopax or woodcock. It gives that intermixture of colours which besprinkles the skin of the frog and salamander ; but it is for the gay and glittering scales of fishes, the splendid metallic shells of beetles, and the gaudy eye-spots that bedrop the wings of the butterfly, that nature reserves the utmost force of this wonderful pigment, and sports with it in her happiest caprices. The different colours, and shades of colours, of the human skin, are attri- butable to the same material. Most of these, however, are intimately con- nected with a very full access of solar light and heat ; for a deep sun-burned skin has a near approach to a mulatto.* And hence the darkness or blacks ness of the complexion has been generally supposed to proceed from the effect produced upon the mucous pigment by the solar rays, and especially those of the calorific kind, in consequence of their attracting and detaching the oxygen of the pigment in proportion to the abundance with which it impinges against the animal surface, and in thp same proportion setting at liberty the carbon, which is thus converted into a more or less perfect char- coal. As this, however, is a subject which I shall have occasion to revert to in a distinct study upon the varieties of the human race,t it is unnecessary to pursue it any farther at present. It is a most curious circumstance, that the children of negroes are uniformly * Humboldt, Essai Polit. sur la Nouvelle Espagne, &c. t Series n. Lecture iii 124 ON THE BONES, &c. OF THE ANIMAL FRAME. "born white, or nearly so ; and that the black pigment which colours them is not fully secreted till several months after birth. It sometimes happens, though rarely, that from a morbid state of the secretory organs there is no pigment s'ecreted at all, or a white pigment is secerned instead of a black ; whence we have white negroes, or persons exhibiting all the common cha racters of the negro-breed in the form of the head and features of the face, with the anomaly of a white skin. And it sometimes happens, though still more rarely, that from a similar kind of morbid action affecting the secretory organs, the black 'pigment is secreted in alternate or interrupted divisions ; and in this case we have negro children with brindled, marbled, or spotted skins: an instance of which was brought to me by a gentleman about two years ago, who had purchased the child in America, and who, I believe, after- ward exhibited it in this metropolis as a public show. The CUTICLE is the thinnest of the layers that form the general integument of the skin. It often, however, becomes thicker, and sometimes even horny, by use. Thus it is always thicker in the sole of the foot and palm of the hand ; and horny in the palms of blacksmiths and dyers; and still more so in the soles of those who walk barefooted on burning sands. It is annually thrown off whole by many tribes of animals — as grasshoppers, serpents, and spiders — and as regularly renewed ; and by some animals it is renewed still more frequently : it is shed not less than seven times by the caterpillar of the moth and butterfly before either becomes a chrj^salis. There are a few plants that exfoliate their cuticle in the same manner, and as regularly renew it. The West India plane-tree throws it off annually. From the cuticle shoots forth a variety of substances, which either protect or adorn it, the roots of which are not unfrequently imbedded in the true skin itself. Of the harder kind, and which serve chiefly as a defence, are the nails, scales, claws, and horns ; of the softer and more ornamental kinds, are hair, wool, silk, ar^d feathers. Hair is the most common production, for we meet with it not only in all mammals, but occasionally in birds, fishes, and insects, varying in consis- tency and fineness, from a down invisible to the naked eye, to a bristle strong enough to support, when a foot long, ten or twelve pounds weight without breaking. Wool is not essentially different in its chemical properties from hair, and it varies equally in the fineness and coarseness of its texture. It is generally supposed by the growers, that the fineness of its texture depends upon the nature of the soil ; yet of the two finest sorts we are at present acquainted with, that of Spain and that of New South Wales, which last is an offset from the Cape of Good Hope, and has yielded specimens of broad cloth, manufactured in this country, as soft and silky as that of unmixed Merino wool — that of Spain is grown on a pure limestone soil, covered with small leguminous plants instead of with grass ; and that of New South Wales on a soil totally destitute of lime, and covered with a long, rich, succulent grass alone. Food, however, or clinaate, or both, must be allowed, under certain circum- stances, to possess a considerable degree of influence ; for it is a curious fact, that the hair of the goat and rabbit tribes, and the wool of the sheep tribe, are equally converted into silk by a residence of these animals in that district of Asia Minor which is called Angora, though we do not know that a similar change is produced by a residence in any other region ; while, on the con- trary, the wool of sheep is transformed into hair on the coast of Guinea. The fine glossy silk of the Angora goat is well known in this country, as being often employed for muffs and other articles of dress. How far these animals might be made to perpetuate this peculiar habit by a removal from Angora to other countries has never yet been tried. Upon the whole, the soil and climate of New-Holland offer the fairest prospect of success to such an attempt ; and under this impression I have for some time been engaged in an endeavour to export a few of each genus of these animals from Angora to Port Tackson. ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. 125 Silk, however, is chiefly secreted by insects, as some species of spider, whose threads, like the hair of the Angora goat, assume a silky gloss and lubricity, and the phalaena mori, or silk-worm, which yields it in great abun- dance. Yet there are a few shell-fishes which generate the same, and espe- cially the genus pinna, or nacre, in all its species ; whence Reaumur calls this kind the sea silk-worm. It is produced in the form of an ornamental byssus or beard : the animal is found gregariously in the Mediterranean and Indian seas; and the weavers of Palermo manufacture its soft threads into glossy stuffs or other silky textures. And I may here observe, that there are various trees that possess a like material in the fibres of their bark, as the morus papyrtfcra, and several other species of the mulberry : in consequence of which it has been doubted by some naturalists wliether the silk-worm actually generates its cocoon, or merely eliminates it from the supply received as its food ; but as the silk-worm forms it from whatever plants it feeds on, it is obviously an original secretion. From the integument of the skin originates also that beautiful plumage which peculiarly characterizes the class of birds, and the colours of which are probably a result of the same delicate pigment that produces, as we have already remarked, the varying colours of the skin itself; though, from the minuteness with which it is employed, the hand of chemistry has not been able to separate it from the exquisitely fine membrane in which it is involved. But it is impossible to follow up this ornamental attire through all its won- derful features of graceful curve and irridescent colouring, — of downy deli- cacy and majestic strength, — from the tiny rainbow that plays on the neck of the humming-bird, to the beds of azure, emerald, and hyacinth, that tesselate the wings of the parrot tribe, or the ever-shifting eyes that dazzle in the tail of the peacock ; — from the splendour and taper elegance of the feathers of the bird of paradise, to the giant quills of the crested eagle or the condur — that crested eagle, which in size is as large as a sheep, and is said to be able to cleave a man's scull at a stroke ; and that condur which, extending its enormous wings to a range of sixteen feet in length, has been known to fly off with children of ten or twelve years of age. Why liave not these monsters of the sky been appropriated to the use of man 1 How comes it that he who has subdued the ocean and cultivated the earth ; who has harnessed elephants, and even lions, to his chariot wheels, should never have availed himself of the wings of the eagle, the vulture, or the frigate pelican ? That, having conquered the difiiculty of ascending into the atmosphere, and ascertained the possibility of travelling at the rate of eighty miles an hour through its void regions, he should yet allow himself to be the mere sport of the whirlwind, and not tame to his use, and harness to his car, the winged strength of these aerial racers, and thus stamp with reality some of the boldest fictions of the heathen poets ] The hint has, indeed, long been thrown out ; and the perfection to which the art of falconry was carried in former times sufficiently secures it against the charge of absurdity or extravagance. LECTURE XII. ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION AND THE ORGANS CONTRIBUTORY TO IT : THE DIF- FERENT KINDS OF FOOD EMPLOYED BY DIFFERENT ANIMALS : CONTINUANCE OF LIFE THROUGH LONG PERIODS OF FASTING. Under every visible form and modification matter is perpetually changing : not necessarily so, or from its intrinsic nature; for the best schools of ancient times concur with the best schools of modern times, in holding its elementary principles, as I have already observed, to be solid and unchange- able ; and we have still farther seen, that even in some of its compound, but 12C ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. gaseous, etherealized, and invisible forms, it is probably alike exempted from the law of change ; while the Christian looks forward with holy hope to a period when this exemption will be general, and extend to every part and to every compound ; to a period in which there will be nevv heavens and a new earth, and what is now corruptible will put on incorruption. At present, however, we can only contemplate matter, under every visible form and modification, as perpetually changing ; as living, dying, and reviv- ing ; decomposing into its primordial elements, and recombining into new forms, and energies, and modes of existence. The germ becomes a seed, the seed a sapling, the sapling a tree : the embryo becomes an infant, the infant a youth, the youth a man ; and, having thus ascended the scale of ma- turity, both instantly begin the downward path to decay; and, so far as relates to the visible materials of which they consist, both at length moulder into one common elementary mass, aivl furnish fresh fuel for fresh genera- tions of animal or vegetable existence. So that all is in motion, all is striving to burst the bonds of its present state ; not an atom is idle ; and the frugal economy of nature makes one set of materials answer the purpose of many, and moulds it into every diversified figure of being, and beauty, and happiness. But till the allotted tefm of existence has arrived, animals and vegetables are rendered equally capable of counteracting tlie waste they are perpetually sustaining in their individual frames ; and are wisely and benevolently en dowed with organs, whose immediate function it is to prepare a supply of reformative and vital matter adequate to the general demand. Of this class of organs in plants we took a brief survey in our eighth lecture ; and shall now proceed to notice the same class as it exists in ani- mals, and which is generally distinguished by the name of the digestive system. There is, perhaps, no animal function that displays a larger diversity of means by which it is performed than the present : and, perhaps, the only point in whicli all animals agree, is in the possession of an internal canal or cavity of some kind or other in which the food is digested ; an agreement which may be regarded as one of the leading features by which the animal structure is distinguished from the vegetable. Let us then, in the first place, trace this cavity as it exists in man and the more perfect animals ; the organs which are supposed to be auxiliary to it^ and the powers by which it accomplishes its important trust. Let us next observe the more curious deviations and substitutes that occur in classes that are difl'erently formed : and, lastly, let us attend to a few of the more singular anomalies that are occasionally met with, and especially in animals that are capable of subsisting on air or water alone, or of enduring very long absti- nences or privations of food. The alimentary cavity in man extends from the moutli through the whole range of the intestinal canal :* and hence its different parts are of very dif- ferent diameters. In the mouth, where it commences, it is wider; it con- tracts in the esophagus or gullet ; then again widens to form the stomach, and afterward again contracts into the tube of the intestines. This tube itself is also of different diameters in different parts of its extent; and it is chiefly on this diversity of magnitude that anatomists have established its divisions. Its general length is five or six times that of the man himself; and in children not less than ten or twelve times, in consequence of their diminutive stature. In som.e animals it is imperforate ; it is so occasionally in birds, and fishes, and almost uniformly so in zoophytes. Generally speaking, the extent of the digestive cavity bears a relation- to the nature of the aliments by which the individual is designed to be nou- rished. The less analogous these aliments are to the substance of the animal they are to sustain, the longer they must remain in the body to undergo the changes that are necessary to assimilate them. Hence the intestinal tube of herbivorous animals is very long, and their stomach is extremely large, and often double or triple ; while the carnivorous have a short and straight ♦StudvofMed. ii. 2. ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. 12T digestive canal, the food on which they feed being; already of their own nature, and containing^ a larger quantity of nourishment in a less bulk ; and hence demanding a smaller proportion both of time and space to become fit for use. In this respect man holds a medium between the two : his digestive canal is less complex than that of most animals that feed on grass alone, and more extensive than that of most animals that are confined to a diet of their own kind. Man is hence omnivorous, and is capable of subsisting on an aliment of either sort ; and from his digestive organs, as well as from various others, is better qualified for every variety of soil and climate than any other animal. Man, however, is by no means the only omnivorous animal in the world; for the great Author of nature is perpetually showing us that, though he ope- rates by general laws, he is in every instance the lord and not the slave of them. Hence, among quadrupeds, the swine, and among insects the ant, possesses as omnivorous a power as man himself, and feeds equally on the fleshy parts of animals, and on grain, and the sweet juices of vegetables. In consequence of this omnivorous power in the ant, we may often make use of him as a skilful anatomist ; for, by putting a dead frog, mouse, or other small animal in a box perforated with holes, and placing it near an ant-hill, we shall find it in a few days reduced to a perfect and exquisite skeleton, every atom of the soft parts being separated and devoured. The solid materials of the food are first masticated and moistened in the mouth, excepting in a few cases, in which it is swallowed whole. It is then introduced into the stomach, and converted into an homogeneous pulp or paste, which is called chyme ; and shortly afterward, by an additional pro- cess, into a fluid for the most part of a milky appearance, denominated chyle ; in which state it is absorbed or drunk up voi'aciously by thousands and tens of thousands of little mouths of very minute vessels, which are not often found in the stomach, but line the whole of the interior coating of that part of the intestinal tube into which the stomach immediately empties itself, and which are perpetually waiting to imbibe its liquid contents. These vessels consti- tute a distinct part of the lymphatic system; they are called lacteals from the usual milky appearance of the liquid they absorb and contain. They pro- gressively anastomose or unite together, and at length terminate in one common trunk, named the thoracic duct, which conveys the difl'erent streams thus collected and aggregated to the sanguineous system, to be still farther operated upon, and elaborated by the action of the heart and the lungs. The means by which the food is broken down and rendered pultaceous after being received into the stomach are various and complicated. In the first place, the muscular tunic of the stomach acts upon it by a slight con- traction of its fibres, and so far produces a mechanical resolution : secondly, the high temperature maintained in the stomach by the quantity of blood contained in the neighbouring viscera and sanguiferous vessels, gives it the benefit of accumulated heat, and so far produces a concoctive resolution: and, thirdly, the stomach itself secretes and pours forth from the mouths of its minute arteries a very powerful solvent, which is by far the chief agent in the process, and thus produces a chemical resolution. In this manner the moist- ened and manducated food becomes converted into the pasty mass we have already called chyme : and, fourthly, there are a variety of juices separated from the mass of the blood by distinct glands situated for this purpose in its vicinity, which are thrown into the duodenum, or that part of the canal into which the stomach immediately opens, by particular conduits, and in some way or other appear to contribute to the common result, and to transform the chyme into chyle, but concerning the immediate powers or modes of action of which we are in a considerable degree of darkness. Of these glands the most remarkable and the most general are the liver and the pancreas or sweet-bread ; the first of which secretes the bile, and is always of a consi- derable size, and appears to produce a very striking eflfect on the blood itself, by a removal of several of its principles independently of its ofllce as & digestive organ. 128 ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. From this brief survey 'of the process of digestion it is obvious that the stomach itself performs by far the principal part ; in some animals, indeed, it appears to perform the whole ; and it is hence necessary that we examine the general structure and powers of this organ with a little more minuteness. In man the stomach is situated on the left side of the midriff; in its figure it resembles the pouch of a bag-pipe ; its left end is most capacious ; its upper side is concave, its lower convex ; and the two orifices for receiving and discharging the food are both situated in the upper part. In its substance it consists of three distinct coats or layers, the external and internal of which are membranous, and the middle muscular. The internal coat, moreover, is lined with a villous or downy apparatus, and is extremely convoluted or wrinkled ; the wrinkles increasing in size as the diameter of the stomach contracts. From what I have already observed, it must appear that the process of digestion in man consists of three distinct acts : mastication, which is the office of the mouth, and by which the food is first broken down ; chymifica- tion, or its reduction into pulp, which is the office of the stomach ; and chy- lification, or its dilution into a fluid state, which is the office of that part of the intestinal canal which immediately communicates with the stomach. The whole of this process is completed in about three hours, and under cer- tain states of the stomach, to which I shall advert presently, almost as quickly as the food is swallowed. The most important of these three actions is that of chymification ; and, while it takes place, both orifices of the stomach are closed, and a degree of chilliness is often produced in the system generally, from the demand which the stomach makes upon it for an auxiliary supply of heat, without an augmentation of which it appears incapable of performing this important function. Considering the comparatively slender texture of the chief digesting organ, and the toughness and the solidity of the substances it digests, it cannot appear surprising that mankind should have run into a variety of mistaken theories in accounting for its mode of action. Empedocles and Hippocrates supposed the food to be softened by a kind of putrefaction. Galen, whose doctrine descended to recent times, and was zealously supported by Grew and Santarelli, ascribed the effect to concoction, produced, like the ripening and softening of fruits beneath a summer sun, by the high temperature of the stomach from causes just pointed out. Pringle and Macbride advocated the doctrine of fermentation, thus uniting the two causes of heat and putrefac- tion assigned by the Greek writers ; while Borelli, Keil, and Pitcairn resolved the entire process into mechanical action, or trituration; thus making the muscular coating of the stomach an enormous mill-stone, which Dr. Pitcairn was extravagant enough to conceive grouHd down the food with a pressure equal to a weight of not less than a hundred and seventeen thousand and eighty pounds, assisted, at the same time, in its gigantic labour, by an equal pressure derived from the surrounding muscles.* Each of these hypotheses, however, was encumbered with insuperable ob- jections ; and it is difficult to say which of them was most incompetent to explain the fact for which they were invented. Boerhaave endeavoured to give them force by interunion, and hence com- bined the mechanical theory of pressure with the chemical theory of concoc- tion ; while Haller contended for the process of maceration. But still a something else was found wanting, and continued to be so till Cheselden in lucky hour threw out the hint, for at first it was nothing more than a hint, of a menstruum secreted into some part of the digestive system ; a hint which was soon eagerly laid hold of, and successfully followed up by Haller, Reau- mur, Spallanzani, and other celebrated physiologists. And though Chesel- den was mistaken in the peculiar- fluid to which he ascribed the solvent energy, namely, the saliva, still he led forward to* the important fact, and the GASTRIC JUICE was soon afterward clearly detected, and its power incontrover- tibly established. * See Serieg i. Lecture x ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. 129 This wonderful menstruum, the most active we are acquainted with in nature, is secreted by a distinct set of vessels tliat exist in the texture of the stomach, and empty themselves into its cavity by innumerable orifices invi- sible to the naked eye ; and it is hence called gastric juice, from yuCTT))?, which is Greek for stomach. Mr. Cruickshank supposes about a pound of it to be poured forth every twenty-four hours. " The drink," says .he, " taken into tlie stomacli may be two pounds in twenty-four hours ; the saliva swallowed may be one pound in the same period, the gastric juice another, the pan- creatic juice another. The bile poured into the intestines Haller supposes about twenty ounces, besides the fluid secreted through the whole of the internal surfaces of the intestines ;"* which Haller calculates at not less than eiglit pounds in twenty-four hours, — a calculation, nevertheless, that Blumen- bach regards as extravagant. f The quantity of the gastric juice, however, seems to vary very considerably, according to the demand of the system generally, or the state of the stomach itself. In carnivorous birds, whose stomachs are membranous alone, and, consequently, whose food is chymified by the sole action of the gastric juice, without any collate-ral assistance or previous mastication, this fluid is secreted in much larger abundance ; as it is also in those who labour under that morbid state of the stomach which is called canine appetite ; or when, on recovery from fevers, or in consequence of long abstinence, the system is reduced to a state of great exhaustion, and a keen sense of hunger induces a desire to devour food voraciously and almost perpetually. Such was the situation of Admiral Byron and liis two friends. Captains Cheap and Hamilton, after they had been shipwrecked on the western coast of South America, and had been emaciated, as he tells us, to skin and bone, by having suff'ered with hunger and fatigue for some months. "The go- vernor," says Admiral Byron, " ordered a table to be spread for us with cold ham and fowls, which only we three sat down to, ^md in a short time des- patched more than ten men with common appetites would have done. It is amazing that our eating to that excess we had done from the time we first got among tliese kind Indians had not killed us ; we were never satisfied, and used to take all opportunities, for some months after, of filling our pockets when we were not seen, that we might get up two or three times in the night to cram ourselves."! When pure and in a healthy state, the gastric juice is a thin, transparent, and uninflammable fluid, of a weak saline taste, and destitute of smell. Generally speaking, it is neither acid nor alkaline ; but it appears to vary more or less in these properties, not only in animals whose organs of diges- tion are of a different structure, but even in the very same animal under dif- ferent circumstances. It may, however, be laid down as an established rule, that in carnivorous cLnd graminivorous animals possessing only a single stomach, this fluid is acid, and colours blue vegetable juices red ; in omnivorous animalf as man, whose food is composed both of vegetable and animal diet, it is neu tral ; and in graminivorous ruminating animals with four stomachs, and pai ticularly in the adults of these tribes, it has an alkaline tendency, and co- lours blue vegetable juices green. There are two grand characteristics by which this fluid is pre-eminently distinguished ; a most astonishing faculty of counteracting and even correct- ing putrefaction; and a faculty, equally astonishing, of dissolving the tough- est and most rigid substances in nature. Of its ANTISEPTIC POWER abuudaut proofs may be adduced from every class Df animals. Among mankind, and especially in civilized life, the food is usu- ally eaten in a state of sweetness and freshness ; but fashion, and the luxuri- ous desire of having it softened and mellowed to our hands, tempt us to keep several kinds as long as we can endure the smell. The wandering hordes of gypsies, however, and the inhabitants of various savage countries, and espe- * Arat. of the Absorbing Vessels, p. 106. t Physiol. Institut. xxvli. § 410, X Voyage, p. 181. See also Hunter's Animal Economy, p. 196. 130 ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c cially those about the mouth of the Orange river in Africa, carry this sort of luxury to a much higher pitch, for they have no objection to an offensive smell, and appear to value their looa in proportion to its approach towards putrefaction. Now all these foods, whatever be the degree of their putridity, are equally restored to a state of sweetness by the action of this juice, a short time after they have been introduced into the stomach. Dr. Fordyce made a variety of experiments in reference to this subject upon the dog, and found uniformly that the most putrid meat he could be made to swallow, was in a very short time deprived of its putrescency. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that crows, vultures, and hyenas, Avho find a pleasure in tainted flesh, should fatten upon so impure a diet; nor that the dunghill should have its courtiers among insects as well as the flower- garden. The gastric juice has hence been employed as an antiseptic in a variety of cases out of the body. Spallanzani has ascertained that the gastric juice of tlie crow and the dog will preserve veal and mutton perfectly sweet, and without consumption, thirty-seven days in winter; while the same meats immersed in water emit a fetid smell as early as the seventh day, and by the thirtieth are resolved into a state of most offensive liquidity. Physicians and surgeons have equally availed themselves of this corrective quality, and have occasionally employed the gastric juice, internally in cases of indigestion from a debilitated stomach, and externally as a check to gan- grenes, and a stimulus to impotent and indolent ulcers. I do not know that this practice has hitherto taken place very largely in our own country, but it has been extensively resorted to on the Continent, and especially in Switzer- land and Italy ; and in many cases with great success. But the gastric juice is as remarkable for its solvent as for its antiputres- cent property. Of this any industrious observer may satisfy himself by at- tending to the process of digestion in many of our most common animals ; but it has been most strikingly exemplified in the experiments of Reaumur and Spallanzani. Pieces of the toughest meats, and of the most solid bones, en- closed in small perforated tin cases to guard against all muscular action, have been repeatedly thrust into the stomach of a buzzard : the meats were uni- formly found diminished to three-fourths of their bulk in the space of twenty- four hours, and reduced to slender threads; and the bones were wholly di- gested, either upon the first trial or a few repetitions of it. Dr. Stevens repeated the experiment on the human stontach by means of a perforated ivory ball, which he hired a person at Edinburgh alternately to swallow and disgorge, when a like effect was observed. The gastric juice of the dog dissolves ivory itself and the enamel of the teeth; that of the hen has dissolved an onyx and diminished a louis-d'or;* even among insects we find some tribes that fatten upon the fibrous parts of the roots of trees, and others upon metallic oxides. And it is not long since that, upon examining the stomach and intestinal tube of a man who died in one of the public hospitals of this metropolis, and who had some years before swallowed a number of clasp-knives out of hardihood, their handles were found digested, and their blades blunted, though he had not been able to dis- charge them from his body. It is in consequence of this wonderful power that the stomach is sometimes found in the extraordinary condition of digesting itself; and of exhibiting when examined on dissection, various erosions in different parts of it, and especially towards the upper half, into which the gastric juice is supposed to flow most freely. It is the opinion of Mr. John Hunter,! however, whose opinions are always entitled to respect, that such a fact can never take place except in cases of sudden death, when the stomach is in full health, and the gastric juice, now just poured forth, is surrounded by a dead organ. For he plausibly argues, that the moment the stomach begins to be diseased, it • Swammerdam, Biblia Naturae, p. 168. \ Vm Trans. 1772. ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, 8zc, 131 ceases to secrete this fluid, at least in a state of perfect activity ; and that so long- as it is itself alive, it is capable, by its living principle, of counteracting the effect of this solvent power. Yet a case has lately been published by Mr. Burns of Glasgow, in which the stomach appears to have been eroded, although the death, instead of being sudden, did not take place till after a long illness and great emaciation of the body. It is possible, however, that even here the stomach did not participate in the disease. That the living princi- ple of the stomach is capable, so long as it continues in the stomach, of re- sisting the action of the gastric juice, can hardly be questioned. And it is to the superior power of this principle of life, that worms and the ova of insects are so often capable of existing in the stomach uninjured, and even of thriving in the midst of so destructible an agency. But though the solvent juice of the stomach is the chief agent in the pro- cess of digestion, its muscular power contributes always something, and in many animals a considerable proportion, towards the general result; and hence, the shape and structure of this organ, instead of being uniformly alike, is varied with the most skilful attention to the nature of the mechanism by which it is to operate. In its general construction the stomach of different animals may be divided into three kinds ; membranous, muscular, and bony. The first is common to graminivorous quadrupeds, and to carnivorous animals of most kinds ; to sheep, oxen, horses, dogs, and cats ; eagles, falcons, snakes, frogs, newts, and the greater number of fishes, as well as to man himself. The second is common to graminivorous birds ; and to granivorous animals of most kinds ; to fowls, ducks, turkeys, geese, and pigeons. The third, to a few apterous insects, a few soft-bodied worms, and a few zoophytes ; to the cancer-genus, the cuttle-fish, the sea-hedgehog; tubipores and madrepores. Of the membranous stomach we have already taken notice in describing that of man ; and at the bony stomach we took a glance in a late lecture on the teeth and other masticatory organs'. It only remains, therefore, that we make a few remarks on that singular variety of the membranous stomach which belongs to ruminant animals, and on the muscular stomach of grani- vorous and graminivorous birds. All animals which ruminate must have more stomachs or ventricles than one ; some have two, some three ; and the sheep and ox not less than four. The food is carried down directly into the first, which lies upon the left side, and is the largest of all ; the vulgar name for this is the paunch. There are no wrinkles on its internal surface ; but the food is considerably macerated in it by the force of its muscular coat, and the digestive secretions which are poured into it. Yet, in consequence of the vegetable and unanalogous nature of the food, it requires a much farther comminution ; and is hence forced up by the esophagus into the mouth, and a second time masticated; and this constitutes the act called rumination, or chewing the cud. After this pro- cess, it is sent down into the second ventricle, for the esophagus opens equally into both, and the animal has a power of directing it to which- soever it pleases. This ventricle is called the bonnet or kin^'' s-hood ; its internal surface contains a number of cells, and resembles a honey-comb ; it macerates the food still farther ; which is then protruded into the third ven- tricle, that, on account of its very numerous folds or wrinkles, is called many- plies, and vulgarly many-plus. It is here still farther elaborated, and is then sent into the fourth ventricle, which, on account of its colour, is called theredy and by the French le caille, or the curdle, since it is here that the milk sucked by calves first assumes' a curdled appearance. It is thus that the process of digestion is completed, and it is this compartment that constitutes the true stomach, to which the others are only vestibules. There are some animals, however, which do not ruminate, that have more than one stomach ; thus the hampster has two, the kangaroo three, and the sloth not less than four.* Nor does the conformation terminate even with • Wiedemann Archlr. b. i 13-2 ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. quadrupeds ; for among- birds the ostrich has two ventricles,* and among fishes the stomateus kiatola. The horse and ass, on the contrary, though graminivorous quadrupeds like the ox, have only one stomach. Tliere may seem, perhaps, something playful in this application of different systems of mechanism to the same class of animals, and of the same system to different classes : but it shows us, at least, that the hand of nature is not necessarily fettered by its own general laws, nor compelled, even under the same circumstances, to adopt the same cause to produce the same effect. Yet, if we had time, we might proceed beyond this remark, and point out, if I mistake not, the reasons for such diversities, and the- skill M'ith which they are introduced. Thus the horse and ass are formed for activity, and require lightness ; and hence the bulk and complexity of three or four stomachs would counteract the object for which they are created; but it does not interfere with the pursuits of the ox, which is heavy and indolent in its nature ; and which, though it, may perhaps be employed as a beast of burden, can never be m^de use of for speed. The activity of the horse and ass, moreover, excites, from the stimulus it produces, a larger secretion of gastric juice than is met with in the ox, and thus in a considerable degree supplies a substitute for the three deficient stomachs ; but it by no means extracts the nutriment so entirely from the food introduced into it ; and we hence see the reason why the dung of horses is richer than that of black cattle, and why they require three or four times as mu<;h provender. We may apply the whole of these remarks to the ostrich, whose peculiar habitation is the sandy and burning deserts of the torrid zone, where not a blade of grass is to be seen for hundreds of miles, and where the little food it lights upon must be made the most of. The double stomach it possesses enables it to accomplish this purpose, and to digest coarse grass, prickly shrubs, and scattered pieces of leather, with equal ease. This animal is supposed to be one of the most stupid in nature, and to have no discernment in the choice of its food; for it swallows stone, glass, iron, and whatever else comes in its way, along with its proper sustenance. But it is easy to redeem the ostrich from such a reproach, at least in the instance before us ; for these very articles, by their hard and indestructible property, perform the office of teeth in the animal's stomach ; they enable it to triturate its food most mi- nutely, and to extract its last particle of nutriment. It is true that in the class of birds, or that to which the ostrich belongs, a double stomach must necessarily, to a certain extent, oppose the general levity by which this class is usually characterized. But the wings of the ostrich are not designed for flight : they assist him in that rapidity of running for which he is so cele- brated, and in which he exceeds all other animals, but are not designed to lift him from the earth. In reality, the ostrich appears to be the connecting link between birds and quadrupeds, and especially ruminant quadrupeds. In its general portrait, as well as in the structure of its "stomach, it has a near re semblance to the camel ; in its voice, instead of a whistle, it has a grunt, like that of the hog ; in its disposition, it is as easily tamed as the horse, and like him may be employed, and often has been, as a racer, though in speed it outstrips the swiftest race-horse in the vvorld. Adanson asserts, indeed, that it will do so when made to carry double ; and that, when at the factory of Podore, he had two ostriches carefully broken in, the strongest of which, though young, would run swifter, with two negroes on his back, than a racer of the best breed. Yet widely different is the mechanism of the stomach in birds of flight that feed on vegetables : nor could any contrivance be better adapted to unite the two characters of strength and levity. Instead of the bulky and complicated compartments of the membranous stomach of ruminant animals, we here meet with a thick, tough, muscular texture, small in size, but more powerful than the stoutest jaw-bone, and which is usually called gizzard. It consists of four distinct muscles, a large hemispherical pair at the sides, and two smaller muscles at the two ends of the cavity. These muscles are * Valisnieri, Anatomia, &c. p. 159, 1713. i ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. 133 distinguished from the rest belonging to the animal, not less by their colour than by their prodigious strength ; and the internal cuticle with which they are covered is peculiarly callous, and often becomes quite horny from pres- sure and friction. The gizzard of grazing birds, as the goose and turkey, differs in some de- gree in the lormation of its muscles from that of granivorous. They have also " a swell in the lower part of the esophagus, which answers the purpose of a reservoir, in which the grass is retained, macerated, and mixed with the secretions poured out by the' glandular surfaces surrounding it, in this respect corresponding to the first and second stomachs of ruminating animals, in which the grass is prepared for maslification,"* though essentially hghter. In most birds, indeed, we meet with an approach towards this, in a cavity situated above the muscular stomach, and called the crop, or craw. This first receives the food from the mouth, and slightly softens it by a mucous fluid secreted from its interior ; and thus prepared, a part of it is given back to the young, where there are young to partake of it, and the rest is sent to the gizzard or proper stomach, whose muscular mechanism, in conjunction M'ith its gastric juice, soon comminutes it into the most impalpable pulp. There are several kinds, however, that, like the ostrich, endeavour to assist the muscular action by swallowing pebbles or gravel ; some of which find this additional aid so indispensable, that they are not able to digest their food, and grow lean without it. Spallanzani attempted to prove that these stones are of no use, and are only swallowed by accident; but their real advantage has been completely established by Mr. J. Hunter, who has correctly ob- served, that the larger the gizzards, the larger are the pebbles found in them. In the gizzard of a turkey he counted two hundred ; in that of a goose, a thousand. Reaumur and Spallanzani have put the prodigious power of this muscular stomach to the test, by compelling geese and other birds to swallow needles, lancets, and other hard and pointed substances ; which, in every experiment, were found, a few hours afterward, on killing and examining the animal, or on its regorging them, to be broken off and blunted, without any injury to stomach whatever. Yet, as all animals are not designed for all kinds of food, neither the force of the strongest muscular fibres, nor the solvent power of the most active gastric juice, will avail in every instance. The wild-boar and the vulture devour the rattlesnake uninjured, and fatten upon it ; but there are many kinds of vegetables which neither of these are capable of digesting. The owl digests flesh and bone, but cannot be made to digest grain or bread; and in one instance died, under the experiments of Spallanzani, when confined to vegetable food. The falcon seems as little capable of dissolving vegetables ; yet the eagle dissolves bread and bone equally ; and wood-pigeons may, in like manner, be brought to live, and even to thrive, on flesh meat. The pro- cellaria pelagica, or stormy petrel, lives entirely on oil, as the fat of dead whales and other fishes, whenever he can get it ; and if not, converts every thing he swallows into oil. He discharges pure oil from his mouth at objects that offend him ; and feeds his young with the same substance. This is the most daring of all birds in a tempest, though not more than six inches long. As soon as the clouds begin to collect, he quits his rocky covert, and enjoys the gathering and magnificent scenery: he rides triumphantly on the whirl- wind, and skims with incredible velocity the giddiest peaks and deepest hollows of the most tremendous waves. His appearance is a sure presage of foul weather to the seaman. There are some tribes of animals that appear capable of subsisting on water alone, and a few on mere air, incapable as these substances seem to be, at first sight, of affording any thing like solid nutriment. Leeches and tadpoles present us with famihar proofs of the former assertion, and there are various kinds of fishes that may be added to the catalogue. Rondelet kept a silver fish in pure water alone for three years ; and at the end of that period it had # Home, On the Gizzards of Grazing Birds, Phil. Trans. 1810, p. 183 134 ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. grown as large as the glass globe that contained it. Several species of tWi carp kind, and especially the gold-fish, have a similar power ; and even the pike, the most gluttonous, perhaps, of the whole class, will both live and thrive upon water alone in a marble basin. The bee, and various other insects, derive their nutriment from the nectar and effluvium of flowers. So also does the trochilus genus, or humming- bird, which appears to be the connecting link between the two classes ; buzz- ing like the bee itself with a joyous hum afbund the blossom on which it lights ; and in one of its species, t. minimus, not exceeding it in size, and only weighing from 20 to 45 grains. Air alone appears sufficient for the support of animals of other kinds. Snails and chameleons have been known repeatedly to live upon nothing else for years.* Garman asserts that it is a sufficient food for spiders; and that though they will devour other food, as fishes will that may be maintained alone on water, they do not stand in need of any other. Latreille confirms this assertion to a considerable extent, by informing us that he stuck a spider to a piece of cork, and precluded it from communication with any thing else for four successive months, at the end of which time it appeared to be as lively as ever.f And Mr. Baker tells us, in the Philosophical Transactions, that he had a beetle that lived in a glass confinement for three years without food, and then fled away by accident. The larves of ants, as well as of several other insects of prey, are not only supported by air, but actually increase in bulk, and undergo their metamor- phosis without any other nourishment. It is probable, also, that air is at times the only food of the scolopendra phosphorea, or luminous centipede, which has been seen illuminating the atmosphere, and sometimes falling into a ship, a thousand miles from land. Amphibious animals have a peculiar tenacity to life under every circum stance of privation ; and not only frogs and toads, but tortoises, lizards, and serpents are well known to have existed for months, and even years, without other food than water — in some instances, without other food than air. Mr. Bruce kept two cerastes, or horned snakes, in a glass jar for two years^ without giving them any thing. He did not observe that they slept in the winter-season; and they cast their skins, as usual, on the last day of April.|; Lizards, and especially the newt species, have been found imbedded in a chalk-rock, apparently dead and fossilized, but have reassumed hving action on exposure to the atmosphere.^ On their detection in this state the mouth is usually closed with a glutinous substance, and closed so tenaciously, that they often die of suffocation in the very effort to extricate themselves from this material. II In respect to toads the same fact has been ascertained, for nearly two 5''ears, by way of experiment ;F and has been verified, by accident, for a much longer term of time. The late Edward Walker, Esq., of Guestingthorpe, Essex, informed me, not long since, that he had found a toad perfectly alive in the midst of a full-grown elm, after it was cut down by his order, exactly- occupying the cavity which it appeared gradually to have scooped out as it grew in size, and which had not the smallest external communication by any aperture that could be traced. And very explicit, and apparently very cau- tious, accounts have been repeatedly published in different journals, of their having been found alive, imbedded in the very middle of trunks of trees and blocks of marble, so large and massy, that, if the accounts be true, they must have been in such situations for at least a century.** There is a very particular case of this kind given by M. Seigue, in the Memoirs of the Roj-:*! Academy of Paris.ff • Encyclop Brit. art. Physiol, p. 679. t Monthly Rev. Appx. Iv. 494. + Voyages, Appendix, p. 296, 8vo. edit $ Wilkinson, Tilloch's Phil. Mag. Dec. 1816. II Journal of Science, No. xii. p. 375. IT See Dalyell's Introd. to his Translation of Spallanzani's Tracts, p. xliii. 1803. *• See various instances, Encycl. Brit. art. Physiol, p. 681. t Mem. 1731, H. 24. Dr. Edwards, of Paris has sufficiently ascertained of late, that blocks of mortal JN THE DlGESllvE FUNCTION, &c 135 These observations lead us to another anomaly of a more extraordinary nature still ; and that is, the power which man himself possesses of existing without food, under certain circumstances, for a very long period of time. This is often found to take place in cases of madness, especially that of the melanclioly kind, in which the patient resolutely refuses either to eat or drink for many weeks together, with little apparent loss either of bulk or strength. There is a singular history of Cicely de Ridgeway, preserved among the Records in the Tower of London, which states, that in the reign of Edward III., having been condemned for the murder of her husband, she remained for forty days without either food or drink. This was ascribed to a miracle, and the king condescended in consequence to grant a pardon. The Cambridgeshire farmer's wife, who, about twenty years ago, was buried under a snow-storm, continued ten or twelve days without tasting any thing but a little of the snow which covered her. But in various other cases we have proofs of abstinence from food having been carried much farther, and without serious evil. In the Edinburgh Medical Essays for 1720, Dr. Eccles makes mention of a beautiful young lady, " about sixteen years of age," who, in consequence of the sudden death of an indulgent father, was thrown into a state of tetanus, or rigidity of all the muscles of the body, and especially those of deglutition, so violent as to render her incapable of swallowing for two long and distinct periods of time ; in the first instance for thirty-four, and in the second, which occurred shortly afterward, for fifty-four days ; during " all which time, her first and second fastings, she declared," says Dr. Eccles, " she had no sense of hunger or thirst; and when they were over, she had not lost much of her flesh." In our own day we have had nearly as striking an instance of this extraordi- nary fact, in the case of Arm Moore, of Tutbury, in StaflTordshire, who, in consequence of a great and increasing difficulty in swallowing, at first limited herself to a very small daily portion of bread alone, and on March 17th, 1807, relinquished even this, allowing herself only occasionally a little tea or water, and in the ensuing September pretended to abstain altogether from liquids as well as solids. From the account of Mr. Granger,* a medical practitioner of reputation, who saw her about two years afterward, she appears to have suf- fered very considerably, either from her abstinence or from that general morbid habit which induced her to use abstinence. He says, indeed, that her mental faculties were entire, her voice moderately strong, and that she could join in conversation without undergoing any apparent fatigue : but he says, also, that her pulse was feeble and slow ; that she was altogether confined to her bed ; that her limbs were extremely emaciated ; that convulsions attacked her on so slight an excitement as surprise, and that she had then very lately lost the use of her lower limbs. It afterward appeared, that in this account of herself she was guilty of some degree of imposition, in order to attract visiters, and obtain pecuniary grants. Dr. Henderson, another medical practitioner, of deserved repute in the neighbourhood, had suspected this, and published his suspicions if and an and heaps of sand are porous enough to admit so much air as is requisite to support the life of lizards, toads, and other amphibials of the batrachian family : but that they all perish if surrounded by mercury, or even water, so as to intercept the air by their beiiipr encompassed by an exhausted receiver. In boxes of mortar or sand, however, they live much longer than in boxes plunged under water. The probable cause is, that the air of the atmosphere pervades the pores of the sand or margin pretty freely ; but that it is not extricated from the circumfluent water so as to pervade the pores of the box buried in it. This, however, is not the explanation offered by Dr. Edwards. He found also that frogs will live a longer or shorter period of time under water, according to the temperature of the water and the previous tempera- ture of the surrounding atmosphere. They die speedily if the water be lower than 32" Fahr. or higher than 108° : that the longest duration of life is at 32^, at which point life will continue for several hours; that its duration diminishes with the elevation of the scale above this point, and that it is extinguished in a few minutes at lOS". The most favourable point in the temperature of the atmosphere is also 32°. If the season have main tained this point for some days autecedently to the frog's being plunged under water, itself of 32°, the ani- •nal will live from 24 to 60 hours. De I'Influence des Agens Physiques sur la Vie : also, M6moires sur rAsi)hyxie, &c.. 1817. Paris, 8vo. 1824. * Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Journal, No. xix. July, 1809, p, 319. t An Examination of the Imposture of Ann Moore, called the Fasting Woman of Tutbury, Legons d'Anat. Comp. i. 23, Sect. 2, Art. 5. VS See M. Marcel de Serres' Statement, Tilloch's Journal, vol. xliv. p. 148 ; and especially Thomson'* ^nals of Phil. No xxiii. p. 347, 348. 350. 354. RESPIRATION, AND ANIMALIZATION. 147 consequently a single circulation, the course of which, however, is directly the reverse of that pursued in fishes ; for the heart in the present instance propels the blood through the body, and the gills receive it, and propel it to the heart. This is also the case in the snail, slug, and many other soft- bodied worms, which possess a gill in the neck, consisting of a single aperture, which it can open and shut at pleasure. Yet with a singular kind of appa- rent sportiveness, the cuttle-fish is possessed of three distinct hearts, which is one more than is allotted to mankind, in whom this organ is only double. In zoophytes we are in great ignorance both as to their sanguineous and respiratory functions. That they stand in need of oxygen, and even of nitrogen, has been sufficiently determined by Sir H. Davy ; as it has also that they absorb their oxygen and nitrogen, as fishes do, from the water which holds these gases in solution. Their nutrition appears to be effected by an immediate derivation of the nutritive fluid fi'om their interior cavity into the gelatinous substance of their body.* Hence then the respiratory organs of the animal kingdom may be divided into three classes; lungs, gills, and holes or stigmata: each of the three classes exhibits a great variety in its form, but the office in which they are employed is the same. Animals of every kind must be supplied with air, or rather with oxygen, however they may differ in other respects in tenacity of life; for a vacuum, or a medium deprived of oxygen, kills them equally. Snails and slugs corked up in small bottles have been found to live till they had ex- hausted the air of every particle of oxygen, and to die immediately afterward : and frogs and land-turtles, which are well known to survive the loss of the spinal marrow for months, and that of the head or heart for several days, die almost instantly on exposure to a vacuum. f Connected with this general subject, there is still an important question to be resolved, and which has greatly occupied the attention of physiologists for the last fifty years. Mediately or immediately, almost all animal nutriment, and, consequently, almost all animal organization, is derived from a vegetable source. The blade of grass becomes a muscular fibre, and the root of a yam or a potato a human brain. What, then, is that wonderful process which assimilates sub- stances in themselves so unlike ; that converts the vegetable into an animal form, and endows it with animal powers ? Now to be able to reply succinctly to this question, it is necessary first of all to inquire into the chief feature in which animal and vegetable substances agree, and the chief feature in which they differ. Animals and vegetables, then, agree in their equal necessity of extracting a certain sweet and saccharine fluid, as the basis of their support, from what- ever substances may for this purpose be applied to their respective organs of digestion. Animal chyle and vegetable sap make a very close approach to each other in their constituent principles as well as in their external ap- pearance. In this I'espect plants and animals agree. They disagree, inas- much as animal substances possess a very large proportion of azote, with a small comparative proportion of carbon; while vegetable substances, on the contrary, possess a very large proportion of carbon, with a small compara- tive proportion of azote. And it is hence obvious, tnat vegetable matter can only be assimilated to animal by parting with its excess of carbon, and filling up its deficiency of azote. Vegetable substances, then, part first of all with a considerable portion of their excess of carbon in the stomach and intestinal canal, durmg the process of digestion ; a certain quantity of the carbon detaching a certain quantity of the oxygen existing in these organs, as an elementary part of the air or water they contain, in consequence of its closer. affinity to oxygen, and producing carbonic acid gas ; a fact which has been clearly ascertained by a variety of experiments by M. Jurine of Geneva. A surplus of carbon, however, still enters the animal system through the medium of the lacteals, and continues • Blumenbach, $ 167. t See Encyclop. Brit. art. Physiol, p. 679. K2 UB ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD, to circulate with the chyle, or the blood, till it reaches the lungs. H-^ire again a certain portion of carbon is perpetually parted with upon every expiration, in the form of carbonic vapour, according- to Mr. Ellis, but according to Sir H. Davy and others, in that of carbonic gas, in consequence of its union with a part of the oxygen introduced into the lungs with every returning in spiration ;* while the excess that yet remains is carried off by the skin, ii? consequence of its contact with atmospheric air : a fact put beyond all doubl by the experiments and observations of M. Jurine, although on a superficial view, opposed by a few experiments of Mr. Ingenhouz,f and obvious to every one, from the well-known circumstance that the purest linen, upon the purest skin, in the purest atmosphere, soon becomes discoloured. In this way, then, and by this triple co-operation of the stomach, the lungs and the skin, vegetable matter, in its conversion into animal, parts with the whole of its excess of carbon. Its deficiency of azote becomes supplied in a twofold method : first, at the lungs; also, by the process of respiration, as should appear from the concur- rent experiments of Dr. Priestley and Sir H. Davy,+ which agree in showing that a larger portion of azote is inhaled upon every inspiration than is returned by every succeeding expiration; in consequence of which the portion retained" in the lungs seems to enter into the system, in the same manner as the re- tained oxygen, and perhaps in conjunction with it ; while, in union with this economy of the lungs, the skin also absorbs a considerable quantity of azote, and thus completes the supply that is necessary for the animalization of vegetable food :^ evincing hereby a double consent of action in these tw( organs, and giving us some insight into the mode by which insects a^id worms which are totally destitute of lungs, are capable of' employing the skin as e substitute for lungs, by breathing through the spiracles existing in the skin for this purpose, or merely through the common pores of the skin, without any such additional mechanism. It is by this mode, also, that respiration takes place through the whole vegetable world, offering us another instance of resemblance to many parts of the animal ; in consequence of which, insects, worms, and the leaves of vegetables equally perish by being smeared over with oil, or any other viscous fluid that obstructs their cutaneous orifices. But to complete the great circle of universal action, and to preserve the important balance of nature in a state of equipoise, it is necessary, also, to inquire by what means animal matter is reconverted into vegetable, so as to afford to plants the same basis of nutriment which plants have previously afforded to animals] Now this is for the most part obtained by the process of putrefaction, or a return of the constitue^nt principles pf animal matter to their original aflini- ties,- from which they have been inflected by the superior control of the vital principle, so long as it inhabited the animal frame, and coerced into other combinations and productions. || Putrefaction is, therefore, to be regarded as a very important link in the great chain of universal life and harmony. The constituent principles of animal matter we have already ermmerated : they are most of them compound substances, and fall back into their respec- tive primordia as the putrefactive process sets them at liberty. This process commences among the constituent gases ; and it is only necessary to notice the respective changes that take place in this quarter, as every other change is an induced result. * Soe Sir H. Davy's Researches Chemical and Philosophical, &c. ; and M^moire sur la Chaleur, par MM. Lavoisier et De la Place. Mem. de I'Acad. De la Combustion, &c. t Essaie de Theorie sur l'Animali/.ation et TAssimilation des Alimens, &c. Annales de Chimie, torn. ii. + See Davy's Researches Chemical and Philosophical, &c. ; and Priestley's Experiments and Observa- tions on different Kinds of Air, vol. iii. $ M. Jurine is chiefly entitled to the honour of this discovery : his experiments coincide with several of Dr. Priestlej's results, and have been since confirmed by other experiments of MM. Lavoisier and Fourcroy See Premier Mcmoire sur la Transpiration des Animaux, par A. Seguin et I,avoisier, 1792; and compara ■with iM. Hasser.frat/.'s Memoire sur la Combinaison de I'Oxygen, &c. Acad, des Scien. 1791. II It should hence appear, that putrefaction is the only positive criterion of death, or the total cessation of the principle of life. Galvanism has, indeed, been advanced as a decisive proof of the same by Betrenda nod Creve ; but Humboldt has sufficiently shown its insecurity as an infalUble test. RESPIRATION, AND ANIMALIZATION. 149 Of these gases I have already observed, that azote or nitrogen is by far the largest in respect of quantity, and it appears also to be by far the most active. ~ Hence, on the cessation of the vital principle, the azotic corpuscles very speedily make an advance towards those of oxygen, and generally in the softer and more fluid parts of the system; the cont-ol of the vital principle being here looser and less powerfully exerted. A miion readily takes place between the two, and thus combined they fly oft' in the form of nitric acid ; while at the same time another portion of azote combines with some portion of hydrogen, and escapes in the form of ammonia or volatile alkali. A spontaneous de- composition having thus commenced, all the other component parts of the lifeless machine are set at liberty, and fly off either separately or in dif- ferent combinations ; during which series of actions, from the union of hy- drogen with carbon, and especially if conjoined at the same time with some portion of phosphorus or sulphur, is thrown forth that ofl'ensive aura which is the peculiar characteristic of the putrefactive process, and which, accord- ing to the particular mode in which the different elementary substances com- bine, constitutes the fetor that escapes from putrid fishes, rotten eggs, or any other decomposing animal substances. In this manner, then, by simple, binary, or ternary attractions and combi- nations, the whole of the substance constituting the animal system, when destitute of its vital principle, flies off progressively to convey new pabulum to the world of vegetation; and nothing is left behind but lime or the earth of bones, and soil or the earth of vegetables: the former furnishing plants with a perpetual stimulus by the eagerness with which it imbibes oxygen, and the latter offering them a food read}'- prepared fcr their digestive organs. In order, however, that putrefaction should take place, it is necessary that certain accessaries to such a process should be present, without which putre- faction will never follow. Of these the chief are rest, air, moisture, and heat. Without REST the putrefactive process in no instance takes place readily, and in some instances does not take place at all : for animal flesh, when ex- posed' to the perpetual action of running water, is often found converted into one common mass of fat or spermaceti, as I shall presently have occasion to observe more minutely. Air must necessarily coexist, for putrefaction can never be induced in a vacuum* Yet we must not only have air, but genuine atmospheric air ; or, in other words, the surrounding medium must be compounded of the gases which constitute the air of the atmosphere, and in their just proportions. To prove this, it is sufficient to mention that dead animal substance has been exposed by M. Morveau,* and other chemists, for five or six years in confined vessels, to the action of simple nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, and various other gases, without any change that can be entitled to the appellation of putre- faction. There must also be moisture ; for as I have already observed, putrefaction commences in the softer and more fluid parts of the animal system. On this account it rarely occurs during a sere harmattan or drying wind of any kind, and never in a frost so severe as to destroy all moisture whatsoever; the power of frost exercising quite as effectual a control over the elements of animal matter as the living principle itself. For the same reason there must be heat ; since in the total absence of heat frost must necessarily take place, together with an entire privation of moisture. On this last account, again, the heat made use of must only be to a certain extent, as about 65^° of Fahrenheit; for, if carried much higher, the rarefaction which takes place in the surrounding atmosphere will induce an ascent of all the fluids in the animal substance towards its surface ; whence they will fly off in the form of vapour, before the putrefying process can have had time to commence, and leave nothing behind but dry indurated materials, incapable of putrefaction because destitute of all moisture. Our dinner^ * See M6moire sur la Nature des Fluides ^lastiqnes aSrifornies, qui se d^gagent de quelques Mati^res Bnunales, &c. par M. Lavoisier, Mem. de I'Acad. 1782 ; as also, M. Brugnatelli's paper in CreU's Chwfucal Annals for 1708, Ueber die Faulung ihierischer iheile in verschieden I.uttarten. 150 ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD, &c. tables too often supply us with instances of this fact, in dishes of roast or boiled meat too lono- exposed to the action of the fire, and hence reduced to juiceless and ragged fibres, totally devoid of nutriment, and capable of keep- ing for weeks or months, without betraying any putrefactive indication. In like manner, when bodies are buried beneath the hot and arid sands of Egypt or Arabia, with a sultry sun shining, almost without ceasing, upon the sandy surface, the heat hereby produced is so considerable as to raise the ■whole of the fluids of the animal system to the cuticle, whence they are im- mediately and voraciously drunk up by the bibulous sands that surround it ; or, piercing their interstices, are thrown off into the atmosphere in the form of insensible vapour. In consequence of which, when a body thus buried is dug up a few weeks after its interment, instead of being converted into its original elements, it is found changed into a natural mummy, altogether as hard, and as capable of preservation as any artificial mummy, prepared with the costliest septics employed on such occasions. When dead animal organs are deposited in situations in which only a very small portion of atmospheric air is capable of having access to them, a change indeed takes place, but of a very different description from that of putrefac- tion, and which is of a most curious and extraordinary nature. For in such cases the animal organs, instead of being converted into their original ele- ments, are transmuted into fat, wax, or spermaceti ; or rather into a substance sui generis, and possessing a middle nature between that of the two former, whence the French chemists have given it the appellation of adipocire ; a term not strictly classical, but for which the chemists of our own country have not hitherto substituted any other. This result is observed, not unfrequently, in bodies that are drowned, and rendered incapable of rising to the surface of the water ; for in such a situa- tion but very little air, and, consequently, very little oxygen, can reach them from the external atmosphere. And it is to these circumstances we ought, perhaps, to resolve the singular appearance in the body of Colonel Pollen, who was wrecked a few years ago in the Baltic Sea, near Memel, and within sight of the coast ; and whose corpse was six months afterward thrown on shore, with the features of the face so little varied, that every one of his ac- quaintance recognised him at the first glance. The body had probably been entangled in the submarine sands on first sinking, and been retained in this situation for months, cut off from that exposure to external air which is ab- solutely necessary in all cases of putrefaction properly so called. A similar conversion into wax-fat was observed also in 1786 and 1787, on opening the Josses communes, ox common burial pits in the churchyards of the Innocents at Paris, for the purpose of laying the foundation of a new pile of buildings. For the bodies that on this occasion were dug up, instead of being dissolved into their elementary corpuscles, were found for the most part converted into this very substance of waxy fat or adipocire. The populace were alarmed at the phenomenon, and the chemists were applied to for an explanation. M. Fourcroy, among others, attended upon this occasion ; and his solution, which will apply to all cases of a similar kind, referred the whole to the extreme difficulty with which external air had obtained any com^munication with the inhumed bodies, in consequence of the close adaptation of cofi[in to coflin, and the compactness with which every pit had been filled up. Difiicult, however, as this communication must have been, he conceived that, from the natural elasticity of atmospheric air, some small portion of it had still entered, conveying, perhaps, just oxygen enough to excite the new action of decom- position. This having commenced, the constituent oxygen of the dead ani- mal organs would itself be progressively disengaged, and rapaciously laid hold of by all the other constituent principles, from their strong and general affinity to it. During this gradual evolution, there can be little doubt that the greater part of it would be seized by the predominant azote, a very considera- ble part by the carbon, and the rest by the hydrogen ; and the result would be, upon the total but very slow escape of the constituent and disengaged oxygen, that the whole or nearly the whole of the azote a considerable por ON ASSIMILATION AND NUTRITION. 151 tion of the carbon, and a certain quantity of the hydrogen, would escape also — leaving behind the remainder of the carbon and the hydrogen, now inca- pable of escape from the want of oxygen to give wings to their flight, to- gether with the residual earth of the animal machine. But hydrogen and carbon, though in this case incapable of sublimation for want of oxygen, would still, from their mutual attraction and juxtaposi- tion, enter into a new union and produce a new result, and this result must necessarily be fat; for fat is nothing else than a combination, in given pro- portions, of carbon and hydrogen. And hence, whatever the respective ani- mal organs of the bodies deposited in these burial caverns may have antece- dently consisted of, whether muscles, liga/nent, tendon, skin, or cellular sub- stance, when thus deprived of their oxygen and azote, the whole must of ne- cessity be converted into fat. Pure and genuine fat it would have been, pro- vided there had been nothing left behind but mere carbon and hydrogen, and in their respective proportions for the formation of fat ; but as we can scarcely conceive such proportions could take place, or that every corpuscle of the azote could be carried oft' before the total escape of the oxygen, many parts of it must necessarily have assumed a flaky, soapy, or waxy appearance, from the union of the azote left behind with some portion of the hydrogen, and the consequent production of ammonia or volatile alkali; since, by an intermix- ture of alkali with fat, every one knows that soap or a saponaceous substance is uniformly produced. But, excepting in situations .of this kind, in reality, in every situation in which dead animal matter, destitute of its living principle, is exposed to the usual auxiliaries of putrefaction, putrefaction will necessarily ensue, and the balance will be fairly maintained : — the common elements of vital organiza- tion will be set at liberty to commence a new career, and the animal world will restore to the vegetable the whole which it ha,s antecedently derived from it. In this manner is it, then, that nature, or rather that the God of nature, is for ever unfolding that simple but beautiful round of action, that circle of eternal motion, in which every link maintains its relative importance, and the happiness of every part flows from the harmony of the whole. Can we, then, do better than conclude with the correct and spirited apostrophe of one of our most celebrated poets 1 — Look round the world ! behold the chain of love X Combining all below and all above. See plastic nature working to this end ; Atoms to atoms — clods to crystals tend.* fciee dying vegetables life sustain ; See life, dissolving, vegetate again. — All serv'd, all serving, nothing stands alone. The chain holds on, and where it ends unknown. LECTURE XIV. ON THE PROCESSES OF ASSIMILATION AND NUTRITION ; AND THE CURIOUS EFFECTS TO WHICH THEY LEAD. We have traced out in our preceding studies something of the means by which form, and magnitude, and motion are produced in the inorganized world : — how the. various substances that surround us combine a,nd separate, vanish from us and reappear, and, in the multifarious processes they undergo, give rise to new products by new and perpetually shifting involutions. We have far- ther traced an outline of the means by which organized matter is capable of building up the curious structures of plants and animals ; how the chief func- • This line is altered to answer the present purjiose in a better manne^r. 152 ON THE PROCESSES OF tions they possess are carried on, and by what means they respectively ac- quire maturity and perfection. But it is not only necessary that the system should in this manner be ma- tured and perfected by a fresh application of materials, but that the old mate- rials which constitute every organ should be progressively removed from the system, in consequence of their being worn out by use, and their place sup- plied from definite stores. Let us, then, devote the present hour to an inquiry how this latter change occurs in vascular and living matter, in the vegetable and animal system : by what means the dead or exhausted and worn-out elements of the different organs are carried off, and replaced by new reformative materials, and what are the principal phenomena that result from such a series of operations. The blood, then, in animals, and the sap, which may be regarded as a spe- cies of blood, in plants, of both which we have already treated, are the vital currents from which every organ of the individual frame derives the nourish- ment it stands in need of, and into which it pours ultimately a considerable portion of its waste and eliminated fragments ; for the provident frugality of nature suffers nothing to be lost, and, as far as possible, works up the old materials, time after time, into fresh food for the subsistence of the entire system. To produce this double purpose two distinct sets of vessels are necessary: one for that of separating from the common mass of the blood, and recom bining into new associations, those particular parts of it which the formation of the fresh matter demands ; and the other for that of carrying back the rejected materials into the general current. And hence these two sets of ves-. sels bear the same relation to each other as the veins and arteries of the ani- mal frame, accompany every part of the frame to its farthest extremities, and, indeed, constitute the general mass of the frame itself. From the respective offices they perform, they are denominated secernent and absorbent sys- tems : in their utmost ramifications they are too minute to be traced by the keenest eye, or the nicest experiment of the anatomist; but where they are not quite so minute, they are sufficiently discoverable, and their course is. sufficiently capable of being followed up, from the delicate apertures or mouths by which, in infinite numbers, they open on all animal surfaces, or hollows whatever, to their incipient sources. The secernents, or that set of vessels whose office it is to separate parti- cular parts from the blood for particular purposes, are evidently continuations of some of those very subtile ramifications of the arteries which, on account of their fineness, are called capillary ; and the absorbents, or that set of ves- sels whose office it is to imbibe or drink up the waste and exhausted materials, are as evidently distinct and attenuate tubes, progressively uniting, and ulti- mately emptying themselves into the venous system ; the common trunk in which they concentre, and in which also concentre the lacteals of the ali- mentary canal, named the thoracic duct, being a tough membranous channel, situate upon the interior part of the spine, of about the diameter of a crow- quill in man, and running in a serpentine direction through the diaphragm or midriff to an angle formed by a union of the jugular and subclavian veins, into which it opens, and where of course it terminates, leaving the waste and the new food, now ultimately intermixed, to be still farther elaborated and refitted for use by those subsequent and specific operations of the heart and the lungs which we have already described.* The simplest action, perhaps, that is evinced by the mouths of the secre- * This double action by a double set of vessels was little, if at all, known to the ancients, who referred the economy of both secretion and absorption to the i)owers of peculiar arteries and veins ; and hence, the porosity of these vessels was a doctrine in common belief till the time of Hevvson, Hunter, and Cruick- shank. M. Magendie and M. Flandrin, of Paris, have of late been very active in establishing a view of the subject in many respects not essentially different from that of the old school, and in teaching that tha only general absorbents are the veins; that the lacteals absorb food, but nothing else; and that the lymphatics have no absorbent power whatever. Their experiments are plausible and striking, but by no means decisive enough to subvert the system explained above. The argument on both sides may be found Id fthfi author's Study of Medicme, vol. v. p. 278, 2d edit. 1825. ASSIMILATION AND NUTRITION. 153 tory or secernent vessels, consists in separating- and throwing forth a fine lymph from the surface of all membranes and organs whatever, for the pur- pose of lubricating them, as we grease the axletree of our carriage-wheels ; and thus preventing one membrane or organ from being injured by the friction of another. Of this every one who has been present on the cutting up of slaughtered oxen must have seen an abundant and striking instance, in the vapour that ascends from every part of the warm carcass : which vapour, when condensed by cold or any other cause, is found to be little more than the serum or watery part of the blood. And one of the simplest actions evinced by the mouths of the absorbent vessels consists in their drinking up, as with a sponge, this attenuate or lymphatic fluid, when.it has answered its purpose, so as to make room for a fresh and perpetual effusion : whence these vessels are often called lymphatic, as well as absorbent, in conse- quence of their being so frequently found loaded with this fine and colourless material. And here, perhaps, the first remark that must occur to every one is, the necessity there seems to exist, that these correspondent systems of vessels should maintain the nicest harmony or balance in their respective functions, since, if the one operate either with a less or a larger power than the other, disease must inevitably follow ; the nature of the malady being determined ^b)^ the nature of the cause that produces it. We have all of us heard, and most of us have seen, instances of the disorder called dropsy; and many of us have surveyed it both in a local and a general form, as dropsy of the head, dropsy of the chest, dropsy of the abdomen, and dropsy of the cellular membrane or system at large. This disease may take place from two causes ; as, for example, from a too great excitement of the secernent system, or a too little excitement of the absorbent. If, from a morbid irritability in the secernent vessels of any one of the cavities I have just adverted to, an undue proportion of lubricating lymph be secreted and steam forth, the natural tone and action of the correspondent absorbent ves- sels will not be sufficient to carry off the surplus ; and hence that surplus will accumulate, and dropsy ensue, although the absorbent vessels of the part affected be in a state of usual health and vigour : the disease depending alto- gether on the morbid and predominant excitement of the secernents. But suppose the absorbent vessels of a particular cavity, in consequence of cold, exhaustion from great previous exercise, or any other cause, to be rendered torpid and inert, and, consequently, incapable of continuing their accustomed measure of action : in this case, dropsy will also ensue, notwith- standing the corresponding secernent vessels are in a state of natural health, and no larger portion of lymph is secreted than a state of natural health de- mands ; for the fluid will now accumulate, from the morbid torpitude of the absorbent system, and its inability to fulfil its function. It is hence, as every one must perceive, a point of the utmogt consequence to determine the nature of the cause in dropsy ; as, in truth, it is in every other disease, before we attempt a remedy ; since an error upon this subject may be productive of the most serious, and indeed fatal consequences. For it is obvious that we may stimulate where we ought to diminish action, or we may diminish action where we oiight to stimulate. Occasionally, however, the action is equally increased in both sets of ves- sels ; as, for example, an inflammation of the leg or arm ; and in this case there is great heat and dryness, and at the same time considerable intumes- cence or swelling. For under this affection the mouths of the secernent vessels, being more distended than in a natural state, pour forth the coagula- ble lymph in a grosser and less attenuate form, and not unfrequently, per- haps, intermixed with some particles of red blood ; while the mouths of the absorbents, though they as eagerly drink up the finer parts of what is thus rapidly strained off, are incapable of carrying away with equal ease those of a grosser texture ; in consequence of which these last remain behind, and produce tumefaction by their accumulation. At times, also, we meet with an equal degree of diminished instead of 154 ON THE PROCESSES OF increased action ic both these sets of vessels ; as on exposure to cold and damp temperatures ; in cases of spare and coarse diet ; or of old ag-e. And the result of this double decrease of ener^ry is dryness, as in the former instance, but combined with leanness and corrugation of the organs that are thus affected. It is hence the bones of old people are more easily broken, and the skm is harsher and more wrinkled than in the middle of life ; hence the shri- velled and squalid appearance of g-ipsies and beggars ; and hence, in a consi- derable degree, the low and stinted stature of the Esquimaux, Laplanders, and Ton gooses. For all the usual purposes of health and organic nutrition, the common action and common deg-ree of action evinced by these respondent systems of vessels are perfectly sufficient, though not more than sufficient. It may hap- pen, however, that in consequence of severe violence from external injury or internal disease, a considerable portion of an organ, as a part of some of the muscles that belong to an arm or a leg, may be totally destroyed or killed, and, consequently, rendered incapable of performing its proper function. How is nature, or, which is the same thing, the remedial principle of life, to act in such circumstances ? If the dead part remain, it is manifest that it must impede the living parts that surround it in the execution of their appro- priate office : independently of which they want the space which the dead part occupies, and the aid which it formerly contributed. It is obvious that two processes are here necessary: the dead part must be carried off, and its post must be filled up by a substitute of new matter possessing the precise proper- ties of the old. And here we meet with a clear and striking instance of that wonderful instinctive power which pervades every portion of the vital systems, both of the animal and vegetable world, and which is perpetually prompting them to a repair of whatever evils they may encounter, by the most skilful and definite methods. In order to comply with this double demand of carrying off the dead matter, and of providing a substitute of new, each of the systems before us com- mences, in the living substance that immediately surrounds that which re- quires removal, a new mode and a new degree of action. A boundary Yme is first instinctively drawn between the dead and useless, and the living and active parts ; and the latter retract and separate themselves from the former, as though the two had been skilfully divided by a knife. This process being completed, the mouths of the surrounding absorbent ves- sels set to work with new and increased power, and drink up and carry off whatever the material may be of which the dead part consists, whether fat, muscle, ligament, cartilage, or bone ; the whole is equally imbibed and taken away, and a hollow is produced, where the dead part existed. At the same time the mouths of the corresponding secernent vessels commence a similar increase and newness of action, and instead of the usual lymph, pour forth into the hollow a soft, bland, creamy, and inodorous fluid which is denomi- nated pus ; that progressively fills up the cavity, presses gradually against the superincumbent skin, in the gentlest manner possible distends and atte- nuates it, and at length bursts it open, and exposes the whole of the interior to the action of the gases of the atmosphere. It was at one time conceived, and by writers of considerable eminence and judgment, and of as late a date as the time of Mr. Hewson, that the injured and dead parts were themselves dissolved and converted into pus ; but this opinion has been disproved in the most satisfactory manner by the minute and accurate experiments of Mr. John Hunter, Sir Everard Home, and Mr. Cruickshank ; and the process has been completely established as I have now related it. In what immediate way the gases of the atmosphere operate so as to assist the secernent mouths of what is now the clean and exposed surface of a wound, in producing incarnation, or the formation of new matter of the very same kind and power as that which has been carried off, and enable them to fill up the cavity with such new matter, and perfect the cure, we do not exactly know. Various theories have been offered upon this very curious subject ASSIMILATION AND NUTRITION. 155 but at present they are theories, and nothing more ; and I shall not, therefore, detain you with a relation of them. Thus much, however, we do know, that the co-operation of the atmosphere with the action of the mouths of the se- cernent system engaged in the work of restoration is, in some way or other, peculiarly beneficial ; and that, generally speaking, the wider the opening, and the freer the access of atmospheric air of a due temperature to the sur- face of the wound, or, which is the same thing, the freer it comes in contact with the mouths of the secernent vessels, the more rapidly and auspiciously the work of impletion and assimiration proceeds. Neither do we know, pre- cisely, why pus, rather than any other kind of fluid, should in the first instance be poured forth, for the purpose of filling up the hollow, and producing a rup- ture of the skin ; but we know to a certainty that some such general process is in most cases absolutely necessary ; we know that such a rupture must take place in the natural mode of cure ; that the atmosphere must come into ' close contact with the mouths of the restorative secernents ; that a milder or softer fluid could not possibly be secreted for such a purpose ; and that the entire process exhibits proofs of most admirable skill and sagacity. It is at times possible for us to assist the process by the lancet, which accelerates the opening. Yet, even in this case, we do no more than assist it, and are only, as we ought ever to be in all similar cases, humble coadjutors and imi- tators of nature, and admirers of that all-perfect and ever-present wisdom which we are so often called upon to witness, but are never capable of rivalling. A process closely similar to this is perpetually unfolding in vegetable life. And it was merely by taking advantage of this process that Mr. Forsythe was able to make old, but well-rooted, stumps of fruit-trees throw forth, far more rapidly than he could saplings, a thrifty family of vigorous and well-bearing shoots : for the compost for which he was so celebrated does nothing more than merely increase the secernent and absorbent action of the vegetable frame by its stimulating property, and defend the wounded part to which it is ap- plied from being injured by the inclemency of the weather. From what has thus far been observed, it appears obvious that all the different parts of the living body are assimilating organs, or, in other words, are capa- ble of converting the common nutriment of the blood into their own respective natures, and for their own respective uses. And it has also appeared, that under particular circumstances every part is capable, moreover, of secreting a material different from that of its own nature ; as, for example, the material of pus, whenever such a substance is necessary. This view of the subject will lead us to understand with facility how it is possible for various organs of the system to maintain two distinct secretions at the same time : one of a matter similar to its own substance, and exclu- sively for its own use ; and another of a matter distinct from its own sub- stance, and in many instances subservient to the system in general. Of this last kind are the stomach, the liver, the respiratory organ, and the brain : each of which secretes, independently of the matter for its own nou- rishment, a matter absolutely necessary to the health and perfection of the general machine : as the gastric juice, the curious and wonderful properties of which I described on a former occasion ; the oxygenous principle of the inspiredair, and, as some suppose, those of light or caloric ; the bile ; and the nervous fluid, or material of sensation. There are various other organs of a smaller kind, and simpler texture, which also perform the same double ofllice, and secrete materials of a much more local use, or which are intended to be altogether thrown away from the system, as waste or noxious bodies. And to the one or the other of these classes belong the kidneys, the intestinal tube, the minute and very simple perspiratory follicles of the skin, the delicate organs that separate the saliva and mucus that serve to lubricate the mouth and nostrils, and those that ela- borate the tears, the wax of the inner ear, and the fat. The organs, of whatever size or texture, that perform this double function, are called secretory glands ; and they are distinguished into different sets, 156 ON THE PROCESS OF either from their peculiar office or peculiar structure : as salivary, lachryinai, mucous, which are denominated from the former character, and apply to the smallest and simplest of them ; conglobate, which are of a larg-er form, and of an intricate convolution, and belong- exclusively to the absorbent system,— as the mesenteric and lumbar ; and glomerate and conglomerate, which are composed of a congeries of sanguineous vessels, without any cavity, but with one or more mouths, or excretory ducts as they are called, which, in the latter, open into one common trunk, — as the mammary and pancreatic ; both which kinds are denominated from the character of their structure. It is by this peculiar org-anization in animals and plants that all those nice and infinitely varying exhalations or other fluids are thrown forth from dif- ferent parts of them, by which such parts, or the whole individual, or the entire species of individuals, are respectively characterized. Our own ,senses are too dull to trace a discharge of any kind of essence or vapour from the surface of the human skin in its ordinary action ; but the discoloration which soon takes place upon the purest linen, when worn in the purest atmos- phere, sufficiently proves the existence of such an efflux ; and there are various qinimals whose olfactory organs are much acuterthan our own, as our domes- tic dogs, for example, that are able to discern a difference in the odour of the vapour which issues from the skin of every individual, and that in fact identify their respective masters, and distinguish them from other individuals, by this character alone. It is to this sense chiefly that quadrupeds, birds, fishes, and most insect tribes trust themselves in their search after food ; and hence the supe- rior acuteness of this power in animals of such kinds is a strong proof of that unerring Wisdom which regulates the world, and is equally con- spicuous in every part of it. Under peculiar circumstances, however, the sense of smell appears to be far more lively among mankind than when such circumstances do not exist. M. Virey, who has written a very learned trea- tise upon this subject, asserts, that it occurs among savages in a far higlier degree of activity than among civilized nations, whose olfactory nerves are blunted by an habitual -exposure to strong odours, or intricate combination of odours, and by the use of high-flavoured foods. And among persons in a keen morbid state of irritability it has been often found, even in civilized life, much sharper than among savages. The Journal des S9avans, an 1667, gives a curious history of a monk who was said to be able to ascertain, by the difference of odour alone, the sex and age of a person, whether he were married or single, and the manner of life to which he was accustomed.* When the exhalation from the human skin is increased by muscular exer- cise, or any other exertion, it is rendered visible ; and in this state it is gene- rally found to combine with it a certain portion of dissolved animal oil or fat. Even without much increased action of the system, it is possible at times to obtain a knowledge of its existence under particular circumstances, or by particular applications. Thus, in cold subterraneous caverns, where the air is dense and heavy, the natural evaporation often escapes from the surface of the body in the form of thick clouds ; and a bright mirror, when held near a warm and naked skin, in the temperature of the atmosphere, soon becomes obscured by a moist vapour. The quantity of this fluid discharged, either in a state of quiesceifce or of increased action, has not been determined with any great degrees of exact- ness. According to M. de Sauvages,! a man of middle stature and age, weigh- ing 1461bs., takes daily of food and drink about 56 ounces (circiter quinqua- ginta sex uncias), his dinner being about twice as much as his supper. In the same period he perspires about 28 ounces; viz. about twelve during the third part of his time in which he sleeps, and sixteen during the two-thirds in which he is awake. It appears certain, from the experiments of Gorter, that •In a pnper on the Petiveria, in the Swedish Academy Transactions, there are a variety of curious ob- Bervations on the peculiar properties given to the smell, flesh, «fec. of different animals in consequence of their feeding on different foods. It is entitled Petiveria, en Americansk vaxt. Anal. Trans, torn, i p 346 + Nosol. Method, ii. 369 ASSIMILATION AND NUTRITION. 157 the weight of the body is more diminished by the same quantity of sweat than of mere perspiration. Sanctorius, whose experiments of measuring the weight of the body were made in the warm climate of Italy, ascertained that in that region eight pounds of food received by the mouth were, by the different insensible secretions, reduced to three ; making the proportion of insensible exhalation as five to eight. In cold climates, however, it has been determined that it does not amount to more than two-thirds of this proportion; and of either quantity it has lately been very satisfactorily established, that more than half this secre- tion has been thrown forth from the surface of the lungs ; which I estimated in a previous lecture, and from the experiments and calculations of Lavoisier, as discharging not less than eleven ounces of solid carbon or charcoal in every four-and-twenty hours.* Plants transpire precisely in the same way, and to a much greater extent, through the medium of their leaves ; which, while they form a great part of their cuticle, may, as I have observed on a former occasion,! be also contem- plated as their lungs. Hales calculated that a sun-flower, three feet high, transmits in twelve hours one pound four ounces of fluid by avoirdupois weight. Bishop Watson put an inverted glass vessel, of the capacity of twenty cubic inches, on grass which had been cut during a very intense heat of the sun, and after many weeks had passed without rain ; in two minutes it was filled with vapour, which trickled with drops down its sides. He collected these on a piece of muslin, carefully weighed, and repeated the experiment for several days between twelve and three o'clock ; and estimated, as the result of his experiment, that an acre of grass land transpires in twenty-four hours not less than 6,400 quarts of water. Dalton, for dew and rain toge- ther, makes the mean of England and Wales 36 inches, thus amounting, in a year, to 28 cubic miles of water. Grew, in 1711, calculated the number of acres in South Britain at 46,800,000, and allowed a million to HoUand.J Smith, for England alone, gives 73^ millions in the present day.^ But the same general surface in animals and vegetables that thus largely secretes delicate fluids, largely also imbibes tliem by the corresponding sys- tem of absorbent vessels, opening with their spongy mouths or ducts in every direction. Hales ascertained that the above sun-flower, which threw off not less than twenty ounces of fluid in twelve hours, suspended its evaporation as soon as the dew fell, and absorbed two or three ounces of the dew instead. And among animals, and especially among mankind, the manifest operations of medicines and other foreign substances, merely diffused through the air, or simply applied to the skin ; of various vapours, as those of mercury, tur- pentine, and saffron ; of various baths, as of tobacco, bitter-apple, opium, cantharides, arsenic, and other poisons, producing the most fatal effects, and altogether absorbed by the skin, are decisive and incontrovertible proofs of such an action. It is hence the bradypus, or sloth, supports itself without drinking, perhaps, at any time, and the ostrich and camel for very long pe- riods, though the latter is also possessed of a natural reservoir. And hence the chief impletion of the human body, in many cases of abdominal dropsy ; since persons labouring under this disease have often been observed to fill with rapidity during the most rigid abstinence from drinks of every kind. Along with the common odour of insensible perspiration, discharged from the human surface, we often meet with other odours of a much stronger kind, produced by particular diseases or particular modes of life, and which are distinctly perceptible. Thus the food of garlic yields a perspiration pos- sessing a garlic smell; that of pease a leguminous smell; coarse oils and fat a rancid smell, which is the cause of this peculiar odour among the inhabit- ants of Greenland; and acids a smell of acidity. Among glass-blowers, Irom the large quantity of sea-salt that enters into the materials of their manufacture, the sweat is sometimes so highly impregnated, that the salt thev ♦ Series i. Lecture xiii. t Series i. Lecture ix. t Phil Trans for 1811, p. 265 ^ Phil. Mag. xix. 197. Young's Nat. Phil. ii. 369 158 ON ASSIMILATION AND NUTRITION. pmpioy, and imbibe by the skin and lungs, has been seen to collect in crystals upon their faces. Hence, too, the various smells that are emitted from the surface of other animals, and especially that of musk, which is one of the most common. We trace this issuing generally from the bodies of many of the ape species, and especially the siimajacchus ; still more profusely from the opossum, and occa- sionally from hedgehogs, water-rats, hares, serpents, and crocodiles. The odour of civet is the production of the civet-cat alone, the viverra zibetha, and viverra civetta of Linnaeus ; though we meet with faint traces of it in some varieties of the domestic cat, the felis catta of the same writer. Ge- nuine castor is, in like manner, a secretion of the castor fiber; but the sus Tajassu, and various other species of swine, yield a smell that makes an ap- proach towards it. Among insects, however, these odours are considerably more varied, as well as considerably more pleasant ; for the musk-scent of the cerambix moschatus, the apis Jragrans, and the tipula moschifera, is far more delicate than that of the musk quadrupeds ; while the cerambix suaveolens, and several species of the ichneumon, yield the sweetest perfume of the rose ; and the petiolated sphex a balsamic ether highly fragrant, but peculiar to itself. Yet insects, like other classes of animals, furnish instances of disagreeable and even disgusting scents, as well as of those that are fragrant. Thus, several species of the melitae breathe an essence of garlic or onions ; the staphilinus hrunipes has a stench intolerably fetid, though combined with, the perfume of spices; while the caterpillars of almost all the hymenoptera, and the larves of various other orders, emit an exhalation in many instances excessively pungent. The carabus crepitans, and sclopeta of Fabricius, pour forth a simi- lar vapour, accompanied with a strange crackling sound. The odorous secretions belonging to the vegetable tribes are well known to be still more variable ; sometimes poured forth from the leaves of the plant, as in the bay, sweet-briar, and heiiotrope ; sometimes from the trunk, as in the pines and junipers ; but more generally from the corol. It is from the minute family of the jungermannia, nearly related to the mosses, and often scarcely visible to the eye, that we derive the chief sense of that de- lightful fragrance perceptible after a shower, and especially at even-tide :* and from the florets of the elegant anthoxanthum odoratum^ or spring-grass, that we are chiefly furnished with the sweet and fragrant scent of nevv-mown hay. But occasionally the odours thus secreted are as intolerable as any that are emitted from the animal world ; of which the ferula asq/ktida, or asa- fetida plant, and the stapelia hirsuta, or carrion-flower, are sufficient examples. To the same secernent powers, moreover, of animals and vegetables, ex- isting in particular organs rather than extended through the system gene- rally, we are indebted for a variety of very valuable materials in trade and diet, as gums, resins, wax, fat, oils, spermaceti. And to the same cause we owe, also, the production of a multiplicity of poisons and other deleterious substances : such, for instance, as the poison of venomous serpents, which is found to consist of a genuine gum, and is the only gum known to be secreted by animal organs ; the electric gas of the gymnotus electricus and raia tor- pedo ; the pungent sting of the stinging-nettle, urtica urcns, and of the bee, both which are produced from a structure of a similar kind ; for every acu- leus or stinging point of the nettle is a minute and highly irritable duct, that leads to a minute and highly irritable bulb, filled with a minute drop of very acrid fluid : and hence, whenever any substance presses against any of the aculei or stinging points of the plant, the impression is communicated to the bulb, which instantaneously contracts, and throws forth the minute drop of acrid fluid through the ducts upon the substance that touches them. As the secernent system thus evidently allots particular organs for the secretion of particular materials, the absorbent system is in like manner only capable of imbibing and introducing into the general frame particular raate- * Hooker's Monography of British Jungenji ON THE EXTERNAL SENSES OF ANIMALS. 159 rials in particular parts of it. Thus, opium and alkohol, the juice of aconite, and essential oil of laurel or bitter almonds, produce little pr no effect upon the absorbents of the skin, but a very considerable effect upon the coating of the stomach. In. like manner, carbonic acid gas invigorates rather than injures, when applied to the absorbents of the stomach, but instantly destroys life when applied to those of the lungs; while the aroma of the toxicaria Macasariensis, or Boa upas, of which we have heard so much of late years, proves equally a poison, whether received by the skin, the stomach, or the lungs. So, also, substances that are poisonous to one tribe of animals are medi- cinal to a second, and even highly nutritive to a third. Thus, swine are poi- soned by pepper-seeds, which to man are a serviceable and grateful spice ; while henbane-roots, which destroy mankind, prove a wholesome diet to swine. In like manner, aloes, which to our own kind is a useful medicine, is a rank venom to dogs and foxes ; and the horse, which is poisoned by the phellandrum aquaticum, or water-hemlock, and corrosive sublimate, will take a drachm of arsenic daily, and improve hereby both in his coat and condition. It has already appeared, that the secernent vessels of any part of the sys- tem, in order to accomplish a beneficial purpose, as, for example, that of re- storing a destroyed or injured portion of an organ, may change their action, and secrete a material of a new nature and character. An equal change is not unfrequently produced under a morbid habit, and the secretion will then be of a deleterious instead of being of a healthy and sanative kind. And hence, under the influence of definite causes, the origin of such mischiev- ous and fatal secretions, in some instances thrown forth generally, and in others only from particular organs, as the matter of small-pox, measles, putrid fevers of various kinds, cancer, and hydrophobia, or the poisonous saliva of mad dogs. But the field opens before us to an unbounded extent, and we should lose ourselves in the subject if we were to proceed much farther. It is obvious, that in organic, as in inorganic nature, every thing is accurately arranged upon a principle of mutual adaptation, and regulated by an harmonious anta- gonism, a system of opposite yet accordant powers, that balance each other with most marvellous nicety ; that increase and diminution, l-fe and death, proceed with equal pace ; that foods are poisons, and poisons foods ; and, finally, that there is good enough in the world, if rightly improved, to make us happy in our respective stations so long as they ar-e allotted to us, and evil enough to wean us from them by the time the grant of life is usually recalled. LECTURE XV. ON THE EXTERNAL SENSES OF ANIMALS. The subject of study for the present lecture is the organs of external sense in animals : their origin, structure, position, and powers ; and the diversities they exhibit in different kinds and species. The external senses vary in their number : in all the more perfect animals they are five ; and consist in the faculties of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. It is by these conveyances that the mind or sensory receives a knowledge of whatever is passing within or without the system; and the knowledge it thus gets possession of is called perception. The different kinds of perception, therefore, are as numerous as the different channels through which they are received, and they produce an effect upon 160 ON THE EXTERNAL SENSES the sensory, which usually remains for a long-time after the exciting cause has ceased to operate. This effect, for want of a better term, we call impres- sions; and the particular facts, or things impressed, and of which the impres- sions retain, as it were, the print or picture, ideas. The sensory has the power of suffering this effect or these ideas to remain latent or unobserved, and of calling them into observation at its option^: it is the active exercise of this power that constitutes thought. The same constitution, moreover, by which the muid is enabled to take a review of any introduced impression, or to exercise its thought upon any in- troduced idea, empowers it to combine such impressions or ideas into every possible modification and variety. And hence arises an entirely new source of knowledge, far more exalted in its nature, and infinitely more extensive in its range : hence memory and the mental passions; hence reason, judg- ment, consciousness, and imagination, which have been correctly and ele- gantly termed the internal senses, in contradistinction to those by which we obtain a knowledge of things exterior to the sensorial region. Thus far we can proceed safely, and feel our way before us ; but clouds and darkness hang over all beyond, and a gulf unfathomable to the plummet of mortals. Of the sensory, or mind itself, we know nothing ; we have no chemical test that can reach its essence, no glasses that can trace its mode of union with the brain, no abstract principles that can determine the laws of its control. We see, however, enough to convince us that its powers are of a very different description from those of the body, and Revelation informs us that its nature is so too. Let us receive the information with gratitude, and never lose sight of the duties it involves. But this subject would lead us astray even at our outset: it is important, find it is enticing; and the very shades in which much of it is wrapped up prove an additional incitement to our curiosity. It shall form the basis of some subsequent investigation,* but our present concern is with the external senses alone. These, for the most part, issue from the brain, which, in all the more per- fect animals, is an organ approaching to an oval figure ; and consists of three distinct parts : the cerebrum, or brain properly so called ; the cerebel, or little brain, and the oblongated marrow. The first constitutes the largest and uppermost part; the second lies below and behind; the third, level with the second, and in front of it — it appears to issue equally out of the two other parts, and gives birth to the spinal marrow, which may hence be regarded as a continuation of the brain, extended through the whole chain of the spine or bdck-bone. From this general organ arises a certain number of long, whitish, pulpy strings or bundles of fibres, capable of being divided and subdivided into minuter bundles of filaments or still smaller fibres, as far as the power of glasses can carry the eye. These strings are denominated nerves ; and by their different ramifications convey different kinds or modifications of sensa- tion to different parts of the body, keep up a perpetual communication with its remotest organs, and give activity to the muscles. They have been sup- posed by earlier physiologists to be tubular or hollow, and a few experiments have been tried to establish this doctrine in the present day, but none that have proved satisfactory. As the brain consists of three general divisions, it might, at first sight, be supposed that each of them is allotted to some distinct and ascertainable pur- pose: as, for example, that of forming the seat of intelleclj or thinking; the seat of the local senses of sight, sound, taste, and smell ; and the seat of general feeling or motivity. But the experiments of anaiomists upon this abstruse subject, numerous and diversified as they have been of late years, and, unhappily, upon living as well as upon dead animals, have arrived at nothing conclusive in respect to it : and have rather given rise to contending than to concurrent opinions. So that we are nearly or altogether .unac- *■ Series in. Lectwes i. ii. iii. iv. OF ANIMALS. 161 quamted with the reason of this conformation, and of the respective share which each division tai^^es in producing the general effect. The nerves uniformly issue in pairs, one for each side of the body, and the number of the pairs is thirty-nine ; of which nine rise immediately from the great divisions of the brain, under which we have just contemplated it, and are chiefly appropriated to the four local senses ; and thirty from the spinal marrow, through different apertures in the bone that encases it, and are alto- gether distributed over the body, to produce the fifth or general sense of touch and feeling, as also irritability to the muscles. That these nervous or pulpy fibres are the organs by which the various sen- sations are produced or maintained is demonstrable from the following facts : If we divide, or tie, or merely compress, a nerve of any kmd, the muscle with which it communicates becomes almost instantly palsied ; but upon untying or removing the compression, the muscle recovers its feeling and mobility. If the compression be made on any particular portion of the brain, that part of the body becomes motionless which derives nerves from the portion com- pressed. And if the cerebrum, cerebel, or oblongated marrow be irritated, excruciating pain or convulsions, or both, take place all over the body, though chiefly where the irritation is applied to the last of these three parts. The matter of sensation, or nervous fluid, as for want of a more precise knawledge upon this subject we must still continue to call it, is probably as homogeneous in its first formation as the fluid of the blood ; but, like the blood, it appears to be changed by particular actions, either of particular parts of the brain, or of the particular nervous fibres themselves, into fluids of very different properties, and producing very different results. And it is probably in consequence of such changes alone that it is capable of exciting one set of organs to communicate to the brain the sensation of sound alone, another set that of sight alone, and so of the rest. While branches from the spinal marrow, or fountain-nerve of touch, are diffused over every portion of the body, sometimes in conjunction with the local nerves, as in the organs of local sense, and sometimes alone, as in every other part of the system.* Such an idea leads us naturally to a very curious and recondite subject, xvhich has never, that 1 know of, been attended to by physiologists, and will at the same time throw no small degree of light upon it : — I mean the pro- duction of other senses and sensorial powers than are common to the more perfect animals, or such a modification of some one of them as may give the semblance of an additional sense. What, for example, is that wonderful power b^'- which migratory birds and fishes are capable of steering with the precision of the expertest mariner from climate to climate, and from coast to coast ; and which, if possessed by man, might, perhaps, render superfluous the use of the magnet, and consider- ably infringe upon the science of logarithms 1 Whence comes it that the field- fare and red-wing, that pass their summers in Norway, or the wild-duck and merganser, that in like manner summer in the woods and lakes of Lapland, are able to track the pathless void of the atmosphere with the utmost nicety, and arrive on our own coasts uniformly in the beginning of October? or that the cod, the whiting, and the herring should visit us in innumerable shoals from quarters equally remote, and with an equal exactness of calculation? the cod pursuing the whiting, which flies before it, from the banks of New- foundland to the southern coasts of Spain ; and the cachalot, or spermaceti whale, driving vast armies of herrings from the arctic regions, and devouring thousands of those that are in the rear every hour. We know nothing of this sense, or the means by which all this is produced : and, knowing nothing of it, and feeling nothing of it, we have no terms by which to reason concerning it. Yet it is a sense not limited to migratory animals. A carrier-pigeon has been brought in a bag from Norwich to this metropolis, constituting a distance of 120 miles ; and having been let off with a letter tied round its neck, from » Sse Hunter's Anim. Economy, p. 261, 262. L 162 ON THE EXTERNAL SENSES the top of St. Paul's, has returned home through the air in a straight line, in four or five hours. Buffon asserts, that a hawk or eagle can travel two hundred leagues in ten hours, and relates a story of one that travelled two hundred and fifty leagues in sixteen hours. A JNevvfoundland dog has in like manner been brought from Plymouth to London by water, and having got loose, has run home by land with a speed so rapid as lo prove that his course must have been nearly in a straight line, though every inch of it was unknown to him. At such instances we start back, and, as far as we can, we disbelieve them, and think we become wise in proportion as we become skeptical. Meanwhile, nature pursues her wonder-working course, equally uninfluenced by our doubts or our convictions.* Even among mankind, however, we occasionally meet with a sort of sen- sation altogether as wonderful and inexplicable. For there are some persons so peculiarly afi'ected by the presence of a particular object, that is neither seen, smelt, tasted, heard, or touched, as not only to be conscious of its pre- sence, but to be in an agony till it is removed. The vicinity of a cat not un- frequently produces such an eifect ; and I have been a witness to the most decisive proofs of this in several instances. It is possible that the anomalous sense may in this instance result from a peculiar irritability in some of the nervous branches of the organ of smell, which may render them capable of being irritated in a new and peculiar manner : but the persons thus affected are no more conscious of an excitement in this organ of sense than in any other ; and from the originality of the sensation itself find no terms in any language by which the sensation can be expressed. Sharks and rays are generally supposed by naturalists to be endowed with a peculiar sense in the organ of a tubular structure found immediately under the integuments of the head though they have not agreed as to the exact character of this additional sense. Trevannius calls it generally a sixth organ of sensation. M. Jacobson, and Dr. de Blainville, who quotes his authority, regard it as a local organ of touch. M. Roux, who seems to have examined it with great attention, believes it to be the source of a feeling of a middle nature between the two senses of touch and hearing.f The bat appears to have, in like manner, an additional sensific power, for it is observed to avoid external objects when in their vicinity, while the eye, ear, and nose are closed, and there is no direct touch : and this peculiar feeling has been called a sixth sense generally by naturalists, without discriminating it farther. What is the cause of those peculiar sensations which we denominate hun- ger and thirst ] A thousand theories have been advanced to account for them, but all have proved equally unsatisfactory, and have died one after an- other almost as soon as they have received a birth. We trace indeed the organs in which they immediately reside, and know by the sensations them- selves that the one exists in the region of the stomach, and the other in that of the throat : but though we call them sensations, they have neither of them any of the common characters of touch, taste, hearing, seeing, or smelling. * The fact of the migratory power of one kind of animals confirms the fact of the migratory power of others. While the question was confined to birds it was too often denied by rnaiiy naturalists, merely from the difficulty of accounting for it : and it was said, in opposition to Catesby and White, and all our best ornithologists, that our summer birds only disappear by creephig into holes and crevices to hibernate. And hence, even so late as 1823, the late Ur. Jenner felt himself called upon to examine such assertions with a view of disproving them; which he has done in one of the most agreeable essays on the natural history of migratory birds to be found in our own or any other language. " A little reflection,'' says he, " must compel us to confess that they are endowed with discriminating powers totally unknown to, and for ever unattainable by, man. I have no objection to admit the possibility that birds may be overtaken by the cold of winter, and thus be thrown into the situation of other animals which remain torpid at that season ; though I must own I never witnessed the fact, nor could I ever obtain evidence on the subject that was to me satisfactory ; but, as it has been often asserted, may I be allowed to suppose that some deception might have been practised with the design of misleading those to whom it might seem to have appeared obvious i" Phil. Trans. 1824, p. 11. The strongest argument against all such disbelief, arising fVom the difficulty of accounting for the migration of birds, is to turn to the migration of fishes, and to the parallel cases of remote travel in other animals, which are given above. The respective marvels give support to each other, "till disbelief itself becomes at length.the greatest marvel of the whole. \ See ferther on this subject, Edino. Journ. of Science, No. ill. Art. iii. p. 87, 1825. OF ANIMALS. 163 Foods and drinks are the natural and common means of quieting their pain, but there are other means that may be also employed for this purpose, and which are often found to answer as a temporary substitute ; as, for instance, pressure against the coats of the stomach in the case of hunger, and stimu- lating the salivary glands in the case of thirst. It is hence that chewing a mouthful of hay alone, or merely moistened with water, proves so refresh- ing to a tired horse, and is found so serviceable when we dare not allow him to slake his thirst by drinking. Savages and savage beasts are equally sensi- ble of the advantage of pressure in the case of hunger, and resort to it upon all occasions in which they cannot take off the pain in the usual way. The manis or pangolin tribes, that swallow their food whole, will swallow stones or coals or any other substance, if they cannot obtain nutriment : not that their instinct deceives them, but for the purpose of acquiring such a pressure as may blunt the sense of hunger, which is found so corroding. Almost all carnivorous beasts pursue the same plan ; and a mixture of pieces of coal, stone, slate, and earth is often met with in the stomach of ostriches, cassowaries, and even toads. The Kamtschatkadale obtains the same pur- pose by swallowmg saw-dust ; and some of the northern Asiatic tribes by a board placed over the region of the stomach, and tightened behind with cords, in proportion to the severity of the suffering. Even in our own country we often pursue the same end by the same means ; and employ a tight handker- chief, instead of a tightened stomach-board. In consequence of this difference in the mode in which the matter of'touch or general feeling is secreted under different circumstances, we may also per- ceive why some parts of the body, although perhaps as largely furnished with the nerves of touch or general feeling as other parts, are far less sensible and ii;ritable ; as the bones, the teeth, and the tendons ; and why the very same parts should, under other circumstances, as when morbidly affected, become the most sensible or irritable of all the organs of the system ; a fact well known to all, but I believe not hitherto satisfactorily accounted for by any one. We may see also why inflammation, attacking different organs of the body, should be accompanied with very different sensations. In the bones and car- tilages, except in extreme cases, it is accompanied with a dull and heavy pain ; in the brain, with an oppressive and stupifying pain ; and in the sto- mach, with a nauseating uneasiness. So, again, in the skin, muscles, and cellular membrane, it is a pain that rouses and excites the system generally; but in those parts which are supplied with the two branches of nerves which are called par vagum and sympathetic, as the loins and kidneys, the patient is affected with lowness of spirits from the first attack of the inflammation.* Dr. Gall, whose physiological theory has excited so much attention of late years on the Continent, has endeavoured to account for all these varieties of feeling, and indeed for all the animal senses of every kind, both external and internal, by supposing some particular part of the brain to be allotted to each, and that the general character and temperament of the individual is the result of the different proportions which these different parts or chambers of the brain bear to one another. He supposes, also, that this organ is possessed of two distinct sets of nervous fibres — a secernent and an absorbent ; both directly connected with what is called the cineritious or ash-coloured part of the brain; the former issuing from it and secreting the fluid of the will, or that by which the mind operates on the muscles ; and the latter terminating in it, and conveying to it the fluid of the external senses, secreted by those senses themselves, and communicating a knowledge of the presence and degree of power of external objects. This elaborate theory, and the facts to which it appeals, were very minutely investigated, a few years ago, by a very excel- lent committee of the physical class of the French National Institute, assisted by Mr. (now Dr.) Spurzheim, the intimate friend and coadjutor of its inventor, and who is well known to have contributed quite as much to the estabhsh- ment of this speculation as himself. This committee, after a very minute * Hunter on Blood, p. 289, 290 I 2 164 ON THE EXTERNAL SENSES and cautious research, gave it as apart of their report, that the doctrine of the origin and action of the nerves is probably correct; but that this doctrine does not appear to have any immediate or necessary connexion with that part of Dr. Gall's theory which relates to distinct functions possessed by distinct parts of the brain.* The orig-in, and distribution, and action, however, of the nervous trunks have since been far more accurately traced out by Mr. Charles Bell, M. Magendie, and various other physiologists ; while, in refuta- tion of the doctrine that ascribes distinct functions to distinct parts of the brain, it may be sufficient to observe, for the present, that many of the nerves productive of different functions originate in the same part, while others, pro- ductive of the same function, originate in different parts. There is no animal whose brain is a precise counterpart to that of man ; and it has hence been conceived, that by attending to the distinctions between the human brain and that of other animals, we might be able to account for their different degrees of intelligence. But the varieties are so numerous, and the parts which are deficient in one animal are found connected with such new combinations, modifications, and deficiencies in others, that it is impossible for us to avail ourselves of any such diversities. Aristotle endeavoured to establish a distinction by laying it down as a maxim that man has the largest brain of all animals in proportion to the size of his body ; a maxim which has been almost universally received from his own time to the present period. But it has of late years, and upon a more extensive cultivation of compara- tive anatomy, been found to fail in various instances : for while the brain of several species of the ape kind bears as large a proportion to the body as that of man, the brain of several kinds of birds bears a proportion still larger. M. Sommering has carried the comparison through a great diversity of genera and species: but the following brief table will be sufficient for the present purpose. The weight of the brain to that of the body forms — In man, from -^^ to 3*3 part. — several tribes of simia J^ — — dog - - . — elephant — sparrow — canary bird - ¥ T4 — goose — turtle (smallest) - M. Sommering has hence endeavoured to correct the rule of Aristotle by a modification, under which it appears to hold universally ; and, thus corrected, it runs as follows : *' Man has the largest brain of all animals in proportion to the general mass of nerves that issue from it." Thus, the brain of the horse gives only half the weight of that of a man. but the nerves it sends forth are ten times as bulky. The largest brain which M. Sommering ever dissected in the horse-tribe weighed only lib. 4oz. while the smallest he ever met with in an adult man was 2lb. Sjoz.f It is a singular circumstance, that in the small heart-shaped pulpy sub- stance of the human brain, denominated the pineal gland, and which Des Cartes regarded as the seat of the soul, a collection of sandy matter should invariably be found after the first few years of existence ; and it is still more singular, that such matter has rarely, if ever, been detected but in the brain of a few bisulcated animals, as that of the fallow-deer, in which it has beei: found by Sommering ;| and that of the goat, in which it has been traced by Malacarne.^ The nervous system of all the vertebral or first four classes of animals,—- mammals, birds, amphibials, and fishes, — are characterized by the two follow- ing properties : — first, the organ of sense consists of a gland or ganglion with *For an examination of the general subject of craniology and physiognomy, see Series m. Lecture xifl. t Study of Med. iv. 11, 2d edit. X Dissertatio de basi Enr.ephali, 1778, and Tabula basf os Encephali, 1799. See Blumenb. p. 292. $ Dissert, p. 10. See also Blumenbach, Ar.at. Comp. ^ 206. OF ANIMALS. 166 a long and bifid chord or spinal marrow descending from it, of a smaller dia- meter than the gland itself; and, secondly, both are severally enclosed in a bony case or covering. In man, as we have already observed, this gland, or ganglion, is (with a few exceptions) larger than in any other animal, in proportion to the size of the body ; without any exception whatever in proportion to the size of the chord or spinal marrow that issues from it. In other animals, even of the vertebral classes, or those immediately before us, we meet with every variety of proportion ; from the ape, which, in this respect approaches nearest to that of man, to tortoises and fishes, in which the brain or ganglion does not much exceed the diameter of the spinal mar- row itself. It is not therefore to be wondered at that animals of a still lower descrip- tion should exhibit proofs of a nervous chord or spinal marrow, without a superior gland or brain of any kind; and that this chord should even be des- titute of its common bony defence. And such is actually the conformation of the nervous system in insects, and, for the most part, in worms ; neither of which are possessed of a cranium or spine, and in none of which we are able to trace more than a slight enlargement of the superior part of the nervous chord, or spinal marrow, as it is called in other animals — a part situ- ated near the mouth, and apparently intended to correspond with the organ of a brain. The nervous chord, however, in these animals, is, for the most part, proportionally larger than in those of a superior rank ; and at various distances is possessed of little knots or ganglions, from which fresh ramifica- tions of nerves shoot forth, like branches from the trunk of a tree, and which may perhaps be regarded as so many distinct cerebels or little brains. In zoophytic worms we can scarcely trace any distinction of structure, and are totally unable to recognise a nervous system of any kind. The com- mon and almost transparent hydra or polype, which is often to be found in the stagnant waters of our own country, with a body about an inch long, and arms or tentacles in proportion, appears to consist, when examined by the best glasses, of nothing but a granular structure, something like boiled sago, connected by a gelatinous substance into a definite form.* Hydatids arid" infusory animals exhibit a similarity of make. The common formative prin- ciple of all these may be reasonably conjectured to consist in the living power of the blood alone, or rather of the fluid which answers the purpose of blood ; and their principles of action to be little more than instinctive. Can we, then, conceive that all these different kinds, and orders, and classes of animals, thus differently organized and differently endowed with intelligence, are possessed of an equality of corporeal feeling] or, to adopt the language of the poet, that — the poor worm thou tread'st on, In corporal suffering, feels a pang as great As when a giant dies ? This is an interesting question, and deserves to be examined at some length. It may, perhaps, save the heart of genuine sensibility from a few of those pangs which, even under the happiest circumstances of life, will be still called forth too frequently; and if there be a human being so hardened and barbarized as to take advantage of the conclusion to which the inquiry may lead us, he will furnish an additional proof of its correctness in his own person, and show himself utterly unqualified for the discut«sion. Life and sensation, then, are by no means necessarily connected ; the blood is alive, but we all know it has no sensation ; and vegetables are alive, but we have no reason to suppose they possess any. Sensation, so far as we are able to trace it, is the sole result of a nervous structure. Yet, though thus limited, it has already appeared that it does not exist equally in every kind of the same structure, nor in every part of the same kind. The skin is » Blumenbach, Anat. Ck)mp. $ 203. 166 ON THE EXTERNAL SENSES more sensible to pain than the lungs, the brain, or the stomach ; but even the skin itself is more sensible in some parts than in others, which are appa- rently supplied with an equal number of nerves, and of nerves from the very same quarter. It is perhaps least sensible in the gums ; a little more so on the hairy scalp of the head ; much more so on the front of the body ; and most of all so in the interior of the eyelids : while the bones, teeth, cartilages, cuticle, and cellular membrane, though largely supplied with nerves, have no sensation whatever in a healthy state. As the degree of intelligence decreases, we have reason to believe that the intensity of touch or corporeal feeling decreases also, excepting in particular organs, in which the sense of touch is employed as a local power. And hence we may reasonably conjecture that in some of the lowest ranks of ani- mals, the sensibility may not exceed, even in their most lively organs, the acuteness of the human cellular membrane, cuticle, or gums. This, however, does not rest upon conjecture or even upon loose indefinite reasoning. We find in our own system that those parts which are most inde- pendent of all the other parts, and can reproduce themselves most readily, are possessed of the smallest portion of sensation ; such are all the appen- dages^f the true skiYi, the cuticle, horn, hair, beard, and nails : some of which are so totally independent of the rest, that they will not only continue to live, but even to grow, for a long time after the death of every other part Of the body. Now it is this very property by which every kind of animal below the rank of man is in a greater or less degree distinguished from man himself. All of them are compounded of organs which in a greater or less degree ap- proach towards that independence of the general system which, in man, the insensible or less sensible parts alone possess ; and hence all of them are capable of reproducing parts that have been destroyed by accident or disease, with vastly more facility and perfection than mankind can do. 1 have once or twice had occasion to apply this remark to the lobster, which has a power not only of reproducing its claws spontaneously, when deprived of them by accident or disease, but of throwing them off" sponta- neously whenever laid hold of by them, in order to extricate itself from the imprisoning grasp. The tipula pectiniformis, or insect vulgarly called father- long-legs, and several of the spider-family, are possessed of a similar power, and exercise it in a similar manner. These limbs are renewed by the forma- tive effect of the living principle in a short period of time : but it would be absurd to imagine that in thus voluntarily parting with them the animal puts himself to any very intolerable degree of pain ; for in such case he would not exert himself to throw them off. The gad-fly, when it has once fastened on the hand, may be cut to pieces apparently without much disturbance of its gratification ; and the polype appears to be in as perfect health and content- ment when turned inside out as when in its- natural state. This animal may be divided into halves, and each half by its own formative and instinctive effort will produce the half that is deficient, and in this manner an individual of the tribe may be multiplied into countless numbers. In many animals of the three classes of amphibials, insects, and worms, the most dreadful wounds that can be inflicted, unless actually mortal, seem hardly to accelerate death ; and hence we have a decisive proof that the pain endured by such animals must be very considerably and almost infinitely less than would be suffered by animals of a more perfect kind, and especially by man ; since in these the pain itself, and the sympathetic fever which fol- lows as its necessary result, would be sufficient to kill them independently of any other cause. The life of man is in jeopardy upon the fracture or amputation of a limb ; and even at times when his body has been spattered over with a charge of small shot, or only of gunpowder. But M. Ribaud, with a spirit of expe- rimenting that I will not justify, has struck different beetles through with pins, and cut and lacerated others in the severest manner, all of which lived through their usual term of life as though no injury had been committed on OF ANIMALS. 167 them. Vaillant, wishing^ to preserve a locust of the Cape of Good Hope, took out the intestines, and filled the abdomen with cotton, and then fixed it down by a pin through the chest ; yet after five months the animal still moved its feet and antennas. In the beginning of November, Redi opened the skull of a land-tortoise, and excavated it of the whole brain. He expressly tells us that the tortoise did not seem to suffer: it moved about as before, but groped for its path, for the eyes closed soon after losing the brain, and never opened again. A fleshy integument was produced, which covered the opening of the skull, but the in- stinctive power of the living principle was incompetent to renew the brain, and in the ensuing May, six months afterward, the animal died.* Spallanzani has incontestibly proved that the snail has a power of repro- ducing a new head when decapitated : but it should be remarked that the brain of the snail does not exist in its head. I will not pursue this argument any farther; it is in many respects painful and abhorrent ; and consists of experiments in which I never have been, and trust I never shall be, a participant. But I avail myself of the facts them- selves in order to establish an important conclusion in physiology, which I could not so well have established without them. Let us turn to a more cheerful subject, and examine a few of those pecu- liarities in the external sense-s which characterize the different classes and orders of animals, so far as we are acquainted with such distinctions ; and admire the wisdom which they display. The only sense which seems common to animals, and which pervades almost the whole surface of their bodies, is that of general touch or feeling; whence M. Cuvier supposes that the material of touch is the sensorial power in its simplest and uncompounded state ; and that the other senses are only- modifications of this material, though peculiarly elaborated by peculiar organs, which are also capable of receiving more delicate impressions. f Touch, however, has its peculiar local organ, as well as the other senses, for particular purposes, and purposes in which unusual delicacy and precision are required ; in man this peculiar power of touch is well known to be seated in the nervous papillae of the tongue, lips, and extremities of the fingers. Its situation in other animals I shall advert to presently. The differences in the external senses of the different orders and kinds of animals, consists in their number and degree of energy. All the classes of vertebral animals possess the same number of senses as man. Sight is wanted in zoophytes, in various kinds of moluscous and articu- lated worms, and in the larves of several species of insects. Hearing does not exist, or at least has not been traced to exist, in many molluscous worms, and several insects in a perfect state. Taste and smell, like the general and simple sense of touch, seem seldom to be wanting in any animal. The local sense of touch, however, or that which is of a more elaborate character, and capable of being exercised in a higher degree, appears to be confined to the three classes of mammals, birds, and insects : and even in the last two it is by no means common to all of them, and less so among insects than among birds. In apes and macaucoes, constituting the quadrumana of Blumenbach, it resides partly in the tongue, and tips of the fingers, as in man, but equally, and in some species even in a superior degree, in their toes. In the racoon (ursus lotor) it exists chiefly in the under surface of the front toes. In the horse and cattle orders, it is supposed by most naturalists to exist conjointly m the tongue and snout, and in the pig and mole to be confined to the snout alone ; this, however, is uncertain ; as it is also, though there seems to be more reason for such a behef, that in the elephant it is seated in the proboscis. Some physiologists have supposed the bristly hairs of the tiger, lion, and cat, to be an organ of the same kind ; but there seems little ground for such an opinion. In the opossum (and especially the Cayenne opossum) it exists • Dalzell's Introd. to his Transl. of Spallanzani, p. xlv. j Anatom. Comparat. i. 25. 168 ON THE EXTERNAL SENSES very visibly in the tail ; and M. Cuvier suspects that it has a similar existence in ail the prehensile-tailed mammals. Blumenbach supposes the same sense to have a place in the same organ in the platypus, or ornithorhynchus, as he calls it, that most extraordinary duck- billed quadruped which has lately been discovered in Australia, avid, by its intermixture of organs, confounds the different classes of animals, and sets all natural arrangement at defiance. The local organ of touch or feeling in ducks and geese, and some other genera of birds, appears to be situated in the integument which covers the extremity of the mandibles, and especially the upper mandible, with which apparatus they are well known to feel for their food in the midst of mud in which they can neither see nor perhaps smell it. We do not know that amphibials, fishes, or worms possess any thing like a local sense of touch : it has been suspected in some of these, and especially in the arms of the cuttle-fish, and in the tentacles of worms that possess this organ ; but at present it is suspicion, and nothing more. In the insect tribes, we have much reason for believing such a sense to' reside in the antennas, or in the tentacles ; whence the former of these are de- nominated by the German naturalists jTwAiAor^ier or feeling-horns. This be- lief has not been fully established, but it is highly plausible, from the general possession of the one or the other of these organs by the insect tribes, the general purpose to which they apply them, and the necessity which there seems for some such organ from the crustaceous or horny texture of their external coat. The senses of taste and smell in animals bear a very near affinity to the local sense of touch ; and it is difficult to determine w^hether the upper man- dible of the duck-tribe, with which they distinguish food in the mud, may not be an organ of taste or smell as well as of touch; and there are some natu- ralists that in like manner regard the cirrous filaments or antennules attached to the mouths of insects as organs of taste and touch equally. Taste in the more perfect animals resides jointly in the papillae of the tongue and the palate ; but I have already had occasion to observe that it may exist, and in full perfection, in the palate alone, since it has been found so in persons who have completely lost the tongue from external force or disease. In animals that possess the organ of nostrils this is always the seat of smell ; and in many quadrupeds, most birds, and perhaps most fishes, it is a sense far more acute than in man, and that which is chiefly confided in. For the most part it resides in the nerves distributed over a mucous mem- brane that lines the interior of the bones of the nostrils, and which is called the Schneiderian membrane, in honour of M. Schneider, a celebrated anato- mist, who first accurately described it. Generally speaking, it will be found that the acuteness of smell bears a proportion in all animals to the extent of surface which this membrane displays; and hence, in the dog and cattle tribes, as well as in several others, it possesses a variety of folds or convolu- tions, and in birds is continued to the utmost points of the nostrils, which in different kinds open in very different parts of the mandible. The frontal sinuses, which are lined with this delicate membrane, are larger in the elephant than in any other quadruped, and in this animal the sense is also continued through the flexible organ of its proboscis. In the pig the smelling organ is likewise very extensive ; and in most of the mam- mals possessing proper horns it ascends as high as the processes of the fron tal bone from which the horns issue. It is not known that the cetaceous tribes possess any organ of smell ; their blowing holes are generally regarded as such ; but the point has been by no means fully established. We are in the same uncertainty with respect to amphibials and worms; the sense is suspected to exist in all the former, and in several of the latter, especially in the cuttle-fish, but no distinct organ has hitherto been traced out satisfactorily. In fishes there is no doubt; the olfactory nerves are very obviously distri- Duted on an olfactory membrane, and in several instances the snouts are OF ANIMALS. Ifig double, and, consequently, the nostrils quadruple, a pair for each snout. This powerful inlet of pleasure to fishes often proves fatal to them from its very- perfection ; for several kinds are so strongly allured by the odour of majorum, asafcetida, and other aromas, that by smearing the hand over with these sub- stances, and immersing- it in the water, they will often flock towards the fin- gers, and in their intoxication of delight may easily be laid hold of. And hence the angler frequently overspreads his baits with the same substances, and thus arms himself with a double decoy. There can be no doubt of the existence of the same sense in insects ; for they possess a very obvious power of distinguishing the odorous properties of bodies, even at a considerable distance beyond the range of their vision; but the organ in which this sense resides has not been satisfactorily pointed out : Reimar supposes it to exist in their stigmata, and Enoch in their ante rior pair of feelers. The general organ of hearing is the ear, but not always so ; for in most of those who hear by the Eustachian tube only, it is the mouth, and in the whale tribes the nostrils or blow-hole. It is so, however, in all the more perfect animals, which usually for this purpose possess two distinct entrances into the organ ; a larger and external, surrounded by a lobe ; and a smaller and internal, opening into the mouth. It is this last which is denominated the Eustachian tube. The shape of the lobe is seldom found even in mam- mals similar to that in man, excepting among the monkey and the porcupine tribes. In many kinds there is neither external lobe nor external passage. Thus, in the frog, and most amphibious animals, the only entrance is the internal, or that from the mouth ; and in the cetaceous tribes the only effective entrance is probably of the same kind; for, though these may be said to pos- sess an external aperture, it is almost imperceptibly minute. It is a curious fact, that, among the serpents, the blind-worm or common harmless snake is the only species that appears to possess an aperture of either sort ; the rest have a rudiment of the organ within, but we are not acquainted with its being pervious to sound. Fishes are well known to possess a hearing organ, and the skate and shark have the rudiment of an external ear ; but, like other 'fishes, they seem chiefly to receive sound by the internal tubule alone. That insects in general hear is unquestionable, but it is highly questionable by what organ they obtain the sense of hearing. The antennas, and perhaps merely because we do not know their exact use, have been supposed by many naturalists to furnish the means ; it appears fatal, however, to this opinion to observe, that spiders hear, though they have no true antennas, and that other insects which possess them naturally seem to hear as correctly after they are cut off. The sense of vision exhibits perhaps more variety in the different classes of animals than any of the external senses. In man, and the greater number of quadrupeds, it is guarded by an upper and lower eyelid ; both of which in man, but neither of which in most quadrupeds, are terminated by the addi- tional defence and ornament of cilia or eyelashes. In the elephant, opossum, seal, cat-kind, and various other mammals, all birds, and all fishes, we find a third eyelid, or nictitating membrane, as it is usually called, arising from the internal angle of the eye, and capable of covering the pupil with a thin transparent veil, either wholly or in part, and hence of defending the eyes from danger in their search after food. In the dog this membrane is narrow ; in oxen and horses it will extend over half the eyeball ; in birds it will easily cover the whole ; and it is by means of this veil, according to Cuvier, that the eagle is capable of looking directly against the noonday sun. In fishes it is almost always upon the stretch, as in their uncertain element they are ex- posed to more dangers than any other animal. Serpents have neither this nor any other eyelid ; nor any kind of external defence whatever but the common integument of the skin. The largest eyes in proportion to the size of the animal belong to the bird tribes, and nearly the smallest to the whale; the smallest altogether to 170 ON THE EXTERNAL SENSES the shrew and mole; in the latter of which the eye is not larger than a pin's head. The iris, with but few exceptions, partakes of the colour of the hair, and is hence perpetually varying in different species of the same genus. The pupil exhibits a very considerable, though not an equal, variety in its shape. In man it is circular; in the lion, tiger, and indeed all the cat-kind, it is oblong; transverse in the horse and in ruminating animals ; and heart-shaped in the dolphin. In man, and the monkey tribes, the eyes are placed directly under the fore- head ; in other mammals, birds, and reptiles, more or less laterally ; in some fishes, as the genus pleuronectes, including the turbot and flounder tribes, both eyes are placed on the same side of the head ; in the snail they are situated on its horns, if the black points on the extremities 'of the horns of this worm j^e real eyes, of which, however, there is some doubt ; in spiders the eyes are distributed over different parts of the body, and in different arrangements, usually eight in number, and never less than six. The eyes of the sepia have lately been detected by M. Cuvier : their construction is very beautiful, and nearly as complicated as that of vertebrated animals.* Polypes and several other zoophytes appear sensible of the presence of light, and yet have no eyes ; as the nostrils are not in every animal necessary to the sense of smell, the tongue to that of taste, or the ears to that of sound. A distinct organ is not always requisite for a distinct sense. In man himself we have already seen this in regard to the sense of touch,^ which exists both locally and generally : the distinct organ of touch is the tips of the tongue and of the fingers, but the feeling is also diffused, though in s subordinate and less precise degree, over every part of the body. It is possible, therefore, in animals that appear endowed with particular senses, without particular organs for their residence, that these senses are diffused, like that of touch, over the surface generally ; though there can be no doubt that, for want of such appropriate organs, they must be less acute and precise than in animals that possess them.f But who of us can say what is possible 1 who of us can say what has actually been done 1 After all the assiduity with which this attractive science has been studied, from the time of Aristotle to that of Lucretius, or of Pliny, and from these periods to the present day, — after all the wonderful and im portant discoveries which have been developed in it, natural history is even yet but little more than in its infancy, and zoonomy is scarcely entitled to the name of a science in any sense. New varieties and species, and even kinds of beings, are still arising to our view among animals, among vegetables, among minerals : — new structures are detecting in those already known, and new laws in the application of their respective powers. ' But the globe has been upturned from its foundation ; and with the wreck of a great part of its substance has intermingled the wreck of a great part of its inhabitants. It is a most extraordinary fact, that of the five or six distinct layers or strata of which the solid crust of the earth is found to con- sist, so far as it has ever been dug into, the lowermost, or granitic, as we ob- served on a former occasion,^ contains not a particle of animal or vegetable materials of any kind ; the second, or transition formation, as Werner has denominated it, is filled, indeed, with fossil relics of animals, but of animals not one of which is to be traced in a living state in the present day ; and jt is not till we ascend to the third, or floetz stratification, that we meet with a single organic remain of known animal structures. M. Cuvier has been engaged for the last fifteen years in forming a classifi- cation, and establishing a museum of non-descript animal fossils, for the purpose of deciding, as far as may be, the general nature and proportion of . those tribes that are now lost to the world : and in the department of quad- rupeds alone, his coflection of unknown species amounted in the year 1810 to not less than seventy-eight, some of which he has been obliged to arrange * Le R^gne Animale distribue d'apres son Organization, 4 tomes, 8vo. Paris, 1817, t Study of Med. vol. iv. p. 14, 2d edit. 1825. t Series u Lecture vi p. 69 OF ANIMALS. HI under new genera, as we shall have occasion to notice still farther in a sub- sequent study. In the new and untried soil of America, the bones of un- known kinds and species lie buried in profusion ; and my late friend Professor Barton, of Philadelphia, one of our first transatlantic physiologists, informed me by letter a short time before his death, that they are perpetually turnnig up skeletons of this description, whose living representatives are nowhere to be met with. In few words, every region has been enriched with wonders of animal life that have long been extinct for ever. Where is now that enormous mam- moth, whose bulk outrivalled the elephant's 1* where that gigantic tapir, of a structure nearly as mountainous,* whose huge skeleton has been found in a fossil state in France and Germany ; while its only living type, a pigmy of what has departed, exists in the wilds of America] where is now the breathing form of the fossil sloth of America, the magaloninx of Cuvier, whose size meted that of the ox 1* where the might)' moniter,* outstripping the lengthened bulk of the crocodile 1 itself, too, a lord of the ocean, and yet, whose only relics have been traced in the quarries of Maestricht ; to which, as to another leviathan, we may well apply the forcible description of the Book of Job, " at whose appearing the mighty were afraid, and who made the deep to boil as a caldron : who esteemed iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood ; who had not his like upon the earth, and was a king amid the children of pride."! Over this recondite and bewildering subject skeptics have laughed and critics have puzzled themselves ; it is natural history alone that can find us a clew to the labyrinth, that enables us to repose faith in the records of antiquity, and that establishes the important position, that the extravagance of a description is no argument against the truth of a description, and that it is somewhat too much to deny that a thing has existed formerly, for the mere reason that it does not exist now. • See Series ii Lecture ii. t **, xli 25. 27. 31 33 • (173) 8ERIJQIS II. LECTURE I. ON ZOOLCGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OP ANIMALS. While every department of nature displays an unbounded scope to the contemplative mind, — a something on which it may perpetually dwell with new and growing delight, and new and growing improvement ; we behold in the great division of the animal kingdom a combination of allurements that draw us, and fix us, and fascinate us with a sort of paramount and magical captivity, unknown to either of the other branches of natural history ; and which seem to render them chiefly or alone desirable and interesting, in pro- portion as they relate to animal life. There is, indeed, in the mineral domain, an awe, and a grandeur, and a majesty, irresistibly ifnpressive and sublime ; and that cannot fail to lift up the heart to an acknowledgment of the mighty Power which piled the massy cliffs upon each other, and rent the mountains asunder, and flung their scattered fragments over the valleys. There is in the realm of vegetables an immeasurable profusion of bounty and of beauty, of every thing that can delight the external eye, and gratify the desire ; simple, splendid, variegated, exquisite. But the moment we open the gates of the animal kingdom a new world pours upon us, and a new train of affec- tions take possession of the bosom ; it is here, for the first time, that we behold the nice lineaments of feeling, motion, spontaneity ; we associate and sympathize with every thing around us, we insensibly acknowledge an ap- proximation (often indeed very remote, but an approximation nevertheless), to our own nature, and run over with avidity the vast volume that lies before us, of tastes, and customs, and manners, and propensities, and passions, and 'consummate instincts. But where shall we commence the perusal of this volume 1 the different pages of which, though each intrinsically interesting, lie scattered, like the sibyl leaves of antiquity, over every part of the globe, and require to be col- lected and arranged in order, to give us a just idea of their relative excellence, and to enable us to contemplate them as a whole. The difficulty has been felt in all ages ; and hence multiplied classifica- tions, or schemes for assorting, and grouping into similar divisions, such indi- viduals as indicate a similar structure, or similar habits, or similar powers, have been devised in different periods of the world, and especially in modern times, in which the study of zoology has been pursued with a searching spirit, unknown to the sages of antiquity. — And well has it deserved to be so pursued. " This subject," observes M. Biberg, " is of so much importance, and of such an extent, that if the ablest men were to attempt to treat it thoroughly, an age would pass away before they could explain completely the admirable economy, habits, and structure even of the most imperceptible insect. There is not a single species that does not, of itself, deserve an historian."* Before we gird ourselves then to a critical indagation into any particular part of the immense theatre which this study presents to us, it may be con- venient to contemplate it upon that general survey which it is the object of such schemes or classifications to lay down ; to travel over it and mark its more prominent characters by a m.ap, anterior to our entering upon the coun- try itself. And such are the humble pretensions of the present lecture ; which will merely attempt to place before you a brief sketch of zoology, in • Amcenitates AcademicaB Suecicae, vol. ii. art. 19, CEconomia Naturae. ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, fee. 173 regard to its bare outlines ; for such a sketch is the whole that our time will allow ; yet if it be found faithful, it will assuredly be found beneficial ; for if the outlines be correctly laid down, the picture may be filled up at our leisure. That most sublime and magnificent of all poems, ancient or modern, the Book of Job, establishes, in the most satisfactory manner, that the study of natural history, and especially the history of tiie animal kingdom, was culti- vated at a very early period of the world, — in all probability as early, at least, as the Mosaic epoch, — with a considerable degree of minute attention in regard to various kinds and species ; and the detailed references to the habits and manners of other animals that lie scattered through almost every part of the Hebrew Scriptures, and especially through the book of Psalms, and those of the Prophecies, and the distinct historical notice which is given of the scientific acquaintance of Solomon with this attractive study,* establish, not only that it was attended to at a very early period, but that it was a very favourite and fashionable pursuit for many ages throughout Egypt, Syria, and Arabia. But the first physiologist who, we can say, with any degree of cer- tainty, pointed out the expediency of a methodical arrangement of animals was Aristotle. His \vorks upon this subject have reached us ; yet while they prove that he took the same extensive and scientific view of it which he did of all other subjects, to which he directed the wonderful powers of his com- prehensive mind, they prove also, that the study of natural history in Greece had by no means, in his day, kept pace with a variety of other studies ; and that he did not conceive, aided as he was by all the mighty patronage of Alexander the Great, and the concurrent exertions of every other physiolo- gist, that he was in possession of a sufficiency of facts to attempt the same kind of systematic arrangement here, which he is so celebrated for having effiected almost every where else. He modestly contented himself, there- fore, with pointing out the important use of such an arrangement as soon as it could be accomplished, and with suggesting a few hints as to the principles upon which it should be constructed. He observes, that the distinctive cha- racters of animals might be taken from the nature of their food, from their actions, their manners, or their different structures. That their inhabiting land or water, offers a distinction of another sort : and that of land animals, there are some kinds that respire by lungs, as quadrupeds, and others that have -no such kind of respiration ; that some are winged, and others wingless; that some possess proper blood, while others are exsanguineous ; that some produce their young by eggs, and these he named oviparous, while others bring them forth naked, and these he called viviparous ; that quadrupeds, again, may, perhaps, be distinguished by the make of the foot, as being of three kinds, undivided, cloven, and digitated, or severed into toes or claws.f These, indeed, were mere hints, and only intended as such ; but they were truly valuable and important ; for they roused zoologists to that general com- parison of animal with animal, which could not fail of very essentially ad- vancing the cause of natural history ; and have, in different degrees, laid the foundation of almost every methodical arrangement which has since been off'ered to the world. To run over a list of these arrangements would be equally useless and jejune. The writers who have chiefly signalized themselves in this depart- ment, are Gesner, Aldrovandi, Johnston, Ray, Linnaeus, Klein, Lacepede, Blumenbach, and Cuvier; and in particular sections of it, Lamarck, Bloch, Fabricius, Latreille, and Brogniart ; all of whom have flourished since the middle of the sixteenth century ; most of whom have contributed something of importance to a scientific method of studying and distributing animals ; and the most celebvated of whom are Ray, Linnaeus, and Cuvier. The system of Ray is derived, in its first outlines, from that recommenda- tion of Aristotle, which suggests an attention to the different structures of different descriptions of animal life ; and his observation, that one of these ♦ 1 Kings, iT. 33. t Arist. Hist. Anlm. lib. i. cap. 1, cap. 3, cap. 6. 174 ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE differences consists in their possessing lungs and a sanguineous system, or their being destitute of lupgs and exsanguineous. The Linnaean method is, for the most part, built upon this general arrangre- ment of Mr. Ray, especially in regard to quadrupeds ; it is, however, an ex- tension of it, and certainly an improvement. That of M. Cuvier, in its subor- dinate division, is founded upon both these ; but in its primary and leading distinctions, upon the nervous or sensorial, instead of upon the respiratory and sanguineous systems ; all animals, upon M. Cuvier's scheme, being pri- marily divided into vertebrated and invertebrated ; those furnished with a back-bone, or vertebral chain, for the purpose of enclosing the spinal marrow, and those destitute of such a chain : the secondary sections, consisting of vertebrated animals with warm blood, and vertebrated animals with cold blood ; invertebrated animals with blood-vessels, and invertebrated animals without blood-vessels. All these, imder his last modification, which is that subjoined to his Lec- tures on Comparative Anatomy,* are regarded as embracing nine distinct classes ; as, L mammals ; and, II. birds, which belong to the warm-blooded vertebral division. III. amphibials ; and, IV. fishes, which belong to the cold- blooded vertebral division ; and the five following, which fill up the division of invertebral animals : V. molluscous, soft-bodied marine animals, or mostly marine animals, as oysters, limpets, whelks, cuttle-fish, .pipe-worms or ship- worms, defended by a testaceous covering. VI. crustaceous; as crabs, various lobsters, shrimps, sea-spiders, and the monoculus tribes. VII. in- sects ; being all those ordinarily so denominated. VIII. worms ; embracing, along with those commonly so called, leeches, and various sea-worms with bristles on the sides of the body, as aphrodites, terebels or naked ship-worms, serpules, amphitrites, nereids, tooth-shells. IX. zoophytes ; the term being used veiy extensivel)^ so as to include, not only all the zoophytes or plant-like animals of Linnaeus and other naturalists, but all their infusory, wheel, or microscopic animals ; their medusas or sea-nettles, actinias or anemonies, and other efflorescent worms, urchins, and star-fishes ; and thus largely infringing on the molluscous order of prior arrangements. Many of these classes have inferior sections and subsections, under which the genera that appertain to them are respectively marshalled. But in a general outline it is not necessary to fo'low up the arrangement more minutely. The common classification of zoological writers of the present day is still that of Linnaeus ; and as such, it is that which I shall regularly follow up in the remainder of the present study, as being best adapted to popular purposes. It is probable, however, that the classification of Cuvier will ultimately take the lead of it ; it is somewhat more abstruse, but considerably more definite; and offers a noble specimen of scientific ingenuity, applied to one of the noblest branches of scientific study ; and I shall hence advert to this classifica- tion as we proceed, for a comparison with that of the justly celebrated Swedish naturalist. The Linnaean system of zoology divides all animals into six classes, and each class into a definite number of orders ; every order consisting of an in- definite number of kinds or genera; and every kind or genus of an indefinite number of species : the individuals in each species being perhaps innumerable. The six classes are as follows : I. mammals, or suckling animals ; II. birds ; III. amphibials; IV. fishes; V. insects; VI. worms. These may be contemplated either in an ascending or a descending scale. As we have begun with brute matter, and have progressively pursued it from a shapeless mass to mineral crystallization, from mineral crystallization to vegetable organization, and from vegetable organization to animal sponta- neity, it will be most congruous still to continue in the same direction, and to commence with the lowest class constituting the worm tribes. I. Worms, in the Linnaean vocabulary, is a term of far more extensive • Lefions d'Anatomie Comparee de G- Cnvier, 8vo. 4 torn. Paris, 1806. DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 175 import than in its popular signification ; and the reason of this we shall per- ceive as we proceed. They include all animals below the rank of insects, and are classically characterized, as being mostly without distinct head and without feet ; the most prominent organ being their tentacles or feelers. The class is divided into five orders; intestinal, molluscous, testaceous, zoophytic, and infusory. The FIRST ORDER Or INTESTINAL, M'ith a fcw exccptious which are found in the waters, consists of animals thai are uniformly traced in the bowels of the earth, or of other animals ; whence, indeed, their ordinal name. They are ordinarily characterized as being simple, naked animals, without limbs. I shall instance as examples of it, the ascaris, Avhich is found so frequently in the intestinal tube of mankind, in the species of maw or thread-worm, and round-worm : the taenia, which comprises among many others the two spe- cies of tape-worm and hydatid; and the filaria or Guinea-worm, which inhabits both the Indies, and is frequent in the morning dew ; at which time it winds unperceived into the naked feet of slaves, or other menials, and cre- ates the most troublesome itchings, frequently accompanied with inflammation and fever. The only method of extracting it is to draw it out cautiously by means of a piece of silk tied round its head as it peeps from the inflamed sur- face ; for if, in consequence pf too much straining, the animal should break, the part remaining under the skin will still survive, grow with redoubled vigour, and occasionally augment the local inflammation to such an extent, as to prove fatal. It is often twelve feet long, though not larger in diameter than a horse-hair. The next intestinal worm at which it is worth while to throw a glance as */e pass on, is the fasciola or fluke, principally known from one of its spe- cies being found in large abundance in the liver of sheep during the disease called the rot, but whether the cause or the result of this disease has never yet been sufficiently ascertained. There are other species of this animal found in the stomach, intestines, or liver of various other animals, and occa- sionally of man himself. The fasciola is hermaphrodite and oviparous. The gordius or hair-worm is chiefly worthy of notice as being supposed, in one of its species, if incautiously handled, to inflict a bite at the end of the fingers, and produce the complaint called a whitlow. It inhabits soft stagnant waters, is from four to six inches long, and is almost perpetually twisting itself into various contortions and knots. The last two kinds I shall enumerate under this order of worms are, the lumbricus or earth-worm, including the dew-worm and the slug ; and the hirudo or leech, both of them too well known under several species to require any farther remark in the present rapid outline. This order includes nearly the whole of M. Cuvier's class of worms, with the exception of his sea- worms, already adverted to. The SECOND ORDER of the WORM CLASS is denominated mollusca, molluscous, or soft-bodied shell-worms ; and consists, for the most part, of similar animals to those found in snail, oyster, nautilus, and other shells, but without a shelly defence : and hence, in their ordinal character, they are described ag simple animals, naked, but furnished with limbs, of some kind or other. By this last mark they are distinguished from the preceding, or intestinal order, which, as already observed, consists of simple animals, naked and destitute of limbs. To place the order more immediately before you, I shall select a few examples from those animals that are most familiar to us, or are most remarkable for the singularity of their structure or other properties. The Umax or slug is one of the most simple animals that belong to this order: its only limbs are four feelers, tentacles, or horns, as they are com- monly called, situate above the mouth, with a black dot at the tip of each of the larger ones, which is supposed to be an eye, though this point has not been fully established. Another genus of molluscous worms is the terrabella ; one species of which is the ship- worm, with an oblong, creeping, naked body, and numerous capillary feelers about the mouth, from four to six inches in length. It is sometimes enclosed in a testaceous or shelly tube, and is then 176 ON ZOOLOGICAL bYSTEMS, AND THE called termes, pipe-worm, or shelly ship-worm, and belongs to the next order. In both forms it is peculiarly destructive to shipping ; boring its way into the stoutest oak planks, with great rapidity and facility ; and chiefly forming a necessity for their being coppei^bottomed. The animal is, in its habits, gre- garious ; and hence, in attacking a vessel, it advances in a multitudinous body, ever)'' individual punctiliously adhering to its own cell, which is separated from the adjoining by a partition not thicker than a piece of writing-paper. In a preceding lecture, however, I had occasion to observe, when glancing at the shelly ship-worm, or teredo navalis, that, by its attacking the stagnant trunks of trees and other vegetable materials, that in many parts of the world are washed or thrown down by torrents and tornadoes from the mountains, and block up the mouths of creeks and rivers, and thus powerfully contributing to the dissolution of dead vegetable matter, it produces far more benefit than evil ; the benefit being universal, but the evil partial and limited. In 1731 and 1732 they appeared in great numbers on the banks of Zealand, and consider- ably alarmed the Dutch, lest the piles by which these banks are supported should have been suddenly destroyed. They never, however, staid long enough to commit mischief, the climate, perhaps, being too cold for them. Another genus worthy of notice under this order is the actinia, which includes those species of naked sea-worms w^hich are, vulgarly called sea-daisy, act'mm BelHs ; sea-carnation, a. Dianthus ; sea-anemony, a. Anemonoides ; and sea-marigold, a. Calendula ; from their resemblance to the stems and flowers of these plants. The first three are found on the warmer rocky coasts of our own country, as those of Sussex ; and the last on the shores of Bar- badoes. The sea-carnation is sometimes thrown upon our flat coasts, and left evacuated of its water by the return of the tide ; in which case it has the appearance of, a slender, long-stalked, yellow fig. Most of us are acquainted with some species of the sepia or cuttle-fish, which is another genus of the order before us. The common cuttle-fish, sepia officinalis, is an inhabitant of the ocean, and is preyed upon by the whale and plaise tribes ; its arms are also frequently eaten oflf by the conger-eel, but are reproducible. The bony scale on the back is that alone which is usually sold in the shops, under the name of cuttle-fish, and is employed in making pounce. These animals have the singular power, when pursued by an enemy, of squirting out a black fluid or natural ink, which darkens the waters all around, and thus enables it to escape. This natural ink forms an ingredient in the composition of our Indian inks. The worm or fish was formerly eaten by the ancients, and is still occasionally used as food by the Italians. In hot climates, some of the species grow to a prodigious size, and are armed with a dreadful apparatus of holders, furnished with suckers, by which, like the elephant with its proboscis, they can rigidly fasten upon and convey their prey to the mouth. In the eight-armed cuttle-fish, sepia octo- podia, which inhabits the Indian seas, the arms or holders are said to be not less than nine fathoms in length. In consequence of which the Indians never venture to sea without hatchets in their boats to cut off" these monstrous arms, should the animal attempt to fasten upon them, and drag them under water. This genus, with that of the argonauta and nautilus, constitute the order CEPHALOPODA of Cuvicr, which belongs to his class named molluscs. The medusa is another genus entitled to attention, as aff"ording various spe- cies that shine with great splendour in the water. The worms of this kind are vulgarly denominated sea-nettles, and consist of a tender gelatinous mass, of various figures, furnished with arms or tentacular processes, issuing from the under surface. The larger species, when touched, produce in the hand a slight tingling and redness, and hence, indeed, the name of sea-nettles, by which they are commonly distinguished. A few of the species are found on our own coasts ; but by far the greater number are exotics. The asterias, sea-star, or star-fish, is another genus of molluscous worms, and, in some of its species, is known to all of us. The most curious spe- cies of this genus is the asterias Caput MeduscB, or basket-fish; which inhabits most seas, and consists of five central rays, each of which divides into two DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 177 smaller ones, and each of which smaller ones again divides into two others; the same kind of division and subdivision being continued to a vast extent, and every ray regularly decreasing in size, till at length the ramifications amount to many thousands, forming a beautiful net-work spread over the water. The colour of the worm varies : being sometimes pale, sometimes reddish-white, sometimes brown. The only other genus I shall mention under this order is the echinus, sea- urchin, or hedgehog : its species are very numerous, and of a great multi- plicity of forms, globular, oval, shield-like, and heart-shaped. Many of them appear to have long since become extinct, and are only to be found in a state of petrifaction. The surrounding spines form an admirable coat of mail when perfect ; but they are generally broken off from the shell when it is picked up empty on our own coasts. The THIRD ORDER of tlie Lhinaean class of worms are called testacea or TESTACEOUS ; and comprise those that are surrounded with a shelly or testa- ceous covering. They are of three kinds ; those possessing a single shell, of whatever form or kind, and hence denominated univalves ; those possessing two shells, which are called bivalves or conchs ; and those possessing more than two shells, which are in consequence named multivalves. The UNIVALVES, or single-valved, are the most numerous, and exhibit the greatest variety of forms. For the most part they are regularly or irregularly spiral : among the most common of them may be mentioned the helix or snail-genus ; the patella or limpet ; and the turbo or wreath-genus, of which the periwinkle is a species ; the animal in all which is a limax or slug. Among the more curious are, the murex or purple-shell so highly valued by the ancients for the exquisite dye it is capable of producing; the volute or mitre, including those fine polished spiral shells, without lips or perforation, which so often ornament our chimney-pieces, sometimes embellished with dots, and at other times with bands of colours of various hues ; the strombus, comprising the larger shells appropriated to the same purpose, spiral like the volute, but with a large expanding lip spreading into a groove on the left side, and often still farther projecting into lobes or claws, the back frequently covered with large warts or tubercles, in some species called coromant's foot ; in all which, the animal or inhabitant is still a limax or slug ; and the nautilus and argonauta, the pearl-nautilus and paper-nautilus ; the first of which is lined with a layer of a most beautiful pearly gloss, and in the East is manufactured into drinking-cups ; and the second of which is remarkable for its exquisite lightness, and the rumour common to most countries of its having given to mankind the first idea of sailing. In reality, it sails itself, and with exquisite dexterity; and to this end the animal that is usually found inhabiting the shell, and which, till of late, was supposed to be a four-armed cuttle-fish, though now regarded as an ocythoe, by Dr. Leach named o. Cran- chii, in memory of the indefatigable, but unfortunate, Cranch of the British Museum,* as soon as it has risen to the surface, erects two of its arms to a considerable height and throws out a thin membrane between them, thus pro- ducing a natural sail ; while the oars or rudder are formed by the other two arms being thrown over the shell into the water, by which ingenious con- trivance, or rather instinctive device, the paper-nautilus sails along with con- siderable rapidity. M. Cuvier has separated the nautilus from the rest though distinctly a univalve ; and, as we have already noticed, has united it with the cuttle-fish, under an order of molluscje, which he calls cephalopoda. The ordinal name for the others is with him gasteropoda, as most of them crawl on their bellies, and carry the shell over them as a shield. They have a dis- tinct and moveable head, by which they essentially differ from our next order, which are without a distinct head of any kind. The two sexes are united in the same individual, but require a reciprocal union for br^^eding. The bivalved or two-shelled testaceous worms, the acephala or headless of Cuvier, are best explained by referring you to the oyster and the muscle • Series i. Lecture xi. p. 118. M 178 ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTI:MS, AND THE (ostrea and mytilus), both which contain species that produce pearls, and mother-of-pearl ; thougli the real pearl-muscle is amya or gaper, found chiefly on the coasts of Malabar and Ceylon, where the principal pearl- fisheries a;-e established. The species of oyster that produces small pearls is sometimes traced on our own shores, and is said to have been at one time frequent in the river Conway, in Wales. Most of the oysters cast their spawn towards the close of the spring-, or in the beginning of the summer, as the month of May. This spawn is by the fishermen called spat, and in size and figure each resembles the drop of a candle. As soon as cast or thrown off, these embryon disks adhere to stones, old oyster-shells, pieces of Wood, or whatever other substance comes in their way; a calcareous secretion issues from the surface of their bodies, and in the course of twenty-four hours begins to be converted into a shelly substance. It is two or three years, however, before they acquire their full size. The scallops, which are a tribe belonging to the oyster kind, are capable of leaping out of the water at pleasure, to the distance of half a yard: when elevated they open their shells, and eject the water within them, and then falling back. into the water close them with a loud snap. Among the more elegant of this division is the nacre, pinna, or sea-pen, so called from its form ; the animal of which (a Umax or slug) secretes, as we have already observed, a large quantity of fine strong silky hair, or beard, which by the Italians is woven into a kind of silky plait. And among the most extraordinary is the gigantic chama or clamp-shell, in form resembling the oyster: one species of which we noticed not long since, as found iii the Indian Ocean, of the weight of between five and six hundred pounds ; the fish or inhabitant large enough to furnish a hundred and twenty men with a full meal, and strong enough to lop off a man's hand, and cut asunder the cable of a large ship. Of the MULTivALVED TESTACEOUS WORMS, Or thosc Containing more than two shells, there are but three known species, the chiton, the lepas or acorn-shell, and the phloas, or, as it is often improperly called, pholas, so denominated from its secreting a phosphorescent liquor of great brilliancy, which illumi- nates whatever it touches or happens to fall upon, and to which Linnaeus chiefly ascribed the luminous appearance which the sea often assumes at a distance : a subject, however, which we shall have occasion to examine hereafter. The FOURTH ORDER of tlic Linuaiau class of worms is called zoophytes, or PLANT-ANIMALS, SO denominated from their efflorescing like plants. Most of them are of a soft texture, as the hydra or polype, so v/ell known from its being capable of existing when turned inside out, and of reproducing any part of its tentacles or body when destroyed by accident. Some are corky or leathery, as different species of the alcyoninm ; some bibulous, as the spongia or sponge, which is now decidedly ascertained to be an animal substance ; and some calcareous, as the numerous fauiilies of coral, which, under the form of tubular, starry, or stony stems, are denominated tubipores, madre- pores, and isises. The FIFTH or infusory order op worms, comprehends those minute and simple animalcules which are seldom capable of being traced, except by a microscope ; and, for the most part, reside in putrid infusions of vegetables, or in stagnant waters filled with vegetable matter. Of these, the smallest known species is denominated monas. To a glass of the highest magnifying power it appears nothing more than a minute simple point or speck of jelly, obviously, however, evincing motion, but often from its delicacy seeming to blend itself with the water in which it swims. Such is a bird's eye view of the Linnsean class of worms, and its 'five orders of intestinal, molluscous, testaceous, zoophytic, and infusory animals. The INSECTS form the next class in an ascending scale; classically cha- racterized as small animals, breathing through lateral spiracles, armed on all sides with a bony skin, or covered with hair; furnished with numerous feet and moveable antennae or horns, which project from the body, and are DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 179 the probable instruments of sensation. They are so voluminous in their orders, as well as in the genera belonging to the class (this single class con- taining, perhaps, as many species as are known to the whole twenty-four classes of the vegetable kingdom), that our time will allow us to do little more than instance the names of a few of the most common and familiar kinds, under the ordinal arrangement. The orders are seven ; all insects being included under the technical names of coleopterous, hemipterous, lepidopterous, neuropterous, hymenopterous, dipterous, and apterous ; or, to exchange the Greek for English terms, under those of crustaceous-winged, half-crustaceous-winged, scaly-winged, reticulate or net-work-winged, mem- branaceous-winged, two-winged, and wingless. From all which it is ob- vious that the ordinal character of insects is derived from the general idea of wings ; to which I may add, that under this general idea, while the indivi- duals of the last order are destitute of wings, and those of the last but one are only possessed of two wings, the individuals of the preceding five orders have four wings each, though not particularly specified in their ordinal names. The COLEOPTEROUS or crustaceous-winged insects, constituting the first ORDER, are by far the most numerous ; and, as the ordinal term imports, em- brace all those whose wings are of a shelly or crustaceous hardness ; and-are subdistinguished by the nature of their antennas as being clubbed at the end, thread-like or bristly. Among the more familiar of this order, I may men- tion the scarabaeus or beetle-kinds, a very numerous race, equally distin- guished by the metallic lustre of their wing-shells, and their attachment to dunghills, and other animal filth. The dermestes or leather-eater, the larves or grubs of one species of which are found so perpetually to prey on the bindings of books, and sometimes even on the shelves of libraries. The coccinella or lady-bird ; the curculio or weavil, the larve of which is found so frequently in our filbert and hazel-nuts, and which secretes such a quantity of bile as to give the nut a bitter taste to a considerable extent beyond the place in which it is immediately seated. The ptinus, producing in one of its species the death-watch, is another insect belonging to this order, whose solemn and measured strokes, repeated in the dead of the night, are so alarming to the fearful and superstitious ; but which, as we formerly noticed, merely proceed from the animal's striking its little horny frontlet against the bedpost it inhabits, as a call of love to the other sex. The lampyris or glow-worm, the cantharis or Spanish-fly, and the forficula or earwig : the last of which is characterized by the singularity of its brooding over its own young like a hen, and only leaving them at night, when it roams abroad in quest of food for their support. A few of these, as the lady-bird and earwig, are by M. Cuvier taken away from the present order, and, with several of the ensuing, as the cockroach, locust, and grass- hopper, carried to a new order, which he has named ornithoptera. The SECOND ORDER OF INSECTS, entitled hemiptera or half-crustaceous, and by some writers rhyngota, has the two upper of the four wings some- what hard or shelly, though less so than the preceding, while the two lower- wings are for the most part soft and membranaceous. To thjs order belong the coccus or cochineal insect ; the blatta or cockroach, of which the chaffer is a species ; the gryllus or locust, of which one species is the little cheerful chirping cricket; the cicada or grasshopper, still more celebrated for its mu- sical powers than the cricket ; and the cimex or bug, celebrated also, but for powers which you will, perhaps, spare me from detailing. The third order of insects, coleoptera, or scai.y-winged, contains but three genera or kinds ; and these are, the papilio or butterfly, the phalaena or common moth, and the sphinx or hawk-moth ; which last has a near resem- olance to both the others, and flies with a humming noise, chiefly in the morning and evening, as the moth flies chiefly in the evening and at nighi, and the butterfly only in the daytime. They have all a general resemblance to each other, and feed equally on the nectary of flowers : the antennas of the butterflies are mostly knobbed or clubbed at the tip; those of the motho are moniliform, those of the sphinxes tapering. 180 ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE The NEUROPTERous INSECTS, or those with four reticulate or net-work Avings, form the fourth order of the Linnaean class; and they maybe exem- plified by the ephemera and hemerobius, the day-fly and May-fly of the angler, those little busy insects that surround us in countless multitudes when we walk on tlie banks of a river in a fine summer's evening, and the whole duration of whose life, in a perfect state, seldom exceeds two days, and often not more than as many hours; while it has comparatively a long life m its miperfect state, or previous to its metamorphosis. It is the agnatha of seve- ral entomologists. This order is not numerous, and I will therefore only add another example, the libellula or large dragon-fly, so denominated from its ferocity towards smaller insects ; usually seen over stagnant waters ; the more common species, libellula Virgo, possessing a beautiful, glittering, and green-blue body, with wings bluish towards the middle. The larve in its internal parts, is larger than the insect, and catches its prey at a distance, by suddenly darting forward the lower lip. The tracheae, or respiratory organs, are singularly placed at the verge of the tail. It is the odonata of Cuvier. The FIFTH ORDER OF INSECTS compriscs the iiYMENOPTERA, the piezata of some entomologists, or those possessed of four "membranaceous wings, most of which are armed with a sting at the tail. They of course include the apis and vespa, or wasp and bee. To v/hich I may add the formica or ant, the ichneumon, and the cynips or gall-fly, to which we are indebted for our gall- nuts, whose peculiarities and habits I shall hereafter have an opportunity of reverting to. The SIXTH order of insects is denominated diptera, and deviates from all the preceding in possessing only two wings instead of four. It includes among others the musca or common fly, the hippobosca or horse-fly, the oestris or gad-fly, the tipula or father-long-iegs, and the culex or gnat. " It is subdistinguished into such animals as possess a sucker with a proboscis, and such as possess a sucker without a proboscis. This order is the antliata of some entomologists. The LAST order of insects differs still more largely from all that have been hitherto noticed ; for it consists of those kinds that have no wings Avhat- ever, and hence the class is called aptera or wingless. To this order belong most of those insects that are fond of burrowing in animal filth upon the ani- mal surface ; as the pulex, pediculus, and acarus, the flea, louse, and itch-in- sect. To the same order belongs also the aranea or spider; the oniscus, wood-louse or millepede ; the scorpio or scorpion, and even the cancer or crab, and lobster ; the Linnrean system making no distinction between land and water animals from the difficulty of drawing a line ; of which, indeed, the cancer genus is a very striking example, since one of the species, cancer curicola or land-crab, is, as we have already seen, an inhabitant of woods and mountains, and merely migrates to the nearest coast once a year for the pur- pose of depositing its spawn in the waters. These, however, are separated from the class of insects in M. Cuvier's classification, and form a distinct class by themselves under the name of Crustacea ; while the greater part of the rest, as spiders, water-spiders, spring-tails, millepedes, centipedes, and scor- pions, are also carried to a distinct order of the insect class, which he has called gnathaptera, leaving to his own order of aptera nothing more than the first three of the preceding list, the flea, louse, and tick or itch-insect. But of all the animals belonging to this division under the Linnaean classi- fication, I should mention, perhaps, on account of its singular instinctive faculties, the termes or white ant. The kind which inhabits India, Africa, and South America is gregarious, and forms a community, far exceeding in wisdom and policy the bee, the ant, or the beaver. The houses they build have the appearance of pyramids, of ten or twelve feet in height ; and are divided into appropriate apartments, magazines for provisions, arched cham- bers, and galleries of communication. The walls of all these are so firmlv cemented that they will bear the weight of four men without giving way ; and on the plains of Senegal, the collective pyramids appear like villages of the natives. Their powers of destruction are equal to those of architecture ; for DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 181 so rapidly and dexterously will they destroy, in less bodies, food, furniture, books, clothes, and timber of whatever magnitude, leaving in every instance the merest thin surface, that a large beam will in a few hours be eaten to a shell not thicker than a page of writing paper. It was my intention to have finished our survey of the Linnaean system in the course of the present lecture ; but the prospect swells so widely before us that it is impossible; and the remaining four classes of fishes, amphibials, birds, and mammals must be reserved for another study. In the mean time, allow me to remark, that low and little as the tribes we have thus far contemplated may appear, they all variously contribute to the common good of animal being, and aid, in different ways, the harmonious cir- cle of decomposition, renovation, and maturity of life, health, and ejijoyment. The insect tribes, beautiful as they are in their respective liveries, may be regarded as the grand scavengers of nature. Wherever putridity is to be found, they are present to devour the substance from which it issues ; and such is the extent and rapidity of their action, that it has been calculated by some na-; luralists that the progeny of not more than a dozen flies will consume a dead carcass in a shorter space than a hungry lion. Thus, while they people the atmosphere they purify it ; and in many instances, perhaps, and by tribes invisible to the naked eye, purge it of those noxious particles with which it is often impregnated, and which, at certain seasons, are apt to render it pesti- lentiaU Theindefatigable labour of the worm-tribes in promoting the general good is still more striking and manifest. The gordius or hair-worm perforates clay to give a passage to springs and running water ; the lumbricus or earth- worm pierces the soil that it may enjoy the benefit of air, light, and moisture ; the terebella and terredo, the naked ship-worm and the shelly ship-worq:!, penetrate dead wood, and the phloas and mytilus, rocks, to effect their disso- lution ; while the termes or white ant, as we have just observed, attacks almost every thing within its reach, animal, vegetable, or mineral, with equal rapacity, and reduces to its elementary principles whatever has resisted the assault of every other species. The same system of warfare is, indeed, pur- sued among themselves ; yet it is pursued, not from hate, as among mankind, but from instinct, and as the means of prolonging and extending as well as of diminishing and cutting short the term of life and enjoyment. It has often been urged against the goodness, and sometimes against the existence, of the Deity, that the different tribes of animals are, in this manner, allowed to prey upon one another as their natural food, and that a large part of the globe is covered with putrid swamps, or wide inhospitable forests, or merely inhabited by ravenous beasts and deadly serpents. Presumptuous murmurers ! and what would your wisdom advise, were Providence to consult you upon so glaring an error? Would you then leave every rank of animals to perish by the mere effects of old age 1 With the example so often before you of the misery endured by a favourite horse or a favourite dog when suffered to drain out the last dregs of existence in the midst of ease he cannot enjoy, and of food he cannot partake of, — a misery wliich often compels us, as an act of mercy, to anticipate his fate, even at last, by the aid of violence, — would you abandon every animal to the same wretchedness, only a hundred-fold multiplied by the horrors of want and hunger, which he must, by growing every day more infirm, be every day growing more incapable of appeasing? — Or would you cut short the evil at once, by destroying death itself, and thus rendering every animal immortal 1 They would not thank you for such an interference, nor applaud the vain oenevolence that might dictate it ; an interference which, by preventing the necessity for offspring, would extirpate from the animal frame its best feel- ings ; which would extinguish the wise and harmonious distribution into sexes ; and make an equal inroad on the pleasures of sense and the endear- ments of instinct. It is granted, that a great part of the globe is an inhospitable wilderness ; that it consists, to a considerable extent, of waste inaccessible jungle overrun 182 ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTExMS, AND THE by rapacious beasts and reptiles, of putrid swamps crowded by myriads of venomous insects, and of immense warrens burrowed by countless hordes of the hampster, the mole-rat, and the white ant. Even here, however, wherever life exists, it exists to those that possess it as an enjoyment ; while these very scenes and these very animals only fill up what man has no occa- sion for, and equally and instantly disappear as soon as he presents himself, and exercises that industry and ingenuity which alone constitute his authority ; and upon which alone his health and his happiness are made to depend. But this is not ail. — While in their diflferent gradations these outcasts from man are thus enjoying life themselves, they are preparing, in the best manner possible, the various tracts they occupy for his future use and habitation. The soil that supports us, and gives us our daily bread, is nothing but a mix- ture of animal and vegetable materials ; other substances, indeed, enter into it, but the great, the important, the active, and leavening constituent is of an organized origin. These materials, then, are perpetually forming and accu- mulating, and rising into an unbounded and inexhaustible storehouse' of sub- sequent riches and plenty by the alternate generation and decomposition of the different kinds and orders of plants and animals which thus fill up, and, as we are apt to believe, encumber the regions we are contemplating ; regions which, though in our own day unexplored or abandoned both by savage and civilized man. may, in that revolution of countries and of governments which is perpetually passing before our eyes, become, in some future period, the seat of universal dominion, the emporium of taste and elegance, of virtue and the sciences. So the fairest fields of Rome were formed out of the putrid Pontine marshes, and England has become what she is, from being a land of bogs and of blights, of wolves, wild boars and gloomy forests. DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF ANIMALS. 183 LECTURE II. ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. (The subjerl continued.) I In our last lecture we took a momentary glance at the history of zoolog-y as a science, noticed the primary features of the best methodical arrange- ments to which it has given rise, and made some progress towards a brief delineation of that of Linnaeus, which still takes the lead amid the writers of the present day, and is hence chiefly entitled to attention in a course of popular-study, generally collating it, however, with that of M. Cuvier, as we proceeded. We observed that the Linnsean system comprehends all animals of every description whatever, under the six classes of mammals, birds, amphibials, fishes, insects, and worms. We pursued this arrangement in an ascending scale, as most consistent with the plan adopted at the opening of the present course of instruction ; and commencing with the class of worms, finished with that of insects. It remains for us to prosecute the same rapid outline of inquiry through the four unexamined classes of fishes, amphibials, birds, and mammals. Fishes are classically characterized in the Linnaean system as being always inhabitants of the water; swift in their motion, and voracious in their appe- tite ; breathing by means of gills, which are generally united by a bony arch; swimming by means of radiate fins, and for the most part covered over with cartilaginous scales. The class is divided into six orders ; the ordinal characters being taken from the position of the ventral or belly fins, or from the substance of the gills. The orders are, apodal, fishes containing no ventral or belly fins ; jugular, having the ventral fins before the pectoral; thoracic, havmg the ventral fins under the pectoral ; abdominal, having the ventral fins behind the pectoral. In all these four, the rays or divisions of the gills are bony. In the fifth order, which is called branchiostegous, the gills are destitute of bony rays; and in the sixth, or chondropterygious order, the gills are cartilagi- nous ; all which will be easiest explained by a (ew familiar examples. Into the general divisions of this class M. Cuvier has introduced no change of any importance whatever, his own sections and names running parallel with those of Linna3us. The kind best calculated to elucidate the first or apodal order, is the well known muraena or eel; since every one must have noticed, that this fish has no ventral or, indeed, under-fins of any kind. In many of its species, it has a very near approach to the serpent tribes ; insomuch that several of them are called sea-serpents, and by some naturalists are described as branches of the serpent genus. Even our own conmion eel, muraena Anguilla, is often observed to quit its proper element during the night, and, like the snake, to wander over the meadovv^s in search of snails and worms. The next genus I shall mention is the gymnotus, of which one species, gymnotus eledricus^ is the electric eel, an inhabitant of the rivers of South America, from three to four feet long, and peculiarly distinguished by its power of inflicting an electrical shock, so severe as to benumb the limbs of those that are exposed to it. The shock is equally inflicted whether the fish be touched by the naked hand, or by along stick. It is by this extraor- dinary power, which it employs alike defensively and off"ensively, that the electric eel escapes from the jaws of larger fishes, and is enabled to seize various smaller fishes as food for its own use. There are, however, a few ©ther fishes, as we shall have occasion to notice in proceeding, that possess a similar power, as the torpedo of European seas, and especially of the Med^ terranean, and the electric silurus of those of Africa. 184 ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND TH^ The only other genus it will be necessary to glance at under this order, is the xiphias or sword-fish ; so denominated from its long sword-like and ser- rated snout, with which it penetrates and destroys its prey. Its chief species is found in the Mediterranean and other European seas, sometimes not less than twenty feet long ; is very active, and, in one instance, has been known to attack an East Indiaman with so prodigious a force, as to drive its sword or snout completel}'- through the bottom of the ship, and must have destroyed it by the leak which would hereby have been occasioned, had not the animal been killed by the violence of its own exertion ; in consequence of which, the snout remained imbedded in the ribs of the ship, and no leak of any extent was produced. A fragment of this vessel, with the sword imbedded in it, has been long lodged as a curiosity in the British Museum. The JUGULAR ORDER of fishes, distinguished by the ventral or belly fins being placed before the pectoral or chest fins, is the next in succession, and contains only six separate kinds ; of which the two most familiar to our own country are the gadus or codfish, including, among a variety of other species, the haddock, whiting, and ling; and the blennius orblenny, including several species of the hake. In these the ventral or belly fins are advanced so far forward, as to be immediately under the jole. Of the THIRD or thoracic order, in which the ventral fins lie somewhat backwarder, and directly under the pectoral or chest fins, I may instance," among those most familiar to us, the zeus or John doree ; the pleuronectes, including the numerous families of plaice, flat-fish, flounder, sole, turbot ; the eyes of all which are situate on the same side of the head, in some species on the left side, in others on the right, but always on one side alone : the perca or perch, one species of which, perca scandens, has a power, like the eel, of quitting the water, and climbing up trees, which it effects by means of the spines on its gill-covers, and the spinous rays of its other fins ; and the gasterosteus or stickle-back. Among the more remarkable or curious kinds, I may mention the echeneis, remora, or sucking-fish, which inhabits the Me- diterranean and Pacific seas ; and though only from twelve to eighteen inches long, adheres so firmly to the sides of vessels and of larger fishes, by its head, that it is often removed with great difliculty ; and was, by the ancients, supposed to have the power of arresting the motion of the ship to which it adhered. 1 may also mention the chaetodon rostratus, beaked or rostrate chaetodon, an inhabitant of the Indian seas, which curiously catches for its food insects that are flying over the surface of the sea, by ejecting water from its tubular snout with so exact an aim as to strike and stun them with the greatest certainty, and hereby to bring them down into its jaws. The FOURTH ORDER of thc Linuaean class of fishes, is called abdominal ; in consequence of having the ventral or belly fins placed considerably more backward, and behind the pectoral or chest fins : and here, as in all the pre- ceding, the gills are bony. The salmo or salmon, with its numerous families of trout, smelt, char, and grayling ; the esox or pike, including the gar-fish ; the clupea or herring, which, as a genus, comprises the pilchard, sprat, and anchovy ; the cyprinus or carp, including the gold-fish, gudgeon, tench, and a variety of similar species; the mugil or mullet; are among the more familiar kinds of this extensive order. Of these, the herring is one of the most remarkable, from its migratory habits ; and the carp, from its great longevity, having in many instances been known to reacli more than a hundred years of agC; and from its facility of being tamed and made to approach the edge of a fish-pond on the sound of its dinner-bell, and to eat crumbs of bread out of a man's hand. But amid the most singular of the kinds belonging to this order is the exocoetus or flying-fish, which, though occasionally traced in other seas, is chiefly found between the tropics, and has a power, by means of its long pectoral fins, of raising itself out of the water and continuing suspended in the air till these fins become dry ; by which means it effectually avoids the jaws of such predatory fishes as are in pursuit of it. But unhappily it is often seized at the same time by the talons of ospreys, sea-gulls, or some other DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF ANIMALS. lOS rapacious birds that are perpetually hovering- over the water to take advan- tag-e of its ascent. There are, however, various other fishes that have a similar power of flight or suspension, and from a similar cause, but none in so complete a degree. It is to this curious power Dean Swift makes allusion in the following lines : — " So fishes, rising from the mam, Can soar with moisten'd wings, on high : The moisture dried, they sink again, And dip their wings again to fly." • The FIFTH ORDER OF FISHES is denominated branchiostegous, in conse- quence of its gills being destitute of bony rays ; by which it is peculiarly distinguished from all the preceding orders, and obtains a mark which has been laid hold of by Linnaeus as constituting its ordinal character. It con- sists, for the most part, of a group of sea-monsters, or natural deformities, if the term might be allowed ; as the ostraceon or trunk-fish, the diodon and tretradon, sun-fish, and lump-fish, many of which are so completely truncated at either end as to resemble the middle part of any common large fish with its head and tail lopped oif; the syngnathus, pipe or needle-fish; and the lophius or frog-fish. In one of the species of this last kind we meet with a sin- gular decoy for entrapping smaller fishes as its prey. This species, 1. pisca- torius, which is about seven feet long, and inhabits most European seas, lurks behind sand-hills or heaps of stone, and throwing over them the slender appen- dages on his head, which have the appearance of worms, entices the smaller fishes to advance and play around them till they come within his reach, when he i.nstantly darts forward and secures them as his spoil. The SIXTH and last order of fishes is denominated chondropterygious, as having the gills wholly cartilag-inous, which constitutes its ordinal charac- ter. It includes, among other kinds, the acipenser or sturgeon, squalus or shark, raia or ray, petromyzon or lamprey, and gastrobranchus or hag-fish. Of these, one of the most useful is the sturgeon : its different species may be ranked among tlie large fishes ; they are inhabitants of the sea, but as^cend rivers annually. The flesh of all of them is most delicious ; from the roe is procured the sauce called caviare, and from the sounds and muscular part is made isinglass. They feed on worms and other fishes, and the females are larger than the males. This order, in the shark, contains the most dreadful of all the monsters of the main. The squalus Carcharias or white shark, which often extends to thirty feet in length, and four thousand pounds in weight, follows ships with a view of devouring every thing that comes in his way, and has occasionally been known to swallow a man whole at a mouthful. But in order to guarcj us in some degree against the perils of their presence, a peculiar stream of light issues in the dark from their tapering, subcompressed bodies, which cannot well be mistaken ; and as some compensation for their rapacity, we obtain from their liver a large quantity of useful oil, and find in tlieir skin a very valuable material for carriage-traces in some countries, and for polish- ing wood, ivory, and other hard substances, in all countries. The next class to that of fishes in an ascending direction is named AMPmBiA ; which, for the sake of brevity, and having no English synonym to meet it, I shall take leave now, as I have on former occasions, to render amphibials. The term, indeed, whether regarded as Greek or English, is not very strictly precise in its presewt application ; for it intimates an intention to include in this class all animals capable of existing in. the two elements of air and water. We have already observed, however, that there are various fishes, as the eel-tribe generally, one species of the perch, and two or three of the exo- coelus or flying-fish, to which many more might be added, that are capable of existing in air as well as in water ; while the insect kinds off'er us a still greater number that are similarly endowed, and the worms a still more nume- rous train. It has been said, indeed, that the animals of this class liave a peculiar agreement in the structure of their organs of respiration, which 186 ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE makes an approach to that of birds and quadrupeds, and differs very essen- tially from that of fishes, insects, and worms. Upon the whole, however, there is no class that offers so great a diversity in the make of its respiratory Groans as the class before us, of which I liad occasion to take notice in the pi-og^ress of our last series of study. In the tortoise and others among the more perfect of the amphibious tribes, the remark of their approximation to the respiratory organs of the higher classes will unquestionably hold ; but it will by no means hold in various cases of the lizards ; while the proper place for the siren, which is possessed of both lungs and gills, remains doubtful to this moment: it. is sometimes grouped among the fishes, sometimes in the order of amphibious reptiles ; while Linnaeus, after having iusthe earlier edi- tions of his system fixed it in this last situation, appears to have intended, had his life been spared long enough to have formed a new order of amphibials for the express purpose of receiving it, which he proposed to denominate MEANTES.* As the Linnaean class of amphibials at present stands, it consists of not more than two orders, reptiles, or amphibious animals possessing feet ; and SERPENTS, or amphibious animals without feet. The different kinds under each are but^ few : the reptiles containing only five ; the testudo, draco, lacerta, rana, and siren ; or, in plain English, the tortoise, flying dragon, lizard, frog or toad, and siren. The serpents comprise only seven genera : the cro- talus, or rattlesnake ; boa ; coluber, or viper ; anguis, harmless snake, or blind worm; amphisbaena; coscilia; and achrochordus. Among the reptiles, the most extensive and important kind is the lacerta or lizard ; for it includes, among other species, the alligator, crocodile, proper lizard, chameleon, salamander, newt, and eft. Among the seven genera of serpents, the first three, rattlesnake, boa, and viper, or rather coluber, are more or less poisonous : the rattlesnake in all its species, which are six or seven ; the boa, in five, out of about seventeen; and the coluber or viper, in about thirty, out of about a hundred and thirty : the two most fatal of which last are, c. Cerastes, or horned serpent ; and c. AVyaj hooded serpent, or cobra de capello. In both Asia and Africa we meet with whole tribes of barbarians who are capable of handling the most poisonous of these amphibials, and of eating them up alive from head to tail, without the smallest injury : even the bite itself producing no mischief. These bar- barians, some of whom were known to the Greeks and Romans, and are par- ticularly alluded to by Celsus and Lucan, were formerly called Psylli. The power they affect has been laughed at by M. Denon, but without any kind of reason for derision. It is a curious subject, however, and connected with others of equal singularity ; and must, therefore, be reserved for a future study.f The poisonous serpents differ from each other in their respective kinds, by having their bodies more or less covered with scuta or plates, instead of with mere scales ; excepting that the rattlesnake is chiefly distinguished by the rattle at his tail. The four harmless genera are characterized by having their bodies covered altogether with simple scales, and never with plates, or as being ringed, wrinkled, or lubercled. This class is not much disturbed by M. Cuvier's later arrangement; but he has separated the tortoises from the lizards, denominating the first, as an order, chelonia ; and the second, sauria ; and has removed the frogs, sala- manders, and siren, into a fourth order, to which he has given the name of BATRAcmA, characterizing them by the possession of a naked skin ; feet ; with branchiae in the young. But we must hasten in our rapid career to the bird class, distinguished by having the body covered with feathers and down ; protracted and naked jaws ; two wings, formed for flight ; and biped. This class consists of six orders : ♦Gmelin and Camper introduced it into the class of fishes; and in Turtonlt occurs in the class Mam r/ialia, order Bruta, as a variety of the trichechus manati, or lamantin. * See Lecture vi. of this Series. DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 187 accipilres; picas; anseres; grallae; gallinae; passeres. In English syno- nyms, birds of prey ; pies ; web-footed birds ; waders ; gallinaceous birds ; and the mixed class of thrushes, sparrows, and finches. These orders are chiefly distinguished from each other by the peculiar make of the bill, and of the feet. Under M. Cuvier's classification, the divisions, and even the names, are the same, with the exception that for picae or pies, he has given the better appellation of scansores or climbers. Every one of them, or rather every distinct kind under every one of them, might agreeably occupy us through an entire lecture ; so curious, so attractive, so interesting, are their structures, their powers, thejr habits, their instincts. But all these must be re- served for subsequent studies.* Our only concern at present is to give a glance at the manner in which they are grouped under the Linnaean system. It is the mere alphabet of the science to which we must at present confine ourselves. The AcciPiTREs, or predacious birds, constituting the first order, with a bill somewhat hooked downward, and four claws hooked and sharp-pointed. It consists of not more than four genera, the vulture, including the coudur (v Gryphus), as one of its species ; the falco, including the numerous families of the eagle, falcon, hawk, osprey, buzzard, and kite, together with various others ; the owl and the lanius or shrike, of which the butcher-bird (1. Collurio) is one of the chief species. The picjE or pies, form the second and most numerous order. The bill is here compressed and convex, vi^hich constitutes the ordinal character. A secondary distinction, taken from the feet, divides them into tribes formed for perching, formed for climbing, or formed for walking. To this order beloiigs the trochilus or humming-bird, the minutest animal of the bird tribes ; and which seems to connect the bird with the insect-class. In one of its species, trochilus minimus, or least humming-bird, it sometimes does not weigh more than twenty grains, nor measure much more than an inch ; it is, consequently, less than several of the bee-tribes, and, like the bee, feeds on the nectar of flowers, which it hovers about and extracts while on the wing with a de- lighted hum. To this order, also, from similarity of bill and foot, belong the very nume- rous families of the psittacus or parrot kind, including the proper parrot, mac- caw, parrakeet, cockatoo, and lory ; equally celebrated for their imitative powers, their longevity, and the splendid variety of their colours ; the para- disea or bird of Paradise, chiefly a native of New-Guinea, and distinguished by the long and taper elegance of its bending feathers ; the monstrous rham- phastos or toucan, whose bill is, in some species, larger than its body, and whose tongue is quaintly tipped with a bundle of feathers, probably answer- ing the purpose of an organ of taste. All thus far glanced at are exotics. Among the kinds a few of whose spe- cies are inhabitants of our own country, I may mention the social and clamo- rous corvus or crow-tribe, including the rook, raven, jay, jack-daw, and various others ; the picus or woodpecker, that drives into the stoutest and toughest timber-trees of the forest its hard and wedge-like bill, and often with a force and echoing sound like the stroke of the woodman ; and whose bony and pointed tongue transfixes the various insects upon which it feeds, and in this state not unfrequently draws them out from a considerable depth in the bark of trees into which they have crept for protection. The alcedo, or kingfisher, is another genus of this order, whose species haunt streams and rivers for the little fishes on which they feed, and are most dexterous anglers in catching them. To these we may add the cuculus or cuckoo, that, with the same want of natural afl*ection which marks the ostrich, builds no nests for its eggs, except under particular circumstances, but avails itself of that of the hedge-sparrow, or some other bird, and abandons to foster-parents the care of its eggs. The THIRD ORDER of bird.s is denominated anseres, and in English web- • See Lerturos iv, v. viii. be of this SericB. 188 ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE FOOTED : they are ordinarily characterized by having- the bill covered with skin, broad or gibbous at the tip, and a palnmate or web-foot, formed for swim- ming : the tongue is uniformly fleshy, and the bill, in many instances, denti- culate or toothed. It includes only thirteen kinds, of which I may take, as examples, the anas, comprehending the very numerous families of duck, g-oose, swan, wild-duck, teal, and shoveler : the mergus or merganser; alca or awk ; aptenodytes or peng-uin ; pelecanus or pelican ; colymbus, compri- sing- the grebes, g-uillemots, and divers ; and procellaria or petrel. The petrels have an extraordinary habit of spouting- from their bills a considerable quan- tit3'^of.oil upon any object that ofTends them. The procellaria jt?e/eo-zca, or stormy petrel, is the most daring- of all birds during a tempest, though not more than six inches long. The moment he beholds the black clouds col- lecting, he quits his rocky retreat and enjoys the mag-nificent and growing spectacle ; he darts exultingly athwart the conclave, and skims with trium- phant temerity the loftiest peaks and deepest valleys of the most tremendous waves. Tiie appearance of this bird is, to the sailor, a sure presage of an approaching- storm. The GRALLiE, or waders, form the fourth order of birds in the Linnsean system. They are characterized by possessing a roundish or subcylindric bill, a fleshy tongue, and legs naked above the knees. The ardea, or genus that includes the herons, cranes, and bitterns, is the most numerous. The scolopax, which includes the curlew, snipe, and woodcock ; the tringa, which includes the sandpiper, the rufl", and reeve, and the lap-wing or pewit; the fulica, which includes the gallinule, coot, and moor-hen ; and the charadrius or plover ; are among those that are most familiar to us. To this order also belongs the tantalus or ibis, so celebrated for the divine honours paid to it for many ages throughout Egypt ; and, at least, a most valuable bird from its clearing the land of those numerous reptiles and insects, which are left upon its surface after the exundations of the Nile. It is the abu-hannes of Bruce, which, however, M. Cuvier regards as not properly a tantalus ; and has, consequently, made a distinct genus for receiving it, to which he has given the name of neuinenius ; and hence, under his classification, it is a Neumenius Ibis, instead of a Tantalus Ibis. The FIFTH ORDER cmbraccs the galiin^e or gallinaceous birds ; those which strictly come under the denomination of poultry. They are chiefly charac- terized by having a convex bill, with the upper mandible arched. They are the least numerous of all the orders next to the accipitres, and extend to not more than ten kinds or genera ; many of which, however, are very extensive in their species. The kinds most familiar to us are the phasianus or phea- sant, including all the families, and their numerous varieties of common cock and hen ; the tetrao or partridge, including all the families and their numerous varieties of grouse, red-game, black-game, ptarmigan, and quail ; the pavo oi peacock ; and meleagris or turkey. To this order also belong the numidia, pintado or guinea-hen, the otis or bustard, the didus or dodt), and the struthio, including those large and stately birds, the emeu, cassiowary, and ostrich : the last of which, though incapable of flying, derives from its wings a fleet- ness of running, that is unrivalled by any animal whatever. This bird is capable of being tamed, and may be conveniently rode ; and Adanson asserts, that, when mounted, it will surpass the speed of the most rapid courser. He tells us, that while he was at the factory at Podore, he was in posssesion of two tame ostriches, the oldest of which, though young, would carry two negroes upon its back, with a rapidity superior to what has ever been exhi- bited by the fleetest racer upon the Newmarket turf. The LAST order of the bird class is entitled passeres, for which, in the sense here intended, we have no exact English synonym; but it is designed to include various kinds and families, which, for the most part, may be denomi- nated small birds and singing birds. They are characterized by having the bill conic and sharp-pointed, and the nostrils naked. To this order belong the alauda or lark kind ; the columba, pigeon, and dove kind ; the emberiza or bunting, including the yellow-hammer ; the fringilla or finch, with all its DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 189 numerous species of g-oldfinch, green-finch, thistle-finch, linnet, and sparrow; the hirundo, including- the swift, swallow, and martin ; the loxia or grosbeak, including the bullfinch and hawfinch, the only finches, I am at present aware of, that do not belong to the fringilla genus : and the motacilla, a most inte- resting group, as including the nightingale, whose song surpasses that of all the singing birds of the grove ; and the redbreast, whose song is, indeed, less sonorous and striking, but who is so justly celebrated and beloved for his social qualities ; together with all the amusing species and varieties of wrens and wag-tails. To the order of passeres appertain also the pipra or manakin, some of which are peculiarly musical; and the turdus, comprising those sweet melodious choristers, the thrush, the throstle, and the blackbird. Such is a brief and scanty survey of the interesting and instructive class of birds : and thus, in the elegant language of the poet of the Seasons, Innumcrous songsters, in the fresh'ning shade, Of new-sprung leaves their modulations mix Mellifluous. The jay, the rook, the daw, And each harsh pipe, discordant heard alone, Aid the full concert: while the stock-dove breathes A melancholy murmur through the whole.* Nor should we suffer their other curious endowments to pass by us unno- ticed. The muscles, and delicate plumage of their wings, give them not merely the power of flight, but, under diflferent modifications, a nearly equal command over earth, air, and water : for such a provision enables the rail, destitute as he is.of a webbed foot, to rival, in swimming and diving, the guil- lemot; the ostrich, as Ave have just observed, to outstrip in running the speed of the race-horse; and even the diminutive swallow, and various other mi- gratory birds, to double, when on the wing, the pace of the fleetest ostrich ; and to dart, twice a year, across the Atlantic and Mediterranean, often at the rate of a mile in a minute for several minutes in succession; and perhaps • Catalogue of singing birds, with the time of their beginnmg and ceasing to sing, from a mean of five yeans' observation, wUh the numerical value of their notes, twenty being that of absolute perfection. From an interesting ar.icle by Mr. .John Blackwell, in Memoirs of the Liierary and Philosophical Society of Man- chester. Second Series, vol. iv. Name. Beguis, Ends. 1 ¥ i I c .S 'i -1_ Redbreast Jan. 3 Dec. 14 9 8 12 14 14 Wren do. 13 do. 3 1 16 2 ft Missel Thrush Feb. 1 May 28 3 4 1 5 3 Throstle do. 8 Aug. 12 3 10 2 10 4 Skylark - do. 9 July 8 4 19 4 18 18 Hedge Warbler do. 9 do. 19 3 4 3 4 4 Chaffinch - - ... do. 10 do. 7 2 14 ' 1 4 5 Starling do. 15 May 30 4 2 2 4 2 Blackbird Mar. 20 July 13 8 1 4 5 3 Green Grosbeak - - - do. 24 Aug. 12 5 3 5 5 5 Titlark - - - , . April 4 July 9 3 2 2 2 2 Lesser Redpole .... do. 5 Aug. 5 1 4 3 3 Woodlark ... do. — Oct. 25 18 2 17 8 6 Goldfinch do. 11 June — 4 16 4 10 12 Redstart - - - - do. 14 do. 29 1 4 2 2 Willow Wren do. 14 Aug. 23 G 4 5 5 5 Linnet ... do. 15 July 6 10 15 6 12 19 Lesser Field Lark - do. 17 do. 8 8 7 5 4 5 Swallow - - - . • . do. 19 Sept. 25 4 6 2 3 3 Stonechat - - - do. 24 June — 1 3 3 2 Whinchat do. £5 July 1 1 3 2 2 Blackcap do. 25 do. 22 14 19 12 10 8 Whitethroat ... do. 29 do. 10 1 4 3 3 Patty-chaps -• May 12 do. 11 14 6 14 10 9 Sedge Warbler - - - - do. 17 do. 16 ' 16 18 14 190 ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE generally, and with perfect ease, at the rate of a mile every two minutes, or upwards of seven hundred miles every twenty-four hours, till it reaches the precincts of its summer or winter residence. We ascend to the first and moHEST class — to that rank of animals which is most complicate in form and most competent in power. This class is chiefly disting-nished by the possession of lungs, and an organ for suckling; and rnost of its kinds possess four supporters in the shape of hands or feet, or both. To this last character the class was formerly indebted for its classic name, which was quadrupeds, or four-footed. As some of the kinds under it, however, in its modern arrangement, are possessed of no supporters of any sort, either hands or feet ; others have four hands and no feet ; and others, again, have two of each, the absurdity of retaining such a name must be ob- vious to everyone ; and hence it has been correctly and elegantly exchanged, by Linnaeus, for that of mammalia, from the mammary or suckling organ which belongs to every kind of the class, as it stands at present, and to no kind whatever out of it ; and which, as we have no fair synonym for it in our own tongue, I shall beg leave now, as I have on various other occasions, to render mammals. The class is distributed into seven orders ; the characters of which are taken from the number, situation, and structure of the teeth. The seven orders are as follows : — primates, bruta, ferae, glires, pecora, bellua?, cete. It is difficult to find English synonyms for these Latin terms, which, in several instances, are used in a kind of arbitrary sense, not strictly pointed out by the terms themselves. The following are the best that occur to me : chieftains ; brute-beasts ; savage beasts ; burrowing-beasts ; cattle ; warriors ; and whales. Tiie first order, primates or cmsFTAiNs, is distingTiished by the possession of four cutting teeth in each jaw. This mark would also include the race of man ; and Linnaeus has actually included him in the order before us, as he is included in the class by Cuvier and most of the naturalists. From such arrangements, however, 1 shall take leave to differ. Man ought to stand by himself; he has characters peculiar to himself, and which place him at an infinite distance from all other animals. With this exclusion, the entire class is reduced to three kinds, the simia or monkey; the lemur or maucauco; and tlie vespertilio or bat : kinds which can only be collectively entitled to the appellation of primates or chiefs, from their very slight resemblance to man in the general distribution of the teeth : for though a few of the monkey tribes have an approximation in their exterior and erect form, in the greater number this character is very inappreciate, while it is nearly lost in the lemur, and altogether so in the bat. Among the simia kind, the most singular species is certainly the ourang- outang, especially the grave, gentle, and very docile Pongo. I have only time to observe farther upon this kind, that those without tails are denomi- nated apes ; those with short tails, baboons ; and those with long tails proper monkeys. Among the lemurs, the most curious, perhaps, is the 1. volans, or flying maucauco, tlie galiopithecus volans, or flying colugo of Pallas and Shaw ; an action which he is able to accomplish from tree to tree by means of a strong leathery membrane that surrounds the body and reaches from the head to the fore-feet, hind-feet, and extremity of the tail; and which gives him an approach to the bat. Of the vespertilio or bat-kind, which is well known to fly only by night, and by means of an expansive membrane, instead of by wings, one of its most extraordinary faculties is that of a knowledge of the presence, and appa- rently of the approach, of objects, by some other sense or medium than that of vision; for when deprived of its eyes, this knowledge, and a consequent power of avoiding objects, seems still to continue. The vespertilio Vam- pyrus, or ternate bat, an inhabitant of India and Africa, is said to be fond of blood, and occasionally to fasten on such persons as he finds asleep, and to suck their veins till he becomes bloated. He might hence, under proper management, be rendered an able and valuable substitute for the leech. In poetry he has often been introduced, under the name of vampire, as a most hideous and appalling monster. DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 191 The SECOND ORDER, BRUTA, OF BRUTE-BEASTS, IS distinguished by having" no fore-teeth in either jaw. It includes the nine following kinds : rhinoceros, sukotyro, elephant, trichecus, — the morse, walrus, inanate or lamantin, the dolphin of the poets of Greece and Rome, by whom it has been celebrated for its love of music, and perhaps not altogether without foundation; — the bradypus or sloth, the myrmecophagus or ant-eater, the manis or pangolin, the dasypus or armadillo, and the platypus or duck-bill, the ornithorhynchus paradoxus of Blumenbach ; that curious little quadruped which has hitherto only been discovered in Australia, or the' regions in and about New South Wales ; and which seems to be a quadruped by its feel, a water-fowl by its- bill, and an amphibial by its fondness for water. It is not yet quite certain whether this singular animal suckles its young, or has a mammary organ for this purpose ; and if not, it must be discarded from its present situation, though we should be at no small loss to know where else to place it. The THIRD CLASS of MAMMALS is denominated fer^ or savage beasts; and is distinguished by having, in every instance, fore-teeth, above and below, the number varying in different kinds, from two to ten ; and in possessing a solitary tusk. The order comprises eleven kinds, the names of which are as follows : the phoca or seal, a water-quadruped, whose skin is so useful to us for various purposes ; and which, like the stag, is found to shed tears when in trouble : the canis or dog-kind, including the numerous families of wolf, fox, jackal, hyaena : the felis or cat-kind, including a variety of tribes of a some- what similar appearance, but far mightier, and nobler in their powers, as the lynx, the leopard, the panther, tiger, and lion, all of which have a power of climbing trees, though the weight of the larger species makes them do it veiy awkwardly, and only to a short height; all of which pitch on their feet in falling ; and all of which see better in the night than by day ; the viverra, including the ichneumon, and several of the weasels : the rnustela, including other species of the weasels, the stoat, polecat, otter, ferret, sable, and ermine ; to the two last of which we are indebted for the luxurious dresses that pass under their name. Almost all of the mustelas have a power of se- creting and discharging a most fetid and intolerable stench at their will ; and many of them do it as a means of defence : and often so effectually that the very beast that pursues them is compelled to relinquish the chase, so com- pletely is he overpowered by its noisome vapour. The remainder of this order are the ursus or bear ; the didelphis or opossum ; the marcopius or kangaroo, which is now naturalizing in the royal parks of our own country ; the talpa or mole ; the sorex or shrew ; and the erinaceus or hedgehog ; which last is capable of being tamed, and is actually tamed by the Calmucs, and made a very useful domestic servant in destroying nnice, toads, beetles, and other vermin. The FOURTH order of mammalian animals is denominated glires, for which we may use the. words hibernaters, or burrowers. They are distinguished by having two fore-teeth in each jaw, close to each other, but remote from the grinders ; and being v^'ithout tusks. They all, in a greater or less degree, burrow in the earth, and almost all of them sleep through the whole, or a great part of the winter. To this order, therefore, we can all of us, of our own accord, refer the ten following kinds, which are the whole that are in- cluded under it. The hystrix or porcupine; the cavia or cavy; the castor or beaver; the mus genus, comprehending the numerous families of the mouse and rat ; the arctomys or marmot ; the sciurus or squirrel, some of which have a long flying membrane that enables them to vault from tree to tree, like some species of the lemur; the myoxus or dormouse; the dipus or jerboa, whose form resembles the kangaroo, but whose habits the dormouse; the lepus, comprising the hare and rabbit tribes ; and the hyrax or daman : with most of which we are too well acquainted to require any detailed account in so cursory a survey as the present. The PEcoRA or cattle kinds form the next or fifth order, and comprehend those horned quadrupeds which are most familiar and most useful to us. To this division, therefore, necessarily belong the bos, ovis, capra, and cervus kinds ; or, in our own language, the ox, sheep, goat, and deer ; and as con- 192 ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE iiected with these, in habits as well as in external appearance, the moschiis, antilope, camelus — the musk, antelope, camel, and cameleopard, or giraffe. They are ordinally distinsruishedby being without upper fore-teeth, but having six or eight in the lower jaw, remote from the grinders. They have all four stomachs, are hoofed, and have the hoof divided in the middle ; and, except the camel, have two false hoofs, which, in walking do not touch the ground. Such as have horns have no tusks, and such as have tusks have no horns : they ruminate or chew the cud ; and from the torpid action of their multifid digestive canal, are apt to have balls form in different parts of it, owing to the frequent concretion of their food, occasionally intermixed, but more usually covered with a quantity of hair, which they lick from their bodies. Some of these balls are of a whitish hue, and'vvill bear a fine polish, and are known by the name of bezoards. These are chiefly the production of the antelope kind; and were formerly in very high estimation as amulets and febrifuges. The SIXTH ORDER of mammals embraces the BELLUiE or warrior kinds, possessing both upper and lower fore-teeth, and hoofed feet. The order consists of only four genera; the equus, or horse, mule, and ass tribes; the hippopotamus or river-horse ; the tapir, which in appearance and habits makes an approach to the river-horse, but is smaller in size ; and the numerous families of the sus or swine kind. The LAST ORDER undcr the mammalian class consists of the cete or whale KINDS, and embraces the monodon, sea-unicorn or narwahl ; balaina, common whale ; physeier, cachalot, or spermaceti whale ; and delphinus or dolphin, including, as two of its species, the phocoena or porpoise, the orca or gram- puF, and the dugong. There is some force in introducing these sea-monsters into the same class with quadrupeds ; but they are still continued here by M. Cuvier. They have a general concurrence of structure in the heart, lungs, backbone, and organ for suckling; but their teeth have little resemblance ; and they have neither nostrils, feet, nor hair; instead of nostrils, possessing a spiracle or blowing-hole on the fore and upper part of the head ; and instead of feet, fins ; in which, as well as in their general habits, manners, and residence in the waters, they have a close resemblance to fishes. These are chiefly inhabit- ants of the polar seas, and several of the larger species afford materials that are highly valuable as articles of commerce or manufactures. All of them produce a considerable quantity of blubber or the basis of the coarser animal oils ; the common whale sometimes to as large a quantity as 6 or 8,000lbs weight : from the horny laminae of whose upper jaw, as well as from that of the baleen a Physalus or fin-fish, we obtain also extensive layers of whale- bone ; while the cachalot supplies us with spermaceti from its head, and with ambergris from some of its digestive organs ; a substance, however, only to be procured from such organs when the animal is in a state of sickness. The jnost warlike of the order is the grampus, which will often engage with a cachalot or common whale of double its size, and continue the contest till it has destroyed it. To this order also belongs the dugong or sea-cow of Sumatra, which has of late excited so much attention among naturalists. It was at one time supposed to be a hippopotamus or river-horse, but Sir Thomas Raffles has of late suffi- ciently proved it to be a cetaceous mammal. It is usually taken on the Ma- lacca coast by spearing; its length is often from eight to nine feet. Its front extremities are two finny paddles ; its only hind extremity is its tail, which is a very powerful instrument. It is never found on land or in fresh water, but generally in the shallows and inlets of the sea ; the breasts of the adult females are of a large size, and especially during the time of suckling. It&, food seems to consist entirely of fuci and submarine algae, which it finds and browses upon at the bottom of the shallow inlets of the sea, where it chiefly inhabits. Its flesh resembles that of young beef, and is. very delicate and juicy.* In M. Cuvier's arrangement the class of mammals is entirely recast, * Phil. Trans. 1820, p. 174. DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 193 and divided into three orders, or principal sections, as distinguished by claws oi nails, by hoofs, or by fin-like feet; while the whole of these orders are far- ther subdivided into eleven distinct families, of which the first six belong to the first order ; the next three to the second ; and the last two to the third. The six families belonging to the first order, the nail or claw-footed, art these : — I. Bimanum : two-handed. Thumbs separate on the superior extremities only. Designed to include man alone. II. Quadruniana : four-handed. Thumbs or great toes separate on each of the four feet. Monkies and maucaucoes. III. Sarcophaga: flesh-feeders. No separate thumbs or great toes on the anterior extremities. Bats, flying lemurs, hedgehogs, shrews, moles, bears, weasels, civets, cats, including the lion and tiger-tribes ; dogs, including the fox and wolf-tribes, and the opossums. IV. Rodentia: gnawers. Want the canine teeth only. Cavies, beavers, squirrels, rats of all kinds. V. Edentata: edentulate. Want both the incisive and canine teeth. Ant- eaters, pangolins, and armadilloes. VI. Tardigrada: slow-footed. Want only the incisive teeth. Sloth tribes. The three families' belonging to the second or hoof-footed order, are the following ; — VII. Pachydermata : tljick-skinned. More than two toes ; more than two hoofs. Elephants, tapirs, hogs, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and hyrax or damon. VIII. Ruminantia: ruminants. Two toes; two hoofs. Camels, musks, deer, giraflfes, goats, sheep, oxen. IX. Solipeda ; single-hoofed. One toe, one hoof. Horse alone, including the ass-tribe. The two families belonging to the third, or fin-footed order, are the fol lowing: — X. Amphibia : amphibials. Four feet. Seals and morses. This family- name should be changed, since the same term is also employed by M. Cuvier, after other naturalists, as the name of a distinct class of other animals. XI. Cetacea : cetaceous. Feet fin-like. Manates or lamantins, dolphins, cachalots, whales, and narwahls. We have thus run rapidly over a map of the different classes and kinds of animals as they are found extant in our own day. But those traced in a living state in our own day are by no means the whole that have existed for- merly. In the lecture on Geology, in the preceding series,* we had occasion to observe that the various formations of rock, and especially the transition formations, open to us very numerous examples of whole families now no longer in existence ; many of which have probably ceased to exist for several thousands of years ; some of which, indeed, are so far removed from the races of the present day, as to require the invention of new genera, if not of new orders in a zoological arrangement for their reception. Stukeley, Lister, and other paleologists and naturalists of the last century, paid no small attention to this subject, and dragged forth the unrecognised relics of various animals from their fossil abodes : but it has since been pur sued with extraordinary spirit and activity by the concurrent labours of Karg, Schlottheim, Fischer, Espen, Collini, Blumenbach, Humboldt, Werner, Buck- land, and, above all others, Cuvier; insomuch that the ascertained lost kinds bid fair in process of time to be almost as numerous as those that are living. The last physiologist is well known to have formed a most valuable and ex* tensive museum for the reception and arrangement of fossil animal remains ; and so rich and varied is his possession, that he has commenced and made a considerable progress in a classification for systematically distinguishing them. The alluvial soil of our own country has furnished him with numerous examples ; the shell-marl and peat-bogs of Ireland, with one or two of still more striking character, and particularly with specimens, more or less per- • ?eiies I. Lecture vi. N 194 ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE feet, of its enormous elk, one of the most celebrated of all the fossil rumina- ting- animals. The Mediterranean eoast, Russia, and both Americas have amply contributed to the collection. But it is to the limestone quarries of JSningen and Geylenreuth, and the alternating- quarries of Paris, that it is chiefly indebted for its very interesting supply of the animal remains of a for- mer world. We have not time to travel even over an outline of this wonderful reposi- tory. Those who have no opportunity of examining it on the spot, may be abundantly gratified by a perusal of M. Cuvier's valuable and extensive work on the fossil remains of quadrupeds :* which, though chiefly devoted to this particular class, is nevertheless rich in its history of extinct kinds and species of birds, amphibials, and fishes. We can only glance at a few of the more striking of the whole collection. These are to be found chiefly in the class of mammals, and especially among the largest kinds. The gypsum-formation of Paris, supposed to be a fresh water deposite, has furnished M. Cuvier with two entirely original ge- nera, and each genus with several species, the whole of which appear to be utterly extinct. , To these he has given the name of palaeotherium and anoplotherium, or OLDEN BEAST, in allusiou to its existence in the olden times ; and defenceless BEAST, in allusion to the want of canine teeth in the genus it designates. Both genera belong to the Linnsean order of belluje or warrior-beasts, and the Cuverian order of pachydermata, or thick-skinned. The station of the first is allotted in this order after the tapir, and before the rhinoceros and the horse, which gives us the best idea of its general cha- racter. It is generically distinguished by having forty-four teeth ; in each jaw^ six fore-teeth, two incisors, fourteen molars: snout extended, flexible; fore and hind feet quadrifid. The gypsum quarries alone have furnished five distinct species of this very singular animal, in a more or less perfect state of its skeleton. I. Palaeothe- rium magnum, of the size of the horse. 2. P. medium; and, 3. P. crassum^ each of the size of a hog. 4. P. curtum, with decurtate, patulous feet. 5. P. minus, of the size of a sheep. Besides which, five other species have been discovered in other parts of France, imbedded in fresh-water limestone, or in alluvial soil ; one of them, P. gigantemn, as large as the rhinoceros ; and an- other, P. tapiroides, of the size of an ox. The second species, or anoplotherium, is somewhat smaller, and has its station assigned between the rhinoceros or the horse on the one hand, and the hippopotamus, hog, and camel- on the other. It has forty-four teeth in a con- tinuous series ; being in each jaw six fore-teeth ; two incisors, not longer than the fore-teeth; fourteen molars; fore and hind feet bifid, wMth distinct metacarpal and metatarsal bones ; and accessary digits in a few. This genus also offers four species, varying from the size of the horse or ass to that of the leopard or elegant gazelle. There is also another genus of entirely extinct quadrupeds, belonging to the same order, and of still larger magnitude, which Al. Cuvier has been able to constitute from remains found in different parts of the world, to which he has given the name of mastodon. It makes a near approach to the elephant, and in one or two of its species vies with it in size. The ascertained species are five ; the largest of which, called the great mastodon, has been found in considerable abundance near the river Ohio; and specimens of whose skeletons have been brought to our own country, and exhibited under the name of mam- moth, which, however, is an error; as mammoth is a Russian term, ap- plied to a fossil species of genuine elephant, which we shall notice presently. But the mastodon has in America been confounded with the mammoth. Both have been dug up in the alluvial soil of Siberia. Of the other species, two have been discovered by M. Humboldi in America alone ; one both in America and at Simorre in Europe ; and one both in Saxony and Monta- * See also Mr. Ken's translation of M.Ctiviei'p Efsay onthe Theory of the Eartli.wUb Professor Jame^ •on's Notes. 8vo.~F.din. DISTINCTIVE CPIARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 195 busard. They are all of less magnitude than the great mastodon ; and, from the character of the teeth, there is no doubt that all the species were grazing animals. The fossil elephant, to which ihave just referred, the proper mammoth of natural history, makes a nearer approach to the Asiatic than to the African living species ; but it nevertheless diifers so much from both, as to leave no question of its being an entirely extinct animal. Various relics of it, as bones and teeth, have been found scattered over almost every part of Europe, as well as in Asia and both Americas ; occasionally in our own island, in the Isle of Sheppey, and in Ireland. But they are more common, and in a far more perfect state, in Sweden, Norway, Poland, and especially in Asiatic Russia ; and M. Cuvier inclines to a belief that the bones of Archbishop Pontoppidan's giants of the north are nothing more than remains of this ani- mal. The most perfect specimen of this kind that has ever been met with, was discovered, in the year 1799, by a Tungusian fisherman. It appeared at this time like a shapeless mass, projecting from an ice-bank near the mouth of a river in the north of Siberia. Year after year a larger and a larger por- tion of the animal was rendered visible by the melting of the ice in which it was imbedded ; but it was not till five years after the first detection that its enormous. carcass became entirely disengaged, and fell down from an ice- crag upon a sand-bank, on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. The greater part of its flesh was soon afterward devoured by the white bear, or cut away by the Juhuts of the neighbourhood, as food for their dogs ; yet when, in 1806, Mr. Adams examined it on the spot, and carefully collected all its remaining parts, more than thirty pounds weight of its hair and bristles were gathered from the wet sand-bank into which they had been trampled; and the mass of extremely thick and heavy skin, which was still left, demanded the utmost exertions of ten men for its removal. The other extinct animals of the same class and order, collected or described by M. Cuvier, are a fossil rhinoceros, sufficiently distinguished from the only two species at present known ; two unknown species of the hippopotamus | and two of the tapir. Of the fossil rhinoceros, the earliest specimens noticed were those described by Grew, and consist of bones dug out of alluvial soil near Canterbury. Since which period, other relics have been traced in various parts of Germany, France, and Italy ; while, in Siberia, an entire animal has been discovered, •with its flesh and skin little injured. Of the two developed species of fossil hippopotamus, there is a doubt whether the largest, found in the alluvial soil of France and Italy, may not belong to an extant species ; but the other, which is not larger than a hog, is strongly characterized, and widely different from either of the two living species of the present day. The two discovered species of fossil tapir evince a like difference of size, the one being small, the other gigantic ; while both are found in dififerent parties of France, Germany, and Italy. All these belong to the pachydermatous or warrior-order of the mammal class, which may, perhaps, be regarded as the richest of all the divisions of fossil animals. But there is no class or order without like examples : and the caves of Gaylenreuth, on the frontiers of Bayreuth, as examined by Esper, have furnished quite as extensive a variety as the quarries around Paris. He has hence derived two entirely extinct species of bear, one of the size of the horse ; several species of the dog ; one of the cat ; and two of the weasel . all of which are possibly extinct, though there is a doubt respecting one or two of them. In these caves alone, indeed, according to M. Esper, the enor- mous mass of animal earth, the prodigious number of teeth, jaws, and other bones, and the heavy grouping of the stalactites, render the place a fit temple for the God of Death. Hundreds of cart-loads of bony remains might be removed, and numerous bags be loaded with fossil teeth, almost without being missed. The fossil deer and elk tribe form also a very numerous' collection. Among these the celebrated elk of Ireland, dug out of a marl-pit near Drog- ■NS 196 ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE heda, with its antlers of nearly eleven feet from tip to tip,* figures as chief. The finest fallow-deer, red-deer, roes, and stags, belonging- to the fossil king- dom, have been found in Scapia, Sommes, Etampes, Orleans, or scattered over Europe, in limestone, peat-bogs, or sand pits. M. Cuvier has described seven distinct species, all of which, with the exception of one, are extinct or unknown species. Of the fossil ox, buffalo, and antelope genus, he has given four disiinci species, all apparently unknown. He has also collected fossil remains of the horse and hog genera, without being able to ascertain to what species they belong : and various animals of the order glires or gnawers, as beavers, guinea-pigs, and rabbits, and two decidedly unknown species of the sloth tribe, which he has distinguished by the names of Megalonix and Megatherium, the first as large as an ox, earliest discovered in limestone caves in Virginia in 1796 ; and the second of the size of the rhinoceros, hitherto found only in South America. Specimens of the ox-sized have since been found in Buenos Ayres, in Lima, and in Para- guay ; and of these three the first, a perfect skeleton, was sent as a present to M. Cuvier by the Marquis Loretto in 1789. Relics of fossil seals and lamantins, though less perfect than most of the preceding, enter also into this extraordinary collection; In the other classes M. Cuvier has hitherto made less progress; though his collection of fossil, and apparently tmknown nmphibials, especially of the crocodile and tortoise tribes, is considerable, and highly interesting, and should his life be spared for ten or twelve years longer, we may have reason to expect these classes to be filled up as numerously as that of mammals. Among the most extraordinary of the fossil amphibials he has enumerated, •B the gigantic monster first discovered as early as the year 1766, in the lime- stone quarries at Maestricht, and which ^was at that time regarded by some naturalists as a whale, by otliers as a crocodile, and by a third set as an enor- mous unknown fish. M. Cuvier has sufficiently ascertained that it must have formed an intermediate genus between those animals of the lizard tribe which possess a long and forked tongue, and those with a short tongue and a palate armed with teeth ; and it is hence generally regarded in the present day as a MONITOR, making an approach towards the crocodile. The length of the ske- leton seems to have been about twenty-four feet : the head is the sixth part of tlie whole length of the animal, which is nearly the proportion it bears in the crocodile. The tail must have been very strong, and its width at the extremity have rendered it a most powerful oar, capable indeed of opposing any violence of the waters ; and it is hence chiefly that M. Cuvier regards it as having been an inhabitant of the ocean: though we are hereby put into possession of a kind or species far supassing in size and power any of those which it most nearly resembles, and at least rivalling the magnitude of the crocodile. t The circumstances under which most of the preceding large and fossil ani- mals liave been found, and especially those traced in Siberia, afford sufficient proof that the catastrophe which arrested them must have overtaken them suddenly while in their native regions ; and that they could not have been brought into their present situations' from a remote distance. And w^e hava * See SirThorms Molyneux'a account of this animal in Phil. Trans. 1726. This is the cen'us Eurycerus of Dr. Hibbert : a name he has applied to it from Aldrovandus, who ap- pears to have been acquainted with this species of fossil elk, and has referred to it as common at that time in various soils in the British isles. Specimens, indeed, are still often to be met with in this quarter: and Dr. Hibbert, in . the essay now referred to, quotes part of a letter from Dr. Milligan, of Edinburgh, in which he adverts to the skeletons of three great elks' that were lately dug up in Ireland, one of which measures eleven feet between the tips of the horns. And he adds, what would seem to show that this s{>e- cies had not been many ages extinct, that near them, in a three feet stratum of marl, were also found the skoletons of three dogs; and, at a little distance, several human skeletons. Edin. Journ. of Science, No. V. p. 134. 1825. t The fos.-il animals of this class have been since considerably enlarged by other discoveries ; among the most curious of which, perhaps, are the Plesiosaurus of the late Mr. Conybeare, and the Megalosaurus of professor Buckland. The remains of the hist are the most imperfect ; though from a large portion of the Jower .jaw dug \\\) from the sr>il at Stonesfield, near Oxford, and a thigh-bone found at Cuokfield, in Sussejt, Mr. Buckland has been able to ascertain its mode of dentition, as also to estimate that its face must have Ifnninated in a flat, straight, and very narrow snout. Its length seems to have been upwards of sixty feet, and its bulk to have equalled that of an elephant seven feet high. Geol. Trans, scries ii. vol. i. part il TTie struf-ture of this gena^ makes an approach to that of fishes, but it has a length a -d flexibility of DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS. 107 hence facts to show, as we had occasion to observe formerly, that various quadrupeds of the largest size, as the elephant, mammoth, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, which are now traced in a living state in the hot parts of Asia, Africa, or America alone, formerly existed, as to certain species that have been long extinct, in the highest northern latitudes : and that, consequently, such species must have had such a discrepancy of habit and organization, like the dog and the ox tribes of our own day, as enabled them to endure the difference. Such, then, is a brief sketch, I will not say of the animal kingdom, but of the most popular f^rrangements which have hitherto been attempted concern- ing it. It would have been much easier, and might have been much more interesting, to have extended the survey : but the thread of connexion would then, probably, have escaped from us, and we should have lost the system in the fulness of the description. • Enough, however, and more than enough, has, I trust, been offered to prove that the study of zoology is of a most interesting and inviting character, equally calculated to win the heart, and to inform the head. I have dwelt some- what m.ore at large upon the three lowest classes of worms, insects, and fishes, for the very reason that these classes have too often been passed over by naturalists, as little worthy of their attention ; and because I wished to impress upon your minds, by the incontrovertible fact of living examples, that nothing is low, nothing little, nothing in itself unworthy, in the view of the great Creator and common Parent of the universe ; that nothing lies beyond the reach of his benevolence, or the shadow, of his protection. God alike sup- plies the wants and ministers to the enjoyments of every living creature: he alike finds them food in rocks and in wildernesses, in the bowels of the earth, and in the depths of the ocean. His is the wisdom that, to different kinds and in different ways, has adapted different habits and modes of being; and has powerfully endowed with instinct where he has strikingly restrained intelligence. It is he that has given cunning where cunnmg is found neces- sar}^ and wariness where caution is demanded; that has furnished with ra- pidity of foot, or fin, or wing, where such qualities appear expedient ; and where might is of moment, has afibrded proofs of a might the most terrible and irresistible. At the head of the whole stands man, the noblest monument of creative power " in this diurnal scene," and in a state of purity and innocence, a faint image of the Creator himself; connected with the various classes of animals by his corporeal organization, but infinitely removed from them- by the pos- session of an intelligent and immortal spirit ; his chief distinction, to the external eye, consisting in the faculty of language, and the means of commu- nicating and interchanging ideas : — a subject full of interest and of import- ance, and towards which, therefore, I shall beg leave to direct your attention after we have examined this lord of the universe in the different varieties he exhibits in different parts of the world, under the influence of climate, manner of life, and incidental circumstances. Thus nature varies : man, and brutal beast, And herbage gay, and scaly fishes mute, And all the tribes of heaven, o'er many a sea, Through many a grove that wing, or urge their song Near many a bank or fountain, lake or rill . Search where thou wilt, each differs in his kind. In form, in figure, diffsra.* neck like that of the larger birds; and from the form of its paddles, it is probable that, like the crocodile. It Kwam on the surface of the ocean ; an idea which is confirmed by various specimens found on the Dorset- shire coast, where the present writer has seen one or two nearly entire specimens. * PrjEterea genus humanum, mutaeque natantes SquamiferQm i ecudes, et ]a3ta armenta, feraeque, I'ltvariiB volucrea, Iaetantiaqus3 loca aquarum Concelebrant, circum rhms funtisque, lacdsque ; Et quae pervolgant iiemora avia pervolitantes ; Quorum unum quod vis generatim sumere perge, Invenies *tamen inter ss difierre figuris. De Nat. Rer. li 342. lyH ON THE VARIETIES LECTURE III. ON THE VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE. Thus far we Have confined ourselves to the different classes of animal* below the rank of man. The sketch has been rapid and unfinished, but I hope not altogether unfaithful, or without its use. Let us now proceed to a gene- ral survey of the human species ; the generic character by which man is dis- tinguished from other animals, and the family character by which one nation is distinguished from another nation. If we throw an excursive glance over the globe, and contemplate the dif- ferent appearances of mankind, in different parts of it, and especially if we contrast these appearances where they are most unlike, we cannot but be struck with astonishment, and feel anxious for information concerning the means by which so extraordinary an effect has been produced. The height of the Patagonian and the Caffre is seldom less than six feet, and it is no un- common thing to meet with individuals among them that measure from six feet seven to six feet ten : compared with these, the Laplanders and Eski- maux are real dwarfs ; their stature seldom reaching five feet, and being more commonly only four. Observe the delicate cuticle, and the exquisite rose and lily, that beautify the face of the Georgian or Circassian : contrast them with the coarse skin and greasy blackness of the African negro, and ima- gination is lost in the discrepancy. Take the nicely-turned and globular form of the Georgian head, or the elegant and unangular oval of the Georgian face : compare the former with the flat skull of the Carib ; and the latter with the flat visage of the Mogul Tartar, and it must, at first sight, be difficult to conceive that each of these could have proceeded from one common source. Yet the diversities of the intellectual powers are, perhaps, as great as those of the corporeal : though I am ready to admit, that for certain interested pur- Eoses of the worst and wickedest description, these diversities, for the last alf century, have, even in our own country, been magnified vastly beyond their fair average, though the calumny has of late begun to lose its power. The external characters thus glanced at form a few of the extreme boun- daries : but all of them run into each other by such nice and imperceptible gradations in contiguous countries, and sometimes even among the same people, as to constitute innumerable shades of varieties, and to render it dif- ficult, if not impossible, to determine occasionally to what region an indivi- dual may belong when at a distance from his own home. It has hence been necessary to classify the human form : and the five grand sections, for we can no longer call them quarters, into which the globe is divided by the geographers of our own day, present us with a system of classification equally natural and easy : for in each of these sections we meet with a marked distinction, a characteristic outline that can never be mistaken, except in the few anomalies already adverted to, and which belong to almost every general rule ; or in instances in which we can obviously trace an inter- mixture of aboriginal families. Before we attempt, then, to account for these distinctions, let us endeavour, as briefly as possible, to point them out ; and consider them under the five heads of the European race; Asiatic race; American race ; African race ; Australian race; or, as they are denominated by M. Blumenbach, in his excellent work upon this subject,* the Caucasian, Mongolian, American, Ethiopian, and Malay varieties. • De Generl Humani Varietate Nativi OF THE HUMAN RACE. I99 Gmelin has pursued the same general divisions, but has merely distin guished the respective races ; and accordingly his five definitions are the white, brown, copper-coloured or red, black, and tawny man. I. The most symmetrical, and therefore the most elegant variety of the human form, is that which I have called European, in consequence of its being traced in the European division of the globe more largely than in any other; and the most perfect lineaments of this variety are those of the region of Asia Minor, on the borders of Europe, the parent spot from which it has been imported — lineaments which we find distributed among the Georgians, Circassians, Mingrelians, Armenians, Persians, and other nations that skirt the southern foot of the vast chain of the Caucasus. And it is on this account that M. Blumenbach has given the name of the Caucasian variety to the European form in general. It is remarkable that in this spot of the globe man was first created : here he first received the breath of life, and arose in the image of his Maker. The die has not yet lost its divine impress : for here we still meet, and in all ages have met (so far as relates to the exterior graces), with the most exquisite models of sj-mmetry and beauty. The, general colour of the European or Georgian variety, the wmT^ divi- sion of Gmelin, is fair ; that of the cheeks more or less red ; the head globu- lar ; the face straight and oval, with the features moderately distinct ; the forehead slightly flattened; the nose narrow, and slightly aquiline; the cheek-bones unprominent ; the mouth small ; the lips a little turned out, especially the under one; the chin full and roundc'^; the eyes and hair vari- able, but the former, for the most part, blue, and t}i5 latter yellow, or brown and flowing. II. The colour of the Asiatic, or Mongolian, the Brown-man of Gmelin, is yellowish brown or olive, with scarcely ever an appearance of red in the cheeks, which, seems to be confined to the European variety ; the head, instead of being globular, is nearly square ; the cheek-bones wide ; and the general face flat; the eyes are blaclc and small; the chin rather prominent; and tlie hair blackish and scanty. III. The American, or Red-man of Gmelin, is of an obscure orange, rusty-iron, or copper colour; the head is less square, the cheek-bones less expanded, and the face less flattened than in the Asiatic; the eyes are deeply seated ; and the hair is black, straight, and thick. This variety seems to form a middle point between the European and the Asiatic. IV. The colour of the African, the ETmopiAN of Blumenbach, and Black- man of Gmelin, varies from a deep tawny to a pitch or perfect jet. The head is narrow; the face narrow, projecting towards the lower part: the forehead arched; the eyes projecting; the nose thick, almost intermixed with the cheeks; the lips, parti(;ularly the upper one, very thick; the jaws prominent; the chin retracted ; the hair black, frizzled, and woolly. The countenance in this variety recedes farther than in anj^ other from the European, and ap- proaches much nearer than in any other that of the monkey. V. The Australian, or inhabitant of New South Wales, and the numeroiis clusters of islands that begirt that prodigious range of unexplored country, together with tiie South Sea islands in general, constituting the Malay of Blumenbach, and the Tawny-man of Gmelin, is of blackish-brown or maho- gany colour: the head is somewhat narrowed at its upper part; the forehead somewhat expanded ; the upper jaw slightly prominent; and the nose broad, but distinct ; the hair harsh, coarse, long, and curly. This variety seems to form a middle point between the European and the African; as the American does between the European and the Asiatic. So that, in a more compendious view of the human race, we might contract the five varieties into three : — the European, Asiatic, and African ; and regard the other two as mere intervening shades of variety. In this general classification of mankind, however, there are two observa- tions that are peculiarly worthy of attention. The first is, that although these distinctive characters will hold in the main, it is not to be expected that they will apply to every individual of the particular division to which they 200 ON THE VARIETIES refer; nor that they buloiig so exdusively to such division as never to be traced, even by a natural introduction, amono: other divisions. The second is, that from the restless or inquiring spirit of several of the divisions, and the migrations which have hence ensued, we ought to expect to meet occasion- ally with the distinctive characters of such divisions among other divisions, and in regions to Avhicli they do not naturally appertain. A perfect jet of the skin 'has never, perhaps, been found in our own coun- try, in any person of genuine English race ; but a dark, swarthy, and even copper-colour is by no means uncommon ; and an equal difference is (ob- servable in the globularity of the head, and the flatness or sharpness of the face. In like manner the skin is occasionally found fair among the red tribes of America;* and black auiong tlie tawny tribes of Australia, and even the olive nations of India. So Captain Cook informs us that, among the natives of the Friendly Islands, he saw hundreds of P^uropean faces, and not a few genuine Roman noses. And Adanson asserts that he was struck with the general beauty and proportion of several Senegambian females, in spite of their colour : while Vailant and Le Maire give a similar testimony concern- ing the Caffre women, and the negresses of Gambia and Senegal. , The most inquiring and consequently the most migratory o7 the five divi- sions under which we are contemplating the race of man, is unquestionably the European. And hence we have reason to expect that we shall meet with more numerous establishments of the European form in regions to which it does not naturally belong than of any of the others. And experience con- firms this expectation. It is, in truth, the migratory spirit of this peculiar division that has filled Europe itself; for, as I have already had occasion to remark, the division in its earliest state was confined to the southern foot of the Caucasus, and branched out into Europe from this region. And thus, in the west of Africa, extending from Fez to the Zaara, we discover considerable patches of the same lineage, the progenitors of which have either shot through the isthmus of Suez or crossed the Mediterranean; while every one knows that, from a similar spirit of migration, America, both North and South, and India in its southern promontory of the Deccan, have for several centuries past exhibited patches of a similar kind. The Asiatic race, properly so called, hd-ve idi like manner had their migra- tions ; and hence we trace the form and features of this family, spreading southerly through the whole of f'^gypt and Abyssinia ; northerly from the Imaus or Caff of the Caucasus towards the Arctic boundaries of Europe and America, amid the Laplanders and Nova Zemblians of the former, and the Greenlanders and Iskimos or (as we have it from the French writers) Esqui- maux of the latter ; and westerly from the north of Persia along the banks of the Euxine, in successive waves, and chiefly under the different denomi- nations of Fins, Goths, Alans, and Huns; the last two uniting on various occasions, and especially under the triumphant banners of Attila, and over- running great part of Germany, and consequently intermixing with the European race ; at the same time driving the Fins into higher northern lati- tudes, along the shores of the Baltic, where they at length intermingled with the Laplanders. Among both these nations, therefore, whether blended or separate, we still meet with very strong marks of the true, genuine Asiatic face, flat, wide, and of a sallow or olive hue ; the eyes being small, and the hair dark and scanty. It is probable, also, that the more polished nations of America, as the Toltecs and Mexicans that belong to the northern, and the Peruvians and Araucans that belong to the southern division of this continent, have originated from an Asiatic source. De Guignes, Forster, and Humboldt concur in be- lieving them to have been of Chinese or Japanese descent; while the mass of the numerous tribes that constitute the chief population of this continent, and are altogether distinguished in external and internal character from the preceding nations, seems to have issued, in various migrations, from some of * Se« M. Humboldt ; Essai Politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne. Paris, 1808, 1809. OF THE HUMAN RACE. 201 the red or copper-coloured tribes with lank hair, which have of late years been ttaced in particular parts of Africa. It is also probable that Australia has in like manner been peopled by successive waves of rovers from both these continents : for we trace proofs of both sources, sometimes separate, and sometimes mixed. But the theories that have been offered upon this subject are too numerous, and for the most part too fanciful for a minute detail, and belong rather to the geographer than to the physiologist. There are some philosophers who have assigned several other distinctive characters to the different families of mankind than any thus far dwelt upon ; and which are chiefly derived from the stature, the shape of a particular limb, or the intellect: thus the gigantic height of the Patagonian has been adverted to as a very prominent feature ; the pigmy form of the Esquimaux ; and the still more pigmy form of the Kimos of Madagascar, if any reliance may be placed on the testimony of Commerson, now that it has been corroborated by Modave, and still more lately by the Abbe de Roclion ; the curved leg of the Calmuc race ; the long leg of the Indian ; and the high calf and flat foot of the Ethiopian. But it appears to me that all such distinctions are upon too narrow a scale, and perhaps too mucii dependent upon particular circumstances, for an admission into the lines of a broad and original demarcation. To the different powers of the intellect, which are still less to the point than even these corporeal peculiarities, I shall have occasion to advert presently. Omitting, then, the consideration of these subordinate points, whence have proceeded those striking and far stronger characteristics which* we have noticed in the preceding divisions ? Are the different distributions of man mere varieties of one common species, or distinct species merely connected under an imaginary genus 1 Has the human race proceeded from one source or from many 1 * In a country professing the Christian religion, and appealing to the records of Moses, as an established and veritable authority, I ought, perhaps, to blush at proposing such a question in public : but the insinuations which have in various ways been thrown out against this authority demand it, and I hasten to rescue, so far as I am able, the first and most interesting account we pos- sess of the creation of man, from the philosophical doubts which have been thrown upon it, and to reconcile it with the natural history of man in our own day. The Mosaic statement has met with two distinct classes of opponents, each of which has pretended to a different ground of objection. The one has re- garded this statement as altogether untrue, and never intended to be believed; as a mere allegory or fiction ; — a beautiful mythos often" indulged in by other oriental writers in the openings of their respective histories ; — as an enliven- ing frontispiece to a book of instruction. The other class has been in some degree more guarded in its attack ; and has rather complained that the state- ment is inexplicit than that it is untrue. These last philosophers have found out that in its common interpretation it does not accord with the living vo- lume of nature; and they hence contend that the common interpretation is incorrect; they perceive, or think they perceive, a variety of chasms in the sacred text which it is necessary to fill up before it can be made to harmo- nize with natural facts and appearances. At the head of the former class stand the names of some of the first natu- ral historians and scholars of modern times, as Linnaeus, Buffon, Helvetius, Monboddo, and Darwin. And from whom do these philosophers, thus de- parting from the whole letter and spirit of the Mosaic history, pretend to de- rive the race of man ? The four former from the race of monkeys ; and the last, to complete the absurdity, from the race of oysters ; for Dr. Darwin se- riously conjectures that as aquatic animals appear to have been produced be- fore terrestrial, and every living substance to have originated from a form or nucleus exquisitely simple and minute, and to have been perpetually developing and expanding its powers, and progressively advancing towards per- fection, man himself must have been of the aquatic order on his first creation : at that time, indeed, imperceptible from his exility, but in process of years, 20a ON THE VARIETIES or rather of ages, aoquiring a visible or oyster-like form, with little gills, instead of lungs, and, like the oyster, produced spontaneously, without dis- tinction into sexes ; that, as reproduction is always favourable to improvement, the aquatic or oyster mannikin, by being progressively accustomed to seek its food on the nascent shores or edges of the primaeval ocean, must have grown, after a revolution of countless generations, first into an amphibious, and then into a terrestrial animal; and, in like manner, from being without sex, first also into an androgynous form, and thence into distinct male and female.* It is not necessary to notice this dream of a poetizing philosopher, which had also been dreamed of long before his own day, any farther than to remark that it is in every respect inferior to the opinion of two of the most celebrated schools of ancient Greece, the Epicurean and the Stoic ; who, though they disagreed on almost every other point, concurred in their dogma concerning the origin of man ; and believed him to have sprung, equally with plants and animals of every kind, from the tender soil of the new-formed earth, at that time infinitely more powerful and prolific ; produced in myriads of little v/ombs that rose, like mole-hills, over the surface of the ground, and were afterward transformed, for his nourishment, into myriads of glandular and milky bulbs, so as to form a marvellous substitute for the human breast. lu the correct and elegant description of Lucretius, — , Terra cibum pueris, vestem vapor, herba oubile Praebebat, multa et molli lanugine abundans.f Earth fed the nursling, the warm ether clothed, And the soft downy grass his couch composed. And frivolous as such a theory may appear in the present day, it w^as the only one which was current among the Grecian or Roman philosophers, except that which supposed mankind to have been propagated by eternal generation, and of course the universe, like himself, to be eternal and self-existent : compared with which, an origin from the dust of the earth, even after the manner of vegetables, is incomparably less monstrous and absurd. Let us now pass on to the hypothesis of those modern philosophers who would associate the tribes of man with the tribes of the monkey, and origi- nate both from one common stock, in the same manner as the ox and buffalo are said to be derived from the bison, and the different varieties of sheep from the argali. There are a few wonderful histories afloat of wild men and wild women found in the woods of Germany and France ; some of which are said to have been dumb, others to have had the voice of sheep or of oxen, and others again to have walked on all-fours. And from these few floating tales, not amounting, in modern times, to more than nine or ten, Linnaeus thought proper to introduce the orang-otang into the human family, and to regard such instances of wild men as the connecting species between this animal and mankind in a state f)f civilized society. Whence Lord Monboddo has amused us with legends of men found in every variation of barbarism ; in some instances even un- gregarioiis or solitary ; in others, uniting, indeed, into small hordes, but so scanty even in natural or inarticulate language, as to be obliged to assist their own meaning by signs and gestures ; and, consequently, to be incapable of conversing in the dark ; of a third sort who have in some degree improved upon their natural language, but have still so much of the savage beast be- longing to them, as to employ their teeth and nails, which last are not less than an inch long, as weapons of defence ; and of a fourth sort, found in an island of the Indian seas, with the full possession of speech, but with tails like those of cats or monkeys ; a set of dreadful cannibals, which at one time killed and devoured every Dutchman they could lay their hands upon. It is truly wonderful that a scholar of Lord Monboddo's accomplishments * See Temple of Nature, Cant. i. p. 26. 29, ii. p. 54, iv. 158, and the additional notes on Spontaneous Vital Uy and Reproduction. T De Rer. Nat. v. 803. OF THE HUMAiN RACE. 203 could have allowed himself to be for one moment imposed upon by a mass of trash so absurd and extravagant as not to be worth the trouble of confut- ing. Such romances are certainly in existence ; but they are nothing more than the fabled news of a few low and illiterate mariners, whose names were i>ever sufficient to give them the slightest degree of authority, even when they were first uttered ; and which, for the most part, dropped succes- sively into an obscure and ignominous grave on the moment of their birth, and would have silently mouldered away into their elemental nothingness, had not this very singular writer chosen to rake up their decomposing atoms, in order to support an hypothesis which sufficiently proves its own weak- ness by the scouted and extravagant evidence to which it is compelled to appeal. Of the wild men and wild women of Linnaeus, some appear to have been ideots, escaped from their keepers ; a few exaggerated accounts of stray children from some wretched hovel of Lithuanian peasants ; and one of them, a young negress, who, during a shipwreck on the French coast, had swam on shore, and at once saved herself from death, and, what is worse than death, from slavery. She is said to have been found in the woods of Cham- pagne, about the middle of the last century, and was at first exhibited under the name of la Jille sauvage and la belle sauvage; and had the honour, soon afterward, of being painted as a sign-post to one of our most celebrated iims in this metropolis, which is still known by the name of the Bell Savage. This young negress was instructed in the French language by the family into whose hospitable hands she fell, and was afterward, from some unaccount- able whim, denominated Mademoiselle le Blanc* In order, however, to settle this question completely, let me mention a few of the anatomical points in which the orang-otang differs from the human foriti, and which cannot possibly be the effect of a mere variety, but must necessarily flow from an original and inherent distinction. More might be added, but what I shall offer will be sufficient ; and if 1 do not touch upon a comparison of the interior faculties, it is merely because I will neither insult your understandings nor degrade my own, by bringing them into any kind of contact. Both the orang and pongo, which of all the monkey tribes make the nearest approach to the structure of the human skeleton, have three vertebrae fewer than man. They have a peculiar membranous pouch connected with the larynx or organ of the voice, which belongs to no division of man whatever, white or black. The larynx itself is, in consequence of this, so peculiarly constructed as to render it less capable even of inarticulate sounds than that of almost every other kind of quadruped : and, lastly, they have no proper feet ; for what are so called are, in reality, as directly hands as the terminal organs of the arms : the great toe in man, and that which chiefly enables him to walk in an erect position, being a perfect thumb in the orang-otang. Whence this animal is naturally formed for climbing : and its natural posi- tion, in walking, and the position which it always assumes excepting when under discipline, is that of all-fours ; the body being supported on four hands, instead of on four feet as in quadrupeds. And it is owing to this wide and essential difference, as, indeed, we had occasion to observe in our last study, that M. Cuvier, and otlier zoologists of the present day, have thought it ex- pedient to invent a new name by which the monkey and maucauco tribes may be distinguished from all the rest ; and, instead of quadrupeds, have called them QUADRUMANA, or QUADRUMANUALs ; by which they are at the same time equally distinguished from every tribe of the human race, which are uniformly, and alone, bimanual. But throwing the monkey kind out of the question, as in no respect related to the race of man, it must at least be admitted, contend the second class of philosophers before us, that the wide differences in form, and colour, and degree of intellect, which the , several divisions of mankind exhibit, as you • See Monboddo on the Origin of Language, &c. vol. i. p. 193, 480- 204 ON THE VARIETIES have now arranged them, must necessarily have originated from difFerent sources ; and tliat even the Mosaic account itself will afford countenance to such an hypothesis. This opinion was first stated, in modern times, by the celebrated Isaac Pey- rere librarian to the Prince of Conde ; who, about the middle of last century, contended, in a book which was not long afterward condemned to the flames, though for other errors in conjunction with the present, that the narration of Moses speaks expressly of the creation of two distinct species of man ; — an elder species which occupied apart of the sixth day's creation, and is related in the first chapter of Genesis; and a junior, confined to Adam and Eve, the immediate progenitors of the Hebrews to whom this account was addressed; and which is not referred to till the seventh verse of the second chapter, and even then without any notice of the exact period in which they were formed. After which transaction, observes this writer and those who think with him, the historian confines himself entirely to the annals of his own nation, or of those wiiich were occasionally connected with it. Neither is it easy, they adjoin, to conceive upon any other explanation, how Cain in so early a period of the world as is usually laid down, could have been possessed of the im- plements of husbandry which belonged to him ; or what is meant by the fear he expressed, upon leaving his father's family, after the murder of Abel, that every one who found him would slay him ; or, again, his going forth into another country, marrying a wife there, and building a city soon after ihe birth of his eldest son. Now, a cautious perusal of the Mosaic narrative will, I think, incontestably prove that the two accounts of the creation of man refer to one and the same fact, to which the historian merely returns, in the seventh verse of the second chapter, for the purpose of giving, it a more detailed consideration; for it is expressly asserted in the fifth, or preceding verse but one, as the immediate reason for the creation of Adam and Eve, that at that " time there was not a man to till the ground ;" while, as to the existence of artificers competent to the formation of the first rude instruments employed in hus- bandry, and a few patclics of mankind scattered over the regions adjoining that in which Cain resided, at the period of his fratricide, it should be recol- lected thai this first fall of man by the hand of man, did not take place till a liundred and twenty-nine years after the creation of Adam : for it was in his one hundred and thirtieth year that Seth was given to him in the place of \bel: an interval of time amply suflicient, especially if we take into consi- deration the peculiar fecundity of both animals and vegetables in their pri- meval state, for a multiplication of the race of man, to an extent of many thousand souls. On such a view of the subject, therefore, it should seem that the only fair and explicit interpretation that can be given to the Mosaic iiistory is, that the whole human race has proceeded from one single pair, or in the words of another part of the Sacred Writings, that God " hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth."* The book of nature is in this as in every other respect in union with that of Revelation: it tells us that one single pair must have been adequate to all the purposes on which this class of philosophers have grounded their objections : and it should be farther observed to them, that thus to multiply causes without ne- cessity ig not more inconsistent with the operations of nature than with the principles of genuine philosophy. But the question still returns : whence, then, proceed those astonishing diversities among the different nations of mankind, upon which the arrange- ment now offered is founded 1 The answer is, that they are the effect of a combination of causes; some of which are obvious, others of which must be conjectured, and a few of which are beyond the reach of human comprehension :— but all of which aio common to other animals, as well as to man ; for extraordinary as these ♦Acts, xvil. 26, ' OF THE HUMAN RACE. 205 diversities may appear, they are equally to be met with in the varieties of several other kinds of animals that can be proved to have been produced from a single species, and, in one or two instances, from a single pair. The chief causes we are acquainted with are the four following . climate, food, manner of life, and hereditary diseases. I. The influence which climate principally produces on the animal frame is on the colour of the sldn and on the extent of the stature. All the deepest colours we are acquainted with are those of hot climates ; and all the lightest those of cold ones. In our own country we perceive daily, that an exposure to the fays of the sun turns the skin from its natural whiteness to a deep brown or tan; and that a seclusion from the sun keeps it fair and unfreckied. In like manner the tree-frog (rana arhorea) while livnig in the shade is of a light yellow, but of a dark green when he is obliged to shift from the shade into the sunshine. So the nereis lacustris, though whitish under the dark- ness of a projecting bank, is red when exposed to the sun's rays. And that the larves of most insects that burrow in the cavities of the earth, of plants, or of animals, are white, from the same cause, is clear, since being confined under glasses that admit the influence of solar light, they exchange their whiteness for a brownish hue. The same remark will apply to plants as well as to animals ; and hence nothing more is necessary to bleach or whiten them, than to exclude them from the light of day. Hence the birds, beasts, flowers, and even fishes of the equatorial regions are uniformly brighter or deeper tinctured in their spots, their feathers, their petals, and their scales, than we find them in any other part of the world. And hence, one reason at least for the deep jet which, for the most part, prevails among mankind under the equator ; the dark-brown and copper colours found under the tropics; and the olive, shifting through every intermediate shade to the fair and sanguine complexion, as we proceed from the tropic of Cancer northwards. Hence, too, the reason why the Asiatic and African women, confined to the walls of their seraglios, are. as white as Europeans ; why Moorish children, of both sexes, are, at first, equally fair, and Why the fairness continues among the girls, but is soon lost among the boys. As we approach the poles, on the contrary, we fiud every thing progres- sively whiten ; bears, foxes, hares, falcons, crows, and blackbirds, all assume the same common livery ; while many of them change their colour with the change of the season itself. For the same reason, as also because they have a thinner nmcous web, the Abyssinians are less deep in colour than the negro race ; for tliough their geographical climate is nearly the same, their physical climate differs essentially : the country stands much higher, and its tempera- ture is far lower. The immediate matter of colour, as I had occasion to observe more fully in a preceding lecture, is the mucous pigment which forms the middle layer of the general integument of the skin ; and upon this the sun, in hot climates, appears to act in a twofold manner ; first, by the direct affinity of its colorific rays with the oxygen of the animal surface, in consequence of which the oxygen is detached and flies off"; and the carbon and hydrogen being set at liberty, form a more or less perfect charcoal according to the nature of theii union ; and next, by the indirect influence which its calorific rays, like many other stinmlants, produce upon the liver, by exciting it to a secretion of more abundant bile, and of a deeper hue. I have formerly remarked that this second or colouring layer of the general integument of the skin, differs (as indeed all the layers of the skin do) in its thickness, not only in different kinds of animals, but very frequently in different species, varieties, and even individuals. Thus in our own country we find it more abundant in some persons than in others; and wherever it is most abundant, we find the com- plexion also of a darker and coarser and greasier appearance, upon a com- mon exposure to the solar light and heat : and we find also, that the hair is almost uniformly influenced by such increase of colour, and is proportionally coarser and darker. 206 ON THE VARIETIES It is of some consequence to attend to this observation ; for it may serve to explain a physiological fact that has hitherto been supposed of difficult elucidation. A certain degree of heat, though less than that of the tropics, appears favourable to increase of stature ; and I have already observed, that the tallest tribes we are acquainted with are situated at the back of Cape Horn, and the Cape of Good Hope. On the contrary, the most diminutive we are acquainted with are those that inhabit the coldest regions or the highest mountains in the world : such are the Laplanders and Nova Zemblians in Europe, the Samoieds, Ostiacs, and Tungooses in Asia, and the Greenlanders and Esqui- maux in America. Such, too, are the Kimos of Madagascar, if the account of these pigmy people may be depended upon, whose native region is stated to be the central and highest tracts of the island, forming, according to Com- merson, an elevation of not less than sixteen or eighteen hundred fathoms above the level of the sea. A multitude of distinct tribes have of late years been discovered in the in- terior of Africa, in tiie midst of the black tribes, exhibiting nothing more than a red or copper hue, with lank black hair. And, in like manner, around the banks of the lower Orinoco, in Mexico, where the climate is much hotter, there are many clans of a much lighter hue than those around the banks of the Rio Negro, where it is much cooler; and M. Humboldt has hence ven- tured to assert that we have here a full proof that climate produces no effect upon the colour of the skin. Such an assertion, however, is far too hasty ; for he should first have shown that the thickness of the mucous web or colour- ing material is equally abundant in all these instances. For if it be more abundant (as it probably is) in the tribes that are swarthiest, we have reason to expect that a swarthier colour will be found where there is an equal or even a less exposure to solar light and heat ; and we well know that the hair will vary in proportion.*' IJ. The effects of dibterent kinds of food upon the animal system are as extensive and as wonderful as those of different climates. The fineness and coarseness of the wool or hair, the firmness and flavour of the flesh, and in some degree the colour of the skin, and extent of the stature, are all influ- enced by tlie nature of tlie diet. Oils and spirits produce a peculiar excite- ment of the liver; and like the calorific rays of the sun, usually become the means of throwing an overcharge of bile "^into the circulation. Hence the sallow and olive hue of many who unduly addict themselves to vinous pota- tion, and who at the same time make use of but little exercise. And hence also the dark and dingy colour of the pigmy people inhabiting high northern latitudes, to whom we have just adverted, and whose usual diet consists of fish and other oils, often rancid and offensive. Though it must be admitted that this colour Is in most instances aided by the clouds of smoke in which they sit constantly involved in their wretched cabins, and the filth and grease with which they often besmear their skins. And hence, also, one cause of their diminutive stature ; the food they feed on being unassimilating and in- nutritive. Swine and all other animals fed on madder-root, or that of gallium verum, or yellow-ladies-bed-straw, have the bones themselves tinged of a deep red, or yellow : and M. Huber of Lausanne, who has of late years made so many valuable discoveries in the natural habits of the honey-bee, has proved himself able by a difference in the food alone, as indeed Debraw had done long before him,f to convert what is commonly, but improperly, called a neuter into a queen bee. III. It would be superfluous to dwell on the changes of body and percep- tive powers produced in the animal system by a difference in the manners AND CUSTOMS. We havc the most striking proofs of this eflfect in all the domestic animals by which we are surrounded. Compare the wild horse with the disciplined ; the bison with the ox, which last is usually regarded as •See Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne. par Alexandre de Humboldt, w trees, the clefts of rocks, and subterranean burrows, in enormous multitudes. The whole ground, indeed, is covered with this reptile band of adventurers; and no geometrician could direct them to their destined station by a shorter course. They turn neither to the riglit hand nor to the left, whatever be the obstacles that intervene: and if they meet with a house they will rather attempt to scale the walls than relinquish tlie unbroken tenor of their way. Occasionally, however, they are obliged to conform to the face of the country ; and if it be intersected by rivers, they pursue the stream to its fountain head. In great dearth of rain they are compelled to halt, when they seek the most convenient encampment and remain there till the weather changes. They make a similar halt wlfen the sun shines with intense heat, and wait for the cool of the evening. The journey often takes them up three months before they arrive on the seacoast; as soon as they accomplish which, they plunge into the water, shake off their spawn upon the sands, which they leave to nature to mature and vivify, and immediately measure back their steps to the mountains. The spawn, thus abandoned, are not left to perish : the soft sands afford them a proper nidus; the heat of the sun, and the water, give them a birth ; when millions of little crabs are seen crawling to the shore and exploring their way to the interior of the country, and thus quitting their elementary and native habitation, for a new and untried mode of existence. It is the marvellous power of instinct that alone directs them, as it directed the parent hosts from whom they have proceeded ; that marvellous power which is co-extensive with the wide range of organic life, universally recog- nised, though void of sensation ; consummately skilful, tliough destitute of intelligence ; demanding no growth or developement of faculties, but mature and perfect from its first formation. The general corollary resulting from these observations is as follows : that instinct, as [ have already defined it to be, is the operation of the principle of organized life by the exercise of certain natural powers, directed to the pre- sent or future good of the individual; while reason is the operation of the principle of intellectual life by the exercise of certain acquired powers di- rected to the same object: that it appertains to the whole organized mass, as gravitation does to the whole unorganized; equally actuating the smallest and the largest portions, the minutest particles and the bulkiest systems ; every organ and every part of every organ, whether solid or fluid, so long as it continues alive: that, like gravitation, it exhibits, under particular circum- stances, different modifications, different powers, and different effects ; but that, like gravitation, too, it is subject to its own division of laws, to which, under definite circumstances, it adheres without the smallest deviation ; and that its sole and uniform aim, whether acting generally or locally, is that of perfection, preservation, or reproduction. ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION. 231 Of Its mode of existence we know nothing: but as little do we know of the principle of gravitation or of mind. We can only assure ourselves that they are distinct powers, perliaps distinct essences ; and we see them actinf^-, as well separately as conjointly, for the general good. Under their accordant influence we behold the plastic and mysterious substance of matter, which we must be especially careful not to confound with themselves, rising from "airy nothing" into entity; ascending from invisible elements into worlds and systems of worlds ; from shapeless chaos and confusion, into form, and order, and harmony ; from brute and lifeless immobility, into energy and activity ; into a display of instinct, feeling, perception ; of being, and beauty, and happiness. One common design, one uniform code of laws, equally simple and majestic, equally local and comprehensive, pervades, informs, unites, and consummates the whole. The effect, then, being one, the mighty- cause that produced it must be one also ; an eternal and hitinite unity — the radiating fountain of all possible perfections — ever active, but ever at rest — ever present, though never seen — immaterial, incorporeal, ineffable: but the source of all matter, of all mind, of all existences, and all modes of exist- ence. Whatever we behold is God— all nature is his awful temple — all sciences the porticoes that open to it: and the chief duty of philosophy is to conduct us to his altar; to render all our attainments, which are the boun- teous affiations of his spirit, subservient to his glory; and to engrave on the tablet of our hearts this great accordant motto of all natural and all revealed religion, of Athens and of Antioch, of Aratus and of St. Paul, " in him we live, and move, and have our being." *Ek Aiog apXi^iicaOa — irdvTrj 6t Aiog Kcxpf/fJiida irdi'Tei' Tov ytip /cut ytvos ianiv* LECTURE VI. ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION. We have now summarily contemplated several of the most important phenomena both of organic and inorganic nature ; and have traced out some thing of the laws by which these phenomena are produced and regulated. Among the most extraordinary facts that have occurred to us may, perhaps, be enumerated the occasional production of effects by causes which do not ai)pear to be immediately connected with them; the operation of one body upon another remotely situated, and which, so far as we are able to trace them, have no medium of communication. The sun is perpetually acting upon and influencing the earth, the earth the moon, the moon the ocean: the magnet operates upon iron, whatever be the sheet of substance interposed; and if the iron be divided into small filings, so that the different particles may move with facility, conmnmicates to each an obvious polarity, and gives to the whole a peculiar and beautiful arrangement. And the repulsive and attractive powers of the electric fluid are supposed to act upon each other, not only where two or more particles of this fluid are perfectly or very nearly in contact, but between all particles of it, at all distances, whatever obstacles may lie between them.f Chemical science lays open to us a wonderful field of similar affections and affinities. Within the range of its peculiar regions, we behold almost every substance evincing a determinate series both of inclinations and of antipathies, strongly attracted by one kind of material, indifferent towards a second, and powerfully avoiding a third. From these extraordinary eidow- ments proceeds unquestionably the union or separation of different oodies, ♦ Aral. Phaenom. 1. 4, 5 1 Young's Lcctur -s. vol. 1. p- 659 232 ON SYMPATHY ANt) FASCtNATlO??. according to the nature of the endowments that are called into action ; but theu' influence, in perhaps every case, commences before such bodies are m a stale of contact, and in many cases while they are at a considerable dis- tance from each other. From lifeless and inorg-anic matter these peculiar and mysterious affection« ascend to vegetable life, and display to us germs, molecules, and fibrils, uniting not at random with germs, molecules, and fibrils, but each selecting the other, and occasionally attracting them from remote situations, the female male, and the male female rudiments ; and this with the nicest discrimination of their various powers of crassitude or tenuity, and, consequently, of reci- procal adaptation, without which no vital entity would ensue. Perhaps one of the most extraordinary instances of this kind we are acquainted with exists in the valisneria spiralis, an aquatic and dioecous plant, or one belonging to that class in which the male and the female are distinct individuals. The male has a long spiral stem, by which its flower is enabled at all limes to adapt itself to the surface of the water, from the bottom of which the phmt shoots forth, and to float in the middle of tide-slreams of almost every varia- tion of ascent. The stem of the female is straight, and much shorter; and is hence only found in shallow waters, or on shores, where the tide exerts but little influence. Thus difi'erently formed and remotely situated, how is that union to take place, without which there could be no increment, and tlie valisneria would be blotted out of the book of vegetable life. The whole process is won- derful ; a part of it is obvious, but the rest is concealed. As soon as the male flower is become perfected, the spriral stem dries away, and the flower separates itself from it, and sails gallantly over the water in pursuit of ihe female, for the most part driven, indeed, by a current of the wind or of the stream ; yet as soon as it arrives within a certain range of the female, it obeys a new influence, and is attracted towards it in various instances even in opposition to wind and tide, the powers that have hitherto directed it. What, now, is this stupendous influence that thus operates at a distance, and gives to the male flower a new direction? It may possibly be a peculiar kind of odour or aroma; and, perhaps, this is the most philosophical way of account- ing for the fact : but however philosophical, it is altogether hypothetical, for we are incapable of ascertaining, and know nothing of the existence of any such exhalation; and could we detect it, we should be still totally ignorant of its mode of operation. The same curious phenomena seem not unfrequently to take place in the animal system : for here also we can truly affirm that bodies appear to act where they are not, and where we can trace no communicating medium. A small laceration on one of the fingers, sometimes in our own country, but far more frequently in warmer climates, will produce, if unattended to, the disease of a locked jaw ; and an inflammation or abscess of the liver a severe pain in the left shoulder. Yet in both these cases we are not distinctly acquainted with any closer connexion subsisting between the finger and the jaw, or the liver and the left shoulder, than there is between these different organs and any other part of the sj-stem. We may theorize upon the nature of the communication, but we have no certain knowledge. The same fact is strikingly exemplified in the different operations of diff'er- ent poisons when introduced into the stomach. Thus it has been observed by Mr. Brodie, in a valuable and ingenious paper, published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1811, that the infusion of tobacco, applied to any part of the alimentary canal, almost instantaneously, and apparently by some other means than that of the circulation of the blood, destroys the action of the heart, and consequently stops the pulsation, while the brain and the other muscles of the system, besides the heart, are comparatively but little aff'ected : and that alcohol, on the contrary, the essential oil of almonds, and the juice of aconite, destroy as rapidly the action of the brain, and throw the animal into violent convulsions, laborious respiration, and deadly stupor, while the heart continues its usual or nearly its usual pulsation, not only during the whole of the symptoms, but for some minutes after death has actually taken ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION. 2S3 place. The woorara, perhaps a species of ticunas, with which the Indians of Guiana poison the points of their arrows, produces the same effect, when inserted into a wound, as aconite juice introduced into the stomach : it ope- rates ahnost entirely upon the org-an of the brain, and more rapidly than it could arrive there by the course of the circulation. The upas Jlntiar, the anthiar Toxicaria of Leschenaut, on the contrary, one of the most fatal vege-^ table poisons of the island of Java, produces death when inserted into a wound, not by affecting- the brain, but, like the infusion of tobacco in the stomach, by destroying the action of the heart. \\\ like manner, the poison of the cerastes, or horned snake, though so fatal in a few hours, often in a few minutes when received by a wound, seems to produce little or no effect when tasted and swallowed. " It is clear," says Bruce, " the poison has no activity, till through some sore or wound it is admitted into circulation.* And a German physician (continues he) was bold enough to distil the pus or putrid matter flowing from the ulcer of a per- son infected by the plague, and taste it afterward without bad consequences." Of the immedia-te cause or nature of this diversity of influence — this dis- crepancy of action between remote organs, we know no more than we do of the cause or nature of gravitation, of magnetism, or electricity. It has been denominated, indeed, sympathy^ fellow-feeling, ox consent of parts, m the gene- ral language of physiological \vriters ; and so long as we employ these terms merely to import a definite kind or peculiarity of impulse, they may have their use and convenience ; but they convey no knowledge, and ought not to be allowed, as I am afraid they sometimes are, to supply the place of know- ledge. That the muscles of the jaw-bone sometimes associate in their action with the muscles of the hand or foot ; the organ of the left shoulder with that of the liver; and the stomach, under some kinds of stimulus, with the brain ; under others with the heart ; and under a third sort, as all those that excite nausea, with the skin; while the skin, in return, associates very gene- rally with the action of the kidneys, are ascertained and well-established facts ; but why they should be facts, or by what power or medium the asso- ciation is maintained, we are altogether ignorant. When the circulation of the blood was first discovered, it was supposed that all these anomalies might fall within the range of this admirable me- chanism, and might be explained by its operation. Not one of them, however, is capable of sjich an explanation. Nor is even the diffused redness which uniformly takes place around the nucleus of an inflamed part in any degree more intelligible or more referrible to this principle ; since, in consequence of the device of a circulating system, the vessels in the immediate vicinity of ea(th other are as much cut off from all direct communication as those at the remotest distance; and only, so far as we are able to trace by ocular expe- riment, associate by the common current of the blood. That they do, in fact, associate by other means we know ; but it is by means altogether concealed from us : it is by what, as already observed, we call sympathy or fellow- feeling ; but what we only call so to express a peculiarity of action, the cause of which we are incapable of penetrating. There is one curious and highly important discovery in the animal economy, however, that has been made, or rather completely established, within the last two or three years, which seems to show that such associate aolion of parts, at a distance from each other, may be the result of a direct intercourse or medium of communication, though the connecting channel is too subtile for pursuit : for it seems now to be ascertained, as it had, indeed, been long suspected, though without the proof of actual experiment, that a variety of substances pass from the stomach into the kidneys, apparently without en- tering into the circulation of the blood, by an unknown and even a much shorter course. Now, to the eye of the anatomist, there are no organs more distinct from each other; they not only lie far remote in situation, but even in different cavities, and are separated by a strong, stout membrane, called the peritoneum. • Appendix to Travels, p. 301, 8vo. edition 834 ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION. To determine whether such a channel actually existed or not, Dr. Wollas- ton introduced into the stomach three grains and a half of the salt called prussiate of potash ; the presence of which, in almost all kinds of colonrlesj fluids, is capable of detection to the utmost nicety, by mixing with them a small portion of solution of iron, the colourless compound being immediately marked with a blue tinge. The above quantity was given to a healthy per son, about thirty-four years of age, and was repeated every hour to the third time. The natural secretion from the kidneys being tested every half hour was found in two hours to be slightly dyed, and at the end of four hours to afford a deep blue. At this period, just one hour after taking the last dose, and when the blood-vessels might be supposed to be fully impregnated with the material, if it passed to the kidneys through this conveyance, blood vvus taken from the arm, and allowed to coagulate, so that the serum or limpid part of it might be fully separated. The presence of the prussiate was then endea- voured to be discovered, by means of the solution of iron, but without the least effect, for the serum still remained colourless. And in other experiments of a similar kind, made both by Dr. Wollaston and Dr. Marcet, it was satis- factorily ascertained that the prussiate of potash, though it found its way readily to the kidneys, did not exhibit any trace of its existence in the fluid of any other organ whatever, any more than in that of the blood ; as the saliva, the mucus of the nostrils, or the limpid discharge produced by blisters. Mr. Home has since shown, that rhubarb introduced into the stomach in like manner finds a path to the kidneys, apparently without passing through the circulating system.* Mr. Home at one time suspected that the organ of the spleen afforded a passage from the stomach to the circulation of the blood in the cases before us, instead of the lacteal vessels, which immediately rise from the alimentary canal. This idea, he has, however, since relinquished as erroneous ; but had even such a passage existed, it would not have answered the purpose ; for it would only have conducted materials by another path to the blood; and the experiments of Dr. Wollaston have sufficiently proved, that the unknown channel, wherever it lies, has no connexion whatever with any part of the system of blood-vessels, or even with the common system of absorbent ves- sels : and so far he seems to have disproved a previous theory of Mr. Charles Darwin upon this subject, which held, that the absorbent system might be- come the channel, by assuming a retrograde action. Such action, however, has never been established, and, independently of the experiments before us, it is rendered highly inconceivable by the known structure of the absorbent vessels themselves. The corollary, then, resulting from these observations, is, that in the animal system, as well as in inorganic nature, bodies in various instances act where they are not, and through channels of influence or communication, with which we are altogether unacquainted. The examples thus far offered, in regard to animals, I readily admit, are taken from different parts of the same individual frame: but as they are drawn from parts remotely situated, and whose intercourse, so far as we are able to trace it, is as much cut off as though they were of different frames, excepting, indeed, by a channel which does not show itself to be resorted to in the cases before us, I mean the blood ; they may serve to lay a ground- work for our conceiving the possibility of a similar influence or association of action between different parts of different frames, or, which is the same thing, between living body and living body. I proceed, then, to offer examples of this latter kind of influence. The sub- ject, I am aware, is not only of a very curious, but of a very delicate nature, * The o:i1y mode by which the present writer can conjecture the possibility of these substances being conveyed :o the kidneys by the course of the blood, and becoming manifest in their ordinary- secretion, on the application of chemical tests, is, that they may be so minutely decomposed by the action of the blood while passing through it, as to be beyond the influence of any tests whatever ; and that they only discover themselves in the renal secretion, in conseciuence of a peculiar attraction or alllnity of the organ for such materials, and their being hereby thown off in a more concentrated fo'rm. But this explanation is. after ail, merely conjectural.— See Study of Med. vol. v. p. 283. 2d edition ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION. 235 and requires to be handled with the greatest dexterity ; nor do 1 know of any philosophical work to which we can turn as a proper beacon to direct us in our pursuit, and to deiermine where the boundary of sober judgment ceases, and that of imagination begins. Some of the instances I shall refer to may, perhaps, be denominated in- stinctive influences. I have no objection to the term; but the facts will remain as singular, and as little accounted for, as if no such term were in existence. Am(tng quadrupeds, and, so far as we know of them, among amphibials, fishes, aiid insects, there exists but little attachment of the male to the female during the time of parturition, or to his own young after the female has brought them forth. The seal-tribes, and especially those of the trichecus Manatus, or lamantin, from which we iiave probably derived all the idle stories of mermen and mermaids, together with a few others, may, perhaps, be offered as an exception ; for these, and especially the lamantin, form unions of single male with single female that continue through life, and live in dis- tinct families with their offspring, till the last, acquiring maturity, leave their paternal home, and found similar families for themselves. Such, then, being the general fact with regard to other animals, whence comes it to pass that the males among the bird-tribes should evince, with a few exceptions, an attach- ment that is so rarely to be met with elsewhere? What is that wonderful power that rivets the greater number of male birds to female birds during the time of nestling and incubation ; that impels them to take an equal part in construct- ing the nest, and stimulates them with feelings unknown at any other season ? Whence is it that several of them, ns the male raven (corvns Corax), divide the toil and time of silting, and incubate the eggs by day as the female does by night 1 or, that others of them, leaving to their respective females the entire process of incubation, sooth them through the whole of this tedious period, often extending to not less than six or eight weeks, with their melo- dies from a neighbouring bush, and supply them with food with the utmost tenderness and punctuality? Whence is it, more especially amid birds that feed their young with a viscid chyle or milk, secreted at that peculiar period in the crop or craw, that the crop of the male becomes enlarged and changed in its action, in the very same manner as that of the female, so as to enable him to divide the tender office of nursing, and to supply the young with an equal quantity of nutri- ment? In the body of the mother we can, perhaps, trace a series of actions which, if they do not give us a full insight into the cause of such a change, and such an additional function, at least prepare us to contemplate it with less astonishment ; it is a change, in a very considerable degree, analogous to what occurs in the female frame of most other kinds and classes when siuii- larly situated ; and which is evinced in its highest and most beautiful perfec- tion in our own race. But in the production of a similar change in the crop of the male pigeon, we meet with a fact altogether anomalous and alone : there is no connexion of organ with organ ; no perceptible chain of actions that can have given rise to it : the frames of the individuals are distinct. It is a pure sympathy excited in one being by a peculiar change produced in the organization of another, and leading to a similar change in the being that is thus most wonderfully and inexplicably operated upon. Let us pass from the bird-tribes to fishes. There are various animals of this class that, on being touched, or eveji approached without being touched, are enabled to exhaust the irritable or sensorial power, or both together, of the hand or other limb that approaches them, so as to paralyze it and render it incapable of exertion. Such, especially, are those fishes which we denomi- nate the torpedo-ray, and the electric eel or gymnote. Of these the former has been longest known to naturalists; for, in consequence of its being an inhabilant of the Mediterranean Sea, it is described both by Greek and Koman writers, who impute its distinctive faculty to magic; and conceive that the animal has a power, not only of concentrating this magical energy at option, but if seized hold of by a fishing-hook, of impelling it through the whole 856 ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION. length of the hook, line, and rod, to the arm of the angler, and hence by pal- sying his arm, of effecting his escape. So Oppian in Greek verses, which I will take leave thus to translate : — / The liook'd torpedo, with instinctive force Calls all his magic fn^m its secret source ; And through the hook, the line, the tnper pole, Throws t" th' offending arm his stern control. The palsied fisherman, in dumb surprise, Feels through his frame the chilling vapours rise, Drops the vain rod, and seems, in stiffening pain, Some frost-fix'd wanderer o'er the icy plain. * There may, perhaps, be some exaggeration in this description ; but there are not wanting naturalists of modern times who contend that the torpedo is able to throw his benumbing influence to this extent and in this manner. This influ- ence, moreover, is altogether voluntary ; and hence the animal will sometimes allow himself to be touched without exerting it. He occasionally loiters on the moist sands of the shore after the tide has retreated, burying himself under the sand by a brisk flapping of his fins, which serves to fling this rhate- rial over him ; and in this stale he is said to inflict at times, even through ihe sand that covers him, a torpor so severe as to throw down the astonished pas- senger that is inadvertently walking over it. We now know something of the medium through which this animal ope- rates, and have no diiliculty in referring it to an electric or Voltaic aura, and '•an even trace a kind of Voltaic apparatus in its structure. Yet, before the laws or power of electricity or Voltaism were known, and, consequently, before the medium by which they act was followed up, which to this hour, however, is only known by its results (for it has never been detected as an object of sense), it is not to be wondered at that so mysterious an energy, operating or ceasing to operate at the option of the animal, and occasionally operating at a distance from the individual affected, should be regarded as a species of magic or incantation. The Voltaic power of the electric eel or gymnote, is, however, more ob- vious and effective th^n that of the torpedo : the gymnote making a sudden and concentrated assault by shocks, of less or greater violence, as though from a more highly-charged battery; and the torpedo, by a numbness or tor- por, whence, indeed, its name, produced by small but incessant vibrations of Voltaism, seldom, excepting in severe cases, amounting to the aggregation of shocks, and precisely similar to what is felt in a limb upon applying to it a great multitude of weak strokes, rapidly repeated from a small battery or Leyden phial. Yet even the peculiar properties of the gymnote were re- ceived with the greatest skepticism for nearly a century after their first dis- covery ; which, as this fish is almost exclusively a native of the warmer seas and rivers of Africa and America, did not take place till the middle of the seventeenth century. They were first pointed out to the French Academy in 1671, by M. Richer, one of the travelling professors sent out by the Academy to conduct certain mathematical observations in Cayenne ; but were not gene, rally credited till tlie concurrent experiments of M. Condamine, Mr. Ingram, Mr. Gravesend, and other celebrated natural historians, set every doul}t at rest, about a century afterward. The more formidable power of the electric gymnote enables it, upon the authority of nlmost every experimentist, to give not only severe shocks, both in tlie water and out of the water, when in actual contact with another ani- mal, but to convey them, as we have just observed that the torpedo is said to do, though upon doubtful testimony, through long rods or poles. It is highly probable, however, that such poles must first be wetted with water; for both the gymnote and the torpedo are found to be limited to precisely the same con- ducting and non-conducting mediums as are met with in common electricity. In these cases we trace something of the medium by which the irritable or • AUeul. i. 413. ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION. 237 seFisorial power is exhr.usted. There are various other oases, however, in which, to this moment, we are "is ignorant, and as little capable of tracinrr it, as mankind must have been in regard to llie animals before us, antecedently to a discovery of the electric aura. And I here pariicidarly allude to the torpid effecis produced upon poisonous serpents and scorpions in Africa and America, on their being handled by persons of two differeiit descriptions; the one possessing this torpifying power naturally and hereditarily, and the other acquiring it by artificial preparation; such as chewing the roots or other parts of certain plants, rubbing them in their hands, or bathing the body in aqueous infusions of lliem, and thus impregnating the body of the operator with their virtues. There appears to be no country in the world so much infested with ser pents of this kind as the ancient Cyrenaica, or that part of Africa which lies northward of the great desert of Sahara. Among the different tribes that formerly inhabited this region, one of the most celebrated was the Psylli; and as this tribe seems to have been in full possession of this power, either from art or nature, and to have given the strongest and most extraordinary- proofs of its having possessed it, all persons capable of exerting a similar effect were denominated Psylli by the Greek and Roman writers. And hence Plutarch tells us, that when Cato pursued his march through the Cyrenaic desert in search of Juba, he took with him a variety of these Psylli to suck out the poison from the wounds of such of his soldiers as should be bitten by the lumierous serpents of the country. It appears most probable that the Psylli were not naturally protected against this venom, but from long and skilful practice were acquainted with the vir- tue of those plants which, as I have just hinted, answer both as a preserva- tive against the bite, and as an antidote after the bite has been inllicted : and, being strongly addicted to divination or pretended magic, as all the historians who have given us any account of them affirm them to have been, affected to de- rive their power of subduing poison from this preternatural source alone, and inculcated the belief that they could only exercise it, by muttering or chant- ing some potent verse or spell over the person who was affected. And hence the disarming a serpent of iiis capacity of poisoning, or disarming the poison itself of its deadly effect after a wound had been received, was denomi- nated charming or incantation. So Silius Italicus,* in allusion to the Psylli, or their neighbours, the Marmarides, lib. iii. : Ad quorum cantus mites jaeufere Cerastes. The horned snake lies harmless at their song. This nort of power, derived from art or nature, and probably originating in this qwc.ner of the world, appears to have been known in the remotest ages, and to have been uniformly ascribed to the same influence of certain magical words or verses chanted, or uttered in recitative ; and it appears also to have been very generally conjectured, that there exists some kinds or species of poisonous serpents that are capable of shutting their ears against the sounds thus uttered, and that will not hearken to or be charmed by the voice of the cnc'hanter, however skilful the enchantment. The sacred books abound in allusions to this popular tradition ;t they are equally to be met with in the writings of the Greek and Roman poets, and even in the Sanscrit moralists, as, for example, in the Hitopadesa of Vishnu- Srirman, probably of a higher antiquity than the Psahnist himself, who tells us in his book of aphorisms, that "as a charmer draweth a serpent from his hole, so a good wife, taking her husband from his place of torture, enjoyeth happiness with him. "J ♦ See also Virgil, JEn. vii. 753, in which he ascribes the salutiferous power both to the song and touch of (he enchanter. Vipereo generi et graviter spirantibus hydris Spargere qui sornnos canthquk masiquk sclebat, Mulc'ebatque iras, et morsus arte levabat. t Pa. IviJL 5, as also Jer. viii. 17, Deut. xviii. 11. t Transl. of Sir William Jonea 238 ■ ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION There are some philosophers and historians, who have venturei' to disbe lieve that any such extraordinary power has ever been possessed by any peo- ple. The very cautious writers of the Anciei;t Universal History express no small degree of skepticism upon this point:* and M. Denon, one of the chief of the literati that accompanied Buonaparte to Egypt, has i)een bold enoug-h to laugh at the assertion, and to regard every pretension to such a power as a direct imposture. He offers, however, no sufficient ground for his ridicule, and is flatly contradicted by the concurrent testimony of all the best travel- lers, both to Africa and South America. Mr. Bruce is very full and vevy ex- plicit upon the subject. He distinctly states, from minute personal observa- tion, that "all the blacks in the kingdom of Sennaar, whether Funge or Nuba, are perfectly armed {by nature) against the bite of either scorpion or viper. They take the cerastes (or horned serpent, bei-.ng the most common, and one of the most fatal of all the viper tribes) in their hands at all times, put them in their bosoms, and throw them to one another, as children do apples or balls ;"t during which sport the serpents are seldom irritated to bite, and when they do bite, no mischief ensues from tiie wound. The Arabs of the same country, however, he tells us as distinctly, have not this protection naturally; but from their infancy they acquire an exemption from the mortal conse- quences attending the bite of these animals, by chewing a particular root, and washing themselves with an infusion of particular plants in water. The Nuba and Funge, however, or those who are preserved naturally from the bite and venom of the viper and scorpion, are also highly skilful in the knowledge and application of these roots, and other parts of plants, to those who have no natural protection or charm. Mr. Bruce has given a particular account of several of these plants, some of which seem only capable of act- ing against the power of the serpent, others only against that of t!ie scorpion, and a third sort against both. And in either instance, where they secure against the bite or sting, and thus operate as a preventive or prophylactic, they also secure equally against the poison, when introduced into the system by a wound, and thus operate as an antidote. In South America the natural charm does not seem to be possessed by any tribe : but the artificial charm, obtained by the use of peculiar plants, is known as extensively, and employed as successfully, as in Africa, and is found to possess the same double virtue of an antidote and a preventive. One of the most satisfactory accounts of this singular fact is contained in a memoir drawn up, in 1791, by Don Pedro d'Orbies y Vargas, a native of Santa Fe, which details a long and accurate list of experiments which he instituted to ascertain it. Tiie plant chiefly employed by the American Indians, he tells us, is denominated in that part of the world vejuco de guaco, guaco-withy, from their having first observed that the bird of this name, or, as Catesby calls it, the serpent-hawk, usually sucks it before it attacks poisonous ser- pents, and then attacks them without mischief.^ Prepared by drinking a small portion of the juice of this plant, and inoculating themselves with it also, by rubbing it upon three small punctures in the hands, breast, and feet, and thus impregnating the body with its virtues, Don Pedro himself, and all Iiis doniesti{;s, were accustomed to venture into tlie open fields, and fearlessly seize hold of the largest and most venomous serpents. It was scarcely ever that the animal thus charmed or fascinated had power to bite, and when he did so, the wound produced was slight and of no consequence. M. Acrell, in the Amcenitates Academicae, after mentioning the same plant, tell us that the senega is possessed of a like power.^ Of the truth of the fact, therefore, thus confirmed by the most trusty travel- lers and historians, in different quarters of the world, there can be no doubt; and it adds to the facility of believing it to find that other animals besides men are possessed of a similar power. Thus the conder and the wild boar feed harmlessly on the rattlesnake, which appears to offer no resistance to * Vol. iii. p. 491, Aj)pendix. \ Travels, Appendix, p. 303 + U ai)pears to be the ojihiorrhiza Mvngos of Lirinasus. • $Amcen. Acad. vol. vi. No. 112. Morsura Serpentum, 1762, ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION 239 llioir attac]<, and suflTer no injury from its venom after they have satisfied their huiitrcr. In both these cases, the charm or power of protection appears to h(! natural, as iu the Nuha and I'^uno^e irihes of Africa. In the serpent-hawk or i^uaco, howevcM, just noticed, which derives its chief food from poisonous snaixcs, and iii the tantalus or ibis of Ejrypt, the numenius Ibis of ('uvier, \vlii(!h equally attacks and devours them, the charm or protection seems to be artificial, and to depend upon the virtue of the plant to which they have re- course for this purpose; for I have already observed that the serpent-hawk uniformly applies to the ophiorrhiza before he commences the battle ; while the ibis, lhoulanatioii which will here be found to follow, resijectiiif; the nature and phenomena of dreaming, have still more lately been ofTired to the world by Dr. Spur/.hcim, and adopted from him by Mr.Carmicluiel of Dublin, with the exception that they have interwoven such views with their peculiar doctrine of a plurality of omans in the brtiin ; which, lor reasons that will be given in a suh.se- queiit lecture (Series iii. Lecture xiii), the present author cainud admit; and docs not conceive is by any means necessary on the present occasion. Such coincidences of opinion, however, ar.d csjiecially it ihey should be accidental, and not derived from his comment on Lucretius, give a considerable degree of confirmation to the general basis on which the theory rests. The lecture, as now i>ublislicd, was delivered In the spring of 1811 843 ON SLEEP, DREAMING, we be spoken to in this slate, we return an answer, which intimates, indeed, that we have heard ; but, by its incongruity with the observations made to ns, intimates also that the will has, in some degree, lost its control ; — that it has become drowsy, and is afrected by the slumber of the organs of external sense. If the general exhaustion be not very considerable, as after dinner, or during the digestion of any other meal, the sleep may not extend beyond this first or simple stage of slumber; though it should be observed that, from the power of association, the internal and external senses have a strong tendency, if in health, to concur or catenate in one common state or action. When the one are in full vigour, the other are usually in full vigour also; and when the one become drowsy, the other incline to the same drowsiness. But if the general exhaustion be more violent than we are now contemplating, the internal senses will unquestionably concur in the eifect, and evince, in some or all of them, an equal degree of sleep. The first of the internal senses that becomes thus influenced is the will itself. It would be easy to show, if we had time, that the will is infinitely more disposed to catenate with the motions of the external senses than any ol' the other faculties of the mind. It hence gives way first of all, and sleeps along with the exterior organs, while the other faculties of the mind remain awake. We are now arrived at the second stage of sleep ; and it is this which we call and which constitutes dreaming. The will catenates in the sleep of the organs of exterior sense ; but all the interior senses, except the will, are still awake. Hence we have ideas of memory, ideas of consciousness, ideas of imagination, ideas of reasoning: but, destitute of a controlling power, they rush forward with a very considerable degree of irregularity, and would do so with the most unshapeable confusion, but that the power of association still retains some degree of influence, and produces some degree of concert in the midst of the wildest and most extravafrant vagaries. And hence that infinite variety that takes place in the character of our dreams; and the greater regularity of some, and the greater irregularity of others. But the general fatigue and exhaustion may be still more violent ; and it may also be produced by motions in which the internal senses have princi- pally co-operated: and in such cases, not the will only, but the whole of the internal senses concur in the common torpor or inertness that is produced : and we now advance to a third state, which I shall beg leave to call lethargy : dead, senseless sleep, or a stage of sleep without thought or idea of any kind, but still natural and healthy ; the vital organs, though none but the vital organs, still continuing their action. It has been a question often proposed, whether the mind ever does, or ever can, exist without thinking? ]3ut it can only have been proposed by persons who have not paid a due attention to a variety of phenomena, which are per- petually occurring, and which must be conclusive as to the fact. The mind of an infant, or rather of a fetus, must anticipate the thoughts or ideas that are afterward introduced within it. In a complete paroxysm of apoplexy, no man has ever been conscious of a single thought or idea ; in sleepy coma or lethargy in fevers, as opposed to restless coma, the same discontinuity of all thought and idea takes place uniformly ; and we meet with it perhaps still more incontrovertibly in all cases of suspended animation from drowning, hanging, or catalepsy. I enter not into an explanation of this stale of being; I only advert to the fact : though if we had time I do not think it would be impossible to suggest an explanation that might be satisfactory to every one. Thus far we have left the vital or involuntary organs, those over which the will exercises no control, in a state of wakefulness, though none but the in- voluntary organs. For these, in the first place, are far less subject to ex- haustion than tlie organs either of external or internal sense ; their actions in a state of health being always more equable and uniform : and hence, se- condly, from an independence most wisely ordained, and productive of the utmost benefit to the general system, they never catenate with any other actions, except in cases. of extremity. Upon an application, however, of very strong stimuli, whether external, as those of severe pain or labour, or internal. RE VERY, AND TRANCE. S49 as those of disease or excessive grief, the vital or involuntary organs them- selves are fatigued and exhausted ; and when the exhaustion is complete, they also, like the organs of external sense, sleep or become torpid : in other words, DfcATH ensues, the living principle ceases, and the spirit separates from the body. The resemblance, therefore, between death and sleep is not less correct upon the principles of physiology, than it is beautiful among the images of poetry. Sleep is the death or torpitudeof the voluntary organs, while the involuntary continue their accustomed actions. Death is the sleep or torpitude of the whole. Every organ of the animal frame recovers from its fatigue or torpor by rest, provided the principle of life continues. Hence the organs of external sense, in a definite period of time, and a period generally proportioned to the degree of their exhaustion, reacquire their accustomed vigour, are qlive to the influ- ence of their appropriate stimuli ; and the smallest excitement applied to any one of them throws the whole once more into action, in consequence of their habit of acting associately and by common consent. In other words, the man 3 wakes from sleep; he rouses himself from the temporary death of the f organs of external sense. Were it possible for the principle of life to con- >inue during a total rest or torpitude of the vital or involuntary organs, as it * oes during- that of the voluntary, there can be no doubt that these also would, >i time, recover from their exhaustion; and that the man would, in like vianner, awake from the total torpitude, the sleep or death of the entire frame ; ^ut this in man, excepting under very particular circumstances, and circum- tances I shall advert to presently, is impossible. The rule of nature is, that IS soon as the vital or involuntary functions are discontinued, the principle of life ceases; the soul deserts the body; the laws of chemistry, hitherto held in subjection by a superior control^ assert their authority ; and the whole visible system falls a prey to corruption and ruin. When the organs of external sense have recruited themselves by repose, 1 have already observed that the stimulus that rouses the one rouses at the same time the rest, from a habit of association. From the same habit, the torpi- tude produced by exhaustion in any single organ is propagated through every other, and the sleep becomes common to the whole : although it is also un- questionable that the whole are fatigued, or partially exhausted, in conse- quence of the general stock of sensorial power having been borrowed, in a considerable degree, from the rest, and expended at a single outlet. The sensitive fibres of the organs of external sense are equally affected, and of course become equally exhausted, whether a stimulus he applied at the one end or at the other, the end terminating externally or that connected with the brain : and hence, internal excitements, as those of severe study, in- tense grief, undue eating or drinking, or febrile diseases, produce the samp effect as causes operating from without. In either case, the sleep or torpitude produced is sound or healthy under a certain degree of exhaustion alone : hence, mankind sleep most refreshingly after a moderate or accustomed fatigue, moderate or accustomed study, mo- derate or accustomed meals. If the stimulus be a little increased beyond this medium, an undue and morbid proportion of sensorial power is secreted, which postpones, indeed, the torpitude or sleep for the present, but at the expense of the general strength of the system, and an expense to which the vital organs themselves contribute something : whence a far deeper and heavier sleep or torpitude ensues than would have ensued with a less proportion of fatigue. If such torpitude take place before the vital organs are totally exhausted, it is con- fined to the organs of sense alone, which hereby progressively recover their accustomed activity and vigour. But if the vital organs be also exhausted before the torpitude ensues, it will be propao;ated to themselves, the living principle will cease, and the sleep will be the sleep of death. Violent and continued pain or labour, as external stimuli, violent and continued fevers, violent and continued grief, a very inordinate debauch, as internal stimuli, are all liable to produce thes6 effects ; and the one or the other will take place in Droportion to their excess and extremity. 850 Ox\ SLEEP, DREAMING, If a stimulus affecting the organs of sense, at which end soever appliedi be intolerably pungent or forcible, the sensorial power will be exhausted ini. mediately, and the organ directly affected will become instantly torpid. Hence sounds, intolerably loud, make us deaf; excessive light blinds us j acrimonious smells or savours render us incapable of smelling or tasting. And hence an abrupt shock of joy or grief, a sudden and intense paroxysm of fever, large quantities of wine ojr spirits, as internal causes, produce mor- bid lethargy, palsy, apoplexy, which are only so many modifications of the sleep or torpitude of the sensitive and irritative fibres. If the same abrupt and violent cause be sufficient to act upon the vital organs, as well as upon those of external sensation, the torpor becomes universal, and the sleep is once more the sleep of death. It is in this manner that death is produced by a stroke of lightning. As violent stimuli produce sudden and occasionally irrecoverable torpitude, either general or local, stimuli less violent induce a tendency to the same effect. Hence the nostrils of persons not accustomed to snuff are more forci- bly agitated by its application, than those that have been in the use of it : the eyes of persons accustomed to sleep in the glare of the sun, find no in- convenience from exposure to the light of the morning ; while those who usually sleep in total darkness are awoke by its stimulus. And so of the rest. On this account a very small portion of light, of sound, or of exercise, are sufficient sources of exhaustion to those who are not in the habit of using great external or internal activity. Hence savages and quadrupeds, who use but very little internal activity, and no more external activity than is neces- sary to gratify their passions aiid satisfy their hunger, become torpid upon very slight excitements. Hence infants become exhausted upon still slighter excitements; as the exercise of being carried, the mere breath of the air, or the digestion of milk alone in the stomach ; either of which, but especially the whole collectively, is sufficient to make them sleep soundly : — so soundly, indeed, that no common stimulus is able for a long time to rouse them from their torpor. In other words, it requires a period of many hours for the ej^- ternal organs to recover from their exhaustion. The smallest undulatory motion in the uterus, perhaps, or the very action of the vital organs them- selves, may be sufficient to wear out, from time to time, the sensorial power of the fetus on its first formation : and hence the fetus sleeps, with few inter- missions, through the whole period of parturition. For the same reason, persons in advanced age are far less impressed by common stimuli than in any former part of their lives ; from a long series of exposure to their influence, the organs of sense are become more torpid, and hence they require less sleep, and at the same time less food. The vital organs partake of the same disposition, and they are in consequence less liable to violent or inflammatory disorders. But the general torpitude increas- ing, the heart is stimulated with greater difficulty; a smaller portion of sensorial fluid is secreted by the brain ; a smaller portion of nutriment is thrown into the circulation from the digestive organs ; the pulse and every other power gra- dually declines, till at length, if ever man were to die of old age alone, he would die from a total torpor or paralysis of the heart. But debilitated as every organ is become long before such a period can arrive, the general frame is incapable of resisting the smallest of the more trivial shocks, whether external or internal, to which man is daily exposed : in other words, there is no reservoir of sensorial power to supply the local or temporary demand ; and the man dies, even at last, from sudden exhaustion, rather than from pro- gressive paralysis. Sleep, then, is a natural torpitude or inertness, induced upon the organs of the body and the faculties of the mind, by fatigue and exhaustion ; and in a physiological survey, consists of the three stages of slumber, dreaming, and lethargy. In slumber, the exhaustion is slight, and is almost confined to the organs of external sense, the will only inclining to their inertness : in dreaming, the exhaustion is usually more considerable, the will altogether associating in their 'nertness : in lethargy, the exhaustion extends to and REVERY, AND TRANCE. 251 embraces the mental faculties. When the system is under the influence of disease, the usual course of the phenomena of sleep and dreaming is often disturbed and interrupted ; and when the torpitude extends to the vital organs, the effect produced is death. But the chief difficulty in the subject of dreaming remains still to be ac- counted for. How is it possible for thoughts or ideas to exist in the brain, and be continued, while the will, which usually regulates them, and the exter- nal senses which give birth to them, have their continuity of action broken in upon 1 I shall endeavour to explain this difficulty in language as familiar as I can employ. A certain, but a very small, degree of stimulus applied to any of the cere- bral fibres of the human body, whether sensitive or irritative, instead of sen- sibly exhausting them, seems rather to afford them pleasure ; at least the fibres are able to endure it without becoming torpid, or, which is the same thing, requiring sleep or rest. Hence every gentle sight, and every gentle sound, or any other gentle object in nature, to what sense soever it be directed; the still twilight of a summer evening ; the mild lustre of the moon, interwoven with the foliage of forest scenery ; the reposing verdure of a spreading lawn ; soft playful breezes; the modest fragrance of roses and violets; the light murmurs of a rippling stream ; the tinkling of a neighbouring sheepfold, and the sound of village bells at a distance, are all stimuli that produce no sensible exhaustion ; and, on this very account, form some of the most agreeable images in nature. In like manner, the orbicular motion of the lips in a sucking infant is a source of so much comfort, and attended with so little exhaustion, that whether sleeping or waking, it will generally be found mimicking the action of suck- ing, when at a distance from its nurse; and, perhaps, not thinking of such action itself. A person who, from habit, has acquired a particular motion of any one of his limbs, a twirl of the fingers, or a swinging of one leg over the other, perseveres in such motion from habit alone, and feels no torpitude or exhaustion in the fibres that are excited, although it might be intolerably fatiguing to another who has never acquired the same custom. It is probable, then, that thought, and the action of the vital organs,areof this precise character. We are totally ignorant, indeed, of the mysterious mode by which either the one or the other was produced at first ; but we see enough to convince us that the stimulus is, in both cases, equally pleasing and gentle. And hence both actions continue without exhausting us, except when unduly roused ; and form a habit too pertinacious to be broken through by any ordi- nary opposition. Thought, then, is to the sensory that which the motions I have just spoken of are to the, muscles which are the subjects of them. Both continue alike, M'hether we be reflecting upon the habit or not: but the habit of thinking is so much older, and consequently so much deeper-rooted, than that of any kind of muscular motion, except the muscular motion of the vital organs, that it is impossible for us to subdue it by the utmost efforts of the will : whence, like the action of the vital organs, it accompanies us, not only at all times when awake, but in all ordinary cases during sleep, and is the immediate and necessary cause of our dreaming. Thought can only be exercised upon perceptions introduced into the sen- sory by the organs of external sense; and hence the chief bent of our thoughts must be derived, whether sleeping or waking, from the objects or perceptions that most deeply impress us. The train of thoughts, then, that recurs from habit alone, as in sleep or total retirement from the world, must generally be of this description : in the former case, however, by no means correctly or perfectly ; because there are others also which have a tendency to recur, and neither the will nor the senses are in action to regulate or repress them. Whence, as I have already observed, proceeds a combination of thouglits or ideas, sometimes only in a small degree incongruous, and at other times most wild and heterogeneous ; occasionally, indeed, so fearful and extravagant as to stimulate the senses themselves into a sudden renewal 252 ON SLEEP, DREAMING, of their functions, and consequently, to break off abruptly the sleep into whicn they were thrown. Let us pursue this train of reasoning", and it will lead us to account, if I " mistake not, for some of the most extraordinary facts that are connected with the recondite subject of sleep and dreaming-. I have just observed that the stimulus of our ideas in dreaming is often suf- ficient to rouse tlie external senses generally, and to awake us all of a sudden. But this stimulus may also be of such a kind, and just such a strength, as to excite into their accustomed action the muscles of those organs or members only which are more immediately connected with the train of our dreams, or incoherent thoughts, while every other organ still remains torpid. And hence, the muscles chiefly excited being those of speech, some persons talk ; and others, the muscles chiefly excited being those of locomotion, walk in their sleep, without being conscious on their waking of any such occurrence. Whatever be the set of fibres that have chiefly become exhausted from the labour or stimulus of the day, the rest, as I iiave already noticed, partake of the torpitude from a habit of association ; exhausted in some degree, also, themselves, by the share of sensorial power which, as from a common stock, they have contributed towards the support of the debilitated organ. But it sometimes happens, either from disease or peculiarity of constitution, that all the organs of external sense do not associate in such action, or yield alike to the general torpor of the frame: and that the auditory, the optical, or some other sense continues awake or in vigour while all the other senses are be- come inert ; as it does also that such particular sense, like the muscles of par- ticular members, as observed just above, is awoke or restimulated into action in the midst of the soundest sleep, by the peculiar force and bent of the dream, while all the rest continue torpid. If the organ of external sense thus affected with wakefulness be that of hearing, a phenomenon may occur whith has often been noticed as far back, indeed, as the times of the Greek and Roman poets, but which has never hitherto, I believe, been satisfactorily explained; the dreamer may in this case hear a by-stander who speaks to him ; and if, from a cause above speci- fied, hesheuld also have happened to talk in his sleep, so as to give the by- stander some clew into the train of thoughts of which his dream is composed, a conversation may be maintained, and the by-stander, by dexterous manage- ment, and the assumption of a character wliich he finds introduced into the dream, may be able to draw from the dreamer the profoundest secrets of his bosom ; the other senses of the dreamer, instead of hereby rousing to detect the imposition, being plunged into a still deeper torpitude, from the demand of an increased quantity of sensorial power to support the exhaustion which the wakeful or active organ is, in consequence, sustaining. This, however, is a case of rare occurrence, though it seems to have occurred occasionally. If the wakeful organ be that of sight, and the dreamer, from a ca;i!i?e just adverted to, be accustomed to walk instead of to talk in his sleep, he will be able to make his way towards any place to which the course of his dream may direct him, with perfect ease, and without the smallest degree of danger. He will see more or less distinctly, in proportion as the organ of sight is more or less awake ; yet from the increased exhaustion, and of course increased tor- por of the other organs, in consequence of an increased demand of sensorial power from the common stock to support the action of the sense and muscles immediately engaged, every other sense must necessarily be thrown into a deeper sleep, or torpor, than on any other occasion. Hence the ears will not be roused even by a sound that might otherwise awake him ; he will be insensi- ble, not only to a simple touch, but to a severe shaking of his limbr^ ; and may even cough violently without being recalled from his dream. Having accom- plished the object of his pursuit, he may safely return, even over the most dangerous precipices, for he sees them distinctly, to his bed ; and the organ of sight, being now quite exhausted, or there being no longer any occasion for its use, may once more associate in the general torpor, and the dream take a new turn and consist of a new combination of imagf s. REVERY, AND TRANCE. 253 The view we have thus taken of sleep and dreaming will explain a variety of other curious phenomena in natural philosophy, which have usually been supposed of very difficult elucidation. What is REVERY? It is the dream of a man while awake. He is so intently bent upon a particular train of thought, that he is torpid to every thing else: he sees nothing, he hears nothing, he feels nothing; and the only difference between the two is, that in common dreaming, the sensitive and irritative power of the external senses is exhausted progressively and generally, while the will partakes of the exhaustion; and that in revery the whole is directed to a single outlet, the will, instead of being exhausted, being riveted upon this one point alone; and the external senses being alone rendered tor- pid from the drain that is thus made upon them to support the superabundant flow of sensitive and irritative power expended upon the prevailing ecstasy. It was my intention to have cited a few singular instances of this wonderful aberrancy of the mind ; and to have followed them up with a momentary glance at those interesting subjects so closely connected with it, nightmare, delirium, madness, idiotism; but the time will by no means allow me, and i hasten to close with a few observations upon winter-sleep and the revivifica- tion of certain animals after their appearing to be dead. Upon a general survey of the preceding observations, it should follow that every part of the animal system may safely sleep or become torpid except the vital organs, or those thai act independently of the will ; and that the moment these participate in the torpor the principle of life ceases, and the spirit sepa- rates from the body. Why the principle of life should even then cease we know not, for we know not what produced its union at first. There are vari- ous circumstances, however, which prove that this, though a general rule, is not a rule without its exceptions. We have all heard and read of such extra- ordinary occurrences as trances, or apparent absences of the soul from the body; we have heard and read of persons who, after having been apparently dead for many days, and on the point of being buried, have returned to a full possession of life and health; and although most of these histories are wrapped up m so much mystery and superstition, as to be altogether unworthy of no- lice, there are many too cautiously drawn up and authenticated to be dis- missed in so cursory a manner. But let us proceed to a few facts of a simi- lar, yet of a more extraordinary kind, and which are or may be within the personal knowledge of every one. In cases of suspended animation by hanging, drowning, or catalepsy, the vital principle continues attached to the body after all the vital functions cease to act, often for half an hour, and sometimes for hours. In the year 1769, Mr. John Hunter, being then forty-one years of age, of a sound constitution, and subject to no disease except a casual fit of the gout, was suddenly attacked with a pain in the stomach, which was shortly succeeded by a total suspension of the action of the heart and of the lungs. By the power of the will, or rather by violent striving, he occasionally inflated the lungs, but over the heart he had no control whatever: nor, though he was attended by four of the chief physicians in London from the first, could the action of either be restored by medicine. In about three-quarters of an hour, however, the vital actions began to return of their own accord, and in two hours he was per- fectly recovered. "In this attack," observes Mr. (now Sir Evcrard) Home, who has given an interesting memoir of his life, " there was a suspension of the most material involuntary actions : even involuntary breathing was stopped : while sensation, with its consequences, as thinking and acting, with the will, were perfect, and all the voluntary actions were as strong as before." In the whole history of man I do not know of a more extraordinary case. The functions of the soul were perfect, while the most important functions of the body, those upon which the life depends absolutely, in all ordinary cases, were dead for nearly an hour. Why did not the soul separate from the body? and why did not the body itself commence that change, that subjection to the jiws of chemical affinity, which it evinces in every ordinary case of the death or 254 ON VOICE AND LANGUAGE ; inaction of the vital organs? Because in the 'present instance, as in every instance of suspended animation from hanging- or drowning, the vital princi- ple, whatever it consist in, had not ceased, or deserted the corporeal frame. It continued visible in its effect, though invisible in its essence and mode of operation. Let us apply this remark to the subject immediately before us : it will serve as a ready clew to its intricacies. In many animals, then, and in most vegetables, the living principle often continues in the same man- ner to reside in and to actuate the organic frame ; while the vital functions, as they are called, and, in conjunction with these, all the other functions of the system, remain inactive, not for an hour only, but for months and some- times for years. It does so in the seeds of plants and the eggs of animals, so long as they are capable of germinating or pullulating. It does so in most animals, and perhaps in all vegetables, that sleep or become torpid during the winter-season ; for though in a few hibernating animals, as the hedgehog and Alpine marmot, we trace a small degree of corporeal action from their ap- pearing thinner on returning to activity in the spring, the greater number, like dormice and squirrels, exhibit no diminution whatever. It does so, in a more extraordinary manner, in the ears of blighted corn ; vvhich, though inca- pable of filling and fattening, and seemingly lifeless and effete, still contain a seed that may be rendered productive of a sound and healthy increase. It does so in various species of the moss ; in various species of the snail, in one or two of the snake, in the wheel-polype, sloth, and tile-eel, and a variety of other animals and animalcules, that, like many of the preceding, have been kept apparently dead and in the form of dried preparations, totally destitute of irritability, altogether withered, and in substance as hard as a board for months and years, — in some instances as long as twenty years, — and have afterward been restored to life and activity upon the application of warmth, moisture, or some other appropriate stimulus.* These are extraordinary facts, and may be difficult to be comprehended: but they are facts, nevertheless, and may be proved at any time and by any person. But there is a fact still more extraordinary, and of infinitely higher moment ; and one in which we are all infinitely more interested — a fact to which these remarks naturally lead, and which they may serve in some de- gree to illustrate; it is the termination of the sleep of death, the resurrection of the body from the grave. LECTURE VIIL ON VOICE AND LANGUAGE ; VOCAL IMITATION, AND VENTRILOQUISM. Language, in the fullest scope of the term, is of two kinds ; natural ana articulate or artificial. The first belongs to most animals ; the last is pecu- liar to man : it is his great and exclusive prerogative. This also is of two divisions: oral or vocal, which constitutes speech; and literal or legible, which constitutes writing- The first of these divisions shall form our subject for the present study ; the second we will examine in a subsequent lecture. At the root of the tongue lies a minute semi-lunar shaped bone, which, from its resemblance to the Greek letter u, or upsilon, is called the hyoid or u-like bone ; and immediately from this bone arises a long cartilaginous lube, which extends to the lungs, and conveys the air backward and forward in the pro- cess of respiration.! This tube is denominated the trachea or windpipe ; and * Snails revived after beinc dried fifteen years and more.— Phil. Trans. 1774, p. 432. See also Mr. Bauer's Croonian Lecture " On the Suspension of the Muscular Powers of the Vibrio Tri tici.-^Phil. Trans. 1823, Art. i. He has revived this curious worm after perfect torpitude and apparent death for five years and eight months, merely by soaking it in water. t Study of Medicine, vol " i p. 457, edit. I. VOCAL IMITATION, AND VENTRILOQUISM. 255 inc. upper part of it, or that immediatel}'^ connected with the hyoid-bone, the larynx: and it is this upper part or larynx alone that constitutes the seat of the voice. The tube of the larynx, short as it is, is formed of five distinct cartilages; the largest, and apparently, though not really, lowermost of wliich, produces that acute projecrtion or knot in the anterior part of the neck, and especially in the neck of males, of which every one must be sensible. This is not a complete ring, but is open behind ; the open space being filled up, in order to make a complete ring, with two other cartilages of a smaller size and power; and which together form the glottis, as it is called, or aperture out of the mouth into the larynx. The fourth cartilage lies immediately over this aperture, and closes it in the act of swallowing, so as to direct the food to the esopha- gus, another opening immediately behind it, whi(;h leads to the stomach. These four cartilages are supported by a fifth, which constitutes their basis ; is narrow before, and broad behind, and has some resemblance to a seal-ring. The larynx is contracted and dilated in a variety of ways by the antagonist power of diflferent muscles, and the elasticity of its cartilaginous coats; and is covered internally with a very sensible, vascular, and mucous mem- brane, which is a continuation of the membrane of the mouth. The organ of the voice then is the larynx, its muscles, and other append- ages ; and the voice itself is the sound of the air propelled through and striking against the sides of its glottis, or opening into the mouth. The shrillness or roughness of the voice depends on the internal diameter of the glottis, its elasticity, mobility, and lubricity, and the force with which the air is protruded. Speech is the modification of the voice into distinct articula- tions, in the cavity of the glottis itself, or in that of the mouth, or of the nostrils. Those aiiimals only that possess lungs possess a larynx, and hence none but the first three classes in the Linnaean system, consisting of mammals, birds, and amphibials. Even among these, however, some genera or species are entirely dumb, as the myrmecophaga or ant-eater, the manis or pangolin, and the cetaceous tribes, together with the tortoise, lizards, and serpents ; while others lose their voice in particular regions: as the dog is said to do in some parts of America^* and quails and frogs in various districts of Siberia.f It is from the greater or less degree of perfection with which the larynx is formed in the different classes of animals that possess it, that the voice is rendered more or less perfect ; and it is by an introduction of superadded membranes, or muscles, into its generalstructure, or a variation in the shape, position, or elasticity of those that are common to it, that quadrupeds and other animals are capable of making those peculiar sounds, by which their different kinds are respectively characterized, and are able to neigh, bray, bark, or roar; to purr as the cat and tiger kind, to bleat as the sheep, or to croak as the frog. The larynx of the bird class is of a very peculiar form, and admirably adapted to that sweet and varied music with which we are so often delighted in the woodlands. In reality, the whole extent of the trachea or windpipe in birds may be regarded as one vocal apparatus; for the larynx is divided into two sections, or may rather, perhaps, be considered as two distinct organs ; the more complicated, or that in which the parts are more numerous and elaborate, being placed at the bottom of the trachea, where it divides into two branches, one for each of the lungs ; and the simpler, or that in which the parts are fewer, and consist of those not included in the former, occupying its usual situation at the upper end of the trachea, which, however, is without an epiglottis; the food and other substances being incapable of entering the aperture of the glottis from another contrivance. The lungs, trachea, and larynx of birds, therefore, may be regarded as forming a complete natural bagpipe ; in which the lungs constitute the pouch and supply the wind ; the trachea itself the pipe ; the inferior glottis the reed, or mouth-piece, which produces the simple sound ; and the superior glottis the finger-holes, whicU • Pennant, Arctic Zool t MuUer, Collect, of Ruasian Discoveries, vol. vii. p.. 122 256 ON VOICE AND LANGUAGE; modify the simplo sound into an infinite variety of distinct notes, and at the same time y:ive them utterance. Here, liowevtM", as among- quadrupeds, we meet with a considerable diver- sity in the structure of the vocal apparatus, and especially in the length and diameter of the tube or trachea, not only in the different species, hut often in the different sexes of the same species, more particularly among nquatio birds. Thus the trachea is straight in the tame or dumb swan (anas Olor) of both sexes ; while in the male musical swan (anas Cygnus) it winds into a large convolution contained in the hollow of the sternum. In the spoon-bill (platalea Leucorodia), as also in the mot-mot pheasant (phasianus Mot-mot)^ and some others, similar windings of the trachea occur, not enclosed in the sternum. The males of the duck and merganser (Anas and Mergus) have, at the inferior larynx, a bony addition to the cavity which contributes to strengthen their voice. Many of the frog genus have a sac or bag in the throat, directly communi- cating with the brynx, as the tree frog (rana arborea)^ while the green frog (rana esculenia) has two considerable pouches in the cheeks, which it inflates at th6 time of coupling, by two openings close to the glottis. And it is on this account they are able to give forth that kind of croaking music which they generally begin in the evening and continue through the greater part of the night. Two or three species, possessed of a similar kind of apparatus, are very clamorous animals ; and, pretending to a knowledge of the weather, are peculiarly noisy before rain or thunder-storms ; while several, as the jocular and laughing toad (rana risihunda and r. bombina) are of a merriei mood, and seem to imitate with tolerable exactness the 1-^ugh of the human voice, in the hey-dey of their activity, which is always in the evening. Amony the bh'd tribes there are some possessed of powers of voi<;e so sin- gular, independently of that of their own natural music, that I cannot consent to pass them over in total silence. The note of the pipra musica or tuneful manakin, is not only intrinsically sweet, but forms a complete octave ; one note succeeding another in ascending and measured intervals, through tlie whole range of its diapason. This bird is an inhabitant of St. Domingo, of a black tint, with a blue crown and yellow front and rump; about four inches long, very shy, and dexterous in eluding the vigilance of such as attempt to take it. The imitative power of several species of the corvus and psittacus kinds is well known ; the jays and parrots are those most commonly taught, and the far-famed parrot of the late Colonel O'Kelly, which could repeat twenty of our most popular songs, and sing them to their proper tune^, has been, I suppose, seen and heard by most of us. The bullfinch (loxia Pyrrhula), however, has a better voice, as well as a more correct taste in copying musi- cal tones, and the bird breeders of Germany find a lucrative employment in training multitudes of this family for a foreign market. The talents of the nightingale (motacilla Lucina) for speaking are, like- wise, said to be very extraordinary, and even equal to his talents for singing. But where is the man, whose bosom burns with a single spark of the love of nature, that could for one moment "consent that this pride and delight of the groves should barter away the sweet wildness of its native wood-notes for any thing that art can offer in its stead ? There is no species, however, so mutdi entitled to notice on account of its voice, as the polyglottis, or mocking-bird. This is an individual of the thrush kind ; its own natural note is delightfully musical and solemn ; but beyond this it possesses an instinctive talent of imitating the note of every other kind of singing bird, and even the voice of every bird of prey, so exactly, as to de ceive the very kinds it attempts to mock. It is moreover playful enough to fkid amusement in the deception : and takes a pleasure in decoying smaller birds near it by mimicking their notes, when it frightens them almost to death, or drives them away witii all speed, by pouring upon them the screams of such birds of prey as they dread. Now it is clear that the imitative, like the natural voice, has its seat in the cartilages and other moveable powers that form the larynx : for the great VOCAL IMITATION, AND VENTRILOQUISM. 257 body of the trachea only gives measure to the sound, and renders it more or less copious in proportion to its volume. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that a similar sort of imitative power should be sometimes cultivated with success in the human larynx; and that we should occasionally meet with persons, who, from long and dexterous practice, should be able to imitate the notes of almost all the singing-birds of the woods, or the sounds of other ani- mals, or even to personate the different voices of orators and other public speakers. One of the most extraordinary instances of this last kind consists in the art of what is called ventriloquism,* of which no very plausible explanation has hitherto been offered to the world. The practitioner of this occult art is well known to have a power of modifying his voice in such a manner as to imitate the voices of different persons conversing at a considerable distance from each other, and in very different tones. And hence the first impression which this ingenious trick or exhibition produced on the world, was that of the artist's possessing a double or triple larynx ; the additional larynxes being supposed to be seated still deeper in the chest than the lowermost of the two that belong to birds : whence indeed the name of ventriloquism or belly- speaking. Mr. Gough has attempted in the Memoirs of the Manchester So- ciety, to resolve the whole into the phenomena of echoes ; the ventriloquist being conceived by him on all occasions to confine himself to a room well disposed for echoes in various parts of it, and merely to produce false voices by directing his natural voice in a straight line towards such echoing parts, instead of in a straight line towards the audience ; who, upon this view of the subject, are supposed to be artfully placed on one or both sides of the ven- triloquist. It is sufficient to observe, in opposition to this conjecture, that it does not account for the perfect quiescence of the mouth and cheeks of the performer while employing his feigned voices ; and that an adept in the art, like Mr. Fitzjames or Mr. Alexander, is wholly indifferent to the room in which he practises, and will allow another person to choose a room for him. Mr. Fitzjames is a native of France ; and his vocal art and vocal povi^ers have been paid particular attention to by M. Richerand, one of the most popular French physiologists of the day ; who has also examined the vocal organs of other ventriloquists, and observes, as the result of his investigations, that although there is little or no motion in the cheeks during the art of speaking, there is a considerable demand and expenditure of air; the ventriloquist always inhaling deeply before he commences his deception, passing a part of the air thus inhaled through his nostrils, and being able to continue his vari- ous voices as long as the inspired air may last, or till he has inhaled a fresh supply. This view of the subject induced M. Richerand to relinquish the old hypo- thesis of a kind of vocal organ being seated in the stomach, to which we have already adverted, and which he had formerly embraced ; though it does not appear that he has very distinctly adopted any other in its stead : " At first,'* says he, " I had conjectured that a great part of the air expelled by expiration did not pass out by the mouth and nostrils, but was swallowed and carried into the stomach; and, being reflected in some part of the digestive canal, gives rise to a real echo ; but having afterward more attentively observed this curious phenomenon in Mr. Fitzjames, who exhibits it in its greatest perfection, I was soon convinced that the name of ventriloquism is by no means applicable ; since the whole of its mechanism consists in a slow gra- dual expiration; in which the artist either influences at his will the surround- ing rnuscles of the chest, or keeps down the epiglottis by the base of the tongue, the point of which is not protruded beyond the arch of the teeth. "f ^I. de la Chapelle, without offering any particular explanation of this curious art, published, in 1772, an ingenious work, in which he attempted to prove that ventriloquism is of a very ancient date ; and that it formed the mode by which the responses of many of the oracles of former times were delivered ♦ Study of Medicine, vol i. p. 463, edit. 1. t Nouveaux E16mens de Physiologic, in loc. Paris. 1804. R 258 ON VOICE AND LANGUAGE; by the priests and priestesses to the credulous multitude around them. And although this able writer has not fully succeeded in establishing his point, it must be allowed by every one that no art, while it continued occult, could better answer the purpose of such a sort of imposition ; for an adept in the science is capable of modulating and inflecting his voice with so nice a dex- terity, as not only to imirate, with equal accuracy, the cries of dogs, cats, infants, and persons in distress, together with every modification of articulate speech, but apparently to throw the mimic sound from whatever quarter he chooses : from the ceiling or roof of a house ; the corner of a room ; the mouths, stomachs, or pockets of any of the company present; from their hands or feet, from beneath a hat or a glass, or from a wooden doll. A hu- morous artist of this kind is said to have amused himself some years ago, by frequent 'nsr the fish-market at Edinburgh, and making a fish appear to speak, and g've the lie to its vender in her own gross phrasing, upon her affirming that it was fresh, and caught in the morning; the fish quaintly replying as often as she so asserted, that it had been dead for a week, and that she knew it. This singular art has given rise to a variety of extraordinary tales, and some of them of a very amusing kind. The following, which 1 copy from M. Bordeau, a learned critic of the sixteenth century, is of this description, and I will for once break through' our accustomed gravity in order to give it you : — The gallant Francis 1. of France had an equally gallant and very shrewd valet-de-chambre, of the name of Lewis Brabant, who was also a most skilful ventriloquist. Lewis Brabant had the misfortune to fall desperately in love with a young, very beautiful, and very wealthy heiress, whose father forbade his addresses in consequence of the disparity of his condition. The father, however, died soon after, and the courageous lover, unsubdued by a first repulse, was determined to try his fortune a second time, under favour of the new state of circumstances, and to see whether it would not be possible, upon a severe push, to call to his aid the art of ventriloquism, in which he was so considerable an adept. He accordingly waited upon the mother as soon as decency would allow, and once more submitted his proposals. But faithful to the views of her deceased husband, the mother of the young lady made no scruple of once more giving Lewis Brabant a direct refusal. While, however, she was in the act of doing so, alow, hollow, sepulchral voice was heard by herself, and by every friend who was with her, and which was instantly recognised as the voice of the deceased, commanding her to give her daughter's hand imme- diately to Lewis Brabant, whom the piteous spirit affirmed he now knew to be a most worthy and excellent man, and considerably wealthier than he had taken him to be when alive; adding, at the same time, that he was at that moment suffering a part of the pains of purgatory for having ill-treated, by his refusal, so exemplary a man ; and that he would not be released from them till his widow had consented. All was mute astonishment; but Lewis Brabant appeared more astonished than the rest. He modestly observed, that whatever his merits or his virtues might be, he had no idea that they were worthy of being commemorated by a voice from the grave ; but that nothing could give him more pleasure than to be made the happy instrument of extricating the old gentleman from the pains of purgatory, which it seemed he was suffering on his account. There was no doubt as to the voice; and, consequently, there was no doubt as to the path to be-TDursued; the mother, the daughter, the whole family, imme- diately assented with one accord, and Lewis Brabant had the honour to receive their commands to prepare for the nuptials with all speed. To prepare for the nuptials, however, required the assistance of a littk ready money; but Lewis Brabant was destitute of such an article. It was necessary, nevertheless, to procure it ; and he now resolved to try whether the same talent which had obtained for him the promise of a wife, might not EiR-o obtain for him the material he stood in need of. VOCAL IMITATION, AND VENTRILOQUISM. 269 He recollected that there lived at Lyons an old miserly banker, of the name of Cornu, who had accumulated immense vvecilth by usury and extor- tion, and whose conscience appeared often to be ill at ease, in consequence of the means he had made use of; and it immediately struck him that M. Cornu was the very character that might answer his purpose. To liyons, therefore, he went instantly post-haste, commenced an imme- diate acquaintance with M. Cornu, and on every interview took especial care, on enterhig into conversation with him, to contrast the pure happiness en- joyed by the man whose conscience could look back, like M. Cornu's, as he was pleased to say, on a life devoted to acts of charity and benevolence, with the horrors of the wretch who had amassed heaps of wealth by usury and injustice, and whose tormented mind only gave him now a foretaste of what he was to expect hereafter. The miser was perpetually desirous of changing the conversation ; but the more he tried, the more his companion pressed upon him with it ; till finding, on one occasion, that he appeared more agi- tated than ever, the ventriloquist conceived such an occasion to be the golden moment for putting his scheme into execution ; and at that instant a low, solemn, sepulchral mutter was heard, as in the former case, which was at last found to be the voice of M. Cornu's father, who had been dead for some years, and which declared him to have passed all this time in the tortures of purgatory, from which he had now just learned that nothing could free him but his son's paying ten thousand crowns into the hands of Lewis Brabant, then with him, for the purpose of redeeming Christian slaves from the hands of the Turks. All, as in the last case, was unutterable astonishment ; but Lewis Brabant was the most astonished of the two: modestly declared that now for the first time in his life he was convinced of the possibility of the dead holding con- versation with the living: a4id admitted that, in truth, he had for many years been benevolently employed in redeeming Christian slaves from the Turks, although his native bashfulness would not allow him to avow it publicly. The mind of the old miser was distracted with a thousand contending pas- sions. He was s'uspicious without having any satisfactory reason for sus- picion ; filial duty prompted him to rescue his father from his abode of misery : but ten thousand crowns was' a large sum of money even for such a purpose. He at length resolved to adjourn the meeting till the next day, and to change it to another place. He required time to examine into this mysterious affair, and also wished, as he told his companion, to give his father an opportunity of trying whether he could not bargain for a smaller sum. They accordingly separated ; but renewed their meeting the next day with the punctuality of men of business. The place made choice of by M. Cornu, for this rencounter, was an open common in the vicinity of Lyons, where there was neither a house, nor a wall, nor a tree, nor a bush that could conceal a confederate, even if such a person should be in employment. No sooner, however, had they met than the old banker's ears were again assailed with the same hideous and sepulchral cries, upbraiding him for having suffered his father to remain for four-and-twenty hours longer in all the torments of pur- gatory ; denouncing that, unless the demand of the ten thousand crowns was instantly complied with, the sum would be doubled ; and that the miser himself would be condemned to the same doleful regions, and to an increased degree of torture. M. Cornu moved a few paces forward, but he was assaulted with still louder shrieks: he advanced a second time, and now instead of hearing his father's voice alone, he was assailed with the dreadful outcry of a hundred ghosts at once, those of his grandfather, his great-grandfather, his uncles and aunts, and the whole family of the Cornus for the last two or three genera- tions ; who, it »t;ems, were all equally suffering in purgatory — and were included in the general contract for the ten thousand crowns ; all of them beseeching him in the name of every saint in the calendar to nave mercy upon them, and to have mercy upon himself. It required more fortitude than M. Cornu possessed to resist the threats and outcries of a hundred and fifty or two hundred ghosts at a time. He instantly paid the ten thousand crowns B2 260 ON VOICE AND LANGUAGE ; into the hands of Lewis Brabant, and felt some pleasure that by postponing the payment for a day, he had at least been able to rescue the whole family of the Cornus for the same sum of money as was at first demanded for his father alone. The dexterous ventriloquist, having received the money* instantly returned to Paris, married his intended bride, and told the whole story to his sovereign and the court, very much to the entertainment of all of them. It is certain, that hitherto no satisfactory explanation has been offered of this singular phenomenon ; and I shall, therefore, take leave to suggest, that it is, possibly, of a much simpler character than has usually been appre- hended ; that the entire range of its imitative power is confined to the larynx alone, and that the art itself consists in a close attention to the almost infinite variety of tones, articulations, and inflections the larynx is capable of pro- ducing in its own region, when long and dexterously practised upon, and a skilful modification of these effects into mimic speech, passed for the most part, and whenever necessary, through the cavity of the nostrils, instead of through the mouth. The parrot, in imitating human language, employs the larynx and nothing else ; as does the mocking-bird, the most perfect ventri- loquist in nature, in imitating cries and intonations of ail kinds. But the parrot and the mocking-bird, it may, perhaps, be said, opeii their mouths and employ their tongues, which the ventriloquist, on many occa- sions, does not do ; and that hence the organ of the tongue is equally neces- sary to inarticulate and to articulate language. Such, I well know, is the general opinion ; but it is an opinion opposed by a variety of incontrovertible facts, and facts of a most important and singular nature, though they have seldom been attended to as they deserve. Every bird-breeder knows that it is not necessar}'^ for birds to open their bills in the act of singing, except for the purpose of uttering the note already formed in the larynx, that would otherwise have to pass through the nostrils, which, in birds, prove a much less convenient passage for sound than in man ; and of so little use is the tongue towards the formation of sound, that instances are not wanting of birds that have continued their song after they have lost the entire tongue by accident or disease. But without dwelling upon these points, which are of subordinate consideration, 1 pass on to ob- serve, and to produce examples, that it is not absolutely necessary for a man himself to be possessed of a tongue, or even of an uvula, for the purpose either of speaking or singing ; or for that of deglutition or taste, in a course of physiological study, and in a lecture upon the nature and instruments of the voice, this is an inquiry, not only of grave moment, but immediately issuing from the subject before us. Among almost innumerable instances of persons who have been able to articulate and converse without a tongue, too loosely recorded in ancient times to be fully depended upon, we occasionally meet with examples that are far better entitled to our credit. Such is the assertion of the Emperor Justin,* who affirms, that he had seen venerable men " whose tongues having been cut out at the root, complained bitterly of the torture they had suffered ;" and who tells us, in another place, of some others, upon whom Honorichius, king of the Vandals, had exercised the same barbarity ; and who had, not- withstanding, "perfectly retained their speech."! Upon the irruption of the Turks into xVustria, in 1683, this cruelty was again put in practice upon many of those who unfortunately fell into their hands Tulpius, whose veracity no man will lightly impeach, was at this time in- formed that one of the sufferers had escaped, and had recovered, and wa& still in possession of the use of speech, and residing at Wesop, in Holland , and, half doubtful of the truth of the common report, to Wesop he imme diately set off, to satisfy himself by a personal examination. He saw the man, and found that he could not only speak, but could articulate those consonants and words which seem chiefly to depend upon the tip of the tongue for theiir • C«n. Tit. de Off. Frapt. t Phil. Trans. 1742, p. 143 ; ib, 1T4T, 621 j in the Aljridg. vui. 596- ix. 375. VOCAL IMITATION, ANJ) VENTRILOQUISM. ^i pronuiiL'iation. This is a case the more worthy of attention, because the man had been so cruelly mutilated at the roof of the mouth, that he could not swallow the smallest quantity of food, without thrusting it into the esophagus with his forefinger.* In the third volume of the Ephemerides Germanicae, is another case of a similar kind, and most credibly authenticated. It relates to a boy that had lost his tongue at eight years of age by the small-pox, but was still able to speak. The boy was minutely examined in a full court before the members of the University of Saumur, in France, who had suspected some deception; the report, however, was found correct; and the University, in consequence, gave their official attestation to it, in order that posterity might have no room to doubt its validity. To these let me add one more instance that occurred in our own country, in what may be almost called our own day, and which is very minutely de- tailed and authenticated in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society that were published between the years 1742 and 1747.t The case, as drawn up by Dr. Parsons, relates to a young woman of the name of Margaret Cut- ting, of Wickham Market, near Ipswich, in Suffolk, who, when only four years old, lost the whole of her tongue, together with the uvula, from what is said to have been a cancerous affection ; but who still retained the power of speech, deglutition, and taste, without any imperfection whatever; articulating, indeed, as fluently, and with as much correctness as other persons ; and, like the individual whose history is given by Tullius, articulating those peculiar syllables which ordinarily require the express aid of the tip of the tongue for exact enunciation. She also sang to admiration, and still articulated her words while singing, and could form no conception of the use of a tongue in other people. Neither were her teeth, in any respect, able to supply the place of the deficient organs ; for they were but few in number, and rose scarcely higher than the surface of the gums, in consequence of the injury to their sockets from the disease that had destroyed the tongue. The case thus in- troduced before the Royal Society, was attested by the minister of the parish, a medical practitioner of repute, and another respectable person. From its f-ingularity, however, the Society evinced a commendable tardiness of belief, '^hey requested another report upon the subject, and from another set of wit- nesses, whom they themselves named for the purpose ; and for whose gui- aance they drew up a line of categorical examination. This second report sooMi reached the Society, and minutely coincided with the first ; and to set tli»- question completely at rest, the young woman was shortly afterward brought to London, and satisfied the Royal Society in her own person. J li appears obvious, then, that the tongue, though a natural and common organ in the functions of voice, taste, and deglutition, is not absolutely neces- sary to these functions ; that on various occasions it has been, and therefore, may be, totally lost, while the functions themselves continue perfect. In singing, every one knows that the larnyx is the only organ employed, except when the tones are not merely uttered but articulated : it is the only organ employed, as I have already observed, in the mock articulations of par- rots and other imitative birds: it is the only organ of all natural tones, or natural language ; and hence Lord Monboddo ingeniously conjectures, that it is the chief organ of articulate language in its rude«t and most barbarous state, " As all natural cries," he observes, " even though modulated by music, are from the throat and larynx, or part of the throat, with little or no operation of the organs of the mouth ; it is natural to suppose that the first languages were, for the greater part, spoken from the throat ; and that what consonants were used to vary the cries, were mostly guttural; and that the organs of the mouth would at first be but very little employed."*^ I have thus endeavoured to account for the chief diflUculty, and the most * Tulpii Observ. Meflicae, Amsterd. t In their abridged form, vol. viii. 586, and Ix. 375 X Study of Med. i. 499, edit. 1, v/here other examples are noticed. ^ Orig. and Progr. of Lang. vol. i. 6 , iii. ch. 4 262 UN NATURAL OR INARTICULATE, AND extraordinary phenomenon that occurs in the art of ventriloquism,* that 1 mean of speaking without appearing to speak, or discovering any motion of the lips : the larynx alone, by long and dexterous practice, and, perhaps, by a peculiar modification in some of its muscles or cartilages, being f -^pable of answering the purpose and supplying the place of the associate organs of the mouth. It is this curious power in the art of ventriloquism that most astonishes us, and puts us off our guard ; for the two other powers connected with it, of imitating various cries or voices, and of appearing to throw the voice from remote objects, are far more common and comprehensible. The power of vocal imitation where the tongue is allowed to be employed is possessed, by most persons, to a certain extent ; and, by many, to a degree of accuracy, that would certainly deceive us in the dark ; or if, by any other means, the performer were concealed from us. While the only point necessary to give the voice the semblance of issuing from a distant or unusual object, is to take a nice measure of the distance itself, and of the nature of the object from which it is to be presumed to issue, and so to modulate or inflect it as to pro- duce the natural tone it may be supposed to possess, if thrown from such a distance or from such a form. It must be obvious, however, that the surprise resulting from the mystery of thus imitating voices and distances must be powerfully aided in ventriloquism by the additional mystery of the artist's motionless mouth ; in consequence of which we are totally incapable of refer- ring it to himself. In hearing, as in seeing, habit is our only guide : in both we only judge by accustomed comparisons ; and we are exactly in the same manner deceived by .the painter, and even allow ourselves to be de- ceived in regard to objects of vision, as we are by the ventriloquist, and with- out such allowance, in regard to objects of sound. In respect to both senses, indeed, we often deceive ourselves in judging of the most common phe- nomena : and hence, it is not at all to be wondered at that we should be com- pletely imposed upon by the nice delusions of art. Thus the evening sky, begirt with gold-green clouds at the extremity of the horizon, is often mis- taken for the ocean, studded with islands ; and the rumbling of a cart over pavement, or hard ground, is not unfrequently believed to be a thuiider-claj in the heavens ; and, under the influence of this last deception, we imme- diately transfer all the awfulness and magnificence of the celestial meteor to this clumsy piece of machinery, and are as alarmed as if the fiery bolt were about to descend upon us. LECTURE IX. ON NATURAL OR INARTICULATE, AND ARTIFICIAL OR ARTICULATE LANGUAGE. tiAviNG, in our last lecture, examined into the seat and properties of the natural voice, let us now proceed to notice the mode in w^ich it is applied to the formation, first, of natural language, and next, of speech, or artificial language. Natural language is the instinctive appropriation of certain tones of the natural voice, to indicate certain feelings of the sensory : and with the few exceptions pointed out in our preceding lecture, every animal belonging to the three classes of mammals, birds, and amphibials, every animal possessed of lungs, is in some degree or other .possessed of this kind of language. Its * According to M. Magendie, whose work first a;)peared In our own country seven years after the ite- livery of the above lecture, in 1811, the larynx is supposed to be the organ chiefly or altogether operated upon in France ; and ventriloiiuism to consist in adjusting the measure of its articulations according to the efTects which the ventriloquist has observed that distance, or other circumstances, produce ujwu the uatur»l voice. See Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ. Ixi. 577 ARTIFICIAL OR ARTICULATE LANGUAGE. 263 scope is, indeed, often very limited ; but always sufficient to answer the pur- poses of nature. The female of every species understands the call of the male, and replies to it as intelligibly: the young understand the mandates of the mother, and the mother the petitions of the young-. This amusing de- partment of natural l^istory was well known to the philosophers of Greece and Rome, and attentively cultivated by them : and Lucretius, in his Nature of Things, has pursued the subject not only so correctly but so copiously, that it is almost impossible, even in the present day, to add any thing of real importance to what he has already observed. I have termed this languyge of nature instinctive : and that it is entitled to this character is clear; because, even among birds, which possess the widest and most complicated range of natural language of all animals whatever, where two individuals of different species are bred Up in the same bush, or in the same cage, or hatched and fostered by a female of a third species, each evinces and retains the note that specifically distinguishes the species to which it belongs. In the case of a goldfinch and a chaffinch this has been put directly to the proof. And it is by this native tongue, as Mr. Montague has justly observed, and not by the form or colour, that the process of pairing is achieved, and the female induced to select her paramour.* Almost every animal of the three classes just adverted to exhibits a dif- ferent tone of voice according to the governing passion of the moment ; but more especially when under the influence oi grief , fear, ov joy ; to which, in some instances, we may add anger; but a distinct tone for anger is not so generally traced among animals as it is for the three precedmg passions. Among quadrupeds, the elephant, horse, and dog appear to possess the greatest portion of a natural tongue. They are all gregarious, particularly the two former. In Asia, the wild elephant, and in the Ukraine, between the Don and the Dnieper, the wild horse, pursue one common plan of political society, in numerous and collected troops ; and are regulated by the elders of the tribe among the elephants, and by leaders chosen for this purpose among the horses : and it is by a difference of voice, combined with a difference of gesture, that these superiors give orders, in the course of their travels from place to place, in pursuit of pasture, for the necessary dispositions and arrange- ments. Both kinds are extremely vigilant and active, and maintain their ranks and brigades with as much regularity and precision as if they were conducted by a human leader. Among the wild horses of the Ukraine, the captain-general seems to be commonly appointed to his station for about four or five years ; at the expiration of which time a kind of new election takes place: every one appears to have a ri^ht to propose himself for the office, the ex-magistrate not excepted : if no new candidate offer, the latter is re- elected for the same term of time, and if he be opposed a combat succeeds, and the victor is appointed commander-in-chief. The conduct pursued by the peaceful and amiable elephant varies in some degree from this of the wild horse ; for, in the travels of these animals from place to place, the troops are led on by the eldest of the tribe, thus evincing a kind of patriarchal government : the young and feeble marching in the mid die, and the rear being composed of the vigorous and adult.f The natural language of the monkey kind, notwithstanding the general resemblance of their structure to that of the human race, appears to be more confined than that of most quadrupeds ; and it is well known that they never attempt to articulate sounds. Linnseus, indeed, seems to have entertained a contrary opinion with respect to the ourang-outang, and asserts that he speaks with a kind of hifesing noise. Buffon, however, and Daubenton, and almost every other naturalist who has attentively watched his habits, deny that he ever employs even a hissing speech. And every comparative anatomist, who has accurately examined his vocal organs, has declared him to be physically incapable of articulation, from the peculiarity of a sac or bag, in some spe- cies of the animals single, in others double, immediately connected with the * Ornithological Dic-t. Introd. p. xxix. t See note to the Author's Translation of Lucretius, vol. ii. p. 376 264 ON NATURAL OR INARTICULATE, AN© upper part of the larynx, and into which the air is driven as it ascends from the lungs through the trachea, instead of being driven into the glottis, where alone it could acquire modulation and articulate sounds. From this sac or bag it afterward passes into the mouth by a variety of small apertures or fissures, by which almost the whole of its force, and consequently of its vocal effect, is lost. This peculiar conformation appears first to have been noticed by Galen, who traced itahrough several varieties both of the ape and monkey families ; but for the most correct account of it we are indebted to Professor Camper, wlio, in a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1779, minutely describes it as it exists in the sylvanus or pigmy, in which Tyson had overlooked it ; in various other species of the ape ; in the cynosurus or dog-tailed monkey ; and in many others of the monkey tribe. At all adven- tures, the monkey has a peculiar deficiency of natural tongue ; and we hence obtain an insuperable objection, had we no others, but which, I have already shown, are sufficiently abundant,* to the declaration of Lord Mon- boddo and Linnaeus, that this tribe are all of the same original stock as man ; and their absurd story that man himself is not unfrequently to be met with in some of the Asiatic islands, with a monkey-tail, varying in length from three or four inches to a foot, possjessing as great a fluency of speech as in any part of Europe. Marcgrave, in his history of Brazil, has amused us with an account of a very extraordinary species of American sapajou, which Linnaeus has called Beelzebub, — Buffon, Ouarine, and our own countryman Mr. Pennant, Preacher- monkey, — that assemble in large groups every morning and evening, and atten- tively listen to a loud and long-continued harangue of one of the tribe, whom he seems to suppose a public officer or popular demagogue. Upon the author- ity of Marcgrave, this species has been admitted into all our books of Natu- ral History ; but there are some doubts concerning it, and the description is at least without the support of concurrent testimony. The different accents of the dog and the horse, when under the influence of rage, desire, or exultation, are too powerful and too common not to have been noticed by almost every one. It is impossible to describe the different tones of the mastiff" more precisely than in the words of the truly philosophical poet I have so lately referred to ; but as it would be improper to quote him in the ori- ginal before a popular audience, I must request of you to receive a feeble translation of him in its stead : — When half enraged The rude Molossian mastiff, her keen teeth Baring tremendous, with far different tone Threats, than when rous'd to madness more extreme, Or when she barks, and fills the world with roar. Thus, when her fearless whelps, too, she, with tongue Lambent, caresses, and, with antic paw, And tooth restrain'd pretending still to bite, • Gambols, soft yelping tones of tender love — Far different then, those accents from the din Urg'd clamorous through the mansion when alone, Or the shrill howl her trembling bosom heaves, When, with slunk form, she waits th' impendnig blow.t The language of the tiger, leopard, and cat is not so rich or diversified as that of the dog ; but they have still a considerable variation in the scale of their mewings, according to the predominant passion of fear or grief : while * Series ii. Lecture iii. On the Varieties of the Huncan Rnf-e. t Inritata canum quom primum magna Molossum Molliaricta fremunt, duros nudantia denteis, Louge alio sonitu rabies districta minatur, Et quom jam latrant, et vocibus omnia conplent. At catulos blande quom lingua lambere tentant, Aut ubi eos lactant pedibus, morsuque potentes, Subspensis teneros imitantur deutibus haustus, Longe alio pacto gannitu vocis adulant, Et quom desertei baubantur in aedibus, aut quom Plorantes fugiunt, submisao corpora, iilagat. Ue Rcr. Nat. v. 1063 ARTIFICIAL OR /ARTICULATE LANGUAGE. 265 these again differ from the accent of simple pleasure, which consists in purr- ing, and very considerably indeed from tlie loud and dissonant voice of love. The language of birds is, in almost every instance, strikingly musical, though not equally eloquent, whatever be the passion it describes. To its variety in the different tribes of tlie osprey, hawk, sea-gull, rook, and raven, and especially as auguring wet or dry, stormy or serene weather, almost everv naturalist has borne testimony : for each can say, that Cawing rooks and kites, that swim sublime In still repeated circles, screaming loud, Tlie jay, the pie, and e'en the boding owl That hails the rising moon, have charms for me. Sounds inharmonious in themselves, and harsh, Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns, And only there, please highly for their sake.* Upon the exquisitely varied tones and modulations of the singing birds we descanted at some length in a former lecture.f But the subject is as inte- resting as it is inexhaustible ; and in the summer-season of praise, when the heart of man overflows, or should overflow, with gratitude to his beneficent Creator for the return of plenteousness that meets his eye in every direction, with wiiat animation do they join in the general carol ; awakening us at the dawn, accompanying us through the day, and softening and harmonizing, and I fear not to add, spiritualizing our feelings at nightfall. The robin, and not the lark, as commonly supposed, takes the lead,f and seems longing for the day to unclose. His gentle voice is in sweet accord- ance with the feeble beams of the early twilight; and as soon as the glorious sun makes his appearance, then up mounts the lark, and pours forth his more vigorous song ; a thousand warblers hear the call, and the chorus is full and complete. The leaders vary, but the carol continues. The nightingale yet protracts his nocturnal tones ; and the thrush, the blackbird, and the goldfinch, from the lofty grove, the close thicket, or the blossomed orchard, intermingle their rival pretensions : while the transient but mellow burst of the cuckoo adds a richness to the general harmony ; and even the croak of the raven, and the chattering of the daw, only break into the symphony, with an occasional discord that heightens the impressive effect. At length the sun is no more : the unbounded concert dies away ; and the season of rest returns. It returns, but not with mute silence ; for the night is soothed rather than disturbed by the solitary song of the robin, now resuming his modest strain, and yielding in succession to the peerless pipe of the nightingale, and the deep-toned but expressive hoot of the owl. The note of the wren (motacilla Troglodytes) is as slender as its form, but it is well worth noticing, as being the only note of the feathered creation that is continued throughout the winter. During the season of frost and snow it is, indeed, heard to most advantage; for the fearless little songster then enters the court-yard, the stable, or the dairy, and seeks, in confidence, his food of insects or their larves. It is this that constitutes the little beggars petition ; and where is the heart so hardened as to refuse the request he then offers ? With respect to singing birds, indeed, of all kinds, we may make this pleasing observation, that, as though chiefly intended, in the general munifi- cence of the great Parent of the human race, to captivate mankind, they almost always reside in their vicinity, and are rarely to be found in the unin- habited parts of the earth.^ t Series ii. Lecture i., on Zoological Systems, and the Distinctive Characters of Animals. X See Jenner, Phil. Trans. 1824, p. 37. . , „• ^ i. § The following passage from Dr. Jenner's very admirable paper "On the Migration of Birds, has a passage so directly in accordance with these remarks, that I cannot avoid copying it from the Phil. Trans, for 1824:— "We must observe, that nature never gives one property only, to the same individual substance. Thronuh every gradation, from the clod we Iread upon to the glorious sun which animales the whole ter- restrial system, we may find a vast variety of purposes for which the same Ijody was created. If we look on the simplest vegetable, or the reptile it supports, how various, yet how important in the economy of nature, are the offices they are intended to perform . The migrating bird, 1 have said, is directed to thia 266 ON NATURAL OR INARTICULATE, AND But the vocabulary of the common cock and hen is, perhaps, the most ex tensive of any tribe of birds with which we are acquainted ; or rather, per- haps, we are better a(-quainted with the extent of its rang-e than with that of any others. The cock has his watch-word for announcing the morning, his love-speech, and his terms of defiance. The voice of the hen, v/hen she in- forms her paramour that she is disburdened of an egg, and which he instantly communicates from homestead to homestead, till the whole village is in an uproar, is far different from that which acquaints him that the brood is just hatched ; and both again are equally different from the loud and rapid cries with which she undauntedly assails the felon fox that would rob her of her young. Even the little chick, when not more than four or five days old, ex- hibits a harsher and less melodious clacking when offered for food what it dislikes, than when it perceives what it relishes.* Before I quit this part of our subject it becomes me also to remark, that even in various other tribes of animals than the three classes to which our observations have hitherto applied, we occasionally meet with proofs of an inferior kind of natural language, though it cannot with propriety be called a language of the voice. And I may here observe, that among the few of these three classes which we have already noticed as being destitute of a vocal larynx, the bounty of nature has often provided a substitute. Thus the wapiti (cervus Wapiti of Barton), though witliout the sonorous endow- ment of the horse or ox, seems to have a compensation in an organ that con- sists of an oblique slit or opening under the inner angle of each eye, nearly an inch long externally, which appears also to be an auxiliary to the nostril; for with this he makes a noise that he can vary at pleasure, and which is not unlike the loud and piercing whistle that boys give by putting their fingers in their mouth.f Among insects, however, we find a still more varied talent of uttering sounds, though possessed neither of lungs nor larynx, nor the nasal slit of the wapiti. The bee, the fly, the gnat, and the beetle afford familiar instances of this extraordinary faculty. The sphinx Airopos, a species of hawk-moth, squeaks, when hurt, nearly as loud as a mouse; it has even the power, in certain circumstances, of uttering a plaintive note, which cannot fail to ex- cite deep commiseration. If a bee or wasp be attacked near its own hive, the animal expresses its pain or indignation in a tone so different from its usual hum, that the complaint is immediately understood by the hive within; when the inhabitants hurry out to revenge the insult in such numbers, that the offender is fortunate if he escape without a severe castigation. The cunning spider often avails himself of the natural tone of distress uttered by the fly to make sure of hini for his prey. He frequently spreads out his webs or toils to such an extent that he cannot see from one end of Island al a certain season of tlie year to produce and rear iis yoiinsf. This apprars to be the grand inten- tion u'tiich nature lias in view; l)ut in consequenceot" t!ie observation just made, its presence liere may answer mail}' secondary purposes; atnoni; these I siiall notice the Jbllowing: The beneficent Author of nature seems to spare no piins in clieering the heart of man with everything that is dehirhtfu! in Iho summer season. We may be indulged with tiie coiupany of these visiters, perha[)s, to heiglUen, by tl)e novelty of tlieir appearance, and pleasing variety of their notes, tlie native scen(«. How sweetly, at the return of spring, do the notes of the cuckoo first burst upon the ear ; and what apathy innsi that soul pos- sess, that does not feel a soft emotion at the song of the nightingale (surely it must be " fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils"), and how wisely is it contrived that a general stillness should prevail while this heavenly bird is pouring forth its plaintive and melodious strains, — strains that so sweetly accord with the evening hour! Some of our foreign visiters, it may be said, are inharmonious minstrels, and rather disturb than aid the general concert. In the mids* of a soft warm summer's day, when the martin is gi'utly floaiing on the air, not only pleasing us with the peculiar delicacy of its note, but with the elegance of its meandering; wlien the blackcap is vying wkh the goldfinch, and the linnet with the woodlark, a dozen swifts rush from some neighbouring battlement, and set up a most discordant screaming. Yet all is perfect. The interruption is of short duration, and without it the lonjr-continued warbUni: of the softer singing birds vvcnild pall and tire the listening ear with excess of melody, as the exhilarating beams of the sun, were they not at intervals intercepted by clouds, would rob the heart of the gHyety they for a while inspire, and sink it into languor. There is a perfect consistency in the order in which ntitureseenu to have directed the singing birds to fill npxhe day with their pleasing harmony. To an observer of those divine laws which harmonize the general order of things, there ap|iears a design in the arrangement of this sylvan minstrelsy. It is not in the haunted meadowrnor frequented field, we are to expect the gratifi cation of imiulging ourselves in this pleading speculation to its full extent; we must seek for it in th Dark, the forest, or some setpiestered dell, hah' enclosed by the coppice or the wood." ♦ See While's Hist, of Selbortie, vol. ii. p. IT. See Phil. Mag. No. 223, Nov. 1816, p. 3&i. ARTIFICIAL OR ARTICULATE LANGUAGE. 267 them to the other ; and often conceals himself in some adjoining crevice where he cannot see the poor animal as it becomes ensnared : hut he sits wistfull}- listening for the buzzing noise that assures him the fly is entangled, and is fluttering to make its escape. He hears the well-known signal, sallies forth from his concealment, and riots on the spoil that has fallen into his power, with all the eagerness and ferocity that distinguish the most rapacious quadrupeds. Whether fishes possess any similar means of communicating their feelings we know not. Reasoning from the facts that a few of them occasionally utter tones of distress when first taken ; and that they possess an ofgan oi hearing, and live in a medium w^ell adapted to the propagation of sound, it is generally conjectured that they have a language of some kind or other, but our knowledge of their usual habits, from their residing in adiff'ereni ele- ment from our own, is so imperfect, that we have no positive data to build upon. It is a curious fact, that many animals, which are naturally dumb in the widest sense of ihe word, are possessed of a power of producing sounds, by the use of some external organ or foreign instrument, that forms a very con venient substitute for a natural- tongue. I have formerly had occasion to observe this of the goat-chafter or cerambyx, which, whenever taken, utters a shrill shriek of fright, by rubbing its chest against its wing-shells, and the upper part of its abdomen ; and of the ptinus fatidicus, or death-watch, that produces its measured and, to the superstitious, alarming strokes, by striking its horny frontlet against the bed-post, or any other hard substance in which it takes its stand. The termes Pulsatorium, or tick-watch, is an insect of a different order, but armed with a similar apparatus, and makes a noise by the same means, like the ticking of a watch, from the old wood or decayed fur- niture in which it loves to reside, and by which it endeavours to entice the other sex to its company. And it is a singular circumstance, which I shall merely glance at in passing, that some species of the woodpecker, in the breeding season, in consequence of the feebleness of its natural voice, makiss use of a.similar kind of call, by strong reiterated strokes of the bill against a dead sonorous branch of a tree. The most aslonishing'instance, however, of sound excited in this manner, jts that made by two species of Italian grasshoppers : the cicada Plebeja, and c. orni. The music of these insects (which is confined to the male) is pro- duced by a very singular apparatus, that consists of several winding cells under the abdomen, separated by different membranes, and opening exter- nally by two narrow valves. In the centre of these cells is . contained a scaly sonorous triangle, and exterior to them are two vigorous muscles, by the action of which the cells are supplied with air through one of the valves, and so powerfully reverberate it against the triangle as to produce the notes of which the grasshopper's song consists ; and which is sometimes so loud that a single insect, hung in a cage, has almost drowned the voices of a large company. This song is also the madrigal of love. But, highly tempting as it is, I must not pursue this part of our subject any farther. From the birds of the field to the grasshopper, from the bee to the fly, every attentive naturalist observes, in every tribe, 'a vast compass of accentuation, and comprehends the meaning of a great variety of their tones. But what is the little that we understand to what is understood by them- selves, formed with similar organs, in a thousand instances more acute than our own, actuated by similar wants, and proposing to themselves similar pursuits ! What the natural language of man is we know not. There can be no doubt, how^ever, that if, by a miracle, he were to be deprived of all artificial language, thero would still remain to him, from the perfection of his vocal organs, a language of this kind, and of far greater extent and variety than that of any other animal. But some schools of philosophers have not been satisfied with contem- plating such an idea hypothetically ; they have boldly imbodied it into a fact, and have contended, and still continue to contend, that such a language has ictually existed ; and that it constituted the sole language of man on his first 268 OiN NATURAL Oil INARTICULATE, AJSJ> formation: the only means he possessed of communicating and interchanging his ideas. But whence, then, has artificial language arisen? That rich variety of tongues which distinguishes the different nations on the earth ; and that vvon- derful facility which is common to many of them of characterizing every distinct idea by a distinct term 1 And here such philosophers are divided : some contending that speech is a science that was determined upon and inculcated iii an early period of the Avorld, by one, or at least by a few superior persons acting in concert, and inducing the multitude around them to adopt their articulate and arbitrary sounds ; while others affirm that it has grown progressively out of the natural language, as the increasing knowledge and increasing wants of mankind have demanded a more extensive vocabulary.* Pythagoras first started the former of these two hypotheses, and it was afterward adopted by Plato, and supported by all the rich treasure of his genius and learning; but it was ably opposed by the Epicureans, on the ground that it must have been equally impossible for any one person, or even for a synod of persons, to have invented the most difficult and abstruse of all human sciences, with the paucity of ideas, and the means of communicating ideas, which, under such circumstances, they must have possessed: and that, even allowing they could have invented such a science, it must still have been utterly impossible for them to have taught it to the barbarians around them. The argument is thus forcibly urged by Lucretius, whom I must again beg leave to present in an English dress : — But, to maintain that one devis'd alone Terms for all nature, and th' incijiient tongue Taught to the gazers round him, is to rave. For how should he this latent power possess Of naming all things, and inventing speech. If never mortal felt the same besides ? And, if none else had e'er adopted sounds, Whence sprang the knowledge of their use 1 or how Could the first linguist to the crowds around Teach what he meant ? his sole unaided arm Could ne'er o'erpower them, and compel to learn The vocal science ; nor could aught avail Of eloquence or wisdom ; nor with ease Would the vain babbler have been long allow'd To pour his noisy jargo.i o'er their ears.f In opposition to this theory, therefore, Epicurus and his disciples contended, as I have just observed, that speech or articulate language is nothing more than a natural improvement upon the natural language of man, produced by its general use, and that general experience which gives improvement to every thing. And such still continues to be the popular theory of all those philo- sophers of the present day who confine themselves to the mere facts and phenomena of nature, and allow no other authority to control the chain of their argument. Such, more especially, is the theory of Buffon, Linnaeus, and Lord Monboddo ; who, overstepping the limits of the Epicurean field of rea- * See on this subject Harris's Hermes, book iii. p. 314. 327 ; and Beattie on the Theory of language, p 246, 1.ond. 1S03, 4to. fProinde, putare aliquem turn nomina distribuisse Rebus, et inde homines didicisse vocabula prima, Desipere est : nam quur hie posset cuiicta notare Vocibus, et varios soiiitus emittere linguaB, Tempore eodem aliei facere id non quisse putentur T Pfseterea, si non aliei quoque vocibus usei Inter se fuerant, unde insita notities est? Utilitas etiam, unde data est huic prima potestas, Quid vellet facere, ut sciret, animoque videret? Cogere item plureis unus, viclosque domare, Non poterat, rerum ut perdiscere nomina vellent : Nee ratione docere uUa, suadereque surdis, Quod sit opus facto ; faciles neque enim paterentur : Nee ratione uUd sibi ferrcnt amplius aureis Vocis inauditos sonitus obtimdere frustra. I)e Rer. Nat. v. 1040. ARTIFICIAL OR ARTICULATE LANGUAGE. 269 soning:, and the articles of the Epicurean belief, concur, as I have already re- marked, in deriviiicr the race of man from the race of monkeys, and in exhibit- ing the ourang-outang, as his dignified prototype and original, whom they hdve hence denominated the satyr, or man of the woods. 1 shall not exhaust the time or insult the understanding of this auditory, by any detailed confutation of tlie new and adscititious matter contained in this modernized edition of the Epicurean theory ; matter of which the Gre- cian sage himself would have been ashamed; and which is directly contra- dicted by the anatomical configuration of various and important parts of this animal itsi-lf : concerning which, it is scarcely necessary to recall to your recollection the remark we have just made — that v/hile it approaches nearest to the form, it is farthest removed from the language of man of almost all quadrupeds whatever. I shall confine myself to the fair question, which the theory in its original shape involves; — is human speesch, thus proved to be incapable of origin by any compact or settled system, more likely to have originated from a succession of accidents — from the casual but growing wants, or the casual but growing improvements of mankind 1 Now, admitting the affirmative of this question, we have a right to expect that the language of a people will always be found commensurate with their civilization ; that it will hold an exact and equal pace with their degree of ignorance, as well ^as with their degree of improvement. It so happens, however, that although language, whatever be its origin, is the most difficult art or science in the world (if an art or science at all), it is the art or science in which savages of all kinds exhibit more proficiency than in any other. No circumnavigator has ever found them deficient in this respect, even where they have been wofully deficient in every thing else ; and while they have betrayed the grossest ignorance in regard to the simplest toys, baubles, and implements of European manufacture, there has been no difficulty, as soon as their language has been, I will not say acquired, but even dipped into, of explaining to them the diffiirent uses and intentions of these articles in their own terms. Again : there is in all the languages of the earth a general unity of principle, which evidently bespeaks a general unity of origin; a family character and likeness which cannot possibly be the effiict of accident. The common divisions and rules of one language are the common divisions and rules of the whole ; and, hence, every national grammar is, in a certain sense, and to a certain extent, a universal grammar; and the man who has learned one foreign tongue, has imperceptibly made some progress towards a knowledge of other tongues. In all countries, and in all languages, there is only one and the same set of articulations, or at least the differences are so few, that they can scarcely interfere with the generality of the assertion ; for diversities of language consist not in different sets of articulations, but only in a difference of their combinations and applications. No people have ever been found so barbarous as to be without articulate sounds, and no people so refined and fastidious as to have a desire of adding to the common stock. But, independently of a uniform circle of articulations, and a uniform sys- tem of grammar, there is also a uniform use of the very same terms, in a great variety of languages, to express the very same ideas ; which, as it ap- pears to mei cannot possibly be accounted for, except upon the principle of one common origin and mother-tongue ; and I now allude more particularly to those kinds of terms, which, under every change of time, and every variety of climate, or of moral or political fortune, might be most readily expected to maintain an immutability ; as those, for example, of family relationship and patriarchal respect; or descriptive of such other ideas as cannot but have occurred to the mind very generally, as those of -earth, sky, death, Deity. I shall beg leave to detain you while I offer a few examples. In our own language wc have two common etymons, or generic terms, by which to describe the paternal character, pajwa M\d father ; both are as com- mon to the Greek tongue as to our own, under the forns of TraTnras and itarrip, and have probably alike issued from the Hebrew source 3N or n!JX» pi. n3K' 870 ON NATURAL OR INARTICULATE, AND And 1 may fearlessly venture to affirm that there is scarcely a language or dialect in the world, polished or barbarous, continental or insular, employed by blacks or whites, in which the same idea is not expressed by the radical of the one or the other of these terms ; both of which have been employed from the beginning- of time in the same quarter of the globe, and naturally direct us to one common spot, where man must first have existed, and whence alone he could have branched out. The term Jather is still to be found in the Sanscrit, and has descended to ourselves, as well as to almost every other nation in Europe, through the medium of the Greek, Gothic, and Latin. Papa is still more obviously a genuine Hebrew term ; and while it mainiains a range almost as extensive as the former throughout Europe, it has an incalculably wider spread over Asia, Africa, and the most barbarous islands of the Pacific, and extends from Egypt J,o Guinea, and from Bengal to Sumatra and New-Zealand. The etymons for 'soji are somewhat more nu- merous than those hnfather^ but the one or tlie other of them may be traced almost as extensively, as may the words, brother, sister, and even daughter ; which last, branching out like the term father, from the Sanscrit, extends northward as far as Scandinavia. The generic terms for the Deity are chiefly the three'following, Al or Allah, Theus or Deus, and God. The first is Hebrew, the second Sanscrit, the third Persian, and was probably Palavi or ancient Persian. And besides these there is scarcely a term of any kind by which the Deity is designated in any part of the world, whether among civilized or savage man. And yet these also proceed from the same common quarter of the globe, and distinctly point out to us the same original cradle for the human race as the preceding terms. Among the barbarians of the Philippine Islands the word is Allatallah, obvi- ously " the God of gods," or Supreme God ; and it is the very same term, with the very same duplicate, in Sumatra. In the former islands, I will just observe, also, as we proceed, that we meet with the terms, malahet, for a spiritt which is both direct Hebrew and Arabic ; is and dua, one, two, which are San- scrit and Greek ; tambor, a drum, which is also Sanscrit : and inferno, hell, a Latin compound, of Pelasgic or other oriental origin. In the Friendly and other, clusters of the Polynesian Islands, the term for God is Tooa, and in New- . Guinea, or Papuan, Dezva, both obviously from the Sanscrit ; Avhence Eatooaa, among the former, is God the Spirit, or the Divine Spirit; Ea, meaning a spirit in these islands. And having thus appropriated the Sanscrit radical to signify the Deity, they apply the Hebrew El, as the Pelasgians and the Greeks did, to denote the sun, or the most glorious image of the Deity ; whence el-langee means the sky, or sun's residence, -diid papa ellangee, ot papa langee, fathers of the sky, or " spirits.''^ Allow me to offer you another instance or two. The more common etymon for death, among all nations is mor, mort, or mut ; sometimes the r, and sometimes the t, being dropped in the carelessness of speech. It is mut in Hebrew and Phoenician ; it is mor, or mort, in Sanscrit, Persian, Greek, and Latin ; it is the same in almost all the languages of Europe ; and it was with no small astonishment the learned lately found out that it is the same also in Oiaheite, and some other of the Polynesian Islands, in which mor-ait is well known to signify -a. sepulchre ; literally, the place or region of the dead; m», we have derived our own and the coiumon Saxon term, women; the J, and v or zu, being cog- nate, or convertible letters in all languages ; of which we have a familiar in- stance in the words vater ^vA father, which, in German and English, mean precisely the same thing. But this subject would require a large volume instead of occupying the close of a single lecture. It is, however, as you will find, when we come to apply it, of great importance ; and I must yet, therefore, trouble you with another example or two. Youth and young are as capable of as extensive a research, and are as com- mon to all languages, barbarous and civilized, as the word man. I Vvill only at present remark, that we meet with it in Hebrew, where it is nj r {ymia) ; in Persia, and Palavi or ancient Persian, where it is juani ; in Sanscrit, where li is yauvan; in Greek, r)\ov [yion)^ from v'm, or t/Iwi«s; in Latin, where we find itjuvenis; in Gothic and German, where it is jung ; in Spanish, jox'en ; in Italian, ^-zoraw ; in French, jettne ; and, as I have already observed, in our own dialect, yovng. The word regent, in like manner, is, and ever has been, in equal use among all nations. This, like the French regir, is derived from the Latin rege; which runs through all the southern dialects of Europe; while in Germany and the north, the derivative recht is the common term fo' 'w/e, law, authority. The Hebrew is "^-i (raj), a conspicuous or illustrious person ; the Sanscrit, raja ; the Greek, pa and pawv; of the same exact import as the Hebrew; and hence ra, or raia, imports the sun, the most powerful and illustrious object in creation, among a multitude of barbarous nations, and especially those of the Sandwich Islands and New-Zealand ; and ooraye and rayan-ai, the day or light itself, in diff'erent parts of Sumatra. Our own term ray, common, indeed, to almost all Europe, ancient and modern, is obviously from the same source; and hence the Arabic \:s^}\j {rayhe), fragrancy, odour; the poetic mind of the Arabians uniformly applying this image to legitimate rule and government. The term name, in like manner, runs through all the leading languages of ancient and modern ages, almost without a shade of difference, either in its meaning or mode of spelling: for we thus meet with it in Hebrew, Sanscrit, Arabic, Greek, Persian, Gothic, and Latin. The same theory might he exemplified from many of the terms significa- tive of the most common animals. Our English word cow is of this descrip- tion, and may serve as a familiar example ; niJ (gouah), in Hebrew, imports a herd (as of oxen) ; the very same word in Greek, yva, means a yoke of oxen ; in both which cases the word is used in a collective sense. In Sanscrit, g^.va imports, as among ourselves, a single animal of the kind, ox or cow; in Persian, and ancient Persian or Palavi, it is gow ; in German, kuh ; and among the Hottentots, as an example of a savage tongue, koos and koose ; while among the New-Zealanders, who have no cows, eu imports paps or breasts, the organ of milk. Mouse is in like manner ni^D {musheh) in Hebrew, literally " a groper in the dark;" in Sanscrit, mushica; in Persian and Palavi, mush; in Greek, ^vf, without the aspirate; in German, mous ; in English, mouse; in Spanish, musgano: all, as I have already observed, confederating in proof that the various languages, and dialects of languages that now are or ever have been spoken, have originated from one common source; and that the various nations that now exist, or ever have existed, have originated from one com- mon cradle or quarter of the world, and that quarter an eastern region. Finally, and before I close this argument, and deduce from it its fair and legitimate result, let me pointedly call your attention to that most extraor- dinary act of correspondence between all nations whatever, in all quarters of the globe, wherever any trace of the art exists, which is to be found in their employment of a decimal gradation of arithmetic ; an argument which, though I do not know that it has ever been advanced before, is, I freely, confess to ARTIFICIAL OR ARTICULATE LANGUAGE. 273 you, omnipotent of itself to my own mind. Let me, however, repeat the limitation, wherever any trace of this art is found to exist ; for in the miserable state to which some savage tribes are reduced, without property to value, treasures to count over, or a multiplicity of ideas to enumerate ; where the desires are few and sordid, and the frag-ments of language that remain are limited to the narrow train of evcry-day ideas and occurrences, it is possiole that there may be some hordes who have lost the art entirely; as we are told by Crantz is the case with the wretched natives of Greenland,* and by the Abbe Chapp6 with some families among the Kamtschatkadales ;t while there are other barbarian tribes, and especially among those of America,| who cannot mount higher in the scale of numeration than five, ten, or a hundred : and for all beyond this point to the hair of their head, as a sign that the sum is innumerable. But, putting by these abject and degenerated specimens of our own species who have lost the general knowledge of their forefathers, whence comes it to pass, that blacks and whites in every other quarter, the savage and the civilized, wherever a human community has been found, have never either stopped short of nor exceeded a series of ten in their numerical calculations ; and that as soon as they have reached this number, they have uniformly com- menced a second series with the first unit in the scale, one-ten, two-ten, three-ten, four-ten, till they have reached the end of the second series ; and have then commenced a third, with the next unit in rotation ; and so on, as far as they have had occasion to compute? Why have not some nations broken off at the number five, and others proceeded to fifteen before they have commenced a second series? Or why have the generality of them had any thing more than one single and infinitesimal series, and, consequently, a nevv name and a new number for every ascending unit? Such a universality cannot possibly have resulted except from a like universality of cause ; and we have, in this single instance alone, a proof equal to mathematical demon- stration, that the diflferent' languages into which it enters, and of which it forms so prominent a feature, must assuredly have originated, not from acci- dent, at different times and in different places, but from direct determination and design, at the same time and in the same place; that it must be the result of one grand, comprehensive, and original system. We have already proved, however, that such system could not be of human invention ; and what, then, remains for us but to confess peremptorily, and ex necessitate rei^ as the fair conclusion of the general argument, that it must have been of divine and supernatural communication ? It may be observed, I well know, and I am prepared to admit the fact, that the examples of verbal concordance in languages radically distinct, and not mere dialects of the same language, are, after all, but (aw, and do not occur, perhaps, once in five hundred instances.^ But I still contend that the exam- ples, tew as they are, are abundant, and even superabundant, to establish the conclusion; and the fact on which the objection is founded, instead of dis- turbing such conclusion, only leads us to, and completely establishes, a second and catenating fact: namely, that by some means or other the primary and original language of man, that divinely and supernaturally communicated to him in the first age of the world, has been broken up and confounded, and scattered in various fragments over every part of the globe : that the same sort of disruption which has rent asunder the solid ball of the earth ; that has swept away whole species and kinds, and perhaps orders of animals, and vegetables, and minerals, and given us new species, and kinds, and orders in their stead; that has confounded continents and oceans, the surface and the abyss, and intermingled the natural productions of the different hemispheres ; that the same sort of disruption has assaulted the world's primeval tongue, has for ever overwhelmed a great part of it,- wrecked the remainder on dis- tant and opposite shores, and turned up new materials out of the general chaos. And if it were possible for us to meet with an ancient historical • Sect. i. 225. * t Sect. iii. 17. t Robertson, vol. ii. b. iv. 91. J» Compare also with Ste^vart's Phil. Essays, vol. 1. p. 150, 4to. Edin. 1810 S 274 ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, records which professed to contain a plain and simple statement of such supernatural communication, and such subsequent confusion of tongues, it would be a book that, independently of any other information, would be amply entitled to our attention, for it would bear an index of commanding authority on its own forehead. To pursue this argument would be to weaken it. , Such a book is in our hands — let us prize it. It must be the word of God, for it has the direct stamp and testimony of his works. LECTURE X. ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, IMITATIVE AND SYMBOLICAL. The subject of the vocal organs, and the scale of tones and terms to which they give rise, which have just passed under review, led us progressively into an inquiry concerning the nature of the voice itself; and the origin of sys- tematic or articulate language. Systematic or articulate language, however, as we have already observed, is of two kinds, oral and legible; the one spoken and addressed to the ear, the other penned or printed, and addressed to the eye. It is this last which constitutes the wonderful and important art of writing, and distinguishes civilized man from savage man, as the first distinguishes man in general from the brute creation. The connexion between the two is so close, that although both subjects might, with the most perfect order, find a place in some subse- quent part of that comprehensive course of study upon which we have even now but barely entered, 1 shall immediately follow up the latter for the very reason that I have already touched upon the former. It will, moreover, if I mistake not, afford an agreeable variety to our philosophical pursuits; a point which ought no more to be lost sight of in the midst of instruction than in the midst of amusement; and will form an extensive subject for useful reflection when the present series of our labours shall have reached its close. Written language is of so high an antiquity, that, like the language of the voice, it has been supposed, by a multitude of wise and good men in all ages, to have been a supernatural gift, communicated either at the creation, or upon some special occasion not long afterward. Yet there seems no satisfactory ground for either of these opinions. That it was not communicated like oral language at the creation of mankind, appears highly probable, because, first, it by no means possesses the universality which, under such circum- stances, we should have reason to expect, and which oral language displays. No tribe or people have ever been found without a tongue ; but multitudes without legible characters. Secondly, among the different tribes and nations that do possess it, it is far from evincing that unity or similarity in the struc- ture of its elements which, I have already observed, is to be traced in the ele- ments of speech, and wliicli must be the natural result of an origin from one common source. The system of writing among some nations consists in pictures, or marks representative of things ; among others in letters or marks symbolical of sounds ; while, not unfrequently, the two systems are found in a state of combination, and the characters are partly imitative and partly arbitrary. And, thirdly, there does not seem to be the same necessity for a divine interposition in the formation of written characters as in that of oral language. The latter existing, the former might be expected to follow naturally in some shape or other, from that imitative and inventive genius which belongs to the nature of man, and especially in a civilized state. And, as we endeavour to penetrate the obscurity of past ages, we meet with a few occasional beacons which point out to us something of the means by which this wonderful art«appears to have been first devised, and something of the eountries where it appears to have been first practised. IMITATIVE AND SYMBOLICAL. 275 But an exception is made by many learned and excellent men in favour of one species of writing; namely, that of alphabetic characters, which is con- ceived to be so far superior to every other method, as to have demanded and justified a special interposition of the Deit}^ at some period of the creation; and, by turning to the Pentateuch, a few texts, we are told, are to be met with, which seem to intimate that the knowledge of letters was first communicated to Moses by God himself, and that the Decalogue was the earliest specimen of alphabetic writing. Such was the opinion^of many of the fathers of the Christian church, and such continues to be the opinion of many able scholars of modern times : as, among the former, St. Cyril, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, Isidore; and among the latter, Mr. Bryant, Mr. Costard, Mr. Windar.* And it is hence necessary to remark, in addition to what has already been observed, that, so far from arrogating any such invention or communication to himself, Moses uniformly refers to writing, and even to alphabetic writing, as an art as com- mon and as well known in his own day as at present. He express-ly appeals to the existence of written records, such as tablets or volumes, and to the more durable art of engraving, as applied to alphabetic characters. Thus, in the passage in which writing is first mentioned in the Scriptures, " And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book or table.^^j And shortly afterward, " And thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it, like the engravings of a signet. Holiness to the Lord."| The public seals or signets of oriental princes are well known to be of the same description even in the present day, and to be ornamented with sentences instead of with figures or mere ciphers. In the State-Paper Office, at Whitehall, there are still to be seen a number of letters from Eastern monarchs to the kings of England, with seals of this very kind, the inscriptions of several of which are copied by Mr. Astle into his valuable work upon the present subject.^ In that sublime and unrivalled poem, the book of Job, which carries intrin- sic and, in the present individual's judgment, incontrovertible evidence of its being the work of Moses, we meet with a similar proof of the existence and general cultivation of both these arts, at the period before us ; for it is thus the afflicted patriarch exclaims, under a dignified consciousness of his in- nocence : O ! that my words were even now written down : O ! that they were engraven on a table : With a pen of iron upon lead : — That they were sculptured in a rock for ever!|| Nor do the Hebrews alone appear to have been possessed of written cna racters at this era. Admitting Moses to be the author of this very ancient poem, we find him ascribing a familiar knowledge of writing, and not only of writing but of engraving and sculpture, to the Arabians; for of this country were Job and his companions. And if, as appears from the preceding passages, the Hebrews were generally acquainted with at least two of these arts at the time of their quitting Egypt, it would be reasonable to suppose, even though we had no other ground for such a supposition, that the Egyp- tians themselves were equally acquainted with them. We have also some reason for believing that alphabetic writing was at this vtery period common to India ; and either picture-writing or emblematic wri- ting to China. The Hindoo Scriptures, if the term may be allowed, consist of four distinct books, called Baids or Beids, Bedas or Vedas, which are con- ceived to have issued successively from each of the four mouths of Brahma ; and of these, Sir William Jones calculates that the second, or Yajur Beda, may have been in existence fifteen hundred and eighty years before the birth of our Saviour, and, consequently, in the century before the birth of Moses whence, if there be any approach towards correctness in the calculation, the • Compare Astle's Origin of Writing, &c. p. 11, 4fo. t Exod. xvii. 14. 1 lb. xxviii. 30 $ Oriifin and Progress of Writing, p. 14, 4to. 1803. |i Job, xix. 23, 24 S2 J76 ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, first, or Rik Beda, must, at the same epoch, have been of very considerable standing. He dates the Institutes of Menu, the son or grandson of Brahma, which he has so admirably transhited, at not more than two centuries after the time of Moses ; though he admits that these are tlie highest periods that can fairly be ascribed to both publications :* and is ready to allow that they did not at first exist in their present form, and were, perhaps, for a long time only traditionary. It is impossible not to wish that the facts upon which this extraordinary scholar builds his premises were established with more cer- taint}^, and that the conclusions he deduces from them were supported by inferences and arguments less nicely spun. Admitting the existence of these compositions in any sort of regular shape on their first appearance, it seems more reasonable to suppose, considering their complicated nature and extent, that they were handed down from age to age in a written form, than that they maintained a precarious life by mere oral tradition; for, if the Egyptians, as appears almost unquestionable, were in possession of legible characters at or before the time of Moses, there seems no solid ground for believing that the Hindoos might not have been in possession of a similar art. The dif- ferent ages of the Kings, or five sacred and most ancient books of the Chi- nese, have been still less satisfactorily settled than the Vedas of the Hindoos. A very high antiquity, however, is fully established for them by a distinct reference to their existence in the Institutes of Menu ; nor perhaps less so in the very simple and antiquated style in which all of them are written, how much soever the characters of any one of these books may differ from any other : and, adopting the chronology of the Septuagint, Mr. Butler ingeniously conjectures that the era of the (jhinese empire may be fixed, with some latitude of calculation, at two thousand five hundred' years before Christ,! which would make it nearly a thousand years before the birth of Moses. . "The annals of China," says Dr. Marshman, "taken in their utmost ex- tent, synchronize with the chronology of Josephus, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint, rather than with that contained in our present copies of the Hebrew text ; and, according to the former, the highest pretensions of their own annals leave the Chinese inhahiting the woods, and totally ignorant of agriculture, nearly five hundred years after the deluge. "| The Y-King, or oldest of their sacred books, consists of horizontal lines, entire or cut, which are multiplied and combined into sixty-four different forms or posi- tions. They appear involved in almost impenetrable mystery, as well as antiquity ; but, so far as they have been deciphered, they seem, in conjunction with the other sacred books, to contain a summary of patriarchal religion, or that which alone ought to be regarded as the established religion of China; under which the people are taught to know and reverence the Supreme Being, and to contemplate the emperor as both king and pontiff; to whom, exclu- sively, it belongs to prescribe ceremonies, to decide on doctrines, and, at cer- tain times of the year, to offer sacrifices for the nation.*^ It becomes me, however, to observe that, with all the researches of our most learned writers, we are still involved in a considerable degree of uncer- tainty concerning the chronology of several of the Oriental empires, and still more so concerning their most ancient publications. M. Freret and M. Bailly, generally speaking, concur in the periods assi|!-ned to the earliest Ori- ental writings by Sir William Jones ; but the pretension of several of them, and especially of the Puranas, or series of mythological histories, to a very high antiquity, has lately been powerfully attacked by Mr. Bentley, in his dis- sertation on the Surya Siddhanta;|| and still later by Captain Wilford, in his series of Essays on the Sacred Isles of the West;lP and a fall in the preten- * He calculates the first three Veda? to jiave bf-en cornpnsed about 300 years before the Institiifes, and about 600 bf^fore the Puranas and Ttnha?as, which he felt convincfd were not the production of Vyapa. Worl<.-i, vol. ii. p. 305 ; atid iii. p. 4S4, 4lo. ed. t Hora- BihlicK, vol. ii. p. 179, 2d ^d. 8vo. 1807. + Elements of Chinese Grammar: with a Preliminary nissertation on the Characiers and Colloquial Medium of the Chinese. Si^rampore, 4tO. 1814. ^ Lettres Edif. et Cur. torn. xxi. p. 218, 1781. II Butler, p. ii. utsiipr. p. 175. Asiatic Researches, vol. vi. IT Asiatic Researches, vol. x. See also Edin. Rev. No. xxxii. p. 387— 3S9. The difference is indeed wonderful for while Sir William Jones reckons the Puranas at nr-arly 2500 or 2500 years old, " it is evk liMITATIVE AND SYMBOLICAL. OT slons of these may probably be succeeded by a like fall in those of various otiiers.* Even China, at the time of Moses, according to the statement of their own writers, liad not long; emerg:ed from a slate of the grossest barbarism. It is admitted in the Lee K'hee, that, during the reigns of Yaou and Shun, or about two thousand years before Christ, the people, as we have just observed, were living in a savage state, in woods and caves, and holes dug in the ground; covering themselves with the skins of beasts, and rude garments formed of the leaves of trees, grass, reeds, and feathers. Even one thousand years later, or during the dynasty Chow, their states or clans amounted to not less than eighteen hundred, each of which had its chieftain, who possessed abso- lute and hereditary power ; though all united in acknowledging the supremacy of this family and conceding to it the imperial dignity. It was only about two hundred years before our own era that these clans were reduced to seven ; and some time afterward that Che-hwang-he, the first emperor of the dynasty T'sin, succeeded in amalgamating the whole into one vast and massy despotism, the great outlines of which continue to the present day.f Yet, ?<3 far down as nine hundred and eighteen years before Christ, or about five hundred years before the era of Confucius, notwithstanding their symbolical characters and sacred books, in use among the learned, Dr. Milne affirms, from their own historians, that generally speaking they were barbarians in literature as well as in manners, and could "neither read, nor write, nor cipher." j And I may here add, that whatever were their writings, and by whomsoever written, in earlier ages, the Chinese have, at this day, none of a higher date than those composed by Confucius himself, five hundred years before our own era, or compiled by him from rude and imperfect copies of more ancient productions, for the most part indinion; at least in respect to one of them, the Sri Bhauaveta: which, he farther tells us, is considered evan by many of the li'arnper iiame is Gaudama, appeared in flindostan about two thohsand threk hunurbd years ago, and gave n new form and »lres8 to the oldiran-ndgrntion system, which, in some slia(»e or other, has e.xisted from time immemorial. Tim Brahmans, in the mean time, dressed uji the system alter their fashion ; and both these modificaticms Blrugirled for the ascendency. At length the family of Gaud-tma, which had held the sovereignty of India, was dethroned, his religion was denounced, and his disciples took refuge in Ceylon, and the neighbouring couutrie.s. In that island, about 500 years after the decease and supposed ANNiHiLAxroN of THEia TKACHKR OR DKiTV, they Composed their sacred writings in the Sanscrit, which had obtained in Ceylon ; whence they were conveyee-writing amid the most savage tribes ; every leader on returning from the field endeavouring to give some account of the order of his march, the number of his adherents, the enemy whom he attacked, and the scalps and captives he brought home, by scratch- ing with coarse red paint a certain display of uncouth figures upon the bark' of a tree, stripped off for this purpose. ''To these simple annals, lie trusts for renown, and sooths himself Avith a hope, that by their means he shall receive praise from the warriors of future times. "| The Mexicans are well known to have acquired such a degree of perfection in this style of writing, that on the first arrival of the Spaniards on their coasts expresses were sent off to Montezuma, the reigning monarch, containing an exact statement of the fact, together with the number and size of the different ships, by a series of pictures alone, painted on the cloth of the country. It was thus this people kept their public records, histories, and calendars. We are still in posses- sion of several very curious specimens of Mexican picture-writing, some of which exhibit several of the very emblems I have just adverted to, as those which would probably be had recourse to in our own day, were we miracu- lously to be deprived of all knowledge of alphabetic writing ; as, a bale of goods to represent the idea of commerce, and a rose-tree that of odour. The most valuable specimens, however, of Mexican picture-writing are those obtained by Mr. Purchas, and published in sixty-six plates, divided into three parts ; the first cantaining a history of the Mexican empire under its ten mo-' narchs : the second, a tribute roll, representing what each conquered town paid into the royal treasury ; and the third, a code of Mexican institutions, domestic, political, and military. Various other specimens are to be met with in different parts of Spain, and especially in the Royal Library at the Escurial; and a folio volume in the Imperial Library at Vienna. Along with the full pictures, we occasionally meet, in some of these national archives, with emblems, or a prominent feature put for the whole figure ; and in others with various symbols or arbitrary characters, making an approach towards • Plin. vii. 56. t De Vet. Lit. Hun. p. 15. Astle, p. 6. } Robcrtsou'a America, vol. iii. b. vii. p. 303 AsUe, p. 6. 28« ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, letters; ani thus confirming- the progress from pictures to arbitrary signs which I liave endeavoured to establish. The written language of the Chinese, however, is carried to a still higher pitch of perfection ; and is, perhaps, rendered as perfect as the system upon which it is founded will allow. It is still altogether a language of things, and was formerly very largely, if not altogether, a language of pictures. The pure picture-style is admitted by themselves to have been the oldest, or that first invented, and they expressly denominate this order of characters siang- or king, " form or image." " The picture," however, observes Dr. Morrison, " does not appear to have ever been intended as an exact representation, such as the picture-writing of Mexico, or the hieroglyphics of Egypt, but only a slight outline."* This kind of style is now become obsolete, and is rarely to be met with ; but of the next series, or that into which the original or siang style was first transformed, which they call Yu-tsu, probably from the name of the great emperor Yu, or Chow, in whose era the transformation is said to have occurred, it is no uncommon thing to meet with specimens on rings, seals, and other public instruments. These are strictly abbreviated pictures, such as symbols or emblems of some kind or other. But the characters now in use are abbreviations of these abbreviations ; and hence have, for the most part, the appearance of being arbitrary marks, though we can still so fre- quently trace the parent image, as to decipher their origin and reference. The Chinese is an extraordinary language in every respect. Its radical words do not exceed four hundred and eleven ; every one of which is a mono- syllable. But as it must be obvious that these can by no means answer the purpose of distinguishing every external object and mental idea, unless varied in some way or other, every one of these four hundred and eleven words is possessed of a number of difl'erent tones and combinations with other words ; and every tone or combination signifies a different thing; so that the whole vocabulary, limited as it is, mayiie readily made to express several thousands of ideas. Thus the word J^u, whicli enters into the well-known compound Kong-fu-tsee, or Confucius, pronounced in different manners, imports a hus- band or father, a town, and various other ideas. So khou imports a month ; but pronounced nasally, as khoong, it denotes empty ; and thus the word shut differently uttered, means both a lord and swine. The whole of the elementary marks, or keys, as they are called, by which the ideas of this language, for it is not the language itself, are written down and communicated, are still fewer than the elementary words; for they are only two hundred and fourteen, and express such ideas alone as are most common and familiar ; as those o( plant, hand, mouth, word, sun, nothing, water; every other idea being denoted by compounds, or supposed compounds, of these elementary marks. Thus, the mark for a thicket, if doubled, implies a wood; a union of the two characters of a man and a field signifies a farmer ; the charac- ters of a hand and staff" united, import parental authority, or a father ; and it is from like characters I have selected the specimen of symbols which I have mostly submitted to you as some of those which would probably be invented in the present day, if, by a miracle, we were suddenly to be deprived of all knowledge of alphabetic writing.f By combinations of this kind, the two hundred and fourteen elementary characters, like the four hundred elementary words, are wonderfully increased, and are daily increasing; while the greater mass have so little resemblance to any one of the genuine elements, that the philologists of the present day regard many of them as primitive or independent signs, formed long subso- quenily to the invention of the proper elements, and combined, like them- selves, in various ways. I have said that the sum total of Chinese characters derived from these * Chinese Miscellany t The following table, compared with the remarks offered in page 281, will more clearly Illustrate the pictorial origin of the Chinese characters. The whole are usually divided by the native philologists into six classes, the first four of which will hot serve as exemplifications. ' » rMTTATIVE AND SYMBOLICAL. 283 sources is perpetually increasing- ; and have also hinted, that from this natural tendency, the language must at length become an intolerable burden even to the most assiduous Chinese scholar. Thus, while all the characters that occur in Confucius, in Mung, and the five Kings, or sacred books, forming together more than twenty volumes, fall considerably short of six thousand, including the numerous unusual words, found in the four volumes of the Shu (and I may add, that the scope is much the same in the celebrated ethical com- ment of Tung-tsee, the favourite disciple of Confucius, denominated Ta-hyoh, " The Great Sublime or Momentous Doctrine," as also in the Choong-yoong, Zun-zu, and Mun, constituting, conjointly, the four books most revered next to the Kings) ; — such has been the accession of new terms invented by sub- sequent writers, and often with a forgetfulness of the old, which have hereby, I. Image?! : a name given to characters which, in their antiquated form, show very clearly a rough repre ■entation of the material objects th6y denote : as, Ancient Form. • ModemForm Jo ^*y the Sun, ... . now written 1^ Youei h the Moon, ^ Chan ^V\^ a Hill, - - - .. - Jj Mou NK a Tree, - -4- Khiouan N^i,^ a Dog, -^ J ^^^' ^y®» - - - ' " " " ^ Tchedu ^ a Boat, "- ' . Jji- Kiu ^ aCart, ........ "g ChoQi ^^ Water, '^/v EQl (£\ the Ear, "gp Jin V-j a Man, - - ..... 7^ Kheoii yV/- Mouth, ....•«.. ^-— v ChoiiJ A/ Water, - ^ Of this sort there are about 200 characters. n. Associates : meaning words formed by a combination of two or more Images : as, Ming GJ) Brightness, now written ^^ Sun and Moon united. Sian -^1 a Hermit, - - - ^jjjj Man and Hill. Ming ^^) Note of a Bird, - - Q ^ Mouth and Bird. W6n ^^ to Hear, - - - ^f^ Door and Ear, Loiii »)J^ Tears, - ' - . C fe Water and Eye. Their number is very great. Koo-kin ^^dK " Eloquence," " Fluency of Speech," literally " Golden-mouth ;" the mark fbr mouth,whick V~~\ (two lips), being united with the mark for gold, which is the remainder of the character. In Greek XpucrfoT oui/s, aurea verba ore fundens. 284 ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, been suffered to become obsolete, that M. de Guignes was able, in his day, to collect and put into his dictionary eight thousand characters : the six national dictionaries that were ciiiefly in use about a century since, give from fifteen to about thirty thousand ; and, lastly, the Imperial Cliiuese Dictionary, com- posed by order of the emperor Kang-khee, in 1710 of our own era, comprises not less than forty-three thousand four hundred and ninety-six characters ! Dr. Marsliman, in his valuable " Elements of Chinese Grammar," observes, that in the Imperial Dictionary these stand arranged as follows : — Characters in the body of the work . . . - . 31,214 Added, principally obsolete and incorrect forms of others - 6,423 Characters not before classed in any dictionary - - - 1,659 Characters without name or meaning - - - - . - 4,200 43,496 We have here, therefore, a confession by the Chinese lexicographers them- selves, that upwards of ten thousand of the characters admitted into the Im- perial Di(-tionary, being nearly a fourth of the whole, are useless, and for the most part unintelligible, in the present day ; independently of which, " a con- siderable number," observes Dr. Marshman, " of the 31,214 characters adopted from the former dictionaries have no meaning affixed to them; but are merely given as obsolete, or current but incorrect forms of other characters, to which the compilers of the dictionary have referred the reader for their meaning."* Whence we may fairly conclude, that of the characters which are still allowed to iigure away in the written language of China, nearly half of the whole convey no ideas whatever, and are altogether representatives without constituents. Were we able to follow even the latest of these up to their origin, and to prove that they have not issued, in the remotest manner, from the two hundred and fourteen elementary marks, which Dr. Marshman has endeavoured to do, III. IsDu-ANTs, or Pdintkrs : from their indicating or pointing out the relative form or position of what Is predicated : as, Chdng * Above, now written I Hi4 — ^ Below, „.— - Schoung kM the Middle, D^ I One, - EW — — Two, ^ — >>^ San — Three, 1 - IV. ANTiTiiETirs, or Contraries: formed by inverting or reversing the character; and hence requir Ing an antithetic or correspondent signification : as, Modern Forms. Tio /^ Left Hand, reversed is G6ou :^ Right Hand, ' ^^ and ;2r IiStan(Ungup,and, ) -r- 1 Lying down, ) ^#> < hence, " Correct," > Fa ^jj \ and, hence, > i^ and -^ Jin J) a Living Man, Chi p^ Dead Body, y4^ and ^^ Most of the Chinese characters may be classed under one of these four heads. , The two remaining classes do not appear to be so intimately connected vrith a pictorial or gin. The two hundred and fourteen elementary keys, or radicals of the language, are divided into seventeen clas^Ch, according to the number of strokes of which ea(;h element or radical consists. I: is probable, however, that all the more complicated, and, indeed, great numbers of all those that possess more than five or six strokes, are as strictly compounds as any in the language, though the lexicographers are incapable^ of reducing them to their constituent principles ; and lience allow them to stand as primitives among such as are of simpler construction ; and hence the total number of prinrdtives are reckoned at about sixteen hundred, each of them producing from three to seventy-four derivatives ; and hereby constituting the great masa of the Chinese written language. * Elements of Chinese Grammar, with a preliminary Dissertation on the Characters and Colloquial Me- tum of iha Chinese, &c. By J. Marshman, D.D., vSerampore, 1814, 4to. IMITATIVE AND SYMBOLICAL. S85 we should probably still find them derived ii) the same manner from forms or symbols of thing's, and that they were at first direct imitations or conven- tional representatives ; still, as I have already showji, united and compounded, or in some other way modified to express abstract or complicated ideas. It must be obvious, however, that characters thus constituted must be very loose and perplexing ; and such, in fact, they are often found to.be, by the most expert and best instructed natives. It must be obvious, at the same time, that a system of picture-writing, thus constructed and perfected, may, in a considerable degree, answer the purpose of alphabetic marks;* and it is doubt- less owing alone to the perfection which this system of writing had acquired in Mexico, and still exhibits in China, tliat "the ingenious people of both countries stopped so long at the point of abbreviated emblems, significant of obj??cts, and never fairly advanced from a legible language for things, to a legible language for words. It should be observed, however, as a farther proof of the tendency of pic- ture-characters to advance towards literal, that even in China itself the Mantcheu, or 'I'artars, have an alphabet, or system of verbal writing, and that the Mantcheu practice has long been acquiring a growing reputation. It should be observed, also, that the Chinese characters themselves have of late been resorted to at Canton, and by Chinese natives, as merely expressive of sounds, and been employed in the formation of an English vocabulary ; in conse- qupuce, as Sir George Staunton remarks, of the great concourse of persons resid- ing at this station who use the English language.! In like manner, the Japanese, fond as they are of copying from the Chinese, have long since departed from their system of marks for things, and addicted themselves to alphabetic characters ; sometimes vvriting them horizontally, and sometimes perpendi- * Among the numerous and important library establishments of the present day, one has lately been opctioil by the co-operation of a committee of enlightened and public-spirited individuals, for a regular course of instrui'tion by lectures in many of the most extensively spoken languages of the East, and atnong the rest in Chinese. Tlie President is Lord Bexley ; among the Vice-Presidents are Sir George Staunton, Hart., and Sir T. S. Raffles ; its situation is in Bartlett's Buildings, Ilolborn ; and while instruction iti these valuable branches of literature is hereby ofTered to every one, it is gratuitously bestowed on ail Christian missionaries vvho are desirous of taking advantage of its benefits. It is, heace. emphatically denominated, 1 " LvNiJiARK Insiitctdn IV Aid of thk P:iopAGAin)N of Curistiamty," and few estabhslnnents jf the present day are more entitled to the support of the nation, or of the world. It should be farther stated, moreover, in order to excite the fullest confidi^nce of the public, tiiat the Pro- fessor in ths Chinese department is the Rev. Dr. Morrison ; while those in the Arabic, Persian, Bengalee, ind Sanscrit are nearly of equal celebrity, and have the occasional assistance of Profesr,or Lee, of Cam- bridge; and that all of them have entered into the undertaking with so much zeal and public spirit as to afford their valuable asslstan.'e gratuitously. Nor has this instruction been offered in vain or unsuccessfully. Even in the Chinese department, where many might expect least to be accomplished, the very learned and excellent Professor, in his first Quarterly Report to the Committee, March 1, 1826, has stated, that he has been attended by thirteen siudenls, seniors and Juniors, besides several ladies ; with the progress of most of whom he has had great reason to be satisfied : and two or three of whom, having attained some previous knowledge of tlie language, are prepar ng to carry on the design after his own rettirn to China. The Institution is also under a deep and inexpressible obligation to Dr. Morrison, for the gratuitous use of his most valuable Chinese library,~by far the first in Europe, — and,perhaps,anywhereoutof Asia; which is now deposited and arranged at the establishment. As a, matter of high literary curiosity, I have requested its di.stingU!shod owner to furnish me with a brief accountof the library for insertion in the present place, and my reverend friend has been kind enough to comply by the following communication, which I give in hia own words: — " In the L\No>TAGK Institition there is deposited an extensive library of Chinese printed books and MSS., together with a museum intended to illustrate subjects referred to in the books. This Library and Museum are the property of Dr. Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China. " There are between nine hundred and a thousand v/orka ; making in all about 10,000 volumes, stitched and bound in the Chinese manner. " These books contain specimens of the literature of more than three thousand years ; from the com- pilations and original writings of Confucius, five hundred years before the Christian era down to the pre- sent time. " The materiaUs from which Confucius compiled the works he put forth are not extant in any other form than that which he gave them ; and therefore, he may be regarded as the oldest Chinese writer whose vvoi ks have come down to the present day. " Dr. Morrison has not had time, during his sojourn in Europe, lo^make out a Catalogue Raisonn* of his Chinese library, with a brief account of the chief works, their titles, aubjects, authors, date, Ac. "They consist of the sacred books of Cliinese antiquity, with copious commentaries, writt : opinions on government ; rites and usages of China; religious books' of Laovfceu- nism , Budhism; and the morals of Confucianism ; poetry; hi.'itoricai and other novels; metUcine; botany ; and the materia medica ; notices of foreign nations, and embassies to China ; works composed by Jesuit missionaries concerning Europe and Christianity ; the European geometry ; and the astronomy of the fifteenth century, &c. ; a fevir works on the rehgion of ^lahomet, &c. counters of more than mortal fury : in the course of which the different combatants, mounted on fiery steeds, and clothed in resplendent armour, mutually wounded, and were wounded in return. Though, when the battle was over, they bathed in foun- tains of living water ; and, being instantly healed, sat down to a sumptuous banquet, at which Oden, their chief deity, presided, and passed the hours of midnight in singing war-songs and drinking goblets of mead. Even the web of future events, woven by their three PARCiE, was manufactured of strings of human entrails, the shuttles being formed of arrows dipped in gore, and the weights of the sculls of gasping warriors. It is to this fiction Mr. Gray alludes so finely, but, at the same time, so fearfully, in his Ode entitled " The Fatal Sisters." Now the storm begins to lower (Haste ! the loom of hell prepare) ; ' • Iron sleet of arrowy shower Hurtles in the darken'd air. Glittering !ances are the loom •■Where the web of death we strain ; Weaving many a soldier's doom, Orkney's wo, and Randver's bane. See the gristly texture grow ! "T is of human entrails n*ade : — And the weights that play below — Each a gasping warrior's head. Shafts for shuttles, dipp'd in gore, Shoot the trembling cords along. Sword ! — that once a monarch bore, Keep the tissue close and strong. 306 ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. Horror covers all the lieiith : — Clouds of carnafte blot the sun :— Sisters ! weave tJie web of death : — Sisters ! cease — the work is done! The armies of the south of Asia, however, under the banners of Mahomet, were as little disposed, at least on the first spur of their fury, to attend to the voice of literature, as those of the north. Yemen, or Happy Arabia, till the time of this accomplished impostor, was equally the seat of polite learning and of courage. It was in climate and language, as well as in elegant pursuits, the Arcadia of the eastern world. Here the genius of poetry received his birth, and was nursed into maturity with fond and incessant attention. The Persians caught the divine art from the Arabians, as the Greeks afterward caught it from the Persians. The best pastoral poems in the world, or Cas- seidas, as they are called, and some of the best epic productions, are of Ara- bian growth. Before the era of Mahomet, a kind of poetical academy was established in this quarter, which used to assemble, at stated times, in a town named Ocadeh ; where every tribe attended its favourite poet on his recital of the piece prepared for the occasion, and supported his aspiring preten- sions. Those declared by the appointed judges most excellent were tran- scribed in characters of gold on Egyptian paper, and hung up in the temple of Mecca ; and the seven which constitute the Moallakat, or suspended eclogues, best known in Europe, are well worthy of the celebrity they have attained. On the appearance of Mahomet, Arabia thronged with poets of this descrip- tion, and of high and justly distinguished characters ; most of whom, more- over, to their honour, opposed his pretensions, and many of whom ridiculed them with a severity which he never either forgave or forgot. As he ad- vanced, however, in success, poetry and eloquence, and scientific pursuits of every kind, became neglected and even despised, except so far as they could contribute to the promotion of his interest ; the refined and elevated contests at Ocadeh were dropped, and every other passion was made to bend to the master-passion of the day. And hence, on the capture of Alexandria by the forces of Omar, the second in succession to Mahomet, the whole of its mag- nificent library, which had been accumulating from the time of its illustrious founder, was condemned to the flames, and served as fuel to the hot-baths for a period of six months. Amrus, the general of Omar's army, was a lover of letters, and 'the esteem he had contracted for Philoponus, one of the most learned Alexandrians of the day, strongly inclined him to spare this invaluable treasure. He wrote, therefore, to the Caliph in its behalf, and the answer received from him is well known from Abulpharagius's history: "As to the books of which you make mention, if there be contained in them what ac- cords with the Book of God (meaning the Alcoran), the Book of God is all- sufficient without them : but if there be any thing repugnant to that book, we can have no need of them. Order them, therefore, to be all destroyed." The wildfire of Asia enkindled an equal wildfire throughout Europe. Of the purity of the motive upon which the crusades were first founded there can be no doubt ; but the unfortunate course they took, and the mistaken views and ferocious passions to which they gave birth, rendered them, on the part of the Christians, as hostile to the cause of science and literature, to say nothiilg of higher objects, as the fury of the Saracens. Every thing was for- saken and forgotten in the accomplishment of the only object with which Christendom was now pregnant ; every knee bowed down before the standard of the Cross ; the religion of love was converted into a religion of vengeance ; the motto of Mecca became that of the Vatican ; to fight for the faith was here also declared to be an act of obedience to God,* and every pulse beat high » The following is a part of the famous bull ofPope Gregory IX., published in 1234, in which he exhorts and commands all good Christians to assume the Cross and join the expedition at that tin^e preparing against the Holy Land. " The service to which mankind are now invited is an effectual atonement for tlie miscarriages of a negligent life. The discipline of a regular penance would have discouraged many offenders so much that they would have had no heart to venture upon it : but the holy war is a compen- dious method of discharging men from guilt, and restoring them to the Divine favour. Even if they die on their march, the intention Avill be taken for the deed; and many in this way may be crowned without fighting."— Collier's Eccl. vol i ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. 307 with an unconquerable determination to rescue the Holy Land, and trample upon its defilers. Hence the origin of the various military orders which form so prominent a feature in the history of this period of the world ; of the Knights of Malta, or of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, as they were at first called : the Knights Templars; the Teutonic Order; and the Order of St. Lazarus. Hence, too, that spirit of chivalry and romantic adventure, of tilts and tourna- ments ; which, however it may have laid a basis for a thousand interesting tales of wild exploit and marvellous vicissitude,* had a tendency to change the sober order of things ; to convert the patriotic citizen into a champion of fortune, and to work up the temperate reality of life into a fitful and visionary phrensy. And hence, too, among those who confined their views altogether to sub- jects of personal devotion and still life, the extension, thoUgh not the rise (for they were already in existence), of religious orders, of pilgrimages, and her- mit solitudes ; of vows of celibacy and fasting, of severe penance and rigour ; under the preposterous idea of propitiating the Supreme Being in favour of his own cause, by directly warring with the best and warmest, the most active and most benevolent passions and instincts which he has imprinted on the human heart for the multipUcation of human happiness. The crusades were numerous, but there are only seven that are worthy of particular notice. Of these, the first was led by Godfrey of Bouillon, in 1096, and was the only one that proved really successful; and that actually rescued, though only for a few years, the whole of Palestine from the grasp of the Mahometans. The third is chiefly celebrated for the chivalrous and enthu- siastic valour with which it was prosecuted under our own Richard L in 1189; and for the generous magnanimity of Saladin, who was at that time the Saracen king of Jerusalem. The last two were headed by St. Lewis in 1248 and 1270 ; and are principally notorious for the piety and valour which he displayed, and the misfortunes which attended him. The scenes of havoc and barbarity to which this infatuating system gave rise on both sides are too shocking for narration, and too long to be recounted, even if we had time. The wild desire of foreign expurgation led to a similar desire of purging the church at home ; and hence the establishment of the Holy Wars led to the establishment of the Holy Inquisition ; — the extirpation of infideis to the extirpation of heretics. Hence the crusaders under Bald- win, count of France, when advancing towards Palestine, in 1204, by a sud- den and delirious impulse, turned aside from their attack upon the Maho- metans, and attacked the Greek Church in its stead, on account of its sup- posed heterodoxies ; and took and ransacked Constantinople, instead of taking and restoring Jerusalem. The brutal havoc which followed upon this expedition, and the destruction of all the finest statues and public monuments erected by Constantine on his founding the city, are described with much force and feeling by Nicetas the Chroniate, who was an eye-witness to the transaction, and who justly styles these crusading Vandals, t5 ku'KS dvepauTor Bap6apo2 :f " Barbarians insensible to the fair and beautiful." He especially laments the destruction of the inimi- table figures of Hercules and Helen, which, being constructed of brass, were melted down to pay the soldiers. The following is a part of his description of the latter statue, and I quote it froni the translation of Mr. Harris, as a proof that Constantinople, even in the thirteenth century, had scholars not altogether destitute of literary taste. " What," says he, " shall I say of the beauteous Helen ; of her who brought together all Greece against Troy t Does she mitigate these immitigable, these iron-hearted men 1 No — nothing like it could even she effect, who had before enslaved so many spectators with her beauty. Her lips," continues he, " like opening flowers, were gently parted, as if she were going to speak : and as for that graceful smile, which instantly met the beholder and filled him with delight, those elegant curva- • Bainte-Palaye : M^moires sur I'Ancienne Chevalerie, torn. I. p. 153, et seq. t Fabricii Biblioth. p. 412 U2 908 ON TPIE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. tures of her eyebrows, and the remaining harmony of her figure ; they were what no words can describe and deliver down to posterity."* From the same demoniac spirit proceeded the infuriate crusade against the virtuous Albigeois or Albigenses in the thirteeenth century ; and the long and savage persecutions of the Waldenses or Vaudois, which continued almost without intermission for eighty or ninety years ; and the depopulation of Spain, by an equal expulsion of Jews and Moors, when the Christian arms had once more proved successful in that country. It was during the crusade against the Albigeois (and it is the only anecdote I need advance in proof of the blind and indiscriminate fury with which these adventures were con- ducted) that, when a scruple arose among the crusading army as to the pro- priety of storming the city of Bezieres, after having made preparation for so doing, in consequence of its being peopled with Catholics as well as with heretics, a dexterous casuist settled the point abruptly, by exclaiming, " Kill them all : God knows which are his own."t Independently of any other cause, therefore, it must be obvious that the internal disputes of the Christian church itself, or rather that which was called Christian, in which every nation, and almost eveiy individual, took a part, were alone sufficient to have repelled the progress of liberal and en- lightened science. But beyond this, very soon after the introduction of Christianity, a fondness for the philosophy of Plato and Pythagoras prompted the more speculative ecclesiastics to investigate the mysteries of the divinity and humanity of our Saviour with too nice a curiosity ; and hence the famous controversies of Praxeas, Sabellius, Arius, Nestorius, Eutyches, and various others, most of which led to very extensive proscriptions and persecutions. The schoolmen carried this itch for discussion into the most visionary subtle- ties of metaphysics, and acquired high-sounding titles by devoting the whole of their lives to an investigation of trifles that would disgrace a nursery. The bishops of Rome, after having advanced themselves to the popedom or supremacy of the Church, and invested themselves with territorial power, soon began to arrogate a temporal as well as a spiritual supremacy through- out Christendom ; and hence the different courts of Europe, and at times even the emperors, were in a state of perpetual hostility with them ; sometimes the emperors obtaining a triumph and deposing the popes, and sometimes the popes proving successful, and deposing the emperors ; and hence the sepa- ration of the Greek church from that of Rome, in the middle of the niiith cen- tury, and of the English church towards the beginning of the sixteenth. There is another cause, and it is the last I shall notice, which powerfully contributed to the night of error and ignorance, which overspread the moral horizon during the melancholy period before us ; and that is, the general chaos which prevailed in tlie language of almost every nation of the civilized world, and the consequent want of some current medium of communication. It was a maxim of the Roman government, and of a most artful and politic charac ter, and which,. in our own day, has been closely copied by the crafty tyrant of France,! ^^ plant its vernacular tongue wherever it planted its arms.- Greece formed the only exception to this general rule ; and, from its admitted superiority of taste and genius, was allowed to teach its conquerors instead of being taught by them. With this exception all the rest of Europe was latinized in a greater or less degree. The latinity, indeed, was of the most barbarous kind imaginable — for the dialect was, in almost every instance, a mongrel breed of Roman and aboriginal terms, with imperfect inflexions and unauthorized idioms, ready for any other change that chance might suggest or future conquest impose. The barbarian conquerors of the north, however, seem to have cared as little about their respective dialects as about their religion ; and hence, in both instances, they gave and took alternately with the different nations thai submitted to their yoke. Yet, as fresh tides of invaders poured forward, tlt« • Harris, ii. 455, 456. f Hist, des Troubadours, 1. 193. X Ttjis lecture was delivered in 1813, during the domineering uower of Buonaparte. ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. 309 Latin character progressively died away ; and pure Latin was at length no longer known except as the language of the learned. Even in Rome itself it ceased to be spoken at the commencement of the seventh century; and the descendants of Cajsar and Cicero, and Virgil and Horace, were incapable of reading the immortal productions of their forefathers. It had already ceased for some ages to be emplo)7^ed in the Greek empire ; having here been sup planted by the Greek tongue itself, the prevailing language of the country, and the fashionable language of every polite Roman, shortly after the remo- val of the imperial court to the eastern metropolis, in the reign of Con- stantine. With respect to language, Mahomet pursued the same plan as the Romans. Wherever he conquered he introduced the Alcoran, and compelled every na- tion to read and to understand it in his own tongue. And hence, during the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, the only genuine languages spoken throughout the civilized M^orld were Greek and Arabic ; both derived from a similar source, and of very early origin ; and both existing without any very great degree of variation to the present hour ; but neither of them employed at any time as a vernacular tongue, in the north or south, or even the west of Europe, except in Spain, where the Arabic was used during the dominion of the western caliphat in that country. In consequence of which the latinity of the Spanish tongue is considerably tinctured with Arabic terms and phraseologies, and possesses less resemblance to its Roman origin than the Portuguese, which, as being more remote, was less affected by the Saracen invasion and conquest. The controversies of the church, and the subtle logomacliies, or word-wars of the schoolmen, were conducted sometimes in Greek, but far more gene- rally in Latin. And as only the former of these tongues was known to the people of the eastern, and neither of them to those of the western empire, the laity, in general, were completely cut off from all knowledge of the little and only learning that was alternately exercised, excepting as occa- sionally explained to them in whatever might happen to be their vernacular tongue. Upon the fall of the Latin language, the rude dialect that was most approved in France and Italy was the Provencal, or that made use of in Provence and its vicinity ; and it was hence exclusively employed by the Troveurs or Trou- badours, as they were called, Proven9al poets that about the commencement of the eleventh century began to flourish very numerously ; and by the com- plimentary and licentious gayety of their incondite rhymes, to obtain an esta- blishment in almost every court of Europe. The times, indeed, were well calculated to promote their object ; for there IS, perhaps, hardly a vice that can be enumerated in the whole catalogue of moral evil that did not at this era of ignorance brutalize the human heart; and even the devotees themselves consisted, for the most part, of worn-out pro- fligates, who had no longer the power of indulging their sensual gratifica- tions. Such, among others, was William IX., count of Poictou, who was one of the earliest Provencal poets, and is equally celebrated for the un- bridled debauchery of his earlier life, and the sanctimonious pretensions of his old age ; — who at first founded an abbey for women of pleasure, and after- ward converted it into a nunnery for the chaste and the pious ; and who, on being rebuked and excommunicated in the midst of his infamous career, by his own bishop, seized him by the hkir, and was on the point of despatching him, but suddenly stopped short, and exclaimed, " No — I have that hatred of thee, thou shalt never enter heaven through the assistance of my hand." " Nee ccelum unquam intrabis meae manus ministerio."* Respecting another court and people in the neighbourhood of Poictou, we are told by an excellent contemporary writer, that all the men of rank were so blinded by avarice, that it might truly be said of them, in the words of Juvenal, * Malmesbury, p. 96, fol. ed. 1596 . 310 ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. Unde habeas, quasrit nemo, sed oportet habere.* None car'd what way he gain'd, so gam were his. " The more they discoursed about right, the greater their enormities. Those who were called justiciaries, were the head of all injustice. The sheriffs and magistrates, whose immediate duty was justice and judgment, were more atrocious than the very thieves and robbers ; and were more cruel than even the cruellest of other men ! The king himself, when he had leased his do- mains as dear as was possible, transferred them immediately to another that offered him more ; and then again to another, neglecting always his former agreement ; and still labouring for bargains that were greater and more pro- fitable."! I have observed that in the midst of this long and gloomy night a few bright and splendid stars shot occasionally a solitary gleam athwart the horizon ; and, in one or two corners of it, a radiance at times poured forth like the dawn of the morning. Several of the Arabian caliphs, as soon as the first paroxysm of their violence was exhausted, returned to that general love of literature which had immemorially been characteristic of their coun- try. And hence, when Europe was plunged into its thickest midnight, the eastern and western caliphats, or courts of Bagdad and Cordova (by far the most illustrious in Saracenic history), evinced a lustre and a liberality that were nowhere else to be met with, and opened asylums to the learned of every country .| " It was then," says Abulfeda, who was himself one of the orightest gems that adorned the former court, " it was then that men of earning were esteemed luminaries that dispel darkness, lords of human Kind, destitute of whom the world becomes brutalized."^ And from the account of the Arabic manuscripts of the Escurial, drawn up by the learned Casiri, it appears, that the public libraries in Spain, when under the Arabian princes, were not fewer than seventy; a wonderful patronage of literature, when copies of books were peculiarly scarce and enormously expensive. The tie, however, between science and Islamism was unnatural, and could not continue long. The religion of Mahomet is, of itself, a choak-damp to every generous purpose of the soul ; no moral harvest can flourish under it ; and the few instances that it can boast of to the contrary are only exceptions to the general rule : scarce and scattered oases, or plots of verdure, that un- expectedly peep forth in the vast ocean of its sandy desert. All Moham- medan patronage of learning, therefore, has long since died away; and Arabia, which once shed so splendid a light on the rest of the world, is now sunk in darkness, while all the rest of the world is beaming with light around it. " Those vast regions," observes M. Sismondi, with a just feeling of re- gret, " where Islamism rules, or has ruled, are dead to all the sciences. Those rich fields of Fez and Morocco, made illustrious through five centuries by so many academies, so many universities, so many libraries, are now nothing more than deserts of burning sands, where tyrants dispute with tigers. All the laughing and fruitful coast of Mauritania, where commerce, arts, and agriculture were raised to the highest prosperity, are at present mere retreats for pirates, who spread terror, and resign their toils for abomi- nable indulgences, as soon as the plague returns every year to make victims of them, and to avenge offended humanity. Bagdad, formerly the seat of luxury, of power, of knowledge, is in ruins. The far-famed universities of Cufa and Bassora are closed for ever. That immense literary wealth of the Arabians, which we have only had a glimpse of, exists no more in any region where Arabians or Mussulmans govern. We are no longer to seek there for the fame of their great men, or for their writings. Whatever has been pre- served is entirely in the hands of their enemies, in the convents of monks, or the libraries of European princes. Yet these extensive countries have never been conquered : it is no stranger, that has plundered them of their • Juv. xiv. 207. t Harris, ii. 515. t Leo fric. De Vir. lilustr. apud Arab. Bibl. J Abulphar. Dynast, p 160 ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. 311 riches ; that has annihilated their population ; that has destroyed their laws, their manners, and their national spirit. The poison has sprung from them- selves ; it has risen indigenously, and has destroyed every thing."* Of the little genuine learning that appeared in Christendom, to temper the gross ignorance of the times, it is to the praise of the Church that by far the greater part of it, both in the eastern and western empire, was the rare boast of ecclesiastics. And it is especially to the praise of our own country, and peculiarly to that of our very ancient universities, both which can lay claim to an origin coeval with the middle period of the Anglo-Saxon octarchy, that more than half the most celebrated scholars of the times were of British birth and education. Such were Aldhelm, Bede, and Alcuin, the three great Anglo-Saxon luminaries of the eighth century, and the last of whom was the tutor and confidential friend of Charlemagne. Such was Ingulph of the eleventh century, made abbot of Croyland by William the Conqueror, and to whose history we are indebted for much that has descended to us of the era we are now surveying. Such, too, were John of Salisbury, Girald the Cam- brian, and the monks Adelard and Robert of Reading; the two last of whom had travelled into Egypt and Arabia, and had studied mathematics at Cordova; and the former of whom translated Euclid out of Arabic into Latin ; a clear proof, however, that Greek, the language in which Euclid himself wrote, was but little known at this time among men of letters in England. Such also was Roger Bacon, of the thirteenth century, whOse knowledge of physics had so far outstripped that of all his contemporaries that, like Petrarch some ages afterward, his wonderful attainments were ascribed to magic, and his holding an intercourse with the iDevil. And such, to close the list, was Wyckliff, in the fourteenth century, the bright and splendid phosphor of the glorious Reformation. These, and as many more, had I time to enumerate them, were furnished from the Church. Nor has the laity any reason to be ashamed of its contri- butions: Sir John Fortescue brilliantly adorned the fifteenth century, Sir John Mandeville the fourteenth ; which was also enlightened by the combined and powerful talents of Gower and Chaucer, of Dante, Petrarch, and Boc- cace. Henry L and Henry IL are nearly equally celebrated in the twelfth century, for their patronage of learning and learned men, and especially for their promoting the purest taste in Gothic architecture ; during whose reigns, the most sumptuous and admired of our national buildings of this kind were erected. The eleventh century is peculiarly signalized by the spleridid talents and learning of Egitha, queen of Edward the Confessor, who, in the language of Ingulph, was equally admired for her beauty, her literary accom- plishments, and her virtue. Let us ascend a century higher, and close the whole with the sacred name of Alfred ; a name, no Englishman ought to pro- nounce without homage : equally tried and equally triumphant in adversity and prosperity; as a legislator and philosopher; as a soldier and politician; a king and a Christian; the pride of princes; the flower of history; and the aelight of mankind. We have thus rapidly travelled over a wide and dreary desert, that, like the sandy wastes of Africa, to which we have just referred, has seldom been found refreshed by spots of verdure, or embellished by plants that should naturally belong to the country: — and what is the upshot of the whole? — the moral that the survey inculcates 1 — Distinctly this ; — a moral of the utmost moment, and imprinted on every step we have trodden ; — that ignorance is ever associated with wretchedness and vice, and knowledge with happiness and virtue. These connexions are indissoluble; they are inwoven in the very texture of things, and constitute the only substantial difference between man and man. For, il we except these distinctions, " all men," observes one of the most enlightened writers of this dark period, to whom I have al- ready adverted, John of Salisbury, who was contemporary with Stephen and Henry H., and whose classical Latin I shall put into literal English, "all • De la Litt^rature da Midi de TEuropc torn i, Paris, 4 torn. 1813. 812 ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. men throughout the world proceed from a like beginning ; consist of, and are nourished by like elements, draw from the same principle the same vital breath, enjoy the same care of heaven, pass through life alike, and alike die."* To which I shall only add, that, as Christianity is the most perfect kind of knowledge, it must essentially produce the most perfect kind of happiness. It is the golden everlasting chain let down from heaven to earth ; the ladder that appeared to the patriarch in his dream ; when he beheld Jehovah at its top, and the angels of God ascending and descending with messages of grace to mankind. LECTURE XIII. ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. In the last lecture, we continued our progress through that general history of science and literature, which we had commenced in the lecture that pre- ceded it ; and having, in the first of these studies, brought down the subject from the most celebrated times of Athens and Rome to the decline of the Roman empire, we waded, in the second, through the barren and cheerless period of the dark or middle ages, extending from the fall of Rome before the barbarous arms of the Goths, in the fifth century, to the fall of Constan- tinople before the no less barbarous arms of the Turks, in the fifteenth cen- tury ; — exploring our way as well as we were able, by the occasional guidance of a few transitory and uncertain beacons, amid the desolate realms of men- tal darkness and chaos by which we were surrounded, till we reached the auspicious hour in which the voice of the Almighty once more exclaimed throughout the dead and dreary waste, " Let there be light ! — and there WAS light!" The period of the revival of letters in Christendom is, in many respects, one of the most brilliant eras in human history. "Without the intervention of a miracle we behold a flood of noonday bursting all at once over every quarter of the horizon, and dissipating the darkness of a thousand years ; wa behold mankind in almost every quarter of Europe, from the Carpathian moun- tains to the Pillars of Hercules, from the Tiber to the Vistula, waking as from a profound sleep to a life of activity and bold adventure ; ignorance falling pros- trate before advancing knowledge ; brutality and barbarism giving way to science and polite letters ; vice and anarchy to order and moral conduct ; and idolatry, hypocrisy, and superstition to the pure simplicity of Christian truth. Hence, in some places, we trace the fall of feudal slavery and vassalage — in others of popish tyranny and imposition — and in every place a juster sense of relative duties and of the real dignity of man. Hence the origin of those im- portant inventions, paper and clock-making, printing, telescopes, and gunpow- der ; and hence, too, the first insight into the modern doctrine of the circula- tion of the blood ; and the wonderful discoveries of the mariner's compass, the sphericity of the earth's surface, and the revolution of the planets around the sun. Hence, Portugal, with a bold and adventurous canvass, doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and realized a maritime passage to India ; Spain explored and established herself in a new world ; and England, in the person of the intre- pid Drake, for the first time circumnavigated tlie globe ; while Galileo, foy the marvellous invention and application of his telescope, unfolded to us not another world alone, but systems of worlds upon worlds in endless succession throughout the heavens ; all which astonishing series of splendid facts and transactions, together with various others of •:" :\r!y equal importance, crowd upon each other within the short period tc w!ii.:!i \vc arc now confining our • De Nugio Curialium ; Harris, ii. 525. ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 313 ttttention, extending from the beginning of the fourteenth to about the middle jf the sixteenth century. The heart of man seemed to beat with a new and more vigorous pulsation, and all the energies of the soul to be roused to the proudest darings of adventure. In contemplating the causes of that wonderful change in the character and pursuits of civilized Europe, which this extraordinary combination of cir- cumstances indicates, the following may, perhaps, be regarded as among the principal. First, the natural spring or elasticity of the human mind, by means of which, though it may for a time be borne down by a weight of ignorance or oppression, it at length rouses from its torpitude, resumes its innate energy, and shakes off the vampire burden with a recoil proportioned to the pressure that subdued or stifled it. Secondly, the sudden flight and dispersion of the best and almost the only literary characters of the age from the walls of Constantinople, upon the capture of this elegant and renowned city by the Turks, under the victorious banners of Mahomet II. Thirdly, the taste for literature which, at this very period, was reviving in many of the Italian states, and more particularly at Florence under the illus- trious family of the Medici ; and especially the election of the celebrated Giovanni de' Medici to the pontificate, under the name of Leo X. Fourthly, the facility afforded by the art of printing, discovered at the very period of the fall of Constantinople, to the diffusion of useful and polite learning in every direction. And, fifthly, and, perhaps, chiefly, the general attention and spirit of inquiry which were excited throughout every country in Christendom, by the grand and eventful drama of the Reformation at this time exhibiting in Germany. Let us attend to each of these causes in the order in which I have stated them. I. Vice and ignorance are the necessary companions of each other : such is the immutable law of nature ; and we can no more reverse it, than we can reverse the stars in their courses ; and nothing can exceed the extreme to which both were carried during the period of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies ; and to which the whole texture of the feudal system, and the abomi- nations of the Vatican tyranny, equally contributed. When the barbarous and intermixed tribes of Goths, Huns, and Vandals poured down in successive streams from the north, and overran the different provinces of the Roman empire, the conquered lands distributed by lot, and thence called allotted or allodial, were held in entire sovereignty by the differ- ent chieftains, without any other obligation existing between them than that of uniting on great occasions to defend the community. Additional tribes still succeeded : — wider tracts of country were subdued, and many individuals occupied land to a very considerable extent ; while the king or captain-general, who led on his respective tribe to conquest, naturally acquired by far the largest portion of territory as his own share. These lands he found it con- venient, in order to maintain his influence, to divide among his principal fol- lowers, merely subjecting them, for the grant, to certain aids and military ser- vices. His example was imitated by his courtiers, who distributed, under similar conditions, portions of their estates to their dependants. Thus a feudal kingdom became a military establishment, and had the appearance of a vic- torious army, subordinate to command, and encamped under its officers in different parts of the country; every captain or baron considering himself independent of his sovereign, except during a period of national war. Pos- sessed of wide tracts of country, and residing at a distance from the capital, they erected strong and gloomy fortresses in places of difficult access ; and not only oppressed the people, and slighted whatever happened to be the civil magistracy of the state, but were often in a condition to set the authority of the crown itself at defiance. As the tenure by which the lands were held was military ; as there was no art or science to occupy the mind ; as reading was seldom cultivated^ 314 ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. and writing a still rarer accomplishment ; every landed proprietor was a mere soldier ; and being expert and strong by the daily use of arms, was eager for an opportunity of showing his prowess. Nor was such opportunity ever wanting ; for, when not employed in expeditions against a public enemy, he was commonly engaged in some petty enterprise at home, prompted by pride avarice, or revenge. Hence feudsj as, indeed, the term itself imports, were the pecuhar characteristic oi feudal power; vice and idleness were pei'- petually engendering animosities ; gross ignorance disabled the different par- ties from adjusting them by the address of argument and fair reason; brutal obstinacy rendered them hereditary; and the son who succeeded to his father's estate succeeded also to his quarrels. While such was the ready aid which the political system of the times ad- ministered to the gloomy reign of mental darkness and disorder, the gross misconduct of the churcli was still more instrumental in promoting the same direful effect. Although nothing is more clear than that, through the whole of this desolate period, God never left himself without a witness of the truth, the purity, and the power of the genuine doctrines of Christianity ; although nothing is more clear than that, even in the deepest midnight of this desolate period, a few honest, zealous, and conscientious ecclesiastics, and even lay- men, are to be met with who sedulously and manfully opposed themselves to the general corruption of their contemporaries, it is equally clear, that the great mass of the priesthood assumed the sacred habit for the mere purpose of indulging more effectually in the worst and most licentious passions and appetites ; and surpassed all the rest of the community in the irregularity and scandal of their lives. Many of them were professed infidels, and ex- claimed openly to each other, " Quantas divitias nobis peperit hctc Christi fahula /"— " What wealth does this fiction of Christ obtain for us !" A sen- timent generally ascribed to the free-thinking genius of Leo X., but which, whether ever uttered by him or not, was in frequent use long before his era ; while nearly all concurred in the well-known motto that " ignorance is the mother of devotion." In truth, it requires no ordinary stock of temper to wade through the scenes of abominable filth and barefaced hypocrisy which characterize the holy fathers of the church, as they were impiously denominated, at the period im- mediately before us. Crusades, indeed, had long been in use for the extirpa- tion of infidelity, and there were occasional triumphs of the Cross over the Crescent ; but, like most other pretensions to ecclesiastical zeal and devo- tion, even these had for the most part been perverted to the sinister purposes of avarice, temporal authority, or revenge ; while plenary indulgences and remissions of sin, for given periods of time, or, in other words, formal licenses to live a life of unrestrained debauchery, and gratify every libidi- nous appetite and inclination for the term specified, had, during the existence of many crusades, been openly granted at the Vatican, as well as distributed for this purpose by its commissaries, all over Europe, to everyone who would either consent to join the sacred standard in person or hire a substitute to fight for him. And similar indulgences were continued after their cessa- tion, and were notoriously bought and sold at a settled or market-price. This was strikingly exemplified during the papacy of Urban II. in the year 1100; while it is admitted by the warmest advocates of the Vatican that the famous fabric of St. Peter's church at Rome was paid for under Leo X. out of the same resources ; which they venture to urge, indeed, in justifi- cation of the measure ;* as though crimes could change their nature by the end for which they are perpetrated. One of the fittest instruments for this traffic of abomination was the noto- rious Dominican inquisitor John Tetzel, who, true to his own trade, led so abandoned a life of debauchery that he was at length condemned to death by the emperor Maximilian for the crime of adultery, accompanied 'With very atrocious circumstances ; and was saved from undergoing the punishment * See Dupin, book ii. ch. i. ; as also Robcoc'b Life of Leo X. vol. iii. p. 150. ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 315 with great difficulty. He had the effrontery to boast that he had saved more souls from hell by his indulgences, than ever St. Peter had converted to Christianity by his preaching. This juggler in iniquity, however, was at times himself out-juggled by others ; and the following instance of his being overreached, as gravely re- lated by Sechendorf, will show that the mummery of his trading was as ridi- culously absurd as it was grossly nefarious. A man of some rank at Leipsic, who was disgusted with his villany, and determined to be even with him, ap- plied to him for information whether he could grant absolution for a sin of a particular kind intended to be perpetrated, but to be kept a secret till the time. Tetzel replied boldly that he could readily do so, provided the payment were made equal to it. The bargain was instantly struck, the money paid down ; and the diploma of absolution signed, sealed, and delivered in due form. The purchaser, thus empowered, waited quietly till Tetzel, having collected from Leipsic and its neighbourhood all the money he was able to lay hold of, set off for his home richly freighted. The man of absolution followed him right speedily ; overtook him on the road ; plundered him of the whole of his fraudulent gain, and, having beaten him soundly at the same time over the shoulders, produced his patent of absolution, avowed that this was the sin he had purchased leave to commit, and sent him back to Leipsic to tell his own story. If we turn immediately to the Vatican itself, and observe the personal con- duct of the direct successors to the chair of St. Peter, and of the sacred col- lege by which they were surrounded, what is the picture which is unfolded to us 1 We behold pope fighting against pope, cardinals, in a multiplicity of instances, against cardinals ;* the fornjer occasionally deposed, and the latter still more frequently strangled. We behold Leo X., when only an infant of seven years old, made abbot of the rich benefice of P'onte-dolce ; a few years afterward holding not less than twenty benefices equally rich and valuable at the same time ; and nominated to the grave and venerable college of car- dinals at the age of thirteen. We behold Alexander VL, a near predecessor of Leo X., living incestuously with his own daughter, the loose but beautiful and accomplished Lucretia Borgia, a common prostitute to her father and two brothers ; and we behold one of the brothers assassinating the other, and shortly afterward her legitimate husband, in the precincts of the apostolic palace, and upon the threshold of St. Peter's church, from a jealousy of their superior pretensions to her favour.f While, to close the whole, for it is dis- gusting to wade in such a slough of moral filth, we behold the council of Lateran inveighing with all its authority against the scandalous lives of many of its own ministers, who, not satisfied with living in a state of concu- binage themselves, consented to receive the wages of iniquity, and sell licenses to the laity for the grant of a like indulgence.| But it may, perhaps, be said, that in these instances the soft and enervating power of an Italian climate, and the licentious habits which so peculiarly characterized the decline of the Roman empire, and which to the period before us had never been altogether eradicated, laid a foundation for vices which would not otherwise have been exhibited. Let us then direct our attention to a climate of another kind ; let us turn to the hardy and prover- bially virtuous inhabitants of Scotland, and proverbially virtuous, too, from the very nature of the climate itself: what was the effect of ignorance and papal superstition amid the corruption of the fourteenth and fifteenth centu- ries upon the physical temperance and chastity of the Highlands? The fol- lowing is Dr. M'Crie's account in his Life of John Knox, and which he sup- ports by suflicient authorities : — "The corruptions by which the Christian religion was universally dfe • Roscoe, vol. ii. p. 104. t ^b. vol. i. Subjoined Dissertations, p. 8 — 11. X Q,uia ver6 in quibusdam regionibus nonnulli jnrisdictionem habentes, pecuniaiios quaestus A concubi nariis percipere non erubescunt, palientes eos in tali fceditate sordescere, sub poenft maledictionis aeternte praecipimus, ne deinceps sub pacto, composilioue aut epe alterius qujeslOs, talia quovis tnodo tolerent, aut dissimulent.— S. S. Concil. torn. xiv. p. 302. 316 ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. praved, before tiie Reformation, had grown to a greater heiglit in Scotland than in any other nation within the pale of the western church. Superstition and religious imposture, in their grossest forms, gained an easy admission among a rude and ignorant people. By means of these the clergy attained to an exorbitant degree of opulence and power ; which were accompanied, as they always have been, with the corruption of their order, and of the whole system of religion. The full half of the wealth of the nation belonged to the clergy ; and the greater part of this was hi the hands of a few of their num- ber, who had the command of the whole body. Avarice, ambition, and the love of secular pomp reigned among the superior orders. Bishops and ibbots rivalled the first nobility in magnificence, and preceded them in honours. They were privy-counsellors and lords of session as well as of parliament, and had long engrossed the principal offices of state. A vacant bishopric or abbacy called forth powerful competitors, who contended for it as for a principality or petty kingdom : it was obtained by similar arts, and not unfrequently taken possession of by the same M'eapons. Inferior bene- fices were openly put to sale or bestowed on the illiterate and unworthy minis- ters of courtiers ; on dice-players, strolling bards, and bastards of bishops. — There was not such a thing known as for a bishop to preach : — the practice was even gone into desuetude among all the secular clergy, and wholly de- volved on the mendicant monks, who employed it 'for the most mercenary purposes. " The lives of the clergj^ exempted from secular jurisdiction, and corrupted by wealth and idleness, were become a scandal to religion, and an outrage on decency. While they professed chastity, and prohibited, under the severest penalties, any of the ecclesiastical order from contracting lawful wedlock, the bishops set the example of the most shameless profligacy before the infe- rior clergy ; avowedly kept their harlots ; provided their natural sons with benefices, and gave their daughters in marriage to the sons of the nobility and principal gentry; many of whom were so mean as to contaminate the blood of their families by such base alliances for the sake of the rich dowries which they brought. " Through the blind devotion and munificence of princes and nobles, monasteries, those nurseries of superstition and idleness, had greatly multi- plied in the nation ; and though they had universally degenerated, and were notoriously become the haunts of lewdness and debauchery, it was deemed impious and sacrilegious to reduce their number, abridge their privileges, or alienate their funds. " The ignorance of the clergy respecting religion was as gross as the dis- soluteness of their morals. Even bishops were not ashamed to confess that they were unacquainted with the canon of their faith, and had never read any part of the sacred Scriptures, except what they met with in their missals."* It is not, then, to be wondered at, that, under so repugnant and scandalizing a slate of things, notwithstanding the darkness and deformity of the times, mankind should in every part of Europe be growing ripe for a change, and that the still small voice of the conscientious few, who exposed and resisted the corruption around them, should be working with a wholesome ferment amid the general mass ; that that elastic power of the human mind, which, in our own day, we have seen in Spain, in Russia, in Germany, and may yet, perhaps, see in France,t rising with indignant recoil against the domestic or foreign tyranny by which it had been long bowed down, should be swelling, and labouring, and maturing to the same effect, in the case before us ; co-ope- rating with the intrepid voice of Wyckliflf in our own country, and with the ashes of Huss and Jeremy of Prague, that were not In vain sprinkled over the guilty soil of Switzerland, and effecting that important revolution, which rea- son, religion, and common sense equally vilified and insulted, equally called aloud for and sanctioned. II. At this very period, in the year of our own era 1445, Constantinople, the • Life of John Knox, p. 14—20. T The prediction is fulfilled. Tlic passage was delivered, during the usurpation of Napoleon, in 1813 ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 317 delight and glory of Constantine, who founded and named it after his own name ; the metropolis of the eastern empire ; the rival of ancient Rome ; the seat of elgance, refinement, and luxury; the asylum of science upon its banishment from the west of Europe, by the savage incursions of the northern tribes ; where the language of Homer, and Herodotus, and Plato, and Aris- totle, and Sophocles, and Demosthenes, was still spoken as the common tongue, and their writings still studied and idolized, — fell prostrate before the haughty banners of the Turks ; the most enterprising, but at the same time the rudest and most barbarous of all the Saracen powers. All Europe trembled at the intelligence, and an utter extinction was predicted to the little learning and virtue which were now beginning to glimmer in the midst of the general darkness. The fear, however, was without foundation ; and the very event which was apprehended, and with much reason, to be most fatal to the cause of true religion and science, proved most propitious to their promotion. Thus inscrutable are the ways of Providence, in a thousand instances, to the cal- culations of man, and thus triumphant the Divine government when it seems most trampled upon. The career of the Crescent, though it overran the most delightful provinces of the Greek empire, and spread to an enormous extent towards the East, did not, except in a few instances, advance farther in a north-western direction than the borders of Transylvania and Hungary ; while Italy, whose most renowned scholars had found an asylum at Constantinople, upon its general ravage by the Goths, now offered, in return, to the scholars of Coiistantinople an asylum from Turkish fury and oppression ; thus ena- bling the elegant and accomplished Greeks, a second time, to give letters to Europe ; at this period to the modern world, as they had done two thousand years before to the ancient. Several of the Italian governments had, indeed, for half a century, begun to feel the importance of literature and science, and, consequently, to offer protection and patronage to scholars of every description. Florence, Naples, and Ferrara are particularly entitled to this eulogy ; and, in a somewhat inferior degree, Venice, Urbino, Mantua, and Milan. It was a growing spirit, and a growing patronage; till, at length, upon the introduction of Giovanni de' Medici, into the college of cardinals, in 1490, and more especially upon his election to the pontificate in 1513, Rome surpassed every other state in the splendid and extensive encouragement it afforded to wit and wisdom of every kind (with the lamentable exception of that it ought chiefly to have prized), but especially to classical literature and the fine arts. III. The Latin tongue was, at this time, so far revived as to become culti- vated and understood in all its elegancies ; and Dante, Petrarch, Boccacio, Trissino, Sanazzaro, Ariosto, and a bright galaxy of other writers, too exten- sive to be enumerated, had progressively given a character and almost a mature polish to modern Italian. But a knowledge of Greek, the master- tongue of the world, of Attic eloquence and refinement, was but very limited and imperfect, amid the best scholars of the day ; and hence, as I have already observed, the fugitive scholars of Constantinople were hailed in almost every part of Italy and especially by the splendid and illustrious family oi the Me- dici, first at Florence, and afterward at Rome. The directors, indeed, of the early studies of Leo X., or Giovanni de' Medici, as he was then called, were partly drawn* from this well-s|)ring of genuine taste and genius ; Demetrius Chalcondyles and Petrus ^Egineta, both native Greeks, being among the more prominent of his tutors. While, in the very first year of his election to the pontificate, he founded a Greek institute of great extent and magnifi- cence in the centre of the apostolic see ; gave a general invitation to young and noble Greeks to quit their country, and take up their residence under his protection ; purchased for the accommodation of these illustrious strangers the noble palace of the Cardinal of Sion, on the Esquilian hill, which he splendidly endowed as an academy ; and, as far as their talents or education fitted them for the purpose, inducted them into the Roman church, and con- ferred upon them some of its highest dignities and distinctions. 318 ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. IV. Notliing could occur more auspiciously to the zeal and splendour with which this munificent and sumptuous pontiff was prosecuting the revival of literature than the invention of printing ; — that wonderful discovery which has since effected, and which is so well calculated to effect, the most important revolutions among mankind : the noblest art of man, next to the invention of letters ; the winged commerce of the mind ; the impregnable breastplate of freedom. We may fairly call it an invention, even at the period here adverted to, since, though the same art, as well in the form of stereotype or wooden blocks, and of moveable type, had at this time been in use in China ever since the close of the ninth century, and was encouraged by the patronage of the emperor Teen Foh*, there is not the smallest ground for supposing, as there is in the case of the mariner's compass, that it was introduced into Europe from any communication with the Chinese empire. Strasburg has the honour of having given birth to this invention in the mid- dle of the fifteenth century, at the very period when Constantinople fell prostrate before the standard of the Crescent. It was for some time kept a profound secret ; but it was an art of far too much importance to remain con- cealed long ; and was soon eagerly laid hold of by a variety of spirited and noble Italians, whom the fashion and ardour of the times had stimulated to try their respective powers in the generous contest for literary fame and dis- tinction ; and applied, upon an extensive scale, to a publication of correct and almost immaculate editions of the best Greek, Roman, and vernacular authors. Among this excellent group, worthy of all praise and immortality, stands first in order of time, and foremost in that of merit, the well-known name of Aldo Manuzio, or Aldus Manutius Bassianus, the intimate friend of Erasmus, born at Bassiano, a village within the Roman territory, in the year 1447 : he established his printing school at Venice ; invited all the scholars of the age to his assistance ; and, in 1494, produced, as the first fruits of the Aldinc press, the first Greek poem or Greek book that ever appeared in print, the Hero and Leander of Musaeus; which was' followed, not many years after- ward, by an accurate edition of the entire works of Plato, at that time the most popular of all the Greek philosophers ; introduced by an elegant copy of Greek verses composed by Marcus Musurus, one of the most learned Greeks of the day, who had carefully superintended the press, and justly complimentary to the talents and princely munificence of the head of the church: who, with a singular coincidence of facts, was at that very moment addressing a letter to Musurus, requesting his assistance in the formation of his Greek seminary at Rome. I need not add, that to Musurus, to Aldo, to Agostino Chisi, who also founded, and at Rome itself, a printing establish- ment of great extent and celebrity, to scholars and artists of every descrip- tion and country, his patronage, his high approbation, and his pecuniary aid, were dealt out to an extent, ana with a liberality, that no other age has ever witnessed either before or since. Nor did he confine his attention to a restoration of the Greek and Roman languages, or an improvement of his vernacular tongue. Under his auspices a study of the oriental dialects, so necessary to a perfect knowledge of the sacred writings, now first began to engage the attention of the learned. Fe invited ecclesiastics from Syria, Ethiopia, and other eastern countries. In order to carry this important object into due effect, he established a Syriac chair in the university of Bologna, and appointed the celebrated canon Teseo Ambrogio to be the first professor, who is said to have been acquainted with eighteen different languages, and to have delivered his instructions in the Syriac and Chaldee tongues with the fluency of a native. He patronised the Psalter of Agostino Giustiniani, published at Genoa in 151G, in four different languages ; personally perused and superintended, as long as he lived, Pag- nini's translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew ; and, to sum up the whole, gave every encouragement to that masterpiece of learning and labour. * Morrison's Philological View of China, p. 27. ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 319 the Complutensian polyglot of Cardinal Ximenes ; which, with the strictest justice and propriety, was dedicated to him upon its completion : so that, with perhaps a single exception, we may adopt the following elegant eulogy of Mr. Pope : — " But see, each Muse in Leo's golden days Starts from her trance, and trims her wither'd bays ; Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread. Shakes off the dust, and rears her reverend head Then Sculpture and her sister-arts revive ; Stones leap'd to form, and rocks began to live : With sweeter notes each rising temple rung ; A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung." The exception in these verses, to which I refer, is the intimation that the service of the temple was now more pure and appropriate. For the general history of Leo's pontificate, as well domestic as public, abundantly shows that pure, undefiled religion was a very subordinate concern in the estimate of this accomplished high priest. He is accused, indeed, of having been a direct infidel; and of having invented the blasphemous exclamation I have* already noticed, " What wealth does this fiction of Christ obtain for us !" T cannot affirm that he never repeated this burst of blasphemy, but it is well known to have been in use long before his day. Nor ought it to be forgotten that it was Leo X. who excited Vida, as he himself tells us, to write his Christiad, upon the simple unadulterated language of the Bible, with an utter omission, for the first time, of all that absurd introduction of heathen mythology into its sacred mysteries, in which Sannazaro, Torquato Tasso, and even Camoens, have so largely indulged : an omission, which it is diffi- cult to conceive that an infidel, whether secret or open, could ever have sug- gested or ever allowed. Yet the measures he too often pursued, and espe- cially the sale of indulgences, which we have already touched upon, and shall once more have to notice presently, and the proffigate characters whom he employed, or knowingly allowed to be' employed, as his delegates in nego- tiating their sale, as well as in effecting various other objects ; more particu- larly that abandoned wretch, John Tetzel, some of whose exploits have already passed before us, give abundant proof that he was satisfied with the pomp and splendour of the church, and had no religious principle at heart. He had a love for its ceremonials, as they gratified his leading propensity of unbounded splendour and magnificence. And as the externals of the church displayed to him a wider field for an encouragement of learning, and criticism, and translations ; of founding professorships for foreign tongues ; of hunting up sacred manuscripts and records from the East ; and for building churches and palaces of unrivalled grandeur and beauty, than any thing else could open to him ; he was eager, and even profligate in following up such pursuits, and adding them to his earnest desires to obtain the finest poetry, and music, and eloquence, and sculpture, of his own or any former age : but of genuine vital religion, the spiritualized breathings of Gregory I., we have no proofs whatever in any part of the pontificate of Leo X. ^ In few words, such was the general taste for learning and science that characterized the immediate period before us, that there was scarcely an Ita- lian state which had not its university, it& printing press, numerous literary institutions, and poets, historians, grammarians, architects, and musicians, of high and deserved celebrity; while the sacred flame, spreading in every direc • tion, arts, literature, and a bold and adventurous spirit of philosophical research, foreign travel, and commercial speculation, blazed forth, in every direction, from the Po to the Elbe, from the Thames to the Tagus. V. I have said, that ignorance and vice are inseparable associates. But is the converse of this proposition equally true 1 We have now seen mankind advancing in the path oT knowledge — are knowledge and virtue equally inse- parable ? I have a pride in answering this question ; and dare appeal to every page in the history cff the times before us for the truth-of its affirmative. From the first moment that the dawn of literature began to glimmer in the 320 ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. horizon of Italy, where, as I have already observed, it shot forth its earliest twinklings, it pointed, as with the finger of reprobation, to the abominable abuses of the church, and stung to the quick in the satires and brilliant wit of Dante, Petrach, and Boccacio ; the first of whom, in his incomparable " Divina Commedia," assigned, without scruple, situations and torments in hell to not less than three or four of the most debauched or most despotic of the popes, apportioning their sufferings to their respective vices and degrees of tyranny while on earth ;* the second of whom characterizes the papal court, in one of his sonnets by the name of Babylon, and declares that he has quitted it for ever, as a place equally deprived of virtue and of shame, the seat of misery, and the mother of error; and the last of whom made it his direct object, in his very popular and entertaining work, the " Decamerone," to expose the whole priesthood to ridicule and contempt ; his entire argument consisting of the debaucheries of the religious of both sexes. As learning advanced, these attacks became more frequent; and as the art of printing established itself, the assaults of the more celebrated writers, of Poggio, Burchiello, Pulci, and Franco, were published at Antwerp, Leipsic, and in other parts of the Con- tinent, as well as in France and Italy ; till at length the church, becoming sensible of her danger, and, at the same time, equally sensible of her utter inability to repel the shafts that were levelled against her, attempted, like the grand tyrant of the present day,t to suppress the voice of truth and of pub- lic feeling by severe denunciations and punishments ; and hence, in the tenth, session of the Council of Lateran, immediately before the elevation of Leo X. to the pontificate, decreed, that no one under the penalty of excommuni- cation should dare to publish any new work, without the approbation either of the ordinary jurisdiction of the place, or of the holy inquisition. Such denunciations, however, had by this time, in a very considerable de- gree, lost their authority ; and even Leo himself, in the zenith of his potency and popularity, and in many respects not popular without reason, fell a sacri- fice to practices which, however supported by custom, are equally repugnant to religion and common sense. I have already described a part, though comparatively but a small part, of the enormous expenses into which the prodigal but refined magnificence of this genuine descendant of the Medici was annually plunging him. His taste for luxury was unbounded ; his foreign diplomacy was conducted upon a scale of still greater splendour than his domestic court or his literary establishments; while he was at the same time in the regular disbursement of almost incalculable sums for embellishing the Vatican, and augmenting its library with manu- scripts collected from every quarter of the globe, and in completing the im- mense fabric of St. Peter's church, commenced by his predecessor Julius II. The vast revenues of the apostolic see, both temporal and spiritual, were incompetent, by their ordinary channels, to these wide and multifarious de- mands : he had exhausted the pontifical treasury ; and, following an exam- ple which had too often been furnished by his predecessors, he fell into the absurdity of granting a sale of indulgences for its repletion. Indulgences were a ticklish subject in the worst of times ;| and in the times before us the more conscientious and enlightened churchmen were as little disposed to endure them as the laity. In this respect, the feelings of Eras- ♦Those whom he has more especially signalized by itieii sufferings in the infernal regions are, Pope Nicholas III., whom the poet finds tortured in the gulf of Simony, Pope Boniface VIII., and Pope Clement V, The confession of Nicholas III. is peculiarly striking, who at first mistook Dante, in his transitory visit, for his own successor in the papal chair, whom he had been long expecting ; — " Foi sospirando, e con voce di pianto Mi disse : Dunque che a me richiedi ? Se di saper ch'io sia li col cotanto Ctie tu abbi per6 laripascorsa, Sappi, ch'io pui vestitodkl gran manto,"&c. Inferno, cantn xix, t Napoleon Buonaparte ; Uieday alluded to being, as already observed, 1813. t Yet the Council of Trent has long since established their use as a part of wholesome discipline, by formally decreeing that " the power to grant indulgences by Jesus Christ, and the use of them, is ben«- flcial to salvation." ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 321 mus, Melancthon, Bucer, and Luther, coincided: but the three former, being of mild, conciliatory tempers, remained quiet ; while the natural hardihood and high spirit of the last mcited him to open resistance. Our time will not allow us to enter into the dispute : the high pontiff, whose natural disposition, it must be admitted, was also conciliatory, stood aloof from it as long as it was possible ; but his delegates were, for the most part, incautious, violent, and overbearing; and Luther, in almost every instance, had the advantage of them, as much in dexterity of management as in soundness of cause. The controversy grew wider and warmer : one step led on to another ; and the mflexible champion who, at first, only intended to controvert the infallibility of the Pope, at length found himself compelled to controvert that of the Church, and, finally, to regard the high pontiff as Antichrist. The conten- tion had now reached its extreme point ; and the only alternative that re- mained to the intrepid monk of St. Augustin was retraction or excommuni- cation. He halted not between two opinions, but boldly braved the latter ; and addressing himself to the emperor Charles V., who presided at the august and crowded diet before which he was summoned, " As your majesty," said he, " and the sovereigns now present, require a simple answer, 1 reply thus, without vehemence or evasion : Unless I be convinced, by the testimony of Scripture, or of plain reason (for on the authority of the Pope and Councils alone I cannot rely, since it appears that they have frequently erred and con- tradicted each other), and unless my conscience be subdued by the word of God, I neither can nor will retract any thing ; seeing that to act against my own conscience is neither safe nor honest." After which he added, in his native German, the preceding having been spoken in Latin, " Here I take my stand. I cannot act otherwise. God be my help. Amen." f^fr nttiit tcJi. Ktfi fean nCcJit antreris. (ISrOtt liclff mtn. Amen. With this noble protest was laid the key-stone of the Reformation : the pontifical hierarchy shook to its centre ; and the great cause of truth and re- generate religion, which had already made its appearance in Switzerland, under the honest-hearted and undaunted Ulric Zvvingle, spread with electric speed over a considerable portion of Germany ; and, within the space of four years, extended itself from Hungary and Bohemia to France and Great Bri- tain. That, in the infancy of its progress, various enormities were perpe- trated, and that even the conduct of its mighty leader was, in this respect, not at all times irreproachable, must be equally admitted and lamented ; but they were enormities merely incidental to the inexperienced season of infancy, and which disappeared as the cause ripened into mature age ; while, whatever may have been the occasional violence of Martin Luther, "all parties must unite in admiring and venerating the man who, undaunted and alone, could stand be- fore such an assembly, and vindicate, with unshaken courage, what he conceived to be the cause of religion, of liberty, and of truth ; fearless of any reproaches but those of his own conscience, or ofany disapprobation but that of his God."* Such is a brief glance at the wonderful periods that anticipated and have introduced our own unrivalled era. Long and doubtful was the conflict be- tween intellectual life and death: glimmering slowly succeeding to glimmer- ing; light still struggling with suffocating darkness, not for weeks, or months, or years, but for centuries upon centuries, before the day-spring became mani- fest. Yet, no sooner had the long-delayed and long-wished-for fulness of the times at length arrived, than the marble tomb of ignorance and error gave way, as it were, of a sudden ; a thousand glorious events and magnificent disco- veries thronged upon each other with pressing haste, to behold and congra- tulate the mighty birth, the new creation of which they were the harbingers ; when, with a steady and triumphant step, the peerless form of human intel- lect rose erect; and, throwing off from itsfresheninglimbs the death-shade and the grave-clothes by which it was enshrouded, ascended to the glorious resur- rection of that noontide lustre which irradiates the horizon of our own day, rejoicing like a giant to run his race. *Roscoe's Lifcof Lf;o. X vol iv p. 58 X ( 322 ) SERIES III. LECTURE I. ON MATERIALISM AND IMMATERIALISM. It is one part of science, and not the least important, though the lowest and most elementary, to become duly acquainted with the nature and extent of our ignorance upon whatever subject we propose to investigate ;* and it is probably for want of a proper attention to this branch of study that we meet with so' many crude and confident theories upon questions that the utmost wit or wisdom of man is utterly incapable of elucidating. The rude, unin- structed peasant, or ignorant pretender, believes that he understands every thing before him ; the experienced philosopher knows that he understands nothing. It was so formerly in Greece, and will be so in every age and country: while the sophists of Athens asserted their pretensions to universal knowledge, Socrates, in opposition to them, was daily affirming that the only thing he knew to a certainty was his own ignorance. The shallow Indian sage, as soon as he had made the important discovery that the world was sup- ported by an elephant, and the elephant by a tortoise, felt the most perfect complacency in the solution he was now prepared to give to the question, by what means is the world supported in empty space 1 And it is justly observed by Mr. Barrow, that the chief reason why the Chinese are so far behind Euro- peans in the fine arts and higlier branches of science, as painting, for exam- ple, and geometry, is the consummate vanity they possess, which induces them to look with contempt upon the real knowledge of every other nation. The subjects we have thus far chiefly discussed, though others branching out from them have been glanced at as well, have related to the principle and pro- perties of matter, both under an unorganized and under an organic modifica- tion: and although I have endeavoured to do my utmost to put you in pos- session of the clearest and most valuable facts which are known upon these subjects, I am much afraid it is to little more than to this first and initial branch of science that any instructions I have given have been able to con- duct you; for I feel, and have felt deeply as we have proceeded, that they have rather had a tendency to teach us how ignorant we are than how wise ; how little is really known than how much has been actually discovered. And if this be the case with respect to our course of study thus far pursued, I much suspect that wliat is to follow has but little chance of giving a higher character to our attainments ; for the subject it proposes to touch upon, the doctrine of psychology, or the nature and properties of the mind, is the most abstruse and intractable of all subjects that relate to human entity, or the great theatre on which human entity plays its important part ; and, perhaps, so far as relates to the mere discoveries of man himself, remains, excepting in a few points, much the same in the present day as it did two or three thou- sand years ago. This subject forms a prominent section of that extensive branch of science which is generally known by the name of Metaphysics, and which, in modern times, has been unjustifiably separated by many philosophers from the divi- sion of Physics, or natural philosophy ; and made a distinct division in itself. * "Our knowledge being so narrow, it will perhaps give us some light into the present state of our minds if we look a little into the dark side, and take a view of our ignorance*, which, being infinitely greater than our knowledge, may serve much to the quieting of disputes and improvement of useftd know- lodge; if, discovering how far we have clear and distinct ideas, we contine our thoughts within the con templation of those things that are within the reach of our understanding; and launch not out into that abyss of darkness where we have not eyes to see, nor faculties to perceive any thing ; o!it of a presump- tion that nothing is beyond our comprehension.— But to be satisfied of the folly of such a conceit we need not go far "'—Locke, Hum. Underst. IV. iii. 'S 22. ON MATERIALISM AND IMMATERIALISM. 323 As a part of physics, or natural philosophy, it was uniformly arranged by the Greeks ; as such it occurs in the works of Aristotle, as such it was regarded by Lord Bacon, as such we meet with it in Mr. Locke's correct and compre- hensive classification of science, and as such it has been generally treated of by the Scottish professors of our own day. And I may add that it is very much in consequence of so unnatural a divorce, that the science of metaphy- sics has too often licentiously allied itself to imagination, and brought forth a monstrous and chimerical progeny. The term, though a Greek compound, is not to be found among the Greek writers. The first traces of it occur to us in the Physics of Aristotle, the last fourteen books of which are entitled in the printed editions, T(:iviJieTdTdv(TiKd: " Of Things relating to Physics ;" but even this title is generally supposed to have been applied, not by Aristotle himself, but by one of his commentators, probably Andronicus, on the transfer of the manuscripts of Aristotle to Rome, upon the subjugation of Asia by Sylla, in which city this invaluable treasure, as we had occasion to observe not long ago, had been deposited as part of the plunder of the library of Apellicon of Tela.* In taking a general survey of the subject immediately before us, there are three questions that have chiefly occupied the attention of the world ; the essence of the mind or soul ; its durability ; and the means by which it main- tains a relation with the sensible or external world. Let us devote the pre- sent lecture to a consideration of the first of these. Is the essence of the human soul material or immaterial 1 The question, at first sight, appears to be highly important, and to involve nothing less than a belief or disbelief, not indeed in its divine origin, but in its divine similitude and immortality. Yet I may venture to affirm that there is no question which has been productive of so little satisfaction, or has laid a foundation for wider and wilder errors, within the whole range of metaphysics. And for this plain and obvious reason, that we have no distinct idea of the terms, and no settled premises to build upon.f Corruptibility and incorruptibility, intelli- gent and unintelligent, organized and inorganic, are terms that convey distinct meanings to the mind, and impart modes of being that are within the scope of our comprehension: but materiality and immateriality are equally beyond our reach. Of the essence of matter we know nothing; and altogether as little of many of its more active qualities ; insomuch that, amid all the disco- veries of the day, it still remains a controvertible position whether light, heat, magnetism, and electricity are material substances, material properties, or things superadded to matter and of a higher rank. If they be matter, gra- vity and ponderability are not essential properties of matter, though com- monly so regarded. And if they be things superadded to matter, they are necessarily imiViaterial ; and we cannot open our eyes without beholding innu- merable instances of material and immaterial bodies coexisting and acting in harmonious unison through the entire frame of nature. But if we know nothing of the essence, and but little of the qualities, of matter, — of that com- mon substrate which is difl'used around us in every direction, and constitutes the whole of the visible world, — what can we know of what is immaterial ? of the full meaning of a term that, in its strictest sense, comprehends all the rest of the immense fabric of actual and possible being, and includes in its vast circumference every essence and mode of essence of every other being, as well below as above the order of matter, and even that of the Deity himself]^ Shall we take the quality of extension as the line of separation between what is material and what is immaterian This, indeed, is the general and favourite distinction brought forward in the present day, but it is a distinction founded on mere conjecture, and which will by no means stand the test of inquiry. Is space extended? every one admits it to be so. But is space ma- terial 1 is it body of any kind? Des Cartes, indeed, contended that it is body, and a material body, for he denied a vacuum, and asserted space to be a part * Series ir. Lecture xi. t See Locke on Hum. Underst, eh. xxiii. book ii. t Study of Med. vol. iv. p. 37, 2d edit. X2 3?4 ON MATERIALISM of matter itself: but it is probable that there is not a single espouser of this opinion in the present day. If, then, extension belong equally to matter and to space, it cannot be contemplated as tlie peculiar and exclusive property of the former: and if we allow it to immaterial space, there is no reason why we should not allow it to immaterial spirit. If extension appertain not to the mind, or thinking principle, the latter can have no place of existence, it can exist nowhere, — for where, or place, is an idea that cannot be separated from the idea of extension : and hence the metaphysical immaterialists of modern times freely admit that the mind has ho place of existence, that it does exist nowhere ; while at the same time they are compelled to allow that the immaterial Creator or universal spirit exists every where, substan- tially as well as virtually. Let me not, however, be misunderstood upon this abstruse and difficult sub- ject. That the mind has a distinct nature, and is a distinct reality from the body ; that it is gifted with immortality, endowed with reasoning faculties, and capacified for a state of separate existence after the death of the corpo- real frame to which it is attached, are, in my opinion, propositions most clearly deducible from Revelation, and, iu one or two points, adumbrated by a few shadowy glimpses of nature. And that it may be a substance strictly immaterial and essentially different from matter, is both possible and pro- bable ; and will hereafter, perhaps, when faith is turned into vision, and con- jecture into fact, be found to be the true and genuine doctrine upon the subject ; but till this glorious era arrives, or till, antecedently to it, it be proved, which it does not hitherto seem to have been, that matter, itself of divine origin, gifted even at present, under certain modifications, with instinct and sensa- tion, and destined to become immortal hereafter, is physically incapable, un- der some still more refined and exalted and spiritualized modification, of ex- hibiting the attributes of the soul : of being, under such a constitution, en- dowed with immortality from the first, and capacified for existing separately from the external and grosser forms of the body, — and that it is beyond the power of its own Creator to render it intelligent, or to give it even brutal per- ception, — the argument must be loose and inconclusive ; it may plunge us, as it has plunged thousands before us, into errors, but can never conduct us to demon- stration : it may lead us, on the one hand, to the proud Brahminical, or Pla- tonic belief, that the essence of the soul is the very essence of the Deity, hereby rendered capable of division, and consequently a part of the Deity himself; or, on the other, to the gloomy regions of modern materialism, and to the cheerless doctrine that it dies and dissolves in one common grave with the body.* There seems a strange propensity among mankind, and it may be traced from a very early period of the world, to look upon matter with contempt. The source of this has never, that I know of, been pointed out ; but it will, probably, be found to have originated in the old philosophical doctrine we had formerly occasion to advert to, that " nothing can spring from or be decom- posed into nothing ;"| and, consequently, that matter must have had a neces- sary and independent existence from all eternity; and have been an immuta- ble principle of evil running coeval with the immutable principle of good; nho, in working upon it, had to contend with all its essential defects, and has made the best of it in his power. But the moment we admit that matter is a creature of the Deity himself; that he has produced it, in his essential bene- volence, out of nothing, as an express medium of life and happiness ; that, in its origin, he pronounced it, under every modification, to be very good ; that the human body, though composed of it, was at that time perfect and incor- ruptible, and will hereafter recover the same attributes of perfection and in- corruptibility when it shall again rise up fresh from the grave, — contempt and despisai must give wa}'^ to reverence and gratitude. Nor less so when, w*th * See I^ckc, Hum. Underst. book iv. ch. iii. ^ 6, as also the author's Study of Med. vol. iv. p. 37, 2d edit. 1825. f In the words of Democritus, MriSh h tov nn Svto; ybctdai, itn^i ck ti) jui) 5j/ 6cifscOdi. Dion. L&ert. lib. ix. p. V4. AND IMMATERIALISM. 325 an eye of devotional or even scientific feeling, we lool< abroad into the natu- ral world under the present state of things ; and behold in what an infinite multiplicity of shapes, and forms, and text,ures, and modifications, this same degraded substrate of matter is rendered the basis of beauty and energy, and vitality and enjoyment ; equally strii^ing in the little and in the great ; in the blade of grass we trample under foot, and in the glorious sun that rouses it from its winter-sleep, and requickens it into verdure and fragrancy ; from the peopled earth to the peopled heavens ; to the spheres on spheres, and systems on systems, that above, below, and all around us fulfil their harmonious courses, and from age to age In mystic dance, not without song, resound His praise, who, out of darkness, called up light. Had the real order of nature been attended to, instead of the loose sug* gestions of fancy, we should have heard but little of this controversy ; for it would have made us too modest to engage in it : it would have shown us com- pletely our own ignorance, and the folly of persevering in so fruitless a chase. Let us then, in as few words as possible, and in order to excite this modesty, attempt that which has been too seldom attempted heretofore, and see how far the subject is unfolded to us in the book of the visible creation. It has already appeared to us that matter in its simplest and rudest state is universally possessed of certain active properties, as those of gravitation and repulsion, which, in consequence of their universality, have been deno- minated essential :* but it has also appeared to us that there is an insuperable difficulty in determining whether these properties belong to common matter intrinsically, or are endowments resulting from the presence and operation of some foreign body, the ethereal medium of Sir Isaac Newton, and which, if it exist at all, is probably a something different from matter, or, if material, different from common, visible, and tangible matter. It has appeared to us next, that common matter, in peculiar states of modi- fication, is also possessed of peculiar properties, independently of the general or essential properties which belong to the entire mass.f Thus iron and iron ore give proofs of the possession of that substance or quality which we call magnetic ; glass, amber, and the muscular fibres of animals give equal proofs of that substance or quality which we denominate electric or Voltaic; and all bodies in a state of activity, of that substance or quality which is intended by the term caloric. But what is magnetism ] What is Voitaism ? What is caloric ? There is not a philosopher in the world who can answer these questions : we know almost as little of them as of gravitation, and can only trace them by their results. We can, indeed, collect and concentrate them, invisible and intangible as they are to our senses ; and we have hence some reason for believing them to be distinct substances rather than mere qualities ; and, consequently, denominate them auras. But are these auras material or immaterial? Examined by the common properties of matter, as weight, soli- dity, impenetrability, they appear to be the latter; for they are all equally destitute of these properties, so far as our experiments have extended ; and hence they are either immaterial substances, or material substances void of the general qualities that oelong to matter in its grosser forms. Let us ascend to the next step in this wonderful and mysterious scale. It appeared from the remarks offered in a former lecture,| that, independently of that general influence and power of attraction which every particle of mat- ter exerts over every other particle, there are some bodies which exert a peculiar power over other bodies, which separate them from their strongest and most stubborn connexions, and as completely run away with them as the fox runs away with the young chicken. And we here behold another power introduced, and of a still higher order; a power, too, of the most complex variety, and which in different substances exhibits every possible diversity of strength. • Ser. 1. Lect. iv. p. 53. 66. t Ser. i. Lect. v. p. 67. { Ser. i. Lect. v. p. 6a 326 ON MATERIALISM Let us take a single example of this curious phenomenon, and let ii ..iaw it from facts that are known to almost every one. The water of the s^ 4, and of various land-springs, as that at Epsom, for example, is loaded with a certain portion of sulphuric acid, or oil of vitriol; thus impregnated, as it flows over a soil composed either wholly or in part of the earth called magnesia, it evinces a peculiar attraction for this substance, separates it from the bed on which it has been quietly reposing, and so minutely dissolves it, as still to retain its transparency. But the attraction of the sulphuric acid for the magnesia is much less than its attraction for the fixed alkalies, potash and soda ; and hence, if to the water thus impregnated we add a certain quantity of either of the two latter substances, the connexion between the acid and the magnesia will immediately cease : the former will evince its- preference for the alkali employed ; and the magnesia, no longer laid hold of by the sulphuric acid, will be precipitated, or, in other words, fall by its own weight to the bottom of the water, in the form of a white powder, and maybe easily collected and dried. And this, in reality, is the usual mode by which this valuable earth is obtained in its pure slate. But the sulphuric acid having thus shown a stronger attraction for an alkali than for an earth, is there no substance for which it discovers a stronger at- traction than for an alkali 1 There are various : it may be sufficient to men- tion caloric or the matter of heat. And hence, exposed to the action of heat, it soon becomes volatile, unites itself to the heat, flies off with it in vapour, and now leaves the alkali behind as it before left the magnesian earth. Glass-manufacturers take advantage of this superior attraction of the mine- ral acids for heat compared with their attraction for alkalies, and employ, in their formation of glass, cornmon sea-salt, which is a combination of an acid and an alkali ; drive off the former from the latter by the aid of a very pow- erful fire, and then obtain a substance which is absolutely necessary for the production of this material. These curious and altogether inexplicable properties and preferences we call chemical affinities and chemical elections : and there are numerous in- stances in which the substances, thus uniting themselves together, evince an order and regularity of the most wonderful precision, and which is nowhere exceeded in the developement of the most delicate organ of animated nature. And I now particularly allude to the phenomena of crystallization; the dif- ferent kinds of which, produced by the consolidation of different substances, uniformly maintain so exact an arrangement in the peculiar shape of the minute and central nucleus, or the two or three elementary particles that first unite into a particular figure, and follow up with so much nicety the same precise and geometrical arrangement through every stage of their growth, that we are able, in all common cases, to distinguish one kind of crystal from another by its geometrical figure alone ; and with the same ease and in the same manner as we distinguish one kind of animal from another by its gene- ral make or generic structure. The form of these elementary particles we can no more trace to a certainty than the bond of their union ; but there is great reason for believing them to be spheres or spheroids, as first conjectured by that most acute and indefatigable philosopher Dr. Hooke, and since at- tempted to be explained by Dr. Wollaston in a late Bakerian lecture.* Such are the most striking powers that occur to us on a contemplation of the unorganized world. From unorganized let us ascend to organized nature. And here the first peculiar property that astonishes us is the princi- ple of life itself; — that wonderful principle equally common to plants and animals, which maintains the individuality, connects organ with organ, resists the laws of chemical change or putrefaction, which instantly commence their operation as soon as this agent or endowment ceases ; and which, with the nicest skill and harmony, perpetuates the lineaments of the different kinds and species through innumerable generations. It is an agency which exists as completely in the seed or the egg as in the mature plant or animal : for as ♦ Phil. Trans. 1813, p. 51. AND IMxMATERIALISM. 327 iorig: as it is present, the seed or the egg is capable of specific developemcnt and growth ; but the moment it quits its connexion, they can no more grow than a grain of gunpowder. What now is this wonderful principle that so strikingly separates organized from unorganized matter 1 that, as I have observed on a former occasion, from the first moment it begins to act infuses energy into the lifeless clod; draws forth form, and order, and individual being from unshapen matter, and stamps with organization and beauty the common dust we tread uponl* I have called it an agent or endowment : is it nothing more than these ? is it a distinct essence ? and, if so, is this essence refined, etherealized matter, freed from the more obvious properties of grosser matter, or is it strictly immaterial 1 It has been said by different physiologists to be oxygen, calo- ric, the electric, or the galvanic gas; but all this is mere conjecture; and even of several of these powers we know almost as little as we do of the vital principle itself, and are incapable of tracing them in the vegetable system. The next curious energy we meet with in organized nature, and which also equally belongs to animals and vegetables, is instinct. This 1 have defined to be " the operation of the vital principle, or the principle of organized life by the exercise of certain natural powers directed to the present or future good of the individual, or of its progeny."! But what are these powers, with which the vital principle is thus marvellously gifted, and which enables it, under different circumstances, to avail itself of different means to produce the same end 1 — that directs plants to sprout forth from the soil, and expand themselves to the reviving atmosphere ; fishes to deposite their eggs in the sands; birds in nests of the nicest and most skilful contrivance; and the wilder quadrupeds to accomplish the same purpose in lairs or subterraneous caverns ; that guides the young of every kind to its proper food, and, when- ever necessary, teaches it how to suck ? Are these powers also material, or are they immaterial] Are they simple properties issuing out of a peculiar modification of matter, or something superadded to the material frame? In the confused language and confused ideas of various metaphysical hypotheses, and even of one or two that pretend to great exactness in these respects, instinct is made a part or faculty of the mind : and hence we hear of a moral instinct. But has the polype, then, or the hydatid a mindl Are we to look for a mind in the midst of sponges, corals, and funguses 1— in the spawn of frogs, or the seeds of mushrooms ? Instinct, however, the opera- tion of the principle of life, equally superintending the entire frame, and every separate part of it, guiding it to its perfect developement, exciting its pecu- liar energies, remedying its occasional evils, and providing for a future pro- geny, is equally to be traced in all of them ? Are instinct, then, and mind the same thing 1 or is the vocabulary of the hypotheses I now ad,vert to, and shall have occasion to examine more at large hereafter, so meagre and limited that it is necessary to employ the same term to express ideas that have no connexion with each other, and which cannot, therefore, be thus ex- pressed without the grossest confusion? It is high time to be more accurate, and to have both determinate words and determinate ideas; and it has been one object of this course of instruction to define v/hat ought to be the real distinction between instinct, sensation, and intelligence. But let us ascend a step higher in the great scale of life ; let us quit the vegetable for the animal kingdom. If I take the egg or grain of a mustard- seed, and the egg of a silk-worm, where is the chemist or physiologist that will point out to me the diversity of their structure, or unfold the cause of those different faculties which they are to evince on future developement and growth] At present, so far as they appear to us, they are equally common matter, actuated by the same common living principle, directed to different ends. To give them developement and mature form, we equally expose them to the operation of the sun and the atmosphere, and, in the case of the mustard-seed, of moisture: and we are not conscious of exposing them to • Ser. I. Lect. ix. p. 101. t Ser ii. Lect. iv. 328 ON MATERIALISM any thing else; all which, ag^ain, so far as we are acquainted with them, are nothing but matter in different states of modification. Yet the animal egg produces a new and a much higher power, which we denominate sensation, while the vegetable egg produces nothing of the kind. What is sensation, and from what quarter has it been derived] Is it a mere property, or a dis- tmct essence 1 Is it material, or is it immaterial ? This, also, has occasionally been called instinct, and been contemplated as of instinctive energy. With equal confusion it has also been called or con- templated as a property of mind. It is neither the one nor the other : it ia equally different from both. We trace, indeed, its immediate seat of resi- dence ; for we behold in the silk-worm a peculiar organ which does not exist in the mustard-plant, and to which, and which alone, sensation always at- taches itself; and to this organ we give tlie name of a nervous system. But to become acquainted with the organ in which sensation resides is no more to become acquainted with the essence of sensation itself, than to know the principal of life because we know the general figure of the individual animal or vegetable in which it inheres ; or than to know what gravitation is because we see the matter which it actuates. As simple nerves, or a nervous chord, such as that of the spinal marrow, is the proper organ of sensation or feeling, the gland of a brain, from which the nervous chord usually, though not always, shoots, is the proper organ of intelligence ; and as I had occasion to observe in a former study, when lecturing upon the subject of the senses, the degree of intelligence appears, in every instance we are acquainted with, to be proportioned, not, indeed, to the size of the brain as compared with that of the animal to which it belongs, as was conjectured by Aristotle, and has been the general belief almost to the present day, but as compared with the aggregate bulk of nerves that issue from it.* The larger the brain and the less the nerves, the higher and more comprehensive the intelligence: the smaller the brain and the larger the nerves, the duller and more contracted. In man, of all animals whatever, the brain is the largest, and the nerves, comparatively with its bulk, the smallest : in the monkey tribes it makes an approach to this proportion, but there is still a considerable difference ; in birds a somewhat greater differ- ence ; in amphibials the brain is very small in proportion to the size of the nervous chord ; in fishes it is a bulb not much larger than the nervous chord itself; in insects there is no proper brain whatever; the nervous chord that runs down the back originating near the mouth ; sometimes of a uniform diameter with the chord itself, and sometimes rather larger; and in infusory and zoophytic worms we have no trace either of nerves or brain. In these last, therefore, it is possible, and indeed probable, as I have already observed, that there is no sensation : the vital principle, and the instinctive faculty, which is the operation of the vital principle, by the exercise of cer- tain natural powers constantly appertaining to such principle, alone produc- ing all the phenomena of life, as in plants. In most insects, for the same reason, it is possible, and indeed probable, that though there is sensation, there is little or no intelligence : the brain, whic'h is the sole seat or organ of intelligence, being totally destitute, in most of them, and of very minute com- pass in the rest. In fishes we have reason to apprehend different degrees of intelligence: in many amphibials somewhat more; more still in birds and quadrupeds, and most of all in man. But what is intelligence, which is a distinct principle from sensation, and to which, as in the case of sensation, a distinct organ is appropriated 1 An organ, moreover, which, like that of simple sensation, may be also produced out of an insentient egg by the mere application, so far as we are able to trace the different substances in nature, of a certain proportion of heat ; for the egg o* the hen, unquestionably insentient when first laid, becomes equally hatched and endowed with the organs and properties both of sensation and intelligence, by the application of a certain portion of warmth, whether that • Ser. I. Lect, xv. AND IMMATERIALISM. 329 warmth be derived from the body of the hen, of a dunghill, an oven, or the sun. But though we know the organ, what information does this give us of the thing itself ? In what respect is intelligence connected with the brain ? Does it result from its mere peculiarity of structure, secreted, like the blood, but of a finer and more attenuate crasis, or is it a something superadded to the organ ? Is it matter in its most active, elaborate, and etherealized form, or is it something more than matter of any kind ? and, if so, how has this superadded essence been communicated 1 To this point we can proceed safely, and see our way before us : but sha dows, clouds, and darkness rest on all beyond, while the gulf on which we sail is unfathomable to the plummet of mortals. It is something more than matter, observes one class of philosophers, for matter itself is essentially unintelligent, and is utterly incapable of thought. But this is to speak with more confidence than we are warranted ; and unbe- comingly to limit the power of the Creator. It has already appeared that we know nothing of the essential properties of matter. If it be capable of gra- vitation, of elective attractions, of life, of instinct, of sensation, there does not seem to be any absurdity in supposing it may be capable of thought : and if all these powers or endowments result from something more than matter, then is the visible world as much an immaterial as a material system. On the other hand, it is as strongly contended by an opposite class of phi- losophers, and the same train of arguments has been continued, almost without variation, from the days of Epicurus, that the principle of thought or the human mind must be material ; for otherwise the frame of man, we are told, will be made to consist of two distinct and adverse essences, possessing no common property or harmony of action. But this is to speak with as unbecoming a confidence as in the former case. The great visible frame of the world seems to point out to us in every part of it a co-existence either of different essences or of different natures — of matter and a something which is not matter; or of common matter and matter possessed of properties that it does not discover in its common form. Yet all these, so far from being adverse to each other, subsist in the strictest union, and evince the com- pletest harmony of action. And hence the soul, or intelligent principle, though combined with matter, though directly operating from a materi^^l organ, may be a something distinct from matter, and more than matter, even in its most active, ethereal, and spiritualized forms : though, whatever be its actual essence, it undoubtedly makes the nearest approach to it under such a modification. / In reality, under some such kind of ethereal or shadowy make, under some such refined or spiritualized and evanescent texture, it seems in almost all ages and nations to have been handed down by universal tradition, and con- templated by the great mass of the people, whatever may have been the opinion of the philosophers, as soon as it has become separated from the body. And the opinion derives some strength from the manner in which it is stated to have been first formed in the Mosaic records, which intimate it to be a kind of divine breath, vapour, or aura, or to have proceeded from such a sub- stance ; for " God," we are told, " breathed into man's nostrils the breath of LIFE (aiTI nDtyj)» and he became a living soul."* Opposed as the two hypotheses of materialism and of immaterialism are to each other, in the sense in which they are commonly understood, it is curi- ous to observe how directly and equally they tend to one common result, with respect to a point upon which they are conceived to diffler diametrically ; I mean an assimilation of the human soul to that of brutes. The materialist, who traces the origin of sensation and thought from a mere modification of common matter, refers the perception and reflection of brutes to the very principle which produces them in man; and believing that this modification is equally, in both instances, destroyed by death, maintains that "as the one dieth, so dieth the other; so that a man hath no pre-erai- ♦ Gen. ii. 7. 330 ON MATERIALISM nence above a beast ;"* whence his hope of future existence, apparently likt that of Solomon, who was without the light of the Christian Scriptures, depends exclusively upon a resurrection of the body. The immaterialist, on the contrary, who conceives that mere matter is incapable, under any modification, of producing sensation and thought, is under the necessity of supplying to every rank of being possessing these powers, the existence of another and of a very different substance combined with it ; a substance not subject to the changes and infirmities of matter, and altogether impalpable and incorruptible. For if sensation and ideas can only result from such a substance in man, they can only result from such a sub- stance in brutes ; and hence the level between the two is equally maintained by both parties ; the common materialist lowering the man to the brute, and the immaterialist exalting the brute to the man. The immaterialist, however, on the approach of dissolution, finds one difficulty peculiar to himself, for he knows not, at that period, how to dispose of the brutal soul : he caimot de- stroy an incorruptible substance, and yet he cannot bring himself to a belief that it is immortal. This difficulty seems to have been peculiarly felt by the very excellent Bishop Butler. He was too cautious a reasoner, indeed, to enlist the term immaterial into any part of his argument; not pretending to determine, as being a point of no importance whatever, " whether our living substances (those that shall survive the body) be material or immaterial :"t but, as a faculty of intelligence is discernible in brutes as well as in man, he thought himself compelled to ascribe it in both to a common principle ; and believing this principle to be immortal in the latter, he supposed it also to be imgiortal in the former; and hence speaks of the "natural immortality of brutes."! ^^^ ^s to what becomes of this natural immortality of the brute creation after death, he says nothing whatever, and even regards the inquiry as *' invidious and vveak."§^ By some immaterialists, and particularly by Vitringa and Grotius, it has been conceived that, as something distinct from matter must be granted to brutes, to account for their powers of perception, mankind are in possession of a principle superadded to this, and which alone constitutes their immortal spirit. But such an idea, while it absurdly supposes every man to be created with two immaterial spirits, leaves us as much as ever in the dark as to the one immaterial, and consequently incorruptible, soul or principle possessed by brutes. The insufficiency of the solution has not only been felt bul acknowledged by other immaterialists ; and nothing can silence the objection, but to advance boldly, and deny that brutes have a soul or percipient princi- ple of any kind ; that they have either thought, perception, or sensation ; and to maintain, in consequence, that they are mere mechanical machines, acted upon by external impulsions alone. Des Cartes vvas sensible that this is the only alternative : he, therefore, cut the Gordian knot, and strenuously con- tended for such an hypothesis : and the Abbe Polignac, who intrepidly follows him, gravely devotes almost a whole book of his anti-Lucretius to an eluci- dation of ibis doctrine ; maintaining that the hound has no more will of his own in chasing the fox than the wires of a harpsichord have in exciting tones ; and that, as the harpsichord is mechanically thrown into action by a pressure of the fingers upon its keys, so the hound is mechanically urged onwards by a pressure of the stimulating odour that exhales from the body of the fox upon his nostrils. Such are the fancies which have been invented to explain what appears to elude all explanation whatever; and consequently to prove that the hypothesis itself is unfounded. Yet the objections that apply to the conjecture of materialism, as commonly understood and professed, are still stronger. By the denial of an interme- diate state of being between the death and the resurrection of the body, it opposes not only what appears to be the general tenor, but what is, in va- rious places, the direct declaration, of the Christian Scriptures ; and by con ! Eccles. iii. 19. f Analysis of Religion, Natural and Revealed, part i, ch I t lb. part i. ch. v. p. 30, edit. 1803. ^ lb. p. 29. AND IMMATERIALISM. 831 cciving the entire dissolution and dispersion of the percipient as well as •mpercipient parts of the animal machine, of which all the atoms may be- come afterward constituent portions of other intelligent beings, it renders a resumed individuality almost, if not altogether, impossible.* The idea that the essence or texture of the soul consists either wholly or in part of spiritualized, ethereal, gaseous, or radiant matter, capable of com- bining with the grosser matter of the body, and of becoming an object of sense, seems to avoid the difficulties inherent to both systems. It says to the materialist, matter is not necessarily corruptible ; as a believer in the Bible, you admit that it is not so upon your own principle, which maintains that the body was incorruptible when it first issued from the hands of its Maker, and that it will be incorruptible uppn its resurrection. It says to the immate- rialist, the term iinmaterial conveys no determinate idea; it has been forcibly enlisted into service, and at the same time by no means answers the purpose that was intended. It tells him that it is a term not to be found in the Scrip- tures, which, so far from opposing the belief that the soul, spirit, or immortal part of man, is either wholly or in combination, a system of radiant or ethe- real matter, seem rather, on the contrary, to countenance it, not only, as I have already observed, by expressly asserting that it was originally formed out of a divine breath, aura, or vapour, but by presenting it to us under some such condition in every instance in which departed spirits are stated to have reappeared. That a principle of the same kind, though under a less active and elaborate modification, appertains to the different tribes of brutes, there can, I think, be no fair reason to doubt. Yet it by no means follows that in them it must be also immortal. Matter, as we have already seen, is not necessarily cor- ruptible, nor have we any reason to suppose that whatever is immaterial is necessarily incorruptible. Immortality is in every instance a special gift of the Creator; and so wide is the gulf that exists between the intelligence of man and that of the brute tribes, that there can be no difficulty in conceiving, where the line is drawn, and the special endowment terminates. It is an at- tribute natural to the being of man, merely because his indulgent Maker has made it so ; but there is nothing either in natural or revealed religion that can lead us to the same conclusion in respect of brutes ; and hence, to speak of their natural immortality is altogether visionary and unphilosophical. In reality, the difference between this suggested hypothesis and that of the general body of immaterialists, is little more than verbal. For there are iew of them who do not conceive in their hearts (with wliat logical strictness I stay not to inquire) that the soul, in its separate state, exists under some such shadowy and evanescent form ; and that, if never suffered to make its appearance in the present day, it has thus occasionally appeared in earlier ages, and for particular purposes. Yet what can in this manner become manifest to material senses, must have at least some of the attributes of mat- ter in its texture, otherwise it could produce no sensible effect or recognition. From what remote source universal tradition may have derived this common idea of disimbodied spirits, I pretend not to ascertain ; the inquiry would, nevertheless, be curious, and might be rendered important : it is a pleasing subject, and imbued with that tender melancholy that peculiarly befits it for a mind of sensibihty and fine taste. Its universality, independently of the sanction afforded to it by revealed religion, is no small presumption of its being founded in fact. But I throw out the idea rather as a speculation to be modestly pursued, than as a doctrine to be precipitately accredited. Enough, and mor'e than enough, has been offered, to show that in the abstruse subject before us, nothing is so becoming as humility ; that we have no pole-star to direct us ; no clew to unriddle the perplexities of the labyrinth in which we; are wandering ; that every step is doubtful ; and that to expatiate is perhaps only to lose ourselves. To show this has been my first object ; my second * Sec the author's Life of Lucretius, prefixed to his translation of the poem De Rerum Natura, vol. I. p. 92. 332 ON THE NATURE AND has been to conciliate discordant opinions, and to connect popular belief with philosophy. But I have also aimed at a much higher mark ; and have follovi'ed up the aim throug-li the general train of reasoning introduced into the preceding divi- sions of this course of instruction. I have endeavoured to show, that though every part of the visible creation is transient and imperfect, every part is in a state of progression, and striving at something more perfect than itself; that the whole unfolds to us a beautiful scale of ascension, every division harmo- niously playing into every other division, and, with the nicest adjustment, preparing for its furtherance. The mineral kingdom lays a foundation for the vegetable, the vegetable for the animal : infancy for youth, youth for man- hood, and manhood for the wisdom of hoary hairs. We have hence strong ground, independently of that furnished us by Revelation, for concluding that the scene will not end here : that we are but upon the threshold of a vast and incomprehensible scheme, that will reach beyond the present world and run coeval with eternity. The admirable Bishop of Durham, to whose writings 1 have already occasionally adverted, pursues this argument with great force in his immortal Analogy, and shows, with impressive perspicuity, the general coincidence of design that runs throughout the natural and the moral govern- ment of Providence, all equally leading to a future and more perfect state of things. " The natural and moral constitution and government of the world," says he, " are so connected as to make up together but one scheme ; and it is highly probable that the first is formed and carried on merely in subserviency to the latter ; as the vegetable is for the animal, and organized bodies for minds. — Every act, therefore, of divine justice and goodness maybe supposed to look much beyond itself, and its immediate object may have some refer- ence to other parts of God's moral administration and to a genuine moral plan; and every circumstance of this his moral government may be adjusted beforehand, with a view to the whole of it. — It is hence absurd, absurd to the degree of being ridiculous, if the subject were not of so serious a kind, for men to think themselves secure in a vicious life ; or even in that immoral thoughtlessness, which far the greatest part of them are fallen into."* LECTURE II. ON THE NATURE AND DURATION OF THE SOUL, AS EXPLAINED BY POPULAR TRA- DITIONS, AND VARIOUS PHIOSOPHICAL SPECULATIONS. We have entered upon a subject in which human wisdom or imagination can afford us but very little aid ; and I have already observed, that I have rather touched upon it, in order that, with suitable modesty, we may know and acknowledge our own weakness, and apply to the only source from which we can derive any real information concerning it, than to support any hypothesis that can be deduced from either physical or metaphysical investi- gations. " The science of abstruse learning," observes Mr. Tucker, and no man was ever better qualified to give an opinion upon it, " when completely attained, is like Achilles's spear, that healed the wounds it had made before. It casts no additional light upon the paths of life, but disperses the clouds with which it had overspread them. It advances not the traveller one step in his journey, but conducts him back again to the spot from whence he had wandered."! But if it do not discover new truths, it prepares, or should pre- pare, the mind for apprehending those that are already in existence with a greater facility, and far more accurately appreciating their value. In our last lecture we took a glance at several of the discordant opinions, * Analysis of Religion, Natural and Revealed, part i. ch. vii. p. 148, 149 165 edit. 1802. t Lighter Nature Pursued, chap, xxxii. DURATION OF THE SOUL. 333 supported respectively by men of the deepest learning and research, that have been offered in relation to tlie essence of ihe mind or soul; and showed by a scale of analysis conducted through all the most striking modifications of that plastic and fugitive substance which composes the whole of the visi- ble world, that all such discussions must be necessarily uncertain, and con- siderably less likely to be productive of truth than of error. But there is a question of far more consequence to us than the nature of the soul's essence, and that is, the nature of its duration. Is the soul unmortal 1 Is it capable of a separate existence 1 Does it perish with the body as a part of it ? Or, if a distinct principle, does it vanish into nothinpness as soon as the separation takes place 1 What does philosophy offer us upon this subjects This, too, has been studied from age to age; the wisest of mankind have tried it in every possible direction : new opinions have been started, and old opinions revived ;— and what, after all, is the upshot ] The reply is as humiliating as in the former case : vanity of vanities, and nothing more ; utter doubt and indecision,— hope perpetually neutralized by fear. If we turn to the oldest hypotheses of the East, — to the Vedas of the Brah- mins and the Zendavesta of the Parsees, — to those venerable bivt fanciful stores of learning, from which many of the earliest Greek schools drew their first draughts of metaphysical science, we shall find, indeed, a full acknowledg- ment of the immortality of the soul, but only upon the sublime and mystical doctrine of emanation and immanation, as a part of the great soul of the uni- verse; issuing from it at birth, and resorbed into it upon the death of the tody ; and hence altogether incapable of individual baing, or a separate state of existence. If we turn from Persia, Egypt, and Hindostan to Arabia, to the fragrant groves and learned shades of Dedan and Teman, from which it is certain that Persia, and highly probable that Hindostan, derived its first polite literature, we shall find the entire subject left in as blank and barren a silence, as the deserts by which they are surrounded; or, if touched upon, only touched upon to betray doubt, and sometimes disbelief. The tradition, indeed, of a future state of retributive justice seems to have reached the schools of this part of the world, and to have been generally, though perhaps not universally, accredited ; but the future existence it alludes to is that of a resurrection of the body, and not of a survival of the soul after the body's dissolution. The oldest work that has descended to us from this quarter (and there is little doubt that it is the oldest, or one of the oldest works in exist- ence,*) is that astonishing and transcendent composition, the book of Job : — H work that ought assuredly to raise the genius of Idumea above that of Greece, and that of itself is demonstrative of the indefatigable spirit with which the deepest as well as the most polished sciences were pursued in this region, during what may be comparatively called the youth and dayspring of the world. Yet in this sublime and magnificent poem, replete with all the learning and wisdom of the age, the doctrine upon the subject before us is merely as 1 have just stated it, a patriarchal or traditionary belief of a future state of retributive justice, not by the natural immortality of the soul, but by a resurrection of the body. And the same general idea has for the most part descended in the same country to the present day ; for the Alcoran, which is perpetually appealing to the latter fact, leaves the former almost untouched, and altogether in a state of indecision, whence the expounders of the Islam scriptures, both Sonnites and Motazzalites, or orthodox and heterodox, are divided upon the subject, some embracing and others rejecting it. And it is hence curious to observe the different grounds appealed to in favour of a future existence, in the most learned regions of the East : the Hindoo philoso- phers totally and universally denying a resurrection of the body, and support- ing the doctrine alone upon the natural immortality of the soul, and the Ara- bian philosophers passing over the immortality of the soul, and resting it alone upon a resurrection of the body. The schools of Greece, as 1 have already observed, derived their earliest * Ser. 11. Lect. x. 334 ON THE NATURE AND metaphysics from the gymnosophists of India ; and hence, like the latter while for the most part they contended for the immortal and incorruptiblo nature of the soul, tliey in like manner overlooked or reprobated the doctrine of a resurrection of the body. On which account, when St. Paul, with an equal degree of address and eloquence, introduced this subject into his dis- course in the Agora or great square of Athens, the philosophers that listened to it carried him to Areopagus, and inquired what the new doctrine was of v/hich he had been speaking to the people. The earliest Greek schools, therefore, having derived this tenet from an Indian source, believed it, for the most part, after the Indian manner. And hence, though they admitted the immortality of the soul, they had very con- fused ideas of its mode of existence ; and the greater number of them believed it, like the Hindoos, to be resorbed, after the present life, into the great soul of the world, or tlie creative spirit, and consequently to have no individual being whatsoever. Such, more especially, was the doctrine of Orpheus and of the Stoics ; and such, in its ultimate tendency, that of the Pythagoreans, who, though they conceived that the soul had, for a certain period, an individual being, some- times involved in a cloudy vehicle, and sleeping in the regions of the dead, and sometimes sent back to inhabit some other body, either brutal or human, conceived also that at length it would return to the eternal source from which it had issued, and for ever lose all personal existence in its essential fruition; a doctrine, under every variety, derived from the colleges of the East. I have said that this principle vi'as imported by the Pythagorists, and the Greek schools in general, from the philosophy of India. The slightest dip into the Vedas will be a sufficient proof of this. Let us ta'ke the following splendid verse as an example, upon which the Vedantis peculiarly pride themselves, and which they have, not without reason, denominated the Gayatri, or most holy verse. " Let us adore the supremacy of that divine sun the Bhargas, or godhead, who illuminates all, who recreates all, from whom all have proceeded, to WHOM ALL MUST RETURN, whom WO iuvokc to direct our understandings aright in our progress towards his holy seat."* The doctrine of the later Platonists was precisely of the same kind, and it was very extensively imbibed, with the general principles of the Platonic theory, by the poets and philosophers who flourished at the period of the revival of literature. Lorenzo de Medici is well known to have been warmly attached to this sublime mysticism ; yet he has made it a foundation for some of the sweetest and most elevated devotional poetry that the world possesses. His magnificent address to the Supreme Being has seldom been equalled. I cannot quote it before a popular audience in its original, but I will beg your acceptance of the following imperfect translation of two of its stanzas, that you may have some glance into its merit : Father Supreme! O let me climb That sacred seat, and mark sublime Th' essential fount of life and love ! Fount, whence each srood, each pleasure flows, O, to my view thyself disclose! The radiant heaven thy presence throws ! O, lose nie in the light above ! Flee, flee, ye mists ! let earth depart : Raise nie, and show me what thou art, Great sum and centre of the soul ! To thee each thought, in silence, tends ; , To thee the saint, in prayer, ascends ; Thou art the source, the guide, the goal ; The whole is thine, and thou the whole.f * Sir Wm. Jones, vi. p. 417. t Concedi, O Padre ! 1' alta e sacra sede Monti la mente, e vegga el vivo fonte, Fonte ver bene, onde ogni ben procede. Mostra la luce vera alia mia fronte, E poicb^ coiiosciuto e 'I tuo belsole, Oeir alma ferma in lui iuci pronie. DURATION OF THE SOUL. 335 While such, liowever, were the philosophical traditions, the popular tra- dition appears to have been of a different kind, and as much more ancient as It was more extensive. It taught that tlie disimbodied spirit becomes a ghost as soon as it is separated from the corporeal frame ; a thin, misty, or aerial form, somewhat larger than life, with a feeble voice, shadowy limbs ; know- ledge superior to what was possessed while in the flesh ; capable, under par- ticular circumstances, of rendering itself visible ; and retaining so much of its former features as to be recognised upon its apparition ; in a few instances wandering about for a certain period of time after death, but for the most part conveyed to a common receptacle situated in the interior of the earth, and denominated scheol (SlXiy)? hades (a^»7s), hell, or the world of shades. Such was the general belief of the multitude in almost ail countries from a very early period of time ; with this difference, that the hades of various nations was supposed to exist in some remote situation on the surface of the earth, and that of others in the clouds. The first of these modifications of the general tradition is still to be traced among many of the African tribes, and perhaps all the aboriginal tribes of North America. That most excellent man, William Penn, who appears, v/ith some singularities, to have united in his character as much moral goodness, natural eloquence, and legislative wis- dom, as ever fell to the lot of any one, has sufficiently noticed this fact, in regard to the American tribes, in his valuable account of the country, ad- dressed to " The Free Society of Traders of Pennsylvania," drawn up from an extensive and actual survey, and constituting, so far as it goes, one of the most important and authentic documents we possess. " These poor people," says he, " are under a dark night in things relating to religion, to be sure, the tradition of it: yet they believe a God and immortality without the help of metaphysics ; for they say there is a great king who made them, who dwells in a glorious country to the southward of them, and that the souls pf the good shall go thither, where they shall live again."* And it is upon the faith of this description that Mr. Pope drew up that admirable and well-known pic- ture of the same tradition, that occurs in the first epistle of his Essay on Man, and is known to every one. Lo ! the poor Indian, wliose untutor'd mind, Sees God in clouds, or hears him in Uie wind: His soul pronid science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or niilkyway ; Yet simple nature to his hope has given Beyond the cloud-topp'd liill, an humbler heaven ; Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd, Some happier island in the wal'ry waste ; Where slaves once more tlieir native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. The tradition which describes the hades, or invisible world, as seated in the clouds, was chiefly common to the Celtic tribes, and particularly to that which at an early age peopled North Britain. It is by far the most refined and picturesque idea that antiquity has offered upon the subject, and which has consequently been productive, not only of the most sublime, but of the most pathetic descriptions to which the general tradition has given rise under any form. The Celtic bards are full of this imagery ; and it is hence a chief characteristic in the genuine productions of Ossian, which, in consequence assume a still higher importance as historical records than as fragments oi exquisite poetry. Let me, in proof of this, quote his fine delineation of the spirit of Crugal from a passage in the second book of Fingal, one of his best Fuga le nebbie, e le terrestre mole Leva da ni, e splendi in la tua luce ; Tu se' quel sommo ben che chiascun vuole; A t^ dolce riposo si conduce, E t6 come s'uo fin, vede ogni pio ; Tu se' principio, portafore e duce, La vita, e '1 termino, Tu sol Magno Die. * Clarksun'B Life of W^m. Penn, vol. i. p. 391 336 ON THE NATURE AND authenticated poems,* premising that the importance of the errand, svltith is to warn his friends, "the sons of green Erin," of impending destruction, and to advise them to save themselves by retreat, sufficiently justifies the apparition. " A dark red stream of fire comes down from the hill. Crugal sat upon the beam : he that lately fell by the hand of Swaran striving in the battle of heroes. His face is like the beam of the setting moon : his robes are of the clouds of the hill : his eyes are like two decaying flames. Dark is the wound on his breast. The stars dim-twinkled thrdugh his form ; and his voice was like the sound of a distant stream. Dim and in tears he stood, and stretched his pale hand over the hero. Faintly he raised his feeble voice, like the gale of the reedy Lego. * My ghost, O ('onnal ! is on my native hills, but my corse is on the sands of Ullin. Thou shalt never talk with Crugal, nor find his lone steps on the heath. I am light as the blast of Cromla, and I move like the shadow of mist. Connal, son of Colgar ! I see the dark cloud of death. It hovers over the plains of Lena. The sons of green Erin shall fall. Remove from the field of ghosts.' Like the darkened moon, he retired in the midst of the whistling blast." Let us take another very brief but very beautiful example. " Trenmor came from his hill at the voice of his mighty son. A cloud, like the steed of the stranger, supported his airy limbs. His robe is of the mist of Lano, that brings death to the people. His sword is a green meteor half extinguished. His face is without form and dark. He sighed thrice over the hero ; and thrice the winds of the night roared around. Many were his words to Oscar. He slowly vanished, like a mist that melts on the sunny hill." The idea of his still pursuing his accustomed occupation of riding with his glittering sword (its glitter now half-extinguished, and of a green hue) on the steed of the stranger — a steed won in battle — his own limbs rendered airy, and the steed dissolved into the semblance of a cloud — is not only exquisite as a piece of poetic painting but as a fact consonant with the popular tradi- tion of all other countries, which uniformly allotted to the shades or ghosts of their respective heroes their former passions and inclinations, the pastimes or employments to which they had devoted themselves while on earth, and the arms or implements they had chiefly made use of. Thus, the Scandina- vian bard, Lodbrog, while singing his own death-song, literally translated from the Runic into Latin by Olaus Wormius, and transferring, in like man- ner, the pursuits of his life to his pursuits after death : " In the halls of our father Balder I know seats are prepared, where we shall soon drink all out of the hollow sculls of our enemies. In the house of the mighty Odin no brave man laments death. I come not with the voice of despair to Odin's hall."f The same popular belief was common to the Greeks and Romans. Thus, j^neas, according to Virgil, in his descent to the infernal regions, beholds the shades of the Trojan heroes still panting for fame, and amusing themselves with the martial exercises to which they had been accustomed, and with airy semblances of horses, arms, and chariots: The cliief surveyed full many a shadowy car, Illusive arms, and coursers train'd for war. Their lances fix'd in earth, Uieir steeds around, Now free from harness, graze tlie mimic ground. The love of horses which ihey had, alive. And care of chariots, after death survive.^ Virgil, while true to the tradition of his country, is well known to have copied his description from Homer ; and in Homer's time the same popular • See Report of the Committee of the Highland Society of Scotland appointed to inquire into the Nature and Authenticity of the Poems of Ossiaii, drawn up, according to the Directions of Uie Committee, by Henry Mackenzie, Esq. its Convener or Chairman, p. 153, and p. 190—260. t See Blair's Dissertation on Ossian. t Arma procul, currusque virOm miratur inanes. Slant terra defixae hastte, passimque soluli Per campos pascuniur equi ; qu© gratia currflm Armorumque fuit vivis, quaj cura nitentes Pascere equos ; eadem sequitur tellure repostos. ^neid, vi. 651. DURATION OF THE SOUL. 337 tradition was common to the Jews, and runs through almost all their poetry. It is thus Isaiah, who was nearly contemporary with Homer, satirizes the fall of Belshazzar, ch. xiv. 9. The lowermost Hell is in motion for thee, To congratulate thy arrival : For thee aiouseth he the mighty dead, All the chieftains of the earth. The term mighty dead is peculiarly emphatic. The Hebrew word is o^KiDl (Rephaim), the " gigantic spectres," "the magnified and mighty ghost ;" ex- hibiting, as I have already observed, a form larger than life, or, as Juvenal has admirably expressed it upon a similar occasion, xiii. 221, -Major imago Humand A more tlian mortal make : whence the term Rephaim is rendered in the Septuagint, r^yvf" u and by Theo- dotion, TiyavTCi- To the same effect, Ezekiel, about a century afterward, in his sublime pro- phecy of the destruction of Egypt, a piece of poetry that has never been sur- passed in any age or country, ch. xxxii. 18 — 26. I can only quote a few verses, and I do it to prove that the tradition common to other nations, that the ghosts of heroes were surrounded in hades, or the invisible world, with a shadowy semblance of their former dress and instruments of war, was equally com- mon to Judea. V. 2. Wail ! Son or Man, for multitudinous Egypt, Yea, down let her be cast, Like the daughters of tiie renowned nations, ,Inlo the nether parts of the earth, Among those that have descended into the pit. Thou! that surpassest in beauty! • Gel thee down. — To the sword is she surrendered : Draw him forth, and all his forces. The chieftains of the mighty dead (q^XSI) Call to him and his auxiliaries From the lowest depths of hell, — V. 27. To the grave who have descended With their instruments of war; With their swords placed under their heads. From what quarter this popular and almost universal tradition was derived, or in what age it originated, we know not. I have said that it appears to be more ancient than any of the traditions of the philosophers ; and in' support of this opinion, I chiefly allude to one or two hints at it that are scattered throughout the book of Job, which 1 must again take leave to regard as the olaest composition that has descended to us. I do not refer to the fearful and unrivalled description of the spectre that appeared to Eliphaz, because the narrator himself does not seem to have regarded this as a human image, but, among other passages,* to the following part of the afflicted patriarch's severe invective against his friend Bildad : Yea the mighty dead are laid open from below. The floods and their inhabitants. Hell is naked before him ; And Destruction hath no covering. Bildad had been taunting Job with ready-made and proverbial speeches i and there can be no doubt that this of Job's, in reply, is of the same sort ; imbued with popular tradition, but a tradition not entering into the philoso- phical creed either of himself or of any of his friends ; for throughout the whole scope of the argument upon the important question of a future being, Ch.XT. 11. Y 338 ON THE NATLKE AND the immortality and separate existence of the soul are never once brought for- ward ; every ray of hope being, as I have already observed, derived from the doctrine of a future resurrection of the body. In many parts of the world, though not in all, this common tradition of the people was carried much farther, and, under different modifications, made to develope a very important and correct doctrine ; for it was believed, in most countries, that this hell, hades, or invisible world, is divided into two very dis- tinct and opposite regions by abroad and impassable gulf; that the one is a seat of happiness, a paradise, or Elysium, and the other a seat of misery, a Gehenna, or Tartarus ; and that there is a supreme magistrate and an impar- tial tribunal belonging to the infernal shades, before which the ghost must ap- pear, and by which he is sentenced to the one or the other, according to the deeds done in the body. Egypt is generally said to have been the inventress of this knportant and valuable part of the common tradition ; and, undoubtedly, it is to be found in the earliest records of Egyptian history : but from the wonderful conformity of its outlines to the parallel doctrine of the Scriptures, it is probable that it has a still higher origin, and that it constituted a part of the patriarchal or antediluvian creed, retained in a few channels, though forgotten or obliterated in others ; and consequently, that it was a divine communication in a very early age. Putting by all traditionary information, however, there were many philo- sophers of Greece who attempted to reason upon the subject, and seemed desirous of abiding by the result of their own argument. Of these the prin- cipal are, Socrates, Plato, and Epicurus. The first is by far the most entitled to our attention for the simplicity and clearness of his conception, and the strength of his belief. Unfortunately, we have no satisfactory relic of the great chain of induction by which he was led to so correct and happy a con- clusion ; for we must not confound his ideas with those of Plato, who has too frequently intermixed his own with them. From the lucid and invaluable MEMORABILIA of his disciplc Xenophon, however, we have historical grounds for affirming that whatever may have been the train of his reasoning, it led him to a general assurance that the human soul is allied to the Divine Being, yet not by a participation of essence, but by a similarity of nature : and hence that the existence of good men will be continued after death in a state in which they will be rewarded for their virtue. Upon the future condition of the wicked, Socrates appears to have said but little ; he chiefly speaks of it as being less happy than that of the virtuous : and it has hence been con- ceived that, as he thought the sole hope of immortality to the good man was founded upon his becoming assimilated to the divine nature, he may have imagined that the unassimilated soul of the wicked would perish with its body ; and the more so, as he allowed the same common principle or faculty of rea- son, though in a subordinate degree, to all other animals as to man ; and hence, again, gave sufficient proof that he did not regard this principle as necessarily incorruptible. To me, however, his opinion seems rather to have been of a contrary kind, importmg future existence and punishment. Upon this sublime subject, indeed, he appears at times to have been not altogether free from anxiety : but it is infinitely to his credit, and evinces a testimony in favour of the doctrine itself far more powerful than the force of argument, and even breathing of divine inspiration, that, in his last moments, he triumphed in the persuasion of its truth, and had scarcely a doubt upon his mind. When the venerable sage, at this time in his seventieth year, took the poisoned cup, to which he had been condemned by an ungrat jful country, he alone stood unmoved while his friends were weeping a/ound him: he upbraided their cowardice, and entreated them to exercise a manliness worthy of the patrons of virtue : " It would, indeed," said he, " be mexcusable in me to despise death if I were not persuaded that it will conduct me into the pre- sence of the gods, the righteous governors of the universe, and into the society of just and good men : but I draw confidence from the hope that something of man remains after death, and that the state of the good will be much better than that of the bad." He drank the deadly cup, and shortly DURATION OF THE SOUL. 33» afterward expired. Such was the end of the virtuous Socrates ! " A story," says Cicero, " which I never read without tears."* The soul of the Platonic system is a much more scholastic compound than *hat of the Socratic; it is in truth a motley triad produced by an emanation from the Deity or Eternal Intelligence, uniting itself with some portion of the soul of the world, and some portion of matter. In his celebrated Pha^do, Plato distinctly teaches, and endeavours to prove, that this compound struc- ture had a pre-existent being, and is immortal in its own nature ; and that as it did exist in a separate state antecedently to its union with the body, it will probably continue to exist in the same manner after death. There are vari- ous other arguments in favour of its immortality introduced into the same dialogue, and, like the present, derived from the different tenets of his own fanciful theory ; in no respect more cogent, and only calculated for the me- ridian of the schools. In the writings of Aristotle there is nothing which decisively determines whether he thought the human soul mortal or immortal ; but the former is most probable from the notion he entertained concerning its nature and ori- gin ; conceiving it to be an intellectual power, externally transmitted into the human body from the eternal intelligence, the common source of rationality to human beings. Aristotle does not inform his readers what he conceived the principle, thus universally communicated, to consist of; but there is no proof that he supposed it would continue after the death of the body.f The grand opponent of the soul's immortality, however, among the Greeks, was Epicurus. He conceived it to be a fine, elastic, sublimated, spiritualized gas or aura, composed of the most subtle parts of the atmosphere, as caloric, pure air, and vapour,| introduced into the system in the act of respiration, peculiarly elaborated by peculiar organs, and united with a something still lighter, still rarer, and more active than all the rest ; at that time destitute of name, and incapable of sensible detection, offering a wonderful resemblance to the electric or Galvanic gas of modern times. In the words of Lucre- tius, who has so accurately and elegantly described the whole of the Epicu- rean system: Penitus prorsum latet haec natura, subestque ; Nee magis hac infra quidquam est in corpore nostra ; Atque auima est animae proporro totius ipsa.$ , Far from all vision this profoundly lurks, Through the whole system's utmost depth diffus'd, And lives as soul of e'en the soul itself. The soul thus produced, Epicurus affirmed, must be material, because we can trace it issuing from a material source ; because it exists, and exists alone in a material system ; is nourished by material food ; grows with the growth of the body ; becomes matured with its maturity ; declines with its decay ; and hence, whether belonging to man or brutes, must die with its death. But this is to suppose that every combination of matter, and every princi- ple and quality connected with matter, are equally submitted to our senses, and equally comprehended by them. It has already appeared that we cannot determine for certain whether one or two of the principles which enter into the composition of the soul, upon this philosopher's own system, are matter, or something superior to matter, and, consequently, a distinct essence blended with it, out of the animal fabric as well as in it. Yet if they be matter, and the soul thus consists of matter, of a matter far lighter, more subtilized and active than that of the body, it does not follow that it must necessarily * Mem. Xen. 1. 1. Nat. Deor. iil. 33, Calix venenatus qui Socratem transtulit i carcere tn coBlum. Senec. Ep. 67. t De Gen. An. 11, 3, iii. 11. Cic. Tusc. Q. i. f- Enfield's Bnicker, i. 286 i In the language of Lucretius, iii. 284, VentUB et aer Etcalor- « Ub. iii. 274- Y8 340 ON THE NATURE AND perish with the body. The very minute heartlet, or corcle, which every one must have noticed in the heart of a walnut, does not perish with the solid mass of the shell and kernel that encircle it : on the contrary, it survives this, and gives birth to the future plant which springs from this substance, draws hence its nourishment, and shoots higher and higher towards the heavens as the grosser materials that surround the corcle are decaying. In like man- ner, the decomposition of limestone, instead of destroying, sets at liberty the light gas that was imprisoned in its texture ; and the gay and gaudy but- terfly mounts into the skies from the dead and mouldering cerement by which it was lately surrounded. Matter is not necessarily corruptible under any form. The" Epicureans themselves, as well as the best schools of modern philosophy, believed it to be solid and unchangeable in its elementary parti- cles. Crystallized into granitic mountains, we have innumerable instances of its appearing to have resisted the united assaults of time and tempests ever since the creation of the world. And in the light and gaseous texture in which we are at present contemplating it, it is still more inseparable and dif- ficult of decomposition. Whether material or immaterial, therefore, it does not necessarily follow, even upon the principles of this philosophy itself, that the soul must be necessarily corruptible ; nor does it, moreover, necessarily follow that, admitting it to be incorruptible or immortal in man, it must be so in brutes. Allowing the essence to be the same, the difference of its modi- fication, or elaboration, which, this philosophy admits, produces the different degrees of its perfection, may also be sufficient to produce a difference in its power of duration. And for any thing we know to the contrary, while some material bodies may be exempt from corruption, there may be some imma- terial bodies that are subject to it. The philosophers of Rome present us with nothing new ; for they merely followed the dogmas of those of Greece. Cicero, though he has given us much of the opinions of other writers upon the nature and duration of the soul, has left us almost as little of his own as Aristotle has done. Upon the whole, he seems chiefly to have favoured the system of Plato. Seneca and Epictetus were avowed and zealous adherents to the principles of the Stoics ; and Lucretius to those of Epicurus. Upon the whole, philosophy seems to have made but an awkward handle of the important question before us. A loose and glimmering twilight ap pears to have been common to most nations: but the more men attempted to reason upon it, at least with a single exception or two, the more they doubted and became involved in difficulties. They believed and they disbelieved, they hoped and they feared, and life passed away in a state of perpetual anxiety and agitation. But this was not all : perplexed, even where they admitted the doctrine, about the will of the Deity, and the mode of securing his favour after death, with their own abstruse speculations they intermixed the religion of the multitude. They acknowledged the existence of the p-«- pular divinities ; clothed them with the attributes of the Eternal ; and, anxious to obtain their benediction, were punctilious in attending at their temples, and united in the sacrifices that were presented. Even Socrates, amid the last words he uttered, desired Crito not to forget to offer for him the cock which he had vowed to Esculapius.* In effect, the whole of the actual knowledge possessed at any time appears to have been traditionary : for we may well doubt whethe?, without such a basis to have built upon, philosophy would ever have started any well- grounded opinion in favour of a future state. And this traditionary know- ledge seems to have been of two kinds, and both kinds to have been delivered at a very early age of the world — the immortality of the soul, and the final resurrection of the body. From the preceding sketch it seems reasonable to suppose that both these doctrines (unquestionably beyond the reach of mere human discovery) were divinely communicated to the patriarchs; and amid the growing wickedness of succeeding times, gradually forgotten and lost * XeiM^h. Mem. 1 iv. Plat. Apol. Lacrt. li DURATION OF THE SOUL. 341 eight of*, ill some quarters one of them being- slightly preserved, in some, quarters the other, and in one or two regions, both. In this last division it is highly probable we are to class the Hebrews at the epoch of Moses : and hence, perhaps, the reason why neither of these doc- irines is especially promulgated in any part of his institutes. But in subse- quent times both appear to have lost much of their force even among this people. The Pharisees and Caraites, indeed, whose opinions (whatever might be their practice) were certainly the most orthodox, supported them ; but ihey are vvell known to have been both relinquished by the Sadducees, and one of them (the resurrection) by the Essenes. Solomon, whose frequent use of Arabisms evidently betrays the elegant school in which he had chiefly ^studied, appears with the language to have imbibed the philosophy of the Arabian peninsula ; and hence, to have admitted (in direct opposition to the Essenes, who drew their creed from India) the doctrine of the resurrection of the body and a state of retribution, while he disbelieved the doctrine of the separate immortality of the soul : and the distinction ought to be constantly kept in view while perusing his writings, since otherwise they may appear in different places to contradict themselves. Thus, in order to confound the pomp and pageantry of the proud and tlie powerful, and to show them the vanity and nothingness of life, he adverts to the last of these doctrines and confines himself to it. Eccl. iii. 19, 20. "That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts, even the same thing befalleth them : as the one dieth so dieth the other ; yea, they have all one breath (or spirit), so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast, for all is vanity : all go unto one place ; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." But when addressing himself to the young and giddy pursuer of pleasure, in order to alarm him in the midst of his gay and licentious career, he as distinctly alludes and as carefully con- fines himself to the first of these doctrines. His IfTnguage then is, ch. xi. 9, "Rejoice, young man, in thy youth," — and tread as thou wilt the flowery paths of indulgence and pleasure; "but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." There is an equal point, a keen and forcible moral in both addresses, and which could not fail to strike the heart of those to whom they were respectively delivered. It has been said by some writers that the judgment here referred to relates to the present world, and must be so interpreted to avoid the self-contradic- tion I have just adverted to. But the wisdom of Solomon stands in no need of tlie feeble and rushlight illumination of su(;h commentators : nor could it ever be so said by any critic who has diligently attended to the mixed lan- guage of Solomon's diction, or rather to the Arabisms he so frequently indulges Ki ; and who, from this and various other sources, has traced out that his early studies must have been passed in Arabia, or under the superintendence of Arabian tutors ; and who, at the same time, calls to mind that the Idumaean cities of Dedan and Teman had the same classical character at Jerusalem that the cities of Athens an^ Corinth had at Rome. But are we still abandoned to the same unfixed and shadowy evidence, with just light enough to kindle the hope of immortality, and darkness enough to strangle it the moment it is born ? Beset as the world is at all times with physical and moral evils, and doubly beset as it is at present; while virtue, patriotism, and piety are bleeding at every pore; while the sweet influences of the heavens seem turned to bitterness, the natural constellations of the zodiac to have been pulled down from their high abodes, and vice, tyranny, and atheism to have usurped their places, and from their respective ascend- ants, to be breathing mildew and pestilence over the pale face ot the astonished earth,* is it to the worn-out traces of tradition, or the dubious fancies of phi- losophy, that this important doctrine is alone intrusted ? — a doouiue not more vital to the hope's of man than to the justice of the Deity? — No ; the fulness of the times has at length arrived : the veil of sepvration is drawn aside ; the mighty and mysterious truth is published by a voice from heaven • This lecture niis t!e!iveted rluiing tlie period of tlip Fiencli Rovtw.ittrn. 34« ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. it is engraved on pages of adamant, and attested by the affirmation of the Godhead. It tells us, in words that cannot lie, that the sonl is immortal from its birth ; that the strong and inextinguishable desire we feel of future being is the true and natural impulse of a high-born and inextinguishable principle : and that the blow which prostrates the body and imprisons it in the grave, gives pinions to the soaring spirit, and crowns it with freedom and triumph But this is not all : it tells us, too, that gross matter itself is not necessarily corruptible: that the freedom and triumph of the soul shall hereafter be ex- tended to the body ; that this corruptible shall put on incorruption, this mortal immortality, and a glorious and beatified reunion succeed. By what means such reunion is to be accomplished, or why such separation should be neces sary, we know not, — for we know not how the union was produced at first. They are mysteries that yet remain locked up in the bosom of the great Creator, and are as inscrutable to the sage as to the savage, to tha philosopher as to the schoolboy; — they are left, and perhaps purposely, to make a mock at all human science ; and, while they form the groundwork of man's future happiness, forcibly to point out to him that his proper path to it is through the gate of humility. LECTURE III. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Having taken a brief survey of the essence and duration of the soul, mind, or intelligent principle, as far as we have been able to collect any informa- tion upon this abstruse subject, from reason, tradition, and revelation, let us now proceed, with equal modesty and caution, to an examination into its faculties, and the mode by which they develope themselves, and acquire knowledge. "All our knowledge," observes Lord Bacon, "is derived from experience." It is a remark peculiarly characteristic of that comprehensive judgment with which this great philosopher at all times contemplated the field of nature, and which has been assumed as the common basis of every system that h^s since been fabricated upon the subject. "Whence," inquires Mr. Locke, *' comes the mind by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety ] Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge 1 1 answer, in a word, from expe- rience. In this all our knowledge is founded; from this the whole emanates and issues." M. Degerando, and, in short, all the French philosophers of the present day, in adopting Locke's system, have necessarily adopted this im- portant maxim as the groundwork of their reasoning; and though, as a general principle, it has been lately called in question by a few of the ablest advocates for what they have ventured to denominate the IMieory of Common Sense, and especially by Professor Stewart,* as I may perhaps find it neces- sary to notice more particularly hereafter, it is sufficient for the present to observe that the shrewd and learned projector of this theory. Dr. Reid, admits it in its utmost latitude: "Wise men," says he, "now agree or ought to agree in this, that there ix but one way to the knowledge of nature^s works, the way of observation and experiment. By our constitution we have a strong propensity to trace particular facts and observations to general rules, and to apply such general rules to account for other effects, or to direct us in the production of them. This procedure of the understanding is familiar to every human creature in the common afl'airs of life, and it is the only one by WHICH ANY real DISCOVERY IN PHILOSOPHY CAN BE MADE."f Now the only mode by which we can obtain experience is bv the use and ♦ Philos. Essays, vol i. p. 122. t Inquiry into the Human Mind, p. 2. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 343 exercise of the senses, which have been given to us for this purpose, and which, to speak figuratively, may be regarded as the fingers of the mind in feeling its way forward, and opening the shutters to the admission of that pure and invigorating light, which in consequence breaks in upon it. It must be obvious, however, to every one who has attended to the opera- tions of his senses, that there never is, nor can be, any direct communication betweeil the mind and the external objects the mind perceives, which are usually, indeed, at some distance from the sense that gives notice of them. Thus, in looking at a tree, it is the eye alone that really beholds the tree, while the mind only receives a notice of its presence, by some means or other, from the visual organ. So in touching this table, it is my hand alone that conies in contact with it, and communicates to my mind a knowledge of its hardness and other qualities. What, then, is the medium by which such communication is maintained, which induces the mind, seated as it is in some undeveloped part of the brain, to have a correspondent perception of the form, size, colour, smell, and even distance of objects with the senses which are seated on the surface of the body ; and which, at the same time that it con- veys this information, produces such an additional effect, that the mind is able at its option to revive the perception, or call up an exact notion or idea of these qualities -at a distant period, or when the objects themselves are no longer presents Is there, or is there not, any resemblance between the ex- ternal or sensible object and the internal or mental idea or notion ? If there be a resemblance, in what does that resemblance consist 1 and how is it pro- duced and supported ? Does the external object throw off representative like- nesses of itself in films, or under any other modification, so fine as to be able, like the electric or magnetic aura, to pass without injury from the object to the sentient organ, and from the sentient organ to the sensory 1 Or has the mind itself a faculty of producing, like a looking-glass, accurate countersigns, intellectual pictures, or images, correspondent with the sensible images com- municated from the external object to the sentient organ 1 If, on the con- trary, there be no resemblance, are the mental perceptions mere notions or intellectual symbols excited in it by the action of the external sense ; which, while they bear no similitude to the qualities of the object discerned, answer the purpose of those qualities, as letters answer the purpose of sounds 1 Or are we sure that there is any external world whatever 1 any thing beyond the intellectual principle that perceives, and the sensations and notions that are perceived ; or even any thing beyond those sensations and notions, those im- pressions and ideas themselves ? Several of these questions may perhaps appear in no small degree whim- sical and brain-sick, and more worthy of St. Luke's than of a scientific insti- tution. But all of them, and perhaps as many more of a temperament as wild as the wildest, have been asked, and insisted upon, and supported again and again in different ages and countries, by philosophers of the clearest in- tellects in other respects, and who had no idea of labouring under any such mental infirmity, nor ever dreamed of the necessity of being blistered and taking physic* There is scarcely, however, an hypothesis which has been started in modern times that cannot look for its prototype or suggestion among the ancients; and it will hence be found most advantageous, and may perhaps prove the shortest way to begin at the fountain-head, and to trace the different currents which have flowed from it. That fountain-head is Greece, or at least we may so regard it on the present occasion ; and the plan which I shall request leave to pursue in the general inquiry before us will be, first of all, to take a rapid sketch of the most celebrated speculations upon this subject to which this well-spring of wisdom has given rise ; next, to follow up the chief ramifications which have issued from them in later periods ; and, lastly, to summon, as by a quo warranto, the more prominent of those of our own day to appear personally before the bar of this enlightened tribunal, for the pur- • See the author'! Study of Medicine, vol. iv. p. 46. edit. 2. 1823 344 ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. pose of trying their comparative pretensions, and of submitting them to your impartial award. The principal systems that were started among the philosophers of Greece to explain the origin and value of human knowledge were those of Plato, of Aristotle, of Epicurus, and of the skeptics, especially Pyrrho and Arcesilas ; and the principal systems to which they have given birth in later or modern times, are those of Des Cartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Hartley, Kant, and the Scottish School of Common Sense, at the head of which we are to place Dr. Reid. I had occasion to observe, in our first series of lectures,* that it was a dogma common to many of the Greek schools, that matter, though essentially eter nal, is also, in its primal and simple state, essentially amorphous, or desti lute of all form and quality whatever ; and I farther remarked, that the ground- work of this dogma consisted in a belief that form and quality are the con trivance of an intelligent agent ; while matter, though essentially eternal, is essentially unintelligent. Matter, therefore, it was contended, cannot possi- bly assume one mode of form rather than another mode ; for if it were capa- ble of assuming any kind, it must have been capable of assuming every kind and of course of exhibiting intelligent effects without an intelligent cause. Form, then, according to the Platonic schools, in which this was princi- pally taught, existing distinct from matter by the mere wi-ll of the Great First Cause, presented itself, from all eternity, to his wisdom or logos^ in every possible variety; or, in other words, under an infinite multiplicity of incor- poreal or intellectual patterns, exemplars, or archetypes, to which the founder of this school gave the name of ideas ; a term that has descended without any mischief into the popular language of our own day ; but which, in the hands of the schoolmen, and various other theorists, has not unfrequently been pro- ductive of egregious errors and abuses. By the union of these intellectual archetypes with the whole or with any portion of primary or incorporeal mat- ter, matter immediately becomes imbodied, assumes palpable forms, corres- pondent with the archetypes united with it, and is rendered an object of per- ception to the external senses ; the mind, or intelligent principle itself, how- ever, which is an emanation from the Great Intelligent Cause, never perceiv- ing any thing more than the intellectual or formative ideas of objects as they are presented to the senses, and reasoning concerning them by those ideas alone. It must be obvious, however, that the mind is possessed of many ideas which it could not derive from a material source. Such are all those that re- late to abstract moral truths and pure mathematics. And to account for these, it was a doctrine of the Platonic philosophy, that, besides the sensible world, there is also an intelligible world ; that the mind of man is equally connected with both, though the latter cannot possibly be discerned by cor- poreal organs ; and that, as the mind perceives and reasons upon sensible ob- jects by means of sensible archetypes or ideas, so it perceives and reasons upon intelligible objects by means of intelligible ideas. The only essential variation from this hypothesis which Aristotle appears to have introduced into his own, consists in his having clothed, if I may be allowed the expression, the naked ideas of Plato, with the actual qualities of the objects perceived ; his doctrine being, that the sense, on perceiving or being excited by an external object, conveys to the mind a real resemblance of it ; which, however, though possessing form, colour, and other qualities of matter, is not matter itself, but an unsubstantial image, like the picture in a mirror; as though the mind itself were a kind of mirror, and had a power of reflecting the image of whatever object is presented to the external senses. This unsubstantial image or picture, in order to distinguish it from the intel- lectual pattern or idea of Plato, he denominated a phantasm. And as he sup- ported with Plato the existence of an intelligible as well as of a sensible world, it was another part of his hypothesis that, while things sensible are * SofTPS I Lecture It ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 345 perceived by sensible phantasms, things intelligible are perceived by intelligi- ble phantasms; and consequently that virtue and vice, truth and falsehood, time, space, and numbers, have all their pictures and phantasms, as well as plants, houses, and animals. Epicurus admitted a part of this hypothesis, and taught it contemporane- ously at Mitylene, but the greater part he openly opposed and ridiculsd. He concurred in the doctrine that the mind perceives sensible objects by means of sensible images ; but he contended that those images are as strictly mate- rial as the objects from which they emanate ; and that if we allow them to possess material qualities, we must necessarily allow them at the same time to possess the substance to which such qualities appertain. Epicurus, there- fore, believed the perceptions of the mind to be real and substantial etflgies, and to these effigies he gave the name of cMwXa (idola), or species, in contra- distinction to the unsubstantial phantasms of Aristotle, and the intellectual or formative ideas of Plato. He maintained that all external objects are per- petually throwing off fine alternate waves of different flavours, odours, co- lours, shapes, and other qualities ; which, by striking against their appropriate senses, excite in the senses themselves a perception of the qualities and presence of the parent object ; and are immediately conveyed by the sentient channel to the chamber of the mind, or sensory, without any injury to their texture : in the same manner as heat, light, and magnetism pervade solid sub- stances, and still retain their integrity. And he affirmed, farther, that instead of the existence of an imaginary intelligible world, throwing off intelligible images, it is from the sensible or material world alone that the mind, by the exercise of its proper faculties, in union with that of the corporeal senses, derives every branch of knowledge, physical, moral, or mathematical. If this view of the abstruse subject before us be correct, as I flatter myself it is, I may recapitulate in few words, that the external perceptions of the mind are, according to Plato, the primitive or intellectual patterns from which the forms and other qualities of objects have been taken ; according to Aris- totle, unsubstantial pictures of them, as though reflected from a mirror; and, according to Epicurus, substantial or material effigies ;*3uch perceptions be ing under the first view of them denominated ideas ; under the second, phan- tasms; under the third, idola, or species. While such were the fixed and promulgated tenets of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, there were other philosophers of Greece, or who at least have been so denominated, that openly professed themselves to be without tenets of any kind ; who declared that nothing was known or could be known upon any subject ; and who, consequently, inculcated a universal skepticism. Of this delirious class of disputants, who were suffered to wander at large without a strait waistcoat, there are two that are pre-eminently entitled to our atten- tion, Pyrrho and Arcesilas. Pyrrho studied first in the atomic school of De- mocritus, and seems to have lost his senses upon the question of the infinite divisibility of matter, a question which has not unfrequently given birth to the same disease in modern times. He first doubted the solidity of its elemen- tary atoms, — he next found out, that if these be not solid, every thing slips away from the fingers in a moment — the external world becomes a mere show — and there is no truth or solidity in any thing. He was not abio to prove the solidity of the elementary atoms of matter. He hence doubted of every thing ; advised aU the world to do the same ; and established a school for the purpose of inculcating this strange doctrine. In every other respect he was a man of distinguished accomplishments, and so highly esteemed by his countrymen, as to have been honoured with the dignity of chief priest, and exempted from public taxation. But to such a formidable extreme did this disease of skepticism carry him, that one or more of his friends, as we are gravely told in history, were obliged to accompany him wherever he went, that he might not be run over by carriages, or fall down precipices. Yet he contrived, by some means or other, to live longer than most men of caution and common sense ; for we find him at last dying of a natural death, at the good old age of ninety. 346 ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Arcesilas was one of the successors to Plato in the academic chair, and founder of the school that has been known by the name of the Middle Aca- demy. Plato, in his fondness for intellectual ideas, those creatures of his own imagination, had always given a much greater degree of credit to their testimony than to that of the objects which compose tl)e material world ; be- lieving that the mind was less likely to be imposed upon than the external senses. And with so much zeal was this feeling or prejudice followed up by Arcesilas, that he soon began to doubt, and advised his scholars to doubt also, of the reality of every thing they saw about them ; and at length terminated his doubts in questioning the competency of reason itself to decide upon any evidence the external senses might produce, though he admitted an external world of some kind or other. And upon being reminded, by one of his scho- lars, who had a wish to please him, that the only thing which Socrates de- clared he was certain of was his own ignorance, he immediately replied, that Socrates had no right to say even that — for that no man could be certain of any thing. It was against this unhappy madman, though, in other respects, like Pyrrho, excellent and accomplished scholar, that Lucretius directed those forcible verses in favour of the truth and testimony of the senses, as the only genuine means of acquiring knowledge, which have been so often referred to, and so warmly commended in the controversy of the present day : — Who holds that naught is known, denies he knows E'en this, thus owning that he nothing knows. With such I ne'er could reason, who, with face Retorted, treads the ground just trod before. Yet grant e'en this he knows ; since naught exists Of truth in things, whence learns he what to know, Or what not know ? What things can give him first The notion crude of what is false or true? What prove aught doubtful, or of doubt devoid ? Search, and this earliest notion thou wilt find Of truth and falsehood, from the senses drawn, Nor aught can e'er refute them ; for what once, By truths oppos'd, their falsehood can detect, Must claim a trust far ampler than themselveK. Yet what, than these, an ampler trust can claim Can reason, born, forsooth, of erring sense, Impeach those senses whence alone it springs ! And which, if false, itself can ne'er be true. Can sight correct the ears ? Can ears the touch T Or touch the tongue's fine flavour 1 or. o'er all Can smell triumphant rise 1 Absurd the thought ! For every sense a separate function boasts, A power prescrib'd : and hence, or soft, or hard, , Or hot, or cold, to its appropriate sense Alone appeals. The gaudy train of hues, With their light shades, appropriate thus, alike Perceive we ; tastes appropriate powers possess ; Appropriate sounds and odours ; and hence, too, One sense another ne'er can contravene, Nor e'en correct itself; since, every hour, In every act, each claims an equal faith. E'en though the mind no real cause could uree Why what is square when present, when remSC Cylindric seems, 't were dangerous less to adop* A cause unsound, than rashly yield at once All that we grasp of truth and surety most; Rend all reliance, and root up, forlorn. The first firm principles of life and health. For not alone fails reason, life itself Ends instant, if the senses thou distrust. And dare some dangerous precipice, or aught Against warn'd equal, spurning what is safe. Hence all against the senses urg'd is vain ; Mere idle rant, and hollow pomp of words. As, in a building, if the first lines err. If aught impede the plummet, or the rule From its just angles deviate but a hair, The total edifice must rise untrue. Recumbent, curv'd, o'erhanging, void of grace. Tumbling or tumbled from this first defect,— So must all reason prove unsound, deduc'd From things created, if the senses err.* * Denique, nihil sciri si quis putat, id quoque nesclt Ansciri i)ossit, &c. — Lib. iv. 471. The passage is too loiig fbr qu-tation, and the reerlor may easUy tarn to It at his lelrore. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 347 It is not to be supposed that mankind could consent to be inoculated with this disease to any great extent, or for any considerable period of time . and hence the chief hypotheses that were countenanced at Rome, and till the de- cline of the Roman empire, were those of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus. During the dark ages, Aristotle seems to have held an undivided sovereignty ; and though his competitors came in for a share of power upon the revival of literature, he still held possession of the majority of the schools, till, in. the middle of the seventeenth century, Des Carles introduced a new hypothesis, which served as a foundation for most of the systems or speculations which have appeared since. With Aristotle and Epicurus Des Cartes contended that the mind perceives external objects by images or resemblances presented to it: these images he called, after Plato, ideas ; though he neither acceded to the meaning of this term as given by Plato, nor allowed with Aristotle or Epicurus that they pro- need from the objects themselves, and are transmitted to the mind through the channel of the senses ; so that the precise signification he attached to this term is not clear. With Epicurus he threw away the doctrine of an intellectual world ; but contended, in order to supply its place, that the mind has a large stock of ideas of its own. implanted by the hand of nature, and not derived from the world around us : ideas, therefore, that are strictly innate, and may be found on being searched for, though otherwise not necessarily present to the mind's contemplation. Among these the principal are, the idea of thought, or consciousness, of God, and of matter; all which maybe fully depended upon as so many established truths : and hence, upon his hypothesis, all real knowledge flows from an internal source, or, in other words, from the mind itself. These ideas can never deceive us, though the senses may do so in their report concerning external objects ; and, consequently, such ideas are chiefly to be trusted to and reasoned from even in questions that relate to the senses. In analyzing the idea of thought, the mind, according to Aristotle, dis- covers it to be a power that has neither extension, figure, local motion, nor any other property commonly ascribed to body. In analyzing the idea of God, the mind finds piesented to it a being necessarily and eternally existing, supremely intelligent, powerful, and perfect, the fountain of all goodness and truth, and the creator of the universe. In analyzing the idea of matter, the mind perceives it to be a substance possessing no other property than ex- tent : — or, in other words, as having nothing else belonging to it than length, breadth, and thickness ; that space, possessing equally this property, is a part of matter, and consequently that matter is universal, and there is no vacuum. From these, and other innate ideas, compared and combined with the ideas of sensation, or those furnished to the mind by the senses, flows, on the hy- pothesis of Des Cartes, the whole fund of human understanding, or all the knowledge that mankind are or can be possessed of. There are two fundamental errors, and errors, moreover, of an opposite character, that accompany, or rather introduce, this hypothesis, and to which, popular as it was at one time, it has at length completely fallen a sacrifice : these are the attempting to prove what ought to be taken for granted, and the taking for granted what ought to be proved. The philosophy of Des Cartes sets off with supposing that every man is more or less under the influence of prejudice, and consequently that he cannot know the real truth of any thing till he has thoroughly sifted it. It follows, necessarily, as a second position, that every man ought, at least once in his life, to doubt of every thing, in order to sift it; not, however, like the skep- tics of Greece, that, by such examination, he may be confirmed in doubt, but that, by obtaining proofs, he may have a settled conviction. Full fraught with these preliminary principles, our philosopher opens his career of knowledge, and while he himself continues as grave as the noble kniffht of La Mancha, his journey commences almost as ludicrously. His first doubt is, whether he himself is alive or in being, and his next, whether any body is alive or in being about him. He soon satisfies himself, however, 348 ON HUxMAN UNDERSTANDING. upon the first point, by luckily finding out that he thinks, and, therefore, says he gravely, I must be alive : Cogito, ergo sum. " I think, and therefore I am." And he almost as soon satisfies himself upon the second, by feeling with his hands about him, and finding out that he can run them against a something or a somebody else, against a man or a post. He then returns home to him- self once more, overjoyed with this demonstration of his fingers ; and com- mences a second voyage of discovery by doubting whether he knows any thing besides his own existence, and that of a something beyond him. And he now ascertains, to his inexpressible satisfaction, that the soil of his own mind is sown with indigenous ideas precisely like that of thought or con- sciousness. These he digs up one after another, in order to examine them. One of the first that turns up is that of a God : one of the next is an idea that informs him that the outside of himself, or rather of his mind, is matter; and combining the whole he has thus far acquired with other information ob- tained from the same sources, he finds that the people whom he has before discovered by means of his hands and eyes call this matter a body, and that the said people have bodies of the same kind, and also the same kind of knowledge as himself, although not to the same extent or demonstration ; and for this obvious reason, because they have not equally doubted and examined. It is difficult to be grave upon such a subject. What would be thought or said of any individual in the present audience, who should rise up and openly tell us that he had been long troubled with doubts whether he really existed or not ; that his friends had told him he did, and he was inclined to believe so; but that as this belief might be a mere prejudice, he was at length determined to try the fast by asking himself this plain question, — " Do I think V Is there a person before me but would exclaim, almost instinctively, " Ah ! poor creature, he had better ask himself another plain question, — whether he is in his sober senses ]'• If, however, we attempt to examine seriously the mode which M. Des Cartes thus proposes of following up his own principles, it is impossible not to be astonished at his departure from them at the first outset. Instead of doubting of every thing and proving every thing, the very first position before him he takes for granted : " I think, therefore I am." Of these two positions he makes the first the proof of the second, but what is the proof of the first 1 If it be necessary to prove that he is, the very groundwork of his system renders it equally necessary to prove that he thinks. But this he does not attempt to do : in direct contradiction to his fundamental principles he liere (commits a petitio principii, and takes it for granted. I do not find fault with him for taking it for granted ; but then he might as well have saved himself the trouble of manufacturing an imperfect syllogism, and have taken it for granted also that he was alive or that he existed, for the last fact must have been just as obvious to himself as the first, and somewhat more so to the world at large. There is another logical error in this memorable enthymeme, or syllogism without a head, which ought not to pass without notice ; I mean, that the proof does not run parallel with the predicate, and, consequently, does not answer its purpose. The subject predicated is, that the philosopher exists or IS alive, and to prove this he affirms gratuitously that he thinks. " I think, and therefore I am." Now, in respect to the extent or parallelism of the proof, he might just as well have said " I itch," or " I eat, and therefore I am." I will not dispute that in all probability he thought more than he itched, or partook of food : but let us take which proof we will, it could only be a proof so long as he itched, or was eating ; and, consequently, whenever he ceased from either of these conditions, upon his own argument, he would have no proof whatever of being alive. Now, that he must often have ceased from itchmg, or eating, there is no difficulty in admitting ; but then he may also al times have ceased from thinking, not only ih various morbid states of thf brain, but whenever he slept without dreaming. And hence, the utmost that any such argument could decide in his favour, let us take which kind of proof we JviU, would be, that he could alternately prove himself to be alive and alter- ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, 349 nately not alive ; that it was obvious to himself that he existed for and during the time that he thought, itched, or ate, but that he had no proof of existence as soon as these were over. But 1 have said, that M. Des Cartes's philosophy consists not only in de- manding proofs where no proofs are necessary, and where the truisms are so clear as to render it ludicrous to ask for them, but in taking for granted pro- positions that evidently demand proof. And I now allude to his whole doc- trine of innate ideas — of axioms or principles planted in the mind by the hand of nature herself, and which are evidently intended to supply the place of the intelligible world of Plato and Aristotle. Of these I have only produced a small sample, and it is not necessary to bring more to market. Let us state his innate idea of a God. It is, I admit, a very reverential, correct, and perfect one, and does him credit as a theolo- gist : but I am not at present debating with him as a theologist, but as a logi- cian. It is in truth owing to its very perfection that I object to it ; for there is strong ground to suspect, notwithstanding all his care to the contrary, that he has obtained it from induction, rather than from impulse ; from an open creed, than from a latent principle. If such an idea be innate to him, there can be no question that it must be also innate to every one else. Now, it so happens that the ideas of other men, in different parts of the world, wander from his own idea as far as the north pole from the south. There are some barbarians, we are told, so benighted as to have no idea of a God at all. Such, as Mr. Marsden, his Majesty's principal chaplain in New South Wales, informs us, are the very barbarous aboriginal tribes of that vast settlement. " They have no knov;ledge," says he, " of any religion, false or true." There are others, whose idea of a God has only been formed in the midst of gloom and terror: and who hence, with miserable ignorance, represent him, in their wooden idols, under the ugliest and most hideous character their gross imagination can suggest. Atheism, in the strictest sense of the term, is at this moment, and has been for nearly a thousand years at least, the established belief of the majority, or rather of the whole Burman empire; the funda- mental doctrine of whose priesthood consists in a denial that there is any such power as an eternal independent essence in the universe ; and that at this moment there is any God whatever; Guadama, their last Boodh, or deity, having, by his meritorious deeds, long since reached the supreme good of Nigbar^ or annihilation ; which is the only ultimate reward in reserve for the virtuous among mankind;* while the ideas of the wisest philosophers of Greece appear to have fallen far short of the bright exern-plar of M. Des Cartes. That Des Cartes himself was possessed of this idea at the time he wrote, no man can have any doubt; but what proof have we that he possessed it INNATELY, aud that he found it among the original furniture of his mind ? In like manner, he tells us, that his knowledge of matter is derived from the same unerring source ; that its idea exists within him, and that this idea * The most authentic account of the tenets of Boodhieni which have of late years been coinniiinicalf.d to the world, are those furnished by Mr. Jiidsoii, an American nii.^sionary, who for ilie last ten or twilva years has hreii staliimary at iJaiiguoii or Ava, has acqnired an accnrale knowledge of the Burman and Pali, or viilirar and sacred tongue, and has translated the whole of the New Testament into the former. His very interesting account of the mission of himself and his colleagues, as well as of the national creed of this extraordinary people, is to be found in his correspondence with the American Baptist Missionary Board, as also in " An Account of the American Baptist Mission to the Burman Empire, in a Series of Letters addressed to a Gentleman in London, by A. H. Judson, 8vo. Lond. 1823." The whole universe, according to the principles of Koodhisni, is governed by fate, which has no more essential existence than chance. A Hoodh, or god, is occasionally produced, and appears on earth, the last of whom was Gua- dama. But gods and men must equally follow the law or order of fate; they must die, and they must suffer in a future state according to the sins they have committed on earth ; anil, when this penance has been completed, they reach alike the supreme good of Nigbar, or utter annihilation. Guadama, their hist deity, many hunihed years ago reached this slate of final btafitude, and another deity is soon e.vpccted to make liis app<'araiice. An eiernal self e.xistent being is, in the opinion of the Boodhists, an utter impossi- bility, and they hear of such a doctrine with horror. When Mr. Jndson had obtained an audience of tlie BuMuan emperor in his palace at Ava, to solicit protection and toleration, his petition was first read, and then a little tract, containing the chief doctrines of Chrir-tianiiy, printed in the Burman tongue, put into the emperor's hands. " He held the tract," says Mr. Judson, " long enough to read the first two sentences, which assert that there is one eternal God, who is independent of the incidents of moria'.i y ; ar-d that. beside liim, there is no god ; and then, with an air of indifference, r^ihai s of disdain he dayhed it down to the ground —Our fate was decided."— lb. p. 23L 350 ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. represents it to be an extended substance, without any other quality, and embracing space as a part of itself. Now, if such an idea appertained naturally to him, it must, in like manner, appertain naturally to every one. Let me, then, ask the audience I have the honour of addressing, whether the same notion has ever presented itself, as it necessarily ought to have done, to the minds of every one or of any one before me 1 and whether they seriously believe that space is a part of matter 1 So far from it, that I much question whether even the meaning of the position is universally understood ; whiln, with respect to those by whom it is understood, 1 have a shrewd suspicion it is not assented to; and that they would even apprehend some trick had been played upon them if they should find it in their minds. The good father Malebranche, as excellent a Cartesian as ever lived, and who possessed withal quite mysticism enough to have succeeded Plato, upon his death, and turned Xenocrates out of the chair, suspected that tricks like these are per* petually played upon us. For he openly tells us, in his Recherche de la V^rit^y that ever since the fall, Satan has been making such sad work with our senses, both external and internal, that we can only rectify ourselves by a vigorous determination to doubt of every thing, after the tried and app-oved Cartesian recipe : and if a man, says he, has only learned to idoubt, lei him not imagine that he has made an inconsiderable progress. And for thiw pur- pose, he recommends retirement from the world, a solitary cell, and a long course of penitence and water-gruel : after which our innate ideas, he tells us, will rise up before us at a glance : our senses, which were at first as h )nest faculties as one could desire to be acquainted with, till debauched in their adventure with original sin, will no longer be able to cheat us, we shall see into the whole process of transubstantiation, and though we behold nothing in matter, we shall behold all things in God. It may, perhaps, be conceived that I treat the subject before us somewhat too flippantly or too cavalierly. It is not, however, the subject before us that I thus treat, but the hypothesis; and, in truth, it is the only mode in which I feel myself able to treat it at all; fori could as soon be serious over the "Loves of the Plants," or " The Battle of the Frogs." And I must here venture to extend the remark a little farther, and to add, that there is but one hypothesis amid all those that yet remain to be examined, that I shall be able to treat in any other manner ; for, excepting in this one, there is not a whit of superiority that I can discover in any of them; and the one I refer to, though I admit its imperfections in various points, is that of our own en- lightened countryman, Mr. Locke. I may, perhaps, be laughed at in my turn, and certainly should be so if I were as far over the Tweed as over the Thames, and be told that I am at least half a century behind the times. Yet, by your permission, I shall dare the laugh, and endeavour, at least, to put merriment against merriment; and shall leave it to yourselves to determine, after a full and impartial hep ring, who has the best claim to be pleasant. So that the study of metaphysics may not, perhaps, appear quite so gloomy and repugnant as the writings of some philosophers would represent it. If it have its gravity, it may also be found to have its gayety as well ; and to prove that there is no science in which it better becomes us to adopt the maxim of the poet, and to Laugh where we may, be serious where we can, Bui vindicate the ways of God to man. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 361 LECTURE IV. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. (.The Subject coiilirmed.) In our preceding study we commenced a general survey of the chief opi- nions and hypotheses that have been urged in different periods upon the im- portant subject of Human Understanding ; and, opening our career with the Greek schools, we closed it with that of Des Cartes. Des Cartes, who was born in 1596, was for nearly a century the Aristotle of his age ; and, although from his very outset he was opposed by his contemporaries and literary friends Gassendi and Hobbes, he obtained a com- plete triumph, and steadily supported his ascendant, till the physical philo- sophy of Newton, and the metaphysical of Locke, threw an eclipse over his glory, from which he has now no chance of ever recovering. Nothing, however, can prove more effectually the influence which fashion operates upon philosophy as well as upon dress, than a glance at the very opposite characters by whom the Cartesian system was at one and the same time principally professed and defended — Malebranche and Spinosa, Leibnitz and Bayle. It would, perhaps, be impossible, were we to range through the whole scope of philosophical or even of literary biography, to collect a more motley and heterogeneous group: the four elements of hot, cold, moist, and dry cannot possibly present a stronger contrast ; a mystical Catholic, a Jewish materialist, a speculative but steady Lutheran, and a universal skeptic. It was only, however, for want of a simpler and more rational system, that Des Cartes continued so long and ao extensively to govern the metaphysical taste of the day. That system was at length given to the world by Mr. Locke, and the " Principia Philosophise" fell prostrate before the " Essay CONCERNING HuMAN UNDERSTANDING." This imperishable work made its first appearance in 1689 : it may, perhaps, be somewhat too long ; it may occasionally embrace subjects which are not necessarily connected with it: its terms may not always be precise, nor its opinions in every instance correct; but it discovers intrinsic and most con- vincing evidence that the man who wrote it must have had a head peculiarly clear, and a heart peculiarly sound. It is strictly original in its matter, highly important in its subject, luminous and forcible in its argument, perspicuous in its style, and comprehensive in its scope. It steers equally clear of all former systems : we have nothing of the mystical archetypes of Plato, the incorporeal phantoms of Aristotle, or the material species of Epicurus ; we are equally without the intelligible world of the Greek schools, and the in- nate ideas of Des Cartes. Passing by all which, from actual experience and observation it delineates the features and describes the operations of the human mind, with a degree of precision and minuteness which have never been exhibited either before or since.* " Nothing," says Dr. Beattie, and I readily avail myself of the acknowledgment of an honest and enlightened antagonist, "was farther from the intention of Locke than to encourage verbal controversy, or advance doctrines favourable to skepticism. To do good to mankind by enforcing virtue, illustrating truth, and vindicating liberty, was his sincere purpose. His writings are to be reckoned among the few books that have been productive of real utility to mankind."! To take this work as a text-book, of which, however, it is well worthy, would require a long life instead of a short lecture: and I shall, hence, beg leave to submit to you only a vety brief summary of the more important part of its system and of the more prominent opinions it inculcates, especially in • Study of Med. vol. in. p. 49, 2d edit. t Essay on Truth, part ii. ch. ii. $ 2. 352 OiN HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. respect to the powers and process of the mhid in acquiring knowledge. The "vvork consists of four divisions, the first of which, however, is merely intro- ductory, and intended to clear the ground of that multitude of strong and deep-rooted weeds at which we have already glanced, and which, under the scholastic name of prcecognita, innate ideas, maxims, and dictates, or innate speculative and practical principles, prevented the growth of a better har- vest; and, to a certain extent, superseded the necessity of reason, education, and revelation, of national institutions and Bible societies; by teaching that a true and correct notion of God, of self or consciousness, of virtue and vice, and, consequently, of religious and moral duties, is imprinted by nature on the mind of every man ; and that we cannot transgress the law thus originally implanted within us without exposing ourselves to the lash of our own con- sciences. Discarding for ever all this jargon of the schools, the Essay before us proceeds in its three remaining parts to treat of ideas, which, in the popu- lar, and not the scholastic, sense of the term, are the elements of knowledge ; of WORDS, which are the signs of ideas, and consequently the circulating medium of knowledge ; and of knowledge itself, which is the subject proposed, and the great end to be acquired. The whole of the preceding rubbish, then, being in this manner cleared away, the elaborate author proceeds to represent to us the body and mind as equally at birth a tabula rasa, or unwritten sheet of paper: as consisting equally of a blank or vacuity of impressions, but as equally capable of acquiring impressions by the operation of external objects, and equally and most skilfully endowed with distinct powers or faculties for this purpose ; those of the body being the external senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch; and those of the mind the internal senses of perception, reason, judgment, imagination, and memory.* It is possible that a few slight impressions may be produced a short time antecedently to birth ; and it is certain that various instinctive tendencies, which, however, have no connexion with the mind, are more perfect, because more needful, at the period of birth than ever afterward; and we have also frequent proofs of an hereditary or accidental predisposition towards parti- cular subjects. But the fundamental doctrine before us is by no means affected by such collateral circumstances ; to the correctness of which our most eminent logicians of later times have given their entire suffrage. Thus Bishop Butler, and it is not necessary to go farther than this eminent casuist: — " In these respects," meaning those before us, " mankind is left by nature an unformed, unfinished creature, utterly deficient and unqualified, before the acquirement of knowledge, experience, and habits, for that mature state of life which was the end ofhis creation, considering him as related only to this world. The faculty of reason is the candle of the Lord within us ; though it can afford no light where it does not shme, nor judge where it has no prin- ciples to judge upon."t External objects first impress or operate upon the outward senses, and these senses, by means hitherto unexplained, and, perhaps, altogether inex- plicable, immediately impress or operate upon the mhid, or excite in it per- ceptions or ideas of the presence and qualities of such objects ; the word idea being employed in the system before us, not, as we have already hinted at, in any of the significations of the schools, but in its broad and popular meaning, as importing " whatever a man observes and is conscious to himself he has in his mind ;"| whatever was formerly intended by the terms archetype, phantasm, species, thought, notion, conception, or whatever else it may be, which we can be employed about in thinking.^ And to these effects, without puzzling himself with the inquiry how external objects operate upon the senses, or the senses upon the mind, Mr. Locke gave the name of ideas of SENSATION, in allusion to the source from which they are derived. * An abstract of ihif? view of Mr. Locke's system, abbreviated for the occasion, tbe author found himself called upon to introduce into his Study of Medicine. Vol. iv. p. 50—55, 2d edit. 1825. t Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, part i. ch. v. part ii. Conciusion. tLocbe booki.ch. i.^3. $Ib, $& ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 853 But the mind, as we have already observed, has various powers or faculties as well as the body ; and they are quite as active and lively in their respective functions. In consequence of which the ideas of external objects are not only perceived, but retained, thought of, compared, compounded, abstracted, doubted, believed, desired ; and hence another fountain, and of a very capa- cious flow, from which we also derive ideas, namely, a reflex act or percep- tion of the mind's own operations ; whence the ideas derived from this foun- tain are denominated ideas of reflection. The ideas, then, derived from these two sources, and which have some- times been called objective, and subjective,* constitute all our experience, and consequently all our knowledge. Whatever stock of information a man may be possessed of, however richly he may be stored with taste, learning, or science, if he turn his attention inwards, and diligently examine his own thoughts, he will find that he has not a single idea in his mind but what has been derived from the one or the other of these two channels. But let not this important observation be forgotten by any one ; that the ideas the mind possesses will be fewer or more numerous, simpler or more diversified, clear or confused, according to the number of the objects or subjects presented to it, and the extent of its reflection and examination. Thus, a clock or a land- scape may be for ever before our eyes, but unless we direct our attention to them, and study their different parts, although we cannot be deceived in their being a clock or a landscape, we can have but a very confused idea of their character and composition. The ideas presented to the mind, from which of these two sources soever derived, or, in other words, whether objective or subjective, are of two kinds, simple and complex. Simple ideas consist of such as are limited to a single notion or perception ; as those of unity, darkness, light, sound, hardness, sweetness, simple pain, or uneasiness. And in the reception of these the mind is passive, for it can neither make them to itself, nor can it, in any instance, have any idea which does not wholly consist of them ; or, in other words, it cannot contemplate any one of them otherwise than in its totality. Thus, on looking at this single sheet of paper, I have the idea of unity ; and though I may divide the single sheet of paper into twenty parts, I cannot divide the idea of unity into twenty parts ; for the idea of unity will and must as wholly accompany every part as it accompanies the collective sheet. And the same remark will apply to all the rest. Complex ideas are formed out of various simple ideas associated together, or contemplated derivatively. And to this class belong the ideas of an army, a battle, a triangle, gratitude, veneration, gold, silyer, an apple, an orange: in the formation of all which it must be obvious that the mind is active, for it is the activity of the mind alone that produces the complexity out of such ideas as are simple. And that the ideas I have now referred to hre complex, must be plain to every one ; for every one must be sensible that the mind cannot form to itself the idea of an orange without uniting into one aggre- gate the simple ideas of roundness, yellowness, juiciness, and sweetness. In like manner, in contemplating the idea of gold, there must necessarily be present to the mind, and in a complex or aggregate form, the ideas of great weight, solidity, yellowness, lustre : and if the idea be very accurate, great malleability and fusibility. Complex ideas are formed out of simple ideas by many operations of the mind ; the principal of which, however, are some combination of them, some abstraction, or some comparison. Let us take a view of each of these : — * " On appolle, dans la philosnpliie Alleniande, idees subjectives celles que naissent de la nature de notre ntelligencK et de ses facultes, et idees objectives routes celiee que sont excit6oB par les sensations." — Mad, e StaSI Holsiein, de I'Alieniagiie, loin. iii. p. 76. Mad. de Siafil, liowever, has fallen into the common error of the French philosophers, from whom she appears to have generally informed herself of the principles of Locke's syeteni, in supposing that he de- rived all ideas from sensation. " A I'^poque oil parut La Critique de la Raison pure, il n'existoit que deux systfiines sur I'entendement huinnin parmi les penseurs ; I'une, celui de Locke, attribuoit tmites nos idies d nos sensations ; I'autre, celui de Des Carles et de Leibnitz, s'attachoit a d^montrer la spirituality et I'acti- vit6 de r4me, de libre arbitre, enfiii toute la doctrine id6aliste."— lb. p. 70. z 354 ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING And, first, of complex ideas of combination. Unity, as I liave already observed, is a simple idea : and it is one of the most common simple ideas that can be presented to the mind, for every object without, and every idea wiihm, tend equally to excite it. And, as being a simple idea, the ramd, as 1 have also remarked, is passive on its presentation ; it can neither form such an idea to itself, nor contemplate it otherwise than in its totality: but it can combine the ideas of as many units as it pleases, and hence produce the complex idea of a hundred, a thousand, or a hundred thousand. So beauty is a complex idea ; for the mind, in forming it, combines a variety of separate ideas into one common aggregate. Thus Dryden, in delineating the beautiful Victoria, in his " Love Triumphant :" — Her eyes, her lips, her cheeks, her shape, her features, Seem to be drawn by Love's own hand ; by Love Himself in love. In like manner the mind can produce complex ideas by an opposite process, and that is, by abstraction, or separation. Thus chalk, snow, and milk, though agreeing, perhaps, in no other respect, coincide in the same colour ; and the mind, contemplating this agreement, may abstract or separate it from the other properties of these three objects, and form the idea which is indicated, by the term whiteness; and having thus acquired a new idea by the process of abstraction, it may afterward apply it as a character to a variety of other objects: and hence particular ideas become general or universal. Other complex ideas are produced by comparison. Thus, if the mind take one idea, as that of a foot, as a determinate measure, and place it by the side of another idea, as the idea of a table, the. result vvill be a formation of the complex idea of length, breadth, and thickness. Or if we vary the pri- mary ideas, we may obtain as a result the secondary ideas of coarseness and fineness. And hence, complex ideas must be almost infinitely more numerous than simple ideas, which are their elements or materials, as words must be always far more numerous than letters. I have instanced only a few of their prin- cipal kinds ; but even each of these kinds is applicable to a variety of subjects, of which Mr. Locke mentions the three following: — L Ideas of Substances; or such as we have uniformly found connected in the same thing, and without which, therefore, such thing cannot be contem- plated. To this head belong the complex ideas of a man, a horse, a river, a mountain. II. Ideas of Modes ; oi such as may be considered as representative of the mere affections, or properties of substance ; of which the idea of number may once more be offered as an example : the ideas of expansion or exten- sion and duration belong to the same stock ; and in like manner those of power, time, space, and infinity, which are all modes, properties, or affections of substance ; or secondary ideas derived from or excited by the primary idea of substance of some kind or other. III. Ideas of Relations; which are by far the most extensive, if not the most important, branch of subjects from which our complex ideas are derived ; for there is nothing whatever, whether simple idea, substance, mode, relation, or even the name of any of them, which is not capable of an almost infinite num- ber of bearings in reference or relation to other things. It is from this source, therefore, that we derive a very large proportion of our thoughts and words. As examples under it, I may mention all those ideas that relate to or are even imported by the terms father, brother, son, master, magistrate, younger, older, cause and effect, right and wrong, and, consequently, all moral relations. It must hence appear obvious that many of our ideas have a natural cor- respondence, congruity, and connexion with each other. And as many, per- haps, on the contrary, a natural repugnancy, incongruity, and disconnexion. Thus i{ I were to speak of a cold fire, I should put together ideas that are naturally disconnected and incongruous, and should consequently make an absurd proposition, or, to adopt common language, talk nonsense. I should ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 556 be guilty of the same blunder if I were to speak of a square billiard-ball, or a soft reposing rock. But a warm fire, on the contrary, a white, or even a black billiard-ball, and a hard, rugged rock, are congruous ideas, and, consequently, consistent vvith good sense. Now, it is the direct office of that discursive faculty of the mind which we call reason, to trace out these natural coincidences or disjunctions, and to connect or separate them by proper re- lations; for it is a just perception of the natural connexion and congruity, or of the natural repugnancy and incongruity, of our ideas, that constitutes all real knowledge. The wise man is he who has industriously laid in and care- fully assorted an extensive stock of ideas ; as the stupid or ignorant man is he who, from natural hebetude, or having had but few opportunities, has col- lected and arranged but a small nu'mber. The man who discovers the natural relations of his ideas quickly is a man of sagacity; and, in popular language, is said, and correctly so, to possess a quick, sharp intellect. The man, on the contrary, who discovers these relations slowly, we call dull or heavy. If he rapidly discover and put together relations that lie remote, and perhaps touch only in a few points, but those points striking and pleasant, he is a man of wit, genius, or brilliant fancy ; of agreeable allusion and metaphor. If he connect ideas of fancy with ideas of reality, and mistake the one for the other, how- ever numerous his ideas maybe, and whatever their order of succession, he is a madman: he reasons from false principles; and, as we say in popular lan- guage, and with perfect correctness, is out of his judgment. Finally, our ideas are very apt to associate or run together in trains ; and upon this peculiar and happy disposition of the mind we lay our chief depend- ence in sowing the important seeds of education. It often happens, how- ever, that some of our ideas have been associated erroneously, and even in a state of early life, before education has commenced : and hence, from the difficulty of separating them, most of the sympathies and antipathies, the whims and prejudices, that occasionally haunt us to the latest period of old age. Peter the Great, having been terrified by a fall into a sheet of water when an infant, could never, till he became a man, go over a bridge without shuddering; and even at last had no small difficulty in breaking the connex- ion of the ideas that were thus early and powerfully associated. Avarice did not by any kind of predisposition belong to the miser Elwes, for in his yOuth he was of gay manners, and a spendthrift; but he caught the vice by living with his uncle : uninterrupted habit, the strong power of association, gave strength to its influence, and what was originally his abhorrence, became at length his idol. Such, then, is the manner in which the mind, at first a sheet of white paper, without characters of any kind, becomes furnished with that vast store of ideas, the materials of wisdom and knowledge, which the busy and bound- '■ess fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety. The whole is derived from experience — the experience of sensation or reflec- tion; from the observations of the mind employed either about external sen- sible objects, or the internal operations of itself, perceived and reflected upon by its own faculties. But man is a social as well as a rational being ; he is 'dependent, for the supply of his wants, upon his fellow-man ; and his happiness is made to con- sist in this dependence. The ideas he possesses he feels a desire of com- miMiicating, and those possessed by others he feels an equal desire of diving into. But ideas in themselves are incommunicable : he requires here, as in the case of sensible objects, a circulating medium by which their value may be ex- pressed. And what he requires is freely granted to him : it consists in the high faculty of speech ; in reducing ideas to articulate sounds or words, the aggregate of which constitutes language. And hence the great and valuable systematic work to which I have now chiefly directed your attention, pro- ceeds from a general analysis of our ideas to a general analysis of their vocal representatives : a subject which every one must perceive to be of the utmost importance in the progress of human understanding. Important, however, as it is, it is a subject rather collateral than direct. We have briefly Z3 366 ON HUMAiN UNDERSTANDING. glanced at it already,* and may perhaps return to it hereafter, but I shall post- pone it for the present, that we may hasten with due speed to the goal before us. Allow me, however, before We quit it, to observe that words bear pre- cisely the same relation to ideas that ideas do to objects; for as ideas are the mere signs of objects, so words are the mere signs of ideas ; and hence that every rule which applies to the variety, precision, and arrangement of our ideas, applies with equal force to the variety, precision, and arrangement of our words ; and that without a clear and determinate meaning to the latter, we can no more have a clear and determinate apprehension of the former than we can have of a person's features by a confused or unlike picture. And hence the importance of attending to our vocabulary ; of minutely measuring and weighing the terms we make use of, so as to adjust them exactly to the measure and weight of our ideas, must be obvious at the first glance ; as it must be also that the more exact and copious a language is found, the more clear and comprehensive must be the general knowledge of the nation to which it belongs. But ideas and words, though the materials of which knowledge is con- structed, and without which it cannot among mankind be constructed at all, are no more knowledge itself than the bricks and mortar of a house are the. house itself. Both, as I have indeed hinted at already, must be collected in sufficient abundance, compared with each other, duly assorted, arranged, and united together, before the proper building can be produced ; and we have yet, therefore, to contemplate the most important part of the subject berore us, and that to which the preceding parts are subservient — the general nature of knowledge, its kinds, degrees, and reality. Knowledge may be defined the perception of truth, or, in the language of Aristotle, the science of truth : and, consequently, he who acquires know- ledge perceives or acquires truth. I3ut what is truth 1 This is a question which has been asked for ages : the particular answer, however, must neces- sarily depend upon the particular subject to which it refers. We are now considering general truth, which may be defined the connexion and agreement, or repugnancy and disagreement, of our ideas. This definition requires some attention ; but when it is thoroughly compre- hended, it will be found to apply to truths of every kind, in the arts, physics, and morals, as well as in metaphysics ; for the law of adjustment, of con- nexion and disconnexion, of congruity and incongruity, it refets to, is a universal law or constitution of nature, and hence must hold equally every where. Thus, in a building, where the different parts of which it consists per- fectly agree, the lines accurately correspond, and the dependencies fit and are proportioned to each other, every part is true to every part, and the whole is true to itself. So in working a mathematical problem, or determining a fact from cir- cumstantial evidence, every separate link or idea that constitutes a part of the general chain, must have its proper connexion or agreement with the link or idea that lies next to it, as well above as below : for it is these connexions or agreements between one idea and another that constitute the proofs, and a failure in any one destroys our knowledge upon the subject ; or, in other words, prevents us from perceiving its truth. It sometimes happens that we are able to discover at once this agreement or disagreement, this connexion or repugnancy, in the ideas that are presented to us ; and in such case our knowledge is instantaneous, and constitutes what we call INTUITION or intuitive knowledge. But it happens far more generally that the agreement or disagreement is by no means obvious ; and we are obliged, as in the case of circumstantial evidence, to look out for some inter- mediate idea, which the schools denominate a medius terminus, by which the separate ideas may be united. To make this research is the peculiar province of the discursive faculty of reason; and hence the information thus obtained is called rational knowledge. Let us take a brief view of both these. When I affirm that white is not * Bet ic'jj II Lecmre vlii. ix. x. O^ HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. S57 black; or, which is a proposition of the same kind, that white is white and black is black, I affirm what I know intuitively. The colours of white and of black have excited ideas in my mind, which, whenever they occur, must be identic and true to themselves ; for it is not possible for me to have any other idea of white than white, or of black than black: the agreement in this case is the agreement of indentity, the agreement of either idea with itself; and hence the man who asks me to prove that white is white, or that white is not black, or red, or yellow, asks me to prove what I neither can prove nor want to prove. 1 do not want to prove it, for 1 know it with certain know- ledge, or, in other words, it is SELF-EvmENT. And I cannot prove it for this reason ; that every proof consists in placing- between two ideas that we want to unite together by an agreement which we do not perceive an idea whose agreement with both of them is more obvious. But what idea can I place by the side of the idea of white, of black, of red, or of yellow, that can agree more fully with either of these ideas than such ideas agree with- themselves? Every one must see that there is no such idea to be had; and, consequently, that I can neither offer a proof nor want one. And the very attempt to obtain such a proof would be an absurdity : for could it possibly be acquired, it would not add to my knowledge, which is perfect and certain already, and depends upon the constant agreement of the idea with itself — the agreement of identity. Nothing has been productive of more mischief in the science of metaphy- sics than this absurd restlessness in seeking after proofs in cases of intuition, where no proofs are to be had, and the knowledge is certain without them. M. Des Cartes's hypothesis, as I had occasion to notice in our last lecture, commences with an instance of this very absurdity, and it has proved the ruin of it; and the same attempt in various other hypotheses of later date that we shall yet have to touch upon, and particularly those of Bishop Berkeley and Mr. Hume, has equally proved the ruin of these. When 1 affirm that 1 am, I affirm that of which I have an intuitive knowledge : and when I affirm that I think, I only make a proposition of the same kind. The connexion be- tween the two ideas f am, and the two ideas I think, is a connexion of coexist- ence or absolute necessity. It is not possible to separate them, and they want no third or intervening idea to unite them ; for if it were possible for me to doubt whether I thought, or whether I existed, the very doubt itself would answer the purpose of a proof in either case. Now one of the chief absur- dities of M. Des Cartes's argument, / think, therefore lam, consists in his put- ting two propositions equally self-evident and intuitive by the side of each other, and making the first the proof of the second : for being equally intuitive, the second must be just as good a proof of the first as the first is of the second; since the mind can no more put together the two ideas lam without thinking, than it can put together the two ideas / think, without being. But nothing is gained by their being put together in the way of proof or demon- stration ; fori have no more evidence of my existence by calling up the ideas I think, ihcin I had before this proposition was conceived; and hence the attempt not only fails, but could lead to no use if it could stand its ground. Our knowledge of personal identity is derived from the same source. It is INTUITIVE. This is a subject which has excited a great deal of learned controversy, — and called forth many a different proof, or attempt at proof, from the different disputants who have engaged in it. Mr. Locke himself, with a singular deviation from the principles of his own system, has fallen into a common error and offered as a proof the idea of consciousness. No proof, however, or attempt at proof, is more imperfect ; for the identity often continues when the consciousness is interrupted, as in sleep without dreaming, in apoplexy, catalepsy, drowning, and various other cases : and hence, if identity were dependent on consciousness, the same man in a dead sleep and out of it would be two or more different persons. The truth is, ihat our knowledge of identity is intuitive; the two ideas I am, and the two ideas I was, a combina- tion of which constitutes the more complex idea of personal identity, are ideas of necessary connexion from the first moment the connexion can be formed; and hence they produce certain knowledge, and can have no proof; since 858 ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. there can be no intermediate idea capable of possessing a closer connexion •with either proposition, and consequently fitted to enter between them. " Here, then," to adopt the language of Bishop Butler, whose reasoning upon this sub- ject bears a (rlose resemblance to the present, " we can go no farther For it is ridiculous to attempt to prove the truth of those perceptions whose truth we can no otherwise prove than by other perceptions of exactly the same kind with them, and which there is just the same ground to suspect ; or to attempt to prove the truth of our faculties, which can no otherwise be proved than by the use or means of those very suspected faculties themselves."* 1 may now advance a step farther, and observe that in all cases in which the agreement or disagreement of two or more ideas can be immediately perceived and compared together, our knowledge is of a like kind, and con- sequently approaches to intuitive ; although to other persons such ideas may be very remote, and require a long chain of intermediate ideas to connect or separate them, or prove their agreement or repugnancy. Thus I know intui- tively, or without going through the process, that the arc of a circle is less than the entire circle; that a circle itself is a line equidistant in every part of it from its centre; that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles ; that the square of four is sixteen. No man, however, can, perhaps, have any kind of knowledge at first sight upon any of these subjects ; he cannot put the extreme ideas together in such a manner as to perceive their agreement or disagreement, and he is not acquainted with the intermediate ideas which are to compare them, and prove their relation. If he could per- ceive that relation at first sight, he would at first sight have intuitive know- ledge upon the subject ; and some persons have a much more comprehensive power of this kind than others ; for they can perceive and compare the rela- tions of ideas both more readily and more extensively. Euler was a striking example of this endowment, in regard to the science of abstract quantities: Jedediah Buxton appears to have obtained a similar degree of intuitive knowledge in regard to the science of numbers ; and we seem in our own day to have another instance of the same kind in the very extraordinary young calculator from America, not more than eight years old.t I have already stated, that when we cannot immediately perceive the agree- ment or disagreement of two or more ideas, which we are desirous of bring- ing into comparison, we are obliged to seek out for some intervening idea whose agreement or disagreement with them is obvious to us ; and 1 have also stated, that as this general search is the immediate office of the faculty of reason, the knowledge thus obtained is called rational knowledge. In many cases we are so fortunate as to hit upon intervening ideas whose con- nexion with the one, the other, or both, as in a chain of perfect evidence, is clear and distinct; and in such case, whether the reasoning consist of a single step or of many, as soon as the mind is able to perceive the connexion or repugnancy, the agreement or disagreement, of the ideas in question, the degree of rational knowledge hereby obtained becomes equal, or nearly so tfl INTUITION, and is called demonstration. If the proofs, or intervening ideas, do not quite amount to this, we have necessarily an inferior degree of rational knowledge, and we distinguish it by the name of belief, assent, or opinion; and according to the nature of the proofs or intermediate ideas, as decided by the faculty of the judgment, the opinion is rendered indubitable, probable, conjectural, or suspicious. It is upon t-liis comparison of two ideas, by means of a mediate idea expressed or understood, that most of our moral information or common knowledge would be found to depend, if we were to analyze it. Thus, on going into the street, and hearing a man whom I am acquainted with asking which is the way to London Bridge, I may, perhaps^ observe to a by-stander, " That man ought to know the way.'* The by-stander immediately compares the two * Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed. Of Personal Identity, forming Diss. 1. t See " Some account of Zerah Colbuiii, an American child, who possesses some very remarkable pow ers of solvm? questions in arithmetic, by computation without writing, or any visible contrivance. "- Ificholson's Journal of Nat Phil. vol. xxxiv. p. 5, ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 35^ ideas of going to London Bridge, and the man's right to know the way, but can find no connexion or agreement between them, and consequently is ignorant o( what I mean. He applies to me, therefore, for the intermediate idea by the question, " Why so ]" and 1 give it to him by answering, " Be- cause he has repeatedly been the same road before :" and although he does not put the three ideas into the measured form of the schools, which is called a syllogism, every one as regularly passes through his mind, and gives him the same satisfactory information as if they were to assume such order; in 'vhich case they would perhaps run as follows : — Every man who goes repeatedly the same road should know iiis way ; This man has been repeatedly the same road : Therefore this man should know his way. It would be absurd to introduce this part of logical analysis into common dis- course : but it is of high use in the closet, as teaching us precision, by com- pelling us to measure the force and value of every idea and word of which a proposition consists. We are indebted to Aristotle for its invention : and though it was at one time carried to an absurd excess, it has of late years been far too generally discontinued. The connective or intermediate idea is not always expressed either in speaking or writing; and hence is not always obvious to the hearer or reader, though it is, or Ought to be, so to the framer of the argument. Let me exer- cise the ingenuity of the audience before me by throwing out as a trial, the following well-known sentiment of Mr. Pope : — Who governs freemen should himself be free. Here are two distinct propositions ; and Dr. Johnson, not immediately per- ceiving their agreement, nor immediately hitting upon any intervening idea or proposition by which they might be united, declared the whole to be a riddle, and that the poet might just as well have written. Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat. Had Johnson, however, lived in our own day, and turned his attention to the Continent, it would have been a riddle to him no longer ; for he would have called to mind, as 1 doubt not every one before me has done already, the mischief that has happened to many a free people on the Continent, from the unfortunate want of freedom in the sovereign who is placed over them, and his being under the detestable control of one of the worst, and, unluckily, one of the most universal, tyrants the world has ever witnessed.* He would have been, as every one before me must be, at once prepared to have connected the two ideas o{ freemen, — and the propriety of their being governed by a free sovereign, by means of a third or intervening idea to this effect, that other- wise the people themselves might run no small risk of having their freedom destroyed by foreign force ; the whole of which might assume the following" appearance if reduced to the form of a syllogism : — Therefore, Who governs freemen should be able to maintain their freedom: But he who is not free himself is not able to maintain their freedom : Who governs freemen should himself be free. Proper or real knowledge, then, is of two kinds or degrees, intuition anc DEMONSTRATION ; bclow which, all the information we possess is imperfec knowledge or opinion. Mr. Locke, nevertheless, out of courtesy to the Car tesian hypothesis, rather than from any other cause, >makes proper or re« * Napoleon Buonaparte. .!i'hii lecture wm delivered in 1814. MO ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. knowledge to consist of three degrees, placing sensible knowledge, or that obtained by an exercise of the external senses, below the two degrees of intuition and demonstration, though above the authority of opinion. In most instances, however, the ideas we obtain from the senses are as clear and as identic as those obtained from any other source : and in all such cased the knowledge they produce is self-evident or intuitive. And although, at times, the idea excited by a single sense may not be perfectly clear, yet, as we usually correct it, or destroy the doubt which accompanies it, by having recourse to another sense, which furnishes us with the proof or intermediate idea, the knowledge obtained, even in these cases, though not amounting to intuition, is of the nature of demonstration : whence all sensible knowledge (the organs of sense being in themselves perfect, and the objects fully within their scope) falls, if I mistake not, under the one or the other of these two divisions. Demonstrative knowledge, where the intervening proofs or ideas perform their part perfectly, approaches, as I have already observed, to the certainty of intuition. But it has generally been held that this kind of demonstration can only take place in the science of mathematics, or, in other words, in ideas of number, extension, and figure. I coincide, however, completely with Mr. Locke, in believing that the knowledge afforded by physics may not unfre- quenlly be as certain. I have already stated that the knowledge we possess of our own existence is intuitive. Our knowledge of the existence of a God is, on the contrary, demonstrative. Examine, then, the proofs of this latter knowledge, and see whether it be less certain. Am I asked where proofs to this effect are to be found? On every side they press upon us in clusters. — I cannot, indeed, follow them up at the present moment, for it would require a folio volume instead of the close of a single lecture ; and I merely throw out the hint that you may pursue it at home. But this I may venture to say, that whatever cluster we take, it will develope to us a certain proof, and, in its separate value, fall but little short of the force of self-evidence. If I ascend into heaven, he is there ; in peerless splendour, in ineffable majesty ; diffusing, from an inexhaustible fountain, the mighty tide of light, and liie, and love, from world to world, and from system to system. If I descend into the grave, he is there also ; still actively and manifestly employed in the same benevolent pursuit : still, though in a different manner, prom.oting the calm but unceasing career of vitality and happiness ; harmoniously leading on the silent circle of decomposition and reorganization : fructifying the cold and gloomy regions of the tomb ; rendering death itself the mysterious source of reproduction and new existence ; and thus literally making the " dry bones live," and the " dead sing praises" to his name. If I examine the world with- out me, or the world within me, I trace him equally to a demonstration : — I feel, — nay, more thankee/, — IA:«oajhim to be eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, the creator of all things, and therefore God. I discover him, not b}'^ the vain maxims of tradition, or the visionary conceit of innate principles, but by the faculty with which he has expressly endowed me to search for him, — by my reason. There may, perhaps, be some persons, as well learned as unlearned, who have never brought together these proofs of his existence, and are therefore ignorant of him ; as there certainly are others who have never brought together the proofs that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, and are therefore ignorant of geometry : but both facts have a like truth and a like foundation : both flow from and return to the same fountain : for God is the author of every truth, — for God is truth itself. ON ANCIENT AND MODEUX SKEPTICS. 9fl LECTURE V. ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. From a system that is simple, intelligible, and satisfactory, adapted to the condition of man, and pregnant with useful instruction, we have now to turn our attention to a variety of hypotheses, that are scarcely in any instance worthy of the name of systems, and which it is difficult to describe otherwise than by reversing the terms we have just employed, and characterizing them as complicated, unintelligible, unsatisfactory ; as not adapted to the con- dition of man, and barren of useful instruction. It is a distinguishing and praiseworthy feature in the Essay on Human Understanding, that it confines itself to the subject of human understanding ^lone, and that, in delineating the operations of the mind, it neither enters into the question of the substance of miiwi, or the substance of matter; nei- ther amuses us with speculations how external objects communicate with the senses, or the senses with the mental organ. It builds altogether upon the sure foundation of the simple fact, that the senses are influenced, and that they influence the mind; and as, in the former case, it calls the cause of this influence external objects, so in the latter case it calls the efl'ects it produces internal ideas. Of the nature of these objects it says little, but of their sub- stantive existence; of the nature of these ideas it says little, but of their truth or exact correspondence with the objects that excite them ; its general view of the subject being reducible to the two following propositions : — First, that as objects are perceivable at a distance, and bodies cannot act where they are not, it is evident that something must proceed from them to produce impulse upon the senses, and that the motion hereby excited must be thence continued by the nerves, or connecting chain, to the brain or seat of sensation, so as to produce in our minds the particular ideas we have of them.* And, secondly, that the ideas thus produced, so far from being images or pictures of the objects they represent, have no kind of resemblance to them, except so far as relates to their real qualities of solidity, extension, figure, motion, or rest, and number.f Thus far, and thus far only, does the author of the Essay on Human Under-- standing indulge in a digression into physical science ; and even for this he feels it necessary to offer an apology to his reader : " I hope," says he, " I shall be pardoned this little excursion into natural philosophy, it being neces- sary in our present inquiry."^ For myself, I am glad he did not proceed farther, and should have been still more satisfied if he had not proceeded even so far; for the subject proves itself, even in his hands, to be inexplicable ; and if he be here found to evince some degree of obscurity, it is only, perhaps, because it is not pos- sible to avoid it. Of the primary or real qualities of bodies, as he denomi- nates them, we know but little ; and it is probable, that Mr. Locke has enu- merated one or two under this head that do not properly belong to the list. And although it is not difl^cult to determine his meaning where he asserts that their ideas resemble them, as being drawn from patterns existing in the bodies themselves, the sense of the passage has been very generally mis- taken, and opinions have hence been ascribed to hiin which are contrary to the whole tenor of his system. In consequence of being real representa- tives of real qualities, they resemble them in respect to reality. And this, I think, seems to be what Mr. Locke intended to express upon this subject ; though he does not discover his usual clearness as to what he desig'ned to convey by the term resemblance. This view, however, will be still more obvious by comparing the seventh, ninth, and twenty-third sections of the * Essay on Hum. Underst book ii. ch. viii. $ 12. lb. ^ 15. ; Tb. $ 22. 362 OxN ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. eighth chapter of his second book, in which he asserts, that the secondary qualities of bodies, as they are usually called, and which he contrasts with the PRIMARY before us, have no real existence in their respective bodies, and are nothing more than powers instead of qualities. And hence, while the ideas of the PRIMARY qualities of bodies are real representatives of real qualities, and to this extent resemble them, the ideas of their secondary qualities are only real representatives of ostensible or imaginary qualities, in regard, at least, to the subjects to which they appear to belong, and, consequently, have NO resemblance to them whatever. What, however, Locke thus modestly glanced at, others, with all the con- fidence of the Greek philosophers, have boldly plunged into; and the conse- quence haa been, that they have met with the very same success as the Greek philosophers, and revived the very same errors : — some having been bewildered into a disbelief of the soul, others into a disbelief of the body, and otiiers again, still more whimsically, into a disbelief of botii soul and body at the same time ; contending not only that there is no such thing as a world about them, but no such thing as themselves, except at the very moment they start either this or any other idea of equal brilliance. We have already seen, that the ideas of the mind have no resemblance whatever to the external objects by which they are produced ; unless in the case of the primary qualities of bodies, in which, as just observed, the term resemblance .may be applied in a figurative sense, the only sense, as I shall show more fully hereafter, in which it was ever employed by Mr. Locke. This is a fact so clear as to be admitted by almost every school of philo- sophy. " Between an external object and an idea or thought of the mind," observes Dr. Beattie, " there is not, there cannot possibly be, any resem- blance."* So, in continuation, " a grain of sand and the globe of the earth ; a burning coal and a lump of ice; a drop of ink and a sheet of white paper, resemble each other in being extended, solid, figured, coloured, and divisible ; but a thought or idea has no extension, solidity, figure, colour, or divisibility : so that no two external objects can be so unlike, as an external object, and (what philosophers call) the idea of it." To the same efifect Dr. Potterfield : " How body acts upon mind, or mind upon body, I know not ; but this I am very certain of, that nothing can act or be acted upon where it is not; and therefore our mind can never perceive any thing but its own modifications, and the various states of the sensorium to which it is present. So that it is not the external sun and moon which are in the heavens that our mind per- ceives, but only their image or representation impressed on the sensorium. How the soul of a seeing man sees those images, or how it receives those ideas from such agitations in the sensorium, I know not. But I am sure it can never perceive the external bodies themselves, to which it is not present." Now allowing this fact, it follows, of inevitable necessity, that the mind does not of itself perceive an external world, even any thing resembling an external world; and we must take both its existence and the nature of its existence upon the evidence of our external senses. Such an authority may perhaps seem tolerably sufficient to most of my audience ; and I trust [ shall be able to prove, before we conclude, that the external senses are as honest and as competent witnesses as any court of judicature can reasonably desire. But it has somehow or other happened, as we have already seen, that there have been a few wise and grave men, and of great learning, talents, and moral excellence, in different periods of the world, who have had a strange suspi- cion of their competency : and have hunted up facts and arguments to prove that their evidence is not worth a straw ; that, in some cases, they have shown themselves egregious fools, and in others arrant cheats ; that the testi- mony of one sense often opposes the testimony of another sense; that what appears smooth to the eye appears rough to the touch; that we cannot always distinguish a green from a blue colour; and that we sometimes feel great awe and solemnity beneath a deep and growing sound, which we at first take to • On Truth, part ii. ch. ii. p. ISi. ON ANCIEiNT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 363 be a clap of thunder, but afterward find to be nothing more than the rum- bling of a filthy cart ; that we mistake a phantasm, or phantasmagoria, for a figure of flesh and blood; and occasionally see things just as clearly in our dreams as when we are awake, though all the world with which we have then any concern is a world of mere ideas — a world of our own making, and altogether independent of the senses; and, consequently, that it is possible the poet may speak somewhat more literally than he intended, when he tells us We are such stiiff As dream? are made on, and our little life Is rounded witJi a sleep." This sort of reasoning, however, has not been confined to modern times; it was, as I have already observed, the very argument of Arcesilas, and the skeptics of the MmoLE Academy, as it was called ; who, in consequence, con- tended that there is no truth or solidity in any thing: no such thing as cer- tainty, or real knowledge ; and that all genuine philosophy or wisdom con- sists in doubting. From a cause somewhat similar, Pyrrho, as I have like- wise remarked, seems to have carried his skepticism to a still farther extra- vagance, though a very excellent man and enlightened philosopher in other respects : for he is said to have so far disbelieved the real existence of every thing before him that precipices were nothing; the points of swords and arrows were nothing ; the wheel of a carriage that threatened to go over his own neck was nothing. Insomuch that his friends, who were not quite so far gone in philosophy, thought it right to protect him against the eflfects of his own principles, and either accompanied him themselves or set a keeper over him under the milder name of a disciple. It was in vain that Plato pre- tended that the mind is loaded with intellectual archetypes, or the incorpo- real ideas, oi all external objects; Aristotle that it perceives by immaterial phantasms ; and Epicurus by real species or efl^gies thrown forth from the objects themselves: Pyrrho denied the whole of this jargon, and contended that if it could even be proved that the senses uniformly give a true account of things, as far as their respective faculties extend, still we obtain no more real knowledge of matter, of the substance that is said to constitute the ex- ternal world, than we do of the perceptions that constitute our dreams. If, said he, you affirm that matter consists of particles that are infinitely divisible, you ascribe the attribute of infinity to every particle ; and hence make a finite grain of sand consist of millions of infinite atoms ; and such is the train of argument of the atomic philosophers. While, on the contrary, if you con- tend, with the atomists, that matter has its ultimate atoms or primordial par- ticles, beyond which it is not possible to divide and subdivide it, show me some of these particles, and let those senses you appeal to become the judges. Such was the state of things under the Greek philosophers : the existence of an external world and its connexion with the mind was supported, and sup- ported alone, by fine-spun hypotheses, that were perpetually proving their own fallacy; and was denied or doubted of by skeptics who were perpetually proving the absurdity of their own doubts. Des Cartes, as we have already observed, thought, in his day, it was high time to remove all doubt whatsoever, and to come to a proof upon every thing; and he zealously set to work to this eflect. In the ardour of his own mind he had the fullest conviction of a triumph; and like a liberal antagonist he conceded to his adversaries all they could desire. He allowed a doubt upon every thing for the very purpose of removing it by direct proofs. He began, therefore, as we have already seen, by doubting of his own existence : and, as we have also seen, he made sad work of it in the proofs he attempted to offer. Having satisfied himself, however, upon this point, he next proceeded to prove the existence of the world around him ; and, candidly following up the 364 ON AXCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. first principle he had laid down for the regulation of his conduct, he was determined to doubt of the evidence of the senses, excepting so far as they could bring proof of their correctness. But what proof had the senses to offer ] The very notion of a proof, as I took leave to observe in our last lee ture, consists in our obtaining a fact or an idea possessing a closer agreement or connexion with the thing to be proved than the fact or idea that the mind first perceives or is able to lay hold of. But what ideas can more closely *agree or be more closely connected with an external world than the ideas produced by the senses, by which alone the mind perceives such world to exist? These are ideas of identity, of self-agreement; and, consequently, ideas which, like that of consciousness, it is neither possible to doubt of or to prove. They form, for the most part, a branch of intuitive knowledge, and we are compelled to believe whether we will or not. I sny Jbr the most part, for I am now speaking of the common effect of ex- ternal objects upon the senses, and upon the mental organ. I am ready to admit that, under particular circumstances, the ideas they excite may not be perfectly clear: we maybe at too great a distance from the object, or the sense of sight, smell, taste, or touch may be morbidly or accidentally obtuse ; but in all these cases a sound mind is just as conscious of having ideas that are not clear, as it is, under other circumstances, of having distinct ideas. There is no imposition whatever: the mind equally knows that it has cer- tain knowledge in the latter instance,, and that it has uncertain knowledge in the former. I mean, if it will exert itself to know by the exercise of its own activity ; for otherwise it may as well mistake in ideas that originate from itself as in those that originate from the senses. And in the case of its being conscious of an imperfect or indistinct idea, excited by one of the senses, what is the step it pursues 1 That which it uniformly pursues in every other case of imperfect knowledge : it calls in the aid of an intermediate idea by the exercise of another sense that is more closely connected or more clearly agrees with the idea that raises the question, and the faculty of the judgment determines* as in every other case. And here the knowledge, as I have already hinted at on a former occasion, loses indeed its intuitive character, and assumes, for the most part, the demonstrative. It was impossible, therefore, for Des Cartes to obtain any proofs whatever ; and it being the very preamble of his system that his doubts should remain unless he could remove them by proofs, the only device that seemed to afford him a loophole to escape from his dilemma was an slppeal to the veracity of the Creator. God, he asserted, has imprinted on the mind innate ideaS of himself and of an external world; and though the senses offer no demonstra- tion of such a world, it is completely furnished to us by these internal ideas : the senses, indeed, may deceive, but God can be no deceiver. And hence what appears to exist around us does exist. The existence of an external world, therefore, in the Cartesian philosophy is doubtful, so far as depends upon the senses ; for the testimony they offer is in itself doubtful. And hence it is not upon the evidence of our eyes and our hands, and our taste, smell, and hearing, that we are to believe that there is any body or any thing without us, but on the truth of those innate ideas of a something without us which are supposed to be imprinted on the mind, in connexion with the veracity of the Creator who has imprinted them. But here another stumbling-block occurred to the progress of our philo- sophical castle-builder; and that was, the difficulty of determining, in regard to the number and extent of these innate ideas. His friends Gassendi and Hobbes openly denied that there were any such ideas whatever, and put him upon his proofs, by which the whole system would be to be commenced again from its foundation; while Malebranche, one of the most zealous of all the disciples of Des Cartes, at the same time that he contended for the general doctrine of innate ideas, confessed that he had some doubts whether they extended to the existence of the world without us, or to any thing but a knowledge of God and of our own being. Although, in his opinion, M. Des Cartes has proved the existence of bodv ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 385 by the strongest arguments that reason alone can furnish, and arguments ^vhich he seems to suppose unexceptionable; yet he does not admit that they amount to a full demonstration of the existence of matter. In philosophy, says he, we ought to maintain our liberty as long, as we can, and to believe nothing but what evidence compels us to believe. To be fully convinced of the existence of bodies it is necessary that we have it demonstrated to us, not only that there is a God, and that he is no deceiver, but also that God has assured us that he has actually created such bodies ; and this, continues Malebranche, "I do not find proved in the works of M. Des Cartes. 'I'he faith obliges us to believe that bodies exist, but as to the evidence of this truth, it certainly is not complete ; and it is also certain that we are not in- vincibly determined to believe that anything exists but God and our own mind. It is true that we have an extreme propensity to believe that we are surrounded with corporeal beings : so far I agree with M. Des Cartes : but this propensity, natural as it is, does not force our belief by evidence; it only inclines us to believe by impression. Now we ought not" to be determined in our judgments by any thing but light and evidence ; if we suffer ourselves to be guided by the sensible impression, we shall be almost alwaj^s mistaken."* Thus stood the question when the very learned and excellent Bishop of Cloyne, Dr. George Berkeley, entered upon its investigation. For Locke, as we have already seen, boldly overleaped the Cartesian tollgate of doubting, and was content to take the knowledge of our own existence upon the authority of intuition, that of a God upon the authority of demonstration, and that of external objects upon the authority of our senses. Berkeley hud minutely studied the rival systems of Des Cartes and Locke. With the latter he agreed that there is no such thing as innate ideas, and with the former that the creed of a philosopher should be founded upon proof. But Locke had not proved the existence of an external world : he had only sent us to our senses, and had left the q-uestion between ourselves and the evidence they offer; and though this is an evidence which Locke had assented to. Bishop Berkeley conceives it ii| an evidence that every man ought to examine and sift for himself. Upon this point, then, he deserted Locke for his rival, and commenced a chase for proofs : He would not with a peremptory tone, Assert tlie nose upon his face liisuwn ; and looked around him for demonstrative evidence whether there be any thing in nature besides the Creator and a created mind. And the well-known result of the chase was that he could discover nothing else : he could dis- cover neither a material world nor matter of any kind; neither corporeal ob- jects nor corporeal senses, with which to feel about for objects; he could not even discover his own head and ears, his own hands, feet, or voice, as sub- stantive existences; and the whole that he could discover was proofs to demonstrate not only that these things have no substantive existence, but that it is impossible they could have any such existence: or, in other words, that it is impossible that there can be any such thing as matter under any modification whatever, cognizable by mental faculties. Let us, however, attend to the limitation that external objects can have no substantive or material existence, for otherwise we shall give a caricature view of this hypothesis (which it by no means stands in need of), and ascribe to it doctrines and mischievous results which, if it be candidly examined, will not be found chargeable to it. Dr. Beattie, from not adverting to this limita- tion, appears, in his humorous description of the Bishop of Cloyne's prm- ciples, to have been mistaken upon several points; audit is but justice to the memory of a most excellent and exemplary prelate, as well as enli-ghtened philosopher, to correct the errors into which his equally excellent and en- lightened opponent has fallen. When Berkeley asserts that he can prove that there is nothing in existence but a Creator and created mind, and that • Recherche de la V^rite, lonj. in. p. 30. 39. 366 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. matter, and, consequently, material objects and material organs have not and cannot have, a being, he does not mean, as Dr. Beattie has represented him to mean, that he himself, or his own mind, is the only created being- in ihe universe ;* nor that external objects and external qualities do not and cannot exist independent of, and distinct from, created mind. He allows as unequi- vocally as Dr. Beattie himself the existence of fellow-minds or fellow-beings, possessing appropriate senses, as also the existence of external and real ob- jects, and°of external and real qualities by which such senses are really and definitely influenced; contending alone that none of these objects or qualities are material, or any thing more than effects of the immediate agency of an ever-present Deity, " who," to adopt his own words, " knows and compre- hends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a manner, and accord- ing to such rules as he himself has ordained, and are termed by us the laws of nature. — When," says he, "in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether 1 shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view ; and so likewise as to the hear- ing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is, therefore, some other will or spirit that produces them. The question between the materialists and me is not whether things have a real existence out of the mind of this or that person, but whether they have an ab- solute existence, distinct from being perceived by (in) God and exterior to all minds 1 I assert as well as they, that since we are affected from without, we must allow powers to be without in a being distinct from ourselves. So far we are agreed. But then we differ as to the kind of this powerful being. I will have it to be spirit : they matter, or I know not what third nature. "f According to Dr. Beattie, Berkeley taught " that external objects (that is, the things which we take for external objects) are nothing but ideas in our minds; and that independent of us and our faculties, the earth, the sun, and the starry heavens have no existence at all ; that a lighted candle has not one of those qualities vi^hich it appears to have ; that it is not w^hite, nor lumi- nous, nor round, nor divisible, nor extended ; but that, for any thing we know, or can ever know to the contrary, it may be an Egyptian pyramid, the king of Prussia, a mad dog, the island of Madagascar, Saturn's ring, one of the Plei- ades, or nothing at all." Now all this shows a fruitful fund of pleasantry, but in the present case it is pleasantry somewhat misapplied. It would indeed be a woful state of things if such were the confusion or anomaly of our ideas, that we could never distinguish one object from another, and were forever mistaking the king of Prussia for an Egyptian pyramid, a lighted candle for a mad dog, and the island of Madagascar for the Pleiades or Saturn's ring. But it would be a state of things no more chargeable to Dr. Berkeley's than to Dr. Beattie's view of nature'; since the former supposes as perfect a reality in external objects, that they have as perfect an independence of the mind that perceives them, the possession of as permanent and definite qualities, and as regular a catenation of causes and effects, as the latter; or, in other words, it sup- poses that all things exist as they appear to exist, and must necessarily pro- duce such effects as we find them produce, but that they do not exist corpo- really ; that they have no substrate and can have no substrate of matter, nor any other being than that given them by the immediate agency of the Deity ; or, in still fewer words, that all things exist and are only seen to exist in God : a representation of nature, which, however erroneous, is by no means necessarily connected with those mischievous and fatal consequences which Dr. Beattie ascribed to it, and which, if fairly founded, must have been suffi- cient not only to have deterred Bishop Berkeley from starting it at first, but those very excellent prelates and acute reasoners. Bishop Sherlock and Bishop Smallwood, from becoming converts to it afterward. The hypothesis, however, after taking away all undue colouring, and re- garding it as merely assuming the non-existence of matter and a material • Beattie on Truth, 8vo p. 159. t Princip. of Hum. Knowledge ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. o67 world, is still abundantly absurd in a philosophical point of view. Yet so fully had Berkeley persuaded himself of its truth, that he had the firmest con- viction that if the world be, as it is said to be, composed of men, women, and children of a corporeal and material make, with ground beneath our feet and a sky over our heads, every body must in his heart believe as he believed, namely, that there are no such women or children, no such ground, sky, or any tiling else but mind and mental perception. Nevertheless, whichsoever creed be true, he contended that it could make no difference in the regulation of our moral conduct; which he endeavours to prove by the following nota- ble strain of argument : " That nothing gives us interest in the material world except the feelings, pleasant or painful, which accompany our perceptions ; that these perceptions are the same whether we believe the material world to exist or not to exist ; consequently, that our pleasant or painful feelings are also the same ; and therefore that our conduct, which depends on our feelings and perceptions, must be the same whether we believe or disbelieve the ex- istence of matter." The more we reflect upon the native vigour and acuteness of Bishop Berke- ley's mind, as well as upon his extensive information and learning, the more we must feel astonished that he could for one moment be serious in the pro- fession of so wild and chimerical a creed. And to those who are not ac- quainted with the subject it may perhaps appear impossible for the utmost stret(;h of human ingenuity to push such a revery any farther. To the possession of such Ingenuity, however, the celebrated author of the "Treatise on Human Nature" is fairly and fully entitled. This notable per- formance, though published anonymously, is well known to be the production of Mr. Hume; and though, in the Essays to which his name appears, he makes some scruple of acknowledging it, and hints at its containing a few points which he subseqently thought erroneous, he maintains, in his avowed volumes, the same principles and the consequences of those principles so generally, that it is difficult to understand what errors he would wish the world to suppose he had ever retracted. In mounting into the sublime regions of metaphysical absurdity. Bishop Berkeley furnished him with the ladder ; but, as 1 have already hinted, Hume ascended it higher, and consequently, in his own opinion, had a more correct' and extensive view of the airy scene before him. If, said he, there be nothing in nature but mind and the perceptions of mind, — perceptions diversified, indeed, by being sometimes stronger and some- times weaker, and which may hence be properly distinguished by the names of impressions and ideas, — how do we know that we possess a mind any more than that we possess a body, which no reasonable man or philosopher can possibly think of contending for 1 How do we know that there is any thing more than impressions and ideas ? This is the utmost we can know ; and even this we cannot know to a certainty : for nobody but fools will pre- tend certainly to know or to believe any thing. These ideas and impressions follow each other, and are therefore conjoined, but we have no proof that there is any necessary connexion between them. They are " a bundle of perceptions that succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux ;"* and hence I myself of to-day am no more the I myself of. yesterday or to-morrow, than I am Nebuchadnezzar or Cleopatra. Now all this nonsense in Bishop Berkeley, even had his lordship gone so far, which, however, he did not do, we could laugh at ; for his mind was of too excellent a cast to mean mischief. But it is impossible to make the same allowance to Mr. Hume, since the doctrines he attempts to build upon this nonsense effectually prevent us from doing so. If the mind of every man become every moment a different being, all pu- nishment for crime must be absurd ; for you can never hit the culprit, who is every moment slipping through your fingers, and may as well hang the sheriff as the thief. No philosopher, it seems, can even dream of believing in an • Treat ou Human Nat. vol. 1. n 438, &•. SeS ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. external world, and yet (putting by the trash of innate ideas) what other ar- guments have we, continues the same school, if school it may be called, for the existence and attributes of a Supreme Being. You may talk of power, but it is a word without a meaning: we can form no idea of power, nor of any being endued wit-h any power, much less of a being endued with infinite power. And we can never have reason to believe that any object or quality of an object exists of which we cannot form an idea. It is, indeed, unreasonable to believe God to be infinitely wise and good while there is any evil or disorder in the uni- verse ; nor have we any sound reason to believe that the world, whatever it may be, proceeds from him, or from any cause whatever. We can never fairly denominate any thing a cause till we have repeatedly seen it produce like efFects ; but the universe is an effect quite singular and unparalleled ; and hence it is impossible for us to know any thing of its cause ; it is impossible for us to know that there is any universe whatever; any creature or any Cre- ator ; or any thing in existence but impressions and ideas.* It is not my intention to enter into these arguments, nor is it necessary. For though there had been ten times more force or more folly m them than there is, we have already traced the Babel-building to its foundation, and know that it rests upon emptiness. Scotland has the* disgrace of having given birth to this hydra of absurdity and malignity : she has also the honour of having produced the Hercules by whom it has been strangled. She has, indeed, amply atoned : for she has produced a Hercules in almost every one of her universities. True to the high charge reposed in them, the public guardians of her morals have started forth from Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, armed in celestial panoply, and equally masters of their weapons. Neither argument nor raillery have been spared on the occasion ; and instead of invidiously inquiring whether Reid, Beattie, or Stewart be chiefly entitled to the honours of the victory, let us vote them our thanks in the aggregate. The only regret (and it is incident to human affairs that in almost every victory there should be a regret) is that in pulling down one hypothesis they should have thought it requisite to build up another, and to give a proof of their own weakness in the midst of their own triumph. But this is a subject which must be reserved for our next lec- ture. I cannot, however, consent to quit our present connexion with Mr. Hume, without adverting to Dr. Beattie's very witty, and I may say, for the most part, logical pleasantry upon the leading principle of Mr. Hume's hy- pothesis, that our impressions and ideas of things only differ in degrees of strength ; the idea being an exact copy of the impression, but only accom- panied with a weaker perception. Upon this proposition Dr. Beattie remarks as follows :f " When I sit by the fire, I have an impression of heat, and I can form an idea of heat when I am shivering with cold ; in the one case I have a stronger perception of heat, in the other a weaker. Is there any warmth in this idea of heat ? There must, according to this doctrine : only the warmth of the idea is not quite so strong as that of the impression. For this author repeats it again and again, that ' an idea is by its nature weaker and fainter than an impression, but is in every other respect' (not only similar but) • the same.'l Nay, he goes farther, and says, that • whatever is true of the one * Mr. Hume seems to have been only a spoculaiii'e advocate of his own doctrines: the Bishop of Cloyne, like the Greelt skeptics to whom we iiave formerly adverted, was a real believer. And it is not a little singular that llie fundamental atheism on wliich the doctrines of Boodhism are founded, as professed throughout the Burnian empire, has jriven riae, even in the present day, to a sect of pliilosophical skeptics of the very same kind ; of which Mr. Judson, the intelligent American niisisinnary to whom I have already alluded (Ser. in. Lect. iii.), gives us, in his Journal, the following notable example: — " May 20th, 1821. Encountered another new character, one Moung Long, from the neighbourhood of Shway doung, a disciple of the great Tongdwan teacher, Ihe acknowledged hfail of all the semi atheists in the country. Jiike the rest of the sect, Moung Long is, in reality, a complete skeptic, scarcely believing his own existence. They say he is always quarrelling with his wife on some metaphysical point. For insiarite, if she says, " The rice is ready," he will reply, " Rice ! What is ricel Is it matter or spirit 1 la it an idea, or is it a nonentity V Perhaps she will say, " It is matter!" and he will reply, " Well, wife, and what is matter 1 Are you sure there is any such thing in existence, or are you merely subject to a de- lusion of the senses!"— Account of the American Baptist Mission to the Burmau Empire, &c. by A. H Judson, p. a04, 8vo. Lond. 1823. T Beattie on Truth, part ii. ch. il. % Treatise on Human Nature, vol. i p. 131 ON ANCIENT AND xMODERN SKEPTICS. 369 must be acknowledged concerning the other ;'* and he is so confident of the truth of this maxim, that he makes it one of the pillars of his philosophy To those who may be inclined to admit this maxim on his authority, 1 would propose a few plain questions. Do you feel any, even the least, warmth in the idea of a bonfire, a burning mountain, or the general conflagration 1 Do you feel more real cold in Virgil's Scythian winter than in Milton's description of the flames of hell 1 Do you acknowledge that to be true of the idea of eating, which is certainly true of the impression of it, that it alleviates hun- ger, fills the belly, and contributes to the support of human life 1 If you answer these questions in the negative, you deny one of the fundamental principles of this philosophy. We have, it is true, a livelier perception of a friend when we see him, than when we think of him in his absence : but this is not all : every person of a sound mind knows, that in the one case we be- lieve, and are certain, that the object exists, and is present with us ; in the other we believe, and are certain, that the object is not present : which, how- ever, they must deny who maintain that an idea difters from an impression only in being weaker, and in no other respect whatsoever. " That every idea should be a copy and resemblance of the impression whence it is derived ; — that, for example, the idea of red should be a red idea ; the idea of a roaring lion a roaring idea; the idea of an ass, a hairy, long- eared, sluggish idea, patient of labour, and much addicted to thistles ; that the idea of extension should be extended, and that of solidity solid ; — that a thought of the mind should be endued with all, or any, of the qualities of matter ; — is, in my judgment, inconceivable and impossible. Yet our author takes it for granted ; and it is another of his fundamental maxims. Such is the credulity of skepticism !" It is a singular coincidence, that while the substantive existence of an ex- ternal world was thus hotly attacked by metaphysics, the science of physics should have proved just as adverse to it ; thus reviving, as we have already seen, the very same double assault to which it had been exposed at Athens, shortly after the establishment of the Academy. This latter controversy commenced and hinged upon what are the real qualities of matter. Heat, cold, colours, smell, taste, and sounds had been pretty generally banished from the list about the middle of the seventeenth century. Locke contended, after Sir Isaac Newton, for solidity, extension, mobility, and figure : but it was soon found that there is a great difficulty in granting it solidity : that the particles of bodies never come into actual contact, or influence each other by the means of objective pressure ; that however apparently solid the mass to which they belong, such mass may be reduced to a smaller bulk by cold, as it may be increased in bulk by heat ; that we can hence form no concep- tion of perfect solidity, and every fact in nature appears to disprove its ex- istence. The minutest corpuscle we can pick out is capable of a minuter division, and the parts into which it divides possessing the common nature of the corpuscle which has produced them, must necessarily be capable of a still farther division ; and, as such divisions can have no assignable limit, matter must necessarily and essentially be divisible to infinity. For these and similar reasons M. Boscovich contended that there is no such thing as solidity in matter ; nor any thing more than simple, unextended, indivisible points, possessing the powers of attraction and repulsion, yet producing ex- tension by their combination.! Upon the self-contradiction of this hypothesis I have found it necessary to comment on a former occasion ;J and shall now, therefore, only farther ob- serve, that it just as completely sweeps the whole of matter away with a physical broom, as the systems of Berkeley and Hume do with a metaphy- sical; for, by leaving us nothing but unextended points, possessing mere powers without a substrate, it leaves nothing at all, — a world, indeed, but a • Treatiso on Human Nature, vol. i. p. 4T. t Theoria PliilosophiiE Naturalis, Vien. 1758. X Series i. Lecture iii. See also Dr. WuUaston's paper ''On the finite Extent of the Atmosphsre,** Phil. Trans. 1S22, p. 8i>. 370 OiN ANCJEx\T AND MODERN SKEPTICS. world " without form, and void ;" with darkness, not only upon the face of the deep, but there and every where else. " That nothing," says Dr. Reid, " can act immediately where it is not, I think must be admitted ; for I think, with Sir Isaac Newton, that power without substance is inconceivable." Lord Karnes, however, in his Elements of Criticism, though a strong advocate for the common-sense system, ex- presses his doubts of the doctrine contained in this passage. To complete the folly of the age, and fix the laugh of the simple against the wise, while Berkeley, Hume, and Boscovich v\'ere thus, in their difterent ways, dissipating the world of matter, in favour of the world of mind, another set of philosophers started up, — -impios Titanas, immanemque turmain,* An impious, earih-born, fierce, Titanic race,— and put to flight the world of mind in favour of the world of matter. Hobbes, who was a contemporary and friend of Des Cartes, courageously led the van, and did ample justice, and somewhat more than ample justice, to the senses, by contendmg that we have no other knowledge than what they supply us with, and what they thenvselves derive from the world before them ; that the mind is nothing more than the general result of their action ; and that with them it begins, and with them it ceases. To Hobbes succeeded Spinosa, who was born in the very same year with Locke, and who carried forward the crusade of matter against mind, to so illimitable a career, that he made the world, the human senses, the human soul, and the Deity himself, matter and nothing else : all one common mate- rial being; no part of which can or ever could exist otherwise than as it is, and consequently every part of which is equally the creature and the Creator. In the midst of these indiscriminate assaults appeared Hartley, whose learning, benevolence, and piety entitle his memory to be held in veneration by every good man. He strenuously contended for the existence of mind and matter as distinct principles ; and conceived it was in his power to settle the general controversy, by showing what Locke had failed to do, or rather what he had too much modesty to attempt, the direct means by which the external senses, and consequently the external world, operate upon the mind. And hence arose the well-known and at one time highly popular hypothesis of the association of ideas. It was conceived by Dr. Hartley that the nervous fibrils, which form the medium of communication between the external senses and the brain or sensory, are solid and elastic capillaments, that on every impression of objects upon the senses the nervous chord, immediately connected vviih the sense, vibrates through its whole length, and commu- nicates the vibration to the substance of the brain, and particularly to its central region, which is the seat of sensation, leaving upon every commu- nication a mark or vestige of itself; which produces a sensation, and excites its correspondent perception or idea. The more frequently these vibrations are renewed, or the more vigorously they are impressed, the stronger will be the vestiges or ideas they induce ; and as, in every instance, they occasion vibratiuncles, or miniature vibrations, through the substance of the brain itself, a foundation is hereby laid for a series of slighter vestiges, sensations, and ideas after the primary vibrations have ceased to act. And hence ori- ginate the faculties of memory and imagination. And as any order of vibra- tions, by being associated together a certain number of times, obtain a habit of mutual influence, arf^y single sensation or single idea belonging to such order acquires a power of calling the whole train into action, either synchro • nously or successively, whenever called into action itself. Now, according to this system, the brain of man is a direct sensitive violin, consisting of musical strings, whose tones go off in thirds, fifths, and eighths, • Hor. lib. iii. 4. ON AiNCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 37! as regularlj^ as in a common fiddle, through the whole extent of its diapason; and the orator who understands his art, may be said, without a figure, to play- skilfully upon the brains of his auditors. The hypothesis, however, is inge"- nious and elegant, and has furnished us with a variety of detached hints of great value ; but it labours under the following fatal objections : First, the nervous fibres have little or no elasticity belonging to them, less so perhaps than any other animal fibres whatever; and next, while it supposes a soul distinct from the brain, it leaves it no office to perform: for the medullary vibrations are not merely causes of sensations, ideas, and associations, but ' in fact the sources of reason, belief, imagination, mental passion, and all other intellectual operations whatever. Admitting, therefore, the full extent of this hypothesis, still it gives us no information about the nature of the mind and its proper functions ; and leaves u& just as ignorant as ever of the power by which it perceives the qualities of external objects. The difficulty was felt by many of the advocates for the associate system, especially by Priestley and Darwin; and it was no sooner felt than it was courageously attacked, and in their opinion completely overcome. Nothing was clearer to them than that Dr. Hartley had overloaded his system with machinery : that no such thing as a mind was wanting distinct from the :rain or sensory itself: that ideas, to adopt the language of Darwin, are the actual contractions, motions, or configurations of the fibres which constitute the immediate organ of sense, and consequently material things ;* or, to adopt ♦he language of Priestley, that ideas are just as divisible as the archetypes or external objects that produce them ; and, consequently, like other parts of the material frame, may be dissected, dried, pickled, and packed up, like herrings, for home-consumption or exportation, according as the foreign or domestic market may have the largest demand for them. And consequently, also, that the brain or censory, or the train of material ideas that issue from it, is the soul itself; not a fine-spun flimsy immaterial soul or principle of thought, like that of Berkeley or even of Hume, existing unconnectedly in the vast solitude of universal space, but a solid, substantial, alderman-likG* soul, a real spirit of animation, fond of good cheer and good company ; that enters into all the pursuits of the body while alive, and partakes of one com- mon fate in its dissolution. If there be too much crassitude in this modification of materialism, as has generally been supposed, even by materialists themselves, there is at least something tangible in it : something that we can grasp and cope with, and fix and understand ; which is more, I fear, than can be said of those subtle and more complicated modifications of the same substrate, which have somewhat more lately been brought forward in France to supply its place, and which represent the human fabric as a duad, or even a triad of unities, instead of a mixed or simple unity ; as a combination! of a corruptible life within a cor- ruptible life two or three deep, each possessing its own separate faculties or manifestations, but covered with a common outside. This remark more especially applies to the philosophers of the French school ; and particularly to the system of DumasJ, as modified by Bichat : under which more finished form man is declared to consist of a pair of lives, each distinct and coexistent, under the names of an organic and an animal life ; with two distinct assortments of sensibilities, an unconscious and a conscious. Each of these lives is limited to a separate set of organs, runs its race in parallel steps with the other; commencing coetaneously and perishing at the same moment.^ This work appeared at the close of the past century ; was read and admired by most physiologists ; credited by many ; and became the popular production of the day. Wifhin ten or twelve years, however, it ran its course, and was as generally either rejected or for- gotten even in France ; and M. Richerand first, and M. Magendie since, have thought themselves called upon to modify Bichat, in order to render him more palatable, as Bichat had already modified Dumas. Under the last series * Zoon. vol. i. p. 11, edit. 3 t Study of Med. vol. iv. p. 41 — 45, edit 2. I Piincipes de Physiologic, torn. iv. 8vo. Paris, 1800—3. ^ Reclierches sur la Vie et la Mori, &c. Aa2 arW ON ANCIENT AND JVIODERN SKEPTICS. of remodelling, which is that of M. Magendie, we have certainly an im- provement, thonoh the machinery is quite as complex. Instead of two dis- tinct lives M. Magendie presents us with two distinct sets or systems of action or relation, each of which has its separate and peculiar functions, a system of nutritive action or relation, and a system of vital. To which is added, by way of appendix, another system, comprising the functions of generation.* Here, however, the brain is not only the seat but the organized substance of the mental powers ; so that, we are expressly told, a man must be as he is made in his brain, and that education, and even logic itself, is of no use to him. "There are," says M. Magendie, "justly celebrated persons who have thought differently; but they have hereby fallen into grave errors." A Deity, however, is allowed to exist, because, adds the writer, it is comfort- able to think that he exists, and on this account the physiologist cannot doubt of his being. " L'intelligence de I'homme," says he, " se compose de pheno- menes tellement differens de tout ce que presente d'ailleurs la nature, qu'on les rapporte a un etre particuliere qu'on regarde comme une emanation de la Divinjte. II est trop consolant de croire a cet eire, pour que le physiologisle raette en doute son existence ; mais la severite de langage ou de logique que comporte maintenant la physiologic exige que Ton traite de l'intelligence humaine comme si elle etait le resultat de Paction d'uii organe. En s'^cartant de cette marcjie, des hommes justement celebres sont tombes dansdes^raw* erreurs ; en la suivant, on a, d'ailleurs, le grand avantage de conserver la meme methode d'etude, et de rendre tres faciles des choses qui sont envisa- gees generalement comme presqu' au-dessus de I'esprit humain." — "II existe une science dont le but est, d'apprendre a raisonner justement: c'est la logique: mais le jugement errone ou I'esprit faux (for judgment, genius, and imagination, and therefore false reasoning, all depend on organization) tien- nent a I'organization. II est impossible de se changer a cet egard ; nous restons, tels que la nature nous a faits."t Dr. Spurzheim has generally been considered, from the concurrent tenor of his doctrines, as belonging to the class of materialists ; but this is to mis- take his own positive assertion upon the subject, or to conclude in opposition to it. He speaks, indeed, upon this topic with a singular hesitation and re- serve, more so, perhaps, than upon any other point whatever ; but as far as he chooses to express himself on so abstruse a subject, he regards the soul as a distinct being from the body, and at least intimates that it may he nearer akin to the Deity. Man is with him also possessed of two lives, an auto- matic and animal: the first produced by organization alone, and destitute of consciousness ; the second possessed of consciousness dependent on the soul, and merely manifesting itself by organization. " We do not," says he, " attempt to explain how the body and soul are joined together and exercise a mutual influence. We do not examine what the soul can do without the body. Souls, so far as we know, may be united to bodies at the moment of conception or afterward ; they may be different in all individuals, or of the same kind in every one ; they may be emanations from God, or something essentially different."! The mind of this celebrated craniologist seems to be wonderfully skeptical and bewildered upon the subject, and studiously avoids the important question of the capacity of the soul for an independent and future existence ; but with the above declaration he cannot well be arranged in the class of materialists. The h3'^pothesis which has lately been started by Mr. Lawrence^ is alto- gether of a different kind, and though undoubtedly much simpler than any of the preceding, does not seem to be built on a more stable foundation. Accord- ing to his view of the subject, organized differs from inor^ranized matter merely by the addition of certain properties which are called vital, as sensi- bility and irritability. Masses of matter endowed with these new properties become organs and systems of organs, constitute an animal frame, and exe- • Precis Elementaire de Physlolotiie, loiri. ii. 8vo. Pmis, 1816, 1817. t Precis Eleniemairo, &c. ut supra, pa^'silll. + PhysiocnomicalPvflnm, &c. p. 253, 8vo. Lond. 1815 S inlroduciion to Oomparaiive Anatomy and rii}«io)opy, &c.8vo. 181C. ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. S7S cute distinct sets of purposes or functions ; for functions and purposes car- ried into execution are here synonymous. " Life is the assemblage of all the functions (or purposes), and the general result of their exercise."* Life, therefore, upon this hypothesis, instead of being a twofold or three- fold reality, running in a combined stream, or in parallel lines, has no reality whatever. It has no esse or independent existence. It is a mere assemblage of PURPOSES, and accidental or temporary properties : a series of phenomena,! as Mr. Lawrence has himself correctly expressed it ; — a name without a thing. *' We know not," says he, " the nature of the link that unites these pheno- mena, though we are sensible that a connexion must exist ; and this convic- tion is sufficient to induce us to give it a name, which the vulgar regard as the sign of a particular principle ; though in fact that name can only indicate the assemblage of the phenomena which have occasioned its formation. "J The human frame is, hence, a barrel-organ, possessing a systematic arrangement of parts, played upon by peculiar powers, and executing parti- cular pieces or purposes ; and life is the music produced by the general assemblage or result of the harmonious action. So long as either the vital or mechanical instrument is duly wound up by a regular supply of food, or of the wince, so long the music will continue : but both are worn out by their own action ; and when the machine will no longer work, the life has the same close as the music ; and in the language of Cornelius Gallus as quoted and appropriated by Leo. X., redit in nihilum, quod fuit ante nihil. There is, however, nothing new either in this hypothesis or in the present explanation of it. It was first started in the days of Aristotle by Aristoxe- n\is, a pupil of his, who was admirably skilled in music, and by profession a physician. It was propounded to the world under the name of the system of harmony, either from the author's fondness for music, or from his comparing the human frame to a musical instrument, and his regarding life as the result of all its parts acting in accordance," and producing a general and harmonious eifect.^ We have already had occasion to notice this hypothesis in a former lecture, and the triumphant objections with which it was met by the Stoics as well as by the Epicureans ;11 as also that it has at times been revived since, and espe- cially by M- Lusac, who extended it to even a wider range : while the same objections remain unanswered to the present hour, and seem to be altogether unanswerable. There is, moreover, the same looseness in the term phenomena, employed by Mr. Lawrence and the French writers just adverted to, as we have re- marked in many of the opposers of Mr. Locke, who seem to be afraid of fettering themselves with defniite terms or definite ideas. This looseness may^ be convenient in many cases, but it always betrays weakness or imprecision. In the mouth of the Platonists and Peripatetics of ancient Greece, we dis- tinctly know that the term phenomena denoted the archetypes of the one, or the phantasms of the other. We understand it with equal clearness as made use of, though in very different senses, by Leibnitz in reference to his system of pre-established harmony, and by Professor Robson, in reference to that of Boscovich. But when M. Magendie, or Mr. Lawrence, tells us that "human intelligence," w^iich is the phrase of the former, in the passage just quoted, or "life," which is that of the latter, is a composition or assemblage of phe- nomena, — a " result of the action of an organ," — we have no distinct notion whatever put before us. The " purposes," or " properties," or " functions,'* or whatever it is they intend under the name of phenomena, certainly do not seem to be strictly material in themselves, though we are told they are, in some way or other, the product of a material organ : but whether they be the * Introduction to Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, &:c. 8vo. p. 120, 1816. f Ibid. p. 122, { Ibid ^ Study o( Med. ui supis || Series i. Lect. ix. on the Principle of Life 3T4 ON THE HYPOTHESIS phantasms of the Greek schools, the visions of Malebranche or Berkeley, the mathematical points of Boscovich, the apparitions or appearances of the Common-Sense hypothesis,— whether they be a name or a thing, any thing or nothing, the writers themselves have given us no clew to determine, and per- haps have hardly determined for themselves. We have thus travelled over a wide extent of ground, but have not yet quite reached our journey's end. It still remains to us to examine the popular hypothesis of the present day, put forth from the north, under the captivating title of the System of Common Sense ; produced undoubtedly from the best mo- tives, and offered as a universal and infallible specific for all the wounds and weaknesses we may have incurred in our enccrunters with the preceding combatants. The consideration of this shall form the subject of our ensuing lecture ; and I shall afterward, by your permission, follow up the whole by submitting a few general observations on the entire subject, and endeavour to collect for your use, from the wide and tangled wilderness in which we have been beat- ing, the few flowers and the Uttle fruit that may be honestly worth the trouble of preservation. LECTURE VI. ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF COMMON SENSE. It must be obvious, I think, to every one who has attentively watched the origin and progress of those extraordinary and chimerical opinions through which we have lately been wading, and which have been dressed up by ph Bb • 386 ON THE HYPOTHESIS self, adopt the ver)' doctrine of Aristotle and Des Cartes, both of whom held the same tenet 1 the former, indeed, calling this separate apparition a phantasm, which is a mere change of the Latin term apparition into a Greek word.* But where, let me again ask, is the residence, and what is the nature ot this many-titled faculty, which is neither sense nor mind ; and is thus capable of discerning what neither sense nor mind can comprehend 1 Every other prin- ciple or faculty has its peculiar seat, and we know how to track it to its form. Instinct is the operation of the power of organized life by the exercise of certain natural laws, directing it to the perfection of the individual ; and wherever organized life is to be found, there is instinct. Irritation exists in the Tnuscular fibre: sensation in nervous cords; intelligence in the gland of the brain : for there is its seat, whatever may be its essence. But where is the seat, and what is the nature of this new principle 1 Is it capable of a separate existence? Does it expire with the bodyl Or does it accompany and still direct the soul after death 1 These are important questions : what is the answer to them 1 Or is there any other to be found than that of Dr. Reid already noticed ? — " Common sense is a part of human nature which hath never been explained."! And what, after all, is it designed to teach usl What is the number and the precise character of those primary maxims, or instinctive notions, or natural dictates, or inspired truths, or whatsoever else they may be called, which form the sum of its communication ] How are we to know what is a genuine and infallible first principle from what has the mere semblance of one and is spurious] Are the founders of tlie system agreed upon this subject among themselves ] If so, they are far more fortunate than the Cartesians upon the first principles, the Koivai Iwoiai of their own school. If they be not, their foundation slips from them in a moment, and all is wild and visionary ; and every one may find a first principle in what his own fancy may suggest, or his own inclination lead him to. Yet we have no proof that any such conven- tion has ever been settled; norhasany individual been bold enough to furnish a catalogue from the repository of his own endowment. In few words, the whole of this hypothesis is nothing more than an attempt to revive the Cartesian scheme, so far as relates to, perhaps, the most obnox- ious part of it, the doctrine of innate ideas, but to revive it under another name. Beattie and Stewart have, in fact, indirectly admitted as much, though neither of them have chosen to avow the design openly. The worst and most dangerous part of Mr. Locke's system, in the opinion of Dr. Beattie, is his first book — that very book in which this doctrine meets with its death- blow. While Mr. Stewart, notwithstanding the contempt with which he pro- fesses to treat this fanciful tenet of innate ideas, asserts almost immediately afterward, that his chief objection to it consists in its name, and the absurdi- ties that have been connected with it ;t and adds, that ^'perhaps he mi^ht erven venture to say,'''' if separated from these, it would agree in substance with the conclusion he had been attempting to establish.*^ It was my intention to have pursued this hypothesis in another direction, and to have pointed out its decisive tendency to an encouragement of mental indolence and immorality ; a tendency, however, altogether unperceived by * «' Tlie scarlet rose which is before me is still a scarlet rose when I shut my eyes, and was so at mid- night when no eye saw it. The colour remains when the appearance ceases: it remains the same wlieii tlie appearance changes To a person in llie jaundice it has still another appearance; but he is easily convinced that the change is in his eye, and not in the colour of the object. Wiien a coloured body \t presented, there is a certain appakition to the eye or to the mind, which'we have called the appearance of colour. Mr. Locke calls it an idea, and, indeed, it may be called so with the greatest propriety. Hence the appearance is, in the imagiiialion, so closely united with the quality called a scarlet colour, that they are apt to he mistaken for one and the same thing, although thev are in reality so different and so unlike, that one is an idea in the mind, the other is a quality of body."— Inquiry, &c. ch. vi. lecture iv. p. 172, 173 175, edit. 4. Loud. 1785. i j j i Ji i , I l.'rt^*' '^'^ '^- ''*'*'' "'• '■' "^- J ^*''-«v »ii- p. 120. \ n 1 u*' '"''?'" ^^^" venture to say that, were the ambitions and obnoxious epithet innate laid a side ami all the absurdities discarded which are connected either with the Platonic, with the Scholastic, or wii h ihc i.artesian hypothesis, concerning the nature of ideas," this last theory ("the antiquated theory of i, mate laeas, as he has just above called it, and to which he here refers) would agree in substance with the c mcln- •lOR wnicj) I have been attempting to establish by an induction of fads."— Phil. Essay iii. p. 130, 4to 18Wk OF COMMUiN SLNSE. 387 the uncorrupt and honourable minds of its justly eminent leaders. But our time has already expired, and I must leave it to yourselves to calculate at home, what must be the necessary result of a theory, provided it could ever be se- riously embraced upon an extensive scale, that teaches, on the one hand, that intelligence is subordinate to instinct, and that our truest knowledge is that which is afforded by the dictates of nature, without trouble or exertion ; and on the other, that our moral sense is identical with our instinctive propensities ; and that the constitution of our nature is an infallible guide, and can never lead us amiss. This mischievous, but unquestionably unforeseen, tendency of the theory of common sense, I must leave you to follow up at your leisure ; but I cannot quit this subject without once more adverting to the total failure of this theory, in accomplishing the chief point for which it was devised, — I mean that of engaging us to believe, in opposition to the philosophical vaga- ries of the Bishop of Cloyne and Mr. Hume, as well as of the earlier idealists, not only that the external world has a substantive existence, but that it sub- stantively exists in every respect as it appears to exist. I have already ob- served, that while Dr. Berkeley was contending, metaphysically, that we have no proof of a material world, because we have no proof of any thing but the existence of our own minds and ideas, M. Boscovich was contending, phy- sically, that we have no proof that matter contains any of the qualities which it APPEARS to contain ; that whatever the ostensible forms of bodies may pre- sent to us, it has in itself no such properties as they seem to exhibit ; that the whole visible creation is nothing more than a collection of indivisible, unex- tended atoms, or mere mathematical points, whose only attributes are certain powers of attraction and repulsion, and, consequently, that every thing we behold is a mere phenomenon, — an apparition, and nothing more. Now, meaning to oppose this doctrine, and every doctrine of a similar im- port, could it be supposed possible, if the fact did not stare us in the face from his own writings, that Dr. Reid would, after all, avow and contend, not indeed for the same, but for a parallel tenet, and support it almost in the same terms ? Could it be supposed tliat he would tell us, as we have already seen he has told us, that every object has its apparition ; that the object is one thing, and its apparition another ; that the object is in one place and its apparition in another ; and that neither the mind nor the eye behold the object, itself, but only its apparition or appearance, its phantasm or phenomenon ? But I have to draw still more largely upon your astonishment ; for it yet remains for me to inform you, that Mr. Dugald Stewart, who maybe regarded as the key-stone of Dr. Reid's system," and the chief aim of whose writings has been to proscribe the hypothesis of Berkeley, has himself fallen, not un- intentionally, as Dr. Reid seems to have done, but openly and avowedly, into a modification of Bosoovich's hypothesis ; and has even brought forward its more prominent principles, " as necessary," I adopt his own terms, " to com- plete Dr. Reid's speculations."* He labours, indeed, to prove, that the two hypotheses of Berkeley and Boscovich have no resemblance or connexion with each other ; and I am ready to admit, that in some respects there is a difference, since Boscovich allows us a visionary material world, a world of apparitions, or orderly phenomena, in the language of Leibnitz, phenomenes bien regies, while Berkeley allows us no material world whatever ; though he, too, has his world of phenomena: but I must contend that they are, to all intents and purposes, alike in their opposition to that tenet, which it is the leading feature of Reid's theory to establish, — I mean that we have an inter- nal principle, that proves to us that tlie world around us is not a vain show, but a solid reality, and that every thing actually is as it appears to be. So that the theory before us, even in the hands of its founder and principal sup- porter, has strikingly failed in the object for which it was devised ; and, for all the purposes in question, the former might just as well have continued in the profession of Bishop Berkeley's principles, as have deserted them, and set up a new scheme for himself. * Essay ii. ch. ii. p. 80, and compare with ch. i.p. 62, 61 Bb3 388 OiN HUMAN HAPHNESS. Under these circumstances I must leave it to the enlightened audience beforn me to choose out of these different hypotheses as they may thmk best. For myself, I freely confess, that I have no ambition to soar mto the higher rank and the infallible knowledge of an instinctive creature, and shall modestly content myself with the humbler character of a rational and intelligent bemg, still steadily steering by the lowly but sober lamps of a Bacon, a Newton, a Locke, a Butler, a Price, and a Paley, instead of being captivated by the beau- tiful and brilliant, but vacillating and illusive, coruscations of these northern lights. LECTURE VIL ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. It has required, 1 apprehend, but a very slight attention to the course of study we have lately been following up, to be convinced of the truth of the remark with which we opened the series, — I mean, that the subject it pro- posed to discuss is, of all subjects whatever that relate to human entity, the most difficult and intractable. And absurd and visionary as have been 'many of the opinions which it has brought before us, let us in conclusion, check all undue levity, by recollecting that they are the absurdities and visions of the first philosophers and sages of their respective periods ; of the wisest and, with a few exceptions, of the best of mankind ; to whom, in most other respects, we ought to bow with implicit homage, and who have only foundered from too daring a spirit of adventure, and amid rocks and shoals which laugh at the experience of the pilot. For myself, I freely confess to you, that my own hopes of success are but very humble. 1 have done my best, however, to render the subject intelligible ; and if, in the progress of it, I should also have betrayed dreams and absurdi- ties, I have only to entreat that they may be visited with the candour which I have endeavoured to extend to others ; fully aware that the ablest arguments ^ have been able to submit are not fitted, if I may adopt the eloquent words of Mr. Burke, " to abide the test of a captious controversy, but of a sober, and even forgiving examination; that they are not armed at all points for battle, but dressed to visit those who are willing to give a peaceful entrance to truth." There is one point, however, and the most important point we have con templated, in which all the different schools seem to be agreed, — I mean, that of moral distinctions. Whatever may be the roads the different travellers have lighted upon, whether short or circuitous, smooth or entangled, they all at last find themselves, in this respect, arrive at the same central spot; and coincide in prescribing the same rules of duty, enjoining the same conduct, and, with a few exceptions, delivering the same determinations. No philo- sopher in the world has ever dreamed of confounding virtue with vice, or of writing a treatise on the benefit of committing crimes. Let us search where we will, we shall find that there is a something in human nature, when once emerged from the barbarism of savage life, that leads the learned and the unlearned to approve the one and to condemn the other, even where their own conduct is involved in the condemnation. And what is this something in human nature that conducts to so general a conclusion 1 A set or system of innate ideas and first principles, replies one class of philosophers ; a moral instinct or impulse of common sense, replies another class ; the intrinsic loveliness and beauty of virtue itself, replies a third ; because the attributes of virtue are useful and agreeable either to our- selves or to others, replies a fourth ; because it conducts to human happiness, replies a fifth ; and because it is the will of God, replies a sixth. But while all thug agree in the conclusion, the question that leadi to it still ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 38tl returns upon us : What proof have we of the existence of such ninate ideas or instinctive impulse 1 of the intrinsic beauty of virtue 1 that it is useful to us, productive of our happiness, or that it is the will of God it should be culli- rated ? or rather, what proof have we that the original position is true, and that there is a something in human nature in general, which induces us to prefer virtue to vice? The original position is true, but the reasons urged in support of it are Jieither equally true nor equally adequate, even where they are true. It is not true that we have either innate ideas or moral instincts that impel us to a love of virtue ; for in such cases the most savage tribes among man- kind would be the most virtuous ; their praecognita, or innate ideas, being but little disturbed by foreign ideas, acquired by education or extensive com- merce with the world; and their moral instincts as little disturbed by foreign habits acquired from the same causes. There lias often arisen in the mind an unaccountable whim, of supposing that a savage life, or state of nature, is the best and purest mode of human existence; and novelists, poets, and sometimes even philosophers have equally ranted upon the paucity of its wants, the simplicity of its pursuits, the solidity of its pleasures, and the strength and constancy of its attach- ments. It is here, we have been told, that the human soul developes its pro- per energies, and displays itself in all its native benevolence and dignity: here all things belong equally to every one ; the only law is the will of the individual, the only feeling a sublime, unselfish philanthropy. This whim became epidemic in France about the beginning of the French Revolution, and was, in fact, the monster mania that led to it. And the contagion, not long afterward, began to show itself among many individuals of our own country, who, in the height of their phrensy, laboured earnestly to promote the same kind of trials among ourselves that our neighbours were actually exhibiting. The history is fresh in the mind of every one, and it is not necessary to pursue it. It is siifRcient to observe, that it led, in a short time, to consequences so mischievous, as to work their own cure ; and to afford another living proof of the fact I endeavoured pointedly to establish in a late lecture, that barbarism, vice, and misery are, by an immutable law of nature, the inseparable associates of each other.* Throw your eyes to whatever part of the globe or to whatever history of mankind you please, and you will find it so without an exception. Other animals have instincts that control their appetites, and lead them insensibly to the perfection of their respective kinds; that inculcate constancy where constancy is necessary, and compel them to provide for and take the charge of their young. Man has no such instincts, whatever ; he has reason, indeed, a more ennobling and efficient faculty,^ but it must be called forth, for it is a dormant priciple in savage life. And hence, destitute of the one, and uninfluenced by the other, he is the perpetual slave of his ungoverned and ungovernable passions, and is the only animal in the world that has been known to kill or abandon its own offspring in a state of destitute and helpless infancy; and to murder its own kind for the purpose of feasting upon it : a fact too well established to be doubted of; and which, instead of being confined to a single climate or a single people, has apparently been common to all countries, when under the influence of gross barbarism ; which still exists among various tribes in Africa, South America, and Australia, and particularly among the islands of the South Sea, and which, according to the concurrent testimony of the best Greek and Roman writers, as Herodotus, Pliny, Strabo, and Pomponius Mela, was formerly to be traced among the Scythians, Tartars, and Massagetae of Asia, and the Lestrigons of Europe. Strabo, indeed, ascribes the same practice even to the Irish in his day, andCaelius Rhodriginus to their neighbours of Scotland ; while Thevenot asserts that, when he was in India in 1665, human flesh was publicly sold in the market at Debca, about forty leagues from Baroche. Consentaneous to this viev/ of the subject are the following remarks of * Reries ii. Lecture xlit. 3!H) ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. one of the most inte.ligent circumnavigators of the present day, M. Von Langsdorfi, which he gives as the result of a personal and comprehensive survey of different climates and countries : — " There is no creature upon the earth," in any climate or zone, that bears such an enmity to its own species as man. Let us only," says he, " cast our eyes over the history of the globe, in the most barren wastes, and in the most fertile countries, in the smallest islands, or on the most extensive continents, among the most savage as well as the most cultivated nations, in short, in every part of the world, wherever man exists, and we shall find him seeking to destroy his own species : lie is every where, by nature, harsh and cruel. The observations we made upon these newly-discovered islands (the Polynesian), which never, to the best of our knowledge, had any intercourse with civilized nations, and whose inhabitants may be considered as children of nature, and as still in their original condition, afford remarkable examples in confirmation of thess assertions. " The sweet and tender feelings of affection and love, of friendship and attachment, even that of parents towards their children, and of children to- wards their parents, I have, alas ! very seldom found among a rude and un- civilized people. The African hordes not only bring their prisoners taken in battle, but their own children, to market. The same thing is done by the Kirgis, the Kalmucs, and many other inhabitants of the north-western coast of America ; and here at Nakatiwa (one of the islands of the South bea) a woman would very readily have given a child at her breast, which had been asked by us in jest, in exchange for a piece of iron."* And he might have added, that it was the exposure of British, or rather, perhaps, of Saxon, chil- dren for slaves in the public market at Rome, as late as the close of the sixth century, expressly sold for this purpose, by their own parents, at their own homes, that first induced that excellent prelate. Pope Gregory I., to plan a mission for the conversion of our barbarous forefathers to Christianity, from the horror he felt at their conduct, and the pity with which he belield the little outcasts. In the view of history, therefore, as well as in the language of Scripture, man, in a state of nature, is prone to evil, and his heart is desperately wicked : or as it is given most exquisitely in the poetical language of the Psalmist, " Behold the dark places of the earth Are full of the habitations of cruelty :"t The sentiment, then, that exists in human nature in favour of virtue, or a virtuous conduct, though general, is not universal, and, consequently, cannot proceed from any original instincts or innate ideas. What, then, are the other causes to which it has been ascribed by moralists 1 The intrinsic loveliness of virtue itself. Because its attributes are generally useful and agreeable. Because it conducts to human happiness. Because it is the will of God. Now all these answers, however diversified, may be resolved into two general ideas — human happiness, and the will of God : for we can only regard that as lovely, or an object of love, which contributes to our happiness : and we can only regard that as useful or agreeable which conduces to the same end. The subject, therefore, becomes considerably narrowed, and the only sub- stantial replies that appear capable of being given to the question. What is the source of this general sentiment among mankind in favour of virtue 1 are, Because it is the path to happiness ; or, Becafase it is the will of God. But may not the subject be still farther narrowed, and both these replies be resolved into one identical proposition ] may not human happiness and the will of God be the same thing ? If so, we shall then only have to inquire farther, whether virtue be the real path to human happiness 1 for if it be, then, necessarily, he who pursues that path obeys the will of God. • Von LangsdorlTa Voyages and Travels, ch vii. p. 139. f Psalm Ixxiv. 80 ON HUxMa!^ happiness. 391 Both questions are important : the first, however, may be settled in a few- words. To discover the will of an intelligent agent, nothing more is necessary than to examine the general drift or tendency of his contrivance, so far as we are able to make it out. Taking it, then, for granted, that the world is the work of an intelligent agent, does it exhibit proof of having been devised for the general accommodation and happiness of man 1 — for his general misery, — or for neither? It cannot have been devised for neither, because that would be to relinquish the very foundation of our present position, and to deny that the world exhibits contrivance, or has been formed by an intelligent agent ? Is, then, the world, with its general furniture, is the frame of man itself calculated to promote man's happiness or his misery 1 It is impossible to answer this question more strongly than in the words of Archdeacon Paley : — " Contrivance proves design, and the predominant tendency of the con- trivance indicates the disposition of the designer. The world abounds with contrivances ; and all the contrivances with which we are acquainted are directed to beneficial purposes. Evil, no doubt, exists : but is never, that we can perceive, the object of contrivance. Teeth are contrived to eat, not to ache : their aching now and then is incidental to the contrivance, perhaps inseparable from it; or even, if you will, let it be called a defect in the con- trivance ; but it is not the object of it. This is a distinction which well de- serves to be attended to. In describing implements of husbandry, you would hardly say of the sickle that it is made to cut the reaper's fingers, though, from the construction of the instrument, and the manner of using it, this mis- chief often happens. But if you had occasion to describe instruments of torture or execution, this engine, you would say, is to extend the sinews ; this to dislocate the joints ; this to break the bones ; this to scorch the soles of the feet. Here pain and misery are the very objects of the contrivance. Now, nothing of this sort is to be found in the works of nature. We never discover a train of contrivance to bring about an evil purpose. No anato- mist ever discovered a system of organization calculated to produce pain and disease ; or, in explaining the parts of the human body, ever said, This is to irritate ; this to inflame ; this duct is to convey the gravel to the kidneys ; tljis gland to secrete the humour which forms the gout. If, by chance, he come at a part of which he knows not the use, the most he can say is that it is use- less. No one ever suspects that it is put there to incommode, to annoy, or to torment. Since, then, God has called forth his consummate wisdom to con. trive and provide for our happiness, and the world appears to have been con- stituted with this design at first, so long as this constitution is upholden by him, we must, in reason, suppose the same design to continue."* A thousand other examples might be added, but it is unnecessary. The conclusion is clear, and it is most important: we obtain from the light of nature, or the exercise of our own reason, irresistible proofs of the divine benevo- lence, irresistible proofs that God has made man to make him happy: or, in other words, that human happiness is the will of God. We are now, then, prepared to enter upon our last question : Is a course of virtue the path to happiness, for if it be, it must necessarily be the will of God to walk in it? Or, having proved the terms to be co-ordinate,- we may propose the question conversely. Is a course of virtue the will of God ? For if it be, it must necessarily conduct to human happiness. Under either view of the question, the general proposition will be as follows: God has willed human happiness, and he has willed it to be obtained by a course of virtue. God, then, is the Author, happiness the end, and virtue the means. Let us take the question before us in its first view, Is human virtue the means of human happiness 1 Had we time it might perhaps be expedient to enter into a definition of the terms : but we have not time, and I must refer, therefore, to the general un- derstanding of mankind upon this subject : which I may do the more safely, • Mor. and Pol. Phil. vol. I. clu t. 392 ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. because, though the terms virtue and happiness are strikingly comprehensive, there is no great difference of opinion either among the learned or the un- learned concerning their general outlines or more prominent characteristics. The question, then, ought to be argued in relation to the happiness both of the individual and of the community ; or, in other words, to the happiness of man in his private and his social capacity. Is the practice of virtue most contributory to a man's individual hap- piness 1 The libertine says No ; and he seeks for it in his mistress, whom he changes as often as he changes his dress. The glutton says No ; unless a good city-feast be virtue ; for the soul of happiness with him consists in a haunch of venison and a brisk circulation of the bottle. The spendthrift says No: you may as well seek for happiness in a haystack: happiness, my dear sir, you may depend upon it, consists in nothing else than a good stud, and a pack of hounds. The gamester, in like manner, says No; and he directs us to a pack of cards and a pair of dice. Even the miser joins in ^he general negative, and would fain persuade us that it resides in the meagre and miserable ghost that constitutes his own person, or the meagre and mise rable pursuits to which his person is daily prostituted. Now all these have, no doubt, their respective enjoyments; but do they constitute happiness in any fair sense of the term 1 are they permanent 1 I do not say through life, but for four-and-twenty hours together. Many of them, on the contrary, are of that violent kind that they wear themselves out in an hour or two; and what is the state of the system before it recovers sufficient energy for a renewal ? To say that it is as empty as an air-pump would be to give a better character of it than it deserves. It is not empty ; it is still full ; full of bitterness or insupportable languor, sickness at heart or sickness at the stomach. Even the miser, who, properly speaking, provides for a longer range of enjoyment than any of the rest of this precious group, is a victim while he is a worshipper, a sacrifice to anxiety while an idolater of Mammon. We are at present, however, merely following them up through a single day ; but life is a series of days : in its ordinary estimate, of threescore years and ten. And he who is a candidate for happiness must prepare himself, not for a single day, but for the entire term : he must save his strength, and proceed cautiously, for there is no race in wiiich he may so soon run himself out of breath. His motto may perhaps be, " A short life and a merry one ;" and this, in truth, is the motto, and not the motto only, but the brief history, of most of those whom we have thus far considered. For consumption, dropsy, gout, or chagrin and suicide, make not unfrequently :>. wofui havoc in their ranks be- fore they have cleared two-thirds of the pleasurable career they had proposed to themselves. Let them, then, have their motto if they will ; but let them not boast that they have found out the specific for making life happy ; for all that they have found out is a specific for throwing both life and happiness away at the same time. They have had a few fitful bursts of enjoyment ; but the price has been enormous, — a costly birthright for a mess of pottage. He only can fairly boast of happiness, place it in whatever way you please, who, on casting up the account, can honestly say that it has accompanied him through the long run. There is another and a very different set of people, both in the higher and lower ranks of life, who also occasionally strive to persuade themselves that they are happy, and who are sometimes actually thought so by those around them : and these are the listless and idle, who loll and saunter life away as though it were a dream ; and vvho, in truth, are more alive in their dreams than in their waking hours. Now, happiness consists in activity: such is the constitution of our nature : it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool. It shows i! self under this form from the first moment it shows itself at all. Behold the happiness of the infant or of the schoolboy : he is full of frolic ; he can- not contain the current of self-delight: in the bold significancy of vulgai !^»g"»ge, It runs out at his fingers' ends. Upon the whole, the listless and idle have less pretensions to happiness than the characters we have just sur- veyed,-r?the libertine, the gamester, and the spendthrift : for should you distil ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 393 the aggregate of insignificant incidents that compose the whole tenor of the feeble life of the former, not a drop, perhaps, of the essence of happiness would ascend in the alembic. They may be at perfect quiet, if you please, and look fat and in good liking, but this is not happiness ; for if so, capons and Cappadocian slaves would have a better title to it than themselves. Let us now apply these observations to the question before us. No man can be happy without exercising the virtue of a cheerful industry or activity. No man can lay in his claim to happiness, I mean the happiness that shall last through the fair run of life, without chastity, without temperance, with- out sobriety, without economy, without self-command, and, consequently, without fortitude; and, let' me add, without a liberal and forgiving spirit. The whole of this follows as the necessary result of our argument. The exercise of these virtues may perhaps cost a man something at the time, but the full scope and aggregate of his happiness depend upon the exercise. It is a tax upon the sum-total, that must be regularly paid to secure the rest. And it ought never to be forgotten, that we are so much the creatures of habit that the more we are accustomed to the exercise, like an old garment, the easier it will sit upon us. But these are private virtues, and only a few of them. Man has also, if he would be happy, to practise a still longer list of public virtues ; and he cannot be happy without practising them. Or, in other words (for I am now to consider him in a social capacity), the happiness of the community to which he belongs, and of which his own forms a constituent part, could not oontinue without his practising them. He may steal, indeed, from his neighbour, and hereby increase his means of gratifying some predominant passion ; but then his neighbour may also steal from him in return, and to a greater extent : and his happiness, there- fore (ever regarding it in the aggregate), is connected with his exercising the virtues of justice and honesty. He may break his promise, or lie to his neighbour, upon a point in which his own interest appears to be concerned ; but then his neighbour may also return him the compliment, and in a way in which his interest may be still more deeply concerned ; and his interest, therefore, or, which is the same thing, his happiness, obliges him to practise the virtue of veracity. In Woodfall's edition of the Letters of Junius, there is a passage upon the subject before us, contained in one of his private letters, which has peculiarly struck me, considering the quarter it has proceeded from, and the manner of its communication. Whoever was the writer of these celebrated Letters, it will he readily admitted, that he had a most extensive acquaintance with men of all ranks and characters, particularly with the vicious and profligate; and that he had a most extraordinary facility of penetrating into the human heart. In the private letter I refer to, he unbosoms himself to his printer, for whom he appears to have had a great esteem, and, amid the regulations he gives him for his future conduct, makes the following forcible remark: " With a sound heart, be assured you are better gifted, even for worldly happiness, than if you had been cursed with the abilities of a Mansfield. After long experi- ence of the world, I affirm, before God, I never knew a rogue who was not unhappy."* It is not necessary to pursue the catalogue. Man is by nature a social being: every one is purposely made dependent upon every other; and, con- sequently, the happiness or well-being of the whole and of every one, who constitutes an integral part of the whole, must be the same happiness. Yet as the happiness or well-being of the individual demands in his private capa- city, as we have already seen it does, a system of private abstinences or re- straints, the happiness or well-being of society demands a more extensive system of public duties of the same kind. . We must consent to relinquish a part of our liberty, a part of our property, a part of allour personal propensities and appetites, or the well-being of the society to which we belong, and, con. • Letter No. xlili 394 ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. sequently, our own social well-being, cOiild not continue. We may, indeed, take ourselves away from society, and live in the solitude of the forests ; but our happiness is bound up in social life, and, whatever is the cost, it is con- sistent with the same happiness that we pay it. Freethinkers are accustomed to sneer at the precepts of the Bible, which inculcate upon us the virtues of self-denial and mortification in the present life, in order to our making sure of a life of uninterrupted happiness hereafter. But if there be any degree of truth in the remarks now offered, they find themselves called upon to practise a similar restraint and denial even in the purchase of present enjoyment. And the analogy is so striking between the natural and the moral government of the Deity in this respect, that Bishop Butler has forcibly laid hold of the same argument, not only in vindication of the Gospel-precepts upon this point, but in illustration of the paramount im- portance of our attending to them, if we would be wise to our future and everlasting interest. " Thought," says he, " and consideration, the voluntary denying ourselves many things which we desire, and a course of behaviour far from being always agreeable to us, are absolutely necessary to our acting even a common decent and common prudent part, so as to pass with any satisfaction through the present world, and be received upon any tolerably good terms in it. Since this is the case, all presumption against self-denial and attention to secure our moHER interest is removed. The constitution of nature is as it is. Our happiness and misery are trusted to our conduct, and made to depend upon it. Somewhat, and, in many circumstances, a great deal too, is put upon us, either to do or to suffer, as we choose. And all the various miseries of life which people bring upon themselves by negli- gence and folly, and might have avoided by proper care, are instances of this ; which miseries are, beforehand, just as contingent and undetermined as their conduct, and left to be determined by it."* It is from this common consent to put a restraint upon our personal feel- ings in the pursuit of relative pleasures, from this social impulse of our con- stitution with which we are so wisely and benevolently endowed, that every man belonging to the same state or community becomes a part of every man, and cannot, even if he would, be an indifferent spectator of the wo or the weal of his neighbour. And hence arises the sacred bond of sympathy or fellow-feeling ; And true self-love, and social, are the same. While as the line is drawn still closer, and we associate together more fre- quently and more intimately, we become, from the great and powerful princi- ple of habit, still more kindred parts of each other. And hence the origin of the higher public virtues of patriotism, generosity, gratitude, friendship, con- jugal fidelity, parental love, and filial reverence: the exercise of all which in our relative situations of life, whether we contemplate it at the time, or whether we do not, is by our own constitution, or, which is the same thing, by the will of the great Creator, rendered essential to ourindividual happiness. Mr. Pope, from a hint furnished by Dr. Donne, finely compares this origin and spread of the different circles of private and public virtues from the salient point of self-love, or the desire of individual happiness in the breast, to the series of circles within circles excited on the bosom of a still and peaceful lake, by the throw of a pebble ; while all nature smiles around, and, from this very agitation, the face of the heavens is reflected with an addi- tional degree of lustre. •' Self-love but serves the virtuous breast to vcake, As the smooth pebble stirs the peaceful lake. The centre mov'd, a circle strait succeeds, Another stiJI, and still another spreads. Friend, parents, neighbour, first it will embrace, Our country next, and next all human race. * VuaJysis of Religion, Natural and Revealsd, part i ob iv. ON HUMAN HAfPlNESS. 896 Wide, and more wide, ih' o'erflowiiig of the mind Taltes every creature in of every Ivijid. Eariii smiles around, in boundless beauty dress'd; And ijeav'n reflects its image in his breast." We stand in need, then, of no praecognita or innate ideas, of no fanciful instinct whatever; — arguing as intelligent beings, and fairly exercising the discursive faculty of reason, we come to the clear conclusion that virtue is the path to human happiness. The case, indeed, is so manifest, that while many of the instincts we actually possess are often tempting us against such a conduct and such a conclusion, whenever reason is appealed to, we never fail to return to the same estal)lished dictum. The Stoics, with a sort of romantic refinement, pretended to have fallen into a love of virtue for her own sake ; and to sustain and to abstain, to bear and ybriecr, to be patient and continent, comprised the summary of their moral system. But while they were thus enraptured with the means, like every other society of mankind, they had the full advantage of the end. They may, indeed, have practised virtue for the love of virtue, but they also practised virtue, and reaped the benefit of their own happiness. The Epicureans, on the contrary, regarded all these sublime pretensions as mere cant and affectation.. They also enjoined and practised, and, notwith- standing the false reproach that has attached to their name, enjoined and practised with more rigidity than even the Stoics, the laws and restraints of moral virtue ; yet boldly and unequivocally avowed that it was chiefly as a mean towards an end ; that it was not so much from a love of virtue, as from a love of pleasure or happiness: and hence pleasure and happiness were in this school used as synonymous terms, as were also vice and folly, and wis- dom and virtue ; or, rather, wisdom was regarded as the first of all virtues, as being that which teaches us that a life of real pleasure or happiness is to be obtained alone by the exercise of the general cluster of virtues. In one of his letters to Menseceus, that has yet survived the ravage of time, Epicurus has a passage upon this subject peculiarly striking, and that cannot be too strongly impressed pn our memories. " Wisdom," says he, " is the chief blessing of philosophy ; since she gives birth to all other virtues which unite in teaching us, that no man can live happily who does not live wisely, conscientiously, and justly; nor, on the other hand, can he live wisely, conscientiously, and jusily, without living happily: for virtue is inseparable from a life of happiness, and a life of happiness is equally inseparable from virtue. Be these, then, and maxims like these, the subjects of thy meditation, by night and by day, both when alone and with the friend of thy bosom ; and never, whether asleep or awake, shalt thou be oppressed with anxiety, but live as a god among mankind.' * To the same effect Cassius, in an expostulatory letter to his friend Cicero, who had shown some inclination to join in the general calumny against the Epicureans : " Those whom we call lovers of pleasure are real lovers of good- ness and justice : they are men who practise and cultivate every virtue ; for no true pleasure can exist without a good and virtuous life." So Lucretius, when describing the different tribes of the sons of vice, or offenders against the public law, characterizes them by the common name of fools. " They are," says he, " perpetually smarting, even in secret, beneath a sense of their atrocious crimes, and that reward of their guilt, which, thev well know, will sooner or later overtake them : — The scourge, the wheel, the block, tjje dungeon deep, Tlie base-born hangman, tlie Tarpeian cliff, Which, though the villain 'scape, his conscious soul Still fears perpetual; torturing all his days, And still foreboding heavier pangs at death. Hence earth itself lo fools becomes a bell.'} * Diog. Laert. x. 132. 135. V6rbera. carnufices, robur, pix, lamina, taeda; : Qui tamen et si absunt, at mens, sibi conscia factis, Prfemeiuens, adhibet stiniulos, torretque flagellis Nfec videt interea, qui terminus ewe maloruui 398 ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. It was from the elegant and ornate moralists of the East, that the philoso- phers of this school derived this figurative synonyme ; from Arahia, Egypt, and India ; in all which quarters we find it still more frequent and familiar. Solomon, whose early studies were derived from an Arabic source, is pecu- liarly addicted to this use of these terms. The very commencement of his book of Proverbs, or system of ethics, as the schools would denominate it, affords us a striking instance: — . " The fear of Jehovah is thehe<.'inriin|n; of knowledge: For FOOL9 despise wisdom and insiructioji." So Vishnusarman in his Hitopadesa, to the same precise effect : " Many who read the Scriptures are grossly ignorant; but he who acts "well is a truly LEARNED man."* Whatever view, therefore, we take of this subject, in whatever way we exercise our reason upon it, we cannot fail to approve of virtue in preference to vice ; for we cannot fail to regard virtue as the only sure road to happiness, and, consequently, as the path of wisdom, or the will of God. The case, indeed, is so clear, that it is seldom mankind in any part of the world are now-a-days at the trouble of debating the subject. There is no controversy — the result is taken for granted. And hence wherever education exists, or, in other words, wherever civilized life extends, we are chiefly taught it, not as a science, but as a rule of action ; we imbibe it as a habit ; and our first and finest feelings co-operate with our best reason in its favour. We form an abstract picture of it in our minds, and delineate it, under the correct and pleasing image of the fair, the needful, the sovereign good. We have already seen that, in proportion as society is ignorant, men are wicked ; in proportion as it becomes wis«, they grow virtuous. They acquire clearer ideas of right and wrong, which are obviously nothing more than virtue and vice, under an additional set of names, or in a state of activity. And were the rules and laws of right, virtue, or wisdom to be constantly adhered to, or, in other words, the will of the Deity to be fully complied with, there can be no ques- tion that mankind, even in the present state, would enjoy all the happiness their nature would allow of; and that a kind of paradise would once more visit t! e earth. A • why, then, is not the will of the Deity fully complied with % Why, since >ne consequence is so undoubted, and so beneficial, are not the rules of virtue constantly and universally adhered to ] This is a most important question, as well in itself as in its results. The will of the Deity, or the entire rules of virtue, are not always adhered to, first, because, as collected from reason or the light of nature alone, they are not, through the whole range of this complicated subject, in all instances equally clear and perspicuous ; and, secondly, because, in a thousand instances in which there is no want of clearness or perspicuity, there is a want of sanction — of a compulsory and adequate force. The rules of virtue are general, and must necessarily be general; but the cases to which they apply are particular. The case is present and often impulsive, but the operation of the rule is remote, and it may not operate at all ; and hence the pleasure of immediate gratification is perpetually unhinging this harmonious system, and plunging mankind into vice with their eyes open. But civil laws, moreover, or the authority of the social compact in favour of virtue, are not only often inadequate in their force, but they must necessa- rily, in a thousand instances, be inadequate in their extent. It is impossible for man, of himself, to provide against every case of vice or criminality that may oflfend the public ; for the keenest casuist can form no idea of many of Possit, quive sciet poenarum deniqiie finis ; Aique eadetn metuit magis, hac ne in niorte gravescant, HincAclierusiafitsTULTORUM deniquevita. Lib. iii. 103a * Sir W. Jonei, vi. p. 87. ON HUMAxN HAPPINESS. 397 buch cases till they are before him ; and if he could, the whole world would not contain the statute books that should be written upon the subject. There are also duties which a man owes to himself as well as to his neigh- bour ; or, in other words, human happiness, as we have already seen, depends almost as largely upon his exercise of private as of public virtues. But tlie eye of civil law cannot follow him into the performance of these duties, for •t cannot follow him into his privacy : it cannot take cognizance of his per- sonal faults or offences, nor often apply its sanction if it could do so. And hence, in most countries, this important part of morality is purposely left out of the civil code, as a hopeless and intractable subject. Yet even in the breach of public duties, specifically stated and provided for, it cannot always follow up the offender, and apply the punishment: for he may secrete himself among his own colleagues, and elude, or he may abandon his country, and defy, the arm of justice. There seems, then, to be a something still wanting. If the Deity have so benevolently willed ihe happiness of man, and made virtue the rule of that happiness, ought he not upon the same principle of benevolence, to have de- clared his will more openly than by the mere and, at times, doubtful infer- ences of reason 1 in characters, indeed, so plain, that he who runs may read ? and ought he not also to have employed sanctions so universal as to cover every case, and so weighty as to command every attention] As a being of infinite benevolence, undoubtedly he ought. And what, in this character, he ought to have done, he has actually accomplished. He has declared his will by an express revelation, and has thus confirmed the voice of reason by a voice from heaven: he has made this revelation a written law, and has enforced it by the strongest sanctions to which the mind of man can be open: — not only by his best chance of happiness here, but by all his hopes and expectations of happiness hereafter. And he has hence completed the code of human obligations, by adding to the duties which we owe to our neighbour and to ourselves, a clear rescript of those we owe to our Maker. Nor is such revelation of recent date ; for a state of retributive justice beyond the grave constituted, as we have already seen, the belief of mankind in the earliest ages of time ; and amid all the revolutions the world has witnessed, amid the most savage barbarism, and the foulest idolatries, there never perhaps has been a country in which all traces of it have been entirely lost, or have even entirely ceased to operate. At different periods, and in different manners, the Deity has renewed this divine communication, according as his infinite wisdom has seen the world stand in need of it. New doctrines and discoveries — and doctrines and disco- veries, too, of the highest importance, but which it is not my providence to touch upon in the present pla^e — have in every instance accompanied such re- newal, justificatory of the supernatural interposition. But the sanction has, in every instance, been the safne ; while, and I speak it with reverence, the proofs of divine benevolence have with every promulgation been growing fuller and fuller: — revealed religion thus co-operating with natural, co-ope- rating with the great frame of the visible world, co-operating with every pulse and feeling of our own hearts in establishing the delightful truth, that God is Love ; and in calling upon us to love him, not from any cold and lifeless pic- ture of the abstract beauty of holiness, beautiful as it unquestionably is in itself, but from the touching and all-subduing motive — because he first LOVED us. »P ON THE GENERAL LECTURE VIII. ON THE GENERAL FACULTIES OF THE MIND, AND ITS FREEDOM IN WILLING. In the commencement of the successive series of lectures which I have had the honour of delivering before this respectable school of science, I stated, as it may be recollected by many of the audience before me ^hat thr subject I proposed to discuss would be of considerable extent and variety ;- that it would embrace, though with a rapid survey, the whole circle of physics, in the most enlarged sense in which this term has been employed by Aris- totle or Lord Bacon ; and, consequently, would touch slightly, yet, as 1 hoped, 'er the tomb Bangs, aiid onjoyt tUo sj)ect/«d gloom. FACULTIES OF THE MIND. |0S And oft to thee he HAs his eye, Mild empress of the spangled sl ciples upon which it hinges are so closely blended with the subject before us, that it is impossible altogether to elude it, though the remarks 1 propose to offer shall be as brief and compressed as I am able to make them. In the first place, then, whatever be the necessary connexion between mo- tives, volitions, and actions, it is by no means true that they are " subjected to the same laws of necessity with the operations of matter." Let me support this assertion by a reference to a few simple facts. A needle, or an iron ball, placed between two magnets of equal power, will fall to neither of them, but remain midway at rest for ever, suspended between equally contending attrac- tions. Now, if the same laws of necessity control the moral as control the physical world, a similar moral cause must produce a similar moral effect; and the traveller who, by accident, after having lost himself in a forest, should meet with two roads running in opposite or different directions, and offering in every respect an equal attraction, must, like the needle or bullet, remain for ever at rest, because the motive to, take one course is just equipoised by the motive to take the other. But can any man in his senses suppose he would remain there for ever, and so starve himself between equally contending attractions 1 Or, rather, can any man suppose such a fact, provided the tra- veller himself were in his senses 1 Yet Montaigne, in support of this hy- pothesis, has actually supposed such a fact, and has put forth the following whimsical or facetious example : " Where the mind," says he, " is at the same • Essnyf : On Libcity and Neceaslty, vo5. U FACULTIES O* THE MIND. 406 time equally influenced by two equal desires, it is certain it can never com- ply with either of them, because a consent and preference would evince a dissimilarity in their value. If a man sliould chance to be placed between a bottle of wine and a Westphalia ham, with an equal inclination to eat and to drink, there could, in this case, be no possible remedy ; and, by the law of necessity, he must die either of hunger or thirst. The Stoics, therefore," continues he, " who were most rigidly attached to the doctrine of fatalism, when asked how the mind determines when two objects of equal desire are presented to it, or what is the reason that out of a number of crown pieces it selects one rather than another, there being no motive to excite a preference, reply, that this action of the mind is extraordinary and irregular, and proceeds from an impulse equally irregular and fortuitous. But it would be better," continues Montaigne, " in my estimation, to maintain that no two objects can be presented to us so perfectly equal, but that some trifling difference may subsist, and some small superiority be discoverable either in the one or the other." And, no doubt, it would be better to maintain such a position ; but who does not see that this is to give up the question 1 to renounce the point upon which we are at issue, and openly to confess that there does not exist in the moral world the same counterpoise of cause and cause that is to be perpetually met with in the natural. Let us confine ourselves to one more example. A cannon-ball, discharged from the centre of a circle, and equally attracted to the north and to the east, will proceed towards neither point; but at an angle of 2-2^ degrees, or imme- diately between the two. But is there any one, unincumbered with a strait- waistcoat, who can suppose that such a rule nas any application to the mo- tive powers of the mind ? who can conceive, that a man, starting at Black- friar's Bridge, and having business so equally urgent at Highgate and at Mile- end, tliat he is incapable of determining to which place he shall proceed first, would proceed to neither, but take a course between the two, and walk in a straight line to Hackney or Newington-Greeni Yet, unless he should thus act, not occasionally, or by accident, but uniformly, and at all times, there is not in the mind the same law of operation, the same sort of necessity, as in matter; but a something, whatever it maybe, producing and designed to pro- duce an irreconcilable distinction ; and, in the correct language of the Epi- curean philosophers, perpetually labouring to prevent the same blind force from vanquishing the one as it leads captive the other : Ne mens ipsa necessum Intestinum habeat ciinctis in rebus agundis, Et devicta quasi, cogatur fkrre, PaTIQUK.* Lest the mind Bend to a stern necessity wiUiin, And, like a slave, determine but by forck. But we are told, that unless the moral world were thus constituted, there could be no mutual confidence between man and man ; no series of actions could be depended upon, and it would be impossible to distinguish between one character and another ; or, in other words, how long the same individual would maintain the same cliaracter. Now this kind of argument, if accurately examined, just as much invali- dates the doctrine it is intended to support as the preceding. There is no one who pretends to place the same degree of confidence in the general course of human actions as in the experienced train of natural events. Even where the circumstances to reason from are equally definite, moral dependence is in all instances less certain than physical, and never amounts to more than a probability. The closest friendships may fail, the purest virtue become tar- nished ; and, in the words of Sophocles, which I must beg -eave to put into our own language — • De Rer. Nai. il -JSd. 406 ON THE GENERAL. FACULTIES OF THE MIND. The power of all things cease; e'en sacred oaths At limes be broke, and the determined mind Forego iis steady purpose. Material causes, on the contrary, are regular in their operations, and unin- terrupted in their effects. Nobody doubts that the sun will rise to-morrow ; that a cannon-ball will sink in water; or that, if the lamps over our heads were to be extinguished, we should be in darkness. The power of Buona- parte, when in the zenith of his success, was absohite and almost unbounded, but did even this ensure steadiness of conduct? Quite the reverse. We be- hold the decrees of to-day overthrown by those of to-morrow, and, in the blind and overwhelming career of his anibition, his hosts of bloodhounds that have just plundered his enemies next sent against his friends; we be- hold every thing in nature, that is within his reach, tottering and out of joint ; ■while every thing that is beyond and above him continues steadfast and un- changeable ; the air is as vital as ever, the seasons as regular in their courses, and, to adopt the beautiful language of our poet-laureate — The moon, Repardless of the stir of this low world, Holds on her heavenly way. But we are farther told, that unless there be the same fixed and dependent chain established in the moral creation which unquestionably exists in the physical, the Deity himself could have no prescience or foreknowledge of human conduct. And so forcible has this argument appeared to some men, and men, too, of acknowledged worth and piety, that in the dilemma into which they have felt themselves thrown, like the Brahmins of the East, they have utterly abandoned the doctrine of divine prescience in favour of that of moral liberty. Shallow and impotent conclusion ! Absurd admission of an hostility that has no existence I As though he who sees through infinite space is incapable of seeing through the brief duration of time; or as though, like Theseus in the Cretan labyrinth, the great Author of nature stands in need of a thread to guide him through the maze of his own creation, and depends upon every preceding event as a direction-post to that which follows. There are con- tingencies in the natural as well as in the moral world, though they are far less frequent because far less necessary. Miracles are of this description; they are direct and palpable deviations from the common laws of nature, the common routine of causes and effects ; and he who denies that the Deity can know any thing of contingencies, in the one case, ought also to deny that he can know anything of them in the other; for the necessary and consecutive chain of causation, upon which alone such philosophers found the attribute of prescience, is equally broken in both instances. But such philosophers have to deny still more than this, or they must abandon their principle alto- gether. They have equally to deny that the Deity can see or know any thing of such anomalies, even when present ; for if he can only know events as successive and necessary links of preceding events, the tie being broken, on their appearance, and the anomalous events detached, he can have no more knowledge of them when gone by or present than when future. It may, per- haps, be thought, that when present and operating they pass before him ! Pass before him ! O puerile and miserable conception of Divinity ! All nature is equally before him, in every point of space, and every moment of eteriiity, and he who denies God to be every where, must deny him to be any where ; unless he sees and knows every thing, he must see and know nothing. Miracles and moral contingencies, then, are a& much provided for, and must be so, as the most common train of natural events, it is true, we know nolhingof the arrange- ment by which they subsist ; but they are v^d must be provided for, neverthe- less. It is here, and here only, we ought to vc >s* — in an equal acknowledgment of human ignorance and divine perfection; — for it is, assuredly, not quite consistent either with the modesty of genuine philosophy, or the reverence of religious faith, to controvert a truth because we cannot account for it ; or ON THE ORIGIN, CONNEXION, &c iST to pluck away attribute after attribute from the diadem of the Deity, out oi mere compliment to the demaiid of a fanciful and empty hypothesis. I retreat from this subject, however, with pleasure. It is loo perplexed and iiivsterious for popular discussion, and I am fearful of darkening it by illus- tratioji. I should not have touched upon it, but that I have been forced, by the regular progress of our own inquiries ; auvl now turn, with a free and un- fettered foot, to the study of the passions ; their general nature and influence upon human actions and language ; which we shall enter upon in our next lecture. LECTURE IX. ON THE ORIGIN, CONNEXION, AND CHARACTER OF THE PASSIONS. We have entered upon an inquiry concerning the nature and operation ol the various faculties that constitute the general furniture of the mind These we have divided into three classes; the faculties of the understanding, the faculties of volition, and the passions or faculties of emotion. The com- mencement of the present series of lectures was devoted to an illustration of the first; the second we discussed in our preceding study; and we now advance to a brief analysis of the third. In sailing over the sea of life, the passions are the gales that swell the canvass of the mental bark ; they obstruct or accelerate its course ; and render the voyage favourable or full of danger, in proportion as they blow steadily from a proper point, or are adverse and tempestuous. Like the wind itself, they are an engine of high importance and mighty pov/er. Without them we cannot proceed ; but with them we may be shipwrecked and lost. Reined in, therefore, and attempered, they constitute, as I have already observed, our happiness; but let loose and at random, they distract and ruin us. How few, beneath auspicious planet born, With swelling sails make ^O'xl ilie proniis'd port, W^itli all llieir wishes freighted. Yotjno. Let it not be forgotten, however, that the passions are not distinct agents, but mere affections or emotions, mere states or conditions of the mind, ex- cited by an almost infinite variet)'- of external objects and events, or internal operations and feelings. And here, the first remark that will probably occur to us is, that, derived from sources thus numerous and diversified, they must themselves form a numerous and motley host. Some of them are simple, others complex; some peculiar to certain circumstances or individuals, others general and embracing all countries and conditions ; some possessing a natural tendency to promote what is good ; and others what is mischievous and evil ; while many of them, again, though distinguished by separate names, only differ from other passions in degree; and, hence, naturally merge into them upon a change in the scale. It has often occurred to me, that if we were to follow up all the passions, multiplied and complicated as they are, to their radical sources, and to draw out their respective genealogies, we might easily reduce them to four — Desire, Aversion, Joy, and Sorrow. And as aversion and sorrow are only the oppo sites of desire and joy, and must necessarily flqw fi-om their existence in a state of things in which all we meet with is not to be desired or enjoyed, it is possible that desire and joy ought alone to be regarded as the proper parent stocks of all the rest. Let us examine them for a few minutes under this svstem of simplification. 40S ON THE ORIGIN, CONNEXION, Perhaps the oldest, simplest, and most universal passion that stirs the mind of man, is Desire. So universal is it, that I may confidently ask, where is the created bosom— nay, where is the created being, without it? And Dryden is fully within the mark in asserting, that Desire's tht vast extent of human mind. Aversion, which is its opposite, is less universal, less simple, and of later birth. It is less universal, for though there is no created being exempt from it, nor ought to be so upon certain points, it is more limited in its objects and operation. It is of later date, at least among mankind, for the infant desires before it dislikes : and hence there is as much physical truth as picturesque genius in the following exhortation of Akenside, to the lovers of taste and nature : — Through all the maze Of YOUNG Desire, with rival steps pursue Tlie charm of beauty. And it is less simple, as being the opposite of desire, and in a certain sense flowing from it, and connected with its existence ; the whole of its empire being founded on objects and ideas that the elder passion of desire has rejected. Now the main streams that issue from desire, running in different direc- tions and giving rise to multitudes of secondary streams, are the three fol- lowing: — LOVE, HOPE, EMULATION. ExamiuR them attentively, and you will find, that, different as they are from each other, they all possess the sperm and parentage of desire, and possess it equally. Love is not simple desire, but flows from it, and is so closely connected with it, that some shade of the latter passion is, in every instance, to be found in the former. The terms are hence, in some particular senses, and espe- cially when employed loosely, used in all languages synonymously: whence Eros ('Epwf) among the elegant Greeks, and Cupido among the Romans, was the god equally appointed to preside over both passions. It is from the latter tongue we obtain in our own language the word cupidity^ which in like man- ner embraces both ideas. Spenser has made desire the offspring of love, rather than love the offspring of desire ; but this is to invert the order of nature. The first instinctive passion discoverable in infant life, as I have already observed, is desire — a desire of satisfying the new-born sensation of hunger ; and love — that is, love of the object that gratifies it — follows from the gratification itself; nor can we, through any period of life, love what in oui own estimation is undesirable. In many cases, for there are innumerablt s}iade« belonging to both, love may be regarded as the same passion as desire but with an increase of intensity ; as hatred, which is its opposite, is ih* same passion as aversion but with a parallel advance in the scale. There are, however, various marks of diff'erence ; and I may observe, that whih desire is never without a less or greater degree of uneasiness, love, thoug!^ it is sometimes accompanied with the same feeling, is occasionally free from it, and always so, when perfectly genuine. Before we proceed to the two other main branches which radiate from desire, let us follow up the subsidiary streams into which the passion of love ramifies. These run in two opposite directions, according as they possess a virtuous or a vicious tendency ; and in each direction they are extremely pro- lific, and offer to us a numerous progeny. Thus, on the one hand, we behold the passion or feeling of love giving birth to charity, benevolence, philanthropy, pity, mercy, fellow-feeling, which the Latins called compassion, and the Greeks sympathy ; generosity, friendship, and ardour. They form a chaste and a happy group, are full of social affection, and are hence often called, after the name of the eldest sister, the charities of life or of the heart. AND CHARACTER OF THE PASSIONS 409 MiTcy, and Truth, and hospitable Care, And kind coniiuhial Tenderness, are there; And Piety, with wishes jilaced above, And sweetest Sympathy, and boundless Love. Goldsmith, altered. On the other liand, we behold issuing from the same source a variety of restless and turbulent aifections, which, from their characteristic violence, contribute equally, perhaps, to the unhappiness of those who possess them, and to the world on which they are exercised. To this tribe belong- avarice, or the love of gain; ambition, or the love of power; pride and vanity, or the love of pomp, splendour, and ostentation ; selfishness, or the love of the per- son, in common language, self-love : though the whole of these being of a selfish character, this latter terra might, with as much propriety, apply to every one of them, as^ that of charity, or the love of others, to each of the preceding division. Most of these are admirably described or allegorized by Spenser in his Faerie Queene, which will be found to afford a most powerful illustration of the general hints here offered. I would readily bring instances in proof of this remark if our time would allow : as a single example of the force of his imagination, let me especially direct your attention to his entire delineation of avarice or mammon, and particularly the following picturesoue representa- tion of his dwelling : — Both roofe and floore, and walls, were all of gold, Butoverijrowne with dust and old decay, And hid in darkness, that none could behold Tlie hew thereof: for vew of cherefuU day Did never in that house itselfe display, but a faint shadow of uncertain light: Such as a LaMP, whose lifk does fake away ; Or as the moone, cloathed with clowuv night, Does show to him that walkes in feare and sad affright.* Hope Ihave enumerated as the second main stream that emanates from the passion of desire. Try the world, examine your own hearts, and you will agree with me that this is its source. Hope must spring from desire, and cannot exist without it : as it rises in the scale it becomes trust or con- fidence ; and confidence, according to the alliance it forms with other feelings or affections, gives birth to two very different families. United to a vigorous judgment and an ardent imagination, it produces courage, magnanimity, patience, intrepidity, enterprise ; combined with vanity or self-love, the complex and mischievous brood is self-opinion, impudence, audacity, and conceit. Hope, however, is not produced singly. It is a twin-passion, and its con- genital sister is Fear. This has not been sufficiently attended to by pathogno- mists ; but examine the general tenor and accompaniment of the passions as they rise in your hearts, and you will find the present statement correct. Hope and fear spring equally from desire — the hope of gaining the desired object, and the fear of losing it. They run the same race, though with vary- ing degrees of strength, and terminate their joint career in the antagonist extreme points of fruition or despair; the powers of hope growing gradu- ally more intense as it approaches the former goal, and those of fear as it appi^O-iehes the latter. 1 have said, that at these boundaries they terminate their respective career; but fear does not always cease with fruition. Uncertainty and change are so strongly written on all earthly enjoyments, that even in the firmest pos- session we have still some fear of losing them ; so that we can seldom say, " What a man hath, why doth he yet fear for ]" though nothing is more per- tinent than the opposite inquiry, " What a man hath, why doth he yet hope for]" Fruition without fear is reserved for, and will be, the great prerogative of a higher state of being. Fear, however, like hope, in its progress through life, forms other alliances * B. ii canto vii. xx\x. 410 ' ON THE ORIGIN, CONNEXION, than that which springs during its infancy. Combined with a sense of failure or imperfection in our own powers, it takes a righi direction, and produces caution, timidity, baslifulness, diffidence, respect, and complaisance : united to friendship, love, or complacency, it engenders gratitude, devotion, reverence, veneration, and awe, which are only different degrees of the same feeling: and hence the term fear, in the sense we are now taking of it, becomes an apt and beautiful type of every religious affection ; of desire ; as love, grati- tude, zeal, devotion, and awe; for we have just traced it as branching up in this direct line of descent. The connexions of fear, moreover, like those of hope, are of a bad as well as of a good character: united to a judgment that measures its powers amiss, and entertains too mean an opinion of them, it degenerates into irresolution, doubt, cowardice, and pusillanimity : combined with a restless and irritable ima- gination, it begets suspicion, jealousy, dread, terror; and terror, when combined with hate, gives birth to the passion of horror. It is in this last character, as connected with the fancy or imagination, that the term fear is for the most part employed by the dramatists ; and it is to this that Collins has entirely confined himself in his celebrated ode upon the subject. Thou to whom the world unknown, With all its shadowy shapes, is shown ; Who seest, ajipiiird, th' iimeal scene When Fancy lids the veil between, — Ah, Fear! ah, tVaniic Fear ' I see, I see ihee near. 1 know tliy hurried «tep, ihy hajrgard eye • Like thee J start, like thee disorder 'd fly. The third main passion which issues from the common stock of desire, 1 have said, is emulation. This, when properly attempered, and connected with what have already appeared to be the social affections, is one of the noblest and most valuable emotions that actuates the human heart. It com- mences early, and often accompanies us to the closing scene of life. It in- spirits the play of the infant, the task of the schoolboy, and the busy career of the man. It gives health and vigour to the first, applause and distinction to the second, and riches and honour to the third. But emulation, instead of being connected with the social, is often connected with the selfish affections; and in this case it degenerates into rivalry, an ungenerous strife to equal or surpass a competitor where there is a chauce of success; or into envy, which is a mixture of emulation and hatred, where there is not. The antagonist passion to desire is aversion, which has also, like desire, different degrees of intensity, and a family of diversified characters, though in neither respect so numerous or complicated as the former. It not unfrequently unites itself to pride, and produces, as its progeny, the jaundiced family of scorn, contempt, and disdain; the last of which is thus described by Spenser : — liis looks were dreadful, and his fiery eyes, Like two great beacons, jLijlartd far and wide, Glancinsi askew, as if his enemies He scorned in liis overweening pride; And stalking stately, like a crane did stride At every siep upon the tip-loes high ; And all the way he went, on every side He gazed about, and stared liorribly As if lie, with his looks, all men would terrify. Aversion, combined with a quick sense of being wronged, whether real or imaginary, becomes anger; anger, when violent or ungovernable, is denomi- nated rage or fury ; and, when stimulated by a determination to retaliate, it assumes the name and shape of revenge. Hatred is only aversion advanced to a higher degree in the scale; and hatred, coUeagued with a fixed and clan- destine desire to injure, degenerates into malice ; the foulest, most despicable, and most devilish of all the passions that can harass an intelligent being, and the most opposite to the character of the Divinity ; for God is love, and the stamp of benevolence is imprinted on every part of creation. AND CHARACTER OF THE PASSIONS, 4J1 De secretes boantds quel amas innombrable ! Plus rAuieurs'estcacl)6, plusil esi udiiiiiaMe:* What boundless beiuities round us are display'd ! How shines the Gudhcud mid the darkest siiadu ! Such, then, are the numerous and diversified families that issue directly o collaterally from the passion of desire, or of aversion as its opposite. 1 stated this passion to be almost universal in its range, and I submit to you whether this statement has not been verified. The two other radical sources into which we are to resolve the remaining passions of the heart are joy and sorrow : of equal weight and moment in the scale of life, but less numerous and complicated in their offspring ; and which will, therefore, detain us but for a few minutes. Joy, when pure and genuine, is a sweet and vivacious affection. It is the test and index of happiness or pleasure. Its influence, like that of gravita- tion, extends to remote objects ; and it lightens the severest labours by its foretaste. It is the breath, the nectar of heaven, and the high reward which stimulates us to a performance of our duty while on earth. Joy, like several of the preceding passions, has different names assigned to it, in-its different stages of ascent ; at its lowest point, it is ease, content, or tranquillity ; at a certain elevation, it is called delight or gladness ; some- what farther in the scale, exultation ; beyond this, rapture or transport — foi the terms, as applied to this passion, are synonymous ; and advanced far higher, it is ecstasy — ^joy so overwhelming as to take away the senses, and prevent all power of utterance. Among the Greeks, however, the term ECSTASY was used in a more general sense, and applied to any overwhelming affection, whether of joy or sorrow ; and Shakspeare, who has often carried it farther than the Greeks, occasionally makes it a feature of madness or mental distraction, which is not passion but disease. The followhig from his Hamlet is an instance of this signification : — Now see ihat noble and most sovereign reasc^n, Likp sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsli ; That uninatcird form and feature of blown youth ' Blasted witli ^icstasy. Combined with activity, joy produces the light-hearted family of cheerful- ness, gaycty, mirth, frolic, and jocularity ; the best and most lively picture of which that the world has ever seen, is given by Milton in his Allegro, mirth being here placed at the head of the whole. Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youiliful Joilily, Q,Mlps, and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and hecks, and Avrealned smiles, Such as hanj; on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleeJc; S|)ort, that wiinklcd care derides, And Langht«r holding both his sides. Come, aird trip it as you go On the light fantastic loe. And in thy right hand lead with thee The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty, Possessing features in many respects similar, we meet with another lively Iribe, which are equally the offspring of joy, but of joy in alliance with an ardent iinagination. These are seniimenlalism, characterized by romantic views or ideas of real life; chivalry, which is the sentimentalism of gallantry, caparisoned for action, and impatient to enter the burning list. Where throngs of knights and barons bold In weeds of jieace high triumphs hold, With sioresof ladies, whose biight eyes Raia influence, and judge the prize. " * Racine le fits, Poeme de la Religion 412 ON THE ORIGIN, CONNEXION, This extravagant passion had its use in the feudal times ; but it has for ages become antiquated, and in modern warfare has certainly too much gone out of fashion. To the same tribe belongs enthusiasm, the joyous or ecstatic devotion of a high-wrought fancy to some particuhtr cause or party, the chief of which are reTigion and patriotism : and under the influence of which, the body is wound up to a display of almost preternatural exploits, and an endurance of almost miraculous* privations and labour. The sprightly passion of joy gives birth also to a third tribe, inconsequence of its union with novelty. It is a listening and attentive group, and consists of admiration, surprise, wonder, and astonishment : upon which I need not enlarge, except to remark that the word astonishment is, at times, made use of to express a very different feeling, produced by novelty and terror ; and which is more accurately distinguished by the name of amazement. These mixed passions, however, are very apt to run into each other, as I shall have occasion to notice more at large in a subsequent study : and perhaps the most exquisite feeling a man can possess of the purely mental kind, is de- rived from a contemplation of scenery, or a perusal of history, where every thing around him is grand, majestic, and marvellous, and the terrible keeps an equal, or rather nearly an equal pace with the delightful. The opposite of joy is sorrow — a fruitful mother of hideous and unwelcome children : fruitful I mean on earth, but shut out with a wall of adamant from the purer regions of the skies. Sorrow is as much distinguished by different names as any of the preced- ing affections, according to the height it reaches in the general scale of evil. And hence, at one point, it is sadness ; at another, wo or misery ; at a third, anguish ; and at its extreme verge, distraction or despair. Connected with a sense of something lost, or beyond our reach, it gives rise to regret and grief; and when in union with a feeling of guilt, it becomes remorse and repentance. Its two bosom companions, however, are fear and fancy. When allied to the former alone, it produces the haggard progeny of care, anxiety, vexation, and fretfulness ; the first of which is thus admirably described by Hawkes- worth, in his ingenious but melancholy piece, entitled Life, an Ode : in which care is directly stated, as in the present case, to be a mixed breed of wo or sorrow and fear. Who art thou, with anxious mien Stealing o'er tlie siiifting scene? Eyes with tedious vigils red, Sighs by doubts and wishes bred ; Cautious step and alancing lepr, Speak thy woes, and speak thy fear. When sorrow associates herself with both fear and fancy, she then produces the demon brood of dejection, gloom, vapours, moroseness, heaviness, and melancholy ; all of them begotten, like the last. In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and siuieks, and sights unholy. Such is the origin of melancholy, as given by Milton, in his Allegro, or Ode to Mirth ; but in his Penseroso, or Ode to Melancholy herself, he derives her from a purer source, and dresses her in the pensive character of a religious recluse. The picture shows a fine imagination; but is, perhaps, less true to nature than the preceding. Come, pensive nun, devout aod pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest giain, Flowing with majestic train, And sable stole of cypress lawn OvM thy decent fihouId«r« drawn— AND CHARACTER OF THE PASSIONS. 413 Cnme, but keep thy wonted state, Willi even step, and musing gair, And looks ckiea, Tliy ra[it soni setting in tliine eyes. There held iti holy passion, still Forjjet thyself to niaihle, till With a sad, leaden, downward cast, Thou fix them on the earth at last. Despair or distraction brings np the rear of the miserable and tumultuous group before us. This passion has generally been contemplated as a mingled emotion ; but it is perhaps far less so than most of the rest. It is a concentration of pure, unmitigated horror, equally void of hope, fear, and all moral' feeling — an awful type of the torments of the lower world. The sen- sorial power is hurried forward towards a single outlet, and with a rushing violence that threatens its instantaneous exhaustion from the entire frame, l/ke the discharge of electricity accumulated in a Leyden jar when touched by a brass rod. The eye is fixed ; the limbs tremble ; upon the countenance hangs a wild and unutterable sullenness. The harrowed and distracted soul shrinks at nothing, and is attracted by nothing : the deepest danger and the tenderest ties have equally lost their command over it. Despair is, hence, the most selfish of all the passions. In its overwhelming agony, and its pressing desire of gloom and solitude, it approaches to what is ordinarily called heart-ache ; but, generally speaking, the emotion is far more contracted and personal, and the action far more precipitous and daring. Despair, as it commonly shows itself, is either hopelessness from mortified pride, blasted expectations, or a sense of personal ruin. The gamester, who cares for no one but himself, may rage with all the horror of despair; but the heart-ache belongs chiefly to the man of a warmer and more generous bosom, stung to the quick by a wound he least expected, or borne down not by the loss of fortune, but of a dear friend or relation, in whom he had concentrated all his hopes. The well-known picture of Be- verley is drawn by the hand of a master, and he is represented as maddened by the thought of the deep distress into which his last hazard had plunged his wife and family; but if his selfish love of gaming had not triumphed over his relative love for those he had thus ruined, he would not have been in- volved in any such reverse of fortune ; nor, without the same selfishness, would he farther have added to their blow by a deed that was sure to withdraw him for ever from all share in their misery, and overwhelm them with an accumulated shock. "While Beverley was in despair, it was his wife who was broken-hearted.* The picture which Spenser has drawn of despair, as seated in his own wretched cave, has been praised by every one from the time of Sir Philip Sidney; but it has always appeared to me that his description of JSir Tre- visan, who was fortunate enough to escape from the enchantment of this demon-power, is still more forcibly drawn in the passage where, on the com- mencement of his flight, he is represented as accidentally meeting with the Red Cross Knight : He answered naught at all : but adding new Feare to his first amazement, staring wyde With stony eyes, and hartless, hollow vew, Ast«)nisht stood, as one that had aspyde Infornall furies with tiieir chaines iintyde. Him yttt ayaine, and yeit againe, bespake The gentle Knight, who naught to him replyde ; But trembling t-very ioynt, did inly quake, And foltriag tongue at last these words seem'd forth to Rliake— " For God's dear love, sir Knight, doe me not stay ; For loe ! he comes, lie comes fast after mee I" Eft looking back, would faine have runne away; But he him forst to stay, and tellen free. The secrete cause of liis perplexitie.t • Study of Medicine, vol. iv. p. 133, 2d edit. 185W t Faerie Queene, b. 1 c. ix. 24, 3& 414 ' ON THE ORIGIN, CONNEXION, &c. Such, as it appears to me, are the chief passions or faculties of emotion discoverable in the human mind. I submit, however, tUe present analysis and classification of them with yome degree of diffidence ; for, as far as I am aware, it is the first attempt of the kind tliat has ever been ventured upon ; and, like other first attempts, it may perhaps be open to the charge of con- siderable imperfections and errors. Be this, however, as it may, it at least offers us a new key to the mind's complicated construction in one branch of its study, simplifies its machinery, and perhaps unfolds a few springs which have never hitherto been sufficiently brought into public view. I have said that the use of the passions is to furnish us with happiness, as that of the intellectual faculties is with knowledge, and that of the faculties of volition with freedom. But from the survey thus far taken, it must be ob- vious to every one, that the passions furnish us with misery as well as with happiness. And it may, perhaps, become a question with many, whether the harvest of the former be not more abundant than that of the latter. We can- not, therefore, close this subject better than by briefly inquiring whether the passions produce happiness at all 1 Whether, allowing the aflirmati^e, they produce more happiness than misery, and whether the present constitution of things would be improved if those that occasionally produce misery were to be banished from the list ] Supposing, by a decree of the Creator, all the mental passions were to be eradicated from the human frame, and nothing were to remain to it but a sense of corporeal pain and pleasure, — what would be the consequence under the present state of things, with this shigle alteration ? Man would cease to be a social being ; the sweet ties of domestic life would be cut asunder ; the pleasures of friendship, the luxiiry of doing good, the line feeling of sy mpath}'-, the sublimity of devotion, would be swept away in a moment. The world would become an Asphaltites, a dead and stagnant sea, with a smooth un- ruflled calm, more hideous than the roughest tempest. No breeze of hope or fear, of desire or emulation, of love or gayety, would play over it : the har- mony of the seasons would be lost upon us, and the magnificence of the crea- tion become a blank. The vvants and gratifications of the body might insti- gate us, perhaps, to till the soil, to engage in commerce and mechanical pur- suits, and to provide a generation to succeed us. And, if literature should exist at all, a few cold and calculating philosophers might spin out their dull fancies upon abstract speculations, and a few Lethean poets write odes upon indifference ; but all would be selfish and solitary. The master-tie would be snapped ; the spii-itus rector would be evaporated, and every man would be a stranger to every man. To a slate of being thus torpid and monotonous, let us now grant the plea- surable passions, and withhold those that accornpany or indicate uneasiness. Now, uneasiness, as I have already observed, is, in some degree or other, an essential attendant upon desire, hope, and emulation ; and hence these pas- sions must as necessarily be excluded here as under the former scheme. For a similar reason we must allow neither generosity, nor gratitude, nor compas- sion ; for put away all sorrow and aversion, all mental pain and uneasiness, and such aflfections could have no scope for their exertion : they must neces- sarily have no existence. But still the world would be thronged with a gay and lively troop of pas- sions ; love and transport, mirth and jollity, would revel with an uninter- rupted career: — not a cloud would obstruct'the laughing sunshine; and man would drink his full from the sea of pleasure, and intoxicate himself without restraint. But how long would this scene of ecstasy continue 1 Under the present constitution of nature, not a twelvemonth. In less than a year, the world, in respect to its inhabitants, would cease to exist: worn out by indulgence, and destroyed for want of those very uneasinesses, tho$e pains and sorrows, those aversions and hatreds, which, when skilfully intermixed and directed, like wholesome but unpalatable medicines, chiefly contribute to its moral health ; and form the best barriers against that misery and ruin, which, when superfi- ON THE CHARACTERS AND PASSIONS OF LIFE. 415 cially contemplated, they seem expressly intended to produce ; but w?iich man must be obnoxious to in a state of imperfection and trial, and would be infinitely more. so but for their presence and operation. TJie sum of the inquiry, then, is, that all the passions have their use, — that they all contribute to the general good of mankind ; — and that it is the abuse of them, the allowing them to run wild and unpruned in their career, and not Ihe existence of any of them, ihat is to be lamented. While there are things that ought to be hated, and deeds that ought to be bewailed, aversion and grief are as necessary to the mind as desire and joy. Tt is the duty of the jndgment to direct and to moderate them ; to discipline them info obedience, and attune them to harmony. The great object of moral education is to call forth, instruct, and fortify the judgment upon this important science ; to let it feel its own power, and accustom it to wield the sceptre intrusted to it with dexterity and steadiness. Where this is accomplished, the violent passions can never show themselves — they can have no real existence ; for we have already produced evidence that they are nothing more than the simpler affec- tions, discordantly associated or raised to an improper pitch. Where this is accomplished, the sea of life will, for the most part, be tranquil and sober, — not from indifference or the want of active powers, but from their nice balance and concord ; and if, in the prosecution of the voyage, the breeze should (je fresh, it will be still friendly, and quicken our course to the desired haven. Finally, wherever this is accomplished, man appears in his true dignity — he has aciiieved the great point for which he was created, and ndions of un- fading glory swell before him, as the forthcoming reward of his piesent triumph. LECTURE X. ON THt 1, APiNCT CHARACTERS AND PASSIONS OF SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED LIFE. In the preceding lecture but one, I stated, as may, perhaps, b*? remembered by man}- of the audience before me, that of the numerous and complicated facul- ties which form the nice mechanism of the human mind, sometimes one, some- times another, and sometimes several in conjunction, appear peculiarly active and prominent, and acquire a mastery over the rest; and that such effect is, in different instances, the result of different causes, as peculiarity of temperament, peculiarity of climate, or peculiarity of local or national habits and associations. Let us pursue this subject, and make it a groundwork for the present lecture. All violent passions are evil, or, in other words, produce, or tend to produce unhappiness : for evil and unhappiness are only commutable terms. There is no proposition in morals that admits of clearer proof. Some violent pas- sions are evil intrinsically ; others as extremes of those that are good ; and all of them as refractory and hostile to the legitimate control of the under- standing. P'or happiness, as we had lately occasion to prove, is a state of discipline ; and is only to be found, in any considerable degree of purity and permanency (without which qualities it is unworthy of the name), in a regu- lated aud harmonious mind ; where reason is the charioteer, and reins, and guides, and moderates the mental coursers in the great journey of life, with a firm and masterly hand. It may, hence, be supposed, that the greatest degree of violence and un- happiness to be met with any where, is among savages ; since, unquestion- ably, it is here that the traces of discipline are most feeble and obscure. And 5uch, in fact, is the concurrent opinion of moralists and civilians. But it is an opinion which should be given with some degree of hesitation. It is true so far as the simpler passions, and especially those of the selfish class, are concerned, — passions which are more or less common to all countries and con- 416 ON THE LEADING PASSIONS ditions ; but civil life has passions peculiar to itself, and passions, too, of pe- culiar force and obstinacy, that Grow Willi ita growth, and strengthen with its strength, which no system of internal discipline seems at all times capable of mode- ratingr ; which, in too many mstances, we behold defying, with equal contu- macy, ail the laws of religion and morality ; and, consequently, introducing into the world pains and penalties, mischiefs and miseries, which the tribes of barbarous and uncultivated nature, amid all their evils, know nothing of. To a certain extent, it is, however, probable, that the common opinion is correct, and that the greatest portion of violence and wretchedness is to be met with in savage life. Now what are the passions that are chiefly brought into action, in this low and lamentable state of existence 1 Let us take a brief survey of them, — it may prove an interesting inquiry, — and examine the changes they undergo, and the new affections they give rise to, as man emerges from chaos to order, from the gloom of ignorance to the light of civilization, morality, and science. One common character runs through savages of every kind. The empire of the heart is divided between two rival deities or rather demons — Selfish- ness and Terror. The chief ministers of the first are lust, hatred, and revenge; the chief ministers of the second are cruelty, credulity, and superstition. Look through the world, and you will find this description apply to barbarians of every age and country. It is equally the history of Europeans and Africans ; of the Pelasgi, who were the progenitors of the Greeks, and of the Celts and Scythians, the suc- cessive progenitors of the English. All the discoveries of modern circum- navigators confirm the assertion; and though the captivating names of Friendly and Society Islands have been given to two distinct groups in the vast bosom of the Pacific Ocean, and the inhabitants in several of them have made some progress in the first rudiments of civilization and government, there is not a people or a tribe to be met with, who are yet in a savage state, that are not still slaves to these debasing and tyrannical passions. The gen- tleness of courtship, or rather the first proof of aff'ection, among the savages of New South Wales, consists in watching the beloved fair one of another tribe to her retirement, and then knocking her down with repeated blows of a club or wooden sword. After which impressive and elegant embrace, the matrimonial victim is dragged, streaming in her blood, to the lover's party, and obliged to acknowledge herself his wife. Cannibalism, in times of war, is still common to several of the islands ; human immolation to most of them. It was at the bloody shrine of revenge that Captain Cook fell a sacrifice in Ovvhyee, one of the best informed and most disciplined of all the islands ; nor has any one, perhaps, who ever read the interesting history of Prince Lee Boo, forgotten the delight he manifested at St. Helen's, on discovering a bed of groundsel, which he immediately converted to an article of food. All of them believe in magic — are the dupes of priestcraft and witchcraft — and in carving images of their deities, seem to think they can never represent them under figures sufficiently terrific and disgusting. The simple but violent passions, then, common to mankind in savage life, are selfishness, lust, hatred, revenge, terror, cruelty, credulity, and super- stition. These are differently modified, as well as combined with other pas- sions according to the force of collateral circumstances, as the dulnefes oi vivacity of the intellectual faculties, the warmth or frigidity of the climate, the tameness or picturesque grandeur of the scenery, and the political con- stitution and habits of the people. Let us see how far this remark is sup- ported by history. From the cap or caf of the Caucasus descended those streams of adven- turers that, under the names of Getes, Goths, Scythians, and Scandinavians, overran all the north of Europe, and progressively spread themselves from the Caspian Sea to the Thames. Born in the midst of snows, brought up iu OF SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED LIFE. 417 the midst of perils, and stretching their barren track from lalce to lake, and from mountain to mountain, throug-h the wildest, the boldest, the sublimest, and most fearful line of country that indents the face of the old world, they caug-ht the gloomy grandeur that surrounded them ; exchanged the love of women for the love of war; and carried fierceness and terror into the whole of their political institutions, their sullen ritual, and their mythology. They neither gave nor would consent to receive quarter; their highest honour being to fall in battle, and their deepest disgrace to sink into the grave by a natural death. They had their heaven, but it was only for heroes ; and they denomi- nated it Valhalla, or the hall of slaughter. They hud also their hell, but it was only for tliose who died at home, and who, as they taught, were imme-' diately conveyed to it, and tormented for ever, for their cowardice, with hun- ger, thirst, and misery of every kind. This audacious contempt of death, and burnmg desire to enter the hall of their ferocious gods, is correctly de- scribed by Lucan, who calls it a happy error— felicis errore suo. We here meet with ail the passions I have enumerated as characteristic of savage life, but modified and peculiarly directed by local circumstances, which at the same time gave birth to other passions equally fierce and violent. Nerved by nature with a firm, robust constitution, and nursed in the midst of clifts and cataracts, and torrents and tempests, they drank in courage and independence with every breath of air ; their only delight was the gloomy one of hunting out difficulties and dangers ; their only lust that of battle and conquest ; and their only fear that of being thought cowards on earth, and being shut out from the hall of slaughter in heaven. To adopt once more the language of Lucan, and follow up his correct description, which, nevertheless, before a mixed audience I must endeavour to give ni our own tongue, — Fn error bless'd, beiieaili tlie polar star, That worst of fears, the fear of death they dare ; Gasping for dangers, prodigal of pain, Spendthrifts of life, that must return again.* The natural passions of cruelty, hatred, and revenge seem to have remained untouched, and the whole character of the heart concurred in giving a terrible enthusiasm to their superstition. Patriotism they had none, for they had no country ; and they only so far sacrificed their personal liberty, and concen- trated themselves into tribes and clans, with leaders of limited authority at their head, as they found best calculated to give success to their lawless en- terprises. And hence the origin of the feudal system, and the first rude eflforts towards a basis of government and civilization in northern Europe. Let us contrast this picture with one of a different kind. Seated in an early period of the world in the vicinity of these ferocious mountaineers, but at the southern foot of the Caucasus, instead of at its summit, we behold another set of barbarians, who progressively spread themselves into thesofterregionsof the south and west, underthenamesof GomeriansorCyme- rians, and Celts. Their patronymic appellation sufficiently proves them to have been the sons of Gomer, and gives them a near connexion with the tribes we have just noticed. The country which formed their cradle was the finest part of Asia Minor, a country that has been regarded in all ages as the garden of the world. Soft, tepid airs ; a rich, productive soil, that scarcely demanded cultivation; plains and sloping hills extending in every direction, and covered with fattening verdure ; fountains interspersed, and raeanderingr rivers ; banks blossoming with the choicest flowers, and suffused with the sweetest odours; the refreshing foliage of deep umbrageous woods; and over all the blue and cloudless canopy of the skies, diffusing light, and laughtei, * Certe popiili, quosdespicit Arctus ' Felices errore suo, quos ille tiaioruni Maximus haud nrget lethi inelUi*. Iiide ruendi In ferrum metis prona vivis, ariimseque capaces Mortis; et igiiuvuai rediturae oarcere vitse. Phars.Lib. i.438 Dd 418 ON THE LEADING PASSIONS and benevolence, seemed labouring with happy concert to subjugate the rugged feelings of the savage heart, and attune it to harmony and peace. Nor was the magic force exerted in vain. The agreeable ideas hereby ex- cited, prompted them, in their migrations, to seek, as far as they were able, for regions of a similar character; and the growing impulse of internal plea- sure thus derived from external beauty gave a new direction to their mental powers. Selfish lust softened gradually into social love; the activity of a sportive fancy subdued the gloomy dictates of cruelty and revenge ; the Gorgon form of fear gave place to the young radiance of hope ; and super- stition dropped her circlet of snakes, and half listened to the soothing song of reason and of truth. In proof of this, it is only necessary to mention that they spread themseives from the headspring of the Danube, or Ister, as it was formerly called, to the mouth of the Tagus, and peopled in their progress Phrygia, so celebrated for its dithyrambic music and vigorous dance ; the Troad, or country o:' Troy, ages ago Married lo irmiorial verse ; Thrace, of scarcely less distinction than Troy; Hungary, the greater part o( Germany, Gaul, Italy, Spain, and the British islands ; sometimes confining themselves to small independent tribes, and sometimes, as in the warmer re- gions more especially, sinking conjointly into subjugation, under one ambi- tious and powerful chieftain. Different local circumstances diversified their general character; but for the most part we find them equally courteous and courageous, faithful to their engagements, hospitable to strangers, full ot patriotism, loyalty, and domestic virtue; and let me add, it is to the quarter I am now speaking of that the Greeks were indebted not only for their Phry- gian music, which formed their most enthusiastic and maddening movements, as 1 have just observed, but also for their Lydian, which formed its opposite, and was equally adapted to quell the cares and fury of the breast, and melt it into feelings of tenderness and affection. It is under this description Dryden speaks of it in his Ode to Alexander's Feast — Softly sweet in Lydian measures Sot)ii he soothed his soul to pleasures. And thus a greater than Dryden, in his well-known poem, entitled L' Allegro— And ever against eating cares Lap me in soft I-ydian airs ; In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out: ' With wanton heed and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony Such, in most parts of the world, has been the effect of climate and sur- rounding scenery. But there is another cause, and a still more powerful one, that ought nut to be omitted in the consideration of national character : and that is the government and habits of a peo.ple. These may, in the first instance, be produced by accident ; they may be the result of the cause already adverted to ; but, when once formed and esta- blished, they lay a much firmer basis for public feeling and conduct than can be derived from any physical impulse whatever. Persia had at one time as much reason as Macedonia to boast of her mili- tary hardihood and heroism ; and, under the guidance o( Cyrus, is well known to have overrun all Egypt and Asia Minor, taken Babylon, and destroyed the Assyrian empire. But her government was at that time most excellent ; her code of laws full of wisdom ; her administration ofjustice exemplary ; and her morals the simplest and most correct in tlie Pagan world. Heryouth,from the age of seven to that of seventeen, were allowed no other food than bread and OF SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED LIFE. 419 cresses, and no oilier drink than water. They were all educated at public schools, provided by the state, and superintended by masters of the highest character for sobriety and science ; who were enjoined by the constitution to use every means of inspiring them with a love of virtue for its own sake, and an equal abhorrence of vice. With the exception of the Macedonians, the Persians are the only people who enacted a law against ingratitude, punishing with a brand on the forehead every one who was convicied of so heinous a crime ; a regulation which, I shrewdly suspect, if carried into execution in the pre- sent day, would wofully disfigure the faces of great multitudes of our (;on- temporaries. The ear of the prince, moreover, was open to the advice of every one, but with this salutary limitation, to prevent the royal presence from being pestered with political busy-bodies : the adviser in proposing his opi- nion was placed upon an ingot of gold : if his counsel were found useful, the ingot was his reward; if trifling, or of no value, his reward was n public whipping. So long as this system of simplicity and political jurisprudence continued, the Persians were the most powerful people in the world ; but the temptations of a warm luxurious climate, and the influx of enormous wealth, from the conquest of surrounding countries, threw them gradually off their guard ; their discipline became relaxed, their laws slighted, their manners changed ; and the nation which was able to conquer Phrygia, Lydia, Egypt, and the proud empire of Assyria, not two centuries afterward, fell prostrate before an army of little more than thirty thousand Greeks, under the banners of Alexander the Great. If we turn our attention to the Greeks who triumphed on this proud occa- sion, their whole history will furnish us with a repetition of the same lesson. The mildness of their climate, the luxuriance of their soil, the picturesque beauty of their country, attuned all the rougher passions to harmony, and gave birth to an equal mixture of the gentler and the sublimer virtues. Com- posed of a variety of small separate states, united by a confederate tie, they felt a generous rivalry to surpass each other in whatever could contribute to enlarge or adorn the human understanding. And hence, while the well- balanced liberty they possessed inspirited them to defend it against every foreign aggression, in philosophy and ethics, in poetry and oratory, in music and painting, in sculpture and architecture, they became models of excellence for all other countries, and for all future ages. They, too, had their supersti- tions and their mythology ; but the genius that pervaded every tiling else per- vaded these. A few grossnesses, indeed, which it is wonderful they should ever have allowed, deformed the whole machinery : but every thing besides, though wholly fictitious and ideal, was uniformly elegant, and for the most part instructive. Every grove, and stream, and mountain was, in their opinion, instinct with some present deity, and under his immediate protection ; and while the sacred heights of Olympus, the bright residence of their gods, was peopled, not with savage heroes and bloody banquets, as among the Scandinavians, but with the divinities of wit, and wisdom, and beauty — with the Loves, the Graces, and the laughing Hours, and the sister train of Music and Poetry. Such was Greece : but what is she now 1 Her climate and bewitching scenery are the same ; but her spirit and constitution are no more. — What, then, is she now 1 or rather, what was she till of late 1 for the spirit of past ages has again, in some measure, revived in several parts of her. A few of her islands are under British protection ; and a few others are struggling to throw ofl" the yoke that has for ages equally subjugated them in body and m mind. But, with the exception of these insular and more fortunate spots — NANTES IN GURGiTE VASTO — what is shc uow ? The eye sickens at the sight, and the tongue falters while it tells the change. A land of slaves and of barbarous usurpers ; where the scourge of the cold Ottoman flays at his will the descendants of those who fell at Thermopylae, and triumphed at the Granicus — while the tame victims that still submit to it, prove themselves M'ell worthy of the fate that has befallen them :— Dd2 420 ON THE LEADING PASSIONS In all, save form .^lone, how chanced ! — and who, • That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye, Who but would deem their bosom biirn'd anew With thy unquenched beam, lost Liberty! And many dream withal the hour is nigh, That gives them back their Calhers' heritage; For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh, Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage, Or tear thei'rliame defiled from Slavery's mournful paga Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not, Who would lie free, themselves must strike the blow? By their right arms the conquest must be wronglitl Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye ? No ! Tiue, they may lay your proud dtispoilers low, But not for you will Freedom's altars flame Sliades of the Helots ! triumph o'er your foe! Greece! change thy lords, thy state is si ill the same ; Thy glorious day is o'er, but not v!iy years of shame. Yet are Ihy skies as blue, thy crass as wild; Sweet are thy gioves, and verdant are thy fields Thine olive lipe as when Minerva smiled. And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields ; 'J'here the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, The free-born wanderer of thy numntain air: A[K)llo sMIl thy lonsi, long summer gilds; Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles £;Iare; Art, Glory, Freedom, fails, but Nature still is fai» * A thousand other examples of like effect, from like causes, might easily bR adduced. Insomuch, that it has become a general maxim among political writers, that nations, like individuals, have a natural youth, perfection, and dissolution. It is a maxim, however, that must be received with some degree of caution. The experiment, notwithstanding that the world has now continued for nearly six thousand years, has never been tried in its hardier and colder regions ; and we have already seen, that in the warmer climates, there is a cause operating towards the production of national decay, peculiar to itself, and distinct, therefore, from the law of general necessity. Yet, even in the warmer regions of the earth, the fact does not hold universally; for the Chinese have historic documents of the continuance of their empire for nearly four thousand years : one of the cnief of which is, the famous record of an eclipse of the sun in the reign of Ching-Kang, 2155 years before the com- mencement of the Christian era; while Persia, though conquered by the Romans, and shorn of more than half its extent in plder times, has still, under some form or another, descended to the present day, through a period of nearly three thousand years. And, wild and wandering as is the life of the Arab tribes, they may at least make a boast of having uniformly retained their customs, their liberty, and their language, for a longer period than any other people, and amid all the changes that have befallen the most splendid empires around them ; and are at this day, in habits, government, and national tongue, nearly the same as they were in the time of the patriarch Job ; and probably as they were long before the earliest epoch to which the Chinese can make any pretensions. There can be no doubt, however, that the very perfection of a people, in the arts of civilization and refinement, has a natural tendency to produce the sc«ds of future decay and dissolution ; and, although the Chinese and Ara- bians have not hitherto given proofs of any such change, it is only, perhaps, because they have for ages continued stationary, and have never reached the absolute perfection we are speaking of. I shall close the present lecture, therefore, with pointing out a few of those passions and other affections which immediately spring from what may be called the manhood or sum- mit of civilization, are chiefly distinctive of it, and pave the way for its downfall. In order, however, to give strength and bearing to the picture, let us first glance at the passions and emotions of mankind, in a simpler state ; in that * Chlldtf lla.old's Pil;rimage, cunKt il SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED LIFE. 421 middle condition of moral cultivation usually to be met with in the villages and smaller towns of a highly civilized people, where the moral affections have sweetened the heart, but refinement has not yet sweetened the manners. Let us transport ourselves for a few minutes to Wales, the Highlands of Scotland,* or the banks of the Garonne. In any of these regions, we shall be received upon a proper introduction, and often without any introduction whatever, with an honest though a homely welcome; the chief virtues of the heart we shall find to be chastity, sincerity, frugality, and industry; its chief feelings, cheerfulness, content, and good-will : if they know little of the sublimer, they know nothing of the turbulent passions : — Far fiorn the maddeiiinp crowd's igiinbl;! strife, Their sober wishes never learn to sira.v ; Along ihe cool sequesU.red vale of life They keep the noiseless lenorof their way. v At the same time, we shall find an evident distinction of national chara'c- ter ; the first of these tribes evincing an enthusiastic fondness for the shadowy traditions, and the antiquated, perhaps the fabulous, heroes of their country, from some of whom every one believes himself to be lineally descended ; the second, an ardent attachment to their respective lairds, and the hardy in- dividuals that compose their respective clans ; and the third, an elastic and ebullient vivacity, that seems to fit them for happiness in any country, and almost under any circumstances. If, from these'scenes of simple life and ingenuous manners, we pass to the crowded capitals of refinement and luxury, we shall see more perhaps to admire, but certainly more to disrelish and weep over; a strange intermix- ture of the noblest virtues and the foulest vices ; the mind in some instances drawn forth to its utmost stretch of elevation and genius, and in others sunk into infamy and ruin ; a courtesy of attention that enters into all our feelings, and anticipates all our wants ; delicacy of taste; punctilious honour; sprightly gallantry ; splendour and magnificence ; wit, mirth, gayety, and pleasure of every kind. Of national character, however, we find little or nothing: like the pebbles in a river, all roughnesses are smoothed away by mutual friction into one common polish. It is easy, indeed, to perceive that every thing tends to an extreme ; the jaded taste becomes fastidious, and is perpetually hunting for something new; gallantry degenerates into seduction; fine, trembling honour, into an irritable thirst to avenge trifles ; the heart is full of restless- ness and fever. In the general pursuit of happiness, contentment is alto- gether unknown ; no one is satisfied with his actual rank and condition, And is perpetually striving to surpass or surplant his neighbour; and striving, too, by all the machinery he can bring into play. Hence, in the more refined ranks, all is flattery, servility, and corruption; in the busy walks of traffic and commerce, all is wild venture, speculation, and hazard ; the bosom, is distracted with the civil warfare of avarice, ambition, pride, envy, and sullen rancour; the whole surface is at length hollow and showy, and the face becomes no index to the feelings. There is no necessity for dwell- ing on those open and atrocious villains, that, like veimin on a putrid carcass, such a state of things must indispensably generate and fatten ; — the haggard tribe of anxiety, vexation, and disappointment — the downfall of splendour — the mortification of pride — the failure of friendship — the sting of ingratitude — the violation of sacred trusts — blasted expectations, and disconcerted pro- jects — the cup of joy dashed from the lips that are sipping it — hope ship- wrecked on the verge of possession — the agony of the mighty adventurer, who for months beforehand sees the tempest of his ruin rolling towards him ; sees it, but dares not meet it ; sees it, but perhaps cannot avert it — harrowed through every nerve by the gaunt spectres of approaching shame, by the lamentations of his own family, reduced to beggary, and the cutting rebukes of other families, w^hom a misplaced confidence has> involved in one common * See, for a correct description of the amns-ernems, siiperstirions, nnd maimetsof llie Scotlisli peasantry, Buriis's HcUloiveen and hin Cottar^s Saturday Night, 4» ON TEMPERAMENTS, destruction^r-the demon train of distraction, madness, suicide ; — these, and a thousand miseries such as these, that naturally flow from, and are naturally dependent upon, a state of superabundant and diseased refinement, without taking into the account the flag-rant and atrocious villanies which fall within the cognizance of the criminal judge, are sufficient to prove, that the nation which has reached the utmost pitch of civil perfection is in danger of degene- racy and decay; and justify the doubt I ventured to suggest, at the opening of the present lecture, as to which of the two extremes of society is pregnant with the greatest share of moral evils — that of gross barbarism, or that of an exuberant and vitiated polish. LECTURE XI. ON TEMPERAMENTS, OR CONSTITUTIONAL PROPENSITIES. The social principle — that horror of solitude, and inextinguishable desire of consorting with our own kind, which every man feels in his bosom, and which impels him to prefer misery with fellowship, to ease and indulgence without it — laid the first foundation for cities and states ; and the nature of the social compact, peculiarity of climate, and community of habits and manners, unite in producing that general tissue of feelings and propensities, which consti- tutes, and is denominated, national character ; which gives vivacity to the French, a refined taste to theltalians, phlegmatic industry to the Dutch, a free and enterprising spirit to the English, and a military genius to the Germans. But, independently of these national tendencies that run through the general mass of a people, it is impossible for us to open our eyes without perceiving some peculiar propensity, or prominent moral feature, in every individual of every nation whatever; and which, if strictly analyzed, will be found as much to distinguish him from all other individuals as the features of his face. This is sometimes the effect of habit, or of education, which is early and systematic habit, and which every one knows is capable of chang- ing the original bent of the mind, and of introducing a new direction; but it is far more generally an indigenous growth, implanted by the hand of nature herself; or, in other words, dependent on the original organization, admit- ting of infinite varieties, and produced by the ever-shifting proportions which the mental faculties and the corporeal organs bear to themselves, or to each other, and which it is impossible in every instance to catch hold of and classify. The Greek physiologists, however, attempted the outlines of a classifica- tion ; for they began by studying the individual varieties, which they ascribed to the cause just adverted to, and hence denominated them idiosyn- crasies, or peculiarities of constitution. They beheld, as every one must behold in tiie present day, for nature is ever the same, one man so irascible, that you cannot accidentally tread on his toe, or even touch his elbow, without putting liim into a rage ; another so full of wit and humour, that he would rather lose his friend than repress his joke ; a third, on the contrary, so dull and heavy, that you might as well attempt to move a mile-stone; and possessing, withal, so little imagination, that the de- lirium of a fever would never raise him to the regions of a brilliant fancy. They beheld one man for ever courting enterprise and danger; another dis- tinguished for comprehensive judgment and sagacity of nUellect ; one pecu- liarly addicted to wine, a second to gallantry, and a third to both : one gene- rous to profligacy ; another frugal to meanness ; and a few, amid the diversi- fied crowd, with a mind so happily attempered and balanced by nature, that education has little to correct, and is almost limited to the act of expanding «nd strengthening the budding faculties as they show themselves. OR CONSTITUTIONAL PliOPENSSITIES. 423 The physiologists of Greece, and especially the medical physiolog-ists, did not rest here. They attempted to cluster the different species of idiosyncra- sies, or particular constitutions, that had any resemblance to each other, and to arrange them into genera, which were denominated erases {Kpdam) or tem- peraments. We have the express testimony of Galen,* that Hippocrates was the founder of this system. He conceived the state or condition of the ani- mal frame to be chiefly influenced by the nature and proportion of its radical fluids, at least, far more so than by those of its solids. The radical fluids he supposed to be four, the elementary materials of which were furnished by the stomach, as the common receptacle of the food ; but each of which is de- pendent upon a peculiar organ for its specific production or secretion. Thus, ihe blood he asserted to be furnished by the heart; the phlegm, lymph, or finer watery fluid, by the head; the yellow bile by the gall-duct; and the black bile by the spleen. The perfection of health, or hygeia, as the Greeks denominated it, he conceived to result from a due proportion of these fluids to each other; and the different temperaments, or predispositions of the body, to peculiar constitutions or idiosyncrasies, from a disturbance of the balance, and a preponderating secretion or influence of any one of them over the rest. Hence Hippocrates established four genera of temperaments, which he de- nominated from the respective fluids whose superabundance he apprehended to be the cause of them, the bilious or choleric, produced by a surplus of yel- low bile, and dependent on the action of the gall-duct or liver ; the atrabi- LiARY or MELANCHOLIC, produccd by a surplus of black bile, and dependent upon the action of the spleen ; the sanguineous, produced by a surplus of blood, and ^dependent upon the action of the heart ; and the phlegmatic, produced by a 'surplus of phlegm, lymph, or fine watery fluid, dependent upon the action of the brain. This arrangement of Hippocrates continued in great favour with physiolo- gists, and with very little variation, till the beginning of the last century, at which time it was warmly supported, in all its bearings, by the quaint but solid learning of Sir John Floyer.f And even to the present hour, notwithstanding all the changes that have taken place in the sciences of physiology, anatomy, and medicine, and the detection of some erroneous reasonings and opinions in the M'ritings of Hippocrates upon this subject, intermixed with much that is admirable and excellent, — it has laid a foundation for all the systems of tem- peraments, constitutions, or natural characters, that have more lately been off"ered to the world. Most of these, however, have been distinguished by an introduction of five other genera, denominated a warm, a cold, a dry, a moist, and a nervous or irritable temperament : the first four of these five having been added to the list by Boerhaave, but unnecessarily, as they may readily be comprehended, as I shall presently show you, under the four simple tem- peraments of Hippocrates ; while the fifth, in the general opinion of modern physiologists, is requisite to supply what must be admitted to be a chasm in the Greek hypothesis. I have dwelt the longer upon this subject, because it has an immediate and very extensive bearing upon the popular phraseology of the present day, in all nations; and will give us a clear insight into the meaning of various col- loquial terms and idioms, which we are in the constant habit of employing, in many instances, without any definite signification. The two usual words to express the moral disposition or propensity of a man, and especially as conn-ected with the passions, are temper and humour. Both are Latin terms : the first, in its original sense, imports mingling, com- pounding, modifying, or qualifying, and has an obvious reference to the com- bination of the four radical fluids just mentioned; on the peculiar iem;?er or proportion of which to each other we have just seen that the Greek physiolo- gists suppos*3d the idiosyncrasy or peculiar constitution to depend : and hence temper is, m a certain sense, synonymous with constitution iiself, though * De Temperament, ii. p. 60. $b. t See his Physician's Pulse-watch ; or an Essay to explain the 0) gaye*y. Phlegmatic {(bXiy^ariKos), again, is a Greek term, denoting lymph c. 'iqueous fluid ; and to the temperament abounding with this cold and spiritless humour, as they con- ceived it to be, they referred habitual indolence or sloth. We often hear of the term ruling passion : this is rather of modern than of ancient origin. It is frequently, however, employed without any clear meaning, and confounded with temper, humour, or idiosyncrasy. Now, the temper, or idiosyncrasy, may be the result of a combination of passions 'U OK CONSTITUTIONAL PROPENSITIES. 425 which case all of them cannot take the rule; and hence that only is, properly- speaking, the ruling passion, which takes the lead of the rest, and gives to the particular temper or humour a particular variety. Pope has not always paid sufficient attention to this distinction. Roscommon has correctly maintained it in the following couplet : — Examine liow your humour is inclined, And which the ruling passion of your mind. If this view of the subject be correct, it will follow, that erases or tempera- ments are the genera or grand divisions under which the moral characters or dispositions of mankind, possessing any considerable degree of resemblance to each other, may be naturally arranged. Tempers, humours, or idiosyn- crasies are the species which compose the different genera and ruling pas- sions, the varieties or singularities of emotion, by which one individual behmging to the same species is distinguished from another. The species and varieties may be innumerable, and would require a folio volume for their separate analysis and description, rather than a single lec- ture. Let us, then, confine our attention to the genera, or primary division of moral and physical constitutions into temperaments, and illustrate this part of the preceding classification by a few familiar examples. All mental propensities or dispositions, then, may be arranged under five separate heads; each of which constitutes a temperament, and is distin- guishable by a correspondent eflect, produced on the corporeal organs, and the external features and figure. So that the mind and body, for the most part, maintain a mutual harmony, and the powers of the one become, in a general view, a tolerably fair index of those of the other. To these heads, genera, or temperaments I have given the names of sanguineous, bilious or choleric, atrabilious or melancholic, phlegmatic, and nervous. These names and cha- racters, as I have already observed, with the exception of the last, are derived from the Greek physiologists ; the principles of animal chemistry on which they are founded are, in many instances, erroneous : but the physiological facts which they are designed to illustrate are, for the most part, incontro- vertible, and it is not easy to change the general arrangement for a better. I. Let us commence with the sanguineous temperament, or that conceived to depend upon a powerful action or peculiar energy of the system of blood- vessels. Suppose the heart and arteries, whose harmonious activity produces the circulation of the blood, and throws it over every part of the system, to pos- sess a predominant energy of action, what may we reasonably expect to be the consequence] The pulse must be strong, frequent, and regular; the veins blue, full, and large ; the complexion florid; the countenance animated; the stature erect ; the figure agreeable, though strongly marked ; the flesh firm, with a proportionate secretion of fat ; the hair of a yellow, auburn, or chestnut colour; the nervous impressions acute; the perception quick; the memory tenacious ; the imagination lively and luxuriant ; the disposition passionate, but easily appeased ; amorous, and fond of good cheer. The diseases of this temperament are few but violent, and are chiefly seated in the circulating system ; as hemorrhages and inflammatory fevers. It shows itself with peculiar prominence in the season of spring; and especially in the season of youth, which is the spring of life. The best external or corporeal marks of the sanguineous temperament are, perhaps, to be met with in the beautiful statues of Antinous and the Apollo of Belvidere ; the best moral character of it in the lives of Alcibiades and Marc Antony, as drawn by the masterly hand of Plutarch ; and the most perfect type of this construction which has been oflered in modern times, is to be found, in the judgment of M. Richerand, from whom I have copied the chief part of this description, in the person of the celebrated Duke de Richelieu.* If men of this temperament devote themselves to labour of any kind, that * Nnuveau E16mens de PhysiologiR, &c. torn, ii, sect, ctxxix i». 445, 8vo. Paris, 1804 426 OF TEMPERAMENTS, demands great muscular exertion, the muscles thus brought into action, and easily supplied with nutrition from the sanguineous system, will acquire con- siderable increase of size, and produce a subdivision of the sanguineous tem- perament, which is usually known by the name of athletic or muscular. In this case, the head is verj small ; the neck very strong, particularly behind ; the shoulders are broad; all the muscles are powerful and prominent, sur- rounded with strongly marked interstices or cavities ; while the joints, and parts not abounding in muscles, are extenuated, and the direction of the ten- dons beneath them is obvious and striking. Perhaps the best model we pos- sess of this peculiar constitution is the Farnesian Hercules, of which a good copy is to be found in the hall of the Royal Academy at Somerset-house, and must have been seen by every one who frequents the annual exhibitions of that establishment. It is this temperament which is bestowed by Homer upon Ajax, and enables him, after receiving the shock of a nioun'tain crag upon his shield, hurled at him by Hector, to return a still heavier and more effective blow. Then Ajax seized the fragment of a rock, Applii d each nerve, and swinging ronnd on higli, Wiih force tempestuous, let tlie ruin fly. Tiie huge stone tlmndering, Ihrougii his buckler broke; His slacken'd kiieeti rtceiv'd the numbiisg stroke. Great Hector falls extended on the field, His bulk supporting on the shatter'd shield. These verses have been deservedly admired for their strength, and they do ample justice to the original. But the whole falls far short of the fearful'and majestic energy displayed by Spenser in his description of the combat between the Giant and the Red Cross Knight, and particularly the overwhelming force with which the former wielded his enormous club, and aimed to despatch the champion by a single stroke, who had the good fortune to elude it, and amply to repay himself on his foe. As when aimighiie Jove, in wraihfull mood, To wreake the guilt of mortall sins is bent, Hurles forth his ihundring dart with deadly food, Enrold in flames, and smouklring d'eiiment Through riven cloudes and molten firmament— f The fierce tliree-forked engin, making way. Both lofiie towres and highest trees iiath rent, And all tlial might liis angry passage stay : And, shooting in the earth, castes up a mount of clay. His boystrous club, so buried in the grovvnd, He could not rearen up againe so light But that the Knight him at advantage Ibwnd ; .'\nd, whiles he strove his combred clubbe to quighte * Out of the earth, with blade all burning-liright He smott off his left arme, which, like a block, Did fall to ground, depriv'd of native might ; Large streanies of blood out of the truncked stock Forth gushed, like freshwater stream from riven rocke.* In this subdivision of the temperament before us, we meet with no great degree of acuteness of external impressions or mental perception. Muscular strength, combined with mental tranquillity, is the prominent character: the individual, therefore, is not easily roused ; but when he is so, he sur- mounts every resistance. It would be difficult to find in history a man of this peculiar constitution, whose intellectual faculties have been sufficient to acquire him an immortal fame. To become distinguished in the career of the sciences and fine arts, an exquisite sensibility is indispensable; a con- dition at utter variance with the full perfection of muscular masses. 11. The second temperament or general character I have noticed, is the CHOLERIC or BILIOUS. The liver and biliary organs in general are here as redundant in their power as the sanguineous vessels, and for the most part at * Faerie Qiieene, b. i. canto viil. 9, 10. OR CONSTITUTIONAL PROPENSITIES. 427 the expense of the excernent, or cellular and lymphatic system. The pulse, as in the last kind, is strong and hard, but somewhat more frequent ; the veins cutaneous and projectinj;; the sensibility acute and easily excited, with a capacity of dwelling for a long time on the same object. The skin is brownish, with a tendency to yellowness ; the hair black or dark-brown ; the body moderately fleshy ; the niHscles firm and well marked ; the figure ex- pressive. The temper of the mind exhibits abruptness, impetuosity, and vio- lence of passion; hardihood in the conception of a project, steadiness and inflexibility in pursuing it, and indefatigable perseverance in its execution. It is to this temperament we are to refer the men who, at different periods, have seized the government of the world. Hurried forward by counige, audacity, and activity, they have all signalized themselves by great virtues or by great crimes, and have been the terror or the admiration of the universe. Such were Alexander, Julius Caesar, Brutus, Attila, Mahomet, and Charle- magne, in earlier periods ; and such in later times Richard III., Tamerlane, Cromwell, Nadir Shah, Charles XII. of Sweden, and the tyrant of our own day, Napoleon Buonaparte. This temperament, like the last, with which it is so closely connected, is characterized by a premature appearance of the moral faculties. The men I have just named, when merely emerging from youth, are well known to have conceived and executed enterprises that would have been worthy of their maturest judgment. Where the lineaments of this character are peculiarly strong, and the susceptibility, as frequently occurs, is very acute, the indivi- duals are highly irascible, and launch into a passion from very trivial causes.* Homer has ascribed this part of the general temperament to many of his heroes, particularly to Achilles ; and every politician knows that it was a prominent feature in the constitution of Buonaparte, who seems, indeed, in the occasional insults he oflfered to many of the highest characters at his own court, and in the general presence of his court, to have copied from the Gre- cian chieftain, who thus addressed Agamemnon, the head of the Grecian princes, the aval avdciav, presiding at a general council, in reply to Agamemnon's reprimand : O monster 1 mix'd of insolence and fear, Tlioii dog in ftirehead, but in heart a deer I When wert thou known in ambush'd fights to dare, Or nobly face tlie horrid front of war ? 'T is ours the cliance of fi-ihting fields to try ; Thine to look on, and l»id the vahant die. So much 'tis easier through the camp to go, And rob a subject, tiiau despoil a foe. Scourge of thy people, violent and base ! Sent, in Jove's ai:^er, on a slavish race ; Who, lost to sense of generous freedom past. Are tamed to wrongs, or ihisliad been thy last. In this temperament we discover, as I have already observed, a union, of an active exuberant bilious, with an active exuberant sanguineous system. The temperament called bilious is, therefore, properly speaking, a complex genus, deriving its features from both systems, and from both in a state of energetic operation. III. If we put away this predominant energy of the sanguineous system, or sink it below its level, if we suppose the bilious system alone predominant, and then add a deranged action of some abdominal organ, or of the nervous department— the vital functions, from the change we have now taken for granted in the sanguineous system, being carried on in a weak and irregular manner, we shall arrive at the atrabilious, black-bile, or melancholy tem- perament. The skin will assume a deeper tinge ; the countenance appear sallow and sad ; the bowels will be inactive, all the excretions tardy, the pulse hard, and habitually contracted. The corporeal sadness exerts an influence over the cast of ideas ; the imagination becomes gloomy, the temper * Bicherand, ut suprd, sect ccxxxi. p. 443. 428 ON TEMPERAMENTS, full of suspicion. The species and varieties afforded by this genus are almost innumerable, for the causes are peculiarly diversified.- Hereditary disease, long-continued sorrow, incessant study, habitual gluttony, the abuse of plea- sures of various kinds, and a thousand other circumstances, may equally become sources of this distressing condition, under some shape or other. And perhaps Le Clerc is correct in regarding it, in his Natural History of Man, as in every instance a morbid affection, rather than a natural and primi- tive constitution. The character of Tiberius, of Louis XL, and of Pygmalion, as drawn by tlie nice hand of Fenelon in his Telemachus, give striking elucidations of this temperament in its moral bearings. M. Richerand has also pointed out examples in Torquato Tasso, Pascal, Gilbert, and Zimmermann ; but perhaps the most perfect picture that has been furnished to the world is to be found in the life of the celebrated Jean-Jacques Rousseau. IV. Let us pass on to the fourth temperament — the phlegmatic, lymphatic, piTuiTous, or WATERY, forthc terms are all synonymous, and by all these terms it has been denominated. The proportion of fluids is here too considerable for that of the solids, or, in other words, the excernent system which secretes them from the general mass of the blood is in peculiar activity ; and the re- sult is, that the body obtains an increased bulk from the repletion of the cel- lular texture. The fleshy parts are soft; the skin fair; the hair flaxen or sandy; the pulse weak and slow; the figure plump, but without expression; all the vital actions more or less languid; the memory little tenacious, and the attention wavering ; there is an insurmountable desire of indolence, and aversion to both mental and corporeal exercise. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that, among the illustrious lives of Plutarch, we do not meet with an individual of this character. They are, for the most part, a good-natured group, not formed for the transaction of public affairs, who have never disturbed the earth by their negotiations or their con- quests, and are rather to be sought for in the bosom of private life than at the helm of states. The emperor Theodosius may, perhaps, be offered as an ex- ample in earlier times; and in our own day the deposed Charles IV. of Spain, who resigned himself altogether into the hands of the infamous Godoy, sur- named Prince of the Peace ; Augustus, king of Saxony, who resigned himself equally into the hands of Buonaparte ; and Ferdinand of Sicily, who, in lucky hour, but of too short duration, at length surrendered the government of his people to our own country. V. The last temperament I have noticed is the nervous or irritable, as it has been sometimes, but incorrectly, denominated. In this constitution the sentient system, or that susceptible to external impressions, is predominant over all the rest. Like the melancholic, it is seldom natural or primitive, but morbid and secondary, acquired by a sedentaVy life, reiterated pleasures, romantic ideas excited by a long train of novel or other fictitious and elevated liistories ; and peculiarly distinguished by promptitude but fickleness of de- termination, vivacity of sensations, small, soft, and wasted muscles, and generally, though not always, a slender form. The diseases chiefly incident to it are hysterical and other convulsive affections. Let us close with two brief remarks upon the general survey before us. The first is, that these temperaments or generic constitutions are perpetually running into each other ; and, consequently, that not one of them, perhaps, is to be found in a state of full perfection in any individual. Strictly speaking, Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox belonged equally in the main to the second of them : there was the same ardour, genius, and comprehensive judgment in both ; but the former had the bilious temperament, with a considerable tendency to the sanguineous ; and hence, with more irritability, had more self-confidence, audacity, and sanguine expectation: the latter, while possessing the same general or bilious temperament, was at the same time more strongly inclined to the lymphatic ; and hence his increased corporeal bulk ; and, with less bold and ardent expectation, he possessed one of the sweetest and most benevo- lent dispositions to be met with in the history of the world. The first was ON PATHOGNOMl. 429 formed to be revered, the second to be beloved ; and both to be admued and immortalized. The closing remark I have to submit is, that eijch of these temperaments, how widely soever they may differ from each other, is capable of being; trans- muted into any of the rest. . Galen has particularly dwelt upon this most important fact, and has especially observed that a man of the most elevated and sang-uineous constitution may be broken down into a melancholic habit by a long series of anxiety and affliction ; while, on the other hand, the most restless and audacious of the bilious or choleric genus may be attuned to th;i sleek quiet of the phlegmatic temper by an uninterrupted succession of peaceful luxury and indulgence. Of what moment is this well-established fact in tbj2 nice science of education ! The temperaments of boys may be born with them; but they are capable of alteration, nay, of a total reversion, both in body and mind, each of which may be made to play upon the other; the one by a discipline of gymnastic exercises, and the other by a discipline of intellectual studies. The Greeks were thoroughly aware of this mutual dependence ; and hence, as we have already seen,* made gymnastic games a regular part of the tuition of the Academy; thus rearing at one and the same time, and rearing, too, in the self-same persons, a race of heroes and of sages, and turning the wild and savage luxuriance of nature to the noblest harvests of wisdom and virtue. LECTURE XII. ON PATHOGNOMY, OU THE EXPRESSION OF THE PASSIONS. In our last lecture, we examined how far the state of the body has an influ- ence upon that of the mnid : in the study we are now entering upon we shall take the opposite side of the question, and examine how far the state of the mind has an influence upon that of the body. This influence, if it exist, may be either instantaneous or permanent: it may be produced by some sudden afi^ection or emotion of the mind, exciting an abrupt change in the features, the muscles, or other soft and flexible parts of the body; or it may result from the habitual character of the moral pro- pensity, slowly and imperceptibly operating on parts that are less pliant, and giving them a fixed and determinate cast. The former constitutes the study of Pathognomy, or of the signs, language, or expression of the passions : the latter, the study of physiognomy, or of the signs, language, or expression of the genius or temper. Let us investigate each of these in the order in which I have now stated them ; and devote our present attention to the former of the two. Suppose a man of a mild but courageous disposition, reclining at ease, and alone, beneath some overspreading forest tree, on a summer's evening, should be suddenly surprised by the attack of a ruffian, who should attempt to rob or murder him ; what would be the change of feelings and of figure he would undergo ] The tranquillity of his mind would be transmuted into hor- ror, rage, and probably revenge, or an attempt to retaliate ; while the negli- gent ease of his posture, the relaxed muscles of his face, the natural vermeil of his cheeks, his half-opened lips, half-closed eyelids, and easy breathing, would suddenly '^tart into tension, energy, suff'usion : he would be instantly on his feet, in an attitude of determined resistance ; still trembling with fear, he would collect all his soul into a strong and desperate effort to overcome the wretch : his muscles would swell with violent rigidity ; his heart contract with unusual force and frequency; his lungs heave powerfully; the whole * 9eiie« ii. Lecture x I. 430 ON PATHOGNOMV, OR visage become inflated, dark, and livid ; the eyeballs roll and look wildly ; the forehead be alternately knit, and worked into fnrrows ; the nostrils would open their channels to the utmost; the lips g-row full, stretch to the corners of the mouth, and disclose both rows of teeth, fixed and grinding upon each other ; the hair stand on end, and the hands spasmodically clenched, or grasp- ing and grappling with the assassin. Now, it has been made a question whether these rapid and violent move- ments are instinctive signs of the passions prevailing in the mind, or volun- tary muscular exertions, called for by the stress of the case, and constituting the means of resistance. Which opinion soever be adopted, it must be allowed to ran parallel with the whole range of internal passions, and external expressions. And hence, the advocates for the latter principle contend, that the various transitions of feature, position, and attitude, which accompany the different emotions of the mind, and indicate their nature, are, in every in- stance, the effect of habit, or are suddenly called forth to operate some bene- ficial purpose. It is from experience alone, we are told, that we are able to distinguish the marks of the passions ; that we learn, while infants, to con- sider smiles as expressions of kindness, because they are accompanied by endearments and acts of beneficence; and frowns, on the contrary, as proofs of displeasure, because they are followed by punishment. So in brutes, it is added, the expression of anger is nothing more than movements that precede or prepare the animal for bitiuj*; while that of fondness is a mere fawning or licking of the hand. The glare of an enraged lion is the mere consequence of a voluntary exertion to see his prey more clearly ; and his grin, or snarl, the natural motion of uncasing his fangs, before he uses them.* I cannot readil}'' adopt this hypothesis, as applied either to man or to quad- rup(^ds. The power of expression possessed by the latter is, doubtless, far more limited than that possessed by the former; but brutes still have ex- pression, and that, too, in the face, as well as in the general movements of the body; and expression, moreover, dependent upon the peculiar frame or feenng of the sensory, and therefore as strictly its genuine and specific sym- bols, as words are the symbols of ideas. In man, indeed, the changes of the countenance seem to proceed upon a systematic provision for this purpose; they constitute a natural language, and this so perfectly, that there is not ai, emotion in the mind which is without its appropriate sign ; while we meet with various muscles in the face, which have no other known use than that of being subservient to this important purpose: particularly those that knit the eyebrow into an energetic and irresistible meaning ; and those of the angle of the mouth, employed in almost every motion of this organ expressive of sentiment ; but peculiarly and forcibly called i-nto action in that arching of the lip which is the natural sign of contempt, hatred, or jealousy. JMr. Charles Bell, to whom we are indebted for an elegant and admirable treatise on the, anatomy of expression in painting, supports this last opinion ; but rejects the doctrine of instinctive expression in the face of quadrupeds ; contending, that even in the passion of rage, by far the most strongly marked on the countenance, the changes which take place in the features are nothing more than motions accessory to the grand object of opposition, resistance, and defence.! The inflamed eye, however, and fiery nostrils of the bull, can scarcely be ascribed to this cause; for they add nothing to the power of striking: they may, indeed, be proofs or effects of the general excitement; but to say this is to say nothing more than that they are proofs or eff'ects of the passion they indicate, and, consequently, its natural language or expres sion. Tiiey are never employed on any other occasion. " In carnivorous animals," observes Mr. Bell, " the eyeball is terrible, and the retraction of the flesh of the lips indicates the most savage fury. But the first is merely the excited attention of the animal, and the other a preparatory exposure of the canine teeth." Now, if the first be merely excited attention, we must meei with it in every instance in which the mere attention of carnivorous animals • Essays on the Anatomy of ExpreFsion in Painting bv Charles Bell, p. 84, 4fo. 1801 t lb. p 85, 86. THE EXPRESSION OF THE PASSIONS. 431 and nothing- but the mere attention, is called forth. But is the glaring and terrible eyeball here alluded to a mark of simple attention? Has any one ever seen it so in any animal, whether carnivorous or graminivorous, quad- ruped, biped, or footless ? Has he ever seen it exhibited on such occasion, 1 will not say constantly and invariably, as upon this opinion it ought to be, but in a single case of simple attention ] And in like manner, I may ask respecting the tremendous retraction of the flesh of the lips, and exposure of the teeth, — not merely of the canine teeth or tusks, as stated above, but of all the teeth of both jaws, as far as such retraction will allow, — has any one ever witnessed this movement in the action of mere seizing or biting, as, for example, in the case of devouring food ? Mr. Bell himself seems sufficiently to settle this point, by telling us, in the beginning of the passage I have just quoted, that " the retraction of the flesh of the lips indicates the most savage fury." And I may add, it indicates nothing else; it is not wanted, and is never made use of, in the muscular movement of mere biting, and, conse- quently, is an immediate symbol of the passion called into exercise. It com- mences with the commencement of this passion, and is limited to its conti- nuance and operation. What, then, it may be asked, is the use of external expression, in instances of this kind, if it do not add to the power of defence or resistance ] The proper answer must be found in the general object and intenVion of nature upon the whole of the case before us. Man, by his constitution, is designed for society and mental intercourse. But what is to draw him to his fellows.] to strip him of timidity and reserve, and fix him in communion and confidence? The language of expression — the natural characters of the countenance — the softened cheek — the smiling lip — the beaming eye — the mild and open forehead — the magic play of the features in full harmony with each other ; — which tell him, and, where arti- fice does not mimic nature, tell him infallibly, that the mind to which they belong is all sympathy, benevolence, and friendship, and will assuredly return the confidence it meets with^ But we have sufliciently seen in the last two lectures, that the mind is not always thus constituted ; that at times it is the storehouse of rage, revenge, malevolence, suspicion, and jealousy; and that to confide in it would be misery and ruin. How is a man to be on his guard on such an occasion? He again looks at the countenance, and, instead of being attracted, he is instantly repelled : the characters are now hideous; and the Almighty, as formerly upon Cain, has set a mark upon the forehead, that it may be known. Such, then, is the real use of that instinctive language of the features which is perpetually interpreting the condition of the mind ; a language of the highest importance, and of universal comprehension; and which, if ever disguised and fallacious, is almost infinitely less so than that of the lips or language. Its characters are most perfect in mankind ; but they are occasionally to be traced in quadrupeds : below which class, however, the signs of the passions, whether sought for in the face, or in any other organ, grow gradually more indistinct; or, perhaps, from our knowing less of the manners and expres- sion of the inferior classes, they appear so to ourselves, though not so in reality to others of the same kinds. ^Necratione ali& proles cognoscere matrpm Nee mater posset prolem ; quod posse videmiis ; Nee niiiius, atque homines, inter se nota cluere.* Hence alone Knows the fond mother her approi»i late youns;, Th' appropriate young tlieir rnotlier, mid the brutes As clear di^cern'd as man's sublimer race. In contemplating, then, the passions, or other affections of the mind, as cognizable by external characters, they easily resolve themselves into two descriptions — the attractive and the repulsive ; the signs of which are to be * De Rer. Nat. ii. "49^ 432 ON PATIIOGNOMY, OR sought for in man, and the nobler ranks of quadrupeds, chiefly in tho fdce^ but considerably also in the attitudes and motions of the body, while, in other animals, we are so little acquainted with these signs, as to be incapable of offering any very satisfactory or extensive opinion upon the subject. In the ATTRACTIVE AFFECTIONS, the fcaturcs, limbs, and muscles are uniformly soft and pliant— in the repulsive, as uniformly tense, and for the most part rigid. The characters of the latter, therefore, are necessarily more marked and imposing than those of the former, though both are equally true to their purpose. And in more definitely answering the question, whether the cha- racters in either case be the effect of habit or voluntary exertion to execute the feeling of the mind at the moment, or whether they be the mind's natural and instinctive symbols ; it may be still farther observed, that in all instances they are the latter, and in a few instances both ; for it by no means follows, that they are not instinctive symbols, because they serve at the same time to ward off our danger, or to inflict retaliation on an assailant. In the attractive feelings or passions, they are perhaps, for the most part, instinctive signs alone : for the natural language of dimples, smiles, laughter, a lively, spark- ling eye, or that softened outline, and uniform sweep of the whole figure, which every one knows to be indicative of tranquillity and repose, is so clear to every one, that he who runneth may read it, and be assured of finding a contented and happy companion, if not a propitious season for a suit the heart is set upon. And although in a few of the repulsive passions, as rage, terror, and revenge, I have already given examples of tlieir being mixed modes, in the greater number of .even this last class they are probably as simple instincts as in the whole of the former. For what other use than that of mere instinctive indications can we possibly assign to tears, sighs, frowns, erec- tion of the hair of the heai, f»r the dead paleness, shivering, and horripila- tion, the creeping cold, that makes the multitude of the bones to trembk under the influence of severe terror or dismay 1 In all this, there is one fact peculiarly worthy of attention ; and that is, tht admirable simplicity which runs through the whole; so that the same muscles are not unfrequently made use of to produce different and even opposite effects: and this, too, by variations, and shades of variations, so slight, that it is difficult; and in some cases almost impossible, to seize them with the pencil. When Peter of Cortona was engaged on a picture of the iron age, for the royal palace of Pitti, Ferdinand II., who often visited him, and witnessed the progress of the piece, was particularly struck with the exact representa- tion of a child in the act of crying. *' Has your majesty," said the painter, " a mind to see how easy it is to make this very child laugh?" The king as- sented ; and the artist, by merely depressing the corner of the lips, and inner extremityof the eyebrows, which before were elevated, made the little urchin, which at first seemed breaking its heart with weeping, seem equally in danger of bursting its sides with immoderate laughter. After which, with the same ease, he restored the figure to its proper passion of sorrow. The nerves that influence the expression take their rise almost entirely from one common quarter, the medulla oblongata, or that lower portion of the brain from which the spinal marrow immediately issues ;* and as all their chief ramifications associate in the act of respiration, we can readily see why the lungs, the heart, and the chest, in general, should so strikingly participate in all the changes of expression, and work up alternately sighs, crying, laughter, convulsions, and suflTocation.f * See Series i. Lecture, xv. p. 160. t Tills subject has been of late perspicuously and admirably pursued by Mr. Bell, in a scries of com munications to the Philosophical Traiis^actioris, and especially in the vnhune for 1322, p. 284, who close? Ills remarks as follows: — "To tlinse I address, it is unneressary to go fartlier than to indicate that tne nerves treated of in the.-se papers are the instruments of expression, IVnm the smile upon the infant's cheek tn the last asony of life. It is when the strong man is subihied, by this mystei ions influence ot soul and body, and when the passions may be truly said to tkar the breast, that we have the most afflict- ing pict\ire of human frailty, and the most unequivocal proof that it is ilio order of functitms which we have been consi'iering that is then affected. In the first strugijles of the infant to draw breath, in the man recovering from a state of suffocation, and in the agony of passion, when the breast labours from the in nuance at the heart, the same system of parts is affected,— the same nerves, the same muscles; and the THE EXPRESSION OF THE PASSIONS. 433 1 have said, that under the repulsive passions the muscles and features are for ever on the stretch ; though tlie tension is often irregular, and alternately softens and stiffens. This general remark will apply to grief, pain, and agony ; rage, suspicion, and jealousy ; horror, despair, and madness ; though, as I have formerly observed, this last affection cannot with strict propriety be in- troduced among the passions, being a mental disease rather than a mental emotion. Let me justify this remark by a few illustrations. " A man in great pain," observes Mr. Burke, " has his teeth set; his eyebrows are violently contracted; his forehead is wrinkled ; his eyes are dragged inwards, and rolled with great vehemence ; his hair stands on end ; his voice is forced out in short shrieks and groans ; and the whole fabric totters."* In GRIEF, there is still more violence and tension, though the tension is irregular and alternating. Where the grief is of long continuance, and deeply rooted, it gives a pale and melancholy cast to the countenance ; an air of re- serve to the manner; and an emaciation to the entire form; as though the sad sufferer were fondly nursing the viper passion that devours his bosom. Such is the exquisite description of Viola, as given of herself in the Twelfth Night :— She never told her love, But let concealmenl, like a worm i' th' bud, Feed on her damask cheek. Slie pined in thought ; And, with a green and yellow melancholy, She sat, like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief. At other times, the passion is characterized by a mingled tumult of agitation, restlessness, and bitter bewailing. Such is the general picture of Constance, in King John ; who thus, among other exclamations, weeps over the ill-fated Prince Arthur :— Grief fills the room up of my absent child ; Lies on his bed ; walks up and down with me; Puts on his pretty looks ; repeats his words ; Remembers me of all his gracious parts ; Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form : — Then have I reason to be fond of grief. In RAGE, there is the same tension, but the same irregular agitation of the muscles. " The features," as Mr. Bell justly observes, "are unsteady; the eyeballs are seen largely ; they roll, and are inflated. The front is alter- nately knit and raised in furrows, by the motion of the eyebrows ; the nostrils are inflated to the utmost ; the lips are swelled, and, being drawn, open the corners of the mouth ;f the muscles are strongly marked. The whole visage is sometimes pale, sometimes inflated, dark, and almost livid ; the words are delivered strongly through the fixed teeth ; the hair is fixed on end, like one distracted ; and every joint should seem to curse and ban." Perhaps the finest picture of this mighty passion ever presented to the world is to be found in Tasso's description of the combat between Tancred and Argante : but it is too long for quotation, and would lose half its spirit if given in any other language than the original. It is in the features of rage that the higher kinds of quadrupeds make'the nearest approach to this form of expression in man. The bull terribly de- notes it, by his inflamed eye, wide and breathing nostrils, and the prone posi- tion of his sturdy head, waiting the due moment to strike his antagonist to the ground. But of all quadrupeds, not perhaps excepting the lion, the war- horse exhibits the loftiest and most imposing character. The noblest and truest description of him that has ever been painted is in the book of Job. symptoms or characters have a strict resemblance. These are not the organs of breathing merely, bat of natural and articulate languai^e also, and adapted to the ex[)rpssion of sentiment, in the workings of th«" KO'inlenance and of the breast ; that is, by siL'ns as well as by words." * Sublime and Beautiful, part iv. sec. 3. Cause of Pain and Fear. t Anatomy of Painting, p. 139. Ee 434 ON PATHOGNOMY, OR Aliow me to quote it somewhat more correct to the original than the render- ing in our common version, which is, nevertheless, in the main, unexcep- tionable : — Hast THOU bestowed on the horse mettle 1 Hast thou clothed his neck with the thunder-flash 1 Hast thou given him lo launch forth as an arrow 1 Terrible is tlie pomp of his nostrils: He paweth in the valle}', and exuheth ; Boldly he advanceth against the clashing host; He mocketh at fear, and trembleih not ; Nor turneth he back from the sword. Asrainst him rattleth the quiver, The glittering spear, and the shield; With rage and fury he devoureth the ground, And is impatient when the truinpet sonndeth. He exclaimelh among llie trumpets, " Alia!" And scetitelh tlie battle afar off. The thunder of the chieftains, and the ghouting. Jealousy is a fitful, unsteady passion : but still the muscles are constantly more or less on the stretch ; " the eyelid is fully lifted, and the eyebrows strongly knit, so that the eyelid almost entirely disappears, and the eyeball glares from under the bushy eyebrow. There is a general tension on the muscles, which concentrate round the mouth ; and the lips are drawn so as to show the teeth, as in great pain or fury. Much of the character of the passion, however, consists in rapid vicissitudes from love to hate ; now absent, moody, and distracted ; now courting love ; now ferocious and revengeful. It is hence difficult to represent it in painting. In poetry alone can it be truly repre- sented in the vivid colours of nature ; and even of poets, Shakspeare, perhaps, is the only one who has shown himself quite equal to the task."* It is thus he describes the workings of Othello's heart, on his first crediting the slander of the seduction of Desdemona by Cassio : — O that the slave had forty thousand lives ! One is loo poor, too weak, for my revenge. Now do [ see, 'tis inie — look here, lago, — All my fond love — thus do I blow to heaven.— 'T is gone. V Arise, black Vengeance, from the hollow hell! Yield up, O Love ! thy crown and hearted throne To tyrannous Hate! — swell, bosom, with thy fraught For 't is of aspics' tongues. The general expression and features of fear, Mr. Burke has compared tc those of severe pain. Mr. Charles Bell objects to this; but Mr. Burke does not mean simple fear, but terror ; which, as we observed in a former lecture, is FEAR united to an active imag^ation; and in this sense of the passion Homer has frequently employed it : witness the emotion of Priam upon the first tidings of the death of Hector : — f Terror and consternation at the sound Thrili'd throush all Priam's soul : erect his hair, Bristled liis limbs, and with amaze he stood, Mute and all motionless. The extreme of this kind of terror is distraction: the total wreck of hope, the terrible assurance of utter and inextricable ruin. The expression of dis- traction or despair must vary with the action of the distress. Sometimes it will assume a frantic and bewildered air, as if madness were likely to afford the only relief from mental agony. Sometimes there is at once a wildness in the looks, and a total rela!xation and impotency of the muscles, as if the wretch were falling into insensibility ; a horrid gloom, and an immoveable eye, while yet he hears nothing, he sees nothing, and is unconscious of every thing around him. Such is the description of despair, as given in the well- known passage of Spenser : — ♦ Bell m suprA, p. 137. t n , lib. xxil. 401 • ' THE EXPRESSION OF THE PASSIONS. 43S The darksome cave they enter, wlier tliey find That cursed man, low sitting on the ground, Musing full sadly in his sullein mind : His griesie lockes, long growen and unbound, Disord red hong about his shoulders round, ' And hid his face, through which his hollow eyne Lookt deadly dull, and stared as astound ; His raw-hone cheekes, through penurie and pine, Were shronke into his iawes, as he did never dine.* The best picture of this passion is Hogarth's, whose scene is admirably chosen, and consists of the g-aming-house, with its liorrible implements and furniture, in which the maddening sufferer had thrown his last stake, and met his utter ruin. Tension, then, permanent or alternating, is the main character of the vio- lent and repulsive passions ; but if the attack be abrupt and intolerably vehe- ment, the nervous system becomes instantaneously exhausted, as by^ stroke of lightning ; and the muscles are instantly relaxed, paralyzed, and power- less, Milton has given us an exquisite exemplification of this in the foUow^- ing picture of Adam, immediately after the first deadly transgression. On th' other side Adam, soon as he heard The fatal trespass done by Eve, amazed, Astonied stood, and blank ! while horror chill Ran through his veins, and all his joints relax'd. From his slack hand the garland wreath'd for Eve Down dropp'd, and all the faded roses shed. Speechless he stood, and pale But let us turn to a pleasanter subject. I have said, that in the expression of the attractive passions all is flexible and pliant. Their characters are necessarily less powerful, and many of them are common to the entire class. In perfect tranquillity and content of mind, when all the passions are lulled into a calm, and the gentle spirit of imagination alone is stirring on the sur- face of the mental lake, there is, as I have already observed, a softened out- line, a smooth and uniform sweep of the entire figure ; every feature of the body uniting in the repose of the soul. Such is often the picture of him who loves Nature for her own sake, and listens with soothing meditation amid the steeps, the woods, or the wilds, that stretch their romantic scenery around him ; and calls for no companions, for he feels no solitude. To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and foil, Slowly to trace the forest's shady sci;ne. Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold; ' A lone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean ; This is not solitiide: 'tis butto hold Converse with Nature's charms, and see her stores unroll'd.t But let this' tranquillity be broken in upon by any of the agreeable passions, and still something of the same softness and pliancy of feature will remain and the changes will be neither numerous nor powerful. This remark may be strikingly verified by turning to Le Brun ; and still more so by turning to other French pathematists, who have still farther subdivided the passions. In ADMIRATION and agreeble surprise, there is a slight muscular agitation; and a gentle advance to stretching or tenseness in simple attention, venera- tion, and elevated revery ; but there i:s no constraint. The whole is calm, placid, and void of exertion. Rapture and laughter make a somewhat nearer approach to the former qualities, and especially the low broad grin of the Dutch painters ; but the muscles, though stretched, are still flexible and at ease. In eager desire we approximate more closely the tension of the violent and repulsive passions : but eager desire is a compound emotion ; it is desire with uneasiness, and, consequently, borders on pain, if it do not enter its boundary. ♦ Facris Qu'.'ene. b. i. cantos ix xxxv. t Childe Harold'isi Pilgrimage, canto a E eB im ON PATHOGxXOxMY. Hence the attractive affections are far more easy to be expressed by the painter than by the poet, and fall immediately within the range of classical sculpture, which limits itself to the calm and the dignified, and has rarely been known to wander into the regions of intensity, distortion, or violence. The poet, incapable of catching those transient lights and shades, that unutterable play of feature into feature, by which the passions of this class are chiefly distinguished from each other, is compelled to have recourse to collateral imagery, complex personification, or allegorical accompaniments. To this remark it will be difficult to find an exception in any writer. Let us take Collins as an example, who is one of the best and boldest of our lyric bards. His description of Hope, in his celebrated Ode to the Passions, is exquisitely fine, but, affer all, somewhat indefinite ; the whole of its figure being that of a beautiful nymph, with fair eyes, an enchanting smile, and wavy golden hair, accompanied with a lyre or some other instrument, for we are not told what, which she strikes to a song of future or prospective pleasure, amid the echo of surrounding and responsive rocks, and woods, and valleys. But thou, O Hope, with eyos so fair, What was thy deligiiied measure 1 Still it whisper'd promised pleasure, And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail. Still would her touch the strain prolong, And from the rocks, the woods, the vale, Shecall'd on Echo slill through all the song. And where her sweetest theme she chose, A soft responsive voice wjis heard at every close. And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair. The portrait is graceful, elegant, and animated ; but I may venture to say, that the only real expression of the character of Hope, is derived, not from the features of her person, but from the subject of her song, the whisper of promised pleasure, the hail of distant scenes. I say not this, however, ais a proof of the imperfection of the artists, but of the art itself. Let us try another description from the same captivating production. The mello-w horn having just been sounded and laid devu by '../elanoholy, thft poet proceeds as follows ; — But O how alter'd was its sprighllier tone When cHEERFCLNKss, a nymph of heaU/ i' .t hue, Her how across her shoulders slung. Her buskins gemm'd with morninsde.v, Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thjcjef r»in^, The hunter's call, to Faun and Dryad known. The oak-crown'd sisters and their cfaite-eyed queen. Satyrs atid sylvan boys were seen Peeping froiri forth their allevi {^reen ; Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear, • And Sport leap'd up, andseizc'«i his beechen spear. The remark I have just made will apply to the whole of this admirable groui than which a finer or more correct and accordant was never offered to tht world. The passion of cheerfulness gives, indeed, a specific expression and character to the countenance that sufficiently identifies it to the beholdoi, and is sufficiently capable of being seized and fixed by the painter; but it is not calcu- lated for poetry, and the only feature Mr. Collins has copied into Inn dcscrip tion is that of a healthy hue. But he has admirably atoned fov thi?. pcveity of his art by the picturesque scenery and associates with which he hao ^arrGLnded her, and in which the province of poetry has an inexhaustible miuf. of wealth; and as much exceeds that of painting as painting exceeds poetry in 'the deli- neation of specific features and attitudes. Cheerfulness, thovgh not distin- guishable by the features of her person, is sufficiently msAe /.nov/n to us by the company she keeps, by her attire, her manner, and h*,r a-jicor.trements. One of the finest pictures and sweetest groupings of \\\Xr, ./ilcgorical kind to be met with in our own language, is contained in tl/C /o;;^/vving verses of Dr. Darwin's Ode to May in his Botanic Garden. //)V)' are worthy oJ Anacreon or Pindar. ON PHYSIOGNOMY AND CRANIOGNOMY. ItT Horn In j on blaze of orient sky. Sweet May, tliy radiant form unfold ; Unclose lliy blut', voluptuous eye, And wave thy shadowy locks of gold. For t)iee the fi agrant zepiiyrs blow ; For thee descends the sunny shower ; The rills in softer nun niurs flow, And bi iglitef blossoms gem the bower. Lipht Graces, dress'd in Howry wreaths, And tip-toe joys their hands combine; While Love ilie ibnd contagion breathes, g • And, laughing, dances round tliy shrine. This subject is a pleasing one ; but it swells before me to infinity, and I must drop it. In the lecture for next week, we shall enter upon the doctrine of physiognomy, or the permanent influence of the mind upon the exterior of the bouy. LECTURE XIIT. ON PHYSIOGNOMY AND CRANIOGNOMY, OR THE EXPRESSION OF THE TEMPER AND TALENTS. The ingenuity of man is never satisfied with research. In tracing out the disposition of the mind by the variable features of the face, it has been dis- covered that this last, though a general criterion, is not always an infallible sign. It does not in every instance, it is said, disclose even the present and acting emotion ; for, in some persons, the symbols are naturally slight and evanescent ; while in others, from a long and skilful course of hypocrisy and dissimulation, they are repressed, or even fraudulently exchanged, for symbols representative of afi'ections which have no real existence. But still less do they manifest the fixed and permanent propensity of the mind, which is ever pursuing its specific drift, whatever be the transition of the passions or of the features from one character to another. And it has hence been inquired whether there may not be some soberer and less variable index by which the natural bent and tendency of the mind may be detected ; a something that no art can imitate, no dissimulation conceal, inwoven in the toughest and hardest, as well as hi the softer and more flexible parts of the body — in the very tissue and figure of the bones ; and, consequently, which Grows with our growth, and strengtiiens with our strength. From such inquiries has arisen the study, for it can scarcely be called the science, of physiognomy, — Temper-indicction, or Temper-dialling <, — for such is the meaning of physiognomy, when strictly translated. It is a figurative term, which supposes the body to be a dial-plate on which the habitual turn or bearing of the mind is shadowed by means of the index or gnomon of some fixed and prominent external distinction, which retains its power and pur- pose amid all the fleeting changes of the passions, and the mask of made-up smiles and serenity. This study is of early date, and in its descent to our own day has met with a perpetual alternation of evil report and good report, in proportion as it has acquired the favouritism or encountered the rejection of public opinion. Aristotle appears to have been the first philosopher who attempted to reduce it to any thing like a scientific pursuit, and to fix it upon any thing like per- manent and undeniable principles. His definition of it is excellent : " It is the science," says he, " by which the dispositions of mankind are discover- able by the features of the body, and especially by those of the countenance." And in the developement of ihis pursuit he advanced it as a leading doctruie, that a peculiar form of body is invariably accompanied by a peculiar dispo- 438 ON PHYSIOGNOMY sition of mind ; that a human intellect is never found in the corporeal form of a beast ; and that the mind and body exercise a reciprocal influence over each other: referring us for examples of the former to delirium and intoxi- cation, in which the mental follows upon the corporeal derangement ; and, for examples of the latter, to the passions of fear and joy, in which the body inversely displays the affections of the mind. As the result "'of this principle and illustration, he argues, and no modern writer upon the subject has ever argued more clearly, that whenever among mankind a certain bodily character appears, which by prior experience and observation has been found uniformly accompanied by a certain mental dis- position, we have a right to infer that it is necessarily connected with it ; and we may fairly and legitimately ascribe it to the individual that exhibits such character. And, pursuing this line of application, he tells us farther, that our observations may be drawn from other animals as well as from men; for, as a lion possesses one bodily form and mental character, and a hare another, the corporeal characteristics of the lion, such as strong hair, deep voice, large extremities, when discernible in a human being, cannot fail to raise in the mind an idea of the strength and courage of that noble animal ; while the slender limbs, soft down, and other features of the hare, whenever visible, or approximated among mankind, betray the mental character of that pusillani- mous quadruped. It is impossible to refuse our assent to sentiments' so just and obvious ; and to this extent almost every one is a physiognomist by nature ; for no man can walk the streets without noticing, in the first place, a marked and striking difference between one face and another face, one form and another form ; and, in the second place, without ascribing, in consequence of such difference, the possession of vigour to one person that passes by, wisdom to a second, magnanimity to a third, folly to a fourth, debility to a fifth, and meanness to a sixth. Physiognomy, therefore, as to its general principles, has perhaps never been altogether neglected; it seems in almost every age to have influenced men's opinion and conduct in first associating with strangers ; and has not unfrequently excited a favourable or an unfavourable prepossession before a word has been spoken or an action performed. As a science, though an im- perfect one, it was pursued, upon the general doctrines of Aristotle, among the Greeks and Romans, till the downfall of all the sciences upon the irrup- tion of the northern barbarians into Europe, towards the close of the fifth cen- tury; and was for a long time so systematically cultivated at Rome, that Cicero was in the habit of publicly availing himself of its force whenever, by employing it so as to excite contempt or hatred, it could be turned to the advantage of his client ; of which we have striking examples in his orations against Piso, and in favour of Roscius ; while we learn from Suetonius that the emperor Titus engaged a professed physiognomist, of the name of Nar- cissus, to examine the features of Pritannicus as to his character and chance of success in his claims upon the empire against himself; who, it appears, gave an opinion in favour of Titus, and declared, and, according to the event, declared truly, that Britannicus would never live to assume the imperial purple. In this curious fact of history we find physiognomy united at an early pe- riod of the Roman empire with magic or judicial astrology ; and we also find that upon its revival, on the general resurrection of science about the middle of the fifteenth century, one of its first and most ujifortunate occurrences was a connexion of the same kind ; from which it only separated to form other and successive alliances with metaphysical theology, alchymy, the doctrine of signatures and sympathies, and the theosophy of the Mystic^ and Rosicru- cians. So that it again fell into contempt with the most liberal and enlight- ened part of mankind ; who, however, did not give themselves the trouble to sift the wheat from the chaff. And though occasionally started afresh in literary journals, and other publications of considerable merit and authority, as, for example, by Dr. Gwyther and Dr. P;ivsons in our own Philosophical Transactions ; by Pernetti and Le Cat, in the Transactions of the Berlin AND CRANIOGNOMY. 459 Academy; and in the separate writings of Lancisi, Haller, and Buffon ; it was not till the appearance of the elegant and popular work of M. Lavater* the well-known dean of Zurich, that piiysiognomy was again able to establish itself as a scientific pursuit in the good opinion of mankind. The two grand objects of M. Lavater were to clear physiognomy of its mystical and other adventitious connexions, and to advance it to the rank of an exact and demonstrable science. The first of these was as judicious as the second was absurd : for he himself was at the time in possession of nothing more than a certain number of detached facts or fragments, which he did not venture to communicate to the world in any higher form than that of essays. His work is chiefly distinguished by a spirit of analysis, and at times of anatomy, to which no other work on the subject had hitherto pre- tended. Instead of generalizing the human form, and taking the features by the group, as was the case with Aristotle, and is the case with mankind at. large, he aimed at separating the features from each other, and endeavoured to assign to each its peculiar bearing. And, fally believing that the general character of the mental disposition runs with a uniform and uninterrupted harmony through every feature and every organ, he frequently trusted to a single feature or a single organ for its developement. In doing which he usually selected such as were least flexible, and by the mass of mankind least suspected; as the form of the bones, particularly those of the head or face ; the shape of the ears, hands, feet, or even of the nails ; and he hereby endeavoured to baffle all dissimulation, and to avoid confounding the perma- nent temper with those occasional flights of passion by wliich the flexible features are disturbed and varied. We have not time to follow up M. Lavater's hypothesis into these points of detail, nor would it be altogether worth our while if we had. The author was a learned and most excellent man, but at the same time a man of a warm and enthusiastic imagination ; and notwithstanding that his remarks are in many respects precise, and his distinctions acute, and aflbrd evident proof of their being the result of actual observation ; and notwithstanding, more- over, that they are richly illustrated, after the laudable example of Baptista Porta, by expressive and elegant engravings, — the declamatory tenor of his style, the singularity and extravagance of many of his opinions, his peremp- tory and. decisive tone upon the most vague and disputable topics, his puffing up trifles into matters of magnitude, and the absurd extreme to which he pushed his hypothesis, so as to make it embrace and exemplify the face and features of all nature as well as those of man and the higher ranks of quadrupeds ; — these and various other sproutings of the warm and luxuriant fancy I have just referred to, prevented his work from obtaining more than a transient popularity; and it sunk beneath the attacks of M. Formey and other continental writers, who laboured, and some of them perhaps disinge- nuously, to point out its defects and extravagances. Perhaps one of the most whimsical of M. Lavater's opinions is, that no person can make a good physiognomist unless he is a well-proportioned and handsome man ; a position which seems to be altogether at variance with his own progress in the study, for the dean of Zurich had few pretensions to such a figure. Another singularity of opinion was that of his extending his physiognomic characters to the peculiarity of the handvvriting; and in this instance reviving the reveries of many of the ancient mystics, who pretended to confide iii the same mark; while by interweaving into the body of this science a belief in apparitions, and this, too, upon very peculiar and fanciful principles, he has indirectly connected it with the dark and exploded study of divination, from which it was one of his first and most prominent objects to separate it. I will only farther observe, that in the wide extent to which he carried this favourite and fascinating science of his heart, he describes the whole mate- rial world as subject to its dominion; amuses us with a developement of the propensities, partialities, and ruling passions, not only of men and quadrupeds, but of birds, fishes, reptiles, and insects, from the unequivocal language of 440 ON PHYSIOGNOMY their external expression ; and makes the reputable class of tradesmen, pro- bably without their knowledge, the deepest physiognomists in the world ; for the trader, says he, when in the act of dealing, not only at once decides that his customer has an honest look, a pleasing or forbidding countenance, and trusts or forbears to trust him accordingly ; but determines by its colour, its fineness, its exterior, the physiognomy of every article of traffic. How far the former part of this last remark may apply to M. Lavater's own country- men, the honest and enlightened traders of Zurich, I will not pretend to say ; but it is highly probable that there are some before me who have not always felt themselves able to read the characters of the countenance quite so well as is here supposed of them, and to whom a few additional lessons from the Zurich counting-house, or the Zurich professor, might have been every now and then of no small service in the transactions of buying and selling; and have saved them, in various instances, from bad debts and impositions. Having pointed out these defects, it becomes me to observe, that, with all its blemishes, M. Lavater's Essays form the best and fullest book on the sub- ject we at present possess. To say nothing of its language, which, though far too florid, is animated, and often elegant, it is a rich repository of isolated facts, shrewd remarks, and ingenious suggestions ; and with less fancy, and more judgment, would have been, and must have been, the favourite text-book of every physiologist in this branch of natural philosophy. Nor, even as it is, can it ever be neglected by any one who is desirous of establishing phy- siognomy upon a permanent and sober basis ; and of analyzing the causes, and determining the real principles, upon which every one pretends to judge, whether rightly or wrongly, of the internal qualities of the mind, by the ex- ternal features of the body ; and, consequently, as in the case of astronomy, gives proof that the study is founded in nature, although its specific laws have not had the good fortune, like those of gravitation, to be systematically sought out and exemplified. It is from this last circumstance, in connexion with M. Lavater's desultory and erratic mode of handling his subject, that other philosophers have been induced to abandon altogether the common ground of the general form and features, upon which mankind in all ages, whether learned or unlearned., have hitherto reasoned, and to inquire whether there may not be some less sensible and obvious, but at the same time more fixed and scientific, more exact and immediate, index in some part of the human figure, which may in- fallibly direct us to the same ends. No minister has hence devised more schemes for taxatirn, no insurance-broker more modifications for a lottery, than this general research has given rise to — this philosophical rage T' expatiate free o'er all this scene of man, This miglity maze, but not without a plan ; This wild where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot; Tliis garden, templing with forhidden fruit. Of all these attempts, however, there is but one that is in any degree worthy of notice, or that has acquired any considerable degree even of transitory popularity; and this is the hypothesis of Dr. Gall of Jena, who has been greatly indebted to his friend Dr. Spurzheim for a popular ditfusion of his doctrine over most parts of Europe. This learned philosopher, being deter- mined to deviate as far as possible from the beaten path, left the face or front of the head to the rest of the world, and took the crown and back part for his own use. He conceived, first, that as all the faculties of the mind are limited to the common sensory or organ of the brain, nature, like a skilful general, instead of confounding every part with every part, and every faculty with every faculty, has marshalled this important organ into a definite number of divisions, and has given to every faculty tl^e command of a separate post. He conceived, secondly, as the general mass of the brain lies immediately under the cranium or scull-bone, and is impacted into its cavity with the utmost exactness, that if any one or more of the aforesaid faculties, or, which \6 the same thing, any one or more of the aforesaid divisions of the brain AND CRANIOGNOMY. 441 allotted to their control, should be peculiarly forward and active, such divi- sions must necessarily grow more abundant, and give some external token of such abundance by a constant pressure against those particular portions of the cranium under which they are immediately seated, and whicli, by un- interrupted perseverance, and especially in infancy and early life, when the bones of the cranium yield or are absorbed easily, they must elevate and ren- der more prominent than any other part.* And, thirdly, he conceived, that every man having some faculty or other more marked or active than the rest, or, in his own phraseology, more sensibly manifested, from which, indeed, his peculiar disposition or propensity takes its cast, must necessarily also have some peculiar prominence, some characteristic bump or embossment, by which his head is distinguishable from all others, or at least from all others of a different temper, or attracted by different objects of pursuit; and that nothing more is necessary than to determine the respective regions of the dif* ferent faculties which belong to the brain, in order to determine, at the same time, from the external bump or prominence, the internal propensity or character. These premises being in his own mind satisfactorily established. Dr. Gall next set to work with a view of deciding the relative parts of the brain possessed by the different faculties or their respective sentient organs. And having settled this important point to his own thorough conviction, he immediately made a map of the outside of the head, divided it into cor- responding regions, and was able, in his own opinion, to indicate to a demon- stration the characteristic temper or tendency of every man presented to him by a mere glance of the eye, or a mere touch of the finger. For, in the lan- guage of Dr. Spurzheim, " in order to distinguish the developement of the organs, it is not always necessary to touch the head ; in many cases the eye is sufficient."! Let me not, however, do injustice to the, talents of the inventor of this hypothesis. For he is not only possessed of a lively ingenuity and fancy, as his speculation, thus far unfolded, must suggest to every one, but he is also a man of learning, and of patient and indefatigable research. And such is the plausibilityof his scheme, that he has contrived to enlist under his banners not a few philosophers and physiologists of considerable eminence and merit, among whom 1 may especially mention Dr. Bojames, who was one of the first to publish an account of this singular line of study to the world, and, as already observed, Dr. Spurzheim, M'ho is at this moment lecturing upon the subject in this raetropolis.| The allotments of the different parts of the brain, and the consequent lay- ing down of the outside of the cranium into a superficial map of mental qua- lities or sensations, was a work of great patience and investigation. To accomplish it, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of human sculls, of known cha- racters and propensities, were examined, and their peculiar impressions, whe- ther prominences or indentations, were noticed and arranged. These were afterward compared with the respective tempers and inclmations of the par- ticular subjects while alive; and the whole tried by the craniognomy, as it was called, of other animals celebrated, in common language, for the acute- * " It seems to me, that at least a great part of every organ lies at tlie surface; and that if the part of any organ be well developed, the whole participates of this developement." Spurfchcim, Physiognom System, p. 2G4.— In p. 240, he adaiiis, however, " that the orcans are not confined to the surface." t Physiog. System, p. 261. t'l'liis lecture was delivered at the time of Dr. Spurzheim's first visit to England, for ihe purf)ose of illustruiing his hypothesis, which has certainly possessed every advantage of which it is susceptible from his exertions and talents. Yet it is well known, that scarcely an individual among the more disiinguisiied anatoniisis or physiologists of our own country have been led to adopt his views. To the discrepancy of Sir Everard Home's conceptions the author will have occasion to advert in a subsequent note. The fol- lowing is the opinion of Mr. Charle.* Bell in his very excellent paper on the nerves of the orbit of the eye, as coniaint-d in ihe Philosophical Transactions for 1823, p. 306 : — "But the most extravagant departure from all ine legiiiinale modes of reasoning, though slill under the colour of anatomical iiive.-tigntion is the system of Dr. Gall. It is sufficient to say, that, without comprehending the grand divit^ions of the ^ervous system ; without a notion of the distuict properties of the individual nerves; or, wiihont having made any distinction of the columns of the spinal marrow ; without even having ascertained the difference of cerebrum and cerebellum. Gall proceeded to describe the brain as composed of many particular and independent organs, and to assign to each the residence of some special faculty." 442 ON PHYSIOGNOMY ness of their respective instincts ; but, in the language of Dr. Gall, for the acuteness of their predominant organs of sensation; in whose sculls cor- respondent symbols were observed, or supposed to be observed. The whole was hence reduced to one regular system : the brain was found to consist of thirty-three separate parts or chambers, and, consequently, the superincumbent cranium was divided into as many sections, from the lowest part of the back of the head, over the crown, to the orbits of the eyes. It is not my intention to dwell upon any of these chambers or superficial sections. To enumerate them, with a few explanatory hints, is all we can find space for; and even this, I am afraid, cannot be done without an occasional verifi- cation of the poet's remark, that there may be situations in which, although To laugh is want, of goodliiiess and erace, Yet to be grave excot-ds all power of face The following is the classification of the diflferent mental powers of the brain, and the order in which they lie, according to the table of Dr. Bojames, one of Dr. Gall's earliest and most assiduous pupils, commencing, as I have already observed, at the lowest part of the back of the head : — I. Organ of tenacity of life. II. Of Self-preservation. III. Selection of food. IV. Or- gan of the external senses. V. Instinctive sexual union. VI. Organ of the mutual love of parents and their oflfspring. VII. Organ of friendship. VIII. Organ of courage. IX. Organ of murder or assassination. X. Of cunning. XI. Circumspection. XII. Vanity, conceit, or self-love. XIII. Love of glory. XIV. Love of truth. XV. General memory, otherwise called sense of places and things. XVI. Painting, or sense of colours. XVII. Sense of numbers. XVIII. Musical sense. XIX. Sense for mechanics. XX. Verbal memory. XXI. Sense for languages. XXII. Memory of persons. XXIII. Liberality. XXIV. Talent for satire. XXV. Talent for comparing things. XXVI. Metaphysical talent. XXVII. Talent for ob- servation. XXVIII. Goodness. XXIX. Theatrical talent. XXX. Theoso- piiy. XXXI. Perseverance. The remaining two, to complete the thirty- three, being, at the time Dr. Bojames wrote, unappropriated ; a sort of terra incognita, which the master of the system had not yet sufficiently explored, but one of which he subsequently discovered to be, the natural organ for theft or stealing.* A few alterations have since been made in the general arrange- ment, both by Dr. Gall himself and by several of his pupils, especially by Dr. Spurzheim, but of no essential moment in a cursory survey.f It is not a little singular that men should be supposed to be prx)vided by nature with express organs for the cultivation of murder and theft-; terms which are softened down by Dr. Spurzheim, in his own catalogue, into the words DESTRUCTIVENESS and covETisENEss: but which, in the body of his work, he treats of under the common and. more intelligible names. The proofs of these organs have been laboured with peculiar force, and not witiiout some apology for their formation. " Our opponents," says Dr. Spurzheim, " maintain that such a doctrine is both ridiculous and dangerous ; ridiculous, because nature could not produce any faculty absolutely hurtful to man ; dangerous, because it would permit what is punished as a crime by the laws. Gall was accustomed to answer, nobody can deny the facts which prove that theft exists ; and as it exists, it is not against the will of the Creator; and there are very few persons who have never stolen anything. The organ is, moreover, very considerable in inveterate thieves."! The morality here offered is certainly not of the purest kind. It directly * The Physingnomonical System of Drs. Gall and Spurzlieim, Sec. p. 280, 8vo. Lond. 1815. t'l'he table, as modified by Dr. Spiirzheiin, gives lis tiie following arrancement: — 1. Order of ama- liveness. 2. Philoprogeniiiveness. 3. Inhabiliveness. 4. Adliesiventss. 5. Combaiiveiiess. 6. De- ftructiveness. 7. Conslriicliveness. 8. Coveliseiiess. 9. Secreiiveness. 10. Self-love. 11. Approliatioru 12. Cautiousness. 13. Benevolence. 14. Veneration. 15. Hofie. 16. Ideality. 17. Cons«:ionsnes8. 18. Firnittess. 19. Individuality. 20. Form. 21- Size. 22. Weight. 23. Colour. 24. Space. 25. Order. 26. Time. 27. Nuniberv 23. Tune. 29. Language. 30. Comparison. 31. Causality. 32. Wit. 33. Imitation. t Pliyiolog. Sy.Htem, &;c. p. 398, 8vo. Lond. 1815. AND CRANIO GNOMY. 443 avows that the Creator has given an express sanction and countenance to robbery and murder by the construction both of the body and mind ; by natural organs and propensities for the commission of these crimes. It cannot, in- deed, be denied, that God has willed them, for nothing can take place con- trary to his will. But there is a little logical nicety or special pleading in this assertion, and it is necessary to recall to our recollection what I endea- voured to prove in a late lecture,* that the will and the the desire are two distinct attributes ; though in ordinary language confounded and used synony- mously. It is true, then, that God has willed robbery and murder ; but it is equally true that he has not desired them : it is equally true, that he has most positively expressed his desire upon the subject, and has forbidden them under the severest threats. Gur duty, therefore, is to attend to the prohibi- tion': our moral conduct is to be collected from his desire, and not liom his will, excepting where the word will is employed in its popular sense, and synonymously with desire. The professors of this new physiognomy, how- ever, having thus advanced their peculiar doctrine upon the subject before us, endeavour to illustrate it by copious examples of persons, who, from being endowed with the stealing bump and stealing organ, had a peculiar and irre- sistible propensity to rob and plunder. Among these, Dr. Spurzheim intro- duces various characters whom we should not very readily have suspected of belonging to a gang of thieves.- He tells us of a chaplain in a Prussian regiment, a man of great intelligence and ability, who could not avoid (for these are his words) stealing handkerchiefs from the officers at the parade. He informs us, that Victor Amadeus I., king of Sardinia, took every where ob- jects of little importance ; and, what will still more astonish the audience be- fore me, that M. Saurin, the Genevese pastor, though acquainted with the best principles of reason and religion, was overcome continually by this propensity to steal. He has given us, however^ no authority for this last assertion ; and no such calumny should be believed without full proof. There is, indeed, an endeavour, on the part of Dr. Spurzheim, though 1 do not find he is supported by any of his colleagues, to let down, in some degree, this charge against nature and the Author of nature, by telling us, that though the organs exist that bear these names and produce a specific propensity, they do not urge on the individual to the actual commission of great crimes of this kind till they are very largely developed, and the developement has not been controlled by other faculties, which he seems to intimate may have an influence upon them. " These functions," say s he, " are abuses, which result from the highest degree of activity of certain organs, which are not directed by other faculties." Now, in the first place, it should seem, by his own examples, that other faculties have very little control overthe master-organ or propensity at any time : for even admitting the truth of his extraordinary anecdote con- cerning M. de Saurin, there can be no doubt that all his faculties of morality and religion were habitually at work in repugnancy to his faculty of thieving, and yet, according to Dr. Spurzheim, to no purpose. But, secondly, the learned writer exhibits a strange inconsistency, in regarding the full developement of a function "as the abuse of a function." The function is a natural power; its growth is a natural power; and hence its full developement, or "the highest activity of the organ," instead of being an abuse of such organ or function, ought only to be regarded as its natural perfection. And, lastly, let the matter be how it ma)^ the man, even in his moral character, is passive under every stage of its progress ; or, in the more tangible and explicit lan- guage of M. Magendie, " 11 est impossible de se changer a cet egard. Nous RESTONS TELS QUE LA NATURE NOUS A FAITS."t , . Not a few persons will, perhaps, be surprised at finding, that nature has likewise kindly provided us with an impulsory organ for theatrical amuse- ments ; and that she thus seems satisfactorily to have settled the lawfulness and expediency, so eloquently and forcibly controverted by the learned Bos- suet, about a century ago, of frequenting theatres and encouraging the drama, ♦ Seri^a ui. Lecture vili. | Precis E16menlaire, 2 toms. 8vo Paris, 1818, 1817 441 ON PHYSIOGNOMY The relative position, moreover, of the different organs I have thus far noticed, is an object of no small curiosity. In the map of the scull those of murder and thieving lie immediately next to those of friendship and courage; while the region for comedies and farces lies directly between the boundaries of moral goodness and theosophy or religion : concerning which last Dr. Bojames expresses himself as follows ; " The organ of theosophy occupies the most elevated part of the os frontis. All the portraits of saints which have been preserved from former ages afford very instructive examples ; and, if this character be wanting in any one of them, it will certainly be destitute of expression. It is excessively developed in religious faiiatics, and in men "who have become recluse through superstition and religious motives. It is the sent of this organ," continues he, with a subtlety of reasoning .worthy of Aquinas, "which, according to Dr. Gall, has induced men to consider their gods as above them, or in a more elevated part of the heavens ; for otherwise," he adds, " there is no more reason for supposing thajt God exists above the world than below it." The theological world cannot but be infinitely obliged to Dr. Gall and Dr. Bojames for this new and unanswerable proof of the divine existence. God, it seems, exists, and must exist, because many men have a bump upon the crown of the head which these philosophers choose to call a religious bump. Dr. Gall, indeed, contends openly that this organ " is the most EvmENT proop OF THE EXISTENCE 01' GOD." I quote the words of his learned colleague. Dr. Spurzheim,* who is perpetually using the word proof in the vaguest manner possible, though a manner common to the school. " In general," says Gall, in continuation, " every other faculty of man and animals has an object which it may accomplish. Can it, then, be probable that God does not exist, while there is an organ of religion ? Hence, God exists." The next benefit we obtain from the discovery of this important organ and embossment is, that it settles the long-contested question concerning the nature and extent of the divine residence — the locality or ubiquity of the Deity. God, it seems, must exist above us, for the religious bump is on the top of the scull ; and he cannot exist any where else than above us, because there is no religious bump in any other direction. The noble Catholicism, moreover, of this incontrovertible proof cannot fail to be matter of the highest gratification ; a Catholicism that puts that of Christianity to the blush, at the thought of its own narrowness ; for the de- monstration before us extends equally to all gods, and to all religions : it is founds we are told, in the portraits of saints ; but it is most highly developed in reWg'ious Janatics, and in men who have become recluse through superstition. Surely, if i)r. Gall or Dr. Bojames had looked a little more closely, they might have discovered that the still vacant region (vacant, at least, at that time) is the seat of absurdity or folly, and that some heads they are acquainted with are not without its mental manifestation. There is not quite so much, per- haps, to condemn in Dr. Spurzheim's remarks upon the same organ; for this most able advocate of the school thinks more clearly, and writes more cau- tiously in the main : but he also very closely touches, at times, upon the re- gion of absurdity, if he do not absolutely fall into its boundary; and, in unit- ing the name of our Saviour with that of Jupiter, seems to show, that the same cast of religion, as well as of moral philosophy, is common to the school. His remarks are as follows : — " The pictures of the saints show the very configuration of those pious men whom Gall had first observed. It is also in this respect remarkable that the head of Christ is always represented as very elevated. Have we the real picture of Christ ? Have artists given to the head of Christ a configuration which they have observed in religious per- sons, or have they composed this figure from internal inspiration. Has the same sentiment among modern artists given to Christ an elevation of head, as among the ancient it conferred a prominence of the forehead upon Jupiter ? At all events,the shape of the head of Christ contributes to prove this organ- ization "* • Physiolog System, ut supra, p. 414. t Ibid. p. 412. AND CRANIOGNOMY. 445 Now, in this very singular passage there are three propositions, concern- ing which, it is difficult to say which is to be admired most ; ^ proof deduced from queries, which the author is incapable of answering ; the idea that our Saviour possibly sat for his picture ; and the idea that modern artists are pos- sibly i?ispired when they paint his image from their own conceptions. I must leave the reader to make his own comments (for I dare not trust myself upon the subject) concerning the edifying resemblance which is here pointed out between the head of the Saviour of the world and that of the Jurn-ER of the Greek poets ; and the unity of sentiment which has ever, it seems, prevailed between ancient and modern artists, when engaged in studying these sacred models.* In seriousness and sobriet}', however, it is not a little extraordinary, not only that folly or absurdity, but that wisdom, hypocrisy, gluttony, drunken- ness, sensuality, mirth, melancholy, and some dozens of other powers and faculties of the most common kind, should have no chamber allotted to them, no protuberance or manifestation, in the hypothesis before us. During an interview I had some months ago with Dr. Spurzheim, I started this difficulty for explanation ; but his reply was at least not satisfactory to myself. It may be sufficient to observe, as a single example, that for the organ of glut- tony he referred us to the stomach ; but this is rather to evade than to meet the difficulty. The stomach is unquestionably the organ of hunger, as the eye is of sight, and the ear of hearing; but if the painter, who derives a pleasure of a peculiar nature from the eye, as in the case of colours ; or the musician, who derives a pleasure of a peculiar nature from the ear, as in the case of sounds, have an express chamber in the brain, by which such peculiar plea- sure is alone excited, and on which it alone depends, so ought the glutton, who derives a pleasure of a peculiar nature from the stomach. While, if there be no such cerebral region or chamber in the brain, and, consequently, no external developement or manifestation of gluttony, or any of the other feelings or sentiments I have just glanced at, the system itself, even admitting its general truth, must be so far imperfect and unavailing : it must dwindle into a half science, and be more liable to lead us astray than aright. There is also another powerful objection, which I will beg leave to state, as I stated it at the same time to the learned lecturer I have just alluded to, though, so far as appeared to myself, without a successful solution. It is this. The strictly obvious or natural divisions of the brain are but three ; for we meet with three, and only three, distinct masses, — the cerebrum or brain properly so called, the cerebel or little brain, and the oblongated marrow. The first, as we have formerly observed, constitutes the largest and uppermost part-; the second lies below and behind ; the third level with the second, and in front of it ; it appears to be a projection issuing equally from the two other parts, and gives birth to the spinal marrow, which is thus proved to be a con- tinuation of the brain extended through the whole chain of the spine or back-bone. Now, as the brain consists naturally of three, and only three, distinct parts, it may be allowable and pertinent. to suppose that each of these parts is * It is always amusing, and sometimes instructive, to trace llio learned rovings of different philosophical imjiginations, when indulging in a like pursuit; to mark the point from wiiich they set out, and follow up the parallelism or divergency of tlieir respective courses, when aiming at a common goal. Sir Everard Home, whom every one will allow to be as deeply versed in the interna! structure atui the external nutp- ping of the brain as cither Dr. Gall or Dr. Spuizlieim, seems also, from a late article in the Philosophiciil Traiisaili