, irlSM'' ■ '$ •■"«•/■ '4. •■ae- ,*t>* ARMY MEDICAL LIBRARY WASHINGTON I'o uncled 1836 i (.^-K-Cl Section___________......___ Number 0-.w..a\...0..>Q.T4.. Form 113c, W. I). S. G. O. 'O 3—10543 (Rovwrd Juno 13, 1936) garner's StmotDpe 25&ttfon. THE BOOK OF !!•?% BY V ^. f JOHN MASON £OOD, M.D. F.R.S. FT MEM. AM. PHIL. SOC. AND F.L.S. OP PHILADELPHIA. fl*e*tfe^ FROM THE LAST LONDON EDITION. TO WHICH 18 NOW PREFIXED, A SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. vV • T .f*N% COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. Mfc* it" . HARTFORD. BELKNAP AND HAMERSLEY. 1837. on m not 3 SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW-YORK, ». BE lTREMEMIHSRED.Toalontbe 3d day of January, A. D 1831, in the fifty-fifth yar of'the'n^™d™"^fhf' ^j States of America, J. & J. rfARPER, of the said district, haw deposited in this office the title of a book, the nght wueixo. •hey claim as Proprietors, in the'words following, to wit: '• The Book of Nature. By John Mason Good, M.D. F.R.S. F.R.S.L. Mem. Am. lliil. Soc. and F.L.S. of Philadelphia. To whicl is now Prefixed, a Sketch of the Author's Life." In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the Uniied States, entitled " An Act for the encouragement of Learning, by k;curin» fhe cool™ 0™™. "haftl and books, to the author, and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned." An* *soKn Act entitled^'An Act, supplementary to an Act, entitled an Act for -he encouragement of Learning, by securing Ow copin of maps, charts, and books, to the author, and proprietors of sort, copies, during the t,me» therein mentioned, and ex- tending the beu&ts thereof to the arts cf designing, engraving, and etching historical and other P™£EDER,CK j BETTSj Clerk of the Southern Dutr'iet oj A'ftL- Tor*. 6 * ■*- >'»I -' •*■ - ,' \.V " ,>• \ ' .|, N> rP '"< < tr+h-fi . ^ ^ « SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. In attempting to furnish the readers of " The Book of Nature" with a delineation of the life and character of its distinguished author, even a more experienced biographer might approach the task with hesitancy. The writer of the following sketch will not therefore affect to conceal his apprehensions that in so brief a space as is allotted to him, he may fail of doing 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, professional, 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 surprising genius, untiring industry, and extraordinary erudition. And though the lines are traced 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 constituted his theme. Little 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 father; 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 personal friends,— the number of pupils being limited to sixteen. There he very early acquired those habits of study, and that taste for literary pursuits, 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 laid the foundation for his subsequent high attainments as a linguist. When he was a little more than twelve years of age, his indefatigable studies began very seriously to impair his health, and his sedentary habits 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 partake A2 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. with his pompanions of those rural and healthful sports, so necessary to mental relaxation and corporeal strength. And although he seemed to have no relish 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 performed 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 establishment, almost entirely without super- intendence, engrossed most of his time. He nevertheless began under these embarrassing circumstances to study the Italian language, of which he soon made himself master; and his commonplace book shows with what zeal, industry, and effect 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 purpose 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 formed a mutual and endearing attachment, each having availed himself of opening prospects Which simultaneously 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 liondon 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 which, " 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 in 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 written on his marriage, before he found, alas ! " a worm was SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. v in the bud of this sweet r6se." In a little more than six months his beloved companion died of consumption. Such was the shock upon his sensibilities produced by this sad and me- lancholy 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 1789, he married a second time. The object of his choice was the daughter of Thomas Fenn, Esq., a highly respectable banker at Sudbury. With this lady, who possessed superior excellence and worth, he shared the conjugal endearments during the last thirty-eight years of his life. The fruits of this 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 t 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- pect of competence and even wealth was opened before hirn. But too soon he proved the versatility of all human possessions; for in 1792, by becom- ing legally bound for the debts of others, or by lending a large sum of money to personal 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 offered by Mr. Fenn, he esti- mated his loss as the penal infliction for his imprudence, and therefore de- termined to tax his mental resources for his penance ; and to his misfor- tune 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 plays, made translations, composed poems and philosophical essays, which, though possessed of acknowledged merit, 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 London, and engage in partnership with a surgeon and apothecary of ex- tensive 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. But again he was doomed to the sad and unavoidable defeat of his apparently well-founded expectations ; for, having 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. vi 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 con- tinual incentives to his professional activity and to the most extended literary 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 difficulty, 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 cure 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 li 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 translation 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 World ;" and the third, " The Nature of the Mind." To these lectures 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 fifteen miles a day through the streets of London, until the year 1820, when he added 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 within two years, " The Study of Medicine" was finished. This work the British SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S' LIFE. va 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, literary and professional, and such the splendid acquirements which he gained by his genius and 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- nagement 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 tlian 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 occupations 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. less, and was eventually led to embrace its doctrines and its spirit as the great ultimatum of human attainments. In the language of his bio- 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 mind 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 he admired the general system of revelation, and ably as he could defend it, it would seem that he vacillated in his creed from 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 pursuino the most 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 Socinianism, 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'S LIFE. IX 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 the New Testament, to assert that the apostles indulged in far-fetched reasoning, or made use of a Creek word (/lovoyo-rjs) which conveyed 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 sophism that ' where mystery begins religion ends.' Being ' buried alive' in occupations, and immersed in vexations of no ordinaiy 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 literary 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 interest- 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 1824, 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 adopting erroneous sentiments, yet he never entirely lost his love of truth ; and hence the forced and unna- tural criticisms in which his 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 preaching 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- mendation of skepticism, led to the following correspondence. "To the Reverend-------. " Caroline Place, Jan. 2Gth, 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 society with which I have cordially associated for nearly fourteen years " I sincerely respect your talents, and the indefatigable attention you have X SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. paid to Biblical and theological subjects : 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 being 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 ministry, 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, clearly and free from all doubt. " I mean merely to repeat what I understood to be the general sense of the proposition; and not to contend that my memory has furnished me with your own words. 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 faithful friend and servant, " J. M. Good." " To John Mason Good, 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 pri- vate judgment, I would be the last person to object to the exercise of that right 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. xi Christian revelation, I should, 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 a 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, u_________________" " To the Reverend--------. " Caroline Place, Jan. 29th, 1807. " Dear Sir, " I am obliged 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 the 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. Ajid here, without ad- verting to other expressions of a similar nature, suffer me to close with ask- ing you, whether I can legitimately draw any other conclusion from such a proposition, than that a skepticism, in 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 1 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 servant, " 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 his cordial persuasion, that the evangelical representation of the doctrines Xli SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. of Scripture was that which alone accorded with the system of revealed truth, and declared his conviction, " that there was no intermediate ground upon which a sound reasoner could make a fair stand between that of pure Deism, and that of moderate orthodoxy, as held by the evangelical classc* 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 of 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 BiblS are inserted, written by himself. " Hebrews 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 Ave 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 their 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 high-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 exhorted 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.'" " Genesis ii. 23, 24. Under the figurative language contained in these two verses is a concealed representation of the whole mystery of the gospel —the union of Christ with the church, the glorious bride, that in the fulness of the times 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 are 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 either himself or the deed he has committed from their eyes. But most 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 sjxame. is able by any means to discern a covering that may conceal the SKETCH OF THE AUTHORS LIFE. xi u naked deformity of his person from the penetrating eye of his Maker. One such covering there is, and but one, and blessed is he who 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. IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD; AND THE WORD WAS WITH GOD, AND THE WORD WAS GOD. O word ! O wisdom ! heaven's high theme ! Where must the theme begin ?— Maker and Sufferer !—Lord Supreme ! Yet sacrifice for sin ! Now, Reason ! trim thy brightest lamp, Thy boldest powers excite ; Muster thy doubts, a copious camp— And arm thee for the fight. View nature through—and, from the round Of things to sense reveal'd, Contend 't is thine 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 line, By logic's nicest plan, That Man could ne'er be half divine 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 learn'd submit: Here learning I despise, Or only own what Holy Writ To heavenly minds supplies. O Word ! O Wisdom !—boundless theme Of rapture and of grief:— Lord, I believe the truth supreme, O, help my unbelief. This devotional effusion furnishes us 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 poetical 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 xiv 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 minutiae 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, zoology, 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 paucity of the labourers too deep, to induce him for a moment to wish 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 frequently 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 date July 27th, 1823, is here inserted. "FORM OF PRAYER, " Which 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 I am removed to a state where personal vanity can have no access, and the opinion of the world can be no longer of any importance. I should wish it to close the subsequent editions of my ' Study of Medicine.' " O thou great Bestower of health, strength, 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 that 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 spirit 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 are 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, O 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 adopted 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- rial is, to live it down by perseverance in well-doing; and by praying to God that he would cure the distempered minds of those who traduce and injure 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 path seemed, like " that of the just," to " shine brighter and brighter even to the perfect day." Mark the humility, devotion, and faith which were exhibited in the hour of his approaching dissolution. He called the members of his family around his bed, and thus addressed them : " I haye 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, xvi SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. hat I have lived below its privileges. I have had large opportunities given me, but I have not improved them as I might. I have been led astray by the vanity of human learning, and by the love of human applause."" How insignificant are the highest intellectual 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, the 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 articulation was gone, and he was almost in the embrace of death, when his kind clergyman repeated the words, " Behold the Lamb of God !" he added, as the last effort 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, Haller, 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 blissful immortality. 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 correcting 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, arid subject. He regretted his inability of acceding to so kind a request at that particulai 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 presei text slightly varied from what was xviii 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- scription, it was wisely resolved, almost from the first, to make a yearly encroachment upon the capital, and to maintain the Institution at its zemth 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 surroimded, 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 delivered, that chiefly induces him to hope for a favourable reception of them in their present form. The progress of time, 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. TABLE OF CONTENTS. SERIES I. NATURE OF THE MATERUL WORLD ; AND THE SCALE OF UNORGANIZED AND ORGANIZED TRIBES THAT ISSUE FROM IT. I^CL pa(;e 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............... . 57 VI. On Geology..................65 VII. The Subject continued..............73 VIII. On Organized Bodies, and the Structure of Plants compared with that of Animals................81 IX. On the general Analogy of Animal and Vegetable Life .... 93 X. On the Principle of Life, Irritability, and Muscular Power . . . 102 XL 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 II. NATURE OF THE ANIMATE WORLD ; ITS PECULIAR POWERS, AND EXTERNAL RELATIONS ; MEANS OF COMMUNICATING IDEAS ; FORMATION OF SOCIETY. Lect. Pap) 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............231 VII. On Sleep, Dreaming, Revery, and Trance; Sleep-walking, and Sleep-talking . . . .•.............243 1 xx CONTEx\TS. 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 XII. On the Dark or Middle Ages.............299 XIII. On the Revival of Literature.............312 SERIES III. NATURE OF THE MIND: ITS GENERAL FACULTIES AND FURNITURE. Lect. Paee 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 III. On Human Understanding.............342 IV. The Subject continued..............351 V. On Ancient and Modern 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 XL On Temperaments and Constitutional Propensities.....422 XII. On Pathognomy, or the Expression of the Passions.....429 XIII. 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..........46Q THE BOOK OF NATURE. SERIES 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 labouredin 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 lie 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 ceoloffy 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 onlv 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 philosovhia prima, or universal science of the great author I have just ad- V6My sole object, however, is to communicate information so far as I may . „<• t oaminir h ii n 52 56. vol. i. 4tb. General science is Iiere divided into three * AdTt£Sna de^SW or Divine Philosophy. II. Doctrina de natura, or Natural1 Philosophy. ffiEit £d homineTSlnan Philosophy, fhe common stem from which they rarmfy » deuomi nattdSosophia Pri"'a> P™itive. •ummiiy.or un.versal philosophy. 56 ON MATTER, AND be able; to exhaust nothing, but to touch upon many things; to give 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 moment 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 1 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 ? 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 Laertius, "that nothing could * This, and two or three subsequent passages in the present lecture, are given summarily from an ampler and more recondite view of the subject in the author's prolegomena to his translation of "thb MATURE Cr 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 Greek* it passed to the Romans, and appears as follows in Lucretius :— ubi viderimus nihil posse creari De nihilo, turn, quod sequimur, jam rectius inde Perspiciemus.* Admit this truth, that naught from nothing springs, And all is clear. And it was thus long afterward reiterated by Persius, as the common doc- trine of his day:— gignl De nihilo nil, in nihilum nil posse reverti.f 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 ?"% 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" % &n6(xpov toijs ;§ while Athenagoras, Tatian, Theopbilus 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 follows : " 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. m T Sat. iii. 83. t The passage is quoted from M. Anquetil du Perron's Latin version. The reader may And various winilar extracts in Sir William Jones's works, vol. vi. 4to. edit. $ Cap. xl. 1". 28 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 nt 2, "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 jnj 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 and 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 xi3 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 affirms, 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 hypotheses0were invented to avoid it, of which the three following appear to have been the chief; each of them, however, if I mistake not, plunging us into an absurdity ten times deeper and more inextricable. The first is that of ay absolute and independent 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 a 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 former other, is to be traced through 2 o 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 J it for a moment capable of standing the test of sober inquiry. We mav U gard matter as essentially and eternally intelligent, or as essentiallyandliter nally unintelligent; as essentially intelligent in its several D-irts nr »« ;L tially intelligent as a whole. The dilemma is equal in all thesleases M '!" ter cannot be intelligent as a whole, without being int^lTigent in every atom] A MATERIAL WORLD. 29 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 essentially 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 ;f 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. O ye, whose hearts are pu/e ! how could something arise out of nothing 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 Aridri! thou art the moon! thou art substance! thou art Djam! thou art the earth! thou art the world! 0 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! O thou, of all mysteries the most mysterious! O 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 See Transl. of Lucr. 1. p. 282. t Tom. i. Paris, 1802 i Acts, xvii. 23. 30 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 jEschylus, in a passage still stronger in point, and imbued with the full spirit of Brafimism :— Jupiter is the air; Jupiter is the earth; Jupiter is the heaven; All is Jupiter.! 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, all proceeds from Jove. Female is Jove, immortal Jove is male; Jove the broad earth—the heaven's irradiate pale. Jove is the boundless spirit, Jove the fire That warms die world with ferling 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 embiaces 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 l'Immortalite de PAme," printed at Paris in 1802. 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 sufficiently 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(t At&s apxTiTov uearai it Atdj itaoai ulv ayvtai, Xlaaat i' avdptiirtav ayopak uteri) ii &d\aaaa, Koi Xtptevci' -nivrrj it Aidj Ktxp>'il*t8a xdvrtS' Tou ydp ical yevos iopev. Lib. i. 1. | Zeis ianv aldfjp, Zeis re yff 7.tiis 6i oipavii, Zeis TU itdvra. t Zeds irpCrof yevho, Zeis Coraros Apxnctnatvof Zeis K£0aX^, Zeiii /tiaaa' Aids 6' ck ndvra rirvKTOV Zeis aporiv ytviro, Zeis ap6poros eirXero j-w'/i^ij' Zeus Ttvdfifiv yairis ra Ka\ ohpavov aareptevros' Zeis nvotfi iravrdv Zeis aKd/iara irvpbs upM' Zeis irivrov pflja* Zeis S)A«os W* otMjvri- Zeis PatrtXtus' Zeis avris faravrlbv aj>xtyive6\os'_ 'Ev Kpiros els Aatn&v yivero, ucyas ap\os airavruv' Hdvra yap iv ucyaXif Zrjvbs riot awuan Ktirai. Ex. Apul. $ See Sir W. Jones's Works, i. p. 449. A MATERIAL WORLD. 31 the great doctrines of a future state and the immortality of the soul. In our own day we allow to it a very liberal extent of bold imagery and poetic license, and with such allowance it may be perused without mischief; but a few verses alone are sufficient to prove its evil bearing, if strictly and literally nterpreted. The following distich, for example, beautiful as it is in itself, discloses the very quintescence of Spinosism :*— All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God the soul: and the general result drawn from the entire passage, which is too long to be quoted, is no less so:— In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, whatever is, is right. If every thing be right at present, there is no necessity for a day of correction or retribution hereafter; and the chief argument afforded by nature in favour of a future existence is swept away in a moment. Unite the propositions con- tained in these two couplets, and illustrated through the whole poem, and it follows that the universe is God, and God the universe; that amid all the moral evils of life, the sufferings of virtue, and the triumphs of vice, it is in vain to expect any degree of compensation or adjustment in a future state; every thing being but an individual part of one stupendous whole, which could not possibiy exist otherwise; and that the only consolation which re- mains for us under the pressure of pain or calamity is, that if we are. not at ease, there are others that are so—that if our own country is devoured by war, or desolated by pestilence, there are countries remote from us that know nothing of such afflictions—that the general good is superior to the general evil, and made to flow from it, and, consequently, that whatever is, is right — If plagues and earthquakes break not Heaven's design, Why then a Borgia or a Catiline 1 The third hypothesis to which I have referred, is that of the idealists, or those who maintain that there is no such thing as a material or external world; that the existence of man consists of nothing more than impressions and ideas, or of pure incorporeal spirit, which surveys everything in the same unsubstantial manner as the visions of a dream. Some of the tenets of Malbranche appear to have a tendency to this theory; but it has been chiefly developed in modern times by Bishop Berkeley and Mr. Hume. Their premises are indeed somewhat different, but their conclusion is the same; excepting that the argument is pressed much farther by the latter than was ever intended by the former, and leads to more dangerous consequences. In Germany, Professor Kant has allowed a part of this tenet, as well as parts of various other tenets,! to enter into his system, or that which he chooses to distinguish by the name of the Transcendental Philosophy, and which not long since bade fair to obtain a universal sway over the Continent, though for some years it has appeared to be considerably declining in its reputation. It was my intention to have traced the origin of the ideal hypothesis, and to have pointed out its sophisms, but our time will not allow me; and it is the less necessary, as I shall have an opportunity, on a future occasion, of re- verting to all these various conjectures and examining them at full length.J But why, after all, is it necessary to support the proposition, that " nothin - can spring from nothing ?" Why may not something spring from nothing, when the proposition is applied to Omnipotence ?§ I may be answered, per- haps, because it is a self-contradiction, an impossibility, an absurdity. This, however, is only to argue in a circle ; for why is it a self-contradiction, or an impossibility 1 " It is impossible," said M. Leibnitz, " for a thing to be • See the author's Prolegomena to his translation of the Nature of Things, p. c.rxvi. t Degerando, Histoire Compare des Systemes de Philosophie, torn. ii. 17. t Series m. Leer. v. i See the author's Prolegomena, et supra, p. lxxviii. • 32 ON MATTER, AND and not to be at the same time." This impossibility I admit; because, to assert tire contrary, would imply a self-contradiction absolute and universal, founded upon the very nature of things, and consequently applicable to Om- nipotence itself. But the position that " nothing can spring from nothing" is of a very different character: it is necessarily true when applied to man, but it is not necessarily true when applied to God. Instead of being absolute and universal, it is relative and limited; the nature of things does not allow us to reason concerning it when its reference is to the latter: and hence we have no authority to say that it is impossible to the Deity; or to maintain that an absolute creation out of nothing by the Deity is an absurdity or self-contra- diction. It is absurd to suppose that matter does not exist; it is absurd to suppose that it does exist eternally and independently of the Creator; it is absurd to suppose that it constitutes the Creator himself: but, as it is not ab- surd to suppose its absolute formation out of nothing by the exercise of an almighty power, and as one of these four propositions must necessarily be true, reason should induce us to embrace the last with the same promptitude with which we reject the other three. So far, indeed, from intimating any absurdity in the idea that matter may be created out of nothing by the interposition of an almighty intelligence, reason seems, on the contrary, rather to point out to us the possibility of an equal creation out of nothing of ten thousand other substances, of which each may be the medium y.i 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? 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 ] Did the Power that spake it into existence give it from the first the general order and harmony and perfection that prevail at present 1 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 1 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 1 It is of little importance which of these splendid fancies we adopt; for all 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 Buffon, 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 lawrs 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 * Thil. Trans, vol. Ixxxiv. c 34 ON THE ELEMENTARY 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 accounted 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. But 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, it 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 of 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 leno-th moul- der into one common elementary mass, and furnish fresh fuel for fresh o-ene- 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 fruo-al eco- nomy 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 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 unfrequentlv 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- • See Dr. Herschel's Observations compared with Flamsteed's, Phil. Trans, vol. IxxUL art. J7 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 mistaken 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 Iv^vtos k-nSvyta, " an in- nate propensity to disorder,"! in that eternal and independent principle of matter out of which all visible things are created. How much more consolatory, as well as agreeable to right reason, is the view taken of this abstruse subject in the pages of genuine, unsophisticated, and unphilosophized revelation, in which the present is represented as a state, not of actual necessity, but of preordained probation; willed, in infinite wisdom, by the great First Cause, to promote the best ultimate happiness of man: and matter as a substance produced out of nothing by his almighty fiat! It was one of the express objects of the preceding lecture to prove, not only that matter does exist, in opposition to those who have thought it expe- dient to deny the being of a sensible and material world, but that it could not exist by any other means; and that, while there is no self-contradiction or absurdity in contending that matter, and that ten thousand other substances than matter, may be produced out of nothing by the energy of an infinite and omnipotent intelligence, there is so pure and perfect an absurdity in en- deavouring to account for its existence upon every other theory which has hitherto been invented, that right reason should induce us to embrace the former opinion with the same promptitude with which we fly from every opinion that opposes it. •- "Matter, then, is the production of an almighty intelligence, and as such is entitled to our reverence; although, from a just abhorrence of many ancient, and not a few modern errors, it has too often been regarded in a low and contemptible light. Though not essentially eternal, as was contended for by all the schools of Greece and Asia, nor essentially intelligent, as was contended for by several of them, it evinces in every part and in every ope- ration the impress of a divine origin, and is the only pathway vouchsafed to our external senses by which we can walk- Through nature up to nature's God; that God whom we behold equally in the painted pebble and the painted flower—in the volcano and in the cornfield—in the wild winter storm and in the soft summer moonlight. Although, when contemplated in its aggregate mass, and especially in its organized form, it is perpetually changing, it is every where perfect in its kind, ancj even at present bears indubitable proofs of being capacified for incorruptibility. In its elementary principles it is maintained by the best schools of both ancient and modern times to be solid and unchangeable; and, even in many of its compound forms, it discovers an obvious approach to the same character. The firm and mighty mass that constitutes the pyramids of Egypt has resisted the assaults of time and of tempests for, perhaps, upwards of four thousand years, and by many critical antiquaries is supposed to have triumphed over the deluge itself. While there is little doubt that the hard and closely crystallized granitic mountains of every country in which they occur," the everlasting hills," to copy a cor- rect and beautiful figure from the pages of Hebrew poetry, are coeval with the creation, and form at this moment, as they formed at first, the lowest depths, as well as the topmost peaks of the globe. That they are in • Thetet. t. i. p. 176. f Ibid. X Phileb. See also Bruchcr, Hist. Phil. lib. ii. cap. viii. $ 1. 36 ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT every instance considerably attenuated and wasted away admits, indeed, of no doubt; but to have borne the brunt of so long and incessant a warfare, without actually being worn down to the level of the circumjacent plains, affords no feeble proof of an almost imperishable nature, and a proof open to the contemplation of the most common capacities. There are various examples of the Macedonian stater or gold coin, struck in the reign of Philip, at this time preserved in the rich cabinet of the Flo- rence gallery,* which, though they have continued in existence for at leasi _ 2200 years, do not not appear to ha^e lost any thing of their weight. Bar ' thelemi, making a trivial mistake in the weight of the drachma, which he calculated at 66.55 grains English, suspected that these had sustained upon the average a loss of about seven-eighths of a grain during this long period: but as M. Fabbroni has since satisfactorily proved that the drachma was nol more than 66.8 grains, and as this is the actual weight of several staters in this cabinet, we have a demonstration that they have sustained no diminution whatever. Yet, in its liquid and gaseous state, matter often exhibits still more extra- traordinary instances of indestructibility or resistance to decomposition; and it should be especially remarked, that its indestructibility or indecomposable power appears to hold a direct proportion to its subtility, its levity, its activity, its refined ethereal or spiritualized modification of being. WTater is as much a compound as any of the earths, yet we have strong reason for believing that for the most part it exists unchangeably from age to age; and that its integrity has been not essentially interfered with from the commencement of the world. Its constituent parts are by no means broken into, but continue the same, whether under a solid form, as that of ice; under its usual form, as that of a liquid; or under an elastic form, as that of va- pour : it is the same in the atmosphere as on the earth; it falls down of the very same nature as it ascends, and the electric flash itself appears, generally speaking, to have no other influence upon it than that of hastening its precipi- tation. It is only to be decomposed, that we know of, by a very concentrated action of the most powerful chemical agents; and even this, whether bv art or by nature, upon a very limited scale. A similar identity appears to exist in atmospheric air, which is, probably at least as indestructible as water; for its Composition, when pureed of 'he heterogeneous substances which are often combined with it, is the same in the deepest valleys as on the highest cliffs ; at the equator, and at the poles • the earth s surface, and the height of 21,000 feet* above it: in many of which situations, and especially the more elevated, it is impossible for it ever to be generated; since the constituent parts of which it is composed are not found to exist in a separate state for its production. It is capable, indeed, of de- composition; but, like water, becomes decomposed with great difficu tv and probably consists at this moment, as to its general mass, of the very ident c particles that formed it on its first emerging from a state of chaos. , a- V?erC°mp°f ltl,°nl_ °f ,he subtler £ases we know nothing. The specific Stofseveralofthem has been ascertained, and the constitu^t prSSSS of one or two of them, as nitrogen and hydrogen, have been guessed at but nothing more; for the boldest experiments of chemistry have hi'herto " been exerted in yam to effect their decomposition. While as to those S are more immediately connected with the principle of animal life and UDnn which many schools of modern philosophy have supposed it altoSther to de" pend, as caloric and the electric and voltaic fluids, the last of which seenS in truth to be only a peculiar modification of the second, together vvhhoSer substances or qualities which in subtilty and activity hafe a consideraWp resemblance to them, as light and the magnetic aura, we are not only whonv incapable of decomposing them by any process whatever but evennv£! y mining them to be ponderable, or to possess anyof thlather common n-' perties of matter, as extent and solidity. Whence we arelln famineaP^ » See Nicholson's Journal, vol. xxxii. p 25 f See Thomson's Chem. vol. iv. 61, as also Phil. Mag. xxi. 225. PRINCIPLES OF THINGS. 37 ot ascertaining whether they be matter at all, whether mere qualities of mat- ter, or whether some other more subtle and spiritualized substances,* inter- mixing themselves under different combinations with the material mass, and giving birth to many of its most extraordinary properties and phenomena. The question is entered upon at some length by Professor Bezelius, in his " Explanatory Statement," published in the Memoirs of the Academy of Stockholm for 1812, in which he endeavours to support the probability that the electric fluids and caloric are material as well as the fluid of light; but, to do this, he is compelled to alter the common definition of matter, and to con- tend that matter does not necessarily possess gravitation or aggregation-! The materiality of light has been attempted to be proved by its effects on solutions of muriate of ammonia and prussiate of potash, when placed in a situation to be crystallized. The crystallization of these salts may be directed at pleasure by the introduction of light at one or the other side of the ves- sels containing such solutions. Camphor displays a like affinity for light. All this, however, shows merely that light possesses an influence of some kind; but it by no means establishes that such influence is a material one.J Is it inquired to what important point these abstruse speculations lead ? 1 may reply, among others, to the following: First, to a probability, if not to a proof, that matter, under peculiar modifi- cations, is capable of making an approximation to something beyond itself, as ordinarily displayed; and hereby of becoming fitted, whenever necessary, for an intercourse and union with an immaterial principle. And, secondly,-to a clearer view of the coincidence of natural phenomena with one of the most glorious discoveries of revelation. For notwithstand- ing that matter, under every visible shape and texture, is at present, in a greater or less degree, perpetually changing and decomposing, the moment we perceive that this is not a necessary effect, dependent upon its intrinsic nature, but a beneficial power superadded to it for the mere purpose of render- ing it a more varied and more extensive medium of being, beauty, and happi- ness—the moment we find ground for believing, that in its elementary prin- ciples it is essentially solid and unchangeable; and that even in many of its compounds it is almost as much exempted from the law of change—we are prepared to contemplate a period in some distant futurity, in which, the great object for which it has been endowed with this superadded power being accomplished, the exemption may extend equally to every part and to every compound : a period in which there will be new heavens and ,a new earth, and whatever is now corruptible will put on incorruption. But what, after all, is matter in its elementary principles, as far as we are capable of following them up? Can it be divided and subdivided to infinity 1 or is there a limit to such divisibility, beyond which the process cannot pos- sibly proceed? and if so, are the ultimate bodies into which it is capable of dissolving still susceptible of developement, or, from their attenuation, re- moved beyond all power of detection ? These are questions which have agitated the world in almost all ages, and have laid a foundation for a variety of theories, of too much consequence to be passed over in a course of physical investigation. The tenet of an infinite divisibility of matter, whether in ancient or modern times, appears to have been a mere invention for the purpose of avoiding one or two self-contradictions supposed to be chargeable upon the doctrine of its ultimate and elementary solidity; but which, I much fear, will be found to have given birth to far more self-contradiction than it has removed. The mode of reasoning, however, by which this tenet was arrived at in ancient Greece, was essentially different from that by which it has been arrived at iv our own day. It being, as we observed in our last lecture, an uncontroverted maxim among all the Greek philosophers, of every sect and school whatever, that nothing could proceed from nothing, matter was of course conceived to have * See Young's Lectures, vol. ii. p. 742, lee. Ix. t s«e Nicholson's Journal, vol. xxxiv. p. 161,165. t See Accum's Elements ot Crystallography, and Tillocb'f Pis' Mag. vol. xli. p. 367. 38 ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT existed eternally, or it could not have existed at all. But it appeared obvious to most of them, that matter is as certainly unintelligent as they conjectured it is certainly eternal. The existence of intelligence, however, is still more demonstrable throughout nature than the existence' of matter itself; and hence such philosophers were driven to the acknowledgment of an intelli- gent principle distinct from a material substance ; and from the union of these two powers they accounted for the origin of the world : matter being merely passive and plastic, and put into form and endowed with the qualities and properties of body b}^ the energy of the intelligent agent. But if form and corporeal properties have been communicated to it, it must, before such com- munication, and in its first or primal state, have been destitute of form ; and that it was thus destitute is incontrovertible, continued the same schools of philosophy, because form presupposes the existence of intelligence, and must be, under every shape and modification, the product of an intelligent energy; for it is impossible that matter could have had a power of assuming one mode of form rather than another mode : since, if capable of assuming any kind, it must have been equally capable of assuming every kind, and, of course, of exhibiting intelligent effects without an intelligent cause, which would be utter nonsense. Such is the general train of reasoning that seems to have operated upon the minds of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, in impelling them to the belief that matter, in its primary state, to adopt the words of Cicero, in which he ex- plains the Platonic doctrine, " is a substance without form or quality, but capable of receiving all forms, and undergoing every kind of change ; in doing which, however, it never suffers annihilation, but merely a solution of its parts, which are in their nature infinitely divisible, and move in portions of space which are also infinitely divisible."* But if we abstract from matter form and quality, and at the same time deny it intelligence, what is there left to constitute it an eternal substance of any kind ? and by what means could pure incorporeal intelligence endow it with form ? These difficulties are insuperable; and, though attempted to be explained in different ways by each of these philosophers, they press like millstones t upon their different systems, and are perpetually in danger of drowning them. Pythagoras compared the existence of matter, in its primary and amorphous state, to pure arithmetical numbers, before they are rendered visible by arithmetical figures. " Unity," says he, "and one (the former of which he denominated monad) are to be distinguished from each other: unity is an abstract conception, resembling primary or incorporeal matter in its general aggregate ; one appertains to things capable of being numbered, and may be compared to matter rendered visible under a particular form." So again, "Number is not infinite any more than matter; but it is never- theless the source of that infinite divisibility into equal parts which is the property of all bodies."f Numbers, however, were not more generally had recourse to by Pythago ras, to typify elementary matter under different modifications, than they are in the present day by the most elaborate chemists, to express its particular combinations: "As in all well-known compounds," observes Sir Humphry Davy, " the proportions of the elements are in certain definite ratios to each other, it is evident that these ratios may be expressed by numbers."! In consequence of which they are so expressed in various places by himself, and by many French, Swedish, and English chemists, the hint having been first suggested, I believe, by Higgens or Dalton. And hence the doctrine of numbers is well known to have been very largely and very repeatedly had recourse to under the Pythagorean system, and to have been used in explana- tion, not only of the endowment of different portions of matter with different forms, but of the harmony with which the different natures of matter and * Acad. Quaest. lib. i. cap. 8. tlS^^^^^S^^ ThemistlnPhysVK;S.2f:Pp:i6i72.See •""En- PRINCIPLES OF THINGS. 39 mmd unite in identic substances. Numbers and forms are, in consequence, not unfrequently contemplated as the same thing—as the models or arche- types after which the world in all its parts is framed—as the cause of entity tO Visible beings : tovs apidjiois ahiovs eivat Tijs ovalas* And hence, again, under the term monad, or unity, Pythagoras is generally conceived to have symbolized God, or the active principle in nature; under duad, the passive principle, or matter; and under triad, the visible world,*- produced by the union of the two former. Pythagoras, however, was as much attached to music as to numbers, re- garding it as a mere branch of the science of numbers applied, to a definite object. He has, indeed, the credit of having invented the monochord, and of having applied the principles of music, as well as those of numbers, to the study of physics. He conceived that the celestial spheres, in which the pla- nets move, striking upon the elastic ether through which they pass, must pro- duce a sound, and a sound that must vary according to the diversity of their magnitude, velocity, and relative distance; and, as the adjustment of the heavenly bodies to each other is perfect in every respect, he farther conjec- tured, that the harmony produced by their revolutions must also be the most perfect imaginable: and hence the origin of a notion, which is now, however, only entertained in a figurative sense, a sense frequently laid hold of by our own poets, and thus exquisitely enlarged on by Dryden :— \ From harmony, from heav'nly harmony, This universal frame began. When Nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay, And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high, ( ' Arise, ye more than dead ! t Then hot and cold, and moist and dry, I In order to their stations leap, And Music's power obey. From harmony, from heav'nly harmony, j This universal frame began; From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, '■ The diapason closing full in man. . What Pythagoras thus called numbers, Plato denominated ideas; a term which has, hence, descended to our own day, and is on every one's lips, although in a different sense from what it originally imported. The reason or wisdom of the great First Cause, and which he denominates the logos of God^ b \6yos, or 6 \oytanbs rev Oeov, and not unfrequently Avuwvpyds (Demiurgus), Plato describes as a distinct principle from the Original Cause or Deity himself, from whom this efficient or operative cause, this divine wisdom or logos, emanates, and has eternally emanated, as light and heat from the sun. Thus emanating, he conceived it to be the immediate region or reservoir of ideas or intellectual forms, of the archetypes or patterns of things, subsisting by themselves as real beings—tA Svtws fora—in this their eternal and original well-spring; and the union of which with the whole, or any portion of primary or incorporeal matter, immediately produces palpable forms, and renders them objects of contemplation and science to the external senses.f It is, hence, obvious that Plato contended for a triad or trinity of sub- stances in the creation of the visible universe—God, divine 3visdom, or the eternal source of intellectual forms or ideas, and incorporeal matter. And it is on this account that several of the earliest Christian fathers, who, as I have already observed, had been educated in the Platonic school, and had imbibed his notions, regarded this doctrine as of divine origin; and endeavoured, though preposterously, to blend the trinity of Plato, and that of the Christian Scripture, into one common dogma: an attempt which has been occasionally revived in modern times, especially by Cudworth and Ogilvie, with great profundity of learning and great shrewdness of argument, but, at the same time, with as little success as in the first ages of Christianity. * Arist. Met lib. i. c. 6. Plut. Plac. Phil lib. i. cap 3. Athenag Apol 4? t Plac. Phil lib i. cap. x Tim lib c. 40 ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT It is to this theory, which, indeed, is highly fitted for poetry, and much better so than for dry, dialectic discussion, Akenside beautifully alludes in the first book of his " Pleasures of Imagination:"— Ere the radiant sun / Sprang from the east, or, mid the vault of night, I The moon suspended her serener lamp; > Ere mountains, woods, or streams adorn'd the globe, ; Or Wisdom taught the sons of men her lore; Then lived th' Eternal One : then, deep retir'd In his unfathom'd essence, view'd the forms, The forms eternal of created things: The radiant sun, the moon's nocturnal lamp, The mountains, woods, and streams, the rolling globe, And Wisdom's mien celestial. From the first Of days, on them his love divine he rix'd, His admiration ; till, in time complete, What he admir d and lov'd his vital smile Unfolded into being. Hence the breath Of life in forming each organic frame; Hence the green earth, and wild-resounding waves; i Hence light and shade alternate; warmth and cold; I And clear autumnal skies, and vernal showers; : And all the fair variety of things. While, however, we thus point out the fancifulness and imperfections of these hypotheses, let us, with the candour of genuine philosophy, do justice to the merits of their great inventors, and join in the admiration which has been so duly bestowed upon them by the wise and learned of every country. It was Plato who first suggested to Galileo, even upon his own confession, that antagonist power by which a rectilinear motion can be converted into an orbicular, and thus laid a basis for our accounting for the regular movements of the heavenly bodies,* a subject upon which we shall enter to a certain ex- tent in our next lecture; who, in some degree, anticipated that correct system of colours which nothing but the genius of a Newton could fully develope and explain ;f who, in mathematics, unfolded to us the analytic method of solving a problem,! and in theosophy so far surpassed all the philosophers of his country, in his correct views and sublime descriptions of the Deity, that he seems almost to have drunk of the inspiration of Horeb or of Sinai; and who, in his Timaeus, applies to the wisdom of God, the Xoyiands tov eeov—a term which in Hebrew could scarcely be translated by any other word than that of Jevah or Jehovah—*fis Svtws atl,§ " whatever is essentially eternal." Of Pythagoras, it is only necessary to direct the attention to the two fol- lowing very extraordinary facts, to place him beyond the reach of panegyric ; the first of which has occasionally furnished reflection for other writers, though the latter remains unnoticed to the present moment. At an antedate of two thousand two hundred years from the age of Copernicus, this won- derful genius laid the first foundation of the Copernican system, and taught to his disciples that the earth revolves both around her own axis and around the sun; that the latter motion is conducted in an oblique path or zodiac ;|| and that the moon is an earth of the same kind as our own, and replete with animals, whose nature, however, he does not venture to describe.TP The second extraordinary fact to which I allude, is one we have already slightly glanced at, but which must not so cursorily be relinquished; I mean that, in ascribing to the primary or elementary forms of bodies, in their unions with each other, relative proportions so exact, yet so diversified, that forms and numbers may be employed as synonymes or convertible terms, he has ex- hibited so close a coincidence with one of the latest and most surprising dis- coveries of the present day, that though I dare not call it an anticipation, I * Galilei Discorsi & Dimostrazioni Matematiche, p. 254,4to. Leyd, 1638. Dutens, Origine des Decou vcrtes, &c. p. 90, 4to. Lpnd. 1796. t Plut. de Placitis Philbs. lib. i. cap. 15, p. 32. Dutens, ut supr. p 101 t Dutens, nt supr. p. 251. § Plutarch, in Tim.' lib. iii. 34. 37. Jl ^T^Z^f 'Vl'"?- Vi;vCap- "« I3- Diog- Hert- lib- viii- sect- 85' Copernicus himself admin that he derived his first hint of the.earth's motion from Nicetas, a follower of Pythagoras. Vide his address lO x 3.U1 111, in Yn'ar^- ?Placit-Cicf ••■ Acad. Qu»st. lib. iv. p. 984, col. 1. Something of this doctrine is to be found In the Orphic Hymn. Procl. de Orpheo, lib. iv. in Timseum, p. 154. PRINCIPLES OF THINGS. 4\ am at a loss how else to characterize it: for it has been minutely ascertained within the last ten or twelve years, by an almost infinite variety of accurate and well-defined experiments by Higgens, Dalton, Gay Lussac, and Davy, that the combinations and separations of all simple bodies are conducted in a definite and invariable ratio of relative weight or measure ;* as that of one part to one part, one part to two parts, one to three, or one to four; and, con- sequently, that every change in the compound thus produced, whether of ad- dition or diminution, is a precise multiple or divisor of such ratio; or, in other words, that the different elementary bodies which enter into such compounds can never unite or separate, never lay hold of or let go each other, in any other proportions. Let us exemplify this remark by a familiar instance or two. It is now well known to every one that the calxes, oxides, or, as they are often called, rusts, of metals, consist of a certain portion of oxygen with a certain portion of the metal, which is thus converted into a calx or oxide. It is also known in the present day to most persons, that the greater number of metals are pos- sessed of two or more kinds of oxides, produced by a union of different proportions of the oxygen and the metal, and often distinguishable even by their colour; as minium or red lead,-and ceruse or white lead, which are equally oxides of the metal whose name they bear. Now, in whatever proportion the oxygen unites with the metal to produce an oxide of one kind, it invariably unites by a multiple or divisor of,the same proportion to produce every kind of oxide belonging to the same metal. Thus we have discovered not less than four different oxides of antimony in different parts of the world: the lowest or simplest of them contains 41 parts of oxy- gen to 100 parts of metal; the next simplest contains 18 parts of oxygen to 100 parts of metal, which is four times 4\; the third oxide consists of 27 parts of oxygen to 100 parts of metal, which is six times 4i; and the fourth oxide, 36 parts of oxygen to 100 parts of metal, which is eight times 4i. So tin, which possesses three discovered oxides, has for its lowest the propor- tion of 7 parts of oxygen to 100 parts of metal; for its second oxide, 14 parts of oxygen to 100 parts of metal, which is twice 7; and for its highest, 21 parts of oxygen to 100 parts of metal, which is three times 7. I have given the proportions in round numbers; but if I were to use the fractions that belong to them, the comparative results would be precisely the same. Nor can we possibly combine these substances in any other proportions, so as to produce oxides; for the corpuscles of which they consist will not lay hold of or let go each other in any other ratios. It is possible that we may here- after detect an oxide of antimony consisting of a less proportion of oxygen than 41 • but if we ever should, we are confident beforehand that such pro- portion will be 2\. It is also possible that we may meet with an oxide con- taining more than 41 and less than 18 parts of the oxygen in 100 ; but if we should do so, we can nearly anticipate that such proportion will be 9. And hence as these proportions, though constantly true to their respective series, are constantly diversified in different substances, their radical figures or num- bers may be employed, and now actually are employed, and that very gene- rally and in perfect coincidence with the system of the Pythagonsts, as sy- nonvmes of the simple forms or substances whose progressive character they describe This curious coincidence of ancient and modern pmlosophy, for at present I will call it nothing more, I cannot but regard as a very marvellous fact • and am not a little surprised that it should not hitherto have occurred, as it'does not appear to have done, to the minds of any of those learned and inp-enious chemists who have chiefly been employed in applying and building un the discovery. And it is not the least important part of this discovery, that not only in the union or separation of simple substances, but in all well- known and more complicated compounds, so far as the experimental series has been carried, the elementary bodies which enter into them exhibit pro- * The only apparent exception I am aware of to this general principle is in the ^^vv'phil'Tra^s „J.„fM nlnrt detonating substance, or azotane, as described by sir Humphry Davy, Fnil. Irans. fcMSl?"and it is hence probable that we are not yet put into posscssionof the proper results. 42 ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT portions equally definite and invariable; thus aflbrding another proof of close connexion between the phenomena of nature and the occasional develope- ments of revelation.; the philosopher beholding now, as the prophet beheld formerly, that the Almighty architect has literally adjusted every thing by weight and measure; that he has measured the waters and meted out the heavens, accurately comprehended the dust of the earth, weighed the moun- tains in scales and the hills in a balance. LECTURE III. ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT PRINCIPLES OF THINGS. (The subject continued.) The few steps we have hitherto taken in the wide and magnificent scope before us have only led to an establishment of two or three fundamental axioms, of no small importance in the science of physics, and to a develope- ment of two or three of the most ingenious and most popular hypotheses of former times, invented to account for the origin of the world around us, and the elementary and constituent principles of things: especially the hypothe- sis of numbers, as proposed by Pythagoras, and that of ideas, as proposed by Plato; and their application to primary and incorporeal matter, in order to endow it with form and quality. There are yet two or three other hypothe- ses upon the same subject that amply demand our attention, and are replete with an equal degree of ingenuity and fine imagination; especially the Peri- patetic and the Atomic, or that of Aristotle and that of Epicurus; and we have also to trace out the relative degree of influence which each of these has exerted on the philosophical theories of later times. Aristotle had too much penetration not to see that the hypothesis of Plato was just as inadequate as that of Pythagoras to a solution of the great ques- tion concerning the production of the visible world: and he proposed a third scheme, which has also had its share of popularity. According to this re- modelled plan, the sensible universe* is the result of four distinct principles, —intelligence, matter, form, and privation; which last term is little more than a mere synonyme for space or vacuum; and thus far the theory of Aris totle chiefly differs from that of Plato, by interweaving into it his fourth prin- ciple, derived from Democritus, and the other Atomic philosophers, and which he seems to have added to it with a view.of providing a proper theatre for the two principles of form and matter to move in. He supposes all these to have equally existed from eternity; and the three last to have beep eternally acted upon or thrown into a definite series of motions, upon which alone the ex- istence and harmony of things are dependent, by the immutable and imma- terial principle of intelligence, whose residence he places in the purest and loftiest sphere or circle of the heavens; a sphere that in its vast embrace comprehends ten lower or subordinate spheres, that lie between itself and the earth, which forms the centre of the whole, and, in conjunction with the earth, constitutes the universal world. This Supreme Intelligence Aristotle conceived to be in himself for ever at rest; and the tranquil and peaceable sphere in which he resides he deno- minated the empyreum or heaven of bliss. But though enjoyino- eternal rest himself, he communicates motion, necessarily and essentially, upon this theory, to the sphere immediately below him ; as this, in its turn, communi- cates it in different directions, and with different velocities, to the other spheres that revolve within its range ;* whence the sphere thus earliest re- ^in?™.0_ti0!l' *.i "e.ar?_s* *? the emPyreum? Aristotle denominated the pf rulai crys- a • .---------—.yj.vuu.^uoiuucuCUUIII mum mobile, or first moving power: it constituted the tenth mum mobile, ur iirbi moving power: it constituted the tenth in the reirulai- series ; the ninth, or that which lies next to it, being denominated the Srvs- * Diog. Laert. lib. v. sect. 23. Axist. Phys. lib. 1. cap. 3,4. De Csel. lib. 2. cap. 3.11. PRINCIPLES OF THINGS. 43 tallme heavens ; the eighth, the starry sphere, or heavens; and the remaining seven deriving their names from, and being appropriated to, the different re- volutions of the different planets, as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo or the sun, Venus, Mercury, and Diana or the moon: the earth, forming the centre of the whole, being an imperfect sphere, with a larger proportion of matter at the equator; on which account the earth was conceived to turn on her axis in a rocking motion, revolving round the axis of the ecliptic, and making the stars appear to shift their places at the rate of about one degree in seventy-two years. According to which calculation, all of them will appear to perform a complete revolution in the space of 25,920 years, and, consequently, to return to the precise situation they occupied at the commencement of such period. This period was hence denominated the annus magnus, or great year, and not unfrequently the Platonic year, as the same kind of revolution was in some measure taught also by Plato. The motory power, thus impressed by the intelligent moving principle, not voluntarily but by necessity, upon the different heavenly spheres, and finally upon the earth, and productive of that catenation of effects which is equally without beginning and without end, Aristotle denominated nature, and thus furnished us with a word, which has for ages been so extensively made use of, that, though there is nothing in all language more imprecise, there is nothing we could spare with more inconvenience. The same term, indeed, is occasionally employed by Plato, but in a sense still less definite if possible, and at the same time still less comprehensive. On the revival of literature, this theory, together with the other branches of Peripatetic science, was chiefly restored and studied; and continued, indeed, to be generally adhered to for upwards of a century after the publi- cation of the Copernican system; which is well known to have at first ex- perienced but a very cold and inhospitable reception from the literary world. And it is hence this theory that is principally adverted to and described in the productions of all the early poets as well as philosophers of every part of modern Europe. And so complete was the triumph of the Peripatetic school in all its doctrines throughout Christendom, at this period, that Melancthon makes it a matter of complaint that, even in the sacred assemblies, parts of the writings of Aristotle were read to the people instead of the Gospel. Even Milton himself, though born considerably more than a century after Copernicus, wavers as to the propriety of adopting his hypothesis of the heavens, and hence, in his Paradise Lost,* leaves it doubtful which of the two, the new or the old, ought to be preferred. The best and most splendid description of the Aristotelian theory that I have ever met with is contained in theLusiadof Camoens: the whole is too long for quotation, but I may venture to affirm, that you will be pleased with the following lines from Mr. MickePs very spirited version of the Portuguese bard, as delineating the different heavenly spheres that were supposed, as I have already observed, to lie one within another, like the different tunics of an onion :— These spheres behold: the first in wide embrace Surrounds the lesser orbs of various face; The empyrean this, the holiest heaven, To the pure spirits of the blest is given : No mortal eye its splendid rays may bear, No mortal bosom feel the raptures there. The earth, in all her summer pride array'd, To this might seem a dark sepulchral shade. Unmov'd it stands.—Within its shining frame, In motion swifter than the lightning's flame, Swifter than sight the moving parts may spy, Another sphere whirls round its rapid sky: Hence motion darts its force, impulsive draws, ' And on the other orbs impresses laws.t These hypotheses are abstruse, and perhaps ill calculated to afford amuse- ment ; but in a course of physical study they ought by no means to be over- * Book viii. t Book x. p. 443, 4to. 1776. 44 ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT looked. Abstruse as they are, the one or the other of them is interwoven with the whole range of classical literature, and, as I have already remarked, held the ascendant in the horizon of metaphysics till within the last two cen- turies • and I have dwelt upon them the rather, because, much as we still hear o'f them, and find them adverted to in books, I am not acquainted with any work whatever that gives any thing like a clear and intelligible summary of their principles. Their more prominent defects are, in few words, as follows: Independently of conveying very imperfect and erroneous views of the creation, they equally concur in reducing matter, notwithstanding its pre- tended eternal existence, to a nonentity, and confound its properties with those of pure intelligence, by giving to numbers, ideas, or a mere abstract notion, real form and existence. The most powerful advocate of the Pla- tonic theory, in modern times, was the very excellent Bishop Berkeley ; who, in the true spirit of consistency, and with a boldness that no consequences could deter, openly denied the existence of a material world, and thus reduced the range of actual entities from three to two, an intelligent first cause, and intellectual forms or ideas, and gave the death-blow to the system by avowing its necessary result. In modern times, however, as I have already hinted at, the infinite divisibi- lity of matter has for the most part been supported upon different grounds, and philosophers have involved themselves in the same fatal consequences, by a much shorter process of reasoning. No compound or visible bodies, it is well known, ever come into immediate contact with each other, or influence each other by means of simple solidity. The earth is affected by the sun, the moon by the earth ; the waters of the earth by the moon. Light is re- flected from substances to which it directs its course, at a distance, and with- out impinging upon them. The particles of all bodies deemed the most solid and impermeable, are capable of approaching nearer, or receding far- ther from each other, by an application of different degrees of cold or heat. We can, hence, it is said, form no conception of perfect solidity; and every phenomenon in nature appears to disprove its existence. The minutest cor- puscle we can operate upon is still 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, it is added, 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. Such was the reasoning of Des Cartes, and of the numerous host of philo- sophers who attached themselves to his theory about the middle of the seven- teenth century. The argument, indeed, is highly plausible ; but it was soon obvious, that, like the Grecian incorporeity of matter, it leads to a pure non- entity of a material world: for that which is essentially unsolid and infi- nitely divisible, must at length terminate in nothing. And hence, Leibnitz attempted to amend the system, about half a century, and Boscovich, about a century afterward, by contending, as indeed Zeno is supposed to have done formerly, that matter has its ultimate atoms, or monads, as they were deno- minated by Leibnitz, from the language of Pythagoras, beyond which it is altogether indivisible; and that these ultimate atoms or monads are simple inextended points, producing, however, the phenomenon of extension, by their combination, and essentially possessed of the powers of attraction and repulsion. There is such a charm in novelty, that it often leads us captive in despite of the most glaring errors, and intoxicates oui judgment as fatally as the cup of Circe. It is upon this ground alone we can account for the general adop- tion of this new system, when first proposed in its finished state by Bosco- vich, and the general belief that the Gordian knot was at length fairly united and every difficulty overcome. It required a period of some years for the heated imagination to become sufficiently cool to enable mankind to see as every one sees at present, that the difficulties chargeable upon the doctrine of an infinite divisibility of matter are not touched by the present theory and remain in as full force as before its appearance. If the monads, or ultimate PRINCIPLES OF THINGS. 45 points of matter here adverted to, possess body, they must be as capable of extension, and consequently of division, as material body under any other dimension or modification: if they do not possess body, then are they as much nonentities as the primal or amorphous matter of Plato or Pythagoras. Again, we are told that these points or monads are endowed with certain powers; as those, for example, of attraction and repulsion. But powers must be the powers of something: what is this something to which these powers are thus said to appertain'? If the ultimate and inextendedpoints be- fore us have nothing but these powers, and be nothing but these powers, then are such powers powers of nothing, powers without a substrate, and, conse- quently, as much nonentities as on the preceding argument. Visible or sen- sible matter, moreover, it is admitted by M. Boscovich and his disciples, is possessed of extension ; but visible or sensible matter is also admitted to be a mere result of a combination of inextended atoms:—how can extension pro- ceed from what is inextended ?—of two diametrical opposites, how. is it gos- sible that either can become the product of the other 1 It is unnecessary to pursue this refutation. The lesson which the whole of such fine-spun and fanciful hypotheses teach us, and teach us equally, is, that it is impossible to philosophize without a firm basis of first principles. We must have them in physics as well as in metaphysics,—in matter as well as in morals; and hence the best physical schools in Greece, as well as in more modern times,—those which have contended for the eternity of matter, as well as those which have contended for its creation out of nothing,—have equally found it necessary to take for granted, what, in fact, can never be proved, that matter in its lowest and ultimate parts consists of solid, impene- trable, and moveable particles of definite sizes, figures, and proportions to space ; from different combinations of which, though invisible in themselves, every visible substance is produced. This theory, which has been commonly distinguished by the name of the Atomic philosophy, was first started in Greece by Leucippus or Democritus, and afterward considerably improved by Epicurus ; and as it bears a striking analogy to many of the features which mark the best opinions of the present day, and has probably given them much of their colour and complexion, if it have not originated them, 1 shall take leave to submit to you the following outline of it:—* The Atomic philosophy of Epicurus, in its mere physical contemplation, allows of nothing but matter and space, which are equally infinite and un- bounded, which have equally existed from all eternity, and from different combinations of which every visible form is created. These elementary principles have no common property with each other: for whatever matter is, that space is the reverse of; and whatever space is, matter is the contrary to. The actually solid parts of all bodies, therefore,are matter; their actual pores space; tand the parts which are hot altogether solid, but an intermixture of solidity and pore, are space and matter combined. Anterior to the forma- tion of the universe, space and matter existed uncombined, or in their pure and elementary state. Space, in its elementary state, is absolute and per- fect void; matter, in its elementary state, consists of inconceivably minute seeds or atoms, so small that the corpuscles of vapour, light, and heat are compounds of them; and so solid, that they cannot possibly be broken or abraded by any concussion or violence whatever. The express figure of these primary atoms is various : there are round, square, pointed, jagged, as well as many other shapes. These shapes, however, are not diversified to infinity; but the atoms themselves of each existent shape are infinite or in- numerable. Every atom is possessed of certain intrinsic powers of motion. Under the old school of Democritus, the perpetual motions hence produced were of two kinds: a descending motion, from the natural gravity of the atoms ; and a rebounding motion, from collision and mutual clash. Besides these two motions, and to explain certain phenomena to which they did not * This outline is given more at length in the author's Prolegomena to his translation of " The Nature of Things," p. cix. and following 46 ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT appear competent, and which were not accounted for under the old system, Epicurus supposed that some atoms were occasionally possessed of a third, by which, in some very small degree, they descended in an oblique or curvi- linear direction, deviating from the common and right line anomalously; and in this respect resembling the oscillations of the magnetic needle. These infinite groups of atoms, flying through all time and space in differ- ent directions, and under different laws, have interchangeably tried and exhi- bited every possible mode of rencounter; sometimes repelled from each other by concussion, and sometimes adhering to each other from their own jagged or pointed construction, or from the casual interstices which two or more connected atoms must produce, and which may be just adapted to those of other figures, as globular, oval, or square. Hence the origin of compound and visible bodies; hence the origin of large masses of matter ; hence, event- ually, the origin of the world itself. When these primary atoms are closely compacted, and but little vacuity or space lies between, they produce those kinds of substances which we denominate solid, as stones and metals; when they are loose and disjoined, and a large quantity of space or vacuity is inter- posed, they exhibit bodies of lax texture, as wool, water, vapour. In one mode of combination they form earth; in another, air; and in another, fire. Arranged in one way, they produce vegetation and irritability; in another way, animal life and perception. Man hence arises, families are formed, so- cieties are multiplied, and governments are instituted. The world, thus generated, is perpetually sustained by the application of fresh tides of elementary atoms, flying with inconceivable rapidity through all the infinity of space, invisible from their minuteness, and occupying the posts of those that are as perpetually flying off. Yet nothing is eternal or immutable but these elementary seeds or atomsthems-elves. The compound forms of matter are continually decomposing and dissolving into their original corpuscles; to this there is no exception : minerals, vegetables,and animals, m this respect all alike, when they lose their present make, perishing for ever, and new combinations proceeding from the matter into which they dis- solve. But the world itself is a compound though not an organized beine;- sustained and nourished, like organized beings, from the material pabulum that floats through the void of infinity. The world itself must, therefore, in the same manner, perish : it had a beginning, and it will have an end. Its present crasis will be decompounded; it will return to its original, its elemen- tary atoms; and new worlds will arise from its destruction Space is infinite, material atoms are infinite, but the world is not infinite This, then, is not the only world, nor the only material system that iiiitl o?her?Ththahhas p!;oduced thisrible *y**m is c™pS1atPS£ others: it has be^n acting perpetually from all eternity; and there are other worlds, and other systems of worlds, existing around us Those who are acquainted with the writings of Sir Isaac Newton and Mr Locke, will percehre in this sketch of the Atomic philosop y the rudhnents oT-1 2J? fart of *eir own systems, so far as rentes JptSciT^mli indeed, fairly regard them as offsets- from the theory before us, cleared 7n * very great degree of its errors, and enlarged in their principles and forti fied by more recent observations and discoveries. I m \°forh J nresenl" confine myself to the following quotations from the first ofthese hVh 0™ ments of our country. "All things considered " cnv« ail r «, -? a" probable that God hTthe beginning formettter8Ts!m t^wT whK^ to the end for of matter continue entire, the/ may composti bodiS n? n™* S°Jld Prticles nature and texture in all ages • butLulrifw ™£ one and the same the nature of things ^A^ro^i^^^^01^^ pieces' en«re panie.es a, the' ^^KMS ».£^ffi PRINCIPLES OF THINGS. 47 the changes of corporeal things are to be placed only in the various separa- tions, and new associations and motions of these permanent particles: com- pound bodies being apt to break, not in the midst of solid particles, but where those particles are laid together, and touch only in a few points." The Epicurean doctrine, moreover, of a flux and reflux of elementary par- ticles exterior to every material system, perpetually feeding and replenishing it, and carrying off its dissolved and rejected rudiments, bears no small re- semblance to the ethereal medium of Sir Isaac Newton ; and, in its law of action, has been singularly revived within the course of the last six years by Professor Leslie, in his principles of impulsion, as detailed in his " Inquiry into the Nature of Heat." It is a doctrine, also, peculiarly coincident with Dr. Herschel's recent theory of nebulae, or milky ways in the heavens, which, contrary to his own earlier opinions, and those of former astronomers, who ascribed such appearance to the mixed light thrown forth from clusters of stars too remote to be reached by the best telescopes, he now resolves, as we shall have occasion to show more minutely in due time, into masses of a luminous fluid, existing independently of all stars or planets, though origin- ally, perhaps, emitted from them; aggregated by a variety of causes that tend to give its minute particles unity; sometimes forming new stars by its condensation, and often feeding and regenerating those that are exhausted. ' _- -. Such is a brief survey of the chief theories of the primitive or elementary substance of matter which have been offered in ancient or modern times; from a combination of the different particles of which, in different modes and proportions, and under the operation of different laws, all sensible bodies are supposed to have proceeded. Of sensible bodies thus produced, some, however, in direct repugnancy to the Atomic philosophy, whether of ancient or more recent times, have been very generally conceived to have been formed first; to be peculiarly simple in their composition, indecomposable by any known powers in their structure, and to be the basis of all other bodies, or those from which all other bodies proceed, by different unions and modifications: and hence such substances have been denominated constituent principles, or constituent elements; concern- ing the kind and number of which, however, we have had almost as many opinions offered as concerning the origin and nature of the primitive princi- ples themselves. * Thus, among both the ancients and the moderns, sometimes fire, some- times air, sometimes earth, and sometimes water, has been considered as the sole constituent element or source of things. Sometimes two of these sub- stances have been thus denominated, and sometimes three; but more gene- rally the whole. Occasionally, indeed, a fifth and even a sixth have been added to the number, as cold and oil, each of these having at times been considered as simple and indecomposable substances: while, under the old Atomic system, and especially as improved by Epicurus, all such principles were completely swept away, and no one sensible substance whatever was conceived to be better entitled to the character of a constituent principle than another; the whole equally flowing from peculiar modifications and combi- nations of the primitive or elementary principles—the rerum primordia—and equally resolving into them upon decomposition. Of these different theories, the greater number are scarcely worth exa- mining; and I shall only therefore observe, that for that which supposes the existence of four distinct elements, fire, air, earth, and water, and which for ages has been in almost universal acceptation, and would have been so still but for the recent discoveries of chemistry, we are indebted to Empedocles. This celebrated philosopher, and very excellent poet, flourished about four centuries before the Christain era. His opinions, like those of almost^ all the earliest sages, were given in metre, in a didactic poem, " On Nature," of which only a few fragments have ,descended to our own times. He was a native of Sicily, and his talents and his country are celebrated by Lucretius, who was, nevertheless, of a very different school of philosophy, in verses so 48v ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT elegant and so descriptive, that I cannot refraih from presenting you with a literal but very humble translation of them ; introduced, more especially, as they are, with observations upon different rival philosophers, who employed one, two, and various other numbers of the commonly esteemed elements, and in various combinations, as the basis of their respective theories. . Nor wanders less the sage who air with fire Would fain commix, or limpid stream with earth; Or those the whole who join, firk, ether, earth, And pregnant showers, and thence the world deduce. Thus sung Empedoclks, in honest fame First of his sect; whom Agrigentum bore In clond-capp'd Sicily. Its sinuous shores Th' Ionian main, with hoarse unwearied wave, Surrounds, and sprinkles with its briny dew; And, from the fair ^Eolian fields, divides With narrow frith that spurns th' impetuous surge. Here vast Charybdis raves; here JEtna rears His infant thunders, his dread jaws unlocks, And heaven and earth with fiery ruin threats. Here many a wonder, many a scene sublime, As 6n he journeys, checks the traveller's steps; And shows, at once, a land in harvests rich, And rich in sages of illustrious fame. But naught so wond'rous, so illustrious naught, So fair, so pure, so lovely can it boast, Empedoclks, as thou! whose song divine, By all rehears'd, so clears each mystic lore, That scarce mankind believ'd thee born of man. Vet e'en Empedocles, and those above Already sung, of far inferior fame, Though doctrines frequent from their bosoms flow'd Like inspiration, sager and more true Than e'er the Pythian maid, with laurels crown'd. Spoke from the tripod at Apollo's shrine ; E'en those mistook the principles of things, And greatly wander'd in attempt so great. Let our controvertists of the present day learn a lesson of liberality from this correct and polished reasoner, whose own theory is well known to have been that of Epicurus, to which I have just adverted, namely, that one sub- stance is just as much entitled to the character of a constituent element as another, and that every thing equally proceeds from, and in turn is resolved into, the primitive and invisible atoms or principles of matter. It is to this theory alone that all the experiments of modern chemistry are giving countenance. Air, water, and earth, suspected to be compounds in the time of Epicurus, have been proved to be such in our own day ; while of the actual nature of heat or fire, mankind are just as uninformed now as they were then. In the process, however, of destroying these supposed elements, chemistry has occasionally seemed to detect others; and hence, instead of air, fire, earth, and water, as simple or indecomposable substances, we have had phlogiston, acids, and alkalies; sulphur and phosphorus; oxygen, hydro- gen, nitrogen, and carbon, progressively arising before us, and laying claim to an imperishable existence. All of them, however, have fallen, or are falling in their turn, without having lived long enough to reach the com- mon age of man; all of them have been proved, or reasonably suspected to be compounds of other substances, that may yet, perhaps, be detected to' be compounds of something beyond. Even oxygen, the most brilliant of the whole, the boasted discovery of Lavoisier, and out of which he was supposed to have built to his own memory "amonument more durable than brass " has had its throne shaken to its foundation by Sir Humphry Davy, and is a't this moment, like the Roman empire in its decline, obliged to divide its sway with a new and popular power, which this last celebrated chemist has denominated chlorine; while of the more subtle and active agents, light, caloric the magnetic and electric fluids, we know nothing but from their effects, and can only say of each—stat nominis umbra. Is physical science, then, a vain show?—a mere house of cards built nr, for the sole purpose of being pulled down again ?—Assuredly not. The firm PRINCIPLES OF THINGS. 49 footing we have actually obtained upon many essential points—a footing not to be disturbed by any future change of system, or novelty of discovery— and the ascertainment of a multitude of recondite facts, and their application to some of our most extensive and valuable arts, sufficiently prove that phi- losophy has neither lived nor laboured in vain. Although we have not been able to break through the spell completely—to follow up the Proteus-form of matter into its deepest recesses, and fix it in its last shape and character— we have succeeded in developing many of its most important laws, as it will be the object of the ensuing lecture to point out, and to apply them to a solu- tion of many of its most important phenomena. Whatever is sure and trusty has remained to us, and whatever has given way has been mere chi- mera and shadow: we have chiefly, perhaps only, failed where we have either been too curious, or have suffered imagination to become our charioteer in the slow and sober journey of analysis. Before we quit this subject, let us, in the candid spirit of genuine philoso phy, do the same justice to Epicurus as we attempted in our last lecture to Pythagoras and Plato. It has been very generally said and very generally believed, principally because it has been very generally said, that the great and mighty cause of this beautiful and harmonious formation of worlds, and systems of worlds, in the opinion of Epicurus, was mere chance, or fortune. There is nothing, however, in those fragments of his works which have de- scended to us, that can in any way countenance so opprobrious an opinion, but various passages that distinctly controvert it,—passages in which he perempto- rily denies the existence of chance or fortune, either as a deity or a cause of action ; and unequivocally refers the whole of those complex series of percus- sions and repercussions, interchanges and combinations, exhibited by the ele- mentary seeds or atoms of matter during the creative process, to a chain of immu- table laws which they received from the Almighty Architect at the beginning, and which they still punctually obey, and will for ever obey, till the universe shall at length cease to exist.* " Whom," says Epiourus, in a letter to his dis- ciple Menasceus, that has yet survived the preying tooth of time, and will be found in Diogenes Laertius, " do you believe to be more excellent than he who piously reveres the gods, who feels no dread of death, and rightly estimates the design of nature? Such a man does not, with the multitude, regard chance as a god, for he knows that God can never act at random; nor as a contingent cause of events; nor does he conceive, that from any such power flows the good or the evil that measures the real happiness of human life." He held, however, that the laws which govern the Universe were alto- gether arranged and imposed upon it by the Creator at its first formation, and that the successive train of events to which they have given rise, have fol- lowed as the necessary result of such an arrangement, and not as the imme- diate superintendence of a perpetually controlling Providence. For it was the opinion of Epicurus, as well as of Aristotle, that perfect rest and tran- quillity are essential to the perfect happiness even of Him, who, to adopt his own language in another place, possesses all immortality and beatitude. "Think not," says he, "that the different motions and revolutions of the heavens, the rising, setting, eclipses, and other phenomena of the planets, are produced by the immediate control, superintendence, or ministration of Him who possesses all immortality and beatitude ; it is from the immutable laws which they received at the beginning, in the creation of the universe, that they punctually fulfil their several circuits." The origin of this calumny upon the character of Epicurus it is by no means difficult to trace, and it has been sufficiently traced, and sufficiently exposed, by Diogenes Laertius, Gassendi, Du Rondelle, and other distin- guished writers, who have done ample justice to his memory; and upon the confessions of Plutarch, Cicero, and Seneca, abundantly proved, that it was the same rancorous spirit of envy among many of his competitors for public fame, and especially among the Stoic philosophers, which strove to fix upon * For a more extensive inquiry into this subject, the reader is referred to the author s Prolegomena to his translation of " The Nature of Things," from which mis summary is drawn. 50 ON THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER, him the charge of voluptuous living, though the most temperate and abstemi- ous Athenian of his day; that thus, with yet keener malevolence, endeavoured to brand him with the still fouler reproach of the grossest impiety and athe- ism. It is, indeed, scarcely to be believed, if the fact were not concurrently attested by all the writers of antiquity, that the philosopher whose name, from the low and malignant spirit I have just adverted to, has been prover- bialised lor general licentiousness and excess, drew the whole of his daily diet from the plainest pottage, intermixed with the herbs and fruits of his pleasant and celebrated garden. " I am perfectly contented," says he, in an epistle to another friend, " with bread and water alone; but send me a piece of your Cyprian cheese, that I may indulge myself whenever I feel disposed for a luxurious treat." Such, too, was the diet of his disciples. Water, says Diodes, was their common beverage ; and of wine they never allowed them- selves more than a very small cup. And hence, when the city of Athens was besieged by Demetrius, and its inhabitants reduced to the utmost extremity, the scholars of Epicurus bore up under the calamity with less inconvenience than any other class of citizens ; the philosopher supporting them at his own expense, and sharing with them daily a small ration of his beans. The plea- sure of friendship, the pleasure of virtue, the pleasure of tranquillity, the plea- sure of science, the pleasure of gardening, the pleasure of studying the works of nature, and of admiring her in all the picturesque beauty of her evolutions, formed the sole pursuit of his life. This alone, he affirmed, deserves the name of pleasure, and can alone raise the mind above the grovellino- and mis- named pleasures of self-indulgence, debauchery, and excess. There is something gratifying to an enlarged and liberal spirit in being thus able to rescue from popular, but unfounded obloquy, a sage of trans- cendant genius and almost unrivalled intellect, and in restoring him to the admiration of the virtuous and the excellent. That he did not feel the force of any argument offered by nature in proof of the immortality of the soul, and was in this respect considerably below the standard of Socrates and Cicero, must be equally admitted and lamented; and should teach us the high value of that full and satisfactory light which was then so much wanted and has since been so gloriously shed upon this momentous subject. But let it at the same time be remembered, that, with a far bolder front than either of the philosophers here adverted to, he dared to expose the grossness and the absur- dities of the popular religion of his day, and in his life and his doctrines gave a perpetual rebuke to vice and immorality of every kind. And hence, indeed the main ground of the popular calumny with which his character was attacked and which has too generally accompanied his memory to the present day. ' LECTURE IV. on the properties of matter, essential and peculiar. In our last lecture I endeavoured to render it probable, that all visible or sensible ma ter is the result of a combination of various solid, impenetrable and exquisitely fine particles or units of the same substance toomTnuTe to be detected by any operation of the senses. Of the shape or^ magnUude of these particles we know nothing: and even their solidity and impenetrability as I then observed is rather an assumption for the purpose of avoiding seve ral striking difficulties and absurdities .that follow from a denial of these qualities, than an ascertained and established fact. From this unsatisfactory view of it in its elementary and impalpable state et us now proceed to contemplate it in its manifest and combinedforms and b°y whfcKy art r™^™ *"*«*' ** *** ™* *° *™"* ESSENTIAL AND PECULIAR. 5, The change of distance between one material body and another, or, in other words, their approach to or separation from each other, is called motion ; and the wide expanse in which motion of any kind is performed, is de nominated space. Matter has its essential, and its peculiar properties. Its essentia] properties are those which are common to it under every form or mode ol combination. Its peculiar properties are those which only appertain to it un dcr definite forms or definite circumstances. The essential properties of matter are usually classed under the six follow ing heads: passivity, extension, density,, impenetrability, divisibility, and gravi tation; which, however, may easily be reduced to four, since extension, density and impenetrability, may be comprehended under the general term cohesibility Passivity, inertia or vis inertia, is the tendency in a body to persevere in a given state, whether of rest or motion, till disturbed by a body of superioi force. And hence, these terms, which are mere synonymes, imply a power of mobility as well as a power of quiescence ; although passivity has often been confined to quiescence, while mobility has been made a distinct property Thus it is from the same power, or tendency to passivity, that a cannon ball continues its motion after being projected from a gun, as that by which it re- mained at rest before it was thrown off; for it is a well known theorem in pro- jectiles, that the action of the powder on a bullet ceases as soon as the bullet is out of the piece In like manner a billiard ball at rest will continue so till put into motion by a billiard ball in motion, for it can never commence motion of its own accord While a billiard ball in motion would persevere in motion, and in the same velocity of motion, for ever, if it met with no resistance. But it does meet with resistance from a variety of causes, as the friction of the atmosphere, the friction of the green cloth, and at last a contact with one of the sides of the table, or with the ball against which it is directed. In this last case either ball will receive conversely the same precise pro- portion of rest or motion which it communicates. Thus, if the ball in motion strike the ball at rest obliquely, the latter will be put into a certain degree of activity, and the former will, in the very same degree, be impeded in its pro- gress, and receive an equal tendency to a state of rest. If the latter, on the contrary, by what is significantly called a dead stroke, receive the whole charge of motion which belongs to the former, it will give to the former, in like manner, the whole possession of its quiescence, and the state of each will be completely reversed : the ball hitherto at rest proceeding with all the velocity of that hitherto in motion, and the ball hitherto in motion exhibiting the dead stand of that hitherto at rest. So, if it were possible to place an orb quietly in some particular part of space, where it would be equally free from the attractive influence of every one of the celestial systems, it would, from the same tendency to inertitude, remain quiescent and at rest for ever. While, on the contrary, if a body were to be thrown from any one of the planets by the projectile force of a volcano, or of any other agency, beyond the range of the attractive or centripetal power of such planet, it would continue the same velocity of motion for ever which it possessed at the moment of quitting the extreme limit of the planet's influence; unless in its progress it should encounter the influence of some other planet; and in this last case it would be either dravvn directly into contact with the planet it thus casually approached, or would have its path inflected into a circle, and revolve around it as a satellite, according to its velocity, and the relative direction of its course at the moment the planetary influence began -to take effect. Thus a body projected horizontally to the distance of about 4.35 miles from the earth's surface, provided there were no resistance in the atmosphere, would not fall back again, but become a satellite to the earth, and perpetually revolve around it at this distance. The moon is sup- posed to have no atmosphere, or, at the utmost, one rarer than we can pro- duce with our best air-pumps: she is also supposed to possess larger and more active volcanoes than any which are known to exist on the earth. And hence it requires no great stretch of imagination to conceive that bodies 52 OF THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER, may occasionally be thrown from the moon, by the projectile power of such volcanoes, to such a distance as that they should never return to her surface: for if the momentum be only sufficient to cause the mass ejected to proceed at the rate of about 8,200 feet in the first second of time,* and in a line passing through the moon and the earth, such effect would necessarily be produced; since, in this case, the propelled mass would quit the centripetal power of the former, and be drawn into that of the latter, and would either become a satel- lite to the earth, or be precipitated to its surface, according as the rectilinear force of the projectile was equal or inferior to the attractive force of the earth at their first meeting together. Yet this is, perhaps, but little more than the velocity with which a twenty- four pound cannon ball would travel from the moon's surface: since its velo- city on the earth's surface may be calculated at about 2,000 feet for the first second ; and it would rush nearly four times as rapidly if not impeded by the resistance of the atmosphere. And hence it is to this cause that M. Olbers first, and M. la Place has since, ascribed the origin of those wonderful aero- lites, or stones, that are now known to have fallen from the air at some period or other in every quarter of the globe; believing them to be in every instance volcanic productions of the moon, thrown by the impulse of the explosion beyond the range of her centripetal influence. Cohesibilit'y is the tendency which one part of matter evinces to unite with another part of matter so as to form out of different bodies one common mass. It includes the three modes which have often been regarded as three distinct properties, of extension, density, and impenetrability. Extension is a term as applicable to space as to matter: "The extension of body," observes Mr. Locke, " being nothing but the cohesion or continuity of solid, separable, moveable parts; and the extension of space the continuity of unsolid, insepa- rable, and immoveable parts." Hence extension applies to all directions of matter, for its continuity may take place in all directions; but in common language the longest extension of a body is called its length, the next its breadth, and the shortest its thickness. Density is a property in matter to cohere with a closer degree of approxi- mation between the different particles of which it consists ; so that the same body, when in the exercise of this property, occupies a smaller portion of space than beiore it was called into act. Hence density cannot be a property rLS£n?%the Parts °f which' as I have just observed,' are immoveable, and cannot, therefore, either approach or recede. Impenetrability is the result of density, as density is of extension. It is that property in matter which prevents two bodies from occupying same place at the same time. They are all branches of the common propertv of cohesibihty. A wedge of iron, indeed, may force its way through Thes-ohd fibres of the trunk of a tree ; but it can only do this by sejLratmg them from each other: it cannot penetrate the matter of which tLseTreTcoS in ^hrtTr'iWhen^shipislaunched'her hulk ca™°* sink into Se water JK i, it ^Plac1"^ ^e exact bulk of water which existed in the spac^ha' the hulk below the surface now occupies. P &" show L?Z°r7- T^7' however'there ^e some phenomena that seem to snow that certain bodies are penetrable bv others Thn* if o S,\uL u r water be mixed with a cubic inch of spirit of wine or sulphurici add thStdk Is that property of Tbody by Shit Is caLSl'0 "S c?h?s'Wli'y- " toe union or /ontinui.y £ AJd^oSHto^Sffi™*"* "* parlS> Place, Exposition du SysWme du Monde ESSENTIAL AND PECULIAR. 53 Divisibility, however, does not destroy cohesion in every instance equally ; though the farther it proceeds, the farther it loosens it. We are told by Mr. Boyle, that two grains and a half of silk were, on one occasion, spun into a thread not less than three hundred yards long, which is, notwithstanding, a much shorter length than the spider is capable of spinning his web of the same weight. Muschenbroek mentions an artist of Nuremburg, who drew gold wire so fine that 500 inches of it only weighed one grain ; and Dr. Wol- laston has obtained platinum wire as fine as ^o-oth of an inch.* The thick- ness of tin-foil is about a thousandth part of an inch ;f that of gold-leaf is less-than a two hundredth thousandth part of an inch; and the gilding of lace is still thinner, probably in some cases not more than a millionth part of an inch; and there are living beings visible to the microscope, of which a mil- lion million would not make up the bulk of a common grain of sand. Yet it is highly probable, from what has actually been ascertained of the anatomy of minute and miscroscopic animals, that many of these are as complicated in their structure as the elephant or the .whale. Gravitation is the common basis upon which all the preceding properties are built, except passivity; the great principle into which all the rest resolve themselves. Gravitation is the attraction by which bodies of all kinds act upon each other, with a force regulated by the aggregate proportion of their respective quantities of matter, and decreasing as the squares of the distances increase. It is a law impressed on matter universally, and hence operates alike on the minutest and on the largest masses; produces what we call weight on earth, or the tendency of heavy bodies to fall towards the earth's centre; and governs the revolutions of the planets. The five principles which regulate its mode of action, and constitute its magnificent code of laws, are thus summed up by M. la Place-I 1. Gravitation takes place between the most minute particles of bodies. 2. It is proportional to their masses. 3. It is inversely as the squares of the distances. 4. It is transmitted instantaneously from one body to another. ' 5. It acts equally on bodies in a state of rest, and upon those which, moving within its range, seem to be flying off from its power. Te a casual observer there are many substances that seem to fly away from the earth, and consequently to oppose this general law. Thus smoke, when extricated from burning bodies, and vapour, when separated from liquids, ascend into the atmosphere; and a piece of cork, plunged to the bottom of a vessel of water, rises rapidly to the surface. But, in all these phenomena, the bodies that seem to move upwards merely give way to bodies of a heavier kind, or, in other words, which have a stronger tendency towards the earth. Thus smoke and vapour only ascend, because the surrounding air, which is heavier than these, presses downwards and takes their place; and the cork rises because lighter than the water into which it has been plunged: but empty the vessel, and the cork will remain at the bottom, because heavier than the surrounding air; and let the smoke or the vapour be received into a vacuum, and it will remain as much at the bottom as the cork. It was first systematically demonstrated by Sir Isaac Newton, that all the motions of all the heavenly bodies depend upon the same power; and the principle thus struck out has of later years been still more extensively and even more accurately applied to a solution of the most complicated pheno- mena. This principle in astronomy is denominated the centripetal force, and the term is sufficiently precise for all common purposes; since, although speaking with perfect strictness, the central point of no solid substance is the actual spot in which its attractive power is chiefly lodged, yet it has been abundantly proved by Sir Isaac, that all the matter of a spherical body, or* a spherical surface, may, in generally estimating its attractive force on other matter, be considered as collected in the centre of such sphere. And hence, as all the celestial bodies are nearly spherical, their action on bodies at a dis- * Wollaston in Phil. Trans, for 1813, p. 114. Thomson's Annals of Philos. No. in. p 224. t Pavy's Elem. vol. i. p. 379. J Exposition du Syst^me du Monde. V. 54 ON THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER, tance may he held the same as if the whole of the matter of which they cod- sist were condensed into their respective centres. To what extent in the heavens the power of gravitation ranges it is impos- sible to determine; there can be little doubt, however, that it extends from one fixed star to another, although its effects are too inconsiderable to be calculated by man. It may possibly influence the progressive motion of several of the stars, and, as I had occasion to observe in a preceding lecture, is the cause to which Dr. Ilerschel ascribes the origin of the material universe, which he supposed at one time, though he seems afterward to have modified his opinion, as we shall notice in our next study, to havi? issued from an immense central mass of matter, peculiarly volcanic in its structure, and to have been, consequently, thrown forth in different quanti- ties,.and at different times, by enormous explosions ; each distinct mass, thus forcibly propelled, assuming, from the common law of projectiles, an orbicu- lar path, and endowed with the common property of the parent body, ejecting in like manner, minuter masses at different periods of time, which have equally assumed the same orbicular motion, and ultimately become planets to the body from which they have immediately issued, and which constitutes their central sun. To produce such an effect, however, and in reality to produce any of the motions which occur to us in the celestial bodies, the passivity of matter is just as necessary as its gravitation. I have already observed that, owing to its passivity, or vis inertia, matter has a tendency to persevere in any given state, whether of motion or of rest, till opposed by some exterior power; and that the path it assumes must necessarily be that of a right line, unless the power it encounters shall bend it into a different .direction. A projectile, therefore, as a planet, for example, thrown forth from a volcano, would travel in a right line for ever, and with the exact velocity with which it was thrown forth at first, if there were nothing to impede its progress, or to alter the course at first given to it. But the attraction of the volcanic sphere from which it has been launched does impede it, and equally so from every point of its surface : the consequence of which must necessarily be, that every step it advances over the parent orb it must be equally drawn back or reined in, and hence its rectilinear path must be converted into a curve or parabola, and a tendency be given to it to escape in this line, which may be contem- plated as a line of perpetual angles, instead of in a direct course; and as soon as the projectile or planet has acquired the exact point in which the two an- tagonist powers precisely balance each other—the power of flyino- off from the centre, communicated to it by the volcanic impulsion, and which is de- nominated its centrifugal force, and the power of falling forwards to the centre, communicated by the attractive influence of the aggregate mass of matter, which the parent sphere contains iu itself, and which is called its centripetal force—n will have reached its proper orbit; and, through the influence of this constant antagonism of the two properties of passivity and enToflime * centnfugal and ceiltriPetal force, persevere in the same to the ■ 0f/he ™mediates cause of gravitation, or the nature of that power which impels different bodies to a union, we are in a very considerable degree of ignorance; or rather, perhaps, may be said to know nothing at all Iti necessary, however, to notice one very singular phenomenon concerning it and to give a glance at two out of various theories by which gravitation has been attempted to be accounted for. gravitation nas ♦o3he Phfomenon is'that although owing to this power, all bodies have a tendency to come into contact, they never°come into actual contact slme kind of pore or open space being still left between the corpuscles of "bodies that approach the nearest to each other. Thus, a plate of heated il aS SeVuSon bv^ld alSgetther ^ !!Ute °if ^^J. ^nS^ ESSENTIAL AND PECULIAR. 55 glass are within about a ten thousandth part of an inch of each other, using fine metallic plates as a micrometer on this occasion, they support each other's weight as powerfully as if they were in actual contact, and that some additional force is requisite in order to make them approach still nearer. Nor is the force necessary to produce this effect of trivial moment: Professor Robison has calculated it, and has ascertained by experiment that it is equal to a pres- sure of a thousand pounds for eveiy square inch of glass. Air is not neces- sary to this resistance, for it is equally manifest in a vacuum ; yet it is a very curious fact, that under water it almost entirely disappears. It is, however, highly probable that the contact is never perfect, otherwise the two plates might be expected to cohere in such a manner as to become an individual mass. It is hence clear that matter, from some cause or other, is possessed of a repulsive as well as of an attractive force ; and that, like the latter, although its law has not been hitherto exactly ascertained, it increases in a regular proportion to its decrease of distance, or, in other words, as bodies approxi- mate each other. It has hence been said, and this is the common theory of those who regard gravitation as an essential property of matter, that matter is universally en- dowed with two opposite powers ; by the one of which material substances attract each other, and induce a perfect union; and by the other of which they repel each other when they are on the point of union, and prevent a perfect contact. It is admitted, however, on all hands, .and is indeed per- fectly clear in itself, that the repulsive power is of an almost infinitely less range than the attractive. I have supposed the attractive power, or that of gravitation, to operate from world to world; yet the repulsive power can never be exerted, except " between such particles as are actually, or very nearly, in contact with each other; since it requires no greater pressure, when acting on a given surface, to retain a gallon of air in the space of half a gallon, than to retain a pint in the space of half a pint, which could not pos- sibly be, if the particles exercised a mutual repulsion at all possible distances."* This idea, however, of double and opposite powers co-existing in the same substance, and in every corpuscle of the same substance, has been uniformly felt difficult of admission by the best and gravest philosophers ; and hence Sir Isaac Newton, while allowing the repulsive power of matter, which in truth is far more obvious to our senses in consequence of its very limited range, has felt a strong propensity to question gravity as forming an essential property of matter itself, and to account for it from another source. "To show," says he, " that I do not take gravity for an essential property of bodies, I have added one question concerning its cause, choosing to propose it by way of question, because I am not yet satisfied about it, for want of experiments."! In this question he suggests the existence of an ethereal and elastic medium per- vading all space; and supports his supposition by strong arguments, and conse- quently with much apparent confidence, deduced from the mediums, or gases, as they are now called, of light and heat, and magnetism, respecting all which, from their extreme subtlety, we can only reason concerning their properties. This elastic medium he conceives to be much rarer within the dense bodies of the sun, the stars, the planets, and the comets, than in the more empty celestial spaces between them, and to grow more and more dense as it recedes from the celestial bodies to still greater distances: by which means all of them, in his opinion, are forced towards each other by the excess of an elastic pressure. It is possible, undoubtedly, to account for the effects of gravitation by an ethereal medium thus constituted; provided, as it is also necessary to sup- pose, that the corpuscles of such a medium are repelled by bodies of common matter with a force decreasing, like other repulsive forces, simply as the dis- tances increase. Its density, under these circumstances, would be every where such as to produce the semblance of an attraction, varying like the attraction of gravitation. The hypothesis in connexion with the existence * Pr. Young's Lect. vol. i. p. 612. t Optics, pref. to the second edition. 56 ON THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER, of a repulsive force in common matter has a great advantage in point of sim plicity, and may perhaps hereafter be capable of proof, though at present it can only be regarded, and was at first only offered, as an hypothesis. M. la Place, equally dissatisfied as Sir Isaac Newton with the idea of gravi- tation beino- an essential property of matter, passes away from the inquiry with suitable modesty, to practical subjects of iar higher importance, and which equally grow out of it, in whatever light it is contemplated. " Is this principle," says ho, " a primordial law of nature 1 or is it a general effect of an unknown cause 1 Here we are arrested by our ignorance of the nature of the essential properties of matter, and deprived of all hope of answering the question in a satisfactory manner. Instead, then, of forming hypotheses on the subject, let us content ourselves with examining more particularly the manner in which philosophers have made use of this most extraordinary power."* There is, indeed, one very striking objection to Sir Isaac Newton's sugges- tion, and which it seems very difficult to repel. It is, that though it may account for the attraction of gravitation, as a phenomenon common to matter in general, it by no means accounts for a variety of particular attractions which are found to take place between particular bodies, or bodies particularly circumstanced; and which, excepting in one or two instances, ought, perhaps, to be contemplated as modifications of gravitation. Upon these particular attractions, or modes of attraction, including homo- geneous attraction, or the attraction of aggregation, heterogeneous attrac- tion, or the attraction of capillary bodies, elective attraction, and those of magnetism and electricity, each of which is replete with phenomena of a most interesting and curious nature, I intended to have touched in the present lec- ture, but our limited hour is-so nearly expired, that we must postpone the consideration of them as a study for our next meeting. Yet it is not possible to close the observations which have now been submitted, without testifying our gratitude to the memory of that transcendent genius whom the provi- dence of the adorable Architect of the universe at length gave to mankind six thousand years after its creation, to unravel its regular confusion, and reduce the apparent intricacy of its laws to that sublime and comprehensive simpH- city which is the peerless proof of its divine original. It has been said, that the discovery of the universal law which binds the pebble to the earth, and the planets to the sun, which connects stars with stars, and operates through infinity, was the result of accident. Nothing can be more untrue, or derogatory to the great discoverer himself. The earliest studies of Newton were the harbinger of his future fame: his mighty mind, that comprehended every thing, was alive to every thing ; the little and the great were equally the subjects of his restless researches : and his attention to the fall of the apple was a mere link in the boundless chain of thouo-ht, with which he had already been long labouring to measure the phenomena of the universe. Grounded, beyond all his contemporaries, in the sure principles of mathe- matics, it was at the age of twenty-two that he first applied the sterling trea- sure he had collected to a solution of the system of the world. The descent of heavy bodies, which he perceived nearly the same on the summit of the loftiest mountains and on the loweft surface of the earth, suggested to him the idea that gravity might possibly extend to the moon; and that, combined with some projectile motion, it might be the cause of the moon's elliptic orbit round the earth: a suggestion in which he vjas instantly confirmed by ob- serving that all bodies in their fall describe curves of some modification or other. And he further conceived, that if the moon were retained in her orbit by her gravity towards the earth, the planets must also in all probability be retained in their several orbits by their gravity towards the sun. To verify this sublime conjecture, it was necessary to ascertain two new and elaborate positions: to determine the law of the progressive diminution * Exposition du Syst&ne du Monde, liv. iv. ch. xv ESSENTIAL AND PECULIAR. 57 of gravity, and to develope the cause of the curves or ellipses of falling bodies. Both these desiderata he accomplished by a series of reasonings and calculations equally ingenious in their origin and demonstrative in their result and ascertained the truth of his principles by applying them, practically and al- ternately, to the phenomenaof the heavens, and to a variety of terrestrial bodies. The bold and beautiful theorem being at length arrived at, and unequivo- cally established—a theorem equally applicable to the minutest corpuscles, and the hugest aggregations of matter—that all the particles of matter attract each other directly as their mass, and inversely as the square of their dis- tance, he at once beheld the cause of those perturbations of motion to which the heavenly bodies are necessarily and so perpetually subject: it became mani- fest, that the planets and comets, reciprocally acting and acted upon, must deviate a little from the laws of that perfect ellipse which they would pre- cisely follow if they had only to obey the action of the sun: it was manifest, that the satellites of the different planets, exposed to the complicated action of the sun, and of each other, must evince a similar disturbance: that the corpus- cles which composed the different heavenly bodies in their formation, perpetu- ally pressing towards one common centre, must necessarily have produced, in every instance, a spherical mass: that their rotatory motion must at the same time have rendered this spherical figure in some degree imperfect, and have flattened these masses at their poles; and, finally, that the particles of immense beds of water, as the ocean, easily separable as they are from each other, and unequally operated upon by the sun and the moon, must evince such oscilla- tions as the ebbing and flowing of the tides. The origin, progress, and per- fection of these splendid conjectures, verifications, and established principles, were communicated in two distinct books, known to every one under the titles of his " Principia" and his " Optics ;"—books which, though not actu- ally inspired, fall but little short of inspiration, and have more contributed to exalt the intellect of man, and to display the perfections of the Diety, than a»\v '.hing upon which inspiration has not placed its direct and awful stamp. i i. *j* LECTURE V. ON THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER, ESSENTIAL AND PECULIAR. (The subject continued.) We closed our last lecture with remarks on the universal operation of the common principle of gravity over matter in all its visible forms, from the minutest shapes developed by the microscope, to the mightiest suns and con- stellations in the heavens. But we observed, also, that, independently of this universal and essential power of attraction, matter possesses a variety of pe- culiar attractions dependent upon circumstances of limited influence, and which consequently render such attractions themselves of local extent. These I will now proceed to notice to you in the following order:—1st, The attraction of homogeneous bodies towards each other, which is denomi- nated, in chemical technology, the attraction of aggregation: 2dly, The attraction of heterogeneous bodies towards each other, under particular cir- cumstances, which in its more obvious cases is denominated capillary attrac- tion : 3dly, The attraction of bodies exhibiting a peculiar degree of affinity to each other, and which is denominated electrive attraction: 4thly, The attraction of the electric fluid ; and, 5thly, That of the magnetic. I. The law of physics, which has rendered every material substance capa- ble of attracting and being attracted by every other material substance, seems at the same time to have produced this power in a much stronger degree be- tween substances of like natures. Thus, drops of water placed upon a plate of dry glass have a tendency to unite, not only when they touch, but when in a state of vicinity to each other; and globules of quicksilver **;11 58 OX THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER, more so: and it is this kind of attraction which is called the attraction of aggregation. And in both these cases the attraction in question evinces a considerable superiority of force to the general attraction of gravitation; since the particles of the drops or globules ascend from the surface of the glass, except those that form their narrow base, and are drawn towards their proper centres, instead of being drawn towards the centre of the earth. If, however, the convex shape of the. drop of water be destroyed by pressing it over the glass into a thin extended film, the general attraction of gravitation, acting with increased effect upon an increased space, will overpower the indi- vidual attraction of aggregation, and the particles of water will be restrained from attempting a spherical figure as before. In the quicksilver, nevertheless, the attraction of aggregation being much stronger than in the water, it will still continue to prevail; and it is only by a very minute and elaborate divi- sion of the particles of this material that we can give to the attraction of gravitation a predominancy. The same result occurs in the homogeneous particles of oil. And hence, if we divide its particles by shaking a certain portion of it in water, we find, upon giving the mixture rest, that the water will first sink to the bottom, or, which is the same thing, the particles of the oil will rise to the surface ; and then that these particles, as soon as they have reached the range of each other's attraction, will unite into one common body. Now, in all these cases it is obvious that the particles of matter thus obeying the law of homogeneous attraction assume or attempt to assume a spherical figure ; and we not unfrequently perceive a similar attempt, even where the breadth of the surface, and the consequent potency of the attraction of gravitation, would hardly induce us to expect that there could be the least effort towards it: as, for example, in a glass brim-full, or somewhat more than brim-lull of wine, or any other liquid. We behold the same figure in the drops of rain as they descend from the clouds; a figure which, in fact, is the sole cause of the vaulted form of the rainbow, as I may possibly take leave to explain more particularly on some s Zl w.?S10n' ,-*ie beh°ld U S reaIity ^^out all nature, in ivery sub- stance whose particles are capable of uniting and separating with ease • and consequently, of readily obeying the laws of cohesibility and dftisibflitv"as those of iqulds. nd ghould gee .t .n y nity, as of these last are incapable of doing readily either the one or the othST pin i '♦. ' 1S the general cause that produces so general an effect» Clearly this: a cause to which I have already in some degree adverted n speaking of the general attraction of gravitation: that, there being an e Jual teS nres?.1'1 T7 ^T^ °f homoS^eouS bodies to press together, they mu press equally towards one common centre, and strive to be as little remote S that centre as possible. Such a strife, however, must ne"sSarily SuS™ globular or spherical form; for it is in such a form only that the extreme Sr tides, or those constituting its surface, apd which are prevented fromTclJser" e^dtcfiom086 ** * ^ areM^-ar Ld equahyTemotTn Hence, then, the cause of the globular figure of drorjs of nnir»lr«;i,^ a „ kind on its surface, when brim-full, or somewha7more Q '* °f a"y Jnea™^ spherical figure of different or Lerog nous subs arfcem itself 'mSv h*^ i°mP°Sed ?f ^ a homogeneous miss when compared withMhX f^r1/.contemplated as and hence, too, we see theneStyfm th?,.T ^ whlch/ 1S su"ounded : some cause or other, a a fluidEstate P^J^™***^ GXisted' from which enter into their make could no h™!™156' ^iprent corpuscles —lent which alone gives Tphe'iS toYhe SSobSk *" ^^ *e have equal proofs of the same peculiar aUracUon'existing between ESSENTIAL AND PECULIAR. 59 solid bodies, though the proofs are not so common; since, as I have just ob- served, the particles of solid bodies have less power of movement, and, con- sequently, of adaptation to each other, than those of liquids. Thus, two plates of lead, whose opposite surfaces correspond so exactly that every par- ticle of each surface shall have a bearing upon the particle opposed to it, when once united by pressure, assisted by a little friction, cohere so powerfully as to require a very considerable force to separate them. And it may be shown, either by measuring this force, or by suspending the lead in the vacuum of an air-pump, that the pressure of the atmosphere is not materially concerned in producing this effect. A cohesion of this kind is sometimes of practical' utility in the arts ; little ornaments of laminated silver remaining attached to iron or steel, with which they have been made to connect themselves by the powerful pressure of a blow, so as to form one mass with it. And it is now a well-known fact, and of a most curious nature, that one of the causes by m which eight-day clocks go at times irregularly, and monthly clocks, whose % weights are much larger and heavier, often amounting to not less than thirty ' pounds, stop suddenly, proceeds from the attraction which takes place between their leaden weights and the leaden ball of the pendulum, when the weights have descended just so low as to be on a level, and, consequently, very nearly in a state of contact, with the pendulum-ball. And hence the reason why both these kinds of clocks, if the pendulum have not actually stopped, seem gradually, a few days afterward, to recover their former accuracy; the attraction diminishing as the distance once more increases.* In like manner, Studor remarks that beams of steel become sometimes erroneous by acquiring magnetic polarity.f It is by the same means that the greater number of rocks seem to be pro- duced that enter into the substance of the earth's solid crust. , The lower- most of these, as I shall have occasion to observe in an ensuing lecture, are united by an intimate crystallization, which is the most perfect form of aggre- gate or homogeneous attraction that can exist between solid bodies, and which must have commenced while such bodies were in a fluid state. Some of the upper kinds or families are united by a particular cement, which is nothing more than a substance possessing a peculiar attrac- tion, or, if I may be allowed the expression, physical partiality to the rudi- mental corpuscles of which the rock consists; and others by nothing more than the law of aggregation or homogeneous attraction in its simplest state ; whence earths unite to earths in consequence of mutual approximation, assisted by their own or a superincumbent pressure, in the same manner as 1 have just stated that plates of lead or other metals unite to metals. <\jf. But there are substances that are unlike in their nature, as solids and fluids, for instance, that under particular circumstances are often found to exhibit a mutual attraction; whence this mode of unioh is called heteroge- neous attraction, and from its occurring most palpably between liquids and solid substances possessing small capillary or hair-tubes, capillary at- traction. The cause of this attraction is obvious ; and it is still more clearly a mere modification of the general attraction of gravitation, than the preceding power of homogeneous attraction. It is the common attractive property of ma- terial substance for material substance; the liquid, or that whose particles are easily separable, pressing toward the solid, whose parts!are by any action oi their own altogether inseparable. Hence the reason why water or any other liquid hangs about the sides of a wine-glass: hence, partly, the reason why a wine- glass, when somewhat more than brim-full of a liquid, does not overflow; the i \co-operative reason being, as I have already stated, the homogeneous attraction «■•■ of the corpuscles of the fluid for each other, which prevents them from sepa- ' rating readily : and hence also the reason why a liquid contained in a narrow- necked and inverted phial does not obey the common attraction of gravita- tion, and fall to the earth, although the stopper be removed to allow it, tih we * Reid, in Nicholson's Journal, vol. xxxiii. p. 92. t Gilb. xiii. 124. Young's Nat. 60 - ON THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER, aid the power of gravitation, or rather loosen the power of the peculiar attraction, by shaking the phial. ____ In this last case it is manifest that the heterogeneous attraction, or that between the two different substances, is stronger than the common force of gravity. In minute capillary tubes or pores this is still more obvious. Such are the pores of a piece of sponge, when pressed or softened, so as to be- come more pliable to the action of water or of any other liquid within its reach. For, in this case, the water being minutely divided by the pores of the spono-e into very small .portions, and still surrounded by the pores in every direction after such division, has its common force of gravitation and its peculiar force of homogeneous attraction equally overpowered; and as- cends from the surface of the earth, instead of descending to it, or uniting into a spherical form; and the same kind of pores, and, consequently, the same kind of power, being continued to the utmost height of the sponge, it will rise to the full extent of its column. The tubes of various imperfect crys- tals, as those of sugar, for example, are still smaller; and hence the lateral attraction must be still stronger ; and any liquid within its reach will rise both higher and more freely, till the sugar at length becomes" dissolved, and, consequently, its pores are totally destroyed. The cause of capillary attrac- tion is therefore obvious: and the reasoning and phenomena now submitted may be applied to an explanation of every other species of the same kind that may occur to us. III. The third particular attraction 1 have noticed, is that of peculiar bodies for peculiar bodies, and which has hence been denominated elective or chemical attraction ; as the tendencies they have to each other have been denominated affinities. Thus limehas a strong affinity for carbonic acid, and greedily attracts it from the atmosphere, which hence becomes purified by being deprived of it. But the same substance has a still stronger affinity for sulphuric acid, and hence parts with its carbonic acid, which flies off in the form of gas, in order to unite with the sulphuric whenever it has a possibility of doing so. It is highly probable that this kind of attraction is also nothing more than a pecu- liar modification of that of gravitation, more select in its range, but more active in its power. To trace out the various substances that are pos- sessed of this peculiar property, and to measure the degrees of their affini- ties, is one of the chief branches of chemistry, but of too voluminous a nature to touch farther upon at present. IV. V. The two remaining kinds of attraction to which I have adverted, those of electricity and of magnetism, are still more select, and perhaps still more powerful than even the preceding: but the phenomena to which they give rise cannot, I think, be attributed to any modification of a gravi- tating ethereal medium. We call the medium in both these cases a fluid, but we know little or nothing of the laws by which they are regulated; whether they be different substances, or, according to M. Ampore, the same substance under different modifications, or whether, in reality, they be material sub- stances at all. They are certainly deficient in the most obvious properties of common matter, and may be another substrate of being united to it. There are also two other substances, or which are generally conceived to be substances, in nature, of a very attenuate texture, which largely con- tribute to the changes of material bodies. I mean light and heat of the general nature of which we are still also in a considerable deo-ree of igno- rance. Like the powers of magnetism and electricity, we only know them and can only reason concerning them, by their effects. These effects, indeed' are of a most curious and interesting character, but spread too widely to be followed up m the course of the present lecture, though we may endeavour to pursue them, and, as far as we are able, to develope them, hereafter. All these four powers or essences, for we know not which to call them, con- curin exhiWing none of the common properties of matter; their respective par- ticles repel each other at least as powerfully as they attract, and in the cases of light and heat repel alone, and without attracting. They may oossiblv be ponderable; but if so, we have no instruments fin! enough To detectteii ESSENTIAL AND PECULIAR. 61 relative weights; and we are hence incapable of determining, as I took leave to observe on a former occasion, whether they be matter at all, whether mere properties of matter, or whether modifications of some etherealised and in- corporeal substrate, combining itself with the material mass, and exciting many of its most extraordinary phenomena. It is at present, however, very much the habit to generalise them into one common origin ; and to conceive the whole as modified results of* matter, or of the gravitating property of matter. Thus, the attractive powers of chemical affinity and of electricity are identified in the following passage of Sir Humphry Davy's valuable " Ele- ments of Chemical Philosophy :"—" Electrical effects are exhibited by the same bodies when acting as masses, which produce chemical phenomena when acting by their particles; it is not improbable, therefore, that the pri- mary cause of both may be the same."* And in like manner, in an adjoin- ing passage, he suggests that all the various properties or essences that have thus far passed in survey before us, may be nothing more than the general attractive power of matter, though he admits that at present we are incompe- tent to determine upon the subject. "With regard to the great speculative questions, whether the electrical phenomena depend upon one fluid in excess in the bodies positively electrified, and in deficiency in the bodies negatively electrified, or upon two different fluids capable by their combination of pro- ducing heat and light, or whether they may be particular exertions of the ge- neral attractive power of matter, it is, perhaps, impossible to decide, in the pre- sent imperfect state of our knowledge."! And hence, heat, in the view of Sir Humphry Davy, Count Rumford, and various other justly celebrated chemists and philosophers of the present day, coincidently with the doctrine of the Peripatetic school, is a mere property of matter, and not a substance sui generis, as was contended for by the Epicu- reans, in opposition to the disciples of Aristotle, and is contended for by the disciples of Boerhaave, Black, Crawford, and most of the chemists of our own times. The cause of heat, among those who deny it a substantive existence, consists in a vibrating motion of the constituent particles of the heated body, too rapid to be traced by the eye. And as it is known to every one that bodies in general, as they become heaited, occupy a larger space, and have their parti- cles more widely repelled and separated from each other than in a colder temperature, it has of late become a favourite doctrine that the repulsive power, which in our last lecture we noticed to exist throughout matter, de- pends altogether upon the property of heat; in consequence of which Sir Humphry Davy uses heat and calorific repulsion as synonymous terms, and hence regards heat and gravitation, or general attraction, as antagonist powers. There is much plausible reasoning to be urged in favour of this hypothesis. It will as readily account for many, perhaps most, of the phenomena which ac- company bodies in their change from one temperature to another, as the posi- tion of the substantive form of heat, and has some advantage in point of sim- plicity ; but it is opposed by a variety of facts of so stubborn and intractable a nature, that no efforts of ingenuity have hitherto been capable of bending them into the service of the new doctrine. I observed, for instance, in our last lecture, that when two plates of glass are within a ten thousandth part of an inch of each other, they cannot be made to approach nearer without a strong additional pressure. I observed, farther, that Professor Robison has calculated the extent of this pressure from actual experiment, and finds it amount to not less than a thousand pounds weight for every square inch of the glass. Now this resistance or repulsive power between the two plates of glass takes place equally under an air-pump and in the fullest exposure to the air of the atmosphere, but it appears to cease under water. By what cause the repulsion is excited in the two former instances, or disappears in the latter, we know not; but it does not seem possible for any ingenuity of argument to connect this repulsive power with heat, whether regarded as a substance or a mere property. •Elm. p. 104,105 t Id p. 176 62 ON THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER, Heat, again, which undoubtedly makes the particles of iron repel each other, so that given weights of them occupy a larger space—makes the particles of a ball of clay, on the contrary, attract each other into a closer approximation, so as very considerably to lessen its dimensions ; and it was on account of this peculiar property that Mr. Wedgewood selected this last material for the pur pose of forming his celebrated pyrometer, or instrument for measuring in- tense heats, the increase of the heat being indicated by the decrease of the mass of clay. So water at about 42° of Fahrenheit, which forms its medium of density, begins to expand upon exposure to heat, and continues to expand in propor- tion as additional heat is applied; but below 42° it begins to expand also upon exposure to cold, and continues to expand in the very same ratio upon the' application of additional cold, till at 32° it freezes and becomes fixed. This curious phenomenon has never been accounted for. If calorific repulsion produce the expansion above -12°, what is it that produces the same effect below? We can, perhaps, explain the cause of the expansion during the act of freezing, from the peculiar shape of the crystals which the water assumes in the act of consolidating; but this explanation will in no respect apply to the expansion of the water when it reaches the freezing point. In this curi- ous and unillustrated fact cold appears to be as much entitled to the character of a repulsive power as heat. For these and numerous other reasons, therefore, heat is even at the pre- sent moment usually regarded, not as a mere quality of body produced by internal vibration, and forming an antagonist power to the attraction of cohe- sion, but as a distinct and independent substance. The sources of heat are various, though by far the principal reservoir throughout the whole solar system is the sun himself, which Dr. Herschel believes to be perpetually- secreting the matter of heat from those dark and discoloured parts on its sur- face which we call spots, by many astronomers regarded as volcanoes, and many of which are larger than, and some of them five or six times as large as the diameter of the earth! This material Dr. Herschel supposes to be first thrown off in the form of an atmosphere, and afterward this atmosphere to be diffused in every direction through the whole range of the solar empire : and, in the Philosophical Transactions for 1801, he has endeavoured to show that the variation in the heat of different years is owing to the more or less copious supply of fuel which such spots communicate. This opinion I at present merely glance at; as it is my intention on a fu- ture occasion to examine its validity, as well as to trace out the other sources from which heat is derived, and to take a survey of the laws by which it is regulated. It will form a progressive part of that investigation to follow up the general nature of light; to try the question whether it be a substance or a property; and if a substance, whether distinct from or a mere modification of heat. I shall at present only observe, that, in one of the latest opinions of the philosopher to whom I have just adverted, it is not only a substance, but the source of all visible substances, and the basis of all worlds. Dr. Herschel has recently taken great pains to prove, but with no small degree of repugnancy to a former hypothesis of his, that the luminous fluid which so often appears in the heavens on a bright night, and shoots streaks athwart them, is diffused light, existing independently of suns or stars, though perhaps originally thrown forth from them ; another kind of ethereal matter being sometimes united with that of li«-ht, and hence rendering it at times capable of opacity. In this diffused state he calls every distinct mass a ne- bulosity; he conceives all its particles to be subject to the common laws of gravitation, or the centripetal force ; and that certain circumstances, unknown to us, may have occasionally produced a nearer approximation between some particles than between others; whence the diffused nebulosity is, in such part, converted into a denser nucleus, which by its comparative preponde- rance must lay a foundation for a rotatory motion, and attract and deter- mine the circumjacent matter still more closely to itself, and consequently; diminish the extent of the nebulous rano-e. ^i»c"»y> ESSENTIAL AND PECULIAR. 63 The nuclei thus arising may sometimes be double or triple, or still more complicated; and whenever this occurs, the nebulosity will be broken into different nebulae, or smaller nebulous clouds ; and if some of them be much minuter than others, the minuter may at length attend upon the larger, as satellites upon a planet: and Dr. Herschel gives instances of all these pheno- mena actually completed, or in a train of completion, in different parts of the visible heavens. Such he submits as his latest opinion of the general construction of the heavens ; believing stars, planets, and comets to have originated, and to be still originating, from such a source ; the nebulous matter contained in a cu- bical space seen under an angle of ten degrees demanding a condensation of two trillion and two hundred and eight thousand billion times before it can be so concentrated as to constitute a globe of the diameter and density of our sun. Some of these masses of light are indistinct and barely visible even by Dr. Herschel's forty feet telescope; and he hence calculates, that if a mass thus traced out contain a cluster of five thousand slars, they must be eleven mil- lions of millions of millions of miles off. M. Huygens entertained an analo- gous idea : and conceived that there are stars so immenselyremote, that their light, although travelling at the rate of eleven millions of miles in a minute, and having thus continued to travel from the formation of the earth, or for nearly six thousand years, has not yet reached us. But this sublime conception is of much earlier origin; and it is due to the magnificence of the Epicurean scheme to state that it is to be found com- pletely developed among its principles. Lucretius has beautifully alluded to it in lines of which I must beg your acceptance of the following feeble trans- lation, the only difference being, that lightning or the electric fluid, is here employed instead of light, at least by Havercamp; for Vossius, in the Ley- den edition, gives us light for lightning, reading lumina instead oifulmina. The poet is speaking of the immensity of space :— The vast whole What fancied scene can bound ? O'er its broad realm, Inimeasur'd, and immeasurably spread, From age to age resplendent lightnings urge, In vain, their flight perpetual; distant, still, And ever distant from the verge of things, So vast the space or opening space that swells, Through every part so infinite alike.* From this immense range of nebulous light Dr. Herschel derives comets, as well as stars and planets, believing them, indeed, to be the rudiments of the two latter; and he" has especially noticed, as originating from this source, the well-remembered comet that so brilliantly, and for so long a period of time, visited our horizon during the close of the year 1811; which he conceives will be converted into a stellar or planetary orb as soon as its luminous mat- ter, and especially that of its enormous tail, shall be sufficiently concentrated for this purpose. This tail he calculated, when at its greatest apparent stretch in October of the same year, at something more than a hundred mil- lions of miles long, and nearly fifteen millions broad, though its bright or solid nucleus or planetary body was not supposed to measure more than four hundred and twenty-eight miles. Its perihelion path, or nearest approach to the sun is stated at a distance of ninety-seven millions of miles, its distance from the 'earth at ninety-three millions. The comet of 1807 approached the earth within sixty-one millions of miles, or about a third nearer the earth, and that * Omne quidem vero nihil est quod finiat extra. Est igitur natura loci, spatiumque profundi, Quod neque clara suo percurrere fulmina cursu Perpetuo possint asvi labentia tractu; Nee prorsum facere, ut restet minus ire, meando Usque adeo passim patet ingens copia rebus, Finibus exemptis, in cunctas undique parteia t De Rcr. Nat. i. 1000. 64 ON THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER, of 1680 within a sixth of its diameter, or as near as 147,000 miles, its tail be- ing of a like length. There is one comet, however, that we seem to be somewhat better ac- quainted with than with this that paid us so near a visit, or indeed than with any other, from its having approached us visibly for four times in succession, if not oftener. It was towards the beginning of last century that Mr. Halley was struck with the remark, that the general elements and character of the comets observed in 1531, 1607, and 1682, were nearly the same ; whence he concluded that the whole formed but one identical body, that took about seventy-six years to complete its eccentric orbit; and hence, although in consequence of this eccentricity, and its travelling amid a range of heavenly bodies that are altogether invisible to us, and whose influence seems to bid defiance to calculation, it is difficult to form an estimate of its progress, he ventured to suggest, that it would appear again, making due allowances for these incidents, towards the close of 1758, or the commencement of 1759 : and he had the high satisfaction of seeing his prediction verified; the comet passing its perihelion March 12th, 1759, within the limits of the errors of which he thought his results susceptible. It is apparently this comet, which at this last period only excited the curiosity of astronomers and mathemati- cians, that in 1456, or four revolutions earlier, towards the close of what are called the dark ages, spread such consternation over all Europe, already, indeed, terrified by the rapid successes of the Turkish arms, that Pope Cal- lixtus was induced to compose a prayer for the whole western church, in which both the Turks and the comet were included in one sweeping ana- thema. Admitting the truth of Dr. Herschel's hypothesis, as we are now contem- plating it, it is possible that some of the lately discovered planets, which are now attendant upon the sun, were formerly comets, whose orbits have for ages been growing progressively more regular, as well as their constitutional rudiments more dense ; and such, indeed, is the opinion of M. Voigt, and of various other philosophers on the continent. The object of the present and the preceding lecture has been to submit a sketch of the most obvious properties belonging to matter, so as to enable you to obtain a bird's-eye view of the general phenomena it is capable of as- suming, and the general changes it is necessarily sustaining. From the qua- lities I have placed before you, of passivity, cohesibility, divisibility, and at- tractions of various kinds, must necessarily result, according to the intensity with which they are called into action, the phenomena of liquidity, viscidity, toughness, elasticity, symmetry of arrangement, solidity, strength, and resi- lience. But the powers which thus perpetually build up the inorganic world, and to this our survey has been entirely confined, perpetually also destroy it: for the whole, as I have had occasion to observe, is a continued circle of action; a circle most wise, most harmonious, most benevolent: and hence as one compound substance decays, another springs up in its place, and can only spring up in consequence of such decay. There is, however, another lesson, if I mistake not, which we may readily learn from these lectures, however imperfectly delivered, and which is alto- gether of a moral character: I mean that of humility, in regard to our own opinions and attainments; and of complacency, in regard to those of others. After a revolution of six thousand years, during the whole of which period of time the restless ingenuity of man has been incessantly hunting in pursuit of knowledge, what is there in physical philosophy that is thoroughly and per fectly known even at the present moment ? and of the little that is thus known, what is there which has been acquired without the clash of contro- versy and the warfare of opposing speculations ? Truth, indeed,—for ever praised be the great Source of Truth, for so eternal and immutable a decree —has at all times issued, and at all times will issue, from the conflict; but while we behold philosophers of the highest reputation, philosophers equally balanced in the endowment of native genius, proved by the great teacher Time to have been alternately mistaken upon points to which they had hon ESSENTIAL AND ECULIAR. 65 estly directed the whole acumen of their intellect, how absurd, how con temptible is the fond confidence of common life! Yet what, indeed, when fairly estimated by the survey that has now been briefly taken of the sensible universe,—what is the aggregate opinion, or the aggregate importance of the whole human race! We call ourselves lords of the visible creation: nor ought we at any time, with affected abjection, to degrade or despise the high gift of a rational and immortal existence.—Yet, what is the visible creation ? by wh»m peopled ? and where are its entrances and outgoings ? Turn wher- ever we will, we are equally confounded and overpowered: the little and the great are alike beyond our comprehension. If we take the microscope, it un- folds to us, as I observed in our last lecture, living beings, probably endowed with as complex.and perfect a structure as the whale or the elephant, so minute that a million of millibns of them do not occupy a bulk larger than'a common grain of sand. If we exchange the microscope for the telescope, we behold man himself reduced to a comparative scale of almost infinitely smaller dimension, fixed to a minute planet that is scarcely perceptible throughout the vast extent of the solar system; while this system itself forms but an insensible point in the multitudinous marshallings of groups of worlds upon groups of worlds, above, below, and on every side of us, that spread through all the immensity of space, and in sublime, though silent harmony declare the glory of God, and show forth his handy work. LECTURE VI. ON GEOLOGY. There are some subjects on which the philosopher is obliged to exercise nearly as much imagination as the poet; for it is the only faculty by which he can expatiate upon them. Such is a great part of the magnificent study upon which we have touched in our preceding lectures. Space, immensity, infinity, pure incorporeal intelligence, matter created out of nothing, innu- merable systems of worlds, and innumerable orders of beings;—where is the mind strong enough to grapple with such ideas as these ? They at once en- tice and overwhelm us. Reason copes with them till she is exhausted, and then gives us over to conjecture. Hence, as we have already seen, inven- tion at times takes the place of induction, and the man of wisdom has his dream as well as the man of fancy. Let us descend from such magnificent flights: let us quit the possible for the actual; and equally incapable of following up the fugitive material of which the visible universe consists, into its elementary principles and collective mass, let us examine it as far as we are able, in the general laws, structure, and phenomena it exhibits in the solid substance of the globe on which we tread It is this inquiry that constitutes the science of geology, a brief outline of which is intended as a study for the present lecture;—a science than which few are of more importance, but which is only at present in its infancy, and of course almost entirely indebted for its existence to the unwearied assiduity and discoveries of modern times. The direct object of geology is, to unfold the solid substance of the earth —to discover by what causes its several parts have been either arranged or disorganized—and from what operations have originated the general stratifi- cation of its materials, the inequalities of its surface, and the vast variety of bodies that enter into its make. In pursuing this investigation, many difficulties occur to us. The bare surface, or mere crust of the earth's structure, is the whole we are capable of boring into, or of acquiring a knowledge of, even by the deepest clefts of vol- canoes, or the deepest bottoms of different seas. It is not often, however, that we have the power of examining either seas or volcanoes so low as to their bottom. The inhabitable part of the globe bears but a small proportion E 66 ON GEOLOGY. to the uninhabitable, and the civilized an almost infinitely smaller proportion still. Hence our experience must be extremely limited ; a thou and^ tacts may be readily conceived to be unfolded that we are incaPable °f *f f"™" ing for; and, at the same time, a variety of contradictory hypotheses to be formed with a view of accounting for them. -„,;„-« So far as the superficies of the earth has been laid open to us by ravines, rivers, mines, earthquakes, and other causes, we find it composed of a multi- tude of stony masses, sometimes simple, or consisting of a single mineral substance, as limestone, serpentine, or quartz; but more frequently compound, or constructed of two or more simple materials variously intermixed and united; as granite, which is a composition of quartz, felspar, and mica; and sienite, which is a composition of felspar and hornblend. These stony masses or rocks are numerous, and they appear to be laid one over the other, so that a rock of one kind of stone is covered by a rock of another kind, and this second by a third kind, and so on, in many instances, for a very considerable number of times in succession. In this superposition of rocks it is easily observable that their situation is not arbitrary. Every stratum occupies a determinate place ; so that they follow each other in regular order from the deepest part of the earth's crust, which has been examined, to the very sur- face. Thus there are two things respecting rocks which claim our peculiar attention—their composition and their relative situation. And independently of the rocks thus considered as constituting almost the whole of the earth's crust, there are other masses of fossil materials that must be likewise minutely studied; which traverse rocks in a different direction, and are known by the name of veins ; as if the rocks had been split asunder in dif- ferent places from top to bottom, and the chasms had been afterward filled up with the matter which constitutes the vein. And hence the veins which intersect rocks are as much entitled to our attention as the structure and situation of the rocks themselves. Rocks, as to their structure, may be contemplated under two divisions, simple and compound. The simple division is, however, rather a speculative than a practical con- templation. It is possible that rocks, and of immense magnitude, may exist in parts of the globe we are not acquainted with, that are perfectly simple and unmixed in their structure; but it is seldom, perhaps never, that they have been actually found in such a state, at least to any considerable extent. It is only under a compound form, therefore, or as composed of more than one mineral substance, that rocks are to be contemplated in our present sur- vey of the subject; and in this form we meet with them of two kinds: cemented, or composed of grains, or nodules," agglutinated by a cement, as sandstone and breccia or pudding-stone; and aggregated, or composed of parts connected without a cement, as granite and gneiss. The component parts of the cemented rocks are often very multifarious; those of granite and gneiss much less so, consisting chiefly of felspar, mica, and quartz, with gar- nets, shorl, or hornblend occasionally intermixed with the mass. The gra- nite that forms the flag-stones of Westminster Bridge are supposed to have been brought from Dartmoor; and, like the rest of the Dartmoor granite, is remarkable for the length of its crystals of felspar, which in some instances are not less than four inches. The aggregate rocks, like the cemented, are sometimes found of an inde- terminate, but more generally of a determinate or regular form; and it is the office of that branch of mineralogy to which M. Werner has given the name of oryctognosy, to distinguish and describe them by these peculiarities This is a branch into which I cannot plunge, for it would lead us from that general view of the science to which our present course of study is directed into a detailed analysis. Those who are desirous of pursuing it in this line of development may consult with great advantage Professor Jameson's Sys- tem of Mineralogy, or M. Brogniart's Traite Elementaire, or M. Cuvier's Essay on the Theory of the Earth, prefixed to his Fossil Remains. I can onlv observe, at present, that the total number of rooky masses, or different kinds of ON GEOLOGY. 67 rocks, whether simple or compound, which have been hitherto observed, amount to about sixty; of which the principal seem to be the eight following: granite, gneiss, hornblend, limestone, wacke, basalt, quartz, and clay. Let us next pass on, then, to consider their relative situation. Of the different rocks thus glanced at, and placed over each other, the whole crust of the earth is composed, to the greatest depth that the industry of man has been able to penetrate; and I have already observed, that with respect to each other, they occupy a determinate situation, which holds invariably in every part of the globe. Thus, limestone, excepting under particular circum- stances, hereafter to be explained, is nowhere found under granite, but always above it. This general view of the subject may, indeed, induce a suppo- sition that every separate layer which constitutes a part of the earth's sur- face is extended round the entire globe, and wrapped about the central nucleus, like the coats of an onion; the kind of rock that is always lowest, or nearest the centre, uniformly supporting a second kind, and this second kind a third, and so on. Now, though the different kinds or layers of rocks do not in reality extend round the earth in this uninterrupted manner—though, partly from the inequality of the nucleus on which they rest, partly from their own inequality of thickness in different places, and partly from other causes, the continuity is often interrupted—yet still we trace enough of it to con- vince us that the rocks which constitute the crust of the earth, when con. templated upon a large scale, are every where the same, and that they inva- riably occupy a like situation with respect to each other. The labours of Mr. Kirwan and M. de Saussure gave the earliest hints upon this subject; and the' geological theories of Professor W'erner of Freyburg, and of M. de Cuvier of Paris, are entirely founded on the same. These theo- ries, though derived in some measure from different sources of mineralogical study, coincide not merely in their general outline, but in all their more pro- minent parts, and only differ in their mode of accounting for the more limited or local deposites. M. Werner, " from whom alone," to adopt the language of M. de Cuvier," we can date the commencement of real geology," so far as respects the mineral natures of the strata, divided in his first view of the subject, all the various rocks that enter into the solid crust of the earth, into five classes. QQMhese the first class consists of those rocks which, if we were to sup- pose each layer to be extended over the whole earth, would lie lowest, or nearest the centre, and be covered by all the rest; it comprises seven distinct sets, as granite, gneiss, mica-slate, clay-slate, a peculiar kind of porphyry, sienite, and a peculiar kind of serpentine. Of these granite lies the under- most, and sienite the uppermost; and in the midst of several of them we meet with beds of not less than eight other kinds of rock, as though dropped into them by accident—as topaz, another kind of porphyry, serpentine, limestone, flint-slate, and trap, quartz, and gypsum; which are hence called subordinate rocks of this class, and which extend the whole number of sets belonging to it to fifteen. These are supposed to have been earliest produced, and when the earth first emerged from a state of chaos to a state of order; and are hence deno- minated primitive formations. They are distinguished by the following character. Not a single relic of either animal or vegetable petrifaction is to be found in any of them. The lowermost or older contain no carbonaceous matter; which is discoverable but very sparingly in the superior or newer. They are all chemical combinations, and generally crystallized ; the crystal- lized appearance being most perfect in the oldest, and gradually becoming less perfect in the newer formations. I have already observed that the whole of this scale of formations does not regularly coat the nucleus of the earth; so little so, indeed, that sometimes even the granite itself, the lowermost rock of all, is left bare, and not pressed down or coated by a deposite of any other kind of rock : and so of the rest. Wherever this deficiency takes place, the rock thus left at liberty rises uniformly higher than it is found to do where pressed upon and invested with its common coatings. But every rock does 68 ON GEOLOGY. not, under such circumstances, rise equally high, or with an equal degree ot freedom; for granite rises highest of all; and hence we frequently find it composing the tops of our loftiest chains of mountains, as well as the basis of the earth's solid crust. It forms the great body of the Swiss mountains and the Alps, though gneiss is here also found in great abundance. The level of gneiss, when left at equal liberty, is a little lower than that of granite. It constitutes the vast mass of the Carpathian mountains, that divide Transylvania and Hungary from Poland. The level of mica-slate is lower than that of gneiss, and the level of clay- slate lowest of all. So that there is a regular sinking of these respective levels from granite to clay-slate : while the newer porphyry and sienite are often laid over their summits, as though these two formations had been de- posited long after the production of the others; an idea which is still farther strengthened by our meeting occasionally with a bed of breccia, or pudding- stone, composed of fragments of the older or lower rocks, capping the gneiss, granite, or other formation before the porphyry or sienite has been deposited. The second class of rocks, or that which, when the number of coatings is complete, lies immediately over the preceding, consists of gray-wacke slate, and a peculiar kind of limestone, greenstone, and amygdaloid ; together with subordinate masses of the proper primitive formations, sienite, porphyry, and granite; as though some portions of these had become crystallized after the rest, along with the next layers in succession, or had been separated from the parent rocks by some early commotion. Gray-wacke, which is a concrete term, denoting a conglomerate rock of a peculiar kind, having a basis of clay- slate, and being studded or otherwise intersected with portions of quartz, fel- spar, and scales of mica, may be exemplified by what in Cornwall is called killas, a far more euphonous word; and hence gray-wacke and gray-wacke slate may be distinguished by the terms amorphose and schistose killas. The Cornish killas lies directly over the granite of that county, which possesses the character ascribed by Werner to granite of the highest antiquity.* These formations, for the most part, irregularly alternate with each other. instead of preserving one regular and successive order, as the different sets of the primitive formations do; excepting that the limestone appears usually undermost and placed, as the basis of the rest, upon the sienite or uppermost of he first class. It is in this second class of formations that petrifactions first make their appearance; and it deserves particular attention that they are uniformly confined, both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, to hole of the lowest links in the scale of organization; and even amono- these to we cies which are at present altogether unknown, and which appear the?eforePto" n?,e!^lynf "CL ,ThUS the ^nimal Pet"factions consist entirely oTammo- ? ' "?? lte,s' unknown corals, and other zoophytic worms; and the Xe table petrifactions of reeds, ferns, and other palm-like plan s, mosses aS other cryptogamic productions, which occupy the lowest part m7e scale of vegetable life, as zoophytic worms do among animals. It is here ato thai carbonaceous matter, which is chiefly of vegetable origin, first makes Us in pearance in any considerable quantity. 8 * kes lts aP_ To this class of rocks, therefore, M. Werner has driven the namP ne ™ uninhabited to an inhabited condition. TheTda e off theK^, 'Tfr0m an The third class of rocks is denominated floptt tW ;* » tal formations, in conseouence nf tht\l ,J,tT ' hat 1S' FLAT or h°bizon- more nearly horizontal 35" the^S Sv?116^"1 feds mu<* transiUon-class, and consist of thePtw^^^ ON GEOLOGY. 69 of which is generally found in a particular situation: sandstone of different kinds, and differently arranged, three sets; limestone, three sets; gypsum, two sets; calamine ; chalk; coal; trap. The trap usually covers the whole of this class, as the newer porphyry and.sienite cover the primitive forma- tions : the relative position of the rest is more variable. The fioetz or hori- zontal class is characterized by its containing an abundance of petrifactions in every one of its sets, and these of known animal and vegetable kinds; though still, of those that occupy the lower parts of the scale, as shells, fishes, the fishes much mutilated, a few tortoises, ferns, pines, and reeds; in- dicating that they were formed at a periodin which organized beings of this character abounded, but in which those of other characters did not exist, or but rarely. The fourth class of formations, under the Wernerian system, is denomi- nated alluvial, and1 constitutes the great mass of the actual surface of the earth's solid crust. They have been evidently produced by the gradual ac- tion of rain, river-water, air, and the elastic gases, upon the other classes, and may, comparatively, be considered as very recent formations, or rather as de- positee, whose formations are still proceeding. They may be divided into two kinds; those deposited in the valleys of mountainous districts, or those elevated plains which often occur in mountains, and those deposited upon flat land. The first kind consists of sand, gravel, and similar materials, which consti- tuted part of the neighbouring mountains in their original state, and which remain, notwithstanding that these less durable parts have been thus washed or blown away. They sometimes contain ores, which also existed in the neighbouring mountains, and have been carried down by the agency of rain, air, or the elastic gases. The ores principally discovered in such situations are those of gold and tin; and these soils are often washed in order to se- parate them. Beds of loam are also occasionally met with on the plains of mountains, formed of the decomposed elements of animal and vegetable bodies that once occupied their sides. The second kind of alluvial deposites, or that which occupies the flat.land, consists of loam, clay, sand, marl, calcsinter, and calctuff, or stalactitic tufa, the basis of our common petrifactions; and which is found very largely in Sweden, Germany, and Italy, clothing with a calcareous coat the smaller branches of trees, leaves, prickles, moss, and other minute plants; eggs, birds, and birds' nests; preserving them from decay, by defending them from the action of the air. The clay and sand sometimes contain petrified wood ; and in many parts are found the skeletons of quadrupeds, even of the largest magnitudes, as we shall have occasion to observe hereafter.* Here, also, occur earths and brown coal (in which is often traced mineral amber), wood • coal, bituminous wood, and bog iron ore. The last, or uppermost, of the five classes of rocks of the Werneria-n sys- tem, is denominated volcanic formations ; and consists of two distinct sets, false and true. The false comprise mineral substances which have experienced a change from the combustion of beds of coal situated in the neighbourhood: the chief minerals which are thus altered are porcelain, jasper, earth, slag, burnt-clay, columnar clay, ironstone, and, perhaps, polishing slate. The real volcanic minerals are those which have been thrown out of the crater of a volcano, and consist of three kinds: first, those which, having been discharged frequently, have formed the crater itself of the mountain: secondly, those which have rolled down in a stream, and are known by the name of lavas: and, thirdly, the residual matter contained in the water which is often ejected, composed of ashes and other light substances, and which, when rendered solid by evaporation, is denominated volcanic tuff or tufa. I have observed that these different classes of mineral formations are often traversed in various directions by other mineral substances which are callc i * See series II. lect. ii. On zoological systems, and the distinctive characters of animals. 70 ON GEOLOGY. veins, as if the rocks they compose had split asunder in different places from top to bottom, and the chasms had been afterward filled up from other sources. These transverse lines or veins are worthy of notice in regard to their shape and the substances with which they are filled. With respect to their shape, they appear to be almost always widest above, and gradually to diminish as they deepen, till at last they terminate in a point; exactly as if they had been originally fissures in the rock. Occa- sionally, indeed, they are observed to widen and contract alternately in dif- ferent parts of their course ; but this is by no means a common appearance. Sometimes they are partially or altogether empty; and in this case they are real fissures, ana are so denominated; but generally they are filled with matter more or less simple, and more or less different from the rock through which they pass. All the formations I have already noticed as existing in the shape of rocks have also been found in the shape of veins : whence we have veins of granite, porphyry, limestone, basalt, wacke, green- stone, quartz, clay, felspar, pit-coal, common salt, and metals of every kind. When the veins are compound, or consist of a variety of substances, these substances are almost always disposed in regular layers; one species of mineral constituting a central line or cylinder, and this being incrusted with a second mineral, and the second with a third, and in the same manner to the utmost sides of the veins. These layers are occasionally very numerous ; that ot the vein Georgius, at Freyburg, consists of not less than nine, and there is another in the same district, which, according to M. Werner extends ™X eH' i 1S !10t uncommon to find veins crossing each other in the same Xp nlht when this occurs, one of the veins may be traced passing through ein11! 7 Ut a."y intf\rruPtio»> aild completely cutting it in two, the cr k S? } seParatlll£ and vanishing at the point of intersection. nallvS«f«Ppea'i8 m°/u °bYi0US than that these veins must ha™ been origi- occur Z it ^ "hid by S°Ee UIlkn°Wn Vi0lence in the rocks in which thfy occur, and it is highly probable, as conjectured by M. Werner that the minp aurin^fh13 S Wh?h co?8?ute them have bee» deposited slow y from ThoTe WnFi format,°n of the different classes or sets of rock of which Ve dif wate, En S "^ ^ r°°kS ,in which the^ occur were covered wih Jhev n'rp 3 , S ^^^Yems are of course newer than the rocks in which ^s^ffi^^xss: ^eS6^ coTdered are those They are supposed to exist^ovlr the globe^ a f IT'lTfT™^' of chorographic or typographic chan^S Hi u e lndePendent denominated[universal formations g' ^ hence been Stl11 farthe* conLlinTof wKChS cS3 p?rt ^"^ * "** l° "^ a SIXTH cla-' those which are so often fomid in vashnZ* ^l F0RM™*: comprising tries; the material; o^ whic are in L^1^™ ba8IM of particular coun- and have probably been^carried doWn^ inLinsta"cfs' strangely intermixed, deluges, ^uJlT^eStiSno^l by circumscribed natingwith each other SknS * i J S °r seas> occasionally alter- fore, xeBHontoe^^t^^1^ dlSrUPtl0"s' We have her^ «»e£. combination of whSerlub t uc^may ^^Vt^* T^ seas or rivers or rifted soil* with ZV y - existed in the course of such ^ formations, a^^ consequently, animal and vegetable remanso? aU xinds " aUUV1°nS' and' ^S^tS^J^ £2MT b^~ P-is, in which the elephants, hippopotiS, £^J m"^^^^?^^ °ft hUgCSt size thu.k-skinned monsters, have ^l^r^^t^76^^^' 0r The celebrated quarries of ^ningen, on the^RhTne,0 re of ^e kSd^Td ON GEOLOGY. 71 these, having been erroneously regarded of the same antiquity as Werner's universal formations, have been appealed to by various writers as affording proofs of the falsity of his theory.* We have other instances of this local formation in many parts of our own country, and particularly near the banks of the Thames. Mr. Trimmer has given an interesting account of the substrate of two fields in the vicinity of Brentford, that are loaded with the organic remains of the larger kinds of quadrupeds; as bones of elephants, approaching to both the Asiatic and the African species ; horns of deer, apparently as enormous as those dug up in Ireland; bones of the bos genus; and teeth and bones of the hippopotamus; the last very abundant, and intermixed with fresh water shells,f and other fresh water relics. Occasionally, however, marine remains are found intermingled with such animal fossils and composing their beds instead of those of fresh water; and not unfrequently layers of the one kind, as in the basin of Paris, are irregu- larly surmounted by layers of the other. But no human skeletons are dis- covered in the midst of any of these rocks, although the bones of man are as capable of preservation as those of any other animal: the only known instance of this sort being that imported into our own country from Guada- loupe by Sir Alexander Cochrane, and which is now exhibited in the British Museum, imbedded in a block of calcareous stone; a very accurate descrip- tion of which has been published in the Philosophical Transactions by Mr. Konig. It is hence obvious, that the catastrophes which involved these enormous quadrupeds in destruction must have occurred at a period when mankind had no existence in the regions which are thus overwhelmed; and in some places overwhelmed alternately by disruptions and inundations of sea and of fresh water. And it is equally obvious, that as the fossil bones are not rolled or violently distorted, or deprived of their natural contour, such remains have not been brought to their present beds from a distance; but that the deluge must have been sudden, and overtaken them in their natural resorts; and hence may, in many cases, have swept away all the individuals of a species in a common calamity. There is, however, a great difficulty with some naturalists in conceiving that such animals as the elephant, the tapir, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the mammoth, or mastodon, animals now only found in the torrid regions, could have existed in these northern parts of the globe. M. de Marschall endeavoured by one sweeping stroke of the fancy to solve this, as well as that of the extraordinary fragments in which they are often imbedded, and held out that the whole have.fallen at different times, like meteoric stones, from heaven.J The real difficulty, however, vanishes in a considerable de- gree, if not entirely, when we reflect, that although the torrid regions furnish us with some of these genera, they do not appear in any instance to contain the same precise species as are traced among the large fossil quadrupeds of the northern and colder parts: and hence it is no argument, that because the habits of the extant species do not qualify them for a residence in these lat- ter regions, such situations might not have furnished a comfortable home to the species whose remains are found among us. The fossil species do not differ less from the living to which they make the nearest approach, than various animals that are familiar to us do from others that belong to the same tribes, and which are found, under one species or other, over the whole world. The race of horses, of swine, or of sheep, furnishes us with abundant exam- ples of this remark: and that of dogs affords perhaps a still more striking illustration; for while under one form, that of the isatis or Arctic fox, the canis Lagopus of Linnams, we find it in the northernmost coast of America, and even the frozen sea, living in clefts, or burrowing on the naked moun- * For an admirable defence of this part of the theory, see Mr. Jameson's essay " On Formations," in- "Tnu T^tmlT^° Sl^Mr. Webster's valuable essay on the same subject, in vol. ii. of T TTansVcHons of the Geological Society. t Recherches sur 1'Origine, &c. Gcssen. 1802. ON GEOLOGY. tains, and in that of the almost infinite varieties of the cfamilians or domes- tic dog, in the bosom of our own country,-4n the form of the /-aureus, chacal or jackal, we meet with it in the warmest parts of Asia and Barbary, prowling at nio-ht in flocks of one or two hundred individuals. The extensive turbaries or peat-fields, which are so common to many parts of Europe, aro produced by an accumulation of the remains of sphag- num and other aquatic mosses. These surround and cover up the small knolls upon which they are formed; or, in many places, descend along the valleys after the manner of the glaciers of Switzerland; but, while the latter melt away every year at their lower edges, the mosses are not checked by any obstacle in their regular increase ; and as such increase takes place in determinate proportions, by sounding their depth to the solid ground we may form some estimate of their antiquity. The ordinary rise of those extensive ranges of downs which are seen skirting the coasts of many countries, and especially where the shore is not very bold, is a mixed effort of sea and wind. To produce this, however, the soil that the sea washes over must consist of sand. This is first pushed in successive tides towards the shore; it next becomes dry, by being left there at every reflux of the sea; and is then drifted up the beach, and to a consi- derable distance from the beach, by the winds which are almost always blow- ing from the sea, and often in whirls or eddies ; and are at length fixed by the growth of wild plants, whose seeds are in like manner wafted about on the wings of the breeze, or casually dropped with the excretions of birds or other animals that pass over them. In several parts, observes M. Cuvier, these proceed with a frightful rapidity, overwhelming forests, houses, and cultivated fields in their irresistible progress. Those on the coast of the Bay of Biscay have actually buried a considerable number of villages whose existence is noticed in the records of the middle ages. And even in the pre- sent day they are threatening not fewer than ten distinct hamlets with almost inevitable destruction : one of which, named Mimigan, has been in perpetual danger for upwards of twenty years, from a sand-hill of more than sixty feet in perpendicular height, produced by the cause we are now contemplating, and which is very obviously augmenting.* There are various forelands on the coasts of the North Sea, and particularly on those of the counties of Sleswigh and Holstein, which are formed in the same manner.-)- But the most extraordinary inroads of sand storms and sand floods are, perhaps, those which have taken place in the Libyan Desert and in Lower Egypt. M. Denon informs us, in his travels over this part of the world, that the summits of the ruins of ancient cities buried under moun- tains of drifted sands still appear externally; and that but for a ridge of mountains, called the Libyan Chain, which borders the left bank of the Nile, and forms a barrier against the invasion of these sands, the shores of the river, on that side, would long since have ceased to be habitable. " Nothing," says M. Denon, " can be more melancholy, than to walk over villages swallowed by the sand of the desert, to trample under foot the roofs of their houses, to strike against the tops of their minarets, and to reflect, that yonder, in days of yore, were cultivated fields, that hard by were groves of flourishing trees, and the dwellings of men close at hand;—and that all has now vanished."! The various islands that spot the surface of the sea have arisen from differ- ent causes. Many of them have been merely separated from the adjoining continent by the inroad of the sea itself upon the mainland; others have been thrown up by volcanoes, which have at times disgoro-ed prodigious blocks of granite among the mixed materials, such as are frequently found in the Danish archipelago, in the midst of the geest, or alluvial matter, which has collected around them. Other islands are altogether the masonry of madre- ™.£rcTv^^ phya^r.^esoncuvier,8Thfio^&c-p-217-c—£°^^^^^^ ON GEOLOGY. 73 pores, and other coral zoophytes of wonderful industry and perseverance, of which the South Sea furnishes us with the largest and most astonishing spe- cimens. These islands are for the most part flat and low, and surrounded by enormous belts of coral reefs. Most of the calcareous zoophytes are em- ployed in their construction, but the principal worm is the madrepora lubricata of Linnaeus. In so large an abundance, and with so much facility, is calcareous matter elaborated by these, as well as by various other animals, and especially the testaceous worms, that M. Cuvier is inclined to ascribe all the calcareous rocks that enter into the solid crust of the earth to an animal origin.* But this is to suppose the earth of a far higher antiquity, and to have been the subject of more numerous general deluges, and inversions of sea and land, than are called for by the Wernerian system, or appear reconcileable with the Mosaic narrative. M. Cuvier apprehends, indeed, that such catastrophes may have occurred five or six times in succession, at a distance of four, five, or six thousand years from each other; and that even the chalk formation found in the basin of Paris originated in a revolution of this kind that occurred an- tecedently to that which is usually regarded as the flood of Noah. And, fol- lowing up this idea, he conceives, towards the close of his Introductory Theory of the Earth, that if the science of fossil organic productions could be carried to a much higher degree of perfection, we should be able to obtain far fuller information upon this subject; " and man, to whom only a short space of time is allotted upon the earth, would have the glory of restoring the history of thousands of ages which preceded the existence of the human race, and of thousands of animals that never were contemporaneous with his species." LECTURE VII. ON GEOLOGY. (The subject continued.) In our last study I attempted a brief sketch of the chief phenomena that occur to the eye of the geologist upon a survey of the solid crust of the earth, as far as he is able to penetrate into it. The conclusion to which such phe- nomena lead us is the following: that the rudimental materials of the globe, to the utmost depths we are able to trace them, existed at its earliest period, in one confused and liquid mass; that they were afterward separated, and ar- rano-ed by a progressive series of operations, and a uniform system of laws, the more obvious of which appear to be those of gravity and crystallization ; and that they have since been convulsed and dislocated by some dreadful commotion and inundation that have extended to every region, and again thrown a great part of the organic and inorganic creation into a promiscuous Now', the only two causes that can enter into the mind of man as being competent to the fluidity that apppears at first to have existed throughout the whole crust of the earth are fire, or'a peculiar solvent. But, if a solvent, that solvent must have been water: for there is no other liquid in nature in sufficient abundance to act the part of a solvent upon a scale so extensive. And hence our inquiries into this subject become in some degree limited, and are chiefly confined to what have been called the Plutonic and the Nep- tunian hypotheses ; the origin of the world in its present state from igneous fusion, and from aqueous solution. Both these theories are of very early • Some writers have proceeded much farther than this, for they have resolved all the solid materials of the earttVarustinto an organic origin. Such was the opinion of Demaillet and Lamarck, who suppose hat every thinswas originally fluid; that this universal fluid gave rise to plants and animals; ttatall clav oSllacfous earth is the produce of the former; all calcareous earth of the latter; and that s.nceous earth has be«n the result of the two.. Telliamid, p. 169. Philosophic Zoologique, paanm 74 ON GEOLOGY. date, and both of them have been agitated in ancient as well as in modern times with a considerable degree of warmth as well as of plausible argument. Among the ancients, Heraclitus seems to have headed the advocates for the former theory, and Thales, or rather Epicurus, the supporters of the latter. In what may be regarded as modern times, Hooke may, perhaps, be held the reviver of the Plutonic system, which has since, as I have already observed, been supported by the cosmological doctrines of Buffon and Dr. Herschel. Its principal champions, however, in the present day are Dr. Hutton, Pro- fessor Playfair,* and Sir James Hall; names, unquestionably, of high literary rank, and entitled to the utmost deference, but most powerfully opposed by the distinguished authorities of Werner, whose system I have just glanced at, Saussure, Kirwan, Cuvier, and Jameson, not to mention that the general voice of geologists is very considerably in favour of the latter class of philo- sophers, and consequently of the Neptunian or aqueous hypothesis. Let us, then, take a brief view of each of these theories in their order. According to the former, or the Plutonic conjecture, heat is the great source, not only of the original production, but of the perpetual reproduction of things. This theory supposes a regular alternation of decay and renovation. Of decay induced by the action of light, air, and other gases, rain, and other waters, upon the hardest rocks, by which they are worn down and their par tides progressively carried towards the ocean, and ultimately deposited in its bed; and of renovation, by means of an immense subterranean heat, con- stantly present at different depths of the mineral regions; which operates in the fusion and recombination of the materials thus carried down and contained there, and afterward in their sublimation and re-exposure to view in new strata of a more compact and perfect character. Hence, the existing strata of every period consist, upon this theory, of the wreck of a former world, more or less completely fused and elevated by the agency of violent heat, and reconsolidated by subsequent cooling: of the general nature of which heat, however, we are still left in a considerable degree of ignorance. "It is not fire, in the usual sense of the word," observes Mr. Playfair, " but heat, which is required for this purpose; and there is nothing chimerical in supposing that nature has the means of producing heat, even in a very great degree, without the assistance of 'fuel or of vital air. Friction is a source of heat unlimited, for what we know, in its extent; and so, perhaps, are other ope- rations, chemical and mechanical; nor are either combustible substances or vital air concerned in the heat thus produced. So, also, the heat of the sun's rays in the form of a burning-glass, the most intense that is known, is inde- pendent of the substance just mentioned; and though the heat would not cal- cine a metal, nor even burn a piece of wood, without oxygenous gas, it would doubtless produce as high a temperature in the absence as in the presence of that gas."f This subterranean heat, moreover, is supposed to derive a very considera- ble accession of power from the vast superincumbent weio-ht that is perpe- tually pressing upon its materials; in confirmation of which a variety of curious experiments are appealed to, and especially a very ingenious set lately carried into effect and described by Sir James Hall, by which it has been rendered probable, that when the gases of any fusible substance, as the car- bonic acid of carbonate of lime, for example, are rendered incapable of flyine off, a much less quantity of actual heat is sufficient for the purpose of fusion than when such gases, freed from a heavy compression, can escape with facility Now the subterranean heat being supposed to exist at prodigious depths below the surface, the substances on which it operates must be so enormously compressed, as not only to render them easily fused, but iS many instances to prevent their volatilization after the fusion has taken place; and from this circumstance it is possible, we are told, to explaina variety of appearances and qualities in minerals, and to answer a varfety of objections which would otherwise weigh heavy against the generaUheoV * Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth. Edinb. 1802. t Ibid. ON GEOLOGY. 75 «To the principle of an alternate decay and renovation, separated irom the means by which they are supposed, upon this theory, to be accomplished, there seems to be no very serious objection. It is as readily allowed by the Neptunian as by the Plutonic geologist, that the strata of the earth are liable to waste, and are, indeed, perpetually wasting; and that the waste materials are carried forward to the sea. But the appearance of shells in limestone and marbles, in which the sparry structure is as perfect as in primary lime- stone, and through which are distributed veins of crystallized carbonate of lime, together with a variety of similar facts, fatally militate against the agency of heat as a universal cause ; since, in such case, allowing it to have been sufficient to produce the general effect of crystallization, every vestige of the structure of the shells must have been destroyed, and every atom of the carbonic acid totally evaporated. It is, secondly, useless to argue, that there are other sources of heat than combustion or deflagration; because, admitting the fact to Mr. Playfair's utmost desire, it can be satisfactorily proved that all these sources are as little capable of acting in the interior parts of the globe, to the extent sup- posed in the theory before us, as combustion itself, which is relinquished by its defenders as incompetent to their purpose. But even allowing the full operation of all, or of any one of these causes, we have no method pointed out to us by which this subterranean heat is duly preserved and regulated— no controlling power that directs it to the proper place at the proper season, without which it must be as likely to prove a cause of havoc and disorder aa of renovation and harmony. It is useless, therefore, to pursue this theory any farther. In spite of the magnificence of its structure, the universality of its application, the plausibility of its appearance, and the talents with which it has been supported, it is built upon assumption alone; it lays down prin- ciples which it cannot support, and deals in fancy and conjecture rather than in solid facts and firm evidence. . Let us next, then, take a glance at the theory by which this, is chiefly op- posed, and which, as I have already observed, is denominated the Neptunian. Under this hypothesis, the two substances that were first evolved out of the general chaos on the formation of the earth, and chemically united to each other, were hydrogen and oxygen, in such proportion as to produce water, which is a compound of these substances, and in such quantity as to be able to hold every other material in a state of thin paste or solution. Of the ma- terials thus held in solution granite is supposed to have been produced first, and in by far the greatest abundance. It hence, consolidated first, probably forms the foundation of the superficies of the globe, and perhaps the entire nucleus of the globe itself; and, as has been already seen, while it constitutes the basis of every other kind of rock, rises higher than any of them. It con- sists, as we have already observed, of felspar, quartz, and mica, all which must therefore have concreted by a crystallization nearly simultaneous ; and from its containing no organic remains, it is obvious that it must have been formed prior to the existence of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. All the other rocks, upon this hypothesis, began to crystallize and consolidate after the formation of granite, in the order in which we have already traced them; and some of these before the whole of the granite was rendered perfectly firm, whence we trace beds of several of them in the granite formation itself; and as the same kind of action appears to apply to the whole, we, in like manner, trace beds of the newer rocks successively in formations of those that are older; and, at last, remains of animal and vegetable materials, which are hence proved to have had an existence coetaneous with the newer classes. The law of gravity appears to have operated through the whole of this pro- cess ; and hence water, as the least heavy material, must have risen to the surface, and purified itself by a filtration through the other materials, and at length collected in such hollows as were most convenient for its reception: these hollows constitute the bed of the ocean. Water, thus collected in the cavity of the ocean, is carried by the atmos- Dhere over the tops of the most elevated mountains, on which it is precipe 76 ON GEOLOGY. tated in rain, and forms torrents by which it returns with various degrees of rapidity into the common reservoir. This restless motion and progress of the water in the form of rain or torrents gradually attenuate and wear away the hardest rocks, and carry their detached parts to distances more or less con- siderable ; whence we meet with limestone, clay, quartz, or flint, sand, and mineral ores, in places to which they do not naturally belong. The influence of the air, and the varying temperature of the atmosphere, facilitate the atte- nuation and destruction of these rocks. Heat acts upon their surface, and renders it more accessible, and more penetrable to the moisture, as it enters into their texture; the limestone rocks are reduced by efflorescence, and the air itself affords the acid principle by which the efflorescence is continued. Such are a few of the numerous causes that contribute to the disunion of concrete bodies, and powerfully co-operate with that wonderful fluid which alternately forms and unforms ; which creates, decomposes, and regenerates all nature. The immediate effects of water in the shape of rain is to depress the moun- tains. But the materials which compose them must resist in prop'ortion to their hardness; and hence we ought not to be surprised at meeting occasion- ally with peaks which have stood firm amid the wreck of ages, and still re- main to attest the original level of the mountain-breadths which have disap- peared. These primitive rocks, alike inaccessible to the assault of time and to that of the once animated beings which cover the less elevated heights with their relics, maybe considered as the origin of streams and rivers. The water which falls on their summits flows down in torrents by their late- ral surfaces. In its course it wears away the soil upon which it is inces- santly acting. It hollows out channels of a depth proportioned to its rapidity, its quantity, and the hardness of the rock over which it passes, and at the same time carries along with it fragments of such stones a£ it loosens in its progress. These stones, rolled by the water, strike together, and mutually break off their projecting angles; and hence we obtain collections of rounded flints which line the beds of rivers, and of smaller pebbles which the sea is perpe- tually throwing upon the shores, often incrusted with a gravelly or calcareous edging. The powder which is produced by the rounding of the flints, or is washed down from the mountains, frequently stagnates, forms a paste, and agglutinates into fresh masses of the rocky matter of which it consists ; often imbedding flints and other materials, and constituting compound substances known by the name of pudding-stones and grit-stones, which chiefly differ from each other in the coarseness or fineness of their grains, or in the cement which connects them. And if the water be loaded, as it often is, with mi- nutely-divided particles of quartz, it will proceed to crystallize whenever it becomes quiescent; and will form stalactites, agates, cornelians, rock-crys- tals, plain or coloured, according as it is destitute of, or combined with, any colouring material: and if the material with which the water be impregnated be lime instead of quartz, the crystallization will be calcareous alabaster, or marble. Many of the earths are now known to be metallic oxides, and all of them are suspected to be so: and hence a degree of heat capable of fusing them, and depriving them of the oxygen which gives them their oxide form will necessarily convert them into their metallic state. That such currents of heat, from electricity and other causes, are occasionally, and perhaps in different places perpetually, existing beneath the surface of the earth, the Neptunian is as ready to admit as the Plutonic geologist; and hence the ori- gin of metallic minerals, of mines, ores, ochres, and pyrites. The decomposition of animal and vegetable matter contributes largely moreover, in the view of the system now before us, to the changes which the globe is perpetually sustaining. The exuviae of shell and coral animals ia pepetually adding to the mass of its earths, and laying a foundation for new islands and numerous beds of limestone, in which we very often perceive impressions of the shells from which the soil has originated. On the other ON GEOLOGY. 77 hand we observe numerous quantities of vegetables, both submarine and su- perficial, heaped and deposited together by currents or other causes, consti- tuting distinct strata, which progressively become decomposed, lose their organization, and confound their own principles with those of the earths. Hence the origin of pit-coal, and secondary schists or slates ; to which, however, the decomposition of animal substances has also largely contributed. Hence, too, the formation and extrication of a variety of acids and alkalies, which have essentially administered to the actual phenomena of the face of the earth. The action of volcanoes has contributed much in all ages, and is still con- tributing in our own, to the present state of the earth's surface. We have daily proofs of the mountains which it has elevated, and have already noticed it as one source of the numerous islands that stud the face of the ocean; and we have just adverted to the subterranean agencies of electricity, heat, water, and other gases and fluids which form its fuel. Eut the operation of volca- noes is more limited and local than that of the preceding agents. " They accumulate substances," says M. Cuvier, " on the surface that were formerly buried deep in the bowels of the earth, after having changed or modified their nature or appearances, and raise them into mountains; but they have never raised up nor overturned the strata through which their apertures pass, and have in no degree contributed to the elevation of the great mountains, which are not volcanic." Inundations of seas and rivers have also, from time to time, added their tre- mendous force; but there is no ground for concluding that any catastrophe of this kind has been universal for the last four thousand years; nor,- in fact, that such an event has ever occurred more than once since the earth has been rendered habitable. In examining, then, the merits of the antagonist systems of geology before us, the Plutonic is perhaps best entitled to the praise of boldness of con- ception and unlimited extent of view. It aspires, in many of its modifications, not only to account for the present appearances of the earth, but for that of the universe; and traces out a scheme by which every planet, or system of planets, may be continued indefinitely, and perhaps for ever, by a perpetual series of restoration and balance. With this system the Neptunian forms a perfect contrast. It is limited to the earth, and to the present appearances of the earth. It resolves the ge- nuine origin of things into the operation of water; and while it admits the existence of subterranean fires to a certain extent, and that several of the phenomena that strike us most forcibly may be the result of such an agency, it peremptorily denies that such an agency is the sole or universal cause of the existing state of things, or that it could possibly be rendered competent to such an effect. More especially should we feel disposed to adhere to this theory, from its general coincidence with the geology of the Scriptures. The Mosaic narra- tive, indeed, with bold and soaring pinions, takes a comprehensive sweep through the vast range of the solar system, if not through that of the uni- verse ; and in its history of the simultaneous origin of this system touches chiefly upon geology, as the part most interesting to ourselves; but so far as it enters upon this doctrine, it is in sufficiently close accordance with the Neptunian scheme,—with the great volume of nature as now cursorily dipped into. The narrative opens, as I had occasion to observe in the lec- ture on Matter and a Material World, with a statement of three distinct facts, each following the other in a regular series, in the origin of the visible world. First, an absolute creation, as opposed to a mere remodification of the heaven and the earth, which constituted the earliest step in the creative process. Secondly, the condition of the earth when it was thus primarily brought into being, which was that of an amorphous or shapeless waste. And, thirdly, a commencing effort to reduce the unfashioned mass to a condition of order and harmony." " In the beginning," says the* sacred historian, " God created the heaven and the earth.—And the earth was without form and void : and 78 ON GEOLOGY. darkness was upon the face of the deep (or abyss;.—And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." We are hence, therefore, necessarily led to infer that the first change ot the formless chaos, after its existence, was into a state of universal aqueous solution; for it was upon the surface of the waters that the Divine Spirit commenced his operative power. We are next informed, that this chaotic mass acquired shape, not instantaneously, but by a series of six distinct days, or generations (that is, epochs), as Moses afterward calls them ;* and appa- rently through the agency of the established laws of gravity and crystalliza- tion, which regulate it at the present moment. It tells us, that during the first of these days, or generations, was evolved, what, indeed, agreeably to the laws of gravity, must have been evolved first of all, the matter of light and heat; of all material substances the most subtle and attenuate; those by which alone the sun operates, and has ever operated, upon the earth and the other planets, and which may be the identical sub- stances that constitute his essence.f And it tells us also, that the luminous matter thus evolved produced light without the assistance of the sun or moon which were not set in the sky or firmament, and had no rule till the fourth day or generation: that the light thus produced flowed by tides, and alternately intermitted, constituting a single day and a single night of each of such epochs or generations, whatever their length might be, of which we have no informa- tion communicated to us. It tells us, that during the second day or generation uprose progressively the fine fluids, or waters, as they are poetically and beautifully denominated, of the firmament, and filled the blue ethereal void with a vital atmosphere. That during the third day or generation the waters more properly so called, or the grosser and compacter fluids of the general mass, were strained off and gathered together into the vast bed of the ocean, and the dry land began to make its appearance, by disclosing the peaks or highest points of the primi- tive mountains; in consequence of which a progress instantly commenced from inorganic matter to vegetable organization, the surface of the earth, as well above as under the waters, being covered with plants and herbs, bearing seeds after their respective kinds; thus laying a basis for those carbonaceous materials, the remains of vegetable matter, which we have already observed are occasionally to be traced in some of the layers or formations of the class of primitive rocks (the lowest of the whole), without a single particle of ani- mal relics intermixed with them. It tells us, that during the fourth day, or epoch, the sun and moon, now completed, were set in the firmament, the solar system was finished, its laws were established, and the celestial orrery was put into play ; in consequence of which the harmonious revolutions of signs and of seasons, of days and of years, struck up for the first time their mighty symphony. That the fifth pe- riod was allotted exclusively to the formation of water-fowl, and the countless tribes of aquatic creatures ; and consequently, to that of those lowest ranks of animal life, testaceous worms, corals, and other zoophytes, whose relics as we have already observed, are alone to be traced in the second class of rocks or transition-formations, and still more freely in the third or horizontal formations; these being the only animals as yet created, since the air and the water, and the utmost peaks of the loftiest mountains, were the only parts as yet inhabitable. It tells us, still continuing the same grand and exquisite climax, that towards the close of this period, the mass of waters having sufli ciently retired into the deep bed appointed for them, the sixth and concludinp- period was devoted to the formation of terrestrial animals ; and, last of all as the masterpiece of the whole, to that of man himself. Such is the beautiful but literal progression of the creation, according to the Mosaic account, as must be perceived by every one who will carefully peruse it for himself. ' Of the extent, however, of the days or generations that preceded the forma- * Gen. ii. 4. t Herschel, Phil. Trans, vol Ixxxir. ON GEOLOGY. 79 tion of the sun and moon, and their display in the sky or firmament, it gives us, as I have just observed, no information whatever. We only know that the flow of luminous matter which measured them advanced or was kindled up by regular tides ; so that it alternately appeared and disappeared, com- mencing with a dawn and terminating with a dusk or darkness; for at the close of each it is said, " and the evening and the morning were the first day:" or, more literally, as indeed suggested in the marginal reading of our national version, " and there was evening and there was morning the first day;" that is, there was dusk and dawn, and by no means such an evening and morning as we have at present. And hence, Origen observes, that " no one of a sound mind can imagine there was an evening and a morning, during the first three days without a sun."* So that the passage should, perhaps, be rendered, as most strictly it might be, " and there was dusk as there was dawn, the first day."—nnx or -ipa wi :nj; *rrv It has, indeed, been contended, that each of these periods constituted a so- lar day, or a revolution of the earth round its own axis, and consequently answered to the measure of twenty-four hours, as at present. But to main- tain this opinion it is necessary to suppose that the sun and the moon were set in the sky " to rule over the day and over the night,"—" to divide the light from the darkness,"—and to " be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years," on or before the very first day or generation ; for otherwise there could be no solar day, or such as we have at present, produced by a revolu- tion of the earth round her own axis. And there have not been wanting cosmologists and critics, as Whiston and Rosenmiiller, who have maintained that the sun and the moon were created antecedently to the earth; that they had their stations allotted them in the heavens, and actually produced solar days and diurnal revolutions of the earth from the first. But though their own hypothesis require this, the idea is directly opposed to the spirit and the letter of the Mosaic narrative, and hence can in no respect be acceded to by any one who is anxious to preserve this narrative in its integrity and simplicity. How much more explanatory and pertinent is the remark of our own ex- cellent Bishop Hall, when speaking of the primeval light, that during the first three days illuminated the face of nature: "ISot," says he, "of the sun or stars, which were not yet created ; but a common brightness only, to dis- tinguish the time, and to remedy the former confused darkness." And how admirably to the same effect does Bishop Beveridge thus express himself: " When he said, let there be light, by that word the light, which was not be- fore, began to be. But when he said (that is, three days or generations afterward), let there be lights in the firmament, to divide the day from the night, he thereby gave laws to the light he had before made, where he would have it be, and what he would have it do. This is what we call the law of nature: that law which God hath put into the nature of every thing; whereby it always keeps itself within such bounds, and acts according to such rules, as God hath set it, and by that means shows forth the glory of his wisdom and power." Nothing, indeed, can be clearer, than that, according to Moses, the sun and the moon were only set in the heavens during the fourth day or generation in the work of creation ; and that, whatever may be the relative proportion of the times and the seasons, the light and the darkness, the day and the night, that have occurred subsequently, we have no reason to suppose they occurred in the same proportion antecedently; since we are expressly told by the same inspired writer, that their immediate office, on being set in the sky, was to rule these divisions of time, as they have ruled them, with a single miraculous exception or two, ever since, and to divide the .light from the darkness, as it has since been divided. We have no knowledge whatever, therefore, of the length of the first three or four days or generations that marked the great work of creation, antece- dently to the completion of the sun and moon, and their appointment to their respective posts. And hence, for all that appears to the contrary, they may * Utfil 'Kpxfo: in loc 80 ON GEOLOGY. have been as Ion- as the Wernerian system, and the book of nature, and I ^ad^hYterin generations, employed ^7 M-es himself seem 01^ Nor let it be supposed for a moment, Oiat the term day m"* ™bre* tongue seems to demand a limitation to the period of four-.^^"^"j as it ordinarily imports; for there is no term in any lan^e,^V or its with a wider latitude of construction than the Hebrew □! -{jom, or to Arabic form, which is the word for day in the original, \\eaie constantly, indeed employing this very word, as Englishmen, with no small degree 01 Sm hfom"In age; for you will all allow me to drop the§phrase,«» our own age," and to adopt " in our own day" in its stead; thus making age ani d" term's of similar Snport. But in Hebrew the same term is emptoyed, if possible, in a still wider range of interpretation: for it not only denotes, as with ourselves, half a diurnal revolution of the earth or a whole diurnal revo- lution, but in many instances an entire year, or revolution of the earth round the sun; and this not only in the prophetic writings, which are often ap- pealed to in support of this remark, but in plain historical narrative as well. Thus in Exod. xiii. 10, the verse, " thou shalt keep this ordinance in its season from year to year," if literally rendered, would be "through days of days," or, " through days upon days,"—HD'D' CTD'D- And in like manner, Judo-es, xvii. 16, "I will give thee ten shekels of silver by the year, if strictly interpreted, would be "per dies—for the days,"--that is, "for the annual circle of days,"—a-'D-'b- . , Sometimes, again, the Hebrew or, or day, comprises the whole term ot life, as in 1 Chron. xxix. 15— Our days (O'D') on earth are a shadow, And there is none abiding. So again, Job, xiv. 6— Turn from him that he may rest, Till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day—IDV- But the clearest and most pertinent proof of the latitude with which the term C3V, or day, is employed in the Hebrew Scriptures, is in the very narra- tive of the creation before us : for after having stated in the first chapter of Genesis that the work of creation occupied a period of six days, the same inspired writer, in recapitulating his statement, chap. ii. 4, proceeds to tell us, " these are"—or rather, "such were the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created; in the day (C1V3) that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." In which passage Moses distinctly tells us that, in the preceding chapter, he has used the term or, day, in the sense of generation, succession, or epoch; while we find him here extending the same term day to the whole hexaemeron, the entire term of time, whatever it may be, that these six days or generations filled up. So that the sense given to the word by Moses, instead of limiting us to the idea of twenty-four hours' duration, naturally leads us to ascribe, not only a different, but a much en- larged extent of time to the divisions he has marked by the word r3V, or day: or at least to those terms which occurred before the government of the sun and the moon was established, and the heavenly orrery commenced its harmonious action. Whether, indeed, the days from this last period, constituting the fifth and sixth, were of a different length from any of the preceding, which may also have differed from each other, and were strictly diurnal revolutions of twenty-four hours, it is impossible exactly to determine. But it is a ques- tion which by no means affects the actual face of nature or the geological system before us: for as the third or horizontal series of rocks in which pe- trifactions of known animal and vegetable substances begin to make their appearance must have continued to augment for ages after the completion of the hexaemeron, or six epochs of creation, whatever be the duration assigned to them; and as the two loftiest, the fourth and fifth sets of rocks, ON ORGANIZED BODIES, &c. 81 or the alluvial and volcanic, are still forming, and have been, ever since the great work of creation was completed, the precise duration of the last two days of creative labour can have no influence upon this question. But to a plain yet attentive reader of the Mosaic account even these two days must, 1 think, appear to have been of a far more protracted length than that of twenty-four hours each, and especially the sixth day; for it is difficult to conceive how the first parent of mankind could have got through the vast extent of work assigned to him within the short term of twelve or fourteen hours of day- light, without a miracle, which is by no means intimated to us, and as diffi- cult to suppose that he was employed through the night. On this last day were created, as we learn from Gen. i. 24—28, all the land-animals after their kind, cattle, and wild beasts, and reptiles; then Adam himself, but alone; who was next, as we learn from ch. ii. 15—22, taken and put into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it; where he had explained to him the trees he might eat of, and the tree he might not; after which were brought to him, that he might make himself 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 niN TVI11N TT " be light! and light was,"* could have ruled the whole of this, or even formed 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 ieferred to, and to understand it by their operations. Nor is it more deroga- tory to Him with whom a thousand years are as 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 meie 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- «..,„,„ anfl the means by which it is upheld and transmitted. If Id" upa .tone, 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 Mhe plant wul instantly sicken, and perhaps die. What is the cause of this * Gen. i. 3 F 82 ON ORGANIZED BODIES. difference ? Both have proceeded from a minute molecule, a nucleus or a germ ; both have a tendency to preserve their derivative or family configura- 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 a 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 grown 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 contributory 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 principle of life, 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, which 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 mineral 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 exhibitino- not only marks of consciousness and sensation, but often of a very high deffrep of intelligence 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 shall 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 away 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 which 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,! less 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 elements 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.|| * Phil. Trans, xiii. 277. t Parkinson's Organic Remains, i. 23, ii. 157,158. t Several species of this genus of fungi have very singular properties: thus the c. hamatodes has so near a resemblance to tanned leather, though somewhat thinner and softer, as to be named oak-leather club-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 any means. Such is the fontinella antipyretica, 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- neys, by way of preservation. So ihat here we have an approach to mineral instead of to animal sub- stances, and especially to ihe asbestos and other species of talcose earths. There is one species of byssus, another curious genus of mosses, that takes the specific name of asbestos from this very property. It is found in the Swedish copper mines of Westmann-land in large quantities, and when exposed to a red heat instead of being consumed, is vitrified. $ Traite d'Anatomie et de Physiologic Veg&ale, i. 19. f) Elemens de Phyeiologie, auu,u . t^el Hales and Dubamel seem to have shown, that in the sap-vessels no valves exist, and that branches imbibe moisture nearly equally at either end. See Thomson's Chemistry, v. 385: an assertion however opposed by various facts. See also Smith's Introd. p. 57. 60. <™«ihhi, nowever, AND THE STRUCTURE OF PLANTS. 91 that their petals are not special organs, but stamens in an abortive or trans formed state.* Plants are also possessed of cutaneous secernents or perspiratory vessels; and in many plants the quantity of fluid thrown off by this emunctory is very considerable. "Keil, by a very accurate set of experiments, ascertained that in his own person he perspired 31 ounces in twenty-four hours. Hales, by experiments equally accurate, determined that a sun-flower, of the weight of three pounds only, throws off 22 ounces in the same period of time, or nearly half its own weight. To support this enormous expenditure it is necessary that plants should be supplied with a much larger proportion of nutriment than animals ; and such is actually the fact. Keil ate and drank 41b. lOoz. in the twenty-four hours. Seventeen times more nourishment was taken in from the roots of the sun-flower than was taken in by the man. Plants, nevertheless, do not appear to have the smallest basis for sensation, admitting that sensation is the result of a nervous system; and we are not acquainted with any other source from which it can proceed: notwithstand- ing that Percival and Darwin, as already observed, have not only endowed them with sensation, but with consciousness also ; and the latter, indeed, with a brain, and the various passions and some of the senses to which this organ gives birth.f Yet, though the vessels of plants do not appear to possess any muscular fibres, we have evident proofs of the existence of a contractile and irritable power from some other principle ; and a variety of facts concur in making it highlv probable that it is by the exercise of such a principle that the differ- ent fluids are propelled through their respective vessels: nor is there any other method by which such propulsion can be reasonably accounted for. Grew ascribed the ascent of the sap to its levity, as though acting with the force of a vapour: Malpighi, to an alternate contraction and dilatation of the air contained in what he erroneously conceived to be air-vessels : Perrault to fermentation: Hales and Tournefort, to capillary attraction: not one of which theories, however, will better explain the fact than another, as Dr. Thomson has ably established; as he has also the probability of a contractile power in the different sets of vessels distributed so wonderfully over the vegetable frn m g T That a contractile power may exist independently of muscular fibres, we have abundant proofs even in the animal system itself. We see it in the human cutis or skin, which, though totally destitute of such fibres, is almost for ever contracting or relaxing upon the application of a variety of other powers ; powers external and internal, and totally different in their mode of operation. Thus, austere preparations and severe degrees of cold contract it very sensibly : heat, on the contrary, and oleaginous preparations, as sen- sibly relax it. The passions of the mind exercise a still more powerful effect over it • for while it becomes corrugated by fear and horror, it is smoothed and lubricated by pleasure, and violently agitated and convulsed by rage or anger. Yet could it even be proved that the vessels of plants are incapable of being made to contract by any power whatever, still should we have no grea difficulty in conceiving a circulatory system in animals or vegetables without any such cause, while we reflect that one-half of the circulation of the blood in man himself is accomplished without such a contrivance; and this too, he more difficult half, since the veins, through the greater extent of their course, have to oppose the attraction of gravitation instead of being able to fake advantage of it. It is in the present day, however, a well-known fact, and has been sufficiently ascertained by the late Dr. Parry of Bath, and on f^e Continent by Professor Dollinger, that the contractile power of the mus- cular fibresis not called into action even by the arteries in the course of the ordinarydrcula°ion of the blood, since, as we shall have occasion to observe, noSaseoff size or change of bulk of any kind takes place in arteries either£ the contraction or dilatation of the heart's ventricles in a state of * Mem. de la Societe d'Arcueil, torn. iii. t Willdenow, Prlncip. of Botany, $ 226 t Syst. of Chem. vol. v. p. 388. 1807 92 ON ORGANIZED BODIES, health, unless where they are pressed upon by the finger or some other cause of resistance. In what part of a plant the vital principle chiefly exists, or to what quarter it retires during the winter, we know not; but we are just as ignorant in respect to animal life. In both it operates towards every point; it consists in the whole, and resides in the whole ; and its proof of existence is drawn from its exercising almost every one of its functions and effecting its combi- nations in direct opposition to the laws of chemical affinity, which would otherwise as much control it as they control the mineral world, and which constantly assume an authority as soon as ever the vegetable is dead. Hence the plant thrives and increases in its bulk; puts forth annually a new pro- geny of buds, and becomes clothed with a beautiful foliage of lungs (every leaf being a distinct lung in itself*) for the respiration of the rising brood; and with an harmonious circle of action, that can never be too much admired, furnishes a perpetual supply of nutriment, in every diversified form, for the growth and perfection of animal life; while it receives in rich abundance, from the waste and diminution, and even decomposition of the same, the means of new births, new buds, and new harvests. In fine, every thing is formed for every thing; and subsists by the kind in- tercourse of giving and receiving benefits. The electric fire that so alarms us by its thunder, and by the awful effects of its flash, purifies the stagnant atmosphere above us ; and fuses, when it rushes beneath us, a thousand mine- ral veins into metals of incalculable utility. New islands are perpetually rising from the unfathomable gulfs of the ocean, and enlarging the bounda- ries of organized life; sometimes thrown up, all of a sudden, by the dread agency of volcanoes, and sometimes reared imperceptibly by the busy efforts of corals and madrepores. Liverworts and mosses first cover the bare and rugged surface, when not a vegetable of any other kind is capable of subsist- ing there. They flourish, bear fruit, and decay, and the mould they produce forms an appropriate bed for higher orders of plant-seeds, which are floating on the wings of the breeze, or swimming on the billows of the deep. Birds next alight on the new-formed rock, and sow, with interest, the seeds of the berries, or the eggs of the worms and insects on which they have fed, and which pass through them without injury ; and an occasional swell of the sea floats into the rising island a mixed mass of sand, shells, drifted sea-weed, skins of the casuarina, and shells of the cocoa-nut. Thus the vegetable mould becomes enriched with animal materials; and the whole surface is progressively covered with herbage, shaded by forests of cocoa and other trees, and rendered a proper habitation for man and the domestic animals that attend upon him. The tide that makes a desolating inroad on one side of a coast, throws up vast masses of sand on the opposite : the lygeum, or sea-mat-weed, that will grow on no other soil, thrives here and fixes it, and prevents it from being washed back or blown away; to which the lime-grass,f couch-grass^ sa"d- reed,§ and various species of willow lend their aid. Thus fresh lands are formed, fresh banks upraised, and the boisterous sea repelled by its own agency. Frosts and suns, water and air, equally promote fructification in their re- spective ways; and the termes, or white ant, the mole, the hampster, and the earth-worm, break up the ground or delve into it, that it may enjoy their salu- brious influences. In like manner, they are equally the ministers of putre- faction and decomposition; and liverworts and funguses, the ant and the beetle, the dew-worm, the ship-worm, and the wood-pecker, contribute to the general effect, and soon reduce the trunks of the stoutest oaks, if lyino- waste and unemployed, to their elementary principles, so as to form a productive mould for successive progenies of animal or vegetable existence. Such is the simple but beautiful circle of nature. Every thing lives, flourishes, and «r. £:££$£ z^r^ztz^L^^r^in the Swcdish **— *»*— * mymu* v™™- X Triticum rtpau. « Arundo armaria AND THE STRUCTURE OF PLANTS. 93 decays: every thing dies, but nothing is lost: for the great principle of life only changes its form, and the destruction of one generation is the vivifica- tion of the next.* Hence, the Hindoo mythologists, with a force and elegance peculiarly striking, and which are nowhere to be paralleled in the theogonies of Greece and Rome, describe the Supreme Being, whom they denominate Brahm, as forming and regulating the universe through the agency of a triad of inferior gods, each of whom contributes equally to the general result, under the names of Brahma, Visnu, and Iswara ; or the generating power, the pre- serving or consummating power, and the decomposing power. And hence the Christian philosopher, with a simplicity as much more sublime than the Hindoo's, as it is more veracious, exclaims, on contemplating the regular con- fusion, the intricate harmony, of the scenes that rise before him— These, as they change, Almighty Father! these Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of Thee. LECTURE IX. ON THE GENERAL ANALOGY OF VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE. (The subject continued.) The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but con- cealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in refer- ence to the proposed result. Such is the great art of nature : and he who would study it with success must, as far as he is able, trace out its various laws, and reduce them to general principles, and collect its separate phenomena, and digest them into general classes. This, in many instances, we are able to do ; and in such cases we obtain a tolerable insight into the nature of things. But so vast, so unbounded is the theatre before us, so complicated is its machinery, and so closely does one fact follow up and press upon another, that we are often bewildered and lost in the mighty maze, and are incapable of determining the laws by which it is regulated, or of arranging the phenomena of which it is composed. The zoologist, in order to assist his inquiries, divides the whole animal creation into six general heads or classes: as those of mammals, birds, am- phibials, fishes, insects, and worms. Each of these classes he subdivides into orders ; of each of his orders he makes a distinct section for a multi- tude of kinds or genera; and each of his kinds becomes a still more subor- « dinate section for the species or individuals of which the separate kinds con- sist. But he is perpetually finding, not only that many cases in each of his inferior divisions are so equally allied to other divisions that he knows not how to arrange them, but that even his classes or first divisions themselves labour under the same difficulty; since he occasionally meets with animals that by the peculiarity of their construction seem equally to defy all artificial method and all natural order. Thus the myxine glutinosa, which by Linnaeus was regarded and ranked as a worm, has been introduced by Bloch into the class of fishes, and is now known by the name of gastrobranchus ccecus, or hag-fish. The siren lacertina, which was at first contemplated by Linnaeus as an amphibious animal of a peculiar genus, was afterward declared by •See upon this subject the Swedish Amcenitates Academical, vol. v. art. 80, by J. H. Hagen, 1757, entt- tied Nature PelagL 94 ON THE GENERAL ANALOGY OF Camper and Gmelin to be a fish approaching the nature of an eel, and was arranged accordingly. It has since, however, been restored from the class of fishes to that of amphibials, and is in the present day believed by various zoologists to be nothing more than a variety of the lizard. And thus the hippopotamus, the tapir, and the swine, which by Linnaeus were ranked in the fifth order of mammals with the horse, are arranged by Cuvier with the rhino- ceros and the sokotyro, that have hitherto formed a part of the second order. The eel, in its general habits and appearance, has a near similitude to the serpent; many of its species live out of the water as well as in it; and, like the serpent, hunt for worms, snails, and other food, over meadows and marshes. The platypus anatinus, or duck-bill (the ornithorhyncus paradoxus of Blu- menbach), one of the many wonders of New South Wales, unites in its form and habits the three classes of birds, quadrupeds, and amphibials. Its feet, which are four, are those of a quadruped; but each of them is palmate or webbed like a wild-fowl's; and instead of lips it has the precise bill of a shoveler or other broad-billed water bird; while its body is covered with a fur exactly resembling an otter's. Yet it lives, like a lizard, chiefly in the water, digs and burrows under the banks of rivers, and feeds on aquatic plants and aquatic animals. The viverra or weasel, in several of its species, approaches the monkey and squirrel tribes; is playful, a good mimic, and possesses a pre- hensile tail. The flying squirrel, the flyinglizard, or draco volans,and especially the bat, approach in their volant endowment the buoyancy of birds, and are able to fly by winged membranes instead of by feathers. The exocetus volitans, or flying-fish, and several other fishes, derive a similar power from their long pectoral fins ; while the troctilus, or humming-bird, unites the class of birds with that of insects. It is in one of its species, T. minimus, the least of the feathered tribes; feeds, like insects, on the nectar of flowers alone, and like the bee or butterfly, collects it while on the wing, fluttering from flower to flower, and all the while humming its simple accent of pleasure. Its tongue, like that of many insects, is missile. When taken it expires instantly ; and after death, on account of its diminutive size, the elegance of its shape, and the beauty of its plumage, it is worn by the Indian ladies as an ear-ring. Such being the perplexity and seeming confusion that extend through the whole chain of animal life, it is not to be wondered at that we should at times meet with a similar embarrassment in distinguishing between animal life and plants, and between plants and minerals. I gave a cursory glance at this subject in our last lecture, and especially in regard to that extraordinary divi- sion of organized substances which, for want of a better term, we continue to denominate zoophytes; many of which, as, for example, various species of the alcyony and madrepore, bear a striking resemblance to crystals, and other mineral concretions ; while great numbers of them, and particularly the corals, corallines, and some other species of alcyony, as the sea-fig, sea- quince, pudding-weed, and above all the stone-lily (which last, however, is now only found in a petrified state), have the nearest possible approach to a vegetable appearance. Whence, as I have already observed, among the ear- lier naturalists, who expressly directed their attention to these substances, , some regarded them as minerals, and others as vegetables ; and it is not till of late years, only, indeed, since it has been ascertained that the chemical elements they give forth on decomposition are of an animal nature, that they have been admitted into the animal kingdom. Among plants, in like manner, we often meet with instances of individual species that are equally doubtful, not only as to what kind, order, or class of vegetable existence they belong, but even as to their being of a vegetable na- ture of any kind, till their growth, their habits, and their composition are minutely examined into. But independently of these individual cases, we also perceive, in the general principle of action and animal life, that the more it is investigated, the more it is calculated to excite our astonishment, and to indicate to us, so far as relates to the subordinate powers of the animal frame the application of one common system to both, and to demonstrate 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 hirudo viridis, for example, are uniformly propagated by lateral sections, or pullulating slips or offsets ;f 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 now 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 bark of the cinnamon tree (laurus cinnamomum) 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.J So * Consult also Mr. Knight's article, Phil. Trans. 1810, part ii. p. 179—181. \ Thus Aristotle, upon a subject which is generally supposed to be of modern discovery, "ilairep ydp tu vrd Kai ralrd (scilicet) h/ropa Siatpov/teva Suvarat t,rjv "' For, like plants, such insects also maintain life after 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. t 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. , ., j , 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 gunfas 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,f 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 offensively as asafcetida; 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 the skin. But perhaps the laurus, as a genus, offers us the most extensive 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 ;|| in a third, the camphor tree ;]P in a fourth, the alligator-pear ;** in a fifth, the sassafras ;ff in a sixth, a sort of gum-benjamin,|J 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§& on the berries of the hippomane or manchineel-tree, and the loxia (grossbeak) of the Bahamas on the fruit of the amyris loxifera^ or poison-ash.j||| The leaves of the kalmia lahfolia 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 who 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,lTF indigenous to Yorkshire, and the plane-tree of the West In- dies,*** which most readers know sends forth every spring new colonies by means of runners, as we usually denominate them, in every 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. f A. balsamifera. X Mimosa nilotica, Linn. § L. cinnamomium. . || L. cassia. IT L. camphora. "* L. persea. ft L. sassafras. XX L. benzoin. % Cancer ruricola. |||| See on this subject the following curious papers in the Swedish Amoenitates Academics, vol. ii. art. 25, par Sueisens, by N. L. Hesselgren. The same subject continued by G. P. Tengmalon, Amoen. Acad] vol. x. art. x. Usus Historiae Naturalis, by M. Aphonin, art. 147. lb. in respect to birds, entitled Esca Avium domesticarum, by P. Holmbergen, p. 481, art. 163. It is also well worthy of remark, that various herbaceous plants which spring up among others that are esculent, 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 stimulus or additional nutriment, as the ranunculus tribes, and many others, season the pasturage and fodder of cat tie.—Engl. Ffora,vol. i. HIT Potentillayhtfico*«. ••• Platanus occidmtalit. VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE. 97 in every order of worms we meet with some instances that naturally appertain to the latter, while almost every genus 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 a variety of instances of which the fragaria 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 fe.w 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 v&leano 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 often been breathed by the human species with impunity at 264°. Tillet mentions • Orchis morio, or latifolia. t Scabiosa siuxisa, or devil's bh X Lacerta aquatica. § Muroena anguilla 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 Morantm gives a case at 325° Fahr., and that for a space of five minutes. 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. 1 hus 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, t 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 77i°. 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 algae 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- tinaiis antipyretic*i, 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 juncus, 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'Acad. Royale des Sciences, 1764, p. 186, h 16 T Travels, part II. Greece, Esypt, and the Holy Land, p. Ill, 4to ed. X He graduates by Reaumur's thermometer, and calculates the heat upon this at 69°. 5 Recueil d'Observations de Zoologie et d'Anatomic comparee. VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE. 99 flourish entirely covered with water, or with their roots alone shooting into a moist soil. Animals of various kinds are aerial: perhaps the term is not used with strict correctness. It will, at least, apply with more correctness to plants. All the most succulent plants of hot climates are of this description: such are several of the palms and of the canes; and the greater number of plants that embellish the arid Karro fields of the Cape of Good Hope.* Succulent as they are, these will only grow in soils or sands so sere and adust that no moisture can be extracted from them, and are even destroyed by a full supply of wet or by a rainy season. The Solandra grandiflora, a Jamaica shrub, was long propagated in our own stoves by cuttings, which, though freely watered, could never be made to produce any signs of fructification, notwithstanding that the cuttings grew several feet in length every season. By accident a pot with young cuttings was mislaid and forgotten in the Kew garden, and had no water given it; it was hereby reduced to its healthy aridity, and every extremity produced a flower.f And hence it is an opinion common to many of the ablest physiologists of the present day, that these derive the whole of their nutriment from the sur- rounding atmosphere; and that the only advantage which they acquire from thrusting their roots into such strata is that of obtaining an erect position. There are some quadrupeds that appear to derive nutriment in the same man- ner. N Thus the bradypus tridactylus, or sloth, never drinks, imbibes by its cutaneous absorbents, and trembles at the feeling of rain; and, in common with the bird tribes, has only one ultimate or excrementary duct; while the olive cavyj avoids water of every kind almost as pertinaciously as does also the ostrich, which is in consequence said by the Arabs never to drink. And yet these are animals almost as succulent as any we are acquainted with. But, however true this may be with regard to animals, we have manifest proofs that vegetables of certain tribes and descriptions are altogether sup- ported by the atmosphere that surrounds them; for, important as is the organ of a root to plants in general, there are several which have no root whatever, and can derive nutriment in np other way. The water-caltrop^ is an instance directly in point. The seed of this plant has no rostel, and consequently can never, in the first instance, become rooted. From the horned nut or pericarp of the seed, as it lies in water, which is its natural element, shoots forth a long plumule perpendicularly towards the surface of the stream; during the ascent of which a variety of capillary branched leaves shoot forth from the sides of the plumule, some of which bend downward, and fix the whole plant to the bottom by penetrating into the soil below the stream; the leaves alone in this late stage of germination acting the part of a root, and giving maturity to the still unfinished plant. The cactus genus, in some of its very numerous species, offers us an example of similar evolution; and especially in the opuntia tribe, or that which embraces the prickly pears or Indian figs of our green-houses, of which the cochineal plant|| is one form. Of these, several grow by the mere introduction of one of their thick fleshy leaves into a soil of almost any kind that is sufficiently dry; they obtain an erect position, but never root, or shoot forth radicles: and hence almost the whole of their moisture must necessarily be derived from the surrounding atmosphere. Perhaps one-half of the fuci have no root whatever: many of them, indeed, consist of vesicles or vesicular bulbs alone, sessile upon the matrix of some stone or shell that supports them, and propagate their kinds by offsets, with- out any other vegetable organs. The seeds of the fucus prolifer sometimes evolve nothing but a leaf; the plant being propagated also by leaf upon leaf, either forked or elliptic, without root. The aphyteia hydnora is a curious instance in point. This plant is equally destitute of leaves, stem, and root; and consists alone of a sessile, coriaceous, • The only rain that waters this tract is that which falls for a few weeks in the winter: during the hot and fertile months there is no rain whatever. t Smith's Introduction to Botany, Sec. p. 141. X Cavia acuschy. This is the more extraordinary, because the C. cobaya, or guinea-pig, drinks freely end the C. capybara, or river cavy, is fond of swimming and diving. 6 Trapa natans. II Cactus coccinellifcr. G 2 100 ON THE GENERAL ANALOGY OF and succulent flower, eaten as a luxury by the Hottentots, and parasitic to the roots ot the euphorbia mauritanica; flower propagating flower from generation to generation. But perhaps the plant most decisive upon this subject is the aerial epiden- drum,* first, if I mistake not, described by that excellent Portuguese phytolo- gist Loureiro, and denominated aerial from its very extraordinary properties. This is a native of Java and the East Indies beyond the Ganges ; and, in the latter region, it is no uncommon thing for the inhabitants to pluck it up, on account of the elegance of its leaves, the beauty of its flower, and the exqui- site odour it diffuses, and to suspend it by a silken cord from the ceilings of their rooms; where, from year to year, it continues to put forth new leaves, new blossoms, and new fragrance, excited alone to new life and action by the stimulus of the surrounding atmosphere. That stimulus is oxygen; ammonia is a good stimulus, but oxygen pos- sesses far superior powers, and hence withdut some portion of oxygen few plants can ever be made to germinate. Hence, too, the use of cow-dung and other animal recrements, which consist of muriatic acid and ammonia: while in fat, oil, and other fluids, that contain little or no oxygen, and consist altogether, or nearly so, of hydrogen and carbon, seeds may be confined for ages without exhibiting any germination whatever. And hence, again, and the fact deserves to be extensively known, however torpid a seed may be, and destitute of all power to vegetate in any other substance, if steeped in a diluted solution of oxygenated muriatic acid, at a temperature of about 46° or 48° of Fahrenheit, provided it still possess its principle of vitality, it will ger- minate in a few hours. And if, after this, it be planted, as it ought to be, in its appropriate soil, it will grow with as much speed and vigour as if it had evinced no torpitude whatever. I have said that few plants can be made to germinate when the oxygen is small in quantity, and the hydrogen abundant: and I have made the limita- tion, because aquatic plants, and such as grow in marshes, and other moist places, are remarkable, not only for parting with a large quantity of oxygen gas, but also for absorbing hydrogen gas freely; and are hence peculiarly calculated for purifying the regions in which they flourish, and in some sort for correcting the mischief that flows from the decomposition of the dead vegetable and animal materials that is perpetually taking place in such situa- tions, and loading the atmosphere with febrile and other miasms. But the instances of resemblance between animal and vegetable physiology are innumerable. Some plants, like a few of our birds, more of our insects, and almost all our forest beasts, appear to sleep through the day, and to awake and become active at night: while the greater number, like the greater number of animals, resign themselves to sleep at sunset, and awake rein- vigorated with the dawn. Like animals, they all feel the living power excited by small degrees of electricity, but destroyed by severe shocks; and like ani- mals, too, they differ in a very extraordinary degree in the duration of many of their species. Some tribes of boletus unfold themselves in a few hours like the ephemera and hemerobius tribes (May-fly and Spring-fly), and as speedily decay. Several of the fungi live only a few days; others weeks or months. Annual plants, like the greater part of our insects, live three, four or even eight months. Biennial plants, like the longer-lived insects, and most of our snell-fishes, continue alive sixteen, eighteen, or even twenty-four months. Many of the herbaceous plants continue only a few years, but more for a longer period, and imitate all the variety to be met with in the greater number of birds, quadrupeds, and fishes; while shrubs and trees are, for the most part, coequal with the age of man, and a few of them equal that allotted to him in the earliest periods of the world. Of these last, the Adansonia digitata, or calabash tree, is perhaps one of the most extraordinary Indi- genous to the land of the patriarchs, and still outrivalling the patriarchal age this stupendous tree, compared with which our own giant oak, in bulk as well * Epidendrnm^oj aerit. VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE. 101 as in years, is but an infant, seems to require not less than a thousand years to give it full vigour and maturity. Extending its enormous arms over the dry and barren soil from which it shoots naturally, it affords shelter to whole nations of barbarians, and in its pleasant subacid fruit administers an ample supply to their hunger. Let it not, however, be imagined that, by pointing out such' frequent in- stances of resemblance between animal and vegetable life, I mean to degrade the rank of animal being from its proper level; for it will be one of the chief objects of our subsequent studies to develope and delineate its multiform and characteristic superiorities. I am only tracing at present the common prin- ciple of vitality to its first outlines: I am endeavouring to unfold to you, in its simplest and rudest operations, that grand, and wonderful, and compre- hensive system, which, though under different modifications, unquestionably controlling both plants and animals, from the first moment it begins to act infuses energy into the lifeless clod, draws forth form and beauty, and indi- vidual being, from unshapen matter, and stamps with organization and pro- pensities the common dust we tread upon. And if, in this its lowest scale of operation,—if, under the influence of these its simplest laws, and the mere powers (so far as we are able to trace them) of contractility and irritability, it be capable of producing effects thus striking, thus incomprehensible, what may we not expect when the outline is filled up and the system rendered com- plete ? What may we not expect when we behold, superadded to the powers of contractility and irritability, those of sensation and voluntary motion ? What, more especially, when to these are still farther added the ennobling faculties of a rational and intelligent soul,—the nice organs of articulation and speech,—the eloquence of language,—the means of interchanging ideas, and of imbody- ing, if I may so express myself, all the phenomena of the mind ? Such are the important subjects to which our subsequent studies are to be directed. In the mean time, from the remarks which have already been hazarded, we cannot, I think, but be struck with the two following sublime characters, which pre-eminently, indeed, distinguish all the works of nature: —a grand comprehensiveness of scheme, a simple but beautiful circle of action, by which every system is made to contribute to the well-being of every system, every part to the harmony and happiness of the whole ; and a nice, and delicate, and ever-rising gradation from shapeless matter to form, from form to feeling, from feeling to intellect, from the clod to the crystal, from the crystal to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from brutal life to man. Here, placed on the summit of this stupendous pyramid, lord of all around him, the only being through the whole range of the visible creation endowed with a power of contemplating and appreciating the magnificent scenery by which he is encompassed, and of adoring its Almisrhty Architect—-at once the head, the heart, and the tongue of the whole—well, indeed, may he exult and rejoice ! But let him rejoice with modesty. For, in the midst of this proud exaltation, it is possible that he forms but one of the lowest links in " the golden everlasting chain" of intelligence ; that he stands on the mere threshold of the world of perception; and that there exists at least as wide a disproportion between the sublimest characters that ever were born of women, our Bacons, Newtons, and Lockes, our Aristotles, Des Cartes, and Eulers, and the humblest ranks of a loftier world, as there is between these highly-gifted mortals and the most unknowing of the animal creation. \ et mind, thanks to its benificent Bestower! is itself immortal, and knowledge is eternally progressive; and hence man, too, if he improve the talents in- trusted to him, as it is his duty to do, may yet hope, unblamed, to ascend hereafter as high above the present sphere of these celestial intelligences, as they are at present placed above the sphere of man. But these are specula- tions in some degree too sublime for us : the moment we launch into them, that moment we become lost, and find it necessary to return with suitable modesty to our proper province—an examination of the world around us; where, with all the aids of which we can avail ourselves, we shall still find difficulties enough to try the wisdom of the wisest, and the patience ot me most persevering. 102 ON THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, LECTURE X. ON THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, IRRITABILITY, AND MUSCULAR POWER. We have distinguished organic from inorganic matter; and have charac- terized the former, among other differences, by its being actuated in every separate form by an internal principle, and possessed of parts mutually de- pendent and contributory to each other's functions. What then is this in- ternal principle,—this wonderful and ever active power, which, in some sort or other, equally pervades animals and vegetables—which extends from man to brutes, from brutes to zoophytes, from zoophytes to fucuses and confervas, the lowest tribes of the vegetable kingdom, whose general laws and pheno- mena constituted the subject of our last study,—this fleeting and evanescent energy, which, unseen, by the eye, untracked by the understanding, is only known, like its great Author, by its effects; but which, like him too, wherever it winds its career, is perpetually diffusing around it life and health, and har- mony and happiness ? I do not here enter into the consideration of a thinking or intelligent prin- ciple, or even a principle of sensation, both which are altogether of distinct natures from the present, and to which I shall entreat your attention here- after ; but confine myself entirely to that inferior but energetic power upon which the identity and individuality of the being depend, and upon a failure of which the individual frame ceases, the organs lose their relative connexion, the laws of chemistry, which have hitherto been controlled by its superior authority, assume their action, and the whole system becomes decomposed and resolved into its primary elements. The subject is, indeed, recondite, but it is deeply interesting: it has occu- pied the attention of the wisest and the best of mankind in all ages; and though, after the fruitless efforts with which such characters have hitherto pursued it, I have not the vanity to conceive that I shall be able to throw upon it any thing like perfect daylight, you will not, I presume, be displeased with my submitting to you a brief outline of some few of the speculations to which it has given birth, together with the conjectures it has excited in my own mind. - Of the innumerable theories that have been started upon this subject, the three following are those which are chiefly entitled to our attention. Life is the result of a general harmony or consent of action between the different organs of which the vital frame consists.—Life is a principle inherent in the blood.—Life is a gas, or aura, communicated to the system from without. Each of these theories has to boast of a very high degree of antiquity; and each, after having had its day, and spent itself, has successively yielded to its rivals; and in its turn has reappeared, under a different modification, in some subsequent age, and run through a new stage of popularity. For the svstkm of harmony we are indebted to the inventive genius of Anstoxenus, a celebrated physician of Greece, who was at first a pupil of science. It is an ingenious and elegant dogma, and was at onetime highly fashionable at Rome as well as at Athens; and is thus alluded to and ex- plained by Lactantius : « As in musical instruments, an accord and assent of sounds, which musicians term harmony, is produced by the due tone of the strings; so in bodies, the faculty of perception proceeds from a connexion and vigour of the members and organs of the frame."* To this theory there are two objections, either of which is fatal to it. The * V. 140. IRRITABILITY, AND MUSCULAR POWER. 103 first is, that admitting the absolute necessity of the health or perfection of every separate part to the health or perfection of the whole, we are still as much in the dark as ever in respect to the principle by which this harmoni- ous machine has been developed, and is kept in perpetual play. The second objection, by which, indeed, it was vigorously attacked by the Epicureans, and at length completely driven from the field, is derived from observing that the health or well-being of the general system does not depend upon that of its collective organs; and that some parts are of far more consequence to it than others. Thus the mind, observes Lucretius, in his able refutation of this hypothesis, may be diseased, while the body remains unaffected; or the body, on the contrary, may lose some of its own organs, while the mind, or even the general health of the body itself, continues perfect. The abbe'Polignac, who, consistently with the Cartesian system, makes a very proper distinction between the principle of the mind or soul, and that of the life, enters readily into the hypothesis of Aristoxenus in regard to the latter power, though he thinks it inapplicable to the former: and Leibnitz appears to have availed himself of it as a means of accounting for the union between the soul and body in his celebrated system, which he seems to have named, from the theory before us, the system of pre-established harmony. By a writer of the present day, however, M. Lusac, the doctrine of Aristoxe- nus seems to have been resuscitated in its fullest scope, and even to have been carried to a much wider latitude than its inventor had ever intended: for the theory of M. Lusac affects to regard, not only the frame of man and other animals, but the vast frame of the universe, as a sort of musical organ or instrument; the concordant and accumulated action of whose different parts or agents he denominates, like Aristoxenus, harmony. " Concerts of music," says he, " afford a clear example: you perceive harmony in music when different tones, obtained by the touch of various instruments, excite one general sound, a compound of the whole." This observation he applies to the grand operations of nature, the irregularities of which, resulting from inundations, earthquakes, volcanoes, tempests, and similar evils, this philoso- pher considers as the dissonances occasionally introduced into music to heighten the harmony of the entire system. With respect to the harmony of the human frame, individually contemplated, or the concordant action of the different parts of the body, he observes, " It may be said, that of this principle I have merely a confused notion; and I admit it, if the assertion imply that I have neither a perfect nor a distinct, nor an entire comprehen- sion of what produces this harmony—in what it consists, or how it acts. I know not what produces the harmony of various instruments heard simulta- neously; but I can accurately distinguish the sounds which are occasioned when musicians are tuning, from those which are produced when, being com- pletely in tune, and every one uniting in the piece, the separate parts are executed with precision. When I hear an harmonious sound, whatever be its nature, I can distinguish the harmony, though incapable of investigating its OJIUSG I shall'only observe, farther, that in the doctrine of Mr. (now Sir Humphry) Davy, which holds life itself as a perpetual series of corpuscular changes, and the substrate, or living body, as the being m which these changes take place, we cannot but observe a leaning towards the same system; and we shall have occasion, in a subsequent lecture, to notice one or two others of equally modern date that touch closely upon it in a few points.? Let us pass on, then, to a consideration of the second hypothesis I have noticed, and which consists in regarding the blood itself as the principlb of life. This opinion lays claim to a still higher antiquity than the pre- cedinp- • and, in a general view of the question, is far better founded. It has the fullest support of the Mosaic writings, which expressly appeal to the doc- trine, that "the life of all flesh is the blood thereof,"* as a basis for the cuh- * Du Droit Naturel, Civil, ct Politique, torn. i. 154. t Series lit. Lecture v. t Levit xvii. 14 104 ON THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, nary section of the Levitical code; a doctrine, indeed, of no new invention, even at that early period, but probably derived expressly from the ritual of the higher patriarchs, if we may be allowed to appeal to a similar belief and a similar practice among the Parsees, Hindoos, and other oriental nations of very remote antiquity, who seem rather to have drawn this part of their cere- monial directly from the law or tradition of the patriarchs, than indirectly from that of the Jews. Among the Greeks and Romans, were the authority of the poets to be of any avail, we should imagine that this hypothesis never ceased to be in repu- tation : for the mptvocos Bavaros, ox purple death, of Horner, and the purpurea anima, 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, hut 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 system 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 itself, though a fluid and in a state of circulation, is actually endowed ^li! ri .le Prv^ed' first'that Jt is caPable of bei»£ acted upon and con- tracting, like the solid muscular fibre, upon the application of a stimulus ; of Hl?r7°,ne-aS,fanrtanC6 in ^at 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 STJXh"?1 te™Wnt™ Whatever'whether of heat or c°w" which Se body n adSonfn t hf^' * ^'T ™ e(luality in its ™n temperature; and egmevesseof\vhyi,Ch n°US ^r™™"' he Proved also'that a new-laid egg, tne vessels of which are merely m a nascent state, has a power of m-e serving its proper temperature, and of resisting cold, heat or Putrefaction for 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 uncoagulated. 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—some fine, elastic, 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, diffused 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 hssc nature, subestque ; Nee magis hac infra quidquam est in corpore nostro; Atque anuria est animse proporro totius ipsa. De Rer. Nat. iii. 274. t Memokes sur l'lrritabilite, considerie comrne principe de vie dans la nature organisee Paris, 1790 ice ON THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, that the crural nerve of a frog, which had been 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 maimer 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; everyone 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 Eowers and faculties without an entity or substantial base to which they elong, and from which they originate. They allow themselves to employ the term, and cann&t, indeed, do without it; but after all they mean nothing by 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 fosse's carry off, and which are employed in Traa,. for 1732. See the author's Study of Medicine, vol. iii7P. ^^^"P^^^'^^veamthePhu. IRRITABILITY, AND MUSCULAR POWER. t07 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-! So that we have here not only the employment of terms 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 ;| 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 * "Personneauiourd'huineconteste 1'existence d'ijn princife be vie qui soumet les etres qui en iouisscnt aun ordre de lois differentes de celles auxquelles obeissent les etres inammes force i. Quelle on pourroit assigner, comme principaux caracteres, de soustraire les corps qu'ELLE anime, 4 rempureiabsom des affinites chimiques, auxquelles ils auroient tantde tendance a ceder, en virtu de la multiplicityjde leurs elemens; et de maintenir leur temperature a un degre presque egal, quelle que soit d'ailleurs celle de 1 at- mosphere. Son essence n'est point de conserver l'aggregation des molecules constitutives, rnais dattirer d'autres molecules qui.s'assimilant aux organcs qu'ELLE vivifie, remplaceni: celle qu'entralnent les peres journaheres, et son t employees a les nourrir et a les accroltre.»-Nouveaux Elemens de Physiologie, torn. i. P" f " Leamot d°e principe vital, force vitale, &c. n'exprime point un etreexistantpar l^;mime' « 'n*|" pendammcntdes actions parlesquellesil se manifeste: il ne faut l'employer 9ue com™ ™eJS£°*'£.*£ dont on se sert pour designer l'ensemble des forces qui animent les corps vivans et les distirigueni ae w matiere inertc:—l'ensemble des proprietes et des loix qui regissent l'economie ammale. —id. p. w X On the Blood, p. 91 § Serles '• Lecture xv. 103 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 sufficient 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, air, 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. 109 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 who 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- garded 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- traction, the latter could not estimate it at more than eight ounces. In like manner Borelli, in applying the same theory to the power with which 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 muscles, which he conceived to divide the labour about equally with itself, as 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 five 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. 110 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,f 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.J 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 cylinder, has the force of forty horses ; and as it acts without intermission, will perform the work of 120 horses, dr 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 len°-th 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 pounds ; 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- 15**.uLe^-vn? p- 9l' ¥ a,8C the Au"s Study of Medicine, vol. ii. p. 16. Edit 2d 1825 tOn the Functions of the Heart and Arteries, Phi!. Trans 1S09 n 1 ' t See Study of Med. vol ii p. 19. Ed. 2d. IRRITABILITY, AND MUSCULAR POWER. 11 tioned by Desaguliers, 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 his 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 difficulty 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 Led. on Nat. Phil. i. 129. t Frederick Martens. See Shaw, II. ii. 489. 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 anything like the number that appertain to the same insect in its perfect state. The elator noctilvcus, 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, which 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 spumaria, 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 cuckow-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 muscular structure enables it to travel once a year to the seacoast to wash off 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 strono- enough to lop off a hand with ease, and to cut asunder the cable of a large ship. 6 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 bv 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!—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 leolure 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 afford 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 afford 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, however, 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 the Structure of Plants compared to that of Animate, p. 81. II J14 ON THE BONES, kc. ib membrane, with a larger proportion of albumen to give it a still greater degree 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 conceived 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 former 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 DomT Iar 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 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 Th7e^o?M£^^ OF THE ANIMAL FRAME. 115 enamel 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 regarded 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 difficulty 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 ef 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, j / / J ft ; < 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; vet 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 t ItTsunderstood that some beds of chalk have since been discovered on the farther side of the Blue Mountains, but none is atill to be traced on the hither side in any of the settlements of the colonv. 116 ON THE BONES, Sic. 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 eight 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 vvondeis 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, in its naked and defenceless state, it may avoid the attack of others of the same tribe which are not in the same situa^on : 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 I 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 original. 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 the proprietor I took an account of this extraordinary animal, and have since communicated it to the Koyal 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. mc It appears therefore, very doubtful whether the animal economy be not at S™tP 6 °fi *«?e™tinfflin>e, as well as gelatin or albumen, out of the different materials introduced into the stomach in the form of food. Vauquelin nSrYnf^ t0 dT?f th,e questi0n by ^riety of experiments upon the Snn nfL i e^-shell«of a ?lttin£ hen, and an examination into the propor- booi of calcareous matter contained in a given weight of shells, compared with the calcareous matter furnished by her food, Ind that discharged m! r. Baker's account of the porcupine man, Phil. Trans, for 1755 OF THE ANIMAL FRAME. 117 recrement; and, so far as these experiments go, they support the 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 gaze], 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 Wales. 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 different 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. 13 ON THE BONES, Sec. 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 fatidicus, 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 and 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 ojf 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 tribps) 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 Kafinesi ue has hence made another genus for the nnrnosp nf r»™vin» ,t^l . ,iTv . genus. OF THE ANIMAL FRAME. 119 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 animals 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), arid 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 OX THE RONES, &c. of South America, found among trees, and a devouier 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 inanv 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 strong hold; and similar processes are met with in the bat and the opossum. In the lamprey and mvxine 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 docs 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 horny, 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 offer an equal 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 Jess 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 theirmud; 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- ration, and behove that they have here a clear proof of its truth. But this is to account for a difficulty by involving ourselves in one of a much greater magnitude. It is apelitioprincipii 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, dormant 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.! 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 which'it secretes for this purpose. But here they could never be hatched, though they were t© 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 W illd. p. 120, note. t Annals of Philos. viii. p. 70. (22 ON THE BONES, tc. climate has its indigenous plants as well as its indigenous animals) should so frequently meet together in the same region1 that those which naturally be long to the Cape of Good Hope should be found wild in New-Holland ? and those of Africa on the coast of Norway ! and that the Floras of every climate under the heavens should consociate in the stoves and gardens of our own country ? 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 ;f America has since 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 1G60, were then sown, and produced flowers and excellent fruit ;J and Mr. R. Gale gives an instance of a like effect from similar 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, affirms, 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 (rete mucosum), which gives the different colours to the skin, but which can only be traced as a distinct J ^T U an 'nt?restjng artic'e on this suhJeet Polished long since the above was delivered • an acconn of which may bo found in the Journal of Science and the Arts? No vii d 3 oeiivereo, an accoun. T Willdenow, Principles, &,c. % 357. + Phil Trans vol xlii ' A ih ™i ,h;j 0 TUloch's Phil. Mag. vol. m\ 208, articled l£Zua%D7&?L ILttonn^e, 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. 1 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 gaudv 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 black- 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 the 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,f 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 in. 124 ON THE BONES, Sic. OF THE ANIMAL FRAME. riorn 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 secreted 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 chrysalis. 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, and 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 climate, 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 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 papyrifcra, and several other species of the mulberry: in consequence of which it has been doubted by some naturalists whether 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 have 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 1 That, having conquered the difficulty 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 1 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 126 ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, Szc. gaseous, ethercalized, 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 new heavens and a ne\r 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 re-combining 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 infanta 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, and 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 term of existence has arrived, animals and vegetables are rendered equally capable of counteracting the 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 which 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 differently 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-lone absti- nences or privations of food. y y The alimentary cavity in man extends from the mouth 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 is 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 the,1 diminutive stature. In some animals it is imperforate; it is so occasionally in birds, and fishes, and almost uniformly so in zoophytes occas»ondlly Generally speaking, the extent of the digestive cavity bears a relation in lTn|thealirtS brvhich the individu* is deSJne I to K°^ nshed. The less analogous these aliments are to the substance of the animal XlUlt tw;U8ta,n'the l0nger they mUSt remain in the body to undergo The changes that are necessary to assimilate them. Hence the intestinal tube ™H nO^Thi*"^'3 Ve7- °ng'and their stomach is extremely large and often double or triple; while the carnivorous have a short and straifS * Studv of Med. ii. 2. ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. 127 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 ovyn 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 voraciously by thousands and tens of thousands of little mouths of very minute vessels, winch 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 different 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: V. // 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 effect on the blood itself, by a removal of several of its principles independently of its office as a 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 ground 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, Spallanzam, 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 UblJ'estaWishld8 S°°n erWard Cl6arly d6teCted'and its P°wer incontrover- * See Series i. Lecture x ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, Sic. 129 This wonderful menstruum, the most active we are acquainted with in nature, is secreted by a distinct set of vessels that 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 yaori)?, 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 the stomach 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 eight pounds in twenty-four hours,—a calculation, nevertheless, that Blumen- bach regards as extravagant.! 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 collateral 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 his 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 suffered 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, and 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 these 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."J 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 incarnivorousandgraminivorous animals possessing only a single stomach, this fluid is acid, and colours blue vegetable juices red ; in omnivorous animals,, as man, whose food is composed both of vegetable and animal diet, it is neife: tral; and in graminivorous ruminating animals with four stomachs, and pafc 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 abundant proofs may be adduced from every class of 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- * Ar.at. of the Absorbing Vessels, p. 106. t Physiol. Institut. xxvii. $ 410. t 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 food 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, who 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 the 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 stomach 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 Nature, p. 168. t Phil Trans. 1772. ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. . 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 king'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 the red, 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 Archiv. b.: 132 ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, Szc. quadrupeds; for among birds the ostrich has two ventricles,* and among fishes the stomateus hiatola. The horse and ass, on the contrary, though graminivorous quadrupeds like the ox, have only one stomach. i There 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 with 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 made 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 within 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 much 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 world. 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. 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 formation 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 mastification,"* though essentially lighter. 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 with 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 familiar 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, Sec. grown as large as the glass globe that contained it. Several species of the 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 genu?, or humming- bird, which appears to be the connecting link between the two classes; buzz- ing like the bee itself with a joyous hum around the blossom on which it lights; and in one of its specie's, t. minimus, not exceeding it in size, and only weighing from 20 to 15 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.J Lizards, and especially the newt species, have been found imbedded in a chalk-rock, apparently dead and fossilized, but have reassumed living 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.|| ■ In respect to toads the same fact has been ascertained, for nearly two years, 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 Royal Academy of Paris.ft • Encyclop Brit. art. Physiol, p. 679. t Monthly Rev. Appx. Iv. 494. X Voyages, Appendix, p. 296, Svo. edit § Wilkinson, Tilloch's Phil. Mag. Dec. 1816 || Journal of Science, No. xn. p. 375. If See Dalyeil'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 ON THE DIGESTIVE 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 melancholy 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 Ann Moore, of Tutbury, in Staffordshire, 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 :f 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 being 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 bejower 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 108°. The most favourable point in the temperature of the atmosphere is also 32°. If the season have mam tained this point for some days antecedently to the frog's being plunged under water, itself of 32°, the ani- mal will live from 24 to 60 hours. De l'lnfluence des Agens Physiques sur la Vie; also, Memoires sur l'Asphyxie, &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, &c. By Alexander Henderson, MI) 8vo J 8) 3. 136 ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, tc. intelligent committee was at length arranged, and assented to by the woman herself, for the purpose of watching her by day and by night. Cut off hereby altogether from fluids, which she had of late pretended to relinquish, as well as from solids, she was hardly able to reach the tenth day, and still less to confess, as she then did, that she had occasionally been supplied by her daughter with water and tea. " On the whole," the committee conclude, in their account of her, " though this woman is a base impostor with respect to her pretence of total abstinence from all food whatever, liquid or solid, yet she can perhaps endure the privation of solid food longer than any other per- son. It is thought by those best acquainted with her, that she existed on a mere trifle, and that from hence came the temptation to say that she did not take any thing. If, therefore, any of her friends could have conveyed a bottle of water to her, unseen by the watch, and she could occasionally have drunk out of it, little doubt is entertained that she would have gone through the month's trial with credit. The daughter says that her mother's principal food is tea, and there is reason to believe this to be true."* But this opinion leaves the case almost as extraordinary as before the detection of the fraud; for if true, and it is greatly borne out by the fact to which it appeals, this woman was capable of subsisting on what is ordinarily regarded as no nutri- ment whatever, and required nothing more for her support than an occasional draught of pure water. Hildanus, Haller, and other physiologists have collected various instances of a similar kind : many of them of a much longer duration of abstinence ; some of them, tndeed, extending to not less than sixteen years ; but in gene- ral too loosely written and attested to be entitled to full reliance. Yet the Philosophical Transactions in their different volumes contain numerous cases of the same kind, apparently drawn up with the most scrupulous caution, and supported by the best kind of concurrent evidence. In one of the earlier volumes! we meet with an account of four men who were compelled to sub- sist upon water alone for twenty-four days, in consequence of their having been buried in a deep excavation by the fall of a superincumbent stratum of earth under which they were working, and it being this length of time before they were extricated. The water which they drank of was from a spring at hand; and they drank of it freely, but tasted nothing else. A still more extraordinary account is recorded in the same journal for the year 1742, and consists of the history of a young man, who, at the age of six- teen or seventeen, from having drunk very freely of cold water when in a violent perspiration, was thrown into an inflammatory fever, from which he escaped with difficulty, and with such a dislike to foods of all kinds, that for eighteen years, at the time this account was drawn up, he had never tasted any thing but water. The fact was well known throughout the neighbour- hood ; but an imposition having been suspected by several persons who saw him, he had been shut up at times in close confinement for twenty days at a trial, with the most scrupulous care that he should communicate with nothing but water. He uniformly enjoyed good health, and appears to have had ejec- tions, but seldom. A multitude of hypotheses have been offered to account for these wonder- ful anomalies, but none of them do it satisfactorily; and I should be unworthy of the confidence you repose in me, if I did not ingenuously confess my utter ignorance upon the subject. Water in most cases appears to have been abso- lutely necessary, yet not in all; for Hildanus, who, though somewhat imagi- native, appears to have been an honest and an able man in the main, assures us, that Eva Flegen, who had fasted for sixteen years when he saw her in 1612, had abstained entirely from liquids as well as solids: and in the case of im- pacted toads, especially those found in blocks of closely crystallized marble, the moisture they receive must often be very insignificant. • A Full Exposure of Ann Moore, the pretended Fasting Woman of Tutbury, 8vo. 1813. The newspapers have informed us that this poor woman died at Macclesfield about the -beginning of October, 1825, at the advanced age of seventy-six. • tPhil. Trans. 1684. ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. 137 Perhaps one of the most singular cases, and at the same time one of the best authenticated on record, is that of Janet M'Leod, published in the Phi- losophical Transactions by Dr. Mackenzie.* She was at this time thirty- three years of age, unmarried, and from the age of fifteen had had various paroxysms of epilepsy, which had considerably shaken her frame, rendered the elevator muscles of the eyelids paralytic, so that she could only see by lifting the lids up, and produced so rigid a locked jaw that her mouth could rarely be forced open by any contrivance. She had lost very nearly her power of speech and deglutition, and with this, all desire either to eat or drink. Her lower limbs were retracted towards her body she was entirely confined to her bed, slept much, and had seldom any other egestions than periodical dis- charges of blood, apparently from the lungs, which was chiefly thrown out by the nostrils. During a very few intervals of relaxation she was prevailed upon with great difficulty to put a few crumbs of bread, comminuted in the hand, into her mouth, together with a little water sucked from her own hand, and in one or two instances a little gruel; but even at these attempts almost the whole was rejected. On two occasions also, after a total abstinence of many months, she made signs of wishing to drink some water, which was immediately procured for her. On the first occasion the whole seemed to be returned from her mouth; but she was greatly refreshed by having it rubbed upon her throat. On the second occasion, she drank off a pint at once, but could not be either prevailed upon or forced to drink any more, notwithstand- ing that her father had now fixed a wedge between her teeth, two of which were hereby broken out. With these exceptions, however, she seems to have passed upwards of four years without either liquids or solids of any kind, or even an appearance of swallowing. She lay for the most part like a log of wood, with a pulse scarcely perceptible from feebleness, but distinct and regular: her countenance was clear and pretty fresh; her features neither disfigured nor sunk ; her bosom round and prominent, and her limbs not ema- ciated. Dr. Mackenzie watched her with occasional visits, for eight or nine years, at the close of which period she seems to have been a little improved. His narrative is very precisely as well as minutely detailed, and previously to its being sent to the Royal Society, was read over before the patient's parents, who were known to be persons of great honesty, as also before the elder of the parish, who appears to have been an excellent man ; and, when sent, was accompanied by a certificate as to the general truth of the facts, signed by the minister of the parish, the sheriff-depute, and six other individuals of the neighbourhood, of high character, and most of them justices of the peace. Yet even with the freest use of water, what can we make of such cases upon any chain of chemical facts at present discovered 1 What can we make of it, even in conjunction with the use of air ? The weight and solid contents of the animal body are derived chiefly from that principle which modern chemists denominate carbon; yet neither water nor air, when in a state of purity, contains a particle of carbon. Again, the substance of the animal frame is distinguished from that of the vegetable by its being satu rated with nitrogen, of which plants possesses comparatively but very little; yet though the basis of atmospherical air consists of nitrogen, water has no more of this principle than it has of carbon; nor is it hitherto by any means established, that even the nitrogen of the animal system is in any instance derived from the air, or introduced by the process of respiration : for the ex- periments upon this subject, so far as they go, are in a state of opposition, and keep the question on a balance—-factis contraria facta. Shall we, then, suppose with others, that the circle of perpetual mutation, which is imposed upon every other species of visible matter, is in these cases suspended, and that the different organs of the system are, so long as the anomaly continues, rendered incorruptible] But this is to suppose the inter- vention of a miracle, and without an adequate cause. Let us, then, rather con • * Vol. lxvii. year 1777. 138 ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD, fess our ignorance than attempt to be wise upon the basis ot conceit. All that we do know is, that bodies of every kind are reducible to a few elementary principles, which appear to be unchangeable, and are certainly invisible ; and that from different combinations and modifications of these proceeds every concrete and visible form: hence, air itself, and water; hence mineral, vege- table, and animal substances. Air, therefore, and water, or either separately, may contain the rudimental materials of all the rest. We behold metallic stones, and of large magnitude, fall from the air, and we suppose them to be formed there: we behold plants suspended in the atmosphere, and still, year after year, thriving and blooming, and diffusing odours : we behold insects apparently sustained from the same source; and worms, fishes, and occa- sionally man himself, supported from the one or the other, or from both. These are facts, and as facts alone we must receive them, for we have at present no means of reasoning upon them. There are innumerable mysteries in matter as well as in mind; and we are not yet acquainted with the nature of those elementary principles from which every compound proceeds, and to which every thing is reducible. We are equally ignorant of their shapes, their weight, or their measure. LECTURE XIII. ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD, RESPIRATION, AND ANIMALIZATION. The progress of science is slow, and often imperceptible; and though in a few instances it has been quickened by an accidental discovery or an acci- dental idea, that has given a new turn, or a new elasticity to the chain of our reasoning, still have we been compelled in every instance to follow up the chain, link after link, and series after series, and have never leaped for- ward through an intermediate space without endangering our security, or being obliged to retrace our career by a painful and laborious reinvestigation. It required a period of three thousand six hundred years to render* the doctrine of a vacuum probable, and of five thousand six hundred to establish it upon a solid foundation. For its probability we are indebted to Epicurus, for its certainty to Sir Isaac Newton. The present theory of the solar sys- tem was commenced by Pythagoras and his disciples five centuries before Christ, and only completed by Copernicus fifteen centuries after Christ. Archimedes was the first who invented the celebrated problem for squaring the parabola, which was upwards of two hundred years before the Christian era; yet an exact problem for squaring the circle is a desideratum in the present day. The simple knowledge of the magnet was familiar to the Ro- mans, Greeks, and some of the oriental nations while in their infancy; it has been employed by the mariner for nearly six centuries in Europe, and for a much longer period by the Chinese, in their own seas ; yet at this moment we are acquainted with only a very few of its laws, and have never been able to appropriate it to any other purpose than that of the compass. The circulation of the blood in the animal system is our subject of study for the present lecture, and it is a subject which has laboured under the same difficulties, and has required as long a period of time as almost any of the preceding sciences, for its complete illustration and establishment. Hippo- crates guessed at it; Aristotle believed it; Servetus, who was burnt as a heretic in 1553, taught it; and Harvey, a century afterward, demonstrated it. I shall not here enter into the various steps by which this wonderful dis- covery was at length effected; the difficulty can be only fairly appreciated by those who are acquainted with the infinitely minute tubes into which the distributive arteries branch out, and from which the collective veins arise; but every one is interested in the important fact itself, for it has done more RESPIRATION, AND ANIMALIZATION. 139 towards establishing the healing art upon a rational basis, and subjecting the different diseases of mankind to a successful mode of practice, than"any other discovery that has emblazoned the annals of medicine. | In our last lecture we traced the action of the digestive organs: we beheld (the food first comminuted by means of jaws, teeth, or peculiar muscles or membranes ; next converted into a pulpy mass, and afterward into a milky liquid; and in this state drunk up by the mouths of innumerable minute vessels, that progressively unite into one common trunk, and convey it to , the heart as the chief organ of the system, for the use and benefit of the , whole. But the new-formed fluid, even at the time it has reached the heart, has by no means undergone a sufficient elaboration to become genuine blood, or to support the living action of the different organs. It has yet to be operated upon by the air, and must for this purpose be sent to the lungs, and again re- turned to the heart, before it is fitted to be thrown into the general circulation. J This is the rule that takes place in all the more perfect animals, as mammals, birds, and most of the amphibials ;* and hence these classes are said to have a double circulation. And as the heart itself consists of four cavities, a pair belonging to each of the two circulations, and each pair is divided from the other by a strong membrane, they are also said to have not only a double circulation, but a double heart—a pulmonary and a corporeal heart. j The blood is first received into the heart on the pulmonary side, and is con- ; veyed to the lungs by an artery which is hence called the pulmonary artery, that soon divides into two branches, one for each of the lungs; in which organs they still farther divide into innumerable ramifications, and form a beautiful network of vessels upon the air vesicles of which the substance of the lungs consists; and by this means every particle of blood is exposed in its turn to the full influence of the vital gases of the atmosphere, and be- comes thoroughly assimilated to the nature of the animal system it is to support. The invisibly minute arteries now terminate in equally minute veins, which progressively unite till they centre in four common trunks, which carry back the blood, now thoroughly ventilated and.of a florid hue, to the left side or corporeal department of the heart. I From this quarter the corporeal circulation commences : the stimulus of the blood itself excites the heart to that alternate contraction which constitutes pulsation, and which is continued through the whole course of the arteries ; and by this very contraction the blood is impelled to the remotest part of the body, the arterial vessels continuing to divide and to subdivide, and to branch out in every possible direction, till the eye can no longer follow them, even when aided by the best glasses. The arterial blood having thus visited every portion of every organ, and supplied it with the food of life, is now returned, faint, exhausted, and of a purple hue, by the veins, as in the pulmonary circulation ; it receives, a short space before it reaches the heart, its regular recruit of new matter from the digestive organs, and then empties itself into the right side or pulmonary de- partment of the heart, whence it is again sent to the lungs, as before, for a new supply of vital power. The circulation of the blood, therefore, depends upon two distinct sets of vessels, arteries and veins; the former of which carry it forward to every part of the system, and the latter of which return it to its central source. Both sets of vessels are generally considered as consisting of three distinct layers or tunics : an external, which in the arteries is peculiarly elastic; a middle, which is muscular in both, but whose existence is doubted by some physiologists; and an internal, which may be regarded as the common covering or cuticle. The projectile power exercised over the arteries is unquestion- ably the contraction to which the muscular tunic of the heart is excited by * Cuvier seems to ascribe a double heart to the class of amphibia, without any limitation. See Law- rence's additional note E. chap. xii. of his translation of Blmnenbach's System of Comparative Anatomy. Blumenbach himself has remarked, that many of the frogs, lizards, and serpents have a simple heart, consisting of a single auricle and ventricle, like that of fishes—Sect. 162. 140 ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD, the stimulus of the blood itself; and which contraction would be permanent, but that the heart appears to become exhausted in a considerable degree of its muscular irritability by the exertion that produces the contraction, and hence speedily returns to its prior state of relaxation, exhibiting that alter- nating succession of systole and diastole which constitutes pulsation. In the venal system, however, we meet with even fewer proofs of muscular fibre than in the arterial, and no such force of the heart as to produce pulsa- tion on a pressure of the finger; and hence, to this moment, we are in a greater degree of ignorance as to the projectile power by which this system is actuated. The theories that have been chiefly advanced upon the subject are, first, that of a vis a tergo, or an impetus given to the blood by the arterial contraction, which is supposed by its supporters to be sufficient to operate through the whole length of the venal canals ; secondly, that of capillary at- traction, the nature of which we explained in a former lecture ; and lastly, a theory of a much more complicated kind than either, and which supposes the projectile power to result jointly from the impetus communicated by the heart and arteries, from the pressure of the surrounding organs, and espe- cially from the elasticity of the lungs, and the play of the diaphragm, in con- junction with the natural irritability of the delicate membrane that lines the interior of the veins. It is unnecessary to enter into a consideration of any of these theories; for they all stand self-convicted of incompetency; and the last, which is the most operose of the whole, has been only invented to supply the acknowledged inefficacy of the other two.f Whatever this projec- tile power consists of, it appears to have some resemblance to that of the vegetable system; and, like many of the vessels in the latter, is assisted by the artifice of numerous valves inserted in different parts of the venal tubes. The most important process which takes place in the circulation of the blood is that of its ventilation in the lungs. It is this process which consti- tutes the economy of respiration, and has till of late been involved in more than Cimmerian darkness. We see the blood conveyed to the lungs of a deep purple hue, faint and exhausted by being drained in a considerable degree of its vital power, or immature and unassimilated to the nature of the system ;t is about to support, in consequence of its being received fresh from the lacteal trunk. We behold it returned from the lungs spirited with newness of life, perfect in its con- formation, more readily disposed to coagulate, and the dead purple hue trans- formed into a bright scarlet. How has this wonderful change been accom- plished ? what has it parted with ! what has it received 1 and by what means has so beneficial a barter been produced 1 These are questions which have occupied the attention of physiologists in almost all ages; and though we have not yet attained to any thing like demon- stration, or even universally acceded to any common theory, the experiments of modern times have established a variety of very important facts which may ultimately lead to such a theory, and clear away the difficulties by which we are still encumbered. These facts I shall proceed to examine into in language as familiar as I can employ: I must nevertheless presume upon a general acquaintance with the elementary principles and nomenclature of modern chemistry, since a summary survey of zoonomy is not designed to enter into a detail of its • Physiological experiments have sufficiently proved of late that the same alternation of contraction and dilatation does not take place in the arteries in a free or natural state; for where there is no resist- ance to the flow of the blood along their canals, there is no variation in their diameter; and that it is only the pressure of the finger or some other substance against the side of an artery that produces its pulse. Study of Med. ii. p. 16. Experimental Inquiry into the Nature, &c. of the Arterial Pulse, by C. H. Parry, M.D. 1816. f It has lately been pretty clearly established, that by far the most active power in the return of the blood to the heart from the veins, is the comparative vacuum which takes place in the ventricles of the heart when exhausted of blood by the systole or alternating contraction of this organ; in consequence of which, the venous blood is, as it were, sucked up into the right ventricle from the vente cavse, or venous system at large. So that the heart, upon this beautiful principle of simplification, becomes alter- nately a forcing and a suction pump. By its contraction it forces the blood into the arterial system, and by its vacuum it sucks it up from the venous. See Study of Med. ii. p. 19, 2d edit. 1825. RESPIRATION, AND ANIMALIZATION. 141 mere alphabet or rudiments, but to apply and harmonize detached facts that relate to it, and to condense the materials that have been collected by others into a narrow but regular compass. The chief substance which has been ascertained to be introduced from the atmosphere into the air-vesicles of the lungs during the act of respiration, and from these into the blood, is oxygen, of which the atmosphere, when pure, consists of about twenty-eight parts in a hundred, the remaining seventy-two being nitrogen. That this gaseous fluid enters into the lungs is rendered highly probable from a multiplicity of experiments, which concur in proving that a larger portion of oxygen is received by every act of inspiration than is returned by every correspondent act of expiration; and that it passes from the air-vesicles of the lungs into the blood we have also reason to believe from the change of colour which immediately takes place in the latter, and from other experiments made out of the body, as well as in the body, which abundantly ascertain that oxygen has a power of producing this change, and of converting the deep purple of the blood into a bright scarlet. It is also supposed very generally, that a considerable portion of caloric or the matter of heat, in its elementary form, is communicated to the blood at the same time and in conjunction with the oxygen; but as this substance has hitherto proved imponderable to every scheme that has been devised to ascer- tain its weight, this continues at preseut a point avowedly undetermined. That an increase of sensible heat at all times accompanies an increase of respi- ration is admitted by every one ; but since caloric may be obtained by other means, if obtainable at all, and since a denial of its existence as a distinct substance has of late years been as strenuously urged as it was in former times by the Peripatetic school, and upon experiments inaccessible to those philosophers, we are at present in a state of darkness upon this subject, from which I am much afraid we are not likely to be extricated very soon. I have already observed that nitrogen, or azote, as it is also called, is the other gaseous fluid that constitutes the respirable air of the atmosphere. And from a variety of well-conducted experiments by Mr., now Sir Humphry, Davy, it appears also that a certain quantity of this gas is imbibed by the lungs in the same manner they imbibe oxygen, and that, like oxygen, it is also communicated from the lungs to the blood while circulating through its substance; for in the experiments adverted to he found that, as in the case of the oxygen, a smaller quantity was always returned by every successive act of expiration than had been inhaled by every previous act of inspiration.* The only gas that seems to have been thrown out from the lungs in the course of these experiments is carbonic acid; a very minute proportion of which appears also to be almost always contained in the atmospheric air, though altogether a foreign material, probably eliminated from the decompo- sition of animal and vegetable bodies, that is perpetually taking place, and certainly unnecessary to healthful respiration. The general result of these experiments was as follows: the natural in- spirations were about twenty-six or twenty-seven in a minute; thirteen cubic inches of air were in every instance taken in, and about twelve and three- quarters thrown out by the expiration that succeeded. The atmospheric or inspired air contained in the thirteen cubic inches,— nine and a half of nitrogen, three and four-tenths of oxygen, and one-tenth of an inch of carbonic acid. The twelve inches and three-quarters of returned air contained nine and three-tenths of nitrogen, two and two-tenths of oxy- gen, and one and two-tenths of carbonic acid. This inhalation, however, varies in persons of different-sized chests from 26 to 32 cubic inches, at a temperature of 55°; but these by the heat of the lungs, and saturated with moisture, become forty or forty-one cubic inches. Taking, therefore, 40 cubic inches as the quantity of air equally inhaled and exhaled about 20 times in a minute, it will follow that a full-grown per- * Priestley had before shown that nitrogen is absorbed. See Phil. Trans. 1790, p. 10& 142 ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD, son respires 48,000 cubic inches in an hour, or 1,152,000 cubic inches in the course of a day ; a quantity equal to about 79 hogsheads. A similar train of experiments has more lately been pursued by Messrs. Allen and Pepys, and will be found fully detailed in the Transactions of the Royal Society for 1808. They confirm the preceding proportions, excepting in the retention of nitrogen; this substance having been found by Messrs. Allen and Pepys to have been returned in every respiration, in the precise proportion in which it was received. It is highly probable, however, that the diet of these two sets of ingenious experimenters had not previously con- sisted of the same proportion of animal and vegetable materials; and that the blood in the former instance was less charged with nitrogen than in the latter; which would at once account for the difference. Upon Sir Humphry Davy's experiments, however, the quantity of nitro- gen received by the lungs is very inconsiderable, not amounting to more than two-tenths of a cubic inch in an inspiration. And omitting the con- sideration of this gas, as also that of caloric, oh account of the unsettled state of the question, respiration, from this view of the subject, consists merely in the act of receiving oxygen, and throwing out carbonic acid gas; the lungs imbibing and communicating to the system not less than 32.4 cubic inches of the former, and parting with not less than 26.5 of the latter, every minute. So that, taking the gravity of carbonic acid gas, as calculated by Lavoisier, eleven ounces of solid carbon or charcoal are emitted from the lungs every twenty-four hours.* The whole of the theory and some of the supposed facts here advanced, however, have of late been very considerably disputed by Mr. Ellis, in his Inquiry into the Changes induced on Atmospheric Air by the Germination of Seeds. He concurs with Messrs. Allen and Pepys, in ascertaining that pre- cisely the same quantity of nitrogen is expired as is inspired ; but he objects to their conclusion, that the whole of any constituent element of respired air introduced into the air-vesicles, and not returned by the alternate expiration, is necessarily conveyed into the blood-vessels, believing that much of this may remain unascertained, in consequence of an increased, but not sensibly increased, expansion of the chest. He admits that carbonic vapour is thrown forth in the quantity usually alleged, with every act of expiration; but he offers evidence to prove that it is the carbon only that is discharged from the animal system, in connexion with the exhaling vapour; contending that the carbon thus existing is separated from the vapour by its union with the whole of the oxygen introduced by the previous act of inspiration, by which alone it is converted into carbonic acid gas : for he found the same decom- position of atmospheric air produced by introducing a small bladder, moistened, and filled with any substance, or perfectly empty, and introduced into an inverted glass containing a certain proportion of atmospheric air, standing upon quicksilver. He denies, therefore, that the air-vessels are in any de- gree porous to gases of any kind, excepting caloric; and, consequently, denies that the blood is converted from a deep modena hue into a bright scarlet by its union with oxygen ; believing, or seeming to believe, that this result is entirely produced by the action of the caloric separated in the air- vesicles upon the union of the carbon of the vapour exhaled from their sur- faces, with the oxygen introduced by inspiration. So that, according to this theory, respiration is nothing more than an introduction of caloric !nto the system, and the conversion of a portion of oxygen (the whole received by the act of inspiration) into an equal bulk of carbonic acid by the carbon exhaled from the living organized body. Air, therefore, examined after respiration, is found to differ from the same air before it is breathed, in having lost a por- tion of oxygen, gained an equal volume of carbonic acid, and in being loaded with pure watery vapour, the vapour thrown off from the lungs ; and he has offered an additional proof that the oxygen of the carbonic acid is that introduced in the act of inspiration, by showing, as in the case of breath- • Phil. Trans. 1808, part ii. 249. RESPIRATION, AND ANIMALIZATION. 143 tng hydrogen gas, that no carbonic acid is returned, and apparently none produced. In opposition to the hypothesis of Dr. Priestley, he seems to show, and plausibly to establish, that all terrestrial plants, whether growing in absolute darkness, in the shade, or exposed to the direct rays of the sun, are constantly removing a quantity of oxygen from the atmosphere, and substituting an exactly equal volume of carbonic acid; that they produce this change by emitting from their leaves, flowers, fruits, stems, and roots, and by a process like animal exhalation, carbonaceous matter, which combines with the oxy- gen of the surrounding air; and that such a function is essentially necessary to their vital existence. In doing this, however, the carbonaceous matter is given forth more freely from the green parts than from any other, especially when exposed to the direct rays of the sun, by means of its affinity for the calorific rays; in consequence of which the oxygen of the carbon is set at liberty, and. escapes from the cellular texture of the green parts through the external pores ; an action, however, which is not necessary to life, for a plant does not die when this has ceased, while it is equally found to occur in a dead as in a living plant. It was probably this occasional escape of oxygen that induced Priestley to regard it as an invariable and constant process, affording a compensation for the animal carbon thrown into the air, and thus taking from and giving to the animal world what seemed to be mutually demanded. Mr. Ellis also affirms that all the various colours of vegetables depend on the varied proportion of alkaline and acid matter mixed with the juices of the coloured parts of plants : that green and yellow, for example, are always pro- duced by an excess of alkali in the colourable juices of the leaf or flower; and all the shades of red, by a predominance of acid; while a neutral mix- ture produces a white. And hence there is most green in the summer sea- son, when the oxygen is parted with most, freely, as drawn away by the rays of light; while in autumn, when there is less separation, the other colours of yellow and red are most frequent. .Mr. Ellis has also quoted a variety of experiments on different kinds of fishes, muscles, marine testacea, snails, leeches, zoophytes, and tadpoles, in which it was found that the water wherein these animals had been placed had lost a part of its oxygen, and received an addition of carbonic acid, while its nitrogen had remained unaffected.* This hypothesis, however, requires confirmation, and is at present open to many objections. If caloric can permeate animal membranes, as Mr. Ellis admits it to do, and unite by chemical affinity with the blood in the blood- vessels, so also may oxygen in certain cases of combination. Mr. Porrett has shown that the Voltaic fluid, when operating upon water, is capable of carrying even water itself through a piece of bladder, and of raising it into a heap against the force of gravitation ; and hence other affinities may not only introduce the oxygen of the respired air, or a part of it, into the blood of the blood-vessels in the lungs, through the tissue of the air-cells, but at the same time carry off the superabundant carbon in the form of carbonic acid, instead of its being thrown out in that of carbonic vapour. Nor have we any proof that carbon will dissolve in water, and produce such vapour; and hence such an idea is gratuitous.! Of the general operation, however, there is no doubt, whatever be the manner in which it is performed: and by such operation the new blood becomes assimilated to the nature of the system it has to nourish; and the old or exhausted blood both relieved from a material that may be said to suf- focate it, and reinspirited for fresh action. In this state of perfection, pro- duced from the matter of food introduced into the stomach, and elaborated by the gases of the atmosphere, received chiefly by the act of respiration, but perhaps partly also by the absorbing pores of the skin, the blood on its ana- lysis is found to consist of the following nine parts, independently of its aerial * Inquiry into the Changes induced on Atmospheric Air by the Germination of Seeds, &c. 8vo. 1807. As also, Farther Inquiries into the Changes, &c. 8vo. 1811. Study of Med. edit. ii. vol. i. p. 474. Thomson's Annals of Plulos. No. xhu. p. 75 76 144 ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD, materials:—first, a peculiar aroma, or odour, of which every one must be sensible who has been present at a slaughter-house on cutting up the fresh bodies of oxen ; secondly, fibrine, or fibrous matter; thirdly, uncoagulable matter, but no gelatin, which is a subsequent secretion; fourthly, albumen; fifthly, red-colouring matter; sixthly, iron; seventhly, sulphur; eighthly, soda; and, lastly, water. The proportion of these parts vary almost infinitely, according to the age, temperament, and manner of living; each of these having a character that essentially belongs to it, with particular shades that are often difficult to be laid hold of. Of these component parts, the most extraordinary are the red-colouring matter, the iron, and the sulphur; nor are we by any means acquainted with the mode by which they obtain an existence in the blood. I have already had occasion to observe, that albumen and fibrine are substances formed by the action of the living principle out of the common materials of the food, and that it is probable the lime found in the bones and other parts is produced in the same manner. Whether the iron and sulphur that are traced in the blood have a similar origin, or exist in the different articles of our diet, and are merely separated from the other materials with which they are combined, is a physical problem that yet remains to be solved. It should be observed, however, that the sulphur does not exist in a free state even in the blood itself, but is only a component part of its albumen. Considering the universality of these substances in the blood, and the uniformity of their proportion in similar ages, temperaments, and habits, whatever be the soil on which we reside; that those who live in a country in which these minerals are scarcely to be traced have not less, while those who live in a country that overflows with them have not more; it is perhaps most rational to conclude, that they are generated in the laboratory of the animal system itself, by the all-controlling influence of the living principle. The exact proportion of sulphur contained in the system has been less ac- curately ascertained than that of the iron, which last in an adult, the weight of whose blood may be estimated at 281bs.,* ought usually to amount to seventy scruples, or about three ounces: and hence the blood of about forty men contains iron enough to make a good ploughshare, and might easily have its iron extracted from it, be reduced to a metallic state, and manufactured into such an instrument. Iron is seldom found except in the red particles of the blood ;f and it has hence been supposed by the French chemists to be the colouring material itself. The process of respiration, according to the theory of Lavoisier and Fourcroy, is a direct process of combustion, in which the animal system finds the carbon, and the atmosphere the oxygen and caloric ; and in conse- quence of the sensible heat which is set at liberty during the combustion, the iron of the blood is converted into a red oxide, and hence necessarily becomes a pigment. But it is impossible to ascribe the red colour to this principle : for, first, we are by no means certain that the air communicates any such substance as caloric to the blood; and, secondly, let the sensible heat of the blood arise from whatever quarter it may, it can never be sufficiently augmented by the most violent degree, either of local or general inflammation, to convert the iron of the blood into a red oxide, which, indeed, is never produced without rapid combustion, flame, and intense heat. And hence, Sir Humphry Davy con- jectures the carbon itself of the blood to be the real colouring material, and to be separated from the oxygen, with which it is necessarily united to constitute * Blumenbacb states the proportion in an adult and healthy man to be as 1 to 5 of the entire weight ol the body. By experiments on the water-newt (lacerta palustris), he found the proportion in this animal to be only as 2£ to 36. t Mr. Brande denies that iron exists more in the red particles of the blood than in the other principles ■ according to his experiments, it exists but in a very inconsiderable quantity in any of them; but he has traced it in the chyle, in the serum, and in the fibrine, or washed crassament. Phil. Trans. 1812, p. 112, Vauquelin has traced it as a constituent in egg-shells and oyster-shells. Thomson's Annals of Philos No. I, p. 66. But Berzelius has proved Brande to be mistaken, and that iron exists largely in the blood, and is the cause of the red colour. See his Anim. Chemistry. ;*:.... RESPIRATION7AND ANIMALIZATION. 145 carbonic acid gas, by the matter of light, which he supposes to be introduced into the system in the act of respiration, instead of the matter of caloric ; in consequence of which it immediately becomes a pigment. But the difficulties which attend this theory are almost, if not altogether, as numerous as those which attend the theory of combustion, and it is unnecessary to pursue the subject any farther. In the.Philosophical Transactions, and in several of the best established foreign Memoirs, we meet with a few very curious instances of spontaneous inflammation, or active combustion, having occurred in the human body. The accident has usually been detected by the penetrating smell of burning and sooty films, which have diffused themselves to a considerable distance ; and the sufferers have in every instance been discovered dead, with the body more or less completely burnt up, and containing in the burnt parts nothing more than an oily, sooty, extremely fetid, and crumbly matter. In one or two instances there has appeared, when the light was totally excluded, a faint lambent flame bickering over the limbs ; but the general combustion was so feeble, that the chairs and other furniture of the room within the reach of the burning body have in no instance been found more than scorched, and in most instances altogether uninjured. It is by no means easy to explain these extraordinary facts; but they have been too frequent, and are too well authenticated in different countries, to justify our disbelief. In every instance but one the subjects have been females, somewhat advanced in life, and apparently much addicted to spirituous liquors. 1 shall hence only observe, in few words, that the animal body in itself consists of a variety of combustible materials; and that the process of respiration (though not completely established to be such) has a very near alliance to that of combustion itself: that the usual heat of the blood, taking that of man as our standard, is 98° of Fahrenheit, and under an inflammatory tem- perament may be 103° or 104° ; and hence, though by no means sufficiently exalted for open or manifest combustion, may be more than sufficiently so for a slow or smothered combustion; since the combustion of a dung-hill sel- dom exceeds 81°, and is not often found higher in fermenting haystacks, when they first burst forth into flame. The use of ardent spirits may possi- bly, in the cases before us, have predisposed the system to so extraordinary an accident; though we all know that this is not a common result of such a habit, mischievous as it is in other respects. The lambent flame emitted from the body is probably phosphorescent, and hence little likely to set fire to the surrounding furniture. It is not certain whether this flame originates spontaneously, or is only spontaneously continued, after having been pro- duced by a lighted substance coining too nearly in contact with a body thus surcharged with inflammable materials. Such, then, are the circulatory and respiratory systems in the most perfect animals: as mammals, birds, and amphibials. It should be observed, how- ever, that in birds the hollow bones themselves, and a variety of air-cells that are connected with them, constitute, as we have already had occasion to no- tice,* a part of the general respiratory organ, and endow them with that levity of form which so peculiarly characterizes them, and which is so skil- fully adapted to their intention. It should be remarked, also, that in most am- phibious animals, and especially in the turtle, whose interior structure is the most perfect of the entire class, the two ventricles, or larger cavities of the heart, communicate something after the manner m which they do in the hu- man fetus The lungs of this class are for the most part unusually large ; and they have a power of extracting oxygen from water as well as from air; whence their, capability of existing in both .elements. The oxygen, how- ever obtained from the water is not by a decomposition of the water into its elementary parts, but only by a separation of such air as is loosely combined with it • for if water be deprived of air or oxygen, the animal soon expires. We have already observed that some amphibials appear to possess only a single heart, and even that of a very simple structure. v * Series I. Lecture xi. p. 118. "■ 146 ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD, In fishes the heart is single, or consists only of two compartments instead of four, and hence the circulation is single also. The gills in this class an- swer the intention of lungs, and the blood is sent to them for this purpose from the heart, in order to be deprived of its excess of carbon, and supplied with its deficiency of oxygen. It is not returned to the heart, as in the case of the superior animals, but is immedatiely distributed over the body by an aorta or large artery issuing from the organ of the gills. The oxygen in these animals is separated from the water instead of from the air; and for this purpose the water usually passes through the mouth before it reaches the gills: yet in the ray-tribe there is a conducting aperture on each side of the head, through which the water travels instead of through the mouth. In the lamprey it is received by seven apertures opening on each side of the head into bags, which perform the office of gills, and passes out by the same orifices, and not, as has been supposed, by a different opening said to constitute its nostril. In the common leech there are sixteen of these orifices on each side of the belly, which answer the same purpose. In the sea-mouse (aphrodita aculeata) " the water passes through the lateral openings between the feet into the cavity under the muscles of the back."* The siren possesses a singular construction, and exhibits both gills and lungs ;f thus uniting the class of fishes with that of amphibials. Linnrcus did not know how to arrange this curious animal, and shortly before his death formed a new order of amphibials, which he called meantes, for the purpose of receiving it. It ranks usually in the class of fishes. The only air-vessels of the winged insects have a resmblance to the aper- tures of the lamprey, and are called stigmata. In most instances these are placed on each side of the body; and each is regarded as a distinct trachea, conducting the air, as M. Cuvier elegantly expresses it, in search of the blood, as the blood has no means of travelling in search of the air.J They are of various shapes and number, and are sometimes round, sometimes oval, but more generally elongated like a button-hole. In the grasshopper they are twenty-four, disposed in four distinct rows. The membranous tube that runs along the back of insects is called by Cuvier the dorsal vessel. It discovers an alternate dilatation and contraction: and is supposed by many naturalists to be a heart, or to answer the purpose of a heart. Cuvier regards it as a mere vestige of a heart, without contrac- tions from its own exertion, and without ramifications of any kind : the con- tractions being chiefly produced by the action of the muscles running along the back and sides, as also by the nerves and tracheae, or stigmata. Scorpions and spiders have a proper heart; and as the term insects is now confined by M. Cuvier and M. Marcel de Serres to those that have only this dorsal vessel, or imperfect heart, the two former genera are struck out of the list of insects as given by Linnaeus.^ This organ differs very considerably in its structure and degree of simpli- city in moluscous animals. The heart of the teredo has two auricles and two ventricles; that of the oyster one auricle and one ventricle. In the muscle the heart is not, strictly speaking, divided into an auricle and ventri- cle, but rather consists of an oval bag, through the middle of which the lower portion of the intestine passes. Two veins from the gills open into the heart, one on each side, which may be considered as the auricles. In several of the crustaceous insects of Linnaeus, as, for example, the mo- noculus and craw-fish, the stigmata converge into a cluster, so as to form gills; which in some species are found seated in the claws, and in other spe- cies under the tail. These have for the most part a small single heart, and * Sir E. Home, Phil. Trans. 1815, p. 260. t Home's Life of Hunter, prefixed to Hunter's Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, &c. p. xli. t En un mot. le sang ne pouvant allerchercher fair, c'est l'air qui va chercher le sang. Legons d'Anat. Comp. i. 23, Sect. 2, Art. 5. $ See M. Marcel de Serres' Statement, Tilloch's Journal, vol. xliv. p. 148 ; and especially Thomson's iiinals of Phil. No xxiii. p. 347, 348. 350. 354. RESPIRATION, AND ANIMALIZATION. l47 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 from 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.t 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 afiimal 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 respect 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 oovious, tiiat vegetable matter can onlv 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, during 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 raters the animal system through the medium of the lacteals, and continues • Blumenbacn, $ 167. _ t SceEncycIop. Brit. art. Physiol, p. 148 ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD, to circulate with the chyle, or the blood, till it reaches the lungs. Hare 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, in consequence of its contact with atmospheric air: a fact put beyond all doubt by the experiments and observations of M. Jurine, although on a superficial view, opposed bv 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 two organs, and giving us some insight into the mode by which insects and worms, which are totally destitute of lungs, are capable of employing the skin as a 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 1 Now this is for the most part obtained by the process of putrefaction, or a return of the constitue-nt principles of animal matter to their original affini- 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 enumerated : 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. * See Sir II. Davy's Researches Chemical and Philosophical, &c.; and Mimoire sur la Chaleur, par MM. Lavoisier et De la Place. Mem. de l'Acad. De la Combustion, &c. . t Essaie de Th£orie sur l'Animalization et l'Assimilation des Alimens, &c. Annales de Chimie, torn. ii. X 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. Priestley's results, and have been since confirmed by other experiments of MM. Lavoisier and Fourcroy See Premier M£moire sur la Transpiration des Animaux, par A. Seguin et Lavoisier, 1792; and compare with M. Hassecfrati's Memoire sur la Combinaison de l'Oxygen, &c. Acad, des Scien. 1791. || 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 Betrends and Creve; but Humboldt has sufficiently shown Us insecurity as an infallible 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 control of the vital principle being here looser and less powerfully exerted. A union readily takes place between the two, and thus combined they fly off 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 offensive 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 ready prepared for 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. Fpr 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 65i° 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 elastiques aSriformes, qui se d^gagent de quelques Matures animates, n is from instinct; that either may exist separately, and that all may exist together. INSTINCT, SENSATION, AND INTELLIGENCE. 225 Whence derive the young of every kind a knowledge of the peculiar powers that are to appertain to them hereafter, even before the full formation of the organs in which those powers are to reside ] To adopt the beautiful language of the first physiologist of Rome, Cornua nata prius vitnlo quam frontibus exstent, Illis iratus petit, atque infestus inurguet: At catulei pantherarum, scymneique leonum, Unguibus, ac pedibus jam turn morsuque repugnant, Vix etiam quom sunt dentes unguesque createi. Alitum proporso genus alis omne videmus Fidere, et a pennis tremulum petere auxiliarum.* The young calf whose horns Ne'er yet have sprouted, with his naked front Butts when enraged: the lion whelp or pard With claws and teeth contends, ere teeth or claws Scarce spring conspicuous; while the pinion'd tribes Trust to their wings, and from th' expanded down Draw, when first fledg'd, a tremulous defence. In like manner an infant, in danger of falling from its nurse's arms, stretches out its little hands to break the fall as though acquainted by experience with the use of such an action. We here meet with an instance of pure instinct; but we pursue the same conduct in adult age, and we have then an example of instinct combined with intelligence ; and intelligence, instead of opposing the instinctive exertion, encourages and fortifies it. So when caterpillars, observes Mr. Smellie, are shaken from a tree, in whatever direction they de- scend, they all instantly turn towards the trunk and climb upwards, though till now they have never been on the surface of the ground. The vegetable kingdom offers us examples of simple instinct equally sin- gular and marvellous. Thus the stalk of the convolvulus twines from the left or east by the south to the west, the face being towards the south: the phaseolus vulgaris,ox kidney-bean, pursues the same course: while the honey- suckle and the hop take a perfectly reverse direction. Who will reveal to us the cause of these differences 1 In the following instances the cause is obvious : it proceeds from the pe- culiar structure and power of the different animals to which they relate : and it would perhaps be as obvious to us.in the preceding, were we as intimately acquainted with the nature of plants as of animals. The squirrel, the field- mouse, and the very curious bird called nut-hatch (sitta Europcea), live equally on hazel-nuts; but each of them opens them in a very different manner The squirrel, after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his long fore-teeth, as a man does with his knife : the field-mouse nibbles a hole with his teeth as regular as if drilled with a wimble, and yet so small that it is wonderful how the kernel can be extracted through it; while the nut-hatch picks an irregular ragged hole with his bill; but as this artist has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces it, like an adroit workman he fixes it, as it were, in a vice in some cleft of a tree or in some crevice; when, standing over it, he readily perforates the stubborn shell; and while at work makes a rapping noise that may be heard at a considerable distance.f 1 (The sphex or ichneumon wasp, in its perfect state, feeds on the nectary of flowers; but as soon as she is fitted to deposite her eggs, she becomes actu- ated by an appetite of another kind. She first bores a small cylindrical hole in a sandy soil, into which, by accurately- turning round, she drops an egg: she then seeks out a small green caterpillar that inhabits the leaves of the cabbage-plant, and which she punctures with her sting, yet so slightly and delicately as not to kill it; she then rolls it up into a circle, and places it in the sandy nest immediately over the egg. She continues the pursuit till she has counted twelve; and has, in like manner, deposited twelve caterpillars one over the other; and repeats the same process till she has exhausted her- self of her entire stock of eggs. She immediately closes the holes and dies, * De Rer. Nat. v. 103S. t See White's Nat. Hist, of Selbourne P 226 ON THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF intrusting her eggs to the parent heat of the sun. The egg in each separate cell or aperture is soon hatched, and finds its food duly prepared for it, and from its enfeebled state incapable of resisting its attack, though preserved from putrefaction by the little life that has remained to it. It feeds pro- gressively on the twelve caterpillars ; and by the time it has exhausted them, becomes fitted for, and converted into, a chrysalis ; in due time it awakes from its dormancy, works its way to the surface of the earth, throws off its chry- salid investment, finds itself accommodated with wings, rises into the atmos- phere, feeds on the honey of plants instead of on maggots; and at length pursues the very same train of actions to provide itself with a progeny which was pursued by the parent insect of the year before. '■ In what I have thus far advanced, I have chiefly proved, however, that instinct may exist separately : I will next proceed to a few examples, in which it will be clear to every one that it may exist in conjunction with each of the other two principles of sensation and intelligence. And, first, as to its union with sensation. Wherever a nervous system is to be traced, which alone is the source of sensation, we have abundant proofs of such an alliance. We meet with it, without having language by which to describe it, in the glow and elasticity of health, in the satisfaction of a cheer- ful meal, and in the refreshment of sound and natural sleep after fatigue ; and we meet with it still more obviously, and in diversities which language is ca- pable of characterizing, in all those natural emotions to which we. have just adverted, and which, in consequence of such alliance, have obtained the popular name of instinctive sensations or feelings, but which in reality are peculiar instincts combined with peculiar feelings. Let us select a few other examples. We are told by Galen,* that on opening a goat big with young he found one of the young ones alive, which he hastily snatched up, and took into a room where there were various vessels severally fitted for the purpose with wine, oil, honey, milk, grains, and fruits. The little kid first rose upon its feet and walked ; then shook itself, and scratched its side with one of its hoofs; it next smelt alternately at all the dishes before it, and at last fixed upon and licked up the milk. In this case the sense of smell went distinctly in aid of the instinctive search after food, and deter- mined the particular kind: so that the instinct and the sensation co-operated. Thus rabbits, when left to the operation of pure instinct, dig holes in the ground for warmth and protection : but after continuing for some time in a domestic state, and finding that they can obtain a more comfortable asylum by other means, and with less labour, they seldom pursue, even when they have an opportunity, the instinctive process, but burrow in the straw, or whatever material is provided for them. In this case the sense of superior comfort combines itself, as in the pre- ceding, with the instinct, and pursues the same end, though by a change of the means. So again, the new-born young of all animals, in whatever way they take their food, are at first stimulated by instinct alone. The lamb sucks, the chicken pecks, and the nestling of the sparrow gapes. In like manner, the mother secretes or selects its food from an instinctive stimulus alone. The udder of the dam swells and becomes painful, the crop of the pigeon does the same ; and there are some birds, whose common food is grain, that during this season devour for their young, spiders and other insects, which nothing could induce them to touch at any other time. This sweet intercourse of natural action lays a foundation for something that in a short time shows itself to be superior to instinct, though it has often, but erroneously, been so denominated. The young of two different mothers, if interchanged as soon as they are born or hatched, are as satisfied with the foster or suppo- sititious as with the natural parent: and the mothers, unless made suspicious of the deception, are as satisfied with their foster or supposititious young. But let the same interchange be attempted a week or a month afterward, and in no case will it succeed. Short as has been the intervening period, there * De Locis, lib. vi. cap. 6. INSTINCT. SENSATION, AND INTELLIGENCE. 227 has been a birth of feeling as well as a growth of form; the rising sense has united itself with the already mature instinct; and the natural nurse and the natural nursling will pine equally, if separated from each other. The poet we have just adverted to, who may pre-eminently be called the poet of nature, has beautifully illustrated this remark by the yearning affec- tion of the cow for her young calf when it has strayed from her or she has been robbed of it; hunting after it with intense anxiety in every direction, mourning for it with a cry that cannot fail to wind itself into every feeling heart, and equally refusing the fattening glebe and the refreshing stream.*' The female dugong or sea-cow of the Sumatra coast, whose general history we have already given a glance at,f evinces a like degree of maternal affec- tion; insomuch that when its young has been entrapped or speared, the mother pursues it so closely and so fearlessly as to be taken with the greatest ease. The young sea-calves have a short, sharp, pitiable cry, which thej frequently repeat; and, like the stricken deer, are also said to shed tears, which, Sir Thomas Raffles tells us, are carefully preserved by the common people as a charm, the possession of which is supposed to secure the affec- tions of those to whom they are attached in the same manner as they attract the mother to her young.J The instinct of this early age, however, belongs to such early age alone, and to the purpose of such early age alone : and when it has answered that purpose it ceases, and we meet with no more trace of it: but the feeling which follows so close upon it, and to which, perhaps, it has given birth, is of a higher order, and continues for a much longer period of time; and for a period of time, indeed, directly proportioned to its intensity, or, in tothei words, to the ascending rank of sentient or percipient life in which it makes its appearance. Hence in the two lowest classes of animals, we meet with nothing of the sort whatever ;Uhe young of insects and worms having a foreign food pro- vided for them without the intervention of the mother; and hence, too, in various quadrupeds and birds the feeling progressively dies away as the young become independent; while in man we behold the principle of intelli- gence, in its most lovely and interesting character, a moral and internal feel- ing, a sense of gratitude and veneration on the one side, of keen complacency and delight on the other, and of active affection on both, catching hold of the two preceding principles, and producing a strong cord of interunion that can never be broken but with the cords of the heart itself. Something of the kind is occasionally, indeed, to be met with in quadru- peds, as I have formerly observed'in the case of the seal and lamantin tribes (trichecus Manatus), which pass through life in families of single male and single female, never deserting or deserted by their young, till the latter, hav- ing reached the term of maturity, separate to found families of their own. / In these cases we see examples of all the three principles of instinct, sen- sation, and intelligence in a state of union: and we,occasionally meet with still more extraordinary examples of the same fact. One of the most extraordi- nary, perhaps, is that related by Mr. Gilbert White, in his very interesting History of Selbourn, of the gratitude and affection of a young hare towards a cat by which it had been suckled and brought up ; the leveret following the cat about the garden, playing with her like a kitten, and bounding towards her upon her purring or uttering any other call of tenderness. We see something of the same kind of internal feeling, and often exalted to a still higher pitch, in the gratitude and affection of the fond and faithful dog for a kind and indulgent master; occasionally, indeed, rising superior to, and openly triumphing over, the strongest instinctive feelings of the anima\ frame, over thirst and hunger, and the love of life itself; and inciting him t 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 fatigued 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 propagated 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 these effects ; and the one or the other will take place in oroportion to their excess and extremity. 250 ON SLEEP, DREAMING, If a stimulus affecting the organs of sense, at which end soever applied, be intolerably pungent or forcible,it!ie sensorial power will be exhausted im- mediately, and the organ directly affected will become instantly torpid.) Hence sounds, intolerably loud, make us deaf; excessive light blinds us"; 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 or 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 and 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 ex- 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 ;ffrom 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 inertness: 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 ? 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, are of 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. iThought, 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, whether 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 thoughts 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 which 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 the 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 have 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, i 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 which 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, he should 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 which 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 cause 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 limbs; 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 images. 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? fit is the dream of a man while awake.\ He is so intently bent upon a particular train of thought, that he is torpid td every thing else: he sees nothing, he hears nothing, he feels nothing; and the only difference between the two is,(|hat 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 that 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. fWe have all heard and read of such extra- ordinary occurrences as tranceSj or apparent absences of the soul from the body: we have heard and read of persons whi, 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 in so much mystery and superstition, as to be altogether unworthy of no- tice, 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 constitutipn, 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 .aws of chemical affinity, which it evinces in every ordinary case of the death or S54 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 ; which, 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 VIII. 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 v, or upsilon, is called the hyoid or u-like bone ; and immediately from this bone arises a long cartilaginous tube, 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 being 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. 1. VOCAL IMITATION, AND VENTRILOQUISM. 255 the upper part of it, or that immediately 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 which, produces that acute projection 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, which 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 different 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 moutln) The organ of the voice then is the larynx, its muscles, and other append- ages ;\ and the voice itself is the sound of tfle^air propelled through and striking against the sides of its glottis, or opening^ into the mouthy 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, iSpeech 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 animals 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.-)- (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 general structure, 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 contrivanceA 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, which * Pennant, Arctic Zool t Muller, Collect, of Russian Discoveries, vol. vii. p. 123 256 ON VOICE AND LANGUAGE; modify the simple sound into an infinite variety of distinct notes, and at the same time give them utterance. Here, however, 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, but often in the different sexes of the same species, more particularly among aquatic 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 larynx, as the tree frog (rana arborea), while the green frog (rana esculenta) has two considerable pouches in the cheeks, which it inflates at the 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 risibunda and r. bombina) are of a merrier mood, and seem to imitate with tolerable exactness the laugh of the human voice, in the hey-dey of their activity, which is always in the evening. ^ Among the bird tribes there are some possessed of powers of voice so sin- gular, independently of that of their own natural music, that I cannot consent to pass them over in total silence. IThe 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 the 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 tunes, 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 much 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 find 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 with 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. 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. i^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. (Jt 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 powers 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. iThis 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 muscles 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 (M- 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 Elemens de Physiologic, in loc. Paris. 1804. 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 imitate, 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.'ne the fish-market at Edinburgh, and making a fish appear to speak, and give 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 I. of France had an equally gallant and very shrewd vafot-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, a low, 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 pursued; 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 little 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 also obtain for him the material he stood in need of. VOCAL IMITATION, AND VENTRILOQUISM. 259 He recollected that there lived at Lyons an old miserly banker, of the name of Cornu, who had accumulated immense wealth 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 Lyons, therefore, he went instantly post-haste, Commenced an imme- diate acquaintance with M. Cornu, and on every interview took especial care, on entering 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: a-nd 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 suspicious 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 seems, 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 have 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 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 bis 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, anti 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 all kindsT) But the parrot and the mocking-bird, it may, perhaps, be said, open 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 necessary 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, I 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.a 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. < 268 ON NATURAL OR INARTICULATE, AND 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 won- derful facility which is common to many of them of characterizing every distinct idea by a distinct term'? And here such philosophers are divided: vsome contending that speech is a science that was determined upon and inculcated in an early period of the world, 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.*3 / 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' i leave to present in an English dress :— But, to maintain that one devis'd alone Terms for all nature, and th' incipient 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 jargon 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 ii*. p. 314. 327; and Beattie on the Theory of language, p £46, Lond. 1S03, 4to. t Proinde, putare aliquem turn nomina distribuisse Rebus, et inde homines didicisse vocabula prima, Desipere est: nam quur hie posset cuncta notare Vocibus, et varios sonitus emittere lingua?, Tempore eodem aliei facere id non quisse putentur ? Praeterea, si non aliei quoque vocibus usei Inter se fucrant, unde insita notities est? Utilitas etiam, unde data est huic prima potestas, Quid vellet facere, ut sciret, animoque videret? Cogere item plureis unus, victosque domare, • Non poterat, rerum ut perdiscere nomina vellent: Nee ratione docere ulla, suadereque surdis, Quod sit opus facto; faciles neque enim paterentur: Nee ratione ulla sibi ferrent amplius aureis Vocis inauditos sonitus obtunderc frustra. De Rer. Nat, y. 1040 - ARTIFICIAL OR ARTICULATE LANGUAGE. 269 soning, and the articles of the Epicurean belief, concur, as I have already re- marked, in deriving the race of man from the race of monkeys, and in exhibit- ing the ourang-outang, as his dignified prototype and original, whom they have hence denominated the satyr, or man of the woods.N) , 1 shall not exhaust the time or insult the understanding of this auditory, by any detailed confutation of the 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 itself: concerning which, it is scarcely necessary to recall to your recollection the remark we have just made—that while it approaches nearest to the form, it is farthest removed from the language of manof almost all quadrupeds whatever. I shall confine myself to the fair question, which the theory in its original shape involves ;-Us human speech, 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 f) 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 different 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 effect 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, an,d 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 me, 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 we have two common etymonsVor 'generic terms, by which to describe the paternal character, papa and father; both are as com- mon to the Greek tongue as to our own, under the forms of nairnas and namp, and have probably alike issued from the Hebrew source ax or nix, ph niK» 270 ON NATURAL OR INARTICULATE, AND And 1 may fearlessly venture to affirm that there \* 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 father 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 maintains 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 to Guinea, and from Bengal to Sumatra and New-Zealand. The etymons for son are somewhat more nu- merous than those for father, but the one or the 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,'^/ 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 spirit, 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, Dewa, both obviously from the Sanscrit; whence 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, and papa ellangee, or 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 Otaheite, and some other of the Polynesian Islands, in which mor-ai, is well known to signify a sepulchre; literally, the place or region of the dead; ai meaning a place or region in Otaheitan, precisely as it does in Greek. An elegant and expressive compound, and which is perhaps only to be equalled by the Hebrew zalmut (nin Ti)-> literally, death-shade, but which is uniformly rendered in the established copy of our Bibles, shadow of death. 'Sir, in our own language, is the common title of respect; and the same term is employed in the same sense throughout every quarter of the globe. In Hebrew its radical import is " a ruler or governor;" sir, s-her, or sher, ac- cording as the h is suppressed, or slightly or strongly aspirated ; in Sanscrit and'Persian it means the organ of the head itself; in Greek it is used in a sense somewhat more dignified, and is synonymous with lord; in Arabia Turkey, and among the Peruvians in South America, it is employed as in the Greek and not essentially different in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France ARTIFICIAL OR ARTICULATE LANGUAGE. 271 the last country never using it, however, but with a personal pronoun pre- fixed ; and it is the very same term in Germany, Holland, and the contiguous countries; the s being dropped in consequence of the h being aspirated more harshly: whence the Hebrew s-her is converted into her, used also com- monly, as the similar term is in France, with the prefix of a personal pronoun. •The radical idea of the word man is that of a thinking or reasonable being, in contradistinction to the whole range of the irrational creation, by which the thinking being is surrounded. And here again I may boldly assert, tha* while in the primary sense of the word we have the most positive proof of the quarter of the globe from which it issued, and where mankind must first have existed, and from which he must have branched out into every other quarter, there is not a language to be met with, ancient or modern* insular or continental, civilized or savage, in use among blacks or whites, in which the same term, under some modification or other, is not to be traced, and in which it does not present the same general idea. rMAN, in Hebrew, to which the term is possibly indebted for its earliest origin, occurs under the form ruo (rnaneh), a verb directly importing " to dis- cern or discriminate ;" and which, hence, signifies, as a noun, " a discerning or discriminating being."/ \In Sanscrit we have both these senses in the directest manner possible; for in this very ancient tongue, man is the verb, and can only be rendered " to think or reason;" while the substantive is mana, of precisely the same meaning as our own word man; and necessarily importing, as I have already observed, " a thinking or reasonable creature." Hence Menu, in both Sanscrit and ancient Egyptian, is synonymous with Adam, or the first man, emphatically the man; hence, again, Menes, was the first king of Egypt; and Minos, the first or chief judge, discerner, or arbi- trator among the Greeks. Hence, also, in Greek, men and menos (fev and ucvos) signify mind, or, " the thinking faculty;" but iievos, contracted, is mens, which, in the Latin language, imports the very same thing. In the Gothic, and all the northern dialects of Europe, man imports the very same idea as in our own tongue; the English, indeed, having descended from the same quarter. In Bengalee and Hindoostanee, it is manshu; in Malayan, manizu; in Japa- nese, manio; in Atooi, and the Sandwich Islands generally, tane, tanato, or tangi; while manawe, imports the mind or spirit; and in New-Guinea, or Papuan, it is sonaman, a compound evidently pronounced from man. In this utmost extremity, this Ultima Thule of the southern world, I will just observe, also, in passing, that we meet with the terms Sytan for Satan, or the Source of Evil; and Wdth (Germ. Goth) for God. But it may, perhaps, be observed, that in all the southern dialects of Europe, tbe French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, we meet with no such term as man; nor in the Latin, from which all these are derived, in which last lan- guage the term for man is homo. Yet nothing is easier than to prove, that even homo itself, the source of all these secondary terms, is derived from the same common root. (This is clear from its adjective, which is hu-man-us: while every school-boy knows that man or men, though not in the classical nominative case of the substantive, is included in every inflection below the nominative case: as ho-rra'ra-is, ho-?nm-i, ho-mzVi-em, ho-mm-e; and it was formerly included in the nominative itself, which was ho-men; whence nothing is clearer than that the particle ho is redundant, and did not origin- ally belong to the word. And were any additional argument necessary, I mio-ht advert to the well-known fact, that this redundant particle is abso- lutely omitted in the negation of homo, which is not ne-homo, but nemo, and was at first ne-men; and which, like homo, or homen, runs, as every one knows ne-rm'n-is, ne-mtra-i, &c. It is easy, however, to prove this redundancy of the ho, by showing the quarter from which it was derived. The old Latin term was ho-men, ho-min-is; which every one must perceive is literally the obsolete Greek uev, with the article & added to it; bpuv or ho-men, emphatically the man. The ho is also omitted in the feminine of homo, which is fe-min-a, and was at first feo-min-a, from feo, to produce; literally, the producer, or bringer forth of man, or min. Nothing, as it appears to me, is clearer than 272 ON .NATURAL OR INARTICULATE, AND this, though the etymologists have hitherto sought in vain for the origin of femina. From feomina, or, without the termination,i/eouim, we have derived our own and the common Saxon term, -^ornen; the f, and v or w, being cog- nate, or convertible letters in all languages; of which we have a familiar in- stance in the words voter and 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 will only at present remark, that we meet with it in Hebrew, where it is nj V (yitna); in Persia, and Palavi or ancient Persian, where it isjuani; in Sanscrit, where ii is yauvan; in Greek, »$w (yion), from vlos, or vlmts; in Latin, where we find it jurenis; in Gothic and German, where it is jung; in Spanish, joven ; in Italian, giovan; in French, jeune; and, as I have already observed, in our own dialect, young.» 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 for -ule, law, authority. The Hebrew is 'jo (raj), a conspicuous or illustrious person; the Sanscrit, raja; the Greek, !>a and l>awv; 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 different 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 &^>[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; nu (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, gjiva 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 ntPO {musheh) in Hebrew, literally " a groper in the dark;" in Sanscrit, mushica; in Persian and Palavi, mush; in Greek, /<«?, 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 1 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 fragments of language that remain are limited to the narrow train of every-day ideas and occurrences, it is possible 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 Chappe with some families among the Kamtschatkadales ;f while there are other barbarian tribes, and especially among those of America,J 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.^, vBut, 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 new 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 different, 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 few, and do not occur, perhaps, once in five hundred instances.^ {But I still contend that the exam- ples, few 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 globej^that the same sort of disruption which has rent asunder the solid hall 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 ;vthat 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. } Robertson, vol. ii. b. iv. 91. $ Compare also with Stewart's Phil. Essays, vol. 1. p. 150, 4to. Edin. 1810 274 ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, record, 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,^oraZ and legible j} the one spoken and addressed to the ear, the other penned or printed, and addressed to the eye. fit 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, I 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 which 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 countries 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 Deity 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 expressly 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."] 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: y . O! that they were engraven on a table: _ jfx 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 very 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, 4to. t Exod. xvii. 14. X I". xxviii. 30. $ Origin and Progress of Writing, p. 14, 4to. 1803. || Job, xix. 23,24 S2 276 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 translated, at not more than two centuries after the time of Moses ; though he admits that these are the 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- tainty, 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 Chinese empire may be fixed, with some latitude of calculation, at two thousand five hundred years before Christ.t 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 inhabiting the woods, and totally ignorant of agriculture, nearly five hundred years after the deluge."JN Contemplating written language, therefore, as (of human invention, let us next inquire into the most probable means by which it was invented and brought to perfection; and the countries in which it originated. dentj" says Mr. Bentley, " that none of the modem romances commonly called the Puranas, at least in the form in which they now stand, are older than 484; and that some of them are compilations of still later times."—Asiatic Researches, vol. viii. p. 240. And to nearly as late a date are they assigned by Mr. Wilford: "They are certainly," says he, "a modern compilation from valuable materials, that, I am afraid, no longer exist. An astronomical observation of the heliacal rising of Canopus mentioned in two of the Puranas puts this beyond doubt."—lb. vol. p. 244. Mr. Coleman is of this same opinion; at least in respect to one of them, the Sri Bhagaveta: which, he farther tells us, is considered even by many of the learned Hindoos as the work of a grammarian supposed to have lived about 600 years ago.—lb. vol. viii. p. 487. • Theis is a doubt which has the best claim to the highest antiquity, the religion of Boodh or that of Brahma. One of the most authentic accounts we have of the former is that transmitted to ihe American Board of Missions by Mr. Judson, a man of great excellence and intelligence, who has resided in the Bnrman empire as a missionary, at Rangoon or at Ava, from 1814, to, I believe, the present time; to which I shall also have occasion to advert hereafter. Mr. Judson is intimately acquainted with the lan- gunge, the customs, and established creed of the Burman empire; and, according to his account, the priests of Buodhism, though they claim for themselves a higher origin than those of Brahma, make no pretence to an extravagant antiquity. " Boodh," says Mr. Judson, " whose proper name is Gaudama, appeared in Hindustan about two thousand three hundred years ago, and gave a new form and dress to the old transmigration system, which, in some shape or other, has existed from time immemorial. The Brahmans, in the mean time, dressed up thesystem after their fashion; and both these modifications struggled for the ascendency. At length the family of Gaudama, which had held the sovereignty of India, was dethroned, his religion was denounced, and his disciples took refuge in Ceylon, and the neighbouring countries. In that island, about 500 years after the decease and supposed annihilatfon or theih tbacher or deitv, they composed their sacred writings in the Sanscrit, which had obtained in Ceylon; whence they were conveyed by sea to the Indo Chinese nations (those of the Burman empire). Boodh- wn, however, had gained a footing in Burmah before the arrival of the sacred books from Ceylon. It is commonly maintained that it was introduced by his emisearies before his death."—Correspondence, 1819. f Part iv. sec. 9. See Milne's Retrospect of the First Ten Years of the Protestant Mission to China. Malacca Press, 8vo. 1820, p. 16. X Kwoh-tseh. Pref. p. 1. Milne, ut supr. p. 20. 278 ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, Supposing,* by a miracle, the world were now to be reduced to the state in which we may conceive it to have existed in its infancy; and every trace and idea of written language were to be swept away, and the only means of com- munication to be that of the voice, what would be the mode most likely to be resorted to of imparting to a deaf person, or a foreigner ignorant of our dia- lect, a knowledge of any particular fact or thing with which we might wish him to be acquainted ? The reply is obvious :(we should point at it if in sight; and if not, endeavour to sketch a rude drawing of it; and thus make one sense answer the purpose of another.) This is not mere fancy, but manifest and experimental fact; it is the plan actually pursued in most institutions for instructing the deafly-dumb, and the elementary system by which they ac- quire knowledge. In such establishments, however, it is the elementary sys- tem alone; for the use of letters significative of words or sounds is, in every respect, so far superior to that of pictures significative of th-ngs, that the latter is uniformly dropped as soon as ever it has answered its purpose and served as a key to the former. But we are at present adverting to a state of things in which letters are supposed not to exist; and the only established mode of communicating between man and man is that of vocal language. Under such circumstances, the most natural method of conveying ideas to a person unacquainted with our tongue must be, as I have already observed, to point at the things to which they relate if at hand, as all savage nations are well known to do; and if not at hand, to trace out a rude sketch of them on the sand, the bark of a plant, or some other substance. In this manner the idea of a horse, a house, a dog, or a tree, may, as single objects, be as distinctly communicated as by alphabetic characters; while two or more houses may be made significative of a town, and two or more trees of a wood; and, by thus continuing to copy in suc- cessive series such things or objects of common notoriety as the train of our ideas might call for, a kind of connected narrative of passing events might be drawn up, which, though not calculated for minute accuracy, might be generally understood and interpreted. This kind of language would be fairly entitled to the appellation of picture- writing ; it would give the images of things instead of the symbols of sounds or words. In its scope, however, it must be extremely limited, for though conveniently adapted to express imbodied forms, it must completely fail in delineating pure mental conceptions, abstract ideas, and such properties of body as are not submitted to the eye; as wisdom, power, benevolence, genius, length, breadth, hardness, softness, sound, taste, and smelL) Our next attempt, therefore, would be to remedy this deficiency; and the common consent of mankind in ascribing peculiar internal qualities and virtues to peculiar external forms, would enable us to lay hold of such forms to express the qualities and virtues themselves. Thus the figure of a circle might be made to signify a year; that of a hatchet, separation or division; that of an eye, watchfulness or providential care, if open; and sleep or for- getfulness, if closed; the figure of a harrow might represent a ploughed field; and of a flag a fortress; a rosebud, odour; and a bale of goods, commerce. Upon the same principle compound ideas might be expressed by a combi- nation of characters; the character expressive of a man in the midst of that expressive of an enclosure, as a square, for example, might denote a prisoner; and a union of those significative of mouth and gold might import eloquence. And we hence advance to another kind of imitative characters, those of a mixed kind, and which are called allegorical, or emblematic writing. —---- It is obvious that legible language must be very considerably improved by such an accession of power; that it must become both more manageable and more comprehensive. It is obvious, also, that in a variety of abstract subjects, as those of philosophy or religion, the allegorical characters alone might be employed as a medium of communication; and that, by attaching an esoteric * A few pages of this lecture, particularly adapted to the occasion, were introduced into an article in the British Review for 1811, at the request of the writer's friend, who was at that time its editor; and may be found in the analysis there given of Dr. Marshman's Elements of Chinese Grammar. IMITATIVE AND SYMBOLICAL. 279 or concealed, instead of an exoteric or general, meaning to each, it would form a language of impenetrable privacy—a language from which every one would be shut out excepting those who might be in possession of its key. The persons to whom we should chiefly look for learning and science in the state of the world to which I am at present adverting would be the priest- hood; or that elevated order which, among all uncultivated nations, con- centrates in itself the three professions of law, medicine, and theology. It is among this order, therefore, that we should chiefly expect to meet with proofs of both these kinds of visible language; and hence, both kinds might also be fairly denominated hieroglyphic writing, dr that of sacred impressions. Thus, indeed, they have been denominated generally; the pure picture-writing- being distinguished by the term curiologic hieroglyphs; and the allegorical, typical or symbolic hieroglyphs. Such kinds of picture-language, however, even with this improvement, must be attended with very considerable labour; and hence, from a desire to abbreviate that labour, we may readily conceive that the pictures or imitative characters would soon become simplified and contracted. The idea of a man, formerly represented by his whole figure, might now be signified by his legs alone, as a simple acute angle, like a Greek A, which is the written character for a man in the Chinese tongue, the whole figure being supposed to have been employed at first; that of hand, formerly represented by a perfect drawing of this organ, might be contracted into a Greek uv, or rather the figure of Vl/, which is the old Chinese expression for this purpose, being a rude or rapid outline of the wrist, palm, and fingers; while the idea of union or friendship, at first denoted by two such figures conjoined, as **, might subsequently be abbreviated into \1V , which, in like manner, is the old Chinese written sign for both these ideas. Ingenuity, thus set to work, would soon be able to form a like device for the auxiliary parts of speech; concerning which it may be sufficient to observe, that most of the preposi- tions might be expressed by some simple mark, whose precise meaning should be determined by its relative situation. Thus a plain horizontal stroke, as —, placed at the foot of a noun, might import under it, and at its head above it; which is, in fact, the very device had recourse to in the old written language of China; so that the sign for measure, with a horizontal line oyer it, imports above measure, and below it, under measure ; while, in the ordinary mark for hand, as noticed above, the cross line is turned to the left to express left- hand, as £., and to the right to express right-hand, as -^N ; for both which, however, a somewhat different form is used in the present dayo .In this manner picture-characters or images would insensibly become con- verted into arbitrary characters; which, to those acquainted with the mean- ing of the different marks, would answer the purpose as well, and would have an incalculable advantage in the facility of writing them.\ We have now reached the utmost pitch of perfectioh which the legible language of things is, perhaps, capable of attaining. It has one superiority over that of words, or marks characteristic of sounds; namely, that when the pictures are drawn at full length, or, if abbreviated, where the key of the abbreviation is known, it is a species of writing addressed to all nations, and may be interpreted without a knowledge of their oral tongues.") It speaks by painting and appeals to what all are acquainted with. : And hence M. Leib- nitz, and many other philosophers, have conceived an idea that a system of pasigraphy or universal writing, a language of human thoughts, might be founded* upon some such invention. It is easy to perceive, however, without any detail of facts, that such a system could never be carried into full effect among different nations: and that, plausible as it may appear at first sight, it must be loaded with incon- veniences, and be equally defective and burdensome, even among people of • See here also Northman's Panography, Repertory of Arts. ii. 307, iii. 91. Langlois's Pantograph, Mach. A. vii. 207. J<\lwick'8 Universal Alphabet. 280 ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, the same empire. It is easy to conceive, to adopt the language of Sir George Staunton, as applied to the most perfect system of the kind that has ever been actually carried into execution, that it would consist of " a plan of which it may justly be said, that the practice is no less inconvenient and perplexing than the theory is beautiful and ingenious."* -If a distinct character were to be employed to represent every distinct idea, the number of distinct charac- ters would be almost incalculable: if a few distinct or simple characters only were to be made use of to represent such ideas as are most common, and the rest were to be expressed by combinations of these, though the number of distinct characters would be in some degree diminished, the memory would still have a difficult task to retain them: and the combinations would, in a thousand instances, be embarrassing and intricate. Under this pressure of evils there can be no doubt that a contemplative mind, in whatever part of the world placed, would soon begin to reflect on the possibility of avoiding them, by making the contracted characters now in use, or any other set in their stead, significative of sounds or words rather than of things or images. By minute attention it would sooii be discovered, that such an art, which would require, indeed, a general convention or agreement in order to its being generally embraced or understood, might be effected with less difficulty than would at first be imagined. It would be perceived that the distinct articulate sounds in any or in every language, as I had occasion to observe inourlastlecture,are notmany, and in every language are the same or nearly so: that in few languages they exceed twenty, and in none, perhaps thirty ;t and that consequently from twenty to thirty arbitrary marks or alpha- betical characters might be ample to express every simple sound, and, by their combinations, to denote every separate word or intermixture of sounds:% whence a written language might be formed, addressed to the ear instead of to- the eye, symbolical of oral language, and, of course, possessing the whole of its accuracy and precision; and as much more easy of attainment as it would be more definite and comprehensive.$ I have thus drawn a sketch of what there can be but little doubt would be the case provided mankind were at this moment to be deprived by a miracle of all legible language, and reduced to the state in which we may conceive the world to have existed in its earliest ages. The art of writing would com- mence with imitative, and terminate in symbolical characters; it would first describe by pictures or marks of things addressed to the eye, and after having passed through various stages of improvement would finish in letters, or marks of words addressed to the ear.) This is not a speculative representation; for I shall now proceed to show, as far as the period of time to which we are limited will allow me, that what we have thus supposed would take place has actually taken place :< that wherever alphabetic characters exist, or have existed, we have direct proofs, or strong reasons for believing, that they have been preceded by picture or imitative characters; and that wherever picture or imitative characters, the language of things, still continue to exist, instead of having been preceded by alphabetic characters, they have a strong tendency to run into them, and pro- bably will run into them in the upshot. And in this view of the subject I am supported by many of the most celebrated philologists of the age, as Bishop WTarburton, the President de Brosses, Mr. Astle, M. Fourmont, M. Gibelin>> The remains of Egyptian sculpture are but few; but they are sufficient to afford us specimens of each of the kinds of writing I have adverted to; * Ta Tsing Leu Lee. Pref. p. xiv. t "Mr. Sheridan says the number of simple sounds in our tongue are twenty-eight. Dr. Kenrick says, we have only eleven distinct species of articulate sounds; which, even by contraction, prolongation, and composition, are increased only to the number of sixteen; every syllable or artieulate sound in our lan- guage being one of this number. Bishop Wilkins and Dr. William Holden speak of about thirty-two or thirty-three distinct sounds."—Astle, p. 18. ITacquet asserts, that the various combinations of the twenty-four letters (without any repetition) will amount to 620,448,401,733,239,439,360,000.—Arithm. Theor. p. 517, ed. Amst. 1704. Clavius makes them only 5,852,616,738,497,664,000. In either case, however, it is evident, " that twenty-four letters will admit of an infinity of combinations and arrangements sufficient to represent not only all the conceptions of the Kind, but all words in all languages whatever."—Astle, p. 20. In like manner, ten simple marks are found sufficient for all tne purposes of universal calculations which extend to infinity; and seven notes, differ- ently arranged, fill up the whole scale of music $ De Brasses, sur l'Origin de 1'Alr*''— IMITATIVE AND SYMBOLICAL. 281 the pure hieroglyph, or simple picture-style; the mixed, allegorical, or em- blematic ; the abbreviated or contracted; and the alphabetic; and the valu- able relics which are to be seen in the British Museum, more especially the sarcophagi and the famous Rosetta stone (as it is called), erected in honour of Ptolemy V., contain examples of most of them. They prove to us, also, the order of succession in which the changes were effected, and clearly indicate the pure picture-style to be the most ancient. The magnificent ruins of Persepolis, the "capital of ancient Persia, offer monuments to the same effect. The windows, the pillars, the pilasters, and the tombs are loaded with characters of some kind or other,imitative, emblem- atical, or alphabetical. In many instances, the pure picture-style is as cor- rectly adhered to as in any Egyptian specimen ; in others we meet with tablets filled with what may indeed be abbreviated emblems, but which appear to be letters; and which, at any rate, afford proof that the ancient Persians had, at this period, made some, advance from characters for things towards characteis for words. The prophecy of the utter destruction of Babylon has been so completely fulfilled, that, although the banks of the Euphrates, on which this city stood, give evident proofs of magnificent ruins along their track, we cannot exactly ascertain its situation. On many of the bricks, however, which have been dug up from the midst of the general wreck, we find a peculiar sort of cha- racter, evincing an approach towards letters, and which are supposed to be abbreviated emblems, as emblems are often abbreviated pictures, employed by the Chaldean sages of Babylonia; who, according to Pliny, always en- graved their astronomical observations on bricks.* And even in Southern Siberia, as high as the river Irbit, or Pishma, Strahlenberg asserts, that he found a variety of rude figures or emblems engraven on the rocks,f whick seem to have preceded the use of the Tartar or Mantcheu alphabet. _, Jn America we meet with traces of picture-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, he trusts for renown, and sooths himself with a hope, that by their means he shall receive praise from the warriors of future times."J vThe 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. iThe 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 containing 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. X Robertson'b America, vol. iii. b. vii. p. 303. Astle, p. 6. 282 ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, letters; and thus confirming the progress from pictures to arbitrary signs which I have 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 different tones and combinations with other words; and every tone or combination signifies a different thing; so that the whole vocabulary, limited as it is, may be readily made to express several thousands of ideas. Thus the word fu, which 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 shu, 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 of plant, hand, mouth, word, sun, nothing, water; every other ideabeing 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 subse- quently 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 f 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 best serve as exemplifications. IMITATIVE 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. Images : a name given to characters which, in their antiquated form, show very clearly a rough repre- sentation of the material objects they denote : as, Ancient Form. ModernForm jo /V) the Sun, .... - now written tj Youei J\ the Moon, ........ V* Chan ^A^ a Hill, - .... j_[_i Mou ^ aTree, . - . - . . ^ Khiouan '^_ a Dog, ........ "7^ JO & a Fish, ........r^ Ma -fa a Horse, ........ EE, Mou /TT> the Eye, ........ Q Tcheflu ^ a Boat,........rjff Kiu ^4 a Cart,........HfL Choui £^ Water,........^/v Eul fe\ the Ear,.......- "Ef Jin V-j a Man, - - ..... /^^ Kheou o\^ Mouth, ........ \ ^ Choui A/ Water, - ...... V Of this sort there are about 200 characters. n. Associates : meaning words formed by a combination of two or more Images: as, Ming Oj) Brightness, now written fifj Sun and Moon united. Siln --£X a Hermit, - - - ^jjj Man and Hill. Mlng ^$) Note of a Bird, - n jjg Mouth and Bird. Wen \%\ to Hear, - ... \^t\ Door and Ear. Loui 'P& Tears, ... C B Water and Eye. Their number is very great. Koo-kin ^4^ " Eloquence," " Fluency of Speech," literally " Golden-mouth;" the mark for rnouth,wbicll \—1 /tw0 jipg^ being united with the mark for gold, which is the remainder of the character. In Greet; Xpvriar onus, 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 chiefly in use about a century since, give from fifteen to about thirty thousand; and, lastly, the Imperial Chinese 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. Marshman, 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 Dictionary, 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 figure 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. Indicants, or Pointers : from their indicating or pointing out the relative form or position of what is predicated: as, Chang ._** ■■ Above,.....now written I Hii - _ ' Below,........_____ Schoflng t+> the Middle,....... CA Eul ~—• xwo,........ —*. San ,--- Three, ........~ .' IV. Antithetics, or Contraries: formed by inverting or reversing the character; and hence requir lng an antithetic or correspondent signification: as, Modern Forms. Tio /*- Left Hand, reversed is Gcou ^. Right Hand, ;|A and Z£l I Standing up, and, ) —r- I Lying down, ) _^ *■ Tchine Tj \ hence, " Correct," > Fa *~j i < and, hence, > |K and -y U- ("Proper." S t" Defect." > ■ *fc" A~ Jin T) a Living Man, Chi ~p^ Dead Body, y4x aad J* Most of the Chinese characters may be classed nnder one of these four heads. The two remaining classes do not appear to be so intimately connected with a pictorial origin. The two hundred and fourteen elementary keys, or radicals of the language, are divided into seventeen classes, according to the number of strokes of which each element or radical consists. It 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 incapabio of reducing them to their constituent principles; and hence allow them to stand as primitives among such as are of simpler construction; and hence the total number of primitives are reckoned at about sixteen hundred, each of them producing from three to seventy-four derivatives; and hereby constituting the great mass of the Chinese written language. * Elements of Chinese Grammar, with a preliminary Dissertation on the Characters and Colloquial Ma- < iumof the Chinese, &c. By J. Marshman, D.D., Serampore, 1814, 4to. IMITATIVE AND SYMBOLICAL. 285 we should probably still find them derived in the same manner from forms or symbols of things, and that they were at first direct imitations or conven- tional representatives; still, as I have already shown, 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, that the ingenious people of both countries stopped so long at the point of abbreviated emblems, significant of objects, 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 Tartars, 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- quence, as Sir G eorge 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 writing them horizontally, and sometimes perpendi- * Among the numerous and important library establishments of the present day, one has lately been opened by the co-operation of a committee of enlightened and public-spirited individuals, for a regular course of instruction by lectures in many of the most extensively spoken languages of the East, and among the rest in Chinese. The President is Lord Ilexley; among the Vice-Presidents are Sir George Staunton, Bart., and Sir T. S. Raffles ; its situation is in Bartlett's Buildings, Holborn; and while instruction in theso valuable hrauches of literature is hereby offered to every one, it is gratuitously bestowed on all Christian missionaries who are desirous of taking advantage of its benefits. It is, hence, emphatically denominated, a " Laniii'agk Institution in Am of the Propaoation of Christianity," and few establishments of 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 confidence of the public, that the Pro- fessor in the Chinese department is the Rev. Dr.Morrison; while those in the Arabic, Persian, Bengalee, and Sanscrit are nearly of equal celebrity, and have the occasional assistance of Professor 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 assistance 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 students, 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 the language, are prepari ng to carry on the design after his own return 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, any where out of Asia; which is now deposited and arranged at the establishment. As a matter of high literary curiosity, I have requested its distinguished 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, winch 1 give in his own words:— " In the Lanoi'aok Institution there is deposited an extensive library of Chinese printed books and MSS. together with amuseum intended to illustrate subjects referred to in the books. This Library and Muse'um'are the property of Dr. Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China. " There are between nine hundred and a thousand works; 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- " The materials 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 works have comedown to the present day. " Dr. Morrison has not had time, during his sojourn in Europe, to make out a Catalogue Raisonne of his Chinese library with a brief account of the chief works, their titles, subjects, authors, date, -fee. "They consist of the sacred books of Chinese antiquity, with copious commentaries, written at various periods, and by a great variety of persons; history, ancient and modern; geography, and topography; astronomy; biography : opinions on government; rites and usages of China; religious books of Laimkeu- nism, Bvdhism;nnd the morals of Confucianism; poetry; historical and other novels; medicine; 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 few works on the religion of Mahomet, .. . , The education of Athenian females was for the most part very limited Those of the middle ranks of life were seldom taught any thing more than to 'read, write, sew, prepare wool for clothing, and superintend domestic con- cerns ^ while even the higher ranks, or those who were educated with more refinement independently of this general knowledge, were only instructed hoTto take some part in the public festivals and other religious ceremonies of The country: such as that of carrying the sacred baskets on their heads, or of johnng in the hymns and sacred dances. Upon this point, however, no expense was deemed too costly, that could endow them with the requisite Ss of modulating their voices and measuring their steps; no pains or Sacrifice too extrlvagant, that could bestow upon them elegance of shape and gracefulness of motion. Nor is this to be wondered at, since, ex- ceptiKon such occasions, Athenian females, above the.lower classes, seldom Appeared abroad, and perhaps never without having their faces ye led The married women, indeed, were allowed to receive and return vfsts among themselves, but even these were never permitted to be pre- sent at then husbands' parties, though the latter occasionally joined them Tthei own houses, and had the liberty of introducing their more intimate friends and companions. So that, among the female sex, none but those of acknowledrd licentious manners had even an opportunity of becoming acouainted with the general literature, or literary characters, of their own Ses whence, with ! singular subversion of the very principles of their sys- tem of eThics, such persons were often noticed and even visited by philoso- ^ElcarioTTherefore, among the Athenians appears rather to have been directed to pu poses of elegance and accomplishment than to he acquisition of useful^knowledge. (To possess the first dignities of the state; to be ap- plaudedfin the assemblies of the people, or at the bar; to bear away the prize trirSd Ta the'palestrae, or public places for games of exercise among men as heP f^mnlsiawere for youths, or the prize crowns at the theatre, were the cWeFoKs of ambition among the more active. Whilefthe great body of chzens idled away almost the whole of their leisure hours V sauntering on the nleaint banks of the Ilissus, or in the agora, or great square of the city, fJeauentfoSevery shop in succession, and especially those of the perfumers, n que" to newl, for which they had an insatiable thirst; indulging their TS 292 ON THE LITERARY EDUCATION well-known vein of wit and keen satire upon passers and passing events, or listening to the declamations of sophists, and other noisy disputants. A few clubs of wits are occasionally to be met with in the present epoch of the history of this people; and \a few select assemblies for polite litera- ture and elegant conversation : of which last the most remarkable, perhaps, was that held at. the house of the celebrated Aspasia : since it was attended by Socrates and Alcibiades, as well as by almost every other scholar or phi- losopher of reputation, and by all the most renowned artists of the day.- But we meet with'no public establishment for a general course of science like that of the universities or the Institutions (as they called) of our own times, excepting their schools, nor with any public library of much note, except that of Pisistratus, which was carried away by Xerxes into Persia before the epoch to which our attention is now directed commenced?" Private libraries, however, were not uncommon, though seldom extensive. Those of Aristotle, of Theophratus, and of Euclid, the founder of the school of Megara, wrere perhaps the largest and most valuable. The art of printing being unknown, books were rare, and copied with great difficulty and ex- pense ; sometimes by individuals for their own benefit; but more generally by professional transcribers, who formed a distinct trade. The great mass of Athenians, moreover, though of exquisite taste and elegance, and cer- tainly wealthier than most of the other Grecian states, seldom displayed those splendid fortunes which were so common in Persia. VA freehold of the value of fifteen or twenty talents (about four or five thousand pounds sterling), raised a man considerably above the middle ranks of life. '.The father of Demosthenes was esteemed rich, the whole of whose property on his death amounted to not more than fourteen talents, or £3150 sterling. Plato ap- pears to have given a hundred minae, or £375 for three small treatises by Phi- lolaus.* But this was a costly purchase: for Aristotle bought the whole library of Speusippus, small indeed, but select, for three talents, or £675.f? Hence the trade of bookselling at Athens was generally upon a limited scale^and usually engaged in by persons of but little property, whose stock consisted mostly of books of mere amusement; a part of which, however, was often sent to the adjacent countries, and sometimes as far as to the Greek colonies on the coast of the Euxine.* In respect to books, and the possession of public libraries, Rome was far more fortunate than Athens ; and 1 shall now hasten to a brief survey of its literary and scientific character in what may be regarded as its most classical and cultivated era ; not the Augustan age, which has usually been contem- plated as such, but that which immediately preceded it, reaching from the dictatorship of Sylla to the establishment of Augustus, and of course termi- nating a few years before the birth of our Saviour. The Romans, who had hitherto devoted themselves altogether to arms and agriculture, and who had even despised eloquence, and paid no attention to the improvement of their native tongue, became attached to literature all of a sudden. 'The Achaeans were accused by the Roman people of having acted hostilely towards them ; and a thousand of them were sent as deputies, or rather as hostages, to plead their cause, and obtain the best terms they could for their country before the senate of this aspiring republic. Contrary, how- ever, to the engagement stipulated with them, they were not allowed to en- ter upon their defence; were scattered over different parts of the republic; forbidden to appear before the senate ; and detained, in a state of captivity, for not less than seventeen years. For the most part these Achaeans were men of taste and elegant accomplishments, and many of them were scholars of profound and diversified erudition. Such, more especially, was Polybius, who was soon introduced into public favour under the patronage of Scipio jEmilianus, and whose elegant Greek writings were now read and studied by every one. The whole republic became enamoured of the various acquisi- * Diog. Laert. in Plat. lib. hi. sec. 9, viii. 85. t Diog. Laert. in Speus. lib. iv. sec. 5. Aul. Cell. iil. IT. t Xenoph. Exped. Cyr. lib. Yii. p. 412. Travels of Anacharsis (Engl, vers.), iii. 130. OF FORMER TIMES. 293 tions of its new, but mistreated visitants : and in matters of polite literature the conquerors soon yielded to the conquered., Hence schools for the study and exercise of rhetoric and eloquence, ^superintended by native Greeks, became in a short time so frequent, that scarcely a Roman youth was to be found who would engage in any other avocation ; and the whole body of Greek philosophers and rhetoricians, that remained after the return of the Achaean deputies, were expelled by a decree of the senate during the consulship of Caius Fannius Strabo and Valerius Messala, in the year of the city 592, in consequence of the ascendency they had acquired over the public mind.^> This expulsion, however, was too late; (a general taste for Grecian litera- ture had been caught, and the classical contagion had spread universally. Polybius was still studied, and the consul Rutilius Rufus had published, in elegant Greek, a history of his own country. The Greek scholars, indeed, were still farther avenged a few years afterward, by the general comparison which was drawn between their own genuine taste and that of the tribe of Latin sophists and declaimers, who, in consequence of their banishment, had sprung up and occupied their place: men who were bloated with conceit, instead of being inspired by wisdom ; and who substituted the mere tinsel of verbiage for the sterling gold of perspicuous argument and fair induction!) With this foppery of learning the Roman government soon became far more disgusted than with the seductive talents of thevGreek teachers ; and hence, in the year of the city 661, during the censorship of Crassus, the Latin de- claimers shared the fate of their predecessors, and were formally banished from Rome. In their own language, therefore, we meet with but few successful spe- cimens of prosaic eloquence down to this period: 'yet Cato the censor, Laelius, and Scipio were orators of no inconsiderable powers, and eminently, as well as deservedly, esteemed in their day. In poetry, however, the republic had already a right to boast of its productions; for Andronicus, Naevius, and Ennius had long delighted their countrymen with their dramatic as well as their epic labours: Pacuvius and Accius, Plautus, Caecilius, and Afranus had improved upon the models thus offered them in thelbrmer department, and Terence had just carried it to its highest pitch of perfection.*) Public museums, also libraries, and collections of valuable curiosities of all kinds, from Greece, Syracuse, Spain, and other parts of the world, were, at this period, becoming frequent and fashionable.* Italy was never more emptied of its elegancies and ornaments by Buonaparte, than Syracuse was by Marcellus,^when stratagem and treachery at length gave him an admis- sion into the city. In the forcible words of Livy, " he left nothing to the wretched inhabitants, but their walls and houses." Spain and Africa were in the same manner ransacked by the elder Scipio; Macedon and Lacedaemon by Flaminius; Carthage by Scipio Africanus ; and Corinth, in the very same year, by Mummius.\ Nothing, however, can afford a stronger proof of the general want of taste for the fine arts among the Romans, even at this period, than the threat given by Mummius to the masters of 'the transports to whom he committed his invaluable pillage of the best pictures and statues of Achaia, that if they lost or injured any of them he would oblige them to find others at their own cost. In addition to which I may also observe, that Polybius, who was at this time with the Roman army, found a party of Roman legion- aries, shortly after the capture of Corinth, playing at dice on the Bacchus of Aristides; a picture s6 exquisitely finished as to be accounted one of the wonders of the world. Not knowing the value of it they were readily per- suaded to part with it for a more convenient table ; and when the spoils of Corinth were afterward put up to sale, Attalus, king of Pergamus, a much better judge of painting than the Roman soldiers, offered for it six hundred thousand sesterces, or about five thousand pounds sterling. Mummius, the Roman consul and general, disbelieving that a picture of any kind could be so valuable of itself, thought it must contain some magical virtue in it; and * See the author's Life of Lucretius, prefixed to his translation of the poem De Rerum Naturti 294 ON THE LITERARY EDUCATION hence would not allow it to be parted with, notwithstanding the remonstrance* of Attalus. He did not, however, appropriate it to his own use, but placed it in the temple of Ceres, where Strabo informs us he had the pleasure of see- ing it not long before it was consumed in the fire by which that temple was reduced to ashes.*; But the library and museum of most importance at this period, and which most attracted the attention of the Romans, was that established under the patronage and superintendence of the illustrious L. jEmilius Paulus; and consisted of an immense number of volumes, statues, and paintings, which he had imported from Epirus, upon the general plunder and destruction of that unfortunate country, in consequence of its adherence to Perses, king of Macedon, and which had been accumulating ever since the reign of Alexander the Great. This early and valuable collection was continually augmented by presents of other books from men of letters or warriors, into whose hands they occasionally fell as a part of the public spoil: but was more indebted to Lucullus, who had studied philosophy under Antiochus the Ascalonite, than to any one else; and who, about the middle of the seventh century of the city, added to it the whcle of the royal library he had seized from Mithridates upon his conquest of Pontus. Yet the transplantation into the Roman capital of the extensive and inva- luable libraries of Aristotle and Theophrastus contributed, perhaps, more than any other circumstance, to inflame the Roman people with a love of Grecian literature. This was effected by the conquest of Sylla, and ante- ceded the public present of Lucullus by about fifteen years. These unrivalled libraries were the property of LApellicon of Teia^ who had accumulated an immense collection of books of intrinsic value at an incredible expense. Apellicon does not appear to have been, in any respect, a scholar: but he was a man of inordinate wealth ; and, as it sometimes occurs in the present day, a library was his hobby-horse, and the greater part of his rental was ex- pended in augmenting it. (^For this purpose he ransacked all the public and private collections of books in Asia: he surpassed, in many instances, the offers even of the kings Eumenes and Mithridates, for valuable volumes that had become scarce ; and when he was precluded from purchasing, he fre- quently induced the librarians, by considerable presents, to steal for him. JDuring the first war, however, between Mithridates and the Roman republic, in which Sylla ultimately triumphed, and acquired a high degree of personal glory, Athens, in an evil hour, had united her fortunes with those of the Asiatic prince ; and hence, at the conclusion of the war, was left totally at the mercy of the Roman conqueror^ Sylla appears to have thrown' a wish- ful eye upon every thing of value tha^t lay within his reach: and having sacri- legiously invaded the groves of Academus and the Lyceum/ the library of Apellicon was one of the next objects that captivated his attention.N( He was determined to add it to his other treasures. Force, however, was now become unnecessary: for at this very moment the bookworm Apellicon died, and he met with no resistance from his relations} The Romans, by thus enriching themselves with the spoils of all the world, became possessed of an influx of wealth that enabled most of the citizens to gratify themselves, not only in this respect, but in almost every other that merely depended upon money. Of the wealth of various individuals, we may form some opinion by the following anecdote. Caesar, by his unlimited libe- rality in furnishing shows to the people, had incurred a debt to an enormous amount; and when on the eve of setting out for Spain, the province that fell to him after his praetorship, was abruptly stopped by his creditors. On this occasion Crassus stood forward as his surety, for more than two millions of our own moneyf (bis millies et quingenties), or, in exact English calculation, £2,018,229 3s. 4d. sterling. - ^ But the literature of Greece was, nevertheless, best to be acquired in Greece itself; iand the Romans, though they transplanted books, could not equally *Strab. lib. viii. p. 381. t Stewart's Life of Sallust, i. p. 1?5; Hut. in Jul. Cees. p. 712, ed Francof. Suet, in Jul. Caes. zvili. OF FORMER TIMES. 295 transplant the taste and spirit that produced them. ( Athens, although plun- dered of her richest ornaments, shorn of the glory of her original constitu- tion, and dependent upon Rome for protection, had still to boast of her schools and her scholars.) Every scene, every edifice, every conversation, was a liv- ing lecture of elegance and erudition. Here was the venerable grove in which Plato unfolded his sublime mysteries to enraptured multitudes;—here the awful Lyceum, in which Aristotle had anatomized the springs of human intellect and action ;—here the porch of Zeno, still erect and stately as its founder;—and here the learned shades and winding walks of the Garden of Epicurus, in which he delineated the origin and nature of things, and incul- cated tranquillity and temperance. Here Homer had sung, and Apelles painted; here Sophocles had drawn tears of tenderness, and Demosthenes fired the soul to deeds of heroism and patriotic revenge. The monuments of every thing great or glorious, dignified or refined, wise or virtuous, were still existing at Athens; and she had still philosophers to boast of, who were worthy of her fairest days, of her most resplendent reputation.* To this celebrated city, therefore, this theatre of universal learning, the Roman youth of all the first families were sent for education.) And at the period we are now contemplating, we meet with the following names, as co- students, and chiefly attendants upon the Epicurean school, forming a most extraordinary concentration of juvenile talents and genius: Tully, and his two brothers Lucius and Quintus, the last of whom was afterward a poet, and as signally distinguished in the profession of arms, as the first was in that of eloquence; Titus Pomponius, from his critical knowledge of the Greek tongue surnamed Atticus,hut who derives this higher praise from Cor- nelius Nepos, that "he never deviated from the truth, nor would associate with any one who had done so ;" Lucretius, author of the well-known poem on the Nature of Things; Caius Memmius, the bosom friend of Lucretius, of whose talents and learning the writings of Tully offer abundant proofs, and to whom Lucretius dedicated his poem ; Lucretius Vespilio, whom Cicero has enumerated among the orators of his day; Marcus Junius Brutus, Caius Cas- sius, and Caius Velleius, each of whom immortalized himself by preferring the freedom of his country to the friendship of Caesar. And when to these I add the names of the following contemporaries, most of whom, we have rea- son to believe, were also co-students at Athens with those just enumerated— Julius Caesar himself, Crassus, Sulpitius, Calvus, Varro, Catullus, Sallust, Hortensius, Calpurnius, Piso, Marcus, Marcellus, whose son Caius married Octavia, the sister of Augustus, Atheius, and Asinius Pollio, to whom Virgil dedicated his fourth eclogue, and who founded, expressly for the use of his country, one of the most splendid and extensive libraries the republic was ever possessed of, collected from the spoils of all the enemies he had at any time subdued, and still farther enriched by him at a vast expense,—we meet with a galaxy of talents and learning, which neither the Augustan nor any other age in the whole history of the Roman republic can presume to rival.) It was the son of Octavia whose ripening virtues and untimely death Virgil is so well known to have referred to in the pathetic tribute introduced into the vision of ^Eneas: Heu miserande puer! si qua fata aspera rumpas, Tu Marcellus eris.f Ah, couldst thou break, lov'd youth ! thro' fate's decree, A new Marcellus should arise in thee. vThis accomplished youth, the delight of the Roman people, appears to have been well entitled to so high a compliment. It was the intention of his uncle Augustus that he should succeed him, and Virgil received from Octavia, for the verses that related to Marcellus, a pecuniary present of the value of £2500. Cicero acted wisely, therefore, in sending, as he expressly declares he did, all his young friends to Greece, who evinced a love of study, " that they * See the author's Life of Lucretius, prefixed to his Translation of the Nature of Things, p. xxix. f JEneid. vi. 881. 296 ON THE LITERARY EDUCATION might drink from fountains rather than from rivulets."—" Meos amicos, in quibus est studium, in Gracciam mitto: id est ad Graeciam ire jubeo: ut ea a fontibus potius hauriant, quam rivulos consectentur."* Horace alludes to the same seat of learning, and nearly the same habit of studying there in his own case, by way of finishing his education, after having read Homer at home :— Roma nutriri mihi contigit, atque doccri, Iratus Grajis quantum nocuisset Achilles, Adjicere bonae pauld plus artis Athenae : Scilicet ut vo^sem curvo dignoscere rectum, Atque inter silvas Academi quaerere verum. f At Rome I first was bred, and early taught What woes to Greece Achilles' anger wrought. Famed Athens added some increase of skill In the great art of knowing good from ill; And led me, yet an inexperienced youth, To academic groves in search of truth. Boscawen Nor were other branches of science, or even the extensive circle of arts and manufactures, forgotten in the midst of the fashionable study of philoso- phy and literature, either at Rome or in the Greek states.N We have not time to enter into a survey of the very extensive and, in various respects, accu- rate views that were taken of many of the most important pursuits of our own day, and the activity with which they were followed up. In statuary and architecture, as well as in poetry and eloquence, the models of ancient Rome, as well as of ancient Greece, are still the models of our own times. We have already touched upon the skill of the Greek masters in the art of designing; which they practised with great perfection in every diversity, from simple outline or linear drawing, to every variety of silhouette, or light and shadow, as well as every kind of painting with colours; while in one or two varieties they went far beyond our own day, as in encaustic painting, both on wax and on ivory; a branch of the art which has, unfortunately, been lost for ages, yet the most valuable of all, as being the most durable. Their ac- quirements are truly astonishing in almost every ramification of invention or execution that the mind can follow up; and the progress which we have still proofs of their having exhibited in metallurgy, crystallography, mirrors, mi- neralogy, chemistry, mechanics, navigation, optics and catoptrics, weaving, dyeing, pottery, and a multiplicity of other manufacturing or handicraft trades, must appear incredible to those who have not deeply entered into the subject. Their splendid purple cloths—Babylonica magnifico colore—have, perhaps, never been equalled since ; the immense and fearful machinery in- vented by Archimedes, at Syracuse, for laying hold of the largest and most for- midable Roman galleys with its ponderous and gigantic arms, and whirling them with instantaneous destruction into the air, as they approached the walls of this famous city during its siege ;—the burning-glasses contrived by him for setting them on fire at a distance, by a concentration of the sun's heat alone;—their knowledge of the existence and fall of meteoric stones— not many years ago laughed at as a chimera among ourselves ;—and the adum- bration, to call it by no stricter term, with which the grand principles of the Coper- nican system of the heavens was approached by Nicetas, Philolaus, Aristar- chus, and other disciples of the Copernican school,—are, I trust, sufficient proofs of the truth of this remark, though hundreds of other examples might be added to the list.^ Still, however, the observation I have made with respect to the education and study of the Athenians applies with considerable, though not altogether with equal, force to those of the Romans. Elegance and accomplishment seem rather to have been the chief objects of attainment than deep physical * Acad. Quest, i 2. t Epist. Lib. II. ii. 41. X On a former occasion the author had an opportunity of following up and developing this interesting subject at considerable length ; and those who are desirous of pursuing it with him, may turn tc the run- ning commentary to his Translation of Lucretius, vol. i. p. 338. 414 ; vol. ii. p. 50. 131.135.154. 159. 401 491. 568. OF FORMER TIMES. £97 and analytical science. Polite literature and statistics were almost swal- lowed up in the vortex of natural philosophy; and logic or rather dialectics usurped the place of induction. Rome, moreover, like Athens, does'not appear to have been possessed of any public establishment for a general course of science, similar either to the universities or the Institutions of the ?r There are various writers who have endeavoured to draw up lists of Greek and Roman names, from the books that have descended to lis of^rsons who were celebrated, in their respective eras, in different branches of the aits and sciences. Among the most complete of these are the tables of the Baron de Sainte Croix, of the Academy of Belles Lettres : and as nothing can give us a clearer idea of the prevailing taste and inclination of a people, than a com- parison of the numbers of those engaged in one department with those en- gaged in others, I have taken some pains to form, from these tables, an esti- mate to this effect. I The tables extend through nearly the whole range of Grecian history (though they are confined to that history), from the uncer- tain times of Orpheus and Cadmus to that of Euclid; or in other words, from the commencement of the twelfth or thirteenth to the close of the third cen- tury before the Christian era. , , Thev contain the names of 863 persons, as artists or men of literature: ana upon arranging them into their different classes, I find the relative proportion as follows :— Legislators and Philosophers....................... 152 Orators, Rhetoricians, and Sophists................. 54 Grammarians, Editors of earlier works, and Critics.. Ii Astronomers, Mathematicians, and Geometers....... |8 Physicians........................................ ™ Zoologists, and A gricultural Writers................ \& Geographers and Navigators........................ >■' Mechanics...........................:........ ••• ^ Founders and Metallurgists........................ ° Engravers........................................ „1 Architects........................................ Sf Statuaries and Sculptors........................... »j» Poets, Painters, and Musicians....................• "uu 863 Hence it appears, that far more persons were engaged in the two last classes or those of P^try, music, and painting, and of statuary and sculpture, than fo all the other classes collectively; that next to these the legislators and Philosophers were most numerous, and then the orators rhetoricians, and sonWsts thalbut little comparative attention was paid to natural history and agriculture, and still less to mechanics; and that not a single name has reached u" in he departmentS of mineralogy, statics, hydrostatics, trades andf manufactures; to say nothing of chemistry and pneumatics, which may ■ SSlP • but it is also unquestionable that that extent must have te^^Tmtod, K otherwise qthe names of those who had studied or SSSvISItiTm must have descended to the present day in some of the WTh!fcom%hrairveevTew ofUStiie arts and sciences of Greece may, with little vJJtion be applied to those of Rome. The study of the fine arts, however, was here 'less extensive; and the race of orators and political demagogues, in consenuence of the peculiar character of the government and of the people, consequence oi "M-^ h- d aefriculture, moreover, appear to have made mo™! pr^and^rious^ranches of trade and manufacture to have bToofthTi^ ^ but iittie to what she.derived fr rrYePce- nor has much been added in any subsequent era, or by any na ion Greece nor has muc . and literature have compelled thTm toMaC «£ -thin the course of the last two centuries ; towards 298 ON THE LITERARY EDUCATION OF FORMER TIMES the beginning of which period Lord Bacon observed, with not more severity than correctness, that/1" tho sciences which we profess have flowed almost entirely from the Greeks; for those which the Roman or Arabian, or still later writers, have added, are but few, and these few of but little moment; and, whatever they may be, are built upon the foundation of what the Greeks invented; so that the judgment, or rather the prophecy of the Egyptian priest, concerning the Greeks, is by no means inapplicable,' that they should always continue boys, nor possess either the antiquity of science, nor the science of antiquity.' "* It remained for this extraordinary character, who thus fairly estimated in his own day the value of ancient and modern learning, to break through the spell which fatally pressed upon it, and seemed to prohibit all farther pro- gress. It is to Bacon, and almost to Bacon alone, that we are indebted, if not for the scientific discoveries that have enriched the last two centuries, and struck home to every man's business and bosom, at least for that mode of generalizing the laws of nature, and of connecting the various branches of the different arts and sciences, which have chiefly contributed to those dis- coveries ; which have called mankind from the study of words to the study of things, and have established from the book of nature the truth of that maxim, which had hitherto only loosely floated in the books of the poets, that AH are but parts of one stupendous whole. It was my intention, in proof of this assertion, to have taken a brief survey, even before we closed the present lecture, of the shifting scenes of science and literature from the decline of the Roman empire to their re-establishment in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; to have given a glance at them in their retreat amid the eastern and western caliphats, in what have usually been called the dark ages of the world, extending from the fifth, but especially from the seventh to the fifteenth century; to have contemplated them on their reappearance and first spread, their resurrection and restoration to life and action, under the fostering providence of the illustrious houses of Medici, Urbino, Gonzaga, and Este; from which last, the most ancient and most distinguished of the whole, our own royal family derive their descent; to have surveyed them as basking under the patronage of Leo X.; but especially as they were affected by the wonderful and all-controlling influence of the Reformation which occurred during his papacy; and to have compared the character they then assumed, with that which they exhibit in our own day;— but, interesting as the subject is, I am compelled by want of time to postpone it till our next lecture, when I shall return to the subject, and carry it for- ward as the period will allow. I shall only farther observe, that, on the first reviviscence of literature, it was chiefly limited to classical and philosophical subjects, and confined to the courts of princes, or the walls of universities, which were now establish- ing in almost every state of Europe; the classical or ornamental branches being mostly cultivated in the courts, and the speculative or philosophical in the schools. And such, with little variation, continued to be the course of learning, till the appearance of that great luminary in the hemisphere of let- ters to whom I have just adverted. No sooner, however, had the writings of Bacon, and of other characters of a similar comprehensiveness of mind, who co-operated in his views, become diffused, than institutions of another class were found wanting:—a something that might fill up the space between the cloistered scholar and the irrecondite citizen: the dry principles of speculative science, and the living practice of the artist and the mechanic. And hence, academies and societies for natural knowledge became organized and incor- porated—museums were founded—taste, ingenuity, and invention commenced a happy intercourse—the general results of their communications were, for the most part, periodically published, and the great mass of mankind became more generally enlightened than in any former period of the world. * Nov. Org. ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. 299 But a mode of acquiring a familiar and systematic initiation into the gene-' tal circle of the arts and sciences was still felt desirable for the body of the people; a sort of rudimental education, by which they might be able to assist and appropriate the knowledge that was flowing around them in every direc- tion ; that might call forth their own energies and resources, and reflect with increased lustre the light in which they were walking. And hence have arisen these scientific schools which are now commonly known by the name of Institutions; and especially, if I mistake not, the school I have the honour of addressing. An establishment of this kind, to be perfect, should be possessed of a library adequate to every inquiry—a laboratory and a museum of equal ex- tent, and a course of instruction commensurate with the whole circle of the sciences. Such an establishment, however, is not to be expected; and espe- cially in our own country, where the government is seldom solicited for assistance, and the sole endowment results from the joint patronage and con- tribution of individuals. All that remains for us, therefore, is to make the best use of the means that are in our power, and to carry them to the utmost extent they will reach; and I can honestly congratulate the members of the Institution before me with having, in this respect, conscientiously acted up to the fullest limits of their duty, and of having rather set an example than followed one; for it is a matter of notoriety to the world at large, that there is no other Institution in which the same measure, of income has heen ex- tended to the same measure of acquiring knowledge, whether by books or by lectures. HS LECTURE XII. ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. If we examine the history of Europe in a literary point of view, we shall find it consist of three.distinct periods—an era of light, of darkness, and of light restored. To the first of these periods I directed your attention in the preceding lecture. "We noticed the general state of literature and the mode of education adopted in Greece and Rome, at the most splendid epochs of these celebrated republics, and briefly compared them with the means of ac- quiring knowledge in our own day; and we at the same time glanced rapidly at the intervening space, or middle period; or rather only touched upon a few of its leading features, from an impossibility of compressing even a minia- ture sketch of its history into the limits of a single lecture; though it may be remembered that I threw out a pledge of returning to the subject on the present occasion, and of investigating it in a more regular detail. A part of that pledge I shall now, by your permission, endeavour to re ■ deem; by taking a survey of the general literature, or ignorance of mankind, which characterized that wonderful era which has usually been described by the name of the dark, or middle ages ; and which extends from the fall of Rome before the barbarous arms of the Goths, in the fifth century, to the fall of Constantinople before the equally barbarous arms of the Turks, in the fifteenth century; thus comprising a long afflictive night of not less than a thousand years; yet occasionally illuminated by stars of the first magnitude and splendour: and big with the important events of ^the sack of Alexandria and the destruction of its library; the triumph and establishment of the Sa- racens, and their expulsion from Spain; the devastation of Europe, and the overthrow of its ancient governments in favour of the feudal system, by suc- cessive currents of barbarians from the north-west of Asia, pouring down under the various names of Alans, Huns, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths, or East- ern and Western Goths; sometimes in separate tides, and sometimes in one 300 ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. united and overflowing flood; the deliriums of chivalry, of romance, and crusading; the introduction of duels and ordeals; of monkery and the inqui- sition ; the separation of the eastern from the western church; and the first gleams of the Reformation, under the fearless and inflexible Wyckliff.^ And, in our own country, the descent of Hengist on the Isle of Thanet; the esta- blishment of the Saxon octarchy; the general sovereignty of Egbert; the glorious and golden reign of Alfred; the conquest of the Norman invader; the oloody feuds of the houses of York and Lancaster; and their termination, on the union of the two families, after the memorable battle of Bosworth. This will lead us to the fair epoch of the revival of letters under the pa- tronage of Leo X., and the still more commanding influence of the Reforma- tion ; a period, however, upon which it will be impossible for us to touch in the course of the present inquiry, though I shall still bear it in memory, and request your attention to it on a subsequent opportunit)7. The literary taste and pursuits of Rome continued nearly the same under her emperors as during her republican form of government. Athens was still the alma mater of the higher ranks of her youth; and, as she increased in opulence and in luxury, she resigned herself more fully to those Grecian blandishments which were despised under the commonwealth.^ On the death of Constantius, which took place in our own city of York, in the year of our Lord 306, for even Britain had at this time bowed down, through a large extent of her territory, before the mistress of the world; Constantine, his favourite son, was, agreeably to his father's will, proclaimed emperor in his stead. Galerius, however, who was co-emperor with Con- stantius, opposed this regulation, and endeavoured to secure the whole of the empire to himself; while various other chieftains taking advantage of the public confusion, not less than four competitors assumed the imperial purple at the same time. It was the good fortune of Constantine to triumph over all his rivals; and having at length securely seated himself on a throne whose dominion extended over almost the whole of Europe, and a considerable part of Asia and Africa, he resolved upon building a new imperial city, more im- mediately in the centre of his dominions; and for this purpose chose the spot of the ancient Byzantium, than which the whole globe could not offer a more auspicious situation, whether in regard to climate, commercial intercourse, or defence.a The walls of Byzantium rose on the Thracian coast of the Propontis, or modern Sea of Marmora; secured by the key of the Thracian Bosphorus on the left, which gave an entrance to the Euxine, and the whole interior of the north ; and by the key of the Hellespont, or Dardanelles, as it is now called, on the right, directly opening into the Archipelago, and com- municating with every other part of the world ; the whole of civilized Europe lying immediately behind, and Asia and Africa immediately in front; sur- rounded by all those scenes which had been richest in harvests of Grecian glory, and had chiefly contributed to immortalize the Grecian name. The language was Greek, the country was Greek, and the customs and manners still possessed that mildness and suavity which so peculiarly characterized this polished people; and which, in no inconsiderable degree, have descended to the present hour. The city thus erected the Roman emperor called, after his own name,vConstantinople; he removed the court to it from the old me- tropolis, and by the enormous sums he expended upon it, and the encourage- ment and patronage he lavished upon settlers of every kind, and especially upon men of letters and artists, he beheld it, in a few years, rivalling the magnificence, and even the extent of Rome itself. He endowed it with the same rights, immunities, and privileges; and established an equal senate, equal magistracies, and other authorities, and declared it to be the metropolis of the East, as Rome was that of the West. Constantinople is also worthy of attention on another account, as being the first city in the world that was dedicated by the authority of the government to the service of the Christian religion. The fact of Constantine's conversion is too important, and the means by wnich it was accomplished too singular, to be passed by on the present occa- ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. 301 sion; and that I may not be suspected of exaggeration or undue embellish- ment, I shall give it you in the plain, unvarnished words of the very cautious and authentic writers of the Ancient Universal History. In describing the war in which Constantine was involved with Maxentius, his most powerful competitor for the empire, they thus observe, at the same time giving their authorities, as they proceed, with an indefatigable research, and weighing them with a scrupulous circumspection which has rarely been equalled in later times:—" In this war Providence had something in view, infinitely more important than the rescuing of Rome from the tyranny of Maxentius; nothing less than the delivering of the Church from the cruel persecution under which it had groaned for the space of near three hundred years.. Constantine had inherited of his father some love and esteem for the Christians; for the first use he made of his authority was to put a stop to the persecution in the provinces subject to him. However, he had not yet shown any inclination to embrace a religion which he both honoured and esteemed; but in the war with Maxentius, apprehending that he stood in need of an ex- traordinary assistance from heaven, he began seriously to consider with him- self what deity he should implore as his guardian and protector. He revolved in his mind the fallacious answers given by the oracles to other princes, and the success that had attended his father Constantius in all his wars, who despised the many gods worshipped by the Romans, and acknowledged only one Supreme Being. At the same time he observed, that such of his prede- cessors as had persecuted the Christians, the adorers of this God, had mis- carried in most of their undertakings, and perished by an unfortunate and untimely end; whereas his father, who countenanced and protected them, had, in all his wars, been attended with uncommon success, and ended his life in the arms of his children. " Upon these considerations he resolved to have recourse to the God of his father, and adhere to him alone. To him, therefore, he addressed himself with great humility and fervour, beseeching him to make himself known to him, and to assist him in his present expedition. Heaven heard his prayer in a manner altogether miraculous; which, however incredible it may appear to some, Eusebius assures us he received from the emperor's own mouth, who solemnly confirmed the truth of it with his oath. lAs he was marching at the head of his^troops in the open fields, there suddenly'appeared to him and the whole army, a little after midday, a pillar of light above the sun, in the form of a cross, with this inscription :— " ' conquer by this.'* \" The emperor was in great pain about the meaning of this wonderful vision till the following night; when our Saviour, appearing to him, with the same sign that he had seen in the heavens, commanded him to cause such another to be framed, and to make use of it in conquering his enemies. The next morning Constantine imparted to his friends what he had seen ; and sending for the ablest artificers and workmen, ordered them to frame a cross of gold and precious stones, according to the directions which he gave them. Con- stantine being, after the miraculous vision, immutably determined to adore that God alone who had appeared to him, sent for several bishops in order to be instructed by them in the mysteries of their religion, and in several par- ticulars of the late apparition. He hearkened to them with the utmost respect, and believed what they told him of the divinity, incarnation, cross, and death of our Saviour, reading with great attention the Holy Scriptures, and con- sulting in his doubts the bishops, whom for that purpose he kept constantly about him."f * TSria vbca. _ _ .. . t Rom. Hist. b. iii. ch. xxv. vol. xv. p. 554, 8vo. edit. 1 /4<. The account is taken from Eusebius; and by some writers, who find it easier to ridicule than lo weigh testimony, it has been called a pious fiction ; but with what justice, the following remarks will sufficiently show. First, Constantine and Eusebius are allowed by all parties'to have been men of general honesty and intelligence, lo give them no higher cha- 302 ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. This extraordinary event having preceded his determination to build anew metropolis, he expressly dedicated the city, as I have already observed, when on the point of being completed, to the service of the religion he had so lately embraced: solemnly consecrating it, in conformity with the-eustom of the times, to the Virgin Mary, according to Cedrenus, but according to Eusebius, to the God of Martyrs. Upon his death-bed Constantine divided the empire into five parts: his three sons and two of his nephews being allowed to share the imperial domains between them. The building of Constantinople was a severe blow to the splendour and opulence of Rome ; and this partition of the imperial authority was an equal blow to the extent and integrity of the empire at large. The tributary nations of every quarter, as soon as they found that the consolidated force of the empire was thus frittered away, were in arms, with a view of re- gaining their liberty or of enlarging their boundaries. The Franks and other German tribes broke into Gaul; the Sarmatians into Pannonia, or what is now called Hungary; the Picts, Scots, and Saxons, into Britain; and the Austrians into Africa. To oppose this general ravage, the imperial dominions were once more con- solidated, and not long afterward, in the reign of Valentinian, who admitted his brother Valens to an equal participation in the purple with himself, regu- larly divided into two distinct empires, under the names of the Eastern or Greek, and the Western or Latin empire ; the former comprehending Illyrium and Pannonia, or Sclavonia and Hungary as they are now denominated, Thrace, Macedon, Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and all the eastern provinces, having Constantinople for its metropolis; and the latter embracing Gaul, Italy, Africa, Spain, and Britain, its metropolis being ancient Rome. The greater degree of energy manifested by the successors to the Eastern empire preserved its boundaries for a considerable period of time free from much mutilation; but the empire of the West, in which Rome, though once more encouraged by the presence and patronage of a splendid court, was never able to recover from the blow it had received by the building of Con- stantinople, continued to droop from its first establishment. Its successes were few and trivial, and such as rather tended to invite new hordes of bar- barians into the heart of its fairest provinces than to deter from aggression by examples of signal vengeance and severity. The tide of incursion, as I have already observed, flowed almost entirely from the north. Beyond the Tanais, and immediately crossing the Imaus or Caf of the Caucasus, extending nearly from the banks of this river to the Sea of Japan, lay scattered, at the commencement of the Christian era, a va- riety of tribes unknown to the conquering sword of the Roman legions, and distinguished by the names of Vandals, Sueves, Alans, Goths, Huns, Turks, and Tartars. Of all these the Huns appear to have given the earliest proofs of restlessness and love of power: they first pressed forward upon the Goths racter. Secondly, Constantine declares that the vision of the cross and of the pillar of light were beheld liy the whole army as well as by himself. Thirdly, Kuseliius affirms that he gave an account of the whole to the artists for whom he immediately sent, on the moininc after his explanatory dream, to construct a standard ornamented with a copy of Ihe golden cross he had beheld and enriched with jewels, according to the direction he gave them. Fourthly, lie tells us that Constantine narrated the same statement to Ihe bishops whom he had assembled to iiive him spiritual advice on the occasion. And fifthly, that he after- ward gave the whole history of it, in like manner, in his own person, to Eusebius himself; and con- firmed the narration with an oath. All this may, indeed, be said to be nothing more than the declaration of Eusebius alone, but when we add to these remarks, sixthly, that Eusebius published his account in the general face of those to whom he asserts that the emperor communicated it at the time, and in the face of hundreds, perhaps of thousands of the army, who he also asserts beheld the glorious vision, the cross and its motto, as well as the empe- ror ; and that not an individual ventured to step forward and contradict him : and when, lastly, we take into consideration the undisputed fact, that the figure of the cross portrayed in the pillar of light wag crpied, together with its motto, and placed on every banner of the imperial army from this lime forth ; and that all the branches of the imperial family became converts lo Christianity from the same period; __when all these points are taken into consideration, a case is made out, not only that sufficiently vindi- cates the veracity of Euseoius, but that probably demands a more miraculous power to shut the heart against its admission, than that of the miracle which is its subject-matter. See Euseb. Vit. Const lib. i cap. xxvii.—xxxi. p 421—423. ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. 303 who, dispossessed of their native regions, bore down upon the Vandals, Sueves, and Alans ; and these, flying before them, entered into Gaul, and from Gaul advanced into Spain ; and on being driven from Spain passed over and invaded Africa; thus making way for a farther advance of the Goths and Huns into the centre of the western empire, which they prosecuted sometimes in conjunction and sometimes alone. Hence, even Italy was in several in- stances overrun, and Rome itself taken and sacked by the Goths under Alaric, towards the beginning of the fifth century ; while the Goths them- selves were in their turn, about forty years afterward, obliged to fly before the victorious arms of Attila, the Hunnish leader, or to enlist under his ban- ners ; a barbarous chieftain, who, descending from the wild and barren moun- tains of Scythia, spread terror and devastation over almost the whole of Europe; and, possessing a political authority of as extensive a range towards the east, proved a formidable enemy to every sovereign from China to Gaul. The camp of this adventurous and successful soldier, when he was stationary, was pitched on the northern side of the Danube, between the Teiss and the Carpathian mountains; his court was unrivalled in splendour and magnifi- cence, and his empire extended through a range of not less than seven thou- sand miles in length. On the death of Attila, this enormous but ephemeral empire, which had only " grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength," insensibly crumbled away. " The Huns were melted down into the nations which they conquered; and, if the modern Hungarians be excepted, whose descent from them is rather a plausible conjecture than an historical fact supported by conclusive evidence, few vestiges of them are now discoverable either in Europe or Asia."* The history of the Roman empire from this period may be comprised in a few words. Towards the close of the 5th century, during the reign of Au- gustulus, who had regained possession of the central provinces, it was over- thrown by the Herulians under Odoacer, who were themselves shortly after- ward expelled from Italy by Theodoric king of the Ostrogoths. About the year 568, the Lombards, issuing from the mark of Brandenburg, invaded the Higher Italy, as it was named, and founded a powerful state, called the empire of the Lombards; the Middle and Lower Italy being added to the empire of the east by the brilliant conquests of Justinian's celebrated but ill-requited generals Belisarius and Narses. These, however, were afterward wrenched from it, and incorporated into the new empire of the Lombaids; from whom the whole passed, together with almost the entire amplitude of polished Europe, into the hands of Charlemagne, the second sovereign of the second dynasty of the Franks; a people that, having subdued all Gaul, had esta- blished themselves in that country for about three centuries already; and had, through the greater part of that period, professed the Christian religion. Charlemagne entered Rome in triumph, and was crowned emperor of the Romans, with great pomp and festivity, towards the close of the eighth century. While such was the series of misfortunes that attended, and at length totally subverted, the western empire, that of the east had to strive with diffi- culties of another kind, and which produced a still greater change in the political aspect of the world. The nations by whom the successive conquests of Europe had been effected proceeded, as we have already beheld, from different, though conti- guous tracts of country, spoke different languages, and were under the com- mand of different leaders. Yet, having originated from a like cradle, from the solitude of mountain-fastnesses, and the savage wild of precipitous scenery, nursed in the midst of snows and howling tempests, they appear to have established, in almost every state which they subdued, nearly the same legislative system: a system known by the name of the Feudal Law, and the introduction of which into Europe constitutes one of the most prominent fea- tures of European history. * Butler, Hor. Bibl. part. ii. p. 85. 304 ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. It was about the middle of the period we have thus far contemplated, in the year of our Lord 568, that Mahomet was born in Arabia : and a period more auspicious to his unrivalled craft and overtowering ambition could not possi- bly have been produced by any concurrence of circumstances. The barba- rians of the north had just completed their conquest over regular monarchy; the western empire was tottering to its foundation, while the eastern was shorn of its limits, and weakened by internal oppressions. Yet neither the extent of the territories of the barbarian powers, nor their respective forms of government, were definitely settled; while, at the same time, the fury which had accompanied their progress being exhausted, they had sunk into a state of political lethargy, and no bond of union or co-operation existed between them. Were we to search for that period of the Christian era in which there was least of order, least of power, least of science, and least of intercourse in Europe, we should be compelled to pitch upon the century which immedi- ately preceded, and that which immediately followed, the commencement of the Hegira. Mahomet flourished in the middle of this period. Deriving his immediate descent from the patriarch Abraham, through the line of Ishmael, and, per- haps, eldest son of eldest son, from the commencement of the chain, he was a man of unbounded ambition, most enterprising courage, insinuating address, and instructed in all the science of his day. He beheld his own country without any fixed principles of religion, and ignorantly intermixing the rites of Judaism with the doctrines of Christianity ; he beheld the professors of the Christian church engaged in perpetual disputes upon inexplicable myste- ries; and excommunicating and massacreing each other, as they alternately possessed the power, upon a mere difference of recondite or speculative points. It was the precise moment for the invention of a new creed, and he invented one accordingly. With a mastery of craft that has never been equalled, even in our own eventful age, he infused into the heterogeneous mass a charm adapted to captivate every party and every passion ; and, to destroy every doubt of success, he united the power of the sword to that of the new faith, and threw open the gates of Paradise, and all the enjoyments of the beatified, to every soldier who should fall under the banners of the crescent. Such a religion, launched forth at such a period, and aided by such auxilia- ries, it was impossible to oppose by human means. It ran like lightning over the whole of Arabia, and equally subdued before it political friends and poli- tical foes. The states of Barbary were compelled to embrace it; the leaders of the Turks, the Mongul Tartars, and the Persians found it admirably adapted to their purpose, and embraced it voluntarily; all the Asiatic pro- vinces of the eastern empire were overrun by the armies of the prophet him- self, or his descendants, Abubeker and Omar: who, on succeeding to Mahomet, assumed, from respect and in reference to him, the subordinate title of Caliph, or Vicar. All Syria was invaded by the former for the express purpose, as he openly asserted, " of taking it out of the hands of the infidels;" and Jeru- salem itself was captured by the latter, and rendered, shortly afterward, one of the principal bulwarks of the Saracens, as they were soon denominated among the Christian powers. The doctrine fundamentally inculcated by the Saracen chiefs was, that "to fight for the faith is an act of obedience to God ;" and on this account they characterized their ferocious and bloody ravages by the name of holy wars. And having been the first to adopt this absurd and contradictory term, they laid down a model, and offered at least an apology for the crusades. And such was the success of their enterprise, that in less than a century from the commencement of the Hegira, they spread the religion of Mahomet from the Atlantic Ocean to India and Tartary, and obtained the whole, or the greater part of the temporal, as well as the spiritual power in Syria, Persia, Egypt Africa, and Spain. Spain, indeed, has since been rescued from their bondage ; but the same general success continuing, the whole of the eastern empire was overturned, and Constantinople itself taken possession of in 1453; while, in ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. 305 different directions, they have also pursued the same triumphant career over the kingdoms of Visapour and Golconda, in India; the islands of Cyprus, of Rhodes, and the Cyclades; and have made large territorial acquisitions in Tartary, Hungary, and Greece. Such is a brief but afflictive sketch of the history of the world, during what has been appropriately denominated its dark ages, throughout which it may correctly be said, that No light, but rather darkness visible, Serv'd only to discover scenes of wo, Regions of horror, doleful shades. In effect, every thing concurred to introduce and establish a universal reign of ignorance and gloom: and I shall next proceed to notice more particularly a few of those causes which chiefly co-operated in producing so calamitous a result. And the first that occurs in the course of the survey is, the sinister and contracted views, and the general repugnance to all science and polite learn- ing that so strikingly distinguish that particular set of the barbarous tribes of the north, already noticed, by whom Europe was earliest overrun; all of whom, by a generic term, may be denominated Scandinavians. Judging of these from the only Scandinavian records which have descended to our own times, the fabulous fragments collected by Saemond and Snorro, and which are respectively called Eddas, all their arts and inventions were rude, and all their passions and pursuits violent. They had poetry, but it was altogether of the terrible kind; the whole muster-roll of their mythology consisted of not more than frorfl forty to fifty gods and goddesses, while those of Greece amounted, in Hesiod's time, to three thousand; and in that of Augustus, to thirty thousand. The same power who, under the name of Loke, was their Ahriman, or Principle of Evil, was also, for want of a larger establishment, their Momus, and their Mercury. As they had their war-songs and their war- speeches, they had also their Apollo; but, like the rest, he, too, was capari- soned with his javelin and his hauberk, and was a god of battles as well as of eloquence. The beatitudes of their paradise, those with which the most valiant of their heroes were rewarded after death, consisted, as we learn from the same bloody legends, in daily encounters 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 Parcje, 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 lances are the loom "Where the web of death we strain ; Weaving many a soldier's doom, Orkney's wo, and Randver'a bane. See the gristly texture grow! 'T is of human entrails made:— 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. II 306 ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. Horror covers all the heath:— Clouds of carnage blot the sun :— Sisters ! weave the 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 nothing 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 of Pope Gregory IX., published in 1234, in which he exhorts and commands all good Christians to assume the Cross and join the expedition at that time preparing against the Holy Land. " The service to which mankind are now invited is an effectual atonement for the 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 will be taken for the deed; and many in this way may be crowned 'without fighting."—Collier's Ecci. 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 multiplication 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 I. 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 infidels 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, ts «iX5 avepao-roX Bapfiopoj :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 from 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! Does she mitigate these immitigable, these iron-hearted men? 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- •fainte-Palaye: Mimoires sur l'Ancienns Cheyalerie, torn. 1. p. 153, et seq. f Fabricii Biblioth. p. 412 U2 308 ON THE 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."f -' 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 every 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, afondness for the philosophy of Plato and Pythagoras prompted the more speculative ecclesiastics to investigate the mysteries of the divinity and humanity of our Savfour with top nice a curiosity; and hence the famous controversies of Praxeas, Sabelliust'Arius^Nestorius,'EutycheS^"and various others, most of wliich 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 nmth 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 the 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,| to 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, tha • Harris, ii. 455, 456. t Hist, des Troubadours, i. 193. X This lecture was delivered in 1813, during the domineering power 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 Caesar 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 employed 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 world 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 logomachies, 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 op Trou- badours, as they were called, Provencal 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 Proven§al 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 hair, and was on the point of despatching him, but suddenly stopped short, and exclaimed, " No—I have that hatred of thee, thou shait 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, quaerit nemo, sed oportet habere.* None car'd what way he gain'd, so gain 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 Drightest gems that adorned the former court, " it was then that men of learning 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 • Jut. xiv. 207. t Harris, ii. 515. X I-eo trie. De Vir. Illustr. apud Arab. Bibl. $ Abulphar. Dynast, p 160- pgs. 311-316 are missing pgs. 311-316 are missing 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 Constantinople 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 of 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-spring of genuine taste and genius; Demetrius Chalcondyles and Petrus jEgineta, 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. Nothing 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 Aldine 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. He 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 1516, 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 iive: 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 !" I 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 profligate 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, its 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 of knowledge—are knowledge and virtue equally inse- parable t I have a pride in answering this question; and dare appeal to" every page in the history of 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,f 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 ;J 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 their 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;— " Poi sospirando, e con voce di pianto Mi disse: Dunque che a me richiedi 1 Se di saper ch'io sia ti col cotanto Che tu abbi perd Inripascorsa, Sappi, ch'io rci vestito del gran manto," &c. Inferno, canto xix. (Napoleon Buonaparte; the day alluded to being, as already observed, 1813. I Yet the Council of Trent has long since established their use as a part of wholesome discipline, by formally decreeing that" tbe power to grant indulgences by Jesus Christ, and the use of them, is bene- ficial 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 incited 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 tristance, 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 inflexible 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, I 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 vvill 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." ^it stehe felt. JJch fean utcht autrcrs. @?ott fielff win. Amen. With this noble protest was laid the key-stone of the Reformation : the pontifical hierarchy shook to its centre; aud the great cause of truth and re- generate religion, which had already made its appearance in Switzerland, under the honest-hearted and undaunted Ulric Zwingle, 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 of any 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'o Life of Leo. X. vol iv p. i6 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 higher 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 s-uspect that what 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 agoj \This subject forms a prominent section of that extensive branch of science wnich 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 oui 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 useful know- ledge; if, discovering how far we have dear and distinct ideas, we confine our thoughts within the con temptation 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; out of a presump- tion that nothing is beyond our comprehension.—But to be satisfied of the folly of such a conceit we need aot go far *'—Locke, Hum. Underst, IV. iii. $ 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. K^he first traces of it occur to us in the Physics of Aristotle, the last fourteen books of which are entitled in the printed editions, TUvnerd rdvanca; " 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 Teia.* 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? [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.fy Corruptibility and incorruptibility, intelli- gent and unintelligent, organizedand 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 immaterial; 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 diffused 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?J : Shall we take the quality of extension as the line of separation between what is material and what is immaterial ? 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 ? 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 u. Lecture xi. t See Locke on Hum. Undcrst. rh. xxili. book ii. t Study of Med. vol. iv. p. 37, 2d edit. X2 324 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 the 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. W 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 no place of existence, that it does exist nowhere ; Kvhile 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, in one or two points, adumbrated by a few shadowy glimpses of nature. And \hat 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 Brahminieal, or Pla- tonic belief, fhat 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; Taut 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 ;"f 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 ; who, in working upon it, had to contend with all its essential defects, and has made the best of it in his poweri feut 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,-y-contempt and despisal must give way to reverence and gratitude. Nor less so when, with * See Locke, Hum. Underst. book ir. ch. iii. $ 6, as also the author's Study of Med. vol. iv. p. 37, 3d edit. 1835. t In, the words of Democritus, t/lrfitv Ik tov i>fi Svros yivtaBai, nyjSi els ri fn ov QVtipeoOai. Dion. Laert m>. ix. p. 44. AND IMMATERIALISM. 325 an eye of devotional or even scientific feeling, we look abroad into the natu- ral world under the present state of things; and behold in what an infinite multiplicity of shapes, and forms, and textures, and modifications, this same degraded substrate of matter is rendered the basis of beauty and energy, and vitality and enjoyment; equally striking 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 Voltaism ? 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 lo 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. i. Lect. iv. p. 53. 55. t Ser. i. Lect. v. p. 57. X Ser. i. Lect. v. p. 60, 326 ON MATERIALISM Let us take a single example of this curious phenomenon, and let us draw it from facts that are known to almost every one. The water of the sea, 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 impreghated 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 may be easily collected and dried. And this, in reality, isthe usual mode by which this valuable earth is obtained in its pure state. 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 ? 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, common 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 tbe 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 IMMATER1ALISM. 327 long as it is present, the seed or the egg is capable of specific developement 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? 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 upon?* 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 ? 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 I have defined to be 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_brainj wbjch is the sole seat or organof 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 ? 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 of 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 1 and, if so, how has this superadded essence been communicated ? 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 Er^curus, 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 material 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. Un 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 (crTl 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 differ diametrically; I rnean 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-emi- *. Gen. ii. 7. 330 ON MATERIALISM nence above a beast ;"* whence his hope of future existence, apparently like 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 iri 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 cannot 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 :"f'but, as a faculty of intelligence is discernible in brutes as well as in man, ne 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 immortal in the former; and hence speaks of the " natural immortality of brutes."| But as 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 weak."§_J 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 but 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 was 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 this 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. c1l i t Jb. part i. ch. i. p. 30, edit. 1802. $ fb. p. 29. >»» • «-'«• ■ AND IMMATERIALISM. 331 ceiving the entire dissolution and dispersion of the percipient as well as impercipient 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 inpart of spiritualjzed^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 upon its resurrection. It says to the immate- rialist, the term immaterial conveysjjQ determinate Jdea; it has been forcibly enlisted into service, and at Ihe 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.j Thaf a principle of the same kmd, 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 few of them who do not conceive in their hearts (with what 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 sensibility 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 more 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 * See the author's Life of Lucretius, prefixed to his translation of the poem De Rerum Natura, vol. 1. p. 99. 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 followed up the aim through 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 I 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 ofProvidence, all equally leading to a future and more perfect state of things, f " 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. r ■ 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 iti" when completely attained, is like Achilles's spear, that healed the wounds if had made before^ It casts no additional light upon the paths of life, but disperses the cloud* 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."f 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. 1808. t Light of Nature Pursued, chap, xxxii. <^i^lXi-<--ti-<.- &C—T ..-■;. 'V'V<.~..- ,y*§ /VW- :/* '^T^'1^ " * 4"'*-X' .pURATIONOF THE SOUL. ^x^^Zi^. 333 ^ supported respectively by men of the deepest learning and research, that have been offered in relation to the essence of the 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 immortal ? Is it capable of a separate existence ? Does it perishwith the body as a part of it ? Or, if a distinct principle, does it vanish into nothiiifnfess as soon as the separation takes place ? What does philosophy offer us upon this subject? 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 fearS 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 but fanciful stores of learning, from which many of the earliest Greek schools drew their first draughts of metaphysical science, we shall find, indeedia full acknowledg- ment of the immortality of the soul, but only upon the submne 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 body; and hence altogether incapable of individual being, 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 lilerature,(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 df the soul after the body's dissolution.1) 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,*)^ that astonishing and transcendent composition, the book of Job:)— a 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. Yeti 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 I 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 I have already observed, derived their earliest * Ser. n. Lect. x. \i 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 incorruptible nature of the soul, they 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 which he had been speaking to the peopled 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 iaeas of its mode of existence; and the greater number of them believed it, like the Hindoos, to be resoxhfid, after the present life, into the great soul of the world, or the creative spirit, and consequently to have no individual being whatsoever. J , 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.,7 I have said that this principle Was imported by the Pythagorists, and the Greek schools in general, from toe philosophy of Indiay The slightest dip into the Vedas will be a sufficient proof of this. Let us take 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 we invoke to direct our understandings aright J 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 pood, each pleasure flows, O, to my view thyself disclose! The radiant heaven Ihy presence throws I 0,lose me in_the light above! Flee, flee, ye mists ! let earth depart: Raise me, 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 an the source, the guide, the goal; The whole is thine, and thou the whole.t * 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 poiche- conosciuto e 'I tuo bel sole, Dell'alma ferma in lui luci pronte. DURATION OF THE SOUL. 335 While such, however, 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^ Ut taught that the 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 (^iNty), hades (aSvs), 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, with 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 of 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, whose untutor'd mind, Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind: His soul proud science never taught lo stray Far as the solar walk or milky way ; Yet simple nature to his hope has given Beyond the cloud-topp'd hill, an humbler heaven ; Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd, Some happier island in the wal'ry waste ; Where slaves once more their 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, vjvas 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 01 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 me, e splendi in la tua luce; Tu se' quel sommo ben che chiascun vuole; A te dolce riposo si conduce, E t£ come suo fin, vede ogni pio; Tu se' principio, portatore e duce, La vita, e '1 termino, Tu sol Magno Dio. • Clarkson's Life of Wm. Penn, vol. i. p. 39L 336 ON THE NATURE AND authenticated poems,* premising that the importance of the errand, which 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 through 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, i like the gale of the reedy Lego. ' My ghost, 0 Connal! 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 dissolv'ed 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, ./Eneas, 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 chief surveyed full many a shadowy car, , Illusive arms, and coursers train'd for war. Their lances fix'd in earth, their steeds around, Now free from harness, graze the mimic ground. The love of horsrs which they 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 Ossian, drawn up, according in the Directions of the 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, enrrusque virflm miratur inanes. Stant terra defixse hastse, patsimque snluti Per campos pascuntur equi; qua? gratia currum Armorumque fuit vivis, qum cura nitentes Pascere equos; eadem sequitur tellure repostos. JEneid, 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 atouseth he the miohty dead, All the chieftains of the earth. , The term mighty dead is peculiarly emphatic. The Hebrew word is ETNAI (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 Humana A more than mortal make: whence the term Rephaim is rendered in the Septuagint, r^ynvels, and by Theo- dotion, Tlyavrcs- ~**=-~ 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 of Man, for multitudinous Egypt, Yea, down let her be cast, Like the daughters of the renowned nations, Into the nether parts of the earth, Among those that have descended into the pit. Thou I that surpassest in beauty! Gel thee down.— To the sword is she surrendered: Draw him forth, and all his forces. The chieftains of the mights dkad (q^XBT) 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 ancienfthan 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 I must again take leave to regard as the oldest 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! 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.xx. 11. Y 338 ON THE NATTjrfE 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 important 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 disciple 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: \apd 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';' -^iy 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, importing 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 ;ful 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 inexcusable 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. 339 afterward expired. Such was the end of the virtuous Socrates! " A story," says Cicero, " which I never read without tears."* "rhe soul of the Platonic system is a much more scholastic compound than 'hat of the Socratic; it is in truth a motlgyjriad 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 Phajdo, 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. (|n 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 hnman 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.j•) 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,J 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 hsec natura, subestque; Nee magis hac infra quidiiuam est in corpore nostro; Atque auima est animae proporro totius ipsa.§ , Far from all vision this profoundly lurks, i 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 cemhiiftauon of matter, and every princi- ple and quality connected with matter, ate equally submitted to our senses, and equally comprehended by them, jt 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 animaf 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. L-_Nat. Deor. iii. 33. Calix venenatus qui Socratem transtulit & carcere in cesium, Benec. Ep. 67. ^ t De Gen. An. ii.-* iii. 11. Cic. Tusc. Q. i. /'-. Enfield's Brucker, i. 285 tin the language of Lucretius, iii. 284, Ventus et aer Et calor--------- 6 IJb. iii. 274- Y2 340 ON THE NATURE AND perish with the body. ; The very minute heartlet, or corcle, which every one must have noticed iii 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.'1 In like man- ner, the decomposition of limestone, instead of destroying, sets afliberty 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 modem 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.1 (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,fohilosophy 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 believecl 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 po- 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 whether, 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 * Xenoph. Mem. I iv. rial. Apol. Laert. u DURATION OF THE SOUL. 341 sight of: in 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- trines 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 they are Well known to have been both relinquished by the Sadducees, and one of them (the resurrection) by the Essenes.) vSolomon, 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 the powerful, and to show them the vanity and nothingness of life, he adverts to the last of these doctrines and confines himself to it. Ecel. 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 language then is, ch. xi. 9, \'J Rejoice, O 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, andwhich 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. ^ut the wisdom of Solomon stands in no need of the feeble and rushlight illumination of such 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 in; 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 and Corinth had at Rome. SBut 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 1 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 of 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 doctrine not more vital to the hope's of man than to the justice of the Deity]—No ;Hhe fulness of the times has at length arrived: the veil of separation is drawn aside; the mighty and mysterious truth is published by a voice from heaven; * Tiiis lecture was delivered during the period of the French Revolution. 342 ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Jt is engraved on pages of adamant, and attested by the affirmation of the Godhead. It tells us, in words that cannot lie, that the soul 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 shail 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 the 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 has since been fabri.-ated 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 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 Theory 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 is 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 affairs 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 by the use and * Philos. Essays, vol i. p. 123. 1 Inquiry into the Human Mind, p. 9. 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 between 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 comes in contact with it, apd 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 present ? Is there, or is there not, any resemblance between the ex- ternal or sensible object and the internal or mental idea or notion 1 If there be a resemblance, in what does that resemblance consist ? and how is it pro- duced and supported 1 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"? 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 1 \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's Study of Medicine, vol. iv. p. 46, edit. 2,1S2S 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 amorphops, or desti- tute 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 will 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. tit must be obvious, however, that the mind is possessed of many ideas wnich 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 expressionjthe 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 * Series i. Lecture 11. 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 ridiculed. 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 effigies, and to these effigies he gave the name of eitSwXa (idola), or species, in contra- distinction to the unsubstantial phantasms of Aristotle, and the intellectual or formative ideas of Plato. Hie 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.J 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 ; such 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, sthere 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. Ofthis 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 ,"4. same disease in modern times. VHe 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 able to prove the solidity of the elementary atoms of matter. He hence doubted of every thing; advised all the world to do the same; and established a school for the purpose of inculcating this strange doctrh^ • 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 the 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 ot 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 themselves. 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 ? Or touch the tongue's fine flavour ? or. o'er all Can smell triumphant rise ? 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 iiself; since, every hour, In every act, each claims an equal faith. E'en though the mind no real cause could urge Why what is square when present, when remdi 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, dedue'd From things created, if the senses err.* * Denique, nihil sciri si quis putat, id quoque nescit Ansciri possit, &c—Lib. iv. 471. The passage is too long for quotation, and the reader may easily turn to it at his leisure, 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, |)es Cartes 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, aftef 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- ceed 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 may be 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 presented 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,Uhe 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; *fhat 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 knight 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. i He soon satisfies himself, however, 348 ON HUMAN 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 turus 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 fact by asking himself this plain question,—" Do I think 1" 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 V 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.'Vl Of these two positions, he makes the first the proof of the second, but what is the proof of the first ] Qf 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 here 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 hatfe been just as obvious to himself as the first, and somewhat more so to the world at large. jThere 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 itching, or eating, there is no difficulty in admitting ; but then he may also at times have ceased from thinking, not only in various morbid states of the 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 will, 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 cf existence as soon as these were over. But I 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 noji 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, j 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 rtorth 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 knowledge," 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 tor 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 un.verse ; 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 exemplar 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, and 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 Boodhism which have of late years been communicated to ihe world are those furnished by Mr. Judson, an American missionary, who for the last ten or twelve years has been stationary at Rangoon or Ava, lias acquired an accurate knowledge of the Burman and Bnarrl as also in " An Account of the American Baptist Mission to the Burman Empire, in a Series of T Piter's addressed to a Gentleman in London, by A. H. Judson, 8vo. Lond. 1823." The whole universe, aw-nrdinir to the principles of Boodhism, is governed by fate, which has no more essential existence than rhanre A Boodh or god, is occasionally produced, and appears on earth, the last of whom was Gua- dama But eods and "men must equally follow the law or order of fate; they must die, and they must ■nrTpr'in a future state according to the sins they have committed on earth ; and, when this penance has hPPn rnrnnleted thev reach alike the supreme good of Nigbar, or utter annihilation. Guadama, their last S '' i„,i,dred vears ago reached this stale of final beatitude, and another deity is soon expected to ueiijr, inanj. ■.« j ___ „„i<\„„: ,„„, h„inn is in Ihp nnininn nf thp Rnnrlhists. nil litter imOOSSl- whirhS«ertSt I'-u'there is one eternal God, who is independent of'the incidents of mortality ; and that, beside him "here is no eo.l: and then, with an air of indifference, r erlw; s of disdain, he dashed it down to the ground.—Our fate was decided."—lb. p.. 251. 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! and whether they seriously believe that space is a part of matter] So far from it, that I much question whether even the meaning of the position is universally understood; while. 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 Vtlrite*, 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 lo doubt of every thing, after the tried and approved Cartesian recipe: and if a man, says he, has only learned to doubt, let him not imagine that he has made an inconsiderable progress. /And for thiu 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-mest 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; for I 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 mv 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 he?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 V Laugh where we may, be serious where wecan,^' ^ But vindicate the ways of God to man. / ■'- ^t ) ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 351 LECTURE IV. on human understanding. fThe Subject continued.) 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 Avas opposed by his contemporaries and literary friends Gassendiand 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 systeih, that Des Cartes continued so long and do 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" foil prostrate before the " Essay concerning Human Understanding." V 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 antao-onist, "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 very 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 Essai- on Truth, part u. ch. ii. $ 2. A 352 ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. respect to the powers and process of the mind in acquiring knowledge. The work 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 pratcognita, 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 of'his 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 shine, nor judge where it has no prin- ciples to judge upon."f 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 mind, 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 ;"J 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 this view of Mr. Locke's system, abbreviated for the occasion, the 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 n. Conclusion. J Locke, book i.ch. i.$3. $lb. $8. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 353 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, silver, 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 are 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 :— *"0n appelle, dans la philosnphie Allemande, id6es sub}ectives celles que naissentde la nature denotre ntelligence et de ses facultts, et idees objectives toutes celles que sont excitees paries sensations."—Mad. e Stafil Holstein, de I'Allemagne, torn. iii. p. 76. Mad. de Siafil, however, 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 system, in supposing that he de- rived all ideas from sensation. " A l'epoque ou parut la Critique de la Raison pure, il n'existoit que deux systfimes sur l'entendement liumain parmi les penseurs; l'une, celui de Locke, attribuoit toutes nos idees a nos sensations; l'autre, celui de Des Cartes et de Leibnitz, s'attachoit a demontrer la spiritualite etl'acth vite de fame, de libre arbitre, enfin toutela doctrine idealiste."—lb. p. 70. 354 ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. And, first, of complex ideas of combination. Unity, as I have 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 within, tend equally to excite it. And, as being a simple idea, the mind, as I 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 Lovk's own hand ; by Lovk 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 ide*a 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 will 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:— I. 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 ; or 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 if 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. 355 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 with good sense. (Now, it is the direct office of that discursive faculty of the mind which we callreason, 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. I 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 number. 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 may be, 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. v 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^n 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 tfeas, the materials of wisdom and knowledge, which the busy and bound- -«ss 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.N The ideas he possesses he feels a desire of com- municating, 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 Z2 356 ON HUMAN 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 ourvocabulary; 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 yef, therefore, to contemplate the most important part of the subject before 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. But 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 refers 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 anyone 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 * Series ii Lecture viii. \x. x. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 357 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 I know it with certain know- ledge, or, in other words, it is self-evident. 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 1 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 I 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 I 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 I am 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 ; for I have no more evidence of my existence by calling up the ideas I think, than 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: andhence, 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, that 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 358 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 (-lose 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 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 whosccon- 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 to 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, oi opinion; and according to the nature of the proofs or intermediate ideas, as decided by the faculty of the judgment, the opinion is rendered induritable, probable, conjectural, or SUSPICIOUS. / It is upon this 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. I. t See " Some account of Zerah Colbum, an American child, who possesses some very remarkable pow ers of solving questions in arithmetic, by computation without writing, or any visible contrivance."— Nicholson's Journal of Nat. Phil. vol. xxxiv. p. 5. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 359 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 of what I mean. He applies to me, therefore, for the intermediate idea by the question, " Why so ?" and I 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 which case they would perhaps run as follows :— Every man who goes repeatedly the same road should know his 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 I 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 offreemen,—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 :— Who governs freemen should be able to maintain their freedom: But he who is not free himself is not able to maintain their freedom: Therefore, Who governs freemen should himself be'free. Proper or real knowledge, then, is of two kinds or degrees, intuition anfi demonstration ; below which, all the information we possess is imperfec knowledge or opinion. Mr. Locke, nevertheless, out of courtesy to the Cai tesian hypothesis, rather than from any other cause, makes proper or rea * Napoleon Buonaparte. This lecture was delivered in 1814. 360 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 cases 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 : Avhence 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- quently 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 life, 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, promoting 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 than/ee/,—Iknowhim to be eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, the creator of all things, and therefore God. I discover him, not by 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 MODERN SKEPTICS. 361 LECTURE V. OTH 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 alone, and that, in delineating the operations of the mind, it neither enters into the question of the substance of mind, 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 effects 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 difficult 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 him 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 designed 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. Undent, book ii. ch. viii. $12. lb. $ 15. ♦ lb. $ 22. 362 ON 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 has 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 others again, still more whimsically, into a disbelief of both 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 possiblv 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 effect 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 I 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 n. ch. ii. p. 1G5. ON ANCIENT 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 stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with 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 Middle 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 effects of his ovvn 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, of all external objects ; Aristotle that it perceives by immaterial phantasms; and Epicurus by real species or effigies 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 effect. 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 * Tempef 364 ON ANCIENT 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 lec- 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 say for 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 ] 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 appeal 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 ovvn being. Although, in his opinion, M. Des Cartes has proved the existence of bodv ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 365 by the strongest arguments that reason alone can furnish, and arguments which 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. The 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 any thing 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 had 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 question between ourselves and the evidence they offer; and though this is an evidence which Locke had assented to, Bishop Berkeley conceives it is 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 the nose upon his face his own ; 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 prin- ciples, to have been mistaken upon several points; and it is but justice to the memory of a most excellent and exemplary prelate, as well as enlightened 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 Verite, torn. 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 the 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 I 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? 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 which it appears to have ; that it is not white, 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. \et 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 leet 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 thing 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 leelings 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 ol Bisnop 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 lor the utmost stretch of human ingenuity to push such a revery any farther. To the possession of such ingenuity, however, the celebrated author ot tne " 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 I 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 mmd and the perceptions ol 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? 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 oerceptions that succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in a Demetual flux ;"* an,d 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 eiery moment slipping through your fingers, and may as wellhang.the sheriff as the thief. No philosopher, it seems, can even dream of believing in an * Treat on Human Nat. vol. i. n 438, &c. 368 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 with 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 in 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 1 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 6ame.'J Nay, he goes farther, and says, that ' whatever is true of the one * Mr. Hume seems to have been only a speculative advocate of his own doctrines: /he Bishop of Cloyne, like the Greek skeptics to whom we have formerly adverted, was a real believer. And it is not a little singular that the fundamental atheism on which the doctrines of Boodhism are founded, as professed throughout the Burman empire, has (riven rise, even in the present day, to a sect of philosophical skeptics of the very same kind ; of which Mr. Judson. the intelligent American missionary to whom I have already alluded (Si-r. 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 doling, a disciple of the great Tongdwan teacher, the acknowledged head of all the semi alheisis in the country. Like the rest of the sect, Moung Long is, in realily, a complete skeptic, scarcely believing his own existence. They say he is always quarrelling with his wife on some metaphysical point. For instance, if she says, " The rice is ready," he will reply, " Rice ! What is rice? Is it matter or spirit ? Is 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 7 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 Burman Empire, &c. by A. H Judson, p. 304, 8vo. Lond. 1823. t Beattie on Truth, part. ii. ch. ii. X Treatise on Human Nature, vol. i p. 131 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN 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, I 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 ? Do you feel more real cold in Virgil's Scythian winter than in Milton's description of the flames of hell ? 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, fijls the belly, and contributes to the support of human life ? 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 differs 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 ;% 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 * Treatise oa Human Nature, vol. i. p. 41. t Theoria Philosophise Naturalis, Vien. 1758. } Series i. Lecture iii. See also Dr. Wollaston's paper " On the finite Extent of the Atmosphere," Phil. Trans. 1822, p. 89. A a 370 ON ANCIENT 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, andBoscovich were thus, in their different ways, dissipating the world of matter, in favour of the world of mind, another set of philosophers started up,— --------impios Titanas, immanemque turmam,* An impious, earth-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 contending that we have no other knowledge than what they supply us with, and what they themselves 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 with 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, any 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 gooff in thirds, fifths, and eighths. ' Hor. lib. iii. 4. ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 371 as regularly 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 us 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-like 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 perishino- 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. Within 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 Principcs de Physlolcgie, torn. iv. 8vn. Pans, 1800—1. $ Rcchcrches sur la \ ip e' la Mort, &c. Aa2 372 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. of remodelling, which is that of M. Magendie, we have certainly an Im- provement, though 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 l'homme," says he," se compose de pheno- menes tenement 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 Divinite. II est trop consolant de croire a cet etre, pour que le physiologiste mette en doute son existence; niais la severite de langage ou de logique que comporte maintenant la physiologie exige que l'on traite de l'intelligence humaine comme si elle etait le resultat de Paction d'un oj-gane. En s'e'cartant de cettemarche, des homines justement celebres sont tombes dans des graves 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 l'esprit humain."—"II existe une science dont le but est, d'apprendre a raisonner justement: c'est la logique: mais le jugement errone ou l'esprit faux (for judgment, genius, and imagination, and therefore false reasoning, all depend on organization) tien- nent a l'organization. II est impossible de se changer a cet egard; nous restons, tels que la nature nous a faits."f 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 be 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 hypothesis 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 inorganized 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 Physiologic, torn. ii. 8vo. Par is, 1816,1817. r Precis Elementuire, &c. ut supra, passim. X Physiognomical Svptem. &c. p. 253,8vo. Lond. 1813 4 Introduction to Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, &c. 6vo. 1810. ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 373 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.";]; 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 hew either in this hypothesis or in the present explanation of it. It was first started in the days of Aristotle by Aristoxe- nus, 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 effect.^ 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 aa by the Epicureans ;|| 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 definite 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," which 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. t ™d. p. 122; t Ibid. $ Study of Med. ut supra || Series i. Lect. ix. on the Principle of Life 374 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 encounters 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 little 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 phi- losophers of the rarest endowments and deepest learning, into a show of systems and theories, that the grand cause of their absurdities is attributable to the imperfect knowledge we possess respecting the nature and qualities of matter, and the nature and qualities of those perceptions which material ob- jects produce in the mind, through the medium of the external senses. These perceptions, however accounted for, and whatever they have been supposed to consist in, have in most ancient, and in all modern, schools been equally denominated ideas; and hence ideas have sometimes implied modifi- cations, so to speak, of pure intelligence, which was the opinion of Plato and of Berkeley; of immaterial apparitions or phantasms, which was that of Aristotle, and in a certain s,ense may perhaps be said to have been that of Hume; of real species or material images, which was that of Epicurus, of Sir Kenelm Digby,* and many other schoolmen of the middle of the seven- teenth century; of mere notional resemblances, which was that of Des Cartes; and of whatever it was the ultimate intention of any of these scho- lastic terms to signify, whether phantasm, notion, or species ; whatever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks, or the mind can be em- ployed about when thinking, which was that of Locke, and is the fair import of the word in popular speech. It is possible, moreover, that this indiscriminate use of the same term to express different apprehensions, and particularly in modern times, has contri- buted to many of the errors which are peculiarly chargeable to the metaphy- sical writers of modern times. But this opinionhas been carried much farther by Dr. Reid, who has persuaded himself that the word idea has been the rock on which all the metaphysical systematizers, from the time of Aristotle to his own era, have shipwrecked themselves ; and hence, having determined to oppose the absurdities of his own countryman Mr. Hume, by the introduction * He was warmly opposed by Alexander Ross, of Hudibrastlc memory, who was a stanch Aristotelian, and, consequently, denied the materiality of ideas. Se6 Ross's argument in Professor Stewart's Essays. vol. i. p. 556, 4to. OF COMMON SENSE. 375 of a new hypothesis, he thought the better way would be to clear the ground on every side, by an equal excommunication of this mischievous term, and of every system into which it had ever found an entrance; whence all the authors of such systems, whatever may have been their views or principles in other respects, he has lumped together by the common name of Idealists. The motive of Dr. Reid was pure and praiseworthy: he entered the arena with great and splendid talents; and soon found himself powerfully abetted by his friends, Dr. Adam Smith, Dr. Beattie, Lord Karnes, Dr. Campbell, and Mr. Dugald Stewart: but it must be obvious to every one, that in the execu- tion of his motive he has carried his resentment to a strange and somewhat ludicrous extreme. Idea is a word sufficiently harmless in itself, and even his own friends have not chosen to follow him in his Quixotic warfare against it; and have, consequently, continued to use it, in spite of his outlawry and pro- scription : while to arrange under the same banner every one who has employed this term, and to impute the same dangerous tendency to every hypothesis in which it is to be met with, is to make the wearing of a blue or a chocolate coat a sure sign of treason, and to assert that every man who is found thus habited deserves hanging. Mr. Locke distinctly tells us, that he uses the term idea in its popular sense, and only in its popular sense. But he uses it, and that is enough:—the mis- chief is in the word itself. It has, however, been attempted to be proved that he has not always known the sense in which he did use it; and that he has sometimes employed it in a popular and sometimes in a scholastic import, as denoting that certain ideas are not mere notional perceptions, but material images or copies of the objects which they indicate, by which means he has given a strong handle to such materialists, or favourers of materialism, as Hart- ley, Priestley, and Darwin: while, by his striking away from bodies all their secondary qualities, as taste, smell, sound, and colour, he has given a similar handle to such immaterialists as Berkeley and Hume. Now, it is not often that a theory is accused of leaning north and south at the same time ; and whenever it can be so accused, the charge is perhaps the highest compliment that can be paid to it, as proving its uprightness and freedom from bias. But it was absolutely necessary for the success of the new hypothesis that the Essay on Human Understanding should be demon- strated to be radically erroneous, and particularly to have some connexion in the way of causation with what may be called the physical speculations of the day, whether of materialism or of immaterialism : since so long as this remained firm, so long as the system maintained its ground, the immortal edifice proposed to be erected—monumentum cere perennius—could find no place for a foundation; and on this account, and, so far as I can learn, on this account alone, the name of Locke has been placed among " the most cele- brated promoters of modern skepticism ;"* though it is admitted that nothing was farther from his intention. It is hence requisite, before we enter upon a survey of this new hypothesis, to inquire how far the objections which were offered against Mr. Locke's theory are founded in fact. I have already mentioned two of the more pro- minent, and I shall have occasion to mention two others immediately. We are told, in the first place, that Mr. Locke has not used the term idea in all instances in one and the same signification; and that while it sometimes imports something separate from body, it sometimes imports a modification of body itself. But this is egregiously to mistake his meaning, and to charge him with a confusion of conception which only belongs to the person who can thus interpret him. Des Cartes, after most of the Greek philosophers, had asserted, that our ideas are in some way or other exact images of the objects presented to the senses: Mr. Locke, in opposition to this assertion, contended, that so far from being exact images they have not the smallest resemblance to them in any respect, with the exception of those ideas that represent the real or primary qualities of bodies, or such as belong to bodies intrinsically; and * Beattie on Truth: compare part ii. ch. ii. $1,2, with the opening of part ii. ch. ii. $2. 376 ON THE HYPOTHESIS which, in his own day, were supposed to consist of figure, extension, solidity motion or rest, and number. These qualities being real in the bodies in which they appear, the ideas which really represent them are, in his opinion, entitled to be called resemblances of them ; while the ideas of the secondary qualities of bodies, or those which are not real but merely ostensible, or which, in other words, do not intrinsically belong to the bodies in which they appear, as colour, sound, taste, and smell, are not entitled to be called resem- blances of them. Now, what does such observation upon these two sets of qualities amount to ? Plainly and unequivocally to this, and nothing more; that as the first set of ideas are real representatives of real qualities, and the latter real representatives of ostensible qualities, there is in the former case a resemblance of reality, though there is no other resemblance, and, in the latter case, no resemblance of reality, and, consequently, no resemblance whatever. The resemblance is in respect to the reality of the qualities per- ceived ; it is simply a resemblance of reality : here it begins, and here it ends. But the adverse commentators before us contend, that it neither begins nor ends here; and that the word resemblance must necessarily import an actual and material resemblance,—a corporeal copy or image; and that, conse- quently, the class of ideas referred to must necessarily be material and cor- poreal things. So that it is not allowable to any man to say, that truth re- sembles a rock, unless he means, and is prepared to prove, that truth is a hard, stony mass of matter jutting into the sea, and fatal to ships that dash against it. But many of Mr. Locke's own followers are said to have understood him in this sense. Not, however, in regard to this distinction: though I am ready to admit that many of those who have pretended to be his followers, have misunderstood him upon the subject of ideas generally, and have affirmed, in direct opposition to his own words, that, in the Essay on Human Under- standing, all our ideas of sensation are supposed to be sensible representations or pictures of the objects apprehended by the senses. This observation par- ticularly applies to Locke's French commentators and followers, Condillac, Turgot, Helvetius, Diderot, D'Alembert, Condorcet, Destutt-Tracy, and Degerando: concerning whom Professor Stewart has made the following just remark; that while " these ingenious men have laid hold eagerly of this common principle of reasoning, and have vied with each other in extolling Locke for the sagacity which he has displayed in unfolding it, hardly two of them can be named who have understood it precisely in the sense annexed to it by the author. What is still more remarkable, the praise of Locke has been loudest from those who seem to have taken the least pains to ascertain the import of his conclusions."* The term object Mr. Locke has occasionally used in an equally figurative sense. Thus book ii. ch. i. sect. 24: " In time," says he, "the mind comes to reflect on its own operations about the ideas got by sensation; and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. These are the impressions that are made on our senses by outward objects that are extrinsical to the mind, and its own operations proceeding from powers intrin- sical and proper to itself; which, when reflected on by itself, becoming also objects of its contemplation, are, as I have said, the originals of all know- ledge." No words can more clearly prove that Locke regarded ideas of sensation as impressions made by external objects, and not as objects themselves; and ideas of reflection as operations of the mind, and no more objects, literally so considered, than in the preceding case. And hence, when, towards the close of the above passage, he applies the term objects to these operations, he can only in fairness be supposed to do it in a figurative sense: in which sense, indeed, he applies the same term to ideas of all kinds in another place, where he explains an idea to be " whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks." And yet he has been accused, by the School of Com- *■ Essays, vol. i. p. 102. OF COMMON SENSE. 377 mon Sense, of using the term literally; and it is " to Dr. Reid," says Mr. Stewart, "that we owe the important remark that all these notions (images, phantasms, &c.) are wholly hypothetical :"* and that we have no ground for supposing that in any operation of the mind there exists in it an object distinct from the mind itself. With respect to the division of the qualities of bodies just adverted to, though derived from the views of Sir Isaac Newton, I am ready to admit that it is loose, and in some respects, perhaps, erroneous. Nor is this to be won- dered at; for I have already had frequent occasions to observe, that it is a subject upon which we are totally ignorant; and that we are rather obliged to suppose, than are capable of proving the existence of even the least con- troverted primary qualities of bodies, as extension, solidity, and figure, in order to avoid falling into the absurdity of disbelieving a material substrate. But the supporters of the new hypothesis have no reason to triumph upon this point, since it is a general doctrine of their creed that all the qualities of matter are equally primary or real; in the interpretation of which, however, the sentiments of Mr. Stewart are wider from those of Dr. Reid than Dr. Reid's are from Mr. Locke's. Nor are they altogether clear from the very same charge here advanced against Mr. Locke : " Professor Stewart, in his Elements, says, 'Dr. Reid has justly distinguished the quality of colour from what he calls the appearance of colour, which last can only exist in a mind.' And Dr. Reid himself says, * The name of colour belongs indeed to the cause only, and not to the effect.'" Here, then, we have it unequivocally from Dr. Reid, that colour is a quality in an external body,—and the sensation occasioned by it in the mind is only the appearance of that external quality '.'.—Would any one suppose that such doctrine could come from the illustrious defender of non-resemblances ?— from the founder of the school which ridicules Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, for supposing that our ideas of primary qualities are resemblances of those qualities ?—" What is the appearance of any thing but a resemblance of it ? An appearance of any thing means the highest degree of resemblance; or that precise resemblance of it which makes it seem to be the thing itself, "f Appearance, in Dr. Reid's sense of the term, is precisely assimilated to the phantasm of Aristotle. In reality, neither of these objections against Mr. Locke's theory seem to have weighed very heavy with Dr. Beattie, whose chief ground of controversy is drawn from another source; from Locke's having opposed the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas and principles : or, in other words, from his having opposed M. Des Cartes's gratuitous assertion tha* infallible notions of a God, of matter, of consciousness, of moral right, together with other notions of a like kind, are implanted in the mind, and may be found there by any man who yy ? will search for them; thus superseding the necessity for discipline and educa- tion and putting savages upon a level with theologians and moral philoso- it phers. To confute this absurdity of M. Des Cartes is the direct object of , the first book of the Essay on Human Understanding; "and it is this first ; book " says Dr. Beattie, " which, with submission, I think the worst and most dano-eroiis."t Here again, however, it is altogether unnecessary for me to offer a vindication, for it has been already offered by one of the most able supporters of the new system, Mr.Dugald Stewart himself; who thus ob- serves as thouo-h in direct contradiction to his friend Dr. Beattie : " the hypo- thesis 'of innafe ideas thus interpreted (by Des Cartes and Malebranehe) scarcely seems to have ever merited a serious refutation. In England, for many years past, it has sunk into complete oblivion, excepting as a monument of the follies of the learned."^ We have thus far noticed three objections advanced against Mr. Locke s system by the three warmest champions for the new hypothesis. And it is a curious fact, that they are almost advanced singly; for upon these three points * Elem. ch. iii. $ ii. Fearne's Essay, p. 23. t B'earne's Essay on Consciousness, ch.xii. p. 247,2d edit X Beattie on Truth, part ii. ch. ii. sect. i. $ 2. $ Essays, vol. i. p. 117. 37rJ ON THE HYPOTHESIS the three combatants are very little more in harmony with themselves than they are with the Goliath against whom they have entered the lists. There is a fourth objection, however, and it would be the chief and most direct, if it could be well supported, on which the metaphysicians of the north seem to be unanimous. The Essay on Human Understanding resolves all the ideas we possess, or can possibly possess, into the two classes of those obtained by sensation, or the exercise of our external senses, and those obtained by re- flection, or the operations of the mind on itself; and it defies its readers to point out a single idea which is not reducible to the one or the other of these general heads. The supporters of the northern hypothesis have specially accepted this challenge, and have attempted to point out a variety of ideas, or conceptions, as Dr. Reid prefers calling them, which are in the mind of every man, and which are neither the result of sensation or reflection; and they have peculiarly fixed upon those of extension, figure, and motion. And hence this argument is regarded as decisive, and is proposed, both by Dr. Reid and Prefessor Stewart, " as an experimentum crucis, by which the ideal system must stand or fall."* Now, strictly speaking, this invincible argument, as it is called, is no argu- ment whatever. It is a mere question of opinion, whether the above-named ideas, together with those of time, space, immensity, and eternity, which belong to the same class, can be obtained either by means of the external senses or the operation of the mind upon its own powers, or whether they cannot. And, for myself, I completely concur in believing with Mr. Locke that they can : though I am ready to leave this part of the subject, as I am the whole question between us, to Mr. Stewart's own case of the boy born blind and deaf, as communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in the course of last year ;f who, it is admitted, is possessed of perfect soundness of mind; but who, at that time in his seventeenth year, was, as we are ex- pressly told, without any idea of a being superior to himself; of any religious feelings; and who did not appear to have possessed any moral feelings upon the sudden death of an indulgent father, notwithstanding the utmost pains that had been taken to give him instruction. If this boy shall be found to possess as clear an idea of figure and motion as those who have the free use of their eyes, 1 will readily allow Mr. Locke's system to be unfounded. That he must have some idea follows necessarily from this system; because he appears to have a very fine touch, and has also, or at least had till very lately, some small glimmering of light and colours.J But, upon the northern hypothesis, he ought not only to have some idea of these qualities of bodies, but a most true and correct idea, probably more so, instead of less so, than that of other persons: since he is said to obtain it from a faculty which is not supposed to be injured, and since the want of one sense is usually found to strengthen the remainder. With respect to the idea of extension, indeed, which, by some philosophers, is thought to be the most difficult of the whole, it appears to me that it is capable of being obtained with at least as much perspicuity as that of most other qualities of bodies, and more so than ideas of many of them ; for we have in this instance the power of touch to correct that of sight, or vice versa; while in a multitude of other instances we are compelled to trust to one sense alone. Extension, in its general signification, is a complex idea, resulting from a combination of the more simple ideas of length, breadth, and thick- ness ; and hence evidently imports a continuity of the parts of whatever sub- ject the idea is applied to; whether it be a solid substance, as a billiard ball, or the unsolid space which measures the distance between one billiard ball and another; the idea of measure being, indeed, the most obvious idea we can form of it. In both which cases we determine the relative proportions of the * Reid's Inquiry, &c.p. 137. Stewart's Efsays, vol. i. p. 549. ■f "Some Account of a Boy born Blind and Deaf. By Dugald Stewart, Esq., F.R.S.," ed. 4to. Edin. 1812. With which compare, relating to the same individual, " History of James Mitchel, a Boy born Blind and Deaf, &c. By James Wardrop, F.R.S." Ed. 4to. 1813. t See Edin. Rev. No. si. p. 468. OF COMMON SENSE. 379 length, breadth, and thickness by the eye, by the touch, or by both: and ac- quire, so far as I can see to the contrary, notwithstanding all that has been said upon the subject, as clear an idea as we do of substance. It is first ob- tained, I grant, from the sight or touch of what is solid alone ; and it is after- ward made use of in a more abstract form, as a measure of what is unsolid; whence the mind is able to apply it not only to the subject of pure space, but to a contemplation of circles, triangles, polygons, or any other geometrical figure, even though such figures be not present to the senses, and exist alone in its own conceptions. Extension, by the Cartesian school, was only applied to solid substance, or body; but then they supposed the universe to consist of nothing but solid substance, or body, and that there is no such thing as vacuum, or pure space. Among the Newtonians, who admit space, extension is applied as generally to this latter as to the former; but in order to avoid the confusion to which the application of this term to things so totally opposite as matter and space has produced in common discourse, Mr. Locke advises to appropriate the term extension to body, and expansion to space; using both these terms, however, as perfect synonyms, and as equally importing the simple idea of measure; which, as I have just observed, is the most obvious and explanatory idea that can be offered upon this subject. Widely different, however, is the opinion of the metaphysical school of North Britain; and hence, in order to account for these abstruse ideas, to which they affirm that neither our senses nor our reason can give rise, as also in order to compel our belief that the external world exists in every respect precisely as it appears to exist, and that external bodies possess in them- selves all the qualities, both primary and secondary, which they appear to possess, and thus, with one wide sweep, to clear the ground as well of the errors of Des Cartes, Newton, and Locke, as of those of Berkeley and Hume ; Dr. Reid, who, at one time, had been a follower of Berkeley, and, as he him- self tells us, " had embraced the whole of his system,"* steps forth with his new theory, the more important doctrines of which may be comprised under the four following heads :— I. There exist in the mind of man various ideas or conceptions, both phy- sical and metaphysical, which we have never derived either from sensation or reflection. II. There must therefore exist, somewhere or other in the animal frame, a third percipient principle, from which alone such ideas can have been den/ed III. From this additional principle there is no appeal: it is higher in its knowledge, and surer in its decision, than either the senses or the reason ; it compels our assent in a variety of cases, in which we should otherwise be left in the most distressing doubt; and gives us an assurance, not only that there is an external world around us, but that the primary and secondary qualities of bodies exist equally and uniformly in the bodies themselves, or, in other words, that every thing actually is as it appears to be. ; IV. This mandatory or superior principle is common sense or instinct. And in order to ensure himself success in the establishment of the doctrines contained in this outline, Dr. Reid, with a warmer deyotion than falls to the lot of metaphysicians in general, and in some degree breathing of poetic inspiration, opens his Inquiry with the following animated prayer: " Admired philosophy! daughter of" light! parent of wisdom and knowledge! if thoii art she ! surely thou hast not yet arisen upon the human mind, nor blessed us with more of thy rays than are sufficient to shed a darkness visible upon the human faculties, and to disturb that repose and security which happier mortals enjoy, who never approached thine altar, nor felt thine influence ! But if, indeed, thou hast not power to dispel those clouds and phantoms which thou hast discovered or created, withdraw this penurious and malignant ray: I despise philosophy, and renounce its guidance: let my soul dwell with com- mon sense." * See Dugald Stewart's Essays, note E, p. 548, and compare with ch. i. p. 62, 63 380 ON THE HYPOTHESIS How far this petition was attended to, and the prostrate suppliant was sna bled to obtain his object, we shall now proceed to examine. It is not necessary again to inquire whether the abstruse ideas of extension, figure, and motion, time and space, together with various others of the same kind, can or cannot be derived from mental reflection or external senration. I have already touched upon the subject, and must refer such of my audience as are desirous of entering into it more deeply to the writings of Locke and Tucker on the one side, and of Reid and Stewart on the other. I shall only observe, in addition, that Mr. Stewart himself admits, with that liberality which peculiarly characterizes his pen, that the ideas or notions of extension and figure, which he somewhat quaintly denominates " the mathematical affec- tions of matter," presuppose the exercise of our external senses.* But this being admitted, they ought, if not derived from their immediate action, to be fundamentally dependent upon them. Let us step forward at once to an investigation of the newly-discovered and sublime principle itself, by which all these profundities are to be fathomed, and all the aberrations of sense and reason to be corrected. Many of my hearers will perhaps smile at the idea that this high and mighty principle is nothing more than common sense; but, in truth, the founder and supporters of the northern system seem to have been wofully at a loss, not only what name to give it, but what nature to bestow upon it; and have hence variously, and at times most cloudily and incongruously, described it, and loaded it with as many names and titles as belong to a Spanish grandee or a Persian prime minister. " If," says Dr. Reid," there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them, these are what we call the principles of common sense."! Upon this passage I shall only, for the present, remark, that the new per- cipient faculty, which it is the object of the Scottish theory to discover to us, is one, as we have just been told, that is capable of extending its survey far beyond " the common concerns of life," and of forming ideas of the mathe- matical affections of matter; and, consequently, that if the principles of com- mon sense be limited, as they seem to be here, and in my judgment correctly bo, to " the common concerns of life," they can never answer the purpose to which this faculty aspires, and for which it is started in the present hypothesis; which demands not only a common sense, but a moral and a mathematical sense ; and all essentially distinct from, and totally independent of, corporeal sensation and mental intelligence. It is much to be regretted, however, and forms an insuperable objection to the whole hypothesis, that its founders have never been able to agree among themselves upon the nature of their new principle. "The power or faculty," says Dr. Reid, "by which we acquire these con- ceptions (those of extension, motion, and the other attributes of matter), must be something different from any power of the human mind that hath been ex- plained, since it is neither sensation nor refiection."\ This is loosely written; for it seems to intimate that there may be concep- tions or ideas in the mind, derived from or dependent on itself, which are not conceptions or ideas of reflection: while the phrase ideas of reflection, as em- ployed in Locke's system, embraces ideas of every kind of which the mind is or can be conscious, and which issue from any powers of its own. Dugald Stewart gives the same doctrine more correctly, as follows, and as a paraphrase upon this very passage: " That we have notions of external qualities which have no resemblance to our sensations, or to any thing of which the mind is conscious, is therefore a fact of which every man's experience affords the completest evidence, and to which it is not possible to oppose a single objection, but its incompatibility with the common philosophical theo- ries concerning the origin of our knowledge."$ • Essays, vol. i. p. 95. t Inquiry, p. 52. J Reid, ch. v. sect. vii. Essays, vol. i. p. 54g. OF COMMON SENSE. 381 But the question still returns, from what source then are these insensible, unintellectual notions derived? Where is the seat, and what is the meaning of that common sense which is to solve every difficulty ? As these philoso- phers make a boast of their experimentum crucis, this is an experimentum crucis in return to them; nor does there seem to be an individual through the whole school that is able to work out a solution, or to offer any definite idea upon the subject. I have already observed upon the looseness of Reid, who, in the passage just quoted, seems still to have a slight inclination to regard his principle of common sense as a power of the mind, and of course as seated in the mental organ; though a power that has not hitherto been explained. In the follow- ing passage he seems to regard it as a power of the external senses, and, hence, as seated in these senses themselves. "The account which this system (Hume's) gives of our judgment and belief concerning things, is as far from the truth as the account it gives of our notions or simple apprehensions;. It represents our senses as having no other office but that of furnishing the mind with notions or simple apprehen- sions of things; and makes our judgment and belief concerning those things to be acquired by comparing our notions together, and perceiving their agree- ments or disagreements. We have shown, on the contrary, that every operation of the senses, in its very nature, implies judgment or belief as well as simple apprehension."* Yet, in a third passage, he tells us still more openly, that common sense belongs neither to the mind nor to the corporeal senses, but is " a part op HUMAN NATURE WHICH HATH NEVER BEEN EXPLAINED !"f Dr. Beattie, on the contrary, who assigns to the phrase Common Sense a much more scholastic import than Dr. Reid appears to have intended, ex- pressly asserts that common sense, as he understands it, signifies " that tower of the mind which perceives truth or commands belief, not by pro- gressive argumentation, but by an instantaneous and instinctive impulse;\ or, as he says on another occasion, " it is instinct and not reason."^ While. Mr. Stewart, still more decisively, declares it to be the common reason of mankind;|| in express contradiction, however, to Dr. Reid, who as positively declares the principles of common sense to consist of those principles which we are under a necessity of taking for granted, without being able to give a REASON FOR THEM."]f Now, whether this third principle reside in the senses or in the mind, so long as it resides in either of them, and constitutes a part of either of them, the argument which they call their experimentum crucis falls instantly to the ground; for the ideas to which it gives rise must be sensitive or mental ideas, or, in other words, ideas of sensation or of reflection. Dr. Beattie's expression of instinctive impulse resulting from a power of the mind is still more objectionable; for instinct is not a power of the mind, but a power meant to supply the place of a mind where no mind is present, or in energy: and always acting most strikingly where there is least intelli- gence, as in the lowest ranks of animals; and perhaps still more obviously in plants. This is to confound endowments instead of to discriminate them. Nor is there less confusion in Dr. Reid's account of the matter; which is, " that every operation of the senses implies judgment and belief, as well as simple apprehension:" for this is to transfer the mind itself from the brain to the senses, as well as to make a like transfer of the principle of common sense to the same organs: it is to produce a chaos in the constitution of man, by jumbling every faculty into an interference with every faculty. And yet upon this very doctrine he stakes the whole truth or falsehood of his theory; and Mr. Stewart abets him in the same appeal.** It is amusing, indeed, to run over the names, titles, or distinctive marks assigned to their newly-discovered principle by the leaders of the Common- • Inquiry, ch. vii. p. 480. t Ibid. ch. v. lect. iii. p. 115, edit. 1T85. t On Truth, part i. ch. i. p. 11 < Ibid, part ii. ch. i. || Essay ii. p. 60. If Inquiry, p. 52. -- Stewart's Essays, vol. i. p 548. 382 ON THE HYPOTHESIS Sense school. For we have not only common sense, instinct,* instinctive prescience.f and instinctive propensity ;J but dictates of nature,^ dictates of internal sensation,|| simple notions, and ultimate laws,? judgment and belief furnished by the senses,** inductive principle,!! constitution of human na- ture,^ common understanding,^ moral sense,|||| moral principle.ff sug- gestions,*** and, finally, inspiration: thus putting this imaginary power, if not in the place of a Bible, upon an equality with it. The "original and natural judgments" of this faculty, says Dr. Reid, are the inspiration of the Almighty: " they serve to direct us in the common affairs of life, where our reasoning faculty would leave us in the dark. They are a part of our constitution: and all the discoveries of our reason are grounded upon them. They make up the common sense of mankind, and what is manifestly contrary to any of those first principles is what we call absurd."ftt Now, what is to be collected from all this pompous heraldry of high- sounding names, so totally inconsistent with the precision of an exact science; and which certainly would not have been allowed had this school been able to settle among themselves, or to communicate to the public, a clear idea of the seat, nature, or attributes of the new and, as I trust to prove, imaginary faculty it thus ventures to introduce; and which, after all, is only * Beattie, part i. ch. ii. p. 28, stereotype edit. Stewart's Essays, vol. i. p. 66. 87, 88. 589. t Reid's Inquiry, ch. vi. lect. xxiv. pi 441. X Beaitie on Truth, part i. ch. iii. lect. vii. p.63. $ Ibid, part i. ch. ii. p. 28. 32. || Ibid. p. 31. IT Stewart's Essays, vol. i. essay iii. p. 123. ** Reid's Inquiry, ch. vii. p. 481. tt Ibid. ch. vi. lect. xxiv. p. 442. XX Slewart, essay i. ch. i. p. 7. Reid, p. 391. Principles of the Constitution, Beattie, part i. ch. ii.p. 29. Original Principles of the Constitution, Reid, Inq. ch. vi. lect. xxiv. p. 423. 441. J$ Reid, ch. vi. lect. xx. p. ^80. fj Stewart, essay i. ch. iv. p. 44; a phrase of Shaftesbury, and adopted from him by Hutcheson. U1T Beattie, part i. ch. ii. p. 29. *** Ibid, essay ii. ch. ii. p. 96. Reid, ch. vi. led. ii. p. 157. ttl Reid, ch. vii. p. 482. In treating of the subject of instinct I had occasion to notice that Dr. Hancock, in a recent work of much moral excellence, has taken the same generalized view of those various powers, and has directly resolved the whole into an immediate and continual flow of divine inspiration through the agency of the Holy Spirit; so that ihe lowest animal, in its instincts, and the most gifted saint, in his Bpeciiil illumination, are supplied from one and the same intellectual fountain. And hence, in Dr. Han- cock's view, this is a power or energy which not only serves " to direct us in the common affairs of life, where our reasoning faculty would leave us in the dark," but to enlighten us in the sublime mysteries of spiritual truth. " In the same manner as the Divine Being has scattered the seeds of plants and vege- tables in the body of the earth, so he has implanted a portion of his own incorruptible seed, or of that which in Scripture language is called ' the seed of the kingdom,' in the soul of every individual of the human race." Essay on Instinct, p. 459. And hence, though Dr. Hancock is obliged to "admit that there are no innate ideas, according to>the strict meaning of ihe term, and no formally inscribed truths like established propositions to be discovered in early life,—yet it is fair to presume that the rudiments or inhe- rent propensities leading to mental and corporeal perfection are still essentially in existence. Hence; because we cannot discover in ihe infant mind the manifest signs of an original innate truth or concep- tion that there is a GoJ, and the simple propositions relative to moral and religious duty, we are not to conclude that it has no tendency to develope these notions."—Ibid. p. 314, 315. We have here a clear example of the difficulty of keeping an hypothesis within due limits that has no fixed principles to be built upon. So far, however, as thes-e writers appeal to Scripture in support of their doctrine of a moral sense, or instinctive love of virtue, propensity to moral right, internal light or innate idea of God, they seem to be opposed by every page lo which they refer. For whatever man may become by a gradual cultivation of his mental powers, or by immediate irradiation from heaven, we are expressly told, what, indeed, we have sufficient proofs of if we look around us, and especially into savage tribes, that by nature his " heart is desperately wicked ;" that shortly after the fall, God beheld that " the wicked- ness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually ;" thai " in the flesh dvvelleth no good thing;" that men by nature are under " the dominion of sin,"—whose power is so great as to constitute, as it were, a " law in the members,"—and a law so active and hostile to every good principle as to be for ever " warring against the law of the mind" when enlightened by a divine revelation, and even sifted, as St. Paul was, when he wrote this of himself, as well as of others, with the power of the Holy Spirit. And it is hence, St. Paul tells us farther, that mankind, in their natural state, instead of being children of light, with innate tendencies or propensities to good, have n heart at " enmity against God;" and " are chiidren of wrath." While instead of referring us to any kind of prjecognita, inbred notions, or instinctive suggestions, in proof of the existence and attributes of a Deity, St. Paul, like Locke, sends us to the works of nature and of providence; to the world without instead of to the world within us; and to the exercise of our own senses in relation to them: "for the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the thinos that are made, even his kternal power and godhead." And these proofs are so manifest, and the duties they enjoin so easily deducible, as to form a law of nature, " a law unto themselves," in Ihe minds of those who attend to them, and have no revealed law,—a conscience of what is right and wrong; so as to leave the whole world, as he farther adds, " without excuse," for not acquiring this knowledge, and this natural law. It is to the same book of nature, and for the same purpose, that the Psalmist leads himself in Ps. viii. 3—" When I consider the heavens, the work of thy hands: the moon nnd the stars which thou hast ordained ;" and to which he leads every one else, in Ps. xix. 1—3. And to what but the same divine yet external proof does our Saviour lead us in Matt. vi. 28—"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow," &.C., as well as in numerous other places ?—external objects generally forming a text to the divine comment of him who " spake as never man spake." OF COMMON SENSE. 383 intended to supply the place of the innate ideas of M. Des Cartes, as these innate ideas were designed to supply the place of the intelligible world of the Greek schools 1 " It is hardly possible for us," says Dr. Beattie, " to explain these dictates qf our nature according to common sense and common experience, in such language as shall be liable to no exception. The misfortune is, that many of the words we must use, though extremely well understood, are either too simple or too complex in their meaning to admit a logical definition."* But the plain fact is, that they have not come to any definite meaning among themselves.f Let us, then, just give a glance at the two leading terms, for it is hardly worth while to follow up the whole of them. These are common sense and instinct: both of which seem by Dr. Reid, and in various places by Dr. Beattie and Mr. Dugald Stewart, to be used in their popular import. Can any man for a moment, who has the slightest knowledge of physiology and philology, seriously admit that common sense and instinct are the same thing 1 or rather ought to be confounded under the same term 1 Do these writers believe so themselves, whenever they form any clear and precise idea of these faculties in their own minds'? " Common sense," says Mr. Dugald Stewart, is " the common reason of mankind -."% and every man of common sense will, I suppose, accede to this definition. But common sense, says Dr. Reid, as though in direct opposition to Mr. Stewart, is not reason : for it is that principle which compels us " to take things for granted without being able to give a reason for them."§—" Common sense," says Dr. Beattie, " is an instinctive impulse. Common sense is not reason, but instinct. It is in- stinct, and not reason, that determines me to believe my touch; it is instinct, and not reason, that determines me to believe that visible sensations, when consistent with tangible, are not fallacious • and it is either instinct or reason- ing, founded on experience (that is, on the evidence of sense), that deter- mines me to believe the man's stature a permanent and not a changeable thing."|| Now, the first thing that cannot fail to strike us, on comparing these pas- sages together, is the contradictory definitions they contain; the singular confusion which runs through the whole of them in respect to the three ideas of reason, common sense, and instinct; and the acknowledged difficulty the writers feel of drawing a line between the first and the last two of these principles, upon which, however, the whole system of the new philosophy hinges. Surely, "if reasoning, founded on experience," which is the very language of Mr. Locke, as vvell as of Dr. Beattie, be sufficient to determine us, and is, probably, the principle actually appealed to in one case of external * Part i. ch. ii. p. 32. t The phrases KOINAI AOHAI, or common sentiments, of Aristotle," TremWres Veritas or Primary Truths of Buffier, or even Innate Ideas of Des Cartes, whatever be the truth or fallacy of the doctrines they impart, are far less exceptionable than that of Common Sense, as being far less capable of being mis understood. Attempts have been made lo support this phrase by a reference to its employment by other writers, and even in the Latin tongue; and poets as well as metaphysicians have been brought forward with theii suffrages. But all this is to no purpose, unless it could be proved that such writeis had used it in the same meaning as the chief supporters of the present hypothesis, and that this meaning was one and indivisible. Mr. Stewart has felt himself particularly called upon to admit the loose and unsettled character of Dr. Beattie's language, and especially in one of his accounts of Common Sense, which he declares " is liable lo censure in almost every line." Elem. ch. i. lect. iii. p. 83: while Dr. Reid, on the very same subject, has been far more roughly handled both by the English translator of Buffier, and by Sir James Stewart, ibid. p. 88. " One unlucky consequence," observes Mr. Stewart, " has unquestionably resulted from the coincidence of so many writers connected with this northern part of the island, in adopting, about the same period, the same phrase, as a sort of philosophical watch-word:—that, although their views differ widely in vari ous respects, they have in general been classed together as partisans of a new sect, and as mutually respon sible for the doctrines of each other. It is easy to perceive the use likely to be made of this accident by an uncandid antagonist."—Ibid. p. 89. I have endeavoured as much as possible to avoid being open to any such charge, by confining my re marks to l few alone of the pillars of the school before us; and by selecting alone those who, from per sonal friendship and confidential acquaintance with each other's thoughts, are universally regarded as being both the most accordant and ablest defendants of their hypothesis. And if, among writers so closely united, discrepancies of doctrine or opinion should be frequent and flagrant, the only deduction that can be drawn from so unhappy a fact is, that the hypothesis cannot be made to hold true to itself, and is faulty in its first principles. X Essay ii. p. 60. 5 Inquiry, ch. ii. lect. vi. fl Essay on Truth, part ii. ch. i. p. 95. 384 ON THE HYPOTHESIS sensation, it may well be sufficient, and be thought the principle actually ap- pealed to in all others. The next remark that must, I think, occur to every one, is the absurdity of clothing instinct with moral and intellectual powers, with belief and judg- ment : for we are, in other places, told that this instinct of common sense possesses sentiment and moral sense. Now, all these import the existence of a mind; they import more, for they import mental feeling. And the con- sequence is, that we must either employ the term instinct without a deter- minate idea, and in opposite significations at different times, or we must allow to reptiles, and ought to allow to plants, the possession of belief, judgment, and mental feeling, as well as to mankind; for the existence of instinct is still clearer and more powerful in the first two than in the last. I know there is no attendant upon these lectures who finds any necessity for this confu- sion of ideas: and who does not apprehend perspicuously, from the definitions I have ventured to lay down, and have so frequently had occasion to repeat, the natural distinction between the principles here adverted to. But let a man, if it be possible for him, believe that common sense and instinct are the same thing, can he still farther believe that this is the faculty, call it by which of the two names you please, that is to be an infallible guide in physical and metaphysical, in sensible and intellectual, in moral and theological perplexi- ties ; where the finest perception falls short, and the most penetrating mind is overwhelmed ? Is it this which is to teach us the mathematical affections of matter; and to direct us in our duty towards God, our neighbours, and ourselves 1 I again refer to Mr. Stewart's own description of the boy, born nearly blind, and wholly deaf, to which I have referred already. If this high and domineering power be instinct, then let us turn, with due reverence, to those quarters where instinct exists in its fullest perfection ; let us pay due homage to the brutal and the vegetable tribes. Let us re- turn to the pretty prattle of the nursery, and learn industry from the ant, and geometry from the bee, and constancy from the dove, and innocence from the snow-drop, and blushing modesty from the rose. Let us hail all these, not, indeed, as our equals, but as our superiors ; as more richly endowed with that " inspiration of the Almighty," which is designed to correct the errors of sense and intelligence, and to soar to sublimities to which these can never attain. But let us part with the term instinct, and confine ourselves to that of common sense. Why is this idea set up as a distinct principle from reason? as a principle often opposed to it, and always superior to it ? Common sense is plain sense: The common judgment of mankind upon subjects of common comprehension, sometimes given intuitively, and sometimes by the exercise of reason, both of which, as I have already shown, are alike mental pro- cesses. And Mr. Stewart has hence, as lately noticed, freely denominated it in one place, though, in my mind, most incongruously with respect to his own system, " the common reason of mankind." Its proper limit is the common concerns of life, and while it confines itself to these, it is nearly infallible ; for the common constitution of our nature must, in most cases, lead us to one common result. When the legislature of our own country (in which this principle exists with peculiar force) appeals to the general voice of the people, it appeals to their common sense. But in doing this, docs it appeal to their instinct, or to any other faculty than their common reason; that dis- cursive power, which, by being better exercised here than among other nations, has enriched them with sounder and more general information upon the subject in question ? Common sense, however, must be confined to common subjects. Like the ostrich, it is quick and powerful on the surface, but its wings are not plumed for flight, and it plays a ridiculous part whenever it attempts to soar. When Copernicus, with a trembling hand, first suggested that the sun stands fixed in his place, and all the heavenly bodies move round him, common sense, assuming the philosopher, to which character it has no pretensions, opposed him, and science* fell a sacrifice to its conceit. With the same foolish vanity it denied, till laughed out of its folly by circumnavigation, the existence of OF COMMON SENSE. 385 antipodes; or that the surface of the earth, which appears to be a plane, could be spherical, and that men and women of our own shape and make could exist on its reverse side, with their feet opposed to our own. When the Dutch ambassador told the king of Siam, who had never seen or heard of such a thing as frost, that the water in his country would sometimes in cold weather be so hard, that men might walk, and bullocks be roasted upon it, his well-known answer was delivered upon the principles of common sense. He spoke from what he had seen, and from what every one had seen around him, and he relied upon the commoi. appearances of nature. " Hitherto," said he, " I have believed the strange things you have told me, because I looked upon you as an honest man; but now I am sure you are a liar." Yet this is the faculty held up in the system before us as a sure and infallible judge, whose office it is to correct the errors of reason, and to prove to us that every thing exists precisely as it appears to exist.* How much clearer, and to the purpose, is the explanation of this subject given by the excellent Bishop Butler, and how perfectly in unison with the language of Mr. Locke ! " That which renders beings," says he, " capable of moral government, is their having a moral nature and moral faculties of perception and action. Brute creatures are impressed and actuated by vari- ous instincts and propensions: so also are we. But additional to this we have a capacity of reflecting upon actions and characters, and making them an object to our thought; and on our doing this, we naturally and unavoid ably approve some actions, and disapprove others, as vicious and of ill desert —It is manifest that a great part of common language and of common be- haviour over the world is formed upon the supposition of such a moral fa- culty; whether called conscience, moral reason, moral sense, or divine rea- son ; whether considered as a sentiment of the understanding or a perception of the heart, or, which seems the truth, as including both."f Here we have laid down a firm and impregnable basis: it is the capacity of reflection: an arrival at the intrinsic nature of natural and moral good, and natural and moral evil, through the operation of our own reason :—that faculty of reason which the same distinguished writer, instead of despising or undervaluing, expressly calls in another place, after Solomon, " the candle of the Lord;" but which he adds, " can afford no light where it does not shine, nor judge where it has no principles to judge upon."J , With this remark I feel that 1 might safely drop this part of the argument: but as I have referred Mr. Stewart to his own description of the blind and deaf boy, in refutation of his view of the powers and duties of the external senses, I will, in like manner, refer Dr. Reid to Dr. Reid himself in refutation of the doctrine immediately before us, that every thing exists precisely as it appears to exist. In page 173 of his chapter on the quality of colours, he tells us, that the colour of the body is in the body itself—a scarlet rose being as much a scarlet in the dark as in the day; but that the apparition or appear- ance of the colour is in the eye or the mind. But when he tells us this, does he not tell us, in as plain terms as can be used, that the object and its appa- rition or appearance are in a state of separation from each other 1 that they are two distinct things, and exist in two distinct places? and consequently, that, instead of every thing being as it seems to be, nothing has a being either as it seems to be, or where it seems to be 1 Nay, does he not, in spite of him- * Dr Beattie has adopted this precise line of reasoning under the influence of his Common-Sense prin- clnles • and points out, by analogy, that the opinion of"the Siamese monarch was founded upon a basis which nothing could shake, or ought to shake; for the only appeal that any opposing evidence could make to him must have been through the medium of his reason, which is a less infallible judge than common sense and hence less worthy of attention. " Common sense," says he," tells me that the ground on which I stand is hard material, and solid.—Now, if my common sense be mistaken, who shall ascertain and cor- rect the mistake ? Our reason, it is said. Are, then, the inferences of reason, in this instance, clearer and more decisive than the dictates of common sense ? By no means. I still trust to my common sense as before and I feel that I must do so. But supposing the inferences of the one faculty as clear and deci- sive as the dictates of the other; yet who Bhall assure me that my reason is less liable to mistake than my common sense I—In a word, no doctrine ought to be believed as true that exceeds bbmkf and contra picTS a first principle."—On Truth, part i. ch. i. ____ ♦ Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed. Diss. il. of the Nature of Virtue. 1 Ibid, part ii. Conclusion. Bb 386 ON THE HYPOTHESIS self, adopt the very 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 of this, many-titled faculty, which is neither sense nor mind; and is thus capable of j 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 muscular 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 body 1 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 tban 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 us ? 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 1 How are we to know what is a genuine and infallible first principle from what has the mere semblance of one and is spurious 1 Are the founders of the system agreed upon this subject among themselves 1 If so, they are far more fortunate than the Cartesians upon the first principles, the Koivdilwoiai 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 ; nor has any 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 ;| and adds, that "perhaps he might even 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 * " The 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 when the appearance changes To a person in the 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. When a coloured body it presented, there is a certain apparition 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 imagination, so closely united with the quality called a scarlet colour, that they are apt to be mistaken for one and the same thing, although they 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. Lond. 1785. ' t Inquiry, ch. v. sect. iii. p. 115. J Essay iii. p. 120. $ "Perhaps I might even venture to say that, were the ambitious and obnoxious epithet innate laid aside and all the absurdities discarded which are connected either with the Platonic, with the Scholastic, or with the Cartesian hypothesis, concerning the nature of ideas," this last theory ("the antiquated theory of innate ideas," as he has just above called it, and to which he here refers) would agree in substance with the conclu- sion which I have been attempting to establish by an induction of facts."—?hil. Essay iii. p. 120, 4to. 1810. OF COMMON SENSE. 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 that 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 T 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 Boscovich'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 hj'potheses 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 yisionary 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 the 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, 63. Bb2 388 ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. Under these circumstances I must leave it to the enlightened audience before me to choose out of these different hypotheses as they may think best. For myself, I freely confess, that I have no ambition to soar into 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 being, 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 VII. ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. It has required, I 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 ;is 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. I 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 thoy may be visited with the candour which I have endeavoured to extend to others; fully aware that the ablest arguments T 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 hurtfan 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'? (k 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 thus agree in the conclusion, the question that leads to it still ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 38$ returns upon us : What proof have we of the existence of such innate ideas or instinctive impulse 1 of the intrinsic beauty of virtue ? that it is useful to us, productive of our happiness, or that it is the vvill of God it should be culti- vated ? 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 neither 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; ffor 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 has often arisen in the mincfan 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 necessaiy to pursue it. It is sufficient to observe, that it led, in a short time, to consequences so mischievous, as to work their ovvn 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 ungovcrned 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, andCaehus Rhodriffinus 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 view of the subject are the following remarks of * Series it. Lecture xiii. 390 ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. one of the most intelligent circumnavigators of the present day, M. Von Langsdorff, 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 onty," 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: he 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 these 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 &ea) a woman wouldwery 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 beheld the little outcasts. ) In the view of history,, therefore, as well as in the language of Scripture, man, in a state of nature, ispronejto 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 !"f 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] 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, Because 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 1 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 fqr if it be, then, necessarily, he who pursues that path obeys the will of God. • Von Langsdorff's Voyages and Travelsi ch vii. p. 139. f Psalm Iraiv. 20. ON HUMAN 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 1 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 1 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 wqrds of Archdeacon^ Paley:— - , ./.,..• •. A'iv ■■•»■"••>'-■■■ ■■ ^"'''4'^ ■'•' -'"' ' *'■ " 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; this 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 Gody 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 ol God to walk in if* Or, having proved the terms to be co-ordinate, we may nropose 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 ol tne 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. ch. v. 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 ? 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 pairof dice. Even the miser joins in the 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, i Now all these have, no doubt, their respective enjoyments; but do they constitute happiness in any fair sense of the term t are they permanent ] 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 which 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 a woful 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.i 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 who, in truth, are more alive in their dreams than in their waking hours. ^Now, happiness consists inactivity: such is the constitution of our nature : it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool. It shows itself 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 vulgar language, it runs out at his fingers' ends, f Upon the whole, the listless and idle have less pretensions to happiness than the characters we have just sur- veyed,—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 vvill 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 continue 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 WoodfalPs 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 ""itTsnot 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. xliii 394 ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. sequently, our own social well-being, could 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 higher 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 our individual 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. 11 Self-love but serves the virtuous breast to wake, As the smooth pebble stirs the peaceful lake. The centre mov'd, a circle strait succeeds, Another still, and still another spreads. Friend, parents, neighbour, first it will embrace, Our country next, and next all human race. * Analysis of Religion, Natural and Revealed, part i ch iv. ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 395 Wide, and more wide, th' o'erflowing of the mind Takes every creature in of every kind. Earth smiles around, in boundless beauty dress'd; Andheav'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 established dictum. The Stoics, with a sort of romantic refinement, pretended to have fallen into a love of virtue for her ovvn sake ; and to sustain and to abstain, to bear and forbear, 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 Menaeceus, that has yet survived the ravage of time, Epicurus has a passage upon this subject peculiarly striking, and that cannot be too strongly impressed on 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 justly, 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 «sleep 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, the dungeon deep, The base-born hangman, the 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 to fools becomes a hell.* * Diog. Laert. x. 132.135. ■ Verbera, carnufices, robur, pir, lamina, tadte : Qui tamen et si absunt, at mens, sibi conscia factis, Prsemetuens, adhibet stimulos, torretque flagellis Nee videt interea, qui terminus esse malorum 396 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 Arabia, 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 thebet'inniiiKof knowledge: For fools despise wUdom and instruction." 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 vvill 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 wise, 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 the earth. And why, then, is not the will of the Deity fully complied with ? Why, since the 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 aie 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 offend the public; for the keenest casuist can form no idea of many of Pocsit, quive sciet pcenarum denique finis; Atque eadem metuit magis, hac ne in morte gravescant. Hinc Achcrusia fit stdltof.um denique vita. Lib. iii. 1030. * Sir W. Jones, vi. p. 37. ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 397 uuch 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 the eye of civil law cannot follow him into the performance of these duties, for it 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 the 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 ? in characters, indeed, so plain, that he who runs may read 1 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 plaee—have in every instance accompanied such re- newal, justificatory of the supernatural interposition. But the sanction has, in every instance, been the same; while, and 1 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. 398 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, that the 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, with a correct outline, upon all the more interesting and important features of matter and of mind. It may be remembered, that I proposed to unfold to you the general principles, laws, and phenomena, as far as we are capable of tracing them, of the world without us, and the world within us ; to follow the footsteps of nature, or rather of the God of nature, in the gradual evolu- tion of that nice, and delicate, and ever-rising scale of wonders that surround us on every side, from the simplest elements to the most perfect and harmo- nious systems of visible or demonstrable existences; from shapeless matter to form, from form to feeling, from feeling to intellect; from the clod to the crystal, from the crystal to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from brutal life to man. All this I have endeavoured to accomplish; feebly and imper- fectly, indeed, but I have still endeavoured it with whatever may be the powers that the breath of the Almighty has implanted within me. But we have not stopped here ; having reached in man the summit of the visible pyramid of creation, we have tremblingly ventured to take a glance at the interior of his mysterious structure ; we have followed him, with no unhallowed eye, into the temple of the soul; we have amused ourselves, for, after all, it has been little or nothing more, with conjectures about its essence, and have commenced an analysis of those faculties so fearfully and wonder- fully planned, which place him at an almost infinite distance from the brute creation, and approximate him to the sphere of celestial intelligences : to that order of pure and happy spirits with whom it is his high prerogative, if not forfeited by his ovvn misconduct on earth, that he shall associate hereafter, and press forward in the pursuit of an infinite and self-rewarding knowledge, and in the fruition of an endless and unclouded felicity. This last topic, however, we have entered upon, and nothing more: we have noticed, indeed, the general furniture of the mind, and the diversified faculties with which it is endowed; but we have only extended our investiga- tion beyond such notice to the principles of perception, thought, and reason, or the discursive power; and to those communications, or ideas of objects or subjects, derived externally or from within, upon which the discursive power is ever exercising itself; and which, as they are obtained from the one or the other of these two sources, are denominated ideas of sensation or of reflection. Now, besides an ability to perceive, think, or reason, we find the mind pos- sessed of an almost infinite variety of othep attributes or faculties, implanted in it for the wisest and most beneficent purposes. We behold it endowed with consciousness, judgment, memory, imagination; with a power of choosing or refusing; with admiration and desire; hope and fear, love and hatred; grief and joy, transport and terror; with anger, jealousy, and despair. And we behold each of these faculties, as called into action, producing a cor- respondent effect upon the organs of the body; giving rise to what the painters call expression, or the language of the features; and to articulate sounds, or the language of the lips; lighting up the eye, and animating the countenance; invigorating the speech, and harmonizing its periods; or, on the contrary, filling the eye and the countenance with gloom or indignation, and the voice with sighs and bitter rebukes. The external signs thus produced, and representative of the inward emotion. FACULTIES OF THE MIND. 399 operate in their turn with a reflex influence, and rekindle in the mind the feelings that have given birth to them. And hence the origin and soul- subduing power of tender or impassioned poetry, or of manly and forcible eloquence ; as also the cause why we feel equally hurried away by the classi- cal debates of the senate, and the fictitious distresses of the drama. We behold, moreover, in different persons, these energetic principles dif- ferently modified or associated in every variety of combination : sometimes one of them, and sometimes another, and sometimes several leagued toge- ther, peculiarly active, and obtaining a mastery over the rest. And we behold these effects in different instances, from different causes; as peculiarity of temperament, peculiarity of climate, custom, habit, or education. And hence the origin of moral and intellectual character; the particular dispositions and propensities of individuals or of whole nations./' Hence one man is naturally violent, and another gentle; one a prey to perpetual gloom, and another full of hope and confidence; one irascible and revengeful, and another all bene- volence and philanthropy; one shrewd and witty, and another heavy and inert. Hence the refinement and patriotism of ancient Greece; the rough hardihood of the Romans; and the commercial spirit of Carthage; and hence, in modern times, the silent and plodding industry of the Dutch; the chivalrous honour of the Spaniards of the last century, unpoisoned by the deadly fever of Corsican morality ; the restless loquacity and intriguing am- bition of the French; and, may I be permitted to add, the high heroic cou- rage, and love of freedom, the generosity and promptitude to forgive injuries, the unswerving honesty and lofty spirit of adventure, that peculiarly sig- nalize the inhabitants of the British isles: all which are subjects that yet remain to be treated of and elucidated, and which seem to promise us an ample harvest of entertainment and instruction." Let us begin with the mental faculties themselves. These, as we have already seen, are numerous and complicated; so much so indeed, that it is difficult to arrange and analyze them ; and hence I do not, at the present moment, recollect a single treatise upon the subject, which gives us a clear and methodical classification of them. ' I shall take leave, therefore, to offer a new distribution; and shall divide them into the three general heads, of powers or faculties of the understanding; powers or faculties of election; and powers or faculties of emotion. To the first belong the principles of per- ception, thought, reason, judgment, memory, and imagination ; to the second, those of choosing and refusing, or of willing and nilling, to adopt an old and very expressive metaphysical term, that ought never to have grown obsolete; to the third belong those of hope, fear, grief, and joy, love, hatred, anger, and revenge, or whatever else is capable of moving the mind from a state of tran- quillity and rest. All these are, properly speaking, acts or actions of the mind; yet, as, during the operation of the last set, the mind becomes at times irregularly and invo- luntarily agitated and affected, though, by the force of its own attributes, as the voluntary muscles of tiie body are often thrown into trepidation and spasms by the contraction of their ovvn fibres, metaphysicians, and especially those of Germany, have seemed inclined to restrict the name of mental actions to the operations of the understanding and the will, and to give the name of affections or passions to those productive of mental emotion: to those transitions of feeling into which the mind is involuntarily hurried by the sti- mulus of this class of its own powers, and under the stress of which it may thus far be said to be passive; and hence, if I mistake not, the application of the term passions (which has so much puzzled the metaphysicians) to certain conditions or powers of the mind, which import activity and exertion. It is upon the same ground, that where the mind is completely subdued, and suffers extreme violence, we employ the term with peculiar emphasis; thus, when a man is raging either with anger or love, he is said pre-eminently to be in a passion, or to entertain a passion; and thus again, but in a far more serious and solemn sense, the Christian world applies the same term in its highest force of signification to the agony of our blessed Saviour. 400 ON THE GENERAL Now, it is the peculiar feature of physiology, and especially as studied upon the principles of induction, that, as far as it has proceeded, it has discovered a general adaptation of means to a proposed end; and has hence placed the doctrine of final causes, as it has been incorrectly, and not without some de- gree of confusion, denominated,—of causes, however, operating to a final intention,—upon a basis too strong to be shaken by the ridicule of many modern philosophers, sheltering themselves under an erroneous construction of Lord Bacon's views upon the subject.* What, then, are the uses or pro- posed ends of this extensive and complicated machinery of the mind of man? What are the respective parts which its various faculties, in the order in which we have now arranged them, are intended to fulfil, and the means by which they are to operate T Their object is threefold, and in every respect most important, and ad- mirably calculated to prove the wisdom and benevolence of the almighty Architect: they are the grand sources by which man becomes endowed with knowledge, moral freedom, and happiness; and is hence fitted to run the elevated race of a rational and accountable being.) From the powers of the understanding he derives the first; from those of volition or election the second; and from the passions or motive powers the third. Yet never let it be forgotten, that he can in no respect, or at least to no considerable extent or good purpose, possess either the one or the other, unless the mind, as an individual agent, maintain its self-dominion, and exercise a due degree of government over its own forces.:> This, I think, must be obvious to every one; and it is in this harmoniouslbalance, this equable guidance and control, that the perfection of the human character can alone consist and exhibit itself. Unless the faculties of the understanding be called forth, there can be no knowledge; and unless they be properly directed, though there may indeed be knowledge, it will be of a worse nature than utter ignorance; we shall pluck, not of the mixed tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as it stood before the fall, but from the tree of the knowledge of evil alone, with- out any union or participation of good. In like manner, unless the will and the passions be under an equal degree of guidance, the mind can be neither independent nor happy; a mental chaos must usurp the place of order, and the whole be misrule and confusion. We are too much in the habit, both in common life and in philosophy, of regarding the faculties of the mind as distinct agents from the mind itself, as though the latter were nothing more than a house or repository for their reception. This is particularly true in respect to the faculty of the will ; for we are perpetually told that the will operates upon the understanding or the mind ; and that unless the will be free, the man himself can have no freedom. Now, the will, like the memory or the judgment, is a mere power or ability, and freedom is another power or ability; but powers or abilities of one kind cannot belong to or be the property of powers or abilities of another kind : they can only belong to or be the property of some agent, and in this case the mind is the only agent. The question, therefore, whether the will be free, can only mean, if it mean any thing, whether the mind be free, of which the will is a power or attribute; and to the question thus modified, I have no hesitation in stating, that the mind is perfectly free to do whatever it wills. ,1 do not say whatever it desires; for the desire is a different faculty from the Will ; and though too generally confounded with each other, for the want of clear ideas upon the subject, the two are frequently in a state of direct oppo- sition. Thus, a man may desire to fly, but he never wills it; and for this plain reason, that though the action may be a matter of desire, it can never be a matter of volition; for to suppose the will or power of choosing to be exerted upon a subject in which there is no power of choosing, is to suppose an ab- 1 • Causarum finalium inquisitio sterilis est, et, tanquam Virgo Deo cnnsecrata, nihil parit. Such is his celebrated aphorism: but the term inquisitio does not relate to the subject or doctrine itself, but merely to its being made a branch of physical instead of metaphysical philosophy. The discoveries of modern times have sufficiently shown that Bacon was deceived upon this last point. But it is perfectly clear from other passages in his writings that he did not mean to controvert the doctrine itself. See Stewart's Elements, "vol. ii. p. 454. FACULTIES OF THE MIND. 401 surdity. In like manner, on the contrary, the schoolboy may will to get his task, though sorely against his desire or inclination, and the timid female, for the benefit of her health, may will to be plunged into the cold bath, though with as great a reluctance. So, when a kind and indulgent father chastises his son for disobedience, the mind, urged by proper motives, consents, and con- sequently wills it; it prefers inflicting the chastisement to abstaining from it: but while it wills or prefers the punishment, it is so far from desiring it, that it probably hates it more than the child itself does. It has been said that, in this case, the feeling of desire is still exercised; that the father, though he does not desire the punishment, desires the ultimate good of his child; that the same power of the mind is therefore still in ac- tivity, though directed to a different object; and, consequently, that willing is nothing more than desire in a higher range of the scale, or a state of predo- minant exertion. But this is to confound rather than to simplify the feelings of the mind. Desire is always accompanied with pleasure, and can never be altogether separated from it; for no man can desire that which is wholly and essentially painful. Now, though the father takes a pleasure in the good of his child, he takes no pleasure, but, on the contrary, great and unmixed pain, in his chastisement; and unless pleasure and pain be one and the same feeling, we cannot apply the simple idea of desire to both, though that of the will is equally applicable. And hence the will and the desire must necessarily be regarded as different faculties of the mind. In like manner, a person labour- ing under a severe fit of toothache may say that he desires to have the tooth taken out; but in saying this he does not desire the pain of its extraction, but only the ease which he hopes will follow upon its removal: for he hates the pain, and would avoid it, and have the tooth removed without it, if possible; but he consents to, or wills it, for the sake of that prospective advantage which alone is the object of his desire, as it is also of his will. 'So that here again, while the desire is limited to the one state of body, the will applies to both, and affords another proof that they are two distinct mental powers. In like manner, Revelation tells ua repeatedly, and as strictly as it does em- phatically, that God "hath no pleasure or desire in the death of the wicked;" but it tells us also, that God is, nevertheless, effecting, and, consequently, willing, their death or punishment every day. Freedom of mind, then, or an exercise of the will, is a distinct power or attribute from that of desire, and can only respect actions in which there is a condition of choice.) A- nian standing on a cliff, has a power of leaping twenty yards downward into the sea, or of continuing where he is; and, having this option, he is free, and exercises his will accordingly. But he has no power of leaping twenty yards upwards into the air, and it can never become a question with him—a subject of deliberation or option—whether he shall leap upwards or not; and, consequently, as this can never become a question with him, the mind can never vvill it, and its freedom remains un- disturbed. Here, then, we rest: the mind is free to do whatever it wills. But the in genuity of man has not been content with letting the subject remain at this point: it has pushed it still farther, and inquired whether the mind is free to will as well as to act after it has willed 1 and this, after all, is the real drift of the inquiry with which the world has been so long harassed, whether the will itself be free? This question is a complex one ; and its complexity has not always been sufficiently traced out and explained. The mind of every intelligent being can only will, or, m other words, be determined to do or forbear an act by a motive or moving power, and in this respect it is subject to a necessity issu- ing from the nature of things; but if, as I shall endeavour to show, the mind, by a voluntary operation of some one or more of its other faculties, of itself constitutes the motive, annuls it, or changes it for another, it must necessarily follow, that it has all the freedom of willing, as well as of acting, that an in- telligent being is capable of possessing. Now, the grand aim of every living, and especially of every intelligent 402 ON THE GENERAL being, is good, pleasure, or happiness: for they all, as in the words of the poet, imply the same thing:— O Happiness! our being's end and aim, , Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content, whate'er thy name. But good, pleasure, or happiness are generic names for a thousand different objects, each of which is pursued as many different ways, not only by differ- ent individuals, but sometimes at different periods by the very same person. In all these cases we perceive so many different motives or moving powers. Yet whence comes it, not only that different persons but that the same indi- vidual should have a different motive or moving power to-day from what he had yesterday, or perhaps only half an hour before? The cause may, indeed, be some sudden and impetuous gust of passion by which the mind may be stormed and led captive, as by a coup-de-main; but it may also be a deliberate determination of the mind itself. And, in truth, this last is the general cause, to which a sudden and impetuous ebullition of the passions forms but a few occasional exceptions. It is this exercise of deliberation that alone renders man a rational and accountable being. All human laws act upon the same principle: they suppose him (saving the few extreme cases just alluded to) to be under the influence of a controlling judgment, and they reward or punish him accordingly. And such is the force of habit and long association, that we not unfrequently behold the judg- ment exercising this control, in a mind evidently unsound and wandering ; and the cunning maniac concealing a skilful design or a deep-rooted passion till the due moment arrives for executing the one, or gratifying the others Now, in all these cases, the determination of the judgment, which forms the motive or moving powerJis as much a voluntary act of the mind, whether right or wrong, as the change of one or more ciphers in the common arith- metical sum, in consequence of our discovering an error upon working it a second time. This determination, or motive, however, may be changed every hour, or even every minute; for the mind may take a new view of the sub- ject : it may obtain clearer ideas from fresh sources; or other affections may be called into play than those which have hitherto produced an influence; and what before was decided to be a certain path to pleasure, may next be decided to be as certain a road to misery and ruin. And so active is the judgment in asserting its control, that even where the mind is borne down by the most violent passions, it still strives, at times, to recover its authority, and is seldom quiet till it has succeeded. Let me offer a single example in elucidation of this assertion. • Behold the enamoured youth, who, after having struggled for years with an unebbing current of obstacles, finds himself, at length, in possession of the fair object of his heart's affection. Here, the reigning power must necessa- rily be the passion of love, and it would be somewhat cynical to look for any thing else. Ask him in what his happiness consists, and what are the mo- tives that stimulate every action of his life, and he will at once point to his beloved bride, without whom, he will tell you, that all nature would be a blank: and with whom, that a wilderness would be a paradise. Behold her next, by the stealthy and startling hand of death, snatched away from his embraces. What now is the condition of the mind ] the new motives that distract it ? and the conduct to which they give rise 1 Is it possible that an ember of happiness can remain to him now 1—Yes, even here, in the rack of anguish, he has still his delight—a lonely and melancholy one, I am com- pelled to grant, but he has his delight notwithstanding; and the mind is as much hurried away, and as violently by the present impulse, which is to weep over her remains, as by the past, which was to devote himself to her wishes , He haunts the deep cathedral shade, The greensward where his love is laid, And hugs her urn, and o'er the tomb Hangs, and enjoys the speclred gloom. FACULTIES OF THE MIND. 403 And oft to thee he lifts his eye, Mild empress of the spangled sky! And thanks thy dewy beams that guide His footsteps to his clay-cold bride. And oft he asks the starry train That circle round thy silver reign, By which her parting spirit pass'd, And whore she stay'd her flight at last. He ask?—and thither would hegf.— For what has nature now below 1 Thus far the mind has unquestionably evinced little or no control; and I bring forward these descriptions as instances of its subjugation. But even here, in one of the severest trials with which mankind can be visited, the mind gradually finds the means of recovering its ascendency ; the passions by degrees become tranquillized, and in their turn subdued; the heart softened, the judgment corrected and fortified, and the reason set at liberty for reflection. The pale sufferer perceives, at length, that happiness, to be genuine, must be neither violent nor transitory ; that its foundation must be permanent, and its nature unalloyed. He yields himself to this train of con- templation; and the mind, now fully reinstated in its government, indulges a sober and rational grief, and arrives at a sober and rational conclusion. It determines that earth has no such happiness to offer him; it may perhaps lead him farther, and prompt him to seek it in a sublimer source. This description I have drawn from the natural passions of the human heart —passions that, in a greater or less degree, are common to all countries and ages; but there are passions of which uncultivated nature knows nothing, which are the baneful offspring of a morbid civilization and immoral habits, and which possess, if possible, a still more tyrannical control over the judg- ment than any that nature herself has implanted within it. Such is the pas- sion for gambling, which has often, even in the sobriety of our own climate, maddened the brain of men who, but for this, had been worthy members of society, and plunged them into the foulest vices, and at length, into the deadly gulf of suicide. One of the best pictures of the heart-rending despair of such a wretch, just before the perpetration of this horrible crime, is to be found in the description of Beverly in " The Gamester," who is thus painted to the life, in the inevitable ruin into which he was thrown after having staked the last resource and final hope of his wife and family on one unfortunate and fatal hazard:— "When all was lost, he fixed his eyes upon the ground, and stood some time with folded arms, stupid and motionless; then, snatching his sword that hung against the wainscot, he sat him down, and with a look of fixed atten- tion drew figures on the floor. At last, he started up; looked wild, and trembled; and, like a woman seized with her sex's fits, laughed out aloud, while the tears trickled down his face. So he left the room." Yet, even here, under the fell sway of this accursed incantation, we are not without examples of its being occasionally broken through, and its deadly fetters shaken off by the virtuous resolution of a mind determined to prove its independence, and to act according to the dictates of its better judgment. As an example of which, among many others, I may refer to the conduct of one of the first statesmen of our own country and our own age;—a states- man, whose name will ever be dear to Britain, on various accounts, but chiefly, perhaps, since under his administration, she set the glorious example to the world of abolishing the slave-trade. In early life it is well known that Mr. Fox was irresistibly addicted to this intoxicating passion; and it is also equally known, that in his maturer life, he tore himself from the farther prosecution of it, by a courageous determination from which he never de- It appears obvious, then, that the mind both can and ought to maintain a general mastery over all its faculties ; and is able, at all times, except in ex- treme cases, to furnish itself with motives. I And hence, though it is perfectly true that it cannot will, or, in other words, cannot choose or refuse without a motive, and to this extent is under a necessity, yet the origination or change Oc2 404 ON THE GENERAL of motives being vested in itself, it is equally true that it is so far free to will, as well as to act, or perform what it wills. . If the distinction here offered had been properly attended to, we should, as I am inclined to think, have had fewer opponents, in all ages, to the doctrine of the freedom of the mind, or of the will as it is commonly denominated. Among the chief of these opponents we may rank the Fatalists of ancient, and the Necessarians of modern times. The general train of argument by which they have been led, and the ground of its adoption, are not essentially different. Motives, volitions, and actions are supposed by both sects to be of the same nature, in respect to relative force and operation, as physical causes and effects ; and, consequently, the same catenation, or necessary dependence of one fact upon another, which marks the experienced train of events in tiie natural world, is conceived to be perpetually taking place in the moral: " All voluntary actions," as Mr. Hume observes, " being subjected to the same laws of necessity with the operations of matter, and there being a continued chain of necessary causes preordained, and predetermined, reaching from the original cause of all to every single volition of every human being."* Or, as another writer upon the same subject has expressed it,-(-" The course of events, both moral and physical, is fixed and immutable ; and thoughts, volitions, and actions pro- ceed in one interrupted concatenation from the beginning to the end of time, agreeably to the laws originally established by the great Creator."/ So that, under the same circumstances, the same motives must be produced irt the mind of every man, give rise to the same volitions, and be succeeded by the same actions; every one of these, to adopt the language of the Fatalists, being equally a link of that ------golden everlasting chain \ Whose strong embrace holds heaven, and earth, and main. ) If it were not so, it is pretended that there could be no mutual dependence or confidence between man and man. No person, from the appearance of one action as performed by his neighbour, could infer a second, or form any opinion of his character. And even the doctrine of divine prescience must be entirely relinquished; since, without such a necessary and consecutive connexion, it must be impossible for the Deity himself to foresee any future event, or to know it otherwise than as it occurs at the moment. It was not my intention to have touched upon this controversy, but the prin- 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 I propose to offer shall be as brief and compressed as I am able to make them. Jn 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 fail 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 ? Or, rather, can any man suppose such a fact, provided the tra- veller himself were in his senses ]JiYet 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 * Essays: On Liberty and Necessity, vol. ii. FACULTIES Of THE MIND. 404 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 should 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 T 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 22£ 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, that 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-Green ? Yet, unless he should thus act, not occasionally, or by accident, but uniformly, and at all times, there ia 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 cunctis in rebus agundis, Et devicta quasi, cogatur ferre, patiquk.* Lest the mind Bend to a stern necessity within, And, like a slave, determine but by roRCE. 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 character. 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 ieave to put into our own language— * De Rer. Nat. ii 289. 406 ON THE GENERAL FACULTIES OF THE MIND. The power of all things cease; e'en sacred oaths At times be broke, and the determined mind Forego its 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 vvill 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 absolute 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 ambition, 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, Regardless of the stir of this low world, Holds on her heavenly way. f 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! 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 eternity, 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 as much provided for, and must be so, as the most common train of natural events. It. i s true, we know nothing of the arrange- ment by which they subsist ; but they are and must be provided for, neverthe- less. It is here, and here only, we ought to vtst—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. 40" to pluck away attribute after attribute from the diadem of the Deity, out of mere compliment to the demand of a fanciful and empty hypothesis. I retreat from this subject, however, with pleasure. It is too perplexed and mysterious for popular discussion, and I am fearful of darkening it by illus- tration. I should not have touched upon it, but that I have been forced, by the regular progress of our own inquiries ; and 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 themind These we have divided .into three classes ;lttie faculties of the understanding^ the faculties of volition, and the passions or faculties of emotion-V The «com- mencement of the present series of lectures was devoted to an ^ration 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 I proper point, or are adverse and tempestuous. Like the wind i££tW we an engine of high importance and mighty power. Without them we cannot proceed; but with them we may be shipwrecked and lost. Reined intherefore, ana attempered, they constitute, as I have already observed, our happiness; but let loose and at random, they distract and rum us. How few, beneath auspicious planet born, With swelling sails make good the promis d port, With all their wishes freighted. Young. Let it not be forgotten, however, that the passions are not: distinct agents, but mere affections or emotions, mere states or conditions of he mind, ex- T-^hTnn almost infinite variety of external objects and events, or internal nnerations"an ^7eel njs Ind here, the first remark that will probably occur toPuistoatirivedfrom sources thus numerous and diversified, they must 12 ii«f fnrm » ni merous and motlev host. Some of them are simple, SS complex some peculiar to certain'circumstances or individuals, others others complex,