PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS IN MEDICINE. 
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
BEFORE THE 
AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, 
AT ITS 
THIRTIETH ANNUAL SESSION, 
ATLANTA, GA., Mat 6, 1879. 
BY / 
THEOPHILUS PAKVIN, M.D. / 
EXTRACTED PROM THE 
TRANSACTIONS OP TIIE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
COLLINS, PRINTER, 705 JAYNE STREET. 
1 87 9. PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS IN MEDICINE. 
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
BEFORE THE 
AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, 
AT ITS 
THIRTIETH ANNUAL SESSION, 
ATLANTA, GA., May 6, 1879. 
BY 
THEOPHILUS PARVTN, M.D. /X 
EXTRACTED FROM THE 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
COLLINS, PRINTER, 105 JAYNE STREET. 
18 7 9. ADDRESS. 
Gentlemen :— 
Science, Literature, Philosophy, and Theology are the great 
subjects of human study. Science is the knowledge of nature 
and of nature’s laws. Literature, including history,, is the 
representation of man’s life; it tells his joys and sorrows, his 
aspirations and achievements, his victories and defeats, his glory 
and shame; it is “ man’s autobiography.” Philosophy studies 
man’s psychical nature, both in its mental and moral mani- 
festations ; it seeks to discover the relation he bears to the past 
and to the future, to nature and to the universe, and in its 
highest development brings the reflecting mind to believe in an 
ultimate unity, a great first cause, the fountain of all other 
causes, a power originant of them if not immanent in them. 
Theology discusses the being, attributes, and providence of the 
Divine, the uncreated, the eternal, whose existence philosophy 
in its sublimest aspirations maintains, even if that existence be 
not one of the fundamental convictions of the human mind. 
Nevertheless, these divisions are in some degree arbitrary. 
For example, if there be a Divine Being, all-wise and all- 
powerful, and nature his creation, his name will be recorded on 
its pages; and to the study of such record, the title of natural 
theology has been given. 
Moreover, man is a part of nature, made of the same material 
as countless other organisms, and subject to the same general 
laws, so that the science of physical man is a part of the science 
of nature. A complete knowledge of man, therefore, includes 
both science and philosophy. 
That department of physical science which has for its objects 
the restoration from disease or injury, the preservation of human 
health and the prolongation of human life, is the queen of 
sciences, and in her royal right and in her grand work accepts 4 
ADDRESS OF 
the services of her handmaids, anatomy, physiology, chemistry, 
and botany, and commands the obedient subtle forces of nature. 
And yet, if Medicine limits its knowledge to that of a mere 
machine, if its ultimate reason rests in the scalpel, retort, test- 
tube, and microscope, the whole of man’s nature is not compre- 
hended. Will, understanding, reason, conscience, are as surely 
a part of the human being as muscle and bone, nerve and ves- 
sel, liver and lung, brain and heart. Knowledge of the intel- 
lectual, of the emotive, and of the moral nature of man, of 
their laws and manifestations, is just as essential to the thor- 
oughly furnished physician as any knowledge of the merely 
material organism. 
With the marvellous advance made during recent years in 
some of the physical sciences, the light of their grand discov- 
eries blazing about us, we are well-nigh blinded by the near 
and sudden glory, and some distant objects that we once saw 
distinctly, have altogether faded, or have grown so dim and 
shadowy that in “the strife of aching vision” we scarcely know 
what they are, where they are. Aristophanes, in one of his 
plays, ridiculing some of the philosophy of his day, taught that 
Vortex reigned in the place of Jupiter, and that the three gods 
in whom belief should be reposed were Chaos, the Clouds, and 
the Tongue. Twenty-three centuries had nearly passed and 
Comte found the Jupiter in man; the apotheosis of humanity 
was declared. Twenty-three centuries have passed, and in some 
of the literature of the day, philosophical and scientific, there 
might be found reason to repeat the very jest of the Greek 
poet. 
The heavens here bright with new light; there dark with 
the disappearance of the old. We breathe an atmosphere of 
doubt—at any rate, of anxious inquiry—and sometimes find 
our footsteps tottering and uncertain.1* Nay, sometimes we 
seem wrapped in the thick darkness of conflicting opinions, 
and like Ajax in the long night of strife pray most earnestly 
for the light of day. 
Science,2 says one of its most distinguished American repre- 
sentatives, adopting the teaching of Lord Bacon, is the practical 
interrogation of nature. Let us interrogate medicine, discuss 
* The numerals in the text refer to notes at the end of the Address. THE PRESIDENT. 
5 
some of its philosophical problems, and see if it makes any re- 
sponse to most earnest questionings of the human soul. 
At the very outset of our inquiries is, Why does Medicine 
exist? What reason for it? It is born of human sympathy; 
it springs from the wants of man, and is an evidence of human 
power; it lives because it can live—it has a right to live. 
Montaigne wittily remarked that he rode his horse, not that he 
knew that he had any such right—possibly the horse had a 
right to ride him—but because the horse let him. Doctors, 
however, do not practise physic because the people let them, 
but because the people want them, demand them. Medicine 
comes in response to the cry of human suffering—of man’s 
writhing with pain, or starting back, in instinctive horror, from 
imminent death. 
Pain is the first lesson in the book of evil which most human 
beings, at one time or another of their lives, read in such bitter- 
ness of sorrow. “ The idea of evil is a generalization from the 
perception of pain.”3 
And here we are brought face to face with this problem of 
physical suffering, this mystery of pain. “Pain expresses an 
ultimate fact of human consciousness, a primary experience of 
the human mind, resolvable into nothing more general or more 
fundamental than itself.”4 But why is this fact? 
In reading John Stuart Mill,5 one is almost tempted to be- 
lieve that a worse than Nero is enthroned in nature, and is 
inflicting cruelties upon the human race, with less reason than 
the mistress in Juvenal chastised her slave.6 
Herbert Spencer7 rejects a Supreme Beneficence, because of 
the existence of suffering on the part of man and inferior crea- 
tures. 
Among the reasons for the existence of pain, the most ob- 
vious is that which the word itself signifies. Often, indeed, 
pain is punitive. Tracing the word to its Greek8 derivation, 
we find that it originally meant blood-money, or compensation 
for the killing of a kinsman, while the Latin poena simply ex- 
presses punishment.9 
Undoubtedly, infractions of the laws of health or of virtue 
generally bring punishment, but not always or alone to the 
offender. Sometimes the wave of suffering widens, bearing 
innocent and guilty to a common ruin, or sweeps away only the 
innocent. 6 
ADDRESS OF 
Countless children bear in their bones and written upon their 
faces, the sins, often of their fathers, sometimes of their mothers. 
Many a pure wife walks a via dolorosa, made for her by a licen- 
tious husband. 
Pain is protective. This conservative power makes it one of 
the most efficient guardians of health. 
The diagnostic value of pain is very great. Pain not only 
warns the patient of the approach or the presence of disease, 
but also guides the physician to its recognition and in its treat- 
ment. 
There are moral uses of pain. Pain is a discipline: Jeremy 
Taylor has declared with his characteristic eloquence, “ Softness 
is for slaves and beasts, for minstrels and useless persons, for 
such who cannot ascend higher than the state of a fair ox, or a 
servant entertained for vainer offices ; but the man who designs 
his son for nobler employments, to honors and to triumphs, to 
consular dignities and presidencies of councils, loves to see him 
pale with study, panting with labor, hardened with sufferance, 
or eminent by dangers.” 
An attack of sickness may lead to an entire reformation of 
life. Then, too, what revelations of true nobleness, of all that 
is gentle and beautiful, unselfish and loving, have we witnessed 
on the part of some who were called to endure most painful, 
yea loathsome, yea hopeless disease; and we were ready to 
exclaim— 
“ How sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong.” 
The Prometheus Vinctus is one of the grandest ideals of ancient 
mythology. 
One of the most distinguished of British scientific men, Prof. 
Owen, has admirably10 depicted the beneficial subjective influence 
of suffering. 
So, too, in the sympathy that human suffering evokes, the 
skill, the kindness, the self-sacrifice, and the unwearied, ever- 
watchful attention manifested for its relief, we see beneficial 
results. Take away, for example, those religious orders of women 
whose whole lives are consecrated to the care of the sick, women 
in regard to many a one of whom we might apply the words of 
Tennyson— 
“ Her eyes are homes of silent prayer, 
Her loves in higher love endure”— THE PRESIDENT. 
7 
and one of the brightest pages of human history is blotted out. 
Thus, too, of all other noble, self-sacrificing remedial agencies 
for the sick. 
What divine beauty of life, making sunshine in a shady place, 
is manifested by wife or mother, sister or daughter, when the 
home is entered by disease. There is no gloom of suffering too 
dark for woman’s smile not to lessen, no depth of distress too 
profound for woman’s sympathy and helpful hand not to reach. 
Mr. Mill thinks it quite a natural question, Whether so com- 
plicated a machine as the human body could not have been 
made to last longer, and not get so easily out of order? Refer- 
ence will be made to the first part of the question hereafter, and 
the answer that most physicians would make to the second part 
would be, that considering the needless wear and tear, and the 
general ill-usage, either from ignorance or neglect, these bodies 
get, it is wonderful they are not oftener out of order. Moreover, 
the experience of the vast majority of human beings testifies 
that so far as physical suffering is concerned, the good greatly 
overbalances the evil; days of health have been much more 
frequent than days of sickness. 
Even with the various utilities of pain, both direct and indi- 
rect, that have been mentioned, we still must refer to it as often 
a mystery; much is revealed, but much else is hidden. The 
different attempted solutions of this remaining mystery we omit, 
only quoting in concluding the topic the eloquent words, in re- 
ference to it, of a distinguished London surgeon, the late Mr. 
Hinton.11 “ A touch might transform it wholly. One flash of 
light from the Unseen, one word spoken by God, might suffice 
to make the dark places bright, and wrap the sorrow-stricken 
heart of man in the wonder of an unutterable glory.” 
And yet one thought more. Mr. Jevons,12 at the close of a 
paragraph referring to the presence of pain, and the difficult 
reconciliation of the fact with the hypothesis of a creator all- 
powerful and all-benevolent, remarks: “We perpetually find 
ourselves in the position of finite minds attempting infinite 
problems, and can we be sure that where we see contradiction an 
infinite intelligence might not discover perfect logical harmony?” 
A similar view is found in these words of one of the most 
gifted poets of the century, Mrs. Browning:— 8 
ADDRESS OF 
“Experience, like a pale musician, holds 
A dulcimer of patience in his hand ; 
Whence harmonies we cannot understand 
Of God’s will in the worlds, the strain unfolds 
In sad, perplexed minors. 
We murmur, 4 Where is any certain tune 
Of measured music in such notes as these ?’ 
But angels leaning from their golden seats 
Are not so minded. Their fine ear hath one 
The issue of completed cadences.” 
Greater than the mystery of life, it has been well said, is the 
mystery of death to child and savage. Nay, it is one of the 
greatest of mysteries unto all. But death is the law of all 
earthly existence. Lord Bacon has said that possibly it is as 
easy to die as to be born; certainly it is as natural ; death is 
the necessary sequence of life—sequence, not consequence, for 
not death, but the continuance, the perpetuation of life is the 
purpose, the end of life. “The individual life is the continua- 
tion of anterior, and the fountain of ulterior lives.” 
Stahl, ill the extraordinary powers with which he invested 
the Anima, making it the ruler and the governor of the body, 
has asked, “Since men can live for a time, why not always?” 
While medicine has done much, and will do more to prolong 
the average of human life, the perpetuation of the individual 
existence is as vain a hope as increasing the physical develop- 
ment to that of the fabled Titans. 
Storms on sea and on land, war, famine, pestilence, earth- 
quakes, fire and flood, and the various so-called accidents on 
ship and on shore, have hurried millions to untimely graves. 
Even if none of these cut short human life, diseases in numerous 
forms—coming to us from our ancestry, coming from without 
or developed from within, coming at every stage of life—bear 
to the great majority the accursed shears of Atropos, so that 
few live to reach the goal of old age “ weary, wayworn, and 
broken with the storms of life.” Fontenelle, dying at ninety- 
nine years, when asked what he experienced, replied, simply the 
ditficulty of existing. 
To those who have thus had their days prolonged, death is 
inevitable from changes in the organism, degeneration of tissue 
rendering the performance of life’s functions impossible. 
It were a grievous thing if old men did not die, says Dr. 
Maudsley, for in that sad case the world’s movement onward to THE PRESIDENT. 
9 
where it is going would be very sluggish if it were not actually- 
arrested. So, too, human longevity would violate that propor- 
tion established between the different stages of life in all the 
mammalia, or by the prolongation of the earlier stages in man 
would bring increased cares, casualties and liabilities to disease 
and death. It is not difficult, as Dr. Symonds has stated, to 
discover m the limitation of our existence its fitness to our con- 
stitution, and to the universal frame of things. 
Life is sufficient for all its purposes if well employed, was the 
just observation of Dr. Johnson, “and what follower of medi- 
cine can forget that the immortal sage of Cos, by the example 
which he afforded in his well-spent life, disarmed his own 
antithesis of its woeful point,” o Pios Ppazv; r; 8e axvri 
But what is this man thus made subject to disease and death, 
man whose Misereres are the invocation of the physician, and 
whose most grateful Te Deums ascend when the physician’s skill 
has restored health or rescued life? 
If, to the poets,14 “ one impulse from a vernal wood” has an 
important lesson “of moral evil and of good”—and the15 “flower 
in the crannied wall” has the secret of man and of God—how 
much clearer revelation of high truths the proper study of man 
might make to physicians. 
Consider the very commencement of human life in the fecun- 
dated ovum. Behold a cell of an inch in diameter, an ovum 
which neither chemistry nor the microscope can distinguish 
from the common mammalian ovum. And yet, in that human 
ovum there dwell physical potentialities, species, race, family, 
individuality; in that ovum there is the assured promise of all 
organs that, in their harmony and co-ordination, make a perfect 
organism. In every living germ, said the great French physi- 
ologist, Claude Bernard, there is a directing idea which is de- 
veloped and manifested by the organization. One by whom 
some of us were instructed in our student days, the late Dr. 
Samuel Jackson, of the University of Pennsylvania, in16 eloquent 
terms, declared that the ideal plan of the universe, in the minute 
as in the vast, for each individual as for the whole, must have 
preexisted to the creation in the Divine mind. Does not this 
correspond with the teaching of Plato who made the causes of 
things an efficient architect, ideas and matter? But before 
Plato, the voice of one of earth’s most famous kings bowing 
before the throne of the Author of existence, declared, “My 10 
ADDRESS OF 
substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, 
and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine 
eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in thy 
book all my members were written, which, in continuance, were 
fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” 
The facts of heredity are equally inexplicable, without the 
recognition of “ a casual incarnation in the germ,” of a direct- 
ing idea making itself manifest through matter. Physical and 
chemical forces, molecular play of organic matter cannot ex- 
plain the transmission of physical, intellectual, and moral quali- 
ties from parent to child ; they cannot explain the slumbering, 
it may be through one or more generations, of these distinctive 
qualities, to reappear in subsequent ones. They are dumb before 
what has been termed the heredity of influence.17 
It is remarkable, too, in the study of heredity18 that moral 
qualities are transmitted with more certainty than intellectual. 
Pathological heredity presents facts of the greatest interest. 
Thus we lind disease transmitted from one or the other parent 
to the offspring, and this disease may show itself in the child 
before it does in the father or the mother. In illustration, a 
daughter dies of cancer, and subsequently the mother dies of 
cancer affecting the same or another organ. Or, again: the 
malady may date back to a grandparent, a father or mother 
giving to children that of which he or she presented not the 
slightest manifestation during a long life. 
Then, too, one of the most surprising facts is pointed out by 
Prof. Chauffard, that of all the maladies which proceed from 
immediate progenitors, or having affected anterior generations, 
may be transmitted by a second generation, those which are the 
most certain of continuance, the most inevitable, are not those 
involving structural changes, not cancer or tubercle for example, 
but the neuroses, such as hysteria and epilepsy, diseases that 
present no appreciable organic alteration. What can chemistry 
say before such facts, and do they not testify that the most ma- 
terial element is lost in these transmissions, the more the direct- 
ing and final idea prevails ? 
I will not wait to speak of the evolution of the various parts 
of the organism—of the swift and perfect formation of a brain 
where no thought can yet dwell—of the eye constructed where 
there is no light—of the ear. where there is no sound, and of 
lungs where pulmonary respiration is impossible; all these and THE PRESIDENT. 
11 
more marvels of Ingenious and harmonious construction accom- 
plished in a few months by the power of a single cell and from 
a single fluid. . I speak not of the wonderful accommodation 
and adaptation on the part of the maternal organism for its high 
office—adaptation and accommodation so wonderful, indeed, 
that the19 greatest of living obstetricians has spoken of them as 
a miracle. 
Nor shall I speak of the transition to the external world, save 
to remind you that one of our own guild, one who, though dead 
for more than a century, is never mentioned without profound 
respect by both physicians and philosophers, Dr. David Hartley,20 
presents from this transition an ingenious argument for our im- 
mortality, the conclusion of the argument being that our birth 
was even intended to intimate to us a future life as well as to 
introduce us to the present. 
Nor is it necessary for our present purpose to wander in the 
shades of speculation as to when, where, and how man origin- 
ated. It matters not just now as to whether his was a special 
creation, or whether he is a descendant through uncounted mil- 
lions of years of ascidian ancestry; whether the beginnings of 
life on our globe were from a single germ, from few or many 
germs, and whether those germs were placed here directly by a 
divine hand, or dropped from some star in its swift flight. Nay, 
even whether matter in the far-distant morning of the earth 
had “ the promise and potency of every form and quality of life,” 
an abiogenesis then possible of which no shadow of manifesta- 
tion is seen to-day. No difference as to man’s origin, lowly or 
lofty, remote or near, but consider man as he now is, “ the heir 
of all the ages,” and what is his nature ? 
The general belief of mankind is that this nature is dual, and 
that belief is expressed by the terms body and mind. “ The 
distinction between them is so obvious that it is recognized in 
every language; and the knowledge of it, therefore, precedes 
speculation, and is anterior to all science and philosophy ; for 
language is the expression and record of the primitive observa- 
tion and unprejudiced common sense of mankind.”21 In its gene- 
ral acceptance it has the same evidence as Cicero22 gives for a law 
of nature. 
A distinguished French member23 of the profession refers to 
“ the duality of man’s nature so universally admitted since the 
school of Plato, so dogmatically consecrated by the fathers of 12 
ADDRESS OF 
the church under the title of homo duplex, and so judiciously 
expressed in our day by the spiritualist school under the double 
denominations of the physiological and psychological man.” He 
proceeds to state that this belief is anterior to all social institu- 
tions, to all legislation; that it is naturally and constantly in 
the universal consciousness of peoples; and that human duality 
is not only a moral fact, but a physiological law, and in con- 
formity with logical law. 
The assertion of human duality includes two propositions:— 
First, man has a physical organization ; and second, associated 
with this physical organization is mind; mind and body are 
man, at least the only man we now know. 
Let us first consider man as a material organism. lie is born, 
grows, attains his acme of development and physical vigor, de- 
clines, decays, dies. Have physical forces their periods of youth, 
of maturity, and of old age? Has inorganic matter any corre- 
sponding periods? During his life, as in its very beginning,24 a 
creative power is constantly manifested. By a chemistry more 
subtle than inorganic nature exhibits, this power lifts lifeless 
matter to life, creates the living from the dead. If the chemist 
in his laboratory has produced certain materials contained in 
inorganic matter, such as taurine and urea, they are in the body 
products of alteration, of decomposition, ready to be returned 
to the inorganic world; he has never made, he never can make 
liver cells, brain cells, blood globules. I do not believe, there- 
fore, the phenomena of living beings can all be referred to phy- 
sico-chemical laws, but we must, with Dr. Beale,25 “accept the 
idea of vital power as being super-physical,” and with that idea 
its correlate, a living Creator of such power. 
Such a Creator as Beale refers to is very different from the 
God-atom which Buchner declares, “ the atom, or the smallest 
indivisible and fundamental part of matter, is the God to whom 
all existence, the lowest and the highest, is indebted for its 
being.” But really more familiar names than that of Buchner 
are identified with almost as strange an hypothesis.26 Prof. 
Chauffard, referring to the suggested “evolution of living pro- 
toplasm from not-living matter,” and the subsequent transfor- 
mations of this protoplasm into all the forms of life our earth 
presents, as “ impossibilities,” exclaims: “And it is in the name 
of these impossibilities that a science which claims to be alto- 
gether experimental and positive, wishes to impose a complete 13 
THE PRESIDENT. 
genesis of organized beings, and excludes from this genesis all 
directing and final idea.” 
Of the perfections of the human body and its various organs, 
of the eye for example, so wonderful in construction and adap- 
tation that the greatest of England’s natural philosophers, Sir 
Isaac ETewton, asked, “Did not He who made the eye know the 
laws of optics ?” I shall not now speak. To believe that stones, 
responsive to the lyre of Amphion, took their places in symme- 
trical order and formed the walls of hundred-gated Thebes, or 
that the accidental association of letters constructed the Iliad, 
would be trifling trials to ordinary faith in comparison with 
believing that this human body, fearfully and wonderfully made, 
is not the work of intelligent design.27 
O <_3 
I pass now to the consideration of the second proposition, to 
wit, the complete conception of man includes mind. Many 
years ago one of the most eminent of Scotch metaphysicians, the 
late Sir William Hamilton, said: “Should physiology ever 
succeed in reducing the facts of intelligence to the phenomena 
of matter, philosophy would be subverted in the subversion of 
its three great objects—God, free will, and immortality.” 
Has physiology reduced the facts of intelligence to the phe- 
nomena of matter? Certain utterances would seem to indicate 
that some answer this question atfirmatively, and they believe 
the “soul is but the sum of the brain functions, and psychology 
but a chapter of physiology.” “The brain secretes thought as 
the liver does bile.” (Cabanis.) “—The view entertained by the 
best cerebral physiologists is, that the mind is a force developed 
by the action of the brain.” (Hammond.) “Thought is a mo- 
tion of matter.” (Moleschott.) 
Hext we ascend to higher authorities, whose utterances are 
not quite so positive: “All states of consciousness in us are im- 
mediately caused by molecular changes of the brain substance.” 
(Huxley.) “ Subjective and objective faces of the same fact.” 
(Herbert Spencer.) And then the “undivided twins” of Pro- 
fessor Bain, “ mental and physical proceed together.” 
“The late Mr. Lewes argued that since feeling, or sensibility, 
is an invariable accompaniment of the action of nervous centres, 
it is more philosophical to regard the psychical and physical 
events as two parts of one reality, and consequently to view 
feeling as a co-efficient, and not, with Professor Huxley, as a 
collateral result of nervous process.”28 14 
ADDRESS OF 
Again, we learn from Professor Huxley : “ In itself it is of 
little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter in 
terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in terms of matter; 
matter may be regarded as a form of thought; thought may be 
regarded as a property of matter.”29 
Dr. Holmes wittily remarks that Professor Huxley gives bio- 
plasm all that it can bear; from the quotations that I have 
made, some of us will think that matter is given a good deal 
more than it can bear. 
Every one who has speculated upon the relations of the ma- 
terial to the immaterial, of body to mind, must be conscious of 
the great difficulties which beset the subject, of the clouds that 
surround him at almost every step. The results obtained, the 
conclusions reached by 8 >me whose opinions I have quoted, 
men whose abilities and fame are so great, surely do not com- 
mend themselves to most minds as ultimate truths. Nay, I 
think some of them are open to criticism, if not unequivocal 
rejection. Very wisely has one of the ablest philosophic 
thinkers30 of the century observed: “Every one knows that in 
this dark and cloudy region, which intervenes between the two 
territories of mind and matter, we meet with some of the pro- 
foundest mysteries of our nature. Here we fall in with sleep, 
dotage, somnambulism, insanity—topics on which little or no 
light has been thrown. In the mists and clouds which forever 
brood over this dark gulf, a thousand errors have been lurking. 
In this border territory there is a continual warfare going on.” 
I do not propose any extended remarks upon this topic, but 
shall present some difficulties which are obvious in all schemes 
of mental physiology, or efforts to interpret the phenomena of 
mind by physical facts. 
Consciousness lies at31 the foundation of all knowledge, and 
physiology ought to give us a definite location for this if it be 
a pure brain function. Now turn to Carpenter, Huxley, and 
Ferrier, and after reading their statements as to the matter, 
take a later writer, Hermann, and see how that which we sup- 
posed was knowledge is swept away. Really, we fear conscious- 
ness may yet be set wandering through the body in search of a 
home, very much as the soul32 has:— 
“It is also impossible to assign any individual spot in the 
cerebrum as the seat of consciousness, since cases are known, in 
connection with almost every part, in which, when that part THE PRESIDENT. 
15 
was destroyed or wanting, consciousness still remained. Con- 
sciousness ma}7 still remain after the destruction of one hemi- 
sphere.” 
There are strong arguments to sustain the view that memory, 
termed by Hamilton the conservative faculty, depends upon 
material impressions made upon the brain. It is an old theory, 
but has been presented by Hr. Holmes,33 of course in a most 
striking and beautiful garb. Without criticising this material 
view from a philosophic standpoint, it is enough to repeat the 
question, Who reads the record? Behind these brain-pages 
crowded with impressions, there must be an intelligence to read 
them, or else they are mute and meaningless as a volume of 
Milton or of Shakspeare would be to a tree or rock. 
An argument for the materiality of the mind has been based 
upon the fact that an increased quantity of certain materials, 
urea is the most notable, is eliminated consequent upon mental 
exertion. Professor Chauffard states that a man in repose passes 
in twenty-four hours twenty grams .46 of urea; if in energetic 
muscular exertion twenty-two grams .60 in the same length of 
time, and finally after intellectual exertion twenty-three grams 
.88. That is, a great orator, a great poet or painter expends in 
the exercise of his mind a trifle over one gram more than the 
hod-carrier or stevedore in the exercise of his muscles. An im- 
mortal poem, or painting, or one of Professor Huxley’s grand 
addresses to be had at the rate of fifteen grains of urea for 
every twenty-four hours 1 
In regard to the two-faced unity, the Siamese twins, objective 
and subjective faces of the same fact explaining the relations 
of mind and body, of the material and spiritual, to my think- 
ing two things are brought together that are essentially dis- 
parate and incomparable. Movement and thought cannot be 
combined in a self-consistent scheme. 
When the phenomena of spirit are to be expressed in terms 
of matter or the reverse, we shall not always have plain sailing. 
I turn to Haller, that illustrious man of our profession whose 
fame is for all ages, and I read in his work on Physiology: 
“For that the nature of the mind is different from that of the 
body, appears from numberless observations, more especially 
from those abstract ideas and affections of the mind which have 
no correspondence with the organs of sense, for what is the 
color of pride, or what the magnitude of envy ?” And Fenelon 16 
ADDRESS OP 
lias said, ask any sensible person if liis thought is round or 
square, white or yellow, warm or cold, divisible into six or 
twelve pieces, and he will laugh at you. 
I think it will be difficult to persuade physicians who have 
directed their attention to what are called mental influences in 
the causation, in the aggravation and in the cure of disease, 
that there is not something in the human body superior to that 
body. Jolly34 has given a most interesting lecture upon the 
“ Will considered as a Moral Power and as a Therapeutic 
Means,” in which he adduces cases of muscular paralysis, of 
convulsive cough, stammering, hysteria, chorea, nystagmus, and 
one of traumatic tetanus—the last being under the care of 
Cruveilhier—cases, many of which had been previously treated 
unsuccessfully by all the ordinary therapeutic means, and which 
were cured by the exercise of the will. 
Sir Benjamin Brodie35 narrates a striking instance of the sense 
of duty triumphing over pain. Every physician can recall 
similar instances occurring under his own observation. 
I have not time to continue the discussion of this topic, and 
yet let me quote the utterances of two eminent men in our pro- 
fession—the one still living, the other deceased a few years ago. 
The late Sir Henry Holland observed: “I will merely remark, 
in correction of a common misapprehension, that the further 
we proceed in unravelling the brain as a collection of nervous 
fibres, condensed into separate organs for the establishment of 
their several functions and relations, the more in fact do we de- 
tach the mind itself from all material organization.” Gueneau 
de Mussy exclaims: “Combine together oxygen, carbon, hydro- 
gen, nitrogen, phosphorus, as much as you will, and you can 
make nothing which will be the representative or equivalent of 
intellectual or moral acts.”36 
We may weigh the brain, count its billions of cells, measure 
the rate of sensory impressions or motor impulses, localize cere- 
bral functions, analyze cerebral matter; but after all possible 
observations, calculations, and analyses, it will always be incon- 
ceivable37 that a displacement of molecules, or an undulation, or 
a vibration, or any mechanical or chemical phenomenon what- 
ever, may be, not the condition of thought, but thought itself. 
The identity of corporeal and of spiritual phenomena is an 
affirmation which ought to be consigned to the list of impossible 
hypotheses.38 THE PRESIDENT. 
17 
Is not the scientist of to-day who explains mental phe- 
nomena by mechanical or chemical changes, simply following 
in the footsteps of the old chemists, who found an explanation 
for all the mysteries of nature, and even of religion, in salt, 
sulphur, and mercury ? 
Physical science cannot express nor explain the mental 
and moral qualities of man: we cannot conceive that con- 
science, reason, joy and sorrow, are mere modifications of gray 
cerebral matter. The common sense of mankind will forever 
revolt against attributing to such modifications the profound 
thoughts of Plato, the winged words of Homer, the virtue of 
Socrates, the eloquence of Demosthenes, the philanthropy of 
Howard, the inspirations of a Mozart, the sublime conceptions 
of a Paphael, the faith of the martyr, and the love of the 
mother. 
The problem of Teleology39 commends itself especially to our 
profession. Even though human beings are but conscious 
automata, as there is a design, a purpose, and end for which 
every machine is constructed, so there must be a design in our 
bodies. The doctrine of automatism is, according to the late 
Mr. Lewes, the reflex theory legitimately carried out. That 
theory is used by Hermann40 to explain volition, and indeed by 
others has been made to support the physical basis of mind. 
To the medical man an argument against the extension given 
this theory is found in pathology, but its presentation would 
divert me from my present purpose. It is enough to repeat 
that human automatism does not materially invalidate tele- 
ology. 
Neither is the doctrine of final causes destroyed if it gives 
no explication of all facts and events. Non-recognition of this 
truth, it seems to me, is an error into which one of our most 
eminent scientific men has recently fallen.41 “Just so far,” says 
Professor Newcomb, “ as the theologian can reconcile the mo- 
tions of the planet or the burning of the theatre with final 
causes, or with a directing hand, so far is he at liberty to recon- 
cile the whole course of nature in the same way.” The asser- 
tion has been previously made that “ the theory of final cause 
assumes that things have been arranged with a visible pur- 
pose.”42 But when wTe remember, as taught by Mr. Jevons, that 
there is probably no science entirely free from empirical and 18 
ADDRESS OF 
unexplained facts; and when he further states that logic ap- 
proaches most nearly this position, but is not free from such 
facts, the teleologist may easily justify his position in cases of 
unexplained facts. Because a certain person reasonably skilled 
in arithmetic cannot solve two selected arithmetical problems, 
no one would be justified in concluding there is no such science 
as arithmetic. Furthermore,43 those who maintain that there 
are final causes in. nature are not thereby bound to maintain 
that there are only such, and that they must always and every- 
where prevail over efficient causes. 
Teleology is not set aside by the development theory. This 
theory, finding such strong support in embryology and in palae- 
ontology, and accepted, probably by three-fourths of scientific 
men, although they cannot admit the adequacy44 of the causes 
of evolution advanced by its chief expounder, Mr. Darwin, is 
not antagonistic to the doctrine of final causes, “ and even on 
the contrary naturally appeals to it, or else the theory of evolu- 
tion is only the theory of chance under a more learned name ” 
The truth is, if you deny intelligent design in nature you 
cannot predicate it of man’s works. If the blind stream of 
physical causation explains the vast and varied phenomena of 
earth’s countless organisms, animal and vegetal, then the acts 
and works of men are similarly produced. Honor no more the 
skilful engineer or architect ; no more crown the hero with 
laurels, or gratefully praise the poet, the painter, the philan- 
thropist. All splendid human achievements and noble works 
are merely reflex phenomena. So, too, burn your scaffolds and 
tear down your penitentiaries. Individuals are as irresponsible 
for their actions as the falling stone, the rushing river, the sun- 
shine or the storm.45 
Hor is teleology to be rejected because of its abuses. Voltaire, 
who presents an argument46 for the doctrine worth any man’s 
reading, refers to some of these abuses,47 and while condemning 
them, defines a final cause as one that acts at all times and in 
all places. He further declares that one must close his eyes and 
understanding who pretends there is no design in nature; and 
if there be a design there must be an an intelligent cause; God 
is.48 
Time is wanting to present any of the striking evidences of 
design offered by the human49 body, offered in its anatomy, in 
its physiology and its pathology. Nor is it necessary, for every THE PRESIDENT. 
19 
physician knows them. Mr. Darwin, whose long devotion to 
scientific pursuits is so well known, and whose various and ex- 
tensive observations of nature are so admirable, in referring to 
certain plants, observes that “ the contrivances and adaptations 
transcend in an incomparable degree the contrivances and adap- 
tations which the most fertile imagination of the most imagina- 
tive man could suggest, with unlimited time at his disposal.” 
How much more, then, will the physician in the study of physi- 
cal man find admirable contrivances and adaptations. And 
thus we are inevitably led to see the force of Voltaire’s argu- 
ment. 
We read in Hippocrates that Medicine is full of reverence for 
the gods. And again, after most eloquently referring to the 
changes in nature, alternations of seasons, of day and night, the 
actions and experiences of individuals, the Father of Medicine 
declares that everything is accomplished by reason of divine 
necessity, avayxriv fl*^*’* 
Once more the voice of Galen, meditating upon the structure 
and functions of the body, is heard: “ Compono hie profecto 
Canticum in Creatoris nostri laudem.” Again Sir Thomas 
Browne speaks: “In our study of anatomy there is a mass of 
mysterious philosophy, and such as reduced the very heathens 
to divinity.” And then from the same century, prolific of great 
men, comes the vision of one not so famous in literature as Sir 
Thomas, but immortal in science—one contemporary with Lord 
Bacon, and Ins physician, and who doubtless knew all the great 
philosopher’s censures of the impertinence of final causes in 
physics, while holding those causes were properly “inquired in 
metaphysique.” The vision is of William Harvey, small of 
stature, with his keen, black eyes, his olive complexion, and 
his long hair, changed in old age from the color of the raven’s 
winsr to that of snow. Listen to his words in defence of his 
c_> 
study of the lower animals: “If you will enter with Heraclitus 
in Aristotle into a workhouse (for so I call it), for inspection of 
viler creatures, come hither, for the immortal gods are here 
likewise ; and the great and Almighty Father is sometimes 
most conspicuous in the least and most inconsiderable crea- 
tures.” And again, as he studies embryology in the hatching 
of a chicken: “ There inheres in some way or other, in every 
efficient cause a ratio finis (a final cause), and by this the efficient 
co-operation with Providence is moved.” 20 
ADDRESS OF 
And what shall be said of his great discovery? It was made 
under the inspiration of teleology, and using his reason aright. 
Harvey, says Professor Ackland,50 believing in God, believed 
that there is purpose as well as harmony in the material world. 
He acted in this faith and, using his reason aright, he made a 
mighty discovery, which has influenced every biological student 
to this day, and will influence them to the end of time. 
David Hartley tells us that “final causes,51 i. e., natural good, 
are the best clew for guiding the invention in all attempts to 
explain the ceconomy of animals.” 
Sir Charles Bell, rising from his famous researches in the ner- 
vous system, as if with oath-like solemnity, lifts up the Human 
Hand an ever-present, everlasting testimony unto man of Divine 
Power, Wisdom, and Goodness.52 
Could array of grander witnesses and of more conclusive testi- 
mony be adduced to prove medical faith in the doctrine of final 
causes? Are there occasionally those who deny this faith or 
doubt this creed? That distinguished surgeon of Strasburg, 
Sedillot, has said : “ Some53 physicians, carried away by convic- 
tions more impassioned than wise, have found it possible, at rare 
intervals and in moments of forgetfulness, to doubt the existence 
of one Supreme Cause, but their vain eftorts at revolt against 
the universal conscience remain without echo and without in- 
fluence upon science.” 
54Sir Henry Holland and Dr. Prichard have each borne un- 
equivocal testimony to their belief in the existence of the 
Supreme Being. 
Professor Tyndall exclaims: Whence come we ; whither go 
we ? The question dies without an answer—without an echo— 
upon the infinite shores of the unknown. How the utterance 
of this great scientific teacher, utterance bearing most mournful 
truth, so far as science is concerned, seems almost like an echo 
through more than twelve centuries of the words of the aged 
Ealdorman to the King of Northumbria : “ So seems the life of 
man, 0 King, as a sparrow’s flight through the hall where you 
are sitting at meat in the wintertide, with the warm fire lighted 
on the hearth, but the icy rain-storm without. The sparrow 
flies in at one door, and tarries for a moment in the light and 
heat of the hearth-fire, and then, flying forth from the other, 
vanishes into the wintry darkness whence it came. So tarries THE PRESIDENT. 
21 
for a moment the life of man in our sight; but what is before 
it, what after it, we know not.” Human experience and human 
science are thus at one ; known not and unknown are their final 
utterances. 
But, on the other hand, is there from the study of man no 
light, though it be faint as the first tremblings of dawn upon 
black, mist hung waves? We have found in such study that 
man has a physical nature, in the commencement and continu- 
ance of which an idea dominated ; that it was a continual crea- 
tion ; that there was an organic unity, and the constant mani 
festation of a power superior to physico-chemical forces. 
Dwelling in this body is 55mind, “in its perfection one and 
indivisible, in the image of its Creator,”56 an immaterial, supra- 
natural element. Man57 is the only one of all created beings to 
whom has been given the power of perceiving that he perceives, 
of thinking that he thinks, of knowing that he knows. There 
animates this machine a self-conscious and immortal principle, 
declares Professor Draper; and the eloquent words of Sir Thomas 
Browne will perpetually recur to the thoughtful mind : “There 
surely is a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the 
elements, and owes no homage to the sun.” Answering to the 
vital unity of the body, we find a spiritual unity in the imma- 
terial nature—physiology and psychology have corresponding 
truths. 
Let this body be “blown about the desert dust, or sealed 
within the iron hills,” it does not follow that the love and the 
hope, the aspiration and the desire, the knowledge, the will, the 
reason and the conscience—those spiritual elements which defy 
weights and measures, chemical analysis, and the most powerful 
objectives — should perish58 with the material organization. 
Certain instincts were given for the preservation of the body, 
and they rarely deceive or betray their trust. So there are 
spiritual instincts which, in their up-springing, would seem to 
promise, as to the ancients the bursting pomegranate symbolized, 
immortality. 
Add to these considerations those which flow from our belief 
in a Supreme Power, wise and benevolent, as suggested by a 
study of final causes, and there is something more than an echo 
from the shores of the unknown. We cannot, we cannot yet 
believe that man has 
“rolled the psalm to wintry skies, 
And built him fruitless fanes of prayer.” 22 
ADDRESS OF 
Since we last met together, less than a year ago, hundreds of 
our profession have fallen victims to the pestilence that walked 
in darkness and wasted at noonday in so many of the cities of 
the South. Some of those who thus fell in their efforts to save 
their fellow beings from swift death, were in the meridian of 
their powers and professional success. Others were in the fair 
morning, with the promise of long years and the hope of high 
honors. Can believe that these heroic men live59 only in the 
memory of their friends? From all the martyr-memories of 
noble men and women in every age, who counted not their lives 
dear unto them when principle was at stake, or in sublime self- 
abnegation sacrificed those lives for kindred, for country, for 
humanity, there comes a solemn protest against denial of life 
beyond the grave. 
Accepting gratefully all the facts of science, let us beware of 
rejecting60 everything that may not be capable of mathematical 
demonstration, and compelling our assent by absolute necessity. 
There may be truths more important, but less open ; whisper- 
ings of hope that are sure promises of fruition. The poet tells 
of the sea-shell when shaken and its polished lips applied to 
your attentive ear, 
“And it remembers its august abodes, 
And murmurs as the ocean murmured there.” 
So if we listen, we may hear the deep but distant murmur of 
the immortal sea as it beats against the shores of time, ready to 
bear upon its mighty bosom the children of men from life to life, 
and the law of Continuity be found as true of the spiritual as it 
is of the material world. 
Happy for us, though, unlike the Thracians, we hold no fes- 
tivities over the dead, if with something of the glad dream of 
hope, if not in the glory of triumph, we can adopt the familiar 
words of our great American poet:— 
“There is no death ! what seems so is transition ; 
This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian, 
Whose portal we call death.” THE PRESIDENT. 
23 
NOTES. 
1. Page 92, Line 32. 
Stirling, in one of his annotations (translation of Schwegler), remarks that 
the heresy of the German critics is, perhaps, quite as active in England at 
present as the positivism of Comte ; and further utters the warning exclama- 
tion, “Truly, we are on the brink of the most fearful crisis in the world’s 
history.” 
2. Page 92, Line 86. 
Dr. Draper. 
3. Page 93, Line 18. 
Baring-Gould. 
4. Page 93, Line 23. 
Alexander Bain. 
5. Page 93, Line 24. 
See liis essay upon “Nature.” Take the following extract as a part of the 
terrible indictment: “In the clumsy provision which she has made for that 
perpetual renewal of animal life, rendered necessary by the prompt termination 
she puts to it in every individual instance, no human being ever comes into the 
world, but another human being is literally stretched on the rack for hours or 
days, not unfrequently issuing in death.” 
Physicians know that labor in the vast majority of cases of healthy women, 
rarely lasts more than a few hours; and that in almost every instance the 
suffering attendant upon it may be greatly mitigated, sometimes entirely abol- 
ished, by the judicious use of an anaesthetic. They know, too, that the mor- 
tality, especially the maternal mortality, is very small, and no intelligent ob- 
stetrician would say that the mechanism of parturition is clumsy. 
6. Page 93, Line 27. 
Sic volo, sic jubeo ; stat pro ratione voluntas. 
“With the conception of two antagonistic powers, which severally work 
good and evil in the wrnrld, the facts are congruous enough. But with the 
conception of a Supreme Beneficence, this gratuitous infliction of misery on 
man, in common with all other terrestrial animals capable of feeling, is abso- 
lutely incompatible.”—Biology. If permitted to criticize the language of 
such a master as Herbert Spencer, I would ask, How can there be misery to 
animals unless they are capable of feeling ? 
7. Page 93, Line 28. 24 
ADDRESS OF 
8. Page 93, Line 33. 
Wedgewood’s “Dictionary of English Etymology.” 
9. Page 93, Line 36. 
Dean Trench, “Study of Words,” remarks that some “would fain have 
us to believe that pain is only a subordinate kind of pleasure, or, at most, a 
sort of a needful hedge and guardian of pleasure. But a deeper feeling in the 
universal heart of man bears quite another explanation of the existence of pain 
in the present economy of the world, namely, that it is the correlative of sin, 
that it is punishment; and to this the word pain, so clearly connected with 
‘poena,’ bears witness. Pain is punishment, for so the word and so the con- 
science of every one that is suffering declares.” 
10. Page 94, Line 30. 
“ Patience, endurance, faith in the end designed, a nature purified as by fire, 
accepting the trial with thanksgiving,—these be facts visible amongst the highest 
recognizable phenomena offered to our ponderings here below. 
“ Whoso has looked upon one so proved slowly consuming, with the inevita- 
ble grave in view, may have beheld, as it were, the face of an angel, have found 
the fitting expression for the visible radiance from that suffering body in Paul’s 
temple of the holy one, have received conviction that in such sufferer was hap- 
piness ineffable, such as no mundane prosperity could yield, transcending any 
felt by an emperor in the highest pride of place, the welcomer of kings and 
kaisers honoring him by visits ; for with them a pale figure, with breast battered, 
blackened and imbrued, rises more tragically than Banquo’s ghost to mar the 
climax. 
“Some who may have lost a loved one by cancer, will know that I state a 
fact. We may accept it and go no further in thought; the evidence of the re- 
sult being, however, as plain as the trial.” (Extract from “Answer to Mr. 
Lewes’s Argument of Infirmity in his Review of the Reign of Law.” By Prof. 
Richard Owen. Fraser's Magazine, October, 1867.) 
11. Page 95, Line 27. 
“The Mystery of Pain.” D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1872. 
12. Page 95, Line 31. 
Principles of Science. 
18. Page 97, Line 18. 
Had time permitted, it was my intention to include in this discussion a 
fuller reference to the miseries and to the mortality of man, briefly alluding in 
such connection to that philosophy with which the names of Schopenhauer and 
Hartmann are identified, Pessimism, of which Caro speaks* as une sorte de mala- 
die intellectuelle. It was my wish to show that such philosophy—the last cry 
of insane and utter despair—has no adequate support in professional experience : 
doctors, though probably not optimists, are still very far from being pessimists. 
* Le Pessimisme au XXXe Siecle. Paris, 1878. 25 
THE PRESIDENT. 
Even from human misery, conclusions very opposite to those of Schopen- 
hauer and Hartmann have been drawn. Buhver has said the discontent of the 
mortal proves the immortal. And Pascal, thus all these miseries prove man’s 
greatness. They are the miseries of a great lord, of a dethroned king. 
When man, either from mental or physical pain, or from weariness of living, 
deliberately destroys his life, it has been interpreted as an indication of his su- 
periority to animal creation. Bossuet has remarked that to determine delibe- 
rately, with clear knowledge and reason to die, notwithstanding all the dispo- 
sition of the body opposes the design, marks a principle superior to the body ; 
and among animals man is the only one having this principle. 
It was my hope also to refer to the remarkable discourse* of Dr. B. F. Cot- 
ting in which its distinguished author ably maintains the thesis, “ Disease is a 
Part of the Plan of Creation, one of the myriad expressions of Divine thought.” 
In this discourse Dr. Cotting brings out, with great distinctness, the fact that 
disease and death were in the earth long before the advent of man, and there- 
fore the moral explanation of these conditions, an explanation founded upon a 
single human transgression, fails. It is doubtful whether many theologians of 
the present day regard this explanation as valid. I quote from an eloquent 
discourse by Canon Farrar the following passages : “ Ages before the first man, 
the primeval monsters had torn each other in their slime. For long ages the 
world had been a theatre of conflict and carnage, of wounds and mutilation ; 
and naturalists tell us that no armory can compete for variety, for beauty, for 
polish, for sharpness, for strength, for barbed effectiveness, with the lethal 
weapons of the fossil world.” . . . “ Yet this death is but the least dreaded 
part of the other, that second, that spiritual death which God meant in that 
earliest warning, ‘ In the day that thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die.’ ” 
14. Page 97, Line 18. 
Wordsworth. 
15. Page 97, Line 19. 
Tennyson. 
16. Page 97, Line 84. 
“If a piece of mechanism, an instrument, or any contrivance is met with, 
though the construction be unknown, no one doubts that it is the work of an 
intelligent being ; and further, that it must have existed as an ideal form in an 
intelligent mind before it could have acquired an actual form. 
“ If we would seek to inquire deeper into these phenomena, and the law that 
governs their production, it would be a vain effort. We have reached the limit 
of human research ; we touch the veil that hides the infinite from the finite, not 
to be raised by human hands. 
“There is but one conclusion that can be adopted. The ideal plan of the 
universe, in the minute as in the vast, for each individual as for the whole, must 
have preexisted to the creation in the divine mind. The creative idea of the 
ever-present, all pervading presence of God continues to reproduce and to main- 
tain in existence all created forms, after their original types, by the instrumen- 
tality of the forces which God has spread throughout nature.” (Dr. Samuel 
Jackson, Introductory Address, University of Pennsylvania, 1844.) 
* Annual Discourse before the Massachusetts Medical Society, May 31, 1865. 26 
ADDRESS OF 
17. Page 98, Line 14. 
A widow marries, and bears children presenting a striking resemblance to 
her first husband long since dead. 
18. Page 98, Line 15. 
See article on Heredity by Aug. Voisin, Nouveau Dictionnaire de Medecine 
et de Chirurgie Pratiques. To the important statement in the text may be added 
that which Rush makes as to the moral powers being the last to fail in old age. 
19. Page 99, Line 6. 
Dr. Robert Barnes. 
20. Page 99, Line 11. 
“ The pain which attends the child during its birth or passage into the 
world, the separation and death of the placenta, by which the child received 
its nourishment in utero, with other circumstances, resemble what happens at 
death. Since, therefore, the child, by reason of its birth, enters upon a new 
scene, has new senses, and by degrees, intellectual powers of perception con- 
ferred upon it, why may not something analogous to this happen at death ? Our 
ignorance of the manner in which this is to be effected is certainly no presump- 
tion against it, as all who are aware of the great ignorance of man will readily 
allow. Could any being of equal understanding with man, but ignorant of 
what happens at birth, judge beforehand that birth was an introduction to a 
new life, unless he was previously informed of the suitableness of the bodily 
organs to the external world? Would he not rather conclude that the child 
must immediately expire upon so great a change, upon wanting so many things 
necessary to its existence and being exposed to so many hazards and impres- 
sions apparently unsuitable.” Then follows the conclusion given in the text. 
(“ Observations on Man,” part second, page 386 ; first printed in 1749.) 
21. Page 99, Line 36. 
Prof. Bowren, Princeton Review, March, 1878. 
22. Page 99, Line 37. 
“Omni in re consensio omnium gentium lex naturae putanda est. Opinio- 
num enim commenta delet dies, naturae judicia confirmat.” (M. Tullius Cicero, 
Quaestiones Tuscalanae, lib. I, c. 13.) 
23. Page 99, Line 39. 
Jolly. 
“ Biology cannot be reduced to the pure mechanism of matter until it is 
shown that germs or seeds are simple aggregates, and that the phenomena of 
the formation of organisms, as well as those of generation, are of the same 
order as the phenomena of affinity and of cohesion.” (Ernest Neville, Revue 
Philosophique, March, 1879.) 
24. Page 100, Line 17. THE PRESIDENT. 
27 
25. Page 100, Line 27. 
“Now, he who accepts the idea of the existence of vital power as being 
super-physical, will almost necessarily be led to believe that the creator of such 
power has attributes infinitely transcending those which any supposed creator 
of the inorganic only would need. The creator of the living must be ever 
living, and must possess power to form, guide, govern and vary, which would 
be useless to one who could create non living matter and its forces. In fact, if 
we admit that there are living things, still it is not possible to resist accepting 
the idea of the existence and constant superintendence of an all-powerful influ- 
ence in nature, such as has been recognized in every age, and by nearly all 
people regarded as supernatural and distinguished as divine.” (Beale.) 
“ La Yie: Etudes et Problemes de Biologie Generale. ” Chautfard. Paris, 1878. 
26. Page 100, Line 35. 
27. Page 101, Line 13. 
I need not say that these illustrations are used by Fenelon—Be VExistence 
de Dieu. One of them, indeed, Fenelon had adapted from Cicero. 
Sully’s “Pessimism,” page 466, where a criticism is made of the monism 
of Mr. Lewes. 
28. Page 101, Line 41. 
29. Page 102, Line 5. 
This statement in reference to thought as a property of matter, is quite in 
contrast with the observation of Pascal: “La matiere est dans une incapacity 
naturelle invincible de penser.” 
30. Page 102, Line 19. 
President McCosh. 
“ Whoso has mastered the elements of philosophy knows that the attributes 
of unquestionable certainty appertain only to the existence of a state of con- 
sciousness so long as it exists; all other beliefs are mere probabilities of a 
higher or lower order.” (Professor Huxley.) 
31. Page 102, Line 31. 
32. Page 102, Line 38. 
The centre assigned the soul, according to Pythagoras, Plato, Cicero, and 
Galen, was the encephalon ; Erasistratus, the meninges ; Heropliilus, the great 
ventricle; Servetus, the aqueduct of Sylvius; Arantius, the third ventricle ; 
Des Cartes, the pineal gland ; Soemmering, the liquid contained in the encepha- 
lon ; others, the origin of the spinal cord, the corpus callosum, the corpora 
striata, etc. Aristotle placed it in the heart, while Empedocles had it circula- 
ting in the blood. (Tissot—La Vie dans VHomme.) 28 
ADDRESS OP 
33. Page 103, Line 7. 
Mechanism in Thought and Morals. 
34. Page 104, Line 8. 
Revue Medicale, 1875. 
35. Page 104, Line 16. 
“A barrister of my acquaintance, who afterward rose to the highest honors 
of his profession, was subject to a neuralgic disease, which so affected him that 
it often happened when he had to advocate an important cause that he entered 
the court in a state of most intense bodily suffering. But his sense of duty 
was greater than his sense of pain, and the latter was almost forgotten as long 
as the necessity for exertion lasted.” (Brodie’s “ Psychological Inquiries.”) 
I might add to these testimonies that of Sir Benjamin Brodie, as follows: 
“ It is to me wholly inconceivable that any exaltation of the known properties 
of matter should produce the conscious indivisible monad which I feel myself 
to be When the materialist argues that we know nothing of mind except as 
being dependent on material organisation, I turn his argument against himself, 
and say that the existence of my own mind is the only thing of which I have 
any positive and actual knowledge. I cannot help believing in an external 
world. Still the hypothesis of its non-existence implies no contradiction ; 
whereas it is as much a contradiction to doubt the existence of my own mind as 
it would be to doubt that two and two are equal to four.” 
36. Page 104, Line 31. 
37. Page 104, Line 36. 
Naville, op. cit. 
“ The moral and intellectual faculties of man belong to a region for which 
physical science has no language and no explanation.” (Edinburgh Review.) 
38. Page 104, Line 41. 
39. Page 105, Line 16. 
Mr. Mill, in his “System of Logic,” remarks: “The word 1 teleology’is 
also, but inconveniently and improperly, employed by some writers as a name 
for the attempt to explain the phenomena of the universe from final causes.” 
This criticism seems to me incorrect, for the use condemned corresponds to 
the etymology of the word, and is consecrated both by time and the judgment 
of many of the most eminent philosophical writers. 
40. Page 105, Line 22. 
“Unless one is willing to admit the inadmissible assumption that processes 
which are not essentially movements of material particles, and the converse, 
we are compelled to surmise the existence of a connection between the nerve 
excitations connected with sensation and will, which is analogous to reflex 
actions.” (“Physiology,” by L. Hermann, translated by Mr. Gamgee. Lon- 
don, 1878.) THE PRESIDENT. 
29 
North American Review, May, 1879. 
41. Page 105, Line 32. 
42. Page 105, Line 39. 
The purpose is not always visible, but is it generally visible ? Neither mis- 
conception nor misinterpretation disproves purpose. 
43. Page 106, Line 7. 
Janet, “Final Causes.” 
Murphy, “ Habit and Intelligence,” second edition, London, 1879, page 375, 
observes: “We thus conclude that the time needed for the evolution of the 
highest forms of life out of the lowest would probably require, on the Dar- 
winian theory, more than three thousand millions of years, while the entire 
duration of geological time cannot have been more than one-eighth of this.” 
44. Page 106, Line 14. 
The late Professor Herbert, in his work upon “Modern Realism,” London, 
1879, has ably presented the necessity for recognizing intelligence and pur- 
pose in nature, or else denying them to the works of man. 
45. Page 106, Line 30. 
46. Page 106, Line 32. 
“ Dictionnaire Philosopliique.” 
Ridiculing these, Voltaire suggests that the nose was made to wear spec- 
tacles, the feet shoes. Coleridge once said: “ You abuse snuff. Perhaps it is 
the final cause of the human nose.” Matthew Arnold, in one of his essays, in 
like manner remarks, the donkey exists that the invalid Christian may have 
milk. But the abuses thus ridiculed may have a counterpart, thus, as a witty 
Frenchman has put it: “I have the toothache ; therefore, there is no God.” 
I find in Dr. Maudsley’s “Physiology of the Mind,” page 147, the follow- 
ing : “M. Bert has made many extremely interesting experiments on grafting 
parts cut from the body of one animal on to that of another. For example, he 
cut off the paw of one rat and grafted it in the flank of another rat; it took root 
there, and went through its normal growth, beginning to dwindle after a time. 
Where was the design of its going through its regular development there ? Or 
what, in the temporary adoption and nutrition of this useless member, was 
the final purpose of the so-called intelligent vital principle of the rat on which 
the graft was made?” Readers of Vulpian’s “Lectures, Phys. du Syst. Ner- 
veux,” need not be told that this objection is a repetition of the thought, almost 
of the words, of Vulpian, and that, as Jowet, referring to the statements of 
Vulpian, has said, it is directed against the doctrine of the vital principle, rather 
than against final causes. Suppose the tail or paw of one rat transplanted to 
another rat does grow in its abnormal situation, grow uselessly and injuriously, 
must God make exceptions to a general law in order to guard against the cun- 
ning experiments of ingenious physiologists and the adroit arguments of not 
less ingenious logicians ? 
47. Page 106, Line 33. 30 
ADDRESS OF 
48. Page 106, Line 38. 
I introduce the statements of Voltaire, partly to correct the notion that tele- 
ology belongs exclusively to theologians. It is a question for all intelligent 
persons, and a question of philosophy, not solely of theology. The scientist, 
because he does not use the doctrine in his methods, has therefore no right 
either to deny its reality, or to consign it to the sole custody of theologians. 
49. Page 106, Line 40. 
Even Mr. Mill remarks : “ The human body, for example, is one of the most 
striking instances of artful and ingenious contrivances which nature offers.” 
50. Page 108, Line 3. 
The Harveian Oration, 1865. 
51. Page 108, Line 8. 
Op. cit. 
52. Page 108, Line 14. 
The following passage from Sydenham is of interest in connection with 
this topic. I quote from page 76 of the translation of his work published in 
1711: “ In the last Place, I will add only this short Note, lest perchance any 
one should wrest my Opinion by a sinister Interpretation, or at least, not thor- 
oughly understand it, viz. That in the preceding Discourse I often use the Word 
Nature, and attribute various Effects to her, as if I would represent under this 
Title some one thing subsisting of it self, and spread every where through the 
whole Machine of the World, which being endued with Reason, governs all 
Bodies, such a Thing as some of the Philosophers seemed to think was the 
Soul of the World. But as I do not affect novelty of Things, so neither of 
Words ; and therefore I use in these Pages the ancient Word indeed, but in a 
sense, unless I am deceiv’d, both sober, and not only understood, but also used 
by the best Men ; for as often as I mention Nature, I mean a certain complex 
of natural Causes, which are govern’d by the best Counsel in performing their 
Operations, and accomplishing their Effects, tho’ they are without Reason, and 
destitute of all Skill, viz. supreme Deity, by whose Power all Things are pro- 
duced, hath so disposed all Things by his infinite Wisdom, that they betake 
themselves to their appointed Functions, doing nothing that is vain, but that 
which is best and fittest for the whole Fabrick of Things, and their own private 
Nature, and so are moved like Engines, not by their own Skill, but by that of 
the Artificer.” 
The illustrious Bo§rliaave might be referred to as also believing in a Divine 
Order, yea in a Divine Providence. In his seventieth year, when in his last 
illness, which was both very painful and protracted, he wrote : “ Patienter ex- 
pectans Dei jussa, quibus resigno data; quae sola amo, et honoro unice.” 
53. Page 108, Line 19. 
Gazette Medicate de Strasbourg, 1855. THE PRESIDENT. 
31 
54. Page 108, Line 25. 
Sir Henry says : “The ‘single’ fact and ‘great truth’ is that of one Almighty 
cause, a conclusion to which we are irresistibly carried forward from every 
side ; surmounting in this inference those intermediate gradations of existence 
and power, -which are too dimly seen to be rightly apprehended by the faculties 
of man in his present state of being.” 
“ The whole universe displays the most striking proofs of the existence and 
operations of intellect or mind, in a state separate from organization, and under 
conditions which preclude all reference to organization. There is, therefore, at 
least one being or substance of that nature which we call mind separate from 
organized body, not only somewhere, but everywhere.” (See introduction to 
Prichard on “Nervous Diseases.”) 
55. Page 109, Line 12. 
The following is an extract from the famous Hunterian oration of the late 
Mr. Lawrence:— 
“ Where shall we find proof of the mind’s independence of the bodily struc- 
ture ? Of that mind which, like the corporeal frame, is infantile in the child, 
manly in the adult, sick and debilitated in disease, frenzied or melancholy in 
the madman, enfeebled in the decline of life, and annihilated by death.” 
In the last clause Mr. Lawrence assumed one of the points at issue between 
the materialist and the spiritualist. But it is impossible to prove the assump- 
tion, viz., the annihilation of the mind at death. 
Futliermore, the spiritualist would answer that the immateriality of the mind 
is not necessarily disproved by its present dependence upon the bodily structure. 
It is quite rational that the child’s mind, like the child’s muscle, should be that 
of a child. The difference is vast between the locomotive of to-day and the 
locomotive first invented. Is the difference between the mind of the adult and 
that of the child any greater ? The complete formation and the accurate work- 
ing of all its parts, is essential in every machine, complex or simple, in order 
that human intelligence may obtain from it its best results. And so of the in- 
strument which the mind uses. Not even a Mozart could evoke music from 
untuned cords. Let the brain be disordered, 
“ Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.” 
Very frequently do we find the mind even in an enfeebled body, revealing 
unwonted vigor. Many famous names in art and in literature, in poetry and 
in philosophy, have been those whose merely physical powers were inferior, 
and who bore a heavy cross of sickness and of suffering. Coleridge in his 
Table-Talk remarks : “ Illness never in the smallest degree affects my intellect- 
ual powers. I can think with all my ordinary vigor in the midst of pain ; 
. . . .” Extreme old age does not always reveal itself in failing intellect. 
Sometimes in the very article of death, sublimer thoughts are uttered than ever 
were conceived or expressed in the full vigor of life. 
Quite in contrast with the teaching of Mr. Lawrence is the following from Prof. 
Jaumes, Montpellier Medicale, I860 : “Thought, sentiment, will, do not imply 
any notion of number, of extent, of motion, and can, ought to, survive the body. 
. . . . A spirit is more than a creation of God, it is an emanation from God 
himself; it participates, doubtless in an inferior degree, but it participates in 
the Divine nature ; it is free, it loves, it knows itself and forms some conception 
of the Infinite Being from whom it came, and to whom it ought to return.” 32 
ADDRESS OF 
56. Page 109, Line 13. 
Ruskin. 
57. Page 109, Line 14. 
Flourens. 
58. Page 109, Line 30. 
Even Cabanis has said: “It is impossible for us to affirm that the dissolu- 
tion of these organs involves that of this moral system.” 
Moreover, if the argument seems imperfectly presented, and I know that it 
is, let me request the doubter to read the page in Coleridge’s Literary Remains, 
entitled Death and the Grounds of Belief in a Future State. 
59. Page 110, Line 8. 
Even where no glory of sacrifice transforms the death-bed into an altar, our 
hearts would have us believe that he who breathes his last is only departing, 
not dying save as to his physical existence. Very truly has George MacDonald 
said, speaking for the moment from a purely materialistic side, Paul Faber, 
Surgeon : “ What man can learn to look upon the dying as so much matter 
about to be rekneaded and remodelled into a fresh mass of feverous joys, futile 
aspirations, and stinging chagrins, without a self-contempt from which there is 
no shelter but the poor hope that we may be a little better than we appear to 
ourselves.” 
A few years ago the celebrated Pasteur, distributing prizes at the college he 
had been educated, in the course of his address, uttered these memorable words: 
“ C’est insulter au coeur de l’homme que de dire avec le materialiste, la mort, 
c’est le neant!” 
60. Page 110, Line 16. 
If the position here taken seems to any one unsound, let me remind the ob- 
jector that it is similar to that of many eminent philosophical thinkers ; espe- 
cially it is the same as that of Professor Acland, in the Harveian Oration* pre- 
viously referred to. 
“ If physical science can put its fingers on nothing but a series of sequences, 
it merely proves that science is not philosophy, and is altogether a subordinate 
affair.” (Prof. Blackie.) Indeed, in regarding the limitations of human 
knowledge, made by some writers upon science at the present day, one is re- 
minded of the advice of the Geometer in Voltaire’s VUomme aux 40 ecus: “I 
advise you to doubt everything, except that the three angles of a triangle are 
equal to two right angles, or that two triangles having the same base and the 
same height are equal, or similar propositions ; for example, two and two make 
four.” This Geometer 'would have been a high priest in the temple of Agnos- 
ticism. 
I cannot forbear quoting, in concluding this note, the following from an 
Oxford lecture delivered last year by Mr. Ruskin : “Of the dignity of physical 
* Page 73. . THE PRESIDENT. 
33 
science, and of thediappiness of those who are devoted for the healing and the 
help of mankind, I never have meant to utter, and I do not think I have uttered 
one irreverent word. But against the curiosity of science, leading us to call 
virtually nothing gained but what is new discovery, and to despise every use of 
our knowledge in its acquisition ; of the insolence of science, in claiming for 
itself a separate function of that human mind which, in its perfection, is one 
and indivisible in the image of its Creator, and of the perversion of science, in 
hoping to discover by the analysis of death what can only be discovered by the 
worship of life—of these I have spoken, not only with sorrow, but with a fear 
which every day I perceive to be more surely grounded, that such labor, in 
effacing from within you the sense of the presence of God in the garden of the 
earth, may awaken within you the prevailing echo of the first voice of its 
destroyer, 4 Ye shall all be as gods.’ ”