experiments, without, however, as many will think, a sufficient fear of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals before his eyes: "Insert," he says, "in the back of a rat the end of its own tail, having first pared it raw with a bistoury; it will heal and take root. As soon as the graft is complete, amputate the tail about onethird of an inch from the old root. The rat's tail will henceforward grow the reverse way and out of the back." And again he says: "If you amputate the paw of a young rat, partially skin it, and introduce it through the skin of another rat's side, it will engraft, take nutriment, grow, and acquire all the ordinary parts of its structure, as if it had remained with its former proprietor." M. Taine, in his recent work, "D' l'Intelligence," has endeavoured to apply these more curious than humane experiments to illustrate the relation between our "physical and moral," or, at least, intellectual nature. If the researches of the Germans have been less curious than the French, they have certainly been more important. It is now nearly a century since Dr. Francis Joseph Gall, a physician of Vienna, when a school-boy, accidentally made the discovery of a connection between certain definite parts of the brain and certain equally definite mental functions. He devoted his life to this study of Cerebral Physiology: others have devoted their lives to the verification of his most important discoveries, so that the physiology of the brain-"the relation between our physical and moral natures"-is not untrodden and unknown ground. Nevertheless, we find Mr. Lecky, after proclaiming the necessity for cerebral organs, declaring that "of their existence we know nothing." It would have been more correct if he had said I-if he had only spoken for himselfalthough no doubt our leading physiologists appear to be still in the dark as to whether the part the brain has to play is that of a pot of pomatum-its function, according to the barber, being to "percolate through the skull and nourish the roots of the hair". '-or to perform the more noble function of the organ of the mind. It is in the latter capacity we recognise it, in its plurality of organs, and we consider the study of the brain and nervous centres, as connected with thought and feeling, quite as important as M. Paul Bert's investigations into "Vitality". -not that we wish to disparage his experiments. Professor Huxley has shown us even the commercial value of Redi's early researches into "spontaneous generation"; and no one, therefore, can say what may come out of M. Bert's transposition of rats' tails from the place where nature intended them, to the middle of the back. The science of the present day, however, would seem to be much more taken up with such speculations, and as to whether our forefathers were covered with hair, had pointed ears and a tail, or whether we began with civilisation, or have ended with it, than with the discoveries of a man who is able to tell us what man is, not what he was countless ages ago. Gall has been forgotten, and the present generation is much less interested in the head than the tail ; nevertheless I am bound to say, notwithstanding the scorn and contempt to which such an assertion will probably subject me, that thirty-six years' close and continued observation have convinced me that the greater part of what has been laid down by Gall, Spurzheim, and Combe is true, and may be verified by any ordinarily well-qualified person who will follow their method of investigation. Of the additions which Mr. H. G. Atkinson has made to their discoveries (for which see "Man's Nature and Development"), as they have been obtained by another method, I have had less opportunity for observation. I can only say I should think them highly probable, as they seem very necessary parts of our mental system. There may be a great deal more to know, and what we do know may be more perfectly known; but upon the facts already discovered has been based a Mental Science, more clear and practical 'than any with which the world has yet been acquainted, and which is admitted to be "the only psychological system that as yet counts any considerable number of adherents." All our faculties both of mind and body have been first tried in the lower animals; they have been transmitted to us through every form of organisation; they have appeared singly, separately, or together, until they have taken their last and most perfect development in man. The study of the animal world, therefore, both in its physiology and its psychology, is most important, and it has been too long neglected. We have accepted the love and service of our fellow-creatures of the brute creation, and then meanly denied our relationship. It is true the Common Spellingbook declares the Pig to be man's best friend, because he can eat him every bit, from the tip of his nose to the end of his curly tail; but even in this rather low view of friendship-friendship being confined generally to eating with, not of, your friend-it is a question whether man has performed his part. We have ignored all mental affinity with our humble friends, and have suffered, as we deserved to do, from our ignorance of their natures and capacities. We have been studying angels, not animals. In fact, In pride, in reasoning pride our error lies; In our self-complacency we have carried our noses so high that we have overrun the scent, and must try back. We are gods here on earth; let us not therefore from ignorance fail in our duties to the creatures below us. At present even the languages they speak are to us unknown tongues. We are God's creatures; they are ours to sympathise with, to rule, and to make happy. In all that lives we shall find something to admire, something to learn, and often something to love. Dr. Draper, the American physiologist, says: "Nearly all philosophers who have cultivated, in recent times, that branch of knowledge (Metaphysics) have viewed with apprehension the rapid advances of Physiology, from seeing that it would attempt the final solution of problems which have exercised the ingenuity of the last twenty centuries. In this they are not mistaken. Certainly it is desirable that some new method should be introduced, which may give point and precision to whatever metaphysical truths exist, and enable us to distinguish, separate and dismiss what are only vain and empty speculations." Only that knowledge which admits of demonstration will endure and advance. Psychology therefore must be brought within the domain of law, if that also, like the other sciences, is to make any progress. This progress, however, must be slow, as the deepest feelings of our nature, and even common sense, have been enlisted and set in array against its discoveries. If it took a century and a half to reconcile mankind to the Copernican Astronomy, it must be long before it will recognise and accept an ethics founded on the Reign of Law, instead of the present one based on chance, called Freewill. We must be prepared for, and tolerant of, some little diversity of opinion on this subject for some time to come, since even the great Lord Bacon said on this question of the earth's motion, "It is the absurdity of these opinions that has driven men to the diurnal motion of the earth; which I am convinced is most false" (De Augmentis Scientiarum, B. 111); and Alexander von Humboldt in his early youth -and the majority of the world are still very young-wrote a learned essay to refute the notion that the pyramids of Egypt were the productions of nature. Still we may hope that ultimately the "new method" will establish the order of the moral world on a basis as fixed and universal as that of the physical. Why we have no mental and moral science at present is because most people think that they have in their religion a sufficient standard of both, and that all the wants of human nature are included in the Bible; but this idea has long been exploded in Physics, and it must be in Ethics before we can make the same progress in Ethics as we have in Physics. Men agree in Science because it admits of demonstration, but we have no recognised Science of Human Nature. We have no first principles on spiritual subjects: consequently on great moral questions that arise we find our most talented and leading men about equally divided on opposite sides. Talent without principles is rather in the way than not, and interferes with the instincts that would otherwise guide us aright, and Who fastest walks, but walks astray, -Prior. |