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450 The Leader arid Saturday Analyst. [M...
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POPULAR PHYSIOLOGY* MR LEWES'S " Physiol...
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* Tho Physiology of Common X^fe, By Geou...
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Contemporary French Literature.* ^Lontem...
thirty-three millions of individuals bound hand and foot under the most rampant despotism that ever existed , if not the consciousness that amidst the general degradation , the love of pleasure , the passion for speculation , luxury , and sensuality ,, are amply provided for and encouraged on every side ? As long as men will hot think , the autocrat cares very little what else they do , and to stop the faculty of thought , he will make almost any sacrifice , knowing very well that his precarious authority cannot bear investigation . We would not imply , however , that Napoleon III . has made the present situation , and the sentence we have just quoted from Daniel Stern , penned before the coup d'Jtat of 1852 , describes a state of things which was only the natural result of fifty years' unceasing political turmoil . But the Emperor found himself one morning at the head of a nation who , amidst the perplexities about the future , was anxious to reap the full harvest of the present , and be has certainly made the best of his advantages .
It is now a matter of public notoriety that the position assumed by the Roman Catholicclergy in France , since 1848 , hasbeen neithervery dignified nor straightforward . At one time helping to plant " trees of liberty , " at another loudly clamouring for the establishment of the most inquisitorial measures , a strict adherence to the principles of " Vicar- of-Brayism" ( if we may coin this expression ) seems their only guiding-star , their only consistencj \ With such examples as M Veuillot , Dom Criieranger , and the Abbe Gaume before her eyes , no wonder that Daniel Stern should describe the Church as possessing merely " une sagesse de mots , " and as ruling " non assurement sur l ' esprit ou le cceur de la society Francaise , mais ses habitudes . " how truthfullthe
We might quote many more passages proving y authoress of the " Esquisses Morales " has described her own country and her own times , but the subject is too painful , and we prefer concluding by a few extracts more universal in their application , and therefore more likely to arrest the notice of dispassionate readers . Saint Evremond , about two hundred years ago , wrote an essay under the singular title " Que la Devotion est le dernier des Amours ;" Daniel Stem adopting this idea , says : — " La devbtion deB femmes n ' est , le plus souvent , que de la coquetterie avec Dieu . Cela occupe , amuse , et n ' engage point . " We must hope , for friendship's sake , that the following statement of . grievances is riot the result of the writer ' s own experience : —
" JAii longtemps cherche a me reridre-compfce de ce que l ' on entendaifc dans le monde par un ami , efc j ' ai fait cette d 6 couverte : un ami , c ' esfc ua hommequi se croit en toute occasion le droit de vous dire une yerite bfessante , de vous donner un conseil inutile , efc de vous ena ]> runter ypfcre argent 6 ans vous le rendre . " _ We should have felt , we own , positively astonished and grieved had we discovered , before perusing the " JEsquisses Morale ^ " that Daniel Stern was not somewhat of a pessimistr The sourness and haughty sneer of the man who finds fault with everything because his own assertion of superiority is disregarded are quite repugnant to our taste ; but we have still less sympathy for him who " takes 3
matters easy , " and exclaims " Apres .. mpi . le deluge !' On the part of the former there exists yet , at all events , a distinct though erroneous acknowledgment of merit ; whilst , according to the notions of the latter , the world offers nothing , but a dead level of selfishness , corruption , and avarice . By way of summing up , we would earnestly recommend to our ¦~ HFeiaersT % mTeT ^ ter ^ been " got up" by M . Techener in a very attractive manner , and the portrait prefixed to this third edition is one of its most pleasant characteristics .
450 The Leader Arid Saturday Analyst. [M...
450 The Leader arid Saturday Analyst . [ May 12 , 1860 .
Popular Physiology* Mr Lewes's " Physiol...
POPULAR PHYSIOLOGY * MR LEWES'S " Physiology of Common Life , " after coming before the public in separate parts , is now issued in two wellprinted volumes , which will have the effect of exciting a good deal of thought ou physiological subjects , although it is doubtful whether those who aro most competent to discover its merits and defects will devote their attention to it . Popular in form and style , it differs materially from most publications addressed to general renders , by the profuse introduction of polemical topics . The student of physiology would require a much more elaborate treatise to place him in possession of the arguments on both sides , or on all sides , of the recondite subjects that are cursorily discussed , and the man of liberal education , desirous of obtaining a clear insight into the
ground-work of the subject , will find himself ' bewildered by doubts he cannot resolve . From these remarks it will be seen that , while we are ready to concede to Mr . Lewes the credit that he deserves for writing in an entertaining and stimulating way upon subjects about which he has collected a great deal of information , we cannot altogether praise the conception of his book—if , indeed , he formed any distinct plan before he wrote it—or the execution of it , if it has been produced according to the impulse of the moment . The work begins with a dissertation on hunger and thirst , which soon , conducts the reader into the thick of the theories put forward by
LiBBia and others on the nature and classification of food . Mr . Ljeweq very properly objects to the tendency of , Lijejbig ' s speculations to overlook the speciality of physiology , and to attempt to explain vital phenomena by the simple action of chemical laws . Mr . Lewes , however , goes too far in opposition to tlio great German chemist , when he undervalues his diviuion of alimentary substances into nitrogenous , or p lastic , and hydrogenous , or respiratory . It is quite true that no simple formula that we can at present arrive at , will explain the whole group of actions and effects which we have to study when we direct our attention to all that concerns nutrition ,
but it was a great advance to obtain a classification of food that went far to distinguish them according to the effects they were competent to produce . No clear ideas could be obtained by calling sugar and beef " nutritious , " without in anyway indicating the services they were capable of rendering to the human system , and it is a decided gain both to pure science and the practical art of feeding different creatures—the human creature included—when we have arrived at the conclusion that the muscle-producing power of food is distinctly related to its nitrogenous character , although the mere presence of nitrogen does not indicate the fitness of a substance to become food , nor , takeu alone , afford an absolute measure of its
plastic power . Mr . Lewes has done good service in constantly keeping in view the complexity of- vital phenomena , an idea not necessarily associated with obscurity , and which is essential to the formation of a sound hypothesis , and the avoidance of that delusive simplicity which appears to explain what has never been rightly apprehended . He also scatters many delusions that have become popular through the misconceptions of scientific men , as when he shows that life does not suppress chemical or other laws , but offers such combinations as give a direction to the various forces compatible with the functions that a living organism has to perform . confusion
Having left the food question in perhaps rather more , than was necessary , Mr . Lewes treats learnedly of the blood , the circulation , the movements of the heart , and the process of respiration ; after which , he passes to feeling , thinking , and other functions of the nervous system , maintaining all through a ceaseless strife with ordinarily received teachers and their views . He differs entirely from those physiologists who follow Bell , Marshall HalIi , and others , in distinguishing between nerves of sensation and nerves of motion , and decries the whole doctrine of reflex actions . To sustain the theory which he has espoused , he maintains that unless an impi'ession on the sensory nerves excites a sensation in the centre / wo motion whatever , takes place . Such ^ an argument turns very much upon the meaning of the word sensation ,
and the explanations Mr . Lewes offers are far from clear . He thinks it remarkable that physiologists should ascribe sensibility to nerves ,, and then reject what he calls the inevitable consequence , that all nervous centres in action give rise to sensation , and thus furnish elements to the general consciousness . / ' They- have , ' ' he says , " no difficulty in ¦ admitting '' that contraction is the active state of contractility in a muscle , but that sensation should be the -active-state of sensibility-in a nerite -centre does not seem to them so clear . " This language is metaphysical and confusing : the word contraction expresses a fact that the parts of a certain substance have approached closer together , and no elear-Jdeas are ^ ained by describing it as the " active state of the ability to contract , ( contractility ) . " We might as well call it the active state of the .
contractile principle , and so follow the school which Mr . Lewes condemns ^ In the second instance , the words sensation and sensibility would not be used in the collocation Mr . Lewes supposes by anybody who did not adopt his views , nor would they by clear writers beused at all in the position in which he places them . We shall soon see the object of this method of statement , but must first attend to the meaning attached- to " consciousness . " Mr . Lewes says ~^^ cr haTe" -senBation- ^ nd- ^ o--be-rConseious--of ~ -sensationr . is-one and the same thing . To have a sensation and to Jcnoio that we have it , are two things , not one thing . Knowledge cannot exist without consciousness , but consciousness may and often does exist without knowledge . " Not seeing that he is committing the very fault himself , Mr . Lewes continues : " Insensibly writers are led
into the glaring contradictions of unfelt feelings and unconscious consciousness . For example , the chest expands and contracts in respiration , and if we attend to it a peculiar sensation is perceived accompanying the process ; but if attention be elsewhere directed , the sensation is not perceived . Now we know , that in both cases a sensory stimulus , playing on the respiratory centre , was reflected as a motor impulse on the muscles , and we are , therefore , forced to adopt one of two alternatives—either the sensation was evoked in . both cases , although perceived only in the first ; or attention is itself the creator of the sensation . " Surely there ia here some confusion of thought . A sensation which ia not felt is no sensation at all . If the mind cannot " perceive ' - the sensation , what proof is there of its existence , or rather how enn it exist at all ? We
should not have chosen the word perceive , but it is clear in what sense it is used by Todd and Bowman , from whom Mr . Lewes derived it . Mr . J . S . Mili says , " a feeling nnd a state of consciousness are , in tlie language of philosophy , equivalent expressions ; everything is a feeling of which the mina is conscious . " Mr . Lewes appears to imagine a kind of sensation which is not folt , and of which the mind is not conscious . His alternative is logically vicious . What ho calls " attention " may bo necessary to the existence of a sensation without being the ex'cator of it . To bite beef with teeth , it is necessary that thero should bo tooth , but
we do not think that Mr . Lewes , in support of hi * favourite hypothesis , would , therefore , assume the teeth to be the crcnf ors of the beef . Attention is a voluntary directing of the mind or of an organ to a particular object . By this process we can feel an impression too small to be felt when it is allowed to be overwhelmed by stronger impressions ; or we may , within certain limits , become insensible to one or more ranges of sensation , by concentrating our power of consciousness in another direction . Some impressions aro , however , too strong to permit our ignoring them , ana we are not obliged to direct any attention to onr finger to know that it is burnt by fire . Unless disease hap disturbed the ordinary action of our nervous system we cannot fail to bo impressed with the sensation such an
* Tho Physiology Of Common X^Fe, By Geou...
* Tho Physiology of Common X ^ fe , By Geougb Henry , Lewes . Black - wood ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 12, 1860, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_12051860/page/14/
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