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lined and stultified by simply keeping a poor woman standing in her cottage while you sit or entering ber house , even at her own request , while she is at meals . She may decline to sit ; she may beg you to come in : all the more reason for refusing utterly to ' obey her , because it shows that that very inward gulf between you and her still exists in her mind which it is the object of your visit to bridge over . If you know her to-be in trouble , touch on that trouble as you would with a lady . Woman ' s heart is alike in all ranks , and the deepest sorrow is the one of which she speaks the last and least . We should not like any one—no , not an angel from Heaven , to come into our houses without knocking at the door , and say , " I hear you are very ill off , I will lend yott a hundred pounds . I think you are very careless of money . I will take your accounts into my own hands ; " and still less again , — " Your son is a very bad , profligate , disgraceful fellow , who is not fit to be mentioned ; I intend to take him out of your hands and reform him myself . " Neither do the poor like such unceremonious mercy , such utitender tenderness , benevolence at horseplay , mistaking kicks for caresses . They do not like it , they will not respond to it , save in parishes which have been demoralised by indiscriminate benevolence , and where the last remaining virtues of the poor saving-self-help and independence have been exchanged ( as I have too often seen them exchanged ) for organised begging and hypocrisy . TVill the day ever come when these precepts will be unnecessary , and the need of visiting will be but in a better and more equal order of things ? It is far distant at any rate . In the meantime , the benevolence of these men not only relieves misery , but opens the hearts and minds of all to progress of the best and surest kind . We heartily congratulate Mr . Maurice on the associates he has gathered round him : their names are the deserved crown of bis nobleUfe .
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Tlie Postdiluvian History , from the Flood to the Call of Abraham , as set forth tn the eafly portions of tke Book of Genesis , critically examined and explained . ~~ By tbe Rev . E . D . Rendell , of Preston : author of " Antidrluvian History , " " Peculiarities of the Bible , " &c , &c . James S . Hodson . T'KB writer of this book , as a learned divine and a candid man , finds it impossible to accept the History of Genesis in its literal sense . " Modern inquiry has removed old interpretations . " He therefore has recourse to the symbolical method , and treats the narrative a 3 the allegorical history of" the Church . He justifies this by-a general theory that all primitive religion was esoteric , and that all primitive religious -writings were figurative 2 ? his character he considers to have been shared by those documents anterior to Moses , from which the Mosaic history was derived . He assumes these documents not to have been of a mythical character , but revelations " probably produced ia Palestine or its neighbourhood . " But what sort of revelation is that -which , being allegorical , contains no hint of its allegorical nature , and is accepted in its literal sense by those to whom it is delivered , and by the Church ever since ? Our confidence in Mr . Rendell ' s theory , we confess , is not strengthened by the result of its application . According to him , Cain and Abel are faith and charity , and tbe murder of Abel by Cain is the triumph of faith over charity ; the Ark rising above the Flood ia the Church rising above temptation ; the want of means for ventilation ia 'the Ark denotes that spiritual influences are supplied not from without , but from within ; the raven is a bad , and the dove a good principle of the intellect ; the rainbow is a type of the variegation of truth ; burnt-offerings are not burnt-offerings , but loved duties ; Noah ' s drunkenness is spiritual intoxication , and his nakeduess moral shame ; Nimrod is dominion in the Church ; the bricks used instead of stones by the builders of Babel , are falsehoods adopted instead of truth , the burnipg them hard is the burning love of those falsehoods , the inflammatory nature of which is farther designated by the vituminous slime , &c , &c . If this is the right way of interpreting the Book of Genesis , we can only say that the author ¦ or authors of that book must have been skilled above all men in the art of using language to conceal their thoughts .
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LIFE AND MIND . 27 » e Principles of Psychology . By Herbert Spencer , Author of ' Social Statistics . " Longman and Co . ( Third Article . ) In a previous article we sketched the rise of the Physiological Method in Psychology . Beginning with the moat general and rudimentary conception of the relation between organ and function , fundamentally opposed to the ¦ old Psychology , by considering Thought as a property of Matter , and not as the property of some unknown , unknowable Spirit , this Method passed from hypothesis to hypothesis , becoming more and more definite and precise in its localization of functions , till not only the whole human organism , but the whole animal kingdom was taken into consideration . In Mr . Spencer ' s work , this Method culminates . He makes Psychology one of the great divisions of Biology . Bodily life and mental life are two divisions of Life in general , being related to each other as species of which Xife is the genus ; or , to vary it with our old formula , Life is everywhere psychial , but only speoialfy intelligent . What a stride from the fcrlef « nd timid references to savages and children , which were considered heretical in Locke , to this bold identification of Thought with Infe 1 Mr . Spencer says : — Though wo commonly regard mental and bodily Ufa as distinot , it needs only to naoend somowhat above the ordinary point of view , to see that they are but sub-divifiions of Hfo In general ; nnd that no lino of demarcation can bo drawn between thorn , otherwise than arbitrarily . Doubtless , to thoao who persist , after tho popular fashion , in contemplating only the oxtremo forma of the two , this oasortion will appear aa incredible as tho assertion that a troo arises by imperceptible chnngfls out of a Bced , would appear to one who had Been none of tho intermediate stages . But in tho absence of prejudice , an examination of tho successive links , will produco conviction 3 a tho ono case as in tho other . It ia not moro certain that from tho simple reilox « otlon by which tho infant sucks , up to tho elaborate reasonings of tho adult man , tho progress Is by daily infinitesimal stops , than It is certain that botwoon tho automatic actions of tho lowost croaturos , nnd tho highest conscious notions of tho liumnn race , a series of actions , displayed by tho various tribes of tho anlmul kingdom , may bo so placed , as to rendor it imposslblo . to say of any one stop In tho scries—Horo intelligence l > eglns . If , from tho advanced man of science , pursuing his inquiries with a full understanding of tho ratiooluativo and inductive processes ho employe , wo descend to tho man of ordinary education , who reasons well and comprehensively , but without knowing how ; If , going a grade lower , ¦ we analyze tho thinkings of tho villager , whose highest gonorulizationa are but little -wider than those which local ovonta afford duta
for ; if , again , we suit to the inferior human Taces , wh ' o ' cannot be induced to think , who cannot take in ideas of any complexity , and whose conceptions of number scarcely transc 3 nd those of the dog ; if we take next the higlier quadrumana , hosts of whose actions are quite as rational as those of school-boys , and whose language , however unintelligible to us , is manifestly more or Ies 3 intelligible to each other ; if , from these , we proceed to domesticated animals , whose power of reasoning is conceded eren by tliO 3 e under theological bias , with the qualification that it is special and not generala qualification which equalh' holds between the different grades of human reasoning ; if , from the most sagacious " quadrupeds , we descend to the less and less sagacious ones , noting as we pass how gradual is the transition to those which exhibit no power of modifying their actions to suit special conditions , and which so prove themselves to be guided by what we call instinct ; if , from observing the operation of the higher instincts ,- in which a complicated combination of motions is produced by a complicated combination of stimuli , we go down , to the successively lower ones , in which the applied stimuli ' and the resulting motions are less and less complex ; if , presentlj-, we find ourselves merging into what is technically known as reflex action , in which a single motion follows a single stimulus ; if , from the creatures in which this implies the irri - tation of a nerve and the contraction of a muscle , we descend yet lover , to creatures devoid of nervous and muscular systems , and discover that in these tbe irritability and the contractility are exhibited by " the same tissue , which tissue also fulfils the functions of assimilation , secretion , respiration , and reproduction ; and if , finally , we perceive that each of the phases of intelligence here instanced , shades oft" into the adjacent ones by modifications too numerous to specify , too minute to describe , we shall in some measure realize the fact , that no definite separation can be effected between the phenomena of mind and those of vitality in general . The third and fourth parts of hi 3 book demonstrate in detail this proposition . He first inquires into the various definitions of Life ( bodily life ) given by Physiologists , and finally settles on one which , so long as we consider Life in its dynamical aspect , seems unexceptionable , namely : The continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations . Or it may be more popularly worded thus : Life consists in ( he continuous adjustment of an organism to external stimuli . But we only make this change here for the reader ' s sake . Mr , Spencer ' s terms best suit his purposes , and keep the ' various parts of his book in obvious connection . With this definition as a guide , Be conducts us through the ascending series of vital complexities . He first-shows how life itself , consisting m the correspondence of the internal with the external , vai'ies in complexity with the varying degrees of correspondence established ; and then how the lowest forms of life are those in which the correspondences are direct and homogeneous , because they are limited to a simple environment ; how an advance is obtained by a slight heterogeneity in the correspondence , and so on till we reach forms of life ia which sensations first arise . Here we greatly desire a fuller treatment than Mr . Spencer has given . Tbe cardinal question which Psychology has to settle with respect to Physiology is this : Can Sensibility be rightly considered as , a new element—a new fact introduced ; one which has no analogue ; one which ia different in kind as well as in degree , from all the other elements of life ; or is it merely one form of that irritability which we all admit to be a generaL property of vital tissue ? There is no hesitation in Mr . Spencei- ' s answer . Ho says : " There is every reason to believe that the susceptibilities to ' odours , colours , and sounds , arise by insensible degrees out of that primordial irritability with which the animal tissue in its lowest ormsf is uniformly , or almost uniformly , endowed . " - Indeed , the wliole tendency of his book is in this direction . He has not , however , as we conceive , carried the principle far enough , nor expressed with sufficient distinctness its bearing upon consciousness . But . we cannot open so wide a question here . Enough that he recognises the fact that the Senses have a basis in those primordial properties of organic matter which distinguish it from inorganic . ? ' It is a conclusion to which many facts point that sensibility , of all kinds , tactual and other , takes its rise out of those fundamental processes of assimilation and oxidation—integration and disintegration—in which life , in its primitive form , consists . " He says further : — In the lowest members of the animal kingdom , whose bodies are so little organized ns to be almost , if not quite , homogeneous , the whole mass of tissue performs , in its inaporfect Avay , all the vital functions . Every part exhibits more or less of that contractility which in higher creatures is confined to tho muscles ; that irritability winch they show only in the nerves ; that reproductive power which with thorn is localized ; that absorption of oxygen which only their lungs perform ; that power to assimilate which is eventually confined to tho stomach ; that excretory action afterwards divided among the lungs , skin , and ludneys . Whore , as in tlie lowest creatures of all , the body consists of nothing moro than n structureless , homogeneous , substance ; nnd where , as in somewhat higher and larger creatures , the body is made up of little else tlnin nn aggregation of like colls , there is an almost complete community of functions throughout ; and only as fast as the structure comes to be specialized , does each part loose tho power of subserving other processes than its habituul one . It is not quite accurate to say the function of assimilation is eventually confined to tho stomach ; assimilation is a general property of tissue ; all tissues assimilate , i . e ., grow , transmute the blood-plasma into tissues . The stomach prepares the food for this assimilation . So also with the absorption of oxygen . Every tissue takes up oxygen nnd lets out carbonic acid . Even muscle , cut from tho body and deprived of its blood , lifts been seen , so long as its irritability remained , to perform this absorption of oxygon and exhalation of carbonic acid—which is tho fundamental fact , the end and aim of respiration . The function of the lungs , like that of tho stomach , is purely preparatory ; it ia a function winch the growing complexity of tho organism renders necessary . o Mr . Spencer , whilo describing the " physiological division of labour , insists on the fact , that even when ono function is specialised in a particular organ , traces of it still remain in the others ; and lie ndds tlmf , bearing in mind tho fact that heterogeneity of function arises out of an original homogeneity , tho traces of which nro never entirely lost , we shall bo prepared to find a certain parallelism of method and results in ino evolution of sensory and motor actions . Horo , ^ too , wo miiy look lor a certain community of function throughout tho ' wholo organism—a P " session by tho whole organism of those susceptibilities which are ultimatel y located and developod in oyes , noao , and the rest . The primordial ti ^ fne * which by ono process of differentiation and integration gives origin to tno internal and external systems—tho \ isceral and ncrvo-uausctilur organs-
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3 , O& 2 . ¦ THE LEADEIL [ Ko . 2 ^ 3 , SATtrkPAjr , _ I
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 3, 1855, page 1062, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2113/page/18/
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