higher. In things mechanical, for example, cause is but a tertium quid of identity, uniting, as so far identical, two things otherwise different. Thus motion is the uniting identity between the billiard ball, A, here, and the different billiard ball, B, there. But there is no such mechanical expedient on the higher stage, life. And I know not that it would be well possible for any man to find a better or more striking example in proof than that which we owe to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, some dozen pages on in his Zoonomia. There, referring to vital phenomena in a mechanical regard, we find it said (and it could not possibly be more neatly said), that animal motions "have no mechanical proportion to their cause; the goad of a spur on the skin of a horse shall induce him to move a load of hay!" This, on the part of Erasmus, is a declaration of his belief in the existence of mind, quite as much as in the existence of matter, and, indeed, in the predominance of mind.1 Many of those "untenable hypotheses" of his look material enough; but still he never deserts his allegiance to mind. Even in plants the chief elements to him are psychical. In fact, if not already animals, they are at least animally endowed. They are possessed, he thinks, even of a brain. They alternately sleep and wake; they secrete, digest, have muscles; they smell, taste, touch; they generate; they distinguish heat, moisture, light; they must repeat their perceptions, waking or dreaming, and so have ideas of the external world and of their own existence ! Charles Darwin at least shares in his grandfather's love for plants; and like him, too, he seems to look upon them as animally endowed. He asks (Life and Letters, 1 Here, properly, of life at least-to divert causality; as might have been suggested, indeed, by the difference of a dead or a live finger placed in the fire. ii. 148) "Heaven to forgive him," but he is disposed to consider "embryological characters" not wanting to plants. "The cotyledons and their position, and the position of the plumule and radicle, and the position and form of the whole embryo in the seed, are embryological.” Mr. Huxley, as concerns these theories of the Darwins, carries our regards back to the ancients, "seventy generations" ago. Darwin having "poured new blood into the ancient frame" (Life and Letters, ii. 180), he can point with satisfaction to what "the revivified thought of ancient Greece has proved itself to be." This is said, strictly, in relation to that, as Mr. Huxley terms it," the oldest of all philosophies, that of evolution.” We here, at the moment, have only the references of these ancients to botany in regard; but it suits the situation to remind that there are others more ancient than even Democritus (whom it is not unlikely that, as a supposed materialist, and with the chronology named, Mr. Huxley has more specially in his eye)-others quite as relative. Anaximander, for example, is a Darwinian as well of the Erasmian as of the later flight, when he holds that there was an infinite common materia of which all things were formed; that the first animals, taking birth spontaneously, were afterwards developed the one from the other; and that it was not otherwise with man, who was at first a fish (Mr. Darwin talks of his "long swimming tail" when he was in this position)! No wonder that Mr. Lewes is decidedly of opinion that, "It is clear that Anaximander originated one of the great lines of speculative inquiry, and that one, perhaps, the most curious in all antiquity." Then Anaximenes, too, will be held to have been "enlightened" in so far as he opined motion to have existed from all eternity. But, probably, it is Anaxagoras who merits most to be named, generally, in this connection. His theories, only the Nous apart, are all physical; then there are his gemmules (not really dissimilar from those of Mr. Darwin); and there is also his botany. It is this last that we have more specially in mind at present. We have at least authority in a certain way Aristotelian for this, that Anaxagoras attributed respiration and life to plants; that he held that they were sensitive, that they experienced both joy and grief, and that they were moved by desire; and even that he maintained of them that they possessed thought and knowledge. The same authority adds to the name of Anaxagoras those of Empedocles and Democritus. These and other ancients, Parmenides, Diogenes, seem really to have entertained, in almost all these respects, very much the same opinions; as, that the earth was the mother, and the sun the father, of both plant and animal, nay of Man, Democritus, among them, was no more than the common brother. All In his views, then, however extreme, if in regard to plants only, Erasmus has not only his grandson to support him, but (to say nothing of the modern Fechner and his Nanna) even quite a band of the ancients. of these ancients, nevertheless, let them be as materialistic as they may on the whole, do still, like Erasmus, discountenance Charles in his denial of design and intellect as independent, actually existent, constituents of this universe. Even Democritus cannot be certainly said not to have united with his materialism the recognition. of a spiritual element as well (see Zeller). As for Erasmus, we already know, and may see again, how very much of a theist and teleologist he was. The second volume of Zoonomia being principally professional, it is there, perhaps, that we shall meet the greatest display of that crude physical picture-thinking which has been characterised as common to most inen in a certain early (the profane would say green) stage of intellectual advance. Erasmus will account for most physiological and pathological results by a sort of see-saw of demand and supply like the Economists— namely by excess or defect of secretion or absorption -an expedient, or uselessly easy matter of words, that is as old as Anaximenes with his TÚKνwots and μάνωσις. Gallstones arise, for example, "from the too hasty absorption of the thinner parts of the bile," while it is from defect of absorption that the liver enlarges. The dull eyes of the aged from the want of moisture are owing to the exhalation being greater than the supply. "The thin discharge from the nostrils in cold weather is owing to the absorbent vessels becoming torpid sooner than the secerning ones which are longer kept warm by the circulating blood.” Flowers of zinc and calcined egg-shells, if burned together with a piece of scarlet cloth, cure bronchocele. The digestion becomes stronger after an emetic by an accumulation of sensorial power during the decreased action of the stomach." "Sneezing consists of muscular action produced by the sensorial power of sensation." "Respiration is immediately caused by the sensorial power of sensation in consequence of the baneful want of vital air.” "Swallowing our food is immediately caused by the pleasurable sensation occasioned by its stimulus on the palate and fauces, and is acquired long before the nativity of the animal." "Squinting" -say strabismus !" is generally owing to one eye being less perfect than the other; on which account the patient endeavours to hide the worst eye in the shadow of the nose!" Surely it is Quacksalver himself we hear bawl, in the market-place, such mouthings as these "The remote cause of thirst arises from the dissipation of the aqueous parts of our fluids by the increased secretion of perspirable matter, or other evacuations!" "Sensitive cough (Zoonomia, ii. 181) is an exertion of the muscles used in expiration excited into more violent action by the sensorial power of sensation, in consequence of some things which too powerfully stimulate the lungs. Of this kind is the cough which attends free drinkers after a debauch; it consists of many short efforts to cough, with a frequent expulsion of half a teaspoonful of frothy mucus, and is attended with considerable thirst-the thirst is occasioned by the previous dissipation of the aqueous part of the blood by sensible or insensible perspiration; which was produced by the increased action of the cutaneous and pulmonary capillaries during the stimulus of the wine-in consequence of this an increased absorption commenced to replace this moisture, and the skin and mouth become dry, and the pulmonary mucus becomes inspissated, which stimulates the bronchia, and is raised into froth by the necessary currents of air in evacuating itthis production of froth is called by some free drinkers 'spitting sixpences'! We may pass now to the solemn conclusion of his book. He hopes-Dr. Erasmus Darwin hopes, that he has done something towards an eventual edifice, “ which may not moulder, like the structures already erected, into the sand of which they were composed; but which may stand unimpaired, like the Newtonian philosophy, a rock amid the waste of ages!--jamque Opus exegi The work is done !-nor Folly's active rage, |