of globulin and fibrinogen, whence come they and whither do they go? Whoever attempts to solve this, must not confine himself to blood, or lymph, or serous plasma. He must have before his mind, nothing less than the whole of the tissues. He must forsake the special problem, and search for general laws. Though there is in the blood, properly speaking, no such thing as fibrin, yet the old and honoured ideas which held blood-fibrin to be the basis of the tissues, are raised up in a new form after being thrown down in their old one. The study of coagulation becomes a study of nutrition and growth. The blood-clot and union by the first intention, seem again the same thing as they were of old in the time of Hunter. Very interesting, too, becomes once more that idea of the analogy between muscular contraction, or at least muscular rigidity, and coagulation with which the great anatomist was so impressed.* But how dif ferent our way of looking at them both! Our horizon is indeed wider, the paths of inquiry seem more numerous, and leading farther off. Those who are preparing to tread them, cannot do better than bear in mind the words of one who wrote on the coagulation of the blood, and who, if he had not so large a field of view as Hunter, saw all the more clearly for reining in his thoughts. "There may be powers (and kinds of powers) in the animal economy, that are not yet dreamt of in our philosophy.”+ XXV.-SCHLEIDEN'S ESSAYS. 1.-Ueber den Materialismus der Neueren deutschen Naturwissenschaft, sein Wesen und seine Geschichte. Zur Verständigung für die Gebildeten. (On the Materialistic Tendencies of Natural Science in Germany at the present time; their Cause and History. A work intended for the educated.) Von M. J. Schleiden, Dr. Leipzig, 1863. 2.-Das Alter des Menschengeschlechts, die Entstehung der Arten und die Stellung der Menschen in der Natur. Drei Vorträge • Vide Kühne. Arch. Anat. u. Phys. 1859, p. 748. Hewson (Gulliver), p. 76. für die gebildeten Laien. (The Antiquity of Man, the Origin of Species, and Man's Place in Nature. Three Discourses for the Educated General Public.) Von M. J. Schleiden, Dr. Leipzig, 1863. SCHLEIDEN's name is well known in the botanical world of Germany, where three of his works have gone through several editions, and in that of England, where one of them has been translated by Dr. Lankester. And if he needed, which he does not, any introduction to the Biological public generally, the two works which he has published within the present twelvemonth, and which, though small in size, treat in a large way of very large subjects, would furnish him with a very sufficient one. The first of these works treats somewhat mournfully of the materialistic turn which, according to the author, the minds of well nigh all German naturalists have recently taken, and goes fully into the history and causes of this disorder: the second, of much more cheerful complexion, proposes to put, and succeeds as we think in putting, its reader fairly on a level with the literature of the most recent discussions on the Antiquity of Man, on the Origin of Species, and on Man's Place in Nature. We propose to give a sketch of the scope and gist of each of these short works, beginning with that which treats of the materialistic leanings which modern Natural Science is displaying in Germany. The names of Moleschott, Vogt and Virchow are brought forward as professing least ambiguously and most conspicuously the doctrines in question; least ambiguously because they are not shrouded in the quaquaversal mists of Hegelian verbiage, most conspicuously because of the unquestioned prominence in Biological Science to which their promulgators have attained. Vogt, in his youth the fellow-labourer of Agassiz, in riper years endorses the crude notions of Agassiz; the soul, according to his teaching (p. 7), is a product of the development of the brain, as secretions are a product of the development of glands; and Moleschott's utterances, in his letters addressed in 1855 to Liebig, are, if possible, less mistakeable still. There are other wandering stars whose lustre is but due to the folly of persecution, which has not been wanting, but was by no means needed, to give celebrity in the cases of the two names just mentioned. For an explanation of this state of things, Schleiden, in the true spirit of German exhaustiveness, and in full disregard of the Horatian inhibition of beginning the history of the Trojan war with the story of oviparous Leda, thinks it necessary to give a sketch of the entire history of Idealism and Materialism from the earliest times downwards. Through the whole of this sketch, though it be intended to elucidate the present condition of the minds of Biologists in a country to which Biology owes so much, and though whatever Schleiden writes may be supposed to be fair matter for the "Natural History Review," we do not propose to follow our author. Skipping, then, three-and-twenty pages, from page 10 to page 33 of the fifty-seven which make up the book, with the remark that our readers will do ill to follow our example, which indeed is set but in this Review, and has had no existence in our study, we come to Schleiden's explanation of the way in which modern German Physical Science has become so deeply and so widely tainted with Materialism. It is a historical explanation, and, whether sufficient or not to account for the result in question, is stated by Schleiden as follows. Kant's influence on the German mind ceased with the commencement of the present century; inter arma silent leges, the laws of thought require in the student of them leisure, and repose, and quiet, which the terrible years ending in 1815 rendered impossible to every highminded German. At the conclusion of this troubled period, the teaching of metaphysics fell into the hands of men who were devoid of that mathematical and physical knowledge and training which had conferred such vigour and such precision on the mind of the philosopher of Königsberg. Kant and Fries, like Descartes and Leibnitz, were astronomers and mathematicians as well as psychologists; whereas of Schilling, Reinhold and Hegel, Schleiden speaks in the following terms, at p. 36. "A characteristic of this entire series of later philosophers was their absolute ignorance of natural science, and especially of mathematics, astronomy and mathematical physics, that is to say, just of the very surest parts of human knowledge. The display of nonsense which Hegel sets before us in his 'Natur-philosophie' makes one's hair stand on end," &c. . . . " And Hegelianism was made by the Prussian system of school inspection the standard of philosophical orthodoxy." ("Preussische Schulpolizie machte Hegel zum philosophischen Messias."), p. 38. The evil working of this system Schleiden hints at in other parts of this pamphlet; and the presence of the phrase "bornirte und unwissende Konigl. preussische Schul-Regulativ-Seminaristen," at p. 8, may explain, perhaps, the absence of the syllables "Prof. in Jena" after our author's name on the title page. N.H.R.-1864. The particular effect of the new Prussian system of education upon the students of Natural Science was to alienate their minds from, and fill them with contempt for, all psychological investigation whatever. The Natural Sciences were at this time making great strides, their votaries, filled with the enthusiasm which the discovery of new and living truth engenders, were little disposed to tolerate the arrogance or acquiesce in the hollow verbiage which supplied in the Hegelians the place of thoroughness and virility of thought. And at last it became the fashion with the students of Natural Science to meddle with the so-called Philosophy and Philosophers in no other way than that of extracting amusement from them. "Die überall mit neu erwachten Kraft auftretenden Naturwissenschaften wendeten sich mit Eckel von diesem hohlen Geschwätz ab, und es wurde unter den Studirenden fast Mode, den für einen Narren zu erklären, der sich mit Philosophie beschäftigte, oder ein derartiges Colleg in anderer Absicht besuchte, als um sich ein Stündchen zu ergötzen." P. 38. But the caricature was one thing and the reality of philosophy another; and the votaries of Natural Science have erred sadly in confounding the two. Sadly for their country, since an antagonism has been supposed to exist necessarily between the Sciences of mind and those of matter; sadly for themselves, as, owing to this belief, onesidedness and "specialismus" has become common among them. When Virchow is so ignorant of the history of the mental philosophers of his own country, when Kant and Fries are so utterly forgotten in Göttingen that Gauss has to snub a mathematical student for sneering at them, what hope is there for healing the ever widening breach, for bringing together again the studies which have been divorced for an entire generation? Schleiden bluntly says that for the immediate future he has no hope: but the present state of things may, he thinks, be remedied in the ensuing generation by again making inductive Psychology, and the Logic which is based upon it, a constituent part of ordinary education, side by side with Natural History and Mathematical Science. "Ein Gegengift gegen diesen Materialismus ist nur in einer vollstandigen empirisch-psychologischen Grundlage und in der Durchbildung zur einer darauf gegründeten Logik zu finden. Beide müssen, wie Naturgeschichte und Mathematik, wesentliche Unterrichtsgegenstande in den höheren classen allen (Real und Gelehrten) Schulen werden," p. 57. The Metaphysic, a goodly octavo of his former colleague at Jena, Dr. Apelt, he recommends in particular instances, as, for example, that of Virchow, p. 51-and to all Natural Philosophers he vouchsafes the two following most wholesome rules, p. 52. "The first rule which the exact investigator of nature should observe is, that he should not allow himself to pronounce an opinion, either in affirmation or negation, upon subjects which do not fall and cannot fall within the sphere of his observation and experience. What astronomer, for instance, would take upon himself to deny the existence of Tantalum or Lanthanum? Yet Spirit, Free-will, God, come as little within the domain of any possible experience of the Natural Philosopher. How then can he be competent to pronounce about them ? If the Natural Philosopher comes, not in his special capacity, but in that of man merely, to speak of these matters (as every man has a right to do) then he must have before his eyes the second rule, which is, that he must not pass any opinion, form his judgment, nor utter it, upon matters of any Science to the present level of which he has not brought himself. If a man pronounces on astronomical points, we suppose him to have mastered astronomy; if on chemical, we suppose him to be skilled in chemistry; and so, if he speak of Philosophy, properly so called, and of the three Ideas which we have mentioned, we must suppose that he will have taken pains and trouble, and study to avoid making himself ridiculous, even in his own eyes, by speaking of what he is not qualified to discuss." Such is a short sketch of Dr. Schleiden's short work; and upon it, before passing to his second opusculum, we will herewith make a few remarks. Firstly, then, we think that Schleiden has assigned too much weight to local and temporary causes, and left out of consideration certain vital points which, though not in all ages, yet certainly for the last three centuries, have put Physicists into antagonism with Psychologists. Long before the days of Moleschott and Virchow, Lord Bacon found the smoke and tarnish of the chemical laboratory, the callipers and the scalpel of the anatomist, to encarnalize the spirit, and turn it away from the contemplation of psychological phenomena, and incapacitate it for the investigation of psychological fact. Believing ourselves that the Sciences of mind. and of material objects are both alike Sciences of observation, and dependant upon inductive reasoning in the first instance, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that, though equal strictness is required in each case for the attainment of truth, it is not equally requisite for |
