The human body and its connexion with man : illustrated by the principal organs

Contents

Page

Dedication vii

Preface ix

Preface

At the end of a work, an author writes the preface or beginning, unable to neglect the law which urges that extremes shall meet. Prefaces need no apology, and a reader intending to study a book, does not do himself justice unless he peruses them. A preface gives the author's last conception of his aim, — the most comprehensive eye with which he sees it. And unless the reader looks through this eye, he cannot enter into the author's mind. The study of a book is the temporary putting on of the faculties and insights of another ; and the sooner the assumption takes place, the sooner the reader begins to read aright.

To assist this we have a few remarks to make that may prepare in some measure for the following pages.

We labor under difficulty in procuring the right audience for the present discourse. The subject of which it treats has been so much narrowed to a class, that on the one hand that class, the medical profession, claims it as an exclusive knowledge; and on the other hand, the public mind is in abeyance with regard to it, and looks upon it as

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a property for ever alienated from its possession. We therefore run the risk of finding no readers, unless we can persuade the public that the knowledge of the human body belongs to every man, woman and child, and has no more necessary connexion with physic, than with art, industry, philosophy, divinity, or any of the other occupations that we do in the body, and by the body. To write a treatise on the subject through which this persuasion shall run with vigorous consequences, has been a leading motive with us in the present work.

Persons for the most part have no idea that the sciences belong to the great world in the first place, and that the classes who are actively cultivating them, are but little bands of pioneers that are contending with difficulties at the out-posts, and slowly winning a new magnitude of knowledge, which as soon as it is settled, belongs afresh to the large country of popular common sense. On the contrary, they allow each party of settlers to hoist the flag of a petty kingdom of their own, without insisting, as ought to be done, that the adventurers shall at once become the colonies of the mother state. Thus it is that professors of all kinds have kidnapped the sciences, and the people fear to take so much as a walk under the walls of these bristling strongholds. But scientific feudalism is evidently about to pass away.

This desirable result will be accomplished by the growth of large towns, that is to say, popular doctrines, of the sciences, which will belong to the broad industry and insights of mankind, and will not contest, but swallow up.

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the castles of the present chiefs, and reverse the feodal direction of duties and fines. Already we have seen the process going on in the history of civilization, and we are about to witness the same thing in the progress of science and of thought.

It may take place somewhat as follows. The masters of science will pursue their own way, warm in their little senates, and cheered by their subjacent schools 5 satisfied with perfectionating the chairs into which they have been inducted. They will gather useful facts, and more and more comprehensive formulas, and appealing to rarer and rarer qualities in their scholars, be most out of sight when they are most at home, until at length, by extremity of cleverness, they will become invisible to all but adepts. Lords of the last ether of things, they will only exist as influences, and not as appreciable substances. In the meantime the people, happily unconscious, will listen to flesh and blood, which seems to talk to them about themselves. Abstractions will have sailed away to the flying island of the professors, who will exert a strong attraction upon the whole wealth of the world's inanitions. A clear stage and sward of common sense will then be at the popular disposal, and the problem of universal education may be conceived upon new grounds. The safeguard of the people will be this, — ^that when the learned have done their best, it is no matter to them; their hearts will be unseduced, and their brows unterrified, by the lordliest and most captivating formulas. One or two plain Johnsonian stampings on the ground, will be sufficient to convince

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them that their ignorance and carelessness on these scores is most invulnerable and sublime.

But here comes a knot claiming Deus intersit. Nor can the difficulties of man be without a response from the mercy-seat: new thoughts and new persons will come speeding to make new things possible. Already we see that the whole of the sciences may reappear on the popular side. The waning moon of the schools gives place to the full-orbed Dian of a more generous light. All the common truths that have been neglected since the foundation of philosophy; the stones that the builders have rejected; that great orthodoxy that has bided its time while ages of conceit were cuffing against its serene face, will rise out of land and sea, and out of the graves of the hearts of many generations, and come in hosts such as no man can number to the people in their hour of need. The doctrine of final causes, which is God in the sciences, and which atheism hates, will ramble over the pleasant fields, and teach them to childhood as a book ; and out of its mouth will come lessons of order and fitness, which will make the world as familiar as a father's and a mother's house.

We find it to be a law, when a branch of knowledge has been cultivated for ages, and still remains inaccessible to the world at large, that its principles are not high or broad enough, and that something radically deeper is demanded. If it does not interest universal man, that is sufficient to prove the point. This law is illustrated by many things, and particularly by the history of the arts.

Once upon a time all books were perpetuated by copying

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xiii with the hand ; whoever would possess a volume, must undergo the toil of transcribing it, or pay the price of that toil to another. This was the narrowness of the circle of the learned. The perfection of the copyist's art was soon attained, but the utmost rapidity and cheapness in this mode of multiplying books, could not render them to the mass of the public. How was the seeming impossibilit}^ to be surmounted? By some meaner process, which should deteriorate the appearance of books to a degree commensurate with the humble fortunes of the poor ; so that if the rich man's Bible cost him £30, a copy of but one sixtieth the excellence should be produced for one sixtieth the sum ? Far from it indeed ! The means of making the poor man a proprietor of books, lay in a glorious new art that clothed all literature in a bodily frame of surpassing beauty and usefulness, and placed it in the hands of the common people in a form that before the invention of printing the greatest kings would have envied ; and which even Virgil or Cicero would not have disdained as the material pedestal of their immortality. This art, simpler and more universal than writing, was not lower but immeasurably higher than its predecessor, whose services were for the noble and the learned.

Another illustration : The means of locomotion or material progress, — what is their history ? Up to a recent date the coaches and high-roads furnished nearly the only mode of land travelling. Journeys by them were restricted to a small portion of the community. The more the coaches were perfected, and the better horsed, the more expensive xiv

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and select they became. How shall we popularize travelling? By a viler expedient, — of canals, carts, and the like ? This too existed, but it was used merely for necessity, and did not attract, or tend to make all men into travellers. To effect the latter result, an invention grander and cheaper than had then traversed space was required. To move the rich needed only a four-horse coach running in an agony of ten miles an hour ; but to move the poor required cars before which those of the triumphing Csesars must pale their ineffectual competition. Thus though the problem was the enfranchisement of the meaner classes from the fetters of pedestrianism, yet the only solution of it lay in the increased convenience of all ranks from the noble to the peasant, and not in the degradation but the elevation of the locomotive art.

And so it must be, as we apprehend, with human knowledge ; the arts of education that will summon the people to learn, are toto coelo different from, and greater than, those which have been sufficient for the schools. A petty magnet is sufficient to take up a few hundreds of isolated persons ; but when the nations are to be attracted, there is nothing less than the earth that will draw their feet.

Here we touch the gist of the matter ; for it is in fact powers of attraction in knowledge that are demanded for the new education. There are three heads to this, which form one. In the first place, attractive knowledge gains the learner and keeps him. In the second place, it enlarges his genius, and out of that, his memory; whereas dry knowledge cultivates his memory at the expense of his

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mind. In the third place, (or in the first again,) such knowledge is coherent with itself, and tends to be all known whenever a part of it is known, giving the learner a constant sensation that he is developing it for himself, which lets him into the legitimate delight of mental power,,

But only that is attractive which is allied to our business and bosoms, and seems to have a life that understands our life, and vice versa. On the other hand, repulsion is the effect of death and unkindness. Hence, to limit ourselves now to the human body, no popular science of it can exist, but one that fills it with at least as much life as its pupils feel throbbing in their bodies. Knowledge draws them never until they are forced to cry out : " Ah ! I see myself more than myself in that wonderful glass I" If to their curiosity about themselves any dead body near them mutters " germ-cells,"* they feel dusty, degraded, and abhorrent. They must be rendered better, bigger and worthier for every look they give, or their eyes will be averted from their books.

Knowledge, however, is progressive, or its cars are of different sizes. It will only be by slow degrees that we can accommodate the world with seats in the trains of science. New inventions will be requisite for each new

* The intellectual correspondence of the doctrine of cell-germs and convertibility of forces, is found in the doctrine of subjectivity, which implies in the first place that you are shut into yourself ; and in the second, that whatever comes to you, puts on your state, and is nothing but your own walls vibrating. This is the philosophical, as the other view is the physical, jail. The way out of it is by walking through the walls, which look granite, but are impudent mist.

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population tliat is to be drawn. In the meantime it is good to see this, and to place as an end the education of the universal people, because that education will require the largest and noblest principles of common sense. To educate a Mechanic's Institute demands far greater principles and more prolific love, than to do the like for a Royal Society : you have to bring things down and to incarnate them, to connect them with material and substantial uses, and to give them both souls and bodies, for the former ; whereas in teaching them to the learned, you escape into laws and formulas, and shirk the problem of realizing the subject to the audience, by insisting that it is the fault of the audience where it does not comprehend. This is according to a vice common in schools, of neglecting the dullards, and petting the clever pupils. On the other hand, public education is for the publicans and sinners of the brain, — the stupid and the quick alike, both of whom are constructed for the largeness of a common understanding.

But if to inform the Mechanics' Institutions be already so much vaster a task than to propagate learning to the learned (who are the people that can take it easiest), what a much ampler knowledge still is required for the educations of clowns and sempstresses, and those great classes of society who have almost no organs but hearts and hands. Knowledge must be like music and nursery songs before these clodhoppers can dance to it.

We have attempted, but most imperfectly, to begin a discoursing on the human body which goes somewhat in the direction of this great outlying population ; being con-

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xvii vinced that to win them to the truths of the creation is a mission enjoined upon the future time. In doing this, we have felt that there was no condescension implied, but the strain of all our faculties into the most universal sphere. And although, by the law of things, there is- more to be done than when we commenced to do, yet shall we be satisfied if we have struck a single cord of that instrument whose earliest notes portend to us the grand Hallelujah choruses and symphonies that are to be.

The matter of universal education may well claim the serious regard of all classes of society. It is indeed a panacea, though not as it is at present conceived. To teach superior artisans and savans a few sciences, and by all means to stimulate the love of property, may keep things together by giving a large army of " specials " an interest in what is called order ; but the great mass is not touched by such motives or informations. The facts prove that it cannot learn these lessons, or care for these objects ; because, like the old coaches, they are not big enough to carry it on its voyage through time. There is nothing for it but a new method and kind of knowledge ; an Orpheus who can thrill into dance not the present nimble figurantes, who can dance to any tune, but stocks, stones, birds, beasts, and fishes, who had no fantasy in them before. That method must take the best common sense of all these people, and shew them that just that, when carried to its highest stages, is the very truth of all the arts and sciences. As soon as this can be done, all stories will move one degree higher ; the kitchens will be parlors,

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and a new drawing room will flower out of every house for the great reception days. The order which will then conserve all things, will not be solely that of the policeman, but it will be like the order of creation, or like that of the notes in a good harmony, where each keeps the rest to their posts.

We have selected the human body to make a trial of the above method, on account of its central importance and significance, and because it is already the theatre of our common sense : nevertheless, any other object of science might have been chosen, and with the same results. For wherever we go, we find that common sense comes first ; and when the subject is completed, again comes last. First glances are always charged with it, in a more or less latent form ; the business of investigation is simply to eliminate it as pure as possible from its accidents.

In no science does the present state of knowledge appear so manifestly as in physiology : in none is the handwriting on the wall so plain. Great is the feast of professors here ; but Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, is brighter than their chandeliers. Chemistry and cell-germs are the walls on which the lightning writes. Well may we call them walls ; for it is impossible to conceive anything more limitaneous : prison stares us in the face while we are in that company. Who of woman born can go further than to distil himself into gas, or to pound himself into cells ? Annihilation, which God forbids, must be the next stage of smallness. These respective doctrines are the last solid points which are possible, and by nature itself there is no

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xix passage beyond them. After these, the scientific men themselves must evanesce ; for already their watchword to each other is, " Hail, Bubble Brother ! Hail, Nucleated Cell !"

Before it came to this chaos, there was everything to shew that physiology, studied with the present objects, had completed its rule. Its great outlines had long been traced, and its general problems had ceased to occupy attention. It had become more and more complicated and microscopic, and leaving the human frame, it was gradually slipping down into the brute creation. Meanwhile the leading questions that a child would ask respecting structure or function, were forgotten, or postponed indefinitely. The connexion of the science with our living sympathies, which was never strong, had ceased altogether. The function of its hierophants, to enlighten the ignorant, had become impracticable, for want of vitality and attractiveness in their knowledge. These were signs that its kingdom was moved from the midst of it, and was about to be given to another. Be it observed, however, that we do not blame the existing sciences for what they are not ; our task lies only in recording that they have had their three sufficient warnings. Their state is like that of us all — birth, growth, and decline ; and like us in due time they are to be supplanted by their sons, when the world's business requires further workmen. For the sciences become immortal in their generations ; solid in the general subordination of the past to the present ; and living, in the perpetual aspiration and appeal from the present to the future.

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I know that even tte claemistry is all right in its own way ; and I cannot help admiring the thoroughness of the Liebigs, who after having analyzed the rest of things, put men and women into the retorts, and ^^ith pen and ink ready, write down so much dirty water and foetid oil, and so many ounces of scientific dust, as the future state which comes over. This is positive fact, if not for the physiologists, at least for the candle makers. I ask nothing more than that it shall be in its place.

And who can quarrel with the microscopists ? When Leeuwenhoek, in the seventeenth century, determined that everything that was too little to be seen, was his empire, he really laid his hands upon the whole of things, in a certain small sense. And whenever our great duties and rights are tolerably well fulfilled, little things will be intellectually and morally magnified into a new importance. Ultimate structui'e will then coincide with primary structure. But until then, the microscope is before its time in physiology, and must wait upon lower callings. While the reasons of minute forms are so totally unseen, it is their prettiness chiefly, their scenic charm and glow, which is of use to human eyes. I have often wondered why, in the difficulties of the artists who make patterns, they have not resorted to Mr. Queckett and the Microscopical Society, for the exquisite traces which they can shcAV. Solomon was not arrayed like the lilies of the field. The Manchester manufacturers would do well to dress out the ladies of this generation in the spoils of the colors and forms of these brilliant creatures. There would be something new as well

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XX as charming in rhinoceros-kidney mousseline-de-laines ; in shawls according to the inner splendors of the bui-nished beetle's "wing; in veils worked to represent the manyeyedness of the blue -bottle ; or in a mantilla on the back of a professor's wife glorious with mimic cell-germs. Here would be a mission for the microscope, and a final cause for the corporation which represents it, which would then take rank as a sub-committee of Drapers' Hall. It would be good to be small, when it enabled you to dive into little cracks and holes whence real beauty could be fetched. And by gaining this practical object, of ornamenting outsides, the Lilliputian people would cease to infest physiology, and leave Gulliver's inside alone.

Such, we believe in our hearts, would be the art corresponding to the present state of this science. For we notice that every little discovery is so straitly held and claimed by the finder, and the label of " My Truth " is so decisively pinned to each fresh zig-zag of cell work — as though the man had not only seen that special quirk, but made it — that we cannot help thinking that Show is the fire which is heaving under this uneasy stratum of the Small Seers. Our proposition, which we hope to see adopted long before the next " "World's Exhibition " in London, exactly jumps vdth this passion for display, but by carrying it over to our ladies renders it both beautiful and harmless. Let " my " family wear the blazon of " my truth " as they walk before me to chmx-h.

There is one part of our work which we think it right xxii

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to mention, but for which we do not apologize. Throughout the following pages, we have taken for granted the Divinity of Christ and the truth of Christianity, and with this tacit assumption we have labored to connect the whole of our general views. There is no escape from some step of this kind : the atheist takes for granted his atheism, and works in its darkness ; he sees no God because he looks from none, and for none : and in every sect, that most comprehensive aspect of nature which is its dependence upon Deity, colors and shapes the whole of the sciences which that sect elicits. We would undertake in many instances to assign to particular Christian denominations, the scientific views which have been contributed by each, and to pin their insights into matter, space, time and history to their prayer-books and hymn-books. In short, science is always impregnated with either religious, or irreligious life. By virtue of this it is, that the coldest treatises end in some kind of sermons, and the nodus of every theory of the world is a corresponding god.

In presence of this necessity, it occurred to us long ago, to assume openly our own creed as the supreme key of knowledge to which we could an-ive, and to peril our faith so far as our readers are concerned upon the success of the experiment. And here we seemed to be truly scientific according to the common rule. For after some facts are found, the method of science consists in assuming a hypothesis to account for them ; and if that hypothesis serves the purpose, it passes over to a theory, and in time is received as the truth of the case. And though the hypo-

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XXlll thesis might seem unlikely, and be liable to many ugly reasonings against it, yet if it answered to the facts, it was justified, and all ratiocinations to the contrary died. By pursuing this method, we have convinced ourselves, that our Lord is wi'itten down in the pages of nature herself as the truth of her whole creation.

This is the method of tolerance. For while we work from this point of view, it is our own fault if we meddle with others who are trying to settle the same problem from different grounds. There is a prize to be won by the religions of the earth ; they are so many accounts of God : the order and laws of creation and spirit are the check which adopts, or rejects, these accounts at some certain point. The book is closed, and who shall open the seals and read it ?

The same is the method of scientific persistence and unity of aim. For no one lifetime can be expected to measure the adjustments of the problem. To all argumentation we can scientifically reply, that we have not yet concluded our experiments. In so great a cause, ages of ages are allowable times for operation. Religions are a vast social matter ; no man has a right to declare the trial done, until the success of creation-reading warrants him. Thus we gain indefinite time against the sceptics, allowing them also their own time for doubting. If God permits them leisure, why should we feel bound to hurry them ? But then they must be equally patient with us.

The same also is the justification of causes and missions. For these are to action what theories and hypotheses are xxiv

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to science. And every man is not only justified, but bound, to plead his religion ; and if it contains that force, to send it forth over the world. He is trying his scientific problem on the practical side.

The same again is a criticism upon criticism. For in a working science, we do not desire to know what a priori probabilities or improbabilities may attach to our hypothesis, excepting in so far as they determine our choice of it at first ; after this we have simply to apply it, and to test it in all convenient ways. There is only one objection which not only slays but buries principles ; which is, that they break down in fair practice, and are disowned by the nature of things : other objections are impertinences, which may, or may not, be true. For this reason, the modern criticisms upon Scripture have nothing to do with the question : whether miracles are likely or unlikely, possible or impossible ; whether God would have dictated a Book which contradicts itself ; whether the attribution of human passions to Deity is consistent ; whether Christ as God could have died upon the cross ; whether the Gospels were written in the first century or the third ; whether Christendom be not a wide mistake of which Chapmandom is the correction : — all these are matters which we postpone, from our extreme inability to do two things at once. If it be found that Christianity is the theory of the Avorld ; that the Divine Man is Lord of the sciences ; that the biblical Revelation is the truth of truths, which opens a Shekinah of light to the later races more than to the first ; that the Gospel alone can rule the nations with a rod of

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XXV iron ; then the finding of this from age to age will sufficiently conserve the text against the stings of the Straussian school. The more so, because if their principle of criticism first, and faith afterwards, were admitted, the result must be atheistic confusion. For if, on account of what contradicts our notions of convenience in Scripture, the Bible be untrue, then for the same reason, nature, being fall of contradictory essences, tigers and lambs, men and vermin, is no work of God ; but a single flea is enough to trip over the nature-textuary into the abysses of denial. The armour of these greatest truths is, however, not so ill-jointed as to let in such lances. It demands that the critic shall tr^^ his criticism by not only accounting for, but ruling the world. If he cannot do these two things, his rack of texts proves as good as nothing.

This method also is a defence against books. For were we not entitled, as children of science, to take for granted our Revelation, and to make our lives, and if need be, our eternity, into its trial, we should be bound on a quest over the whole universe, to listen to what everybody said. The sandals of this terrible flight would soon reverse us, and take the place of our heads. By nature however we make up our minds very soon, malgre the possibility of meeting some one who shall one day upset us : there is a quick hour when every man bums his Alexandrian Library as heartily as the Kalif Omar. And thus we limit ourselves to a particular walk, and like cobblers, " stick to our last." The atheists do this just as much as other people; the vacancy of the air of their studies, suffices them for the xxvi

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induction that " God is nowhere." Why should not the Christian professionally accept this necessity of not roaming through all books, but work from the Best to his vocation ?

We were forced upon this track of thought, by noticing that the Rationalists had got to nothing as punctually as if nothing had been their aim ; and that their inductions were of no consequence, supposing them to be true ; which however concluded against their truth. We found also that they were like the fellow who claimed Virgil's " Sic vos non vohis " to himself, but could not complete the line which the great poet had left half finished. In the whole company of them, and in all their promise of offspring, there was not a spark of revelation ; though to hear them talk one might have imagined, that they knew the way of making myths, and that writing bibles was their forte. For these and a thousand other reasons, we left them on one side, and took another tack.