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October 18,1856.] THE L E A P E B. 1001
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ICitwattim
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sive Critics are not the legislators, ba...
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The function of Reviews has for some tim...
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ANIMAL MAGNETISM. Animal Momictism and S...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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October 18,1856.] The L E A P E B. 1001
October 18 , 1856 . ] THE L E A P E B . 1001
Icitwattim
ICitwattim
Sive Critics Are Not The Legislators, Ba...
sive Critics are not the legislators , bat the judges and police of literature . Tiey do not a . " make Iaw 3—the ^ interpret and try to enforce th em . — Edzjwurgri , He-view . xe
The Function Of Reviews Has For Some Tim...
The function of Reviews has for some time past been so niuch more effici- ^ ently performed by- the other organs of the Press that we regret to see the valuable space of a Quarterly bestowed on articles like the one in the last gr Edinburgh on " New Poets . " If the writer had any new -views to propound , ho or any deeper criticism of the new poets than that which has been current ™ - in magazines and journals for the last three years , there would have been in ample justification of his article ; but we have stale quotations from Bacon , fo Aristotle , Milton , Sir Phime- -Sidney , and . Hooker ,, ushering in very ki stale objections to the very obvious faults of a few poets whose merits and demerits are , we should have thought , pretty well understood by this time vi 3 n every cultivated circle . 01 Very different in value and in purpose is the article on " Perversion . " m " When it is remembered that the author of that mischievous novel is , or was , w a . contributor to the Edinburgh JReview , the force of the well-merited casti- k gatibn :.-bestowed , by the Review will be appreciated and its independence o honoured . The article is not only a keen , though temperate , exposure of tl the flashy style of the novel , it is also a high-toned moral rebuke : ¦— ^ "We resume our objections to tins book . It is botb intolerant and irreverent—two w faults which-go together oftencr than is supposed . True veneration respects the con- < j sciences of other men and is tender for their troubles as for its own . Intolerance gi belongs to a hard temper and a proud stomach and a wilful mind , utterly inconsistent with the spirit of reverence , -which , is humble , unselfish , and forgiving . How can a " man who thinks of , and treats , the creeds and the doubts of others as this writer does , a expect that the sarcasm and the slander stall stop just short of his own proportion of & faith and of his own allowance of dogma . If he can jeer , as lie does , at things serious to High or Low Churchmen , will not others be found who -will jest at his share of ll credulity , and pronounce him too , in his measure , superstitious and absurd ? If he a can regard with scorn the difficulties and scruples of all honest men who do not quite j c attain his quantum of belief , and can represent Unitarians as " being ashamed of the name of Christians , " why should not those who are discontented with his Christianity , either from an historical or spiritual point of view , declare him , to be a secret con- a spirator against the truth , plausibly veiling his infidelity under the colour of a o moderate rationalism ? Such -words have been spoken against far deeper theologians , t , against far wiser and more temperate controversialists than lie is ; and it will , and ought to he , in vain , for those who are at once the satirists of all shapes of piety that r do not hdi > p <> n to nlease them and the maligners of all religious ideas more comprehensive tban their own , to appeal to the moderation and good sense of their own s scheme of theology to save them from opprobrium and niiaropr ^ sentation- 1 After touching on the narrow bigotry which animates Perversion , the a reviewer adds : — . Personal bigotry rarely affects in any degree the cause it assails , while it induces g the individual to commit acts of injustice from which , in the ordinary transactions of r daily life , he would , shrink as from crime—inclines bim to overlook in himself tempers £ which he would severely chastise in his children—and , if he be one with , whose name r the literature of his time is familiar , destroys the worth and character of the Writer , as it damages and diminishes the Man . ; ' . There are two scientific papers in this number , one on " Arago ' s Lives , " f and the other on " Geographical Botany ; " the latter is treated with a some- £ what hesivy hand , but contains matter of considerable interest . Here is a i sample : — . J lor this in is , on a a of "
This doctrine of the preservation in the earth of stores of seeds retaining ages * their powers of germination is a popular one , supported by anen of great authority , and to winch Do Candolle often reverts . Carried down by torrents , deposited in the 1 beds of rivers or canals , drawn into the earth by animals , wlio hoard them for their ' j winter store , dropped into fissures formed by summer droughts , buried by accidental disturbances of the soil , —he believes that seeds swarm in the upper strata of the earth ' s surface , fomu ' ng a kind of magazine , whence they are ready to germinate in after ages when accident turns them up to the surface itself . This is a very common idea , founded chiefly upon the occasional sudden appearance of vast quantities of some plant not previously observed ,-when extensive cuttings or embankments have turned up the substrata of the soil . It is a convenient resource by which to account for a number of analogous phenomena , such as the substitution of beech to pines , or vice versa , on tho cutting down of a forest , the peculiar vegetation which will appear in the bed of a canal or piece of water when first drained oft " , & c . We cannot , however , but entextain considerable doubts on the subject . No one that we are aware of lias ever detected any considerable depot of good seeds in the ground . Nor do we believe in tho powers of seeds to preserve their vitality so long . It is well known that some lose their power of germination after a few months , or even a much shorter period , tho generality under favourable circumstances will preserve it for one , two , three , or more years . After twenty years , as far as observation goes , the grout majority are dead , although some kinds have been known to germinate after fi i ' ty years ; and we have heard that Mr . Brown has caused a nclumbium seed to germinate which remained for a hundred and twenty years in Sir Hans Sloane ' s collection . But these cases are rare aiul exception nl . The s « eds have been thoroughly dried and kept in a condition known to be essential to prolong their dormant lite ; and thero is a vast difference between these extreme periods and the many hundreds , or even thousands , of years during which wo are required to believe that they are preserved in the ground under very unfavourable circumstances . Scuds , -we readily admit , are shed every year upon the surfaco of tho earth in countless myriads , but so many are tho enemies they meet with , that scarcely one is to "be found the following season . A largo proportion may germinate , either immediately or as soon as the HCiiaon affords sufficient heat to excite them , but most of these porish in infancy , starved by the climate or liy want of appropriate nourishment , stilled by the surrounding vegetation , or devoured by animals ; a still greater number—nearly all , indeed , of sonic species—arc destroyed in the seed state by insects , by birds , or other animals ; some rot away from the humidity of tho soil , and . others , though apparently still sound , ha-ye lost their vitality in consequenco of a slight fermentation in ther albumen or cotyledons ; and to all these causes of death seeds enclosed in tho earth are particularly exposed . We never did believe in the germination ot mummy wheat thousunds of years old , and the fallacy of tho Lust authenticated storaes on tho subject is now generally admitted . " 1 1 I L i
: \ There is a scientific japer also in the British Quarterly , and on a subject of deep interest—the views of Cuvier and Db Bjoainviixe on creation . Unhappily the paper is written with an arrogance which 5 s the more offenbecause it is accompanied by ignorance ( or carelessness ) which forcibly recals the preface and notes to the English edition of Mmre Edwabds ' s Zoology , but which surprises us in the careful pages of this Review . Read one sentence : — Never a discinle either of Cuvier or of Blainville , this present writer took up a similar ground of contradiction to the-palaeontology and classification of Cuvier from the first hour of his acquaintance with , them . M . Flourens sees in Cuvier a great inductive mind . We have never seen in him anything but a very learned man , who offended grievously the first principles of the Baconian logic . " We have always seen Cuvier a man laying down as truth what he could not prove . Cuvier and his followers have gone on doing this because they do not know what the proof required according to the principles of the inductive philosophy . The reviewer ' s boast that he was never a disciple of Cuvieb , or Bi / Aiirville is altogether superfluous , his want of acquaintance with the subjects which they disputed is quite assurance enough ; and the reckless statement which precedes this boast , namely , that FtouKENS furnished Cdvibr with the basis of his classification on the nervous system , assures us that he knows little either of Cuvier , or Flouhens . If he will take the trouble to open theRegneAnimalhe will find that the first edition of that work bears the date of 1816 ; if he further inquires into the contributions of M . Floubens to the physiology of the nervous system , he will find that 1822 was the date of his first appearance , and that neither then nor since has he done anything towards a zoological classification on thebasis of the nervous System . But our complaint against this reviewer is not so much that he makes reckless off-hand statements , but that throughout the article he ttacks Cuvieb without even pre tending to show where Cuvier is in error , and praises De BLAmviLLE ( a very remarkable thinker , not at all needing the reviewer ' s defence ) without giving the slightest evidence . The paper is tissue of insolent assertions on a question which the profpundest knowledge is at present disposed only to treat as an hypothesis . It is pleasant to turn to the other papers in this numfcer— to the liberal and sagacious article on " Piedmont and Italy , "—to the vigorous polemics ¦' " Theology—the Old versus the New , " or to the charming paper on Mendelssohn , " one of the very best musical articles we remember to have read . It is -well said : — . ' The isolation of music from its sister arts and from literature is , however , chiefly shown in the extreme * arity of allusion to it in any but the most general sense . Nothing is more commoa in our everyday writing than illustrations drawn from the achieved reeulta of other arts . Authors possessing no skill of their own * either in painting or music , speafc familiarly of the former , yet , utterly ignore the latter . The Bachism of Bach , though obvious enough to the musician , is not so available to our scribes as the ' Corregiosity of Correggio . ' A description of nature brings up the name of a picture or painter as if it were part of the , scene , but we remember no similar case ia which impressions of the Pastoral Symphony or of Haydn ' s Seasons are recalled . . ; And the reason is given in this passage :- — But music is itself too subtle an essence to admit readily of verbal analysis . Ar . * ticulating no definite thought to the mind , the mind in its turn can give no articulate echo . The structural features of a composition may indeed be discussed , and they afford delightful exercise for the faculties which recognize proportion , sequepce , symmetry ; but all this is professional , not popular , while that which is popular and not professional , is exactly that which cannot be translated into words . The writer has an affectionate admiration for Menbelssohn which fits him for the task of sympathetic criticism , although it occasionally leads him further than most readers will follow , as when he says : — As poetry culminated in Goethe , who has himself shown how far his all-inclusive genius represented that which had gone before , so , at a later period , Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy resuvied in the great circle of his creative power those splendours of musical faculty which had preceded him . Articles on music are generally caviare to all but professional readers ; this article will , however , interest every person who is interested , in music .
Animal Magnetism. Animal Momictism And S...
ANIMAL MAGNETISM . Animal Momictism and Somnambulism . By the Somnambulc Adolphe Didier . J T . C . Newby . M . Aijolphk Didier , besides setting up in business as Somnambulo and Medical Adviser , now ventures on extending his influence as a Teacher , and complies with the " request of friends" that ho should enlighten the world on that science of which he is a professor . Hefore reviewing his work we may briefly state our conviction on the whole subject , namely , that there is unequivocal truth in many of the asserted fads of Mesmerism , upon which facts very absurd hypotheses are raised ; but that while Mesmerism ( limited to the inducement oi aniesthesia ) is true , Clairvoyance is always either Delusion or Deceit . "We shall not here argue these points , which have on several occasions been argued in our columns , but proceed at once to notice M . Didier ' s wretched attempt to palm upon the public science which only imbecility could accept , and facts which demand credulity of a very robust nature . - ,... /• On the third page we are initiated into the secret of his contempt lor common sense as implied in the gratuitous exaggeration of his statements respecting matters within every one ' s power of observation . He says : — There were in the y « ur 1805 more works written in Franco upon animal magnetism than upon anything else . In the face of booksellers' catalogues and booksellers' counters this assertion is entirely clairvoyant ; again : — Every day thousands of partisans arc won over to mesmerism—men who have tlio morul courage to acknowledge at last the truth , and trample under foot their shallow and narrow-minded views of the past .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 18, 1856, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_18101856/page/17/
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