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In the Dublin University Magazine there is a very curious and suggestive essay on the " Mystery of the Beasts / ' which treats of the strange conceptions formed by the ancients of the moral and intellectual nature of animals , conceptions strange , indeed , yet not more absurd than those held by many modern philosophers , who draw a line of demarcation between instinct ( of which they know little ) and reason ( of which they know less ) , and make animals automata moved by quite different strings from those moving men . The essayist now under notice says : — Though modern science yields its unwilling assent to the undoubted and melancholy fact , that the material appetites and instincts of man are only too identical with those of the brute , yet it refuses to admit of this analogy in the moral sentiments . A profound and even infinite difference is clearly recognised , though to define what this difference consists in is a task of which modern science is incapable . It knows and proclaims , however , that the sacred ray which enlightens and warms man has not reached the lower animals . Now , antiquity was blind to this distinction . To the lower animals it attributed not merely the passions which agitate , but the moral sentiments which dignify , and the affections which console , mankind . Rivals axe found among the beasts and birds for the heroes of tragic passion , such as Phsedra , Orestes , Pylades , &c . A goose , according to Pliny , fell desperately in love with a youth named Egius ; and in Egypt a tender passion was conceived for the beautiful Glauce , a female musician of distinguished merit in the court of Ptolemy , by an amorous ram . A sublime constancy in friendship has been manifested from time to time by horses , eagles , and dolphins . A young girl in Sestos reared and fed an eagle , which , upon her death , was inconsolable ; it rushed into her funeral pyre , and perished upon her ashes . A dolphin died of grief for the loss of a child , during the reign of Augustus . This child was accustomed , on its way to school , to cross the Lucrine lake every day , which the dolphin observing , approached the child and bore it on its back , safely depositing its burden on the opposite shore . One day the child failed to appear , and the dolphin was seen waiting with evident uneasiness . The dolphin came the next day , and the next , but the child was dead , and the sympathetic fish , as if it were " A crime in Heaven to love too well , " sickened and perished of grief . One smiles on reading such stories ; yet who that has lived with a dog will not echo Sir Walter Scott ' s declaration that there is-scarcely anything he could not believe of a dog ? Our great difficulty is to understand the language of animals . This did not much trouble the imaginative ancients : — The narratives of the fabulists are only dramatic versions of universally accredited traditions . That . ^ Esop ' s fox should converse with the stork , or that a philosophic discussion should beguile the leisure of the town rat , when visited by an acquaintance from the country , is not to be wondered at , when history itself teems with similar examples . On the fall of Tarquin , a dog , in the open streets , could not contain his political sentiments , but gave expression to his republican opinions by loudly vociferating his congratulations . When Domitian was assassinated , an observant crow , perched on the Capitol , favoured the city with its regicidal views by applauding the murderers . " It ' s a good deed , " screamed the crow ; " it is right well done . " When Otho oppressed Rome , and Vitellius threatened the walls , the golden reins , to the terror of the alarmed city , dropped from the hands of the statue of Victory , and the oxen , in a low tone , were overheard exchanging private opinions on public affairs . When Lepidus and Catullus were consuls , a cock , in the farm-yard of Galerius , conversed like a human being ; and Pliny , animadverting on this fact , gravely remarks , that " speaking cocks are very rare in history . " But while beasts spoke with Attic and Roman purity , few men acquired the art of speaking the language of beasts . Four lucky men and one woman are mentioned as having attained this proficiency : Tiresias , Helen us , ApoiiLONius , and Melampus among men , Cassandra among women . In our own days the researches of zoologists and physiologists have also taught us something respecting the language of animals , taught us to interpret the signs by which they express themselves ; but great as are the advances made in Comparative Anatomy , one must confess that little more than the initial steps towards a Comparative Psychology have been taken . Nor will any good results be achieved so long as man isolates himself from all spiritual connexion and kindred with animals . The Unity of Composition which underlies all organic forms , underlies also all mental forms . Prejudice may shriek at the idea of man having anything in common with animals . But fact disregards the shrieks of prejudice , and science has to discover and interpret fact . We are not less men , less gifted , less noble , because animals are more gifted than wo fancied them to be . We are not " degrading man to the level of the brute . " Wo cannot alter fact , we cannot alter man ' s level , we cannot degrade him by our theories . What ho is he is , what animals arc they are ; and that they remain in spite of all our theorising .
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We are now at the very dullest part of tho year for Literature . The unhappy reviewer has great difficulty in finding any mutter upon which to exorcise his craft . Yet books , or no books , his office remains . Review ho must . Ho pounces on impossible books . He snatches at tho remotest excuse . Tho mill must grind , and chad ' is bettor than tho empty air . Anything ia welcome , from German Philosophy to Greek tragedians : Sjsnjsca cannot bo too heavy , nor Pjoautus too light for him . And this reminds us that J . H . and J . Parkhr of Oxford are publishing a series of Greek texts , delightfully adapted for tho pocket , though tho typo is necessarily small . Hero " for a shilling you have the Antigone or the Philootetea to take down with you to the sea-side ; a useful analysis of the action and brief notes accompany tho text ; and to all who have not
forgotten their Greek ( which , alas ! is of very < easy accomplishment ) , fchese little vohsmes " will be really Acceptable . We may also intimate that the first volume of a novel called ILes Petit Bourgeois ^ and said to be a posthumous work of De Baezac * s ,, has appeared : in the Brussels Collection Hetzel . From a glance at it , we disbelieve in the alleged authorship , of which , indeed , no guarantee is 6 fFered . The writer has too obviously imitated certain peculiarities of Balzac . Whether he has caught any of Balzac's wonderful spirit , we know not ; idle readers may like to ascertain .
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THE PHASIS OF MATTER . The Phasis ofMatter ; being an Outline of the Discoveries and Applications of Modern Chemistry . By T . Lindley Kemp , M . D . Two Tols . Longman . The first and most important question asked respecting such a book as this will be : Shall I buy it ? for it professes no other aim than that of utility . There is no novelty in it , of fa ct , arrangement , or philosophy . This may be a merit in a compilation , if the compilation itself be excellent . At any rate , it limits the business of the critic to an answer of the simple question : Was the book wanted , or was it not ? Dr . Kemp thinks there was the want of some such book ; for , although he admits the existence of more than two or three very excellent manuals of
chemistry , and one or two elementary books for schools ( a dozen would be nearer the mark ) , he thinks that we still need " a treatise on chemistry more extended than the latter , but less minute than the former , and intended for the wants of the general scholar and of men of the world , whose active occupations are more or less based upon a knowledge of chemical principles and chemical facts . " His purpose is , therefore , " to supply this numerous class with a manual of chemistry having a moderate bulk and price . " There is always need of a good book ; so that after all the question takes this shape : Is Dr . Kemp ' s Phasis of Matter a good book ? And our answer unhappily cannot be more than a very qualified affirmative . The reader he addresses will assuredly learn much from these pages , winch
have been compiled with pains ; but we cannot conceal the fact that he would learn more , and learn it better , in the pages of many existing works , which Dr . Kemp means to supersede . His manual is not a work to be preferred to existing works in respect of clearness , fulness , novelty , or philosophy . He is not a better expounder , a better thinker , or a more industrious compiler than those who have already treated the subject ; and the only attraction his book can be supposed to possess over any tolerable chemical treatise , is the extent of his plan , which embraces topics of chemistry , geology , and physiology . Thus he divides the work into four books . The first is devoted to Morganic Chemistry ; the second' to the Chemistry of Geology ; the third to Organic Chemistry ; the fourth to the Chemistry of Life ; and the whole concludes with a long appendix on the applications
of Chemistry to the Arts . . . For so large a scheme there was needed unusual mastery of the principles and facts of science , or else great philosophic power . Few men have the knowledge which would enable them to execute the scheme with success-Dr . Kemp has certainly no pretensions to this encyclopaedic wealth . But he has a worse vice than poverty—namely , a looseness and inaccuracy of statement , which , if it be not always the result of imperfect knowledge , is always misleading . The mastery demanded by popular exposition of science is the cause why so few really popular works are written , and why those few are so attractive . Dr . Kemp has not this mastery ; and his language is frequently such as to lead an uncharitable reader to suspect his knowledge to be fragmentary and superficial . An example or two may be cited . for historical in
At vol . i . p . 10 , in a strange jumble meant to stand an - troduction , he says that chemistry was formerly confined to determining the elements and the laws of combination of compounds formed in the inorganic world ; " but since the publication of Liebig ' s doctrines , chemistry likewise describes the combination that the elements form in living structures and the various and rapidly succeeding changes that take place m them . " it would be difficult to understand anything by this statement but that Liebig is the father of organic chemistry , and that before him no one thought of chemical analysis of organic bodies ; but it would be difficult also to believe Dr . Kemp so ignorant of the history of chemistry as to have meant what no has said ; the merest glance at the works of Fourcroy , Thdnard , Berzehus , Chevreuil , and Dumas , would suffice to rectify so gross an error . On the same Dane we are told that a now name should be given to this
science created by Liebig , and for this reason : " the laws of combination that prevail amongst tho elements in the organic world (/ . e ., the laws oi the old chemistry ) cca . se the moment these same elements enter a living structurey and other ones take their place . " And at p . 19 he repeats and expands tins monstrous error . Ho probably means that tho combinations which take place in a living structure are more complex , and , occurring under difleront conditions , are different from tho combinations occurring out of living structures . Ho cannot moan that tho laws of combination cease ; that the " vital affinity" he talks so much about replaces chemical affinity . I 3 ut tins is what the passages convoy . „ ,. . _ ..,.. section of his work wluc
Nor is tho inaccuracy of statement less in that -u treats of Physiology—a subject upon which on M . D . may bo expected to be more precise than when touching on Chemistry . The opening \ n \ ni ~ graph of this section contains three extraordinary statements : — 1 st . That living beings " do not obey tho laws of mechanics or of < ; « ' » ' » ° " chemistry , but those of an altogether distinct science . " Ho mean * » " ^ "g of the kTnd ? ho means that besides obeying tho laws of incol . a »™ £ ™ chemistry , they arc also subject to vital laws . The error is not ignorance , but looseness of statement , which is as bad for tho roadcr . crvsta ] s or 2 nd . "All these living beings , instead of , as w th « ™™ £ J , which SfcrsSW S ^ fZ £ s" ? Ti £ y $ o « . . T&ftSgs
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 15, 1855, page 891, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2106/page/15/
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