The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-08-29 00:00:00

SEED.

----•
LONDON, Monday, Aug. 24.—Very little thiglish Cloverseed
waa offered, and prices cannot be quoted accurately. foreign
samples were generally held higher, but transaotious were
not numerous. Trefoil was held for full rates, tart not many
sales effected. New Trdliuniwaasteady in value and demand.
Canaryseed was dearer again, and in good request Remy.
seed realised former rater steadily. New Winter Tares, being
more plentiful, °oak( be bought on lower terror. White
Alustardseed was purchased more freely at very full prices.
Grass seeds were in fair request at very high rates. black
samples of English Rapeneed were held for quite as much
money, with a moderate sale. New Rye realised very Rill
prices, with a steady sale.
PROVISION,
- -

_
LONDON, Monday, Aug. 24. The arrivals last week from
Ireland were 1,165 firkins butter, and 2,868 bales bacon, and
from foreign ports 25,671 packages butter, 3,720 bales bacon.
Foreign butter keeps steady, the supplies of fine about equsl
to the demand, but middling and inferior move slwaly at
ruttier lower rates: Bacon has not wad quite so Well and at
the close of the week prices of Irish and Hamburg were re-
duced '2s. per cwt., but fins American singed sides ad-
vanced to 84s, per cwt. Lard and Hama itnn at the late
advance.

PRICII3.
Butter, per @wt, s. s. Cheese, per cwt.
Dorset . ...... 140 to 144 Cheshire .... •••• 74 to 84,,
Friesland 136 - Dble. Glouc., Dew 76 8.
Jersey
Eng Fresh per dos l4 10s, American. .. 42
Bacon, per cwt. flame: York ll2 112
Wiltshire, dried 84 86 Cumberland llO 110
Irish, green, Lob. 06 88 hish iv 114

TALLOW.
Limos, Monday. Aug. 24 —P.Y.C. Is in slow request at
44s 6t per cu:t, on the spot. Town Tallow is quoted at
Ids. 3d. per cwt. net cash : and rough fat at Is, Id per 81b.
Town Tallow, per ewt. 39 0 Rough Stuff, per cat 14
Rough Fat, per Wu.. 1 9i Graves 19
Melted Stuff, per eat. 29 0 Good Dregs
Yellow Magian, new ......41s. 6.1. per cwt.
Ditto Ditto old ......001s. Od.
Australian Mutton '1 41s. 84. „
Ditto Reel Ditto Pia. SAL
RAY.
WIIrrIcHAPEL, Saturday Aug. 22. —With a small safpply
hay and straw WI sale, trade at this market has been iff4r.
at very firm prises : Prime clover, 100 e. to 130 • lnieMr.
755. to 85e. Prime meadow hay, 11011. to 1181.; hohnior,
to Ma; and Straw, Win 495. payload.

PROFESSOR TYNDALL at the MEETING
of the BRITISH ASSOCIATION.
At the first general meeting of the Britiela Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Science, held in Belfast
act week, Professor Tyndall delilvered his inaugural
address, and from which want of space precludes us from
giving more than the following extracts :--
THE ATOMIC DOCTRINE.
" The atomic doctrine, in whole or in part, was enter-
taineti by Bacon, Descartes, Robb., Locke, Newton, lioyle,
and their successors, mail the chymical law of multiple pro-
portions enabled Dalton to confer upon it all entirely new
signlficsuice. In our day there are secessions from the theory,
but it still stands firm. Only a year or two ago Sir William
Thompson, with characteristic penetration, sought to deter-
mine the sizes of the atoms, or rather to fix the limits betweell
'which their sizes lie; while only last year the diacourses of '
Williamson and Maxwell illustrate the present held of the
doctrine upon the foremost scientific minds. What these
• atoms, self-moved and self-posited, can miii cannot ac-
e, mplish in relation to life is at the present moment thp
subject of profound scientific thought. I doubt the legiti-
macy of Maxwell's logic lint it is iniposaible not to feel
the ethic glow with which his lecture concludes. There is,
moreover, a Lucretian grandeur in his description of the
steadfistness of the atoms .--'Natural causes, as we knew,
are at work, which tend to modify, if they do not at length
destroy, all the arrangements and dimensions of the earth
and the whole solar system. But though in the course of
ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the
heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new I
eystems evolved out of their rains, the molecules out of I
which these systems are built, the foundation stones of the :
material universe, remain unbroken and unworn.' Ninety
years subsequent to Gassendi the doctrine of bodily instru-
ments, as it niey be called, assi.ned immense importance
in the handl, of Bishop Butler, who, In his famous A nelogy
4 Religion, developed, from his own point of view, and
with consummate sagacity, a similar idea. The Bishop
still influences superior minds ; and it will repay us to
dwell for a moment on his views. Ile draws the sharpest
distinctiou between our real selves and our bodily instru-
ments. He does not, as far as I remember, use the word soul,
possibly because the term was so hackneyed in his day, as it
had been for many generations previously. But he speaks of
' living powers," perceiving ' or percipient powers,'' moving
agents,' 'ourselves.' in the same sense as we should employ
7 the term 'soul.' lie dwells upon the fact that limbs may be
'removed, and mortal diseases assail the body, while the
ielnd, almost up to the moment of death, remains clear Ile
refers to sleep and to swoon, where the 'living powers 'are
suspended but not destroyed. lie considers it quite as easy
.• to conceive of an existence mit of our bodies as in theft;
that we may animate a stireeSslOn of bottles, the disso-
lution of all of them having no more tendency to dis-
solve our real selves, or deprive its of living faculties
-- the faculties of perception and ection—than the dissolu-
tion of any foreign matter which we are capable of receiving
impressions from or making use of for the common occasions
of life.' This is the key of the Bishop's position—' Our or-
genie,' bodies are no more a part of ourselves than any ether
matter around us.' 111 proof of this he calls attention to the
use of glasses, which 'prepare objects ' for the • precipieut
power exactly as the eye does. The eye itself is no more
precipient than the glass, and Is quite as much the inetru-
meat of the true self and also as foreign to the tine self as
the glass is. 'Amid if we see with our eyes only in the same
manner as we do with glasses, the like may justly be con-
.ooo from analogy of all cur senses.' Lucretius, as you
are aware, reached a precisely opposite conclusion ; and it
certainly would be interesting, if not profitable, to us all to
hear what he would or could urge In opposition to the reason-
ing of the Bishop.
"As a brief discussion of the point will enable its to see
the bearings of an important question, I will here permit a
disciple of Lucretius to try the strength of the Bishop's
position, and then allow the Bishop to retaliate, with the
view of rolling back, if he can, the difficulty upon Lucretius.
Each shall state his ease fully and frankly, and you shall be
umpire between them. The argument might proceed in this
fashion —' Subjected to the test of mental presentation
( Vorstething), your views, most honoured prelate, would
present to many minds a great if not an inimperable difficulty.
You speak of 'living powers,' 'percipient or perceiving
powers,' and 'ourselves ; 'hut can you form a mental picture
of any one of these apart from the (organism through which
it is supposed to act? 'rest yourself honestly, and see
whether you possess any faculty that would enable you to form
such a conception. The true mil bass local habitation in each
of us thus localized, must it not possess a form ? If no, what
form" Rave you over for a moment realized it? When a
leg is amputated the body is divided into two parts ; is the
true self in both of them or in one? Thomas Aquinas
tnight say in both ; but not you, for you appeal to the con-
scioueness associated with one of the two parts to prove
that the other is foreign matter. Is consciousness, then, a
necessary element of the true self? If so, what do you say
to the cue of the whole body being deprived of conscious-
ness? If not, then on what grounds do you deny any portion
of the true self to the severed limb? It seems very singular
that from the beginning to the end of your admirable book
(and no one admires its sober strength more than I do), you
never once mention the brain or nervous system You
begin at one end of the body, and show that its parts may
be removed without prejudice to the perceiving power.
What if you begin at the other end, and remove, instead
et the leg, the brain? The body, as before, is divided into
two parts but both are now in the same predicament, and
neither can be appealed to to prove that the other is foreign
matter or, Instead of going so far as to remove the brain
itself, let a eat min portion of its bony covering be removed
and hots rythmic series of pressures and relaxations of pres-
sure be applied to the soft substance. At every pressure
'the faculties of perception and of action' vanish at every
relaxation of pressure they are restored. Where, during the
intervals of pressure, is the perceiving power? I once had
the discharge of a large Leyden battery passed unexpectedly
through me; I felt nothing, Ind was simply blotted out of
conscious existence for a sensible interval Where was nip
true self during that interval? Men who have recovered
from lightning-stroke have been much longer in the same
state; and, indeed, in cases of ordinary concussion of the
brain, days may elapse during which no experience is
registered in consellousnesa Where is the man himself
• duritig the period of insensibility You may say that I beg
the question when I assume the man to have been uncon-
scious, that he was really COMIOOIIII all the time, anti has
simply forgotten what had occurred to him. In reply
to this. I can only say that no one need shrink from the
worst tortures that superstition ever invented if only so felt
and so remembered. Ido not think your theory of instru-
ments goes at all to the bottom of the matter. A telegraph
operator bas his instruments, by means of which he con-
verses with the world our bodies possess a nervous eystem
which plays a similar part between the perceiving power
tint' external things. Cut the wires of the operator, break
hie bsttery, demagnetize his needle ; by this means you err-
Lenity sever his connexion with the world but, inasmuch
as these are real instruments, their destruction does not
touch the luau who uses them. The operator survives, and
he knows Oust he survives. What is it, I would ask, in the
human system that answers to this conscious survival of the
operator when the battery et the brain is so disturbed as to
produce insensibility, or when it is destroyed altogether?
Another consideration, wllich you may consider slight,
presses upon me with some force. The brain may change
from health to disease, and through such a change the
most exemplary man may be converted into a debauchee or
a murderer My very noble and approved good master had,
as you know, threatenings of lewdness introduced into his
brain by Ids jealous wife's philter ; and sooner than
permit himself to run even the risk of yielding to these
base prompting' he slew himself. Row could the hand
of I.ucretius have been thus turned against himself if the
veal Lucretius remained as before ? Can the brain or can
ft not act in this distempered way without the inter-
vention of the immortal reason? If it can, then it is a
prime mover which requires only healthy regulation to
reader it reasonably self-acting, and there is no apparent
need of your immortal reason at all. If It cannot, then
the immortal reason, by its mischievous activity in opera-
tog upon a broken instrument, most have the credit of
-conintitting every imaginable extravagtuice and crime. I
think, if you will allow me to say so, that the gravest con-
sequences are likely to flow from your estimate of the body.
'To regard the brain as you would a staff or an eyeglass—to
ehet your eyes to all its mystery, to the perfect correlation
that reigns between its condition and our consciousness to
the fact that a slight excess or defect of blood in it produces
that very swoon to which you refer, and that in relation to
it our meat and drink and air and exercise have a perfectly
transcendental value and significance—to forget all this
does, I think, open a way to innumerable errors Ins aim
habits of life, and may possibly in some cases initiate and
foster that very disease, and consequent mental ruin, which
a wiser appreciation of this mysterious organ Would have
dv.,idett'

hut extendetl It was seen by the clear-witted men
who entered this arena that many of their best argu-
ments applied equally to brutes slid men. The Bishop's
arguments were of this character. He saw it, admitted it,
accepted the conseqiiences, and boldly embraced the whole
animal world in his scheme of immortality. Bishop Butler
accepted with unwavering trust the chronology of the
Old Testament. describing it as •contirmed by the
natural and civd history of the world, collected from
common historians from the state of the earth, and from
the late inventions of arts and sciences.' These words
mark progress: they must seem somewhat hoary to the
Bishop s successors of to-day. It is hardly necessary to in-
form you that since his time the 11011121 in of the naturalist
has been immensely extended - the whole science of geology,
with its astounding revelations regarding the life of the
ancient earth, having been created. The r gidity of old
conceptions has been relaxed, the public mind being ren-
der d gradually tolerant Of the idea that not for all thou-
sand, nor for sixty thousand, nor for six thousand thousand,
but for wens enibmeing untold millions of years this earth
been the theatre if life and death. The riddle of the
I rocki has been read by the geologist and palieontologist,
from subcambrian depths to the deposits thickening over the
, sea-tiottoms of to-day. Arid upon the leaves of that stone
look are. as you know, stamped the characters, plainer and
surer titan flows formed by the ink of history, which carry
the mind back into abysses of past time compared with
which the perhalli which satisfied Bishop Butler cease t / have
a visual angle."