The Press.
London, England, 1858-04-17 00:00:00

THE PRESS, APRIL 17, 1858.

army to acoord in all outward appearances, ceremonies,
and forms, to the European armies, bat its real efficiency
has been thereby destroyed. A sepoy of the line, dressed
in a tight coal; trousers in which he can scarcely walk,
and cannot stoop at all ; bound to an immense and totally
useless knapsack, so that he can hardly breathe ; strapped,
belted, and pipeclayed within a hair's-breadth of his life;
with a rigid basket-chako on his head, which requires the
skill of a juggler to balance there, and which cuts deep
into his brow if worn for an hour; and with a leather stock
round his neck, to complete his absurd costume—when
compared with the same sepoy, clothed, armed, and ac-
coutred solely with regard to his comfort and efficiency,
forms the most perfect example of what is madly called
the " regular " system with many European officers, con-
treated with the system of common-sense now recommended
for adoption.
Let the oommon-sense system be adopted, and nearly
one-half of the cost of the native army of India might be
saved to the State by reduction in the number of European
officers, while the real strength and military power of the
army would be more than doubled.
And upon the utter impolicy of flattering
men's prejudices, the following passage is a
favourable specimen of the style of General
Jacob's " views and opinions ":

The supposing it necessary to flatter men's prejudices,
&0., which appears to be so much insisted on throughout
the Bengal army, is a sad mistake,—it is the greatest evil
which can exist,—it is the destruction of all mutual con-
fidence and respect. It creates and fosters those very
prejudices and mutual misunderstandings which it pro-
fesses to " conciliate." Why did the soldiers of the Tenth
Legion love Cesar? Because they were proud of him,
not because he coaxed them. Men and soldiers, native or
European, hate being commanded by " spoons." Show
the men that you respect and regard them as soldiers and
men, not as Hindoos or what not; treat all men under
your command as men and soldiers, without any regard to
(although without giving offence to) caste or prejudices;
treat the native officers as gentlemen, and you will soon
understand each other perfectly. The differences of
religion, &c., between officer and man are forgotten—posi-
tively never thought of : you hsve one common interest,
and the European commander, if worthy by nature of his
command, becomes the object of the most profound respect
and regard—even though his demeanour be not very " con-
ciliatory."
There are other qualifications, besides those mentioned
by Captain Trawer, which, in my opinion, are essential to,
or very desirable for, a good commandant of irregular
cavalry. He should, if possible, be a good and successful
partizan soldier, quick in danger, fertile in resources :
indeed, until a commanding officer and his regiment
have been on service together, the corps must be con-
sidered in a greater or less degree in an imperfect state :
the proper feeling between each other can hardly exist.
But, after all, everything else is of trifling consideration
when compared with a natural talent for command,—that
quality, or combination of qualities, whereby a commander
gains not only the respect of his own men, but makes
them respect themselves, and raises their character in
their own estimation, and in that of the world. This is the
grand secret of being loved, respected, almost adored, by
the native soldier.
Parts of these opinions read like truisms, but
there is a calmness and unexaggerated force
even in the most positive of them, though cer-
tainly the gallant General does lay down the
law like an Anthony Absolute.

On the policy of the Persian war into which
Lord Palmerston plunged us, the General said,
in January, 1857:—
The effects of each expeditions as th it now being under-
taken against Persia will be momentary only, will be
enormously expensive, and will leave matters on our
frontier of India, as regards security from threat, insult, or
real attack, exactly as before.
If the expedition be undertaken in order to punish
Persia for insolence, &c., well and good : let us then under-
stand that revenge is our solo object ; and this we may
indeed accomplish, if thought worth our while. I have
nothing to say to such proceeding*. But if oar object be
to secure India, we must fail lamentably.

Lord Palmerston and his supporters would of
course say that the expedition was for punish-
ing Persia, and had no arriere pensie with
reference to the defence of India The cir-
cumstance that General Jacob was commander-
in-chief of the expedition gives additional in-
terest to the expression of his opinion on the
impolicy of the war in which the gallant
General's talents were so well displayed
hold a deci3ed opinion that the Persian expedition on
which we are engaged, carried out on the plan of invasion,
which has been determined on by the English Govern•
ment, is a great error; and I am quite convinced that ere
long this will be as evident to others as it now is to me.
But the course of action having been determined on, no
effort on my part shall be wanting to command success in
any pan of the proceedings which it may fall to my lot to
conduct; and I trust, that having strong convictions of
my own, conscientiously arrived at and expressed, I shall
not be found deficient in the force and energy necessary
to the just execution of those of others.

The question of the Civil Government of
India attracts more attention just at present
than that of military reorganization, which
must be postponed, and therefore we refrain
from criticising some plans of the gallant au-

thor, as at a proper time they will be duly
noticed in another department of our Journal,
as already intimated The value and interest
of the work can be judged of by our rea,lera
from the extracts we have laid before them.
Officials, civil and military, will do well to
consult its pages.

Human insitsßelary pionsicaintihetlheNßorbalienand ,
The
Ner Mind
Nervous System. By
M.D. London : Churchill.
THE two schools of mental investigation which
have in all ages divided the world, have lately
shown some tendency to approach each other.
The purely deductive method, such as was
used by some of the ancient philosophers,
would now be employed by no writer without
some leaven of the Baconian spirit. On the
other hand, the extreme sensational school—
some of whose disciples exclude both meta-
physics and psychology from a place in their
cycle of sciences, and range all their pheno-
mena under the head of physiology—have in
some instances appeared to recoil from the
materialism to which such views must neces-
sarily lead, and admit the presence in their
researches of some element which no process
yet discovered by physical science is able to
measure or appreciate. Between the two
extremes lies a medium class of thinkers, who,
unable to view life and thought merely as a
result of organization, and equally unable to
deny the dependence of both, in some way
or other, on some portion of the bodily or-
ganism, suspend their judgment as to the
deeper problems of the science, and content
themselves with watching the relations of
body and mind, and classifying from time to
time the coincidences of the phenomena ex-
hibited by both.
The work of Dr. Noble is a favourable
specimen of the kind of investigation to
which we refer. It relates to what Bacon
calls the " Doctrina Feederis "—the connection
of body and mind—the invisible bridge on
which soul and sense, nerve and force, meet
and clasp hands—the Al Sirat of Psychology
and Physiology. Dr. Noble expressly dis-
claims all tendency to materialism, and though
he appears to have once been a believer in
phrenology, he has now been converted even
from that creed by the arguments of Dr.
Carpenter. He therefore makes no attempt
to settle what portions of the brain may be
justly considered as the special organs of
mental faculties, but, starting from the broad
divisions, of the nervous tissue on one side,
and of the usual classification of mental phe-
nomena on the other, attempts to show bow
far they are, generally speaking, mutually de-
pendent, and what evidence there is for the
localization of any of the latter. His psycho-
logical division corresponds with the one
usually adopted. Assuming that the brain is
the seat of consciousness and of other mental
states, which he considers to be proved by
comparative anatomy and the common feelings
of mankind, he proceeds to consider the phe•
nomena belonging to the senses. The nerves
themselves can be traced to their termination
in the nervous tissue, but it has been always
a problem with physiologists to localize the
faculty of "common sensation," by which we ap-
prehend resistance in general, and acquire the
impressions of hardness and smoothness, cold
and heat, &c. Dr. Noble places this in what
are called the " corpora dentata," a part of
the cerebellum but we have not space to
draw out the reasoning by which he arrives at
this conclusion. In passing from the senses
to the emotions, we meet with a similar pro-
blem in the " Camiesthesis," or feeling through
which we are conscious of our own substan-
tive bodily existence (as distinguished from
the presentation of outward objects), and the
favourable or morbid condition of which con-
stitutes what is popularly known as good or
bad spirits. That this is a distinct faculty,
Dr. Noble believes on the following grounds
Emotional sensibility has sometimes been regarded„ $
simply a mode of common sensation. But
in a little retieo.
nt,
tion upon the peculiarities of the respective pheno
will bring out essential differences. In the first piac%
emotional sensibility maintains no sort of corresponilen
with that which is tactile. On the contrary, when the
former is greatly elevated, the sense of touch is sometime:
abolished, or suspended. Witness the effects of hero_ ,
"%buil"
; tactile we but WU