The Sun.
London, England, 1860-05-21 00:00:00

THE SUN, .LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, MAY 21, 1860.

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LITERATURE,

The Physiology of Common Life. 2 vols. By G.
H. Lewes. Blackwood and Sons.
The accomplished biographer of Goethe has
latterly been building up for himself a perfectly
distinct reputation—and has now taken, we believe
permanently, high rank among the more remark-
able of the later contributors to our scientific
literature. It is not merely that Mr. Lewes has
evinced in this new phase of his intellectual
advancement, very peculiar skill, and a rare and,
as it appears to us, even exceptional aptitude in the
systematisation and yet more the popularization of
knowledge already accumulated by others—it is
that to the sagacity of an adroit collator of
the works of earlier inquirers in physiology and
anatomy (for example) he has brought in aid very
considerable and extended researches of his own as
an experimental anatomist and phs siologist. He
is no mere compiler. He is pre-eminently a student
of Nature : more eagerly, more zealously, now a
student of Nature than he has ever been, or for that
matter, still is a student of either polite or scientific
literature. Here, in these completed pages of his
latest and incomparably his noblest record of the
particular anatomical and physiological investiga-
tions alluded to, Mr. Lewes has given to the world
what we do not for one instant hesitate to describe
in so many words, as a masterpiece of comprehen-
sive elucidation. The Physiology of Common Life
will, henceforth, " hold its own" we arc perfectly
well satisfied, as a standard and authoritative work
of reference. Among works of reference it only
wants age to become a classic. It needs but
the lapse of a very brief interval to secure to
itself the advantage of being widely popu-
lar. The varied exposition undertaken by
the author in these two volumes, he has endea-
voured throughout, as he tells us in his preface,
" to render on a level with the science of our day."
And while so doing, he has repeatedly found it im-
perative upon him to break away from the custom
almost invariable among previous popular writers
upon these subjects—that of allowing themselves
to drop into what he aptly terms mere middlemen
between the public and the scientific authorities.
In other words, Mr. Lewes has disdained to be
simply and slavishly a mere reporter or interpreter
—standing midway between the froXXoi and
the chi.Xoo-0450r transmuting the esoteric into
the exoteric—translating scientific technicalities
into the vulgar vernacular. While expounding
" facts and doctrines" in the Physiology of Common
Life, Mr. Lewes has not done so as he found them,
but as he himself believes them to be. Speaking of
his determination to do this, he says himself
frankly—" I could not bring myself to publish,
upon the authority of respected writers, statements
which I know to be false, and opinions which I
believe to be erroneous." he old accustomed plan
had about it, of course, the allurement of being by
far the easiest and the most convenient. Mr. Lewes
has been too conscientiously faithful, however, to the
interests of Truth to dream for a single moment of
adopting a plan of that slovenly description—simply
because it was the easiest or tha most convenient.
" Having laboured earnestly [we shall presently
see how earnestly] to get at the truth," he writes
in his preface, " it would have been disloyal to con-
tribute in any way to the spread of what I
believed to be erroneous." The course pursued
by him, therefore, throughout these two im-
portant volumes, in consequence of this honest
and conscientious determination, has been
" impartially to state the facts and opinions cur.
rent among physiologists," and then having done
that, explicitly " to state the reasons for their re-
jection," whenever these opinions have appeared to
him inadmissible. He is, therefore, arrogating to
the work no merit which it does not actually pos-
sess in a very high degree, when he adds that the
work necessarily comprises within it upon that ac-
count, "much original matter and a great deal of
criticism." It is far more, indeed, a record
of original remarks than a carefully con-
densed compilation. These researches of his
own, in truth, have been so considerable
and so comprehensive, that they have actually em-
braced within them—molluscs, bees, beetles,
spiders, locusts, crabs, fishes, frogs, tritons, lizards,
chickens, moles, mice, rats. cats, dogs, sheep, pigs,
calves, oxen, and men. Our physiologist, there-
fore, is no mere themist, but a skilled and laborious
experimentalist. He is not content that his work
should be a mere whispering gallery, in which the
voices of others should be heard echoing and rever-
berating. What he promulgates as opinions he
promulgates from the fulness of his own convictions
—what he asserts as facts he asserts from his own
personal knowledge that they are so. In testimony
of his thorough independence he points, and with
perfect reason, and with a certain amount of com-
placency we cannot but conjecture—(a complacency,
moreover, to our thinking, not in any way unnatural
under the circumstances) to those chapters upon the
Nervous System (to be found in the latter part of
the second volume) in which arc discernible the
largest amount of dissent on his part from opinions
hitherto entertained. And it is especially notice-
able that it is in one of these surprising, and iu
every respect admirable chapters, the author
traces with a luminous pen, what ought
to be the true spirit of inquiry manifested
in the course of these philosophical in-
vestigations. Wfic, indeed, would venture in
sober seriousness to contravene a single one of these
subtle and refined propositions Who will hesitate
to concur with Mr. Lewes when he writes that,be-
fore adventuring upon inquiries of this kind( Vol. 11.,
p. 83), " we must resolve in a loving, seeking, ear-
nest spirit to keep our minds open to the reception
of Fact ; and calmly to acquiesce in it, when pre-
sented, instead of opposing it by preconceptions of
our own ?" Who will not bow before this irresis-
tible force of his reasoning ? when be adds, " It is
idle to interrogate Nature in the spirit so often
animating the disputes of men when each antagonist
is less desirous of hearing the argument of the
other than of thrusting forward his own ;" or when
he observes yet further, " If we ask Nature a ques-
tion we must listen patiently to her reply ; should
that reply perplex us, we must ask again, put-
ting the question in another form ; and should
again and again the same reply be elicited, we must
accept it, be it never so destructive of our theories
and anticipations." Adding cautiously—wittingly
almost—" We must not dictate our answer to the
Oracle we consult." It is in this lofty yet lowly,
serious and reverent spirit that the author of The
Physiology of Common Life has conducted his re-
searches into the Arcana of Nature. And it is this
which lends such rare value to the fruits of his
philosophical investigations. He has no pet theories
to subserve. He has no especial abhorrence of
whims and crotchets in the way of idle scientific
hypotheses. He carves his way to new facts with
the scalpel, and sees many an old opinion resolve
itself into nothingness when scrutinised under the
inexorable lens of the microscope. " What !" he
hears some of the more supercilious ex-
claiming against him as he writes, " What !
with your scalpel, fit only to deal with
Death, do you hcpe (for example) to
deal with the mysteries of lhought ? When you
have taken the mechanism to pieces, do you expect
to reveal its action ; or do you fancy the soul is
less mysterious than a watch ?"—" Feeble nonsense
of this kind has imposed on men," Mr. Lewes
immediately replies bluntly in answer to those old
shallow objections: observing thereupon—"Thatwe
shall ever penetrate the mystery of the Soul isim-
probable ; equally improbable that we shall ever
penetrate the mystery of Life; yet," he exclaims
with some exultation, " it is certain that the
methods of science have enabled us to discover
some of the laws of Life, and assign to the various
organs the part each plays ; and this in spite of
the fact that the scalpel is fit only to deal with
death." The sentence which follows crushes and
pulverises under the irresistible pressure and
weight of the reductio ad absurdum the :frivolous
objection already particularised, Mr. Lewes ob-
serving simply—" I would ask these declaimers
whether they think that the action of the watch
will be better understood by taking the mechanism
to pieces and studying each part and its relation
to the rest; or by examining certain speculative
postulates respecting it, and working a system
out of deductions from those postulates?" Not
a syllable need be added to that one sarcastic in-
terrogation. The folly of the argument repelled
is thereby conclusively demonstrated. All that
the anatomist attempts, as our author has admi-
rably shewn, is to discover the
.mechanism;to the all that
detect
is essayed by the physiologist
in-
fluence each separate part of thatn mechanism exer-
cises. Enough has been here
cispirit in which
delightful remarked, however,
to indicate the truly philosophical
and most esti-
ia
the author of this
mable chain of treatises on The Physiology of
Common Life has from first to last conducted his
anatomical and physiological investigations. And we
have been desirous of directing attention peculiarly
to the spirit in which the work before us has been
produced, rather than to the mere scope of it as a
literary and scientific production. For the scope
itself of these two volumes might readily be con-
jectured in a great measure from their sufficiently
explicit designation. " The Physiology of Com-
mon Life" affixed to the title-page is but the epi-
tome of that microcosm of which the table of Con-
tents forms but the expanded syllabus, and of which
also the supplemented index is but the detailed
analysis arranged alphabetically. Between the
alpha of the contents and the omega of the index,
the text itself (halved in the two volumes) is sub-
divided into thirteen chapters, the headings of
which areas suggestive as they are antithetical. Here
we read of Hunger and Thirst—of Food and Drink
—of Digestion and Indigestion—reminiscent to how

' many this last ? for that agonized couplet in Bul-
wer's Siamese Twins—
" When we'vegreatly daring mind
The damned dyspepsia's left behind."
Here, too, read we not of Respiration and Suffoca-
tion—of Feeling and Thinking—of the Mind and
the Brain—of Sleep and Dreams—of our Senses and "
Sensation —of Life and Death ? Whoever,
after reading these two most readable vo-
lumes shall preserve in recollection but a corn-
paratively small modicum of the extraordinary mass
of facts herein compacted together, will yet have
added immensely to their stores of information,
and will be tolerably certain to revert in quest of
more to the same admirable repertory of knowledge
upon the subject of Everyday Physiology.

Life of Monsgr. Weedall. By F. C. Husenbeth,
D.D. One vol. Bvo., pp. 317. Longman and
Company. _ _ _

A really charming biography of a most amiable
and learned character, written throughout in a
manner delightfully easy and anecdotal. The
writer, it should be observed, at once possesses the
chief qualification of a biographer—he knew the
original of which this literary sketch is the life-
like portraiture—knew him long, and intimately,
and appreciatively. And, as he himself observes in
his opening chapter, quoting the wise and senten-
tious words, that follow, from Doctor Johnson's
memoir of Addison :—" They only who live with a
man can write his life with very genuine exactness
and discrimination." Anyone's life, if so written
—" with genuine exactness and discrimination"—
could hardly fail (it has been remarked) to prove
both instructive and interesting. Above all, the
life of a good and able man so penned—the career
of one conspicuous among those about him, by the
possession of rare parts and shining virtues, if only
described thus, with precision as to the facts related
and with discrimination as to their value and
bearing in realising to the reader the distinguishing
peculiarities of the commemorated idiosyncracy—
can never fail, we may be sure, of exercising upon
that reader's sympathies a peculiar and even irre-
sistible fascination. Dr. Husenbeth—whether in-
stinctively or intentionally it matters little—haa
taken a hint from some of the greatest masters
in biographic literature. He who is mani-
festly so familiar with the admirable writ-
ings of Samuel Johnson, and who has here in
this graceful memorial of his " schoolfellow, pupil,
and friend," quoted once at least, if not frequently,,
from the pages of the " Rambler," may possibly
recall to mind that judicious observation of our
profound moralist-essayist, when talking of the
commendable particularity observable among bio-
graphers :—" Thus Sallust, the great mast( r of
Nature, has not forgotten to remark of Cataline
that his walk was now quick and again slow, as an
indication of a mind revolving with violent commo-
tion." Whether the writer of this present biography
has penned its score of chapters in the light of that
distinct recollection, he has certainly taken pen in
hand, with a due appreciation of the truth ex-
pressed by the greatest of all classic biographers--
Plutarch—where he has said in his life ofAlexander
that frequently an action of little consequence, a
word, or a joke, rrpava Ppaxi,, Kai ilnp.a, Kai ratScci,
often brings out more than the greatest sieges, for
example, or the most signal victories, the distin-
guishing traits of a person's real character. Dr.
Husenbeth has, with a vivid sense of this, traced
the outlines of the tranquil and scholarly career of
his deceased friend, pupil, and schoolfellow, from
his birth, on the sth of September, 1788, to his de-
mise, on the 7th of November, 1859, filling up the
record of that interval, of more than 71 years, with
a multiplicity of those minute traits defined by
Plutarch as so eminently, or rather pre-eminently,
characteristic. The result has about it, as we have
said, the effect of a life-like portraiture. The bio-
graphy is as a canvass hanging on our walls, from
which the features of the departed look down upon
us—smile down upon us—familiarly.

SPORTING NOTES.