The Sun.
London, England, 1869-08-19 00:00:00

total-aeon, Which must ctecioe t tie quee-ston or len tee,:
mercial employment. But assuming it to be thus obtained
at a sufficiently cheap rate, what a remarkable example
does the discovery afford of the way in which the
philosopher quietly working in his laboratory may
obtain results which revolutionise the industry of
nations ! To the calico-printer indeed it may make
no ye; y important difference whether he continues to use
madder, or replaces it by the artificial substance ; but what
a sweeping change is made in the madder-growing
interest ! What hundreds of acres hitherto employed in
madder-cultivation are set free for the :Auction of
human food, or of some other substance useful to man !
Such changes can hardly be made without temporary
inconvenience to those who are interested in the branches
of industry affected ; but we must not on that account
attempt to stay the progress of discovery, which is con-
ducive to the general weal. Another example of the way
in which practical applications unexpectedly turn up when
science is pursued for its own sake is afforded by-a result
recently obtained by 1)r. Matthicssen, in his investigation
of the constitution of the opium bases. He found that by
the action of hydrochloric acid on morphia a new base was
produced, which as to composition differed from the
former merely by the removal of one equivalent of water.
But the physiological action of the new base was
utterly different from that of the original one.
While morphia is a powerful narcotic, the use of which is
apt to be followed by subsequent depression, the new base
was found to be free from narcotic properties, but to be a
powerful emetic, the action of which was unattended by
injurious after-effects. It seems likely to become a
valuable remedial agent. In relation to mechanism, this
year is remarkable as being the centenary of the great
invention of our countryman James Watt. It was in the
year 17G0 that he took out his patent involving the inven-
tion of separate condensation, which is justly regarded as
fodming the birth of the steam-engine. Little could even
his inventive mind have foreseen the magnitude of the
gift he was conferring on mankind in general, and on his
own country more particularly. In these days of
steamers, power-looms, and railways, it requires no
small effort to place ourselves in imagination in the
condition we should be in without the steam-engine.
It needs no formal celebration to remind Britons of
what they owe to Watt. Of him truly it may be said
"si monumentuni reguiras eircumspice." With reference
to those branches of science in which we are more or less
concerned with the phenomena of life, my own studies
give me no right to address you. I regret this the less
because my predecessor and my probable successor in the
preSidential chair are both of well-known eminence in this
department. But I hope I may be permitted as a
physicist, and viewing the question from the physical side,
to express to you my views as to the relation which the
physical bear to the biological sciences. No other phy-
sical science has been brought to such perfection as
mechanics ; and in mechanics we have long been familiar
with the idea of the perfect generality of its laws, of their
applicability to bodies organic as well as inorganic, living
as well as dead. bus in a railway collision when a train
is suddenly arrested the passengers are thrown forward, by
virtue of the inertia of their bodies, precisely according to
the laws which regulate the motion of dead matter. So
trite has the idea become that the reference to it may seem
childish; but from mechanics let us pass on to chemistry,
and the case will he found by no means so clear. When
chemists ceased to be content with the mere ultimate
analysis of organic substances, and set themselves to study
their proximate constituents, a great number of definite
chemical compounds were obtained which could not be
formed artificially. I do not know what may have been
the usual opinion at that time among chemists as to their
mode of formation. Probably it may have been imagined
that Chem cal affinities were, indeed, concerned in their
formation, but controlled and modified by an assumed
vital force. But, as the science progressed, many of these
organic substances were forded artificially, in some cases
from other and perfectly distinct organic substances, in
other cases actually from their elements. This statement
must, indeed, be accepted with one qualification. It was
stated several years ago by M. Pasteur, and I believe the
statement still remains true, that no substance the
solution of which possesses the property of rotating the
plane of polarisation of polarised light had been formed
artificially from substances not possessing that property.
Now several of the natural substances which are deemed
to have been produced artificially are active, in the sense
of rotating the plane of polarisation ; and therefore in
these cases the inactive, artificial substances cannot be
absolutely identical with the natural ones. But the inac-
tivity of the artificial substance is readily explained on
the supposition that the artificial substance bears to the
natural, the same relation as racemic acid bears to tartaric
—that it is, so to speak, a mixture of the natural substance
with its image in a mirror. And when we remember by
what a peculiar and troublesome process M. Pasteur suc-
ceeded in separating racemic acid into the right-handed
and left-handed tartaric acids, it will be at once under-
stood how easily the fact, if it be a fact, of the existence
in the natural substance of a mixture of two substances,
one right handed and the other left-handed, hut
otherwise identical, may have escaped detection.
This is a curious point, to the clearing up of which
it is desirable that chemists should direct their attention.
Waiving then the difference of aceivity or inactivity,
which, as we have seen, admits of a simple physical expla-
nation, though the correctness of that explanation remains
to be investigated, we may say that at the present time a
considerable number of what used to be regarded as essen-
tially natural organic substances have been formed in the
laboratory. That being the case, it seems most reasonable
to suppose that in the plant or animal from which those
organic substances were obtained they were formed by
the play of ordinary chemical affinity, not necessarily nor
probably by the same series of reactions by which they
were formed in the laboratory where a high temperature
is commonly employed, but still by chemical reactions of
some kind, under the agency in many cases of light, an
agency sometimes employed by the chemist in his labora-
tory. And since the boundary line between the natural
substances which have and those which have not
been formed artificially is one which, so far as we know,
simply depends upon the amount of our knowledge, and
is continually changing as new processes are discovered,
we are led to extend the same reasoning to the various
chemical substances of which organic structures are made
up. But do the laws of chemical affinity, to which, as I
have endeavoured to infer, living beings, w 'tether vegetable
or animal, arc in absolute subjection, together with thwe
of capillary attraction, of diffusions and so forth, account
or the formation of an organic structure, as distinguished
from the elaboration of the chemical substances of which
;t is composed? No more, it seems to ins, than the laws
ef motion account for the union of oxygen and hydrogen
to form water, though the ponderable matter 89 uniting is
subject to the laws of motion during the act of union just
,es well as before anti after. In the various ',recesses of
crystallisation, of precipitation, and so forth, which we
witness in dead matter, I cannot see the faintest
shadow of an approach to the formation of an organic
structure, still less, to the wonderful series of changes
which are concerned in the growth and perpetuation of
even the lowest plant. Admitting to the full as highly
probable, though not completely demonstrated, the appli-
cability to human beings of the laws which have been
ascertained with reference to dead matter, I feel con-
strained at the same time to admit the existence (I a
mysterious something lying beyond—a something s:ti
genesis, which I regard, not as balancing and suspending
the ordinary physical laws, but as working with them and
through them to the attainment of a designed end. What
this something, which we call life, may be, is a profound
mystery. We know not how many links in the chain of
secondary causation may yet remain behind ; we know
not how few. It would be presumptuous indeed to
aesumein any case that we had already reached the last
link, and to charge with irreverence a fellow-worker who
attempted to push his investigations yet one step further
back. On the other hand, if a thick darkness enshrouds
all beyond, we have no right to assume it to be impossible
that we should have reached even the last link of the
chin ; a stage where further progress is unattainable,
and we can only refer the highest law at which we stopped
to the fiat of an Almighty Poe er. To assume the contrary
as a, matter of necessity, is practically to remove the First
Cause cf all to an infinite distance from us. The boun-
dary, however, between what is clearly known and what
is veiled in impenetrable darkness is eof ordinarily thus
sharply. defined. Between the two there lies a misty
region. in which loom the ill-discerned links of the chain
which are yet beyond us. But the general principle is
not affected thereby. Let us fearlessly trace the depen-
dence of link on link as far as it may be given us to trace
it, but let us take heed that in thus studying second
causes we forget not the First Cause, nor shut
our eyes to the wonderful proofs of design which,
in the study of organised beings especially, meet
us at every turn. Truth we know must be self-consis-
tent, nor can one truth contradict another, even though
the two may have been arrived at by totally different
processes,. in the one case, suppose, obtained by sound
scientific investigation, in the other case taken on trust
from duly authenticated witnesses. Misinterpretations
of course there may be on the one side or on the other,
causing apparent contradictions. Every mathematician
knows that in his private work be will occasionally by
two different trains of reasoning arrive at discordant con-
clusions. He is at once aware that there must be a slip
somewhere, and sets himself to detect and correct it.
When conclusions rest on probable evidence, the recon-
ciling of apparent contradictions is not so simple and
certain. It requires the exercise of a calm, unbiassed
judgment, capable of looking at both sides of the question ;
and oftentimes we have long to suspend our decision, and
seek for further evidence. None need fear the effect
of scientific inquiry carried on in an honest, truth-
loving. humble spirit, which makes us no less
ready frankly to avow our ignorance of what
we cannot explain Lan to accept conclusions
based on sound evidence. The slow but sure path of in-
duction is open to use. Let es frame hypotheses if we will;
most useful are they when kept in their proper place,
as stimulating inquiry. Let us seek to confront them
with observation and experiment, thereby confirming or
upsetting them as the result may prove ; but let us beware
of placing them prematurely in Vie rank of ascertained
truths, and building further conclusions on them as if they
were. , When from the phenomena of life we pass on to
those of mind, we enter a region still more profoundly
mysterious. We can readily imagine that we may here
be dealing with phenomena altogether transcending those
of mere life, in some such way as those of life transcend,
as I have endeavoured to infer, those of chemistry and
molecular attractions, or as the laws of chemical affinity
in their turn transcend those of mere mechanics. Science
can be expected to do but little to aid us here, since the
instrument of research is itself the object of investigation.
It can but enlighten us as to the depth of our ignorance,
and lead us to look to a higher aid for that which most
%early concerns our wellbeing.

Her Majesty's stea:n storeship Megmm, Staff-
Commander J. Loane, left the T pier, Royal
Arsenal Woolwich, this morning, at five a.m., and
proceeded up tly. river under steam, having com-
pleted discharging condemned warlike stores yes-
terday.

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