The New York herald., 1868-02-02

wnatever the difficulties may be that surround
tue conduct OF q lyric establishment, those
dimcuites will be overcome when It Is re-
membered that another competitor ia in the
field.
human Anowicdge-The Condition Of Pro-
Buckle held that there was no reason tn
believe that " the children born in London in
1860 were whit more richly endowed by
nature than those who were born in London a
hundred or thousand years before !" and he
argued that the brain remained thus stationary
even while urging the progressive course of
science. He was wrong, however; for the
march of science stamps its advance in the az
gregate brain of the race not less actually
and positively than upon the printed pages Of
our book shelves. Cerebral change is as
much law Of our progress as any other
change. One generation does not start where
preceding generation started; it starts
where that former one was stayed at last ;
and it is not only through the communicated
knowledge Of written or printed records that
1t has the advantage Of the efforts and expert
ments of that former generation, but it has it
also in the brain it inherits in which me
growth in knowledge Of the former sg.caeraiion
had developed actual changes and had
stamped capacity Of further development in
the same direction. Men inherit the diseases
| 2f their fathers-above all, cerebral diseases,
which are cerebral changes in bad sense /;
by the same natural law they inherit the
change that is in better sense, and thus is left
in the brain Of the son, other things equal,
some good result of what the father knew. In
the faintest possible degree this change and
advance are perceptible from one generation
to another; but taken through the ages they
have such consequences that the commonplace
people Of to-day share in the general property
Of knowledge that the Biblical times regarded
as beyond all but omnipotence In Job the
lightning is messenger for God. To-day
it is in the service of every reader Of the
HERALp.
There are thousands of men alive in the
world to-day who know more on given sub
jects than any men that ever lived before them
knew; and though they should not write at all,
nor teach, there would be no retrograde Of
knowledge at their death; for their acquire
ments that we are in the habit of chasing as
intellectual are physical. Man, by study and
by experimental wrestling from nature Of her
secrets, secures for himself certain pre-emi-
nence in knowledge; and the appearance of
his knowledge to the world is only the out
ward sign, the superficial evidence of the ac-
cretions within, the physical additions to the
boarded wealth of his brain and indeed, how
ever valuable his discoveries may presently
seem to humanity, the real advantage is the
subjective one in the development of the dis
coverer's own brain; ior in that development
lies the reality Of the step taken in our intelec-
tual progress. In this il must be seen that the
discoverer, tue man of scientific Investigation
not at all the soldier nor the statesman nor the
phi!anthropist nor the lawyers the real pio-
neer Of human progress. All the material devel-
opments OF our civilization the wonderful ma
chineries of the time, will be pushed from their
places by more wonderful ones, as gunpowder
already begins to give place to nitro-glycerine,
as the good old spinning wheel gave place to
the power loom and all these that we count
our great material achievements will be re-
garded with interest only as monuments Of the
steps taken in the real development, which is
that of the brain. Shall, then, the develop
ment oil brain, secured by a man who has
made himself pre-eminent in knowledge,
die with him but for print? Can il
be that while we see preserved from
father to son, mere individualities, the ido-
syncraces of thought and tendency, even
while national characteristics
run SO far in their groove that the beggar imps
from Italy who strain broken harps in our
area ways can acquire in five minutes musical
strains that the cultivated of other races will
require months to master-can 1t be that
these things do not depend upon law that
shall also secure for us in positive develop
ment the results OF endeavor in grander
spheress n will require better authority than \
Buckle TO establish this.
Assuming this progress we mny well i'm
agine that the development of the human
brain is the real secret, the Jacobs ladder by
which we are to noun. in the eventual ages 10
a real knowledge OF why we are here and
what is expected of US. Perhaps the arbor vitae
Of the old anatomists may be, indeed, the tree
of life, and the tree of knowledge Of good and
evil also. Since there is no lfperbole that
can oveTrate in expression the progress
has already made since this ami
NAL, who began on the earth we cannot guess
how low, but we know not very high, perhaps
an eater Of fruits and climber OF trees, the
Fortunate gorilla of propitious climates,
already not only "looketh to the ends of the
earth and seeth under The whole heaven"
but knows the courses of the stars and
the secrets Of the seasons-who shall say that
he. who has to this time acquired 50 much shall |
not In the further development OF brain acquire
of which man, rs he now stands,
cannot conceive, and penetrate secrets the