Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1870-06-01
From Old and New for June.
PrOtOplaSm.
BY FRANCIS TIFFANY.

In the strangely discordant moods which
sweep across the mind of man, we find him
at one time taking a morose pleasure in
Identifying himself with the gross, material
and perishable, and at another recoiling in
disgust at every whisper of the kind Often
in these morbid moods he evinces keen dra-
matte satisfaction in rhapsOdizing on all that
is counted sublimest in his nature, only to
blast the whole with some mocking, brutal
word at the close. Why does Hamlet fling
himself into that glorious burst, - What a
piece of work is mani Only to wreak
the fullness of his misery and contempt in his
final, - This quintessence of dust - as just
before the ~ brave o'erhanging armament,
the " ma jestical roof, frettcd with golden
fire, were but splendid pictures to prepare
the way for the " foul and pestilent cOngre-
CATION of vapOrs." But in his elated and
soaring moods such procedure is utterly re-
pulsive to man. While he is glorying in
life, beauty. color, perfume. he turns in an
ger and revolt on any teacher or any theory
that undertakes to analyze these enhancing
experiences into lower elements, and TO in
sist that certain atoms, oscillations, and
chemical afhnities account for them all, or
are adequate equivalents of them. The
golden haired Mary, into whose blue eyes he
is fondly looking, and round whose waist his
ara is=elfe<fngy y-hsreenses stsrb50rnlysto iten-
tify with any formula of definite proportions
of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen.
The gorgeous sunset into which they are
both gazing with silent alteration this he
will not have translated into barren terms of
so much vaporized water, so many vibrations
of ether. Is he right or wrong, conceited or
rational, in such refusal /?
Wandering through the halls of the larger
anatomical museums of Europe and America,
one is wont to find himself brought to a
stand before a certain glass dOored case
whose contents present him with a cOmpre-
bensive view of all the elements that enter
into the composition of a man. A large
bottle of water stands fanked by a number
of smaller bottles and vials, containing, in
varying quantities, chloride of sodium, phos-
phate of magnesia, starch, sugar. fbrin,
hematine, biliverdine, and the many other
indispensable ingredients. And very in
teresting and instructive sight it is. Every
thing is there that was ever in the departed
gentleman, who, out of his own substance
kindly furnished all the elements of the col
lection yes, everything that Is in you, the
spectator, improving your mind, and. after a
fashion, cOntem plating as man-su bjeetive
the man-objective before you. You look
round, perhaps, with a certain shock at blue
eyed Mary, as you recall, on the highest
physiological authority, that there is nothing
now and here in her that is not " represent
ed - in the vials before you. You feel
tempted to say, brusquely, " have seen
enough of this, let's get out into the air =
But, alas you were born too late in the
course of the ages to do this resolutely. A
sudden feeling of shame flushes your cheek
What am | to be afraid of facts Am [ to
be one of the unprogresslve and reactlonary
tremblers who hate, and hide from, science !
This protest in me, is it anything but the
protest of false pride, a cowardly cold-shoul-
der turned to my own and Mary's poor blood
relatives. hematine and globuline You turn
for possibility of escape from the bumiliating
conclusion to the printed explanation of the
contents of the case, and read that the con-
dilions under which these elements become
man are left out, uncorkable, in any of the
walls. The conditions Well, will think
about these conditions.
There is a certain class of scientific men
who make short work with these protests.
.'Here is the analysis they gruffly say.
% A whole is but the sum of it's parts. The
s5esS Fs aad al oseSfe hsFs pgs ses
under which they unite and think, love, weep,
rejoice, are not in the glass case. But they
are trihing matters. A little heat, little
electricity, and so forth. The particles are
the all-important entities. Vibrations among
them will account for all your poetry, all
your affection, all your prayers. One thing
is certain such emotions and thoughts are
nothing, when we come to sift them down,
but complications of vibrations of Just such
elements as are before you. Your protest
that human nature is degraded by admitting
this, is the folly of pride or the conceit of
ignorance. The question is not a matter of
feeling. sir, but a matter of fact.
Yes" you reply, 4" but feelings are facts,
and often the most rational of facts. Ali
that we know in any department may be re-
duced to feelings of difference between one
thing and another. Beauty and ugliness,
truth and error, with all their incest sbad.
ings of discrimination, rest at last upon
great and small senses of dissimilarity. /,
for one, encounter point blank sense of ut
ter IncongruIty when you tell me, after the
manner of Professor Huxley, and in bis own
words, that 1t is a matter of little moment
whether we express the phenomena of matter
in terms CT spirit or the phenomena of spirit
in terms of NATTER nay, and still further
tell me that the latter is altogether the clear
er and better manner of expression. A great
gulf yawns between the two. The one refers
me to daily conscious experiences known in
being and experienced inno other way The
other refers me to images of shifting motions
among points and specks. matter of little
moment Let us suppose that some clever
experimenter, like Professor Tyndal, had
lived in Shakspeare's day, and had invented
an electric or other light of such intensity
that its rays would penetrate right through
the brain of man, and throw an image of
his cerebral activities upon a screen. Well
VIC have our Shakespeare in full fire ofthought