+ 2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



BRAIN-WOEK AND THE EMOTIONS. 



AMONG the legitimate solaces of the toils of the modern biologist, 

 there should certainly be reckoned the grim delight which he 

 were less than human if he did not feel in terrifying Mrs. Grundy. 

 Merely to hear a Huxley or a Spencer shout " Boh ! " to a flock of the 

 terrified orthodox is amusing, but to the man himself who makes it 

 the fun must be even perilously fascinating. Doubtless, there is some 

 danger of carrying the joke too far. One has heard of a philosopher, 

 who, when courteously asked by a company of the most intelligent of 

 the London clergy to explain some of the principal points of conflict 

 between scientific data and conventional religious theory, began his 

 speech by bluntly telling his audience that he was going to relate im- 

 portant facts, but that his hearers were such unimportant people that 

 he did not care a button whether they believed the facts or not. Such 

 rudeness gives even more pain to the truly scientific mind than it in- 

 flicts upon the immediate sufferers. 



However, there really is legitimate amusement to be had, and even 

 much good to be done, by the biologist, in shocking the theoretical 

 prejudices of the metaphysicians. The irony of Von Hutten, and the 

 delicate wit of Erasmus, when exposing the intellectual contemptibility 

 of the opponents of the Reformation, were not more truly helpful to 

 the progress of humanity, than are the assaults of those physiologists 

 and physicists who are even now smashing the crockeryware of the 

 metaphysicians and kicking the fragments about with a fury that one 

 can easily see is partly fun. As for that large section of the clergy 

 who persist in looking at the phenomena of mind only through the 

 spectacles of Hamilton and Mansel, there really is no way of dealing 

 with them at all except that of pelting them with incessant ridicule. 

 It is inexpressibly comical, and yet provoking, to hear them keep 

 chattering about the tendency of modern biology to degrade our ideas 

 respecting mind ; for one has only to look back some fifty or sixty 

 years to remember the days when mind was considered exclusively 

 the domain of theologians and metaphysicians, and mental diseases 

 were treated according to " high priori " notions instead of medical 

 science. One would think that the cruel and shameful failure of that 

 old system, and the striking benefits that at once accrued to the men- 

 tally afflicted when physicians boldly declared that the mind could 

 only be successfully treated by treating the brain one would think 

 that these and many other similar things would have taught the meta- 

 physicians modesty ; but such is not the case. It was but four years 

 since that the Archbishop of York delivered himself of a most pre- 

 sumptuous and densely ignorant attack on modern biological specu- 

 lation, and was promptly castigated by Dr. Maudsley. To this day, 



