2 6 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



scientific technics, and regularly made himself acquainted with 

 new instruments and methods. He had qualities of heart corre- 

 sponding with the superiority of his mind. His pupils recollect 

 the quiet good-will and fatherly kindness which he showed toward 

 them, and returned them with grateful demonstrations. 



Although he was actively engaged in scientific pursuits during 

 the whole of his long career, he never mingled in the discussions 

 of the learned world after he went to Belgium. During the five 

 years of his residence in Berlin, his discoveries followed upon one 

 another like the explosions of a piece of fire-works ; and all the 

 great discoveries that made his name illustrious and opened new 

 horizons to scientific thought date from that time. After remov- 

 ing to Belgium, he published only one work, his researches on the 

 uses of the bile. He became almost forgotten outside of Belgium, 

 and many, not hearing his name mentioned any more, thought he 

 was dead. This may be charged to his aversion to personal con- 

 troversy. While the cell theory, as a whole, was established, some 

 of the details gave rise to disputes in which he did not care to en- 

 gage. Believing that he had reached an ultimate principle which 

 time would only establish more strongly, he was willing to let 

 details take care of themselves. But he never lost his interest in 

 the scientific movement ; and, at the time of his death, he was 

 engaged in studying the influence of electrical discharges on the 

 development of the lower beings in organic infusions. 



In Schwann's theory all the phenomena of life were explained 

 by the properties of atoms. The cell was an aggregation of atoms 

 obeying the laws of nature as if it were a crystal. Plants and 

 animals were aggregations of cells, likewise machines destitute of 

 spontaneity. But man differed from animals by possessing an 

 immaterial element that lifted him above them and gave him 

 freedom. It was in this way that he escaped materialism, and 

 kept himself in line with the Church, to which he submitted his 

 studies, having even sought and obtained ecclesiastical approval 

 for the cell theory before he would publish it. For many years 

 he was collecting materials for a great philosophical work in 

 which the cell theory should take the proportions of a general 

 theory of organisms. Beginning with the definition of the atom, 

 his Theoria, as he called it, was to include all the manifestations 

 of life. Psychological phenomena and the dogmas of the Catho- 

 lic religion were to have definite places in it. Death prevented 

 his beginning the final preparation of it ; and his heirs could only 

 find in his desk a manuscript of seventy-two sheets entitled Man 

 considered from the Physiological Point of View, as he is, and as 

 he is to he.— Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from 

 the Revue Scientifique. 



