DR. CARPENTER ON SPIRITUALISM. 



435 



strange insects. The anthidies usually furnish 

 their nests with a sort of flannel which they make 

 slowly out of the flock gathered from the fruit of 

 the figwort, or from mullein; some insects of this 

 kind, finding some flannel clothes drying in a 

 field, went to cut fragments from them. Their 

 work was done at once. 



Man, who is superior to the whole of creation 

 in his general physical aptitudes, his intellectual 

 powers, and the possession of speech, is subject 

 in this world to the same laws as other creatures. 

 It has often been complacently said that he alone 

 makes progress, and a famous physiologist, who 

 h.is given much attention to the functions of the 

 brain, has expressed the thought in this senten- 

 tious way: "The animal never makes progress as 

 a species ; man only, as a species, makes prog- 

 ress." This seems to be equivalent to saying 

 that men of to-day have a natural superiority 

 over those of the age of Moses or the times of 

 Pericles ; in reality, this is confounding the hu- 



man race with society, which does grow perfect 

 and elevated by the labor of its members. 



In conclusion, that grand character of unity 

 which results from the multitude of facts of the 

 physical order, results alike from the multitude 

 of facts in the intellectual order that are best ob- 

 served and least open to discussion. Precisely 

 as aptitudes and functions diminish in impor- 

 tance when their instruments become simple, and 

 vanish when the organs cease to exist, so the 

 faculties of the intellectual order decrease as the 

 organism is lowered. Nowhere do the phenome- 

 na of life differ essentially ; here displaying them- 

 selves with power, there in a feeble way, they 

 disappear when the instruments for their produc- 

 tion no longer exist. In animated beings the 

 connection between all phenomena is extremely 

 close, and by itself the recognition of this truth, 

 which is a new advance won from study and rea- 

 son, opens a new path for scientific investigation, 

 and promises new illumination to the human mind. 



DR. CARPENTER ON SPIRITUALISM. 



Bt ALFRED EUSSELL WALLACE. 



THE two lectures which Dr. Carpenter gave 

 last year at the London Institution were 

 generally reported by the press and led to some 

 controversy. They were then published in Era- 

 ser's Magazine, and they are now republished with 

 what are considered to be pieces juslificatives in 

 an appendix. We may therefore fairly assume 

 that the author has here said his best on the sub- 

 ject — that he has carefully considered his facts 

 and his arguments — and that he can give, in his 

 own opinion at least, good reasons for omitting 

 to notice certain matters which seem essential to 

 a fair and impartial review of the whole question. 

 Dr. Carpenter enjoys the great advantage, 

 which he well knows how to profit by, of being 

 on the popular side, and of having been long 

 before the public as an expounder of popular and 

 educational science. Everything he writes is 

 widely read ; and his reiterated assurances that 

 nobody's opinion and nobody's evidence on this 

 particular subject is of the least value unless they 



1 "Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc., historically and scien- 

 tifically considered. Being 1 Two Lectures delivered at 

 the London Institution, with Preface and Appendix." By 

 William B. Carpenter, C. B., M. D., F. E. 8., etc., etc. 

 New York : D. Appleton & Co. 1877. 



have had a certain special early training (of which, 

 it is pretty generally understood, Dr. Carpenter is 

 one of the few living representatives) have con- 

 vinced many people that what he tells them must 

 be true, and should, therefore, settle the whole 

 matter. He has another advantage in the im- 

 mense extent and complexity of the subject and 

 the widely scattered and controversial nature of 

 its literature. By ranging over this wide field 

 and picking here and there a fact to support his 

 views and a statement to damage his opponents, 

 Dr. Carpenter has rendered it almost impossible 

 to answer him on every point, without an amount 

 of detail and research that would be repulsive to 

 ordinary readers. It is necessary, therefore, to 

 confine ourselves to the more important questions, 

 where the facts are tolerably accessible and the 

 matter can be brought to a definite issue ; though, 

 if space permitted, there is hardly a page of the 

 book in which we should not find expressions 

 calling for strong animadversion, as, for example, 

 the unfounded and totally false general assertion 

 at page 6, that " Believers in spiritualism make 

 it a reproach against men of science that they 

 entertain a prepossession in favor of the ascer- 

 tained and universally admitted laws of Nature." 



