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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



mucous membrane ; looking through his ophthal- 

 moscope at a diseased retina, he infers in certain 

 cases diseases of the nervous system, diseases 

 of the vascular system, of the secreting system. 

 A glance at a child's teeth will every now and 

 then indicate to the practised eye a constitutional 

 unsoundness of a very precise kind inherited 

 from his parents. And so on through countless 

 instances. 



We have here before us the most important 

 and fundamental of all the facts connected with 

 living things — the sympathy, or, if you like the 

 Latin word translated from the Greek, the con- 

 sensus, or in plain English the fellow-feeling, of 

 all the parts of the same organism. For the pur- 

 poses of this lecture I shall have to dwell much 

 on this point. Meanwhile, I remark in the first 

 place that this sympathy, though very real, is by 

 no means complete or perfect. There are parts 

 which are more bound together, and parts which 

 are less bound. You cannot cut away the prin- 

 cipal roots of a tree without risking its life ; but 

 you can cut away leaves, flowers, and even branch- 

 es, without any very marked effect. In man and 

 other animals, as we know, hair can be cut, nails, 

 hoofs, and cuticle, may be partially removed, with- 

 out any consensus, any affection of the rest of the 

 organism. On the other hand, there are parts 

 which are vital. A bullet through the heart 

 means instant death. There is a very small and 

 well-defined place in the upper part of the spinal 

 cord, and if that be injured, life ceases in a mo- 

 ment. Thus there are parts that are more bound 

 together, and parts that are less bound. 



And observe, in the second place, that, as we 

 rise higher in the scale of life, we find two great 

 distinctions gradually growing upon us, and form- 

 ing a slowly-increasing contrast between the high- 

 er forms of life and the lower. We find, in the 

 first place, a greater variety of parts ; in the 

 second place we find a greater oneness, a strong- 

 er binding together. The slightest consideration 

 will show this. The huge ocean sea-weeds, hun- 

 dreds of feet long, are formed of monotonous repe- 

 titions of similar parts ; there are millions and 

 billions of cells, bound no doubt together by ma- 

 terial contact, like bricks in a long wall, but with 

 very little vital connection. No simultaneous 

 thrill, no wave of excitement, can pass through 

 such an organism as this. The parts are all 

 alike, and they have very little vital union. You 

 may vivisect such an organism as this with per- 

 fect impunity. Pass upward to the exogamous 

 plant — to any one, for instance, of our common- 

 est trees or shrubs. Here you have many more 



differences — root, stem, leaf, calyx, corolla, sta> 

 men, ovary, seed, and so on. Moreover, if you 

 look at it closely, you will find difference of tis- 

 sues ; not merely cells, but the coalescence of 

 cells into fibres of various textures. And here, 

 as we have seen, there is complete unity, though 

 still very imperfect. It is still very difficult to 

 say whether the plant is an individual or whether 

 it is a collection of individuals. You can cut off 

 a twig, and place it in the soil under suitable con- 

 ditions, and it becomes a new tree. You can re- 

 peat this process any number of times. Fas3 up- 

 ward from. the plant to the vertebrate animal, and 

 you find a vastly greater multiplicity of parts or 

 organs — brain, heart, lungs, intestines, etc., etc. 

 — these organs when analyzed resolving them- 

 selves into a relatively small number of tissues, 

 but still far more numerous than the tissues of 

 the highest plant. And, corresponding to this 

 divergency, we find that strongly-maiked consen- 

 sus of which I have already spoken. Here, then, 

 we have the meaning of that very profound re- 

 mark of Coleridge — though possibly, like so many 

 others, it was not his own thought — " Life is the 

 tendency to individuation." That is to say, the 

 higher forms of life are more distinctly individu- 

 als than the lower. To use philosophic language, 

 in the higher forms of life, as compared with the 

 lower, there is increased differentiation coupled 

 with increased integration. There is at once 

 greater variety of parts and greater unity of the 

 whole. 



So much for plants and animals. Let us now 

 ask ourselves whether anything of the same kind 

 can be traced in the comparison of different na- 

 tions, or of nations in different stages? What, 

 in a few words, is the difference between the 

 savage state and the civilized state ? Is it not 

 this : that in the savage state people have very 

 little to do with one another, and are very like 

 one another; in the civilized state, people have 

 very much to do with one another, and are very 

 much unlike one another ? In the one case there 

 is independence without individuality; in .the 

 other case there is dependence with individuality. 

 This is quite contrary to the common democratic 

 prejudice that Rousseau imported into the world, 

 which is widely diffused in America. It differs 

 from the opening statements in Mr. Mill's " Essay 

 on Liberty." But I think it will be found true. 

 I suppose Shakespeare was a strongly-marked 

 individual. Well, try for a moment to think of 

 Shakespeare quite apart from the whole history 

 of England and of Europe before him. You 

 might just as well try, to think of the blossom of 



