io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



control through a wide range of space. If the loss of meteors which 

 become a prey to the attraction of great spheres be replenished by the 

 entrance of new ones into our system, the new visitants from ultra-plane- 

 tary space would, in consequence of a resisting medium, be found in the 

 greatest numbers along the line of the sun's progressive motion. The 

 arrangement seems, however, to be modified by the sun's magnetism, 

 which, by favoring direct motion in the plane of his equator, gradually 

 leads to the meteoric array which is manifested in the appearance of 

 the zodiacal light. That this light is reflected by innumerable meteors, 

 is an opinion which has long been maintained, and which has been con- 

 firmed by late observation ; but it is only from the physical considera- 

 tion which I have presented, that we can account for the permanence 

 of a phenomenon depending on the presence of objects of so minute 

 and perishable a character. To the same cause may be ascribed the 

 direct motion of the comets of short periods of revolution. These 

 effects will give some idea of what might be accomplished by solar 

 magnetism when, as in the cases I have considered, it becomes many 

 million times more powerful than that of our sun, and when it is favored 

 with all the conditions for arranging chaotic matter for a transforma- 

 tion into worlds. 







THE GKOWTH OF THE WILL. 



By ALEXANDEK BAIN, 



PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 



I DESIRE to offer a few observations in reply to the paper by Pro- 

 fessor Payton Spence, in the August number of the " Popular 

 Science Monthly,"* on my theory of the growth of the Will. 



By a calculation of the chance coincidences of the muscles of the 

 human body, Professor Spence appears to reduce to an utter absurdity 

 any theory that makes the will depend upon trial and error. At the 

 same time, he finds in the doctrine of evolution an easy way out of the 

 difficulty. 



1. My first remark is, that I from the first assumed a large number 

 of instinctive connections among our organs, not perhaps so large a 

 number as may now seem requisite, but still so many as to reduce 

 greatly the random tentatives in new acquisitions. In my chapter on 

 instinct (" The Senses and the Intellect," and mental science) I described 

 under reflex actions and primitive combined movements, numerous in- 

 stinctive groupings of considerable complexity on which the will can 

 build its subsequent powers. I set no limit to the number of such in- 

 stincts ; only, I did not refer to any that were not more or less immedi- 

 ately apparent. I reasoned out the locomotive rhythm in the human 



* " Voluntary Motion," by Prof. Payton Spence, M. D. 



