PHYSIOLOGY VERSUS METAPHYSICS. 249 



PHYSIOLOGY YEBSUS METAPHYSICS. 



By WALTER HAYLE WALSHE, M. D. 



" The laboratory is the forecourt of the temple of Philosophy ; and whoso has not 

 offered sacrifices and undergone purification there, has little chance of admission into the 

 sanctuary." — Huxley, " Life of Hume." 



" It was the glory of Hippocrates to have brought Philosophy into Medicine, and 

 Medicine into Philosophy." — Auctor (?). 



"Attendre et esperer" (To wait and hope). — Dumas, "Monte Cristo." 



FEW physiologists, mixing in general society, can have failed to 

 notice how common it is to hear their psychological brethren (if 

 referred to at all) stigmatized as atheists ; and this alike in coteries 

 distinguished for pugnacious religious dogmatism, and in social cii-cles 

 where indifferentism marks the prevailing tone of thought. The acri- 

 mony with which the charge is made apparently increases, on the one 

 hand, in the direct ratio of the bigotry or religious fervor, and, on the 

 other, in the inverse ratio of the scientific enlightenment of different 

 speakers. Furthermore, in certain cliques a shrewd suspicion seems to 

 have arisen that, as any whole includes its parts, physiology in general 

 (nay, even medical science at large) is chargeable with the delinquen- 

 cies of its cerebral dej^artment, and is hence condemned by these judges 

 as a representative in its entirety of atheistic proclivity and purpose. 

 An illustration in point may be found in the columns of the leading 

 daily journal, wherein the reviewer of the volumes of Bain, Bastian, 

 and Luys on Mind, Body, and Brain, " need scarcely say that in all 

 three works the physiological (some would say materialistic) aspects 

 of the subject are strongly insisted upon." * No doubt some would 

 say so, and thence at a bound jump to the conclusion (a foregone one 

 with all who use the word " materialist " in an adverse sense) that all 

 these authors are " atheists." In point of fact, the masses are hardly 

 wiser in their estimate of medical belief than two centuries ago, when 

 lay smartness and ignorance combined had fashioned the libelous 

 apothegm, " Ubi tres medici, ibi duo athei " f (where three doctors are, 

 there are two atheists). 



Now, metaphysical psychologists, though inquiring as boldly from 

 their point of view into the genesis of mind, have contrariwise, with 

 rarest exceptions, escaped and continued to escape this form of social 

 obloquy. Whence comes this diversity of judgment ? Are physiolo- 

 gists thus penalized because they have shown that a certain definite, 

 if subordinate, part is played by physics and chemistry in the complex 

 act of evolving thought, and because they have thus, at least partially, 

 succeeded in wrenching this branch of philosophy from the nerveless 

 grasp of the pure introspcctionist ? Has the success of cerebral physi- 

 * The " Times," January 19, 1883. f Browne, " Religio Medici." 



