4.32 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [1870. 



Mozart or a Beethoven ? Is there really no immortal portion 

 separable from this brain-tissue, though yet mysteriously united to 

 it ? In a word, does this curiously-fashioned body inclose a soul, 

 God-given and to God returning ? Here Science veils her face 

 and bows in reverence before the Almighty, AYc have passed the 

 boundaries by which physical science is inclosed. No crucible, 

 no subtle magnetic needle can answer now our questions. No 

 word but His who formed us, can break the awful silence. In 

 presence of such a revelation Science is dumb, and faith comes in 

 joyfully to accept that higher truth which can never be the object 

 of physical demonstration. 



E'OTES AXD REFERENCES. 



1. Humboldt, Yiews of Xatiire, Bohn's ed., London, 1850, p. 380. 

 This Allegory did not appear in the first edition of the Yiews ot 

 Xature. In the preface to the second edition the author gives the 

 following account of its origin : " Schiller," he says, " in remembrance of 

 his youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me, during my 

 loUiT stay at Jena, on physiological subjects." * * * " it was at this 

 period that I wrote the little allegory on Vital Force called the Rhodian 

 Genius. The predilection which Schiller entertained for this piece, 

 which he admitted into his periodical. Die Horen, gave me courage to 

 introduce it here." It was published in Die Horen in 1795. 



2, Humboldt, oj). cit, p. 386. In his Aplwrismi ex doctrina Phijsio- 

 logice c/ie»uc«?PZ«n^«)'«t'«, appended to his Flora Frihcrgeiisia siihterranea, 

 published in 1793, Humboldt had said " Yim interuam, qum chymicse 

 affiuitatis viucula resolvit, atque obstat. quominus elemeuta corporum 

 libere conjungantur, vitalem vocamus." " That internal force, which 

 dissolves the bonds of chemical affinity, and prevents the elements of 

 bodies from freely uniting, we call vital." But in a note to the allegory 

 above mentioned, added to the third edition of the Yiews of Xature, in 

 1849, he says : " Reflection and prolonged study in the departments of 

 physiology and chemistry have deeply shaken my earlier belief in 

 peculiar so-called vital forces. In the year 1797, * * ^ I already 

 declared that I bv do means regarded the existence of these peculiar 

 vital forces as established." And again : "The difficulty of satisfacto- 

 rily referring the vital phenomena of the organism to physical and 

 chemical laws depends chiefly (and almost in the same manner as the 

 prediction of meteorological processes in the atmosphere) on the com- 

 plication of the phenomena, and on the great number of the simulta- 

 neously acting forces, as well as the conditions of their activity." 



3 Compare Henry Bence Jones, Croonian Lectures on Matter and 

 Force. London, 1868, John Churchill & Sons. 



4 lb, Preface, p. vi. 



