THE ORIGIN OF NERVES. 



ONE of the most characteristic features of the present age, 

 regarded from a scientific stand-point, is the marked desire 

 to account for the origin and causes of natural phenomena. 

 The hackneyed quotation from Virgil 



" Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,'' 



in respect of its fitness, might well be adopted as a motto 

 by the scientific thought of our day and generation. Not 

 content with investigating facts, we look beyond the facts 

 to their causes, and endeavour to show how and why these 

 causes have brought about the familiar results, and how one 

 cause becomes related to another in the great sequence of 

 nature. Unquestionably, the improvement of the means of 

 research must be credited with the chief merit of inspiring 

 the search after the " causes of things." So long as we are 

 unable to peer very far beneath the surface of nature, we 

 are not likely to possess much incentive to discover the 

 hidden source of Nature's actions. But when the eye is 

 unsatisfied with its own limited power of seeing, and calls 

 to its aid the microscope or telescope ; when the laboratory 

 of the physiologist becomes furnished with instruments 

 capable of measuring the rate at which the subtle thought- 

 force travels along nerves ; when the chemist and physicist 

 boast of their ability to analyse by aid of the spectroscope 

 the far distant orbs of heaven, or to make far-off sound 

 audible; then we have reached an era when it becomes 

 impossible for mankind to rest content with the declaration 



