THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN GERMANY. 



193 



which there belongs to pure and to applied science, 

 the continual contest which exists there between meta- 

 physical and exact reasoning, and the general ebb and 

 flow of rival currents of ideas, all seem to have been 

 necessary to raise to the rank of an exact science those 

 researches which deal with the phenomena of life and 

 consciousness in their normal and abnormal forms of ex- 

 istence. In the hands of German students l chemistry 

 and physics, botany and zoology, comparative anatomy 

 and morphology, pathology, psychology, and metaphysics, 

 have laboured from different and unconnected beginnings 

 to produce that central science which attacks the great 

 problem of organic life, of individuation, and which studies 

 the immediate conditions of consciousness. Physiology, 

 or to use its more comprehensive name, Biology? may be 



21. 



Biology a 

 German 

 science. 



1 The two greatest discoveries 

 in physiology belong to England. 

 These are Harvey's discovery of the 

 circulation of the blood in the seven- 

 teenth century, and Charles Bell's 

 discovery of the difference of sensory 

 and motor nerves in the early part 

 of this century. The two men, how- 

 ever, who have done most to estab- 

 lish physiology as an independent 

 science, whose systematic works 

 have done most for the student 

 of physiology, are probably Haller 

 (see supra, p. 176), whose 'Ele- 

 menta ' cast into the shade all 

 older handbooks, and Johannes 

 Miiller (1801-58), whose 'Hand- 

 buch' (1833-40) was translated 

 into French and English. See Du 

 Bois-Reymond, ' Reden,' &c., vol. 

 ii. pp. 143, &c., 195, 360, who also 

 points out how in other sciences, 

 like mathematics, physics, chem- 

 istry, Germans made use almost 

 exclusively of translations of French 

 and English textbooks and hand- 

 books, whereas in physiology they 



VOL. I. 



furnished for a long period the 

 systematic treatises for the whole 

 world (vol. ii. p. 196). Physiology 

 has therefore with some right been 

 termed a German science (see 

 Helmholtz, ' Vortrage,' &c., vol. i. 

 pp. 339, 362 ; Du Bois-Reymond, 

 ' Reden,' vol. ii. p. 265). Com- 

 pare also what Huxley says, 

 ' Critiques and Addresses,' pp. 221, 

 303. On the connection of physi- 

 ology with all other sciences see 

 likewise Helmholtz, loc. cit. ; Du 

 Bois - Reymond, vol. ii. p. 341 ; 

 Huxley, ' Lay Sermons,' &c., p. 

 75 ; ' Science and Culture,' p. 52 : 

 "A thorough study of human physi- 

 ology is, in itself, an education 

 broader and more comprehensive 

 than much that passes under that 

 name. There is no side of the in- 

 tellect which it does not call into 

 play, no region of human know- 

 ledge into which either its roots 

 or its branches do not extend," &c. 

 2 The word " biology " seems to 

 have been first used by G. R. 



N 



