426 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



what I had said seventeen years previously in the *' Satur- 

 day Review." The Professor continues: *'If I explain 

 attraction and repulsion as exhibitions of mind, as psychi- 

 cal phenomena, I simply throw the Psyche out of the win- 

 dow, and the Psyche ceases to be a Psyche." I may say, 

 in passing, that the Psyche that could be cast out of the 

 window is not worth house-room. At this point the trans- 

 lator, who is evidently a man of culture, strikes in with a 

 foot-note. **As an illustration of Professor Virchow's 

 meaning, we may quote the conclusion at which Doctor 

 Tyndall arrives respecting the hypothesis of a human soul,^ 

 offered as an explanation or a simplification of a series 

 of obscure phenomena — psychical phenomena, as he calls 

 them. *If you are content to make your soul a poetic 

 rendering of a phenomenon which refuses the yoke of 

 ordinary physical law::, I, for one, would not object to this 

 exercise of ideality.'"* Professor Virchow's meaning, I 

 admit, required illustration; but I do not clearly see how 

 the quotation from me subserves this purpose. I do not 

 even know whether I am cited as meriting praise or de- 

 serving opprobrium. In a far coarser fashion this utter- 

 ance of mine has been dealt with in other places: it may 

 therefore be worth while to spend a few words upon it. 



The sting of a wasp at the finger-end announces itself 

 to the brain as pain. The impression made by the sting 

 travels, in the first place, with comparative slowness along 

 the nerves affected; and only when it reaches the brain 

 have we the fact of consciousness. Those who think most 

 profoundly on this subject hold that a chemical change. 



* Presidential Address delivered before the Birmingham and Midland Insti- 

 tute, October 1, 1877. "Fortnightly Review," Nov. 1, 1877, p. 607. 



