of the Vital and Physical Forces. 371 



healthy or exhausted subject/' (Report Brit. Assoc. 1849, p. 77, 

 78.) 



A view similar to this was printed anonymously in the ' Bri- 

 tish and Foreign Medico-Chii'urgical Review' for January 1848. 

 Still more recently, on the 20th of June 1850, since the publi- 

 cation of Dr. Fowler's absti-act, a paper was announced at the 

 last Meeting of the Royal Society, by Dr. Carpenter, " On the 

 Mutual Relation of the Vital and Physical Forces." But as neither 

 that paper nor the abstract of it has yet been printed, I can only 

 allude to the fact in connexion with that of the publication of 

 Dr. Fowler's remarks, as showing that views like to one which I 

 announced some years ago are now beginning to be dissemi- 

 nated. 



The view by myself had for its foundation the opinion that 

 vital force is derived /rom without; that its degrees, or kinds, have 

 a close relation with the physical forces ; and that, like vital 

 force, the instinctive power, ov force, in animals, is an "evolution, 

 or change of form," of these forces, in, or through, the organi- 

 zation of nervous structure ; - and by which the entire body is 

 impelled to acts of definite character in proportion as the force 

 evolved is determined more or less centrifugally to definite struc- 

 tures or regions ; and further, that this determination to parti- 

 cular regions may be regulated either by the vegetative powers 

 of organization inherent in the body itself, or by accessions of 

 force from without, as by motion, light, heat, food, contact, &c. 



This view, in so far as relates to the connexion of the vital and 

 instinctive forces with the physical, was publicly announced in 

 a paper read to the Linnsean Society on the 18th of November 

 1845, " On the Natural History, Anatomy, and Development of 

 the Oil Beetle, Meloe." 



The force referred to in that paper in illustration of the view 

 was light ; my attention being then particularly drawn to the 

 effects of this influence on the instincts of the young animal. I 

 had already published, in the ' Philosophical Transactions ' for 

 ]837, the results of observations on the influence of light on the 

 Hive Bee, during the occurrence of the annular eclipse of the sun 

 in May 1836 ; and also had pointed out in the ' Transactions ' for 

 1841 the marked effect of light on the instinct of a newly born 

 Myriapod. It may thus be seen that immediately it was shown 

 that " an intimate relation exists between electricity, magnetism 

 and light, and that these are convertible the one into the other*," 

 — the observations I had made on the effects of light on animals 

 would quickly induce the conception that a similar relation ex- 

 ists between the physical and the vital and instinctive powers, 



* Fai'adav, '"' On the Magnetization of Light," &c. (Athenaeum, Dec. 6, 



1845.) ' ' . 



