IDIOSYNCRASY. 387 



fest the power familiar to us as muscular force. We are here brought 

 face to face with the same difficulties that meet us whenever we at- 

 tempt to explore the mysterious physics and chemistry of living mat- 

 ter. The attempts which have been made to account for the peculiar 

 selective power of the living cells of the rootlets of plants, to explain 

 the selective action of the gland-cells of the kidneys which act partly 

 according to laws of transudation and diffusion, and partly in opposi- 

 tion to those laws, have given us no satisfaction on those points. And 

 it is the same with regard to the essential functions of other living 

 tissues — all are carried on under the influence of the peculiar and un- 

 comprehended properties of living matter. 



We have gained, and are constantly gaining, valuable knowledge 

 as to very many of the processes taking place in the living body, but 

 as to the processes which take place in the truly living cells of gland, 

 muscle, brain, or nerve, we are in almost complete darkness. At the 

 doors of these most refined and mysterious of Nature's laboratories, we 

 must lay down our rude tools and methods, and confess to ourselves 

 that " thus far and no farther " may we hope to press our eager search 

 for truth. 



IDIOSYNCEASY. 



Bt Professob grant ALLEN 



EVERY man is, in the true Greek sense of the term, an idiosyn- 

 crasy. He is a syncrasis, because he derives all his attributes, 

 physical or mental, from two parents, or four grandparents, or eight 

 great-grandparents, and so forth. But at the same time he is an icUo- 

 syncrasis, because that particular mixture is eminently unlikely ever 

 to have occurred before, or ever to occur again, even in his own broth- 

 ers or sisters. That he is and can be at birth nothing more than such 

 a crasiSf that he can not conceivably contain anything more, on the 

 mental side at least, than was contained in his antecedents, is the 

 thesis which this paper sets out to maintain. 



Take a thousand red beans and a thousand white beans ; shake 

 them all up in a bag together for five minutes, and then pour them 

 out in a square space on a billiard-table just big enough to contain 

 them in a layer one deep. Each time you do so, your product will be 

 the same in general outline and appearance : it will be a quadrangular 

 figure composed of beans, having throughout the same approximate 

 thickness. But it will be a mixture of red beans and white in a cer- 

 tain order ; and the chances against the same order occurring twice 

 will be very great indeed. Make the beans ten thousand of each so 

 as to cover the table ten deep, and the chance of getting the same 

 order twice decreases proportionately. Make them a hundred thou- 



