458 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIII 



when asked whether Mr. Gladstone was an expert 

 metaphysician "An expert in metaphysics? He 

 does not know the meaning of the word." 



In addition to his share in the discussions, Huxley 

 contributed three papers to the Society. The first, 

 read November 17, 1869, was on "The views of 

 Hume, Kant, and Whately on the logical basis of 

 the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul," showing 

 that these thinkers agreed in holding that no such 

 basis is given by reasoning, apart, for instance, from 

 revelation. A summary of the argument appears in 

 the essay on Hume (Coll. Ess. vi. 201, sq.). 



On November 8, 1870, he read a paper, "Has a 

 Frog a Soul ? and if so, of what Nature is that Soul 1 " 

 Experiment shows that a frog deprived of conscious- 

 ness and volition by the removal of the front part of 

 its brain will, under the action of various stimuli, 

 perform many acts which can only be called purposive, 

 such as moving to recover its balance when the board 

 on which it stands is inclined, or scratching where it 

 is made uncomfortable, or croaking when pressed in 

 a particular spot. If its spinal cord be severed, the 

 lower limbs, disconnected from the brain, will also 

 perform actions of this kind. The question arises, Is 

 the frog entirely a soulless automaton, performing all 

 its actions directly in response to external stimuli, 

 only more perfectly and with more delicate adjust- 

 ment when its brain remains intact, or is its soul 

 distributed along its spinal marrow, so that it can be 

 divided into two parts independent of one another ? 



