256 
IN ATBOTE 
[ Zan. 6, 1870 
This amount of work exceeds the work done by the 
muscles during a boat-race (as already stated) in the pro- 
portion of 20 to 15, or of 4 to 3. 
3. There is yet another mode of stating the wonderful 
energy of the human heart. Let us suppose that the 
heart expends its entire force in lifting its own weight 
vertically ; then the total height through which it could 
lift itself in one hour is thus found, by reducing the daily 
work done in foot-tons (124°208) to the hourly work done 
in foot-ounces, and dividing the result by the weight of 
the heart in ounces :-— 
Height through which the human heart could raise its 
24° 7 22 
se 
24 X 9°39 
An active pedestrian can climb from Zermatt to the 
top of Mont Rosa, 9,000 feet, in nine hours; or can lift 
his own body at the rate of 1,000 feet per hour, which is 
only one-twentieth part of the energy of the heart. 
When the railway was constructed from Trieste to 
Vienna, a prize was offered for the locomotive Alp engine 
that could lift its own weight through the greatest height 
in one hour. The prize locomotive was the “ Bavaria,” 
which lifted herself through 2,700 feet in one hour; the 
greatest feat as yet accomplished on steep gradients. 
This result, remarkable as it is, reaches only one-eighth 
part of the energy of the human heart. 
From whatever mechanical point of view, therefore, we 
regard the human heart, it is entitled to be considered as 
the most wonderful mechanism we are acquainted with. 
Its energy equals one-third of the total daily force of all 
the muscles of a strong man ; it exceeds by one-third the 
labour of the muscles in a boat-race, estimated by equal 
weights of muscle ; and it is twenty times the force of the 
muscles used in climbing, and eight times the force of the 
most powerful engine invented as yet by the art of man. 
No reflecting mind can avoid recognising in its per- 
fection, and regarding with reverential awe, the Divine 
skill that has constructed it. 
own weight in one hour 
SAMUEL HAUGHTON 
THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE 
Darwinism tested by the Science of Language. Translated 
from the German of Professor August Schleicher, 
by Dr. Alex. V. W. Bikkers. (London: J. C. 
Hotten, 1869.) 
2 is not very creditable to the students of the Science 
of Language that there should have been among them 
so much wrangling as to whether that science is to be 
treated as one of the natural or as one of the historical 
sciences. They, if any one, ought to have seen that they 
were playing with language, or rather that language was 
playing with them, and that unless a proper definition is 
first given of what is meant by nature and by natural 
science, the pleading for and against the admission of the 
science of language to the circle of the natural sciences 
may be carried on ad énjinitunt. It is, of course, open to 
anybody so to define the meaning of nature as to exclude 
human nature, and so to narrow the sphere of the natural 
sciences as to leave no place for the science of language. 
It is possible also so to interpret the meaning of growth 
that it becomes inapplicable alike to the gradual formation 
of the earth’s crust, and to the slow accumulation of the 
humus of language. Let the definitions of these terms be 
plainly laid down, and the controversy, if it will not cease 
at once, will at all events become more fruitful. It will then 
turn on the legitimate definition of such terms as nature 
and mind, necessity and free-will, and it will have to be 
determined by philosophers rather than by scholars. 
Unless appearances deceive us, it is not the ten- 
dency of modern philosophy to isolate human nature 
and to separate it by impassable barriers from nature at 
large, but rather to discover the bridges which lead from 
one bank to the other, and to lay bare the hidden founda- 
tions which, deep beneath the surface, connect the two 
opposite shores. It is, in fact, easy to see that the old 
medieval discussions on necessity and free-will are 
turning up again in our own time, though slightly dis- 
guised, in the discussions on the proper place which man 
holds in the realm of nature; nay, that the same anti- 
nomies have been at the root of the controversy 
from the days when Greek philosophers maintained 
that language existed either vues or Oécer, to our own 
days, when scholars range themselves in two hostile 
camps, claiming for the Science of Language a place 
either among the physical or the historical branches of 
knowledge. 
It is by supplying a new point of view for the considera- 
tion of these world-old problems, that Darwin’s book “On 
the Origin of Species” has exercised an influence far 
beyond the sphere for which it was originally intended. 
The two technical terms of “ Natural Selection” and 
“ Struggle for Life,’ which are in reality but two aspects 
of the same process, are the very categories which 
were wanted to enable us to grasp by one effort of 
thought the reciprocal action of the one on the many and 
of the many on the one; the mutual dependence of in- 
dividuals, species, and genus ; or, from another point of 
view, the inevitable limitation of spontaneous action by 
the controlling influences of social life. I may be 
allowed to repeat what I said on a former occasion :— 
“Who has thought about the changes which are brought 
about, apparently by the exertions of individuals, but 
for the accomplishment of which, nevertheless, individual 
exertions would seem to be totally unavailing, without 
feeling the want of a word—that is to say, in reality, of 
an idea—to comprehend the influence of individuals on 
the world at large, and of the world at large on individuals ; 
an idea that should explain the failure of Huss in reform- 
ing the Church, and the success of Luther ; the defeat of 
Pitt in carrying parliamentary reform, and the success of 
Russell? How are we to express that historical process 
in which the individual seems to be a free agent, and 
yet is the slave of the masses whom he wants to influence ; 
in which the masses seem irresistible, and are yet swayed by 
the pen of an unknown writer? Or, to descend to smaller 
matters, how does a poet become popular? How does a 
new style of art or architecture prevail? How, again, does 
fashion change?—how does what seemed absurd last 
year become recognised in this, and what is admired in 
this become ridiculous in the next season? Or take 
language itself. How is it that a new word, such as ‘to 
shunt,’ or a new pronunciation, such as ‘ go/d’ instead of 
‘goold, is sometimes accepted, while at other times the 
last words newly coined or newly revived by our best 
writers are completely ignored or fall dead ? We want an 
idea that is to exclude caprice as well as necessity—that 
