452 RECENT PROGRESS IN PHYSIOLOGY. 



iology IS easing witli tbose parts of the body which we call muscuiar, 

 vascular, glandular tissues and the like, rightly handled she points out 

 the way not only to mend that which is hurt, to repair the damages of 

 bad usage and disease, but so to train the growing tissues and to guide 

 the grown ones as that the best use may be made of them for the pur- 

 poses of life. She not only heals, she governs and educates. Nor does 

 she do otherwise when she comes to deal with the nervous tissues. 

 IS^ay, it is the very prerogative of these nervous tissues that their life 

 is above that of all the other tissues, contingent on the environment, 

 and susceptible of education. If increasing knowledge gives us increas- 

 ing power so to mold a muscular fiber that it shall play to the best the 

 part which it has to play in life, the little knowledge we at present j)OS- 

 sess gives us at least much confidence in a coming far greater power 

 over the nerve cell. This is not the place to plunge into the deep waters 

 of the relation which the body bears to the mind; but this at least 

 stares us in the face, that changes in what we call the body bring about 

 changes in what we call the mind. When we alter the one, we alter the 

 other. If, as the whole past history of our science leads us to expect, 

 in the coming years a clearer and clearer insight into the nature and 

 conditions of that molecular dance which is to us the material token of 

 nervous action, and a fuller, exacter knowledge of the laws which govern 

 the sweep of nervous impulses along fiber and cell, give us wider and 

 directer command over the molding of the growing nervous mechanism 

 and the maintenance and regulation of the grown one, then assuredly 

 physiology will take its place as a judge of appeal in questions not only 

 of the body, but of the mind; it will raise its voice not in the hospital 

 and consulting room only, but also in the senate and the school. 



One word more. We physiologists are sorely tempted toward self- 

 righteousness, for we enjoy that blessedness which comes when men 

 revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you 

 falsely. In the mother country our hands are tied by an act which was 

 defined by one of the highest legal authorities as a "penal" act; and 

 though with us, as with others, difficulties may have awakened activity, 

 our science suffers from the action of the State. And some there are 

 who would go still further than the State has gone, though that is far — 

 who would take from us even that which we have, and bid us make 

 bricks wholly without straw. To go back is always a hard thing, and 

 we in England can hardly look to any great betterment for at least 

 many years to come. But unless what I have ventured to put before 

 you to-day be a mocking phantasm, unworthy of this great association 

 and this great occasion, England in this respect at xcast ofiers au 

 example to be shunned alike by her offspring and her fellows. 



