viii 



audience in 1847-52, and published thirty years afterwards under 

 the title of " Anthropologische Vortrage." That they dealt with 

 subjects very far apart from what we now understand by anthro- 

 pology may be gathered from the titles — Faith and Materialism ; 

 Taste and Conscience ; The Physiology of Emotion ; The Will ; 

 Teleology and Darwinism ; Medical and Religious Dualism ; &c. 

 Among the most interesting' are the two last enumerated. Like 

 many other biologists of the former generation, Henle, while cordially 

 accepting the doctrine of descent, strenuously opposed the monistic 

 view, which in the minds of most persons is associated with it, and 

 which refuses to find anything in the phenomena of life which cannot 

 be accounted for as resulting from the play of the molecular forces of 

 the chemical elements which take part in them. He regarded the 

 organism, whether plant or animal, not as the inevitable product of 

 the conditions under which it originated and was developed, but as 

 having independent powers of its own, which the environment is 

 capable of modifying or even controlling, but not of originating. The 

 constancy as well as the variability of organic structure, he said, are 

 alike manifestations of the existence of an agent attached to matter, 

 but not material, and endowed with the function of " presiding over 

 the metabolism of the body capable of reproducing the typical form, 

 and of endless partition without diminution of intensity," in a way 

 which has no counterpart in the inorganic world. It is this infinity 

 of the faculty which the organism possesses of "making the material 

 which composes it its own, and impressing upon it its stamp," which 

 separates it from the recognised forces of inorganic nature. Every 

 kind of organism has its " raumliches " as well as its " zeitliches 

 Ziel,"* which serves as the law of its existence, and the fulfilment of 

 which in no way interferes with its taking its legitimate part in the 

 order of nature. J. B. S. 



Thomas Davidson, LL.D., whose death took place at his residence 

 in Brighton on Wednesday, October 14th, was born in Edinburgh, 

 May 17th, 1817; his ancestral home being at Muir House, near 

 Edinburgh. Mr. Davidson's family possessed considerable landed 

 property in the county of Midlothian. 



At the early age of six years he was taken to the Continent and 

 entirely educated in France, Italy, and Switzerland under the tuition 

 of French and Italian masters. Even at eleven years of age he 

 exhibited a marked predilection for natural history, as well as the 

 fine arts, especially painting, and every facility was afforded him to 

 secure the great advantage which Paris then offered to the artistic 

 and scieLitinV student. 



* " Telcologie und Darwinismus," p. 92. 



