Ill 



comprising both classics and the principles of physical science, at the 

 school established by his father at Bristol, and it was his intention to 

 adopt the profession of a civil engineer. He was, however, persuaded 

 to accept the opportunity offered by a medical practitioner, Mr. Estlin, 

 of Bristol, and to enter on the study of medicine as apprentice to that 

 gentleman. Shortly after this he was sent, as companion to one of 

 Mr. Estlin's patients, to the West Indies, and on his return from this 

 visit he entered, at the age of twenty, the medical classes of University 

 College, London. After passing the examinations of the College of 

 Surgeons and the Apothecaries' Society he proceeded to Edinburgh, 

 where he graduated as M.D. in 1839. 



His graduation thesis on " The Physiological Inferences to be 

 dednced from the Structure of the Nervous System of Invertebrated 

 Animals " excited considerable attention, especially on account of the 

 views which he advanced as to the reflex function of the ganglia of 

 the ventral cord of Arthropoda. 



From the first Dr. Carpenter's work showed the tendency of his 

 mind to seek for large generalisations and the development of philo- 

 sophical principles. He was a natural philosopher in the widest sense 

 of the term — one who was equally familiar with the fundamental 

 doctrines of physics and with the phenomena of the concrete sciences 

 of astronomy, geology, and biology. It was his aim, by the use of the 

 widest range of knowledge of the facts of Nature, to arrive at a general 

 conception of these phenomena as the outcome of uniform and all- 

 pervading laws. His interest in the study of living things was not 

 therefore primarily that of the artist and poet so much as that of the 

 philosopher, and it is remarkable that this interest should have carried 

 him, as it did, into minute and elaborate investigations of form and 

 structure. Although some of his scientific memoirs are among the most 

 beautifully illustrated works which have been published by any natural- 

 ist, yet it is noteworthy that he himself was not a draughtsman, but 

 invariably employed highly skilled artists to prepare his illustrations 

 for him. Yet we cannot doubt that the man who, with his dominant 

 mental tendency to far-reaching speculations, yet gave to the world 

 the minute and ingenious analysis of the beautiful structure of the 

 shells of Foraminifera, had an artist's love of form, and that the part 

 of his life's work (for it was only a part among the abundant results 

 of his extraordinary energy) which was devoted to the sea and the 

 investigation of some of its fascinating living contents, was thus 

 directed by a true love of Nature in which ulterior philosophy had no 

 share. 



Two books, Dr. Carpenter has told us, exerted great influence over 

 his mind in his student days : they were Sir John Herschel's " Dis- 

 course on the Study of Natural Philosophy" and Ly ell's " Principles 

 of Geology" — that great book to which we owe the even greater books 



