402 
POPULAR SCIENCE REYIEW. 
perceptible change which might be caused in his glottis) is followed 
by an infinite variation in function (speech or dumbness, as the 
case may be, and its results). 
As in the former case, the argument may seem clear and conclusive to 
our author ; but it is not so to our apprehension. 
The first proposition, which it is unecessary to repeat, is denied by his op- 
ponents, or rather he undertakes to prove its accuracy, and that he seeks to 
do in his second. But his second does not appear to us to consist of facts, 
for in dealing with the watches he neither brings about a structural alte- 
ration, such as he requires for his argument, nor does that alteration 
result in a variation in functional action (for that is the point at issue). 
He simply injures the mechanism, and completely arrests, or destroys, its 
functional action. If the author had shown that by effecting some im- 
perceptible change in the mechanism of one watch, he could make it go 
immeasurably faster than the other, then his simile would have been ap- 
propriate ; but we could not have accepted it as evidence in favour of his 
argument. It would then only have been a simile ; but as it now stands, it 
is not even a pertinent one. Had the author told us to place by the side 
of these watches two men made by the same Maker, and as completely 
alike as possible ; and that if we or the Maker (the Maker in preference, 
as He understands His handiwork the best) were to derange some minute 
vital organ, he would cease to live, and that all his vital functions would be 
stopped, we should have said that the analogy holds good, and should have 
seen in- it an evidence of the feeble tie that unites body and soul. But as 
it stands, it does not bring us a step nearer to a conclusion, being simply 
irrelevant, and we must pass it by ; and proceeding to the natural illus- 
tration, man’s speech, we take exception to it on the ground that it 
assumes as a fact what is not so, namely, that it is speech which “ con- 
stitutes and makes man what he is,” &c. 
In the first place, speech is a mere instrument of the mind; and, 
secondly, it is not by any means so infallible an instrument as the hand 
(aided, of course, by the chisel, the pen, or the pencil). It is certainly not 
tradition which has “ enabled man to record his experience,” and con- 
stituted him what he is at present. And, finally, it is very doubtful 
whether a race of dumb men, circumstanced as the author states, would be 
so degraded as he seems to think. Their progress would be slow, but 
their human attributes would not be extinguished by the absence of this 
one faculty.* 
Now if these exceptions which we have made to the author’s propo- 
sitions be well grounded, he has simply failed (as far as his examples go) 
to prove that a “ variation in function, which follows on a variation in 
structure, may be enormously greater than the variation in structure 
but if he had proved this exceptional law (and we apprehend that the 
author does not regard it as a general one), still we should have protested 
* We should add that precisely the same mode of treatment has been 
adopted by the author in dealing with his men , as with his watches. lie does 
not bring about an immense variation in function ; but, as in the case of 
the watches, he completely stops the functions of one of them. 
