REVIEWS OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
45 
Pr inciples of General and Comparative Physiology ; intended as an Introduction 
to the Study of Human Physiology, and as a Guide to the Philosophical Pursuit of 
Natural History. By William B. Carpenter, M.R.C.S. London: Churchill. 
1839. 8vo. 
We think, with some of the correspondents of The Naturalist , that any of 
the departments of Natural History may be studied merely for the sake of the 
pleasure they afford the mind; and, when thus studied, the manner signifies 
little, so long as the matter affords the gratification and delight which were 
sought. But this is not the highest object of the pursuit of Natural History. 
By bringing our minds in contact with the various members of the animal, 
vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, we may advance from the objects themselves 
to the laws which regulate their existence, and by the knowledge thus acquired 
be enabled to increase the subserviency of Nature to Man, and give him more 
absolute power over the circumstances in which he is placed. There is a high 
and pure delight that may arise from the contemplation of the simplest object in 
creation, which may be increased with the number of objects presented to our 
senses; but the perception of these is but the beginning of pleasure, and not to 
be compared with the higher feeling that results from looking upon them in their 
mutual relations, observing their influence upon each other, and tracing their 
varied forms and habits to those principles by which all Nature is sustained. 
The fall of an apple might be a subject for interesting thought to the mind of a 
poet or a moralist, but it became the means of revealing the sublimest truths 
when presented to the mind of a Newton. We know that all mankind are not 
endowed with the genius of a Newton ; but at the same time we believe that by 
neglecting to follow his footsteps, the student of Nature will not derive all the 
pleasure his pursuits are able to confer. It might require the mind of a Newton 
to discover the law of gravitation, but every one can follow the process of reason¬ 
ing that led him to the discovery. 
We have been led to these remarks as introductory to the notice of the book 
which is named above, as its contents forcibly remind us, that the study of the 
mere external forms and habits of organized beings, not only fails to afford so 
much pleasure and advantage as we should receive from connecting these with 
the investigation of their internal structure and functions, but that by thus 
confining ourselves, we may be sometimes led into serious error. 
During the latter half of the past century, and the commencement of the 
present, nothing has perhaps been more remarkable in the history of science than 
the increased attention that has been given to the study of the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms. The neglect of this study among the philosophers of Greece 
and Rome may be easily traced to the prevalence of a system of philosophy 
which affected to despise the objects of sense, and excluded from its pale the ideas 
