Not as a substitute for a sound public opinion in practical morality, but as an instrument which that opinion may effectually wield, let laws be made and executed which shall make the high position and large transactions of the criminal, not an alleviation but an aggravation of his crime. The comparative impunity with which large frauds are still committed exercises a disastrous influence on the morals of those who are young in years and subordinate in position. We know a young man, lying at this moment in a narrow prison cell, who had been morally and religiously trained by worthy parents, and who never before was charged with any vice. He has been detected in the act of taking the accommodation of a hundred pounds or so, that belonged to his employers. He says, and we believe with truth, that while much was passing through his hands, he only took the loan of a small portion, intending to repay it in due time. His conduct was wrong. It was a sin in God's sight, and a crime against society. His punishment is just. But he knows full well that many are this day sauntering in the Exchange, and returning to their elegant houses, who have notoriously committed the same crime, the only difference being that in their case the appropriation was vastly greater in amount. We do not adduce these facts to support a plea either for setting the smaller culprit free, or for vindictively incarcerating the greater. But we say deliberately and earnestly to the trading community of Britain, that as long as these glaring partialities flaunt shamelessly on the high places of trade, you will labour in vain to educate into tender moral sensibility the crowds of young men who occupy its low places. The escape of a great criminal, with the connivance of public opinion. and public law, stimulates and forces into maturity the roots and seeds of crime that slumber indigenous in the hearts of hundreds.

ART. V.-1. The Illustrated History of Alcohol. By Frederic R. Lees, Ph.D. London: John Chapman and Co.

Nos.

1 to 4. 1843-46. 2. On the Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors. A Prize Essay. By William B. Carpenter, M.D., Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in University College. London: C. Gilpin, 1850. 3. The Pathology of Drunkenness. A View of the Operation of Ardent Spirits in the Production of Disease, founded on Original Observation and Research. By Charles Wilson, M.D. Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1855.

4. Refutation of the Westminster Review. By Dr. F. R. Lees, and J. M. MacCulloch, M.D. London: W. Tweedie, 1855.

The Stern Covenant of Works.

5. Principles of Human Physiology.

57

By W. B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S. Fifth Edition. London: John Churchill, 1855. 6. Alcohol; its Place and Power. By James Miller, F.R.S.E., Professor of Surgery in the University of Edinburgh. London: Houlston and Wright, 1858.

THE possibility of a Science of Life is founded on the assumption that vital phenomena, like all others, are regulated by laws, invariable and mathematical-that is, by forces,' at once precise, ascertainable, and calculable. On this supposition solely is the study of physiology, of diet, disease, and medicine, of any conceivable utility or interest. Neither temperance nor intemperance, neither wisdom nor folly in relation to health, can be possible, where no sanitary laws exist, or where the forces at work are transient and fluctuating. Morality itself becomes meaningless, where physical laws are unknown; even the very idea of causation has for its background and basis the ultimate conception of fixedness. Hence the practical interest of the world in biological studies. Physiological law is the unfaltering expression of that Omnipotence which rolls along the planets in their orbit, and poises the sun in his central effulgence. These laws accept no bribe, endure no rival, and hold no parley. The body of man lives under the stern covenant of works, Do and live, disobey and die.' In vain you plead a throbbing head-a burning thirst -a morbid craving-a strong temptation and weakened will-in arrest of judgment. Whatsoever is sown in this field of action, of that, and no other seed, must be the harvest which is reaped. The violated law (though, after all, mercy in disguise) marches on, like a remorseless Nemesis, to the fulfilment of the covenant. He who fully apprehends this truth, will feel the absurdity of the common but latent expectation, that the cunning physician can reconcile intemperance with health.'

The fact of the complexity of the conditions and processes of life, and the consequent difficulty of discovering them, is by no means a reason for abandoning their persistent pursuit; much less is it any justification for indifference or doubt: it is rather a more urgent call for the careful consideration of the methods and paths to be followed, in order to reach and master these laws. The history of biological inquiry is pregnant with examples of the extent to which science may be retarded in its progress by exclusive methods, scholastic authorities, and hasty hypotheses. On the one hand, vitalists have discarded the explanations of mathematicians and chemists; and on the other, mechanists and chemists have attempted the solution of vital phenomena by the partial, and therefore exaggerated, application of their favourite principles. Now obviously, in the incessant molecular motion characteristic of

vital structures, we have a process which furnishes no fixed quantities for the geometers to manipulate; yet it cannot be denied, that a rational understanding of animal mechanics-of the complex structure and play of the human organism-presupposes some previous acquaintance with mathematical science; and it is equally certain that the laws of equilibrium and of motion, of the conversion of forces, as of heat into steam or electricity, are mathematical questions of quantity (or energy), irrespective altogether of the special character of the force. It is a pernicious fallacy to suppose that the complexity of forces and operations in man at all detracts from the certainty and stability of their action-in short, their 'invariableness;' or that the general truths of statics and dynamics are not as perfectly illustrated in the body of man, as in any machine of art, or in the masses of the solar system. The only material difference is this, that in man there resides a power which enables him to change the direction of movement, and to disturb the equilibrium at will; and by this unique endowment he is constituted a morally responsible being.

The mathematical method of exactness is essential to the success of biological pursuits. The facts to which that method is applied, must of course be collected by careful induction-by crucial experiment which shall eliminate extraneous conditions on the one hand, and by a broad and varied experience which shall, so to speak, absorb them, on the other. In fine, the strict conditions of scientific evidence must be fulfilled, and all authority'all mere 'plausibility' and seeming-rigidly rejected. We would not, however, absolutely exclude all conjectural hypotheses. As in the well-known cases of Newton's law of gravitation, and Dalton's atomic theory, a rational hypothesis may be provisionally adopted. Ideality may carry the torch which lights the way to reality; but we must not mistake it for the object itself. Let it be regarded as a fiction waiting to be tested by fact, and no harm can come of it. Of the dignity and worth of biological study, few can entertain a doubt. Apart from its practical value, a mastery of the laws of life has in the past, and will still more in the future, be accepted as the surest measure and most certain mark of intellectual superiority.

To biology several other studies and collateral sciences are subordinated, such as anatomy and pathology, pharmacy, therapeutics, and regimen, but more particularly chemistry, which forms a distinct preliminary science. The modern doctrine of TEMPERANCE, associated with one of the most notable popular movements which the historian of the nineteenth century will have to record, blends itself intimately, as a theory of regimen, with both physiology and chemistry; while, regarded as a personal and social question, it finds an appropriate chapter in the science of

ethics.

Triple Relation of Temperance.

59

ethics. Temperance doctrine, therefore, has a prime and essential relation to three things:

1st. To the physical agent of intoxication, by virtue of which the question comes within the domain of chemistry.

2nd. To the work of alcohol in the living body, which limits the question to a discussion in physiology.

3rd. To the moral and social consequences of drinking, which refers the problem to the decision of deontology, or the science of dutv.

These, in fact, are the three cardinal points to which the agitation of temperance has constantly tended, notwithstanding occasional divergencies, which may be compared to the oscillations of the magnetic needle. The common sense of the reformers has adhered with sound Saxon insight and pertinacity to the true issue; and there can be no doubt in the minds of careful observers, that this agitation and discussion, in its entire bearings and consequences, has not only had all the effect of a national education on the important and specific topic of food and drink, but has done much to waken up the popular mind to other subjects of great social and moral interest. The advocates of temperance, lay and cleric, have been the itinerant instructors of the people, the heralds of sanitary improvement, the preachers of physical and social purity, the apostles of a dawning science of daily life. Within our memory-though time has not yet silvered our locks-not only the educated portion of society, but the general members of the medical profession, entertained the rudest and most confused notions as to diet; whilst the nation at large was shrouded in the crassest ignorance. Everybody, no doubt, felt their need of daily bread; but not one could have given an accurate, and few even a plausible explanation of the need, or of the adaptation of the food to the want. Not merely did the people not know what was food; they believed almost universally that drink' was food-that alcohol was a necessary of life;' at once innocent, invigorating, and nutritious! The first light which broke in upon the darkness arose from the progress of chemical analysis, and its application to the chemistry of the body. Dr. Prout's division of food into the saccharine and oleaginous on the one hand, compounds of three chemical elements only (carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen)-and into the albuminous on the other, compounded of a greater numerical complexity of elements (especially of nitrogen)-naturally suggested a distinction of function or use. It furnished, moreover, a natural standard of comparison for the value of all food, real or alleged, founded upon the presumed perfection of natural law, as the expression of Divine wisdom. Then came the providential discoveries of Mulder and Liebig, which, at first supposed to countenance the

use

use of strong drink, were astutely seized on by the earliest scientific expositors of temperance, in 1843, as demonstrations of the science of teetotalism.' Now a flood of light illuminates this entire plane. Analysis, experiment, and, above all, experience, have contributed their testimony; and confusion, obscurity, and darkness have given way to Science-to clear-seeing.

6

Much opposition had to be encountered by the early and earnest advocates of this new physical temperance, or rather, of an old forgotten temperance revived. But the contest was their discipline and their strength. The conservative critics of custom, the professional advocates of prejudice, as in all similar cases of discovery, sought, in the quaint words of Carlyle, in the opening chapter of the Sartor,' to erect turnpikes, spiked-gates, and impassable barriers,' in the path of the unlicensed adventurers. The obstructions, however, were removed, one by one, and Science, year by year, opened the pages of her illuminated missal to the eager eyes of these new truth-seekers. Perhaps to none can the wise words of Carlyle be more justly applied than to these pioneers of a movement which now constitutes at once the most important branch of life-science popularized to the nation, and that particular field of biological inquiry which is most completely cleared from the doubt and uncertainty that yet hang over so much of the domain of physiology :

'How often have we seen some adventurous, perhaps much-censured wanderer, light on some outlying, neglected, yet vitally momentous province; the hidden treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was completed; thereby planting new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient realm of nothingness and night. Wise man was he who counselled that speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed. It is written, "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." The plain rule is, Let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to: for not this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united task the task of mankind.'

From the issue of the prize essay, 'Bacchus,' in 1840, to the publication of Professor Carpenter's Human Physiology' in 1855, which contains an admirable summary of the established truths of temperance, there has been a sure and steady advance in science towards the stand-point of the water-drinker. For the v rification of this remark we appeal to the scientific works and able popular treatises, written by scientific men of our own land, the titles of which are prefixed to this article; and we may add the interesting fact, that the series of eminent experimenters on the Continent, whose researches and productions have given a new direction and an enormous impetus to biological inquiriesamongst whom we may especially name Liebig, Otto, Huss, Vierordt, Mulder, Naas, Böcker, Moleschott, Morel, and Leh

man n