The British Association for the Advancement of Science
291 Art. XI.?. :Author: J. M. WINN, M.D., M.R.C.P. &c. Tiie Annual Meeting of this Society, which has been recently held at Sheffield, was chiefly conspicuous for the revival of the crude materialistic hypotheses of the Tyndall and Darwin school. The ex-Presidents, Edwards and Spottiswoode, in past years, confined themselves in their addresses exclusively to the discussion of scientific facts ; this year, however, the President and other members have gratified the taste of a large portion of the public by parading extravagant theories, as improbable as they are sensational. Physiological psychology and evolution have again run rampant, and the prodigies of Bathybius and brain-cells have again been held up to astonish and bewilder the ignorant and unwary.
We cannot understand the unqualified encomiums which have been lavished on Doctor Allman’s address by the public press. The President advanced nothing new about protoplasm, or the effects of anaesthetics on plants ; and it was premature and un- warrantable to say that ” when a thought passes through the mind it is associated, as we have now abundant reason for believing, with some change in the protoplasm of the cerebral cells.” The fact is, we are not yet in possession of data to substantiate such an assertion ; and it is of the utmost importance that a hasty opinion should not be formed on a question so closely associated with the independence of the human mind. This bold assertion which has been accepted by many as an established truth, is the keynote of those who style themselves physiological psycho- logists, and whose endeavour it is to materialise mental phenomena, and identify mind with matter. In our waking moments it has never been demonstrated that a thought effects any change in the protoplasm or ganglionic cells of the brain ; how utterly inconceivable it is then, that a subtle intangible thought such as flits across the mind in a dream should produce the slightest molecular alteration, especially at the very time when the nervous system is recuperating itself by rest, and is supposed to be least susceptible to impressions. After making the above bold assertion, Dr Allman is inconsistent in allowing that there is no analogy between thought and the phenomena of matter, and that the ” chasm between unconscious life and 292 THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. thought is deep and impassable.” In the article on ” Mind and Living Particles” in the last number of the Journal of Psychological Medicine the same idea was expressed in the following words: ” Any attempt to bridge over the mysterious region between mind and matter is as hopeless as the en- deavour to span the space between our earth and the most distant fixed star.”
Having gratuitously assumed that a molecular cerebral movement is indissolubly linked with a mental conception, the materialistic psychologist, without hesitation, infers that thought is a function of the brain. The mind of man which perceives, thinks, and wills, is, next to the Divine Intelligence, the grandest and most mysterious fact in the universe, and as such we must humbly accept it.
It is satisfactory to find that Dr Huglilings-Jackson, who was formerly a firm believer in physiological psychology, has at length candidly acknowledged that he had been in error. We quote the following observations from an article of his in the Medical Press for Sept. 3, 1879 : “In a scientific investiga- tion of nervous diseases, it is essential to keep distinct psychology and the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system… . I have been misled by not having seen the distinctness of physical (nervous) states and psychical states, in my earlier studies, and thus I feel bold to point out the evil results of the confusion of the two things.” Dr Hughlings-Jackson must not think that he has acted with extraordinary boldness in making these remarks. He has not been the first to mount the breach. The fallacies of physiological psychology were fully pointed out in an article on ” Materialistic Physiology,” in Vol. iii., New Series, of the Journal of Psychological Medicine. Dr Allman is not strictly logical in defining life as a property of protoplasm (we prefer Dr Lionel Beale’s more explicit term bioplasm), and we are no more justified in the present state of our knowledge in saying that life is a property of bioplasm than we should be in saying that mind is a property of the brain, because in both cases we find them associated ; and the close resemblance between the bioplasm of plants and that of animals, does not necessarily imply that there is no funda- mental difference which the microscope has not yet revealed to us. Would any biologists be so presumptuous as to say that there is nothing in heaven or earth beyond what is discernible by our senses ? All we know is that a principle or power called life has been superadded to matter, and the deeply interesting researches of the microscopists have demonstrated that this power can be traced carrying on its operations in the minutest portions of both animals and plants; and although Dr Allman upholds THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 293 that” there is no dualism in life?that the life of the animal and the life of the plant are, like their protoplasm, in all essential points identical!?and advocates a strong- family likeness be- tween a man and the Drosera, merely because it absorbs nourishment from animal matter, yet he is forced to confess that there may be a fundamental molecular difference between animal and vegetable protoplasm. He observes : ” To suppose, however, that all protoplasm is identical where no difference cognisable by any means at our disposal can be detected, would be an error. Of two particles of protoplasm, between which we may defy all the power of the microscope, all the resources of the laboratory, to detect a difference, one can develop only to a jelly-fish the other only to a man; and one conclusion alone is here possible?that deep within them there must be a fundamental difference which thus determines their inevitable destiny, but of which we know nothing and can assert nothing beyond the statement that it must depend on their molecular constitution.’
Dr Allman speaks of the myth Bathybius as if it were a reality, and of the law of evolution as if it were an established general truth, evidently not being aware that some of its warmest advocates are at length compelled to admit that it is not a de- monstrated fact. One of them has recently observed, ” Perhaps it would be unwise to regard either pure materialism or the theory of evolution as amongst the best established facts in science ” ; and it would be more consistent with common sense and the rules of inductive philosophy for evolutionists to leave their theory in abeyance, until they have answered the numerous objections which have been so frequently brought forward in the pages of the Journal of Psychological Medicine.
Dr Allman, carried away by his unbounded faith in an un- verified hypothesis, gives the reins to his imagination, and looks forward to a period when the human intellect will be developed to such an extent by the agency of the god Evolution, assisted we presume by the angel Bathybius, that it will be able to com- prehend ‘the great mystery of thought.” This day we fear is very far distant. If we may judge from the reasoning powers displayed by the scientific men of the present time, it may be safely averred, that the pure intellect of the philosophers of Greece would bear comparison with them, and that the human mind is in much the same state as it was more than two thousand years ago.
In the biological sections, Sir John Lubbock, who, following in the footsteps of Dr Watts, holds up to our admiration the busy bee and the industrious ant, mentions some new and in- teresting facts regarding the habits of the last-named insect. He thinks so highly of its reasoning faculties that he believes, that if its span of life were not so short, and it had more time to cultivate its intellectual powers, it would rise in the scale of civilisation. He considers that animals possess a mind differing only in degree from that of man.. St. Greox-ge Mivart, Dr All- man, and the majority of those who were present, were of an opposite opinion, and held that the difference was in kind and not in degree. It is a saying as old as the hills that the exclu- sive pursuit of one study is apt to warp the judgment, and whilst looking up to Sir John Lubbock and Huxley as two of the most distinguished naturalists of the day, it is impossible to help noticing the egregious mistakes they fall into when discussing questions connected with mental philosophy.
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