Materialism at the International Medical Congress
233 Art. VII. :Author: J. M. Winn, M.D., M.R.C.P., &C.
Although the International Medical Congress cannot be said to have added much to our store of medical knowledge, it must be admitted that, as a social gathering, it was a great success. It is, however, to be regretted that there was one dark blot in its proceedings?the advocacy of Materialism bj Professor Huxley, in his address on The Connexion of the Biological Sciences with Medicine.
Inasmuch as the Professor is one of the most strenuous supporters of materialistic doctrines, the title of his address is singularly inappropriate, inconsistent, and misleading. What right has he to adopt the definition of biological science, which wholly relates to life, when he ignores the vital principle ? It would have been more candid if he had styled his address: An attempt to prove that all vital phenomena are the effects of mechanical and chemical forces.
No one can object to the prefatory remarks in the address, which have reference to the valuable aid medicine has derived from modern discoveries in physiology and chemistry ; but this, however true, is not new, and is familiar to nearly every second year’s student at our medical schools. When, however, the Professor leaves the beaten track of facts and gives utterance to the dogmatic assertion?that there is no contrast between living and inert matter?he makes the most glaring and egregious blunder. In speaking of Descartes and his followers he makes the following observations, which are unwarranted by those very modern discoveries in science for which he professes unbounded admiration : ” Others, on the contrary, supported by a robust faith in the universal applicability of the principles laid down by Descartes, and seeing that the actions called ‘ vital’ are, so far as we have any means of knowing, nothing but changes of place of particles of matter, look to molecular physics to achieve the analysis of the living protoplasm itself into a molecular mechanism. If there is any truth in the received doctrines of physics, that contrast between living and inert matter on which Bichat lays so much stress, does not exist.” If Professor Huxley had been thoroughly acquainted with the researches of Professor Lionel Beale and others on cell-life, he surely would not have proclaimed to the world the extravagant hypothesis that a living body is a mere piece of molecular mechanism ; a theory which, he must be aware, if true, would tend to subvert the fundamental principles on which morality and polity are based. The following observations from Dr Lionel Beale’s Lumleian Lectures on Life and on Vital Action,* are diametrically opposed to Professor Huxley’s view. After an elaborate description of bioplastic movements, be remarks : ” Of the several primary vital movements I have described, none can be initiated. They are peculiar to living matter, and not one of them has been explained by physical law. No mere physical or chemical attractions or expulsions, on the part of any material particle, at all resemble vital movements I beg you carefully to consider the evidence upon which the views I have advanced are based. It has been affirmed that the phenomena occurring in the simplest living matter, are not far removed from the phenomena of the non-living, and, like these, are to be explained mechanically, but only the operation not the explanation is forthcoming.” We are not aware that Professor Huxley has paid special attention to microscopic investigation of living tissue, and are therefore not inclined to give so much credence to his haphazard remarks, as to those of Professor Lionel Beale, who has devoted a life-time to the patient observation of living tissue with microscopes of the very highest power. About four years since Dr Huxley expressed his belief that vital force is a sort of crystalline force. A crystal as much resembles a life cell as an icicle does a warm palpitating animal.
One of the most reckless assertions in the Professor’s address, showing the unphilosophical haste with which he adopts fiction as fact, was the affirmation that ” living matter differs from othpr matter in degree and not in kind; the microcosm repeats the macracosm ; and one chain of causation connects the nebulous original of suns and planetary systems with the protoplasmic foundation of life and organisation.” It would have been more in accordance with sound philosophy if the Professor had waited till the nebular hypothesis, which is at present in nubibus, had been proved, before announcing it as a fact. We have not the slightest desire to check scientific inquiry, but the vice-president of the Congress surely might, for the sake of humanity, have paused before giving the weight of his authority to visionary, extravagant, and unverified theories of a decidedly atheistical tendency. The subtle sophistries of his school are doing infinitely more mischief than the outspoken blasphemy of Bradlaugh. It is a marked feature in the constitution of the Professor’s mind, that he is always in such hot haste to propagate fanciful speculations. The speedy collapse of his theory?that seamud and bioplasm were identical?should have been a warning to him to be more cautious for the future. His notion also that * On Life and on Vital Action. London: J. A. Churchill, 1876. a living organism was the same as a crystal, to which we have previously referred, is another example of the mode in which he is carried away by his imagination. Moreover, he still persists with a pertinacity worthy of a better cause, to uphold evolution (that modern figment of science which the Rev. F. 0. Morris, the distinguished naturalist, has happily termed ” The Darwin Craze “), after the innumerable unanswerable objections which have been advanced against the hypothesis ; the chief of which I published in my ” Collapse of Scientific Atheism,”* and which, to any but a prejudiced inquirer, must have shown incontestibly that Darwinism is played out. At the Congress, Dr Bastian’s attempt to revive the exploded materialistic theory of spontaneous generation, was a complete failure.
In the Physiological Section Dr Ferrier exhibited two of his uselessly mutilated monkeys, to show that injury to particular parts of the brain will produce paralysis, which might have been taken for granted without vivisection. As regards the localisation of the moral and intellectual faculties in the brain, Dr Ferrier is no nearer the goal than he was six years since. The dog exhibited by Professor Groltz, and from which he had removed the greater portion of its brain, afforded evidence opposed to the views of Professor Ferrier. Inasmuch as a dog is a more intelligent animal than a monkey, we are inclined to give our vote in favour of the dog.
Since the above remarks were written, the British Association for the Advancement of Science has held its annual meeting at York. Its proceedings fully bear out the character I gave of it last year in The Journal of Psychological Medicine. I described it as a gigantic pic-nic, enlivened by sensational addresses on materialistic philosophy, and that it might be not inaptly termed: An association for the advancement of infidelity. In their recent addresses, Dr Huxley and Sir John Lubbock have done their best to maintain the materialistic character of the association; and it is a great misfortune that its members should allow these gentlemen to take the lead in its proceedings year after year. Their scientific fallacies would matter little, and they might be safely left to the sobering influence of time, had it not been for the baneful influence they are exciting on those younger members of society, who have neither leisure nor opportunity for the study necessary to enable them to perceive the shallowness of the pernicious and
fallacious doctrines, so loudly espoused by Drs. Tyndall and Huxley.
The president, Sir John Lubbock, in his address endeavoured to make it appear that the difficulties of the Darwin theory were more and more being overcome. This we most emphatically deny. Even his protege, the industrious ant, rises up ungratefully, in arms against his patron. Sir John has taken great pains to endow him with the attributes of the human mind, but he did not see that in doing so he was breaking the ingenious chain which was to link the anthropoid ape with man. Sir John admits that, although the anthropoid ape approaches next to man in bodily structure, the ant claimed the next place to him in intelligence; therefore, inasmuch as mind is superior to matter, it happens after all, that it is not the monkey but the ant who is our immediate progenitor: if not, man must be a cross between the ant and the baboon, or, as a late popular novelist might put it: In the morning of life the industrious married the grotesque, and their offspring was the human mind. This is only one of the many absurdities which follow in the wake of Darwinism. But we are indebted to this intelligent creature, the ant, not only for his refutation of the evolution theory, but also for his having afforded an argument opposed to the views of Dr Ferrier, and other materialistic physiologists. If, as they assert, a brain of complex structure is necessary for the manifestation of intelligence, how is it that the ant, with a simple ganglion, large only in proportion to the development of the eyes, antenna?, &c., is so much more intelligent, as Sir John Lubbock contends, than the anthropoid ape ?
Professor Huxley in his address on ” The rise and progress of Paleontology,” bandied the old arguments in favour of evolution, without attempting a reply to the numerous objections to it. The only inference we can draw from his persistent reticence, is that he cannot answer them.
In the Zoological department, Miss Becker expressed her displeasure that the meetings of the association had been described as huge pic-nics. She evidently prefers sensational addresses, like those of Dr Huxley’s, which draw well, to sober sensible discourses such as Mr. William Spottiswoode’s. It is a notorious fact that sensational lectures with a spice of wickedness in them attract the largest audiences. We have no doubt that if some one were to announce an address entitled ” The existence of a Deity disproved by the spectrum analysis,” or something equally impious or absurd, that the draw would be immense. There is nothing like ad captandum atheistical rhetoric to attract a thoughtless crowd.
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