"opinionum commenta delet dies, natur? judicia confirmat."—cicero.
"time, which obliterates the fictions of opinion, confirms the decisions of nature."
whoever has wandered to the south side of lincoln's inn fields, will have found himself in one of the "solitudes of london"—one of those places which, interspersed here and there amidst the busy current that rushes along every street and ally, seem quite out of the human life-tide, and furnish serene spots, a dead calm, in the midst of tumult and agitation. here a lawyer may con over a "glorious uncertainty," a surgeon a difficult case, a mathematician the general doctrine of probability, or the chevalier d'industrie the particular case of the habitat of his next dinner; but, unless you have some such need of abstraction from the world, these places are heart-sinkingly dull. you see few people; perhaps there may be a sallow-looking gentleman, in a black coat, with a handful of papers, rushing into "chambers;" or a somewhat more rubicund one in blue, walking seriously out: the very stones are remarkably round and salient, as if from want, rather than from excess, of friction. the atmosphere from the distance comes charged with the half-spent, booming hum of population.
immediately around you, all is comparatively silent.
if you are in a carriage, it seems every moment to come in contact with fresh surfaces, and "beats a roll" of continued vibrations; or, if a carriage happen to pass you, it seems to make more noise than half a dozen vehicles anywhere else. you may174 observe a long fa?ade, of irregular elevations—upright parallelograms, called habitable houses; but, for aught you see, half of them may have been deserted: the dull sameness of the fa?ade is broken only by half a dozen ionic columns, which, notwithstanding their number, seem very serious and very solitary. you may, perhaps, imagine that they bear a somewhat equivocal relation to the large house before which they stand. you may fancy them to be architectural relics, inconveniently large for admission to some depository within, or that they are intended as a sort of respectable garniture to the very plain house which they partly serve to conceal or embellish; or quiz them as you please, for architects cannot do everything, nor at once convert a very ugly house into a very beautiful temple.
but, stop there!—for temple it is—ay, perhaps, as human temples always are, not altogether unprofaned; but not so desecrated, we trust, but that it may yet contain the elements of its own purification. it enshrines, reader, a gem of great value, which nothing extrinsic can improve, which no mere art can embellish—a treasure gathered from the ample fields of nature, and which can be enriched or adorned only from the same exhaustless store. though humble, indeed, the tenement, yet, were it humbler still, though it were composed of reeds, and covered in with straw, it would remain hallowed to science.
it holds the monument of the untiring labour of a great master—the rich garnerings of a single mind—the record, alas! but of some of the obligations mankind owe to the faithful pioneer of a science which, however now partially merged in clouds and darkness, and obscured by error, still exhibits through the gloom, enough to assert its lofty original, and to foster hopes of better times.
the museum of john hunter (for it is of that we write) is one of the greatest labours ever achieved by a single individual. to estimate that labour aright, to arrive at a correct notion of the man, the spectator should disregard the number of preparations—the mass of mechanical and manipulatory labour which is involved—the toil, in fact, of mere collection; and, looking through that, contemplate the thought which it records; the general175 nature of the plan; the manner in which the argus-eyed author has assembled together various processes in the vegetable creation; how he has associated them with their nearest relations in the animal kingdom; and how he has traced the chain from link to link, from the more simple to the more compounded forms, so as to throw light on the laws dispensed to man. the spectator should then think of the hunterian portion of the museum as the exhausting harvest of half a life, blessed with no greatly lengthened days; a museum gathered not in peaceful seasons of leisure, nor amid the ease of undiverted thought, but amidst the interrupting agitations of a populous city—the persistent embarrassments of measured means—the multiform distractions of an arduous profession—the still more serious interruptions of occasional indisposition—and, finally, amidst annoyances from quarters whence he had every right to expect support and sympathy—annoyances which served no other purpose but to embitter the tenure of life, and to hasten its termination.
our space will not allow us to dwell more on this subject or the museum just now. but where is our excellent conservator—where is mr. clift, the assistant, the friend, and young companion of john hunter? he, too, is gathered to his rest. he, on whose countenance benevolence had impressed a life-long smile—he who used to tell us, as boys, so much of all he knew, and to remind us, as men, how much we were in danger of forgetting—is now no more. how kind and communicative he was; how modest, and yet how full of information; how acceptably the cheerfulness of social feelings mantled over the staid gravity of science. how fond of any little pleasant story to vary the round of conservative exposition; and then, if half a dozen of us were going round with him the "conticuere omnes," when, with his characteristic prefatory shrug, he was about to speak of hunter. then such a memory! why once, in a long delightful chat, we were talking over the lectures at the college, and he ran over the general objects of various courses, during a succession of years, with an accuracy which, if judged of by those which had fallen within our own recollection, might have suggested that he had carried a syllabus of each in his pocket.
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we had much to say of mr. clift; but, in these times of speed, there is hardly time for anything; yet we think that many an old student, when he has lingered over the stately pile reared by john hunter, may have paused and felt his eyes moistened by the memory of william clift.
when mr. abernethy lectured at the college, there was no permanent professor, as is now the case; no professor owen, of whom we shall have to speak more in the sequel. both the professorship of anatomy and surgery, and also that of comparative anatomy, were only held for a comparatively short time.
it is not very easy to state the principle on which the professors were selected. the privilege of addressing the seniors of the profession has never, any more than any other appointment in the profession, been the subject of public competition; nor, unless the council have had less penetration than we are disposed to give them credit for, has "special fitness" been a very dominant principle. considering the respectability and position of the gentlemen who have been selected, the lectures at the college of surgeons, under the arrangements we are recording, were certainly much less productive, as regards any improvement in science, than might have been reasonably expected.
the vice of "system" could not be always, however, corrected by the merits of the individual. one result, which too commonly arose out of it, was, that gentlemen were called on to address their seniors and contemporaries for the first time, who had never before addressed any but pupils. it would not, therefore, have been very wonderful, if, amongst the other difficulties of lecturing, that most inconvenient one of all should have sometimes occurred, of having nothing to say.
mr. abernethy was appointed in 1814, and had the rare success of conferring a lustre on the appointment, and the perhaps still more difficult task of sustaining, before his seniors and contemporaries, that unrivalled reputation as a lecturer which he had previously acquired. as mr. abernethy had been all his life teaching a more scientific surgery, which he believed to be founded on principles legitimately deducible from facts developed by hunter; so every circumstance of time, place, and inclination,177 disposed him to bring mr. hunter's views and opinions under the review of the audience at the college, composed of his seniors, his contemporaries, and of pupils from the different schools. he was, we believe, equally desirous of disseminating them amongst the one class, and of having them considered by the others. at this time, no lectures of mr. hunter had been published; and mr. abernethy thought that, to understand hunter's opinions of the actions of living bodies, it was expedient that people should have some notion of what mr. hunter considered to be the general nature of—"life."
we hold this point to be very important; for all experience shows that speculation on the abstract nature of things is to the last degree unprofitable. nothing is so clear in all sciences as that the proper study of mankind is the laws by which they are governed. yet we cannot, in any science, proceed without something to give an intelligible expression to our ideas; which something is essentially hypothetical.
if, for example, we speak of light, we can hardly express our ideas without first supposing of light that it is some subtle substance sent off from luminous bodies, or that it consists in undulations; as we adopt the corpuscular or undulatory theory. it would be easy to form a third, somewhat different from either, and which would yet pretend to no more than to give a still more intelligible expression to phenomena.
now this is, as it appears to us, just what mr. abernethy did. he did not speculate on the nature of life for any other reason than to give a more intelligible expression to mr. hunter's other views. at that time there was nothing published, showing that mr. hunter's ideas of life were what mr. abernethy represented them to be; they might have been remembered by men of his own age, but this was not very good for controversy; and as that was made a point of attack35, it is well that the since collected "life and lectures of john hunter," by mr. palmer, have given178 us a written authority for the accuracy of abernethy's representations.
in theorizing on the cause of the phenomena of living bodies, men have, at different times, arrived at various opinions; but although not so understood, it seems to us that they all merge into two—the one which supposes life to be the result of organization, or the arrangement of matter; the other, that the organization given, life is something superadded to it; just as electricity or magnetism to the bodies with which these forces may be connected. the latter was the opinion which mr. abernethy advocated as that held by mr. hunter, and which he honestly entertained as most intelligibly and rationally, in his view, explaining the phenomena.
that such were really the views held by mr. hunter, a few passages from the work, as published by mr. palmer, will show. "animal and vegetable substances," says mr. hunter, "differ from common matter in having a power superadded totally different from any other known property of matter; out of which various new properties arise36." so much for a general view. next, a reference to particular powers: "actions in animal bodies have been so much considered under a chemical and mechanical philosophy, that physiologists have entirely lost sight of life;" again showing how correctly abernethy had interpreted hunter's notion of the necessary "key," as abernethy phrased it, to his views; hunter says: "for unless we consider life as the immediate cause of attraction occurring in animals and vegetables, we can have no just conception of animal and vegetable matter37." mr. hunter, in relation to the idea of life being the result of organization, shows how faithful an exposition abernethy had given of his views. "it appears," says he, "that the living principle cannot arise from the peculiar modification of matter, because the same modification exists where this principle is no more."—vol. i, p. 221. and in the same page: "life, then, appears to be something superadded to this peculiar modification of matter."
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then as to one of the illustrations employed by abernethy, hunter, after saying that he is aware that it is difficult to conceive this superaddition, adds: "but to show that matter may take on new properties without being altered itself as to the species of matter, it may not be improper to illustrate this. perhaps magnetism affords the best illustration. a bar of iron, without magnetism, may be considered as animal matter without life. with magnetism, it acquires new properties of attraction and repulsion," &c.
mr. abernethy, as we have said, advocated similar views; and, we repeat, founded his reason for so doing on what he conceived to be the necessity of explaining mr. hunter's ideas of life, before he could render his (hunter's) explanation of the various phenomena intelligible. in all of this, he certainly was expressing mr. hunter's own views, with that talent for ornamenting and illustrating everything he discussed, for which he was so remarkable.
abernethy multiplied the illustrations by showing the various analogies which seemed to him to be presented in the velocity, the chemical, and other powers of life and electricity; and, with especial reference to the extraordinary discoveries of sir humphrey davy, added such illustrations, as more recent achievements in chemical science had placed within his grasp; and thence concluding it as evident that some subtile, mobile, invisible substance seemed to pervade all nature, so it was not unreasonable to suppose that some similar substance or power pervaded animal bodies. he guarded himself, however, both in his first and again in his second course of lectures, from being supposed to identify life with electricity, in a long paragraph especially devoted to that object. in his second course, in 1815, he proceeded to enumerate john hunter's various labours and contributions to science, as shown by the museum; imparting great interest to every subject, and in so popular a form, that we wonder now, when (as we rejoice to see) there are some small beginnings of a popularization of physiology, that there is not a cheap reprint of these lectures.
keeping, then, his object in view, we cannot see how, as a180 faithful interpreter of john hunter, abernethy could have done less; and if any theory of life at all is to be adopted, as necessary to give an intelligible impression to phenomena, one can hardly quarrel with that which takes the phenomena of life on one hand, and those of death on the other, as the means of expressing our ideas. when we see a man dead, whom we had contemplated alive, it certainly seems that something has left him; and whether we say "something superadded,"—the "breath" or "life," or by whatever term we call it,—we appear really to express in as simple a form as possible the facts before us. it seems to us that, after all, john hunter did little more; for the illustration or similitude by which we endeavour to render an idea clear, has in strictness nothing necessarily to do with the idea itself; any more than an analogy, however real the likeness, or a parallelism, however close, represents identity.
we should have thought it, therefore, of all things in the world the least likely that a representation of any theory of hunter's should have disturbed the harmony which ought to exist between men engaged in scientific inquiries. it shows, however, the value of confining ourselves as strictly as possible to phenomena, and the conclusions deducible from them. nothing could possibly be more philosophical than the terms in which mr. abernethy undertook to advocate mr. hunter's views of life. his definitions of hypothesis, the conditions on which he founded its legitimate character, the modesty with which he applies it, and the clearness with which he states how easily our best-grounded suppositions may be subverted by new facts, are very lucid and beautiful, and give a tone to the lectures (as we should have thought) the very last calculated to have led to the consequences which followed.
