Part 2

So simple is nature, so few her laws, that were any one of her phenomena known throughout all its bearings, it would be found that the knowledge includes the philosophy of the whole of matter. Of this Aristotle was aware when announcing, that he who is unacquainted with motion, is ignorant of all things in true philosophy. Motion being the only effect producible on inert, unalterable matter, the knowledge of the phenomenon includes that of all effect. The substance of all things being of the same species, and the power of Nature consisting in universal pressure, the formations in general nature and in the laboratory of art can have but the same principles, laws, theory, and philosophy. Paul may plant and Apollos water; nature germinates, the weather or climate grows and fructifies. The chymist's fire does not burn itself; in the absence of air and its pressure there is no combustion; neither is there growth, respiration, nor life.

According to the philosophy of the astronomer, the earth has projectile motion, from "impulse once impressed, at the beginning, and not since renewed;" which is effect six thousand times, at least, greater than the cause. Then, again, as motion must be in the direction of impulse and cease out of that direction, the earth, from "impulse once impressed," goes round the sun without being impelled; or of its own accord, and should be centripetally attracted to the sun, if solar attraction were possible. It needs no mathematical calculation to prove, that, from such philosophy being wholly independent of all consideration of natural cause, it is untrue, and at variance with common sense.

The philosophy of the chymist is of every-day make. It assumes different species of matter; chymical matter and matter not chymical; attractions innumerable, such as chymical, electric, galvanic, capillary, and attraction of cohesion; likewise magnetic forces, chymical affinities, and affections of matter--"while as yet there is none of them"--matter being inert naturally. To mechanical nature the entire is useless and foreign, and their value lies solely in being terms of professional application in the highly important chymical art; but to the discovery of true philosophy they are an insurmountable obstacle. How chymical matter differs from the common matter of the world, no chymist can say or conceive; nor is there any difference in the substance and nature of inert matter: as well might it be maintained that motion is not always mechanical, but sometimes chymical. The true philosophy of chymistry is dynamic, the basis inertia, the laws those of quantity and relative position.

The philosophy of the anatomist and physiologist is semi-natural, semi-spiritual, mechanical and vital. Life, throughout all belonging to the frame, does not suffice; the heart and blood have each an imputed, distinct, living principle; the nerves are sensitive, the muscles irritable; the flesh has its susceptibility, according to the modern physiology. The sainted health-preserver shudders at the irreligious notion of the economy being philosophised on at all; more especially according to the laws of hydrostatics; it being "impious beyond measure" to reason on the work of God's own hand, formed after his own image and likeness, (malformations excepted,) as on human mechanism. Yet, where are any of these vitalities and living principles when respiration is suddenly stopped? Verily, these professionals endow, most gratuitously, the animal frame with as many vitalities and living principles as the lives bestowed on the tailor's--so much the more unfortunate--cat. As every organ of the body is inert; no organ, of itself, performs the function; every function is mechanically performed, and every effect analogous to impulsive pressure, whether consisting in formation, intermixture, or dissolution, all depend on elementary local change. The contrary is not in the power of the anatomist and physiologist to prove of inert, unalterable, atomic substance; nor should more causes be assumed than what are natural, common, sufficient, and analogous to effects. Spiritual principles for mechanical purposes are as little requisite for animal organism as for the steam-engine, or the performances of a watch.

The last on the list of professional philosophies is that of the Therapeutist; the least misleading, from being the most concise. The word ACTION includes the whole. There is no inquiry to which the word action is not the deeply-learned significant reply; being indefinite, it stands for a dead-stop silencer. The doctor knows best--with much room for knowing better. The doctor knows, and assures from his own certain knowledge, that the action of the dose on the stomach upheaves the sac; but rather than be thought positive, allows that the effect may be from the action of the stomach on the dose. The good easy man of M.D. celebrity, or mediocrity, has to learn, that the dose is as inert as when in the tea-cup, and the stomach as inert as when it has arrived at the predicted destiny, the dissecting table. Again, the action of the pain prevents the action of the physic, otherwise the cure would have been immediate. Such philosophy is harmless, if so to the patient; from its insignificance it corrupts neither pathology, osteology, nor dynamics. Not so the learning, published on high surgical authority, to enlighten ward-walking noviciates--that "pain may exist in the flesh and bones without being felt, owing to the insensible sensibility of the part," which amounts to an excruciating, painless toothache, and, the being unconscious of excited consciousness. Pain is not in the diseased or wounded part, being the consequence of cerebral excitement; pain is one of the objects of perception belonging to the scenery of the sensorium, from which it cannot migrate. The disorganised part is but the apparent place of pain; and wisely such, or else all remedial applications would be to the brain. As to the dose and stomach action, it stands corrected by the diagnosis; the stomach is lifted in consequence of the equilibrium of pressure being destroyed by means of the dose, notwithstanding its additional weight, within the stomach. Chymical action of the dose and self-lifting muscles are all of Esculapian surmise. The faculty should cease to identify feeling, pain, sensation, with organic ailments and disorganization of the flesh.

ATTRACTION.

Attraction is the all-pervading, all-perverting sin of the established philosophy, the scape-goat, on which the blunders of illustration are heaped. Newtonians endow every atom of matter with not only an attracting property, but another, as if to neutralise it--repulsion, which renders both useless; as if to make matter both active and inert, naturally, and as if Nature were planned on principles of complexity, from having double the number of powers the universe is possessed of atoms. One steam power would suffice for the whole of England, all appendages being feasible. How is solidity either maintainable or attainable, while attracting atoms are repelling atoms? The free, uncombined condition of the atoms of the atmosphere, as well as their inertia, proclaim their inability to attract each other; and the mere crack in a pane of glass, that between bodies there is no attraction. While it is left to be conceived by the so-taught rising generation, that the atoms of a bar of iron are busily employed in attracting one another, and as busily in repelling each other at the same time; and that the same atoms are inert, the long-denounced aspersion stands good, that there is no absurdity, however great, into which philosophers have not fallen; which is removable only by Philosophers, Professors and Teachers coalescing to reform the erroneous doctrines universally promulgated, which cannot stand the test of rational investigation, and for which, as National Instructors, they are morally responsible.

Terrestrial attraction, attenuated on arriving at the moon, and there sufficiently strong to prevent the satellite having tangential flight, should be at the surface of the globe at least two-hundred-and-forty-thousand times stronger; yet here a puff of the breath drives the dust into the air, and the smallest winged insect is not restrained by the attraction of the enormous magnet the earth is considered, from escaping off the surface of the globe. There is philosophy in mists, as well as "sermons in stones." Rain should come down from above the clouds, if terrestrial attraction hold fast the moon: mists and exhalations, by quitting the earth, solve the problem; but we are ignorant of the philosophy, ways, and expressions of simple nature; hence, ours is foreign philosophy.

In attributing the fall of bodies to the ground to attraction, it is overlooked that the earth's greater attraction has to be exceeded by the minor muscular, or explosive force, which caused the ascent. The foregoing plain facts, although demonstrations to the contrary are on record in the royalized TRANSACTIONS, but without reference to the inability of inert matter to attract, are certain proof that attraction is founded on a guess-work basis. Hence, that all learning is not knowledge is a moral certainty; and that the nature of cause is not to be arrived at by demonstrating the properties of lines and angles, time has sufficiently proved.

Had the fall of Newton's apple been an effect of terrestrial attraction, there should have been some stronger attraction from somewhere above the tree, to make the juices of which the apple was formed ascend from the ground, and capillary cannot be said to be stronger than terrestrial attraction. There is nothing but puzzle, contradiction, and inconsistency, in human opinion, where the natural truth is unknown. Oh! apples, apples, why for discord sent? the first cut short eternal life on earth; another turned "heaven-born reason" to inventing dreams;--that heaven-born reason which tells us every day of its yesterday's mistakes.

EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY.

The Baconian precept, to "torture Nature out of her secrets," has been, and ever must be, abortive of the good intended. Nature is performing freely and openly every hour, without making us wiser, and as little while she is operating in our own experiments. Her language, of which inertia and pressure are the alpha and omega, is not studied; nor does it mislead or flatter like our own. Experiments innumerable have been performed; the experimentum crucis resorted to; the screw applied to the utmost pinch, without either confession or concealment on Nature's part. Hence, the experimenter is left to make his own philosophy of the case, of which the next operator makes a different; and all are falsely interpreted that violate the principle of inertia, which all do. Aristotle, Bacon, Newton, Black, Reid, Davy, Des Cartes, experimented indefatigably under the most favourable auspices,--exalted talent, and the institutions of the world at command; but all on false principles; yet Nature, tortured or not, left them to their own mis-interpretations. Aristotle, true in his opinion of motion, was himself ignorant of the cause of continuous motion, or all would not be so at present. Bacon recommended experiment, without teaching the natural mode of interpretation. Newton spent his valuable time, to the world's great loss, in experimenting on light, in ascertaining and describing its properties, as if there were material light; instead of which, light is a mere sensible effect; hence, a physical nonentity. Black and Reid called to their assistance all the powers of numbers, to ascertain and prove the quantity of heat in the animal system, and of cold in ice; but could not torture Nature out of the information, that heat and cold do not belong to matter or bodies, as a knowledge of the function of the senses could have informed them. Davy travelled to Skehallean to find from the size of the hill, a ratio of attraction, whence to calculate the quantity of attraction in the entire globe of the earth: at home, correctly sought, he would have found, without numerical assistance and the pendulum, that the amount is zero. The deflection of the pendulum was caused by the pressure on one side of the bulb being greater than on the side facing the hill; which, from varying hourly with the sun's altitude, should have told him that the deflection is a mere weather-deviating circumstance.

On the other hand, who perceives the natural truths elicited by even his own experiments! That truly great philosopher, Priestly, remained ignorant that his own experiments on blood and air brought to light the principle on which the blood is arterialized, without coming in contact with the air in the lungs; of which experiments the faculty are reprehensibly ignorant at present; also the principle of congelation without cold. It is a general error that men must be philosophers because they are mathematicians and first-rate experimenters, yet do not know what keeps the blood in motion, nor how water becomes ice.

What experiment was ever so absurdly illustrated as that of ice formed in the midst of fire; which is explained by, "evaporation generating cold in a red-hot crucible," and while maintaining that cold is only the absence of heat. The rationale is: the oxygen of water is the hindrance to congelation, which the evaporation carries off, and the remaining elements of the water are compressed into ice. What are the elementary constituents of water, has yet to be learned. Misled by false-directing philosophy, the analysis of a rotten potato, in quest of the cause of the vegetable epidemic, is as wise as were the same scientific procedure taken on the contents of a pustule to discover the cause of the small pox: the result in both cases must be a complete new formation; and in the former, the result could be no preventive information whatever to the planter. To convince planters and remove all timidity, every garden owner should plant an experimental patch with potato peelings, each having an eye; the crop is certain and good, and supplies the cottager with the next year's seed at no expense. The cutting for seed may be of exhausted vegetating power, while the peeling of even the same potato may be as sound as ever. The badly grown potatoes of the previous crop caused those of the following to be of imperfect growth and perishable: hence the general potato-rot.

PHYSIOLOGY AND FUNCTION OF THE SENSES.

By the popular expression, "Evidence of the Senses," is universally understood, the perception, or seeing external bodies by the organs of sense: yet externals are invisible and the senses insentient. This mistake, common among the fathers of every age, has corrupted the prevalent false philosophy tenfold.

The eye is not possessed of sight; neither is colour a property of matter, or it must be indestructible by fire and every other means. The senses should be considered as but mechanical agents for exciting the brain; by which means it is we have our knowledge, the particulars of the whole of which are mental, confined to the brain, and consist, solely, in the cerebral excited scenery of the sensorium. We have no other kind or means of acquiring knowledge, that is, mental information. By the mere organs of sense we know nothing. The knowledge we have by means of the senses exciting the brain, consists in sensations or sensible effects, and, we know nothing but our knowledge, whatever may be thought of externals being objects and immediate objects of our knowledge.

In describing what we know, it is imagined the description is of external bodies, their appearance, qualities, and properties; which, however harmless the mistake throughout busy-life affairs,--as all abide, judge, and are directed by the same kind of evidence,--not so is it in philosophy, which is a description of nature's own mode of procedure; and although it is impossible to describe invisible things, as they are really, they should not be philosophised and reasoned on, as they are not; they are not according to what we know, and can have no resemblance in any manner to sensations, which are all we know by means of them. Instead of knowing by the senses what bodies are, we know only what they are not; modern philosophy is regardless, totally heedless of this most instructive most pointedly directing information, instead of making the just allowance for mental appearances, it materializes every sensation, and imputes the whole to the bodies outside of our own, of which all we can possibly know is but inferential knowledge: it considers our sensations as being qualities of bodies or properties of matter, and maintains that some are physical causes by which certain physical effects are produced. Such may be considered some of the principal reasons why clairvoyance is unintelligible to all the most learned; and so must it ever remain, or until a truer philosophy arises and rescues the great subject from the darkness and errors of a perverting philosophy, the whole of which has to be abandoned before the mind is fitted for the reception of natural truths. We must cease to identify sensations with their unseen, unknown, and but promoting, material causes. In proof of the foregoing, a short review of the senses, their physiology, function, result of the function and use of the result, must prove satisfactory and convincing.

The physiology of a sense, consists in an external organ,--as the eye or ear, its nerves of sensation which spread through the brain, and, the nervous fluid. To each of the senses there belongs a distinct cerebral organ, which, if deducted, leaves nothing to constitute the physiology, but the external organ, the nerves, and nervous fluid; such may be considered the physiology of all the senses, so far as the exciting mental perception is concerned.

The function of a sense is, to act on and excite the cerebral organ, when the nervous fluid is put into an acting state through external circumstances.

The result of the function, is a sensation, of which we have immediate cognizance, by reason of a sensation being a recent change in consciousness. The nervous fluid, not the tubular nervous striæ, is that by which the brain is excited.

The use of the sensation is manifold. Emanating from the wonderful Economy, is the law, that, the sensation which an external body promotes, shall, to ourself, seem to belong to that body.

The law is imperative. The sensation being apparently at, and belonging to, the external object or body, it is imagined the body is visible, seen by the eyes, and of the colour, flavour, or odour known by the sensation. The apparent place of the sensation directs to where the body is situated.

No person thinks, when a rose promotes the sensation of colour, that the object perceived is within himself: without the sensation there is no perception of red, and with it, nothing is perceived or seen of colour or of the flower; so that, were the object coloured or not, it is to the spectator invisible; and as the sensation would be useless were the object coloured and seen, it is obvious that the flower is uncoloured, therefore is not seen: the seeing an uncoloured object is a physical absurdity. So is it with all sensations; they constitute the only objects of perception with which we are acquainted; and, such as they are in any respect, the outward objects are in no respect. Sound is a sensation; a sense has been provided that we should have knowledge of sound; there is nothing of sound or noise in the air; the function of the sense is not to hear, but excite the auditory cerebral organ, and the sensation, in which alone sound consists, seems to be outside of us, and seems to come from a bell, but which has nothing of the kind to part with; yet it is imagined that sound enters the ear. Thus is it supposed that the sensation externally exists, and is sound heard by the ear. The philosopher so instructed, calculates the velocity of the physical nonentity sound.

Luminousness, light, colour, sound, heat, cold, flavour, odour, are sensations,--each of the entire is traceable from the function of the senses to the sensorium: deduct these, there is nothing perceived or to perceive; by means of the senses, respectively, we have knowledge of each,--and by the senses exciting the brain are the whole produced, as sensible effects. Outward bodies can have nothing the same or similar to sensible effects; and therefore nothing of the whole belongs to matter or bodies, or to physical philosophy. To mechanical nature the whole would be useless; to sensitive beings only are they useful; to us they are substitutes for Nature's deficiency in these respects; and the whole present a convincing proof of the wise, the strict economy of the Great Architect in his works.

The objection is unfounded, that the external object should be like the sensation, in order to produce such sensation. But where is there sound in musical string or in the metal of a bell to promote the sensation; or yellow in the snowdrop to promote the sensation of yellow, when the eyes are jaundiced or a stained lens is before them: the sensation of pain is not the effect of pain; it and pain are one. That which in health promotes the sensation known as sweet, promotes that of bitter in sickness; the object is the same, the sensation changeable. In reason it cannot be said that fire is like the sensation, or the latter should be burning hot in the brain, where it is excited; neither is any material thing outside of us like a sensation of the brain; nor does the sensation inform us of anything but itself, excepting that it has a remote external cause. The common show-box exhibits the same landscape picture under the different aspects of summer, autumn, winter, and spring, according to the stained lens before the eyes; the picture has not all these colours, nor any, it is a mere black and white print, in which the stained lenses make no alteration. Nothing can be like a sensation but a sensation.

That the objects we perceive and their remote cause are distinct things, is proved by the perception being that of a coin of the half-crown size, when the eyes are directed to a shilling and a convex lens before the face; if the lens be red, yellow, or blue, so is the perceived object, which is not the white shilling. We are invisible to each other; what is imagined to be a man's appearance, may be described as, various sensations of different colours symmetrically arranged, and constituting a single optically-excited mental effect. Neither is it the likeness of the sitter that the canvass exhibits, but the excited perception within the sensorium of the limner; for the renewal of which it is that he directs his eyes so frequently to the sitter's face, which is invisible to the limner, although he feels certain that he sees every feature.

Those who imagine the eye-balls look and see, and that externals and the perceptions they promote are the same, should, upon reflection, attribute sight to their spectacles; for, as sight is nothing bettered when the glasses are removed, so should the temporary improvement be referred to the spectacles having sight as well as the eyes.