to the clamour of both these great extremes. They concern themselves comparatively little with the merely chemical phenomena of living bodies; and they contemplate the phenomena of vital dynamics with the eye of delighted curiosity, rather than of determined science. They are the structural physiologists; men like Müller and Schleiden, Owen and Goodsir. The phytologists and scientific anatomists of Europe look with distrust and dissatisfaction upon the incondite and unskilful attempts of Liebig and his school to construct a chemical physiology. At the same time, they have no consideration for homœopathy. They are not loudly condemnatory, like the chemists, but they will not investigate it. In truth, they are intent upon the law of development, to which they have been consecrated; and they pursue their admirable researches with devotion and success. If, however, these three great lines of advance are divergent, they must therefore be converging too, and that toward some deeper centre than the present extremity of any of them. Organic chemistry shall certainly become another science altogether. At present it is only the chemistry of exorganic bodies. It never lays hold on an organic body but the life escapes. It works among the mere exuviæ of that higher force, which the true physiologist apprehends, and endeavours to expound. It is the chemistry, not of life, but of death.

On the other hand, the homoeopathic physiologist must learn to take more cognisance of the substantial stuff of which the body is composed, and by the coming and going of which it is sustained. His science is too gasiform. He must fix it in the solid bones, the firm flesh, and the liquid blood of living systems. As a speculator, he is in danger of becoming attenuated and mystical. But for the best thing about him, viz.,

the

fact that he is a successful and eminently practical physician, his theory might have evaporated long ere now. As it is, there is no man of science of the present day stands so much in need of being implored to study other departments profoundly. The apostle of homœopathy should be a very learned man, in order to harmonise the new doctrine, at first sound so discordant, with the old culture and the swelling sciences. This is the task he must perform. His solemn duty is to promulgate his truth, not like a sectarian, but as becomes a catholic member of the universal school of scientific investigation.

VOL. II.

N

PHYSICAL PURITANISM.

(WESTMINSTER REVIEW.-No. CXII.)

THERE is no lack of signs of the times in these days. There are signs ethical and religious, signs ecclesiastical and theological, signs political and cosmopolitan, signs literary and æsthetical, signs scientific and industrial, signs social and humane. In fact, it must be freely confessed, that no mortal capacity of vision could possibly take in all the signs of the times, that is to say, with any hope of reading them aright. Even Humboldt, whose eyes have seen and whose hands have handled such multitudes of things, on many seas and in many lands, professes that he is not possessed of a subjective understanding, and has therefore nothing to offer concerning religious ideas, although ready with his vote in almost every scientific question yet under discussion: so that the multifariously accomplished Baron could make little but blur and confusion out of the sign theological, now climbing nearer and nearer the zenith, with all his intellectual optics. Our greatest men are not men after all; they are only bits of men. The widest and clearest spirit is but a fragment of the all-seeing intellectual sphere. Man is the only true Argus, the only hundredhanded Briareus, able to stretch his cunning hands and

lift his understanding eyes in all directions; but man will neither edit our views nor write our books for many a century to come, for his fall dashed him into as many fractions of himself as he has eyes and hands; and we must just content ourselves with such broken reports and partial interpretations of the numerous signs aforesaid, as can be had at the hands of the common men and women of the press, always reserving the right of private judgment.

'And women'-for though the editorial pronoun, which made somewhat too boastful an appearance near the end of the last paragraph, turns out to be neither of Rhea's gigantic sons, it is at least somewhat of a Vertumnus in its way, and changes its sex as easily as a chameleon changes its colour. To tell the truth, we are everything by turns and nothing long. The great advantage of this unceasing metamorphosis is to be found in the circumstance that, in this way, we manage to get a peep at almost everything. Thanks to our Protean nature, we find ourselves possessed of a reversionary interest in every legacy of the passing age. Hardly anything escapes us; we have so many shapes, so many points of view, so many talents, so many professions, so many private advantages, so many eyes open in succession, and so many divided hands to write! We have never done going to and fro upon the earth, seeking whom we may review; and we have of late years come upon a new and out-of-the-way sign of the times we live in. It is a very little way above the horizon, being no bigger than a man's hand; few gazers have yet noticed it, while fewer have given it the least attention, and none have assigned it a place among the new lights. The sign we mean is Vegetarianism.

It is curious to notice how a quaint inquiry will come again and again upon one in the course of life, and ask passing attention, if not demand more serious consideration. Vegetarianism must have come and gone among these small recurring topics in the experience of many. At school one reads of Cyrus, reared on bread and cresses; at church and at home of Daniel, fed on pulse; and of both as nothing less than heroes in manly beauty, as well as in valour and wisdom. It is not unlikely, indeed, that thrifty mothers were not slow to insist on the fact that Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were both bonnier and better than the rest of the Hebrew striplings, who ate the king's portions and drank the king's wines. Once fairly out of leadingstrings, and in quest of knowledge on our own account, whether inside or outside of a college, which of us was long in discovering that the Essenes among the Jews, and the Pythagoreans among the Greeks, were vegetarians on system; to say nothing of the Egyptian mystagogues of very ancient times, from whom both of these comparatively recent schools are thought to have taken their cue, more or less directly; and to say still less of the old Brahmins, whose descendants were understood to be thriving on vegetable fare at the date of the last monthly mail? Which of us was not arrested, in the mid career of fast and furious youth, by the perusal of poor Shelley's pleading for the vegetarian diet; and introduced, in a state not very far from conversion, to the mild acquaintance of Dr. Lambe and Mr. Newton, the apologetic twins for a return to Nature, consisting of distilled water for drink, diet-loaves for dinner, and other paradisaic fare au naturel? For our own parts, we actually gave the thing a trial for two or