Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/729

Rh holy ministrations in a temple consecrated by the felt presence of the Divinity" (p. 428). This, however, is not physiology.

Outside the narrow circle where Dr. Carpenter treads the barren heath of metaphysics, tethered to his theory of free-will, lies the wide and beautiful world of Nature which no one knows better than himself. Naturalist, physiologist, philosopher, philanthropist, there are few men who touch Nature, and human nature, at so many points; and there are very few who can illustrate their knowledge from such rich stores of reading and research.

We are not surprised, therefore, to observe an important journal speaking of Dr. Carpenter's new book as being "as amusing as a novel." Not that novels always are amusing, or that amusement is a proper aim for a scientific work, yet the wealth of illustrative anecdotes scattered through these pages seems to justify the intended compliment of the Lancet reviewer. The thought, however, most impressed upon ourselves by Dr. Carpenter's wide acquaintance with men and books, and the use he has made of it in his abundant illustrations of mental phenomena, is that these phenomena are in their very nature so transitory and fluent that they afford most unsatisfactory data for scientific conclusions. Physical facts can be repeated and verified. Even facts of rare occurrence and beyond the control of man do repeat themselves, and can be waited for. The astronomer, or at least astronomers, can wait for the next transit of Venus, or the next appearance of a comet; but who can be expected to wait for the man capable of "repeating correctly a long act of Parliament, or any similar document, after having once read it?" (p. 457); or of that distinguished Scotch lawyer who performed a feat of legal ratiocination while he was asleep, which had baffled the utmost exertion of his waking powers (p. 593). These cases are quoted by the author on the respectable authority of Abercrombie, who recorded them forty years ago, and the time for their repetition has perhaps not yet come full circle round.

Without the opportunity of a verification, men are apt to accept marvelous statements as to mental facts with a degree of indulgent faith which they would never extend to any physical feats or phenomena. No one would accept the statement that a man had run a mile in two minutes, but that a man had performed a prodigious feat of cerebral exertion far surpassing, in comparison with the average powers of man, the excess of power which this would indicate, will gain ready credence, and find record in repetition without end. We should rather have expected that Dr. Carpenter, dealing with the faculties of mind from the scientific point of view, would have had more vividly before him than appears this peculiarity of the evidence on his subject, and that he would have preferred to choose the commoner and more verifiable facts than the curiosities of mental literature; that he would have directed his research rather to the ocean-currents of