the fundamental maxim of Bichat, that the study of organs must be subordinate to the study of tissues, and both have supplied the most valuable aid to zoological classification. On this point, the service rendered by Owen is incontestable, whatever may be thought of his original claims. This eminent naturalist has, with immense industry, applied the discovery to all vertebrate animals; and in an elaborate work, specially devoted to the subject, he has placed beyond dispute the astonishing fact, that the structure of a single tooth is a criterion of the nature and organization of the species to which it belongs. 157

Whoever has reflected much on the different stages through which our knowledge has successively passed, must, I think, be led to the conclusion, that while fully recognizing the great merit of these investigators of the animal frame, our highest admiration ought to be reserved not for those who make the discoveries, but rather for those who point out how the discoveries are to be made. 158 When the true path of inquiry has once been indicated, the rest is comparatively easy. The beaten highway is always open; and the difficulty is, not to find those who will travel the old road, but those who will make a fresh one. Every age produces in abundance men of sagacity and of considerable industry, who, while perfectly competent to increase the details of a science, are unable to extend its distant boundaries. This is because such extension must be accompanied by a new method, 159 which, to

157 Dr. Whewell (Hist. of Induc. Sciences, vol. iii. p. 678) says, that "he has carried into every part of the animal kingdom an examination, founded upon this discovery, and has published the results of this in his Odontography." If this able, but rather hasty writer, had read the Odontography, he would have found that Mr. Owen, so far from carrying the examination "into every part of the animal kingdom," distinctly confines himself to "one of the primary divisions of the animal kingdom" (I quote his own words from Odontography, vol. i. p. lxvii.), and appears to think, that below the vertebrata, the inquiry would furnish little or no aid for the purposes of classification.

158 But in comparing the merits of discoverers themselves, we must praise him who proves rather than him who suggests. See some sensible remarks in Owen's Odontography, vol. i. p. xlix.; which, however, do not affect my observations on the superiority of method.

159 By a new method of inquiring into a subject, I mean an application to it of generalizations from some other subject, so as to widen the field of

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be valuable as well as new, supposes on the part of its suggester, not only a complete mastery over the resources of his subject, but also the possession of originality and comprehensiveness,-the two rarest forms of human genius. In this consists the real difficulty of every great pursuit. As soon as any department of knowledge has been generalized into laws, it contains, either in itself or in its applications, three distinct branches; namely, inventions, discoveries, and method. Of these, the first corresponds to art; the second to science; and the third to philosophy. In this scale, inventions have by far the lowest place, and minds of the highest order are rarely occupied by them. Next in the series come discoveries; and here the province of intellect really begins, since here the first attempt is made to search after truth on its own account, and to discard those practical considerations to which inventions are of necessity referred. This is science properly so called; and how difficult it is to reach this stage, is evident from the fact, that all half-civilized nations have made many great inventions, but no great discoveries. The highest, however, of all the three stages, is the philosophy of method, which bears the same relation to science that science bears to art. Of its immense, and indeed supreme importance, the annals of knowledge supply abundant evidence; and for want of it, some very great men have effected absolutely nothing, consuming their lives in fruitless industry, not because their labour was slack, but because their method was sterile. The progress of every science is affected more by the scheme according to which it is cultivated, than by the actual ability of the cultivators themselves. If they who travel in an unknown country, spend their force in running on the wrong road, they will miss the point at which they aim, and perchance may faint and fall by the way. In that long and difficult journey thought. To call this a new method, is rather vague; but there is no other word to express the process. Properly speaking, there are only two methods, the inductive and the deductive; which, though essentially different, are so mixed together, as to make it impossible wholly to separate them. The discussion of the real nature of this difference I reserve for my comparison, in the next volume, of the German and American civilizations.

after truth, which the human mind has yet to perform, and of which we in our generation can only see the distant prospect, it is certain that success will depend not on the speed with which men hasten in the path of inquiry, but rather on the skill with which that path is selected for them by those great and comprehensive thinkers, who are as the lawgivers and founders of knowledge; because they supply its deficiencies, not by investigating particular difficulties, but by establishing some large and sweeping innovation, which opens up a new vein of thought, and creates fresh resources, which it is left for their posterity to work out and apply.

It is from this point of view that we are to rate the value of Bichat, whose works, like those of all men of the highest eminence,-like those of Aristotle, Bacon, and Descartes,―mark an epoch in the history of the human mind; and as such, can only be fairly estimated by connecting them with the social and intellectual condition of the age in which they appeared. This gives an importance and a meaning to the writings of Bichat, of which few indeed are fully aware. The two greatest recent discoveries respecting the classification of animals are, as we have just seen, the result of his teaching; but his influence has produced other effects still more momentous. He, aided by Cabanis, rendered to physiology the incalculable service, of preventing it from participating in that melancholy reaction to which France was exposed early in the nineteenth century. This is too large a subject to discuss at present; but I may mention, that when Napoleon, not from feelings of conviction, but for selfish purposes of his own, attempted to restore the power of ecclesiastical principles, the men of letters, with disgraceful subserviency, fell into his view; and there began a marked decline in that independent and innovating spirit, with which during fifty years the French had cultivated the highest departments of knowledge. Hence that metaphysical school arose, which, though professing to hold aloof from theology, was intimately allied with it; and whose showy conceits form, in their ephemeral splendour, a striking

contrast to the severer methods followed in the preceding generation.160 Against this movement, the French physiologists have, as a body, always protested; and it may be clearly proved that their opposition, which even the great abilities of Cuvier were unable to win over, is partly due to the impetus given by Bichat, in enforcing in his own pursuit the necessity of rejecting those assumptions by which metaphysicians and theologians seek to control every science. As an illustration of this, I may mention two facts worthy of note. The first is, that in England, where during a considerable period the influence of Bichat was scarcely felt, many, even of our eminent physiologists, have shown a marked disposition to ally themselves with the reactionary party; and have not only opposed such novelties as they could not immediately explain, but have degraded their own noble science by making it a handmaid to serve the purposes of natural theology. The other fact is, that in France the disciples of Bichat have, with scarcely an exception, rejected the study of final causes, to which the school of Cuvier still adheres: while as a natural consequence, the followers of Bichat are associated in geology with the doctrine of uniformity; in zoology, with that of the transmutation of species; and in astronomy, with the nebular hypothesis: vast and magnificent schemes, under whose shelter the human mind seeks an escape from that dogma of interference, which the march of knowledge every where reduces, and the existence of which is incompatible with those conceptions of eternal order, towards which, during the last two centuries, we have been constantly tending.

These great phenomena, which the French intellect

160 In literature and in theology, Chateaubriand and De Maistre were certainly the most eloquent, and were probably the most influential leaders of this reaction. Neither of them liked induction, but preferred reasoning deductively from premisses which they assumed, and which they called first principles. De Maistre, however, was a powerful dialectician, and on that account his works are read by many who care nothing for the gorgeous declamation of Chateaubriand. In metaphysics, a precisely similar movement occurred; and Laromiguière, Royer Collard, and Maine de Biran, founded that celebrated school which culminated in M. Cousin, and which is equally characterized by an ignorance of the philosophy of induction, and by a want of sympathy with physical science.

presents, and of which I have only sketched a rapid outline, will be related with suitable detail in the latter part of this work, when I shall examine the present condition of the European mind, and endeavour to estimate its future prospects. To complete, however, our appreciation of Bichat, it will be necessary to take notice of what some consider the most valuable of all his productions, in which he aimed at nothing less than an exhaustive generalization of the functions of life. It appears, indeed, to me, that in many important points Bichat here fell short; but the work itself still stands alone, and is so striking an instance of the genius of the author, that I will give a short account of its fundamental views.

Life considered as a whole has two distinct branches;161 one branch being characteristic of animals, the other of vegetables. That which is confined to animals is called animal life; that which is common both to animals and vegetables is called organic life. While, therefore, plants have only one life, man has two distinct lives, which are governed by entirely different laws, and which, though intimately connected, constantly oppose each other. In the organic life, man exists solely for himself; in the animal life he comes in contact with others. The functions of the first are purely internal, those of the second are external. His organic life is limited to the double process of creation and destruction: the creative process being that of assimilation, as digestion, circulation, and nutrition; the destructive process being that of excretion, such as exhalation and the like. This is what man has in common with plants; and of this life he, when in a natural state, is unconscious. But the characteristic of his animal life is consciousness, since by it he is made capable of moving, of feeling, of judging. By virtue of the first life he is merely a vegetable; by the addition of the second he becomes an animal.

If now we look at the organs by which in man the functions of these two lives are carried on, we shall be

161 Bichat, Recherches sur la Vie et la Mort, pp. 5-9, 226; and his Anat. Gén. vol. i. p. 73.