As long as nationalities are compelled to be rivals, it is necessary to find some compensation for this rivalry. The ancient system of the balance and equilibrium of power, which has seemed to be old and disused armour, was perhaps never more opportune than now. If a general confederation after the American manner seems visionary, as opposed to the actual state of things in Europe, it might be practical and efficacious to substitute this system of equilibrium for partial alliance, and to establish the political balance of Europe in a normal position. But it is necessary that this work should be effected in time, before the preponderance of different Powers should become more marked, and especially before the ambitions and greed which are now upon the surface should strike deeply into the basis of international policy. A well-planned system of approximating those elements which are in any sense homogeneous or guided by common interests would tend to secure peace and strengthen governments, and would at the same time keep in check the social discontent which is nourished by political dissensions, gathers strength from the uncertainty and weakness of our present institutions, and triumphs in our misfortunes.
Here we must break off on the brink of conclusions and remedies. A few words will not suffice to sum up the moral of this long dissertation, nor was it our intention to do so either in few words or many. The question is too large for solution in the pages of a Review.
It simply appeared to be an opportune moment for pointing out the singular situation created by the progress of modern ideas, and to indicate the dangers involved in it.
We do not wish to exaggerate these dangers, and have ourselves pointed out that modern civilisation also includes their correctives, and that they do not imply the end of all things, nor that another flood of Deucalion is needed to renovate the human race from its very beginnings.
But precisely because European civilisation is so elaborate and complex, it would be an error to suppose that catastrophic causes are needed in order seriously to affect the conditions of our comparative civility. Feudal and tyrannical wars took place in barren lands, amid rude castles and squalid villages; those which are national and social must be fought out amidst gardens and the monuments of art and manufacture. The last wars recorded by history had Lombardy and Champagne as their theatre, or were fought in the streets of Paris. Any of the tendencies indicated by us in the foregoing considerations which should terminate in a conflict would take place under analogous conditions and in the same degree of civilisation which, while it might mitigate the modes of warfare, must make its effects more grievous. And the same ambition to possess distant countries which are more or less civilised may also be equally full of danger to commerce, international relations, the peace of Europe, and the interests of civilisation.
The privileged rules of the policy of the old world imposed upon themselves a limit to excessive power, and used the saying, Noblesse oblige. A new motto might be proposed to the builders and destroyers of Governments in our day, which would be equally noble and might be more fertile of results—Progrès oblige.—Nineteenth Century.
[ORGANIC NATURE’S RIDDLE.]
BY ST. GEORGE MIVART.
Amongst the many sagacious sayings of the patient and profound thinkers of Germany, not the least noteworthy was Schelling’s affirmation that the phenomena of instinct are some of the most important of all phenomena, and capable of serving as a very touch-stone whereby the value of competing theories of the universe may be effectually tested. His prescience has been justified by our experience. The greatest scientific event of the present time is the wide acceptance of the theory of evolution, and its use as a weapon of offence and defence. It is used both against the belief that intelligent purpose is, as it were, incarnate in the living world about us, and also in favor of a merely mechanical theory of nature. Now it would be difficult to find a more searching test of that theory’s truth than is supplied by a careful study of instinct. The essence of that view of nature which is associated with the name of Professor Haeckel,[1] a negation of the doctrine of final causes and an assertion of what he calls “Dysteleology,” that is, the doctrine of the purposelessness of the organs and organisms which people a purposeless planet. That doctrine may be called the gospel of the irrationality of the universe, and it is a doctrine to which a proof of the real existence of such a thing as “instinct” must necessarily be fatal. Instinct has been defined[2] as a “special internal impulse, urging animals to the performance of certain actions which are useful to them or to their kind, but the use of which they do not themselves perceive, and their performance of which is a necessary consequence of their being placed in certain circumstances.” Such an impulse is always understood to be the result of sensations: actions which take place in response to unfelt stimuli being referred, not to instinct, but to what is termed reflex action. In such action it is commonly supposed that the mechanism of a living body occasions a prompt responsive muscular movement upon the occurrence of some unfelt stimulation of the nervous system. The nervous system, or total mass of nerve-stuff—which is technically called “nerve-tissue”—in the body of an animal, such as a beast, bird, reptile, or fish, is composed of two parts or divisions. One of these divisions consists of a voluminous and continuous mass—the brain and spinal cord (or spinal marrow), which form what is called the central part of the nervous system. The second division consists of a multitude of white threads or cords—the nerves, which form what is called the peripheral part of the nervous system. Of these nerves one set proceed forth from the central part of the nervous system to the different muscles, which they can cause to contract by a peculiar action they exert upon them, thus producing motion. Another set of nerves proceed inwards, from the skin to the central part of the nervous system, and by their peculiar action give rise to various sensations, according as different influences or stimulations are brought to bear upon the skin at, or in the vicinity of, their peripheral extremities. Under ordinary circumstances, different stimulations of the surface of the body convey an influence inwards, which produces sensation, and give rise to an outwardly proceeding influence to the muscles, resulting in definite and appropriate motions.
There are cases in which responsive actions take place under very abnormal conditions—as after a rupture of part of a man’s spinal cord, or the removal of the whole brain in lower animals, such as the frog. A man so injured may have utterly lost the power of feeling any stimulation—pricking, cutting, or burning—of his legs and feet, the injury preventing the conveyance upwards to the brain of the influence necessary to ordinary sensation, and stopping short at the spinal cord below the point of injury. Nevertheless, such a man may execute movements in response to stimuli just as if he did feel, and often in an exaggerated manner. He will withdraw his foot if tickled with a feather just as if he felt the tickling, which he is utterly incapable of feeling. Similarly a decapitated frog will make with his hind legs the most appropriate movements to remove any irritating object applied to the hinder part of its body. Such action is termed “reflex action,” on the supposition that the influence conveyed inwards by nerves going from the skin to the spinal cord is reflected back from that cord to the muscles by the other set of nerves without any intervention of sensation. This action of the frog may be carried to a very singular extreme. At the breeding season the male frog tightly grasps the female behind her arms, and to enable him the more securely to maintain his hold, a warty prominence is then developed on the inner side of each of his hands. Now if such a male frog be taken, and not only decapitated, but the whole hinder part of the body removed also, so that nothing remains but the fragment of the trunk from which the two arms with their nerves proceed, and if under these circumstances the warty prominences be touched, the two arms will immediately close together like a spring, thus affording a most perfect example of reflex action. It has been objected by the late Mr. G. H. Lewes and others that we cannot be sure but that the spinal cord itself “feels.” But there is often an ambiguity in the use of the term “to feel.” By it we ordinarily mean a “modification of consciousness;” but experiences such as those just adverted to, and others in ourselves to which I shall next advert, show clearly that surrounding agents may act upon our sense organs without the intervention of anything like consciousness, and yet produce effects otherwise similar to those which occur when they do arouse consciousness. Without, then, entering into any discussion as to whether “sentiency” may or may not be attributed to the spinal cord, it seems evident that some definite term is required to denote such affections or modifications of living beings as those just referred to. Inasmuch as they are affections of creatures possessing a nervous system, which is the essential organ of sensation, and as they resemble sensation in their causes and effects though feeling itself may be absent, they may be provisionally distinguished as “unfelt sensations.” Such are some of the actions with which instinct is contrasted, because, unlike instinct, they are not carried on by the aid of felt sensations, the highest of such insentient action being reflex action.