and infirmities, and when educated communities can once be made to understand and feel that the preservation of their mental health is to a very great extent in their own hands, we may expect many of the most fertile sources of mental disorder to be speedily and effectually checked."

In one important point Dr. Robinson differs with almost all the recent writers on insanity, including Esquirol, Pritchard, &c., who have maintained the 'reality of a morbid condition, to which the designation moral insanity" has been given, and which, in Dr. Pritchard's words, is characterized by "a morbid perversion of the feelings, affections, and active powers, without any illusion or erroneous conviction impressed upon the understanding; it sometimes coexists with an apparently unimpaired state of the intellectual faculties." Dr. Robinson does not deny that the moral sense and feelings in the partially insane are frequently impaired, but argues that there are few in whom the powers of the will, the reason, and the conscience are so far undermined as to render them altogether incapable of self-control, and consequently irresponsible. This is no doubt perfectly true, but the advocates of the doctrine of moral insanity do not contend, as Dr. Robinson seems to think, that this condition, if ever so satisfactorily shown to exist, should be admitted as a bar to all punishment. No doubt the doctrine has been carried too far, and Dr. Robinson has some reason for saying that

"This assumption of the possible existence of 'irresistible' and 'uncontrollable' impulses in persons admitted to be intellectually sane, is the root of all the difficulties surrounding the subject."

And we agree with him that-

"The only effective and legitimate mode of reconciling the requirements of social security with the exculpatory recognition of human weakness and man's natural proneness to crime, consists in the mitigation of our criminal laws, and the substitution of the reformatory for the retaliatory principle, as the ground of the punishments inflicted by them."

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But Dr. Robinson recognises the fact, that there are large numbers of persons of unaffected intellect in whom the governing power of the mind is so far enfeebled, that they are "habitually incapable of resisting criminal impulses or vicious cravings," and this surely amounts to something very like "irresistible impulse." He is so well aware that this moral weakness is a fertile source of misery, that he believes in these cases the general interests of the community to be more involved than in those of individuals 'morbidly" affected. We are inclined to think that Dr. Robinson's unwillingness to regard moral weakness as a morbid condition, depends very much upon his fear that it should be confounded with natural depravity and vice, and admitted as a bar to punishment when pleaded in extenuation of crime. We think there are few impulses which are altogether irresistible, if there be a sufficiently powerful motive to exercise control over the actions, and, therefore, few who can properly be said to be irresponsible; but we think few will deny that the responsibility attaching to individuals differs in degree, and that in many it is of a very limited kind by reason of mental weakness, the result of morbid action in these cases. We would on no account contend for immunity, but if punishment is to be inflicted it ought surely to be modified in proportion to the presumed incapacity to resist criminal impulses.

The question as to the increase of insanity is one upon which authorities differ, and upon which it is very difficult to form an opinion. Statistics are quoted both to prove and to disprove the position, and it is maintained with considerable show of reason, that the apparent increase is in a great measure, if not altogether, owing to the fact that more cases are brought under observation, and more attention is paid to them; but making allowance for these, the weight of evidence seems to be in favour of the opinion that there is a certain increase in the number of insane persons beyond what could be referred to the increasing proportion of the population. The chief cause of this is doubtless to be found in the wear and tear of the great battle of life, too often carried on without regard to any consideration but the gratification of an ever restless ambi

tion, which leads men of every rank and degree to sacrifice present happiness in the fierce struggle for wealth and pre-eminence. We cannot but fear that the increasing civilization of the age of which we constantly hear such complacent commendation, is not without serious drawbacks, and that society pays for its advantages by the greater selfishness of its members and by the prevalence of a less lofty tone of morality. Dr. Robinson has expressed his views on this subject as follows:

"Notwithstanding, then, the enormous intellectual advances made during the present age, there probably never was a period in the history of this country when happiness and contentment were less generally diffused throughout the different classes of society. The increasing tendency to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, necessarily produces discontent among the many; while the incessant striving after social elevation, as one of the results of the more general equalization of education, the intensity of competition, the love of display, so unnatural to the old English character, the introduction of many foreign vices, and the frequent faithlessness of men holding important trusts, have all united to engender a state of feeling in the highest degree injurious to the mental condition of the cominunity. And in investigating the moral causes of insanity, we shall discover ample evidence of its frequent origin in the vices of a spurious and hollow civilization."

We have derived much pleasure from the perusal of Dr. Robinson's treatise, which is evidently the production of a philosophic mind, and we trust it will be extensively read, believing that his views are generally sound, and knowing that his experience has been considerable. The suggestions also of Dr. Seymour and Mr. Eccles are well worthy of consideration, at a time when Parliament needs to be guided by the unprejudiced opinions of experienced men in legislating upon a very difficult subject, under the influence of a sort of panic created by exaggerated statements, and increased by the fears which have their origin in very imperfect knowledge of the subject on the part of the public.

REVIEW VII.

1. The Oxford Museum. By HENRY W. ACKLAND, M.D., Regius Professor of Medicine, and JOHN RUSKIN, M.A., Honorary Student of Christchurch.-London, 1859. 2. A Manual of Qualitative Chemical Analysis. By A. BEAUCHAMP NORTHCOTE, F.C.S., Demonstrator to the Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, late Senior Assistant in the Royal College of Chemistry, London; and ARTHUR H. CHURCH, F.C.S., of Lincoln College, Oxford, late Assistant to Professor Brodie.-London, 1838.

3. A Handbook of Chemical Analysis, adapted to the Unitary Notation. Based on the Fourth Edition of Dr. H. Will's Anleitung zur Chemischen Analyse.' By F. T. CONINGTON, M.A., F.C.S., Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.-London,

1858.

4. A Letter to the Provost of Oriel; on a Scheme for making Oxford more Accessible to Medical Students generally. From C. H. PEARSON, M.A., Fellow of Oriel College, and late of St. George's Hospital.-London, 1858.

5. A Letter to the Rector of Exeter; on Some Proposed Changes in the Residence required by the University for Degrees in Medicine. By GILBERT W. CHILD, M.B., of Exeter College, Physician to the Radcliffe Infirmary.-Oxford, 1858.

Six years have now passed since we called attention to one out of the many reforms which were then being commenced at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The school of Natural Science, which existed only in embryo, has now, in Oxford at least, attained some growth and organization. Evidence of this is appearing, not only esoterically, in the form of attendance on the professorial lectures, in the increasing number of students of the practical branches of physical science, and in the more

general diffusion of appreciative respect for these pursuits among the members of the colleges; but fruit is also being borne of which the outer world can form a judgment. We have much satisfaction in pronouncing a high estimate of the two manuals of Chemical Analysis, both, wholly or in part, emanating from Oxford men, whose titles are prefixed to this article. Both of them appear to possess accuracy and fulness of detail which would do no discredit to any class of observers; while they are superior to most former works of a like character in the very points in which the advantages of Oxford training ought to be most apparent. Even the casual reader can hardly fail to be struck by a greater completeness of plan, a more accurate adjustment of subject, and a more harmonious subordination of less important parts than is usual in works of this nature. The joint authors of the larger work, by their own statement, seem implicitly to suggest this deficiency in former manuals when they "request the attention of chemists, and all those engaged in instructing pupils in Chemical Analysis, to the following features," of which we extract some of the most prominent:

"1. In the first part of the volume, at the end of each group of elements or salts, concise tables are given, which show at a glance the most striking properties of the more common substances, as well as their most characteristic reactions.

"3. In describing the salts and reactions of the various acid and basic radicals, the same order is invariably preserved. The monobasic salts come first, then the bibasic and lastly the tribasic, the basic elements commencing with those most decidedly positive.

"4. If, in treating of any basic or acid radical, a salt of characteristic properties is described, the corresponding salt of all basic or acid-radicals subsequently spoken of is invariably noticed.

"5. The most characteristic compounds of each radical are printed in a conspicuous type."

Indeed, the subsequent arrangement of this work fully justifies the hope expressed by the authors, "That they have attained some degree of unity and simplicity, as well as of completeness, in the present treatise."

Not a little of this clearness and unity of design depends on the adoption in both works of the Unitary Notation. It is somewhat remarkable that a system proposed by Gerhardt sixteen years ago, and possessing such undoubted claims to general employment, should as yet have met with only limited acceptance in England. The chemical school of Oxford has already conferred a boon on the general body of students by setting its stamp of approbation on so manifest an advance in chemical nomenclature.

We sincerely hope these may prove to be only the first of a long series of treatises on the various sections of Experimental and Physiological Science hereafter to emanate from Oxford. For, so far from sharing the old opinion of the unfitness of the Universities as places of study for this branch of human learning, we believe them in every respect well adapted for its successful prosecution. The advantages seem to extend in a twofold manner; not only will the tone of thought and the matter of education provided at these seminaries be improved and enlarged by the addition, but all those classes of the community, whose preliminary training is in some way connected with the Universities, and indeed many who are less closely united to them, will be furnished with new outlets of energy, and fresh means of usefulness.

One of the healthiest signs in the history of modern thought is the increasing turn towards a minute and reverent study of nature. It is in part, perhaps, a reaction from the over-great concentration and individualism which were the characteristics of the end of the last century and the beginning of the present. But, whatever be the essential cause, we cannot doubt that greater use of the observing powers, and a disposition to be more occupied by the facts of the world about us, pervades our literature, our art, our theology, and perhaps, we may add, our science; indeed, it would seem that this progress, commencing from the inner recess of experimental investigation, had not only brought out great results for science itself, but had pervaded the tone of general thought; and that at an epoch of unexampled advance in the discovery and explanation of physical phenomena, the mind of society had, as it were, gained a tinge of this observant and watchful spirit; that where formerly it raised theory and framed system, it is now content to wait in rapt attention for the revelation of fact, for the evidence of

purpose, and to labour with an earnest faithfulness to elicit germs of new truth by the closer searching of the means at its disposal.

This is the tendency of the better minds; this gave to a work like the 'Cosmos' of Humboldt its enthusiastic welcome even among classes little read in natural history. The same idea is reflected even in the lighter efforts of fancy; the paintings of the "Preraphaelite" school, the works of Ruskin and of Kingsley, abound in portraits of the common things about us, whose principal attraction is a close fidelity and a reverent admiration for the great design. We look upon the revival of physical science in the Universities as the expression of this general yearning. It is the wakening of a body of men unequalled for power and discipline of mind to the value of even the smallest work of nature about them as an object of study. They had long considered it almost beneath their dignity, as thinking, reasoning men, to use merely their eyes and outward senses in observation of the world round. This was at most the business of a few, specially gifted by caprice of organization, with tastes and faculties fitted for the pursuit. But the same age which speculates with wisdom on the real amount of physical process involved in the action of mind; which estimates the weight of brain substance consumed in thought; which can show almost to demonstration that memory is an actual mark and impression, insensible indeed to our present means of investigation, but none the less material for that reason, stamped on the molecules of the nervous centres; this same age has in part overthrown the false distinction of kind formerly drawn between matter and mind by a sort of unstated axiom. It has shown that reason is only the highest function of our material bodies, and that sight, hearing, and touch, are not far below it in dignity. This age has worthily accepted the practical corollaries of its foregone discoveries, and does not scorn to see its highest intellects, tutored with all the preliminary and ancillary instructions so properly set forth in our school and University course, bending themselves to the watching and "questioning of nature," which can never be a mean occupation for any created being.

Dr. Acland not only points out in a most convincing manner the causes of this change in the current of University studies, but also directs attention to the fact of its being more a return to the oldest methods than strictly a new discovery. The passage is so excellent as to demand quotation :

"The great tide of human thought had set for centuries, and down even to the close of the Middle Ages, chiefly in the direction of speculative reasoning, poetry, or history. Many circumstances in the condition of our globe tended to repress the outbreak of inquiry and eager interest in external nature, which about the time of the discovery of the New World dawned upon all the educated part of mankind. It is not other than both remarkable and humiliating, that some of those who studied and taught the mental science of Aristotle, or the speculative dogmas of the schoolmen, should have wholly forgotten the successful energy which Aristotle and Galen, in the very dawn of literature, had expended in investigating the laws of organic life. It is probable, indeed, that the very condition of the Church in the Middle Ages, which led men to study the Bible less, and value their own fancies more, did, in fact, close their eyes to the astonishing revelation of the unwritten as well as of the written Word of God. Oxford, the ancient seat of learning,' was not exempt from this intellectual onesidedness. It cultivated chiefly classic lore, and pursued the metaphysical notions of the schoolmen; even these were not always taught in the far-seeing spirit of true philosophy. It has taken some centuries from the epoch of Roger Bacon, followed here by Boyle, Harvey, Linacre, and Sydenham, besides nearly two hundred years of unbroken publication of the Royal Society's Transactions, to persuade this great English university to engraft, as a substantive part of the education of her youth, any knowledge of the great material design, of which the Suprenie Master- Worker has made us a constituent part."

While we feel deeply the value of the natural and experimental sciences as an addition and superstructure to the general educational course, we cordially agree with the same writer in rejoicing that there has not been a mere substitution of the one for the other. "The addition," he says, in the work before us, "has been made; the substitution is, I hope, averted. The further my observation has extended, the more satisfied am I that no knowledge of things will supply the place of the early study of letters-litteræ humaniores." Obvious as is the soundness to all of this proposition, perhaps there is not any branch of professional labour in which it is so strongly exem

plified as in our own art of medicine. There is hardly one of us who will not, at some time or other, have been painfully struck by the absence of coherent and dispassionate reasoning on medical evidence exhibited by men well versed in all the facts, and well practised in all the mechanics of their study. If it be true that in former times we had occasionally to accept the reproach against University medical men, that they were deficient in the knowledge of facts, and in the manipulative skill only to be acquired by a kind of labour particularly repugnant to a cultivated mind; it is still more undeniable that we have very often to wonder that energetic work, and earnest thought on the practice of medicine, aided by a store of all the material information needed for the task, should come, before our very eyes, to so little or so false results, when unsupported by balance and sobriety of judgment, by closeness of logic, and pertinacity in holding to the important point. These powers, unless when given exceptionally to a very few minds, seem only to be acquired by patient and persevering devotion to those studies which the consent of mankind has universally conceded to be the "exercitations" and as it were gymnastics of the reasoning powers.

"I do not doubt," says Dr. Acland on this point, "the value of any honest mental labour. Indeed, since the material working of the Creator has been so far displayed to our gaze, it is both dangerous and full of impiety to resist its ennobling influence, even on the ground that His moral work is greater. But notwithstanding this, the study of language, of history, and of the thoughts of great men which they exhibit, seems to be almost necessary (as far as learning is necessary at all) for disciplining the heart, for elevating the soul, and for preparing the way for the growth in the young of their personal spiritual life; while, on the other side, the best corrective to pedantry in scholarship, and to conceit in mental philosophy, is the study of the facts and laws exhibited by natural science."

But besides speculative improvements which result from the addition of physical science to the University course, there are some which will commend themselves to the most practical minds. High among these we are disposed to place the fact that it is converting many men who once lounged through their stated time of residence in almost idleness, into earnest workers. We allude to those young men who have some leaning towards the study of natural history. This is a large class at the Universities; many come up from the country schools with a very considerable knowledge of subjects, which only needs a few sanctifying principles to become philosophical; either they are sportsmen, or fishermen, or learned in horses, cattle and sheep; not uncommonly they have a rough knowledge of botany or entomology, of geology or agriculture. Most persons look upon boys as so alike, so deeply marked with the Latin and Greek' stamp of public schools, as to have hardly any individuality. But we speak from some observation, in saying that these biases which often become the ruling passions later in life, are sometimes begun very early. It is, perhaps, to be regretted that the cramped and Procrustean nature of the ordinary routine destroys many of these proclivities before they have had time to ripen into pursuits. All members of this class are alike characterised by a habit of acute observation, and by senses more than ordinarily keen; and to them the schools of natural science open a wide field of occupation. By those who have energy there is much distinction to be gained, and the opportunity of serving the cause of science; and those who, from lack of purpose or of ability, do not attain any eminence, will at least be made more happy and more useful members of society. Many of those who attended the physiological lectures at the Christchurch Museum have been young men of standing and of position in their respective districts; it is undeniable that from their studies in that direction much good has followed; some have since given proofs evident to the world of the value of the lessons they then learned, and of the habits of observation they there acquired; and in the cases where no such proof can be given, there is strong ground for conjecture, since no one can have failed to remark what a vast accession it is to the character of a country gentleman, or a clergyman of some remote district, if his tastes rest on a basis of the study of nature. The merest sports of the former-hunting, shooting, or fishing, and, still more, the more serious business of farming, rearing live-stock, and the like, gain a double interest to himself, probably a higher degree of success; the latter may turn