was seen even more clearly than that of the great generalization of
Laplace. Professor William Lawrence (1783-1867), the physiologist,
published in 1816 an Introduction to Comparative Anatomy and
Physiology, containing some remarks on the nature of life,
which elicited from the then famous Dr. Abernethy a foul attack
in his Physiological Lectures delivered before the College of
Surgeons. Lawrence was charged with belonging to the party of French
physiological skeptics whose aim was to "loosen those restraints on
which the welfare of mankind depends." [1894] In the introductory
lecture of his course of 1817 before the College of Physicians,
Lawrence severely retaliated, repudiating the general charge, but
reasserting that the dependence of life on organization is as clear
as the derivation of daylight from the sun. The war was adroitly
carried at once into the enemy's territory in the declaration that
"The profound, the virtuous, and fervently pious Pascal acknowledged,
what all sound theologians maintain, that the immortality of the
soul, the great truths of religion, and the fundamental principles
of morals cannot be demonstrably proved by mere reason; and that
revelation alone is capable of dissipating the uncertainties
which perplex those who inquire too curiously into the sources of
these important principles. All will acknowledge that, as no other
remedy can be so perfect and satisfactory as this, no other can
be necessary, if we resort to this with firm faith." [1895] The
value of this pronouncement is indicated later in the same volume
by subacid allusions to "those who regard the Hebrew Scriptures as
writings composed with the assistance of divine inspiration," and
who receive Genesis "as a narrative of actual events." Indicating
various "grounds of doubt respecting inspiration," the lecturer adds
that the stories of the naming of the animals and their collection
in the ark, "if we are to understand them as applied to the living
inhabitants of the whole world, are zoologically impossible." [1896]
On the principle then governing such matters Lawrence was in 1822,
on the score of his heresies, refused copyright in his lectures,
which were accordingly reprinted many times in a cheap stereotyped
edition, and thus widely diffused. [1897]
This hardy attack was reinforced in 1819 by the publication of
Sir T. C. Morgan's Sketches of the Philosophy of Life, wherein the
physiological materialism of Cabanis is quietly but firmly developed,
and a typical sentence of his figures as a motto on the title-page. The
method is strictly naturalistic, alike on the medical and on the
philosophic side; and "vitalism" is argued down as explicitly as is
anthropomorphism. [1898] As a whole the book tells notably of the
stimulus of recent French thought upon English.