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Another correspondent of Dr. Miller's, Mr. Spencer of Oakhill, writes thus:"I have known William Kingston personally these thirty years or upwards, and he is, as you state, without hands or arms, but certainly not capable of performing all the operations you enumerate. That he writes with his toes a very legible hand is true, and, if I do not greatly mistake, many years ago I saw him do it. He can also lift heavy burdens with his teeth, which also serve him to hold his bridle in riding; this I have seen him do. I have heard that he catches and bridles and saddles his horse, and that although he is not in appearance a very strong man, (I should think not more than five feet five or six inches high,) yet he has many times had combats with other men, and I have heard generally came off victorious. The method he takes in these combats, I am told, is to run very furiously at his adversary with his head, and strike him about the stomach, tripping up his heels at the same time."

In a subsequent letter from Mr. Spencer, it is stated, that "Kingston intends very shortly to wind up his little farming concern, and exhibit himself as a natural phenomenon. He has a little property, but not quite sufficient to maintain him."

I sincerely rejoice at this intelligence, as I think that such anomalous facts in the history of our species cannot be too generally known and witnessed. The case of Mr. Kingston corresponds exactly with that of the Indian compared by Strabo and Dio Cassius to the statues of Hermes. See p. 88 of this volume.

Since writing the above, a friend sent me the Fourth Volume of the Memoirs of the Wernerian Society, Part II., in which there is an extremely interesting and valuable paper by Dr. Hibbert, on The Natural Expedients resorted to by Mark Yarwood, a Cheshire boy, to supply the want which he has sustained from birth of his fore-arms and hands.

As Dr. Hibbert himself had an opportunity of examining the person he describes, he has stated the particulars of the case with all the skill and accuracy of a medical observer. His paper, therefore, does not admit of an abstract, and I must accordingly content myself with recommending it to the attention of the reader as a document equally curious and instructive.

After perusing these authentic statements, (which I have perhaps multiplied more than was necessary,) the reader may form a judgment for himself of the paradox of Helvetius, that "if the wrist of man had been terminated with the hoof of a horse, the species would have been still wandering in the forest." I hope he will agree with me, in preferring upon this point the plain good sense of Galen, as expressed in a passage already cited, [p. 288,] to the more refined conclusion of modern science; a conclusion which I remember, while the philosophy of Helvetius was in the height of its popularity, to have heard appealed to triumphantly as an indisputable axiom, not only in France, but in this island. I subjoin the Latin version of Galen, which does more justice to the conciseness and force of the original than I am able to do in English. "Ut autem sapientissimum animalium est Homo, sic et manus sunt organa sapienti animali convenientia. Non enim quia manus habuit, propterea est sapientissimum, ut Anaxagoras dicebat; sed quia sapientissimum erat, propter hoc manus habuit, ut rectissimè censuit Aristoteles. Non enim manus ipsæ hominem artes docuerunt sed ratio. Manus autem ipsæ sunt artium organum."

NOTE HI, p. 292.-Faculties of Man and Brutes. (8 3.)

It may be proper here to take some notice of the celebrated story (quoted by Locke from Sir William Temple) of the old parrot whom Prince Maurice saw and conversed with at Brazil.' That Prince Maurice, from whose mouth Sir William Temple heard it, believed the truth of his own statement, there can be little or no doubt; and that Sir William himself did not consider it as wholly incredible, is inferred by Mr. Locke, on very reasonable grounds, from the manner in which he introduces and relates it. "I have taken care," says Locke, "that the reader should have the story at large in the author's own words, because he seems to me not to have thought it incredible; for it cannot be imagined that so able a man as he should take so much pains, in a place where it had nothing to do, to pin so close not only on a man whom he mentions as a friend, but on a prince, in whom he acknowledges very great honesty and piety, a story which, if he himself thought incredible, he could not but also think ridiculous."

With respect to Mr. Locke's own opinion on the subject, we are left entirely in the dark. That he did not, however, give the story much credit, may be presumed from the cautious scepticism with which he expresses himself,-a scepticism greater than might have been expected, (when we consider the evidence on which the story rests,) from that credulity in the admission of extraordinary facts, of which this great man has given so many proofs in the first book of his Essay, and which seems, indeed, to have been the chief defect in his intellectual character.

I have not thought it necessary to transcribe the details of the relation, as they must necessarily have left a deep impression on the memory of all who have ever read Locke's Essay. Indeed, I have met with more than one of his professed admirers, who seemed to recollect little else which they had learned from that work than this story of the parrot.

After all, perhaps, it would not be found so easy a task as might at first be imagined, to state the arguments which justify us in rejecting, without one moment's hesitation, as altogether incredible and absurd, what plainly appears to have been admitted as certain, or at least not improbable, by such men as Sir William Temple and Prince Maurice. The speculation is not unworthy the attention of those who have a pleasure in tracing the gradual progress of Human Reason, and in investigating the circumstances on which this progress depends.

Another problem, which appears to myself highly curions, is suggested by the fact in question. Suppose for a moment this fact to be confirmed by the testimony of our own senses,-that we actually saw and heard one of the lower animals, a dog for example, conversing with his master in articulate language; it cannot, I think, be doubted that the spectacle would be, in an extreme degree, offensive and painful; it is so, in some degree, when it is merely presented to the imagination. Now, to what principle of our nature are we to refer the painful emotion

1 Essay on the Human Understanding, book ii. chap. xxvii. sect. 8. [See also supra, Works, vol. i. p. 285.]

A dog of this description, according to Leib-
VOL. IV.

nitz, was actually seen by himself.-See what I have said on this subject in the second part of my Dissertation prefixed to the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. [Supra, Works, vol. i. pp. 285, 567 ]

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which such a spectacle would excite? I apprehend, in a very great measure, to our sympathy with what we conceive to be a rational mind degraded by a union with the brutal form, and condemned by nature to the brutal condition. It is sometimes difficult to avoid a slight feeling of this sort, when our eye happens to catch and to fix the seemingly reflecting and serious eye of an elephant. In consequence of that intimate association which is established by early and constant habit between the ideas of speech and of reason, the mere power of uttering articulate sounds would, I apprehend, be in a dog disagreeable at first, even although he should exhibit no marks of intelligence superior to the rest of the species. It is only our experience of the limited and unmeaning vocabulary of parrots, combined with the ludicrous mistakes which they are continually making in its application, which reconciles us to these birds as an article of amusement. We are told, accordingly, by Sir William Temple, that "one of Prince Maurice's chaplains, who had witnessed the conversations with the parrot of Brazil, and who lived long afterwards in Holland, would never, from that time forth, endure a parrot, but said they were all possessed with a devil."

I have been led to start this problem, chiefly by a passage which I have lately met with in Huygens's Conjectures concerning the Planetary Worlds, where the truly illustrious writer takes notice of the same fact which I have just remarked, -the horror with which we would look at any animal differing in shape very widely from ourselves, but possessing similar powers of reason and of speech. This he explains by our comparing the anomalous and monstrous appearance with our preconceived notions of beauty and deformity,-notions which he resolves (much too precipitately in my opinion) into the effects of custom and habit alone. The true theory, I suspect, lies a little deeper in the nature of man. If this imaginary animal should happen to resemble any of the brutes, the horror it would inspire has been already accounted for. If it should differ from man in the dimensions and relative proportions alone of the body, I should ascribe its disagreeable effect to the habitual experience we have had, how admirably the usual frame and size of the human body are fitted for its various functions; and to our sympathy with the sufferings of a being apparently so ill-adapted to the scene where it is destined to act. The whole passage, however, is an object of some curiosity, as it is the earliest I know, where this theory (ascribed by Mr. Smith to Father Buffier, and afterwards adopted by Sir Joshua Reynolds) concerning the influence of custom on our ideas of beauty, is pushed to all its extent.

"Etenim omnino cavendum est ab errore vulgi, cum animum rationis capacem non alio in corpore, quam nostris simili habitare posse sibi persuadet. Ex quo factum est, ut populi penè omnes, atque etiam philosophi quidam, humanam formam diis adscripserint. Hoc vero non nisi ab hominum imbecillitate et præjudicata opinione proficisci quis non videt? Uti illud quoque, quod eximia quædam pulchritudo humani corporis esse putatur: cum tamen ab opinione et assuetudine id totum quoque pendeat, affectuque eo, quem cunctis animalibus natura provida ingeneravit; ut sui similibus maxime caperentur. Illa verò tantum possunt, ut non sine horrore aliquo animal homini multum dissimile conspectum iri credam, in quo rationis et sermonis usus reperiretur. Nam si tale solummodo fingamus aut pingamus, quod, cætera homini simile, collum quadruplo longius habeat, vel oculos rotundos duploque amplius distantes; continuo eæ figuræ nascuntur, quas non pos

simus intuentes non aversari, quamvis ratio deformitatis nulla reddi queat.”— Christiani Hugenii Cosmotheoros, lib. i.

[The preceding suggests

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Simia, quam similis, turpissima bestia nobis."-Ennius.-Ed]

NOTE I, p. 299.-Faculties of Man and Brutes. (2 3.)

Having more than once referred to the Baron Cuvier in the course of this chapter, I beg leave to add, before concluding these notes, his candid confession of the very limited knowledge we possess with respect to the functions of the different parts of the brain.

At a time when so many attempts are daily making to vitiate the Philosophy of the Human Mind, by chimerical speculations concerning this organ, it may be useful to contrast with these presumptuous reveries, the modest and hesitating statement of the first comparative anatomist and physiologist of the age.

"Il y a donc dans notre corps une partie dont le bon état est une condition de la pensée; nous ne pensons qu'avec cet organe, comme nous ne voyons qu'avec l'œil. Et remarquez que c'est là un fait de simple histoire naturelle, qui n'a rien de commun avec le système métaphysique qu'on nomme matérialisme; système d'autant plus foible que nous avons encore bien moins de notions sur l'essence de la matière, que sur celle de l'être pensant, et qu'il n'éclaircit par conséquent aucune des difficultés de ce profond mystère.”—Dict. des Sciences Naturelles, Art. Ame des Bêtes.

"La nature du principe sensitif et intellectuel n'est point du ressort de l'histoire naturelle; mais c'est une question de pure anatomie que celle de savoir à quel point du corps il faut qu'arrivent les agens physiques qui occasionnent les sensations, et de quel point il faut que partent ceux que produisent les mouvemens volontaires, pour que ces sensations et ces mouvemens aient lieu. C'est ce point commun, terme de nos rapports passifs, et source de nos rapports actifs avec les corps extérieurs, que l'on a mommé le siège de l'âme, ou le sensorium commune.”

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"Il est facile de conclure que c'est dans le cerveau que doit se trouver ce sensorium que l'on cherche. Mais il n'est pas aussi aisé de déterminer la partie du cerveau qui est spécialement consacrée à cette fonction importante. Cet organe, qui cesse totalement ses fonctions à la moindre compression, peut perdre des por tions considérables de sa substance sans qu'on remarque d'affoiblissements sensibles dans ces mêmes fonctions. Ce n'est donc pas tout le cerveau qui est le sensorium commune, mais seulement quelques unes de ses parties: Mais laquelle ?

"Ici l'expérience ne peut pas nous conduire fort loin. Des blessures qui pénètrent profondement dans la substance du cerveau, produisent des désordres trop violens et trop subits dans l'économie animale, pour qu'on puisse nettement distinguer les effets propres à chacune d'elles.

"A la vérité on a cru remarquer que les blessures du cervelet arrêtoient les mouvemens vitaux et involontaires, tels que celui du cœur, et que celles du cerveau exerçoient leur influence principale sur les mouvemens animaux et volontaires; mais cette observation n'est pas confirmée. On a donc été obligé de se contenter du raisonnement, et c'est ce qui a fait diverger les opinions.

"D'abord il étoit naturel de chercher ce point central à quelque endroit où tous les nerfs parussent se rendre; mais comme il n'y a pas un tel endroit, et que l'œil ne peut suivre les nerfs que jusqu'à des points encore assez éloignés les uns des autres, l'imagination a tracé le reste de leur route: les uns ont donc supposé qu'ils arrivoient tous au cervelet; d'autres à la glande pinéale, d'autres au corps calleux.

"Descartes a pris le parti de la glande pinéale, et a rendu célèbre ce petit corpuscule; mais il est pen vraisemblable qu'il remplisse de si hautes fonctions, parce qu'il est souvent altéré, et contient presque toujours des concrétions pierreuses. Bontevox, [Bontekoe?] Lancisi et Lapeyronie sont ceux qui ont parlé pour le corps calleux; mais cette partie manque à tous les animaux non-mammifères, et il est à croire que le sensorium commune doit être une partie essentielle, et qui disparoît ou change de forme la dernière de toutes.

"La même objection a lieu par rapport au septum lucidum adopté par Digby. "Enfin pour ce qui concerne le cervelet, dont l'importance a été soutenue par Drelincourt, il y a cette grande difficulté, que c'est presque la seule partie du cerveau où l'on ne voit clairement aucun nerf se rendre.

"On ne peut guères non plus regarder comme le siège de l'âme quelque partie double, comme les corps cannelés, pour lesquels s'est déclaré Willis; et les deux grands hémisphères, ou plutôt leur partie médullaire, appelée centre ovale, et défendue par Vieussens. D'ailleurs Sammerring nous paroît assez bien prouver qu'aucune partie solide n'est propre à cette importante fonction. Il semble en effet, que les nerfs agissent en conduisant quelque fluide vers le cerveau ou vers les muscles, et que le sujet corporel affecté par l'arrivée ou le départ des fluides des différens nerfs, doit lui-même être fluide pour être susceptible de modifications mécaniques ou chimiques, aussi rapides et aussi variées que le sont les différens états que les modifications occasionnent dans l'âme. C'est d'après cette manière de voir que Sommerring regarde l'humeur renfermée dans les ventricules du cerveau, comme le véritable organe de l'âme."—Ibid. Art. Siège de l'Ame.

[APPENDIX BY EDITOR.-(P. 370.)

Note in Final Supplement to the History of JAMES MITCHELL.

I thought it would be interesting to obtain some account of the present state (ie., in 1854) of James Mitchell; and in reference to my inquiries, have to return my best thanks for the information politely communicated by his sister, Miss Mitchell, by his brother, Lieut. Mitchell, and by Mr. Grant, banker in Nairn. It amounts, however, only to this,-that little or no change in his condition has occurred, beyond what his advance in age must have occasioned.

Mr. Grant states," He is in the enjoyment of excellent health, and constantly moving about."

Miss Mitchell, with whom her brother James has always continued to reside, says, "I have had some additional anxiety regarding poor James's future safety,

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