I trust you will not find the subject without interest. Whether the mode in which I have treated it will please you is a different question. There is also a local cause which led me to select this subject.

Physical anthropology, the natural history of the human species, had its scientific cradle within the walls of this city. The house (now devoted to a benevolent object) is still standing in which the man, from a few fragments which his grateful pupils sent him from all parts of the world, laid the foundations of a new branch of human science, which connects the natural history of our species with the history of the universe. Some of those present personally knew that man, and the documents upon which he founded his studies are preserved to our University, by the liberality of our government.

Blumenbach's style was so popular that the results of his investigations have become common property of all educated persons. His fundamental principles with regard to the natural connection and diversities of the nations on the globe are introduced in all our schoolbooks.

There is, however, one question which I wish specially to discuss, which is, whether certain dogmas touching the original relationship of the varieties of mankind have been confirmed by the enlargement of our ethnographical knowledge.

Let us glance at certain results, which I shall sum up in seven axioms.

Axiom 1. All physical differences presented by the various nations on the globe are not greater than the diversities presented by animals and plants of the same species, and which differences, e. g. in the dog and sheep, we term varieties.

All the facts collected since Blumenbach's first investigations, that ís during the last eighty years, tend to confirm that axiom.

Axiom 2. The varieties of the human species consist, (a) of accidental varieties, e. g. albinos, owing to absence of pigment, occurring among all peoples, many mammals, and birds. (b) Climatic varieties, exhibiting the influence of climate in the colour of the skin, stature, etc. (c) So called permanent varieties, or races.

Axiom 3. The determination of the number of such races is, to a ccrtain extent, arbitrary, depending on the degree of deviation which is considered requisite to constitute a separate race. Blumenbach, as is known, assumed five races, which on the whole correspond with the five parts of the world. With singular tact, he described the four continental races, or according to colour, the white, the

yellow, the black, and the red race. We may even retain Blumenbach's fifth race, the brown or Malay race, if we add as a sixth race the lank-haired race of New Holland, and add the Papuan as a seventh race, whilst we include the wool-haired negroes of the seacoast in the continental negroes. Linguistic investigations have since then established the remarkable fact that the great groups of languages appear to run parallel with the development of races.

Axiom 4. All races of mankind intermix; they are fertile, producing cross breeds, mulattoes, mestizoes, etc., which again are productive. All human races constitute, therefore, on physiological principles, but one species, which is here identical with genus

humanum.

This latter axiom is now an undoubted consequence of the physiology of generation. It is established that only animals of the same species are fertile. Animals of different species may interbreed under particular, generally artificial conditions, but the offspring is sterile. This all-pervading law is necessary, for the historical existence of the various species.

Axiom 5. Historical documents, mummies, and sub-fossil human skeletons prove that man has not undergone any material changes in form or stature; and geology has also proved that man appeared last.

To these five axioms we may add a sixth and a seventh, which I will put in the form of two questions, which are certainly the most interesting in the science of man.

Can all human races be reduced to one original type, and if so, how have the varieties originated? And again, can we, from natural causes, assume or deduce that they have descended from a single pair? You will admit that an affirmative answer to these questions, founded on science alone, irrespective of tradition, would be of the greatest importance.

Blumenbach adhered to the principle that all men were but varieties of one species, and he arrived at the result that there exists no sufficient scientific reason against the descent of these varieties from one and the same original stock. All races, he declares, run so much into each other, by so many gradations that only arbitrary limits can be given to each race.

This theory of Blumenbach has been much attacked, and a number of eminent naturalists, who have made this subject their special study, have arrived at the conviction that there must have been originally different stocks, and that the negroes and some other chief races had

their own Adams and Paradises; a result which no doubt appeared highly satisfactory to slaveholders. With regard to the number of these original pairs authors are much divided.

They have first assumed five Adams, corresponding with Blumenbach's five races; and subsequently extended the series to fifteen or sixteen Adams.

If you ask me on my scientific conscience, quite irrespective of my religious convictions, how I would formulate the final results of my investigations on this subject, I should do so in the following manner :-All races of mankind can (like the races of many domestic animals) be reduced to one original existing, but only to an ideal type, to which the Indo-European type approached nearest. The mode by which races have been formed is perfectly unknown. It reaches back in a primordeal time, perfectly inaccessible to science.

Whether all human beings descended from one pair can be as little proved by scientific data as the contrary theory; and in this respect theology can derive no assistance from natural science. Still the possibility of descent from one pair cannot, on physiological principles, be disputed. We see with our own eyes, in some colonies, physiognomical characters arise in men and animals which apparently become permanent, and exhibit certainly some analogy to the formation of

races.

This is, if you like to take it so, my scientific confession of faith, as regards this interesting question, in which neither historical investigation nor anthropology, combined with geology, rest on a firm support, but are lost in an inacessible depth.

I now turn from the physical to the psychical aspect of the question. Has physiology, which investigates the vital process of the individual, also occupied itself with the question what becomes of that individual after death, or what is tantamount, has this science which has made such progress, spoken out plainly on the nature of the soul?

Not all physiologists have ventured to touch this question; and if they have done so, they have either, on account of the difficulty of the subject or from other considerations, avoided to speak out plainly. Still, gradually, they have more and more encroached on a province which has hitherto been abandoned to philosophy and theology. Materialistic views have gained ground among naturalists, and specially among physiologists the belief in a substantial soul gradually diminishes, and the attempt to fuse psychology with natural science seems to be for him who can read the signs of the times the present problem. Though men perfectly acquainted with the present state of

our knowledge have pronounced against materialism, they do not deny, to use the words of an eminent philosopher now present, "that materialistic theories, which existed at all times, have in recent times been greatly encouraged by the progress of natural science." The great progress of these materialistic opinions induces us to investigate the chief arguments produced.

I select for this purpose some passages from the second edition of a work by a well-known and highly-gifted author. In his chapter on the functions of the nervous system and mental life, he says:—

"The seat of consciousness, of the will, is solely to be found in the brain. To assume the existence of a soul which uses the brain as an instrument with which it can work at pleasure is pure nonsense." .... "All mental activity ceases with death." ... "Physiology thus decidedly and categorically declares against individual immortality, and against all notions which attach themselves to the special existence of a soul. Physiology is not only entitled to treat these questions, but it has been justly reproached for not having touched them sooner, in order to point out the proper way for the solution of these questions. It has been stated that physiology advances beyond her province in investigating psychical phenomena, but it must study the functions of this substratum; and whatever physiology considers as such functions, must necessarily form the subject of her investigation."

This author, after citing the opinions of three eminent German anatomists and physiologists, concludes thus:

"With regard to myself, I can only say that every naturalist, if he thinks logically, must come to the same conclusions. I will not, however, deny that there are idiotic and obtuse naturalists."

Among the three physiologists cited by that author, there is one who honours us this day by his presence, and whom I had the pleasure of counting among my pupils, who has some reason to complain. The views which he expressed appear to me to have been much more restricted and more prudently expressed than to warrant his being so summarily counted among the adherents of materialism. One thing must be readily admitted, our author speaks clearly and plainly; we cannot complain of his equivocation. This honesty is praiseworthy. He gives an unvarnished answer to a delicate question. The consequences which are drawn from them are equally of remarkable simplicity. Our moralists, our theologians, our lawyers, will henceforth have a very easy office. "For," says the learned author in another work, "free will does not exist, and consequently no responsibility

and accountability such as moral or criminal jurisprudence would impose upon us. We are at no time masters of ourselves-of our intellectual faculties;-as little as we are masters that our kidneys should secrete or not secrete."

Thus, all the grand thoughts which the deepest philosophical investigators have acknowledged, which has inspired whole generations, are idle dreams, phantasms of biped mechanisms which run about on the surface, then become skeletons, are finally resolved into atoms, which are again combined, become again human forms, commence again their sphere of action, not unlike the dancing of lunatics in a madhouse. They have no future, no moral basis, no faith in a moral code.

It is the province of three great sections of this assembly to occupy themselves seriously with the question regarding the nature of the soul and its connexion with the body. I would, therefore, both in the interest of men of science and laymen, ask you :

Do you think science is sufficiently advanced to decide the question on the nature of the soul? And if so, are you inclined to adopt the opinion of those who deny an independent individual soul?

These questions are plainly and clearly formulated. answer, whatever it be, be equally so. worthy of a scientific free thinker.

May your Half-and-half answers are un

PICTET ON THE ARYAN RACE.*

WHEN the great philological discovery of modern times was made, that all the languages of Europe, with a few exceptions, were sprung from one common tongue, most nearly represented by the ancient sacred language of India, the study of the branches sprung from this now extinct parent language became a matter of the highest moment to Ethnologists. For though it would not be sound reasoning to make language an absolute test of race, and to take away, for instance, the Cornishman from his connexion with the Welshman and plant him among the Saxons whose language he has adopted, or to say off

Les Origines Indo-Européennes, ou les Aryas Primitifs, Essai de Paléontologie Linguistique, par Adolphe Pictet. Paris: Cherbuliez, 1859-63.