The title of this Series of Essays— Half Hours with Modern Scientists —suggests a variety of thoughts, some of which may not be inappropriate for a brief introduction to a new edition. Scientist is a modern appellation which has been specially selected to designate a devotee to one or more branches of physical science. Strictly interpreted it might properly be applied to the student of any department of knowledge when prosecuted in a scientific method, but for convenience it is limited to the st

The five lectures embodied in this First Series of Half Hours with Modern Scientists were first published as Nos. I.—V. of the University Scientific Series. In this series the publishers have aimed to give to the public in a cheap pamphlet form, the advance thought in the Scientific world. The intrinsic value of these lectures has created a very general desire to have them put in a permanent form. They therefore have brought them out in this style. Each five succeeding numbers of this celebrated

The following remarkable discourse was originally delivered in Edinburgh, November 18th, 1868, as the first of a series of Sunday evening addresses, upon non-religious topics, instituted by the Rev. J. Cranbrook. It was subsequently published in London as the leading article in the Fortnightly Review , for February, 1869, and attracted so much attention that five editions of that number of the magazine have already been issued. It is now re-printed in this country, in permanent form, for the fir

In order to make the title of this discourse generally intelligible, I have translated the term “Protoplasm,” which is the scientific name of the substance of which I am about to speak, by the words “the physical basis of life.” I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is such a thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novel—so widely spread is the conception of life as a something which works through matter, but is independent of it; and even those who are aware that matter and

In the Syracusan Poecile, says Alexander von Humboldt in his beautiful little allegory of the Rhodian Genius, hung a painting, which, for full a century, had continued to attract the attention of every visitor. In the foreground of this picture a numerous company of youths and maidens of earthly and sensuous appearance gazed fixedly upon a haloed Genius who hovered in their midst. A butterfly rested upon his shoulder, and he held in his hand a flaming torch. His every lineament bespoke a celesti

1 .   Humboldt , Views of Nature, Bohn’s ed., London, 1850, p. 380. This allegory did not appear in the first edition of the Views of Nature. In the preface to the second edition the author gives the following account of its origin: “Schiller,” he says, “in remembrance of his youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me, during my long stay at Jena, on physiological subjects.” * * * “It was at this period that I wrote the little allegory on Vital Force, called The Rhodian Genius. The pred

It is a pleasure to perceive Mr. Huxley open his clear little essay with what we may hold, perhaps, to be the manly and orthodox view of the character and products of the French writer, Auguste Comte. “In applying the name of ‘the new philosophy’ to that estimate of the limits of philosophical inquiry which he” (Professor Huxley), “in common with many other men of science, holds to be just,” the Archbishop of York confounds, it seems, this new philosophy with the Positive philosophy of M. Comte;

It is well known that a species is usually represented by a great number of individuals, distinguished from all other similar associations by more or less numerous points of structure, color, size, etc., and by habits and instincts also, to a certain extent; that the individuals of such associations reproduce their like, and cannot be produced by individuals of associations or species which present differences of structure, color, etc., as defined by naturalists; that the individuals of any such

The evidences of derivation of species from species, within the limits of the genus, are abundant and conclusive. In the first place, the rule which naturalists observe in defining species is a clear consequence of such a state of things. It is not amount and degree of difference that determine the definition of species from species, but it is the permanency of the characters in all cases and under all circumstances. Many species of the systems include varieties and extremes of form, etc., which

It is infinitely improbable that a being endowed with such capacities for gradual progress as man has exhibited, should have been full fledged in accomplishments at the moment when he could first claim his high title, and abandon that of his simious ancestors. We are therefore required to admit the growth of human intelligence from a primitive state of inactivity and absolute ignorance; including the development of one important mode of its expression—speech; as well as that of the moral qualiti

In examining this subject, we first inquire (Sect. α ) whether there is any connection between physical and moral or religious development; then ( β ), what indications of moral development may be derived from history. Finally ( γ ), a correlation of the results of these inquiries, with the nature of the religious development in the individual, is attempted. Of course in so stupendous an inquiry but a few leading points can be presented here. If it be true that the period of human existence on t

The celebrated Fichte, in his lectures on the “Vocation of the Scholar,” insisted on a culture for the scholar which should not be one-sided, but all-sided. His intellectual nature was to expand spherically, and not in a single direction. In one direction, however, Fichte required that the scholar should apply himself directly to nature, become a creator of knowledge, and thus repay, by original labors of his own, the immense debt he owed to the labors of others. It was these which enabled him t

Solar light in passing through a dark room reveals its track by illuminating the dust floating in the air. “The sun,” says Daniel Culverwell, “discovers atomes, though they be invisible by candle-light, and makes them dance naked in his beams.” In my researches on the decomposition of vapors by light, I was compelled to remove these “atomes” and this dust. It was essential that the space containing the vapors should embrace no visible thing; that no substance capable of scattering the light in t

I carried with me to the Alps this year the heavy burden of this evening’s work. In the way of new investigation I had nothing complete enough to be brought before you; so all that remained to me was to fall back upon such residues as I could find in the depths of consciousness, and out of them to spin the fiber and weave the web of this discourse. Save from memory I had no direct aid upon the mountains; but to spur up the emotions, on which so much depends, as well as to nourish indirectly the