PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON ETHICS.

1272 These points formed substantially the arguments urged in the recent appeal, but Mr. Justice Bruce, with whom Mr. Justice Kennedy concurred, thought that the justices were right in saying that an inspector under the Food and Drugs Act was not bound to show that he was an inspector when he demanded samples of goods, and, further, that it was in the highest degree reasonable that the inspector under the Act should be allowed to exercise his power without producing any warrant. With regard to the point that the inspector had no right to demand a sample from any particular vessel, it is to be said that he certainly had a right to be served from the vessel from which he had already been supplied. If he were not entitled to this, then the Act could easily be evaded by keeping adulterated spirits in the vessel for sale and drawing spirits from another vessel when they were required for analysis. The appeal was dismissed with costs.

ELIMINATION OF MORPHIA BY THE SALIVA. AN interesting series of experiments has recently been undertaken by Dr. Julius Rosenthalon the elimination of morphia by means of the salivary glands after the drug has been administered hypodermically. Dr. Rosenthal detected morphia in the saliva of patients after hypodermic injections of morphia in very small doses had been given. The reaction could not always be obtained immediately-sometimes, indeed, not until the third or fourth day after the injection had been administered. The reaction persisted for several days. Dr. Rosenthal considers that the quantity of morphia thus eliminated by the salivary glands is considerable. It would be a fair question to ask whether the morphia found in the stomach after hypodermic injections of the drug had not been swallowed, in part at any rate, with the saliva ; but experiments were tried on trustworthy individuals, who were instructed to be careful not to swallow their saliva, and yet after a short period morphia could be easily detected in the gastric juices. The elimination of the drug, therefore, by the saliva has no connexion with the similar function exercised by the stomach. ,

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PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON ETHICS. THE second Romanes Lecture was delivered by Professor Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, and dealt with the "Evolution of Ethics." He commenced by observing

Huxley in the

that nature as we see it is undergoing a constant process of cyclical evolution. Perpetual change is indeed the only constant factor in both the inanimate and the living kingdoms ; but one of the phenomena exhibited by sentient beings is pain or suffering, which becomes more and more acute till it culminates in man. Now the science of ethics professes to teach us what is good and what is right, and why it is so, together with the advantage of following the one and rejecting the other-that is to say, it professes to furnish us with a reasoned rule of life. Now the sages of the earliest systems of philosophy with which we are acquainted endeavoured to apply the conclusions which had been arrived at by reasoning upon right and justice to the world around them, and found the two to be incompatible. Either, therefore, the conclusions must be wrong or the course and governance of the world as a whole are conducted on different principles from theirs. The earlier forms of Indian philosophy held that there was a permanent reality or substance beneath the shifting series of phenomena whether of matter or of mind. This primary substance was Brahma, from which the individual man or Atman was separated only by his bodily envelope and into which, when he had cast this off, he returned. Guatama, the founder of Buddhism, eliminated matter altogether and left only a flow of sensations, emotions, volitions and thoughts, the end of life being Nirvana or nothing1

L’Union Médicale, March 23rd, 1893.

ness.

In Greece,

ethics, commencing with Heracleitus with his

physical principle of fire underlying all things, was gradually evolved by Democritus and the Stoics into an ideal Divinity possessing infinite power and transcendent wisdom and with absolute goodness. But the great stumbling-block still presented itself-that if pain and sorrow and wrong are realities, as the universal experience of mankind testifies, the existence of an immanent, omnipotent and infinitely beneficent cause It would be a new thing in history is clearly inadmissible. if a priori philosophers were daunted by the factious opposition of experience, and the Stoics were the last men to allow themselves to be beaten by mere facts. ’Give me a doctrine and I will find the reasons for it,’ said Chrysippus. So they perfected, if they did not invent, that ingenious and plausible form of pleading, the Theodicy, for the purpose of showing, first, that there is no such thing as evil ; secondly, that if there is, it is the necessary correlate of good ; and, moreover, that it is either due to our own "

fault

is inflicted for our benefit." The outcome of the the philosopher and the world in Greece as between struggle in India was that the ideal wise man was incompatible with the nature of things, and that a reasonable approximation to that ideal was to be attained only at the cost of renuncia. tion of the world and mortification, so that he became in the one country the mendicant cynic and in the other the monk. In the present day Professor Huxley points out that the propounders of ethical speculations, who adduce a number of more or less sound arguments in favour of the origin of the moral sentiments by gradual evolution, overlook the fact that the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved and that consequently there is, so far, as much natural sanction for the one as for the other. He thinks that a fallacy pervades the ethics of evolution—"the notion, namely, that because, on the whole, animals and plants have advanced in perfection of organisation by means of the struggle for existence and the consequent survival of the fittest, therefore men in society, men as ethical beings, must look to the same process to help them towards perfection. " He urges, on the contrary, thatthe practice of that which is ethically best-what we call goodness or virtueinvolves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands selfrestraint ; in place of thrusting aside or treading down all competitors it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows ; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. It demands that each man who enters into the enjoyment of the advantages of a polity shall be mindful of his debt to those who have laboriously constructed it, and shall take heed that no act of his weakens the fabric " in which he has been permitted to live. By such means he thinks, and we may hope with him, that man may undergo improvement in his moral nature and the essential evil of the world may undergo material abatement. or

THE CONDITION OF THE THAMES. THE recent drought has had its effect upon the River Thames, for it has been reported for some weeks that the river from Teddington Lock to Kew Bridge has been remarkably shallow at low water and that the bed of the river has been exposed in many places. This has led to the accumulation of mud and putrid matter on the foreshore, notably at Chiswick, where the local board have recently resolved to send to the Conservators a copy of a memorial which has been received from the inhabitants of the district calling attention to this fact. In the memorial it is alleged that the accumulation of offensive material is so great at low water as to cause a noxious smell to emanate which is in all probability injurious to health,