Note 232 — Chapter XXI · FREETHOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

3. In England the influence of the French stimulus in physiology 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.”232 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.”233 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.”234 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.235