It

by a writer of such eminence and authority as Cruveilhier. is hardly necessary to observe how distinguished a place this author has held amongst the pathologists of the present century. He defines general pathological anatomy as that branch of pathological anatomy, the object of which is the determination and general study of morbid species. He openly proposes the question: "Do there exist species in pathological anatomy?" which he solves in the affirmative, by stating: "Yes, there exist morbid anatomical species quite as distinct the one from the otherquite as natural, as the zoological species"; and he goes on to declare: "The individuals of each species, I would venture to say of each pathological family, are recognizable by features as characteristic as if they proceeded the one from the other by means of generation; and it is a thing which has often excited my admiration to meet, after an interval of ten years, (pathological) alterations so identical, that descriptions and designs preserved amongst my drawings were applicable, in the most exact manner, to the fresh specimens which I had under my eyes, and which appeared to be the faithful reproduction of them". We beg leave to draw particular attention to the concluding observations of this extract. In a series of propositions, fourteen in number, this able anatomist proceeds to establish certain laws which he regards as determined with certainty respecting the "morbid species". Amongst these laws are to be chiefly noticed, in relation to our present consideration, those embodied in the propositions that" the number of morbid species is limited"; that "the morbid species are identical, whatever be their seat"; that "there exists a certain number of special lesions"; that the "morbid species are not capable of transformation, the one into the other"; and "that the living tissues are unalterable by themselves".

From the point of view in which we are engaged in studying the pathology of disease, it must be said that issue is to be taken with Cruveilhier and those who hold similar opinions upon each individual proposition which embodies the "laws" above briefly cited. In the passage in which he alludes to the very remarkable recurrence of pathological states and phenomena, with almost stereotyped regularity, is to be found one of the strongest, and apparently most striking, though at the same time one of the most easily refuted, proofs of the doctrine of distinct morbid species, or independent pathological types, as we prefer to designate them. Indeed, with anything like close scrutiny, it will be found that the so-called morbid species have, even in this respect, but the most superficial resemblance to independent physical entities in any department of nature or art. In organic or inorganic fabrics having complicated structure.

3 Traite D'Anatomie Pathologique General. Paris, 1849.

definite coordination of parts, and persistent and determinate physical properties, it is not matter for surprise that like physical agencies, or, in general, like causes, should be followed by like results. And the more persistent is the physical conformation, the more like the physical properties, and the more identical in force and intensity the physical and other agencies operating from within or without, the more identical, even to their very minutest phenomena, will be the mechanical or other effects which follow from the irregular, impeded, excessive, or defective action of the several forces concerned. It is matter of every-day experience, that, in complicated machines, accidents recur in a manner the most regular and almost systematized, and with an identity almost stereotyped in the very minutest features of the injury which results. And yet, to designate an injury or "lesion" occurring in the physical world as a "morbid species" or independent type of accident, and to claim for it an existence and characters as self-dependent as those which reside in the substance (metal, or what aught else it may be) which becomes the subject of such well-marked and recurrent injury, would be not less absurd than to assign to the "morbid species", affecting the physical apparatus of the animal organism, characters as distinct and as natural as those possessed by the zoological species. The very constant change from fibrous to crystalline structure in certain metals, as iron, and their consequent fracture, under the influence of a mechanical force like that of vibration, is as much entitled to be regarded as a "morbid species" affecting the metal, as mollities ossium deserves to be considered an independent diseased type or "morbid species" in the bones of the human subject. In our present limits, it will not be possible to follow this extensive subject and ample theme for enlarged pathological and perhaps metaphysical disquisition into the detail required for its full exposition. The consideration of it has yet to be taken up at large, and in a sense and manner worthy of the scientific as well as practical interests of medicine and humanity involved. It must serve our purpose in the present instance to illustrate our views on the questions at issue, by selecting some two or three examples from the best defined types of disease, and the most generally recognized "morbid species", and show how they are to be interpreted in conformity with the principles laid down in our definition of the nature of disease, as already explained. We shall take an example or two from pathological histology, and one from general pathology.

[To be continued.]

THE

ATLANTIS.

ART. I.-The Writings of Seneca considered with reference to Christianity. By ROBERT ORNSBY, M.A.

PERHAPS few writers could be named, who, possessing

such obvious faults as Seneca, nevertheless have had so important an influence on literature, exercised on some minds. so great a fascination, or afford so curious a study in the history of the manners of one of the most remarkable ages of the world. English literature in particular is indebted to him more than is commonly remembered. One of the most favourite of its departments is that of the Essayists. Beginning with Lord Bacon, we have Cowley, Steele, Addison, Johnson, Cumberland, Mackenzie, and their successors in our own days, such as Coleridge, Foster, Helps, and many others. Now the pedigree of all this class of composition is readily traceable to the tutor of Nero. Had there been no Chrysippus, there had been no Porch, said the old Stoics. We may say, had there been no Montaigne, there had been no Addison, and had there been no Seneca, there had been no Montaigne. The old French Essayist treats the Roman moralist (together with Plutarch) as a mine to which he may have endless recourse for acute observations on life; or, to use his own comparison, as the tub of the Danaides, from which he may incessantly fill his vessel as fast as he empties it. For a very long period in European studies, no author was more read than Seneca, and the Tragedies, which are certainly of his school, if not his composition, were one of the most popular books in classical education.

This preference for the Tragedies arose from the fondness which minds in a particular stage of cultivation have for the striking, rhetorical, and aphoristic, as the vulgar are fond of proverbs, while they are incapable of following lengthened and

III.

16

close thought, or of perceiving the beauty of organic wholes. The corresponding characteristic of the philosophical writings of Seneca has been one of the chief causes of his popularity. Perhaps no author affords so many sentences adapted for quotation on moral subjects. Clever, pungent observations on life and manners are scattered with an unsparing hand throughout his works. They seem to exhibit the results of the studies and the experience of the long life of a man placed, as he was, in command of the entire harvest of the two great literatures of the ancient world, and in the first rank of the society of his age. His nature, however, led him, not to systematic reasoning, not to the dogmatics of philosophy, but to its parænetic department (for the Stoics kept these provinces quite distinct). It belongs to the very idea of maxims to be disjointed; and as his compositions are chiefly the vehicle of maxims, they are almost entirely deficient in that harmony of form which has been frequently represented as the leading characteristic of classical as opposed to romantic literature. Never was a truer criticism than that of Caligula, who compared Seneca's writings to sand without lime. They have no cohesion except that of a moral purpose. The same general tendency makes him, in another way, read more like a modern than an ancient author. Everywhere he is subjective, he deals not with doctrine as such, so much as with doctrine in its application; and in his inquisition into the individual heart, in his absorption into self, contrasts wonderfully with that infantine identification of self with the external world, which constitutes the great charm of really classical literature. A general reader of this day would therefore find in Seneca much more affinity with the tone of his own mind, than he would, for example, in Aristotle. But there is in Seneca another source of great, though indirect, interest to modern times. This consists in the well-known resemblance which may be traced between many portions of his teaching, or rather his expressions, and the moral doctrines of Christianity. These resemblances lie upon the very surface of his works, and must be admitted to coincide very singularly even with the words of various passages in the New Testament. When we unite them with the impression which Christian antiquity appears to have had of Seneca and St. Paul's having come in contact with each other, a very great amount of prima facie evidence may be considered to result. Whether it can fairly be stated at more than this, it is the object of the fol lowing paper to inquire. It is hardly necessary to say that the apocryphal correspondence between St. Paul and Seneca is now universally rejected as a forgery of the clumsiest de

scription. That of course would not militate against the fact of a correspondence having really existed, as St. Jerome believed; only, the extant letters cannot be genuine. It is not at all uncommon in literature for fictitious productions (for example the supposed letters of Cicero to Brutus) to have been substituted, even in a comparatively early age, for lost originals.

I. Let us begin by examining the real or apparent traces of affinity to Christianity in the philosophy of Seneca; and in so doing we shall, for the present, make no distinction between what he has in common with other Stoical writers, and what may be peculiar to himself. The Pagan world differed from the Christian polity in nothing more strikingly than in the principle of the former being division, the latter unity. How broad were the distinctions which separated man from man in the same countries in the earlier times! Greece was split up into races, each with its characteristic habits, dialects, institutions, sacred rites; and even in the same state there were several strata of tribes, with varying privileges, as unmingling as oil and wine in the same vessel. For centuries, Greece and Rome knew next to nothing of each other. The world had not been fused together, and the human race hardly, as yet, understood its unity. Nay, that unity was distinctly denied, and the earth was believed to have engendered in various places various aboriginal families. The wonderful unifying force of the Roman empire, it is true, did much to bring mankind together. It made peace throughout the world, that "Romana pax" which formed such a contrast to the incessant wars of earlier date, such a majestic repose in the otherwise miserable period of the foundation of the empire. But still, slavery, the most hateful and rooted of all distinctions, prevailed everywhere; and man was still considered capable of being reduced into a thing, to minister in the vilest services to the cruelty or caprice of his fellow-man, placed by accident in a position to control him. Aristotle believed that nature made some classes of men slaves to others, whilst he admitted the hardship of cases where those not naturally slaves were reduced to servitude by the fortune of war.3 Contrast now with this general belief of the civilized world, the Christian truths as enunciated by St. Paul: "Non est Judæus neque Græcus; non est servus neque liber... Omnes enim vos unum estis in Christo Jesu"-Gal., iii. 28. And then consider in connection with

Cf. Joseph. contra Apionem, lib. I. τῆς Ῥωμαίων πόλεως, τοιαύτην ἐκ μακροῦ δύναμιν κεκτημένης, καὶ τοιαύτας πράξεις κατορθούσας πολεμικάς, οὔθ' ὁ Ηρόδοτος, οὔθ ̓ ὁ Θουκυδίδης, οὔτε τῶν ἅμα τούτοις γενομένων οὐδὲ εἷς ἐμνημόνευσεν, ἀλλ ̓ ὀψέποτε καὶ μόλις αὐτῶν εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἡ γνῶσις διεξῆλθεν. * Sen. De Div. Prov., c. 4. 3 Pol., i. 3, 5, 6.