the operation of warmth, coldness, moisture, and dryness as forces. Matter is divisible into similar and dissimilar parts, variously compounded; these form organs, and organs, differently arranged, form living beings. The perfection of living beings depends on the relative number of their organs, which are most numerous in the most perfect, from roots and leaves to hands and brain; and ever as they become more perfect, they are more fitted to do and execute each of the infinite forms of the infinitely diversified products of animated nature. Plant or animal has its given duty, and is fitted for its accomplishment. Embryo and organ alike have an aim in their structure which marks and makes them what they are. Being rises from seed to soul. Soul is an energy or activity. It is the principle of organic, sensitive, and intellectual life. Organic life has two functions-nutrition and reproduction-and is common to all beings. Sensitive life is special in animals. Sensations act upon organs, each of which is the seat of an appetite, and form a union in an internal sense, which regulates them all. Intellectual life is peculiar to man. It has two modes,-passive, inasmuch as it receives impressions from sensible objects; active, inasmuch as it makes impressions upon outward things. To it, also, there is attached an appetite-the desire for truth. It exerts itself theoretically in surveying and knowing what exists; practically, in considering what should or may be done or avoided. It is not only changed by objects that lie without it, but it also modifies that which lies without. Here arise the practical sciences-ethics, politics, economics,-to which hereafter we may turn our thoughts. Such is a hasty, train-flashing glimpse of this great historic thinker's views on nature. We have touched only on the matters which supremely concern the after ages of thought. Research has worn away from many details their validity, from many speculations their truth, from many suggestions their vital importance to further progress; but no research can take away the perennial interest with which thinking men view the struggles of a great soul to arrest for the investigation of science the complex streams of activity which work throughout all nature, and learn whence they come, what they effect, and whitherward they flow. The grandeur of Aristotle's efforts and his earnestness for the accomplishment of his aims, are vouched for by the extraordinary multitude of facts he gathered together, the singular care with which he systematized them, and the marvellous creative ideality with which his suggestive faculty provided him with forms of solution for the problems of his soul. His life-labour even, though all out-dated, would still entrance and fascinate; but when we feel that even now his dominion extends itself through many forms of investigation, we comprehend the strange immortal vitality of a great spirit. Aristotle gave the centuries their impulse, and provided for human guidance along the lines of thought; he supplied a vital science to man; he wrenched the sceptre of philosophy from Imagination, in whose hands Plato had placed it, and restored it to the Intellect; he has taught us, by the wheel of dialectics, to draw water from the deep wells of truth; and he has cast a divining-glance into the principles of things and thoughts which has had its result in the suggestion of the union in all true wisdom of Induction and Deduction. This is the dawn of true science. His was the mind which threw the beams of a guiding light over the weltering waves of speculation. He set up in that pathless waste of waters the Pharos of philosophy, LOGIC. We cannot avoid regarding the aim of Aristotle as far grander and nobler than that of Bacon. Aristotle's final end of science was truth; Bacon's, utility. "Men who desire to learn," says Aristotle, "must first learn to doubt; for science is only the solution of doubts' (Metaph., III., 1). "Each science takes cognizance of its own class of truths" (Rhet., I., 7). "The true and legitimate aim of science," says Bacon, "is no other than to enrich our lives by new inventions and discoveries" (Nov. Org., I., 124). The latter regards man as a spider, under the fretted dome of heaven doing the daily utilities of its life, and working out its own objects in the web of science that he spins; the former looks upon man as a bee, roving over the beauteous face of creation, rejoicing in the air, aspiring to heaven, yet finding beauty, goodness, and opportunity of usefulness upon the earth and from its products. To believe in truth, to yearn for its acquirement, to devote the days of a toil and grief-tried existence to evolve from nature all the truth that it involves is to be nobler as a man than to lay it aside in despair, to halt through fear of non-success, to seek it only because of the good it yields, or to deny its possibility and utility to humanity. The conception of rounding the whole scheme of knowledge into a mutually suggestive circle of truth-of bringing into oneness the gathered lore of nature, the investigations into the human soul, and the processes by which it works; the inquiries capable of being made regarding morals, and the guesses which might be made concerning the gods was indeed one worthy of holding a place in the mind of a thinker. That Aristotle pursued his researches with a flagless zeal and an unwavering hopefulness, amidst great discouragements and difficulties, is honourable to his memory, and one of the finest elements in his fame. There is something far more striking and sublime in Aristotle's forth-reaching hope to penetrate the secrets of heaven and earth by logic, than in Bacon's hunger for " over nature" and the enlargements of the boundaries of man's dominion, or in the materialism of Comte, and in the halting scepticism of Lewes who has too readily given his adhesion to the seoffing, anti-philosophic utterance of Goethe, "What shapest thou here at the world? 'tis shapen long ago: Thy lot is appointed; go, follow its hest,— Thy way is begun, thou must walk and not rest; And running, not raging, will win thee the race." power Social Economy. ARE OUR EXISTING PATENT LAWS PRODUCTIVE OF PUBLIC BENEFIT? AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-III. SHALL a man have or shall he not have fruit of his brain? That is the question in this debate. It is reasonably presumed that a public benefit can never arise from a private wrong; that is, from the spoliation of the individual with the intention of the " public good. This principle, if any so maintain it, carried to its legiti mate extent, would involve the seizing of the goods and possessions of the more fortunate members of the community, and during seasons of distress, appropriating them to the public service. None will maintain, surely, that when a man has been months, years, and, it may be, the greater portion of his life, inventing a machine, that so soon as perfected the public should have the benefit, and the inventor share only with those who have neither risen early nor lain awake to scheme and plan its construction. "Delta" says, "It must not for one moment be supposed that we would object to all protection of the inventor and the use of his invention. We think this is possible with the least degree of infringement of the principles of free trade." We say that it is not a question of objection but a question of right, that the inventor should have his invention protected, just as much as the law protects his house, and makes it a castle sacred to him and his family. It is not a question of free trade or restricted trade in any sense, and does not enter into the laws of political economy. It has to do with a man's private property, just as it has to do with a field of potatoes, which is private property; and which any one removing without the consent of the owner, renders himself liable to be prosecuted for felony. The right which constitutes ownership in the potatoes is not greater, is not so great, as that which constitutes ownership in an invention; and he that steals from the inventor his invention commits a crime not less than the man who deliberately puts his hand into another man's pocket and purloins his gold. What has the question of free trade, then, in any sense, to do with inventions which proceed from the private and not the public brain? He who demands free trade in inventions can quote precisely the defence which serves the Free Brothers of Spain, the freebooters of France, and the bushrangers of America. But we are not left without an instance of how free trade in inventions would work,-would work for others, and leave the inventor himself with little or no profit in his invention. The inventor of the "mule," whose monument the inhabitants of Bolton have recently "set up," as if that "stone" could atone for positive cruelty to the man who had enriched not only the cotton district but England and the world with his invention. When Samuel Crompton was in his twenty-first year he commenced the construction of his "mule," which took him the next five years to perfect. He says, "The next five years had this addition to my labour as a weaver, occasioned by the imperfect state of cotton-spinning, viz., a continual endeavour to realize a more perfect principle of spinning; and though often baffled, I as often renewed the attempt, at the expense of every shilling I had in the world." Crompton could only work on his machine at over-hours, often far into the night, which caused reports of the house, in which he and his mother dwelt, to be haunted. No doubt it was, but it was with Samuel's untiring, restless spirit. His only tools were a few, sacredly preserved by his mother, once the property of his father, and now interesting from the fact that with them he had constructed a church organ. In order to obtain some other needed tools, Samuel frequently hired himself to the manager of the Bolton Theatre, taking his place in the orchestra, in company with his violin, which had been made by himself, for which service he received one shilling and sixpence per night. When Crompton was on the eve of completing his machine, the Blackburn spinners were excited to riot against machinery, which they were told would destroy their means of living. During this outbreak the "mule" had to be taken to pieces and concealed. In the course of the year, however, the machine was complete; yarn was spun upon it, which was manufactured into muslins of a very fine description. The manufacturers were astonished at the fineness and firmness of the yarn Crompton produced. He was then only twenty-seven years of age; but his invention, from the hour of its completion, had altered the entire system of cotton manufacture. It was now seen that the muchcoveted India muslins could be made at home. The cotton manufacturers were only too anxious, therefore, to penetrate Samuel's secret. He, on the other hand, was equally solicitous to keep his invention to himself. All sorts of stratagems were resorted to, to obtain admission to the house. Samuel had to erect a screen before his window, which frequently had three or four faces "peeping in.' One man, more determined than the rest, secreted himself for some days in the cock-loft, watching Samuel through a gimlet-hole pierced through the ceiling. Under these circumstances, it was impossible long to retain the secret of the machine. Speaking of this period, Samuel said, "During this time I married, and commenced spinner. But a few months reduced me to the cruel necessity either of destroying my machine altogether, or giving it up to the public. To destroy it I could not think of; to give up that for which I had laboured so long was cruel. I had no patent, nor the means of purchasing one. In preference to destroying, I gave it to the public." He trusted to the manufacturers to remunerate him. They did, indeed, draw up an agreement which ran thus:-" We, whose names are hereunto subscribed, have agreed to give, and do hereby promise to pay, unto Samuel Crompton, at the Hall-in-theWood, near Bolton, the several sums opposite to our names, as a reward for his improvements in spinning. Several of the principal tradesmen in Manchester, Bolton, &c., having seen his new machine, approve of it, and are of opinion that it would be of the greatest public utility to make it generally known; to which end a contribution is desired from every well-wisher of trade." One authority says that Samuel received £50; another says £106. Crompton said himself, "I received as much by way of subscription as built me a new machine with only four spindles more than the one I had given up, the old one having forty-eight, the new one fifty-two spindles. But, most wretched to relate, even the miserable sums appended to the list were withheld in many instances when Crompton applied for them. He wrote:-" At last I consented, in hope of a generous and liberal subscription. The consequence was, that from many subscribers, who would not pay the sum they had set opposite their names when I applied to them for it, I got nothing but abusive language, given to me to drive me from them, which was easily done, for I never till then could think it possible that any men (in such situations of life and circumstances) could pretend one thing and act directly opposite. I then found it was possible, having had proof positive. Having thus experienced the generous treatment of the men who were making fortunes out of his invention, Samuel turned his attention to manufacturing, trusting to obtain the suc cess of his neighbours. But in this hope he was doomed to be disappointed. No sooner did he teach any new hands the use of the machine than they were bribed by the manufacturers in the neighbourhood to leave him. Crompton thus records this additional injustice" I pushed on, intending to have a good share in the spinning line, yet I found there was an evil which I had not foreseen, and of much greater magnitude than giving up the machine, viz., that I must always be teaching green hands, employ none, or quit the country, it being believed, that if I taught them they knew their business well. So that for years I had no choice left but to give up spinning or quit my native land. I cut up my spinning machine for other purposes." He, on another occasion, feeling acutely the injustice which had been done him, seized his axe and broke his carding machine in pieces, saying, "They shall not have this too." In 1811 Crompton commenced collecting information relative to the results of his invention. He found that in England, Scotland, and Ireland, there were between four and five millions of mule spindles in use; two-thirds of the steam power then employed in cotton spinning was employed to turn the "mules." The value of the buildings and machinery employed in Samuel's invention was computed at between three and four millions sterling; and, as a proof that the invention had not thrown hands out of employ, it 1864. 2 E |