The Metaphor of Organization: An Historiographical Perspective on the Bio-Medical Sciences of the Early Nineteenth Century

I offer these preliminary reflections as my perception of traditional writing in the field, rather than as a documented study. I also include here all the debates which might be dismissed as second-rate science or as an ideological distortion of ‘real’ science. Robert Young has analysed the ‘science’ of evolution as an inseparable part of the nineteenth century debates broadly called ‘man's place in nature’ in several of his works, culminating with his overview of the debates, and his theoretical/political/programmatic statement in “The historiographic and ideological contexts of the nineteenth-century debate on man's place in nature”, Changing perspectives in the history of science, essays in honour of Joseph Needham , ed. Teich M. and Young R. M. (London, 1973), 344–438. His paper contains a highly perceptive account of the historiographical assumptions in the history of science during the past twenty years, and a detailed bibliography. There is no need to duplicate that work in this paper.

Ibid., sections ii and iii; on the integration of natural philosophy and bio-medical science, Ritterbush P. , Overtures to biology (New Haven, 1964); Schofield R. , Mechanism and materialism (Princeton, 1970); Young R. , op. cit. (ref. 1); Smith R. , “The background of physiological psychology in natural philosophy”, History of science, xi (1973), 75–123; Figlio K. , “Theories of perception and the physiology of mind in the late eighteenth century”, History of science, xiii (1975), 177–212; Canguilhem G. , La formation du concept de réflexe (Paris, 1955). See these works for further bibliography. On the recasting of popularization, J. Habermas, Toward a rational society, trans. Shapiro J. (London, 1971), ch. 5; Yoxen Edward , “‘The genetic code’: The manufacture of a scientific symbol”, paper presented to the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Cambridge (21 February, 1974). Mr Yoxen is completing a detailed study of molecular biology with this theme in mind. On the traditional historiography which sees science freeing itself from philosophy, and disciplines forming in areas of new positive knowledge and techniques, see Schiller J. , “Physiology's struggle for independence in the first half of the nineteenth century”, History of science, vii (1968), 64–89; Mendelsohn E. , Heat and life (Cambridge, Mass., 1964); idem, “The biological sciences in the nineteenth century: Some problems and sources”, History of science , iii (1964), 39–59; Cranefield P. , “The organic physics of 1847 and the biophysics of today”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xii (1957), 407–23; idem, The way in and the way out (New York, 1974) is a documentary history of the Bell-Magendie dispute whose very preparation implies this historiography; Whitteridge G. , William Harvey and the circulation of the blood (London, 1971); Coleman W. , Biology in the nineteenth century (New York, 1971). On institutional/social/political orientations which either stress the propagation of ideas because of such a structure, or which lay ideas alongside them, see, K. Rothschuh, History of physiology, translated by Risse G. (New York, 1973); Geison G. , “Social and institutional factors in the stagnation of English physiology, 1840–1870”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xlvi (1972), 30–58; Brown T. , “The College of Physicians and the acceptance of iatromechanism in England”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xliv (1970), 12–30; idem, “The mechanical philosophy and the ‘animal economy’; a study in the development of English physiology in the 17th and early 18th centuries” (Ph D. dissertation, Princeton Univ., 1968); Ackerknecht E. , Rudolph Virchow, doctor, statesman, anthropologist (Madison, 1953); idem, Medicine at the Paris hospital, 1794–1848 (Baltimore, 1967); Allen G. , Life science in the twentieth century (New York, 1975).

On the sociology of knowledge, see Young R. , op. cit. (ref. 1); Barnes B. , Scientific knowledge and sociological theory (London, 1974). Dr Young examines Marxist historiography in detail. See also Foucault M. , The order of things (London, 1970); idem, The birth of the clinic (London, 1973). There is a growing Foucault literature in English: Lecourt D. , Marxism and epistemology (London, 1975); Piaget J. , Structuralism (London, 1971); Chiari J. , Twentieth century French thought (London, 1975).

Barthes R. , Mythologies, ed. by trans. and Lavers A. (Frogmore, St Albans, 1973).

ibid., 131–3.

ibid., 142.

ibid., 116–17; 142–3. John Berger's analysis of the portraiture of aristocratic families stresses the sense of naturalness imparted, the apparent pure representation of things and people as they are, which submerges the ideological fabric of property relations. Here, as in Barthes's notion of myth, the coerciveness of the impression depends on commanding unquestioned assent to naturalness, so that a criticism would appear to be an absurd rejection of nature. Berger John , Ways of seeing (London, 1972).

Canguilhem G. , La formation (op. cit. (ref. 2)); idem, La connaissance de la vie (Paris, 1952), 156; Lecourt D. , op. cit (ref. 3), 179; Hoppe B. , “Le concept de biologie chez G. R. Treviranus”, in Schiller J. (ed.), Colloque international ‘Lamarck’ (Paris, 1971), 199–237; Schiller J. , “Apropos de la diffusion du terme biologie”, ibid ., 239–42; Figlio K. , op. cit. (ref. 2); Coleman W. , op. cit. (ref. 2); Bynum W. , “Time's noblest offspring: The problem of man in the British natural historical sciences, 1800–1863” (Ph. D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1974).

Garfinkle N. , “Science and religion in England, 1790–1800: The critical response to the work of Erasmus Darwin”, Journal of the history of ideas, xv (1955), 376–88.

See ref. 3.

The usual ‘science as social history’ implies the generation of distinctive ideas and distinct disciplines within the constraints imposed from outside science by institutional organizations which, in turn, reflect social policy and political conditions. The questions remain, “What joins the institutions to their distinctive ideas?”, and, “Isn't science itself a social force, not just by its application, but as social activity and mythology?”. See ref. 1, especially the discussion and bibliography of these historiographical positions by Robert Young.

I have treated these concepts as an example of the construction of a theoretical, value-neutral ‘scientific’ domain which covertly retains a philosophical/theological investment in my “Theories of perception” (ref. 2). I should like to strengthen that interpretation by asserting that the ‘scientific’ nature of these concepts is itself a scientific mythology.

Whytt R. , Observations on the sensibility and irritability of the parts of men and animals occasioned by the celebrated M. de Haller's late treatise on those subjects, in Works of Robert Whytt published by his son (Edinburgh, 1768), 255–306. For an exposition of post-Hallerian attitudes, see Hall T. , Ideas of life and matter (2 vols, Chicago, 1969), ii, chs 33–34.

Cabanis P.-J. , Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, in Lehec C. and Cazeneuve J. (eds), Oeuvres philosophiques de Cabanis (Paris, 1956), i, 105–631. See especially Mémoires 1–3, pp. 124–234.

Ibid ., esp. 142–4, 165–74.

Figlio K. , “Theories”, op. cit. (ref. 2).

Lamarck J.-B. , “Irritabilité”, Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle (36 vols, Paris, 1816–19), xvi (1817), 396–402; idem, Philosophie zoologique (Paris, 1809; repr. 2 vols in 1, Weinheim, 1960), i, 82–101.

Idem, Philosophie (ref. 17), i, 269–357.

Cuvier G. , Leçons sur l'anatomie comparée (5 vols, Paris, 1800–5), i, article iv; Coleman W. , Georges Cuvier zoologist (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), ch. 4.

Cuvier G. , Leçons (ref. 19), ii, 95, 98–99. For a bibliography of Cuvier's published writings on the nervous system, see Coleman , op. cit. (ref. 19), notes to ch. 4. On systems of classification, see Dagognet F. , Le catalogue de la vie (Paris, 1970). For the fundamental role of the nervous system, see p. 91.

Smellie W. , Philosophy of natural history (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1799), 144–59, 413–33, 470; Virey J.-J. , “Voix et chant”, Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle appliquée aux arts (24 vols, Paris 1803–4), xxiii (1804), 381–94; idem, “Instinct”, Dictionnaire des sciences médicales (60 vols, Paris, 1812–22), xxv (1818), 367–413; idem, “Animal”, Nouveau dictionnaire, i (1803), 419–66; Buffon G. , Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (15 vols, Paris, 1749–67), in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Lanessan J. (14 vols, Paris, 1885), iv, 456; vii, 73; v, 27, 103; viii, 357–60; ix, 149; xiv, 23–27, 41; Bonnet C. , Essai analytique sur les facultés de l‘âme (Copenhagen, 1760; repr., Hildesheim, 1973), paras 150–3, 217–72; White C. , An account of the regular gradation in man and in different animals and vegetables and from the former to the latter (London, 1799), 14–40; Stewart D. , Collected works, ed. Hamilton W. (10 vols and suppl., Edinburgh, 1854–60), ii, 1–38, 120–43; iv, 116–80, 250–370, esp. 281; Condillac E. , Traité des animaux , in Oeuvres complètes (16 vols, Paris, 1822), iii, 329–471; Bynum W. , op. cit. (ref. 8); Tinland F. , L'homme sauvage (Paris, 1968); Kuehner P. , Theories on the origins and formation of languages in eighteenth century France (Philadelphia, 1944); Chomsky N. , Cartesian linguistics; a chapter in the history of rationalist thought (New York, 1966); Bryson G. , Man and society; the Scottish inquiry of the eighteenth century (Princeton, N.J., 1945).

Bynum W. , op. cit. (ref. 8). This does not mean that man no longer saw the spectre of his primitive forms in animals or that continuity between man and animals had been repudiated. The fascination in the chimpanzee, orang-outang, ‘wild children’ and the origin of language testify to the lively interest in the features which demarcate the human from the animal—but by holding a mirror up to man. Interest centred on the multi-faceted forms of life revealed by comparative anatomy and on a diminishing realm of as yet unnaturalized criteria of humanity, such as the ability to generate abstractions. Any argument from the ‘naturalized’ ideas of organization and structure had to assume continuity in order to compare functions, and the obvious similarities between man and animals could only be interpreted with continuity assumed. Man salvaged his identity either through a single essentially human faculty (e.g., abstraction, articulate speech) or through his superiority as a whole, if not in any single faculty. There is indeed a tension between naturalizing concepts with their implied continuity, and demarcation concepts, but the implication was the same: Life was variously-perfected, expressed through organization and grasped through comparative anatomy as a multi-dimensional comparison of faculties. See ref. 21.

Descartes R. , Treatise of man (1664), translation and notes by Hall T. (Cambridge, Mass, 1972); Stahl G. , “Ueber den Unterschied zwischen Organismus and Mechanismus”, translated from sections 20–24 of his Dissertatio inauguralis medica de medicina medicinae curiosae (Halle, 1714) by Gottlieb B. , in Sudhoffs Klassiker der Medizin , xxxvi (1961), 48–53, 71–73; Figlio K. , op. cit., (ref. 2) for a discussion and bibliography on Hallerian irritability.

Robert Young has argued that natural selection, the concept considered central to Darwinian evolution, was caught up totally in metaphor. It was a productively ambiguous concept which could be thought of as an element in a theory—the evolutionary mechanism—but also as evidence of design, thus the denial of mechanism. The metaphor of selection forged the scientific concept, and it also held together a growing body of adherents to evolutionary naturalism who in fact held widely divergent views about nature, about man's attributes and about God's activity in nature. Dr Young's detailed analysis showed that at no point could a scientific content be distilled and purified from the philosophical/theological (ideological) matrix, all held together by the metaphor. Young R. , “Darwin's metaphor: Does nature select?”, The monist , xlv (1971), 442–503. Nisbet argues that all efforts to grasp reality are partly art and always formed by the mode of inquiry and by a vocabulary which, at least in the human sciences, is always metaphorical. Nisbet R. , “Genealogy, growth, and other metaphors”, New literary history , i (1969–70), 351–63; also, Hudson L. , Cult of the fact (London, 1972), 155. Ludmilla Jordanova has argued that the power of metaphorical concepts which span apparently incommensurable categories (e.g., physiological/psychological), which she calls ‘the problem of levels’, is central to the thought of J.-B. Lamarck. She stresses ‘organization’ as one of them, and the use of the nervous system for classification based ultimately on faculties. “The science of man: Lamarck and the Idéologues”, paper presented to the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University College, London (12 February, 1975).

Cuvier G. , op. cit. (ref. 20), 110–18.

ibid., 118–21.

ibid., 2–7.

ibid., 6–9.

This is not at all an isolated example of the scientific rendering of aesthetic, moral and imaginative judgement. Man saw in the animals around him and in his own creations glimpses of his own nature, both debased and elevated. The anatomist's interest in the African, in the ape and in the ‘wild children’ was a more naturalized fascination of the type that informed the fables of pygmies, satyrs, mermaids and troglodytes. Nature debased or elevated, man in his genuinely primitive state, purified expressions of human characters—these were what the animals, real and imaginary, brought to the anatomist. Physiognomy, an anatomically alive subject, not just a parlour game, saw in the human face and head a mix of characters, whose pure forms were more clearly expressed in the less complicated animals. Equally striking was the fascination with the classics. Not only did Cuvier dabble with the aesthetic ideals of classical art; he was a principal contributor to an annoted re-edition of Pliny's Natural history. In his profuse notes can be seen the modern anatomist offering naturalistic, plausible interpretations to the intermingled fantasy and observation of that time. But why was there so much attention still given in the early nineteenth century to the propagation of classical natural history, as well as to its debunking? The orang-outang and the ‘wild boy of Aveyron’; the one, a kind of man—perhaps one who wisely chose not to speak—the other, a human in his natural state; both touched the imaginative fantasies of man's own character, just as did his accumulated myths and aesthetic ideals. Tinland F. , op. cit., (ref. 21), explores the blending of fascination in the animal with the scientific perspective of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. On physiognomy, see Allentuck M. , “Fuseli and Lavater: Physiognomical theory and the Enlightenment”, Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, xlv (1967), 89–112; Lebrun C. , A series of lithograph drawings illustrative of the relation between human physiognomy and that of brute creation, translated by Blanquet (London, 1827); Lavater J. , Von der physiognomik (Leipzig, 1772) (Lavater's physiognomical essays went through several editions and translations until well into the nineteenth century); Gusdorf G. , Dieu, la nature, l'homme au siècle des lumières (Paris, 1972), 410–16; Lichtenberg G. C. , “Ueber Physiognomik wider die Physiognomen”, in his Vermischte Schriften (9 vols, Göttingen, 1800–1806), iii, 401–526; 527–88; idem, “Physiognomische und pathognomische Beobachtungen und Bemerkungen”, Vermischte Schriften, ii, 176–93; Bell C. , Essays on the anatomy of expression in painting (London, 1806), and several later editions. There were several editions and translations of Pliny during the nineteenth century. For Cuvier's extensive notes, see Histoire naturelle, traduction nouvelle par A. Grandsagne, annotée (20 vols, Paris 1829–33), vi. On wild children, including a translation of Itard's reports on the wild boy of Aveyron (whom Itard taught and observed), see Malson L. , Wolf Children and the wild boy of Aveyron, translated by Fawcett E. , Ayrton P. and White J. (London, 1972).

Hesse M. , Models and analogy in science (Notre Dame, 1966), esp. 157–77; Glass B. , “The establishment of modern genetical theory as an example of the interaction of different models, techniques and inferences”, in Crombie A. C. (ed.), Scientific change (London, 1963), 521–41; Canguilhem G. , “Analogies and models in biological discovery”, Scientific change , 508–20; Barnes B. , op. cit. (ref. 3), 49, 53–59, 86–96, 146–7, 165.

See ref. 24.

Foucault M. , op. cit. (ref. 3).

Foucault M. , The order (ref. 3), 264, 267, 269. Also, see Russell E. S. , Form and function, a contribution to the history of animal morphology (London, 1916).

Foucault M. , The order (ref. 3), 226–32, 263–79; idem, The birth (ref. 3), ch. 9, esp. 154–9. Here Foucault describes the change in clinical medicine from nosology, a taxonomy of superficial symptoms, to pathological anatomy, which presupposed the notion of disease as a form of degeneration. But degeneration is an alteration in the nature of life, so the change from nosology to pathological anatomy also reflects the shift from the classical to the organic epistemes.

See refs 19 and 20. Dr Dorinda Outram has suggested that I may have overemphasized the importance of the nervous system in Cuvier's physiology and classification and has drawn my attention to his use of other classificatory criteria, such as the respiratory system and the blood. Although I agree with her, I think it is fair to refer to the long histories of these criteria and still to concentrate upon Cuvier's attempt to find a system more intrinsically associated with the nature and perfection of life, and to subordinate other characters to it. There is evidence of his downgrading independent muscle irritability by subordinating muscle to nerve. Remembering that Hallerian irritability symbolized an autonomous vital power at this time, Cuvier's support of the Scottish, neo-Stahlian position (Cullen, MacBirde, Gregory), that muscle depended upon nerve, is significant. That so much could be implied in a simple, ‘scientific’, statement as “nerve is dominant over muscle” is the point of this paper. Cuvier G. , Histoire des progrès des sciences naturelles (2 vols, Bruxelles, 1837–38), 101–5; idem, La règne animal (4 vols, Paris, 1817), i, 30f. For discussions of irritability and the nervous system in the early nineteenth century, see Fournier F. and Begin L.-J. , “Irritabilité”, Dictionnaire des sciences médicales (60 vols, Paris, 1812–1822), xxvi (1818), 94–122; Hall M. , “Irritability”, in Todd R. (ed.), Cyclopaedia of anatomy and physiology (5 vols, London, 1835–39), iii, 29–44. Hall reviews the association between respiration and irritability of several writers (including Cuvier), which shows that respiration was not considered apart from vitality at this time; and the nervous system, as the locus of irritability, was still the central organ of vitality. Also, see refs 19 and 20, especially F. Dagognet, op. cit. (ref. 20), 84–91, 105–10 on the interrelation vs dependence of properties.

See Foucault , The birth (ref. 3), ch. 9.

Levi-Strauss C. , The savage mind (Chicago, 1966), 16–37; Barnes B. , op. cit. (ref. 3), 57–59.

Temkin O. , “Basic science, medicine, and the romantic era”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xxxvii (1963), 97–129; Goodfield-Toulmin J. , “Some aspects of English physiology: 1780–1840”, Journal of the history of biology, ii (1969), 283–320. On Lawrence, see Bynum W. , op. cit. (ref. 8).

Barclay J. , An inquiry into the opinions, ancient and modern, concerning life and organization (Edinburgh, 1822), 413, note. Barclay refers to Le vrai sens du systême de la nature and to the Systême de la nature, which, he says, did not appear in the French edition of Helvétius's collected works.

For a partial bibliography on this point, see Figlio K. , op. cit. (ref. 2), ref. 5; Bretschneider H. , Der Streit um die Vivisection im 19 Jahrhundert, Medizin in Geschichte und Kultur , no. 2 (Stuttgart, 1962). On the image of the French in English literary and philosophical magazines, see Deane S. , The perception and reputation of some thinkers of the French Enlightenment in England between 1789 and 1824 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1968).

Goodfield J. , op. cit. (ref. 38), 290.

ibid., 290, 292, 295, 297, 306, 318. My emphasis.

Anonymous, “Abernethy on the vital principle”, The Edinburgh review, xxiii (1814), 384–98; the quote is on p. 384. On Newtonian authority to justify the postulations of biological forces, see Hall T. , “On biological analogs of Newtonian paradigms”, Philosophy of science, xxxv (1968), 6–27.

Anonymous review of F. Magendie's Précis elémentarie de physiologie (2 vols, Paris, 1816–17), in the Edinburgh medical and surgical journal, xv (1819), 561–87; the quote is from p. 561.

Op. cit. (ref. 43), 388. The review of Gall and Spurzheim in The Edinburgh review, xxv (1815), 227–68, was written by Gordon John , M.D.; Copinger W. , On the authorship of the first hundred numbers of the Edinburgh review (Manchester, 1895), 26. It is likely, therefore, that he was also the anonymous reviewer of Anernethy's lectures.

Annals of medicine, vi (1801), 223–53. Plans to prepare a translation are also mentioned, p. 486.

Tribune Catholique, gazette du clergy, no. 71 (13 June 1832), 4. I am grateful to Ludmilla Jordanova for supplying me with these extracts (also ref. 48) from the dossier on Cuvier at the Institut National, Paris, “Fonds Cuvier 332”.

Les Protestants, journal religieux, politique, philosophique et littéraire , no. 30 (1 June 1832), “Fonds Cuvier 332”; de Bonald L. , Oeuvres (12 vols, Paris, 1817–19), ix (1818), 287, 303–4, my emphasis. For a discussion of the French reaction to the critical, analytical thought of the Idéologues, and of the emergence of a synthetic, metaphysical, scientistic, secular-religious inclination during this period, see Charlton W. , Secular religions in France, 1815–1870 (London, 1963).

For general studies of the Scottish school, see McCosh J. , The Scottish philosophy (London, 1875; repr. Hildesheim, 1966); Grave S. , The Scottish philosophy of common sense (Oxford, 1960). For studies of the relation of Scottish philosophy to science, see Bryson G. , op. cit. (ref. 21); Olsen R. , Scottish philosophy and British physics 1750–1880 (Princeton, N.J., 1975).

Stewart D. , “On the influence of Locke's authority upon the philosophical systems which prevailed in France during the latter part of the eighteenth century”, in Philosophical essays (London, 1810), 101–26; Works (ref. 21), v (1855), 120–36.

Ibid ., 113–14; Works, v, 128–9. The polemical, selective citing of French authors, in the attempt to create the illusion of radical differences between French and British thought, becomes even more evident if we consider the influence of French political/economic writers (Quesnay, Condorcet, Say) upon the British (Stewart, Mill, Ricardo). At the centre of the British absorption of French political economy was James Mill, a student of Stewart's and a follower of Thomas Brown, Stewart's student and successor to the chair of moral philosophy at Edinburgh. Brown had borrowed so much from Tracy and Laromiguière that he was accused of plagiarism by Sir William Hamilton, but still asserted the profound gulf between French and British mental philosophy. See Halévy E. , The growth of philosophic radicalism , translated by Morris M. (London, 1928; repr. with corrections, 1952, 1972), 264–82, 435.

Stewart D. , “Of the speculation concerning final causes”, Works, iii, 335–57; the quote is on p. 340.

ibid., 342, note 1.

Dagonet F. , op. cit. (ref. 20), 73; Haüy R. , Traité de mineralogie (5 vols, Paris, 1801), i, 1–4, 12; Buffon G. , op. cit. (ref. 21), iv (1884), 163–5, 166–7, 168–9, 173–5; Buffon uses gravity, which is proportional to mass, not to surface, to support analogically the possibility, not just of biological force, but of a penetrating force which operates in the interiors of living units; Chaptal J.-A. , Elements of chemistry (3rd edn, 3 vols, London, 1800), iii, 1, 280; Thomson T. , System of chemistry (5th edn, 4 vols, London, 1817), iv, 642, 645; Virey J. J. , “Instinct” (ref. 21), 374–80; Barclay J. , An inquiry (op. cit. (ref. 39)), 386–92; Schwann T. , Microscopical researches into the accordance in the structure and growth of animals and plants (London, 1847), esp. 161–215; Maulitz R. , “Schwann's way: Cells and crystals”, Journal of the history of medicine, xxvi (1971), 422–37.

Cuvier G. , Leçons (ref. 19), i, 5; Barclay J. , op. cit. (ref. 39), 220–1. As the quotation suggests, Barclay's interpretation is highly selective and polemical.

Virey J.-J. , “Physiognomie”, Dictionnaire de sciences médicales (ref. 21), xlii (1820), 188–230; also see ref. 29.

Chaussier F. and Adelon N. , “Organization”, Dictionnaire de sciences médicales (ref. 21), xxxviii (1819), 205–49.

Barclay J. , op. cit. (ref. 39), 340, 341.

ibid., 56.

ibid., 372–81.

ibid., 393–414.

ibid., 351.

Ibid ., 371–2. In the assertion of this “encumbrance with material organs”, Barclay sounds more ‘materialistic’ than Condillac, the originator of the apparently materialistic French sensualists, the Idéologues. Condillac spoke simply of the dependence of the soul for knowledge on the senses, as if the senses were the cause, not the occasion: “It is this state of the soul which I propose to enquire into; the only one that can properly be the object of philosophy, since it is the only one made known to us by experience. Whenever therefore I happen to say that we have no ideas but what come from the senses, it must be remembered, that I speak only of the state into which we are fallen by sin. … I do not treat of the knowledge of the soul in the two extreme states; because I cannot reason but from experience…”. Condillac E. , An essay on the origin of human knowledge , translated by Nugent T. (Gainsville, 1971), 18. Remember Stewart's observations on the distortion of Locke in this French tradition (ref. 50).

Virey J. J. , “Instinct”, Dictionnaire des sciences médicales (ref. 21), xxv (1818), 367–413, the quote being on p. 380; de Bonald L. , op. cit. (ref. 48), 360. I should like to thank Mr Finlayson C. P. , Keeper of Manuscripts at Edinburgh University Library, for the opportunity to consult the dissertations of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh. Of special interest are the dissertations on ‘organized bodies’, ‘intellect’, ‘intellectual powers’, ‘man’, and ‘mind’. On the argument of this paper, see Balmain J. , “Do the powers of organized bodies differ in kind or only in degree?”, xlviii (1802–3), 303–26; Fearon H. , “Are ideas accompanied by affections of the immediate organs of sense, as asserted by Darwin?”, iii (1804–5), 159–94; Erskine P. , “In what manner are we to proceed to ascertain the nature of the thinking principle in man?” xxxix (1793–95), 197–204.

Coker F. , Organismic theories of the state, which is to be found in Studies in history, economics and public law, xxxviii (1910; repr. New York, 1967); Mann G. (ed.), Biologismus im 19 Jahrhundert, Studien zur Medizingeschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts , Bd v (Stuttgart, 1973); Barnes H. “Representative biological theories of society”, Sociological review , xvii (1925), 120–31, 182–95, 294–300. That organic analogies were not unique to the nineteenth century does not affect my argument. What is important is how they reflect ideology.

Stewart D. , Works (ref. 21), iii, 343, 346–57.

ibid., 350.

ibid., viii, 37, 38.

Ibid ., iii, 350. Compare this view with the French Idéologue position expounded by its systematizer, Destutt de Tracy. Tracy's discussion of political economy constitutes the final volume of his Ideology, the study of the generation of ideas. He considers the theory of the state to be a sub-class of that of the will, and the organization of his ‘textbook’ of ideology confirms this view. Political economy is introduced, after a long resumé of the principles of ideology, as a continuation of the section on the will. de Tracy Destutt , A treatise on political economy; to which is prefixed a supplement to a preceding work on the understanding or elements of ideology , translated by Jefferson Thomas (Georgetown, 1817; repr. New York, 1970). On the Idéologues, see Boas G. , French philosophies of the romantic period (Baltimore, 1925). Halévy throws into sharp relief the two systems of political, economic, social, philosophical and psychological thought; one based ultimately upon egoism and advocated principally by Bentham and Mill, the other reducible to sympathy and espoused by Sir James Mackintosh. The second view is close to Stewart's, but of greater importance is Halévy's analysis of the consistency all the way from opinions on educational and government policy to those on individual psychological faculties. E. Halévy, op. cit. (ref. 51), esp. pt iii, ch. 3, “The laws of thought and the rules of action”. Equally important, of course, was the substantial absorption of French political economy into British thought; so that, as in the case of animal organization, one must see both the unity and the ideological diversity invested in the same concepts. See ref. 51.

Stewart D. , Works (ref. 21), viii, 48–54.

ibid., 207. My emphasis.