Chapter XIII (3)

2. A system of intellectual faculties, such as reason, imagination, reflection, combination of ideas, discrimination between different ideas.

3. A system of emotions, or susceptibilities to pleasure or pain, of a moral and intellectual nature as distinguished from the pleasurable or painful excitation of our nerves.

4. A system of desires, which prompt us to wish for and acquire some good, or to avoid some evil.

5. A system of affections, which prompt us to like or dislike persons, things, situations, and whatever is attractive or unattractive, as the case may be.

A little further analysis of each of these systems will explain why they are respectively to be thus classified as distinguishable organic powers or functions of the human mind:

_First._ The mind is placed as a recipient in correspondence with the material universe through the nerves of sensation and the special corporeal organs, whereby the properties of matter become to some extent known to us. As the power of the physical senses to obtain for us a knowledge of the properties of matter is limited, even when our senses are in the utmost state of their normal capacity, there may be properties of matter which will never become known to us in our present existence. But certain of its properties do become known to us, and we are perfectly aware that this takes place through our physical organs of sense, which convey to our mental reception certain impressions. This power of the mind, therefore, to receive such impressions, to retain and transmute them into thought, is to be recognized as a power exerted by means of an organic physical contrivance and an organic mental structure, the two acting together, the resultant being the mind's faculty for receiving ideas from the external world. Let us suppose, then, that the bodily senses are impaired by the partial destruction of their organs. It does not follow that the knowledge which has been derived from them, when they were in full activity, is destroyed; all that happens is that we acquire no more of such knowledge by the same means, or do not acquire it so readily and completely. If the destruction of the physical senses is so complete as it becomes when death of the whole body takes place, the materials derived from the impressions conveyed to the mind from external objects during life have been transmuted into ideas and thoughts, and, as that which holds the ideas and the thoughts is of a substance unlike in nature to the substance of the physical organs which conveyed the impressions, the rational conclusion is that the ideas and thoughts will continue to be held by it, after the dissolution of the body, as they were held while the body was in full life.

_Second._ I recognize in the mind a system of intellectual faculties. Of intellect, I should say that the ascertainment of truth is its primary function; and hence I should say that the power of retaining permanent possession of truth already ascertained is the means by which we maintain continued ascertainment, or the utilization of truth already ascertained.[152] For the exercise of this power of ascertaining, holding, applying, and expressing truth--the processes of intellect--we have three recognized faculties. These are the intuitive faculty; the faculty of association or combination; and the introspective faculty, or the capacity to look inward upon the processes of our own minds. The philosophers who maintain that all our knowledge is derived from experience admit neither the intuitive faculty nor the fact of intuition. On the other hand, the philosophers who maintain, as Mr. Spencer does, that the brain of every infant is an organized register of the experiences of his ancestors, do not allow of the existence of any intuitions as facts in the individual life of the infant, because they regard the individual experiences of the infant as mere repetitions of former experiences that took place in its progenitors. But rightly regarded the true meaning of the intuitive faculty is this: that at the instant when a new sensory impression is received by the infant, or the adult, there is an innate and implanted power which comes into play, by which is asserted the reality of that from which the sensory impression is received. This power, the intuitive faculty, is infallible. It was ordained as the means by which a sensory impression becomes to us a reality. We are so constructed, mentally, that we must believe those primary facts which the sensory impressions certify to us to be facts. On the veracity of this certification we are absolutely dependent, because we can not contradict the affirmations of reality which causation makes to our intuitive mental perceptions. On this veracity we risk our lives; we could not be safe if we were not subjected to this belief. Intuition, therefore, is something anterior to experience; it is that power by which the first experience and the last become to us the means of belief in a reality. This is a power that can belong to and inhere in a spiritual organism alone. We must, therefore, recognize in the infant this original implanted endowment, the capacity to be mentally convinced of realities; and while, in order to meet the first exercise of this capacity there must be a physical organism which will conduct the sensory impressions to the brain and a brain that will receive them, the capacity of the infant to have its first conviction of the reality certified to it by the sensory impression is at once the capacity of an intellectual being, and a necessity imposed upon him by the law of his existence. Idiocy, when complete, is the absence of this capacity, by reason of some failure of connection between the brain, as the central recipient of sensory impressions, and the mind which should receive and transmute those impressions into thought. We are scarcely warranted in regarding the idiot as a human animal possessed of no mind whatever. The absolute idiot should be defined as a human creature whom we can not educate at all--in whom we can awaken no intelligence; but we are not therefore authorized in believing that there is no provision whatever for the development of intelligence after the mere physical life of the body is ended. Absolute idiocy, or what, from our as yet imperfect means of developing intelligence in such unfortunate persons we must regard as at present absolute, is probably very rare. Between human creatures so born and those vast multitudes in whom average intelligence is developed by surrounding influences, whatever they may be, there are various degrees of the capacity for development; and what happens in these intermediate cases proves that there are different degrees in which the connection between the physical and the mental organism is established at birth, so that in some the connection may be said to be abnormal and imperfect, while in the enormous majority it is at least so nearly normal and complete that intelligence may be developed.

Here, then, is the place to advert to Mr. Spencer's assertion that the doctrine that intelligence in the human being is wholly produced by experience is utterly inadmissible; that it makes the presence of a brain meaningless, and idiocy unaccountable. A doctrine which imputes the development of intelligence _wholly_ to the experience of the individual is of course untenable. There must be a brain and a nervous system; but we are not warranted, in the case of the idiot, in assuming that he has a differently organized brain and nervous system from those of his parents or others of the human race, as Mr. Spencer appears to me to assume. What we are warranted in believing is that while the brain and nervous system of the idiot child may be just as complete in his structure as in those of the parents, there has somehow occurred, from some cause, antecedent in some cases to birth, but operating after birth in other cases, a failure of the adequate connection between the brain and the mind, so that intelligence can not be developed at all, or can be developed but partially. The individual may have inherited just as good an "organized register" of the experience of his ancestors--just as good a natural brain as his brothers and sisters who are perhaps highly intelligent from their birth, or capable of becoming intelligent. Yet he lacks the ability to co-ordinate impressions and to perform the actions appropriate to those impressions, because there has failed to be established in him the necessary connection between the impressions and the sensory intellectual system which constitutes one organic part of the mind. The experiences, however often repeated, of the impressions produced by his physical senses on his brain, remain there as corporeal feelings. They reach no further. They do not become transmuted into ideas, and so intelligence can not be developed, or is developed but to a very feeble extent. Instead of saying that "the gradually increasing intelligence displayed throughout childhood is more attributable to the completion of the cerebral organization than to the individual experiences," I should say that it is most attributable to the presence of an established connection between the function of the cerebral organization and the mental receptivity of impressions, which is not merely passive, but is incessantly active because incessantly receiving, and that, where this connection is wanting, the receptivity, although it may exist, can not become active, and so intelligence can not be developed in this life. But there may be another state of existence, in which the mind of the idiot, no longer dependent on a physical organization of brain and nervous system for the reception of ideas and for intellectual growth, but retaining its capacity for mental development, may begin and carry on such development by other means; whereas, if the brain and the nervous system constitute all there is of any human being, whether born an idiot or born capable of intellectual growth through his individual experiences, he can have no future after that brain and nervous system are destroyed, unless we suppose that mind is something that has been developed out of matter into a spiritual existence--a supposition which is to me inconceivable.

The second of the intellectual faculties is the associative, or that intuitive power by which ideas are combined and associated or held in disjunction and separation. I regard this as an intuitive faculty, because, as our observation teaches us, its presence and power, manifested at the first dawning of infantile intelligence, are attested by every exercise of the organs through which the external world reaches our minds, to the last moment of our mortal existence. Experience is, of course, necessary to the first action of this intuitive faculty. This is only another way of saying that there must occur a sensory impression upon the brain which becomes transmuted into the idea of the external object, and then a repetition of that impression produces a repetition of the idea, and the associative faculty combines or disjoins them. But unless there exists an intuitive power, inherent in the intellective system, whereby the first idea and the second can be associated and compared, there can be no knowledge, no acquisition of truth, because the sensory impressions will stop in the brain as so many feelings excited through the nervous system, instead of being transmuted into thought.

The introspective faculty, on the other hand, does not deal solely with sensory impressions, or with the ideas which they have suggested. It is that power of the mind by which it can look inward upon itself. This is seemingly a paradox; but nevertheless, the existence of such a faculty is a necessary hypothesis, not only because we are conscious of it, but because without it we could have no means of analyzing our own mental structure, although we could make some very partial analysis of the mind of another individual by studying his actions. As regards ourselves, it is as if our visual organs possessed the power of looking at the process by which an image of an external object is impressed upon the retina and is thence transmitted to the brain, where the sensory impression is produced. This, of course, is a physical impossibility. All we can do is to examine the physical structure of the eye, with its wonderful provision of lenses and other means for the reception and the effect of light, and to reason upon what we can discover that the process of what is called seeing must be thus or thus. But that process itself we can not see by the same organs by which it is carried on. In the case of the mind, however--and herein is one of the remarkable proofs of its unlikeness as an organism to the bodily organism--there is a power to witness, to observe, to be sensible of its own operations. This power, like all the other mental powers, may be very feeble in some individuals, for want of exercise, but in others, from long and frequent exercise, it may become exceedingly vigorous, and be the means of advancing mental philosophy if its observations are preserved and recorded. It is one of the systems which, as a whole, constitute the spiritual organism to which we give the name of mind. Such a capacity can not be predicated of a physical organism. It is impossible for us to conceive of a machine standing and looking upon its own operations, speculating upon their improvement, or thinking of the relation of its mechanism to the human author of its being. It is equally impossible for us to think of the body of man contemplating its own existence, or being sensible of it; but it is perfectly easy to conceive of its being known to the mind that inhabits it, which takes cognizance both of its own operations and of the operations of the physical organism, reflects upon them separately or in their action upon one another, and spontaneously refers both to an author.

_Third._ I have placed third in the category of mental systems the system of emotions or susceptibilities to mental pleasure or pain, as distinguished from the pleasurable or painful excitation of our nervous system. No one can doubt that, however powerful may be the influence upon our mental states of physical pain or physical sensations that are pleasurable, there is such a thing as mental pain and mental pleasure, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, wholly unconnected with and in no way dependent upon our corporeal feelings, present or past. It is from this susceptibility to mental pain or pleasure that we come to have the idea of goodness or badness, which is originally a classification of the qualities of external things as good or bad; the good being those which affect us pleasurably, and the bad those which affect us painfully. By our mental organization we are placed in such correspondence with the material universe, that things apart from ourselves affect us agreeably or disagreeably; sights, sounds, odors, and tastes give us pleasure or pain. We are also placed in correspondence with the spiritual universe, and thereby certain acts, relations, and traits of character give us pleasure, or the reverse. In process of time, the youth whose mental systems are in the course of expansion comes to perceive that his own acts give him pleasure or pain, and hence he derives the perception of good or bad qualities in himself. Moral goodness in ourselves--goodness of disposition, of intention, of volition, of habit--is found to be distinct from physical and intellectual goodness; and thus the consciousness of moral goodness becomes the intellectual faculty to which moral commands can be addressed, with a prospect that the connection between obedience and happiness will be perceived. This susceptibility to mental pain or pleasure, from the qualities of external things, from the acts and dispositions of other persons, and from our own, is one that can inhere in a mental organization, but it can not possibly inhere in a physical organism. The physical organism is undoubtedly the means by which the mental susceptibility to pleasure or pain is reached from the external universe; but, unless there is a mental organism to feel the pleasure or the pain, the action of the physical organization is nothing but the excitation of the nervous system. I, therefore, make a distinct class among the mental systems, and assign to it the faculty of experiencing mental pleasure or mental pain as a capacity distinct from the pleasurable or painful excitation of our nerves.

_Fourth._ In the category of mental systems may be placed those desires which lead us to wish for and strive to obtain some good or to avoid some evil. This, surely, is not to be regarded as anything but an intellectual perception of what is to us a good or an evil. It is a structural capacity of the soul which, after an experience of that which we learn to be good for us, or the reverse of good, is always prompting us to take the steps or to perform the acts which will insure a repetition of that experience, in the acquisition of further good or the avoidance of further evil. Its operations may be perverted. We may, from bad habits or erroneous ideas of good and evil, pursue objects that are pernicious. But whether we strive for that which is truly good, or is deceptively regarded as a good, we are perpetually acting under the impulse of a desire that is implanted in us, and that operates as a desire whether its objects are worthy or unworthy, beneficial or injurious, noxious or innoxious to our moral health.

_Fifth_, and lastly, we may classify the affections as one of the structural systems of our spiritual existence. It is that part of our natures that makes us like or dislike both persons and things; and, in regard to the former, it is the capacity for love in its high distinction from the physical appetite of sexual passion. The range of its operation is most various and multiform, but throughout all of its operations it is a spiritual capacity, implanted in us for our happiness as spiritual beings.

If it is objected that this is an arbitrary classification--that as an analysis of structural systems in our mental organization it bears no analogy to the anatomical exploration and classification of the structural systems of our physical organism--the answer is, that in regard to the latter we make the examination by the exercise of our corporeal senses, chiefly by the visual organs, as we do in the case of all other organized matter. In analyzing the structural organization of our minds, we are examining a subject that is not laid bare to the inspection of any of our corporeal organs; the scalpel in the hand of the dissector can afford us no aid in this investigation, but the inspection must be carried on by turning the eye of the mind inward upon itself. This we are mentally constituted to do. While, therefore, it may be true that the classification which I have made, or which may have been made by others, of the structural mental systems, is in one sense arbitrary, and while in any method of describing them they may run into or overlap one another in a complex organism, it will always remain true that the mind is capable of such examinations, and that the analysis, however given, is useful to the comprehension of the mind as an organized and extended entity. No one can carry on this mental examination without perceiving that he is examining a something which has an independent existence and a life of its own, whether he supposes it to have been evolved out of organized matter, or embraces the idea of its distinct and special creation by an exercise of the Divine Will.

The two main hypotheses concerning the origin of mind may now be contrasted. In the long process of development of animal organisms out of one another there come to be, it is said, higher and higher degrees of intelligence, as the nervous system becomes more and more capable of complex impressions, until we arrive at the consummate physical organization and the supreme intelligence of the human race. The physical organization is open to our examination, and we find the human brain divided into cerebral masses, with ganglia of sensory nerves extending to the external sensory organs. Intelligence is the faculty of comprehending by previous preparation the combinations of impressions made on the brain through the sensory nerves. The brain being an organized register in which the experiences of progenitors have accumulated a high degree of this faculty, each human infant born into the world comes into it with a prepared capacity to acquire the combinations of impressions produced in his individual experience. Transmitted from generation to generation, this inherited capacity becomes the means by which each individual manifests and enjoys what we call intelligence; and the resulting aggregate of all the faculties thus called into exercise is what we denominate mind. It must be observed, however, that this theory or explanation of the origin of mind, rejecting the hypothesis of its special creation as a being of a spiritual nature, assumes it to be a something which has been developed out of the growth and improvement of a physical organism. When you inquire whether the nature of this something is supposed to be a product of a different substance from matter, although developed out of matter, you are left without an answer; and when you press the inquiry whether a spiritual existence can be conceived as having grown out of the action of a physical organism, you are told that there are no means of determining what a spiritual existence is, because there is nothing with which you can compare it so as to ascertain what it resembles or what it does not resemble. Or if there are some who accept the evolution theory of the origin of mind, and who think it possible that a spiritual existence can owe its origin to the action of matter without any intervention of a creating power purposely giving existence to a spiritual essence, you have to ask a question to which you can only get this answer: that it has pleased the Almighty Being to establish a system by which a spiritual in contradistinction to a physical existence has been developed in countless ages out of the action of material substances organized into definite systems and endowed with the principle of life. Those who assume this hypothesis must necessarily assume also that the spiritual existence is, after it has come into being, an existence distinct from the physical organism, although generated out of it, and then they must encounter the further inquiry as to the probability of the supposed method of production resorted to by the Supreme Being.

More than once in the course of our colloquies I have had occasion to say that, in all our inquiries of this nature, whether in regard to the origin of our physical organism or that of our mental existence, we must constantly bear in mind the unbounded capacity of the Creator to adopt any method of production whatever; that it is just as much within his power to call things of the most opposite natures into existence by a single word as it is to establish methods by which they shall be developed through innumerable ages of what we call time. That the Being who is supposed to preside over the universe and to hold this unlimited power is an hypothesis I readily admit; but I affirm that his existence and attributes are necessary postulates, without which there can be no reasoning concerning the origin of anything. Whether that Being exists and possesses the attributes which we impute to him I have all along said is a matter of which we must be satisfied by independent proofs before we undertake to investigate his probable methods.

The hypothesis of the origin of mind which I now mean to contrast with that of the evolutionists may be stated as follows: It is a rational deduction, from all that we know of our physical organism, that procreation of new individuals of that organism by the sexual union of male and female was established as the means of continuing the species of animal known as man. When or how established is not a material part of the inquiry that I now make. It may have been that the division of the sexes came about by a very slow process, or it may have been by the aboriginal creation of a completed pair, male and female. However or whenever it came to exist, there came to be one uniform method of bringing into existence new individuals of a peculiar and perfectly distinguishable animal type. If we confine our attention to the physical organism of man, it is perfectly apparent that when procreation and gestation take place they happen because of the established law that a new individual of this species of animal shall be produced by the sexual union of two other individuals, male and female, and that the new individual shall have the same physical organism as the parents. A new physical life thus springs out of two other physical lives by a process the secret of which we can not detect, although we can trace it through some of its stages so far as to see that there is a secret process by which two physical organisms give existence to another physical organism of the same type and having the same principle of life.

As the new individual animal grows into further development, we find that along with his animal organism and united with it by a tie which we can not see, but about which we can reason, there is apparently present a kind of life that is something more than the life of the body. The further we carry our investigations of the phenomena which indicate the existence of this mental life, the more we become convinced that it is the life of a spiritual organism. As the Creator had the power to give existence to the corporeal organism, why had he not an equal power to give existence to a spiritual organism? If he established the law of sexual union between a male and a female in order to perpetuate the type of animal to which they belong--the law which gives existence to a new individual of that animal type every time that a new conception and a new birth take place--why should he not have established the collateral law that every time there is a new birth of an infant there shall come into existence a spiritual entity which shall be united to the corporeal organism for a time, thus constituting in that infant a dual existence which makes his whole individuality during this life? If we suppose that the physical organism of our double natures was left to be worked out by a very slow process, by which physical organisms are developed out of one another--or by which we theoretically suppose them to have been so developed--why is it necessary to suppose that our spirits or souls have been developed in the same way or by an analogous method? What reason have we to believe that the Creator works by the same methods in the spiritual world, or by methods that are of the same nature as those which we think we can discover to be his methods in giving existence to corporeal organisms? The two realms of spirit and matter are so completely unlike that we are not compelled to believe that the methods by which creation of organisms of the two kinds are effected by the Almighty are necessarily or probably the same.

In order to be clearly understood I will now repeat my hypothesis in a distinct form. I assume the existence of a pair of animals of the human type, male and female, endowed with the power of producing new individuals of the same type. In their physical organisms is established the law of procreation, and in the female counterpart of that organism is established the concomitant law of conception and parturition. Thus far provision is made for the production of a new individual physically organized like the parents. In those parents there is also established another law, by the operation of which the same process which results in the production of the new individual animal organism brings into existence a spiritual organism, which is united with and becomes the companion of the physical organism so long as the latter shall continue to live. These laws established in the first pair and in every succeeding pair continue to operate through every succeeding generation. Perhaps it will be said that this attributes the production of a spiritual organism to a physical process; but, in truth, it does no more than to assert the simultaneous production of the two existences. It is not necessary to assume that the fœtus which becomes at birth the human infant is before birth animated by a soul; for it is not necessary to suppose, nor is it apparently true, that the physical organism is complete until birth takes place and the breath of life enters the lungs, thus constituting a new life other than that of the fœtus or the unborn child, although the one is a continuation of the other. At whatever point of time the complete animal organism is in a condition to be observed so that we can say here is a living child, at that point we begin to perceive a capacity to receive impressions from the external world without the connection that has theretofore existed between the unborn child and the maternal system. This capacity must either be attributed to the individual experience of the infant, so that without experience of his own he can not begin to be possessed of a growing intelligence, or it must be imputed to an innate and implanted power resident in a spiritual organism that comes into exercise whenever the physical organism has begun to draw the breath of life.

The evolution hypothesis of the origin of the human mind necessarily leaves its nature in an indeterminate state that will not satisfy the requirements of sound reasoning. In one mode of stating and reasoning upon this hypothesis it is assumed that there is not now and never was a mental existence that was created in each individual of the race at his birth; but that at some very remote period in the history of successive animal organisms there was produced an animal of a highly developed nervous structure, capable of intelligence by reason of a superior power of receiving physical impressions and co-ordinating them into states of consciousness which correspond to the physical feelings; and to the perpetually recurring series of these states of consciousness we give the name of mind. This capacity of intelligence is transmitted from parents to offspring, the experiences of the former being registered in the brain of the latter; but however complete may be the inherited nervous structure, and however great the capacity for intelligence, mind in each individual of the race is evidenced by nothing but a constant succession and variation of certain states of feelings produced in the nervous structure.

Against this view we may place what we know from constant observation. We know that it has been ordained, as a consequence of the sexual union of two individuals of opposite sex, there shall come into existence a new individual of the same physical organism as the parents. Of the interior process by which this product is effected we must remain ignorant, but about the fact there can be no doubt. That fact is, that by the union of certain vesicles contributed by each of the parents there results a new individual organism. We know further that simultaneously with the complete production of the new physical organism, there comes into being, and is incorporated with it, an existence that we are compelled by the phenomena which it manifests to regard as a non-physical and a spiritual organism. Of the process by which this distinct existence is effected, we must remain as ignorant as we are of the process by which the physical organism was made to result from the sexual union of the parents. But of the fact there can be no more doubt in the one case than in the other. In every instance of a new birth of a perfect infant, we know that there results a dual existence in the same individual; the one manifested by physical, the other by mental phenomena. To argue that the mental and spiritual existence grew out of an improved and improving physical organism in long-past ages, and became an adjunct to that organism after it had attained a certain development, without any intervention of the creating power at each new birth of an individual infant, is to limit the power of the Creator in a realm wherein the subject of his creating power is essentially unlike the subject with which he deals when he deals with physical organisms. In all reasoning upon the origin and nature of the human mind, the boundless power of the Creator must be assumed. In judging of the probabilities of his methods of action, it is the safest course to be guided by what we can see takes place at every new birth of a human infant. The physical organism results from the operation of a certain law. The mental organism results, it is alike rational to presume, from the operation of a certain other law. How either of these laws operates we are not permitted to know, but we can as safely infer the one as the other, from what is open to our observation.

I shall now touch briefly upon another argument, the foundation of which is to be tested by historical facts into the truth of which I shall not here inquire, because they must, for the purposes for which I use them, be assumed. The immortality of the human soul is said to have been proved by a Divine revelation. This great fact is supposed to be established by evidence of a character quite different from that which convinces us of the existence and attributes of the Almighty. But, assuming revelation to be a fact, it has an important bearing upon the subject of this essay, because the question arises, for what conceivable reason the Almighty should have made to us a revelation of our immortality, through the direct testimony of a competent witness, if we are not spiritual beings. Information of a fact supposes that there was a person to be informed. Concurrently with the consciousness which assures us of our personality, we have the assurance of our immortality certified to us by a messenger expressly authorized to give us the information. If the mind, or that part of our individuality which we call the soul, is in its origin and nature nothing but what the evolution theory supposes, what was there to be informed of immortality, or of anything else? The possibility and certainty of an existence after the death of the body is a conviction that must exercise great influence over the conduct of men in this life. It is consistent with the whole apparent scheme of the revelation to suppose that it was made for a twofold purpose: first, to cause men to lead better lives in this world than they might have led without this information and conviction; and, secondly, to form them for greater happiness in another world. The first of these purposes might have been effectuated by causing men to believe in their own immortality, notwithstanding the belief might be a delusion because there is no being capable, in fact, of any existence after the life of the body is ended. But such a method of action is hardly to be imputed to the Creator and Supreme Governor of the universe, according to the ideas of his character which natural religion alone will give us. It is not in accordance with rational conceptions of his attributes to suppose that he deludes his rational creatures with assurances or apparent proofs of something that is not true for the sake of making them act as if it were true. When we find ourselves running into a hypothesis of this kind, we may be pretty sure that we are departing from correct principles of reasoning. In regard to the second of the supposed purposes for which the revelation of immortality was made--to form men for greater happiness in another state of existence--it is quite obvious that the supposed scheme of the revelation is a mere delusion, if we are not beings capable of a continued spiritual existence after the death of our bodies. It is therefore a matter of great consequence to determine what the evolution theory of the origin and nature of the human mind makes us out to be.

I have never seen any statement of that theory that does not lead to the conclusion that man is a highly developed animal organism, whose mental existence is not something created in each individual of the race, and of a substance and organized structure different from the physical organism, but whose mental phenomena are merely exhibitions and effects of occurrences taking place in the physical system, and assuming the shape of what for distinctness is called thought. In whatever form this theory has been stated by its most distinguished professors, it leaves only an interval of degree, and not an interval of kind, between the mind of man and that which, in some of the other animals, is supposed to be mind. The evolution doctrine, taken in one of its aspects, supposes one grand chain of animal organisms, rising higher and higher in the scale of animal life, but connected together by ordinary generation, so that they are of one kindred throughout; but that, as each distinct species grows out of predecessors, by gradual improvements and increments, forming more and more elaborate organisms, man is the consummate product of the whole process. But when we ask at what point or stage in the series of developing animal organisms the mind of man was produced, or what it was when produced, we get no satisfactory answer. To the first question, it can only be answered, as Darwin himself answers, that there must be a definition of man before we can determine at what time he came to exist. To the second question, we have answers which differ materially from each other. First, we have whatever we can extract from such a system of psychology as Mr. Spencer's, which ignores the capability of the mind to exist independent of the nervous structure and the brain, because it excludes the idea of any ego, any me, any person, and makes consciousness to consist of a connected series of physical feelings, to which there are corresponding psychical equivalents that he calls mental states. It would seem to follow, therefore, that when there is no longer remaining for the individual any nervous structure and any brain, the mental states, or psychical side of the physical impressions, must cease; or, in other words, that the only existing ego has come to an end.

On the other hand, I have seen an ingenious hypothesis which it is well to refer to, because it illustrates the efforts that are often made to reconcile the doctrines of evolution with a belief in immortality. This hypothesis by no means ignores the possibility of a spiritual existence, or the spiritual as distinguished from the material world. But it assumes that man was produced under the operation of physical laws; and that after he had become a completed product--the consummate and finished end of the whole process of evolution--he passed under the dominion and operation of other and different laws, and is saved from annihilation by the intervention of a change from the physical to the spiritual laws of his Creator. Put into a condensed form, this theory has been thus stated: Having spent countless æons in forming man, by the slow process of animal evolution, God will not suffer him to fall back into elemental flames, and be consumed by the further operation of physical laws, but will transfer him into the dominion of the spiritual laws that are held in reserve for his salvation.

One of the first questions to be asked, in reference to this hypothesis, is, Who or what is it that God is supposed to have spent countless æons in creating by the slow process of animal evolution? If we contemplate a single specimen of the human race, we find a bodily organism, endowed with life like that of other animals, and acted upon by physical laws throughout the whole period of its existence. We also find present in the same individual a mental existence, which is certified to us by evidence entirely different from that by which we obtain a knowledge of the physical organism. As the methods employed by the Creator in the production of the physical organism, whatever we may suppose them to have been, were physical laws operating upon matter, so the methods employed by him in the production of a spiritual existence must have operated in a domain that was wholly aside from the physical world. Each of these distinct realms is equally under the government of an Omnipotent Being; and while we may suppose that in the one he employed a very slow process, such as the evolution of animal organisms out of one another is imagined to have been, there is no conceivable reason why he should not, in the other and very different realm, have resorted to the direct creation of a spiritual existence, which can not, in the nature of things, have required to be produced by the action of physical laws. When, at the birth of each individual of the human race, the two existences become united, when, in consequence of the operation of that sexual union of the parents which has been ordained for the production of a new individual, the physical and the spiritual existence become incorporated in the one being, the fact that they remain for a certain time mutually dependent and mutually useful, co-operating in the purposes of their temporary connection, does not change their essential nature. The one may be destructible because the operation of physical laws may dissolve the ligaments that hold it together; the other may be indestructible, because the operation of spiritual laws will hold together the spiritual organism that is in its nature independent of the laws of matter.

I can therefore see no necessary connection between the methods employed by the Almighty in the production of an animal and the methods employed by him in the production of a soul. That in the birth of the individual the two come into existence simultaneously, and are temporarily united in one and the same being, only proves that the two existences are contemporaneous in their joint inception. It does not prove that they are of the same nature, or the same substance, or that the physical organism is the only ego, or that the psychical existence is nothing but certain states of the material structure, to whose aggregate manifestations certain philosophers give the name of mind, while denying to them personal individuality and the consciousness of a distinct being.

And now, in bringing this discussion to a close, I will only add that the great want of this age is the prosecution of inquiry into the nature of the human mind as an organic structure, regarded as such. It seems to me that the whole mission of Science is now perverted by a wrong aim, which is to find out the external to the neglect of the internal--to make all exploration terminate in the laws of the physical universe, and go aside from the examination of the spiritual world. It is no reproach to those who essay the latter inquiry that they are scoffed at as "the metaphysicians." It matters not what they are called, so long as they pursue the right path. It is now in regard to the pursuit of science as it was formerly in regard to the writing of history. That philosophical French historian, M. Taine, has luminously marked the change which has come over the methods and objects of historical studies in the following passage:

"When you consider with your eyes the visible man, what do you look for? The man invisible. The words which salute your ears, the gestures, the motions of his head, the clothes he wears, visible acts and deeds of every kind, are expressions merely; somewhat is revealed beneath them, and that is a soul--an inner man is concealed beneath the outer man; the second does not reveal the first; ... all the externals are but avenues converging toward a center; you enter them simply to reach that center, and that center is the genuine man--I mean that mass of faculties and feelings which are the inner man. We have reached a new world, which is infinite, because every action which we see involves an infinite association of reasonings, emotions, sensations new and old, which have served to bring it to light, and which, like great rocks deep-seated in the ground, find in it their end and their level. This under-world is a new subject-matter proper to the historian.... This precise and proved interpretation of past sensations has given to history, in our days, a second birth; hardly anything of the sort was known to the preceding century. They thought men of every race and country were all but identical--the Greek, the barbarian, the Hindoo, the man of the Renaissance, and the man of the eighteenth century--as if they had all been turned out of a common mold, and all in conformity to a certain abstract conception which served for the whole human race. They knew man, but not men; they had not penetrated to the soul; they had not seen the infinite diversity and complexity of souls; they did not know that the moral constitution of a people or an age is as particular and distinct as the physical structure of a family of plants or an order of animals."[153]

In the same way psychology needs a new birth, like the new birth of history. If we would know the mind, we must reach the conviction that there is a mind: and this conviction can be reached only by penetrating through all the externals, through the physical organism, through the diversities of race, through the environment of matter, until we have found the soul. If history, like zoölogy, has found its anatomy, mental science must, in like manner, be prosecuted as an anatomical study. So long as we allow the anatomy of zoölogy to be the predominant and only explanation, the beginning and the end of the mental manifestations, so long we shall fail to comprehend the nature of man, and to see the reason for his immortality.

FOOTNOTES:

[139] Corinthians, revised version.

[140] In the "authorized" version the passage is rendered thus: "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." Sophereus quotes the late revised version. The meaning is the same. St. Paul assumes the existence of a natural body, and then asserts that there is likewise a spiritual body.

[141] I have met, by the kindness of the author, with a little treatise which contains a great deal of sound mental philosophy, with which in the main I concur, and to which I am indebted for some very valuable suggestions. This modest little book is entitled "The Heart of Man: An Attempt in Mental Anatomy." The author is Mr. P. P. Bishop, a resident of San Mateo, in Florida. It was printed at Chicago, by Shepard & Johnson, for the author, in 1883. I know not if it is on sale. I suppose that Mr. Bishop was led to send me his interesting treatise by the publication, in the "Manhattan Magazine," at New York, in 1884, of the substance of the first three chapters of the present work. I take this opportunity of expressing my high appreciation of his treatise, and of explaining the meaning of its title. As I understand him, he uses the term "Heart of Man" as synonymous with structure of the mind, and not as referring to what is figuratively called "the human heart." He has explained "Mental Anatomy" as follows: "The method of investigation, which I have employed in making my way to the conclusions set forth in this discussion, I call 'The Anatomical Method,' because it is based on the conception of mind as an organized being, and aims to discover the structure of that being." ... "At the risk," he adds, "of appearing egotistical, I think it best to relate an experience." He did not need to deprecate the appearance of egotism, for his method of investigation, based on his own mental experience, was the very best that he could have followed. It were to be wished that we could have more of this kind of self-analysis by persons competent to make it, and less of theoretical reasoning from premises more or less arbitrarily assumed.

I have endeavored to make my imaginary philosopher, Sophereus, avoid the method of reasoning which I thus condemn, and to keep him within the bounds of experience.

[142] "Extemporaneous," Latin, _ex_, from; and _tempus_, time, at the same time, or from the same time. Extemporaneous discourse is when the thought and the expression in which it is clothed occur at the time it is uttered, or without premeditation of both thought and language. "Improvisation" means the same thing, but it is specially applied to the act of making poetry or performing music extemporaneously, that is, without prevision of what one is to say or sing. Rapid conversation is of the same nature. So is an instantaneous and unpremeditated answer to a question.

[143] Webster's Dictionary--"Matter."

[144] "And it shall be as when a hungry man dreameth, and behold, he eateth: but he awaketh, and his soul is empty; or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and behold, he drinketh: but he awaketh, and behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite."--ISAIAH.

[145] Scott's "Antiquary," note v.

[146] If it is objected that I have allowed Sophereus to overstate the power of the mind to deal better with difficulties after "a good night's sleep," as we say, than it had dealt with them before, I will cite the testimony of one of the most prolific of writers and one of the most self-observing of men, Sir Walter Scott, whose greatest success was achieved in the field of poetical and prose fiction. This is a department in which inventive genius is the main reliance, and is put to its greatest tasks. In that part of Scott's "Diary" which covers the year 1826--the period when he was writing "Woodstock"--he says:

"The half-hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my invention. When I got over any knotty difficulty in a story, or have had in former times to fill up a passage in a poem, it was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me. This is so much the case that I am in the habit of relying upon it and saying to myself when I am at a loss, 'Never mind, we shall have it at seven o'clock to-morrow morning.' If I have forgot a circumstance, a name, or a copy of verses, it is the same thing.... This morning I had some new ideas respecting 'Woodstock' which will make the story better." (Lockhart's "Life of Scott," vol. viii, chap. lxviii.)