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AUTHOR: 
 
 PRICE, ELI KIRK 
 
 TITLE: 
 
 ANOTHER PHASE OF 
 MODERN .... 
 
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 DATE: 
 
 [PHILADELPHIA] 
 
 [ 1 872] 
 
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 Price, Eli K[irki • . 
 
 Another phase of modem philosophy read 
 I before the American philosophical society, March Ist, 
 
 1872 
 
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 ANOTHER PHASE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 By E. K. Price. 
 
 {Read before the American Philosophical Society^ March Ist, 1872.) 
 
 ** All flesh is not the same flesh." "There is one flesh of men and 
 another of beasts." " What is a man profited if he shall * * * lose 
 his own soul?" 
 
 Those who have lived through nearly three -fourths of the Nineteenth 
 Century, and witnessed the many useful and brilliant discoveries that 
 have illustrated the past two ages, may not safely venture to discourage 
 the boldness of any investigations that are legitimately pursued. Nor 
 will any one properly criticise or censure those who in the main are doing 
 good service to science, unless he clearly perceives that the great canon of 
 philosophizing, which all must acknowledge, has not been duly observed. 
 When such case occurs in matters of highest importance, it then becomes 
 the duty of the humblest to speak out in correction of what he believes to 
 be error, in the name of an all pervading philosophy, and in behalf of our 
 common humanity, according to his conviction and ability. 
 
 The first lesson the scientist should learn is that of the limit of the 
 human understanding, beyond which it is useless to attempt to investi- 
 gate, and to recognize as inviolable those secrets which the Creator has 
 chosen to reserve to Himself, as to which there is no response to interro- 
 gation. The second, is to make sure of all the facts requisite to the 
 ascertainment of truth, and thence to draw only such conclusion as the 
 known facts will justify. 
 
 The physicists of this century have studied life from its physical basis, 
 and have too often made the life and the mind of man the product of 
 matter. I propose to discuss this theory, particularly in review of Pro- 
 fessor Huxley's Physical Basis of Life, both to show that he has drawn 
 his conclusions upon inadequate facts, and that he has left out of view 
 the facts that shew the distinctive nature and operations of the life and 
 of the mind. 
 
 Let us first consider a few of the subjects having a bearing upon his 
 theory, wherein the limit to knowledge is recognizable, beyond which 
 further research is sure to be baffled. Nothing is more familiar to us 
 than our own life. It is that self we should best know ; and we can and 
 do know many things about it ; indeed all about it, except the mystery 
 how it can possibly be, and can carry on its own functions. We can see 
 and dissect our bodily structure of bones, joints, muscles, tendons ; brain, 
 nerves, tissues ; heart, arteries, veins, etc. We see and feel the body's 
 functions as they are carried on. We see how it is fed with food, and 
 how the circulations are kept going and the strength is maintained ; and 
 know that the food taken is transmuted into the living being. We are 
 invited to eat and drink to appease hunger and thirst, and thereby we 
 both avert greater pain, and enjoy pleasure. The food is dissolved by the 
 gastric juice secreted by the stomach, and is then chyme. This in its de- 
 
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■cent receives the juice of the pancreas, and the bile from the gall-bladder 
 of the liver. The action of the stomach keeps its contents in motion ; 
 and one portion, unfitted to enter the life-process, is rejected into the 
 draught, the other called chpk, is a milky fluid, which the lacteaU 
 opening into the intestines imbibe and carry to the thoracic duct and 
 into the venous system. The heart propels the crimson blood that is re- 
 turned to it by the veins, together with the contributions of chyle, upon 
 the lungs, where it meets the oxygen of the air, is decarbonized, and be- 
 comes scarlet ; and this bright red blood, being returned to the heart, is 
 propelled through the arteries to the extremities of the body, freighted 
 with all the material the system demands ; the corpuscles for bone, muscle, 
 tendon, tissue, etc., and delivers them as and where wanted, and from the 
 extremities the blood is returned through the veins to the heart. The 
 process of life is carried on by ceaseless pulsations. The heart throbs ; 
 the arteries expand and contract ; the stomach, the diaphragm and chest 
 expand and contract ; the lungs are kept in play, and we breathe ; the 
 intestines are operated by the peristaltic motion, and the glands and ab- 
 sorbents are ever at work. All this we perceive, or the anatomist or 
 physiologist does for us, and to him all is as familiar as things of daily 
 observation. But can he tell us what life is, or how it acts with an intel- 
 ligence surpassingly wonderful ? "We see in this process that the food has 
 become part of the living being ; and it will remain such so long as it is 
 useful to the creature, and when any part becomes useless in the animal 
 economy it is rejected, so that after a few years the whole system is com- 
 posed of new materials, but the same life of identical consciousness has 
 survived ; and may survive more than ten entire changes of the life- mol- 
 ecules. It is the life in the body and only the life that has had power to 
 take in, digest, and assimilate the organic food we eat and make it part 
 of itself. Why or how the thing we call life can do all this no micro- 
 scope reveals to our sight ; no skill of dissection can reach it ; no cunning 
 of thought can teach us. We only witness the process and the fact of life. 
 The Power that created the life, and endowed it with its wonderful in- 
 telligence has chosen to keep this secret to Himself; and though it is 
 ourself, and we are always conscious to its presence and action while we 
 live, we can never tell what it is, or how it lives. We must accept it as 
 an ultimate fact ; but from that fact we may, if we are logical, infer that 
 it had an Author, who could create it, and yet permit us never to know 
 his secret, though that secret be our own life. The unknowable is thus 
 dwelt upon not only to heighten our conception of Deity, but to shew 
 where time and labor would be spent in vain ; and also, because it is salu- 
 tary that all who investigate science should do so with the humbling 
 consciousness that all that is known bears a very small proportion to that 
 which here cannot be known. Yet, from the known, from the evidence 
 of its design, and power, and beneficence ; its obedience to law, and 
 harmonious movements ; its grandeur and glory, we surely infer a Creator, 
 Almighty and Omniscient. 
 
 Let us go back a stage in the being of this life, whose source and nature we 
 are invited by Dr. Huxley to investigate. From a vitalized ovum, seem- 
 ingly but a speck of jelly, the foetal being is developed into a body, with 
 every part prepared to begin the hardening process of breathing life. 
 Until birth it derives its nourishment from the mother by the umbilical 
 cord attached to its navel. In due time it is expelled by nature's timely 
 effort, that child and mother may continue to live. The physical liga- 
 ment that united them is severed ; and the separate life begins. . The 
 child now breathes for itself, and takes food into its own stomach. Still 
 the nourishment comes from the mother, and nature has provided it as 
 wanted in her breast. At those fountains the child drinks by a process 
 its instinct has already taught it. Its food is that adapted to enter into 
 its circulation and nourish its life. The lacteal ducts absorb the milk and 
 carry it into the current of life. Why this should all be we readily un- 
 derstand ; but how this harmonious process takes place with such sure 
 observance and beneficent end we cannot penetrate. We say that nature 
 and instinct do that we so admiringly behold. But if nature had an 
 Author, then it was God who does it, to continue our race. Yet He re- 
 tains the secret He chooses not to reveal. 
 
 But we must recede yet further to reach the physical beginning of life. 
 In animals and vegetables of highest organization, we find that there are 
 two sexes requisite to the reproduction of life. We will take the illustra- 
 tion from the vegetable kingdom, whence the inference may be made to 
 the animal, including man. When the sun's warmth revisits us, and 
 spring has come with her showers, we have also the flowers. These are 
 not only for our pleasure and refinement of taste ; but they are nature's 
 bridal habiliments. The two sexes may be found in the same blossom ; 
 or in separate blossoms on the same, or diff"erent trees. The base of the 
 pistils contains the female ovules, made but to perish in sterility unless 
 they shall receive the pollen formed in the anthers of the stamens ; but 
 are not permitted to perish, for the breezes are ever transporting the dust 
 of the pollen to the awaiting ovules ; and the busy bee and insects, as they 
 flit from flower to flower, assist in nature's requirement. In the speck of 
 male dust is the beginning of life, to find its necessary receptacle in the 
 female molecule of matter. The ovules are fructified ; the flower fades 
 and dies, for it has fulfilled its office ; but the seed grows and matures, and 
 is the germ of another life, that shall be like unto the parent. All this is 
 watched, and surely observed ; it is beautiful to behold, and of most 
 beneficent purpose, for without it all vegetable and animal life would 
 cease upon the earth. But the ultimate secret who can find out ? Why 
 the pollen should be requisite to fructification ; how it should have the 
 power thus to impart life, man has never found out, and probably will 
 never discover. We have looked upon the renewed vernal life of the 
 vegetable kingdom with sympathy, and in that sympathy we have invested 
 nature with our own feelings, and she has seemed to us sensient of joy. 
 And now, returning to ourselves, as subjects of the like process, we behold 
 
the fruit to be not only new life, but in its consequences, to be man's chief 
 resource for all his happiness ; for hence spring, the comforts and refine- 
 ments that belong to the family ; the love of wife and chUdren ; intell^t- 
 ual culture, developed affections ; and the training of human souls. We 
 have been thus led by a pleasurable instinct, and a virtuous obedience, 
 to continue our race, and have found therein our best welfare and highest 
 excellence. God has done this, yet has kept His secret* 
 
 But science will ever interrogate nature; does bo boldly but not 
 blamably. She will with telescope ceaselessly sweep the heavens ; she will 
 with microscope untiringly explore a boundless life that every where teems 
 unseen by the naked eye ; she ever applies her chemical tests, and analysis 
 as keen of the sharpened human intellect. Her researches are well rewarded ; 
 but she may not know all. For often it happens, that "Seeing ye shall 
 see, and shall not perceive." With the microscope and scalpel the sources 
 of Ufe are explored, and science announces that all life, in the higher organ- 
 izations, comes and is maintained by the blood propelled from the heart. 
 Thence came the parental germs that have met and started the embryonic 
 life ; thence has come every increment that has given the body growth 
 from the gelatinous germ to the mature man. You have traced the 
 physical being back to nearly its starting point, and found its component 
 parts all to have been molecules of matter, or corpuscles, or cells in the 
 blood. These the physiologist declares to be the physical basis of life. 
 We may not venture to deny this conclusion, for his dissections and mag- 
 nified sight have revealed what he describes, and it comports with our 
 observation. But chemical tests can but imperfectly verify his observa- 
 tions, for they can only be applied to matter dead, and when Ufe has 
 ceased to resist nature's chemistry, that chemistry is quick to change 
 the material which had been the living source of life's supply. Tbe 
 assisted eye has seen in that crimson current, says Huxley, "innumerable 
 multitudes of little, circulai-, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles, which float 
 in it and give it its color, (and) a comparatively small number of colorless 
 corpuscles, of somewhat larger si^e and very irregular shape. Huxley 
 speaks of these as marvelously active, changing their form with great 
 rapidity, as if independent organisms ; and their substance he calls proto- 
 plmrn. These he calls the units of the human body ; and says, " Beast 
 and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm, and polyp, are all composed 
 of structural units of the same character, namely, masses of protoplasm 
 with a nucleus.*' ** Thus it becomes clear that all living powers are cog- 
 nate and that all living forms are fundamentally of one character." Thus 
 . while Darwin would make all living beings related by descent from a 
 common parent, Huxley would make aU to be related as creatures of the 
 same blood. 
 
 Kow the only reliable basis for such conclusions seems to be the mag- 
 nified vision, limitedly applied, revealing similarity of looks and activities. 
 The elements of the universal protoplasm are stated to be "carbon, 
 hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen." But it is not shown or said that these 
 
 exist in the like proportion in the protoplasm of different creatures, 
 which might explain much of the difference there is in their structure. 
 Thus if the proportion of oxygen in the air was considerably increased all 
 life would be burnt up ; and if the proportion of nitrogen were consider- 
 ably increased in the atmosphere we breathe, all life would be extinguished. 
 Without much more observation than appears to have been made, science 
 cannot insist upon the sweeping generalization Dr. Huxley has made, 
 that all living creatures are cognate. His facts are few, and the theory de- 
 duced runs counter to the common observations of men. Likeness in the 
 looks of the white corpuscles, without shewing of what they consist, or 
 actually do, is not proof adequate to the induction. The ova in the 
 ovarium of living creatures, and the initiate particle that vitalizes them, 
 may appear much alike under tbe microscope ; but from the ovum of one 
 comes a fish, from another a fowl, from another a beast, and from another 
 man. It is inferable that from the germ upwards the structures of these 
 creatures have had various elements and in differing proportions. Were 
 it not so, creatures so diverse in form and nature, it seems not reasonable 
 to believe, could be the result. This objection Huxley does not attempt 
 to explain. 
 
 Again, the different kinds of food that animals live upon shew that the 
 nourishment that feeds their life, in its first vitalized stage, called by Huxley 
 protoplasm, must vary in the nature and proportions of its elements. 
 Some live on animal food only ; others upon grasses and grain only ; man 
 upon animal food, grain and vegetables. Some can eat with impunity 
 things poisonous to others. Some, too, secrete deadly poison from the 
 material within them. The qualities of the things eaten or drank must 
 enter into the circulation and growth, and these must furnish molecules 
 or cells of qualities such as the body demands. Portions of food are to be 
 rejected ; first without entering the circulation, and afterwards through 
 the secreting glands. The breath of the drunkard shews that alcohol has 
 entered his circulation and is exhaled from his lungs ; it is shewn in the 
 capillaries of his face ; and by dissection it is perceived in the brain. The 
 nursing mother who has taken medicine transmits a portion of it to her 
 child, by the milk secreted from her blood. Many medicines are admin- 
 istered with the view to their effect through the blood circulation. These 
 enter the vital current and produce their known effects. 
 
 The cold blooded and warm blooded animals ; the edible and poisonous ; 
 cannot be taken to be creatures of the same substance ; and though they 
 may have been built up from a fluid circulation, it cmnot reasonably be 
 inferred that they have been composed of the same elements ; and if not 
 of the same elements, the protoplastic theory to unify life becomes base- 
 less : "All flesh is not the same flesh." 
 
 But if the vitalized ova and protoplasm that start and build up life 
 were homogeneous, or approximately so, only the more wonderful must 
 be the power of the life which can construct creatures of the diversity we 
 behold ill sea, or air, or upon the land, from the same elements. From 
 
 j^ 
 
countless globules the work is done. But each living creature is to re- 
 produce its like, and is ever to reproduce only that ; such is its mission, 
 and it unerringly fulfils that mission. Either the life does this, or He 
 that created the life. It is no known property of matter to produce life. 
 And the more the elemental materials are alike, the more each life must 
 do ; the more it must rule over the materials to produce the diversified 
 results ; and the less the materials could have had mastery over them. 
 We know well what the life appears to do, for she does all under our eyes 
 and within us ; yet she dwells herself in impenetrable mystery. What 
 she is, and how she can carry on her operations, ao man may fully know. 
 The keenest in scrutiny are not agreed as to the import of what they see, 
 and Dr. Huxley has not explained whence the colorless corpuscles he 
 calls protoplasm are derived ; does not say whether they are particles of 
 food or chyle in transition to blood corpuscles, as that which is more 
 vitalized, or whether they are derived from the latter ; or whether red 
 blood contributes any material for the construction of the body. The 
 proportion of the colorless corpuscles to the red is less than three in one 
 thousand (Dr. Carpenter's Physiology, sec. 15). To make the few colorless 
 corpuscles suffice for the consummation witnessed, seems cause inadequate 
 to the results, and is to make the vastly greater mass of red blood useless 
 in the process, except it be merely as a tide to bear along the vital cor- 
 puscles to the places of destined use. He gives no reason why the white 
 should be the exclusive material, or as he compares it, why the clay or 
 brick, with which the house is to be built, is alone to be used, though that 
 house is to contain also all other requisites to comfort; the plastering, doors, 
 windows, floors, furniture and upholstery. It appears to be an assump- 
 tion requiring proof, that the few white particles alone contribute to form 
 and repair the differing parts, the bone, muscle, tendon, tissue, etc., and 
 contrary to different ends to be subserved, and to the universal economy 
 of nature that does nothing uselessly. These different parts demand 
 particles of like nature to each respectively. We know, too, that the 
 flesh may be changed in color and quality by the material fed, as the 
 feeders of stock well know ; and this seems proof that the elements that 
 nourish and fatten are not protoplastically the same in substance or color. 
 
 Dr. Carpenter speaks of the red corpuscles as "especially concerned in 
 preparing pabulum for the nervous and muscular tissues, the former of 
 which is distinguished by the presence of phosphorized fats, and the 
 latter by the remarkable predominance of the potash salts ; and this view 
 derives further confirmation from the fact, that a flesh diet seems to have 
 a decided effect in the formation of red corpuscles." CPhysiology, Sec. 
 160.) And he devotes some paragraphs to show that the colorless cor- 
 puscles are but another stage of the evolution of the red corpuscles. (Sec. 
 163, etc. Again he says, ** That the corpuscles, however, both red and 
 colorless, are living cells, and that, like other cells, they possess vital en- 
 dowments peculiar to themselves, is not now questioned by any one.'* 
 (lb. Sec. 196.) 
 
 We are to go deeper than a certain likeness in protoplasms, to under- 
 stand so much of life as we are permitted to know. Dr. Huxley in his 
 article entitled, *' Yeast" disclaims having said anything new in his lecture 
 upon "The Physical Basis of Life." He is, however, responsible for 
 what he adopts, and for the breadth and length of his deductions Pro- 
 toplasm he considers the basis of life, and that it is a physical basis • and 
 he assigns no other than this as cause of life, and makes the life but a 
 property of the protoplasm. He says, "If the properties of water may 
 be properly said to result from the nature and disposition of its compo- 
 nent molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing to say that 
 the properties of protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its 
 molecules." Nature is deemed exuberant of one aliment, called proto- 
 plasm, that supports all the life of the world, whether received by the 
 roots mto the circulation of the trees, or by the stomach into the circu- 
 lations of animals ; " a unity of power or faculty ; a unity of form, and 
 a unity of substantial composition ; does pervade the whole living world " 
 He continues, ^'AU the multifarious and complicated activities of man 
 are comprehensible under three categories : either they are immediately 
 directed towards the maintenance and development of the body, or they 
 effect transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body or 
 they tend towards the continuance of the species. Even those manifes- 
 tations of intellect, of feeling, and of|will, which we rightly name the 
 higher faculties, are not excluded from this classification." " This pro- 
 toplasm exhibits the phenomena of life." These extracts, and the drift 
 of the lecture show that the author is not merely showing what is the 
 physical basis of life, but is attempting to show that life is but a property 
 of matter, which accounts for all bodily and mental activities. He makes 
 life a property of protoplasm ; and protoplasm a thing composed of car- 
 bon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen ; as water is a thing composed of 
 hydrogen and oxygen ; and that as " aquosity" cannot be said to exist to 
 produce the water from said two gases, so is "vitality" not to continue 
 to be spoken of as something existing in the living matter, which had no 
 representative in the non-living matter which gave rise to it. But the 
 water is a chemical compound, and protoplasm consists of parts not 
 chemically united ; but united by that thing called life that resists chemi- 
 cal action ; that has properties of a nature other than chemical, and is in 
 all nature peculiar and discriminated. We see that he would thus sink 
 the life into protoplasm, and make it and the intellect but a property of 
 matter. But others should make better observation and induction. 
 
 It may well be asserted from all that we can observe and know, that 
 matter cannot originate life ; nor life matter. Each logically demands a 
 Creator. Life cannot originate itself ; but only continue the previously 
 created life, by a power conferred on life to continue life. Dead matter 
 may be vitalized and thus become part of the living body ; but the life 
 must first be to appropriate matter for its uses, to vitalize it, and to build 
 up the living body and to continue it in life. In all time, only life has 
 
initiated the beings of the successive generations. We have only to con- 
 sider all we know to be assurecj of these truths. No protoplasm could 
 BOW exist, unless life had produced it. It never has been chemically or 
 otherwise than by life produced, except as first created. It is only found 
 in the vital current produced from dead food. The immediate cause of 
 it there must, therefore, be the preceding vital processes, endued with 
 power to impart life to dead matter. In this result Dr. Carpenter con- 
 aiders the liver and spleen perform important service. 
 
 The interest of science and truth require that we here take a yet closer 
 view of life's origin and perpetuation. Our love of truth and our rever- 
 ence for God will preserve us from every unhallowed thought. No obser- 
 vation or philosophy can account for the first pair of each living species, 
 otherwise than by the logic that all tliat we behold must have had a 
 transcending Creator. Our race must have had its Adam and Eve, or 
 first parents, ungenerated. Judging from all that observation, and 
 science, and history can teach us, every subsequent being has had its 
 incipient germ of life from a male parent, but only to become another life 
 when that germ has met the prepared ovule in the mother that is to afford 
 the offspring its nourishment and growth. It is only that seminal germ 
 that is the incipient life, that first unites with the ovules and afterwards 
 appropriates every other particle of matter that enters into the life of the 
 new being. How nourished from* the mother we have noticed. Indue 
 time, but by coarser food, the man and the woman of each generation 
 are built up to their mature perfection. But it was the life beginning as 
 a speck, that began and has completed the structure by employing the 
 subservient molecular matter. The matter of itself could have taken no 
 step in the process ; it could have sent not a cell to form the growing, 
 living structure, if the pre-existing life had not prepared that cell from 
 matter drawn by the life process into the life-current, and afterwards 
 placed it where the lifebuilder required its service. That which was 
 dead in the stomach took life in the blood ; for the life-blood had power 
 to impart its life to the elements it needed for the body's growth. 
 It is true now as when Moses gave his commandments, " The blood is 
 the life ; and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh." 
 
 Dr. Carpenter, says, ** After the Chyle and Lymph have begun to flow 
 into the circulating current, the continued generation of red corpuscles is 
 due to the progressive metamorphosis of the corpuscles of those fluids, 
 is an opinion that hus come to be very generally received by physiolo- 
 gists.'* (lb. Sec. 168.) *' Looking, again, to the undoubted vitality of 
 the corpuscles, and to the strong ground for regarding fibrin also as an 
 instrument of vital force, we cannot but perceive that the life of the 
 blood is as legitimate a phrase, and ought to carry as much meaning in 
 it, as the life of a muscle." (lb. Sec. 221. ) "Thus then, we seem justified 
 in the belief that the Blood, like the solid tissues, has a formative power 
 of its own, which it exerts in the appropriation of the new material sup- 
 plied to it fiom the food." (lb. 222.) ** There is not, in fact, a more re- 
 
 9 
 
 markable indication of Hhe Life of the Blood,' thau is afl^orded by its 
 extraordinary power of self recovery, after having undergone the excessive 
 perversion which is consequent upon the introduction of the more potent 
 zymotic poisons ; and every philosophical physician is ready to admit, 
 that, is this vis medicatrix natum, rather than any remedial agency 
 which it is in his power to apply, that he must look for the restoration of 
 his patient.' ' (lb. Sec. 232.) It is the Life that is thus potent to carry on 
 her work ; to repel injury, and to cure. 
 
 Let any one look back upon the origin of life and its perpetuation, and 
 he must say, in the retrospect, "between me and the first man of my 
 race the thread of life has never been broken. I am more than link of a 
 chain ; I am part of that first life, never yet severed. As his was from 
 God, so is mine that of an ancestry of one continuous life.'' At the in- 
 ception of each generation that has preceded each of us through many 
 thousands of years, life was but an inherited speck ; but that speck was 
 part of the next preceding life ; commissioned to seize upon matter for 
 its growth, in manner to fulfil the design of the Creator of the first Ufe, 
 and no other ; and bound to arrest its own growth when that design 
 should be filled out ; but to continue the nurture of the normal being until 
 its strength should be spent by its assigned lapse of years, or sooner 
 termmation by disease, or casualty. If it has left offspring the continu- 
 ous Ime of life may never be broken, as certainly it will not have been as 
 to any survivors of the race, whoever they may be, for between them and 
 the first parent, at any future age, their genealogy, their life, will never 
 have been severed. But the elements of matter that have composed the 
 bodies of the countless ancestry will have been dissipated ten thousand 
 times, and gone the many repeated rounds of life and death ; yet one con- 
 tinuous line of life has connected all the generations by a continuity more 
 complete than a chain of many severed but interlocked links ; b> an actual 
 physical and vital portion transmitted from every parent to every child 
 being as truly one continuous life as that the planted willow slip con- 
 tinues the life of the parent tree. 
 
 Let not, then, the materialist persuade us that matter has done all this 
 by matter's inherent power. The ceaseless life has done it, compelling 
 inert matter to obey it ; and thus will it use matter to cany on all the 
 life of earth, while the world shall last. The dead matter so used could 
 of Itself exert no such power ; could not initiate life ; could exercise no 
 cunning of construction ; but only life can continue, carry on, and per- 
 petuate life ; so transmute dead matter to living, and make it part of that 
 life, whose stream in humanity commenced with the first created man 
 and will only end with the last. All this is sure induction from bound- 
 lessly observed facts ; and reverses the theory of the materialist. And, all 
 that life has done so wonderfully and so intelligently, it has done Lnd 
 ever does without a conscious wiU of its own. It must, therefore, do it 
 by a will and Power that is above it, and that rules the life ; the Power 
 that gives and rules the instinct of the animal ; the Power that gives the 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 mind of man and also rales it, except as He has conferred upon it free- 
 will, within permitted limits. 
 
 The author of the essay on the iPhysical basis of life, carries his induc- 
 tion beyond animate life. He makes matter cause of life and he places 
 vegetable life on the same basis with the animal, and makes the like pro- 
 toplasm the source of both. Both, indeed, have their circulations in 
 which are contained material elements for growth, but elements of a quite 
 different nature and derivation. The animal lives on organic matter ; 
 dead matter that has had life in it ; the vegetable derives its supply fresh 
 from inorganic matter in the earth or air. This leaves us justly to infer 
 that the elements of growth are of diflerent kinds ; and if so that there 
 then can be no protoplasmic kindred, and nothing; is gained by the theory. 
 The fluid in the thistle and other plants have a contractility that gives 
 movement to the circulation and diffuses the molecules or protoplasm. 
 That shews a different impelling force from that of the heait of the 
 animal ; and rather indicates a want of identity of protoplasmic material, 
 while the wants of the two growths demand different material. The 
 animal's circulation constantly repeats its rounds, while the plant's growth 
 depends upon a single fluid transmission from root to leaf, and from leaf 
 to root, as the seasons change. Huxley would confound the two great 
 kingdoms of nature, because there is a veij limited agreement in the ap- 
 pearances and behavior of the fluid supply of both. Contrasting plants 
 with the lowest animals, he says, *'it may well ho asked, how is one mass 
 of non-nucleated protoplasm to be distinguished from another? Why 
 caU one * plant,' and the other ' animal ' ?" The answer naturally would 
 be because they are of different natures, shewing that their protoplasm 
 should be different in elements, and because the animal has sensation, the 
 plant none ;- and usually other obvious distinctions To call the supply 
 of vitalized food by the same name, without proof that its elements are 
 the same, seems to be a summary way of breaking down distinctions be- 
 tween the different kingdoms of beings and things of life. 
 
 Continuing our attention to vegetable life let us judge the tree by the 
 fruit. Can any body imagine the resin of the evergreen to be identical 
 with the sap of deciduous tree s? The inflammable turpentine to be the same 
 as the watery sap that would extinguish fire? Can the oak and hemlock 
 whose bark contains tannin have the same base as the sap of the sugar 
 maple and sugar cane? Can the Tea and Coffee trees producing theine 
 come fiom the same elements as the Palm and Olive trees? The gums of 
 commeice, the varnishes, the resins ; the spices, cloves, nutmegs ; the 
 vegetable coloring matteis ; tobacco, opium, hashhish ; and cinchonia and 
 all vegetable drags ; it is impossible to believe that all these, and plants 
 that produce deadly poisons, had the same base with our farinaceous food, 
 and edible fraits. Theory that attempts to destroy these distinctions by 
 a few observations so narrowly based as that in question, must meet with 
 deserved incredulity, by mankind. The canon of legitimate induction is 
 violated. A similitude of molecules presented to the vision by the micro- 
 
 lii, 
 
 11 
 
 scope, that tells nothing of their inherent properties or proportions, can- 
 not determine the base of plants to be the same, when their quality as 
 medicines, coloring material, or nourishing food, or poisons, are infinitely 
 varied and the opposite of each other. 
 
 This physical basis of life that is thus extended so broadly, Huxley, in 
 a measure, defines by saying, "that as all protoplasm is proteinaceous, 
 or, as the white, or albumen of an egg is one of the commonest examples 
 of a nearly pure proteine matter, we may say that all living matter is 
 more or less albuminoid." Well, that may be, if sufficient latitude be 
 allowed to the words *'more or less," and yet all be as different as the 
 things above enumerated, with many other things of contrary elements 
 constituting their "living matter," for all that is not albumen must then 
 be something else, and be part of the living matter that came with the 
 albumen, or protoplasm, into the composition of the living being or thing. 
 And this lets the theory fall to the ground. A partial similitude will not 
 necessarily constitute identity. The theory demands too much when it 
 requires identity of elements of growth in plants and animals of whatso- 
 ever kind. 
 
 The plant, uosentient, without mind or will of its own, is said, by 
 naturalists, to affect its habitat, that is to choose where it likes to grow. 
 This but means that it flourishes where circumstances most favor its 
 growth, and does not elsewhere. In its life inhere wonderful mysteries 
 that we can only refer to something above it, as we have for the life and 
 instinct of animate beings. Its seeds are boundlessly strewn, but which 
 shall grow and flourish will depend upon their relative power and mastery 
 over competing plants. This contest and its results we readily understand. 
 But how the fibres of the roots have their gift to select from the soil only 
 those particles of nourishment which suits the plant's growth ; how the 
 plant can convert silt into flowers ; how it can send the vital current against 
 the law of gravitation, to the topmost branches of the oak and pine, sur- 
 passes our comprehension. We say, in part explanation of the latter, 
 that the resin and sap pass upwards by capillary attraction, as we see 
 water rise a limited distance in very small tubes, or through a sponge, or 
 among the hairs of our shaving brush. This, in part, may suffice, but 
 there must be help from vital action, as certainly there seems to be where 
 life is employed in the fresh growth of annual plants, and the new 
 branches of trees. The vital force must do the work, as when that is 
 qiiiescent nothing is done. As in all animate nature we can only continue 
 to look upon all vegetable life as a continuing, insoluble mysteiy; but of the 
 highest beneficence. Trees and plants, ever ti-ue to the life and duty assigned 
 them, will furnish to man, beast, fish, reptile, bird and insect, the food 
 they require ; and to man the medicines, gums, dye-stuft*s, and spices he 
 wants ; and also the blossoms, flowers, and scenery he loves and enjoys 
 with an ever refining enjoyment. In truth, directly or indirectly, all the 
 animate life on land, or in air or sea, is supported by the seemingly self- 
 sustaining life of the vegetable kingdom. The latter is created that the 
 former may live ; and all that human souls may crown the creation. Yet 
 
JLi m9 
 
 all vegetable life, as all animal, now existing, judging by all we see or 
 know, are the continuous threads of the first created life of their respec- 
 tive species^ kept forever unbroken and unentangled. 
 
 And as every species in vegetation selects and assimilates different 
 elements from the soil or air, and for diflferent parts of itself, as wood, 
 bark, leaf and flower, so does every different species of animal select 
 those essential to its own well being ; and to complete the creature that 
 the life is busy in constructing, and it does construct, but that the parent 
 was. These end* demand differing elements ; and however seemingly 
 alike their protoplasm and blood, those and whatever else is tributary to the 
 varied growth and dififering developments, must be equally different. It 
 is vain for science to say to the common sense of mankind that the cells 
 that compose the bone and cartilages, tendon and muscle, the tissue, skin, 
 hair, all opaque, and transparent eye, are identical in material, more 
 than in shape or function, or fruit. The sight, the tests of chemistry, 
 Commercial scrutiny and scientific classification, alike conti-adict the 
 theory, and tell us it cannot be true that the protoplasm or blood of 
 animal and vegetable, and every kind of each, caa be the same. The 
 young of the mammalia drink milk drawn from the mother ; and the milk 
 of the different kinds may look much alike, yet not be identical, and not 
 alike be suitable to nourish the young of all. We may take leave to re- 
 gard it as a myth that Romulus was suckled by a wolf; but will implicitly 
 believe that neither " do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles." 
 
 It is of necessity that all animals and vegetables that have a vital circu- 
 lation must take their food into their circulations in fluid form, that it 
 may thereby traverse the body, and in sufficient minuteness supply its 
 wants of growth and repair where needed. The stomach of the animal 
 elaborates the solid into fluid ; the roots of the vegetable take up the 
 material it wants, assisted by the rains and water that give the required 
 transporting fluidity. But that each process sends into the circulation 
 the same eletnents for animal and tree, there is not furnished the begin, 
 ninqr of any proof, while the different natures of the growths indicate very 
 surely that their wants are not the same, that their supplies are different, 
 as their products are infinitely diverse. It must, therefore, be mislead- 
 ing to maintain the theory ** that all living powers are cognate, and that 
 allliving forms are fundamentally of one character." There is yet a 
 vegetable kingdom and an animal kingdom, and those infinitely diversi- 
 fied. " There U one flesh of man, and another of beasts." 
 
 Seems it tedious and unnecessary thus to have traveled over the grounds 
 of this theory in so much detail? The conclusion to which it is carried 
 shews how important it is to have carefully considered every foundation 
 stone of the superstructure. It concerns man the most deeply of all ques- 
 tions to know what he is and what he is to be. That such question is 
 invi lived is shown by the conclusion at which the theorist has arrived. In 
 his own estimation he has proved the protoplasm of the vegetable and 
 animal, animal including man, to be the same : Thus Professor Huxley 
 
 13 
 
 says : " As I have endeavored to prove to you, their protoplasm is essen- 
 tially identical with, and most rapidly converted iijto, that; of any animal, 
 I can discover no logical halting place between the admission that such 
 is the case, and the further concession that all mtal action may, with 
 equal propriety, be said to be the result of the molecular forces of the 
 protoplasm which displays it : And if so, it must be true, in the same 
 sense, and to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I am now giving 
 utterance, and your thoughts regarding thein are the expression of molecular 
 changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenom- 
 ena.^^ Is there anything of uncertain sound in this? He expects from it 
 the outcry of "gross and brutal materialism ;" and then confesses that 
 ** most undoubtedly the terms of the proposition are distinctly materialistic,'** 
 What more he next says I will show hereafter. 
 
 Thus the logical climax of the theory ; the capstone of the edifice, ap- 
 pears to be that the thoughts and mind of man, being derived from the 
 same protoplasmic source as the lower animals and the plant, and the 
 physical organization being thence built up, it is consequently to follow, 
 that when the life of this body shall be dead, there will be no mind, no 
 soul, to survive; that it can only with truth then be said, *'the bubble of 
 life has burst!" Such would be the natural conclusion of mankind from 
 such premises. And if such be the import of human life, what then is the 
 worth of creation ! Are the dignity of man, and the glory of the universe, 
 and the exalting faith of the immortality of the soul to be thus cast down, 
 and shorn of their grandeur and of their logical significance, because the 
 works of the Almighty shew some faint resemblances in the early pro- 
 cesses of life ? That because He makes matter subservient to life, and life 
 to the mind or soul, that, tnerefcre, all must be matter and all but matter? 
 If such be the logic of creation, as only now found out by very limited 
 applications of the microscope, it would seem to be wise in us to wait a 
 thousand-fold further applications of that instrument to the invisible 
 elements of life ; and not the while refuse to use our eyes and the telescope 
 as to what they can see , and also to use our understanding and its logic 
 as to what they can clearly know, before we surrender our faith in all 
 that humanity, in its best conditions, through the centuries of time, has 
 taken to be the import of our being and the meaning of the Universe. 
 
 Happily, however, for our relief, so far as his authority will avail. Dr. 
 Huxley makes the admission that, while he is logically carried to a ma- 
 terialistic conclusion by his philosophy, he is, in truth, no materialist, and 
 that materialization would "paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty 
 of life." He has perceived within himself a nobler sense of the import of 
 his being, that arrests his individual conclusion, and deflects his logic, so 
 confidently asserted, into an opposite direction. That is well, and some 
 comfort ; but may we take his mere opinion as adequate counterpoise to 
 a theory he has advocated with elaborate detail and apparent earnestness 
 of conviction ? Those who love skepticism will continue to abide by his 
 theory, which he has not himself controverted- 
 
In one half para^^pb he confesses to a contradiction ; to two opposite 
 conclusions ; that the theory he has announced as logically true, ho, him- 
 self, does not believe 1 Thus he says: **ADd, most undoubtedly, the 
 terms of the propositions are distinctly materialistic. Nevertheless, two 
 things are certain : the one, that I hold the statements to be substantially 
 true ; the other, that I, individually, am no materialist, but, on the con- 
 trary, believe materialism to involve grave philosophical error." Dr. 
 Huxley has not said this to accommodate himself to the orthodox 
 opinion of men. He who takes occasion frequently to encounter and 
 brave that opinion cannot thus have insincerely conformed to it. He is 
 obviously too candid and too brave for that. He seems in all his conduct 
 to follow what he takes to be the truth fearless of consequences. But 
 what then, must be our judgment of him? Can it be other than this, 
 that he is possessed of a truer logic, based upon vastly more facts than 
 the few embraced in his protoplastic theory ; and that his individual be- 
 lief, for which he has not given us the grounds, contains the actual truth; 
 and that, consequently, we have Huxley's authority to condemn em- 
 phatically Huxley's theory, built upon " the physical basis of life.*' But 
 who will answer for his insincerity to the truth of science ? For the con- 
 sequences of the infidelity he has preached in his sermon? He proposes 
 to conduct his hearers out of the slough, into which he confesses he had 
 plunged them, and meant to plunge them ; but we read on to the end of 
 the discourse in the vain expectation of finding the stepping stones that 
 would conduct us out of the slough to the firm land. Does he not in this 
 trifle with his own and the understandings of men? His philosophical 
 speculation is one thing ; his individual opinion is another. He describes 
 no mitigated materialism that represents his own conviction. That which 
 he has explained makes his uttered thoughts but matter ; for these, he 
 says, "are the molecular changes of that matter of life which is the 
 source of our other vital phenomena." And this is his hopeful and con- 
 fident assertion : '* And as surely as every future grows out of past and 
 and present, so will the physiology of the future extend the realm of 
 matter and law, until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and 
 with action." Thus the science of the physical basis of life is to absorb 
 the mental and emotional, and make all one, all physical ; all to have but 
 a physical basis a ad a physical consummation. And yet, again, he con- 
 fesses to two hopeful beliefs, but flagrantly at variance with his preten- 
 sion for physiology : ** The first, thai the order of nature is ascertainable 
 by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited ; the second, 
 that our volition counts for something as a condition of the course of 
 events." Yet neither of these could, logically, be a true belief, if man be 
 but the product of matter and law, and these be taken as sole sources of 
 his knowledge, feeling, and action ; for all would yet be fatalism, as well 
 as paralyzing materialism. Indeed, there could be no thought if all were 
 matter. Mere changes of molecular matter could not be means to ex- 
 pand our knowledge, or rule the course of human events. What would 
 it be to the world and its events, that the material of my brain had un- 
 
 15 
 
 dergone molecular change ? Thoughts are not material growths ; are not 
 buds or sprouts ; are not protuberances or indentations, or engraved 
 lines ; or secretions or excretions of matter, or the shifting of any mole- 
 cular living particles, by any testimony ever presented to the human 
 mind. Men cannot conceive that matter can be thought, or thought 
 matter ; and all its phenomena declare it unlike all else in created nature, 
 and without element of matter. The mind of man has, indeed, a like- 
 ness unto God. 
 
 Dr. Huxley says, "the fundamental doctrines of materialism, like 
 those of spiritualism, and most other * isms,' lie outside the limits of 
 philosophical inquiry." Says, " It is also in strictness true, that we know 
 nothing about the composition of any body whatever as it is." But is 
 not all knowledge within the limits of philosophical inquiry ? And, 
 though we cannot know how matter, or life, or mind can be, or what in 
 essence they are, yet we certainly can and do know much of the prop- 
 erties and actions of each and all of them, and of their differences from 
 each other. We must not become so far positivists as to refuse to know 
 all that is knowable; and especially may we not ignore the human mind. 
 It is our duty to search after all attainable truths, and when we have 
 come to the limit of our faculties, there reverently to pause in the pres- 
 ence of an infinity of knowledge known only to God. To seek knowledge 
 only of things physical, and things of life, and there to set the limit of 
 inquiry, seems but the prudery of scientific caution, that can win no 
 credit for wisdom, nor increase our trust in the authoriry of the teacher. 
 
 In this discourse we have assumed that in its origin life had a Creator, 
 upon the logic that such effect must have an adequate and a far-trans- 
 cending cause. As matter and life logically demanded a Creator of each, 
 and neither produced the other, so does the mind or soul, by even higher 
 claim, logically demand a Heavenly Father. Its nature is too dis- 
 tinguishable and transcending to be confounded with matter or life. Life 
 dominates matter, mind dominates them both, and God them all. The 
 soul asserts a higher than a generated parentage, and a large immunity 
 from the mutations of matter. Matter ever slides from under mind, but 
 its integrity is untouched. The matter that has sustained the life of one 
 as old as the writer, has wholly passed away from his body more than 
 ten times ; and the more rapidly changing parts have been eliminated with 
 vastly greater frequency. Yet the mind in this body has a memory of 
 conscious identity from the year next before the first of the current cen- 
 tury. Such imperishable mind can have no element of ever-shifting mat- 
 ter in it, and must be a being of difi'erent origin and nature, both from 
 the material of this body and the life of this body. That material is 
 ever changing, and is often renewed, until the body's death ; and when 
 the life that maintained the organization shall have succumbed, and have 
 ceased to exist, except as it has been continued in a living progeny, we 
 justly infer that the mind, or soul, will cutlive the organization and the 
 life, and will return to its its Giver, to share His pleasure, or meet His 
 
condemnatioD, as deserving. This is inferred from what we know of the 
 nature of mind, and the induction that creation must have an adequate 
 significance. The great truths of Scripture are inductively reattested by 
 the truths of philosophy. 
 
 Thus, then, stands the phenomenon of our being. The matter that en- 
 ters the body may be in itself, for all we know, imperishable, but is cer- 
 tainly transient in each living body, remains there until effete, and is 
 then dismissed by the vital process, or at death passes into vapor and 
 ashes, and enters the further rounds of chemical change and vegetable 
 and animal growths. The organized being of one generation of the life 
 of an unbroken continuity from the first parents has come to an end, 
 except as continued by offspring ; but the individual, ungenerated, im- 
 material mind tliat was neither the matter nor life of the body lives on 
 forever. 
 
 We have seen the life to assert a dominating power over all the ma- 
 terial that has built up the organized body. This life process is essentially 
 one independent of the mental will. During gestation this is plainly so ; 
 and is so through life, except as the mind has power to refuse to conform 
 to the laws of health, and may mar life's healthful functions and dura- 
 tion, even to the perpetration of suicide. The circulation, digestion, 
 assimilation, and eliminations go on in health almost without our con- 
 sciousness ; but we are compelled at intervals, by hunger and thirst, to 
 keep up the needed supply of food and drink. The brain and nervous 
 system are also thus nourished, as the rest of the body, though it is the 
 system especially subjected to the instant dominion of the mind or will. 
 The material brain and nerves are not the mind, nor do they produce it, 
 but ara servants of the mind. Mind is other than the brain and nerves, 
 and is other than the life ; and it alone can rule, and must give account 
 of itself, the body, and the life. The vegetable carries on all its given 
 life- processes, without sensation and without mind. The animal below 
 man does the same, except as it has a limited mental development that 
 we call instinct, has also, limitedly, brain, and nerves, and senses; all of 
 wonderful fitness for its preservation, which we may not now pause to 
 consider. The life of plant or animal will grow to its assigned limit, will 
 cure its own wounds, and reproduce its kind, but is other than the in- 
 stinct of the animal, yet more remote from the mind of man. It alone, 
 of all beings, has moral responsibility. 
 
 Among the hundred, or thousand, wonders of the life, whose causal 
 explanation can be in Deity alone, and over which mind had no formative 
 power, is the fact that every kind of nerve has been fitted for its special 
 duty, and can perform no other. There is, in this, admirable design to 
 prevent confusion. The nerve of sense can give sensation to, but can 
 impart no mandate from the mind. The nerve that executes command 
 will give back no sensation. One of each is attached to each serving 
 muscle, but neither can do the appointed work of the other. The nerves 
 of sight, hearing, taste, and smell can neither of them perform the funo- 
 
 17 
 
 tiou of any other. The brain, the commonly supposed seat of all feeliug, 
 has in itself no feeling. Sir Charles Bell hays, "The brain is as insensi- 
 ble as the leather of our shoe ; that the brain may be touched, or a por- 
 tion of it cut off, without interrupting the patient in the sentence he is 
 uttering." The brain and the sensitively perceiving mind must, therefore, 
 be different. The one is cut away; the other suffers thereby no interrup- 
 tion of thought or its expression. One feels; the others does not. One 
 commands; the other obeys. The muscle is moved by the will and exerts 
 great power, but through a brain and a nerve without muscle, or physi- 
 cal power, so far as is seen. Apparently an immaterial mind says to 
 every muscle do this, and it doeth it, but by the word of Command. 
 Truly, the body, life and mind, each, is very wonderful, and most won- 
 derful is their combination ; a combination of dissimilar things, made to 
 act in antagonism, and yet bound to act in harmony, for the welfare of 
 all. Awake, the mind is to regulate all for the common good, yet may 
 not, without injury, much interfere with the life-process of the bodily 
 organization. Asleep, the physical reacts, taking a limited advantage of 
 the un watchful mind that has let drop the rein of discipline. The raiud 
 in the semi-consciousness of dreams ranges through bright scenes and 
 beautiful images, if all be well with mind and body ; but if either l)e un- 
 happy or disordered, a dark change comes over the happy dream, and 
 then threatened dangers and startling incidents awake the mind to resume 
 irs discipline, happy then to find its troublous adventures '*but a dream."' 
 Yet in the sleeping and waking experience the mind and body have 
 acted and leacted, both as united, and often as opposing powers. 
 
 The materialist sometimes ventures even to liken life to a process of 
 crystallization or chemistry, or mechanism, and mind as well. Crystal- 
 lization follows one law, and, the world over, does one thing, and forms its 
 crystals and gems of each kind on the same angle ; her ultimate particles 
 of the same kind being of the same shape, and obeying one law of attrac- 
 tion. The chemical affinities act under laws as certain, and under the 
 same circumstances act always in the same way. Living things are more 
 complicate ; and the process of growth is carried on by an apparent choice 
 as to the selection of material and in the deposit of different particles for 
 the growth of the several parts differently from crystallization and chem- 
 istry. Life is not molecular, or magnetic, or chemical attraction ; but is 
 a vital process that employs various materials ; utilizes them, and dis- 
 poses of them differently to perfect the common economy. It employs, it 
 iS tiiie, chemical processes in breathing, etc. ; and in the heart, eye and ear, 
 and in the action of the muscles, mechanical structures and powers ; but 
 all is moved by and dependent upon the life that has made from matter 
 living molecules, and with them constructed the creature. But all this, 
 though subservient to, gives no explanation of the mind ; shows no kin- 
 dred to it ; gives no information why we have consciousness, how we can 
 feel and think. No proof is offered, nor can it is believed, be adduced, 
 to shew that the mental action consists in but physical changes. The 
 
18 
 
 brain, as the arm, may shew weariness when overtasked by the mind ; 
 may suffer waste of material, of phosphorus if you please, but that will 
 not prove mind to be brain, or brain mind. 
 
 The all transcending importance of this subject demands our yet further 
 patient consideration. On the discrimination of the mind of man from the 
 body and from the life, depends our truthful appi-ehension of the great 
 problem of what we are, and what we are intended to be ; the most im- 
 portant consideration that can occupy the human mind. Can we, as 
 rational beings, live over three score years and ten, or more, and not 
 devote much of our time to reflect upon this subject, the highest of philoso- 
 phical studies? This is not an ** ism " lying outside philosophical inquiry. 
 No religion can begin her task, no philosophy can consummate her study, 
 that has not peristently dwelt upon it and made it the theme of habitual 
 thought. It is the necessary climax of all the study that can give us the 
 solution of the problem of the universe. In this age of materialistic skepti- 
 cism, that respects no time-honored opinions, or sacred traditions, we must 
 begin where the physicists begin, but may not stop where they are wont to 
 Btop ; may not refuse to know the ultimate significance of all created things 
 and beings, body and soul, as they are constantly presented before our senses, 
 and demand interpretation from our reasoning intellect. We may not fail 
 to examine and consider all the true facts that tlie naturalist and physicist 
 make the basis of their theories, nor all other facts that must be taken 
 into view, for a true solution of the problem. No a priori assumptions 
 may be admitted as basis of induction ; and it must not be allowed the 
 skeptic to say, as he is sure to do, that he only builds truly upon certain 
 facts ; that his faith alone stands in inductive truth ; that religious faith 
 will not bear the test of induction from ascertained facts. And we must 
 not permit him to make his inductionH fi-om less than half the facts that 
 define our being, and these the less important. 
 
 The mind's thoughts are not propagated as things of physical growth. 
 We but borrow in relation to the mind, the language of the garden and 
 use it figuratively, when we speak of sowing mental seeds, or propagating 
 ideas. Tlie thoughts I am speaking I do not lose ; and your gain, if any, 
 is not a material acquisition, nor, so far as you or I can ever know, 
 has the effect been produced by molecular changes in our brains ; and 
 if such changes do take place they are a life process of the brain, and 
 cannot, conceivably to us, be the thoughts that enter int3 and exercise 
 your minds ; thoughts that as believed worthy, or as your minds may 
 make them worthy, may become permanently your thoughts, after the 
 molecular particles moved, if any such, will have long passed away. The 
 mind may, indeed, for aught we know, and we may so conjecture it prob- 
 able, put the brain in motion, as we know it will thrill the nerves, and 
 can hurry the blood ; as the wind can heave the water into waves, but the 
 cause and the effect are different, and continue ever after as distinct as 
 
 before. 
 Physiology teaches us that the mind is seated in the brain ; for with the 
 
 19 
 
 brain is connected every nerve that gives to the mind the sensations re- 
 ceived by it ; and with the brain is connected every nerve that executes 
 the will of the min^ upon every muscle of the body movable by the will. 
 A ligature round the nerves of sensation will prevent the mind receiving 
 sensations by them from a point beyond the ligature ; a ligature round the 
 nerves that obey the will, will paralyze its power to command the muscle 
 to which the nerve is attached. The perception and command are inter- 
 cepted at the ligature ; and beyond mental power has ceased. The 
 mind that is the light of our being, sits enthroned in a chamber of life-long 
 darkness, cushioned upon medullary matter ; moved by no muscle, yet 
 moving every motor muscle as bid to obey its will. The eyes are called 
 its windows ; but that is to speak figuratively, for no ray of light ever 
 enters there ; the senses are called its portals, through which we learn all 
 we know of things without us, but no sense ever lets into the mind one 
 particle of matter. 
 
 We have seen that the life of the body is fed by material food taken 
 into the stomach. The mind is nob so fed, nor fed by any material food. 
 The mind, or a mental capacity, exists in the child at birth, underived from 
 sensations, for it must pre-exist to receive the first as all after sensations. 
 Though we may not know how it can exist ; of its nature and operations 
 we can observe and know as much as of matter and life ; and we have no 
 more right to refuse to know all that we can understand of it than of 
 them. It is the nobler part of our being, and that which is most charac- 
 teristic and most prophetic of the purpose of existence. 
 
 The immaterial mind is fed but with immaterial food. It draws this 
 from sensations without and within ; and thus learns the nature and 
 qualities of all perceived things. It digests that it receives ; forms con- 
 ceptions or ideas by its inherent power ; has capacity of comparing, think- 
 ing and judging, and thus is also self- fed from within by immaterial 
 thoughts as no life is fed. Thus we may observe ^.he mind to be developed; 
 the mind that can frame the constitutions and laws that preserve human 
 society, and that can administer them ; that can wield the physical arms 
 and resources of the nation ; and can develop the truths of philosophy 
 and religion. All this is done by thought, only by thought ; by thought, 
 indeed, sometimes inspired ; and the quieter the body and the brain, the 
 more surely truthful is the mental judgment and the might of its power. 
 
 Now let us consider some of the sensations that the mind notices as 
 perceptions and conceptions, and stores as ideas, to be used in thought 
 and judgment and see if they own a material source. The eye opens upon 
 all visible things, and by a lens the picture of them is represented on the 
 retina, or back part of the globe of the eye ; a picture the reverse of that 
 in the outside world, upside down, right side left. The retina is the ex- 
 pansion of the optic nerve leading to the brain, that gives to the mind a 
 perception and conception of the image on the retina ; not that the image 
 can itself be taken through the round opaque tubular nerve ; not that 
 there is any material picture on the retina, any more than the reflection 
 from the mirror is a real picture on its surface ; but the mind has capacity 
 
20 
 
 to reach forward and take perception of tlie picture truthfully, but takea 
 it restored from its reversals by the convex lens to its true position, as 
 was the outside reality ; up-side up» and dght side* right, as is at once 
 verified by the outreached hand. This power of perception is something 
 more, and quite different from, the materially fed animal or tree. There 
 is no protoplasm here. The perceptions, and the ideas thus derived 
 through all the several senses, are alike immaterial. Through the eye, 
 the ear, the touch, taste, or smell, it is not perceptible, nor conceivable, 
 that outside matter enters into the brain, yet less into the perceiving 
 mind. It seems more reasonable to infer that the mind, which by its will 
 can command and put in action the many muscles of the body, through 
 the nerves of command that extend from the bmin to tliem, can also reach 
 through the distinct system of the nerves of sensation, wheresoever im- 
 pinged upon, and take note of all sensation. Thus doing the mind is 
 filled with perceptions, conceptions, ideas. But when it perceives, thinks, 
 compares its ideas, recalls its memories of long past years, forms new 
 judgments, and the will sends forth its mandates, v,e are not to believe it 
 is carrying on material operations, before the muscles have acted ; that 
 thoughts are the bubblings or heavirgs of medullary matter ; or as elec- 
 tritity they are elicited by material friction ; or as the chemical corrosions 
 of a battery ; or are any other material production. There appears no 
 evidence of any such processes, and these indicate no relationship 
 with mental action. The memoiy of half a century ago, < annot be a re- 
 calling of the matter of the brain of that time ; the i>erceptions taken into 
 the mind contained no material element, and the mind's elat>oi-ations of 
 immaterial perception cannot be elaborations of matter, or produce male- 
 rial thoughts. Thought that ranges instantly over creation, cannot be 
 bound by the limitations of matter. Whatsoever is matter must have the 
 bounds of matter ; matter must liave the properties of matter. Thoughts 
 are not so subject. It is not in the nature of matter to range beyond 
 itself; to look to the past or future, or in imagination to survey the world 
 and universe, and all that in tliem is. It is not in the nature of thought 
 to be subjected to mechanical or chemical tests. If thoughts be but 
 matter they must be eliminated by the body's ever busy absorbents as 
 waste material, and there could l»e no memory of them ; but the mind 
 holds not her rich treasures by so slight a tenure. The intellert would 
 then sit upon a throne whose base would be incessantly undermined ; nay, 
 be rapidly swept away, since the new tissue supplied to the brain by the 
 life-process would not rephvce the lost ideas. Immaterial thoughts, the 
 immortal mind, is not carried off" as waste ami etfete matter ; as sewage 
 through the sewers of the body. Xewly deposited brain tissue from the 
 blood would not restore thought that has vatiished. Memories are not as 
 characters written on the sand to be washed out by ever refluent waves. 
 The memories of a well preserved old man, whose strength has not failed, 
 nor his eye grown dim, make him a being compouutled of the characters of 
 three generations ; with mind informed liy the presstu-es and knowledge of 
 
 21 
 
 them all; with gathered experiences and foretliought that make him 
 largely prophetic of the future. So the Poet's vision has seen and de- 
 scribed such an oct(Jgenarian ; or knew him and sketched him from life : 
 
 •' Age had not tamed his eye ; that, under brows 
 Shaggy and grey, had meanings which it brought 
 From years of youth ; which, like a Being made 
 Of many Beings, he liad wondrous skill 
 To blend with knowledge of the years to come: 
 Human; or such as lie beyond the grave." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 As the visual picture entered not the brain, so will not the vibrations of 
 sounds in the air. The speaker's mind is filled with thoughts which he 
 is earnest to inculcate upon his hearers, and vocally he gives them to his 
 thousand listeners. I do not say transfers them, for he has not parted 
 with one idea, though they have got all he has spoken. No phosphorus, 
 or any other matter has left his to go into their minds. His voice has but 
 made vibrations in the elastic air, which otherwise has been unchanged. 
 These vibrations have spread concentrically from their centre, with their 
 ten thousand distinctions of modulated words. These sounds have reached 
 the ears of the listeners, and their j^erceptive minds have reached forward 
 through the auditory nerve, whose extension by delicate tibres floating in 
 the water of tlie vestibule of the ear have been stirred, and given to the 
 mind the perception of every variation of the voice of the speaker ; of its 
 formed words, its inflections, cadences ; its tones of earnest pathos and its 
 joyous or sad emotions ; aud all its varied meanings. But no vibration 
 of the air has reached the interior of the brain ; indeed, no material i lea 
 had traversed the air to reach the hearers. Air-borne wavelets of words, 
 or conventional signs of ideas expressed only by distinctions in sounds, 
 have reached the easily- moved hairy fibres of the auditory nerve, and im- 
 parted motion to them ; but there the material motion has ended, yet the 
 perceptive mind luis caught the many distinctive meanings. But no 
 motion, no sound, no matter, has entered the brain by the auditory nerve ; 
 for the nerve tliere embedded is constricted in passing through a narrow 
 orifice in the skull ; is not itself floated, or tensioned, to transmit vibra- 
 tory mtJtion ; but cut oft" from the air, the vibrations of which have been 
 spent u[)on the drum of the ear and the wonderful apparatus, and water 
 within ilie vestil)ule ; and were this not so the vibrations of the air are not 
 transmissions of matter ; l)ut wlien the voice has sounded, the air and the 
 ear are again as if no voice had spoken. The mind has taken the per- 
 ception of the distinctions of sound from the fibrous extension of the 
 auditory nerve. Had the same words, or conventional representations of 
 thoughts, been written or printed, and then been read by others, these 
 would have received their characters pictured on the retina, without the 
 charms of vocal expression, and alike without the reception of any ma- 
 terial element in the brain. 
 
 It is obviously th# same as to the sense of touch. The finger will give 
 the pereeptioii of the shape, density, temperature, etc. of the object 
 
22 
 
 23 
 
 touched, but no matter or thing will be transmitted into the brain. The 
 mind by its perceptive power in the brain and nerve will have taken 
 notice of the properties of the object, and formed an idea of it. By no 
 sense has the brain or mind been materially fed. Here we should recol- 
 lect the physical condition of the brain. It fills the chamber of the skull ; 
 is always dark, is always silent. Therein is the source of all the intel- 
 lectual light in the world, yet not one real spark, or beam of light has 
 there ever glowed. No ray of light can depict a picture therein ; no 
 vibration can carry a sound within it ; no tasted food, or touched thing, 
 nor aroma of incense, can enter there. But the nerve of each sense has 
 been affected by an outward object, and the perceptive mind has reached 
 to notice the action of the outward thing upon the nerve. In the eye it 
 is a picture thrown by the light on the retina and it is there perceived ; 
 in the ear vibrations have stirred the floating fibrous extension of the 
 auditory nerve, and there they have been perceived with their varied dis- 
 tinctions ; and by the other nerves of smell, touch and taste, the per- 
 ception has been at the point of contact. The miod's command reaches 
 by the motor nerve to the remotest muscle ; sensation by touch may reach 
 as far ; and there appeara to be no reason why the mental perception has 
 not reached to the point whence such sensation is said to have come. 
 The mind wills to move the toe, and it has at the same instant the per- 
 ception that it has moved. Indeed, each nerve of sensation has its local 
 duty to inform the mind instantly of every impingement upon the surface 
 over which its fibres are spread. This it can only do by the mind's taking 
 notice of it, so that sensation implies perception. Tlie nerves at the stump 
 of an amputated leg, when irritated there give the i>erception as at the 
 foot or toe to which the nerve when unsevered had been attached, for that 
 had been its established duty in its relation with the mind ; and the per- 
 ceptive mind yet adheres to its original consciousness, and still takes its 
 perception as from a living foot, where now there is none. The percep- 
 tion that had formerly reached the extremity of a perfect nerve comes to 
 consciousness as from that point, though the nerve has been touched mid- 
 way. And when the optic nerve is involved by disease, its illusive visions 
 produced by disease, appear as they would, if truly pictured on the retina ; 
 and so if the auditory nerve be so involved, the illusive sounds appear to 
 enter the ear. And so too as to those bright visions and hymning tones by 
 which the dying are often preternaturally visited, showing them, in ad- 
 vance celestial scenes and companionships such as they are about to enter, 
 their outward senses seem to them still to have served them, and they 
 wonder that their surrounding friends have not seen and heard all that 
 they have so intensely enjoyed ; but no outward sense had seen or heard 
 that the mind had directly perceived. The appropriate nerve always 
 ministers to the mind according to its original appointment, and responds 
 m the faithful gentinel only from the assigned post of duty, and there it 
 is that report is made to perception. Sensation and perception appear to 
 be synonymous and simultaneous and at the same point ; but the concep- 
 tion of ideas, and the mental processes of thinking, comparing, imagin- 
 
 ing, judging and willing, are carried on in the superior brain, by which 
 man is distinguished above all other creatures. Physiologists speak of 
 the sensorium or central ganglia, below the cerebrum, as the common 
 centre of sensation ; but our own consciousness when thinking, and our 
 penal head-aches for over-much thinking, plainly say to us that the crown- 
 ing and frontal hemispheres of the brain are the seat of thought and 
 mind. It is the mind in that little space that rules the world. 
 
 The reflective anatomist as well as others, is struck with wonder when 
 contemplating the human brain as the seat of thought and sovereign will ; 
 yet as poet he must speak figuratively : He exclaims as he looks upon it, 
 
 "Then mark the cloven sphere that holds 
 All thought in its mysttrious folds; 
 Tliat feeis sensation's faintest thrill 
 And tlashes forth the sovereign will ; 
 Think on the stormy world that dwells 
 Ijocked In its dim and clustering cells! 
 The lightning gleams of power it hheds 
 Along its hollow glassy threads I " 
 
 Dr. O. W. Holmes. 
 
 Such combination of body, life, mind and feeling, are indeed, more won- 
 derful than miracle, and justify the anatomist and poet in his prayerful 
 conclusion : 
 
 *'0 Father! grant Thy love divine 
 
 To make these mystic temples thine."— (J6 ) 
 
 The great fact is never to be forgotten, that the body is fed only by 
 material food ; tliat the brain and the nerves are also fed as the residue of 
 the body from the living blood ; but that the mind is ever and only can be 
 fed by immaterial perceptions of outward and inward material things, 
 and as it is self-fed by its own immaterial thoughts and inherent emotions. 
 How amply the physical brain is fed by the blood is apparent when physi- 
 ologists tell us, that its proportion to the whole body is as one to thirty-six, 
 while one-fifth of the whole volume of blood is in circulation there. 
 
 There is another test we may also daily observe in others and in our- 
 selves, showing that mind and body are not alike nourished, namely, that 
 the gross feeding that expands the body, does not enlarge, but ob- 
 scures the mind. That the mind is usually clearest and most eftective 
 when men are abstemious and temperate, provided only they eat enough 
 to keep up their normal strength. Many bright minds that have enlight- 
 ened the world, would never have been its shining lights, had not their 
 bodies been frail and their physical organization delicate ; indicating, not 
 that the body and mind were one, but that the body's grossness had not 
 overlaid or obstructed the free thinking and reasoning mind. 
 
 The power of mental consciousness and his capacity to think constitute 
 man's great distinction. Mind makes him man and lifts him above all 
 other creation. It is the mind that yields him all his purest and truest 
 pleasures. We say that the eye sees and the ear hears. These senses are but 
 inlets to outward sights and harmonies ; it is only the mind that perceives 
 
 t 
 
 / 
 
■migf Ml- 
 
 Hud enjoys. The trausiiortiiig i>rospe€t w© look ui>oii ; tlie landscape t)!* 
 lawn, trots, ri¥er and mountain ; or the music tliat cliarnis us with iiule- 
 finable delight, are pleasures iidierent in the mind, inborn of the soul. 
 Led by the great Dramatist we willingly say with hira, 
 
 »'Here wUl we sit, and let the sounds of music 
 
 Creep InKour ears : Soft stUlness and the night 
 
 Become tm touches of sweet harmony !" 
 
 "8uch harmony Is In Immortal souls." 
 
 And such inner sense of the beautiful ; our moral sense ; our sympathy 
 with our fellow beings ; our emotions in worship ; "our sense of an end- 
 less being ;" are all inborn of the soul, and assure us ours is the liarniony 
 of "immortal souls." Necker, statesman of France, also reassures us of 
 that Shakespeare so beautifully said; "the whisper of the gales, the 
 munnur of waters, the peaceful agitation of trees and shrubs, would con- 
 cur to engage our minds, and affect our souls with tenderness, if our 
 thoughts were elevated to one I'niversal Cause." It is thus in thought 
 and emotion that alone we can rise to commune with our higher self, witli 
 the highest endowments of our friends, and with Deity. 
 
 The materialist supposes he has advanced his theory when he tells us that 
 it has been found, after a speaker has used extraordinary mental exertions, 
 an analysis of his urine shews an increase of phosphorus ; and this is in- 
 ferred to be a material residuum of the speaker's spent thoughts ! The 
 idea must be that phosphorus is the matter most likely to be mind. Let 
 us apply another test, not material, to this supiwsed experiment, the 
 scrutiny of the thinking mind itself. The exertions of the si^eaker were 
 probably much more physical than mental, and the nsult, if true, would 
 be more properly assignable to physical causes. Tlie ideas of the speaker 
 ai-e conjmonly formed in advance, in his study, in quietude, and the best of 
 them in the wakeful hours of the night, when the body is in perfect repose. 
 The delivery of them so far as tlie intellect is tasked, is more the easy ex- 
 ercise of memory than the formation of new ideas. But to make the de- 
 livery of them impressive the orator exerts his voice ; gives violent play to 
 the lungs ; uses earnest gesture ; accelerates the circulations ; produces 
 perspiration ; and it would be an obvious consequence even if there were 
 no increase of the phosphoric deposit, that as much of the water in the 
 blood has gone out through the pores of the skiu, which would otherwise 
 have diluted the urine, that tlie phosphorus appearing in it is found in 
 larger proportion. 
 
 Though matter be essential to the growth and transmission of all life ; 
 though matter and life be essential to sustain the mind in its manifesta- 
 tions in this worid ; all these three are of very distinctive nature. In the 
 plant there is life, but no brain or nerves, nor feeling or mind. These, 
 therefore, are not necessary to the phenomenon of life. It is tlie nourished 
 blood of other composition than vegetable protoplasm that must flow and 
 bear the life sustaining material of the animate Ijeing, and that for brain 
 and nerves as well as the residue of tlie body. You may intercept the 
 mind's perception, and life will go on ; but intercept the blood's circula- 
 
 25 
 
 tion and the excluded part is killed. Sir T. C.Morgan, M.D., says: "If the 
 supply of blood be cut ofj' from a limb, by means of ligatures made upon 
 its arteries, sensibility of all kinds is in a very short time extinguished ; 
 and the part dies, and undergoes the same changes, as supervene on the 
 death of the whole body." " If, on the contrary, the circulation continue 
 uninterrupted, and the ligature be cast round the nerves of the limb, so as 
 to cut oflf its communication with the cerebral centre, the other tissues 
 will continue their functions uninterrupted by the accident." " These 
 counter-experiments clearly demonstrate that the nervous system is not 
 the fountain of life to the rest of the economy ; but receives its animation, 
 in common with all other tissues, from the action between its own vessels 
 ^nd the circulating fluids." (Philosophy of Life, 217.) Thus the incom- 
 prehensible life requires matter as the vehicle of its manifestations ; and 
 the incomprehensible mind requires matter, including brain and nerves, as 
 well as the life, for its manifestations ; but the distinctly manifested 
 actions of both are full of diversities and contrarieties. As life cannot 
 account for and produce matter, nor matter life ; so do neither, or both 
 together, account for, or produce mind, but only subsei-ve it. For each 
 the Cause can only be logically sought in a Creator ; and for their wonder- 
 ful combination, and concurring, or counter actions, in the being man, we 
 can, in reason, only refer ourselves to Him who transcends all and knows 
 all, even the thoughts and mind of man. That mind that is not matter 
 nor the life, but is above these ; that has no likeness on earth ; proves 
 itself of all we know the most like unto God who is a spirit. It alone in 
 nature reviews its own consciousness, as under an inevitable sense of moral 
 and religious duty and accountability, and asks and answers the question, 
 "My soul is it well with thee?" If there be another such being in the 
 universe, it can only be an angel in heaven. 
 
 Xavier Bichat, who studied and wrote at the end of the last century 
 and until the second year of this, and had much experience in surgical 
 practice during the French Revolution, was certainly the profoundest 
 physiologist of his day. He did not fail to perceive that the human mind 
 was something different and higher than the brain and the nerves, which 
 he regarded as but material instruments of the mind. He considered a 
 want of harmony in the two superior hemispheres of the brain as cause 
 of imperfect perceptidli, not by the brain, but by the mind or soul, say- 
 ing, "for the brain is to the soul what the senses are to the brain; it 
 transmits to the soul the impressions conveyed to it by the senses, as the 
 senses convey to the brain the impressions made upon them by external 
 objects." (On Life and Death, 30-31.) "If both (the hemispheres) do 
 not act alike, the perception of the mind, which ought to be the result of 
 the two sensations united, will be inexact and irregular." (p. 31.) He 
 enquires whence arises the facility which our sensations have of under- 
 going so many modifications, and answers, " To conceive of it, let us first 
 remark that the centre of these revolutions of pleasure, of pain, and in- 
 difterence, is by no means seated in the organs, which receive or transmit 
 the sensation, but in the soul." (lb. 49.) Thus imperfect perception and 
 
•^G 
 
 27 
 
 .111 
 I 111 
 
 api>i-eheii8ioii, and indeed, imperfect intellectual power come from defects 
 ill the material instruments tbat seiTe it, but it is to l>e said that the 
 defective structure produces deficient mind only in the sense Uiat it has 
 served the mind with imperfect perceptions, and hence with erroneous 
 conceptions for its use. The nature of the mind may thus be the same in 
 aU, though furnished with i)erception8 and ideas, and exercised and de- 
 veloped, as variously, as the number of human beings. Then, again, the 
 physical constitution and the animal passions, as well as the emotions and 
 affections, social, moral and religious, will also differently affect the sensa- 
 tions, perceptions, and pow-ers of reasoning ; our thoughts, imaginations 
 judgments and character, and yet not be the mind that thinks, reasons, 
 judges and acts. They are most important parts of the being but the. 
 physical can be no part of the mind, 
 
 Yet Mr. Huxley tells us tbat our thoughts "are the expression of mo- 
 lecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other 
 vital phenomena;" but he states no reason why this should be so; 
 why matter or life separately or together sliould produce thoughts. He 
 takes no notice of their contrary nature and operations from matter. 
 Now, as we have seen, the process of life gives its own proofs immeasur- 
 ably surpassing in accuracy that of the microscope, as to all that enters 
 into the composition of the plant or animal, as attested by products in- 
 finitely varied, and thereby has proved all protoplasms not to be bases of 
 the same nature, and that life uses other elements in her structures ; so 
 the different natures and actions of thoughts and mind from life and mat- 
 ter, must be taken as proof that they are not one with, nor can be pro- 
 duced by matter, or yet be the life that has subjected matter to her uses. 
 The life, instead of producing mind, is made subject to the mind, as to 
 its uses, what it shall be ; whether it be more worthless than the fester- 
 ing chamel heap, or in purity, perfection, beauty and glory, it shall be the 
 fitting companion of immortal immaculate beings. 
 
 Professor John Tyndall, always ardent and hopeful in scientific dis- 
 covery, does not leave the materialist without hope in the future, yet 
 does state this : " I do not think he is entitled to say that his molecular 
 groupings and his molecular motions explain every thing : In reality they 
 explain nothing." " The problem of the connection of body and soul is 
 as insoluble in its modem form as it was in the prescientific ages." 
 «' The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of 
 consciousness is unthinkable." (Fragments of Science, 119) . True, the 
 manner of the connection is unthinkable, but the fact of such connection 
 between very dissimilar things all must admit who do not deny the evi- 
 dences of their senses, the proofs of experiment, and of the mind's testi- 
 mony unto itself : and the higher significance of mind and emotion seems 
 
 equally obvious. 
 
 The mind is placed in closest alliance with the body, but is of different 
 constituency and power. Set over the body to rule it, her throne is in the 
 brain whither the nerves of sensation are ever giving information from 
 withJut and within ; whence her judgments are ever issued, and executed 
 through the nerres of command. Would you liken this to the telegraph ? 
 
 you must carry the comparison to include both operator and sender of 
 messages ; must note that in the centre is the mind that thinks, and that 
 receives, and sends the messages, and commands and executes as well. 
 There is still the mastery of mind, ever asserting her power over matter, 
 and her own likeness unto God. And though so small a speck, there is 
 nothing known to man that will so bear to be put in comparison with our 
 conception of Deity, who is a spirit, as the immaterial mind of man. 
 
 It is not to be doubted, after the experiments and observations of Prof. 
 Matteucci, and Drs. Du Bois-Reymond, Carpenter and Radcliffe, that 
 electricity pervades the nerves and muscles of the body, the precise ser- 
 vice of which awaits further development, but is supposed to be identified 
 with the ordinary force and action of the nerve and muscle. Dr. Rad- 
 cliffe says, as the result of his investigations, " There is reason to believe 
 that all kinds of electricity act upon nerve and muscle by way of charge 
 and discharge, the charge antagonizing, the discharge permitting, the 
 state of action." Whatever may be further ascertained as to the agency 
 of electricity in the animal economy, of this we may be assured, that it 
 will act subserviently to life and to the will. So it is found in the electri- 
 cal eel and the torpedo fish, in which life largely accumulates it, and the 
 will discharges it upon an enemy, in electric shocks, but only so long as 
 the supply lasts, when the belligerent thus armed must await renewal of 
 supply by natural recuperation. With all animate creatures rest after 
 fatigue is the appointed means for renewal of strength to muscle and 
 nerve, to become fitter instruments of the will ; and that is to say, after 
 the exacting will has ceased to enforce wasteful action, the life process 
 works on during repose to restore the strength, and the more perfectly if 
 we sleep. The strength or electricity would not be given us without the 
 life give it, and neither is to be identified with the life, or mind or will. 
 
 I suppose there are few of active mind who have not the consciousness, 
 when going to sleep, of those sudden nervous throbs that tell us that a dis- 
 turbed electricity is seeking its equilibrium in the body, and thus several 
 times defeating the desire to sleep. This occurs at the moment of oblivi- 
 ousness ; shewing that the mind had until then restrained electrical action; 
 but which ensues as a physical action in the body, as soon as the mind 
 ceases to rule. Many materials concur to build the human temple and to 
 subserve the life. The blood alone has its more than dozen elements; its 
 water, albumen, fibrin, sodium, lime, magnesia, iron, &c., and heat and 
 electricity may warm the body and aid the vital functions, yet be not mind. 
 
 And our minds 
 
 •' Are not wholly braiti, 
 MagneMiC mockeries ;" * » • 
 
 " Not only cunning casts in clay : 
 
 Let scleace prove we are, and then 
 
 What matters science unto men ?'* 
 
 Tennyson, 
 
 Prove man is worthless, then is science worthless all. 
 
 One so practical and learned as Dr. Carpenter, and so fully informed 
 upon the results of modern scientific investigation, and himself writing 
 as a life-long teacher of physiology, regards the brain as the instrument 
 
28 
 
 of mind other than itself. " The physiologist knows fuU well, that the 
 immediate operation of the will is not upon the muscle but upon the 
 brain." " We have not only evidence of the excitement of nerve-force 
 by mental agency ; the converse is equally true, mental activity being 
 •xcited by nerve-force." And he proceeds to say, " it is obvious that the 
 view here taken does not in the least mUitate against the idea, that mmd 
 may have an existence altogether independent of the material body through 
 which it thus manifests itself." ** In the control and direction which the 
 will has the power of exerting over the course of the thoughts, we have 
 the evidence of a new and independent power, which is opposed m its 
 very nature to all the automatic tendencies, and which, accordingly as it 
 is habitually exerted, tends to render the individual a /rde agent.'' (Phys- 
 iology, sees. 585, 586, 588.) 
 The capacity of the body is limited. Its growth cannot be forced. It 
 
 ean add not a cubit to its stature. But no limits can be assigned to the 
 acquisitions of the mind. While he has life man may learn. True, 
 students, ardent and ambitious, will often sacriace their lives in the pur- 
 suit of knowledge ; but that is not because the mind has taken into itself 
 more than it will hold, but more rapidly than the frail body will bear, and 
 in manner violating the laws of health ; those laws that require the 
 exercise of the muscles, the play of the lungs in breathing fresh air, and 
 an accelerated movement of the circulations, of the assimilative process, 
 f nd of all of life's functions ; and due rest and sleep. The versatile and 
 boundless ranging mind must wait upon the limited conditions of its sub- 
 servient companion ; by wisely doing which this life may last long, and 
 the mind ceaselessly acquire increase of knowledge and power. But ever 
 the master mind must be doing, or naught is done. 
 
 Dr. Carpenter, as a purely scientific teacher, also speaks of the soul s 
 relation to the Infinite ; and of its constituting one of the most distinc- 
 tive peculiarities of man, and as the main-spring of human progress. 
 He says the desire for improvement grows by what it feeds upon ; "in 
 the higher grades of mental development there is a continual looking up- 
 ward, not towards a mere elevated human standard, but at one to some- 
 thing above man and material nature." He desires to participate in a 
 spiritual existence ; "of which the germ has been implanted in the mmd 
 of man, and which, developed as it is by the mental cultivation, * * ♦ 
 
 has been regarded by philosophers in all ages as one of the chief natural 
 arguments for the immortality of the soul." (Physiology, Sec. 7. ) And 
 he concludes his work on Animal Physiology in these words: "The 
 philosopher who has attained the highest summit of mortal wisdom, is he 
 who, if he use his mind aright, has the clearest perception of the limits 
 of human knowledge, and the most earnest desires for the lifting of the 
 veil that separates him from the Unseen, lie, then, has the strongest 
 motives for that humility of spirit and purity of heart, without which, 
 we are assured, none shall see God." 
 
 While I would thus elevate mind to its truthful distinction and pre- 
 eminence, I would say nothing to disparage the material and living crea- 
 tion While physicists ascribe aU to matter ; all matter, all life, all raiiid. 
 
 29 
 
 and nothing to God, I ascribe all to Him ; yet regard matter.as essential 
 means to all life, and to the exhibition of all mind upon this earth. We 
 see God's good design in physical nature, and that design we must rever- 
 ence, and learn to adore Him in the sublimity of his works. Without 
 this material eai-th, and sun that lights and warms it, there would be none 
 of the life that we behold : would not be human souls to people heaven. 
 Climate it is to be admitted, does make the Esquimaux and the Negro 
 what they are. Unfriendly to life and its happiest physical development, 
 it is also unfriendly to intellectual, to moral and religious culture ; and it 
 also fails either in the productions needful for man's uses and improvement, 
 or produces animal and vegetable life so rankly as to over-master the un- 
 skilled native until he shall be helped by the stronger and more inventive 
 man of the temperate zone. But it follows not that the mind is the pro- 
 duction of the surrounding physical causes, but only that these have not 
 so well developed the instrument the minds must use ; and consequently 
 the mind itself is not so fully developed. 
 
 The mind it is that is ever conquering nature and moulding matter and 
 ruling life. It reclaims the earth to culture, fells the forest, drains the 
 morass, destroys wild beasts ; mines the fuels and metals ; makes and 
 applies iron to its ten thousand uses ; constructs railroads and telegraphs ; 
 creates the arts and sciences ; educates mankind generally unto a higher 
 civilization, and makes a large proportion almost what they should be ; 
 that is to say, learned, temperate and wise, lovers of man and worshipers 
 of God ; and all are advanced in moral conduct, except the irreclaimably 
 vicious. The task remaining before our humanity is to endeavor to cause 
 the ixjople to approximate the standard of perfection, and if, peradventure, 
 we get a majority of such, the world will have made inestimable progress. 
 And why should we not all strive for such consummation? In every branch 
 of business, men exert a wonderful amount of common sense and acute- 
 ness of thought, and achieve admirable success. Half the like assiduity and 
 culture directed upon their own minds would produce a transformation of 
 character and increase of intelligence, that would excite their wonder and 
 the admiration of the world. Mind only can do it, but mind can work the 
 consummation ; and that is the great hope of all thoughtful good men. 
 
 In all ages men have spoken of matter and mind ; of the flesh and the 
 spirit ; of body and soul, as things of contrasted nature, and as at strife, 
 until one has attained the rule over the other ; and if that rule be of the 
 flesh or the sensual passions, it is a dominion of sure degradation and 
 early destruction ; but if it be of the truthful mind, then is it a dominion 
 of peace and wisdom. Paul said, "I see another law in my members 
 warring against the law of my mind," with the sin in those members his 
 sense of duty was also at war ; and to desist from fulfilment of the sense 
 of duty, was to him intolerable woe. Mankind have always made such 
 contrast and adopted their lesson of discipline from the requisition of an 
 exacting conscience, and by induction from surely observed facts. And 
 when our friends are with us in life what is it that so much engages our 
 attachment and love and veneration for them ? Not surely the body, ex- 
 cept slightly by association, since it is the temple where higher excellences 
 
dwell ; but-it is the intelligent mind, the loving heart, the well tried vir- 
 tues ; and when death has taken our friend, for what is our sorrow ? Not 
 for the body, so little distinguishable from other bodies, but for the intel- 
 lectual and social companion, who had requited our love, but may never 
 again ; thi»t instructor and adviser with whom we took wise counsel, but 
 shall no more on earth forever. It is for the social and good and generous 
 mind that we grieve with a grief that refuses to be comfoi-ted, except as 
 w© find it in the faith that assures us we shall meet again, never again to 
 be separated ; a necessary faith of human consolation, and therefore proof 
 to ourselves that our minds and virtuous affections shall be immortal. 
 This was the testimony of Buckle, as to his own experiences and reflec- 
 tions after ho had witnessed the slow decline and death of his beloved 
 mother ; testimony that refuted the skeptical philosophy of his life ; and 
 has redeemed his memory from apparent heartlessness, and made it very 
 beautiful to those whose philosophy grasps the inunortality of the soul. 
 
 Matter and life are always untlergoing changes, and both in the human 
 body, kept in health, will live through length of happy years ; but at some ' 
 time they will hasten towards dissolution, and come to the end of their 
 organism ; and the life will only thereafter continue as it has l)een ira- 
 paited to offspring. But mind or thought is everlasting, if there can 
 only be found imperishable material to hold its expressions. If the 
 printed page, or the canvas, or marble will endure, the thoughts of the 
 author and artist will last forever. The eternal thought can then only bo 
 assailed through its allied perishable material ; and that mind shall never 
 perish, it only needs an imperishable, a "celestial body" ; and that it should 
 be translated into one, or live independently of one, should be no more a 
 mystery to philosophy than that the himian soul has existed in its mortal 
 habitation ; is not more questionable as within the power of the Almighty 
 and His fulfilment of the logic of His creation, than the fact that a blade 
 of grass shaD grow, or that this body is now the habitation of a human life. 
 
 The subject of this discourse might be continued through volumes, and 
 the writer be all the while dealing with as veritable realities as those that 
 occupy the physicist or naturalist, whose great deficiency so often is, that 
 he becomes so wedded to the material that he disregards the mental and 
 moral in his philosophizing, and is, therefore, possessed of but half the 
 facts needful as a basis whence to make induction of all the great truths 
 of Creation. He needs to know more to become wiser and more charitable ; 
 and the metaphysician and theologian also need to knew all the truths of 
 physical nature the former can develop, all of them God's tiuths, that 
 they may become more fully informed, and, i>erhaps, more charitable ; 
 Ihat they may clearly know the physical works and laws of the Creator, 
 and the more perfectly love and adore Him. Each class is in possession 
 of numberless invaluable truths, but neither possesses so many as it should 
 know ; and this is partly owing to the wall of partition their hostility has 
 erected between them. While it is natural that each should cling strongly 
 to its convictions, those convictions must be based upon all facts requisite 
 to truth, that tliey may endure. 
 
 And here let me not be understood as making a general charge of 
 
 31 
 
 materialism against physicists, for I am happy in believing that the great 
 majority of physicists are not materialists. I give credit to all who dis- 
 avow a materiah'stic faith, including Dr. Huxley ; giving credit to the like 
 disavowals here, there is no materialist known to me in this Society. I 
 have been enabled to use the authority and facts furnished by eminent 
 physicists, with great advantage, to sustain the views expressed in tliis 
 essay, as those of Bichat, Morgan, Carpenter, Hohnes and Tyndall. 
 
 While the drift of Professor Huxley's lay sermon favors materialism 
 there is that in "systematic materialism" that repels him as something 
 pernicious. The last words of the sermon are these: " The errors of 
 systematic materialism may paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty 
 of life." He has some other faith, therefore, which preserves him from 
 the deadly influence he deprecates, and the loss of the sense of the beauty 
 of life which he loves. It can only be a more elevating philosophy, by 
 his concession, that can preserve to us a sense of the beauty of life ; may 
 we not say, "the beauty of holiness ?" Such good fruit must be proof of the 
 greater truth of the higher philosophy he conceives and believes, yet 
 does not explain or advocate, but has sought to supplant. Now how only 
 do men attain their highest sense and example of this "beauty of life?" 
 It is by a belief in the immortal life, and by cherishing the highest ideal 
 of perfection, which that belief ever presents to our apprehension, with 
 an obedience to the injunction to strive to be perfect as the highest per- 
 fection ; even looking to the perfection " of our Father in heaven." That 
 cannot be the truth of life that could "paralyze the energies and destroy 
 the beauty of life." Why then seek to build up a philosophy which con- 
 demns itself? Why seek to establish a theory at which our given sense 
 of truth and beauty revolts ? Why seek to entomb the mind in matter, 
 and thereby lose our own soul ? The useful, the beautiful, and the per- 
 fect in God's creation attest the truths thereof and that it is His. It re- 
 mains ever to be a sure test, by their fruits are all things to be known. 
 
 I would now leave it as the testimony of one who has lived longer than 
 the allotted three score years and ten, not unobservant of men, nor unre- 
 flecting upon the question of the wherefore of our being, with a mind 
 consciously open to the reception of every truth presented, for all that the 
 conviction of one mind may be worth, that the doctrine of materialism 
 cannot be adopted as a belief of mankind, until men shall become capable 
 of confounding things the most opposite in nature ; until they can believe 
 that light can be darkness ; good be evil ; right wrong ; not until men can 
 dissever effect from its due cause ; logic from reason ; creation from its 
 Creator. Not until then will they confound mind with matter. All 
 nature demands a broader and truer interpretation, wherein every part 
 shall have assigned to it its just significance, and unto the whole its ad- 
 equate import be ascribed. Each and all imply no less than that there is a 
 Creator, and that the human soul has a life immortal. If the soul of man 
 has not this significance, then, truly, Creation is without adequate motive 
 or result for all eternity. But if we be children and heirs of God, there is 
 a sufficient solution of the purpose of our being, and an object worthy the 
 glory of the universe.