THE FUTURE OF MIND. 243 



of organism, the death of the organism involves a discontinuance of 

 all its functions thought, affection, and will, not excepted and their 

 resolution into the more primitive forces from which they originally 

 sprang But it is clearly a most unwarranted assumption that spiritual 

 individuality the fundamental principle of which no one pretends to 

 apprehend can not be prolonged or perpetuated, except under such 

 material circumstances as earth supplies. If it be recollected how 

 ignorant man is of the essences of matter and motion, and that there 

 are in mind or spirit qualities which can not be ranged with material 

 things, or with their almost infinitely subtile forces, we will readily see 

 that the assumption of no conscious life except under such circum- 

 stances as material things supply is most unwarrantable. 



Even the argument against immortality, based upon the relations 

 of mind to organism, when closely examined, loses much of its seem- 

 ing fitness. The persistence of force is, indeed, as much an axiom of 

 science as the indestructibility of matter. What appears to be cessa- 

 tion of force is simply its transformation into other forces. But mus- 

 cular movements provoked by volition are not actuated by mental 

 force. The mind, in voluntary motions, does not supply the force. 

 It only signals the nerve-centers that furnish the force. The centers 

 of motion, which have of late been demonstrated in the brain, do not 

 supply the force for the operation of the muscles, whose contractions 

 they specially control. The brain-centers are properly only intellect- 

 ual signal-centers centers whence issue the volitions that liberate the 

 forces of the lower nerve-centers for contracting special muscles. Fatal 

 errors in reference to mind may easily grow from confounding nervous 

 force with mental force. It is impossible to form right conceptions of 

 mind so long as it is regarded as a merely resultant force made up of 

 the organic forces which lead up to it. In any such conception there 

 is left out an important element which it is difficult explicitly to define, 

 but which may be forcibly suggested by a comparison. The beautiful 

 form symmetry and proportions of a noble tree may be regarded 

 apart from the organic materials and forces which underlie it. Thus 

 regarded it is, as it were, spiritual, and is capable of arousing concep- 

 tions of beauty and grandeur in the soul of the beholder. Mind, in 

 this view, instead of a mere force, becomes a symmetrical and living 

 expression of the relations of the myriad forces which have from the 

 very beginning entered into the life. It is, therefore, in one view, as 

 absolutely immaterial as the form and beauty of a tree. But in still 

 another aspect mind must be considered a higher and vastly more sub- 

 tile force than any physical forces with which we are acquainted, and 

 in its actions and methods of development is governed by laws pecul- 

 iarly its own. Mind or mental force is, therefore, unique, and stands 

 apart as a grand exception to the general law of the correlation of 

 forces. But, as all the physical forces are persistent in some form or 

 other, it is eminently unreasonable to suppose that this peculiar force, 



