THE SOUL AFD FUTURE LIFE. 



239 



corporeal and animal life, and is each day ar- 

 ranging it in more accurate adjustment with the 

 immense procession of animal life around him. 

 He has grouped the intellectual powers, he has 

 traced to their relations the functions of mind, 

 and ordered the laws of thought into a logic of a 

 regular kind. He has analyzed and grouped the 

 capacities of action, the moral faculties, the in- 

 stincts and emotions. And not only is the analy- 

 sis of these tolerably clear, but the associations 

 and correlations of each with the other are fairly 

 made manifest. At the lowest, we are all assured 

 that every single faculty of man is capable of sci- 

 entific study. Philosophy simply means, that 

 every part of human nature acts upon a method, 

 and does not act chaotically, inscrutably, or in 

 mere caprice. 



But then we find throughout man's knowl- 

 edge of himself signs of a common type. There 

 is organic unity in the whole. These laws of the 

 separate functions, of body, mind, or feeling, have 

 visible relations to each other, are inextricably 

 woven in with each other, act and react, depend 

 and interdepend, one on the other. There is no 

 such thing as an isolated phenomenon, nothing 

 sici generis, in our entire scrutiny of human na- 

 ture. Whatever the' complexities of it, there is 

 through the whole a solidarity of a single unit. 

 Touch the smallest fibre of the corporeal man, 

 and in some infinitesimal way we may watch the 

 effect in the moral man, and we may trace this 

 effect up into the highest pinnacles of the spirit- 

 ual life. On the other hand, when we rouse, 

 chords of the most glorious ecstasy of the soul, 

 we may see the vibration of them visibly thrilling 

 upon the skin. The very animals about us can 

 perceive the emotion. Suppose a martyr nerved 

 to the last sacrifice, or a saint in the act of re- 

 lieving a sufferer, the sacred passion within them 

 is stamped in the eye, or plays about the mouth, 

 with a connection as visible as when we see a 

 muscle acting on a bone, or the brain affected by 

 the supply of blood. Thus from the summit of 

 spiritual life to the base of corporeal life, whether 

 we pass up or down the gamut of human forces, 

 there runs one organic correlation and sympathy 

 of parts. Man is one, however compound. Fire 

 his conscience, and he blushes. Check his circu- 

 lation, and he thinks wildly, or thinks not at all. 

 Impair his secretions, and moral sense is dulled, 

 discolored, or depraved ; his aspirations flap;, his 

 hope, love, faith reel. Impair them still more, 

 and he becomes a brute. A cup of drink de- 

 grades his moral nature below that of a swine. 

 Again, a violent emotion of pity or horror makes 



| lirium to clear thought, 

 waste his sinews. 



him vomit. A lancet will restore him from de- 

 Excess of thought will 

 Excess of muscular exercise 

 will deaden thought. An emotion will double 

 the strength of his muscles. And at last the 

 prick of a needle or a grain of mineral will in an 

 instant lay to rest forever his body and its unity, 

 and all the spontaneous activities of intelligence, 

 feeling, and action, with which that compound 

 organism was charged. 



These are the obvious and ancient observa- 

 tions about the human organism. But modern 

 philosophy and science have carried these hints 

 into complete explanations. By a vast accumula- 

 tion of proof positive, thought at last has estab- 

 lished a distinct correspondence between every 

 process of thought or of feeling and some corpo- 

 real phenomenon. Even when we cannot explain 

 the precise relation, we can show that definite cor- 

 relations exist. To positive methods, every fact 

 of thinking reveals itself as having functional re- 

 lation with molecular change. Every fact of will 

 or of feeling is in similar relation with kindred 

 molecular facts. And all these facts, again, have 

 some relation to each other. Hence we have es- 

 tablished an organic correspondence in all mani- 

 festations of human life. To think implies a 

 corresponding adjustment of molecular activity. 

 To feel emotion implies nervous organs of feeling. 

 To will implies vital cerebral hemispheres. Ob- 

 servation, reflection, memory, imagination, judg- 

 ment, have all been analyzed out, till they stand 

 forth as functions of living organs in given condi- 

 tions of the organism, that is in a particular 

 environment. The whole range of man's powers, 

 from the finest spiritual sensibility down to a 

 mere automatic contraction, falls into one co- 

 herent scheme: being all the multiform functions 

 of a living organism in presence of its encircling 

 conditions. 



But, complex as it is, there is no confusion in 

 this whole when conceived by positive methods. 

 No rational thinker now pretends that imagina- 

 tion is simply the vibration of a particular fibre. 

 No man can explain volition by purely anatomical 

 study. While keeping in view the due relations 

 between moral and corporeal facts, we distinguish 

 moral from biologic facts, moral science from 

 biology. Moral science is based upon biological 

 science; but it is not comprised in it; it has its 

 own special facts and its own special methods, 

 though always in the sphere of law. Just so, the 

 mechanism of the body is based upon mechanics, 

 would be unintelligible but for mechanics, but 

 could not be explained by mechanics alone, or by 



