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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



to damage the other. I cannot but think that 

 the members of the positivist school in this coun- 

 try stand in some danger of falling into that fatal 

 error ; and I put it to them to consider whether 

 it is either consistent or becoming for those who 

 hold that " the finest spiritual sensibility " is a 

 mere bodily function, to join in the view-halloo, 

 when the hunt is up against biological science — 

 to use their voices in swelling the senseless cry 

 that " civilisation is in danger if the workings of 

 the human spirit are to become questions of phys- 

 iology." 



Lord BLACHFORD.— Mr. Harrison is of 

 opinion that the difference between Christians 

 and himself on this question of the soul and 

 the future life " turns altogether on habits of 

 thought." What appears to the positivist flimsy 

 will, he says, seems to the Christian sublime, and 

 vice versa, " simply because our minds have been 

 trained in different logical methods," and this 

 apparently because positivism "pretends to no 

 other basis than positive knowledge and scien- 

 tific logic." But if this is so, it is not, I think, 

 quite consistent to conclude, as he does, that " it 

 is idle to dispute about our respective logical 

 methods, or to put this or that habit of mind in 

 a combat with that." As to the combatants this 

 may be true. But it surely is not idle, but very 

 much to the purpose, for the information of those 

 judges to whom the very act of publication ap- 

 peals, to discuss habits and methods on which, it 

 is declared, the difference altogether turns. 



I note, therefore, in limine what, as I go on, 

 I shall have occasion to illustrate, one or two 

 differences between the methods of Mr. Harrison 

 and those in which I have been trained. 



I have been taught to consider that certain 

 words or ideas represent what are called by logi- 

 cians substances, by Mr. Harrison, I think, enti- 

 ties, and by others, as the case rray be, persons, 

 beings, objects, or articles. Such are air, earth, 

 men, horses, chairs, and tables. Their peculi- 

 arity is that they have each of them a separate, 

 independent, substantive existence. They are. 



There are other words or ideas which do not 

 represent existing things, but qualities, relations, 

 consequences, processes, or occurrences, like vic- 

 tory, virtue, life, order, or destruction, which do 

 but belong to substances, or result from them 

 without any distinct existence of their own. A 

 thing signified by a word of the former class 

 cannot possibly be identical or even homogeneous 

 with a thing signified by a word of the second 

 class. A fiddle is not only a different thing from 

 a tune, but it belongs to another and totally dis- 



tinct order of ideas. To this distinction the 

 English mind at some period of its history must 

 have been imperfectly alive. If a Greek con- 

 founded kt'htis with Kricrixa, an act with a thing, 

 it was the fault of the individual. But the Eng- 

 lish language, instead of precluding such a con- 

 fusion, almost, one would say, labors to prop- 

 agagate it. Such words as " building," " an- 

 nouncement," "preparation," or "power," are 

 equally available to signify either the act of 

 construction or an edifice — either the act of pro- 

 claiming or a placard — either the act of prepar- 

 ing or a surgical specimen — either the ability to 

 do something or the being in which that ability 

 resides. Such imperfections of language infuse 

 themselves into thought. And I venture to think 

 that the slight superciliousness with which Mr. 

 Harrison treats the doctrines which such persons 

 as myself entertain respecting the soul is in some 

 degree due to the fact that positive " habits of 

 thought " and " logical methods " do not recog- 

 nize so completely as ours the distinction which 

 I have described as that between a fiddle and a 

 tune. 



Again, my own habit of mind is to distinguish 

 more pointedly than Mr. Harrison does between a 

 unit and a complex whole. When I speak of an 

 act of individual will, I seem to myself to speak 

 of an indivisible act proceeding from a single 

 being. The unity is not merely in my mode of 

 representation, but in the thing signified. If I 

 speak of an act of the national will — say a deter- 

 mination to declare war — I speak of the concur- 

 rence of a number of individual wills, each act- 

 ing for itself, and under an infinite variety of 

 influences, but so related to each other and so 

 acting in concert that it is convenient to repre- 

 sent them under the aggregate term "nation." 

 I use a term which signifies unity of being, but 

 I really mean nothing more than cooperation, or 

 correlated action and feeling. So, when I speak 

 of the happiness of humanity, I mean nothing 

 whatever but a number of particular happinesses 

 of individual persons. Humanity is not a unit, 

 but a word which enables me to bring a number 

 of units under view at once. In the case of 

 material objects, I apprehend, unity is simply 

 relative and artificial — a grain of corn is a unit 

 relatively to a bushel and an aggregate relatively 

 to an atom. But I, believing myself to be a 

 spiritual being, call myself actually and without 

 metaphor — one. 



Mr. Harrison, who acknowledges the exist- 

 ence of no being but matter, appears either to 

 deny the existence of any real unity whatever, or 



