A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 



511 



Thus (in apparent contradiction to the state 

 ments quoted), on p. 242, No. III., we are told 

 that it is "man who loves, thinks, acts; not the 

 ganglia, or sinuses, or any organ" that does so. 

 But perhaps the essayist means that all the body 

 together does so. He says a man is " the con- 

 sensus, or combined activity of his faculties." 

 What is meant by this phraseology ? It is just 

 this " his," this " consensus,' 1 '' or " combined act- 

 ing," that is inconceivable without the focus of 

 unity, in which many contemporaneous phenom- 

 ena, and many past and present, meet to be com- 

 pared, remembered, identified, as belonging to 

 the same self; so only can they be known phe- 

 nomena at all. Well, do we find in examining 

 the physical structure of man's body as solid, 

 heavy, extended, divisible, or its living organs 

 and their physical functions, or the rearrange- 

 ment of molecules of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, 

 etc., into living tissue, or its oxidation, anything 

 corresponding to the consciousness of personal 

 moral agency, and personal identity ? We put 

 the two classes of conception side by side, and 

 they seem to refuse to be identified — man as one 

 and the same conscious moral agent — and his 

 body, or the bumps on his skull ; or is man in- 

 deed a function of his own body? Are we right 

 in talking of our bodies as material things, and 

 of ourselves as if we were not things, but persons 

 with mights, rights, and duties ? We ought, per- 

 haps, to talk — theologies and philosophies being 

 now exploded — not of our having bodies, but of 

 bodies having us, and of bodies having rights or 

 duties. Perhaps Dundreary was mistaken, and 

 the tail may wag the dog after all. 



Mr. Harrison says : " Orthodoxy has so long 

 been accustomed to take itself for granted, that 

 we are apt to forget how very short a period of 

 human history this sublimated essence " (the im- 

 material soul) " has been current. There is not 

 a trace of it in the Bible in its present sense." 

 This reminds one rather of Mr. Matthew Arnold's 

 contention that the Jews did not believe in God. 

 But really it does not much signify what particu- 

 lar intellectual theories have been entertained by 

 different men at different times about the nature 

 of God or of the soul : the question is whether 

 you do not find on the whole among them all a 

 consciousness or conviction that there is a High- 

 er Being above them, together with a power of 

 distinguishing themselves from their own bodies, 

 and the world around them — in consequence of 

 this, too, a belief in personal immortality. Many 

 in all ages believe that the dead have spoken to 

 us from beyond the grave. But into that I will 



not enter. Are we our bodies? that seems to be 

 the point. Now, I do not think positivism has 

 any right to assume that we are, even on its own 

 principles and professions. 



Mr. Harrison (No. III., p. 239) has a very 

 forcible passage, in which he enlarges upon this 

 theme : that " the 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. . . . From the summit 

 of spiritual life to the base of corporeal life, 

 whether we pass up or down the gamut of hu- 

 man forces, there runs one organic correlation 

 and sympathy of parts. Touch the smallest 

 fibre in the corporeal man, aud in some infini- 

 tesimal way we may watch the effect in the 

 moral man. When we rouse chords of the 

 most glorious ecstasy of the soul, we may see 

 the vibrations of them visibly thrilling upon 

 the skin." Here we are in the region of positive 

 facts as specially made manifest by recent inves- 

 tigation. And the orthodox schools need to rec- 

 ognize the significance of such facts. The close 

 interdependence of body and soul is a startling 

 verity that must be looked in the face ; and the 

 discovery has, no doubt, gone far to shake the 

 faith of many in human immortality, as well as 

 in other momentous kindred truths. It has been 

 so with myself. But I think the old dictum of 

 Bacon about the effect of a little and more knowl- 

 edge will be found applicable after all. Let us 

 look these facts very steadily in the face. When 

 we have thought for a long time, there is a feel- 

 ing of pain in the head. That is a feeling, ob- 

 serve, in our own conscious selves. Further, by 

 observation and experiment, it has been made 

 certain that some molecular change in the ner- 

 vous substance of the brain (to the renewal of 

 which oxygenated blood is necessary) is going 

 on, while the process of thinking takes place — 

 though we are not conscious of it in our own 

 case, except as a matter of inference. The thought 

 itself seems, when we reflect on it, partly due to 

 the action of an external world or cosmos upon 

 us ; partly to our own " forms of thought," or 

 fixed ways of perceiving and thinking, which 

 have been ours so long as we can remember, and 

 which do not belong to us more than to other 

 individual members of the human family ; again 

 partly to our own past experience. But what 

 is this material process accompanying thought, 

 which conceivably we might perceive if we could 

 see the inside of our own bodies ? Why it too can 

 only seem what it seems by virtue of our own 

 personal past experience, and our own human as 



