THE PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. 723 



character of our daily toils, and in the too great concentration of 

 attention upon physical sciences, to the exclusion of those in which a 

 psychic element is found. The study of physical science alone is no 

 better preparation for psychic studies, which employ different faculties, 

 than the study of the counting-house ledger or the supervision of a 

 pork-house would be for the service of Parnassus. 



A recent publication from Dr. Carpenter, embodying two lectures 

 on psychic subjects (mesmerism, spiritualism, etc.), presents, in the 

 most offensively exaggerated form, the pragmatic pretension of cer- 

 tain physical scientists to take charge of psychic investigations with 

 an air of more than papal infallibility, and an emphatic notice to all 

 the rest of mankind, not only that they are incapable of such investi- 

 gations, but that their opinions, their testimony, and even their oaths 

 are not entitled to claim a feather's weight before the self-created tri- 

 bunal of which Dr. Carj)enter is the authoritative mouth-piece. 



The magniloquent insolence of such a proclamation would be 

 amusing enough, even if ])r. Carpenter were, as he fancies himself, an 

 expert of great skill ; but when he is dealing with a subject of which 

 he knows far less than thousands of the most enlightened people, far 

 less than many men of science who are his peers in intelligence and 

 his superiors in candor and in philosophic habits of thought, his inso- 

 lent assumptions of superiority and denial of their claims to veracity 

 and intelligence, whenever in conflict with his own theories, are all 

 that his most unfriendly opponent could desire in order to demon- 

 strate his utter unfitness for the task which he has assumed. 



Passing by his ludicrous claims to a boundless superiority over 

 contemporary scientists who do not follow his lead, we may ask 

 whether he has any claims whatever to be recognized as an expert, 

 whose opinions on these subjects have any especial value. Eminence 

 as a physiologist does not imply eminence or capacity as a psycholo- 

 gist. It is true, physiology and psychology are coterminous sciences ; 

 but until recently their cultivators have kept as wide apart as the an- 

 tipodes. Psychology has been prosecuted as if man never htid a body 

 (and ultra-psychologists do not admit that there is a human body or 

 any other material existence whatever), while physiology has been 

 cultivated in the same ultra spirit of nescience, as if man had no soul. 

 So thoroughly does a feeble or a narrow mind, in fixing its attention 

 on one object, lose sight of everything else. Dr. Carpenter himself 

 has expressly excluded the soul from the pale of science, which is the 

 next thing to excluding it from cognition, and one of the most recent 

 voluminous and learned American works on physiology excludes it 

 entirely, and substitutes the physical action of the brain, as follows : 

 " The brain is not, strictly speaking, the organ of the mind, for this 

 statement would imply that the mind exists as a force, independently 

 of the brain ; but the mind is produced by the brain-substance " 

 (Flint's "Physiology of Man," Nervous System, p. 327). 



