724 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Thus physiologists generally regard mind as purely phenomenal 

 as something holding the same relation to the brain as music to the 

 violin, when the violin j^lays itself. If tlie relations of the brain to 

 paralysis or to digestion are. under consideration, such physiologists 

 may be recognized as expei'ts ; but when its relations to a soul of 

 wMch they know nothing are under consideration, we may very proj)- 

 erly say to them, " Ne siitor ultra crepidam^'' 



Of course, materialists cannot deny that mental phenomena exist, 

 but to them they are simply the phenomena of matter. Dr. Carpen- 

 ter may even admit the existence of a soul beyond the pale of science 

 a quiddity as distinct from the real soul as Spencer's "Unknow- 

 able " is from any conception of a God, Practically speaking, Dr. Car- 

 penter is entirely in harmony with other materialists. 



Men of scientific culture, who have spent a considerable portion of 

 their lives in practical investigation and familiarity with the facts of 

 mesmerism, spiritualism, and other psycho-physiological sciences, are 

 experts in the higliest sense of that term, and can but smile at the 

 insolence of those who, never having made a successful experiment on 

 those joint operations of the soul and body which constitute mes- 

 meric, spiritual, and other sciences, nevertheless claim, as Dr. Carpen- 

 ter does, to be recognized as the oracle in matters of which his igno- 

 rance is both pitiable and ludicrous, having never, by ])is own confession, 

 witnessed any of the innumerable facts demonstrating an extra-mate- 

 rial agency, which, during the whole of the present century, have been 

 accumulated and diffused in all civilized countries, and among their 

 foremost thinkers. His position is precisely that of the principal Pro- 

 fessor of Philosophy at Padua, who refused to look through Galileo's 

 telescope, and continued to teach the old theories. Nay, far worse : 

 he not only refuses to see M'hat is open to all men, but, as Horkey wrote 

 against Galileo, while refusing all fair investigation, and thus furnished 

 an examjde to " point a moral " for posterity an example of the 

 power of "dominant ideas" in a bigot Dr. Carpenter repeats the 

 same performance amid the higher enlightenment of the present age, 

 with a perversity and hostility of purpose which wei-e never surpassed 

 by the blind votaries of Aristotle. And as Horkey detected the trick 

 in Galileo's telescope which made stars by reflected light. Dr. Car- 

 penter too detects fallacies in the experiments of Prof. Crookes, whose 

 temperate and candid reply places him in even a worse position than 

 that of Martin Horkey. (See Nineteenth Century for July.) 



In a question of the existence of certain facts, the honest witness 

 who, without prepossession, investigates and follows up the facts 

 wherever they are visible, is competent to instruct us; but he who 

 carefully avoids coming into close contact with the facts, and, while 

 maintaining his mind in undisturbed ignorance, feasts upon second- 

 hand gossip and stale calumnies, which he retails with delight, is hard- 

 ly entitled even to a nod of recognition among honest inquirers. 



