ON THE ANNIHILATION OF THE MIND. 715 



The microscope should be, like the rest, as portable as possible. 

 For most geological purposes high powers are not required, conse- 

 quently a small microscope is sufficient. 



It is sometimes of service, when working in a district where micro- 

 scopic rock-sections are required, to carry a small collection of micro- 

 scopic slices of selected or typical rocks or minerals for purposes of 

 comparison. A series of fifty or one hundred slices can be packed in 

 a box a few inches square. Outlines of Field- Geology. 



-- 



ON THE ANNIHILATION OF THE MIND. 



By JOHN TEOWBRIDGE, 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS, HARVARD COLLEGE. 



fT^HERE are some subjects which are unapproachable by any of 

 J- the present methods of scientific investigation, yet the human 

 mind, especially that form of it which is utterly untrained in scien- 

 tific methods of thought, loves to ponder over the profoundest mys- 

 teries, and calls upon Science with an almost imperative tone to solve 

 moral doubts and fears. One of the greatest questions which one 

 finds is perplexing the general reader of popular science, who is also 

 an independent thinker on religious questions, is that of the survival, 

 so to speak, of the human mind and all that betokens the mental and 

 moral power of man after death. The alarming doctrine that the 

 mind and soul are the result of a process of growth in the individual, 

 like physical growth of bone and muscle, and that body and mind 

 increase and decrease together, and are resolved into the elements 

 again at the close of life, is not infrequently put forward by material- 

 ists. It is maintained, further, that the belief in immortality is 

 largely a matter of education, notwithstanding the evidence which 

 is brought forward to prove that even uncivilized nations have a 

 belief in deities and a future life. To the materialist, the picture 

 presented by the unwrapping of a Peruvian family burial-sack, with 

 its young and old mummies, and its collection of pottery and bag of 

 grain to help the disembodied spirits on their w r ay to a happier hunt- 

 ing-ground, is pathetic only because it seems a hopeless superstition. 

 What kind of a soul, it is asked, has the Digger Indian who is hardly 

 more intelligent than a wild animal? If he has a mind and soul, so 

 has my dog. No; what we call the soul is a cultivated state or con- 

 dition which perishes like a highly-disciplined adaptation of the mus- 

 cles of the body which a gymnast possesses. It is a state of crys- 

 tallization ; it is a reaction or interaction of atoms consequent upon 

 physical growth. AVhen the body dies, the mind and its attributes 

 perish. Such utter disbelief in the great doctrine of the resurrec- 



