MATERIALISM AND ITS LESSONS. 66 7 



smallest fractional part are the result of excessive intellectual effort ; 

 a somewhat larger number arise from structural disease ; but the great 

 majority of the insane who have committed or attempted to commit 

 crimes have lost control of their reason because they habitually allowed 

 passion, not reason, to control them. Therefore, we repeat, the greatest 

 possible preventive of crime is to raise a race who shall know how to 

 control their emotional natures through an enlightened will and the 

 habitual exercise of a moral judgment. 



* 



MATERIALISM AND ITS LESSONS. 



By De. HENKY MAUDSLEY. 



IT is well known that from an early period of speculative thought 

 two doctrines have been held with regard to the sort of connection 

 which exists between a man's mind and his body. On the one hand, 

 there are those who maintain that mind is an outcome and function 

 of matter in a certain state of organization, coming with it, growing 

 with it, decaying with it, inseparable from it : they are the so-called 

 materialists. On the other hand, there are those who hold that mind 

 is an independent spiritual essence which has entered into the body 

 as its dwelling-place for a time, which makes use of it as its mortal 

 instrument, and which will take on its independent life when the 

 body, worn out by the operation of natural decay, returns to the earth 

 of which it is made : they are the spiritualists. Without entering 

 into a discussion as to which is the true doctrine, it will be sufficient 

 in this article to accept, and proceed from the basis of, the generally 

 admitted fact that all the manifestations of mind which we have to do 

 with in this world are connected with organization, dependent upon 

 it, whether as cause or instrument ; that they are never met with apart 

 from it any more than electricity or any other natural force is met 

 with apart from matter, and that higher organization must go along 

 with higher mental function. "What is the state of things in another 

 world whether the disembodied or celestially embodied spirits of the 

 countless myriads of the human race that have come and gone through 

 countless ages are now living higher lives I do not venture to in- 

 quire. One hope and one certitude in the matter every one may be 

 allowed to have and to express the hope that, if they are living now, 

 it is a higher life than they lived upon earth ; the certitude that, if 

 they are living the higher life, most of them must have had a vast 

 deal to unlearn. 



Many persons who readily admit in general terms the dependence of 

 mental function on cerebral structure are inclined, when brought to the 

 particular test, to make an exception in favor of the moral feeling or 



