358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



matter, and matter determines the form of energy, so consciousness 

 determines their form and they determine the form of consciousness. 

 It is well known to the most superficial observer that the body affects 

 the mind, and the mind affects the body. A man with toothache, drunk, 

 or in a fever, in in a bad state to think. When mentally depressed or 

 in great excitement, the body is affected, and disease or even death mav 

 be induced by a fright. A blow on the head may destroy memory for 

 all past events or only part of them. How easy for men, who look upon 

 memory as the substance of consciousness, to declare that that blow on 

 the head suspended consciousness, because memory was a blank for 

 some minutes or hours after it ! As well might we talk of energy being 

 suspended from the time motion ceases to be seen as such in the mag- 

 neto-electric machine till it reappears as motion again in the electro- 

 magnetic machine. "While the body rests in sleep, the forms of con- 

 sciousness are, to all intents and purposes, still, and we say the sleeper 

 is unconscious. Give the alarm of fire, and see how quickly the so- 

 called unconscious man will be aroused. Did he first hear that call and 

 then awake, or did he awake first and then hear the call ? If he heard 

 the call before awakening, then consciousness was awake to hear it 

 while the body slumbered. If he awoke before he heard the call, 

 then the call did not awaken him. No matter how deep the slum- 

 ber of the body, something remains awake to catch the signals from 

 without. 



Every form of consciousness being built of that form we call the 

 ego feeling, or feeling of individual identity, that feeling may be ex- 

 pected to persist wherever consciousness persists. As the connections 

 of matter and energy, so far as form is concerned, are perfectly con- 

 tinuous and complete in every form that each assumes, so the connec- 

 tions of mind and body from beginning to end will be found just as 

 perfect and thorough-going throughout. Given the form of matter, and 

 the form of energy can be at once inferred. The forms of matter, 

 motion, and consciousness, have from beginning to end the most 

 intimate relations with each other. Each moulds the other into the 

 form in which it appears, and it would, indeed, be remarkable from this 

 view of the case if our experiences of the power of bodily condition 

 over mind were not as they are. Nerve-waves are not sensations. The 

 nerve-matter is there and the wave and sensation are there, but by no 

 effort of thought can we conceive them as less than three. Whether 

 any one of these can exist independent of the others cannot be known. 

 We know matter as possessing energy, and when the philosophic mind 

 attempts to divest it of all energy it melts into inconceivability. In 

 attempting to separate energy from matter we are foiled. We know 

 consciousness as connected with matter through energy. When we 

 attempt to remove consciousness in thought from this relationship, it 

 slides out of thought completely. In an ultimate analysis each of the 

 three appears with a substantive basis of its own, but the natures of 



