THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 205 



aid and control it by scientific apparatus. These apparatus, 

 however, can only aid, never supplant, introspection. The 

 telescope does not replace the eye, but extends its vision." 

 ("Relation of Exp. Psych, to Philosophy," pp. 40, 41 — Trans. 

 of Wirth.) 



§ 3. Tlie Nature of the Human Soul 



Now our inner consciousness bears unmistakable witness 

 to the existence within us of an abiding subject of our thoughts, 

 feelings, and desires. In biology, the soul is revealed to us 

 as a binding-principle, that obstructs dissolution of the organ- 

 ism, and a persistent type that maintains its identity amid an 

 incessant flux of matter and flow of energy. Clearer still is 

 testimony of introspective psychology, which reveals all our 

 psychic activities and states as successive modifications of this 

 permanent "I," "self," "personality," or "mind," according 

 as we choose to express it. Human language proves this most 

 forcibly; for the intramental facts and data of our conscious 

 life simply cannot be so much as intelligibly expressed, much 

 less, defined, or differentiated from the extramental facts of 

 the physical world, without using terms that include a reference 

 to this selfsame persistent subject of thought, feeling, and voli- 

 tion. Even inveterate phenomenalists, like Wundt, James, and 

 Titchener, are obliged to submit to this inexorable linguistic 

 law, in common with their unscientific brethren, the generality 

 of mankind, although they do so only after futile attempts at 

 a "scientific revision" of grammar, and with much grumbling 

 over the "barbarous conceptions" of the gross-headed aborig- 

 ines who invented human language. Be that as it may, no 

 formulation of mental facts is possible except in terms that 

 either denote or connote this permanent source and ground 

 of human thought and feeling, as is apparent, for example, 

 from such phrases as: "/ think," "/ wish," "/ hear"; '^mental 

 states" (i.e. of the mind) ; psychic functions [i.e. of the 

 psyche) ; subjective idealism (i.e. of the subject) ; a conscious 

 act (from con-scire: "to know along with," because in 



