EDITOR'S TABLE. 



411 



other heavy body lifted without taxing 

 any one's muscles, the best way to do it 

 is to hire a medium who will engage a 

 disembodied spirit to do the job. Ma- 

 terialism in the sense above limited, far 

 from threatening any injury to or dero- 

 gating from the dignity of mind, is the 

 very thing that will most help to bring 

 mind to the highest perfection, while 

 it promotes its dignity by making all 

 material things subservient to it. 



But there is another point of view. 

 This doctrine, far from being of a radi- 

 cal and disturbing kind, is eminently 

 conservative and favorable to intellect- 

 ual order. Why? Because it estab- 

 lishes the truth that mind is not an un- 

 conditioned entity, as some are inchned 

 to regard it, but a thing strictly condi- 

 tioned and limited. The world ought 

 by this time to have got over the old 

 metaphysical notion of the absolute in- 

 dependence of mind, but it has not, in 

 point of fact, got over it ; and, strange 

 to say, some of those who hold most 

 strongly to the old error are professed 

 freethinkers. In fact, we are not sure 

 but that the ranks of technical "free- 

 thought " are to day the very citadel of 

 that error. It seems to be continually 

 assumed that the vindication of the 

 right of free-thought carries with it an 

 assertion of the competency of every 

 man's thought for all possible intellect- 

 ual enterprises. Here we see the old 

 idea of the mind as a kind of impalpa- 

 ble essence of absolutely unlimited pow- 

 ers, tethered neither to time, to place, 

 nor to circumstances. But supposing 

 the opposite truth were universally and 

 frankly recognized, that each man's 

 mind was simply what circumstances 

 past and present had made it, a man 

 would not in claiming free thought feel, 

 as so many do now, that he was assert- 

 ing his right and his competency to 

 deal with all problems in heaven and on 

 earth, but simply that he was asserting 

 his right to exercise that limited activity 

 for which his mind was adapted. A man 

 whose body was in durance would not, in 



claiming physical liberty, fall under the 

 illusion that if he could onoe gain his 

 liberty he would be competent with his 

 body to perform all manner of gymnas- 

 tic feats. No ; because he knows what 

 his body is fit for, what it has been 

 trained to, and what lies altogether 

 beyond its powers, natural and ac- 

 quired. If, when he had obtained his 

 liberty, somebody wanted him to at- 

 tempt at once, by way of marking and 

 emphasizing his perfect freedom from 

 physical control, some very difficult and 

 dangerous athletic feat to which he had 

 never been accustomed, he would be 

 wise if he turned a deaf ear to the 

 suggestion; or, rather, he would be an 

 extraordinary fool if he listened to it. 

 Yet it will scarcely be maintained that 

 exactly similar folly is not often prac- 

 ticed by way of emphasizing freedom 

 from mental control — that is to say, 

 that men rush at the most difficult in- 

 tellectual problems without any pre- 

 liminary consideration of the question 

 of their competency for dealing with 

 them successfully or hopefully. As long 

 as they arrive at some conclusion which 

 they can fling in the faces of their sup- 

 posed opponents as a trophy of free- 

 thought, they are satisfied. The remedy 

 for this kind of folly is plam. It lies 

 in the "materialistic" doctrine, as we 

 claim the right to call it, that the mind 

 is as limited a thing as the body, and 

 that therefore we can not properly as- 

 sign any more extensive meaning to 

 freedom of the mind than we do to 

 freedom of the body. Both kinds of 

 freedom are good, but neither confers 

 new powers, except in so far as the 

 exercise which freedom makes possible 

 tends to develop power. Power, how- 

 ever, is only developed by rational ex- 

 ercise ; bodily growth can be arrested, 

 and the bodily frame twisted out of 

 shape, by excessive or ill-directed exer- 

 cise ; and precisely so with the mind. 

 While, therefore, we have all possible 

 sympathy with the claim for freedom 

 of thought, we wish we could always 



