a 
a ee Se 
ELS 
59 
dissolution of the body. This faith, though no doubt rudely 
shaken in the minds of some by generalisations drawn from the 
investigations of modern science, has, in the minds of others, 
recently received confirmation from the study of the science to 
which I draw your attention on the present occasion. Next I 
would mention a belief for which I must invent a name, and call 
it Pneumatism, by which I mean to express a belief in a soul which 
is dependent entirely on the material body—a soul in short which 
is not necessarily immortal. The holders of this belief occupy 
a middle position between the materialists and the spiritualists. 
I usé this term here in its wider sense, and not as limited to what 
is called modern spiritualism. Third and last come the materialists, 
and I will give their belief in their own words. “Mind is not an 
entity like the body, nor a part of the structure like the brain or 
the liver, but it is the product of structure. Mind is a function of 
the brain, as digestion is a function of the stomach. Thought is a 
secretion from the brain. When the brain dies, thought ceases.” 
On this definition I would make one or two remarks. When you 
have called thought a function of the brain, you have not really 
explained it ; nor can you explain it as you can explain the process 
of digestion as a function of the stomach: your explanation is, at 
best, but an adroit evasion of a difficulty. The conclusion at 
which you have arrived is one in favour of which a great amount 
of affirmative evidence might be adduced ; but it is not more than 
this ; and we can conceive of thought, mind, and consciousness as 
being something other than a function of the brain, in the sense 
that its origin is in the brain. Thought, mind, consciousness of 
personality, are not secretions of the material brain in the sense 
that their existence is inconceivable without the existence of a 
material brain, but a material brain is absolutely necessary to 
consciousness, thought, or mind during contact with a material 
world. The question presents itself, if we can think without the 
machinery of a brain, why are we endowed with one? The answer 
is, that without a brain, we cannot communicate with the material 
world. On the hypothesis I have advanced, the brain would still 
be necessary to put the nerves in motion, and through them the 
