president's address — SECTION J. 251 



in detail, there are valid grounds for asserting that for every mental 

 change there is a nervous change. The whole study of the pathology 

 of the brain confirms the impression that mental facts are so dependent 

 on cerebral conditions that, when these conditions are changed, there 

 is a change also in the character of the mind. Facts such as these 

 suggest that mental life is simply the result of the working of the bodily 

 machine. 



The hypothesis of materialism has been allied also with the theory 

 of evolution. According to this theory man has descended from a 

 lower animal type ; the whole of the organic world, including plants 

 and animals alike, has sprung from the same primitive forms ; and 

 the organic has, in its turn, been evolved from the inorganic. But 

 evolution, thus widely applied, cannot be denied of mind. With the 

 greater complexity of organic forms, mind has ascended step by step 

 in complexity and efficiency ; and the presumption is that every mind, 

 like every organism, must form part of the great natural series. Follow- 

 ing the same line of thought, it may be plausibly supposed that matter 

 is prior to mind. The suggestion is that the first dawn of mental life 

 appeared when matter had attained the required development, and that 

 greater and greater complexity in the arrangement of physical and 

 chemical constituents, and of the cells which they compose, led at last 

 to the evolution of the human body, and, as its result, of the human 

 mind. The materialist may thus maintain that matter, as prior in 

 existence, has been the cause of the origin of mind as well as of all its 

 subsequent developments. Or, on a more liberal view of the presence 

 of mental facts throughout the universe, he may represent mind as 

 identical with the energy which is inseparable from matter, or as a 

 special form of that energ3\ He may ascribe the psychic qualities of 

 sensation and inclination — though in a rudimentary or unconscious 

 form — to the smallest particle of matter, and even to the ether. (a) 

 Ascending in the evolutionary scale, he may discover in the psychic 

 life of the higher animals the most elaborate and perfect form of physical 

 energy. (&) Thus he may reduce mental phenomena, at this stage, to 

 " elaborate performances of the nervous system. "(r) Or, varying his 

 phraseology, he may describe the mental life of the higher mammals 

 as depending solely on changes which proceed from moment to moment 

 in the cortex of the brain. On this view consciousness is a cerebral 

 function, and the human soul '' merely a collective title for the sum 

 total of man's cerebral functions." ((/) In any case the mental states 

 or activities of man are either identified with physical energy or re- 

 garded as the inevitable effects of physical change. And in whatever 

 form the theory may be expressed it follows from it, as a necessary 

 and avowed consequence, that with the last breath of the bodv th • 

 mind must cease to be. 



There are few who have not at some time or another felt the clutch 

 of materialism. Yet it does not present so sturdy a front now as it 

 did 50 years ago. Thus Haeckel notices that such eminent men of 



(a) Haeckel, " The Riddle of the Universe," pp. 224-5. 229. 

 (5) lb., p. 226. (c) lb., p. 237. (d) lb., p. 208. 



