PSYCHOLOGY. 333 



have indeed an empire here, because words, which are airy men, like 

 other men beget children, which are words of words : but the first 

 words of the mind fit to things, which are either human, or the parts 

 of humanity. Hence in its centres every idea is uttered according 

 to the human form. 



We have shown in the foregoing pages that the faculties, powers 

 and causes in man are referable to the types of the organization, and 

 that by correspondence these inner men inhabit the outer body; 

 thus, for example, that consciousness is the mind of skin because 

 consciousness itself is the skin of the mind (p. 283). At present, 

 we do not enter further upon this general subject, which for its com- 

 pletion would require us to trace the whole outline of the mental 

 body, as it runs parallel with the organs of the physical frame. But 

 yet we will select one or two metaphysical ideas, in order to show 

 their fitness to the human form. 



And first we select that of power, which has caused terrible star- 

 ing to eyes philosophic, for they have been trying to identify power 

 with nothing at all, and to see it notwithstanding. From Locke to 

 Brown, through the exhausted receiver of David Hume, the essence 

 of power has been spilt, for want of the vessel of the form. And 

 what is the form of power but the human arm with the will in its 

 muscles? The metaphysicians have asked whence they got the idea 

 of power, but the prior question is, Whether they have got it, or 

 not? Certainly if ever they had it, they have lost it, and their 

 chains of causes and effects are ropes of sand or sequences of weak- 

 ness. On the other hand, it is plain to common sense, that power 

 is shown by deeds, and that the idea of power comes from the show- 

 ing; also that the arm of man is the central executive of experience. 

 All other carriage of causes through effects is but the comparative 

 anatomy of that prime organ. But the central form is the main 

 symbol, or the essential body of the idea. And by the laws of cor- 

 respondence, the idea has that body with it, either consciously, or 

 unconsciously, whenever it is used with force. And moreover from 

 the richness of that body it draws out imagery which is the sharpness 

 of the occasion. 



The controversy about power could not fail to lead to the conclu- 

 sion, that there was no such thing ; which was quite true of the 



