772 OF THE FUNCTIONS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 



doubt, notwithstanding the denial of their validity by those who have had com- 

 paratively little opportunity of observing them ; we refer to the influence of the 

 Body upon the Mind, of physical upon psychical states ; an influence which no 

 one will fail to recognize who studies its phenomena with freedom from precon- 

 ceived theory. But, in reducing the Thinking Man to the level of " a puppet 

 that moves according as its strings are pulled/' it is so utterly antagonistic to 

 our own consciousness of possessing a self-determining power whilst, in put- 

 ting aside, as mere delusions, what we feel to be the noblest conceptions of our 

 nature, it is so thoroughly repugnant to the almost intuitive convictions which 

 we draw from the simplest application of our Intelligence to our own Moral 

 Sense that we feel its essential fallacies with a certainty that renders logical 

 proof quite, irrelevant. On the other hand, the purely Spiritualist doctrine is 

 no less encumbered with difficulties, nor less opposed to facts of most familiar 

 occurrence. For whilst it fully recognizes all that the other ignores, it ignores 

 all that it recognizes ; and in placing the Mind outside of the Body (so to 

 speak), and in denying that the action of the Mind is ever disordered by cor- 

 poreal conditions, it places us in the dilemma of either rejecting the plainest 

 evidence, or of admitting that, after all, we know nothing whatever about the 

 Mind itself, all that we do know being that lower part of our mental nature 

 which operates on the body and is in its turn affected through it. For it must 

 be admitted that, in the delirious ravings of Intoxication or of Fever, or in the 

 perverted reasoning of the Lunatic, we have the same evidence of mental ope- 

 ration that we have in the sayings and doings of the same individuals in a 

 state of sanity ; and ample testimony to this effect is borne by those who have 

 observed their own mental state during the access of these conditions, and who 

 have described the alteration which takes place in the course of their thoughts, 

 when as yet neither the sensorial nor the motor apparatus was in the least per- 

 turbed. 1 Nothing can be more plain to the unprejudiced observer, than that 

 the introduction of Alcohol, or Opium, or other intoxicating agents, into the 

 circulating system, perverts the action of the mind, disordering the usual se- 

 quence of phenomena most purely psychical, and occasioning new and strange 

 results, which are altogether diverse from those of its normal operation. And 

 when once this influence of physical conditions upon mental phenomena has 

 been admitted, we can scarcely refrain from attributing to it a very wide range 

 of action ; seeing as we do how very much the due balance of the Emotions is 

 dependent upon the purity of the blood and the general vigor of the system, 

 and how strangely the normal succession of Intellectual operations may be in- 

 terrupted or altered by local affections of the Cerebrum. No Physiologist could 

 venture to deny, in the face of the crowd of facts which force themselves on 

 his attention, that all Mental phenomena are inextricably linked with Vital 

 changes in the Nervous system ; and that the regular performance of the latter 

 (which we have seen to be dependent on the due combination of physical and 

 dynamical conditions) is essential to the normal sequence of the former. Nor 

 can any one who duly examines the evidence which has been collected on the 

 subject of Idiocy and Cretinism, feel any doubt that, in the original develop- 

 ment of the Mental powers, the healthful activity of the Corporeal organism 

 has just as important a share, as it has in their subsequent maintenance. 



804. It may be fairly asked, then, whether there be any mode of combining 

 the truths contained in the Materialist and Spiritualist doctrines, and of separat- 

 ing them from their associated errors ; and whether any general expression can 

 be framed, which may be in harmony alike with the result of scientific inquiry 



1 See especially the work of M. Moreau "Du Hacbisch et de I'AlSe'nation Mentale, 

 Etudes Psych ologiques," Paris, 1845; arid the well-known "Confessions of an English 

 Opium-Eater." 



