PHYSIOLOGY VERSUS METAPHYSICS. 251 



all its stages and all its factors a non-material process. And it does 

 not involve any serious error to maintain that the formula under which 

 this doctrine obtained the widest acceptance by philosophy, while it 

 best satisfied the craving of ordinary people for some insight into the 

 nature of their mental operations, originated with Descartes. And 

 this philosopher's well-known formula assumed : there exists a spirit- 

 ual, non-extended, indivisible substance, an objective, immortal entity, 

 superadded to and independent of brain, which thinks, feels, and wills 

 — a substance cognizable by self-consciousness alone, and which is in 

 fact the " thinking principle " or proper " soul." Mind thus becomes 

 absolutely and wholly an extra-cerebral product, and the possible 

 offspring of activity on the part of the " soul " alone. The purely 

 hypothetical character of this doctrine, the feeble, in some sense half- 

 hearted, support given it by its originator, its incompatibility with 

 every-day experiences of cerebral disease, and its proving a hopeless 

 puzzle to cultured people, at once endowed with the critical faculty 

 and unbiased by prejudice, all alike failed to shake its supremacy, and 

 for long years it held sway, not as a makeshift, provisional, mere scho- 

 lastic formula, but as an established primary truth. And all this, 

 though Descartes himself, in the following words, honestly avowed his 

 disbelief in the surety of his own doctrine : " Je confesse," he writes, 

 '' que par la seule raison naturelle nous pouvons faire beaucoup de 

 conjectures sur I'dme et avoir de flatteuses esperances, mais non pas 

 aucune assurance " * (I confess that by natural reason we can make 

 many conjectures about the soul, and have flattering hopes, but no 

 assurance). 



Meanwhile, as mind was thus made a product of the soul, the ques- 

 tion at once arose by necessary involution. What in turn was the soul ? 

 Now, in all probability, no more startling chapter figures in the his- 

 tory of philosophy than that chronicling the varied efforts made at 

 furnishing a sufficing reply to this query. From the days of Plato to 

 our own, metaphysicians seem to have lost themselves in a maze of 

 conjectures, too often, imfortunately, no less dogmatic in tone than 

 vague and unsatisfactory in essence. Yet be their failures, while un- 

 flinchingly registered, freely forgiven ; the obscurity of the problem to 

 be solved, coupled with the imperfection of the instrument selected 

 for its solution, has ever proved an obstacle to success, even when that 

 instrument has been handled by the deepest thinkers and most devoted 

 searchers after truth. 



Thus, setting aside the profanum vidgus of illogical and inaccurate 

 writers, with whom the word is but a word, carrying with it no ink- 

 ling even of definite signification, we find that with some philosophers 



* In explanation of his doubtingness, we must remember Descartes was not merely a 

 metaphysician — he was likewise a physicist of high distinction. The positive tendencies 

 fostered by physical objective study served to counterbalance within certain limits the 

 subjective transcendental activity of his grand intellect. 



