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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



weight? Such "proof," inasmuch as it transcends experience, can 

 never advance beyond the unreality of subjective formulation, can 

 never attain the reality appertaining to objective demonstration, l^ay, 

 Kant admits more than this : he grants nothing can really be proved 

 by metaphysics concerning the attributes, or even the existence, of 

 the soul ; while holding that, inasmuch as its reality can not, on the 

 other hand, be disproved, such reality may, for moral purposes, be 

 assumed. So that this sublimest of the world's thinkers is obliged in 

 ultimate analysis to admit that ordinary common-sense may prove as 

 successful in wrestling with the problem as the vastest inborn intel- 

 lectual potentiality intensified by prolonged culture. 



Reaching next the modified or hybrid metaphysical and physiolo- 

 gical school of the present day (the former element largely predomi- 

 nant), we find one of its most eminent representatives. Bain, seeming 

 to teach that, whatever it is, the soul has but loose connection with the 

 body. " The body might," he assures us, " have its bodily functions 

 without the soul, and the soul might have its psychical functions in 

 some other connection than our present bodies.* But surely, as indeed 

 this psychologist elsewhere himself admits, mind is a function of the 

 body ; therefore it follows implicitly from his propositions that mind 

 may exist without the soul, whereas the metaphysical contention de- 

 nies the possibility of thought without it. Note further that this 

 thinker, with wise discretion, shrinks from any disclosure of his own 

 idea, either by affirmation or negation, of the nature of the soul, and 

 leaves us in total ignorance of what he desires us to understand, when 

 on his own behalf he employs the word. 



"We may remark in passing, that Plato thought the soul could exist 

 without a habitat in the human body. Kant, on the other hand, held 

 it to be beyond our powers to make any affirmation as to the pos- 

 sibility of its separate existence. Dugald Stewart, somewhat in the 

 same vein, held that we " have no direct evidence of the possibility of 

 the thinking and sentient principle exercising its various powers in a 

 separate state from the body." Here, be it observed, the soul, as with. 

 Descartes, is a "principle." Is this anything more than a mere word? 

 What is the actual meaning of the term in this connection ? or has it 

 any meaning ? What explanation does it furnish of the facts ? 



The foregoing brief analysis of metaphysical opinion, though ob- 

 viously and necessarily imperfect, is not one-sided or dishonest, and 

 seems to render the conclusion inevitable that introspective psychology 

 has failed to supply a definite presentment of the nature of soul. 

 Metaphysicians have, in truth, merely postulated its existence and en- 

 dowed their creation with a series of attributes, the nexus of no single 

 one of which with its assumed factor has ever been made the subject 

 of serious proof ; while, in speaking of mind as one manifestation of its 

 activity, they simply ascribe the performance of a positive act (that of 

 * "Mind and Body," p. 153. 



