OF VITAL ACTIONS, AND THEIR MUTUAL DEPENDENCE. 73 



may be noticed, the consciousness of personal identity, preserved throughout 

 the continual and rapid changes to which the Nervous structure is subject. 

 The assertion, however, that psychical operations cannot be the result of mate- 

 rial changes, is based on the assumption, that we know far more of the essential 

 characters of both, than is admitted by the best metaphysicians to be the case 

 regarding either. This is one of the questions, which scarcely comes within 

 the boundaries of mere human knowledge. Neither hypothesis is inconsistent 

 with the Revealed doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul ; though the second 

 could not be made to conform to it, without the additional supposition that some 

 refined form of matter, on which psychical operations essentially depend, has 

 also an eternal existence ; and the upholders of this doctrine seek a confirma- 

 tion of it in the expression " spiritual body," used by an authority which is all 

 but supreme.* The certainty of a future existence, in which all that is cor- 

 ruptible shall be done away, is the grand practical fact for the Christian ; on 

 the mode of it the philosopher may speculate ; and, even though he may come 

 to the conclusion that "Mind and Matter are logically distinct existences," yet 

 he finds their operations so inextricably interwoven in the phenomena of Man's 

 terrestrial life, that he cannot pursue either class by itself alone. The physi- 

 ologist, therefore, will enter upon the inquiry with the best prospect of success, 

 if untrammeled by any preformed opinions, and ready to form his deductions 

 from the facts presented to his notice. 



79. That a very close relation may be traced between the variety and im- 

 portance of the psychical phenomena of different classes of animals, and the 

 complexity and size of their material instruments, all must admit ; and it seems 

 difficult, on the supposition of the completely distinct existence of Mind, to 

 separate the phenomena to which organic changes are and must be essential, 

 from such as do not require these for their production. For example, it is 

 universally admitted, that the mind cannot become cognizant of any impression 

 made by an object external to it, except through the medium of a material 

 change, commencing in the orgaji of sense, and propagated to the central 

 sensorium ; and yet of the absolute nature of this change we know nothing. 

 Now the Sensation thus produced cannot give rise (as will.be shown hereafter, 

 288,) to a Perception, the formation of an elementary notion of the nature 

 of the object causing the impression, without a series of changes, in which 

 Memory, Association, Judgment, &c., are involved. Memory seems clearly 

 the result of the permanency of the material change effected by the sensation ; 

 for it is peculiarly liable to be affected by disorders or injuries of the brain, 

 which do not impair that power of Comparison, and perception of Causation, 

 by which the Reasoning faculty works upon the materials submitted to it. If 

 Memory be thus connected with organic changes, the power of mental Concep- 

 tion, which is dependent upon the reftewal of the state immediately produced 

 by Sensation and Perception, is scarcely to be separated from them. Now it 

 seems impossible to draw a distinct line between these operations, on the one 

 hand, and the power of Imagination, which derives most or all of its materials 



* The writer is most happy to find himself supported in these views, by so high a 

 theological authority as that of the propounder of the "Physical Theory of Another 

 Life;" who, after pointing: out how completely the question, whether the human soul is 

 ever actually and entirely separated from matter is passed over by St. Paul, as an in- 

 quiry altogether irrelevant to religion, thus continues : " Let it then be distinctly kept in 

 view, that although the essential independence of mind and matter, or the abstract possi- 

 bility of the former existing apart from corporeal life, may well be considered as tacitly 

 implied in the Christian scheme, yet that an actual incorporeal state of the human soul, 

 at any period of its course, is not necessarily involved in the principles of our faith, any 

 more than it is explicitly asserted. This doctrine, concerning what is called the immate- 

 riality of the soul, should ever be treated simply as a philosophical speculation, and as 

 unimportant to our Christian profession." 



