The Mind. 999 



of the clapper because we can bring more than one sense to bear upon 

 it so that we can get an idea of it; that is we can compare it with some- 

 thing else having points of resemblance or difference. But the sensa- 

 tion sound is the movement of some of our own tissues, and as shown 

 above, since these are the ultimate terms in the series, so far as our ego 

 is concerned, we can get no idea. of sound. All we can do is to get its 

 repetition (in memory), by the reagitation of the same tissues, and when 

 this is done we have the same sensation in reduced volume that we had 

 at first, and so all we can say about it from such test is that sound is 

 sound. We might objectively examine such tissues in another brain, 

 and while they were to their owner such sensation, they would be to us 

 merely a vibratory quiver; just as a deaf man might inspect a ringing 

 bell and see its motion and feel its vibrations without the least concep- 

 tion of sound. 



Our ideas of what constitutes motion are largely matters of habit. 

 We now regard heat as motion, with no more question than we do the 

 wa\ing of a flag. But it was not so with our ancestors. They thought 

 of it as a substance, and called it caloric. 



The third proposition mentioned by Prof. Huxlej^ requires to be no- 

 ticed; viz., that sensation originates independently of the motion of the 

 sensorium, but it is a concomitant of it. Something like this seems to 

 have been the opinion of Prof. Bain. He says the mind and body are 

 inseparable, and he appears to believe that mind and body grow up to- 

 gether, being linked to each other from the very beginning, a unit 

 which he calls mind-body. He says, without the plrysical alliance 

 "we should not have mental states at all." Prof. Bain sees and 

 states the facts, but he is barred from any intelligible explanation of 

 them by the persistent fetish of an immaterial mind considered as a 

 thing or substance. He saw the two together as he supposed ' but 

 realized the impossibility of accounting for the union of two things 

 utterly destitute of common bonds, belonging, as they seemed to do, to 

 entirely different kingdoms, and amenable to entirely different sorts of 

 laws. He says, " We have every reason for believing that there is in 

 company with all our mental processes an unbroken material succession. 

 From the ingress of a sensation to the outgoing responses in action, the 

 mental succession is not for an instant dissevered from a physical succes- 

 sion. A new prospect bursts upon the view, there is a mental result of 

 sensation, emotion, thought, terminating in outward displays of speech 

 or gesture. Parallel to this mental series is the physical series of facts, 

 the successive agitation of the physical organs, called the eye, the re- 

 tina, the optic nerve, optic centers, cerebral hemispheres, outgoing 

 nerves, muscles, &c. While we go the round of the mental circle of 

 sensation, emotion, and thought, there is an unbroken physical circle of 



