MATERIALISM. 207 



iStahl, and Leibnitz took up in their own phraseology 

 in succession to that of more ancient philosophers. 1 



The materialist argues, and justly as to fact, that 

 the mind and its functions grow together with the 

 growth and structural changes of the body, from in- 

 fancy up to maturity that old age brings on, though 

 less definitely as to time, the decay of both that in 

 all stages of life the phenomena of sleep and dreams, 

 of idiocy and insanity, of delirium and drunkenness, 

 of apoplexy and fainting, and the other various forms 

 and accidents of cerebral disorder all show a direct 

 and indispensable relation of the brain and nervous 

 system to the intellectual and moral states of the 

 man. 2 Of the fact that no material change can occur 

 in the nervous organisation without some correspond- 

 ing change in the mental functions, the proofs are end- 

 lessly furnished by the daily experience of life. Birth, 

 dating even from the foetal state death, at whatsoever 

 age occurring these seeming termini of our being are 

 intelligible to us only as parts of a present necessary 

 co-existence and relation of body and mind. By no 

 effort or artifice of thought can we dissociate these 

 portions of our common nature, so as to feel or con- 

 ceive what we call Mind singly in itself. 



The materialist finds a certain aid to his argument 

 in the strange differences of individual minds. The 

 phrenologist may be wrong or ridiculous in his de- 

 notation of these specialties of character, intellectual or 



1 Germany furnishes the most explicitly avowed materialists of our 

 day, in Yirchow, Vogt, and Moleschott. 



2 A few lines of Lucretius, in his third book, put clearly all that 

 belongs to this argument. 



