MATERIALISM. 209 



lations do exist, however imperfectly defined in their 

 details, is well attested by observation. It is hard in 

 such a case to accept quantity as a measure of quality, 

 yet we must needs do so under certain conditions. 

 That there are tracts or local portions of the brain, 

 with which the convolutions are perhaps most inti- 

 mately concerned, having special connexion with dif- 

 ferent faculties of the mind, can scarcely be denied, 

 looking to the various physiological evidence for this 

 fact. Even the faculty of speech, on the evidence 

 derived from its morbid changes, has lately been sub- 

 mitted to this interpretation. But admitting to a cer- 

 tain extent such localisation, we still are not beyond 

 the threshold of the question, whence come and in 

 what consist the endowments of thought and feeling as 

 we see them in many animals, and supremely in man ? 

 The question, then, however it be shaped, again forces 

 itself forward : Do the facts which show that unceasing 

 changes of mind are produced by material causes acting 

 through material organs prove that such organisation 

 is in itself capable of generating those wonderful 

 functions of perception, thought, feeling, and volition 

 which in their totality constitute the mind of man ? 



The answer to this question I think to be that no 

 such proof is possible, and that presumption is wholly 

 against it. That we cannot give other explanation of 

 the phenomena is no argument, in a case where reason 

 and consciousness are equally unable to lend any aid. 

 Nothing that the most minute anatomy or physiology 

 have taught us can bridge over that chasm hiatus in- 

 franchissable, Cuvier well calls it -which separates 



p 



