MATERIALISM. 211 



schemes have been devised assuming to explain the 

 phenomena of memory and association by these cellu- 

 lar connexions. But such hypotheses are utterly with- 

 out proof, and do not really carry us farther than the 

 hypothetical vibrations and vibratiuncles of Hartley's 

 school. It is better to avow ignorance than thus to 

 screen it. And if we cannot connect this faculty with 

 structure, far less can we conceive such connexion in 

 the case of those higher faculties of intellect and feel- 

 ing to which memory itself is but a minister. 



Minute anatomy, as well as physiological experi- 

 ments, have afforded more certain results as to the 

 functions associated with the medulla oblongata, me- 

 dulla spinalis, and the nervous ganglia. But these are 

 parts either appertaining to organic life or instru- 

 mental only to the mental faculties. And here, as in 

 regard to the brain, we are wholly without knowledge 

 as to the nature of that wonderful endowment of 

 nervous matter ', medullary or cineritious, aggregated 

 or granular, enabling it to fulfil such vast and various 

 purposes throughout every grade and form of animal 

 life. 



This view of the incommensurability r , as it has been 

 called, of matter and mind, of body and soul, has been 

 held by the philosophers of every age ; always em- 

 barrassed, indeed, by terms vaguely defined, such as the 

 *>ous, t/^X 7 ?' an( ^ Trvevpo. of the Greek schools, and the 

 equivalent ambiguities of our own and other languages. 1 



1 The distinction between the voDc and ^u,x'/> so strongly marked in 

 the ' Timseus' of Plato, is denoted even in the old Latin dramatist 

 Attius : ( Sapiinus animo, fruimur anima.' 



p 2 



