On the Scieyitific Study of Htiman Nature. 453 



The method of regarding man which tradition has trans- 

 mitted to us from the earHest ages, is, at the outset, to 

 cleave him asunder, and substitute the idea of two beings 

 for the reality of one. Having thus introduced the notion 

 of his double nature — mind and body as separate independ- 

 ent existences — there grew up a series of moral contrasts 

 between the disjointed products. The mind was ranked as 

 the higher, or spiritual nature, the body as the lower, or 

 material nature. The mind was said to be pure, aspiring, 

 immaterial ; the body gross, corrupt, and perishable ; and 

 thus the feelings became enlisted to widen the breach and 

 perpetuate the antagonism. Having divided him into two 

 alien entities, and sought all terms of applause to celebrate 

 the one, while exhausting the vocabulary of reproach upon 

 the other, the fragments were given over to two parties — 

 the body to the doctors of medicine, and the spirit to the 

 doctors of philosophy, who seem to have agreed in but one 

 thing, that the partition shall be eternal, and that neither 

 shall ever intrude into the domain of the other. 



As a necessary consequence of this rupture, the living 

 reality, as a subject of study, disappeared from view, and 

 the dignified fraction was substituted in its place. Not 

 man, but mmd, became the object of inquiry. With the dis- 

 appearance of the actual being, went also the conception of 

 individuality, and there remained only mind as an abstraction, 

 to be considered as literally out of all true relations as if 

 the material universe had never existed. The method thus 

 begun has been closely pursued, and for thousands of years 

 the chief occupation of philosophic thought has been to 

 speculate upon the nature and operations of mind as mani- 

 fested in consciousness. Admitting the legitimacy of the 

 inquiry, and that it has to a certain extent yielded valid 

 results, it is clear that the effect of the divorce was fatally 

 to narrow the course of investigation and to prevent all 

 free and thorough research into the reality of the case ; 



