470 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



accomplishment of its purposes. In this way the auto- 

 matic system becomes a means of exalting the office of 

 volition, and making it in an eminent degree the arbiter of 

 individual destiny. But in the exercise of its prerogative 

 the will is governed by the same great law which rules all 

 the other powers, namely, the acquirement of strength by 

 exercise. Only through that constant exertion by which 

 energy is accumulated can the will gain command of the 

 thoughts and mastery of the impulses. By continual prac- 

 tice the organism grows, as it were, into subordination, and 

 the voluntary powers become habitually predominant. The 

 will is thus, in an eminent degree, capable of education, 

 but when we see how it is enfeebled in bodily debility and 

 utterly extinguished in numerous morbid states of the sys- 

 tem, it becomes apparent to what an extent physiological 

 conditions must enter into the policy of its intelligent man- 

 agement. Even its limited freedom, as physicians well 

 understand, is only coincident with healthy bodily action. 



Sufficient, I trust, has now been said to show that 

 mental operations are so inextricably interwoven with cor- 

 poreal actions, that to study them successfully apart is 

 altogether impossible. The mental life and the bodily life 

 are manifestations of the same organism, growing together, 

 fluctuating together, declining together. They depend 

 upon common laws, which must be investigated by a com- 

 mon method ; and science, in unravelling the mysteries of 

 the body, has thrown important light upon the workings 

 of the mind. It only remains now to point out, that when 

 subjected to the Baconian test of " fruitfulness " — of prac- 

 tical application to the emergencies of experience — the sci- 

 entific method of regarding human nature, incomplete as it 

 may be, already stands in marked contrast to the prover- 

 bial barrenness of the old metaphysics. I will briefly refer 

 to two or three such applications. 



One of the gloomiest chapters of man's social history is 



