ON IMMOETALITY. 155 



Thought, emotion, volition, the psycho-physiologist 

 tells us, the three things which make up consciousness, or 

 the mental side of the man, are inseparably bound up 

 with the brain and nervous system, whose functions they 

 are, just as it is the function of the heart to pump up the 

 blood, and of the lungs to aerate it; and as all functions one 

 day evidently cease their work together the heart to beat, 

 the eye to see, the lungs to breathe- by what logic, it is 

 demanded, can an exception be made in favour of think- 

 ing, the function of the brain, which as palpably ceases 

 as all the rest ? Can thought go on after the dissolution 

 of the brain, the thinking organ ? Indeed, i thought; if 

 consciousness be only a function of the brain, to put the 

 question thus is to show the absurdity of the doctrine of 

 a future life. For can a function be even imagined to 

 exist without the organ whose action in fact constituted 

 its sole existence ? The soul, of whose future existence 

 you speak, is nothing but our consciousness composed of 

 its threefold contents, and these are only functions of the 

 bodily organism the highest functions, it is allowed, but 

 still only functions, all of which must cease together with 

 the body. Is not the power of muscular movement 

 palpably arrested when the limbs become rigid ; and the 

 power of thought, is it not to all appearance as palpably ? 

 why should the appearance be deceptive in the one case 

 rather than in the other ? It is not a case of an inde- 

 pendent entity temporarily lodged in tKe body which 

 merely changes its residence at death, or of an entity 

 which could exist without any bodily residence, as Plato 

 and Butler and the metaphysicians generally conceived 

 it ; it is the case of a power, or function, or faculty, which 

 ceases with its appropriate bodily organ. Or, if you 

 prefer it, it is the case of an effect which ceases, like every 

 effect, with its. proper cause ; for the brain is the cause 



