156 THE CKEED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



of thought in the strict scientific sense, that the former 

 is the sum of the antecedent conditions, in the absence 

 of which thought is never produced, but which, being 

 given, carries the power of thought invariably with it. 

 And that thought is fully and adequately described as the 

 function of the brain ; that it is nothing more, and nothing 

 other (for to regard it as a case of causation amounts to the 

 same thing), is proved, according to physiologists, by 

 abundant and increasing evidence.* It is proved by our 

 own varied experience in the effort of thinking, as well 

 as by the report of the most competent psychologists and 

 physiologists who have studied the subject, and who show 

 us in proof of the statement the constant concomitant 

 variations in the state of the brain, and in the faculty of 

 thought, in youth and in age, in sickness and in health. 

 In short, thought grows with the growth of the brain, 

 it strengthens with its strength, it varies with its health, 

 declines with its general vigour, and, must we not con- 

 clude, by the canons of inductive logic, that it finally 

 dies, as it appears to do, with its dissolution ? 



Add to this what embryology shows us, that conscious- 

 ness came by slow degrees from unconsciousness. Once 

 there was absolutely no thought, no consciousness, which 

 was gradually evolved from the growing organism as 

 the final outcome and flower of it. We are sure from 

 this circumstance that the relation between the body and 

 soul is of the most intimate and essential nature. The 

 soul was evolved out of the body, as the flower from the 

 plant ; it came with the body, and must it not go with 

 the body, as Haeckel argues ? f 



4. Moreover, there is a wholly new argument now 

 adduced by naturalists as a result of the Darwinian 



* Bain's Mind and Body. 



t History of Creation, vol. ii. p. 361. 



