Heredity, Vai'iation and Genius 71 



The discoveries of radio-active substances hav- 

 ing disclosed imaginable subtilties of matter 

 and force unimaginable when it and its energies 

 were pictured to mind in comparatively coarse 

 material shape and motion, it is lawful and right 

 to think generally of far finer motions at work in 

 vital processes than was heretofore possible. An 

 emotion moving out of the body is truly a sub- 

 tile motion travelling in it, and its external 

 work when it strikes a recipient mind is no less 

 positively physical than the internal metabolic 

 effects which it notably produces on bodily func- 

 tions. Instead of thinking of mind as an abstract 

 spiritual entity separate in nature from body, yet 

 somehow mysteriously working on and worked on 

 by it — the soul of the idiot of the same piece 

 as that of the statesman, only badly housed — 

 and prolonging futile disputations concerning the 

 mutual relations of two essentially independent 

 and unrelated beings, doomed to go along together 

 in a pre-established harmony (marred it is true by 

 frequent friction), through corresponding periods 

 of growth, maturity and decay, it will be more to 

 the purpose henceforth to make matter spiritual 

 in the body, or, more properly speaking, to make 

 material motion raised to its highest power one 

 with so-called spiritual motion — to bring down 

 the higher from its metaphysical height and to 

 exalt the physics of the lower. In conceiving 

 which ultimate identification it will be very neces- 

 sary to form and grasp the clear and distinct 



