260 Transactions of the Am eric an Institute. 



trntli in tliis accnsation. If one is gazing at the stars, it is evident 

 tliat lie may stumble over tlie stones at his feet ; and jet that is not 

 a sufficient reason why he should not sometimes look at the lieavens. 

 But the action wliich I most deprecate in connection with meta- 

 physics is the presentation of false conclusions, is not merel}' turning 

 away from this field of inquiry, but putting in the place of it that 

 which is not its fair representative. 



The Power or the Mind. 

 There is a disposition in our times especially to look upon mind as 

 the product of the external world ; to regard it as played upon by 

 the external world, by visible things, by audible things, l)y things 

 tasted and handled, till finally we conceive it as produced by things 

 altogether outside of it ; and not as giving form and knowledge to 

 the world in the midst of which it is placed as the great creative 

 agent. I wish to urge upon you this evening the power of the mind 

 and its independence, the fact that it brings to the material about it 

 the key of knowledge, and does not acquire that key, those methods 

 of explanation from the external world. In reachinoc this end I 

 invite your attention iirst to the power of the mind in connection 

 with the senses. How does the external matter, material of the 

 senses, present itself in the hands of the physicist? Take the eye, 

 for instance. He inquires into the character of light. He finds it 

 may be resolved into motion, and the various colors into varioas 

 kinds of motion of different degrees of ra])idity. He traces this 

 motion to the retina, and all he knows there of it is still motion. He 

 has now reached the nerve, and through this [masses on to the brain. 

 Everywhere, as the result of his inquiry, he meets with motion, a 

 change of molecular relations. The last point to which he can trace 

 this process is the gray matter of the brain, homogeneous in its struc- 

 ture. The same is found to be true of the ear. All its phenomena 

 are resolvable into motion, a motion passing on to the gray nervous 

 center. Thus in each of the senses, whether the sensation takes its 

 rise in physical or chemical force, the upshot is another modification, 

 by motion, of the substance of the brain. RLMneiiiber now that this 

 nervous matter is homogeneous, and that out of this one material 

 the mind builds up for itself all that comes to it from the external 

 world. Is not, therefore, the most marvelous thing in this process 

 the constructive power of the mind; the transforming power of the 

 mind by which it makes everything, as it were, out of ncjthing, out 



