BAIN ON FORCE AND MIND. 243 



unbroken material succession, side by side with all our 

 mental processes," yet he says in the same paper, " The 

 brain is a system of myriads of connecting threads, 

 actuated, or made alive, with a current of influence 



other modes of being by revelation or by the evidence of the senses 

 testifying to certain facts -which indicated a reversal of the otherwise 

 invariable laws of matter and force. Such facts would be supernatural, 

 or miraculous, but would be none the less credible because human, 

 beings would still be incapable of conceiving the nature of the beings 

 exercising those miraculous powers. However, the belief in the 

 spiritual world does not necessarily countenance the notion of spiritual 

 substances taking part in the ordinary operations of life and mind in 

 the material world any more than in those of gravitation or chemical 

 action, for the same law of equivalence of force holds good in the or- 

 ganic as in the inorganic kingdom. And no spirit could have any in- 

 fluence on mind or life, any more than on so-called brute matter, except 

 by expenditure of force. Now this implies the expenditure of what 

 a spirit cannot possibly possess if force is an affection of matter. If, 

 therefore, a spirit can have any influence whatever on material beings, 

 either occasional and exceptional, or continual as a substantial mind, 

 it must have the power of creating, out of nothing, a measurable, in- 

 destructible something, which we know as force. Such a power has 

 hitherto been ascribed to the Almighty alone. Doubtless at His plea- 

 sure He could endow subordinate spiritual beings with such a power, 

 but all exercise of it would be to its supernatural and miraculous, and 

 every alleged instance of it would require the strongest proof. No 

 conception of the human mind of a spiritual or immaterial substance 

 is at all more congruous or respectable than the vulgar notions of 

 those mere creations of the fancy, ghosts, fairies, imps, genii, and 

 the like. The slightest rap of spirits imagined by the so-called 

 spiritualists, who in our day are, no doubt, the intellectual descend- 

 ants of the believers in magic and witchcraft, would be as great a 

 miracle as any recorded in Scripture. And, in short, the smallest 

 influence exerted by any spirit on material objects or creatures, even 

 the slight stimulus needful to excite a spectral illusion, would be a 

 creation of force, and therefore supernatural. Whatever may have 

 been the case in past ages, we have no warrant for the belief that such 

 supernatural power is now given to subordinate immaterial beings to 

 act on the material world, Or its inhabitants. Science, strictly so called, 

 affords no evidence of the existence of immaterial substances, beings,, 

 or intelligences, and for her such exist not. On this subject, there- 

 fore, appeal to science is vain. Let us be satisfied to receive in their 

 widest sense the words of the inspired writer, " Eye hath not seen, nor. 

 ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things," not 

 only alluded to, but as equally applicable to all things pertaining ta 

 the nature of the spiritual world. 



162 



