824 ANATOMY OF VERTEBRATES. 



expressing the sum of living phenomena; and who maintains these 

 phenomena to be modes of force into which other forms of force 

 have passed, from potential to active states, and reciprocally, 

 through the agency of these sums or combinations of forces im- 

 pressing the mind with the ideas signified by the terms f monad,' 

 * moss,' ' plant,' or ■ animal.' 



If the physiologist rejects the theological sense of the term 

 if life,' without giving cause for the charge of unsoundness in re- 

 ligious principles, does he lay himself more open to the charge, 

 by rejecting, also, the theologian's meaning of the term ' spirit,' of 

 the term e soul,' of the term f mind,' and we might add of ' sin ' or 

 ' death ' ? That is to say, arguments based upon scriptural ex- 

 pressions of thought-force may be drawn from the like personifi- 

 cations of the aberrations and cessation of such force. Both Poets 

 and Painters have, in each case, endeavoured to realise and give 

 shape to the abstractions. 



When doubting Thomas obeyed the Lord's command, his 

 fingers met resistance below what seemed to him the surface of the 

 side, and, entering the wound, were opposed by a ( force ' exceed- 

 ing the ( force ! they exercised. 1 The resulting idea was, that 

 the ' matter ' of our Lord was there, but wanting where the spear 

 had penetrated ; the fact was the opposition of a force by a force, 

 and the sensation of that opposition. We know of nothing more 

 i material ' than the ' centres of force.' Our ideas of things with- 

 out as within the ' ego ' are the action and reaction of forces, as 

 ' material ' or ( immaterial ' as the ideas themselves. 



In this view is avoided the alternative of 'idealism' with 

 denial of an external world, or that of the personifying the sum 

 of mental phenomena as an f immaterial indestructible soul,' con- 

 tradistinguished from other sums of forces which are as arbi- 

 trarily styled e destructible matter.' Sleep, stimulants, drugs, 

 disease, concur by their effects in testifying that the kinds and 

 degrees of mental manifestations are the result of corresponding 

 affections and changes of structure of the brain. 



How the brain works in producing thought or soul is as much 

 a mystery in Man as Brutes — is as little known as the way in 

 which ganglions and nerves produce the reflex phenomena simu- 

 lating sensation and volition. 



1 cccxxxvi". vol. i. p. 656. The whole of Locke's ' Second Reply ' to Bishop Stilling- 

 fleet may be read, with profit, in relation to the undesigned testimony borne by 

 Physiology to the clear good sense and affinity for truth in the Philosopher's remarks 

 on the relation of the dogma of • immateriality,' ' indestructibility,' and ' separability ' 

 of soul, to a Christian's faith in the resurrection of the dead as resting on the grounds 

 of divine revelation. 



