MIND. 39 



contradict each other. Bacon accordingly, in a very memor- 

 able part of his writings, directs the physical enquirer to be unin- 

 fluenced by religious opinions 1 , as the more independently truth 

 is pursued the sooner will it be gained, and the sooner will the 

 real meaning of a divine statement of natural things, and the 

 conformity of this to physical fact, be established. 



The assertion, however, that the mind is a power of the living 

 brain, is not an assertion that is material ; for a power or property 

 of matter cannot be matter. 



Neither is it an assertion that this power cannot be a something 

 immortal, subtle, immaterial, diffused through and connected with 

 the brain. A physical enquirer has to do with only what he 

 observes. He finds this power, but attempts not to explain it. 

 He simply says the living brain has this power, medullary matter 

 though it be. Seeing that the brain thinks, and feels, and wills, as 

 clearly as that the liver has the power of producing bile, and does 

 produce it, and a salt the power of assuming a certain form, 

 and does crystallise, he leaves others at liberty to fancy an 

 hypothesis of its power being a subtle, immaterial, immortal 

 substance, exactly as they fancy life to be a subtle fluid, or, 

 perhaps, though very extraordinarily, the same subtle fluid (if 

 subtlety is immateriality and immortality) k , elucidating the subject 



1 Si quis animum diligentius advertat, non minus periculi naturali philosophise 

 ex istiusmodi fallaci in iniquo foedere, quam ex apertis inimicitiis imminere. 

 Tali enim foedere et societate accepta, in philosophia tantum comprehend!, aucta 

 autem, vel audita, vel in melius mutata, etiam severius et pertinacius excludi. 

 Denique versus incrementa et novas veluti eras et regiones philosophise, omnia 

 ex parte religionis, pravarum suspicionum et impotentis fastidii plena esse. Alios 

 siquidem simplicius subvereri, ne forte altior in naturam inquisitio ultra datum, 

 et concessum sobrietatis terminum penetret, &c. &c. Quare satis constabat in 

 hujusmodi opinionibus multum infirmitatis, quin et invidiae et fermenti non parum 

 subesse," &c. Cogitata et Visa, vol. ix. p. 167. 8vo edition. In the same para- 

 graph he remarks, with regret, that no writers are more popular than those who 

 pompously set forth the union of divinity and philosophy, i. e. faith and sense, as 

 if it were not illegitimate. t( Haud alias opiniones et disputationes magis secundis 

 ventis ferri reperies, quam eorum, qui, theologiae et philosophise conjugium, veluti 

 legitimum, multa pompa et solemnitate celebrant, et grata rerum varietate animos 

 hominum permulcentes, interim divina et humana inauspicato permiscent." 



k The hypothesis of a subtle mobile fluid is downright materialism the doc- 

 trine of Lucretius. 



. " Quoniam est animi natura re"perta 

 MobUis egregie, perquam constare necesse est 

 Corporibus parvis et Icevibus atque rotundis." Lib. iii. 204. 

 D 4 



