LECTURES AND ESS A YS 



to try the strength of the Bishop's posi- 

 tion, and then allow the Bishop to 

 retaliate, with the view of rolling back, 

 if he can, the difficulty upon Lucretius. 



The argument might proceed in this 

 fashion : 



" Subjected to the test of mental pre- 

 sentation ( Vorstettung)) your views, most 

 honoured prelate, would offer to many 

 minds a great, if not an insuperable, 

 difficulty. You speak of ' living powers,' 

 'percipient or perceiving powers,' and 

 ' ourselves '; but can you form a mental 

 picture of any of these, apart from the 

 organism through which it is supposed 

 to act ? Test yourself honestly, and see 

 whether you possess any faculty that 

 would enable you to form such a concep- 

 tion. The true self has a local habitation 

 in each of us ; thus localised, must it not 

 possess a form ? If so, what form ? 

 Have you ever for a moment realised it ? 

 When a leg is amputated the body is 

 divided into two parts ; is the true self 

 in both of them or in one? Thomas 

 Aquinas might say in both ; but not 

 you, for you appeal to the consciousness 

 associated with one of the two parts, to 

 prove that the other is foreign matter. 

 Is consciousness, then, a necessary ele- 

 ment of the true self ? If so, what do you 

 say to the case of the whole body being 

 deprived of consciousness ? If not, then on 

 what grounds do you deny any portion of 

 the true self to the severed limb? It seems 

 very singular that, from the beginning to 

 the end of your admirable book (and no 

 one admires its sober strength more than 

 I do), you never once mention the brain 

 or nervous system. You begin at one 

 end of the body, and show that its parts 

 may be removed without prejudice to the 

 perceiving power. What if you begin at 

 the other end, and remove, instead of the 

 leg, the brain? The body, as before, is 

 divided into two parts ; but both are 

 now in the same predicament, and neither 

 can be appealed to to prove that the 

 other is foreign matter. Or, instead of 

 going so far as to remove the brain itself, 

 let a certain portion of its bony covering 

 be removed, and let a rhythmic series of 



pressures and relaxations of pressure be 

 applied to the soft substance. At everj 

 pressure ' the faculties of perception and 

 of action ' vanish ; at every relaxation oi 

 pressure they are restored. Where, dur- 

 ing the intervals of pressure, is the per 

 ceiving power ? -I once had the discharge 

 of a large Leyden battery passed unex 

 pectedly through me : I felt nothing, bu' 

 was simply blotted out of conscious 

 existence for a sensible interval. Where 

 was my true self during that interval? Mer 

 who have recovered from lightning-strok( 

 have been much longer in the same state 

 and, indeed, in cases of ordinary con 

 cussion of the brain, days may elaps< 

 during which no experience is registerec 

 in consciousness. Where is the mar 

 himself during the period of insensibility '. 

 You may say that I beg the questior 

 when I assume the man to have beer 

 unconscious, that he was really consciou: 

 all the time, and has simply forgotter 

 what had occurred to him. In reply tc 

 this, I can only say that no one neec 

 shrink from the worst tortures that super 

 stition ever invented, if only so felt anc 

 so remembered. I do not think you: 

 theory of instruments goes at all to th< 

 bottom of the matter. A telegraph 

 operator has his instruments, by mean: 

 of which he converses with the world 

 our bodies possess a nervous system 

 which plays a similar part between th< 

 perceiving power and external things 

 Cut the wires of the operator, break hi: 

 battery, demagnetise his needle ; by thi: 

 means you certainly sever his connectior 

 with the world ; but, inasmuch as these 

 are real instruments, their destructior 

 does not touch the man who uses them 

 The operator survives, and he knows tha 

 he survives. What is there, I would ask 

 in the human system that answers tc 

 this conscious survival of the operato: 

 when the battery of the brain is sc 

 disturbed as to produce insensibility, o: 

 when it is destroyed altogether ? 



" Another consideration, which yoi 

 may regard as slight, presses upon m< 

 with some force. The brain may chang< 

 from health to disease, and through sue! 



