LECTURES AND ESS A YS 



behoves our teachers to come to some 

 definite understanding as to this question 

 of health ; to see how, by inattention to 

 it, we are defrauded, negatively and 

 positively : negatively, by the privation of 

 that " sweetness and light " which is the 

 natural concomitant of good health ; 

 positively, by the insertion into life of 

 cynicism, ill-temper, and a thousand 

 corroding anxieties which good health 

 would dissipate. We fear and scorn 

 " materialism." But he who knew all 

 about it, and could apply his knowledge, 

 might become the preacher of a new 

 gospel. Not, however, through the 

 ecstatic moments of the individual does 

 such knowledge come, but through the 

 revelations of science, in connection with 

 the history of mankind. 



Why should the Roman Catholic 

 Church call gluttony a mortal sin ? Why 

 should fasting occupy a place in the dis- 

 ciplines of religion ? What is the mean- 

 ing of Luther's advice to the young 

 clergyman who came to him, perplexed 

 with the difficulties of predestination and 

 election, if it be not that, in virtue of its 

 action upon the brain, when wisely 

 applied, there is moral and religious 

 virtue even in a hydro-carbon ? To u se 

 the old language, food and drink are 

 creatures of God, and have therefore a 

 spiritual value. Through our neglect of 

 the monitions of a reasonable materialism 

 we sin and suffer daily. I might here 

 point to the .train of deadly disorders 

 over which science has given modern 

 society such control disclosing the lair 

 of the material enemy, ensuring his 

 destruction, and thus preventing that 

 moral squalor and hopelessness which 

 habitually tread on the heels of epidemics 

 in the case of the poor. 



Rising to higher spheres, the visions 

 of Swedenborg, and the ecstasy of 

 Plotinus and Porphyry, are phases of 

 that psychical condition, obviously con- 

 nected with the nervous system and state 

 of health, on which is based the Vedic 

 doctrine of the absorption of the indi- 

 vidual into the universal soul. Plotinus 

 taught the devout how to pass into a 



condition of ecstasy. Porphyry com- 

 plains of having been only once united 

 to God in eighty-six years, while his 

 master Plotinus had been so united six 

 times in sixty years. 1 A friend who 

 knew Wordsworth informs me that the 

 poet, in some of his moods, was accus- 

 tomed to seize hold of an external object 

 to assure himself of his own bodily exist- 

 ence. As states of consciousness such 

 phenomena have an undisputed reality 

 and a substantial identity ; but they are 

 connected with the most heterogeneous 

 objective conceptions. The subjective 

 experiences are similar, because of the 

 similarity of the underlying organisations. 

 But for those who wish to look beyond 

 the practical facts there will always 

 remain ample room for speculation. 

 Take the argument of the Lucretian in- 

 troduced in the Belfast Address. As 

 far as I am aware, not one of my 

 assailants has attempted to answer it. 

 Some of them, indeed, rejoice over the 

 ability displayed by Bishop Butler in 

 rolling back the difficulty on his oppo- 

 nent ; and they even imagine that it* is 

 the Bishop's own argument that is there 

 employed. But the raising of a new 

 difficulty does not abolish does not 

 even lessen the old one, and the argu- 

 ment of the Lucretian remains untouched 

 by anything the Bishop has said or can 

 say. 



And here it may be permitted me to 

 add a word to an important controversy 

 now going on : and which turns on the 

 question : Do states of consciousness 

 enter as links into the chain of ante- 

 cedence and sequence, which give rise 

 to bodily actions, and to other states of 

 consciousness ; or are they merely by- 

 products, which are not essential to the 

 physical processes going on in the brain ? 

 Speaking for myself, it is certain that I 

 have no power of imagining states of 



1 I recommend to the readers particular 

 attention Dr. Draper's important work entitled 

 History of the Conflict between Religion and 

 Science (Messrs. H. S. King and Co.). 



