140 ALFRED T. SCHOFIELDj ESQ.^ M.D., M.K.C.S., ETC., ON 



may be thrown into violent action, causing the person to spring 

 vigorously away from the injury. 



AVhen we speak of higher loops ascending to the cor- 

 tex, and when we remember that besides these loops the 

 brain cells send off masses of fibres that ascend to the 

 cortex and appear to end there, and when we ask what are 

 the sources ot the impulses that control these loops and fibres 

 that are evideutly the vehicle of voluntary actions, we are 

 brought face to face with two great questions : " Is there a 

 mind apart from the brain ?" and " Can mind act on matter : 

 or that which is immaterial on that which is material?" 

 This subject cannot be wholly passed by, and must be here 

 briefly touched on. 



With regard to the second question Professor Clifford 

 settles the whole point for us by the dogmatic statement 

 that " To »ay, will, influences matter is neither true nor 

 untrue, but simply nonsense." If this ex cathedra state- 

 ment be true, I fear a good many of us talk great non- 

 sense, and some of us will certainly do so to-night. Before 

 answering it, however, let us consider our first question, 

 as to the existence of mind apart from brain. 



The existence of the Avill, which is the supreme assertion 

 of mind, is proved by knowledge and experience. The 

 formulas, " Cogito, ergo sum^^ and "I know, I am, I can, I 

 will," both express this. Feeling and tliought and will are 

 the only things we know to be real ; all else is ascertained 

 by our senses. The consciousness of effort as well as pur- 

 pose in will is strong proof of its real existence. The con- 

 trary belief, that we are actually automatic, that voluntary 

 actions are only so called because their automatic nature has 

 not as yet been discovered, and that the mental phenomena 

 that follow brain actions and movements, such as sensa- 

 tions of pleasure and so forth, are merely the products of 

 such movements, or at any rate associates of them, as the 

 melody is the result of playing on a harp, or motion the result 

 of rowing in a boat, is negatived not only by experience but 

 by the following considerations. Are we, for instance, as Dr. 

 Courtney asks, "to consider that mental states are merely the 

 products of movements of material molecules ? " Is thought 

 a secretion of the brain, or are we, in the words of Mr. S. H. 

 Lewis and others, to speak of the equivalence and identity 

 of mind and matter, so that thought and nerve action are 

 two sides of the same thing, or to use one of the most 

 recent similies, "that the mental and physical sensation 



