174 A. T. SCHOFIELD, ESQ., M.D., ETC., ON 



physical violence) as identical, but operating in diifei'ent degrees : 

 the nutrition, and therefore the activity of the cerebral hemispheres, 

 being arrested by the cutting-off of the blood supply, completely 

 and for a pi-otracted period in the one case, and intermittently and 

 regionally in the other. 



I am well aware that in referring the chief agency to the vaso- 

 motor mechanism I offer an explanation of the mode of working 

 only, not of the working itself. No physiologist can explain the 

 molecular changes in the grey matter of the brain which cause 

 thought and action. The man of science is as powerless to do 

 this as he is to demonstrate the living mechanism of the structure- 

 less protoplasm which in one case may remain a homogeneous 

 amoeba and in another may develop into the complex organism 

 of the highest form of animal. At certain limits all help fi-om 

 science and from scientific methods leaves us, and we can form 

 our ideas only from the working of the "supra-conscious" mind, 

 the "sphere of the spirit life" as Dr. Schofield terms it. Then we 

 must either except the teachings of Authority or confess ourselves 

 hopelessly unable to understand. It seems to me that it is 

 impossible from the very nature of things that our human powers 

 can understand Mind as Dr. Schofield defines it. Force apart from 

 matter is to us unintelligible. Mind " as the universal directing 

 agent and mover of matter " our ordinary powers do not permit 

 us to comprehend. In the very nature of things we cannot 

 understand it, for in this stage of our existence thought is the 

 result of the reactions of force and matter. 



I cannot subscribe to Dr. Schofield's view that sub-conscious 

 intelligence and acts are " spiritual or mental functions and not 

 material." I think they are decidedly material ; so distinctly 

 material that the vivid pictui'e of one's own execution, in a 

 dream, may be the result conveyed from the alimentary tract to 

 the sensorium of the irritation of a portion of an undigested supper. 



For the acceptance of Dr. Schofield's definition of Mind, 

 therefore, I conclude that we must dispense with scientific 

 reasonings and be submissive to the doctrine of authority. There 

 is no antagonism to science in the opening sentences of the 

 description of Mosaic Cosmogony. 



Our powers cannot realise the waste and void immensity of 

 chaos nor the force or spirit which influenced it, but the idea is 

 intelligible that the Will of the Creator imparted a vibration to the 

 particles of matter, and — " there was Light." 



