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ON THE REALITY OF THE SELF. 21 
REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING PAPER. 
The Rev. H. J. CLarke writes :— 
I cannot hope to be able to do justice in a few words to the able 
and profoundly thoughtful paper, ‘“‘On the Reality of the Self.” 
The writer, as it appears to me, has successfully exposed the 
fallacy of the materialistic theory in dealing with the two ques- 
tions he has undertaken to answer. 
In considering, however, where the mind resides, I am hardly 
disposed to allow that, in speaking of the brain as ‘“‘its seat” or 
‘‘home,” we are using language which is “ merely poetical and 
metaphorical;”’ for on the assumption that there is a subject of 
sense and consciousness distinct from the organic conditions by 
which they are determined, science teaches that its immediate 
interactions with the organ by means of which it exercises these 
functions, take place within the brain. 
With respect to the question, what is the mind? I think 
that, in commenting on the theories of “Occasionalism”’ and 
“Pre-established Harmony,” the writer might have made it 
apparent that they are gratuitous. For if the absolutely antithe- 
tical dissimilarity, in regard to essence, between spirit and matter 
may be held to admit of the conception that the latter is ruled by 
an Almighty and Eternal Spirit, it cannot be alleged that inter- 
action in the case of a spirit and an organised body is inconceiv- 
able. The intellectual difficulty which seemed to necessitate one or 
the other of these theories, exists only for the imagination. If we 
endeavour to apprehend the process of change in space-occupying 
substance, it resolves itself intimately into re-arrangement effected 
by movement in space; but we cannot picture to ourselves move- 
ment produced otherwise than as communicated by impact from 
something which occupies space. In mental pictures, origination 
and spontaneity can find no place: they are cognisable only in our 
consciousness, whereby we are made acquainted with truths which 
are fundamental, and too deep to be reached by any effort of 
imagination. 
The writer makes valuable remarks in showing that there can 
be no adequate physical explanation of memory. The real exis- 
tence and continuity of the individual appear to me to be demon- 
strated by his ability to resume in consciousness experiences 
through which he passed in years long gone by, and thus to recog- 
nise as his own states of thought and feeling which, from the 
materialistic point of view, were those of another person. Unless 
there be an underlying soul, which receives the impressions made 
upon the brain, it is not apparent how the reproduction of the 
latter can bring about identitication. 
