Mind in the Lower Animals. 165 



spirit. Mind is simply brain action. When the brain is disor- 

 dered, mind is disordered. When the brain is healthy, the mind 

 is healthy. When the brain is imperfect in its development and 

 structure, as it is in idiots, then the action of the^mind is hope- 

 lessly imperfect. But when, on the contrary, its development 

 and structure are the most perfect, uniformly its action is the 

 most perfect. 



Moreover, when the brain perishes as it does after death, all 

 mental action ceases, or at least all evidences of it. In short, all 

 that we knew as mind before the death of the individual, perishes 

 with the brain. Any opinion that there is a being so distinct 

 from the body, as to continue to survive after its death, is a mere 

 creation of the fancy, at the dictates of the baseless aspirations or 

 traditions of mankind. 



Mind is, hence, absolutely dependent on the body, and without 

 it has no existence. It is simply a combination of physical forces, 

 which return to their primitive condition after death, ready to 

 enter into new combinations of any or all kinds. Such, in outline, 

 is one class of opinions as to mind. They are what have been 

 QdWedi materialistic. If this class of opinions were true, there could 

 hardly be any difference among thinking people as to whether the 

 lower animals are possessed of minds, as well as man. In point 

 of fact, persons who hold to the view just described, generall}'' 

 admit that animals share in the possession of mind with men. 



By the other class, mind is regarded as something substantially 

 different from the physical organism, or body, though closely as- 

 sociated with it daring the corporeal life of the individual, from 

 which, however, it becomes separated in what is called death, of 

 which this supposed separation is held to be the principal event. 

 After this, the organization of the body indeed perishes, but not 

 so the mind ; for the latter is believed to continue to exist, as 

 mind, in some other state. It is farther conceived, that the mind 

 is an imperishable existence, possessed always of the same facul- 

 ties of knowledge which distinguished it while yet connected with 

 the body, but deprived, perhaps, of the means of mechanism furn- 

 ished by the latter for obtaining a knowledge of the physical 

 world, as well as for manifesting its own existence, or its invisible 



