12 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts ami Letters. 



improbable. It would also imply increased difficulty in the 

 acquisition of mental power^ when the facts disclose in- 

 creased ease. Nor is it any relief to this embarrassment to 

 say that the special senses, like the eje, give the mind very 

 complex impressions by an equally complex organic state. 

 The image of a landscape is displaced by each succeeding 

 image. The eye is a specialized organ that has been de- 

 veloped to its present power by stages of growth that date 

 back almost to the beginning of animal life, and yet its maxi- 

 mum power is represented in the reproduction of a single 

 landscape, with very great limitation of distinctness of 

 vision beyond the immediate centre of observation. The 

 method and degree of reproduction in the eye and the ear 

 give no color of plausibility, but the reverse rather, to the 

 supposition that the cerebrum has in its molecular action an 

 exhaustless representative and retentive power both in the 

 regions of imagination and of abstract thought. 



Mathematical truth and all exact knowledge lead to the 

 opposite conclusion. Cerebral states as physical effects can 

 never be the precise counterparts of each other in different 

 brains. ISl'o truth, therefore, dependent on such states could 

 be absolute and universal. Some kind of color-blindness 

 would sooner or later show itself in all directions. 



The deductive reasons already referred to come in to con- 

 firm this conclusion of the relative independence of pure 

 thought in an unmistakable way. No physical relation can be 

 the equivalent of logical convictions ; and no convictions 

 can be merely physical effects. The two lines of law are 

 not parallel, and cannot be made the counterparts of each 

 other. The conditions of thought are not those of force. 



We may then pass all strictly physical experience as in- 

 deed giving limits to liberty and sometimes limits crowding 

 very close upon it, but limits that never abolish it as long as 

 thought remains. We turn now to our intellectual experi- 

 ence in its relation to freedom. 



Men start with a balance of powers and a bias of disposi- 

 tion which are not easily modified or resisted. This natural 

 disposition is the result of primitive passions and tastes that 

 are stubborn facts by no means to be wiped out by a simple 



