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necessity, but by the will of the commander, and the discipline of the men. 

 I, for my part, am prepared to grant that every Thought, Emotion and Memory 

 of Man may have its physical counterpart ; but the Materialist confounds the 

 physical expression with the thing expressed. The absurdity is as great as it 

 would be to identify the motions of the Telegraphic apparatus with the trans- 

 mitted message. As those motions are merely the selected vehicles of expression, 

 so may it be, — so is it, as I believe — with the apparatus of the Human Mind. 

 In short, the mistake of Materialism is the old confusion between symbol and 

 thing signified, which has played such wild work in the World. 



"It is impossible," says a great philosophical writer of the present day, to 

 " form a steady conception of thought except as originating behind even the 

 innermost bodily structures, and intrinsically different from them. However 

 much you refine and attenuate the living organism, yet after all, Thought is 

 something quite unlike the whitest and thinnest tissue ; and the most delicate 

 of fibres, woven, if you please, in fairy loom, cannot be spun into Emotions. 

 Nor is it at all easier to imagine Ideas and Feelings to be the results of organi- 

 sation, and to constitute one of the physical relations of atoms ; and, if anyone 

 affirms that the juxta-position of a number of particles makes a Hope, and 

 that an aggregation of curious textures forms Veneration, he affirms a proposi- 

 tion to which I can attach no idea. Agitate and affect these structures as 

 you will, pass them through every imaginable change, let them vibrate and 

 glow and take a thousand hues ; still you can get nothing but motion and 

 temperature and colour ; fit marks and curious signals of Thought behind them- 

 selves, but no more to be confounded with it, than are written characters to be 

 mistaken for the genius and knowledge which may record themselves in 

 language. The corporeal frame then is but the mechanism for making Thoughts 

 and Affections apparent, the signal-house with which God has covered us, the 

 electric telegraph by which quickest information flies abroad of the Spiritual 

 force within us. The instrument may be broken, the dial-plate effaced ; and 

 though the hidden artist can make no more signs, he may be as rich as ever in 

 the things to be signified. Fever may fire the pulses of the body : but 

 Wisdom and Sanctity cannot sicken, be inflamed, and die. Neither consump- 

 tion can waste, nor fracture mutilate, nor gunpowder scatter away, Thought 

 and Fidelity and Love, but only that organisation which the Spirit sequestered 

 therein renders so fair and noble. To suppose such a thing would be to invert 

 the order of rank, which God has visibly established among the forces of our 

 World, and to give a downright ascendency to the brute energies of matter, 

 above the Vitality of the Mind, which up to that point, discovers, subdues, 

 and rules them. * * * " 



The position that the action of the Brain, styled, " Cerebration " in the 

 latest jargon of Materialism, is identical with Thought and Feeling, must then 

 be surrendered as intrinsically absurd. But next, perhaps, the contention is, 

 that Thought and Feeling are mere effects of a material cause. That the 

 bursting of a small duct on the Brain, should, in a moment, destroy the life 

 of Consciousness, and put a stop to every Mental process, is, no doubt, as has 

 been said, a fact of which the significance cannot be increased by the adduc- 

 tion of a thousand like instances. In this, it may be argued, and in the 

 cognate phenomena of Insanity, and of old Age, is the plain proof that Mind 

 is a mere Organic function ; suspended when the Organ is deranged, and, on 

 its dissolution, ceasing altogether. Now, in common speech, we do, no doubt, 

 talk of the physical occurrence, the apoplexy, the fever, or the blow, as the 

 very cause of the Mind's failure. But, on a closer scrutiny, we find we are 

 not justified in making such an inference. In truth, we have no right to 

 speak at all of a material cause. Of natural' phenomena we know only this, 

 that one event, improperly referred to as effect, invariably attends upon, or 



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