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weak as the first. The phenomena of Disease, Insanity, old Age and the like, 

 give no just ground for the conclusion that Thought and Feeling are mere 

 products of the material organisation. Again 1 say, the Physical are not 

 shown to be more than concomitants of the Mental occurrences ; and io is still 

 open to the Theist to refer their connection to the Will of the Almighty.* 



I am fully aware that in spite of every argument there will remain on 

 some minds a strong, though perhaps not distinct impression, that the advance 

 of physical science, unfolding more and more as it is doing the boundless plan 

 of creation is decidedly adverse to a belief in Human responsibility. The 

 sources of this general notion are well worth exploration. But I must now 

 limit myself to the narrow ground of the special tendency in this direction of 

 the physical facts I am to-night endeavouring to interpret. Before concluding, 

 I propose, therefore, to say something on the seemingly close atfinity to the 

 Brute Creation which the Naturalists have fastened upon us. At the first 

 aspect of the facts on which this unpleasing conclusion is based ; when, too, 

 we hear an Owen declare that to determine the difference between Homo and 

 Pithecus is the Anatomist's difficulty ; or when a Huxley affirms, that no 

 cerebral barrier intervenes between us and the Quadrumana ; our blood begins 

 to curdle, and for a time, we are on the way to think that the dignity of Man, 

 his awful responsibilities, his Heavenly hopes, alike are dreams of Theologians, 

 which the wiser modern world has now left far behind it. "Yea," say we, in 

 such a mood, " yea, they have all one breath ; so that a man hath no pre- 

 eminence above a beast ; all go to one place ; all are of the dust, and all turn 

 to dust again." And what is worse, we are half tempted to the logical 

 conclusion, " that for a Beast there is nothing better than a Beast's enjoyment," 

 nothing better for a Man than that he " should eat and drink, and that he 

 should make his soul enjoy good in his labour." But rousing ourselves to 

 consider facts, we cannot but perceive the folly of ignoring the immense chasm 

 which separates the reflecting mind, thus debating with itself these arduous 

 themes from the highest of the brutes. Anatomy, it is said, can detect no 

 difference between the brain of a Newton and that of the last discovered Ape. 

 Is it indeed so 1 So much the worse then for Anatomy ! At most it comes 

 to this, that there exist no physical signs of an enormous disparity. But this 

 is no reason for discrediting our own most certain conviction that the disparity 

 does, in fact, exist. A far more likely solution is, that the imperfect methods 

 of the Science are as yet unequal to detect the physical indicia. I, for one, am 

 far from thinking that anatomy may not hereafter throw a strong reflected 

 light upon mental science. I say a reflected light, for the original ray divine, 

 the pregnant hint of what to look for, must ever come from Psychology itself. 

 Meanwhile, what folly to surrender our beliefs, because they are not contradicted, 

 but, simply, unrecognised, by the imperfect science of the day. The greater 

 physicists are too wise to forget the limits of their own department. And as 

 to the mere dogmatists of the dissecting room — men, who like Draper of New 

 York, will tell you that those whose fingers have never puddled in the dead 

 brain, can know nothing of the living mind — we must recollect that the 

 " dyer's hand is subdued to what it works in." It is certain that men may, by 

 too gross a familiarity with the secrets of this fleshly frame, " encarnalise their 

 spirits." Look for no wide philosophic scope in such a quarter. Inured to 

 the Physical order of ideas they are become incapable of dealing with the 

 Psychological. Leave them to think, if they can, that their own Meditations, 



* It is exceedingly satisfactory to find that Professor Huxley, in the pajjer to which I 

 shall presently refer, entirely agrees in repudiating any knowledge of efficient causes in 

 Physics. Less accomplished men of the Professor's school are continually forgetting this 

 truth, and setting up material causes in opposition to the spiritual first cause believed in 

 by the Theist. 



