222 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



demonstrably the physical consequents of physical antecedents. The chain 

 of physical causation is complete in itself. 



There is yet another defect, as it seems to me, which ought to be pointed 

 out in Mr. Prankland's theory. It will not fit the case in which cerebral 

 phenomena must be regarded as antecedents of mental ; as in the instance 

 of diseases and lesions of the brain, idiocy, and old age. If we suppose 

 that, in the case of the voluntary exercise of intellectual power, mind may 

 detect itself in action upon matter, it is equally true in the cases above 

 suggested that the relation is reversed, and matter is found in action upon 

 mind. The causal nexus must be affirmed in all cases, or rejected in all. 



In any view of it, I prefer Mr. Frankland's theory to the naked ma- 

 terialism of Professor Huxley's essay on the " Physical Basis of Life." It 

 is better, I mean more philosophical, to regard the motions of a man's brain 

 as physical effects of his mind or will, than to reverse the supposed order 

 of causation, and affirm, with Huxley, that mind is " the expiression of 

 molecular changes " in the protoplasm of the cerebral cells. I reject both 

 opinions ; but, in so doing, must not be thought to deny the obvious truth 

 that the human mind is made manifest in and by a material organism. It 

 is only through such an organism that we can communicate with each 

 other. We need not seek, in the obscure, involuntary, and to us inexpres- 

 sive, motions of the brain, for proofs of exact correspondence between the 

 mind and the physical organism. In the face, voice, and eye of man, we 

 have the familiar exponents of his intellect and soul. Cerebral anatomy, 

 with its dark lantern, will never add a perceptible ray to the broad day- 

 light of conviction in which we live upon this subject. As regards our 

 undoubted command over these well-known indicia of thought and feeling, 

 it is psychical, not physical ; as I have already tried to explain in the case 

 of voluntary movement of the limbs. Behind (so to speak), and beyond, 

 the innermost nerve-centres, sits the Will, apart from the material appa- 

 ratus ; and its mandates are transmitted, we know not how, we know not 

 why, by ways inscrutable to science, never to be laid bare by scalpel or 

 dissecting-needle, to the corporeal agents. It is in vain, as Professor Bain 

 points out, that we "insist on some kind of local or space-relationship 

 between the extended and unextended." " A certain mystery," he admits, 

 " has attached to the union of mind and body." The mystery, thus spoken 

 of in the past tense, remains a mystery, and I believe will ever do so. Our 

 minds are manifested in material phenomena, but are not themselves the 

 causes of these phenomena ; neither are they the effects ; nor can any 

 mental be identified with any physical event. 



But, again, I must not be supposed to deny that mind, or, as I prefer to 

 say, a mind, is the true ultimate cause aUke of the human intellect and of 



