March 1, 1872.] 361 [ Price. 
ANOTHER PHASE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
By E. K. PRIcE. 
(Read before the American Philosophical Society, March 1st, 1872. 
“All flesh is not the same flesh.”” “There is one flesh of men and an- 
other of beasts.”? ‘What is a man profited if he shall * * * lose his 
own soul?” 
Those who have lived through nearly three-fourths of the Nineteenth 
Century, and witnessed the many useful and brilliant discoveries that 
have illustrated the past two ages, may not safely venture to discourage 
the boldness of any investigations that are legitimately pursued. Nor 
will any one properly criticise or censure those who in the main are doing 
good service to science, unless he clearly perceives that the great canon of 
philosophizing, which all must acknowledge, has not been duly observed. 
When such case occurs in matters of highest importance, it then becomes 
the duty of the humblest to speak out in the correction of what he believes 
to be error, in the name of an all-pervading philosophy, and in behalf of 
our common humanity, according to his own conviction and ability. 
The first lesson the scientist should learn is that of the limit of the 
human understanding, beyond which it is useless to attempt to investi- 
gate ; and to recognize as inviolable those secrets which the Creator has 
chosen to reserve to Himself, and to which there is no response to interro- 
gation. The second, is to make sure of all the facts requisite to the 
ascertainment of truth, and thence to draw only such conclusion as the 
known facts will justify. 
The physicists of this century have studied life from its physical basis, 
and have too often made the life and the mind of man the product of 
matter. I propose to discuss this theory, particularly in review of Pro- 
fessor Huxley’s Physical Basis of Life, both to show that he has drawn 
his conclusions upon inadequate facts, and that he has left out of view 
the facts that show the distinctive nature and operations of the life and 
of the mind. 
Let us first consider a few of the subjects having a bearing upon his 
theory, wherein the limit to knowledge is recognizable, beyond which 
further research is sure to be baffled. Nothing is more familiar to us 
than our own life. It is that self we should best know; and we can and 
do know many things about it; indeed all about it, except the mystery 
how it can possibly be, and can carry on its own functions. We can see 
and dissect our bodily structure of bones, joints, muscles, tendons ; brain, 
nerves, tissues; heart, arteries, veins, etc. We see and feel the body’s 
functions as they are carried on. We see how it is fed with food, and 
how the circulations are kept going and the strength is maintained ; and 
know that the food taken is transmuted into the living being. We are 
invited to eat and drink to appease hunger and thirst, and thereby we 
both avert greater pain, and enjoy pleasure. The food is dissolved by the 
gastric juice secreted by the stomach, and is then chyme. This in its de- 
A. P. S.—VOL,. XIT.—2T 
