Its Composite- aH^ Dissoluble Nature. 175 



It is in tlie amazing flux of these tides of etlieric matter, 

 that all " spirit " phenomena, past and present, found and 

 hold their place in popular credulity. The point always 

 lost sight of by priest and devotee, charlatan and dupe, 

 alike, is that it is only by virtue of long-perfected organi- 

 zation that a "soul" is raised up to self-consciousness; 

 that the human personality requires and presupposes an 

 organized brain which only the entire evolution of the 

 human race has brought into existence ; that intellect and 

 mind result from organized union of the millions of neurons 

 which form the brain and nervous system ; that personal 

 identity exists only by virtue of the coalition of these cells, 

 and no longer than they coalesce ; that self-consciousness 

 depends on that perfected mechanism of sentient filaments 

 by means of which the neurons pool their self-lives to be- 

 come consentient ; and that when this mechanism of union 

 is impaired or destroyed, personality ceases, being resolved 

 first to the inferior intelligences of the cells and ultimately 

 to the lowly sentience of elementary matter — when the 

 cells themselves die and are reduced to their component 

 molecules and atoms. 



It is this point of the long-descended organization of 

 living matter, which the biologist has ever to keep in 

 mind; for if our science teaches one truth more conclu- 

 sively than another it is that intellect and mind are never 

 seen to exist in the absence of a delicately organized union 

 of cells. 



