1885.| The Relations of Mind and Matter. 1061 
difference in the character of these vibrations with every new kind of 
sensation, since the mind receives a peculiar impression from every 
peculiar sensory impulse. The memories thus implanted in the 
mind represent to us the conditions which exist without us. This 
tepresentation very possibly may not be an exact one. Possibly 
it is only analogically similar. But it is all we know of external 
nature, and although each impression may not truly reproduce 
the condition from which it arose, there can be no doubt that the 
relations between these impressions are correct. The picture 
must be correct as an analogical reproduction if not as an actual 
one. It must be borne in mind also that the impressions received 
indicate the motor conditions of external substances, and that 
they become motor conditions of the psychical substance, so that 
their exactness of representation may be much closer than is 
usually surmised. 
The mental organism thus acts as a mirror, in which the uni- 
verse becomes more or less fully reflected. Its memories are 
reproductions, more or less exact, of external conditions, and it 
exists as, in a partial. measure, a counterpart of external nature. 
But it is much more than this. Its powers are not confined to 
the reception and storage of external energy and the reflective 
reproduction of the forms and forces which emitted these ener- 
gies, but it has a reorganizing power of its own. Its energies 
Combine and produce new conditions, which may or may not 
have a counterpart in external nature. If these new productions 
are the outcome of reason they may represent conditions or 
forces in nature which are not apparent to our senses, as, for in- 
stance, the attraction of gravitation, or the vibrations of heat and 
light. If they are the outcome of imagination they may repre- 
sent conditions which do not exist in nature and which are new 
Creations of the mind. ; 
The vision of a cathedral, for example, gives us a mental im- 
Pression which becomes persistent. The mind has henceforth 
among its stores the image or representation of the external com- 
pound of matter which we call cathedral. A picture or a descrip- 
tion of a cathedral may produce the same image. Close observa- 
tion gives minute knowledge of the constituent parts of this 
edifice, and reasoning yields what the senses cannot convey, a 
conception of the architectural principles involved and of the 
forces at work in binding the parts of this structure together 
