16 The Relations of Mind and Matter. [January, 
volume of psychic substance might be formed by the addition of 
new surface films, each becoming specially organized by sensory 
influences, and losing its intimate relation to cerebral matter. 
In such a method the bound ether of material molecules may 
be converted into the psychic substance of mind. And with 
every transfer of energy from matter to psychic substance, con- 
sciousness may declare itself. The conditions of mental devel- 
opment and mental reception of sensations, as considered in the 
preceding section, are in close accordance with this idea. We 
have not matter with two sides, or with duplicate physical and 
mental motor relations, as considered by Mr. Bain in his Mind 
and Body, but two distinct conditions of substance, originally in- 
timately bound together, but becoming separate as their motor 
conditions become inharmonious. In such a case the disintegra- 
tion of the brain would not carry with it the disintegration 
of the mental substratum. The latter has ceased to be the 
bound ether of the former, and the cerebral molecules could only 
carry with them their latest increment of bound ether without 
affecting that which had escaped from this condition. Nor could 
the energies which cause the disintegration of the brain produce 
the same effect upon the psychic substance. A substance through 
- which the most vigorous motor energies, such as those of light 
and heat, pass without producing any permanent disturbance of 
its conditions, might remain utterly unaffected by the most in- 
tense disrupting energy of material agencies, and survive the 
body as a concrete organism. 
In fact the close connection between brain and mind seems to 
depend in some measure upon the activity of the brain. This 
activity appears to enhance the attractive hold of the cerebral 
cells upon their psychic outgrowth. It is during the stage of 
cerebral activity that external sensations are most abundantly and 
intensely received. With the partial cessation of this activity 
which takes place during sleep, some degree of weakening of the 
bonds between mind and body seems to take place. During 
deep sickness, or at the near approach of death, the bond seems 
to become still weaker, and the mind, with no impairment of its 
activity, seems often to be partially independent of the inactive 
body. The complete cessation of cerebral activity, which comes 
with death, may utterly break the bond of connection, the mole- 
cules of the brain only retaining their latest increment of bound 
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