Af 
662 
substance, or biogen, is the vital principle of 
the living man. Thus far, then, our author. 
We are in no wise concerned, as yet, to test 
the truth of all this. We desire, for the first, 
only to examine the good sense of it. Our 
author suggests several interesting thoughts by 
his very original definitions. Mind is only a 
relation between soul and body, but not a thing. 
‘ Mind,’ also, ‘is what the spirit thinks in con- 
sequence of its connection with matter.’ ‘ Rea- 
son is the mistress of the mind.’ ‘Its exercise 
is judgment, or the critical faculty.’ Hence, 
it seems, Professor Coues would define a judg- 
ment as ‘‘ the exercise of the mistress of a rela- 
tion that the spirit thinks, in consequence of its 
(the spirit’s) connection with matter.’’ This 
definition obviously expresses a very distinct 
advance in the clearness of philosophic thought, 
and ought to be useful in future logic text- 
books. ‘The materials for it are found on one 
page together. However, it is somewhat unfair 
to judge Professor Coues by any one page of 
his book, since he says various things on vari- 
ous pages; such as, that ‘‘mind [viz.. the 
aforesaid ‘relation’ | is what the spirit retains 
when it becomes disembodied’’ (p. 61), and 
that ‘‘ mind, as the expression of a relation 
between the soul and the body, necessarily dis- 
appears when that relation is discontinued ”’ 
(p. 13). It follows from all this, that Pro- 
fessor Coues has been led to enrich philosophic 
language by a definition of mind of which he 
himself can make nothing, and of which we, of 
course, cannot hope to make much more. 
But of mind, enough. Let us think of this 
soul-stuff. It is ‘semi-material.” This may 
mean either of two things: it may mean that 
soul is made, half of it out of matter, and 
half of it out of something else; or that the 
soul is a sort of a something that is neither 
matter nor the opposite of matter, but halfway 
between the two. Which is our author’s mean- 
ing? If we go from the appendix to the lec- 
ture, we find (p. 55) a definition of biogen, or 
soul-stuff, as ‘‘ spirit in combination with the 
minimum of matter necessary to its manifesta- 
tion.’’ This would seem to answer our ques- 
tion. Biogen, or soul-stuff, is semi-material 
because it is spirit plus a minimum of matter. 
The same view is borne out by expressions in 
the appendix itself. But other expressions give 
countenance to the other view. The soul-stuff 
is the ‘ body of the spirit.’ Its substance is 
the ‘medium of communication between spirit 
and matter.’ It is tenuous, elastic, and proba- 
bly not atomic in structure. It flows about, it 
is sometimes projected from the living body 
during sleep, etc. In all these cases the semi 
SCIENCE. 
ig ey ee ee ee Pe) 
in semi-material seems to refer, not to the com- 
position of biogen as being matter plus spirit, 
but to its nature as being halfway between 
matter and spirit. Soul-stuff is thus expressly 
opposed both to spirit and to gross matter, 
being a sort of a something in between the 
two. One infers, from this confusion and self- 
contradiction, that Professor Coues has written 
his essay on biogen without ever knowing what 
he really means by the word, although it is all 
his own. 
The relation of this biogen to ‘ vital force’ 
is also a question which a careful reader 
anxiously considers. Biogen is not a force at 
all (p. 64), but a Tune (the capitals are our 
author’s). When acted upon by spirit, how- 
ever, it is the ‘ vital principle ;’ and the ‘ vital 
principle,’ as we learn from p. 63, is ‘‘ simply 
the force by which the spirit acts upon matter 
through the medium of the soul.’’ Hence, to 
sum it all up again, the soul-stuff, which is 
not a force, but a thing, becomes, nevertheless, 
when acted upon by the spirit, a force; viz., 
that force by which the spirit acts upon matter 
through the medium of this soul-stuff itself. 
This we must leave to the reader’s ingenuity to 
unravel. We confess ourselves baffled. 
Clear ideas about biogen the reader must 
therefore not expect. Professor Coues does 
not go to his philosophic studies for such cheap 
commodities, and nobody need demand such 
things from him in this field. He has simply 
[Vou. III., No. 69. 
amused himself a little by telling us about the | 
well-known traditional views of many people, 
using a hopelessly muddled terminology of his 
own invention to express no more of the tradi- 
tional view itself than many well-instructed 
children in religious schools can tell us. And 
they would understand their language quite as 
clearly as Professor Coues seems to under- 
stand his own. No apology, to be sure, would 
be needed, if Professor Coues had simply come 
forward to maintain in a plain manner so an- 
cient and respectable a faith as that in the ex- 
istence of immaterial forces and agents: but 
there is, ‘at the same time, no reason why he 
should confuse our minds with new meanings, 
that are yet no meanings, given to words that 
we have long since learned to use somehow ;_ 
and there is no need of new words, unless the 
inventor can give us some clear idea of what 
they are to mean. Therefore the value of our 
author’s contribution to the discussion becomes 
forthwith obvious. 
The lecture itself is devoted to proving the : 
dogmas thus defined. But it is enough to say 
of the whole argument therein set forth, that 
our author seems entirely to forget one very 
