DR. GREGORY SMITH, ON PSYCHOLOGY. 



133 



Dr. Gregory Smith replied as follows : — 



To Colonel Alves' questions. — There is too frequently a careless 

 use of the word soul. It is a remarkable instance of the vagueness 

 and confusion of thought. " Soul " is used sometimes for the heart; 

 at other times as the immortal part of us. Scientific men say that 

 there is a parallel action of mind and brain, and again of emotions 

 and the heart. The word soul needs definition. Ontology is 

 transcendental metaphysic. It concerns itself with what things 

 really are in themselves, not what they appear to us. 



We are more concerned with the relative than the absolute. 



To Mr. Tuck well. — A child has to distinguish itself from sur- 

 rounding things, this is the beginning of consciousness. Unconscious, 

 cerebration is a remarkable fact and indicates that mind acts 

 mechanically. 



To Bishop Thornton. — We must go back to the same beginning 

 of thought. The little child looks up to its earthly father, and so 

 ascends to the thought of a heavenly. 



To another speaker. — The inquiry whether I am the will or I use 

 the will, is not a question of great moment. The character is the 

 personality. We can recognise evolution in the gradual formation 

 of our being, but the real self is a spark of the light eternal. 



Subsequently Dr. Gregory Smith writes : — 



Professor Orchard's profound remarks required more time than 

 was at our disposal ; may I refer him, Mr. Turner and other 

 speakers, of whose remarks time prevented me from taking 

 particular notice, to my book on Practical Psychologij, Bennett 

 and Co. 



Bishop Westcott in The Gospel of Life, chap, viii, says : — " Man,, 

 made in the image of God, is an indivisible being. We naturally, 

 even necessarily, speak of ' body ' and ' soul ' in such a way 

 as to imply that man's soul is the real 'self,' complete and 

 separable from his ' body.' Yet careful reflection will show that 

 such language simply expresses an abstraction. There is undoubt- 

 edly an antithesis in man, an organism and something w^hich works 

 through the organism. But the living man, the self, is not a part 

 of this antithesis : he consists in combination of both parts. He 

 can no more conceive himself remaining without the one factor than 



