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(2.) Equally unsatisfactory are their representations of the 
agent of science,, whether it be called the human intelligence 
or the human soul. It would seem as though any satisfactory 
metaphysics would of necessity exalt the agent of all these 
achievements to the highest possible position, and accord to it 
the noblest endowments and capacities. To do this has been 
the temptation of scientific thinkers in other ages. It has 
been reserved for the science of our time to show its extremest 
daring by its attempts to degrade its activities, and to crown 
that daring by efforts to dishonour or destroy the agent that 
performs them. It would seem that none but a modern scientist 
could be moved to sublime delight in looking back upon his 
individual self as once floating in the whirl of the original 
fire-mists, or rise to a feeling of exultation in looking forward 
to himself as flashing in the azure tints which drape a mag- 
nificent sunset. Nor have these conceptions of man’s spiritual 
being been confined to the soarings of the scientific imagi- 
nation. The reason has also used its utmost refinement of 
analysis and stretched analogies to the boldest theories in 
order to reduce the knowing agent to “a physiological ex- 
pression” or a metaphysical abstraction. It is true that, in 
order to be successful, it must first avail itself of the mystery 
and magic which the common mind finds in the processes of 
life, exalting and magnifying them so high as to make them 
capable of spiritual functions, and then give both life aud 
spirit a downward plunge by its mechanical theory of nervous 
shocks. If our readers will assure themselves that this repre- 
sentation is no exaggeration, let them carefully study the 
representations of the soul as they are reasoned out by Bain, 
or Spencer, or Lewes, or Fiske. Let them not be imposed on 
by the apparently candid and considerate admissions which 
they find in all these writers of the difference between physio- 
logical and psychological experiences, nor of the incom- 
mensurability of the one with the other. They will find that 
in the last analysis the so-called psychological experiences are 
only other names for states of the nervous system which, 
even in the terms by which they are described, are only 
removed by the faintest nuances, from mechanism and chimism, 
either in thought or language. As to the mind itself as known 
to itself, as exercising the authority of judgment or being 
convinced in certainty, there is not the hint that this is not 
only essential but conspicuous in the operation of scientific 
knowledge. The suspicion or conviction that there is or can 
be an agent that exists or acts in them all, is set aside by the 
suggestion that mental acts and the agent as known are but 
fleeting states or phenomena of the unknown force which now 
