152 
registration were effected, it could not give us identity, as the 
cerebral cortex is momentarily passing away. 
The Professor admits that “ it is incorrect to say that our 
personality retains its identity,”* and says that “ our person- 
ality changes every moment.” He thus abandons personal 
identity. It also follows from his reasonings that when the 
registration in the cortex ceases, the personality ceases ; and, 
as a matter of course, when the personality ceases, the person, 
the Ego, also ceases ; and thus we reach the terminus of all 
materialism. 
The Chairman, having conveyed a vote of thanks to Dr. Fisher for his 
very careful paper, called upon the Honorary Secretary to read some 
communications referring to the paper. 
The Honorary Secretary then read the following which had been received 
from Mr. F. Bateman, M.D., of Norwich : — 
“The subject introduced by Dr. Fisher is one especially calculated to 
interest the members of the Victoria Institute, treating, as it does, of the 
mysterious connection between matter and mind. It is especially interest- 
ing at this juncture, when, as you are aware, there is a certain school 
of modern philosophers who are trying to materialise everything, ignoring 
man’s spiritual and metaphysical attributes, the belief in which, they regard 
as a relic of mediaeval superstition. They go so far as to assert that mind, 
thought, and consciousness, are bodily functions, and simply the result of 
some molecular or atomic change in the brain. However, evidence is daily 
accumulating of a scientific character, which directly tends to controvert 
the materialistic tendencies of the day, and to show that what has been 
termed the ‘ slippery force of thought —the vis vivida anima ’ — cannot be 
weighed in the balance. 
“ If I understand the author right, he contends for the Immateriality of 
Mind. I agree with him, but I think he has failed to state his case as 
clearly and as forcibly as he might have done. In speaking of Dr. Ferrier’s 
definition of the ‘ brain as the organ of mind,’ Dr. Fisher complains that 
we are not told ‘ what Dr. Ferrier wishes us to understand by organ , brain , 
or mind.’ 
“Now, this is not the time or place to enter minutely into this question, 
a subject which I have treated at some length in my work on ‘ Darwinism 
tested by Language ; ’ f I wish, however, to say that I so far agree with Dr. 
Ferrier, that the brain is undoubtedly the material organ of mind, and that 
by it our thoughts become manifested to the outer world, for each of our 
faculties manifests itself by means of matter, and the material condition 
which renders the exercise of a faculty possible is an organ ; but it is 
important not to confound the faculty itself with the corporeal organ upon 
which the external manifestation of this faculty depends . 
“ I would illustrate my meaning by an allusion to the electric telegraph, 
an apparatus by which ideas and words are transmitted from miod to mind, 
with a rapidity to which ordinary language cannot attain. Now, the elec- 
trical battery may be not inaptly compared to the brain, and the telegraph 
* Page 124. 
f Dr. Bateman’s paper on this subject will be found in vol. vii., p. 73. 
