i88i. 
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CORRESPONDENCE. 
%* The Editor does not hold himself responsible for statements of fadts or 
opinions expressed in Correspondence, or in Articles bearing the signature 
of their respective authors. 
LIFE AND MIND ON THE BASIS OF MODERN 
MEDICINE. 
To the Editor of the Journal of Science . 
Sir, — I have read with interest your criticisms of Dr. Lewins’s 
“ Life and Mind,” and of my Appendix to that remarkable 
treatise. Will you allow me a small portion of your space in 
which I may answer, first, your allusion to Dr. Lewins’s not ven- 
turing “ to deny the possible existence of an Eternal Mind,” or 
attempting “ to show how physical energy is transformed into 
life ;” and, secondly, your impeachment of my estimate of the 
character of those lives which are wholly devoted to scientific 
pursuits — “ that is, to specialism.” 
A perusal of “ Life and Mind ” will show why its author re- 
fuses to dogmatise, or even to speculate, respecting the existence 
of a Supreme Intelligence. Such an abstention is the only pos- 
sible logical result of the relativity of human knowledge which 
finds expression in Dr. Lewins’s theorem that “ higher than him- 
self no man can think, his own perceptions and conceptions 
constituting his entire universe.” If this position be self-evident 
it surely follows that either to affirm or to deny the existence of 
a something which utterly transcends man’s perceptions and 
conceptions would be an a<51 of gross inconsistency — altogether 
inconsonant with the first principles of his Thesis, as of Indudtive 
Science itself. Any attempt to explain the transference of phy- 
sical energy into life is now, ever has been, and probably ever 
will be, a purely eschatological abuse of reason — a Will-o’-the- 
Wisp pursuit of a phantom, which, as wholly beyond the range 
of our faculties, cannot be regarded as a rational theme for 
“explanation.” There is as great a mystery underlying the 
different perfumes of the rose and the violet as that which veils 
the origin of life. Why these odours are different to our percep- 
tion we do not know, and we are not called upon to explain. I 
may confidently state that the opinions I have expressed in my 
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