1 882.] Correspondence. 49 
facft, mind. It is obvious, however, from the fourth and some 
other sentences in this letter, that C. N. is using the word ‘ mind ’ 
in a different sense from that in which I employ it, viz., as signi- 
fying thought, desire, intention, &c., while I use it to indicate the 
person or being which thinks — the ego, the man himself. The 
distinction here referred to is as important as it is real, and the 
neglect of it produces endless confusion. It is fully recognised 
in the Latin by the difference between * animus ’ and * anima,’ 
the former being C. N.’s sense, the latter mine. Mind in the 
former sense is the outcome or manifestation, or perhaps condi- 
tion, of mind in the latter. But further, C. N. asserts that the 
brain (or its grey matter) “thinks — ergo, it exists.” I neither dis- 
pute the existence of the brain, nor that it thinks, i.e., that it is 
the organ of thought. It does not think, as matter, but because 
it is associated, for a time, with a living conscious entity. If it 
could think, per se, it should do so when separated from the rest 
of the body, which no sane person will affirm. God has made 
the brain, or its gray matter, if you please, essential to thought, 
and it is only in that secondary sense that it can properly be said 
to think. The celebrated phrase ‘ Cogito, ergo sum ’ must not be 
thus travestied, for the ‘ ego ’ is the living soul, and not one of 
the bodily organs. It has been well said on this subjedt, by Dr. 
Moore, “ Thought has no analogy to any known property of 
matter. Could anyone dare to talk, even in metaphor, of definite 
atoms of mind ? or of a soul being divisible by weight or 
measure ? ” But there is nothing inconceivable in the idea of 
an union or blending of a material with an immaterial entity. 
(3.) C. N. makes the marvellous assertion that “ The volitions 
of man are ... as purely due to physical causes as the fall of a 
stone.” If ‘due to ’ means ‘influenced by,’ no one will dispute the 
truth of the assertion. But more than this is intended. This idea is 
made by its advocates to be a ground for the denial of the freedom 
of man’s will and of his responsibility to a higher power, and is 
closely allied to Fatalism. Nor will the clause “ in thelast analysis” 
save it from the charge. But the illustration upsets the thesis. 
For gravitation, which brings a projected stone to the solid earth, 
is allowed by the best philosophers to be not only an universal (as 
far as we know), but an ultimate, fadt : i.e., one explicable only 
by referring it to the Supreme Will, and this implies a Mind. So 
does human volition imply a human mind. 
(4.) The ‘ phlogistic theory ’ is again produced, and declared 
to be parallel with the ‘ animistic theory,’ and to ‘ have no analogic 
ground for supposing a levitating fadtor.’ Without admitting the 
parallelism, I venture to remark that such an analogy, though 
no doubt an inadequate one, does exist. For a mass of cork or 
a bladder of air, attached to a stone in water, would be a ‘ levi- 
tating fadtor ’ to raise it to the surface. 
(5.) But I gladly turn from criticising to commending. In 
sentence 12 C. N. alludes to “ a power ‘ behind ’ organic 
VOL. IV. (third series). e 
