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The Brain Theory of Mind and Matter . [March, 
world of sense is a pidlure, a poem, a melody. Granted ; 
but what, then, shall we say of the world of intelledt and 
emotion ? Is this the more real of the two, or is it merely 
a vision of the painting, a reminiscence of the lyric, an echo 
of the music? The answer is not far to seek. We believe 
that Matter is the ultimate reality beyond which it is im- 
possible to penetrate, and that its most elementary, most 
general, and most easily verified manifestations are found 
in simple physical and psychical phenomena. From com- 
binations of these phenomena, all our conceptions must be 
exclusively drawn, and by similar combinations they must 
be corroborated or disproved. All ideas, notions, or fantasies, 
are of course equally subjedlive, since none can boast an 
origin higher than the human brain ; but some may be in 
harmony, and others in open discord, with the observed 
course of nature, while a third group may stand apart from 
fa<5Is altogether, assuming a position neither of amity nor 
of enmity. The two latter classes are alike illegitimate, the 
one being false, and the other simply irrelevant. A propo- 
sition which can neither be denied nor affirmed is for all 
practical purposes rejected, for, in reason, as in law : “ De 
non apparentibus et non existentibus eadern est ratio” No one 
can prove by induction or deduction that witches never ride 
on broomsticks through the air, or cast malignant spells 
over children and cattle ; that fairies have never danced by 
moonlight on the green, or that the Lorelei never sat singing 
on her dark rock, and luring unwary travellers to destruc- 
tion ; yet all these fictions have imperceptibly passed away 
from popular belief, to a limbo prepared for dogmas and 
legends not less unscientific, but hitherto more tenacious of 
life and power. It is time that the pseudo-science of Onto- 
logy should be superseded by Physiology and Psychology, 
and that the vain search for final causes, to which all religion 
may be referred, should be renounced by those whom reason 
must teach to behold in the orderly arrangements of the 
Cosmos only a supreme glorification of Matter, the Universal 
Mother, and of Man, her child. In the grey cells of the 
cerebral cortex are generated, not only the visible Heaven, 
“ this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire,” but the 
poetic sense of its beauty and harmony, and even the condi- 
tions of time and space which correspond to. the revolution 
of its spheres. For, without the intellect, time and space, 
infinitude and eternity, which are at present abstract con- 
cepts formed by the brain, would, so far as we know, be 
annihilated. Matter would still, as in geologic and pre- 
geologic ages, continue its immortal existence ; but matter, 
