CHAPTER OP CRITICISM. 
205 
the existence of the mental powers which distinguish Man from the lower 
animals; if, therefore, this immaterial principle must be resorted to at all, it would 
certainly be less absurd to employ it as an explanation of vitality, than as an ex¬ 
planation only of the higher results of that vitality. 
But with regard to spirit, I must enter my decided protest against its intro¬ 
duction in any scientific system whatever. 44 Spirit” is a word which, like the 
line or the point in Geometry, represents no reality in Nature ; with this difference, 
however, that the geometrical terms are useful and even necessary in the solution 
of important problems, while the popular 44 spirit” can never serve any other 
purpose than to confound in the mind the true basis of scientific investigation, 
without producing the slightest countervailing advantage. Spirit is the negation 
of matter; and, since the man of science has to deal exclusively with matter and 
its operations, spirit must of necessity be to him a non-existent chimera. What 
he has to do, and what we all have to do, is to learn what is, not how it is, or 
what we fancy may be. We know that the earth revolves round the sun; we 
can explain the laws by which this takes place; but who can say what is the 
cause of the phenomenon? We can say that bodies gravitate to the centre of the 
earth; can determine the comparative forces with which different bodies do so; 
but who can say what makes them gravitate ? So it is with every other operation 
of Nature, with the motions of the minutest atoms of non-sentient matter, and 
with the workings of the human mind. 
The paragraph on which I have animadverted is so obscurely worded that it 
would almost seem to be the intention of the writer to leave a loophole for escape 
by means of a quibble, in case of necessity. He will perhaps say, that by his 
principle he meant reason. But this will not do; for 1st., reason had been 
metioned before, and the 44 but” plainly indicates that this 44 principle’’ is considered 
in the light of a superaddition to the 44 divine gift2nd., reason is not a principle, 
but a faculty; 3rd., if it be answered that 44 faculty” was intended, and not 
44 principle,” I reply, that reason does not connect Man peculiarly 44 with all that 
is below him in creation/’ nor at all with what is 44 divine and spiritual beyond 
the bonds of matter and the records of timereason does not enable us to <4 survey 
the world we live in,” nor is it the faculty which makes the world and all it 
contains seem beautiful in our eyes. If it had been said that Man possesses 
many and noble faculties which are denied to the inferior animals, then indeed 
there would have been no room either for objection or misunderstanding; but as 
it stands, the paragraph can be viewed in no other light than as a high-so,unding 
but meaningless lure, to ; catch the applause of the ignorant and the unreflecting, 
and as a homage to prejudice and blind self-esteem, equally unworthy of the 
philosopher, whether it be sincere, or whether, as I suspect is the case, it be 
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