than to believe that the whole mind acts on external objects by means of the whole body or the whole brain. In short, in whatever point of view the system is regarded, whether as true or false, the objection of materialism is futile and unphilosophical; and one must regret that it should have been brought forward in the name of religion, because every imbecile and unfounded attack against philosophy, made in this sacred name, tends to diminish the respect with which it ought always to be invested.

In entering on this subject, it is proper to take a view of the nature and extent of the point in dispute, and of the real effect of our decision upon it. The question, then, is, Whether the substance of which the thinking principle is composed be matter or spirit? And the effect of our decision, let it be observed, is not to alter the nature of that substance, whatever it be, but merely to adopt an opinion consonant with, or adverse to, a fact in nature over which we have no control. Mind, with all its faculties and functions, has existed since the creation, and will exist till the human race becomes extinct, and no opinion of man, concerning the cause of its phenomena, can have the least influence over that cause itself. The mind is invested by nature with all its properties and essences, and these it will possess, and manifest, and maintain, let men think, and speak, and write what they will concerning its substance. If the Author of Nature has invested the mind with the quality of endless existence, it will, to a certainty, flourish in immortal youth in spite of every appearance of premature decay. If, on the other hand, He has limited its existence to this passing scene, and decreed that it shall perish for ever when the animating principle passes from the body, then all our conjectures, arguments, discussions, and assertions respecting its immortality will not add one day to its existence. The opinions of man, therefore, concerning the substance of the mind, can have no influence whatever in changing or modifying that substance itself; and if so, as little can these opinions undermine the constitution of the mind, or its relations to time and eternity, on which, as their foundations, morality and religion must, and do, rest as on an immutable basis. According to Phrenology, morality and natural religion originate in, and emanate from, the primitive constitution of the mental powers themselves. Innumerable observations have proved that faculties and organs of Benevolence, Hope, Veneration, Justice, and Reflection exist. Now, our believing that the mind will die with the body will not pluck these sentiments and powers from the soul; nor will our believing the mind to be immortal implant a single one more of them in our constitution. They would all remain the same in functions and constitution, and render virtue amiable and vice odious, although we should believe the mind to be made of dust, just as they would do were we to believe the mind to be a more immediate emanation from the Deity himself.

In short, therefore, this question of materialism is one of the most vain, trivial, and uninteresting that ever engaged the human intellect; and nothing can be more unphilosophical and more truly detrimental to the interests of morality and religion, than the unfounded clamour, or cant, shall I call it, which has been poured forth from the periodical journals about the dangers attending it. A manly intellect, instead of bowing before prejudice, would dissipate it, by showing that the question is altogether an illusion, and that, adopt what opinion we will concerning the substance of the mind, every attribute belonging to it must remain unaltered and unimpaired.

But not to stop in our investigation till we have reached the goal, we may inquire whether it be possible to discover the substance of which the mind is composed, and whether it be material or immaterial? Previously to doing so, however, we ought to endeavour to ascertain what means we possess of arriving at a knowledge of the essence of the mind. All our

knowledge must be derived from either consciousness or observation. Now, by reflecting on consciousness or on what we feel, we discover nothing concerning the nature or essence of the thinking being. We do not feel a spiritual substance stirring about within us, and elaborating sentiment and thought; and neither do we feel a material substance producing these effects. We are conscious only of feelings and emotions, of friendships and attachments, of high conceptions and glorious thoughts; but whether these originate from matter or spirit; whether the first embryo substance of reflection dwelt lowly in the dust, or soared a pure ethereal essence amid the regions of boundless space, before it was constituted a part of us; whether God, in creating man, was pleased to invest his material organs with the property of thought, or to infuse into him a portion of immaterial fire: on all these points consciousness gives us no information. A great deal of popular delusion has been kept alive on this point, by the fact being overlooked, that we are not conscious of the operations of the brain. Men in general, because they are sensible only of thought and feeling, and not of the movements of any material organ performing these acts of the mind, imagine that it is necessarily an immaterial substance which is thinking and feeling within them; but they are equally unconscions of the contraction and relaxation of the muscles, and they might as well imagine that their arms and legs are moved, not by material organs, but by the direct impulse of spirit, as entertain the supposition in question. In short, the truly philosophical conclusion is, that, by means of consciousness, we are unable to discover of what substance the thinking principle is composed.

Does observation, then, throw a stronger and steadier light upon this long agitated question? The mental organs, while in health, and in the natural state in which their functions are most perfectly performed, are completely hid from inspection. No eye can penetrate the integuments of the head, the tables of the skull, the dura mater, and the pia mater, to obtain a view of the operations performed in the brain while the thoughts run high and the sentiments swell with emotion: and when external injury or disease removes these coverings, the mind does not disport in all the vigour of its healthy action. Even when all these external obstacles to inspection are removed, it is only the surface of the convolutions which is` perceived, and the soul may be enthroned in the long fibres which extend from the surface to the medulla oblongata, or thought may be elaborated there; yet, as the eye cannot see nor the hand feel thought, it may evade detection. It may be said, however, that death will solve the question, and allow the whole secrets of the soul to be disclosed; but, alas! when the pulse has ceased to beat, and the lungs no longer play, the brain presents nothing to our contemplation but an inert mass, of a soft and fibrous texture, in which no thought can be discerned and no sentiment perceived, and in which also no spirit nor immaterial substance can be traced; so that, from inspecting it, even imagination receives no food for conjecture, as to the presence or absence of an immaterial guest while life and health yet animated its folds.

Observation, therefore, reveals as little in regard to the substance of the mind, as does reflection on consciousness; and as no other modes of arriving at certain knowledge are open to man, the solution of the question appears to be placed completely beyond his reach. In short, to use an observation of Dr. Spurzheim, Nature has given man faculties fitted to observe phenomena as they at present exist, and the relations existing between them; but has denied to him powers fitted to discover, as a matter of direct perception, either the beginning, or the end, or the essence or anything under the sun; we may amuse our observation with

conjectures, but shall never arrive at truth when we stray into these interdicted regions.*

Lord Brougham maintains that in this life "the mind is different from, and independent of, matter altogether;" (Discourse of Natural Theology, p. 107;) but this objection has been adverted to on pages 34 and 35.

The solution of this question, therefore, is not only unimportant, but impossible; and this leads me to observe, that no idea can be more erroneous than that which supposes the dignity and future destiny of man, as an immortal being, to depend, of necessity, on the substance of which he is made.

Let us allow to the materialist, for the sake of argument, that the brain is the mind, and that medullary matter thinks-What then? If, in fact, it does so, it must be the best possible substance for thinking, just because the Creator selected it for the purpose, and endowed it with this property. In this argument the religious constantly forget that the same Omnipotent hand made the brain which created the mind and the universe itself, and that, in the dedication of every cerebral convolution to its objects, be they thinking or any other process, the Divine Wisdom is as certainly exercised as in impressing motion on the planets, or infusing light and heat into the sun. If, therefore, de facto, God has made the brain to think, we may rest assured that it is exquisitely and perfectly adapted for this purpose, and that His objects in creating man will not be defeated on account of His having chosen a wrong substance, out of which to constitute the thinking principle. But what are his objects in creating man? This brings us to the jet of the question at once. Mr. Lawrence, it is said, founds no moral doctrine or his opinions regarding the essence of the

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The argument maintained in the text is very ably stated, in a different form, by the author of "Remarks suggested by the reading of Mr. Taylor's letter to the Lord Provost, &c., of Edinburgh, offering himself as a candidate for the Logic Chair," 1836. Philosophers," says he, are now beginning to discover a glimpse of the truth, that MIND and MATTER, which they have all along assumed to be real existences, are only the NAMES, and nothing more than the NAMES, of certain classifications of human ideas; there being within the scope of man's knowledge no such thing as Matter, independently of the different material objects of human perception, or of the individual elementary particles that compose them; and there being, on the other hand, no such thing as Mind, independently of the different individual beings that feel, think, and will. To compare, therefore, together Mind and Matter, in the abstract, as antagonist principles, having no common property, as philosophers and theologians have always done, is really, it appears to me, with all deference to the opinions of the great men who have wasted their energies upon it, one of the most futile operations in which the mind of man can be engaged, for it is. a comparison of non-entities. There are no such things as extension, solidity, and resistance, form, size, colour, sound, or smell, different or separate from the material objects that exhibit them; and all that can be legitimately predicated of them is, that they are attributes, qualities, or properties, not of the abstract essence, or substance, called matter, but simply of the particular stock, stone, pigment, earth, metal, or gas that is the immediate object of thought." P. 10. "Thought and feeling are, equally with extension and solidity, qualities of concrete beings, and mankind have no knowledge of any other than concrete beings that possess such powers. Reflection, indeed, upon consciousness, has brought thinking men to the conclusion, that their powers of thinking, feeling, and willing are the attributes, not of their whole being indiscriminately, but of their brain exclusively; but beyond this their means of inquiry cannot carry them. It is the concrete being lodged within the skull (the concrete being, and not the abstraction called Mind) that feels, thinks, and wills; but what are the elements that compose that concrete? and what is the principle or mainspring of its activity? are questions that no man can answer." P. 14.

mind; but other materialists, who make these opinions the foundation of atheism, wish us to believe that the best evidence of the Divine intention in creating the human soul, is to be found by discovering the substance of very which it is made; and they insinuate that, if it be constituted of refined and dignified material, the conclusion necessarily follows, that it is intended for magnificent destinies, while, if it be composed of a rude and vulgar stuff, it must be intended only to crawl on this filthy world. Here, however, sense and logic equally fail them; for no principle in philosophy is more certain than that we cannot infer, from a knowledge of the mere substance of anything, for what ends it is fitted. Exhibit to a human being every variety of imaginable essence, and if you allow him to know no more of its properties than he can discover from examining its constituent parts, he will be utterly incapable of telling whether it is calculated to endure for a day or last to eternity. The materialist, therefore, is not entitled, even from the supposed admission that medullary matter thinks, to conclude that the human being is not immortal and responsible. The true way of discovering for what end man has been created is, to look to the qualities with which he has been endowed, trusting that the substance of which he is composed is perfectly suited to the objects of his creation. Now, when we inquire into his qualities, we find the thinking principle in him to differ, not only in degree, but in The latter have no faculty_of kind, from that of the lower animals. justice to indicate to them that the unrestrained manifestation of Destructiveness or Acquisitiveness is wrong; they have no sentiment of Veneration to prompt them to seek a God whom they may adore; they have no faculty of Hope, pointing out futurity as an object of ceaseless anxiety and contemplation, and leading them to expect a life beyond the grave; and, indeed, several of the convolutions of the brain, which in man form the organs of these sentiments, appear not to exist in the lower animals. Those organs also, which in man serve to manifest the faculties of Reflection, are, in the lower animals, eminently deficient, and their understanding, in exact correspondence with this fact, is so limited as to be satisfied with little knowledge, and to be insensible to the comprehensive design and glories of creation. Man, then, being endowed with qualities which are denied to the lower creatures, we are entitled, by a legitimate exercise of reflection, the subject being beyond the region of the external senses, to conclude, on principles truly philosophic, that he is designed for another and a higher destiny than is to be allotted to them, whatever be the essence of his mind.

These principles enable us to dispose of an objection which was long ago stated by Dr. Barclay, and has since been repeated by many other opponents, and yet is in itself very absurd. Dr. Barclay's hypothesis is, that the mind fashions the organs. If it is impossible to discover the substance of which the mind is composed, it is equally impracticable to tell whether the faculties determine the size of the organs, or the organs limit the power of the faculties. Some of the difficulties with which Dr. Barclay's notions are beset are the following: If the immaterial mind fashions the organs, then God bestows idiotic minds, insane minds, stupid minds, and viciously disposed minds on different individuals; and these make bad organs: a doctrine which appears fully more objectionable than the theory, that the mind itself, in all individuals, is perfect; but that the manifestations of its dispositions and powers, in this life, are affected by the state of the organs with which it is connected. On the former supposition, human efforts can do nothing to meliorate the condition of the mind; for the immaterial principle is beyond our reach, and, until we modify it, no change in the organs can take place. On the latter hypothesis, we are encouraged with hopes of success to do our best; for it

assumes that the mind in all individuals is sound, and that the imperfections lie in the organs, which are subject to modification by means of propagation and exercise. According to this view, also, insanity is not a disease of the immaterial principle, but an affection of the organs, which may be cured by medicine. See Phrenological Journal, vol. ii., p. 149.

III. ON THE EFFECTS OF INJURIES OF THE BRAIN ON THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE MIND.

(BY DR. A. COMBE.)

Or all the arguments advanced for the subversion of Phrenology, no one has been more frequently or more confidently urged, than that which rests on the alleged fact of the brain having, in various instances, been wounded or destroyed in whole or in part, without in any degree impeding the usual operations of mind. When narrowly examined, however, this objection proves at variance with the views of those who maintain it, and completely demonstrative of their ignorance of the principles of the science against which it is directed. "The system of Gall and Spurzheim," it is said, "however ingenious or amusing in theory it may be, is annihilated by the commonest reference to fact. Experience has shown us that a man may live in the full enjoyment of his intellectual faculties, although a part of his brain is destroyed by disease. Portions of the brain, various in situation and size, have been found to have been entirely disorganized, yet no single power of the mind was impaired, even to the very day of the patient's death. It would be difficult to find any one portion of the brain that has not, in some case or another, been deranged in its structure, without injury to the mind. Certainly, of the parts specified by Gall and Spurzheim, every one has, in its turn, been found wanting, without any deficiency in that intellectual faculty which they would represent it either to produce or sustain."* Such are the ipsissi ma verba of a learned and respectable, though prejudiced, opponent; and, although others might be quoted who go still farther than he does, I am ready to admit that, if the statements here recorded were as clearly substantiated as they were sweepingly made, neither the system of philosophy which we advocate, nor any other which acknowledges the necessity of the intervention of a material instrument for the manifestation of the mind, could possibly survive for a day.

At first sight the foregoing objection appears to be highly plausible and relevant; and, coming as it generally does, directly or indirectly, from the members of the medical profession, who, naturally enough, are supposed to be best qualified to judge, it is received by many with implicit confidence, and thus operates upon them with all the force of truth; and, in fact, to those who are alike ignorant of Anatomy and of Phrenology, and who, therefore, have no means of forming an accurate estimate of its force, it does present a very formidable aspect. As, however, to those who are acquainted with both these scionces, and who are consequently better qualified to judge correctly, the very facts upon which the objections are grounded seem, instead of invalidating the fundamental principles of the new philosophy, to be clearly and unequivocally demonstrative of their truth; it may be useful to state such an abstract of the evidence itself as shall enable even the unprofessional reader to determine how far it authorizes the inferences which have been deduced from it by our opponents. With this intention I shall first make some observations on the testimony offered of the alleged integrity of all the mental faculties in cases of extensive injury of the brain; and then examine anatomically how far the

* Rennel On Skepticism, p. 100.