completely changed. I shall still be the same I. Ego, ego, animus.

PYTHIAS. It is a strong point, this unbroken consciousness of personal identity amid the constant mutation of the atoms which make up our physical organism. I do not know that it has been satisfactorily met by the materialists—as yet. Büchner, indeed, observes that, though the substances which make up the brain change, the mode of their composition must be permanent and determinative of the mode of individual consciousness. He adds that these interior processes are inexplicable and inconceivable.

DAMON. There at all events we may safely agree with him.

PYTHIAS. But before you go on, let me point out that the argument which you have just urged applies equally to the brutes. Look at my dog Spider, as he lies there on the hearthrug. All the atoms of which his bodily frame is made up are in a constant state of flux, just as those atoms are which make up my body. Materially, he is not the same dog that he was a very short time ago, but an entirely different dog. His personal identity, however, remains the same, and he is very conscious of it. He knows that he is Spider, not Leo his friend, nor Hector his foe; and he knows that he is the same Spider that he always has been. What is really he, what constitutes his true self, is, I suppose, not his nerves, nor his tissues, nor his

CHAP. V.]

PHENOMENA AND SUBSTANCE.

315

bones, nor his tail, but the thinking being which resides within these environments.

DAMON. And why not? It seems to me manifest that in every living organism, be it animal or vegetable, you must distinguish, as the old schoolmen did, between phenomena and substance. What we call life, wherever we find it, is, as I account, the result of the union of spirit and matter-of the animæ et corporis dulce consortium-the sweet wedlock of soul and body. Descartes' machine theory of the animals we call lower is certainly no longer tenable in the face of what we now know about them.

PYTHIAS. So that we may talk of a thinking self in dogs, horses, and cats; so that Sir Joseph Banks, upon the memorable occasion when, if Peter Pindar is to be trusted, he exclaimed,—

Fleas are not lobsters, damn their souls,

was not exactly bombinans in vacuo: and a poet of a different order is to be taken literally when he sings of "a spirit in the woods."

DAMON. There is a profound saying of Thoreau, to whom so many of nature's open secrets were revealed: "The mystery of the life of plants is kindred with that of our own lives. We must not expect to probe with our fingers the sanctuary of any life, whether animal or vegetable." I am persuaded that the true self of every animate being is spiritual. I do not, of course, say that all souls are the same, or that human souls have not endowments

which animal and vegetative souls do not possess. But, my very dear friend, Peter Pindar's scurrility won't help us much in a discussion of this kind.

PYTHIAS. Believe me, I have never been more serious than I am at the present moment. "Truth

sits upon the lips of dying men."

But

But you know somewhat Vol

my cast of mind has always been tairian, and I can't change it now. If, as I strongly incline to think, Swift was right in holding life to be a ridiculous tragedy, perhaps our highest wisdom is to look as much as we can upon the risible side of it. But don't let us digress. You have doubtless considered the fact that mental processes depend upon the bodily organs. You cannot think without a brain. And not only so, it has been clearly established that certain sets of conceptions and impressions depend so absolutely upon certain portions of the brain, that, if those portions be removed, the impressions and conceptions disappear with them. Phrenology has doubtless been discredited by charlatans. But Gall was unquestionably right in his main position, that the various parts of the brain are the seats of different intellectual faculties. Büchner makes a point when he asks, What more signal proof of the material character of the so-called "soul" can you have than that the anatomist's scalpel is able to take it away, bit by bit? and appeals triumphantly to this fact as putting it beyond question that the intellectual faculties are a product of the cerebral substance.

CHAP. V.] THE BRAIN AND THE SOUL.

317

DAMON. Büchner and his school have a strange way of reasoning. I admit their facts, but deny their inferences. The fact of the close connection between the brain and the thought, and between certain sections of the brain and certain intellectual faculties, is indisputable. But it is a curious kind of logic which pronounces, as a necessary conclusion from these facts, that intellect is a creation of the brain and thought a mere secretion. Why may not the cerebral substance be a product of the mind? No doubt mortal man cannot think without a brain. No doubt the various developments of intelligence and sensibility correspond with developments of the brain. No doubt the removal of a particular portion of the cerebral substance, or grave injury to it, is followed-for a time, at all events-by the cessation of the faculty of which that portion was the organ. So, the musician cannot play without an instrument, nor can he produce certain sounds if the notes whereon he expresses them are wanting or are dumb:

But the soul is not the body, and the breath is not the flute; Both together make the music; either marred, and all is mute. No, the soul is not the body. I can give you what seems to me a convincing proof of that from my own recent experience. Not long ago I took laughing-gas, before having a tooth drawn. So complete was the insensibility which it produced that when I came to myself, after the operation was over, I asked the dentist when he was going to begin. On the other hand, my mind, while I was under the

influence of the anaesthetic, was active and lucid in a quite astonishing degree. I seemed to be in a land of marvels, where the deepest mysteries were revealed to me; and, when the effect of the gas passed off, it was as though the veil of illusion had fallen again between me and realities. Swiftly the vision faded, but the general impression remained, indistinct and blurred indeed, for some hours. I suppose this experience is common enough. Sir Humphry Davy, I remember, tells us how, after taking nitrous oxide, he exclaimed to Dr. Kinglake, "with the most intense belief and prophetic earnestness, 'Nothing exists but thought; the universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures, and pains.'"

PYTHIAS. The phenomena of ætherisation are certainly very curious, and I wonder that they have not been made more of by your side.

DAMON. There are many kindred phenomena not less curious, and not of less evidential value as to the spiritual element in the nature of man. Consider how in sleep we sometimes transcend our individual limits and project ourselves into futurity. Consider the marvels of second sight, of mesmerism, of clairvoyance, of spiritualism. Nothing, of course, is easier than to put aside the accounts of these things contemptuously, and to pronounce dogmatically that they are either delusions or impostures, and cannot be true. But nothing is more unscientific. Make the largest deductions you